#while police were trying to evict him

[partialbirthabortion]

As was absolutely completely predictable, self-immolation is experiencing a bit of a renaissance now

[lovelyyandereaddictionpoint]

Yandere Femboy Tenant x Landlord Reader

He’s just so used to being catered to 

Men and women falling at his feet everywhere he goes

Lending their money and bodies to every little whim of his 

He’s beautiful and social and the most desirable guy around

“Oh Soru-sama! I have a gift for you!”

“Soru-sama here have my money this month! I do have to pay rent but I feel the most fulfilled if you were to have this!”

“Soru-sama I wish I was as cool as you!” 

With a flip of his hair crowds absolutely swoon 

“Thank you so much, everyone…now please leave your gifts in an orderly pile.”

But at the end of the day, Soru does return to a home

A gated house that he’s currently renting 

And it's the house you own

“Tenant Soru I’ve come to get your rent!”

“Oh (Y/n) you’ve conveniently arrived right when I had my noon bath~ Are you thinking of joining me?”

“Soru the rent.”

“Ah! Can I maybe persuade you with a bottle of champagne?”

“No, it’s probably drugged. What I want is the rent.”

“Uh oh~ I think I left the water running! If you’ll excuse me!”

“Hey!” 

At first, he hated you 

Because you weren’t kissing the ground he walked on like past landlords

Whether you are just not interested or eager to maintain a tenant-landlord relationship

You just won’t be swayed

And in the end, he’s just not used to the typical treatment

Where you’ll threaten to evict him if he doesn’t pay up

Or how you scream and threaten to call the police when he offers something alternative

And how when he goes to talk to you, you don’t immediately try to ask him out

He comes to find he just really really really likes you

It takes him a while to realize though

“They’re right…I really should stop dropping by their place unannounced…but I just really want to see them and when I don’t I feel–wait…oh no…am I in love!?” 

But when he does realize he refuses to stop himself

Whether you are already dating or not interested 

He won’t be deterred 

All his life he’s been given everything 

So if he wants you he should be able to have you right

To entrance you all by himself 

Once he’s decided on you he never stops 

Using every tool in his arsenal to get an ounce of your attention 

“(Y/n)! So glad you could stop by~! Care for a cookie?”

“You said your pipe was broken…”

“It is! And I desperately need you!”

All he needs is one shot 

One slip-up from you is all he needs

All he wants

When you finally accept that drink or those cookies or even decide to rest your eyes in the ‘seemingly’ empty house

It’s over

At the snap of his fingers and a lie, Soru has an entire dedicated fanbase ready to help with crafting your disappearance 

When you do wake again, you’re so dizzy you settle on the thighs under your head

“Aww does my little landlord have a hard time keeping their head up? Good, I wouldn’t want it any other way!”

[munson-blurbs]

hope you don't mind me asking but could reader adopt harris officially? it'd be a sweet little blurb ☺️

Single Dad!Eddie x Fem!ReaderSeries

Summary: Harris makes a special request on his birthday: for you to adopt him and officially be his mommy.

TW: mention of parental neglect/drug use, pretty much just all fluff and happiness

WC: 2.2k

A/N: Happy Mother's Day to all of the moms out there! Y'all are badasses who deserve to be celebrated. I used this video for the judge's dialogue to ensure accuracy.

February 2001

“So, Har,” Eddie starts through a mouthful of cake, “did you have a good birthday?”

Harris nods emphatically, digging into his own slice. A dollop of vanilla frosting dots the tip of his nose, but he continues eating, unbothered.

Eddie looks at you as you try to contain the inevitable mess that Hendrix will make. His chubby cheeks are already decorated with chocolate cake, and he’s only a few bites in. “Can you believe we have a nine-year-old now?”

You shake your head. The years truly have flown by, and though you haven’t had the privilege of being there for all of them, it feels as though Harris’s fifth birthday was only yesterday. 

“What’s crazy to me is that Harris is the same age you were when I took you in,” Wayne says to Eddie. He glances at his nephew, a wistful look in his old eyes. 

“Oh, yeah!” Harris grins. “I forgot you took care of Daddy.”

Eddie leans back in his seat and smirks. “Did you ever regret adopting me, Old Man?” 

“Every damn day.”

While he may have tuned out his dad and grandfather’s back-and-forth, you can see Harris pause before he continues eating. He’s never been one to stifle his curiosity, the wheels in his head turning as he processes the information. 

His time to ask a question grinds to a halt when Hendrix slams his little palm right into the cake slice, grabs a chunk of it, and smashes it into his face. If any actually got in his mouth, it would be a miracle. 

Harris gets his opportunity later that night. Eddie tucks him into bed, pulling the SpongeBob comforter up to his chin, and kisses his head. 

“Daddy?” Harris asks before Eddie can stand up. 

“Hmm?”

“Why did Grampa adopt you?”

Eddie exhales, chewing on the inside of his cheek. As his eldest son has gotten older, he’s become more honest with him, not constantly shielding him from painful truths. He chooses his words carefully before speaking again. 

“Well, my mom and dad weren’t good parents. They didn’t take care of me, and they made a lot of bad choices,” he says. Memories flash through his mind, ones of eviction notices and strangers constantly in his home. Ones of police officers snapping handcuffs on his parents’ wrists, the two of them too far gone to even register to the severity of the situation. He shakes it off, turning his attention back to Harris. “And so Grampa Wayne took me in and adopted me so I would have a safe, happy home.”

“Like how my mom made bad choices? My real mom?”

Eddie nods, wondering if Harris knows how closely their situations resembled each other. Except you did what your father didn’t–you changed, he reminds himself. 

“Yeah, like that.”

Harris thinks for a moment. “But now Mom is my mom. So does that mean she adopted me?”

“No, she didn’t adopt you.” His heart sinks when he sees the small pout forming on Harris’s lips. “Not yet, anyway.”

“Why not?”

Eddie scratches at his jawline, his nails digging into a particular itchy patch of stubble. “Well, honestly…we wanted to make sure it was what you wanted, Har. Because Mom will love you no matter what,” he makes sure to add. 

Without any hesitation, Harris declares, “It’s what I want.”

“Are you sure? You can sleep on it—” Eddie feels a smile tugging on the corners of his mouth despite his attempt to remain neutral. Yes, his son often acts on impulse, but Eddie can tell this isn’t one of those instances. 

Harris huffs out an impatient sigh, irritated that he even has to explain himself. “Dad, I’m nine now,” he says matter-of-factly. “I’m almost double-digits. And I know I want Mom to adopt me.”

Eddie grins wider, pressing a kiss to his son’s forehead. “All right, bud. You got it.” He stands up with a grunt, something that Harris has already dubbed an ‘old man noise.’ “We’ll talk about this more tomorrow, okay?”

“Mm-hm,” Harris agrees sleepily, cocooning himself in his blankets while Eddie turns out the light. 

Eddie is teeming with excitement when he sees you sitting in the family room, an open bag of sour cream and onion potato chips in your lap. Hendrix was fast asleep in his crib, and it was finally time for you and your husband to relax. 

“So,” Eddie says, sliding onto the couch cushion next to you and plucking a chip from the bag, “it turns out that the birthday boy has one more gift request. A big one, actually.”

You raise your brows. “How big? Like, Hot Wheels track big or space camp big?”

“Neither.” Eddie’s eyes gleam. “He wants you to adopt him.”

You sit up quickly, a smile stretching across your face. “Are you…are you serious?”

“One hundred percent.” Eddie says with a nod. “He insisted on it, actually. I don’t think you could say no even if you wanted to.”

His teasing would normally draw a snarky retort from you, but you’re too overwhelmed to come up with a quip. “Harris wants me to adopt him,” you say slowly, letting each word seep into your tongue. 

Eddie kisses your cheek, his nose brushing your warm skin. “This is everything I ever wanted for him, you know,” he murmurs. Another kiss, then he tilts your chin so he can place his lips on yours. “Thank you for loving him.”

You snuggle in closer, your head resting on his shoulder. “Thank you for letting me.”

September 2002

It’s a special occasion when you can convince Eddie and Wayne Munson to wear a suit and tie, but you didn’t even have to ask today. Both men are dressed with their shirts tucked into their slacks—not jeans. 

You smooth out a pleat in your dress, scoop Hendrix out of his Pack-N-Play, and grin at your family. 

“You guys ready?” You ask, desperate to get everyone into the car before someone spills something on their clothes. While Harris and Hendrix would be the most obvious culprits of a mess, the men are just as capable of causing chaos.

Eddie slings Hendrix’s diaper bag over his shoulder and takes Harris’s hand in his. “Let’s ship out, team.”

“Ship out!” Hendrix echoes–loudly, right in your ear. You wince, but you can’t stay annoyed for too long, considering how happy you are. How happy everyone is; even the baby of the family, who doesn’t know why he’s in a good mood, just that he is.

Everyone piles into the sedan: Eddie in the driver’s seat, you in the passenger seat, and Wayne squished between his grandsons in the back.

“Don’t know how I ended up here,” Wayne grumbles, reaching behind for his seatbelt. 

Eddie grabs your hand as he pulls onto the road, giving it a tender squeeze. This is a huge deal; logically, you know this. To Eddie, he’s officially giving his son the mother he always deserved, and you’ll be able to make all sorts of important decisions for Harris. But to you, there is no piece of paper that can strengthen or weaken your love for your oldest son. Still, this is a promise from you to Harris, one that you will never break.

The courthouse’s silence is promptly broken with the Munsons’ arrival, as your family’s presence tends to do. Hendrix enjoys the way his delighted shrieks reverberate down the empty hallway, and Harris grips a nearby bench to jump out his nervous energy.

“Har?” you call out, waving him over to a private spot. He stops jumping long enough to follow you, shaking his hands excitedly.

You crouch down to his height and dig through your purse until you find what you’re looking for: a shiny silver compass with a quote engraved on the back:

“If you don’t get lost, there’s a chance you may never be found.” 

“Uncle Dusty recommended his favorite compass, and he said you can bring it on your next camping trip” you say with a smile, your lower lip trembling as you hold back tears. “I hope that every time you use it, you remember that I’ll always be here to help you find your way.”

Harris looks from you to the compass and back again. He grins and flings his arms around you, nearly knocking you over in the process.

“This is so cool!” He cheers. “I’m gonna show everyone!”

“What do you say?” Eddie reminds him, a twinkle in his eye.

Harris barely turns around to you to yell, “Thanks, Mom!”

Mom. That title never gets old, and you don’t think it ever will.

“Munson?” You jump slightly when a bailiff announces that it’s your turn to see the judge. He gives a small smile as you enter the courtroom, probably relieved that this is a joyful occasion that won’t likely require his intervention.

This is it, you think. You wish your dress had pockets to hide your trembling hands.

Everyone takes their positions. Harris stands between you and Eddie, and Wayne holds Hendrix at the end, ready to make a quick getaway in case the youngest Munson decides to throw a tantrum.

The judge addresses you directly. Her tone is firm but warm as she says, “Do you understand that if your petition for the adoption of Harris Wayne Munson is granted, you will be legally responsible for him?”

“Yes.” You feel Harris’s palm slide against yours; when you briefly look down, you see that his other hand is holding Eddie’s.

“And do you understand that this support includes food, clothing, shelter, as well as medical and educational support?” She continues.

You nod. “Yes.”

“And do you understand that if your request is granted, that you will be Harris’s parent in all respects, just as if he had been born to you?”

“Yes.” Your heart swells with love. Just as if he had been born to you. Even with the memorable pains and trials brought on by carrying and delivering Hendrix, you considered Harris just as much your son.

“And do you understand you will be undertaking the intellectual, spiritual, and moral guidance of Harris?”

You can almost hear your husband’s thoughts: Better her than me.

“Yes.” 

The judge goes through a few more questions, all regarding your abilities to care for Harris. With each one, you feel Harris’s bouncing get more exuberant; part of you wishes you could join him.

Finally, she declares, “Based upon the reports and recommendations, this court finds that granting this petition is in the best interest of Harris.” She looks directly at Harris as she says, “Congratulations, she’s officially your Mommy.”

A choked sob escapes your throat, and your free hand flies to your mouth. You and Eddie both crouch down to embrace Harris, and you can’t help but notice the tears in your husband’s eyes. Wayne makes his way to you and, as best as he can with Hendrix still in his arms, wraps you in a hug. You think he might be the only adult not crying, but a tell-tale sniffle gives him away.

Hendrix is very confused by the overt display of emotion. The last time Wayne cried was well before the boy was born, back when the Colts won the 1970 Super Bowl against the Cowboys.

“Daddy? Mommy? Grampa?” He asks. “Why you cry?”

“We’re fine, buddy. Just have some big feelings. Happy feelings,” Eddie clarifies, kissing Hendrix on a chubby cheek. He looks at Harris and grins. “How does it feel, Har? Now that Mom adopted you?”

Harris scrunches up his face. “Like the same.”

You laugh and ruffle his hair. It’s not as wild as it was when he was your student, his curls less of a mop. “Good ‘the same’?”

He grins, nodding and hugging you again. “I can’t wait to tell all of my friends, and Uncle Dusty, and Mr. Will…”

Harris continues listing people he’s going to share his news with all the way to the parking lot. Some names you recognize, and others he might as well be making up.

“Wait! I almost forgot!” You reach into your purse and pull out a Ziploc bag containing five Oreos. “Everyone take one, but don’t eat it yet.”

When each person has an Oreo in their hand, you raise your own to eye-level and begin your toast. “To my first son, Harris. Thank you for making me a mommy.”

“To Harris!” Wayne and Eddie chorus, and Hendrix just yells his brother’s name before chowing down on his cookie. 

As you all pile back into the car, Eddie takes your hand in his. Chocolate is still tucked into the crevices of his lips. 

“To you, Sweetheart. Thank you for being the mommy Harris always wanted. Thank you for making us a family again.”

The kiss tastes of vanilla creme, sugary sweet, and you swear you wouldn’t have broken it if Wayne didn’t clear his throat. 

“No need to make a third kid up there,” he mutters under his breath. 

Eddie glares at him, hoping Harris didn’t overhear the comment, but you press on. “Shall we celebrate at the diner?”

“Can we share pancakes?” Harris beams.

You crane your neck and look back at him, once again overwhelmed by the amount of love you hold for him–for your son.

“I’d love to.”

--

[orirocks]

Baby Daddy! Dabi/Touya gets a new place in the rich part of town (courtesy of his dad) and asks you to move in with him so you guys can be a “proper family”. You tell him that if he can be consistent with your guys’ relationship for six months then you’ll consider it. He agrees and doesn’t ask again. Well, for a couple days… He doesn’t appreciate having all his hard work going to waste (asking his dad for a penthouse was a TRULY humbling experience) so he definitely doesn’t threaten to turn your landlord into charcoal if they don’t evict your ass by morning. The papers come, you call him and tell him what’s going on while he feigns sympathy and listens to you cry about how you don’t know where tf this all came from, and he’ll offer to let you stay at his new place, just until you figure things out. By the time the boxes are packed and the moving truck is on the way to his place, you’re so relieved that you don’t notice that your landlord was acting strangely when you went to drop off the keys and get your security deposit back. Maybe they were just stressed? Maybe Touya reduced his car to cinders when they tried to call the police. Who knows? All you know is that Touya is there for you and the baby. Now you’re all cuddled up with him in his place and the fireplace is roaring with blue flames while the sounds of a happy baby float through the house. He knows you’re not gonna leave, even if you try, he’d reduce anyone who approves your application to ash. But why would you try? It’s nice here, it’s large and inviting, there’s top daycares everywhere, plenty of places for you to shop, and not to mention safe. As he sits and watches you play with your baby in his arms, he smiles at you and his baby all soft and lovingly. You return the smile and give all your attention back to your baby, but as soon as you direct your gaze away from him, that loving smile turns into a smirk befitting of the devil himself. You’re never leaving him, you’re never getting away from him, he’ll burn this city down before you do.

[sinsandsweetness]

Shane. Shane’s stuck in my head. I wonder if he and Rick got up to any shenanigans late at night in the police station with a cute girl…. I know Rick probably just watched but dang. Just thinking about it 👀 and if Merle and Daryl were in the drunk tank next to the cell…..

Shane is forever stuck in my head <3 I usually don't go for the pre-apocalypse au's but damn. this one got me dreamin' and drooling....

pairing- (Shane x fem!reader)

cw- dub con? just a power imbalance more than anything, mentions of drunk driving, very suggestive but no actual smut. 1.4k wc

“You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me.” You walk past the two officers, both a little shocked by your vulgar language. Reaching the bars and seeing Merle grinning like a madman. Drunk. Clearly. Smelling of bourbon and poor decisions. 

“Aw, sugar-tits! I knew you’d come. Daryl says you wouldn’t n’ I says oh yesss she will,” he slurs his words. “And here you are! Our saving grace.”

You immediately turn to face Daryl. Bags under his eyes, elbows leaning on his knees while he sits on the bench. Clearly just as tired and irritated as you are. 

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” You smack him on the shoulder with your bag. “I could barely pay rent this month. There's an eviction notice on my damn door and you think I can afford to bail your lousy, drunk of a brother out of- "

His eyes go wide at your confession, shooting up to grab your hand. 

“You don’t have to keep living with that loser, you know you can come stay with me-“

You shake him off. Blood starting to boil with irritation. “That’s not the point, Dare! I can’t keep doing this. I can’t keep saving his ass whenever you two need it.” You pinch the bridge of your nose. Attempting to contain the flood of emotions that the week's events are summoning. 

“How much is it?” you brace yourself for the worst. Subconsciously knowing that whatever disgusting number you were picturing, would still be better than whatever Daryl was about to say.

“… 500.” 

“Fuckin' hell, Dare.” He gives you a look that reflects exactly how you feel. Apologetic. Angry. And so fucking tired.

With a deep breath, you tell him you’re going to try and talk to the cops that brought Merle in. To see if there's any way you can work something out. 

Pulling your skirt down slightly, in an attempt to be more modest for the police than you are for the men you wait on, you make your way over to the men. The tall one, dark hair and handsome in an almost intimidating way, is standing at the counter, chewing on a toothpick. The other is just as handsome, though in a softer way. Pretty blue eyes and an unsurprising wedding band adorning his left hand. He sits behind the desk as he fills something out on the computer. The satisfying click and clack of the keyboard, times almost perfectly with that of your heels on the grey linoleum. 

You approach the two with your sweetest smile, full of remorse. Your pretty eyes scream 'pity me' and you pray that the officers are kind enough to listen.

Immediately, you notice the way that the dark haired one stares down your blouse as you come to a stop. Taking a little breath for courage before starting your little spiel. 

“Hi.” You can't help but blush a little at the look that Officer Handsome is giving you. 

“Hey, sweetheart. What can we help you with?” He licks his lips and can't seem to contain the way they curl into a cheeky grin.

“My friend there, the uh, dumbass behind the bars…. well, you see he’s just, um…” pull yourself together, baby. “He fucked up. And I know that. He knows that. Even if it doesn't really seem like it. He really fucked up and if this were any other week, me and his brother over there, we would have more than enough money for his bail. We just.. Um, don't have it right now. So, I was wondering if there's any way we could work something out, like a payment plan or…”

“You got a boyfriend?” he asks, obviously uninterested in your proposal. 

Mouth agape at the bold interruption, you respond hesitantly, glancing back at Daryl for a second.

“Uh, no but…” 

“Really? Pretty boy over there… he’s what? Just a friend?” he nods towards Daryl, who can't quite hear but is obviously intrigued, and trying to assess how the conversation is going.

“Yeah, we're just friends… why?” 

He ignores your question again, hand coming up to touch the cross pendant on your chest, “Cute necklace.” He smirks again, this time at the way your breath hitches at his touch. Fingers moving over to play with a strand of your hair, twirling it around his finger. 

“Shane.” The officer at the desk scolds his partner. Unimpressed but seemingly unphased by his behaviour, not even glancing up from the document he's reading.

“Ricky, c'mon. Look at her. Ain’t she gorgeous? What the hell are you doin' hanging out with these idiots?”

Apparently Daryl could hear that remark because you hear a faint, unimpressed, “Hey!” come from the bench behind you. 

“Dare, sit down.” You tell him, with a scowl on your face as he sighs and sits back down and leaned into his hands once again. Praying for the night to just be over already.

“His brother is the idiot, he’s just… too loyal for his own good.”

The officer, Shane, nods his head, continuing to inspect you. Black mini skirt and button up blouse, curly hair cascading over your shoulders. Smelling like vanilla and vodka and whatever body oil is making your long legs shimmer so beautifully in the fluorescent lights.

“What are you doin’ up this late, anyway?” he asks. Apparently intrigued by your attire.

“I'm a waitress. I was just walking home from the bar as I got their call.” The constant dreaded call to come bail Merles drunk driving ass out of jail. 2:00 am on a friday, and you should have known they'd get themselves into trouble.

“You know, this is his third time. We've already taken his license. Impounded his car. If you don't have the money then…there's really not much I can do.” Shane tells you, that wicked grin still splayed on his face.

“You can leave him 'til morning, come back when you have the money.” Rick offers, finally putting the papers down and leaning back in his chair. One boot crossed over his knee as he relaxed into the leather cushion.

“And how the hell do you propose I come up with 500 dollars overnight?” You try not to sound so rude, but you’re tired and cold and Merles drunk babbling from the cell is really starting to piss you off.

The two men share a look and you feel goosebumps raise on your bare legs.

“Pretty girl like you… shouldn't be too hard.” Shane says, flicking his toothpick into the bin.

You can't help the scoff that leaves your mouth, “I'm not some kind of whore, you know.” You cross your arms over your chest, suddenly feeling a little exposed in the excessively cold air conditioning.

“Of course not. That’s not what I meant, sweetheart.”

“Then what'd you mean, huh?” 

“Yeah, Shane, what did you mean?” Rick crosses his own arms, entertained by his friend getting himself stuck in such an awkward predicament. 

“Yeah, Shane. Why don't you expand on that for us.” You lean against the counter and he shakes his head with an annoyingly attractive laugh, which you can't help but smile at. Forcing you to forgive his crude suggestion almost immediately.

“You gonna give me your number or what?” he says, leaning up beside you.

“I’ll give you a whole lot more than my number if you can get his bail waved.” You bite your lip and nod towards Merle in the holding cell.

“Thought you said you weren't a whore.” 

“Shane-” Rick hisses, warning his friend to tone it down. They're supposed to be officers of the law after all. Though you aren't really offended. You would fuck the man for free if he asked.

“You got an office here or something?” Your left hand starts to play with the keys on his belt, slowly making their way to the buckle, where you tap your french tips a few times, looking up at him with a look so sickeningly sweet, his cock actually twitches. 

He thinks for a moment, letting you pull at the leather band until he’s flush with your core.

“Fuck,” he mumbles under his breath, realizing you’re actually serious. Deciding to give in to your downright sinful suggestion. “Rick. Turn off the cameras in the interrogation room.” He turns to his partner. Blue eyes, all wide and dumbstruck.

“Shane, that’s illegal-”

Shane grabs your hand and starts leading you towards the room, talking over his shoulder, “Rick. Cut the fuckin’ cameras." His lips brush your ear as turns to whisper, nudging you forward, "I’d ask him to join, but I already know he won't." You smirk at his confession, looking back at Rick and silently wish the ring on his finger wasn't there.

Shane directs his attention at Rick once more, "You can watch from the glass if you’re feelin’ left out.” 

You can't help but giggle as you enter the room. Empty, aside from a metal chair and table. Shane pauses at the doorway, catching the attention of Daryl from down the hall.

“You too, pretty boy. This is for your brother's sake after all.”

-continued here

taglist- @rickswh0r3 @elnyrae @eternalrose81 @murder-jacket @miinbun @ankhmutes @grimesthinker @cl0wnb0yyy @whatthefuuuck @olive3oil @taylormarieee

(what the hell do I name this fic??)

also I don’t know shit about jail so… don’t come for me lol

[reasoningdaily]

At age 17, Donnell Drinks was one of many young men in Philadelphia who went to prison for life without parole. Today, the city has resentenced more of those prisoners than any other jurisdiction.

Published Aug. 15, 2023Updated Aug. 18, 2023

Donnell Drinks woke up one morning to banging on his door in the projects of North Philadelphia. It was the late 1980s, and Mr. Drinks, who was 15 and the oldest of three boys, had nodded off after taking his youngest brother to school. He should have been at school himself, but he had stopped going earlier that year. It wasn’t a truant officer at his door, though — no one had ever come knocking about that. Instead, sheriff’s deputies were waiting outside. They were there to evict his family.

The officers told him to get out, not bothering to ask if there was an adult around, which there wasn’t. Mr. Drinks’s dad had abandoned the family a decade earlier, and his mom was in the throes of crack cocaine addiction. For years, Mr. Drinks had been raising his younger brothers, and he had just become a father himself. He’d dropped out of school to support his family by selling drugs, a transition that felt so natural he hardly remembered how it happened.

Groggy and panicked, Mr. Drinks scanned the apartment for essentials, stuffed a shopping cart with clothes for his brothers and wheeled the cart up the road to his grandmother’s overcrowded rowhouse. The officers never asked where he was going.

“There was not one adult that said, Hold a minute. We need to call somebody,” Mr. Drinks said. “Not one adult said, That’s a child.”

At the time, Black teenage boys like Mr. Drinks were being treated less as children in need of help and more as if they were threats to society itself. Crime was rising nationwide, particularly in Philadelphia, where, in 1990, the city recorded 500 murders in a year for the first time. It was a terrifying period, especially for people living in poorer neighborhoods where the violence was worst. But the rhetoric, perpetuated by public officials and overheated headlines, suggested that a new morally depraved generation of teenagers — particularly Black teenagers — were to blame. This idea gave rise to the “superpredator” era and a raft of laws cracking down on juveniles that followed.

Mr. Drinks, now 50 years old, is a small man with a stocky frame and a warm, gaptoothed smile. He keeps his salt-and-pepper beard meticulously fluffed. An animated storyteller who is quick with a metaphor and a motivational quote, he becomes guarded when describing his upbringing — not just because it’s painful, but because he doesn’t want anyone to think he’s trying to justify what happened next. “This is context,” he said, “not excuses.”

In February 1991, when he was 17, Mr. Drinks and his 22-year-old girlfriend, who was a police officer, tried to rob a man named Darryl Huntley. They staked out Mr. Huntley’s house and forced him and his fiancée inside at gunpoint. That violent act led to others. Mr. Drinks stabbed Mr. Huntley, fatally, and was shot himself. Mr. Drinks was arrested while he was in the hospital recovering from his injuries.

By the time Mr. Drinks was brought to trial for Mr. Huntley’s murder, Philadelphia had a new district attorney: Lynne Abraham, a former judge who went on to hold the office for nearly two decades. Pennsylvania law already made life sentences mandatory for first- and second-degree murder convictions, but Ms. Abraham responded to the era’s surge in violent crime by aggressively pursuing the death penalty, an approach that once earned her the moniker the “deadliest D.A.”

She also called for tougher punishments for juveniles. In 1994, she pushed for legislative changes to give prosecutors more power to charge juveniles as adults. “You don’t get any bonus for being under a certain age,” she told The Philadelphia Inquirer at the time. The next year, the state passed a law that required prosecutors to treat children 15 and older as adults when they were charged with certain crimes.

Though Philadelphia had already sentenced many young people to life without parole, under Ms. Abraham’s watch — and with the city’s murder rate remaining high throughout the ‘90s — the number getting that sentence in Philadelphia rose quickly. For some, it may have been a deal worth taking to avoid the death penalty.

Mr. Drinks was tried as an adult and initially sentenced to death. In 1993, his sentence was reduced to life without parole. (His then-girlfriend, who received the same sentence, remains in prison.)

He most likely would have died in prison, but while Mr. Drinks was behind bars, a national effort began to rethink the culpability of young people in the eyes of the law. In the 2005 case Roper v. Simmons, the Supreme Court struck down the death penalty for minors, leaning heavily on new scientific research that showed — “as any parent knows,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote — that young people are not like adults. They are more impulsive, reckless and susceptible to persuasion.

The court did not question that minors should pay for committing heinous crimes, but in banning the most severe punishment, it affirmed the possibility “that a minor’s character deficiencies will be reformed.” Real change, Justice Kennedy suggested, was possible.

Mr. Drinks had been in prison for more than a decade when the Roper decision came out. Then one day, a Philadelphia lawyer named Bradley Bridge traveled to the upstate Pennsylvania prison where Mr. Drinks was locked up, and explained to him and the other men who had been given life sentences as boys what the ruling could mean for them.

Striking down the death penalty for minors was only the beginning, Mr. Bridge said. Soon, he predicted, the court would apply the same logic to outlaw mandatory life sentences for juveniles too, potentially giving Mr. Drinks and others serving such sentences a shot at freedom — and giving the city of Philadelphia a chance to rewrite its legacy.

A long list of friends

Mr. Bridge had been delivering his speech inside prisons throughout Pennsylvania for months before Mr. Drinks heard him speak. Mr. Bridge worked for the Defender Association of Philadelphia and had spent nearly three decades representing prisoners who were appealing their sentences. When the Roper ruling came down, he was involved in the case of a teenager facing a mandatory sentence of life without parole. He understood immediately the opportunity that the Supreme Court’s ruling presented not just for his client, but for scores of prisoners.

For Mr. Bridge, it meant pursuing a novel legal theory that might help dismantle what he viewed as a particularly unjust part of the justice system. “Children are children, and they make mistakes,” Mr. Bridge said. “But they grow and change.”

Mr. Bridge began the enormous undertaking of compiling a list of all the prisoners in Pennsylvania who were sentenced to life as minors. No one in the state had ever kept track of this group, who came to be called “juvenile lifers” in the courts and “child lifers” by some of the inmates themselves.

He expected the list to be long. He didn’t expect it to eventually include more than 500 names, nearly one-fifth of the more than 2,800 child lifers in the country. More than 300 of them had come through Philadelphia’s system, making a city with less than 1 percent of the country’s population responsible for more than 10 percent of all children sentenced to life in prison without parole in the United States. No other city compared. Even more glaring: More than 80 percent of Philadelphia’s child lifers were Black. Nationally, that figure was roughly 60 percent.

Racism “undoubtedly occurred in every phase of the criminal justice system,” Mr. Bridge said. “This created an opportunity to try to fix things that had been broken.”

After the Supreme Court outlawed the death penalty for minors, Bradley Bridge started encouraging inmates sentenced to life as children to prepare for the possibility that the court would eventually revisit the constitutionality of their sentences, too.

His partner in this work was Marsha Levick, who had co-founded the Juvenile Law Center in 1975 as an idealistic young graduate of Temple University’s law school and gone on to become one of the nation’s foremost experts on juvenile sentencing.

Mr. Bridge and Ms. Levick began traveling the state, arranging meetings with the people on Mr. Bridge’s list and adding names as they went. Mr. Bridge’s first stop was Graterford, a maximum-security facility outside of Philadelphia that, at the time, held more child lifers than any prison in the state. Dozens of men crowded into Graterford’s chapel to hear what Mr. Bridge had to say.

“People wanted to know what was coming down the pike,” remembered Kempis “Ghani” Songster, who was in the room that day. “Is this a ray of light flickering on?”

At age 15, Mr. Songster stabbed another teenager to death in a crack house. Both were runaways working for the same gang. He was given a life sentence for his crime, but it wasn’t until that meeting in 2006, nearly two decades after he went to prison as a scrawny kid who couldn’t grow a beard, that he realized how many other lifers at Graterford had also arrived as teenagers.

“It was like, Whoa, he’s been here since he was a kid, too?” Mr. Songster said. “A lot of us who were child lifers didn’t really know that we were in a distinct class.”

There had never been a reason to talk about age. The courts had treated them as adults, and if anything, being marked as a child in a violent adult prison would only have made them more vulnerable. Now, there was power in the identity.

The child lifers inside Graterford began organizing. They quickly formed a committee called Juvenile Lifers for Justice, which met weekly to discuss the evolving law and science around adolescent development. They drafted pamphlets, circulated newsletters to other prisons and their family members, and kept one another motivated around their common cause.

These conversations also started to change how some of the men thought about why they had committed such serious crimes.

Mr. Songster said he never felt “entitled” to be free. “I can’t wash the blood off my hands that’s on my hands,” he said. But the emerging research, which showed brains aren’t fully developed until people get into their 20s, gave him new understanding. “It made me curious about myself,” Mr. Songster said of the research. “I knew I was a good person, but I couldn’t reconcile the person that I became and I know I am with the person that committed that horrible act.”

The child lifers were also reaching out beyond the prison walls. They invited politicians to visit Graterford and partnered with nonprofit organizations to distribute supplies to local schools.

“We were always trying to break that wall down so people could see we’re humans,” said Don Jones, who was also sentenced as a minor and was the president of Graterford’s N.A.A.C.P. chapter during this period.

Mr. Bridge and Ms. Levick became frequent fixtures at the prison. At each of these visits, Ms. Levick was struck by how the men — imprisoned at such a young age and last in line for any prison edification programs because of their status as lifers — had mastered the nuances of the law and were orchestrating a statewide grass-roots movement from inside prison. “Their desire to come home was real,” Ms. Levick said. “It was palpable, and it made you want to do more.”

“We were always trying to break that wall down so people could see we’re humans,” said Don Jones, who was locked up at Graterford and has since been released.

Mr. Drinks had spent 10 years at Graterford, but after he was transferred upstate, newsletters coming out of Graterford and messages passed along from old friends became his lifeline. Without a lawyer of his own, he kept his case alive by adapting draft legal petitions circulated by Mr. Bridge. And he documented his accomplishments in prison — articles he’d written, certificates he’d earned, thank-you notes from the nonprofits he’d raised money for — until he had three manila envelopes’ worth of records illustrating all the ways he’d grown.

Still, he never quite let himself believe that Mr. Bridge’s prediction would pan out. He wanted to be prepared, but he was also prepared to be let down.

“It’s like throwing water out of a boat that’s sinking,” Mr. Drinks said. “You’ve got to do it anyway, because if you don’t, the water’s going to get you.”

Throughout this period, lawyers around the country, including Ms. Levick and Mr. Bridge, were bringing new cases, trying to apply the rationale in the Roper ruling to other kinds of sentences for juveniles. At the national level, a key leader in this work was Bryan Stevenson, founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative, a nonprofit.

Mr. Stevenson saw a connection between the superpredator era and the overwhelming number of young Black boys who had been locked away for life.

“You had these criminologists going around saying that some children aren’t children. Some kids look like kids, but they’re really, quote, superpredators,” he said. “That narrative was so prevalent, so persuasive, that you see states all over the country lowering the minimum age for trying children as adults.”

In 2008, the Equal Justice Initiative found 73 children who had been given sentences of life without parole when they were 13 and 14 years old. And all of the people who received those sentences for crimes other than homicide were children of color.

“It just said something about the way in which race was a proxy for a presumption of dangerousness, this presumption of irredeemability,” Mr. Stevenson said.

Then came a series of breakthroughs. In 2010, the Supreme Court abolished sentences of life without parole for minors charged with crimes other than murder. Two years after that, Mr. Stevenson appeared before the court on behalf of two young men who were sentenced to life without parole when they were 14. In its decision in Miller v. Alabama, the Supreme Court struck down all mandatory sentences of life without parole for juveniles. Four years later, in a case called Montgomery v. Louisiana, for which Ms. Levick served as co-counsel, the court made that decision retroactive, fulfilling the prediction Mr. Bridge made in the Graterford chapel a decade before, and giving more than 2,800 child lifers across the country the right to have their sentences revisited.

Mr. Drinks remembers the first time he got a look at Mr. Bridge’s list. It was filled with the names of people he’d known for years, but had never known were child lifers. There was Abd’Allah Lateef, the soft-spoken guy he’d always admired at Graterford, even when he griped about Mr. Drinks’s loud music. There was Luis “Suave” Gonzalez, a big talker whom Mr. Drinks had encouraged to lead one of Graterford’s Latin American cultural exchange groups. And there was Don Jones, a friend so close, Mr. Drinks said, “my brothers call him brother.”

“That was my tear-shed moment,” Mr. Drinks said. “I knew I was on the list, but going down the list and seeing genuine friends?” Now, they might all have a shot at freedom — a shot, but not a guarantee.

A block in North Philadelphia. Donnell Drinks sold drugs in the area as a teenager and was convicted of homicide at age 17 in a robbery gone wrong.

‘The election changed everything’

The Supreme Court’s rulings in Millerand Montgomery marked an important rethinking of culpability when it comes to children who commit the most serious crimes. But the practical implications of the rulings were limited: the court hadn’t abolished all life without parole sentences for children — only ones where state laws made the sentences mandatory.And while child lifers now had a chance to make a case for their release, prosecutors could still seek new life sentences. In other states with high numbers of child lifers, including Michigan and Louisiana, as well as some parts of Pennsylvania, that’s just what they did.

In Philadelphia, however, all of the list-gathering and planning that had been taking place for more than a decade began to pay off. Most of the state’s child lifers had been prosecuted in the city, and it was up to its district attorney’s office and court system to move hundreds of people through the resentencing process. “Philadelphia was bad, and everybody recognized it was bad,” Mr. Bridge said.

Ms. Levick added, “In a way, the whole world was watching.”

Philadelphia soon began resentencing and releasing child lifers, starting with those who’d been in prison the longest. But while R. Seth Williams, Philadelphia’s district attorney, initially committed not to resentence anyone to life without parole, he stuck to strict new state sentencing guidelines, which meant that Mr. Drinks and others who had been swept up in the ’90s, would most likely spend many more years in prison.

Marsha Levick, an expert on juvenile sentencing, visited inmates. “Their desire to come home was real,” Ms. Levick said. “It was palpable, and it made you want to do more.”

Mr. Williams viewed this approach as the only way to honor the Supreme Court’s ruling, the Pennsylvania government’s consensus and the rights of the victims. “People often only look at the factors for the defendant. I understand. But they often forget there was a victim,” Mr. Williams said. “Someone was murdered. We just can’t just sweep that under the rug.”

Then came a twist that no one predicted. In March 2017, a little over a year after the Montgomery decision, Mr. Williams was indicted on charges including bribery and extortion and later sentenced to five years in prison. Almost as surprising was who was elected to be his successor: a sharp-elbowed former public defender and criminal defense attorney named Larry Krasner.

Whatever Ms. Abraham, the former district attorney, had been to the city in the 1990s, Mr. Krasner swore to be the opposite. (Ms. Abraham did not respond to requests for comment.) He had run against the death penalty and mass incarceration, and vowed to decriminalize marijuana and end cash bail. One of his first moves after taking office in January 2018 was to fire 31 prosecutors in a purge that became known as the Snow Day Massacre.

When it came to juvenile lifers, Mr. Krasner was more open than his predecessor to considering how people had changed in the decades since committing their crimes. Chesley Lightsey is a former assistant district attorney who worked on Mr. Drinks’s case and others under both administrations. “It took time for me to wrap my head around it: ‘Okay, now we can have much more of a conversation about this,’” she said about the change when Krasner was elected. “It was just a different perspective.”

Under Mr. Krasner, prosecutors paid special attention to reports drafted by mitigation specialists. Those specialists, who are essentially professional storytellers for defendants, interviewed juvenile lifers, their families and anyone else who could offer context. They asked questions about how the inmates had been raised, the trauma and pain that had influenced their actions, what they had done with their time in prison and what they planned to do upon release.

By the time Mr. Krasner took office in January 2018, Mr. Drinks had spent hours spilling his soul to a lawyer and mitigator named Rachel Miller. Over the course of countless calls and several in-person visits, Ms. Miller wove the story of Mr. Drinks’s life into a memo, complete with a two-inch stack of documents highlighting his accomplishments.

The memo covers the most painful moments of Mr. Drinks’s childhood: being abandoned by his father, his mother’s struggle with addiction, getting evicted. It describes how Mr. Drinks would skip school to collect the family’s food stamps before his mother could pawn them for drugs and how, when his mother turned violent, he would take the brunt of her beatings in an attempt to spare his brothers.

But the memo also tells the story of a grown man who spent his time behind bars trying to atone for the crime that put him there. Among the stack of documents is a community college transcript filled with A’s and B’s, an agenda for a workshop he organized with victims’ rights advocates and a photo of him beaming behind a giant check made out to Big Brothers Big Sisters of America. Perhaps most meaningful to Mr. Drinks were the letters he received from other incarcerated men who were members of a youth group he founded attesting to all the ways the group, and Mr. Drinks, had saved them. “I did not know the child that committed the crime he is in here for,” read one of the letters, “but the man I do know is not that same person.”

Before Mr. Krasner’s election, Mr. Drinks was offered a deal of 35 years to life, which would have made him eligible for parole in 2026. Shortly after Mr. Krasner took over in 2018, Mr. Drinks got a new offer: time served.

“The election changed everything,” Mr. Drinks said, referring to Mr. Krasner’s victory.

“I’m always conscious of the emotion, the hurt, the disappointment, the disdain, all those negative emotions that my actions led to,” Mr. Drinks said of the murder he committed. “I’ve got to live the rest of my life counteracting that.”

Mr. Drinks’s case was not unique. Researchers at Montclair State University have found that, under Mr. Krasner, prosecutors began offering child lifers new sentences that were, on average, 11 years shorter than the ones offered to those same people under Mr. Williams. Crucially, the researchers found that child lifers’ release had a negligible effect on public safety. Seven years after they started coming home, the rearrest rate for Philadelphia’s child lifers hovers around 5 percent. That’s small compared with the national rate, where 40 percent of people with past murder convictions are rearrested within the first five years, according to the most recent data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics. As of early this year, only three of the city’s child lifers who were rearrested have been convicted (for marijuana possession, contempt and robbery in the third degree), according to the Montclair State researchers.

For Mr. Krasner, these numbers reveal as a lie the idea that some people are so incapable of change that they should never be offered a shot at it. “It was always wrong to believe that people are either saints or they’re sinners,” Mr. Krasner said.

At his resentencing hearing in April 2018, Mr. Drinks read aloud from a letter before a gallery filled with friends and family, as well as the loved ones of Mr. Huntley, his victim. He apologized to Mr. Huntley’s family and said he knew he had no right to ask anyone in the room for forgiveness, and so he didn’t. But he did promise to spend the rest of his life making amends.

Mr. Huntley’s family members also made statements to the court. In a handwritten letter, Mr. Huntley’s sister described her brother as a loving and giving person. She explained how his murder had crushed her family, derailed her own education and deprived her children of ever knowing their uncle. “My mother still is deeply hurt and our family find it difficult to celebrate Valentine’s Day,” she wrote, “because these horrible, horrible actions took place that evening leading into his death.” She told the court that she did not want to see Mr. Drinks released.

Mr. Huntley’s sister did not respond to an interview request, but Suzanne Estrella, who runs the Office of Victim Advocate in Pennsylvania, said that many victims’ families “flat-out just do not” agree with the resentencings. But she said there were also many families that understood and accepted them. “You have survivors who have lost loved ones and survivors who have loved ones who are incarcerated,” Ms. Estrella said. “So you see all those perspectives coming to the table at the same time.”

As painful as it was, Mr. Drinks said he appreciated Mr. Huntley’s family’s honesty. “I felt it, and I understood it,” he said. “I’m always conscious of the emotion, the hurt, the disappointment, the disdain, all those negative emotions that my actions led to. I’ve got to live the rest of my life counteracting that.”

Three months after the hearing, having won the approval of the parole board, Mr. Drinks met his brothers as he walked out of prison for the first time in nearly three decades. Mr. Drinks remembers his sense of disbelief and being a little carsick as they drove the four hours back to Philadelphia, where he would move in with his brother Damon. The whole way home, he couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was following close behind. “I didn’t want to look back,” he said, “so I kept looking ahead.”

Donnell Drinks married Shekia Drinks two years ago. But he hasn’t been able to get the approval needed to move out of his brother’s home and in with his wife.

A return to the 1990s?

Of the more than 300 child lifers who became eligible for resentencing in Philadelphia in 2016, all but about a dozen have been resentenced, and more than 220 have been released, the majority of them on lifetime parole. That’s nearly a quarter of the roughly 1,000 total child lifers who have been released across the country. These numbers make Philadelphia, once an outlier in imprisoning minors for life, now an outlier in letting them go. By 2020, the city had resentenced more child lifers than Michigan and Louisiana combined.

What set the city apart, said Mr. Stevenson, of the Equal Justice Initiative, was not just the buy-in from local officials and public defenders, but also the community of child lifers who became their own best argument for release.

“It was the way they organized, the way they cared for one another, the way they modeled a kind of readiness to contribute to society,” Mr. Stevenson said. “These young people had been told they were going to die in prison. Some of them just never accepted that.”

Since the Supreme Court decisions, more than half of all states have outlawed life without parole sentences for children altogether, reducing the number of child lifers left in the country to fewer than 600, according to the Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth, a national nonprofit. Mr. Stevenson’s organization is now working to raise the minimum age at which children can be tried as adults in 11 states, including Pennsylvania, where there is no age floor. Other states are considering abolishing mandatory life without parole sentences for people under 21.

While life without the possibility of parole sentences for juveniles are now rare, they are not unheard of. The now solidly conservative Supreme Court has issued a ruling that could lower the bar for judges to apply the sentence to children in states where it is still allowed. A prosecutor in Oakland County, Mich., is seeking life without parole for a mass shooter who was 15 when he killed four students at his high school in 2021. A judge will have to weigh the horror of his crime against the possibility that, over time, he could change.

The United States is still the only country in the world that gives courts the discretion to send children to prison without the chance of proving themselves later in life at a parole hearing. And the tough-on-crime rhetoric of the 1990s is making a comeback, thanks to a spike in violent crime that began at the outset of the pandemic. In Philadelphia alone, the murder rate has surpassed the record set in 1990 two years in a row, with young people emerging as both victims and perpetrators.

Mr. Drinks and Mr. Jones started an anti-violence group in Philadelphia and sometimes walk the streets handing out pamphlets.

Just as they did in prison, child lifers have come together to create a buffer against an outside world that often feels hostile and unwelcoming.

Though this uptick in crime is showing signs of decline, it has prompted a nationwide backlash against progressive prosecutors, including Mr. Krasner, whose comparatively lenient approach has become a lightning rod in local politics. Mr. Krasner was recently the subject of an impeachment effort by Pennsylvania Republicans, and even some Democrats raced to condemn his record during the city’s mayoral primary in May.

Those who were released have become some of the loudest voices for building upon the fragile gains they fought for while on the inside. Their fight now is about abolishing life without parole for everyone, getting young people out of adult prisons and addressing the underlying causes of the violence plaguing Philadelphia and other major cities.

“If you would have dealt with a lot of my issues,” Mr. Drinks said, “they probably would not have escalated to crime.”

It’s not that Mr. Drinks and his fellow activists believe juveniles convicted of murder should not be held accountable. “When we talk to legislators, we don’t say: Throw the doors open, and everybody’s coming home,” Mr. Drinks said. “Our conversation is always that everybody deserves an opportunity to show they’re worthy of coming home.”

Today, Mr. Drinks coordinates a network of former child lifers through the Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth. In any given week, he might be found with two cellphones in hand, flying to Alabama to urge progressive prosecutors to stay the course, organizing retreats for formerly incarcerated men and women, or canvassing city streets through an anti-violence nonprofit he co-founded with Mr. Jones, his friend from Graterford.

Mr. Drinks and other child lifers know that they embody for the public what all the research said about a young person’s capacity for change, and they are keenly aware that their example could help secure other people’s freedom. But they are also wary of being used to suggest that the system works, or allowing it to conceal just how difficult their re-entry into the outside world has been.

While several of Philadelphia’s child lifers have gone on to become an Ivy League lecturer or nonprofit executive, many more are working minimum-wage jobs or are unable to find work. Some are in bad health. Four have died. Nearly all of them are on lifetime parole, with the possibility of being sent back to prison forever looming.

Mr. Drinks credits his brothers, Damon and Kareem, for making his homecoming easier. Throughout Mr. Drinks’s incarceration, the three brothers had remained as close as the prison system would allow, keeping up visits even when he was transferred far away. Often, Damon Drinks would bring along Mr. Drinks’s son, who was just 3 when his father was arrested, and is now a grown man with a family of his own. It is thanks to his brothers, Mr. Drinks says, that he was able to maintain a relationship with his son at all.

Mr. Drinks, in Fairmount Park, said his brothers visited him while he was in prison and have helped him readjust to life on the outside.

Damon and Kareem Drinks’s support continued once their big brother was released. They took him shopping, kept him housed and partnered with him to start a local printing company not far from the city courthouse. Mr. Drinks has not had to struggle to survive, but that doesn’t mean he has not struggled. Five years after he left prison, the terms of his parole still prohibit him from leaving the county of Philadelphia without permission. He got married two years ago, but he has yet to get the approval needed to move out of his brother’s home and in with his wife. And he lives with the constant fear that one act of violence by any of the state’s other child lifers could spell the end of his own tenuous freedom.

This fear is part of what keeps Mr. Drinks connected to the men who were once boys with him on the inside. Just as they did in prison, child lifers have come together to create a buffer against an outside world that often feels hostile and unwelcoming. These bonds are as much a product of their shared experiences as they are a defense against their shared vulnerabilities.

“We’re each other’s co-defendants,” Mr. Drinks said. “We see people want to stray, it’s like, No, come on. We’re going to get to this finish line together.”

Mr. Drinks hugs Michael “Smokey” Wilson, another former child lifer.

[dianapana]

SH Day 1 – Waiting for you – Right person wrong time

Hellos, I am once again back from the dead. I wrote this day a bit in advance, but for the rest of them I may be a bit slow. I'll still try my best! Have a wonderful SH month Everyone!

~Love Dia.

TW: Unfulfiled love

~

“Was it a bad day?”

Hinata’s hand extended to tuck some of his bangs behind his ear. His face is red and sweaty, hair sticking to it. He’s beyond drunk. The owner of the bar contacted her asking for someone to come retrieve the buzzed gentleman.

But Sasuke does not wish to leave yet.

So here she is, an unsuspected Wednesday night having a drink with him too.

“You could say so”

Muttering, his head barely held up by his hand on his cheek. Eyes closed.

“Work related?”

Sasuke is a private detective. So even when he does have bad workdays, he can never truly vent to her. He has way too many signed NDAs for that. A simple nod from the man tells her that there will be no further questions from her.

Moving her stool a bit closer to his. Caressing his back softly, guiding his head onto her shoulder. She can’t give him more comfort that this. Letting him know she’s there. That’s who they are, who they’ve always been since university when they met through some common friends.

Friends, best friends, the closest of friends.

“Come. Let’s go. I’ll take you to my place.”

Probably he does not want to be alone for today.

Sasuke stumbling to sit up. “Won’t that be an issue?”

A genuine and reasonable question. Her boyfriend has made a few comments about her friendship with Sasuke, shown jealousy. Tiny frown on her lips.

“It’s alright. He won’t” shaking her head vehemently. She’s unsure but won’t think about it now.

It hurts that now there are such questions that need to be asked when they used to simply show up at each other’s place without a second guess. She could take him to his place, knows his pin code, has a key to it. But…

*

Hinata is preparing breakfast for both of them, Sasuke probably still asleep in the bed, or if he is awake he’s dealing with a huge hangover. She did leave some ibuprofen and water on the nightstand for him.

As she pours the egg mixture in the pan to make some scrambled eggs, she can hear the shower running. So, he’s awake.

“How are you feeling? You were quite drunk yesterday.”

He’s putting a white t-shirt on, already has on sweatpants. Yes, he has multiple clothing items at her place.

“I feel oddly fine.” His head is killing him, Hinata looks at him with a knowing gaze. She remembers how badly he reacts to alcohol the next day, have seen it all in university. He too knows how she acts when drunk.

They’ve both seen each other at their highest, were there holding the other’s hand when they got their dream job, got the scholarship money they needed and so on. But they were there just the same when they were at their low, failed grades, evictions from dorm rooms due to some fights with roommates.

But most importantly, they were there at each other’s lowest. When Neji was killed in an accident by a drunk driver, when Sasuke’s father almost lost his life on duty as a police officer.

No matter how many partners either of them went through, Hinata is still his emergency contact, she’s the one his phone calls automatically when pressing the unlock button three times.

“Here; have some food. It may help”

*

Hinata is a high school English and art teacher, thankfully her university roommate Sakura also works at the school as the nurse so they always eat lunch together.

Today Sakura seems to be flinching and acting odd, she opens up her mouth multiple times but does not say anything. Hinata observes and lets it go for a while, but even her patience does not last forever.

“What’s wrong?”

Green uncertain eyes looking at her.

“I’m not supposed to tell you this.”

???? “Umm…ok?” confused, but if Sakura can’t tell her, who is she to insist.

“But I feel like I should!” Frustrated hand through pink hair.

“I’ll tell you. But you can’t blame me for ruining the surprise, ok? I just…I just feel like you should know…”

“Umm…ok” Same answer as before. Hinata’s anxiety raising too. What could Sakura know that is tormenting her so?

“Ok.” Multiple nods. “Here it goes.

…

Kiba is going to ask you to marry him.” Whisper-scream from the woman and then she covers her mouth, as if she cannot believe herself the words she just let out, somewhat regretting having told Hinata.

Her own heart beating at a rate that is truly scary. She’s happy, of course she is. She loves him, why else would she be dating him? But…but there’s still a tiny part of her that feels…sad.

“That’s amazing” Finally answering the secret. Putting her sadness away. She’ll deal with it at another time.

Hand over her heart. “That’s amazing”

Sakura’s shoulders relax. “It is! I just- I know that…”

But she doesn’t say anything after. There’s no need for her to. Hinata knows what she means. They talk about it more. Hinata asks her how she knew, Sakura tells her how Kiba ask her to take Hinata to get her nails done by the end of the month, and that she knows what that means. That she told him congratulation and he blushed shyly but proudly.

*

Home at the end of her day, eyes closed as she lays in bed. The room still smells of booze a bit, but mostly it smells of Sasuke.

She can’t help but think of their university days. Their last year, when she finally became aware of her feelings for him. When she’d look at him for seconds too long, think of him even when he was not there.

How one time when it was just them, when her head was resting on his shoulder she almost reached over to hold his hand. But fear is a much stronger feeling for her than love ever was. She feared rejection, feared ruining their 4 year long friendship.

They’ve also each dated multiple people throughout their friendship, how there was almost never a time period in which both of them were single. That each time she almost got the courage to do something she’d cower in fear. So, she just waited. Waiting for him to give her a signal, waiting for him to make a move. And it just never happened.

She was still waiting until 2 years ago when she met Kiba, when she started dating him casually, but now…now he’s the one she calls first after a hard day. He’s the one she thinks about the most.

Hands covering her face. Fading unfulfilled love is not what she thought her and Sasuke would turn into.

*

Hinata is melancholic and thinks about all of their interactions for the following few days. So when Sasuke calls her, asking her to come over she still has all those thoughts into her mind.

Arms around him the moment the door opens. Sasuke taken aback, chuckling. Asking ‘Did you miss me that much’ jokingly. But when she doesn’t reply his heart rate spikes up, pushing her slightly to look at her face, a few unshed tears into her eyes.

“Hinata? What’s wrong?” Cubbing her cheek, wiping her tear away with his thumb.

Her eyes closed, heart heavy and confused. Fear makes her fingertips numb, but she cannot back down now, she needs to know, it’s important. She cannot answer Kiba’s question with a truthful and enthusiastic ‘yes’ unless they talk about this, unless they move on.

“I loved you” Her words echoing into the hallway. A moment of silence that urges her to open her eyes and look up at him, he has a sad smile on his lips.

“I know. I loved you too”

Her whole body is tingling, shocked. “What?”

Sasuke caresses her hair and pulls her into a hug.

“I didn’t know all along. I suspected at times, but then you’d turn around and do things that made me believe I was a narcissist for thinking you might feel the same. I was waiting for you to say or do something, tell me I wasn’t wrong.

But time went on and…well…”

Her mouth wide open, fist clenched, and she hit his shoulder. “I was waiting for YOU!”

More frustrated with both of them than anything else.

“By the time I realized that perhaps my feelings were indeed reciprocated, so many things happened, so much time passed and it felt like a shame…to change”

Looking at him somewhat in disbelief.

“Kiba asked me to marry him” He didn’t yet but that’s just details. “I said yes” she didn’t yet but she will.

Sasuke’s smile dims a bit, but he hugs and congratulates her nevertheless.

They remain in a hug for a long time before she breaks the silence.

“We both said loved. In the past”

“I still love you, but it is different now…”

Small nod. She agrees. She feels the same. The feelings faded in time, no longer having a romantic aspect to them.

They both waited for each other, but the wait was just too long

~

@sasuhinamonth

[caxycreations]

New Housemates are fucking stupid. Both of them.

My roommates and I took in more housemates. There's a baby, a kid, and two adults. The reason is they got evicted and have nowhere to go until June.

They're SUPPOSED to be staying in the garage, which we specifically set up to be livable for them.

I was in the restroom, and the guy walks up to the door, stops, and yells out "Baaabe, there's someone in the bathroom...I think..." and walks away before I can confirm. A second later, the woman comes up, knocks on the door, I confirm, and she says "Yeah, there is someone in the bathroom!"

As if the guy couldn't knock himself to check

A second later, I hear the woman say, in a panicked voice, "Are those cameras!?"

For context, my VR Base stations that track my full body trackers are still mounted to the living room walls, we haven't moved them yet.

The guy goes "Nah babe those are monitors for a VR headset, they keep them from going outside the barrier so they don't go too far and get hurt."

She storms over (literally stomping) to my roommates bedroom door and full-on cop-knocks (you know the knock... BANG, BANG, BANG, POLICE, OPEN UP type knock)

Roommate answers and she goes

"Are those cameras in the living room!?"

Guy, in the background, AGAIN says they're VR monitors.

My roommate confirms this.

Woman goes "Oh, okay."

Followed by them trying (and failing) to say quietly "We probably shouldn't go any further" to the guy, who responds with "Given the circumstances, yeeaahh" while laughing.

WERE THESE TWO ABOUT TO FUCK IN OUR LIVING ROOM??? ON THEIR VERY FIRST DAY HERE??? WHAT THE FUCK?

She ignored him twice even though he (sort of..) knew what the base stations were, and only accepted it when my roommate said the same thing. And what did they decide not to do?? What "further" were they going to go to had that not happened???

THEY HAVE A BABY. AND A CHILD. IN THE HOUSE WITH THEM.

Fucking hell, they were evicted for being behind on rent and on top of that they can't even CONSISTENTLY take care of their kid, but still wound up having ANOTHER baby anyway. Irresponsible, stupid motherfuckers...

[stillheresanctuary]

So. It's Been A While.

That last update was a bit prophetic, wasn't it.

Uhm, I guess I should give a sort of summary of the last... Two? Three years? For people that are still lingering.

I'll put the bulk of it under a read more, but TL;DR- Parks Department job has panned out really well, had to move out a second time due to Stuff, Dad had a second stroke and passed away from complications, my mom's dog passed away from a malignant tumor, and I'm currently doing a lot of juggling to help Mom and myself try to survive.

Could be better. Could be a lot worse.

For folks that want some more details, well-

I'll get the rough stuff out of the way first.

My dad died. It'll be two years this October. He had a second stroke, and went from slow but steady improvement to a rapid decline that ended with Mom and I mutually agreeing that his quality of life had degraded so badly it was basically torture forcing him to stay alive. He wasn't quite a vegetable at the end, but it was close. He couldn't talk. He couldn't articulate his needs. He couldn't take care of himself in any fashion.

I sat and waited in his hospice room, and saw when the final breath left his body. There is no possible means to describe the Certainty, and the Relief. Knowing he was gone, and that he was no longer suffering.

Neither Mom or I have really had the space to fully process it. His ashes have yet to be scattered, and we haven't be able to coordinate a wake for the extended family. I don't know if we'll ever have one at this rate, but we want to give him a send off for everyone to properly say their good byes.

Less than two months after Dad passed, Mom called me crying. Tali, our family dog for the last 16 years, hadn't been feeling very well for a while, and gave Mom a couple bad scares before she finally had to be rushed to an emergency vet. They found out that Tali had been developing a tumor, and while it wasn't metastasized or actively malignant, it had begun to interrupt body functions and after a sudden seizure, had caused internal bleeding so bad they weren't sure she would survive being sedated let alone surgical intervention.

We decided it would do her a disservice to force her through such an invasive procedure, with no guarantee of recovery, let alone good health.

Mom and I both held her as the doctors gave her a fatal dosage of anesthetic, and she passed away peacefully. Her ashes are also still with us, waiting for us to decide how to honor her life.

On to less miserable topics-

Moving house! Happened cause the roommates we moved in with ended up paranoid assholes who tried to get us evicted and/or arrested on falsified charges of theft! We had to call up the sheriff, police and the landlord, as well as a tenant-landlord lawyer, to get the roommates of our backs. We moved out as soon as we were able to keep their assholery from reoccurring and possibly resulting in legal actions.

My partner and I ended up staying with a mutual friend for a couple months while we hunted for a new place, and now we've been staying in a pretty nice duplex that we're currently hoping won't price us out come the next lease reup (there's consulting of tenant-landlord lawyers in the plan for negotiating with the landlord). Other than fretting over funds, we're pretty alright.

Job! Parks and Rec invited me back to a longer season, and I just recently got invited back again, and I may actually apply for a year round full time position. The people are great, I enjoy the work I do, the benefits are excellent, and I even have a supervisor who Gives A Shit for once.

Pretty sure the job kept me from a depression spiral when Dad and Tali passed away back to back.

Rapid fire what else- Got a new to me car, reconnected with a bunch of friends from old fandoms, made new friends in an entirely new fandom, started looking into possibly going back to school, helped my mom with buying a house and a car, got sick with Covid twice, got two cavities drilled and filled, played way too much Cult Of The Lamb...

I think that's it? At least, that's all I can remember anymore.

It's been A Lot.

What does this say for this project?

Well, I still want to put work into it. I want to reinvest myself and my interests into this world that I've created. Considering current Tumblr drama, I may end up seeing how much I can transition over to something less fragile, like Neocities. I haven't made a webpage in so long it's ridiculous, but it could be worth it to mirror all my Tumblr projects onto something that I can actually archive.

It's a bit up in the air, and I apologize in advance if I vanish again, since I'm going to be going back to work at the end of March and I'm not sure how much energy I'll have to juggle. Whatever happens-

Thank you all for participating in this experience with me. You all have made this silly little side project a true joy, and I'm thankful for everyone who has made it possible.

[rwbyazre]

How about Emerald’s backstory?

Emerald and Mercury, and even Ilia in a sense, were all written to have similar backstories that go along the theme of being failed by those who were meant to protect you.

Emerald was born in Vale City to a single mother. All her life was spent in poverty, as they lived in the downtrodden area of the city away from the city centre and Beacon. Her childhood home was actually not too far from the apartments that Cinder is using to hide in now.

Her mother was also a thief who taught Emerald all she needed to know to survive, installing the mentality of putting yourself first since no one else will help them.

As a kid, Emerald didn't believe that people were that selfish, and constantly tried to reach out. But each attempt only ended in failure. Emerald started to grow more and more jaded, and her mother constantly telling her that she was stupid to believe in them, that she wouldn't be anything, that Faunus like them can only cheat, steal and survive, Emerald started to embody them.

When she was around nine, they became homeless after being evicted from their home and lived on the streets. Emerald would steal things to eat, clothes to replace her old ones, and eventually started stealing things like jewellry to sell on or keep for herself.

She was caught at eleven and quickly arrested. Her mother was meant to keep an eye out while she broke into a closed store after hours, but when the alarm went off and the police arrived, her mother ran and left Emerald behind.

So, that solidified Emerald's mentality of protecting herself. She was given a lenient sentence and put into the foster system, but every home she was put in, she ran away. Eventually, the social workers stopped trying to look for her, and Emerald was on the streets onwards.

Only once did she try and go to the White Fang for help, but left when the other White Fang members objected to her inability to work with them.

She stayed on the streets, moving the cities to avoid police, until Cinder found her at seventeen. Finally, she felt that someone not only understood her, but loved her truly, and started to devote herself to Cinder and her cause, just wanting to be a part of something.

She was with Cinder for about a year and a half until Mercury joined, as Emerald and Cinder tracked him down to actually recruit Marcus, but only arrived in time to see his house on fire and Mercury crawling out of the wreckage.

Like with Mercury, there's a few tidbits I had for Emerald too:

She's bisexual, though her love for Cinder is a motherly desire than a romantic one, since Emerald projects her issues with her bio mother onto Cinder.

Like Mercury wearing her emblem on his belt, she has his on her belt buckle.

She's multilingual, picking it up on the streets while running with a few groups.

She's an asp Faunus to play into her Cleopatra look.

The red gem necklace she wears was her mother's. It's the one thing she kept after being arrested.

She's actually allergic to gold, which is why she only wears silver jewellry and pawns off any gold she steals.

She was taught how to read and maths by her mother, and is actually really good at maths.

[anoseforrottenapples]

“🍼🍼” Mena and Troy

@unyieldingvalxr (for Mena)

Troy glances up when a thump from above vibrates the walls in his apartment, an annoyed scowl creasing his features. “You’d think those two were trying to bring the whole bloody block of flats down around us.” He absently pushes his coffee cup to a more secure spot of the counter when another thud shakes the walls, followed by loud, barely coherent screaming. The Hoffmans are in fine form this evening. The couple, with their twin children, have been living above Troy’s place for almost five months now. While he would never call them easy neighbors to live with, these knock-down drag-them-out rows have only been happening for about two weeks. From what he can gather, they seem to be tangled up with Mr. Hoffman losing his job at the docks, and Mrs. Hoffman constantly comparing him to some high school boyfriend she keeps claiming she should have married instead. The fights have steadily been getting more vicious. Old Mrs. Polvo down the hall has already called the police on them twice, Troy has gone to speak with them twice, and the building superintendent is threatening them with eviction if they get going again. It looks like that eviction notice is forthcoming. Shaking his head, he finishes filling his kettle, but before he can turn the stove on, the sounds from upstairs change. It gets quiet… eerily silent. The hairs on the back of his neck start standing up, old instincts flickering from the dormancy they have temporarily fallen into. “Mena,” he calls for his girlfriend, “I’m going to go check on the Hoffmans, all right? I won’t be a minute, love.” Something is making him uneasy… and it is better to check and look silly, then not check and let something horrible happen right under his nose. There are two short flights of stairs in between the floors. Troy’s feet barely touch the first landing when the screaming starts in earnest—a woman’s screams which means it is Mrs. Hoffman. The causal jog becomes a dead run, and he is hammering on the Hoffman’s door less then a minute later. “Mrs. Hoffman?” He bellows as the screams pitch louder before abruptly stopping. Up and down the hall, the neighbors start throwing their doors open. Not wasting time on the futile effort, he sets his shoulder against the door and shoves hard. A second body joins in behind him—a quick glance tells him it is Mr. Vong, who runs a radio repair shop nearby. The door bursts open, and the two men stumble inside.

Cold dread tightens around Troy’s stomach as he gestures for Vong to stay where he is. “Call the police and an ambulance.” His voice sounds alien in his own ears. The old instincts slam into place as he solemnly stares at the scene. Mrs. Hoffman is dead, sightless eyes staring up at the ceiling as blood still oozes from the knife wounds in her throat and abdomen. Mr. Hoffman’s wrists are slashed… he likely finished bleeding out just before they got the door open. He is first on scene. Secure the room. Don’t disturb the forensic evidence. Keep the crowd back. Automatically, he heads to the open door, and the neighbors crowding around it. “Ladies and gentlemen,” His Sargent voice comes back to him much easier then he thought it would, “There’s nothing you can do here. Mr. Vong is calling for the police. Just stay back and keep the scene clear so they can work when they get here.” There is something else about the Hoffmans that is nagging at the back of his mind but, staring down at two fresh bodies, all side details have slipped away. Looking up, he spots Mena’s head in the crowd and manages a shaken smile for her.   “Sorry Mena. I think I’ll be stuck up here a while after all…”

[multi-dimensional-turtles]

Chapter 2: Growing up

A/N: I don't like how this one turned out, but it does smooth over some inconsistencies in the comics. It's just an overview of the turtles childhood (based on my comics)

Ao3 version here

A week had passed, and Yoshi was doing his best to take care of the strange creatures. They didn’t ask to be mutated like this, someone had to care of them. He got a few books from the library, thank goodness it had a self check out so the people there wouldn’t have to see his mutated form. He picked up a book about turtles, as well as one on parenting. Could this be considered parenting? They were animals, but they acted like human children.

Lettuce was a good choice to feed turtles, so he made sure to buy some, as well as some other foods they could eat, a good mix of vegetables and meat. Leaving the turtles on their own was nerve wracking but he had no other choice. It wasn’t like he could get a babysitter. 

Unfortunately the babies were picky, and didn’t appreciate the lettuce. It didn’t help that it was a few weeks old now, luckily it wasn’t rotten. Still, they didn’t like it as much as they did at first, or maybe they were just tired of the same stuff.

The box turtle- he decided to name it Michelangelo, was refusing to eat it today. Yoshi had picked him up and was trying to hand feed him, but Mikey kept pushing it away and made a disgusted face.

“I know, I know, it’s not fresh,” he said. “We don’t have a lot of money right now, we just have to make due.” It was true that they were going to be tight on money, it wasn’t going to be easy finding a new job as he is now. 

As adorable as the babies were, Yoshi really missed his students and dojo. He had to email all the parents that there will be no lessons this week again, and possibly never again. Maybe the strange goo will wear off? Or there could be some sort of cure? Yoshi wasn’t sure, it seemed unlikely. He couldn’t go to anyone about it either, there was no police or government help. 

Even if it didn’t get him and the turtles killed, he's an immigrant and would be deported back to Japan. As much as he would love to go home, it wasn’t the same, and it definitely wasn’t safe.

Now his life here will never be the same again. Chances are he’ll never see his dojo or students, no parent would be okay with a rat sensei. To help with the money, he may have to sell it.

~~~

Selling the dojo and most items in it bought them a few months. They were able to buy some groceries, though Yoshi has been eating less to support the baby turtles. He was getting smaller too, at first he thought it was because he was skipping meals, but his height was rapidly declining. The babies also seemed to be getting bigger, perhaps it was the strange goo doing this.

He’s been reading more books on parenting and turtles, and doing his best to care for them. Unfortunately, money was still a huge problem. He couldn’t afford rent anymore, and has missed several payments. 

On a slow afternoon, while he and the turtles were napping together, a loud knocking woke him up. It certainly wasn’t a happy knock, whoever they were, they were banging against the door.

Two of the babies had been woken up as well, the sea turtle and red footed tortoise, the latter hissing. Yoshi got up and went to the door, not yet answering. He waited until he could hear footsteps walk away. When he looked through the peephole, no one was there.

He opened the door, hearing paper flutter as he did so. His shoulders dropped when he saw the eviction notice. Sighing, his eyes scanned the paper, this was coming sooner or later. He had three days to leave.

“I suppose it’s time to find a new home,” he told the turtles.

Over the next three days, he went over what he could carry. He had nowhere to go, no one to rely on, so he had to pack light. After all, he will be sleeping on the streets with four mutated creatures, he won’t be able to stay in one place for long.

He took mementos, books, pictures, and weapons he brought with him from Japan. He was still surprised he was able to get those past security, but he wasn’t about to escape unarmed. He took some clothes, food, and anything he needed and could stuff into a duffle bag and backpack.

The babies had grown quite a bit and they wouldn’t be able to fit into the pet carrier anymore. So he put them in the backpack, putting it on so the bag was against his chest. He kept the zipper open, but made sure they wouldn’t climb out.

The streets certainly weren’t luxury, they were cold thanks to the weather and disgusting. They hid during the day, and Yoshi went scavenging at night for any food. His best bets were bakeries, they tend to throw out their food at the end of the day even if it’s still good. He did his best to do so after everyone was asleep, but he got careless one night and went dumpster diving too early.

A woman saw him and screamed in horror, and as if their luck couldn’t get any worse, a policeman was nearby. Yoshi grabbed his things and the babies, making a run for it. Michelangelo stayed in his shell, something he did often whenever he got spooked. The other three peeked out of the bag, and Yoshi put an arm over it to make sure they didn’t fall out.

“Stop! Police!”

Yoshi continued to run, passing by other people. They shouted and screamed as he passed them. Someone shouted, “That way- he’s not human!”

Another shouted, “Monsters!”

Yoshi ducked into an alleyway, looking for some sort of escape. He saw a manhole cover and, with no other choice, went for it.

As the policeman who was chasing him rounded the corner, shouting for him to stop, the manhole cover was already back on and Yoshi was nowhere to be seen. “Where’d he go?” the man asked himself.

Yoshi waited quietly, trying to catch his air as he looked above. If the manhole cover even budges, he’s running. For now he must remain quiet. A few seconds passed, then a minute, everything was still.

Smiling in relief he looked down at the turtles. “Are you all okay?” The three turtles that were looking at him chirped in response. “Michelangelo?” from underneath his siblings, the youngest chirped as well. “Okay, let’s keep moving my little ones.”

They continued down the sewers, the smell was gross and Yoshi had to watch his step. Luckily there was a walkway for them, so he wasn’t wading through sewage. After hours of walking, they came across an opening. Sewage poured into a deep hole, a bridge went across from the hole and pipes ran everywhere. What was most surprising, however, was the giant tree that grew in the giant man made pit. Apples grew from it, but there was no way it was a normal apple tree. Between the cracks in the bark, faint glowing green light oozed out. As if it was mutated, just like them, that was the only way to explain it. 

There was a hole in the tree right next to the walkway. Walking closer, Yoshi could see a lot of space inside, almost as if the tree was hollow. He smiled, no one would find them here. This could be… “Home!”

~~~

Over the next few months, Yoshi would leave the tree during the night to find supplies. He would put the turtles in a box to keep them from leaving while he did, so they wouldn’t fall into the rushing water below. 

He found wood to build a walkway around the hole, and to the bridge. He grabbed any clean blankets and pillows that he was lucky enough to find. Any he found with bugs would be discarded as soon as he could.

He slept in during the mornings but made sure to be up for the day, he didn’t want the babies to be awake while he was out. He also wanted to make sure they had a proper eating schedule, feeding them the freshest food he could find. Most of the time it was stolen food, thank goodness for his ninja training so no one would see him.

Time continued to pass and the turtles became more human-like. The sea turtle was the first to walk on two legs. It was shocking, but Yoshi embraced it and helped her. The red footed tortoise, Raphael, was teething the most. Yoshi made the mistake of sleeping next to him while he was awake, and he ended up getting a hole in his ear for it. He made sure not to sleep with his ears so close to the turtles anymore.

Over the years he got them toys and books, anything to entertain them as he built their home. He carved out a staircase since there was a hole above them inside the tree, leading to a large area. He also collected furniture for the tree, the largest piece being a couch he had found thrown out.

The turtles became more human-like as they grew up. Michelangelo seemed to love drawing with crayons, and the red eared slider, Dontatello, was the first one to talk. It had shocked Yoshi when he did, he was flipping through the pages of a book he constantly wanted to be read.

Soon they were all talking, and Yoshi picked up more educational books to teach them to read, write, and do basic math. More years continued to pass and they grew older, so Yoshi needed to build them separate rooms.

There was a third space above, so that was where the turtles slept. Yoshi had built his own room outside of the tree, and had started on constructing some for the turtles when they were old enough to need their own space. The first ‘floor’ was a living room, and the second was the dining room.

It was an accident when they found out the tree generated energy, it must be because it was mutated. Yoshi brought home a lamp without thinking, and told Donnie it had to be plugged into the wall. Somehow he managed to shove it into the wall of the tree, and to their surprise, it turned on. It made things so much easier after that.

Soon the turtles got their own rooms, the first being the sea turtle. She was the oldest and the tallest, though she seemed to have more of a temper than her brothers, even the red footed tortoise at times who hissed and glared at everything.

It took awhile to connect the dots, and even then, she had to outright tell him that she wanted to be a boy. Yoshi has heard about this before, someone changing their gender, but he wasn’t very familiar with the concept. Couldn’t be weirder than being mutated into a rat and humanoid turtles.

So the oldest turtle chose his name from an old renaissance book, Leonardo. If he decides he’s not really a boy, then that’s fine, but for now Yoshi will raise him as one. After that, he seemed much happier.

As they aged, so did Yoshi. Gray started to appear in his hair, and his vision started to become bad. He has tried to find glasses that helped his vision, but it was hard to do so without going to the doctors. Who knows what would happen if he did.

Michelangelo came up with the idea of them wearing colored headbands after he had mistaken him for Raphael. Both of their shells were dark with orange spots after all, but while Raph had three dark orange spots, Mikey only had one uneven splash of light orange.

When they put on the headbands, it reminded Yoshi of his old students. He decided to train them, his martial arts is his pride so why not pass down the secrets? Besides, this world would not be kind to them, they should learn how to defend themselves.

They started off learning the moves, Yoshi turning their old room into a dojo. He made dummies and trained them with simple movements. Eventually Raph got bored with just dummies, and demanded to spar.

It was a mistake to let him, as he fought against Leo. There was a small accident where Leo kicked him too hard in the mouth, kicking out a tooth. It terrified Yoshi, seeing one of his boys hurt this badly, especially during training. It brought back awful memories of his own childhood, but he pushed them aside so he could focus on the present.

They wouldn’t be able to spar with each other for a few more years.

Before the time came, the brothers learned to use more martial arts tools and skills. Eventually they learned to climb the tree, though they only did so when their father was not home or sleeping. He didn’t like them climbing around outside the tree.

“Hurry up,” Leo whispered.

Mikey shouted as his foot slipped, but he caught himself.

Raph shouted, “Mikey if you fall, you’re never allowed up here again.”

Donnie whispered to him, “Raph if you get us caught, you’re never allowed up here again.”

When they finally got to the top, they laid against the leaves and branches. 

“Look up there!” Leo pointed, there were holds coming from the manhole cover, making rays of light shine down.

“Woah, so pretty,” Mikey gasped. Colors of all kinds came through, faint sounds of the city above following.

“Yeah, it’s great,” Donnie agreed.

“I wonder what’s up there.

Leo answered him, “A big city, remember?”

“Humans,” Raph muttered, frowning as he watched the world above carefully.

“I wish we could go up there.”

Raph sat up, “Are you crazy?! Humans are dangerous, they’re evil!”

“Nuh uh! Captain Mask is good!” Mikey argued.

“That’s a show, and that’s not what Raph meant,” Donnie told him. “I do wish we could talk to some though.”

“But we can’t ‘cause we’re different, humans hate different things, they would hurt us if they knew about us.”

“No they wouldn’t, right Leo?” Mikey asked.

“I don’t know,” Leo admitted. “Some might be good?”

“Yeah, besides, we could beat them up, dad will protect us too!” Donnie pointed out.

Mikey sat up, “Yeah! He’s super strong!”

Leo put his hands behind his head, a bad taste in his mouth. “True, but it’s better to be safe than sorry. Dad says there’s always someone stronger.” Something he would never tell his brothers, was one day when he went to their fathers room early in the morning, he saw him getting dressed with his back towards the door. On his back were two giant identical scars next to each other.

[abyssofsydney]

Scrolling through social media this morning I came across a post in one of my support groups made by a mom that instantly took me back.

She wrote about how her family consisted of narcissists and how recently her father had bought her teenage daughter a car and it has been brought to her attention that he was keeping tabs on the granddaughters whereabouts (suggested via airtag tracker on the car) which he justified doing so as "he owned the car".

There was much more to the story and the mom was very concerned for her daughters wellbeing and simply in shock that her father could do such a thing.

I read through the post once and had to read through it again, the more I read the more memories and emotions come flooding back.

I remember being that scared teenager driving home from school being followed by an unknown car, usually an older male. I remember turning down side roads and going way out of my way just to loose him, only to finally make it home and have that same car sitting across the street.

I remember the feelings of constantly being watched and always looking over my shoulder. I remember never feeling safe.

I remember the police lights flashing in the darkness of my cars mirror's while my friends and I are being questioned about what I was doing that night, who purchased my car, and who my mom was hanging out with while we weren't home.

I remember the nightmares every night of people peeping in my bedroom windows and trying to break in... just to wake up and look out my windows to see unmarked cars watching my house day and night.

I remember being pulled out of class my junior year by police officers to interrogate me about who my mom was currently dating.

I remember when my mom and I called the county and state police just to try and get the harassment to stop, to no avail.

I remember being run out of the only place I had ever called home, by people who were supposed to protect me and make me feel safe.

My father and his small town connections wreaked havoc on my life during my final two years of high school. Well he has always wreaked havoc, and he usually has minions to assist and do the dirty work, because that would require audacity to do himself. After his and my moms divorce my sophomore year, he constantly tried to control every aspect of our lives. Brainwashing my little sister to think that my mom was a drug addict, persuaded her to tell my mom she didn't want to live with her anymore, as he was trying to "protect her" by moving her out of state to live with him and his new girlfriend (whom actually was a drug addict). He then left my mother and I with a house that he refused to sign over or sell, therefore went into foreclosure because Mom was unable to refinance after he left and could no longer afford the monthly payment with only one full time income. My Mom and I were literally days away from being evicted from my childhood home and no one in the family cared at all that we were about to be homeless. My father and sister had actually ghosted us at this time. To be honest I really don't remember most of the reasoning behind why the arguments happened, all I know is that it was always the same pattern. lies, broken promises, overstepping boundaries, confrontation, blow up, silence, silence, and more silence.

During those two years of high school, and for many in my early twenties, it was common to go months, if not years without talking to my Dad. It was only until he starting dating this awesome lady who had a huge heart and family as a prerogative that he started to try and have a relationship and somewhat what to be my Dad.

These two years he lived out of state with my sister and had almost zero contact with me. He told everyone who would listen that I was a bad kid who was always into trouble and going nowhere with my life.

Occasionally I would want to go visit my sister, and I knew the only way to do that was to reach back out and apologize and say whatever to make him happy so that I had the privilege to drive the 9 hours to visit with my sister. Usually these "good periods" with my Dad were not long, weeks, maybe a couple months, and something would happen and the cycle would repeat.

lies, broken promises, overstepping boundaries, confrontation, blow up, silence, silence, and more silence.

I had a really nice car in high school, thanks, to my aunt and uncle. They made an agreement with me where they financed and I made the payments.

Almost immediately, the car and how I came about it, Dad had spun it into a thousand different lies, depending on who you asked, all of which made me look bad.

He was bitter that I had gotten a sports car on my own when he had only weeks prior took away an old pickup truck that he had given to me at 16. Again, I never remember what specifically triggered the agreement, but this one specifically I remember blowing up at him for something (maybe secretly getting married? still not totally sure) and then we didn't talk. Next thing I know my Grandpa walks into the house after school one day and he said, "I need the keys to your truck, your dad called and told me to come pick it up". I cleaned my stuff out and gave him the keys. A week later I saw his friend driving it around town and heard that Dad made him a "great deal!".

After this happened I cut contact for months, as did my mom for how he left us for homelessness over silly signing a piece of paper. He then became thirsty for control over us as he no longer had access to our lives. He then decided to recruit his friend from high school who was now a detective with our local police department. I used to get followed by marked and unmarked cars around town and home from school constantly. We always had cars parked across the street staring at us, and then when you would approach they would turn their lights on and drive off. One time I got pulled out of class to go to the principals office where they put me alone in a room with two officers who interrogated me about what I do after school, the locations and people I hang out with, as well as where my mom goes outside of work, and who she was dating. I worked at a local restaurant and they would sit in the parking lot and either watch me get into my car after my shift and follow me home, or be parked waiting across the street when I got home.

He used to tell me he had friends in the CIA and they were trained to sneak into peoples houses without you knowing it while you're sleeping. He then would call me a few days later and ask if I noticed a picture was crooked something was moved, because so-and-so had been in my room and did it without me knowing. Now that I am older I realize that probability of that is very low, however, it still gives me the creeps to think about.

Going back to the social media post that stirred these memories all up... I commented on it telling her she's a good strong mama for being concerned and trying to do what's best for her daughter. I also gave a smidge of my backstory with my Dad and this woman was so kind that she felt bad for me! It was not my intention at all, I was only trying to reassure her that she is taking the right steps as someone who has gone through similar. The responses I received to my comment made me step back and really think about what I had endured with him those last two years of high school...

Especially as at this time of my life I was already dealing with so much. I spent everyday after school in the PEDS floor of the hospital spending time with my cousin, who was only one month older than me and we grew up side by side. Down the hall was one of my dearest friends since 8th grade (and future prom date). They were both dying of cancer, Kallie from a brain tumor, and Spencer from testicular cancer that had spread. I was so young, dealing with so much as it was, all I wanted was a Dad I could count on. Not one that harassed me and had strangers follow me. Looking back I truly do feel bad for my younger self. I don't know how a father could be so cruel to one daughter and then treat the other like a princess...

My parents always seem to find it appropriate at present day to tell me about how I was such an angry teenager. But they always fail to remember the circumstances that I had to grow up and live in.

[the-firebird69]

Judge delivers bad news for Trump ahead of first felony trial in New York

Donald Trump is going to get pushed out of all those jobs people promise to push him out of and he's running around pissing people off telling them they're screwed because he's not fired yet come Monday people are firing him are going to get support. This place is going to bust open right now at about 45% right now they're 55% emptied and pretty soon 65%, they're going nuts on the guy and taking out all his people as they can they need the stuff right now

-along with this function he is also a Deadman for saying the things he does to us and about our son he is a sleaze ball a low life he doesn't care about himself he's not smart enough to understand that it's real and his reaction is opposite of what he should be doing and we double our efforts and he gets hit we are going to start hitting him today is a filthy a****** and yeah we are sick of this guy

-there's several things that are starting up including the Washington series Lord of the rings a lot of movies up in Maine including Shawshank redemption where he goes to prison and he thinks he's going to escape by screwing around with the sewer at the house and we know what he's talking about he wants to pull those items out and he wants to do it from septic tank but it's not really going to happen and they do renovate the septic but we think our son might even be moved out by the time that happens probably not he says and it's true they will try and raise the rent and he is going to get killed and we're going to help it happen.

-there's a law that says you have to notify people they're going to raise the rent and it's one month before they do so cuz if you can't afford it you need time to move already people are suing him and our lawyer farm is going to sue him for what he's doing now and other stuff says he's going to use weapon on her son and he's saying it to people and we're going to sue him they were going to sue him for doing it once already and that's raising the rent without telling him at all we are going to say you had someone else do it and it's not true now you're trying to bother him all the time and we're going to see you for that Stan and go after your stuff and we need to your States we'll have them and we need you out of the way apparently to do it

-there's more about this but we don't want to get into it right now we're going to send people down to handle it there's other stuff going on John remillard is always trying to assemble people to bother our son and now they say they're going to and they start taking this stuff and money in the eastern hemisphere if they continue to 65%, he's going to be finished over there because he's going to go at the stuff hard and he is going to get hit and his people taking down right now he's a small percentage of the general populace over there and he's getting smaller fairly soon very small

-everybody is gearing up to grab his stuff in the Western hemisphere and yeah he's a stinker that guy is an ass and he is going to get completely raped and while he is messing with his son too and yeah he's a fool this huge crowds they're going to get ready to go after his stuff huge and they are not his people.

-besides those things which are going to happen this coming week and a little slower than all in one day they plan on evicting the two and it's for being in the apartments illegally Dave has been threatening for the contract and it's been threatening Sherry and Trump has been threatening everybody but he's really there and his granddaughter has the contract and she is complaining to stand several times I have the contract and he won't move out and I can't get him to and he forced his way in he says call the police I said I did and I said you have to prove it's your apartment and you're not in it and stuff and I don't have the copy of the contract so Stan is going to get her a copy of the contract that will kick it off because the police will act and she's already fighting him and she already found out that he's the one who shot her husband and that they're doomed and doesn't care and wants the cops to fight him. And her husband's in the way and he'd be the one just standing up to do it

-there's a couple other things that are coming down the pike real quick and yeah she's going to get the contract probably Monday and he's going to get kicked out real quick then I go for the kill and I see the plan and they see everybody who's involved and they can use it and they have to it's a godsend really and they see how he's going to die his own brother

-several other things like that are happening finally the water is going down eventually right now it's up pretty high it's above the high clam mark and it's due to that little bump I really there's a ton of water coming down a lot of water lake Okeechobee water wouldn't make a difference go somewhere else they did let them out but it's not much and this water is coming from the storms there were several and they're finally getting here this is going to be like the middle of it late tonight it'll be tapering off but right on the money for the approach of low tide from 11:00 to 3:30 a.m. there's going to be this huge huge push in all the stuff down below is going to get a push out it's going to be wonderful it's going to be perfect. It's going to clear it all out lots of the harbor and the river and the mouth all that's going to be pushed out and they're only be several feet here and there a lot of it's going to be gone with this quick movement of water and large amounts it is going to be terrific it really is needed and the canals will clear out eventually it's raining off and on

-right now they're down to only have a foot and a half of muck and that is a lot less than it was there it was like 6 ft of mine everyone was panicking Tommy f is trying to start storms already and he's not wanted here there's a few other people who are hated I'm going to hell pretty soon

-Mac Daddy's seems to be helping he does a little but he is falling off the wayside he's not doing much about things and he can't you really wants to but he's trying to work with foreigners and they just don't want it and they need it but they don't want it we think he's going to be a pain in the ass you already isn't several areas so we are going to have to start doing stuff and like other things it seems like them you're doing it and he's going to be fighting Stan tooth and nail and you can see in Dune he gets hit and that's where he disappears for a Time and we know that he reappears after the museum and he goes after bja and company and annihilates them for the most part using all sorts of techniques including riding and it's not that far from now and you can tell you can see the actors and you can see where his final quarter by the knife and Justin gets up and hits a ton of them and the others run and he saved everybody. And our son has decide with people who are kind of helping a little cuz nobody else is.

-so things are going to be okay but not the greatest but this is a tough time people put a lot of demands on her son and they don't do anything or hardly anything cuz they can't do anymore and it's fluctuating and they don't know how to do it it's really hard and they think it's the clan and there's a lot of stuff going on that off of Mars there's a war brewing and between the pseudo empire and the warlock they're going to fight it out and the warlock they're going to kind of run out of ships once that happens it'll be the clones and Hera is pleased with our son's assessment and says this is what is actually happening she says it says I'm going to be huge all the time don't do anything all the time and she laughs. So it's going to be weird with you right next to me are you trying to figure out if you're doing it. I thought you're doing it before I figured out you just kind of stupid it's true too and then we were crying required to concentrate all the time just walking and stuff it turned out to be that it's because of these guys and others she loves you a lot for it they put a lot of effort in just kept saying I have to get through college.

-a few more things are brewing but this is math and they're going to help Emily blunt then she kind of makes huge errors and shoots Tom Cruise and we don't know why Tom Cruise is not in the way of the apartment mostly but he might help him find a different place but that's not really that far away so we think that she's been after a son for so long she wants to go after him and thinks he might be easier and squeeze a few drops out have a child that looks like our son and that's kind of crazy but okay these people are nuts.

-along with that kind of thing there will be several deaths of huge huge Stars and not just the morlock and it's coming up and they disappear forever and I mean the meaning that they're gone John remillard and bja Jason Brad ley everybody he knows there's several people that get hit a lot Camila gets hit a few times not that bad it goes in and out and Tom Cruise it goes right through and they stop it and leave the nonsense behind and there's huge shows where lots and lots of stars get wiped out a lot of them are more lock but there's one or two Max each time and their clans are being destroyed they're getting destroyed below too A lot of it is Europe and Russia parts of Africa South parts of South America the only parts and they're smaller clans and they have to do the dirty work out here and they have to go out first and it's a pump wrap and I tried to turn it around and they are convicted some of them and it said in Warhammer and these guys copy them and they're getting they're getting shortly because of it and their evil people they're kind of snickering bags too they all are says that's good and it is true so they coming out and they will meet their maker in Star wars and other series to die the way they did it's not BG or Chrissy and no it is they don't look like themselves they had enough no they duck down and they're in pirates of the Caribbean so they continue some people just keep going it looks like they can't see it and our son and daughter say just get under the water you can't see it yet you will and so they go deeper and they see it and talk under luckily

-huge numbers people are saying dumb things to him no but a few it's going on we have news about funding he is soon going to be getting some and it is from kind of an unlikely source and it's been talked about a little it is one of the accounts he had is not right but he has to get some money for something and people are saying it too he needs to buy something he doesn't know what it is his credit card and that's what it is and everybody's worried about it and so they're trying to get him some funding to pay for it and the government has the program that isn't qualified for some reason and yeah I'm looking around for other sources and the state might have some things but really it is pretty tough and they owe him a lot of money and these people are weasels I mean these Max no matter what they are a weasels they think they don't have to pay they don't care how many people it takes and they say stuff like that and they end up dead and they just keep doing it and it's really gross they're very greedy people and we caught it and we're working on it we do know it works he's got a lot of stuff out there hey put some stuff out there todayhe said to the sleaze balls he said it's raining for $3 and $5 and it's not really serious it's not enough for even cigarettes and I'm big and strong and it'll cost more in whatever it could be very very expensive and it's not going to get you s*** instead if I had like 500 bucks on me all the time be a different story so they're looking at that and they see that yeah that could be true and it could be that is true and they are going to start looking into it and they need it too it's a few reasons why they might do it

:: number one is he would have money and that means something to low life people and the thieves and such bullies right now it doesn't mean anything it's $20 at the most and that's it and it says $20 like 20 all day and night for like forever and nobody can read it

: if you had money he could get things and he would look like some sort of Mark and they don't go after the top dogs no they do but they have to know who they are I've been calling him a top dog he says I don't have anything what are you talking about and the max are planning on getting him a castle that his brother owned and car companies of his and Big Time names one of them said Porsche and our son and daughter say no because papa is probably going to take it back but dagger and GT Bradley and several more including the European version of the Ford GT and she says it would all be his for a while and maybe even a company of the USA and they're saying possibly and that's the kind of thing they're thinking for threatening and instead of threatening nothing and he doesn't have any people that really are dependent on and he's not they're not really responding to threats of any kind so it's garbage and he would have employees right now the threatening DG and he's killing people and he has people kill people and they don't like it it's not killing a ton of Max but what he's doing is kind of gross they said and these people who deserve it

: he doesn't have a billfold that has any money in it we're trying to say that in English it's always empty it has a credit card but everyone's protecting it and has a bank card everyone protects and he has debt so he practically has nothing in the bank it doesn't work at all they tried millions of times and you just get their asses kid pretty soon all the morons to try and do it are going to be gone and these guys going to be sitting there saying they're threatening nothing they're at the house threatening bicycles and it's only transportation so everybody is supporting BG and helping him and they're getting their asses kicked they're right there leaving the same place people are beating them up

: the impression is is poor threatening him and he said I'll roll you and he almost did it in the Publix they left the wallet in there and a phone and he could have sold the phone to Garth and could have given the wallet the car and got to know what to do with it and it's worth money and people do that around here they leave their stuff around he didn't do it didn't know who it was but everybody's watching there and he's aware of it but still we find out it had money $1,000 in different bills and he needs that money to pay bills that doesn't want to have to repay it but if you beat him up and stuff he's going to take the money and nobody's going to bother getting the money back for you it's stupid yeah and that's what would happen

: he doesn't have a car doesn't have a way to get around and it would help but you guys can't seem to get the math on that it's well beyond you for some reason and when you're running around changing disguises it's harder to check and you look different you have different cars out here everybody knows your car is even though there's like 500 of them it's a small place.

; speaking of cars you wouldn't have like a used broken down car and you're going to steer towards the Mac plan instead of getting a different vehicle and saying he's Rich even though you'd only have like a few million or something or a few hundred thousand dollars really will likely but down here people find that to be a lot of money the retirees and he has no money and he's sending a signal to go after you he's actually doing it for us cuz that's what happens to people like him they come down here other they take from you stupid assholes or they get in a lot of trouble like gone and the scene is dangerous or harmless than a threat and they keep saying is harmless and a threat and he keeps on wiping out Bunches of you because the ACT and the motif is set on him and y's threat essential threat.

: there's a couple more is limping around it looks weak but he let people know he's real strong and it's not a good Mark and they noticed that he wants to sue people and if they attack him he's going to have a lawsuit but if they attack him and they take stuff it's going to be a criminal offense against our son instead of just like a small criminal offense and a small lawsuit and he'd press charges and you can't really do that if you're not one of them they say they went over all this like the past couple days and they're really discovering stuff they say and it's going on now and they want to try and do stuff that has some effect at all and they don't seem to be doing it there's one more

: it's not going to any atmosphere at all except the same places over and over and over and he doesn't seem to care and he doesn't really he has to do things he's got work to do and he's getting a lot done and really they don't want him staying all this stuff and they have no way of controlling it or regulating it and the two at the house and they can't and he's also got no hobbies that are bad for him for the most part and he's trying to recover all the time and he does it so there's a big list but these are things that happened in this realm

Thor Freya

I was thinking is poor and that he's a second from the street and he's not the governor's a backup and the federal government always steps in to put him on the stupid ride and go back to the clone house and they'll get hit and that's what the math is

Hera

I give you some money and I lived with somebody my whole life and I noticed it I've made great strides because I don't have any and the code we're sending this kind of really possibly not even on purpose it says I'm poor we have to do something just sitting there with that half cock I'm not even sure that I would use the money on anything that's worth anything because they're not savvy enough to try and do that

Zues

So you're saying that if you got money it would have to be like a parallel you can't just go around blow it out the window or spend it on yourself and we agree it's really really dimwitted right now

Daniel

Usually if it's a parallel it works for us he was working in construction and making decent money they're having a blow it out the window and it didn't work as well as it could have we built a ton of stuff

Mac

Olympus

[fullmoonfanantic1976]

The robbery

Full moon guys I got this weird note in the mail that says you will get evicted if you don’t pay your rent by the end of the day sincerely your landlord I thought toothy paid it toothy I thought blade paid it blade I thought tunneler paid it tunneler I thought six shooter paid it six shooter I thought jester paid it jester I did pay 4 months ago everyone what the hell jester. Full moon wait my safe were I keep all my kfc money let’s use that. Everyone went to fulll moon room and looked in a corner were there was a little safe blade there is no way you keep more than 70$ in there full moon no let me show you wait this is the code oh no some one broke the safe code we have to break it open but how let me look it up. After 20 minutes of full moon figuring out how to melt A safe toothy got A idea. Toothy let’s just rob A gas station full moon I got I need jet fuel toothy or you could rob A gas station with us full moon I’m good. Toothy ok guy full moon went to go steal jet fuel let’s rob this gas station. Everyone barges in everyone on the ground hands no funny business wait no ones here blade what’s this note say dear whoever is reading this I’m on my lunch break please don’t rob the gas station blade the cashier is gone grab the money. Right after everyone stepped inside the door slammed shut and multiple steel doors blocked the exit everyone oh shit. Blade quick toothy grab the money will try to find A way out. For the next 5 minutes they try everything they can to open the doors but knifes hooks drills teeth and guns do nothing to the doors but nothing works and after a while everyone starts to come to the conclusion that they will eventually die in the gas station. Six shooter grabbed him and tunneler A popsicle and started talking about what they had planed for life and dieing in a gas station was not one of them blade and jester sat near the cash register and just tried to distract each other from the fact they were trapped when blade wanted to tell jester something. You know jester I always thought you were cute jester looks away blushing uhm thanks blade I think your cute to they stay silent for A while until they look at each other before blade leans in to kiss jester. But before they can kiss there interrupt by toothy yelling I found the exit the staff room has a way out. Everyone walks out happy that they don’t have to die in A gas station until they get stoped by the police. Police your under arrest for attempting to rob this gas station and breaking and entering blade wait attempted robbery wait toothy you don’t grab the money bag toothy ow yea that police tell it to the judge. Mean while full moon go,s to the apartment with jet fuel guys we won’t lose the apartment wait were did these police come from for the last time I didn’t make the fake switch’s police no you were working behind the scenes in A bank robbery using puppets full moon wait no you got the wrong person I’m innocent I swear.

The end

[hijeatsdirt]

1984 by George Orwell Chapter 2

Chapter 2 As he put his hand to the door-knob Winston saw that he had left the diary open on the table. DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER was written all over it, in letters almost big enough to be legible across the room. It was an inconceivably stupid thing to have done. But, he realized, even in his panic he had not wanted to smudge the creamy paper by shutting the book while the ink was wet. He drew in his breath and opened the door. Instantly a warm wave of relief flowed through him. A colourless, crushed-looking woman, with wispy hair and a lined face, was standing outside. 'Oh, comrade,' she began in a dreary, whining sort of voice, 'I thought I heard you come in. Do you think you could come across and have a look at our kitchen sink? It's got blocked up and----' It was Mrs Parsons, the wife of a neighbour on the same floor. ('Mrs' was a word somewhat discountenanced by the Party--you were supposed to call everyone 'comrade'--but with some women one used it instinctively.) She was a woman of about thirty, but looking much older. One had the impression that there was dust in the creases of her face. Winston followed her down the passage. These amateur repair jobs were an almost daily irritation. Victory Mansions were old flats, built in 1930 or thereabouts, and were falling to pieces. The plaster flaked constantly from ceilings and walls, the pipes burst in every hard frost, the roof leaked whenever there was snow, the heating system was usually running at half steam when it was not closed down altogether from motives of economy. Repairs, except what you could do for yourself, had to be sanctioned by remote committees which were liable to hold up even the mending of a window-pane for two years. 'Of course it's only because Tom isn't home,' said Mrs Parsons vaguely. The Parsons' flat was bigger than Winston's, and dingy in a different way. Everything had a battered, trampled-on look, as though the place had just been visited by some large violent animal. Games impedimenta--hockey-sticks, boxing-gloves, a burst football, a pair of sweaty shorts turned inside out--lay all over the floor, and on the table there was a litter of dirty dishes and dog-eared exercise-books. On the walls were scarlet banners of the Youth League and the Spies, and a full-sized poster of Big Brother. There was the usual boiled-cabbage smell, common to the whole building, but it was shot through by a sharper reek of sweat, which--one knew this at the first sniff, though it was hard to say how--was the sweat of some person not present at the moment. In another room someone with a comb and a piece of toilet paper was trying to keep tune with the military music which was still issuing from the telescreen. 'It's the children,' said Mrs Parsons, casting a half-apprehensive glance at the door. 'They haven't been out today. And of course----' She had a habit of breaking off her sentences in the middle. The kitchen sink was full nearly to the brim with filthy greenish water which smelt worse than ever of cabbage. Winston knelt down and examined the angle-joint of the pipe. He hated using his hands, and he hated bending down, which was always liable to start him coughing. Mrs Parsons looked on helplessly. 'Of course if Tom was home he'd put it right in a moment,' she said. 'He loves anything like that. He's ever so good with his hands, Tom is.' Parsons was Winston's fellow-employee at the Ministry of Truth. He was a fattish but active man of paralysing stupidity, a mass of imbecile enthusiasms--one of those completely unquestioning, devoted drudges on whom, more even than on the Thought Police, the stability of the Party depended. At thirty-five he had just been unwillingly evicted from the Youth League, and before graduating into the Youth League he had managed to stay on in the Spies for a year beyond the statutory age. At the Ministry he was employed in some subordinate post for which intelligence was not required, but on the other hand he was a leading figure on the Sports Committee and all the other committees engaged in organizing community hike