#tracker sector

[xinganhao]

cherry on top 🍒 mafia boss!seungcheol x reader. (4)

stories like this always end with a damsel in distress. except—this time around—you’re not the one who needs saving. previous chapter + masterlist.

📄 Minutes of strategic information meeting, filed by Kim Mingyu (Mafia Soldier, Logistics & Recon)

Date: ██████████ Location: Safehouse Omega-9, Undisclosed City Perimeter Time: 03:17 HRS

ATTENDEES:

Yoon Jeonghan (Underboss)

Lee Chan (Combat Unit Leader)

Chwe Hansol (Surveillance Division)

Kim Mingyu (Logistics & Recon; Recording Officer)

Civilian Target [REDACTED] (Unauthorized Attendee)

AGENDA:

Contingency Plan for Retrieval of Boss (S.Coups)

Chain of Command During Absence

External Threat Assessment

[BEGIN TRANSCRIPT]

JEONGHAN: We go in through the east dock. Two snipers posted by 03:40. Chan leads breach. Hansol, your eyes stay on thermal—no improvisation this time.

HANSOL: I never improvise. My brilliance is structured.

CHAN: Can we not do this right now?

JEONGHAN: [ignoring them] Mingyu, once we get him out, you're on evac. Full blackout route. No trackers, no chatter.

MINGYU: Copy.

HANSOL: Any updates on who turned? Someone had to leak coordinates.

CHAN: There’s a list. We’ll handle it after we bring the boss home. One fire at a time.

[DOOR SLAMS OPEN. SOUND OF HIGH-HEELED FOOTSTEPS. SILENCE.]

CIVILIAN TARGET: You’re planning this without me?

JEONGHAN: [visibly tense] You weren’t invited.

CIVILIAN TARGET: He’s my belo—my boyfriend, Jeonghan. You think I’m just going to sit around while you play war games?

JEONGHAN: This isn’t a movie. You’re a civilian. You don’t belong in this room.

CIVILIAN TARGET: No, I’m the reason he still believes in soft things. I belong more than half the people at this table.

CHAN: She’s got a point.

JEONGHAN: Chan.

CHAN: I’m just saying. She’s not exactly fragile.

HANSOL: She did rewire one of my bugs with a paperclip. That was... not unimpressive.

JEONGHAN: [sighs] This isn’t about guts. It’s about blood.

CIVILIAN TARGET: Then you should know mine’s already on the line. Every second he’s gone, I feel it. And I’m done being sidelined. I’m not here to ask. I’m here to help.

[BEAT OF SILENCE. THEN—]

JEONGHAN: You get one job. And if you screw it up, I’ll personally drag you out.

CIVILIAN TARGET: Deal.

JEONGHAN: Hansol, give her the map. Mingyu, loop her in.

MINGYU: You’re going to need a comm. And a bulletproof vest.

CIVILIAN TARGET: Got both. And a knife in my boot.

CHAN: Okay, badass.

[MEETING CONTINUED UNDER LEVEL-2 SECRECY PROTOCOLS. TRANSCRIPT REDACTED. END OF MINUTES.]

FINAL NOTES:

Civilian Target formally added to Operation Homecoming roster.

Jeonghan authorized conditional field involvement.

Morale status: heightened.

Risk level: astronomically high.

🗂️ Operation Homecoming: Field Notes & Briefing Report, compiled by mafia underboss, Yoon Jeonghan

Clearance Level: Top Confidential Date Logged: ██████████ Location: Safehouse Omega-9

SUMMARY: Boss (S.Coups) was captured 48 hours ago following the receipt of a falsified emergency ping traced back to the civilian target’s encoded channel. The ping claimed she’d been injured and was en route to an undisclosed hospital in Sector D. According to surveillance logs, the Boss diverted course alone, abandoning standard security protocol. We believe he was intentionally isolated through signal jamming, then intercepted at the underpass beneath Route 14.

AUTOPSY OF THE TRAP:

Fake GPS tag mimicked civilian target’s bio-signal pattern

Voice distortion software replicated her distress call

EMP deployed upon vehicle arrival to disable tracking

Tactical unit waited with sedation-grade rounds

CURRENT LOCATION OF BOSS: Confirmed. Underground storage facility, formerly Syndicate-aligned. Defected cell now controls the zone. Reinforcements on site. Boss presumed alive—last thermal footage confirms faint movement.

INTERVENTION STRATEGY: OPERATION HOMECOMING

Phase One – Extraction:

Entry through east dock (03:40 HRS)

Chan leads breach unit, Hansol on thermal, Mingyu handling evac

All units silent channel only

Phase Two – Internal Sweep:

Civilian target assigned distraction and misdirection role (see below)

Two-minute window to locate and stabilize Boss

Phase Three – Extraction + Fade:

Mingyu initiates blackout route

Decoys deployed on west perimeter to delay pursuit

Rendezvous at Site Echo

CIVILIAN TARGET: PERFORMANCE LOG

Arrived wearing borrowed Kevlar and jeans tucked into combat boots. Asked if bulletproof vests same in women’s sizes. Did not wait for response.

Showed immediate enthusiasm, zero tactical finesse. Hansol gave her the map. She held it upside down. Twice.

Informed her she’d be working as the visual diversion. Her response: “Like bait?” Followed by: “Cool. I’m good at being annoying.”

Surprisingly effective. Created a loud enough ruckus on the perimeter to draw three guards off their posts. Managed to bluff her way past checkpoint by pretending to be a lost food delivery driver. Claimed she had gluten-free soba for a man named Kevin. There is no Kevin.

Still not sure how she pulled it off.

When Boss was found, he was semi-conscious but breathing. Whispered her name first.

END STATUS:

Boss retrieved.

Minimal casualties (1 injured – not fatal)

Facility compromised but not traced

Civilian target cried in the van. Then threatened to punch me for writing that down. I'm writing it down anyway.

FOOTNOTE — for Seungcheol’s eyes only: You’re reckless, stubborn, and impossible to reason with. But apparently, that’s your thing. You’re also luckier than most of us ever will be.

She didn’t sleep. Not once. Kept looking at every door like you might walk through it.

When you did, she didn’t even say anything. Just threw her arms around you like gravity stopped working.

Try not to make her go through that again.

– YJH

📱 Phone history log, filed by mafia soldier Chwe Hansol

Device: S.Coups' Personal Line (Encrypted Channel #017) Status: Outgoing Messages Only – Blocked by Signal Jammer Timestamp Range: ██:██–██:██ (Time of Abduction)

NOTE: Texts never reached intended recipient. Recovered during post-mission diagnostics. For archival purposes.

[01:12 AM] Where are you? They said you were hurt. I'm on my way.

[01:15 AM] Which hospital? No one's answering. This isn't funny. Call me.

[01:17 AM] Your signal keeps bouncing. Something's wrong. Stay where you are.

[01:21 AM] I swear to god if they laid a hand on you

[01:24 AM] No ambulance ever came.

[01:25 AM] This is a setup.

[01:27 AM] I'm so stupid. They used you. Fuck fuck fuck

[01:28 AM] I should've followed protocol. Should’ve sent Mingyu. Should’ve sent anyone but me.

[01:30 AM] If you get this, lock all the windows. Call Jeonghan. Stay put.

[01:34 AM] They knew I’d come for you.

[01:36 AM] This isn’t your fault.

[01:39 AM] Don’t come after me.

[01:41 AM] Love, beloved, please. Don’t try to save me.

[01:45 AM] You always do this—you throw yourself into fires you don't understand.

[01:49 AM] If they hurt you because of me, I’ll never forgive myself.

[01:52 AM] Tell Jeonghan to burn everything. Get out. Go far.

[01:54 AM] Forget me if you have to. Just live.

[02:01 AM] I love you. Please, please, please, don’t be stupid.

[END OF RECOVERED LOG]

📰 Excerpt from "The Ethics of Mafias: Love in the Line of Fire", a follow-up think piece by Xu Minghao

... If leadership within organized crime is already an ethical minefield, then love within it is something more volatile still: a paradox of vulnerability embedded in violence. New whispers surround the figure known only as S.Coups—the alleged mafia boss whose name, until recently, conjured images of discipline, domination, and an empire forged in precision.

Now, another narrative has emerged. One that reshapes how we understand not just the man, but the very myth he embodies.

According to rumors sourced from both within and outside the organization, S.Coups may have a romantic partner. Not a fellow operative, nor a political alliance. But a civilian. Someone unaffiliated and—crucially—untouched by the bloodied logic of the underworld.

If this is true, the implications are vast.

To love in his position is a risk. It is weakness, some would say. Yet others might argue that such love is the only thing capable of keeping a man like him from becoming monstrous. If the rumors are accurate, she is the reason he looks over his shoulder less. The reason he checks his own wrath. The reason his most trusted lieutenants have stopped fearing him and started worrying about him.

Love, here, is not a diversion. It is discipline.

And perhaps that is the most fascinating ethical twist of all: that this boss, so often theorized as either tyrant or savior, might be both—because of her.

Some say he texts her between assassinations. That he buys her gummy bears because she mentioned liking them once, months ago. That he has started folding her laundry and learning her aunt’s dietary restrictions. These are, of course, unconfirmed. They seem almost laughably mundane. But within the shadowed world of syndicates and secret wars, what could be more radical than tenderness?

Others claim that he was taken. There are now verified reports of a failed abduction and his eventual rescue. She was allegedly involved. They say she showed up unarmed, untrained, and utterly unafraid. They say she demanded to be part of the rescue mission. They say she was reckless, infuriating, and ultimately, instrumental.

And that when he saw her again, he wept.

To be loved, it turns out, is not always soft. Sometimes, it is brutal and inelegant and wildly inconvenient. But in the context of a life built on violence, to be loved is to be saved. Again and again. In the ways that matter.

Whether S.Coups is worthy of that love is not the question. The question is whether it has already changed him. Whether, in the end, the girl outside the syndicate might be the only thing real in a world made of smoke and mirrors.

And whether that, more than power or fear, will be his lasting legacy.

Mafia boss S.Coups is many things. Protector, manipulator. Brother, enemy, friend.

It seems we must add two more things:

Lover, and loved.

FIN. THANK YOU FOR READING CHERRY ON TOP!

› scroll through all my work ദ്ദി ˉ͈̀꒳ˉ͈́ )✧ ᶻ 𝗓 𐰁 .ᐟ my masterlist | @xinganhao

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Trump's not gonna protect workers from forced labor

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/07/03/states-rights-trumps-wrongs/#mamdani

As fascism burns across America, it's important to remember that Trump and his policies are not popular. Sure, the racism and cruelty excites a minority of (very broken) people, but every component of the Trump agenda is extremely unpopular with the American people, from tax cuts for billionaires to kidnapping our neighbors and shipping them to concentration camps.

Keeping this fact in mind is essential if we are to nurture hope's embers, and fan them into the flames of change. Trumpism is a coalition of people who hate each other, who agree on almost nothing, whose fracture lines are one deft tap away from shattering:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/07/14/fracture-lines/#disassembly-manual

The vast unpopularity of Trumpism presents endless opportunities for breaking off parts of his coalition. Take noncompete "agreements": contractual clauses that ban workers from taking a job with any of their employers' competitors for years. One in 18 Americans has been captured by a noncompete, and the median noncompete victim is a minimum-wage fast-food worker whose small business tyrant boss wants to be sure that she doesn't quit working the register at Wendy's and start making $0.25/hour more flipping burgers at McDonald's.

The story of noncompetes is bullshit from top to bottom. The argument goes, "Your boss invests heavily in training you, and lets you in on all his valuable trade-secrets. When you walk out the door and go to work for a competitor, you're stealing all that training and knowledge. Without noncompetes, no boss will invest in the knowledge-intensive industries that are the future of our economy."

Now, like I said, the vast majority of people under noncompetes are working low-waged, menial jobs with little to no training, and no proprietary trade secrets to speak of. Which makes sense: workers with less bargaining power end up signing worse contracts. That's half the case against noncompetes.

Here's the other half: the most IP-intensive, profitable, knowledge-based industries in America operate without any noncompetes. California's state constitution bans noncompetes, which means that every worker in Hollywood and Silicon Valley is free to quit their job and walk across the street and join a rival.

If Hollywood and tech are examples of industries that "can't attract investment," then we should be shooting for every sector of the American economy to be so starved for capital. Silicon Valley's origin story is based on the ability of key workers at knowledge-intensive firms to quit their jobs and go to work for a direct competitor: the first Silicon Valley company was Shockley Semiconductors, founded by William Shockley, who won the Nobel Prize for inventing silicon transistors.

Shockley literally put the "silicon" in Silicon Valley, but he never shipped a working chip, because he was a deranged, paranoid eugenicist who ran such a dysfunctional company that eight of his top engineers quit to found a rival company, Fairchild Semiconductor. Then two of the "Traitorous Eight" quit the Fairchild to start Intel, and the year after, another Fairchild employee quit to start AMD:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/24/the-traitorous-eight-and-the-battle-of-germanium-valley/

This never stopped. Woz quit HP and Jobs quit Atari to start Apple and the tradition of extremely well-capitalized companies being founded by key employees who quit market-leading firms to compete with their old bosses continues to this day. There are many things we can say about AI, but no one will claim that AI companies �� especially not those in California, where noncompetes are banned – have trouble attracting investment. Half of the leading AI companies were founded by people who couldn't stand working for Sam Altman at Openai and quit to found a competitor. Just last week, Altman flipped out because Mark Zuckerberg poached his key scientists to work on competing products at Meta:

https://fortune.com/2025/06/28/meta-four-openai-researchers-superintelligence-team-ai-talent-competition/

Knowledge-intensive industries are provably compatible with a system of free labor where workers can work for anyone they want. You know who understands this? The lawyers who draw up employment contracts with noncompete clauses in them: the American Bar Association bans noncompetes for lawyers! Every law firm in America operates without noncompetes!

Everyone hates noncompetes. They are bullshit, and only get worse with time, as the largest companies in America metastasize into sprawling conglomerates, they compete with everyone. Who isn't a competitor of Amazon's?

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/02/its-the-economy-stupid/#neofeudal

Biden's antitrust enforcers hated noncompetes, too. Former FTC chair Lina Khan held listening tours and solicited comments to hear workers stories about noncompetes, developing a record that she used to create a rule that banned noncompetes nationwide:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/25/capri-v-tapestry/#aiming-at-dollars-not-men

America's oligarchs weren't happy. They sued to overturn the rule, and got a nationwide injunction (you know, those things that Trump's illegitimate Supreme Court claims are unenforceable) that suspended the FTC rule pending a full hearing.

It's clear that Trump's FTC is going to walk away from this fight and let the rule die. Trumpism is wildly unpopular, and this is no exception. Americans overwhelmingly support banning noncompetes, but Trump's richest donors are terrified of another Great Resignation and want to keep us indentured to their shitty companies, so Trump's FTC will sell us all out.

But that's not the end of things. As David Dayen writes for The American Prospect, states and local governments can pass their own noncompete bans, and they are:

https://prospect.org/labor/2025-07-02-ftc-noncompete-state-regulation-workers-wages/

Take NYC mayor-in-waiting Zohran Mamdani: unlike Trump (and the Democratic Party's billionaire wing), Mamdani campaigned by offering to create policies that are popular, including a ban on noncompetes. New York City has two distinct groups of workers who are screwed over by noncompetes. One of those groups is Wall Street finance bros, who work for some of the most legendarily toxic assholes to ever draw breath, and are overwhelming bound by noncompetes that will all become null and void the day Mamdani dons his sash.

The other group of workers Mamdani will liberate are those at the very bottom of the income distribution, from fast food workers to gig workers to doormen, who are victims of some of the dirtiest noncompete clauses in America, including "bondage fees":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/21/bondage-fees/#doorman-building

Big cities are filled with workers who are getting screwed by noncompetes and every city government has it in their power to liberate every one of those workers (who are also voters).

States can do even better. There are already four states that ban noncompetes, two of them blood red: California, Minnesota, North Dakota, and Oklahoma. Other states place significant restrictions on noncompetes, including Washington, Colorado, Illinois, Virginia, Maryland, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and Maine. Nevada bans noncompetes for hourly workers, Idaho only allows them for "key employees"; Louisiana limits noncompetes to two years, and NJ bans noncompetes for domestic workers.

Up and down the country, in states blue and red, noncompetes are unpopular, and banning noncompetes is popular:

https://www.ipsos.com/en-us/majority-americans-support-ftc-ruling-would-ban-non-compete-agreements

Oregon just banned noncompetes for doctors and other health workers, as part of a sweeping, bipartisan law that banned the "corporate practice of medicine":

https://pluralistic.net/2025/06/20/the-doctor-will-gouge-you-now/#states-rights

Oregon's in good company: noncompetes are banned in the health sector in 32 states, including Arkansas, Indiana and Colorado.

Lina Khan's FTC developed an irrefutable evidentiary record about the abusive nature of noncompetes, proving that industries can attract capital and field successful companies without them. States have it in their power to step in where Trump has betrayed American workers. This isn't the most efficient way to protect workers – that would be a federal ban on noncompetes – but it will still get the job done, and it will weaken the Trump coalition, which is barely holding together as it is.

[sinisterexaggerator]

Star-crossed

Imperial!Hunter xF!Reader

Summary: You are a lowly spy living on Akiva. Your mission is to gather intel for a growing resistance led by Bail Organa of Alderaan. You want to keep hope alive for people across the galaxy—but it won't do you any good should you die trying.

Enter the Imperial Headhunter—you've slipped up. Will you be captured and taken in, or will you get a second chance?

Warnings: NSFW/ 18+ for: Elements of predator/ prey, cat and mouse, brat-taming, enemies to lovers, knife play, cunnilingus, heavy kissing and petting, PiV sex, foul-language, and explicit sexual content. Mild dubious consent. There is use of pet names. Reader has hair of indeterminate length.

Word count: 6.2K

Notes: I've decided to write an Imperial Bad Batch series of fics and started with Hunter! Shoutout to @imperial-tracker and the memeforce crew, as they are an inspiration! I love the idea of an Imperial version of the Batch and couldn't help myself. I am choosing not to discuss the activation of his chip to let that be open-ended or ambiguous. No timeline for when I will write the rest, but I hope you guys enjoy this!

P.S.: I've been playing a lot of Star Wars: Outlaws, thus I chose the jungle planet of Akiva to be the setting for this story.

Ao3 link.

Fat droplets of rain pelted your face as you ran like wildfire through the jungles of Akiva, your pursuer hot on your trail. Overgrown vegetation, along with the fragrant blossoms and gnarled vines of Jarwal trees, provided cover as you leapt over a steep incline made of rock and landed hard on the ground.

You hoped desperately to avoid the Venga, an opportunistic creature that thrived during the rainy season, though now, the rain poured without relent. Still, it would be better than if he caught you—the headhunter sent by none other than the first Galactic Empire.

You had information—intel. You kept track of the small number of Imperial forces on this planet, relaying anything and everything of even minute importance to Senator Bail Organa of Alderaan. You were a part of a growing resistance—a small band of people spread thin across the galaxy—your sole mission to keep hope alive for all who needed it, though you were but a cog in the machine.

You needed to tell your contact that more people were willing to fight, that more of the Empire’s forces were arriving on Akiva by the day, and that soon they would take over the Stormhollow sector. Already, they were covertly building a military base just outside Pyke territory.

Ultimately, you were worried about your planet’s future.

Unfortunately, you had been caught snooping at an imperial construction site.

This soldier who was giving chase wasn’t like the others. Out of breath, you made it to a network of labyrinthine tunnels, catacombs that rested beneath Myrra, stretching far beyond the city—they were a series of twisting pathways that spiraled off into various tracts like that of an anthill, one specifically leading you back toward your longtime home in the mountains.

You lived east of the capital; you hoped to lose him somewhere along the way, knowing this planet like the back of your hand. Surely, he would be unable to find you if you could shake him in the foothills—little did you know he was built for this.

You pulled your cloak tighter, your hood closer, darkness momentarily prevailing upon your entrance to the catacombs, torches fueled by dilarium oil greeting you a few feet down. The Uugteen lived here, out of sight, but you knew how to avoid them, going the way of the old Separatist droid foundry, its machinery left derelict and in disrepair.

You desperately wished you hadn’t ditched your speeder once you realized you were being followed; a noise off to your right caused you to startle. You flashed your glowlamp toward the vicinity of the sound to spot a fengla scuttling off beneath refuse, having disconnected it from your belt. It was a small, hairless vermin with green eyes; you would rather meet a horde of them alone than to face your adversary head-on.

You sighed and moved onward, the creaking of expanding and contracting building materials and the smell of stale air your only company—or so you thought. Your human senses were incapable of detecting the commando who watched you, biding his time like a predator stalking its prey.

Brown eyes surveyed your every move from beneath a visor tinted black; the enhanced clone assessed your threat level, finding you to be no more harmful than a mouse. Hunter thought that to track you down was almost beneath him, though he had been given a direct order—not that he always followed through per his discretion.

“What do we have here …” the clone asked quietly enough, his voice echoing throughout the otherwise desolate space; it bounced off the walls in every direction so that you could not pinpoint its exact origin.

You gasped as you turned around, your eyes wild like that of an animal as you searched him out—that Imp you knew was in here with you—horrified to find that he stood mere feet away, blending into the metallic backdrop of the factory.

“A little bird,” — the black clad sergeant stepped forward, his pace languid, almost as if teasing you — “one that chirps a little too much, and a little too loudly.”

You bolted like a skittish fathier, kicking up dirt and grim as you fled down the nearest corridor, your heartbeat raging in your ears as you traveled what felt like miles, never once looking back.

And that voice was strangely familiar, as if you’d heard it somewhere before but couldn’t place it. It was smooth and sultry, unhurried—the auditory embodiment of patience, and more than a bit unnerving.

You broke free of the tunnels, escaping through an exit dug out from the earth to dash across a lush field of green grass. Nearby was a dilapidated temple, leftover from a bygone era, built by the Ahia-Ko; you would take shelter in its crumbling remains.

The mausim had worsened since you had ventured underground, thunder crashing above your head as your heart continued to thunder in your chest. You crawled beneath an outcrop of carved stone, decorated in ancient markings no one knew the meaning of, doing your utmost to hide.

“Shit, shit, shit,” you whispered to yourself, whipping your head to the left and right, knowing that just ahead was a steep drop-off you would need a grappling hook to handle, though you had stupidly left yours behind.

The only way out was to your right, though you heard footsteps, the crunching of twigs underfoot. This man wasn’t doing anything to conceal himself, knowing that he was somewhere up above you, the only thing shielding you from his sight, that bit of stonework hanging above your head.

“Hmm … where could she have gone?” the imperial commando asked aloud; you prayed to the stars above that he wasn’t being facetious in humoring himself, knowing full well that you lurked just beneath his boots, cornered like a dog on a dead-end street—perhaps he expected you to bite.

“Come out, little bird. I know you’re there,” came that purring lilt, the microscopic hairs on your arms standing at attention as you held your breath, daring not to make a peep like the little bird he thought you to be. You could feel yourself trembling, as much from the weather and the unrelenting rain as from fear, finding that instinct had led your hand to your blaster, ready to use force even though you felt you were no match for him.

“All right, then. We’ll do this the hard way, hm?”

You sucked in a ragged breath as the dark clad soldier landed roughly on the ground before you, having jumped from at least six feet down. You were trapped—literally—between a rock and a hard place, knowing that you would have to stand and fight.

“Kark you, imperial shit!” you screeched, pulling your pistol; the clone shot it straight out of your hand so that you screamed in pain, the bolt having singed your skin as you found yourself disarmed.

“Now, now. That’s no way to—”                             

Before the man could finish his sentence, you sprang to your feet and lunged. Despite facing off against a hardened soldier and you being a woman, you pinned him down, knocking the blaster out of his grip. But once you were both sprawled across the remnants of the temple floor, you did not know what to do next. It was obvious you had not thought this through, and your enemy could tell.

“What a compromising position,” he quipped, taking hold of both your wrists. You made to knee him in the groin but felt a wellspring of pain radiate up through your leg. He was well-protected from head to foot.

“Let me go!” you demanded, thrashing against him. He endeavored to hook your leg with his own, using his body weight to flip you over onto your back. You squirmed like a fish out of water, determined not to go down so easily.

Just then, your hood fell off. The clone hesitated, looking down upon you. You seized the opportunity to free one wrist, snatching off the bastard’s helmet so that your fist could land a clean shot to his jaw.

Then, you did much the same thing as he was, gazing up with a dumbfounded look on your face. It was the handsome clone from The Alcazar—the one you had fucked back in some cheap motel room.

“Hu-Hunter?” you asked breathlessly, staring into his doe brown eyes, even as a steady downpour of rain wetted your cheeks, your hair all but plastered to your forehead—you knew there had been something recognizable about his voice.

“Hmm,” he hummed, a low vibration in the back of his throat, your one-night stand tilting his head to the side. “I thought I smelled something … familiar,” he slyly returned; your eyes narrowed as you came back to your senses.

“You’re imperial?” you asked through gritted teeth, having met this clone when he was dressed in civilian clothing. You supposed he had been off duty then, stationed on Akiva for Force knows what, and you just happened to be a sucker for a pretty face, not to mention halfway to wasted.

“And it would seem that you’re a naughty girl,” he replied silkily.

You silently cursed yourself as you felt your loins stir, thinking your body ridiculous for behaving in such a manner, though you had no control over your own hormones. You threshed against him once more, taking a swipe at his hair, aiming to rip off that stupid bandana he wore marked by the symbol of the empire. If only he had been wearing it when you first met.

The commando was too fast for you, dodging by shifting his neck one inch to the left. He smirked, snatching that roaming hand back up to affix both your wrists to either side of your ears, pegging your arms to the ground.

“What am I to do with you?” he asked rhetorically, Hunter’s chestnut locks dangling limply over his eyes, soaked to the roots by the rain.

You were quiet, so taken in by his beauty; no man should be this pretty, you thought, attempting to shake yourself free of his spell.

You briefly came back to yourself. “You’re on the wrong side,” you hissed, “and I have done nothing wrong.”

“No? And just where is that camera you’re hiding?”

You stiffened, knowing he meant the one you had used to take visual images of the partially constructed imperial facility back in Stormhollow, having concealed it in the pouch hanging from your belt. It was small and compact; you had planned to share the photos with Bail Organa, though not all was going according to plan.

“None of your business,” you seethed.

Fuck, he was hot. You hated yourself increasingly with every passing second, feeling your blood warm beneath the surface of your skin despite the cool temperature of the surrounding air. Most of the time, Akiva was hot and muggy, but this was the wet season—suddenly, in more ways than one.

“Oh, but it is my business,” Hunter said, his butter smooth tone doing a number on you twice now. “Don’t make me have to search you by hand, little bird.”

“Don’t touch me,” you growled, though it lacked conviction. You weren’t sure you could even convince yourself you did not want him to, much less the clone on top of you.

“Come now, you didn’t seem to mind before,” Hunter teased, lifting both your arms higher, cinching your wrists in one hand, mashing them together. His other hand gingerly explored your clothes, starting at your shoulders before moving toward your middle, giving you a pat down in small increments.

“That was before I knew you were an Imp.” You wriggled beneath him, trying to move away from his soft touch, though you felt bothered in a different way, remembering the night you had spent together all too vividly.

“So, now what’s your excuse?” Finally, his open palm rested along your waist. He had a simper tugging at the corner of his mouth. It was infuriating, but also incredibly attractive. You kicked your legs one more time for good measure, but Hunter did not budge.

“Piss off,” you grated.

“Do you know how I found you so easily, sweetheart?” He was clearly amused, and that further angered you.

You glared at him, not answering, finding it peculiar, though you did not want to readily admit it. Akiva was your home—it had been since your birth. You knew this planet like the back of your hand, yet still he was able to find you when other troopers had failed. They had always lost your trail; you had always outsmarted them, yet Hunter was the only one who had come this far.

“I’m a tracker, little bird. An experimental soldier—” he bent down low, nearly brushing his nose against yours, your eyes scanning his tattooed face as you feigned not wanting to kiss him. “I pick up on things—smells, sounds—the scent of sex, lust, desire.”

Hunter’s free hand slid down, his knuckles caressing the side of your face, his leather glove smooth against your skin. “And you’re nothing if not an open book.”

Your whole body stiffened; you felt like a mouse caught in the claws of a nexu, yet you would be lying if you told him he was wrong. You sucked in a breath, uncertain of your escape, notwithstanding that you were comfortable right where you were, and rightfully so—the clone nestled securely on your lap, apparently uninclined to move.

As fate would have it, the headhunter’s superhuman senses caught wind of something else, just as that something came crashing down with an ear-piercing screech. All of Akiva was a jungle; you had no doubt about what thatsomethingwas, though Hunter was caught off guard for one split second—it was enough time for you to initiate a new sequence of events.

You wrenched one arm free from his grasp just as a fussy little Kowakian monkey-lizard tumbled into sight. It was angry, as the branch it had been seated on had snapped under pressure, causing the reptilian creature to take a rather nasty fall. Surprised to see you both, it threw a rock in your direction; Hunter swatted it away, not expecting you to reach up toward his face.

He reclaimed your wrist, but it was too late; you were cradling his cheek in your palm. It was the best plan you could produce—hopefully, he wouldn’t see through it straightaway.

You curled your fingers, then drew him in, whispering, “kiss me, then.”

Hunter gazed at you with a furrowed brow; he studied the look in your eyes before consciously agreeing, even if against his better judgment.

The clone dipped down low, scooping up the back of your head. Truth be told, he was happy to indulge you. There was no reason he could not have his cake and eat it, too. Although he would have to turn you over for detention, he might as well give you pleasant memories for those cold, lonely nights you would spend in a cell.

Your lips parted as Hunter’s pressed against yours; you searched out his tongue, lapping eagerly at the inside of his mouth. With a moan, you clawed into his damp curls, bringing him closer as your breathing intensified and became uneven.

You made a move to coax him to release you all together, wiggling your other arm. After a moment’s hesitation, he let you loose; you used the opportunity to wrap it around his neck as your kiss went deeper and slowed down—it was all a part of your poorly thought-out plan.

“Hunter,” you enunciated between broken breaths, your hips lurching upward. You had to commit to the bit, or otherwise you would lose your focus, finding it hard to concentrate on anything but the taste of him, or the feeling of his body cozied up to yours.

But why not just go with it? What harm could it do? It was tempting to ignore everything and simply give in to the moment, but your mission far outweighed any pleasure you might receive, or at least that’s what you had to tell yourself to carry on.

“What a shame I have to turn you in,” Hunter said in that deceptively erotic tone; it would drive you wild if you allowed it, your hand slipping down, down, gripping Hunter’s black spaulder before inching toward his rerebrace, ever closer to your goal.

“You could always let me go,” you whispered, digging into his armor with your fingers as if you could touch his bicep beneath it, skirting the underside of his blacks.

The sergeant chuckled against your lips; you could feel his codpiece grinding into you, knowing what he kept beneath it, how it felt inside you. “I don’t think so, kitten.”

“Too bad,” you muttered, wrapping your tongue under and then across his in a swirl. Your cheeks hollowed to suck, distracting the commando the best you could as you finally had the guts to try your luck.

You snatched Hunter’s knife loose from its sheath on his vambrace, then broke away from the kiss; it hummed to life as you held the blade to the clone’s bare throat. His dark eyes flashed; he bore a mischievous smile, though your expression had turned serious. He seemed unbothered, though his voice was stern. “Is that the best you can do?”

It took milliseconds for him to latch on to your forearm; he twisted it in such a manner that it caused your fingers to loosen. You screamed, then aimed to drive your other palm into his nose, but Hunter was too quick.

You found yourself once more bound by your wrists. You bucked violently beneath him, then thrust all your weight to one side. You both rolled toward the edge of the ledge—the one you would have needed your grappling hook to conquer.

“Wait!” you shrieked, one arm dangling over the side of a precipice that was a drop of at least one hundred feet. The clone snatched you backward to where you now rested on top of him, having nearly tossed yourselves over the brink.

You both breathed heavily, staring into each other’s eyes. After a moment, Hunter latched onto your shoulders and forced you to roll the other way, collecting dirt and leaves all over your clothes—though by the end, you found yourself pinned once more, only inches from the actuated blade.

Hunter snatched it up, twirling the weapon once between adept, gloved fingers. This time, he held it to your throat—his breathing finally settled, though you were still all wound up.

“Do you know why they call this a vibroknife, sweetheart?” he asked, his expression stoic and unreadable. You gazed up at him like a dugar dugar caught in the headlight of a speeder, swallowing down your excess spit.

Instead of elaborating, he trailed its vibrating pommel between your breastbone, zigzagging it for effect. Hunter slipped its handle all the way down your chest toward your belly before he ended at your lap, pressing the butt squarely against your groin. He would push it into the soft fabric of your tights, then lean in close.

“I’ll give you one guess,” he said cockily.

The faint buzz of the blade on your tights silenced you, the sensation delightfully climbing upwards. It was clear he knew what he was doing; your breathing would not calm but deepen.

“Tooka got your tongue?” he asked, smiling subtly down at you, though he held within his gaze something mildly sinister. “Well, then. It’s best I show you.”

Hunter pushed the butt of the vibroknife more succinctly between your thighs. Even though you were clothed, you felt every tremor, every oscillation of the pommel. Your tights were thin, made for easy maneuverability, just like his armor. You gasped as the clone angled it against your clit, the quiver of the knife so intense your eyes rolled toward the back of your head, able to feel everything as if he were touching bare skin.

“H-Hunter!” you breathed his name once more, trying to hold on to your dignity. The commando canted his head, a few strands of sodden hair following suit as he stared down at you, forcing the knife’s handle against you just a little harder.

“Hm?” he asked with a kind of arrogant nonchalance, Hunter watching the way your facial muscles twitched as the continued vibrations drove you closer to the edge of an orgasm. You felt as if you couldn’t catch a breath, one of your knees lifting as you gyrated gently against the ground, both your hands finding the clone’s shoulders as you held on tight.

“Fuck,” you muttered, finally giving in to a moan. Your hips arched upward without your permission, the whirring of the blade seeming to increase in its intensity. Then, fireworks erupted before your eyes; you did not consciously know what was happening, losing sight of your surroundings as your vision blurred. You stared straight up at the canopy of trees above your head as your heart fluttered rapidly, your body seconds from succumbing to his game against your will.

“That’s right, sweetheart, give into it. It will make things all the easier,” Hunter purred, his other hand rising to cradle your face in the bowl of his hand. He brushed back a droplet of rain clinging to your cheek with his thumb, as if it were a fallen tear, then leaned down to kiss you, even as you writhed like a common whore, unable to stop yourself from coming.

You had no idea what he had meant—easier to capture? Easier to control?

You rode out your orgasm to its completion, knowing why the Twi’lek called it “the little death,” feeling as if you had transcended to another realm entirely as you came down, though now feeling wholly insatiable, wanting the man all to yourself—no matter who or what he was.

“Fuck me,” you spoke between jagged gasps for oxygen; Hunter had not yet pulled the blade away. You could feel another orgasm building, your chest heaving with every new breath you sought.

“And will you be good for me?” he asked, beginning to swirl the butt of the blade in micro circles. Your hips rotated in unison as you attempted to speak your mind.

“A-asshole,” you managed between fractured pants for air. Hunter chuckled wryly at your struggle.

“Wrong answer,” he stated coolly, able to sense your pleasure mounting. He waited until the time was right, then took his vibrating blade away; you clenched your thighs in protest, letting out a whine.

You were so distraught that you barely noticed him hoisting you up to sit by your gathered wrists, having easily sheathed that accursed knife. He dragged you back, the seat of your pants dusting the ground as he positioned your spine against a tumbledown pillar once belonging to the Ahia-Ko. The remains of this temple were a feat of architectural engineering; perhaps he would have taken the time to admire it, but for now he had other things to occupy his mind.

“What-what are you doing?” you asked with a soft exhalation, Hunter keeping you still as one hand disappeared behind himself. He unclipped a set of binders from his belt, then brought them around.

“Stand up,” he laconically demanded.

You were tempted to disobey, but you drew your knees up to place your feet flat on the ground. You pushed up with your thighs. Hunter remained silent for as long as it took him to anchor you in place, then inched backward to study his work.

“Can’t have you trying anything funny, now can we?” he asked in a deep, enchanting drawl.

Curse him and the starship he flew in on.

“What are you on about?” you dared, though your chest felt tight, having been tortured by pleasure, unsure if you were glad that it was over. But you found you missed the taste of his kiss, pining for it; all you could do was lamely rattle the binders that barred you from touching him.

Hunter did not answer you; he dropped to his knees and pulled the waistband of your tights and underwear down along with him in one fell swoop, revealing your sex to the open air of the jungle. To say that you felt a breeze was an understatement, though no other coherent thoughts filled your mind; Hunter buried his tongue between the folds of your labia without warning, its flat, broad surface lapping a line from the cusp of your cunt to the top of your clit, stopping to thoroughly suck your throbbing bud between his puckered lips.

“Fuck—” you could only repeat yourself from earlier, hardly able to stand up straight as Hunter switched to gingerly flicking his tongue’s tip across your nub. You were practically sopping wet from before; you could feel your own slick dripping down your inner thighs.

Hunter did not shy away, slipping one arm under your ass to help keep you aloft as he spread your lips apart for better access between his fore and middle fingers. You felt as if you could melt; become one with the forest floor.

“Don’t-don’t stop,” you begged. Hunter moaned his appreciation into your mound as his nose brushed against soft flesh; he ate and ate. His strokes became longer and more languid; he pressed his face more firmly against you, his cock standing erect behind his codpiece. Once he felt you were stable, he released his hold, then steeped two gloved digits inside you, the creak of leather accompanying the act of him curling his fingers, playing you like some Zeltronian lute.

“Too much,” you whispered, though it was just right, knowing you were seconds away from coming for the second time. The pressure against your anterior wall was perfect; the glide of the leather itself was an indescribable turn-on, though you were far past that.

“Kiss me,” you entreated once more, though instead he went back to a diligent suck, the undulation of his tongue’s tip rolling against your clit as he pushed against the deep seat of your core.

It was a triad of sensations; your body trembled against the moss-covered pillar propping you up. You knew you had your work cut out for you if you were to escape the headhunter’s clutches once and for all, but you were not sure you even cared to do so by this point.

Within the sleeve of your cloak was a tool designed for picking locks; you slipped your fingers across and inside, even as you fucked Hunter’s face, gently riding the curve of his nose as he continued to titillate you, the warmth in your bowels rising to a head, your body already so sensitive.

“Yes,” you praised him, biting down on your lower lip. Hunter’s eyes trailed up your form to land on your face; you were cognizant enough to halt the movement of your hands. He wanted to witness your expression as he led you to the point of no return.

Within seconds, you obliged him with one of ecstasy, whether or not meaning to. You rode the fingers still immersed within you, gliding back and forth, over and across them. Hunter matched your pace until you were practically limp, the clone retreating from your insides to wipe his fingers off on his thigh before he stood up to his full height.

You teetered, though you kept hold of that tiny tool that would allow you to pick at your cuffs; it was nothing larger than a hairpin. Hunter pressed his body against yours, overcome with the animal instinct to bury himself in your hair, smelling deeply of your natural fragrance before he released a low, predatory sound.

Then, he cut a piece off.

You gasped as he twirled his vibroknife, sliding it back inside its sheath. He had been so quick to do so; it boggled your mind. The commando gazed at you with heavy-lidded, brooding eyes before stowing the bit of hair into a pouch on his belt. “Just in case,” he smirked, knowing now that he would never be one to lose your trail should you escape.

You blinked, unsure of what had just occurred. The clone pushed his belt up and unhooked his crotch and skid plate; they fell to the ground with a clatter. You stared up at him, panting for breath as if you had just run a marathon. Hunter hovered close, the smell of you still on him, taking hold of your chin.

“Ready for me, little bird?” he asked.

You shook your head; Hunter kissed you, prying apart the magnetic fasteners of his body glove at the groin. His prick was swollen with his blood, thick and girthy, with pre-cum leaking from its head. You knew what it looked like from days previous, your eyes closing as your tongue joined in with his, tasting yourself as he pressed his cock against your eager sex.

You lifted one leg; Hunter hoisted it up, guiding it to wrap around his waist. Though you were bound, you pulled him closer by the crook of your knee, your other foot still flat on the ground.

“Come on, then,” you taunted, sinking your teeth into his bottom lip. Hunter gave you a dark, sensual look that sent shivers down your spine. He guided himself in—you were wet ten times over, ready, and willing to take every inch.

“You are a brat,” he remarked. You fit him like a glove, the clone commando groaning throatily as he sunk deep into the core of your being, your walls snug and warm, Hunter having to force himself not to release his seed too soon.

“Let’s see if I can make you sing, bird,” he spoke softly into your ear, twisting his fingers into your hair as he pulled you tightly to his body. You found yourself flush against his cuirass, never imagining yourself to be in this position, yet so drawn to him it was nearly inexplicable.

Hunter palmed the shape of your breast, tilting his hips forward; slowly his hand trailed down, locking onto the dip in your waist while the other kept hold of the back of your head. He used your own body as leverage; you met him in the middle every time, counter-thrusting when Hunter did, gliding smoothly over his cock with ease.

“But you’ve caged me,” you whispered, appealing to whatever goodness might be inside him. Even so, you were hungry for him, peppering kisses at the corner of his mouth, across his lips, seeking his tongue time and time again.

“You’ve done that to yourself,” Hunter replied, moving to squeeze your bare ass. You gave a chirrup in response, flexing your walls around him. Hunter groaned from the added pressure, slowing the roll of his hips lest he burst.

“What a funny way to look at things,” you hissed, taking the lead. Hunter concealed himself in the bend of your neck, the other hand joining his left, each now tightly groping one half of your shapely buttocks.

“I have my orders.”

You laughed a dry, vicious laugh. “What a good little soldier you are.”

Something snapped within him, the commando activating his powerful quads to drive his cock into you at a speed that was more pronounced. He snatched you around the throat, forcing you to look him in the eye, the other hand moving to pinch your clit between two fingers.

“I am what I am,” the clone growled as you gasped, his pinching turning toward a frictional rub, adding to the pleasurable prodding of your erogenous zone.

You felt the fire in your belly building up, slipping down, sending you toward climax as Hunter fucked you open, arms clinging, mouth wide as you gazed at the sky; the rain still fell, clouding your eyes.

You were nearing overstimulation; you rocked with him in a steady rhythm, disregarding everything but the feeling of him inside you. Then, Hunter lifted your shirt, your nipple sucked into his ardent mouth. You struggled to maintain your balance, kissing his ear, neck, nipping and biting, moaning his name. “Hunter.”

His left hand stayed between you both; his thumb running circles over your thrumming bud. You couldn’t hold back any longer—it was too much. You vocalized to the heavens, the entire jungle, coming for a third time, praising his name over and over like a mantra.

His voice purred into your ear, telling you how good you felt, bouncing you over his cock until you were begging him to stop. It was your pleading that drove him over the edge; you sang for him like the little bird you were.

Hunter thrust into you twice more, already aware that you were protected, coating your walls with his ejaculate as he groaned your name, his blunt teeth grazing your lip as he smashed his mouth onto yours, both of you once more joining tongues.

You timed it exactly right; you unlocked your binders as Hunter soared high, though you made no moves to dislodge them from your wrists. Instead, you stood there, letting the man rest his head, letting him lie against you, his chest rising and falling as he breathed in lungfuls of air.

Then, the commando’s comlink bleeped at him; someone on the other end wanted his attention—his superior, no doubt, or perhaps a colleague.

The clone pulled back to stare into your eyes. You held his gaze for as long as he stood transfixed. Something silent passed between you, Hunter gradually sliding out of your plush loins, wanting to stay there a moment longer, but knowing that you both were now at a crossroads, and him with a final decision to make.

“CT-9901, reporting.”

You did not bother to strain your ears as he walked away; Hunter tucked himself back into his blacks with his other hand. You watched quietly from your position against the pillar, finally slipping the first cuff from off your wrist.

You saw a pause in his step—had he heard you? If he had, the clone gave no outward sign, so you continued.

“I am aware, general,” you heard him say as you gathered the waistband of your tights and panties, shimmying them back up your waist and hips. With the clone’s back turned, you took a chance, bending down low to creep along the ground.

Hunter seemed distracted with his conversation. That, and the fact he had stooped down to scoop up his helmet, not seeming to notice you picking up first your own blaster, then his; they had long been discarded after your first altercation more than half an hour ago.

“This planet has a habit of washing away evidence,” Hunter said, his inflection denoting his annoyance, “this thing the locals call a mausim doesn’t seem to be letting up.”

As you stepped backward, you felt a small rock roll underfoot; it bounced lightly across the temple floor, clinking against a piece of Hunter’s discarded armor, the commando having taken the call without reattaching his crotch or skid plates.

Hunter had been pacing, though he jerked to a halt. He kept his back to you, not bothering to investigate. The clone had recognized from the get-go you would attempt to run from the moment he had placed his face between your legs. His heightened senses were keen enough to notice the slight movement of your fingers, though he had chosen to ignore it.

“Affirmative. Understood.”

You had inched farther away by the time he disconnected the comm, both blasters poised and at the ready, aimed at Hunter’s back. He placed his helmet back over his head, securing it in place, then spun around to face you.

“Are you going to shoot me?” he asked point-blank.

“Are you going to turn me in?” you returned, wondering if he had changed his mind.

“I won’t be going far without my codpiece,” he replied, walking back toward the pillar where he had left them on the ground. “The least I can do is give you a head start.”

You stared at him, unable to read his face through the bucket on his head, gazing into the black visor that hid his beautiful brown eyes; he began to clip the pieces back to his waist. You hesitated, not wanting to leave, but not wanting to stay—Hunter made sure to give you a bit more of a wake-up call.

“I’d get a move on; this won’t take long.”

You felt like crying, yelling, kicking, punching—but you wouldn’t let your feelings get in the way. Not now. Not when you had a second chance, however small. You still had the camera, the photos, the intel. You had your mission, and Hunter had his—you were star-crossed, doomed from the start.

“Isn’t there some other way?” you pleaded, voice cracking with emotion.

There was a lengthy pause.

“No.”

You nodded, taking one last, long look.

Finally, you departed, propelling yourself forward through the wind and rain, determined to lose him if that was what must be done. You would scent yourself with the blooms of the Asuka tree, cake yourself in mud—anything to throw him off your trail.

Hunter sighed and watched after you. What a waste it would be to throw you in a cell, though it was, after all, his duty.

His voice did not reach you as you vanished into bramble and vine—“Beat wing, little bird,” he whispered.

[marionvonwolfstadt]

I had to get this out of my system, so this is a star wars au lestappen from a lovely idea by @chock-and-bates and it's for You dearest ❤️💙 (a measly 583 words written on the go but I had to so it wouldn't eat me from the inside, hope it is somewhat alright)

"Max always thought it was ridiculous. The way he came about this whole… Thing.

Max had meticulously planned everything, ensuring he wouldn't be on rotations or have a patrol in a sector coming up. He also made sure Dan would cover for him if necessary, all while keeping his mate in the dark about the real reason for his trips to the Outer Rim. Danny teased him about it, thinking maybe he was just visiting some lady they met during one of their leaves or who caught Max's eye on a mission, that he was being shy about it, that maybe she wasn't human and Max wanted to keep it under wraps so Horner would get off his ass.

Come to think of it, his friend wasn't so far off.

Except, Max stopped feeling it was just a fling some time ago, between one encounter and the other. When he again hesitated too long. When his nearly perfect shot miraculously missed Max's TIE fighter every time.

They came so differently about this, the way they met, that Max started to wonder if it meant the same to them both, or if it was just him. Being stupid. Being played.

He checked his surroundings again, adjusting the collar of his civvies that he checked multiple times for bugs and trackers before departing. He was dressed plainly, like some ordinary worker, boring colours, no distinctive markings, no characteristic jewellery to identify him later, to catch someone's eye. Maybe he was right and Max was just paranoid, but he couldn't help but look behind his back, tense until he got back to base and no one pulled out a blaster and shot him in the head for treason. Then, even his father's influence wouldn't be enough to save him. He was truly safe and in control only in two situations — behind the helm of his ship, when he had his life in his hands, and when the door closed behind them and they were left alone in a cheap canteen room on some backwater planet.

Max preferred to be ready, to be safe and get in front of every situation, and it worked, but not when he came across him.

Max squeezed the glass with the Corellian whiskey on the rocks tighter in his palm, not his usual order, but here the options were heavily limited. His lips became a thin white line, and his spine straightened as someone walked through the main entrance, getting everybody's attention.

The person had a purpose in their step and a spark in the green eyes, the spark that rarerly dimmed. They were wearing an angry red leather jacket with some yellow and black thrown in and gloves, which they started to take off quickly as soon as they spotted Max. They looked and carried themselves like a pilot. Max cursed internally but didn't turn his gaze away.

The space had it's lights dimmed to create an atmosphere or to hide how dirty and old it was, but the braclets and necklces on the pliots body found a way to glisten in it, matching his eyes, giving him an aura of something magical, something you want to chase and find out about. Max stopped keeping count of how many times he chased that particular X-wing.

Finally, the person stopped in front of Max and sent him that damn dimpled smile that made the lingering fear seep out of Max almost completely.

Charles never was good at keeping a low profile."

[disappearinginq]

Important state of the WIPs questions!

What is the premise of each of the six unnamed Slow Horses fics?

How many Tracker fics are there? General plots?

How about Deception? Just Consequences and Mirrorverse? Or a few more?

Is there any news on the Rue front?

I have miscounted on the unnamed Slow Horses fics, so...buckle up:

Louisa is awoken in the middle of the night by Catherine. River, who's been missing for an indeterminate amount of time, has shown up at her flat, looking pretty okay if not just tired and exhausted, but he either can't talk, or won't, and it's them trying to piece together what happened. (they don't, and all I have figured out is that River CAN talk, he just doesn't because of whatever happened to him)

In which I channel my inner Stephen King and make a play on Misery by having River get held hostage by an older woman who has decided that he gets himself into too much trouble (after seeing him after incidents like the season 3 finale, season 4 finale, etc) and decides that she needs to keep him safe from himself.

My excuse to have River and Catherine bond even more. There's a lot of back and forth miscommunication between the two of them. River has learned through bitter experience that parental love/affection is something to be afraid of, and after the events of season 4 he's sort of unraveling and Catherine is trying not to overstep Coworker Level of Care but really trying to take care of him at the same time, and River is freaking out because he thinks he's overstepping, and angst ensues.

This one is like a Conspiracy Theory knockoff, except I think I'm changing up the timeline. It was going to be bad guys of non specific origin that had kidnapped River, but I think now maybe it's MI5 itself who're interrogating River about his "involvement" with Frank's machinations post season 4 finale. Whelan is a Bad Guy in this.

A conversation in between season 2 and season 3 when the agents find out that Spider didn't choose not to go to Slough House, Lamb wouldn't take him, so his only option was to quit and go private sector. This leads to fun speculation between Catherine and the gang because Catherine knows damn well why Lamb told Spider to get fucked and the Horses realize there actually are standards for Slough House.

River has to deal with chronic pain after season 3, but he just decides to muscle through it because he doesn't have any better way of dealing with/addressing it. Shirley recommends massage therapy after watching him hobble about/wincing at certain movements but River is Not a Fan of being touched, especially by strangers, so Shirley offers to do it for him. Basically an excuse for me to incorporate real life experiences into fic

Shirley decides to take a more proactive interest in her co-workers lives after Marcus dies, and it becomes a tradition for her to walk the last one out of the office to their car/mode of transport, and it becomes a highlight of the day for the others because Shirley picks the most unhinged conversation topics like "if you HAD to fight a bear, which one would you choose if you thought you had a chance of winning?" One night, when walking River out to the car, they linger longer than usual because River, despite being awkward as fuck, is probably the most emotionally intuitive of the group, and she feels like she can actually talk to him about Marcus and missing him, but - in true Slow Horses Luck fashion - they get mugged, and they go after River thinking he's the threat when we all know Shirley is the one who's killed the most people canonically (AND SHE'LL DO IT AGAIN).

Slow Horses, except set in WWII. They’re not relegated to admin work, but instead are shoved into the field and take missions that will likely result in death as they’re considered expendable. More like X-Company meets The Dirty Dozen

From the Bad Things Happen Bingo Card "Ear Injury". River’s hearing doesn’t recover as well as he would like from the archives, and he, naturally, hides how bad it gets because he thinks it’s just taking its sweet time recovering and doesn’t want to get fired for being mostly deaf. Turns out, no, River, it’s not just tinnitus. That’s just a symptom.

the Horses get stuck on a road trip/ in the field overnight, stuck in a town where there's nothing except a small inn with a whopping total of two rooms. Instead of an argument about who is going to be sleeping on the floor, it is an argument who gets to share the beds because nobody wants to share with Lamb. River is too tired to care and just passes out on one of the beds and wakes up at the bottom of a dog pile and other than a crick in his neck 0 complaints

BTHB "This is for your own good". Not sure the circumstances but River has been having horrific insomnia for weeks, but he refuses to do anything about it because River has 0 self care habits, but he has in fact been prescribed sleep medication and just won't take it. One of the Horses takes matters into their own hands and slip it into his tea or something equally benign, except after it starts taking effect, something happens to make them half to go on the run/hide, and they're struggling with a barely conscious River in addition to Bad Guys. Details TBD

Frank, River, and Lamb are in a standoff (details unknown): Lamb: you've only got one bullet left, and it'll take more than that to stop me Frank: best put it where it'll do the most damage then, hmm? And shoots River

Tracker: Alas, only one, which was started before anybody met Russell on the show. Colter goes missing, and Reenie calls his brother to help find him. Turns out, Colter got a little too close to something Big and Bad and was kidnapped by Big Pharma doc who has been experimenting on patients that family members have committed under false pretenses to assume control over their property/money/affairs

Deception is in fact just Mirrors and Consequences because I refuse to start anymore until these two are done.

As far as Rue - I've established she makes her money in the foodie smuggling business because different planets have different spices and like vanilla and saffron are worth more than their weight in money, and she uses this to supplement her piracy tendencies.

[sinnabarmoth]

So you talked about what the lads would be like as yanderes… how would they handle US being a yandere? How tolerant would they be? Is there a line they would draw? Would they try to test our limits or make us jealous?

Okay so I guess it all depends on what kind of yandere they are dealing with. For the sake of this ask I'm just going to categorize the yandere as your typical stalker yandere.

Zayne: I think out of all of them the least tolerant of a yandere would be Zayne. The man simply does not have the time to be dealing with a yandere and their tendencies. You are showing up at the hospital all the time while he is trying to work and while he may have enjoyed your visits before the frequency gets a little grating. He had to ask you to stop coming by so often to visit and you begrudgingly agreed and then wound up back at the hospital later anyway cause you claimed that you weren't feeling well. Whatever happens away from work he's much easier about but he has to end up drawing a hard line when it comes to his workplace. Since he won't let you in you end up installing hidden cameras in his office so you can keep tabs on him without bothering him.

Xavier: At first Xavier doesn't realize that you are stalking him and just thinks you keep running into each other by coincidence. It isn't until he is on a mission in a dangerous sector and sees you that he gets a little more concerned and he starts to realize what's actually been going on. Tells you that your attention to him is flattering but you can't go wandering into missions with him unprotected. You concede that and end up gifting him a fitness watch that doubles as a tracker so you can keep tabs on where he is going and watching his heart rate so you can discern when he is fighting or not. Outside of that one line he is able to handle you pretty easily and you mellow out a lot when you can actually be together.

Rafayel: Rafayel fully does not care that you are yandere. The man is actually happy that you follow him around because he equally loves having you all to himself. He saw your phone once and saw that it was full of open search tabs and social media apps all about him that you clearly check multiple times a day. A picture of him is your phone background. He adores the attention and he has no problem with you letting yourself into his house and he knows you've broken in before because he obviously has security cameras set up. He eventually just gave you a key so you could come in whenever. He likes teasing you a bit by talking to other people and watching how worked up you get when you think you have competition.

Sylus: Sylus knew from the jump that you were a yandere and loves nothing more than turning your stalking back on you. You like following him around? He's going to take such a weird winding path just to confuse you. You're secretly taking pictures all the time? He's making sure to pose so you get a nice shot, can't have bad blurry photos of him after all. The entire time he also has Mephisto keeping tabs on you. He likes to test just how far you are willing to go to see him. One time he locked himself in his mansion with every curtain drawn so you couldn't even get a glimpse with a drone and kept track of how long it took you to attempt breaking in. He's in the security room watching the camera feeds and you as you bust your way into the mansion just thinking, about damn time! Three days? He's a little insulted you took that long.

[pinturas-sgm-aviacion]

1943 05 Swordfish rockets 816 NAS- Roy Cross

By May 1943, No. 816 NAS was a seasoned Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm squadron with a history of anti-submarine and anti-shipping operations. Originally formed in October 1939 aboard HMS Furious with Fairey Swordfish for convoy protection, the squadron had seen action in multiple theaters, including Norway (1940), the Mediterranean (1941), and the Atlantic (1943). In early 1943, it was operating with Swordfish, likely the Mark II variant, which had been introduced that year with metal lower wings capable of mounting rockets—a significant upgrade for attacking surface targets. The squadron’s base of operations during this period is less certain, but it was likely shore-based at a southern England airfield, such as RAF Perranporth in Cornwall or RAF Manston in Kent, or possibly detached to an escort carrier like HMS Tracker or HMS Chaser, both of which it served aboard at various points in 1943.

The English Channel in May 1943 was a critical theater for disrupting German maritime supply lines, particularly as the Allies prepared for the eventual invasion of northwest Europe. German shipping in the Channel included coastal convoys, E-boats (Schnellboote, fast attack craft), and smaller vessels supporting the Atlantic Wall defenses. No. 816 NAS, with its Swordfish, would have been tasked with targeting these vessels, often under Coastal Command’s direction, to degrade German logistics and protect Allied shipping. The Swordfish’s ASV (Air-to-Surface Vessel) radar, operational since 1941, allowed it to locate targets in darkness or poor weather, making night missions a hallmark of its operations.

Equipped with rockets or bombs (torpedoes were less common against smaller Channel targets), they would patrol a sector between Start Point and Ushant, hunting for a German convoy reported by reconnaissance or Ultra intelligence.

In such a mission, the Swordfish would fly low, around 50-100 feet, using ASV radar to detect a target—say, a group of armed trawlers or an E-boat flotilla escorting supplies from Cherbourg to Boulogne. Upon sighting, the lead aircraft might signal an attack, climbing to 500 feet to fire rockets in a shallow dive, aiming to disable engines or ignite fuel stores. The others could follow with 250-lb bombs, targeting additional vessels or scattering the convoy. Success might be sinking one or two ships (100-500 tons each) or forcing the rest to disperse, with the flight returning under cover of darkness to avoid Luftwaffe interception. Losses were a risk; a Swordfish could be downed by flak or a night fighter, though German air cover in the Channel was waning by mid-1943.

[theoutcastrogue]

Members of an ethical hacking group called Dragon Sector, including Sergiusz Bazański and Michał Kowalczyk, were called upon by a train repair shop, Serwis Pojazdów Szynowych (SPS), to analyze train software in June 2022. SPS was desperate to figure out what was causing "mysterious failures" that shut down several vehicles owned by Polish train operator the Lower Silesian Railway, Polish infrastructure trade publication Rynek Kolejowy reported. At that point, the shortage of trains had already become "a serious problem" for carriers and passengers, as fewer available cars meant shorter trains and reduced rider capacity, Rynek Kolejowy reported.

Dragon Sector spent two months analyzing the software, finding that "the manufacturer's interference" led to "forced failures and to the fact that the trains did not start," and concluding that bricking the trains "was a deliberate action on Newag's part."

According to Dragon Sector, Newag entered code into the control systems of Impuls trains to stop them from operating if a GPS tracker indicated that the train was parked for several days at an independent repair shop.

The trains "were given the logic that they would not move if they were parked in a specific location in Poland, and these locations were the service hall of SPS and the halls of other similar companies in the industry," Dragon Sector's team alleged. "Even one of the SPS halls, which was still under construction, was included."

The code also allegedly bricked the train if "certain components had been replaced without a manufacturer-approved serial number," 404 Media reported. [...]

404 Media noted that Newag appeared to be following a common playbook in the right-to-repair world where manufacturers intimidate competitor repair shops with threatened lawsuits and unsubstantiated claims about safety risks of third-party repairs. So far, Dragon Sector does not appear intimidated, posting its success on YouTube and discussing its findings at Poland’s Oh My H@ck conference in Warsaw.

[a-very-tired-jew]

So we've come to the first Friday of Trump's second term and my fiance sent me this handy dandy website.

It tracks what legislature and executive orders have been signed/passed or are being considered and it provides the schedule, and location of the President. There are numerous things to be worried about with this administration, but I'd like to bring attention to this executive order.

This is likely why Musk, Zuckerberg, Bezos, Chew, and other AI and tech billionaires were there. They, and other people like Trump and co, view themselves as leaders in tech, AI, and "science". Except they're all business in the worst ways possible. You're not seeing research publications come out from these names in any capacity. They're there to advise the President on how to exploit science and technology in the worst way possible. The other likely nefarious motivation is that they get to solicit all government institutions, universities, and science and research bodies for information in order to "advise" the President. Then after 2 years they get to leave with all that information having been made available to them. You don't think these tech billionaires and co aren't itching at the chance to get access to research before it's published and circulated? That they get access to information that might even be proprietary, private, or some level of classified because they are presidential advisors?

Also consider that this is a way for disgraced scientists that engage in things like climate change denialism and antivax rhetoric to become presidential advisors as well. Many of these scientists are not respected in the scientific community for letting their personal biases, beliefs, and lack of morals (e.g. taking bribes to publish fake results) compromise and undermine the work that is and has been done. They've long since been kicked out and relegated to political think groups where they can "research" and "publish" all day long and scream into their echo chamber. There is no way they actually put reputable scientists on this advisory board and let them run it as it should hypothetically be. If they do and it does run that way then I will be pleasantly surprised. But consider who this president is, who he pals around with, and who the sycophants have been lately.

This is another grift.

And our science sector is going to suffer for it.

[spectrolitha]

I did it! I've storytelled Technocratic one-shot set in Digital Web :]

Here are NPCs and some lore too. Click on pic for quality, as usual.

❗cw: mention of death, violence, brainwashing in text below❗

Clawrence Crane

Local greysuit, supervisor of player amalgam. He has found out that Elba, supervisor of the whole sector of Digital Web, is conspiring with Reality Deviants in an attempt to find cure for her brother's vampirism. So Clawrence has tasked players with delivering this information to higher-ups. Of course, he hasn't told players what exactly they are delivering, only that it's classified info. Which led to players doubting him at one moment, but in the end, almost all of them sided with Clawrence.

Elba Fields

Local greysuit, supervisor of the whole sector both players and technocratic NPCs belonged to. Unfortunately, during her previous work for Technocracy she pissed off quite a few vampires, which had led to them Embracing her younger brother as a retribution. Bitter about the fact that the Union for which she'd done a lot of work couldn't even protect her family, she turned to Reality Deviants for help. Which Clawrence has found out about and used as a blackmail, forcing Elba to seek help from Rezul (we'll get to him). In the end, players gave info on her betrayal to higher-ups. She's either being socially processed now or is already dead. Yay.

Nick-2

A Hollow One who has broken into player's sector in order to steal info on themselves, Mandrake and Rezul from Technocratic database. Also to prevent players from giving info about Elba's betrayal to higher-ups, because Nick-2 works for Rezul, and Rezul and Elba made a deal to help eachother. They failed miserably. Nick-2 has managed to destroy info about themselves, Mandrake and Rezul, but got caught. Trip to Room 101 probably awaits them now...

Mandrake

A Verbena working for Rezul alongside Nick-2. She had a very bad day which started by her getting shot and ended by her caught by the Technocratic Union. Is now in Room 101 with Nick-2, I suppose. Poor guys...

Ripple

Ripple is a reason Nick-2 and Mandrake ended up in Room 101. Most of the Digital Web knows Ripple as a lucky bastard from Virtual Adepts, who lives really close to Technocracy and somehow has been escaping from its grasp for quite a few years by now. The truth is much less epic: Ripple is a greysuit who pretends to be RD. Yeah, he has saved some of them from his own colleagues, but not before gathering information and putting GPS tracker on them. He intended to do the same thing with Nick-2 and Mandrake who had come to Ripple for help with escaping Technocracy after stealing data about themselves, but the players intervened, Ripple had to out himself, and, since it meant Nick-2 and Mandrake has learnt about his true affiliation, they were sent to Room 101. Also Ripple was sure that Clawrence had faked the fact that Elba works with RDs until he was forced to accept the truth. It broke his heart, he was a close friend of Elba, but this bastard will recover.

Joy Bright

Just a blacksuit who had been working for Elba before the truth came out. She'll probably work in another sector after all this. She doesn't like Clawrence one bit after he sold out Elba, even if it was earned (and to be honest, she hadn't liked him one bit before that either).

Brennan Chu

Another blacksuit under Elba's command. He was supposed to appear in game with Joy, but we were short on time and I've cut him out. So he was vibing elsewhere, I suppose. After everything has been revealed, he moved to work in another sector with Joy.

The Basilisk

The Basilisk adores Technocratic Union and it's agents. They unknownly help The Basilisk to finally be created, afterall! Unfortunately for my players, Technocracy does it too slow for The Basilisk's liking, so when Rezul, who was really close to becoming a Herald of Basilisk once (a type of Technephandi) came forwards with a deal, The Basilisk accepted. Rezul had promised to write some code for The Basilisk, and it had promised to help Rezul with destroying information about him, Nick-2, Mandrake and Elba's betrayal. Which led to The Basilisk threatening to eat player characters and even actually eating one of them after he tried to shoot Rezul... That eaten character was just a chatbot of an anime guy (yeah, character ai is a thing in Technocracy now, I regret nothing), but I'm still sad about his demise :(

In the end, one of players made a deal with Rezul and he ordered The Basilisk to let the players pass. The Basilisk was glad to oblige, it's rooting for the Technocracy and it hasn't forgiven Rezul for his refusal of being a Herald of Basilisk anymore. And it never will. If The Basilisk will ever be created properly, it'll take out it's anger for waiting so long on Rezul among other people, that's for sure.

Rezul

It's him. Born into Technocracy, NWO agent who had almost turned Nephandus once. Was saved from this fate by Ecstatic and became one of those himself. Unfortunately, Technocracy was looking for him, so he reached out to Elba, who was also having problems with Technocracy, and promised to help her if she'd help him. To ensure that he would be able to stop whoever gets in the way of destroying unwanted information, Rezul returned to The Basilisk once more, making a desperate deal. He'll bring The Basilisk a bit closer to existing in reality, thus making eternal suffering for those who had opposed The Basilisk's creation (including himself) a bit more real perspective, and The Basilisk will help him this one time.

In the end, Rezul has sold a piece of his soul for nothing once again. Another player has helped him delete information about himself, Nick-2 and Mandrake (not that it would help them now, but still), but the same player then delivered Rezul's digital traces to high-ranking technocrat, so if Rezul shows up in Digital Web again it won't go pretty. Not to mention that he has to run and hide again, since digital can be traced back to reality pretty easily in our times.

So Rezul now has to live with the fact that The Basilisk still owes him an eternity of suffering for his unwillingness to help it manifest, two people were taken by Technocracy because he involved them in this whole mess, and he hasn't helped Elba and even made everything worse. Wow. This game was not kind to my NPCs...

[yanderes-galore]

I recently replayed Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart and you already have a concept for Ratchet. So, i thought it would be nice if you wrote one for Rivet as well. Just some general thoughts on how she would act around a resistance member like herself.

Watched some cutscenes and did some personality research on her, hope I have something good :)

Yandere! Rivet Concept

(FT. Rebel! Darling)

Pairing: Romantic/Platonic

Possible Trigger Warnings: Gender-Neutral Darling, Obsession, Stalking, Overprotective behavior, Fear of loss, Trust issues, Clingy behavior, Manipulation, Delusional behavior, Kidnapping, Dubious companionship/relationship.

Rivet would naturally be friendly towards another resistance member.

In fact, her obsession is most likely going to be part of the Resistance, so this may not change her behavior much.

While Rivet has trust issues, rebels against Nefarious are those she feels a certain kinship for.

After all, you're both fighting for the same cause...

Freedom.

Many rebels know of Rivet.

She's the only Lombax in this universe and always sacrifices her comfort in order to help those in need.

She never seems to back down despite her many defeats.

She's a good person even if she's hesitant when it comes to making friends.

When she trusts someone, she's loyal until they hurt her.

Although she's quite used to working alone.

When she first meets you, she's hesitant.

Due to her trust issues her obsession would have to prove themselves to gain her trust.

When you do and prove to her you are a rebel...

Rivet is quite the protective Lombax.

She's naturally caring, albeit awkward, and offers you and services she can spare.

She's quite the inventor, after all.

She makes you gear, weapons, anything you need to aid you

In return, you become companions and often help one another out.

She slowly but surely grows close to you, keeping you out of danger as much as she can...

She's not used to any of this... companionship doesn't happen often with her.

Rivet doesn't have many friends, let alone family.

This is due to the fact her home is under a tyrant's rule and the fact her entire race is locked away in another dimension.

So those she does consider close are under her protection.

She can get quite overprotective, unfortunately.

Around her obsession, Rivet may not know she's being suffocating.

It's all small things like her lingering around you or calling you on the radio system.

Honestly, with how smart Rivet is, I would not doubt her putting a tracker on you to make sure you stay out of dangerous sectors.

She's another who would justify her behavior as just being "worried".

Invasive? Sure... but better than dead!

Rivet in the end would just want her obsession safe.

If her obsession confronted her about being clingy or not trusting you, she may not understand and get defensive.

She's just... really close to you...!

She doesn't want you getting hurt.

In terms of her overall type, definitely a clingy protective yandere.

Maybe even with some oblivious behavior due to how socially awkward she is.

She gets overly excited when with her obsession, just happy to see you're okay.

She may even be a bit manipulative if she feels she could lose you.

Overall I'd imagine she's tame.

She wouldn't kidnap you necessarily.

But she may isolate you if she feels you'll be safer that way.

Murder? Not her thing.

If she snapped and you were in danger, maybe, but that's a spur of the moment thing.

For that to happen she'd need to be under a ton of stress and a life or death situation.

Rivet can also struggle with cheering people up.

So imagine you're having a breakdown, perhaps due to feeling isolated, only for Rivet to awkwardly attempt to make you feel better.

In reality she'd probably make something worse, especially if she's locking you in her base of operations.

Rivet is definitely someone who means well with her obsession, but is completely oblivious to the harm she causes you...

Sure, she may want to protect you and keep you away from harm...

But are trackers, stalking, and isolation the way to do it?

Rivet may feel guilty when convinced that what she's doing isn't right.

She doesn't mean to make you upset.

Although... Rivet may also seem delusional at times to try and justify her actions.

While it may seem like what she's doing is wrong... Isn't it justified due to the situation with Nefarious?

While she may struggle to admit it... Rivet is scared to lose you.

One way or another, you feel like the family she's never had.

She tries to reason with you and plead with you to understand when she isolates you in her base.

She holds you close, fur against your skin and cold metal arm lightly brushing against your arm.

She feels sorry... but everything she does is for you.

Just... Just trust her, please...

She knows it's a lot to ask, but she never wants to let go.

She wants things to continue as they were...

She doesn't want you to hate her.

You helped each other out, you supported her as a rebel, you mean so much to her because she's so lonely.

Such thoughts make her worried.

If she loses you... What is she supposed to do?

The best course of action would be to prevent any harm from happening... To be your hero and defend you...

Yet in the end she's simply locking you away, isolating you, just because she doesn't trust you to fend for yourself... and is scared she'll lose the only family she has.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Kickstarting a new Martin Hench novel about the dawn of enshittification

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/07/weird-pcs/#a-mormon-bishop-an-orthodox-rabbi-and-a-catholic-priest-walk-into-a-personal-computing-revolution

Picks and Shovels is a new, standalone technothriller starring Marty Hench, my two-fisted, hard-fighting, tech-scam-busting forensic accountant. You can pre-order it on my latest Kickstarter, which features a brilliant audiobook read by @wilwheaton:

http://martinhench.com

This is the third Hench novel, following on from the nationally bestselling The Bezzle (2024) and Red Team Blues (2023). I wrote Red Team Blues with a funny conceit: what if I wrote the final volume of a beloved, long-running series, without writing the rest of the series? Turns out, the answer is: "Your editor will buy a whole bunch more books in the series!"

My solution to this happy conundrum? Write the Hench books out of chronological order. After all, Marty Hench is a financial hacker who's been in Silicon Valley since the days of the first PCs, so he's been there for all the weird scams tech bros have dreamed up since Jobs and Woz were laboring in their garage over the Apple I. He's the Zelig of high-tech fraud! Look hard at any computing-related scandal and you'll find Marty Hench in the picture, quietly and competently unraveling the scheme, dodging lawsuits and bullets with equal aplomb.

Which brings me to Picks and Shovels. In this volume, we travel back to Marty's first job, in the 1980s – the weird and heroic era of the PC. Marty ended up in the Bay Area after he flunked out of an MIT computer science degree (he was too busy programming computers to do his classwork), and earning his CPA at a community college.

Silicon Valley in the early eighties was wild: Reaganomics stalked the land, the AIDS crisis was in full swing, the Dead Kennedys played every weekend, and man were the PCs ever weird. This was before the industry crystalized into Mac vs PC, back when no one knew what they were supposed to look like, who was supposed to use them, and what they were for.

Marty's first job is working for one of the weirder companies: Fidelity Computing. They sound like a joke: a computer company run by a Mormon bishop, a Catholic priest and an orthodox rabbi. But the joke's on their customers, because Fidelity Computing is a scam: a pyramid sales cult that exploits religious affinities to sell junk PCs that are designed to lock customers in and squeeze them for every dime. A Fidelity printer only works with Fidelity printer paper (they've gimmicked the sprockets on the tractor-feed). A Fidelity floppy drive only accepts Fidelity floppies (every disk is sold with a single, scratched-out sector and the drives check for an error on that sector every time they run).

Marty figures out he's working for the bad guys when they ask him to destroy Computing Freedom, a scrappy rival startup founded by three women who've escaped from Fidelity Computing's cult: a queer orthodox woman who's been kicked out of her family; a radical nun who's thrown in with the Liberation Theology movement in opposing America's Dirty Wars; and a Mormon woman who's quit the church in disgust at its opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment. The women of Computing Freedom have a (ahem) holy mission: to free every Fidelity customer from the prison they were lured into.

Marty may be young and inexperienced, but he can spot a rebel alliance from a light year away and he knows what side he wants to be on. He joins the women in their mission, and we're deep into a computing war that quickly turns into a shooting war. Turns out the Reverend Sirs of Fidelity Computer aren't just scammers – they're mobbed up, and willing to turn to lethal violence to defend their racket.

This is a rollicking crime thriller, a science fiction novel about the dawn of the computing revolution. It's an archaeological expedition to uncover the fossil record of the first emergence of enshittification, a phenomenon that was born with the PC and its evil twin, the Reagan Revolution.

The book comes out on Feb 15 in hardcover and ebook from Macmillan (US/Canada) and Bloomsbury (UK), but neither publisher is doing the audiobook. That's my department.

Why? Well, I love audiobooks, and I especially love the audiobooks for this series, because they're read by the incredible Wil Wheaton, hands down my favorite audiobook narrator. But that's not why I retain my audiobook rights and produce my own audiobooks. I do that because Amazon's Audible service refuses to carry any of my audiobooks.

Here's how that works: Audible is a division of Amazon, and they've illegally obtained a monopoly over the audiobook market, controlling more than 90% of audiobook sales in many genres. That means that if your book isn't for sale on Audible, it might as well not exist.

But Amazon won't let you sell your books on Audible unless you let them wrap those books in "digital rights management," a kind of encryption that locks them to Audible's authorized players. Under Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, it's a felony punishable with a 5-year sentence and a $500k fine to supply you with a tool to remove an audiobook from Audible and play it on a rival app. That applies even if the person who gives you the tool is the creator of the book!

You read that right: if I make an audiobook and then give you the tools to move it out of Amazon's walled garden, I could go to prison for five years! That's a stiffer sentence than you'd face if you were to just pirate the audiobook. It's a harsher penalty than you'd get for shoplifting the book on CD from a truck-stop. It's more draconian than the penalty for hijacking the truck that delivers the CDs!

Amazon knows that every time you buy an audiobook from Audible, you increase the cost you'll have to pay if you switch to a competitor. They use that fact to give readers a worse deal (last year they tried out ads in audiobooks!). But the people who really suffer under this arrangement are the writers, whom Amazon abuses with abandon, knowing they can't afford to leave the service because their readers are locked into it. That's why Amazon felt they could get away with stealing $100 million from indie audiobook creators (and yup, they got away with it):

https://www.audiblegate.com/about

Which is why none of my books can be sold with DRM. And that means that Audible won't carry any of them.

For more than a decade, I've been making my own audiobooks, in partnership with the wonderful studio Skyboat Media and their brilliant director, Gabrielle de Cuir:

https://skyboatmedia.com/

I pay fantastic narrators a fair wage for their work, then I pay John Taylor Williams, the engineer who masters my podcasts, to edit the books and compose bed music for the intro and outro. Then I sell the books at every store in the world – except Audible and Apple, who both have mandatory DRM. Because fuck DRM.

Paying everyone a fair wage is expensive. It's worth it: the books are great. But even though my books are sold at many stores online, being frozen out of Audible means that the sales barely register.

That's why I do these Kickstarter campaigns, to pre-sell thousands of audiobooks in advance of the release. I've done six of these now, and each one was a huge success, inspiring others to strike out on their own, sometimes with spectacular results:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/books/2022/04/01/brandon-sanderson-kickstarter-41-million-new-books/7243531001/

Today, I've launched the Kickstarter for Picks and Shovels. I'm selling the audiobook and ebook in DRM-form, without any "terms of service" or "license agreement." That means they're just like a print book: you buy them, you own them. You can read them on any equipment you choose to. You can sell them, give them away, or lend them to friends. Rather than making you submit to 20,000 words of insulting legalese, all I ask of you is that you don't violate copyright law. I trust you!

Speaking of print books: I'm also pre-selling the hardcover of Picks and Shovels and the paperbacks of The Bezzle and Red Team Blues, the other two Marty Hench books. I'll even sign and personalize them for you!

http://martinhench.com

I'm also offering five chances to commission your own Marty Hench story – pick your favorite high-tech finance scam from the past 40 years of tech history, and I'll have Marty bust it in a custom short story. Once the story is published, I'll make sure you get credit. Check out these two cool Little Brother stories my previous Kickstarter backers commissioned:

Spill

https://reactormag.com/spill-cory-doctorow/

Vigilant

https://reactormag.com/vigilant-cory-doctorow/

I'm heading out on tour this winter and spring with the book. I'll be in LA, San Francisco, San Diego, Burbank, Bloomington, Chicago, Richmond VA, Toronto, NYC, Boston, Austin, DC, Baltimore, Seattle, and other dates still added. I've got an incredible roster of conversation partners lined up, too: John Hodgman, Charlie Jane Anders, Dan Savage, Ken Liu, Peter Sagal, Wil Wheaton, and others.

I hope you'll check out this book, and come out to see me on tour and say hi. Before I go, I want to leave you with some words of advance praise for Picks and Shovels:

I hugely enjoyed Picks and Shovels. Cory Doctorow’s reconstruction of the age is note perfect: the detail, the atmosphere, ethos, flavour and smell of the age is perfectly conveyed. I love Marty and Art and all the main characters. The hope and the thrill that marks the opening section. The superb way he tells the story of the rise of Silicon Valley (to use the lazy metonym), inserting the stories of Shockley, IBM vs US Government, the rise of MS – all without turning journalistic or preachy.

The seeds of enshittification are all there… even in the sunlight of that time the shadows are lengthening. AIDS of course, and the coming scum tide of VCs. In Orwellian terms, the pigs are already rising up on two feet and starting to wear trousers. All that hope, all those ideals…

I love too the thesis that San Francisco always has failed and always will fail her suitors.

Despite cultural entropy, enshittification, corruption, greed and all the betrayals there’s a core of hope and honour in the story too.

-Stephen Fry

Cory Doctorow writes as few authors do, with tech world savvy and real world moral clarity. A true storyteller for our times.

-John Scalzi

A crackling, page-turning tumble into an unexpected underworld of queer coders, Mission burritos, and hacker nuns. You will fall in love with the righteous underdogs of Computing Freedom—and feel right at home in the holy place Doctorow has built for them far from Silicon Valley’s grabby, greedy hands."

-Claire Evans, editor of Motherboard Future, author of Broad Band: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet.

"Wonderful…evokes the hacker spirit of the early personal computer era—and shows how the battle for software freedom is eternal."

-Steven Levy, author of Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution and Facebook: The Inside Story.

What could be better than a Martin Hench thriller set in 1980s San Francisco that mixes punk rock romance with Lotus spreadsheets, dot matrix printers and religious orders? You'll eat this up – I sure did.

-Tim Wu, Special Assistant to the President for Technology and Competition Policy, author of The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires

Captures the look and feel of the PC era. Cory Doctorow draws a portrait of a Silicon Valley and San Francisco before the tech bros showed up — a startup world driven as much by open source ideals as venture capital gold.

-John Markoff, Pulitzer-winning tech columnist for the New York Times and author of What the Doormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry

You won't put this book down – it's too much fun. I was there when it all began. Doctorow's characters and their story are real.

-Dan'l Lewin, CEO and President of the Computer History Museum

[parfait4bunny]

(Not heroes, not villains. Just soldiers trapped in the middle of a war they didn’t start, following orders they no longer believe in.)

Name:

Special Forces Division (SFD) – officially The Unified Peace Initiative, often called SpecFakes or Brass Puppets by rebels

Type:

Peacekeeping Military Corps / Corporate-Aligned Law Enforcement

Brief Backstory:

The SFD began as an Sector E-03 based global protection force with good intentions: defense, diplomacy, and keeping the peace. After Outworld annexed Sector E-03, the SFD was absorbed into Outworld’s corporate security network.

Now they’re an exhausted, stretched-thin army assigned to suppress unrest, hunt resistance groups, and recover escaped projects.

Some officers still believe in justice. Others just follow orders they don’t trust anymore. Many know they’re being used but can’t see a way out.

It’s a fractured system of tired heroes, hidden truths, and endless compromise.

Key Characters:

Sonya Blade – high-ranking officer torn between her duty and what’s right

Jax Briggs – retired veteran quietly helping fugitives

Stryker – conflicted foot soldier caught in the middle

Leadership:

General Sonya Blade holds authority but is constantly blocked by Outworld command. Real power sits with corporate oversight boards who control operations through blackmail and hidden agendas.

Objectives:

Keep peace in Outworld-controlled zones by any means necessary

Capture or eliminate rogue assets like Liu Kang, and Lin Kuei defectors

Stop the White Lotus uprising from spreading beyond containment

Inside the ranks, many agents secretly hope for reform but risk punishment if they speak up

Special Traits / Vibes:

Officers have implanted trackers and auto-report systems

Use advanced weapons, drones, mech suits, and neural inhibitors

Many are burned out and feel like their own minds are glitching

Some quietly pass information to rebels out of guilt or love

Aesthetic / Visual Feel:

Tactical black, gray, and blue gear with glowing visor helmets

Uniforms always look clean and polished... until the fighting starts

Headquarters are brutalist bunkers covered in propaganda screens, with mobile command rigs in the field

[ACCESS MASTER ARCHIVE] all sectors, all syndicates, all stories

[kommandonuovidiavoli]

¿How does I.T go in this universe? The original delightfulls gave 1 and 362 the tracker to track down the real Father. But this ones crave and want his approval more so i don't think they would give out Father's location just like that.

These two questions arrived 5 minutes apart, and it made me laugh! Sorry for the wait, so here's how I.T. goes.

The episode plays as normal, kids tagging, and everything is chaotic. Of course, "Wally" is not involved because, at this point, he's still not into the KND.

Everything goes up as normal, with Father getting tagged, he becomes the new Soopreme Leader and he makes all treehouses made of broccoli. As we see in the show, the Delightfuls are there, but instead of being scared of what is going on, they cheer for Father and want him to succeed.

He turns to them and decides it's time they finally show him how much they love him. He gives them the Code Module and tells them to meet him at the Moonbase OR ELSE.

Again, the episode plays as normal, but the Delightfuls don't make a deal with Nigel and Rachel; they just take them up to Father. In this version, no one manages to make Father say TAG, and he just duplicates himself and tries to take over the two operatives, not caring about hurting the Delightfuls in the meantime.

Rachel and Nigel arrive at the door. Father is behind, but instead of the Delightfuls, we see Wally appear and hand them the Code Module. The two ask how he got there, and he just... shrugs. Rachel tries to understand, but Nigel stops he,r explaining that it's just how that kid works, he appears at the right time and disappears when everyone's safe.

Rachel remembers she saw the kid that time at the Delightful's house; he's the one who fought her!

Rachel: Tell me, what's your name, kid? Irwin: Wallabee Rachel: Wallabee... that's it? Irwin: *shrugs and nods* Rachel: *confused face* Nigel: Yeah. We got used to that. Rachel: You... are probably about to save the whole KND from doom with this action... are you an operative? Irwin: No. But they call me Numbuh 4 at Sector V. Rachel: *looks at Nigel* Nigel: ahahah... y-you know... we always joked that we missed a 4 in the group and he's helped us a lot... so... Rachel:... tell you what, Wallabee. When I'll be Soopreme Leader again, I'll let you in. Sounds good? Irwin:... first, you need to be tagged. Rachel: Yeah, I'll force Father-- wait... how do you know about the game? Irwin: *shrugs* Nigel: Sorry to interrupt, but we need to go. Good job... future Numbuh 4. Irwin: *smiles and salutes before running off*

The episode goes on and ends as usual.

I might need to create a completely new episode for when Numbuh 4 becomes official, because nothing fits.

[crumbledcastle28]

Come Hell or High Water

Pairing: miguel x fem!reader (she/her; afab)

Summary: After an anomaly raid resulting in your capture, Miguel attempts to get some rest after days of searching. He finds it more difficult than expected.

Warnings: swearing, Miguel is incredibly self-deprecating, descriptions of blood, crying, torture, and an ambiguous ending.

A/N: I’m trying out some new formatting. Feel free to let me know what you think! And as always, thank you for reading.

Part 2

Word Count: 1k Type: blurb

Miguel O'Hara never knew how easy it would be to memorize a popcorn ceiling. Every crack, bubble, fleck of dust, scratch of paint. He had gotten to know it intimately, more intimately than he thought was possible.

He preferred the endless, beige void of his bedroom ceiling to closing his eyes, knowing that once he did, he would be met with your own.

"Miguel," you whispered, light leaving your eyes as the Doctor Octavious variant stomped on your gizmo, wrenched your arm out from under you, and dove the both of you through his cross-dimensional portal.

"I'll find you," Miguel screamed, veins popping from his neck. “I’ll find you; I promise.” The frailty in his voice making his skin crawl just thinking about it.

"Miguel," you repeated, knowing the truth, and were gone.

Without a trace. A tracker. Or a goodbye.

And it was all his fucking fault.

He was the one who pushed. He was the one who agreed to let you come. He was the one who had not properly calculated how big of a threat the Doctor had become and sent you in to be totally blindsided. He was the one who let his true feelings for you show, right in front of the Doctor's beady, vendetta-filled eyes, allowing him to see just how to bring Miguel O’Hara to his knees.

He still felt the bruises and dried blood on his shins, kneecaps, and elbows from how long he had kneeled and buried himself onto that rancid cobblestone street. “I'll do anything, anything you want.”

The Doctor only smiled.

Miguel hadn't allowed himself to grieve. Or mourn. Or process any of it for long enough to come up with an actual plan. No. He tore through galaxies like an animal, commanding every one of his spiders to search every sector of every city, before moving onto the next one. He blocked off streets. Ripped apart homes. Trespassed into governmental bodies. Dug through sewers and trashcans and jail centers. He left every galaxy he visited in shreds.

It stretched on for days, this rampage, until Jess finally cornered him, and forced him to finally sit the fuck down.

“Look at yourself, Miguel. You're becoming the people who kill us. This isn't how we'll find her.”

Miguel merely scoffed, complying only to humor her.

“Go home, Miguel. Fucking relax.”

How could he fucking relax - how dare he fucking relax - when he was the one who had done this to you.

He couldn't get it out of his head. Your eyes slowly becoming solemn, sunken, defeated. Like you were disappointed in him. Like he had let you down. And yet, your gaze simultaneously memorized every inch of him.

Blood streamed down your face from a deep cut on your forehead, dripping a deep red into your eyes and mouth as you stared at him. The Doctor's grip on your arm was firm, firm enough to squeeze your triceps so hard muscle popped out on your underarm. Your suit was torn to shreds, signifying that you had more than just the wound on your forehead.

Miguel wondered obsessively if they had been cleaned, stitched, and treated properly, or if the Doctor stooped to merely let you rot in a cage somewhere.

If that was the case, Miguel wondered, would you even still be breathing?

He closed his eyes, attempting to steady his breathing. No, you would be alive. Without you, the Doctor had no leverage, no treat to wiggle in front of Miguel's face, yet keeping it just out of reach. He would be keeping you alive.

His nostrils flared as his brain spiraled down a hole he hadn't let himself fall into yet. Alive was one thing, but how he was keeping you alive was another.

Miguel ground his teeth together as his occipital lobe flashed images into his mind before he could stop it. The Doctor starving you, trapping you, taunting you, putting his hands on you -

Miguel's claws began to pull out of his fingers, and his fangs dug into the skin of his bottom lip. Waves and waves of white hot, burning, pulsing rage washed over him, making his vision go milk white, paralyzing him to the bed. The images continued flashing and flashing, over and over again. The Doctor's smile gleaming as he touched you, your face a mural of pain and loss, screaming at the top of your lungs.

His claws dug into his mattress, and his fangs cut deep enough to draw blood. His mouth filled with metal.

He could hear your screams, echoing through his mind. It was the only thing he could hear.

He couldn't fucking take it anymore.

He sat up in bed, his bare, sweaty back sticking to the sheets as he did. He tapped on his gizmo, allowing his suit to stretch and encompass the entirety of his body. His ears rang and his neck twitched as he stood to his full height, allowing his suit to cover him completely.

As his mask covered his face, he closed his eyes. He breathed in, washing away the scenarios his brain was abusing him with, and breathed them out. He pushed all his emotions into corners of his brain, storing them away into tiny pockets, vowing to only open them once the job was done.

He opened his eyes, his body a vessel of only cool, venomous focus. He didn't care what the Doctor had done, what he himself had done, what anyone had done up unto that point. He only allowed himself to care about how to move forward.

He left his room, walking down the hallway of the Spider Society as silent and deadly as a loaded gun, and dug his claws into his palms. Blood trailed a path behind him.

He was ice. Pure, focused ice, and he was going to get you back.

"Come hell or high water," he whispered to himself, "I will get her back."

Tag list:

@leahkenobi @buckysblondie

[vallorouslly]

Meet the Mimas Crew

Below you will meet the crew Logan served with on Mimas. These are the folks who he built strong relationships with over five years on the station, and who he grieves the most on a daily basis.

There are many more souls that were on the station itself, but those are folks he never knew personally.

Henrik Olsson Swedish representative, Mimas Station Operations Manager, NASA representative FC: Bill Skarsgard Someone Logan met early on in the mission, they would become close simply out of work place status. Logan would report with the other Commanders of their branches to Henrik, who would then take all that data to meetings and intel trackers. Logan actually had a crush on Henrik for quite some time before Dae stole his heart for good. The friendship he and Logan forged was strong in comradery and equally personal, someone to confide in and relinquish doubts to lighten the load. Olsson was a no nonsense kind of guy, caring and kind when he needs to be, and authoritative when the need arises. Logan would happen upon him and stay with him in his last moments during the tragedy. Honorable Mentions: {xx} {xx}

Madeline Randolph Australian representative, Communications Manager FC: Rachael Taylor Madeline is an effective communicator and she would often times track various frequencies that happened to bounce off of the Moon's surface. One of the few times she first interacted with Logan was alongside Henrik, and that would prove to be a theme of their mutual existence. They'd get to know each other more through 'accidentally' dropping in on their filmed videos sent back home to their families, and a laid back friendship grew. Madeline actually intercepted a communication at the time which was entirely foreign. She, Henrik and Logan discussed what it could be, and once NASA came back with little concern, Logan just couldn't shake it. A couple weeks later, the station was down.

Boris Volkov Russian representative, Military FC: Aleksandr Kuznetsov Boris and Logan regularly butted heads on the mission in general. So much so that Logan would often times sequester Boris to the civilian sector for night watches or even to their little armory to take stock of what they had (even if it was a meaningless task). What kinship they did build was tenuous and often times much more sarcastic and brisk than any other, a very typical dude-bro situation that worked well enough when Boris wasn't questioning Logan's authority. Perhaps it was fate, in a way to make amends, that Logan found Boris and put him out of his misery in the end. An act of mercy he still holds dear and often regrets the way he spoke to the man.

Hans Shafer German representative, Military, Weapons Specialist FC: Volker Bruch Hans did the repairs and maintenance of what little outward weapons displays the station had (which were few and far between). He would often times tinker with thinks to try and get something new going, always the 'just in case' mentality ever present in his thought process. He maintained the cannons and kept all weaponry in each soldier's hands in working order. He often times would be the one taking inventory in the armory as well, taking pride in ensuring nothing went unaccounted for. It was to him Logan went to get a pistol each for Henrik, Madeline and Dae when he got that worry that something might happen. Logan dispatched Hans with a separate battalion to the civilian sector of the station and never saw him again in the end.

James Sager American representative, Excavation Manager FC: Tyrese Gibson Logan and James found themselves on the same schedule for a good while, ending up in the line at the cafeteria together so often that they made it a ritual of sorts (when they could, that is). Logan learned a lot about the process of what they were here for, and James' own doubts on if this mission had true validity or not. If Logan happened to be working the rounds near the construction bay, James would take a break to come chat with the Commander from time to time. Their friendship seemed the most organic in nature, the most inquisitive and the most exposed with their emotional connection to the mission itself. James and the excavating crew would be some of the first to perish outside the station before it was broken into.

Min Dae Korean representative, Geologist FC: Kim Ji-Won Logan and Dae firstly had a solid friendship during the year of training before their flight to Mimas. She decided, once they'd gotten settled on Mimas, to give dating a try. To her surprise, Logan accepted because he really loved spending so much time with her and getting to know her. Four years went by of quiet kisses and sweet cuddles when they may have been allowed the time, but they never got to say I love you. Logan regrets that the most because when he found her, she was already long dead. Travis was with her, giving a valiant effort that Logan has always appreciated. Full bio can be found here

Travis Boyce American representative, Military FC: Josh Duhamel Travis is a friend of Logan's from serving in the military together before going space bound. He applied with Logan thinking it would be a long shot that they would end up going together, and it just so happened to work out. They have the most comfortable relationship in that they prep together and exchange a bit of morbid comedy and conversations when they think nobody can hear them. Travis was the first person Logan went to with the information from Madeline and Henrik, his place of debate and confidence. In the chaos, Travis went to the science wings of the station to help as best he could in an unwinnable situation.

Genevieve Bernard French representative, Military medics unit FC: Marion Cotillard Genevieve looked after all the soldiers on the station and often times would encounter Logan bringing with him a fellow soldier to get patched up for whatever reason. She got used to not questioning random injuries given the fact their station was unstable in some ways to begin with. They built a more unspoken friendship that lingered on the sidelines for most of the mission, chatting in passing, checking in before he did his monthly checks with Henrik for data purposes. He'd often escort her to the construction bay whenever injuries were reported in that area specifically, lending itself to regular trips. The day of the attack, she stuck with Logan as he fled from one person to the other but they were always too late. She had to pry him off Travis, but was ultimately killed thereafter.