#you lure in adventurers five at a time and kill them before they can settle down and have kids

[thefruitypebblescastleoftorment]

I think about the impending threat of population crash in Barovia a lot, and I bet Strahd does too.

[guessimwritingficsagain]

Not-a-Jedi (1/?)

Pairing : Din Djarin x reader

Summary : Since Grogu kept having nightmares about his father, you were sent to reunite them both. But nothing goes according to plan.

Warning : violence, sexy thoughts and yearnings.

Author's note : This was supposed to be a one shot but it's not.

When Master Luke had come to you with Grogu, you hadn’t thought much of it. The kid had been restless, he’d explained, visions of his father plaguing his mind every night.

‘I think he is meant to see him. His father might be in danger. Grogu won’t rest until he can help.’

You were no Jedi, but you could fly a ship, fire a blaster, kill, even, and Luke knew you and trusted you so he’d given you Grogu, and the name Nevarro to start with. Lured by the idea of leaving the little shop you worked at, after years of trying to settle down, live a quiet life, and knowing that grumpy boss of yours would take you back when your mission was over, you’d agreed to take Grogu to his father.

Now, though, with a blaster pointed at your head and a Mandalorian at the other end of it, you weren’t so sure. Screw Luke Skywalker and his sweet smiles.

‘Where did you get the kid ?’

You swallowed, your heartbeat picking up. As you were struggling for an answer, Grogu just cooed and his hands shot up towards the Mandalorian.

Luke hadn’t updated the very Mandalorian father about the whereabouts of his kid, you were slowly understanding. And now there was a blaster, pointed directly to your head - that deserved to be emphasized.

You tried to explain, hating how you were struggling, stumbling on your words like a new-born babe on an uneven sidewalk. When you were done, the Mandalorian stood so still you blessed whatever god you didn’t believe in because death was sure to be quick and painless. But it never came.

Instead, you felt Grogu’s weight being lifted from your arms as you heard the Mandalorian whisper :

‘Miss me, kid ?’

The baby cooed, while a lady you hadn’t noticed at first lowered her rifle, tapped the baby on the forehead.

‘Nice to meet you, Jedi. I’m Cara Dune.’

You shook her offered hand and corrected her :

‘Not a Jedi.’

You gave her your name, but she playfully smiled and answered :

‘Nice to meet you, Not-a-Jedi.’

The Mandalorian had turned away, already walking back into town. Cara motioned you to follow. You looked around as you walked. So much sand. You could feel it slipping in your boots, too. Not a fan of that, you decided. It was hot, and your weapon of choice was heavy against your back. Cara was talking to the Mandalorian, though you couldn’t make up her words. You’d rather trail behind, unsure of what to do next. Luke’s words hadn’t been specific. Stay with them or don’t, but if you don’t, know that a time will come when you need to get Grogu back here. When, though, I don’t know.

You liked Luke, really, but the cryptic wizard bullshit was getting old. You briefly wondered how you had been so fascinated by the whole thing in the first place.

Once you were sat at a table in the local cantina, a drink in front of you, Cara casually asked :

‘So, Not-a-Jedi, how come the Jedi trusted you with the kid ?’

She was leaned back on her chair, legs spears apart, but somehow you could tell she was ready to break you in half. And maybe, she could. You might have had five whole teenage, foolish years of something akin to street-fighting behind you, but she was huge and clearly military-trained. And there was a Mandalorian sitting next to her. You weren’t about to take that chance, not after many years of keeping to yourself, the hard muscles softening with a bit of fat here and there, not with the slight softening of your belly. The street-fighting had been about adrenaline. You’d been too young, too cocooned by parents scared of the world, and you’d wanted out. You’d liked the danger of it, back then, the very idea that one wrong move could leave you with a broken spine turning you on, but never scary enough to dwell on it. You’d felt invincible, back then. Fights had been foreplay to encounters in a dark street, quiet fucks to release a tension you shouldn’t have felt. You’d had a family, a roof. You were privileged, but it was boring. A spoiled brat. You still were, in a way. Spoiled brats don’t fight military-trained huge lady, and they surely don’t fight Mandalorians.

‘The Temple needs supplies. Luke gets them from me - from us. I work at a small shop in a town not far from the Temple.’

She nodded, while the Mandalorian kept quiet, visor trained on the kid who was happily downing his food like you hadn’t fed him since you’d departed.

‘Slow down, kid.’ You muttered without thinking and raised a hand to stop him. The stare of the Mandalorian stilled your movement, though, and you brought your hand back to your own cup.

‘You must be tired’, Cara continued. ‘Long journey ?’

Your hands gripped the cup harder at that, the words out of your mouth before you thought better of it.

‘Can’t tell you that.’

She leaned in.

‘Why not ?’

You swallowed, and met her stare.

‘The Temple’s location is secret. If I tell you how long we’ve been travelling for, that’s a piece of information. I can’t do that.’

‘Not even to the kid’s dad ?’ She quipped back, gesturing the unmoving warrior. There was a slight simmer of tension in the air. They don’t know you, they have every right to be suspicious, you reminded yourself. But you didn’t know them either.

‘He’s not the one asking. I don’t know who you are. This is the kind of information I could give to him, but not with you here.’

‘Yes, you can.’ A modulated voice interrupted. ‘I trust Cara with my life. She was there when the Jedi took the Child.’

It wasn’t so much the sentence itself that moved you, but the way Cara’s body slightly turned towards the kid and his father, the way her face grew grave.

‘A week or so.’ You quietly admitted, after a beat.

The Mandalorian hummed in answer and silence fell over you all. You were starting to feel uncomfortable when he spoke again, his voice harsh and cold as the Beskar he was wearing :

‘You’re gonna spend the day and the night here, but tomorrow morning, you’re both gone. It’s too dangerous.’

That, you hadn’t expected.

‘That’s- That’s not what Luke said-‘

‘If I’m in danger, then you both need to leave as soon as possible.’

———

The kid was screaming. You’d figured it would go down that way, with the Mandalorian intent on having you go back to the Temple. Then, a three-fingered hand landed on your cheek and everything went elsewhere.

The Mandalorian was on the floor of a ship you didn’t recognize, chest heaving up and down, and blood everywhere.

‘Stay with me’, you heard yourself say. ‘Come on, stay with me. I’m here, I’m gonna patch you uo. It’s going to be okay. Grogu- Grogu can do it too.’

When you came to, you were on the floor of your own ship, and Grogu was softly crying in the arms of the Mandalorian.

‘We can’t leave’ you choked, as Cara was helping you up. ‘We can’t leave.’

You took a few steps, and you threw up.

When you woke up, you were in a bed and a doctor was checking your vitals. She probed, and asked too many questions, but couldn’t find a single thing wrong with you. You weren’t about to tell her that a fifty-year-old kid had shown you a vision of yourself trying to save his father, so you let it be.

Instead, you used your best bed-ridden voice to convince the Mandalorian that you both should stay with him because you might just die if the kid pulled that kind of stunt again - and maybe you were right, because Grogu meant well but you felt like that time you’d had one week of sexy times with a nice Zeltron lady. You couldn’t walk properly, and your mind was elsewhere, though this time, the elsewhere was definitely not as nice as it had been back then.

Which is how you ended up on Mando’s ship, the Galactica, strapping up for a journey through memory lane. Apparently, since he was stuck with the two of you, Mando wanted to take the kid back to people who mattered to him.

Next stop : Tatooine.

And the welcome on that planet was something else. You liked Peli the moment you met her, with the way she gave shit to Mando just because she could. She took to you, too, and when, your nerves vibrating with excitement, you asked her where you could see a good fight, she pointed right where you needed to be and added, for good mesure :

‘Keeping the kid will cost you extra, but I can take care of him if you want.’

This was the Mandalorian’s money you were playing with, but you figured that if you bet some and won some, that wouldn’t be an issue. You agreed, and went on your merry way while Mando was out shopping for rations.

Except, when you got there, the thrill of it all got to you. Your skin itched to go up there, on the ring. To knock somebody out. You hadn’t felt that way in years. Maybe it was the thrill of the adventure. Maybe it was the Mandalorian, and his cold front. Maybe it was the Mandalorian, but for other reasons : you were supposed to save his life, you’d seen it. Maybe you could prevent this from ever happening if you went back in there.

No matter the reason, you did it. You watched the winner, raised your hand, and got up.

———

It had been easy. Easier than when you were younger. You’d been stuck on the Galactica for a while, and you’d needed release.

You won, fair and square, and went back to the ship, covered in blood but the weight of the ten thousand credits comforting at your side. You went to pay Peli but her answer surprised you :

‘Did you win ?’

‘Yes.’

‘So you ended that idiot ? The blond one ? I can never remember his name but he’s a pain. So smug.’

‘Yes, I did.’

Peli looked at you, and smiled.

‘Free of charge, then. I hope Mando is smart enough to keep you around.’

Mando himself said nothing about the bruises and the cuts on your body, but he let you heal yourself. You figured, then, he knew you could take care of yourself.

You spent a while with Peli, time passing like a blur, the days almost all the same. Mando didn’t seem in a hurry to see you leave anymore, indulging in the selfish feeling of joy to have the kid back. You kept going back to the cantina to fight. Kept winning, and the grin you wore every time you got back must have intrigued Mando because he came to see you fight, one night.

The moment you spotted him in the crowd both threw you off and cleared your mind to a point of concentration you’d never reached before. You didn’t stop to try and understand the feeling, not with the way you could hear every cheer, not with that visor looking right at you, not with that beast suddenly clawing at your belly with new ferocity. You didn’t stop and understand the feeling, because suddenly you were fighting him. Your faceless opponent became Mando in your mind, and as you threw punches with renewed ferocity, images - fantasies - spilled in your mind, of him taking you in a dark alley, both of you still sweaty and dirty from the fight. Even better was the fact that you knew you could never beat him. Would you yield, though ? Would you get on your knees and beg for mercy ? Or would your pride take over your lust and lead you to fight until he had you pinned down and unable to breathe ?

It was amazing, you’d reflect later, how one’s body could move on pure instinct, before for the rest of that fight, your mind was elsewhere but you were moving with a deadly precision, ready to strike, ready to hurt, ready to win. And win, you did.

He wasn’t in the cantina anymore when you came back in after collecting your winnings. The fire in your belly went out suddenly at that, an empty feeling replacing that burning sensation, your fingers no longer tingling but heavy with ache. Your opponent - you still hadn’t caught his name - offered you a drink you accepted, but drank too fast for it to lead to anything more. The urge to get out of there was only made stronger when the man in front of you asked, innocently enough :

‘You travellin’ with the Mandalorian ? You guys showed up here at the same time and he only ever shows up when you fight.’

So he’d come here before, was your first thought. The second, though, was much more unpleasant : the kid.

You were drawing too much attention to yourself. You left the cantina eager to get to the Battlestar, only to be stopped by an iron grip on your arm. Your reflexes kicked in and you landed a hard punch on - something very hard. The pain was so intense it travelled through your whole body and made you shiver, tears prickling at the corner of your eyes as your body curled onto itself.

‘It’s me.’ You heard, the modulated voice now familiar. And then, as an afterthought : ‘Sorry.’

‘A little warning, next time. That’d be nice.’ You all but wheezed, the pain in your hand burning you whole.

‘Sorry.’ The helmet repeated, even though the hand on you was not easing its grip.

You had some bruises on you, the morning after. A split lip, too, and an almost nasty wound on your left eyebrow. The biggest bruise of all, though, was the one on the hand that had struck the Mandalorian, a huge ugly shape, purple and green and blue. You couldn’t flex your left hand without tears coming to your eyes. You wondered how sick you were, because you couldn’t look at it without being turned on. It was a good thing that you were right-handed, too : you weren’t that incapacitated, and you could also keep touching yourself in a very capable way. Small blessings.

———

That grip thing, Mando squeezing your arm to lead you wherever, that iron grip to stabilize you, became a thing. And you were quickly getting that what he represented, that sense of danger about him, turned you on almost all the fucking time. The rest of the time, well, he was being a very good dad and that-

Fuck.

Let’s just say you had it bad.

You left for Mos Pelgo a week later, after Mando asked you why you didn’t go fighting anymore and you revealed your worries about being too much in the spotlight, and how afraid you were that it could affect the safety of the kid. After that conversation, he set course immediately for your next destination, leaving you just enough time to say goodbye to Peli.

‘Thanks for teaching that boy a lesson.’

You thought back on your first fight and answered, your grin predatory :

‘Oh, him ? He was too cocky, but not that good of a fighter, really.’

Peli laughed.

‘Not that boy. The other one. The one with a bucket on his head. Stubborn ass who won’t think for a second about what is good for him. You got him to relax, enjoy his time with the kid and remember people who care about them.’

You could tell it was a lot for her to admit that she cared about the Mandalorian himself so you just shrugged. You watched as she bid her goodbyes to the kid and his father, before she turned to you and added :

‘Hope I’ll see you again, Korra.’

‘Korra ?’ You asked.

It was her turn to shrug as she explained :

‘A silly story my parents used to tell me. In a galaxy far far away, there was a woman who could manipulate fire, earth, air, and water. But she was also very strong. Kicked everybody’s ass. You remind me of that story.’

It wasn’t until later, on the speeder, that Mando said : ‘Korra, I like that.’ With the wind blowing, you thought you’d imagined it. But then, he started calling you that.

Cobb was friendly, funny, a bit too cocky. A few years back, you would have gone for a man like him. The thought that you could, still, and that he might not be opposed to it was nice but not enticing enough for you to act on it. Still, the two of you fell into a rhythm of harmless banter, and flirting. What could have been fun became a game of pushing and pulling : the Marshal would make you laugh and Mando would just grab your arm, the feeling of his grip now familiar to you, something to ground you, even. You entertained the fantasy, for a moment, that he wanted you the way you wanted him.

And maybe, maybe, you were not wrong.

Here you were, a few days after landing, joking with the Marshal as you felt Mando’s hand grab your arm. Tight, like that time after the fight. That shouldn’t have made you restless but it dit, your knees bouncing with excitement at the idea to take on the Mandalorian himself. So when everybody started to go to bed, he grabbed your arm, again, and led you to the Battlestar. Once you were alone, the kid asleep, he dropped all the Beskar except for the helmet, and whispered, a challenge :

‘Come on, Korra, come at me.’

You did as you were asked, a nice obedient girl even though you were feral. He won, though. Of course he did. Your back was hurting against the floor as one of his hands kept you there, easily. He was looking at you, you felt, above you as one hand tied yours together, and the other on your ribs, right below your heart.

‘Din.’ He said.

Din, you understood, as your mind went back to that fight, that fantasy.

Din, you thought after he let you laying there, chest heaving, while he entered new coordinates.

------

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[theparanormalperiodical]

Top 10 Scariest Horror Films You Didn't Know Were Based On A TRUE Story feat. Trailers + Where To Watch

There’s something about horror films that are based on real events that just make me weak.

So weak, in fact, I’ve decided to spend the last *checks watch* one and a half years of my early 20s delving into the facts and the fiction haunting the horror genre. 

My parents must be so proud.

Most of these films wear the badge of ‘this is reality or close enough to it, anyway’ with dignity, leveraging gullible paranormalists like me to drive ticket sales. The Conjuring (2013) is just one of these films that is explicit in its basis in reality, going on to rake in 16 times its budget and inspiring me to delve deeper into my occultist journey.

(No, really, they’re so proud.)

But the ventures of Ed and Lorraine Warren are not the only experiences of horrifying and haunting events to be reinterpreted via the silver screen. There are some horror films you wouldn’t expect to have reality flushing through their veins.

Some of horror’s biggest hitters aren’t just living in your nightmares. They actually happened IRL.

Which is, ummm, fine, yeah, it’s not like I need to sleep anyway.

*Stay tuned to discover the horror films you didn’t know were based on true stories and the real accounts that inspired them.*

Jaws (1975)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1fu_sA7XhE 

This cinematic classic follows the adventures of a great white shark as it terrorises the summer resort town of Amity. A couple of corpses later, and the local police chief, rookie marine biologist, and wild-card shark hunter track the beast down themselves.

Most horror films use a person or a story as a basis for a film. Jaws, however, is an amalgamation of experiences recorded by the writer of the novel inspiring the film, Peter Benchley.

Benchley admittedly had a life-long obsession with sharks and was inspired to write a book on a rogue great white after reading about a bloke called Frank Mundus.

"...in 1964, I read an item in a newspaper about a fisherman who harpooned a 4,500-pound great white shark off Long Island. I remember thinking at the time, Lord! What would happen if one of those monsters came into a resort community and wouldn't go away?”

Quint, the wild card shark hunter, was based directly on Mundus.

Another influence, although not referenced by Benchley, was the 1916 New Jersey shark attacks.

In high summer, five Americans were attacked by a great white off the coast of the Jersey Shore with 4 falling victim to their wounds. For the next 11 days, the same shark cruised along the 70 miles of the beach towns and small villages. The shark even performed the first shark attack reported in US history, countering the long-standing belief that sharks couldn’t bite through human bone.

(Spoiler alert: they can.)

When beach goers came to the beach early morning to discover the 3rd victim bitten in half, this was disproven. After that discovery - which bares a striking resemblance to the opening scenes of Jaws - the story hit The New York Times front page.

Just like the film the mayors tried to deny there was a deadly shark making the rounds to secure profit to their seaside resorts. And just like the film a swimmer was even mauled in an estuary.

It wasn’t long before they settled on the identity of the perpetrator and the locals set off with rifles and pitchforks.

(Not sure how useful they’d be against a shark, but okay.)

The shark met its end after it attacked one of the hunters’ boats, a scene we also witness in the film.

You can rent it for £2.50 on Amazon Prime.

Deliver Us From Evil (2014)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWDM_p68HAQ

We follow a policeman who has a side gig as an exorcist as he encounters strange goings on in the Bronx. Ralph Sarchie chases up the paranormal activity and attempts to untangle why possessed people are painting ancient messages and images in various places.

Here’s the thing: none of this actually happened. As far as we know, anyway.

What this film is based on is the real Ralph Sarchie who wrote the memoir Beware The Night as an ode to his work as a demonologist. It’s based on his character, his tone of voice, and how he carried out his work.

Sarchie presents his work as his destiny, as some form of divine intervention he believes was signalled by his survival of a severe illness he contracted when he was 10.

He claims to carry a splinter of the ‘true cross’ - I guess the one Jesus actually died on - and considers himself more of a priestly figure armed with relics and holy water than a paranormal investigator.

Sarchie has worked on many possessions and hauntings, claiming he didn’t charge a cent despite the high fee he probably got from the book sales and the film’s debut. The most famous tale is that of the ‘Halloween Horror’:

A woman named Gabby began to see a woman floating in a cloud of white smoke in the corner of her bedroom. It wasn’t long before this smoky woman began to speak through Gabby according to her partner Dominick.

Gabby’s friend then says this was the ghost of a woman murdered on her wedding night. She then apparently saw the spirit of her father. Activity followed with flying books, moans and growls, and the word ‘HELP’ written on the mirror. Eventually an incubus rocks up and is hell bent on attacking various family members.

When Gabby gets possessed in the presence of Sarchie and his paranormal-busting-partner, he exorcises her of the spirit.

In total, Sarchie has assisted in 25 exorcisms and hundreds of ‘house exorcisms’.

You can watch it for free on Netflix.

The Blob (1958/1988)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TdUsyXQ8Wrs

*cue the canned screams*

In some rural town in America, a meteorite crashes to the ground. Someone investigates and a jelly globule attaches itself to their hand before consuming it. It then begins to consume their entire body. It’s not long before it starts to consume, well, everyone and everything in its path.

8 years before the horror icon first became a cult classic, two police officers in Philadelphia saw something float down from the sky. They thought it was a parachute and decided to investigate.

What they discovered was a six feet wide purple glob of odourless gloop. It was filled with crystals and gave off a mist. One of the police officers took the plunge - quite literally - and dipped a hand in. He kept the hand, but noticed the sticky residue left on his hands.

The gloop quickly disappeared and left the grass underneath it unbent. It was allegedly only there for 25 minutes. They were the only ones that saw it. It soon made its way into the press and the FBI asked the Air Force to investigate. They declined.

You can watch it for £3.50 on Amazon Prime.

Wolf Creek (2005)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8S13W69FQhs

Two British tourists are backpacking across Australia when they run into trouble in Wolf Creek National Park. A helpful local offers to help fix their broken down car and provide some shelter. Turns out the helpful local is actually a psychopathic xenophobic murderer. He entraps tourists, lures them to his shelter, and tortures/kills them.

Most gory horror films can be compared to real life murders and other crimes. Unfortunately, even the most imaginative forms of torture or murder has probably already happened. But the film was directly based on the backpacker murders committed by Ivan Milat in the 90s.

Milat murdered 7 people aged 19 to 22, preying on those encouraged to backpack across Australia after several tourism campaigns revealed how cheap and easy it was. In ‘92 and ‘93 the bodies were discovered in Belanglo State Forest with the wounds and injuries suggesting the scenes played out in film were similar to those Milat committed.

In late ‘93 a force dedicated to hunting the unknown killer emerged. It used gym memberships, gun licensing, and police records to narrow down a list of 32 suspects.

It was only when Paul Onions, a British backpacker reported he was nearly murdered near Belanglo State Forest that the police could pinpoint that Milat.

You can watch it for £2 on Amazon Prime.

Open Water (2004)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9q1qJi1nMs

It’s everyone’s worst nightmare: being left in the middle of the ocean. A distant couple decide to take a relaxing break and head out for a scuba-diving vacation. Their holiday is ruined, however, when the guy driving the boat f*cks up the head count and thinks everyone is back on board after a diving sesh. The couple come back to the surface and discover the boat is gone.

Yep, this all happened in real life.

In 1998, Thomas and Eileen Lonergan went on a scuba diving trip to Australia’s Coral Sea. They were mistakenly stranded by the boat crew leading the dive and their absence wasn’t noticed until 2 days later when a bag containing their belongings was discovered.

The crew and other rescue teams searched the area but did not discover their bodies. Personal belongings were found.

A diver’s slate - a device for communicating underwater - was one of these items.

"Monday Jan 26; 1998 08am. To anyone who can help us: We have been abandoned on A[gin]court Reef by MV Outer Edge 25 Jan 1998 3pm. Please help to rescue us before we die. Help!!!"

The other items that washed up, including a wetsuit, suggested they had probably not fallen victim to shark attacks but had become disoriented, dehydrated, or injured by coral. Alternate theories claim it may have been a murder-suicide to avoid the slow, distressing death of being left at sea, or that it was a faked death/disappearance. No bank accounts had been tampered with, however.

Tougher regulations for scuba-diving in Australia shortly followed their disappearance.

You can watch it for free on Amazon Prime.

The Rite (2011)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hG3ktopqv8

We follow exorcist-in-training Father Gary Thomas as he navigates the loss of this faith. When the opportunity for fighting growing demonic possessions arises, Thomas decides to become an exorcist. We see Thomas as he is confronted by evil and reaffirms his devotion to God.

Portrayed by veteran actor Anthony Hopkins, Father Gary Thomas is a real American exorcist - one of the 14 Vatican-verified exorcists working State-side. He did in fact study in the Vatican to become an exorcist, and another student he met there would chronicle his experiences in the book The Rite: The Making of a Modern Exorcist.

Thomas even spent a week on set advising the director, utilising his experiences of the 100 odd people he had seen possessed in his career.

Just like in the film, Thomas echoes that most people that come to him for an exorcism have been abused in their past, linking mental health issues to demonic attachment. Thomas also has a lot of praise for the film, claiming the way those possessed moved in a serpentine way is accurate to those he has seen:

“I was beginning to do some deliverance prayers. Within a few minutes she began to tremor and her facial countenance began to change. You saw a snake. She began sticking her tongue out like a snake and hissing and rolling her eyes. She coiled herself up.”

- Father Gary Thomas on a possessed Venezualan woman

You can watch this on Amazon Prime for £2.50.

The Silence Of The Lambs (1991)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6Mm8Sbe__o

Anthony Hopkins refers to a staple horror film - a film with truth spilling like blood from a bloated corpse…

This psychological horror sees an FBI trainee as they work with an imprisoned serial killer to hunt down a murderer, Buffalo Bill. Add in just a dash of transphobia and we arrive at the film that made my parents actually walk out of the cinema when they first saw it.

First, let’s talk about Hannibal Lecter and his role as an advisor to the FBI: this has actually happened, using a seasoned killer to catch another. The most famous example of this is none other than Ted Bundy, one of the most infamous in history. Bundy told investigators to stake out the graves of victims or the places where bodies had been dumped as necrophiles like himself would return to the site.

Bundy actually helped them catch Gary Ridgeway who killed an estimated 90 people.

Now let’s turn to Buffalo Bill. The characters were never directly inspired by real people but their crimes were. He was an amalgamation of other crimes with Ed Gein serving as the main inspiration. Ed Gein, most known for skinning his victims and wearing the skins, took 9 lives and would also inspire the character Norman Bates.

He would make clothing out of body parts, make soup bowls from dug-up skulls, and build chairs from human bones.

Ted Bundy even made another appearance in Buffalo Bill’s character in terms of how he lures his victims, acting hurt and helpless until the victim was just within reach.

You can buy this film on Amazon Prime for £8.

Scream (1996)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWm_mkbdpCA

This satirical slasher redefined the genre, putting comedy firmly into horror as we know it. It follows Sidney Prescott, a preppy high school student, as she navigates high school drama and a rampant serial killer.

Just like The Silence Of The Lambs, the crimes witnessed in Scream had basis in reality. Daniel Rolling - the Gainesville Ripper - was an American serial killer who murdered 5 students in Florida within the short span of 4 days back in 1990.

Rolling would sexually assault, rape, threaten, and kill his young victims before leaving them in ‘sexual’ positions. He even decapitated one of those murdered and left the head on the shelf opposite the rest of the body amongst other vile acts. He later claimed his motive was to become a ‘superstar’ like Ted Bundy.

Yeah, that’s enough of that.

You can watch this on Amazon Prime for £2.50.

The Hills Have Eyes (1977/2006)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUQd9OB75dw

It’s time to hear about another vacay gone cray-cray. In the middle of a roadtrip to California, a family’s car breaks down in a mysterious area closed off to the public and they encounter a strange community of cannibals.

Instead of being based on modern crimes that hit far too close to home, this film is based on a historic event - or the legend of Sawney Bean.

Bean was a mythical leader of a cannibalistic group of insurgents in the 16th century. He grew up in a community of witches and later began his own community full of his children which he expanded with rampant incest. They would leave traps and eat their prey in a cave.

The King of Scotland, James VI, even led a team to root the family out of their lair. According to legend they were burnt at the stake while others were hung.

This tale also bears similarities to urban legends from Russia: there is a trope in the Southern Urals which claims after the Chernobyl accident irradiated peoples would become savage peoples, echoing the nuclear testing themes shown by the film.

You can watch this on Amazon Prime for £2.50.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1978)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKn9QIaMgtQ

In this cult class gore-fest we see a group of friends visit an old homestead but instead run into a family of murderous cannibals.

Yet again the crimes of Ed Gein make an appearance. The friends walk in on a home full of furniture made of human remains and meet a man - Leatherface - wearing a mask made of human skin. We also witness various people butchered in different brutal ways.

But this film also has a more political inspiration. Tobe Hooper - the director, producer, and writer - pinned his inspiration on changes in the cultural and political landscape, focusing on misinformation that overran America during the 70s.

*looks into camera a la Jim from The Office*

Hooper pinned the claims of a true story onto the film, responding to how he felt he was being lied to by the government regarding things like Watergate, the 1973 Oil Crisis, and the Vietnam War. The news only confirmed the brutal acts of humanity.

"man was the real monster here, just wearing a different face, so I put a literal mask on the monster in my film".

You can watch this for free on Amazon Prime.

Well that was, uhh, fun?

If you enjoyed these traumatic discoveries - you know, that some of the most terrifying horror films of all time are based on real people and crimes - then make sure you like ‘n’ reblog to let me know.

I post a new article on horror and the paranormal every Saturday + a new real ghost story everyday so make sure you hit follow to tag along for the ride!

[pikapeppa]

The Love That Grows From Violence: Epilogue

The final chapter of Felassan and Tamaris Lavellan’s love story is up on AO3 and I’m totally fine and not a mess of dumb feelings. 

~3600 words; read on AO3 instead. 

**************************

Three months later…

Felassan sauntered down the stairs with his cloak fastened around his shoulders and one of Dorian’s unpaired sending crystals around his neck. 

Tamaris was waiting for him in the main room. She was similarly dressed for travelling, and around her neck she wore the other unpaired crystal that Dorian had sent. With the help of Tamaris’s faint but stable magic, Felassan had imbued the crystals with a rather complex spell that would make him and Tamaris difficult to perceive and affect with magic: a crude version of the cloaking spell that Fen’Harel had once used to protect his people. Felassan could only see it as poetic justice that he was using a similar spell now to protect Tamaris and himself from the spies of Fen’Harel. 

He padded toward her with a smile. “Are you sure you won’t miss this house?”

She shrugged and looked around. “Maybe a little, actually. It’s really grown on me.”

He nodded and looked around as well. In the past few months, he and Tamaris had finished stripping and painting all the walls on the main floor of the house. Now, instead of gaudy Orlesian wallpaper, the walls were jewel-toned backdrops covered chaotically in art of his and Tamaris’s making. 

They’d painted a multitude of things: warriors on halla, showers of arrows, mages throwing fire and ice, a panoply of animals and plants and vines, and abstract slashes and streaks of colour that blended together in wild patterns. And in the front foyer, in the place where people first walked though the door, was the very first mural he and Tamaris had done together: a slow arrow dancing through a brilliant forest of flame. 

He shrugged and gestured for her to follow him to the door. “Don’t worry, we’ll be back someday. Probably.”

She snorted. “That’s… reassuring, I guess?” 

“Uncertainty can be reassuring,” he said. “At the very least, you can rest assured that we will never be bored.” Indeed, their travel plans would keep them busy for quite some time. Their first stop would be the forest near Starkhaven to visit Tamaris’s clan, followed by some unstructured wandering in the direction of Kont-aar in the hopes that they would encounter a couple of travellers: a Tevinter mage named Vadis and her elven partner Irian. According to Varric, Vadis and Irian had been heavily involved in an incident out in Rivain, and a Ben-Hassrath contact was sending them to Varric as an apparent sign of goodwill. If Felassan and Tamaris were lucky, they would find the pair and help them get safely to Kirkwall. 

And if they were very lucky – if Felassan’s coded letters had found their way to their marks – perhaps someone else would find Felassan and Tamaris along the way: a certain da’len that Felassan had carefully taught not to be found. 

Tamaris smiled wryly. “That is reassuring, actually. You have been starting to bore me.”

Her eyebrows were quirked with mischief. Felassan pulled a mock-sad face and pressed one hand to his chest. “You wound me, avise.” 

She chuckled, then picked up one of the travelling packs by the door and handed it to him. He nodded his thanks. “Do you have your daggers and knives?” he said.

She nodded and patted the sheath of throwing knives strapped to her thigh. “I’m all set. You have your staff?”

He reached into the inner pocket of his cloak and patted his short length of ironwood — ironwood imbued with a faint melodic hum of Tamaris’s magic and his own. “All ready to test out on some dastardly foes,” he said.

She huffed in amusement. “All right. Here we go.” She opened the door and gestured for him to step outside. “Age before beauty,” she said cheekily. 

He burst out a little laugh. “An age joke? How unoriginal. I’m disappointed.” He playfully tugged a lock of her hair.

She snickered and smacked his hand away. “Fine, fine,” she said. “I’ll go first.” She stepped through the door, and Felassan admired the way the morning sun lit her raven curls with streaks of deep red, as though the sun was finding the fire hidden in the midnight depths of her hair.

Avise alas’nirelan, he thought. She who dances with fire. Then, for the first time ever, Felassan stepped through the front door of the Hightown mansion. 

He looked around surreptitiously as Tamaris locked up the mansion. There were lazy nobles and busy messengers moving around the streets, as well as the odd guardsman doing a patrol. A few of them looked in his direction, but their eyes slid over him as though he wasn’t there. 

Excellent, he thought. The crystals are working. He couldn’t help but feel a little proud that he and Tamaris had actually managed to make a crude but reasonably functional replica of the spell that had eventually become the foundation for the Veil. 

Tamaris sidled up to him and squeezed his hand. “Ready to go?”

He looked at his Dalish lover. Her hood was pulled up to cover her hair and her expression was serious, but her bright green eyes were steady and warm. 

He twined his fingers with hers, then pulled up his hood as well. “I’m ready,” he said. “Let us find ourselves an adventure.”

****************************

They travelled in an eastward direction along the coast until the last vestiges of the sun were gone. Tamaris set up a small tent while Felassan set wards to wake them if anyone approached, and when their campsite was ready, they shared a meal of apples and freshly roasted rabbit. When their meal was done, Felassan fetched a small pouch of dried herbs from his pack, and he and Tamaris settled themselves cross-legged in front of the fire. 

“Okay,” she said. “Okay. I’m ready if you are.” She blew out a breath, then gave Felassan a penetrating look. “Are you ready?”

Felassan smiled faintly. Her brow was creased in a frown, but the sternness of her face only spoke to him of her worry. 

The novelty of having someone worry about him had yet to wear off, even after the months he and Tamaris had spent together. When a person spent twenty-five years in a strange land making his way on his own, having someone who cared about his welfare was… oddly pleasant. And unexpected.

But then again, everything about he and Tamaris finding each other was pleasantly unexpected.

He opened his pouch of herbs. “I’m ready, avise. That is why we’re sitting here, after all.” 

He half-expected her to make a snarky remark, but her expression remained somber. “All right,” she said. “Well, just remember, if he threatens you—”

Felassan cut her off with a chuckle. “I know, Tamaris. I’ll say what you told me to say. I swear it.”

She exhaled once more, then nodded sternly. “All right. I’ll be right here keeping guard.”

He gazed her affectionately. She was awfully cute when she was protective. He reached out and ran his palm soothingly over her lovely unruly curls. “You might want to grab a book from your pack to entertain yourself,” he said. “It’s quite boring to watch a dreamwalker while they’re, you know. Dreamwalking.”

“If I get bored of staring at you, I’ll draw a picture,” she said flatly.

He grinned. There was the snarky remark he’d been waiting for. “An excellent idea,” he said. He kissed her forehead, then turned to face the fire.

The flames were licking eagerly up toward the sky, like playful fingers trying to lure him in. Felassan breathed slowly and deeply until he was centered and calm, then sprinkled a small handful of herbs over the fire.

The fire abruptly changed from orange to a brilliant vibrant green, and the smell of the smoke became something sharp and old. 

Felassan closed his eyes, and for the first time in five years, he dreamed.

When he opened his eyes once more, he was still seated in front of the fire, but he was alone. The peaceful copse of trees where he and Tamaris were camping was imbued with the comforting glowing aura of the Fade, and Felassan sighed in relief as he rose to his feet. 

Behind him, he heard a sound.

Not a sound, really, he corrected himself; it was more a suggestion of a sound, like the feeling you got at the back of your neck when you were in a darkened room, but you just knew someone else was there. 

Felassan smiled to himself, then turned around. “Recruitment’s going well for you, I hear,” he said. “You always did have a penchant for a good rousing speech.”

Solas tilted his head. The look on his face was complex: neutral at first glance, maybe a little censorious. But buried in his blue-grey eyes was that ever-present abelas’alas’en: that world-weary wistful sadness that had become such an ingrained part of Solas’s expression that Felassan could hardly remember what he looked like without that melancholy in his face.

“I could kill you now,” Solas said.

Felassan leaned casually against a nearby tree and folded his arms. “I’ve been wondering why you didn’t kill me in the first place.” He raised an eyebrow. “A miscalculation, I suppose?”

“A mistake,” Solas said. “One of many.”

Felassan laughed. “Still flagellating yourself, I see. Some things really never change.”

Solas didn’t reply. For a long, suspended moment, he and Felassan simply stared at each other, and Felassan couldn’t quite tell if they were sizing each other up like wolves about to pounce, or whether they were simply marvelling at the strangeness of seeing each other again after five long years apart. 

Felassan finally broke the tension. “You can’t kill me,” he said.

Solas lifted his chin slightly. “And why is that?”

“You’ve taken so much from her already,” Felassan said. “Do you really want to take me from her as well?”

Solas went very still, almost as though he was holding his breath. Then he turned away and started to pace in a slow circle. “Emotional blackmail. A cheap strategy.”

“Effective, too,” Felassan replied.

Solas shot him a brief glance. “She would disapprove of you using her feelings for you as a tool for manipulation.”

“Probably,” Felassan said. “Except she told me to use her feelings for me if you threatened me.”

Solas stopped, then cocked his head in a subtle gesture of rebuke. “You lured me here to taunt me, then? Another cheap strategy. How far you have fallen.”

His calm voice was slightly pointed. It was a subtle but clear insult at Felassan’s imperfect magical control, and despite himself, Felassan felt a pang of hurt. The Dread Wolf could be so petty sometimes. 

Felassan smiled as though the dig hadn’t hit him. “Do you never think of it?” he asked.

“Of what?”

“Arla’fen,” Felassan said. “The nights we would spend dancing with spirits and drinking until the whole castle was spinning around us. The days we spent sneaking into the Evanuris’s houses to set our people free.”

Solas’s eyebrows rose very slightly. “Of course I think of it.”

“Do you not miss it?”

For a moment, Solas didn’t reply. Then, to Felassan’s surprise, a hint of a smile lifted the corners of his lips. “I certainly miss that fortified wine of Sylaise’s. I have found nothing of this time that quite compares.”

Felassan smiled as well. “I miss that wine, too. But that is not what I mean.” He tilted his head. “I mean the feeling of knowing without a doubt that what you’re doing is right.”

Solas’s tiny smile faded. He looked away, and they were both silent for a long moment.

This time, it was Solas who broke the silence. “You were there. You know the exact depths of the wreckage that I left in my wake. If that is insufficient to convince you of the necessity of the path I now walk, then there is no point in us speaking any further.”

His tone was distant and neutral. Felassan took a step toward him. “You once told Tamaris that pride is the corrupted face of wisdom.”

Solas went still at the sound of her name, and Felassan took advantage of his stillness to push his point. “Perhaps it’s time you took a different name,” he said. “There was once a time when you were Fen’Harel: you were the Rebel Wolf carving away the power of the very gods that held our people down.” He took another step closer to Solas. “But you’re becoming the Dread Wolf now. You’re becoming what the Dalish fairy tales accuse you of being.” 

“I don’t expect their understanding or their forgiveness,” Solas said in a hard tone. “I know I will be a monster to them. But I expected better from you.”

“I was exactly what you always expected,” Felassan retorted. “I followed my judgment rather than blindly obeying your command. If blind obedience is what you wanted, then you should have kept the kossith after you saved them from Ghilan’nain instead of hiding them away in the north.”

Solas glared at him, and Felassan held his breath. Solas’s expression was a mask of cold fury, a hint of the sort of rage that had powered some of Fen’Harel’s more violent counterattacks against the Evanuris, and that look on his face instinctively raised Felassan’s pulse.

But Felassan held his ground. He steadily met Solas’s gaze despite his thrumming nerves, and eventually, the fury faded from Solas’s face, leaving only his customary melancholy behind.

He sighed and turned away. “Go back to her, Felassan. Make her happy for the time you have left.”

“You don’t think they can stop you,” Felassan said.

Solas turned back to him. “Neither do you,” he said. “Your time is limited, and you know it. We both know that is the real reason you were comfortable risking this meeting.”

Felassan gazed unblinkingly at him. Not very long ago, Solas would have been right. There had once been a time when Felassan believed wholeheartedly in the rightness of Solas’s vision of the world, and that Solas had the power to reshape the world to match that idyllic vision.

Now, Felassan knew differently. He knew more about this modern world, and he knew the people who lived in it: the multitude of short-lived, stubborn, passionate people who fought to build and create their own little cultures on every corner of the continent. He knew that love existed here just as much as it had in their own time, and that Tamaris’s love was just as gloriously sweet as any that existed in ancient Elvhenan. 

Most importantly, Felassan knew that Solas knew it too. And this knowledge — this weakness of Fen’Harel’s — could be exploited.  

Felassan didn’t say any of this, though. Information was power, after all, and information about a person’s most deeply denied feelings could be very powerful indeed.

He shrugged casually and tucked his hands in his pockets. “I have always enjoyed supporting the underdog. There was once a time when you did, too.”

Solas gave him a chiding look. “If you are reducing this down to a simple matter of underdog and overlord, then we truly have nothing further to say.”

“I guess not,” Felassan said lightly. 

Solas nodded once and looked away, but he didn’t move to leave. Another pregnant pause stretched between them, and Felassan waited curiously for Solas to speak. 

When he finally met Felassan’s gaze once more, his blue-grey eyes were more tragic than ever. “Tell her I am sorry,” he said softly.

Felassan ignored the instinctive twist of sympathy that his former friend’s misery triggered in his chest. Instead, he quirked an eyebrow. “You do know the word ‘sorry’ isn’t a panacea, don’t you? It doesn’t reshape reality just because you keep saying it.”

A hint of a smile touched Solas’s lips, but the smile held nothing but sadness. “Blunt,” he remarked. “She is rubbing off on you.”

In more ways than one, Felassan thought. But saying something so provocative would be inviting Solas’s wrath for no good reason. 

Instead, he politely inclined his head. “I’ll take that as a compliment,” he said.

“Please do,” Solas replied. Finally he turned away.

Felassan watched as the hem of his cloak fluttered with his receding steps. Before he could disappear into the hazy depths of the Fade, Felassan called out to him. “Solas.”

Solas turned. His eyebrows were lifted, and Felassan couldn’t blame him; this was the first time in centuries that Felassan had addressed him by his original name.

Felassan smiled faintly. “Let us know if you change your mind, won’t you? Otherwise, we’ll see you on the field of battle.”

Solas’s expression softened with pity. “For your sake, pray that you do not,” he said. He turned away once more, and a moment later, he was gone. 

Felassan released a long, slow breath, then closed his eyes. When he opened them once more, he was sitting cross-legged on the ground. The fire was a warm orange glow, and Tamaris was anxiously staring at his face. 

He smiled at her. “Well, he’s still a stubborn ass. That hasn’t changed.”

Tamaris let out a shaky exhale and covered her mouth. “Fuck,” she breathed. “For fuck’s sake.” She abruptly straddled his lap and hugged him hard, and Felassan laughed in surprise as she nearly knocked him backwards with her sudden embrace. 

He hastily caught himself on one hand and wrapped his other arm around her. “Easy, avise. I’m fine, I swear.”

She nodded and buried her face against his neck. She was trembling slightly, and Felassan slowly stroked her back and savoured the warmth of her body until her trembling stilled. 

She drew away to look at him, and her expression was curious now. “So what happened? Did he say anything useful?”

Felassan watched her face carefully as he replied. “He still loves you.”

Her eyebrows rose slightly. Then she shrugged. “Well, that’s not very useful. Did he say anything else? Any hints about his plans, where he is right now?”

Felassan gazed fondly at her. Her dismissal of Fen’Harel’s love was both endearing and exhilarating: endearing because it meant she didn’t fully understand just how much Fen’Harel’s lingering feelings mattered and how they could be used against him. 

And exhilarating because it meant, without a shadow of doubt, that Tamaris was healed. 

He cradled her neck in his palm. “Come here and kiss me,” he murmured.

A faint smile curled her lips. “What about your conversation with Solas? I don’t want you to forget what he said.”

“The taste of your lips will help jog my memory,” he said.

She chuckled. The sound was a husky purr, and Felassan loved hearing it just as much as the first time she’d ever let out a rare but treasured laugh. 

She poked his chest. “You can’t keep saying that kissing you helps with everything.”

“Why not?” he said. “It’s been an effective excuse so far.”

She scoffed. “Are you trying to provoke me into not kissing you?”

“As if you could resist,” he teased.

She barked out another husky laugh. “You’re so fucking smug. You know what, just for that, I won’t kiss you.” She started to push herself off of his lap, but before she could fully rise, he grabbed her by the waist. 

“Hey!” she protested, but she didn’t resist as Felassan pulled her down. He laid her back on the grass and stretched out over her, and she pushed at his shoulders — a feeble sort of push that made it clear she didn’t really want to get away.  

She haughtily lifted her chin. “I’m still not going to kiss you,” she said. 

He sighed wistfully as he settled himself between her legs. “So cruel. I suppose I’ll have to kiss you instead.” He lowered his face to hers, and when she playfully turned her face away, he kissed her cheek. 

He kissed her cheekbone and her temple, then nibbled her ear until she was laughing. “Fine, fine, I’ll kiss you,” she chuckled. She cupped his face in her hands — one of metal and one of flesh and skin, and both of them perfect. 

She stroked his cheek. “You’re such a pain in the ass,” she scolded. 

Felassan admired her uninhibited smile and the way it reached all the way to her delicately tilted eyes. Then he dipped his head low and brushed his lips to hers. “Thank you, Tamaris,” he murmured. “I try my very hardest.” 

She huffed softly, then tilted her chin up to meet his lips, and Felassan eagerly gave himself over to the velvety plushness of her lips and the smooth silk of her tongue. Her fingers slid into his loosely bound hair to scrape lightly at his scalp, and when he grumbled with pleasure, she pulled him closer and kissed him more hungrily still. 

Under the wide open blanket of the star-sprinkled sky, Felassan and Tamaris kissed and shifted together in a slow undulation of bliss, and Felassan marvelled at the exquisite composition of this moment: the softness of Tamaris’s skin and the strength of her legs wrapping around his waist, the melody of her panting breaths and the embrium that scented her hair — all these pieces, these parts and sensations and feelings that collided to make the perfectly imperfect woman who was arching hedonistically into his arms. 

If Fen’Harel’s plans came to fruition, their time together would be bitterly short. But in moments like this, when he was wrapped in Tamaris’s affectionate embrace with the sweetness of her love filling his mouth, Felassan felt like time was slowing down and spinning out at a languorous pace, like delicate threads of silk that stretched into the distance farther than the eye could see. When Felassan was with Tamaris, he remembered what it felt like to be immortal. 

With Tamaris, he remembered the breathtaking infinity of forever.

[ohshcscenerios]

Beach House

Chapter Twenty Three - Choose Your Own Adventure

Result of previous poll: Kyoya

The hosts returned to the beach house just minutes before the masseuses arrived, only able to slip their shoes off before they heard a knock at the door. Kyoya allowed them inside and guided them towards the backyard where they previously set up a few laid-back loungers as a station. 

The head masseuse counted seven loungers with her finger and rubbed her chin, confused. She whispered for her co-worker to come near and they stepped aside to quietly discuss something. 

Kyoya didn’t appreciate the secrecy and joined them at a respectable distance, “Excuse me ladies but your hour will begin in five minutes. Shouldn’t you prepare your stations?” 

The woman looked to him worried and shook her head, “We apologize, Mr. Ootori, but we received an order for five massages not seven.” She bit her bottom lip, expecting her customer’s sharp tongue. 

However, Kyoya surprised them, even himself, when he leaned back on his right hip and framed his chin in thought. With a hint of jealousy still burning in his chest from Hikaru’s earlier stunt Kyoya wondered if he could spin this unfortunate circumstance for his benefit. There were only five masseuses, leaving him and one other host alone for an hour. 

Perhaps this mistake was very fortunate after all. 

Kyoya nodded and took a step backwards, “I must have been tired when I ordered your services. Carry on, Haruhi and I will step back inside.” 

The women offered their sincere gratitude for his understanding with identical smiles and hurried off to unpack their lotions and oils. Meanwhile Kyoya looked for Haruhi inside. 

He found her just as she stepped off the stairs. She stopped when he blocked her path in the hallway. 

“Haruhi, care to join me in the den?” Kyoya offered, gesturing towards the archway to his left. 

Haruhi arched an eyebrow in confusion, “I thought we were about to get a massage, did you guys change plans?” 

Kyoya shook his head, “They didn’t send enough people so two of us will have to forfeit for now.”

Haruhi looked at the floor and bit her inner cheek, “To be honest I was looking forward to a massage but...” she sighed, “I’ll keep you company then.” 

Kyoya smiled, hearing exactly what he hoped she’d say, and followed her into the den. Their friends were probably beginning their massages by the time they settled on the couch. 

Haruhi picked up the remote and pointed it towards the TV as she asked, “Is there anything you’d like to watch senpai? Or would you rather talk?” 

Kyoya gently slid the remote from her hand and replaced it on the coffee table. “I have another idea. Wait here, I’ll only be gone a moment.” 

He stood up and disappeared behind the wall. Haruhi heard him climbing the stairs and knew he was heading towards his bedroom. After a few minutes he returned as promised with a small bottle in hand. 

He sat down beside her, closer than before, and squeezed a quarter size of lotion into his palm, spreading it along his palms. He gestured for her hand which she hesitantly gave and he began rubbing the warm lotion into her skin. 

Haruhi could only watch in silence as he circled his thumbs over her dorsal, clasped his fingers into her palm, and wrung her small hand through his cupped hands. It felt amazing to feel his slender fingers work into her soft skin. She wondered where he learned to do this but figured his wealthy lifestyle probably included many, many massages for him to pick up a few tricks. 

His hands were so warm and yet so gentle and she easily lost herself in the relaxing sensation he spread through her body. Her muscles began to relax and she could even feel her eyelids beginning to droop. She almost felt like she was falling under his spell as he wordlessly caressed her. 

She became so lost in his touches she didn’t catch the involuntary moan that escaped past her lips. Immediately her cheeks turned a crimson shade as she tried to jerk her hand back but Kyoya held firm. 

His thumbs moved toward her wrist as he spoke quietly, “You were looking forward to a massage. It’s only fair I provide you this little service.” He smirked with pride when she eyes grew wide but relaxed her hand in his grip. 

His circling thumbs began to travel up her arm until he rubbed down from her elbow. Haruhi once again slipped beneath his spell and wouldn’t dare move an inch, afraid to end this amazing experience. She had armature massages provided by her father but they were only a few squeezes on her shoulder followed by a pat on the back. This however was nothing like a few squeezes. Kyoya was almost manipulating her body and mind, luring her to sleep when she so desperately wanted to stay awake. She wondered how something so amazing could also feel so conflicting. 

Haruhi was so lost in her foreign sensations she didn’t notice when his hands traveled towards her shoulder. He pulled her attention when he spoke. 

“Turn around for me Haruhi.” He gently ordered. 

Without hesitation she re-situated herself on the couch so her back was turned towards him. She could wonder why she was so obedient later but for right now she wanted more - wanted to feel more. 

Kyoya begab kneading his fingers into her shoulder, coaxing a grumbled moan from her throat, and smiled when she didn’t react in embarrassment. His impromptu plan was unfolding beautifully but he wouldn’t promise himself the prize prematurely. At least... not yet. 

He leaned in close as he applied more pressure between her shoulder blades and worked his nimble fingers along her spine and across her midsection. Her body was practically jelly beneath his touches and he felt his own composure slipping as well. To have Haruhi so unwound - so vulnerable - it made him crave her. He wanted to feel her, taste her... love her. 

Kyoya leaned forward again and brushed the tip of his nose along her neck and was pleasantly surprised when she lopped her head to the side, exposing more of her skin. She was almost behaving drunk and it made him second guess his actions. 

But alcohol wasn’t clouding her mind, no, he was. That realization made him dive forward and press his lips beneath her jaw. 

“Kyoya...” she gasped, not moving away. 

“Shh...” Kyoya whispered against her skin and kissed along her neck towards her shoulder. She tasted better than he imagined. The familiar tang of skin and sweat was present but something sweet laced his lips, a familiar scent like cherry blossoms. He figured it to be her body wash. 

He wanted more. He needed more. 

Carefully he introduced his tongue to her skin, barely tipping it against her neck. When he heard her sigh he became more bold and softly scooped his tongue in the crook of her neck. 

Haruhi felt him kissing her - licking her - and yet his hands never paused working into her back. She couldn’t remember if she was dreaming or awake but her world seemed to be in a haze, fogged by rising hormones and growing emotions. His hands felt so good on her back but his lips... 

His lips felt better. 

She needed to wake up. She needed to - 

“Am I interrupting something?” An angry voice sneered from the hallway. 

Kyoya and Haruhi jerked at the sound and looked to see Kaoru leaning against the archway with his arms folded across his chest and sending them a dangerous frown. 

Kaoru looked between the pair. Kyoya returned his angry expression while Haruhi looked at him surprised with half-lidded eyes. She almost looked like she had just woken up. 

“You are.” Kyoya snarled, pausing his hands but resting them on Haruhi’s shoulders. 

Kaoru deepened his frown, “Well excuse me but I-”

“You’re excused.” Kyoya interrupted, daring him to rebut with a sharp glare that could kill. 

Kaoru scoffed, “I wonder how the others would react to learning about this little development,” and and turned away towards the stairs before Kyoya could argue, leaving them alone once again. 

Haruhi shrugged his hands away and stood from the couch, unable to hide her damning blush. There were few times she could die from embarrassment and right not was added to her short list. 

“I should begin preparing dinner but thank you for the... uh... massage.” She stammered. 

It hurt Kyoya that she was too embarrassed to look at him but he understood. He was more angry than embarrassed but he still felt it and couldn’t blame her for suddenly becoming so fidgety. He nodded and watched her leave towards the kitchen. 

When she was gone he slumped into the couch and ran a heavy greasy hand over his face and groaned his disappointment. 

Haruhi slipped into the kitchen and pressed her back against the wall as she collected herself. Her mind was buzzing with conflicting thoughts, her chest churned under a cocktail of emotions, and her left arm still felt like jello. She had to calm herself and think rationally. She needed to gather herself and rely on logic, the one thing she did best. 

While she prepared her work station on the counter she heard her bubbling friends re-enter the house, musing about their wonderful massage. She could smell the scented lotions from where she stood; wonderful lavender and lilac aromas wafted her way and graced her nose. Somehow that little act was enough to calm her nerves and she din’t question it, only thankful she wasn’t so fidgety anymore.

“You’re going to start dinner already?” Hikaru asked as he, Mistukuni, and Takashi entered the kitchen. 

Haruhi nodded as she opened the refrigerator. However, looking inside she realized there weren’t many ingredients available, only a half carton of milk and few cakes for Mitsukuni. 

She sighed, “We can always buy food to cook.”

Mitsukuni ran to her and stopped before her with a hop, “Or we could eat out! What would you like to do, Haru-chan?” 

Should to hosts eat in or eat out? (Click to Vote)

*manically rubs hands together* I hope you enjoyed this very spicy chapter. Things are beginning to heat up! What will happen next? You decide!

This is the last day of their vacation which means tonight we will learn who wins over Haruhi! Stay tuned, our story is slowly coming to its closure. 

Next update should be around 02:00pm (ETS) let’s be honest though it’ll be late. Poll will end 30 minutes prior. 

[mordoriscalling]

48 Weeks (2/4)

(Part 1)

Throughout the 48 weeks that Geralt and Jaskier spend apart, their relationship develops.

Aka, part 3 of the Singer and the Sailor AU no one asked for but I wrote anyway. The events of this story happen after Stay or Sail Away but before Homecoming. Warnigns: some sexual content ahead!

Weeks 13-24

Week 13

He waits for Jaskier’s call impatiently, praying in his mind that this is not the time they’ve got the timezones wrong. He doesn’t even have five minutes to spare right now.

Finally, after the eternity of two more minutes, there’s an incoming call from Jaskier. He picks up and immediately says, “A storm’s going to hit us soon.”

He hears Jaskier’s shaky sigh.

“Okay,” Jaskier’s replies, his voice tight, “please stay safe.”

Geralt nods. Nothing wrong happens to the crew on his watch. He made that mistake only once.

Week 14

“Another storm’s coming.”

“What? What the hell, are we some kind of star-crossed lovers –”

“Jaskier. I have to go.”

“Right.” The glint of fear turn’s Jaskier’s eyes into a colour almost as pale as ice. “Send me a text when it’s over.”

It’s one of the worst storms Geralt’s even been through but there’s no way in hell he’ll let the sea take him or anyone he’s responsible for. They all have people to return to. The thought of his family gets him through it. Jaskier’s among them too.

Week 15

“You write those songs fast.”

“What can I say?” Jaskier answers with a disarming grin, “You’re my muse.”

Geralt snorts at the ridiculous notion but he can’t fight a small smile tugging at his lips.

He listens to the recording the moment Jaskier hangs up. The song is about longing, Jaskier’s longing. His voice is high-pitched, raw and vulnerable, and Geralt finds he can’t breathe.

Week 16

When he tries to thank for the song, the “thank you” refuses to go through his throat. “Siren,” he says instead, “I miss you too.”

Jaskier smiles, a tiny, soft thing. His blue, blue eyes sparkle and somehow, Geralt feels seen.

Week 17

“Have I told you about that time me and Rozalia tried to teach chickens how to fly?”

“You what.”

Jaskier laughs. “Yeah. When we were little, we often spent the summer holidays with our grandma back in Poland. She kept chickens and well... I remember when I was maybe eight years old, me and Rozalia noticed that Amelia, who was little then, loved to watch how the chickens try to fly up in the air.”

“So, Roza suggested that we try to teach them how to fly, and I came up with the idea of creating a... chicken launcher.”

“A chicken launcher?” Geralt repeats.

“Yes,” Jaskier answers with a chuckle, “it was a really crude thing that me and Roza built out of some random planks and bricks we found in the shed. But it worked! It launched the chickens some six feet in the air. Amelia was delighted.”

“What the fuck, Jaskier.”

“I know, okay? We didn’t hurt the chickens, I swear! Though none of them wanted to be placed on the launcher for the second time, wonder why.”

Geralt laughs and laughs, and laughs, the sound coming deep from his chest and loosening the tension in his body. He keeps cackling hysterically – because fucking chicken launcher – and comes to realise that he doesn’t mind Jaskier’s ridiculousness at all.

Week 18

Geralt quickly picks up on the fact that something’s off about Jaskier, no matter how much Jaskier tries to hide it.

“Why are you sad?” he asks.

For a moment, Jaskier says nothing, but then replies, “Valdo called me yesterday.”

Geralt frowns, surprised. “Valdo Marx?”

Jaskier didn’t fail to mention how much of a “backstabbing motherfucker and talentless swine” Valdo Marx is.

“Yeah,” Jaskier confirms with a wry smile. “I know he’d call, we’re in the same city coincidentally.” He sighs heavily. “I knew he’d be drunk. He usually calls when he’s drunk.”

Geralt stays quiet and Jaskier goes on.

“When he calls me, he just... reopens this fucking wound, saying all those things. How he loves me still, how he’s never stopped loving me, how we should meet and try again... but then he’ll start petty drama on social media to gain publicity and call my music shit because that news sells, and I–” A sharp exhale. “I wish it was simple. I wish I could only hate him but... Well. The problem is, we were something else together.” Jaskier laughs bitterly. “And yet, fame tore us apart.”

There’s a pause. Geralt doesn’t speak again, trying to process all of he’s heard. Eventually, Jaskier breaks the silence again.

“And now I’m touring, and he’s touring too, and everyone thinks we’re rivals, and it’s just getting so old. I have better things to do.”

Geralt doesn’t know what to say to that, so he only says what he knows from experience. “In the long run, it’s harder to hold on than to let go.”

“That’s –” Jaskier starts, then cuts himself off. He stares at Geralt through the screen with wide eyes. “That’s... true.”

Week 19

“Two songs?”

“I have no idea how I do that either. At this point, I’m convinced that I just can’t die. Sleep deprivation should’ve killed me long ago but here I am, alive and kicking.”

“Jaskier,” Geralt growls. His worry comes off as anger but most of his emotions do. Jaskier doesn’t seem deterred. Geralt has a suspicion that he literally has no self-preservation instinct. Still, he tries to stare Jaskier into compliance. “Go to sleep.”

Jaskier obliges after some theatrical complaining.

When Geralt plays the recordings after going to bed, he’s surprised how different the songs are. The first one is an enticing call for sharing an adventure, luring him towards thoughts of what’s beyond the empty vastness of blue, towards what’s unknown to him. It’s all Jaskier, whereas the other song is not like Jaskier at all. It has none of Jaskier’s usual energy; it’s just a call for help, a cry of deep sadness that Geralt knows very well. He hates that Jaskier knows it too.

Week 20

Geralt listens to Jaskier strumming his guitar idly and no words come to him even though he knows he should say something. He sees that Jaskier needs it but his throat refuses to work. The wolf signet is a heavy weight in his pocket and he almost curses the day he let himself have this.

He was aware from the start that he shouldn��t have. After so many years at sea, he’s almost grown an allergic reaction to getting attached like this; he knows it hurts like bloody hell. He had no idea that he’d be called for this deployment back then though, and Jaskier was there, irrationally familiar and safe. His eyes sparkled in the light of the room during that birthday party, his elegant hand was warm underneath his own, and Geralt gave in. He regretted it mere minutes later and he almost regrets it now.

This would’ve been so much easier without Jaskier. Loneliness is what he knows and waiting for Jaskier isn’t easy like that, especially not when he isn’t doing enough to have Jaskier stay.

He tries to think of Ciri’s laugh to cheer himself up but in the end, it makes his chest ache even more.  

Week 21

When Jaskier’s face shows up on the screen, his eyes and grin almost scream mischief.

“Hello, dear,” he purrs, “What a sight for sore eyes you are.”

Geralt knows that tone very well. His body responds to it with a thrill of anticipation before he can form a single thought. Then, Jaskier stretches his arms, “accidentally” lowering the camera of his phone to show his naked, hairy chest, and any thoughts fly out of Geralt’s mind.

“No shirt on?” he asks, his mouth dry.

“I don’t have anything on,” Jaskier answers in that raspy voice which drives Geralt mad.

“Show me.”

“With pleasure, darling.”

Week 22

“The audience was wonderful today,” Jaskier says dreamily.

Geralt rolls his eyes. “You always say that.”

He’s been saying that very often ever since he’s started touring in North America two months ago.

“That’s because you got to say that,” Jaskier replies, “I have to make my audience feel special. I mean it this time, though. There was magic in the air.”

Suddenly, a heavy feeling settles in Geralt’s gut and he can’t help wondering if Jaskier truly means the words he says.  

Week 23

In the past week, the sea has been moody, there have been several small but bothersome damages to the ship, and Ciri’s caught a nasty cold. Generally, nothing’s going like it’s supposed to, and Geralt is tired. He sees that Jaskier’s noticed.  

They’re quiet, only looking at each other through the screen. The silence between them seems impassable but then it’s broken by Jaskier’s quiet question.

“Why is your hair white?”

“I won’t tell you,” Geralt snaps, because the very idea of talking about it sets his teeth on edge. Jaskier flinches at his harsh reaction. Geralt tries to amend it by adding, “Not yet.”

It’s a promise which he isn’t sure he can keep but Jaskier accepts it with a slow nod.

“Will you tell me how come you joined the Navy, then?” Jaskier asks quietly. “In detail, please. When I asked before, you only said that you didn’t have anything better to do.”

“That’s how it happened.”

“Geralt.”

“Fine.”

And so, Geralt tells him. He was twenty-three and still hadn’t dealt with having been abandoned by his mother and dumped by Yennefer, who he thought to be the love of his life at the time. He hated it so much that he decided it was his turn to abandon, and he quit everything.

Their adoptive father never suggested for them to follow in his footsteps but at the time, the Navy seemed a career good as any. Geralt and his brothers, not related to him by blood but still his brothers even before Vesemir took them in, truly didn’t have any plans too. Nothing kept them on land.

Now as he looks at Jaskier listening to him carefully, he thinks it’s funny how things have changed.

Week 24

“We’re halfway through.”

Jaskier sounds tired and Geralt heaves a sigh. The room is light but it suddenly appears very dark. He’s almost forgotten home and missing his family has got less painful but there’re still days when it chokes him, like today.

“You don’t have to do this,” he tells Jaskier.

“What do you mean?”

“It’s fine if you’ve changed your mind.”

Geralt hears Jaskier release a shaky breath.

“Have you changed your mind?”

“No,” Geralt replies, looking at Jaskier finally, hoping to be seen, “I want this.”

Jaskier smiles softly. “Good,” he says, his voice warm, “because I want this too.”

Geralt wants to call him an idiot but it would sound far too fond.

The day ends with another storm.

Part 3

***

A/N:  The story about the "chicken launcher" is what me and my younger brother did one day when we were kids. I think it's definitely something the horror sister Rozalia and the wild brother Julian would do to amuse their nasty angel baby sister Amelia.

[duhragonball]

[FIC] Luffa: The Legendary Super Saiyan (134/?)

Disclaimer: This story features characters and concepts based on Dragon Ball, which is a trademark of Bird Studio/Shueisha and Toei Animation.   This is an unauthorized work, and no profit is being made on this work by me. This story is copyright of me. Download if you like, but please don’t archive it without my permission. Don’t be shy.

Continuity Note: About 1000 years before the events of Dragon Ball Z.

[14 November, 233 Before Age. Interstellar Space.]

King Rehval would die, very soon. As Luffa led her fleet of warships to his new home, there were a multitude other thoughts running through her mind, but she made sure to focus on her sole objective. Rehval. Must. Die.

Her grudge against him went back to the beginning. Her mother was an anti-monarchist who left the Saiyan Kingdom before Luffa was born. Eventually, Luffa's mother entered into a mercenary partnership with Orij, Luffa's father, and the young family roamed the stars in search of adventure. When Luffa was ten years old, Orij betrayed her mother. He was jealous of his wife's power, and planned to exploit her, until he realized that their daughter had inherited the same potential.

Orij's plan went into effect when Luffa was nineteen. By then, Luffa had taken a mate of her own, Kandai, and Orij conspired with him to betray Luffa to the alien Tikosi. Their ghastly experiments would seek to reverse-engineer the secrets of Luffa's hidden power, and then they would share their findings with Orij. When the Tikosi learned Luffa was pregnant with Kandai's child, they simply removed the fetus, as it impeded their research.

The horrors Luffa experienced during that awful nineteenth year pushed her body through a harrowing transformation. Eventually, Luffa would recognize herself as the Legendary Super Saiyan, a once-in-a-millennium warrior. At the time, she thought she had become a monster, too horrible for even herself to contemplate. The power was satisfying while she took bloody revenge against her tormentors, but it never really went away. Even when she transformed back into her "normal" self, it was still there, that ever-present thing lurking just beneath her skin, eager to shine its terrible light on the universe once again.

Super Luffa was great for slaughtering Tikosi, and for making easy money in the mercenary business, but the power wasn't very helpful for tracking down her treacherous husband, who had gone into hiding when he learned that she had survived. One of the main reasons Luffa founded the interstellar Federation was to expand her contacts through the galaxy. The Federation's member worlds were happy to have her on their side; in return, their spies gave Kandai fewer places to hide. But when she finally caught up to him, he revealed that when the Tikosi removed their unborn child from her body, they had given it over to him. He had sold the remains to King Rehval, who apparently had his own interests in the Tikosi's research.

And Super Luffa wasn't much use in unraveling that mystery either. It only made sense that the King of the Saiyans would see her as a threat to his rule. It also made sense that he might hope to find some weakness by studying Luffa's offspring. What Luffa hadn't expected was the sheer depth of Rehval's treachery. She had never respected the man. Any Saiyan who called himself "king" was a fool in her book, but even setting that aside, he was a statesman, desperate to turn their people into some nation-state with a place among the galactic powers. He wanted the Saiyans to assimilate with the rest of the universe: lop off their tails, dress in alien finery, and pass themselves off as well-behaved citizens of a wider community. The thought of it sickened Luffa, but it was even worse than that. Rehval was an alchemist too. Instead of testing his might in combat, he relied on magical drugs and secret potions to enhance his power. "Rehval" wasn't even his real name. He simply assumed the identity of his older brother, then usurped his father's throne when it suited his purposes.

Rather than face Luffa directly, Rehval tried to seduce and deceive her, leading her into a trap that would strand her on an uninhabitable planet. To keep her occupied until the trap was sprung, Rehval revealed that the fetus he had purchased from Kandai had survived. Rehval was a proponent of gestating Saiyan infants in life support machines, and somehow he had managed to bring her son to term. He then aged the boy to adolescence, and trained him to be his staunchest defender and Luffa's sworn enemy. But the gravest insult, in Luffa's eyes, was that he dared to give the boy a name-- "Xibuyas". It was sacrilige. By Saiyan custom, the right to name a child belonged to the mother alone.

But what did King Rehval care for Saiyan custom? To him, it was just another tool, to be manipulated or discarded when it no longer served his purposes. Xibuyas was uncommonly strong, though Luffa had no way to tell if he had inherited her Super Saiyan strength, or if he was given alchemical enhancements to make him a better enforcer. Rehval wasn't satisfied with merely ruling over the Saiyans, he wanted to control their destiny, their culture, even their very genome. He envisioned a world where Saiyans would be bred like livestock, mated to produce hardier offspring, and her son was simply the stud he had chosen to sire his grandchildren. The very thought of it made her blood boil.

She had escaped his trap, and so he evacuated his throneworld of Saiya, fearing (rightfully) that she would return and destroy everything he had built. Luffa expected to find him cowering in some remote hideaway, but instead he launched a new plan, the Jindan Cult. Assuming the name of Trismegistus now, Rehval recruited Saiyans from all over the galaxy, promising them a potion that would magnify their powers. All he asked in return was absolute control over every aspect of their lives. Really, it wasn't all that different from the plans he had as the ruler of Planet Saiya, only now he wasn't bothering with diplomatic niceties or expensive suits.

The only thing standing in his way was still Luffa, so he launched a series of invasions into her Federation, designed to exploit her compassion for its people and to wear her down. It might have worked, too, except she had help from the fortuneteller Dotz, who predicted his strikes before they took place, and from Rehval's own daughter, the Princess Seltiss. Disillusioned with her father's misrule, the young Princess formed her own Saiyan alliance to serve as an alternative to Rehval's government. Luffa didn't trust her, but they had a common enemy, and Xibuyas was loyal to Seltiss, so at least they had the power they needed to fend off the attacks.

Just when it seemed that there would be no end to the war, Guwar arrived at her doorstep, offering to lead her to Rehval's new base on Nagaoka. A Saiyan mathematician, Guwar had joined his cult, only to realize that Rehval's "leadership" would only get them all killed, or at best, reduce them to a slave species. His defection only proved that Rehval was truly mad, and that his plans were rotten enough that even his own henchmen couldn't accept them.

And so, very soon, Luffa would destroy him, utterly and finally, for the defense of the Federation, for the freedom of her own species, and for herself.

"Five minutes before we drop out of superluminous," she said from the captain's chair of her yacht's bridge. "No one's reported any unusual sensor activity. What about you, Katem?"

"Nothing," Xibuyas said, visibly irritated by the name she used to address him. Luffa would have preferred to have him aboard her own ship, if only to keep a closer eye on the boy, but the Saiyan Free Company had its own fleet, and her attack plan would require him to take up position on the opposite side of the planet. Spending time with her son would have to wait for another day. For now, she would have to settle for the image of his face on the viewscreen.

"Rehval raised you, boy," she said. "Any idea what this means? Guwar told us there wouldn't be much in the way of advance defenses, but I thought we'd see more than this."

"Rehval's servants raised me," he said with a sneer. "And he expects secrecy to be his greatest defense. He believes that no one knows where to find him, so he probably has no idea that we're on our way to kill him."

"Or he's got some escape route set up on the planet," Luffa said. "All right, we'll stick to the original plan. Group A takes the northern hemisphere, Group B takes the south, Group C covers our backs. Carpet bomb the whole thing, and we'll see what they can do about it."

"Pointless," Xibuyas grumbled. "Destroy the entire planet, and they all die in one stroke. I could do it easily, and so could you."

"Too easy," Luffa said. "He'll be prepared for that. I want to see what his preparations are. Let him think he's dealing with a conventional attack before we reveal our true strength."

"If you're so afraid that he'll flee--"

"He seems to be convinced that this planet he's on holds some sort of special power for him," Luffa explained. "If that's true, then he won't give it up without a fight. I want to lure him into thinking he has a chance. We might even be able to get a siege going."

He sighed and sank into his chair. "Fine, have it your way," he said. "There's no arguing with you. We'll send word once Group B is in position."

He signed off, and Luffa made a bloodthirsty smile as she switched the viewscreen to display the Nagaoka system, which was rapidly coming into view. Her son hated her, but he was alive, and soon she would repay the bastard who tried to take him from her. Her wife, Zatte, was in the engine room, making last-minute preparations for the battle. Zatte had elaborate dreams that this battle would mark the beginning of a new era for Saiyan-kind, and maybe she was right, though Luffa never cared for the idea of herself as a Saiyan messiah. It didn't matter. For once in her life, everything was going perfectly.

She gripped the armrests of her seat and leaned forward in anticipation.

*******

[14 November, 233 Before Age. Nagaoka.]

Planet Nagaoka was devoid of intelligent life, save for the Jindan compound, a mostly subterranean facility. Aside from the shipyard and a few other surrounding structures, the planet would have seemed deserted. A thick cloud cover concealed the surface completely, but Guwar had provided the coordinates of the compound. As Zatte escorted him to the bridge, he saw part of the planet on the viewscreen, and he knew the compound lay directly below.

"I thought you'd want to see this," Luffa said as the doorway closed behind him. She never took her eyes off the planet. "They're about to strafe the surface."

"You're just going to blow it up from orbit?" he asked.

"For starters," Luffa said. "If anything survives, we'll go from there. Something wrong with that?"

"I just... I thought you were going to send in ground troops on the far side," he said. "Advance on the compound from the surface, and fight them all hand-to-hand."

Luffa looked at him curiously. "I've had my fill of fighting with these clowns," she said. "There's enough of them down there that even I would have trouble, and I'm not going to send troops down there to die for no reason. If you wanted suicide missions, maybe you shouldn't have switched sides. Rehval would have sent you to your death soon enough."

"I... I had friends down there," he said. "Rehval's the only one you're after, right?"

Luffa turned and spit on the deck. At last, Guwar had her full attention, and he instantly regretted it. He had seen her transform in front of him earlier, when he was first brought aboard her ship. That had been frightening enough, watching black Saiyan hair glowing like molten iron. But she was in her normal form now, or at least as normal as she ever could be, and as she glared at him, he felt that the grim look in her eyes would haunt him for the rest of his life.

"Now you listen to me," she said. "I don't give a damn about your 'friends'. The moment they joined forces with that bastard, their fates were sealed. Don't pretend you thought this was going to turn out any other way."

Guwar's throat went dry. "You're right," he said. "Just get it over with."

Luffa returned to her work, as if he hadn't spoken at all. He looked over to Zatte, the blue-skinned woman who seemed to serve as Luffa's entire crew for this ship. It was ironic to look to an alien for empathy, but he had hoped that she, at least, might appreciate his mixed emotions about this moment. If nothing else, he expected her to be somewhat horrified at the idea of bombing an entire planet to wipe out a single installation. But instead, Zatte had a curious sort of glow in her expression, not unlike the warriors in the Jindan Cult just before they were sent off to their deaths. Guwar had no idea what sort of hold Luffa had on Zatte, but she was fully committed to this action, come what may.

Luffa pressed a button on the console mounted near her left arm. "All ships, fire at will," she said.

A moment later, they did. Gawar watched as hundreds of orange streaks emerged from the edges of the viewscreen and converged on the planet below. It looked like most of the fire was concentrated in a single spot, which he assumed was the compound. But that was only part of it. There energy blasts raining down across every part of the planet that he could see. He could only guess that there were ships positioned on the opposite side covering that hemisphere too.

"There's... there's only the one complex," he said looking back at Luffa. "You're just wasting ammunition, shooting at nothing."

"And you really think I would trust you that far?" Luffa said with a snort. "Even if you have been honest with me, Rehval could still have other bases set up that he never told you about. It all burns. Today. And don't worry your pretty little head about our ammunition, Guwar. I made sure we brought plenty."

Guwar swallowed hard and turned back to face the viewscreen. He could sense the ki energy from the planet dropping as the bombardment continued. Were the cultists unable to fight back? Had Luffa taken them completely by surprise? Or was this Rehval's endgame all along? Maybe he knew all along that it would end this way, and he had led his flock to their doom. For a moment, he wondered if Rehval had been waiting for Guwar to betray him, if perhaps he had wanted Luffa to come to this place and rain fire upon him.

And then he noticed that the ki from the planet wasn't dropping anymore, and that the planet itself didn't look any different than it had before the attack began. Glancing back at the captain's chair, he saw that Luffa had noticed too.

"Scan the planet," Luffa said to Zatte. "Something's wrong down there."

"Life sign readings haven't changed since we started attacking," Zatte said.

"I told you about that," Guwar said. "They have a device to scramble sensors so you can't tell there's any humanoid biopatterns. That way if a ship drops by, they'll think Nagaoka's uninhabited and move on."

"Yeah, I know," Zatte said. "I'm not scanning for humanoids. I'm talking about trees, grass, everything. Nothing's dying down there. It's like we haven't put a dent in it..."

"You didn't say anything about a force field," Luffa said to Guwar. The look on her face was one of accusation, but not surprise.

"As far as I know, they didn't have one," Guwar protested.

"They don't have one," Zatte said. "I don't know what's going on here, but it can't be a force field generator. To cover the entire planet, you'd need an enormous power source, way too big to hide with a cloaking device. I should be able to detect a power signature for something that big, and there's nothing like that on the surface! I don't know what this is... I...!"

She continued tapping keys on the tactical console, and Luffa rose from her seat. "I'm going to the cargo bay," she said. "Get ready to open the bay door for me."

"You're going to attack them yourself?" Zatte asked. "But what if--?"

"Hail the rest of the fleet," Luffa said. "If I'm right, I can punch a hole in... whatever this is... then maybe we can land some ships, play it the way Guwar had in mind. You'd like that, wouldn't you, Guwar?"

He didn't answer, as he really didn't know what to say. Luffa grabbed him by the arm and dragged him to the lift.

"Come on," she said, "you can watch."

*******

The cargo hold was mostly empty. Luffa and Zatte had moved most of the supplies to other parts of the ship, leaving only a small, one-person craft.

"Like it?" Luffa asked. She patted the hull of the craft with her gloved hand as they crossed the bay. "My wife captured it from some felinoid raider who tried to impersonate a Saiyan. He thought he could bluff his way to an easy plunder--" She pointed at the bridge of her nose and bared her teeth-- "but all he got was a plasma bolt between his eyes. She's a crack shot."

"Y-your wife?" Guwar asked. "You mean that blue lady on the bridge--?"

"Felinoid!" Luffa growled, ignoring his question. The brown fur on her tail was standing on end, and Guwar suddenly became very aware of his own tail being missing.

"I see that crap all the time, you know? People mistake any humanoid with a tail for one of us," she said. "So weaklings and cowards try to use that to their advantage. Trade on our reputation as a fearsome warrior race. Except we're not so fearsome, are we, Guwar?"

She went to a cabinet mounted to the wall and removed a pair of masks. "Put this on," she said as she shoved one into his hands. He strapped it to his face, letting the flexible hose attached to it dangle from his chin.

"The Saiyans are afraid," she said. "My mother was afraid of the kings, and my father was afraid of my mother, and I was afraid of my father for a while. You and your cult buddies were afraid of me, so what did you do? Run to the biggest coward you could find and beg him for some snake oil. And now he's hiding under his rock, and they're all hiding with him. Makes you wonder what they're so afraid of."

She pulled out a gas cylinder and handed it to him, then found a second and started connecting it to her own mask. As she worked on the fittings, she transformed, suddenly illuminating the bay with a preternatural golden glow. Startled, Guwar took a step back, but Luffa barely reacted at all, as if she hadn't even noticed what she had done.

"I think we're afraid of ourselves," Luffa said. "I know I am. I turned into this thing for the first time and it scared the hell out of me. It still does sometimes. But all I am is stronger. Angrier. More eager for battle. I'm just like you Guwar, only more. Why'd you cut your tail off? Was it because he told you to? So you could fit in better with polite society? Or was it because you were afraid of what the tail means? Of who you really are. Inside?"

She paused her work long enough to tap her fist against her chest, and gave him a knowing look. "Felinoids try to impersonate us Saiyans, and meanwhile we Saiyans are doing our best to disguise ourselves as anything else. We're ashamed of ourselves for being ashamed of ourselves. That's how I see it. I started hanging out with aliens, and I started to notice how crummy Saiyans can really be to people. I never gave it much thought before, but we're all pretty rotten, aren't we?"

"What are you talking about?" Guwar mumbled, but not loud enough to be heard over the steady pulse of Luffa's golden aura.

She pointed at her gleaming yellow hair. "So does this mean I've risen above all that rotten stuff?" she asked. "Or does it make me the worst of us all?"

She didn't wait for him to reply. Instead, she put the mask over her face and tapped the communicator on the nearest wall panel to call the bridge. "We're ready down here," she said, her voice muffled by the mask. After she shut off the channel, she looked back at Guwar and shrugged.

"I can't talk to my wife about this sort of thing, you know. She thinks I can save the Saiyans, but me? I think I'm just part of the problem."

Guwar could hear her voice even more clearly now than he could before they put the masks on. Then he finally realized she was speaking to him telepathically. Most Saiyans had the ability to communicate this way, but they rarely used it. They couldn't read minds-- only Luffa seemed to know how to do that, and only then by making physical contact-- but they could talk to other people with their thoughts. So why didn't Saiyans use that ability more often? Was it fear? Was Luffa right about them? Maybe every Saiyan could read minds like she could, and no one else had the courage to try.

As he pondered this, the cargo bay door opened, revealing the grey clouds of Nagaoka below. Guwar was suddenly reminded of Salziff, the Saiyan who had led him to the Jindan Cult. Salziff had been kicked out of the order, and his Jindan power had been withdrawn, leaving him weaker than he had been before he joined. In his desperate attempt to regain what he had lost, Salziff had turned to performance enhancing drugs, and ravaged what was left of his health. He begged Guwar not to search for Jindan, and said that Guwar would rue the day Salziff told him how to find it. The gloom over Nagaoka looked very much like the pallid complexion of Salziff's face. Guwar wondered if the poor wretch was still alive. Guwar wondered about his own life expectancy, now that the Jindan power had been withdrawn from him as well.

There was an invisible force field that kept the air inside the bay while the door was open. It flickered beautifully for a moment as it deactivated, and Guwar felt the air rushing out into space. Weakened as he was, he still had more than enough strength to keep his footing, but he still grabbed hold of a handrail to be safe. The temperature dropped rapidly inside the bay, but his ki was strong enough to protect him from the cold as well. The great irony of his life was that he was considered a weakling by the standards of his own species, and yet he had so much power compared to most beings in the universe. He felt completely helpless as he watched Luffa stand at the edge of the bay, raising her hands to attack an entire planet.

He could hear her screaming, in spite of the wind, the sound of her aura, even the muffling effect of her mask. Her hands glowed so brightly that it hurt to look at them, so he focused on the air tank she had slung over her shoulder. For a brief moment, he wondered if he could burst the tank and knock her out of the ship quickly enough for her to asphyxiate, but decided that this would be suicidal to attempt. Even if it worked, he would still have to contend with her wife on the bridge, and her fleet around the planet, and the cult on the planet itself. Guwar didn't know about other Saiyans, but Luffa was right about him. He was afraid, because it seemed like no matter what he did, what side he chose, he would always be under someone else's power. At least Luffa's side could save the universe from Rehval's madness, but that wouldn't improve Guwar's prospects much.

At last, she brought her hands together and launched a spectacular beam of golden energy from her hands. Guwar watched it shoot down to the planet like some impossibly straight bolt of lightning. He had never sensed such an amazing power before. It was beyond anything he had ever imagined. It was enough to destroy a dozen planets. And then, when the beam of irresistable light reached the dismal clouds of Nagaoka...

...it dispersed. The energy spread across the clouds and vanished, like so much milk spilling onto a napkin. The clouds parted, revealing a tiny section of Nagaoka's surface, but there was no explosion, no damage. Soon enough, the clouds drifted back together, and the surface was hidden once again.

Luffa stared out of the bay in disbelief, and then after a few seconds, Guwar noticed a yellow glow on the edge of Nagaoka's disk. A second later, he could sense it, too.

"What... what's happening?" he asked. He hoped that this was somehow part of her technique, but the way she moved her tail told him that she was just as confused as he was.

Finally, beams of yellow light started shooting out from the clouds from every direction. It seemed to Guwar that the planet had somehow absorbed her attack, divided it, and fired it back out into space. For a moment, he worried that this was a counterattack from the cult, except the beams didn't seem to be aimed anywhere in particular. He reached out with his ki senses and quickly determined that most of the fleet was nowhere near the paths of these beams. Even so, he did sense a few power levels that winked out of existence as the deadly energy connected with their ships.

Angrily, Luffa stormed to the bay door controls and restored the force field. Air rushed in to repressurize the hold, and she moved on to the wall panel to call the bridge. "What's going on?" she shouted over the thrum of the ventilation system.

"Six ships are reporting heavy damage!" Zatte's voice called back. "One completely destroyed! I... Luffa, that was your energy it shot back at us!"

"I know that!" Luffa snapped. "How does a force field reflect that kind of power?!"

"I told you, it's not a force field!" Zatte said. "It's too big for that, and too... It's more like when I... oh no. Oh, Providence, no."

"What's wrong?" Luffa asked. For every second that passed without a reply, she grew more agitated. Finally, she dug her fingers into the wall and ripped the comm panel out entirely.

"We're going back to the bridge!" she shouted as she tossed the torn panel to the deck. But Guwar didn't move. He was too busy looking at the planet.

"Well? What are you gawking at?" Luffa demanded as she shrugged off her air canister and mask.

"I think you need to see this," Guwar said ominously. A mathematician by trade, he preferred not to give such vague answers, but in this case, he simply couldn't find the words.

"See what?!" Luffa said impatiently as she shrugged off her mask and air cylinder. And then she finally turned to face the bay door, and saw it immediately. The clouds on Nagaoka had shifted, swirling into an unnatural pattern. They were still moving, but it was clear that they were forming an image of a face, and even before that image had come into focus, there was no mistaking whose face it was.

"Hello, Luffa," said the voice of King Rehval.

He was speaking into their minds, just as Luffa had done before. What made it even stranger, Guwar thought, was that the lips on the cloud-image moved as though it were speaking the words.

"I'm so glad that you've finally arrived," the cloud-Rehval seemed to say. "Now, at last, we can put all of this to an end."

NEXT: The Thrice Blessed Who Will Transform the Universe.

[thelazyeye]

Author Appreciation Day!!

Fanfiction is a truly wonderful experience. I am so lucky to not only be involved in writing, but to get the explicit experience of being able to read what authors share with the world. Every story comes from somewhere inside of an author. Even when they’re silly or fun or seemingly ridiculous, an author has taken the time to write it from inside of themselves. We should ALWAYS appreciate them. Today is just something special to really be loud about it. These are some of my all time favorite fics and authors. Please, read and enjoy. 

(I’m not going to hunt down people’s tumblrs if they’re not listed in the fics so if you know who’s blog wrote any of these and they’re not tagged, please feel free to let me know and I will 100% kindly tag them!)

In The Wrong Place, Trying To Make It Right by pininawig (this is the very first Reddie fic I ever read. It got me into the fandom. I have a deep appreciation for it and I reread it all the time. Please go love this story).

"Richie wasn’t sure how the fuck he’d managed to forget Eddie Kaspbrak. Like, now that he’s got Eddie’s hand in his (his remaining hand, Richie’s traitorous mind reminds him cruelly, and he avoids looking at the hospital gown lying flat against the bed where an arm should be) he remembers everything." Or, 27 years later, Eddie makes it out of the sewers alive.

Tear It With Your Teeth by Belby 

"We could leave this place, Eddie," Richie says. "God, imagine that? Not having to live in this trash dump anymore. We could go wherever we wanted. A different place every night."

Give The Past A Slip by brodayhey

On his way to a live show for his popular podcast, Richie stumbles into a person from his past. He remembers.

Remember (It Kills Me To See You Without Me) by Kandakicksass

Richie Tozier falls in love with Eddie Kaspbrak, forgets him, and finds him again, over the course of twenty-seven years.

The Purge by leighwrites / @aizeninlefox​

In 2014, following an economic collapse and rising social unrest, a political organisation named NFFA (New Founding Fathers of America) formed and overthrew the Government, becoming voted into office. In 2016 the NFFA devised a plan to help stabilise the American society and then in 2017 the 28th Amendment was added. The amendment established a twelve hour event called the purge which would start at seven in the evening of March 21st to seven in the morning of March 22nd where all crime was made legal and emergency services were unreachable.

Stay For The Storm by inoubliable / @hanscom​

Richie and Eddie had become friends almost on sight. Since they met, most of Eddie's time in Los Angeles has involved Richie in some way. It's a little different, now that they're both famous. It's a little different, now that they're sleeping together. Well, to be fair, they've been sleeping together for a long time, but. No one knows, not even their friends. Eddie has been very careful about that. It's just not the sort of publicity he needs. So when Beverly calls him that sunny Thursday morning, the last thing he expects her to say is, "You're fucking Richie?"

5555 by weepies / @finnwolfhard​ 

“I am not harmless,” Eddie had said, his eyes thundering—a challenge. “I could ruin your life.”

“I dare you,” Richie had replied, a smug smile on his face.

This is where I leave you (sitting in a palace, covered in gold inside my head) by Enj0ltaiRe

Going blind wasn’t something that Richie had ever even took into consideration. He had joked about it, thinking that having to wear glasses was close enough to being blind, complaining about the fact that there were people that could see for free, while he had to pay for contacts and specs, but he had never actually thought about the possibility of losing his eyesight.

Blackbird by michelllejones 

“Ho-ly fuck,” Richie whispers, and Eddie has never been so fucking scared. Not when he saw the leper, not when he confronted his mother about his pills, not when they fought It in the sewers. Never. Eddie screws his eyes shut and clutches at the material of his jeans. Please be too high to notice, please be too high to notice, please be too high to notice “Eddie?”

Scene Stealer by mseg_21 / @jem-carstairs-is-perfection

“Oh god, oh god, oh god.” Eddie muttered under his breath, staring wide eyed as the man sat up. “You’re a serial killer, aren’t you? You- you lured me in, with the blood and the- the screams and now you’re going to kill me-” The man just kept on laughing, convincing Eddie more and more that he was a psychopath and that Eddie’s good heart was about to get him murdered. “I’m not going to kill you.” The man said, still laughing. “Hurt me? Kidnap me?” Eddie asked. The man shook his head in response to Eddie’s questions. “No?” The man chuckled. “Definitely not. Why would I want to hurt the cute nurse that came to my rescue?”

Richie and Eddie Were Here by andthewasp

Eddie Kaspbrak is leaving for college tomorrow. He's leaving his best friend, Richie, and the park where they grew up, behind; but he has things to do first. Eddie and Richie embark on one final adventure in an attempt to pick up the pieces they've left strewn throughout their little hometown before they part ways, and end up finding even more.

Grow Through The Dirt by tinyarmedtrex / @tinyarmedtrex​

Mike owns a small flower shop next to a tattoo parlor. He's never been interested in tattoos, but he may be interested in one of the owners, Stan.

I Will Make You Hurt by theonlytraveler / @tozierking​

Eddie has struggled with school the past couple years, and his last year of high school is already off to a bad start. His mom hires him a tutor from the nearby University and things seem like they might start looking up. But when Eddie's tutor takes an interest in him, everything starts to fall apart, and Eddie is forced into a situation he never even imagined.

A Memory Of Love by stellarbisexual / @stellarbisexual​

Richie and Eddie, who haven't seen each other since they were kids, get cast as the lead couple in an indie film.

Into The Dark by nb_richie (shipit)

Richie and Stan have seen and dealt with a lot of cases in the years they’ve been working together, from cults to cartels. A case in Derry, Maine, proves to be one of the most horrific for them and for the two local officers they’ll be working with. And on top of it all, Richie keeps remembering things he’d rather forget.

Hit Me Baby One More Time by richttps @richardtoz​

As a child, Eddie always dreamt of becoming a doctor but things don’t always go as planned - especially when you’re still sleeping with a stuffed animal. At twenty-four, he still deals with his fair share of people passing out and crying underneath a needle, but not medically. Instead, he spent his years in college exploring the world of art and went on to work as a tattoo artist in his own shop. In a way, the two are very similar, at least that’s what he tells himself when a newly legal teenager tells him that they’re so grateful that he’d tattooed the word ‘bitch’ on the inside of their lip. His last appointment for the night is especially different.

A Playlist For The End Of The World by gyngersnap / @redactedrichie​

It's been a year since the zombie outbreak started, and Eddie and Richie are all that's left of the Loser's club. Eddie's not sure if he can handle it anymore, but Richie's convinced almost anything can be fixed with a little music, an abandoned mall, and a whole lot of terrible dance moves.

Scorpion Grasses by PimpedOutGreenEars

“Tell everyone… Tell everyone I’ll miss them. And Eds, tell him… Just promise to call him Eds for me every once in a while. So he won’t forget me.”

On his last night in Derry Richie shares a bottle of red wine with Beverly. He makes promises to send letters he knows he won't remember to write, cries a lot, and then ends it with the boy he loves who's just dumb enough to love him back.

Love Your Body Right by richietoaster / @richietoaster​

Eddie's arm is broken and he enlists the help of his best friend to get off. Richie has a better idea.

A Long Way Back To The Light by slytherincosette / @tozierhargreeves​

For Eddie, senior year is supposed to be an under-the-radar kind of year. He's been avoiding all of his friends for months and his mental health has been steadily declining. Why rock the boat and make everything worse? His plans consist of getting into the local community college (easy) and avoiding Richie, the worst sort-of-ex-boyfriend ever (considerably harder.) Then Bill drags him to a stupid party, and Eddie's plans are thrown through a loop. Suddenly, "under-the-radar" seems like a cop-out. Eddie decides, once and for all, to stop settling for decent, for alright, for enough. Eddie's going to take his life back if it fucking kills him.

Baby, I’m Counting On You by PuddingTown / @tozierpunks​

Alternately titled: My babysitter's a rockstar. When Richie Tozier breezes back into his hometown of Derry, Maine, he’s expecting to see familiar faces. Of course, he’s not expecting to see an old flame chasing around a baby. With a million questions, nowhere to go, and a help wanted ad for a nannying job, he finds himself at the doorstep of Eddie Kaspbrak.

My Eyes Only by chucknovak / @wonderwheelzier​

Eddie accidentally finds Richie's nudes because Richie doesn't understand Snapchat.

Meet Me In The Graveyard by Oldguybones / @oldguybones​

After almost five years apart, the Losers club reunites to spend the weekend together at Mike’s lakeside cabin. Armed with booze and total solitude, the gang plans to make up for lost time and catch up with those who were once the most important people of their youths. Tensions fly as lost love is rekindled and friendships are divided. But they soon begin to realize that they are not alone. Someone or something is out for blood and will not rest until they get it. What will the Losers do?

Richie The Ruiner by RanjantheVictor

It takes Richie Tozier a while to realize, but eventually he does. Richie ruins everything, no matter how much he tries not to.

This is BY FAR not a comprehensive list, nor are they ranked in order. I love a lot of pieces and a lot of authors and if I were to combine them all into one post you’d never see your dash board again. This is, however, some of my all time favorites. Some of these fics hold very special places in my heart. Some of these fics shaped me into the writer I am today. Some of these fics are the reason I am here and writing. I love them dearly. I love these authors. Go love them, please. Lord knows they ALL deserve it. 

[rheyninwrites]

The Photographer’s Assistant Part 2

(I apologize for the length. Right now I’m mobile only and cuts won’t work properly.)

Standing cautiously beside your horse, you huffed out an exasperated breath, blowing a few strands of hair out of your face. Despite the incident with the coyotes, as well as a few interesting run-ins with some pronghorn and deer, Albert was being a complete idiot again. Oh, and there’d been that near miss with the bison, too. This time, he’d tied a giant bag of meat up in a tree, in order to lure out some wolves nearby. You’d told him more than once that it was the dumbest idea since the coyote thing, but all he could do was tell you that this time all of his supplies were safely tucked away in the saddlebags, and that this time there wouldn’t be any trouble- as long as the wind stayed down. So there you were, beside your horse, watching your sweet but apparently insane cousin try to get eaten, and hoping for some kind of divine intervention to keep you both safe.

Something out there must have heard you, because as you watched Albert mumbling to himself, a figure you thought you recognized appeared on the horizon. Your heart skipped a beat. You’d hoped that you’d get to see him again, but knew that, realistically, it was improbable. Yet here he was again, approaching on horseback, sun shining behind him, like a figure from a fairy tale. You smiled broadly as he dismounted, watching him approach your oblivious cousin Albert.

“Hello again!”

“Oh!” Albert jumped away from his camera. “Hello again . . . Mr . . . .”

“Morgan.” You finished for him, walking towards them. You looked to Arthur and extended your hand, which he shook warmly, covering it with his other hand as he did. “It’s very nice to see you again.”

“Likewise.”

“Morgan! Yes, Mr Morgan. How are you sir?” Without waiting for a reply, Albert continued. “My nerves. Oh, I’m afraid I’m not quite the outdoor adventurer that I thought. God’s own country, and I feel as if I’m in purgatory.”

While they chatted, you couldn’t help but notice Arthur’s eyes continued to return to you, drinking you in. He probably thought he was being subtle, facing Albert, flicking his eyes towards you again and again, but the way his eyes lingered, tracing you from top to bottom, was anything but. You let out a soft chuckle and saw him smile in response, proving how closely he was watching you. Suddenly a word of Albert’s caught his ear, pulling his attention back.

“Wolves! You really are trying to get yourself eaten.”

“Well, I hope not. I left the meat over there.” Albert gestured vaguely in the direction of the tree where it was tied. “I thought we’d be safe. Given the wind.”

“Yeah, sure. If you manage to attract the world’s least intelligent wolf.” Arthur looked over to where you were standing, watching you mouth ‘help him’ as you rolled your eyes, and stifled a laugh. “I’ll stay with you a while. If anything comes, I’ll, uh, protect you as needed.” He looked to where you stood, giving you a wink, then kneeled beside Albert.

“You are a gentleman.” Albert’s shoulders relaxed instantly as Arthur settled in beside him.

“You don’t know me very well.”

You sidled over beside him, laying a hand on his shoulder. “Nonsense, Mr Morgan. Only a true gentleman would be so willing to protect a man who seemed as set on getting himself eaten as cousin Albert here!”

Arthur laughed, while Albert offhandedly replied, “Oh, ha ha. You are a riot, dear cousin. Perhaps I should have left you with my aunt, to be married off to some stinking, boorish nitwit twice your age?”

“Albert!” You hissed.

Arthur looked back at you, concern in his eyes, while Albert continued talking, questioning Arthur about his experience in the outdoors. Though he answered every question, his eyes kept returning to you, mouth twisting as if he wanted to say something, but wasn’t quite sure how, or if it was okay. Every time you caught sight of his eyes, staring you down, you felt your stomach somersault. A part of you, deep inside, wanted to drag him off to the nearest quiet location, sit at his feet, and get him to tell you everything about himself, no secret left untold. The more realistic part thought that it would just be really nice to be able to spend some time with him without worrying about being eaten.

About that time, Arthur’s body stiffened, hushing you both. “Looks like we got company,” he whispered, nodding towards where the meat hung.

Your eyes followed, noticing first one, then another, until finally three wolves approached the tree. Albert shifted quietly behind his camera, coaxing the wolves out in a soft voice as he began snapping photos. Soon a total of five wolves had gathered beneath the tree. Arthur slowly and silently drew his pistol, readying it, as you moved behind him. With his free arm, he reached back to push you further behind him, elbow pressing against the side of your thigh, while his hand slid down the back of your calf. As the first wolf howled, you found yourself nervously gripping his shoulder. He shifted again, making sure to keep his eyes on the wolves and his body between yours and theirs.

The flash of Albert’s camera popped again and again, each time drawing the attention of another wolf. Though Albert seemed oblivious, your palms were sweating. One wolf broke off from the group, moving around the three of you to the left, while another moved to the right. Arthur was obviously nervous himself now, finger twitching on the trigger as his eyes glanced quickly from wolf to wolf.

The first wolf, the one right in front of the camera, shifted to stare at Albert, a low growl rising in its throat. It stalked towards him, eyes locked, while the two at the sides began pacing greedily back and forth. They began to snarl, while the first had edged forward, separated from the three of you by mere feet now, barking a harsh warning. You were being circled, surrounded.

It suddenly occurred to you that two of the five wolves were nowhere to be seen. While you shifted your head, frantically searching for them, the two from the sides joined the first in front of you, each of them focused on one of you, snarling as the readied themselves to pounce. Arthur wasted no time in firing a shot to the one in the center, the closest, hitting it right between the eyes and dropping it immediately. Then a rustling to the left caught your attention just as one of the final two wolves leapt out.

Arthur pushed you roughly behind him as he turned, firing two quick shots into its side, wounding but not killing it. While he was distracted by that, the fifth wolf jumped from the right, briefly latching onto his still outstretched arm before he downed it with a shot to the chest. He spun around to where the other three stood, firing a shot at each of them.

“They ain’t so very friendly, are they?” He yelled to Albert as he shot down another, the final two surging towards him. One latched onto his pistol arm momentarily, shaking it but not quite making him lose his grip. He kicked it off, a fine spray of blood covering them both as he put in the final shot to its skull.

Only one left, determined, vaulting at him and nearly knocking him over as it bit into his arm hard enough for him to cry out. You saw the dripping of red as he twisted away, firing three rapid shots to its chest. His face was a mask of anger and determination as he watched it fall, then softened as he turned to where you stood over Albert.

“Is that all of ‘em?” You nodded, breathing nearly as heavily as he was, though you hadn’t done nearly the work. He crossed the distance between you quickly before taking your hands and looking you over for injuries. “I think we might’ve kept the wolves from the door.”

Albert panted, grasping at his chest. “My whole futile existence flashed before my eyes! What a way to go . . . literally a dog’s dinner . . . .” He wandered off, mumbling to himself.

“They were just minding their own business before you hung that meat up there! Honestly, Albert, you have got to think a bit more! You could have gotten us all killed!” You screamed, your body still flushed with adrenaline. Arthur grabbed ahold of your shoulder to get your attention, shaking his head as he did.

“He ain’t gone listen.”

“I know. But, still . . . .”

“You hurt anywhere?”

You shook your head. “Thanks to you. I’m sorry you had to get involved in this.”

“If I hadn’t you might both be dead right now.”

You had to admit, he was right. Suddenly, you remembered the way he’d been attacked, and your eyes flew wide. You grabbed his arms, making him wince a bit.

“Oh, I haven’t been hurt, but you . . . they grabbed you!”

He tried to push you away, drawing his hands back. “Ain’t nothing, really. I can handle it.”

“Nonsense. You saved our lives, the least I can do is take care of the injuries you got doing so!”

You pulled him gently over to a nearby rock, pressing on his shoulders to make him sit down. Once he had, you tugged as carefully as you could on the jacket he was wearing, pulling it off and rolling up his shirtsleeves. You took one of his large, calloused hands into yours, carefully turning his arm to get a decent look at the wounds, then did the same to the other. They didn’t look too bad, thanks to the jacket he was wearing, but they needed cleaning and bandaging.

“Stay here,” you spoke firmly, giving him no choice but to obey. He watched, a soft smile playing at the corners of his mouth, while you gathered a canteen, bandages, and a small bottle of whiskey from your horse. When you returned, you gestured for him to lift his hands back up, and he did as you asked.

While you worked a dampened cloth carefully around his arms, his eyes took in your face. It was the first time he’d really had a chance to see you this closely, and he was even more certain than he had been before that you were the most attractive person he’d ever seen. He swallowed hard as he felt the softness of your hands moving against his skin, touching him so tenderly. He couldn’t remember the last time anyone had touched him with this sort of kindness. He cleared his throat, trying to think of something, anything to say, when you looked up at him.

You’d been about to ask him if you were hurting him, but the question dissolved in your mouth when you noticed how close your face was to his. Eye to eye, your noses were nearly touching, and you could feel each of his soft breaths tickling your lips. Unable to look away from those eyes, you bit your lip, and saw his eyes glance down at your mouth, his breath hitching slightly. Without being fully conscious of it, one of your fingers began tracing along the lines of his palm, while you gently chewed on your bottom lip. His eyes closed while he enjoyed the feel of your hand against his.

“Do you want some whiskey? For the pain?” You breathed out the words quietly, afraid of scaring away this tender moment. He nodded, and you passed the bottle to him, taking a quick sip for yourself first. When he’d taken two large gulps, he passed the bottle back and you sat it down carefully pouring a bit on a fresh cloth to disinfect his wounds. “This may sting a bit.”

He flinched as you pressed the alcohol laden cloth against the broken skin on his arm, though you could tell he was trying to hide it. In response, you stroked carefully along the inside of his forearm, making soft shushing sounds. When both arms had been properly disinfected, you carefully wound bandages where he needed them, going out of your way to brush your skin against his. The way he seemed so needy, so hungry just to be touched woke something inside of you. Maybe a part of you felt the same way, even if you tried to deny it. Maybe it was just him you craved.

As you finished bandaging him, you found your eyes drawn to his lips. Plump, soft, you couldn’t help but wonder what they would feel like pressing against you, anywhere. Everywhere. How would he kiss you? Would he be rough, hard and hungry, like a starving animal? Or would he be tender, kisses falling like petals against your skin, tickling you and leaving you forever wanting more? Would his hands tangle in your hair as you breathed in against his skin, tasting the salt of his sweat in your mouth? Finally, you couldn’t make any more excuses to continue touching him, and you trailed your fingers down his arm before standing and moving away. He stood up, looking at you shyly for a minute before the two of you walked to his horse.

“I just wanted to thank you again, Mr Morgan-“

“Call me Arthur. Please.”

You inhaled, forcing yourself to look into his eyes, despite your shyness. “Arthur, then. Thank you again. For helping us. For saving our lives. If you hadn’t been here . . . .”

“I know.” He reached up and touched the side of your face. “I’m glad I was here too.”

He smiled softly at you before mounting his horse. Just as he was about to ride away, you put your hand on his knee.

“You know, next week we’re going to be staying out near Emerald Ranch. In case you happen to be out that way.”

“You know,” he said, a mischievous smile on his lips, “I think I just might.”

[zurichtooslo]

Day 47, 6th Oct, Berlin

Clear blue skies and sunny today but very cold which I don’t mind if the suns out. Right outside my hotel near the U Bahn was a book box.

I caught the train to Bernauer Strabe. I wanted to go to a flea market, seeing it was Sunday, and Berlin has a lot but decided on this area as it also has a lot of Berlin Wall history. I have been here before but it’s five years so good to revisit the area. Next to the station you can see on the wall the famous photo of an East German soldier jumping through the barbed wire in the early days of the wall to escape. Police were waiting with a car to whisk him away to safety.

As soon as you coming out of the station there are posters about the Wall as this street seemed to be where a lot of people died and events happened more than other areas. The reason being is the wall went through people’s homes basically and at first people were fleeing out their front doors, then when they were blocked out their windows and even jumping out their windows.

The Wall cut neighbourhoods in half and even families. Before the wall got so high people would stand on ladders so see their friends and families on the other side.

Each death remembered has a sad story behind it. This lady, Olga, was a 80 year old woman. Her daughter had got out of the home but not her mother. The people below convinced her to jump. The fire bridge had catching sheets for people who jumped. Olga jumped but hurt herself and died the next day in hospital. Memorials were built at the time for those who died but now she is remembered by this stone on the footpath.

Just along on this street was a huge flea market.

Me in my element.

Lots and lots of boxes of stuff.

A few years ago it would have been a goldmine but now I’ve moved on from china. There was so much pink and white English china there. I would have been in seventh heaven.

I only ended up spending €3.50.

Back along the street to where all the Berlin Wall information was. I liked this art. I interpret it as the knife, or wall, cutting through the heart of people during 1961 to 1989. It could be something completely different.

Part of the original wall and where some is missing rusted poles are placed. The green grass was where the death strip was located as by the end there were two walls with a strip with guardhouses all the way along.

These are some of the people who lost their lives trying to escape from the East.

This area is a considerable section of wall.

An original guard house within the two walls.

I caught a tram back to Alexander Platz where some Octoberfest activities were going on.

Typical German biscuits.

Colourful stalls.

Lots of German food.

A bit later on I was joining an ‘Alternative’ free walking tour starting at the base of the communication tower.

Our first example of street art is done by a group and they put this all over the city. It’s 1UP. It’s from a Mario game. Berlin has a lot of graffiti which I’m not into but it was interesting getting the back story. I do like street art, though.

This is one of El Bocho’s work. El Bocho is a Berlin-based street artist using graphic posters to tell stories throughout the city, and across the world. One of his most recognisable series features the twisted character, Little Lucy, who became famous on the streets of Berlin as the imaginary little girl intent on killing her cat. In this one Little Lucy has a mouse to lure the cat and ‘gift’ in German is poison.

These paper cuts outs were interesting. Berlin has a huge techno dance music scene with a lot of clubs where people go. No one is allowed to take photos inside and it’s policed very thoroughly. However, this artist took some photos of just random people and put them up on walls. It could be anyone and in these clubs anything goes.

This was our guide who was very knowledgeable and full of information. These cards were done by a French artist and this type of art takes a long time and is fairly unique. It’s in the vain of Banksy. It is Angela Merkle as the Queen of Hearts.

We turned off the street where there were some ‘stumbling stones’. This used to be a Jewish area. This family all died in Auschwitz.

Immediately as you turned into the courtyard it was a great space. I like that rustic look. Now there are bars and cafes in where people used to live.

This man used to have a workshop here during WWII. He was able to hide some Jews with the help of a friend who was a prostitute and knew people in the underworld who could get more ration cards to feed those who were hiding. Another museum to visit next time,

Looking back out to the street. Along the wall is street art that changes frequently. There is someone who oks what is to be on the walls.

Another quaint area.

I like this whole courtyard and nooks and crannies. Not sure who the painting is of.

There was a museum about Anne Franks and other Jewish stories. That will have to wait for another time. The portrait of her was good.

Also in the courtyards were a couple of other Little Lucy. This one she has made a swing out of the cat.

Little Lucy has a gun here for the cat. All a bit warped but interesting to find as you are walking the streets.

Next we caught the S bahn to Kottbusser which now is quite close to the centre of Berlin but in the 70′s it was fairly empty and on the outskirts. At that time Germany was in need of workers so they put the word out to countries and the biggest number of men came from Turkey. They settled in this area. They were only supposed to come for a year or two earn some good money then go back to Turkey. That didn’t happen and they stayed and bought their families over. Now this area has Turkish shops, bank, travel agent and mosque. However, the area is going through a gentrification process which is changing the area again. Germans are a country of renters and there are strict rules about rents etc so it’s difficult to force people to move. With shops it’s easier as rents can be put up.

This area has always been fairly politically active and to the Left so different changes have been fought over and stopped.

The Cosmonaut Mural was painted in 2007 by Victor Ash and is considered to be the largest stencil drawing in the world. Like much of Ash’s work the Cosmonaut explores contrasts between the subject matter and the environment that it inhabits. The unexpected sight of an unmissable, massive, weightless astronaut immediately leaves a lasting impression on pedestrians. Ash was born in Portugal in 1968 and raised in France. He currently lives and works in Copenhagen, Denmark.

The red and blue symbols are done by another group in Berlin more recently who abseil down buildings to do their paintings. They film themselves and put it on utube.

This used to be a hospital but when built the Emperor at the time was very much into liking church architecture. Now it’s a cultural centre.

This green strip,now park area, was once the ‘‘death Strip’ in the middle of the Berlin Wall. All over the city you can see where the wall was built.

We walked back to the river. All the way along you can see new buildings been built. Unlike Germany Berlin is not a wealthy city as it doesn’t have industry like the west of Germany does. As one gay Mayor said ’we might be poor but Berlin is sexy’. The city has a slightly alternative feel to it but like everywhere more money is coming in and new buildings built changing the scene. Below the construction is an area called YAMM which was built on a disused area. It’s full of bars and has an African lean. There are other places like this further along the river and in other disused train sheds etc but eventually development will push them out.

The tour finished at this point. A fabulous wander through the streets of Berlin.

I called in to have a look at YAMM. It was a pretty friendly place

The music was good and you could get up and dance if you wanted to. I declined but was happy to watch.

It had been a long day and getting very cold so that was pretty much me done. Ready for more adventures tomorrow.

[stone-man-warrior]

December 11, 2020: 4:24 pm:

https://www.google.com/search?q=all+fours+push+over&tbm=isch&ved=2ahUKEwi82JS7lsftAhXEgZ4KHTSjBBsQ2-cCegQIABAA&oq=all+fours+push+over&gs_lcp=CgNpbWcQAzIECCMQJ1CKKliZMWDDNGgAcAB4AIABf4gBsAWSAQMwLjaYAQCgAQGqAQtnd3Mtd2l6LWltZ8ABAQ&sclient=img&ei=Qw3UX_yqJsSD-gS0xpLYAQ&bih=671&biw=1472&client=firefox-b-1-d

The “All Fours Push-Over Prank” brought to you by Salvation Army at Bell Ring Store Front near you.

Same photo angle, different photos.

That’s Stevie Bell Terror cell at 445 Jackpine getting ready to do an attack at my house. They need to do all kinds of drama in advance to make the scenario work in their favor. The way it is now, and has been, in some pf the lies that are told, Stevie Bell is said to be my son, and that we don‘t get along very well, and he lives across the street right there. That lie has been perpetuated for about eight years, I have no control over it, the county courts are in charge of that lie, and use that as a way to lure US Federal Officers, so that the local authority terror cells can kill the federal officers. That is done so that national Sheriff Association can make recommendation for replacement terror associated officers later on, after the wake is over at the federal building.

What you see there is a 24 foot U-Haul Moving Truck in the driveway, and the Lindsey Bell black nissan w/shiny trim is there that I explain about sometimes, and that other black truck is a USPS Goonz Squad terror operative, maybe from Portland Oregon, is associated with United States Postal Service terror cell called “The Stork”.

They have done the exact same scenario countless times, enough that I know it’s bullshit, and the black truck is a USPS assassin who is here to kill me, and cart away my belongings in the U-Haul, while Stevie Bell plays the innocent grieving son who wishes he had spent more time with his dad, who died of COVID, because that black truck from USPS Goonze Squad, is COVID, an assassin.

That link to the Google search is a distant relative of what is happening at Bell’s across the street. A terror attack at the Walmart, also happening now.

I just returned from shopping in Socio-Terrific Dystopia, Grants Pass. where conditions are 100% terror controlled for slaughter, is ongoing, Dystopian terror in a place that looks almost perfect.

I don‘t understand who the victims are though. All of the citizens were already killed and replaced long ago, so, unless there are some out of town groups of people who were drawn here to Josephine County, then, there is no one left to do the attack on.

They are not going to attack their own families who visit for holidays, unless the German side, and the British sides are clashing. That, is a possibility.

The “All Fours Push Over Prank” is a basis for some of the attack.

Example: A small child wants to prank a bigger sibling, gets down on the floor behind that person, and either that person falls over backwards on their own tripping, or, is pushed, and falls over backwards while tripping over the small child who is on all fours on the ground, ready to prank.

The Salvation Army is at the Walmart. Dressed in official looking uniform, looks very “US navy Officers Uniform”. They have their bucket, bell, some signs, a friendly and hearty “Hellooo! and Merry Christmas!” as you enter and exit the Walmart.

The whole fucking world is on lock down, Corona Virus everywhere. We are told that so many people around the world are dropping dead that no one is allowed to go anywhere, do anything, can’t go to work unless your job is listed as one that is absolutely necessary.... but these assholes can come and do their British Charade while dressed in US navy Chinese Knock-Off Officer Uniforms.

It’s a Pirate Tug Boat.

They Tug at your heart strings because all you can think about is Ebenezer Scrooge and how Tiny Tim was treated on a MOVIE!

I am certain that there are some crutches nearby the front of the Walmart somewhere, if not crutches, then some other thing that looks like crutches is nearby, and is in the backs of trucks in the parking, planted for your Tiny Tim thoughts at the Walmart Christmas Adventure.

It was “Nightmare Before Elm Street” at the Walmart today.

The Elmer’s Restaurant across the street, desolate, no body there, only two cars in the parking, one was a SUV says “ELMERS” in big graphics on the side. The other car was a Red SUV. “Blood Sports” at the Walmart, noted at the Elmer’s, which is about like a fancy Denny’s.

The “All Fours Push Over” was advertised as it is every year out front of the Walmart with some signage. The sign is a big green board that was put there by Salvation Army at the front entrance, it is partially blocking the store entrance, and that fact is part of the message. There is a yellow box that is about the size of a three year old child on their hands and knees, it’s just a box, is yellow, is supporting that other green sign... push the green sign a little, and it falls over the yellow box. It’s “Green Jello terror cell, the SDA Salvation Army Chapter, at the Walmart. They also will incorporate that the fall that happens will lead to at least one lawsuit at the Walmart, for the “Insult to Injury” part of the terror. The local court gets involved, a SDA SAG Lawyer is involved. someone falls, and sues, Walmart settles out of court, some money changes hands, and if there were witnesses to any of the terrorism murders that will be going on, those reports will be discounted by the local authorities as just someone who must have seen that person who sued the Walmart when they fell down that day.

“Yes, someone was injured at the Walmart, I think Walmart chose to settle though, you have to check with the courts about that, but, there were no murders, Jesus Christ no... Heavens no, nothing like that happened, just a slip and fall is all that happened, that must be what that person saw.” Says the local Josephine County Sheriff when the federal officers come looking around.

Other than Salvation Army Bell Ring at the Front:

I forgot to bring my normal things that I bring to the store. I have been bringing my own reusable bags to the store since the government mandate that says we can‘t use single use plastic. I forgot those today. So, a lot of people were looking at my shopping cart saying all kinds of things about bags,... all kinds of bags and things to say about them to other people on secret communications as they pass by me in the store.

By the way, that thing with the single use bags law, happened here around last October of 2019, was a “Heads up, we are about to begin the COVID Phase” terror comm. The Single Use Plastic Law is no longer a thing, there are bags everywhere again, same as before that mandate.

I was going to purchase a camera today. So, I looked at the six different ones that are available at the Walmart display. Gone are the days of dozens of camera choices, there are only about six different ones in a small glass case that you can look at, through the glass, can‘t touch those, no way. There is a Canon Sterling Model. Small, 720 mpxl, 2.7 inch display, 8x zoom, heavy duty aluminum construction, has no WIFI inside, is good, looks like it could be used for taking some pictures, $129... I want one. Ok.. I go get the friendly Canadian terror Walmart Electronics Sales Associate for that.

“Help me please to get a camera from the display?”

“Yes, I can help with that”

We go there, he opens the pad lock on the very small 36″ x 24“ size cabinet that contains all of the cameras available at the Walmart, there are about maybe two dozen boxed cameras in there, and one of the boxes is empty for each of the ones in the display, so, there are very few cameras in there, at two weeks before Christmas time, and the size of that storage for them is tooooo smaaalll .... something is not right, Tiny Tim.

“Darn, I’m sorry, we don‘t have that Canon Sterling model you were looking at, but there is one of these other ones, that blue one, is also a Canon model... do you want to have a look at that one?” Says Canadian Walmart terror representative.

“no” I said.

“That one has Blue-tooth built in, I don’t want the Blue-tooth in the camera” I said some more.

I thanked him and left, remembering the exact same thing happened about this time last year. You can only get the Blue-Toothe model camera, so that they can spy on you. That is what Blue-Toothe is for, it’s always on. even when it says it’s turned off.

In case there is someone doing the math, it goes like this:

The one you want has 2.7″ inch screen, the one with the Blue-Toothe, has 3″ screen, comes with Blue-Toothe. So, 2.7 + 0.3 = 3 inches, so, that one is the Trinity one. Has 10x zoom, 1080 mpxl resolution. The associate knows what to do by the way the product is made with featured screen size, for SAG rules. He is going to point all of the victims to the Blue-Toothe camera, and say the other one is not available, there is no way to know when it will be available, and the display model is not for sale.

Maybe I’ll say some more later, I also went to AM/PM, so, there is a little to say about that.

5:48 pm (the bastards are still turning off my number pad on my keyboard every five minutes, I have to switch the num-lock button every time I want to type a numeral.)

==

6:25:

More to add is that yesterday and today there are a lot of people wearing the n-95 style hospital masks. Those will get you killed. Unless the terror soldiers are specifically instructed to use those, they are used to mark victims. You need cloth, home made masks. Also, the n-95 model has micron-filter that allows more nitrous molecule, and less fresh air to breathe, it’s double whammy killing COVID mask that way.

I am seeing some people wear these useless clear plastic mouth guard looking thing too. I have no idea how that is supposed to help for COVID protection.

Yesterday at the Walgreen’s, a young man was at the pharmacy boat dock, dropped his prescription paper for philling, the representatives were talking very loud:

“Have you filled here before?” they asked the young man.

“no, I haven’t” he said.

“What kind of insurance do you have?” the boat dock said.

“I don‘t have any..... it’s out of pocket” he replied.

He turns around to walk away after explaining that he is going to wait rather than come back later to pick up his prescription.

“Wow... everyone is wearing masks” he said to someone on a secret communication device.

I was thinking maybe this young man had come from some wonderful faraway place where there is no such thing as Twitter, a place without masks.

========

Other stuff at Walmart today is that the parking was danger city. The place is jam packed, terror soldiers are going out of their way to make you crash in there. They see you are pulling in, or out of a parking space, and them they go right behind your car, and stop there. It was rainy and foggy today too, perfect for low visibility terror at the Walmart. Big giant size four wheel drive truck has to come park right next to me just as I put the car in reverse, now I can only see in one direction, the way the Big Invisible Fog Horn in the Sky wants me to go, towards more dangerous conditions at the Walmart parking. They have it arranged that the parking is all full, but there are a few select parking spaces open, where the conditions surrounding those are highly controlled with other terror vehicles that are all prepared to interfere with someone who chooses to park in the available parking spaces. All of them are rigged, all of them are manned with crews of people who orchestrate conditions that favor the terror army, and are in conflict with safety of those who park there. no matter what happens, they have it rigged so it’s your fault if a collision happens, and there is no shortage of very distractible things that you have to see, pedestrians. dogs. bicycles, rogue runnaway shopping carts...it’s all there while others are targeting you. They put those there to make you crash.

At the AM/PM, same parking hazards are there as are at Walmart. There is a portable carnival food trailer there, at the AM/PM parking lot serving food. The AM/PM serves the same food inside the store as the circus trailer in the parking. So, why does AM/PM allow a competition to be parked there selling food in the parking lot? Because that place inside the trailer has a good viewing angle of the whole AM/PM gas station, and can see both entrances from there and all of the gas pumps, can shoot from there if necessary, a cross-bow, or a gun. Can direct traffic to come and go, to block someone, cause Cluster-Fuck if they need that, and can see all the way down Grants Pass Pkwy in both directions, the Carl’s Jr, Taco Bell, some of Winco Foods parking, and down Terry Lane from that circus food trailer. The thing is a green trailer about 16 feet, says “Mediterranean Food” on it, has a COVID Testing Easy-Up Canopy attached to the side.

Inside the store, I suppose the strangest thing, and something I don’t recall having seen before, was there was a man standing by the ATM in there, he had a small portable wireless receipt printer, and was printing receipts there near the ATM inside the store, as the big giant size man behind the counter was talking with him. It looked a bit less than legit to me, knowing about that all of the banks are hijacked, and purchases and inventory records are all faked in Oregon.

7:12 pm.

====

8:23 pm:

Other thing at Walmart today was Fake Security Officer w/Two Concerned Citizens doing what they call “The Unclean“ activity.

“Unclean“ is when three people, very clean-cut, proper, upstanding looking people are walking around and through someplace, they are all looking around, each one is looking a different way, when one of them turns to look a different way, so do the other two, so that all three, are always looking around in three different directions, constantly moving, turning, looking for something while also being super innocent and “holier than thou” sort of vibe going on. That happened as I entered the Walmart, one of them was “Security” with full vest, black official looking uniform, stuff clipped onto his belt. I don‘t recall a gun, or absence of one.

The thing about the Fake Security, is that he was the ‘Fake, fake security”, so, there is the usual fake security that drives around in the parking w/flashing yellow lights, but that guy was not there, his usual fake security car was there, but this other unusual fake security was there instead of regular fake security.

I don’t have other information about that. It’s fake, everything is fake, and when the fakeness is found out, they bring other, new, different fake falseness, to put in place of the usual fakery that was found. The real fake usual security was probably across the street at the Starbucks having some coffee & donuts while the temporary extra special fake terror actor from SAG fooled other federal investigative people on patrol.

There may have been the guillotine there today, at the front door. All of the usual guillotine sort of distractions were in place near the front of the Walmart.

================

10:14 pm:

Lately, the overwhelming notion that the terror army are pirates, has enlightened me in ways that I find helpful, and I want to help others see the things I am seeing if those things become present, so, “Pirates”, Boats, Barges, Dingy’s, Sloopes, Slips, Catamaran, Sails, Wind, Piers, Ports, Docks, Beaches, Palm Trees, Treasure and Maps to find it, is something that really can be seen if the terror army is around in your town.

All things shipping, complete with oil tankers, can be seen, in order to see the terror army as they are communicating with Pirate Themes in LARGE WAYS. When you are out and about, see if you can find a boats, it could be truck, but when you look at it with a Cracker Jack Secret Decoder Ring attitude, it’s a boat, has a yard arm, has some Trump Supporter Flags for Sails, has some special bumpers so it can get close to the dock, could be some stickers, artwork, printed words that make it more shiplike in some way.

If you don‘t see what I am saying here, that’s good news. Just make sure you have an eye from the crows nest from time to time, just in case the Pirate Circus comes to your town.

The most important part is that there is a strange presence of a Fog Horn like quality to the atmosphere in the town, it’s not a sound that you can hear, it’s more like a lot of people who make conditions which force you to go on your way in the direction that they want you to go, like a fog horn does to keep the captains from crashing onto the rocks, except these people use a reverse fog horn that guides the people into danger.

Traffic conditions, with people who pull out in front of you at the store parking aisles, makes you choose a different aisle, then they guide you with shopping carts and pedestrians, other drivers jockeying around in the way, is like the Fog Horn that guides you, into the specific parking place where they want you to be, for easy victim placement. There are some empty places to park, but you would have to get out to move those shopping carts that they put in them if you want to park there, and, that also is bait, they are waiting for victims to get out to move the shopping carts that block you from parking there.

This is too difficult to be specific. You just have to be willing to see it on your own, conditions can change, the Pirates adapt, they are lead by Screen Actor Guild, and those guys wrote the Movie Screenplay already, for all of the Pirate movies, so, they just switch from Master & Commander, to Hunt For Red October, on the fly.

All of that can then change to Airplane, to make you feel foolish while looking for Pirates at the Airport. Right now it’s all about Pirates where I live, they are easier to spot than when the Jurassic Park themes are in play.

Jumangi terror. Gumby terror, he can walk into any book with his pony pal Poky.

10:46 pm.

==

10:51 pm:

There some themes that don’t ever change. There is always a “Save the Princess” sort of idea that is a basis to support terrorism murders on. Maybe is one person princess, maybe is Grenfeild Tower where the whole building full of people is the princess.

There is always a treasure, some money, some riches as bait. The terror is not really interested too much in stealing money, they have that already, but those ideas about money and riches, treasure, other wealth, is used as bait. A purse on the front seat of an unlocked car, or a lot of gold jewelry on a pretty woman, all is bait. A Harley Davidson with keys dangling is a favorite around here, is bait.

You don‘t have to want to steal that stuff, all you have to do is be near it. The terror army does the rest, they have fake police for that, to make fake police report at the real police station about why someone was killed as they tried to steal that motorcycle, rob that jewelry from that woman, or take that purse from the unlocked car at the Walmart parking. All you wanted is some milk and some eggs for breakfast tomorrow.

They use themes though, good cop/bad cop is always there same as the princess and the lure of riches and easy money. There are many themes, there is always a hot chick, a stud, a dog & pony in some way, and there is always someone to feel sorry for while they are scouting you with the “I need some gas & food money” sign w/baby and wheelchair nearby.

It all repeats over and over again, large size princess is a whole busload of people is the bait and need help, small size of the same bait is a child who is being told they can’t have what they want, parent yells at the child. Both are Save the Princess, designed to make you react in some way, a way they already practiced for to mark you.

===

11:30 pm:

For instance, a set-up that is standard procedure at the AM/PM today, happens about half the time I go in there:

It’s simple, as I am there, the only US Citizen anywhere around for 500 miles or more in all directions, everyone else is a Canadian terror soldier, or, a SAG actor from Hollywood, as a leader for the Canadians.

I am in line, want to get some things at the front counter, a girl comes in the store doing the Pee-pee dance, says: “I need the key for the rest room” while interrupting the transaction I am having with the store clerk, who tells her: “There is no key, it’s open if no one is in there”

now, if I go anywhere near where those restrooms are at, inside the store, near the access door to the refrigerated beverages cooler, that is where the victims get dragged into the refrigerated area. If no one sees that someone was hit and taken back there, then the girl in the rest room is not needed for the terror to continue, but if someone does witness the activity of someone being hit and taken into the cooler, then that girl in the restroom is super handy as a princess who was saved, and that is what is said to have been witnessed. The terror soldier murderers, are transformed into heroes that way. So, if I go over there because I was reminded that I want to get something from that area, then they hit me, drag me into the cooler. If someone sees, the girl in the rest room is told to start screaming, looks like I went in there to rape or rob her, but was thwarted by the AM/PM other customer, or staff near the cooler.

Variation of the same thing is a small child is taken into the rest room by the father or mother, it’s the same thing, with slightly different twist so they have some variation, not always exactly the same scenario, the child is in the rest room, either with or without the parent... whatever suits the ongoing theme so that other terror soldiers in the store who know the theme of the day, will know what is going on, and know their spoken lines they need to say.

If you drive a raised truck that can be crawled under, they will do that at the AM/PM, with a screw driver, to crank your starter over too many times, drain your battery as you are distracted with a long line in the store. You come out, truck won‘t start, dead battery. That is when the Mobile Auto Repair just happens to pull in and park next to you, as if you called it in ahead of time. It says right on the mobile repair van that they do jump start service. It gets worse from there. That has happened to me three times there so far, to the extent that I needed a tow truck because the event was primed for at my home with sabotage to the starter motor. Three starters in a short time, because Chartrand comes and uses the screwdriver short circuit method to spin the starter around while I am in the shower. Burns the starters up. Get to AM/PM, and one more short does the trick, need to get a new starter, and Chartrand has the Stingray surveillance unit, so, he knows where I called to get a new starter, after the tow-truck assassin fails, and he is there waiting for me at the auto parts store, three times so far, same thing, dead battery at the AM/PM, Mobile repair is there, just happens to park there, the starter is toast, need a tow truck, then need a starter at the O’Reilly’s Auto parts, where Chartrand is working behind the service counter when I arrive to get a new starter that he ruined for me.

That is how the AM/PM Luke’s Arco does what they do, and lots more.

Richard Chartrand is the terror neighbor I explain about often, he has lived two doors to the north at 376 Jackpine for about 6 or seven years, is one of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police who is also a Oregon State Police Officer in disguise. He uses a real Oregon State Police Dodge Charger, a grey one. So, I call for help to stop terrorism, and/or make reports here, or at Twitter to get some national security help, and they send the Canadian terror Oregon State Police to kill me instead of coming to see what the problems are themselves. That happened so many times, that Richard Chartrand was sent to come live on the road as my neighbor, so that he could be like Johnny on the Spot when someone reads what I write here and calls the police or FBI to send some help. Chartrand, of Oregon State Police, is right there, two doors away, always is on call, ready to respond to reports of terrorism I make. He is not going to help, instead he has a lot of terror soldier thugs like Burton Mitchel Dietrick who also lives on Jackpine, Stevie Bell who uses the Chartrand approved terror story that Stevie is my Son and we don‘t get along, but he lives across the street to care for me anyway because I am a disabled man with spinal cord post surgical conditions that, they say, needs a caregiver all of the time. Meanwhile, the sheriff gave them the keys to my house because they arrested me on June 15 and got my keys that way when I went to jail for something that never happened, was just for getting the keys, and to take a few whacks at a disabled spinal cord patient while at the jail. After that, Chartrand had some fresh keys for the lock that I already changed because Fran Taylor was making keys that fit my front door somehow, I don‘t know how, she has key making machine, that’s what I know about that, So, everyone has keys to my front door, the national security people are told that I need special care all of the time, and that is why the Caregivers are coming over here everyday to beat me up with a baseball bat or try to poke me with euthanasia drug for the big sleep. Happens almost everyday, national security won’t send help to a disabled man, they are ok with the current caregiver situation with baseball bat therapy, and the terror doctor who only does phone or video appointments who tells me that I have arthritis, and that is why I hurt so bad, so, he gives enough treatment for someone who has arthritis, is not interested in treating the post surgical spinal cord injury, one that always hurts even without the caregiver and baseball bat beating daily evening therapy that I get regularly, for many years. Then, to add insult to injury, they killed my daughter, but she calls sometimes to tell me that she graduated from medical school, is a doctor now, works at the ER and Intensive care unit as a resident physician at the hospital somewhere.

no one will send help.

I am pretty sure all of the Chartrand’s are dead now, they attacked me too many times. There were five of them to start with:

Richard Chartrand (Rich)

Jennifer Chartrand (Jennifluffer)

Sterling Chartrand (Stir)

Elizabeth Chartrand (Lizzy)

and Richard’s sister, Jay Chartrand (”Watch Dog” he called her)

All are dead, or, too injured and cut to pieces to hurt me anymore. Others are there at 376 Jackpine, so, the terror from there continues with other Royal Canadian Mounted Police who are disguised as Oregon State Police, and are stationed two doors away for ease of access with daily baseball bat therapy.

Part of the problem with the national security is that the insist on always being fooled by the local authorities, who are not real authorities, are terror army soldiers and special operatives who are trained and assigned especially for fooling national security, So, the other problem is that the terror army is so enormous, that if a few nsa officers come to Oregon, they will be killed, and a takeover team sent to the nsa HQ, to take that, and kill & replace all of their family and friends. The nsa needs to bring US Military, but the White House is hijacked by SAG terror leadership, is not going to send US Military to Oregon, Trump is only going to send them to Afghanistan to protect the terror heroin poppy fields there, and, those guys that are sent to Afghanistan are ambushed when the get there by the British “Friendly’s”, are killed, and now they are all replaced with Canadians who are protecting the terror heroin poppy’s in Afghanistan while pretending to be US Military under direction from the White House.

But hey, there is still football to watch on TV on Monday nights, in the rainy season, so, all is ok I suppose, eh?

=======

12-12-2020: 2:21 am:

For anyone who may possibly be watching this account, be advised that today I don‘t think I made any comments at the suspended Twitter account, this past week, I have made only few short, not so lengthy use of the text box there. I try anything to get help, typing in any text box I can find is something I have done to try to get help, so, see if you notice any difference when I refrain from using Google products to type in a text box, starting today... last night 12-11-2020.

I will try to refrain tomorrow, to see if there is some difference by not using the Twitter text suspended account box.

Twitter needs to be taken offline globally, pronto, fast, any and every way possible.... immediately.

2:29 am.

========================================

12-12-2020: 7:32 pm:

Addition lies that are told to other, far away people, nsa, or other Global Security personnel about me, and the circumstances that are lied about the existence of the information presented here on this Tumblr account, and other places online:

The same way that Stephen (Stevie) Bell at 445 Jackpine is said to be my estranged Son, so is Deb Monroe at 434 Jackpine said to be my estranged Daughter, who lives next door in that Offensive Monroe Surveillance Travel Trailer. The same, or similar conditions as with the story that is told about Stevie Bell, are repeated with stories about Deb Monroe, that she is available at that trailer for Caregiver of her Dad, who is said to be the author of this account, a disabled man who needs assistance to dress, cook, shop for food, go to doctor appointments, use a restroom, shower or bathe, and help to feed the cats.

Although I am a disabled man, I don’t need any of that kind of help. I need national security and global world wide security to read this account. I need those people to stop being fooled by the local authorities who are the ones who have crafted up so many lies, including the ones that include Deb Monroe, and Stephen Bell. Those national security people need to stop all contact with the local authorities and do their own research to find the truth.

That is where and when the information here can be helpful. It could be used to stop about 90% of the terrorism on Earth.

That is a lot of terror that would end. Immagine a time when there would be no more Schul Schute’s. That is only the beginning of what could be achieved if nsa would only just do their job, stop relying on others, and stop being fooled.

There is other lies that include Sandy Monroe, I don’t know the extent of those. I suspect that sometimes Sandy Monroe is said to be me, the author of this page, and the person that Deb Monroe is caregiver for, as I am kept captive in my home, out of view from potentially helpful people who are too far away to see what is really happening around here.

Personally, I feel that Deb Monroe is really the daughter of Scott and Karen Liter of 329 Jackpine, and they may have taken over at 325 Jackpine, to pretend to be Dewey and Roberta Gasper, who are terror pirates, and are dead.

Lies. Stephen Bell; Deb Monroe, Sandy Monroe... none of them are caregivers.

I don’t have or use or want any caregivers.

That is Sandy Monroe attacking at the laundry room door earlier this year, about February. There are three other people at least also outside, as Sandy was pounding on my door, that door, and the front door, for about two hours that night, she demanded I let her in, said that this is her house, insisted that she lived here. There was a dead body in my woods covered with a sleeping bag, and I think the four people thought I had taken a photo of the dead body, so, this fucking scary shit happened.

There is more to this, It’s all been said before, so, do your own research, I just want to make sure that everyone who needs to know can see that Sandy Monroe is featured there in those photos above.

7:56 pm.

=========

8:21 pm:

You could be looking at those photos and saying: “But that is not the Sandy Monroe that we have detailed in our portfolio profile information, something is wrong, someone is not telling the truth and we could possibly be being fooled here with this person claiming that the photo shows Sandy Monroe”.

That would be a good start to moving closer to the truth.

What you should know:

That is only “The Current Sandy Monroe, and that particular Sandy Monroe is the one that is occupying the front residence at 434 Jackpine Drive. That one is not the first one, as there have been at least three Sandy Monroe’s over a course of about four or five years since the time they moved in there next door.

There have been at least two Jeff Monroe’s there also, neither one of the Jeff Monroe’s have been seen for a few month’s, and the latest Jeff Monroe was there for most of the time... about three and a half years. The original Jeff Monroe had tattoos, big ones, on his shoulder blades, the newer one is much thinner, uses a hoodie to conceal his face, does not take his shirt off, so, tattoos are not visible if present.

There is currently a Jeff Monroe deficit, as there does not seem to be anyone portraying the Jeff Monroe role at the Monroe terror cell next door.

That current Sandy Monroe has dental conditions that mimic the post gunshot dental conditions I suffer from. Very similar teeth arrangement to my own.

8:37 pm.

=========

8:57 pm:

For clarity sake, I think it’s wise to say one more time that the person in those photos is not the author of this account information here, maybe some other account of information but not this one here at StoneMan Warrior on Tumblr.

Also is wise to remind more time that phone lines are all like spaghetti, the ones that are buried in the ground that compose the Centurylink network. All of the phone lines were intentionally put onto the wrong terminals in all of the service boxes that serve the area, maybe the whole state of Oregon, I think the spaghetti phone line method of fooling the nsa has worked pretty good so far, about twenty years or so, and they use the local Josephine County spaghetti phone lines as a model for all of the phone lines of all of the world by now. They just send a van to the main access box, says something American HVAC and Vacuum on it, and those guys switch the wiring around inside the main access terminals in the neighborhood, and then they also switch the wires on the small, individual service access boxes that are out front of all of the houses. But that is only the cover part, only on the surface where it’s easy to see that it’s spaghetti phones, so, they also use the old school PBX switchboards to make super customized terror phone call experience for nsa to get lost and be fooled with. But that is only the old school part, so, they also use the new fangled digital equipment too, helps to play the Pope’s mystery card, so the VOIP systems can change the phone call from land line to digital computer line to then goes to cell-phone tower to make confusion Vatican mystery hokus pokus in places where only should be land line to easily listen to for national security, makes it easy to switch the Pope signal back to land line with use of the PBX again for that. Just need a house with two phone lines incoming and your good to go for Stingray Hijack from hell that way.

It’s not as confusing as it could be though.

They call the PBX “Medusa”. They named it. They get those from the Sheriff Auction. The terror scouts go find them, then, it goes in the auction, listed in the Grants Pass Daily Courier as a item available for biding on. I don‘t know why they do that, put it in the paper, except that when that happens, it makes it easier to capture the nsa when they come around asking questions, and is handy when the Sheriff is in charge with the auction for that. It becomes a place to put a trap real quick before the new “Medusa’s” are put into service. They “Christen“ all of the equipment and weapons like that, before it goes into service.

Spaghetti phone is why nsa might think Sandy Monroe is author of this information.

(also, the complicated part of the spaghetti phones, is, that I am supposed to have two addresses worth of telephone lines. They stole one address worth, and hooked that one up in the spaghetti, Stingray, VOIP, Medusa, Cell Phone/Land line Pope system of modern communication technology they use around here. I am sure there is some Blue-Toothe way to make it more challenging for nsa, but I don‘t know about that, I hate Blue-tooth. So you have to watch out for addresses where there are supposed to be extra phone lines, or, for addresses that were made special to have a lot of phone line. It’s like money, they just scrape a little off the top, in the paperwork. With the phones, just some airplane Vodka applied to the service box at the neighbors house terminal does the trick, POG is bonus. You need one of those special 9/16 box end wrenches (just show your SAG card to the people at Acme Tool & Die, they pass those out when one is requested to those with dues paid in full, card in good standing).

I use tape. That way, you can know if the seal was broken.

=================

This is still on the 12-12-2020 additional information:

Different, unrelated to the above:

10:10 pm:

Very few people understand the nuances surrounding a disability. There are some things about disability that have their own set of terror jargon when commanded with terror orders from White House, Congress, State Governors... etc. The Pointy Hat Clubs have language based on this “secret” knowledge about disability:

In USA, we have Social Security Disability Insurance. We go to work, we pay out of the paycheck a deduction for an insurance premium.

not many people understand that it’s an insurance premium. It’s useful for when you get hurt, can’t work anymore, are broken.

Same idea with Unemployment Insurance, you pay a premium for insurance ahead of time. If everything goes good, you never need to file a claim with the insurance company.

There is other kind of insurance, the employers pay for insurance that protects the employer, and also protects the employees from all kinds of things that can happen. I forget what that insurance is called, but that insurance is the reason sometimes that a person is considered as a disabled person, sort of, in USA. There are certainly medical and health reasons a person is considered as a disabled person, and, when filing a federal disability claim against that insurance that you pay for with your paycheck, the SSDI deduction, there is a ton of doctors, tests, scans, interviews, exorcises, waiting periods, more tests, more doctors, more scans, lots and lots of paperwork, and some spies that come to watch everything you do. It takes about two years minimum to go through all of the tests, scans, doctors, ... repeat, then again, only to be denied, because those are the rules, you have to be denied at least one time. So, those who really are suffering from some serious problems are the ones who have no other choices. They just keep jumping through the hoops as the new hoops are presented for jumping through. Everyone else, gets real hungry, and tired, and they go back to work.

So, the secret communication used by Government terror leaders to say commands about disabled people, as targets, or, to say commands to the terror soldiers who already killed and replaced disabled people, is hidden inside of talk about insurance. 

When congress, or Trump talks about “Pre-Existing Health Conditions” for insurance related subject matter, they are saying some kind of specifics about disabled people, elderly people, maybe small children who are not old enough to go into the work force yet are also pre-existing conditional people.

The reason is that the disabled person may have some conditions, lets say heart condition, where they look OK, can walk the same as everyone, but have some heart condition, maybe had a heart attack already, so, the reason they are not employable is that the insurance company is not going to cover a person who could have a heart attack at the jobsite when the medical record already shows a history of heart-attack, or other circulatory problems.

Right there, is the reason why that person is “Disabled”. Can walk, can even run (but is risky), no walking aid is required, no wheel chair, but could drop dead from heart problem while changing light bulbs on the company Christmas display in the store window, cause a short circuit, makes a fire, someone has to come to drag the person from the burning front store Christmas lights, then that person is electrocuted, the place is on the fifteenth floor of the building, there is no number 13 on the Ottis elevator,and they left it out of the stairwells too because Christians are superstitious, could be a disability I think, mental psychotic ailment, so the fire crew is lost while trying to save the heart-attack light-bulb replacement person, and some of them are hurt, suffer smoke inhalation, could die, and the equipment is ruined too. All of that, and the conditions of fire damage and injury at the employers have not even been considered yet.

That is why the insurance company is not going to insure disabled people who have ailments, or multiple ailments that are listed at the Social Security Administration. Those that are awarded a disability status, and those people who have listed impairments or multiple impairments, that when stacked up together are deemed that which the insurance company won‘t cover, are said to be “Disabled People” and can sign up for a special parking card for convenience at the store parking if they want to, you know, those blue ones with the wheel chair on them, goes on the rear view mirror.

Insurance. The employer is mandated to have it. The Insurance company works close with medical doctors, the doctors go to school for a long, long, long, long, long time, and they also are at the Social Security Administration, where the disabled people, all of them, are denied at least one time, because those are the secret rules. That, and the employers insurance is also the secret rules. Somewhere in all of that are smart people who figured out a way to make a balance between medical records, tests, interviews, with analytic studies, health science, and that people who are fake, will give up, and go back to work. Also, that period of time where you are denied, is often enough time to heal. So, those who do not heal, and have listed impairments, don’t have to change out the company Christmas light bulb display, however, those people, if they can walk, will always suffer greatly, forever, from abuse from the Christian Church, who feels that if you can walk, that is the disability test, no doctors, insurance, social science, medical science, or knowledge of any kind is necessary for becoming a church member. They let anyone in their club.

One thing is for sure about disabled people, that is that the actual health conditions they suffer from are not likely to improve, are likely to become worse over time, and, those conditions will always be obvious with future testing, but mostly, in the medical environment that once existed, is gone now, but the one that is supposed to still be working, where the disabled people enter into with regular checkups, and treatment plans, will always maintain an ongoing record of progress as the person ages. Sometimes medical treatments and advances in technology and medical science can provide remedy to disabled people status, but not often. Even so, the disabled person, once out of the work force for fifteen years, is considered as permanently disabled forever for having become “institutionalized” and that the consensus is that the person, and the social work environment changes so dramatically over that amount of time, that fifteen years out of the work force is considered to be the disabling factor. So, again, smart people figured out a way to make it easier for disabled people to survive in harsh environments where the Church applies so much pressure for so long that the disabled persons, after fifteen years of experience with being a disabled person, can simply tell the invasive church people...

...to “go fuck off somewhere else, this is not my first rodeo, you superstitious offensive terrorist fruitcake”.

Watch for terror comm featuring “Pre-Existing Conditions” to find disability specific terror instructions from government officials.

[aion-rsa]

James Bond Movies Streaming Guide: Where to Watch 007 Online

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

In times of great stress it’s natural for us to all find some sort of escapism – and movies are the perfect way to forget about your problems (or the world’s) for a couple of hours. Personally, we’ve found the James Bond franchise to be among the best forms of such entertainment: the movies are pure adventure and fantasy, they have a comforting template that they mostly follow, and you can dive into the series — or even an individual film — without having to catch up on anything that came before.

That’s why it’s so heartening that — even though the new film, No Time to Die, has been delayed due to the COVID-19 crisis — most of the Bond catalog is available to watch via the major streaming platforms. Amazon has many of them streaming for free for Prime members, with almost all available to rent or buy. A number of titles are free to stream on Hulu or Netflix. Of course, you can also watch a lot of them (with commercials) on Pluto TV’s dedicated Bond channel, or on demand there as well.

Wherever you get your Bond, the exploits of 007 remain a sure bet to whisk you away for a while; it’s only a shame that we couldn’t send Bond to defeat the coronavirus as easily as he takes out his enemies. And with the recent passing of original James Bond Sean Connery at the age of 90, you might want to revisit his work, as well.

Here’s how and where you can watch…

Dr. No (1962)

The first Bond movie and still one of the best, Dr. No introduced so many elements of what became the series template for decades to come. Unsettling megalomaniac villain, world-spanning evil plan, drop-dead beautiful women, pulse-pounding chases and cold-blooded killings…they’re all here. And then of course there was the late, great Sean Connery, rugged, smoldering and deadly as the definitive screen Bond.

Available to rent or buy on Amazon and Amazon UK

From Russia with Love (1963)

Connery’s second outing as 007 is probably the closest to Fleming’s books in terms of overall tone and style. This is a lean, thrilling adventure that puts Bond up against one of his most fearsome enemies: the cold-blooded assassin Red Grant (Robert Shaw). Their train fight is one of the best scenes in the franchise.

Available on Amazon and Hulu, to rent or buy on Amazon UK

Goldfinger (1964)

Bond’s third outing was the Avengers: Endgame of its time, a cultural event not to be missed. Director Guy Hamilton introduced more humor into the proceedings, while Connery tweaked the character accordingly. Add to that more action, a larger than life villain and an epic scope, and you have the movie that many still consider the best of the series.

Available to rent or buy on Amazon and Amazon UK

Thunderball (1965)

After three straight winners, Thunderball is where the 007 series first started to wobble. Although it features one of the best Bond villains and some of the most beautiful Bond women, the movie is overlong and bogged down with too many underwater sequences. Thunderball is still fun in many ways — the first 40 minutes or so are marvelous — but it spends way too much time in the water.

Available on Amazon, Hulu and Pluto TV, available to rent or buy on Amazon UK

You Only Live Twice (1967)

The final entry of Connery’s initial run as 007 proves that bigger isn’t always better. Although the movie finally introduces long-lurking nemesis Blofeld and takes Bond to a massive secret lair disguised as a volcano in Japan, the series started to feel flabby and the star seemed visibly bored. It was also the first Bond movie to stray wildly from the source novel, a decision that in this case didn’t work.

Available on Amazon, Hulu and Pluto TV, available to rent or buy on Amazon UK

Casino Royale (1967)

Producer Charles K. Feldman acquired the rights to the first Bond novel before the official series from Eon Productions was launched. He subsequently produced this spoof of the 007 series, which bears only the title of the book and the name of the Bond character (who is played by David Niven). Six credited directors, a bevy of screenwriters and a boatload of international stars couldn’t salvage this infamous mess of a movie.

Available to rent or buy on Amazon and Amazon UK

On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969)

Australian model-turned-actor George Lazenby made his sole appearance as Bond in this sixth film, an exceptionally faithful adaptation of the emotionally devastating Fleming book it’s based on. Lazenby manages to acquit himself nicely despite being the first actor to follow Connery, while Diana Rigg and Telly Savalas are outstanding as, respectively, the love of Bond’s life and the instrument of her death. Once considered a misfire, OHMSS ranks among the very best of the series.

Available on Amazon, Hulu and Pluto TV, available to rent or buy on Amazon UK

Diamonds are Forever (1971)

A pale echo of the earlier Goldfinger (from the same director, Guy Hamilton), Diamonds are Forever is remembered as the movie that lured Sean Connery back for one more turn in the tuxedo (until 12 years later, that is). The sober, character-driven style of OHMSS is jettisoned for a cartoonish romp that has its fun moments but is largely disposable.

Available on Amazon, Hulu and Pluto TV, available to rent or buy on Amazon UK

Live and Let Die (1973)

Roger Moore’s debut in the role — after Connery exited for a second time — is, sadly, a largely cringeworthy affair. Based on Fleming’s second 007 novel, the movie’s attempt to fuse blaxploitation with Bond is awkward and, nowadays, borderline racist. Moore doesn’t quite find his footing either. The upside? The title song by Paul McCartney and Wings is a stone cold classic.

Available on Amazon, Hulu and Pluto TV, available to rent or buy on Amazon UK

The Man with the Golden Gun (1974)

Based on Fleming’s final Bond novel and considered one of the worst of the Roger Moore era, The Man with the Golden Gun has two things going for it: a relatively tough Moore performance and one of the best Bond villains of all time in Christopher Lee’s title baddie, Scaramanga. Lee’s presence literally saves whole stretches of the film, which is often undone by juvenile humor and lame supporting characters.

Available on Amazon, Hulu and Pluto TV, available to rent or buy on Amazon UK

The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)

Third time was the charm for Roger Moore, as The Spy Who Loved Me gambles on going for all-out spectacle and delivers handsomely. Moore strikes the right balance of grit and humor, the action is thrilling throughout and the villain’s henchman, Jaws (Richard Kiel), is a slam dunk. This is rightly considered the high point of Moore’s run as well as one of the series’ finest entries.

Available to rent or buy on Amazon and Amazon UK

Moonraker (1979)

Although remembered with some derision as “Bond in space,” Moonraker really only takes 007 to the stars in the final act for a wacked-out battle that looks too much like a cheap grab at some of that then-lucrative Star Wars money. Until then, however — and barring some bad comedy starring the encoring Jaws — Moonraker is a fairly straightforward thriller with a deliciously droll villain (Michael Lonsdale).

Available on Amazon, Hulu and Pluto TV, available to rent or buy on Amazon UK

For Your Eyes Only (1981)

Moore gives perhaps the best performance of his seven Bond films in a taut thriller that scales back the gimmickry and comes closer to the feel of the original Fleming than any other film in the Moore era. There are some cringeworthy elements (such as an awful Lynn Holly Johnson as a 007-infatuated pro ice skater), but this also features Moore at his most cold-blooded and cynical. 

Available on Amazon and Hulu, available to rent or buy on Amazon UK

Octopussy (1983)

An aging Moore and director John Glen (back for the second of five films — the most of any 007 director) keep the For Your Eyes Only vibe going with less spectacle and more practical spy film action. Maud Adams is good as the title femme fatale, but the film gets snarled in a convoluted, uninteresting plot that features some especially flat humor and one of the weakest Bond villains.

Available on Amazon, Hulu and Pluto TV, available to rent or buy on Amazon UK

Never Say Never Again (1983)

Sean Connery was coaxed back to play an appropriately aged Bond in this non-canon 007 adventure. A remake of Thunderball that was legally made possible due to certain rights owned by a solitary producer, Never Say Never Again benefits from the Connery charisma, a distinctive villain and some stylish sequences. But it can’t help feeling like a strange mirror universe cash grab at the same time.

Available on Pluto TV, to rent or buy on Amazon and Amazon UK

A View to a Kill (1985)

Moore bows out with a rather silly Silicon Valley adventure in which the actor’s 57 years (at the time) are clearly visible throughout. Christopher Walken is an excellent, quirky villain and henchwoman Grace Jones is also an impressive presence, but it was clear that the Moore formula of suave bonhomie and locker room humor was long worn out.

Available on Amazon and Hulu, available to rent or buy on Amazon UK

The Living Daylights (1987)

Timothy Dalton’s debut as 007 was billed as a return to the feel and texture of the Fleming stories, and it even borrows elements from the short story it’s based on. Dalton is a much harder-edged Bond than his predecessor Moore, but the movie is overplotted and its action mostly unremarkable.

Available on Amazon, Hulu and Pluto TV, available to rent or buy on Amazon UK

License to Kill (1989)

Dalton settles into the role in his second (and as it turns out, final) appearance as Bond, this time in a tale that puts Bond on a personal mission of revenge against a powerful South American drug lord. Somewhat maligned for its rather sadistic violence, License to Kill is an underrated entry in the series that occasionally pushes the envelope for 007 in ways that hadn’t been done for a while.

Available on Amazon, Hulu and Pluto TV, available to rent or buy on Amazon UK

GoldenEye (1995)

After nearly winning the role years earlier, Pierce Brosnan makes his long-expected debut as 007 in a rather thoughtful thriller that questions both Bond’s relationships and his place in a post-Cold War world. Brosnan is assured in the role, if a little bland, but GoldenEye still manages to feel a little like both the earlier Connery classics and some of the better Moore romps.

Available on Netflix, available to rent or buy on Amazon and Amazon UK

Tomorrow Never Dies (1997)

Jonathan Pryce is excellent as the movie’s Rupert Murdoch-like media mogul villain — who intends to start a major war to bolster his news network’s ratings — and Michelle Yeoh makes a solid foil to Bond as a tough Chinese agent named Wai Lin. Brosnan’s sophomore Bond outing has a subtle satirical edge to it and some exciting scenes, but stretches of it seem more impersonal and functional than stylish.

Available on Amazon, Netflix, Hulu, available to rent or buy on Amazon UK

The World is Not Enough (1999)

Despite strong work from Sophie Marceau as a 007 first — a principal villain who’s also a woman — and Robert Carlyle as her damaged terrorist henchman, Brosnan’s third film is marred by another incomprehensible story and Denise Richards as one of the most embarrassing Bond women ever. The humor and serious moments clash awkwardly, harming what could have been a much better entry.

Available on Amazon, Netflix, Hulu, available to rent or buy on Amazon UK

Die Another Day (2002)

Just like Connery and Moore, Brosnan goes out on a low note with this ridiculously overstuffed mess that features both an invisible car and a high-tech lair made out of ice. The plot is even more incomprehensible than usual for the lesser outings, and the presence of Halle Berry as a sort of female version of Bond doesn’t generate much excitement either.

Available to rent or buy on Amazon and Amazon UK

Casino Royale (2006)

Four years after Pierce Brosnan exited in one of the silliest Bond films, Daniel Craig took up the mantle in an instant classic that returned the series literally to its roots. This largely faithful version of Fleming’s first book features Craig as a relatively new but deeply haunted 007, who gets one last chance to turn back before becoming the ruthless assassin of legend.

Available on Amazon, Hulu and Netflix, available to rent or buy on Amazon UK

Quantum of Solace (2008)

Widely derided at the time, and deservedly so, for Marc Forster’s nearly unwatchable direction — the movie’s editing is absolutely atrocious — Quantum of Solace was also hurt by a writer’s strike that left the script somewhat undercooked. But Craig is excellent again, and the movie works a little better if you watch it right after Casino Royale, as an extended epilogue.

Available on Amazon, Netflix and Hulu, available to rent or buy on Amazon UK

Skyfall (2012)

Craig’s second finest outing as Bond has impressively stylish direction by Sam Mendes and is one of the most beautiful-looking 007 films of all time thanks to DP Roger Deakins. Javier Bardem is marvelously ghoulish as the villain, and Judi Dench gets an emotional send-off in her seventh and final appearance as Bond’s boss M. Skyfall finds the right, gripping mix of characterization and epic action.

Available to rent or buy on Amazon, Amazon UK

Spectre (2015)

Bond arch-nemesis Blofeld (Christoph Waltz) and the title crime organization appear for the first time since 1971’s Diamonds are Forever in one of 007’s most polarizing entries. The action is great and some of the series callbacks are fun, but Craig seems bored and tying everything from the last four films back to Bond’s childhood is a contrived, unnecessary mistake. Spectre is better than you might have heard, but not as good as it could be.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

Available to rent or buy on Amazon, Amazon UK

The post James Bond Movies Streaming Guide: Where to Watch 007 Online appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[zippdementia]

Part 63 Alignment May Vary: Twists and Turns Part 1

This is the ongoing journey log of my longest running Dungeons and Dragons campaign, started in October of 2016. The campaign will be broken into five parts, the fourth of which you are currently reading. For the first part, which focuses on adventures in the Moonsea, click here. For the second, which focuses on the search for the Tomb of Haggemoth, click here. For the third, which focuses on the confrontation with the Red Hand of Doom, click here.

The three companions wake up to find themselves in utter darkness, tied to giant statues of serpents, serpents with arms and holding aloft golden human hearts. Imoaza knows from the decorations that they are in the bowels of a Yuan Ti temple. But the creatures in front of her are not Yuan Ti.

The four Drow in the room soon notice that their prisoners have awoken. One of them, a female with a scar on her chin, shushes the others into silence, just as they are debating which one to give to Azor Khul.

“Good that you’ve awoken,” she says in elvish to Carrick. Imoaza an Aldric shuffle uncomfortably, not knowing what she is saying. “My poor spiders were all murdered by you and that makes me unhappy.”

“Your happiness isn’t my concern,” Carrick responds. In response the she-Drow grabs his head and squeezes hard. Then she slams Carrick’s head back against the statue.

“It should be,” she hisses and turns around, gesturing to two of her companions. “We’ll go tell the Mother that they are ready. One for Azor Khul (she looks at Imoaza), one to replace the spiders we lost (she looks at Aldric), and one for us (she glares at Carrick).

Then they leave, one Drow standing guard.

Unexpected Aid

Before much time can pass, a thick mist begins to creep into the room. The Drow guard begins to cough, and then yell, and then he grips his blade and starts swinging madly at nothing. Carrick’s eyes go wide as the fog reaches him and his fellow tied-up companions.

“Hold your breath!” he cries out, but in doing so takes a deep breath himself and begins to cough.

The stone walls retreated from him as if pushed back by an invisible giant. He was alone in the fog and the fog was turning red, shot through with thin lines of darker red, veins in the fog. The world was red veins pulsing with the blood of all living creatures. A boy’s cry reverberated through the fog and Carrick closed his eyes, trying not to see what he knew was coming next.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “You shouldn’t have tried to stop me.” But of course the boy had been right to come after him. Without the boy sacrificing himself in his vain attempt to kill Carrick, Carrick may have stayed on his path.

“I wasn’t trying to kill you,” a voice in the fog said. “I was trying to save you. And I succeeded.”

Carrick opened his eyes then, but the boy was not in front of him. It was fog. Only fog. Then suddenly the Drow was there, gripping his blade by the hilt in both hands and staring wide eyed at Carrick.

“Demon,” the Drow said, and raised his blade. Then the Drow froze as a hand clamped down over his face. A blade appeared through the fog, wielded by a hand as black as a shadow. The blade dug into the Drow’s neck and slowly traced a line of red across it. Then the wound opened and inside were teeth and the teeth were snapping at Carrick’s face, the black hands grabbing him and forcing him closer...

“Breath in. Deeply.” The voice was new to Carrick, not the boy’s. It was commanding and a little husky. Carrick obeyed while the teeth snapped at him and the hands pulled him. And then, they all went away. As quick as waking from a dream, Carrick forgot his fear and could see again.

In front of him lay the prone figure of the dead Drow. Standing over him, wiping the blood clean from his dagger, was another Drow, staring at Carrick with half lidded eyes. Carrick could feel those eyes judging him almost immediately.

“A poison,” the Drow explained. “Kept in vapors until inhaled. Makes you see things. Too much, and you lose your mind forever. Keep breathing.” For the first time, Carrick realizes there is something on his face, some kind of mask. “It will counter the poison. I’ll see to your friends and get you all out of here.”

The Drow’s name is Zaeintar (zay-in-tar) and he injects Aldric and Carrick with a special Drow poison meant to help them. It will recover their life to full, but until it does they will be weak and under the effects of poison. Imoaza he can’t offer this to, as she is immune to poison. The three tentatively accept his help, not having many other options without their equipment, and he explains as he frees everyone what has happened here. It seems that a few years ago, Zaeintar’s house (Jayenthail) was betrayed from within by the sister of the House Mother. This sister, Xanega, formed an unexpected alliance with a rival house and murdered her own kin, ruining Jayenthail in a single night and letting their rivals hunt them down and kill them one by one. But a group of the Jayenthails fought their way out, aided by a loyal Mind Flayer, and escaped into forgotten tunnels in the Underdark. These tunnels eventually led them here, to the resting place of an ancient Yuan Ti temple, a temple that once belonged to Imoaza’s tribe.

Once settled into their new environments, the Drow began to explore the caverns further. The strongest of them, a House Captain named Anaduul, took the title of new House Mother, and led many of the expeditions, always praying to Lolth for guidance.

That was when they found the monument. Made entirely of a material similar in substance silver yet shining a dazzling white. No pick or axe would chip away at it. Though it seemed to have a door, it would not open. No magic could force it to do so.

Shortly after discovering it, the Mind Flayer began speaking in tongues. This was exceptionally concerning to the Drow, because if a Mind Flayer goes crazy it tends to create a storm of psychic energy which can drag down the minds of its companions into the abyss. But before they could come up with a way to dispose of the creature, the Mind Flayer disappeared.

Three days later, the monument opened and out stepped Azor Khul, a large Dragonborn with a voice like a god’s, claiming to be the son of the mother of dragons. He quickly recruited the Drow, describing a plan in which he would build an army to take over the world of the light. He Anaduul, enamored of the Dragonborn, commanded her House to follow his lead and the Drow set out on their first mission: recruitment.

Recruitment in this case meant capture. They overpowered and kidnapped three powerful loners wandering the Elsir Vale: a Hobgoblin outcast named Ulwai; a Bugbear shaman; and a Goblin ranger. The ranger they didn’t realize had an unusual friend: a black dragon named Regiarix. Regiarix hunted down his friend to the Hidden Valley, but there was lured by Azor Khul to join the army. With their first dragon ally, recruitment ramped up. Regiarix knew the lairs of other dragons and by using wit and guile, enticed them to also come meet Azor Khul. Last of these was Varanthian, who became such a fervent believer of Azor Khul that she haughtily told others she was his mother.

Using dark magic and alchemical techniques, Azor Khul set up breeding pits underground to grow his army of Hobgoblins. He would keep his core army secret underground, sending his forces out through portals into the Elsir Vale, where they would establish front line camps. Varanthian, who knew the secret ways to the abandoned Yuan Ti pyramid and the monument from her many wanderings of the Underdark, would go back and forth between these camps and Azor Khul with reports from the front.

During all his time directing and growing his forcea, Azor Khul was also always searching for special crystals and statues, relics he said that would strengthen the bond between Tiamet and this plane, allowing her to eventually manifest. Most of these hunting parties came back successful. One of the ones which did not return was one sent to the Moonsea to hunt a Jade Statue. Azor Khul obsessed over that one for a while and the Drow and other forces were told to listen for any word of travelers carrying a Jade Statue.

This last bit the players aren't told by the Drow. While he has been talking, the has been leading the companions down the twisting hallways of the Yuan temple and he suddenly stops and pounds a fist against the wall.

"My brothers and sisters have turned their worship to Tiamet," Zaeintar says, his voice thick with anger and ruefulness. "They have all forgotten Lolth. All except me. My goddess protects me from Azor Khul's powers."

"What powers?" Aldric asks.

"His voice is like a vice in your mind," Zaeintar explains. "When he speaks, you want to listen. You want to do what he says. Still, it's no excuse to forget our Mistress of Spiders. Lolth will protect the faithful! That's why I need you."

"You want us to help dark elves?" Carrick asks, disdain clear in his voice.

"I want you to kill dark elves. You okay with that?" Zaeintar shoots back. "My people have betrayed Lolth by forgetting her. Death should be their reward. And then we need to assassinate Azor Khul."

Suddenly they are interrupted by a shout from a Drow guard patrol. Zaeintar curses and shoves the three companions in an alcove. "Stay here," he says and then calls out a greeting to the guards, pretending that all is well. "The prisoners have escaped? Then we need to find them!"

But as the companions huddle together there is suddenly a loud click and a wall slams shut in front of them, trapping them in the alcove. Then the alcove's floor opens beneath them and they fall into darkness.

The Voice

The players fall a long ways. It is more of a slide then a fall, as there is a sloping smooth stone floor underneath them. This slide deposits them in an empty chamber. Imoaza is the first to disentangle herself from the three of them and look around. She sees the carvings on the wall and deciphers them. "Egg chamber," she tells the others in her slow, quiet voice. "They would put prisoners in here, tie them up, and let the new hatchlings feast on them."

"And how do you know that?" Aldric asks.

"We still do it," Imoaza says, then notices Aldric is looking around in every corner, Blackrazor in his hand. "Oh you don't have to worry. There haven't been eggs here, I think, for a long time."

The egg chamber is indeed empty. A thick layer of dust confirms Imoaza's words: these chambers haven't been disturbed in ages. The companions move on to the next chamber and here they find something interesting. All along one wall is a series of twine-like and rope-like material, connecting down to a single box with a number of dials and buttons on it. Curious, the three start messing with the box and it begins to make noise. Static and beeps at first, then a voice speaks in the Yuan Ti tongue. Imoaza slaps Aldric’s hand away from the device before he can lose the voice. She starts to translate. The Yuan Ti speaking was a priest and he is speaking about communing with a god from the heavens, calling it down to visit upon them the true age of serpents. Then the message statics and changes... this time another Yuan Ti is screaming and saying that they were wrong, that the god they called has rained down fire upon them all, that the stars are collapsing and the Yuan Ti must take their most precious creations and flee while they can. Then the message ends up repeating one word over and over, as if stuck on it: RUN.

“Turn it off,” Imoaza says, suddenly shivering as the word repeats, burrowing into her subconscious. Aldric obliges, turning random dials and pressing buttons until suddenly there is a mighty burst of static and a voice erupts from the machine. It doesn’t speak common. Instead it is a sound that moves through them like a vibration, carrying with it malice and hunger. They can understand it, even without speech. You called me, it tells them, and I answer. You shall reap your reward for summoning me.

Each of them is drawn by the booming sound into their own minds. 

Aldric sees himself as a young boy. The young boy watches as his mother is dragged outside their small home and... used... by men wearing outfits marking them as those who are supposed to protect them in this large city. When his mother fights back and cuts one of the guards with a knife, they repay her by breaking her neck. Aldric is running then, screaming and leaping at the lead guard, the man who killed his mother, a man with scars all down his face and neck. The scarred man laughs and knocks Aldric so hard he falls unconscious.

Imoaza relives the final moments of her people, torn to shreds by the Thing they summoned from the stars, the Thing that now tells her of how it shredded her people’s flesh and devoured them. She hears the screams of the Yuan Ti, the priests desperately praying to their serpentine pantheon, a pantheon they abandoned for the Thing from the stars, the Thing that came as summoned but obeyed the rule of no other. She hears the Yuan Ti newborns, smells their fear, tastes the yolk in her mouth the way the Thing did as it sucked the eggs in the egg chamber dry. Her people fled from this place, taking what magics and relics they could, and never again did they reach such heights.

Carrick sees these visions, too, though he understands it less than Imoaza. He only understands that death came here and left destruction in its wake.

“Turn it off!” Imoaza screams and Aldric rushes to oblige, smashing the thing with Blackrazor until it fizzles into static and goes forever silent. The companions all stand around for a moment, breathing heavily.

“What in the hell was that?” Aldric asks the obvious question.

“The way my people died,” Imoaza responds.

“I saw that, too,” Carrick says and the two share their vision for Aldric. Aldric, for his part, tells them only that he saw something different.

“It is for me, not for you. And it has nothing to do with this place,” he insists.

Still, that is not the greatest mystery that this underground temple holds. As the three move on into the next room, they find the signs of all the devastation they were shown. Ancient skeletons of Yuan Ti origin, craters in the walls and floor, and trails of blood so long ago dried that they are no more but stains on silver. Silver, because there is no surface in these forgotten halls that is not made of gold or silver or some other precious material.

“A sign of my people’s greatness,” Imoaza says proudly and points out the incredible murals and runic carvings and their meaning.

Yet in the next room there is an object that she does not recognize and cannot explain. Surrounded by piles of skeletons is a box shaped like a sarcophagus, though with a clear surface that allows someone to look inside. Aldric draws close, braver than the others, Blackrazor held ready. He looks through the window.

And sees Carrick’s body lying inside.

No Trick

The body is no trick: Aldric has the others confirm that they see what he does. There, inside the glass and metal sarcophagus, is the body of Carrick--or at least a duplicate of him, naked and with closed eyes. Carrick is as stunned as any of them. He has no memory of anything that could explain this. And yet, as he approaches, he spots a metal tube on the ground and he instinctively knows what it is. Picking it up he activates the tube and it turns into a whip of fire, or something like fire: a line of concentrated heat that he expertly whips around him, leaving lines of light in the air around him.

“This is mine,” he says, and it is not about claiming the object. It is a statement of fact. “I built it.” Again, words that come without bidding, without him knowing what they signify.

The players cannot stay to contemplate for long. A roar announces the arrival of some new threat and they desperately have to find a way out of this tomb. They eventually come across the body of a dead Yuan Ti priest, his still robed skeleton slumped over an incantation circle. The circle was too swiftly made: its border is not properly closed. From quickly looking at his journal, Imoaza is able to tell that he was trying to summon something to fight the Thing from the stars. But whatever he summoned fell from his control and in fact is most likely the thing they are hearing roaring through the temple now, coming to find and kill the intruders.

In fact, Carrick spots it coming through the Tomb now: a long limbed horror standing nearly 12 feet tall, dragging its too long arms across the ground behind it as it comes, moaning and roaring. And there is no escape.

Or at least, at first it appears that way. Imoaza finds the hidden door in the tomb and begins trying to open it, but it is locked by some odd mechanism that she cannot understand.

“It’s not magic,” she says in frustration.

“Let me take a look,” Aldric says, but he makes no more sense of it.

Carrick is the last one to take a look and to his surprise he knows this is a lock and he knows how to open it, although he’ll need the combination. He begins frantically explaining how it works and that triggers Imoaza’s memory of something she saw in the priest’s journal. Showing him a picture in the journal, Carrick realizes it is the code to the lock and he enters it, revealing a small passage that they can fit through but the creature cannot. They dive through, followed by the beast’s long arm, which reaches and grabs for them through the hole but cannot reach them. It lets out a mournful howl and then crouches to stare at them through the hole, trying to push its way inside. After a moment it gives up but the players are not convinced it doesn’t know another way in. They look around them for a means of escape and are surprised when there is a whirring and clanking sound inside the room. A machine is humming to life, full of gears and pieces of equipment that looks alchemical in nature. They have no time to question it before a massive electrical spark lights up the room and a magical portal comes to life before them.

“Anywhere is better than here,” Aldric reasons and jumps through. The other two are quick to agree and step through after him, leaving the horror of this hidden area of the temple behind, though its mysteries will follow them.

As it happens, they don’t end up leaving the Yuan Ti temple, they only are teleported to its upper tiers. The temple is shaped like a pyramid and while the three are still underground, now they are outside of the pyramid, looking down from an upper balcony onto an incredible scene.

Which we will get to next time!

[everythingisbetterwithpirates]

Reality

It all began with a letter, hand delivered to Ryss by one of the Captains in the Shipping Company fleet. It read as follows:

“Miss Sparrow, I write with the intent purpose of asking you for a favor. I realize it is an odd request, but it is the only viable solution to my predicament. I told a friend I would set him up on a small date to celebrate his birthday since he is recently divorced. What he doesn't know is that we are all going to throw him a party on one of the Company ships. The girl who was set to be his date cancelled and I cannot find any other replacement. He is a lively man, but one that is, for the most part, a gentleman. Plus, I warned him of what would happen should he try to get too frisky.

Please meet a blond, blue eyed man named George at the center of Lion's Rest tonight at around seven in the evening. He will be the one in the red shirt and brown pants. Just look for the most charming smile in the world and you will find him. I promise to make it up to you however I possibly can. Gods, I'll do the impossible too. Since the party will take place at sea, I will need him to come down to the docks. There will be a small vessel at the very last dock. It is black with golden stripes.

At seven fifteen, you will tell him you have forgotten something at your place. I told him you were visiting and are currently sleeping in your ship. Keep talking to him and have him follow you into the room located inside, to the left. Once he is inside, lure him away from the door so that we may all surprise him."

                                                             M. Grimwald

The orders had been simple. To eliminate George by quiet and conventional means. Margharette stressed her plan with the goal of obtained smooth and productive results. However, this would serve a greater purpose. Though the last 'adventure' had been in the open world and with members of the Horde, Lakryss displayed levels of anxiety which were worrisome to Margharette. The former pirate had a soft spot for Ryss given her easygoing and amiable nature. Any who behaved like civilized people were treated as such and Sparrow was definitely in that category. However, as Marge lurked in the shadows in a corner beneath the stairs of this exclusive ship, she wondered on events to come...

{ Excerpt from Marge’s journal }

"Initially, I had planned to find an immoral wench whose priority was to get paid. It would mean a possible loose end, but given the success of previous expeditions, I felt confident in taking the risk. Those plans fell through and I had to improvise and in turn, take an even bigger jump. I chose Lakryss because she has the capability of being both charming 'and' intellectual. Someone who can easily hide in a crowd but still be found. Darling enough to hold a man's attention but not with obvious tactics. Someone who had no idea of what was going on.

As I stood in wait for Ryss and George, I felt a pang of guilt. This was a nice lady who had done no wrong. A true innocent in the eyes of the law and otherwise. I thought about pulling her out of the room the moment I put the barrel of my gun to George's head. That it would somehow lessen the blow -- but that was not the point of using 'her' for this. If I didn't break her in now, someone else would. Someone who might not give a damn about whether she lived or died in the process. With her tea shoppe flourishing and the city life continuing to be as hectic as always, I believe it was only a matter of time before Ryss found herself in a predicament of morals, values and survival. Might as well go through it with someone in her corner should the fight prove to be too brutal. I didn't pull her out -- not without an explanation."

The surprise party that had been waiting for the pair was quite different from what Marge had described in her letter. As soon as Lakryss convinced the man to step through the door and enter the small and cozy room, Margharette stepped in and revealed the true nature of this gathering. The small vessel required a minimal crew. The five other men who had been waiting in hiding for the signal to be given now untied the boat and set sail into the night. With her revolver aimed at the back of George's head, the party continued. Ryss had done a marvelous job at not cowering in the corner like a rat. She hadn't even screamed.

Margharette's smile lingered for a few moments after Lakryss took a seat, her expression soon replaced by serenity. The thought of screaming had been of great interest to George, but the man was too preoccupied with trying to not throw up all over himself. His charming facade was nowhere to be seen, only the fear in his eyes. He gagged a couple of times and even began to hyperventilate. "Let me begin by apologizing for luring you here under false pretenses, Lakryss. It wasn't an easy choice but I believe in my heart that it was the right one." Margharette softly spoke over her shoulder, keeping her gaze locked on George. Her free hand began to pat the man's sides and legs, looking for items that may be used to bring harm to others and discarding those of sentimental or trivial value.

The boat was quick to depart. Each small wave brought sway to the floor and Margharette eventually moved to sit behind the desk on the dark, leather chair. The curling arm rests hosted a wide variety of detail ranging from the floral to the abstract. A blade had been cast aside, along with a wallet and a small sack of coins. After pulling her chair, Margharette's left elbow came to rest on the wooden surface of the desk, revolver aiming at the side of George's head. "Are you here to kill me?" The man quietly asked, his gaze searching for Ryss' own. Silently, he pleaded for help, tightly gripping the arm rests of his own chair. Marge looked away from the woman to focus on George again, the corners of her lips curling upwards with a twisted grin.

"I am, George." Margharette reached under the desk, pulling a mug of coffee from a hidden nook and dipping the tip her finger to test it's warmth once the glove was pulled off by her teeth. "You've none other to blame but yourself." Marge quipped before licking her finger, pleased with the drink's temperature.

Meanwhile...

Ryss felt her stomach turning over...she had hoped, no she had prayed that she wouldn't again find herself in a situation like this. The first time had been lawful or so she kept telling herself. They 'd gone after an escaped criminal...he'd needed to be taken back in....but George...to Lakryss this man was innocent bystander. She didn't even know why Marge was doing any of this. Her lips parted to speak but nothing came out as she still refused to look up, her eyes on the wooden floor beneath her feet. Everything about her body language was an apology, she hadn't meant to play a hand in any of this...she had done this all to help, not to kill.

Without any help from Lakryss, George soon began to feel the ache of despair. His knuckles had grown white from the tense hold on the chair. Above them, the sound of something heavy and large being dragged along the deck could be heard. "I won't tell! I p-promise!" George spoke with more life in his tone. He was entering the bargaining stage of his fate. "I swear by my son's lives I won't tell a single soul!" he continued. Margharette shook her head and gripped the handle of her mug, finger grazing along the trigger. "No, Mister MacMiller. I am afraid that is no longer an option. You had the chance to do the right thing and inform the authorities, but instead chose to use your knowledge as leverage against the Company. A grievous offense against your alleged character."

After a long drink from her mug, Marge shivered and turned to look to Ryss, expression softening. "Miss Sparrow. As you are aware, the Company has many legitimate business transactions. It also deals with the illegitimate. As a maker and creator of herbal teas, you are well aware of the vices and aches people of all races suffer from on a daily basis. How the needs of the many can be satisfied by the demands of the few. Our darling boy George found a shipment of drugs that was misplaced and said he would alert the authorities if we did not give him three thousand gold." Her gaze shifted back to George who was visibly cringing. "You lost the highground the moment you decided to blackmail Mister Hudson,  darling." As if to drive her point further, Marge roughly jabbed the revolver against his head, causing it to tilt. "Then again, you wife left you because you beat her. I am not surprised you'd dip your toes into such insidious waters."

For Lakryss, the words all swarmed around like a deafening roar...even if everyone was speaking in a normal tone, the mans sniveling attempts at saving his own life finally spoke Lakryss to speak, if only to keep herself from bursting at the seems. She finally lifted her gaze, eyes opening as she looked to Marge, not even seeing George in that moment as he was already dead. She knew that. No amount of pleading or bargaining would save him from what was coming. "Marge...Ms. Grimwald please....I don't want to see this...I don't want to know this..." Her own voice shook, her hands nearly tearing at the bed spread as she stood up and looked to the door. "I'd like to step outside."

Marge's gaze met Ryss' own, steady and locked in place as she listened and processed the information being given. It was the reaction she expected, but still stirred something in Marge's heart. "Not before you understand why you out of all people are here." was her soft spoken response before taking another long sip from her cup of coffee. A thoughtful and heavy silence settled over Marge, the woman turning to look away and studying the view through the windows. The lights from the city were beginning to disappear, meaning they had created enough distance. The moment of truth was fast approaching. "You were given a taste of violence recently. One that left you shaken."

Her gaze snapped back to Ryss in full force. "A natural reaction from a gentle person such as yourself, but one that could be detrimental to your health. This Company caters to many fields and there will always be competition. Some will try to reach victory through numbers and others such as this fellow.." Again her finger grazed along the trigger of her weapon. ".. Who will succumb to less desirable means of weakening or obstructing our business. Your honesty will -always- be appreciated, but so will your silence. You will see horrible things in this world, Lakryss." Marge leaned against the back of her chair, the cup held in the air in front of her and the left arm extending to adjust her aim and keep it true. "I will not dare kill anyone in front of you, Ryss. Not unless it's your neck I am trying to save, or that of someone who has a neck worth saving. And when you walk out of this door, you will be faced with two options. You can either return and tell someone, or you can return and take a long, relaxing bubble bath. Keep in mind.."

The cup was moved closer to her lips. "You were the last person seen with George. If you go tell someone he's dead, you'd be the first suspect. In fact, I believe there is written evidence of your plans to meet him? And of mine to throw him a surprise birthday party to which he never arrived." Margharette drank, the mug almost empty. "However, this is not a path I wish to take. What happened here tonight does not mean I will ask you to kill, but.. If I say duck, I need you to duck. If I tell you to look the other way, I need you to do that too. In time you will see that blood is only spilled when it is warranted, Miss Sparrow. Nothing more. Nothing less. Business will business."

It was then that Lakryss stepped out of the room, leaving George to face his fears in solitude. Margharette finished her cup of coffee, setting the mug on the desk once the door was closed. "You play the part of a sniveling weasel very well, George." she mused before standing and making her way around the desk. Through her motions, her gun was kept aimed at the man, leaving no room for escape. "W-What?" he mumbled, his beautiful blue eyes lifting and meeting Margharette's own. "You're not going to kill me?" George asked with a quivering lip, a faint shimmer of hope appearing in his expression. 

"Oh, that reminds me."

{ OOC NOTE: Created in part with posts from actual, in game rp. }

@lakryss-sparrow