#tim: say less. what should be our code word? | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

flying-nightwing · 4 years ago

Text

Damn Him

Hi, this is average af but I needed to post something. You’ll probably be disappointed lmao. Anyway, enjoy some Dick Grayson content!

More on my masterlist, pinned as a top post!

Pairing: Dick Grayson x Reader

Word count: 4798

Warnings: None

Summary: Dick Grayson never seems to say the right thing around you, and it’s not quite for the reason you initially thought

You looked up from your book when your cellphone vibrated on your desk beside you. You were in the midst of studying for your last exam of the semester, so you had your phone on a strict do not disturb schedule, which meant it remained on 24/7. Your notifications were blocked for any social media, text or calls you might receive, well, except for your one emergency contact: Bruce Wayne. He knew he was supposed to contact you only if he had no other choice but ask for your help, and never had he even used that card ever since you knew him. Reluctantly, you put down you book and marker to switch them for your phone. Turning on the screen, you ignored the various hidden notifications, focusing only on the single line that stared back at you.

Call me when you can - B.

Sighing, you unlocked your phone and pressed the contact name, then the phone icon next to it. It rang twice before Bruce picked up.

"(Y/N), how are you?"

"A bit stressed out, but it could be worse" You replied truthfully. "What's up?"

"I hope you know I wouldn't do this if I had any other solution" He began. "But I need your help on a recon mission, almost all my effective got busted last night"

"Oh my, are they okay?" You frowned with concern, even if he couldn't see you.

"Yes, don't worry" He said, "I'll explain in person, that is if you agree to come. I'd understand if you refused, though"

You rubbed the bridge of your nose and closed your eyes for a second. You owed a lot to Bruce, and since it was a simple recon stakeout, you could take one or two nights off to help him out. You were already ahead of schedule in your studying and confident in your knowledge of the material.

"Yeah, sure, I'll be there" You finally answered. "What time do you want me over?"

"As soon as you can"

"Aight, see ya"

You hung up the phone and put it back on your desk, observing it for a second. It had been gifted to you by Bruce after you began going on missions more regularly with the batlings, he said that way he knew for sure all communications would be secure and sheltered from hacking or government surveillance. You had to admit, having an encrypted phone was pretty neat, as it ran entirely on Wayne Enterprises servers and networks. The simple thought of not having to suffer through youtube ads was satisfactory enough on its own to justify the need for it, even if you didn't join missions as much as you used to.

You finally stood up and went to change from your yoga pants and loose tank top to black jeans and a sweater, then jumped in your car and drove to the manor. You punched in your code at the gate and took the right to the garages, where you entered a second code to open the doors. Your car was several notches under those parked there, but you had to have something less flashy as not to attract too much attention. Still, it was more than a majority of college students even had. You had to thank Bruce for that too. He wasn't your adopted father per say, since he found you a few days before your eighteenth birthday, but he still acted like a guardian and mentor for you.

You jogged down to the batcave, where you instantly spotted a chatty blonde sprawled in a seat, making wild gesture. She sprung up straight at the sound of you coming in and her face split in a wide grin. She jumped on her feet and skipped toward you.

"Hey giiiiirl" She drawled out excitedly. "Long time no see!"

"Hey Steph" You chuckled, going for the hug. "Sorry I didn't call, I have no excuses"

"Don't worry about it" She waved off with an airy laugh. She knew how busy school kept you, and how you kind of wanted to separate yourself fromthe vigilante life. "I'm just glad you're here"

"So am I" Bruce called from the computers. He gave you a subtle smile, and you nodded back to him. "It seems like we're in a bit of an impasse here"

You didn't miss the quick glare he sent to Tim and Steph, who sheepishly avoided looking back at him. It didn't seem too serious though, or the air would have drastically changed.

"Before he says anything, know it wasn't our fault" Steph hurried to say.

"We were totally ambushed by Vicky Vale" Tim nodded along."No idea what she did there, but she was, and she saw right through our disguises.We had to bolt before she exposed us"

You frowned in confusion. "Okay can someone tell me what is going on here?"

"Tim and Steph were supposed to go undercover and cozy up with the high leaders of what I have suspicions on good authority are transiting premium grade opium into the US and Europe, and are close partners to Count Vertigo" Bruce began, already exhausted. "But as they said, Vicky Vale was somehow invited to the banquet and singled them out immediately before they could get even near the big guys"

"My magnificent blond mane attracts way too much attention, I'm afraid" Steph sighed sadly, making you chuckle. "It's a curse, babes. I tell ya"

"Keep telling yourself that, Stephi" A new voice came from the top of the stairs. You both wanted suddenly to go back to your books as a big part of why you barely tag along on missions anymore skipped down the stairs. Damn Dick Grayson, damn him. "We all know covert missions are not your strong point"

"I'm gonna kill you in your sleep, Grayson" She smiled sweetly at him.

"No, because you suck at being subtle" He returned the grin, just as sweetly if not more. He ruffled her hair as he passed by. "What's up Timbo"

He hummed something unintelligible, flipping his brother off. Dick laughed, then almost added something when he finally noticed you. His laughter died down and his eyes widened, and suddenly he looked uncomfortable. "Oh, you're here"

"So it seems" You replied as flatly as he spoke. It wasn't new, you had never known how to act around each other. Did you hate him? Of course not, you had absolutely no reason to. Did you consider him your friend? Hard to say. All you knew was that any and every encounter you had with Dick Grayson was awkward. You got along with Tim just fine, and even Jason when he was still around. You loved Cass and Duke, and you even managed to get on Dami's good side, or most of the time anyway. But Dick remained a mystery to you, one that had eluded you for years now. You didn't understand a single thing about that boy, and you doubted you ever would. You've had conversations before, loads of them, and you had no doubt he would make an amazing friend, but you couldn't seem to get past the stage of acquaintances.

Which was frankly disappointing, because you had been instantly attracted by his charms and easygoing nature when you first met. You had been drawn to him, and you couldn't try and pretend you hadn't pinned after him for the longest time. But you hit a wall when his behaviour began changing wildly around you, right around the time you slipped flirts every now and then to let him know that you were into him. Right now, you were just really over his poor attempts at pretending he never noticed it happen.

"So" Bruce spoke up, breaking the tension that had suddenly arisen in the cave. "Tomorrow night we'll have a new opening to try and get to them, hopefully without interruption this time. I've taken a look at the list, and no reporter was on it. We should be good"

"But Tim and Steph already got busted" You pointed out. "They'll know something is up if they show up again"

"That's why they will be seen at the Gotham Charity Auction at the museum" He explained, meeting your eyes. "That's why I called you up. You'll be going undercover with Dick as husband and wife"

"What?" Dick coughed almost immediately. "We're not–" He laughed nervously. "Us? As a married couple? This is ridiculous"

Your head turned sharply toward him, your eyebrows raised in disbelief. "Wow, thanks a lot for the vote of confidence" You snapped. "I didn't know being my fake husband was such a terrible perspective"

"No– Wait– That's not–" He stuttered, his eyes wide. "I didn't mean it that way"

"Sure" You rolled your eyes, before turning to Bruce again. He had an unreadable expression on his face, more unreadable than usually anyway. Tim and Steph stood there in stunned silence, not daring to speak up. "What's the briefing?"

Bruce glanced in between you and Dick, before looking back at you again. "Félix Lachance and Stella Gustavsson, they're the one you need to befriend. Since you're not known to the public, it'll be easier for Dick to pass under the radar and not cause an incident like last time"

"We get it, B" Tim muttered under his breath as Bruce passed you the files with the pictures.

"I need you to retrieve any information you can" He continued, ignoring Tim's comment. "Names of business partners, location of transactions, dates, anything, you know the gig. Your occupation and alias if you want one will be at your discretion, I trust you can deal with that. As always you need to be extremely careful as not to alert them, because this is our last chance to get the critical Intel we need to take this down. So I'll need you at your A game, both of you"

This was a warning and you knew it. He let you know more or less subtly to put aside whatever was happening between you and behave like adults. You straightened your back and took a deep breath, getting your head in the right mindset.

"Alright, I'll be ready for tomorrow night" You nodded as you gathered the files. "Can I stay over tonight? There is no point in trying to study now"

"You don't need to ask, (Y/N), you're always welcome here" Bruce said, a hint of fondness in his voice. He always liked having you around, he said your presence tamed the boys. You nodded and made your way upstairs, finding the room you claimed as your own for about a year, and the same you always came back to when you stayed the night.

You went to the drawers, fishing out old training clothes you had left behind. You weren't sure all those were yours, they were probably mixed with pieces you stole from Steph and Cass. In return, they probably did also steal from your drawer occasionally, balancing it all out. You were about to change into something comfy for bed when a soft knock at your door caught your attention. You walked to it and tentatively opening the door, your expression flattening when you saw how it was.

"Yes?"

"Hey um" Dick scratched the back of his neck. "I just wanted to say, I'm sorry it came out that way. I just meant that it would be, you know, weird"

You stared at him blankly. "You're not helping your case here, Dick"

"Shit, that's not what I mean either!" He hurried to say, realizing his mistake. But you were already closing the door. "Please (Y/N)–"

"Get some rest Dick" You said as you pushed the door closed. You sighed and shook your head before adding in a whisper, "God knows we'll need it"

------

You had done covert missions before, but this was the first time you were operating in such conditions. You finished retouching your hair, staring at yourself in the mirror, wondering whether or not it was more expensive than your total life income. The floor length champagne coloured dress was stunning, tailored to your form and just sparkly enough to let you shine through the design. You suspected the shoes were made especially to fit with the dress, as they resembled its lace and belt colour. You were sporting on top of that a heavy diamond necklace with matching earrings, proving the general high cost of the outfit. Your comm was carefully tucked in your ear, functional and well hidden.

"Oh my my" Steph whistled lowly. "If I wasn't dating Timbers I would date you"

You laughed. "This is the outfit talking. You haven't seen me tired and puffy in sweatpants just yet"

"Grump, just take the damn compliment" She playfully poked your exposed shoulder.

"Alright alright, thanks" You rolled your eyes. "Since it's gonna be the only one coming from this household anyway"

Steph wiggled her eyebrows. "Wouldn't be so sure about that" She said in a sing-song voice. "Your fake boyfriend may have some thoughts too"

"Ha" You snorted, walking out of your room with her following at your side. "It's good, that you're wishful thinking. The boy can't seem to talk to me without insulting me lately"

"Trust me, he won't be able to resist to this bombshell" She gestured at your form. "Dick's a people pleaser, and looking like a whole five course meal like that, you sure are easy to please if you want my opinion"

You shook your head, a small grin on your face. Steph had always been your favourite for a reason. She knew how you felt about Dick, but she never meddled. Well, not more than she typically would anyway, and not enough to cross your boundaries. And even then, she had no explanation either for his behaviour. You finally reached the foyer, where Bruce was dressed casually, sleeves rolled up and without a tie, talking to an all dressed up Dick, his hair now dark red and with almost black contact lenses. Your heels clicking on the stairs was what snapped their attention to you; Bruce nodding at his choice of dress for you, and Dick, his mouth slightly agape. You felt Steph gently but excitedly elbowing your ribs.

"Ah, (Y/N), there you are" Bruce said. "I'm glad to see the dress fits well"

"Yeah" Dick tried to smile, but it came out more like a grimace. "You look okay"

You blinked in disbelief as you heard Steph's facepalm behind you. You closed your eyes and exhaled through your nose, while Bruce shook his head slightly at his son.

"Yikes" Tim made his presence known. You shared this one word mood immensely right about now. "Way to go D"

Dick cleared his throat, trying to push back the embarrassment blush creeping up his cheeks. "Uh, shall we go?"

"That would be preferable, yes" Bruce replied, making Steph choke and cover he laughter with a cough. The way he said it was clearly meant to be a jab to his son's tactless attitude. "Be careful"

"Of course" You smiled tightly and all but dragged Dick outside. You'd take one of Bruce's luxury car to get there, and it was already waiting in the driveway. Dick pressed the door button and slowly, they lifted up to let you in. You slid in the passenger seat without waiting for Dick's help and you kept your eyes on the windshield in from of you as he began to drive. The ride was silent until he decided to speak again, tentatively.

"It's nice to see you all dressed up, for once" He said, still clearly not thinking of his choice of words more carefully. "It's different. A good different!"

For once? Was he serious?

You audibly sighed. "I'm begging you to just stop talking"

"What?" He objected, confused. "What did I say wrong this time– Oh"

"Yeah" You replied, your tone clipped and dry.

"I'm an idiot" He mumbled under his breath. That you could agree on, but you didn't voice it out loud.

He couldn't pull into the driveway fast enough. You slipped on your fake engagement ring as Dick stopped in front of the awaiting valet, doing himself the same thing. You both had a recording device slipped in your clothes, and the ring allowed you to turn it on and off at will, as well as the comm in your ear. You turned both off for the awaiting scan at the entrance, as not to emit detectable frequencies.

"Ready?" He asked, and you gave him a firm nod. He got out first and rounded the car, opening your door for you as he would be expected to by this particular crowd. You took his offered hand to climb out and linked your arm to his as he gave the keys to the valet in exchange for a ticket. He left a tip before you walked inside, registering to the guest list. You passed the security checkpoint without a hassle and found yourself in the hall where the auction was held. You turned on your comm and recording device again.

"Recon first, then regroup?" You suggested in a mutter as you were both visually scanning the room.

"Yep" He replied shortly. "B, copy?"

"Crystal clear"

"Good. Let's go"

While Dick headed to the bar, you opted for the art collection on display, pretending to scout for potential pieces to bid on. But your eyes weren't on the expensive paintings and statues, but moved around the room to spot some VIP lounge or area where the big shots might hang out at. There was a room where attendees came and went, but you shrugged it off as there wasn't enough security for the profile you were searching for. You paused your recon for small talk here and there, and you were in the middle of a casual chat about painted landscapes with an older gentleman when Dick rejoined your side, handing you a drink.

"There you are honey" He smiled sweetly, his unusually dark brown eyes reflecting the light from the chandelier.

"Joey, my love, allow me to introduce you to Sir Fernand Bretworth of Essex" His alias flew out of your mouth naturally, then you took a small sip of your drink. Non alcoholic, nice thinking. "We were discussing impressionism and its influence on modern art"

You wanted to smirk at the clueless look Dick gave you. He was a prodigy in a lot of things, but art wasn't one. It was more Damian's thing, or Tim's if he tried hard enough, but definitely not Dick's. Take that now.

"Ah, yes..." He replied slowly. "Fascinating indeed"

"Alright" You let out a small, cover up laugh as your hand rested on his bicep. "My husband has little interest in art, my apologies"

"No offence taken" He chuckled. "I'll leave you two, my wife must be looking for me. An old fool like me gets easily distracted!"

You laughed along with him until he was out of earshot. Then you dropped your hand and turned to him. "Noticed anything?"

"Yeah, there is a guarded room with special access" He said as you walked deeper into the crowd not to look suspicious. "Only owned of a special pass can go in, and the guards are very thorough"

"Great" You breathed. "Now let's hope out lovebirds will come out to mingle"

"As it turns out..." He trailed off, and instinctively, you began turning your head toward where his gaze lead. He immediately redirected your head back to him with a firm, but gentle touch on your cheek. His hand remained there for about three seconds longer than necessary, until he realized what he did and retracted his arm. You could have almost enjoyed it if he didn't look like he was touched by literal fire. "Don't look"

"Sorry" You mumbled, avoiding his gaze.

"... They got out, they're talking to people" He informed you, ignoring what just went down. "You go for Stella, I'll take Felix. Remember, friendly but not suspicious. Sweet talk your way into spilling the beans"

"I know" You bit back, your voice low. "Not my first mission, remember? I know what to do"

"I was just reminding you"

"Yeah, I got that" You scoffed. "If you don't trust me, just say so, it'll save you trouble of babying me"

"Come on, that's not–"

He began arguing, but you walked away before you could slip up and say his real name. It would give him one more reason to come down on you like you were a beginner in need of guidance. You were rusty, not stupid. You didn't need him insulting your undercover talents as well. You stopped in front of a beautiful emerald necklace that had a start bid of ten millions dollars and took a long sip of your drink, now kind of bummed it was non alcoholic. But that very detail was probably why you felt a presence approaching you from behind, giving you a few seconds to compose yourself and sweep your frustration under the rug.

"Trouble in paradise?"

You turned around, surprised. It looked like the voice made you jump, when it was in fact the nature of the question that threw you off, as well as the person who had spoken. Before you could ask, the Stella Gustavsson smiled warmly and nodded to where Dick had been seconds earlier.

"I saw what happened" She began, and your heart skipped a beat, hoping she hadn't overheard. "Those frustrated hands gesture are all too familiar. What did he do?"

You relaxed slightly, for now. "We've been having trouble lately, well, more than usually" You explained with a little complicit cock of your head. She seemed to get it. You, on the other hand, knew Dick was hearing everything on his comm, so you decided to go for it. "He's acting... Weird. Can't seem to talk to me without irritating me, whether on purpose or not. I'm sorry, I'm venting to a stranger, I can't imagine how it must look look like.

"Don't worry about it dear, I asked" She winked, extending her hand. "I'm Stella"

"Aleka" You shook her hand.

"Your dress is stunning, by the way!" She exclaimed. "Which designer?”

You froze for a second before shrugging. "No idea, my designer got it for me" You brushed off. "As long as it looks good, I don't care where it comes from"

"Amen" She said, taking a sip of her champagne. "Although, I need to know the name of your designer. They have amazing taste, and I'm looking for a new one for myself"

Oh shit.

"It's B" You replied instantly.

"Bee?"

"Yeah" You nodded, and she looked at you incredulously. "I mean, that's what we all call him. I'm sure he has a name, but I pay him to dress me, not to know his personal life"

"Harsh, (Y/N)" Bruce said in your ear, and you remembered he had been listening to everything. "But nice save"

She laughed, unaware of the comments from Batman himself. "That is very true. How have I not met you before? I feel we have a lot in common"

"I sincerely have no idea" You replied, adding a little gasp of disbelief.

"You're different from this crowd, I can feel it" She kept going on as you started walking side by side in the exposition room. "Everyone here only cares about petty, trivial things. You have a head on your shoulders, you're smart. Too bad your man can't seem to see what's in front of him"

You sighed in agreement to hide the fist pump of victory that threatened to come up. Just like that, you had won Stella over. "I don't know what to do about it. I've tried to talk to him, but it just makes it worse"

"But have you tried to make him jealous?" She suggested with a perfectly shaped eyebrow raised. "There are plenty of young men around, or older bachelors if you're into that. Flirt with them, make sure he sees you, he'll come running, take my word"

"It won't work, he's not–" Even my boyfriend, you were about to say, but you saved your fall just on time. Still, you could practically see Dick's glare in the back of your head at the almost slip up. "Jealous. He's not a jealous man, he's very confident and secure"

"What a shame" She drawled out, going for her champagne again. "Here's what you can do then. Go to him, take him by the neck and french kiss him like there is no tomorrow”

You choked on your saliva as she watched you with a mischievous grin. "Excuse me?"

"It's guaranteed to work, darling" She lifted her shoulder in an elegant shrug. "Then you hold him off. You'll thank me later tonight when you're back at home, just wait and see"

You were about to argue some more, but her insisting stare told you she wasn't just going to let it go. So you scanned the crowd for Dick, spotting him casually excusing himself from a conversation group, going for a refill at the bar. You reached him and grabbed him by the elbow, bringing him face to face with you. You made sure your back was to Stella before beginning to explain the situation.

"I heard" He told you in a mutter, making sure his lips were unreadable under Stella's stare from the distance.

"Then you know what she expects" You sighed, slipping your hands behind his neck. "It doesn't have to be deep, just convincing. Can you do this without grimacing?"

You thought he would stumble into some weak apology, or say something clever. He did neither, instead dived straight for your lips so quickly it was you who was taken by surprise. Naturally, all you could do is kiss him back and try to keep up with him. At some point you thought he would break off, but you weren't prepared for him to actually deepen the kiss. He wasn't letting you go, and it made you dizzy in all the best ways. Let's say you were thankful for his arm around your waist right about now. Finally, you still had to breathe, so you parted reluctantly.

"What was that for?" You asked, your eyes still dazed.

"An apology for irritating you unintentionally" He grinned boyishly, for probably the first time ever directed at you. "I'm an idiot"

"Can confirm" You replied, bringing him down on your lips again. This time, it was a bit shorter, but the spark was still very much present. "You should have done this a long time ago"

"I know" He nodded, his head slightly down and his puppy dog eyes shining even underneath the dark contact lenses. "You're a bit intimidating, I didn't know how to act"

You let out a loud laugh at his confession. "You're kidding"

He pouted.

"Me?" You repeated. "But you're– You're you!"

"Well, duh" He chuckled. "You've got me all tangled in here," He pointed at his chest. "Made me nervous all the time"

You melted just a little bit at his little display, before remembering doing this was a specialty of his. You were just not used to be on the receiving end of it. "You're lucky you're cute, and that I'm already sold on you"

The bright grin returned.

"As heartwarming as this moment is, please focus on the task at hand" Bruce's stern voice echoed in your head, and you were suddenly reminded your conversation had been integrally transmitted to him.

"Right, sorry" Dick apologized sheepishly.

"See, I told you"

This time, you were taken by surprise by Stella walking on you. Even Bruce's intervention hadn't quite brought you back to reality. Damn Dick Grayson, damn him. You turned around, trying to hide your flustered state and instead focusing on the tall gentleman at her side. Must be Felix Lachance, you thought.

"It works every time" She added, sipping from a new glass of champagne.

"You were right" You let out an airy laugh. "Stella, this is my husband Joey Moore. Joey, this is my new friend Stella"

They shook hands before she introduced her husband to the both of you. You already knew his name, but you both pretended you didn't for the sake of your covers.

"Nice to meet you two" Félix smiled politely.

"Hey, would you like to go for a drink after this?" Stella asked. "I sure would like to get to know you two better"

Dick and you exchanged a glance, knowing you had locked the target. Acquiring intel from now on would only be a piece of cake, the base was laid for further actions. You smiled, returning your glance to Stella.

"That would be absolutely lovely"

#dick grayson #dick grayson x reader #dick grayson imagine #nightwing #nightwing x reader #nightwing imagine #dc #dcu #dc universe #dc imagine #dcu imagine #dc universe imagine #batfam #batfam imagine #imagine #nightwing x you #dick grayson x you

272 notes · View notes

bellatrixxue · 4 years ago

Text

Xue’s Supernatural Dare: Wendigo (S1 EP2)

Hello, everyone? How did everyone feel about the finale? Yes? Yes? Oh. Oh. Oh my. Oh, dear.

Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeell that half-assed homophobic chicken-shit fuckbucket’s not gonna stop me, since I strapped myself onto this roller coaster already and I promised I’m not getting out until the ride’s over, so here we go, wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Also, those who are in this roller coaster with me, ready? Tag list is: @fangirlxwritesx67 @amazingiam00 @kalliravenne @indecisive20something @2musiclover2 @impossibletosleepthrough @there-must-be-a-lock @wingedcatninja @arvit

Oh my gods this recap is so cheesy I actually can make a fondue out of it. 2000s, everybody!

A WHOLE MINUTE AND A HALF FOR THAT FONDUE

FUCKJUMPSCARETITLEFUCKYOU

So we’re starting the episode with the murder scene first, eh? Is that gonna be a trend?

Oh come on, Chads, you’re out in nature and you’re playing video games? Absorb the nature...before it absorbs you!

Waitwait. Holy shit is that...is that Cory Monteith? Oh, bless his soul...

If the wendigo eats his dick as he’s peeing I’m immediately giving Jensen Ackles $100. For no real reason, I just feel like giving him money for already carrying the show on his back.

I can’t tell if it did or not, so I’m not paying yet.

Aw, Sammy...

"I should have told you the truth.” *Vine voice* BUT YOU DIDN’T

FUCKYOUINTHEASSHOhnightmare. Nightmare. So did he visit her at her grave or not? I need answers.

A week? Goddamn. Poor thing. That man-eating tree’s fucking good at his job, man.

“There’s nothing there, it’s just...woods,” Sam, I don’t know if Jess’s death hit you hard or if you got into law school by eating some ancient dick and/or pussy instead of earning that high score fair and square, but the woods “in the middle of nowhere” (your words) are known to be one of the top places full of weird-ass creatures. Even kindergartners know that.

Ehehehehehehehehe he’s so smol next to his lil bro my lil shit

At least you’re coming up with decent covers this time. No Agent Mulder and Scully ruining things for you this time around.

“Bull” oop-

Oh Dean’s a smoooooooooth operator. Good going, buddy.

AND HE GOT A COPY OF THAT DOCUMENT TEAM DEAN TEAM DEAN

Oh that death really got to Sam. I hope he doesn’t turn out to be a trigger-happy psycho. Or eat the man-eating tree and become one himself.

Oh, Haley’s a cutie! Which one’s her brother? Cory? Discount Enrique Iglesias?

Do you have a card for EVERY profession, Dean? And how do I get them too?

That is a very pretty car. I bet they wasted half the budget on that thing.

Okay, sonny boy, little bro, Broseidon, calm down.

Ah, fuck, Haley and Broseidon is gonna go into the woods, that’s more heads to worry about.

How the fuck does Sam find information this fast? I’m impressed, I take five hours to get to one article for my research paper. Or maybe I’m just lazy. So he really earned his law school interview without having to eat dick and pussy, huh.

Every 23 years? What is this, Pennywise? Are we going to see the wendigo do his best Tim Curry do his best scary clown impression? Honk honk?

“Whatever that thing is, it can move.” And the sun rises on the East, Sammy. Why are you so smart and dumb at the same time? Is this his character trait? It might grow on me.

Ahhh, so Sam’s go-to move at interrogation is doing puppy dog eyes and sympathize with the person. He’d make a good lawyer, shame that man-eating tree.

Go Grandpa Exposition, go!

Go Grandpa Exposition, go, give us information and none at all!

OH GEEZ THAT SCAR. PENNYWISE WENDIGO IS VICIOUS.

Skinwalker, Back Dog...Ooh, those all sound cool! I hope we get to see them soon!

‘Corporeal’ doesn’t sound like a real word, but then again, English doesn’t sound like a real language. Sorry. Moving on.

Sam’s gonna eat the wendigo with that attitude, Jesus Christ.

AND HIS BROTHER, AT THIS RATE. If the real villain turns out to be inside Sam all along I’m gonna flip. Is that why women keep dying and burning on ceilings where he sleeps? Is he secretly Lucifer’s spawn or something?

“Oh sweetheart I don’t wear shorts”. They queer-coded him from the start and they tried to make you believe he was straight for fifteen seasons straight? And some people bought that?

Oh, crap, another crappy death treatment for Cory before he got into Glee...No, I wasn’t into Glee, I just watched a few episodes and I might hate Rachel Berry...And Lea Michele...ahem...

Dean is totally flirting with Roy shut upppppppp

OOP AND THERE ROY GOES OH THE SEXUAL TENSION IS HIGH IN THESE WOODS TODAY

“It’s probably the most honest I’ve been with a woman. Ever.” See. Bi. Bi bi bi.

So...why the coordinates, Daddy Negan? Is this a portal to Hell? A place where man-eating trees grow?

*carefully places death flag on Roy*

Ooooh the campsite is very...haunted house-y. You know what I’m saying?

That’s not Discount Enrique Iglesias, but Pennywise wendigo, yes? Those things can mimic human voices, right?

*Google searches*...There are so many versions of this tale I can’t even confirm or deny it. Dammit.

Maybe Pennywise wendigo just wants some snacks and a nice phone and GPS? Maybe he misses his family in uh, Canada or something?

Daddy Negan’s journal is a e s t h e t i q u e .

I’m so sorry, but the way Sammy smirks as he speaks with those dark, dark voids for eyes? My boy’s a demon. He’s a demon, I’m telling you.

At least Haley has some sense to her. *puts another death flag on Roy*

*PUTS YET ANOTHER DEATH FLAG ON ROY*

True, that. What the heck is Daddy Negan up to with all of this?

“Saving people, hunting things, the family business!” Okay, the way Dean said it gave me chills.

I can actually empathize with Sam here...As whiny and bitchy as he is, he has his reasons to be this way. I guess if I were in his shoes, I’d be less of a Dean and more of a Sam, too. We deal with our losses quite similarly.

Ah, the brotherly bonding moments like these little talks make the show worth it. It’s so heartwarming.

Pennywise wendigo! I didn’t miss you, why’re you here to burst my happy bubble?

I’m starting to see a slight parallel between Haley and Broseidon and Dean and Sammy. Hmm.

Nice meeting you, Roy. Zoop you go.

Haley and Broseidon are taking this rather well, I’m glad they do.

Okay, actual exposition time, thank you.

Whoa, Broseidon speaks! Donner Party! Please don’t remind me of that! Those poor people!

Hibernation and food storage. Delightful, just delightful.

TORCHING? *CALLS RAMMSTEIN*

Somehow, not being able to see the wendigo is scarier to me than what I will probably see itself. Limited budget horror can actually work well.

Oh, dear, Roy literally did a death drop. Badum tissssssssss.

FUCK IT TOOK DEAN THE ONLY CHARACTER I CARE ABOUImean I love you too, Sam! Come on, let’s find him before it’s too late!

A trail of M&Ms! Yes, Broseidon! And Hansel and Gretel refercalled it. Sammy, you and I share the same wavelength?

SHITSHITTHEYTRIPPEDANDFELLINTHEFUCKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK

Thank the gods the Pennywise wendigo kept them right there. Chances.

DISCOUNT ENRIQUE IGLESIAS IS STILL ALIVE GEEZ BUT ALSO PHEW

Ah, Dean Winchester, I love you so much that I can’t even begin to describe it.

Also how convenient that the flare guns are there. Deus ex machina!

Haley would bode well as a hunter, look at her courage, her will. There are more hunters around than Daddy Negan and the brothers, right?

Yeah, seeing the actual wendigo makes me less scared of it now. It’s unnerving, but still.

TEAM DEAN YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEHAW

Graphics are...alright, but it’s the thought that counts!

Running with the grizzly bear story. Smart Broseidon. Ben. Sorry, you deserve to be called by your real name. I think with practice they could become good hunters, along with their Discount Enrique Iglesias brother! Is there a fanfiction for that? Can I write it now?

...

I AM WILLING TO DIE TO PROTECT DEAN WINCHESTER I

Haley’s a lesbian, that’s why she kissed him on the cheek only. Headcanoned. Also I have a crush on her, she’s really pretty? Like? Heart eyes???

Ah, the siblings parallels again. Let’s hope neither of the two brothers end up in the bed like that.

“Man, I hate camping.” Really. Really really. Really.

“I’m driving”

...

SAM WINCHESTER I’M SORRY I EVER SPOKE ILL OF YOU I WILL PROTECT YOU WITH MY LIFE TOO I PROMISE YOU I WILL

It’s just a sassy bisexual brother and his little snide bisexual brother on the road to kill evil creatures and find their father and I love this show? Help? Help???

I really, really see the charm of Supernatural now! I’m fully invested in both brothers and their story, and I’m cheering them both on! Let’s get Daddy Negan back and get rid of that man-eating tree once and for all!

Six stars out of five!

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

This dare is introducing me to a whole new world, and I really, really am glad I took that jump a few days ago, man!

Thank you everyone for reading my ramblings, and I’ll see you in the day after with the next review! Thank you for sticking with me! Buh-bye!

- Xue

#xue's supernatural dare #spn #supernatural #dean winchester #jensen ackles #sam winchester #jared paladecki #text #i had a really bad day today with my constant pain and aching from the chemo #but this really brought genuine smiles to my face!#what a good show #what a wonderful show #how the FUCK did they fuck it up later #well #i guess i'll find out when i get there lmao

77 notes · View notes

still-busy-being-mortal · 4 years ago

Text

the rising of the moon

word count: 4544

rating: G

fandom: the mechanisms

warnings: major character death

summary: They've lived so long together, perhaps it is only fitting they die alone.

story notes: so this came about as a result of wanting to cry MORE about the mechs. don't ask me why.

features raphaella spouting unnecessary science jargon, ivy being emotionally repressed/depressed, drumbot brian holding a conversation with himself, and the toy soldier being actually emotionally intelligent.

——————

JONNY

It’s a quiet day aboard the starship formerly known as The Aurora. Most of the crew is out, and she’s drifting slowly through a dusty asteroid field. Ivy has stayed aboard to read, and Drumbot Brian was designated ship-sitter, so he’s stayed on as well. When enough time has passed (Is it days? Or decades? No one knows anymore, and no one cares. They are all so tired.), Brian hits the alert switch that will tell the Mechanisms to come home.

Ivy feels the gentle vibration in her brain --the pulse of The Aurora’s beacon-- and she puts her book down before walking slowly to the navigation bridge. Marius’ hand starts to buzz, messing up his note-taking; he apologizes to the rather fascinating asteroid-dweller he’s interviewing and takes his leave. Ashes feels their chest hum, and they turn away from their beautiful, fiery meteor shower.

[read more on ao3, or continue below!]

One by one, the Mechs find their way home. It takes some longer than others, but they all return eventually. Or they should; right now, there are only seven crewmates in the navigation bridge.

“I’m sick of waiting--where the hell is Jonny?” Tim whines.

“I guess he decided to stay in the asteroid belt?” Marius says.

“Woulda been nice to let us know,” mutters Ashes, “So we’re not all sittin’ here for ages.”

Brian stands and raises his hand. “All in favour of leaving and returning in a few decades?” They all agree, so he pilots Aurora away from the asteroid field.

Time goes by, and they do not hear from Jonny. Of course, members of the crew sometimes stay away for long periods of time, but that doesn’t mean their absence is not felt. And Jonny hasn’t appeared to try and contact them at all.

After a while, they vote to return to the asteroid belt. When they arrive, they split up, communication devices in hand.

Ivy combs through her memory, trying to summon any knowledge she has on Asteroid Field 01.18.20. The Toy Soldier moves methodically from meteor to meteor, searching for their lost comrade. Raphaella interviews any inhabitants she comes across, axially coding their qualitative responses to identify patterns in the data. Tim goes to a bar for a drink, irritated at Jonny’s latest antic.

He walks into some nameless, backwater joint and sits at the counter, flagging down the bartender with a lazy wave. He orders and waits, mechanical eyes roving the establishment. And then he freezes.

On the far wall hang a few dozen photographs, all dusty and poor quality. Above the photos is a crudely-done banner that simply reads “Cheers to Our Past Patrons.” One of the pictures is of Jonny.

When the bartender returns, Tim asks: “What��s the deal with the wall of fame, then?”

“Oh, that,” they answer tiredly. “Just sum dark joke the old owner thought up. Them’s the folks who kicked it in this here bar, you see.”

Tim was confused. “You mean those people died here? That can’t be right; my friend’s up there, and he can’t d--he’s alive.”

The barkeep shrugged. “Don’t know, pal. We had to bury most of thems out back, if you reckon you want to check.” He chuckled darkly and went back to drink-making.

Tim quickly finished his drink and went out the back door. He debated alerting the other Mechs about this development, but decided he might as well see for himself first.

He found the makeshift graveyard quickly, small rusty mounds amid the equally rusty asteroid outback. Some displayed names on roughly carved wood planks, but obviously none of them said “Jonny d’Ville” (Tim laughed at the idea of Jonny carrying around an ID). Most were unmarked, however, so he started to dig.

He used his hands, too impatient to try and find a shovel. He came across bodies and bones in various stages of decay, but none that had any chance of being Jonny. About fed up with this ridiculous idea of his, he decided to dig up one more grave. He shovelled dirt and rocks out of the way, until his hand hit something hard and cold. Something metallic. He pulled on it, and came away with a belt. Christ , he thought.

He quickly scooped away the rest of the dirt, revealing the corpse of Captain First Mate Jonny d’Ville. Dead. Tim stumbled backward, hand fumbling for his comm. “Um, mates, I-I found him.”

The Mechanisms were different after that. Yes, Nastya had gone Out long ago, but they had never actually come across her dead corpse , so it wasn’t the same. Marius had examined his body and declared him fully, completely, and irrevocably dead. They had held a funeral, but they were all too much in shock to really remember it. All they knew was that they were down a crew member, without a captain first mate, and terribly aware of their own mortality.

ASHES

About half the crew was in Raphaella’s lab, helping her with some complex kind of experiment. Raph was mixing two viciously green liquids together, while Marius was unspooling wire from a large bobbin. The Toy Soldier was holding an ultraviolet light against a motherboard, and Ashes connected the motherboard to the chartreuse concoction using the wires. After pouring all of the chemicals, Raphaella pulled on some rubber gloves and pulled out a small pocketwatch from her shirt. “Are we ready?” she asked gleefully. Without waiting for an answer, she started the countdown. “Five! Four! Three! T--curses!” The pocketwatch slipped from her gloved grasp and fell into the churning beaker. All at once there was a flash and a bang, and the lights went out. They stood in complete silence for a minute, before the backup generators flicked on.

The Toy Soldier clapped its hands, “That Was Jolly Good! Can We Do It Again?”

“No, TS, look, I got goop on my--wait!” Marius shouted, “Where’s Ashes?” They all turned to look at where the quartermaster had been just moments before. The floor where they’d been standing was a scorched, intricate, dark pattern of swirls. “What the hell is that ?”

“I Do Not Know, But I Will Go Get The Archivist!”

TS returned with Ivy, who took one look at the patterns on the floor and asked: “Who is it that has been time travelling?”

“Time travelling?!” Raph exclaimed.

“Yes,” Ivy said, “Those marks are a perfect exemplar of the evidence left behind when one has been forcibly transported forward or backward in the time continuum. Which one of you did it? Did you happen to bring back any books?”

“It wasn’t us: it was Ashes.” Marius said, “And we don’t think they’ve come back yet.”

Ivy grew very pale. “That is highly alarming. There’s a less than 0.1% chance that a time traveller ever comes back if they do not return instantly after the outset of their journey.”

“Y-you mean Ashes might not...” Marius trailed off, “...Wait a second! That doesn’t make sense! We don’t experience time linearly!”

“That may be true, but we are not forcibly moved through it either. We are at the whim of the narrative flow, and any alteration to that usually produces negative results.”

The Toy Soldier flashed through many emotions at once, though its face never changed. “So Quartermaster O’Reilly Is...Gone?”

“We can’t prove that yet!” Raph cried, fluttering around the lab and grabbing various scientific instruments. “Maybe if I can pinpoint when exactly they’ve been transported to, we can...we can bring them back.”

“That’s quite a long shot,” Marius said.

“What is science if not a shot into the ignorant dark?” Raph replied, rigging up a technological monstrosity. She aimed the thing at the charred spot and clicked a button, causing the machine to emit a pulsating, whirring sound. “Oh, you all might want to close your eyes.”

With a burst of green and a harsh dial tone, the thing spit out a strip of paper. Raph grabbed it and read it intently. She dropped it suddenly, eyes distant and empty. “They are gone.”

The room burst into a cacophony. (“What do you mean?!” “Gone How? Gone Forever ?” “It was statistically unlikely that they could have returned.”) Raph picked up the paper and pressed it onto the lab table. Most of it was meaningless words and numbers, but Raph pointed out a string in the center: “RESULT) DATE: %& INFINITE ROUNDING ERROR $! _ LOCATION: SINGULARITY!UNIVERSAL IMPLOSION. ANALYSIS) CHANCE OF TERMINATION: 100.0% +-0.0 R = 1.0”

“They’re gone.”

RAPHAELLA

The crew was far more disorganized after Ashes left. With no one to maintain inventory or keep the crew in line, The Mechanisms started to fall apart. Raphaella tried for a while to build some kind of time-travelling device, some way of defying the inexorable march of the story, but it was in vain. She was left with only one option; one experiment she hadn’t tried yet.

She carefully laser cuts some metal from the starship once known as the Aurora. She sits in Nastya’s former workshop for hours, bending and twisting and fabricating until she is left with wings; wings more breathtaking than any she has possessed before. Once on, they fan out behind her in a starburst of blue and metallic grey.

But her crew will never see them. In the cover of darkness, she steals away to the airlock. The ship is currently sailing past a black hole (Raphaella has the Messier number and NGC identification memorized, but that’s not her concern now). With one final look backward at the place that had been her home for millennia --the place she thought she would call home forever -- she casts herself into the black hole.

Ivy finds the note she left, succinct and unmincing as ever:

“Addressed to whoever finds this first:

After a brief review of prior literature, I have found extensive holes (no pun intended) in the study of singularities, specifically as it relates to a singularity’s effect on a humanoid body and mind. I seek to rectify this, as well as explore the possibility of horological manipulation, though perhaps my methods are not entirely replicable. It is every scientist’s dream to be on the cutting edge of research, and so I initiate this experiment joyfully. Also, black holes are hypothesized to have magnificent magnetic fields!

Yours,

Dr. Raphaella La Cognizi”

TIM

Tim, Marius, the Toy Soldier, Brian, and Ivy wait. They do not wait together, and they do not know what exactly it is they’re waiting for, but they wait nevertheless.

Time passes.

Brian pilots the ship towards various planets, pointless battles, dying stars. One day, the remaining Mechs arrive at a lawless sea-based war occurring on a planet composed entirely of liquid obsidian. They commandeer a ship (which they dub the ‘Dawn’) and spend decades wreaking havoc as the most formidable group of pirates. But Tim knows something is wrong.

“Tim, take out that vessel off the starboard side.” Brian orders from the prow of the Dawn.

Tim smoothly preps, loads, and positions a cannon to aim directly at the enemy ship in question. He lights the fuse, and the cannon fires. The crew watch as the projectile hurls through the air, arcing like a cold meteor into the distance. They watch it come down towards the enemy vessel. And they watch it miss.

The crew turns to stare at Tim. He’s not nearly as mortified as they expected. In fact, he’s perfectly serene.

“Um, Tim…” Marius starts slowly, “D-did you know you, uh...missed?”

“Yep.” he responds, popping the ‘p’.

“Did you mean to?”

“Nope.”

“And...you’re not upset by that?”

“Not especially.”

(“That’s a fascinatingly abnormal psychological response,” Marius mutters under his breath, jotting something down in a notebook he appears to have produced out of nowhere.)

The crew continues to stare as Tim goes below deck to his bunk, humming slightly.

Tim has known something was off for a long time now. His aim started to err by nanometres, then by millimeters, then more, until he was missing entire ships like today. He’d panicked at the beginning, of course, but now? Now, he was ready to be done.

He’d felt the pressure building up in his head, behind his eyes. He got spurts of tunnel vision randomly, and sometimes his vision just went to static. He gradually lost the ability to see some colors, as the electronic rods and cones went out one-by-one and refused to self-repair. But he wasn’t nervous or distressed or alarmed; he was excited.

You see, he’d been saving something for a special occasion. He didn’t know what ‘special occasion’ entailed, since the Mechs never consistently celebrated holidays or birthdays, but permanent death seemed like a pretty good one. He rooted around in his rucksack, and withdrew a set of shiny silver keys; keys he’d stolen a long, long time ago. These were the ignition keys to the largest gunship existence will ever see, and Tim planned to go out with a bang. That evening, he told the crew he wanted them all to return to the starship so he could be dropped off somewhere. They all agreed, since they didn’t have any real cares anymore, and they set off for the planet Tim had etched into his memory.

Tim sits in the cockpit of the gunship, the planet itself already ruined and smoking from fighting his way to get here. The Mechanisms were long gone, as he’d told them to leave without him. He hadn’t exactly said he wasn’t planning on coming back, but he thinks they understood. With one last grin of pure, unadulterated madness, he kicks the gunship into gear and blasts off.

The ship goes too fast to comprehend, and in an instant he’s shooting across the cosmos, shattering stars and razing entire systems of planets. The universe has never before witnessed such complete and utter desolation. Tim doesn’t process much during this rampage...until he starts to die.

He doesn’t know what he hit, but something has jolted the gunship just right, and he’s flung out the front glass. He knows he should die instantly, and he is, but his eyes are moving faster. They’re replaying his life, backwards, and he wants to groan with the cliché-ness of it all. But then it’s over. Or, almost over. At the very end, so fast, so short compared to the millennia he has lived, he catches sight of a young man in a trench. Bertie. A face he will never forget no matter how much longer he could have lived. And in the moments of blackness before he stops forever, he thinks about Bertie, about what comes next.

Faith is a moot point when you’re immortal, since you’ve quite literally come into contact with gods and demons, eldritch horrors and cosmic powers. But here, at the end of his wretchedly long existence, Tim wonders if he will ever see Bertie again. If he will ever see Jonny, or TS, or Ashes, or anyone ever again.

He dies blind, with their names on his lips.

IVY

Exposition: Ivy is quite spectacular at suppressing her emotions. She’s also skilled at identifying patterns, so by the time Raphaella left, she knew what was going on with 98% certainty. Without much fanfare, she packed her bags (5 for books and 1 for everything else), said goodbye to Marius, Brian, and the Toy Soldier, and left.

She rifled through her memory archives for the quaintest library she knew of, and headed there.

Rising Action: And so time passed.

Ivy read, and organized, and wrote, and...existed. Nothing happened, and nothing changed. Carmilla must have made an error in her mechanization because she’d never been the best at processing feelings, but she was happy, she thought.

Climax: A war came, and her library was attacked. With the numbest, most detached sense of purpose imaginable, she loaded an escape pod with random books she thought should be preserved and fired it out into the void. She didn’t even know she’d been hit until she’d fallen to the floor, blood streaming from a massive wound. She knows she is dying; she’d seen the patterns.

Denouement: Her brain whirs slower and slower, until it stops. The end.

MARIUS

They are not a crew any longer. Brian has firmly rooted himself on the bridge, more robot than man now. The Toy Soldier wanders the ship, searching for its friends who are playing the best game of hide-and-seek that the universe has ever seen. Marius putters along, doing some maintenance, writing down his thoughts, and waiting for his death.

He’d always known this life of theirs couldn’t last. Besides the conceptual and moral implications of an eternal existence without consequences, it didn’t even make sense physically . There was no such thing as a perpetual motion machine, and he was surprised his more rational-minded crewmates didn’t question it more. But now his theory had come to fruition, and his crew, his family , had slowly dropped off one-by-one, like leaves from an autumnal tree.

He’s at a bit of a loose end now. With no people left to talk to, no minds to pick, he doesn’t feel any sense of purpose. It’s not depression--he knows that; it’s more of a...cosmic futility.

He feels one last pull, one last tug of the all-pervading narrative, a tide of finality, urging him towards a certain door. He knows this door, knows what it means when he opens it. But he also knows all things come to an end eventually, so why not go out doing what he always did? Providing the comic relief.

“Time this for me, will you, Aurora?” he calls out. He turns the handle and steps inside.

BRIAN

Since Jonny’s death, Brian has been at war with himself. He supposes he’s always been at war with himself though, and his current moral quandary reminds him uncomfortably of his first.

Sitting on the bridge alone, he decides to have a conversation.

“So the crux of the problem is that we can bring people back from the dead, correct?”

He flips his switch. “Correct.”

He flips it back. “But the dilemma is whether we should bring the Mechs back or not.”

“Also correct.”

“Which we shouldn’t, because they wanted to die.”

“No, we should. We want them alive, right? Using magic is definitely the easiest way to achieve that.”

“But we need our family to be happy. God knows how long it’s been.”

“Is the end goal their happiness or our happiness?”

“If I answer that, will I change your mind?”

“Is altering the end goal really the moral way to win this argument?”

“You know what? Damn you.”

Time passes, and each crewmate’s departure only makes Brian’s contempt for his own inner hesitation grow. He spends years staring out into the cosmos, thoughts whirling just as fast as the dust and gases beyond the glass. He wonders if he will ever die and join his family, or if the degree of his artificiality will render him truly immortal. He hates that thought more than most anything else.

He stops smelling the smoke of Ashes’ fires one day, and wonders if his olfactory systems are shutting down.

He stops feeling the rumble of Raphaella’s experimental explosions, and wonders if his nerve endings are rusting.

He stops seeing the flash of Tim’s gunshots bounce around the corridors, and wonders if he’s gone as blind as the gunner himself.

He stops hearing Ivy’s narration, and wonders if his auditory fluids have finally trickled away.

One day, the lone violin that has been echoing throughout the empty starship fades out, and Brian feels his heart stop.

It restarts of course, but Brian knows.

He knows that it’s finally, finally time. Soon, very soon, there will be no more life aboard this ship. No life, where there had been life for eons. No life, where there had been life immortal.

His sense of taste has never come into doubt, because he can still taste the acridness of the Toy Soldier’s cooking wafting on the air. He decides it’s only right to bid goodbye, so he makes his way back to the kitchen. On the way, he passes the Doctor’s old laboratory. He briefly considers destroying it, bringing down the whole ship in a blaze of fire and brimstone, but he knows that isn’t right; it wouldn’t fulfill anything.

In the kitchen, the Toy Soldier is pulling something pink and grey and on fire out of the oven. “Hey, TS,” Brain says gently, leaning against the doorframe as his heart falters again. “I-I’ve got to talk to you.”

The Toy Soldier spins around. “Drumbot Brian!” it shouts joyfully. “How Have You Been, Old Chap! I Have Been Playing Hide-And-Seek With The Rest Of The Crew For A While Now, And They Are Definitely Winning! Have You Seen Them?”

“Oh, TS,” Brian says sadly, “We’re all who’s left now. Don’t you know? The others have gone.”

He sees the Toy Soldier’s wooden eyes soften, betraying an agedness he’s never seen before. “Of Course I Know, Bean. But What Have We Been Doing This Whole Time, If Not Pretending?”

Brian smiles sorrowfully, and TS matches it. “I just wanted to let you know, TS, that now it’s my turn to go.”

“I Know.” It salutes him. “Goodbye, Drumbot.”

Brain gently returns the salute, and leaves.

He stumbles through the ship, heart failing rapidly now, but he makes it to the airlock. He knows deep down that there’s only one way his story could end. His whole existence has been framed by empty solitude, with his family providing the best aberration one could wish for. With his body more an empty metal frame than a robot now, he opens the airlock and casts himself back into the cosmos, from whence he came, and where he would die.

THE TOY SOLDIER

Its friends are all gone away now, and it knows this. There is no more laughter aboard the starship once known as the Aurora. There is no more gunfire or explosions. There is no more music. The cold mass of metal drifts through the void of the uncaring cosmos, with no living being aboard.

But The Toy Soldier has to be sure; it has to guarantee that it is truly all alone now. So it visits its friends’ final resting places.

It spends some years gazing out the front windows of the ship. The thrusters have been broken for a long time now, and the Toy Soldier doesn’t know how to repair them, so it just sits and watches. It wants to see the Drumbot, so it pretends that it does. Soon enough, out the starboard porthole, it spies him. His metal is rusted and warped, frost rendering most of his face unrecognizable. A drum is still looped around his shoulder. The Toy Soldier tethers itself to the ship and goes outside for a moment, drifting towards the robot. It lays a wooden hand on his deformed chest, and feels that his heart beats no longer. It carves off a long curl of wood from its side, and places it in Brian’s frozen hand.

It returns to the ship. It hadn’t known where Marius had disappeared to, but now it feels the force of the narrative driving it towards a certain room. It opens the door, and a handful of mangy octokittens hiss at it and scurry away. There’s nothing in the room besides a pile of crumpled clothes, a broken violin, and a metal hand, but the Toy Soldier could recognize that style anywhere. It gently twists one of its own wooden hands off, and lays it on the mound.

The Toy Soldier knows that Ivy went somewhere far away, so it closes its eyes and pretends that it’s there. When it opens them again, it finds itself in the charred ruins of some great marble building. At its feet lay bones, a metal flute, and a mess of circuitry, untouched by the ash. The Toy Soldier reaches up, removes a piece of wood from the back of its head, and lays it besides the flute.

The Toy Soldier has a harder time finding the gunner. It’s drawn this way and that, chasing an intangible trail through the stars and galaxies. All of the planets it passes are devoid of life. Finally, finally, it stumbles across an enormous, gaping wreck of a starship, all mangled and smashed to pieces. The ship is so large, it’s drawn smaller asteroids into an orbit around it. On one of these rocky satellites, the Toy Soldier spies a body: a skeleton covered in a long brown coat with a guitar slung across it. A pair of mutilated, metal eyes rest in the skull. The Toy Soldier smiles sadly, removes one of its own wooden eyes, and slips it into the pocket of the coat.

It knows it cannot follow the science officer into a black hole. It does manage to find the sketches of the wings Raphaella designed, so it gathers them up, takes two chunks of wood from its back, finds Raph’s keyboard, and casts everything into the nearest singularity.

After pretending to be at the end of space and time, it finds itself there. There is nothing, absolutely nothing. It removes two segments of wood from deep within its chest and places them in the nothingness, along with the strings of an old electric bass it had found. As it winks back to the ship, it catches the faintest scent of gasoline.

It returns to the asteroid Jonny had died on, the start of their ignoble demise. It visits his grave, in the taupe dirt of the desert behind the backwater bar, and sees all of the trinkets and mementos the crew had left behind. It knows none of them left anything during their makeshift funeral, so that means each of them must have slipped away at some point to come here on their own. Ashes has left their best lighter, Tim a pair of dogtags. Marius left behind all of his notes of Jonny’s disaster of a brain, and Brian has deposited some sun-scorched piece of space station. His harmonica has also found its way here, somehow. The Toy Soldier slowly, slowly reaches into its chest and removes its wooden heart, laying it down atop the mound of dirt and memories. It walks away, and knows that it can finally, finally stop pretending.

AURORA

There is no record of where the Toy Soldier went next. It certainly did not return to the empty ship once known as the brilliant Aurora. The lifeless, soulless, music-less ship drifts on alone through the cosmos, rusting and warping until no one could tell it had ever been a ship at all. Eons pass, and whatever memory the universe might have had of The Mechanisms has been utterly lost.

Until the misshapen mass gets stuck in the orbit of a planet. Molded and formed by the planet’s gravity, the ship is reborn as a moon. And all at once, she comes to life.

As dawn washes over her, the young moon hears a voice. “Hello, dear,” a woman coos, “My name is Dr. Carmilla.”

#hi please read my fic #am i posting it yet again? yes #the rising of the moon #the mechanisms #fiction #ao3

18 notes · View notes

girlfriendsofthegalaxy · 4 years ago

Text

tuesday again 1/5/2020

a list of firsts

listening house of the rising sun, the animals: no particular reason this was my first song of the year, i am simply fond of it. do you want to watch a man go ham on a travel-size electronic organ? of course you do.

@dying-suffering-french-stalkers has a killer playlist tracing the evolution of the Spanish Rakes folk song family. were i musical-history inclined, house of the rising sun is the song i would be most likely to do that for i think

youtube

watching it happened one night, (1934, dir. Capra). so every year, at around 11:20ish new year’s eve, i start a black-and-white “classic” movie i’ve never seen before. fuck i love a pre-code movie. it is easier for me to set aside my modern feminist sensibilities when i’m watching a screwball, because they’re supposed to be satire! i am allowed to watch and laugh without getting my hackles up as much!

[REDACTED TOO-PERSONAL ANGRY FEMINIST SCREED BC THOSE EIGHT HUNDRED WORDS ARE BETTER SUITED TO A THERAPY SESSION]

i sort-of haphazardly liveblogged my new year’s viewing here, the main point is that this early autogyro worsened my anxiety. modern helicopters are death traps!!! they just casually land this thing on a lawn in the middle of a crowd of people!!! PLEASE DO NOT

youtube

reading the trouble with doing these weekly roundup things is that i try to go beyond “did i like the thing” and go into “was this successful at what it’s trying to do? how did it go about what it’s trying to do and were these techniques that fit?” while trying to keep this within a reasonable wordcount bc i am not being paid to put out thousands of words of media critique a week. but sometimes i just straight up don’t like a piece of media for no particular reason. and that’s fine too, it just doesn’t make for very interesting reading.

anyway i read Cursed Pirate Girl (2009) and Cursed Pirate Girl Annual (2015). this is peak- i’m not sure how to succinctly describe this- late-aughts whimsical but sort of dark Alice-in-Wonderland? like steampunk that allows itself to use cool colors? published and re-published in a collection just as steampunk was starting to fall off the mainstream but the tim burton movies were still sort of on a high and weird little non-superhero comics and graphic novels were starting to make it into respected book reviews and bestseller lists?

the draftsmanship in these is beautiful, and they do look like “what if early 1800s comics were held to a modern standard of design”. but i simply do not vibe with the aforementioned trend bc i had a miserable time in high school at the peak of the steampunk/edgy British Empire trend and thinking about high school me makes my soul wither a little bit. anyway this cover slaps

playing the haunted island: a frog detective game, and frog detective 2: the case of the invisible wizard. this is really the epitome of “i want short games made with worse graphics made by people who are paid more” i would like one of these little bonbons a year please.

i am startled to find that my opinions on video game length jive with my opinions on tv show and movie length. i don’t want a “forever game” with infinite proc-gen quests (no man’s sky, for example, is not a game for me) and i think tv shows should be like three seasons max. no one iteration of a show should be on the air for a decade plus. this is partly bc i very rarely have the brainspace to get into tv shows, and i certainly do not have time to get into whole new longrunning tv shows at this braintime. i have the time for short self-contained media experiences like movies or video games under six hours.

these two games are really simple and really short- i blew through them both in less two hours- but i was charmed and delighted at almost every moment. it has the kind of straightfaced deadpan humor that some children’s shows have- i’m drawing a blank on specific examples other than vintage sesame street (pre-elmo) perhaps? (”kay why do you have an extensive knowledge of children’s entertainment and animation? you’re 26, sus” well you see i have two siblings that are significantly younger than me, which means sesame street was on constantly in our house well into my teens, and i’ve had at least one babysitting client at any given time since i was eleven)

i wouldn’t say they’re trying to make a particular point about cops/copaganda, esp since they’re from 2018 & 2019 by an australian team, but you could probably get an interesting paper about the portrayal of “crime” and “solving crime” in these games.

making cinnamon raisin bread with sourdough discard, it’s on the last rise before it goes in the oven and should be photogenic enough for tumblr by like noon thirty

#tuesday again #tuesday again no problem

30 notes · View notes

sohotthateveryonedied · 4 years ago

Text

Talk Less, Smile More

Read here on AO3!

Summary:

Tim wakes up, a silent cry scraping up his throat.

He grapples for his neck, wheezing panicked gasps as he feels for the thick blood that should be painting his skin, the gash carved through his trachea. Instead, he finds the ridge of a scar and the soft collar of the shirt he wore to bed.

Cold gravel presses against Tim’s back, digging in through the kevlar padding as he lies on the rooftop. There isn’t much to see; there so rarely is when you live in a city ranked the seventh most polluted in the United States. There are so few stars above, but each twinkles its heart out as if they’re laughing at Tim’s misfortune down below. They watch him bleed out and titter as it happens. Time moves in little eternities bookended by larger ones, pockets of time that make no sense because, by all reason, Tim should have been dead hours ago. It certainly feels like he’s been here that long. Maybe this is just how it goes when you die. Your heart slows, beat by beat, and with it slows consciousness. Your thoughts become a dripping faucet, never quite knowing when to stop until fate says “fuck it” and twists off the handle. Tim is dying. He knows that for certain. What other option is there when you can’t breathe and are bleeding out faster than anyone can run to save you? Miraculously, there is no pain as Tim slowly chokes on his own blood; only the agonizing push and pull of lungs struggling for air they can’t reach. Tim is going to die here, all by himself on this damn bloodied rooftop. Who knows how long it will be until someone finds the body, if the rats don’t chew him down to the bone first. Maybe it’ll be a janitor. Maybe a suicide jumper will stumble upon Tim’s mangled corpse and be convinced not to do the deed, if only to spare themselves the humiliation of rotting alone on icy gravel.

Tears slip over Tim’s temples and catch in his bloodied hair. Will his family wonder what happened to him, or will they simply forget to check if their brother and son is still alive? How long will it take for them to realize that Tim hasn’t checked in? Days? Weeks? Ever? I did it for you, he would tell them if he had breath. All of you. For Bruce. I just wanted to bring our family back together. He just wanted to bring Bruce back. Instead he went and got himself killed. Tim can’t see how severe the damage is, but he knows it’s too deep to fix. It’s too deep to breathe, but Tim tries anyway because lungs are one of those things that refuses to give up, even when the rest of your body knows it’s a wasted effort. Tim gasps for air he can’t have, choking as blood spurts from the wound, spilling down his throat and pooling on his collarbone. He hovers on that precipice between life and death—a fish on a beach, a sailor between plank and shark-infested waters. He’s so sure of it that for a moment, he’s convinced that he hallucinates the shape swinging overhead. It’s his personal angel of death, come to collect. Then he blinks back the fog of self-grief, the misty tears clouding his vision. Because he would recognize Dick Grayson anywhere, batsuit or not. Tim opens his mouth and strains to make a noise, to scream, anything. But some invisible force holds him down and keeps his limbs from working. All he needs is one noise, and maybe this doesn’t have to be the end. Or if it does, then at least he’ll have his big brother to hold him as he goes. Dick, he mouths. Help me. But all that comes out are whooshes of air, grating against his mutilated throat and severed vocal cords. Tim is suffocating to death and help is so close, but so far away. Dick can’t hear him. No one will ever hear him again. Please, Dick, Tim silently wheezes as the shape gets farther and farther away. I’m scared. I don’t want to die. I don’t want to be alone anymore. The scene gets blurry as his eyelids droop without his consent, Dick’s image still prominent against the blackness, like he’s determined to tease Tim with rescue just out of reach. Tim’s chest jerks as he strains for air, his vision darkening at the edges, taking him away… Tim wakes up, a silent cry scraping up his throat. He grapples for his neck, wheezing panicked gasps as he feels for the thick blood that should be painting his skin, the gash carved through his trachea. Instead, he finds the ridge of a scar and the soft collar of the shirt he wore to bed. Tim releases a shaky breath. He’s drenched in sweat, sticky and making him shiver despite the sheets tangled around his legs. Trembling fingers touch his cheek and find salty wetness there, the remnants of tears he shed in his sleep. It’s fine, he tells himself. It was just a dream. A memory. You’re okay now. He hasn’t been okay in months. The only sound to be heard in the dark bedroom is Tim’s own harsh breathing. He runs a hand through his hair, scrubs away the tears. God. He should be past this by now, right? And yet he can’t escape the lingering image of nightmare and memory blurred together, combining to create a worse monster in his head. Before he knows what he’s doing, Tim is reaching for his cell phone and punching in the numbers, trying to pretend like there aren’t glass shards pushing their way through his lungs. Three rings. A click. “Tim?” Dick sounds exhausted, his voice thick with sleep. “It’s three in the morning.” Oh. Tim didn’t even think to check the time. Now he feels kind of bad for waking Dick up when the guy already gets so little sleep as it is. “What’s up?” It hasn’t occurred to Tim until now that he can’t exactly talk over the phone anymore. He keeps forgetting that part, keeps answering calls only to feel a rock settle in his stomach when he remembers that he can’t even say hello. He let instinct carry him tonight, drive him to do what he does every time he has a nightmare: call Dick. He hears the shifting of a mattress. “Did you have a nightmare?” Tim doesn’t say anything—can’t say anything, but there’s a sigh on the other end as Dick must take the shuddering breaths for what they are. Even voiceless, Dick knows him so well. “What can I do?” Good question. Swallowing thickly, Tim lowers his phone to the nightstand and knocks on the wood. Morse code. Talk. “Okay,” Dick says. Tim can almost hear the cogs in his brain clicking as he thinks. “Uh...want to hear about the last time Donna and I went out drinking?” He doesn’t wait for an answer and starts talking, rambles on about gay bars and something called a Long Island iced tea. Tim lies back down and puts Dick on speakerphone, letting his voice fill the room. Slowly, as Dick rambles, Tim’s heart begins to settle. His hands stop shaking, little by little. Breathing gets easier, less like he’s sucking in air through a pixie stick. He doesn’t know how he’ll ever get used to this, to the never-ending silence. Tim was comfortable being the quiet Robin compared to his predecessors, because at least then it was a conscious choice to adopt the same silent, brooding demeanor as his mentor. Just as often as he came in with a quip and a joke, Tim thought. He listened. He got good at the silence, at hearing what others missed and catching cues between words. Tim had a reason for his own silence, just as he had the power to drop the schtick in a second and go back to being Tim Drake. But now? Now the choice to be quiet has been made for him. And that is a fate worse than he ever could have bargained for.

#whumptober 2020 #no.24 #forced mutism #tim drake #red robin #robin #idiot duckboy #batman #dick grayson #nightwing #batfamily #batfam #dc comics #fanfiction #fanfic

51 notes · View notes

warninggraphiccontent · 4 years ago

Text

16 July 2021

Food for thought

At last week's Data Bites, I noted how 'Wales' is a standard unit of area. This week, along comes a map which shows that all the built-up land in the UK is equivalent to one Wales:

The map is from the National Food Strategy, published yesterday (and the man has a point).

It has divided opinion, judging by the responses to this tweet. I understand where the sceptics are coming from - at first glance, it may be confusing, given Wales isn't actually entirely built up, Cornwall made of peat, or Shetland that close to the mainland (or home to all the UK's golf courses). And I'm often critical of people using maps just because the data is geographical in some way, when a different, non-map visualisation would be better.

But I actually think this one works. Using a familiar geography to represent areas given over to particular land use might help us grasp it more readily (urban areas = size of Wales, beef and lamb pastures = more of the country than anything else). It's also clear that a huge amount of overseas land is needed to feed the UK, too.

The map has grabbed people's attention and got them talking, which is no bad thing. And it tells the main stories I suspect its creators wanted to. In other words, it's made those messages... land.

Trash talk

Happy Take Out The Trash Day!

Yesterday saw A LOT of things published by Cabinet Office - data on special advisers, correspondence with parliamentarians, public bodies and major projects to name but a few, and the small matter of the new plans outlining departmental priorities and how their performance will be measured.

It's great that government is publishing this stuff. It's less great that too much of it still involves data being published in PDFs not spreadsheets. And it's even less great that the ignoble tradition of Take Out The Trash Day continues, for all the reasons here (written yesterday) and here (written in 2017).

I know this isn't (necessarily) deliberate, and it's a lot of good people working very hard to get things finished before the summer (as my 2017 piece acknowledges). And it's good to see government being transparent.

But it's 2021, for crying out loud. The data collection should be easier. The use of this data in government should be more widespread to begin with.

We should expect better.

In other news:

I was really pleased to have helped the excellent team at Transparency International UK (by way of some comments on a draft) with their new report exploring access and influence in UK housing policy, House of Cards. Read it here.

One of our recent Data Bites speakers, Doug Gurr, is apparently in the running to run the NHS. More here.

Any excuse to plug my Audrey Tang interview.

The good folk at ODI Leeds/The Data City/the ODI have picked up and run with my (and others') attempt to map the UK government data ecosystem. Do help them out.

Five years ago this week...

Regarding last week's headline of Three Lines on a Chart: obviously I was going to.

Have a great weekend

Gavin

Enjoying Warning: Graphic Content?

Tell your friends - forward this email, and they can:

Subscribe via email

Follow on Twitter

Follow on Tumblr

Or:

Buy me a coffee (thank you!)

Follow me, Gavin Freeguard, on Twitter

Visit my website (I'm available for work!)

Today's links:

Graphic content

Vax populi

Why vaccine-shy French are suddenly rushing to get jabbed* (The Economist)

Morning update on Macron demolishing French anti-vax feeling (or at least vax-hesitant) (Sophie Pedder via Nicolas Berrod)

How Emmanuel Macron’s “health passes” have led to a surge in vaccine bookings in France* (New Statesman)

How effective are coronavirus vaccines against the Delta variant?* (FT)

England faces the sternest test of its vaccination strategy* (The Economist)

Where Are The Newest COVID Hot Spots? Mostly Places With Low Vaccination Rates (NPR)

There's A Stark Red-Blue Divide When It Comes To States' Vaccination Rates (NPR)

All talk, no jabs: the reality of global vaccine diplomacy* (Telegraph)

Vaccination burnout? (Reuters)

Viral content

COVID-19: Will the data allow the government to lift restrictions on 19 July? (Sky News)

UK Covid-19 rates are the highest of any European country after Cyprus* (New Statesman)

COVID-19: Cautionary tale from the Netherlands' coronavirus unlocking - what lessons can the UK learn? (Sky News)

‘Inadequate’: Covid breaches on the rise in Australia’s hotel quarantine (The Guardian)

Side effects

COVID-19: Why is there a surge in winter viruses at the moment? (Sky News)

London Beats New York Back to Office, by a Latte* (Bloomberg)

Outdoor dining reopened restaurants for all — but added to barriers for disabled* (Washington Post)

NYC Needs the Commuting Crowds That Have Yet to Fully Return* (Bloomberg)

Politics and government

Who will succeed Angela Merkel?* (The Economist)

Special advisers in government (Tim for IfG)

How stingy are the UK’s benefits? (Jamie Thunder)

A decade of change for children's services funding (Pro Bono Economics)

National Food Strategy (independent review for UK Government)

National Food Strategy: Tax sugar and salt and prescribe veg, report says (BBC News)

Air, space

Can Wizz challenge Ryanair as king of Europe’s skies?* (FT)

Air passengers have become much more confrontational during the pandemic* (The Economist)

Branson and Bezos in space: how their rocket ships compare* (FT)

Sport

Euro 2020: England expects — the long road back to a Wembley final* (FT)

Most football fans – and most voters – support the England team taking the knee* (New Statesman)

Domestic violence surges after a football match ends* (The Economist)

The Most Valuable Soccer Player In America Is A Goalkeeper (FiveThirtyEight)

Sport is still rife with doping* (The Economist)

Wimbledon wild card success does not disguise financial challenge* (FT)

Can The U.S. Women’s Swim Team Make A Gold Medal Sweep? (FiveThirtyEight)

Everything else

Smoking: How large of a global problem is it? And how can we make progress against it? (Our World in Data)

Record June heat in North America and Europe linked to climate change* (FT)

Here’s a list of open, non-code tools that I use for #dataviz, #dataforgood, charity data, maps, infographics... (Lisa Hornung)

Meta data

Identity crisis

A single sign-on and digital identity solution for government (GDS)

UK government set to unveil next steps in digital identity market plan (Computer Weekly)

BCS calls for social media platforms to verify users to curb abuse (IT Pro)

ID verification for social media as a solution to online abuse is a terrible idea (diginomica)

Who is behind the online abuse of black England players and how can we stop it?* (New Statesman)

Euro 2020: Why abuse remains rife on social media (BBC News)

UK government

Online Media Literacy Strategy (DCMS)

Privacy enhancing technologies: Adoption guide (CDEI)

The Longitudinal Education Outcomes (LEO) dataset is now available in the ONS Secure Research Service (ADR UK)

Our Home Office 2024 DDaT Strategy is published (Home Office)

The UK’s Digital Regulation Plan makes few concrete commitments (Tech Monitor)

OSR statement on data transparency and the role of Heads of Profession for Statistics (Office for Statistics Regulation)

Good data from any source can help us report on the global goals to the UN (ONS)

The state of the UK’s statistical system 2020/21 (Office for Statistics Regulation)

Far from average: How COVID-19 has impacted the Average Weekly Earnings data (ONS)

Health

Shock treatment: can the pandemic turn the NHS digital? (E&T)

Can Vaccine Passports Actually Work? (Slate)

UK supercomputer Cambridge-1 to hunt for medical breakthroughs (The Guardian)

AI got 'rithm

An Applied Research Agenda for Data Governance for AI (GPAI)

Taoiseach and Minister Troy launch Government Roadmap for AI in Ireland (Irish Government)

Tech

“I Don’t Think I’ll Ever Go Back”: Return-to-Office Agita Is Sweeping Silicon Valley (Vanity Fair)

Google boss Sundar Pichai warns of threats to internet freedom (BBC News)

The class of 2021: Welcome to POLITICO’s annual ranking of the 28 power players behind Europe’s tech revolution (Politico)

Inside Facebook’s Data Wars* (New York Times)

Concern trolls and power grabs: Inside Big Tech’s angry, geeky, often petty war for your privacy (Protocol)

Exclusive extract: how Facebook's engineers spied on women* (Telegraph)

Face off

Can facial analysis technology create a child-safe internet? (The Observer)

#Identity, #OnlineSafety & #AgeVerification – notes on “Can facial analysis technology create a child-safe internet?” (Alec Muffett)

Europe makes the case to ban biometric surveillance* (Wired)

Open government

From open data to joined-up government: driving efficiency with BA Obras (Open Contracting Partnership)

AVAILABLE NOW! DEMOCRACY IN A PANDEMIC: PARTICIPATION IN RESPONSE TO CRISIS (Involve)

Designing digital services for equitable access (Brookings)

Data

Trusting the Data: How do we reach a public settlement on the future of tech? (Demos)

"Why do we use R rather than Excel?" (Terence Eden)

Everything else

The world’s biggest ransomware gang just disappeared from the internet (MIT Technology Review)

Our Statistical Excellence Awards Ceremony has just kicked off! (Royal Statistical Society)

Pin resets wipe all data from over 100 Treasury mobile phones (The Guardian)

Data officers raid two properties over Matt Hancock CCTV footage leak (The Guardian)

How did my phone number end up for sale on a US database? (BBC News)

Gendered disinformation: 6 reasons why liberal democracies need to respond to this threat (Demos, Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung)

Opportunities

EVENT: Justice data in the digital age: Balancing risks and opportunities (The LEF)

JOBS: Senior Data Strategy - Data Innovation & Business Analysis Hub (MoJ)

JOB: Director of Evidence and Analytics (Natural England)

JOB: Policy and Research Associate (Open Ownership)

JOB: Research Officer in Data Science (LSE Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science)

JOB: Chief operating officer (Democracy Club, via Jukesie)

And finally...

me: can’t believe we didn’t date sooner... (@MNateShyamalan)

Are you closer to Georgia, or to Georgia? (@incunabula)

A masterpiece in FOIA (Chris Cook)

How K-Pop conquered the universe* (Washington Post)

Does everything really cost more? Find out with our inflation quiz.* (Washington Post)

2 notes · View notes

96thdayofrage · 4 years ago

Text

Since Republican Senator Tim Scott’s remarks on Wed April 28 (following President Biden’s address to Congress) the question, “Is America a racist nation?” has found renewed traction on the major news networks. Hot takes on our social media feeds also abound. There are many ways to think about how/why this question has been able to garner the attention it has in our public square. But for those of us who study how the history of race and anti-black violence unfolds in the North American context, one thing is abundantly clear: It’s precisely because the United States is a place where racism in general, and anti-blackness more specifically, can thrive that this question is able to capture the collective attention it has. In other words, that we’re still asking this question of whether or not “America is a racist nation” seems less about the question itself, and more about the existential threat that it poses to our collective investment in what Eddie Glaude, Jr. calls “the lie”. The lie, Glaude writes, is that “broad and powerful architecture of false assumptions” that gives to whiteness the subject position in the American grammar book. The same architecture of false assumptions that stitches together the horrific brotherhood of twenty-five year old Michael Stewart, forty-four year old Eric Garner and forty-seven year old George Floyd.

The minutes leading up to the jury’s verdict in Derek Chauvin’s trial were harrowing, in a historical sense. They are minutes that many of us will always remember. We’ll always be able to recall what we were doing and who we were with as they slowly ticked away. What made the wait most difficult for me was watching my sons – both young black boys growing up in and against the “powerful architecture” of the lie – wait through those minutes, knowing that no matter what the verdict was, there was really no good news to celebrate with them. So when ‘guilty on all three counts’ finally came, there was some sense of relief, for sure. But it was the kind of relief you might liken to standing on the edge of a precipice, and being lucky enough to not have fallen off ‘this one time’. What I mean by that is that alongside the relief one feels in not falling off is that more overwhelming ‘wobble’ of dangling over the edge of a precipice in the first place. It’s a relief, yes. But not enough to undo the horror of what you’re all too aware was statistically way more likely. Not enough to undo the horror of knowing that you’re alive not because you were supposed to survive, but because of, well, some alchemic combination of grit and dumb luck.

It was in that way that I was relieved to hear that Derek Chauvin was going to be held accountable for the life he had taken away (in that slow and casual way he stole George Floyd’s life). The trifecta of guilty counts felt like being given a chance to steal away from a precipice’s edge, just a little, so that you saved yourself from falling off. At least this time. When I found out that George Floyd’s murderer was going to pay a price for taking his life, I felt like I needed to hug my two boys, in the way I imagine George Floyd’s family felt the need to embrace each other. Not quite in a moment of celebration, although there was a clear battle that had been won. I hugged my boys because we were seeing what looked like a criminal justice system working to value black life, affirming a black man’s sacred humanity. But I also (and, to be honest, mostly) hugged my boys because what we were seeing that day felt so very happenstance, so ‘this one time’, so unexpectedly against what we’ve come to know as statistically likely. Nothing about the relief of the Chauvin trial’s guilty verdict takes away this wobble of being racialized as black in the US, of having to insist on one’s right to freedom in a world in which black life is unequivocally unfree. I guess you can say that I hugged my boys because they still needed to understand this as their reality, even as the guilty verdict came across the TV that afternoon.

Rehearsing, here, all the police killings of unarmed black women, men and children that happened in the months prior George Floyd’s murder and immediately following the conviction of Derek Chauvin feels somewhat like indulging in catastrophe porn. (It is also something that would make me very fucking tired, and so I’m not going to do that.) However, I do want to point to this ever- and always-growing cluster of police killings to raise, perhaps, a more useful question than “Is America a racist nation?” And that is: Is there something about the intimacy between racism and self-formation in the US, which will always make that question a false start?

In a 2003 co-authored piece, Steven Martinot and Jared Sexton write that “notions of the state as the arbiter of justice and the police as the unaccountable arbiters of lethal violence are two sides of the same coin. Narrow understandings of mere racism are proving themselves impoverished because they cannot see this fundamental relationship. What is needed is the development of a radical critique of the structure of the coin.” What if we’ve already missed the rot of anti-black racism if we wait for a Derek Chauvin to express our outrage? What if what we should mean by ‘anti-black racism’ is not only the “flash point” of Breonna Taylor’s murder, but (before that), the disproportionate access to life-sustaining healthcare, education, clean water and safe housing that structures being black in the United States? What if “a radical critique of the coin” shows that anti-blackness – the racially uneven distribution of death across all aspects of our social field – makes someone like Derek Chauvin not a statistical anomaly, but rather a likely product of a state machinery invested in the capture of black life?

The black radical imagination and black activisms have historically understood the need for this kind of radical critique – of the whole coin, and of the interconnectedness of all its sides. It is only then, on the heels of such a critique, that an ‘otherwise’ future opens up for black life, an otherwise future in which “black” can, indeed, be free and human and sacred. To be sure, working toward such otherwise futures has always been the impetus for black politics in this radical sense, the sense in which studying blackness (in the words of the poet, Charif Shanahan) reveals what is both the “pained and possible” of black life. What is possible — it is also with that in my heart that I hugged my two boys on the afternoon of April 20. Imagining and working toward otherwise futures is essential to mothering black children. We raise them for living, for breathing, and for taking up the task of demanding – with an audacity of hope and a suspicion of cheap optimism – a world in which they can be free.

And so the question of what is possible for black life – possible as abolitionist rehearsals of naming ourselves – has always accompanied and ruptured the impossibilities coded in the violent algorithm of “the lie” in which the US continues to invest. And for this reason, what is of most concern to scholars of the history of race and anti-blackness in the United States is not the question of whether or not “America is a racist nation”. Rather, what most concerns us is the more urgent question of how we might gather our present and ancestral resources in order to – in the words of Ruthie Gilmore – “change everything”.

1 note · View note

miss-choco-chips · 5 years ago

Text

Put a ring on it

I’m not sure what this is, everyone. Had it on my docs for a while, got bored during work and thought ‘what if I just post this?’, and here we are. Basically the Core Four being loving and caring (and spiteful).

Shout out to @animemangasoul who pumped me up about this and @the-quiet-carrotcake and @iphoenixrising for letting me cry to them the Titans loving Tim.

Can be read as either ship or friendship

------.------

When shit went down, Wally and Roy made sure they were nowhere near the planet. A nice little interplanetary fuckery called for anyone free, and both of them had magically clean schedules, so off they went, praying to every god they knew about (and, with how many holy disasters they had faced between them, there were a lot) to be back after the worst of the mess had blown over.

Even if it meant missing the undoubtedly hilarious face Batman would make when he found out. Not even the chance of witnessing that was worth staying and waiting with bated breath until someone pointed out that, in the end, it was both their faults.

-So let me get this straight.

-Difficult for me, but go on.

Wally rolled his eyes, chucking a pillow at his little dude, wondering how Nightwing could do this with not one, not two, but three badly adjusted little brothers (and that without counting the girls, though, to be honest, they already had Babs). Truly, a hero of the ages. Arsenal just cackled from his place in front of the coffee table, where he was keeping them company and cleaning his equipment.

-I’m serious. I’ve never seen you this mad without a bad guy to blame for it.

-Well…

-As furious as you are at them, Bart, they are still the good guys.

-Debatable.

Wally threw another pillow, and Bart, arms crossed and all but vibrating on the couch, didn’t even bother on dodging. Just moved his particles quick enough that the thing went straight through him.

Arsenal raised an eyebrow at them- It’s scary when you do that. Like a freaking ghost.

-It’s scary that Tim’s whole family can be this level of neglectful, but you don’t see me bitching at them.

-Only because you know they’ll give you your ass back to you in a silver platter after they are done whooping it -interjected the older speedster, snack bag on his lap, a few more by the ground at his feet, sitting as close to Bart as the whole ‘don’t touch, I bite’ aura he had around him would allow.

-Kinky.

This time, Wally’s pillow was aimed at the archer. Roy just dodged without looking, still cross legged on the other side of the little table facing the couch.

-Real talk now, it’s not like they are jerks on purpose. We all know the Bats are on a whole new level of ‘always busy’, it’s to be expected they wouldn’t have time for social niceties.

Wally winced, scooting a little further away from Bart when he looked up to glare at Roy. That wasn’t a nice look. That was a ‘I can take you to someplace no one would hear you scream in less than ten seconds’ look.

-My seventeen year old best friend managed to finish high school after having to take a year off to go look for his missing mentor, going through several different mourning processes and dodging a frankly creepy cradle robber of a ninja terrorist, all while kicking ass and taking names, taking care of a huge as hell company, and keeping up the intel guy work for the rest of his shitty family. And he still graduated early. The least they could do after the fuckery he was put through by their collective stupidity would be go as moral support, but no. No, other things are more important than such a big milestone on his life. Fuckers.

Wound down after the rant, Bart dropped back on the couch, shrinking in place, oozing contempt from every pore.

Roy raised his eyes to share a look with Wally. Even if the bro code meant they were contractually obligated to defend their respective best friends, there was undeniable truth to Bart’s statement. Jason had gone on killing sprees for far less than Tim’s situation, and God knows Dick would have showed a big middle finger at his mentor and go off world with the Titans as a protest at the slightest fight. All in all, Red Robin was taking it like a champ.

-Jason’s busy with the Torinelli drug cartel thingie -tried Roy nonetheless, loyal as one could be.

Wally nodded- And Dick had already promised Damian to go on a camping-training trip that weekend...

-Great. So criminals that aren’t going anywhere and the ‘favorite’ demon child are more important than my best friend’s graduation, which isn’t even a long thing, just a couple hours and a few photos. Awesome. Do you happen to know Batman’s excuse? I mean, I’m sure is equally as shitty as his sons’ excuses, but, you know. Variety and stuff.

Wally sighed, because yeah, point. Were it Bart’s graduation, nothing short of the end of the world would have kept him from going, but, again, he only had one little dude to worry about. Dick’s house was full.

-You’ll be there -tried Roy, dropping his arrow back on the table and resting his crossed arms next to it, leaning forward to look straight at Bart-, you and the rest of the brats, right? Supes and Diana’s babies. You guys may not be related like that, but that’s not necessary for you to be family.

Like the Teen Titans were, went unsaid- the older heroes exchanged a glance, reminiscent of their days fighting side by side under Dick’s unwavering leadership. No matter where they were now, that’s where they both came from.

-Yeah -accepted Bart, but the frown hadn’t left his face-. It’s just. His parents are dead, his ‘foster’ bat-family are dicks. He has us, yeah, but… I wished he could have his family there, you know. Like, if I could adopt him, I would, just so he can have that.

Wally dropped the empty snack bag onto the ground and took a new one, tipping it in Bart’s direction as a peace offering- I mean, it’s still a month away, maybe one of them would clear his schedule and go? Probably not all of them, but anything’s better than nothing, right?

Bart harrumphed, hunching even lower in the couch, pout still present.

-If anything else fails -joked Roy, going back to cleaning his stuff-, I hear Kara’s single right now, and Tim’s an emancipated minor. Get them to marry each other, and then your Super friend is technically his brother- or something like that. Political families still counts.

Bart went still for a second, and if Wally were less invested in his snack and more on the thoughtful expression on his face, he might have known ahead of time that his next words were a bad, bad idea.

-And if she’s not on board, you could always ask someone else on your team. Team as family and all that shit, Tim would literally be marrying into the fam. Want some chips?

But Bart was already gone.

-Huh? -blinked Roy- Where'd he run to?

-...

-...You don't think he…

-What? No. No, of course not, they aren't so dumb...

For a horrible second, Roy and Wally crossed eyes again, both remembering the stupid shit they got up to when they were seventeen, and replayed the conversation. Their jokes, that anyone with half a brain would take as that, as silliness. Then came the thought that being stupid was almost a requirement for being a Titan.

With the kind of synchronicity one could only have after fighting side by side for years, they both jumped to their feet at the same time.

-I’ll hit Kori up, maybe she has some alien fuckery to deal with and we can tag along.

-Imma call Supes and let him know we’ll be off planet for a while. Shit, Dick’s gonna flip. He was the big B for a while, he knows stuff. Painful stuff.

-Dude, he at least doesn’t kill. Jay has guns, and it’s his favorite brother we’re talking about.

A shiver went through them when Batman’s reaction came to mind.

-If Kori’s not dealing with something, I’ll ask her to start shit up somewhere far, far away to give us an excuse to leave either way. She’s a goddess like that, she’ll help.

-Good thinking. I’ll start packing.

---.----

The secret meeting was held at one of Tim’s safe houses, because it had enough lead on the walls there was no risk of Superman overhearing them. Not that the owner of the place was aware of it; no one was, besides Cassie, Kon and Bart themselves. Keeping it hush hush was vital for the success of the mission.

-All on board then?

Kon’s smile could light up a town- Hell yeah dude. I’ll take care of getting Tim time off from work. Tam knows me and I’m fairly sure she doesn’t hate me as strongly as she does the bats. Fair warning though, she might ask to come with.

-She’s cool, so I’m in. We’re gonna need a witness anyway.

Cassie nodded, fierce smirk and challenge in her eyes- This is gonna piss so many people. Hey, do you think if we let Oracle in the know she’ll give us footage of the bats' faces when they find out?

Bart bit his lip- As crash as that would be, I don’t think it’s worth the risk.

Cassie deflated, but then shrugged it off- We’ll ask Tim, then. He’s as good as her with hacking, I’m sure he’ll figure something out.

-If he doesn’t kill us first, you mean.

-Don’t be a coward, Kon. I thought you were in.

-I’m not saying I’m backing down, just that we should put our business in order in case he snaps and murders us in cold blood. I know he has it in him, if pushed the right ways.

She nodded, because point. The almost feral look on her face wasn’t gone, though- Worth it. I'll be in charge of clothes. You reckon there's any chance I can get a dress on him?

-Sure, if you want him to actually break his no kill rule.

-Fine, but he's wearing white anyway. It goes well with his skin tone.

Bart extended his first for her to bump- Now you're talking. I'll be the extraction man and take him to the place.

Kon crossed his arms, looking conflicted for the first time- We can't go the classic way about it, because a fake name would mean he won't take seriously what we're trying to do, and if we use his real one in a formal document, it'll hit the news before the ink has a chance to dry. And then he'll kill us for sure.

-You're awfully worried about him drawing blood, Blue. What gives?

-He's scared shitless of Cassie and you're too adorable to hurt, but me? I'm the one he's gonna focus his rage on, and you know how he gets when at his limit.

Cassie snorts- He can't live without you, you dork. I think we are all safe. And anyways, the plan is to make him too drunk to walk on a straight line, he wouldn't be able to hurt us.

-You say that -interjected Bart, getting up from where he was crouching above their carefully spread, color coded sheets of plans; Tim would be so proud- but I've seen the dude drop kick someone with a broken leg once. He can fuck shit up no matter the situation.

-True… still, we are doing it, right?

-Oh yeah, for sure, I just wanted everyone aware that it might be our last big bang.

-Then we better make sure it's one hell of an explosion, am I right?

-Hell yeah.

-This is gonna be so crash!

----.----

The entire thing had gone something like this.

On friday, Tam made Tim turn around and head back home the second he showed his face at the office, claiming the bags under his eyes clashed terribly with her new Prada handbag and she’d rather had it than him around. In Foxspeak, it meant ‘go the fuck to sleep or so help me God’. Tim would have fought back just on principle, but Tam had him at a standstill, because the spleen thing could very easily reach Alfred’s ears if he crosses her, and no one (him) wants that. As if to make sure he would obey, she demanded they share the car that would take her to the airport (did she have some meeting out of Gotham? He couldn’t remember) and dropped him at his Perch on her way there.

He wasn’t actually planning on sleep, maybe work some of his cases from home, start patrol early, possibly tracking Jason down to offer his help for the drug cartel thing. Confused by the unexpected way his morning had gone so far, he was woefully underprepared for a flash of red and yellow to whisk him from his living room the second he put his carrier bag on the ground.

It was only years from using his team as glorified uber drives what kept him from nerve striking Bart on reflex. Knowing whatever he asked would be lost to the background sound of super fast travelling, he merely slumped over the thin shoulder he was thrown over and waited till they reached their destination.

Which… he wasn’t expecting Vegas.

The next few hours were a blur of his team explaining they had planned this gateaway as an early graduation party, hugs and a few grateful tears on his part, and booze. So much booze. He was trained by Batman, he had a bigger than average resistance to… well, everything, and still, he got so, so wasted.

Saturday’s hungover was cured with more booze. They hit casino after casino, danced over tables, payed a bar owner to close for the night and let them work their way through his entire supply, went to some neon party at someone’s exceedingly large hotel suite (the guy wasn’t getting his deposit back), his cellphone was thrown on a fountain after Cassie got sick of it going off again and again with Dick’s predetermined ringtone, drank some more, were kicked out of yet another casino...

At some point Tam appeared (a very drunk Tim had hugged her and spun her around so fast her stilettos went flying and almost blinded someone), and they all went back to the hotel, where Kon basically manhandled him into a white suit. More booze when Tim started asking questions, followed by a two hour long stay at some park were Cassie, Bart and Kon took turns holding his hand, and then each others’, with Tam saying something about bonds, and family, and sickness, and health in the background, Kon muttering something in kryptonian and making Tim repeat it, Cassie dropping to one knee and sprouting some Amazonian speech, Bart jumping on his back after his own speech (futuristic laws and all) was done, then more booze, partying and….

Well, everything was a blur, before and after that.

They woke up saturday morning with the worst headache, in a undignified puppy pile back at their suit, minus Tam who apparently had her own room. Kon’s TTK took care of the blinds and Tim blinked awake at the sound (Robin instincts), looked at his sleeping friends and then went back to sleep, head pillowed by Bart’s butt, with Cassie’s knee denting his ribs and Kon’s arm thrown over his neck, completely disregarding the three rings hanging from his shiny new necklace.

That was a problem for sober Tim to solve.

---.----

Monday morning, Tim went back to the office, Tam by his side, acting like everything was perfectly fine.

Dick called after lunch asking about his whereabouts that past weekend, claiming he was missed during patrol, but backed down when informed he was actually relaxing with his friends. Bruce didn’t ask, probably had tracked him down the second he couldn’t find him and let him be after realizing he was at Las Vegas.

Everyone that saw them walking down WE’s hallways would have swore a trail of classic music followed them, graceful and elegant.

In Tim’s mind, however, the background sound was the kill bill sirens and blaring red lights.

Tam felt like a queen, coming back after conquering treacherous lands.

Tim felt like Jason may have been onto something when he died.

----.----

When the Big Day (capital letters included) arrived, and Tim got into the stage to accept his diploma (Honor Student, of course), his eyes automatically went to the loud, rowdy teenagers, sitting as close to the front as possible, cheering and smiling.

He was far enough that it could’ve been a trick of the light, but he thought he could see all three of them going misty-eyed. His own eyes watered when he shook the headmaster's hand and posed with his diploma for the cameras (Wayne Heir Graduating would be trending on every magazine by dinnertime), his friends never stopping yelling his name.

When the time came to throw the little hats, he catched by the corner of his eye how Bart held both Cassie’s and Kon’s hands, keeping them from flying in their emotion. If one paid close attention, their feet actually were floating juuust above the ground. They were just so genuinely excited for him, it was… it was amazing.

After as little smalltalk as possible with his classmates, he sneaked away into some hidden spot, away from prying cameras, and waited. Sure enough, his best friends were there barely ten seconds later, and using that same speed, they swept him off his feet. Bart was the first, latching to his front, Kon a close second jumping on his back and hugging his head. Cassie, ever the showoff, threw her hands around the three of them and spun them around as if they weighted nothing to her. That was probably the case.

-You did it, you did it, you did it!!!! Oh my god, this is so crash!!!

-Not that we had any doubt, with that big brain of yours. Making a girl so proud.

-Speak for yourself. Personally, I feared the worst. This is Gotham, after all.

-But nothing happened! And you GRADUATED!

Tim let out a laugh, allowing himself to just feel joy. Letting them see him like that, as payment for being the most awesome friends (family) in existence, he returned the hug, squeezing back as strongly as his non meta arms could.

Then, a voice behind them that he absolutely didn't expect- Congratulations, Master Timothy.

Without letting any of them go, Cassie turned around, so they could all see Alfred Pennyworth, in his Sunday’s best, looking proud and warm, his eyes glazed over with nostalgia when they landed on his young charge. One of the young men he had the honor to watch grow into the amazing person he was today.

Even more surprising, he held a tablet on his arms, screen facing them, with a familiar figure there, white streak and leather but no firearms, probably cautious of possible civilians around.

-Hey, baby bird. Sorry ‘couldn’t be ther’ p’rsonally. Hope ya don’t mind me an’ Alfie crashing like this.

-A-Alfred? Jason? What… I thought you were in Russia!!

The man on the screen scratched the back of his head, visibly uncomfortable but determined.

-Am, actually. But it’s yer big day, babybird. Wouldn’t missit for the world.

Tim’s already watery eyes just overflowed.

-----.----

It took a month for shit to hit the fan. Tim was honestly impressed, because things rarely went his way, and getting more than a few hours to mentally prepare for Disaster? Unheard of. What a shocker.

When it did went down, it was in large part because he was milking the ‘no metas in Gotham’ rule that kept his team at bay and allowed him to go days without sleeping. Kon would say it was karmatic retribution for ignoring their orders to relax and take it easy. He would protest, but really, how to deny the truth; if not for his sleep deprivation, his secret would have gone a lot longer without being unveiled.

Between hacking into Lexcorp, running the dna samples he took during patrol half an hour ago on the database and finishing his report of the night, he was out of fucks to give. Damian bitching on his ear was the last drop.

-...And your mere presence here is an insult to Grayson's legacy. He founded it, Todd died for it, what did you even contribute to it?

A slow blink. Tim was aware his brain to mouth filter was as good as gone, but tired as he was, he just didn't care.

-Besides providing the brains on this whole fucking operation? Pants, I guess. Common sense. Ninja skills commended by your own grandfather, the king of ninjas. Virtue, too, since Dick is a verified hoe and Jason slept with your/

-C'mon Timmy -cut in Dick, Nightwing suit halfway down his chest, when Damian's face was turning an alarming shade of blue- aren't you a little old to be fighting a kid?

-Who are you calling kid?!

Typical, big bro to the rescue. Tim was too tired to be disappointed that once again Dick was siding with an eleven year old bully that kept harassing Tim. Never mind that he had been minding his business before Damian came to bark at him.

-Boys -chided Bruce and, huh, Tim had said that out loud. Whatever, not like it wasn't true. Fuck them.

-Fuck you -he told… Bruce? Dick? Definitely Damian, too- all.

-Tim! -gasped Dick. Still half naked. Standing right by Damian's side.

That kid was going to have a very uncomfortable sexual awakening any day now.

-SHUT UP, DRAKE! YOU ARE DISGUSTING!

Wow he really needed to stop talking out loud.

-Tim -And now Bruce was walking towards them, frown firmly in place- you are obviously too tired, if you can't control what comes out of your mouth. Go to sleep.

Tim hissed at him. Dick looked too shocked to answer but Bruce, somewhat used to that reaction of the sleep deprived teen, loomed even more.

-I'm an emancipated adult. I control your company. I live on my own. You're not the boss of me.

Now even Damian was looking at him open mouthed. Whatever. The computer pinged with his results, just as his phone did with his 'The hubbies and waifus' group chat.

-What's gotten into you, kiddo? -now Dick was worried, throwing an arm around his shoulders. Still half naked, that was an important detail.

Tim shrugged him away.

-Fucking demon spawn coming from nowhere to fuck with me just for the hell of it puts me in a bad mood, I'm weird like that -he deadpaned, replying to the group chat one handed- And the rest of this fucked up team siding with him just because he's a bad word away from a violent psychotic break doesn't help. Fuck off and let me do my shit, and I'll be out of your hair before you know it.

And then, with a sneer, ignoring both Bruce's and Dick's flabbergasted expressions, Damian said what would be Tim's down fall.

-Go to hell, Drake.

A ping made Tim look down at his phone and he replied without thinking, one hand tapping away at the screen- Wait, let me ask my wife.

A beat of silence. One sneer, one grunt, one surprised gasp.

Bruce made a half step towards him- Tim, what/?

A ping.

-She says no. Hang on, let me get you a second opinion, just to be safe.

-Timmy, what do you mean/?

Another one.

-Husband number one says no, too. Husband number two hasn't replied, probably asleep or traveling somewhere, but two already win by majority. It seems it's a ‘no’ on going to hell for me. Bummer, it would have been funny seeing your homeland, brat.

-...

-Aaaaand that’s my cue to interrupt -announced a new voice above them all. Kon, phone at hand, looked down with half amused, half guarded expression-. Someone hasn’t held their end of the deal and slept eight hours, huh, bud?

Tim, ignoring his family that hadn’t yet recovered from the bomb, shrugged- I slept eight hours. This past week. You never said they had to be consecutive hours.

The super just sighed and landed long enough to haul a too tired to resist bird in his arms- I can see you aren’t getting any sleep in Gotham. Let’s go back to the Tower, Cassie wants us to see The Princess Bride with her again.

-Don’t lie to me, you liar.

-Bart wan/

-Look at my face and tell me the truth.

-Okay, I want to see The Princess Bride again -he conceded, taking flight towards the closest exit, sleepy bird cocooned in his arms and TTK- Later, bats!

-...

Finally, Dick snapped back to reality, although the background noise in his head was one would expect in suspense movies right before the assassin jumped a unsuspecting protagonist- ...did he say ‘husbands’? As in, married?

-...

-AS IN MORE THAN ONE?

----.----

#Tim drake #kon el kent #cassie sandsmark #bart allen #tam fox #bruce wayne #dick grayson #jason todd #damian wayne #Alfred Pennyworth #core four #crack wedding

180 notes · View notes

herocentral · 4 years ago

Text

Possible Hero 6

Authors notes: Chapter 9 is done folks, worked on it all day yesterday and finished it this morning, I think thats a new personal writing record. Anyway enjoy

Kim Possible & Big Hero 6 (c) Disney

Chapter 9: Countdown to Catastrophe PT2

On the campus of the San Fransokyo Institute of Technology at the Ito Ishioka Raobotics lab the young genius Hiro Hamada was hard at work on his secret project.

In his lab lay the recently completed energy amplifier that was sitting inside a scanner as it flowed with purple energy. Hiro looked over the device with anticipation as he continued the test. He wasn’t alone however the Tweebs Jim and Tim Possible were also present, as from their sister they learned what Hiro was up to and decided they wanted in on it fortunately Ann already asked Hiro if he could look after the boys since Kim was busy with the others. Which Hiro was more than happy to encourage younger geniuses such as himself.

“Whoa that looks awesome!” Tim said looking at the device.

“Because it is awesome.” Hiro said as he rolled his chair over to his computer opposite the scanner and typed on the keyboard.

Baymax was walking over Hiro then moved his chair back to the scanner then back to the computer again and so on and so fourth whilst the computer screen was measuring the energy output of the amplifier. Hiro and the tweebs looked at the diagram to see the results.

“Okay if my math is right the results from this energy amplifier should be off the charts.” Hiro said looking over the chart on his computer seeing the levels were optimal.

“Looking good so far.” Tim said. “The results appear to be on the chart.” Baymax said as the three geniuses looked at the inflatable robot confused.

“Uh dude you know thats an expression right?” Jim pointed out to which Baymax just blinked.

“Yeah and I meant incredibly amazing.” Hiro said as he went over to the amplifier followed by the tweebs and Baymax.

“Oh.” Baymax said as he waddled over. Hiro took out the amplifier ready for its next test.

“Now I just need to test it before showing it off at Open House.” Hiro explained as he activated it.

“Man we should have brought our rocket packs!” Tim said

“Yeah that would be awesome to amplify their power!” Jim agreed.

“Uh no guys whilst a good idea we’re going to start small.” Hiro said as he pulled out his phone which was extremely low on power.

“Only one percent if my modifications work no overload this time.” He hopped as he placed the phone on the amplifier and it began to glow and as it did the energy began rising.

“Hey it’s working!” Tim exclaimed. “Good good,” Hiro said liking the progress of the charging battery. and thankfully no overload occurred.

“Huh.” Hiro breathed amazed. “Look it’s working.”

“Sweet!” Jim agreed. However Baymax saw differently as the humming noise from the phone got louder and louder.

“Yes it is also about to combust.” He said as the phone began smoking overcharging the battery Hiro and the Tweebs stepped back with caution.

“ammonium phosphate is required.” Baymax explained as he used the fire extinguisher in his finger to put out the nearly destroyed phone.

“We’re those results off the charts?” Baymax asked.

“Slightly.” Hiro said a little disappointed he hadn’t cracked the overload part yet.

“Slightly it was way off the charts!” Tim exclaimed “HUSHA!” The twins agreed as they high fives.

“We are so building an amplifier of our own when we get home!” Tim said.

“Yeah imagine the supercharged rockets we could build even boots our other stuff too!” Jim agreed.

“Whoa whoa hold up guys whilst it’s good to be enthusiastic I think an energy amplifier maybe too advanced for you guys.” Hiro advised.

“Huh don’t know where that came from?” He then wondered.

“I detect Professor Granville approaching.” Baymax said getting Hiros attention as he quickly hid his energy amplifier as he didn’t want Granville to know about his secret project.

“I estimate she will be here in two…” “Mr Hamada.” Granville said opening the lab doors just as Hiro hid it behind his back.

“…Seconds or less” Baymax finished and Granville noticed the two Possible brothers in the lab with Hiro and Baymax.

“May I ask what they are doing here in this lab?” Granville asked.

“Uh well Professor Granville you see uh…” Hiro tried to explain.

“Our mom asked Hiro to watch us because Kim was busy this afternoon.” Tim explained. “Yeah and we heard about his final project and thought we’d learn a lot from a robotics wiz.” Jim added.

“Yeah yeah thought Jim and Tim could learn a lot from seeing things in the robotics trenches if they wanted to enrol here someday heh.” Hiro finished with an innocent smile.

“This seems like an inconvenient time to be taking on young protege’s Mr.Hamada.” Granville noted and then noticed her students burnt out phone.

“What happened to your phone?” She asked. “Krei tech heh you know.” Hiro said innocently.

“I do, they’re trash.” Granville then said as Tim hid the amplifier in Hiro’ hood.

“However, I’m here to discuss your final project.” Granville said with some serious tone.

“I’m just um, still, kicking around a few ideas,” Hiro said trying to hide his secret project.

“This is no time for idea fooseball!” Granville explained. “The open house is tomorrow.” She then reminded but noticed that her student was in fact hiding something.

“Are you hiding something Mr Hamada?” She tried to look behind his back but Hiro kept moving to avoid her seeing what was in his hoodie.

“Professor Granville I am shocked.” Hiro breathed in shock. “After all we’ve been through?”

“Yeah what would he have to hide?” Tim asked helping him.Baymax managed to come between them and Granville before anything else happened.

“Professor.” Baymax said. “The sound of your grinding teeth indicates stress.” He then diagnosed.

“Our boy genius is on the verge of failing.” Granville said with her hand on her hips, “and he is clearly hiding something from me so yes I am a little stressed.” She was trying to get past but Baymax kept blocking her path.

“Would you like a hug?” Baymax asked with open arms quite literally.

“I would not.” Granville said as she was backing out of the room.

“Next time we talk Mr. Hamada I expect results!” She then called out as she left the room leaving the four in the lab.

“Man she is relentless!” Jim said, “You have no idea.” Hiro agreed as he pulled out the amplifier from his hood.

“Well, she wants results.” Hiro activated his amplifier and it glowed with energy. “Lets give her some results.” He said confidently as he turned to the twins.

“You in?” Hiro asked. “Hica bica boo.” Tim said “Husha” Jim added. “We’re in!” They then said together.

Gogo’s Apartment

Late that very night on the far side of town, the shadiest part of the city Gogo, Honey Lemon, Wasabi and Kim were gathered in Gogo’s apartment.

Gogo sat at the table and looked over the wax cylinder that Wasabi, Honey and Ron recovered in Shimamoto’s lab.

“So you just took this?” Gogo asked holding the cylinder. Honey Lemon meanwhile was placing the gramophone they ‘borrowed’ from Baron Von Steamers lair onto the kitchen table, as Wasabi moved a plant pot out of the way.

“We left a lot of notes.” Honey said “And wiped everything down.” Wasabi added.

“To erase your finger prints?” Gogo questioned in a knowing tone.

“No just to tidy up.” Wasabi said wiping the table with a cloth whilst Honey Lemon was smiling.

Gogo just shrugged at this point. “So are we going to play it or what?” She asked.

“EEE This is soo exciting!” Honey squeaked with joy. “Say where’s Ron thought he’d be here to see this since he did help us find it?” Honey asked.

“Oh yeah he said he had plans with Fred.” Kim pointed out whilst looking over the Kimmunicator.

Honey just shrugged and moved to insert the wax cylinder into the gramophone.

“For the first time ever, Linore Shimamoto in her own words.” She said as she turned the gramophone handle turning it on. Kim decided to listen in just for general interest.

However when it played the words couldn’t be made out it was just a scrambled message. This was confusing to everyone.

“Are we sure those are words?” Gogo wondered. “Maybe it’s some kind of code?” Kim guessed.

“Hm somethings not right.” Honey took a closer look at the gramophone.

Wasabi then closely examined the wax cylinder and instantly gagged as he clearly saw what the problem was.

“ ‘Blech’ This is nasty!” He whispered as Gogo looked at the cylinder and determined the cause as well.

“Yeah a hundred years of dirt and dust will do that.” She said.

“Good thing I bought my detergency kit.” Wasabi began unlocking a grey briefcase that had password locks and biometric scanners which were unlocked by his hand print. Inside was a vast collection of cleaning materials all organised and maintained.

“The key is to have the proper tool for the job.” Wasabi said looking among his tools whilst Kim was all but perplexed.

“You really need all that security for this stuff?” She questioned whilst looking over her Kimmunicator.

“Hey can’t be too safe Kim.” Wasabi pointed out.

“Ah” He then pulled out a small motorised brush from one of the compartments.

“I knew the humming bird would come in handy one day.” He said.

“Oh we have to have it ready for the open house tomorrow.” Honey said with some concern.

“The Humming bird Honey Lemon, tiny but mighty.” Wasabi explained as he turned on the humming bird brush and applied it to the cylinder and just like that huge clouds of dust began pouring off it.

“Impressive.” Gogo admitted, and everyone looked rather surprised, was Gogo actually giving a compliment.

“What I’m being sincere.” Gogo said.

“Really?” Wasabi said. “Don’t think I’ve seen you sincere before?” Kim agreed.

“Well not completely, like eighty percent.” Gogo said and everyone just gave questioning looks.

“Thats really not bad Wasabi.” Honey Lemon admitted putting a hand on Wasabi’s shoulder. “Right Kim?”

However Kim was too occupied looking something over on her Kimmunicator which she had been doing all evening.

“Kim?” Wasabi asked but no response and so Gogo proceeded to slam her hand on the table which immediately got the red headed teens attention.

“Huh what what?” Kim said rather startled.

“You okay?” Gogo asked. “Yeah you seem kinda distracted.” Wasabi noticed. “Plus you’ve been looking over that thing of yours all evening since you got here.”

“Is this because of our failed plan at Krei tech?” Honey asked. “Cause if it is don’t worry I’m sure we’ll catch Shego and figure out what she and Obake are up to.”

“No no it’s not that.” Kim explained and took a deep sigh as it was time to share what she was thinking but she was afraid to.

“What do you guys think about Professor Granville?” She asked openly which was more than a surprise to everyone else.

“What do you mean?” Honey asked. “I mean do you think she’s capable of hiding something, something she doesn’t want anyone else to know about.” Kim explained.

“Oh boy.” Gogo said pinching the bridge of her nose. “Look Kim, Hiro was suspicious of Granville too especially when he found out she taught at SFIT before he enrolled.” She explained. “and when he was looking into her turns out she was working on security drones for the school.”

“No it’s more than that,” Kim explained as she stood up and paced the room. “Hiro proposed creating an energy amplifier for his final project but Granville said no.”

“So whats so suspicious about that?” Wasabi asked.

“Its the way she said it, the tone in her voice indicated that she had been through this once before and not in a good way.” Kim then explained.

“Well maybe if you ask her about…” “I did Honey Lemon but she shut the door on that conversation, and when I asked her if any of her other students approached energy amplification she said no.” Kim interrupted Honey. “But I could tell she was lying.”

This had gotten the groups attention why would Granville their trusted dean lie about something, especially if it concerned a certain project.

“Thats not all, take a look at this.” Kim placed her Kimmunicator on the table and pressed a button to show a hologram of the screen she was looking at it was the SFIT student database.

“Whoa since when did Wade go holo-screens?” Wasabi asked.

“I asked Wade to do some checking in the SFIT database and it turns out one of her students did approach an energy amplifier before.” Kim said as she brought up the file. “A student named Bob Aken, but when Wade tried accessing the file it was sealed and required administrative access.”

“And the only person who would have that kind of access…” Gogo theorised “Would be a university Dean, namely Professor Granville” Kim confirmed. She then moved the holo screen to an article about an accident at SFIT.

“Wade also found a newspaper article relating to an accident at the robotics lab claiming that an accident with one of the professors experiments sent a student to the hospital” Kim explained “which coincided with Aken’s leave of absence from SFIT sometime after.”

“Kim what are you saying?” Gogo asked.

“I know a cover up when I see one, Granville’s hiding something.” Kim then started to wonder. “and I have a bad feeling it’s somehow connected to Obake.”

“But how?” Honey asked. “Yeah it doesn’t make any sense?” Wasabi agreed, Kim then came to a decision about what to do next.

“Thats what I intend to find out.” She deactivated the Kimmunicator holo screen, picked it up and left the apartment.

“Where are you going?” Gogo asked. “To make an office call.” Kim replied and she left.

Back at SFIT: ITO ISHIOKA ROBOTICS LAB

Meanwhile Hiro, Baymax and the Tweebs were in the hallway standing in front of a vending machine full of snacks and treats.

“These snacks are un healthy.” Baymax analysed as Hiro prepared his energy amplifier for the next test.

He placed the amplifier onto the vending machine and as it began supercharging it Hiro and the twins took cover behind Baymax as they pulled him away in case anything went wrong. All of a sudden a packet of chips came flying out of the machine and smashed open above Hiro’s head who screamed as the chips exploded onto his hair.

“Whoa!” Tim said amazed “And dangerous.” Baymax added. They looked to the machine and it started firing out snacks at them like a machine gun gone wild.

“TAKE COVER!” Jim exclaimed as they all hid behind Baymax and they used him as a shield to get closer to the machine as it fired more and more snacks at them Hiro reached for the amplifier and removed it shutting it down.

“Whew.” He breathed in relief.

“Man I’ve heard of snack attacks but this really takes the cake!” Tim said pulling a chip out of his hair.

“Its still over loading things with the charge.” Hiro said rather disappointed.

“Well Hiro maybe the problem is we’re still thinking too small, small devices have a small charge.” Jim suggested.

“Yeah hence why they keep overcharging things and causing the overloads.” Tim agreed.

“So we need to test it on something big enough to handle the power surge.” Hiro guessed.

“Yep pretty much.” Jim and Tim said in unison. “Wow you guys sure pick up quickly.” said and impressed Hiro.

However they first needed to find something big enough for the test where would they find that? Then as if on cue.

“Hiro!” everyone turned to see Fred, Ron and Rufus at the end of the hallway open doors.

‘I’ve gotta show you something and it cannot wa…” Fred then noticed how Hiro’s hair was coated photo chips.

“Whoa! who over snacked the place?” Ron asked. “I mean if you guys were planning to raid the snack machines why didn’t you invite us Rufus is great at that?”

Fred meanwhile started picking off the chips from Hiro’s hair and ate them.

“Hm garlic fresh seriously my fav.” Fred said and Rufus hoped from Rons shoulder onto Freds then onto Hiro’s head and ate a chip from it.

“Hmm yummy.” Rufus agreed.

San Fransokyo Bay area harbour

Soon they found themselves at the harbour where a lone seagull flew off from its perch. Heathcliff Freds butler had driven them down to the harbour to show them something. Fred had covered Hiro and Rons eyes whilst the tweebs and Baymax covered their own eyes.

“Okay you can open your eyes” Fred said removing his hand as Hiro and crew opened their eyes and they saw something amazing standing before them. It was a large three eyed green coloured Kaju monster with darker green horns and a long spiked tail.

“Whoa!, wait is that!” Ron said amazed. “Yep behold my friends Kantuki Kaju 2.0!” Fred confirmed in excitement.

“WHOOOOA!” the Tweebs said amazed.

“AWSOME I’ve seen that movie but the actual monster thats a level ten BOOYAH!” Ron gasped in excitement.

“YEAH!” Rufus agreed. “But wait didn’t you say you had one of these before and…”

“I know I know the last one almost destroyed the city” Fred interrupted Ron. “But this one..”

“Is perfect for my test.” Hiro said pulling out his energy amplifier from his hoodie and activated it.

“Oh yeah!” Tim breathed amazed.

“Hey whats that?” Ron asked. “Oh it’s my energy amplifier for my final project.” Hiro explained.

“The one Granville told you not to work on?” Ron asked.

“Yep, why?” Hiro asked. “Oh nothing besides nothing says amazing grade like a little rebellious student along the way, trust me dude I’ve been there.” Ron said.

“I… don’t know what your talking about,” Fred said but last one into the dangerous monsters a rotten egg!” He then said in a child like tone.

“Oh yeah this rocks!” Tim said as he and his brother raced Fred over to the Kaju mech.

“Rotten eggs can cause gastrula intestinal distress, it is also common that..” Baymax explained as they went over to the kaju.

Soon everyone was on board in the cockpit wearing crash helmets just in case anything should happen.

“Probably should warn you this might be a bad idea.” Hiro said activating the amplifier.

“Bad idea, you never said this was a bad idea!” Ron suddenly panicked.

“Ron relax what could possibly happen.” Tim said assuringly.

“Besides this is a bad Idea is my middle name!” Fred added.

With that Hiro plugged in the amplifier and the control console lit up in purple lights engulfing the whole cockpit in a purple glow. The monster raised itself high and the cockpit doors which were also the eyes closed down and turned from yellow to purple.

“Whoa!” The Tweebs said in amazement. However Hiro was looking a little worried as was Ron but Fred on the other hand was all but excited. He was about to reach for the lever until Hiro stopped him.

“Lets just start slow.” Hiro insisted. “Right baby steps.” Fred agreed.

“Oh come on Hiro, sometimes you gotta run before you can walk.” Jim disagreed.

“I’m good with baby steps.” Ron pointed out. “Uh huh uh huh me too.” Rufus agreed.

With that Hiro carefully pushed the lever up to level one but.

“EsA…..YYYYY!” Suddenly the Kaju mech just took off into the sky with one massive jump taking off like a rocket into the sky.

It hovered above the cloud bank and inside everyone was floating in the air Rufus quickly grabbed onto Rons shirt before.

“Oh no.” Baymax and Ron said as the Kaju began crashing down to the ground and inside everyone was now flattened on the roof of the cockpit.

“YAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!” Ron screamed as they toppled down from the sky.

“Hiro! your amplifier thingy rocks!” Fred exclaimed.

“YEAH THIS IS AW…SOME!” Jim agreed

“I’m more concerned about our landing right now!” Hiro pointed out rather scared.

“That makes two of us!” Ron yelled terrified.

The kaju crashed into the bay with a very large splash and the water wave was heading for Heathcliff who prepared an umbrella for such an eventuality. The water splashed all over him and when it receded he had a squid on his face along with some seaweed and some sea creatures were scattered everywhere.

In the cockpit of the Kaju mech Hiro deactivated the amplifier and unplugged it as he stood up.

“Everyone okay?” Hiro asked. “There were no major injuries.” Baymax reports.

“We’re good.” Tim called out. “Yeah let’s do that again!” Jim chuckled.

“Lets do it again!” Fred exclaimed before he fell to the floor rather dizzy not surprising after all the G-Force he took.

“Uhhh guys I don’t feel so..” Rons cheeks puffed up and he instantly vomited all over the place whilst Rufus just waddled around rather dizzy himself.

SFIT The Robotics lab

Back at the robotics Lab Hiro looked at his amplifier with admiration he had done the impossible it was tested and ready to show.

“An and they said it was impossible.” Hiro said deactivating the energy amplifier and put it away in a cabinet draw.

“It was off the charts.” Baymax agreed.

“Yeah so off the charts!” Tim agreed also. “Yeah it’s already given me some ideas for our next project.” Jim added.

“Yeah guys totally off the charts, I can’t wait to see the look on Granville’s face.” Hiro said rather confident.

“Hiro, it is approximately two minutes past Jim and Tims bed time.” Baymax reminded looking at his monitor clock with pictures of Jim and Tims faces next to it.

“Oh yeah come on I’d best get you guys back to the hotel.” Hiro realised and so the three and Baymax walked out of the lab not before they turned out the lights in the lab.

Elsewhere on campus:

Professor Granville was heading out of her office for the night picking up her purse and then exited her office switching off the lights and locking the door behind her. She then took her leave of the campus.

Unknown to her however someone was waiting in the hallway dropping in from the roof was Kim Possible clad in her stealth suit and wore the visor from her armour. She knelt down to the door handle and used a pick to pick the lock on the door. It was unlocked and Kim entered the office but snuck in carefully to avoid the security cameras.

“Okay Wade where would the student files be kept?” Kim tapped her visor activating the Kimmunicator.

“They should be located in a cabinet at your 11 o’clock.” Wade relayed.

Kim looked and saw a cabinet on the left hand side of Granville’s desk, she smiled and made her way over too it. Luckily thanks to the stealth suit she was able to blend in. She arrived at the cabinet and saw it needed an electronic key to unlock it.

“Think you can hack this lock Wade?” Kim asked. “Ask and you shall receive.” Wade replied and using the visor link he was able to hack into the lock and deactivate it.

Kim opened the cabinet draw and looked in the file sections that were labeled alphabetically. She looked in the row marked B.

“Okay Bob Aken, Bob Aken.” Kim said to herself and eventually she found the file she was looking for.

“Bingo.” She said as she pulled it out and looked at the contents she saw a photo attached with a paper clip of Professor Granville standing with said student with brown full out hair that looked rather puffy and wore a light coloured cardigan with an orange dress.

“Whoa looks like Granville had a thing for crazy hair styles.” Kim commented. “And a cardigan a little retro?”

She then looked under the photo and at Bob Aken’s enrolment record she saw a photo of him he had black grey hair and one side covered his left eye and had a trace of red in it, with pale skin and violet coloured eyes. He was listed as a gifted student who was passionate about his work. She then looked at his project records and what she found all but confirmed her suspicions.

“So Aken was given access to the campus after hours in order to work on his projects, with Granville’s permission?” Kim analysed. Then her visor beeped the kimmunicator tone.

“Go Wade.” She answered.

“Kim I’ve looked into the hospital records of the accident at Granville’s lab and it says some weeks after her leave of absence, her student fully recovered but hasn’t been heard from since.” Wade explained as he looked on his computer.

“So he’s a ghost story?” Kim guessed. “Bang on the nose.” Wade replied.

Kim then began to think about what Hiro had told her about Obake and how he’s been acting from the shadows like a ghost and only showed himself during the incident involving a certain journal. She wondered could the two be connected somehow?

“But it looks like this ghost may not want to remain hidden any more.” Kim said out loud.

“What?” Wade asked.

“I don’t know yet, but we better keep our eyes open at the open house tomorrow, I’ve got a feeling whatever Obake’s plan is the Open house maybe the key.” Kim deduced as she put away the file and locked up the cabinet as if she was never there.

However there was a camera in the room and someone was watching on the other side it was a certain glowing faced man who watched with interest.

“Hm, seems I’ve underestimated her deductive skills.” Obake mused.

The Lucky Cat Cafe: The Following Morning:

The day of the SFIT Open House had arrived and in the Lucky Cat Hiro’ aunt was treating him to a pancake breakfast with a smily face made from berries oranges and cream.

“You know it feel like yesterday when Tadashi was going to his first open house.” Cass said rather happy. “And now here you are, I’m so proud of you.” she gave her nephew a hug.

“Thanks Aunt Cass.” Hiro thanked. “I think your going to be impressed.”

“I hope so, oh and the Possibles and Ron will be there as well the best way to spend their last few days of their trip before going home.” Cass explained.

“Well let’s hope it’ll be one we won’t forget.” Hiro said as he began eating his pancakes.

As Aunt Cass walks away Baymax’s scanner then sounds off an alert.

“My scanner has detected.. Obake.” The mention of the word caused Hiro to choke on his pancakes in surprise as he spat it out.

“Whats an Obake?” Cass asked overhearing the conversation.

“Uh Obake Hunt.” Hiro explained as he stood up from his seat and moved towards the exit.

“Its a, it’s a game heh,” He pulled out his phone for empathise. “I gotta go catch me some Obake’s, Baymax let’s go.” Hiro said pushing Baymax to the door.

However Cass looked at her nephew with a suspicious look she had never heard of this game called Obake’s not to mention Hiro was behaving strangely. Said nephew kept pushing Baymax through the door but got stuck and when he was free it caused Hiro to fall onto his back.

“Good luck catching your Obake’s.” Cass just said waving goodbye.

The Hotel:

Meanwhile the Possibles were up and about getting ready to leave for the SFIT Open House. James was tying his tie and Ann was putting her shoes on whilst the boys were just waiting in the living area.

“Kimmie come on we’re going to be late for the open house!” Ann called.

“Be right there!” Kim called back.

“Boy I can’t wait to see what the next generation of scientists and robotisist’s will show today at this open house.” James said rather eagerly.

“Yeah dad we’re gonna explore it too.” Jim said. “Yeah and maybe even try a few free samples.” Tim agreed. “Husha!”

“Nice try boys you’ll be staying with us the whole time besides we’re also going to support Hiro and his friends.” Ann explained.

In her room Kim had finished brushing her hair and wore a turquoise green shirt with black pants and indigo blue shoes, just as Ron came in wearing a green and white jersey and his normal brown pants.

“KP lets go I don’t want to miss the open house.” Ron said.

“Ron its so not the drama we’ll..” Just then she heard the Kimmunicator sound off.

“You know Wade has the worst timing.” Ron said. “Its not Wade.” Kim pointed out.

“Hey Hiro whats the sitch?” Kim asked.

“Kim its him! We’ve found Obake!” Hiro relayed and the two teens looked wide eyed in shock and Rufus just popped up out of Rons pocket.

“What where is he?” Kim asked.

“Baymax was running scans for Obake since we first met him and he just detected him in Night Market Square.” Hiro explained.

“Thats a pretty far off side of town?” Kim wondered as she remembered that area from her tour of the city with Cass some time ago.

“Yeah its the perfect place for a villain to hold up.” Ron pointed out.

“But how was Baymax able to find him I thought he couldn’t scan for Obake?” Kim then asked.

“I know thats what I thought too, but his scanning jammer maybe malfunctioning.” Hiro explained.

“And biometrics and vocal analysis match the readings from when we met, Obake.” Baymax added as he and Hiro were in an alley way not to far from the Lucky Cat Cafe.

“I don’t know Hiro, doesn’t seem a little weird that he shows himself now this smells like a trap.” Kim wondered.

“Unless it’s a trap inside a trap.” Ron added. “Please don’t start that again.” Kim cut Ron off after hearing a reminder of the whole trap trap thing that resulted in being pulled into cable TV.

“Whatever it is this could be our one chance to catch Obake once and for all.” Hiro pointed out.

“Yeah but dude what about the open house?” Ron reminded. “what about your final grade?”

“I know I know if I don’t show Professor Granville will fail me.” Hiro said. “But Tadashi always taught me to help even if it means putting me or my grade at risk, and theres no way I’m letting Obake escape again.”

Kim took a moment to think about what was just said on the one hand this could indeed be the only chance they have to capture the mysterious Obake and find out his plans, but on the other hand this could be a trap luring them in. However she knew whatever it was they couldn’t let this villain run loose forever.

“Okay find Obake.” Kim said “but I’m coming with you I’ll meet you in Night Market.” She decided.

“Okay see you there.” Hiro said hanging up the call.

“Lets suit up KP.” Ron said. “Booyah!” Rufus agreed.

“No Ron I need you at the open house just in case.” Kim said. “In case of what?” Ron asked.

“In case this is a trap and if anything else should happen.” Kim said to which Ron nodded.

“Now all we have to do is explain the sitch to my parents.” Kim said as she pressed a button on the Kimmunicator calling the Sky-max unit.

SFIT Open House:

The SFIT Open House was now in full swing the booths were up and the banners were hanging from the ceiling, and Professor Granville was looking everything over making sure everything was in place.

She was walking over to the other booths when someone dressed in pink and purple with an orange coloured lab coat, green hair in pig tails and purple goggles jumped in front of her playing a song on a ukulele.

“I love science fairs don’t you too Professor Granville? oooo.” Wendy Wower sung and was about to hug Granville but she avoided it.

“So glad you could join us Doctor Wower.” Granville greeted. To which Doctor Wower shook her hand.

“You know professor, you were the inspiration behind my TV character.” Wendy explained Professor Granville just looked at the good doctor and wondered how she could have been the inspiration for her former student.

“Hmm is that right?” She said simply. “Thats very flattering.” she then moved to inspect the other students booths.

Meanwhile Karmi was in her booth showing off one of her latest projects to Liv Amara one of the leading bio geneticists in San Fransokyo. She had blonde hair fair skin brown eyes and wore a red dress.

“So you created an electric circuit inside the rose?” Liv asked just as Alister Krei was walking by.

“I fill lysilum” Karmi explained. “with a conductive polymer” Liv said. “wow Karmi this could give a whole new meaning to.”

“Power plants.” The two then said and shared a laugh to which Krei also joined in but when they turned to see him he stopped laughing. Just then he recognised a familiar face.

“Dr. James Possible this is a surprise.” He greeted as James only just noticed the Krei Tech CEO.

“Why Alister it’s been too long.” He said sharing a handshake. “I haven’t seen you since that space conference in Geneva last year.”

“Was it last year I lose track of time, you know if only you considered my offer for Krei Techs space tech program we could have done great things.” Krei recalled.

“Yes but if I recall you couldn’t find the trained pilots for said program.” James recalled.

“Oh oh yes I remember, well enjoy the Open House.” Krei said as he left to look at the other booths.

James then saw the booth he and his family were looking for and saw a rather concerned looking Aunt Cass with a box of cakes waiting at her nephews booth labeled Hiro Hamada. Just out of stress she starts eating a cake. Just then she notices Gogo and Honey Lemon setting up their booths for their projects Gogo was hanging a picture up of Linore Shimamoto whilst Honey Lemon cleaned the presentation table.

“Hey guys have you seen Hiro?” Cass asked as she came over and Fred was in his mascot costume sitting on a chair.

“Oh he’s not here yet?” Honey asked. “He said he was going to meet us.”

“I’m sure he’ll be here any minute.” Fred added as he came over.

“I think their right Cass.” as Ann came over to comfort her.

“This is a big day for him he’s probably a little nervous.” She said covering up the real reason as her daughter explained.

“Yeah and you know he could be planning to make an entrance on his big day.” James also added.

“Yeah like I saw in a film once.” Ron added.

“Okay.” Cass decided. “Well anyone want a cupcake?” She then asked offering a box of cat shaped cupcakes.

“I do.” Jim and Tim said as they took one. “Awesome.”Gogo said

“Thanks Aunt Cass” Honey lemon said as she Ron, Gogo, Fred, James, and Ann took one too and with one bite Ron all but enjoyed the taste of it.

“Man these are delicious reminds me of some I made back home.” Ron explained. “You cook Ron?” Gogo wondered.

“Yeah I was even in charge of my home mech class back in Middleton, thats is until the Health inspector saw Rufus.” Ron explained.

“Oh sorry.” Rufus squeaked.

Fred meanwhile was still trying to choose which cake to have.

“Hm it’s not going to work.” So he basically took the whole box and poured the contents into his mouth all at once.

“Dude thats awesome!” Tim said admiring Freds ingenuity.

However everyone couldn’t help but notice Cass still looking a little worried about the absence of her nephew. And rightly so.

“If Hiro keeps flaking he’s going to flunk out.” Gogo whispered to Honey Lemon and Ron. Then Honey noticed something someone else was absent too.

“Hey where’s Kim, shouldn’t she be here too?” She wondered.

“Uh well she’s uh well probably setting up something for Hiro when he gets here.” Ron said. “Which he will, any second.”

However Gogo wasn’t convinced she knew Ron was hiding something and decided to find out what.

“Okay Ron spill it where is Hiro really?” Gogo asked and Ron just smiled innocently.

Meanwhile in Night Market Square:

A truck had just pulled up in front of what looked like a condemned shop and out of it was Kim armoured up in her mission gear/armour.

“Thanks for the ride Mac.” Kim thanked the driver.

“Ah no problem Kim it’s the least I can do after you saved my shipment in San Diego last month.” The driver thanked.

“Ah no big one of the reasons I wear laced boots.” Kim thanked remembering that one mission.

Just then Hiro and Baymax arrived armoured up too. Hiro climbed down off of Baymax and they greeted the teen hero.

“About time you guys got here.” Kim said. “Hey weren’t you only just arriving?” Hiro cracked as they turned their attention to the condemned shop.

“Nice hideout.” Hiro said rather curiously as he expected more.

“And here I thought this Obake guy would be another one of those based on an island in the middle of nowhere types.” Kim wondered. “Baymax are you sure he’s here?”

“Scanning” Baymax begins a scan of the building then suddenly detects something.

“Obake is inside.” Baymax relayed.

“We better call the others.” Hiro suggested.

“Hold on Hiro, we should probably hold off on that until we know for sure he’s inside.” Kim pointed out. “Besides I think they’re where they need to be.”

“Whys that?” Hiro asked. “Just got a feeling thats all.” Kim simply said.

“Obake is approaching the rear exit.” Baymax then relayed.

“Your right we better go in now.” Hiro said as he approached the door. Kim however was a little uneasy not just about this sitch but about Baymax, as he’s usually on the side of caution.

Hiro reaches the door and is about to open it.He turns to his comrades. “Its Hero Time!” Hiro said.

This left Kim with a blank look and a raised eyebrow whilst Baymax just blinked.

“Hiro, you do know that lines been taken right?” Kim pointed out. Which left Hiro with a defeated pout on his lip and a little ticked they didn’t like the catchphrase.

“Never mind, c come on.” Hiro said as they entered the building.

Back at the Open House:

“WOW!” Fred exclaimed as he looked to see loads of people gathered including the Possibles were at Honey Lemons project booth. Ron had just informed them about what Hiro and Kim were doing so they decided to try and buy them some time.

“Honey Lemon, look at all the big dogs who showed up for your final project.” Fred observed.

“Big dogs no don’t say that.” Gogo protested. “Why whats wrong with big dogs?” Ron questioned.

“Yeah I like big dogs.” Fred protested. “Gogo who doesn’t like Big dogs?”

“Yeah?” Rufus agreed but Honey Lemon was feeling a little worried as there was one piece of her project missing one that another absent someone was working on.

“Wheres Wasabi with the Wax Cylinder?” She said rather worried.

“Don’t worry I’m sure he’s on his way.” Ann comforted.

“Yeah I still want to know if it was worth me nearly getting..” Gogo elbowed Ron in the gut before he could say anything else.

Just then Wasabi arrived working his way through the crowd carrying said wax cylinder.

“Excuse me.” He said coming between Liv Amara and Professor Granville.

Honey Lemon was all but glad to see Wasabi had made it in time with a freshly cleaned wax cylinder as he handed it to her.

“Sorry it took so long.” Wasabi panted as he handed the shining cylinder to her. “I pushed the humming bird to its limit!” He whispered as the cylinder glistened in the light.

“Ah thank you Wasabi.” Honey Lemon said giving her friend a hug before turning to the crowd.

“You need better hobbies.” Gogo said after popping a bubble of gum.

“She’s got you there dude.” Ron agreed. “Like you need a new hobby besides kick boxing.” He then groaned.

“Ladies and gentlemen, for my final project I am unraveling the mystery of Linore Shimamoto’s secret work as a scientist.” Honey Lemon explained whilst Granville and Live looked at each other about the viability of the project.

“I believe I have found the key.” Honey held up the wax cylinder. “A recording made by Lenore Shimamoto herself

“Are you sure this is authentic?” Granville questioned just to be sure.

“Uh huh it was hidden in her lab, I believe she wanted a future generation to find it and now we have.” Honey explained as she loaded it into the gramophone.

“We will be the first people to hear her speak in over a century.” Honey said excited as she wound up the gramophone and moved the horn in place as it began to play.

“April 4th 1907.” Said the voice of Shimamoto and Granvile and Liv were more than surprised by this.

“If you are listening to this, then you have proven yourself clever enough to follow the clues I left.” Shimamoto said.

“Nerd power, for the win.” Wasabi said. “Booyah!” Rufus squeaked as everyone else looked excited however their optimism was short lived.

“Undoubtedly, you have uncovered the diagram under my painting city rising.”

A flashback showing Shimamoto hiding a strange looking diagram behind an old painting of San Fransokyo from that time period.

“I preserved it for study only, do not let yourself be tempted by blind ambition.” Shimamoto then said.

As the recording played everyone at the open house were listening closely at the mention of those words and some even looked with concern even Rufus hid in Rons pocket as he didn’t like the next bits. Nor did Liv or Granville.

“To recreate my work will lead you down a pitch dark path.”

A flashback of Shimamoto building something in her lab that was made of cogs and gears she was using a welding torch to bring it all together. She then flicked the on switch on the wall next to her and watched with hopeful eyes to see if her creation was a success.

“I built a machine, which I thought would create a source of unlimited power.” Shimamoto described. “However thats not what happened my experiment was responsible for…”

The room then shook and everything was consumed in a bright light and the light faded to reveal San Fransokyo of old had been destroyed rendered to a baron wasteland.

“…I am responsible for, the Great Catastrophe.”

The very mention of that made people gasp in horror even more for James and Ann as the recording continued on its final message.

“The destruction, the devastation.” Said an upset Shimamoto who was recording her final message. “I’m sorry, I’m so very sorry.” She broke down in tears as Honey Lemon stopped the gramophone from playing.

However the damage was done everyone looked in shock and horror at what they just learned the scientist the very founder of the city was responsible for its destruction so many years ago. Honey Lemon was completely frozen in shock and horror knowing her idol was responsible for the city’s destruction.

“Hm you might want to put on a happier wax cylinder next time, oh maybe one with ray gay.” Fred suggested but no one said a word.

“No way.” Ron breathed in shock. “Man am I glad KP wasn’t around to hear that.” “I can’t believe it.” Ann said in horror.

Back at Night Market:

The door of the condemned building opened and Hiro, Kim and Baymax stepped cautiously inside, they knew that Obake was here, but where was unclear as there are many shadows for scorpions to hide in.

“Hiro I should take point just in case.” Kim suggested and Hiro nodded in agreement. So Kim took the lead.

Suddenly they saw a light flicker at the end of the room and sitting at a table in the corner of the room was the very person they were looking for.

“Obake!” Kim called. “Give it up Obake, theres nowhere to run.” Hiro called as Baymax stood behind them.

“My dear Hiro why would I run.” Obake turned round to reveal he was part machine with exposed metal components. Something that would put even Metallo from Superman to shame.

“When I have you and Miss Possible exactly where I want you”

“He’s a robot?” Kim exclaimed. “No it’s not the real Obake!” Hiro exclaimed realising this was a trap.

Suddenly the imposter extended his arm and pushed Baymax into the support pillars one by one and he crashed to the ground.

“Oh no!” Baymax looked up and saw the roof where he was crash down on him Kim covered Hiro to protect him from the debris, the smoke cleared to reveal him buried.

“Baymax!” Hiro called.

The imposter then extended his other arm and tried to grab Hiro but Kim pushed him out of the way just in time. Kim quickly got up and ran towards the robot, and it attacked with its arms and she performed a tipple flip to avoid them.

Hiro was moving fast too to avoid the robots attacks from below and above moving him to the left side of the room. He managed to duck underneath the robots hand.

This distracted the robot long enough for Kim to get in close and perform a flying swing kick on the robots head knocking him down .

“Hiro Now!” Kim called. Hiro used his magnetic glove to grab hold of the robots arm and tried to hold him still. Kim then joined him in holding the robot in place.

“Baymax Rocket fist!” Hiro called. “let go!” Kim said as they released the arm and it flung right back into robot Obake’s face.

Baymax freed his left arm and fired his rocket fist at the robot and hit him dead in the head knocking out the robots power.

“Baymax are you okay?” Kim asked “My damage is minimal.” Baymax replied as his hand returned to him.

“Thank you for playing.” said the robot and it dropped to the ground and caught fire.

“I should have known it was a fake, we’ve been had.” Kim deduced.

“But I don’t get it?” Hiro wondered. “Baymax why’d the bot confuse your scanners?” He then asked Baymax.

“I am uncertain.” Baymax replied.

“This was all a trick he must have known if he showed himself we’d come after him best guess he mimicked the robot to match a human life sign.” Kim deduced.

“Very observant of you.” The robot turned its head all the way around to face the three heroes.

“Well done Hiro, unfortunately for you I kept you and Miss Possible busy just long enough…” The robot lost power and shut down.

“Kept us busy from what?” Hiro wondered Kim thought for a moment and wondered why would Obake go to this much trouble unless…

“From him getting something from the one place he doesn’t want us at right now!” Kim realised in horror.

Then Hiro realised what Kim was talking about as his eyes widened in horror.

“Oh no.” He breathed, “We need to get to SFIT NOW!” Kim said as they hurried out of the building.

Back at SFIT Open House:

At the Open House, Professor Granville was looking at the portrait of Lenore Shimamoto herself. However knowing what she knows now from the recording she heard she was still completely frozen in shock over the revelation. And more surprising shocks were about to come.

“Hello professor.” Said a voice and Granville turns around to see Obake (the real one) standing behind seeing a face and voice she recognised all too well.

“Bob?” Granville said in surprise. “Bob Aken!?”

“In the flesh.” Obake/Bob Aken said.

“I.. I haven’t seen you since…” “Since my little accident?” Obake said finishing the sentence of the still in shock professor.

“What… what happened back then, I’m sorry.” Granville apologised.

“Ah ah ah ah.” Obake interrupted. “Sorry for what you did exactly what was best for me what was it you used to say, you can’t hold back genius.” He said with a sadistic looking smile.

“A philosophy I’ve come to regret.” Granville admitted.

“Ahh a pity.” Obake said admiring the gramophone.

“your current protege deserves the same creative freedom.” Granville knew he was referring to Hiro Hamada. “After all, you made me the man I am today.”

The left side of Obake’s face glowed neon purple showing a horrified Professor Granville what had happened to him on that night.

“Wonderful to see you again.” He said as he was leaving and Granville could only bear a look of horror at what had become of her former student.

He was then walking by Gogo’s booth where he recognised the five people there as the other members of Big Hero 6.

“Fascinating presentation Honey Lemon.” Obake whispered and everyone was in shock and horror to see the very villain they’d been facing appear here of all places.

“Are you guys seeing what I’m seeing?” Wasabi questioned.

Totally that kid stole my sparklers idea!” Fred pointed to a booth where they saw a kid standing at a booth named Never-ending sparkler and he stood with a sparkler next to a timer

“Guys who was that?” Ron asked referring to the man they saw. “Ron that was Obake!” Wasabi said in horror.

“Wait what!” Ron exclaimed and Rufus squeaked with fright.

“Obake’s here!” Fred said in surprise. “OBAKES HERE!”

“But Ron I thought you said Kim and Hiro tracked Obake somewhere else?” Honey questioned.

“Yeah they did but that means.” Ron suddenly realised something. “Oh no it was a trap!”

Fred and the others chased after the villain with Ron close behind. They saw him leaving through one of the doors however before they could reach it a familiar looking glob of pink goop landed in the way.

“And he’s not alone.” Honey Lemon said and she was right the glob formed into Globby himself. “Uh oh.” Rufus squeaked on Honey Lemons shoulder.

One overweight girl gasped in horror at the sight of Globby whilst everyone else looked frozen in shock.

“Geez lady didn’t your parents ever teach you its rude to scream at strangers.” Globby said as he proceeded to gag the girl with some of his goop and everyone fled in a panic.

Then out from another door came Noodle Burger Boy and Momakase wielding her graphene katana.

“Hello can we take your order.” Noodle said taking a fighting pose whilst Momakase swung her Katana.

“Now it’s a party.” She said.

Then landing in front of them was Shego who energised her hands and drew her plasma blades from her gauntlets.

“Greetings geeks mind if we crash the party.” Shego announced with a sadistic smile.

“Wow good entrance.” Momakase said which did perk Shego’s mood. “For a noob.” She then said which just caused her to frown.

“Oh great the gangs all here!” Ron gasped. As he and Ron reached for their phones and called their Skymax pods. Ron then sent a text to Kim saying.

“VILLAINS AT SFIT HELP NOW!”

“Yep all the bad dogs showed up.” Fred said in concern.

People were fleeing for their lives whilst the guy at the sparklers booth was completely unaware of what was going on around him given he was wearing dark glasses. He suddenly got the message as debris was sent flying into the air crashing into his stall and the loud roar which came from T-Rex Globby grabbed a table in its mouth and flung it at the exit whilst Noodle Burger boy was firing lasers all over the place.

Everyone evacuated out of the building and at the exit Professor Granville was evacuating everyone along with Dr. James Possible.

“Please evacuate in an orderly fa..” “LOOK OUT!” James tackled the professor to the ground before she was hit by a blast of green energy they both looked to see Shego blasting everything with her energy blasts, Noodle Burger boy was shooting his eye lasers all over the place whilst T-Rex Globby crushed another booth under his foot.

“Professor we need to get out of here.” James advised as he helped Granville up.

“You go Dr. Possible I’m activating the security robots.” She said as she moved to a panel on the wall which required finger print recognition. She placed her palm on the scanner and it recognised her palm print and immediately activated the campus security systems.

A security spider drone which was an orbed robot with four spider looking legs took to the ceiling and crawled along whilst the others rolled into the room in ball form. One stopped under a table and then transformed catapulting the table which was then sliced in half by Momakase.

The four villains then found themselves surrounded by more of these spider bot security drones who readied their defensive capabilities.

“Really this is the best they have?” Shego questioned then suddenly a security drone fell from the ceiling only for Shego to blast it with her plasma blasts destroying it.

Another one then fell to the ground and unfolded its legs and T-Rex Globby chose to face it.

“Bring it on!” He said as he grabbed the bot in its mouth and swallowed it. But that was a mistake the bot unfolded itself again and used its legs like a razor saw blade to slice T-Rex Globby in half.

“Ow.” He cried.

The bot was free only for Momakase to slice it in half with her graphene katana. She then looked to Globby who reformed himself on the ground.

“You’re terrible at this aren’t you.” She said. “Terrible please he’s a rank amateur.” Shego agreed.

Then out of nowhere four of Big Hero 6, Ron and Rufus arrived on the scene armoured up and ready to fight.

“Ah yeah heroes on the scene!” Ron exclaimed as Wasabi formed his plasma blades.

“Granville’s security bots.” Fredzilla noticed. “Sweet give them some room to do their thing!”

In a flash Momakase sliced apart every single security drone in sight in what felt like two seconds flat. The heroes were more than surprised but not completely.

“Thang really?” Gogo said. The villains then turned their attention to the heroes in front of them.

“Oh goody if it isn’t Big Loser 6, well come on kiddies pain schools in session.” Shego taunted energising her plasma blasts.

Gogo blew a bubble gum bubble and when it popped she lowered her helmet visor. “Lets dance!” Gogo said as the heroes stood in a battle pose and Ron readied his gauntlet energy shield.

“Aw yeah AVENGERS ASSEMBLE TIME!” Ron yelled.

“You got it Mister!” Noodle said and strangely the robot mascot began singing and dancing much to Shego’s humiliation.

“Come on everybody do the noodle, do the noodle a do the noodle.” The mascot sung much to everyones shock and confusion.

“Okay is this guy for real?” Shego asked the heroes.

“Yeah he does that sometimes.” Fredzilla answered.

“Noodle this!” Gogo said throwing her mag lev disk knocking the robot unconscious. Shego and Momakase leaped into battle.

Wasabi dodged the sushi ninjas strike as he fought back with his plasma blades and Momakase blocked the strikes with her katana.

Honey Lemon throws a chem ball at Globby who catches it in a glob wall then throws a punch at Honey who rolls out of the way to avoid it. Fredzilla then jumps in and unleashes a fire blast on the villain.

Meanwhile:

Not to far away Hiro and Kim rode on Baymax’s back flying across the city at top speed in an effort to get to SFIT before it was too late.

“Hurry Baymax we’ve got to get to my lab!” Hiro said.

“And fast I have a feeling I know what he’s after!” Kim agreed. “Yeah me too, I just hope we’re not too late.” Hiro agreed.

They arrive at the campus and head for the robotics lab.

Back in the open house:

Wasabi and Momakase clash blades but the ninja can see some fear in her opponents eyes.

“Scared of me?” She taunted. “No it’s not you.” Wasabi answered. “Its everything NOW!”

Just then Rufus flies in with his suit and delivers a kick to Momakase’s face knocking her off balance and Wasabi delivers an upper cut knocking her onto her back which she’s able to recover from. Then charges for them with her katana blade Wasabi dodges her strikes and tries to land a few of his own but Momakase kicks Wasabi in the gut sending him flying. Rufus tries to hit the ninja but she just grabs him in her hand.

“Nice try rodent.” She said as she tossed Rufus over to Wasabi.

Meanwhile Gogo and Ron are fighting Noodle Burger boy as Gogo tosses her mag lev disk at the mascot. Suddenly a looming shadow is over her and she sees its Shego, Gogo quickly dodges her attack and blocker her plasma blasts with her disks. The two then lock hands in a heated stand off.

“You know your new boss has some nerve showing his face here!”Gogo said “Why are you here what does Obake want?!”

“Yeah yeah details details if you ask me speedy you have a more immediate concern.” Shego said as she formed her plasma blade. “Like keeping your head on!”

Shego tried to strike Gogo but she manages to skate away then using the rubble as a ramp she throws her mag lev disks at Shego which she just incinerates with her plasma blasts.

“Oh boy!” Gogo said.

Ron meanwhile had his hands full with Noodle Burger Boy who was firing lasers all over the place and Ron blocked them with his shield as he ran and took cover behind the rubble.

“Ooo I love hide and seek.” Noodle said with his eyes glowing bright red.

“I’m fighting a fast food mascot!” Ron breathed. “Well at least it ain’t monkeys gah.” He shivered.

Ron tried to look but he just saw incoming laser fire. “Ready or not here I come.” Noodle said.

However Ron noticed one thing that he could use to his advantage and he remembered what Kim would do in this situation, improvise.

Making a run for it he dodged all off Noodle burger boy’s attacks then quickly dived for the tarp banner under Noodles feet and pulled it from underneath him tripping him up.

“Boom that’s how the Mad Dog does it!” Ron exclaimed.

However Noodle burger boy just got up and looked at Ron and Gogo still fighting Shego.

“Now serving breakfast all day!” He said as he fired a gold liquid from his left hand which coated the floor and as Gogo skated towards Shego she ran into the goop, lost her grip and crashed into Ron and they were stuck.

“Syrup, seriously?” Gogo said in surprise. “Eh I’ve seen weirder villain attacks.” Ron shrugged.

Globby was flying in the skies gliding on a path of his own glob whilst avoiding fiery attacks from Fredzilla. Globby rises in the air and fires metal shards from his arms at Honey Lemon who thanks to her training with Kim was able to flip and avoid the shards and took cover in some rubble. Fredzilla was taking cover nearby.

“Honey Lemon toss one up surprise me!” Fredzilla said as Honey Lemon dialled in a chem ball formula and received the ball out of her purse.

The two then emerged from their hiding place to face their enemy.

“Batter up!” Honey said as she tosses the ball into the air and Fredzilla swings his tail and hits the ball like a base ball bat at Globby. However he then turns his right hand into a tennis racket shape and hits the ball back encasing Fredzilla and Honey Lemon in pink goop as he stands victorious.

“Advantage Globby!” Globby said in victory.

Elsewhere:

At the doors to the lab belonging to Hiro Hamada Obake approached and held up an old SFIT ID card with his former identity on it. The scanner recognises the student ID and unlocks the door.

“Mm still works.” Obake said smiling as he entered the lab and breathed in the air.

“Feels like home.” He said as he walked into what was once his lab. He looked around like he was looking for something.

He picked up the cap that belonged to Hiro’s brother Tadashi and tossed it to one side.

“Now where oh where…” He looked at a certain cabinet draw and when he pulled it out he found what he was looking for.

“Ah the final piece.” He breathed as he held up the energy amplifier but was unaware that three certain heroes stood behind him.

“So the real Obake I presume.” Kim asked with a knowing look.

“Ah the great Kim Possible.” Obake greeted as he turned to face them. “We meet at last face to face, I must admit, your not at all how I pictured you to be.”

“Yeah well your everything I’ve been told you are not coming out of hiding and letting your lackeys do the work for you.” Kim described. “Just like every other supervillain that me and my new friends have had the pleasure of stopping this week.

“Hardly my dear I am nothing like that amateur Drakken, if anything I am more superior.” Obake scoffed.

“Put it down Obake, it’s over!” Hiro warned.

“Quite the opposite things are just getting started.” Obake said with a sinister look.

“So not your not going anywhere!” Kim said.

“Oh have you not learned anything, I’m always one step ahead.” Obake chuckled.

“Blast him Baymax!” Hiro ordered and Baymax raised his rocket fist and fired it but he missed his target and instead broke the circular window in the lab.

“What!” Kim breathed as she clearly saw that Baymax missed but she also saw he did it intentionally, she figured it was part of his programming not to injure human life or was it something else.

Obake turned and saw he had an exit. “Oh why thanks.” He pulled out a remote and uncloaked a pack of Buddy guards which he jumped on as they carried him away. He gave a two fingered solute as he bid his enemies farewell.

Kim, Hiro and Baymax watched as Obake was getting away.

“Guys come on he’s getting away!” Hiro exclaimed but suddenly a green blast of plasma energy nearly hit him Kim and Baymax.

“Going somewhere Kimmy!” Shego smirked and Kim just glared at Shego and used her own armour jet pack and rocketed at trying to punch her only for Shego to catch her fist in mid air.

“Hiro get Obake I’ll deal with her GO!” Kim exclaimed with that Hiro and Baymax took to the sky however Globby arrived and threw some goo at the red robots jet boots rendering them powerless and as a result the two heroes were sent crashing to the ground.

“NO!” Kim exclaimed as Shego then blasted Kim out of the window with a huge focused plasma blast however the cheerleader was quick to protect herself with her gauntlet shield. She crashed to the ground and saw the downed heroes.

“Hiro Baymax!” She exclaimed as she took off her visor and ran over to them.

Hiro groaned as he regained consciousness and could hear the sound of Noodle burger boy singing as they saw the villains escape holding onto Globby as they swung away.

“Please stop!” Momakase groaned.

“Until the next time Big Loser 6!” Shego exclaimed.

Hiro just growled in defeat. “Hiro!” Kim came running over.

“Are you okay?” She asked. “Gah’ yeah a little battered but alive.” Hiro said holding his side. “We didn’t exactly save the day this time did we?”

“Nope bad guys two good guys zero.” Kim said counting a scoreboard.

Just then the rest of Big Hero 6 arrived to help their comrades. “Are you guys okay?” Honey asked as Gogo and Kim helped Hiro up whilst Wasabi and Ron helped Baymax up onto his feet.

“We are without injury.” Baymax diagnosed. “But Obake got away.” Hiro breathed as he limped over.

“Yeah that seems to be happening a lot lately.” Ron pointed out.

Soon everyone regrouped back at Hiro lab Honey helped support Hiro as he limped into his lab and Ron helped Kim as well whilst Rufus sat on Baymax’s shoulder. They looked to find Professor Granville in the lab looking over the damage.

“Students, is everyone alright?” She asked in concern.

“We’re fine professor.” Fredzilla said until Gogo elbowed him in the monster mouth realising who they were speaking to.

“Uh I mean ah complete stranger, who we’ve never met..” “Enough with the charade Mr. Frederickson” Granville then interrupted with a knowing look.

“Yeah she’s right guys, she knows.” Kim then admitted.

“Hah, w, wha, y, you know we’re.” “Big Hero 6, I see all.” Granville said confirming Hiro’s worries.

The six heroes looked at each other very worried now their university dean knew their secret what was to happen next.

“Calm down, your secret is safe with me.” The professor then assured.

With that each of the six heroes unmasked one by one revealing their identities to professor Granville and Hiro was the last. Ron felt no need to wear his visor anymore so he took it off and Rufus removed his own helmet.

“My primary concern is why the school was attacked for a third time this semester?” Granville then questioned.

“Hiro.” Kim said openly and Hiro looked to find his cabinet draw empty.

“This was all my fault.” Hiro admitted getting everyones attention. “I disobeyed you, I created an energy amplifier.” Hiro said to his teacher. “Good news is it worked.”

“Let me guess the bad news.” Gogo asked already knowing the answer. “Obake has it.” Hiro confirmed. “Mmhm.” Gogo hummed knowingly.

“Obake?” Granville asked not understanding the situation. “Yeah you know the creepy guy with the nightlight in his face.” Fred explained. Immediately Granville knew who they were talking about.

“But you already know something about him, don’t you professor.” Kim asked knowing her theory was right.

Granville took a breath before she answered. “Follow me all of you.” with that everyone left the lab and arrived in Granville’s office where she brought out a file that Kim recognised all too well.

“Obake, once my star student, I knew him as Bob Aken.” Granville explained and Hiro looked at the name label on the file and blanked out the words B and N leaving the name Obake it was an anagram.

“He had so many ideas to make the world a better place.” She then explained

Flashback some years ago:

A young Bob Aken working on something in the late hours of the night in his lab.

“I encouraged him to explore fearlessly.” Granville continued. “Unfortunately the path he chose lead to the energy amplifier.”

“I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say it didn’t end well?” Ron guessed.

“No Mr. Stoppable it did not.” Granville said

Young Bob Aken smiled with pride only to be consumed by a glowing green light. The flash ends and a younger Professor Granville is looking through the remains of his former lab.

“He, wasn’t as successful as Mr. Hamada.” She explained

Young Granville found in the wreck a strange looking rock that was spiked looking which would later be the very ornament that once lay on Granville’s desk prior to Hiro enrolment but was no longer there after the incident with Yama’s evil Baymax army.

Present day:

“The boy needed limits, I did not provide them.” Granville said with some form of guilt in her voice. “It was a mistake I never wanted to make again, however it seems I have.”

Hiro just looked away with his own feeling of guilt not listening to his teacher and now receiving the full story of her former student.Kim placed a consoling hand on his shoulder as everyone stood in silence.

“His real names Bob?” Fred openly said as everyone just glared at him.

“Really thats the one thing on your mind!” Gogo scolded.

“What I can’t be the only one thinking it.” Fred said Ron was thinking the same thing but for the risk of injury from Gogo he kept quiet.

“So thats why you didn’t want Hiro to pursue the energy amplifier as a project.” Kim realised. “You were trying to keep history from repeating itself.”

“Yes, but it seems I underestimated Mr. Hamada’s over eager ambitious mind to prove the impossible.” Granville confirmed. “And it seems the past has a way of coming back to haunt the present as it did today.”

“Professor, I’m sorry if, if I had known I…” “It wouldn’t have made much difference.” Granville interrupted Hiro. “But I apologise for not being straight with you about this.”

“This isn’t anyones fault but Obake’s professor.” Kim said. “This was all part of his plan, he must have known Krei tech was nowhere close to making an energy amplifier so he needed someone else, someone who couldn’t resist the challenge.” She explained.

“And I fell for it.” Hiro guiltily said. “Hiro, theres no way you could have known.” Honey consoled.

“Yeah but that still doesn’t tell us what his endgame is!” Gogo said.

“Whatever it is, it started the day of his accident, he’s been patient scary patient.” Kim explained. “Which means he’s going to make his move soon everything will have been carefully planned.”

Later on:

Soon everyone was out of SFIT and out of their armour, well everyone except Kim they needed to discuss their next move.

“Guys we need to figure out what Obake’s up to?” Gogo insisted.

“Lets check the conspiracy board.” Fred suggested.”Freds right, wow never thought I’d hear myself say that, maybe theres a pattern we missed.” Wasabi agreed.

“Right let’s meet up at the garage and compare notes, I gotta go check on Aunt Cass.” Hiro said still feeling a little guilty. “Come on Baymax let’s go.”

Hiro and Baymax took their leave of the others and as Baymax retracted into his charging port on the back of Hiro’s scooter Hiro mounts it and then starts the engine and rides home. Kim couldn’t help but notice the change in Hiro’s mood and she knew why.

“He’s blaming himself for whats happened.” Kim saw.

“Yeah it’s like what happened to Tadashi all over again.” Honey said.

“Lets head to the garage.” Gogo said. “You guys go I’ll catch up later.” Kim said.

“Wait what why?” Ron asked.

“I want to go back to Night Market Square and have another look at where Robo Obake ambushed me and Hiro.” Kim explained. “There could be a clue there.”

“Okay lets go.” Ron said until Kim put her hand out and stopped him.

“No Ron I have to do this one solo.” Kim explained. “What by yourself?” Ron said in surprise. “But we’re a team you and me right?” “Hey!” Rufus called as he popped on his shoulder.

“Oh yeah and Rufus.” Ron corrected.

“Yeah we are, which is why I need you with the others to figure out what Obake’s next move is if what I find doesn’t pan out.” Kim explained. “Look if I run into trouble I promise I’ll call.”

Ron took a moment to think and he was never one to question his friends judgement, in a way she was right but he still felt like he was being benched.

“Okay, it’s just I don’t like the idea of you going in alone.” Ron said. “And it’s sweet of you to worry.” Kim admitted.

“Yeah support it’s what the sidekick does what a best friend does.” Ron smiled and Kim smiled back.

With that Kim activated her armour jet pack placed her visor back on and flew away towards the city. Ron just looked as he saw his childhood friend fly away but he couldn’t help but worry. He turned to see the others give him a knowing look.

“What?” Ron asked and Rufus just shrugged.

“Oh nothing.” Gogo said “No love the shrubbery.” Honey Lemon said as Wasabi and Fred were whistling to themselves.

Ron just shrugged as he and Rufus left the campus and were soon followed by Gogo and the others who were having a quiet chat among themselves.

“Okay I’m not the only one who sees it right?” Gogo questioned with a knowing look.

“Oh absolutely.” Wasabi agreed. “Defiantly I see it too.” Honey agreed in a cheery tone.

“See what?” Fred wondered not knowing what they were talking about.

“We’ll tell you later.” Gogo whispered and they all left the campus.

Lucky Cat Cafe:

Meanwhile as night fell lights were still on at the Lucky Cat Cafe, and with good reason. In the living quarters Cass was stirring a bowl like crazy, she was greatly worried about Hiro and Baymax so she started stress baking, she had already baked a cake along with other desserts and was now making another one. She then grabbed a donut and put it in her mouth.

James and Ann who were waiting with her just to calm her nerves just watched in complete amazement.

“Uh honey did she always do this back when you knew her in high school?” James whispered to his wife.

“Only when she gets stressed or tense.” Ann whispered back nodding. She then went over to Cass.

“Uh Cassie look I know your a little worried about the boys but I’m sure they’re on their way back right now, so just calm down.” Ann tried in a calming tone.

“Calm I’m calm why would you say I’m not.” She said in mouthfuls. “I’M COMPLETELY CALM!” Cass exclaimed spitting crumbs all over the place.

Ann just looked with shrunk pupils in surprise. “I guess somethings never change.” Ann said knowingly.

Just then they heard the sound of foot steps coming up the stairs and Cass dropped the donut in her mouth. Then Hiro and Baymax appeared in the room and Cass was more than relieved to see her nephew alive and well after the chaos at the open house. She dropped the mixing bowl and ran over to him.

“Hiro! Where have you been?” Cass asked as she instantly pulled him into a hug.

“Agh uh careful.” Hiro winced as he felt some pain from the hug as he was still a little banged up.

“Oh are you hurt?” Cass asked as she looked him over. “Ann is he hurt anywhere?”

Ann looked Hiro over and saw he was fine but had a few minor injuries. “Don’t worry Cass he’s fine just a few bruises here and there.” Ann diagnosed.

“Yeah I just got a little banged up with all the chaos at school” Hiro explained.

“I got so anxious when I couldn’t find you at the open house.” Cass said putting her hands on his shoulders.

“Yeah I’m sorry, for showing up late that must’ve been really scary.” Hiro apologised.

“I’m just glad you two are back in one piece.” Cass said relieved. “Well two pieces because there are two of you, probably didn’t need to explain that.” She said gesturing to Baymax. Hiro just smiled knowing that his aunt was safe and well.

“Okay then Cass we’ll be going we have to check on the boys and we have some packing to do before we head home soon.” James said.

“Okay thanks for staying with my aunt Dr. and Mrs Possible.” Hiro thanked.

“Not a problem Hiro we’re all practically family, we’ll see you all soon.” Ann said as she and her husband took their leave of the Hamada house hold.

Meanwhile:

Back at Night Market square Kim had just arrived and was looking over the burnt remains of the Obake decoy. She knelt down so that Wade could take a look. Through the visor she was having Wade scan it for clues.

“Anything Wade?” Kim asked. “Well this thing was made with advanced components some even similar to those Destructo Yamas that Drakken used.” Wade explained.

“Makes sense he’s stolen Krei tech before.” Kim recalled from Hiro’s stories.

“Hold up I think I may have something.” Wade said as he looked over the scan and detected a certain component inside the robot.

“What have you got?” Kim said standing up. “As far as I can tell from the scan, theres a small transponder inside probably controlling it.” Wade relayed as he zoomed in on the component.

“And get this it’s still transmitting a signal.” Wade said. “Can you track it?” Kim asked.

“Way ahead of you.” Wade began typing on his keyboard and used the Kimmunicator satellite to triangulate the signals source and where it was, was surprising.

“Wait this can’t be right?” Wade said surprised.

“What is it?” Kim asked. “The signal source is right where you are.” Wade answered and Kim looked around the room but couldn’t see anything.

“Where exactly?” she asked. “Directly below you.” Wade answered and Kim looked down to the ground and instantly knew what could be below her feet.

“Let me guess this building has a basement?” She said knowingly.

“Your smart and psychic.” Wade answered “The basements through those doors ahead.”

With that Kim proceeded to the doors at the rear of the room she managed to open them but only part way as there was a collapsed part of ceiling blocking it. She slipped through the gap and found a set of stairs leading down. She moved slowly, if there were any traps this would be the ideal place to set them. Thankfully she reached the bottom of the stairs with no trouble. She moved down the hallway and saw a door at the opposite end. Kim cautiously opened the door slowly in case someone was waiting for them. She fully opened the door and found there was no-one there just a set of computer screens and a table with a small button on it. She approached it and saw there was a small note attached.

“Okay thats weird?” Kim wondered. “Why..what ..is it.” Wade said faintly.

“Wade your breaking up, the signal must be weak down here.” Kim deduced. “But theres a note next to a button.” She said and read the note. “It says ‘Press me and all your questions shall be answered.’” she read.

“Okay if that doesn’t scream obvious trap.” Kim guessed.

“Kim I.. don’t like this.. maybe … call the others.” Wade suggested despite the poor signal.

“No, if this is a trap, I don’t want to drag the others into it.” Kim declined. “plus if this is a trap theres only one way to see who’s set it.”

So a rather cautious Kim proceeded to press the button on the desk, then suddenly the computer screens blared into life and revealed something alarming. It was surveillance footage specifically it was of Hiro, Honey Lemon, Wasabi, Fred, Gogo, Baymax and even of Kim and Ron when they first arrived in the city a week ago. Kim looked and saw the time stamps and it was from the past few months. There was footage from their respective homes, the Lucky Cat and Hiro’s Lab at SFIT whilst he worked on the amplifier and in his garage when he was creating an enhancement suit.

“He, he’s been watching them?” Kim said in horror then noticed a small screen which had their faces and their Big Hero 6 personas this told her only one thing.

“He knows who they are, thats how he’s been one step ahead!” Kim breathed. “But why?”

She then noticed a surveillance camera at SFIT that showed Granville and Gogo working on what looked like a large electro magnet and then some news footage from when Baron Von Steamer attacked the city with his statue bot.

The pieces began forming in the teen heroes mind, she began to realise what the components Obake stole could be used for and that with Hiro’s energy amplifier. She covered her mouth with horror realising what he was trying to do.

“Oh my god, he’s actually going to do it!”

Then suddenly a certain devil avatar appeared on the centre screen. “I told you and Hiro this before, I’m always one step ahead Miss Possible.” Obake’s voice echoed on the speaker in the room.

“Obake! Or should I just call you Bob Aken!” Kim called out.

“Don’t call me that name!” Obake growled. “Bob Aken failed but Obake won’t I will change the face of this city forever.”

“I know what your trying to do, your going to use the components you’ve stolen and the energy amplifier to create a machine to generate an unstable energy star.” Kim said. “The very same kind of star that Shimamoto created, your trying to recreate the Great Catastrophe.”

“Hm you truly are bright, though Id expect nothing less from the daughter of the great James Possible.” Obake said from the confines of his lair as he watched the surveillance camera.

“You’re insane Aken that catastrophe killed thousands of innocent people and destroyed the entire city!” Kim exclaimed. “And you think it’s a good idea to do a sequel!”

“I am merely pushing the limits of what Shimamoto created succeeding where she did all those years ago.” Obake merely voiced. “They revered her work for years aI now wish to be remembered from the ashes of San Fransokyo I will create a new civilisation guided by technology and science, my work.”

“No! the only thing you’ll be remembered for is a mass murder, your no scientist your a villain!” Kim exclaimed.

“Villian, no a visionary I see a world that only I can create, and I shall not guide it alone.” Obake then said getting the teens attention.

“What are you talking about?” Kim then demanded.

“Think of it like a game of chess, I have captured the armoured knight and now he shall claim my prize.” Obake said and then footage appeared and it was of a certain younger genius in his room at the lucky cat.

“Ow.” Hiro said as he sat down on his bed. He turned to face what looked like the camera, and Kim could see this was footage and looked in horror as she knew from where or rather who.

“I said ow?” Hiro said but he had no response. “Uh alerted to my need for medical attention?”

“Oh no.” Kim gasped as she realised what had happened to Baymax during the fight at Krei tech.

“Nothing?” Hiro said as he approached Baymax and opened his access port. “There must be something wrong with…” Hiro discovered a purple data chip with a certain devil avatar stamped on it.

“What?” Hiro gasped. He reached for the chip but Baymax’s hand grabbed his wrist. “Baymax?” Hiro breathed

Baymax looked down on Hiro but his eyes were glowing bright red with evil the feed then cut out.

“Hiro!” Kim breathed in horror and hurried to the exit only for a metal panel to cut her off from the exit.

“I’m truly sorry, but I can’t allow you to stand in the way of progress.” Obake’s voice echoed.

Suddenly Kim heard another noise in the room it was beeping and thats when she saw in the far corner of the room an arrangement of explosives with a timer set for ten seconds.

“Progress requires sacrifice Miss Possible, and in my new city I’ll be sure to put up a statue of you labeled relics of the past.” Obake’s voice echoed.

Kim tried to pry the door open to no effect, she then pulled out her laser lip stick and tried to cut through the door but the metal wasn’t burning quick enough.

“Kim.. Kim whats.. going!” Wade tried calling in on the Kimmunicator but it was being jammed.

The timer was now counting down. 6…5

“Admit it it’s better this way.” Obake said as Kim scanned the room trying to find a way out.

4…3…

“We were both” Obake said as Kim looked in horror that there was no means of escape.

2…1

“Out of time.” …0

Outside the condemned building everything seemed normal. Then a huge explosion blew out the windows shocking everyone around it and a massive blast completely destroyed the front of the building as it crumbled to the ground.

From his room Wade could hear a blast and knew what it was and looked in horror. “KIM!” Wade shouted at his computer screen.

The smoke cleared to reveal a burning pile of rubble where the Night Market was fires were still burning in the night illuminating the scale of the destruction, as it seemed the teen hero had stepped inside had perished along with it Obake had dealt a great hand tonight.

Authors Notes: DUN DUN DUN Now how's that for a cliffhanger folks, I was feeling inspired after playing a bit on Avengers PS4 and I always thought Obake was an amalgamation of Ultron from the Avengers (MCU) Devoe from CW’s The Flash and recently MODOK from Avengers PS4 when I saw his character. But whats to come next Obake’s entering his endgame will our heroes prevail find out in the next chapter.

9 notes · View notes

techtiger · 4 years ago

Text

The Role Of Voice Recognition Technology In AI And Machine Learning.

Speech recognition technology is something that has been dreamed of and worked on for many decades.

From the beep-bopping of R2-D2 in Star Wars to Samantha's dissatisfied but charming voice, science fiction writers have played a big role in shaping expectations and predictions about how speech recognition will be in our world...

However, for all advances in modern technology, voice control is a very sophisticated relationship.

It is felt to be historically helplessly clear and nothing but a novelty to simplify our lives. That is until we start to get more into the field of big data, intensive learning, machine learning, and AI technology. Similarly, text to speech is a technology similar to voice recognition that converts digital text into voice. Text to speech technology makes computer to read text aloud from the text document. There are many best free text to speech software that you can use to let your device read for you without looking at the text.

Voice Recognition: A Brief History

As with any technology, what we know today comes from nowhere, someone and someone else.

The first recorded attempt at speech recognition technology was in 1,000 AD. However, the tool that can answer direct questions “yes” or “no” comes back through development.

Although the experiment does not technically involve voice processing in any form, the idea behind it must be part of the foundation of speech recognition technology: the use of natural language as an input to speed up the action.

Centuries later, Bell Laboratories worked to develop "Audrey", which could detect vowel-speaking numbers 1-9.

Later, IBM developed a device that could detect and distinguish 16 spoken words.

These successes have greatly enhanced the dominance of technology companies focusing on speech-related technologies. The Department of Defense also wanted to join the action. Researchers are working steadily toward the goal of making machines more capable of comprehending and responding to our verbal commands.

The history of speech recognition technology is long and winding. However, today’s speech systems such as Google Voice, Amazon Alexa, Microsoft Cortana, and Apple’s Siri are not where they are today, there are no early pioneers.

Thanks to the integration of new technologies such as cloud-based processing and ongoing data collection projects, these speech systems have improved the ability to constantly hear and understand a wide variety of words, languages , and voices.

At this rate, the predictions of future writers are not as far-fetched as we might think.

The Voice Recognition Process: How Does It Work?

Around smartphones, smart cars, smart home appliances, voice assistants, and more, it's easy to know how speech recognition technology works.

Why?

Because it is easy to be misled by digital assistants. Speech recognition is still very complicated.

Think about how a child learns a language.

From day one, they hear the words used around them. Parents talk to their child, and even if the child does not respond, they perceive all kinds of sound signals; Noise, reflection, and pronunciation; Their brain designs and makes connections based on how their parents use their language.

Although it may seem difficult for humans to hear and understand, we train all our lives to develop this so-called natural ability.

Speech recognition technology essentially works the same way. Although humans have improved our process, we have yet to identify the best practices for computers. We must train them in the same way that our parents and teachers trained us. In addition, this type of training requires vision, research, and manpower.

These speech recognition systems take longer and more field data to complete; Thousands of languages, voices, and dialects need to be considered.

To say that we have not made progress; As of May 2017, Google's machine learning algorithm has now achieved a 95% word accuracy rate for the English language. This current rate is a limit to human accuracy, take care of yourself.

What is the best voice assistant?

So far, we have all heard and/or used speech recognition systems; They entered the technological ecosystem to become a means of communication between humans and technology.

Voice input is a more efficient form of computing, as Mary Meeker said in her annual Internet Trends report: Humans can speak an average of 150 words per minute, but can only type 40. Farewell texting and push buttons - we're so busy now bus.

What has become the dominant form of computing is that speech recognition is unbelievable. In addition to regional accents and speech impediments, background noise can make word recognition difficult. Not to mention multiple-voice input.

In other words, recognizing sounds alone is not enough.

These speech recognition systems must be able to distinguish between homophones (words that sound the same but mean something different), to distinguish proper names from separate words ("Tim Cook" is an individual, not merely a search request for a cook called Tim), and more.

Ultimately, speech recognition accuracy determines whether or not they become voice assistants. It certainly answers the question of which voice assistants are the best on the market right now; In terms of speech accuracy, innovation and usability, and compatibility with other smart systems.

Apple’s Siri

Apple's Siri was the first voice assistant launched by mainstream tech companies in 2011.

Since then, it has been integrated into all iPhones, iPods, Apple Watch, Homepod, Mac computers, and Apple TVs.

Through your phone, Siri is being used as a major user interface for automobiles and wireless AirPods earbuds in Apple's Carplay infotainment system.

With the release of Sirikit, a development tool that allows third-party companies to integrate with Siri and HomePod‌, Apple's initiative Intelligent Speaker (after the success of Amazon Echo and Google Home), voice assistant capabilities Become strong.

There is always Siri with you, whether on the road, at home or even literally on your body. This gives Apple a big advantage in terms of adoption.

Although Apple has a big head when it comes to Siri, many users are frustrated by the inability of the device to understand and execute voice commands.

Naturally, being as quick as possible means getting too many errors for a function that does not work as well as the function.

But, to this day Siri is notorious for misinterpreting voice orders, even by providing a list of nearby liquor stores to respond to requests for help with alcohol poisoning.

If you ask Siri to send you a text message or call on your behalf, it can be done easily. However, when it comes to communicating with third-party apps, Siri is slightly less powerful than its rivals, working with only six types of apps: ride-hailing and sharing; Message and call; Photo search; Payment; Fitness; And auto infotainment system.

Why?

Because Apple advises that "users should not use voice commands without human experience, and what can be done to ensure that Siri works well". Is ", Reuters reports.

Siri will open any ride service app on your iPhone and you can book on the go. Gives you options like traveling to the airport and ordering a car.

Focusing on the system capability of follow-up questions, language translation, and re-incorporation of Siri's voice into a more human-Esque will definitely help to iron out the voice assistant's user experience.

In addition, Apple controls its rivals by country in terms of availability and thus makes sense of the slang of a foreign accent. Siri is available in more than 30 countries and over 20 languages - and, in some cases, many different dialects.

By comparison, Google Home is only available in seven countries and can only speak four languages 'simply' (English, German, French and Japanese), although it does support multiple versions of some languages. Alexa, on the other hand, can only handle English (U.S. and U.K.) and German.

Amazon Alexa

Inside Amazon's smash-hit Amazon Echo smart speakers, as well as the newly released Echo Show (voice-controlled tablet) and Echo Spot (voice-controlled alarm clock), Alexa is one of the most popular voice assistants today.

While Apple focuses on areas where it has the capacity and expertise to meet its needs, Amazon does not impose such restrictions on Alexa.

Instead, a voice assistant with a lot of "skills" (the term for applications on your Echo Assist devices) will "get the reliable following, even if they make occasional mistakes and are easy to use." Will try harder ".

Although some users have set Alexa's word recognition rate as a shadow behind other voice platforms, the good news is that Alexa will adapt to your voice over time with those with your unique voice or dialect. The problem can also be solved.

In terms of skills, Amazon's Alexa Skill Kit (ASK) probably pushed Alexa into a bonafide platform. ASK allows third-party developers to create applications and tap into Alexa's power without local support.

With over 30,000 skills and growing, Alexa has integrated Siri, Google Voice, and Cortana in terms of third-party integration. With the incentive to "add voice to your big ideas and more customers" (not to mention the ability to build for free in the cloud, "no coding knowledge required"), it's no surprise that developers are putting content on the skills platform. To

While some may not be able to help draw parallels with Apple's Appstore, it's catching the attention of developers trying to keep content - any content - on their platform regardless of whether it's worthwhile or not.

Its integration with smart home devices such as cameras, door locks, entertainment systems, lighting, and thermostats is another big selling point for Alexa.

Lastly, give users complete control over their home whether they are in bed or on the move. With Amazon's Smart Home Skill API (another third-party developer tool similar to ASK), you'll be able to control devices connected to customers from millions of Alexa-enabled endpoints.

When you ask Siri to add something to your shopping list, she adds it to your shopping list - without actually buying for you. Alexa goes one step further though.

If you ask Alexa to re-order her debris bags, she will go through Amazon and order them. You can order millions of Amazon products without lifting a finger; Natural and unique ability to surpass Alexa's rivals.

Microsoft’s Cortana

Based on the artificially intelligent role of the 26th century in the Halo video game series, Cortana launched in 2014 as part of Windows Phone 8.1, the next major update to Microsoft's mobile operating system.

At the end of 2017, Microsoft announced that its speech recognition system had reached an error rate of 5.1%. It surpassed the 5.9% error rate reached by a team of researchers from Microsoft Artificial Intelligence and Research in October 2016 and keeps its accuracy on par with professional human transcription, with benefits such as the ability to hear text multiple times.

In this race, every inch is important; When Microsoft announced its 5.9% accuracy rate at the end of 2016, they were ahead of Google. However, the fastest-moving year surpasses Google - but only 0.2%.

While percentages and accuracy rates are important, Cortana distinguishes itself from other voice assistants based on real, human-assisted assistants.

Rival services dig into data from devices, your search history, cookie trails you left on the Internet. While this is often useful, it can also be annoying in the form of non-stop notifications or it can scare the smart system into knowing too much about you.

We all saw 2001: the mother of all sensitive computers, the HAL 9000, was murdered with her pale red-eye and soft-butter robot voice.

To prevent this, Microsoft spoke with several high-level personal assistants, all of whom found that they had notebooks with important information about the person they were looking at. It was this simple idea that prompted Microsoft to create a virtual "notebook" for Cortana that would store personal information and anything Cortana approved for viewing and use.

It's not a privacy control panel, but it's exactly what Cortana does and gives you a little more control over what's not accessible.

For example, if you are not comfortable with Cortana accessing your email, you can add or remove access to your notebook. Another special feature? Cortana always asks you if she stores any information in her notebook.

Microsoft has teamed up with Halo developers on visual themes as well as voice actress Jane Taylor for Cortana's voice. These elements bring Cortana to life and form the personality and emotion to a system that would not have happened without that cooperation. Cortana’s personality shines through in everyday use - along with funny reactions from her circuit boards.

In addition to Google Assistant and Google Search, Cortana is supported by Microsoft's Bing search engine. This allows Cortana to chew up the data needed to answer your burning questions.

And, like Amazon, Microsoft has come up with its own home smart speaker, the Invoque, which performs many of the functions of its rival devices. As soon as Microsoft hits the market there is another big advantage - Cortana is available on all Windows computers and mobiles running Windows 10.

Google Assistant

One of the most common responses to a question these days is "LMGTFY". In other words, "Google me".

This only makes sense when Google Assistant talks about answering (and understanding) any questions.

From asking to translate a phrase into another language, to change the number of butter columns to one cup, Google Assistant not only provides the correct answer but also provides some additional context and source information for the website This suggests that Google's powerful search technology supports it, perhaps with a surprising exception.

Although Amazon's Alexa was released two years ago (via the Echo introduction) than Google Home, Google has made significant progress in capturing Alexa in a very short period of time. Google Home was released in late 2016, and within a year, it had already established itself as Alexa's most meaningful rival.

By the end of 2017, Google had stated a 95% word accuracy rate for American English; Currently the highest of all voice-assistants. It turns out to have a word error rate of 4.9% - Google is the first in the group to fall below the 5% limit.

While some have tried to strike back at Amazon, Google has released several similar products for Amazon. For example, Google Home is reminiscent of Amazon's Echo and Amazon Echo Dot's Google Home Mini.

Recently, Google announced some new, important partnerships with Lenovo, LG, and Sony to launch a series of assistant-powered "smart displays" that will once again resemble Amazon's Echo Show.

Nuance’s Dragon Assistant and Dragon Naturally Speaking.

Although Nance did not come with a smart home speaker, their Dragon Assistant, and Dragon natural speech systems have been used as the backbone of speech recognition for other technology companies. "I need to be able to talk without touching my phone," said Vlad Sejonha, chief technology officer at Nance Communications. "It's constantly listening for trigger words and pop up the calendar or create a text message or browser where you want to navigate".

Nance's voice-recognition technology is largely centered around speech systems in the car; Embedded dictation capability and bringing interactive information to the car.

“Another development involves a deeper level of understanding,” says Nance’s lead solution architect John West.

West argues, "Here, the goal is not just to identify speech, but to gather meaning and purpose that enables voice-driven systems to respond intelligently, in a way that meets the needs of the user."

What is the best voice assistant?

Here's what we know

With over 400 million devices using Google Assistant, including Google Home speakers and Android phones, the company's voice assistant is now installed on more than 400 million computers and devices.

Similarly, Microsoft has officially stated that Windows 10 has 400 million active users; Exclude mobiles running a single system.

Since Amazon’s Alexa is only available on their Echo speakers, this number will definitely reduce the number of dwarves competing against Alexa.

On the other hand, with over 300 million iPhones worldwide by mid-2001, Siri took advantage of this space - not to mention the number of people who owned an Apple Watch, MacBook, or iPad.

With the support of millions of pre-existing users for the tech giants mentioned above, a simple software update is needed to integrate their post-voice assistants worldwide.

For example, people with Google's Pixel phones will be part of the Google Ecosystem. They are more likely to invest in Google Home Speaker, so they can get entangled with YouTube, Google Search, Google Maps, and more. Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft users are the same, without the least repetition of what ecosystem and what products they spend on.

It may depend on the use case.

After all, there is no one-size-fits-all winner when it comes to voice assistants.

If you like the Apple-consumer, Siri and its wide distribution across all Apple products will help you.

If you want to make your home a smart home, Alexa already has thousands of software and hardware integrations ready.

If you've been looking for a helper who can answer all your weird and amazing questions, Google Assistant's search engine will find the rest. If you want a little more control over what information your digital assistant has access to, Microsoft's Cortana has that functionality.

Collaboration that sets the bar high

The recently announced partnership between Microsoft and Amazon on August 30, 2017, is the real deal-breaker here.

This is correct. Alexa and Cortana are officially working together. Since both companies do not have popular smartphones (unlike Google and Apple), they have changed their assistants to suit their strengths.

Users can say "Alexa, Open Cortana" on their Echo devices and "Open Cortana, Alexa" on their Windows 10 devices.

Alexa customers will be able to remember Cortana's special features, such as booking meetings or accessing work calendars, picking flowers, or read your work email on your way home.

Similarly, Cortana customers can ask Alexa to control their smart home devices, shop on Amazon.com, and communicate with more than 30,000 skills built by third-party developers.

Therefore, in terms of voice-activation and digital assistants leading this new industry, Amazon definitely takes the cake.

The company not only supports the creation of other voice-activated technologies through their ASK and Smart Home APIs, but they are also the original inventors to create a smart home speaker with a smart home speaker and screen.

In other words, they are moving faster (and moving forward) than their rivals, all of which are new by continuing to share.

Speech Recognition in-Car

Voice-activated devices and digital voice assistants not only make things easier.

It’s also about safety - at least when it comes to speech recognition in the car.

Companies like Apple, Google, and Nance are completely changing the driver experience in their vehicles; Allows drivers to focus on the road with the intention of eliminating the distraction of looking down on their mobile phones while they drive.

Instead of texting while driving, you can now tell who to call your car to or which restaurant to navigate.

Instead of scrolling through Apple Music to find your favorite playlist, you can ask Siri to find and play it for you.

If your car is running low on fuel, your speech system will not only let you know if your car needs refueling but also point to the nearest fuel station and ask if you have any specific brands. Priority to this

Or you can be warned that the petrol station of your choice is too far to reach with the rest of the fuel.

As advantageous as it may seem in the ideal scenario, speech technology in a car is dangerous if applied before high-speed accuracy. The study found that voice-activated technology in cars actually causes a higher level of cognitive distraction. This is because it is as new as technology; Engineers are still working on software kinks.

But, as rate speech recognition technology and artificial intelligence are improving, we can’t stay behind the wheel in a few years.

Speech Recognition Apps and Devices

Voice assistants are making a big difference in our personal lives, according to a recent study by Voice Labs that 30% of respondents cite smart home devices as the main reason for investing in Amazon Echo or Google Home.

This next generation of 'communication' technology provides users with a way to use the clumsy remote control interface.

Therefore, it allows consumers to talk and communicate with their electronics as they further increase the ease of human use and reduce the barrier to access to technology products.

Engineers must work hard to create an abundance of voice-controlled devices that can integrate with the voice technology of leading digital assistants; From appliances and safety devices to thermostats and alarm systems.

Nest, for example, is a company that invests capital in the new voice-technology frontier. “Your smart home should not be dumb,” the company said.

With the Nest Thermostat, you can use the Amazon Echo to control the temperature in your home with simple voice commands. Or, pre-order the Nest Hello Video Doorbell and get the Google Home Mini at no cost when shipping. From alarm systems to smoke and carbon monoxide alarms, Nest Protect thinks, speaks, and warns your device.

Bringing these voice assistants to the office in future applications of speech recognition, beyond the home.

In late 2017, Amazon announced new voice-activated tools for the office, hoping that verbal commands such as "Alexa, Print My Spreadsheet" would extend to normal office tasks. Microsoft's Cortana has begun to handle some other office tasks, such as scheduling meetings, recording meeting minutes, and arranging travel.

Today, only a handful of high-ranking officials have their own personal assistants. With the introduction of AI digital assistants in the workplace, everyone can be one.

To access the company's financial data from last week to last year, please ask your Google Assistant to create a graph showing the year's increase in click-through rates - there are many uses for implementing Digital-Assistant in the workplace.

Think about it - just like electronic computers, voice can go manually through the files on your computer so that paper records can be easily changed shortly before.

Video Games with Voice Control

In these use cases, speech recognition techniques have been implemented with the aim of simplifying our lives, which is also evolving in other areas. Namely, in the gaming industry.

Creating video games is already exceptionally difficult.

Plots, gameplay, character development, customizable gear, lottery systems, worlds, etc. can take years to display properly. Not only that, the game can change and adapt based on the actions of each player.

Now, imagine adding another level to gaming with Speech Recognition technology.

Many companies that create this idea do so with the intention of making gaming more accessible to those who are visually and/or physically challenged, as well as immersing players further in the gameplay by launching another layer of integration.

Voice control can reduce the learning curve for beginners, with less emphasis on recognizing controls; The player can start talking immediately.

In other words: it can now be very challenging for game developers to collect hundreds (if not thousands) of voice data, speech technology integration, testing, and coding to keep their international audience.

However, despite all the goals that tech companies are shooting and overcoming challenges, there are already video games that believe the benefits outweigh the barriers.

Even mobile games and apps are now capable of using voice-activation in addition to the classic console and PC versions. Seaman, starring Leonard Nimoy as a sarcastic man-fish, debuted in the late 1990s, and Mass Effect 3, released in 2012, is just the latest example of speech technology in video games.

What is our history, where are we going?

Speech recognition has made major advances in the last decade; it's been 1,000 years in the voice technology market. Magic eight ball to today.

The intense level of competition we see among these tech giants in the industry and the growing trend of companies creating materials in space indicates that we still have a long way to go.

#voice recognition technology #voice recognition software #using speech recognition

1 note · View note