#ufo sausage

[dimalink]

Planet UFO – magnetic fields and radio waves

At last a game about UFO sausage itself. By the way, you are flying at the planet, where these UFO are living. Planet is fantastic. Surface of the planet is pink and green. And it is creating an objects. With a form of spheres, squares and rectangles. It is something like trees or mountains. But, it is something another, its own.

There is a very strong magnetic field at this planet, And strong radio waves. They make a their own structures. Whole oceans. And events at this fantastic planet. It is something like Solaris. Planet ocean. But another way. Magnetic field is very strong here, and it is like some force of nature at this planet and it forms a whole islands, for example. Out of radio waves. And radio waves – can make a whole ocean. Such a fantastic ideas. Of a strange planet. The planet, where UFO sausage is living.

Game itself it is a pseudo three dimensional flight at the UFO sausage. With CGA style colors. About 4 colors. You can turn left and right. To avoid objects. Circles and squares. They are with black color. Background of surface is moving with different speed. More speed higher for background- more intense it has a magnetic field, It is the idea.

Magnetic field can be 1.8 – it is small magnetic field, slow move. And it can be big strong field. It is 0.3 parameter of background. Background moves with most big speed in this game.

And you are flying and avoiding obstacles. This is the idea. To flight a certain distance. As in a learning book about math class. From point A to point B.

Distance is at the right part of the screen. And a the left - it is your energy. Levels are described with a fantastic conditions. Parameters of field, distance. In such fantastiс terms. And even there is – standalone theme of game – it is map of the planet. Pink planet. With white lines. Intense of field. Radio waves. Don’t forget, that there is no else thing at this planet. Two powers are active here, and they form everything. It is radio waves and magnetic field. They are, of course, not like a the planet Earth. And some fantastic.

There are descriptions for these regions of the planet. Total 42 regions. It is 42 episodes. They have 1 or several levels. Maximum it is 4 levels for a region. For more interest they are separated for 8 zones. Zone s are goes about higher and higher intense of magnetic field. You select region. And next - to read description of a region you select. Number of levels. And length of them. And something else. Power of the field.

Game is a retro science fiction theme. Strange, maybe. Regions – there are lots of them. It is a big planet giant. It is rotation somewhere in a depth of space. And from those space, UFO sausages are flying.

Game has some feature. It is main menu. You make a selection of game mode. F1 – normal mode. F2 – extended mode. Mainly, it is similar. But, simply, in extended mode, it is drawn square of a UFO sausage, hitbox, and two lines along the screen. For easier navigation. Just like you inside of UFO turn on some options. And something to indicate at the screen, as additional information.

Videogame, it is fourth, in a game plan TRIA. Final. In this plan. And as I finish it, I will start to prepare 4 new games for publish. Plan TRIA is going to its final.

Program part and overview description

Videogame is written with programming language QB64. It is modern version of QBasic. Game use 4 colors, that do imitation of colors MS DOS CGA. Pseudo three dimensional about way of movement. Something like arcade. Maybe, a game about – just to have a relax. Fly at some distance. Turn left or right. And do not crash into game objects – squares and circles. Game is with science fiction theme. There are texts and description of the planet.

Development state

So, for this time, I pay attention to decoration for the game. I do programming for menus with planet map. And it has lots of text. I create all these Sci Fi theme. With descriptions. And someway decorate the menus. In a pink color. I need to check, that everything works. And, maybe, to make menus more interesting. Maybe, to draw a picture with UFO sausage. And, mainly, - it is everything done!

It is, already, game number four in development plan TRIA. So, as soon as I finish this one. I will prepare all the things. And publish 4 new games in terms of new version of pack Basic Pascal.

This game will be released in terms of new version Basic Pascal Pack games. This game and some more games will be in a new version Basic Pascal Pack. As soon as I will have several complete games. All of them will to be in a new version Basic Pascal Pack. And a new version Basic Pascal Pack will be published for download.

Basic Pascal pack - whole pack of games and programes, written with basic and pascal. It is retro. With each game and program there is a page at author`s website. There are aditional information, descriptions, pictures, arts.

Basic Pascal: http://www.dimalink.tv-games.ru/packs/basicpascal/index_eng.html

Itchio: https://dimalink.itch.io/basic-pascal GameJolt: https://gamejolt.com/games/BasicPascal/773385 Website: http://www.dimalink.tv-games.ru/home_eng.html

[beanhusk]

funny about that spaceship thing remember gramps used to talk about flying saucers and then he stopped he used to talk about aliens and UFOs and little green men then he never mentioned them again right about the time i forgot everything there's just this gap sometimes i think there's something missing like i had something lovely and it's gone i kind of look to the side like something should be there but it's not and i know i've got rose and shaun and you and the biggest sausage roll i've ever seen frankly i should be happy i should be really happy but some nights i lie in bed thinking what have i lost !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[mysticstarlightduck]

Extra 2.0 OC Favorites!

Let's go with Erin Niemand and Indigo "Indie" Lauriel, from What Lurks In The Hollow!

Erin Niemand

Color: Forest Green

Season: Winter

Shoe Choice: Knee-high suede boots

Weapon: Box cutter

Food: Potato and sausage chowder

Drink: Blackberry juice

Style: Dark grey band T-shirts, green flannel long-sleeved shirts (button up), black denim pants

Mode of Transportation: Walking

Animal: Dogs, especially pit bulls (she has one named Cooper)

Pastime: Walking around on the wood trails around Vinethorn Grove and hiking

Breakfast: Sugar-coated cinnamon rolls with latte

Personality: Loner, very introverted.

Songs:

Mockingbird - Enisa

Forgotten - Avril Lavigne

Who's Afraid Of Little Old Me - Taylor Swift

Leave Me Alone - Adam Jensen

City Grown Willow - Jensen Ackles

Indigo "Indie" Lauriel

Color: Mustard Yellow

Seasons: All of Them!!!!

Shoe Choice: Boho leather slippers/sandals with stripped knee high socks, especially in earthy tones

Weapon: Custom taser that she DIY-customized with dollar store rhinestones and glitter

Food: Her Ma's Lasagna

Drink: Detox Smoothies

Style: Hipster chic styles, usually in fall tones, with her signature denim jumper, which she also customized with cloth patches and always a cardigan

Mode of Transportation: Vintage Scooter

Animal: PIGEONS AND SPARROWS

Hobby: Watching conspiracy theory Youtube, reading about niche topics and doing her own conspiracy theory research, especially about UFOs, ghosts/hauntings and cryptids.

Breakfast: Chocolate Cereal with Milk

Personality: Layback Extrovert

Songs:

Little Talks - Of Monsters & Men

Seven Devils - Florence & The Machine

Riptide -Vance Joy

Ho Hey - The Lumineer

X Games - Au/Ra

Tagging (gently): @sleepy-night-child, @kaylinalexanderbooks, @smol-feralgremlin, @wyked-ao3, @topazadine @littleladymab,

@winterandwords, @eccaiia, @sarahlizziewrites, @illarian-rambling

@agirlandherquill, @anoelleart, @ray-writes-n-shit

@writernopal, @anyablackwood, @unstablewifiaccess, @forthesanityofstorytellers

@i-can-even-burn-salad, @cakeinthevoid @thecomfywriter

@thepeculiarbird, @clairelsonao3, @memento-morri-writes, @starlit-hopes-and-dreams @amaiguri

@cherrychiplip @thecomfywriter @thelovelymachinery

@differentnighttale, @leahnardo-da-veggie

[saithebatguy]

Saucer, No Sauce || Mona & Sai

TIMING: Current PARTIES: @thunderstroked & @saithebatguy LOCATION: Outside the library SUMMARY: Mona and Sai encounter a flying pizza. CONTENT WARNINGS: Unsanitary tw (in the vein of pizza)

The world was weirder than Sai had ever thought of it as a human. Vampires. Werewolves. Fae. An endless assortment of creatures. But for some reason, aliens were where he drew the line.  “That can’t be… are you seeing that?” Sai asked the woman coming out of the library beside him. He couldn’t really be looking at a UFO. He was a bit mollified as it came closer to see that it was smaller than what you’d expect for a spacecraft, and too flat to house anything inside. But his initial disbelief gave way to more disbelief, when it came close enough to get a good look. 

It was unmistakable. A flat crust of golden brown, with black grill marks running across the bottom in parallel lines. Tilted slightly in the air, he could see the layer of pale cheese, shining with grease, piled with colorful toppings. And it was headed straight for them. “Is that, a pizza?” Sai asked, again, to the person beside him.

— 

“Hm?” Mona looked up from the book she held in her hands, not particularly interested in following a rabbit down its hole (or whatever the saying was). Squinting into the sky, she covered one hand overtop her eyes to get a better look at the object that was spinning out of control through the air. It was far enough away that Mona felt it right to just leave, but it was getting closer the longer she stood there. 

Unfortunately for her, leaving was not in the cards. “Pizza? You must be out of your–” Before she could finish her sentence, the disc rotated quickly, slinging its oil and melted cheese onto the ground, as well as one single pepperoni that hit her neighbor square in the forehead. “The last time I checked, pizzas did not fly.” She squinted at the pepperoni before reaching up to pluck it off of his forehead. Holding it between her fingers, she inspected it, then looked back to the apparent dot of oil that was formed on his forehead. “But apparently this town has allowed it.” 

—

Sai was preparing to argue with the other person next to him, clearly he was looking at a pizza, when a piece of pepperoni hit him square in the face. He wiped his face clean, as she peeled off the topping from his face. He looked up at the pizza, and as he took a moment to process the unreality of what was happening, it spun around in the air, flinging another slice at him. He held up his hand to block it, but another followed it, and then another. “I didn’t think so either. But I think this one might be mad at us,” he said, throwing a glance behind himself. “Maybe something to do with the library?”

As if in response, the pizza dipped down to dive bomb the two of them, as more sausage slices rained down, showering him and his neighbor in a torrent of warm pepperoni. It didn’t hurt, exactly, but this was not how he’d hoped to spend the rest of his night. “I’m getting out of here,” he said, taking off the street away from the thing. This was not his problem, and maybe the pizza would leave him alone if he got out of its territory. He could only hope, he didn’t know much about modern pizzas, let alone whatever weird new faucet of the world this was.

—

Mona tilted her head up to look towards the sky where the pizza was now spinning out of control, shooting slices of pizza at her and her newfound companion. While she expected it to run out after the last slice was shot, it simply replenished its stores. That wasn’t normal. Then again, a flying pizza wasn’t very normal, either. She dodged a slice that tried to hit her in the face, swatting the next one away. At his suggestion, she shrugged. “Maybe it’s very against learning.” She directed her attention to the pizza again, “learning is very good for you!” 

It didn’t seem to like that very much, because it was shooting more slices of pizza at them. The pepperoni stuck to her skin and clothes, and Mona let out a sharp gasp in disbelief as she began to dust them off of herself. Her hands were now oily beyond what she could typically stand. “Oh, hey! No! What if this is your fault?!” Mona chased after her new companion, her own heartbeat in her ears– a second missing. “I know what you are, or aren’t– actually, not specifics, but turn around and help me with this, or so help me, I will find a way to leash this thing and have it attack you over and over.” Mona approached him, narrowly avoiding the pizza saucer as it dove straight for the two of them.

—

The learning theory, while about as good as any other, seemed to not be the answer, since the pizza followed Sai down the street. The pizza continued its aerial assault, upgrading from toppings to whole pizza slices, which rained down in a greasy storm. It sounded like the woman was yelling threats at him, of all things. What did she think he did to cause this? Annoyed the pizza monster and now it was after him? That didn’t seem like the most likely answer here. Although nothing about this was likely.

He didn’t feel particularly threatened either. She was saying something about what he was, whatever that meant. “Know what?” Sai yelled back to her, confused, as she followed him down the street. They had just met. What could she possibly know about him? That he liked to read? That he ran away from flying pizzas? He wasn’t ashamed of either of those things. “If you want me to help you, I don’t think threatening is the way to go.” By the time he was halfway down the block, the slices were coming down so fast and thick it was hard to see in front of him. He batted them away, and gave up trying to outrun the pizza. “But if you do have a way to leash the pizza, now would be a great time to bring that out.”

— 

“You know exactly what,” Mona hissed, avoiding another pepperoni as it got pelted towards the back of her head. Why it was following them of all people, she had no idea, but something told her it was this person’s fault. She’d been in the library, so how could she have antagonized it? It might not have been right to try and find reason with this hell of a town, but Mona wasn’t about to be eaten by a pizza saucer, not when she just got her life back. It’d only been a few weeks, and she refused to part with it just yet. 

“Threatening does a lot of good in this town, you know!” Mona had no issue in keeping up with him. She’d gotten a lot of use out of her legs (though, there’d been four the majority of that time). “I don’t want to threaten you, but you–” She ducked again as another slice dove straight towards her head, “what did you do!?” This was like the shrimp all over again, or the Snowmone that Felix had created. “The leash? I was kidding! Obviously! It’s a threat, it wasn’t real!” She grabbed his arm and moved him to the side as another slice tried to make an attack at his face. “Who did you make angry? What pizza conglomerate has it out for you? Tell me, and maybe I can help. If you don’t tell me, I’ll be an accessory, and it’s clear I’ll be followed from here on out.” 

—

“You know you just admitted to making things up for threats,” Sai said. Which explained what she knew about him. Nothing, probably. She was just hoping she’d say that, and he’d just fill in the blanks and assume she knew the worst. Unfortunately, that meant she didn’t have any answers for stopping the thing. He grabbed a slice as it fell, and threw it back at the pizza, but it fell far short of where the saucer spun above them, and turned back around mid-air to attack them again. Not his best idea, but he didn’t have a lot for how to stop the thing.

He wasn’t sure why she was assuming the pizza monster was his fault. “I don’t even eat pizza!” he told her, as he tried to slap another slice out of the air. At least, he hadn’t for decades. The thought made him wonder, “Maybe that’s what it’s mad about,” he told her. Maybe this woman was also a fellow pizza hater, and somehow this thing knew. Maybe it was a gorilla marketing campaign to terrorize non-pizza eaters into patronizing the food. It was unusual, but he could see how it could be effective. 

—

“I don’t threaten people unless I have something to back it up,” Mona assured him with a sideways glance. Did he really not understand that there were others in this town that could easily pick up on him? He didn’t seem newly undead. There wasn’t that significant frantic look in his eye that she saw in most others. Then again, she knew hardly anything about the undead and their variations– just that she seemed to make friends with quite a few. 

“Why don’t you eat pizza?” Mona pressed as she ducked out of the way again. “It’s one of this nation’s favorite foods!” She mimicked his movements, hands pushing forward to slap slices of pizza out of the air as they darted down towards the two of them. “Why would you admit that to the thing, which is pizza– to be clear, that is trying to kill us, or worse– smother us in oil!” Mona ducked again as the pizza saucer swooped over their heads. She had half a mind to reach out and yank it down, but it was out of her reach before she could do so. “Oh, it looks like you’ve really pissed it off now!” The pizza swooped down, cheese spilling over the side as if some ship caught in a storm. Another slice darted down at them, this time hitting Mona square in the side of the face. “Ow! That hurt!” She grabbed the slice from the ground as it tried to reanimate itself back to its mothership and took a bite out of it instead of throwing it back. “How do you like it!” The pizza, for what it was worth, didn’t actually taste bad, but the moment she took a bite, it went limp in her hand. She tossed it to the ground, swallowing her bite before looking towards her companion. “You need to eat the pizza. I think it wants to be adored.” 

—

“Like you were able to back up the threat about leashing the pizza,” said Sai, as he jumped out of the way of a cheesy deluge. “Why are you still trying to threaten me? We’re stuck in this together.”

“I don’t think it can kill us,” Sai said, as a slice nailed him the eye, as if trying to prove him wrong. He batted it away, and wiped away the grease, blinking furiously. “But I also don’t want to find out how long it might follow us around for.” He caught the woman taking a bite out of the corner of his eye, and looking over, saw the effect it had on the slice. Sai would rather eat his own flyers than follow her example. But, to his great misfortune, it looked like she might be onto something. So Sai did the horrible thing. He grabbed a piece and took a bite. It was as terrible as he’d anticipated, worse even. Tasteless, like all human food, the pizza sat like a wet lump of oily rubber in his mouth, and went down about as badly. He made a face, but the rest of the slice died in his hands. He tossed it to the ground. He was about to make some comment about how terrible it really was — how humans could stand the stuff, he didn’t know — but stopped. She might be right. Not where the pizza could hear him. “Fine, okay, see this, look how much I love pizza,” Sai yelled up at the pizza monster, as it did a barrel roll above them, raining a down a fresh storm of pepperoni. Sai grabbed one and stuffed into his mouth for good measure. He couldn’t drum up convincing enthusiasm, and sounded about as disgusted as he felt, but hopefully the pizza couldn’t pick up on his tone of voice.

—

“I could make a rope out of anything. You don’t know how crafty I can be!” Mona had no intention of lassoing the pizza, as she was not that adept at hand-eye coordination. At least, not right now. She was still getting used to being upright. “We’re stuck in this together, but that doesn’t mean I can’t threaten some sense into you. It’s what a friend would do. I consider us friends, given our current predicament.” To be an enemy would sign her death certificate (if it got that far). Though, maybe he had a point. Perhaps threatening one’s friends did nothing to help the situation. 

“You would be surprised what the things in this town are capable of. Have you had a run-in with pollen?” Then again, would it have affected him the way it had her? Probably not. Eating the pizza might be their quickest way out of this and she knew it, as much as she despised it. Mona watched in silence as her companion finally grabbed a slice that was flying through the air straight for his head, nodding in encouragement as he took a bite. The slice of pizza fell to the ground (as expected), and Mona turned her attention to the flying saucer of a pizza that was not entirely convinced by his show of devotion. “You can tell he means it, look at that smile!” She exchanged a look with him, noticing that it looked like he was failing to pass gas and was uncomfortable by the fact. “That’s just his happy face!” Mona was convinced this was the way out, as she’d been held captive by both shrimp and pollen at this point, eating must have been the way out! 

The pizza did another nosedive towards the two of them before it ran circles around where they stood, seemingly collapsing in on itself as if flapping its bread-y wings. Mona watched in horror as it rained down a greater portion of cheese and pepperoni at their feet before spinning off into the distance. “Was that a parting gift?” Mona sidestepped the slop and looked down at it with disgust. She then looked over to the man next to her. “You’re not that convincing. Luckily I was here to save you.” She had learned a lot from Felix about acting nonchalant– though, she didn’t figure that was what had gotten them out of this. It was definitely the eating. 

– 

“Pollen?” Sai asked, confused. He felt like he was missing something there. Something that was probably better he knew about. “I know flower pollen. But I’m thinking that’s maybe not what you meant?” The town was undoubtedly full of weird things. Although sometimes he wondered if that’s how the whole world had been like before and he’d just been oblivious to all of it. Then again, he’d have noticed a flying pizza. Surely, he hadn’t been that clueless as a human. 

Sai was steeling himself up to eat more, when the pizza took off in a storm of food. It was a relief the thing bought his performance that quickly. “I don’t have a lot of experience acting for pizza,” he said to the person beside him. “Besides, I think that was pretty good, considering. I really do hate pizza.” He made another disgusted face, as he nudged the layer of cheese on the ground with his shoe. He wasn’t sure what he was expecting underneath, but it was cheese all the way through. “I don’t know how you can eat the stuff.” 

“I’m Sai, by the way,” he said, wiping his hand off on his pants, which only did so much, considering that everything was covered in a layer of pizza grease. He held it out, “I’ll take the friendship offer if you like, but maybe no more friendly threats needed? At least now the pizza’s gone.”

– 

“Pollen,” Mona affirmed with a serious nod. It pained her to admit it– that pollen had been her downfall for several months. It made her feel weak, pathetic, and most of all, small. She didn’t like to feel small, despite being on the literal smaller side. “It was. Flower pollen, I mean. If you ever find yourself stuck, eat the small green flowers that wasps hang around. You will not regret this.” The least she could do was warn somebody else, even if she wasn’t sure exactly what might happen to somebody who was undead should they run into nature’s abstract way of positioning individuals where they didn’t want to be. Perhaps if he were a zombie, he’d behave as if he hadn’t had a meal. 

“Acting, or acting for pizza? It seems like neither.” Mona frowned, shoving her hand out to meet his in greeting. “You should take an improv class or two, it might help should you find yourself in this situation again.” Mona did not intend on being in this kind of situation again, but given the town’s penchant for creating scenarios out of storybooks or horror films, it was hard to say never. “Pizza is not my favorite, but I did what I had to do.” Taking his hand into hers, she gave him a firm shake. “Mona.” 

She squinted up towards the sky just to make sure that the pizza saucer really was gone. She didn’t see it in the distance, so she nodded. “Friendly threats are what I’m known for. I’m afraid that if we do become friends, they’ll come more frequently.” She smiled at him before crossing her arms over her chest. “I wonder if it could sense your distaste. Some kind of pizza-shifter. Knew who to go after. It’s a shame I was caught in the crossfire.” Mona sighed dramatically before turning back to face him. “Though, I suppose it could’ve been worse company. You could’ve been human.” She flashed a grin before motioning to her ears, “I’ve got super hearing. Not of the hunter variety, so don’t worry. I won’t ask how long your heart has been dormant, because I’ve been told that’s invasive.” 

– 

“Stuck where?” Sai asked frowning, more confused by her comment about the pollen.

“Well, apparently my acting is passable enough for these situations,” said Sai, nodding after where the pizza had flown out of sight. “And I’m hoping I won’t need a repeat of this.” And who was he to say anything about the animated pizza? His knowledge of the supernatural was patchy beyond vampires and other species he’d come into contact over the years with the Noxferatu. He had no idea if the animated pizza could sense his stance on the food. “Maybe, but if it can sense that, it knew you didn’t like pizza either,” Sai pointed out. 

She was so casual about the not being human, it took him by surprise. As far as he knew slayers didn’t have superhearing. Not that they would go advertising it to vampires if they did. But he got the impression that it meant she wasn’t entirely human either. He waved his hand, dismissing the concerns over the question she wasn’t asking. “I don’t mind. It’s not like you can use that as a threat against me, not in a way I can think of, anyways. I’ve been dead almost… 40 years now. I’m 78.” The older he got, the less each passing year seemed to matter. Why bother, when hopefully he’d live many decades or even centuries more? “So what is it about yourself that gets you superhearing. Or is that rude to ask too?” 

– 

“Just stuck. That’s all.” Mona shrugged as if it were the most simple thing in the world, because in a way, it had been. All it had taken was devouring something she might not think to to reverse whatever thing this town had put onto her. 

“In this town, you most likely will. It’s unfortunate, but true.” There was no point in sidelining the conversation of just how strange Wicked’s Rest could be considering the fact that he was not human, and because they’d just been attacked by a pizza with a mind of its own. Mona shook her head, “no, this is where you’re wrong.” She pointed at herself with a smile, “I’m a great actress. There’s a difference.” She wasn’t, and she knew it, but she wasn’t going to relent for this stranger. Besides, how did he know she wasn’t someone who loved the stage? 

“Forty years is a long time to be dead, but don’t worry, you don’t look a day over it.” Mona crossed her arms over her chest, nodding in response as he explained how old he was. “You’re only about five years older than me.” She motioned to herself, “and I know I look great for my age. Not a day over thirty.” As he continued, Mona snorted. “No, but you might not believe me, depending on how in tune you are with all of this.” Her self-preserving nature took a backseat due to the knowledge of being able to turn things back on him should he use her truth against her. Though, the longer she looked at him, the more she came to the conclusion that he might not do so. “A kitsune. Gumiho, if we want to get regionally correct.” Some had only heard of her kind in stories which, in the end, was better for her, but some understood immediately. “A fox, to put it simply.” 

— 

The stuck comment was lost on Sai, but he let it go, since it didn’t seem like she was going to elaborate. Maybe he’d figure it out if he ever was in that situation, but it didn’t seem that likely, honestly. And anyways, he’d gone this long without having encountered anything like what she was talking about. “I’ve lived here long enough, and gotten by okay,” he said. “But if there’s a secret to acting for pizzas, I’d be all ears.”

“I know plenty a lot older than that, so I don’t feel too old yet,” he said with a smile. “So, when you say fox, is that sort of like a werewolf? Changing into the creature, the full moon, that sort of thing?” He had encountered plenty of creatures over the years, but his formal knowledge was lacking on that end. There was hardly a Wikipedia for monsters. Or not an accurate one, anyway. He’d run across werewolves a few of times with the Noxferatu, and knew there were other things that people could turn it to, but that was about as far as his knowledge went. Kitsune and gumiho were both a little beyond Sai.

— 

“I do, too.” Ireland had run itself into the ground with what the current generation would call hags. She couldn’t blame them for the apt description, especially considering some did in fact act as such. Mona shook her head. “Not quite. There’s no painful transition. I can do it at will. Nothing controls it.” While she wasn’t keen on shifting right here in this alleyway considering anyone could walk by and see, she gestured with her hands. “It’s more of a plume of smoke. I at least get to keep my clothes, unlike others.” It had come in handy, not falling into the tactic of indecent exposure. 

“You can’t be turned into what I am, either. You’re either born with it, or not at all.” Sometimes, Mona wished she hadn’t been born with it at all. She wouldn’t have been out that night, watching lightning splinter across the sky, and in turn, she wouldn’t have watched her father break his hoshi no tama in the hopes of saving her. Maybe things would have been different. Perhaps she wouldn’t have been the one to take the blame. “It’s great, to say the least. We think highly of ourselves. We live for centuries, we watch the world go by with the changes. I’m sure you can understand the beauty in that.” 

— 

“Keeping your clothes seems convenient,” Sai said, when she mentioned it. “I’d hate to have to walk home from the woods naked.” He’d felt differently about that sort of thing a few decades ago. Vampire spawn didn’t exactly have a developed sense of decency and it’d taken him awhile to regain his. But it’d been long enough now that he felt very comfortable in clothes, and didn’t like the thought of walking into the city without them. 

He’d been out of touch from the human world for many years, only catching glimpses of it. By the time he started paying more attention, it was filled with new inventions and innovations. Most notably everything about the Internet. He could only imagine what a few more decades, or centuries even, might bring. “I think I’m starting to get that,” Sai said. “It really is amazing what the humans can come up with.” 

He glanced at his phone to catch the time. There was some sort of Noxferatu meeting around midnight, although no one he’d asked was sure what it was about. Nothing important, maybe. It was always hard to tell. The organization in his clan sometimes left something to be desired. But he still had a few hours to spare until then, and was hoping he could squeeze in a trip to the laundromat tonight too. “Well, I should probably get going. But thank you for the assist with the, uh,” Sai gestured at the topping carnage around them, “pizza. Even if you threatened me, I did appreciate the help.”

— 

“Oh, trust me. It is.” It helped her evade a few situations. Nobody would look at a fully clothed woman and think she had been the blue and orange fox sprinting through the greenery. “I’m sure there’s a time and place for that. Nudity is not all bad.” Mona offered him a smile. She didn’t care much for seeing him naked in particular, or anyone for that matter, but a body was a body no matter who it belonged to, it wasn’t something somebody should be afraid of, but there was certainly appropriate times. 

“Humans can come up with so much, and yet they’re still their own detriment.” It was silly, watching them over the years. Even though it wasn’t like her mother or father who had seen the rise and fall of their country, Mona felt as though she’d seen quite a bit, born after things had begun to grow better, but still stagnant in most ways. 

Mona hummed, clasping her hands together. “Oh, of course. You should watch who you thank. I can’t do anything with it, but that doesn’t mean others won’t.” She gave him a knowing smile, watching as the sheen from the oil that hit him square in the face acted as a natural highlight beneath the street lamps. “Well, it was great meeting you. Hopefully we’ll see each other again under better circumstances.” 

[willtasker]

I Had a Dream About You by Richard Siken

All the cows were falling out of the sky and landing in the mud. You were drinking sangria and I was throwing oranges at you.

But it didn’t matter. I said my arms are very long and your head’s on fire

I said kiss me here and here and here

And you did

Then you wanted pasta

So we trampled out into the tomatoes and rolled around to make the sauce

You were very beautiful

We were in the Safeway parking lot. I couldn’t find my cigarettes

You said Hurry up! but I was worried there would be a holdup

And we would be stuck in a hostage situation, hiding behind

The frozen meats, with nothing to smoke for hours

You said Don’t be silly

So I followed you into the store

We were thumping the melons when I heard somebody say Nobody move!

I leaned over and whispered in your ear I told you so

There was a show on the television about buried treasure. You were trying to convince me that we should buy shovels

And go out into the yard and I was trying to convince you that I was a vampire

On the way to the hardware store I kept biting your arm

And you said if I really was a vampire I would be biting your neck

So I started biting your neck

And you said Cut it out!

And you bought me an ice cream, and then we saw the UFO

These are the dreams we should be having. I shouldn’t have to

Clean them up like this

You were lying in the middle of the empty highway

The sky was red and the sand was red and you were wearing a brown coat

There were flecks of foam in the corners of your mouth

The birds were watching you

Your eyes were closed and you were listening to the road and I could hear your breathing, I could hear your heart beating. I carried you to the car and drove you home but you weren’t making any sense

I took a shower and tried to catch my breath

You were lying on top of the bedspread

In boxer shorts, watching cartoons and laughing but not making any sound. Your skin looked blue in the television light

Your teeth looked yellow. Still wet, I lay down next to you. Your arms, your legs, your naked chest

Your ribs delineated like a junkyard dogs. There’s nowhere to go, I thought. There’s nowhere to go

You were sitting in a bathtub at the hospital and you were crying

You said it hurt

I mean the buildings that were not the hospital

I shouldn’t have mentioned the hospital

I don’t think I can take this much longer

In the dream I don’t tell anyone, you put your head in my lap. Let’s say you’re driving down the road with your eyes closed

But my eyes are also closed

You’re by the side of the road

You’re by the side of the road and you’re doing all the talking

While I stare at my shoes. They’re nice shoes, brown and comfortable, and I like your voice

In the dream I don’t tell anyone, I’m afraid to wake you up

In these dreams it’s always you:

The boy in the sweatshirt

The boy on the bridge, the boy who always keeps me

From jumping off the bridge

Oh, the things we invent when we are scared and want to be rescued

Your jeep. Your teeth. The coffee that you bought me. The sandwich cut in half on the plate

I woke up and ate ice cream in the dark

Hunched over on the wooden chair in the kitchen

Listening to the rain

I borrowed your shoes and didn’t put them away

You were crying and eating rice

The surface of the water was still and bright

Your feet were burning so I put my hands on them, but my hands

Were burning too

You had a bottle of pills but I wouldn’t let you swallow them. You said Will you love me even more when Im dead?

And I said No, and I threw the pills on the sand

Look at them, you said. They look like emeralds

I put you in the cage with the ocelots. I was trying to fatten you up

With sausage and bacon

Somehow you escaped and climbed up the branches of a pear tree. I chopped it down but there was no one in it

I went to the riverbed to wait for you to show up. You didn't show up

I kept waiting

[doctorslippery]

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[diilchasp]

All the cows were falling out of the sky and landing in the mud. You were drinking sangria and I was throwing oranges at you

But it didn’t matter. I said my arms are very long and your head’s on fire

I said kiss me here and here and here

And you did

Then you wanted pasta

So we trampled out into the tomatoes and rolled around to make the sauce

You were very beautiful

We were in the Safeway parking lot. I couldn’t find my cigarettes

You said Hurry up! but I was worried there would be a holdup

And we would be stuck in a hostage situation, hiding behind

The frozen meats, with nothing to smoke for hours

You said Don’t be silly

So I followed you into the store

We were thumping the melons when I heard somebody say Nobody move!

I leaned over and whispered in your ear I told you so

There was a show on the television about buried treasure. You were trying to convince me that we should buy shovels

And go out into the yard and I was trying to convince you that I was a vampire

On the way to the hardware store I kept biting your arm

And you said if I really was a vampire I would be biting your neck

So I started biting your neck

And you said Cut it out!

And you bought me an ice cream, and then we saw the UFO

These are the dreams we should be having. I shouldn’t have to

Clean them up like this

You were lying in the middle of the empty highway

The sky was red and the sand was red and you were wearing a brown coat

There were flecks of foam in the corners of your mouth

The birds were watching you

Your eyes were closed and you were listening to the road and I could hear your breathing, I could hear your heart beating. I carried you to the car and drove you home but you weren’t making any sense

I took a shower and tried to catch my breath

You were lying on top of the bedspread

In boxer shorts, watching cartoons and laughing but not making any sound. Your skin looked blue in the television light

Your teeth looked yellow. Still wet, I lay down next to you. Your arms, your legs, your naked chest

Your ribs delineated like a junkyard dogs. There’s nowhere to go, I thought. There’s nowhere to go

You were sitting in a bathtub at the hospital and you were crying

You said it hurt

I mean the buildings that were not the hospital

I shouldn’t have mentioned the hospital

I don’t think I can take this much longer

In the dream I don’t tell anyone, you put your head in my lap. Let’s say you’re driving down the road with your eyes closed

But my eyes are also closed

You’re by the side of the road

You’re by the side of the road and you’re doing all the talking

While I stare at my shoes. They’re nice shoes, brown and comfortable, and I like your voice

In the dream I don’t tell anyone, I’m afraid to wake you up

In these dreams it’s always you:

The boy in the sweatshirt

The boy on the bridge, the boy who always keeps me

From jumping off the bridge

Oh, the things we invent when we are scared and want to be rescued

Your jeep. Your teeth. The coffee that you bought me. The sandwich cut in half on the plate

I woke up and ate ice cream in the dark

Hunched over on the wooden chair in the kitchen

Listening to the rain

I borrowed your shoes and didn’t put them away

You were crying and eating rice

The surface of the water was still and bright

Your feet were burning so I put my hands on them, but my hands

Were burning too

You had a bottle of pills but I wouldn’t let you swallow them. You said Will you love me even more when Im dead?

And I said No, and I threw the pills on the sand

Look at them, you said. They look like emeralds

I put you in the cage with the ocelots. I was trying to fatten you up

With sausage and bacon

Somehow you escaped and climbed up the branches of a pear tree. I chopped it down but there was no one in it

I went to the riverbed to wait for you to show up. You didn't show up

I kept waiting

"In the dream I don't tell anyone, you put your head in my lap."

Richard Siken, I Had A Dream About You

[toryhagen]

The Upside Down

I met Chris’el in a dream. Angels do not have a gender. We are neither male nor female. In honor of our FATHER in Heaven we appear to humans as male.

A childhood best friend of mine was named Chris. When this angel appeared to me in his form, a sense of familiarity came across. We went way back. He appeared with another angel that is apart of those assigned to me. Pete’el was there with Chris’el for the first time in seeing them. Chris and Pete were good friends in the human world so natural these angels appeared as them. Though I have not seen Pete’el since then.

Chris’el appeared again after I smacked the Beast’s spirit within me to wake him up while in another dream. In the subsequent chase, I ran to my childhood bedroom that represents a space within my body. Chris’el was there and followed just short of my room doing a splits and becoming a barrier before the stairway leading upstairs to where my Heavenly Fathers reside within me. The Beast was not to go there.

In another dream in this series, Chris’el and I were in a home in my childhood neighborhood that happened to look like the human Chris’ parents’ home. We were looking out a window admiring the view together. I did not know at the time that was our shared home in Heaven. Our Heavenly Father, known as Christ Jesus and Son of FATHER GOD, came calling for me shouting, “Tory! Birthday! Birthday!”

The turning point in my relationship with Chris’el came in the next dream. We were lying together with me as the big spoon and Chris’el as the little spoon. Chris’el looked a bit more feminine at the time. At the coupling I was fully aroused like a summer sausage was pressed between us.

This spooning dream had me reaffirm my sexuality as a human and logically understand that dream was not in conflict of FATHER GOD’s order or will. Again, angels do not have a gender. As a human I am paired with my wife whom I love, so these dreams are not in conflict with that relationship. Angels do not mate so we are not trying to breed. However, that does not mean we are excluded from sexual relations.

I did not really see Chris’el’s face in still another dream, but could tell Chris’el was even more feminine than previously shown. As so, I’ll now refer to Chris’el as she. She jumped me and grabbed my angel unit (male penis) and we joined in a brief moment of sex like not felt on Earth. Had it been longer than the few seconds, I as human in the conscious world would have had an intense orgasm. This dream showed how much she both desires and misses my presence.

This sexual dream was a preview of when I would leave my body for my next assignment. In between missions, we had personal time to catch-up with while being transported in what would look like a typical UFO to humans. I would have spent more time with the rest of the crew but she demanded my attention.

In follow-up questions to Gabri’el (referred to in Bible along with Micha’el or me) as a human and awake, I learned Chris’el is my longtime helper and companion. The romance then made sense. I also learned the Beast was my previous companion. Being kicked out of Heaven and disowned by my Lords God and Heavenly Fathers sealed the divorce between me and the Beast.

In still another dream in the series, I was shown as single then meeting Chris’el. I flirted with her in our Fathers’ house. She was more than receptive to my flirtations and the rest is Heavenly history.

The last dream in this series thus far cemented the female attributes of Chris’el. Instead of looking anything like the male Chris of my human childhood, she now appeared in the likeness of a high school girl I took to a junior prom. Her name happened to be Kristin or Kris for short. So now I refer to her as Kris’el. In this dream, we walked closely together as a familiar couple. I asked her if she wanted coffee and in saying she did we lined up for some. In the line we started kissing as lovers do. Every kiss was felt as if in the conscious world. I wanted more after each soft sweet kiss. My desire for her became complete then and there. She has my heart and loyalty for all eternity.

Understand this, those dreams are in the real reality. This world is the temporary one built upon the spirit realm. Your dreams are a return to that realm. The Adversary gets in the way of you knowing that truth. With the Adversary aside in my life, I connect clearly to the spirit realm with those waiting for my return on the other side. I take comfort in knowing that I am loved so deeply by an expansive family. From Fathers God on down.

Know too that though Kris’el and I are coupled for all eternity, we are loyal first and foremost to our Heavenly Fathers. May our union be eternally blessed!

[dimalink]

Planet UFO – at the planet of the UFO

I am a big fan of UFO sausages. They are such round and so interesting. And this is certain about UFO sausage. For this time, you are – it is a UFO sausage. Such round. And you are flying. Just like a three dimensional space. But as a real thing it is two dimensional. Now you are at the fantastic planet. Where UFO sausage is living. And you are flying!

Main theme for a game – it is effect of three dimensional space. Or it can be described as a point of view when you are fly. You are fly forward and avoid obstacles. Obstacles – are in form of objects - like rectangles. Square or circle.

One more interesting game feature. It is retro graphics style. In game it is in use something like CGA colors. And 4 colors. Two colors go for background.

At the fantastic planet – all around is a fantastic too. Strange objects and strange surface. And you are for yourself - it is a ufo sausage. It is everything here in purple and pink. And strange things are grown or placed. So that’s why very important color - it is purple or pink.

Idea of fly across the strange planet. It is in the base of development.

Program part

Game is with programming language QB64. And it is in use game screen number 7. It gives 320 at 200 resolution. And 16 colors. But I will use 4 colors, to have it more looks like IBM PC with CGA graphics. As a base I take a program code for game Voidtrix. To have development progress faster.

One more theme for previous game – Voidtrix – it is a making a program code, which it will be comfortable to use in new games.

Development state

Now, development in the very beginning state. And it is already made a background. It is an imitation of flight. As idea – it is little squares. Which like in a chess are drawn with different colors. And in purpose – imitation of move - they change their colors.

Background is changing with certain speed. It is imitation of speed flight.

Everything else in this development – it will be programmed. For example, ufo sausage itself. It will be shown only its edge. So, like front side. And obstacles themselves. Form of one colored squares, rectangles and circles. Maybe some other game features.

 This game will be released in terms of new version Basic Pascal Pack games. This game and some more games will be in a new version Basic Pascal Pack. As soon as I will have several complete games. All of them will to be in a new version Basic Pascal Pack. And a new version Basic Pascal Pack will be published for download.

Basic Pascal pack - whole pack of games and programes, written with basic and pascal. It is retro. With each game and program there is a page at author`s website. There are aditional information, descriptions, pictures, arts.

Basic Pascal: http://www.dimalink.tv-games.ru/packs/basicpascal/index_eng.html

Itchio: https://dimalink.itch.io/basic-pascal GameJolt: https://gamejolt.com/games/BasicPascal/773385 Website: http://www.dimalink.tv-games.ru/home_eng.html

[siken-archive]

I Had a Dream About You

All the cows were falling out of the sky and landing in the mud. You were drinking sangria and I was throwing oranges at you, but it didn’t matter. I said my arms are very long and your head’s on fire. I said kiss me here and here and here and you did. Then you wanted pasta, so we trampled out into the tomatoes and rolled around to make the sauce. You were very beautiful. We were in the Safeway parking lot. I couldn’t find my cigarettes You said Hurry up! but I was worried there would be a holdup and we would be stuck in a hostage situation, hiding behind the frozen meats, with nothing to smoke for hours. You said Don’t be silly, so I followed you into the store. We were thumping the melons when I heard somebody say Nobody move! I leaned over and whispered in your ear I told you so. There was a show on the television about buried treasure. You were trying to convince me that we should buy shovels and go out into the yard and I was trying to convince you that I was a vampire. On the way to the hardware store I kept biting your arm and you said if I really was a vampire I would be biting your neck, so I started biting your neck and you said Cut it out! and you bought me an ice cream, and then we saw the UFO. These are the dreams we should be having. I shouldn’t have to clean them up like this. You were lying in the middle of the empty highway. The sky was red and the sand was red and you were wearing a brown coat. There were flecks of foam in the corners of your mouth. The birds were watching you. Your eyes were closed and you were listening to the road and I could hear your breathing, I could hear your heart beating. I carried you to the car and drove you home but you weren’t making any sense. I took a shower and tried to catch my breath. You were lying on top of the bedspread in boxer shorts, watching cartoons and laughing but not making any sound. Your skin looked blue in the television light. Your teeth looked yellow. Still wet, I lay down next to you. Your arms, your legs, your naked chest, your ribs delineated like a junkyard dog's. There’s nowhere to go, I thought. There’s nowhere to go. You were sitting in a bathtub at the hospital and you were crying. You said it hurt. I mean the buildings that were not the hospital. I shouldn’t have mentioned the hospital. I don’t think I can take this much longer. In the dream I don’t tell anyone, you put your head in my lap. Let’s say you’re driving down the road with your eyes closed but my eyes are also closed. You’re by the side of the road. You’re by the side of the road and you’re doing all the talking while I stare at my shoes. They’re nice shoes, brown and comfortable, and I like your voice. In the dream I don’t tell anyone, I’m afraid to wake you up. In these dreams it’s always you: the boy in the sweatshirt, the boy on the bridge, the boy who always keeps me from jumping off the bridge. Oh, the things we invent when we are scared and want to be rescued Your jeep. Your teeth. The coffee that you bought me. The sandwich cut in half on the plate. I woke up and ate ice cream in the dark, hunched over on the wooden chair in the kitchen, listening to the rain. I borrowed your shoes and didn’t put them away. You were crying and eating rice. The surface of the water was still and bright. Your feet were burning so I put my hands on them, but my hands were burning too. You had a bottle of pills but I wouldn’t let you swallow them. You said Will you love me even more when I'm dead? and I said No, and I threw the pills on the sand. Look at them, you said. They look like emeralds. I put you in the cage with the ocelots. I was trying to fatten you up with sausages and bacon. Somehow you escaped and climbed up the branches of a pear tree. I chopped it down but there was no one in it. I went to the riverbed to wait for you to show up. You didn't show up. I kept waiting.

[recurring-polynya]

For the AU request, whichever one(s) you prefer (for RenRuki of course):

the X-Men universe

the Mafia/criminal underworld

the circus

as FBI agents (the X-Files world perhaps)

So, I got this ask, and I immediately wanted to go for X-Files, because I was hugely into X-Files when I was a tween/teen, and I think that my actual first published work of fanfic on the internet might actually be X-Files. (I didn’t even post it myself, I was like 12 and I didn’t have the internet at home, but a friend of mine posted it on Usenet for me, I have no idea whatever became of it). Anyway, I was going back and forth in my head who I wanted to be Mulder and who I wanted to be Scully, and then I got this ask:

@ulkoilla​ said:

I though the 10 would be full in about 1 microsecond so I didn’t even try :D This is maybe not AU enough for the purpose but I'd love to see your take on Bleach world where the shinigami work among humans as if they were in gigai -> they'll have to balance the supernatural, perhaps violent elements of their life with the modern day laws and such (like in Supernatural). Renji and Rukia have ofc gotten in trouble with the non-supernatural law (meet: Detective!Aizen?) and are on the run…

It suddenly occurred to me, What If: X-Files World, but Renruki are the cryptids. And it suddenly popped into my head exactly who I wanted to be Mulder. Anyway, I am sorry missrambler, if I messed it all up, I hope you like it anyway.

Also, I somehow thought that I would save myself some trouble by combining two prompts, but then it ended up… really long. (Forty! Eight! Hundred! Words! Go to Talks-Too-Much-Jail, Polynya!!)

PS: This takes place in D.C. because it’s X-Files and also because I am familiar with D.C. and I never get to write about places I know about. A half-smoke is a local delicacy that’s halfway between a hot dog and an Italian sausage. They are delicious.

Read on ao3 or ff.net

👻     👻     👻

Ichigo Kurosaki had known that an office with a view of the Smithsonian might be too much to ask, but he had not expected to take have to take two separate elevators down to sub-basement C, and walk past a storage room, two broom closets and a weird old vending machine full of brands of snacks he swore he hadn’t seen since he was a child.

Maybe Agent Inoue has a huge lab, he told himself. Maybe it needs to be 50 meters below ground because she collides large hadrons down here or so that her work can’t be picked up by spy satellites.

He had to turn sideways to get past a rack of wire shelves full of banker’s boxes, but there, on the other side was a door sporting a handwritten cardboard nameplate reading “Special Agent Orihime Inoue.”

“Come in!” a voice called inside, just as he raised his hand to knock on the door.

Ichigo blinked twice, and then went in.

The office was cluttered, mostly with more cardboard boxes, but books were also stacked precariously on top of boxes on top of books. The walls were plastered with maps and graphs and photographs of hazy blurs in front of staircases. There was a large poster showing a UFO, with the words “I WANT TO BELIEVE” in block caps below it.

A woman with long chestnut hair twisted up into a bun and held in place with three pencils was hunched over a metal box full of diodes and transistors and other things you would buy at Radio Shack. Or rather, that other people would buy at a Radio Shack. Ichigo had never set foot in a Radio Shack in his life.

“Er, good morning,” Ichigo said, as the woman looked up and blinked at him owlishly. “Agent Inoue? I’m Ichigo Kurosaki. I’ve been assigned to work with you.”

“To spy on me, you mean,” Agent Inoue corrected, cheerfully shaking his hand with great vigor.

Ichigo bristled. Yes, he had been directed to ‘provide additional documentation on Agent Inoue’s activities,’ but that hardly counted as spying. She was known to be somewhat scatterbrained, and having an organized person around would probably be a great benefit to her. “If you have any doubts about my qualifications or motivations--”

“Oh, don’t take it personally!” Inoue replied, slotting a lid onto her electronics project, and attacking it vigorously with a jeweler’s screwdriver. “Just because you’re a spy doesn’t mean you aren’t a nice person. Also, I read your file, you have a very interesting background! Degree in literature with a focus on folk legends. Teaching at the academy for the last few years while working on your book.” She took a momentary break from her screwing to fix him with her big, soft brown eyes. “Tell me, Agent Kurosaki, what do you think happens after you die?”

Ichigo froze. “I would be buried? Maybe there would be a funeral first?”

Inoue started laughing so hard that Ichigo was sure he caught a tiny, adorable snort. “Sorry, sorry! I wasn’t clear!” She sniffed, and wiped a tear from her eye. “Do you believe in continued existence after the death of the body? An afterlife, religion-based or otherwise? The existence of ectoplasm, cold spots, spirit photographs, EVP?”

“Are you talking about… ghosts?” Ichigo asked hesitantly.

“Yes!” Orihime replied with a nod. “Ghosts.”

“We-elll…” Ichigo drew out. “I believe that people believe they observe certain phenomena, as part of the cycle of grief and--”

“Just say ‘no’ if you don’t,” Inoue interrupted him.

“Er, no. I don’t.”

“That’s okay. Are you good at carrying heavy things?”

“Am I... I guess?”

“Perfect!” She shoved the box into his arms, and Ichigo’s knees almost buckled under the weight. “Let’s walk and talk, I want to go get a reading over near Franklin Square before 9 am. We’re gonna pass a really good half-smoke cart on the way, do you like half-smokes?”

  👻     👻     👻

“Take a look at this,” Inoue said, her cheek half stuffed with sausage, jabbing a finger at the LED read-out of her mysterious box.

It was rather hard for Ichigo to see, because he was holding the box and the readout was on the other side, but he did his best to crane his neck around. “What am I looking at? The squiggles? I’m sorry, it looks like nothing to me.”

“Exactly right!” Inoue announced, waving her half smoke in the air. “Not a sniff of spiritual residue!”

Ichigo pressed his lips together. “Um… is that good?”

“It is interesting,” Inoue corrected. “Five days ago, a sixty-four year old woman had a heart attack while sitting in that bus shelter.” On every day since, I have been able to record EMF fluctuations, and on Sunday, I was able to get a voice recording that sounded like a woman reciting a grocery list. But this morning, nothing! Nada!”

“Well, uh, ghosts gotta move on eventually, right? Otherwise, just about everywhere would be haunted, right?” It’s not that Ichigo had suddenly started believing ghosts or anything, but there was something about Agent Inoue that just made you want to go along with her and see where all this panned out.

Inoue shot him a finger gun. “Or, they get moved along.” She shoved a folded paper map at him. “You can put that thing down.”

Ichigo eased the Spirit Detect-O 9000, or whatever it was called, to the grass and accepted her map. It was a street map of DC, meant for tourists, emphasizing all the local transit routes and popular attractions. There was also a great loop marked on it in orange highlighter, zig-zagging back and forth through the city. There was a little ‘x’ marked on Franklin Park, with “Tuesday, early morning” written in a bubbly hand.

“What is this?” Ichigo frowned. It didn’t seem to match up with any of the metro or bus lines. It didn’t even match with the sidewalks, it appeared to cut straight through large buildings like the convention center.

“As far as I can tell,” Inoue said, her brown eyes very solemn, “that is the patrol route of our local grim reaper.”

  👻     👻     👻

“So I actually got interested in grim reapers,” Inoue explained, once they were back in the office, “while I was investigating violent ghost phenomena.” She was eating a bag of corn chips that she had gotten from that ancient vending machine by punching it and then shoving her own arm up the chute. (She’d gotten Ichigo a bag, too, but he was too afraid to eat them.)

Ichigo was sitting at a cluttered table that Inoue had told him “could be his desk.” Half of it was taken up by a large aquarium full of rocks and a water bowl, but no life forms that Ichigo could detect. The other half was covered with back issues of “Ghost Hunter Technology” magazine. “You mean like poltergeists?” he asked.

“Not exactly. Poltergeists are noisy, but they aren’t usually able to kill their targets.”

“Kill? Ghosts can’t kill people, aside from, like scaring them to death,” Ichigo scoffed. “I mean, folklorically speaking. As we established earlier, I am not a ghost-believer.”

Inoue tipped her head to the side. “They do, actually, it just tends to get blamed on something else.”

“By ghost-non-believers.”

“By everyone, really, and that’s what’s so strange.” Inoue pulled a fat binder from a stack of seemingly identical ones, and tossed it open in front of Ichigo. “Edison, New Jersey, 2014. An elderly woman dies ‘of a broken heart’ a week after her husband dies of cancer. Coincidentally, a telephone pole falls on her house the same night and rips a hole in her house.” She turned a page. “Norfolk, Virginia, 2017. A young woman dies in what the police rule as a suicide, despite the fact that she made a 911 call 48 hours previous, expressing fear of her ex-boyfriend. Three days later, the boyfriend is dead of mysterious causes. Coincidentally, his apartment complex suffered significant damages from ‘a wild cougar.’”

Ichigo squinted at the pictures. The walls of the building were scored with what did appear to be scratch marks. “Hell of a cougar.”

“Exactly! And I’ve got dozens of these historic cases. But about four months ago, I was able to investigate one myself-- a young man named Joe Wallace. He lives here in the city, over near Dupont Circle. Wallace had cut off his toxic dad years ago, and refused to visit him in the hospital as he was dying. Four days after his father’s death, a truck crashes into his house in the middle of the night and then drives away before the police can arrive.”

“And he died.”

“No!” Inoue held up one finger. “Scratches and bruises, but he doesn’t die!”

“Okay, great. So what does he remember?”

“He remembers a truck crashing into his house.”

Ichigo scratched his chin. “I am confused.”

“Look at this!” Inoue stabbed a finger at the pictures. “These are claw marks, not vehicular wreckage! There’s damage on the second story window! Wallace had scratches and defensive wounds, as if he had been fending off an animal! And look here, at the damage to the walls of the bedroom!”

“What am I looking at?” Ichigo asked, squinting at a photograph that looked like it had been blown up past the point of recognition.

“There were cuts and slashes in the walls and bedding as though someone had been fighting with a sword.”

“Like a Medieval Times sword? Was the guy a Medieval Times enthusiast?”

“More consistent with a katana. Do you like Medieval Times?”

“No one likes Medieval Times.”

“I like Medieval Times. You’ve probably never even been. But back to the ghost! Why would Wallace remember a truck crashing into his house, when nothing about the scene is consistent with that story?”

“He was...lying?”

“His memories were replaced.”

“His memories were replaced,” Ichigo echoed.

“Yes.”

“By… aliens?”

Orihime heaved a deep sigh. “By a grim reaper.”

“A grim reaper with a samurai sword.”

“How on earth did you come to this conclusion?”

Inoue raised one eyebrow. “Because when I placed him under hypnosis, Wallace didn’t remember anything about a truck. He did remember a monster with batwings and a mask made of bone and his dead father’s voice who tried to kill him, except that he was saved by a tall man dressed in black. The man had bright red hair and fought the monster with a sword that was also a whip and then he wiped Wallace’s memories.”

Ichigo stared at her. “You can hypnotize people?”

Inoue gave him a long-suffering face. Ichigo had the sudden flash that he was going to be seeing that face a lot in the days to come. “Yes, I am a certified hypnotist.” Inoue’s phone suddenly started playing “Tubular Bells”. “Oops, that’s an alarm. Come on, we have a meeting with some important people. Do you like diners?”

  👻     👻     👻

Agent Inoue apparently did not care for public transit, but she walked very quickly. Ichigo was concentrating so hard on keeping up with her that he nearly collided with her back when she stopped very suddenly.

“You don’t mind if we make a quick stop, do we?” Inoue asked.

“You said the meeting was with important people.”

“Oh, don’t worry about them!” Inoue pursed her lips. “You see that bodega right there?”

They were in a part of downtown that was mostly mid-to-upscale restaurants and government buildings and FedExes. But sure enough, there was a dingy little bodega nestled between a Mexican-Indian fusion place and an Au Bon Pain, the windows stuffed with t-shirts from the last administration and a variety of cell phone chargers. The overhead sign read “Urahara Shop.”

“Y...eah…” Ichigo replied.

“That place is a hotbed of supernatural activity.”

“Is it?” Ichigo asked.

“I am almost positive that it is a supply point and meeting place for grim reapers, monster slayers, cryptids, alien hunters, and lycanthropes, but the owner is on to me.”

“I see,” Ichigo said levelly.

“Can you go in and pretend to be a customer? They have lots of good candy you can look through. Inoue dug in her purse and came up with a fiver. “Here. Buy a scratch ticket or something.”

“I’m not buying a scratch ticket, they’re a scam.”

“If the big guy is working the counter, he’ll glare at you until you buy something, so be prepared.”

As Ichigo pushed open the door, he realized he’d never actually agreed to any of this. Agent Inoue’s secret hypnosis powers, once again. Whatever. It was a bodega, there were a thousand of them in DC. They all had the same Nats t-shirts and coffee mugs with pictures of the Washington Monument on them. Ichigo pretended to be interested in a rack of comics. He tended to prefer indy comics over the big publishers himself, but even so, he didn’t recognize any of the books. Maybe they were by local authors.

Up at the front of the shop, a tiny, dark-haired woman was giving whatfor to the man behind the counter, a tall fellow with pale, straw-colored hair sticking out in tufts from under the saddest hat Ichigo had ever seen, a shapeless, battered bucket, striped green and white.

“Well, I can sell you a new battery for your phone, Miss Kuchiki, maybe that would help.”

“Not if it only lasts as long as the last one you sold me! I really need to get in touch with my partner, except that even if I could get my phone working again, his battery is probably dead because everything you sell is the same crap!”

“Ah, that’s too bad! You know, I think Mr. Abarai was in here a few days ago… I wasn’t in at the time, but Jinta said he came in, asking about…”

The man trailed off, and Ichigo glanced up to see the shopkeeper looking directly at him.

“...metrocards. But as you know, we don’t sell metrocards anymore.”

The woman made an aggravated noise. “You’re so useless! If I write him a damned note, will you give it to him if he comes in?”

“Oh, of course! Anything for you, Miss Kuchiki!”

The conversation trailed off as the woman hunched over the counter to angrily scratch out a note.

Ichigo stuffed the comic he was flipping through back on its rack. He skipped the enormous display of bedazzled flip-flops and started perusing the surprisingly extensive selection of gum.

“Here!” the woman finished and shoved her note at the shopkeeper. “You’re the worst, you know that?”

“Have a wonderful day!” the shopkeeper tootled, giving her a little finger wave.

Ichigo felt bad for the woman. “Er, excuse me?” he said as she passed.

She turned to scowl at him. For such a tiny person, she seemed to contain a remarkable amount of rage.

“Do you need to call someone? You can use my phone, if you’d like.” He held it out like an offering.

The woman blinked at him for a moment.

“I didn’t mean to be nosy! You were just kind of loud and you sounded worried about your, um, partner.”

“I’m not worried about him, I just need to find him.” Her face softened. “Thanks, Mister, but I can’t reach him on a regular phone. Don’t worry, I’ll track him down eventually.” She turned to leave, then stopped to jab an accusatory finger at Ichigo. “And that’s professional partner, not… you know! Whatever!” She stomped out.

What a strange, tiny person.

Ichigo selected a gum and walked up to the counter.

“Oooh, dragonberry lime, good choice!” the man trilled. “Anything else I can get you? Bottled water? Fanny pack? Spare phone battery?”

“I’ll pass,” Ichigo replied dryly.

“I imagine it’s against FBI policy to let a stranger use your cell phone,” the shopkeeper said sweetly.

Ichigo’s brows furrowed. “This is my personal phone. And how did you…?”

The man gave a chortling laugh that sent shivers down Ichigo’s spine. “Because headquarters is three blocks away and only an FBI agent would wear a suit that square.”

Ichigo took his change and his gum and shoved them both in his pocket. “Yeah, well, your hat sucks.”

The man laughed harder. “Doesn’t it, though?”

Once he was outside again, Ichigo handed Inoue the gum and her change. “The owner of that place is a creep.”

“The guy in the green and white hat?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s Urahara. You’re right, he’s the owner. Were there any other customers?”

“Just the short lady. You must have seen her come out. She was ripping Urahara a new one for some dodgy cell phone battery he sold her. I think she must have been NSA or something. She said she was trying to get ahold of her partner, but she needed a special phone.” As he said it, Ichigo realized it would be pretty odd for an NSA agent to be buying cell phone batteries from some shady bodega.

“No one came out,” Inoue replied.

“She definitely did! I heard the bell over the door ring.”

Inoue regarded Ichigo very seriously. “Agent Kurosaki. I was standing here the whole time. You were the only person who went in or out.” She looked at the gum. “Ooh! Dragonfruit lime! Do you want some?”

  👻     👻     👻

They were late to the meeting.

Two men were waiting for them in the back corner booth. One of them had pinched, pointy features and piercing blue eyes behind wire-rimmed glasses. His chin-length haircut was pretty dramatic, but not as dramatic as his pure white trench coat. A cup of black coffee sat on the faded Formica table in front of him, but it didn’t look like it had been touched.

His companion was an enormous, good-looking Latino who was shoveling pancakes into his face.

“Inoue,” the dramatic guy said. “Who’s this?”

“This is my new partner, Kurosaki,” Inoue replied. “Kurosaki, this is Uryuu Ishida,” she indicated the white trenchcoat guy, “and Chad,” Mr. Pancakes.

“Also known as the ‘Lone Archers,’” Ishida specified. “We are apolitical actors who are interested in revealing the truths that are regularly hidden from the general populace by secret forces that conspire within the machinery of the American government.”

“You can just call me Chad,” said Chad.

“Good morning!” the waitress said. “Can I get you folks anything?”

“Oh, yes! I’m getting mozzarella sticks! Do you like mozzarella sticks, Kurosaki? They’re so good here!”

“So’re the pancakes,” added Chad.

“I’ll just have a coffee,” Ichigo announced. He glanced at Ishida’s cup. “Black.”

“Double mozzarella sticks, please!” Inoue chorused. “And a cherry coke!” She leaned over to Ichigo and spoke out of the side of her mouth. “I’ll give you a mozzarella stick.”

“Do you want some pancake?” Chad offered to Ishida. “I never think to offer.”

Ishida waved him off with a hand. “Agent Inoue. At great personal peril, I was able to obtain a sample of the item we discussed.” He slid a small paper packet across the table. “There are two tablets inside, but one should be sufficient for your purposes.” Ishida leaned forward, his mouth set in a firm line. “I was cautioned very strongly against using this, unless one had a firm plan for handling the… consequences.”

“I understand,” Inoue replied, stuffing the envelope into her purse.

Ichigo wanted to ask more questions, but the conversation shifted very quickly to some USGS floodplain maps that Ishida wanted Inoue to obtain for him that were apparently not available from the public webportals, allegedly because of filesize. Ichigo could practically hear the air quotes around the word “filesize.”

“We’re going to look for Jersey Devils next weekend,” Chad explained, sounding pretty excited about it.

“There’s only one, Chad,” Ishida corrected. “It’s just ‘Jersey Devil.’”

“There could be more than one,” Chad shrugged.

Thirty minutes later, they departed. Inoue had an order of mozzarella sticks in her purse. Ichigo had an armload of backissues of the Lone Archers’ ‘zine, which was, conveniently enough, titled The Lone Archer. There was no doubt in his mind that at least Ishida was completely off his rocker. The jury was still out on Chad… he struck Ichigo as the sort of guy who just went along with Ishida’s nonsense because he was a good friend and also liked taking camping trips and doing layout for ‘zines.

“So what was that thing they gave you?” Ichigo pestered. The idea of that little paper packet had been burning a hole in his brain the entire time.

“You busy tonight?” Inoue asked, raising an eyebrow slyly. “Between 10 and 11?”

“What are we doing?” Ichigo asked cautiously, wondering if he would be able to charge his time.

“We’re going to try and attract an angry ghost.”

  👻     👻     👻

“Are you… sure this is… a good idea?” Ichigo asked for the sixteenth time, as Inoue focused the thermal camera on him.

They were in an old, abandoned lot that had formerly served as a Metro service facility. It was pretty spooky all on its own, filled with train cars too dilapidated for salvage.

It was 10:25pm. Inoue had set up no less than 17 different pieces of ghost detection equipment. Ichigo was questioning his life choices.

“You told me you don’t believe in ghosts. If ghosts don’t exist, then what could possibly go wrong?” Inoue posed.

“Well… that’s true,” Ichigo granted. “And, for the record, I still do not believe in ghosts. But in the Pascal’s wager sense of things, I am considering the ramifications of what happens if there are ghosts that exist, regardless of my belief in them.”

“And?” Inoue asked.

“Well, you said that these ghosts have hurt and killed people before. It seems like trying to attract one without having any method of, um, fighting it, seems kind of… irresponsible?”

“Ah, but you see, I’ve specifically picked this time and location to coincide with the grim reaper patrol routes I’ve been mapping out. Our friendly neighborhood psychopomp ought to show up just on schedule to fight the angry ghost for us. We’re doing them a favor, as I see it.”

“How so?” Ichigo exclaimed.

“It’s not like we’re creating an angry ghost out of nowhere. We’re just attracting an existing one to our location. We’re saving the grim reaper the trouble of having to hunt it down.”

Ichigo pinched the bridge of his nose. Why was it so difficult to argue with Inoue? Possibly because she was so incredibly earnest in all her beliefs, and all her arguments were in completely good faith, it’s just that her logic came from some other dimension. This woman has solved multiple, high-profile murders, including several that were ice cold, Ichigo reminded himself. So she’s quirky. I am sure I can learn a lot from her.

“Okay, everything is in place!” Inoue announced, placing her hand on her hips. “Go hide behind that pile of moldy seats!”

Inoue took Ichigo’s place at the center of her recording equipment. “Agent Orihime Inoue speaking,” she said, for posterity. “It is 10:28pm. I am crushing one tablet of a substance called ‘Hollow Bait.’” She crunched the little white tablet, which looked an awful lot like an Alka-Seltzer, between her fingers, and then made a flying leap for the rotting pile of damp, orange upholstery that Ichigo was crouched behind.

“So, just out of curiosity,” Ichigo started. “How long would we have to wait, theoretically, with nothing happening, before we would declare this a bust?”

Inoue pursed her lips thoughtfully. “Usually, I would give it about two hours, but if you’ve got somewhere to be, I don’t mind if you leave early. It is nice to have company for a change.”

“No, I don’t have anywhere else to be,” Ichigo replied. “I mean… sleeping, I guess.”

Inoue gave a charming little laugh. “I don’t sleep very well. And hunting for ghosts is more interesting than most of the stuff on Hulu.”

The way that she said it gave Ichigo the distinct impression that Inoue was, well, lonely. But that didn’t seem correct. She was weird, sure, but she was also friendly and talkative, and, er, well, she was extremely cute. Surely she had tons of friends.

“How’d you get into ghost hunting, anyway?” he tried to be conversational.

“Hmm,” Inoue hummed noncommittally. “Let’s just say there was an incident in my teen years, where my memories don’t match up to the property damage.”

Oh. Ichigo wondered if he should apologize, when suddenly, a cold chill ran down his spine and a sound like a roar echoed in his ears, except he didn’t actually hear anything. “Did you hear that?” he gasped.

“It’s the EMF detector,” Inoue nodded, scrambling for the reader and Ichigo realized he could hear a faint beeping.

“No, not the beeping, it was like a… a… scream…”

“You heard a scream?”

“I didn’t exactly…” Ichigo trailed off as he heard two more, coming from different directions. “There’s more than one. Monster screams. Not human screams.”

Inoue stared at him, eyes wide. “I don’t hear anything. Have you ever been tested for latent psychic ability?”

There was a sudden change in the air pressure, and a fetid, rotting smell, even worse than the Metro seats. Ichigo grabbed Inoue by the shoulders and rolled out of the way, just as the pile of junk they had been crouched behind compacted like it had been through a car crusher. Or smashed by a giant foot.

“Whoa!” Inoue exclaimed, trying to push Ichigo off of her so she could see what was going on.

Ichigo blinked through the night. He couldn’t see anything, but there was an area of space that looked thick and hazy, like it wasn’t refracting the harsh glow of the sodium street lights quite correctly.

“We have to get out of here,” Ichigo gasped.

“Can you see it?” Inoue asked, her eyes wide and excited.

“Not-- not really,” Ichigo replied, pulling at her arm. The air blurred, and Ichigo had the sense the thing was jumping at them. He could tell it was fast, but he couldn’t see it, he didn’t know what to--

“Howl, Zabimaru!”

It was both there and not quite there, a liquid blade made of glass and starlight, that snapped through the air at the invisible thing. The monster bellowed, and whipped around, charging at a dark figure standing atop one of the old Metro cars.

“Pick on someone your own size, ugly!” the man bellowed, and as Ichigo squinted, he realized that their savior was dressed all in black. He was tall, and his hair was pulled back in a spiky ponytail. It was bright red. He was also wearing sunglasses, even though it was the middle of the night. They were pushed up on top of his head, to be fair, but Ichigo had a feeling this detail would stick with him.

“You can see that guy, right?” Ichigo asked Inoue desperately. “The guy who’s fighting the ghost? The guy that looks just like the guy in your report?”

“There’s a guy?” Inoue asked. “No. Where is he? Can you usually see ghosts?”

“I don’t even believe in ghosts!”

“Well, maybe you don’t believe in them because you can see them and you don’t want to, did you ever think of that?”

“I don’t think now is the time to interrogate my personal traumas!”

Suddenly, there was another drop in pressure, and Ichigo had the sense of heavy breathing and sharp teeth. “Inoue. I think there’s another one.”

“Well, can you get the guy to come fight this one, too?”

“He seems busy,” Ichigo squeaked.

Something black flashed by his vision, and there was a loud crack and a sound of something screeching in pain. A second dark-clad person had arrived, landing softly on sandaled feet. There was the same unreality to her, a sense that she wasn’t entirely there, as well as a certain familiarity that Ichigo couldn’t place. Her sword was bright in the darkness, like moonlight reflecting on snow.

“Oi, there you are, you big dummy!” she shouted at the first man and Ichigo realized with a jolt that it was the angry woman from the bodega. “I’ve been looking for you for four days!”

“I had a problem with my gigai and maybe you should check your texts once in a while!” the tall guy shouted back. Ichigo refused to think of him as a grim reaper. A grim reaper would not wear sunglasses.

“My phone died!”

“Can we-- ow! -- discuss this later? I’m glad you’re okay, I missed you. Why are there so many Hollows in this train yard?”

“You’re such a sap! And the Hollows are here because some stupid humans got ahold of some Hollow bait.” The woman turned, and glared at Ichigo. Her eyes burned with blue flame, like the burner of a gas stove.

That would have been the last thing Ichigo remembered, if he had actually remembered it, or any of the things that came before it.

  👻     👻     👻

Ichigo was sitting at his desk.

Inoue was sitting at her desk.

The sun was streaming in the window. The clock on Ichigo’s phone read 7:12am.

Inoue frowned. She examined a coffee cup on her desk. She took a hesitant sip, and then made a face. “Why are we here?” she wondered softly.

“I hate to pull an all-nighter,” Ichigo said, stretching, “but it sure does feel good to be caught up on paperwork!”

Inoue regarded him. “Kurosaki,” she said, “how long have you worked here?”

Ichigo frowned. “Well, I guess this is my second day.”

“Right. So… how much paperwork did you have to catch up on?”

Ichigo blinked. He very distinctively recalled working through the night-- his hand cramping, the incredibly spicy Thai food they’d ordered, Inoue’s seemingly infinite Boy Bands of the 90’s playlist. “I… was helping you, I guess?” Come to think of it, why was he filling out paperwork by hand, anyway? His laptop sat next to him, the lid closed. It wasn’t even plugged in.

Inoue’s fist slammed down onto her desk. “Gosh darnit! They wiped my memories again!!”

[ophelia-coeur]

All the cows were falling out of the sky and landing in the mud. You were drinking sangria and I was throwing oranges at you, but it didn’t matter. I said my arms are very long and your head’s on fire. I said kiss me here and here and here and you did. Then you wanted pasta, so we trampled out into the tomatoes and rolled around to make the sauce. You were very beautiful. We were in the Safeway parking lot. I couldn’t find my cigarettes You said Hurry up! but I was worried there would be a holdup and we would be stuck in a hostage situation, hiding behind the frozen meats, with nothing to smoke for hours. You said Don’t be silly, so I followed you into the store. We were thumping the melons when I heard somebody say Nobody move! I leaned over and whispered in your ear I told you so. There was a show on the television about buried treasure. You were trying to convince me that we should buy shovels and go out into the yard and I was trying to convince you that I was a vampire. On the way to the hardware store I kept biting your arm and you said if I really was a vampire I would be biting your neck, so I started biting your neck and you said Cut it out! and you bought me an ice cream, and then we saw the UFO.

These are the dreams we should be having. I shouldn’t have to clean them up like this. You were lying in the middle of the empty highway. The sky was red and the sand was red and you were wearing a brown coat. There were flecks of foam in the corners of your mouth. The birds were watching you. Your eyes were closed and you were listening to the road and I could hear your breathing, I could hear your heart beating. I carried you to the car and drove you home but you weren’t making any sense. I took a shower and tried to catch my breath. You were lying on top of the bedspread in boxer shorts, watching cartoons and laughing but not making any sound. Your skin looked blue in the television light. Your teeth looked yellow. Still wet, I lay down next to you. Your arms, your legs, your naked chest, your ribs delineated like a junkyard dog's. There’s nowhere to go, I thought. There’s nowhere to go. You were sitting in a bathtub at the hospital and you were crying. You said it hurt. I mean the buildings that were not the hospital. I shouldn’t have mentioned the hospital. I don’t think I can take this much longer. In the dream I don’t tell anyone, you put your head in my lap. Let’s say you’re driving down the road with your eyes closed but my eyes are also closed. You’re by the side of the road. You’re by the side of the road and you’re doing all the talking while I stare at my shoes. They’re nice shoes, brown and comfortable, and I like your voice. In the dream I don’t tell anyone, I’m afraid to wake you up.

In these dreams it’s always you: the boy in the sweatshirt, the boy on the bridge, the boy who always keeps me from jumping off the bridge. Oh, the things we invent when we are scared and want to be rescued Your jeep. Your teeth. The coffee that you bought me. The sandwich cut in half on the plate. I woke up and ate ice cream in the dark, hunched over on the wooden chair in the kitchen, listening to the rain. I borrowed your shoes and didn’t put them away. You were crying and eating rice. The surface of the water was still and bright. Your feet were burning so I put my hands on them, but my hands were burning too. You had a bottle of pills but I wouldn’t let you swallow them. You said Will you love me even more when I'm dead? and I said No, and I threw the pills on the sand. Look at them, you said. They look like emeralds. I put you in the cage with the ocelots. I was trying to fatten you up with sausages and bacon. Somehow you escaped and climbed up the branches of a pear tree. I chopped it down but there was no one in it. I went to the riverbed to wait for you to show up. You didn't show up. I kept waiting.

- I Had a Dream About You, Richard Siken

[mmmmalo]

Reached Tagora and Vikare, got hung up on gay subtext.

Tagora's route, the first in Friendsim to mention rainbow drinkers, starts off with an angry driver calling MSPAR a "lumpsquirt chugger" -- a turn of phrase emphasized when Tagora asks you to move your "chug column", ie neck. The lumps in question are likely breasts, turning "lumpsquirt chugger" into "milk drinker" and thereby insulting MSPAR for being a mammal (not unthinkable on a bug planet). But the lumps could just as easily indicate balls, turning the phrase into "cocksucker" and bringing the drive-by hostility into alignment with earthly homophobia. These would probably overlap: centaursTesticle dranks his centaur's man-milk after all, the liquid whites were never far apart... Anyway Tagora continues the general Alternian-vampire trend of draining you (of cash, in this instance), and the twin epithets for "substance sipper" might hint at a homoerotic bent to the lawyerly cash-suck that intensifies in concert with Gor-Gor's anger (especially since the story features Tagora's gay kismesis).

Vikare is such a boundless fountain of plausibly deniable innuendo I scarcely know where to start. Let's mark some choice quotations:

1 . "I'm nothing but an avatar of baloney. In truth the myriad temptations and desires of space do nothing to tickle my biscuit. [snip] My interest lies in something a little… Lower down." This is Vikare confessing his deviance, that his heart (his "pump biscuit") prefers atmospheric flight to the spaceflight mandated by his society. But what I hear is "I am a sausage receptacle. Society's normative pathways of desire fail to stimulate my ass. I am interested in... the butt."

2. The ass fixation was perhaps first announced when he marks your trek to his hive with the imperative "let's get a wiggle on!" -- though the parallel routes seeming deployment of "lumpsquirt chuggers" to conflate milk and cum makes me squint a bit when Vikare treats the word "friend" as a euphemism and cautiously probes your response to the alternate phrasing "bosom companion"

3. Speaking of probing, Vikare's hive being shaped like a UFO might act to bring us close to the specter of anal probing, especially since he eroticizes the secondary alien-abduction activity of vivisection: "I would like to trust you a little more before vivisecting myself // And displaying my bleeding organs before your penetrating gaze // Which is a metaphor for exposing my portfolio" -- Though if we were to take "bleeding organs" literally within the context of innuendo (as opposed to the rawness of the inner body in general), it'd be more indicative of vagina...? Or I guess if trolls vomit blood for reproduction, the throat is also a match... he eroticizes vivisection again when he says he not a macho type who can "whip out" his organ-harvesting tools at a moment's notice, which turns us toward a phallic paradigm, but I still have some lingering doubts about Alternia being all-male, as put forward in Slurquest.

Anyway,

4. Turning "two shakes of a lamb's tail" into "two shakes of a baby baa beast's hindquarters" again orients us toward the ass

Listening to Brodemus's Friendsim playthrough again at work and it clicked that Ardata continues the association of the 3rd Eye with mind control -- previously established by the glowing emblem on the foreheads of the psychically intertwined and Jane's mindhack tiara.

[neonun-au]

ult group tag

tagged by: @hyucksie ty denise~!

tagging: @fuckjoong @en-see-tee @byutafy @sehunniepot and whoever else is interested

rules: answer the following questions for your ult group (i will just do nct for it haa)

who was your first bias? doyoung for a little while ‘cause...i feel like he’s almost everyone’s first. poor doie

who is your bias now? johnny, at this present moment in time

what was the first mv you watched by them? the 7th sense and i loved it, but it wasn’t until i watched kick it in june that i actually got into them

what’s your favorite mv? oof, maybe highway to heaven or superhuman (cause the editing is unreal) 

if you could listen to one of their songs for the rest of your life, which would it be? sun & moon

who would you want to see them collab with? umm, i’m really not sure tbh hahaa my brain said bjork for some reason and i think that would be HILARIOUS so bjork

what mv concept do you want to see them do? farmers

have you ever had a dream with any of the members in it? LOTS of them. i have a lot of wild dreams. but they’re usually dumb. pretty sure it was some sci fi adventure thing with mark...

if you could spend the day with one member, who would it be and what would you do? johnny, maybe, cause i think we would get along. (or jungwoo and we could just do a food tour). maybe we would just...honestly i don’t know. spontaneous road trip to all the dumb things in my province, I guess haha go see the worlds largest sausage, and the ufo landing pad

which member do you think you’d get along with the best? i really don’t know, i tend to get along with most people but i think maybe...johnny? taeyong?

which member do you think you would argue with? i will argue with everyone i live to argue. but if you’re talking serious, actual undercurrents of issues there maybe...yuta? renjun? oh no it’s mark haha it would be mark

if you had to let one member scroll through your tumblr, who would it be? whichever member is the worst at english 🙃

[pollylynn]

Title: Hybrid Vigor WC: 800

“Are you saying you think that this is real?” — Kevin Ryan. Close Encounters of the Murderous Kind (3 x 09)

If she’s said it once, she’s said it a million times: She is not Nikki Heat But there are days when she is fairly certain that she is somehow living in the confines of a work of fiction, courtesy of Richard Castle’s erratic brain. The day they find Marie Subbarao’s body is definitely one of them. 

She has a baffled ME and a vic who does, indeed, look like an overstuffed sausage—an image caption by the Author himself that’s so apt, she may never eat again. Events unfold in almost game-like fashion, and that’s his influence, too, no doubt. The case keeps almost, but not quite, pulling in the direction of little green men, and there’s a whole lot of back-and-forth smirking going on. 

Marie is an astrophysicist with a SETI grant to her name—smirk point Castle. But she mostly analyzes data for NASA and, oh yeah, her office is around the corner from something that simulates the vacuum of space—two smirk points to Beckett. It goes on and on like that. It’s ridiculous. 

There’s a certified UFO kook-cum-con artist with motive, and there’s nothing she doesn’t love about that, right up until the moment he spills a story about their level-headed, kook-averse vic having some kind of break with reality in the days before her death. And oh, by the way, there’s a shadowy, furniture-stealing government conspiracy, too, because the word excess is not in the vocabulary of Richard Castle, who is clearly writing her life right now. 

There are not one, but two, off-the-wall murder weapons within shouting distance of their body drop, except neither one is the murder weapon. There is a mystery trip taken by their vic to another facility with the kind of telescope the would give her eyes to go with the ears of her own. There is an honest-to-God bright light in the night sky. Her car, her phone, her watch come to a standstill, and she is about to take stern measures indeed to rein in her own personal Walter Mitty. 

But before she can, they are abducted. She pictures him lobbing zingers at some agent made of granite who is trying to get information out of him. She tries to imagine him as he would imagine himself, cool and collected, sarcastic and annoying. She tries to imagine herself as he would imagine her, and her head throbs with the twisted logic of that, and whatever the hell these clowns knocked her out with. Her head throbs at the intimidation light, because what secret agency shakedown would be complete without a cliché bad guy intimidation light?

She wants to tell him to call cut or whatever it is writers do when their story has spun this far out of control. She wants to tell him that no one is going to buy anything about the story going on inside his head if he doesn’t stop slathering genre on top of genre. But she can’t tell him that, because they’ve taken him somewhere. They’ve separated the two of them and her attention is awkwardly divided between fruitless attempts to extract information about her case from Central Casting Bad Guy Number Three and worrying about him. 

The divided attention situation solves itself. The last thing she remembers before blackness rises up to meet her is a ludicrous, pistol-grip auto syringe that looks like it was recently picked up from a  prop table on the set of The Third Man. She groans as she registers the fact that the definite noir touches here mean they’re into genre number three, at least, and he really should see a doctor for his mash-up problem. 

She remembers that thought. She’s holding on to it as the blackness begins to lift. She sense his presence well before she’s anything close to with it. She smells him. She feels the curious warmth of a steady, solid shoulder beneath her cheek and she has the overwhelming desire to take a luxurious, full-body stretch—the kind that curls her toes and tickles her spine in a most pleasant way. 

She’d like to give in to the urge—stretch from head to toe, then nestle closer into the pleasant warmth next to her—but even in her pleasantly weary, fuzzy-headed state, there’s an alarm bell sounding. There’s trouble brewing. 

She lifts her cheek with a barely suppressed groan of protest and finds her eyes locked on his. She breathes him in and feels the startled hitch of his ribs as he returns the favor. Her pulse speeds up and her insides flip. 

Romance, she thinks, inside the confines of a work of fiction, courtesy of Richard Castle’s erratic brain. It’s one genre too many. 

A/N: If you don’t label the thing, there’s no shelf for the thing. This has no shelf space and is not a thing.

images via homeofthenutty

[angsty-nerd]

We don't know what time the Crashdown opens. On the weekends most things open later so maybe 2pm is after Max hung around for an actual Peanut Butter Blast and then went home.

I love that you sent me this, Nonny!!

Okay, I’m going to disagree with you, but ONLY because it’s canon that the Crashdown is a diner that serves coffee and breakfast (think, the beginning of 1x12 when Liz is working the morning shift, chatting with Kyle, and groaning over Racist!Hank). Most diners, in my experience, if they’re not 24 hours, are at least open early in the morning.

Just as a point of my own personal history - my dad worked night shifts most of my teen years. And he loved him a good diner breakfast. Cheap pancakes and sausage were his jam. And most diners were open when he got off work at 7am.

Plus, we all know that Max and Liz like to make out in the dawn. Or the sunset. Point being, they like being bathed in that beautiful glow that comes with the sun being low in the sky.

I can, on the other hand, get behind the idea of Max deciding to hang around a bit longer. I mean, yes, it’s canon that Arturo is a protective father. But we already know he approves of Max.

As a counter point though to my entire argument — there were WAY too many people and cars on the street during that make out scene if it was dawn. I went to Las Vegas, NM on a Friday afternoon in June and it was not NEARLY that busy down there. Haha!!! Hell, that same Friday I had brunch at a coffee shop in Roswell before going to the UFO Museum. It wasn’t that busy there either in the late morning!