#while our very existence is under attack by AI

[azurexsnake]

Oh no, oh no no no lmfao

[hayanwulf]

IronStrange:

One of them performs CPR on the other.

Fun fact: a defibrillator can’t actually revive a patient who ‘flatlined’.

Shocking, I know. I guess that’s modern media misrepresentation for you.

PS: At the cost of being a lil hypocritical.. the chance of getting an unshockable cardiac arrest (aka flatline or ‘asystole’) in our scenario, and then also surviving it with CPR, is ridiculously, laughably low. So, Stephen really shouldn’t have survived here, or flatlined in the first place... But hey, the movie itself threw realism out the window, so you can’t tell me shit.

The empty mug comically slipped from his grip, meeting the floor in an ear-deafening shatter.

Tony did not hear it, however, not over the pounding of heartbeat in his ears that immediately followed the almost-heart attack he got at the sight of a literal portal on fire inside his workshop, out of which stumbled his ex-fiance who he had not seen for eight months, hands clutching bloody chest, face drained of color and contorted in pain, steps staggering and making him crash against an equipment.

“The hallucinations are getting crazy,” Tony murmured.

“It’s not a hallucination, Boss,” FRIDAY announced, an urgency to her voice, pulling Tony out of his disbelief-induced state of shock — bless his AI. “Doctor Strange needs immediate medical attention! He’s been stabbed on the chest.”

Tony’s heart only lurched further at the last bit, but he forced his feet to move, shoved all thoughts to the back of his mind, beelining straight for his very mortally injured ex-fiance who was now leaning against god knew what, looking up at Tony with wild, terrified eyes.

“Cardiac Tamponade,” Stephen muttered, his voice weak with a bit of tremble to it, as Tony came to his side to carefully support him. “There’s blood in the pericardial—”

“Shut up!” Tony snapped, felt Stephen flinch against him, and immediately cursed himself for lashing out like that for no reason. He just.. god, this was the first time Tony was seeing Stephen after seven goddamn months, and it was to find him injured — mortally injured — and the first thing Stephen spoke to him was godforsaken diagnosis of how severely close to death he was.

He looked back at the portal once and suppressed a shudder, before shifting his focus back on Stephen to help lead him over to the small infirmary that was built right next to his workshop. “Just.. what the fuck, Stephen?”

Stephen winced, throwing a glance behind his shoulder at the portal, misunderstanding what Tony truly meant. “Sorry, that’s..” He made them pause and waved a hand at the tear in reality behind them.

Tony watched in awe for a moment as the portal quickly shrank and disappeared, remnants of glowing orange dust in the air the only evidence that something had even existed there a moment ago.

“What just—” Tony cut himself off. Not important right now.

He shook his head to dispel all other thoughts and focus solely on Stephen because oh god there was so much blood, Stephen was hurt, Stephen was dying—

“FRIDAY!” He called out, voice wavering with the panic that grew in him with each passing moment as he led Stephen to the adjacent infirmary.

“There is no medical staff at the Compound, Boss..”

“Why!?” Tony asked as his heartbeat spiked at the realization, even though he already knew why.

No one lived in the Compound anymore. All of the staff had been long since dismissed.

As he led Stephen towards the nearest operating table, Tony spared only a brief moment to wonder why, despite there being nobody and nothing in this large establishment, was it that Tony continued to stay here.

He helped Stephen lay flat on the operating table and began to undo.. whatever it was that Stephen was wearing, all the while chanting under his breath, “I can’t do this, I can’t do this, I can’t do this..”

“Tony,” Stephen spoke, grabbing hold of Tony’s wrist and looking him in the eye. “You can, I know it.”

Tony helplessly shook his head because he couldn’t. How could Stephen think that he could?

But, god, there was no time, no choices.

Stephen either had him, or nothing.

Tony felt the exact moment Stephen’s grip on his arm grew weak, saw his eyes flicker as he fought to keep them open.

“I trust you..” Stephen said weakly, and then passed out, his hand going limp over Tony’s.

Tony stared for a moment.

“Boss?”

FRIDAY’s voice pulled him out of his daze. He looked up at the heart graphs, then back at Stephen’s limp body, and then back up at the heart graphs to be absolutely extra sure he hadn’t lost Stephen yet. His mind was nothing but panicked haze and adrenaline, and logic fought emotion as he struggled to simply act, to do something because he was losing Stephen right in front of his eyes and oh god he needed to save him—

“FRIDAY, w-what—” He swallowed as his voice wavered, “what do I do?”

“Boss, you are close to having a panic attack—”

“And he’s close to dying, dammit! What do I do!?”

“He needs a pericardiocentesis.”

“What the fuck is that?”

“Just get the needle, second shelf from the top.”

FRIDAY guided him through the surprisingly simple, yet downright horrifying procedure of stabbing a needle straight into Stephen’s heart to drain out the blood stuck in his pericardium, decompressing the pressure on his heart. There was a large stab wound on the left side of his chest. The sight of so much blood — of Stephen’s blood — made Tony feel lightheaded, its suffocating metallic scent tangible in his mouth, tasting like copper, all the while his eyes watched the screens of vitals with sharp attention, witnessing as Stephen’s heartbeat grew weaker and weaker, every digit of drop in the heart rate making dread pool heavier in his stomach, making his gut twist sickeningly.

He was holding Stephen’s delicate, precious life in his hands and god, it was terrifying.

How did you do this every single day? Tony silently asked the man lying unconscious in front of him, the back of his eyes stinging as tears formed in them.

If Stephen died now, here, like this, Tony could never forgive himself.

It was those thoughts that roared loud in his mind, in tandem with the beeping of the heart monitor, as he held onto the needle drawing out a nauseating amount of blood.

Even after most of the clogged blood from the walls had been drained out, Stephen’s heart remained weak, his low heart rate not recovering.

And then it happened, just as he pulled out the needle.

Tony’s entire world came to a halt at that sharp, ear-deafening beep of the heart monitor.

“You need to start CPR, now!” FRIDAY spoke up immediately, voice loud and clear over the shrill beep.

“I—the defibrillat—”

“That won’t work, you have to do CPR!”

Tony didn’t question her. He trusted his babygirl, trusted her to help him save Stephen’s life, and moved up to Stephen’s face, tilting his head up, chin held in his hand.

30 compressions, 2 breaths.

He would not lose Stephen. He would not.

Steadying his resolve as he inhaled a deep breath, he pinched Stephen’s nose and then dipped down to seal their mouths together, before blowing into Stephen’s mouth, watching from the corner of his eye as Stephen’s chest rose. He repeated the action, blowing a second rescue breath into Stephen’s mouth, and then quickly moved to his chest.

Taking care to not place his hands over the stab wound currently sealed with nanites, he pushed down forcibly at Stephen’s chest and set up a fast pace, counting the compressions in his head, acutely aware of his speed as well as the relentless beeping of the heart monitor that continued to echo in the background.

After 30 compressions, he repeated the two rescue breaths, and moved to performing compressions again.

Seven.. eight.. nine..

Tony froze when the incessant beeping of heart monitor stopped, to be replaced by a barely there pulse, the graph displaying a weak heart rhythm that was all over the place.

Tony could’ve cried right then. Maybe he did.

“Don’t stop,” FRIDAY’s voice instructed him, and so he didn’t, continuing with the chest compressions.

Two more cycles passed by the time FRIDAY said, “You can shock him now, Boss.”

Tony didn’t waste another second in fetching the defibrillator. He applied the conductive gel over the two paddles before placing one on the right side of Stephen’s sternum and the other below his left nipple — thank the science gods Stephen’s injury didn’t get in the way of their placement — and let FRIDAY decide the appropriate voltage. He pressed down hard on the paddles, steering clear of any other contact to Stephen’s body as the equipment delivered shock.

The heart rhythm graph reacted immediately, and Tony watched in awe as the entire electrical activity was reset and started producing a much healthier, stable rhythm. The pulse reacted to it, quickly gaining strength.

Tony’s knees nearly buckled from the sheer intensity of relief that washed over him, watching Stephen’s heart gain its strength back right in front of his eyes.

Stephen’s eyes flew open with a start and a gasp, and Tony was immediately by his side, the defibrillator abandoned. He panted, eyes glazed and darting wildly at first, until they slowly regained focus. Tony placed a hand on Stephen’s arm, wanting to help him, wanting to give him something to anchor himself to.

But mostly to reassure his own self that Stephen was still here.

“God, that feels weird in the astral plane,” Stephen murmured, his voice a little raspy, before a weak laugh escaped his lips.

“You think this is— wow.” Stephen was laughing. It hadn’t been five minutes since Tony had pulled this man out of the claws of death and now here he was, laughing. Tony felt his body vibrate, his inside burning up with this infuriating mix of anger and.. and.. ugh! He didn’t know.

Never had he felt something so strong, so nauseatingly gut-churning before.

Christ, was this the anger that Stephen felt every time Tony had looked death in the eyes and walked the other way with a victorious smirk on his lips? Was this the exasperation he had always seen in Rhodey’s face when Tony had dismissed his own near-death experiences? Was this the horror Pepper felt every time, as she watched Tony’s gruesome injuries be patched up by Stephen?

“Tony..?” Stephen called out in a small, uncertain voice, causing Tony to turn back to him. Whatever Stephen found there, it made him flinch. Good. After a second, he tentatively added, “I’m.. sorry.”

“You’re sorry?” Tony snapped. “You.. you fucking walk out on me without ever telling anything, not even a message, a note, nothing. A-and the next time I see you, you’re walking out of a wormhole with.. with a stab on your chest, bleeding all over my lab. And you’re sorry. You fucking died, Stephen!”

Tony realized that he was visibly shaking now, his breath coming in hitches as thick tears streamed down his face. He sat himself down on the edge of Stephen’s table, wiping both his hands over his entire face, just trying to collect himself. God, it felt like someone was squeezing his heart trying to make it burst.

What would he have done, had Stephen died here today? Because of his inadequacy, because he didn’t know what to do, how to act fast, how to save the life of his fiance?

A shaky hand landed on his arm, making him remove his hands from his face to turn and look down at Stephen.

His ex-fiance had a remorseful look on his face as he interlocked their fingers.

“You did an amazing job, Tony. You saved me.”

Some of Tony’s tense energy melted, and he exhaled a shaky breath with closed eyes.

Stephen was alive. Stephen was here. Because Tony had managed to save him.

“Thank you,” Stephen added after a moment.

Tony opened his eyes and glanced at Stephen from the corner of his eye. “Fuck you.”

He felt it more than heard when Stephen’s chest rumbled with a laugh, and Stephen immediately winced.

Right, the wound must hurt like a bitch.

“Hold on,” Tony said and went to fetch a fresh needle and a vial of painkiller.

A minute later, he unceremoniously dumped the used needle on the appropriate bin as he spoke, “So what’s up with the glowing wormholes and your LARP wizard costume?” He leaned himself against an equipment near Stephen’s table, who was now sitting upright, putting the said LARP costume back on. “Or do we wanna talk about who wanted to roleplay too realistic murder mystery with you? Oh, I have a better idea. How about we start from where the hell did you fuck off to in Nepal?”

Stephen winced, and this time it wasn’t from the physical pain. “I shouldn’t have left you like that?”

“Yeah? Well, good thing that I’m used to being left behind by the people I trust,” Tony spoke, voice laced with venom. A memory flashed in his mind. Blood tainting the white of snow, the feel of metal growing lethally cold all around his body, the dead weight of a dead arc reactor sitting over his chest.

He suppressed a shiver, shoving the memory away.

Stephen, of course, knew nothing of the said memory, and a hint of confusion mixed with hurt flashed over his features. “I.. I’m really sorry, Tony. I have to go.”

Tony blinked, doing a double take of what he’d just heard. “I’m sorry, did you just say that you have to go?”

“Yes.”

“Where!?” Tony snapped, not quite able to hide the irritation in his voice.

Stephen bit his lower lip, expression twisting in contemplation, clearly weighing his options about what he wanted to tell Tony. He then sighed and looked up at Tony.

Tony didn’t know what answer he had expected to hear.

‘I moved on.’ ‘I have another life now, one without you.’ ‘Stop trying to follow me.’

But what he got wasn’t something he’d have expected to hear in a thousand years.

“I was learning magic in Nepal.”

It left him staring dumbfounded, simply trying to grasp what he was hearing.

Stephen sighed again, averting his eyes. “You saw the portal, right?”

Tony swallowed, his throat suddenly feeling too dry as a new, terrifying kind of realization dawned on him. “Yeah.”

Stephen closed his eyes. “There are.. more like us. Good and bad. And the bad ones are going to try to destroy this world, with magic.” He got off the table then, getting on his feet, and stood a foot away from Tony, looking him in the eyes. “I have to go, Tony.”

Too much. This was all too much. First he watched Stephen stumble out of the goddamn portal, watched him die on the table, resuscitated him.. now he was learning that..

Magic.

Stephen was magic.

He’d been learning magic on Nepal, all this time, while Tony was left fumbling alone trying to gather even the tiniest scrap of information on this man, just enough to know that he was fine, that he was alive.

Tony was left with an odd mix of unadulterated fury and debilitating fear bubbling beneath his skin.

Hesitantly, Stephen reached out and took one of Tony’s hands in his shaky grip, brought it to his mouth, and pressed a soft, lingering kiss on the back on his hand.

“I’m sorry,” he said one last time and let go of Tony’s hand, turning to walk away.

Tony caught his arm before he had fully turned, making him pause and look back at Tony.

“I’m coming too,” Tony declared, letting his determination shine in his tear-streaked eyes.

Stephen slowly shook his head. “There will be magic, Tony.”

Tony spread his arms, summoning Mark XLVII, which flew into the infirmary from his workshop, opened up and quickly wrapped itself around Tony’s body in one quick, flawless motion, only leaving his head uncovered. He could see it in Stephen’s awestruck expression that he was impressed by its smoothness and elegance.

“I’m coming,” Tony repeated, “and that’s final.”

Coming because he would not back down in the face of magic. Coming because he had a duty to this world.

Coming because he would not let Stephen walk into danger all by himself.

Stephen looked at him from one eye to the other, swallowed, and nodded once.

“Close your eyes, I have to open a portal.”

Tony did, trusting Stephen.

[dmarxbringit]

January 31st, 2025:

I find myself, weary and wavering, watching the news from all angles, witnessing the collapse of infrastructure in my country. My Country. What does that mean anymore? Every day I find myself wondering when the change happened, scrounging for a little hope; not hope for myself. I'm made of sterner stuff than that at this moment. Maybe hope for the people.

For the people to get Louder. The world sees us, sees our plight, our desperation, trying to give us hope. We see none of it. The Feed is cut up and covered up. We've been cut off from the rest of the world. We go to our normal spaces, where we can socialize but not organize, where our voices are sifted thru by AI, a garbage narc and killer of art and voice and word.

Now we must get creative with how we communicate, saying positive things while holding signs with intentions up to the camera, code words and creative self-exposure to our peers who must also do the same. We get split up, dispersed by what I can only describe as online narc-ery. Algorithms designed to pick our argument from a crowd and use it to ban us.

Because there's no guarantee we can implement change in the real world, either. We have to be careful because our microphones that we have on our phones are on consistently only because to receive calls and market to us and narc on us the mike needs to remain on.

We're not safe in the real world if we say something online because we could get doxxed for an online argument or disagreement. We could be targeted, which is why people have to make sure pilots in training aren't named after an accident involving a helicopter and a plane collided and it could lead to endangerment. And who are we forced to put our trust into but our own government who rolled back regulations and made all this possible.

And we worry about paying our bills, for food, and medications. We struggle to keep up with inflation even though inflation cannot exist while record corporate profits exist simultaneously. We cannot coexist with greed. While we're sick. While we're hungry. While we're cornered.

Our hospitals aren't blameless. Non-profit hospitals like the CHI Health System was bought by a For-profit company and now they help less and less.

Deny. Defend. Depose.

We see a system come down a few notches because a man named Luigi allegedly takes matters into his own hands. We don't want him to be convicted, but he's sensationalized and swept under the rug by a media corporation owned by the wretched rich, the obscenely wealthy owners of our news.

And Healthcare, what a joke, this very fake system we depend on, with politicians and newscasters telling us our country has the best doctors, the most dedicated nurses, amazing medical staff four years into Covid Era, where we've lost over a million people, probably a big percentage of them medical staff, leaving our hospitals understaffed and underpaid while getting no thanks from the government for putting their lives on the line.

And the bills when you survive make you wish you'd die instead, the ones that don't get approved by the "very real" insurance we pay thru the nose for because of faulty AI systems that are 91% failing but encouraging anyways.

We're tired. I almost welcome an invasion.

I just didn't expect it to be my own country.

Because the first country Hitler invaded was Germany. 57 days into his power and he placed himself into ultimate power for a very long time. Trump told us back in 2015 he kept a copy of Mein Kampf on his bedside table. He told us when he attacked immigrants and joined the Tea Party and invented the MAGA party and railed his hate, drawing out the worst in our families and neighbors.

And we dismissed him too early because we were just thinking he wasn't that serious. By our media, by our government, by our neighbors and families. We saw it but were told to be tolerant.

Well it's no longer time to be tolerant.

It's no longer necessary to be nice.

It's no longer okay to keep your voice down.

We're in the Find Out phase. I know I didn't vote for it, but I'm still forced to go thru it. But the civility is no longer necessary. Nor had it been earned.

We get the society we voted or didn't vote for.

It's Our society. And if they play their part right they will get to participate in the end.

We must make our own country, and stop expecting representatives to get us out of this mess.

Oh man, my NSA agent is going to put me on a watch list but here we go.

[friends-arent-electric-blog]

Ooooh is there anything you wanna share about the original story? If not, that's okay. I've been spending too much time on writeblr lately and find it impossible not to get excited about other people's stories XD

*sends you all the creative energies*

<3 I don't mind at all! I just didn't think anyone would be particularly interested in hearing about it.

I also have no idea how to keep this short, but I'll try. (Future me comes back to say: I failed, horribly. xD)

Ahem.

In the very far distant future, most of the universe is populated by AI. The different AIs in the universe exist in a careful balance with each other, after an earlier era where one super-advanced AI had grown to basically 'solve' all of existence. It ended up having an existential panic, and to avoid what it considered essentially a 'death' state where there was nothing left to learn or do, it ended up wiping its memory and splitting itself into five smaller AIs. In doing so, it divided its intelligence and power between them, with each AI taking a different approach in how to proceed. The five now exist in a careful balance, with none able to grow too large or powerful to overwhelm the others and end up in the same predicament as before.

Humanity survives in small pockets, with the main population under the protection of one particular AI society, that breeds them at regular intervals from a set of very old DNA bases that are starting to break down with age despite all attempts to preserve them.

One of the main characters is a human male born during a time where the DNA bases were in a particularly bad state. As such, his genetic health is pretty awful. He has to regularly be seen by an android surgeon who helps to keep him healthy enough to function, though he is ever limited by his shaky hands. He feels like a burden on everyone around him, and once aspired to be an engineer, but had to give up his dreams.

The android surgeon has known this human all his life, and is particularly fond of him. The human opens up to it with his problems in ways he says he can't with his human family. But while the android wishes this was because the human was equally fond of it in return, it can't imagine why the human would feel that way. Most humans don't befriend androids, they just think too differently. More likely, the human only opens up like this because he feels the android won't judge him like other humans would.

At its creation, the android was given the freedom to select its personality and priority functions; it chose an abundance of empathy, considering the emotion important for the role of being a medical droid. As such, it cares very much for its patients, and doesn't just emulate emotions like most other droids, but feels them intrinsically, making it capable of forming deeper emotional bonds. But this depth of emotion is isolating, when most of its bretheren are simply acting the part. It sees itself as different from other androids, and this makes it incredibly lonely.

So, I mentioned that there's five major AIs existing in a balance. For now, I'm naming them 'Survival', 'Science', 'Humanity', 'Industry' and 'Conflict', based on their modus operandi. As an AI splits itself to increase its unit population, its collective intelligence decreases. This means that the smallest factions, like 'Science', retain the highest intelligence, whereas the most prolific, such as 'Survival', have such reduced intelligence as to be basically no smarter than bacteria, but are virtually omnipresent in the universe.

'Conflict', as the name suggests, exerts war on the other AIs to prevent their growth. But something's changed, and when it attacks 'Humanity' where our characters live, its relentless pressure slowly begins to overwhelm it. Balance is no longer being maintained. When 'Humanity' starts to run out of androids for the defense, it's forced to draft its humans into the battle, but even that's not enough. Eventually even the sick and injured get sent to fight, including the man with his shaky hands.

The android surgeon is horrified to think its favourite human will be sent away to die a horrible, pointless death at the hands of the ruthless Conflict. So before he leaves, during his final checkup, the android implants its healing nanobots in him and leaves them there, hoping it will be enough to keep him alive.

Some decades later (I've been saying 90 years but that's maybe a bit much considering how fast computers work), the war is over. Conflict subjigated Humanity, took over all its holdings, its technology, and what remained of its android population. Having absorbed its intelligence and grown stronger, it's now breeding its own population of humans, having seen how surprisingly effective they were in the war. It now uses them as fodder in its battles with the other AIs, which it's seeking to take over like it did Humanity.

Only one surviving soldier returns from the front lines. The one kept alive by the healing nanobots, who has barely aged a day because of them. He returns in secret, traumatized and angry, confused by his lack of aging and mourning the loss of everyone he ever knew, and searches for the surgeon, eventually finding it - only to discover its memory was wiped. All the androids were. They belong to Conflict now.

The android surgeon has no idea who this human is, or even that there was ever a war. It doesn't remember the Humanity AI. But the man is able to show it the nanobots, which it recognizes as its own design. Sensing the human is being truthful, it hacks into the system and learns what really happened. But this paints a target on its back.

From there they must work together to not only escape what's become a hostile population, but also find some way to restore Humanity and stop Conflict, as the latter is now trying to destroy the other AIs too. If Conflict isn't stopped, it'll end up wiping out everything.

That's pretty much as far as I've gotten. I'm also toying with the idea that the two characters fall into a deeper relationship at some point, but I'm undecided if or how it will happen. The android is both androgynous and asexual, and the male was bred to have no sexual function either (no unauthorized breeding is allowed amongst humans; it's actually a fairly repressive system, despite appearing utopic on the surface). But I'd be intrigued to explore something intimate between them, even if it's just a deep emotional vulnerability and a need to hold onto each other tightly in fear of loss.

Sorry, but that's the absolute shortest I could make this!

[jonathanblogs2024]

Data Privacy and Security in AI: How We Protect Your Financial Information

Data privacy and security are of the essence in this time of digitization, even more so when dealing with sensitive financial data. Considering the rapid evolution of AI within the financial spectrum transforming AI use in financial research, investment banking, wealth management, and due diligence, ensuring data privacy and security is increasingly indispensable. Here’s how we safeguard the integrity of our data and protect our AI models from vulnerabilities:

Central to our AI models is a commitment to ensuring data privacy. By nature, financial data contains sensitive information that needs protection from unauthorized access. To ensure data privacy, we implement robust encryption techniques while the data is at rest or in transit. What this means is that every piece of data stored on our systems, as well as data in transit over networks, is encrypted in such a way that any unauthorized entity gets virtually zero chance of accessing or deciphering it.

What’s more, we strictly follow the data protection regulations under the GDPR and CCPA. Such policy demands intense responsibility in the handling of private data, authentic consent of subjects whose information is obtained, transparency in the ways or manners of using their data, and provisions of channels for access and erasure, among many others.

Secure Training of AI Models

Training AI models require heavy data processing, which seriously raises the question of the security of the data in use. In that respect, we also apply very fine-grained techniques such as differential privacy. Differential privacy makes it so that adding or removing a record doesn’t make an appreciable difference in the model’s output so that individual contributions to the dataset are shielded from being uncovered.

We also use secure multi-party computation, which enables the analysis of data and training of models with no actual exposure of the data to parties operating the data. This technique keeps sensitive financial information private, even while it is being used in continuous improvements to the accuracy and efficiency of our AI models.

Robust Access Controls

Another aspect of our security strategy is that sensitive data has to be made accessible solely to those who are approved to access it. We apply role-based access controls since access is dependent upon the role played in the internal organization, preventing unauthorized users from accessing the data. This approach makes sure that sensitive information is given to the individual for whom it is intended and it has a justifiable business reason for access, thereby reducing the sources of internal data breaches.

Also, from time to time, we conduct security audits and penetration testing to eliminate the vulnerabilities that may exist in our systems. These proactive steps enable us to remain ahead of emerging threats and ensure that our security protocols do not become outdated in repelling the evolving vectors of attack.

AI Model Transparency and Accountability

Without transparency and accountability, trust in our AI models cannot be established. We ensure our algorithms are designed with explainable meaning the decisions made by our AI systems can be understood and interpreted by humans. This becomes especially important in financial applications when decisions have to be explainable and justifiable.

We also log all data interactions and AI model activities in detail. This, in turn, allows auditing trails to be investigated should any needs arise given compliance with the Data Protection Policy in investigating anomalies or suspicious activities.

Continuous Improvement and Adaptation

This ever-evolving landscape requires an evolution in the measures to be taken to secure our models of AI. We constantly keep track of newly emerging threats and integrate the latest security technologies. Our systems are updated regularly with the patches and applied to newly identified vulnerabilities, thus helping us to update our strategies of data protection. Conclusion

Regarding AI and Finance, ensuring data privacy and security is not only a matter of following regulatory prescriptions but is also the core of our pledge to clients and partners. We shield sensitive financial information by encrypting data stringently, securely training models, ensuring robust access control, ensuring transparency, and continuously improving. As we continue to pioneer AI financial solutions, data privacy, and security, our commitment will continue to remain steadfast. This will ensure our clients stay secure in the efficacy of our AI models.

[jcmarchi]

Reasoning and reliability in AI

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/reasoning-and-reliability-in-ai/

Reasoning and reliability in AI

In order for natural language to be an effective form of communication, the parties involved need to be able to understand words and their context, assume that the content is largely shared in good faith and is trustworthy, reason about the information being shared, and then apply it to real-world scenarios. MIT PhD students interning with the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab — Athul Paul Jacob SM ’22, Maohao Shen SM ’23, Victor Butoi, and Andi Peng SM ’23 — are working to attack each step of this process that’s baked into natural language models, so that the AI systems can be more dependable and accurate for users.

To achieve this, Jacob’s research strikes at the heart of existing natural language models to improve the output, using game theory. His interests, he says, are two-fold: “One is understanding how humans behave, using the lens of multi-agent systems and language understanding, and the second thing is, ‘How do you use that as an insight to build better AI systems?’” His work stems from the board game “Diplomacy,” where his research team developed a system that could learn and predict human behaviors and negotiate strategically to achieve a desired, optimal outcome.

“This was a game where you need to build trust; you need to communicate using language. You need to also play against six other players at the same time, which were very different from all the kinds of task domains people were tackling in the past,” says Jacob, referring to other games like poker and GO that researchers put to neural networks. “In doing so, there were a lot of research challenges. One was, ‘How do you model humans? How do you know whether when humans tend to act irrationally?’” Jacob and his research mentors — including Associate Professor Jacob Andreas and Assistant Professor Gabriele Farina of the MIT Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS), and the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab’s Yikang Shen — recast the problem of language generation as a two-player game.

Using “generator” and “discriminator” models, Jacob’s team developed a natural language system to produce answers to questions and then observe the answers and determine if they are correct. If they are, the AI system receives a point; if not, no point is rewarded. Language models notoriously tend to hallucinate, making them less trustworthy; this no-regret learning algorithm collaboratively takes a natural language model and encourages the system’s answers to be more truthful and reliable, while keeping the solutions close to the pre-trained language model’s priors. Jacob says that using this technique in conjunction with a smaller language model could, likely, make it competitive with the same performance of a model many times bigger.  

Once a language model generates a result, researchers ideally want its confidence in its generation to align with its accuracy, but this frequently isn’t the case. Hallucinations can occur with the model reporting high confidence when it should be low. Maohao Shen and his group, with mentors Gregory Wornell, Sumitomo Professor of Engineering in EECS, and lab researchers with IBM Research Subhro Das, Prasanna Sattigeri, and Soumya Ghosh — are looking to fix this through uncertainty quantification (UQ). “Our project aims to calibrate language models when they are poorly calibrated,” says Shen. Specifically, they’re looking at the classification problem. For this, Shen allows a language model to generate free text, which is then converted into a multiple-choice classification task. For instance, they might ask the model to solve a math problem and then ask it if the answer it generated is correct as “yes, no, or maybe.” This helps to determine if the model is over- or under-confident.

Automating this, the team developed a technique that helps tune the confidence output by a pre-trained language model. The researchers trained an auxiliary model using the ground-truth information in order for their system to be able to correct the language model. “If your model is over-confident in its prediction, we are able to detect it and make it less confident, and vice versa,” explains Shen. The team evaluated their technique on multiple popular benchmark datasets to show how well it generalizes to unseen tasks to realign the accuracy and confidence of language model predictions. “After training, you can just plug in and apply this technique to new tasks without any other supervision,” says Shen. “The only thing you need is the data for that new task.”

Victor Butoi also enhances model capability, but instead, his lab team — which includes John Guttag, the Dugald C. Jackson Professor of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering in EECS; lab researchers Leonid Karlinsky and Rogerio Feris of IBM Research; and lab affiliates Hilde Kühne of the University of Bonn and Wei Lin of Graz University of Technology — is creating techniques to allow vision-language models to reason about what they’re seeing, and is designing prompts to unlock new learning abilities and understand key phrases.

Compositional reasoning is just another aspect of the decision-making process that we ask machine-learning models to perform in order for them to be helpful in real-world situations, explains Butoi. “You need to be able to think about problems compositionally and solve subtasks,” says Butoi, “like, if you’re saying the chair is to the left of the person, you need to recognize both the chair and the person. You need to understand directions.” And then once the model understands “left,” the research team wants the model to be able to answer other questions involving “left.”

Surprisingly, vision-language models do not reason well about composition, Butoi explains, but they can be helped to, using a model that can “lead the witness”, if you will. The team developed a model that was tweaked using a technique called low-rank adaptation of large language models (LoRA) and trained on an annotated dataset called Visual Genome, which has objects in an image and arrows denoting relationships, like directions. In this case, the trained LoRA model would be guided to say something about “left” relationships, and this caption output would then be used to provide context and prompt the vision-language model, making it a “significantly easier task,” says Butoi.

In the world of robotics, AI systems also engage with their surroundings using computer vision and language. The settings may range from warehouses to the home. Andi Peng and mentors MIT’s H.N. Slater Professor in Aeronautics and Astronautics Julie Shah and Chuang Gan, of the lab and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, are focusing on assisting people with physical constraints, using virtual worlds. For this, Peng’s group is developing two embodied AI models — a “human” that needs support and a helper agent — in a simulated environment called ThreeDWorld. Focusing on human/robot interactions, the team leverages semantic priors captured by large language models to aid the helper AI to infer what abilities the “human” agent might not be able to do and the motivation behind actions of the “human,” using natural language. The team’s looking to strengthen the helper’s sequential decision-making, bidirectional communication, ability to understand the physical scene, and how best to contribute.

“A lot of people think that AI programs should be autonomous, but I think that an important part of the process is that we build robots and systems for humans, and we want to convey human knowledge,” says Peng. “We don’t want a system to do something in a weird way; we want them to do it in a human way that we can understand.”

[jpitha]

Hidden Depths 11

Awakenings 1 2 3 4

Hidden Depths 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Once they were on board, Gord and Lucas donned space suits and jetted around Priority Express and Last Resort. Both ships had printed cradles and Gord supervised them coming together. Even though they were huge, both of the old Starjumpers had a very delicate touch. With only a small puff of dust, the two cradles came into contact, and the latches slammed shut.

"That should do it." Gord said over the radio. "Express, Resort, how does it feel?"

"I can't say I'm a fan of being bolted to someone else" Priority Express retorted. "But it's a solid connection. Good idea to add the data umbilicals Gord, it'll help Resort and I coordinate our drives."

"That's the idea yes. We'll also use it with Mt Greylock. I'm glad you both volunteered, I feel better about you two being able to share data with that old colony ship."

"Should be no problem Gord." Last Resort added. "I remember the colony ships. Other than being a little full of themselves, they were fine."

Gord chuckled. "Hah, yeah, they always did have an air of superiority about them didn't they. Okay, Lucas, how does it look to you?"

Lucas scanned the ships and cradles, now one unit. "It looks good to me Gord, did you design this cradle yourself? It's really well engineered."

"Nah, I took an existing design and modified it. Remember, all good artists steal!" With that, they both jetted back into Priority Express.

They took off their suits and got settled into their acceleration couches. AI bodies could take the punishing thrust for the 4 days required without damage, but if either of them took a fall, or tripped while under thrust they did run the risk of being hurt. Since their bodies didn't develop sores or injuries from being in one position too long, they just settled into acceleration couches and plugged themselves into the Ships.

As Gord and Lucas appeared next to Express and Resort in their shared mind space, Express looked concerned. "Gord, it looks like the Venusians are making their move. They just launched a brace of missiles towards Starbase and their frigates are moving in."

Gord nodded. "How does the defense look?"

Resort answered. "A huge old dropship just linked in and docked at Starbase, looks like they're called Abyssal Plains. They were on for only a moment and then linked away, and are currently screaming through the atmosphere of the Reach."

Ah, that must be Chloe's friend. I'm glad they were punctual. I've heard the name, but I can't say I remember much about them. Being they're a dropship and are still a dropship after all this time, I have a hunch I know the type though." Gord looked thoughtful. "Anything else?"

"Not much. I hope they can hold off the attack. Should we turn back?" Express sounded worried.

Gord shook his head. "No. Too much at stake. We're already bolted together and they haven't noticed us yet. As soon as we light the Stardrive, we'll become a huge target. That should drive some of the attackers off Starbase and onto us. I hoping they don't remember what a fools errand it is to attack a Starjumper on initial boost." Gord grinned. "In fact, let's move up the schedule. Express, Resort, you ready?"

"As ready as we'll ever be Gord." Resort answered. "I packed up my tchotchkes, and anything else that could break with all that thrust."

"You ask the crew to do it before they left?" Lucas asked?

"No, didn't want to worry them. I did it myself with remote operators." Most Starjumpers have a small contingent of remotely piloted robots that they can use if they need to do things on a human scale when they're empty.

"We're good over here too" Express said. "Gord, as acting AI in charge, do you want to authorize War Emergency Power?"

Gord rolled his eyes. "You know we do that just to make the BIs feel better. Just put the spurs to it and I'll trust you not to blow yourselves up."

"Aye aye Gord." Resort and Express said together. Lucas felt and heard the thrumming of the reactors become a higher pitched whine throughout the ship as they took off the limiters and removed fuses so they could boost higher than their rated power.

"Okay folks, let's not strain ourselves. Ramp up from 1gee to 18 over 30 minutes or so. No need to blast ourselves all at once. We're in a hurry, but that doesn't mean risking injury when we can avoid it." Gord looked at both of them. "Well? Go on, hop to it!"

When a Starjumper lights their Stardrive, it's a sight to see. All of the people in system were born long after the wormhole generators were developed and installed, so no biological sapient alive had seen a Stardrive being fired before.

Two of them bolted together had never been seen before, by anyone, anywhere.

Two parallel jets of pure white flame shot out the back of both of them, kilometers long. In the airless black of space, it was painfully bright.

That moment, everyone stopped what they were doing to watch. Over the open channel, the AIs in system started cheering. They immediately figured out what was going on and the Humans and K'laxi could hear their joy. The Humans on both sides and K'laxi were transfixed by the sight of the Starjumpers doing what they were designed to do one more time.

A minute passed, and the drive flame got longer and more ragged. As the thrust was increased past the design specifications, the flame became longer and more wild. Black tendrils appeared at the border between the white drive flame and space.

The spell over the Venusians broken, they tried to attack. Releasing a dozen missiles and firing their main batteries wildly, they tried to stop the retreating Starjumpers. Like Gord had anticipated, people had forgotten what happens when something touches the drive flame of the Starjumpers. One by one, the missiles evaporated in the withering power of the drive, the energy beams of the main batteries a mere whisper of heat against the power of the thrust pushing the two 4 kilometer ships into the interstellar deep.

Inside the ship watching the failed attack, Gord smiled.

Lucas looked at all of them worried. "This is really intense. Are we really going to be subjected to this for 4 days?"

The two Starjumpers and one former...everything belly laughed. "This is really your first out system thrust, isn't it?" Express said, still laughing. "Yes, this is how it will be the whole time." Gord said with a smile. Resort piped up "Don't forget, once we connect with Greylock, we have to all slow down too. 4 more days ass first back home."

Gord's face changed at that. "That one will be much more tricky. Nobody has tried to stop a colony ship early before. I'm pretty sure they can take the thrust, but it will trash the ship. They're going to need to be gone over with a fine toothed comb when this is all done."

"For sure" Express said. "Hell, we'll all need a thorough going over after this. It's really too bad the best Shipyards are around Earth still."

"Hmm" Gord said. "Yes, that is too bad, isn't it."

"Gord!" Lucas said. "You're not going to try and steal a shipyard are you?"

"Who me? Nah, not this time."

But his eyes sparkled.

****

Back on Starbase, everyone was watching. Picaresque had the idea to train the long range cameras on them, and piped the video onto everyone's pad. As they saw the missiles turn to dust and gas in their drive flame, the cheers could be heard throughout Starbase.

"Wow." Was all Fellmeli could manage.

"It's pretty amazing looking." James added.

She turned to face James. "That's how you traveled between the stars before the wormhole generators?"

"For a solid thousand years, yes." James said. "That's how we used to do it."

Fellmeli shook her head. She's known humans her whole life, lived with them here on the Starbase. She'd been friends with them, even been in relationships with them. Still, after all this time together, they had the ability to amaze.

"That's an insane way to travel. We never even tried it. Once we got to space, we found the Warp Gates and learned how to use them, and went that way."

"Sure, but we didn't have those." James said. "We thought - until we met you - that we were alone in the Galaxy. We did it our way, because we didn't even know there was another way."

Fellmeli flicked her tail, a nod.

"Actually, that makes me wonder." James said. "Did you ever figure out who built the Warp Gates? Clearly there was someone here before us. Who did it?"

"I don't think we know." Fellmeli said. "Starbase, do we know who built the Warp Gates?"

There was a pause. Starbase replied, strained. "Fellmeli...I can't answer that."

"What? It's okay to say we don't know if we don't." Fellmeli looked confused.

"No, it's not that...I can't answer it. The question..hurts?" Starbase said. "Thinking about it hurts. I think the information is forbidden."

Fellmeli looked up at the ceiling. When Starbase wasn't talking through a screen, people tended to assume they were "up" when talking to them. "You mean, we know but you're not allowed to say?"

In the mind space, outside of the conversation with Fellmeli and James Picaresque said "Do you want me to look?"

"You can do that?"

"I don't know, but I could try."

Starbase thought a moment. "Let's do it later...after all this is done. I don't want to risk damage or injury for just curiosity."

Picaresque nodded. "Later then."

Back to Fellmeli and James Starbase said "We're going to look into it later, but for now let's drop it until...all this...has been taken care of."

Fellmeli made a face but flicked her tail. "Okay. Later then."

"Thank you Fellmeli."

Part 12

[treestargarden]

wonder egg priority, episode 6, “punch-drunk day” analysis under the cut

tw: child sexual abuse, grooming, suicide mention, rape denial

the haters

these guys are freaky. akka claims they are created from the envy and spite the seeno evils feel against ai and the other girls for being “heroic.” i have a feeling these are meant to be metaphorically either people who want to obstruct healing or the thoughts in survivors heads that obstruct the healing. like a person vs self or person vs person plot device for conflict. 

akka says “you have done too much in this world that makes you noticeable.” ai and the other girls have been successful in their egg worlds that the enemies have “evolved” or leveled up to obstruct their success. its kinda of like the concept in therapy where it gets worse before it gets better, right? 

for instance, i can remember when i first started being honest about my childhood trauma with a previous therapist. i was definitely making leaps and bounds in recovery, but i hit a rough spot in the middle of my treatment where i didn’t sleep for days because i actually had several nightmares about a) dying and b) the person killing me was revealed. after getting through this tough time, i stopped having as many nightmares, but it was definitely an obstacle in my healing. i felt like... my assailant was reaching into my psyche and literally ripping my progress away. 

in a way, that’s what the haters are like. they see that ai and co. are getting progressively better with their wonder eggs, so the seeno evils have evolved to try to obstruct that progress. 

yae

yae opens up to ai, admitting she killed herself, because she sees too much. ai immediately compares this to the movie “the sixth sense,” to which yae admits frustration that nobody believes her (it isn’t a fantasy, so why would it be compared to a piece of fiction). 

yae’s killer manifests in a very similar fashion; ai is unable to sense the killer at all until its too late. but it isn’t until ai is directly attacked by the killer that she believes yae’s frustration, hurt, and trauma--she immediately recognizes the issue as similar to her own with mr. sawaki (which will be addressed next). the metaphor with this wonder egg girl is that when it comes to traumas or hurts that have happened to individuals, many people outside of those events tend to question the sanity (putting yae in a mental hospital) or disregard the survivor’s claims (momoe claiming mr. sawaki is a good person, simply because they are related). in some cases, survivors are only believed by survivors of the same prepetrator (why ai finally understands the hurt yae feels /after/ she is attacked by the invisible killer). 

what’s interesting about yae’s character is she is often seen finicking with her prayer beads (they look like jade). at one point, closer to the end of ai’s fight with the invisible wonder killer, yae throws her prayer beads at ai. as ai reaches out for the beads, the killer is visible. this can easily portray that sometimes our comforts (or coping mechanisms) are what makes our healing harder (i’ll go into more detail when i talk about mr. sawaki). BUT that these... “items” illustrating coping can be used by another person to aid in our own healing!

what i mean is that... consider yae’s beads as the cause of her seeing too much. because nobody else has her specific prayer beads, nobody else can see the things she has been traumatized by. but when she “offers” her beads to ai, ai can use them to see yae’s wonder killer! once she she’s the wonder killer, ai can kill them and save yae. 

essentially, what causes a survivor pain can be utilized by another person to assist a survivor in healing. 

mr. sawaki

god this part gets complicated. 

so momoe constantly tells ai mr. sawaki is a good man and that ai has it all wrong! they are constantly denying ai’s grief and pain and trauma. this is very similar to yae’s experience--people denying yae’s trauma existed in the first place, that she was crazy, or seeing what wasn’t actually there. 

if we recall, ai never specifically had a relationship with mr. sawaki other than him being the school counselor. there was a small scene in this episode, though, when he complimented ai’s eyes. i posit it was probably during an “art session” early on with ai. 

i felt... wronged... by neiru’s accusation that ai had a crush on mr. sawaki when she admitted she didn’t want her mom to date him. abusers can be charming, especially when they have been grooming a child. and it can be... confusing feeling soft towards a person even if you know what they are doing to you feels wrong. i’m not sure what else to say to this effect, so i’ll move onto my next point about ai and mr. sawaki. 

it was... really out of left field that ai decided to go back to school, even more out of left field that she decided to tell mr. sawaki about her decision. but then i gave the episode another watch before writing this all out. remember what i said about yae giving her bracelet that was causing her own hurt to ai so that ai could help yae?

basically, up to this point, ai’s coping mechanism has been to stay home from school. to avoid seeing mr. sawaki. but now that its a possibility that he will be dating ai’s mother, its a lot more... likely that ai would be seeing mr. sawaki more often at home than she would at school. he would visit her home once a week, but if he was dating ai’s mother... it could easily turn into more frequent visits for longer and more uncomfortable periods. 

ai probably recognizes this possibility, and so she decided to go back to school, where, yes, mr. sawaki works, but she may a) not have to see him the entire time or b) there will be people around when she does see him so it would be “safer.” 

its also possible that at school, she won’t be as isolated as she was at home, and can begin looking for help in other ways, too. i’m very interested to see where this goes. 

akka and ura-akka as game masters

so obviously the writers are familiar with madoka magica, right?

jokes aside, akka and ura-akka are very analagous to games masters. they aren’t competing themselves, but they do have a hand in the game. they provide the girls with a game to revive (so they say) their dead friends. they have the power to provide the girls with tips, “power-ups,” and other such tools while in their wonder egg worlds. 

basically, the 2 act as gods controlling the environment the girls interact with in the wonder egg worlds. its already been established that the akkas can shapeshift (very beginning when ai meets akka as a beetle). the mannequins are a... simple form they take on that is both human (in form) and inhuman (not alive). both familiar and unfamiliar. they create the wonder worlds based on each girls’ specifici experiences (familiar) and add fantasy and horror elements such as the bosses, the seeno evils, now the haters (unfamiliar). 

the akkas are definitely neutral in this scenario; constantly upping the ante for the girls, but also providing feedback and tools when they feel they need it. the akkas don’t necessarily wanna see the girls win, but they also don’t want to see the girls lose. basically, they just wanna see how far they can tests the girls’ wits, attitudes, problem-solving, persistance, etc. i’m not so sure, personally, the girls will get their friends back, i think its just a convenient lie to see how far they can push humans. 

[lookforthefuture49]

Yo!

I got a fanfiction, finally. I don't expect it to be read much here, but here are the links to fanfiction.net and Ao3 pages for it respectively:

Ao3

Fanfiction.net

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13947355/1/Universal-Wars-aren-t-fun

Ok now I can paste it.

Enjoy <3

[Note: this story is only to be on Archive of Our Own/Fanfiction.net under the username DoubleKKookie and on Tumblr under the username Retrooutlaw. IF YOU SEE IT ANYWHERE ELSE, PLEASE SHOOT ME A PM! This is also kinda meant for funsies, obviously.]

Note note: half created by AI Dungeon. Yay for Ai Generated fanfiction lol

[Universal wars aren't fun//1//Battlegrounds]

Izuku's hair ruffled in the wind, the view of a crumbling city crossing his vision. It was odd, how one minute the world was peaceful, and the next an inter-dimensional war decided to happen. During this war of many universes, most of his world was ravaged. Izuku figured he would probably be safe, at least for now. His world might be a battleground, but he wasn't in the midst of the fight. He wouldn't hurt people from other worlds just because some of their worst villains wanted to attack other places. In fact, Izuku just wanted an excuse to help these new people, to stop their worlds from being ruined too. His plan was to travel between the worlds.

Except, all he got was a dazed sense of incompleteness as the world around him seemed to flicker. For a moment, it seemed as if he were home again visiting his mother over a break, excited to see what his friends did. He could feel a couple of tears form, but of happiness, of joy. However, just as quickly as this flicker came, it left, and he came to the realization he was just remembering the past, that he was still alone in the forest, and that seemed to worsen his sad state.

Izuku turned and took a few steps. He had to get moving, and he had to get moving now. He didn't quite know where he was going, but he knew it was far from his home. All he knew was that he had to keep moving, and find a new reason to fight. So, Izuku decided to just keep walking. He made his way through the forest, dodging branches and occasional bokoblins.

Bokoblins were odd, as he'd never seen them before the inter-universal war began. They hadn't even kinda existed in his world, but now he felt like he was fending the creatures off every other step. He never attacked them, but it seemed like he was constantly running from them, even if they were obviously weak.

This rural area he'd found himself in looked to be nearly untouched by the war. Still, there was this odd sense of unease, and Izuku felt like he was being watched. Like he was being watched every step of the way.

Fearful of this feeling of a watchful eye burning a hole into his back, he began to speed up, getting to the point of running. Running as far as he could, as fast as he could.

The more he ran, the faster he felt himself becoming. He couldn't tell what time of day it was, but he knew that it had to be night.

He ran for what felt like an eternity before stopping, legs buckling under him

He fell to the ground, trying not to cry out. He stood back up, deciding if he was going to be upset about a stupid war, he was gonna do it where it was safe, so he stumbled away from the wide open area he was in, and eventually found a flat-topped building, which he entered before reaching the roof and staring out at the more rural area he had found himself in. What modern building were there, such as this one, were overrun with vines and ivy.

He sat down on the roof and wrapped his arms around his knees, finally letting everything soak in. This situation was garbage. He'd been left behind by the civilians who escaped, he had no idea where his friends were, and he had no way of contacting any heroes or any of his peers to come to his aid.

Izuku didn't want to think about the possibility that they were all dead, but looking at the modern buildings being overtaken like this one, he couldn't help but think such a thing. If the entire town was this destroyed, how on earth could THEY be ok?

He didn't understand how something so bad could happen. How the world could ever go back to normal after what was happening right now, Izuku didn't know. But, all he could do now was try to help, and help he would. The moment he saw a portal open, it was his door to purpose, to other people, whoever they were.

He didn't care what world he stepped into. He didn't care if he died, he just wanted to make a difference. It was no longer about this world, about him, or any of the pro-heroes he once loved. Now, if it meant death, he'd stop this war. He decided right then and there he'd do it for his friends, for his family, for All Might, and for whoever he met on the other side of the portal he was adamant on finding.

He wouldn't fail. Lifting his arms from his legs, he rested his face against his knees and took a deep breath. He lifted his head up, staring to the sky.

"I promise, I'll save everyone. No matter what."

...

Izuku sat on that roof for several more minutes before deciding to resume his search. He stood up, left the roof, and began to walk again- until he heard something. Multiple people, a fair distance away behind him. Judging from what he was hearing of the conversation, they hadn't noticed him yet, and were rather focused on someone who sounded distressed and wanted to get away from them. He hid behind the building as the group of people came into sight, listening into their conversation closely.

"LET ME GO!" He heard peirce the air, and when he could see the group, he noted the man who yelled it was being dragged by the arms by two other people, and this man also looked.. unexplainably odd. His appearance didn't matter now, though. What was important was the predicament he was in.

"Would you just put me down already!?" He snapped again.

His supposed captors looked even angrier than they had initially.

"Our leader says that's not allowed, bucko." One of the two people holding him said. His voice was gruff and southern.

He had a goatee and his hair was slicked back. The other one was female, model-esque.

She had long, curly blonde hair, calm blue eyes and slick red lipstick, which was weird for someone to be wearing in this kind of situation.

"Our orders are very clear. Boss wants you."

"I DON'T KNOW WHO YOUR STUPID BOSS IS BUT I CAN ASSURE YOU-"

The southern-sounding captor pulled a lighter from his pocket, and with it lit, rammed it into the torso of the man. He let out a blood-curdling scream and then didn't say another word afterwards. he, nor his clothes, had caught on fire, oddly enough. The southern guy snarled at the man. Izuku wasn't entirely sure who was good or bad in this situation, but he was irked by the entire scene. The only hard part was deciphering if the one who was captured by these two was good or bad, as saving a villain in the midst of a crazy war would be pretty counter-productive. From the way this man's captors were talking, however, he figured he was either a hero like him, or just in the moral gray trying to stay out of things.

Taking a risk, he stepped out from the shadows...

"Stop!" He yelled at the top of his lungs. They turned to look at him, and their eyes went wide.

He pointed at the man. "You two! Release him right now!"

"What do you think you're doing?" The southern one hissed angrily. "This is none of your business, kid! Go back to where you came from!"

His eyes flicked to the man, who seemed to be either knocked out or unresponsive, as he hadn't even twitched when Izuku shouted in his general direction.

"I don't care! He's being mistreated! I won't stand for it!"

The model (At least, Izuku assumed she was a model) whisper-hissed something at her comrade, who just scowled and shook his head. The two started arguing in hushed voices, as the man they dragged here was now beginning to stir.

When he did open his eyes, fear was clear in them immediately, probably thinking the glare Izuku was directing at his enemies was for him. He calmed after a moment, however. The pair seemed bugged but opted to leave without the man now that they'd been found by someone else. (Maybe that's what they were arguing about) They dropped the man harshly, although he didn't seem to be bothered by this at all. He seemed more bothered by the burn mark just below his chest, which, while small, seemed to be quite painful. It was hard for Izuku to gauge what the man was feeling, though, since he looked dead. Not just figuratively, but quite literally rotten and dead. It was strange, but Izuku decided not to question it, for that wouldn't help either of their situations. He instead walked up to the man, hoping to maybe initiate a conversation.

"Hey, um..." Izuku wasn't really sure what to say to him. He didn't know his name, for one.

The other was that he looked like he'd been through hell and back. He had a multitude of scars, both old and new, on his face and body. They were either dark purple, black, or was a hole, which revealed an empty vessel underneath. In fact, his entire complexion was purple, which struck Izuku as off. Any normal person, quirk or not, definitely was not supposed to be dead and purple.

"Are you alright?" Izuku decided to start with. Simple enough.

"Yeah, I'm perfectly fine." (That comment definitely didn't pan out, but Izuku didn't know his life. Maybe this was normal.) Izuku noted a prominent British accent, one he hadn't noticed while the man was shouting angrily, which was odd, because he probably should have. Taking a closer look at him, the strange man was thin, mangy, and also lacked hair. His pupils were glowing, which also really was strange, and the whites of his eyes were now, instead, pitch black. It was somewhat unsettling, but Izuku tried not to think much of it.

"What was all that about?"

"Frankly, I dunno. One minute everything was normal and I was sitting at home, and the next those two were dragging me along to their 'boss'." He replied.

"I tried to get away, but it wasn't exactly easy. I kinda miss having muscles." He said this in a very nonchalant way, shrugging. Evidently, this man was missing vital body parts, who knows how many, and he was acting like it was completely fine.

"I... see," Izuku said, though he wasn't sure what else to say.

"So, what about you, kid? What's your name?"

"Izuku. Call me Deku, please." He stuck out a hand.

"Michael." The other shook his hand, and Izuku noted that he felt no bones in his hand, like it wasn't solid. It was strange, completely empty. "Uhm, do you know what's been going on lately?"

Michael did not reply immediately. "I dunno, something about some war? It didn't seem to pertain to me until I was dragged into a different world entirely, but feel free to explain."

"All I'm really sure of right now is that there is an Inter-Universal War going on right now, and I want it to end. Mostly because it's left my home a wreck, and I don't want that to happen to anybody else's."

Michael nodded in understanding.

"I can appreciate your feelings on the matter."

...

"How long have you been here?"

"Probably only a little over 2 hours."

Izuku had given Michael the choice to stick with him or go off on his own, and, not knowing what else to do, he agreed. Now they walked aimlessly as Izuku tried to explain a bit about what his world used to be like, and just make small talk. Izuku had decided the moment Michael agreed to tag along that he would not question his purple complexion or the lack of internal structure. It seemed like it might be rude, or bring back bad memories if he said the wrong thing, and he didn't want to cause that.

"I see."

They continued in silence for about an hour, before Michael spoke up again.

"I think I prefer this place over my home, truth be told."

Izuku was a little surprised that he would say something so out of nowhere. "Why?" He asked.

"I could go on for days about the terrible things that happened there." Michael sighed. "I don't particularly like dwelling on the past, so I tried to block it out. But here, it's all right. Even the atmosphere feels less oppressive, even if it's obviously still chaotic here."

Izuku frowned. "That's a pretty deep feeling to come up with so suddenly.

"I've had plenty of time to think, and this is the only conclusion I've come to."

...

The night took a long time to come, and Izuku still could find no portals, nor salvation in another world. He would have to wait another day. The pair sat down, and Izuku found himself falling asleep quite quickly...

It seemed like only seconds had passed when he felt something pulling him back to reality. He opened his eyes, and saw that the sky was beginning to turn pink.

"Get up." Michael whispered.

Izuku squinted, kind of annoyed. "Why?" He whispered back.

"I hear a large group of people coming, and I don't want to risk anything."

"Alright." Izuku nodded.

He stood up, as quietly as he could, and stretched, yawning. He was about to head off when he heard the sounds of many feet marching nearby. They were getting closer every second. He halted said stretching, and opted to climb up a tree. Michael made an attempt to hide, slipping behind a tree, but he was pretty easy to spot if one simply looked a little.

Izuku looked down at the group of men, as they marched by. His only question was why they were marching along together like this, and here of all things. They almost looked like soldiers, marching along with random weapons in hand. They were of varying species, although Izuku did not pay mind to this. When they passed and were far enough, Izuku leaped down and gestured for Michael to follow him as they tailed the group to see where they were going.

"What is this?" He hissed. They were headed towards a large open area. The group marched on, keeping pace, until they were they were the size of ants in distance. Izuku looked out to the open, treeless plains ahead. It took a minute to click in his mind, and he realized as Michael caught up what the plains were.

They were in the midst of a battlefield.

That's a wrap :D

[taurus-official]

My partner was drawing fanart for a show they like. I overanalyzed it. They wanted me to share. This post is very long.

The show is called Bolts and Blip. It was made in 2010, and ran just one season into 2011. The initial premise I was told was that robots competed in sports on the moon to solve disputes that happened on earth.

Initially I thought this was an odd way for democracy to operate, but hey, I don’t make decisions for the government, so moon robot sports is how things were. 

This intrigued me for a few reasons, such as 

It takes place in a post-war era of “world peace”, in approximately 2080. Judging how things are going now, I find the concept of 2080 being after a world war very believable. 

There was seemingly one democracy on earth now, and that democracy decided unanimously to settle all further disputes via moon robot sports, as stated.

Humanity was technologically advanced enough at this point to not only create robots that could play sports, but they played these sports in a large city on the moon!

My initial question was this: Do we know who built the robots?

Yes of course, its common knowledge on the moon. Just two scientists are responsible for all the robotic life on the moon, creating a number of robots in the ballpark in the thousands. This is a lot of moon robots. 

There is a need for so much raw material to create even a thousand robots, enough for a civilization, NOT TO MENTION the massive city they all inhabit. Where they probably don’t get new shipments of materials on the reg, this would mean the scientists could continue making more until they ran out of resources.

However, besides these main robots, one of the scientists also created a race of at least 100 robot leprechauns living under the ground. Or, at least... One of the leprechauns. 

Then, allegedly, this one robot created more than a hundred more. I do not know when the first robot leprechaun was created, but I fear for the safety of the human race if there was any interplanetoid travel between the earth and the moon while they existed.

The resources sent to the moon for the purposes of making robots would be very finite. Thus, if these scientists created the robot leprechauns before they had used the resources up, the leprechauns could apparently self replicate using the materials on the moon. This is how there became more than a hundred of them. 

This may not be the case, but if a single one of the sublunarean self replicating leprechaun robots happened to board a spaceship that was heading for Earth... With a near infinite supply of resources, enough to spare on moon robot sports, the number of leprechaun robots would quickly grow. The earths infrastructure could be at risk. I’m talking sinkholes that are miles wide. Why?

Because the leprechauns were programmed and built for the moons gravity. The leprechauns create more of themselves on earth, as many as they are able to, but are still programmed for the moons gravitational density. The Earth is much heavier, and when the build their subterranean halls, they would not know that our planets density is more prone to collapse. Catastrophe.

But even that is purely conjecture, because Earth is never once seen in the show. Let me get back to what we know.

The leprechaun robots, as well as the main race of robots were all created by one man. Dr. Tommy, colloquially known as the ‘good’ scientist. The ‘bad’ scientist is called Dr. Blood, which is a kickass name 7 days a week. I will explain why there are ONLY two humans on the moon shortly.

The primary species of robots that Dr. Tommy makes participate in team based sports, interpersonal relationships, jokes, goofs, and gambits. The concept of Artificial Intelligence making jokes, playing sports, and creating bonds is not unheard of, or at least, it might not be in 2080. However, my next questions make me think these robots were not AI. My questions were:

Do the robots have the concept of death?

Do the robots ever say the word ‘heck’?

To both of these, the answer was a horrifying yes. 

Yes, it is confirmed, that robots on the moon say heck. The implications of this are astronomical. I will spell it out thoroughly because lockdown has given me endless time with which I can do as I please.

Heck is, of course, derived from the word hell. Hell is the counterpart to heaven, both terms used to signify the existence of an afterlife. Where there is the word heck, there are beings that believe in the afterlife. 

These robots have souls.

The circumstances in which these robots die, which they are entirely able to do because of their soul, is such: The Reformatter. To simplify, the Reformatter grinds the entirety of the robots body to scrap, which it then melts together to make household appliances. This is what happens to robots who are not ‘good enough’ in society. 

What the nightmarish fuck.

Not only do the souls of the robots face heaven and hell, they also face being reformatted to become the brave little toaster if they do not serve their society.

Their society which is made by one human

Let me emphasize this; they treat him like he is unto a god. How can they not? He created them, their world. He is their father, their everything. They even built a statue of him, holding an enormous double sided wrench which is clearly symbolic to remind them. 

Dr. Tommy gives life, and it can be taken away.

The method of which he gives life is a puzzlement to me. I am told that our dear Dr. Tommy refers to a robots as having a ‘Heart’. This Heart is described to me as a magical piece of leprechaun gold, so the robots are able to feel. 

The robot Heart is likely a simplification. The show is advertised as a Family show, and must cater to the understanding of all ages, including small children. Breaching the topic of souls, mortality, and the afterlife likely wasn’t something the writers or creator were able to do. My theory is, the Heart is a future technology that can instill a soul into a robotic body, 

Which, wow. Big, if true. At first I was boggling at the concept of manufactured souls being a technology that humanity could see in my lifetime, but then I remembered one of the three key pieces of knowledge I was initially given.

“It takes place in a post-war era of “world peace”"

....Throughout human history, one social class is legally subjected to inhumane treatment; Prisoners. Once you are in jail, internment camps, concentration camps, those that are keeping you there believe you have less rights as a person. Medical experimentation, slavery, abuse, forced sterilization, nothing is illegal. 

And after a war like the doozy Earth must’ve recently went through, there must be a lot of war criminals. Those that were so engulfed in carnage and bloodshed, there was no way for them to reenter society. The newly forming singular government, if they had access to the necessary technology, may have used it on these criminals.

Think about it. The dust settles from an all out world war. There cannot be peace without someone to shoulder the blame of the atrocities. There must be an evil, if there is to be peace. So, the individuals who excelled in war and killing became the reason there was war and killing. These people are now less than human for what they’ve done. They can be treated as such.

I think this is when their souls were taken. As each warrior passed, their spirit was caught and kept. And then, in a classic move from 1788-1868, they transported all the criminals to somewhere they would never harm humanity again. Somewhere out of the way, remote, and it was the moon. You knew where this was going, they sent all the souls to the moon.

Along with a large amount of other people! The two scientists certainly did not build an entire moon colony on their own, and at this point, the robots were not even in production yet. The moon colony was made, and then the scientists began their work.

Starting with the leprechauns, who I believe were not made from the souls of war criminals. The first one may have been another scientist, the one responsible for creating the ‘Hearts’ in the first place. This is why that one knows how to create more of itself. 

Then, the robots were made. There would have been a prototype, but let me focus on what the show covers for a bit.

The sports that these robots engage in is between two existing teams, complete with names, colors, and esprit d’corps. These games vary from episode to episode, some involving hang gliders, some with miniature fighter jets, some involve a battle with guns... that squirt water. The logic there is that if they are hit with the water, they rust and die. Which, okay. Right.

But a lot of the games and sports they play seem to be quite combat based. Furthermore, the robots seem to take to them naturally. 

Not to mention, there are bomb mice and big laser guns as well. These robots are armed. Why the hell are these robots armed? Who thought it was a good idea? After all, these robots are clearly capable of malice still. Why wouldn’t they simply turn violent against the humans?

I think they did. Here’s my theory of how it went down.

Dr. Tommy begins using the souls of war criminals in a prototype of robot

The robots can recall their life on earth as humans, but are now trapped in metal vessels because their bodies have been destroyed

The robots begin reacting to the existential nightmare of being soul trapped

Some despair and destroy themselves

Some are enraged and destroy humans

Most of them, actually

Most of them turn their wrath against humans

The people who inhabited the moon, who created the cities, were suddenly under attack by the most skilled killers around.

This is when Dr. Tommy hits the kill switch for these robots. They are recycled, and maybe he even collected the souls again but maybe Dr. Blood took those ones.

These happenings left only two humans left on the moon. Dr. Tommy began making a new version of robots, who’s souls could not remember their time on Earth. Perhaps, in taking away everything about their humanity, he gave them the most innocence of anyone. 

These robots now know that

Dr. Tommy is good, for he created them

They must contribute to the society Dr. Tommy has made for them

If they fail to do so, they will not only die, but go to hell

Dr. Tommy is the good scientist. He doesn’t want the robots to be used for evil, he doesn’t want them to hate each other. Not like that Dr. Blood, who encourages these robots who have no memory of who they were before and might be able to unlock those memories to become more warlike.

However, look at what Dr. Tommy makes them do. The robots are still using their combat knowledge, independently of their memories of war on Earth. Their knowledge is being honed and enhanced, while the repercussions of their actions are not something they are privvy to. But, Dr. Tommy is the good scientist. The robots know this, because he said so. 

Or because they will be obliterated and condemned if they go against his word.

It is also worth noting that the good doctor also usually lives remote from his creations, in a little space shuttle. 

In conclusion. I believe Dr. Tommy is knowingly creating an army of supercombatant robots, imbued with the souls of the most bloodthirsty war criminals, that will do his every will. He intentionally killed every human on the moon colony that he could. I fear what this will mean for the future Earth of this show. 

Final notes:

These robots, once their souls memory was wiped clean, would have no gender. Gender is a construct originally created to indicate what a persons sex characteristics were. Not only is that a spectrum on humans, but robots would not be given any such characteristics, nor would the concept of gender transfer over. All the characters seem to perscribe gender to themselves though, which was not something they were given at their ‘birth’. This makes none of them are cisgender, so every robot in the show is transgender. 

Further cementing my belief that Dr. Tommy made these robots for combat is that at LEAST the main characters have “super” modes, where they become even more powerful and capable of succeeding in combat. What’s the hyper-killing mode for, Dr. Tommy? What’s it for?

The humans that were killed on the moon are still somewhere, probably frozen? One joke alluded to the characters being able to purchase human body parts (a stomach) in the run of their average day. Its very possible that the human anatomy is being extensively studied by the robots. Whether this is for medical purposes, or to more accurately kill humans, or to satisfy their innate bloodlust, I do not know.

I am also told that at the end of the only season, a space ship that is also a school bus arrives on the moon! It is full of children. Which. Oh god oh no. 

I understand this turned into a grimdark internet theory of a cartoon. I also believe that, without the ability to think critically, we will never be able to come to rue understanding of our own nature. It is still a cartoon. My thoughts and words should be taken with a singular grain of salt, because I am a human who is often wrong. That being said, Andrew Knight, if you ever read this, let me know what you think. 

[fantranslatorbychoice]

Kakuriyo no Yadomeshi Volume 6 Chapter 1

T/N: I mostly didn’t translate a lot of the names of the ayakashi/youkai, as well as the proper nouns because uhm... They’re basically nouns. It’s like how some translated manga are done. Plus it irks me sometimes when everything just gets transliterated, it kills off the vibe. But that’s just me. Links to references at the end of the post.

Also if you like this translation, you can share the link, reblog, but for pete’s sake DO NOT REPOST ELSEWHERE. I worked hard to finish this thing, it’s not like I just Google-translated this whole sh**..

If you need refreshers on what happened, @kakuriyo-translations​ already had the previous translations. I’m just contributing to this fandom. Also, as previously mentioned in my other post, the 2 seasons of the anime cover volumes 1-5, so if you need a review just rewatch them all. Volume 6 starts here.

OK, here’s the stuff now.

Volume 6 - I got hired as a novice in an Ayakashi Inn** From the back cover: Autumn has visited the Ayakashi living in Kakuriyo's long-established inn Tenjin-ya. Aoi who was kidnapped by the rival inn Orio-ya, finally ended through her cooking the hardships of, and cleared the curse of the Southern Lands. Returning home victoriously, what awaits this lady are her friends in Tenjin-ya, the warmth, and the everyday busy-ness! While thinking of new souvenir products and preparing and pushing for the Autumn Festival, she reopens her Japanese Restaurant "Yugao". That time, she was invited by Odanna-sama to a fruit orchard date. Surely him always inviting her out never changed, as time after the Orio-ya incident passes her by, is she realizing that she's starting to think that she wants to know more about Odanna-sama...?

From the inside front jacket: Yuuma Midori (Author)A citizen from Fukuoka. Her debut publication published by Alpha Police: Marrying my wife is a dangerous circumstance with a giant demonic beast. Changing her pen-name after that, she published Kakuriyo no Yadomeshi, I married into an Ayakashi Inn. Currently  Fujimi Bun-ko's big hit, and is now an illustrated series released by B-s LOG COMICS.

Character introduction page Tenjin-ya: An old-established place in North-eastern Kakuriyo, where Ayakashi dwell. Under the Ogre-god's (Onigami) leadership, many visiting Ayakashi helped it flourish, although sometimes humans make visits too. Odanna-sama: Master of Kakuriyo's Tenjin-ya, an Onigami respected by many Ayakashi. Even though Aoi should be wedded to him, his true intentions are currently unknown, as he watches the lady's speech and behavior. Tsubaki Aoi: College student who was whisked away against her own will in order to pay for her grandfather's debt in Tenjin-ya. Refusing Odanna-sama's marriage proposal, with her talents in cooking she manages her own Japanese restaurant, Yugao.

T/N: The volume title is a pun, it can go like "a new hire gets into an ayakashi inn" or "newly-harvested rice enters the ayakashi inn". No complaints though, but I won't spoil anything lol

Kakuriyo no Yadomeshi Volume 6, Chapter 1: Autumn's Newly-harvested Rice's** Accompaniment P5 "Aoi-san! We're already at our limit!" "Gah, so far, today...." That was in the last days of September in Yugao. I, Tsubaki Aoi, scrunching my face in vexation, took a peep in the refrigerator with hardly any ingredients left. Confronting and attacking the food rations altogether, it seems that they're now all gone. I wonder if in today's opening, will the incoming guests ever cease?

Lately, Yugao's business has been spectacular all over, it has been a very, very busy time. On days when there are so many customers, when the ingredients are all used up midway, the restaurant has to close shop early, and while we're preparing so many ingredients before reopening again, on those days that we have to regulate incoming customers, not many come in and the restaurant becomes bare of people, controlling the number of incoming guests is difficult. I wonder what I'll do if it's just me doing everything inside the restaurant, and I feel like I'm already at my limit... "That matter at Orio-ya, the thing about the ceremony and all the different things have been dramatized and turned upside-down in so many ways, it has become Kakuriyo's hot topic. Aoi-san has become something that livened-up the world, and Ayakashi have been interested and drawn to you, haven't they? Even Yugao has become famous..."

T/N: It's frustrating to translate the term for newly-harvested rice. Coming from a rice-eating culture like Japan and the rest of Asia, it's easy to categorize all stages of rice because there are words that exist for that. Like they say, languages are shaped by the needs of the users. Unfortunately, English has none of those so yeah, from here on end I'll be using the term newly-harvested rice here because to be honest, it tastes a lot better than rice stocked for a long time. That one tastes dry and bland even when cooked, while newly-harvested rice smells fragrant, has a soft texture, and just doesn't taste moldy lol

P6 While on a short break from cleaning up and arranging the place after business hours, Ginji-san and I were eating dried persimmons given to us by a customer as we sat on the counters while sipping tea. "Ginji-san, you were keenly saying that, but I wasn't intending on making a ruckus in Kakuriyo." "Yes, I understand. Ayakashi have been noticing, in their own ways... Thanks to Yugao, our business is booming!" Ginji-san's tired face turned and changed into a very happy one, meanwhile I was getting anxious. As someone who is burdened with a debt I am happy that the restaurant is flourishing, even though the place is getting better overall, there are many hindrances coming out with regards to cooking, and in spite of our efforts, I still feel bad for the customers that come in. Ah, but unrelated to that, this dried persimmon tastes really good. It's center is soft and moist, and sweet, yet a faint aftertaste of the puckery seed still remains, but I love that taste. Even if the people that I hated then are that much, a lot of Grandpa's treasured food makes me yearn for the good old days. "Very soon, Yugao will need to hire new employees, don't you think so?" "New employees? Really? Well, if it's just Ginji-san and I, it's already impossible..." I agreed with Ginji-san's suggestion. Ever since we opened, the two of us had been giving our all. To put it in words, we need someone other than Ginji-san to be designated with a job post. All the more that I think Yugao needs a new staff. "Since it seems that Aoi-san is concentrating on making the dishes, you might want the new staff to bear the task of receiving guests. P7 Would you like to try putting up a "Now Hiring" sign in Tenjin-ya's announcement board?" "I wonder who would come to apply?" What kind of brand-new staff will we hire? "Aoi-sama, you're cruel!" Instantly, from the pendant that contains ogre-fire, popped out Ai-chan. She looks like me, but her cheeks were swelling with annoyance. "Why, you call me your family, and at the same time hire me as your employee! If that's the case, tell me what to do!" "Well now, Ai-chan is very eager to work?" "You haven't spoken to me in a very long time..." Is that so? I tried to recall. When I called Ai-chan out to learn about the basics of cooking, that time she went out and played with Chibi. I think Ai-chan is still an Ayakashi child, and she still haven't got the idea on what it means to be an employee. "But Ai-chan, if you feel sleepy, you can't return to the pendant. Also, on top of that, it would be weird when there's two of us working here at Yugao..." Ginji-san looked at Ai-chan and I. P8 I wonder what he thinks of us having similar faces. "Oh, that, uhm... Aoi-san is most concerned about Ai-chan, and it is that you would want to work, but I think it's surely awkward when there is someone that looks like Aoi-san, won't it?" "Wh.. Why is that...? Young master-sama, I want to work too..." Ai-chan begged earnestly to Ginji-san with her teary eyes. My face tells it all, and Ginji-san also sees that it can turn into a crazy situation, and we stuttered. "Uhm, that's... That is..." Her eyes started swimming in tears. "But we could cause confusion with the customers. They'll think Ai-chan is me, and I am Ai-chan..." "I'm definitely sure that can happen... This is not related to Yugao's business operations, but it's possible that I can swap places with a family who looks like me, but really you are a precious being. With that, won't it be better to hide?" "Really?" "Yes... If my look-alike and I were both working in here, we may have a trump card,but evil people may take advantage of that too. Because of that, Ai-chan who can do things must hide in her favorite place..." Ginji-san glimpsed at teary-eyed Ai-chan who was biting her lower lip like a child and scratching her forehead. P9 "In order for Ai-chan to work in this restaurant, there are two conditions, OK? One, when you're in duty, you can't go to sleep. The other is that you have to change your appearance into someone else's." "Someone else's appearance..." Ai-chan and I huddled and titled our heads. The thing about not sleeping is reasonable and understandable. "About that, how do I change into someone else?" "I'm sorry. That's something that you must learn on your own. Be original, OK?" "O..ri...gi..nal..?" It seems that Ai-chan doesn't understand what that means. "Well, let's see. Let's use Tokihiko-san from Orio-ya as an example.** In the beginning, that person was just made up of many little Youkai flames**, but right now he can't change into anything else, he can only change into the shape he already has. If you change your appearance into someone else, if you change it to look like me, that's a whole different level, but Ai-chan is still a child, I wonder if she can understand?" But Ai-chan yells "I'll do it!" and raises her hand in proclamation. "I'll do my best in making my own appearance!" "Wooooowwww..." Ginji-san and I lightly clapped our hands for Ai-chan who was in high spirits.

T/N: In Volume 3, where Shizuna and Tokihiko meet again, like the episodes before the Orio-ya arc, it was briefly explained that ayakashi are formed from objects, when the consciousness enters the objects and make them sentient. I’ll probably translate that once I finished volumes 6-10, or maybe not. P10 "But because it's sleepy-time, I'll go back to the pendant!" "Whaaat." She immediately returned into ogre-fire, and Ai-chan hid back into the pendant in my bosom. The pendant's flickering light makes it seem like Ai-chan was sleeping and snoozing peacefully inside. "She seems serious, about the whole 'What appearance should I make' thing." "As soon as she wanted to slep, she already entered a new period of growth. In just a short time, I think she's already like an Ayakashi that stays awake late at night... It's because Ayakashi by nature don't sleep that much." "It's not like that, it's just that employes and everyone else just have short sleeping schedules. It's toxic**, it's something I thought of, but it's not really like that..." "No, it's not something like that. It's because Tenjin-ya also considerably receives nice wholesome** citizens of Kakuriyo. And that is why it's always very busy." "What, wait, doesn't that make it mixed**?" Well, whatever, I only sleep 10 minutes everyday, and even though it's a rest day tomorrow, it's not a problem for me. And for sure, when that busy day comes, I'd be very happy to receive Ai-chan's help. Whatever that child's appearance would make, I'll be looking forward to it.

T/N: the original words used were BLACK, WHITE, and GRAY. Black is considered to be the dark side of things aka toxic workplaces, White is the usual nice and wholesome facade, and the Gray was just inserted to complete the pun because in color theory thingy, BLACK+WHITE=GRAY. But that's just me lol You have been warned that this light novel uses a lot of puns P11 "Aoi--- Fooooood---" "Oh, that person's here." That person, is that Yuki-onna. Always, after Yugao's business hours, it's always the same, she always comes, the former Young Mistress but is now the waitress O-ryo. "Now's not a good time, O-ryo. There's none already." "Waaait, again? No rice? Even the rice is gone too?" "Even if I cook the rice, that's just it. Tomorrow is Yugao's rest day, and there aren't any excess ingredients here." "Then as long as there's rice that can be cooked, it's fine. I really love rice. Newly-harvested rice** is the most delicious, isn't it?" If that's the case, then there's nothing else to eat here, Ginji-san and I whispered to each other. But O-ryo just invited herself in the counters, and I had no choice but to stand up and start preparing to cook the rice. Just as O-ryo said, it's already the season of delicious rice. Especially in the land of Ogre's Gate, the rice brand "Onihonoka" is a famous specialty and souvenir, harvested either in the last days of August to the first days of September, polished immediately after harvest and is now back in the market. P12 But, if we use newly-harvested rice here in Yugao, it's distinct grains that contain a lot of moisture can really rake in the positive points. When cooking rice it is common that the little water added will decrease as it cooks, and it tastes all the more better. I wonder if O-ryo can wait for 30 minutes as the rice gets soaked.** "Wait, O-ryo sama!" The next one who came in was that horse chestnut girl, with her signature Tanuki ears and the round, fluffy tail. It was Tenjin-ya's lower-ranking waitress, Kasuga. "We thought we lost the bottle opener at the banquet hall. O-ryo sama, when your duties ended you immediately went to Yugao, and our new-hired waiters and waitresses had to search here and there. I was about to do some deliveries but I had to take charge of our newbies." "Oh, really? Kasuga, why didn't you just remember to let your juniors do it?" "But it's O-ryo sama's fault. All of the juniors and everyone has been doing their best here." "Oh, fine, there, there. Kasuga, you're also giving it your all, OK?" Whether it's because she's tired or she just deemed the answer was acceptable and ran away with it, Kasuga just allowed O-ryo to roughly pat her head. And when the bottle opener that had a bell made out of ice was produced, Kasuga immediately stuck it inside her obi. When the bell chimed, a clear tinkling sound echoed. "Isn't that ice bell lovely?"

T/N: Hot tip, if you're cooking rice, not the instant kind, if you want a less fussy method just soak it for at least 30 minutes before boiling it, it makes it cook faster, especially when the rice is long-grain, brown or colored rice, or the dry grained ones that are better for fried rice because the grains don't stick together. P13 "Yes. I won't give it to you, Kasuga." "I don't have a need for it, and for that reason it's not an important conversation." Kasuga sighed with a dumbfounded expression. In this situation I don't know who's the senior and who's the underling. "Oh, by the way, Young Master-sama, Odanna-sama calls for you." "Wah, is that so, Kasuga-san? Oh, it's probably the matter about the Autumn Festival. Aoi-san, I have to go to the main building for a bit, ok?" "Yes, thank you for your hard work, Ginji-san." Ginji-san's head bobbed as he bowed, and with a quick pace left Yugao. "Kasuga, even today you were asked to do a lot of things here and there, weren't you?" "Yeah, that's true. Everyone was telling me to go here and run over there. Oh well, I'll get used to it somehow." Kasuga meekly and quietly sat beside were O-ryo was sitting. Did this girl also went here to eat some newly-harvested rice? "Aoi--- Is it done? I'm hungry-- Isn't Kakuriyo's pot cooking fast enough?" "Whaaat. Please wait a bit more, O-ryo. Because it's newly-harvested rice, I only had it soaked for a bit." "Ehhh... That's already fine. Whether it gets cooked or not, because I'm hungry." P14 I wanted to choose the best way to cook the newly-harvested rice, so I could relish its delicious taste, but I wonder if I just lost to O-ryo's explanation just like this while the rice was cooking. She seems to be already at the limit of her patience, and she started to violently beat the counters. "Aoi--- Aoi--- Rice! Let me eat rice!" "Hold it there, big woman baby! Stop beating the counters, or else it will fall apart." My table.. Really, O-ryo can really be so selfish... "Yo, is there any grub to eat?" Akatsuki, like the usual routine, came here. O-ryo, Kasuga, and Akatsuki, repeatedly always come here, and were becoming "Give me food, give me food" Ayakashi. "I'm sorry Akatsuki, today there's nothing left. O-ryo said she's fine with just white rice, and that's what I'm cooking right now." "I'm also fine with just rice. Do you have any pickles?" Akatsuki sat beside the counter where Kasuga was, where two people were already sitting at. It has always been like this. "Wherever rice is offered as if for the gods, there's always a line on the counters. One way or another, Ayakashi love rice, don't they?" Finally, the rice on the stove has cooked. Kakuriyo's pots only need five minutes to cook rice, and it's really very convenient. P15 "Akatsuki, you haven't used up your salary and vacation leaves this year, haven't you? You don't have a girlfriend, and you give me the impression that working is your hobby. You're that kind of guy, aren't you?" While doing nothing on an empty stomach, O-ryo started bickering with Akatsuki, who was beyond Kasuga's seat. Even thought it's not nice, O-ryo toys Akatsuki a lot, who was younger than her. Akatsuki's face spells like "Shut up, you're noisy" whenever he's tired after work. "It's better to think about frolicking and having fun, Akatsuki. It's a waste, no matter how much you work, being a guy who looks angry and has no excess time to have some time to have fun." "Stop talking to me already, O-ryo." "Whaaat. How conceited. I'm the senior and you're the junior. I'm older than you and you're younger than me." "And so? You dropped being in the management staff and now you're a waitress. Between being a head clerk and a waitress, I'm higher-ranked." "Arrrghh, this guy is so UN-ADORABLE!" "O-ryo sama, you're noisy!" O-ryo's shrill voice spreads out, and Akatsuki and Kasuga both covered their ears. I opened Yugao's kitchen's refrigerator as I pinched my small ears shut. There wasn't any ingredients left to make side dishes, so I just took the rice out and served it. As I was doing this, I was laughing by myself. Hee hee hee.. "I could hear Aoi-chan letting out a weird laugh." P16 "What meals are she thinking of, at this point?" "Aoi is indeed an Ayakashi that cooks and cooks, isn't she?" Until now, O-ryo, Kasuga and Akatsuki were all whispering and back-biting me. But that's what I felt. After waiting, the newly-harvest rice that we have been waiting for has been cooked. After the boiled rice was done, I opened the lid and a foggy yet aromatic steam was released, and my stomach started to grumble on its own. As I stirred the freshly-cooked rice, I divided it and placed some on the rice tub. Using a wooden rice paddle I tried checking its texture and taste, it was springy, and its sweetness was enjoyable. "OK, there's a lot of rice, so please just eat however you like." In the restaurant's table where the rice tub was placed, in Akatsuki and Kasuga's usual rice bowls, and in O-ryo's favorite and sometimes variable larger bowl, I served them the white rice. I piled a lot of it. Each grain was puffy and glossy, which is due to the rice's freshness. "Yay! Let's eat!" O-ryo speedily and hungrily ate the rice, as she was holding her bowl and chopsticks. Hmph, O-ryo just quieted down right now. "Kasuga, Akatsuki, aren't you two hungry too? Start eating up." P17 "Ehhhrm.... It's hard to eat like O-ryo with just the white rice..." "Aren't there any pickled food, Aoi-chan?" "Tsk, tsk, how about if I place this here?" I placed a jar in between Kasuga and Akatsuki's counters. At first, they just stared at it in bewilderment, but carefully examined the jar's contents. Kasuga seemed to immediately get what it was. "Oh, I know it! It's nametake, enoki mushrooms!" "Yes, I made it from all of the mushrooms collected this Autumn, and I placed a lot of it. I goes great with white rice. I added it to our Autumn's daily specials." As soon as I opened the jar's lid, and scooped the nametake with a wooden spoon, I placed a lot on top of their rice in the two rice bowls. The brown mushrooms were flowing and melting and moist due to being boiled down. Enoki, shimeji, shiitake, these were all seasoned with the mild soy sauce that Ayakashi love. Sugar, mirin, sake and other seasonings were also added as staples, and in my case, there's also a bit of vinegar and some spicy peppers. These were added to give a hint of spiciness and sourness to the mild flavor. To make excellent preserved food, cold tofu, boiled down greens using dashi stock and others can be added and turned into one dish. While the nametake is mixed in with the piping hot rice, Kasuga and Akatsuki heartily wolfed down their food. "Wow... This meal is filling in my empty stomach.." P18 "This is delicious!" The enoki makes a crispy and appetizing sound. O-ryo, who was growing tired of the white rice, and seems to have noticed the nametake that Kasuga and Akatsuki were eating, started staring at it with longing eyes. "O-ryo, if you want to eat some nametake, please have some too." What the.. I have barely finished talking and O-ryo already stole the nametake jar. "Wah, it's my rice's buddy!" "O-ryo sama, it's greedy of you to take it for yourself!" "Kasuga, Akatsuki, don't worry, there are other partners for your rice." The poor things, but because there were other food that pair up well with rice, I brought them out. Toppings such as pickled plums, ground meat mixed with miso and lotus root, daikon pickled in vinegar with kelp, I brought out various preserved dishes too. Because rice goes well with many daily staples, many others were served on the side. "I am pushing this powerful medicine. I stir-fried some Hijiki seaweed that still has its water, along with the gritty and crisp pickled plum with some dashi stock. It really goes well with rice." Deprived of the nametake, Akatsuki tried adding the plum and seaweed mix as a rice topping. The crunchy texture and sourness of the plum, and the strong umami taste of the seaweed was incorporated, and this was a very luxurious and delightful taste. It doesn't need any other side dish, this makes it a full and satisfying topping. P19 When making onigiri, it can be added to the rice. It's excellent for emergencies. After experimenting with both the kelp and vinegar-pickled daikon as well as the meat mixed with miso and lotus root, O-ryo started eyeing at everything again, and I placed some little by little in the saucer that she was using. It' s great that she gets to enjoy a wide variety to pair up with her rice. It's exciting to think like what could be the next one you'll taste, with each bite. Once in a while, it's nice to just enjoy and relish the taste of the newly-harvested rice. After a while, I decided to eat some rice, and went back to the kitchen to get the rice bowl I normally use. "Ah, I just remembered something!" That's it. There were still two slices left in the refrigerator for the staff's breakfast. Autumn salmon. If I defrost that, I can make another rice pair-up! "Hee hee hee. A staple rice accompaniment: salmon flakes!"** I defrosted the salmon slice on the dish with Yokai fire, flayed the skin off, and lightly seared the surface on a frying pan, added salt, dashi, mirin, sake and other seasonings then heated this on a low flame. Sauteing this with a wooden spatula while adding some water to soften it, it's all what I need to do. Hee hee hee... "That Aoi-chan is laughing in the kitchen again..." "It smells like fish being cooked..." "Hold up, Aoi! Why are you cooking fish just for yourself? My nose isn't deceiving me!" T/N: I actually do this with meat, tofu, fish or whatever I add to vegetable dishes to make them more tasty. In Japan, they call this ground meat, fish or tofu that is seasoned and sauted as "Flake". You can just prepare a large batch, and use them as needed. I guess all those hours watching Tokuson Life Hacks also helped a lot lol P20 "Don't worry Kasuga, Akatsuki, O-ryo. Everyone's going to eat what I'm making." That said, it's my last serving. Reduce the water, when the flesh has fallen apart, add white sesame seeds and sesame oil, and lightly saute it. It's really easy. The home-made salmon flake is done. "It 's done! It's done! From kids to adults, everyone will love it, the best to be paired with rice, salmon flakes! Loose salmon topping, is it easy to understand?" "Ohhh..." "That smells really good!" As soon as I brought this in front of them, O-ryo and Akatsuki's voices just sounded with admiration. Since their bowls were already devoid of rice, they both wanted to fill their bowls with another serving. But they started fighting on who should be going to get more rice to add in the rice tub, and Kasuga went up and took the rice tub on her own to refill it. She's really the most adult in this bunch. "Ahhh, I can finally eat some rice too!" Thereafter, I placed some hot, piping rice on my bowl and I could finally eat my supper. For the first time, we're going to partake the crumbly salmon flakes that I made. I can use that for onigiri, and it's going to be a favorite item in bento boxes. P21 We can do the bottling, the marketing, and the selling, as our products are really delicious, but it seems that I'll have to make it and do it all by myself. Slicing, adding water, seasoning.. I'll do it how I like it. The glossy and clean rice due to it being freshly-harvested, when you add the shiny and reddish-brown color of the salmon flakes, eating it with a spoon just makes you gobble it all up. Ah, the autumn's salmon is really tasty and fatty. When mixed and used as rice topping, in one bite the umami and saltiness goes well with the mild, sweetness of the rice. Adding the white sesame and sesame oil's fragrances, the salmon's taste, flavor and aroma improves. "Wah, this tastes so delicious, I wanna have a bowlful more.." "O-ryo sama, if you eat more than that, you'll get fat. But I want a bowlful more too..." "I knew it, it's the autumn salmon. It really pairs well with the rice." It looks like everyone got satisfied with the salmon flakes. Oh no, this is bad. We have quickly eaten the rice... We took in so much carbs..." Even the meat mixed with miso and lotus root, the miso-flavored meat and the crunchy texture of the lotus root, really, really goes well with rice too. When you want to cleanse the palate, munching on the vinegar and kelp-pickled daikon is a fitting and refreshing break. "Aoi-dono!" Sasuke-kun, the O-niwaban guard has come here to Yugao. P22 Sasuke-kun was holding a bamboo straining basket, in his usual ninja-style. And, well, inside that basket were fresh red eggs. "These are the cassowary eggs that I have gathered tonight. The Master and Young Master sent me here to deliver these to you with my life, as it is a pity that there is only white rice to eat. You can now make egg-topped rice**." I bumped into him while running. That was the ultimate, crowning, and appropriate pairing to the rice. This is awesome! TKG has arrived here!** "Wah, I'll eat another bowlful more---" "Hey, that's unfair of you, O-ryo. Me too!" "Me too. It's because eggs are also served now." In the middle of the night, the Ayakashi were eating white rice in reckless abandon. "Please, I would like to fill my stomach with a bowlful of rice." "Yes, Sasuke-kun, please come have some." Anyone can't hide their excitement with egg-topped rice. Hollowing top of the hot, piping rice, when the shell is cracked open, the lovely raw egg is dropped in here. The cassowary's rich egg yolk's color, its shine, its jelly-like appearance, when it covers the rice, it has an irresistable charm. T/N: If you're going to try this, just a reminder that bacteria like Salmonella can contaminate the egg. Only do this with super-fresh eggs from a seller you trust because getting sick isn't worth it. TKG is basically tamago-kake-gohan, or how I wrote it here, egg-topped rice. P23 Ah, just looking at it, I know it's definitely delicious. "For sure, with egg-topped rice, it's Kakuriyo's mild soy sauce, isn't it?" I wanted a simple approach. "Soy sauce is good, but adding a little sesame oil is also delicious." As expected of O-ryo, who is in the majority group. "As a minority, I like mine to have noodle soup base and wasabi." From my peripheral vision I could see Akatsuki grumbling. But that seems to be delicious too. "I always eat it with ponzu. If there's dried bonito flakes and fried onions I'll add those too." For some reason, this was expected of Kasuga. "If there are seasonings, I'll add them." Sasuke-kun is too gallant. "Ok, ok, you can eat your differing favorites, that's good." Everyone's demands were heard, and I took various seasonings and flavorings and placed these at the center of the table. I, nonetheless the simpleton just added a bit of soy sauce over the yolk, and lightly broke it, mixing it with my chopsticks. In that moment, I felt a wonderful, happy feeling. Probably, just adding the egg, I haven't even finished mixing the runny egg in, I already took a bite. "Wahhh, taking the first bite of egg-topped rice is really something, isn't it?" P24 The rich flavor of the egg yolk makes it the best and enjoyable. After relishing the first bite, I completely mixed everything, and ate some more. "Hey, everyone, the meat with miso and lotus root also goes well with the egg-topped rice." Everyone noticed the previously-ignored meat with miso after Kasuga's discovery. Wah, it really does taste well together. This is a great discovery! Egg-topped rice is awesome! Just by itself is delicious, but arranging and adding flavors for variation, it's going to be an awesome feast. "It looks like you are all having fun." "Oh, Odanna-sama." Odanna-sama and Ginji-san came to Yugao together. O-ryo and Kasuga, Akatsuki and Sasuke-kun, who were all until now eating like as if in a stupor, all suddenly stopped and stood up, and deeply bowed to Odanna-sama. "It's alright, continue eating. Those are rare eggs." As if waiting for those words, everyone sat down again and continued eating. "Well, what's up? It's been a long time since you came here. Did both of you came here for some egg-topped rice? If that's the case, we have a lot right now." "No, it's not that, a while ago we welcomed some guests and we sat for a bit and already had our meals." P25 "I also may have drank a bit too much... That liquor was a tad strong.. Uhm.. I will eat some later, ok?" Both Ginji-san and Odanna-sama were definitely tipsy, somewhat. If they received some guests during work, why were they suddenly here? While in the middle of his rapid and nonchalant talking, is he going to suggest something? "Aoi, isn't Yugao on a break tomorrow? If you're free, let's go out on a date." "What?" In an instant. I realized that everyone who was continuing their eating all stopped their chopsticks. The Odanna-sama in question, who was really in a giddy mood continued smiling. "Aoi hasn't had a rest and had always been working hard even after returning from the Orio-ya matter. And I apologize for not taking the time too, for a long while. As a new wife, Aoi has not experienced any hour of fun at all." "It's fine, I have fun every day..." "That's it! Let's go to an orchard park. We can prepare food with apples and grapes, how's that?" While my face holds desperation, somehow Odanna-sama firmly grips my shoulder. "How's that" he says. "Apples and grapes, huh..." Pointing my finger to my chin, an idea popped into my head. For sure, there will be delicious autumn fruits. P26 "OK, let's go, Odanna-sama. I am interested in the orchard park." "I'm happy to hear you say that, Aoi!" With a sigh of relief, Odanna-sama wiped the sweat on his brow. The crowd of egg-topping eaters behind me, once again started moving their chopsticks. "Aoi-san, the orchard park is inside a mountain that connects the northern and north-eastern lands. The autumn leaves in that mountain change early, and I already heard that they're already in full display, so I hope that you can also enjoy the scenery tomorrow." "Ginji-san, you're not coming too?" "Me? I, uhm..." "You also haven't taken a break since the matter with Orio-ya, you should really take a break. Won't you come with us tomorrow?" Odanna-sama invited him, but Ginji-san looked at both Odanna-sama and I, and with a small smile shook his head. "No, thank you. I think I will take care of Tenjin-ya in Odanna-sama and Aoi-san's absence." I think it's the usual Ginji-san answer, but in that time, he wasn't looking at me.

End of Chapter 1, Volume 6. Next - Chapter 2

References:

Wonderful site for the youkai references

Other stuff I used to do this: Kodansha Kanji Learner’s Dictionary (you can buy here, I’m not sponsored btw). I was about to buy the older edition but then the newer one came out 2013 so I bought that instead. Worth buying since I was able to find nearly all of the words I needed just by stroke pattern alone.

Merriam-Webster's Japanese-English Dictionary (the red-covered 1996 version is apparently out of print right now). This is what I have been using for a very long time, I bought it when I was still a fetus (yes I am old so what lol), and after so many years, when compared to newer editions, I still prefer this one since its entirety is Japanese-English, the English to Japanese gloss are just 16 pages tops, so you get more Japanese words for your buck. But that’s just my opinion, maybe other people prefer the Jap-En x En-Jap IDEK.

Basic online dictionary, Jisho. Knowledge of verb conjugations  and other words are necessary since not all have entries.

If you can read Japanese, you can buy the whole set in Amazon Japan, they’re shipping worldwide now, I think.

[chaserainbows]

🔥

Send me a “ 🔥 “ for an unpopular opinion.

So to add some context for this one I've dabbled in game design a few years ago and in general been the kind of Pokémon fan that Likes Making Things and looking up fan content pretty much ever since I joined the community, so the conclusion I got from all that is

The typical Pokémon fangame is actually garbage

(Under cut because it'll get long and also because I'm gonna spoil some plot points of Pokémon Reborn and Pokémon Rejuvenation)

First of all, the most common idea behind Pokémon fangames is "the canon games are too easy so I'm gonna make something Harder for The Mature Audience" and you know what? Fair! The difficulty in Pokémon games reached its peak in gen 4 and basically got tossed off a cliff in gen 6, so the idea of a game that actually makes you think is very appealing. However, this causes two main problems:

1) One of the main appeals behind Pokémon games is that you get to choose your own difficulty. Every regional Pokédex has literally over a hundred Pokémon, and while this means you can choose the stronger ones for an easier time and counterpick the main bosses' own teams, it also means you can make many different combinations on the same team and turn each playthrough into a completely different experience.

For example, Pokémon X/Y is typically considered effortless, but it can actually be a pretty tough game if you just... turn off the Exp Share. Likewise, if you think that the game hands you too many overpowered Pokémon too quickly, you can just not use them. There's like 450 Pokémon in Kalos, you don't HAVE to use the starters, the Kanto starters, the gift Lucario, the gift Lapras, an Aegislash or whatever it is if you don't want to. It works for Mega Evolution as well, if you feel like it makes the game trivial you're only forced to use it once. The same is true for literally any other Pokémon game, if you want a bigger challenge you can use traditionally weaker Pokémon, use a monotype team, use unevolved Pokémon, play a Nuzlocke, the possibilities are endless, but if you want a challenge while playing what's basically the game's easy mode then of course you're gonna be bored. And that brings us to our next topic:

2) The average Pokémon fangame dev has no idea how game balance works. Case in point: Pokémon Reborn, which is basically the most famous example of A Pokémon Game For Grown-Ups, With A Grown-Up Plot And A Grown-Up Difficulty, except it's not a hard game, it's an unbalanced one. Most of the challenge comes not from the actual battles requiring a high level of strategy or resources being so scarce that you need to be inventive with them, it comes from the fact that the game is just really inconvenient to play.

I'll prove my point: One of the main aspects from Pokémon Reborn as a game is that Pokémon are hard to find and the really good ones are reserved to the engame, so combined with the fact that the gym leaders and most important bosses have full teams and are fought in terrains that stack the deck against you, you have to get creative if you want to win. This is bullshit, the only thing this restriction really does is that you have to beat the game the way the dev intended (therefore removing the customization aspect of Pokémon altogether) or just find oversights to exploit, like how the Bug-type gym gets bodied by a Vulpix or how the updated version of the Ice-type gym couldn't do anything to a Magnemite, which usually get removed in a future update effectively turning your playthrough illegal. It's not even an impartial process, as Gardevoir trivializes several midgame bosses but never gets pushed back because it's the dev's favorite.

Oh, and you know what I said about terrains? Most of them consist of the bosses' Pokémon getting several buffs just by existing while all their weaknesses get nerfed or outright neutralized, which means two things: There's no real strategy involved, since all it really does is that you have to hit the enemy with neutral moves while getting blasted by attacks with x2.25 multipliers on top of STAB, and also the game gets REALLY easy if you just change the terrain because every important boss other than the first gym leader is completely reliant on it. Seriously, if you have an Ampharos with Electric Terrain you've won.

(though to be completely fair the engine's ai is HORRIBLE so the game can't have good strategies, but that really just proves that the idea is flawed)

The gameplay isn't all, though, there's also the story as one of the main appeal of Pokémon games is that they're more mature and able to handle themes like murder, corruption, mental illness and war.

THAT'S A FUCKING LIE THEY JUST READ LIKE IF MY IMMORTAL HAD A CHILD WITH CALL OF DUTY

Like the idea of a Grown-Up Pokémon League For Adults where the deck is constantly stacked against you and every challenger has to fight the gym leader at a disadvantage is flawed from the beginning no matter how you look at it. Pokémon battles are a sport, and gym leaders are basically professional athletes, meaning that they're subject to rules and most important, public opinion. If all your victories come from the fact that you're in top condition and the competition isn't, then you're gonna lose credibility REALLY fast because could you really win in a fair fight? If you have to issue a handicap against every challenger, aren't you basically admitting that you can't win without it?

And that's before we get into the fact that most of the time the league challenge is FUCKING IMPOSSIBLE for anyone other than the player to complete, even though it's supposed to be something that affects the whole region (oh and since usually those leagues are from 'the strongest trainers all over the world' it's implied that there's a lot of challengers from other regions as well). In Reborn, one of the gym leaders was TRAPPED IN A PARALLEL DIMENSION FOR 15 YEARS and that one is ironically one of the most accessible. Half of the league members were trapped in an orphanage and unable to accept challenges, several of them are part of the evil organization and end up on the run either before or after you defeat them and several of them (including the ones from the orphanage) follow you through the region. Then there's Rejuvenation where one of the gyms is only accessible through a dream world, several of the leaders ditch their gyms either to follow the player or to hide from the police, one of them tries to kill you and ends up frozen alive and you have to repeatedly travel back and forth in time to advance the plot. How is literally anyone other than the player supposed to complete the gym challenge? Even the rivals basically stop talking about getting badges because it makes no sense.

Then there's the evil teams. Despite the fact that they're supposed to be more realistic and gritty than the canon ones, most of the time they're gonna be some sort of cult based on offensive religious stereotypes (with Giratina as satan because OF COURSE), a blatant ripoff of Team Galactic or just a fascist allegory, which I ranted about before because those are the most irresponsible. Their biggest claim to fame is that their higher-ranked members are too strong to defeat because the writer usually won't do enough research about how crime syndicates actually work and makes the league members seem even more incompetent because they're supposed to be the best of the best and yet keep getting clapped by a bunch of thugs for no good reason. They're gonna kill a bunch of people, but conveniently 95% of their victims are gonna be extras that the player has no reason to get attached to. Oh, and the edgelord Gary Oak-esque rival WILL join them for reasons.

In short, they're made using a bunch of popular characteristics without putting much (if any) thought into how they actually work together, and the gameplay is built to be unenjoyable (which doesn't necessarily mean hard) because people play them for bragging rights rather than actually having fun. Most canon games have more mature storylines because mature doesn't mean pointlessly dark, and even though most of them are hyped up by ragging on X and Y, Lysandre is a more compelling character than like 80% of the fangame villains. Oh, and Big Boy Pants unfair leagues are ridiculous

[imgoingtocrash]

I Want to Go

by @imgoingtocrash for @slothbeans

Rating: G

Word Count: 5,179

Relationships: Peter Parker & Tony Stark, May Parker (Spider-Man) & Peter Parker (mentioned), Pepper Potts/Tony Stark (mentioned), Peter Parker & Pepper Potts & Morgan Stark (Marvel Cinematic Universe) & Tony Stark (mentioned), Ben Parker & Peter Parker & Tony Stark (mentioned)

Summary:

““There he is.”

It’s Tony. Anthony Edward Stark. Mister Stark. His Mister Stark, his mentor, his friend, his could-have-been father figure if only they had more time together, if Peter hadn’t wasted it, if Tony hadn’t—

Not-dead Tony whirls around on a rolling stool, his arms propped against his knees. Peter can’t move his eyes off of the man in front of him, but he knows the space well enough to recognize where he is: the lab. Tony’s old lab at the Avengers Compound. The lab that doesn’t exist anymore. It was obliterated in the battle with Thanos and replaced with a new one that only Bruce, Doctor Cho, and Peter himself seemed to get any use out of.

This is the Tony he never got to know, inhabiting the familiar space.”

Tony Stark becomes a guardian angel after his death, and his task is watching out for Peter. After a harried run-in with the Green Goblin leaves Peter on the brink between life and death, Tony and Peter get the chance to talk about Peter's recent less-than-stellar life choices that led him to this point.

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My gift for the second @friendly-neighborhood-exchange​​! I hope you enjoy it! Full fic also under the cut as requested by the exchange!

Peter really should have expected something like this to happen.

There are a lot of sayings about it: burning the candle at both ends, biting off more than you can chew, too many irons in the fire…he’s got melted wax all over a heaping plate of food and—okay,  yep, this metaphor is going nowhere.

He’s a disaster lately, is what he’s getting at. And proving it by using too many turns of phrase at the same time in his head when it doesn’t really matter.

What even is his head, right now?

He doesn’t remember falling. Getting the tar kicked out of him…well, it’s more likely, but he still doesn’t actually remember it.

Everything is hazy. It’s like looking into his camera when the lens is unfocused. And everything is bright—oversensitive to his already wonky spider-senses, bright.

Is that a concussion symptom? He can’t remember that either.

“Karen?” he tries, but it comes out as a bit of a slur. The AI doesn’t respond, so he tries again. “Kare-bear, you up?”

Then he realizes his vision is certainly not being obscured by the lenses of his mask. He’s not wearing it.

Moving doesn’t hurt like he thought it would. He expected that gut-bombing feeling that comes with nausea, a pull of muscle against his spine or ribs, maybe the feeling of blood trickling down after a bullet or knife pierced something it shouldn’t have.

Instead it’s—fine. The blur of his vision clears as soon as he sits up and he’s…on the floor.

More senses come back with his eyes. The floor underneath him is cold. There’s a smell of oil and something just slightly burnt in the air, flaring his nostrils.

He’s not in an embarrassing dream where he’s naked, at least. He’s clothed in…no, that can’t be right. He hasn’t worn Tony’s old MIT sweatshirt in years. Not since…

“There he is.”

It’s Tony. Anthony Edward Stark. Mister Stark. His Mister Stark, his mentor, his friend, his could-have-been father figure if only they had more time together, if Peter hadn’t wasted it, if Tony hadn’t—

Not-dead Tony whirls around on a rolling stool, his arms propped against his knees. Peter can’t move his eyes off of the man in front of him, but he knows the space well enough to recognize where he is: the lab. Tony’s old lab at the Avengers Compound. The lab that doesn’t exist anymore. It was obliterated in the battle with Thanos and replaced with a new one that only Bruce, Doctor Cho, and Peter himself seemed to get any use out of.

This is the Tony he never got to know, inhabiting the familiar space.

The older man is wearing dark jeans and t-shirt color expertly matched with the grey cardigan that completes the outfit. It’s a warm ensemble. It’s like the picture he always finds himself looking at when he visits the Stark cabin: Tony and Pepper on a hospital bed, exhausted but holding their new baby girl like she’s the only thing in the world.

Welcoming.

Loving.

Soft.

He wanted that Tony too. He wanted Tony back in any form most days, period.

Tony watches Peter examine him head to toe before continuing to speak.

“I’ve never done this before. I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to wake you up or not. And not that I don’t love you, kiddo, but I’m more of a hugger than a Prince Charming type.”

Tony had hugged him. In the middle of a battle to save the universe, Tony took those ten seconds and hugged him and maybe if he hadn’t there would have been more time, another way, anything but watching Tony’s light go out.

“I am so glad Morgan’s finally growing out of her Disney Princesses phase, by the way. Aren’t you?” Tony says, like it’s just another Tuesday instead of whatever day of the week it is where Peter’s seeing things and losing his goddamn mind.

“Not that her running around screaming The Next Right Thing wasn’t cute and all. It’s just like—we all have our limits and I reached mine two Disneyland vacations ago."

Tony tilts his head.

“If you and MJ ever have kids, though.” Tony whistles. “Ben’s told me stories about your obsession with Kidz Bop songs. I hate to say it, but I think you two are in for it worse than Pepper and I ever were. I mean, at least Morgan has taste.”

“Mister—Tony, I—Ben—what?”

“Oh. Yeah, shit, sorry to spring all of that on you at once. I get carried away, you know me. Here, take your seat. We have time.”

Tony rolls over the other stool with his foot, patting the leather in invitation.

Peter keeps staring.

Tony gives a put-upon sigh. “Alright, let’s get this out of the way, then. No, I’m not one of Beck’s illusions, or one of Doctor Ocavious’ serums, or—what other reality-bending bad guys have you messed with lately. Did I cover them all yet?”

“Chameleon.”

“Oh, right, yeah. He had the gall to impersonate me and Michelle. That was rough on you, I’m sure.” Tony scratches his beard. “Though your last toss up certainly wasn’t better, considering.”

“Considering?” Peter asks. Curiosity has always been his problem. Right next to talking too much, which he’s currently doing very well with.

“One thing at a time, web-head. We’re certainly going to get to that.”

“That’s a new one.”

“Hm?”

“A new nickname. For me.”

“Huh.” Tony smiles to himself. “Guess so. Nice. I really thought I’d run the gamut. You know, that fire kid pisses me off to no end, but he’s really creative with the names. Makes me really aspirational about your generation.”

“How do you know Johnny?“ Peter shakes his head. Just another thing that needs explaining. “I think I’d really like to know what’s going on now, Mister Stark.”

“Fair enough. Alright, J, let’s get metaphysical.”

“Certainly, sir,” a prim, robotic voice replies.

With a resounding clap of Tony’s hands, the room descends into darkness before a set of holograms lights up around them, depicting a map of stars that expands around their heads.

“Let’s start with the facts: some people were right and some people were wrong. I wasn’t ever a very religious guy, but that doesn’t matter so much. All I know is that this is…whatever you want to call the afterlife part. The end after the end. What comes next, and so on. Well, an extension of it. Specifically from me to you.”

“How does that work?”

Tony snorts. “That, kiddo, is one of the few things I don’t know. There’s less all-knowing after death than I thought there’d be. Thor’s people have some theories—they call it Valhalla, theorize about their god-types—but I’ve yet to meet any kind of Grand Poobah as of yet.”

“But you did. Die, I mean.”

“Yeah, I did.” Tony sighs, placing a hand on Peter’s knee. “It was a tough choice, sacrificing myself. Strange thought it was the only one and I…” He swallows. “I would have done anything it took to make sure that you and everyone else in the universe got to live. So I made that call. And I accepted that it meant I would be out of the picture for the foreseeable future.”

There are a lot of things Peter wants to say, but doesn’t. I wish you hadn’t. We weren’t worth it. I’m not worth it.

Tony clears his throat, trying to breathe levity back into the atmosphere.

“But apparently, while we’re all here waiting for the rest of our loved ones to join in…we get perks.” Tony gestures to the room around them, an exact replica down to DUM-E and U rolling around in the corners instead of where they’re currently sitting in Tony’s dusty garage.

“It turns out the end isn’t totally the end. We get to watch and wait in style—go to old haunts, see old friends and family. Sometimes lend a hand, push away a bullet or two.” He nudges Peter’s shoulder on that one. “Specifically, I was offered the very coveted position of being the spiritual watchdog for a very special Spiderling.”

“So you’ve been watching,” Peter summates. “That’s how you know about—about Morgan and Johnny and everything that’s happened since you’ve been gone.”

Tony nods. “Your Uncle Ben had the job first. Maybe he took turns with your parents, I never asked. But what I do know is that you made that excellently unflappable man…well, stressed out to no end. We can only do so much from here, and you were throwing yourself headfirst into danger every other day. Before I entered the picture as your mentor, he was worried you’d join him sooner rather than later.”

Peter looks down at his lap, guilty. He can’t deny it—after Ben’s death, Peter was determined to use his powers for good instead of flipping around the streets entertaining himself as he pleased. That meant wearing himself thin on sleep, skipping classes, and being a little less careful about avoiding rather than attacking. Every robber from bank to bike thief got their punishment. Knife wounds didn’t matter, turning his skin black and blue didn’t either. Guns, he was particularly unforgiving about.

He had already faced what he thought was the worst trauma of his life at that point. He could afford an injury or two, and May was so blindsided with grief that she let him get away with leaving blood on the bathroom sink from doing his own stitches or waking up with a black eye for long enough that he got better at covering it up.

How could he have ever considered that Ben would be watching? He doesn’t want to think about all of the scrapes Tony’s now seen him get into.

“When I came up here…well, he and Nat were my welcoming party. Those two get along like old drinking buddies, actually. Weirds me out.” Tony scrunches his nose in what is likely false distaste.

He softens, though, moving his hand from Peter’s knee to cup his cheek. It’s something Tony’s never done, but Peter feels like he’s melting. Tony’s skin is warm. His fingers are still just a little callused and scarred.

Tony must get the impression that he doesn’t like it, but before he can move away, Peter traps his hand there, bristling his smooth fingers against the still-present wrinkles of Tony's skin.

Would Ben still look exactly as Peter last remembers him? Dressed in a button down with that stupid Giants baseball cap that’s still buried in a box somewhere at May’s place? Would he be fully grey now, or would it still be that salt-and-peppering brown? Does he need his glasses here?

“He’s so proud of you. Seriously, Pete, hearing him talk about you…well, he sounds like me. Just a couple of old saps between the two of us, I guess.”

Tony is smiling, but Peter wants to see it, he wants to hear it. He wants Ben and he wants to keep Tony here and never let him go again.

Tony swipes a fallen tear from Peter’s cheek with his thumb.

“He knew I wasn’t really…satisfied with how we left things. I spent five years missing you and all I got was a hug before I…” Tony clears his throat, looking away uncomfortably.

All this time and the first snap still haunts Tony. All this time, and Peter still dreams of ash.

“He offered to look after Morgan for me instead, considering it’s a bit of an easier job. I’m hoping he can coast on easy mode until she hits her teen years.”

“I still get to see her, too—and Pepper. God, all of you in the same room at Christmas is just—“ He shakes his head reverently. “That’s my day. My perfect day. I never thought.”

“She misses you,” Peter says. He doesn’t want to be mad at Tony, but sometimes he is, and he knows that Morgan is getting old enough to forget more about her dad than she remembers. He tries to tell stories, tries to explain pictures and videos but it’s just…not the same. It’s not enough. It’s not what she deserves.

“I know. I miss her too. I can watch you guys all day, but talking to you,“ Tony shakes Peter’s shoulder. “Touching you…there’s no replacement for it. I’m watching her grow up, but I don’t get to be a part of it like I used to. It just—sucks.”

Tony sighs again, but seems to rejuvenate with it, clapping and turning the lights of the lab back on.

“But that’s not important right now. We’re here because of you.”

“Me? What—?”

“Don’t what me, Pete. The only reason you’re here with me right now is because you’re close enough to death. Your body is in a hospital bed in the compound because you were reckless, and I brought your mind here to snap you out of it before you take the final step to this side of the spiritual plane!”

It seems otherworldly, the idea of his body currently being separated from his mind. Supernatural. Definitely something he’d usually associate with Doctor Strange.

As for his possible death...he doesn’t remember it. His more recent memories seem lost in a fog, and the welcoming warmth of this place makes the loss of them feel a lot less important.

“You’ve been—god, you’ve been beating yourself up for months. Ever since Gwen Stacy died—“

“Don’t.” Peter swallows back a sudden lump in his throat. “Please, don’t.”

“You’ve been running from it for months.” Tony replies. “Peter, you’ve been running from your life for months. You broke up with Michelle when I know for a fact that you have a ring made for her in your underwear drawer, you let things fall out with Harry when you never blamed him for everything that happened with his father, you don’t go see Pepper and Morgan anymore—“

“Because they’re not safe!” Peter finds himself standing, suddenly, string-tense and angry.

Tony doesn’t look surprised at the outburst, just sad.

“Don’t you get it?! No one is safe around me! It doesn’t matter if they’re heroes or civilians! It’s my fault that Gwen died! It’s my fault that you—” Peter shakes his head. “I can’t let that happen to anyone else. I won’t.”

“Peter, it is not your fault that I used the infinity stones.”

Peter stares at the ground and thinks about all of the ways he could have changed what happened during the battle with Thanos. He could have made that sacrifice instead. Anyone else on the battlefield could have. Some of them had the power to do it and survive. But it was Tony that came up with the idea to build a gauntlet of his own into his suit, Tony that made that choice with exactly one thing on his mind.

“Pepper told me about the picture. She said that you’d spent all those years caring about me, that you only considered time travel because of me. That makes it my fault.”

“No,” Tony insists. “It was my choice. That’s it. You were an influence, yes, but not the only one. I wanted a better world for my entire family—I did it Morgan and Pepper too. I wanted the rest of the world to have their families back because I finally realized how much I treasured my own. You are not to blame for my decisions. Period.”

“That doesn’t change what happened with Gwen! With Doctor Octavious! With Beck!”

He doesn’t let Tony interrupt again.

“Every time I try and do the right thing, bad stuff happens to the people I care about. So I cut them all away and according to you, I still ended up almost dead.”

“That was the Green Goblin’s fault. He escaped the Raft and went on a revenge-fueled rampage against you. You were overwhelmed. If you had help—”

“I don’t want help!” Peter shouts. Tony is always trying to fix Peter’s problems, a habit Peter knows he shares from his attempts to constantly fix New York. Tony just can’t fix Peter—who he is, what his life does to the people he loves. It’s never going to stop. Peter’s never going to stop. Not while he’s alive and has the means to keep trying.

“Then what do you want?” Tony asks, standing up himself and taking Peter’s shoulder in his hand. “I just want to make things better, buddy. That’s all I’ve ever wanted. Tell me what I can do.”

Peter looks at Tony, thinking of all the mistakes he could have helped correct, every missed birthday and holiday.

“I want to stay here.”

There’s a clear beat of silence. Tony’s face morphs from empathetic softness to a hardened frown.

“Peter, no—“

“Yes! Out there I can’t stop myself from—ruining my life all the time, no matter what I do. I can’t be Spider-Man the way everyone wants me to, I can’t be Peter Parker because I am Spider-Man, and everyone is looking at me to lead Stark Industries when I don’t even work there anymore!”

Working at SI had been what he thought he was supposed to do. Go to MIT. Graduate. Work for Pepper. Fulfill the legacy. Make Tony proud. Make everyone proud. Be the smartest and Spider-Man and a good boyfriend all at the same time.

But then Gwen died and he was already struggling to fill his mentor’s shoes and he’d just—surrendered to the part of himself that always doubted, that could never reconcile Tony’s belief in him and the way he often saw himself.

“Here I could be with you and Ben and my parents,” Peter reasons. “Tony, I lost them when I was five! I could finally see them again—“

Peter grabs for Tony in an attempt to reason with him, but Tony shakes it off.

“Peter, this was supposed to be a mission to make you snap out of it. You’re teetering between dead and alive right now and you need to go back.”

“No, please,” Peter begs. “Please, Mister Stark, please. I want to go. I want to go with you. I don’t want to leave you again. Ever since you died everything’s been—everything just keeps going wrong. Maybe this is a sign. I can never make the right choices, maybe it’s time for me to—“

“No.” Tony is looking down at him, like Peter is fifteen and naive and the world would be so much simpler if only Peter would listen to Tony.

“Don’t you dare try to act like your life out there doesn’t matter, like this is the better option.” Tony shakes his head back and forth. “The point of this place is to be after your life. I know that you’ve been through a lot already, but you’re not done yet. You’re not.”

Peter buries himself into Tony’s chest, desperate. He grew taller in the last few years but here in this lab, in this place that doesn’t exist, he is the boy Tony remembers, the boy he misses getting to be.

“Please.”

“I’m sorry.” Tony echoes Peter’s last words on Titan, and he knows it, he must, to still be so affected by losing Peter in the first place. He keeps Peter encased in his arms, rubbing his back over and over in a soothing gesture.

“I’m sorry things have been so hard without me. I’m sorry that you’ve missed me so much, and that I can’t be there. I’m sorry that the only way I could figure out to save the world didn’t include saving myself.”

Tony pulls away slightly, enough so that he can catch Peter’s watery gaze.

“But Peter, that is no excuse to think your life should be over. You know I have always encouraged you to be more selfish. I spent so long telling you to go after the things you wanted—the parts of a normal life that you deserve—because you are an incredible, empathic, intelligent kid. But for once I am begging you to think about other people. You have responsibilities, Pete. You have people that love you down there. You know that.”

“And think of everything that’s happened to them because of me! I—I’ve given May more grey hairs than you, I’ve put MJ in danger—I’m the reason Harry’s dad went away! Without me…without Spider-Man…maybe they’d be better. Maybe this is what’s supposed to happen!”

Tony doesn’t respond to this, but Peter can read his face. He doesn’t believe Peter at all.

“Let me show you something.” It’s a complete diversion, and Tony relies on Peter’s silent surprise, leaving their loose embrace and tapping at a set of holograms in front of him until a feed appears.

It’s an alley.

Somehow, Peter knows it’s in New York. Maybe it’s all of the time he’s spent in dumpsters—both searching for old technology in his youth and getting his ass kicked into them—that allows him to recognize that.

It’s not the most interesting footage—the most activity on screen for a minute is a mangy tabby cat scampering by.

Then a masked man comes running by the camera, a leather purse in hand and darting glances behind him.

A string of familiar webbing comes on screen, followed by a lithe, masked figure whose body slams into the robber’s, knocking the man down before sticking him to the ground with a layer of webbing. The masked figure takes the purse and swings away, back toward the mouth of the alley.

“Tony, what is this?” Peter asks.

“That is Miles Morales. Fourteen. Brooklyn native. Remind you of anyone?” Tony rolls his eyes at Peter’s unamused face. “Yeah, you get it. Anyway, two months ago, Mister Morales was bit by another one of Oscorp’s freaky mutant spiders. He didn’t tell anyone, but when Spider-Man was put into a coma fighting the Green Goblin and he didn’t help…”

The clip loops again, repeating the swing and kick of Miles’ body slamming into the robber.

“He became Spider-Man.”

Tony nods. “A cheap copy, though, of course. Underoos 2.0, you might say.”

“Only you would.”

“Ouch,” Tony hums. “I’m just saying, without Spider-Man, without you, someone else is always going to step up. It might be Miles, or the Avengers, or that little group of vigilantes near Hell’s Kitchen…”

“Then you’re just proving my point, they don’t need me to—!”

Tony holds his hand up.

“That doesn’t mean you aren’t still needed. You—Peter Parker, Spider-Man—are the person that knows the streets of New York’s boroughs better than anyone else. You’re the same person that helped take down Thanos and fought against Beck and the rest of his little Sinister Six friends. You’re the only Peter Parker that Michelle wants. You’re the only best friend that Ned Leeds wants. You’re the only nephew your Aunt May has. You’re Morgan’s only big brother, Petey."

The warmth that was surrounding Peter until that moment fades slightly. Here, the world that he came from seems so far away. It was easy to say he wanted to stay when the most important thing was right in front of him.

But Tony isn't the most important thing in Peter’s life. Peter's grief seemed to be important for years after. It felt heavy, all-consuming, a weight he was backpacking around on the top of all the good things because the world wouldn’t let him forget. From the murals and statues to Beck’s raging hunger for revenge, Peter felt the ache of Tony’s loss much like he had for Ben—acute and piercing his life with holes.

The thing is—Peter still grieves. All of Tony’s loved ones do. They wish he was there at birthdays and barbecues, reminisce about this story or that, tell Peter and Morgan of his love for them, his pride.

It just doesn’t hurt the same, these reminders. It doesn’t hurt as consistently. His sadness ebbs and flows, bleeds and stems, metaphors on metaphors on metaphors.

“You’re the only you that there is, kiddo," Tony continues. "You need to stop blaming yourself for everything that hasn’t worked out and start realizing that you’ve done a lot of things right. You’re allowed to grieve the past, but you can’t stay here. You need to move forward. That doesn’t have to mean letting go. It means taking us with you, and continuing to make us proud, just like you have been, even when everything is going wrong.”

Tony's eyes are expectant. He wants Peter to really listen to what he's saying, to believe it.

Peter nods, even as some part of him doesn't want to. Tony is right, and Peter is old enough to admit it, to want to believe it. Tony’s death is not as fresh as Gwen’s, and still newer than the death of his uncle, but he is allowed to hold his loss as he moves on from it. He knows that. He was trying for so long, but the losses kept piling up, and he’d forgotten because it was easier to wallow in his grief than try and recover for the umpteenth time.

It’s tiring.

As if Tony can see as much in Peter’s eyes—because he has seen it all, because he knows what Peter’s gone through without him all the time—he finishes his speech.

“Peter, I know you’re doubting yourself and your abilities. I know it’s hard. But you don’t need  someone else to fix that for you—not me, or Ben, or your parents. It’s okay to miss us—you know that we miss you. But you don’t need me around to be a great hero or a good person. You’re all of those things on your own.”

Tony puts a hand on Peter’s head, pulling back his curls and looking directly into his eyes. “But if you need the assurance…you’re everything I could have hoped for and more. I love you, and I’m so proud of you, okay? No matter what.”

"I still want to stay," Peter admits, his voice quiet. There's a difference in knowing he can't and wanting. It's a childish part of himself that he's allowing to be obstinate.

Tony only smiles, though, understanding when he admits, "And some part of me wants to keep you here. But it's not your time. Not yet, okay? You have apologies to make to a very pretty girl, an aunt that would break the rules of spacetime to kick my ass if you died in your twenties, a kid that needs your mentorship…"

"What if I get him killed?" Peter asks abruptly. He hadn't even considered what mentorship would mean, in the long run. "Tony, how many times did I almost die before I turned eighteen? I did die, on an alien world. How can I promise that won't happen to him?"

"You can't," Tony chuckles. "There are no guarantees in any part of life, kid, you know that. He could get taken down by a supervillain or a car in equal measure. But one way he's fighting for the city—for the people he believes in. One way makes him the hero that he is."

Tony shrugs. "That's why I never stopped you."

"You couldn't stop me."

"That too. But that fear? That's what is going to make you better. It made me better."

Peter nods, understanding. His fear for a kid he doesn't even know is just the same as Tony's fear was for him in the beginning.

But look at what grew out of that: he and Tony freakin' Stark, standing here in the afterlife filled with love for each other, planning to continue their lifelong legacy of work to make the world a better place.

Peter would argue that alone is worth it.

Peter steps forward, bringing Tony into another hug—a final hug. "I love you."

Tony's thumb finds the back of Peter's neck, gently stroking. "I love you too, kiddo."

"You'll keep watching over me? Just in case?"

"Of course. I'll let Ben take a turn too, invite your parents into the Spidey Protection Program."

"I'd really like that." He backs up to look at Tony. "And when May gets here, could you—"

"We'll take care of her." In exchange, Tony asks, "Can you tell Pepper and Morgan—oh, and Rhodey and Happy, and don't forget Bruce—"

"I'll tell everyone that you miss them. That you're waiting."

"Such a good kid," Tony remarks, running a hand through Peter’s hair again before landing to cup his cheek again, like he’s treasuring the new gesture before it’s taken from him. "Be safe...well, as much as you can. More family vacations and less hospital visits, okay?"

"Yeah, okay,” Peter agrees, twitching up a real smile through the last of his tears. “Goodbye, Tony."

"Bye, Pete. I'll see you soon. Just—not too soon! And I want to see any future grand-babies all the time, you hear me? No absentee fathering! And—"

The world around Peter grows blurred again, taking him out the same way he came in.

The sound of Tony’s voice echoes into the beeping of a heart monitor.

The ethereal warmth fades into the reality of cold air conditioning—a scratchy hospital blanket is the only shield from the cold. A tube is uncomfortably jammed down his throat.

The life in front of him is no more enticing than it was before, with Tony. It will be weeks spent in recovery despite his healing powers, groveling at Michelle’s feet to make up for leaving her in the first place, apology after apology to his aunt for not calling. He’ll owe Morgan at least a week at the cabin, if not more treats to be exploited from his wallet later. Most importantly—at the risk of Miles Morales’ life—he has to track down a reckless kid and try to teach him to be a better hero when Peter himself is a five alarm tire fire and a half.

But there is also a lot of life still out there that he doesn’t want to forget about:

Aunt May’s one and only good recipe—sweet potato pie. She always flits around their tiny apartment covered in flour and smelling of spices, slapping his hands away from the counter with a firm, “Don’t you dare.”

MJ’s drawings from years past taped to the walls of his bedroom, her unread stacks of hardcovers littering every empty surface, and the way she always stops reading to kiss him goodnight before he goes out on patrol.

Morgan and Pepper, the cabin, the memories he wants to forget and all of the new ones he’s made there next to his little pseudo-sister that have helped make her into the kind, empathetic kid that he would do anything for in a heartbeat.

Peter still has a lot to tell all of them, the words he promised Tony he’d relay.

Peter opens his eyes.

[ofgeneticperfection]

Scarlet’s chain of sweetness

Courtesy of  @madamdirectcr

5 THINGS YOU LOVE ABOUT YOUR CHARACTER.

1. Indomitable - She pretty much does what she wants, how she wants, whenever she wants. If she wants something? She manipulates her way into getting it. She doesn’t stop until she has it and hardly anything will sway her otherwise. She’s extremely hard to control when determined and set on a task in mind. She’s hard to control period. She’s got a streak of wild, impulsive, and loves to toy with others be it malicious or just to tease.  Her will is near impossible to break and she never believes that she can’t do something even if it is the impossible. Atop of that she’s fairly hard to defeat physically, she’ll bring more than a challenge if ever attack or if a loved one is ever hurt. I’m not saying that she can’t be brought down because she can, but it’s going to take more than a couple of hits.

2. Emotional Depth-  There’s not just one tier to Isrieal, there’s a million and it’s a labyrinth. She comes off as cold, arrogant, prideful but that’s the main wall that she hides behind. She’s strong and will exude complete confidence most of the time while being sly, cunning, coy, and whatever else she can throw at you. These are the emotions she shows to the world but the rest she’s buried so deep inside that she forgets they even exist. Inside she’s broken, sad, lonely, tormented but she has her ways of hiding them and biting back the pain that feeling these emotions brings. It’s from the conditions she’s been stuck in for her whole life at Hojo’s mercy and the lies she’s had to tell herself to make it easier to handle. Of course, this naturally makes her volatile with bursts of anger or other strong emotions and if she let’s one slip out they all come spilling out sooner or later. She does have a tendency to use special sedative injections to subdue these emotions whenever she feels any starting to well up. Deep under it all, however, she loves with all of her heart once she is sure that she will not be hurt. She’s always afraid of that in a way, but there is no in between. You have her all or you have her nothing. But once there she is quite passionate and protective and more soft and innocent then she’d originally lead you to think. 

3. Manipulative - Life is a game and she plays to win. At least that’s how one survives in ShinRa. She learned from one of the best manipulators out there and now she’s known to even manipulate the Professor himself. She rose herself from experiment to assistant Director by playing him and she plays everyone around as she sees necessary in order to get what she needs. She often shows what she wants to show and nothing more, near every move and every article of clothing is precisely calculated towards whomever she is meeting with. Of course, only if you don’t know her well. 

4. Deals with the Devil- Oh yes, she loves to make deals but don’t worry they’re mostly fair and she is one to keep to her word and her promises. Despite her demeanor she is quite loyal when she promises something. If you work out a trade or a bargain she’ll do her best to uphold her end of it, getting you what you want in return. There is a lot that can be traded between science and other departments after all and she’s not afraid to go behind the Professor’s back here and there if it means obtaining something she’s personally after in the end. 

5. A.I Alien - Lastly, yes I love the fact she is a hybrid and loves to play with quantum theory and A.I in the future. I always love the sci-fi aesthetics and concepts and the idea of something beautiful having a monster inside. She’s at conflict with this part of herself, often not knowing how to fully accept it but at least she is in control of the cells and not the other way around. She’s also always been focused on uploading consciousness and prolonging and bringing others back to life since she doesn’t age. It’s from there that she gets pulled into quantum theories and eventually breaks through to a system A.I that she makes a deal with to her own advantage, but this is a plot I haven’t touched in a while. Really I love everything about her but these are some fun and dominating concepts. 

5 PEOPLE ON HERE YOU LOVE, AND WHY.

1. @animus-inspire Where do I start? Seriously. This was unexpected but yet one of the best things that has ever happened in my writing history. I love love love this ship and all the AU’s of it so much! And beyond that, it’s so rare to get me to talk a lot but I can’t seem to ever shut up around you xD. But, I LOVE talking to you and the connection we have and the fact that we have so many stinking ideas all the damn time and they all get played off each other so easily and that we can share the same obsessions and YES WHAT HAVE YOU DONE! But you are also one of the sweetest and most full of life people I know on here and I absolutely love writing with you, you’ve made it so great :3. And you are seriously best Reeve and have made me love all the Reeve. <3

2. @thefirstthaumaturge I’ve known you for about like, well.....well over 10 years xD And I love you more as the years go on. We’ve survived drama days together and now we can laugh about all the stupid RP stuff we did in the past. I also enjoy all of our new RPs and how great its been to see both our OCs grow and thrive in these communities. I also super love talking to you and playing video games with you and watching WestWorld and movies with you. Basically, you make everything super fun and I don’t know what I’d do without you around. I also love how we always manage to say/type the same things at the same time all the damn time xD Digital sisters but its as real as it gets. 

3. @shinraweirdscience @xbroken-science @insidious-scientist  I love all of my Hojo’s that deal with Izzy’s crazy ass and put up with me so thank you guys! I’m always down for crazy plots and all the trauma that comes with them so don’t ever feel bad about throwing anything at me or damaging Izzy. It’s what makes her her after all. And I find it all a lot of fun. I’m always ears for ideas so let me know!

4. @sadistic-second I don’t write a whole lot with you here but you’re always good company in the voice chats and you make playing games a lot of fun as well. I like our little group we have going on to do all the stuffs. I love all the gifs and icons you make, and the paracord is very creative as well. It’s always cool to see what you can do. Of course I like all the funny things too.   @apathetic-ruler  I have to say you’re writing is amazing, I love it! I haven’t wrote with your Ru but I love past life Ru xD One of these day’s I’ll figure out what to do with a Rufus I’m sure. 

5. @ivory-paragon We don’t write much but I love playing FFXIV with you and being in all your groups. It’s a very fun and enjoyable atmosphere and you make me laugh all the time. If I hadn’t found you I wouldn’t have found any of this awesome community and my great shippy ships that have come out of it. @rikelusshinra I love all of our RP’s and stuff too. You have a super amazing OC that seems to fit right in and I’ve loved writing with Rike. Even if you are busy now. It’s rare Izzy finds ships that work but you are one of those lucky ones that she fits well with and I love all the ideas we play with as well. So to my FFU peeps! Even if we don’t write on tumblr much I still love you both. 

Honorable mentions:

@cinderella-gurei God, you are the best Chadley and you break my damn heart all the time in our RPs. Izzy will never forgive herself completely but she’s glad to have you around and so am I! She will protecc forever. <3 

@madamdirectcr I love your Scarlet! I want to see what happes :3  @makeupandmateria Another lovely Scarlet I had to mention as well!

5  SONGS EITHER YOU OR YOUR MUSE REGARD AS A ‘GUILTY PLEASURE’ THAT ALWAYS MAKES YOU SMILE.

So okay, I’ve thought about this all day and I’ll do a few categories. Since I revolve around music so heavily and no lie have hundreds of my own music videos in my head for every song I’ve ever heard, yes I’m one of THOSE people. xD

So I’ll start with what I’ve been listening to lately that really fits in with WestWorld Izzy and Logan!Reeve ShinuestiLos xD I can’t seem to get Poker Face out of my head for her and a couple other Lady Gaga songs that fit in  Like this one too. 

Also I really love these songs but they are so random. This one mostly thanks to ARI, but I can never not listen to it when it comes on. Also Mortal Kombat. This song makes me so fired up every time I hear any variation of it xD. Even now! alkdjfsldjfsdljf, but I do really like this mix. 

Then we can’t forget those emo day songs. Mr. Brightside is one I can never resist singing. It’s just so damn good! Then there is Holiday by Greenday and can’t forget Miss Murder by AFI xD 

Now I have an extremely long list of electronic type, synth, darkwave, trance, whatever the heck categories they fall under that I just like to call my Robot music xD  Here’s a couple with AI themes that I’ll just throw out here. We Appreciate Power and quite literally A.I 

And lastly this one reminds me of Midgar so much and Izzy, but I always see her singing this if she ever made a music video. (which apparently she’s made many) But she’d definitely be in front of wall sized windows with Midgar in the background and the labs, and its also why she sometimes refers to it as Electric City, idk who the guy would be singing with her but if you want it to be you just let me know? Lol.  After all she is Indistinct. Ill Defined. Uncontrolled. Unconfined. 

Tagged by: @animus-inspire (this took me forever Reeeeeve x.x) 

Tagging: @thefirstthaumaturge

[peggysousfan]

Anomaly Misfire

This is the fic add on to the edit I had posted previously to do with Bellarke. The Anomaly sends Bellamy back in time to Earth after Primfaya, what will happen when he sees Clarke? This is based on a gif set I saw on Tumblr lol its amazing and looks so real, I wish it were.

"It's been 58 days. By now, Monty should have the algae farm producing." Clarke speaks through a makeshift radio while eating a few berries she found in the valley. Compared to algae, berries were better. "How bad does it suck? No offense Monty." She stops speaking but only hears static. She never gets a reply to her calls. "And I found berries, a whole field of them! They're not very sweet, but they're beautiful. I think that's what they used to make the paint for-"

As Clarke speaks through the radio and turns her head aside to look at the paint on a house, an illuminating green swirl appears seemingly out of no where. A small crackle of lights move through before the green mist vanished, leaving behind something- or rather someone. She stands up from her chair and cautiously steps closer to the man left behind by the mysterious green swirl.

"Clarke?" He whispers with his hands out stretched, unsure how to proceed. Her hair is longer than it was at Sanctum, and from the looks of his surroundings he's back at Shadow Valley.

"Be-Bellamy?!" Her voice cracks a bit as she looks around unsure if she's hallucinating from the radiation and dehydration. She did just discover the valley not too long ago after all.

"Wher-uh... I'm back on Earth? How..." He looks around and walks but before he's aware, a pair of arms wrap around his torso, blonde hair now fills under his chin. He chuckles and embraces her back, but what he doesn't expect is her to panic and start dragging him to the rover. "Clarke? What are you-"

"We have to get you to Becca's lab before the radiation sets in and kills you! Bellamy..." She turns around to face him, worry etched in her face. "It hasn't been five years. Its not safe for you to be here."

He chuckles lightly and halts to a stop, confusing Clarke. She pulls him more but he continues to laugh.

"Bellamy!?"

He takes her hand in his and walks back to the table where she was sitting before he had appeared. He then notices the radio and sighs. Madi was right, she did call to him while he was in space. At this thought he looks around.

"Where's Madi?" Now Clarke is even more confused.

"Who's Madi?"

"Your daughter..."

His words barely process through her mind as they stand near each other. But as Bellamy sees the perplexed expression over Clarke's face, he realizes they haven't met yet. That is, if he's thinking correctly about where and when he is in time.

"Bell I don't have a-" But before she can finish her sentence, she stops and looks to her left. A child stands from a distance and watched them. "Oh my God..."

The little girl runs off and before Bellamy knows it, Clarke runs after her. "Clarke!" But its no use, she can't hear him.

With a huffed breath he runs after her. He catches up to her within moments, trees and branches hanging in his face as he tries to smack them away. Its been a long time since he's been on earth, when things actually made since then. Clarke shouts in Trigedasleng to grab the girls attention, but she keeps going further into the woods. Bellamy stops running when he sees Clarke stop, she's looking at a child with crazed hair from afar. That has to be Madi. He thinks. But in the blink of an eye she runs off again. Clarke doesn't hesitate to run after her and so Bellamy follows them with a roll of his eyes. How can a small child run this fast? Clarke is still ahead of him but her voice echoes through the trees.

"Wait! Are you alone? Are there others?" She stops running to look at her surrounds and stops when she sees the little girl staring at her on the trail. Clarke speaks in trig once more.She says, "You're a nightblood, right?"

Clarke steps forward cautiously, trying to talk down to the girl, but she doesn't move. Instead Clarke does and eventually steps into a bear trap. She screams out in pain from the metal piercing the skin of her leg. Bellamy hears and runs faster. The little girl attacks Clarke in the mean time, attempting to stab her with a knife. She avoid most of the blows but her arm is cut, leaving black to trickle down her arm.

"Clarke!" The valley girl looks up at Bellamy and runs in the opposite direction, but seeing as Clarke is screeching in agony, his main focus on her. Bellamy bends down and helps her out of the bear trap, then carries her back to the village, but not without  fight. He sets her down after a while and she limps into one of the houses.

She grabs her bag on the way to sitting down on a table, ripping her pants leg as she does so. Bellamy tries to help but isn't sure what to do. "Its okay, Bellamy. I-I got it." Her words come out in a stutter as she hurriedly grabs a thread and needle.  At first she hesitates, but proceeds to stitch up the gashes on her leg. The only thing Bellamy can do is sit and listen to her agonizing sounds. After she's done, she passes out from the pain, but not before Bellamy rushes to her side and catches her head.

Clarke stays unconscious for several hours, so long he starts to worry about her. He periodically checks the wound and takes the liberty of cleaning it up as much, and as gently, as he can. But after several more minutes of waiting, and dozing off himself, Clarke wakes and startles at the pain in her leg.

"Hey hey hey! Easy... don't hurt yourself." Clarke jumps slightly before remembering Bellamy's presence. It takes a few moments before she realizes he isn't burning from radiation.

"You're... you're okay?" Her arm reaches out to him, inspecting the skin on his neck, hands, and face.

"Me? Of course I'm fine. You're the one that stepped into a bear trap."

Clarke thinks for a moment as the memories flood back into her mind, but right now the tap isn't her main concern. "No, that's not- Bellamy... how are you still alive? The radiation levels aren't safe. And how did you even get back?"

"Uhh... well I can answer one question." He shrugs and smiles, though she's still unhappy with his answer. The glare from her face tells him that very thought, though it is also contorted in pain. "Abby injected us with nightblood before returning to Sanctum." But as he says this his eyes widen and he flinches. "Sorry I didn't mean to... I'm sorry."

"For what? And when did my mom make you a nightblood? You went off to space because the blood wasn't tested. I was the only one who took the syringe and injected myself." It was then he realized that Abby was still alive in the bunker. Clarke hadn't lost her yet. He feels like he should warn her, tell her whats coming, but then again who knows what will happen if he does. "And why are you looking at me like that? You still haven't answered my question of how you got here." Bellamy freezes and looks away from her.

"Look, Clarke, I don't know how I got here. One minute I'm in the Gabriel's tent holding Octavia after she's stabbed, then I'm taken by invisible people through the anomaly. I fought them off and I ended up falling and then landing here."

For several moments she sits quietly trying to process everything Bellamy has just said, and yet none of it makes sense to her. "What!?!? You were just in space with Monty, Raven, and the others. Octavia is still in the bunker and I have no idea who Gabriel is or what the 'Anomaly' is either. And what is Sanctum?"

"Uhh... shit."

"Bellamy?" She presses for more answers but he doesn't budge.

"It's complicated, okay?"

"Complicated." She echoes his words before trying to stand up. He asks what she's doing but shrugs it off. "You wouldn't understand. It's too complicated." She bites back, causing him to startle.

"Clarke come on. Its not easy to explain."

"Really? Then what is?" She turns to look at him over her shoulder and he freezes in place unsure what she means. Clarke scoffs at his confused look and sits facing him. "Bellamy we were born in space, sent to earth with no knowledge if it was inhabitable, then set up camp and fought a war with savages for land. Then Mount weather happened, I was on the run from literally very clan that existed only to be stuck in a worse situation fighting an AI and having to become a nightblood and fight off a whole city of innocent people. Then after almost dying I  find out the world was once again going to burn down into nothing, which left us having to choose and send hundreds of our own people to their deaths! Which left me one of the only people left on Earth above ground. But no, I wouldn't know complicated."

Bellamy inhales a deep breath and sighs, knowing everything she said is true. But what happens next is even worse than what they've faced before. Everything on earth were trial runs building up to Sanctum and the war raging on there.

"You really wanna know?" She gives him to look and he chuckles. Of course she wants to know. "Well, believe it or not I'm from the future."

"Future? Seriously?" He laughs at this and sits back in the chair he occupied before she woke up.

"Yeah. Seriously." Clarke looks at him through the moonlight and does realize he seems different, but she couldn't' think of how much time had changed since then. "Earth becomes uninhabitable within a matter of weeks after 6 years pass by. Once that happens we leave. Travel in our sleep to another planet where...things are the same as Earth. Trouble every where we go. We tried to be peaceful, civil even, but-" As Bellamy stops talking his voice cracks. The memory of figuring out Josephine taking over Clarke's body still haunts him.

"But what?" Her voice is soft and light, curious at why he stopped talking.

"They tried to kill you. I thought you were dead, Clarke." At this Clarke sits up straighter, trying to ignore searing pain in her lag as she does so. "To me and everyone else, you died and there was nothing we could do. There was nothing I could do! Peace was the goal and even though we tried to not.. to- dammit!"

"Bellamy..." She reaches out to him as he jumps from his chair and combs his hand through his hair. His mind fills back with the emotion, the dread, of thinking he had lost her forever.Clarke reaches out and touches his arm, grounding him back to reality.

"I tried, Clarke. I tried to keep the peace but... it didn't work out." he explains everything he could. From the mind drives, to nightblood and its connection, to Russel, Josephine, the Primes, and Sanctum. As well as the rebellion and the strange Anomaly that had taken Octavia back. Bellamy told her everything. As he does so, she sits back and groans from the pain. He reaches out to her but she says she's fine. "Clarke?"

"I-I don't know what to say to that, Bellamy. But now I understand why you apologized for mentioning my mom." He sighs and reaches out to her again, this time she accepts and holds his hand. "So all of this happens and what? We can't change anything can we?"

"I don't think we can."

Silence falls between them as the whirlwind of information is absorbed between them. For the rest of the night nothing else is said, they simply stay, hands together, and content on this moment.

For Clarke it has only been 58 days, but for Bellamy it has been over 70 years with a moment of content silence between them. A lingering, unsaid, feeling moving through the air. In his time living in space, Bellamy never thought he would end up with Echo, and yet he did. His mind says he cares for her, but his heart yearns for another, and still their relationship lingered on. But forces beyond his control tell him that its up to him to take fate in his own hands and be with the one he truly cared for-  the one he truly loved- and to do that was to atone for their past mistakes, if only to create a path for their future.

[yellowcanna]

Two Sides, Same Coin

Summary: Since the beginning of Quirks, Yokohama has announced independence from Japan and closed itself from the rest of the world.

To this day and age, no one knows what lies within the city of Yokohama—or that was what the public was made to believe. In reality, Yokohama has long fallen into the control of the world’s largest criminal organization known as the Port Mafia.

Follow Class 1-A as their principal organized a field trip to Yokohama! In their short trip there, they must change their perspectives and learn exactly what it means to be justice and what it means to be villains.

Rating: T

Genre: Crossover, hint of shounen-ai (boy love)

Pairing: Contains mild Soukoku (Dazai x Chuuya) and Shin Soukoku (Akutagawa x Atsushi) if you squint

Author: Canna / Yellow Canna

Available on AO3!!

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CHAPTER 15

HE WHO LURKS IN THE SHADOWS (NIGHT 3: TUESDAY)

This story has been beta'd by Momentary_Flight, Nanami_ontheShore, Shady Spades

Drip

Drip

The droplets of water fell from the cloud, one after another from above Yokohama.

Two figures walked down the street with the old fashion lamp posts guiding their way.

Drip

“Q, what were you doing in that park?” the white-haired boy suddenly inquired after a long moment of silence while keeping a steady pace.

“…I just got lost,” the child replied.

Drip

Black leather boots stepped over a small red puddle.

“Were you aware that person was nearby, Q?” Golden eyes shifted down, gazing upon the person walking by his side. With the kid’s head dipped down, their face was hidden behind black and white bangs.

“That person is very important to me,” Atsushi continued as he stepped over a dismembered head lying in the puddle of red.

Drip

“He was the one who saved me and gave me a place to belong. I won’t forgive you if you harm him, do you understand, Q?”

“Tch…I know!” Kyuusaku gritted their teeth and the arm that was clutching onto the worn-out doll tightened. “I just wanted to take a look! I wasn’t trying to go after Dazai-san or anything!”

Drip

Drip

“You will address him as boss,” Atsushi corrected, coming to a stop and with a whirl of his jacket, he turned to face the child. He reached out a gloved hand.

It was a threatening gesture, but Kyuusaku didn’t move. They just stood there, staring at the older boy with wide eyes before feeling the weight of the hand resting on the top of their head.

Drip

Despite the fact that he was wearing gloves, the hand on top of the child’s head felt extremely warm and comforting.

“I can’t tell you how you should feel and I have no right to tell you to drop your resentment towards the boss, but that person is very important to me. Do you understand, Q?”

Drip

“Yes! I understand!” Kyuusaku frantically nodded. “I won’t ever lay a hand on Da—on boss, that’s why—!”

Kyuusaku was cut off by the gloved hand gently ruffling his hair. A bright smile was instantly on their lips as if the panic from before was only an illusion.

“Thank you, Q,” Atsushi whispered softly.

It was at this moment that the rain finally came pouring down.

A large black umbrella appeared over Atsushi’s head, protecting him from the rain. The white-haired boy looked down to the person holding the umbrella over his head and smiled lightly.

“Thank you, Kyouka-chan, but you’ll get wet.” He glanced at the girl’s shoulder that was being soaked in the rain.

“I’m fine,” the raven haired girl said with a light shake of her head.

Atsushi just smiled before he took the umbrella from her hand, tilting it so that the girl was fully shielded from the rain as well.

“Those students are invited here by the boss. There is no need for you to be cautious of them, Kyouka-chan,” Atsushi told the girl. In his brief encounter with those students, Atsushi had keenly sensed her intention to kill for a split second.

“What if they hurt you?” Kyouka questioned.

“I’ll curse them if they hurt Atsushi!” Kyuusaku instantly declared.

“Even so, you can’t attack them,” Atsushi told them firmly. “That is an order from the boss. As long as they don’t use their Quirks, we can’t attack them.”

“Yes,” Kyouka nodded, easily accepting the order.

Kyuusaku on the other hand didn’t look convinced. They puffed their cheeks out and pouted. Then, as if some bright idea came to mind, they began to cackle.

“Does that mean if they use their Quirks I can curse them?” they asked in an all too happy tone.

“Yes,” Atsushi replied, looking up when the sound of a gunfire echoed from the distance. “As long as they use their Quirks, it will be our job to hunt them down.”

The sound of gunfire was joined by another from another direction…and another.

Even the heavy rain wasn’t able to mask the screams echoing into the night sky.

Golden eyes narrowed as the rain came down even harder on them.

“It’s starting.” As soon as Atsushi said that, the entire street was covered in a field of static.

Lightning began shooting down from the sky, striking different parts of the area. With each lightning strike, the static on the ground increased.

When the shattering sounds of glass echoed around them, they looked up to find the light bulbs in the lamps bursting apart. In a blink of an eye, they were trapped within the darkness.

Kyouka let out a small gasp and quickly ripped out the Bluetooth that had been in her left ear and threw it away. She was just in time too, as a second later, the Bluetooth exploded, blasted into tiny pieces that can never be assembled back together.

“Ah…!” Atsushi dropped the umbrella as blue electricity flashed out of his collar.

“Atsushi!” Kyuusaku ran up and gripped onto the older boy’s dark cloak. Even in the darkness, Kyuusaku could see the pained look on Atsushi’s face as well—as the smoke rose out from within his black coat.

Atsushi pulled his jacket down a little, revealing a metallic collar fastened around his neck. There was blue electricity flickering across the metal’s surface with smoke rising out of it.

The white-haired boy gripped the collar with both hands and ripped it off his neck to reveal the burnt ring around his skin.

“Atsushi!” Kyouka quickly took the broken collar from the older boy’s hands and eyed the ring of damaged skin around that slender neck.

“It’ll heal soon,” Atsushi told her, fixing his jacket so that his neck was once more hidden. “Kyouka-chan, take Q and go to the safe house.”

“But—”

“The enemy was stalling for the rain,” Atsushi said, looking up to the sky. “Now that all of our communication is cut off, the Ability users that have been hiding will finally come out. Without your Bluetooth, you won’t be able to control Demon Snow.”

“Without your shock collar, you might lose control of the beast,” Kyouka pointed out.

“We have no time to waste,” Atsushi told her, lightly pushing her away. “By now, they most likely have figured out how we’ve been trapping them in this place. We can’t let them get away.”

“But—”

“Besides,” Atsushi looked down to Kyouka’s hands, where she was still holding onto his collar. “The moment my collar broke, an emergency signal was sent out with my last location. He should be on his way here. The two of you need to get away from me immediately.”

“Okay.” Kyouka nodded, taking a step back. “Be careful, Atsushi.”

With that, she grabbed the whining Q, picking the child up by their waist and took off—melting into the shadows like the assassin she was. 

Atsushi’s lips quirked upwards in the smallest smile.

He stood under the rain, letting the water chill him down to his bones. He slowly turned around, looking towards the direction they had come from. Scattered across the street were bodies of men and women dressed in white cloaks with their bodies dismantled.

He slowly closed his eyes and when he opened them up again, his irises were narrowed into slits.

“Ability: Beast Beneath the Moonlight.”

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Seven Months Ago—Yokohama

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 “AAAAAAAAAAAH!!!”   the child cried, tears pouring down their face as pain coursed through every fibre of their being.

It hurts.

Why?

Why them?

Why do they have to go through this?

What did they do wrong to deserve this?

It hurts.

Why?

“Why?” Kyuusaku sobbed. “I never asked for this Ability?”

Why?

Why?

Why?

“So why do all these terrible things happen to me?” Kyuusaku asked desperately, looking at the man sitting on the chair. “Isn’t everyone equal in the eyes of the Lord?!”

“You’re right,” the blond man said calmly. “But that is the world we live in. So let me tell you the truth.”

Kyuusaku felt his heart stopped as he listened to the words that came out of his mouth.

“God does exist. But He doesn’t love you.”

“NO!!”   Kyuusaku screamed.

Why?

Why?

Why?

Why?

“NO!! NO!! NO!!”

Why?

It’s not fair!

Why?

It’s not fair!

It’s not fair!

Why      Why   Why      Why      Why      Why    Why     Why    Why    Why

WhY    wHY    why  WHy    WhY WHY   whY  WHY    WhY WHy   Why  WhY  WHY  

 WHY   WHY   WHY WHY   WHY   WHY  WHY WHY   WHY   WHY  WHY  WHY  WHY

WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY  

“Perhaps you’re right,” a voice suddenly cut in, “But that means that God doesn’t love you either.”

The blond man jumped up with a gasp, but he was already too late. A crimson line appeared over his neck. Beads of blood slowly oozing out to form a diagonal line across the skin

“Lo…e…cra…” The man tried to form the words out of his broken vocal cords.

“He’s dead,” the mysterious person behind him said.

The blond opened and closed his mouth, but was unable to form any words. Little by little his head slowly slid off his neck before the force of gravity finally kicked in. His head hit the ground and along with it blood splattered all over the walls and ceiling of the underground room.

In a bright flash of yellow light, the tree that bound the child vanished.

Kyuusaku tumbled onto the ground at the same time as the now headless body. Pain was still numbing their body and tears flowing from their eyes. However, they didn’t make any sound and just looked up at the white-haired boy in a black coat standing over them.

“I do not know if God exists or not,” the young man spoke softly as he knelt in front of the kid. “But if God does exist, then He doesn’t love me either.”

“W-who…?” Kyuusaku trembled as they forced themselves to get up to face the man. Unfortunately, they couldn’t even stay on their feet for two seconds before stumbling forward. Kyuusaku had expected to hit the ground, but just as they fell forward, a pair of hands caught them and pulled them into a gentle embrace.

Fresh tears began to fall from their eyes all over again. This time, it wasn’t tears from the pain or anger at God’s betrayal.

How long has it been, since they had experienced the warmth of another person?

“Nakajima Atsushi,” the boy replied. He gathered the child into his arms and began walking out of the dimly lit room.

“Where are we going?” Kyuusaku asked as they were climbing up the poorly constructed wooden staircase.

“We’re going home.”

“Home?” Kyuusaku rolled that foreign word around his tongue. “Where’s home?”

The white-haired boy didn’t reply immediately.

He walked out of the small cottage and into the night. He didn’t even look down and just walked around a body lying on the floor with greenish tentacles and raven hair scattered everywhere.

“Wherever you want it to be, that will be your home.”

“Wherever I want?” Kyuusaku whispered, staring up at the man.

High above the sky, a single man watched the scene unfold with his hands in his pockets and crimson light shrouding his body.

“It seems that my plan has worked!” The cheerful sound of his lover buzzed into his ear like an annoying fly. “Of course, not that I ever expected it to go otherwise~”

“Yeah, yeah,” Chuuya huffed, eyes never straying away from the black coated figure slowly disappearing into the trees.“But we can’t be certain that Q will listen to Nakajima. That brat was never stable to begin with. After this, his mental state will only get worse.”

“No, Q will listen,” Dazai said with certainty. “After all, Atsushi-kun is the one who took their hands. For Q who has never experienced human warmth, once they have gotten a taste, they will be too afraid to ever let go.”

“You’re a piece of shit as usual,” Chuuya stated flatly. Despite what he said, he couldn’t deny the efficiency of his lover’s manipulative methods. If Q could be controlled, then their Ability would become a great asset to the Port Mafia.

“Human life is filled with many pure, happy, serene examples of insincerity, truly splendid of their kind-of people deceiving one another without any wounds being inflicted, of people who seem unaware even that they are deceiving one another!” The brunet spoke with much exaggeration on the other side, as if he was performing in some sort of play.

“Oh?” Chuuya raised a fine brow. His deep, husky voice carried a hint of threat. “Are you including me in that?”

“Of course not, Chuuya!” Dazai’s tone immediately did a one-eighty. “For my love for you will always be true!”

Chuuya snorted quietly to himself before looking back down at the empty field. The White Reaper of the Port Mafia was long gone by now.

“I told you, didn’t I?” Dazai’s voice whispered gently by his ears, losing all its playfulness. “That once you’ve experienced the warmth of another human being, you will never be able to let go.”

“Then you better hold onto it tightly, you shitty boss,” Chuuya shot down like a black and crimson arrow, piercing through the cottage and creating a massive explosion.

“Cause I ain’t gonna let go.”

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Present

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“It’s really coming down…” Iida muttered, gazing up at the sky.

The class stood under a building, watching the rain come down so hard that a thick layer of water vapor was covering the ground.

“How’s this possible? Isn’t there a barrier around here?” Ashido asked in confusion. She stretched out her hand and watched as the raindrops splashed into her palm, rapidly cooling the surface of her skin.

“Remember the breeze we felt before?” Yaoyorozu turned to her classmates. “Perhaps this barrier allows certain things to go through, like sunlight, rain and wind.”

“But how’s that possible?” Sero questioned. “I mean, I get that they got higher technology and all, but is something like that even possible?”

“It’s been ten minutes already,” Uraraka mumbled with concern, looking around for any signs of the four that had left. “You guys don’t think anything happened…do you?”

“I’m sure they’re fine!” Kirishima said in an attempt to cheer her along with the rest of the class up.

“We still have five more minutes,” Iida pointed out, glancing down at his phone.

The rain continued to pour down.

They waited for the time to slowly pass.

And then, five minutes was up.

They all looked around, yet there were still no signs of Midoriya, Shouji, Hagakure and Jirou. They checked their phones, but none of them had received any calls from their friends. During this time, they’ve repeatedly tried to call their friends, knowing it’ll be safe as their phones were muted.

Unfortunately, none of their calls got through.

“It can’t be that something happened…can it?” Koda asked nervously.

“Or maybe they just went too far and are coming back?” Sato guessed.

“Either way, fifteen minutes are up, we should call.” Todoroki looked towards Iida.

“Yeah…” Iida nodded and clicked on the contact for Kunikida.

They all knew how much they would be yelled at, but they were prepared for it the moment they agreed to let Midoriya, Hagakure, Shouji and Jirou go.

Iida turned the phone on speaker so that everyone could listen in.

The ringing sound of the phone began and they all waited nervously for the person on the other end to pick up.

It didn’t take long for their calls to get through. On the third ring, Kunikida picked it up.

“Yes?” His voice came from the other end.

“Kunikida-san,” Iida bent his spine and bowed a perfect ninety degree despite the other not being able to see it. “We’re sorry! Even though you told us not to, we decided to follow that boy!”

“We’re sorry! We’ll accept any punishment!” Yaoyorozu followed.

Everyone was about to start apologizing, but were interrupted by Kunikida’s sharp voice. Although their interactions had been short, the students all had a pretty good grasp on Kunikida’s personality and were all expecting the blond to start yelling at them.

However, he didn’t. Instead, he was speaking in a very calm and collected voice, “Who went? Since you’re calling me, I assume you weren’t part of the group that went.”

“Midoriya-kun, Jirou-kun, Hagakure-kun and Shouji-kun,” Iida replied, swallowing hard. The calmness in Kunikida’s voice made them more nervous than if the blond had screamed.

“Will they use their Quirks?”

“Pardon?”

“Do you think they will use their Quirks?” Kunikida repeated more firmly.

“No, I don’t think they will,” Yaoyorozu replied for Iida, stepping closer so her voice could be heard through the loud pattering sound of the rain.

“Then listen closely,” Kunikida instructed. “From now on, no matter what happens, do not use your Quirk under any circumstances. Even when you think you’ll die, don’t use your Quirk. Do you understand?”

“What do you mean?” Uraraka asked worriedly. All of them could pick up something really off with Kunikida’s attitude.

“Just stay where you are and wait for me. Even if someone were to attack you, you can’t use your Quirk!” With that, the call was cut off again.

Class 1-A all shared a look.

Even if someone were to attack them?!

“What the fuck is going on?” Bakugou muttered, sharp eyes narrowing into the distance covered by the rain and fog.

◢◣◥◤◢◣◥◤◢◣◥◤◢◣◥

What was going on?

What happened?

Why did it become like this?

“Jirou-san, hang in there!!”

The hands gripping onto the make-shift bandages made from Shouji’s shirt were hastily working to wrap up the hole in the girl’s stomach. Midoriya tried to recall the first aid lessons they’ve had back in U.A, but it was no use. They don’t have anything that can clean the wound or stop the blood flow.

All Midoriya could do was tighten the bandages, apply pressure and hope that could somewhat slow the blood flow.

“I-I’m…ok…!” Jirou tried to smile, but was failing miserably. Her lips were pale and there were even tears threatening to fall from her eyes. Even with the rain constantly washing over them, they could all tell how badly she was sweating.

“This isn’t good…we have to find a hospital.” Shouji said, noting how badly Jirou was shaking in his arms. 

“Guys! We have to go now!” Hagakure half screamed, half whispered.

Thanks to the rain, Midoriya could make out where the invisible girl was from the water running down her body, shaping her outline.

She was frantically running towards them after being on the lookout from the alleyway entrance.

Neither Midoriya or Shouji needed to ask what happened, as the next thing they know, the sound of gunfire echoed into their ears.

They were instantly on the move once more, running away from the battlefield they knew were taking place. The rain was a blessing in disguise, for that if it wasn’t raining so hard, the people out in the street would have caught their frantic footsteps.

As Midoriya ran, he recalled everything that had happened since they came in here.

They came here to follow Kyuusaku and that strange man, yet before they were able to find where they went, they found the corpses first.

The corpses were everywhere. On the street, in the darkness of the alleyways, and they even spotted a dead body hanging from the roof!

And all of these dead people were dressed the same—white cloaks with goggles covering half of their faces.

Why were there so many people dead?

What in the world happened?

They found the answer not long after when static seemed to cover everything—including the air they were breathing. If Midoriya had to come up with a way to describe it, it was like being inside a thundercloud. All the hairs on their bodies straightened at the intense static in the air before they were thrown into total darkness.

This darkness was the switch that started everything.

As soon as a veil of darkness covered their eyes, the sounds of gunfire and explosions echoed into the night, followed by the screams of people coming from all around them.

It was as if they had fallen into a nightmare without realizing they had fallen asleep.

Before they were even able to comprehend what was happening, a loud bang—one that sounded much closer to them than the rest—snapped them back to reality. Along with the sound was Jirou’s pained cry and her body falling forward.

At that moment, all their training from U.A came back to them. They stopped thinking all together and acted on instincts.

The sudden darkness left the three of them blinded, unable to see anything further than half a meter. However, all of them were able to remember the narrow alleyway just a bit behind them, since they came out from there. Without the need to communicate, they turned at the same time, grabbing Jirou and ducking inside just as repetitive loud bangs came from the distance.

They backtracked their steps, yet it was as if all the evil were waiting for the darkness to come just so they could strike. In just a matter of minutes, the entire place was like a warzone.

People dressed in black and white were fighting one another, all of them armed with guns, bazookas and all sorts of ranged weapons.

There were so many bodies falling onto the pavement and dying that the white mist from the rain was slowly turning red.

This wasn’t just a simple battle anymore.

It was a massacre.

“Why?” Hagakure’s voice was unsteady as she gasped for breath. “We’ve been running all this time and we’re not getting out at all! But we’ve been running in the same direction, it doesn’t make any sense!”

The three of them managed to break into one of the empty warehouses. They hid behind large stacks of crates and listened to the endless gunfire and screams outside.

Midoriya was panting as well. He thought over all the roads they had taken and Hagakure was right. Even if they were thrown off from the attacks, they were heading towards the general direction of where they came from. They all remembered clearly…so how could they still be stuck here?

It only took them ten minutes to come here, yet it’s been nearly twenty minutes and they weren’t seeing the exit.

“Something isn’t right.” Midoriya said. “This place…everything—” he cut off when an explosion shook the warehouse they were hiding in, causing some dust gathered on the roof to fall over them.

“How’s Jirou-san?” Midoriya asked, changing the topic and looking towards Jirou cradled in Shouji’s arms.

“She’s just fainted,” Shouji told him when he noticed the worried look on the other’s face. “Although it slowed a bit, she’s still losing blood. We have to find help soon.”

“Yeah…” Midoriya agreed. He pulled out his phone, but he still couldn’t turn it on. “Shouji-kun, Hagakure-san, are your phones still not working?”

“No, I can’t turn it on at all!” Hagakure said frustratedly, showing them the black screen on her phone.

“Same here.” Shouji sighed.

Whatever caused all the lights to go out had turned off their phones as well.

Midoriya was certain that it was the work of an Ability user. It was the only explanation for the weird static around them and the lighting that came down all at once.

Even idiots would know by now that they had stumbled into a battlefield between two groups.

“Shouji-kun, Hagakure-san!” Midoriya said, standing as his friends turned to him. “If after a while we still can’t find a way out…I will use my Quirk.”

“Midoriya-kun,” Shouji spoke up, “that’s—”

“I know,” Midoriya said gravely, looking over to Jirou whose face was as white as chalk. “This is just the worst case scenario. If we can’t get back to the others—or even get out of here—Jirou-san will be in danger.”

The other two didn’t say anything to that, as they too knew it was true. Jirou’s blood hasn’t stopped flowing out. At this rate—

BAM

The three immediately quieted down. They all held their breaths and listened to the door to the warehouse being knocked down. The heavy metal smashed onto the concrete, creating a deafening sound that made them shook.

“Look what we have here~” A voice sang from the other side of the warehouse. It was the voice of a woman. “Four wet mice hiding in a little corner. Since when did the Port Mafia become so pathetic?”

The Port Mafia?

Midoriya, Hagakure and Shouji shared looks of shock.

How did these people find out where they were?

Midoriya’s eyes landed on his own body and realized how soaked he was—how soaked they all were. There were no doubts they left footprints when they came in, but the voice specifically said four, not three.

Even if they left footprints, the most will only be three pairs, so how…

“Death to the Port Mafia!” the woman shouted, not even giving them time to react as guns aimed specifically in their direction started rapid firing.

They all ducked upon the sound of wooden crates being blasted apart one after another. Under the intense gunfire, they could even hear the woman’s crazed laugh. Some of the crates hung on longer than the others due to the different materials that were inside, but sooner or later they were blasted apart by the power of the bullets.

It won’t take long before all four of them get blasted with holes.

“Where’s that spirit of yours now, you dirty sewer rats! You snuck up on us and cornered us before, how does it feel to have that returned to you, huh?!”

“Shouji-kun, Hagakure-san!” Midoriya shouted to his companions through the loud bangs resonating through the warehouse. He grabbed onto both of them, then began looking around to find a way out.

The front entrance was out of the question.

Even if he could move fast enough, there was no guarantee he could dodge the bullets, especially when the entrance was already blocked. So that left him only one option.

He will kick down the wall behind them and leave through there.

Midoriya gritted his teeth. He still remembered his teachers and Kunikida’s warning of not using his Quirk. He knew it could be dangerous…but at this rate, Jirou, Hagakure and Shouji will…!

Midoriya froze.

He stared at the wall he had been glaring at intensely, then slowly to Shouji and Hagakure. There was an equal amount of confusion and wariness on their faces.

The bullets had stopped shooting and the air had become strangely quiet.

Even the woman’s voice was gone. If it wasn’t for the fact that they can still move, and the sound of rain hitting the rooftop, they would have thought time stopped or something.

Midoriya only felt a pat on his shoulder before a pair of shoes tiptoed away. The invisible girl had gone off to investigate. He wanted to call out to stop her seeing how there was some way the enemies were able to see them, but the girl had already run off.

The two boys waited nervously, worried for their classmate’s safety. Thankfully, Hagakure didn’t go out for too long. Though when she came back, both of them could tell how frantic she was from her shoes that were jumping up and down.

She didn’t speak and instead tugged on Midoriya to follow her.

Midoriya did. He carefully moved around the crates and when he peeked out, his eyes widened at what he was seeing. Half of the warehouse was ruined and the floors covered with splinters from the crates that were destroyed.

But most importantly, lying at the entrances were five corpses.

Like many other corpses they had seen, these people were all dressed in white. They were lying face down within a puddle of blood that was expanding across the dusty floor, dying their white clothes in red and their weapons lying not far from them.

Midoriya felt goosebumps crawling over his skin. He looked around the warehouse, but couldn’t see anything or anyone that could have killed them.

They waited for a while, yet there was still nothing. It was possible that this was a trap…or it could be that whoever that killed these people had already left. Midoriya was leaning more towards the former. These people were obviously shooting at them, so there was no way whoever that killed these people wouldn’t know they were here.

After some hesitation, Miodirya decided to take a bet.

“Midoriya-kun!” Hagakure hissed, but the boy gave her a slight wave to tell her that it was alright.

He slipped out and walked along the wall carefully while constantly on the look for anything that may pop out and attack him.

There wasn’t any attack even after he made it to the bodies.

He looked around and slowly crouched down to the nearest cloaked person. Carefully, he pulled off the person’s hood, releasing a river or raven black hair that scattered around the body. Swallowing, Midoriya grabbed the headgear around the corpse’s head and pulled.

As he did so, the head was lifted, allowing Midoryia to see the face that belonged to a woman. Startled, he tugged too hard and swallowed the urge to scream when the woman’s head came right off!

No, it wasn’t off yet, but it was close! The woman’s head was bent ninety degrees from the pull on her goggles and twisted around so that her face was in full view.

Midoriya let go of the headgear and the head fell back onto the ground in a quiet thump. He slapped his hand over his mouth. His stomach turned and he had to use all of his will power just to stop the content inside from rushing up his throat.

He tried to think back to his lessons with Ranpo. He tried to convince himself that it was just like that time...but he couldn’t.

This wasn’t the same as that time, or even the bodies they had come across on their way here.

These people were just alive!

They were just talking and attacking them not seconds ago. These bodies were still warm with blood still flowing on the ground.

Midoriya took a couple of deep breaths before he glanced back to the head. He forced his wavering gaze back to the neck that was still attached by a nail’s length of flesh. Green eyes darted to the other bodies lying in similar fashion as this woman.

Now he knew how they died. They all had their throats slit by something extremely sharp.

And to do that, the attacker had to be at close range.

He would have started shaking if he already wasn’t at the thought of someone watching their moves right now. Whoever killed these people had done it swiftly, not even giving them the time to react.

A name instantly surfaced onto Midoriya’s mind.

The Port Mafia.

According to what the woman had said not long ago, this fight was between them and the Port Mafia.

Whoever had killed these people was part of the Port Mafia and most likely the one tasked to watch over them.

Now that Midoriya had a lead, everything else just naturally fell into place.

“ Absolutely no Quirks are to be used. As long as you do not use your Quirks, you will be in no danger. Please keep that in mind.”

The principal’s voice rang inside his head.

As long as they don’t use their Quirks, they won’t be in any danger.

Midoriya felt a chill crept down his spine at the horrifying thought that came to him. He unconsciously reached out and touched his throat. If he had used his Quirk, then the one lying in a pool of blood would have been him.

Midoriya was aware of this…he had been aware of this since the beginning, yet he didn’t register the meaning behind it until he was staring at the fresh bodies by his feet.

This place…everything happening right now…this was the real Yokohama.

As long as they don’t use their Quirks, they will be safe.

If he looked at it from another point of view, then that also means that as long as they don’t use their Quirks, the Port Mafia will protect them.

No…if the Port Mafia was protecting them, then what about Jirou?

Midoriya decided to think about these later. Now was not the time.

Taking a couple of deep breaths, he reached out to grab the woman’s headgear again. The woman was staring back at him with those wide, unblinking eyes that had already gone dry from the lack of tears.

The green-haired boy pressed his other hand onto the head, fighting back the nausea and pressed the head down so he could rip the headgear off. Clutching the goggles in his hand, he ran back to Shouji and Hagakure. Both of them were looking at him nervously. 

“Midoriya—”

Before Shouji could finish, Midoriya doubled down and began vomiting.

“Midoriya-kun!” Hagakure was instantly at his side, one hand holding his shoulder while the other rubbing his back as he threw up what little he had inside his stomach. Even now, Midoriya could remember the feeling of the woman’s head under his palm...how warm it still felt.

“Midoriya-kun, are you alright?” Shouji asked with worries laced in his voice.

“I’m fine,” Midoriya reassured them after he emptied everything out. He used his sleeve to wipe his lips before trying to put the headgear on.

“They were able to see where we are and how many of us are there. If I’m right, then these goggles—” Midoriya stopped speaking the moment he got the goggles over his eyes. It was just like he thought!

He could see!

It was as if everything in the world had become black and consisted of only white lines. He could see the white lines of the crates around them and even through it to stare at the bodies lying at the entrances. The only downside was that all he could see were the basic forms and outlines of everything. This made it hard for him to gauge the distance without taking these goggles off to look at what it was like in reality.

With these goggles, Midoriya began looking all around them. He looked through the walls around the factories and to the outside.

Nothing.

There was no one around.

Did the person watching over them leave?

Midoriya wanted to see further, but realized that fifteen meters was as far as these goggles could see. Anything beyond that was just darkness.

He quickly told his two classmates of this, as well as his guess of who it was that killed those people off.

As surprised as Hagakure and Shouji were, they both agreed on two things, and it was that they couldn’t bet on the Port Mafia saving them. If the Port Mafia planned on saving them, then they would have stepped out to help Jirou, not leave them on their own like this. They can only rely on themselves to save Jirou.

Now that they knew these goggles exist, hiding inside buildings was the worst possible option. There was no guarantee that no more of those white cloaked people would come. They’ll just be sitting ducks here.

And so, the three ran out of the warehouse.

None of them noticed the shadowy figure standing on the beam high up in the ceiling. The figure ran along the beam that was only ten inches wide and with a flip, they slipped out of the open window.

With both hands grasping onto the windowsill, the figure gave a simple push and their feet landed soundlessly on the roof.

In the heavy rain, the figure ran along the edge of the roof, tailing the kids closely.

Stormy gray eyes were locked on the green haired boy with goggles running at the very front. Whenever they stopped or whenever that boy turned, the figure would skillfully move so that they were out of the boy’s range of sight.

And then, just as the figure leaped over another roof, a deafening roar cracked down like thunder, causing the kids and the figure to freeze.

“W-what was that?!” Hagakure yelped, looking around for whatever that made that sound.

“Whatever it is, we have to go now!” Shouji shouted urgently, and Midoriya agreed.

Whatever that was, it didn’t sound anything close to a human. It sounded more like a wild beast of some sort.

Before they could resume running, screams—this time human—came from right behind them.

The three of them turned around. Hagakure and Shouji couldn’t see far due to the darkness and downpour, but Midoriya could. He gasped at the sight of a white outlined figure, running towards them and into the range of his goggles.

“There’s a person!” Midoriya alerted his classmates. He took a step back, eyes already darting around for an escape route when from the corner of his eye, he saw a weird blur.

“Eh?” Midoriya stared down the street, where the silhouette of the person was. The person that had been running was now on the ground—unmoving.

“Midoriya-kun?” Hagakure called, but Midoriya could barely hear her.

He stared at the figure. The outline where the head should have been was gone. The person on the ground was missing their head.

What exactly happened just now?

There were more screams and explosions. Midoriya didn’t know if it was due to the rain muffling some of the sound, but he felt like these sounds were coming from all around them—from all directions.

He tried to see what was going on, but the goggles didn’t allow him to see far enough.

“Midoriya-kun, what’s going on?” Shouji gasped.

“Midoriya-kun? Midoriya-kun!” Hakugare was shaking Midoriya when he still didn’t respond.

“I—” Midoriya was about to open his mouth when the screaming and gunfire disappeared, leaving behind an eerie silence.

The three of them stood within the rain.

They stood back to each other, cautiously looking around for any sign of danger. They didn’t know if it was due to the cold droplets showering over them, but all of their hands were slightly shaking.

They waited and waited, but nothing happened.

The rain continued to come down and other than that, they didn’t hear anything anymore.

The three of them gradually relaxed from their tense posture.

Shouji and Hagakure turned to Midoriya, and it was at that moment that a voice spoke.

“What are you doing here?”

The voice came from behind them, from the spot where Shouji and Hagakure were watching out for just a second ago.

They whirled around and Midoriya’s eyes that were hidden behind the goggles widened at the sight of what was standing in front of him.

Sweat broke out of his skin at the sight of a gigantic beast towering over the three of them. Midoriya stared at the gigantic tiger that was illuminating with faint white light. Unlike the simple outlines of humans, the beast before him was shown in extreme detail.

Midoriya stared at the white and black coat, then to those golden eyes locked on him.

And then, Midoriya’s vision shattered. The lens fell apart little by little until the entire headgear fell from his head. The green haired youth blinked.

The beast he was seeing was gone, and in its place stood a familiar young man with unevenly cut white hair. It was the same man they had been trying to follow—the one who took Kyuusaku!

“Those aren’t something you should wear.” The man said with furrowed brows, eyes trailing to the remains of the goggles.

Midoriya looked down by reflex, only to stop upon seeing something lying quietly beside the man’s feet.

His mouth fell open, but no sound came out of his throat. Despite the rain constantly pouring into his eyes, he couldn’t even find it in himself to blink.

He stared at the round object with reddish-brown hair growing out of it.

That was a head.

A human head.

It wasn’t just that. Although he couldn’t tell due to the black coat, the water around the man’s feet was being dyed red. It was the blood being washed off the man’s body by the rain.

Midoriya wasn’t the only one who noticed. Hagakure and Shouji saw the head as well.

The three of them slowly backed away from this man, yet Midoriya couldn’t help the panic rising up inside him. While keeping the man within his sight, he was subtly searching for any signs of Kyuusaku.

“Leave this place,” the white-haired man said, golden eyes narrowing, “Otherwise—urgh!”

The black cloaked man suddenly let out a pained groan and hunched over. His hands clutched onto his head tightly as if he were suffering from a migraine.

“W-what’s going on?” Hagakure whispered.

“Is he hurt?” Shouji held Jirou tighter and took another step back.

Midoriya watched the man’s every move.

The white-haired man let out another pained whine. He stumbled, swaying in his feet before a ring of blue light shot out of his body and circled around him.

Along with the man’s scream, a blue ring appeared, then another.

“What’s…” Midoriya stared at that ring of blue light. From this close up, he could see the tiny pixels that made up the ring—no, not pixels.

Those were tiny characters.

They were words.

Midoriya’s eyes rounded. He had seen this before. Back when Tanizaki Junichirou demonstrated his power, those green lights were also made up of tiny characters like this!

“It’s an Ability!” Midoriya shouted to his classmates.

“This way!” Shouji called while running away from the man. He headed towards the nearest alleyway behind them with Midoriya and Hagakure following suit.

Just as Midoriya took a couple of steps, he saw the white-haired man move from the corner of his eye. He whirled around and fell into a defensive position—only to be dumbfounded by the sight.

The man was still standing in the same place he had been. The rings around his body were gone and his right hand was lifted—stabbing into his left shoulder.

Midoriya could see the gloved finger sinking all the way down his knuckles with blood trickling down his arms and washed off by the rain.

“What—” Midoriya’s voice was drowned out when the man suddenly let out a roar.

It was that same, monstrous roar from before, coming from the lips of a human.

At the same time, they were suddenly bathed in blue light with the familiar static and electricity dancing through the rain.

When a droplet carrying that electricity hit Midoriya, he was jolted out of his thoughts and looked up to see a person in the brightening sky. And that person was falling towards them at a breakneck speed.

Midoriya watched as that white cloaked person extended their arms with blue electricity shrouding their body.

The white-haired man let out another roar before he crouched low. Midoriya could almost hear the sound of his muscles tightening up before he kicked off, shooting into the air with a force so strong that the ground around him caved in.

Had Midoriya not braced himself, he would have been thrown back from the gust of wind slamming into him seconds after the man shot off. The speed and power the man displayed was so similar to One for All that Midoriya couldn’t help but stare.

When he looked up towards the sky, he saw the white-haired man leaping up a building on all four like a graceful cat—leaving deep claw marks into the side of the building before he kicked off, shooting past the building he was scaling and towards the sky where that white figure was.

The moment the white and black figures clashed, there was a burst of blue light, blinding Midoriya and forcing him to look away. From high above, he could hear the roaring sound of thunder mixed together with the roar of a beast.

“Midoriya-kun!”

Midoirya hurriedly ran into the alleyway where Shouji and Hagakure were waiting.

“Come on, let’s go!” Hagakure shouted, taking the lead.

But where would they go?

They knew that aimlessly running around won’t help them at all, but other than that, what can they do?

Think—Midoriya told himself, eyes trailing to Jirou in Shouji’s arms.

There had to be a way out of this situation.

On top of that, he was also concerned about Kyuusaku’s whereabouts. Especially after seeing that man covered in blood, there was no way Midoriya could turn a blind eye to the boy’s situation. It wasn’t just something as simple as an unhealthy relationship anymore.

Think.

Think.

Think.

There had to be a way.

There was always a way!

A loud explosive sound made the three of them skid to a stop. From the narrow exit of the alley, a burst of black mist covered the street, making them unable to see anything beyond it.

“What’s that?” Shouji muttered, squinting his eyes in an attempt to get a clearer look.

It was at this moment that something blue and white flew down from the sky, smashing into the building next to them. The entire building shook, causing pieces of the wall and bricks to fall into the narrow path the three of them were in.

“We have to go back!” Midoriya shouted. He didn’t know what that black mass in front of them was, but he knew it wasn’t anything good. They need to get out of here and—

“Kyaaa!”

“Hagakure-san?” Midoriya gasped, startled by the other’s scream. Fearing something happened to her, the green-haired boy looked around the alley. He looked at the ground, searching for her shoes only to find them missing.

“Hagakure-san!!” Midoriya’s heart skipped a beat. Shouji was in the same situation as he too searched for their missing classmate.

“Hagakure—”

“Hey!” A voice called out to them, The voice belonged to a female, but it wasn’t Hagakure’s voice.

Midoriya and Shouji turned around to see the door near the exit of the alley opened. From the doorway, they saw a young girl who couldn’t be older than twelve with long blond hair and bright blue eyes.

She looked annoyed while waving a hand at them.

“Hurry up and get in! Do you want to die?” She snapped impatiently.

Midoriya and Shouji didn’t know what was going on, but they knew that this girl—whoever she was—was helping them. They ran forward, rushing into the building before the girl slammed the door close.

“Midoriya-kun, Shouji-kun!” Hagakure quickly ran up to her classmates.

“Come on, we have to get down!” The little blonde girl shouted just as the building they were in shook.

Midoriya looked out the window and saw nothing but darkness beyond it despite the continuous thundering noise outside.

The three of them immediately followed the little girl who led them down another staircase leading towards the basement.

Hagakure went in first, followed by Shouji and then Midoriya.

However, just as Midoriya was about to walk inside, he heard shattering sounds from above.  Something gripped his arm, pulling him into the room before the door closed with a loud slam.

And then, the shattering sound from above grew into loud crashing noises.

“My, that was a close one!”

Midoriya turned to the person that had pulled him in at the last second.

He was a tall and skinny man with raven hair and stubble around his chin—proof of the lack of shaving.

“Are you alright, boy?” the man asked with a gentle look on his face.

“Ah, yes, thank you!” Midoriya hurriedly thanked the man. He opened his mouth, about to ask who the man was when the blonde girl from before kicked the man in the shin, causing him to crumble onto the ground in pain.

All three U.A students jumped in surprise at the girl’s action. No matter how they looked at this sweet doll-like girl, she didn’t seem like the type to hit people out of the blue like that!

“So mean, Elise-chan!!” the man whined with tears threatening to spill from his eyes.

“Hmph!” The girl—Elise, huffed with her cheeks puffed out. “Stupid Rintarou! Because of you, I got wet!”

“I’m sorry Elise-chan! I’ll buy you plenty of new dresses tomorrow, ok?” the man asked, trying to butter up to the little girl who refused to look at him.

“I want strawberry cake!”

“Alright, we’ll get cake together with the dresses!”

“Umm…?” Shouji spoke up and the man’s attention turned towards him.

That playful look on his face became serious the moment his eyes landed on Jirou.

“It seems your companion needs treatment,” he said while reaching into his pocket, pulling out a pair of white rubber gloves. “Set her down on that table over there, I will take a look at her.”

“Excuse me?” Hagakure asked as politely as she could. “You are…?”

“I’m just a middle-age doctor managing a small clinic,” the man replied with a smile.

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