#watch ping pong i implore you all

[marcsnuffy]

I think I really started liking Peco (from Ping Pong the animation) when he declared out loud, out of the blue, in the middle of a concurred place to his best friend that his dream is to be the best player in the world and that he hates losing and doesn't care about how his opponents end up as long as he wins. This happens AFTER he lost 7-0, cried, said he wished he'd never been born (so he'd never have to go and lose 7-0) and said he'd quit the team, and BEFORE crying again after losing at a tournament and quitting the sport for real this time, almost killing himself then going right back to playing

[stoic--rose]

what's your animated series recommendation?

just like, out of any animated series? cuz if so, i dont really have many, ill be honest. i dont watch many movies or shows, so my pool of things like that is a little shallow.

with that said PLEAAAAASE WATCH PING PONG THE ANIMATION its probably the best thing ive ever watched, its art direction and style is so unlike anything ive ever seen, the story had me clamoring for more all the time, it has one of my favorite characters in all of fiction (manabu sakuma) and its pretty short too, watchable all in an afternoon. and if you end up liking the anime, i implore you to read the manga! that style i mentioned earlier has more room to shine on the pages if you ask me, its simply just Awesome all the way through

[samwrights]

I Found You

I have no excuses for this one except I’m a dirty dirty Overhaul fucker.

On the real though, this one was very loosely inspired from Yagami Yato’s plot lines for Dabi and Overhaul. These routes inspired the Underground and Dabi and Kai’s occupations, otherwise everything else was just me being a simp.

⤞ Pairing: tattooed!Reader x Former Villain!Chisaki Kai

⤞ Word Count: 16,850. Yes you read that right.

⤞ Warnings: language, arson, awkward questions, reader smokes, I shafted Dabi again and made him the best friend...again, slightly vivid gore, mentions of death, male masturbation, daddy kink, age difference, breeding kink (ish), dirty talk, dom!Kai, 

I’m sorry this is so long. Just kidding, no I’m not. I love writing really long fics. Honestly, I’m trying to see how much I can push the boundaries of my writing and how long I can keep one idea conhesive and consistent and how much I can flesh out. Eventually these longer oneshots will be cross-posted to my AO3, I just really need to do my paper. Also Tropium Tattoos is pronounced as Tro-Pie-Um.

The color of fire always burns in accordance to temperature as well as the material that it’s burning. Watching the local Underground clinic slash orphanage burn not only red, but an almost ethereal green from the copper couplings and details of the building felt like an early Christmas warning—like the Underground was a target and the rest of the hidden city would soon follow by the holiday. That warning was only followed by disgust at the thought of someone feeling the need to go after a free clinic and orphanage in a city built out of a hollow sewer full of exiles for whatever fucking reason. 

Your heart is an amalgam of aching and sorrow and anger as you watch the flames burst through the windows of the shoddy building from a safe distance. From where you stood outside of your tattoo parlor only two blocks down, you see a crowd beginning together. Much to your surprise, most of them were only kids with one adult herding them—a man you recognized to be the owner of the building currently meeting its demise. 

The doctor of the clinic is as calm as ever, or rather trying to be, quietly attempting to do a headcount of his children. It seemed that concentration was alluding him, given the situation, because he swears up and down that he knows he has nine kids. Yet, he seemed to be unable to count past eight. He’s trying not to panic, but one of the kids speaks his greatest fear into fruition. “Daddy, Eri’s not here!” Golden eyes widen until the sclerae are fully round, pupils constricting in fear. This ‘Eri’ was special, you realize as you observe from a short distance away. The doctor is looking back at his children who are all in some form of tears and shambles then back at the burning building like a ferocious game of ping pong. Chisaki Kai can’t just leave his kids out here—not when he is almost certain that this attack was premeditated. But his daughter, his eldest daughter at that, was still inside potentially being engulfed by flames. 

Back and forth. 

Back and forth. 

Your body moves without a second thought. 

Your body moves, ignoring the screams from other bystanders for you not to go inside the burning clinic as you burst past the dilapidated red door. Upon entering, copper decor and steel support beams had fallen from the ceiling, sparking flames that were separating you from the stairwell that led up to the orphanage. There was no way you would be able to find this Eri person through the wreckage—not alone at least. Maybe your dumb quirk was good for something. 

You didn’t even realize you had a quirk until the age of twenty when you had gotten your first tattoo. It wasn’t anything crazy—a traditional-style three-eyed wolf’s head on your arm—only to wake up the following morning with no soreness, no tenderness, and no ink on your body. The wolf laid beside you, curled up in your bed, somehow manifesting into real life. At first it was terrifying, of course, but after learning how to return the creature back to your body you realize it might not have been a total waste of money. Your quirk, something you jokingly called the Magic Pencil quirk in reference to a Spongebob Squarepants episode from your childhood, was officially registered through the government on the Surface as Life Canvas. Again, it was a pretty dumb quirk unless you knew just what to utilize. Now your body was littered with dozens of creatures, weapons, hell even a telephone just in case you might need it. But the wolf was your favorite, as it was your first, and he was just the one to call for in this situation. Activating your quirk, you pinch at the ink on your forearm until it begins to peel off before setting it down on the ground. The line work stands on its own before the ink fills out into a three-dimensional mass and a now recognizable creature. 

“There’s a child somewhere here. Help me find them,” you implored your creation, cautiously climbing around the shambles while it did the same, though much nimbler than you. Fragments of the stairs were missing, some of railings were in flames—it was hard for you to get anywhere at the moment. A scream rips through the walls, a young girl you realize. She’s probably now seeing your large and somewhat creepy three-eyed wolf. Maneuvering carefully, you find spots that have yet to burn until you see a little girl cowering away from flames in her bedroom and away from your quirk. “Take my hand!” You try to scream, but the way building was going down was deafening. Instead, you cross a patch of fire to scoop the frail child in your arms and trapping the both of you behind a brazen wall of flames. Patting the wolf on the head, as if deflating it with your magical hands, it flattens back into a two dimensional drawing and returns to your body to grant you the ability to switch out to a manifestation that would prove to be more useful in this situation. You repeat the process, this time with a Phoenix from under your bosom that emerges just outside the window closest to the two of you. “Hold on tight,” you tell her as you pull her flush against your own body before smashing through glass to land the back of the Phoenix, covering her head to make sure the shards didn’t mar her skin. With a gentle descent, you place her feet first on the concrete with her family. 

“Eri!” The doctor of the clinic calls out in relief, arms wrapping around his daughter tightly. Your lips purse in a small, tight smile before you’re off on your way again, riding off into the horizon on the back of your strange creature. And for a moment, Chisaki Kai is torn between going after you to thank you while Overhaul wants nothing more than cleanse his children and you for touching his precious daughter with a vile quirk. He settles on the former, golden eyes watching your back disappear into the dark cavern of the Underground city. 

Weeks had passed since the fire burned down the orphanage clinic. Tabloids were published trying to figure out who the mysterious hero was, though most of the articles feared that an actual Hero was among the residents of the Underground. The Underground welcomes Heroes like the human body welcomes the plague—they tried to be eradicated and killed off. Not to say that quirks themselves weren’t welcome, no. It’s just that most of the residents were quirkless and those that did have one were all registered in a public database, separate from the government mandated one up on the Surface, so that quirk wielders were no secret. 

All but you, anyway. 

One of these well-known resident holders was Chisaki Kai. Quirk: Overhaul. Local doctor and caretaker of the orphaned, quirkless kids. Though, whether their powers had yet to manifest or he had removed them himself due to his vile distaste for the genetic mutation was unknown to the public. 

Another was the leader of the Underground: Dabi. The Cremation user who was presently lounging in one of your dingy, beat up sofas of your tattoo shop. “You know, most of the people just want to know who you are,” he supplies, flipping through the most recent news article. Instantly, he knew it was you that had rescued the little girl from the burning building, knowing full well of your quirk regardless of how rarely you used it. 

“And half of them want my head because they think I’m a Hero,” you spit the last word out as you finish tidying up your workspace. Your last client of the evening had just left, leaving you to close up shop while Dabi came to bother you as you did so. Not that you complained considering he had been a close friend for a long time. “Like I would ever be a Hero.” Heroes were the reason you and many others here in the Underground existed in this hidden sewer metropolis. Whether the Heroes had destroyed their livelihoods, their families or, in your case, accidentally killed your parents while you were still a teenager and you had nowhere to go, they were at fault for the creation of this cozy, dingy city. 

“Says here that Eri wishes to personally thank you,” Dabi adds, turquoise eyes flickering in your direction as you stop at the mention of her name. “We could hold some little rally, get you a medal—“

“Dabi, no.”

“—or you could just stop by town hall with me. Overhaul and the kids have been staying there while the clinic gets rebuilt.” You mull his words over in your head while capping all your ink bottles and putting them away in their respective drawers. Dabi takes your silence as a gesture of you thinking, even more so as you aggressively sanitize your client chair. “Come on, [ name ], she’s just a kid.”

“Yeah, but I hate kids.”

“Then stop acting like one.” With that, the leader leaves your shop, bells tolling as he exits. You weren’t being childish, you internally bite, silently and stubbornly. It wasn’t your fault that you didn’t want to just announce that the lone tattoo artist of the Underground had a quirk that the public didn’t know about. It wasn’t your fault that your body moved without thinking. And it certainly wasn’t your fault that you rescued the daughter of the most notorious quirk hater in the city. 

Chisaki Kai was not quiet when it came for his distaste of quirks despite having one himself. Rumors floated all around the Underground that all of the children in his care had their quirks removed by his own hand, Eri included. What kind of monster did that? To his own child, no less. The thought made you sick to your stomach, only reaffirming your initial decision to not meet with Eri. 

But thinking of her brings great sadness to you. She was merely a child—a child who probably didn’t understand her father’s distaste. A kid who just wanted to thank the woman who saved her and nothing else. A sigh passes your lips as you head up the stairs from your shop to your attached apartment, turning off the lights to Tropium Tattoos. It’s not fair to deny her, you think. 

Maybe you’ll just sleep on it for now. 

 The following morning was quiet, as it was every morning in a city built out of a sewer. But eerily...too quiet. The sound of chirping nature and wildlife was a foreign concept now, especially years later. But there were no sound of bikes or clunky old cars passing by or arguing neighbors—if noise was present at all, it was in the form of faint crackling and crinkling of papier-mâché but somehow on a grander scale. It was new. There’s a grotesque smell in the air; a cross between a stale bonfire and rotting wood and warm smoke. 

Oh no. 

Oh fuck.

Panic fills your veins, throwing your nearly bare body out from under the covers. Ripping open your bedroom door and flying out the narrow entryway that led to the stairwell, you’re met with orange flames burning the wood of your staircase leading down to your shop. There’s no time for you to think about anything other than retreating back to your living room, to where the flames had yet to enter the threshold. Glancing out the large bay window behind your couch, you debate how steep of a drop it is from your second story down onto the cold pavement without sparing a second thought to how you could break your own fall. Contemplation wears down at your time to escape, you realize, as the fire is now entering your living space and burning brightly like a firework and catches onto the wooden console table in your entryway as well as the walls. Without another moment’s hesitation, you throw yourself through the window, bracing for impact from both the glass and the inevitable shattering of at least one bone. 

“[ name ]?!” You hear Dabi yelling over the sound of collapsing support beams from the inside of the building. All that’s on your mind is pain—throbbing pain and an ear-splitting cry as you try to cradle your probably broken arm from the back alley of your shop. Dabi calls out your name again, running over towards you while still trying to be somewhat mindful of all the shards of glass in fear of accidentally kicking more in your direction. Between rapid breaths, a few heavy coughs escape your lungs, no doubt from smoke inhalation. “I got you,” he murmurs as he picks you up gingerly. Another groan leaves your lips—your whole body hurts and were you more coherent and not in shock, you probably would have realized sooner that you’d broken more than just your arm. “Find who did this and bring them to me,” Dabi snarls at the small squadron behind him attempting to put out the fire that was destroying your livelihood as he makes his way back to town hall. 

It takes everything in Dabi’s body to not stamp his entire way back into his living quarters and the only reason he isn’t is because he’s carrying your busted body. This is the fourth fire in two weeks with no discernible pattern. All he knows is that it started with Overhaul’s clinic and now has somehow reached your quaint and quiet tattoo shop. As a leader, it makes Dabi want to tear his hair out. As a friend, he’s just pissed off. 

He’s thankful you’ve passed out just so he doesn’t have to deal with you bitching about how gruff he’s being. Though, it certainly dawned on him that you had probably fallen unconscious from the sheer agonizing pain of breaking multiple bones simultaneously. He sets you down, far from gently, in the residential living room upstairs of the Town Hall building. “Overhaul!” He bellows out, not even caring if the children heard his angry tone right now. 

“I told you to stop calling me that,” the doctor appears from around the corner, a clearly agitated look on his face, even beneath a simple black mask. The irony isn’t lost on Dabi despite his composure—he remembers once upon a time when Kai only went by the name of his quirk. Funny how years go by. “Her again?” Overhaul all but sneers, looking at your limp body that was covered only in a thin tee shirt and a pair of panties. Ignoring that little fact of seeing so much painted flesh, he notices the distinct smell of burnt wood and swelling under the skin where the breaks were. “What happened to her?”

“Someone set [ name ]’s tattoo shop and apartment on fire. She jumped out of a window to get out.” Dabi is absolutely seething, little sparks of blue flames leaving his nostrils as he lets out tufts of air. “Idiot had no idea how to break her fall and busted her shit. Can you help her?” 

“I suppose that would make us even.” The doctor snarks back thoughtlessly, but he can’t help but wonder why you didn’t use your little quirk to save yourself as you had with Eri. 

“Good. I’m gonna go find this fucker.” With that, Dabi storms out of the living room and out of the town hall building, leaving Kai with the woman that saved his daughter’s life. At least maybe now, Eri could say thank you like she had been asking to do. He could say thank you. 

Chisaki adjusts you on the couch so that you’re entirely flat on the cushions, mindful of the glass that’s embedded in your skin. If anything, he should probably remove those first. With gloved hands, he picks out all the shards he can see with his golden eyes while his mind wanders as he looks at the lines and colors of the tattoos that covered your body. From neck to toe, there was ink on nearly every inch—even the one dragon-snake hybrid on your face that wrapped around your temple and cheekbone. Despite your [ hair color ] locks matting your skin, Overhaul found all of your tattoos rather intriguing to look at; almost as if it weren’t flesh because the contact wasn’t causing him to break out in hives. Like your body told a story without you even needing to speak. 

After getting all the glass cleared up, Kai gently pushed on your arms and legs, checking for any signs of bones out of place from where they should be or cushioning and swelling to protect the damaged areas, outside of the very obvious ones that nearly looked like softballs. Two breaks in your femur, four in your ulna from what he could feel—nothing that Overhaul couldn’t fix. Though, he had to make sure that everything had set the way it was supposed to and that you were able to use your limbs after he did the repair. That meant he would actually have to speak to you, and he comes to the realization the two of you never actually had the chance to speak to each other before. Maybe he shouldn’t be as judgmental of the fact that you had a defect—maybe you were like him and abhorrent at the fact that you had a mutation to begin with. 

After using his own quirk, Overhaul checks for a pulse on your neck with two fingers, making sure you at least had a heartbeat before patiently waiting for you to regain consciousness. In the meantime, he continues picking out the fragments of glass that escaped his initial sweep—a task made slightly easier when the shards caught the light contrasted the dark lines embedded in your dermis. For a brief second, you stir against his touch before your eyes snap open. “Holy fuck, what happened?” You all but howl when you come to. You let out a deep gasp for breath, suddenly aware of the dull throbbing in your arm and leg as you attempt to make sense of your surroundings. 

“Can you tell me if this hurts?” The doctor to your left says evenly, emotionless even, as he holds your wrist between his thumb and middle finger, moving your arm in all sorts of ways. A sharp inhalation sucks in between your teeth as it twists in ways you weren’t sure it could before. A grimace touches his lips underneath is plain, black cloth mask—maybe he didn’t set the bones correctly? Overhaul lays your arm flat, ready to make his adjustments, but as his gloved fingers padded closer, you found yourself retreating further into the depths of the couch cushions. 

“I-I’m good,” your words come rushing out, desperate to dodge his touch. Why did you wake up with Overhaul over you? Did he take your quirk away? You’d have to investigate further when you were alone, test it out in private. Ignoring the dull hums of pain coming from your arms and legs, you manage to sit up, slumping over your knees before you realized where you were. “Town hall?”

“Yes. Do you remember anything?” You shake your head—you remember waking up to smelling the smoke in your apartment. You remember the fire creeping up the stairwell and the way orange painted your once tan walls. You remember jumping out the window, but everything else after is met with a blank slate. “You broke your arm and legs in a few places—I reset them with my quirk.”

“Oh,” is all you have to say. “Uh, thank you.”

“Speaking of thank you,” Overhaul palms his knees before pushing off of them from the wooden stool he’s sitting on, standing at his full height and smoothing out his black dress shirt and slightly creased slacks. “My daughter would like to thank you for rescuing her a few weeks back.” 

Dammit. 

It wasn’t like you could just say no to Eri’s father when it was only the two of you—that would just make you look like an asshole or worse; he could just kill you and say you died in the fire. It was even more difficult to decline considering the young, silver-haired girl was peeking her head from behind a partition, wide-eyed when her dad mentioned her. With your own eyes softening at the sudden contact, you offer an awkward smile that you pray comes off as welcoming. Overhaul beckons her to come closer, holding one hand open until the young girl is tucked underneath his hip. 

“U-Um, t-thank you for saving me,” a squeak spills past her dry lips before she runs out of the room as quickly as she came. You didn’t blame her. Even if Overhaul is her father, he gave off an intimidating air that surely would frighten any child. It made you wonder how such a man ran an orphanage. But to your surprise, Eri returned, though this time not alone. A flock of children was accompanying her, each of them with bright eyes and big smiles adorning their unique appearances. 

“Thank you for saving our sister!” They chime in unison. The sight made your heart swell and soften, even if only slightly. Eri steps forward cautiously, pushing through her own trepidation as she stands before you and throws herself at you, hugging you tightly with arms around your neck in gratitude. As if triggering a domino effect, a few of the other children felt the need to express the same sentiment. An uncomfortable laugh bubbles past your lips as you awkwardly wrap your arms around the gaggle of kids—you may not like them, but you weren’t that much of an asshole to deny them a hug. 

Kai’s typically hard, cold expression mellows at the sight. It’s heartwarming, he gave it that, but a part of him cannot stave off the tiny bubble of envy he feels seeing his children so ready to embrace you when they initially had such a hard time adjusting to life with him. He loved these kids—and it was quite clear you felt the opposite—so why hadn’t they gravitated towards him like they did you? Underneath his mask, he grimaced before internally shaking his head. They were his children, they loved Kai regardless and he knew that. “Alright kids, why don’t you go play and let [ name ] rest? It’s been a rough morning for her.” The use of your name shouldn’t have shocked you, or maybe it was fear that crawled up your spine at the doctor’s endearing tone. You weren’t aware that he knew who you were. The kids let out a collective groan before listening to their father and exiting the living room. As soon as each of their little, youthful heads is out of sight, you breathe out a sigh of relief. 

“S-sorry,” you mumble out, suddenly reminding yourself that it was probably rude of you to make a sound as such and you wanted to make sure you did nothing to insult Overhaul to his face. A huge part of you felt that one wrong word out of your mouth meant the end of your quirk or your life. 

“It’s alright, I know they can be a handful. Though, they seem to be quite taken with you.” His tone is still rather polite, you notice, and his voice is entirely different than what you’d thought it would be in a one on one interaction. You thought it would be deeper, as whispers and rumors of Chisaki Kai being an incredibly cruel, bitter man painted a different picture in your head. But the man standing before you looked every bit as broken as you felt on the inside—as if a part of him had an empty chasm residing in his chest that could not be filled by the nine children in his care. 

“I can’t imagine why,” you reply. 

“Neither can I,” he says without skipping a beat, his tone still airy and light. Before you can rebuttal with your quick wit, Dabi storms in with his eyes locked on to your now conscious body. Gesturing with his head, over exaggerating the folds of his damaged skin, he encourages you to follow him downstairs to the mayoral study. Silently, you sauntered off behind him, leaving Overhaul alone in the living room, while you could feel the internal flames burning within Dabi. Pissed didn’t even begin to describe the look on his face.

In the office, photographs of burnt down buildings, rubble, and the skeletal framework of Underground businesses were littered across the large, maple desk. All the while, the leader of the Underground was grumbling to himself repeatedly while tugging at his raven locks in frustration. Not only had someone burned down local businesses in the city, let alone a close friend’s business, but it seemed that someone was attacking his city from the inside. “I wasn’t able to save Tropium.” You offer no response, mostly because there isn’t one to have. You felt anguish over losing your home, sure, but knowing how hard Dabi worked to protect the Underground, you can’t quite imagine how he’s feeling.

Instead, you respond with, “Is there anything I can do to help?”

“I should be asking you that. Your home is gone, [ name ].” He had a valid point. Perhaps you could find a few local contractors and give them some work—it wasn’t like you didn’t have the money to spare. But that would probably take some time considering, from photo evidence, the place—all of them—was going to need to be built from the ashes. “Stay here while you figure it out. It’s the least I can do.”

“Don’t you already have Overhaul and the kids staying here?” Maybe Dabi didn’t notice the way your voice trembled as you spoke his name, even more so after having woken up to him by your side. But the thought of you, a quirk wielder that kept that little fact hidden from the public, temporarily boarding with a man who was vehemently against the abomination of quirks gave you severe anxiety. Additionally, there was the nine little children that also were a factor and the thought of one of them waking up in your temporary residence and intruding on what little privacy you would have—

“And?” Dabi asks, pulling you from your reverie. “[ name ], I know I don’t say this enough, but you’re one of my closest friends. I don’t feel right not giving you a place to sleep.” His quirk may be Cremation, but Dabi was a master manipulator when it came to pulling at your heartstrings whether or not he was aware of that. You let out a sigh of conceding, knowing you wouldn’t be able to argue your way out of this one. 

“One condition, bud,” you hold up a single index finger, the black quill feather tattooed there standing erect, “find me some contractors to help rebuild all the buildings that were burned dow.”

“That’s gonna cost ya,” Dabi hums, as if contemplating. And he was, but rather in estimated cost as opposed to the proposal itself. Physical currency was a rarity in the Underground, as the city ran on a merit and bartering system. Real Surface money was only used for certain occupations. Realistically speaking, he knew money was no object to you considering the wealth, or rather hush money, you acquired from your parents’ death, so there had to be another reason. Knowing you as well as he did, it was probably the fact that the faster your homes were rebuilt, the less time you would have to spend sharing walls with Overhaul. Very smart, the leader mused. “You got a deal, doll.”

 You lost count of the days that had gone by since you took over the project of rebuilding the structures that had gone down. While the orphanage project had already begun, you had hired two additional bodies to help the progress go faster so that Dabi could return to his duties without the addition of eleven more mouths to feed. Simultaneously, you had been at your own construction lot from metaphorical sunup to sundown, helping contribute and manage the two men that were hired for your location. 

You weren’t avoiding Overhaul, you told Dabi repeatedly when he asked where you’d been all day. 

This project was an opportunity for you to set up shop in a reimagined way—to be able to design both your studio space and your living space exactly to your tastes. It had sort of become your baby and you wanted to be as hands on as possible. 

You weren’t avoiding Overhaul, you kept telling yourself. 

Tropium’s new store front was stunning, albeit a bit ill-fitting with its new modern style in contrast to the Underground’s more rustic, steampunk look. But the charcoal grey stone walls with chunky white trim filled your heart with a sense of pride that your business would hopefully rise from the ashes much like that of the Phoenix tattooed under your bosom. 

Currently, you were upstairs with the tiny team of contractors while going over the floor plan of your currently bare apartment. Given the space of the empty building, you managed to enlarge your rooms at the cost of downsizing your entryway and living room. It still felt homey and, with the addition of a small office that served as a spare bedroom, you figured on nights that Dabi hung out and didn’t feel like going home, he had a space too. After laying out the floor plan and going over schematics with the team, you ventured back downstairs to continue sanding down the counters for your studio space. 

“So, this is where you’ve been spending your time?” Oxygen freezes in your throat as you’re met with Overhaul’s golden eyes and black mask. Albeit he wasn’t in his normal dress shirt and tie for once, but rather sporting an oversized hoodie and tight denim jeans. 

“W-what are you doing here?” Is all you can say back. You aren’t sure if you’re moving or even breathing at this point. The pressure you feel from a man whose face is half-covered is terrifying—liquid gold was dull in comparison to the intimidating eyes of Chisaki Kai. 

“Dabi told me about your little deal,” his voice rolls like honey straight from the dripper as he makes small flits toward you that subconsciously leave you retreating back up the stairs one step at time. A deep groan rumbles in his chest when he sees your reaction—not that he blames you in the slightest. Overhaul is more than aware of his notorious reputation both in the real world and in the Underground and is accepting of strangers’ reluctance to be around him. He knows he’s partially to blame for not trying to quell the stigma around him by formally introducing himself prior. maybe not being such a condescending jackass when he first officially met you would have helped as well. 

But he can’t squash the little bouts of jealousy that filled him seeing his children flock to you like dragonflies in search of water that almost make him bask in your trepidation. 

“Take a walk with me,” Overhaul adds, torn between offering you a gloved hand as a metaphorical olive branch or simply turning around to see if you follow. He opts for the latter merely for the fact that you’re covered in dust and paint from your days’ work. Bounding after him, you stuff your hands into the pockets of your loose overalls as you try to catch up while bearing in mind to keep a short distance between the two of you. The two-block walk is brief and silent as you end up at the construction site of the clinic. Perhaps your memory of the building you never visited beforehand was skewed, but it you were certain it was much larger now. “Feel free to look around. After all, you’re paying for this.” There’s a twinge of malice that paints his invitation that isn’t lost on you, but you decide to forego the welcoming regardless. 

Passing through the threshold cautiously, you’re greeted with what looks to be a regular, two story home. The skeletal structure foreshadowed a kitchen, dining room, living space, and a hallway leading to two rooms. One staircase that lead to a basement, one that lead upstairs—it was strange to see the clinic become more of a home than anything else. “Where are you putting the clinic?” You ask meekly, careful not to touch. Just because Overhaul invited you to check out the specs, doesn’t mean he wanted your lingering fingerprints ingrained in his space. 

“Basement. I figured it would be better for the children to have majority of the space.” A pregnant pause takes over the conversation once again, leaving you to roam around the new space in appreciation. A part of you was pleased with the work the contractors did for this family, a large part even, but there was a small nagging voice in your head that was still telling you to retreat back to your own project. “Why did you do it?” 

“Do what?” A brief chuckle that is muffled by his mask dances on his lips. He’s not sure which of his theories he wants to start unraveling first. So he starts with the one he believes to be most ludicrous—the conspiracy that you or somebody you worked for was trying to take this children away, or Eri at the very least. If people on the Surface knew about her and her quirk, Kai doesn’t doubt a bounty would be on her head. But truth be told, he knew this seemed unlikely. You had never bothered to even engage with him or anyone else in his family until recently, despite having come to the Underground shortly after its establishment. 

“Rescue my daughter, for starters.” Of course he starts with the question you don’t have an answer for. To which you can only respond with the truth—your body moved on your own when you saw the panic in his eyes. Also knowing he had to watch his eight other children and ensure their safety prompted your body to act automatically. “You used your quirk to save Eri, but not yourself. Why?” Your eyes narrow slightly in both suspicion and out of confusion. It was strange that Overhaul kept demanding answers and logic and reason for things you did as a knee jerk reaction. Considering you’d only discovered your quirk just before going to the Underground, it wasn’t exactly what you would call a natural reaction. Plus, weaving through danger for someone else wasn’t as simple as just running in and out of the building as it was to jump out your bay window. Judging by his silence, it seemed he accepted that answer.  “And the contractors?”

“I just want all of our lives to go back to normal, including Dabi.” It wasn’t exactly a lie—rather just a short omission of the truth—and it wasn’t like you could tell him that you couldn’t stand living in such close proximity with him due to fear. But Overhaul had a knack for pinpointing a fib like a honeybee in search of something sweet. 

“You’re lying,” he bites. You shake your head almost violently, as if the movement will deter your mouth from telling him the truth in its entirety. There was no way you could admit the fear he instilled in your bones or the anxiety you felt standing close enough for him to touch you. Sure, you may have felt that your quirk was less than impressive but that didn’t mean you wanted him to take it away or worse, your life. Knowing that he knew about it too, while the public didn’t which was a requirement for living in the Underground, only reaffirmed your worries. “Do you fear me?” Overhaul asks, making note of the way your fingers were trembling and way your eyes constantly averted his. 

“Yes,” your voice comes out as a mere whisper, barely rising above the hammering and drilling of the construction workers. A part of you wished that your admission made you feel better—like it felt like a weight lifting off of your shoulder rather than making it feel like you were denying some greater truth—a part of you just wanted to run and hide and pretend this interaction wasn’t happening. 

It shouldn’t have hurt Kai as much as it did to hear you say it out loud, considering you were nothing but a stranger. But you were a stranger that his children were so utterly enamored with and all he wanted was to understand. Yet, the feeling of disappointment is a dull thrum in his chest, long forgotten with a wide array of other emotions and coming only second to his envy. “I’m sorry,” he says finally, though the monotone voice almost sounds insincere. 

Perhaps, his jealousy is misplaced, he thinks. His children may be drawn to you, but at least they didn’t tremble or wrack their bones with trepidation the way you do when you see him. If anything, his jealousy is replaced with empathy. Despite your clear distaste for youth, you got along swimmingly with his kids and they clearly wanted to be present with you. It must have been difficult for you to be near them, even more so considering you trembled in their father’s presence. The two of you stand in silence with you looking away pretending to soak in your surroundings of the plastered walls. Overhaul is observing your nervous ticks—the way your twitching fingers are exaggerated by the ink in your skin or the way your knee bounces impatiently along the hardwood. 

“Daddy, daddy, daddy, come look at my roo—oh! [ name ] is here too!” Bounding down the unfinished staircase was one of the orphans in Overhaul’s care; Shura, if you remembered correctly. 

“Just stopped by to see how the place was coming,” you offer in addition to a sheepish wave. Before you know it, Shura is grasping one of your hands with both of his while guiding you up the stairs. 

“Come see our rooms, [ name ]!” Overhaul watches with curious eyes at the way one of his sons is so overzealous to include you in their little world. The appeal makes no sense to him—you were just a stranger with skin like a Monet painting that had made little to no effort for these children outside of rescuing Eri and allowing them to shower you in their affection. 

Why did acknowledging that their enthusiasm to include you hurt Kai even more so, knowing you were afraid of him?

Trudging behind, Overhaul peers through the open doors upstairs to see each of his kids decorating their freshly painted walls. In Shura’s room, you were sitting on the floor with your arms wrapped around your knees while the little boy explained to you that he wanted his room to be decorated with narwhals. The excitement he had, and the knowledge of even knowing such a creature existed, was quite charming. “[ name ], are you gonna join us for dinner this time? Dabi says you’re always working, but daddy always makes you a plate just in case!” Your eyes glance over to Overhaul and his leisurely pose as he rests one arm on the door jamb. For a moment, your mouth open and closes repeatedly as you try to stutter out some semblance of an answer. 

“Just in case,” the doctor adds, as if to add more pressure to his son’s convenient question. The golden orbs you normally deterred from swirled with an intensity that, much to your surprise, didn’t wrack your nerves like they normally did. It was as if they were filled with remorse rather their typical bitterness, maybe sympathy even, imploring you to consider Shura’s inquiry. 

“I should go finish my work for today then so I can be home for dinner,” pushing yourself off of the freshly carpeted floor to stand. At some point while Shura was giving you the grand tour of his room, your legs had fallen asleep, causing your first step to hobble and throw you off balance and trip. 

“Careful,” Overhaul chimes, bemused at the way you flail to recover from your stumble. To your surprise, he’s pushed himself off the door jamb, crossed through the threshold of Shura’s room, and has his arms locked underneath yours to keep you steady. “Drink some water before going back to work.”  

“R-right,” you stutter out, hyper aware that his hands are touching you. He feels the way your tendons bunch together in your arms at the contact, even more so when your pupils lock into his. It untangles one more thread in his theories, one he figures he’ll push on later because it’s a theory just as farfetched as his last one. “I’ll, um, see you at dinner,” the last syllable rises in intonation as you squeak, flitting away and ignoring your numbed legs and blood burned cheeks. Meanwhile, Overhaul chuckles as he watches you scurry away, the blush painting your cheeks burning into his mind just as well. The way you moved was reminiscent of when he had reset your bones and the way you recoiled thereafter. But through thorough observation, he knew that reaction wasn’t fear this time around, no. Fear made you quiet, not nervous or jittery or force your pupils to dilate. 

This was something else entirely.

Something else entirely to the point where Chisaki Kai is unsure if he even wants to entertain the possible theory that maybe, maybe, you’re the slightest bit infatuated with him. 

“How nice of you to join us,” Dabi sneers teasingly when you set foot into the private entryway of town hall’s attached home. The makeshift family of ten is already seated at the extended dining table, an empty seat awaiting you on Dabi’s left with Overhaul on his right. Each of the children that you had come to be familiar with over the last few weeks had lit up like your presence was a treat—a strange feeling, considering you’d done the most to avoid being in the temporary residence. 

“Go wash up, we’ll wait for you,” you had never seen Chisaki Kai without his mask, let alone heard his voice so clear. The angelic lilt rivaled expert fingers rimming crystal glasses, hypnotizing you to do as he said without so much as a fight. Entering your room, you immediately discard your dirty work clothes and shower hastily, scrubbing off flecks of dried paint and dust. In seven minutes and nineteen seconds, you’re out of your en suite bathroom and shucking on leggings and a long sleeve tee before joining everyone else at the dinner table. 

To your surprise it felt quite...normal. Was this how families had dinner together? You were unsure, considering your parents had never been one to have the three of you gather together for a meal—they were always too busy working until the day they were killed nearly a decade ago. 

It surprised you how natural the flow of conversation was, even with nine children ranging from ages four to seven. Even more to your shock, Dabi was more than willing to indulge the kids in their stories. But the creme de la creme was seeing maskless Overhaul smiling and laughing and attempting to get his kids to eat their vegetables. Was this the real Overhaul? Had his notoriety preceded him so greatly that you feared him for no reason at all? Your intuition tells you no and, perhaps, to some degree it’s right. There was still a dangerous air that encapsulated Chisaki Kai, but it wasn’t one that made you instantly retreat like touching a cake pan you’d recently pulled from the oven with a bare hand. If anything, it was alluring as opposed to intimidating. 

The kids were so happy you finally joined them all at dinner. Rapid fire questions from any one or even two of them made you hesitate to answer but you did your best to keep your face even and amused. Children may not have been your favorite, but however the heck Overhaul was raising these ones, especially all nine of them, was truly wonderful. Throughout conversation, Shura and even shy little Eri had scrambled into your lap with each one of them taking a leg while the three of you ate. Initially, Kai had scolded them both, saying they were being rude to which you only shook your head and allowed them to stay, much to his surprise. 

After dinner, the children cleared the table. Those that were able of the younger ones brought stacks of dishes to Eri and Shura whom were in the kitchen washing plates and silverware—their duties as the eldest of the nine. Dabi has pardoned himself after thanking the family for the meal to hole himself up in his office. According to the leader of the Underground, the investigative team was still working around the clock to unearth who was responsible for the fires. You had found yourself in the garden of Town Hall, tablet and digital pen in one hand with a cigarette in the other. Drawing was the only leisurely activity you indulged in when not working on rebuilding Tropium. 

Typically, Dabi would join on you on these evenings with stacks of papers and a cigar between his lips as he bounced ideas off of you to figure out potential perpetrators. Needless to say, it surprised you when Overhaul enters the makeshift garden that was really just a manmade pond with lily pads and rose bushes aligning the sinkhole. “Hi,” you offer meekly, averting his gaze by keeping your own glued to your tablet screen. 

“Hi,” he returns, twisting up a shapely brow at the cigarette between your index and middle finger. For a moment, he’s torn between asking what you’re working on or if you had any ideas to who burned down both of your homes or even how the rebuilding of Tropium was coming along. But he can tell by the way the filter of the cigarette squeezes between your fingers that you’re tense, that you can sense there’s a reason for his presence and decides to forego small talk. “I don’t want you to be afraid of me,” his voice is small and unsure and drastically different from the Overhaul you were used to. Nonetheless, his statement catches your attention and pulls it away from the screen of your tablet. 

“I’m more afraid of what you can do,” you admit quietly, “I don’t want people knowing about my quirk. Dabi was the only one who knew and now your entire family knows and—“ you pause for second, hesitating on whether or not you should continue. But Overhaul was brave enough to tell you had what been bothering him, even if only a minuscule issue, you figure you owe him the same. “And I don’t want you to take it away.” The broken syllables leave your lips bare above a whisper, reaffirming at least one of the theories the doctor had about you. Of all the conspiracies, it made sense that this one was the most likely to explain your reactions to his presence, no matter how much he had hoped it to be some strange, magnetic attraction. 

You had bought into the whispers of the Underground that said Chisaki Kai’s life mission was to overhaul the population and remove quirks. 

Dejection fills his chest as he lets out a sigh. Maybe this was being too honest, his inner voice argues as it debates on his next words cautiously, but he feels the need to burn clean. “[ name ], what do you know about me?” 

“That you were a Yakuza leader and you think quirks are a plague that need to be eradicated.” Overhaul closes his eyes languidly, peeling them back open at a snail’s pace while the warm, golden orbs stare off into the never-ending tunnels of the Underground. 

“I became the leader of the Shie Hassaikai when I married my wife at twenty-three and took over for her ill father. It was a quirk marriage, but a happy one, nonetheless. At twenty five, my wife had Eri and while most children’s genetic code didn’t activate the gene for a quirk until a few years later, Eri was born with her quirk activated,” you listen deeply, soaking in every word leaving Overhaul’s maskless lips. His eyes drop down to stare at his gloved hands before burying his face in them for a moment to swallow his guilt quietly. “Eri can rewind time on living things and the first person she used it on—“

“—was her mother,” your voice barely vibrated past your lips as you made the connection. Bile rose in your throat, threatening to spill the contents of your gut not out of disgust, but rather an overwhelming surge of sorrow. 

“I lost my wife when I was twenty-five. The rate that she was being rewound at was too much for her body to handle and I had to overhaul my own daughter at birth just to get her quirk to deactivate so she didn’t destroy everyone she touched,” had Chisaki Kai not come to terms with the truth a long time ago, he would have shed at least a single tear recounting these memories he had buried. Either that, or almost hurled recalling the way his wife’s body had imploded until chunks of skin and muscle tissue and blood ended up spewing all over his chest and face. There was a reason he constantly wore gloves and a mask—the smell of cooking carcass and burning meat never left him and the exaggerated mask stuffed with lavender was the only scent that eased him. “I was angry at the world for a long time.”

“I am so sorry, Over—“

“Kai,” he interrupts, “or Chisaki, at the very least. I don’t go by that name anymore.” After a bout of silence, Chisaki continues further. Eri never grew up with a mother or siblings and after things had gone south on the surface, he wanted to raise Eri in a place where people didn’t know the truth about her or the mother she never had the opportunity to meet. So he fled to the Underground with Dabi; he started helping tend to the ill and taking in quirkless children who had lost their parents on the Surface to Heroes. 

In a moment of vulnerability, you felt the need to offer the olive branch and share your own story with this man after he bared his soul to you. And so, you tell him about the accident. How, while in pursuit of a villain, the small mom and pop diner that your parents frequented on Friday afternoons was accidentally set on fire by Endeavor and trapped and killed of the patrons inside. You were in your first year of high school at the time—fourteen and preparing for university until you realized you would need to work full time in order to continue paying the bills until the settlement from Endeavor came. University was down the drain. It took years for the dividends to be decided and the lawyer managed to get you a considerably high amount thanks to emotional damages, but riches and wealth would never quell the resentment you held towards the then number two pro Hero for being so reckless. That was nine years ago. Somewhere along the way, you’d met Dabi and he granted you a home and space to continue to hone the craft of tattoo artistry that you had picked up from working part time in a parlor, as recompense for his father killing yours. Though, you’d left that last little tidbit out, unsure if Kai knew of Dabi’s lineage. “I’ve been in the Underground for the last three years, give or take.”

You had always been rather indifferent to the concept of heroism until that day. Even more so when you had met Dabi—a man who was wanted and was supposed to be a villain. Yet he extended warmth and welcoming to you, offering you refuge in a new city he had created for the exiled and wandering. 

The grey areas only widen with this conversation with Chisaki Kai. A notorious man, an infamous man, known for causing utter chaos on the Surface both as the leader of the Shie Hassaikai and as a super villain, was sitting across from you and sharing the most intimate moments of his life. 

Maybe the concept of heroism was skewed to begin with, you think to yourself as you put out the cigarette in the ashtray in front of you. Maybe Dabi and Overhaul weren’t the real villains—only designed that way because of the way some omniscient creature in the stars that you couldn’t see. 

“I remember when you first opened Tropium,” Chisaki hums bemusedly, “the children said you looked like a coloring book.” The only fitting response you have is laughter. Neither of you thought laughter would be something the two of you would indulge in together. But the way your cheeks cinch together at the corner of your eyes or the tufts of air leaving your nostrils in a short snort and the somehow smooth staccato of your chuckle sounds like holiday bells after the first snowfall. It was a peace that Chisaki Kai hadn’t known for some time now. It was a peace he didn’t know he needed, and it makes him wish that his magnetic attraction theory had some truth to it. “Your secret is safe with me,” he says finally after the laughter had died off. 

“Thank you, Chisaki,” 

 You started coming home for dinner every night, figuring the two contractors didn’t need you there to micromanage them, until you stopped dropping into the worksite all together. With a full house, Dabi was out more frequently, preferring to be in the field to investigate the fires as much as he could. This left you with Chisaki and the kids more often than not. On occasion, you would run to the local market with Eri and Shura or had even done arts and crafts with some of the younger ones. As a sort of inside joke, you had bought each of the nine coloring books. 

Currently, the kids were playing volleyball in the makeshift garden while you and Chisaki supervised. It was no longer tense between the two of you, a sort of bond forming since that one night. You should have seen the inevitable question coming. Though you more so imagined it would come from Dabi in the form of some snide comment with sexual implications regarding how close you and Overhaul had become. Never did you anticipate his oldest son asking, “[ name ], are you going to be adopting us? Are you going to be our new mom?” 

“I-I—“ you were a deer in headlights and the question was a freight truck gunning in at ninety. Looking over at Chisaki for help, who seemed almost unwilling or at the very least unsure on how to, you shake your head before staring back at Shura’s big blue eyes. These children had begun carving a special place in your heart due to how they came to be in Chisaki’s care, sure, but you still had your reservations about kids in general. Not that the doctor blamed you—maternal instincts didn’t necessarily apply to every female. “I-I don’t wanna take you away from daddy, he works so hard to take care of you all and he does such a good job,” for a second, Shura’s expression becomes crestfallen. 

“But we all like having you around, [ name ],”

“I’m not going anywhere, buddy, I promise,” the seven-year-old boy promptly wraps his arms around your neck, squeezing tightly as if you were going to dissipate into the air in front of his very eyes. Without hesitation, you hug back briefly before telling him his siblings were waiting for him to start the next set of volleyball. “Was that okay?” You ask quietly, looking over to the doctor. From underneath his mask, you can see the twists of pain coloring the dusty gold hues of his irises and the way his jaw tenses. When he remains quiet, you anxiously reach for an e-cigarette—a fruity one that wouldn’t alert the kids or burn Chisaki’s nostrils from the scent—and pull the tip to your lips. Maybe you shouldn’t have said that to Shura, you think as you exhale a large cloud of smoke. 

But Overhaul’s stomach is twisting and churning, and he crosses his legs over the knee to squeeze his legs together tightly. He’s thankful for the black cloth mask that covers majority of his facial features as he bites his lip and his nostrils flair while he tries to control his breathing. Think of anything else, his mind snarls. Think of the days in the Shie Hassaikai, think of the children, think of literally anything but the way you called him “daddy” and how the blood rushed from his brain and straight to his dick at an alarming rate. It was so innocent—there was no reason Kai should even be thinking of it in any other way—but primal instincts were taking over, twisting into a delusion in his brain into hearing you repeatedly call him daddy while he fucked you from behind. 

“Can you watch the kids?” Chisaki chokes out, standing up abruptly and fleeing inside the temporary home. He doesn’t even have the chance to hear you ask if he’s alright as he’s rushing upstairs to his en suite bathroom. Entering his room, he rips off every shred of fabric covering his body before turning on the shower to the coldest temperature he could tolerate. But there wasn’t enough cold water in the Underground or gruesome thoughts of his wife’s sudden death that could stave off the erection he was currently sporting. “Fuck!” He snarls out viciously, mind running rampant with salacious daydreams. Out of sheer need, Overhaul wraps one hand around his cock, the other bracing himself on the shower wall while the cold water runs down his spine. 

Chisaki Kai is livid—raging over the fact that he is reduced to such actions over a simple word that he hears multiple times on a daily basis. It wasn’t that he was abhorrent at the thought of masturbation in the slightest—he was a human with natural human needs, after all—but this desperation that filled his gut and fueled his hard on was less than desirable. But he can’t stop the aching he feels to hold onto that blip of memory of you calling him daddy. He savors it like the first bite of a meal and indulges it in the same way he’s trying to coerce his own orgasm. 

Throaty groans and grumbles wrack in Overhaul’s throat as he fists his angry, weeping cock, twisting and turning it as he prays for reprieve. It’s not enough; it’s not your mouth or any other oriface he would rather be shoving into, but the friction rubbing against his veins would have to be enough. He’s far from gracious at this point. Cupping and massaging his balls with one hand while thrusting into his enclosed other at ferocious speeds was all in the name of merely getting off. “Fuck,” he hisses out once again as he feels the very start of his orgasm. As much as his natural instinct is just telling him to sit back and enjoy the ride, his common sense tells him otherwise, tells him that he’s filthy for doing this and he doesn’t deserve to indulge in these thoughts. 

But he needs that extra push to satiate his natural instinct. 

Succumbing to his deeper, carnal desires, his imagination wanders back to you. With golden eyes screwed shut, he pretends it’s you he thrusting into, that it’s you stringing together languid profanities between your lips; that it’s you begging for daddy to fuck you harder. 

That it’s you begging daddy to fill you up and make you into a mother. 

“Oh, shit,” Chisaki is gasping for breath as he cums on the shower walls—the last thought to flood his mind serving to break the dam. He licks his lips and swallows hard, his skin becoming dry despite standing in the cold shower. After his ragged, uneven breathing returns to some semblance of normal, he peels his heavy lids open and stares at the fluid coating the shower wall. For a moment, shame washes over him because he feels pathetic and small. But the moment is brief before it was replaced with a dull burn of hunger that may never be quelled. 

Pathetic, Kai thinks again as he scrubs his body clean, before exiting the arctic shower. Never before had he been in such a state, even at the ripe age of thirty-two, to masturbate to the mere thought of another person. Perhaps he was that touch-starved, all things considered. 

He can’t bring himself to gaze at his reflection as he gets dressed. Adorning grey joggers and a red zip up hoodie, in addition to his usual mask and gloves, he maneuvers his way back to the makeshift garden where the children are still playing with together. But rather than you sitting alone at the patio table as you were, Dabi had joined you in the seat directly across from you. 

Both of you were sporting matching cigarettes in your respective hands with matching distressed looks on your faces. 

“We’ve been waiting for you,” you say in an almost indifferent tone, a departure from the way Kai had heard you in his mind seconds ago. It was a sentence typically accompanied with some sass, but your eyes were devoid of emotion at the moment. Cautiously, Chisaki took a seat beside you at the patio table, propping an elbow on the armrest closest to you before resting his temple on the same closed fist he had just used to beat himself off. You pay it no mind, how close he is to you, but rather put out your cigarette on the ashtray on the table as a courtesy to him. “Dabi,” your tone is thoughtful as you say your best friend’s name, making a hand gesture that signifies him to speak. 

The leader of the Underground opens the manilla folder that was harboring the photos of both of your burnt down homes as well as the two other destroyed businesses. “It’s been a challenging investigation, but after eyewitness accounts and working with local law enforcement from the Surface, I’m pretty sure my bastard brother was behind this shit,” Dabi grits out. 

“Brother?” Kai asks, confirming your suspicions of him being unaware of Dabi’s genealogy and family tree. To this, the leader pulls out a mug shot of Todoroki Shouto. The face wasn’t entirely familiar to Kai, save for the small resemblances to Dabi. Same jaw shape, same blue eye with the same dead look. 

“Why us?” You ask, flipping the photo over. While it had been awhile since you had resided let alone visited the Surface, you knew that there was some rumors in the air about the start of a war, but what possible reason did Todoroki have for going after the Underground when everyone kept to themselves? For Chisaki, who ran a free clinic, and his children? What about you—why go after you?

Outside of Dabi, hadn’t the Todoroki family tortured you enough?

The city leader takes a deep breath, exhaling smoke as he extinguishes the dead cigarette on the ashtray. According to the patchwork man, Todoroki had confessed that he was selected for a covert mission from the Hero Association. The primary goal was to eradicate any and all quirk wielders within the Underground so they didn’t procreate further, so no overpowered quirks would mutate in the next generation of Underground born children. Overhaul lets out a scoff at the explanation—leave it to the Heroes to act so recklessly and selfishly. 

If quirk mutation was the concern, only him and Eri would have been targeted, maybe Dabi as well. Probably Dabi as well. But they burned down Tropium Tattoos, the home of you whom had the legally registered quirk Life Canvas up on the Surface. They burned down a farm whose owner had a quirk that could manipulate light and sunshine—whose farm fed the patrons of the Underground. They burned down the house of the guy who had a weird magnet quirk. It sounds more useless than he actually is—Dabi ended up capitalizing on his manipulation of magnets to create magnetic elevators up to the surface for supply runs and other necessities. 

This was about population control. 

It was a form of genocide that Overhaul himself was all too familiar with. 

“Well that’s fucked,” you sneer, reaching for one more cigarette, “the fuck is wrong with your family, dude, and why are they all trying to kill me and my family?” Chisaki turns his head in curiosity, no longer resting on his knuckles. The only time you had brought up your family, around him at least, was when Endeavor killed your parents—

Oh. 

He pretends he doesn’t feel disappointment when he realizes you weren’t implying he and the children were your family. 

“Why the hell do you think I left, [ name ]?” Chisaki almost feels as if he shouldn’t be present for this conversation; like it was meant to be private between the two of you. But he can’t bring himself to leave your side, not with the way anger is crinkling in the form of crow’s feet at the corner of your eyes. Dabi excuses himself after a long bout of silence, leaving you to stew in your bitterness while Overhaul directs the kids to wash up for dinner. You don’t realize all nine of them had left the garden until the doctor is standing over you, despite the small wisps of smoke billowing from your cigarette with a hand extended towards you to pull you from the patio chair. You’re sure to extinguish the stick, knowing how the smell often offended him before taking it. 

“Why don’t you go rest inside for a minute and wash up while I make dinner?” He offers quietly as he pulls you to your feet. The entire time, Chisaki maintains eye contact, his golden orbs unwilling to break their trance with your form. But thanks to the distress and the rapid pace that your brain is moving, you aren’t even aware of your surroundings or the way Chisaki is just standing in front of you until you’re running into his broad chest. Instinctually, you recoil away from him. Not out of disgust or fear like before, but rather respect, knowing how he is about touch and physical contact. 

“Sorry—“ his arms are nestling at your waist to keep you in close proximity and you’re suddenly reminded of the time your legs fell asleep at the orphanage and you had stumbled trying to walk. Chisaki had been there then too, holding you steady much like he was now. There was something drastically different to the scenario now compared to back then. The doctor didn’t shy away from the contact anymore, didn’t draw his hands back like he touched a freshly stoked lump of coal or break out into itchy hives. If anything, his gloved hands lingered just a little bit longer—too long even for Chisaki—before gingerly patting your head and retreating inside the home. 

And maybe if you weren’t trying to process the fact that the Surface was attempting to start a war with the Underground, you would have dwelled more on the warmth and security coming from Kai. The poise he held coupled with the fire and desire in his eye would have been enough to reassure that everything was going to be alright.

Dabi never came back that night. Rather than leaving his head seat at the dining table empty, Chisaki sat to your left with his daughter filling his space temporarily. You sat directly across from Eri, the girl who was once too timid to thank you now smiled brightly every time you looked at her. Other than your best friend’s absence, dinner was relatively average. Conversation went on as normal, sharing laughter and smiles between all of you—it was a nice delusion that for a moment, you were all a complete family and you weren’t so enrapt with the heartbreak of knowing these ten humans were targets to the surface. 

The children cleared the table as they always did, but rather than having the two oldest do the dishes, you offered to clean up instead. “Why don’t you kids gather up in the living room and have daddy put on a movie for you?” Clearly excited from the reprieve of duty, the orphans all head off, touting something along the lines of Frozen versus Tangled. But your back is already turned away from the family, getting started on putting away leftovers and scraping away scraps on plates and entirely missing the way Kai’s eyes drain from gold to a murky mustard. It misses the way his jaw clenches tightly as he settles the debate for his children, turning on Tangled—the clearly more superior film—before he returns to the kitchen. 

The sleeves of your ragline tee are pushed above your elbows as you hum an unknown hymn, unaware of Kai stepping cautiously toward you. Despite having just eaten, the doctor is filled with a renewed hunger entirely as his grip finds limp purchase on your hips much like they had before dinner. “You know, I think we need to have a talk about you calling me ‘daddy’ in front of the children,” he murmurs hotly against the shell of your ear, causing the hair on the back of your neck to stand up. Your blood is torn between running cold from the predatory drawl in his words and boiling from the sudden close contact. 

“I-I’m sorry, should I stop?” Kai licks his lips before running his teeth behind your ear and down your neck, suckling on the flesh as he mumbles a response. 

“Do you want to?” You contemplate his question in full, though it proves to be a challenge with the way he’s pressing warm, open mouth kisses to your neck and shoulder and the way his hands are kneading at your hips. “Are you afraid of me, sweetheart?” He asks again, his voice a low grumble yet somehow is louder than thunder as it isn’t hidden behind a mask. Had this been months ago when he had asked you an identical question when you were perusing the reconstruction of the orphanage, you would have said yes again. But this wasn’t fear—fear wasn’t a word you associated with Chisaki Kai anymore. 

Warmth. Strength. Dedication. Resolve. 

Love. 

Those were the words you associated with him now. 

“No,” you finally respond, shutting off the water before turning to face him. It was a rare, momentous occasion when you got to gaze upon his bare face outside of having meals together. His golden eyes swirl with elation, even more so as your painted fingers brush stray locks that fallen just over his brows. Despite a rather simple appearance, especially in comparison to yours, there’s something elegantly charming about Chisaki Kai that had never gotten the full appreciation he deserved. 

Tentatively, you nudge him closer to you from the back of his neck until your lips are pressed against his. For you, it’s an experiment just to feel him in such a manner. For Kai, it’s torture in every sense of the word because it’s a tease after all of the salacious thoughts that have marred his imagination. Taking a leap of faith, his arms tighten around your waist, pulling your body flush against his because right now there isn’t enough contact in the world that would satisfy him. 

The once delicate, experimental kiss becomes hungrier at his hand as he’s exploring your mouth with tongue, groaning as he does so. The scent of smoke and fresh cotton wafts into his nostrils between his sharp intakes of breath as he refuses to break contact. It’s as if he’s trying to commit the moment to memory, to burn it into his brain. 

As if this was never going to happen ever again. 

“Kai,” you whimper out his name, his true name, between pants of breathlessness for the first time. Just as gingerly as before, your fingers are cradling the man before you by the temples. You’re gazing at him fully, unabashedly, as you run a thumb just below his distinct lower lashes. Chisaki’s head dips a bit further into your brief touch before you skip away from him. 

“Wait, where do you think you’re going?”

“Come on, let’s go watch the movie with the kids,” you chime, holding a hand out to him as if he didn’t just have you all but pinned to the kitchen sink. 

“I was serious when I said we needed to have a talk.” Despite his verbal protest, he takes your hand in his, trailing behind as you saunter off towards the living room where the children are fully invested in the film. Plopping down on an empty space on the couch, you bring Kai with you until he’s nearly resting on top of you. For a moment, he releases your hand, opting to wrap an arm around you to pull you closer. “Back to avoiding me, angel?” The doctor grumbles into your ear, low enough so as not to alert the little ones. 

“Figured it would be better to not risk being interrupted,” you whisper back, smirk twisting your lips. Chisaki’s licks his own dry plains, tugging you even closer so that you’re sitting on one of his thighs instead. That predatory miasma that surrounds him on a day to day basis is seeping out of him tenfold, but intimidation when it came to Kai was now a foreign concept to you. It brought back that same seductively dangerous feeling you’d felt the first time you had dinner with the family or, thinking back further, to when you went to scope out the renovations. A part of you wonders if that fear you once had was displaced as soon as you knew he was going to keep your quirk a secret. Displaced with an attraction to him that was easily confused with fear. 

A part of you wonders if you ever really did fear him at all. 

Maybe you didn’t. 

Your mindless thoughts wander to anything other than the screen, casually leaning back so that your head settled on Kai’s clavicle. The doctor looks down at you with a curiosity that is replaced with a warmth that temporarily quelled his lust. As much as he had been fighting his day dreams of fucking you, having you in his arms surrounded by his kids stoked a different fire inside him. 

He didn’t want this domestic moment to end. 

He hopes that desire translates into the simple gesture of his lips pressing into your hair. 

Chisaki Kai was finally caving into his wants and being honest with himself. He doesn’t want this makeshift family to go back to normal when you finally returned to Tropium or when his family returns to the Underground clinic. There isn’t a single cell in his body that believes having you in his lap and curled into his chest feels anything other than right. He’s overwhelmed with the idea, the fantasy, of you moving in and being with the family. Your family—in the collective sense—with Kai by your side with your nine orphans. 

During the lantern scene of the film, he presses another kiss where the roots of your hair meet your forehead, lips lingering a little longer than normal. In response, you look up at him curiously to find his muted golden eyes staring right at you. There was a plethora of different things that Chisaki wanted to say to you, especially with the way you look so heavenly in his arms. But he settles with the murmur of, “I don’t want things to go back to normal.” 

“Neither do I,” you whisper, gracefully accepting the way Kai’s lips mould over yours almost lovingly. In a sense, it’s your way of finally admitting to yourself the feelings that worked and wriggled their way into your chest. The thought of returning to your lonely little two-bedroom apartment by yourself just seemed daunting now, despite the initial rush to get to work on the remodel. No more waking up to bright eyes at the table for breakfast or coloring with the kids; no more having Kai cook a delectable meal or having him accompany you in the garden for a smoke. It broke your heart just thinking about all you would be missing out on when life returned to somewhat normal, war aside. 

The doctor sucks gingerly on your lower lip, nipping slightly with his canines as his tongue wholeheartedly dances with yours. The kiss is full of longing and desire and it made his brain go fuzzy with strange thoughts. A part of him can’t remember ever feeling this recurring surge of wanton lust and infatuation when Kai would kiss his wife and, in regular circumstances, he would have felt guilt over it. But this warm, wet entanglement of your tongues is more loving than he was accustomed to and it excited him. Than you were even accustomed to. 

“So stay with me, sweetheart,” the nickname he’s given you sounds almost patronizing. But the admiration that seems to be laced in with it sends a shiver down your spine and leaves the hairs on your arms standing at full attention as the film comes to an end. “Time for bed, children. We’ll be by in a little bit to check on you,” Chisaki calls out to his protesting kids, though making no motion to move from his planted position on the sofa. When he’s certain that all nine of them are out of earshot, he adjusts you in his lap so that both of your legs are draped over his thighs. You call out his name, pulling him from his thoughts that take him far away from the present. 

“You said you wanted to talk,” you remind him. A part of you is afraid to start conversation because you aren’t sure what direction he wants to take this. Chisaki could have an entirely different meaning of returning to normal than you, but for you...

You didn’t want to wake up every morning without him being nearby. In the rawest form, that was the only way you could piece it together into a coherent thought. But even more than that, you felt as if there was so much more you wanted to see from Chisaki Kai. He was becoming more open with touch, no longer breaking out into hives when he touched others and even going so far as to hold you, albeit very languidly as he was now. Another part of you wanted to know if he would be beside you when it came to the impending war with the Surface. 

Mostly, you just wanted to know if he wanted to be by your side too, even if logic wanted to tell you this was a bad idea. 

“Will you stay? With me?” Kai implores quietly. His eyes are locked with yours, the gold shining brighter than ever. 

“You say this after I renovate our homes?” A short, lighthearted scoff leaves his lung in lieu of laughter at your attempt of a joke. Because, despite him echoing your own deeper, innermost thoughts, a part of you refused to believe this was reality. As if reality was actually playing a prank on you. 

Of course he had thought of that little fact. It was the longing desire he felt in his bones to have your presence that he hadn’t taken into account, but that need burning at the pit of his stomach had outweighed any semblance of logic that urged him to keep his thoughts to himself.

“The kids will grow up eventually and need their own space away from the orphanage. We could always save it for them.”

Answers you were expecting from Chisaki Kai: not that. 

Had he invested that much into the idea? To the point where he planned on you still being a part of the orphan’s lives until they were adults?

“‘We’?” You ask. “And what if “we” don’t work, have you considered that?”

“No,” Kai’s voice is clear and calm as ever, exuding the very confidence that once made you tremble, “I want you in every sense of the word. I’ve already said my vows and had my shot at forever. I want that sort of permanence with you and I know that some part of you wants me too.” At a loss for words, you opt to brush the backs of your nails along his cheeks endearingly, trailing them down until your hands find purchase around his neck to bring him close enough that you can feel his lashes tickle your cheekbones. The silence between the two of you was deafening and damning, yet welcoming as it’s broken with him pressing his lips fully against yours. 

For a moment, it feels as if the hunger stirring within his gut is satiated—satisfied with the even the tender, loving gesture of pulling you closer still until you’re straddling his lap. As if you were trying to fuse your bodies together because there was no such thing as too much physical contact right now. Kai encircles your waist with his arms, hoisting you up as he motions to stand and causing you to wrap your legs around his midsection. You don’t ask where you’re going; partially because your tongue is too busy just indulging in a private dance with his, partially because it doesn’t matter where he takes you. You’d go with him anywhere, no questions asked. 

It’s a challenge and a half maneuvering up the stairs with you anchored around him so tightly—even more so that with every step he took ended up grinding your pelvis along his ever-growing erection. Kai felt liberated this time around, shamelessly rubbing against you this time rather than scurrying off for a cold shower and a five-minute session with his hand. Your eyes open as he unceremoniously tosses you onto the plush blanket of your borrowed bed. Immediately, you’re greeted with the sight of Chisaki Kai hastily shredding off his tee shirt and lounge pants, leaving the doctor in strained boxer briefs. 

Briefly, you’re blown away by the sheer beauty of him—like a statue of Adonis come to fruition before your eyes. Even with the uncomfortable twinge in his golden orbs from your unnerving gaze. It was different, to say the least, to have you gawking at him with such adoration when he felt he was the only one doing so. “C’mere,” your voice comes out as a near broken whimper, a call to which Kai heeds graciously. The bed dips as he kneels at the edge, crawling closer until he’s hovering above you. Gingerly, your fingers trace over the smooth skin of his cheeks, tracing down his lips and neck until they ghost over his collarbones. 

“Sweetheart,” Kai groans out, snatching your hand in his as it continues to trail further down his bare skin. “As much as I want to bask in the romance of all of this, you called me ‘daddy’ earlier, and I think it’s time you suffer the consequences.”

“Yeah?” You sneer sardonically, pushing into your elbows until you’re both touching nose to nose. “Like it when I call you that?” His breath is hot as it fans over your features, the wanton lust tangled within the golden hues of his irises becoming overwhelmed with feral desire. Kai’s hand that isn’t supporting him over you grips tightly at your baggy tee, pulling harshly to tear at the fabric keeping your bare body from him. For a moment, his breath becomes caged in his chest upon seeing your semi-nude form for the first time. But the moment is flitting as he’s reminded of his aching, hard cock twitching underneath his undergarments. 

“Hands and knees, baby,” the slow, torturous movement you give in reply grates at Kai’s nerves, prompting a resounding smack to the ass of your joggers the moment your bottom is visible to him. “Daddy’s already impatient, dear,”

“And what’s Daddy going to do about that?” 

Similar to the treatment he gave your shirt earlier, Kai dug his fingers into the waistband of your joggers. Though he did not have nearly as much luck tearing off the thicker material, the gruff motion is enough to expose you, leaving your bare, pulsing core in plain sight while the cloth gathered at your knees. His chest presses against your back, his skin searing hotter than hellfire, as he places languid kisses along your shoulder. “I promise, I’ll spoil you with attention later. But right now, I need you,” his voice is something reminiscent of begging, only amplified by his suddenly bare cock dancing along your slit and smearing pre-cum along it before cautiously slipping the head in. 

Throaty groans leave both of your lungs simultaneously. Kai swears up and down that this was heaven manifested into reality. Part of him thinks this is all a dream, the way your walls are squeezing him to tightly as he pushes in centimeter by centimeter. “K-Kai,” you whimper. The calling of his name awakens something gutturally primal within him. 

“Uh uh,” the doctor tuts, ceasing his movements. “What’s my name, baby?” In lieu of a response, only pants of shortened breath escape your slackened jaw. There was no way Chisaki Kai was human, you decided. Not with the way his words sent every cell in your body into overdrive or the way his fat girth stretched you so deliciously without even entirely plunging his engorged cock. Not with how, despite his notoriety once proceeding him, he was often blatantly honest with you and certainly not with how utterly enamored he was with you and vice versa. “Say my name, baby, and I’ll give you a reward,”

“D-daddy, please,” you whisper in between breaths. Abiding by his word, Kai works his thick length into you, albeit still slowly, until your bones presses into his pubis and his whole cock carefully bottoms out inside you. His right hand trails up your tummy and dances along the skin of your sternum until his fingers encase your throat gingerly. Keeping still within you, the doctor tugs at your throat until you’re only resting on your spread knees as his lips ghost along the outer shell of your ear while he gives slow, deep, steady thrusts.  

“You like having daddy’s fat fucking cock in you, angel? Feel so fucking good around me, yes you do,”

A real poet, Kai was. 

Turning your head to face him, your fingers lace themselves in his messy locks and pull his lips to yours in a kiss that is entirely devoid of lust. He can bring the heat all he wants—it was your mission to make sure he understood that you wanted him in more than just sex. Even if the slow torturous withdrawing of his cock was absolutely divine. 

And he felt it too. Even with his hand delicately cupping your throat or the way his pelvis greets your plump ass with every thrust or the way your wet walls clench on him as if trying to expel his cock from inside of you. Kai can feel it in the way your nails are digging into the flesh of his arms or in the tufts of breath that leaves your nostrils because he leaves you absolutely breathless. He feels the love, and he wants to bask in it. 

Now that he’d quelled his hunger slightly, Chisaki pulls away from your endearing lip lock while simultaneously withdrawing his length from you. A small whimper leaves your lips at the loss before Kai turns you over, pressing your back against the mattress and sliding home once again. The passion and intimacy he feels is overwhelming, boiling his skin through every pore as he bears weight on one arm while the other caresses your cheek. “I meant it, you know,” the murmur dances like air along your own lips, warm breath inviting. “I want you in every possible way. I want to wake up next to you in the morning, experience every season that doesn’t pass for us in the Underground with you.” 

“Kai...” in return, you seal you mouth along his, wrapping your arms around him to pull him closer and coaxing him to move. Slow and steady, he withdraws himself from within you before snapping his hips once again until he’s fully sheathed. Each thrust feels like thunder. “M-more,” you choke out, breaking apart your kiss momentarily to beg. His focus shifts down to where you’re connected—where each vein of his throbbing erection greets and becomes acclimated for every crevice within your cavern. Angling his hips along with your own with the assistance of his hand, he manages to welcome that spongy weakness that makes your knees buckle and regurgitate a scream in response. 

“Right there, princess?”

“P-please!” The hand under the small of your back moves to hook around your knee, it’s twin mimicking the gesture and leaving you entirely at the mercy of Overhaul whose mission at the moment is to rearrange your insides in an entirely different sense. Pinning your knees to the bed, Kai is at the perfect angle to ram into your g-spot over and over at a rapid, even pace until you’re clenching around him deliciously, silently coercing his orgasm. “Oh my fucking god,”

“Mm, you’re so tight, baby. Ya gonna cum? Gonna cum nice and hard for me? Cum for daddy,” his words are almost enough—almost. And it was as if he knew the filthy, slopping sound of his cock reaming you wasn’t enough. Though whether enough for you or him remained a mystery, his thrusts are becoming erratic as he’s panting and grunting an unabashedly as he chases his release and oxygen. “I love you,” Kai’s voice is broken, “love you so much, just wanna fill you up over and over until your body only knows the taste of me.” And you aren’t sure if it’s his nasty, vile words or the way he is utterly knocking away at your g-spot that is causing you to convulse around him—that brings you over the final hurdle and over the dam. Screams rip past your lungs as your back arches as much as it can from it’s confines while your fingers twitch out of necessity to grip something—anything. 

You’re granted no reprieve in that regard, but it matters not with the way Kai is still smacking his hips into yours, dragging out your orgasm even longer while in pursuit for his own. There is no amount of physical contact in this moment that is enough for him, even as he slats his lips over yours and slides his tongue inside your mouth to greet yours. Hips beginning to stutter, Kai is fighting every fiber in his soul—torn between the dichotomy of wanting to cum and stave off his orgasm because he wants to feel the welcoming, convulsing walls of your pussy forever. And though you’d already came at least once, the pressure was building again rapidly from the stimulation of the uneven rhythm of Kai’s hips. Part of you is thankful his tongue is hungrily dancing with yours to keep your screams muted so as not to wake the children down the hall. But the rumbling in his chest from his own throaty groans become overwhelming, forcing him to break away to and let his grunts and slew of curses fly from his mouth freely. 

“I love you, Kai,” the moans are just as bad coming from you, but those four words coming from your lips are what do the aforementioned man in. And he can tell there is no lie dripping from a silver tongue here—you mean every ounce of these four little words. For everything that is Chisaki Kai—the former Yakuza leader, the former villain, the doctor, the father—you loved the man before you. 

“Fuck! Fuckfuckfuckfuck, ‘m gonna cum,” he wails, the rhythm of his cock head tamping against your womb matching the pacing of his broken speech, “daddy’s gonna cum so fucking deep in you, gonna make you mine forever, angel.” Another hissed out string of profanities pass through as his dick twitches almost violently, shooting out ropes of seed and painting your walls white. You can tell he meant what he said, even in his lustful spew, by the way he leaves his softening erection inside of your spasming cunt and sealing his emission inside until he was almost certain his claim held permanence. 

“I meant it too,” you mumble into Kai’s sweaty neck as he collapses on top of you. Though he’s boneless at the moment, having spent all of his energy, you feel the breath of his questioning grunt beside your ear before his face is attempting to look at you while half buried in your pillow. Gingerly, he removes his now flaccid member from you, adjusting himself so that his form molds around you and wraps his arm securely around your stomach. 

“You know,” Kai starts off slowly. The rich timber of his voice is thick with exhaust but is warm and welcoming all the same. “I was jealous before.”

“Jealous? Of what?” 

“My children love you—a woman who was nothing but a stranger who doesn’t even like kids. They warmed up to you so easily, much easier than they did with me,” there’s a brief pause between his statements, causing you to adjust under his grasp until you’re touching nose to nose with the doctor. His eyes are closed for a moment, his long and feathery lashes greeting the tops of his delicate cheekbones. “So I tried to understand. Tried to figure just why they gravitated towards you.”

“And what did you find?” Peeling back his eyelids, Kai’s rich amber eyes bore into your own. Irises swirling with admiration before the view is flooded with a sudden closeness and the press of his plush lips against yours in the most loving fashion.

Truth be told, he wasn’t sure how to answer. 

He had found determination and independence, qualities of a strong woman that his daughters looked up to. Free and proud and brave, he thinks, are the reasons his sons admired you. But there’s something more. There’s a love and warmth that you bring to the family, yet a sternness that doesn’t allow them to run rampant (not that they would under Overhaul’s upbringings) that spoke so motherly to each of his nine children. And somewhere along the way for the last six months that the Clinic had been under remodel, Kai found himself gravitating to all of those exact qualities in you, the envy transforming into an admiration of his own. It was an error in his initial magnetic attraction conspiracy theory; he thought that your fear had changed to attraction when it was his all along. 

But Kai’s not always the greatest with words, and the thought of spilling his deepest thoughts of you seems a daunting task that he’d rather replace with kissing you instead. Considering you asked a question, however, he did feel the need to respond with something—anything. 

“I found you.”

 “Honey, I can still help, you know,” you whine for the umpteenth time, folding your arms over your chest as you stand in the mayoral office of Dabi with your partner. It’s been a year since Todoroki Shouto had burned down Tropium Tattoos and the Underground Clinic and tonight was finally the night that the Underground had planned on mobilizing their forces. It had taken a full year of investigating, planning, building alliances with those on the Surface, and patience for the citizens to finally strike back. 

Enough was enough. 

All of you had been exiled at one point or another, but now the Surface was trying to exterminate all of you. 

“Angel, no,” Kai chides sternly, igniting the twitch on the leader’s face. Granted it had been six months since you and Kai had first declared this little relationship of yours and, as your best friend, Dabi was still slightly hesitant on the idea. Not that his opinion had much weight considering—

“Kai, I am only three months along. I can still fight!”

“Hell no,”

“Absolutely not,” both men snark simultaneously. Best friend or not, personal opinion aside, there was no way in the ninth circle of hell that Dabi was going to let you go to war while you were pregnant. And with Kai being the father, the chances of you getting your way in this moment with him were even slimmer. The doctor pinches the bridge of his nose underneath his black cloth mask with his thumb and middle finger before letting out an annoyed rift of air. “Dabi, I’m gonna take [ name ] home before we go over invasion plans. Do you mind?” 

“Nah,” the leader waves his purple and nude hands in dismissal, “besides, we should wait for Hawks to get here before we start all that.” With that, Kai grabs your wrist with his gloved hand and drags you away from the office. He knows you want to fight, and he knows you want to protect your family—all eleven with himself and the embryo included. But as a father with another—biological—one on the way, Chisaki Kai just can’t bring himself to allow you to put yourself in harm’s way. 

“Sweetheart,” he calls out, stopping just outside of the currently closed Tropium. The grey and white building looked crisp and clean and everything you wanted it to be but you often found yourself closing up shop early and coming in late to spend more time with your nine children at home. At the very least, you were grateful that your parlor was only a block or two away from the clinic. “I need you here where you can keep our children safe in case anyone slips through the cracks.” Even with his mask on, you can tell that Kai is trembling ever so slightly. The thought of someone making their way into his home and hurting his kids, hurting you, was enough to unleash the beast within. 

“I know,” you respond quietly. Using his grip on you to your advantage, you pull the doctor towards you until he’s towering over you and looking down directly into your eyes. “But you know me, always ready to jump headfirst into the fire,” his amber eyes soften, thinking back to a year ago when you had saved Eri from the burning clinic. To think that a year later, you would be living with him and carrying his child and occupying nearly every cell in his brain. 

“It’s your turn to watch the kids,” he jokes pulling down his mask below his chin to slat his lips over yours lovingly. It’s only half a joke—he knows better than anyone you would do anything to protect them. He’s known that since day one. 

“You better come back to us,” your demand is quiet and breathless and laced more with concern than it is with threat. The thought of Kai dying while on the Surface has plagued you for the last six months, even more so when you found out you were pregnant. He knew it too, knew how much worry and panic had disturbed your sleep when the realization that war was an option had settled in. Despite the knowledge that he carried about different afflictions and ailments; Kai had been at a loss for how to quell your anxiety. He hopes that circumstances aside, him reaching into the right-side pocket of his heavy, army green coat and pulling out the small black velvet box is the correct move. Gingerly holding up said box until it’s in your line of sight, he takes a step back before peeling back the lid to showcase a single, solitaire diamond set in a simple gold band. 

“I promise you I will come back. And when this is all over, we can finally enjoy our life in peace, so long as you’ll have me.”

[rovvboat]

What Are Those? - Colossus x Reader

*Requested by the wonderful @emma-frxst - Prompt: What Are Those?*

A/N: henlo!! I know the request was for about something that piotr doesn’t know about / something he doesn’t know how to say in English - but i couldn’t come up with anything ;-; B U TTT it made me think of one specific thing which is kinda unique!! - I’ll attach a picture of it at the bottom ;)) and if any of you readers wanna try it, you could possibly get it from a local store!! 

Really hope you enjoy it! :)

Word count: 1.4k

Summary: There’s a suspicious surprise at the front door from reader, and Wade and Colossus love it. 

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‘’Listen, we don’t want these hairy-looking balls. I like that they’re red, but they’re much too hairy for my liking. How is anyone supposed to eat these anyway?’’

You wake up to the sound of Wade bickering with someone at the front door.

‘’Sir, this delivery is for Mr/Ms. Y/L/N. Are they home right now?’’ you hear a familiar voice ask calmly. You quickly get up off the bed and rifle through the closet, looking for your robe. You find the pastel pink cloak and cover yourself with it – securing it with a knot at your waist. You tiptoe back to the bed and lean over Colossus, still sound asleep, and place a kiss on his cheek. Just as you turn around to leave, a hand finds yours and gently tugs at you. You stop and look back as Colossus rises from the bed; stretching out his free hand and bringing it over his mouth to cover a yawn

‘’Good morning, keesa (kitten). Where are you off to?’’

You take a step closer to him as he wraps his arm around your waist. ‘’It’s a surprise.’’ You whisper into his ear before walking towards the door. He smiles at your figure, as you disappear into the hallway.

You trod down the steps as Wade and the delivery man were still arguing about the delivery.

‘’Listen here Mr. Hair Balls Delivery, I have no idea what these are and I have no intention of claiming responsibility for them – even though I would love to. But this is quite clearly a prank, and Wade Wilson does not fall for – ‘’

‘’Ah, Mr. Wilson! I’ve heard many stories about you… Y/N has spoken – ‘’

‘’Hey there, Michael! Is that for me?’’ You ask the delivery man as you take the last step down the stairs.

‘’Michael? So, you’re on a first name basis with the hairy balls man?’’ Wade quips. Michael gives Wade an amused look, then looks back to you and laughs.

‘’Hiya Y/N! Yeap! And I now have had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Wilson as well.’’ He said with a nod to Wade. He lifts the crate and makes his way into the kitchen. It’s filled with ping-pong sized fruits, each of them coloured a bright shade of red with greenish, soft hair-like projections.

They were exactly what the doctor ordered.

You sign the delivery form on the clipboard as Michael helps bring the crate into the kitchen and places it onto the countertop. ‘’These are fresh from the greenhouse. Mr. Jones made sure that you got the freshest pick of the day.’’ He says proudly.

You say a quick thank you to him and he tips his hat at you; ‘’Nice meeting you Mr. Wilson!’’ He calls out before hurrying out the front door back to his van.

‘’Are you fucking kidding me? You really ordered all this?’’ Wade asks in disbelief. ‘’Sorry missy, the only hairy balls I like are– ‘’

‘’Wade, no, please. These are for the kids.’’

‘’WHAT? For the children?’’ Wade exclaims with his hands on his cheek.

‘’What is all this ruckus about?’’ A heavy accent floats into the room.

‘’Hey, Colossus! Your girlfriend’s making us eat these… hairy balls!’’ He accuses dramatically, pointing at the crate. ‘’Please make her stop!’’

Colossus steps into the kitchen – surprisingly, in his human form – and gives you a little kiss on the cheek, before pouring himself a hot cup of coffee. He spots the crate, overflowing with the red berries.

‘’What are those, myshka?’’ he asks, a kind of inquisitive concern plastered on his face. You laugh at that look.

‘’They’re just fruits, bub. And God knows Wade needs more of those in his damn system.’’

‘’These are… fruits? I have never seen such… unique looking fruits before.’’

‘’They aren’t native to America. I found them at a local market in Asia while I was on a mission there! They’re exquisite!’’ You reply.

Both Colossus and Wade look bemused at this statement. You let out a light whine.

‘’Listen, I thought they were weird too. But I saw a bunch of kids eating them and they looked pretty happy with it! I tried one and it was so sweet and fleshy and it felt more like sweet treat than fruits! You gotta trust me on this.’’ You implore.

‘’Fine. But if I choke on these hairy motherfuckers, I’m burning the whole crate.’’ Wade exclaims.

He plucks one of the berries off its stem and inspects it. He sniffs it before opening his mouth, slowly bringing the fruit – thick dense skin and all – towards his gaping mouth.

‘’NO, WADE. Not like that, you moron! You gotta open up the skin first. Like this –’’

You grab one of the rambutans, or mamon chino as they’re called in central America, and skillfully place your thumbs onto the equator of the berry. You apply some pressure, pulling it apart from the ends, revealing its white, translucent flesh. You take it out and show it to the boys.

‘’This right here, is the main event, my compadres. There’s a seed in there. You’re supposed to eat around it, but it’s big enough that you can bite around it while it’s in your mouth! You gotta make sure to throw away the seed though.’’ You present the berry to Wade, who by now is a lot less puzzled and open to eating the much more innocent looking white fleshy berry. He pops it into his mouth and carefully bites on it.

‘’Ho-ly fucksicles, thes-e ah-ren’t hh-alf bad!’’ He says between eating and sucking on the berry. ‘’And they’re this sweet? Bring on the diabetes!’’

You look at him, happy that he’s enjoying the foreign berry. You turn to Colossus, who’s still sipping on his coffee.

‘’Your turn, big boy.’’ You say to him with a smirk. You pick out a bright red berry, nice and ripe – some mildew still on it, adding that much more to its allure – and split it open clean. You present the fleshy berry, still cradled in the half-open skin. He gently takes it out of the leathery casing, and bites a little off the berry.

‘’C’mon Piotr! You’re not getting the full experience here! Put it in your mouth and suck on it!’’

You immediately regret saying it as you hear Wade bellow into laughter.

‘’You probably hear that pretty often, don’t ya Coco?’’ He looks from Colossus, to you. ‘’Wow, way to bring your bed room talk public, Y/N! If you wanted me to join you, you could’ve just asked me straight up, no need to tease.’’

You bring a palm to your face, embarrassed by what’s happened. Colossus gently places a hand on your arm, and you look up to him. He puts the berry into his mouth and closes it; and his eyes widen.

‘’I know better than to doubt your tastes, kisa.’’ He says, clearly pleased with how nice this new fruit tastes.

‘’That was the surprise! See, these are great when you peel them and leave them in the fridge. They’d be a great substitute for ice-cream. I know you’ve been talking about getting the X-kiddos to eat more fruits and I think that if we put like little wooden picks into them, they’d look like round mini-popsicles! And, and – ‘’ you open the fridge to look at all the other fruits inside– ‘’We could also put all the other fruits onto them…’’ You ramble on excitedly as Colossus watches you, neither of you noticing Wade pick out half the fruits from the crate and sneak out of the kitchen.

Colossus wraps his arm around your waist and slowly pulls you to him. Your body twists around as your eyes meet his gaze; tender and warm all over. You tilt your head at him.

‘’What are you looking at?’’ you say with a smile.

‘’The most beautiful soul in the world. ty moye sokróvishche – you are my treasure.’’

Your face turns red within seconds, you look away for a moment, clearly flustered as Colossus laughs. ‘’It is fun seeing you embarrassed. But what I say is from my heart, lyubímaya (beloved)’’

He’s still holding onto you, and you take this chance to pull him in – allowing your lips to meet in a gentle kiss as your hand finds his cheek, and your thumb leaves strokes on the light stubble of his face.  

You slowly break the kiss, and when you take a quick look behind Colossus, you see half the crate’s contents missing.

‘’Oh my God. WADE!’’ You holler after him, spotting a trail of berry stems leading out of the kitchen. You follow the trail looking for Wade, and suddenly you get a fuzzy feeling in your chest and smile, as you detect a hint of coffee and sweet berry on your tongue.

[philippmichelreichold]

#scifi #Review Barrington J Bayley's Collision Course daw books

#scifi # Review Barrington J Bayley's Collision Course

I first read Barrington J. Bayley's Collision Course/Collision with Chronos more than thirty years ago. I must have given my first copy to the Goodwill. I searched for years before finding my current copy at Haslam's Books in St. Petersburg, Florida. They are the best. Collision Course is the sort of story you want to not lose.

Bailey follows a fairly unique approach to time travel stories. The vast majority deal with an alterable timeline that must either be changed or preserved to save the viewpoint character's way of life, the universe, etc; or with a multiverse where myriads of ways unfold and whatever decision a character might make, other versions of that character are deciding to do the same thing or its opposite. One example of the former is  Poul Anderson's Time Patrol stories. There are many examples in Star Trek with its time loops and Predestination Paradoxes and Chiefs O'Brien averring their hatred for Temporal Mechanics.  Larry Niven's All the Myriad Ways is an example of the latter.  Catch that Zeppelin by Fritz Lieber and Joe Haldeman's Manifest Destiny offer alternate time lines within a multiverse. Another approach, my personal favorite, is that you can't change the past. This the premise of By the Time We got to Gaugamela by R Garcia y Robertson. You can go back, but whatever is about to happen has already happened. To paraphrase, all the history books agree that Alexander the Great is going to be alive tomorrow, but no such assurances are available for the time traveller in question. Bailey takes a totally different tack from any of these, one ""so original that it avoids all (most?) time-travel clichés".

According to The Newsletter of the Council for the Literature of the Fantastic, Bailey followed the ideas of J. W. Dunne set forth in An Experiment with Time. Time travels as a wave or a torrent through six dimensional space in a local region of what we perceive as three dimensional space, creating and carrying life and consciousness with it as side effects. The future is dead and decayed, the past dead-- a collection of insensate automatons. You can build a machine to carry a bit of time with you ahead of or behind the time wave, but it won't do you any good. Times finger, having writ, moves on and you cannot change a word, act or dead. The trouble comes when two different time streams are headed along the same planet in opposite directions, like a pair of locomotives rushing along a track on a collision course set to arrive at a fatal destination. Life-consciousness-intelligence, it cannot be over emphasized, are byproducts of the time stream/wave/torrent.

And so it is in Collision Course that two time streams associated with Earth will crash together in about 200 years, with serious effects noticeable in about 100 years. Collisions of this nature must occur with some frequency as the International Space Society Retort City, located many light years from Earth and populated by the descendants of Chinese emigrees, has recently had a near miss with an entity whose time stream is situated obliquely to that of Retort City. The inhabitants of Earth are just beginning to understand time travel. The inhabitants of Retort City can literally run rings around the Earthers, and the Oblique Entity has nearly godlike (not Godlike as it points out) powers. The abilities of Retort City's scientists and the Oblique Entity, combined with obliqueness of their paths, allowed them to avert total disaster. Even so, things got pretty bad. The Oblique Entity and a researcher on Retort City have been watching events on Earth unfold with detached insouciance and mild concern. Time travellers from Retort City rescue stranded time travellers from Earth and offer to help.

Matters are not so straight forward at this point as one might hope. ISS Retort City was established 5000 years before the setting of the story, which is many thousands of years ahead of our own time. The races of man on Earth bare little physical resemblance to the people of our times (the "Chinks" of Retort City are a legendary race on Earth). The dominant race on Earth, led by the Titanium Legions (think SS), follows an Earth Mother religion. They believe with all the fervor that religious conviction can bring that they, True Man, are Earth's true sons and all the other races are defiling deviants whom they must expunge. There are archaeological ruins of alien design scattered about they believe support these beliefs.

The Titans see these ruins as proof of Alien Interventionalists who diabolically caused the rise of the Deviant races to destroy True Man. Never mind that there had been nuclear wars in the past with radioactive fallout to increase background radiation levels and thereby raise the mutation rate and never mind that the new races arose isolated from one another for a long time. Natural selection and niche filling divergence don't fit their self image or self interests. Or their self serving propaganda. Genocide is something the Titans have been quite successful at with only a few remnants of the other races remaining on reservations. The Titans have roving "experts" that can tell at a glance if someone is "racially impure". There is of course opposition and an underground which is losing faster each day. When the Titans learn of the ISS, with its wondrous technology and mighty industrial capacity, the natural recourse is to mount an invasion.

Retort City is designed as a double retort with the retorts set end to end. Lower Retort/Production Retort is devoted to industry and production. The mastery of time is so complete that different sections of a ping pong table can have different time streams moving at separate rates. Production lines can be run through time loops so that an artefact that was months in the making can be available hours after being ordered. The two halves are offset by about 34 years, so direct travel between the two halves is futile. Manufactured goods travel along a time gradient to the other half of the city and always arrive just in time. So great is Production Retort's efficiencies that it has greater industrial capacity than all of earth. The workers there are wholly devoted to their work. Their absorption with work is so great that off duty conversation often centers on how and where work is going. To them any other way of life would be a waste. "Technology was, after all, their life."(pg 54)

Life within Upper Retort/Leisure Retort is more luxurious, more devoted to subtle esthetics, and "was probably the most refined culture the galaxy had to offer". (pg 57) It's inhabitants are wholly absorbed in advancing the arts and sciences, so absorbed that they tend to objectify people and ignore any human factor not connected with the research that holds their attention. (So self absorbed that the sounds of fighting with the Titanium Legions is less a survival threat than an annoying distraction.) Little physical labor is performed directly, there being machines to handle that sort of thing. The apparent social disparity between the two halves of Retort City is solved by their mastery of time. Envy is avoided by the Exchange of Generations. One sends one's children by way of a temporal differential tunnel to the opposite half of Retort City and receives one's grandchildren in return. Robert Gibson hits the nail firmly when he says the equanimity of the arrangement eliminates jealousy between Retort City's two halves. The Leisure Retort's inhabitants are not so self absorbed as to not offer to help the inhabitants of Earth deal with the impending collision.

Once again, nothing is easy. An evacuation of refugees is impractical on religious grounds. The Titan dominated society could never abandon Mother Earth. It is unfeasible logistically as not Retort City lacks the lift capability. Diverting the time streams is beyond their science. They are not sufficient to the task and must ask the Oblique Entity for its help-- a sort of deus ex machina.

Aliens are described in some stories as being too alien to comprehend. Most human motivations/conflicts begin with food safety and shelter and proceed along Maslow's hierarchy to greed status fulfilment and pleasure seeking. Niven's Kzinti are motivated by status and the desire to acquire estates on which to hunt and raise families. The alien empires in Star Trek seem involved in dominance games characteristic of humans. I don't recall hearing an explanation for the behavior of the aliens in Independence Day unless it was pure revulsion. Certainly hatred was evident. All understandable as human like. The Oblique Entity may be beyond human comprehension by nature. No human definition fits and description is based only on vague and fleeting perceptions. No words suffice for it to explain its nature to humans. One common trait comes through clearly-- the enjoyment of entertainment. One of the human time travelers implores its assistance in saving the Earth. How does one obtain aid from someone who finds great entertainment value in the unfolding drama of one's plight?

For that matter, how does one convince someone that their murderous hatred is misplaced and futile? The Titans and the lemur like creatures in the approaching time wave ignore the fact that consciousness/life/intelligence are but byproducts of time. Even if one group succeeds in exterminating the other, the 2 time waves will still crash together ending time and life. (It is a theme of the story that despots and tyrants and haters ignore any information that contradicts their dogma and preconceived notions.) Effort and time that would be better spent working together for mutual survival are wasted on hydrogen bombs and plague weapons. As the Oblique Entity says, the final Battle of Armageddon must be fought.

Collision Course is tightly written, fast paced story that wants to be read all the way through without a break. As one reviewer puts it, "Bayley packs more into under two hundred pages than most authors come up with in a lifetime". The characters are sketched in quickly, but you know them as well as need be to follow the plot. The unique approach to time travel and the unique solution to the class struggle make it well worth reading. The ending of the story is fitting as the major conflict is resolved to the satisfaction of all concerned, even if they don't all know it. It is not a sugar coated resolution and conclusion, but the Titans would not have had it any other way, "with their cargos of death, death, and more death." I first read the story when I was in my late teens and then reread it some 30 years later. I enjoyed it as much this time as I did the first time. It is not currently available as e-text, but there are paper copies still available.

Selected dramatis personae:

•Leard Ascar- Earth's leading time scientist

•Chairman of Panhumanic League

• Grandfather of Hue Su Mueng

• Herrick- Amhrak scientist inventor of remote, intferometry-based remote viewing

• Rond Heshke- prominent archeologist

• Hue Su Mueng- disgruntled Retort City malcontent

• Hueh Shao father of Hue Su Mueng

• Hwen Wu- Leisure Retort prime minister and old friend of Hueh Shao

• Layella- Sobrie's "racially impure" girlfriend

• Leader Limnich- leader of Titanium Legions and de facto ruler of Earth

• Li Kim- friend of Hue Su Mueng

• Li Li San- Retort City envoys to future Earth aliens

• Blare Oblomot- assistant to Rond Heske at Hathar Ruins. brother of Sobrie. member of Panhumanic League

• Sobrie Oblomot- member of Panhumanic League

• Shiu Kung Chien- Retort City's leading expert on time. in contact with the Oblique Entity.

• Titan-Lieutenant Gann- time travel tech officer

• Titan-Lieutenant Hosk- time travel tech officer

• Titan-Captain Brask

• Titan-Major Brourne

• Whang Yat-Sen Retort City envoy to future Earth aliens

Further reading about Barrington J. Bayley, Collision Course/Collision with Chronos

•  COLLISION WITH CHRONOS on Ovias

•  Astounding Worlds of Barrington J Bayley on Ovias

• Review of Collision Course on Science Fiction Ruminations

• Wryte Stuff-- Politics with a Difference - Science-Fictional Constitutions

•  Jesse's Review on Goodreads

•  Barrington J Bayley on Wikipedia

•  Barrington J Bayley # ISFDB

• Barrington J. Bayley: Science-fiction writer who treated the human condition as a puzzle that must be solved

• Book Review: The Fall of Chronopolis, Barrington J. Bayley (1974)

• Book Review: Star Winds, Barrington J. Bayley (1978)

• Book Review: Empire of Two Worlds, Barrington J. Bayley (1972)

• The Zen Gun-Barrington J. Bayley (1983)

• Review: Let the Galaxy Burn - Warhammer 40k Anthology

• Obituary: Barrington J. Bayley

• Barrington John Bayley on Fantastic Fiction

Creative commons 4.0 

Credit cover art image under fair use for review. contact publisher for reuse 

[5hfanfiction]

Wicked Games (Chapter 19)

“I’m selfish. I want you all to myself, I swear, you don’t need nobody else.” - PnB Rock

A small, faint buzzing woke me from my nap. I sat up, wiping my eyes and then rolled over to grab my phone off the nightstand.

Dinah: 21st birthday party for Missy tonight at our place! 8 oclock!

I sighed deeply at that text. I had totally forgotten it was Missy’s birthday. Should I really go to that? A part of me wanted to so I could try to talk to Lauren, but a part of me didn’t want to so I could keep away from Lauren, her drama, and all of the feelings she stirs up inside of me.

The girl had done her typical ignoring act during practice and once practice was over she was out of the locker room quick as lightning, probably to avoid me. I tried to text her afterwards, but didn’t get a response. I looked hopefully at my phone one more time to see if she had responded and.. nothing.

I peeked over at the clock. It was almost seven-thirty. For the past week, this is typically when Lauren would be here. Her beautiful body on full display for me. Not tonight I guess.

I couldn’t help myself. I got on snap chat and sure enough, Lauren had added a picture to her story. I opened it up and gulped. It was an astoundingly intimidating photo of her in full makeup. I couldn’t stop staring at her green eyes. All I could think about was her being here with me this past week, how I made her body mine, how those eyes looked at me with such passion. I turned off my phone and stood up. I had to go. I had to see her. I had to get her to come home with me tonight.

I got dressed in my best outfit and put on makeup as quickly as I could. I left my house about twenty minutes after eight o'clock and got to their place about ten minutes later. Once inside, I realized the party wasn’t just women’s basketball. The men’s team was there too, along with some people from a few other sports, and some other people I didn’t really recognize. It was a little more crowded than I was expecting. I was met with greetings from my teammates and I went to each one and gave them a hug. I stopped and chatted with the birthday girl for a few moments as well. I still didn’t see Lauren yet, but whilst looking around I found a different brunette. Keana was there.

We made eye contact and she lifted her cup at me in greeting. I walked over to her.

“Hey,” I grinned.

“Hi gorgeous,” she complimented. “Guess you decided to come out and have a little fun?”

“Sometimes I can have fun,” I mentioned unconvincingly.

“Really? I would have never guessed. You’re always so tense.. well, the two times I’ve seen you, you’re tense.”

“Am I tense now?” I implored.

She took a sip from her cup and gave me the once over. “I don’t know.. I’m not sure.”

I laughed, slightly unnerved by the look she gave me, “I’ll take that.”

That is when Dinah came up to me with an overly aggressive hug.

“Woah.. hey buddy,” I chuckled, nearly falling backwards. The party had only just started, but Dinah was already intoxicated. They must have pregamed.

Dinah was begging me to come with her to play beer pong and she just wasn’t taking no for an answer, so I politely excused myself from Keana and went back to the kitchen. “We got next!” Dinah shouted as we entered the room.

That is where I found Lauren. She was standing next to a guy on the men’s team named Matt. He was of average height, slightly taller than her, with a toned build. He had short light blonde hair and bright blue eyes. I hated to admit it, but he was pretty attractive. They were partnered up on one side of the beer pong table and Ally and Normani were partnered on the other side. Micah and Missy were also in the kitchen along with a couple other guys on the basketball team.

I almost started laughing because it wasn’t looking good for Mani and Ally. They still had seven cups left and Lauren and Matt were on their last two cups. “Guys… you gotta pick it up! Come on now,” I chided to Mani and Ally. Ally threw her hands in the air and screamed “Mila!” as she ran and practically tackled me in a hug. “Man, everyone’s acting like they didn’t just see me this morning.” Normani, clearly the only one here not completely intoxicated, shook her head and gave me a side hug, “even Lebron has off nights,” she tried to justify her poor beer pong performance.

“Who said you’re Lebron? You’re more like JR Smith,” I teased which earned an arm punch from her because JR is her least favorite player on the Cavs. I threw my hands up, pleading innocence, “kidding, kidding.”

Reluctantly I finally turned to the other side of the table. Matt waved in greeting and said, “Hi, Camila.” To which I responded with only a fake smile. Lauren didn’t even acknowledge me and instead complained, “Can we get the game started again?”

I crossed my arms and shook my head. Guess it’s gonna be one of those nights again. Although she wasn’t looking at me, I certainly was looking at her. She was wearing a black and white striped two-piece jumpsuit that was definitely hugging her figure in all of the right places. She wore her hair straight, with it all tucked on one side of her shoulder currently, so the soft skin on her other shoulder was exposed. She was looking elegant, but sexy as hell. I eventually tore my eyes from her and sauntered over to the kitchen counter to fix myself a drink while I waited. I’d only just started pouring the Bacardi into my cup when I heard Lauren and Matt cheering behind me. I turned, raising my eyebrow to find the game was over and Matt and Lauren had completely blown Mani and Ally out. Mani and Ally were each chugging their loser cups while Lauren and Matt were hugging. I did not like his hand placement one bit. It was on the small of her back just barely above her ass. I was already getting irritated. I downed the little bit of Bacardi in my cup, as Dinah called me over.

“Lets do this Mila! We gotta put a stop to their winning streak!” she slurred.

“Yeah, seriously,” Mani groaned after she finished her drink and wiped her mouth. “They’ve won the past four games.”

I looked up to find Matt whispering something in Lauren’s ear. Whatever he said, Lauren was smiling and nodding. Aggravation bottled up and caused me to blurt out, “hey!” I made myself jump I said it so loud. Both of their heads snapped to look at me. Trying to play it cool, I lowered my pitch and asked, “You two ready to start?”

Finally the two of them separated. I was determined to win. Whatever this was going on with them two, it needed to stop. I peeked at Lauren as Dinah rolled the ping pong balls across the table to Matt. Lauren had been looking at me. I stiffened up and when Lauren realized she had been caught she smirked. Smirked! What the hell is that? She looked away because Matt was handing her a ball.

I shook my head, I wasn’t going to let her distract me anymore.

We got started and Matt took the first shot, which he sank. Dinah groaned in response. I watched Lauren intently as she leaned forward making her top raise up a little and expose some skin of her stomach. Her eyebrows creased and she bit her lip in concentration. Gosh, she looked so cu- wait, no I wasn’t letting her distract me. Instead, I decided to focus on the cups. I watched as a ball suddenly fell into one of the cups in the back row.

I frowned and Dinah groaned once again, much louder and much more obnoxiously this time. ‘Damn they’re good.’ The sounds of irritation from Dinah were accompanied by cheers from Matt and Lauren to my dismay.

I picked the balls out of the cups, and moved them to the side. Once again, I avoided Lauren’s gaze at all costs. I already knew those eyes of hers would make me miss completely. I focused on the cups on the right side of the pyramid and took my shot. The ball bounced on one cup then fell into the cup directly behind it. It was my turn to smirk.

Dinah instantly yelled, “That’s two cups, baby!”

I shook my head at her volume, but watched as she took her shot. She airballed completely. She pouted deeply, then turned to me and shrugged. I laughed and patted her shoulder, “You’re just warmin’ up,” although I expected nothing less from her the rest of the game.

The next round Matt missed, but Lauren sank another cup. In response, I made a cup in the corner and Dinah miraculously happened to make the same cup so we got balls back. Unfortunately, we both missed on our second chance.

The game went back and forth until we each had only two cups left. The partygoers around us were cheering me and Dinah along since we were the overwhelming underdogs in this game. Although it was just a simple party game, for some reason I felt there was more at stake. Maybe it was sad, but I wanted to prove to Lauren that I was better than this Matt guy. I knew a stupid beer pong game is not going to determine whether or not Matt is better than me, but I really did not like how flirtatious they were being with eachother so I did not want him to beat me in any way.

My heart was starting to beat pretty fast when I picked up the ping pong ball. I was feeling some pressure. Except for the one shot she made, Dinah had been relatively useless throughout the game because she was too drunk to see the cups properly, so it had pretty much all been up to me. I really wanted to beat Matt and Lauren and put an end to whatever was going on with them.

I was starting to focus really hard on one of the cups when I noticed Lauren out of my periphery. I had done a great job of avoiding looking at her despite multiple attempts by her to distract me, but this time I failed to ignore her. She leaned over the table right behind the cup I was looking at, her shirt hung loosely enough for me to get a great view of her cleavage. My jaw tightened as the cup blurred away from my focus and instead her boobs perched above a push-up bra became my entire field of vision. Almost immediately, my thoughts went to a dirty place, reliving memories of that part of her body pressed up against me. After a few seconds of staring I came to and looked up to meet her eyes for the first time since the game started. That typical arrogant smirk of hers was back. She knew exactly what she was doing. “Are you going to take your shot, Camz?” Lauren teased suggestively.

I blinked in embarassment and threw the ball. It airballed, landing just in front of Lauren’s chest. 'Wow, I really could not have made it more obvious’ I chastised myself internally. The stupid grin on Lauren’s face as she stood back up was enough to have me teetering on the brink of rage. Dinah shot and missed, of course. Now I was starting to sweat, my composure slipping away.

It only got worse when Matt got his cup. Lauren exclaimed, “Yes!” wrapping her arm around him. I could only watch in horror as the two of them smiled at each other, their faces inches apart. Luckily that did not last long. Lauren leaned back, removing her arm from him. Her face constricted again with concentration as she stared at the lonely cup infront of us. I crossed my fingers behind my back, desperately hoping she would miss.

I was sorely disappointed. I heard a clunk as the ball landed inside of the cup. Although the rest of the party groaned like Dinah, Matt started jumping up and down, screaming “Yes!” over and over again. I didn’t know why he was so excited, but I also felt pretty stupid for how lousy I was feeling about losing a dumb party game. Unfortunately for me, there is no redemption shot in this household. I gladly took the assortment of beers inside of the losers’ cup and downed that sucker quickly. The taste was horrendous and my face cringed as soon as I finished the cup, but at least I started feeling a buzz pretty soon afterwards.

Ally called us all into the living room because Missy was about to blow out the candles of her cake. From then on, I did my best to refocus on the true purpose of this party and be a good friend for Missy. We all sang happy birthday for her and cheered her on as she got to take some of her first legal drinks. I enjoyed myself a big fat piece of cake and sat on the couch amongst my friends.

I was joking around with Ally and Micah when I saw it. Across the room was Lauren, seated next to Matt. They were sitting close, too close. My laugh automatically stopped. Both of them had drinks in their hands and even punched them together as if they were cheering something. Then it happened. Matt leaned forward and placed his lips on hers.

Within an instant, my blood was boiling and my fists were clenched so hard, my knuckles turned white and my nails were drawing blood in my palms. I am jealous. Probably more jealous than I have ever been in my entire life. What was even more infuriating was that I didn’t even have a right to be angry. Lauren and I aren’t in an exclusive relationship and we never were going to be, but still, I was furious. Unable to tear my eyes away from what was happening across the room, I saw Matt’s hand begin to wander up her thigh and I felt like I was about to break my teeth I was clenching my jaw so hard. The worst part was that she was reciprocating.

“Mila? Are you ok?” I vaguely heard coming from the direction of Ally and Micah.

“Fine,” I spat out.

I had felt jealousy before with Emma, but I never felt it on this level. With Emma I was never concerned because I felt secure in our relationship. There was no security in my relationship with Lauren, or whatever the hell we are. I felt completely threatened by Matt. He could mess everything up between us. What if Lauren no longer wanted me? What if I lost my opportunity to make her fall for me forever? What if she would stop making late night trips to see me? 'God, I’m being selfish.’ I thought to myself. In all reality, would I even want to have sex with her if she was messing around with Matt at the same time? For a sad moment, I considered what that may be like. What have I become? Where my sexual desires are more important than my sanity and my dignity. But if I was being truly frank with myself.. it was never just about sex with Lauren.

I was about to look away and try to move on with my night, but Lauren pulled away from Matt slightly. However, Matt traveled to her neck, continuing his invasion of my woman. Lauren’s piercing green eyes looked straight at me. My mouth fell open slightly at her nerve. Her lips were curled up into a tight smile. It was as if she was challenging me, daring me to stop her.

That was the straw that broke me. I painfully ripped my eyes from her and abruptly rose from my seat. I charged back to the kitchen, shoving one of the freshman on our team aside so I could pick up a beer bottle out of the pack. I popped the top off and started chugging it. I got about half way down before I got a better idea.

I made my way through the party crowd, keeping my eyes peeled for what I was looking for. I found her standing with a couple of guys on the basketball team a few feet away from where Lauren and Matt were getting cozy.

I sauntered straight past Lauren, not even giving her a glance, and stepped up to Keana. “That offer still stand?” I questioned her, not caring about whatever conversation she had been having with those guys who were clearly drooling over her.

She looked me up and down, an eyebrow slightly raised in surprise, but her lips turned upwards in pleasure. “For you? Absolutely.”

I took a big swig of the beer, grimacing as I struggled to handle the violent taste inside the bottle. I nodded towards the hall, “Then let’s go then.”

Feeling especially petty, I took Keana into Lauren’s room. It wasn’t until I shut the door that I started second guessing what I was doing.

While I was trying to consider what my next move would be, I heard Keana pipe up behind me, “You sure Lauren won’t mind?”

The mere mention of Lauren stirred something inside of me. I turned to face her and responded harshly, “I don’t care and since when do you?”

“Woah, what do you mean by that?” she looked at me with her eyebrows knitted.

Immediately I softened, already feeling guilty for taking out my emotions about Lauren on her. “Nothing, sorry.”

We made eye contact and my pulse quickened. She raised an eyebrow, looking at me with anticipation. I took one more sip of liquid courage and then set the bottle down on Lauren’s nightstand. Leaning forward, I had just barely grazed Keana’s lips before she lightly pushed me backwards.

“You know, what I meant by distraction didn’t have to be sex,” Keana commented carefully.

I sighed with relief. It was like she read my mind. I didn’t really want to do this. I didn’t really know what I was doing to be honest. Seeing Lauren being with somebody else made me snap. Although I barely even kissed Keana, I already felt ashamed by my actions. It felt so high school. I never would have pictured myself acting this way, but Lauren makes me feel things in such a raw way that I almost lose all self-control with her around.

“..If you need to talk.. we can just talk..” Keana’s voice pulled me out of my thoughts. I nodded, taking a seat on Lauren’s bed with dejection. Keana sat down next to me. I could not believe that this model status girl even wanted to have sex with me in the first place, but now I was even more taken aback by how gentle and kind she was being. She seemed to pick up on exactly how apprehensive I was and she was not forcing me to do anything.

We both just rested there for a few moments in silence. I honestly didn’t know where to begin. I also didn’t know how much Keana knew about me and Lauren. Apparently she knew enough.

“Is this about Lauren?” Keana suddenly spoke. It had been so quiet aside from the distant noises from the party that it almost shocked me. I nodded in confession.

“Look, Lauren’s my friend, but sometimes she doesn’t know a good thing when she’s got it.”

I tweaked an eyebrow upwards, speaking for the first time in minutes. “Ha.. funny, I was thinking that about myself.”

“What do you mean?”

I sighed. “I have a girl back home.. I have a lot of history with her.. Not to sound cocky, but I could probably make her mine right now if I wanted to.” I was worried I was saying too much to this relative stranger, but to my surprise, Keana was listening intently.

“Well, I guess that’s the thing,” she murmured.

“What?” I was curious to see what this outsider had to say about my situation.

“If you wanted to, she would be yours right now.. so I guess deep down that’s not what you really want.”

I stared at her, speechless. Was it really that simple? Had this girl I barely met figured me out before I could? That’s not the truth though.. right?

“What if I do really want her, but I’m too scared to give her another opportunity to hurt me?” I wondered out loud.

“Looks to me like you’re giving Lauren an opportunity to hurt you.”

Well, shit. I turned and made eye contact with Keana. There is more to this girl than meets the eye. I see now why Lauren took a liking to her. She is smart and intuitive. I reached over to grab my bottle and took a big swig. “I misjudged you.”

Her eyes softened and a light laugh escaped her lips. “Let me guess, did you think I was a whore?” she asked with a wide grin.

I smiled with guilt at her and nodded slightly.

“Well I am,” she chuckled. “I’d have my way with you right now if you really wanted it, but I’m not stupid. I can see it’s not me you want.”

“Am I that obvious?” I inquired.

Keana shrugged. “No.. you weren’t to me until I saw the way you were looking at her while she was kissing Matt. You looked so sad.”

I looked down, reminded of that horrible moment. I took a deep breath. I couldn’t believe it, but my gut was telling me to tell her something I hadn’t told anybody. She just seemed so understanding and trustworthy to me in this moment that I couldn’t seem to stop the words before they were forming. It also didn’t help that I was pretty close to drunk.

“I’m falling for her, Keana.”

There. The words were out. I had finally admitted it to not only someone else, but myself as well.

Keana’s comforting voice returned, “I wish I could tell you that I know how she feels, but I really don’t. She keeps most things to herself.”

I nodded, completely understanding. “She definitely does.” All I’ve been doing since I met Lauren is trying to deconstruct those thick walls she has built up. I’ve known her for about three years now and I still feel like I have so much more to learn about her.

I couldn’t believe how wrong I was about Keana. In her words, I guess I was still right, but I only knew her on a superficial level. Now I had seen how much deeper her mind and soul is and I was very thankful I ended up trying to hook up with someone like her. She was a very beautiful girl on the outside, but I could see now that she wasn’t bankrupt on the inside like I had originally thought.

Keana stood up as well and when she did so I pulled her in to a hug. “Thank you,” I genuinely said to her.

“Oh, I’m on that level with you now?” She joked, referencing our conversation from earlier today.

I grinned from ear to ear. “Yes, you are now.”

“Can I at least cop a feel of your ass?” The original Keana I met came out of nowhere. I laughed so hard at that request I probably could have been heard by everyone at the party.

___________________

AN: Back from a long hiatus! Hope you all enjoy :)

[terrancewti7257-blog]

Why You Must Steer clear of Ice For A Sprained Ankle joint

Seatec è l'unica rassegna in Italia dedicata esclusivamente alle aziende che si rivolgono alla fornitura della cantieristica navale e da diporto. Extreme is actually approved to ISO 9001:2008 in the Manufacture, Style, Screening and Sales Semiconductor Laser device Diodes. Whether you possess a lab-scale manufacturing procedure or even a whole entire assembly line, well-maintained space ailments or regulatory worries, Intense has the experience as well as knowledge you should cultivate reliable, practical and also stress-free computerization answers that suit your distinct needs. Last period, she was actually the assistant instructor from Intense Volleyball's 14 National Elite staff. Travel Intense discovers as well as shares the greatest eco-lodges and outside adventures worldwide so as to guarantee you have a stressless and also perfect , organic eco-vacation. If your navel possesses additional of a rounded slope that curves under, if there is actually not ample area responsible for the cover for jewelry to correctly rest, or if your navel collapses when you sit you might not be a really good applicant for this one. If you adored this article so you would like to collect more info concerning bricksbud.info i implore you to visit our web-page. Rigorous warranty encompasses the original owner only, However our company possess programs in place to aid you get back on your bike. Join us for 3 times from outdoor camping, competition, and extreme sessions as we remain to Develop Guy and also Raise Sons". Arthroscopic shoulder surgical treatment will generally be the encouraged course of procedure to restore the harmed ligaments. All operations layout pass through quality control with which the Navel is licensed. . Cara Cara Navel oranges are understood for being actually exceptionally sweet along with a little reduced level of acidity than normal Navels. Extreme can combine micro-optics as well as image resolution optics to create varieties of laser dots from 200 approximately 5000 dots each in. The grade from the sprain controls procedure, and also the person's ability to bear weight on the ankle joint. Snatch specially-marked Intense Dairy bottle limits all wintertime long to spare cold, hard cash. All the information on Intense Cycles web site featuring item graphics, hallmarks, depictions, designs, icons, photos, art work, photos, as well as any online video and/or audio components are actually copyrights, hallmarks, and other patent had, regulated, only by Intense Patterns, Inc The best common ankle joint strain occurs on the lateral or even outside component of the ankle joint. In the very early 1800s, the first well-known navel orange increased on a bitter orange tree at a Brazilian monastary as well as was actually discovered through a missionary. Maintain your heel on the ground as well as glide your feet outside as well as have for 10 seconds. Rigorous recommends that an authorized Intense supplier check the framework for worry at the very least annually, along with any time the bike has been actually engageded in a collision or even based on notable loads, regardless of whether no harm is apparent. Extreme Cycles carries out not handle any type of such 3rd party sites as well as is not responsible for any type of problems you might suffer from making use of such third party web sites. He is director of Intense Beach ball as well as has coached club beach ball for 7 years. Navel Voice members may throw discussions along with their fellow mother buddies and also earn money while doing this. To learn more, merely email us at hi @.louisvilleorthopedics.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/ankle_sprain.jpg" width="256" /> Without a well-defined lip" over the navel there is actually an improved opportunity for troubles healing-- consisting of denial. Found at Slippery Rock Educational institution near Moraine Condition Playground and also merely FIFTY miles north from Pittsburgh, PA, the Intense Ping pong Camps range closely watched tasks observed 'around-the-clock' through a professional personnel. For example, if the sprain isn't addressed effectively, you could possibly develop a bothersome condition referred to as severe side ankle joint vulnerability. Bicycles are not everlasting, and every Rigorous frameset has a beneficial product life cycle. Whether this's taking your method to the next level or even getting a necessary new innovation to market, the staff at Intense Engineering gones on contact us to help.

[evandowning45-blog]

One Month

We delight in to reveal that Tar Stream Elementary School's Terra Tunes chorus got the best sceneries from their video clip for the 2016 Concert for Music in Our Institutions Month ®! Considering that the place's first elements were actually introduced, 216 girls as well as guys have lived certainly there, and NASA has actually discovered a lot about effective ways to stay in space-- regarding the difference between climbing into zero‑G for two weeks as well as resolving in for months at once. I do work in an interdisciplinary college on my own (the College of Atmosphere as well as Natural Assets at The Ohio State University) and also I know that there is actually a bunch of worth in what our company political researchers do for interdisciplinary staffs, but our experts are typically certainly not terrific at interacting our toughness as well as the value from our skills to non-political researchers. It was actually President Ronald Reagan, in his 1984 State of the Union speech, which directed NASA to make and totally staff a spaceport station, which he anticipated would allow quantum leaps in our research in scientific research, communications, in metallics, and in lifesaving medicines which may be made simply in space." NASA's authentic eyesight for the station was actually as eager as this had been actually for Beauty or even the shuttle bus. This ominous truth can expand regional inequality, as mental ability, ability, and tasks leave the Midwest as well as the Rust Waistband-- where existing financial downtrend could have brought about the crucial shift of voters towards Donald Trump-- for places along with curvaceous private and also better-funded social universities.

Is actually gel The best Trending Point Currently?

Because of this month's lunar eclipse as well as Pluto retrograde, April may be an unusual opportunity for your social life-- however fortunately we have the AstroTwins to malfunction the greatest strategy, by prediction indicator, of when to stay in, when to go out, and also exactly what (/ that!) to watch out for all month long. NameEditor or even Headlines DirectorName of Paper, Radio or even TV StationAddressDear Mr./ Mrs.National Association for Music Education and learning, with more than 75,000 members, has actually introduced that the statement for the March YEAR Music In Our Institutions Month (MIOSM) nationwide celebration is THE ME.

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Douglass's heyday of effect resided in the mid to late 19th century-- when he was actually likewise one of The Atlantic's biggest-name writers-- however he could be much better known than ever amongst the widest swath from the American public because of his ascension in to the Pantheon of dark past bodies taught in colleges given that the United States established Dark Past history Month in 1976.Suggested Resource site i implore you to visit our web-site. org/files/education/poetry-month12.jpg" width="286" alt="monthly calendar"/> August is one hell of an active month in the heavens: There are actually two game-changing eclipses (/ learn-astrology/solar-and-lunar- darkens/ ), pair of wandering retrogrades (/ learn-astrology/retrogrades/) and the ultimate installment of three Jupiter-Pluto squares (- pluto-square-2016/) that have actually been actually shaking factors up because last November. That is actually due to the fact that the division's regulations pointed out that customers could claim a protection to payment in any type of proceeding to pick up on a Straight Lending." When lending collection agencies were testing to recuperate defaulted debt, that made it seem like debtors could possibly increase defenses only. The hearings are actually the creation from Statesman Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, the Republican chairman from the Health, Learning, Effort, and also Pensions Committee, that has actually been talking for months concerning the must maintain Obamacare's specific insurance coverage market. Trump seems to be ping-ponging between taking the absolute most pro-Nazi posture accessible to him as well as refuting that he has done so, however final evening he did three points that made that look that he believes his political survival depends upon rallying racist support to his laid siege to streamer.

[emblem-333]

Smile, Because It Happened

My friends and I shuffled into our seats Tuesday night, up high in the balcony. So high you can mistake Marcus Smart for Terry Rozier, and Paul Zipser for Nikola Mirotic. On the left of us, an overweight fellow wearing Celtics green, who embodied every negative stereotype of a sports fan. Shouting "Take it to the hole," throughout the night. My ears rang irritably, and I'm pretty sure he spilt beer on my sweater and hat. Behind us, Bulls fans shouting “Brick!” when a Celtics player hoisted up a shot. Wasn’t until we left I realized they were just kids. Couldn’t have been older than 12. Right then I realized, this was their initiation into the cold world that is sports fandom.

All of us have that one moment when we know we’ve been hooked on victory like a drug. For me, it was when I was seven, walking aimlessly in at the Texas Roadhouse, in Newbury Danvers, watching David Ortiz extend the ‘04 ALCS series against the Yankees. I was too young to understand to understand it. But Boston sports had me hooked from that moment on. People inside the barroom howled with ecstasy, while I walked around the peanut covered floor looking for the restroom. Two weeks later, Renteria hit a hopper back to the mound, Keith Folkue (who I spent a lot of time reinactng this moment) grabbed the white stitched ball in midair, carefully flipped it to Doug Mientkiewicz and..volià. Eighty-six years of suffering erased. A seven-year old boy initiated into fandom before he truly got to know what pain sports will bring a young soul.

Those Bulls fans who sat behind me last night deserved to bask in the warm glow of victory. Because after this season, the Chicago Bulls won’t give them much to cheer about. But they’ll still be wearing their colors proudly. General Managers can abuse their fans all they want with stupid, shortsighted decisions and can always count on fans to vicariously buy their team’s jersey, pay outrageous prices for garbage seats and not make that much of a stink when their team goes 41-41.

Last night was a revelation for Celtics Nation. One we shouldn’t forget, nor take for granted. The last three years have been fun. Isaiah Thomas has embodied everything great about Boston, forever we’re in his debt and will remain a cult hero for years to come.

But a playoff series we cannot win with him. I can’t stress how hard it was for me to type that. It feels like a betrayal of trust. I stood by him, as did many when critics would point to his size as the crux of why he wasn’t an elite point guard. A fans devote loyalty can sometimes be rewarded. This is not one of those times.

When the Boston Celtics season comes to a close, ushering a summer of armchair talk of Al Horford’s expensive contract issued during a “use it or lose it” summer of crazy amounts of cap space. We await the bouncing of the white ping-pong balls to decide our future, perhaps even reshape our team entirely. If the Celtics do grab the number one pick the Isaiah Thomas Era as we know it, may end against the Bulls.

But that discussion is for another time.

When the Celtics walk into the rejuvenated Chicago arena (whatever the corporate name is), it will have the feeling of the curtain coming down on a play we didn’t want to end.

I implore all of you, Celtics fans specifically, to enjoy it. Soak in our overachieving nature just for a couple more nights. For the future is uncertain, the present is clear. The Boston Celtics are down 2-0 to the Chicago Bulls, entering a two game road stretch. Let’s show our support for players we may not see in a Celtics’ uniform ever again after this season.

[philippmichelreichold]

                                          Barrington J. Bayley, Collision Course/Collision with Chronos</tite> </head>< body><!--'"

I first read Barrington J. Bayley's Collision Course/Collision with Chronos more than thirty years ago. I must have given my first copy to the Goodwill. I searched for years before finding my current copy at Haslam's Books in St. Petersburg, Florida. They are the best. Collision Course is the sort of story you want to not lose.

Bailey follows a fairly unique approach to time travel stories. The vast majority deal with an alterable timeline that must either be changed or preserved to save the viewpoint character's way of life, the universe, etc; or with a multiverse where myriads of ways unfold and what ever decision a character might make, other versions of that character are deciding to do the same thing or its opposite. One example of the former is Poul Anderson's Time Patrol stories. There are many examples in Star Trek with its time loops and Predestination Paradoxes and Chiefs O'Brien avering their hatred for Temporal Mechanics. Larry Niven's All the Myriad Ways is an example of the latter. Catch that Zeppelin  by Fritz Lieber and Joe Haldeman's Manifest Destiny offer alternate time lines within a multiverse. Another approach, my personal favorite, is that you can't change the past.  This the premise of By the Time We got to Gaugamela by R Garcia y Robertson. You can go back, but whatever is about to happen has already happened. To paraphrase, all the history books agree that Alexander the Great is going to be alive tomorrow, but no such assurances are available for the time travailer in question.  Bailey takes a totally different tack from any of these, one ""so original that it avoids all (most?) time-travel clichés".

According to The Newsletter of the Council for the Literature of the Fantastic, Bailey followed the ideas of  J. W. Dunne set forth in An Experiment with Time. Time travels as a wave or a torrent through six dimensional space in a local region of what we perceive as three dimensional space, creating and carrying life and consciousness with it as side effects. The future is dead and decayed, the past dead-- a collection of insensate automatons. You can build a machine to carry a bit of time with you ahead of or behind the time wave, but it won't do you any good. Times finger, having writ, moves on and you cannot change a word, act or dead. The trouble comes when two different time streams are headed along the same planet in opposite directions, like a pair of locomotives rushing along a track on a collision course set to arrive at a fatal destination. Life-consciousness-intelligence, it cannot be over emphasized, are byproducts of the time stream/wave/torrent.

And so it is in Collision Course that two time streams associated with Earth will crash together in about 200 years, with serious effects noticeable in about 100 years. Collisions of this nature must occur with some frequency as the International Space Society Retort City, located many light years from Earth and populated by the descendants of Chinese emigrees, has recently had a near miss with an entity whose time stream is situated obliquely to that of Retort City. The inhabitants of Earth are just beginning to understand time travel. The inhabitants of Retort City can literally run rings around the Earthers, and the Oblique Entity has nearly godlike (not Godlike as  it points out) powers.  The abilities of Retort City's scientists and the Oblique Entity, combined with obliqueness of their paths, allowed them to avert total disaster. Even so, things got pretty bad.   The Oblique Entity and a researcher on Retort City have been watching events on Earth unfold with detached insouciance and mild concern. Time travellers from Retort City rescue stranded time travellers from Earth and offer to help.

Matters are not so straight forward at this point as one might hope. ISS Retort City was established 5000 years before the setting of the story, which is many thousands of years ahead of our own time. The races of man on Earth bare little physical resemblance to the people of our times (the "Chinks" of Retort City are a legendary race on Earth).  The dominant race on Earth, led by the Titanium Legions (think SS), follows an Earth Mother religion. They believe with all the fervor that religious conviction can bring that they, True Man, are Earth's true sons and all the other races are defiling deviants whom they must expunge. There are archaeological ruins of alien design scattered about they believe support these beliefs.

The Titans see these ruins as proof of Alien Interventionalists who diabolically caused the rise of the Deviant races to destroy True Man. Never mind that there had been nuclear wars in the past with radioactive fallout to increase background radiation levels and thereby raise the mutation rate and never mind that the new races arose isolated from one another for a long time. Natural selection and niche filling divergence don't fit their self image or self interests. Or their self serving propaganda.  Genocide is something the Titans have been quite successful at with only a few remnants of the other races remaining on reservations.  The Titans have roving "experts" that can tell at a glance if someone is "racially impure". There is of course opposition and an underground which is losing faster each day.  When the Titans learn of the ISS, with its wondrous technology and mighty industrial capacity, the natural recourse is to mount an invasion.

Retort City is designed as a double retort with the retorts set end to end. Lower Retort/Production Retort is devoted to industry and production. The mastery of time is so complete that different sections of a ping pong table can have different time streams moving at separate rates. Production lines can be run through time loops so that an artefact that was months in the making can be available hours after being ordered. The two halves are offset by about 34 years, so direct travel between the two halves is futile. Manufactured goods travel along a time gradient to the other half of the city and always arrive just in time. So great is Production Retort's efficiencies that it has greater industrial capacity than all of earth.  The workers there are wholly devoted to their work. Their absorption with work is so great that off duty conversation often centers on how and where work is going. To them any other way of life would be a waste. "Technology was, after all, their life."(pg 54)

Life within Upper Retort/Leisure Retort is more luxurious, more devoted to subtle esthetics, and "was probably the most refined culture the galaxy had to offer". (pg 57)  It's inhabitants are wholly absorbed in advancing the arts and sciences, so absorbed that they tend to objectify people and ignore any human factor not connected with the research that holds their attention. (So self absorbed that the sounds of fighting with the Titanium Legions is less a survival threat than an annoying distraction.) Little physical labor is performed directly, there being machines to handle that sort of thing. The apparent social disparity between the two halves of Retort City is solved by their mastery of time. Envy is avoided by the Exchange of Generations.One sends one's children by way of a temporal differential tunnel to the opposite half of Retort City and receives one's grandchildren in return.Robert Gibson hits the nail firmly when he says the equanimity of the arrangement eliminates jealousy between Retort City's two halves. The Leisure Retort's inhabitants are not so self absorbed as to not offer to help the inhabitants of Earth deal with the impending collision.

Once again, nothing is easy. An evacuation of refugees is impractical on religious grounds. The Titan dominated society could never abandon Mother Earth. It is unfeasible logistically as not Retort City lacks the lift capability. Divertimg the time streams is beyond their science. They are not sufficient to the task and must ask the Oblique Entity for its help-- a sort of deus ex machina.

Aliens are described in some stories as being too alien to comprehend. Most human motivations/conflicts begin with food safety and shelter and proceed along Maslow's hierarchy  to greed status fulfilment and pleasure seeking. Niven's Kzini are motivated by status and the desire to acquire estates on which to hunt and raise families.  The alien empires in Star Trek seem involved in dominance games characteristic of humans.  I don't recall hearing an explanation for the behavior of the aliens in Independence Day unless it was pure revulsion. Certainly hatred  was evident. All understandable as human like. The Oblique Entity may be beyond human comprehension by nature. No human definition fits and description is based only on vague and fleeting perceptions. No words suffice for it to explain its nature to humans. One common trait comes through clearly-- the enjoyment of entertainment. One of the human time travelers implores its assistance in saving the Earth. How does one obtain aid from someone who finds great entertainment value in the unfolding drama of one's plight?

For that matter, how does one convince someone that their murderous hatred is misplaced and futile? The Titans and the lemur like creatures in the approaching time wave ignore the fact that consciousness/life/intelligence are but byproducts of  time. Even if one group succeeds in exterminating the other, the 2 time waves will still crash together ending time and life.  (It is a theme of the story that despots and tyrants and haters ignore any information that contradicts their dogma and preconceived notions.) Effort and time that would be better spent working together for mutual survival are wasted on hydrogen bombs and plague weapons. As the Oblique Entity says, the final Battle of Armageddon must be fought.

Collision Course is tightly written, fast paced story that wants to be read all the way through without a break. As one reviewer puts it, "Bayley packs more into under two hundred pages than most authors come up with in a lifetime". The characters are sketched in quickly, but you know them as well as need be to follow the plot. The unique approach to time travel and the unique solution to the class struggle make it well worth reading. The ending of the story is fitting as the major conflict is resolved to the satisfaction of all concerned, even if they don't all know it. It is not a sugar coated resolution and conclusion, but the Titans would not have had it any other way, "with their cargos of death, death, and more death." I first read the story when I was in my late teens and then reread it some 30 years later. I enjoyed it as much this time as I did the first time. It is not currently available as e-text, but there are paper copies still available.

Selected dramatis personae:

Leard Ascar- Earth's leading time scientist

Chairman of Panhumanic League

Grandfather of Hue Su Mueng

Herrick- Amhrak scientist inventor of remote, intferometry-based remote viewing

Rond Heshke- prominent archeologist

Hue Su Mueng- disgruntled Retort City malcontent

Hueh Shao father of Hue Su Mueng

Hwen Wu- Leisure Retort prime minister and old friend of Hueh Shao

Layella- Sobrie's "racially impure" girlfriend

Leader Limnich- leader of Titanium Legions and de facto ruler of Earth

Li Kim- friend of Hue Su Mueng

Li Li San- Retort City envoys to future Earth aliens

Blare Oblomot- assistant to Rond Heske at Hathar Ruins. brother of Sobrie. member of Panhumanic League  

Sobrie Oblomot- member of Panhumanic League

Shiu Kung Chien- Retort City's leading expert on time. in contact with the Oblique Entity.

Titan-Lieutenant Gann- time travel tech officer

Titan-Lieutenant  Hosk- time travel tech officer

Titan-Captain Brask

Titan-Major Brourne

Whang Yat-Sen Retore City envoy to future Earth aliens

Further reading about Barrington J. Bayley, Collision Course/Collision with Chronos

COLLISION WITH CHRONOS  on Ovias

Astounding Worlds of Barrington J Bayley on Ovias

Review of Collision Course on Science Fiction Ruminations

Wryte Stuff-- Politics with a Difference - Science-Fictional Constitutions

Jesse's Review on Goodreads

Barrington J Bayley on Wikipedia

Barrington J Bayley # ISFDB

Barrington J. Bayley: Science-fiction writer who treated the human condition as a puzzle that must be solved

Book Review: The Fall of Chronopolis, Barrington J. Bayley (1974)

Book Review: Star Winds, Barrington J. Bayley (1978)

Book Review: Empire of Two Worlds, Barrington J. Bayley (1972)

The Zen Gun-Barrington J. Bayley (1983)

Review: Let the Galaxy Burn - Warhammer 40k Anthology

Obituary: Barrington J. Bayley

Barrington John Bayley on Fantastic Fiction

[philippmichelreichold]

 Reveiw Barrington J Bayley's Collision Course

I first read Barrington J. Bayley's Collision Course/Collision with Chronos more than thirty years ago. I must have given my first copy to the Goodwill. I searched for years before finding my current copy at Haslam's Books in St. Petersburg, Florida. They are the best. Collision Course is the sort of story you want to not lose.

Bailey follows a fairly unique approach to time travel stories. The vast majority deal with an alterable timeline that must either be changed or preserved to save the viewpoint character's way of life, the universe, etc; or with a multiverse where myriads of ways unfold and what ever decision a character might make, other versions of that character are deciding to do the same thing or its opposite. One example of the former is Poul Anderson's Time Patrol stories. There are many examples in Star Trek with its time loops and Predestination Paradoxes and Chiefs O'Brien avering their hatred for Temporal Mechanics. Larry Niven's All the Myriad Ways is an example of the latter. Catch that Zeppelin  by Fritz Lieber and Joe Haldeman's Manifest Destiny offer alternate time lines within a multiverse. Another approach, my personal favorite, is that you can't change the past.  This the premise of By the Time We got to Gaugamela by R Garcia y Robertson. You can go back, but whatever is about to happen has already happened. To paraphrase, all the history books agree that Alexander the Great is going to be alive tomorrow, but no such assurances are available for the time travailer in question.  Bailey takes a totally different tack from any of these, one ""so original that it avoids all (most?) time-travel clichés".

According to The Newsletter of the Council for the Literature of the Fantastic, Bailey followed the ideas of  J. W. Dunne set forth in An Experiment with Time. Time travels as a wave or a torrent through six dimensional space in a local region of what we perceive as three dimensional space, creating and carrying life and consciousness with it as side effects. The future is dead and decayed, the past dead-- a collection of insensate automatons. You can build a machine to carry a bit of time with you ahead of or behind the time wave, but it won't do you any good. Times finger, having writ, moves on and you cannot change a word, act or dead. The trouble comes when two different time streams are headed along the same planet in opposite directions, like a pair of locomotives rushing along a track on a collision course set to arrive at a fatal destination. Life-consciousness-intelligence, it cannot be over emphasized, are byproducts of the time stream/wave/torrent.

And so it is in Collision Course that two time streams associated with Earth will crash together in about 200 years, with serious effects noticeable in about 100 years. Collisions of this nature must occur with some frequency as the International Space Society Retort City, located many light years from Earth and populated by the descendants of Chinese emigrees, has recently had a near miss with an entity whose time stream is situated obliquely to that of Retort City. The inhabitants of Earth are just beginning to understand time travel. The inhabitants of Retort City can literally run rings around the Earthers, and the Oblique Entity has nearly godlike (not Godlike as  it points out) powers.  The abilities of Retort City's scientists and the Oblique Entity, combined with obliqueness of their paths, allowed them to avert total disaster. Even so, things got pretty bad.   The Oblique Entity and a researcher on Retort City have been watching events on Earth unfold with detached insouciance and mild concern. Time travellers from Retort City rescue stranded time travellers from Earth and offer to help.

Matters are not so straight forward at this point as one might hope. ISS Retort City was established 5000 years before the setting of the story, which is many thousands of years ahead of our own time. The races of man on Earth bare little physical resemblance to the people of our times (the "Chinks" of Retort City are a legendary race on Earth).  The dominant race on Earth, led by the Titanium Legions (think SS), follows an Earth Mother religion. They believe with all the fervor that religious conviction can bring that they, True Man, are Earth's true sons and all the other races are defiling deviants whom they must expunge. There are archaeological ruins of alien design scattered about they believe support these beliefs.

The Titans see these ruins as proof of Alien Interventionalists who diabolically caused the rise of the Deviant races to destroy True Man. Never mind that there had been nuclear wars in the past with radioactive fallout to increase background radiation levels and thereby raise the mutation rate and never mind that the new races arose isolated from one another for a long time. Natural selection and niche filling divergence don't fit their self image or self interests. Or their self serving propaganda.  Genocide is something the Titans have been quite successful at with only a few remnants of the other races remaining on reservations.  The Titans have roving "experts" that can tell at a glance if someone is "racially impure". There is of course opposition and an underground which is losing faster each day.  When the Titans learn of the ISS, with its wondrous technology and mighty industrial capacity, the natural recourse is to mount an invasion.

Retort City is designed as a double retort with the retorts set end to end. Lower Retort/Production Retort is devoted to industry and production. The mastery of time is so complete that different sections of a ping pong table can have different time streams moving at separate rates. Production lines can be run through time loops so that an artefact that was months in the making can be available hours after being ordered. The two halves are offset by about 34 years, so direct travel between the two halves is futile. Manufactured goods travel along a time gradient to the other half of the city and always arrive just in time. So great is Production Retort's efficiencies that it has greater industrial capacity than all of earth.  The workers there are wholly devoted to their work. Their absorption with work is so great that off duty conversation often centers on how and where work is going. To them any other way of life would be a waste. "Technology was, after all, their life."(pg 54)

Life within Upper Retort/Leisure Retort is more luxurious, more devoted to subtle esthetics, and "was probably the most refined culture the galaxy had to offer". (pg 57)  It's inhabitants are wholly absorbed in advancing the arts and sciences, so absorbed that they tend to objectify people and ignore any human factor not connected with the research that holds their attention. (So self absorbed that the sounds of fighting with the Titanium Legions is less a survival threat than an annoying distraction.) Little physical labor is performed directly, there being machines to handle that sort of thing. The apparent social disparity between the two halves of Retort City is solved by their mastery of time. Envy is avoided by the Exchange of Generations.One sends one's children by way of a temporal differential tunnel to the opposite half of Retort City and receives one's grandchildren in return.Robert Gibson hits the nail firmly when he says the equanimity of the arrangement eliminates jealousy between Retort City's two halves. The Leisure Retort's inhabitants are not so self absorbed as to not offer to help the inhabitants of Earth deal with the impending collision.

Once again, nothing is easy. An evacuation of refugees is impractical on religious grounds. The Titan dominated society could never abandon Mother Earth. It is unfeasible logistically as not Retort City lacks the lift capability. Divertimg the time streams is beyond their science. They are not sufficient to the task and must ask the Oblique Entity for its help-- a sort of deus ex machina.

Aliens are described in some stories as being too alien to comprehend. Most human motivations/conflicts begin with food safety and shelter and proceed along Maslow's hierarchy  to greed status fulfilment and pleasure seeking. Niven's Kzini are motivated by status and the desire to acquire estates on which to hunt and raise families.  The alien empires in Star Trek seem involved in dominance games characteristic of humans.  I don't recall hearing an explanation for the behavior of the aliens in Independence Day unless it was pure revulsion. Certainly hatred  was evident. All understandable as human like. The Oblique Entity may be beyond human comprehension by nature. No human definition fits and description is based only on vague and fleeting perceptions. No words suffice for it to explain its nature to humans. One common trait comes through clearly-- the enjoyment of entertainment. One of the human time travelers implores its assistance in saving the Earth. How does one obtain aid from someone who finds great entertainment value in the unfolding drama of one's plight?

For that matter, how does one convince someone that their murderous hatred is misplaced and futile? The Titans and the lemur like creatures in the approaching time wave ignore the fact that consciousness/life/intelligence are but byproducts of  time. Even if one group succeeds in exterminating the other, the 2 time waves will still crash together ending time and life.  (It is a theme of the story that despots and tyrants and haters ignore any information that contradicts their dogma and preconceived notions.) Effort and time that would be better spent working together for mutual survival are wasted on hydrogen bombs and plague weapons. As the Oblique Entity says, the final Battle of Armageddon must be fought.

Collision Course is tightly written, fast paced story that wants to be read all the way through without a break. As one reviewer puts it, "Bayley packs more into under two hundred pages than most authors come up with in a lifetime". The characters are sketched in quickly, but you know them as well as need be to follow the plot. The unique approach to time travel and the unique solution to the class struggle make it well worth reading. The ending of the story is fitting as the major conflict is resolved to the satisfaction of all concerned, even if they don't all know it. It is not a sugar coated resolution and conclusion, but the Titans would not have had it any other way, "with their cargos of death, death, and more death." I first read the story when I was in my late teens and then reread it some 30 years later. I enjoyed it as much this time as I did the first time. It is not currently available as e-text, but there are paper copies still available.

Selected dramatis personae:

Leard Ascar- Earth's leading time scientist

Chairman of Panhumanic League

Grandfather of Hue Su Mueng

Herrick- Amhrak scientist inventor of remote, intferometry-based remote viewing

Rond Heshke- prominent archeologist

Hue Su Mueng- disgruntled Retort City malcontent

Hueh Shao father of Hue Su Mueng

Hwen Wu- Leisure Retort prime minister and old friend of Hueh Shao

Layella- Sobrie's "racially impure" girlfriend

Leader Limnich- leader of Titanium Legions and de facto ruler of Earth

Li Kim- friend of Hue Su Mueng

Li Li San- Retort City envoys to future Earth aliens

Blare Oblomot- assistant to Rond Heske at Hathar Ruins. brother of Sobrie. member of Panhumanic League  

Sobrie Oblomot- member of Panhumanic League

Shiu Kung Chien- Retort City's leading expert on time. in contact with the Oblique Entity.

Titan-Lieutenant Gann- time travel tech officer

Titan-Lieutenant  Hosk- time travel tech officer

Titan-Captain Brask

Titan-Major Brourne

Whang Yat-Sen Retore City envoy to future Earth aliens

Further reading about Barrington J. Bayley, Collision Course/Collision with Chronos

COLLISION WITH CHRONOS  on Ovias

Astounding Worlds of Barrington J Bayley on Ovias

Review of Collision Course on Science Fiction Ruminations

Wryte Stuff-- Politics with a Difference - Science-Fictional Constitutions

Jesse's Review on Goodreads

Barrington J Bayley on Wikipedia

Barrington J Bayley # ISFDB

Barrington J. Bayley: Science-fiction writer who treated the human condition as a puzzle that must be solved

Book Review: The Fall of Chronopolis, Barrington J. Bayley (1974)

Book Review: Star Winds, Barrington J. Bayley (1978)

Book Review: Empire of Two Worlds, Barrington J. Bayley (1972)

The Zen Gun-Barrington J. Bayley (1983)

Review: Let the Galaxy Burn - Warhammer 40k Anthology

Obituary: Barrington J. Bayley

Barrington John Bayley on Fantastic Fiction

It should be noted that there seems to be some confusion at Amazon as to which Collision Course is which. Buyer caution is advised 

[philippmichelreichold]

#scifi #Review Barrington J Bayley's Collision Course

#scifi #Review Barrington J Bayley's Collision Course

I first read Barrington J. Bayley's Collision Course/Collision with Chronos more than thirty years ago. I must have given my first copy to the Goodwill. I searched for years before finding my current copy at Haslam's Books in St. Petersburg, Florida. They are the best. Collision Course is the sort of story you want to not lose.

Bailey follows a fairly unique approach to time travel stories. The vast majority deal with an alterable timeline that must either be changed or preserved to save the viewpoint character's way of life, the universe, etc; or with a multiverse where myriads of ways unfold and whatever decision a character might make, other versions of that character are deciding to do the same thing or its opposite. One example of the former is  Poul Anderson's Time Patrol stories. There are many examples in Star Trek with its time loops and Predestination Paradoxes and Chiefs O'Brien averring their hatred for Temporal Mechanics.  Larry Niven's All the Myriad Ways is an example of the latter.  Catch that Zeppelin by Fritz Lieber and Joe Haldeman's Manifest Destiny offer alternate time lines within a multiverse. Another approach, my personal favorite, is that you can't change the past. This the premise of By the Time We got to Gaugamela by R Garcia y Robertson. You can go back, but whatever is about to happen has already happened. To paraphrase, all the history books agree that Alexander the Great is going to be alive tomorrow, but no such assurances are available for the time traveller in question. Bailey takes a totally different tack from any of these, one ""so original that it avoids all (most?) time-travel clichés".

According to The Newsletter of the Council for the Literature of the Fantastic, Bailey followed the ideas of J. W. Dunne set forth in An Experiment with Time. Time travels as a wave or a torrent through six dimensional space in a local region of what we perceive as three dimensional space, creating and carrying life and consciousness with it as side effects. The future is dead and decayed, the past dead-- a collection of insensate automatons. You can build a machine to carry a bit of time with you ahead of or behind the time wave, but it won't do you any good. Times finger, having writ, moves on and you cannot change a word, act or dead. The trouble comes when two different time streams are headed along the same planet in opposite directions, like a pair of locomotives rushing along a track on a collision course set to arrive at a fatal destination. Life-consciousness-intelligence, it cannot be over emphasized, are byproducts of the time stream/wave/torrent.

And so it is in Collision Course that two time streams associated with Earth will crash together in about 200 years, with serious effects noticeable in about 100 years. Collisions of this nature must occur with some frequency as the International Space Society Retort City, located many light years from Earth and populated by the descendants of Chinese emigrees, has recently had a near miss with an entity whose time stream is situated obliquely to that of Retort City. The inhabitants of Earth are just beginning to understand time travel. The inhabitants of Retort City can literally run rings around the Earthers, and the Oblique Entity has nearly godlike (not Godlike as it points out) powers. The abilities of Retort City's scientists and the Oblique Entity, combined with obliqueness of their paths, allowed them to avert total disaster. Even so, things got pretty bad. The Oblique Entity and a researcher on Retort City have been watching events on Earth unfold with detached insouciance and mild concern. Time travellers from Retort City rescue stranded time travellers from Earth and offer to help.

Matters are not so straight forward at this point as one might hope. ISS Retort City was established 5000 years before the setting of the story, which is many thousands of years ahead of our own time. The races of man on Earth bare little physical resemblance to the people of our times (the "Chinks" of Retort City are a legendary race on Earth). The dominant race on Earth, led by the Titanium Legions (think SS), follows an Earth Mother religion. They believe with all the fervor that religious conviction can bring that they, True Man, are Earth's true sons and all the other races are defiling deviants whom they must expunge. There are archaeological ruins of alien design scattered about they believe support these beliefs.

The Titans see these ruins as proof of Alien Interventionalists who diabolically caused the rise of the Deviant races to destroy True Man. Never mind that there had been nuclear wars in the past with radioactive fallout to increase background radiation levels and thereby raise the mutation rate and never mind that the new races arose isolated from one another for a long time. Natural selection and niche filling divergence don't fit their self image or self interests. Or their self serving propaganda. Genocide is something the Titans have been quite successful at with only a few remnants of the other races remaining on reservations. The Titans have roving "experts" that can tell at a glance if someone is "racially impure". There is of course opposition and an underground which is losing faster each day. When the Titans learn of the ISS, with its wondrous technology and mighty industrial capacity, the natural recourse is to mount an invasion.

Retort City is designed as a double retort with the retorts set end to end. Lower Retort/Production Retort is devoted to industry and production. The mastery of time is so complete that different sections of a ping pong table can have different time streams moving at separate rates. Production lines can be run through time loops so that an artefact that was months in the making can be available hours after being ordered. The two halves are offset by about 34 years, so direct travel between the two halves is futile. Manufactured goods travel along a time gradient to the other half of the city and always arrive just in time. So great is Production Retort's efficiencies that it has greater industrial capacity than all of earth. The workers there are wholly devoted to their work. Their absorption with work is so great that off duty conversation often centers on how and where work is going. To them any other way of life would be a waste. "Technology was, after all, their life."(pg 54)

Life within Upper Retort/Leisure Retort is more luxurious, more devoted to subtle esthetics, and "was probably the most refined culture the galaxy had to offer". (pg 57) It's inhabitants are wholly absorbed in advancing the arts and sciences, so absorbed that they tend to objectify people and ignore any human factor not connected with the research that holds their attention. (So self absorbed that the sounds of fighting with the Titanium Legions is less a survival threat than an annoying distraction.) Little physical labor is performed directly, there being machines to handle that sort of thing. The apparent social disparity between the two halves of Retort City is solved by their mastery of time. Envy is avoided by the Exchange of Generations. One sends one's children by way of a temporal differential tunnel to the opposite half of Retort City and receives one's grandchildren in return. Robert Gibson hits the nail firmly when he says the equanimity of the arrangement eliminates jealousy between Retort City's two halves. The Leisure Retort's inhabitants are not so self absorbed as to not offer to help the inhabitants of Earth deal with the impending collision.

Once again, nothing is easy. An evacuation of refugees is impractical on religious grounds. The Titan dominated society could never abandon Mother Earth. It is unfeasible logistically as not Retort City lacks the lift capability. Diverting the time streams is beyond their science. They are not sufficient to the task and must ask the Oblique Entity for its help-- a sort of deus ex machina.

Aliens are described in some stories as being too alien to comprehend. Most human motivations/conflicts begin with food safety and shelter and proceed along Maslow's hierarchy to greed status fulfilment and pleasure seeking. Niven's Kzinti are motivated by status and the desire to acquire estates on which to hunt and raise families. The alien empires in Star Trek seem involved in dominance games characteristic of humans. I don't recall hearing an explanation for the behavior of the aliens in Independence Day unless it was pure revulsion. Certainly hatred was evident. All understandable as human like. The Oblique Entity may be beyond human comprehension by nature. No human definition fits and description is based only on vague and fleeting perceptions. No words suffice for it to explain its nature to humans. One common trait comes through clearly-- the enjoyment of entertainment. One of the human time travelers implores its assistance in saving the Earth. How does one obtain aid from someone who finds great entertainment value in the unfolding drama of one's plight?

For that matter, how does one convince someone that their murderous hatred is misplaced and futile? The Titans and the lemur like creatures in the approaching time wave ignore the fact that consciousness/life/intelligence are but byproducts of time. Even if one group succeeds in exterminating the other, the 2 time waves will still crash together ending time and life. (It is a theme of the story that despots and tyrants and haters ignore any information that contradicts their dogma and preconceived notions.) Effort and time that would be better spent working together for mutual survival are wasted on hydrogen bombs and plague weapons. As the Oblique Entity says, the final Battle of Armageddon must be fought.

Collision Course is tightly written, fast paced story that wants to be read all the way through without a break. As one reviewer puts it, "Bayley packs more into under two hundred pages than most authors come up with in a lifetime". The characters are sketched in quickly, but you know them as well as need be to follow the plot. The unique approach to time travel and the unique solution to the class struggle make it well worth reading. The ending of the story is fitting as the major conflict is resolved to the satisfaction of all concerned, even if they don't all know it. It is not a sugar coated resolution and conclusion, but the Titans would not have had it any other way, "with their cargos of death, death, and more death." I first read the story when I was in my late teens and then reread it some 30 years later. I enjoyed it as much this time as I did the first time. It is not currently available as e-text, but there are paper copies still available.

Selected dramatis personae: •Leard Ascar- Earth's leading time scientist •Chairman of Panhumanic League • Grandfather of Hue Su Mueng • Herrick- Amhrak scientist inventor of remote, intferometry-based remote viewing • Rond Heshke- prominent archeologist • Hue Su Mueng- disgruntled Retort City malcontent • Hueh Shao father of Hue Su Mueng • Hwen Wu- Leisure Retort prime minister and old friend of Hueh Shao • Layella- Sobrie's "racially impure" girlfriend • Leader Limnich- leader of Titanium Legions and de facto ruler of Earth • Li Kim- friend of Hue Su Mueng • Li Li San- Retort City envoys to future Earth aliens • Blare Oblomot- assistant to Rond Heske at Hathar Ruins. brother of Sobrie. member of Panhumanic League • Sobrie Oblomot- member of Panhumanic League • Shiu Kung Chien- Retort City's leading expert on time. in contact with the Oblique Entity. • Titan-Lieutenant Gann- time travel tech officer • Titan-Lieutenant Hosk- time travel tech officer • Titan-Captain Brask • Titan-Major Brourne • Whang Yat-Sen Retort City envoy to future Earth aliens

Further reading about Barrington J. Bayley, Collision Course/Collision with Chronos •  COLLISION WITH CHRONOS on Ovias •  Astounding Worlds of Barrington J Bayley on Ovias • Review of Collision Course on Science Fiction Ruminations • Wryte Stuff-- Politics with a Difference - Science-Fictional Constitutions •  Jesse's Review on Goodreads •  Barrington J Bayley on Wikipedia •  Barrington J Bayley # ISFDB • Barrington J. Bayley: Science-fiction writer who treated the human condition as a puzzle that must be solved • Book Review: The Fall of Chronopolis, Barrington J. Bayley (1974) • Book Review: Star Winds, Barrington J. Bayley (1978) • Book Review: Empire of Two Worlds, Barrington J. Bayley (1972) • The Zen Gun-Barrington J. Bayley (1983) • Review: Let the Galaxy Burn - Warhammer 40k Anthology • Obituary: Barrington J. Bayley • Barrington John Bayley on Fantastic Fiction Creative commons 4.0