#unrecognizable without the skateboard

[transzilla]

Need a sub who is going to let me forcemasc him and kick his fucking ass like 80s rough trade style. Like some real neanderthal low IQ bdsm. Like I want to put him in the hospital. LMAO

You like a dom when it's one of your skinny fucking chainsmoking cis boys, like you honestly think you're hard because you let some skateboarder who can't lift a spare tire smack you around a little bit.

Your problem is that you're scared because you don't know what pain is. So believe me when I say I'm going to teach you what pain is.

I am literally on steroids and I do this shit for my own enjoyment.

Have you ever been hit in your liver? Like right on your ribs, a real body shot? It's like somebody lights you on fucking fire from the inside out and your whole body burns worse and worse by the millisecond. And you can taste it. Like I'm making you suck on some pennies. Lmao.

When your nose bleeds it will taste bad but you should be fine provided it doesn't obstruct your breathing. When your nose gets broken, that sinus fracture won't hurt right away from the adrenaline but as soon as it wears off it hurts like fucking hell and you can't touch it without it crunching or cracking around under your skin. You will feel nauseous and then fucking sick at the way your face breaks in ways you didn't know was possible, pieces of your inner cheekbone breaking and getting loose in your eye socket, the devil's own human anatomy lesson. When you get knocked out by getting punched in the face you think you're fine for the first half second but when the momentum catches up and your brain hits the other side of your skull in your head it's good night from there. And after you come to your face will be valentine's red and pink and swollen and nigh unrecognizable and from there is just going to turn so many pretty colors you'll look like a goddamn renaissance painting.

I'm going to make you scared that you're gonna die. And then you're gonna be scared that you might not.

You can complain, you can scream, you can beg, try to run, try to fight back, hold your hands up, there's honestly no point because you know you're going to take it and you know you like it because I say you will so you will. You're a faggot. There is something wrong with you. If you didn't come to me to try to fuck you would have just spent your time trying to run away from the first chucklefuck who knew how to fight and had a problem with you. You made it clear that this is how you accept love, so I will make you wear it on your face.

I am not going to afford you the ability to hide behind a mild, vanilla, effeminate or weak front. I am going to hurt you so badly your friends and your family and your significant other can't even bear to look at you without feeling your pain as badly as you felt it. They can't hold your perfect pretty girly face in their mind anymore, even after you eventually heal your nose has been bent into a new shape and the symmetry your teeth grew into has been rearranged into a haunted graveyard of broken and missing teeth like tombstones. And you can't exploit their safe conditional acceptance anymore. And you have to find a way to live as an ugly fucked up man when you can't get by looking pretty and doing nothing.

And idk maybe after I'll let you suck my dick a little bit.

[deadratgirl]

tony hawk’s curse strikes again

[ridiasfangirlings]

It's the future way after the events of RoK. Everyone's sort of moved on and have their own lives/families although they still connect with each other. They don't really bring up the clan stuff to the new people in their lives since it didn't seem important then one day a new threat arrives and then they decide to use whatever skill/connection they got from their past experiences like former heroes coming out of retirement.

I like the idea that some of these are weird skills too, like the S4 boys end up on a deserted island somehow and they immediately know how to survive thanks to Captain's training on the beach trip XD Like imagine this is the future years and years after the destruction of the Slate, everyone's powers have faded and there are no more Strains. The clans all still keep in touch with each other but they've also all got their own lives and have new friends and new coworkers, people who never even knew about Kings and powers. For the most part the cast keep this all to themselves, at this point the whole mess when the Slate awakened has been mostly forgotten by the populace at large and there's no point in bringing up things that don't matter anymore.

Then maybe there's like some construction going on at jungle's old hideout and some random dude finds a piece of the Slate, which gives him superpowers. As it happens he's a member of some underworld gang who still recall the days when the Slate was active, there are all kinds of underworld whispers about a secret giant magic rock that gave people superpowers once upon a time. Armed with this chunk of the Slate the gang decides it's time to take control of Shizume City and start a dangerous crime spree, quickly becoming like this mafia group that will in time seize control of the city and eventually the central government of Japan.

Unfortunately for them it happens that Prime Minister Munakata becomes aware of this and naturally he will not allow this to happen to the country while it is under his protection. Using his amazing skills of ninja communications he sends out a missive to all his old clansmen, letting them know he will need their assistance. Of course the squad no longer have their powers but that's okay, everyone has some kind of skill that will be helpful, whether it be Akiyama and Benzai's discipline, Enomoto's computer skills, Gotou's ability to scare the crap out of people or Kamo's deep knowledge of how to prepare a pufferfish so it looks good but will actually kill whoever eats it. Awashima takes some time out from running her anko shop to tell Kusanagi, who alerts the Homra guys and also starts using his old underworld connections to find out more about this new enemy.

Since no one has powers anymore say they have to do some kind of complicated heist/infiltration that requires everyone to bring their special skills. Like the Silvers are called too, Shiro uses the power of Science to make some nice explosives that can be planted in various places around the gang's hideout. The gang has started up some kind of illegal underground casino and Kamo and Kuroh sneak in as chefs working for the catering team, together creating some sort of delicious meal that also puts half the bad guys to sleep. Chitose flirts his way in to the place while Dewa takes off his hat and becomes instantly unrecognizable. The mafia leader has bought like an attack lion to guard the vault where he keeps his piece of the Slate and Fujishima, Benzai and Neko team up to cat whisper it and retrieve the Slate piece. Fushimi of course gets to make use of both hacking and knife skills (and maybe he has to crossdress to sneak into the party, just for old times' sake) while some security thing requires quick reflexes and Yata gets to skateboard his way down a hallway full of sensor lasers. In the end they defeat the mafia guy and his men without needing to use their powers at all, everyone making use of their unique personal skills instead to save the day.

[ectonurites]

tbh i hate coffee tim but i’m getting frustrated with the same people who complain about it turning around and doing the exact same thing with him like skateboarding or whatever. like taking something you’ve seen him do twice and trying to force it as a main aspect of his character until he’s just another unrecognizable caricature AGAIN headcanons are fun but can we please relax on doing this

I agree with your point as a blanket thing- in general reducing a character to a trait that only shows up a few times is stupid- but I... wanna critique the use of that argument in this specific situation.

Because the way the fandom is with the coffee thing has an inherent difference from an activity like skateboarding! For me the core problem with 'coffee tim' is that far more often than not it becomes 'coffee addict jokes' and any sort of jokes about addiction (yes even something like coffee) are just... not funny! That's what pisses me off about it, the butt of the joke becomes 'haha Tim is addicted to this and can't function without it' the majority of the time- when that is not and never has been the case in the source material. Sure some content with 'coffee tim' comes at it more seriously- that's the stuff that doesn't bother me as much- but that sort of thing feels few and far between... and honestly feels like a counter/reaction to the humorous stuff- like it wouldn't exist in the first place if people hadn't been joking about it to bring up the idea.

Tim skateboarding or even just any sort of activity like that... does not have that same connotation. Nobody jokes about Tim being genuinely addicted to skateboarding- that he couldn't function without his skateboard, etc. So that's just categorically very separate to me.

Like, I agree reducing his character to just another trait like that is also not good to do, but I think... one is significantly more harmful than the other the way people actually are about it.

[axels-corner]

Chapter 5

Hello welcome back to my High school AU for the council called skateboards and leadership

Chapter one   Chapter two   Chapter three   Chapter four   ao3 link

I’m excited to write the next couple chapters because they kinda flush out Oralie, and Kenric’s realationship

“C’mon I have something to show you.” Oralie says gently pulling him to his feet. They walk out of the building and into the forest, it was noon the next day, so the light was shining through the trees illuminating the dirt path they walked on. Oralie led him through the trees and down a hill to the stream he and Bronte had crossed yesterday to find Oralie and Alina. They both sat on the damp grass, it must've rained earlier Kenric thought.

“I have a question.” Oralie says as she fidgets with her hands. Kenric leans back trying to look relaxed

“Go for it.” he tells her

“Did you see those shadows too before you found Alina, and I?” Kenric tried to remember that day but he had been so worried about Oralie that it was hard. Just as he was going to tell her he hadn't, a memory popped into his mind.

He and Bronte had been about to cross the river when two kids, they couldn't have been over 13 ran across, and even though it was bright and sunny out the forest covered them in shadows so they were nearly unrecognizable.

“ I saw them, but I couldn't make out much of their features. Except for their was one boy, and one girl, they both had blonde hair. Oh! Also the girl had brown eyes.” Kenric tells her, they sit in silence for a few minutes when Kenric looks over he sees Oralie lost in thought looking at the picture of her and her sister. He bumps her shoulder “Hey they’re probably still out there, from the few times I hung out with them they were smart and good problem solvers.” He watches as she nods seemingly in a different universe. His tone turns more serious as he asks her a question of his own, “That's why you came here wasn't it? To see if you could find her, or at least some clues to her disaperance?” Oralie nods more tethered to reality, he watches as she looks at the photo with Sophie in it it gleams in the sunlight as the breeze blows along the bank. Suddenly a  strong gust of wind comes along, and despite Oralie's tight grip on the photo the wind snatches it like, it was lifting a feather and it drops into the river, Oralie screams

“NO!” Without a second thought Kenric dives into the river after the photo.

Kenric swims after the photo finally reaching it and grabbing it, he swims to the bank and heaves himself out of the water. His hair and clothes are dripping wet and he lies on the bank staring up at the bright sun. He hears Oralie running and then a shout

“Kenric!” she falls to her knees beside him and shakes him, he opens his eyes and extends the photo to her,

“I got your photo.”

“Really I appreciate it Kenric but you can't just go jumping into freezing cold. I could've lost you!” He smiles sheepishly at her and then shudders as another breeze of wind blows through the air. Oralie tucks the photo back into her bag and helps him stand up “Come on let's get you back to camp before you catch your death out here.”

Writing taglist (ask to be added or removed): @gay-otlc @fintan-pyren

[thespaceinmybed]

I posted 238 times in 2021

228 posts created (96%)

10 posts reblogged (4%)

For every post I created, I reblogged 0.0 posts.

I added 795 tags in 2021

#poetry - 227 posts

#writing - 227 posts

#poem - 224 posts

#spilled thoughts - 53 posts

#spilled ink - 27 posts

#spilled poetry - 13 posts

#thoughts - 12 posts

#spilledthoughts - 7 posts

#quotes - 3 posts

#words - 2 posts

Longest Tag: 16 characters

#spilled thoughts

My Top Posts in 2021

#5

Maybe you are broken

Like I am

But in different places

So we will never fit together

Sometimes I think the pit inside me

Is as empty as the sky

As hungry as the ocean

I want someone to lean into

And feel safe

Who touches my hair

Who whispers in my ear

I want to be filled with laughter and warmth

I want none of this darkness

None of this fear and hurt and sorrow

That eats away at me

Day by day

Tell me how

To rid myself of these bitter stains

That cling to my life

That feed and pulse

And grow

Until

I cannot breathe

Until

I collapse

And lessen

And choke

8 notes • Posted 2021-10-04 17:57:01 GMT

#4

And so the night comes

Again and again

And with it the heaviness

Of things best not remembered

Right when my skin was almost ready

to feel something

I found myself

In a room with a stranger

Panicking

But isn’t everyone a stranger these days

How to place yourself in danger

To be

not just consumed

But decimated and remade

Until you become unrecognizable to yourself

Again and again

Why do some hands seem only made to harm

To silence

And

take apart

8 notes • Posted 2021-09-28 05:34:29 GMT

#3

Remember when you wrote me that poem

That was when

I convinced myself

You were in love me

I guess it’s never too early

To start lying to yourself

I remember laughing and stealing your sandwiches

Laying down on train tracks

Letting you teach me things

I already knew how to do

Kissing in your sound studio

In your living room

On your skateboard

In your bed while other people

Were sleeping in it

Slamming your truck door

After you drove me home

Because I was upset that you wouldn’t

Couldn’t

Love me

Waiting in the cold for you

After your show

Waiting for you to convince me

To go home with you

When you pulled me into your lap

I fit

More than anywhere I’ve ever been since

But it was a minute

A few seconds

A few nights spent

Ignorant and happy

You never did go out of your way for me

It was a glimpse

A sprinkle

A flickering light

A promise without intention

A heart and initials

Carved into a tree

It’s saying forever

When you don’t know what forever means

You used to call for me

You used to shout drunkenly

Where’s my wife

And I knew

When I heard your voice

Where I belonged

But it was an end before it was a beginning

You were always looking

Everywhere else

As these things go

Women looked at you

You looked at them

You took what you could

But I will never forget

Watching the Crow on wine stained carpets

You touching my face to turn my head

The way your lips owned mine

So effortlessly

I will never forget the nights I spent

Listening to the songs you played

And the way your hands just knew

How to warm every part of me

9 notes • Posted 2021-05-17 22:10:40 GMT

#2

It’s moments like these

In the quiet

In the laughter

In the fresh cold air

That I wish would last forever

Contentment in romance

I’ve never found

But love

I feel it here

In the wilderness

In the open spaces

In the clearness of the stars

If happiness comes in bits and pieces

I’ll take what I can get

I’ll hold it in my mind

For when I go back

To the places where misery touched me

I’ll hold it in my fists

That refuse to open

For anyone

Until its warmth feeds my bones

I’ll hold it in my silence

In the parts

That aren’t free

I’ll let the joy seep until it expires

If my blood only has eyes

For terrible things

Then I’ll

Make sure none spills out

Anymore

I’ll braid my hair

Like my she told me

To take the pain away

Pain that shouldn’t be

This close

Why does everything that feels real

End with the absence of hope

I would ask

But I maybe I don’t want the answer

I’m too busy feeling

And never saying anything

10 notes • Posted 2021-11-22 05:49:09 GMT

#1

The stars have been talking to me

They say

It’s ok to be alone

They whisper to me tonight

And I listen

Because they are close enough

To touch

It’s ok to be broken

It’s ok to not belong

To feel sometimes

Like your skin isn’t yours

And your name is lost

They say

It’s ok

To sink sometimes

To have nothing solid to hold on

To lose your words and your meaning

And your heart

It’s ok to feel

Like nothing

Sometimes

It’s ok

To be

Uninhabited

To be

Unable to gather

Anything that matters

It’s ok

To be

The ruins of a person

They whisper

We don’t judge

117 notes • Posted 2021-11-22 06:18:12 GMT

Get your Tumblr 2021 Year in Review →

[black-streak]

Maribat March - Day 6 - Unconventional Weapons

To be real with y'all, this is actually a snippet from Saturday's Alright that's been sitting in my drafts for 4 months now. Whoops. Still, works way too well for the prompt to not post it. Timinette obviously.

Permanent list of peeps:

@naoryllis @throneoffirebreathingbitchqueen @my-name-is-michell @daminett4life @dast218 @novicevoice @shizukiryuu @princess-of-fangirls @bigpicklebananatree @pirats-pizzacanninibles @abrx2002 @breemeister @darkthunder1589 @thestressmademedoit @severelyenchantedwonderland @isabellemasen @multi-fandom-freak0221 @fantasyloversblog @bzz75 @cloudiedraws @jardimazul @orbitsvt @gingerdaile @sotheresthatthought @kadmeread @novaloptr @unabashedlyswimmingtimemachine @crazylittlemunchkin

~---~

Marinette might've lied to Tikki about the reasoning for not using the Ladybug Miraculous in Gotham. Well, lying felt too harsh a word, especially with how she disliked doing so. More like, gave multiple valid points, without divulging the more embarrassing one.

"I'm sorry Tik, but the ladybug is too recognizable nowadays. It would put a spotlight on me and let people know the miraculouses were here. And in a crime ridden, chaotic city like this, there are so many rogues who'd be interested in getting their hands on it. Ladybug is better suited to the daylight anyways. Plus, I'm really wanting to keep things on the downlow here. The Bats have quite the claim on this city and the last thing we want is them shoving their nose where it doesn't belong due to some misguided need to know the ins and outs of literally everything. It's not a risk I can take."

Tikki had been saddened, but very understanding, agreeing to retreat back into her box, accepting that the rest was well needed anyways. 

That didn't change the fact that Mari had another reason for keeping Ladybug out of Gotham. 

Back in Paris, she'd been known for her… more interesting lucky charms. Okay, so it might've become a bit of a meme at this point. Pictures of her annoyed expression with sayings like, "when you're sick of this bullshit but your magical girl powers won't give you a gun" or her more dumbfounded looks with little bits on them such as, "I don't think this is meant for that type of use," or her personal least favorite, a picture of her lit up expression of joy while gesturing to a bar of soap that said, "Is this a weapon?"

Needless to say, it got old real quick. The only upside was that anything related to the Heroes of Paris or Hawkmoth situation had stayed locked down to only the local area, not reaching outside of France. Meaning she was free of the stigma in Gotham.

Of course, by the time her and Tim became public as a couple, he already knew her past though he hadn't seemed to look further than watching some of the actual battles, respecting her wish to keep the past mostly that.

Now though, now it had been over a year since she used Tikki and the poor Kwami was itching for a run with her chosen. And Mari couldn't say no to the sweet little goddess who had been waiting so patiently for this opportunity. So they went out on a night patrol that seemed to promise some quiet, not really wanting to get into a fight with any rogues, despite the upgraded stealth design making her near unrecognizable if not for the powers and traveling method.

She ran into Red Robin about halfway through the night, having each been doing a solo patrol for once. And well, he had never seen her transformed as Ladybug, so obviously he couldn't leave well enough alone.

Which went about as well as she expected.

"Is that a fucking Yoyo?" He asked as he dropped beside her.

"Yeah, sure, judge me from your skateboard," Mari bickered back.

"How do you know about that? Did you look up clips of when I was Robin?" 

She had.

"Like you didn't look me up before now and wait for this moment to point out my questionable choices."

Not choices, but whatever.

His eyes narrowed behind the mask, but conceded,  "... Touche, yoyo girl."

Really, she's just glad she didn't have to use any lucky charms that night.

[blstys]

tomorrow  /  @shockpop​​​  ——   ans.  ask  meme  ——  one  word  prompts  ;  accepting.

are  you  sure  that  was  a  good  idea?  kirishima  had  prompted  the  night  before,  as  kindly  as  humanly  possible.  bakugou  had  shrugged,  placed  an  empty  glass  on  the  table  top  and  replied  what’s  a  little  heartbreak  between  old  friends?

the  answer  did  not  need  to  be  given,  it  was  known  plainly.  kirishima  had  served  it  to  him  piping  hot,  drenched  in  that  same  kindness,  anyway:  it  isn’t  just  a  heartbreak  and  it  wasn’t  exactly  little,  bakugou.  the  two  of  you  didn’t  even  try  to  stay  friends  and  now  you’re  going  to  live  together?

he  hadn’t  known  it  yet  but  the  words  would  bruise,  darkening  over  the  span  of  the  next  day;  become  sore  to  revisit,  even  at  the  surface  level.  grossly  out  of  character  to  the  person  he’d  been  trying  to  be,  he  was  defensively  hopeful  and  still  littering  swears  between  meaningful  sentiments,  in  parting;  money  tucked  under  the  rim  of  his  empty  glass  enough  to  cover  both  parties:  since  when  has  there  been  a  god - damn  statue  of  limitations  on  fucking  trying.  it  will  be  fine.  we’re  not  stupid  kids  anymore.

now,  standing  in  the  doorway  to  the  life  denki’s  lived  without  him,  katsuki  comes  to  the  crispy  realization  once  again  that  he  was  probably  wrong  about  where  his  own  limits  exist.  he  shoves  them  down,  steps  inside.

denki  beats  him  to  it,  already  tucked  toward  the  television,  coiling  wires  for  gaming  consoles  before  katsuki’s  shoes  are  toed  off,  respectful  habit  ingrained.  eyes  size  up  the  place.  cozy,  but  not  unkempt.  a  decent  size  for  a  single  person  and  a  sushi  roll  but  terribly  overpriced  for  its  location.  chipped  paint  and  ancient  light  fixtures.  unlike  the  apparently  empty  expanse  of  his  industrial  penthouse  that  intends  to  house  them  both  starting  tomorrow,  denki’s  small  space  appears,  well,  lived - in. 

where  his  walls  have  lain  bare - brick  and  white  paint,  only  the  necessary  furniture  and  katsuki’s  previous  belongings  having  dwindled  down  to  the  span  of  a  couple  bookshelves  and  a  too - large  bedroom;  there  is  hardly  an  inch  of  denki’s  place  untouched  by  well - loved  belongings.  it  has  the  clutter  of  an  actual  life  lived.

it,  too,  appears  so  painfully  denki  in  appearance  that  for  a  terribly  ( nostalgic )  second  katsuki  swears  they’ve  stepped  right  back  in  time  to  denki’s  u.a.  dorm  room.  the  second  passes  onto  the  next,  as  it  always  does,  and  divorces  the  dream  from  reality.  it  is  a  process  that  he  has  nearly  forgotten  how  to  do  outside  a  hungover  morning.

a  blink,  the  gentle  clink  of  dog - tags  getting  in  the  way  of  a  quick  collar - pull,  another  glance.  steady  breath  reveals  the  obvious  truth:  familiar  items  are  there  but  much  fewer  and  further  between  than  unfamiliar  ones.

a  flannel  he’s  worn  before  hangs  off  an  open  door  handle;  at  least  three  more,  unknown,  lay  over  unoccupied  corner  surfaces.  one  is  tucked  under  the  coffee  table.  there  is  one  potted  cactus  that  katsuki  remembers  giving  a  name  and  several  unrecognizable  plants  spilling  out  of  their  terracotta  homes.  light  folds  in  where  it  can,  sunlight  spilling  from  the  single  bedroom  window  into  the  living  space  to  turn  the  place  pale  yellow.  there’s  a  corner  of  a  bed  visibly  unmade  illuminated,  too.  a  small  laptop  lays  atop  the  least - mussed  end  like  a  silver  cat.  the  kitchen,  for  all  its  lack  of  breadth  is  haunted  by  only  ( as  far  as  he  can  tell )  a  graveyard  of  kirby  drinking  glasses  that  do  not  appear  to  be  of  any  particular  matching  set.  memorized  licence  plates  hang  on  the  wall  like  the  eyes  of  doctor  t.j.  fucking  eckleburg  while  faces  that  are  familiar  but  distinctly  not  his  peer  at  him  from  their  strung - up  photographs.

crimson  eyes  glaze  over  a  guitar  with  fret  spacing  his  fingers  remember  and  stick  to  a  red  cassette  tape  player  before  flitting  quickly  away.

purpose  remembered,  katsuki  moves,  as  originally  tasked,  to  the  god - forsaken  skateboard  bookshelf  to  assist  with  the  packing.  he  scans  titles,  new  and  misplaced,  as  he  puts  them  into  the  open  mouth  of  the  box  that  waits  at  the  shelf  base  and  aches  to  think  of  the  box  of  mixed  tapes  collecting  dust  in  the  top  shelf  of  a  closet  in  his  guest  room.  he’ll  have  to  move  them  sometime  today  before  denki's  un - strewn  flannels  can  lay  claim  to  the  space.

even  meticulous  hands  have  difficulty  shaking  off  the  odd  tremor  when  they  reach  for  a  haphazard  tower  of  miscellaneously  stacked  things.  it  sears  through  the  center  of  his  chest  like  an  arrow  re - sunk  into  an  old  wound  to  disassemble  it.

“ so  you’re  still  stacking  things,  huh ?  —  sootball's  gonna  love  that. ”

[skybound2]

David x Michael, on a road trip, arguing over music choices (or whatever permutation of that you would like to use!).

Hey, so 500 years later, I know, but I’ve written a thing! Well, several things, sorta? This is basically a series of short ficlets each focusing on a different song, but all connected, and is basically a direct follow on to the response I wrote MONTHS ago for a different prompt (You Are My Sunshine)! 

THANK YOU SO MUCH for the prompt, it helped get me out of a rut, LIKE A LOT. (Also, I had a TON OF FUN thinking up songs to set each piece too :-D)

Takes place in my Walk Unafraid universe sometime after Michael has gone full vamp, and is maybe just a little bit cracky ;-P

Hope you enjoy!

Billy Idol “Rebel Yell”

Michael frowns as the first few beating notes of the song start pouring out of the speakers. Before the first line is over, he’s a freshman again, shuffling into the streamer and tinsel decorated nightmare that was his first (and last) high school homecoming dance.

He hadn’t wanted to go. Would rather have been playing chicken with his skateboard on the highway. Or at home, babysitting Sam and rewatching that movie with the talking rats for the fiftieth time.

Or working on his math homework.

Really, just about anywhere else doing anything else would have been preferable.

But he’d made junior varsity on the football team (Thanks, he’s sure, to him being a year older than the rest of the freshman class. Flunking third grade. So helpful.) and even though he hadn’t played a second of that day’s game, it had been made clear that he was expected to attend that evening’s festivities. 

To support his team. And school.

Rah rah rah.

He hadn’t given a rat’s ass about any of it, not when the girl he’d been seeing (if you could call one awkward make-out session ‘seeing’) had broken things off with Michael the day before, opting to go to the dance with Michael’s friend Keith instead. 

The situation might have been less of a mess, Michael suspects, if the sight of his friend and former almost-girlfriend dancing together had sparked the expected kind of jealousy for Michael.

Which of course, it hadn’t. Instead, it had dosed Michael with a confusing case of adolescent ‘what the fucks’ when he’d caught Keith and Jenny kissing mid-dance, and he’d realized just who he was jealous over. 

The whole thing had gone topsy-turvy not long after, in a spectacular (sloppy, messy, pathetic) fist fight between Michael and Keith on the dance floor to the tune of that damn overplayed Billy Idol song.

Michael had been suspended for two days following the fight. Which had been fine by him, as it gave him time to first come to terms with what he’d been feeling, and then to find a careful place in his psyche to shove said feelings into, to be dealt with never.

Three years later, Michael had moved away, the bond between him and Keith forever broken.

As the memories play back in Michael’s head, Michael finds that the old agitation, that bitter ache of confusion and loss he’d always felt in the past, is muted. The scene’s a faded sort of matte gray, instead of technicolor. Like it happened to someone else, and he’s just catching the repeat on late night TV. 

Which in a way, he guesses it kind of had. The person he is now so far removed from who he was then as to be unrecognizable.

Different person or not, he still hates the song. (Maybe he hasn’t changed that much.) And so Michael’s lip lifts up in a sneering approximation of the blond singer’s trademark curl as he reaches for the knob and seeks out another station. 

“Hey. I was listening to that.” The complaint from the driver’s seat is annoyed but without any real heat. 

Michael keeps twisting the knob, not looking at his companion, skipping over white noise in search of something - anything - else. “We’ll find something else. Can’t stand Billy Idol.”

Even though Michael knows it’s not actually possible, it feels as if the temperature inside the car drops several degrees. Shock reverberates across the link between Michael and David loud enough that it bounces Michael’s brain around inside his skull, forcing him to turn his head away from the radio towards the blond as he continues to spin the dial. 

David appears downright scandalized as he stares back at Michael, eyebrows making friends with his hairline. “You can’t stand Billy Idol?”

Michael nods, head tilting at David, confused by the obvious annoyance rolling off of him. 

And also a little worried by how long David has kept his eyes from the road, regretting having let the blond take over driving duties at the last gas station. “Uh, yeah. Leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Can you watch the road, David? Don’t feel like getting up close and personal with the guardrail.”

David sneers, but turns his head back to the road, grumbling incoherent words beneath his breath that, try as he might, Michael can’t pick out. 

Not that it matters, as when an audible sentence finally does work its way up and out, Michael’s still as confused as when all he’d heard was gibberish. “I’ve made a mistake.”

Michael frowns. “With what?”

“Making you immortal. I can’t spend eternity with someone who doesn’t appreciate Billy Idol.”

Michael snorts, his hand dropping away from the dial when he locates something less detestable to listen to. The fast pace guitar chords and beats of Mötley Crüe playing through the speakers as a backdrop, he leans back in his seat, head angled towards David, the better to watch the exaggerated play of disgust on his lover’s face. “Too late. No take backs.” 

David’s frown deepens, but there’s a twitch at the corners of his mouth, like he’s fighting the upward tug of a smile. “Never too late for anything, Michael.”

Michael smirks at him, stretching his legs out and dragging his tongue across his bottom lip in a deliberate attention grabbing move that pulls David’s eyes straight to his mouth. “Yeah. Right. After how hard and long you fought for me?” Michael drags the words out with dirty intent. Feeling playful, and eager to wash away the lingering remnants of that earlier time, of that earlier life. He draws upon more recent, much more pleasurable memories, letting them hover at the front of his mind. The spike of lust that floods the air between them all the proof he needs that David’s on the same page. “Yeah. That’s what I thought.” 

“So damn sure of yourself, aren’t you?” The question is spoken with careful neutrality that does nothing to disguise the visceral want pouring off of David.  

A growl thrums across Michael’s vocal chords. “Pull over. Let’s find out.”

David does.

And they both forget all about Billy Idol. 

Abba “Fernando” 

Sated and settled back in the passenger seat on the road south, David knows what song it is from just the first couple of notes. He has no intention of subjecting himself to it, so he reaches for the dial only to have his hand smacked away by Michael. Shocked, he looks up at the man behind the wheel, the driver’s blue eyes alight with mischief as he starts to sing along with the music while David watches on in horror. “No. No absolutely not. Turn it off. Right now.”

But Michael’s hand stays covering the dial as his voice gets stronger. When he hits the title lyric he leans heavily away from the wheel in David’s direction and croons it in his face. David’s frozen in place by the disturbing sight. “Why do you even know the lyrics?”

‘You’ve met my mother and my brother, you honestly think I wouldn’t know the lyrics?’ The thought jumps from Michael’s mind to David’s, but Michael’s singing voice doesn’t falter at all as he sings about crossing the Rio Grande.

Under any other circumstances, David would be damn proud of Michael that his ability for telepathic multi-tasking has come along so far, but as is, he’s too distressed to feel much of anything else.

“Is this a method of torture? Is that why you’re doing this? Testing the waters? Because if so, bravo. Very effective. But it’s time to stop now.” 

Michael cackles. Cackles! As he smacks David’s hand away from the dial again, the sound bleeding into an off-key “Liberty” with a devilish grin upon his face as he turns the volume up.

David sinks as deep into the leather bench seat as is possible, all the way against the door, trying to put distance between himself and the… horror happening on the other side of the car. “Just stake me. It would hurt less.”

The gleam in Michael’s eyes is pure evil as he sways towards David again, all his earlier concern for road safety seeming forgotten in his Abba-induced haze. 

He manages to keep the car between the painted lines and away from any ditches as the song comes to an end - though it weaves a considerable amount. The smile on his face when he looks David’s way on the final note is wide and brilliant and blinding. Pleasant waves of giddy happiness echoing across the bond so strongly, that David’s own treacherous emotions race to sync up with those of his tormentor.

David hates himself a little for being so far gone on the bastard, but the shared laughter that fills the car between them feels good all the same.

Deep Purple “You Keep On Moving”

Another tank, another station, another song.

Michael smiles as the beat of a tune he never hears getting radio airplay hits his ears. He drums his fingers against his knee, mouthing along to the lyrics and bouncing his leg in time. Thinking it might be fun to finally learn how to play something other than his kneecap. The drums, or the guitar even. Or hell, why not both? He’s got nothing but time now, right? Why shouldn’t he spend it learning how to play a dozen instruments if he wants?

David speaks up when the song hits the third verse and Michael’s halfway through an imaginary worldwide tour as the next biggest drummer since Bonham. “Paul had a copy of this album.” He chuckles, once, the sound dark and heavy. “Two copies, actually. One he’d worn down to nothing. Sounded like garbled shit, but it was the only one he’d play. Said he was keeping the other ‘for posterity’ or something.”

Michael returns from his European stage debut and looks to David, trying to judge the meaning behind the story. The other man offering up information on the absent boys so rare, that he figures there must be a reason for it.

There’s not much light to illuminate him, the dash on the old vehicle mostly dark, but Michael’s eyes don’t need much light to see by these days. Not that it matters, as there’s nothing to read on the blond’s face, his expression that disconnected mask that Michael’s grown so familiar with in the past year.

“Think he bought the first one on account of the cover, but turned out he liked the music too.” David’s voice is muted - not so soft as to be wistful, but a next door neighbor to it maybe.

Michael digs through his brain, trying to recall what the cover looked like, but comes up empty. He prods at David for some help, snorting when David reproduces in Michael’s mind the image of the band’s disembodied heads floating in a wine glass of dark red liquid, with the tagline ‘Come Taste the Band’ scrolled over the top. He guffaws at the sight. “Why am I not surprised?”

“Paul was always easily amused.” The comment is said with a quiet intensity that peters out to a heavy silence, despite the song still rocking through the car.

It leaves Michael feeling like he’s intruding on something he shouldn’t be. He inches back and forth in his seat, tapping the leather seating between the two of them instead of his knee. “You, uh, you want me to change it?”

David glances at Michael, the expression on his face a little mournful, but not despondent or angry as it may have been in the past. “Nah. It’s a good song. Let it play.” 

Michael nods once, and the song plays on.

Fleetwood Mac “Landslide”

“…”

“…”

“I - you can change it if you want.”

“Course I can.”

“…”

“…”

“Are you gonna change it or…”

“Nah. Took too long to find this station. Probably just be static everywhere else.”

“Yeah. You’re probably right. So…we leave it then?”

“Might as well. It’ll be over soon.”

“Okay.“ Michael takes a deep breath, uncertain about what he’s about to say, but unable to stop himself. “This was Star’s-”

“I know.”

“And you still don’t mind-”

“No. Should I?” The questions is flat. Unconcerned, but Michael doesn’t miss the way David’s face tightens when he asks it. 

Michael moves his right shoulder in an awkward shrug. “Just got the impression you didn’t care for her much.”

David makes a low humming sound. “Liked her well enough at first. Liked her a whole lot less later on.”

Michael doesn’t have a ready response for that, knowing damn good and well why David’s feelings towards Star changed. 

“You heard from her lately?”

Michael whips his head towards David, surprised by the question.“No. I haven’t.“ 

David hums again, fingers flexing on the steering wheel as he does. “Sure about that?”

“When exactly do you think I would have talked to her, David?”

“No clue. It’s why I asked.”

Michael thinks that’s a lie, but doesn’t call David on it. Instead, he settles back, letting Stevie Nicks serenade them for a few verses before offering what little he does know. “She calls my Mom sometimes. They…talk.” David’s gaze stays firmly on the road, though Michael can feel the way tension thrums through his frame. “Think she’s still with Laddie, wherever they went. I don’t - I haven’t spoken to her since she left.” It’s the truth, but for some reason it feels like a lie.

“She took Laddie back to his father I take it?”

Michael gives a noncommittal bounce of his head. “Think so.”

“Hmm. Maybe we should pay them a visit.”

Michael lets out a low laugh at the comment. “Doubt we’d be welcome.”

A sly smile that Michael knows can’t mean anything good lifts the corner’s of David’s mouth. “Never know if we don’t try. Could pencil it sometime after Phoenix.”

Michael rolls his eyes, knowing he’s being baited and not about to be caught. “Yeah sure. Why the hell not?” Michael smirks at the way David’s forehead scrunches up at the easy agreement. He means it - he’s curious enough about where Star ended up and what she’s been doing that visiting her isn’t the worst idea he’s ever heard - though he’s not so much of an idiot that he doesn’t know that David’s reasons for wanting to see her are far from benign.

No longer in the mood for the song, Michael changes the station.

Billie Holiday “You’re My Thrill”

David hums as he twists the dial through station after station of white noise. He spins it past an old jazz tune, but then twirls it back again, making an appreciative noise as a crooning female voice starts to spill from the speakers.

Satisfied with his find, he slouches back into the leather upholstery, eyes closed and an almost dream-like smile on his face.

From his spot in the driver’s seat, Michael goggles at him. “Seriously?”

“Michael Emerson, if the next words out of your mouth are that you don’t like Billie Holiday either, I’m leaving you at the next truck stop and you can find your own way back to Santa Carla. I don’t care how close to sunrise it is.”

The way his voice doesn’t falter when he says it brings Michael up short, making him think that it may be more than just an idle threat. (Not that Michael would let him leave him behind without a fight, but that’s beside the point).

Michael manages to keep his mouth shut for a cool twenty seconds, during which he watches David out of the corner of his eye. Watches as the bleached-blond, spiky-haired murderous vampire clad all in black - not a small amount of it leather, hell, there are spurs on his boots for Chrissakes - quietly enjoys the old-fashioned song. The disconnect between the image he presents and the one the song evokes makes Michael laugh. “Damn, what decade are you from, Old Man?”

“The seventies, Michael.”

Michael snorts, rolling his eyes. Not that David can see him with his own eyes enjoying the view behind their lids. “Yeah sure. You’re younger than me. Explains the occasional tendency to throw tantrums still.” 

“The eighteen-seventies, Michael.” David says, calm and cool and not at all joking.

Michael’s hands on the wheel jerk sideways in surprise, sending the car swerving over the line before he can yank it back where it belongs. David’s eyes crack open at the disturbance, leveling a glare at Michael, but he doesn’t react otherwise. “Seriously?”

David smirks at him, slipping the cigarette he had stowed behind his ear down and to his mouth. He doesn’t give Michael an answer, just flicks his lighter open and sets flame to the stick, puffing on the end to get it to light, and settles back into his seat, eyes half-closed.

Michael molls the unexpected tidbit of information over in the space between verses. One particular thought standing out in greater relief against the rest. “Shit…you’re older than my Grandpa. By a lot.”

“I am. And if you want to be too one day, shut it and let me enjoy the song!” 

It’s only the lingering shock of the information that keeps Michael quiet. It has nothing to do with the amber gleam in David’s eyes.

Really.

Besides, as far as old-as-sin songs go, it’s not half-bad. 

Starland Vocal Band “Afternoon Delight”

Approximately one point five seconds into the song, David’s hand meets Michael’s as they both reach for the dial. David growls, fangs dropping. “I will break your hand, your arm, and all your fingers if you try and stop me from changing the station, Michael.”

Michael’s hand raises up in the air in a placating gesture that David doesn’t trust. At all. “Hey! I was trying to change it too.”

“Sure you were.” David twists the dial, spinning it through endless seas of static and snowstorms and a whole lot of absolutely nothing else.  

“I was.” Michael’s voice is pleading, but there’s mischievous glint in his eyes that doesn’t match the sound.  

David gives him a sideways glare. “Somehow, I don’t believe you.”

Michael breathes out a heavy-handed sigh. “So little trust. And here I thought we’d really been getting somewhere this past year.”

David rolls his eyes. “You forfeited all rights to musical trust after that horrendous ‘Mamma Mia’ sing-along.

“Hey! First off, it was ‘Fernando’, and second: you enjoyed that. You were smiling. I saw you.”

“That was a defense mechanism, Michael.”

“Liar.”

Which is true, but David’s not about to admit it. So he ignores him, and stops the dial on a patch of white noise; settling back in his seat to enjoy the scratchy sound of absence.

Less than a minute of quiet passes between them before Michael’s hand inches for the radio. David’s voice is curated calm when he says: “Try me, Michael.” 

“Idle threat.”

“When have you ever known me to be idle, hmm?”

Michael scoffs, giving David a tilted smile that tells the elder vampire just how little Michael thinks of David’s threats. “Go ahead, tell me all the ways that you’re gonna torture me if I change the station. What’s it gonna be this time? Something more creative than holy water dipped knives, I hope?”

“You ever heard of ‘torpor,’ Michael?” David asks, dipping into the darker part of his psyche. To the blackened memories of his early life under Max’s so-called-care. Fully intending to shower Michael with the visual of being trapped - buried - deep beneath the earth in a impenetrable box, screaming for his maker to let him out. To let him go. Screaming until his throat runs dry, and the blood in his veins slows to a trickle. Skin gone paper-thin, and ashen. So desperate to be released that he’ll say anything. Do anything.

David doesn’t plan to exact such a punishment on Michael of course, but he’s not above a little mental torment. Especially not after being trapped in a car for two-hundred plus miles with Michael and his previously undocumented love of country music and disco.

But before David can so much as conjure up an image of a box or a handful of dirt, Michael frowns in his direction. “Don’t think so. That a New Wave group or something?”

A surprised bark of laughter bursts out of David, amused eyes latching onto Michael. “What? No, it’s-” He shakes his head, small peels of laughter leaking out of him as he does. David’s laughter grows in time with Michael’s confusion. The uncertain look upon the younger vampire’s face endearing to David in a way that it has no right to be.

David shakes his head, his plans to teach Michael a lesson forgotten. “You know what, never mind.”

A frown stays planted on Michael’s face for a while longer, the confusion fading at a snail’s pace. But he drops the subject, and the two of them drive on in silence. 

A silence that lasts for the length of time it takes Michael to forget why the radio was off in the first place.

But David hasn’t. So really, it’s Michael’s fault that David launches at him, teeth bared, and the car is sent skidding off the road.

At least there aren’t any guardrails to hit. 

And if the only casualty of the accident ends up being the radio, well, they were do for an upgrade anyway.

Preferably one with a cassette deck. 

~End

[kayfabewannabe]

I don’t think the Avatar fandom understands...

That you can acknowledge the mass of contributions made to the show by Aaron Ehasz without throwing Bryke under the bus. 

It’s a pattern that’s repeated OVER and OVER with fans of many things throughout history. Someone makes something that is wildly popular. Popular thing is successful and receives praise. Creators move on to create more things which aren’t as popular and get criticized. Suddenly, the creators are hacks and there’s a rush to disprove that they were ever good in the first place. George Lucas and the prequels, Peter Jackson and the hobbit, hell, basically the entire career of Shamalyan. It’s not enough to say “they didn’t write this thing well”. You HAVE to prove “Nothing that they ever wrote was good in the first place”. It’s a retroactive reframing of the narrative surrounding the media’s creation that conveniently scapegoats the creators to maintain the illusion that “Good writers don’t write bad stories”. 

Like, Korra wasn’t stellar. There were many missteps, often at critical junctions of the plot. Bryke were definitely responsible for how the show turned out as well. But the backlash to Korra had to extend backwards to their previous work. And Avatar isn’t perfect either! Bryke were responsible for a lot of the flaws of the original as well. But that doesn’t mean they weren’t responsible for some of the good parts as well. There’s this persistent fandom myth that “Aaron Ehasz saved Avatar”, and to some degree its true. Without the changes he made to the original pitch (basically some major change to all of the character’s characterization in one way or another), the show probably wouldn’t have been as good as it ended up being. But to say he “saved” it? That he was the true “genius” behind the show? That downplays the collaborative nature of television. EVERYONE who worked on the show contributed to it in some way, from the artists to the musicians to the voice actors to the showrunners and yes, even to the head writers. There’s no singular genius behind the shows inception, rather a whole pool of talent, none of which would have been able to make it without the others. 

The real problem here is the reductionist nature of the Genius/Hack dichotomy. They’re boxes we put these creators in. You’re either “A Good Writer”, which means everything you write is genius, or you’re “A Bad Writer” which means everything you touch is cursed. And yes, there is some degree of talent involved in writing. But you can be a “Good Writer” and still make utter shit. Writing isn’t a Yes/No binary of good or bad, its far more qualitative. Writers can be ‘Good” at worldbuilding but “Bad” at dialog. Writers can make great choices one chapter then fuck it up completely the next. Every writer is like this. Every writer has some good and some bad. Whether or not the work ends up good mostly matters if they play to their strengths or not. 

Let’s take Peter Jackson for an example. The Lord of the Rings trilogy is arguably one of the most popular film series of all time, and among the best received in the fantasy genre. The Lord of the Rings succeeded at capturing it’s audience due to the strength of its adaptation, to make an otherwise inaccessible book into something with widespread appeal. LOTR is a phenomenon and one of my favorite film series of all time. The cast is wonderful, the music breathtaking, but most importantly, the thematic basis of the story stayed (mostly) true to it’s roots. But LOTR as a book wouldn’t work as a movie. Characters had to be rewritten, events reorganized. The action was emphasized as was the comedy to give it more mainstream appeal. And it succeeded. 

Then came the Hobbit, a series of films that as an adaption, are almost unrecognizable from the source material. There are many problems, but at the same time those problems were both strengths and weaknesses in LOTR. The action was even more emphasized with newer cg technology, now to the point of absurdity. The “comedy” was even more present with characters like Bombur and Alfrid, but without the dramatic backup to support them, they fell flat. Everything that was bad about the Hobbit was already in LOTR. Legolas skateboarding with a shield on Helm’s Deep was already in LOTR. Jackson brought the same style, the same touches, the same values of storytelling to the Hobbit as he did to LOTR. One time he dropped the ball, another time he didn’t. They don’t cancel each other out. In one he controlled his tendencies, in another they got out of control. Peter Jackson isn’t a “Bad Writer”. He isn’t a “Good Writer” either. He’s both. 

And that brings us back to Avatar. With Korra fresh in our minds and the new live action coming soon, helmed by Bryke, it’s easy to scapegoat them. We can say they ruined Korra, but much of what people didn’t like about Korra was already present in Avatar, just turned up (stilted romance, deus ex machina conclusions, MY COUPLE DIDN’T GET TOGETHER AND I RIOT). they leaned away from the strengths of Avatar to try something new and experimental with Korra and thats commendable. They tried to make a character who was functionally Aang’s opposite, but brought the same style of writing to what was fundamentally a different concept. 

But without Bryke, there wouldn’t be Avatar. There wouldn’t be any of the good, there wouldn’t have been the chance to try something different. I respect Aaron Ehasz very much, and i have high hopes for his new series. But we can commend a creator without them being a genius, we can criticize a creator without decrying everything they made. We can acknowledge one creator without throwing another under the bus. 

[lara-raeanne-ross-blog]

Prologue (Warnings: Language)

Lara felt heat rise to her face, as she entered her brother’s apartment building. She was soaked, water pulling her clothes right to her, and she pulled her hair out as she opened the front door.

“Everett, I’m home!” she called. Instantly, she heard the tiny patter of feet.

“Mommy!” Kali squealed, her dark, bare feet smacking against the hardwood tile. Lara laughed, and picked her up, “hi, Baby Girl.” Peppering her daughter’s face with kisses, she moved into the kitchen, to find her brother making dinner. Without turning, Everett greeted her, “hey, sis. How’d it go?” Lara pursed her lips, as she put Kali into her high chair.

“I didn’t get the job,” she told him, once she had the tray in place. “Someone had same experience, but higher qualifications.” Lara didn’t even dare look at her brother, as she sat down and untied her boots. But there was nothing from Everett, only a look at her sopping wet form.

“How’d you get so wet?” He finally asked, turning back to the stove.

“Skateboarder knocked me into a fountain,” Lara told him, grabbing an apple and taking a bite from it. Everett raised an eyebrow, “oh? Lara nodded, wiping apple juice from her lips, “yep. He rammed into me.” Everett chuckled, and shook his head, but said nothing.

* * *

“I knew you’d come,” a deep, baritone voice said. Lara barely looked up, before a sad smile formed on her face, “well, I signed the Accords. Why would I miss this?” She did not meet the eyes of the man in front of her. It caused her too much pain. She had once loved the man in front of her, but in the end, she had to be sent away. To save both her career and his name.

“You could have called me, Lara,” the man whispered, his dark hand reaching for her face. “Or wrote, or something.” Lara shook her head, “no. Your father, he didn’t want me to, T’Challa.”

“Izigqibo zakhe akuzona zam,” T’Challa whispered, before turning and walking away from her. He went down the street, towards a crosswalk, and when he had disappeared from sight, Lara turned and went into the International Center. They had time, but Doug was waiting inside for her with their spots, no doubt sitting near Natasha. As she slid into her seat, she could feel a pair of eyes watching her, so she looked up, and met them. King T’Chaka was staring at her, hardly listening to the man he was speaking with. T’Chaka excused himself, before making his way over to where Lara and Doug sat.

“Your highness,” Doug greeted for the both of them. With a fake smile, Lara greeted T’Chaka in the traditional Wakandan way, wishing to be polite.

“May I spare a word with Miss Ross?” T’Chaka asked. Lara nodded, and stood, “of course. Excuse me for a moment, Doug.” She stood, awkwardly smoothed out the sleeves of her jacket, and followed the king of Wakanda.

“How is your child, Miss Ross?” T’Chaka started, creating small talk between them.

“Please, call me Lara,” she told him, with a small shake of her hand. “And Kali, she is well. She’ll be five here in a week.” The Wakandan king smiled, “has it really been that long since-.”

“Since what?” Lara interrupted. “Since you sent me away from Wakanda? Sent my child away from any future with her father?” Her voice was bitter, not a tone that should have been used towards a king, but she didn’t care. T’Chaka had taken away her daughter’s father before she was even born. “Why don’t you just cut the crap and tell me the real reason why you wanted to talk to me.”

“I was just going to tell you that I want you to stay away from my son while you are in Vienna,” T’Chaka told her. “He finally has someone that is actually good for him.” Lara felt her face burn, “you mean someone you chose for him.” T’Chaka shook his head, “no-.”

“Ok, I think conversation is over,” another voice said, a hand landing on Lara’s shoulder. Glancing over her shoulder, Lara gave a breath of relief when she saw Natasha. “Come with me, El.” The two walked away from T’Chaka, and that was when Lara released a breath of relief.

“Thanks, Nat,” she said. Natasha waved her hand, then tucked it back next to her other one, “anytime. And hey, drop the damsel-in-distress expression. It’s very disheartening.” Lara laughed, as she lightly punched her friend’s shoulder, “I’ll try.”

* * *

Lara tried to pay attention to T’Chaka’s opening remarks, but she could hardly listen to the king’s voice without anger coursing through her. He had sent her from Wakanda, and yet he was the one who was angry. She didn’t understand.

Don’t let anger get the best of you, Lara told herself, before focusing her attention back into T’Chaka. But it was at the wrong time. In that moment, she heard T’Challa’s voice yell, “everybody, get down!” That was when the blast went off, and Lara’s world turned dark.

When she came to, Lara was only partially aware of the figure that stood over her. What she was more worried about was the fact that she was stories below where the actual ceremony had started and it was now night.

“Wake up,” the figure above her hissed. The voice sounded feminine, but unrecognizable. “Wake up, now.”

“Who are you?” Lara asked. “What are you doing?” To herself, her voice sounded weak.

“I am the Scourge,” the voice hissed. “And when I’m done, people like you will cease to exist.” Lara let out a deep breath of air, almost like a hiss, “you wanna know something? You’ve messed with the wrong people.” Her legs shot to the sides, latching onto the ankles of the figure. The figure fell on top of her, having been caught off balance, and Lara pushed her off. Her vision was shaky as she stood, but she shook it off as she teetered away. Her steps started to become quicker, and soon she had came to a run, reaching the street, where chaos still ensued.

* * *

“Tony, you don’t understand, but whoever she was nearly killed me,” Lara said, smacking her hand against Tony’s worktable. It was three days later, and she still did not understand who had caused the attack on the International Center.

“No, you need to calm down. You’re angry,” Tony replied. He glanced down, before holding out the bag of blueberries he held towards Lara, “blueberry?” Lara shoved the bag away, “I don’t want blueberries, I want answers!”

“Well, I am fresh out of those, I really am,” Tony retorted. “Y’know, I have noticed that when Pepper is mad, it sometimes ends up being because she’s hungry. Do you want a blueberry?”

“No,” Lara said, her bottom lip now starting to quiver. “Stick your blueberries.” Tony sighed, and put his hand on her shoulder, “I know it’s been rough for you, that’s why I’m offering you some of my food. Now take a Goddamned blueberry.” Lara laughed, before holding her hand out, “fine.”

“See, that wasn’t so hard, was it?” Tony asked, as he poured some into her hand. “As for whoever this ‘Scourge’ is, we’ll find her. Just like we’re going to find Barnes. Ok?” Lara nodded, the quivering in her bottom lip gone, “ok.” Still eating the blueberries, she turned, and left the lab, where finally she broke down. The stress of the last few days had been wearing thin on her.

“I will find you, Scrouge.”

Translations:

Izigqibo zakhe akuzona zam: my Father’s decisions are not my own

[microsoftedgy69]

November 11, 2428

It’s still bad.

You’re not surprised; things took a sharp turn for the better in the past few days, but it is still November 11. Five years P.D., post Dirk.

When you moved to your boat, permanently, you locked yourself out of accessing Corpsefridge’s coordinates on your transportalizer, to keep yourself from going back there for any reason. You’re all about sabotaging yourself into good things, now. You’re trying, at least.

You programmed it to let you back over today, because that’s different.

Today’s different.

Still bad.

Your lightweight body feels heavy as you drag it onto the pad. You don’t want to go, but you know that you’ll hate yourself if you let this anniversary pass without paying him a visit. It’s the least you can do, you think, and send yourself off.

You are immediately surrounded by water.

The apartment, as you had anticipated, has completely flooded in the few months that you weren’t here. It is not technically a problem--you are waterproof from head to toe, and you spend a lot of time underwater. As your feet leave the transportalizing pad and you float weightlessly towards the ceiling, you find yourself thinking that it is kind of nice, actually.

The window has burst from the water pressure, and the door to the bedroom is missing entirely. Many of the little things--skateboards, hats, computers, his pillow--aren’t here anymore, having been carried off by the tide while you weren’t here. Furniture is suspended seemingly in mid air, and the silence of the place is all encompassing. The apartment is almost unrecognizable now, and you find solace in that.

In the water, you turn, and push your feet against the ceiling to dive down. It takes you a bit of effort, but you wrench the transportalizer free from the apartment floor. With it in your hands, you swim out of the broken window, and go up.

You surface to the murmur of waves and the screams of seagulls. The roof of the apartment is still dry, so they’re still here. The enormous birdhouse you built them is still standing strong, albeit covered in shit. You spare it a crooked smile as you climb ashore.

For today, you're wearing black, and your clothes are clinging to your body with ocean water while you deploy the transportalizer. The sun is shining, though, and you'll be dry in no time. You pay it no mind when you message your brothers to let them know that it's safe to come over now.

Sawtooth and Squarewave are advanced enough to read your moods and quiet down when you're sad, but not to feel sad themselves. They arrive in all black and silence, and you're thankful for it.

It's Brobot you're worried about. He is still getting used to emotions, still trying to name them all even, and you have no idea how he’s going to take this. But he has his own free will now, and he wanted to come, and you are in no position to say no to him. You let him come over last, and then it’s the four of you again, up on that high-rise, four robots without their maker, four kids unbothered by the ocean breeze.

The four of you stand at the ledge, and you look out into the sea, neverending until it cuts into the horizon. If you stared at it long enough, you could almost think you’re at home on your boat. But the seagulls scream, and pull you right back.

You put your arm around Brobot’s shoulders. He can’t feel it, not physically, but he sees what you’re doing and you trust he knows how to interpret the gesture by now. Sawtooth’s big hand is on Squarewave’s hat, and you take Squarewave’s little metal hand in yours. You can’t cry, in this body, because you have no fluids at all, but you think you probably would if you could, right now. You imagine that it would be quiet, maybe dignified even, and you think that would be nice. Not too long ago, you had full sobbing fits when you thought about this, so it is progress.

“We’re not gonna be able to come here next year,” you tell the sea. “Shit’s sinking and all. So this is it, buddy.” You pause, and try to let the realization of this wash over you once more. You did all you could to help Roxy, Jane, and Jake out of this timeline, and the only one left now is the dead body of a boy you had to throw out the window and call it a sea burial four years and nine months ago. You squeeze Squarewave’s hand--he can’t feel it, but you can--and say, “Bye, Dirk.”

The sea doesn’t answer you.

You stay a bit longer, like this. You make sure to hang out with Brobot here, make sure to offer to talk, make sure it’s not too much for him. You want him to know he’s not alone with any of this, before you send him back home.

Once all three of them are back on the yacht, you sit down on the roof and take your shoes off. It’s pointless in a way, because they’re already soaked, but you want to feel the ocean water between your toes when you let your legs hang off the edge of the roof.

“So,” you say, and in stark contrast to all those times you spent imagining this exact moment, you smile. “Last time, huh.”

You snort, and look down into the water. It’s still fairly clear here. Faintly, you see the outlines of a city long forgotten in the depths.

“I don’t know how true that really is. Sometimes, when I talk to myself, I still imagine I’m talking to you. I guess they’re the same thing, right?” You start kicking your legs, and watch the water slosh around them. The shark skin makes you very hydrodynamic. This feels smooth, and good, and a little like home. Your fingers tighten on the ledge, but only for a second.

“Life’s good on the yacht,” you say. “And I pulled Brobot out of Hellmurder, and gave him emotions, because you and I are the same and history repeats itself. I also got a bunch of plants, and a kitten, and an aquarium. And a family.” You pause to think of them, and smile. “I’m making new memories, better ones. October and November are still hard, but I think I’ll be better next year. I have a safety net that’s made of people, the way you had. The way I had, before things went to shit.”

Your abdomen makes a mechanical noise. You tilt your head back and look at the sky. It’s blue, cloudless, and unforgiving as always.

“I’m dating Jake now,” you say, and you laugh. “Not ours. That one is never going to trust me again. No, I’m with a different version, one that treats me like a person. It’s nice. I’ll try not to screw it up.”

For a minute, you stay like this, looking up into the sky, thinking about your boyfriend. He said you’d go get burritos later, and he makes you feel like a real person. When you told him about Dirk, he said that what happened to you was horrific, and if you hadn’t been shades at the time, you would have wept like a baby. Because he said what happened to you, not what you did, and it was a perspective that you had been entertaining, but felt like you didn’t deserve.

But Jake thinks you deserve good things. And your new, found family thinks you deserve good things.

You sigh, and tilt your head back down.

“Neither of us wanted things to go like this,” you say, softly, to the gentle waves. “You know that. I hope that, somewhere, you knew that. Because I do. You weren’t a bad person, and neither am I, I think. It just sucks it turned out this way and--and those are Front Bottoms lyrics, actually.” When you snort, it comes out strained and wonky, the autotune on your voice jumping a little. “I’m still sorry. It’s awful--what happened to us. It shouldn’t have happened and it’s all fucked up and I’m sorry about it all, even if it wasn’t--wasn’t my fault.”

The waves, too, don’t answer you.

But you nod to yourself.

“It’s still shit. You had a whole life ahead of you and I feel bad sometimes for living it. You know that. I tell you all the time. But there’s nothing we can do about it, and I’m done punishing myself. I want to be done.”

Again, you nod, then you pull your feet out of the water and stand. You look around, to the vastness of the ocean expanding to either side, to the birdhouse and the seagulls. You said goodbye to this place months ago, and you find that it doesn’t hurt, anymore. You don’t live here, and maybe you never fully did.

You slide your hand into your damp pants pocket, and pull out a pair of tacky triangular shades. Looking down at them, you turn them in your fingers, and let the edges dig into your thumb, before you flick them into the water.

“We buried you without a pair of those,” you tell him, and step onto the transportalizer. “Thought I’d rectify that. They’ll find you.”

You think, to yourself, that that was a weird thing to say. Then you look out into the ocean of your home timeline, November 11, 2428, in what used to be Houston, for the last time, and smile.

“Goodbye, DS,” you say. “Until we meet again.”

You send yourself off, to November 11, 2018, the Atlantic Ocean, and despite the wet clothes weighing you down, you feel a thousand times lighter.

[frasier-crane-style]

Watched Star Trek: Discovery

It was naht good, you guys.

-First off, mucho annoying having half a dozen ‘buy CBS All Access’ commercials. Plus, it was a two-hour premiere and to get even the second half, you have to buy their shitty streaming service. So I feel like I’m not getting a fair taste of the series before being expected to pay for it. This is the thanks I get for taking a chance this show, not even getting a complete story? Completely anti-consumerist. 

-This seemed way more like Kelvin Timeline: The Series than anything set in the Prime timeline. In the first hour along, we have callbacks to the opening of Star Trek Into Darkness, a callback with Burnham strapping on an Iron Man suit and flying through space (which Kirk already did twice), a callback to Spock’s childhood... they can’t even have member berries for something that doesn’t have Chris Pine in it.

-Speaking of Kelvinverse, it’s amusing as hell that the show’s idea of showing Starfleet on a humanitarian mission is having them blow shit up for the greater good. Next up, humanity must end the strife between two feuding species by doing some radical skateboard tricks!

-They’ve also adapted the Kelvinverse habit of ‘conflict’ that’s manufactured out of one person being a psychotic jackass and the other person going ‘maybe don’t be a psychotic jackass’. Seriously, after Burnham assaults a superior officer and attempts to take over the ship, how is she not spending the rest of the show in Space Leavenworth? And how does Captain Supercop no-sell a Vulcan nerve pinch? It’s not a cup of Nyquil, it doesn’t just make you drowsy!

-The pilot really only introduces three characters and 2/3 of them are awful (I take it from all the “I don’t want you to die” stuff from Burnham that Yeoh is totally going to die). So, Sarue--how does a species whose hat is being a giant chickenshit end up third-in-command of a starship? When Burnham and Yeoh were down together on the planet, apparently the acting captain was a guy who would shit himself and die if someone sneezed. Fine, he’s a science officer--don’t give him the conn! Jesus! The chain of command on the fucking Orville is more stable than this: first officer is a paranoid warmonger and second officer is a pussy!

-The new Klingons (and their ship design) looks awful. Just totally generic ‘we are evil’ stuff. They might as well have been Uruk-Hai, or Reavers, or a dozen other mean alien species. And their ships look like a Decepticon’s dildo. Why bother using an iconic Star Trek thing if you’re going to make it completely unrecognizable--to the point that even their language sounds like they’re all chewing a sandwich as they talk.

-Also, I get that they’re trying to be topical by making the Klingons Trump voters or something--yeah, yeah, stay woke--but if the Klingons and the Federation haven’t had contact in 100 years, why do they feel so threatened? I guess they kinda imply that Federation territory is encircling the Klingons, but it seems like in all the other, ‘later’ series that the Klingons are still way off in the distance, with even a literal ‘Neutral Zone’ between them and humanity. Only I guess fifty-some years before that, they’re going “holy shit, the humans are right on our doorstep”?

-Speaking of, I thought TPTB were trying to make the Klingons more nuanced, but apparently their way of declaring war is

A. Show up on the enemy’s doorstep.

B. Get their attention and allow them to call for reinforcements.

C. Then and only then call for your allies, who you can only hope will show up.

D. Without any sort of strategy or battle plan, go to war.

That seems way more Stupid Klingon Tricks than the Klingons have ever been before.

-Even with Fuller gone, they do a bunch of flourishing, psychobabble lines meant to be poetic and falling on pretentious. Like Mohindar in your average episode of Heroes. I know all Treks are guilty of this to some extent, but it just feels wrong to have Sarek talk about how Burnham is ‘facing her demons’. I thought Vulcans were all about logic, not slam poetry.

[tryveryhard]

Six years

One. Tangled up in those big “look-at-me” necklaces, hung in the same cheap wood paneled-closets where women hung such things decades and decades before we, ourselves, were on the verge. So we got to talking. And we hated it, I’m sure. My hair thin and pressed close to my head, braces squeezing my teeth — this was still an era of low-rise jeans and believing life could end in acne-prone boys named Luke and Jake back home in Michigan. A had purple, died hair and didn’t believe in abortion, nor feminism. S had a heart-shaped face and a dimple at the end of her spine and believed in both. We all agreed upon peanut butter and cheap sheets. We were complete strangers doomed to share a room for at least a year. We would have to see one another’s breasts, our curved moons hanging in the dark. We would have to tell one another everything. We would have to share secrets across the room, across that wavy dark carpet, and think: adulthood. We would fall in love with one another by Christmas break.

This all seemed terribly exciting, our semi-sheer shirts and dining-hall salads. I wrote none of this down. I watched a boy get carried out of our dorm hall — Washington Hall, 49 E. Green Drive — and into the ambulance that waited for him on the slick pavement. I watched this scene from the window of my dorm stairwell, all covered in cracked plaster, and thought about how it felt awfully like the slick tile of the bathroom walls in my elementary school. Exotic, cool. I cried several times that year in public, and would pace around the lobby in that yellow glow, all panicked, calling my parents while I sobbed on the floor of the single bathroom that locked. And it always felt so haunted back then, that place. I realize now that’s because the whole placed dripped with the choking sobs of other young people. I touched at least five strange penises that year. I fucked at least two that I can remember. And that year, I became both addicted and un-addicted to Camel Blues. I got my braces off and grew my hair past my ears. I went to Pittsburgh for the first time, teetered around in high heels, and realized I still had growing up to do. The girls I fell in love with, we’d forget one another soon. But I left letters for them the day we left that room. And I think of them each day, trapped in that small square, us crashing against the walls of our teeny-tiny brains. Two. This was the year I got a better down comforter for my twin-sized mattress and became inextricably involved with people in the military. My roommate that year, H, had an eating disorder and a boyfriend who didn’t want to fuck her when she was bloated. She also wanted to be a nurse in the Navy. She studied relentlessly. And somewhere between Pittsburgh and leaving that room, I had fallen impossibly in love with a boy who would leave for a military base that October. I did not realize then that every woman must go through this at least once, this plot. I loved him for his height and for his almost endearing violence when he kissed me in parking lots. Naturally I never told him any of this, but as a matter of perseverance I’m sure he and two other men loved me that winter. I did not know then that it was odd for a 25-year-old to lure a 19-year-old to bed — a bed in his parents’ house, then a guest bed in his sister’s house — when he got off his job at Lowes. This felt perfectly in-line with my trajectory, what I was supposed to be doing when not coaxing my roommate to eat something other than a can of corn and $15 handle of vodka. He broke up with me over text, I threw myself into the student newspaper, then a skinny, short boy who would hold my hand as we left philosophy class. He lent me several hoodies I never returned, and I had sex with him until he told me he loved me and I determined I couldn’t do anything but ignore him for the rest of my life. Nonetheless, I remember wondering if I could marry a short man, if this was my life. Then back to the student newspaper. Work, work, work. Many nights in a fluorescent hallway, fingering the gray carpet and whispering into the phone the whole, I. Can’t. Do. This. One night, after covering a student protest, a boy walked me back to my dorm and kissed me, suddenly. This was the sweetest moment of that year. His dorm room smelled entirely of garbage but it allowed me to climb the steepest set of stairs on campus and observe, so viscerally, the campus I had grown to know in the past year. I never felt afraid. This boy and I, we went to church. Then I took his virginity, and I determined I couldn’t do anything but ignore him for the rest of my life. He asked if we could have one last kiss which I, cruelly, found pathetic. Especially sad because he had once carried me home when my heels were too bruising, and no man would ever do that again. Work, work, work. I suddenly woke up to the fact that my life had been rife with problems. My mother was a drug addict. How did I not realize this before? I did, I did. I started making both more destructive and more impressive decisions with this knowledge. I went to a conference in Atlanta and ate brisket and began telling everyone all at once that my life was a tragedy. I drank cheap wine with strangers and decided, weeks later, to aggressively kiss a boy I had just decided to love. Then I took him back to his home, crashed into his cheap blue sheets, and I told him he was weird, and we saw each other for the next year, just like that. Me thinking he was weird. Me taking him home. Those girls from the first year, at that point, had melted into background noise. But I lived in the attic of S’s mom that summer, which is astounding now that I think of it. I moved into a home with humid green trees, a grand staircase, no furniture. And my bedroom, larger than the one in Queens now, had two windows that framed the bed and buzzed with cicadas. I went there every weekend, and I have no memory of what exactly that meant. I became editor of the student newspaper for no reason at all, except for that I wanted to feel something. I went to New York City for the first time as an adult and drank chilled sangria in Harlem, radiating terror.

Three.

This was the year of machinery. Synapses in my mind click, click, clicking to remind me I was knocking out my minutes and careening toward the end. I made big promises that that are difficult to think of now. I ate so many meals in bed. I was playing dress-up at 20 years old, with all those adult meetings and tears and assumptions that life began and ended with the student newspaper, with my own thoughts. In some ways, I was half-right. I grew my hair long, met with professors constantly. Studied, studied, studied. After all that swallowing of misery, I began the fast climb out of the pits, desperate. I do not remember if I wrote this year. I do remember that I fell out of love quicker than I had fallen into it, would go weeks without talking to that man, would try to end our relationship over and over to no avail. Everyone hated me this year and I could feel it cloaking me, that dismay. I started drinking white wine out of coffee mugs, laying in bed watching documentaries all weekend and thinking about how I was on fire. Big, magic, the life waiting for me outside. This was the year of optimization, the year of Girl Boss. I am sure there were many cardigans in my closet. I sent many emails. Too many emails. I started to have the impression that I was becoming something bigger than myself, bigger than my past, bigger than this school. I kept crying in meetings. This was mania, pure mania, after all. I worked until 4 a.m. some nights, slept until 8 a.m., went to class, never anywhere else. I was made to constantly meet with old men who didn’t care for me much. I went down the hall to sit in Ian’s bed, nightly, drinking beers in silence, thinking that I had never been so exceptional. Every once and a while I completely lost my mind, but never quite openly. I would sometimes get phone calls late at night, a message from the newspaper printing facility saying something had gone wrong, and I’d drive barefoot back to that tower where we made the thing nobody read so I could I’d fix it. And maybe it’s the prospect of fixing that made me feel so unrecognizable and knowing that year. There was so much that was broken, after all. I forgot my one-year anniversary with that guy, yet realized I was fine doing the same thing two years in a row. I do not remember when I discovered I had gotten that internship. I do not remember when I realized I’d move to New York after all. I do remember that before all of that transpired, all of that hope, I cracked and slipped back into angst. I went home and pressed myself into the ink-stained jeans I wore throughout high school, bought magazines on foreign policy, lied to my parents. I was 21. I met with my ex-boyfriend at a Coney Island, laid in his tobacco-scented scrawny arms, and kissed him, shaking with anticipation. A reintroduction to my 15-year-old self after all those nights spent pretending there had ever been anything else, and many more nights trying to forget. We shuddered with all the years we had lost, and I slid under his body again, and we watched skateboarding videos on a thin mattress on his floor. Before I left for New York, I realized it would unlikely work in the long-term. Then I hit his friend’s car on accident, moved to an unfamiliar city, and for whatever reason, slept in the same bed as my ex-boyfriend every night for three months in an apartment that smelled like new paint. He pissed in an Uber. I developed an odd relationship with a comedian named Alec, who I saw once in person, like a mirage, getting off the 2 train and walking away from me. I discovered a new egg and sausage sandwich at Clark Avenue, and I wandered about with Seth, slowly losing my mind. My calves, though, were hardened by all the nervous pacing I did that summer. I got a plane and went back home, with the newfound strength to wear slip-on vans with sheath dresses that hit below the knee. Four.

My room in Athens was haunted by cicadas, rainy mornings. Always impossible hot, yet I surrounded myself in blankets and pillows. I still drew on my eyeliner thick. And my bathtub still clogged with hair, soaking my feet in cold, gray water. I still felt those minutes click, clicking away but I also felt desperate to gain them back. The first night, a Friday, I wore a tank top and met Reba at a wood-paneled bar called Tony’s, drinking white wine, thinking: just like Manhattan. I met my ex-boyfriend from sophomore year thinking: he’s not gay, I think. And I had sex with him half-heartedly that night in one of those dingy college-guy rooms, with the bad sheets and a handful of the posters and the sense that this is all fading fast, just for kicks. But he only lived up the hill from my home, and I knew I could stumble on back to my own bed before 2 a.m. And I did just that. That morning, I ate three scrambled eggs on a plastic plate. I prepared an three boxes amount of pasta because I was determined to have people like me that year. I walked it over to the home of a boy I knew only marginally, named Alex. I wore a black shirt, patterned shorts, sandals, and that thick eyeliner. I was still in a fit of insanity from the night before, thirsting for all my new bad decisions. His roommate was tall, lanky, wore black pants and a short-sleeved button up shirt. I thought: he’s balding, and covering it up with a hat. I thought: he’s odd. He came up behind me when I was drinking my second bottle of red wine in the basement, all caked with alcohol, all under the glare of an ex-boyfriend from my sophomore year. I was playing Danzig, and he made some comment I was too drunk to process. I went up to that yellow-lit kitchen and tried to clean the dishes I had brought. I wanted everyone to eat pasta. I wanted to clean up everything as if I had never been there. I wanted so badly to stop thinking the past three years were for nothing. The boy, the roommate with the hat, stopped me and told me I didn’t have to wash the dishes. Don’t worry about it. I asked him if he wanted to kiss, and he nodded and leaned into me, and we feverishly toppled onto the front porch. I took him to the same bar where I was the night before, kissed him, and he took me into the other bar I was at the previous night — the wood-paneled one — and walked me home. Inexplicably, we sat in my bed while I talked about the summer I had just crawled out of. I told him about the articles I had written, Manhattan. Does this sound impressive? Does this make me likable? He did not kiss me goodbye. He merely disappeared down the stairs, long legs carrying him back to the kitchen with all the dishes I wasn’t allowed to clean. I knew his first name: Michael. And he waved to me the next morning, sat behind me as if I had not disclosed all those things and kissed him on his porch. He left without a word, turning to walk beneath the tall oak trees flush with summer, stepping into that flickering light. And I loved him, honestly. Would’ve died for him. But I spent the next few months tumbling into his bed, trying to deny that. Trying to pretend I was still my productive self from the year prior, but always thinking of him and wishing I were beneath him. One autumn night I ran out of his home, terrified of him, and straight into a field where I laid down without my phone. I thought: I hope I die. Instead, I told him I loved him that January. Instead, I replaced some of my ambition with his Friday nights. I spent my last night of college on his floor, watching heat lightning ripple across that Ohio sky, and was unable to figure out whether I had been incredibly stupid or incredibly astute these past four years, falling in and out of love with many things and people. I did not talk to my roommates from the first year anymore. I did not talk to my roommates from the second year. I was hardly talking to my current roommates, having practically moved into Michael’s. I was still doing the student newspaper six days a week, but part of me didn’t feel as committed because I had gradually become less insane. I thought. I did not write my name on the wall with the rest of the people who had worked there, at the same time, did not say goodbye, because I thought: these people still hate me. And I drove out of Ohio without any tears. 

[thegirlsinthefirehouse]

Descendants, Chapter 17

-----

“You’ve gotta be kidding me,” said Abby, putting a hand on her hip.

“The Shadow People, really? And you’ve never thought about mentioning this before?”

“Not kidding Abs,” Holtzmann said, picking up the PKE meter from off the bed and placing it carefully in a bag along with the other things she was packing in an old shoulder bag from her dad. If there was one thing Abby was never without, it was any of her ghost hunting equipment. And it had somehow all ended up in the bag with Holtz’s tools.

“I never got to explore the possibility, but I do remember being a kid in that school and hearing the older kids talk about ghostly shapes on the walls. Sort of like Peter Pan and his shadow. They would move constantly throughout the school, like they were looking for something or someone.”

“And you never saw them while you were there?” asked Abby.

“Too busy,” shrugged Holtzmann. “I was going to be the first kid with a motorized skateboard. I had plans everywhere, Abs.”

Abby looked at her wife like she was about to say something, but she refrained.

“Your skepticism is noted, but I really-- I really never saw them,” said Holtz with a shrug. “Maybe something out of the corner of my eye... but I could never verify that with a school of elementary aged kids running amok around me. And I never thought about breaking in.” She picked up the bag and put it on across her shoulder. "Well, you were tiny and breaking back into your daily prison probably wasn't high on your list," said Abby. Holtz nodded.

“But I’ve always been curious,” said Holtzmann. “And I’ve never been to an elementary school after dark.” She wrapped her arm around Abby's waist. “You don’t worry about a thing. I’ve got it all covered.”

“That’s what I’m worried about,” said Abby, crossing her arms.

“You just take care of the little one and stay behind me.”

“I’m pregnant, not helpless Holtz,” huffed Abby.

“And it’s my possible ghost hunting mission and you’re only going to look pretty on my arm.”

“Your arm candy huh?” said Abby, smiling a little. Holtzmann leaned in and kissed the side of Abby’s neck.

“You’re always beautiful.” She patted the side of the bag. “Now let’s go catch a cab and see if we can break in before nightfall.”

-----

Holtz and Abby had gotten downstairs to the hotel lobby when Abby had to go to the restroom again. It was while waiting that Holtzmann had noticed a familiar figure standing outside the hotel, dialing his cell phone. She headed for him.

“I know we’re missing dinner, but you didn’t have to--”

“I’m not,” Dean Holtzmann said, putting away his phone. “No carryout containers. I didn’t even turn on the stove.” He gestured to the small bag on his back. “I’m going with you.”

Holtzmann was very surprised by that. “Dad--”

“No arguments,” he said pointedly. “You’re going to a semi-abandoned property where there could be not only the paranormal activity you want to see, but the potential for looters and god knows what else.”

“This isn’t our first rodeo. You do realize how many decrepit old buildings we go to in New York?”

“I am aware Jillian, but I’m still going. But I’m going to let you tell Abby I’m going in her stead.” Now Holtz was seeing where this was going. It was cute, really. Her dad was being protective of his grandchild. She couldn’t see this going real well with her wife though. Holtz adjusted her glasses and put a hand on her dad's shoulder. "Dad, seriously. It would be better if Abby went instead of you." Dean grimaced, his frown lines creasing across his face. "I don't think it would be in the best interests of all of us if you take Abby with you. She’s four months pregnant with your child Jillian. Those buildings are not that safe." "Abby knows what to do in the case of a paranormal entity. She makes it her joie de vivre to punch ghosts back into the ghost realm."

“Yes, but you don’t have your equipment and you don’t have backup. At least, most of your equipment. Who knows what you might find in there?”

“A few dust bunnies to add to my collection. They’re so precious.”

“Or copper thieves.”

Holtz sighed. This was going nowhere.

“Dad...”

“And I do have one thing in my favor,” said Dean. He gestured to the keys in his hand. “Now you won’t have to call for a ride.” Holtzmann grimaced at that. He did have a point...

“Fine, but Abby is still going, just in case. I might need her.”

Dean Holtzmann sighed. “I guess it’s good that there will be two Holtzmann’s going then, eh?” Holtz just sighed and lowered her head. This was going to be a long night.

-----

Abby had been more than a little suspicious when Dean had shown up at the hotel, even more so when Holtz said he was driving them to the school. She was fairly certain she knew what the both of them was thinking, and sort of felt pity for her wife who now had three people to worry about.

Well, two and one third. She rubbed her baby bump and listened to Holtz and her dad talking about things. She was quite amused at the story Dean was telling her about how Malinda had tried to sneak Jillian into a dress for the 1st grade class picture, but she had managed to slip out the house without them knowing early that morning with not only her backpack, but a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, chips, and a juice box. She had taken the picture with wild everywhere hair, mismatched shoes and socks, jean shorts, and her favorite yellow t-shirt. Holtz laughed and said the favorite thing about the outfit was the rainbow suspenders that had matched the shirt. Abby could just imagine little Holtzmann with skinned knees and band-aids on her fingers hopping off the stool after the picture and asking the photographer if she could take apart his camera to see how it worked.

It was dusk when they pulled into the old neighborhood where they had used to live. Holtz pointed out where their house had been again. It had been torn down a couple of years after her dad had sold it to downsize. It had hurt Holtzmann a little to see it go, but she had the beginnings of a promising career at CERN, and had no reason to reside in Baltimore.

Funny how things changed over time, although she still had no reason to want to return permanently to her hometown. New York was her home.

Two blocks over, they came upon the elementary school. It had been a nice place at one time, but age was beginning to show. Holtzmann grimaced as she noticed the broken windows after they had parked across the street.

“You may be right about the looting, Dad.”

“I’m almost certain they’ve probably been busy getting all the ‘good’ they can get out of the place,” he said with a grimace as he held open the door for Abby. “It’s just sitting here empty.”

“It does have a bit of a creepy vibe,” said Abby, leaning on the door. “Holtz?”

“PKE is registering off towards the deep end, and we are definitely picking up some unstable electromagnetic fields,” she said with a grin. She pumped her arms up in the air. “Whoo! Let’s go.” She knocked her fist on the hood of the car. Abby was right behind her as she started to walk away from the car.

“I’m assuming that’s a good thing?” asked Dean, looking a little concerned.

“No, that is an excellent thing,” said Holtzmann, turning around to look at him and gesturing. “Come on Dad, we’re hunting ghosts tonight.”

-----

It turned out that breaking into her old elementary school was not as hard as she thought it would be considering all Holtz had to do was go up and push on the front gate. There was not even a security system on any of the buildings, nor any lock and key. The chains and locks were all laying on the ground, rusted to the point of being unrecognizable.

“No wonder someone said all you had to do was walk in,” said Dean. He grimaced as he saw the condition of the floor in the main building. The tile was starting to come up in some places, and it looked like it was intentionally broken in others. Holtz was walking not that far from them, checking the Geiger counter. Abby walked over and took the PKE meter from her. She wanted to get a reading from inside the building once they had entered. She blinked for a moment. She could have sworn she saw something out of the corner of her eye.

“You feeling that?” asked Holtz.

“Temperature drop, yes,” said Abby. “Although it is fall and there are broken windows.”

“Mmhmm,” said Holtz absently.

Abby frowned. She felt uneasy, but couldn’t form what was bothering her into words. She rubbed her wrists. One symptom she was definitely not enjoying in her pregnancy was the fluid retention that was causing her to have carpal tunnel issues. It was making everything in the lower arms just ache at random times. She rubbed up and down her forearm some more.

“There’s definitely something here,” said Abby. “Was it always like this?” Dean Holtzmann shook his head. “It was a bright, friendly elementary school. At least, when Jillian was here.”

“Spook factor is not being helped by the oncoming evening,” gestured Holtz to one of the windows in the hallway.

“Should there be mist in here?” asked Dean, walking towards what would have been the secretary’s office, greeting people as they came in. “Oh wait, it disappeared.”

“Manifestation,” grinned Holtz. “I think we may see something tonight Dad.”

“Hopefully we’ll be seeing some fried chicken at a diner later,” said Abby.

“Already?” asked Holtz. Abby nodded. Holtz wrapped an arm around her and kissed her temple.

“We’ll make sure to feed the kid later.”

“And blueberry waffles.”

“I think those are more of an Abby thing than a baby thing,” Holtz said, looking around for a moment before pulling out a flashlight. She hissed under her breath.

“Holtz?” asked Abby.

“I think I saw one Abs,” said Holtzmann. “Flitted away fast.”

“Distinct form?” Abby asked. “Or--”

“Shadow,” said Holtz. “Always a shadow.” She grimaced. “Why didn’t I ever ask more questions?”

“Like from an adult?” asked Abby, looking around. Holtz shrugged as they walked around. Her dad was going into one of the classrooms with his own flashlight.

“There had to be some sort of local myth or legend.”

“The kids probably knew more than the adults did,” said Abby. “Did you ever know how many--?”

Holtzmann shook her head, but then she stopped.

“Six.”

Abby looked at her as Holtz flitted her flashlight to the ceiling. “You remembered something.”

“Possibly,” she said. “I don’t know where the thought came from though, which disturbs me.” She frowned and looked around.

“I didn’t even think about that there could be mold from a leaky roof or old lead paint. You probably shouldn’t have come here, Abby.”

“Like I would have just stayed at the hotel while you were out hunting ghosts,” said Abby, pulling out her phone and using it as a flashlight. It was getting dark enough that she couldn’t see much with just their one light.

“Yes, but you should have.”

Abby ignored her wife and started veering off from Holtz. Inside the building was very rough. There was a lot of damage on the inside to the paint and wood paneling on the walls. Teenage vandals probably, judging by the spray painted messages on any sort of large surface they could find. A large set of rusted lockers lay on one end of a long hallway. When she saw something out of the corner of her eye again, she flinched.

“Yo Abs!”

Abby turned around and looked to where Holtz had gestured to the ceiling. A familiar green substance was dripping down onto the wall in front of her.

“Oh yeah, your Shadow People are definitely here,” said Abby. Holtz nodded and almost reached out to keep Abby from touching the substance, but refrained. She knew she’d need to pick her battles this evening. And it wasn’t like they didn’t deal with the stuff nearly every week.

“What is... that?” they heard from behind them. Dean was standing there, using his flashlight to get a better look at the slime.

“Ectoplasm,” said Holtzmann. “Leftover residue from ghostly and other paranormal appearances.”

“Oh, that stuff you always tell me your co-worker gets doused in.” Abby laughed softly. Poor Erin did get more than her fair share of it, and it was always a pain to clean up. Dean moved closer to get a better look.

“Interesting stuff.”

“I should show you some of our samples at the lab,” said Holtzmann. “You’d hate to see the black slime. If you ever thought I was terrible on clothes, that stuff practically eats them for breakfast. We have to keep changing out its container because it eats through them.”

“Not to mention eroding your soul,” said Abby, moving towards what she thought was an empty classroom. The PKE meter was giving her a reading that something was there as she entered the space. She wanted to tell Holtz later that maybe they needed flashlights in them so they could see in front of them while still taking readings. There had been a light breeze in the classroom when Abby had entered, but she had chalked it up to a couple of broken windows she noticed off to the side. But when the wind picked up, it sent old schoolwork and pieces of the old ceiling tiles flying all around the room, really capturing her attention to the sheer force of it. She had to cover her face with her arm and duck down to keep them from hitting her.

“Holtz!” The wind picked up even more, and it was all Abby could do to keep from completely hitting the floor to avoid being hit. These ghosts were definitely putting on a show.

“Abby!” said Holtzmann, coming running into the room. The wind automatically stopped, sending everything back crashing to the floor.

“Okay... that was weird.” Holtz helped Abby back up to her feet. “Why did the wind stop when you came into the room?” She ran the PKE meter over Holtz, who gently pushed it away.

“I’m not carrying any spooks or ghouls if that’s what you’re wondering.” She paused, looking worried. “You ok?”

“Fine,” said Abby, dusting off her knees. “I--”

A yell got their attention and they both rushed back out into the hallway. There was a fine mist settling over everything. It had an unearthly glow to it, which made the color of it discernable.

“All hail the mighty glow cloud,” joked Holtz. She frowned when she looked over to Abby and noticed she looked troubled.

“Abs, you okay?” Abby gestured to the walls. They all had ectoplasm dripping down them in sheets. Dean Holtzmann was standing in the middle of the mist, trying to stay away from the walls.

“I’m assuming this is not a good sign?” he gestured.

“I’m starting to think the entities are really not happy with our presence here,” Abby said, looking at Holtz. “They may not be as benign as you were hoping they would be.”

“And here I was hoping we could just spend the evening making out at my old elementary school,” drawled out Holtz, smirking. Abby pushed on her shoulder.

“So what do you want to do?”

“I’m thinking about those waffles,” sighed Holtzmann. She rubbed a hand across her face, grimacing.

“Dad, maybe--”

Both Holtz and Abby looked over to where Dean was standing. He was absolutely still, barely even moving. There was something surrounding him when they shined their light on him.

Shadows. They stood out against the glow of the mist.

“Oh boy,” Abby said under her breath.

“Dad, stay still,” said Holtz, panicking a little. She pulled out something she had hoped not to use. She had made her dad his own personal proton handgun much like her own, just in case of an emergency a few years ago. There hadn’t been any apocalypses in Baltimore recently, so he really hadn’t been much of a need for it. She had to unbury the shielded box it was in from under 17 rolls of fabric.

“Keep a beam of light on them!” yelled Abby.

“You think?” said Holtz, listening to the gun as it purred a little as she turned it on.

“No, but it gives him a little something to concentrate on,” she said softly as they began to inch closer. The shadows seemed frozen in place in the light of their flashlights. Abby took several readings, fascinated. There was something going on there, and she couldn’t figure out what.

That was until Holtzmann got close enough that she nearly stepped on one. With a quick yelp from Holtz, the shadows surrounded her, covering her entire body in darkness. Abby made a quick grab for the flashlight and gun in Holtz’s hands. They quickly dispersed at Abby’s touch, much to her surprise. The brunette was disgusted as she tried to wipe off the sleeves of her sweater on her jeans. They were covered in ectoplasm. But the shadows were gone from their vicinity. She looked over to Holtz’s dad, who was still trying to gain his composure.

“Dean?”

“Yeah, I’m fine--fine.” She handed the handgun and flashlight to him. He shined it on his daughter.

“Jills?” said Abby softly, pulling her close and stroking her hair.

“That was... not a field test I wanted to experience,” said Holtz. “Being surrounded by ghosts is not a party trick I’d like to do again.”

“Worse than being squashed by a big white balloon?” Abby said, trying not to smirk.

“At least I can hear,” said Holtzmann, pulling out of her wife’s grasp. She shook all over, as if to sling off the creepy feelings.

“Glad you’re alright Jillian,” said Dean.

“You too Dad,” said Holtz. She looked over to Abby, who was in contemplation.

“Did they touch you?”

Holtz shook her head.

“Just... surrounded you?” asked Abby, leaning her head to the side.

“Yup,” said Holtz. “Just a large swatch of blackness for me.” She grimaced when she noticed Abby’s sleeves still had ectoplasm clinging to the fibers.

“But apparently they did you.”

“I touched you,” said Abby. “I was worried you might get possessed and--”

“Say no more,” said the blonde. They both gave each other a pained look. Possession was not one of their favorite subjects.

“So you put your hand through my protective barrier of ghosts and they didn’t do anything to you?”

Abby snapped her fingers. “That’s it!”

“What’s it?” asked Dean, who had taken to shining his flashlight around the hallway to keep an eye out for the shadows. Holtz took back the gun and other flashlight from him.

“Protective,” said Abby. “That’s why they didn’t touch you. They were protecting you, Holtz.”

The blonde looked perplexed. “Whaaaaaaaaaat?”

“The Shadow People,” said Abby. “I don’t know this for sure, but you were a student here. Even though you’re an adult, they may have still recognized you. They didn’t-- they’re not evil, I think. They wanted to protect the children who came to the school. And I think they’re still trying to, which is probably why the teenagers can still get away with the vandalism.” She pointed at all the graffiti in the space. “It’s all speculation, but I’d imagine they’ve been restless since the place closed down.”

“That’s kind of--” began Dean.

“Sad,” finished Holtzmann. She twirled a loose curl. “They’re anchored here and everyone is gone.”

“Right,” said Abby with a nod.

“So you think these ghosts were watching over the children for years?” asked Dean.

“We’d have to get into the school’s history to even make a guess, but I’d imagine you’d find some sort of story about someone dying on these grounds. Perhaps a natural disaster of sorts?”

“The school burned down two years after it was built,” said Dean. “I do remember hearing about that.”

“That could be the reason why they’re here,” Holtz said. “They died saving the children, and they’re still trying to.”

“Hence why Holtz was unaffected by the ghosts,” said Abby. “They were making sure she was alright.” Abby gave her a small smirk. “Even if she is all grown up.”

“Pffft, please. Like I’d ever be a real adult.”

“You’d better sweetheart, or Abby’s going to have two children to look after,” mused Dean. The statement made Abby laugh a little and wipe one of her sleeves off on Holtz’s shoulder, who looked disgusted at the green slime.

“They haven’t reappeared yet,” stated Holtz, looking around. She took the PKE meter back from Abby.

“The mist is gone too,” said Dean. “Do you really think they were trying to protect you?” Holtz shrugged.

“I--”

“We were. We remember Jillian,” said a voice. Holtzmann turned around quickly when she realized the voice was coming from an all too familiar source.

“No no no Abby...” said Holtz, running up to Abby frantically. Her face was blank, as what usually happened when she was taken over by a ghost. But with the baby and...

“We will not hurt them,” said the voice. Abby seemed to grimace.

“Your beloved is yelling at us.”

“With good reason,” said Holtzmann. “Give them back to me, please.”

“You have in your possession something we need.”

“What?” asked Holtz quickly.

“Your weapon,” said Abby, pointing at the gun in Holtz’s hand.

“You want to leave this place,” Holtzmann guessed.

“Yes,” said the voice, a little deeper this time. “We are tired. And there are no more children here.”

“They abandoned you, didn’t they?” frowned Dean.

“No one believes anymore,” stated the voice. Which was true in Holtz's opinion. People just didn’t want to see what was in front of their faces sometimes.

“You were a happy child,” said the voice, lighter this time. The fact that Abby’s face wasn’t changing with any of the statements was making Holtzmann antsy. She also knew her dad was growing anxious behind her. She needed to keep him calm too.

“Was I?” said Holtz. “I don’t remember you.”

“We protected you,” said the voice of not Abby. “The older boys did not like you and tried to hit you.”

Now that, Holtz did remember. She had tried to ignore them, but...

“We kept them away,” said the voice again. “When you would cry in the bathroom at their words.”

“Jillian?” said Dean. He sounded surprised.

“It... it was part of life,” said Holtz. She didn’t really want to bring back the past right now. She needed to think about the present, in which a group of ghosts had control of her wife and child. She needed to get them free. She stepped forward.

“What do I need to do?”

“Outside,” said the voice. “Away from the school. We need to break free.”

“Alright, let’s go,” said Holtzmann, gesturing. “Field trip!”

Holtzmann and Dean followed Abby slowly outside. Once out near the streetlamps on the school grounds, five shadows suddenly surrounded the three humans on the asphalt of what would have probably been the teachers’ parking lot. They sprang up out of the ground, still only appearing as shadowed figures, but now they seemed more real.

As real as you could be floating above the ground. “We only have a little time,” said Abby. “We can not--” “Be too far away from your manifestation point,” said Holtzmann. “You will want to return.”

“Yes,” said the voice of not Abby. “Shoot us with this weapon and we can move on.”

“But--” began Holtz with a grimace. “It will--”

“We know,” said one of the ghosts through her wife. “We are ready.”

“Well, never say I’m not up to shooting a ghost,” said Holtzmann, looking at her dad. She pulled the trigger and the blast from the proton handgun let out a stream of red energy, which hit each and every one of the shadows in the chest, their forms exploding in pure white light in rapid succession.

“Thank you,” said the voice. “We will be able to move on.” A ghostly shadow popped out of Abby, making her pitch forward. Dean grabbed Abby around the shoulders and helped her stay upright, despite her going weak in the knees. Holtz quickly shot the last ghost before turning back to her lover. She was relieved to see Abby looking a lot more normal.

“Abs, we’ve got to quit doing this.”

“How--how did we get outside?” said Abby. She was rubbing her head with a wince. Holtz came over and poked her on the shoulder. “I should have really left you in the hotel room if I had known you’d get possessed by not one ghost, but six.”

“S--six?” gulped Abby. She grimaced. “We’d better not tell Erin.”

“I am definitely not mentioning this to Erin or she will yell at me again,” said Holtz. She looked at Abby, worry written all across her features. “Are you okay?”

“I-- I’m not sure,” said Abby. “Kind of woozy, but that’s obvious. My brain feels like mush.”

“We should take her to see a doctor perhaps?” stated Dean. Holtz powered down the gun and handed it back to her dad, who put it back in his bag, along with the flashlight he had been using. Abby leaned into Holtzmann. The nuclear engineer was very glad to be able to pull her wife close.

“I’m fine,” said Abby. “At least, I will be once my head feels like it's screwed back on correctly.” She frowned, rubbing her hand across her baby bump. "Are they okay?" asked Holtz.

“I don’t think there’s anything wrong. I haven’t felt... I haven’t felt anything,” she said. “If there was something wrong, I would think I would know.”

“That is reassuring since they did promise me not to hurt you,” said Holtz. Abby looked dubious at that. "They promised you?"

"That they did," said Dean. "Do ghosts do that?"

"Not normally no," said Holtz. "They normally just like to screech at us and throw us around like water balloons."

Dean sighed and shook his head. "I always knew the work you did was dangerous, but seeing it first hand is another thing." He started to pull out his keys. "Where to now?"

“We can figure out what we want to do on the way back. But for now, we’re going to get that fried chicken. I'm starving after sending six ghosts to the afterlife.” She looked at the state of their clothes and frowned. “Maybe after we freshen up.” -----

Later that night, Holtz heard her phone go off softly. Abby was asleep beside her, but she was up nibbling on a drumstick left over from their late supper. Holtzmann had been scrolling through some articles about her old elementary school but answered the call.

"You're a go for Holtzmann's House of Leisure."

"You running a house of ill repute is a scary thought Holtzy."

"You know it," grinned Holtz. She always loved hearing from Patty. "Talk to me."

"Your dad was right about the school's history," said Patty. "It did burn down not long after it was built. It was an accident having to do with a coal stove. 18 people died. But get this, six bodies were never identified. They weren't teachers or even parents. It was speculated that they have been immigrants passing through who stopped to help." Holtz shifted the phone to her other ear when she felt Abby move beside her. "Damn, I definitely would have thought they'd be teachers."

"You definitely need to come back and document everything. It'll be interesting to see your point of view. And get your dad to do it too."

"Will do," said Holtz. She threw the leftover bones back into the styrofoam container and got quietly out of bed. She went to the bathroom and closed the door.

"And the other?"

"From what I can find," said Patty. "Womb hauntings usually have to do with a ghost taking over before a child is conceived. I read a few stories about where a deceased loved one takes over a woman's womb in order to stay with them, but other than demon spawn, there's really not much out there. Paranormal events are still hard to collect." She paused for a moment.

"Abby is fine Holtzy."

"I know. I just worry," said Holtz. "I think we've been lucky so far. I remember reading in one of the paranormal groups that pregnant women are more receptive to the paranormal." Holtzmann sat down on the edge of the bathtub. "Considering out of all of us, she's always been the truest believer... I'd hate to see that even more heightened. I'd never get her away from work."

"And now you're overthinking things," said Patty. "But you're right about the fact that Abby would enjoy the ability to sense a ghost without equipment."

Holtz groaned at that.

"Maybe you're right, I am putting too much thought in this," she said. "They kept their promise."

"I'm sure the whole thing was scary," agreed Patty. She was sitting on her bed at home, looking at her computer screen. She was wearing a pair of mint green pajamas with hearts on them. The lights of the city were bright through her large bedroom windows, which were the delight of the apartment. She stared at them for a few moments before looking down at Cheyenne, who was asleep beside her. Patty caressed Cheyenne's cheek.

"I can't even imagine Cheyenne having to deal with that."

Holtz didn't say anything for a moment. She glanced at the back of the bathroom door where their clothes still hung from the night's adventures. "I think I'm going to go stuff myself with some more waffles and get some sleep."

"Good plan," said Patty. "Good night Holtzy. Go hold your wife." "You too," grinned Holtzmann as she hung up the phone. Patty chuckled and did the same.

"Oh, I plan to." She sat the computer on the bedside table and turned over, pulling Cheyenne into her arms. <– Prev | Next –>

[e-flo]

AU where kakashi is essentially like tony hawk in which without a mask and skateboard on he's totally unrecognizable

oh and his insta is all vids of his dogs on skateboards

some skater boi kakashi doodles cause of the new official images, i’m obsessed with him trying to fit in (and failing)