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mostlysignssomeportents · 2 months

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The largest campaign finance violation in US history

I'm coming to DEFCON! On Aug 9, I'm emceeing the EFF POKER TOURNAMENT (noon at the Horseshoe Poker Room), and appearing on the BRICKED AND ABANDONED panel (5PM, LVCC - L1 - HW1–11–01). On Aug 10, I'm giving a keynote called "DISENSHITTIFY OR DIE! How hackers can seize the means of computation and build a new, good internet that is hardened against our asshole bosses' insatiable horniness for enshittification" (noon, LVCC - L1 - HW1–11–01).

Earlier this month, some of the richest men in Silicon Valley, led by Marc Andreesen and Ben Horowitz (the billionaire VCs behind Andreesen-Horowitz) announced that they would be backing Trump with endorsements and millions of dollars:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2024/07/16/trump-lands-more-big-tech-backers-billionaire-venture-capitalist-andreessen-joins-wave-supporting-former-president/

Predictably, this drew a lot of ire, which Andreesen tried to diffuse by insisting that his support "doesn’t have anything to do with the big issues that people care about":

https://www.theverge.com/2024/7/24/24204706/marc-andreessen-ben-horowitz-a16z-trump-donations

In other words, the billionaires backing Trump weren't doing so because they supported the racism, the national abortion ban, the attacks on core human rights, etc. Those were merely tradeoffs that they were willing to make to get the parts of the Trump program they do support: more tax-cuts for the ultra-rich, and, of course, free rein to defraud normies with cryptocurrency Ponzi schemes.

Crypto isn't "money" – it is far too volatile to be a store of value, a unit of account, or a medium of exchange. You'd have to be nuts to get a crypto mortgage when all it takes is Elon Musk tweeting a couple emoji to make your monthly mortgage payment double.

A thing becomes moneylike when it can be used to pay off a bill for something you either must pay for, or strongly desire to pay for. The US dollar's moneylike property comes from the fact that hundreds of millions of people need dollars to pay off the IRS and their state tax bills, which means that they will trade labor and goods for dollars. Even people who don't pay US taxes will accept dollars, because they know they can use them to buy things from people who do have a nondiscretionary bill that can only be paid in dollars.

Dollars are also valuable because there are many important commodities that can only – or primarily – be purchased with them, like much of the world's oil supply. The fact that anyone who wants to buy oil has a strong need for dollars makes dollars valuable, because they will sell labor and goods to get dollars, not because they need dollars, but because they need oil.

There's almost nothing that can only be purchased with crypto. You can procure illegal goods and services in the mistaken belief that this transaction will be durably anonymous, and you can pay off ransomware creeps who have hijacked your personal files or all of your business's data:

https://locusmag.com/2022/09/cory-doctorow-moneylike/

Web3 was sold as a way to make the web more "decentralized," but it's best understood as an effort to make it impossible to use the web without paying crypto every time you click your mouse. If people need crypto to use the internet, then crypto whales will finally have a source of durable liquidity for the tokens they've hoarded:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/09/16/nondiscretionary-liabilities/#quatloos

The Web3 bubble was almost entirely down to the vast hype machine mobilized by Andreesen-Horowitz, who bet billions of dollars on the idea and almost single-handedly created the illusion of demand for crypto. For example, they arranged a $100m bribe to Kickstarter shareholders in exchange for Kickstarter pretending to integrate "blockchain" into its crowdfunding platform:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/untold-story-kickstarter-crypto-hail-120000205.html

Kickstarter never ended up using the blockchain technology, because it was useless. Their shareholders just pocketed the $100m while the company weathered the waves of scorn from savvy tech users who understood that this was all a shuck.

Look hard enough at any crypto "success" and you'll discover a comparable scam. Remember NFTs, and the eye-popping sums that seemingly "everyone" was willing to pay for ugly JPEGs? That whole market was shot through with "wash-trading" – where you sell your asset to yourself and pretend that it was bought by a third party. It's a cheap – and illegal – way to convince people that something worthless is actually very valuable:

https://mailchi.mp/brianlivingston.com/034-2#free1

Even the books about crypto are scams. Chris Dixon's "bestseller" about the power of crypto, Read Write Own, got on the bestseller list through the publishing equivalent of wash-trading, where VCs with large investments in crypto bought up thousands of copies and shoved them on indifferent employees or just warehoused them:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/15/your-new-first-name/#that-dagger-tho

The fact that crypto trades were mostly the same bunch of grifters buying shitcoins from each other, while spending big on Superbowl ads, bribes to Kickstarter shareholders, and bulk-buys of mediocre business-books was bound to come out someday. In the meantime, though, the system worked: it convinced normies to gamble their life's savings on crypto, which they promptly lost (if you can't spot the sucker at the table, you're the sucker).

There's a name for this: it's called a "bezzle." John Kenneth Galbraith defined a "bezzle" as "the magic interval when a confidence trickster knows he has the money he has appropriated but the victim does not yet understand that he has lost it." All bezzles collapse eventually, but until they do, everyone feels better off. You think you're rich because you just bought a bunch of shitcoins after Matt Damon told you that "fortune favors the brave." Damon feels rich because he got a ton of cash to rope you into the con. Crypto.com feels rich because you took a bunch of your perfectly cromulent "fiat money" that can be used to buy anything and traded it in for shitcoins that can be used to buy nothing:

https://theintercept.com/2022/10/26/matt-damon-crypto-commercial/

Andreesen-Horowitz were masters of the bezzle. For them, the Web3 bet on an internet that you'd have to buy their shitcoins to use was always Plan B. Plan A was much more straightforward: they would back crypto companies and take part of their equity in huge quantities of shitcoins that they could sell to "unqualified investors" (normies) in an "initial coin offering." Normally, this would be illegal: a company can't offer stock to the general public until it's been through an SEC vetting process and "gone public" through an IPO. But (Andreesen-Horowitz argued) their companies' "initial coin offerings" existed in an unregulated grey zone where they could be traded for the life's savings of mom-and-pop investors who thought crypto was real because they heard that Kickstarter had adopted it, and there was a bestselling book about it, and Larry David and Matt Damon and Spike Lee told them it was the next big thing.

Crypto isn't so much a financial innovation as it is a financial obfuscation. "Fintech" is just a cynical synonym for "unregulated bank." Cryptocurrency enjoys a "byzantine premium" – that is, it's so larded with baffling technical nonsense that no one understands how it works, and they assume that anything they don't understand is probably incredibly sophisticated and great ("a pile of shit this big must have pony under it somewhere"):

https://pluralistic.net/2022/03/13/the-byzantine-premium/

There are two threats to the crypto bezzle: the first is that normies will wise up to the scam, and the second is that the government will put a stop to it. These are correlated risks: if the government treats crypto as a security (or worse, a scam), that will put severe limits on how shitcoins can be marketed to normies, which will staunch the influx of real money, so the sole liquidity will come from ransomware payments and transactions with tragically overconfident hitmen and drug dealers who think the blockchain is anonymous.

To keep the bezzle going, crypto scammers have spent the past two election cycles flooding both parties with cash. In the 2022 midterms, crypto money bankrolled primary challenges to Democrats by absolute cranks, like the "effective altruist" Carrick Flynn ("effective altruism" is a crypto-affiliated cult closely associated with the infamous scam-artist Sam Bankman-Fried). Sam Bankman-Fried's super PAC, "Protect Our Future," spent $10m on attack-ads against Flynn's primary opponent, the incumbent Andrea Salinas. Salinas trounced Flynn – who was an objectively very bad candidate who stood no chance of winning the general election – but only at the expense of most of the funds she raised from her grassroots, small-dollar donors.

Fighting off SBF's joke candidate meant that Salinas went into the general election with nearly empty coffers, and she barely squeaked out a win against a GOP nightmare candidate Mike Erickson – a millionaire Oxy trafficker, drunk driver, and philanderer who tricked his then-girlfriend by driving her to a fake abortion clinic and telling her that it was a real one:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/14/competitors-critics-customers/#billionaire-dilletantes

SBF is in prison, but there's no shortage of crypto millions for this election cycle. According to Molly White's "Follow the Crypto" tracker, crypto-affiliated PACs have raised $185m to influence the 2024 election – more than the entire energy sector:

https://www.followthecrypto.org/

As with everything "crypto," the cryptocurrency election corruption slushfund is a bezzle. The "Stand With Crypto PAC" claims to have the backing of 1.3 million "crypto advocates," and Reuters claims they have 440,000 backers. But 99% of the money claimed by Stand With Crypto was actually donated to "Fairshake" – a different PAC – and 90% of Fairshake's money comes from a handful of corporate donors:

https://www.citationneeded.news/issue-62/

Stand With Crypto – minus the Fairshake money it falsely claimed – has raised $13,690 since April. That money came from just seven donors, four of whom are employed by Coinbase, for whom Stand With Crypto is a stalking horse. Stand With Crypto has an affiliated group (also called "Stand With Crypto" because that is an extremely normal and forthright way to run a nonprofit!), which has raised millions – $1.49m. Of that $1.49m, 90% came from just four donors: three cryptocurrency companies, and the CEO of Coinbase.

There are plenty of crypto dollars for politicians to fight over, but there are virtually no crypto voters. 69-75% of Americans "view crypto negatively or distrust it":

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/04/10/majority-of-americans-arent-confident-in-the-safety-and-reliability-of-cryptocurrency/

When Trump keynotes the Bitcoin 2024 conference and promises to use public funds to buy $1b worth of cryptocoins, he isn't wooing voters, he's wooing dollars:

https://www.wired.com/story/donald-trump-strategic-bitcoin-stockpile-bitcoin-2024/

Wooing dollars, not crypto. Politicians aren't raising funds in crypto, because you can't buy ads or pay campaign staff with shitcoins. Remember: unless Andreesen-Horowitz manages to install Web3 crypto tollbooths all over the internet, the industries that accept crypto are ransomware, and technologically overconfident hit-men and drug-dealers. To win elections, you need dollars, which crypto hustlers get by convincing normies to give them real money in exchange for shitcoins, and they are only funding politicians who will make it easier to do that.

As a political matter, "crypto" is a shorthand for "allowing scammers to steal from working people," which makes it a very Republican issue. As Hamilton Nolan writes, "If the Republicans want to position themselves as the Party of Crypto, let them. It is similar to how they position themselves as The Party of Racism and the Party of Religious Zealots and the Party of Telling Lies about Election Fraud. These things actually reflect poorly on them, the Republicans":

https://www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/crypto-as-a-political-characteristic

But the Democrats – who are riding high on the news that Kamala Harris will be their candidate this fall – have decided that they want some of that crypto money, too. Even as crypto-skeptical Dems like Jamaal Bowman, Cori Bush, Sherrod Brown and Jon Tester see millions from crypto PACs flooding in to support their primary challengers and GOP opponents, a group of Dem politicians are promising to give the crypto industry whatever it wants, if they will only bribe Democratic candidates as well:

https://subscriber.politicopro.com/f/?id=00000190-f475-d94b-a79f-fc77c9400000

Kamala Harris – a genuinely popular candidate who has raised record-shattering sums from small-dollar donors representing millions of Americans – herself has called for a "reset" of the relationship between the crypto sector and the Dems:

https://archive.is/iYd1C

As Luke Goldstein writes in The American Prospect, sucking up to crypto scammers so they stop giving your opponents millions of dollars to run attack ads against you is a strategy with no end – you have to keep sucking up to the scam, otherwise the attack ads come out:

https://prospect.org/politics/2024-07-31-crypto-cash-affecting-democratic-races/

There's a whole menagerie of crypto billionaires behind this year's attempt to buy the American government – Andreesen and Horowitz, of course, but also the Winklevoss twins, and this guy, who says we're in the midst of a "civil war" and "anyone that votes against Trump can die in a fucking fire":

https://twitter.com/molly0xFFF/status/1813952816840597712/photo/1

But the real whale that's backstopping the crypto campaign spending is Coinbase, through its Fairshake crypto PAC. Coinbase has donated $45,500,000 to Fairshake, which is a lot:

https://www.coinbase.com/blog/how-to-get-regulatory-clarity-for-crypto

But $45.5m isn't merely a large campaign contribution: it appears that $25m of that is the largest the largest illegal campaign contribution by a federal contractor in history, "by far," a fact that was sleuthed out by Molly White:

https://www.citationneeded.news/coinbase-campaign-finance-violation/

At issue is the fact that Coinbase is bidding to be a US federal contractor: specifically, they want to manage the crypto wallets that US federal cops keep seizing from crime kingpins. Once Coinbase threw its hat into the federal contracting ring, it disqualified itself from donating to politicians or funding PACs:

Campaign finance law prohibits federal government contractors from making contributions, or promising to make contributions, to political entities including super PACs like Fairshake.

https://www.fec.gov/help-candidates-and-committees/federal-government-contractors/

Previous to this, the largest ever illegal campaign contribution by a federal contractor appears to be Marathon Petroleum Company's 2022 bribe to GOP House and Senate super PACs, a mere $1m, only 4% of Coinbase's bribe.

I'm with Nolan on this one. Let the GOP chase millions from billionaires everyone hates who expect them to promote a scam that everyone mistrusts. The Dems have finally found a candidate that people are excited about, and they're awash in money thanks to small amounts contributed by everyday Americans. As AOC put it:

They've got money, but we've got people. Dollar bills don't vote. People vote.

https://www.popsugar.com/news/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-dnc-headquarters-climate-speech-47986992

Support me this summer on the Clarion Write-A-Thon and help raise money for the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Workshop!

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

https://pluralistic.net/2024/07/31/greater-fools/#coinbased

#pluralistic #coinbase #crypto #cryptocurrency #elections #campaign finance #campaign finance violations #crimes #fraud #influence peddling #democrats #moneylike #bubbles #ponzi schemes #bezzles #molly white #hamilton nolan

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s0me-rand0m-d0rk · 6 months

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Ok. So, you know that TV show Ghost Adventures? Let's make it Danny phantom.

Danny, Sam, and Tucker are college age. Danny's studying astrophysics and astronomy. Tucker's studying engineering. And Sam's double majoring in occult studies and parapsychology. They're not in Amity Park, I don't know where they'd be but it would probably be a really haunted city/town. They need some extra money so they start a paranormal investigation group kinda like what Ghost Adventures is, but local. They post their findings on YouTube. They basically blow up overnight and get monetized after they get a few videos out there.

Danny is the "medium". (He's not a medium. He just has ghost powers.)

Tucker's the tech specialist.

Sam's the occult specialist.

But instead of provoking the ghosts and being rowdy and screaming all the time (don't get me wrong, the show is funny and I do enjoy watching it, but we all know they're not always respectful of the spirits.), they're actually trying to solve the problem the ghost is posing. They try to compromise with them and help them pass on.

Sam sends Danny into creepy basements by himself just like Zak does with Aaron. She also pulls the most obscure and random occult facts out of her ass. One time, she told the audience that it was possible to exorcise ghosts using music. She proceeded to play Riptide on a ukulele for the spirit of a pre-teen girl and it worked. After the episode is over, people go to look it up, and low and behold, there it is.

Tucker makes progressively more insane and less believable gadgets to contact and interact with ghosts. Their audience tunes in every week wonder what he'll have next. The last episode, it was some sort of ghostly etch-a-sketch. AND THE GHOSTS ACTUALLY USED IT. Did one of them draw a dick on it like a smart ass? Probably.

Sometimes Danny has full on conversations with no one on camera. He waves when there's no one else in the room. He scolded a poltergeist that tried to push him down the stairs. He consistently says that most ghosts just need a hug. Dark spirit? Hug it. Violent poltergeist? They need a hug. Ghostly child? HUG. The audience notices his eyes glowing in the dark. Is it special effects? No one knows.

No one can tell if they're serious or not. They had a literal gun that shoots ghosts. They play music for ghosts. They have ghostly etch-a-sketches. Unless you're from Amity Park, there's no way you're believing that.

But, people who have their properties investigated often say that the activity stops or de-intensifies or changes all together. People may have to change things, like hanging up a photo of the deceased, holding a memorial service, or stopping/changing renovations. But they make the ghost happy or even pass on. That way they stop throwing the good china out of the cabinets.

#danny phantom #danny fenton #sam manson #tucker foley #i guess it could kinda be like BuzzFeed unsolved too.#i dont watch it tho #the yt channel is called ghostly adventures #yes. it was 100% on purpose #they think they're hilarious

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apas-95 · 1 year

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the more well-known the agency confronting you is, the less trouble you're usually in. like if it's the cops at your door, it could just be a noise complaint. FBI might just be there for tweets. obviously, still bad, but... here, a comparison. if you have a run in with the CIA you're probably in trouble, but if you have a run in with the Office of Naval Intelligence then you've definitely fucked up. did you know the USPS has its own investigative force? and you might be thinking like, oh, as in some dudes in baby blue button-ups who search for missing mail - but no, these are uniformed, armed federal agents with all the authority that entails. they've got squad cars and such. and, like, these guys are serious. back in the late '80s to the early '90s, when electronic mail sorting first started to be rolled out, there were consistent issues with the machines having trouble scanning letters. it wasn't a super common problem, but it happened a lot, in multiple states. anyway, the USPS eventually realised two things - first, that the problems persisted even after the machines themselves were replaced (at great expense); and second, that they were really limited to michigan and some surrounding states, with only rare occurrences elsewhere which might be unrelated. anyway, that was enough to get the United States Postal Inspection Service to take interest. if somebody was sending dangerous materials though the mail which were messing with the scanning machines, it was probably endangering postal workers too. this was pre-9/11, so the idea it was terrorism wasn't taken too seriously, and the investigation didn't get much support. anyway, it takes months of waiting for machines to break down, cataloguing the mail they'd been handling, cross-referencing it, etc, to narrow down the source of the mail to somewhere south of detroit. kinda goes cold for a while, since the mail's scanned in big batches and finding the common link takes a *lot* of data and work. anyway it's like october '91 now and they think they've finally got it. they've found a specific batch that's tripping the machines up, and they're going over it with a fine-tooth comb when an agent's pager starts freaking out. after experimenting, they realise that whatever's fucked with the scanning machines has also fucked with the pager, and they realise it might be putting out radiation. biiig 'oh shit' moment. they isolate the whole batch and get a big medical checkup, but they're alright. geiger counter picks up nothing. what they *do* find, however, is that there are like 60 letters in there that are each putting out small amounts of non-ionising EM radiation. so, basically safe to handle, but together they're enough to flip some bits in the janky '80s tech they've got and cause occasional scanning errors. and, get this, they're all from the same address. they track this place down, and it's this guy running a sort of bird sanctuary in his backyard. he's australian, and sells like, courses for avoiding getting attacked by birds - and he spends a lot of time hanging around these birds, right? so they take the guy in for questioning, and they literally can't even have recording equipment on the table with him without it glitching, he's almost cooking popcorn here. they question him, and he tells them about his business, how he like, teaches people specific hand gestures to scare away birds and whatever, and they start grilling him on whether he's been exposed to any chemicals or anything, because of the letters. and the guy, when he hears about the letters, suddenly goes like 'ohhh', and explains. cus he gives people grades on their performance and sends them a handmade certificate after they complete the course, right? so they're like 'why the fuck are your letters irradiated' and he just tells them 'Thats My Crow Wave Gradiation'

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robertreich · 6 months

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youtube

How Trump is Following Hitler's Playbook

You’ve heard Trump’s promise:

TRUMP: I’m going to be a dictator for one day.

History shows there are no “one-day” dictatorships. When democracies fall, they typically fall completely.

In a previous video, I laid out the defining traits of fascism and how MAGA Republicans embody them. But how could Trump — or someone like him — actually turn America into a fascist state? Here’s how in five steps.

Step 1: Use threats of violence to gain power

Hitler and Mussolini relied on their vigilante militias to intimidate voters and local officials. We watched Trump try to do the same in 2020.

TRUMP: Proud Boys, stand back and stand by.

Republican election officials testified to the threats they faced when they refused Trump’s demands to falsify the election results.

RAFFENSPERGER: My email, my cell phone was doxxed.

RUSTY BOWERS: They have had video panel trucks with videos of me proclaiming me to be a pedophile.

GABRIEL STERLING: A 20-something tech in Gwinnett County today has death threats and a noose put out saying he should be hung for treason.

If the next election is close, threats to voters and election officials could be enough to sabotage it.

Step 2: Consolidate power

After taking office, a would-be fascist must turn every arm of government into a tool of the party. One of Hitler’s first steps was to take over the civil service, purging it of non-Nazis.

In October of 2020, Trump issued his own executive order that would have enabled him to fire tens of thousands of civil servants and replace them with MAGA loyalists. He never got to act on it, but he’s now promising to apply it to the entire civil service.

That’s become the centerpiece of something called Project 2025, a presidential agenda assembled by MAGA Republicans, that would, as the AP put it, “dismantle the US government and replace it with Trump’s vision.”

Step 3: Establish a police state

Hitler used the imaginary threat of “the poison of foreign races” to justify taking control of the military and police, placing both under his top general, and granting law-enforcement powers to his civilian militias.

Now Trump is using the same language to claim he needs similar powers to deal with immigrants.

Trump plans to deploy troops within the U.S. to conduct immigration raids and round up what he estimates to be 18 million people who would be placed in mass-detention camps while their fate is decided.

And even though crime is actually down across the nation, Trump is citing an imaginary crime wave to justify sending troops into blue cities and states against the will of governors and mayors.

Trump insiders say he plans to invoke the Insurrection Act to have the military crush civilian protests. We saw a glimpse of that in 2020, when Trump deployed the National Guard against peaceful protesters outside the White House.

And with promises to pardon January 6 criminals and stop prosecutions of right-wing domestic terrorists, Trump would empower groups like the Proud Boys to act as MAGA enforcers.

Step 4: Jail the opposition

In classic dictatorial fashion, Trump is now openly threatening to prosecute his opponents.

TRUMP: if I happen to be president and I see somebody who’s doing well and beating me very badly, I say, ‘Go down and indict them.’ They’d be out of business.

And he’s looking to remake the Justice Department into a tool for his personal vendettas.

TRUMP: As we completely overhaul the federal Department of Justice and FBI, we will also launch sweeping civil rights investigations into Marxist local district attorneys.

In the model of Hitler and Mussolini, Trump describes his opponents as subhuman.

TRUMP: …the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country…

Step 5: Undermine the free press

As Hitler well understood, a fascist needs to control the flow of information. Trump has been attacking the press for years.

And he’s threatening to punish news outlets whose coverage he dislikes.

He has helped to reduce trust in the media to such a historic low that his supporters now view him as their most trusted source of information.

Within a democracy, we may often have leaders we don’t like. But we have the power to change them — at the ballot box and through public pressure. Once fascism takes hold, those freedoms are gone and can’t easily be won back.

We must recognize the threat of fascism when it appears, and do everything in our power to stop it.

#youtube #videos #fascism #Donald Trump #election #video #politics

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tanoraqui · 6 months

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In Which Space Orcs are Men

[AO3] A "what if humans are space orcs" take on Dagor Dagorath. (Aka the prophecied apocalypse of Middle Earth. Scifi story accessible to non-LotR nerds!)

Elves weren't really supposed to leave Earth. That's what they told us—the Elves, that is, told people thousands of years ago, when Elves could still be found here and there. When I was born, elves were nearly as much a fairy tale as they’d been on Ancient Earth.

Elves weren't supposed to leave Earth, the Elves said in the fairy tales, and in a few old scraps of records scattered around known space. They literally weren't made for it. They could only do it if they brought Earth with them—Arda they called it, leaves or dirt, water or a rare bubble of air, perfectly preserved in a white crystal. There are tons of tales about Elves losing their lifeline jewels—their hearts, their silimirs—and roping people into epic quests to get them back before they—the Elf—faded to nothingness.

Even the jewels weren't enough, though. That's why there are also stories about Elves who fell in love with a person or a place and stayed there until they faded, or Elves who charmed someone into following them back to Fairyland on Earth...because whatever they said, Elves didn't really live on Earth. Humans have maintained their home planet as a monitored nature reserve since like the 40th century, open only to vetted research teams and serious Human religious pilgrimages. The most confirmed accounts of Elves that exist are of their ships appearing out of nowhere, with no trace of any tech that would enable it, at random, always-changing points within 100 miles or so of Earth.

Nobody ever came back from trying to follow Elves home. Mostly Elves tried to dissuade people from trying. But there are always crazy and curious people—and Elves usually attracted those, because any Elf who left the home they were "made" for was usually crazy and curious themselves.

Those were the stories I grew up with. There was a cave near the orphans' creche which was supposed to be haunted by a faded Elf. I didn't really believe it—like I said, the last confirmed Elf was last seen like 5,000 years ago, and not even on my planet. People have met two dozen new sentient races since then. We've discovered that reincarnation is probably real (just functionally untrackable), prompting the Pan-Religious Reform Wars. The last person to see a live Elf was still traveling via natural wormholes—they literally didn't know that you could loop pi.

When the Human natal sun started to turn really red, it wasn’t that big a deal at first. It’s a very important, very sad event for any species, but it happens to everyone eventually. It happened to the Hectort just after we invented interstellar flight. There were some unusual gravatic waves around Earth’s Sol, but nothing worth noting to anyone who didn’t already care for personal reasons.

Then the Elves sent us a message.

The local Parks Service picked it up, of course. I bet the Humans meant to hush it up at first—though the Centaurian government still won’t admit anything—but someone leaked it immediately on the intergalactic net. It should’ve only been famous as a joke of a hoax, but…

It was basically just a metal box with rudimentary fire-thrusters soldered on the sides. It contained two things. The first was a recording/replaying device so antiquated that the only way they got it working is that it was already playing on loop, and didn’t stop until someone disconnected it from its power source.

The message was in Ancient Bouban, which some folklorist soon announced is the latest language an Elf could know, since the last known Elf went back to “Arda.” The voice somehow sounded melodic to every species with a concept of music, from the screeching Vesarians to the deep-sea sub-sonic Thinkers, even when translated through cheap, staticky speakers. And to most species, the speaker was audibly distraught.

They said,

This is the final message from the Firstborn of Eru to the Secondborn, and everyone else. The Battle of Battles has come, and we…are losing. If there are any who remember the ancient love and loyalty which bound our peoples, if there are any heirs remaining of Thargalax the Magnificent, of Nine-Fingered Frodo, of the noble Houses of Haleth, Hador and Beor—

The speaker drew a sharp breath, there.

—by great oaths and greater friendship I bid you now to raise your swords and ride to our aid. Ride as swiftly as you can!

We will hold for another year. We will, they said determinedly. After that, it is unlikely that…

Another, shakier breath. A smile forced into a voice which would rather weep.

Fëanáro and Nienna believe there is a way to destroy the Straight Road. If we must, if it comes to it, we will do so, and trap the First Enemy here in this dying world with us. Though I don’t know about—

Hair-aristocrat! a more distant, slightly less perfectly melodious voice called, in a language so dead that they needed computers to decode it. The walls are falling, we need to go!

If you never hear from us again, and no sudden discord arises among you, you will know we succeeded, the first speaker said quickly. If otherwise…I am sorry. Either way, I bid you all only, remember us! Oh beautiful flames, remember us, as we have ever remembered y—

There was a sudden screech of tearing metal, a defiant, musical battle-cry, and a jarring silence. Then the message restarted.

And that wasn’t even the strangest thing in the box. The strangest thing was the recorder’s power source, which was powering the whole tiny rocket mechanism as well. It was an Elf-jewel right out of a fairy tale, a fist-sized, translucent not-quite-diamond—but instead of rock or water or a much-loved scrap of plant, the only thing it held was light.

...Kind of. It isn’t normal light. It arguably isn’t light at all, as we know it—scientists now think it’s technically some sort of plasmoid aether, except it only acts like a plasmoid aether about half the time.

It has no detectable source within the jewel. It fully illuminates whatever space it’s in, no matter how big. Its visible radiation is a frequency, the scientists say, that matches a hyper-accelerated version of what the universe must’ve sounded like in the split second after the Big Bang.

It makes people remember things, when they see it in person or sometimes even across a holo. Some remember a similar light in a strange traveler’s eyes. Others, dreamily enchanted valleys where spring never faded, or tall castles, bright swords, and stern and glorious lords and ladies. And some of us got hit with a whole lifetime of memories in one go: an identical gem on the brow of a sober forest king, friends who slipped through trees like shadows save for their merry laughter, an impossibly beautiful gold-haired maiden dancing in a glittering cavern...

(And all the pain and loss that came with them.)

And some people just remember the sight of a distant star—in another world, in another lifetime.

Reincarnation was provable but untraceable…until now.

The Thinker ambassador on Astrolax Station 5 was the first to kick up a fuss. Most Thinkers never leave their home planet, they're too huge and aquatic. But like I said, there's always crazy and curious people. The ambassador started bellowing the second che heard the message, without even seeing the light, because, "I know him! My Wisdom! We must send aid!" That made some news, and random other people shared their own, less dramatic revelations, and soon a compilation swept the net with timestamps showing that most of them were organically independent, not just jumping on the bandwagon….

Even that might've gotten written off intergalactically. The Thinkers are big in reincarnationist circles, on account of how they claim that deep in their planetary ocean they can hear echoes of their past lives. But being mostly planet-bound means they're not really influential on a big political level. Or it would've sparked another surge of the Reform Wars, and everybody would've remembered the rock, but not the recording. Or there would’ve been a fight over this potentially infinite energy source (though that is so last giga-annum)….

But first it was shown in person to the current Director of the Admiralty of the Astral Alliance, President of the X-ee Empire and Matron of the House of S,sh, Ch’ees/i’i S,sh. I was actually there—I was Captain of her ceremonial Alliance guards, in a last-ditch attempt to salvage my career after Zanzibus. Very ceremonial, considering the X-eee have laser-proof shells and pincers and I have, what, opposable thumbs? Vestigial tusks?

I wasn’t paying attention at first, too busy being suddenly assaulted by all my own memories. So I missed the President freezing mid-step and gasping (in X-eee), “Mother.” I also missed her rising alarm call of an attempt to speak Ancient Elvish without an Elvish tongue or lips.

I sure didn’t miss her snap back to X-eee for a sharp call to attention, and everything that followed: the call to arms! The rousing of the Alliance! A tour of the galaxy, to find anyone and everyone else in whom the Light could awaken ancient memories! And for the love of X'eeh, why had nobody figured out how to get back to Fairyland with this thing yet, and every warship in the quadrant?!

If I believed in the One Behind, or in any other creator god or gods—I'm not saying I do, but if I did, if there really is something out there all-powerful and all-kind—then it'd be because out of every soul in the entire universe, the probably one in the best position to act on the Elves' message turned out to have, from a past life, two parents and a much-loved twin still in Fairyland. Like, that's insane, right?

I stayed with the Director's ceremonial guards for the whole tour, actually more than ceremonial for once—it was the weirdest mission of my life, and I've been on a lot of weird missions. Or supposedly routine missions that got weird (and usually disastrous). My friends joke that I'm cursed. S,sh requisitioned an Inquiry-class ship, so the science boffins could study the Light and jewel along the way, and we started wormholing at weft speed, hitting a new planet every week. Sometimes every day. In each major spaceport and ground-city, S,sh stood with the jewel on the highest available point and gave a recruitment speech for going to save the Elves and fight the oldest enemy of all reality.

Honestly, it seemed a little redundant? The Astral Alliance was made for this sort of rescue mission (and for escorting trade convoys). But I was...if not happy, then sure as hell more self-certain with my ancient memories restored, and most people who joined up seemed to agree. It was mostly people who remembered, when exposed to the Light, who joined—so before long, we had a whole tag-along trail of mostly civilian ships, trying to get up to Alliance Fleet standard on the road in less than a year.

Three different religious sects tried to kill S,sh for "profaning the mysteries." Five others tried to steal the jewel because we were apparently appropriating a holy object. The boffins announced that, bar the can't-prove-a-negative possibility, the evidently sourceless Light should be counted as an infinite energy source, and at least seven different groups, ruthless financiers and sustainability idealists, immediately tried to steal it for that. And I still don't know what the rival thief-queens of Likkiliani were about, except that I got tied up upside-down from a palmdar tree for two hours trying to stop one, the other paid me 700 cron then threw me off a cliff, and in the end they recognized each other from past lives and just made out on worldwide live-holo before joining our growing fleet.

It turned out they were the Director's past life's great-grandparents, and a Canid pop princess was her niece. The Thinker ambassador was some sort of ancestor, too. Crazy extended family.

Most people who remember just remember the sight of a star in the sky. A buddy of mine from Fleet Academy remembered looking up at it as a Human sailor. The historians—and you’d better bet we picked up some Earther historians on this mission as well!—say this jewel or one like it was probably astrologically conflated with the planet Venus by early Humans.

(The more time I spent around the jewel, the Silmaril, the more I remembered, of my first life and more. Lifetime after lifetime with bad luck dogging my steps, killing loved ones in my arms, destroying cities I was supposed to save… One restless, haunted night, I met a Rigilic in the cafeteria who’d been awake with some of the same nightmares, who’d been my dead older sister once.)

The tour was cut short when word came from the Earth system that there was a black hole growing in the center of their reddening sun.

No, the sun wasn’t compressing into a black hole millennia ahead of schedule—one had just spontaneously manifested within it, like it’d teleported in. No, not literally—that was impossible. We were pretty sure. No, the sun wasn’t falling into it…somehow. Yet. The black hole was only 17 quectometers wide, but it was growing at an erratic but unceasing rate. If their best estimation of the pattern held, it would consume the sun 2 months before the Elves’ deadline, and the Earth 4 to 950 minutes later.

We pulled back to Earth—well, to the dwarf planet Eros, on the edges of Earth’s star system. That’s where the nearest shipyard of any note was, and we were gathering the whole Astral Alliance. This is exactly the sort of thing the Alliance is for.

I was released back to ship duty. Zanzibus was still a black mark on my record, as was Jorab, and really everything on the AAS Endeavor…and that thing in third year of Fleet Academy… But no matter how bad my curse, I was an experienced captain and one of the best pilots in the Alliance. For this, we needed all the best.

The boffins had pretty quickly mastered limited manipulation of the Light, using modified aetheric resonators, and every day they came up with something new for us to test. They focused the Light into a laser cannon like no one has seen before. They laced it through plasma shields until a fully shielded ship glowed like a distant star. They managed to nearly replicate the Silmaril’s crystalline structure, so they could make “copies” that shone like the original for first a few hours; then, with refinement, a full week…

The one thing they couldn’t pin down with any real confidence was how to get to Fairyland. The frequency of the Light resonated with large bodies of Earther saltwater in a particular way, and models suggested that if the Light source moved horizontally along the water within a certain range of distance and velocity, the resonance would create a wormhole-like ripple in space—but wormhole-like, was the key word, and models suggested. The closest anyone had seen to that spatial distortion was in a logbook of dubious veracity from the Delta Quadrant, four hundred years ago. Alteia, my Academy buddy who’d been a Human sailor, took the Silmaril in an M-wing on a series of highly monitored test flights above the Atlantic Ocean, and space did repeatedly start to hollow in front of bom—so bo had to stop every time, rather than risk vanishing with our single, maybe-one-way ticket.

Then Earth’s moon stopped shining in the sky. Its albedo just dropped nearly to zero, from one night to the next. There was nothing wrong that anyone could figure out—nothing with the orbit, nothing with the surface rock, nothing with the artificial atmosphere. Inhabitants reported feeling colder by several degrees, but no measuring equipment recorded anything.

The black hole slightly off-center in the middle of Sol was now 844.9 zeptometers, and growing more steadily.

We didn’t have time to keep testing. We needed to raise our swords and make our ride, even if we only got one shot at it.

I was given command, for seniority, skill, and because I was the one who managed to talk S,sh out of leading the fleet herself. (If my lives had taught me anything, it was the importance of having someone, anyone, ready to be emergency backup.) Ironically, I was back on the Endeavor, with most of my old crew—though we got permission to rename the ship, in honor of the mission. A lot of people did. Alteia was now commanding the AAS Elendil on my right flank, star-friend in Ancient Elvish. That Canid pop princess had taken over a hospital ship and renamed it Rivendell. An Earth Park Ranger, of all things, remembered being my dad—briefly—and he was leading the Rangers plus my Rigilic drinking buddy on the EPSS Elfsheen.

We weren’t sure if any ship but the one with the Silmaril would get through. The fleet numbered in the hundreds in battleships alone, not counting scouts and scuttlers. Twelve races had sent ships on top of their typical Alliance Fleet tithe, and S,sh had brought about half the full force of the X-ee Empire. We all just locked tractor beams and hoped.

I was piloting as well as captaining, with the Silmaril between my forehorns. It was held in place by about a dozen wires and other connectors to the ship, like an old-timey pilot’s headset. We took off in orbit around Earth, as close as possible to the surface—not very close, in warships of Class S and higher, but within range of the oceanic resonance. A Likkilianian thief-queen stood at my shoulder, ready to advise if anything “Musical” started to happen.

Think about what you’re trying to get to, and why, the boffins had advised, so I did—bright-eyed kings and dancing maidens; lost friends, families, cities, planets and all. The jewel got warmer against my skin and shone brighter with every pulse of the engine, brighter than we should’ve been able to see through.

The silver-gold Light twisted and diffused as space did around us. But there was no familiar rippling wormhole boundary—instead, spacetime thinned to a curtain like driving rain, like Vesarian silver-glass.

A ghost appeared next to me. She looked like the oldest, grumpiest writing teacher at the crèche, though I knew that was only in my head.

“There you are,” she said, impatient and relieved like I’d been hiding in the sandbox again, rather than coming to class on time. Her sewing scissors went snip snip snip as she darted them around my body—and a chain on my soul faded into guiding threads.

Before she’d even disappeared again, I punched the engine and blasted through the silver-glass curtain.

Fairy tales said there’d be a peerlessly beautiful land on the other side, green with eternal spring, full of endless light and laughter. They said there’d be sunlit shores and shimmering waves, with welcoming docks for sea-ships, sky-ships and space-ships all…

We flew into the worst battlefield I’d ever seen, in any lifetime. It was more desperately vicious than Jerusalem V at the height of the Reform Wars, more ruined than Glaurung’s wake, more desolate than Zanzibus after the nuclears fell.

Either a massive supercontinent or a small moon had been shattered, leaving nothing but a roiling debris field. The brand-new meteoroids ranged from pebbles to rocks the size of a small space station, and included space-frozen corpses, forests, and what might have once been city blocks.

I gave the helm back to my Pilot Officer—zer had, I can admit, slightly better reflexes for dodging debris—and focused on captaining.

Most of the life signs were clinging to the larger rocks. There shouldn’t have been atmosphere for them, but walls of thunderstorm wrapped around every shard with even a single life sign—wind and water desperately hand in hand to safeguard the last of the Elves. The only thing visible through the impossible storms was the Light of a second Silmaril, on a meteoroid shaped like half a broken eggshell.

A corpse lay at the epicenter of the explosion—what might’ve been a corpse, if it wasn’t also shattered. The broken pieces of a massive stone humanoid, taller than my ship if it’d stood beside her, still bleeding lava so hot that it burned even in frozen space. Another titan knelt at the shards of its head, a figure of towering bark and leaves, wailing with grief even worse than the end of the world.

A slimmer tree-woman stood with one hand on her shoulder, comforting, and the other wielding a skyscraper-sized club spiked with incandescent wildflowers. Guarding her sister’s heartbreak, she fended off a swarm of bat-sized monsters with wings of darkness and whips of flame.

Bat-sized relative to the gods of Elves and ancient Humans. About the size of an M-wing, in flight.

Countless more of the bat-things flung themselves at the storm-bubbles, like carnivores chasing the prey hidden inside. They were fended off by an equal army of creatures with wings of light and swords of lightning, led by a towering figure who seemed to dance from one bloody battle to the next.

The biggest battle by far was the farthest away, over where the sun had been. In this dimension of stories over science, Sol was another woman-shape, smaller than the others but burning just as brightly as her star. Also just as blood-red. The light was centered on a fist she kept clenched at her chest, and instead of containing the black hole, the unseeable thing that it was here surrounded her, striking at her with a thousand hungry jaws and grasping legs, and she had only a one-handed whip of a solar flare to fend it off—

But she didn’t fight alone. A warrior tore at the Darkness’s spidery limbs with his fists, image on the cameras flickering impossibly between every hero I’d ever heard of. A snarling figure bit at it with jagged teeth, gored it with horns, shredded it with claws and talons, and generally made every ancient prey-instinct in me scream. And a queen with a crown of stars, a shield like the night sky and a sword like a streaking comet, stood dauntlessly at the sun-holder’s side.

With all that, and with the speed of even her most exhausted strikes, I thought the sun-holder could probably have gotten away if she’d tried. But I knew how a person fought when they weren’t willing to leave a friend, and a smaller, silver figure lay at her feet, unmoving and drained of light.

But even the battle for the sun wasn’t what grabbed my eye. No—all my attention, all my guiding threads of fate and the quick temper that always used to get me in trouble, before (and sometimes after) I learned to leash it in an Alliance uniform— All of that took me straight to the fight happening orthogonal to the stone giant’s corpse.

It was another one-versus-many. Morgoth, the First Enemy of Elves and Men— Master of Lies, Maker of Chains, Sonofabitch Curser of Bloodlines—towered over even his fellow gods. His shape changed constantly, sickeningly, but it was always black-armored with eyes like dying stars that hated you personally. His maul dripped with lava and every other kind of blood.

He fought against three great gray figures who moved as one. The tallest wielded a star-studded scythe with swift, efficient strokes, and wore the dark gray of corpse-shrouds. The shortest shimmered with more colors than even a Stamotapadon could dream of, and his weapon shifted likewise. The third was the clear, clean gray of skies after rain or tears run dry, and fought with only a shield—and hit harder with it than either of her brothers.

Around their heads darted the only Elves on the battlefield, in small fliers more like sea-ships than aircraft. But they moved fluidly, pestering the Dark Lord like flies, pricking his skin and threatening his burning eyes.

Until Morgoth swung his maul with a roar of fury that traveled even though soundless space. My ship and heart both shuddered. The gray gods all staggered back, and the Elves fell from the no-longer-sky—all but their leader, more fire than flesh, who wore the third Silmaril. Morgoth caught him in one massive black hand and with sharp claws plucked the jewel away, as easily as a ripe berry from a tree—

“All power to fore-cannon and fire,” I ordered—and the jewel on my brow shone bright again as several stored months’ worth of infinite Silmaril-Light slammed into Morgoth’s chest with all the force that the best scientists in the Astral Alliance could engineer.

He stumbled. He dropped both the jewel and the elf-king (who’d been trying to bite him). The Lady of Mercy tossed her shield to catch them, staying low and out of sight—though she needn’t have bothered. The so-called “Lord of All” had already found his next enemy.

“All ships, move forward and join shields,” I ordered, and met his burning stare though the viewscreen. “Then broadcast me on all external frequencies.”

The wires on my forehead shimmered as we shifted Light-flow to the shields—and to my right, so did the Elendil, and to my left, the Cosmian Blade, and all around us the Minas Tirith, the Elfsheen, the Muse, the Rivendell, the Heart of Zanzi, the Longbottom Leaf… They were still soaring out of the silvery distortion behind me, tractor- and Silmaril-towed: sleek Rigilic eels-of-prey and Centaurian cruisers full of Humans eager to fight for their homeworld, Betan mine-ships and Canid X-M-wings and my own Hectoan starlighters, a full third of the X-ee navy with their X-eee–shaped six-engine dreadnoughts, and hundreds more.

“This is Captain Pel Cinia, once Túrin Turambar, of the Astral Alliance ship Gurthang,” I said. My words were broadcast from every ship on every frequency in every language that the people of Arda might know, as the Fleet assembled from forty-plus different worlds flew into position. Our Light-infused shields blazed and locked together, until we formed a seamless wall right in the Enemy’s face, with the Elves and their other allies safely behind us.

I’ve never felt more proud to recite the most cliché line in the Fleet:

“We got your distress call. We’re here to help.”

#the silmarillion #science fiction #humans are space orcs #fanfiction #my fic #dagor dagorath #not tagging characters bc spoilers (they're listed at the end of the ao3 though)

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redflagshipwriter · 27 days

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Halfa Cass 9 pt 1

masterpost

The first thing Danny did when he woke up was blink to focus on his breath. Nothing was visible. He vaulted up from his sprawl across the couch and prowled around the apartment, unnerved.

It felt like someone was here, or had been here. It was subtle, but there was a ghostly touch in the area. There shouldn’t be. He had confirmed that no one was haunting this building before they moved in. City ghosts tended to stay in their personal environment, whether that was sitting on a recliner in the apartment they’d died in or forever running a route in a ghostly version of the delivery van they’d worked in for decades.

He investigated in increasingly paranoid detail, even daring to flick on a bit of smuggled Fenton tech to wave around in search of ecto.

“Whoever came by is gone,” Danny admitted. He stood in the middle of the dinky open plan apartment for a while feeling lost. Then the energy rush left him. He rubbed at his eyes and stretched a little, trying to work up a little bit of enthusiasm for the day.

It was a Friday morning, not quite 5 am. Damn. He’d really adjusted his sleeping schedule. Jazz would be back from her overnight shift soon.

“I should make her breakfast,” Danny said, half-heartedly hoping that saying it aloud would magically compel and energize him. It didn’t. He eventually shuffled to the kitchen nook, pushed by duty and not any kind of internal motivation.

Jazz was the only one with a semi-legit identity. They hadn’t been able to pay for papers for both of them. Even though he was making the bulk of their money, they were pretty sure that Jazz needed some kind of legal justification for her income.

Employment options were limited. Without qualifications, she was pretty much only looking at customer service, where hundreds of people would see her face every day. That was a nerve wracking prospect when they were hiding. They were serious enough about restarting that they had both trashed their lifelong career dreams. Jazz was studying friggin’ bridges and whatever, civil engineering. Danny didn’t even know what he would do when it was his turn to get a formal education.

So. Obviously. Standing in front of hundreds of people daily was not the best option for their desired level of anonymity.

Luckily, Gotham had a shitty fast food chain where the gimmick was that the employees were in costume. So Jazz had crammed her class load into Monday-Thursday and she worked overnight Thursday to Saturday nights every week, serving burgers up in a full face mask as a Black Bat.

He decided to start with coffee. That might help.

Danny filled the water tank, put a filter in, and poured coffee beans in. Then he groaned, took the beans out, and resentfully put them into the dumb hand grinder. He put the powder back into the filter, pressed the button, and watched as nothing happened.

It took a while to notice that nothing was happening.

Jazz came home at 5:22, bringing with her a cloud of fry oil scent. He vaguely heard the door unlock and her kick off her shoes. She paused when she saw the disassembled coffee maker on their table. The old Jazz would have scolded him for making a mess where they ate. The high school version of her would have sighed about the mess.

The exhausted food service version of Jazz took it in stride. “I grabbed food,” she said. “Come on, couch.” She opened a cupboard door and took something out on tiptoes before shutting it near-silently. She put the food down to duck into the bathroom and take out her brown colored contacts.

Danny grunted. A few seconds later her words reached his brains. He blinked. “Right. Thanks,” he said belatedly. He put down his tools and washed his hands. “Should I grab utensils?” he called. He heard the sound of relief as Jazz sat on the couch, off her aching feet.

“Yes, please.”

He yanked open the drawer, unintentionally making things clatter. Danny winced at the volume and picked out two forks. He grabbed a roll of paper towels and headed over to see what Jazz had brought home.

She had two styrofoam boxes, clearly from a diner and not Batburger. Fair enough. They were both sick to death of their menu.

Danny’s box had two pancakes, scrambled eggs, and a side of bacon. He glanced over to see that Jazz had the same thing with sausage instead of the bacon. The syrup was already on the coffee table.

The smell hit him like a freight train. Suddenly, Danny was ravenous. He tore through his eggs and bacon and then went for the syrup, drowning the pancakes. When he was done he put the box down with a sigh of relief and looked over to see that Jazz was slouching, hand thrown over her face. “Long day?” he asked.

Jazz groaned. “Leave me to die,” she begged. She slumped a little more, encroaching into his half of the sofa. Her dull brown hair coiled on the sofa cushion, dryer than it had ever been back in Amity.

Danny took the hint that she wanted the couch. He gathered up their trash and went back to the kitchen. He worked as quietly as he could on the coffee machine and wished his sister was home and awake more.

If life was just like this, sort of hard but the two of them pulling together, it would be kind of…nice. There was a domestic fantasy element.

But the outside world was going to intrude. Danny put the coffeemaker together and then set it to run. While it worked, he went to the shitty plastic dresser that held his work clothes and changed into his underlayer of t-shirt and soft jogging pants. He stuffed a heavy jacket and thick jeans into a plastic bag and then put that in his work bag. He didn’t want to be late for work. Like, really didn’t want to be late for work. His supervisor coming to find him and meeting Jazz had featured in more than one nightmare. The people he worked for were just plain scary. Danny zipped his bag shut and then poured the entire pot of coffee into his thermos for the day.

“I’m going,” he called quietly, on the off chance that Jazz was still awake. And then he left to see what the local gang needed built this week.

#dc x dp #dp x dc #red halfa cass

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chaosclimber · 5 months

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shop assistant

Emily kept the smile firmly fixed in place as she watched the man in front of her vacillate. Engagement rings were always a long sales pitch, but at least this one seemed to know his partner’s taste. She only wished he would take her concerns about budget seriously–but then, that was fairly standard for the men she’d helped thus far. As if feeling her patient stare, the tall, pale goth glanced up from the displays and at her.

God, his eyes were gorgeous. Whoever he was shopping for was a lucky girl.

“You need not hover over me. I will be some time making this decision–it has to be exactly right.”

Wow. Someone certainly talked like a period drama. Emily dialed her Customer Service Smile up another notch. “Alright, well, I won’t be far if you need me. Please, don’t hesitate to ask.” With that, she gracefully departed for the main sales counter, where Eric was wrapping up a sale with a perky blonde.

“Hey, Em, is your guy who I think he is?”

Emily rolled her eyes. Eric was constantly thinking people here were celebrities. It never actually panned out to be true, but it didn’t stop him from speculating. She honestly couldn't care less, though. As far as she was concerned, celebrities were just people. There was no need to make a fuss over them–and she wouldn’t, even if this turned out to be whoever Eric was thinking of. “Probably not, but tell me who you think it is anyway. I know it’ll eat at you if you don’t say it.”

“I think that’s one of the Aeturnus family. They’re like...Vanderbilt rich. Old money. Hell, I think if you go far enough back, they’ve got some royal blood from some European country or other…”

“Well, that would explain why he just waved me off when I asked about the budget.” She shrugged. She wasn’t sure she believed it, but there was something just a little off about Tall, Pale, and Gorgeous. And there always seemed to be something with that level of wealth. She would count herself lucky he still treated sales people with respect. She shrugged it off, gossipping with Eric about the tech store across the street–rumor had it the owner was trying to romance one of their employees and not being particularly subtle about it. The employee was into it, but literally everyone else around them was not.

It was a half-hour later that the man approached her. “There is one which will do nicely with a bit of customization.” He must have seen her open her mouth to talk about the budget once more, because he held up a hand. “Money is no object, I promise.”

“Alright. Let’s see what we can do.” They walked back to the display case, and he pointed out one of the thicker wedding bands marketed towards men. The one he chose was lovely, with a deep red wood polished to a shine. The outside was rose gold–and that, it seemed, was the problem.

“The rose gold does not quite suit my partner’s taste. Perhaps white gold could be arranged.” It was a statement, not a question.

“Of course. Are there any other alterations you’d like to make?”

“I…” The hesitation seemed…out of character. Whatever the request was, it was clearly the emotional heart of the matter. Emily silently vowed to see it through, no matter what. “...I would like an engraving on the inside.”

“Of what?”

“I’ve written it out.” He pulled a folded paper out of his pocket. On it was a delicate script, in Latin. Amor Aeturnus Est. Love is eternal.

“Would you prefer a regular cursive script, or shall we replicate your handwriting?”

There was a blink, the only outward sign of his surprise. “You can do that?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Then, by all means, please.”

“Very well, Mr…” She prompted. Was she fishing for Eric’s sake? Maybe. But she would never hear the end of it if she didn’t at least ask the name. He smiled–only barely, but that was a contrast to his previously neutral expression. “Aeturnus…for now. We shall be hyphenating.”

The rest of the transaction ran smoothly. As soon as Mr. Aeturnus left, Eric all but bounced over to Emily’s station. “How did it go? What is he like?”

Emily rolled her eyes. “He’s normal, Eric. He’s just a guy, buying a ring for his partner.” Even as she spoke, there was a soft smile on her face. She hoped that Mr. Aeturnus’s partner liked the ring–there was a lot of heart that went into choosing it.

As if reading her thoughts, Eric kept on badgering her. “Was it a good ring? Please tell me he picked a good ring, I can’t stand it when rich people have no taste…”

“It will be once his customization is done.”

“Awesome~”

@domaystic All the prompt fills are cross posted to AO3

#the sandman #dreamling #dream of the endless #domaystic2024 #outsider pov #my fic #house at pooh corner

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ariprasad899 · 5 months

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wave tech services

One of the key areas of expertise for Wave Tech Services is in harnessing the power of wave technology, a field that explores the properties and applications of electromagnetic waves. By leveraging wave technology, they develop innovative solutions for communication systems, wireless networks, sensor networks, and beyond.

http://wave tech services.in/

#wave tech service provider #wave tech

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happysaddca · 5 months

Text

This is. Incredibly self-indulgent and requires context.

You are a veteran FazCo employee who worked as a janitor (and eventually dates that location's DCA) when the Glitchtrap virus infects the plex. Unlike the game, this virus affects all the mega pizzaplexes, and it leads to you getting mauled by Moon. You nearly die, the DCA is deactivated and replaced after the virus mysteriously vanishes, and eventually you start working at a new plex, with a new DCA and staff.

After a long and bumpy road, you finally have your DCA's chips installed in a functional animatronic. It's time for a reunion.

Parts and Service still creeps you out, even with the changes the tech team here made. At the very least, you’re allowed to wait in the cylinder instead of outside with everyone else.

You take a peek through the glass, catching Gemma and Anika watching you. Your body locks up, and you manage a stiff little wave before focusing on Sun behind them. Sun isn’t watching you (at least, you’re pretty sure he’s not). Sun’s watching the body on the table. Your turn back to it as well.

It’s another Daycare Attendant unit, currently completely off. The color changing material of the animatronic’s pants and paint sits at a muted, muddy brown color, the light not bright enough to bring out Sun’s colors but too bright for Moon’s. When you touch its faceplate, it’s cold, unmoving. It’s an older model, a spare body for the DCA standing outside. And it currently holds the chip that is your

That is your Sun and Moon.

“Everything good in there?” Gemma’s voice is tinny over the speakers. You nod quickly, giving a thumb’s up. “Okay, I need you to back away for a second. Gotta plug in and give the OS one last check before we power them up.”

“Okay.” You give a reluctant half step back, then another at Gemma’s prompting, retreating closer to the wall and the people outside. Overhead, electricity thrums as the diagnostics and repair tools come online, a cable snaking down to plug into the back of the animatronic’s head. “You’ll warn me when they’re about to be turned on, right?” No answer. “Guys?”

The sounds overhead changes, with a chime sequence signaling that no, you were in fact not being warned ahead of time.. Some pseudo-soothing, corporate beeps that remind you of commercials advertising anti-depressants begin, but when you go to approach the body again, the speaker crackles on.

“Stay right there.”

“But I want—” You’re cut off before you can even turn to face the trio waiting outside.

Anika’s frown is made more severe by scarring distorting her forehead.

“We don’t know how they’re going to react to being woken up for the first time in three years. For them, it’s only been a moment since they shut down, and we don’t really know how that… hey. Don’t look like that. I thought you’d already worked past the guilt.”

“No, I have. But. I.” Another chime sequence has you whipping back around, but there’s no change. You shift so you can keep half an eye on what’s happening while you’re talking to everyone on the outside.

“Sunshine.” Sunny speaks over Anika, leaning forward to take the microphone. “Think about what might happen if they come online and hurt you.”

“It’d be—”

“It’d be an accident, but.” Sunny holds up one long finger, indicating that you should wait. You look back at the table again, but there’s still nothing to indicate what’s going on. “Friend, turn your screen around. They’re going to be fretful unless they know what’s going on.”

“Oh, right. Sorry.” Gemma turns one of the monitors around, showing off a series of progress bars that you don’t know what they mean. She taps the monitor. “Once this hits a hundred percent, they’ll boot up.”

“Thank you.” The lump in your throat eases, just a little. You stare at the little bars slowly working its way up.

“Sunshine.” Sunny catches your attention with his talking-to-children-about-complex-topics voice. “We should stay here until the other attendant wakes up and has a moment to process that they aren’t affected by the virus—and that they’re safe.”

“As safe as they can be in here,” you mumble, and Sunny’s smile widens as he gives a small nod, setting the microphone back on the table. The progress bar fills ever so slowly, and any noise behind you makes you twitch and look back at the animatronic with concern. Your palms itch, suddenly slick, and you wipe at them quickly before shoving them in the pockets of your overalls.

Overalls. You are bringing back your oldest, dearest friend that you’ve not seen in years and you’re wearing the world’s most fucked up, stained overalls. And that does count farmers and mechanics around the world. You take a peek at the progress bar and—how has it jumped up 30% already? It had been dragging just a minute ago! There’s now no way you can slip away into something better, and of course you couldn’t have gone anyway.

The noise from overhead changes, and there’s an error sound, sharp and blunt, followed by the mechanical squeak of the monitor getting jerked back around to Gemma. “Anika, can you grab the thingie?”

“The thingie?”

Gemma gestures vaguely behind her and Sun, who is standing frozen, rays partially retracted as he stares at the table. Anika zips off to find whatever it is Gemma needs, but you’re turning away again, watching as the spare daycare attendant unit twitches.

“Sun?” you ask, stepping closer. The animatronic twitches again, one hand, then a whole leg, spastic and out of control like it’s being electrocuted in bits and pieces. Their rays start to poke out, then snap back into place with an audible click. One gets stuck, tangled up in white and blue fabric. “Moon, Sun, it’s okay,” you say, voice barely audible over their fans starting and immediately going into overdrive. “You’re safe. It’s me.”

“Sunshine!” Sunny’s voice breaks when you are close enough to touch the twitching attendant’s foot.

Your ears pop as the doors open, and you twitch, turning just enough to hold out a hand. “Sunny, it’s okay. I know but… they’re glitching out. I think they’re going to Eclipse.”

“All the more reason to stay away!”

“You stay there if it makes you comfortable, but if they’re Eclipsing…” You turn back in time to catch the rays spring out, a handful caught in the hat, shredding into it. “I’m staying. Sun? Moon?”

There’s no reply from the animatronic, just more twitching and spasming. You want to free the rays from their hat, but this early model has no silicone softening the metal edges. They’re just a bunch of very dull knives and with no consciousness controlling their movements. You settle for touching their shoe instead, feeling the twitching of their actuators. Are they in pain? Can they feel anything at all?

“Hey, be careful in there! I’m unplugging the cords now and sometimes they can be a little whippy.” You grimace, pulling away as far as you could without relinquishing your touch over the moon patch. You give a thumbs up without looking away.

The cords are a little whippy, jerking away from the table and snapping back into the ceiling with such force that it makes them look alive. You hate Parts and Services.

“We’re at ninety percent now. Sunny, if you can step back? We don’t know how they’ll react to another Attendant hovering.”

“Right… right.” Sunny’s voice is closer, and you’re surprised to find he’d crept well inside the cylinder, the distance between the two of you halved. He holds his hands up, retreating back to the door. You stare and he gives a timid little shrug, his faceplate tilted towards the now waking animatronic.

You’ve been around FazCo branded animatronics for ten years now, been in love with one, this one, for almost as long. Even in a new body, even Eclipsed, you know they’re waking from the change in their fans, slowing briefly with a little click clatter click before returning to overdrive. The foot under your hand twitches one last time before stilling and pulling away.

There’s static, climbing up your arm and into your mind as you look up. There’s static there too, a thin, trembling stream from Eclipse’s hidden speakers. They’re staring at you, eyes locked on. You shift, and they shift, ever so slightly, eyes tracking the scars visible on your face.

“Eclipse?” you ask, holding a hand up as they start to answer. “No, it’s okay. I-I am happy to see you. You’re here. You’re safe. You’re both safe, right?”

You have to walk around the table. They still watch you, hands limp at their side until you reach for the nearest one. They flinch away, dragging their hand into their lap, claws catching on the coarse material of their waist ruffle. Once, a long time ago, you’d asked about those claws and Moon had explained they used to play stringed instruments, just like the glamrocks did now.

“You won’t hurt me,” you tell them, taking their hand anyway and squeezing it so hard you can feel a joint in your wrist pop. You toy with one of the claws with your thumb, worrying the little gear that makes it flip back into their fingers, sighing softly. “You didn’t hurt me.”

You look up to see them staring at you, and despite things, you give a little laugh. A wet laugh, something sticking in your throat uncomfortably. “It wasn’t you Moon.”

You don’t know how or when, but a cold hand brushes over the ruined half of your face, stroking the skin just under your eye. It pulls back, metal shiny with tears. You laugh again, hiccuping and holding your free hand up to your face as you force yourself to calm down. “I’m okay. I’m here. You’re here. I missed you so much you big stupid dummy.”

You can’t wait any longer, so you throw yourself at Eclipse, worming your hands under their arms, tucking your face carefully under their faceplate, away from the metal rays. They can’t see you crying like this, but it’s an ugly messy, human thing and their neck ruffle is horrifically itchy. The slow weight of hands on your back make you sob, voice breaking.

There’s a few minutes that are likely very awkward for everyone not currently on or half on the cylinder’s table, but you don’t notice any change until there are claws digging in your back. “Eclipse,” you mumble, lifting your head, but the hands pin you to their torso. “Eclipse, what’s wrong?”

“I-it might be me!” Sunny’s voice trips over itself. “I, we, all of us wanted to make sure you were okay?”

“I’m okay,” you say, a little too softly at first. You feel up for Eclipse’s cheek, stroking it gently. “‘Clips, let me up. Sunny isn’t going to hurt us.”

The hands dig, and you can feel those claws in your skin, but they loosen as you continue to push up. You settle on the table a little awkwardly, perched to avoid hurting Eclipse with your weight. You wipe at your eye, trying to clear your vision, before taking Eclipse’s hand again. “Sorry Sunny. I know things aren’t going as planned but…” You clear your throat, smiling weakly. “Sunny, this is Clips. They Daycare Attendant from my old plex. Eclipse, this is Sunny. He’s the Daycare Attendant here in Sandusky. He uh, he helped convince me it was worth trying to save you.” You hesitate. “He and his Moon went through it too,” you say more softly. Eclipse’s grip tightens on you and Sunny grimaces. “We’ll talk about it later, when everyone’s recovered. Sunny, move.” You gesture and he gives you a confused look before stepping out of the way.

Anika and Gemma are staring through the thick plexi of the cylinder. Gemma’s mouth is hanging open, but Anika looks vaguely smug. You hold up your entwined hands in a wave. “That’s Gemma and Anika. Gemma helped get this body back online and you in it, and Anika helped me save you. We saved you.” Oh, you’re starting to cry again.

“Welcome back to the world of the living.” Gemma’s voice is clipped, and she turns her monitor back to you. You can just barely see some graphs and charts, but the orangey-red lines, and the continued strain of Eclipse’s fans clue you in before Gemma can.

“Oh, oh, Eclipse, you need to restart with just one of you fronting.” You turn back to them, catching them staring at you once again. You twist around to hold their face, stroking over the edge and the craters, finding the large swirl of an eyebrow before you reach their hat. They flinch as you pull at it. “I know. But I’ll stay right here the entire time. I won’t even let go of your hand.”

“Sunshine, that’s—”

“I’m staying right here Sunny,” you say, a little more sharply than you meant to sound, but the intent remains. You don’t look away from Eclipse, leaning forward to press a kiss over the moon’s eye. “I am staying right here. You can restart. I’ll make sure nothing happens to you.”

Eclipse stares, and there’s a long, long minute where you worry they’re going to refuse until they burn out but finally there’s a soft stream of static and a nod. Eclipse leans forward as you pull on their hat, freeing it incrementally from their rays. The light from their eyes dims and goes out, their fans slowing a couple minutes later. You pull the hat free successfully, their hand slipping from yours as you check over the fabric. It’s torn and greasy where it’d gotten caught in the gears, but you can probably fix it, if they want. Or perhaps you’ll be able to get help remaking their old hat, if that’s what they preferred.

“Is everything all right?” Sunny’s voice is quiet, and his hand is soft as it rests on your shoulder. You twitch but don’t pull away, watching your attendant’s faceplate intently for any flicker of light. “They’ll turn on again.”

“I know they will. But will they be able to let go? It’s got to be Moon, I think. It’s always been more willing to take control.” Sunny’s gentle verbal prodding compels you to continue. “Sun’s a softie, even if she does have a spine about the rules, her rules. The ones that are important to her. She tried so hard…” You trail off into a cough, swallowing back the lump wrong and making it worse on yourself. You have to wipe at your eyes again, sniffing hard. “But if Moon is scared or upset, they might Eclipse again.”

The startup is quieter, so you miss it in your talking to Sunny, until you feel more than hear the thrum of the animatronic’s inner workings. Sunny steps back, out of reach, when the rays retract, one at a time, jerkily, like the mechanism controlling them is unfamiliar to the Moon currently in control. Because it’s Moon who is waking up now, and it’s Moon’s gravelly voice that lets out a surprised noise when you immediately push into a hug.

“Starlight?”

The nickname is enough to make you cry again, and you squeeze him so tightly your arms hurt. “I’m here Moony. I’m here. And I’m never leaving you again.”

#dca au #fnaf daycare attendant #daycare attendant #constellations au #fnaf dca #dca #dca fandom #moon fnaf #sun fnaf #eclipse fnaf #dca ocs #reader insert #gender neutral reader

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blueraineshadows · 1 year

Text

Mechanic!Garreth Weasley

Weasley Wednesday just got greasy and dirty

This week's Garreth's Groupies Discord Prompt is: Alternative Universe

Mechanic!Garreth x F!MC 🔥 NSFW 🔞

Long fic under the cut ❤️

With the last box loaded into the back of her little van, MC checked her clipboard one last time before giving a wave to Ben in stores. "I'll catch you in a bit, Ben," she said. "Thanks for helping me load up."

"No worries, MC," he said. "And don't let them give you any crap today, okay?"

MC grinned and waved her hand in dismissal. "Ah thanks, but I'm tougher than I look. I'll be fine."

Climbing into the driver's seat, she checked her delivery round list and entered the first address into her SatNav. Sunglasses on, radio turned up, MC put the van into gear and set off.

It was summer, the sky a gorgeous blue with little puffs of cloud drifting lazily by. MC sang along to the radio, thinking about Ben's concerns, but MC could handle the banter. She had been delivering to the local motor garages for about 6 months now and learned to let the comments from the techs bounce off her skin. Their cheeky remarks about her bending over to pick things up, asking if her uniform came in a lower or tighter fit, were just lads getting through their working day. She wasn't against a bit of flirting, and most of the time, that's all it was.

MC laughed it off or quipped back with a little comment of her own. Most of them were harmless, and the odd creep was easily handled with a firm look and a few choice words. Her Dad hadn't raised a fool. Working in the trade himself, she was well used to being around a working garage, having spent her Saturday mornings helping her Dad as a kid.

Her first drop went without a hitch, and then she was back in the van checking her clipboard for the next drop. A small smile curved her lips. She recognised the address and didn't need the SatNav. Weasley's Motors was a regular client and she definitely didn't mind if he wanted to flirt with her, that was for sure.

Nestled out of town down a country road, Weasley's Motors was a garage that worked out of an old lock up on a farm. Her van made the turn into the driveway, bouncing along the potholes in the gravel track until she pulled up outside the entrance. MC turned off the ignition, and the quiet surroundings were pierced by the sound of a heavy-duty tool from inside the workshop, the distant sound of a radio playing the only other noise.

She climbed out with her clipboard, lifting her sunglasses on top of her head as she peered into the gloom of the workshop. There was no sign of the owner, Garreth, but his work mate, Ryan, was bent over an engine, his overalls pulled down and tied at his waist. He stood and turned to look at her, a slimy grin spreading across his face.

"Here she is," he said. He grabbed a rag and wiped at his filthy hands, wandering towards her. "What you got for us today then, love?"

MC moved to the rear of the van, opening the doors and checking the deliveries in the back. If it was just Ryan, then she wanted to get this over with. He was one of those that bordered on creep territory.

"Service parts and brakes, I think," she said. She spotted the service parts order in a bag and grabbed it, checking the invoice. She patted a cardboard box marked heavy. "Would you mind grabbing the brake discs for me?"

Ryan gave her a slow look up and down as he approached the back of the van, and MC pretended not to notice. He bent to pick up the brake discs, the smooth toned muscle of his arms flexing at the weight of them. "Anything for you, love," he said.

MC flashed a polite smile and carried the bag towards the workshop, Ryan following close behind. She glanced around. "Is Garreth about? I need a signature, and I've got some old invoices that need checking."

Ryan nodded as he put the brake discs down on his tool trolley. "Garreth!" He yelled. Ryan moved towards the back, waving for MC to follow as he disappeared through a door. His voice carried out to her. "That bird with the nice arse is here from AutoParts."

MC rolled her eyes, hanging back in the workshop in case Garreth wasn't actually in there. She did not want to be alone in the back room with Ryan, and she clutched her clipboard a little tighter, fantasising about whacking it around Ryan's head.

Ryan appeared, grin still in place. "He's just coming, love."

MC tensed as he passed her, his eyes roving over her as he went back to work on his car. He was one of the creeps that she would rather avoid, and it was a shame because Garreth was lovely.

MC let some of her tension go as Garreth appeared in the doorway, his wavy red hair tumbling across his forehead, his smile wide as he saw her waiting for him. He had gorgeous green eyes and a smattering of freckles over his face. Today he was wearing dark grey overalls, pulled down and tied at his waist as Ryan's were, revealing a black, sleeveless top that showed off toned arms covered in tattoos.

MC felt her cheeks warming up as she tried not to oogle him. To do so would make her no better than Ryan, but it was hard not to. Garreth was bloody gorgeous and she gave him a shy smile, feeling like a frump in her steel toe caps, jeans, and checked shirt. Over her shirt, she was wearing her work high-vis vest, and her hair was thrown up in a messy bun. It was not her best look, but it was only work after all. Right now, though, she was wishing she had made more of an effort this morning when she crawled out of bed.

"Hey, how's it going?" Garreth said. He was always cheerful, his smile welcoming and you couldn't help but smile back.

"Not bad," MC said. She held up her clipboard. "I've got some paperwork that needs signing and some invoices to double check."

"No problem. Do you want to come through to the office?" Garreth pointed his thumb back through the door, and this time MC nodded, more than willing to follow him.

As she followed Garreth through the doorway, Ryan shouted across the workshop. "Get her number this time!"

Garreth huffed a laugh and shook his head. He gave MC a sheepish look. "Sorry about him, he can be a bit of a knob."

MC laughed. "I noticed."

The office was tiny, the desk a chaotic jumble of paperwork, dirty tea mugs, and random tools. The wall was covered in planners, posters of cars, notices, and a calendar of topless models hung from a rusty nail. Garreth filled the space and MC hovered near the door, clutching her clipboard a little nervously.

Garreth grabbed a box of donuts from the desk and held it out to her. "Would you like one?"

MC eyed the sugar-coated delights, but the black finger marks around the box made her nose wrinkle. "I'm all good, cheers."

Garreth shrugged and dropped the box back down before rubbing his hands together, his grin playful. "Come on, then. Where do I need to sign my life away?"

MC held out her clipboard and pointed to the box where he needed to sign. Garreth grabbed a pen from the pot on his desk and leaned in to sign his name, his hair falling across his forehead, while she held the clipboard for him. He was left-handed, and his arm brushed against her hand as he signed. His skin was warm, the hairs tickled against the backs of her fingers, and she almost shivered. His male scent surrounded her, the clean aroma of his shower gel and his aftershave mingled with the underlying tang of oil and grease.

His eyes lifted to hers, and she stared at him, a nervous smile lifting the corners of her mouth. The soft green of his eyes was just so lovely, framed with thick copper lashes, and they sparkled with a hidden mischievousness and warmth. Being this close to him had her heart pounding and she wondered if he could tell.

"Thanks," she murmured. She mentally shook herself, reminding herself that she was supposed to be working here, and lifted the signing sheet to pull out the invoice file. "Erm, this is for you. Outstanding invoices. My supervisor wanted me to get you to check them and give the office a call."

Garreth took the paper, leaning his hips back against the desk as he quickly checked it. He nodded and grabbed up a small box from the desk, pulling out a handful of business cards. "Before I forget, would you mind putting some of these on your shop counter? I've just had them made up and I thought I would be cheeky and ask."

MC took the cards, her fingers brushing against his as she did so, the contact adding to the gentle swirl of heat building inside of her. She looked at the cards, quickly reading the details.

"I've started doing a call-out service out of hours. The number is on the card," he said. "Another way to earn a few pennies."

She smiled and tucked the cards into her pocket, wondering if this was a subtle way of giving her his number. Ryan certainly kept hinting at him getting hers. "I'll put them on the counter myself," she promised.

"Thank you, I appreciate it," he grinned. His eyes glanced over her, not as obvious as Ryan, but there was a glimmer of interest all the same that stoked her hope. "Been up to much lately?"

"Oh, you know, working, the usual. I tried that new bar in town last weekend," she replied.

He looked up with interest. "I know the one. Wasn't there a band playing?"

She nodded. "Yes, they were really good."

He smiled. "I should check it out sometime."

"You should."

The air hung thickly between them, both of them eyeing the other. MC bit her lip, her mind going blank as she tried to think of something to say. She had noted a while ago that there was no wedding ring on his left hand, but then in his trade, that wasn't unusual. It was too dangerous to wear rings. You could lose a finger if it got caught up at the wrong time. She wondered if he had a wife or girlfriend waiting for him at home. She wouldn't be surprised if he did. It made her hesitate to say much more, the words suggesting that they should go to the bar together dancing on the tip of her tongue.

"Are you going this weekend?" He asked. Was that a glimmer of hope in his eyes?

MC felt her cheeks grow warm again, and she fiddled with the hem of her work vest. Her tummy flipped at the idea of going with him. "I might," she said.

The phone rang on his desk behind him, and they both turned to look at it. He gave her an apologetic smile. "I'd better get this," he said regretfully.

MC nodded. She should really be getting on with her delivery round, the taco in the van would be timing her and she shouldn't really be lingering. "Sure. I'll erm... I'd best get going. See you next time."

"Take care," he said. His smile was soft as he looked at her, reaching out to pick up the phone. It made her far too reluctant to leave his office, but he held the phone to his ear and he was back into work mode. "Weasley's Motors, how can I help?"

MC backed out of the office, a little regretful that their conversation had been interrupted. She sighed and tapped her clipboard against her thigh as she crossed the workshop, her thoughts still on Garreth and his smile.

"Alright, love?" Ryan said. He ducked out from under the bonnet of the car he was working on and her soft, warm feelings over Garreth plummeted into mild disgust. "Did we get your number this time?"

MC looked at him and rolled her eyes. "You want a number?" She tore a sheet out from under the delivery list on her clipboard and shoved it into his hand. She pointed at the headed paper for the company she worked for and smiled sweetly. "Contact details right there. Have a nice day."

Ryan laughed as she turned away, completely unperturbed by her sass. She ignored him. "Maybe next time then, yeah?" He called out.

She strode out of the workshop and out into the sunlight, irritated as she threw the clipboard into the passenger seat of the van, and fired the ignition.

....*....

The late summer sun was sinking below the horizon as MC dropped her friend, Poppy, off at her home. They had been down to the sea front for a walk on the beach and a cheeky ice cream. It had been nice to catch up with her. She had been full of stories about her boyfriend, Sebastian, and MC felt a twinge of envy.

Why couldn't she keep hold of a bloke? Her luck was terrible. She always seemed to end up with the Ryan's of the world and longed for a Sebastian of her own, a bloke who would treat her properly, as well as ruin her in the bedroom. Maybe a bloke like Garreth. The thought made her smile. Bloody hell, she fancied him.

MC took the turn out of Poppy's apartment block car park and turned the radio up a bit, singing along to the song playing as she drove towards home. As she was moving along the dual carriage way, a strange clunking sound came from under the car, and she frowned, turning the radio volume back down again. Her eyes quickly scanned the dash for any warning lights, but there was none. She slowed down, her ears pricked up in case it happened again. It did. A clunk and then the car seemed to dip in speed on its own, the engine power dying.

"No, no, no," she groaned. She gripped the steering wheel, a look of misery on her face as she pulled to the side of the road and rolled to a stop. She leant her head against the steering wheel and sighed. "Shit!"

Unbuckling her seat belt, she pulled the bonnet catch and got out. The road was quiet, the sky a deep blue that was quickly turning into the black of night. She lifted the bonnet and squinted in the dying light, pulling out her phone to turn the torch light on. She shone it over the engine bay but couldn't see anything obvious.

The oil and water were good. She checked it regularly as her Dad had taught her. The only thing she had not done was get her service yet. Money had been tight, and she had been holding off. She bit her lip, knowing her Dad was going to lecture her for not doing it, but that wasn't going to help her now. Perhaps she had blown a filter or something and she rubbed her face with her hand.

Glancing down at her phone, she debated calling her Dad. He was away on holiday, but it wouldn't be the first time he had tried to diagnose a problem over the phone. Then, a flash of inspiration struck her. Her heart pounded as she hurried back around to the car door, climbing in on her knees to fumble around on the back seat for her work vest. Out of the pocket, she pulled the business cards that Garreth had given her earlier. Thank goodness she hadn't put them in the shop yet.

Her fingers trembled as she keyed in the phone number for out of hours, hoping that it wasn't going to put her through to Ryan. The dialling tone sounded and was answered quickly.

"Hello?"

MC took a breath. "Hi, erm...is that Garreth?"

"Yeah," he said slowly. "Who is this?"

"Hi, it's MC. I deliver to you, you know, AutoParts? I was there today."

"MC?...Wow, erm...what can I do for you?"

She cringed. "I've broken down, and I still had your card in my pocket...you said were doing call outs now?"

"Oh, right, so you need my services? Where are you?"

MC told him the road she was on and roughly how far along from the nearest junction she was.

"Are you alone?" He asked. She told him she was. "Hang tight, darling. I'm on my way."

MC felt a flood of warmth at the endearment and bit her lip at the concern in his voice. She gazed around at the isolated surroundings of where she had stopped and appreciated his promise of being on his way.

The road was quiet, the odd vehicle rushing past, the headlights growing brighter and then fading off in to the distance. MC had locked the car and moved into the grass verge to sit and wait. She knew never to sit in the car and wait in case you get slammed from behind by a truck that didn't see you parked up. She had the hazard lights on, but it wasn't worth the risk. Even though the creepy darkness was starting to put her on edge, she stayed put.

Now that the sun was gone, the air had cooled, and MC hugged her arms about herself. She was only wearing a thin vest top, and tiny denim shorts and goosebumps covered her arms. She played about on her phone, scrolling aimlessly as she waited for Garreth, a little flutter of anticipation her chest at the thought of seeing him again.

When a pickup truck slowed to a stop behind her car, MC hesitated, eyeing the driver as he climbed out, relief washing over her when she saw Garreth's unruly mop of red hair. She stood, brushing loose grass from her bare legs. "Sorry to call you out so late, Garreth," she said, approaching him.

He smiled that gorgeous smile. Tonight he was wearing jeans and a T-shirt, with a lightweight dark jacket. "Not at all, I was just watching TV. Are you alright?"

She nodded. "I'm alright, but my car not so much."

He came closer and held out a bottle of water and a big share bag of crisps towards her. She eyed them with confusion. "You brought snacks?" She asked, amused.

He shrugged. "I'm always prepared, and I thought you might be hungry."

She giggled. "Do you do this for all your customers?"

"Only the pretty ones." His wink made her tummy flutter, and she took the offered treats with a shy smile, thanking him.

She explained what had happened, and he had a quick look under the bonnet. "You're probably right about it being a filter but I won't know for sure until I get a proper look at it. It's too dark to see out here, but I can tow your car back to the garage and check it out tomorrow if you like."

"That would be great, thank you. I will call a taxi or something to get myself home." She smiled, rubbing her arm with her hand against the chill as she unlocked her phone.

"Don't be daft. I'll give you a lift home," he offered.

"Are you sure?" She asked.

"Of course," he said. He studied her a moment and then slipped his jacket off and held it out to her. "You're cold. Here, put this on. I'll get the tow rope fixed up and you can go sit in the truck and warm up."

MC blushed. "Oh, you don't have to give me your jacket."

He sighed and moved around her to drop the jacket over her shoulders, smoothing his hands over them as he did so. MC shivered, but not from the cold, her breath hitching at the solid feel of his hands on her. The jacket was warm from his body heat and smelled of him. It was doing torturously wonderful things to her insides. She wondered what else those strong hands could do as he held her.

"No arguments," he said. Still holding her shoulders, he guided her towards the truck and opened the passenger door. He nodded inside. "In you get. I won't be long."

The truck was warmer than being outside, despite the mess and the lingering odour of oil and men, and MC hugged his jacket around her as she watched Garreth fix up the ropes. He was adorably sweet, bringing her snacks and giving her his jacket, but right now she was shamelessly gawping at his arms in the glow of the headlights as he pulled the rope tight.

Once the car was roped up and ready, MC got back out of the truck.

"Have you ever been towed before?" He asked.

She nodded. "My Dad was a tech. I've done this plenty of times."

Garreth's smile was warm. He caught her under her chin with a calloused finger, the touch light, there and then gone. The burn his touch left behind tingled down her neck and spread all over her.

"Full of surprises, aren't you? Jump in your car then, and we'll get going. I will go to the garage first and then I'll take you home. I won't go to fast, we'll take it easy."

They took a careful trip to his garage with no incident, pulling up outside, and then he unhitched her car, pushing it inside the workshop where it would be safe.

"I can't thank you enough for this," she said. Garreth checked the workshop and was pulling the huge doors closed. He grinned at her. "Maybe you can buy me a beer in that new bar to say thank you."

Her heart leapt. "Sure! I mean, yeah, I could do that," she said, blushing. She hesitated. "You've not got a girlfriend or anything have you?"

He paused to look at her, his hands on the other door, and shook his head. "No. What about you? No boyfriend at home waiting for you?"

She shook her head. He looked thoughtful for a moment and then pulled the garage door closed, locking it up securely. He walked towards her slowly and reached out to slip the keys into his jacket pocket, the jacket she was still wearing. She was reluctant to take it off, not ready to lose the warmth and his scent.

His eyes met hers, his gaze glittering in the darkness, the glow of the security light reflecting in the green depths. He reached up and gently brushed her hair back with a finger, the callused tip grazing against her temple.

"How is it possible that a girl as beautiful as you has no man waiting for her at home?" He asked softly.

"I'm just not that lucky," she whispered. His touch was stoking the aching burn between her thighs, his eyes deep pools of temptation that she would happily drown in.

He trailed that finger down her cheek, waking up her goosebumps as he continued along her jaw, his thumb brushing against her lips. She parted them, her breathing picking up the pace, her heart thudding against her ribs and she couldn't tear her gaze away.

He bent down and brushed his lips against hers, a teasing kiss, a gentle taste, before pulling back a little. His eyes burned into hers, and she grabbed the front of his t-shirt, her mouth claiming his for another kiss because one just wasn't enough. He moaned against her lips, his hands sliding up over her waist, gripping at her vest top and pulling it up so he could smooth his palms over her skin.

She gasped at the feel of those calloused hands on her midriff, her mouth opening to welcome the taste of him, his tongue gliding smoothly against hers as he backed her up. Her Converse scraped against the gravel, legs stumbling backwards until she collided with his truck, his kiss deepening with desperate hunger. She shoved a hand into that glorious hair, fingers sliding through soft locks as he reached around to grab her arse, groaning as he moulded it with his hands.

"Fuck, you feel so good," he breathed. He pinned her against the truck, hips grinding, and she whimpered. She could feel how hard he was, and she ached for more, arching her back, greedy for his touch.

MC slid her hands under his t-shirt, sighing at the delicious ripple of firm muscle, the soft hair on his stomach, and achingly smooth skin. She teased his lips with tongue and teeth, drawing soft sounds from his throat, he was very vocal and it spurred her on. His hands moved to her thighs, sliding upwards, fingers delving under the hem of her tiny shorts. They were short enough for him to grab the flesh of her arse and he hummed in approval.

"I've been wanting to get my hands on your arse for bloody weeks," he murmured. He bent to mouth at her neck, his hands groping and moulding her flesh. "So fucking sexy."

MC tilted her head back, a soft groan leaving her mouth as he sucked at her neck, tongue sliding over her hot skin. "Keep groping me like that and I won't be responsible for my actions," she teased.

"Hmm, is that right?" He squeezed her arse even harder with a growl, before sliding his hands up and around, pushing them up under her vest to cup her breasts, his fingers sliding over the lace of her bra. "Oops, more groping. What are you gonna do?"

She chuckled and slid her hand down to cup him through his jeans, palming along his length with slow deliberate strokes. He groaned and rutted against her hand. "Fuck, yes..."

"You like that, huh?" She whispered.

He pressed his forehead to hers, eyes looking down at her hand as she rubbed, his hips rocking. He bit his lower lip, moaning. "Your place or mine?" He asked. "I need to get you somewhere, and fast, before I fuck you against my truck."

Hunger, hot and feverish swept over her, an ache so fierce she was panting with it. Her fingers fumbled at his jeans, tugging at the buttons. "Do it," she begged. "Fuck me."

A shocked sound left his mouth, his eyes wide as he looked at her. She stared back at him, breathing hard, her body begging for him to take her.

"What...are you sure?"

She had his jeans open now, and she kept her eyes on his as she slid a hand inside, her fingers sliding over the hot, silky skin of his hard cock. She felt it twitch under her touch, a low moan coming from him, his eyes hooded and glazed over as she began to stroke him. "I want it," she whispered.

Utterly gorgeous, sexy and adorably cute. Oh, she was sure.

Garreth groaned and kissed her, his mouth devouring her as he made quick work of her shorts, shoving them downwards to expose the pretty lace of her knickers. Impatient fingers tugged that lace aside, sliding eagerly down and delving into her waiting slick. MC moaned, lips parting as Garreth skilfully swept finger tips over her opening, soaking his fingers with an appreciative groan before sliding two deep inside of her.

"All this for me," he said. He pumped his fingers, twisting them slightly. "Fuck, MC, you're perfect."

MC whimpered and rocked her hips, clinging to him as the pad of his thumb sought out her clit and rubbed in torturous, slow circles. "Garreth..."

"Tell me," he whispered. His mouth moved to her ear, nipping and kissing along the shell of it. He moaned into her ear, his fingers curling and rubbing her into a panting, moaning mess. "That's it, fucking moan for me. I want to hear you."

His filthy talk was so hot, adding to the desperate ache. Her thighs trembled and her back arched, her head tilted back and rolled in ecstasy against the window of his truck as he sucked bright blooms of red down her neck. She could feel the building pressure of her climax, each firm, deliberate thrust of his fingers driving her faster and faster towards it. She didn't care that they were outside and someone could come along and catch them at any moment. All that mattered was his smouldering green eyes and the way his fingers were driving her crazy.

"Garreth," she cried. Her nails dug into the flesh of his arm, the muscle beneath her grip flexing as he fucked her with his hand. Her climax hit, and she clenched around his fingers, a cry leaving her lips, splitting the quiet darkness of the night around them.

Garreth whispered words of praise into her ear, his fingers easing gently, stroking her in teasing slow circles as she shuddered with little after shocks, overly sensitive and throbbing. "Such a good girl," he whispered. "I'm gonna fuck you now. Is that what you want?"

"Yes," she whispered, biting her lower lip. "Please..."

Garreth slipped the jacket from her shoulders, opening the truck door and throwing it inside. He slid both hands up her body, pushing up her vest top to expose her bra. He hummed in appreciation, his thumbs hooking back the lace.

"I need to see these," he murmured. He tugged back the lace and bent to lick across her breasts, moaning against her flesh as he took a nipple into his mouth and sucked, his tongue rolling over her hardened peak. "Delicious," he whispered.

He kissed up over her collar bone and throat, finding her mouth, and he kissed her deeply. His hands reached around to grab her arse again. He moaned and pulled his mouth away. "I'm gonna turn you around, alright?"

MC nodded. "Okay."

He smiled and kissed her nose, his hands gently turning her, shuffling them along a bit until they were at the open passenger door of the truck. He pushed her forward and bent her in over the seat, her legs trembling as he slid her knickers down over her hips, letting them pool at her ankles with her shorts. He smoothed his hands over her arse and hips, dipping between her legs to tease her with gentle fingers before pressing her thighs open a little more. "Fucking hell," he groaned. "That looks so perfect."

MC felt a blush heat her face as he caressed and teased her from behind, her breasts squished against the seat, her hands gripping the edge as he slid fingers inside of her again. He worked her open, soft moans leaving her lips as she felt the brush of his cock against her thigh.

"Please..." She whimpered. She rocked her hips eagerly. She felt the pressure of his tip as he rubbed it teasingly against her slick heat. She rocked her hips again, and he moaned.

"So greedy for my cock," he whispered. He guided himself inside of her, both of them moaning at the intrusion. He filled her up so perfectly, and as he began to move, MC buried her face into the seat. Her hands grappled for purchase against the leather, bracing against the centre console of the truck as he began to fuck her hard.

A cry left her mouth, his skin slapping against her arse in a punishing rhythm, the truck rocking on its wheels as he braced one arm against the top of the door frame. His other hand gripped her hip, breathless grunts, and moans spilling from his mouth as he pounded relentlessly. The angle was utter bliss, each thrust hitting that sweet spot until she saw white spots in front of her eyes. Her climax came swift, ripping through her with blazing heat, her walls clenching tightly around him.

Garreth swore viciously, grinding against her tight and hard with a growl before pulling out. MC whimpered at the sudden emptiness, gasping as his cock slapped against her arse, sliding upwards, hot and throbbing as his cum splattered up her sweaty back.

All she could hear were their tortured breaths in the silence as they took a moment to recover. And then the truck dipped, and he leaned in over her. She smiled as she felt his lips soft and teasing against her shoulder blade.

"Are you alright?" He asked.

She nodded. "That was so good," she said.

She heard him fumbling about and turned her head. He grinned as he pulled a rag out of the door compartment and wiped the cum from her back. He chuckled. "Apologies, I made a bit of a mess."

"We made a mess," she chuckled.

He helped her out of the truck, and as she adjusted her bra and vest top, he bent to slide her knickers and shorts up her legs. She smiled at him, appreciating the way he was taking care of her. One minute, he was banging her within an inch of her life. The next, he was sweetly tugging up her knickers and pressing soft kisses on her thighs. What more could she ask for?

When he stood up, she grabbed his t-shirt and pulled him in close. She stared up into those pretty green eyes of his. For so long, she had met them with shy smiles. Now she had seen them burn with desire, and for her no less. The smile she gave him now was one of intimacy, appreciating the fucked out daze of his eyes knowing that she had put it there.

She liked that look. She could get used to seeing it all too easily. She cupped his face and pressed a slow kiss to his lips.

"You know we are doing that again, right?"

His eyebrows lifted, his eyes pleased, eager. "We are?"

She smirked and nodded. "Your place or mine?"

"Mine," he said. Then he tilted his head thoughtfully. "Might have to stop at McDonald's drive-through on the way, though. I'm fucking starving."

MC giggled and wrapped her arms around his neck. "Deal. And it's my treat seeing as you came to my rescue this evening."

He kissed her nose, his hands roaming around to cup her backside again. He was definitely an arse man. "Sex and a burger. Best night ever," he grinned.

#hogwarts legacy fanfic #garreth weasley #garreth weasley smut #garreth weasley x f!mc #Garreth's Groupies #Weasley Wednesday #blueraineshadows

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mostlysignssomeportents · 1 year

Text

Intuit: “Our fraud fights racism”

Tonight (September 27), I'll be at Chevalier's Books in Los Angeles with Brian Merchant for a joint launch for my new book The Internet Con and his new book, Blood in the Machine. On October 2, I'll be in Boise to host an event with VE Schwab.

Today's key concept is "predatory inclusion": "a process wherein lenders and financial actors offer needed services to Black households but on exploitative terms that limit or eliminate their long-term benefits":

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2329496516686620

Perhaps you recall predatory inclusion from the Great Financial Crisis, when predatory subprime mortgages with deceptive teaser rates were foisted on Black homeowners (who were eligible for better mortgages), resulting in a wave of Black home theft in the foreclosure crisis:

https://prospect.org/justice/staggering-loss-black-wealth-due-subprime-scandal-continues-unabated/

Before these loans blew up, they were styled as a means of creating Black intergenerational wealth through housing speculation. They turned out to be a way to suck up Black families' savings before rendering them homeless and forcing them into houses owned by the Wall Street slumlords who bought all the housing stock the Great Financial Crisis put on the market:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/08/wall-street-landlords/#the-new-slumlords

That was just an update on an old con: the "home sale contract," invented by loan-sharks who capitalized on redlining to rip off Black families. Back when banks and the US government colluded to deny mortgages to Black households, sleazy lenders created the "contract loan," which worked like a mortgage, but if you were late on a single payment, the lender could seize and sell your home and not pay you a dime – even if the house was 99% paid for:

https://socialequity.duke.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Plunder-of-Black-Wealth-in-Chicago.pdf

Usurers and con-artists love to style themselves as anti-racists, seeking to "close the racial wealth gap." The payday lending industry – whose triple-digit interest rates trap poor people in revolving debt that they can never pay off – styles itself as a force for racial justice:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/01/29/planned-obsolescence/#academic-fraud

Payday lenders prey on poor people, and in America, "poor" is often a euphemism for "Black." Payday lenders disproportionately harm Black families:

https://ung.edu/student-money-management-center/money-minute/racial-wealth-gap-payday-loans.php

Payday lenders are just unlicensed banks, who deploy a layer of bullshit to claim that they don't have to play by the rules that bind the rest of the finance sector. This scam is so juicy that it spawned the fintech industry, in which a bunch of unregulated banks sprung up to claim that they were too "innovative" to be regulated:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/01/usury/#tech-exceptionalism

When you hear "Fintech," think "unlicensed bank." Fintech turned predatory inclusion into a booming business, recruiting Black spokespeople to claim that being the sucker at the table in the cryptocurrency casino was actually a form of racial justice:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/07/business/media/cryptocurrency-seeks-the-spotlight-with-spike-lees-help.html

But not all predatory inclusion is financial. Take Facebook Basics, Meta's "poor internet for poor people" program. Facebook partnered with telcos in the Global South to rig their internet access. These "zero rating" programs charged subscribers by the byte to reach any service except Facebook and its partners. Facebook claimed that this would "bridge the digital divide," by corralling "the next billion internet users" into using its services.

The fact that this would make "Facebook" synonymous with "the internet" was just an accidental, regrettable side-effect. Naturally, this was bullshit from top to bottom, and the countries where zero-rating was permitted ended up having more expensive wireless broadband than the countries that banned it:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/02/countries-zero-rating-have-more-expensive-wireless-broadband-countries-without-it

The predatory inclusion gambit is insultingly transparent, but that doesn't stop desperate scammers from trying it. The latest chancer is Intuit, who claim that the end of its decade-long, wildly profitable "free tax prep" scam is bad for Black people:

https://www.propublica.org/article/turbotax-intuit-black-taxpayers-irs-free-file-marketing

Some background. In nearly every rich country on Earth, the tax authorities send every taxpayer a pre-filled tax return, based on the information submitted by employers, banks, financial planners, etc. If that looks good to you, you just sign it and send it back. Otherwise, you can amend it, or just toss it in the trash and pay a tax-prep specialist to produce your own return.

But in America, taxpayers spend billions every year to send forms to the IRS that tell it things it already knows. To make this ripoff seem fair, the hyper-concentrated tax-prep industry, led by the Intuit, creators of Turbotax, pretended to create a program to provide free tax-prep to working people.

This program was called Free File, and it was a scam. The tax-prep cartel each took a different segment of Americans who were eligible for Freefile and then created an online house of mirrors that would trick those people into spending hours working on their tax-returns until they were hit with an error message falsely claiming they were ineligible for the free service and demanding hundreds of dollars to file their returns.

Intuit were world champions at this scam. They blocked their Freefile offering from search-engine crawlers and then bought ads that showed up when searchers typed "freefile" into the query box that led them to deceptively named programs that had "free" in their names but cost a fortune to use – more than you'd pay for a local CPA to file on your behalf.

The Attorneys General of nearly every US state and territory eventually sued Intuit over this, settling for $141m:

https://www.agturbotaxsettlement.com/Home/portalid/0

The FTC is still suing them over it:

https://www.ftc.gov/legal-library/browse/cases-proceedings/192-3119-intuit-inc-matter-turbotax

We have to rely on state AGs and the FTC to bring Intuit to justice because every Intuit user clicks through an agreement in which we permanently surrender our right to sue the company, no matter how many laws it breaks. For corporate criminals, binding arbitration waivers are the gift that keeps on giving:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/24/uber-for-arbitration/#nibbled-to-death-by-ducks

Even as the scam was running out, Intuit spent millions lobby-blitzing Congress, desperate for action that would let it continue to privately tax the nation for filling in forms that – once again – told the IRS things it already knew. They really love the idea of paying taxes on paying your taxes:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/20/turbotaxed/#counter-intuit

But they failed. The IRS has taken Freefile in-house, will send you a pre-completed tax return if you want it. This should be the end of the line for Intuit and other tax-prep profiteers:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/17/free-as-in-freefile/#tell-me-something-i-dont-know

Now we're at the end of the line for the scam, Intuit is playing the predatory inclusion card. They're conning Black newspapers like the Chicago Defender into running headlines like "IRS Free Tax Service Could Further Harm Blacks,"

https://defendernetwork.com/news/opinion/irs-free-tax-service-could-further-harm-blacks/

The only named source in that article? Intuit spokesperson Derrick Plummer. The article went out on the country's Black newswire Trice Edney, whose editor-in-chief did not respond to Propublica's Paul Kiel's questions.

Then Black Enterprise got in on the game, publishing "Critics Claim The IRS Free Tax Prep Service Could Hurt Black Americans." Once again, the only named source for the article was Plummer, who was "quoted at length." Black Enterprise declined to tell Kiel where that article came from:

https://www.blackenterprise.com/critics-claim-the-irs-free-tax-prep-service-could-hurt-black-americans/

For Intuit, placing op-eds is a tried-and-true tactic for laundering its ripoffs into respectability. Leaked internal Intuit memos detail the company's strategy of "pushing back through op-eds" to neutralize critics:

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6483061-Intuit-TurboTax-2014-15-Encroachment-Strategy.html

Intuit spox Derrick Plummer did respond to Kiel's queries, denying that Intuit was paying for these op-eds, saying "with an idea as bad as the Direct File scheme we don’t have to pay anyone to talk about how terrible it is."

Meanwhile, ex-NAACP director (and No Labels co-chair) Benjamin Chavis has used his position atop the National Newspaper Publishers Association to publish op-eds against the IRS Direct File program, citing the Progressive Policy Institute, a pro-business thinktank that Intuit's internal documents describe as part of its "coalition":

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6483061-Intuit-TurboTax-2014-15-Encroachment-Strategy.html

Chavis's Chicago Tribune editorial claimed that Direct File could cause Black filers to miss out on tax-credits they are entitled to. This is a particularly ironic claim given Intuit's prominent role in sabotaging the Child Tax Credit, a program that lifted more Americans out of poverty than any other in history:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/29/three-times-is-enemy-action/#ctc

It's also an argument that can be found in Intuit's own anti-Direct File blog posts:

https://www.intuit.com/blog/innovative-thinking/taxpayer-empowerment/intuit-reinforces-its-commitment-to-fighting-for-taxpayers-rights/

The claim is that because the IRS disproportionately audits Black filers (this is true), they will screw them over in other ways. But Evelyn Smith, co-author of the study that documented the bias in auditing says this is bullshit:

https://siepr.stanford.edu/publications/working-paper/measuring-and-mitigating-racial-disparities-tax-audits

That's because these audits of Black households are triggered by the IRS's focus on Earned Income Tax Credits, a needlessly complicated program available to low-income (and hence disproportionately Black) workers. The paperwork burden that the IRS heaps on EITC recipients means that their returns contain errors that trigger audits.

As Smith told Propublica, "With free, assisted filing, we might expect EITC claimants to make fewer mistakes and face less intense audit scrutiny, which could help reduce disparities in audit rates between Black and non-Black taxpayers."

Meanwhile, the predatory inclusion talking points continue to proliferate. Nevada accountants and the state's former controller somehow coincidentally managed to publish op-eds with nearly identical wording. Phillip Austin, vice-chair of Arizon's East Valley Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, claims that free IRS tax prep "would disproportionately hurt the Hispanic community." Austin declined to tell Propublica how he came to that conclusion.

Right-wing think-tanks are pumping out a torrent of anti-Direct File disinfo. This surely has nothing to do with the fact that, for example, Center Forward has HR Block's chief lobbyist on its board:

https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/4125481-direct-e-file-wont-make-filing-taxes-any-easier-but-it-could-make-things-worse/

The whole thing reeks of bullshit and desperation. That doesn't mean that it won't succeed in killing Direct File. If there's one thing America loves, it's letting businesses charge us a tax just for dealing with our own government, from paying our taxes to camping in our national parks:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/30/military-industrial-park-service/#booz-allen

Interestingly, there's a MAGA version of predatory inclusion, in which corporations convince low-information right-wingers that efforts to protect them from ripoffs are "woke." These campaigns are, incredibly, even stupider than the predatory inclusion tale.

For example, there's a well-coordianted campaign to block the junk fees that the credit card cartel extracts from merchants, who then pass those charges onto us. This campaign claims that killing junk fees is woke:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/04/owning-the-libs/#swiper-no-swiping

How does that work? Here's the logic: Target sells Pride merch. That makes them woke. Target processes a lot of credit-card transactions, so anything that reduces card-processing fees will help Target. Therefore, paying junk fees is a way to own the libs.

No, seriously.

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

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/27/predatory-inclusion/#equal-opportunity-scammers

#pluralistic

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arlana-likes-to-write · 2 years

Text

Monet Issues By Chase Petra

Summary: You are the daughter of Tony Stark but DNA is the only thing you have the proves he’s your father. You were raised by his assistants and nannies. When an interview comes out, you have a few choice words you want to say to the billionaire.

Word Count: 2.3 k

Warning: implied sexual relationship, child abuse, child neglect, Tony is kind of a horrible father.

“Good morning, Diane,” you said, placing her coffee order on her desk. It was Monday morning and every Monday you brought coffee for everyone on your team. It was a tradition you started when your tech company was 4 people. Now you had about 15 employees, still small but you were in the bar with the likes of Stark Industries and Bishop Securities.

“You are in a good mood,” she said, taking a sip of her iced coffee. “Did you have a good weekend?” You smiled.

“I spent the weekend up north with no service and a beautiful woman,” Diane smiled, shaking her head.

“Good, you deserved it. Let me know if you need anything.” You gave her a salute and headed through the rest of the office. You gave your employees their coffee and asked about their weekends. Finally, you sat down at your desk with a sigh. Mondays were the busiest with long meetings and phone calls to start the week on the right foot. You opened your email and saw you had over 1000 unread emails.

“Morning boss,” Taylor said as she came into your office with her laptop. You rolled your eyes.

“Not your boss, Tay.” You said, not looking up from your laptop. Taylor was your business partner and best friend since grade school. She set a bag down on your desk, you knew it was snacks to help you both get through the long meetings. She shrugged.

“Yeah, but your name is on the building.” That was true. Fundamentally, it was Taylor’s idea to focus the company on advancing medical products for veterans due to losing her father at a young age. But you were a Stark, the company was under your mother’s name as that was when you went by. L/n Production, you wanted nothing to do with Tony.

“Can you tell me why every news station is requesting a comment from me?” You asked. “What the hell happened?”

“That is where I come in,” Emily said, entering your office. Her usual put-together bun that sat on her head was disheveled. She must have had a long weekend and an early morning since no reporters were standing outside your office. “So, I’m guessing you didn’t see it.” You glared at her. “Sorry, don’t look at me like that.” She picked up her coffee and plugged her computer into the TV that was mounted on the wall. It took a moment for it to load and you saw a clip of an interview with your father and Jimmy Fallon. You groaned, holding up your hand.

“Wait,” you said before she pressed play. “Is this going to piss me off?” It was a zoom style interview as Tony lived upstate at the Avenger’s compound.

“Probably,” Taylor mumbled, sipping on her coffee. You sighed and waved your hand for Emily to continue. She pressed the spacebar.

“And your daughter, Y/n L/n,” you could tell the clip was from the middle of the interview. Tony put a smile at the mention of your name. “She’s making quite a name for herself. She and her team were given the Presidential Medal of Freedom and nominated for a Nobel Prize for their work in prosthetics.” Jimmy held up a picture of you and Tony at the White House. You invited him to the event to avoid the press, not that you wanted him there. “You must be extremely proud.”

“I am,” your jaw clenched. “She has made this old man very proud.” Well, that was news to you.

“When she was younger did she always have an interest in falling in your footsteps in the tech world?” Tony laughed.

“Jimmy, I couldn’t keep her out of my lab.”

“Oh my god,” you mumbled, putting your hands over your face.

“Those times spent together are memories that are important to me,” your father continued. “And I like to think that those memories shaped her into the person she is today.” The video ended. Your office was silent. Throughout your entire career, you’ve tried to separate yourself from him. Tony Stark. Ironman. He had many names but father wasn’t something you would call him. You were raised by the nannies he hired. You paid your way through school by working waitress jobs, retail jobs on holidays, and babysitting gigs when you had the time. You wanted nothing to do with Tony Stark since he wanted nothing to do with you. When your mother died, he didn’t even show up to the funeral.

“I’m gonna kill him.” You said, standing up and throwing your work essentials in your bag. You were taking a trip to Upstate New York. You didn’t wait for Taylor and Emily to say anything as you headed to the door.

“Egghead,” you stopped at the nickname Taylor called out. “I can’t afford to bail you out so don’t kill the man.” You chuckled, waved your hand, and left.

“Miss. Stark,” FRIDAY as you walked into the compound. “It has been a long time.”

“And I told you to stop calling me that,” you told the AI. The AI was silent for a moment.

“My apologies, it appears the boss changed it.” You sighed. Of course, he did.

“Where is he?” You asked.

“He’s in the conference room with the rest of the team. Would you like me to alert you of your arrival?” You smirked.

“Let’s surprise him, that’s more fun.”

Steve was standing in front of the team with a blueprint of a factory. The words were in Russian. You leaned against the open team, the team was engrossed in what the super soldier was saying you went unnoticed. While one person saw you, a certain redhead. The Russian smirked at you. You set her a playful wink. “Y/n,” Steve said, interrupting Tony. The table looked away from your father and to you. You gave them a small wave.

“It’s my favorite Stark!” Clint said. Tony rolled his eyes.

“Don’t eat my leftovers like last time,” Clint called after you. You flipped him off over your shoulder.

“I’m hurt, Legolas,” he finally looked at you. “I didn’t know you were making a trip up here."

“Finish your meeting. I’ll be in the kitchen.”

That was the problem. You enjoyed the company of the other Avengers but being around Tony made your blood boil. It was frustrating. You opened the fridge and pulled out the ingredients to make a salad. You weren’t sure how long the meeting was going to be.

The answer was 45 minutes. In that time, you ate your salad, made coffee, and joined in on two meetings for work. You were sitting on the couch with your laptop open when the Avengers walked into the common floor. Clint made a beeline for the fridge, to make sure you didn’t eat his food. Steve went by the window with a sketchbook in his hands and Sam sat down next to you, turning on the TV. Finally, Tony walked in but he walked to the coffee pot instead of you. You sighed, standing up. “Do I smell or something?” Sam asked. You laughed.

“No, I have to go talk to the old man.”

“Good luck with that.” You smiled. Tony was pouring a cup of coffee into a mug.

“Hey, can we talk for a second?” You asked. He shook his head.

“Can’t right now. I have to do some modifications to the suit before the upcoming mission.” You bite back a sigh.

“Okay, how about when you are done?” He put the pot back on the machine.

“We’ll see if I’m not busy.” He began to walk towards his lab.

“So you’ll only talk about me in interviews, is that it?” Tony turned back to look at you. “Nice interview by the way. Jimmy knows how to bring out your good side.”

“You saw that.” He said, a hint of surprise in his voice.

“Half the world saw it, Tony, according to how many news stations were in my inbox looking for a statement.” You were becoming the center of attention with the other Avengers. You noticed a few more entering the space. Wanda and Vision were in the kitchen and Natasha were on the couch, her feet tucked underneath her as she watched the interaction between you and Tony.

“Maybe we should take this conversation somewhere else,” You laughed.

“Oh, now you have time for me because a few minutes ago you weren’t going to give me the time of day. But now since your image of yourself is being fucked with you have time,” you took a step forward. “Who are you to credit yourself with my accomplishments? How could you lack such common sense?” You asked. “You may have given me a name but blood doesn’t mean a thing 'cause I did it all on my own. So, disown me, you don’t owe me, I don’t want your money so feel free to leave me out of your will.” The man was silent in front of you. It was the first time you’d seen him speechless. “You don’t deserve the title of my father.” The slap caught you by surprise. You touched the spot he hit and stared at him. He seemed shocked. Your jaw clenched. The common floor was silent. It was a loud silence. “You are lucky I have any ounce of respect for Pepper or I would be suing your ass.” You grabbed your bag from the couch and walked towards the door. You heard footsteps behind you but you didn’t stop until you felt the sun on your face. You sat down on the bench, squeezing the metal. You looked at Natasha. She was frowning as she cupped the cheek Tony hit.

“Do you want me to kill me?” She asked. You shook your head.

“His death is not worth it to add to your ledger,” you said, kissing the palm of her head. She sat down next to you.

“He hit you,” she said. “He put his hands on his daughter.” You nodded.

“I know,” you whispered. “But it’s not your fight, okay?” She didn’t look convinced. She was angry and you knew if you allowed her to, she would march back in there and deal with him. “Just sit here with me.” You placed her head on her shoulder. She sighed and relaxed on the bench.

“Stay the night,” she said. That was the last thing you wanted to do. “This weekend wasn’t enough.” She kissed the top of your head. Her fingers skim underneath your shirt. “I’ll make it worth you're wild.” You smirked.

“Are you trying to bribe me into sleeping with you?” You asked. She smiled.

“You didn’t need much bribing this weekend,” you rolled your eyes. “Please malyshka (baby girl).” She whispered, kissing your cheek.

“Okay, since you are twisting my arm.” She laughed against your neck.

Knocking woke you up. You groaned and burrowed your head deeper into the pillow. But the knocking continued. You opened your eyes, blinking the sleep away. Natasha was slowly waking up. Her red hair fanned out over the pillow as she lay on her stomach facing you. “Who's at the door, FRIDAY?” She asked the AI.

“Mr. Stark is at your door,” the redhead sighed.

“I am going to kill him.” She mumbled. You kissed her shoulder.

“I’ll deal with him,” you stood up and found a shirt and shorts to throw on quickly. “Are you going with him knowing about us?” You asked. Natasha’s eyes were already closed.

“FRIDAY must have told him you were here,” she said, yawning. “I’ll deal with him later.” You smiled and headed to the door. You opened it. You could only imagine what you looked like. Your hair was probably a mess from Natasha running her fingers through it. You had hickeys on your skin. Since you were still half asleep you weren’t sure if you were wearing your clothes.

“Tony,” you said, leaning against the door frame. “Good morning. How are you?”

“What are you doing in Romanoff’s room?” He asked.

“Well Tony,” you noticed by saying his name was getting under his skin. “I’m sleeping with her.” You smiled. “I have been for a while,” you added.

“No, not happening,”

“Oh I missed the part where I asked you if it was okay,” you heard Natasha chuckle from inside her room.

“Your my kid I don’t-”

“I’m your kid?” You cut him off. “The last time I checked I disowned you and you slapped me across the face.” There was no bruise but the feeling was there. You flinched a few times when Natasha took you by surprise and touched your cheek.

“Look, I'm sorry.” You stared at him.

“Sorry about what exactly?” You asked. “Because you are the source of all my scarring. I spent too many years underneath rubble that I got myself out of. I put my heart back together. Do yourself a favor and leave me alone.” You closed the door on him. You took the clothes you were wearing off and climbed back into bed. Natasha rested her head on your chest and looked up at you. You loved staring into her green eyes.

“Are you okay, malysh (baby)?” She asked. You smiled.

“Yeah, I’m good.”

You made the trip back home that afternoon. It was nice being back in the city, in your apartment. You took a quick shower and changed into sweatpants and a white tank top. It was going to be a long night. You sat on your dining room table with a cup of coffee in your hands. You were watching a recorded zoom meeting that you missed. But you winced from a slight pinch on your neck. You touched your neck and felt a tranquilizer dart. The room around you began to spin. The coffee mug fell from your hands and shattered to the ground. You fell to the floor and the world went black.

Part 2 here

#natasha romanoff x reader #natasha romanoff x you #Natasha romanoff x y/n #natasha romanoff x fem!reader #natasha romanoff x stark!reader #tony stark x reader #tony stark x you #tony stark x y/n #tony stark x daughter!reader #Marvel AU #marvel fanfiction #marvel one shot #tony stark #natasha romanoff #tony stark x pepper potts

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yoitsjay · 2 months

Text

Pod Racing

Pairings: Tech x Fem! Reader

Summary: after his first Pod race tech couldn't get enough, so he started doing it on Ord Mantell where he met you, a mechanic for the pod racers... then he couldn't get enough of you either

Warnings: cunnalingus, blow jobs, throat fucking, fluff, minor angst backstory.

Word count: 2,241

A/n: IM BACK BABY WOOOOO

Pod racing.

Pod racing was probably the most exciting thing he had ever experienced, and was something he definitely wanted to do again. For the credits, and just for fun. He found a pod racing tournament hosted every week in Old Ord Mantell, so without telling his brothers he signed up for it.

The day the tournaments happened always seemed to fall on their day off, where they all did their own things. But Tech was off racing, winning credits (Which Hunter was growing suspicious of), and staring at who he was sure was going to be his future wife in simple terms.

You were a mechanic that worked for other pod racing companies, you fixed broken racers, or replaced parts, and when you got hired for custom jobs then he would find out you spent your time overnight at your garage, which he heard rumors of, about how it was filled with old pod racers, worn and broken.

He was curious… had you pod raced before?

Regardless, in the past couple weeks of him pod racing, he had also caught your eye. Sometimes you’d wave, and he’d nod back out of respect. Other times you’d catch him staring and you’d smile before continuing on with your work.

But there was a tension growing between you and Tech, and you both were starting to crave more of it.

That’s when he started hiring your services.

He could make his own repairs, he didn’t need a mechanic, but Tech couldn’t help but feel a surge of feelings unknown every time you’d bend down in front of someone else to repair their pod speeder. He only wanted you in front of his pod, in more ways than one it seemed.

Every time you bend down to study the machine he drove, and he’d see your pants stretch as your ass pushed out, he got… not uncomfortable…

Aroused. That’s what he had learned from his data pad, and then from his brother Echo when he asked about it. He only asked Echo because he knew Echo wouldn’t tease him about it unlike the others.

Of course Echo started asking who was making him aroused and well… Tech wanted to talk about this beautiful Mechanic that he wanted in his pants.

Over the course of several months he had grown closer to you, per Echo’s advice, and you had a lot in common with him. You were also really smart, especially when it came to ship parts and pod parts, you were autistic, and he learned that loud noises were a huge sensory issue for you but only around massive amounts of people, which is why you wore noise canceling headphones when you worked at the pod races.

Though when you invited him to your home and garage, he found out that loud noises only affected you around crowds of people, because when you were around him, in the safety of your home, you blasted music and banged your way through your garage… which he admired.

“Were you a pod racer?” Tech had asked you the second time you invited him to your garage. You had tensed up, and then nodded.

“I was before I got really injured.” You answered, and rolled up your overall pant leg to reveal a cybernetic knee and joints attached to the lower and upper leg to help you walk.

“Oh… i’m sorry if i-”

“No no- Tech it’s okay… I've had this for a while and I'm used to it. But I don't think I could ever race again, so I just stuck to mechanics and fixing pods for other people.” You explained, smiling when Tech had put his hand on your shoulder and squeezed it reassuringly. You had practically melted into his touch.

After that you kept contacting Tech a lot more often, he was always happy to receive your calls or texts through the data pad. You often talked with him about the races, sometimes you'd go into depth about your accident… but one night he caught you at a bad time.

You weren't responding to his calls and messages, though you had the data pad in your hands, you were just staring at the messages you found flirty… and your hand was between your legs, fingers coated in your slick as you tried to muffle your cries, though it didn’t do much to hide how good you were feeling… and yet you craved more than your hands.

When Tech sent another text, saying he was on his way, panic… and arousal burst through your stomach like popping flames. You let out a shaky breath, positioning the datapad in front of you so it could capture every part of your arousal covered pussy, and the fingers on your clit.

You snapped the picture and sent it, and moments later you were on the verge of an orgasm when you heard your bedroom door slam open.

You jolted on your bed tearing your hands away as you stared up at Tech. His armor was on, helmet too, but you saw the intense look in his eyes as he stared at you, his eyes slowly trailing down your nude form.

“Ignoring my messages, making me worry that you were in danger… then you send me that photo.” he listed. You sucked your bottom lip between your teeth, watching as he removed his helmet. You saw how his lips parted as he saw your hand snake its way back down to between your thighs.

Tech growled.

yes he fucking growled when he saw your fingers start rubbing against your clit again. Though you kept eye contact with him, despite your insides screaming at you not too, and he heard the soft gasps leave your lips before your back arched off the bed and you came.

and you moaned his name.

That was the moment he realized that he wasn’t the only one pleasuring himself to the thought of you, that you were touching yourself to the image of him.

Tech slowly approached the bed, and you were quick to meet him halfway, sitting on the edge as you stared at him. “I’m sorry if i-”

“Quiet.” Tech whispered, grabbing your slick covered hand as his pupils dilated. You watched as he brought your hand up to his mouth, and then his tongue darted out and you had to bite back a groan as he licked up your juices from between your fingers. And once your hand was clean, his eyes returned to your body.

“You… you have mystified me, Y/n… every part of you has my attention. I am, in simple terms, attracted to you… and it is clear you feel the same.” He whispered, watching you nod your head.

“I crave you, like a drug I know I shouldn't be taking.” He added, breathless as he felt you start to unclip his armor, slowly, giving him the chance to stop you if he wanted.

But he didn’t, so you continued until his upper armor was off of him, and was piling onto the floor beside him. “Touch me.” You encouraged, and he did, tearing his gloves off before gliding his fingertips against your shoulders and collar bone.

You continued to rid him of his armor until he just stood in his blacks. You then pulled away from him, backing up on the bed until you were sitting back against the pillows.

Tech followed, entranced by the way you moved. He removed his upper blacks with ease, and he felt your eyes roam down his toned abdomen and chest. He might have been smart, and lanky but he was nowhere near weak. He was a clone, bred for war so he had to be capable enough to fight, and he was. Tech could probably man handle you if he wanted too.

“What do you want to do, Tech?” You asked, voice soft as you reached out and ran your hands down his chest, feeling his heart rate spike underneath the warmth of your hand.

“I want to taste you.” He confessed. “More than just your fingers.” you smiled as he added more to his confession. You leaned back once more, spreading your legs open to let him view more of what was in the picture.

“Then taste me.” You encouraged me.

Tech was on top of you within seconds. placing open mouthed, surprisingly sloppy kisses against your skin. When he reached your breasts he had paused his adventure down. He glanced up, and saw you smile and nod, and he devoured.

His lips wrapped around your nipple while his tongue flicked and flattened against the sensitive bud. He heard your whines, and felt you writing against him, and as he moved to the other breast he heard your breath catch in your throat as you pressed your torso up into his chest.

The corner of Tech’s lips curled up a little bit as he finished sucking at your nipples, and continued placing sloppy wet kisses down your skin until he had found purchase between your thighs.

He stopped, and stared, analyzing the way you are entrance clenched around nothing every time his fingers ghosted the inner parts of your thighs. He watched the slow and steady flow of your arousal come out of you, and once he analyzed your weak points he moved his head in, flattening his tongue against your folds, starting at your entrance before he moved his tongue upwards, gathering your slick juices and previous orgasm on his tongue.

You heard him groan, and you couldn’t help but gasp as his tongue dove right back to your cunt. His grip tightened against your thighs and prevented you from closing them around his head as your body started to write against your sheets.

His tongue was heaven.

The way he dipped his tongue into your entrance, and circled your clit slowly with his thumb or finger, it drove you crazy.

He could tell your second orgasm was building up in your stomach with the way you were tensing and moaning his name. And as he slid two fingers inside of you, and curled them upward as he circled your clit with his tongue, you combusted, clenching around his fingers as you cried out his name, and came.

Tech helped you ride through your orgasm before removing his fingers and sitting up, he was straining against his blacks, but let you catch your breath.

What he didn’t expect was for you to take one look at his bulge, and pounce on him, yanking down his blacks and boxers to allow his cock to spring free.

“Serad what are you-”

Tech was promptly cut off the moment your lips wrapped around his cockhead, and his hand flew to your hair as you started bobbing your head up and down, staring slow, swirling your tongue around his tip and against the slit in his cock before you moved downwards.

He felt you gag slightly, and pause and he gave you a look, but you just squeezed his thighs and continued.

And with the way you moved your head, hollowed your cheeks and cupped his balls? yeah he became the whiny writhing mess that he had made you moments ago. He wasn’t as loud as you had been, but you could hear his soft groans of pleasure.

Then he started rocking his hips back into your mouth every time you would pull your head back, and you grinned around him, looking up at him through your eyelashes as you nodded, and squeezed his thigh.

Tech pushed you down onto the bed, having slipped from your mouth momentarily. But he was back on you within seconds, and he was rocking his hips faster now, his cock gliding through your mouth and throat, balls slapping against your face and yet you didn’t care.

You held onto him, but gave him no indication that you were uncomfortable or wanted to stop.

He was soon cumming down your throat, and he watched and felt as your throat closed around him, and swallowed every spurt of cum.

Tech then pulled out, a little overstimulated, and he sat down in front of you, watching as your chest rose and fell with every breath you took.

You then looked up at him, sitting back on your elbows as you smiled. “You okay?” You asked him, and he nodded. “Yes I am… better than I have been in a long time.” He breathed out, moving to lay beside you as he pulled you against him.

You melted into his embrace, resting your head on his chest as you sighed. “Are you okay?” Tech then asked, hearing your soft chuckle moments later.

“Yes Tech… I'm perfectly fine… that was the best orgasm i probably ever had.” You whispered, feeling him hold you a bit tighter.

“Can we… experiment more?” He then asked, and you let out a soft laugh, pulling your head back so you could look up at him.

“Id let you fuck me in a pod racer Tech, on the counter, floor, couch-”

Tech cut you off, promptly placing his lips against yours, swallowing your soft gasp of surprise.

After a few moments he pulled back, resting his forehead against yours. “Then we can start experimenting tomorrow.” He started, and hugged you again as you chuckled into his chest.

You didn’t think this was where you would ever end up, but you were so glad that you did.

➺

Tag list:

Tech Tag:

Tbb:

@only-my-unexistent-fiances

All:

@moomoog017

#fanfiction #tbb tech #the bad batch #tbb hunter #tbb wrecker #tbb crosshair #tbb echo #tbb omega #star wars the bad batch #tech x female reader #tech x fem!reader #tbb tech x reader #tech x reader #tech x reader smut #smut #jay writes

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