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twdmusicboxmystery · 3 years

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10x19: One More - Analysis

Okay, what did everyone think of 10x19? I really liked it a lot. I’m still trying to get a handle on what everything meant, and I think there’s a lot more to be had than what we see on the surface, but it was a really tragic and moving episode. I got lots of messages from people who watched it early and immediately noticed the Bethyl callbacks.

So, I’m going to do something slightly different this week. Today, I’m going to focus on those—all the obvious callbacks—and tomorrow I’ll do more of a forecasting post about what I think this episode means for the future and where I think it’s going.

***As always, spoilers abound below for 10x19. Don’t read until you’ve watched!!!***

I kind of figured from the description that this would be a case of Gabe and Aaron = Beth and Daryl. And that’s definitely true. I’m going to call this a mixture between Still callbacks and Consumed.

Still, because of all the callbacks I’m sure you noticed at least a few of. And Consumed because it’s two friends out looking for something. Actually, the first thing that made me think of Consumed is that they kept showing really sad things accompanied by really sad music, which reminded me of Consumed. I know for most people in our fandom, that’s not our favorite episode because it’s a Daryl/Carol episode, but just for the imagery and music and sadness of the dystopian world, I really love it. And this episode was similar to that.

So, it starts by showing some—both white and yellow. This flower

Is an Easter Lily. Yeah, not kidding. EASTER Lily.

Of course there are both white and yellow flowers. The yellow ones are reminiscent of the ones we saw in the cemetery in Alone.

Then we see Aaron and Gabe surrounded by walkers. When they start killing the walkers, its shows blood hitting all the flowers in a really kind of graphic way. I was like, “ew.” But at one point, they also hit a green grasshopper.

So, I was thinking that blood hitting the flowers and the grasshopper could possibly represent Beth being shot. And there are plenty of blond walkers to be had in this episode.

Aaron and Gabe arrive at a particular house. On Maggie’s map, it says this should be a two-story house with a root cellar, and she wants them to check the cellar for supplies. But when they get there, all that’s left is a doorframe with a swinging door and the chimney. The rest has been burnt, and by the looks of it, fairly recently. This is where they see the three charred skeletons with the pink flowers growing around them.

Couple of things. 1) This is a foreshadow for later in the episode. It has to do with the 2 stories, and I’ll get to it at the end. 2) The charred skeletons are a bit like what Daryl saw in 6x06, which was chalk full of Beth symbolism. 3) The pink flowers. (Pink Theory.)

In terms of foreshadows, this really screams the CRM to me, because of the burnt skeletons and the ties to 6x06, and remember that in 5x09, the radio voice (Andy) talked about the republic and a group that was setting people on fire. It’s like that’s one of their tactics.

One thing I didn’t realize from the trailer is that these are not three adult skeletons. It’s two adults and a child, all with their arms wrapped around each other. There’s a huge theme in this episode of families dying and specifically children dying. (Which is actually another tie to Consumed; remember the mother and child walker they find, and Daryl burns? Well, here we have two parents and a child, all who’ve been burnt. Yeah, not a coincidence, folks.)

We have two or three representations of families or children dying in this episode. I was thinking about the family in the gas station in 4a. I don’t think any of theme were children, but Daryl said something about them holding hands and taking themselves out Kumbaya style. And a lot of the skeletons we see here seem to be either taken out by their family members, or else they’ve committed suicide. There’s the child walker Carol and Daryl saw in 5x06. There was the creepy nursery near Denise just before she died. Etc. And it’s really very dark, ominous symbolism. Very sad.

Then Gabe pulls out an egg timer (another one of those), sets it for 5 seconds, and lobs it into the field. When it rings, tons of walkers spring up. So, it’s their way of checking before walking into tall grass. In this case, it shows the dial turning as the timer counts down. It definitely feels like a symbolic countdown to something big.

There’s also huge bullet theme. And usually single bullets. Mays makes them play Russian Roulette, which is all about one single bullet in the chamber. But there are tons of times when they pick up single bullet casings, or we see bullet holes in cars or walls or cans. Just a huge theme.

Okay, let’s get specific. They come upon a line of cars, which is really important. But just before that, Gabriel sees basically two piles of bones. I could tell not all of them were human. Some were too big. And I thought they might be horse bones. @bluesandbeth told me she thought they were two horses with their riders still on top. And she’s right. I couldn’t tell when I first looked at them. But once she said it, I could see it. It’s like a horse lying on it’s side, with the rider still straddling the horse, also lying on his side. And they died that way.

Now, other than knowing that we’ve definitely seen horses in the show before—think Buttons—I wasn’t sure what to make of it. Until @wdway said something interesting. You know the two horseback riders we see in the opening credits? Me and my fellow theorists are always going back and forth about who they are. I originally thought Rick and Michonne, which is the obvious conclusion. But @wdway told me she thinks this is actually Rick and Beth.

And you know, that makes a lot of sense since we didn’t see these new opening credits until Rick disappeared into the CRM. So, they could represent the two missing sheriffs.

And that makes a lot of sense with these bones. Because this scene with the cars has about 20 callbacks to Beth and what we think happened during the missing 17 days. So the bones represent the two riders from the opening credits, which represent the two missing sheriffs.

Now, onto the cars. One has the trunk open (Still) one has the side door hanging open (5x09). And there’s a van where Aaron sees a female walker in the front seat, which is kind of like what we saw in 5x09. Gabe finds a can of food, but there’s a bullet in it, which probably means the food either leaked out or spoiled.

But the really interesting thing is that him opening this trunk and looking in is very reminiscent of Maggie opening the trunk and finding the Beth walker in 5x10. So if we can equate those two things, both times, it represents opening the trunk and Beth being inside. In 5x10, she was represented by the walker. Here, by the can of food with a bullet hole in it, just like Beth got shot in the head.

Another thing I was reminded of was in 6x04, when Morgan sees the man and woman and she puts down a can of food and a bullet on top and says, “Thank you.” I think this symbolism may be related to that.

Then they go to the MiniMart. On the outside, it feels like the Big Spot or else maybe the gas station where Rick and Daryl met Jesus. In fact, much like in 6x10, there is a post for cigarettes with a price of $4.30.

When it pans out, there’s a coffee pot lying on its side (important because it’s something that water runs through, and we’ve seen a coffee theme as well) a walker with a bullet hole in its forehead, a bright yellow magazine rack by the door, etc. And this was a place you could play the lottery, so there was a poker theme going on.

Okay, the ARM symbolism is alive and well. My fellow theorists and I have been obsessing about what the arm symbolism points to ever since Leah threw the walker arm at Daryl. In this episode, a walker sticks both hands out of the door, and Gabe hacks them both off, around the forearm/elbow area.

Then, another walker gets its head and torso out and Aaron stabs it in the head. He and Gabe both grab an arm to try and yank it out of the way so they can get by, but the arms (really the hands because it separates at the forearms) just come off. And really, it’s just the skin, not the bones that comes off, but still. (Ew.)

This is where Gabriel goes up on the roof and we get the scene from the promo.

Okay, so when I first saw the promo, I immediately said this was a Grady callback. The “SAVE US” is something that could only be seen from the sky. Like…from a helicopter? Plus there were some important scenes on the roof of Grady. There’s a walker that’s handcuffed. So it’s an imprisonment theme. And Grady was all about imprisonment. And finally, we have what looks to be two lovers, dead, but entwined together on a mattress. I was thinking that if this is meant to represent Grady, that might represent Beth and Daryl. The love that never happened because Beth “died” and the relationship died with her. Or something equally tragic.

But there are other things we can connect this to as well. First off, what you don’t see in this shot is that there are two other walkers also tied to a second pole, but neither of them are animated. They’re just corpses. So we have a grand total of three prisoners here. If you look closely, the man lying on the mattress has a gun in his hand. Which suggests this might have been a murder/suicide situation.

It’s reminiscent of Merle being handcuffed on the roof in season 1, which was just before he went missing. It also reminded me of the strange, unexplained handcuffs Daryl found in 8x02 in that office building. Those were never explained. But the point is, it’s a handcuffs/imprisonment theme.

A big part of this is a foreshadow for the end of this episode and what happens with Mays. But given that he and his bro are one-off characters only appearing in this episode, I think this must foreshadow more than that, too.

We don’t actually see the inside of this place because Gabe goes to the roof, takes the ladder down (Ladder Theory) and then comes out the front door, but tells Aaron there’s nothing they can use in there.

Then they talk about going home. Aaron and Gabe been out for 2 weeks, which is definitely a Heath/Tara thing. In S6, they’d been out scouting for supplies for 2 weeks, and that was just before Heath disappeared into the CRM. Just saying.

Okay, then Gabe falls in the mud. Here’s the thing: we really thought Gabriel might die in this episode. Obviously not. But I do see some fairly clear death omens for him here. Of course I can’t be sure of anything, but I still think his death is probably close.

First is the fact that he trips at all. Anytime anyone really faceplants on the show, it sort of shows a coming catastrophe for them, which is often death. Beth face-planted in the elevator shaft in 5x04. Spencer fell off the zipline in S6, and died less than a season later. You get the idea. When, when Aaron lifts the walker off him, it leaves some intestines (ew) on his stomach, and the camera focuses on them for a moment. Just felt like a death omen to me.

I will say, however, that anyone who’s read the comics knows that this feels a lot like they might do exactly what they did there for his death. And they don’t usually do that. They almost always remix it in some way. So this could also just be a nod to his comic book death. We’ll have to see where they go with it.

But this scene is super interesting. It feels like EXACTLY the same thing we saw in 10x18. We have Gabriel’s map being ruined, and then a huge storm that immediately follows. And there’s Beth symbolism (talk of a water tower, etc). So I thought it was interesting that we saw it twice, in two subsequent episodes. Also, for most of the episode they’re kinda sorta trying to get to the water tower. As though water tower is end game or something.

Then they get to a warehouse that wasn’t on the map. Gabe finds the bibles inside. I’m still forming a theory about the passage he opens up to, but we all know they use biblical symbolism in this show a lot, and especially around Beth. But remember they found a bible in the barn in Alone. Later, Mays says the pages are torn because he uses them for toilet paper. (Toilet Paper Theory.)

Then we get to the really good Bethyl callbacks. Aaron and Gabriel eat pork, drink alcohol, play poker (not exactly the same as Beth and Daryl’s drinking game, but it’s a game), Aaron has a “bullshit” line, Gabriel shows an 8 and a 2 card, Aaron says he needs to “take a piss,” etc.

I did notice something while watching, but wasn’t sure what to make of it until AK was talking at the end of the episode. It shows one hand of poker and Aaron folds, which means Gabe wins. This is where he shows a 2 and an 8, which isn’t anything in poker. So, he won the hand on a bluff. And I went, huh. Wonder what that means. But it was a foreshadow of what happens with Mays. I’ll get to that.

Gabe has an “I’m serious” mention. In one of the bigger parallels, the dialogue is not the same, but the meaning is. So, different words, same meaning. Gabriel says his line from the promo about how evil people aren’t the exception, they are the rule. That really disturbs Aaron and he says, “okay, now I’m sober.” It’s the equivalent of “you ain’t a happy drunk at all.” And then he drives it home by saying, “I’m going to go up to the room and pitch myself off head first.”

And THEN—get this—he picks up a golf club and smacks a golf ball at FG, hitting him in the foot. Gabe says, “ow.” So not only a golf/Still reference, but I think it specifically ties back to when Daryl uses the club to kill the walker and hits Beth with the gore.

They say in TTD that they actually did an extended golf sequence where Aaron and Gabe set up this huge mini-golf course thing, but most of it got cut from the episode for time. So there was originally a massive golf theme in this episode.

Of course Mays shows up to take them captive. He shows Gabriel Aaron’s metal arm. So, more arm symbolism.

Without going into tons of detail here, let’s just recognize that the entire theme of this episode is whether or not there are good people in the world still. (Beth line.) Mays thinks all people are evil but Gabe and Aaron prove him wrong by refusing to the point the gun at one another during the Russian Roulette game. There’s a line where Gabriels screams at him that he needs to remember who he was. (“who you were.”) Which is a direct parallel to Beth telling Daryl to stay who he is. Which is a good person. So it’s a similar theme being explored here.

At one point, Mays says, “there’s nothing left in this world but thieves and murderers.” It’s not the same line Glenn says in 5x02, but the wording of the first part is exactly the same. “There’s nothing left in this world that isn’t hidden.”

We also definitely get an “illusion/hallucination” reference here. I noticed Gabriel said (and I’m paraphrasing; didn’t write down the exact words) that Mays was so bitter, and had so convinced himself that everyone in the world was evil, that he’d blinded himself to the truth and couldn’t see that he was about to kill two very decent guys (Gabe and Aaron). So, it just struck me as a you-can’t-see-the-truth-that’s-right-in-front-of-you theme. Plus, maybe a see no evil theme?

Another theme that jumped out at me is whether or not they are the same as him. At one point, he says, “you’re so close,” and I think he means to becoming a villain, like he is. During their fight, he says they’re the same and Gabriel rebukes him, saying they aren’t like him.

We’ve seen that theme a lot before. It’s like a theme of the bad guys trying to make the good guys like them, and the good guys have to prove they’re better than that. So, Crazy Tattoo Guy at Terminus came running out of his train car yelling, “we’re the same,” before he died. Joe Claimer tried hard to convince Daryl that he was like them and one of them, even though he wasn’t. And we could even tie this to Beth saying, “I’m not like you or them, but I made it.” Slightly different meaning in that case, but the verbiage is similar.

(BTW, notice in the pic above, Aaron has a head wound, bleeding from exactly the spot Beth was shot.)

And surprisingly, they actually manage to convince Mays that they’re right and he puts away the gun and unties Aaron, looking as if he’ll let them go. He unties Aaron…and then Gabe kills him. Pretty brutally.

So this is the second reason I think this might be a death knell for Gabe. And it also ties to the bluff in the poker game. AK said that everything Gabe said to Mays about him still believing in God and the bible was a bluff. So we’re left wondering if it was a complete lie, and Gabe has entirely lost his faith. Now, a crisis of faith does line up with Daryl in Inmates/Still, but at the very least, Gabe is in a really dark place. But he hides it well. It doesn’t look that way to others. But I feel like he’s spiraling and being super self-destructive, and this might soon lead to his death.

Remember when he killed Dante? It’s a lot like that. And at one point, Aaron says that Gabe doesn’t mean that (all the negative stuff he says) because his mind is just really full of the Whisperers still, but not all people are like the Whisperers. So, I think the idea is that dealing with the Whisperers really messed Gabe up.

But of course they go upstairs, or up a level and find Mays’ twin brother. And the thing is, Gabe wasn’t entirely wrong to kill him. I mean, in terms of Gabe’s inner arc, obviously he was being really, disturbingly brutal. But Mays was keeping his twin brother a prisoner upstairs. We see two bodies—that of a woman and child—each with a bullet hole in their foreheads. Which is obviously reminiscent of Beth. But the brother also says Mays “made him play.” Which means he did the Russian Roulette thing, but unlike Gabe and Aaron, he didn’t shoot himself but rather turned the gun on his wife and child and eventually shot both of them.

So neither of these guys was exactly Alexandria material. Then the brother gets ahold of Gabe’s gun and shoots himself. Aaron and Gabe leave. On their way out, it shows a photograph of the two brothers laughing together, clearly before the apocalypse.

Okay, let’s talk about this scene. This is what I meant was foreshadowed by Maggie’s two-story building description. Gabe and Aaron found a 2-story building where a family died together. You could say the same thing here of Mays and his brother.

I’m still not entirely sure what to make of the evil twin/evil sibling symbols. I think it must foreshadow something, and we just don’t understand what it points to yet. We saw it with Lizzie/Mica, with Noah’s twin brothers (and the picture of Mays and his brother is very reminiscent of that) and now here. So it’s really fascinating to me, and I’ve talked about it before, but it’s obviously symbolism that’s still in play and that we don’t entirely understand. For more on this, see the 5x09 Post I recently wrote.

But here’s the other thing about this scene. It was this scene in particular that reminded me of the handcuffs Daryl found in S8.

Because Mays’ bro was handcuffed in the same way. Near those cuffs in S8, there was also what might have been a dogfood sandwich, which is exactly what Daryl was fed at the Sanctuary in 7x03. So you see what I mean? It’s a whole imprisonment theme, with similar symbols around it. And dog symbol always = Sirius = Beth, which is why I think it has to have something to do with her. Then, I saw this:

Guys, this is the exact same brand of dog food we saw with Daryl at the Sanctuary. It’s called A-OK.

And what does it mean? I’m not sure, but consider this: even in 4x01, Beth had a lot of imprisonment symbols in her cell. A bird cage, a no exit sign, a garden gnome. And if Grady was tied to the CRM, and was absorbed by them, then Beth may have been a prisoner of the CRM for like 8 years, now. And even putting her aside, Rick has been their prisoner for 6 years. That much is confirmed in the show. So I think this points to the CRM in one way or another. It’s about a long imprisonment term, but is tied to Sirius and the return.

In the last scene, Gabe and Aaron walk through a field and they are coming up on the water tower, though it’s still in the distance. One of them says it’s the last place on the map. And I think that’s significant. So, I had a few different thoughts about how we could interpret this.

So, as I already said, Beth = water = endgame. But we also know the CRM is purifying water. So CRM = endgame. What I mean is, maybe it’s saying that the CRM is the last huge battle they’ll have to fight, and maybe then they’ll get the world back. And we’ve kind of thought that for a while. That they’ve been hinting at this group and this war, since season 1 when Rick saw the helicopter in Atlanta. And Beth will be a big part of it.

I also think we may be getting lots of hints of them losing Alexandria here. So it might be a matter of losing one more home or finding one more home. Something like that. If the CRM is the “one more” in the title… well, at first, Gabe says, “two more,” and then eventually “one more.” So I’m thinking two more big arcs. The first is the Commonwealth. The second “one more” is the CRM. But I think that will last for several seasons.

It also occurred to me that the “one more” could also be a death omen for Gabriel. One more place. One more battle. One more episode? And then he’s done. But all of this is just conjecture. Me brainstorming ideas.

One other thing I wrote down is that AK said the bullet in the gun in the Russian Roulette game represented one last trial, and would this be the bullet that will break them? I thought that was interesting, especially in terms of Beth’s loss breaking Daryl.

Okay, lets go back to what I said at the beginning. Obvious callbacks to Bethyl and Still, and lots of things suggesting her imminent return. Since the water tower = Beth and Gabe and Aaron were kind of searching for it the whole episode, you can see how that parallels 5x06, Consumed. But I also think it foreshadows the spinoff with Carol and Daryl leaving together to go search for Beth, even if they don’t know it initially. The fact that Aaron and Gabe were originally searching for something else (food/supplies) but sort of ended up aiming for the water tower here is probably purposeful.

Bottom line? This still points toward Beth being very close. I’ll do more general forecasting tomorrow. Thoughts?

#beth greene #beth greene lives #beth is alive #beth is coming #td theory #td theories #team delusional #team defiance #beth is almost here #bethyl

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seemslegitflapjacks · 3 years

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Chapter 2, The Neighbors

When I woke up, It was already the next day. The obnoxious sun glaring at me through the curtainless window. I groaned, sitting up, my back aching from sleeping on the floor. I looked, seeing Rambo pawing at the door, asking to be let out. I sat up, kicking my way out of the sleeping bag, opening the door for the massive dog, who shoved his way out the door.

“Jeff! Wake up darlin and help us with the boxes please!” I heard my mom holler from downstairs.

I smiled, hearing my mom’s voice first thing in the morning was the best. Even if it was her telling me to grab scratchy cardboard boxes and carry them back and forth.

“Coming mama!” I hollered back, running down the stairs so fast I nearly fell.

“Hey raggamuffin.” My mom chuckled, ruffling up my messy head of hair.

“Hey mama.” I smiled back, hugging her, my mom returning my embrace.

“Ok, now go help your daddy and your brother with the boxes. Your boxes have your name on it baby.” My mom told me, giving me a kiss on the head as she shooed me away.

I walked outside, taking a few good seconds to adjust to the bright sun. I couldn’t remember the last time I’ve ever been outside when it was so bright. It was probably a California thing, hell if I know.

I kept walking to the moving truck, walking up the ramp, seeing my dad pass by with boxes in his hands.

“Mornin’ champ.” He greeted as he passed.

I gave my dad a wave back, searching for the boxes with my name written on them. After digging a bit, I found one of them. I carried it into my room, doing the same with the rest of my boxes. Back and forth, up and down the stairs. I honestly couldn’t tell whether I was running suicides or moving. It kept me busy though.

I had scratches from the cardboard all over my forearms. My arms and back felt so strained from constantly crouching down to pick up stuff. The constant back and forth up the stairs also took a bit of my energy. But it wasn’t as bad as soccer and lacrosse. Those were honestly way worse with the constant running.

After I had set the last box down in my room, I heard my mom call me from downstairs.

“Jeff! Come down please we have some neighbors!” My mom yelled, to which I rushed down the stairs.

Once I was outside, we were met by a young woman and her son. She had a slim deer like face with freckles and big doe eyes. Her son was about five or six, he has scruffy brown hair with big hazel green doe eyes and freckles.

“Hey, I’m Barbara, and this is my son, Billy.” The tall slim lady smiled, her hand patting her young son’s shoulder.

“Hi Barbara, my name’s Margaret, this is my husband Peter, and these two boys right here are my sons, Jeff and Liu.” My mom spoke, a smile on her face, our father matching her smile as the three of them shook hands.

“Hi I’m Billy!” The little kid blurted out, shoving out his hand towards my twin and I.

“Hey Billy, I’m Jeff, this is my twin Liu.” I smiled, shaking his tiny hand, the kid’s jaw dropping.

‘Mommy! They’re twins!” He told his mom, pulling on the edge of her shirt.

‘Oh! Your boys really are so alike Margaret!” Barbara replied, my mom laughing.

“You should’ve seen Jeff when he had short hair, couldn’t tell one from the other.” Our mother chuckled.

The three adults talked for a while, discussing random stuff. The conversation drew on for so long I knew my mom had already made a new best friend. I remember when I had to literally sit in the candle aisle at Wal-mart for a whole hour because my mom couldn’t stop talking to a coworker of hers. I love my mom but she’s gonna be the death of me someday I swear.

“Nice meetin’ y’all, see y’all later!” Our mom waved, finally, alas, I didn’t have to listen to my mom ramble about my brother and I.

Once we were back inside, I saw our cat Chanel laying on the couch. I smiled, quickly scooping up the little kitty in my arms, he let out a surprised meow, but instantly started purring when he realized it was me. I scratched his ears as I held him on the couch. My parents were talking in the kitchen, while my brother was attempting to figure out how to get the TV plugged up and connected to cable.

“You know It’d be nice if you helped me instead of petting the cat dude.” Liu told me, shooting me a dirty look.

“Sorry but I’m not willing to get electrocuted.” I clapped back.

Liu rolled his eyes, “You’re not gonna get electrocuted you wuss-” just then, almost on clue, the outlet shocked. Liu making a weird yelp noise, holding his finger.

“See? I’m not finna play ding-dong-ditch with God’s door dumbass.” I told him, sticking out my tongue.

“Shut up Rapunzel-” He snapped, embarrassed.

I rolled my eyes, continuing to pet Chanel, who was almost half asleep. My mom returned, turning to help my brother configure cable wires. The TV eventually flicked on, Liu grabbing the remote, changing the channel to some random show. Probably some white trash rich people show, House wives of nobody fucking cares. I hated the shows, but they were also entertaining.

At some point, my mom had turned it to the news. The reporter talking about a grizzly murder that had happened the night before. The body of a convicted child abuser was found strung up and gutted in the woods. The body was mutilated in all sorts of ways. Apparently the murderers had also smacked him around like a pinata. That was gruesome. Like, being a human pinata sounded painful. It wouldn’t even be that exciting, I mean, you don't even get candy you just get teeth n’ stuff.

We had dinner, which was just door dash Steak Escape. I grabbed Chanel, taking the little siamese cat upstairs to my room, plopping the cat down on my bed. Quickly walking into my bathroom, taking a shower.

I sat, letting the skin boiling water rain down on me. I closed my eyes, leaning my head up, the shower water making my forehead numb. I heard static fuzz up in my ears, slowly getting louder and louder. Before I opened my eyes, it had completely stopped. I quickly washed my hair, making sure I got it all before I lathered myself up in body wash, watching the soap rinse down into the drain.

I noticed the water turning pinkish red, quickly putting the back of my hand up to my face. Only to see blood. Shit, I was having another nosebleed. I’d been having a lot lately, they’d bleed until I started to hear static again. I didn’t wanna tell my parents, they’d think I was lying. Who would believe something like that anyways? Like, ‘Oh hey mom I hear static and everytime I do my nose starts gushing blood.’ Like my mom would totally believe that. I stepped out, quickly pinching my nose as I leaned over the sink. The static became louder and louder. It hurt so bad, it was ringing in my ears like a siren. I moved my ears back, trying to drown it out by making the blood in my ears rumble. But it didn’t stop. That’s when I gagged, hacking and choking, before a slug of blood splattered into the sink. Yuck.

I let go of my no longer bleeding nose, My hands stained bright red from the blood as it began to dry up. I turned on the sink, running my hands up under the water. Quickly grabbing a towel to dry myself off. I looked at myself in the mirror. My skin pale and yellowish, I felt cold and clammy. The skin on my arms splotchy with red. I looked sick as a dog. The bags under my eyes a dark purple brown. I looked disgusting, like actually nasty. I thought showers were supposed to make you feel and look better. Clearly today’s shower decided to nerf me.

I walked out, Chanel meowing loudly as he waited outside the door. The needy bastard wanting to be given attention. I nudged him away, grabbing some basketball shorts and a random t-shirt, bouncing up onto my bed. Chanel jumping up. The small cat meowing as he walked on my stomach, shoving his forehead onto my hand as I pet him. Chanel cured up on my lap purring until I got tired of petting him and fell asleep. Tomorrow was gonna be one hell of a day.

#creepypasta #jtk #creepypasta jtk #jeff woods #jeff the killer #liu woods #homicidal liu #alternate universe #my au #rewrite #creepypasta fandom #writers on tumblr #writing #chapter

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txladyj-blog · 4 years

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Chapter 4 - This Time Around

a Daryl Dixon x OFC collaboration written by @xmistressmistrustx

Rating: Explicit

Relationship: Daryl Dixon/Original Female Character

Tags: Friendship, Friends to Lovers, Awkwardness, Awkward Flirting, Awkward Crush, Fluff and Humor, Angst and Humor, Mild Smut, Strong Language, Eventual Sex, Eventual Romance, Slow Burn, Canon Divergence, Some Canon Scenes and Dialogue

Chapters 15/?

Before the turn, Jess had packed her car for her annual visit to the same Renaissance Faire she’d been attending with her friends for the last five years. It was a much-anticipated event for her and her collection of costumes had grown into an impressive variety of elaborate garments. Being indecisive about which ones to take with her was always an issue and so on this occasion, she’d crammed her car with as many clothes as possible, along with a few casual outfits that she kept in the trunk anyway due to many, spur of the moment road trips to see friends and visit conventions across the state. Her best friend, Ben had made fun of her for never being able to make a decision when it came to clothing and for always being prepared for anything. 'Just in case' was her favorite phrase and it was usually met with Ben replying with 'just in case of what, exactly?". Little did she know that the car journey to the Faire would be the last time the two of them would ever argue over what music to play in the car, what greasy food they would start the day with and where was the best place to park. It would be the last time she'd ever laugh at one of his cheesy jokes or tell him not to bother checking out any cute girls, because he was so forgetful he wasn't likely to remember he had a girlfriend if he ever managed to bag one. Two hours after the car door slammed and they began their final journey together, Jess had watched in utter horror as a Walker tore out his jugular and chomped on it like it was eating a burger.

Her interest in such activities and active participation in events that required outfit changes in meant she was lucky enough to not only have more than one change of clothing, but also a backpack big enough to hold her journal and a couple of books. Unlike some of the others at the camp, Jess had the luxury of being able to change her clothes every day and therefore, made the effort to help out with the laundry where she could. When Rick and some of the others returned from the city with bags full of clothing, the laundry duties increased and meant that Jess found herself with a job and a way of contributing to the group.

Her superhero and cult film T-shirts were both an entertaining talking point with Carl and a source of ridicule to the likes of Sarah and Jodie. While Daryl also enjoyed making fun of her for them, his lighthearted mockery only resulted in debates about which was the better character in the films they'd both seen and her crush on him intensifying to a dangerously consuming level. She blushed around him. Stared at him so much he continuously caught her and felt a slither of drool escaped her lips when she saw him emerge from the water one day, shirt soaked and stuck to his body. One of her eyebrows had shot up to the sky so fast she had little control over it. She held her breath and let herself indulge as he ruffled his hair with one hand, flicking drops of water everywhere. Jess could only liken it to a scene from some kind of 80's romance movie, where the unpopular, dorky girl falls for the ridiculously attractive bad boy that smokes too much.

Stood in front of him in a bright yellow Pulp Fiction T-shirt and her jeans, her face was expectant and waiting for an explanation, she squinted in the sun and propped a hand over her forehead. Heat beat down on her head, her scalp burning. She wished that she’d picked up a baseball cap when she’d left her apartment for the Faire that day.

“Alright, don’t freak out.” Daryl told her. “Wait here”

She sighed and tapped her foot while crossing her arms. Information about the days expedition was minimal. He was taking her to the woods and she wasn't to argue or he'd push her off of the RV. When he turned and disappeared into the woods, he left her alone around five feet from the tree line. After a few minutes, she began to slowly wander back and forth, stopping occasionally to crane her neck and check for movement in the dull light of the trees.

This better not be some kind of stitch up. She thought.

She knew it must have been at least fifteen minutes before the rustling of leaves and the crunching of twigs beneath boots caught her attention. Along with the snarling of a Walker. Her heart rate quickened. Instinctively, she took a couple of sizable steps back and frantically scanned the ground for something sharp with which to defend herself. A part of her was cross with Daryl for having left her here in danger of being seen by a hungry, walking corpse that would make a quick meal out of a slow, chubby girl with no means to defend herself.

I hope I taste like acid when it bites me.

Seeing nothing to use as a weapon on the ground, she looked back up to see Daryl bunding a Walker out of the woods. He had tied a belt around its neck which he used to keep it in line like some kind of macabre, oversized dog and was shoving it along in front of him. Both of its arms had been hacked off at the elbows and the bloody stumps waved about like two coagulated, beef patties.

Jess was rooted to the spot, paralyzed by fear and totally confused. Daryl grunted as he pushed the Walker against a tree and wrapped the remainder of the belt around the trunk, fastening the corpse to the tree. It bucked and gnashed its teeth at him as he stepped back, bloody drool seeping from its jaws and pooling at its feet.

Daryl beckoned her over with his hand “C’mon. S’alright.”

“Ha-have you lost your fucking mind?!” She gasped. “What are you going to do? Feed it a bone and teach it to sit?!”

“No, smartass.” He huffed. “I’m gonna teach ya how to kill one of these things.”

Her enlarged; terrified eyes stared at him in disbelief. “Why?” she asked.

She thought she saw him swallow hard before he locked eyes with her and took longer than she was expecting to answer her. The Walker’s noises now drowned out by her mind racing and the panic welling in her chest.

“Case I ain't around.” He replied quietly.

“Why would you not be around?”

“I dunno. I killed seven of these things in a day yesterday. Numbers are goin’ up. We’re either gonna have to move or we’re all gonna have to know how to fight. Ya gotta know how to do this, Jess. Ya ain’t safe if ya don’t.”

Is he saying he cares about me here?

Unsheathing his knife, he felt its weight in his hand for a moment before holding it out to her. She gingerly took hold of it, the heavy handle providing it with the majority of its weight. The blade was sharp and shiny. She often saw him sharpening it as an almost mindless task while sitting around the campfire.

“You right-handed?” He asked.

“Yes”

He moved behind her and it took all of her self-awareness not to flinch when she felt his fingers curl around her left wrist. He lifted it up and she slowly turned her head to see her pale flesh in his tanned grasp.

“Get closer” He rasped in her ear, encouraging her to step forwards by pulling on her wrist “use this hand on it’s forehead to steady it.”

Her breath caught in her throat when he took hold of her other wrist, sliding his hand up further to move her fingers into the correct position around the knife. The warmth from his torso hummed against her back.

“Raise ya hand up, good n’strong. Move closer.”

But Jess stilled. Her feet were rooted to the spot at the sight of the monstrosity before her. She wondered how Daryl had managed to hack off both of its arms and wrestle it out of the woods by himself. She shook her head and swallowed a deep breath.

“No” She squeaked “Please, I don’t want to go near that thing.”

With his hands still tightly gripped around her wrists, he leaned closer to the side of her face, both of them more than aware that as the weeks turned into months and as their friendship had grown, the sensation of their skin connecting had been unknown until now.

“Look at it’s arms.” He told her “It can’t grab ya. I made sure of that.”

And he had. Snapping the bones was easier than he'd anticipated and hacking through the flesh to dismember it's limbs was not unlike preparing an animal for food. So, he told himself it was just a kill from the hunt like all the others, except this one was larger and the odor it gave off was enough to make even the strongest of stomachs flip.

“I-I can’t.” She stammered, her hands beginning to shake. He could feel her bones trembling as he gently urged her forwards.

“Yeah, ya can.” He countered “S'alright. C’mon. Just try.”

Turning her head to the side, the first thing she thought was how close his face was to hers and how icy blue his eyes were.

"What if it gets loose and I can't kill it? Don't leave me with it" She pleaded.

"I got it if it gets loose. I ain’t goin' nowhere. I'm right here." He confirmed.

She neared the Walker, Daryl allowing her a little more freedom with each step like a parent urging their child to ride a bike without stabilizers. His hands loosened their grip and drifted down her forearms, before he broke away and she was standing inches from the bloody stumps of the waving arms attached to the Walker.

“Don’t overthink it, just do it.” He said from behind her.

She lunged forward, slamming her hand against the cold, dampened forehead and smacked it against the tree. She didn't know why, but she expected it's skin to be warm somehow, like regular people that are wandering around, going about their day. But this man was dead, so it stood to reason he'd be cold to the touch. She lifted her other hand and paused.

“The eye, it’s the easiest. As hard as ya can.” He instructed.

She fought against the Walkers attempts to break free, the blood from it’s missing arms now smearing across her T-shirt. Her stomach churned at the putrid and rotting smell that grew stronger with each thrash of its head. She screwed up her face and with all her might, drove the blade into the weeping, white eye of the Walker. The wet sound of the blade against its skull meant bile began to rise in her stomach and an involuntary cry left her throat. The scrape of metal on bone, but loose, like sand along the sharp edge of the knife. She slumped forwards and tried to yank the knife from the bloodied hole in the Walkers face but it stuck fast. She fought with it, twisting it and tugging on the handle, until Daryl’s hand closed over hers once more and he pulled on the weapon with brute force, freeing it and catching Jess when she stumbled backwards.

He took the knife from between her fingers and noticed his other hand had ended up around her waist, stopping her from falling. He ripped it away in seconds and stepped back, dropping his gaze. Jess turned and tried to steady her breathing as she watched his ears turn pink and his shoulders sag.

“I did it” She whispered.

If anything, it was a desperate attempt to draw attention away from the fact that he had just touched her somewhere other than her hands and that was something she’d only dared to imagine during nights scribbling in her diary in her tent or while drifting off to sleep. Even then, it was with some reluctance, as if somehow everyone around her could hear her thoughts and see her imaginings like they were displayed on a projector screen for all to see. He had just touched her and yes, it was accidental, but it was a moment she knew would guide her through many more nights alone with her thoughts. A moment that was as funny as it was tragic and would most likely never happen again.

“Yeah, ya did it. Good job.” He mumbled. She stood immobile while he cleaned the blade with a red rag from his back pocket and offered it to her once more, all the while avoiding having to look at her.

“Why are you giving that back to me?” She wanted to know.

“Take it. It’s yours.” He said flicking the handle up in front of her and urging her to take it.

“No, it’s yours” She corrected, smiling at his now vividly apparent awkwardness.

“I got a another” He told her, tapping at another knife holster on the other side of his belt. “Shouldn’t walk around these days without a knife. Take it.”

“I can’t, it’s-”

“-Take the goddamn knife, Jess.” He interrupted.

She smiled at him again, pleased to see that he couldn’t seem to look away once his eyes met hers. She delicately slipped the knife from his hand and resisted the urge to jump on him and hug him for believing in her and pushing her out of her comfort zone. It was working, she was learning, getting better at surviving in the new world and she had him to thank for that. Aware that hugging him would go down like a lead balloon, she simply smiled at him instead.

“Follow me” He grunted before setting off into the trees with intent.

“What? Where are we going?!” She called after him

"Ya just levelled up.” He barked back at her. “Now ya gonna complete level two.”

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The next few days consisted of Daryl teaching Jess everything he’d picked up in the short while since the world had lost its footing and plummeted into what now resembled one of the levels of hell. He also continued to pass on his already established and extensive knowledge of hunting and tracking. It was not only productive but unequivocally enjoyable to Jess to be able to spend so much time with him. She knew not to question his desire to train her, accepting it simply as a mutually beneficial act somehow. Although quite what he got out of it still remained a mystery to her.

He’d even taught her to fish, a skill which wasn’t altogether alien to her due to many family vacations at the lake house and boat trips with her brother. But she feigned ignorance and politely listened when he showed her how to reel fish in and swallowed the urge to vomit when he made her fillet them, a task she had always left to the men in her family.

It was no more than a few lingering smiles, one or two occasions when she would catch him watching her perform mundane tasks like writing in her diary or sewing up a hole in her jacket, but it was there. The feeling of something a little more than friendship that Daryl just couldn’t seem to fathom. He had given his all, put everything he had into teaching her to survive and if someone were to ask him why, he wasn’t sure he had an answer. He hadn’t taught anyone else a single thing, hadn’t felt the sheer panic at the thought of anyone but her being bitten by a walker. With Jess, it was different. What he did know, was that when other people looked at him, they saw nothing but a damaged, unpredictable criminal that wasn’t to be trusted. But when Jess looked at him, when Jess spoke to him, she really saw him. He was a person, another person just like she was. Right from the start, she hadn’t given up and persevered with a most unlikely friendship.

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On top of the RV for what had become their habitual time to unwind at the end of every day, Jess hummed to herself as she propped her legs up on Dales cooler. Her book rested on her lap and she batted away the smoke from Daryl’s cigarette beside her. The cool night air carried it up into the atmosphere but the smell still hung heavy around her.

“Those things will kill you y’know.” She remarked with a scrunched-up face.

“You gonna miss me?” He quipped, deliberately expelling a large plume of smoke at her. She waved her hand dramatically and fake coughed.

“No. I’ll get some peace and quiet.” She joked with a light chuckle.

Thinking the conversation to be over, Jess opened her book and began to read. It wasn't unusual for Daryl to just cease speaking when he'd had enough or when he felt like whatever had been said didn't warrant a response. Jess pushed the end of her pen between her lips and bit down on the lid, leaving the end peppered with small, teeth marks.

“What was that s’posed to mean?” Daryl eventually asked with a tone akin to mild irritation. She closed the book and looked quizzically at him.

“I just mean you making me run around in the woods killing things.” She grinned “It ruined my Pulp Fiction T-shirt. I’m going to have to beat the holy hell out of it against a rock to get the bloodstains out.”

His eyes were narrowed at her, and worry that she’d offended him prodded at the back of her mind.

He’s touchy tonight. She thought.

“I don’t make ya do nothin’. S’for ya own good.” He grumbled.

“I’m just playing.” She tried. But his jaw was clenched and he looked away, taking a forceful drag on his cigarette and exhaling it in the opposite direction to her this time. Instead of stoking the fire that apparently had appeared from nowhere, she lowered her eyes back to her book and tried to ignore the now taut atmosphere between them.

Daryl rarely lost his temper with her, even out in the woods after hours of training, coated in sweat and blood and gore, repeating the same things over again, he never got angry when she couldn’t get it right. He never usually took her jokes the wrong way either which made their current situation both baffling and extremely awkward.

Why am I being such a jerk to her? He thought.

But he didn’t know the answer. All he knew was that the churning ball of anxiety in the pit of his stomach was for a reason and it was always at its worst when he was sitting quietly beside her, watching her be nothing else but herself. It was frustrating and enraging and entirely mystifying to him.

“It’s only you.” He muttered. Him facing away from her meant that she only just caught the words. Far from wanting to jump to conclusions that would only land her in an awkward and uneasy mess., she needed more information.

“What?” She questioned, closing the pages of her book once more.

“That I teach stuff.” He added.

“I know” She said softly. “I’m grateful for everything you do for me. I don’t know why you do it, but I know it’s only me.”

He nodded at her statement but still didn’t turn to see her, opting to carry on staring out into the darkness and watching the smoke from his roll up dissipate into the blackness.

“Want ya to be safe.” He uttered.

Jess’s heart lurched and her face broke out into a strong smile that was just too stubborn to shove away. Biting her bottom lip, she gently nudged his upper arm with her hand, thinking it a shame he’d put a leather jacket on and scuppered her chances to cop a feel of the biceps she so admired on him. Feeling braver than ever, in part due to the confidence that Daryl had instilled in her with his belief in her abilities, she took a risk.

“That you saying you care about me?” She jested.

Not turning to her straight away, she saw his body jolt when an amused exhalation followed a small head shake and it took all of her self-control not to blurt out what she really wanted to say.

I think you care about me and I care about you too. I have such a huge crush on you. You are the most interesting and amazing person I have ever met.

The look on his face when he gradually worked his line of vision around to her took her by surprise. Chewing on his lower lip, she could see him hiding a smile, one that didn’t need hiding because it was in his eyes.

“Maybe a little.” He told her.

“Wow” She laughed loudly “A little, huh? Lucky me!”

Oh lord. What the hell was that, Jess?! ‘Lucky me!’ I’m such a dork.

Footsteps below silenced them both and Daryl leaned to his left, catching a glimpse of a figure wandering past the RV. When the sound of whistling danced through the air, Daryl realized who it was.

“It’s just Merle.” He dismissed. Jess nudged her head up in acknowledgement and re-opened her book, feeling like the moment had passed to delve even deeper into what appeared to be Daryl caring about something other than running out of smokes and hunting deer. Her eyes scanned the words on the page, but none of them actually registered as her mind raced with thoughts of confessing her feelings. With no intentions to actually do so, all she had was her vivid imagination and the ability to simply dream.

He cares about me.

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Two nights later and by the flickering glow of the fire, Jodie rummaged through her laundry at the opening of her tent, carefully folding her minimal wardrobe, enough to fit inside a backpack should they have to pack up and leave. Sarah, who sat beside her was painting her nails. A necessity of the apocalypse, of course. Along with applying her eyebrows in a pocket mirror and curling her lip in disgust at the thought of having to go to the makeshift bathroom in the woods. A far from pleasant necessity that everyone else had come to accept, as was the way of the world now. They were all thankful to be alive, Sarah and Jodie were just happy to have their matching, Gucci belts still intact.

Jess was busy on the other side of the fire, sharing a few overcooked squirrel strips with Carl. They were so dry and tough that it was more like eating jerky than anything else. Carl winced and chewed relentlessly on a piece of meat that looked like a leather shoe while Jess snorted with laughter as she pointed at him and covered her own mouth which was also full of food.

Daryl was at her other side, the two of them now barely apart for more than half a day and just about able to ignore the jibes and attempts at humor at their expense from Jodie and Sarah. Daryl’s threat seemed to have worked to an extent, but whispers and mockery could still be heard if they listened hard enough. By now, the entire camp had accepted that Jess and Daryl had become friends and that Jess was the only person that Daryl would tolerate being around for so long. Likewise, he was the only one that didn’t drain her energy after more than an hour with incessant chit chat.

Merle hadn’t expressed an opinion but Daryl knew it wouldn’t be long before he made his feelings known and was waiting for the day when he would have to bite his tongue and remember that Merle was not the smarter one of the two of them. From a distance he watched, sneering and tutting as if Jess’s mere presence was at a detriment to his existence and the downfall of his plan to rob the camp was somehow her fault. Jess was none the wiser, blissful in her ignorance and Daryl had no plans to change that.

“Oh. My. God!” Jodie’s voice rang through the camp and everyone at the fire stopped what they were doing to look up. “There’s a frickin’ tent…in my tent! Look at the size of that!”

Daryl was the first to register what was happening and immediately snapped his head around to see Jess, leaning on her elbow to see past Carol, who was opposite her. It was like slow motion had kicked in when her eyes widened and the color drained from her cheeks.

Her body suddenly flushed with heat from embarrassment and fury and her surroundings increased in volume, the shrill laughter from the two girls holding her underwear a loft began to echo through her ears. The sound was deafening and her eyes glazed over, her vision glassy. Tears dripped down her cheeks.

“Sorry, Jess. I guess this wasn’t how you imagined Daryl seeing your panties for the first time.” Sarah announced.

With an inferno burning in her cheeks, she sprang up from the floor, stomped across the clearing, snatched the garment from Jodie’s hand and raced off into her tent. Daryl sat frozen for a moment, watching both girls fall about in hysterics before he also got up and went off into the woods with his crossbow. A backdrop of people expressing their disgust did nothing to quell the anger he felt as he departed. He wanted to go to her, to tell her it was alright and that it was just two dumb girls that didn’t mean anything. But his legs took him in the opposite direction so he could take the time to retreat into himself and try to push past his own humiliation.

Through tears and sobs in her tent, Jess took out her pen and journal and started to pour her feelings onto the page. Her teardrops tainting the ink.

'I don’t know if I can stand this anymore. Daryl is literally the only good thing about being at this camp. I have these urges to just leave. But I am reluctant to leave him. We’ve become friends, good friends and I think we actually care about each other. I made progress with someone, I spoke to a person I wouldn’t normally have bothered with and something amazing happened. But now those assholes have stamped on it all. He’s never going to want to be around me when I’m such a glaring target for those two bitches. Carol once told me that they’re just jealous of me. But I don’t have a single thing for anyone to be jealous of.'

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Tracking, hunting and fighting lessons had become less social and more strictly on a need to learn basis between Jess and Daryl. He had less and less to say as the days crawled on after the humiliating scene at the campfire. Her efforts to engage him in conversation feel on disinterested ears and with each new day, Jess felt their friendship slipping further and further away. She still sat with him on the RV every night, her stubborn streak refusing to let her give in. The only sounds came from her turning a page or him lighting a cigarette. He’d still look over at her, she registered it every single time and she so wanted to look right back at him, to smile at him and crack a joke, but she knew any attempts to fix things would be futile.

She wasn’t sure what she was guilty of exactly, except being the reason Daryl was mentioned during the horrendous ordeal of the panty announcement. Now, it was apparent to Jess that there was every possibility of Daryl wanting to distance himself from her to avoid being targeted again.

More and more Walkers appeared every day and the Group made the collective decision to start gathering supplies in order to move on and find another safe haven. But with food, medicine and weapons running low, a supply run into the city was arranged and planned which Merle very quickly attached himself to due to the prospect of stocking up on something he deemed to be a priority; Whiskey. Daryl initially agreed to go along, but Jess could tell it was simply because he couldn’t tolerate his brother’s complaining about his lack of interest.

On the way back from a hunting lesson, Jess carried a large hog which she was immensely proud of hunting by herself and with the aid of Daryl’s crossbow. Once the animal had been taken down, he’d offered a simple appreciation of her skill that could have been missed if Jess wasn’t paying attention

“Good job” He’d muttered.

“Gee, thanks.” She replied with a roll of her eyes before she surged through the bushes and claimed her prize

Now, she was getting used to being out in the heat, creeping about in the woods and had even killed three Walkers without Daryl having to step in. As she trudged through the thick, hot air towards the camp with the hog around her shoulders, she sighed to herself in frustration and stopped walking, flicking her head and freeing a few strands of hair that were obscuring her view. Daryl walked on and it wasn’t until he was a good ten feet away that he noticed she wasn’t beside him anymore.

“Why ya stopped?” He enquired.

Jess looked down at her feet. Once brand-new sneakers that had seen better days. Tatty and stained beyond repair. She kicked about in the mud and tapped a finger on the hoof of the hog she held onto her back.

“Are you angry at me for something?” She said quietly.

“Say what?” He questioned, bringing a hand up to his ear to signal that she wasn’t speaking loud enough.

“I said, are you angry at me for something?” She repeated, much louder this time.

Jess expected him to look confused at least, but his expression was deadpan, almost blank and with not a single scrap of emotion.

“No.”

“Then why are you being off with me?” she demanded.

He shrugged his shoulders and wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of his wrist.

“I ain’t.”

“Yes, you are. You barely talk to me anymore. We come out here and wander around like a couple of strangers. It’s not like it was.” She explained. It had taken a lot of courage for her to address the situation. Daryl wasn’t known for having a gentle nature and she was not unfamiliar with how hostile he could be. But she missed the way things were before, when they would talk into the night, make fun of each other while training in the woods or simply sit in each other’s comfortable company.

“I ain’t being off. I am off. This is how I am.” He snapped, turning around and walking off. “Get over it.” She heard him grumble under his breath.

In her chest, she wrestled with anger and sadness. The one person she had a connection with was now further from her than he’d ever been. As he vanished from her sightline, it occurred to her that it was physically as well as emotionally.

When she deposited the hog at the food station, she caught sight of Daryl sat on a rickety, plastic chair outside the RV with a smoke between his lips and his knife clamped in his hand. He was buckled forwards, carving something into the dirt with the pointed end.

“Everybody! Can I have your attention please?” Sarah’s voice sounded out through the camp and people stopped their tasks and chatter in anticipation of some kind of announcement. Beside Sarah, who was stood on top of the RV, Was Jodie. The sleeve of her bright pink sweater was pulled up over her hand and she chewed excitedly on the fabric while she waited for her friend to speak.

Jess’s veins stung with dread when she clocked what Sarah was holding in her hand. A leather-bound journal.

I left it on the RV last night. Shit. Oh no. No, no, no, no! Please no!

“I found this awesome book up here! It really is gripping stuff! So I thought y’all would like to hear an excerpt!”

She opened the journal and cleared her throat, holding it out in dramatic fashion in front of her.

“Sarah.” Jess blurted out. The blonde girls vicious glare swung over to Jess. “Please. Don’t do this. Please.”

Without a single glimmer of apprehension, Sarah’s eyes moved back to the page and she began to read aloud.

“To everyone else he just seems to be this angry, unpredictable redneck. But to me he’s different. Daryl is an enigma. He has a personality that he tries to keep hidden but I see it and it’s so interesting.”

As she spoke, the mocking tone to her voice added to what was already a mortifying and agonizing moment for Jess, who was stood, red faced and wishing the ground would open up and she would fall into an abyss, away from Sarah, away from Daryl, away from all of them.

Daryl was totally still, his Jaw taut and the veins in his neck popping with rage. He wasn’t even watching Sarah. Instead, his eyes were fixed on nothing in particular at floor level. Sarah continued and with every single word, the fire inside Daryl was stoked and a piece of Jess fell away to nothing.

“He’s snappy and rude at the moment but I still really like him. But alas, I shall carry on admiring him inside my own head and outwardly being his friend. Friend zoned without ever having to have that awkward conversation, as usual. There’s no point in being any other way, anyway. He probably thinks I’m weird and a total loser and doesn’t even see me as a friend. Just the clingy nerd that follows him around. That’s me. The cling on.”

The cackles of Sarah and Jodie were soon stopped by Dale climbing the ladder, snatching the book from Sarah’s hand and scolding them both for being so cruel and childish. Below, Lori and Carol looked on, both shaking their heads in disgust as Andrea shouted up to them, asking how they would feel if the same were done to them. Everyone was there. Rick, Carl, T-Dog, Glenn. They all heard it as clear as day and could clearly see the damage done to Jess.

But that’s just it, isn’t it? It’s never done to them. They’re never made to endure the torment that people like me have to live with. Some people are the lucky ones. Me? I’m not.

As if a bass guitar was droning in her head, her despair grew so much, she could no longer hear what was going on around her. Her vision was a blurry haze and her feet felt like two cement blocks. But she knew she had to move. Remove herself from the situation. Someone was laughing. Merle. Chuckling loudly and mentioning Daryl’s name. She couldn’t see, but then there was yelling, swearing. Daryl’s voice.

“SHUT THE FUCK UP, MERLE!”

Picking up the dead weights of her legs, she ran to the slope. Down to the water's edge. To the calm and quiet where she sat in the dirt and sobbed so hard her throat and chest were raw and her tears sliced down her skin like razors.

Chapter 5

#daryl fanfiction #daryl x oc #the walking dead daryl #daryl dixon #twd fanfiction

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spidergwenstefani · 5 years

Text

Holy Dimensional Gateway, Batman! | 1/?

oh fuck look out cause I’m about to attempt a multichapter fic and my track record with finishing those has been um. not great.

but here’s to new beginnings! I couldn’t justify cutting my idea of a plot for this down enough to be a oneshot so we’ll see how this goes.

In which Clint gets dragged through a hole in space and lands in a universe that’s dark, violent, and… not entirely unfamiliar. It’s populated with a whole kooky cast of masked vigilantes, which sucks because Clint just wants to get home. Bucky just wants to stop making dumbass decisions, like diving into a wormhole to save his crush.

TW: guns, the writer’s own open hostilities towards the DC universe

Rated: T?

The future has a way of surprising you, Bucky thinks as he stares out into the blackness of space. He allows himself a small smile that it’s Steve’s voice saying the words in his head, because Bucky was doing a little more than sleeping during the seventy year gap. It took Steve a while to realize that Bucky wouldn’t be bamboozled by the fucking coffee machine, that the years in between are just blood-splattered snapshots in his mind, but yeah, Steve, he noticed cassette tapes.

Still, his memories from HYDRA are patchy at best, and Bucky doubts that watching the moon landing on TV would have come anywhere close to preparing him for actually being up among the stars, drifting through the void in an impossibly thin Stark-branded prototype space suit. It’s awesome, in the oldest sense of the word. It’s terrifying, only a few layers of metal between him and imminent death, but it’s a kind of terrifying that envelops you like a soft blanket and almost starts to feel safe.

“I hate space,” Clint grunts out next to him through gritted teeth. Bucky turns enough in his harness to watch Clint, eyes shut tight and knuckles white against the edge of his seat, and maybe the siren song of the cold expanse has made him a little poetic, but he thinks there’s some kind of a simile there. Clint’s like space a little bit. Ever-present, easy to get lost in. Terrifying, but only because he makes Bucky feel so safe. Beautiful.

“God, can you get space-sick? I don’t want to know what happens if I puke in zero-g.”

Alright, so it’s not a perfect metaphor.

“Robin Hood, if you puke in my ship I’m chucking you out the airlock,” Tony calls from the pilot’s seat. Clint clenches his jaw and groans.

“Why am I here? Nobody even knows how arrows work in space. I’m not enhanced. I’m soft. One wrong hit and I get vacuumed out of this thing and liquified into meat jelly.”

“Obviously we brought you for morale,” Steve answers from his seat next to Tony.

“And the scientific inaccuracies. It adds charm. Like we’re in a movie,” Tony contributes. “By the way, I’m not even going to touch all the problems with what you’ve just said, but I am absolutely having JARVIS replay them for Bruce when we get back.”

“Also, the SHIELD station has artificial gravity, so arrows will work just fine,” Steve says, pointing through the disturbingly large windows to the giant donut they’re steadily approaching. The station is big and white, glowing bright against the pitch black.

“Putting me in a giant spinning loop is not gonna solve the problem, Cap. I do my best work where the air isn’t canned.”

Bucky wishes the harnesses weren’t so restrictive. He’d give Clint a reassuring shoulder bump, maybe nudge him with an elbow like he does when their eyes catch before a big mission. But the way Stark has them strapped in means it’s mostly just forearms that are free, and even if Clint has been returning his flirting a little more lately, he doubts a pat on the inner thigh is particularly welcome right now.

“Why isn’t Thor on this mission? Dimensional portals are totally his thing, right?” Clint lets his head thump back against the seat, eyes still tightly shut. Bucky finds his gaze drawn to the lines of his neck.

“Thor’s fighting style isn’t very… containable,” Steve says. “We don’t want to cause too much damage.”

“You mean we don’t want to punch a death-hole in the tissue paper hell-donut,” Clint whines. “Only SHIELD would build a research station around a newly discovered dimensional portal without checking to see if anything could come out of it. This is my last mission. I’m going to fucking retire. Go live on a farm or something. Somewhere with a lot of ground.”

“You say that every other mission,” Bucky says, not bothering to hide the smile in his voice. Clint actually cracks his eyes open at that, giving Bucky a half-hearted glare.

“The portal was stable when they built the station,” Tony says, maneuvering them around to the docking bay and flipping a dizzying amount of switches as the ship glides into place. “It’s only recently that things have started coming out. My theory is that the connection to the other side has frayed. It’s not a door that only opens to one room anymore.”

“Awesome,” Clint says weakly, and the ship settles into the port with a mechanical thunk.

>>==========>

The space station isn’t nearly as cool as the space ship, Bucky decides. There’s no windows, and Clint’s kind of right about the artificial gravity being disconcerting. He’s not even upset when an alarm goes off, painting the cold plastic walls a startling red and making them skip the grand tour. The SHIELD astronaut that helped them out of the docking bay seems a little concerned, however. She jogs ahead of them, unholstering some kind of stun baton, which must be the only SHIELD weapon trusted in a place like this. Bucky would be concerned too, having to face the possible horrors of the universe with something that’s barely a step up from a taser. It had been a hell of a time for him to convince Steve and Tony to allow him a sniper rifle, conceding that he wouldn’t use it unless he ended up on the wrong side of the gateway.

“We’ve had things coming through more and more often,” she says as they near a sealed door, warnings plastered across it in glossy red. “There was almost four months between the first visitors and the second. Now it’s every few weeks. Our last batch was only six days ago.”

“Are there any similarities between the creatures? Patterns, maybe?” Tony asks, with what Bucky thinks is too much excitement. At least he closes the helmet on his suit, not too starry-eyed with the prospect of alien lifeforms to remember the situation at hand.

“Not exactly, although the ones that breathe oxygen best seem to come through in groups. Most of them end up asphyxiating before they can do too much damage. That’s what the last ones did.”

“So they come in clusters that breathe similar atmospheres?” Tony hasn’t reduced himself to scientific babble yet, although Bucky can sense he’s close. “It might be opening up to a few gateways on each planet. Maybe the link up is affected by gravitational pull, or solar radiation.” Yep, there it is.

The astronaut keys in a code, stun baton held at the ready as the doors slide open.

“What the hell?” Bucky says, ducking as a thick vine immediately whips toward them. He blocks it with his left arm on autopilot, and Clint pins the thickest part of it to the doorway with a quick shot. Their eyes meet and Bucky manages a nod of thanks before another one of the freaky vine tendrils slithering out of the dimensional gateway tries to sweep his feet out from under him.

The gateway itself is kind of hard to look at, like it doesn’t interact with light the way a solid object should. There’s definitely edges, although Bucky doubts he could point them out if asked, and it only seems to open on one side, letting the vine monster tentacles straight out into the center of the room.

Tony keeps his repulsor blasts to a minimum, waiting until he’s got a vine closed in his hand to let one loose, and Steve does more hacking with his shield than throwing. They make short work of the thing, considering none of them know what the hell it is. The floor is littered with gently smoking, slightly wriggling vine chunks by the time the thing gives up, if it’s sentient enough to understand surrender. The rest of the vines slither back into the void, and as Bucky watches, the not-quite-edges seem to fold in on themselves, shrinking down to a pinprick of black before shooting back out into the giant circular portal it was moments ago, this time sans plant-tentacles.

“Cool. We’re done with space. Let’s go home,” Clint says, rubbing his wrist where the woody bark of a vine seems to have scraped it. Tony ignores him, circling the gateway like a cat presented with a new toy.

“That’s fascinating. This side of the gateway isn’t static. It’s like a whole new portal that’s just opened up in the same spot.”

“Yeah, fascinating. Let’s go back to Earth and tell some scientists all about it,” Clint says, the hope dying from his voice as Tony reaches cautiously for the edges of the gateway.

“Not so fast, Legolas. We don’t leave until the portal is closed for good, and we’ve still got about a million tests to run on this thing before I’ll even begin to know how to do that.”

“I hate space,” Clint says petulantly, kicking at a particularly large coil of slightly spasming vine.

Bucky barely has time to blink before the vine grabs a hold of Clint’s leg, the severed end shooting straight for the gateway and pulling Clint along with it.

“Fuck,” Clint manages, and Bucky lunges for him, almost getting a grip on Clint’s forearm before he slips away, him and the vine sucked into the giant gap in space without so much as a ripple.

“Clint,” Bucky shouts, the sound of it not reaching his ears. He moves automatically, barely registering Steve’s warnings, every noise suddenly far away, like he’s under water. He’s jumped feet-first into the gateway before he even has time to think.

>>==========>

Clint hates space.

It comes with an unease that settles into the very bones of him, makes him feel like he’s off balance at his innermost core, farther out than he was ever meant to go. Artificial gravity doesn’t do much to help. He still feels the wrongness with senses he never knew he had.

So when he comes out the other side of the doorway, the fact that he’s no longer in space registers before anything else. The tug of real, Earth-strength gravity settles his nerves before he’s even noticed that he’s too high up in the atmosphere to see anything but stormy grey clouds, and falling like a stone.

Clint’s never been inside a cloud before, but the charm wears off quick as the puffs of foggy grey drench him to his core on his way down. At least he’s still got his bow in his hand, and his quiver on his back. He gives the alien vine around his ankle an angry kick, but the thing already relaxed its hold the moment they came out the other side, and it slithers off more than willingly, plummeting out of sight.

Then suddenly the clouds are gone, and a rickety roof is rushing up to meet Clint, looking like some kind of dilapidated train that got it’s directions all turned around. Clint has time to turn shoulder-first against the oncoming building, and almost enough time to wonder what it says about his life that falling through a roof is a welcome experience after the violent emptiness of space.

The rooftop splinters immediately on impact, as does the attic floor, and the next floor, too. He plummets into some kind of dusty couch with enough impact to snap the thing, but the floorboards beneath hold fast. Some part of Clint’s brain manages to register that the building looks decrepit and abandoned, enough that he’s surprised to see about six guns pointed at his face when the dust clears.

“Who the fuck are you?” A voice spits out, and Clint follows the barrel of the gun directly in front of his nose to find the speaker. The guy is human, at least by every way Clint knows to check, and his friends are too. He’s not dressed exactly like a 1930’s gangster, but he’s sure dressed like he grew up admiring them. He’s got a nasty sneer and an accent that’s so deep New York, Clint might laugh if he hadn’t just had all the wind knocked out of him. He wraps his fingers tighter around his bow, which, through a combination of being cradled protectively during the fall and being made out of a fucking adamantium alloy, seems to have survived unscathed.

“Woah,” he manages to cough out through the dust. “You look like an asshole.”

The guy shifts his weight, finger tightening on the trigger, but Clint’s already rolled off the former couch and pinned one of the other goon’s wrists to the wall by the time Asshole manages to get a round off into the couch cushions. The goose feathers that erupt from the pillows do add a nice ambiance to the fight, though, and Clint takes down two more guys while Asshole chokes on one of them. One of the gangsters gets a shot out, putting a few holes in the drywall before Clint gets him through the shoulder. He knocks the fifth guy out with a blow to the head, just in time to shoot the gun out of Asshole’s hand and pin it to the far wall. Asshole lunges for him, but ends up tripping over a floorboard Clint must have brought with him. He goes down hard, and Clint plants his boot on Asshole’s chest, drawing an arrow and letting the tip hover directly over his forehead. Asshole almost goes cross-eyed trying to look at it.

“Are you Green fucking Arrow?”

“Do I look like Green Fucking Arrow?” Clint spits out, going out on a limb and guessing Green Fucking Arrow’s signature color isn’t purple.

“Who do you work for? Penguin? Scarecrow? Bats?”

Clint weighs his options, because he’s getting the impending sense that he’s not in Kansas anymore, and this guy might have some information on what kind of gritty noir universe he’s crashed into. On the other hand, he can’t even begin to parse through the words that just came out of Asshole’s mouth, and he’s starting to feel a post-space-travel headache coming on. Maybe he can look for answers later. After a nap.

He only manages to to lower his bow by a fraction of an inch before someone else makes the call for him. Something heavy hits Clint in the back of the head, hard, and the whole world crumbles into darkness.

>>==========>

Clint wakes up to a blinding spotlight shining directly into his eyes. His arms are strapped down to something that feels like a chair, and the way his aids are picking up on sounds tells him that the background noises are off here. Too echoey, maybe.

His eyes adjust slowly, and he can’t see far past the column of light trained on him, but wherever he is seems cavernous. The air is damp and cold, and Clint swears the shadows up above look like stalactites. Or stalagmites. He’s never figured out which is which. His mouth feels like sandpaper, and he’s got a headache that feels more like it’s brought on by a concussion than space travel. A true connoisseur like him can tell the difference.

There’s movement on the edge of his vision, and Clint manages to follow the shape of a shadow, lurking just on the edges of the darkness. His aids don’t do so great with low noises, but Clint’s pretty sure the thing isn’t making any sound as it glides across the cave floor.

“Who are you?” a voice echoes out, low and fucking chilling. It makes Clint’s throat hurt just to listen to it. It sounds demonic, like the shadow’s been gargling glass shards instead of listerine. Fuck, it sounds like Thor with the flu.

“Nobody important,” Clint says, and his own voice doesn’t sound too great either. He’d kill for a glass of water right now. It might come to that. The shadow doesn’t seem like it’d be easily swayed by asking nicely. “Who are you?”

“You don’t know who I am?” the shadow growls.

“I don’t know if you were there, but I fell from the sky a little bit,” Clint says. “I’m not from around here.”

“I am darkness,” the shadow says, voice rumbling through the cave in a way that Clint thinks might be ominous if it weren’t filtered into static by his hearing aids. “I am the night.”

“Yeah, and I’m clearly from another fucking universe, so if you’re trying to intimidate me you’re going to have to add more context.”

He feels the shadow approach more than sees, and Clint thanks whatever gods rule over this grimdark universe that Natasha isn’t here to see the shiver that runs down his spine as a figure materializes out of the blackness.

“I’m Batman,” it says, and even with the gravelly voice fuzzed to shit through his hearing aids, Clint gets the sense that this should be all the context he needs. Batman is- well Batman’s kind of a nightmare. His costume is all shadows and odd edges and he seems to shift between phantom and solid even as Clint watches him step further into the light, although that might just be his concussion settling in. The whole outfit sparks a memory through his haze of disorientation. It looks like the joke costume Bucky talked Steve into submitting when the Avengers PR team was pushing for a Winter Soldier rebranding. One look at the nightmare grimace mask and tattered cape and the costume department had clammed right up, although Steve wasn’t too happy about the extra therapy hours they had enforced after seeing such a dark glimpse into the psyche of Captain America.

“You don’t seem impressed,” Batman rumbles, looming in closer. Clint realizes he’s grinning like some kind of psycho, and shoves the memory back down. Probably better not to piss off some kind of demonic creature within a day of entering it’s universe.

“No, sorry, you’re very impressive. I was just thinking of something else. You remind me of someone.”

That… actually seems to throw Batman off. He looms backwards, and Clint’s mind clears enough to realize that he’s less demon-cloaked-in-shadow and more human-cloaked-in-cape.

“What are you doing in Gotham?” Batman rumbles, and that’s somewhat of a relief. Clint had been hoping the glimpse of crumbling skyline he got wasn’t some horrific version of New York in shambles.

“That’s a really long story. And I’ll pass out before I finish it, so you should probably untie me.” Clint coughs for effect. Batman seems unphased.

“What were you doing in one of the Falcone hideouts?” Anger seems to rush back into his voice with the question, and Clint shrinks back against the chair a little.

“Woah, woah. I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, alright? Your friends greeted me with some guns to the face so I reacted in self defense. I didn’t have any sort of agenda, I swear.” Except he sort of did. Alternate universe or not, Clint knows bad when he sees it, and Asshole and his friends reeked of malintent. Batman definitely registers on the scale as well.

Batman falls silent at that, although Clint can practically see the rage curling off him like smoke. He gets a sudden pang of loneliness in his chest. He wishes Bucky was here. He makes the anger look a lot sexier.

“So you don’t know the Falcones?”

“I don’t know you, you think I know them? I told you, I’m not from this hell of a universe. I fell through a fucking gateway in space and landed here. All I want to do is get home.”

Batman looms contemplatively.

“It would be very, very stupid to try anything,” he rumbles carefully. Clint holds back an eye roll.

“Yeah, I’m picking up on that.”

Batman reaches out a clawed, no, gloved hand, pushing down a button. The restraints keeping Clint to the chair fall open with a mechanical hiss, and he gingerly rubs at his wrists.

“So, when you kidnapped me out of an abandoned building, you didn’t happen to pick up my bow, did you?” He looks up hopefully, sighing as he’s met with an unrelenting scowl. “Yeah, alright. Just thought I’d ask.” Clint slides off the chair, keeping his movements open and cautious. Once he’s out of the interrogation spotlight, his eyes adjust to the cave much quicker. Clint’s mouth falls open as he stares into the depths of the cavern.

“Fucking christ, what are you, Victor Von Doom? How many gadgets can a supervillain possibly need?”

“I’m not a supervillain,” Batman growls, sounding almost offended. Clint blinks, and his eyes fall on something behind his darkly shrouded shoulders. There’s a display case. Well, a row of display cases. Most of them are full of haunting iterations of Batman’s current costume, but Clint’s eyes catch on the brighter ones. Red, green, yelllow, and purple spandex glint back at him through the gloom.

“Well, fuck me. Are you a good guy?”

>>==========>

The blackness of the portal gives way to bright blue skies and a sparkling metropolis. The first thing Bucky notices is that Clint isn’t below him. There’s no flailing dumbass hurtling towards the ground, and no black and purple smear on the pavement below, which is almost upsettingly spotless. The glimpse Bucky gets of his surroundings as he hurdles downwards feels like a creepy utopian image of New York, all the litter and grime and graffiti and heart scrubbed spotless and gleaming. He allows himself a little smug satisfaction as he drops past a skyscraper and punches his hand into the brick to slow his descent.

There’s an explosion from above, and Bucky looks up to see the other side of the gateway still gaping out against the clear blue sky, two figures racing up toward it.

One of the flying figures looks like some hideous green version of the hulkbuster suit, but with a crackling cannon-like device strapped to its’ back. The second figure is a blue and red streak against the sky, its’ goal clearly being to impede the green monstrosity from reaching the gateway.

There’s a crowd gathering in the plaza below, and Bucky’s destructive descent doesn’t get half a glance from the people with their necks craned up to the sky. Another explosion sounds off, and a chunk of the green suit comes hurtling downward, heading toward a cluster of onlookers on the edge of the plaza. Bucky wonders if this twilight zone New York is some kind of haven for fucked up villains. It sure looks like it. He isn’t sure anyone who would willingly live in a place like this is worth saving. But his legs don’t seem to care, and his arm certainly doesn’t hesitate as he rips the front panel off of a mailbox and jumps in front of two kids that are too scared to move, using the metal sheet to deflect the smoking debris.

“Get back,” he growls, and the kids scream and stumble backwards, clearing the area in time as the green hulkbuster falls from the sky like a stone, the blue streak racing after it. Bucky retreats as well, although not as far as the rest of the crowd. The blue streak catches the hulkbuster about twenty feet off the ground. Bucky unstraps his machine gun from his back, because he’s just realized that the blue streak is shaped like a man, and he’s not about to let his guard down on any man that can lift a thing like that with one hand.

A guy tumbles out of the hulkbuster, dropping to the ground and scrambling away as Blue drops the empty shell with a pavement-cracking thump. The crowd behind him cheers, all eyes on Blue, and naturally misses the second guy pulling out some weird blaster that looks like something a Flash Gordon villain would use. He aims the sci-fi blaster at the crowd, and cheers turn to screams.

“Stay back, Superman,” the guy calls, the sun glinting off his bald head. “Or the whole crowd gets it.”

Bucky isn’t sure if this is some kind of elaborately immersive live theater, or if he’s just ended up in a universe modelled after saturday morning cartoons. Either way, baldy doesn’t seem to notice as Bucky puts him in his scopes.

“Not so fast, Luthor,” Blue, Superman, calls back. “Think about what you’re doing.”

“Oh, I’ve thought about it. I’ve thought about it long and- AAGH” Bucky’s bullet goes clean through Luthor’s arm, sending the blaster spinning away and giving Superman the opening to scoop the guy up by the back of his shirt. Bucky can’t see any reason the guy can fly like that, but that doesn’t seem to stop him from hovering a triumphant ten feet above the crowd.

“Evil never prospers, Luthor. You’re headed straight for Stryker’s Island.”

The two of them disappear in a blur of blue.

Bucky needs a drink. He thinks about his odds of finding a satisfyingly seedy bar in a shiny place like this and decides he needs more than one. The approaching police sirens suggest he find himself a few bottles.

He ducks into an alley as the crowd disperses, cursing whatever absolute sociopath of a city planner made these alleys so wide open and well lit. He considers chucking the domino mask and weapon in a dumpster, but decides there’s not much point when he still has a metal arm and is clad head to toe in combat gear and leather. He doesn’t even make it out the other end of the alley before there’s a flash of blue and he finds himself staring into the very intense glare of Superman himself.

“You’re not a civilian,” Superman booms, apparently not caring if the police find them or not. His fights must end in a lot less paperwork than Bucky’s tend to.

“No,” he agrees.

“What are you doing in Metropolis?” Superman raises his chin challengingly, showing off a heroic jawline and a stubborn glare that’s uncomfortably familiar. Bucky bites back a laugh because of course this hell hole is called fucking Metropolis. Instead, he holds his hands up placatingly, although the effect might be ruined some by the gun still in his hands.

“I’m looking for a friend.”

“And you thought the best way to find him was to go jumping through portals and tearing up buildings?”

“There was only one portal, really, and it’s not like we went through on purpose.” That’s half a lie, but Superman doesn’t seem to notice. “He should’ve come through right before me. Or maybe a while before. I don’t pretend to know anything about travelling through universes. His name’s Clint Barton. Tall, blond. Wears purple, shoots arrows. I think you’d know him if you saw him.”

“That portal opened up only a second before you came through,” Superman says, and he actually seems apologetic about it. “The only reason Luthor was heading for it is because he’s been studying interdimensional rifts for months. If your friend had come through, I would’ve seen him.”

“Figures he’d fuck it up like this,” Bucky mutters to himself, holstering his weapon. “That’s the last time I let my guard down around a fucking sentient vine.”

“Sentient vine?” Superman actually perks up at that, and Bucky raises a brow.

“Yeah, it pulled him in. Sound familiar?”

Superman beamed at him, and Bucky resisted the urge to punch him right in the gleaming teeth.

“I don’t know where your friend is, but I know someone who might.”

#winterhawk #buckyclint #my fics #Rated: T #idk if you've caught on yet but i have absolutely no method for rating my fics #also i'd like to state for the record that i'm a big dc comics fan #i just also hate dc comics #also thats a stupid name #dc comics???#detective comics comics???

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the-most-beautiful-broom · 6 years

Note

I now want some headcanons about Modern AU Pirate Mechanic like, they could be so damn hot 😍

BLESS YOU NONNY THIS IS THE BEST THING TO HAPPEN TO ME ALRIGHT STRAP IN FRIENDS THIS IS ALMOST 2K AND IT’S JUST HOW THEY MEET

First thing first, modern AU Zeke has Jordan Bolger’s accent. I need Raven to hear his voice before she sees him, think damn, then turn around and not be disappointed (if you haven’t heard his voice, let me bless you today) Also it’s about to be (kind of?) a college AU so hope that’s cool?

SCENE 1: a hackathon, an annual competition hosted at the USNA; Raven is repping MIT and when she walks in, people start elbowing each other, pointing at her. That’s THE Raven Reyes. She’s won the last three years. CIA is looking for her once she graduates, but she’s not really the desk job sort of girl. Did you see her bike? She built it in her spare time, completely from scrap, refurbished it from an 80s model. She’s legend.

She smiles to herself, flips her hair a bit, stares down the competition she knows, and walks over to her seat, texting Clarke that it’s too easy with these nerds.

The competition starts and of course, Raven is nothing but cool. She’s on top of her game, and is just about to push her latest update when her screen flickers. She freezes. Everyone else’s does too, but then the screens go back to the normal display and everyonebreathes a sigh of relief, going on. Raven narrows her eyes and opens another browser, just playing out a hunch… nobody notices that she’s left her main console open, that she’s working in another command center, but everybody notices when she pulls her legs off the desk in front of her. Her lips are pursed but her eyes are alight with a challenge.

Minutes pass and she leans forward, fingers flying. She types a few morelines, mutters ‘boom’, then leans under her desk and yanks out thecable. Her screen goes dark and everybody looks around in confusion. She grabs a pen and pencil that were on the desk, scribbles a couple of lines on the scratch paper provided, and walks over to the moderators’ desk, setting the paper onto it. “That’s an ip address, somewhere in the UK,” she says, pointing, “they hacked the mainframe, they can see all of our screens, and they’re pulling all the code everyone is writing and feeding it nicely onto this,” she taps the paper again, “site; he’s blasting it out online. I don’t write for free, so I dropped a virus in his system. You can track that here,” she taps one last time, before pulling back and sticking her hands in the pockets of her jeans. “It’s pulling everything it can from his machine. Once the upload is complete, it’ll fry his drive.” She turns from the desk, strides out of the room. It’s completely silent, then everyone else starts pulling their cables too.

They call off the competition; nobody wants to talk about how someone calling themselves The Acolyte managed to get onto the server that’s encrypted with the same security as most of the branches of the US government. They ask how Raven was able to find their hacker, since that means she’d have to access the same server, and do it without Uncle Sam or The Acolyte knowing about it, and she cocks an eyebrow at them. “Ye of little faith,” she shakes her head, then calls the airline to move her flight up a couple of hours.

SCENE 2: bellarke house party. Raven doesn’t often go into Boston but she makes an exception for her friends’ house warming. It’s a gorgeous brownstone, with Clarke’s avant-garde pieces hanging throughout, and a dark library for all of Bellamy’s books. The house is BRIMMING with people, and Raven smiles to herself, happy that her friends have so many people who want to celebrate them.

The night goes on and people are weaving in and out of the narrow hallways and the lights are dim and she’s eavesdropping near the fireplace, listening to some guy with a really lovely British accent talk about a solo motorcycle trip he took across Europe. She’s laughing a bit to herself—come on, does he really expect them to believe he made it from Madrid to Andorra in 5 hours? —when someone trips and someone else moves to avoid their drink, and then someone else steps into her. She’s sure they didn’t mean to, but they hit her left knee just right and she’s falling when someone catches her.

Strong arms are at her elbows and when she turns to thank whoever caught her, she doesn’t recognize him. He has a jawline she could cut herself on, gorgeous brown eyes and an amazing mouth that just happens to be turned up in a bit of a smirk when he realizes she’s looking. “You alright?” he asks easily, and she realizes that this is the renegade biker and his voice suits him. But she doesn’t like to be caught off guard and she especially doesn’t like it when it’s because of her leg so she pulls her arms back, nods curtly, and says “It’s 609 kilometers from Madrid to Andorra; does your bike have wings?” and then he really grins and she can’t help herself, but that’s a pretty sight.

He pulls her into the group conversation, and Raven likes the light rise and fall of his voice. She also likes the relaxed way he’s standing, the way he fills up the corner of the room, the way he tells stories and they way he seems to be noticing everyone around him. He’s smart, and it’s a lazy kind of intelligence, where people might not assume itwhen they meet him, but that’s an advantage. She can tell, because she gets his humor. He’ll say something to the side, mutter it, and look over at her in surprise when she snorts, because she heard it, and was thinking it. He’s not used to someone catching it, and Raven’s amused by that.

At some point, he pushes the sleeves of his jacket up his forearm, and she notices the tattoo just under his elbow. She asks him about the bird there and he shrugs, saying it reminds himof this line from a poem, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before, that he heard when he was in primaryschool, and how it stuck with him, and whenever he sees the ink, it reminds him to venture, never settle. He adds that it’s by this guy Edgar Allen Poe, called The Raven, and she realizes he’s either the boldest person she’s met, or he truly doesn’t know who she is. Either way, the next time someone pushes into someone else, and the room shifts to readjust, she steps closer to him.

She leaves with him. Is okay with him not knowing her name, okay because look at him, and he’s looking at her like he’s thinking the same, and after the disaster that was the hackathon, she could use a break. She’s not usually one for hookups, but then again she’s never met a British guy with eyes that are as quick as hers, and hands that feel like fire on her skin, and a voice that sends shivers through her. He’s careful of her leg and he keeps checking that she’s okay and when she falls apart, the awed expression on his face sends a jolt of emotions through her that she wasn’t expecting. She lets herself fall asleep in his bed, his hand running through her hair and hers tracing the ink on his arm. She’s tempted to ask about the other tattoos, but she doesn’t.

She wakes at the crack of dawn, like she always does, slips around the room to grab her clothes while he’s still waking up. It’s not awkward, but she thinks they both know that this is it, and not to make a big deal out of it. But as he makes her some coffee, the picture of domesticity in his kitchen with sweatpants around his hips and his face still half asleep, she finds herself wishing that maybe it could be more.

But she has school and she assumes he has a life to get back to, so she plants a chaste kiss on his pretty mouth, leaves the coffee on the table, and lets herself out.

The next weekend, Clarke asks her at brunch, eyes laughing and expression telling, if she and Zeke got along as well as she had predicted. It takes Raven a minute to connect the dots that her hot hookup was the ex-RAF pilot that Harper had met when she was overseas, and that she and Clarke had been trying to sether up with for forever (”seriously, Rey, he might be the only guy ever who’s on your level”). But she dunks some more sugar into her coffee, rolls her eyes and says that she didn’t really get to talk with him—it’s true, they really didn’t talk much—but that that’s probably a good thing, since she doesn’t go for guys who think that being on her level is a competition. Clarke mutters that sometimes someone really is just that perfect for you, and Raven takes the opportunity to divert her friend to her boyfriend, which Clarke happily bites at. She’s easily distracted when it comes to him.

Classes resume and Raven is disappointed in herself. She doesn’t let guys get under her skin, no matter how gorgeous they are, or how well they can handle a Ducati, but here she is, wondering what brown eyes is doing with his week.

She gets a call from Annapolis on Wednesday morning: they found the hacker. Well, sort of. Turns out, The Acolyte had a couple pet viruses of his own, and whenever his machine went down, they backfired on thesource. He lost everything, sure, but he’d gotten halfway through the mainframe of the hackathon before they caught him. And now he had a firewall set up, locking them out of the system and him in and, they were embarrassed to ask this, but would it be possible for Raven to take a look…

She does. Rolls her neck and sitsdown at the computer they give her in a room that isn’t supposed to exist. She’s slipped in through a backdoor and she whistles in admiration as she has to work her way through three more layers. It’s sophisticated stuff. Flashy, a bit much for her taste, but excellence can afford elegance. You can tell a lot about a developer by how they write code, and The Acolyte is no amateur. She’s surprised: usually hackers like this use their skill to steal or blackmail. This guy, he just seems like he’s trying to prove a point. But he’s protecting something.

Three hours in, she finds it. He hacked the competition because there was a backdoor through the USNA server into a subset of DACA records. The administrators behind her are getting nervous—it’s fair, Raven figures, they can’t read a thing on her screen, and she’s been focused pretty intently for the last half hour—but she doesn’t cue them in. Because, after all that effort, he’d just changed the deportation date for a couple hundred kids. Given them a chance to stay in the states, extend their future. Raven bites her lip. She thinks for a millisecond, then she changes her strategy. She still takes down the firewall, still wipes his drive. But she erases The Acolyte from the code, and publishes the code with the authority of one of the men behind her. The Acolyte is out, but his changes are in, and locked. And she left him a message.

She doesn’t know if he’ll show, but a week later, she’s back in Boston, waiting at the Common. She leans against one of the pillars, looking down at the Brewer Fountain. Just as her watch shows 4pm she straightens, not believing her eyes. But sure enough, she recognizes the broad shoulders and jawline of the man casually holding a rosary—she thought she was clever— and pacing back and forth in front of the fountain, looking around curiously. And as she goes down to meet him, she finds she’s smiling, wondering if maybe Harper and Clarke were on to something.

“Zeke Shaw,“ she says when she gets closer, and he turns, recognizing her voice. A couple different emotions run across his face, then he laughs, his hand coming up to cover his mouth as he steps towards her.

“Are you kidding? I was up against Raven Reyes?“

“You’re lucky, I went easy on you.“

He snorts. “You wiped my hardrive.”

“You crashed my competition.“

His eyes are laughing and he lifts his chin at her. “Come on, that wasn’t a competition for you.”

He’s right, and her smile stretches. “Rarely is.”

He stares at her for a long moment, admiration mixed with humor in his eyes. Then he shakes his head. “Now that, I believe.”

#pirate mechanic #zaven #zeke shaw #raven reyes #lindsay writes #i had wayyyy too much fun with this guys #help

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moonie-here · 6 years

Text

Shaken to the Core-Chapter 1

Fandom: Thomas Sanders/Sander Sides

Summery: Logan and Roman make a mistake with deadly consequences. Can Patton right their wrong before Virgil is gone forever?

Warnings: Angst. Crying. Non-descriptive body horror. General sad feeling. Slight physical fighting.

Pairings: Platonic Moxiety

ao3 link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13874427

{°°°}

The cracks first appeared he was alone.

Virgil was sitting on his bed drawing and listening to My Chemical Romance when he felt it.

It was as if someone had taken a sledgehammer to his ribs and mercilessly beating him with it. A scream of pain wracked it’s way up his throat, but was muffled by the sleeve of his hoodie as he threw his hand over his mouth.

Oh god oh god ohgodohgodohgod.

He crawled off of his bed over to the mirror on his wall, small sobs coming from his lips even with his hand over his mouth as he worked his way over slowly to the mirror.

He took a minute to gain focus and work past the pain before yanking his hoodie off and lifting up his shirt.

When he saw what was there a much louder sob pushed from between his lips.

Cracks.

Starting at his left hip slowly working their way up his abdomen and onto his chest. Something that looked like oil and blood dripped slowly from the newly formed crevices in his skin. Bruises were forming around the edges in shades of black, blue and yellow.

He let his shirt slip from his fingers and sat back on his knees. He finally caught his own reflections eye in the mirror. His makeup was smeared down his red puffy cheeks and exposed the heavy, purple bags under his eyes. His hair was messy from where he had grabbed his head in a state of panic. He looked like shit. He felt like it too.

“So this is how I go huh?” He whispered to the empty room.

...

“Not surprised.”

{°°°}

He figured out pretty quickly what was happening. Patton would avoid eye contact, Roman didn't talk to him and Logan would freeze every time he entered the room.

They didn't tell him. He didn't expect them to. It was supposed to be a secret between the three of them anyway. Why make it awkward?

Oh hey, by the way, I totally know you got Thomas is to take anxiety medication. Yeah, also it's totally gonna kill me. Anyway how's your day been?

Not happening.

Whenever he felt the cracks worsen he simply shut himself in his bathroom for as long as it took for it to stop and to clean himself up. The blood-oil stuff was a mess to clean up so he stopped trying to clean the bathroom after every “attack”. It was gross but at this point he didn't care. He was dying after all.

This happened consistently for a week before it really got worse. The cracks spread rapidly and Virgil spent most of his time in his bathroom, which was now covered in a layer of black sludge. He left only if he knew nothing was going to happen, which was almost never at this point. And despite the fact that Pat had tried to talk to him consistently over the last two weeks he felt...so alone.

{°°°}

Patton missed Virgil. Ever since Logan came to him and Roman with the idea of medication he felt...iky. Roman had been on board right away but Patton wanted to ask Virgil about it and the others wouldn't let him.

He felt wrong. Virgil was his best friend and he hated lying. He had rarely seen Virgil since this entire thing started and when he did Virgil looked on the brink of death. It had been two weeks since they had they had a proper conversation and oh, he just wanted to hug his son right now. He wanted to help Virge with whatever was going on and see if the pills had done anything bad.

Patton was curled up in his bed debating on going to tell Virgil what was going on. He’d tried to check on the other side before but Virge had always turned him away saying “I’m fine,” or “I’m just tired.”

In fact Patton was so wrapped up in his own thoughts he only snapped out when a violent, hysterical scream pierced through the tense air of the mind scape.

He shot straight up, throwing his quilt and several stuffed animals off of his bed. He swung his door open and rushed into the hall looking around widely until another scream pierced it's way into his brain.

His stomach sank.

The scream came from Virgil’s room.

{°°°}

Virgil felt it coming. After about two weeks he could feel it before it hit, like someone would just start slowly squeezing his kidney until pain took over his entire body. The cracks almost covered his body now. Up to his collarbone, forearms and ankles.

This one was different though. He could tell. His stomach twisted differently and his hands shook more than usual. The throbbing all over his body was more intense as well.

This was gonna be the last one.He felt tears gather in the corner of his eyes as he walked shakily from the bathroom to the desk in his room. He didn't want to sit down but his legs were giving out.

He slumped into the chair and pulled out a new sheet of lined paper and his favorite pen. He couldn't figure out what to write to the others. He wanted to say goodbye but he wasn't good at all this mushy stuff.

Fuck it.

He poured out everything he was thinking onto the paper until he had to flip it over for more room. Halfway down the second side the pain hit full force.

He tried to push up to make it to the bathroom but ended up falling onto the the floor, chair toppling right alongside him.

The pain was so much at once. It tore through him. Literally. He couldn't breath, he could barely think. He wanted it to end.

Make it stop oh god oh god please helpme helpme helpme i should have told them i dont wanna die please stop it it hurts

Tears ran down his face as he curled into a ball. He clenched his jacket’s sleeves looking for some release but all he felt was his fingers cracking and slipping on the weird sludge that was now soaking the fabric. He felt a scream claw its way up his throat.

…

Hands.

Hands were on him. Pulling his own fingers from where he clenched the hoodie till it tore. Someone was crying and holding him. Pushing his bangs from his forehead, as he felt tears land on his face. The person was singing to him with shuddering breaths. He wish he knew who it was. He couldn't sort out any real thought and his body was thrashing out of his control, jerking violently in every direction.

You are my sunshine, my only sunshine. You make me happy when skies are gray. You’ll never know dear how much i’ll love you. Please don't take my sunshine away.

Patton?

Virgil open his mouth to talk, only to start hacking up black sludge. The taste of mud and iron worked its way up his throat and passed his lips. I can't breathe!

The coughing, pain and cracking went on for what felt like hours. The presence of two others appeared by his side only to be pushed back by what he assumed was Patton. It took all of his strength but he managed to pull his eyelids apart. He locked eyes with Pat.

“V-virgil? Kiddo-o you with-th me?”

“Virgil, what caused this?” Virgil’s eyes flickered towards the voice even when his body jerked away, curling further into Patton’s arms.

“Not now Logan.” He looked back at Patton who was glaring at who he gathered was the logical side. Patton looked…. Scary. His eyes were red and watery but looked as if they were shooting daggers to kill someone. His entire face a bright pink in the non-blushy way. Sadness? Anger? This wasn't Pat.

He coughed again and all attention was back on him. He whimpered “P-patn?”

“Im here kiddo. Im right here…”

“Hurts...make it stop?”

He felt fingers run through his hair. “Yeah I know kiddo. I’m not sure I can make it stop, but i'm damn well gonna try.”

“I-I think ima die?”

The hand froze and three people sucked in at the same time.

“No. You're not gonna die Virgil. You're my best friend and im not letting you die.”

“I can feel it… I don't wanna die Pat.” His fists worked their way into his polo. “Don't let me die.”

Tears. Everything was blurry as tears ushered down his cheeks making tracks through the black goop that strained his face. He let loose a few strangled gasps as he felt himself crumble.

“NO! COME ON VIRGIL PLEASE! I-I cant l-loose you…”

“M’sorry Pat….”

{°°°}

Patton’s arms were empty now. They had been for an hour. At least what he thought was an hour. He didn't know anymore. He didn't care. His best friend died in his arms and he did nothing but cry.

When Virgil passed it was messy. A mix of dust and black sludge were pooled around him staining everything it touched. The only thing left was Virgil’s hoodie, which Patton had clutched in his closed fists. Logan and Roman were still standing in the doorway where Patton had kept them. He still didn't let them close. When Patton finally moved from his kneeling position, two hours and thirty-seven minutes later, he fell onto the edge of Virgil’s bed smearing black onto the mussed up sheets.

Logan spoke, breaking the silence. “Patton. We... we should clean this up.”

Pat looked up at him from the hoodie in his grip. Mouth opening and closing a few times before he found his voice. “No.”

“Pat this is hard for all if us but surely we cant-” Roman was cut of when a fist connected with the side of his face.

“Patton!” Logan yelled as Princey fell to the floor with a thud.

“NO LOGAN…” He yelled spinning to face the logical trait, and grabbing by his collar. “MY BEST FRIEND JUST DIED IN MY ARMS AND YOU BOTH ACT LIKE IT’S NOTHING!” He spat it out as if it was the most disgusting thing ever to touch his tongue.

Tears threatened to spill from Patton's eyes as he stared Logan down.

“He’s gone…

And it’s because of his own family….”

Pat let go of his shirt, arms swinging to his sides. A sob broke through his lips as he sank to the floor once more, curling up into a tight ball. His whole body shook as he cried loudly into Virgil’s hoodie.

Roman looked on in disbelief. Patton hadn't cried like this ever...not even when Thomas got dumped.

Bile rose in his own throat as he looked over the moral side. He threw his hand over his mouth in order to keep it down. Tears spilled down his own cheeks as he looked up at Logan.

His eyes widened when he saw red blotchy cheeks and shaking shoulders.

“What did we do?” He heard Logan whisper.

“Oh god what did we do…?”

@pattson @anxious-ball-of-sunshine @my-happy-little-bean @ironwoman359 @mirror2thespirit @shadow-walker-1201 @thecrimsoncodex (suffer with me)

#logan sanders #roman sanders #patton sanders #virgil sanders #im sorry #thomas sanders #sander sides #holy shit #im crying #send help

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mysmesecretvalentines · 7 years

Text

For @stardustseven

It starts with the writing. Sometimes, people just wake up with pen markings on their arms, markings they don’t remember drawing on themselves. Some brush it off as forgetfulness. Others know straightaway. They all reach the same conclusion in the end. They’ve seen their mate. Mate, or the longer term “soulmate” was the “too rare to be common, too common to be rare” phenomenon of two souls being equal to each other. Of course, it’s not all daisies and sunshine after the markings begin, no sir. First, it’s the tracking down. For some it’s easy- that new waitress at the restaurant, that guy who just moved in above, those kinds. For others it’s hard- waking up face down in a bar after getting rip-roaring drunk with floral writing on your hand and no memory of the last 18 hours is not a good start. And for others still it’s a challenge- a story that went viral a few days ago was about a man who found his mate by watching a short advertisement- in Chinese. It took him months to find the ad, a year to learn basic Chinese, and another 2 to find and propose to his mate on the spot(they got married 2 years later). And for some, it’s a special sort of hell- perhaps they find their mate in another relationship-or, God forbid, married. Others find their mates and get together, only to fall horribly apart due to clashing personalities or mental problems. Just because their souls were equal, doesn’t mean their hearts were as well. Ironically, it was these relationships that almost always ended with abuse, crime, and on a really bad day, death. Luciel had always thought himself to be the latter. *** It started with a hacking. Ok, a lot of things in his life started with a hacking. But this one didn’t have anything to do with him. Well, it kinda did. Anyway- He noticed the newcomer right away. He stared at her screen name. MC? He messaged the group members as he worked, drawing their attention to the trespasser. It wasn’t a dual download, like he had suggested, but neither was it a robot. An actual human being had entered the chatroom without his permission. Their IP address wasn’t encrypted so he gained access to the phone with ease, digging into their social media (barely anything), gallery (nothing-was this a new phone?) and anywhere else he could find clues about this MC. The name implied it was female, but he’d been fooled before. It wasn’t until he switched to location tracking when he noticed where she was. Rika’s apartment. He told the others(who proceeded to freak out a bit) while he hacked into the security cameras in the house. He hadn’t done that in a year-plus he made damn good firewalls-so it took him sometime to see their intruder’s face. And she was… She was… He felt his skin go hot. He wasn’t even looking at her face yet; just the monochrome silhouette of a woman no older than he. What’s wrong with me? He shifted in his computer seat, taking a large swig of Phd. Pepper as the woman turned to look up at the camera. Luciel spat out his drink as electricity jolted down his spine. He hunched over as he coughed, hands grasping the desk as he expelled the carbonated beverage. Straightening, he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand when he noticed something on the inside of his right wrist. It was a word-“tintinnabulation?” in sharp but elegant handwriting. He moved his gaze to the rest of his arm; slowly, as if he was writing them himself, other words and phrases also began to dot the rest of his forearm. He looked back at the girl; she was rubbing her arms. And looking directly at the camera. Ah, shit. *** She was a writer. His arms told him that much. The next five days were filled with things to do; if he wasn’t working he was doing what V wanted him to do, or he was on the messenger, talking with the members in his usual style; all jokes and laughs. But mostly, he was writing on his hand. It took him a minute after the initial shock to remember that he could write back on himself as well-using washable markers he wrote on his palm, keeping an eye on the security camera to see her reaction. He laughed when she jumped at the letters forming in her hand, but then peered closer to read his message. Hello, MC.

She looked at it for a bit. Her gaze flickered to the camera, but then she had a pen in her hand and was writing back. Luciel felt pressure, the telltale prickle of taking a pen to flesh. He waited. Luciel. Back and forth they communed, writing at first small questions and answers to each other. What are you from? What do you like? It soon digressed, however, into silly banter and stupid drawings scrawled on different regions of their bodies. There were times when he would wake up and go to the bathroom, only to find his face vandalized to look like a cat. Suppressing a smile, he had called her and teased her in a cat like voice “Come on, nya~ Rub it off nya~”, all while he watched her giggle on the sofa at Rikas apartment, wearing an identical set of whiskers on her face as well. He was still chuckling when the alert came in. He stared at his screen, aghast and perplexed at the crimson skull flashing on top strings of code. He leapt into action, trying to trace to incoming hacker and block them. It was too late, however-the intruder had already started tampering with security controls long before the system had even registered their presence. Luciel was left to survey whatever damage they had wreaked. He paled as he scanned for the change in the lines of code, while accessing security. The change wasnt much-a few words here, a command there, but the result was horrendous. The bomb. He checked the system twice, then another time to make sure he wasn’t dreaming. The screen stayed the same. The bomb. Before Rika had died, she had become…paranoid. Convinced that someone would try to access the sensitive information about party guests without the RFA’s knowledge…she had taken extreme measures. One of those measures was to install a bomb into her apartment. When the system picked up an unauthorized entry, it was to detonate the bomb, which could wipe out the whole floor-or maybe the building itself. And it was hacked. He called V. He also told the members in the chatroom what had happened, and warned MC to stay put, lest she trip the bomb. He switched all screens around him to the security feed of the building, save for a laptop, which he used to try and fix the issue. He looked at his hand for a moment, almost anticipating a sign from MC. When she didn’t reach out, he scrawled two words across his hand before sinking back into his computer chair to work. I’m sorry. Exactly 26.5 hours later, he’s still awake. The running anthem of itsallmyfaultitsallmyfault is an effective way to ward off sleep, as well as the five one liter bottles of Ph.D Pepper that littered his workspace. He still hadn’t made much headway into cracking the code surrounding the bomb controls. At worst, they’d have to go in there and disarm the bomb manually-risking the lives of many people. Including MC. MC. Exactly 2.26 hours after he apologized, she got back to him. The feeling of being drawn on plagued his upper body for hours as she wrote messages to him. His phone was off, so the only way to get his attention was to literally draw on him. It did a good job too; he found himself tearing away from the computer screen once in a while to glance at his hands or arms. Are you alright? Turn on your phone!!! Answer me you @$!&# Are you sleeping? I miss you. I’m worried about you. Luciel, please. The last one was bolded and underlined, as if she had traced it over and over again. He stared at it for a while, his emotions swirling under his golden eyes. He pulled up a small tablet, tapping a few icons to pull up the security footage of Rika’s flat. MC was still there, laying sideways on the couch. Her long brown hair was pushed to the side, so her closed eyes and pursed lips were visible, as well as her two hands, which were clasped together to her chest. She looked a bit like she was praying. The thought of that made him smile. He reached out, the tips of his fingers gently playing along the side of the screen, around her small, monochrome figure. “Sorry,” he muttered softly as he stroked her back. What he was apologizing for, he wasn’t sure anymore. Whether he was talking about ignoring her, or just being her soulmate in general. He didn’t deserve her. He didn’t think he ever would. Then the screen flickered, and cut out. What the? Luciel tapped the screen, once, twice, before putting two and two together. It wasn’t that the tablet was broken, but the security feed had been cut. The security- He felt pain race down his forearm, he looked down to see words in big, hurried font appearing on him. The ink was red, looking perversely and terrifyingly like blood. HELP. Luciels blood ran cold. No.nonononononononono- He rushed back to his computer, but then stopped. He couldn’t help her from here. Swiveling on his chair, he reached for a pen. What happened? Intruder. One. He wants to take me. Where are you? Her response to this took a while. When she did, her writing was shaky and sloppy, as if she couldn’t see exactly what she was doing. Hiding The g was slanted to the right. There might have been something that frightened her-something like- He grabbed his phone, dialing one of the few numbers he had. “Hello?” the man who answered was calm, if not puzzled at why he was being called at such an unholy hour. “Send the police to **** Building!! Apartment ****! And bodyguards! Hurry up!” “What?” Jumin asked. “Where is that? And why-” he paused, his mind processing the information. “MC?” Luciel didn’t say anything, breathing hard. “Alright.” He hung up. Luciel breathed. He leaned back in his chair, combing his hand through his hair and closing his eyes. He didn’t wake up for a while. Not to see the small words forming on his wrist, just like the first day the connected. Thank you.

————————– Hello! I know this isn’t great and technically unfinished but this is all I can give you…if you want you can contact me and I’ll try to end it XD

#mysme secret valentines 2k17 #mystic messenger #jumin han #707 #unknown #fic #submission

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toothlessthedragon12 · 5 years

Text

Chapter 1: The Encounter

Hello everyone this is my first fanfiction/story so I hope you like it :). I’m also pretty new to this, so yeahhh. Also please tell me what you think ^_^!

Word Count: 1918

Characters:10289

Warnings: Mention of blood, gunshots (not sure if this counts

Chapter 1: The Encounter

Written by:

Alexa Kurdelak

Time:9:00 p.m Cairo, Egypt, Location: Outskirts of Talon base.

“There are one, two, ten ,twenty talon soldiers, maybe even more on that base” said an unknown voice. “Relax Jackson, it’s nothing I haven’t dealt with before,” said an unknown female with binoculars in her hand. “Yeah but Luna do we even know if “he will actually be there,” he said. Luna sighed, putting away her binoculars and gearing up. “I trust the intel that Zoe found and besides this is the best lead I’ve got right now,” Luna said putting the mask over her mouth and pulling her hood up. A moment of silence and then Jackson spoke “I know just please be careful Lu”. Luna laughed a little, “I will and I trust you will be my eyes in the sky” she said as she released a robotic beetle. “Always” Jackson answered.

Luna hopped the fence to the base and used her blowgun with sleep darts to knock out a couple of guards. “Looks like there’s an entrance just up ahead, but you’re going to need a keycard,'' said Jackson. “A keycard huh” said Luna hiding behind a wall. “I take it those two guards might have the keycard we need”? “Yeah.. I mean it’s possi-”, before Jackson could finish his sentence Luna ran out and wrapped her forearm around one of the guards throat with the blade of a dagger resting on his neck. “Ahh, Ahh Ah. If I were you I would put that gun down, unless you want your buddy here to die” she said to the guard pointing the gun at her. “Not that you care but the blade against your skin is coated in the toxins from poison dart frogs and I’ve never seen it’s effects on a person before though I’m down for anything really” said Luna in a sadistic tone. Luna felt the guard shift when he heard what might happen to him.

Luna realizing the guards shift she changed her tone “Of course that all depends on your friend pointing the gun at me”. “The way I see it is you have two options: option 1: your buddy holding the gun hands me the key card and you both live or option two: I kill you then I kill your buddy and take the key card for myself”. “It’s your choice,'' Luna said. The talon guard seeing no other option pulls the keycard out of his pocket and walks over to Luna, “here” said the guard. “Now you will keep your word, that we will live”, said the guard that Luna is holding hostage. Luna taking the key and answering “of course you have my word”. Without the guards seeing Luna grabbed two of her sleep darts and used one on the guard she had as a hostage, then before the other guard realized what had happened she already threw the other dart and put him to sleep too. “Goodnight boys,” said Luna walking over them and towards the keypad. “I’m always impressed on how you take people down so fast,'' said Jackson. “Well I did have great teachers” Luna replied with a smile. Luna placed the keycard in the slot and the door opened.

“I won’t be able to communicate with you once you enter so you will be going in blind,'' said Jackson. “However I will be able to hack into their cameras so your movements will go unnoticed”. Luna smiled, “Sounds good, see you on the other side”.

Moving through the base as quietly as she can to find her target. She suddenly hears some voices coming from the room down the hallway, and so now crouching Luna inches herself to where the voices are coming from. Luna leans up against the wall and realizes the voices are coming from just around the corner, judging by the voices she could tell that someone with a raspy weird sounding voice was giving somebody (possibly a talon soldier) orders. Luna then heard footsteps walking away from her location and with a sigh, she peeked her head around the wall to see that the two who were speaking left. Still moving down the corridor Luna comes up to an interface and takes out the flashdrive Jackson gave her and puts it in the usb port. “It’s up to you now Jackson” Luna whispered to herself. Jackson on the other side of the world hacked passed the firewall and began downloading data from the Talon base. “Wait, no, no, No” Jackson said as the connection has been stopped and the data frozen. An alarm startled Luna “what’s going on, she thought to herself. “Luna, Luna can you hear me, you have to get out of there Now!” said Jackson.

Luna surprised answered “Jackson what’s going on”? “How are you able to hack into their frequency?” “I tell you about that later but right now my priority is getting you out of here, so I will guide you to the best of my ability,'' Jackson answered. “Okay, I trust you,” said Luna as she starts running to try to escape. “Okay so down this hall and to the right there is an exit,” said Jackson looking at the base blueprints. “Okay” said Luna already at the coordinates Jackson told her, “but we have one little problem and I’m not doubting you at all, it’s just this is a dead end”. No, you’re in the right area your exit is right next to you, the air duct”, Jackson said. Luna sighed, “Great, what’s a mission without crawling threw an air duct”. “Yep well you better hurry, company’s coming from both sides,” said Jackson. Without a moment to lose Luna removed the air vent, climbed inside the air duct and tried to put back the air vent so no one would get suspicious. “So how is it going”?, asked Jackson in a teasing way. Luna still struggling to get through the air duct “Oh, you know it’s a little difficult when you have a bunch of gear on you plus not having to waste my oxygen since there’s barely any in here,'' said Luna annoyingly. Jackson laughed, “So anyway how much farther do I have to go to find the exit,'' asked Luna. “Not to far, just ahead of you actually is the outside world,'' said Jackson. Once Luna reached the exit she situated herself to kick the air vent lose, once the air vent hit the ground she jumped down to the ground.

Catching her breath, Luna leaned up against the wall to rest before she escapes the base. “Once these guards pass you, it’s a clear shot to kick off the wall near the fence and jump over it, then you’re home free,” said Jackson. Once the talon soldiers pass her she sticks her head out to make sure the exit is clear. *Bang* a gunshot was fired just above her and miraculously the bullet just grazed her arm. “Argh” said Luna as she grabs her arm and runs out into the open to find the person that shot her. Luna drew her crossbow and looked up at the roof to see “him”, the one they call Reaper. Reaper had jumped down from the building and once he hit the ground he turned into this black smoke and turned back to his human form. Luna realizing that if she doesn’t take care of her arm soon she is going to lose a lot of blood. Thinking fast on her feet she fires a trick crossbolt from her crossbow at the ground which creates a smoke bomb. Once she created the diversion she ran and hid behind a wall “Well this is just great,” said Luna as she touches her bleeding arm. She ripped off a piece of her outfit and wrapped it around her arm to help stop the bleeding. “What I am going to do now? It’s not like I can wall hop and jump over the fence with an injured arm” she said to herself. Before she could think on it more she heard another gunshot and this time she dodged it! “You don’t give up, do you?” Luna said drawing and pointing her crossbow.

She fired the crossbow hoping to hit her target but Reaper doged every one of the crossbolts. Before Luna could fire off more Reaper did a move that only she would know because her father taught her. She had no time to react before she landed on the ground and the crossbow flying out of her hand “No” Luna whispered. Turning over she comes face to face with Reaper’s gun pointing at her. Trying to crawl and get her crossbow, Reaper prevents her from reaching it by stepping on her injured arm. *Argh* Looking at the gun and no means of escape Luna thought to herself “This is it, I’m going to die here.'' As Luna is about to pass out from the amount of pain in her arm she hears Jackson say “Luna close your eyes!” as a miniature stun grenade is fired next to her and Reaper. “Jackson,thank-” Luna started to say, “Thank me later Lu, now run,'' interrupted Jackson. Listening to Jackson’s words she grabbed her crossbow and ran as fast as she could. Reaching her exit she kicked off the wall as hard as she could and hopped over the barbed fence and continued running.

At a hotel somewhere in Cairo,Egypt Time: 11:30 p.m

In Luna’s hotel room she is webcamming with Jackson, to talk about tonight's events. “You know you should really go to a hospital,''said Jackson while he’s watching Luna clean and sterilize her wound. *Pain Grunt* “Yeah well I rather not have the nurses and doctors question what I was doing to have gotten this injury,'' said Luna. “So anyway, were you able to get any information from that flashdrive before you were cut off” asked Luna while wrapping gauze around her wound. “Yeah, and looks like your next destination is in Venice,'' said Jackson. Luna standing up and putting on one of her father’s hoodies “Good” she said. Jackson smiling “Hm, I thought you’ve given up on your wearing your dad’s hoodie?” said Jackson. “Ha, yeah well it’s the only thing that keeps the nightmares away and it keeps me safe” said Luna. Jackson realizing he might have hurt Luna, “Listen Lu, I’m sorry I didn't mean..” before he could finish Luna interrupted him “I know Jack”. “Well I better get going, the others wanted to go out for lunch,” said Jackson. “Okay, well say hi to everyone for me” said Luna not wanting to say goodbye. “You should get some rest Lulu, I will get you a plane ticket to Italy so please just rest,'' said Jackson. “Hmm, haha alright Jackson, Goodnight” said Luna smiling. “Goodnight”, said Jackson. After saying goodnight to each other, Luna turned off her laptop and put her laptop in her suitcase. Still rummaging through her suitcase Luna found a picture of her and her dad, taking a breath she placed it on the nightstand next to her bed. Luna pretty beat from tonight’s events layed down on her soft pillow and stared at the picture of her and her dad. “Goodnight, Dad” said Luna softly. She leaned over to turn off the light and with her mind still swimming about coming face to face with Reaper, she closed her eyes and went to sleep.

#blizzard #Reaper #Gabriel reyes #luna reyes #fanfiction #orginal character #Overwatch #blizzard entertainment

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leehaws · 5 years

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Renato Moicano is Jack of All Trades, with Answers for All

Renato Moicano is not a fighter who presents a single, stand-out problem. No one is writing home about his thunderous right hand, his blindingly fast jab, or his unstoppable double leg takedown. The Brazilian brings a fairly mundane toolkit to his fights but can eye up an opponent and tell you exactly what is needed within a few minutes of sparring. And when Moicano has assessed his man and hit on what is working, it is ruthlessly exploited until his opponent can no longer keep pace. No, Moicano has no standout technique or tactic to set the featherweights of the world quivering in their boots, but he has something much more useful: he has answers.

Even if you are a fairly committed follower of the UFC, Renato Moicano’s surge to prominence in the featherweight division might have caught you by surprise. Moicano arrived in the UFC in December 2014, beating Tom Niinimaki fairly impressively on the undercard of a Fight Night event. Unfortunately, Moicano was taken out of action by injuries and missed the entirety of 2015, and only managed one mundane decision victory in May 2016.

After another year out, Moicano returned to the cage on April 15, 2017 to face the No. 5 ranked featherweight, Jeremy Stephens. It was an opportunity that seemingly came out of nowhere and yet Mociano made good on it. The Brazilian made Stephens look foolish, clipping off crisp jabs, low kicks and combinations before circling away from Stephens’s straight-armed swings. Since then, Moicano has managed to stay healthy and looked impressive boxing up Brian Ortega (before falling into a guillotine choke), and outclassed Calvin Kattar and Cub Swanson in 2018.

There isn’t a lot about Moicano that you can grab onto: none of his weapons are the fastest or the hardest or the crispest in the division, and that might account somewhat for his almost sneaking up on the featherweight top ten. We are touting him as a brilliant striker, yet he hasn’t scored a single knockout. But when you have access to the footage and you can watch one fight after another, the changes Moicano makes from fight to fight are a more exciting indicator of potential than any Zabit Magomedsharipov or Yair Rodriguez jumping spin kick.

Stephens – Lateral Movement, Straight Hitting

Jeremy Stephens’s game is well known. He is going to walk forward and attempt to kick your lead leg very hard, or take your head off by swinging his hands. The problem is that he’s extremely tough and has a pretty good gas tank for someone swinging all their being into every shot. Even the very best fighters in the world have to show they are capable of adapting in order to beat him.

One of the key weaknesses in Stephens’s game is his footwork. He can cut the cage for a while, but tends to get frustrated by direction changes, and when he gets frustrated his ring cutting gets even worse. So Moicano set to work floating around the cage with his feet almost parallel. This was a stark contrast to his usual long, low stance. With his feet level Moicano could side step more effectively. Each time Stephens stepped in he ate Moicano’s jab, then Moicano would circle off into space and Stephens would have to cut the ring all over again.

Of course no one can be perfect all the time, so Moicano did end up at the fence from time to time. But the Brazilian kept his head (and remembered to move it) and then cut tighter angles out to the side. He often did this by stepping across himself, allowing a tight pivot around to face the opponent or permitting him to run straight through into a sprint in the style of Alexander Gustafsson if he felt particularly troubled.

When the judges’ decision was announced, one judge saw it—bizarrely—for Stephens, perhaps because he had been advancing the entire time. The problem is that moving forward while getting lanced by jabs is really only dictating the pace at which you get your ass kicked. But to everyone else it was quite a coup, Moicano was basically unknown and Stephens had just fought a far closer fight against the great Frankie Edgar who was being lined up for a title shot.

Ortega – Catch and Pitch

Unfortunately, Moicano’s path to the top was hindered slightly in his next match where he made the first misstep of his UFC career, against Brian Ortega. The fight started out well for Moicano as he abandoned the mobile style and opted to play catch and pitch with Ortega. Ortega likes to throw hard and one or two at a time, he also likes to attempt to shoulder roll off his opponent’s right hand but does it pretty poorly, leaving his chin up and his shoulder low. So Moicano carried his left forearm upright, ready to catch Ortega’s right hand and immediately return with his own.

Moicano had success returning on Ortega’s right hands but was caught by surprise at just how durable Ortega was. Moicano put over a hundred blows onto Orega’s head but there was very little to show for it, where Ortega had opened up Moicano’s nose pretty badly in one of the opening trades.

It got pretty heated as Moicano forced more and more trades.

Moreover, for all his technical shortcomings, Ortega often shows a talent for the science of striking. By the second round Ortega was sneaking in body punches while Moicano teed off on his head. By the third round, Moicano was breathing hard. A reactive takedown late in the second round had scored Moicano some points and won him some breathing room, but an attempt at the same in round three saw him dragged into the vaunted Ortega guillotine and he was quickly submitted.

The Ortega fight stands as an example of Moicano doing his reconnaissance and not adapting appropriately because he was too invested in his first plan. Moicano found good success with low kicks as Ortega stepped in. He also found Ortega’s body easily when he shot for it in his punching combinations. But he rarely returned to these targets and instead stuck to his guns in swinging for Ortega’s head.

Kattar – Killing the Jab

Calvin Kattar met Moicano coming off a tremendous knockout over Shane Burgos. Kattar was known as a kickboxer but did much of his work floating in behind a jab in order to score a good right hand. Moicano’s task in this fight seemed to be cutting down Kattar’s mobility while mitigating Kattar’s straight hitting. For the early going it was all the usual Moicano check hooks and the odd kick, but Moicano really found his stride when he timed Kattar with low kicks as Kattar stepped in.

The traditional in and out style of boxing cannot be performed without one leg leading the entire body into the opponent’s range, so as that leg stepped, Moicano punted it—either moving his head off line or checking Kattar’s hands with his own as he did so.

Here Moicano demonstrates one of the prettiest techniques in counter kicking—slipping inside of the jab and countering with the right low kick to buckle the opponent’s planting leg.

A few jarring connections as Kattar stepped in and suddenly Kattar wasn’t so mobile. Kattar would follow Moicano around the cage and then Moicano would stop and start checking Kattar’s hands, showing him feinted jabs and straights, and then as Moicano threw a kick from this close range you could almost see in Kattar’s face the disappointment that he had been suckered once again.

A common feature of Moicano fights is distance control. If he is not doing his own hitting, he simply isn’t there. It hardly seems sporting but that is the way good striking is done. So if Moicano stands still in front of his opponent, you can be pretty much assured there is a trap being set.

Moicano’s movement and distance work against Kattar was broken up by periods where he would stand in front of Kattar, heavy on the front foot in his long stance, and extend his right hand to either check Kattar’s lead hand or obstruct the path of the jab. Obstructing the path of the jab is a great trick that you will see all the time in MMA—it looks like the fighter is open for the left hook behind his extended right hand, but the entire point is to stifle the quickest punch the opponent has, and being ready to react to the slower one that is being offered up.

After eating a couple of those low kicks as he stepped in, Kattar became more cautious in these little pawing exchanges, and then Moicano was free to skip up and hack away with the inside low kick.

When obstructing a jabber’s best weapon, a fighter has to know that the moment his checking hand slips from that path, the moment his opponent’s lead fist is shown a glimmer of sunlight, that jab is going to fly out of its own accord. So rather than simply shutting down an opponent’s jab, a fighter might do even more damage to his opponent’s confidence through carefully choosing when he is going to allow his opponent to jab. Moicano’s right hand was rarely off of the line of Kattar’s jab, but when it was, Kattar’s jab would come like clockwork and Moicano would immediately slip to the elbow side of it and return with a counter right hand.

A final crafty look was Moicano’s work from southpaw. He would occasionally switch stances and then lead with a right uppercut. This served to raise the head of Kattar and stand him upright. Following with a body kick, a leg kick, or a high kick, Moicano was able to score good connections on Kattar throughout the fight. This use of the southpaw right uppercut to both close the distance and stand the opponent up was a staple of the great Nak Muay, Yodsanklai.

Other Habits

Of course there are features of Moicano’s game which are constant from fight to fight. As we remarked earlier, what he does best is adjust the ratios to suit his opponent. On Saturday night, Moicano faces Jose Aldo—the most accomplished featherweight in MMA history and while Moicano deserves this opportunity he has by no means been flawless. Moicano’s check hooks are a double edged sword—he scores many of his best connections by leaning back and whipping out the left hook as his opponent chases him, but he also exposes himself horribly when he does so.

Moicano’s bad habit is the same that Francis Ngannou had when he first came to the UFC. He has his timing down on the check hook and has good success on it, but rather than slide back with his feet or drop his right foot back and lean back into his stance, he will often come up out of his stance and lean back only at the waist. This means that there are many, many awkward occasions in Moicano fights where the opponent is almost on top of him and he is swinging with his hands low and performing a limbo. (It is worth noting that Ngannou fixed this habit and you can see him perform the same technique with much neater mechanics and while maintaining his stance against Andrei Arlovski.)

Like Ngannou, Moicano will pair his check hook with a right uppercut. It’s a good combination because if the opponent senses the hook he will normally drop his head and crunch down to protect himself, then the bus driver uppercut clacks his teeth together.

In the above example, Moicano actually shifts off to his left side as he throws the check hook, taking him into a southpaw stance to land a right hook/uppercut. We all recall this sneaky southpaw hook from the ninety degree angle as Mike Tyson’s favorite punch, but it is hardly a modern invention. Here is Georges Carpentier (world light heavyweight champion from 1920 to 1922) demonstrating the exact same shift to line up the right hand.

Moicano’s back-leaning check hooks are the most worrying because should Moicano go into a lean like this and his opponent instead show him a double jab and commit to covering ground before letting go the right hand, Moicano will have nowhere to go when that right hand comes.

And even those shifts into southpaw out to the side have their problems. Brian Ortega caught Moicano with clotheslines every time he stepped out to the right in this manner with his head up in the air and that is how Moicano got bloodied up in that fight in the first place.

While the counter hooks work wonderfully when Moicano can get opponents reaching for his head, his Achilles heel in the Ortega fight turned out to be his body. You can’t lean your gut out of reach. Moicano is a gangly guy for the weight class and drives a hard pace to begin with, a bit of body work could slow his feet and cause him all kinds of trouble. Jose Aldo’s commitment to bodywork has been sporadic, but after he handed Jeremy Stephens a very rare knockout loss with a liver shot, you have to think he’ll be coming into this fight with a new appreciation for hitting the midriff.

We have only really hit the main points of Moicano’s striking, and there is a lot of clever stuff he does that we just don’t have time to cover in depth (marching double kick combinations like an old school American kickboxer, upward elbows and so on) but it is worth noting just how smooth Moicano has looked on the ground in his UFC fights. He hasn’t scored a single career knockout, but that statistic hides the fact that he has hurt a lot of opponents and then methodically finished them on the ground. You will remember this as B.J. Penn’s typical gameplan, but there’s a touch of Penn in Moicano’s top game as well. When met with butterfly guard, Moicano will clear one knee, drop to a hip and then simply step over the other hook straight into mount.

In his most recent fight, against Cub Swanson, Moicano set to work establishing the jab and frustrating Swanson who was forced to leap to close the distance. A stiff jab sent Swanson to the mat and Moicano quickly found himself in the mount. As a Swanson fan it is sometimes more fun to watch him work hurt because his ground game is something quite wily—constantly working back to half butterfly guard and hitting stand ups and sweep attempts from there. As Moicano postured up to strike, Swanson sat straight up into him, scooting back on his hands and sneaking a knee in to accomplish butterfly half-guard. But even against a guard player as slick as Swanson, Moicano sat to his hip again and swept the leg over to mount once more. Eventually Moicano was able to subdue Swanson with a rear naked choke.

UFC on ESPN+ 2 is an absolutely stacked card of fights for the educated fight fan. From Moraes vs. Assuncao to Oliveira vs. Teymur to Alves vs. Griffin, there are some seriously compelling match ups between high level technicians scheduled. It should tell you something that instead of covering all of those we chose to focus entirely on one fighter today and on his style rather than the specifics of his upcoming bout.

Renato Moicano has shown the ability to spot openings and ruthlessly exploit them, changing his game on the fly without instruction, and even among the elite that remains a rare skill. He has the makings of something very special and it is important that you know that, and in turn that you know just how good Jose Aldo is if he can, at this advanced stage in his career, beat such a prospect.

Jack Slack wrote the biography Notorious: The Life and Fights of Conor McGregor and hosts the Fights Gone By podcast.

Renato Moicano is Jack of All Trades, with Answers for All syndicated from https://justinbetreviews.wordpress.com/

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wordatlas-deactivated · 6 years

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Take Me To Church - Short Story

For Mr. Dumbrille’s ENG3U - “Man’s Potential for Evil” project [10/29/17]

Outside, the town was dead.

The sliver of sun creeping above the horizon gave away how early of an hour it was for Darion to be walking. He appeared to be the only living thing awake exploring the crisp, autumn dawn of Blackwood. Pine trees towered to the heavy rain clouds, stretching vast and endless, swallowing the silent cabin-village whole.

Another gust of wind urged him forward a step, causing him to tighten the grasp around his middle, hugging his jacket. A tussle of dead, dark gray leaves bounced around his black shoes for a moment, before dancing on their way. He looked up, sucked a big breath of cold air in, and sighed.

This whole town was hit-and-miss. “Blackwood Pines, hideaway treasure of Oregon state!” A cheap lodging hole until I drive up to Portland tomorrow morning and waste away in a 9-to-5. I’ll return home to a jungle of boxes and lonely, empty rooms. What a new, fresh life you’ve gotten for yourself, Weiss. Darion dragged a hand over his face, scowling at a blackbird drifting across the sky. Who knows, you may find someone to f--

Hands hard and cold as rocks crashed down and squeezed around Darion's neck. The being's elbow connected with his face as he was spun around. Wide eyes met crazy eyes attached to a hysteric and deranged man who looked like he was dragged through the forest. The man's lips ferociously collided with Darion's, keeping him in a death-lock of a lover's embrace. Darion's scream was muffled between their pressed faces -- he yanked his body back, a hand flying up to his mouth to aggressively wipe his ruined lips.

"Whathe- What the hell is wrong with you?" Darion was shaking and felt like throwing up. The stranger looked like he was about to throw up also with the effort of getting his frantic words out. Being this close, Darion would see strings of spit cling to the man's grizzly beard. "I'm alive - oh God, I'm alive. I spat Hellfire in the face and it felt so good." He shot Darion a knowing look before hacking a cough into his sweater sleeve. "You have to get me out of here. They can probably already smell my tracks like the pack of blood-thirsty hounds they are."

Darion took a trembling step back. He could feel his heart thumping away like a rabbit in his throat, hindering him from forming a sentence. "Who th-the fu-"

He cried out in pain at the sudden clawing grip to his arm.

"I've already branded you with the Forbidden," the man seethed, "so they're tracking you too. Take me, or you die."

Darion stared at the person with huge, terrified and watering eyes, as he tried to squirm away.

"What are you talking about?!" He tried to rip his arm from the man's grasp, crying out again. "I don't know what you want with me-!"

"I want you - I need you to come with me," breathed the man, still clutching Darion's forearm. He began pulling Weiss towards the empty street, wild eyes scanning the rows of dull wood cabins. "I haven't seen someone daring to walk on the road in years."

Darion looked at the log houses passing too, trying to figure out what the stranger was searching for.

"This place does seem like a ghost town..." He shook his head, and ripped his arm free from the man. "At least tell me your name before dragging me off somewhere."

The man took his eyes off of the cabins and for the first time, gave Darion a leveled gaze.

"Elliot. Daughter, My name - that's my name," he seemed unsure, but sounded sincere nonetheless.

Darion pointed from his chest to Elliot's. "Elliot, Darion. Darion, Elliot. That's how you introduce yourself to people, not by breaking their collarbone and making out with them."

Elliot, with his head down in shame, almost cracked a smile, but his expression quickly turned grave.

"I'll explain everything when we get to where we're going. C'mon."

---

Frankly, it never surprised him how well human flesh and dead tree branches acted as flame starters. Putting out said fires, however, was a different story. Father Maverick Luciano had found himself in the squinting early minutes of dawn, in the middle of Blackwood's dense forest, close to shouting aloud in frustration. A melting, yet still burning fire stood before him, spread out in a perfect and massive pitch-black circle on the grass. The ashes, coals, and other things within the fire were still blazing merrily, which only made his temper rise. Smoke was billowing out from it in massive clouds, rising and disappearing over the treetops.

He had tried all he could to get the fire from the night before out -- no matter how enjoyable it was starting it. He threw water from a nearby steam onto it. Apparently, that just made the smoke hungrier and hungrier. Trying to smother it with more branches was definitely not a good idea. This wasn't supposed to be his job anyway! He created the fires, threw thrashing and screaming things into the fire, and had other people put said fire out.

Yet, alas, Father Luciano was close to catching his shoes on fire, angrily stomping a few stray coals into a crumble with his heel. If he kept this going any longer, he was going to start a forest fire. Or worse, have his cover blown. Just by some damn smoke by some damn fire.

Ironic in a not-so-ironic way, Maverick grounded his teeth, and spat on the fire. "Screw you to hell."

A mass of black curls appeared from behind a tree trunk. A timid step into crunching leaves gave away her hiding place.

Maverick wiped his hands down the front of his button-up black suede jacket, the coal on his hands disappearing into the fabric. Without looking up, he spoke powerful and clear: "Come here, Miss Torrance."

Attached to the curls was a tall and thin young lady named Pansy Torrance, who was dressed eloquently in a black Sunday dress. Head bowed in shame, eyes locked on her shoes, she appeared by Maverick's side. The heat of the fire on her face made the corners of her eyes prick with hot tears.

"As you can see," Maverick started, taking a deep breath and motioning to the still-roaring fire in front of them, "some children of the Church are rather neglectful when it comes to their cleaning up. It was quite a surprise, waking up to find the reminiscence."

He tilted his head, turning away from the fire and shooting a look laced with snake venom towards Pansy.

"Reminiscence of the meeting that was held last night -- that you didn't appear to. Care to explain?"

Pansy's head shot up. "Forgive me, I swear I didn't forget, I promise, I had to b-" "Forget it," Maverick sighed. He looked much older than he was, all heavy eye-bags and hollow cheeks. "I am by far not proud of what occurred last night. As you know, four dear sacrifices were captured and set for the ritual. The initial three complied with little struggle, but the fourth fought back. Elliot, I believe his name was. For the first time in a long time, we had a vittima escape."

"Elliot - Elliot Daughter? He left Blackwood years ago for the Army. He hasn't walked these streets since he was still in school."

"The man was found of committing an atrocity," Maverick recited off, his tone growing more stone cold. “I'm here to build a society, not make friends with the criminals."

"But you plan on capturing him, right?" Pansy tentatively asked.

Father Luciano's cutting stare made her shrink even more.

"I never believed you to be the type to doubt me, Torrance. And to think -- once my duties were done, I had thought that would fill my position at the Church with pride in your heart. You haven't been displaying lately the conviction we promote here. However, to make up for it, I will put the task of recapturing this Fallen man into your hands."

Pansy went pale. She knew she wasn't able to refuse it, but the nauseating idea of having to hunt down and kill her old friend made her throat knot up. All in the name of the Church.

She chose her words carefully. "You will not be disappointed, sir. If you reason that I am capable of this, it must be true."

"I know it's true," Maverick retorted, turning his attention back to the fire. "It has been long overdue for your taste into how this Church really works, Pansy. You will be able to take credit for helping change the world -- one life at a time."

"You want me to kill him, sir."

"You will do more, so much more," he turned his face back to hers, his eyes reflecting pure hellfire. "You will cleanse, and purify."

"Sir, I-"

"You will add to the count, you will watch, and hear, and taste, and you will see how life is truly meant to be lived..."

With his back turned to the roaring fire, he looked like the Devil himself, stepping out from the Inferno.

"Being a Child of the Church, you will hunt, and capture, and burn, and kill, and rise, and....."

-- "....that's how I ended up here."

Darion watched Elliot dry his unruly hair from the comfort of the couch. The house that Elliot had dragged them to was quaint and tidy; if he hadn't known that anyone lived here, it could easily pass as a staged living room for a home improvement commercial. No dust inhibited any surfaces.

Pansy was the name Elliot kept mumbling on the way there. He had explained as he pulled up the corner of the welcome mat to reveal a house key that this was his old friend's house - she lived in Blackwood her entire life, and wouldn't move away for a million dollars. Elliot had spent a substantial chunk of his life in this house, and knew it inside out, making it the perfect haven.

Darion was settled into the couch with a mug of lukewarm coffee. Elliot had showered and shaved, transforming himself from the grimy homeless man in the woods into a mature-looking man with dark, broad features.

"So, this Maverick guy," Darion started, taking a sip, "he's just crazy and hates people who fall in love?"

Elliot shook his head. "To fall in love in love here is a sin -- the Church sees it as a lethal crime. They're trying to wipe out everyone that Fall, so they can make the ideal society: where intelligence isn't hindered by petty emotions. If they can control all of Blackwood, they will try to control the state, then the country, and the world."

"I wonder what this guy's resume must look like," Darion mumbled into his cup, "seasoned people-burner?"

"I -- I don't even know what it's like to fall in love," Elliot whimpered, dramatically tossing himself onto the couch beside Darion. Darion's eyes grew at how close Elliot was - their thighs touched, and he could smell Elliot's clean hair. Cue the internal screaming.

"I was captured falsely! It was a one-time thing. I've heard so many stories and rumors about what happens when you fall in love, and I did not feel any of that. No lights, no colors, no fireworks, shit and null. It's like a goddamn witch hunt, they don't even check if you've truly fallen in love yet, you can do anything and you're branded by the Forbidden--"

Elliot froze, realizing that during his rant, his face had become an inch away from his new friend's. Their wide yes reflected in each other's. Darion looked like a deer in the headlights.

A sudden bang across the room made the two jump a foot in the air. Tumbling through the door came a panting girl with a wild mane of black curls. Elliot tore himself away from Darion and stood up, causing the girl to lock her eyes on him. They held a quick staring contest before the girl broke the silence.

"Elliot."

"Pansy," he replied, duplicating her hushes and shocked tone.

"I thought you were dead," she whispered, almost scolding, and crossed the room to give him a hug. Elliot clung to her waist, burying his face in her hair.

"I escaped. I was so close, but I escaped. The Church is still looking for me though -- I didn't know where to go. I thought your house was the safest place."

Pansy pulled back. "You can't stay here, in Blackwood. You know they're capable of finding you. I've got to -- who's this?"

Darion's head popped up. "Oh - eh, hey, I'm Darion. He, uh -" he motioned to Elliot, "kinda attacked me and dragged me here. You have a nice house."

Pansy's hard stare was making Darion wilt like a flower. She turned her eyes to Elliot, who stifled a flinch.

"It was his fault for walking on the road in the first place. I sort-a kinda needed to get out of the forest to avoid the homicidal religious maniacs, sue me," drawled Elliot.

"Christ," whispered Pansy, shaking her head. She ruffled Elliot's hair, baring a smile that was more fangs than fancy. "I'm just relieved that you're alright. For now."

Elliot returned the sarcastic yet sincere smile and sat back down on the couch. He suddenly began coughing into his elbow, then hacking doubled-over, heaving for breath. Darion frantically patted his back, offering his drink to help.

From all the smoke, Pansy thought, her stomach feeling sick. The stench and the smoke were the worst things during a Burning, second to the screaming. She'll be dead by 40 from the overwhelming secondhand smoke she endured while being part of the Church.

She took a step back. The view of Darion virtually cradling a weak and broken Elliot, patting his shoulders with the gentleness of a lover made bile involuntarily rise to her throat. From day one, she was told that to fall in love was digging your own grave. And Elliot already had one foot in.

The image of Maverick with his back to the fire, reenacting Satan guarding the gates of Hell appeared before her eyes -- an ominous and eternal reminder that he will stop at nothing to gain justice. And justice was giving up Elliot to the Church. She wouldn't be able to live with the fact that Elliot was a criminal, but also couldn't risk the chance of Maverick deciding to throw her into the fire too for keeping such a secret.

"Excuse me -- I'll be right back," she mumbled, making a beeline for the door and stepping outside. She collapsed against the closed door in relief, sucking in the cool air.

Placed delicately before her on the concrete step was a wooden gravestone cross, ablaze with fierce gray flames. She shrieked, pressing her back further into the door to shrink away from it. She immediately knew it was a gift from Maverick and the Church -- a sign that he knew all. Her whole body was trembling with fear. Her secret had been found out.

Elliot's a goner no matter what I do, the thought echoed in her head, the sensible thing would be to save yourself, instead of trying to protect someone who can't be saved. Right?

The towering black trees called to her from across the road. She knew within the depths of the forest the Church would be waiting for her. It was her choice if they were going to accept her with open arms or hungry flames.

She broke out into a run.

-- "Is that smoke?" Darion asked Elliot, concerned eyes on the treeline in the distance. He was yanked to Elliot's side, and began matching the jogging pace of the other.

"So what if the forest burns down," Elliot retaliated, the wild look returning to his face that Darion was met with only a few hours ago. "We have to find her. I know this town like the back of my hand, but Pansy knows all the secrets."

Darion nodded. The two had left the house after Pansy had disappeared and now trekked the back paths to find where she had run off to. He didn't think much about her, but for some reason had a gut intention to protect her. With how much she meant to Elliot, it was only nice to tag along and help search. They were his only friends in this weird-ass town, anyway.

The search continued on for a while. Elliot warned Darion not to call out her name like a lost cat. That would only make him hated by everyone in town, and blow Elliot's cover. They tried weighing everywhere she could have gone -- the library, work, the school, Elliot's old cabin -- but she left no trace.

"God, oh God," Elliot breathed, turning in a circle, hand clutching his hair. To him, the towering trees all looked the same, and like they were beginning to close in. "Maybe the Church got her. She had a panic attack and ran off into the deep part of the forest, she's easy prey, oh, shit--"

"Hey," whispered Darion, reaching out for Elliot's hand, "you're about to have a panic attack yourself if you don't breathe. It's okay, we're going to fi--"

All at once, Darion's world turned upside down. Fireworks boomed in his ears, white-hot flashes burned before his eyes. He almost screamed -- with pure fear rather than pain. He crashed back down to earth, hand clutching onto Elliot's for dear life. He could see how pale his knuckles were from becoming on his peach-toned and freckled hand.

He could see the smooth fabric of his forest green jacket. He could see the dirt and blood still embedded under Elliot's nails. He could see the wondrous shades of autumn bloom all around him, gold and amber and bright orange. He could see the fear in Elliot's bright blue eyes.

As fast as it came, all the color and light drained from Darion's world with an earth-shattering blow to the back of his head. He staggered, hit the ground, and crawled into unconsciousness.

-- The stinging heat to his left side was what awoke him. Darion blinked his bleary eyes, clutching his splitting headache. Slowly, a large and dark figure stepped before him, silhouetted by a wall of flames. He looked beside him, and saw Elliot's limp body begin to wake.

"Gentlemen," a voice laced deep with poison rung out before them. As the figure's edges became sharper, Darion saw he was laying at the feet of a tall and slender, snake-like man. His head was upturned, and his eyes bore down into Darion like razor-sharp daggers.

"I truly appreciate how you've both had the audacity to vile your own lives, here today, on the day of our Lord."

Elliot groaned and began to rise up onto his knees. Maverick, striking like a cobra, lifted up his black leather shoe and forced it into Elliot's chest, sending him back down to the ground in a heap.

"Those who have Fallen remain on the ground," Maverick snarled. He turned and made his way to the shadowed guard flanking the Burning Circle. Black curls surrounded her crying but solemn face.

"Pansy!" Darion cried, his body lurching forward. She just blinked back at him, her tears ceasing to stop, as Maverick looked over his shoulder at Darion. The knife that he accepted from Pansy glinted against the fire's glow.

"I appreciate Miss Torrance's gracious work on helping the Church find you two, so justice may be served, and Blackwood may remain pure," purred Maverick, a sinister smile curling onto his face.

Darion heaved himself up onto his weak feet -- Elliot clung to a tree to help him stand. Elliot stared at Pansy with pure hatred and betrayal. His hair was whipping against his face, the trees surrounding them, swaying and creaking, over the rising, howling wind.

Maverick lifted his arms to the sides, presenting himself like a crucifixion. With the flames behind him licking at his hands and ankles, he bellowed over the roaring wind and fire:

"We are gathered here today, under the gaze of our Lord, for the slaying of Elliot Daughter and Darion Weiss -- two men brought together by love and holy abomination. Now that they have given themselves to each other by their immoral acts, I pronounce these men dead, dead, dead, in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost."

His lowered his hands, flaming eyes wild with madness. "You may now kiss the groom."

Darion made eye contact with Pansy for a split second before she launched out from her post, tackling Maverick to the ground. Her scream was mixed with his roar, as they battled on the ground. He looked from the fight to the shadowed chapel hidden behind the darkened trees.

Darion spun towards Elliot, who immediately clutched Darion's shoulders for support. Darion's shaking hands frantically worked at Elliot's neck, ripped off his tie, as Elliot appeared to be close to fainting. Their tear-filled eyes met, then their mouths connected, and Darion ripped away from the scene.

He sprinted towards the Burning Circle, catching the bottom of the tie clutched in his hand on fire, and ran as fast as he could to the abandoned white church awaiting in the shadows.

Elliot watched the attack unfold before him, while still clinging onto the tree. Pansy and Maverick spat vile and hatred at each other, faces inches apart as they tumbled and thrashed, screams harmonizing. With a massive blood-curdling screech, Pansy lifted her hands and crashed them down into Maverick's chest, earning a yowl in pure, horrific pain from him. She yanked herself back onto her staggering feet, wild hair and eyes glowing from the fire.

Maverick slowly rose to his feet, desperately clutching his stomach, his long black coat billowing out to reveal a river of blood flowing from his abdomen and a sparkling silver blade embedded between his fingers. He stumbled on his feet, looking like a corpse brought back to life, dragging himself towards Pansy.

"Oh, dear," he seethed, baring his teeth at her, "I thought you loved me. To kill me, to reach the top, is low. So low."

He reached out a bloody hand, and traced Pansy's jawline, smearing his blood across her petrified and hate-filled face.

"Oh, how it hurts to have loved and lost, than to have never loved at all."

Pansy grasped his wrist and pulled his hand away. She took that same hand and placed it on his chest. With no remorse in her face and no love in her eyes, she shoved Maverick backward into the fire. The fire hungrily accepted him with open arms.

A deafening boom exploded 50 feet away, causing Pansy and Elliot to shoot their heads up. Flames erupted from the chapel, sending fire in all directions. Darion came running wildly, trailing the fire behind him. The trees, grass, and everything in between went up in ravenous inferno.

The three printed away with the flames licking their heels until they reached a safe enough distance. They stood there, gasping for breath, watching with a euphoric feeling of horror and massive relief as the entire Church, and Blackwood with it went up in hellfire.

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gorgeoussuperhero-blog · 6 years

Text

Obscurity

Discovered (chapter 3)

I snapped awake to the smell of smoke and the sound of sirens. Red and blue lights flashed outside my window. I grabbed the coat that was laid on top of me and ran out the door pulling it on over my wrinkled clothes. I got outside to find half the town on fire, mostly the buildings in the town square. A fire this big couldn't have started with a single stove, this was deliberate and convenient to a thief since the whole police department was out doing street control.

I booked my way back into the building, racing into my place. Everything looked normal and in its place. I went over to my bookshelf looking for the book that never moved. I knew it was a cliché hiding place but it was the only place I could hide something like this. I found the book and tipped it towards me. The bookshelf slid apart to reveal a broken black case. The usual black elastic suit was missing replaced by a note. All it said was "we found you" in thick red ink.

"Dang it," I moaned to myself, grabbing the remaining items they hadn't bothered to take, the most important of them all being the weaponizing bracelet that proved extremely useful in almost every situation but this one.

I slipped on the bracelet, put in my ear piece, tucked the touch screen away, and strapped the knife to my waist underneath my coat. Finally I snatched up the silver rod and made my way to Mason's house.

I reached the end of his street, from where I could see two unfamiliar cars parked in the drive way. Though it was a long shot, I reached out to him, sending brainwaves like a ringer on a phone.

Shortly after the operation and discovery of my abilities, Mason had found a mental connection between our minds that made us able to speak to one another mentally. We rarely used this form of communication since it was exhausting for both of us.

"Emera?" He yawned, his mind not fully awake yet. I hated to do this to him but I needed his undivided attention.

"WAKE UP!" I screamed causing a massive headache in my mind. I could feel him snap awake, strengthening the connection.

I closed my eyes and looked through his. He was sitting up in his bed, the moon shinning in on him. He hopped out of bed and headed for the closet. He opened the door to reveal a mirror inside. He had on some basketball shorts but no shirt. His well-defined six pack was showing.

"Emera!" He snarled, forcing me back to my own eyes. They flashed open to the dark night. I could feel his presence in my head as he looked through my eyes now. "Why are you here?" I didn't push him out but let him wander through my thoughts.

"I've been discovered." I could feel my fear rise to the surface. I didn't want him to find it, but I couldn't bury it, every time I tried, it boiled back up to the surface.

"Come over and we'll figure this out together," he suggested firmly but smoothly. He knew I was terrified and was attempting to be my rock as he always had.

"I think your parents are home," I whispered, glancing toward the cars to show him.

"Those aren't my parents cars," he stated. A sound of something shattering ripped through his thoughts followed by a deep voice that broke Mason's concentration along with the connection.

I darted my way toward his house, reaching it as fast as possible. I attempted to open the door normally but it didn't budge. I stepped back and bashed my way through his door and raced downstairs. Mason, still without a shirt on, stood next to a unconscious man.

I sighed, thankful he was safe. I wrapped him in my small embrace. He looked down at me with an encouraging grin on his face.

"I think we need to talk about your limits of telepathic communication. I don't look good shirtless," he joked. I would have laughed, maybe even disagreed if I didn't feel something off about him. Then it hit me. It had only takin him a minute or more to defeat the ripped man on the floor. What had he done?

I reached out to him, slipping into his mind. I looked through his eyes to see myself hugging some man. I watched myself push away from the stranger and stumble into Mason. I wasn't controlling my own body, Mason was. This wasn't something we had tried before but had guessed we could do if we tried hard enough.

I retook control of myself and lashed out at the man in front of me. I twisted up his mind, erasing memories, and replacing them with my new ones. He succumbed to the confusion and ran out of the house clawing at his head.

I turned around to face the stern Mason. That man had tricked me into believing he was Mason. I had let my emotions get away with me, giving them the opportunity to plant a holographic image into my unfocused mind.

Mason was scowling at me. Folding his arms over his chest he held a taser, his weapon of choice.

"Sorry." I whimpered tucking my tail between my legs. The real Mason didn't budge as I cowered in front of him.

After a long time Mason finally stepped forwarded and lightly placed a hand on my shoulder. He gave me a nervous grin as if debating what to say.

"I'll let this slide, as long as you don't try to see me shirtless again." His nervous grin grew to a playful smirk. I looked at his chest to find a t-shirt. In the midst of an intruder attack he managed to get dressed? He was a strange boy.

"What now?" I asked pushing away the feeling of embarrassment from the incident. Mason's face went straight as he sat down in his chair. He settled in and started to type away at the keyboard.

"We figure out how they found you and scare'em," Mason responded, giving certain edginess to his words.

Within minutes Mason had hacked his way into the bases of my 'main' enemy, the G.R. also known as The Gang Retreat. He pulled up files, security footage, journal entries, documentaries, photos and so on.

It went on like this for hours until the sun started to rise. At one point I'd been so bored I'd fallen asleep only to wake with my coat and weapon removed from my person and replaced with a cozy blanket. I didn't bother to move , afraid that I would let the cold in so I just listened as Mason played video after video.

"Emera?" he asked, shaking my shoulder. My eyes fluttered open to a sun filled room. I must have fallen asleep again. "I have a mission for you." He told me, helping me to sit up.

"But my suit?" I yawned, stretching my arms into the air.

"I Have a new improved one for you." He answered, leading my tired body over to a tinted glass case. He pressed a button and the panels open to reveal a night blue leather jumper with rings of gold around the forearms. My eyes shot open as I remembered yesterday in the simulator. The future me and the jumper.

I wanted to cower and hide, scared that what I saw would come true. I couldn't see the future, no one could, so all I uttered was, "cool."

"I thought you would like it." Mason boasted, proud of his small achievement. I ran it through my mind, understanding that the suit could be explained. With reading brain waves I could have predicted the suit just like I could predict someone's next move in a fight. I probably did it accidentally to Mason before I went into the simulator.

"So what do you need me to do?" I asked thinking it was going to be something minor.

"Infiltrate the G.R. home base and destroy the command center," he ordered saying it with such ease as if it was nothing.

I nodded my head slowly, the words not quite going through my mind. "Okay."

#chapter 3 #superhero #girl power #telepathy #hero #story #short story

0 notes

flauntpage · 5 years

Text

Renato Moicano is a Jack of All Trades, with Answers for All

Stephens – Lateral Movement, Straight Hitting

Ortega – Catch and Pitch

It got pretty heated as Moicano forced more and more trades.

Kattar – Killing the Jab

Here Moicano demonstrates one of the prettiest techniques in counter kicking—slipping inside of the jab and countering with the right low kick to buckle the opponent’s planting leg.

After eating a couple of those low kicks as he stepped in, Kattar became more cautious in these little pawing exchanges, and then Moicano was free to skip up and hack away with the inside low kick.

Other Habits

Jack Slack wrote the biography Notorious: The Life and Fights of Conor McGregor and hosts the Fights Gone By podcast.

Renato Moicano is a Jack of All Trades, with Answers for All published first on https://footballhighlightseurope.tumblr.com/

0 notes

flauntpage · 5 years

Text

Renato Moicano is a Jack of All Trades, with Answers for All

Stephens – Lateral Movement, Straight Hitting

Ortega – Catch and Pitch

It got pretty heated as Moicano forced more and more trades.

Kattar – Killing the Jab

Here Moicano demonstrates one of the prettiest techniques in counter kicking—slipping inside of the jab and countering with the right low kick to buckle the opponent’s planting leg.

After eating a couple of those low kicks as he stepped in, Kattar became more cautious in these little pawing exchanges, and then Moicano was free to skip up and hack away with the inside low kick.

Other Habits

Jack Slack wrote the biography Notorious: The Life and Fights of Conor McGregor and hosts the Fights Gone By podcast.

Renato Moicano is a Jack of All Trades, with Answers for All published first on https://footballhighlightseurope.tumblr.com/

0 notes

flauntpage · 5 years

Text

Renato Moicano is a Jack of All Trades, with Answers for All

Stephens – Lateral Movement, Straight Hitting

Ortega – Catch and Pitch

It got pretty heated as Moicano forced more and more trades.

Kattar – Killing the Jab

Here Moicano demonstrates one of the prettiest techniques in counter kicking—slipping inside of the jab and countering with the right low kick to buckle the opponent’s planting leg.

After eating a couple of those low kicks as he stepped in, Kattar became more cautious in these little pawing exchanges, and then Moicano was free to skip up and hack away with the inside low kick.

Other Habits

Jack Slack wrote the biography Notorious: The Life and Fights of Conor McGregor and hosts the Fights Gone By podcast.

Renato Moicano is a Jack of All Trades, with Answers for All published first on https://footballhighlightseurope.tumblr.com/

0 notes

flauntpage · 5 years

Text

Renato Moicano is a Jack of All Trades, with Answers for All

Stephens – Lateral Movement, Straight Hitting

Ortega – Catch and Pitch

It got pretty heated as Moicano forced more and more trades.

Kattar – Killing the Jab

Here Moicano demonstrates one of the prettiest techniques in counter kicking—slipping inside of the jab and countering with the right low kick to buckle the opponent’s planting leg.

After eating a couple of those low kicks as he stepped in, Kattar became more cautious in these little pawing exchanges, and then Moicano was free to skip up and hack away with the inside low kick.

Other Habits

Jack Slack wrote the biography Notorious: The Life and Fights of Conor McGregor and hosts the Fights Gone By podcast.

Renato Moicano is a Jack of All Trades, with Answers for All published first on https://footballhighlightseurope.tumblr.com/

0 notes