#ALSO people using food pots for dyeing oh my god. OH my god.

[closedafterdark]

Conflicted

BLΛƆKPIИK Chaeyoung x Male Reader

7929 words

categories: smut, oral, angst

note: special thanks to @sharpfeelings​ for all the help with this.

Read on AFF

“Open up! We know you’re in there!”

Two women look at each other, nodding before the taller of the two kicks the door open.

Drawing their guns, they use the built-in flashlight and search the apartment.

“Bathroom’s clear.”

Bedroom’s clear too.”

Reconvening back in the living room, the two look around at the apartment. Despite it being empty, it was evident someone was living here.

“They’re gone. They probably knew we were coming.”

“Goddamn it! First lead we have in weeks and the prime suspect is already gone.”

“Jooyeon unnie. It’ll be alright.”

Feeling a hand on her shoulder, Son Jooyeon looks to her side and sees Detective Lee Jinsook staring back and giving her a weak yet reassuring smile. Jinsook was sort of an anomaly. Not exactly green enough to be considered a rookie, yet not having been with the squad the necessary amount of time to be classified as a Senior Detective. Graduating from the academy at the minimum age required to do so, Jinsook was assigned to Starship Precinct as a bright, wide-eyed rookie. Having accumulated several years of experience under the guidance of you, Jiyeon and Jooyeon, Jinsook grew to be much more serious. Still maintaining her friendly demeanor when not on the field, she learned to approach situations cautiously and address all possible outcomes when making a decision.

“You’re right.” Jooyeon said, tapping Jinsook’s hand softly and responding with her own soft smile. “It’s just… this is my first assigned case for the Senior Detective promotion. Usually oppa or Jiyeon unnie would be the one leading everything. And with the Captain wanting to promote you and I... I just don’t want to fuck up.”

“Fucking up is a part of learning.” Jinsook began. Jooyeon’s eyes widened slightly, surprised at hearing how casually her partner cursed. “You guys taught me it’s okay to mess up so long as you use it to improve yourself.”

“Since when have you begun giving life advice? Usually it’s the other way around.” Jooyeon teased.

Jinsook pouted at her, giving her the cutest angry glare before heading for the door.

“Hmph!”

Jooyeon softly laughs as she also heads for the door.

“Oh, unnie.”

“Hmm?”

“Jiyeon unnie called the Captain today. She should be returning in a few days.” Jinsook said, turning back as she gave a genuine expression of worry to Jooyeon.

“You haven’t talked to her since the incident, right?”

Jooyeon shook her head, smiling slightly.

“She and I rarely talk to each other anymore.” Jooyeon began, her eyes beginning to glisten. “If anything, she’s closer with the Lieutenant nowadays. I can’t remember the last time Jiyeon unnie and I hungout, just the two of us.”

“Doesn’t help that you slept with her boyfriend, either.”

“H-Hey!” Jooyeon said, softly hitting Jinsook. “She and oppa are on a break.”

“I know you like oppa, unnie. But all three of your relationships will change if you and him get together. You know oppa will prioritize you and unnie’s friendship.”

“I know.” Jooyeon sighed. “It’s just… I really like him. And when we slept together, he made me feel so loved. I just want him.”

“Unnie…” Jinsook said, pulling Jooyeon in for a hug. The two embrace each other for several minutes, Jinsook rubbing the older woman’s bag as she comforts her. When the two let go, Jooyeon wipes away the tears built up. This causes them to laugh slightly and has relaxed her worries.

“Come on unnie, let’s go get some food. Nothing like a tall glass of beer and some spicy barbecue to calm our nerves. Plus, it’ll be fun listening to you talk about oppa while buzzed.” She said, heading for the door. Taking one last look around the empty apartment, Jooyeon is about to leave when something catches the corner of her eye. Kneeling down, she finds a thin piece of slightly durable paper. Black in color, only four words are printed on it in a pink color with a crown emblem.

“How you like that?” Jooyeon read aloud. Taking out her phone, she scrolled through her camera roll and found a photo of the first calling card left behind during the Gangnam Precinct escapes. Contrasting the one she just found, it was a pink background with black font and a square emblem.

“BlackPink in your area…” She said, scrunching her nose. “Just what are they up to?”

You wandered the empty Gangnam streets, surprised at the lack of foot traffic on a random Wednesday afternoon. Not even a full 12 hours have passed since your date and subsequent intimate moment with Son Jooyeon, a colleague you have grown close to ever since she joined the squad, confessing her feelings for you. Not to mention the fact that you and your girlfriend Kim Jiyeon were currently going through a break. Your thoughts are interrupted as you see a woman with long, blonde hair struggle to pick up various congratulatory flower pots. Quickly going to her, you pick up the pot from her arms and bring it inside the shop.

“Oh my, thank you so much!” the woman said, wiping the sweat on her forehead.

“It’s no problem.” you said. “Always happy to help someone in need.” When the two of you make eye contact, you realized she seemed familiar. Stealing a few more glances at her caused you to figure out she was the same woman who helped you choose flowers to bring to Jiyeon at the hospital. It seems she has recognized you as well.

“Oh…” you said to each other.

“Nice to see you again.” the woman said, giving you a smile. Her appearance has changed from the last time you saw her a few days ago. Her long brown hair was now a silky gold color. Her striking makeup was replaced with more natural tones, opting to equip herself with a thin eyeliner and rosy pink lips.

“It’s nice to see you again as well. Didn’t realize I walked all the way over here.” you said, carrying the last of the flower pots inside. As she followed you, she grabbed a spray bottle and tended to the various plants that lined the walls of the boutique. Her side profile caught your attention, as you took notice of her sharp eyes and cute pointed nose.

“So, what brings you by? Did your girlfriend like the flowers you picked out?” She said, returning to the back of the counter to sort through customer’s orders. When she didn’t hear you respond, she turned around and saw the sadness in your eyes. “What happened?”

“She liked the flowers you helped me pick out. But... decided we should take some time apart.” you said, remembering how you accused Jiyeon of being involved in Luda’s case.

“Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry…” she said, sincerity heard in her voice.

“Don’t be, it’s alright. She’s a very emotional person so I understand. We’ve had fights before but I kinda messed things up this time so I’m willing to give her all the space she needs.”

“I’m sure everything will work out between you two.” she said, flashing you her trademark smile. She possessed an elegant vibe to her, a classness you could exactly pinpoint specifically. She spoke in a lower register, which was easily complemented by an exotic accent that made every word sound like honey to you.

“Thank you. I couldn’t help but notice your accent. I guess you aren’t from here?” you asked, wanting to smoothly change topics.

“Ah, yes. I’m actually from Australia. I was actually born in Auckland but moved to Melbourne when I was 7. My parents still live out there and my sister visits me here from time to time. But in my heart, I will always be a Kiwi.” she replied.

“I take it you didn’t move all the way over here just to run a flower shop.” you said.

The woman laughed. “No I didn’t, actually. I came here because I wanted to be a singer. I went to many auditions and went through the training process to debut, but it wasn’t my thing. The extreme dieting, the company pointing out every one of my “flaws”. And the hair dye. God, that stupid fucking hair dye. I had to bleach my hair so many times, my scalp is so dry and my hair is fried.” She picked up strands of her hair to show you how damaged it had become, losing its natural oils. Her hair was slightly frizzy and riddled with split ends.

“I’m sorry to hear that.” you said, unsure of what response would be appropriate.

She shook her head. “You know, despite all of that. I don’t regret any of it. The company I was signed to allowed me to meet some really great people. The final lineup for the group I was in contained myself and three other girls. And although we never got to debut, I’m happy. We went through a lot together, and while we now all live separately, it’s in the same apartment complex so we’re practically neighbors.”

“Sounds like all that trouble was worth it if you made such great friends.”

“It was. Although, sometimes I kinda wished we debuted you know? They were planning on having me be the main vocalist.”

“I’d love to hear you sing sometime.”

“Mmm, that depends.”

“On what?” you said, tilting your head in curiosity.

“I don’t sing for free.” she teased.

“I don’t seem to have any money on me at the moment…” you said, rummaging through your pockets and opening up your wallet.

“I’m just kidding.” she said, laughing. “I don’t need the money. Although, I could never say no to a nice meal.”

“Are you asking me out on a date, miss?” you said, raising your eyebrow slightly.

“What, me? I would never.” she replied, feigning innocence. You noticed her cheeks begin to blush slightly as she coughed cutely and turned away.

“I never said it was a bad thing.” you said, laughing slightly. “But I don’t even know your name. Would be rude of me to not know the name of the person I was going on a date with.”

“I-It’s Roseanne.” she said nervously. “Roseanne Park. But here in Korea, I go by Chaeyoung.”

“Roseanne… that’s a pretty name.” you said. “Any preference on what you like to be called?”

“My friends usually call me Rosie or Chaeng. And I formally go by the name Rosé. But you can call me whatever you like. Just as long as you call me later.” she said, handing you a black business card with pink colored font on it. You observed it, taking note of a rose with the petals designed in the shape of a crown.

“I didn’t expect you to be so smooth. Do you always flirt with customers like this?” you asked.

“No no, I’m not that kind of girl. Well... maybe only to the cute ones.” she said, winking playfully. “Just wanted to share a meal as a thank you for helping me out with those pots my friends sent me. And it seems like you could use someone to talk to.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” you said, waving the business card in the air as thanks before heading for the door.

“I’ll be off in a few hours. Call me then.”

You smiled at her and waved as you left. When you disappear from sight, Chaeyoung returned to tending the flowers inside the shop. She hears the bell chime as the door is opened once more.

“You’re back already? I didn’t expect you to-”

Turning around, Chaeyoung is met by a woman with dark hair slightly taller than her. She quickly bows her head in apology, the woman doing the same.

“I’m so sorry. I had a customer leave just now and thought you were them.”

“It’s alright.” the woman said, smiling.

“What brings you in today, ma’am?” Chaeyoung asked.

The woman fumbles around her pockets before taking something out and opening it up.

“Son Jooyeon, Starship Precinct Senior Detective. I was wondering if you’ve seen anything out of the ordinary recently.”

“No, nothing at all. We’ve been closed the past few days as I was recovering from a bad case of a cold.”

“There’s been a string of high profile robberies lately and we’ve been going to each business asking if they’ve seen any suspicious activity. I apologize for the intrusion.”

“Oh no, it’s perfectly fine. You’re just doing your job. I haven’t been here due to being sick. I even have these terrible tasting capsules I have to consume daily.” Chaeyoung said, holding up a bottle with a disgusted look on her face.

Just then, Jooyeon’s phone began to ring.

“Detective Son speaking. Really… Understood. I’ll be there shortly.”

Hanging up, Jooyeon returned her attention to Chaeyoung. “Sorry about that. Thank you again for your cooperation. Have a good day.”

“Wait, Detective!”

Jooyeon turned around. “If you don’t mind me asking, where did you get that flower?” Chaeyoung pointed to the one currently resting inside her hair.

“Ah, it was given to me by someone very special. Have a good day, ma’am.” Jooyeon said, bowing. As she left, Chaeyoung couldn’t help but think about how familiar that specific flower looked.

It didn’t take very long for several hours to pass. You indeed called Chaeyoung, slightly nervous that you would be viewed as desperate to accept her offer if you did so too early. She told you to give her an extra hour in order to freshen up and prepare for the date, texting you her address and the location of the restaurant you two would be eating at. You decided to take the time to have yourself presentable as well.

Arriving outside what you believed to be was her apartment complex, you were barely able to release a hi as Chaeyoung excitedly told you to start driving. Neither of you spoke during the car ride as she cycled through the various radio stations and recited the lyrics to the various songs she liked. Her sweet voice filled the vehicle with happiness as the two of you drove to the restaurant’s location.

Once you arrived, and earned compliments from Chaeyoung by placing your hand on the passenger side headrest while reversing the vehicle with your left hand, you arrived at the location of your date. The outside of the restaurant looked dated, paint chipping on the walls and windows that have been scratched up. Getting out of the vehicle, you quickly ran to the passenger’s side and opened the door for Chaeyoung.

“Such a gentleman.” she said, accepting your hand to help her out of the car.

Park Chaeyoung wore a very elegant look - black skinny jeans that showed off her long legs and nicely sculpted thighs, a white button up shirt tucked in with a skinny black tie, a heather gray blazer that complimented her outfit nicely even though it was slightly big on her, and a white designer bag that she wore on her body. Her blonde hair that she cursed about was neatly combed, not a singular hair out of place. The black knee high boots she wore were so perfectly fitting, you weren’t sure where they ended and her jeans began. She wore minimal makeup, choosing only to equip herself with pink lipstick. The people who passed by began to silently whisper to each other about how beautiful she looked. Chaeyoung looked ready to have her photo taken on a fashion runway in any minute, not having dinner with a customer she asked out.

“Your finest bottle of red wine, please.” Chaeyoung said as she handed the menu to the waiter. Looking at you, you quickly told the waiter your order and followed suit.

“Isn’t this place a bit too fancy?” you asked, scanning the room.  All the employees wore black ties. You knew this was a fancy restaurant the moment you saw the waiters draping a towel on their arm as they tipped the wine bottle without letting the tip hit the rim of the glass. But what really tipped you off were the prices and the various plates of food arriving. The small portions of food inside such large plates.

“The steak here is amazing. And the lobster is caught fresh everyday.” Chaeyoung said. “Plus, it’s your treat.”

“I’m sorry, what?” you said, coughing after you drank water too quickly while listening to her talk. She looked at you confused.

“You’re the one who asked me out. Shouldn’t the person who does so pay?”

“But you’re the guy. Think about how people would react if I had to pay for the meal.”

“Wow, you really are something Park Chaeyoung. Times really should change. Women are able to pay fully for dates too.” you replied.

“So tell me about yourself.” Chaeyoung said as the food arrived. She cut into her steak delicately, the meat sliced with little pressure from the knife as your eyes are met with a perfectly medium rare center. Taking the piece in her fork, she uses it to wipe the sauce on her plate before putting it into her mouth. Despite the elegant environment, Chaeyoung stuffed her face. You smiled seeing her cute cheeks expand with food as she hums in satisfaction with each bite. And while you still weren’t sure if this was a date or not, you were happy to spend time with a beautiful woman who could eat well.

“What’s there to say… my life is pretty boring. Everyone thinks being a detective means I get to experience dead bodies or intense hostage situations on a daily basis. But really, it’s a lot of paperwork and sitting in front of a computer. I graduated from the academy a bit later than others. Being a beat cop for a year was very boring. During my very first field assignment, I forgot to carry a set of cuffs. I’ve had the same routine for the past four years up until three days ago. For the first time in forever, I have more time to myself than I know what to do with. So, I’m just taking things day by day.”

When you finally finished talking, you saw Chaeyoung staring at you. Her mouth was agape as the piece of steak on her fork was raised midair. You laughed at seeing her in shock. Snapping your fingers, her attention returned to you.

“Was I boring you?” you said, laughing.

“No! No, it’s just... that sounded so cool.” Chaeyoung said, choosing her words carefully. “I wish I had more structure in my life. It feels like I’m finally able to do what I want but don’t know where to begin.”

“Sometimes it’s nice to be free. Live in the moment and let things happen. Too much structure and routine is a hard habit to break.”

Chaeyoung smiles at you as she finishes her glass of wine and flags down the waitress to ask for another bottle. You sighed, your wallet was going to cry by the time the meal was over.

With both of your stomachs full - Chaeyoung’s more than yours, you sat inside your car and relaxed. You almost went into cardiac arrest once the waiter arrived with the final bill, but seeing her beautiful eye smile caused you to shake your head and smile as you gave them your card and signed the check.

At her insistence, the two of you drove to a bubble tea shop. You claimed to be full - an obvious excuse as you didn’t want your wallet to bleed any further. Chaeyoung hit your shoulder as she realized what you meant and told you she would pay. After waiting several minutes, Chaeyoung hears her name being called and picked up her order. Holding onto the tray, she hands you a bubble tea.

“What’s this?” you asked.

“Something sweet as a thank you for paying.” Chaeyoung said as she sipped her bubble tea cutely. You watched her cheeks huff as she closed her eyes in excitement.

While the two of you consume your drinks, you tell her about a story from your rookie days when you overslept and left your house so quickly, you forgot to put on pants. She laughed at every joke, even some that weren’t funny at all. You were thankful, enjoying her company as it provided you a distraction from your current struggles in the romance department.

Your conversation is cut short when the both of you feel droplets hitting you. Looking down, you see the cold sidewalk begin to be pelted with polka dot stains that gradually increase into pouring rain. The customers enjoying their drinks and the nighttime ambience quickly enter the shop, as you look to Chaeyoung and seemingly tell her to head to the car with your eyes. Neither of you carrying an umbrella, you do your best to shield her from the rain with your hands while the two of you run to the car.

The two of you set off aimlessly, the windshield wipers set on the maximum setting as you try your best to make out the road ahead of you. You look to your side and see Chaeyoung visibly nervous. She looks back at you when she feels your hand placed atop hers as you gently squeeze it and give her a warm smile.

“It’s pouring out there. I don’t think we’ll be able to get home. It’s not safe to drive right now.” you said.

“There’s a hotel a few miles from where we’re currently at.” Chaeyoung said, scrolling through her phone.

“You sure that’s okay?”

“It’s either that or we risk our lives in the blinding rain.”

“Fair enough. Just input the address in the navigation system.”

What should have been a 20 minute drive became 40 as the directions sent you off in a route that was longer than needed. Wanting to give up half an hour in, Chaeyoung provided moral support and cheered you on when you took a 5 minute breather. Luckily, there was one open vacancy available when you arrived.

The room was simple yet fairly spacious. One bed, a large desk with a built in television and writing area, a mini fridge fully stocked with overpriced snacks, and a balcony with what normally has a nice view of Seoul’s downtown area. Entering the bathroom, you noticed it fully stocked as well along with two pearly white bathrobes. Grabbing a towel, you freshen up by splashing cold water on your face. Looking at your reflection in the mirror, you wondered how you got into this situation. 

You were thankful for a fun day with Chaeyoung, but expected to be relaxing in your own apartment by now, not in a hotel room very late at night. When you exited, you saw Chaeyoung trying to reach for the window curtain wand to give the room more privacy. You laughed softly seeing her struggle and chose to observe her. She tries with all of her might, standing on her tiptoes. Finally getting the wand she turns around and is greeted by you smiling at her. Feeling embarrassed, she turns around quickly before stumbling her footing. Seeing her about to fall, you managed to grab onto her before the two of you landed on the bed. The two of you locked eyes, both of you having neutral expressions. You can hear your heartbeat rapidly increasing as you feel Chaeyoung’s soft breath coming from her nose.

“I should go take a bath…” you said, trying to excuse yourself from the situation. Slowly getting up, you feel yourself pushed back onto the bed as Chaeyoung’s expression has changed. No longer was the shy, innocent woman staring at you. The look you saw in her eyes was one you knew all too well, a look that Jiyeon gave you at work whenever she felt stressed. Lust.

“Stay. I… I want you. Please.” Chaeyoung begged, her accent lacing each word with pure seduction. 

The seriousness of her tone left you far more aroused than you would like to admit. Chaeyoung leaned down and pressed her lips against yours. They had a unique softness to them, feeling like they could melt away from the heat your own were providing. Your breaths began to get heavy as your arms wrapped behind her back and pulled her closer to you. Chaeyoung nibbled on your lower lip, allowing further entry as she pushed her tongue inside your mouth. The two of you fought for control over the other as you helped her out of her coat. Chaeyoung rolled over so that you were on top of her as you both began unbuttoning each other’s shirts. She quickly loosened her tie and threw it into a far off corner of the room.

Both of your tongues and hands explored and searched each other. Your mouths locked together the entire time, with your hands wanting to explore her milky soft skin, slightly annoyed at her cute yet still present clothing being worn. Freeing each other of your shirts, you see Chaeyoung shyly brush as her lacy red bra is exposed to you. Her breasts were on the smaller side, but enough of a handful for you to play with.

Wanting to be back on the bottom, the two of you free each other of your pants until you are both left in your underwear. Chaeyoung’s cute bubble butt complimented her thighs, which were now locked onto your lap. You felt her rub her crotch back and forth against your cloth imprisoned shaft. Running your hands across her smooth thighs, you stop when it is in front of her underwear. You felt the heat radiating from her, Chaeyoung’s perfume hypnotizing you with its intoxicating smell. Grabbing onto her hips, you gently lower her back onto the bed. Your hands move back down, grasping the helm of her sheer laced panties and pull them down. You find, much to your delight, that she is already leaking as it dribbles out of her.

Pulling you back in for a kiss, you reciprocate her earlier action and bite her lower lip while simultaneously sucking on it. Chaeyoung moans as you leave a trail of kisses down her neck and chest, coating her skin and faintest amount of cleavage with your saliva. Your kisses continue as you make sure not to leave out her tummy. Chaeyoung’s moans rapidly increase in volume as you get closer to her thighs. Upon reaching the inner apex of them, you add strong licks and paint her inner creases with your tongue. You lick your lips in satisfaction upon being face to face with her inviting warmth.

You marvel at the sight of her long, milky legs as her soft thighs do little to prevent them from being closed. As her lips glisten from her juices, you watched Chaeyoung gently run her middle finger between her folds until it reaches the bottom. Dragging it slowly upward, she adds her index finger and traces the outline of her lips. She touches herself softly, her erotic moans complemented by her accent. You watched her eyes slowly close as the pleasure began to course through her body. Her breathing becomes hitched, but she manages to regain enough composure to open her eyes and smile seeing you enamoured by the show she is displaying for you. Her voice has become soft, but no less lacking in desire.

“Please… taste me.”

You returned to the previous position you were in when you removed her panties, swiftly removing your boxers and freeing your hard cock. Controlling yourself, you began by planting soft kisses on her thighs. You enjoyed the feeling of her soft, milky skin each time your lips made contact with them. You caressed her legs, taking note of how muscled yet tender her skin was at the same time. Chaeyoung’s body was slim, but her thighs were a sight to behold.

You continued leaving kisses, repeating the process on her other leg until you were finally back where you started - in between her legs. Believing you have given an adequate amount of time for foreplay and teasing, you dive right in. You stick your tongue out to taste the bottom of her slit. Chaeyoung gasps as she feels you make contact with her for the very first time. Her gasps quickly turn into long, satisfied moans as you press your tongue against her lips and give her deep, strong licks.

You wanted to savor every inch of Chaeyoung, a woman you’ve only met twice and were technically still on a date with at the moment. Her drawn out, erotic melody moans keep your attention focused on what is in front of you. Giving her slow licks, you savor the rapidly dampening flesh until you finally suck her clit.

“Oh fuck, that feels so good.”

Chaeyoung runs her fingers through your hair until it rests behind your head. Using both of her hands, you feel her nails digging into your scalp. It is painful, but is well worth it knowing you’re giving her body pleasure. The moans that escape her mouth each time you lick and suck her delicious folds motivates you to continue.

You hold onto her hips as your thumbs gently part her lips even more. The wet flesh feels so soft and inviting. You move your tongue in a wave motion as you give her rapid fast licks. You consumed the nectar leaking out of her, savoring its sweet taste. Getting accustomed to you eating her pussy, Chaeyoung was not prepared when you surprised her by biting her clit.

“Oh… fuck!” she shouted, closing her eyes as her voice was so intense that the pleasure coursed through her body. A bit surprised at how suddenly she came, you are quickly pushed between her legs. Chaeyoung feels the same way as she wraps her legs behind you and pushes your head deeper. Her taste and aroma felt intoxicating, the both of you experiencing a high that could not be replicated by any drug.

Eventually, her body stops violently shaking as her body tense up. She was unable to move her limbs from the pleasure. You were content with yourself, satisfied at your partner’s reaction to your oral skills. You consumed whatever you could, replacing her leaking juices with kisses all over her lower body as you waited for her to recover.

“Fuck… that was… fuck…”

She finally opened her eyes and saw you licking your lips, enjoying the taste of her juices on your tongue. You gave her pussy a deep, long kiss before mirroring your earlier actions and replacing your soft kisses on her tummy earlier. Reaching behind herself, Chaeyoung unhooks her bra and finally frees her chest.

Her eyes were a mix of slight satisfaction and another emotion you couldn’t quite tell. It looked like an unquenchable lust. But it carried a heaviness to it, an appearance of a woman who wanted to be loved.

You climbed back upwards until you were both at eye level, your arms supporting yourself on the bed. Chaeyoung gives you the same sweet smile from earlier at the bubble tea shop that warms your heart as you lower your face to hers and press your own lips against hers. The two of you shared a rather passionate kiss, her arms wrapping around your neck as you feel her legs spread open. She whines softly when you break the kiss, but it quickly becomes a moan as her soft skin is given copious amounts of kisses on her cheeks, neck and upper chest.

Bringing your hand to her right breast, you fondle it as your mouth takes in her left breast. Her nipple begins to harden as you tease it with your tongue. The breast you are fondling is given the same treatment as you gently rub it between your index finger and thumb, pinching it gently. Although they were small, her breasts were inviting. You truly wanted to savor Chaeyoung’s skin, as her long, drawn out sultry moans let you know she was enjoying it as much as you.

Your eyes were on Chaeyoung the entire time. Seeing her head tilt back as the steady stream of moans continued. She looked down and seemed to have read your mind.

“C-Can… Can you fuck me now? Please. Fuck me, please baby.”

As you line your bodies up, you are about to tease her when you feel Chaeyoung grab onto your thighs.

“I… want to be fucked from behind.” she said, her words mere needy whispers.

Giving yourself a few quick strokes, you roll Chaeyoung onto her stomach before pushing yourself forward into her wet pussy. Few feelings could outdo the sensation of entering a woman for the very first time. Despite the many times you’ve done so, it always gave you genuine excitement and satisfaction. Jiyeon and Jooyeon were tight in their own regard, but Chaeyoung made them feel like a hollowed out cave.

Chaeyoung’s body reacted to you being inside her by moving her hips and cute round butt against your cock. Both of you savored the feeling of your hard flesh inside her pussy.

“Oh fuck, baby… Fuck me… Please fuck me…”

Removing your cock from her body, you are delighted to see it glistening in her juices as it appears from between her soft buttcheeks. You withdraw yourself until only the tip of your cock is left inside her before thrusting back inside, your shaft spreading her lips and entering her warm, inviting flesh.

It doesn’t take very long for you to establish a rhythm with which to fuck Chaeyoung from behind with. Having sex with a woman on her hands and knees in front of you was your favorite position - next to a woman being on her knees with your cock in her mouth. And while you’ve had your fair share of women before Jiyeon that you considered to be tight, all of them would be put to shame by Chaeyoung. Unlike sex with Jooyeon, a coworker and close friend, sex with Chaeyoung was quite possibly on par with Jiyeon - an affirmation of a romantic relationship between two people who discovered feelings for each other. While it was still the physical action of sex, it was a way your bodies spoke to each other to confirm your feelings through pleasure.

You felt Chaeyoung’s hips wriggle with each thrust of your own inside her body. Her moans increase in volume while being what you believed, individual in the way you were pleasuring her. The wet, hot feeling of her pussy wrapped around your cock was incredible.

Having used her hips for support, you bring your hands to her ass, firmly squeezing her cheeks with both hands. You were delighted to see them create soft ripples with each collision of your crotch against hers. Chaeyoung gasps in surprise when she feels you give her ass a spank.

“Baby, fuck me… Fuck me harder.” She gasps. Chaeyoung no longer wanted to be fucked by you. She wanted pure pleasure.

You satisfied her desires, giving her hard, deep thrusts as your cock moved in and out of the tight grip of her pussy.

Holy fuck… Yes! Oh yes!” she screamed, throwing her head back as you increased the pace. “Fuck me just like that!”

Through your repeated thrusts, you seemed to have discovered a sweet spot that gives Chaeyoung the most amount of pleasure. It takes you a few tries, but soon your cock is repeatedly hitting that spot as you maintain the same speed and depth of your thrusts. You know it won’t be long until her orgasm arrives, having seen the same signs from Jooyeon and Jiyeon - the ever increasing volume of her moans, the way her fists grasp onto the sheets for support as the pleasure courses throughout her entire body, and of course the way her hot, tight pussy maintains a firm hold on your cock.

“Baby… I’m about to cum! I’m gonna cum so hard!”

“Do it, Chaeyoung. Cum on my cock. Surrender yourself to pleasure and cum for me!”

“Baby… I’m cumming! Oh, fuck!”

Chaeyoung’s body tightens up as the pressure explodes, her pussy clamps down hard on your cock. You wanted to keep thrusting into her hard, but her orgasm has made her pussy far too tight for you to continue. Her cute, small fists form a deadly grip on the bedsheets below as her face sinks down onto the soft cotton pillow. You see her arms give out as her upper body collapses onto the bed.

The sound Chaeyoung made is the same sound you hear when a woman orgasms, an erotic sound that will never be old to you.

Chaeyoung’s second orgasm of the night was even more intense than the first, and as such, takes her several minutes to recover from. You relished at the sight of her body still bent over in front of you, your cock still inside her tight pussy. The light from above gave you a good view of her toned back that was lined with sweat.

“Baby… holy fuck, that was amazing.” she said, panting heavily.

You smiled at her words, giving a gentle squeeze on both of her asscheeks as a response.

“I want you to keep fucking me, baby.”

Drawing your cock out of her body, you watch as Chaeyoung straddles your lap. Thinking she was going to turn around and face you, Chaeyoung shoots down that theory as she strokes your cock before lowering herself onto it. You are given an alluring view of her sweaty back as she starts riding you. Her round ass slams down against your crotch with each movement of her hips. She was slim, but contained a small amount of curves in the right locations as you slap her ass cheek with a flat palm.

Chaeyoung throws her head back and lets out erotic, satisfied moans with each slap on her ass.

“Does Chaeyoung love getting her ass slapped like this?” you asked, knowing full well what her response will be.

“Y-Yes, ah!” Chaeyoung moaned. “Is my p-pussy tight enough for you?”

“I think it could be tighter.” you teased.

“Make me cum again and it will.”

Chaeyoung fucks herself on your cock for a few more minutes before regretfully removing her body from yours. You whined softly at the feeling of no longer being inside her, but it is short-lived as Chaeyoung gets off the bed and gets on her knees. She extends her hands out for yours as you take them and stand in front of her.

Her eyes remained fixed on you, taking her position between your spread legs. You looked down and saw her beautiful face filled with lust.

She takes you inside her mouth, your cock drenched in her juices. She bobs her head quickly, working on your cock as her tongue paints your underside and her hands massage your balls and thighs. Her tongue swirls around the tip of your cock, satisfied at how sensitive your tip is to her touch.

Chaeyoung’s moans send vibrations of pleasure throughout your cock, as you savor the delicious tingles of her mouth around your shaft. Her ultimate goal was to give you the very same pleasure you gave her.

“Chaeyoung… I’m… I’m close.”

“I knew you wouldn’t be able to last much longer in my tight pussy. And while I’m sure you want nothing more than to cum inside me, I want you to watch me swallow your cum.” Chaeyoung said softly as she took your cock back inside her sweet, wet lips.

Her beautiful brown eyes met yours as her lips formed an airtight seal around your cock. Her slim fingers massaging your balls was too much for you to handle.

“I’m cumming…” you say as your orgasm finally arrives. You bobbed her head up and down as quickly as you can before pushing her head all the way down to your base. Your cock throbbed as it releases hot, thick semen into Chaeyoung’s warm and inviting mouth. She manages to push her head back from your hold, opening her mouth to allow you to see your cum shoot into her mouth, painting her tongue and back of her mouth a milky white color. Her eyes crinkle in satisfaction, seeing your face riddled with pleasure.

You were surprised you managed to keep your eyes open the entire time you came. This was the first time you ever saw yourself cumming inside a woman’s mouth. And it was safe to say, it certainly wouldn’t be the last. When you finally finished, you watched Chaeyoung wipe her lips to catch the remaining droplets of cum before closing her mouth and swallowing your load down her throat. She sticks her bright pink tongue out at you with a satisfied hum and laugh, letting you know she enjoyed your tasty treat.

You collapsed back onto the bed, completely exhausted. Chaeyoung climbed on the bed shortly after, licking your cock clean before making her way on top of you. Your foreheads rested against each other, before she cupped your cheeks and gave you a deep, passionate kiss. You opened your eyes and found yourselves staring at each other longingly.

“That was amazing…” you said, mirroring her earlier sentiments.

“You were too, baby. You made me feel like a lovesick girl.” she said, pushing back her damp blonde hair.

“What does that mean?” you asked.

“It doesn’t matter.” she said. “You really were amazing, though. I’ve never been fucked like that before. That was the most incredible sex I’ve ever had.”

You smiled as she began tracing a finger across your chest.

Chaeyoung gave you even more loving kisses as she feels your cock slowly start to harden underneath her.

“Bad boy…” she said, reaching behind her to grab a hold of your shaft. “Already so hard for me again.”

“What can I say, you know how to make a person want more.” you said, resting your hands on her ass before giving her a firm squeeze. Chaeyoung playfully hits your shoulder in response.

Just as she is spreading her legs and lowering her body back onto yours, your phone suddenly rings. You give each of her asscheeks a slap before gently removing her body off yours.

You grabbed your phone from the desk and quickly headed out to the balcony.

Chaeyoung sits up on the bed and wraps her body in the comforter. At the nightstand next to her, she hears her own phone begin to ring.

“Hello?”

“Mudkip, it’s Hyunjung.”

“Hi, Lieutenant. You know I hate that nickname.” you sighed. “What’s up?”

“I’m not even supposed to be doing this since you’re still suspended, but I cashed in my redemption. Your request has been fulfilled.”

“Really? That’s great news. Thanks so much.”

“Are you sure this person can help us? From my brief conversation with them, they didn’t seem too happy when your name was mentioned.”

“They can… if anyone is going to be able to help us, it’s them.”

“Understood. Be safe, okay? Your suspension ends on Monday.”

“I know. Thank you, Lieutenant.”

“You’re welcome. But if you really want to thank me, bring me some bubble tea when you return. Hyunjung loves bubble tea.”

“Hyunjung really does love her bubble tea…” you replied. “Thanks again, I’ll see you Monday.”

“Chaeyoung… is your mission complete?”

“Yes, unnie. I made contact with him and got the digital imprint of his phone like you asked.”

“Good. So… how was he? How big was he? He better not be like that last guy you slept with.”

Chaeyoung sighed. “Yes Jennie unnie, he was big. I don’t know why you have to ask that every time I sleep with a guy.”

Seeing you enter from the balcony, Chaeyoung whispers quietly into the phone. “I’ll call you later.”

“Are you ready for round two?” she asked, ending the call as she turns around and cutely wags her butt at you.

“Chaeyoung…” you said. Noticing the seriousness in your voice, she turned around and faced you.

“What’s wrong?”

“Something came up, I have to leave.”

“What, right now? But we were about to start round two, where we get in the shower and fuck me until I can’t stand.”

“I know, and I really want to. But it’s important. You understand, right?”

“I do…” she said, pouting. She smiled weakly as you planted a long, tender kiss on her lips.

“I’ll be back soon.”

As you quickly dress up and leave Chaeyoung by herself, you give her one final wave before exiting the room. Chaeyoung sighs as she stares at a black domino mask and pearl necklace.

“I really like him… but we can never be together. Especially when he finds out who I am.”

The meeting location the Lieutenant gave you was not too far from the hotel. Thankfully, the storm has passed as the smell of rain perfumed the nighttime air. You finally reached your destination 10 minutes later.

Entering it, you scan the cafe until you find the person you were looking for. Approaching them, you see them sipping on a piping hot cup of tea. You timidly sit across from them.

“Thanks for agreeing to see me on such short notice.” you said.

The person doesn’t respond, sipping their cup of tea instead.

“How have… you been?” you continued. You watched as they finally lowered their cup.

“You know she will kill me if she found out I agreed to meet you.”

“What can you tell me about the robbery that happened a few days ago?” you said, your tone becoming serious.

They looked at you intently, before sighing and taking out a case file from their bag.

“Four women. They hit hard and strike like thunder. They wore masks and left no traces of print or hair. They clearly know what they are doing. Stole a couple million in jewels and denominations.”

“What about the security system?”

“Disabled. Along with CCTV. One of them was believed to be disguised as a repairer. They work in pairs. Two act as bait while the other two sneak underground and execute the plan.”

“They’ve never been ID’d?”

The person shook their head. “Nothing in our database at all. Whoever they are, they’re a ghost in the system’s eyes.”

“But…” they said, causing your eyebrow to raise. “I have a hunch on who. Interpol sent these in this morning.”

They handed you another envelope containing four photos. The first three seemed unfamiliar causing you to pay no attention to them. That is - until you reached the last photo.

“Are these legitimate?”

“You know Interpol wouldn’t send us fakes. Why?”

“This person.” you said, holding up the photo.

“She has the second highest bounty. Interpol has a file on her in several other countries, namely Australia and New Zealand.” They noticed your expression changing. “Why?” they repeated.

“I was just with her…” you said. 

“How is she?” you said, changing your tone to let them know you were talking about someone else.  “I heard she’s Captain now.”

“I still don’t know why I’m here. Your Lieutenant told me you were still suspended. I could lose my job for talking to you about work off the clock.”

“You know she and I didn’t end on good terms and that affected a lot of my relationships with people. Especially ours, you and I were best friends.”

“Please…” you continued. “You know I wouldn’t ask you in this way if I had any other choice.”

“I need your help. I need your help, Kim Bora.”

#kpop smut #kpop fanfic #blackpink smut #blackpink #rose #park chaeyoung #male reader #reader insert

[littlemessyjessi]

How They’d Be As Mukbangers:  Harry Potter Characters

How They'd Be As YouTube Mukbangers

James: Every video has a theme.   Like, I'm not even playing.   Holidays?  All kinda of holiday themed food.  Quidditch World Cup coming up?   Things inspired by the country of his favorite team.   Just a random day?  Everything is blue.   He's that type of way.

Sirius:  If a mukbanger was a thirst trap.  I could easily see him really getting into.  Dark background, black gloves, aesthetic as fuck and like, he doesn't even talk.  He just sits there, looks hot and somehow makes eating looking incredibly sexy.  And he fucking knows it.   Bitch also one hundred percent rolls his eyes back when it hits his taste buds.  Licks his lips and his fingers.  Takes way too big of bites.   Most people would say it's cringy how sexual his videos are...but everyone is secret subscribed anyway.  With notifications on.

Remus:  This goes one of two ways.  If he's in a good mood and things are chill, he'll find a recipe, make it to the mother fucking 't' and then have a little mukbang slash review on said recipe.  Nice lil chat.  Sweet tol bean.   Precious. If it's near the full moon there ain't none of that.  Ya boy, brings in his monstrous plate of food, sits it down and just tears into like a fucking beast, no talking.  Just nom nom nom.  Unintentionally thirst traps and people opening talk about when Remus goes beast mode.  

Peter:  Candy and sweets channel! Small mukbangs with reviews from different candies from Honeydukes!

Lily:  Lol, Lilypad.  She ain't playing around.  Her videos are planned out, edited and just generally finessed to perfection.  Even had music added to it with tiny vlog segments as it's set up.  It's a little pretentious but she does have a good following.

Marlene:   This bitch.  Fucking competitive eating queen.  Tiny ass lil ho can eat you under the table, bro.   Think RainaIsCrazy on YouTube.  She can fucking smash.  Usually does eating challenges from different resteraunts and competitions.  Often, challenges Remus on his wild days.   He's a beast but she still wipes the floor with him.  

Dorcas:  The collab.  Dorcas always has good food and good company.  She's all about sharing a meal with someone and talking about random things.

Alice and Frank:  The couple channel.  It's generally filled with so much fucking cute and the food is always tasty.  It's sickening they feed each other but you also can't help but awww.

Molly Prewett/Weasley:   Family recipes.   Molly's channel are tried and true recipes from the Prewett family.  Cook with me and tons of kitchen life hacks.  Also, that woman can turn a ham sandwhich into a full course meal. Bet.   Always taste tested by Daddy Weasley.  Yes, I said Daddy Weasley.  

Lucius Malfoy:  The most pretentious fucking channel to ever exist.  It's a whole fucking production that admittedly he does put a lot of work into.   Somewhat thirst trappy like Sirius' but instead of just having a plain black background he goes out of his way to shove as much of his manor into.   Only eats the most expensive food fucking on the planet and of course, it's prepared by House elves cause he's a twit.  (Yes, I know this is Thranduil but honestly wouldn’t put it past Lucius to be this fucking pretentious.) 

Severus Snape:  Actually pretty solid content.  His exquisite skills in potions actually made him a rather good chef.   Tasteful shots, edited well with music over everything and subtitles.   Simply audio for the eat portion at the end.  Nothing too fancy for the background.  Often just a very clean kitchen. Solid content though.

The Black Sisters: Mass chaos.  Part vlog, part drama channel, half the time the food never even gets finished because of fights.  

Bill Weasley:  The Traveler.   A lot of egyptian food.  Some made by hand.  Some vlogs from street food while he's out just generally doing his job.   Short videos but solid.  He's hot and he picks good food.  It works for him.

Charlie Weasley:  This extra ass bitch.  He's the bitch that does all that outdoor cooking.  You know what I mean.   Shots in the woods, roaring fire.  Lit by a precious dragon child no doubt.  Dragons lounging in the background like those bitches who always have their dogs there.  Yes, I'm jealous.  Close up shots of him cutting things on a custom wood cutting board. Everything he makes causes your mouth to water.  God damn, scarred, freckle faced bastard just gobbles it up and ends every fucking video with a wink.   Charlie Weasley is the ultimate thirst trap and he fucking knows it.

Percy:  Percy's channel could be epic but instead is boring as fuck.  Why?  Because he insist on having the most snooze worthy meals that are 'sensible' and THEN he proceeds to talk about politics.   He actually had a pretty decent following of other like minded individuals but my god- politics and porridge, Percy?  Really?

However, once he chills the fuck out, leaves the ministry to do something else - it’s a game changer.  Brings the family on for mukbangs.  Does videos with mummy weasley.  Percy grows his hair out and Bill teases him for being a copy cat.  Much better.  Still talks politics but it’s fucking hiliarous and now the food is poppin. 

Fred and George:  Alright, this shit right here.   Every fucking bit of it is a self promo for the shop.  Meals inspired by and that would go well paired with 'this product'.  Like, that's the whole thing.  And then they run an add for their shop at the end featuring the product.  It works for them because they're smart, they're hot and they're also wildly entertaining with their constantly sibling squabbling. But yeah.  Big promo for the shop.

Ron Weasley: Honestly, out of everyone.   Ron probably has the most followers and it's because he doesn't say shit while he's eating. He sits down with a massive fucking turkey.  Nods at the camera and just tears it up.   It's literally so satisfying.  All the food is prepared by his mother.  So it's obviously fantastic. ( I just had to use this gif.) 

Ginny:   Gin's channel is usually team building videos with the Harpies.  'Cheat Day: Vlog and Mukbang w/the Harpies' type of vibes.  It's cool though and since it's a famous quidditch team the fans enjoy the behind the scenes action and actually drop all kinds of recipes for them to try in the future.

Hermione:  Hermione could easily veer off into Percy's channel of misery when she gets started on her rants but mostly they're really chill videos.  Mukbang and Book Review type of vibe.  Or sometimes even the playing of an audio book while she does her thing.  All in all, wholesome.

Harry:  Lol, I swear.  Fucking awkward bean.   Harry's videos are literally of him making the simplest of things and being so fucking awkward. "Er, well, hi guys.  So I'm about to head out for work.  Running a bit late.  But we're having a bit of toast and jam."  Like it's literally just little videos of him eating whatever throughout the day.  But of course, since he's Harry Fucking Potter- his follower count is astronomical.  

Neville:  Now, this boy.  This boy is a goblincore gobbo's wet dream.  Gardening videos with homegrown veg.  Recipes from Grandmother.   Have a nice Veggie Pot Pie with Professor Longbottom in the Hogwarts Greenhouse.  There is a fanbase and it is huge.  

Luna: Honestly, the weirdest fucking channel in the world.  Like she finds the weirdest things to eat and goes from there.  But Luna is bae so it's cool.  Also, a thousand percent does Smoke Sesh + Mukbang videos.  You know it's true.

Dean and Seamus:  Literally, eating in the most crowded pubs as they visit football games around the country.  Seamus will definitely pull the Irish card from time to time to have a drinking competition.  He wins everytime.  He may be a little dude but shit- homie can hold his own.

Cedric:  Honestly, it's so fucking pure.   Straight up did videos during his time at Hogwarts in the Hogwarts kitchen.  Such kind little conversations with the house elves.  "Hey, guys.  Thanks for coming back to another video.  Today we're making some really tasty biscuits.  Whispy, one of the talented bakers here in the kitchens, is here to help us today so please say hello to her in the comments."  He'll also always make extra and leave them in the Hufflepuff common room for everyone to enjoy.  Like, it's honestly so pure and he's such a soft boi and oh my fucking geeeeeeerrrrrrdddd!!!!!

Draco: Actually takes it really seriously and put a lot of hard work into it.   Nothing like his father's ego-tistical recipes.   Surprisingly, every. single. recipe. is a muggle recipe.  How would he know?  Because he cross referenced with Granger of course.  Cooks it himself.   No magic.  Lots of random talks.  Just like a monologue of things and it gets kinda deep sometimes.   Like, it's the channel to go to when you need advice that you didn't even know that you needed.   Still eats incredibly proper.   It's that pureblood raising of his.  Old habits die hard.

Tonks:  Pure chaos.  "Hey, today we're having Mum's homemade lasagna and I'm also getting a new tattoo.  Might dye my hair.  Don't really need to since I can do this  but whatever. So yeah, there's that.  Like it's just all over the place and you'd think it would take but the chaos is too good not to watch.  Literally gives herself beaks and snouts while she eats.  It's iconic.

Dumbledore: Mother fucker just sits at his desk, stares straight into the camera and eats a lemon drop.  Like a weirdo.  The video usually no more than a minute and each video is just some variation of that.  Meme lord.

Hagrid:  Tea With Hagrid.  Also, so the recipes suck, they too, but Hagrid is a peach and it's relaxing to see his gentle half giant there in his hut, pumpkin patch out the window and Fang laying by the fire.  It's a mood and he's just like the comforting Dad figure. 

McGonagall:  Honestly the best one in the entire world.  She makes a full course traditional Scottish breakfast... and then transforms into her animagus the cat...and promptly knocks it off the table.   A fucking legend.

------------------------------

Please attack the ask box!

Love, Kenny

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Love, Kenny

#harry potter character headcanons #harry potter fandom #harry james potter #ron weasley #hermione granger #the weasleys #mukbang headcanons #hogwarts #james potter #sirius black #remus lupin #peter pettigrew #lily evans #severus snape #lucius malfoy #draco malfoy #the black series #weasley twins #percy weasley #charlie weasley #molly weasley #molly prewett #frank and alice longbottom #neville longbottom #ginny weasley #bill weasley #dorcas meadowes #marlene mckinnon #alice fortescue #luna lovegood

[bubblegumstardust]

i havent bombarded you with questions in a long ass time so here i am (feel free to skip some if its too much): 1, 3, 4, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 (i know you probably won’t even have to google), 16, 17, 18, 24, 27, 29, 33, 36, 41, 47, 51, 58, 59, 61, 66, 71, 74, 75, 76, 79, 80, 90, 95 and finally 100🥰🥰

Dear God Chelle 😂😂💕💕

So sorry this is so long but I can't do read more on mobile

1: when you have cereal, do you have more milk than cereal or more cereal than milk?

I try to have more cereal generally but I just chuck milk in randomly and if it ends up being more then it ends up being more 🤷‍♀️

3: what random objects do you use to bookmark your books?

I generally just use an actual bookmark, but some things I've used in a pinch are: receipts, a pen, sunglasses, some mail, another book, debit card, a hairband, my purse

4: how do you take your coffee/tea?

I don't drink coffee and I just have a teaspoon or 2 of sugar in my tea

7: do you name your plants?

Yep, I have 2 in my room called Ellie and Nyah. I even named their pots because they're cute and shaped like a sheep and a hippo! The pots are called Pippa and Mimi and they're girlfriends

8: what artistic medium do you use to express your feelings?

Generally writing I guess. I do a lot of painting/drawing too but that's less feeling expression and more just fun.

9: do you like singing/humming to yourself?

Yep, and I'm probably very annoying to share space with because I do it a lot

10: do you sleep on your back, side, or stomach?

On my side and I have to switch like every 10 minutes when I'm trying to sleep or I get uncomfortable

11: what’s an inner joke you have with your friends?

Literally cannot think off the top of my head. @wonderfilledness, remind me please. Also Chelle tell me any of ours I might have forgotten.

12: what’s your favorite planet?

In our solar system, Pluto because fuck science, it's a planet! Other than that there's a planet I can't remember the name of that, because of rotation speeds, always has the same side facing the sun so like most of the planet is uninhabitable except a thin strip on either side between the two

13: what’s something that made you smile today?

The pup. Also I was helping my mum make masks and I completely fucked up and it was really funny

14: if you were to live with your best friend in an old flat in a big city, what would it look like?

Ngl it would be a mess. Also probably covered in books and art stuff and it'd probably be light and airy with lots of plants and cute pastel colours

15: go google a weird space fact and tell us what it is!

Oh where to begin! Okay so for one NASA had to design a special pen for use in space because due to the lack of gravity, normal pens don't work. Any liquid in space will form itself into a sphere due to surface tension. Sunsets on Mars are blue. There's a planet where it's constantly raining glass sideways because wind speeds are so high. There's a (I think) dwarf planet in our solar system that they nicknamed The Goblin. Planet 9 is something we can observe exists but no one can find it and it might not be a planet at all. It could be a black hole or something. The moon is slowly drifting away. I'm gonna stop here but I could go on for ages.

16: what’s your favorite pasta dish?

Fucken love a good spaghetti bolognese

17: what color do you really want to dye your hair?

Kinda want it pastel pink or purple again but also really wanna dye it like a deep turquoise colour

18: tell us about something dumb/funny you did that has since gone down in history between you and your friends and is always brought up.

Excuse me how dare you assume I've done anything dumb! Tbh I definitely have but again my memory is really bad for stuff like this so I'm gonna turn to @wonderfilledness and @mooncloudsea for this again

24: is there someone out there you would trust with every single one of your secrets?

Tbh, you Chelle. Also I'd definitely trust Alice with them but it's somehow easier to tell you because admiting stuff face to face is horrible and I can only talk to you online really

27: what’s your favorite bubblegum flavor?

I don't like gum

29: what’s something really cute that one of your friends does and is totally endearing?

Everything all you guys do is cute 😘💕

33: what’s your fave pastry?

C r o i s s a n t s

36: which band’s sound would fit your mood right now?

Hmmm. I don't know what my mood is right now so like idk?

41: what’s the last book you remember really, really loving?

I mean I'm pretty sure the last book I actually read was Aurora Burning so I gotta say that

47: what food do you think should be banned from the universe?

Well there's plenty of foods I don't like but I'm not sure I'd ban any of them because there's always people who do like them.

51: think of a person. what song do you associate with them?

Okay it makes no sense but I always think of Alice when I here B0$$ by Fifth Harmony because it's one of the songs we always end up screaming along to in the car

58: who’s the wine mom and who’s the vodka aunt in your group of friends? why?

I feel like Alice is a vodka aunt and maybe I'm the wine mum?

59: what’s your favorite myth?

Idk actually. I quite like the echo myth though

61: what’s the stupidest gift you’ve ever given? the stupidest one you’ve ever received?

Honestly I have no idea 😂

66: what would your ideal flower crown look like?

Small little delicate one with lots of small cute flowers like daisies and other pink white and purple ones. Also it would be full of forget me nots because they're my favourite flowers.

71: what’s your favorite kind of tea?

Peppermint all the way

74: describe a good friend of yours without using their name or gendered pronouns.

They have short brown hair and give some of the best hugs. They're a couple inches taller than me and will not let me forget it. They also steal all my old clothes and would probably steal my dog if given the chance. They need to learn to fucken drive already and it's been too long since I last saw them

75: tell us about your pets!

He babey. He also a little shit but I adore him

76: is there anything you should be doing right now but aren’t?

So many things. Probably most importantly, applying for uni

79: what’s one of the cutest things someone has ever done for you?

Lol no one likes me enough to do something cute for me

80: what color are your bedroom walls? did you choose that color? if so, why?

Light purple. I chose it when we first moved here but painted it even lighter a couple years in

90: talk about your one of you favorite cities.

I'm generally not the biggest fan of cities but I actually really loved living in Nottingham. It was super developed and you had like everything you could need and want there but also really kept its historic feel and it never felt so overcrowded like places like London do and idk, it was just a really nice place to live

95: what are your plans for this weekend?

I don't really have any in particular. Probably do some more art and writing and stuff but idk really

100: if you were presented with two buttons, one that allows you to go 5 years into the past, the other 5 years into the future, which one would you press? why?

I usually pick future no question but like I'm a little concerned as to what such a near future will actually look like. Maybe the past so I can redo some stuff and make a few better life decisions and get help for my mental health sooner and also maybe find a way to do something to prevent some of the awful things happening right now

#people talk to me

[sunshinexlollipops]

I hate any and all pizza. Is that a crime? ‘Cause all my friends think that’s a crime. 🍕

OKIE OKIEEEEEE— I heard you all.

Here’s PART TWO to “Need a Lift?” with a bit of a twist. ;)

(click HERE to read part one!)

“Pick Me Up Lines”

“You don’t like pizza?”

“No, never have. My friends say I’m weird for it, and John threw me in jail over it because he said it was a crime, but that’s just my prefences.”

“That’s…”

You blink, looking at Arthur from where he drives as though he were an alien instead of a man. Well, you guess it would make more sense either way— him not being a man. After all, he literally lifted your car by hand and—

“I just don’t like how heavy it is,” Arthur scratches at the peach fuzz lining his chin, “Like grease from the pepperoni or cheese? It’s too much.”

“But jail?”

“It wasn’t an actual jail,” he clarifies, “But there’s a cell and everythin’. Didn’t really work when I bent the bars to get out.”

You stare at the man.

“You bent metal over a debate on pizza.”

“I am very strong about protectin’ my beliefs.”

“Or just very fucking strong,” you mutter, and you shake your head and earning a chuckle from Arthur before you ask, “Do you like garlic bread at least?”

“Well, yeah. Ain’t nothin’ wrong with it.”

“Okay… So you’re not entirely a lost cause,” you murmur as Arthur takes a turn, “But still— no pizza?”

“If you wanna eat pizza, that’s just fine by me. I don’t want you to think you gotta eat somethin’ I like. That ain’t really the point of a date.”

You blink, cheeks burning then as you stare at Arthur. He seems to catch onto your reaction then, and the collar of his frock coat folds as he looks at you.

“What?”

“You just said the D-word.”

“That ain’t the D-word.”

“Yes it is,” you turn to him then in your seat, pointing a finger at him, “Do you not know how to spell it?”

Huffing, Arthur grumbles, “Last I checked, it’s spelled D–I–C—”

“No! Not dick, Arthur!” the man coughs as you hit him lightly on the shoulder, “You said… d… date.”

“How are you literally so comfortable with sayin’ the d-word but not date—”

“YOU SAID IT AGAIN—”

“Because that’s what we’re doin’!” Arthur laughs at you then as he stops at the red light, “We’re gonna have dinner together. Ain’t nothin’ wrong with that.”

Rolling your eyes lightly, you huff, looking out of the foggy and snowy window, “I’m not sayin’ that.”

“Well, I don’t like pizza and you don’t like the word date,” Arthur hums, “Strange folks, we are.”

You also have superhuman strength?

“It’s not that I don’t like the word or what we are doing, it’s just that it’s kind of unexpected. Like, I was supposed to go home and watch Umbrella Academy on Netflix, and now here I am, going to have dinner with who I am positive is the bumpkin inspiration for Luther Hargreeves.”

“Luther-who-now?”

You ignore Arthur’s question and sigh, drawing an absent squiggle into the condensation on his car window. As your finishing your abstract masterpiece of boredom, you begin to notice the overall construction and architecture of Valentine change. Suddenly, all the buildings begin to pick up a western theme, and your mind bogles as you look down one road to find it entirely looking like an old western town from the late 1800’s.

Well, how a western outlaw town would look buried under six inches of piling, white snow.

“What in the hell?” you look back at Arthur then, “Did we suddenly time travel? Like… I have a Toyota man, not a tardis.”

“I have no idea what that is.”

“I would be more surprised if you did. But don’t worry, I’m not much of a Doctor Who fan. I only watched it for David Tennant and that was all I would allow myself.”

“Remind to ask you about what you said later,” he mutters.  

Arthur slows as you arrive to a saloon-themed diner of all things, donned with the gaudy name of “The Chuckwagon” written in an old timey font with a cartoon rendition of an Armadillo tipping its hat at you. You take in the double doors with decals on them to appear like the clip art version of wooden saloon doors, and the fact that the roof has even an arched top to appear like an old wagon topped with canvas.

“Uh.”

“Appearance is weird, but the food is good,” Arthur says with some defense.

“Care to explain why the entire town has gone Clint Eastwood on me?”

Arthur sighs as he parks his tow truck, “This is gonna sound weird, but… We’re a tourist attraction here. One of those re-enactment places you sometimes hear about.”

“Oh! So that’s what you meant by it not being an actual jail!”

He nods, “Precisely.”

Your eyes lighten up as the prospects pile up before you.

“For the love of everything holy, please tell me you’re the sheriff—”

“No, that’s Dutch, but sometimes I play the deputy. Otherwise… I play a bounty hunter.”

“Sweet mother of… At least tell me you’re from somewhere southern?”

“No. I’m from California. LA, actually… only reason I have an accent is that it got stuck,” Arthur then clears his throat, talking without an accent, “I used to sound like this.”

Your voice is quiet in the cab as Arthur silences the engine and undoes his seatbelt, “Oh my god…”

“We’re a bit of a weird town, but that’s how we are… Dutch actually owns all these places, runs it during the summer. Obviously this is the off season, so we do other stuff to stay afloat like being an in-between point for major cities around here. It pays well when it’s the height of tourist season.”

You both exit the car, and you look over to him as you step onto the curb and head towards the Chuckwagon. The harsh wind whips at your face and hair, and you feel your skin heat up as Arthur goes to pull one of the doors to the themed diner.

“Thought people didn’t really go to these kinda places anymore?”

“Well, we have other stuff apart from the re-enactments, but it helps with shows like Westworld comin’ out.”

Under your breath, you hiss, “I’m gonna have a stroke…”

Arthur doesn’t seem to hear you as the bell above the doors rings upon your entry.

The inside of the diner looks just like the outside, with the wood-paneled walls and the fake potted cactuses that sit at each table, a designated repetition like the salt and pepper shakers and napkin dispensers.  

Immediately, as Arthur stops at the podium and you pause at his side, a girl walks up to the hostess station, grinning like wild as she twirls one of her blonde curls.

She’s dressed in appropriate attire for the location, except with a more modern, dignified twist. With her white and purple dress, she looks straight out of a western flick with a poor budget as you wave at her lightly.

“Ah now, Arthur, who is this fine thing you’re thinkin’ ‘bout right now?”

“My date,” he says easily.  

Flushing a bit, you wave a slight hand at the blonde as she narrows her eyes on you.  

“Again with the d-word!” you nudge his side, to which Arthur lightly rolls his eyes.

“Hm,” there’s a twinkle in the woman’s gaze, much like the blue glitter in her eyeshadow as she grabs two menus from the podium and beckons you both to follow, “Don’t think I’ve seen you before.”

“I’m not from here… Arthur, he found me on the road, stuck in this stupid storm with my car just about dead.”

“Oh Arthur, you’re such a hero! Trust me, she thought you were impressive!”

“But—“

“I’m not a hero, Karen.”

“Yeah, but to your date, you’re Superman.”

Snorting as she stops in front of a both, and you and Arthur go to seat yourselves, he comments idly as the waitress sets your menus onto the table, “I ain’t no Clark Kent.”

“Please! Some glasses and hair dye, and you’d be perfect!”

You have to agree. He’s got the powers and everything, after all. Only thing that’s stopping him is the wardrobe.

“Hey, even your date agrees!”

Frowning lightly, you realize, “I didn’t say I did—“

“Nah. I was Deadpool once for John’s Halloween party and that was enough.”

Eyes widening, you gape, attention diverted, “You dressed as Wade Wilson!?”

“Yes. And I can say I’m not a fan of spandex.”

Laughing, Karen jests, “The other people sure were, though.”  

“Karen,” he pushes.  

“Alright, well I’ll leave you two be for a minute. But expect me to come back ‘round! I wanna know more ‘bout you!”

You grin sheepishly at Karen as she sways back into the rest of the diner, and then you look back to Arthur.  

“So is she part of the re-enactments thing?”

“No. She ain’t in character. She’s just like that,” Arthur explains, “Bless her heart.”

“I’m guessing most of you are here for the re-enactments thing?”

Arthur nods, picking up his menu, “Most are. There’s a few who don’t. Like Hosea, he doesn’t exactly partake. But he’s older and his job is more so financial-based than anything with actin’. He helps keep Dutch and this place in line… Probably the only reason we’re still open after all these years.”

You hum, looking at the armadillo brandishing his lasso on the front of the menu as someone else approaches your table.

“My my, Arthur Morgan! You sly dog!”

You look up to see another woman, her hair also done in curls like Karen’s, but her sandy hair is pulled back along the top and held together in a braid that cascades down her shoulders like the rest of her hair. She’s dressed in period-appropriate attire just like Karen, except her tacky dress is a light blue that is what you wished the sky looked like right now.

“Hey, Mary-Beth.”

“Say, what could I get you two to drink?”

Arthur hums, rubbing his chin, “Guess I’ll take a coffee. Black, please.”  

Scribbling his request down, Mary-Beth then regards you, “And what would you like?”

“Sweet tea, I guess.”

“Lemon?”

Shrugging you shake your head, “I’m indifferent about them.”

“I’ll bring some on the side just in case you want some,” she winks, “I’ll grab those drinks and be right back to take your order.”

Mary-Beth offers a polite and curt smile to you both before walking to the drink station in the corner of the room.

“Guess I should look at the menu then…”

“Most of the food here is pretty good. Pearson has gotten better over the years, so any decision you make should be fine… Just avoid the soup of the day. It’s always chili no matter what. It’s all he can make.”

You sputter a small laugh, but go back to looking at the listed foods.  

“What do you plan on getting?” you ask.

“Probably the cowboy burger,” he answers, rubbing at his chin with one hand, “I’m in the mood for some crispy onions.”

Nodding, you take in Arthur’s decision as you try to make your own.

After a bit of browsing, you decide to just go along with Arthur and get a burger. You fold your menu back up and set it on top of Arthur’s before setting your eyes on him.

He’s already looking at you, brows creased and gaze focused, and you quirk an eyebrow at him.

“What?”

“Nothin’… Just think I’ve talked about myself a lot. I was wonderin’ a bit about you.”

You flush some, smirking, “Well, I was visiting my family up here, holidays, ya know? I live a few hours away for school and whatnot. I’m trying to study for programming.”

“Oh, like computers n’ stuff?”

You shake your head with a laugh, “Nah, like video games and stuff.”

Arthur looks like he wants to ask more, but he is cut off by Mary-Beth returning with your drinks. She sets Arthur’s steaming mug of coffee down before before grabbing your glass of tea and placing it on your side of the table.  

“Know what you want?”

“Yeah.”

Arthur goes first, “I’ll have the cowboy burger. No mayo, extra pickles.”

Noting his meal down, Mary-Beth looks to you.

“And you?”

Swallowing, you tell her, “I guess I’ll have the same? No mayo or tomato though. Regular amount of pickles.”

“Looks like that’s it! I’ll be back to check on you a couple of times, but otherwise the food shouldn’t take long!”

“Thanks, Mary-Beth,” Arthur grins, sipping at his coffee.  

“Thank you,” you smile at her.

“No problem!” she beams, “If y’all also need anythin’ let me know!”

Mary-Beth leaves, and you look over to Arthur.

“She’s really nice,” he tells you, “Probably the sweetest here in Valentine.”

“So. This town, Valentine… why haven’t I heard of it before?”

Arthur hums, finishing his sip of coffee before answering, “Like I said, it’s not dying but we aren’t major either. It’s gotten a little better over the past few years, and like I said, were the first town on the highway for a minute, so people pit stop here all the time anyways. Guess we’re kinda more a local thing or something you happen ‘cross.”

“Yeah.”

“Do you like it?”

Humming, you place your hands around your glass of tea, “Not sure how I feel about it. Ain’t like a piece of pizza to me yet.”

Chuckling, he sends you a warm look.

“Hey man, I’mma dog you like your name is Clifford for as long as I can for that one.”

“As I’ve noticed,” Arthur tilts his head at you then, “So, you said you wanted to make video games?”

“Oh yes,” you brighten some, “It can be pretty rough depending on what you’re doing… and certain developers aren’t doing too hot or mismanaged like hell, but I love video games. And a lot of people do too, if they’re done right,” you pause, “You play anything?”

Arthur pulls out his cellphone, an older smart one by the looks of it. Now considered ancient with the new models coming out. Honestly, you were expecting a flip phone at this rate, so you’re gonna count your blessings where they lie.  

“I play solitaire sometimes. And there’s an app I mess with occasionally. Just one of those puzzle ones, and I had Mancala on here until I had the moves memorized and it was just click n’ go. But I don’t really get involved with games.”

You fiddle with your straw, twirling it in your glass as you specify things, “What about on a console? Xbox, PlayStation? You play anything there?”

“Nah. The most I own is a DVD player at my house. I never really played games overall.”

You hum, “Sounds kinda fitting. At least you don’t have a VCR.”

Rolling his eyes playfully, Arthur asks, “What about you?”

“I’ve played a few things across quite a few platforms. I don’t really have a specific favorite or something I’m diehard for. If I like something, then I like it. Doesn’t matter what it’s on or about.”

Grinning, Arthur nods, “That’s commendable.”

“I just wanna make something everyone enjoys. Something anyone can have fun with, ya know?” you stop moving your straw then, focusing entirely on the man across from you, “I just wanna be able to create that feeling I had as a kid, playing something and enjoying myself. And to share that with other people.”

“That’s a beautiful thing to want.”

Flushing, you sheepishly ask, “What about you? Why did you decide to come to Valentine?”

“Ah. I liked actin’ but I’m not a huge fan of the industry. There’s a lotta problems there. And I guess I’ve always like country life but I’m too modern to exactly accept it entirely. So this was easy. I was actually on my way up to New York and my car broke down kinda outside of town, and found my way here. Just stayed ever since.”

“Huh.”

You sip at your tea then, thinking.  

“Guess we both just kinda wandered down here.”

Smirking, Arthur explains, “Valentine is just like that. A lot of people don’t expect to stop here, but they do. It’s gotta way if growin’ on ya.”

“I suppose so… I haven’t seen anything like it.”

“It’s a strange place, for sure…”

You nod, thinking back to when Arthur lifted your car. There’s nothing but snow and strange in this bitch.  

“You have questions,” he notes.  

Looking up from your tea to the aspiring actor gone tow-truck cowboy, you blink.  

“Questions?”

“Obviously,” Arthur takes a sip of his coffee before setting his mug down, the dark liquid steaming as his licks his lips before speaking once more, “I saw your face earlier. Both when I was towin’ your sedan, and at the gas station. You haven’t brought it up so far, and honestly… it’s kinda strange.”

“A lotta things are strange here,” you whisper, “You think me refraining from asking why that is happens to be one of them?”

“Well yeah. Man lifts a car in front of you no problem, and all you do is tell me I’m a Netflix character. You’re not a Buzzfeed quiz.”

“I’m not rude, either.”

Snorting, Arthur explains, “Would it be rude to really ask why it’s possible when you know it shouldn’t be?”

“Hey, as long as you got me outta that ditch and didn’t murder me, I was fine with the super strength. You’re like a ninja turtle. Except you’re not a turtle. And you hate pizza.”

“I don’t hate pizza.”

“You don’t love it either.”

“I know what I like to eat,” he says, and your eyebrows raise as his gaze heats a little, “Depends on if what I come across matches my taste.”

Your mouth goes dry, your heart hampering away in your chest as Mary-Beth seems to appear in front of you with your food.

“Here ya go! Two burgers! And I brought a bowl of pickles out for you, Arthur.”

“Thanks,” Arthur sends her a grin, all friendly like he hadn’t just eyed you like a god damn snacc.  

“You still okay?” Mary-Beth asks you.  

Flushed and flustered, you are only able to nod.  

“Awesome!” she grins, “I’m gonna give you all some space, and I’ll check on you in a minute!”

You look down at your plate, and you hear what almost sounds like static at your side. Glancing up, you see that the space beside you where Mary-Beth once was is now suddenly vacated entirely.  

Bugging out of their sockets, your eyes move to Arthur, who seems completely unbothered by the sudden disappearance of your waitress and his friend.  

“She does that,” he says easily, picking up his burger, “She can teleport. Wish I could. She saves so much on gas.”

You look at your plate, your mind going elsewhere as you stare at your food.  

“You’re… you’re not the only one who can do weird things?”

“We all can. Honestly, we all wound up here one way or another by happenstance. We all have somethin’ ‘bout ourselves that ain’t normal, too.”

Looking to where Karen stands at the booth, looking in the mirror of her compact blush as she reapplies her make-up, you find yourself asking, “What can she do?”

“It’s kind of annoyin’ at times when she will play with you,” Arthur takes a bite of his burger, chewing, “but Karen? She’s a telepath.”

“And our cook?”

The man deadpans, “Oh, Pearson? He can transfigure things. Except his ability is kinda broken… it all just becomes chili.”

You can’t help it, despite your shock, your burst out laughing.  

Arthur looks startled for a second, obviously not expecting that kind of reaction, but he smiles nonetheless.  

After it dies on your tongue, you ask, “You said everyone has a strange ability?”

“Yes. Well, except for Micah. He’s a bit sour about it, and honestly, he’s an asshole before that, and he’s also grumpy about bein’ the janitor of the place too. But everyone kind of has their own specialty. I’m sure you can guess mine.”

“An unexplainable and unnatural amount of strength?”

Chuckling, he nods.

“You know,” he begins, “You’re takin’ this a lot better than I expected.”

You shrug, murmuring, “I suppose there have been weirder things to happen to me.”

“Are you sure ‘bout that?”

“Don’t John Cena me.”

His brows furrow with confusion then, “Who now?”

Shaking your head, you mutter, “Nevermind…”

The man buns, taking a bite of his burger as you pick at your fries.  

Honestly, it is a lot to process, and your brain? Well, you might as well be staring at a blue error 404 screen. There’s no way you could grasp enough brain cells to wrap your mind around the concept of a western re-enactment tourist city being filled with people just as unordinary as the town itself.

You find your curiosity getting the better of you, and you lose your focus on your plate of food.

“You mentioned Dutch and Hosea, the people who kinda run this place. What can they do?”

“Oh, Hosea can predict the future, to an extent. And Dutch, he has the ability to turn invisible. Which is funny, ‘cause all the man wants it to be seen.”

Humming, you ask, “How many of you are there?”

“Eighteen,” he tells you, “not includin’ me or Jack.”

“Jack?”

“Abigail and John’s son. We don’t know if he’s got an ability or not.”

“Oh. Cool,” pausing, you glance up at him, “Is this all supposed to be a secret?”

“We don’t like to make it known, but… I feel like I can trust you,” Arthur states, “And even then, it’s hard for anyone to believe if they don’t see it themselves.”

Blushing a bit from his initial admission, you nod, “Point made I guess.”

Taking another bite, Arthur speaks with his cheek propping out like a chipmunk’s, “Are you gonna eat?”

“Oh, yeah. Sorry. Got distracted.”

You munch on your burger absentmindedly. And as you eat, you know that Arthur’s eyes don’t leave you. He’s obviously gauging you, and with the way his eyes squint, it’s like he struggles.  

Which is weird.  

You’re pretty much an open book when it comes to your feelings. You always have been.  

As you finish your burger, Arthur offers an inquisitive look.  

“How’s the food?”

“It’s not pizza,” when Arthur chuckles, you relent some, “It’s pretty good.”

“The chili is too. But you can try that next time.”

Blinking, you tilt your head, “Next time?”

“Well, you’re gonna have to stay here for a minute. This blizzard isn’t gonna let up for a few days, and it’s gonna take a couple more for the plows to come through and clear this all out.”

Nodding, you sigh, “Of course…”

“You sound delighted about that.”

“It’s not that I’m not enjoying our time together,” you insist, and you reach over, placing your hand over Arthur’s, “I don’t feel bad about meeting you at all.”

You see Arthur’s face scrunch up in confusion, but then his features slacken, his eyes glazed a little as he looks to you.  

“Yeah… same.”

Quirking a brow at him, you remove your hand, cheeks burning as he stares at you while you shove your hands into your jacket pockets.  

“Well, food’s eaten. What do we do now?”

“Why pay, of course!”

“JESUS CHRIST—“

Mary-Beth bursts out laughing at you as you clutch at your chest.  

The air somewhat glitters around her from where she appeared, and Arthur seems to shake off whatever came over him as he sees her.

“I’ve been called worse, but I’ll take it!”

She sets a black checkbook down onto the table.

“It’s no rush to either of ya.”

“We’re both done. Ain’t no rushin’ for us,” Arthur snatches the checkbook before you’re even able to get your hands out of your coat pockets, “And I got it.”

“Such a gentleman!” Mary-Beth winks.  

Rolling his eyes lightly, Arthur places a twenty and some ones into the checkbook, “Keep the change.”

“He’s treating both of us,” Mary-Beth nudges you then.  

Nodding at her, you watch as Arthur stands and Karen comes up to your table.

“Leavin’ already?”

“Seems like that’s what you do once you eat n’ pay,” Arthur jokes.  

You stand up as well, glancing at Karen and Mary-Beth as they openly judge you. Their hands are on their chins and everything.  

It’s like those two old guy muppets judging you, as though Arthur had picked you up off of Sesame Street instead of the snowed-in highway.

“Girls,” Arthur warns without much heat.  

He comes over to your side, putting a hand at the small of your back as the girls come closer.  

“Arthur, we’re just curious!”

“I know ya are. But it’s been a long day, and—“

Karen huffs, “You just wanna take the date to the hotel. Or your place. Whichever. Long as it’s got a bed.”

Arthur stops, voice dying and crackling out miserably. You glance to him, cheeks burning.  

Arthur wanted— …

Oh.  

O h.  

Oh fuck. He wants to fuck—

“You ain’t gotta be like that, Karen.”

“It’s okay. They don’t mind either.”

“Karen!”

Wait. Karen can read minds. Right.  

Meaning. She can hear you.

Right now.  

Thinking of Arthur burying his dick in you like your car did with the snowbank he pulled you out of which OH—

“I ain’t even gotta use my powers to know. Just lookin’ at you two and I can tell you wanna test how soundproof Grimshaw’s hotel is.”

“KAREN—“

She shrugs, nonplussed in the wake of your own and Arthur’s mortification.

Mary-Beth only nods at Karen’s words, and you wish a hole would open up here in the floor to swallow you whole.  

“Can we leave please?”

“Be our guest,” Karen gestures to the door then, “But don’t worry. I’ll hear about it. Either from Grimshaw or from across the road.”

“Karen,” Arthur sends her a pleading look.  

You both scurry past her, escaping out of the Chuckwagon and our into the freezing world outside of it.  

As you rush to Arthur’s tow truck, your mind can’t help but play a loop on what just happened.  

You both get into the cab of the truck, the space of it barely warm from where you had been in it before. Arthur rushes to start the car, and as soon as it rumbles to life, you both reach to adjust the AC.  

Your fingers brush against one another, and you swallow thickly as Arthur stalls.  

Arthur gets that same look about him as he did in the restaurant as you pull your hand away, and you look out of the window.  

Some moments pass, and the air is as tense as it is cold as the heater in the tow truck slowly comes back from the brink of freezing.  

“Hey…”

You glance back at Arthur, cheeks redder than the man’s as he looks at you.  

“Yeah?”

“I don’t want you to think we gotta do anythin’ or whatever. I’m not gonna ask you to do anythin’ because I helped you, or that I’m interested and want somethin’ back. You only ever have to do anything you chose and are comfortable with,” you’re taken aback with some surprise then, “Karen really went over the line back there and—“

You cut him off by pressing your lips against his, and you feel Arthur go slack against you.  

His lips are chapped, but soft past the dryness of his skin. But it doesn’t come close to the way his hand comes up the side of your face, and his fingers work their way into your hair.

His lips work against your own finally, and you make a small noise before Arthur finally breaks away.  

He’s panting lightly, and you go back into your seat, breathing.  

And of course, that’s when you look into the foggy windows of the Chuckwagon to see Mary-Beth and Karen whooping at you.  

“Oh Jesus—“

Arthur pulls his tow truck away from the parking lot then, and onto the road, and you both ride on in silence for a moment or two.  

It’s as Arthur gets down the end of the road, his truck going to turn, that he regards you.  

“So… you okay if I take you to my place, or did you want to head to the hotel after we grab your things?”  

You can’t help it, but you laugh and shake your head, your smile as warm as the cab of the tow truck now.

“We can pick it up on the way to either, if you want.”

“There’s somethin’ else I’d like to be pickin’ up—”

“You are the worst.”

Triumphantly, he declares, “But I’m not pizza.”

“No,” you smirk, “No you’re not.”

#arthur morgan #rdr2 #rdr #red dead redemption #red dead redemption 2 #reader fic #gender neutral reader #arthur is better than luther okie #strong mans #rdr2 fic #drabble #plz ignore me #but dont

[noeliareads]

Roses are overrated x Mark Lee

Roses are overrated (Tia and Mark Lee)

Requested by @sweetie-yoongi7

Genre: Fluff

****

“Hey Tia wanna go to the movies tonight?”

“Sorry Johnny but I have to work at the store tonight. We have a wedding tomorrow.” She said as she gathered her notebooks. She offered Johnny a sad smile and left. She had to hurry, otherwise her mother wouldn’t be very pleased if she were late. 

Tia worked at her family business every weekend and sometimes on a weekday if they had a lot to do. Tomorrow, Saturday they had a wedding and they had to do around 10 center pieces, arrangements for the church, the food table, the cake table and a whole lot of other tables. I mean, there were a lot of flowers involved. She arrived at the store, said a quick hello and changed into an old t shirt that she keeps in the office. 

“Hey mom, I’m here.” 

“Oh thank God! Tia I need you to cover the front for me because Sandy left. She had an emergency. Use the main table and please try not to make a mess. I’ll send you the images so you can start making them.” 

“Kay mom.” Your mom gave you a kiss on the forehead and retired to the back. But, you actually forgot one thing. “MOM,” you hollered. “What flowers and what color?” Your mom gave you the answer and you grimaced. You hated those, especially the color. But what can you do? The client gets what they want. You cleared your work space, got the flowers, the greens, your scissors, thorn cutter, many many vases and pots and began to work, 

***

“Son, did you get the flowers I told you?” Mark slowly turned to look at his father and smiled sheepishly. His father rolled his eyes and told him to go to the Riviera Flower shop, the best one in town. It was only 4:30 so it was probably still open. Mark grabbed his wallet and ran out the door. It was his mother's birthday and he had forgotten to buy the flowers after school. He biked to the store, being that the fastest way to get there. Tiny bells chimed as he opened the door. He was invaded by the smell of flowers and the buzz of classical music playing. Some people say they can’t smell flowers but this was a place where there were flowers everywhere. His eyes settled on a girl behind a large table cutting the thorns out of blue roses. He cleared his throat and the girl looked up. What he saw was a girl, a beautiful girl with bronze skin, wide chocolate colored eyes and long straight hair tied up in a ponytail. A few baby hairs were around her face but it was understandable because she was so concentrated in working. ‘She’s beautiful’ He thought. 

Tia felt someone watching her, she didn't hear the chiming bells as the person opened the door but she did feel the stare.

“Can I help you?” She asked as she looked up. It was a boy. A dark haired, tall, lean boy with sharp angular features. Cute.

“Oh! Uh yeah. Um, I need some flowers.” The girl lifted an eyebrow with the ghost of a smile on her lips. Mark laughed nervously. Of course he needed flowers he was in a flower shop. “Yeah, like it’s my mom's birthday and I just wanted like, I dunno like some roses or something.” The girl scoffed. 

“Roses are so overrated.” She blurted out. Mark couldn’t help but stare at her. ‘Why?’ He asked. Tia blushed. ‘Me and my big mouth.’ 

“Everyone thinks of roses when they think about flowers. If it’s not red roses. It’s white ones or pink ones. I mean, there are hundreds of types of flowers out there! ” Mark watched as she ripped out the thorns of a dozen roses with a special instrument, she didn’t even look at what she was doing. It came natural to her. She learned flower names and meaning since she was little. She loved helping around the shop whenever she could. 

“Ok then.” He said. “How about some white tulips.” He smiled inwardly. People usually buy purple, red or yellow tulips. 

“Are you crazy?” She exclaimed. “White tulips mean heaven and eternity. Heaven and eternity = death. Dying, bye bye world!” He shifted nervously on his feet. She was intimidating. 

“Ok then. What do YOU recommend?” She put the rose and the thorn cutter on the table and walked around to the large fridges where they kept their flowers. 

“Mom’s birthday you say?” He nodded. She grabbed a large piece of Kraft paper that was beside her and began to grab some flowers. “Bluebells mean gratitude.” She began, turning around to look at him with a meaningful expression. “Carnations mean love and admiration. Sunflowers mean loyalty and baby’s breath mean everlasting love.” Mark wasn’t paying much attention to what she was saying. He was paying attention to how she delicately grabbed the flowers and arranged them effortlessly, grabbing some greens to add volume and color. Deep into his thoughts, he didn’t notice how she was staring at him with the flowers in her hands. 

He was handsome she thought, very handsome. It was cute when he said ‘like’ 100 times in one sentence. But of course, your sarcasm and sometimes nerdy personality shines through most of the times. 

“Here are the flowers by the way.” You said. Mark snapped out of his daze and thanked you for them. 

“How much are they?” He asked, while he fished for his wallet. 

She waved it off. “Nah, it’s on me.”

“Yooo! No, I can’t.” She smiled. 

“I’m serious. It’s ok. My parents own the store and the coffee shop across the street, so I work for them.”

“Are-are you sure?” 

“Positive!” She beamed at him. And extended her hand. “I’m Tia by the way.”

“Mark.” 

After their exchange, Mark went back home. He couldn’t stop thinking about Tia. He didn’t even acknowledge the praise he received from his parents in choosing flowers. It was her voice, the way she phrased things. The way she didn’t think he was weird for saying ‘like’ so many times. He already got enough from his friends. But it was her, her working hands, the bright colors of the flowers contrasting with the color of her skin. Her, he had to see her again. 

Mark went almost everyday to the flower shop and the coffee shop in hopes of finding her. After about a week and a half he did. He found her in the coffee shop. 

“Mark! Hi!” She exclaimed as she saw him. ‘Oh crap. Was I too obvious?’ She thought. Tia also thought of him constantly. Almost a week after their first encounter, she was working in the back room of the flower shop doing inventory when she saw some bluebells and smiled. It reminded her of their interaction. ‘Ok, Tia. Get yourself together! He’s just a guy.’ 

After some quick conversation she told him to take a seat and that she’ll be out soon. “Can I get you anything?” She asked. 

“Nah, I’m good.” Still she made him a cup of coffee alongside hers and a piece of chocolate cake. They talked for around 2 hours. There were some moments of awkward silence but they were replaced with random topics and his hilarious laugh. His laugh was contagious. Even clapping while doing so. She couldn’t stop laughing and smiling with him. “Oh crap.” They both thought. “I’m in deep.” 

“So, what does baby’s breath mean again?” He asked. They were talking about the meaning of flowers and how she grep up to know about them. She crossed her legs and said without hesitation. “Everlasting love.” 

“Yeah but, is there like a cool story behind it?” 

“Story?”

“Yeah yeah. Like a legend. I dunno, like a hero saves a princess and like they have a kid and like the baby had magic powers and with their breath the baby like made...the flowers?” Tia laughed out loud. 

“OH MY GOSH!” She kept on laughing making Mark’s ears turn red with embarrassment. “Dude, that’s a great story but no. It also means purity and innocence. We use baby’s breath with everything basically. But in terms of like a story?” She paused. “Mhmm. I do know that in some places it’s common to give some of them to new mothers. But other than that it resembles the innocence and delicateness of a baby.” 

“Nice nice.” He kept on quizzing her about flowers, at least the ones he knew the names of. 

“I could...” She hesitated. “I mean, you can come by the store sometime if you wanna know more...”

“YES!” He cleared his throat. “I mean yeah, that’s cool.”

Tia and Mark met every Saturday and Sunday that she worked in the shop. She showed him what she knew about flowers and plants.  She taught him how to make basic arrangements and how to dye flowers. ‘We don’t buy pre dyed flowers.’ She says. ‘Not the same quality.’ Tia’s mom welcomes the helping hand and teased Tia at home about him. After Mark got a hang of the flower stuff he grew to work in unison with Tia. He knew what she was going so he did the other in order to help her out. Shoulders bumped and hands brushed. There were blushing cheeks, reddening ears and giggles (mainly from Mark) every weekend. 

After a few months and coordinated with Tia’s mom, Mark booked the store for the night. He didn’t need flowers because the store was full of them. But he wanted to make sure Tia knew how he felt about her. That night, he asked Tia to be his girlfriend, offering her a bouquet of red chrysanthemums, blue irises and of course, baby’s breath. He knew she loved bright colored flowers and he loved seeing her in those colors as well. 

“Tia, I uh, I just want you to know that I really really, like really like you.” He started. “These past few months I got to know flow--- I mean you. I got to know you.” 

Tia giggled, still surprised that he organized this. And with her mother’s help! “And flowers.” She added. 

“Yeah you and flowers.” He took a deep breath and let it out fast. “Ok, you know what?” He said exasperated. “I really am not good at this. I wanted to say that you are as beautiful and delicate as a flower, you also always smell like flowers.” He stated. “Like, always!” He earned another laugh from Tia. She was really enjoying this. “Tia, my point is. Do you want to be my flower? I mean, my girlfriend?” 

Tia was actually waiting for him to say those words a while ago. She nodded and headed over to hug him, his tall frame towering over her. And just like flowers, their romance bloomed. 

#mark nct #nct mark #mark lee #mark nct 127 #mark imagine #mark lee imagine #mark #nct 127 #nct #sm entertainment #nct u #nct dream

[scaryscarecrows]

Swinophobia

AN: Gotham verse, written when Pyg was confirmed but not explained; I went with the idea that he was that guy way back in S1, the one scared of piggies.

* * *

Rare Gotham sunshine beams in through a cracked window and onto Jonathan’s ragged jeans. He barely notices, too busy rifling through a notebook with tattered pages and a stained cover.

He remembers that one because it was just so macabre and come on, how do you even get that into your head-

“Jonathan.” He glances up, hands shaking a little (why are they doing that and what time is it there’s sun). Kitty’s standing in front of him, eyebrow raised. “I thought you were going to take a break.”

You been busted, son.

Nobody asked you.

“I…did?”

The eyebrow goes higher. Somehow.

“You don’t sound very sure.”

Yeah…

He sets the notebook aside and stretches, feels things crack that probably shouldn’t. God, he’s tired, he hasn’t slept well since…

Since…

He can’t remember. He knows they kept him sedated at the hospital, for his own safety-he still has numb spots on his arms and legs*-but other than that…

Whoops.

“Come on.” She leans over, links their fingers, and gives him a pull. “The notes aren’t going anywhere, I promise.”

But…

He lets her haul him out of the chair and promptly grays out. Yeah, okay, food and sleep might not be a bad idea.

“Jonathan. Jonathan! You all right, what happened?”

“Stood up too quick.” He blinks a few times and his vision starts to return. A bit. “Give me a minute.”

“I swear…” She lets go of him to facepalm and honestly, he’s feeling a little attacked right now. “Self-care’s not a weird Internet Hipster thing, y’know. It makes sure you don’t die from doing something stupid, like falling in the shower.”

“I’m not that bad off-is that my hoodie?”

“No.”

The fact that she can tell such blatant lies with a straight face is actually hilarious.

“Kitty. The sleeves are rolled up about fifty times and it’s practically at your knees.”

“It’s oversized, that’s a Thing.”

“I vividly remember putting those stitches in.”

“Coincidence.”

Good-bye, hoodie. You were a loyal friend…until you weren’t, you traitorous brown bastard.

“We’ll both pretend I believe that.”

“Bed. You look like you’ve had an accident with my eyeshadow.”

* * *

Lazlo Valentin is, apparently, little the worse for wear despite it all. Jonathan’s never actually met him-Dad only said he was ‘a little odd’ (which, in hindsight, may fall under ‘pot, meet kettle’) and refused to let him near him.

But now Dad’s not here, so. Besides, how bad can the guy really be? He runs a beauty parlor, for heaven’s sake.

It’s a little traumatizing. It’s pink and opera is blaring through the speakers and the receptionist has a lot of makeup and clear signs of too much Botox.

“Kitty, is this a Thing.”

“For the fifty and up.”

Hopefully there’s no clients. He’s not sure why, but old ladies seem to gravitate towards him, fingers outstretched to pinch his cheeks.

Also, if this goes bad, witnesses would just make it worse.

“The hell.”

“Shh, relax. They’re all like this.”

This is a strange, strange world. So many bottles of nail polish on the wall-

“That’s it? Not even one bottle of blue?”

What.

“Huh?”

She gestures at said nail polish with an eye roll.

“I have more than that, this is sad.”

There are things he’s just not going to ask about, like this, and Why is it a Big Deal when two girls wear the same dress. He’ll just chalk that up to Things Man Was Not Meant to Know.

“We’re here to see Lazlo Valentin,” he says to the plastic receptionist. “Is he here?”

“Mm-hm. Got a name?”

“Jonathan Crane.” He’s not sure if that’ll get him in or get him shot at, but he’s figuring there’s a fifty-fifty chance, so…he’s feeling a little lucky. Y’know. For him.

“I’ll be right back.”

She leaves the pink, perfumed room and he’s left wondering if the lights are supposed to be flattering or if the dimness is to hide imperfections. Or bloodstains.

“So who’s this one?”

“One of Dad’s old, uh…patients. Doesn’t like pigs, I don’t know why. But I guess he’s really weird, I don’t know, I never met him.”

“Is this a good idea?”

“Probably not.”

And then they’re shown into the back. It’s a stark, rather awful contrast to the garish pink lobby-it’s dark, cold, and gives off a general vibe of ‘Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter Here’.

Take notes.

Shh.

Valentin…Valentin is. He, uh.

Jonathan really doesn’t have words for the man. He’s…large. Built like the butcher in his old book of fairy tales. Looks like him, too-he’s wearing an apron has dark stains on it that Jonathan really doubts came from hair dye. His face isn’t…something’s wrong with it. Like the receptionist’s.

There might be a reason Dad didn’t want him around this guy. His whole vibe is off.

Scared?

Unsettled.

Wuss.

Maybe he makes his polishes out of human remains.

…shit. Time to go.

Valentin blinks at them, snuffles and snorts and oh, god, Jonathan wishes he could appreciate the irony here but he just can’t.

“Can I…heeeeelp you?”

“Yes. Yes, I think you can.” He takes a deep, hopefully calming breath and checks to make sure the path to the door is still clear. “You may remember my father. Gerald Crane?”

There’s an alarmed sucking of breath that turns to a gaspy snort. This may not have been his best idea.

“No, no, no.” Each word is punctuated with a flail of a thick finger. “No. We discuss something nicer, yes?” Um. “You want me to make you perfect. This I can do.”

Nope, thanks, he’s happy the way he is.

“Don’t change the subject-”

Valentin moves closer, fingers fluttering too close to their faces for Jonathan’s liking.

“Wrong, wrong…but I can fix. Yes. I can fix you all up.” He tries to nudge Kitty’s head up and she pulls away. “Good bone structure…both of you need…haircut…”

“That’s enough.” Only in Gotham… “You are going to do something for me, Mister Valentin. I’m not asking.” He takes a step back, dragging Kitty with him, because this is not going the way it was supposed to. “My father had a friend for you. Do you remember?” Another alarmed noise. “That friend misses you very much.” The friend is probably bacon by now, but who knows. “You are going to play a game with the police, or that friend comes to see you. You can make them…perfect.” And he does not want to know what the entails. “Is that clear?”

Valentin is silent. Jonathan’s just about to make a run for it when he nods, once and firmly.

“Yes.”

“Good. I’ll be in touch.” Hopefully next time with some armed backup. He found people to kidnap Merton, he can find people to keep Valentin in line.

They leave, and it’s only when they’re driving away that Kitty lets out a shuddery breath.

“The hell was that?”

“I have no idea.” he admits, leaning his head against the seat. “But I think he’ll keep the cops busy for us.”

THE END

*Restraints. Or, rather, fighting the restraints. His time in Arkham did not help.

#Gotham #Jonathan Crane #Scarecrow #Kitty Richardson #Lazlo Valentin #he's not Professor Pyg yet #but he will be

[xx-coffeebean-xx-blog]

TWINS | BTS | Fanfic| PT 3

It's been almost an entire week and I haven't heard anything from Jimin. Taking a sip from my boba, I stop at the street light waiting for the sign to change. It was crowded with many people, I was squished in the crowd and I felt someone take hold of my hand. Oh my god its a pervert. That's when I got a notification unlocking my phone it was a message from a private phone number.

xxx-xxx-xxxx

Don't attract any attention to yourself just follow me my lead.

Looking at my phone I could see Jimin's reflection on the screen, relief wash over me but from the other side of the street I could feel like we were being watch. And I was right someone wearing all black stood still and he was staring directly at me. Luckily the light sign turned and everyone was on the move.

Jimin held my hand tighter as we push past people, turning a sharp corner we were met by a black window tinted car park in an empty dark alleyway. He unlocks the car and tosses me the keys, "You drive." he says opening the passanger's door. sit and takes out his phone. Letting out a sigh I step in turn on the car & drove off following Jimin's directions we found ourselves at a fancy hotel. As the valet parks the car I follow close behind Jimin as he went to the front desk and asks for the room key. The front desk lady squeals as she saw the k-pop idol smile up at her, quickly gave him the key and slowly caressed his hand. Jimin gives her a weak grin thanks her then took my hand in his leading me to the elevator.

The desk lady finally realize my existence and signals her other coworkers, they all whisper to each other which made me uncomfortable. My eyes stayed glued to the ground as Jimin pulled into the elevator on into a room were I was greeted by an embraced.

" OMG it's so nice to finally to meet I'm Ji-yoo Jimin's stylist." she says releasing me.

"Hello nice to met you I'm-"

"Oh no need to explain sweetie Jimin has told me so much about you. So lets get started come take a seat here." Ji-yoo says taking my coat and sits me down in a sliver dresser chair surrounded buy so much make up. Wrapping a piece of clothe around my neck, next Ji-yoo concocted a mixer which reeks of bleach, "What are you doing?"

"Dyeing your hair blond like Jimin's" she says pointing to Jimin how pulls down his hood to reveal his lock blondish, sliverish. It was no longer brown, "Well can't I just use a wig or something." I suggest.

Jimin chuckles looking up from his phone he lifts one finger and moves it side ways, "Not possible my dear little sister remember you're going to be sharing a room with one another guy and with all the dancing the wig mite fall off." I gave a glare from the mirror. "Cheer up you're going to look great and if it makes you feel any better I'm going to dye my hair brown and have extensions on to look like a girl."

"Just like how mom use to dress us." I squeal "Okay do your thing Ji-yoo"

Plugging in my ear buds I jam out to Big Bang. I must've fallen asleep because next thing I knew I woke up to my reflection to find my hair dyed and cut short exposing my ear. "It suits you quite well sis." I turn to find Jimin with long brown hair, "If mom saw this she would die happy."

Unlocking my phone I started to take pictures no stop each one taken with a different angle. Jimin instantly went into model mode, switching places I began to model, Ji-yoo took the phone and together we pose on the bed, floor, hallway, closet it was definitely a full out photo shoot.

++++++

Switching clothes Jimin explained what was going on right now with the rest of the guys, I was rooming with someone name Jung Hoseok he's part the rap line and dance line most of the time he's in the dance studio practicing so he won't be much of a bother. Also with the youngest member Jeon Jungkook the golden makane.

One by one he introduces his members and I did the same telling him about the people I live with to the people I work for. Fixing my hair I step out of the bathroom, let me tell you one thing I look good in guys clothes, I look just like Jimin. Speaking of Jimin he steps out of the other bathroom wearing my outfit.

"It's like looking in a mirror huh sis." He jokes pushing up his fake breasts and pucker his lips.

"Shut up." I said putting on the Apple watch. "Is there anything else I need to know before this takes off."

"Yeah the guy's they tend to be touchy. So don't panic if they hug you or due something in front of the camera fans like to see us fawning over each other." He says casually. "Also I told the guys I was going to the doctors. So if they ask that's where you went."

I nod my head in agreement, "Jimin before I leave, my roommate tends to be sick all the time so please take care of her & don't try anything." I warn him, he rolls his eyes but agrees.

"Aren't you nervous?" Ji-yoo says.

"Why would I be?" I answer.

"You're going to be living with guy's. Men do weird things you know?" Says Ji-yoo finishing her packing as she stood by my side.

"I grew up with two brothers how hard is it to handle six more." I smirk at Jimin, putting on the shades and pull up the hood.

"We'll were off." Ji-yoo waves to Jimin opening the door and steps out of the room.

I follow Ji-yoo but got stop by Jimin taking hold of my hand. "Jinee if at any point you feel uncomfortable we can switch back."

Pulling Jimin in a tight hug, it's been so long since I seen him it felt weird hugging him. I understood why I was doing this, yet I couldn't help but be scared at the idea of putting his career on the line, fooling friends, his fans everyone that knew Jimin as an idol.

"I'll be fine Jimin don't worry." I have him a smile. "Secret twin handshake?"

"Aren't we a bit to old to be doing that." Asks Jimin

"Never."

A grin came across his face, doing our handshake we parted ways. Closing the door I follow Ji-yoo to the back of the hotel where the black car from waited for us.

Buckling in, Ji-yoo drove down the roads till we stopped at an apartment complex. It was huge and so fancy, "Okay Jinee this is you. You're apartment is on the 8th floor room 3015 here's your key. Jinee fighting!" Ji-yoo cheers, handing me a key.

I wave her good till the car was out of sight taking in a deep breath I set foot inside the lobby were I was welcomed warmly. Smiling to the receptionist I headed towards the elevator and push the button that had an arrow pointing upwards.

The elevator doors sung open to reveal a man dressed in a red hood, black short and Timberlands?

This must be Jungkook.

"Oh Hyung! Where have you been we've been calling you nonstop." He said showing me his phone 20 missed calls. "What's with the new phone?"

Crap! Jimin and I didn't switch our phones. "Sorry Jungkook I was at the doctors and when I left, these girls started chasing me and I dropped my phone and it's broke. So I bought a new one." I explain lowering my voice a bit and show him my new phone.

"That explains a lot." He giggles as did I till it got awkward. We stood there in silence, a confused look took over Jungkook's. "Hyung aren't you going to step inside?"

"Oh right." I chuckle nervously stepping inside the elevator. As we rode the elevator I couldn't help but admire Jungkook's facial features, he's so handsome.

Following him out of the elevator he unlocks the door to apartment. Where we were, greeted by loud yelling and something that smells fantastic.

"We're home!" Jungkook yells taking off his shoes and step into the living room. Following his actions I pass the kitchen to see one man with blond hair wearing checkered blue apron.

"Jin-hyung is the food almost ready." Asks Jungkook dipping his hand to take out a piece of meat out of the pot.

Jin smacks Jungkook's hand, he pouts and walks away.

"Can you believe this kid? God knows where his hand been." He mutters "Jimin go tell everyone that the food is ready." I nod and went to the living room to find three men sitting in the couch and Jungkook playing video games with another boy with his hair painted two different colors. I instantly figured out that this was Taehyung how because of all the Gucci he was wearing.

Like seriously this guy was deep dip in Gucci.

"Um Hyung said that the foods ready." I say. They exchanged looks before dropping everything and run to the table.

Taking the only available seat which was next to Jin and to Hoseok. They gobble down the food at a rapid pace that I didn't even get a chance to fill up my plate.

Once finish we played Rock, paper, scissors it was down to me and Namjoon it was very intense. "Rock, paper, scissors shoot." Namjoon threw out paper while I threw rock. The leader cheers as did the others, being disappointed I took all the plates and began washing them.

Plate after plate, cup after cup I finally finish flopping down on my bunk bed which was at the bottom I scroll threw my phone and found a message from Jimin.

Jimin: How was dinner?

Me: Very awkward I didn't get a chance to eat properly. WBY

Jimin: Boring your roommate hasn't even come home I had to eat alone :(

Me: yea she tends to do that get use to it.

Jimin: well you better get to sleep you got practice tomorrow

Me: u too! U got class at 8:30 goodnight :)

Jimin: night sis

Taking Jimin's PJ's I lock the bathroom door and quickly took off the bandages around my chest. It felt great being able to let the girls out for a breather. Turning on the shower I step in letting the cool water hit my skin.

Suddenly a knock came from the door. "Hey Jimin are you okay? You've been in there for a while." It was Hoseok.

"Just a second." I turn off the shower, change into the PJ's realizing I only had one pair of underwear and they were used.

Another knock came from the door, I had no choice but to put them on.

Disgusting.

Opening the door I saw Hoseok concern expression. "Are you okay?"

"Me? Yeah I'm okay."

"You sure you've been acting strange today."

"I'm okay Hoseok really I am. I went to the doctors they said that nothings wrong with me." I lied " Now excuse me I'm going to bed night Hoseok."

"Night Jimin."

#bts army #bts fanfic #bts jhope #bts #bts jimin #park jimin #jin #jungkook #jimin #bts namjoon #kim namjoon #kim taehyung #kpop #jeon hoseok

[thisbrutalbelle]

chatzy with @monsterbyamile

        miles and bella wake up the morning after the black light party and discuss him asking her to meet his kids before he heads to work.

Bella had come in quite late, it was practically morning by the time she slipped into Miles apartment and changed into one of his shirts. He was a pretty sound sleeper, though admittedly she was also very quiet as she moved about the bedroom. It was already beginning to feel a lot like a second home to her, so many nights she either crawled in beside him or awoke to find he’d crawled in next to her. Honestly she didn’t even sleep, she just crawled in next to him, found a position close to him without disturbing his sleep and closed her eyes, waiting for him to wake up. No doubt it wouldn’t be long and with how heavy Bellamy slept him waking her often took a few tries, especially if the sun was up, her vampiric form naturally wanting to sleep. When he finally stirred she opened her eyes, wriggling closer to him, arms wrapping tightly around him as her lips pressed a kiss to his back.

Normally it wasn’t the sounds she made or the movements in the bed that woke Miles up. It was her scent. While he slept, her familiar scent would enter into his mind, and with such close proximity, it quickly enveloped his dreams until finally he started to wake and could feel her arms wrapping around his middle, and her lips pressing against his back. “Hey,” he mumbled groggily, blinking slowly against his heavy lids. “What time is it?”

“Morning,” was all Bella responded, her phone abandoned somewhere in the apartment, probably the bathroom, and not able to tell her. Her nose pushed against his back, nuzzling in close as she felt his warmth take hold of it, making her cheeks red. “Maybe I’ll look while I bring you some food,” she teased.

Miles grumbled in protest, still half asleep but knowing enough that all he wanted right now was to brush his teeth and down half a pot of coffee, but all he managed to say was a sleepy, “Okay, okay,” before he pushed himself upright. “I gotta brush my teeth,” he said as he lumbered out of the bed.

Bella was quickly in front of him, planting a kiss to his lips before he could make his way to the bathroom. With that she was gone, already in the kitchen, sitting on the counter and putting on some coffee for him. Her speed came out at times like this, unfortunately for the groggy Miles. Whatever the case it probably helped because by the time he’d get done she’d have his coffee made, some toast and be onto bacon and eggs.

Miles felt much more awake after brushing his teeth and washing his face. Also the rich smell of the coffee wafting through his apartment helped. He went out to the kitchen and came up behind her, wrapping his arms around her middle and pressing a kiss to her cheek. “Morning. Is that for me?” He nodded his head toward the food she was preparing on the stove.

“For us both,” Bellamy answered, leaning into the kiss, her body falling back against his. It didn’t seem like he was upset with her after the night before but she was still a little worried about things. “You excited for the day?” she asked, figuring that was the best way to introduce things.

“Yeah, it should be fun.” Miles gave her one more kiss before pulling away to pour himself a cup of coffee. He leaned against the counter beside her as he took a drink, looking at her from over the rim of his mug.

Bella frowned slightly, pushing the bacon around, waiting for it to become crispy. “I didn’t really expect you to ask me to come with you, I was sort of surprised,” Bellamy commented, not intending to give things up. Maybe Miles didn’t want to talk about how she hadn’t said ‘yes’ like he may have wanted but Bellamy couldn’t give it up.

Miles wasn’t upset about it, at least, not really. He wasn’t mad at her but he was a little bit annoyed. “I didn’t want to make it a big deal,” he shrugged. He figured asking her like that was essentially the same as asking if she wanted a drink or to get some food. “If you don’t want to, that’s fine. I just figured, we’ve been seeing each other for a while now, and it’s probably about time you met my kids.”

“I thought you’d be pleased,” Miles added on.

Bella nodded her head, taking the fry pan off and sitting it to the side, turning off the stove. “I am pleased,” she assured, turning to look at him while the bacon continued to crisp while the pan cooled. “But it is a big deal, beyond just the fact obviously I need to make a good impression so it doesn’t screw things up with us, I always sort of expected that part, but…I don’t want to make anything hard on you later. I don’t think it’s smart for me to spend time with them if Beth doesn’t know what I am. Usually I would say it’s not any of your exes business what I am, just like it isn’t any of mine what you are, but this is different, what I am is…not something people might want their kids around and unfortunately Beth sort of gets a say in that,” Bellamy explained, rubbing her hands on her thighs.

“I don’t care what Beth thinks,” Miles answered sharply. “They’re–” he paused and set his coffee down on the side, jaw clenched as his fingers tapped against the counter top. “They’re my kids too. I get to decide who gets to be in their life. If you were just some woman, I wouldn’t care, but you’re you. I don’t give a damn what Beth thinks because…” He turned toward her, “What if she says no. Then what? The rest of my life you never get to see my kids?”

Bella didn’t expect Miles to be pleased by what she’d said. Fact was it sucked he would always have to turn to someone else to decide stuff about them, someone he wasn’t romantically attached to and couldn’t compromise with in the same fashion he would have if they were a couple. For the both of them things would be easier if Miles was just by himself but easier didn’t really mean better. Bella’s hands searched for his own, pulling them away from the counter. “Then we wait and we see and we make it obvious that it’ll be okay,” she insisted, kissing his fingers softly. “If you don’t tell her, and she finds out…don’t you think that will be worse?”

Miles let out a frustrated breath as she reached for his hand, but he welcomed the touch. “It’s not like we’re that much different. I’m just as dangerous around them as you are. I hate that I have to constantly ask what I can and can’t do with my own damn kids.”

“Then…maybe don’t ask, just tell her,” Bellamy said, squeezing his hands softly. Admittedly Bellamy didn’t believe it was true that Miles was just as dangerous, but she also saw so much goodness in Miles and it took a lot for her to see it in herself. “Say that you know what I am, that you know I wouldn’t do anything, and that if it ever seemed like I would you’d do what was best for your kids. I mean, she can’t deny you seeing them and…if she’s a good person then she wouldn’t, but…she should know.”

“I don’t suppose I could just text her this and call it square?” Miles said half jokingly.

“Just send through 'my vampire girlfriend and I are taking the girls to make some tie dye shirts, drop them off later’,” Bellamy laughed, shaking her head a little, holding his hands to her chest.

Miles stepped in closer as she drew his hands to her chest, chuckling as she played along. “If only,” he pressed a soft kiss to her forehead. “You’re right though. I’ll talk to her.”

Bella smiled, glad that he understood why she hadn’t quite jumped for joy when he asked her. “You really want me to meet them though?” she asked, looking up at him with her big golden eyes. “How much do they know about me?”

“Of course I want you to meet them,” Miles pulled his hands out from hers, stepping away just to turn off the stove since the bacon had been left on and was just close to burning. “They know that you’re my girlfriend, they know you’re a vampire,” maybe it was strange that his kids knew more about Bella than their mother did, but Miles just didn’t like having to talk to her about things other than when he could see his kids next. “They know you have a few businesses, and they know you have a dog. By the way, they want to meet your dog too.” He got some plates down from the cupboard and started plating the bacon, eggs, and toast – which he grabbed from the toaster.

Bella watched as he moved, beginning to prepare and plate their food. “They do? And they’re not like…scared?” Bellamy asked. There was every chance if his kids knew than Beth did, even if he hadn’t told her then they might have and not thought much of it. After all they knew what Miles was, they knew what the town had within it, why would it be weird to think he was with someone who wasn’t human? “Boss will probably be a whole lot more interesting to them than me, plus he obviously loves attention so I’m sure he’ll be pretty happy to be played with and have his fur pushed in all kinds of directions.”

“No, they’re not scared.” Miles grabbed some forks from the drawer and set them all down on the counter, “They were actually pretty excited about it at first, but after I told them you couldn’t actually turn into a bat they didn’t seem to care all that much.”

“Oh my god,” Bellamy let out, momentarily distracted by the topic of bats. “It’s such a scam, I should be able to be a bat,” Bellamy decided with a firmness. “But I’m glad and excited and nervous and probably going to mess it up,” she smiled, leaning over the counter and picking up one of the forks for herself. “So maybe if we can’t get to tie dye today we can do something else together.”

“I think you should talk to whoever is in charge of the whole vampire thing,” he said pointedly, picking up a piece of bacon and taking a bite, “Get them to rework the rules a bit. You won’t mess it up.” Miles assured her, “They’ll love you.”

Bella smiled as he said they’d love her. Bella hoped that was true, that they’d see how much she cared for Miles and that would be what mattered most but kids could see things that adults couldn’t. Bella didn’t want them to look at her and see how fucked up she was. Even if they couldn’t exactly pinpoint it Bella just didn’t want to know everything she’d done could be seen so easily and destroy things so quickly. “So what should we do? Fly to Disneyland?” she half joked.

Miles laughed and reclaimed his coffee, taking a drink to help down the mouthful of eggs and bacon. “No Disneyland. We went there once and only went on three rides. The whole rest of the day was spent waiting in line. No ma'am. If you want to take them somewhere, the Wild Waves Theme park over in Federal Way is good enough.”

“But I can get us VIP, they like take you around and put you to the front of all the lines,” Bellamy stated. She had never been to either of the Disney locations in the states and was pretty obsessed with going. Iann had said he would go with her but it was one of those things with no definitive time line so Bellamy mostly had just done her research to make the trip as painless as possible for the man who loathed corporate America. “Yes! Okay, let’s go there,” she beamed, beginning to eat some of her food. “That’ll be a fun day. And that way you can have today with your girls and tell them that they are going to meet me instead of springing it on them too.”

“Okay,” he nodded in agreement, “Sounds like a date to me.” Miles smiled at her, genuinely looking forward to Bellamy meeting his kids. “Have you ever been to a water park like that before?” She hadn’t been to a zoo before so he figured maybe it would be her first time at a water park too.

Bella shook her head. “Closest I’ve been to a water park is a slip'n'slide at my friends place when we were in high school but we were pretty drunk,” she admitted. Bellamy barely remembered what had happened, bits and pieces coming to mind. “So it’ll be a first for me, as I tend to have a lot of with you,” Bellamy noted, finishing off her food. “I want to have lots of firsts with you.”

Miles finished off the last of his food with one last gulp of his coffee. “Good, I like having all of these firsts with you.” He wrapped his arms around her middle and kissed her repeatedly on her cheek. “It’ll be fun, and you’ll be great.”

Bella smiled, feeling his arms around her and grasping him back, willing him to remain in her arms and her in his. “I’m guessing you have to go?” Bellamy asked him, a heavy disappointment in her voice.

Miles would have stayed there with her, holding her all day, kissing her all day and just hanging out but he did have to go. “Yes ma'am. I got to go to work and then I gotta pick up the girls from my parent’s place.” He gave her another kiss before he pulled away, picking up their dirty plates and setting them into the sink. “Thanks for breakfast, babygirl.”

Bella felt a sort of emptiness as he slipped out of her arms. It felt like it had been forever since they’d had a whole day together - even though they’d just had a whole week for his birthday. She was so used to having partners whose schedules basically revolved around her because…well, they didn’t exactly have traditional jobs, but Bellamy decided since he would be at the auction they’d be able to be close then. “It’s okay,” she said of the food. “Are the girls staying over tonight or can I stay again?” she asked, only ever asking permission when their was a possibility they would be there.

“You can come over. Beth is supposed to pick them up later,” Miles poured himself a bit more coffee to drink for while he got dressed into his uniform.

“Okay,” Bella acknowledged, watching as he dressed, slowly becoming even more attractive as his uniform fitting to him. It was tremendously hard for her not to buy a prisoner costume and wait for him whenever he came home, she resisted though assuming it would be in poor taste. “I’ll be here,” she told him, leaning up and kissing him, her mouth pressed to his she deepened it more than any of the one’s previously.

Miles pressed a hand on the small of her back, pulling her closer as the kiss deepened. “You better be,” he spoke lowly against her lips as he continued the kiss.

Bella blushed as she heard his words, hands grasping the fabric of his shirt, almost willing it to come off though not pulling. “Or else?” she teased back, smirking against his lips.

“Or else,” Miles muttered as a promise, kissing her deeply once before he unwillingly had to step away.

Bella just continued to smile at his faux sort of threat, knowing he had to go. “Miss you,” she assured him. “Love you.”

“And I love you, babygirl,” Miles shouldered on his jacket and stuffed his keys, phone, and wallet into his pockets. “I’ll see you later.”

#monsterbyamile #Chatzy #nothing triggeering woot #unless kisses are gross to you #AND BEING IN LOVE

[thegeminisage]

today in adventures of liz:

ok BACK to kakariko to tell impa i got the thing

the memory thing idk if i talked about it in the last post but i recovered a memory and saw a cutscene of link and zelda and died i was just too migraine addled to keep going

aww i got my tunic back

...im gonna turn it green. i know it was blue in the trailers but. green.

aww i cant dye this one?? no fair ):

well i’ll try sailing then!! i don’t know if my brother figured out how so it’ll be something to tell him (update lol he has. fuck)

he’s also done the major test of strength shrine :/

oooh i got the boat started and now it’s...kind of drifting around on its own lol

guess i’d better try the shrine now while i have such good weapons ):

WOW broke my battle axe already!!

and my shield ): in TWO hits

HAHAHA I DID IT

fuck

that was so difficult!!! never do i ever want to do that ever again!!!!

got myself some SICK CLIMBING GEAR

omg dude i found a rito playing the accordion for some seagulls and my heart twisted bc i thought of aryll

i can’t climb the thing he’s on bc it’s raining so i get to just stand under some shelter and listen to his song

im nostalgic high key hahaha jesus christ

in wind waker they say “you’ve traveled far for one with no wings” but at least in wind waker you had a companion. in this game i am so alone. i could just weep tbh

i love it when the game slams you with unexpected faint feelings like that. it doesn’t work as well if this is your first zelda but if you’ve been playing them for years there’s a lot of sadness and unexpected grief and loneliness

the hyrule i knew was always full of people. maybe not in all the places, but even in the remote areas you might still find someone once in awhile, and you always had your companion. this is so different. all the feelings are like--of an age past, of something dead or sleeping. like link.

and the rain’s over, let’s climb

omg he’s playing songs about link im going to CRY

either me or the link of 10,000 years ago

oh my god the song is SO pretty geez geez i got chills

omg i found some stone pebble monsters on the beach and theyre kinda cute?? idk how to kill them except blow them up

ohhhh i found the big monsters hole :||||

sheikah slate says: hinox

oh. oh it chases you. okay, good great thats

bye lmao

im gonna bomb it from the top of the hole. fuck this nonsense i play smart

[roll safe meme picture here]

NOOO I FELL

at least it didn’t wake back up

ok, so i can’t get any of the bombs close enough...at least i have arrows?

...which don’t do enough damage. ok. ok. i’ll just glide down there and attack him the arrows are chipping away at his health pretty quickly so

oh. i died. all right then

HA I KILLED HIM

and broke my best weapon. but.

that wasnt so bad. i bet i could kill the one on the island if it didn’t take all my equipment and elixirs

speaking of i’ve been trying to stack them lmao and i think they only work one at a time...smh

aw aw i found a heart-shaped pond with fairies

i guess the only part left of this province i haven’t explored is that big mountain :/ y a y

whoa i just saw something fall from the sky and i thought maybe it was embers from death mountain but that’s too far away...i chased it down and it turns out its a piece of a fallen star OOOO:

time to climb mt laynayru i guess rip

ah i wound up going the super long way around and found this lake with ruins in it!! last time i found one the blood moon rose but it just did that a couple of nights ago so i think im safe this time lol

ohh man. oh wow. these are. beautiful. man.

me: wow these ruins are so beautiful! can’t wait to explore! the weather: (:

this is the only video game thats ever made me hate rain omg

also i keep forgetting to take pics of things for the copendium :/ god it’s gonna be sooo tedious to get everything, rip

oh wow i can see a big gate or dam thing in the distance in another province...tbh it’s fucking amazing how far away you can see at the high points and the map is SO huge

yep, definitely a dam

nooo its cold up here so i gotta take off my climbing shirt and wear my warm doublet bc i dont have any spicy food 4 my son )):

oh wait lmao jk i do

eat the spice and be warm my child

it was stupid to come up here without fire arrows lol

whoa there are wolves here...they kinda look pink :3

put on my doublet and i’m STILL too cold to go on?? WTF

i mean i have one more spicy dish but...man. i didn’t know the cold came in tiers.

whoa i see some weird glowing thing??

oh shit the music started up Oh Shit

oh my god its a dragon!! infected with Malice 

oh my god its naydra!!! so like for nayru, and farosh is for farore, i KNEW they didn’t forget the goddesses

and i have to shoot the stuff off to free it but i only have about 4m of cold resistance left and 10 arrows?? oh my god

i’ll try friend!!!!

aaah i got all but one eye i’m using those the updrafts and those sick mid-air shots to get close enough

maybe i’ll reload my save now that i’ve had more practice...i don’t want to leave it ):

HAHAHA OH MY GOD I DID IT

WITH MY LAST ARROW I DID IT

“you must now pierce the dragon’s body to save it” WITH WHAT ARROWS? oh my god don’t...tell me i have to leave im crying

wait wait I HAVE ICE ARROWS thank god

or nayru i guess

ok good god back to a cooking pot to make some spicy shit before i die for real

#personal #loz blogging #botw spoilers

[mnetruinedmylife]

Majisuka Gakuen 4 Redux

Chapter 1

It’s a sunny spring morning that sees the start of the school term.

Perhaps in a more civilized part of town, there may be students in their freshly pressed uniforms and book bags disembarking from buses and hurrying along the streets to their schools. That would not be a common sight in this particular area.

Instead, the beginning of school year in southern Tokyo sees young adolescents leisurely wandering the streets in packs, while donning a mockery of the uniform regulations: ripped up sleeves, ankle length skirts, pipes or baseball bats slung over one shoulder, bright dye in their hair, and smoke and violence trailing in their wake.

Majisuka Jyogakuen has always boasted some of the more infamous delinquents, and the grounds reflect as such. With students loitering about in the courtyard, if they deem it fit to show up at all. The old brick walls are scribbled all over in all manner of paints and pens, depicting obscenities, names and threats, and even random declarations of power. The corridors are somehow even more chaotic, with students clamouring over each other in the tight spaces, a stray swing of a fist here, bits of broken glass littering the floor, a vicious kick there, all in the hopes of furthering their positions on the school’s hierarchy for the upcoming year.

Upon the second floor corridor, the smell of cooking food wafts throughout the halls. This year it appears to be a familiar scent of cooking meat, only now it’s not so much smoky grilled, but steamed and complemented with a rich broth smelling of tantalising spices. The second year students have vacated the hall, lest they become a little too tempted to burst through the third classroom from the stairs and do something stupid.

Inside said classroom, sits a dozen students who have become rather desensitized to the mouth-watering aroma of the hotpot-of-the-day in past year, and five girls in red jerseys crowd around a boiling pot, simmering to the brim with mushrooms and vegetables.

For Team Hinabe, this is more than just the start to a new year, it’s the year they stake their claim on the school. First years are hardly ever taken seriously, and so second year is the crucial moment that decides their trajectory for the rest of their high school careers. The team’s founder and captain Uonome, is deep in thought as she stares at the bubbling broth.

There are so many different ways they can do this, but honestly, she can’t see most of them ending in success. Majisuka Jyogakuen, like most delinquent yankee schools in the area, is organised based on strength. The hierarchy is almost entirely a show of physical and martial power – unfortunately, as she looks at each of her contemporaries around the stove –

“You put something disgusting in it again,” Dodobusu complains, giving the piece of tripe lying limply on the ladle a nauseated glare as though it had somehow personally offended her.

Kusogaki probably is personally offended because she’s quick to chime in with a rather juvenile, “The only disgusting thing here is your face!”

“What? Say that again after looking into a mirror!” Dodobusu’s reply isn’t exactly much more mature.

Predictably Kusogaki is quick to grab onto the collar of her teammate’s jersey menacingly, but before any threats (or acts) of violence can get uttered, Jisedai interrupts with an exaggerated eye roll, “Oh shut up. Can’t I eat in peace?”

The final member of her team, Kenpou chimes in with, “Article 14: the general populace are equal by law, that is to say they are not to be discriminated by race, religion, gender or by their face.”

Uonome curses the nitwit who planted the idea of going to law school in Kenpou’s head. Her teammate has been speaking entirely in verses of Japanese law for months. If she isn’t so annoyed, she might’ve actually been impressed at how Kenpou managed to still participate in most conversations with such…restrictions.

“It’s too early for you to be talking Kenpou!” Kusogaki moans, rubbing her forehead as though thinking is actually causing her pain and the entire group descends into more and more juvenile squabbling.

Just as they’re reaching ‘I know you are, but what am I?’ levels, Uonome succeeds in becoming temporarily deaf. Why yes, Uonome thinks sardonically, there’s a lot of fearsome power to be seen here. Luckily though, an invaluable source of information drops onto their lap this year in the form of an old friend and mentor.

Wota, now known as Scandal, former leader of Team Hormone and a member of Maeda’s (technically Otabe’s) Rappapa, has returned from her exile to Fukuoka.

Scooping a generous serving of the broth into a bowl, Uonome offers it to her returning senpai, “Neechan, the hinabe is ready.”

“Thanks,” the green jersey clad girl takes the bowl while wondering when the food thing became so extravagant.

It had started with Scandal – or Wota as she went by back then, eating her lunch in class because she was hungry. When the teacher said nothing, she started doing it just because she could. Then Bungee started bringing her food, and then Unagi lugged a grill she found on the side of the road in one day, and then they’d started grilling hormone in class because who the hell was going to stop them? It appears the tradition has gotten more ridiculous over the years because Team Hinabe actually has an entire cooler set aside for themselves, filled with raw ingredients and condiments.

“Where are you guys getting the money to have hotpot every day?” Scandal is still a little incredulous at the whole thing. She remembers squabbling with her teammates over who had to pay for the hormone every week, and they were the cheapest cuts of meat you could get.

“Fighting, duh,” Kusogaki says in a matter-of-fact tone, and Scandal is reminded that this particular food-themed-team formed a little differently than most in Majijo did.

“That and Kenpou is rich,” Jisedai adds wryly.

“Sh! Article 13: every individual has the liberty of protecting his or her own personal information from being disclosed to a third party or made public without good reason!” Kenpou hisses, eyes flickering around the room warily.

“Oh relax, like anyone’s going to steal from us,” Dodobusu waves off her worries dismissively.

“It’s been a long time right Neechan?” Uonome steers the conversation away from that because the last thing she needs is for Kusogaki to start making loud declarations of how no one has the guts to challenge them, and well of course, those kinds of boasts result in just that, “How long were you suspended for?” she wonders aloud.

Scandal resists the urge to knock the kid on the head, she knew exactly how long Scandal has been gone for, “Two years brat. They sent me to Fukuoka you know? Just when I had the chance to be Vice-Captain too.”

“Oh yeah, it was the thing right?” Kusogaki asks, and the little rascal has the audacity to make the sign for ‘lover’ at her.

Scandal shoots her a poisonous glare and wonders when these punks got so bold. Probably in the two years she was gone. God did she hate Nezumi sometimes. That sneaky rat set her up. Scandal takes a bite of a mushroom and decides to change the subject before she slams a head into the boiling pot, Otabe probably won’t appreciate that – also she really needs to graduate soon and causing grievous bodily harm to her juniors is counterproductive to that, “Anyway, what’s been going on lately? How’s my team doing?”  

“...how are we supposed to know? The last of Team Hormone graduated when I was a first year, like my actual first year,” Uonome says incredulously. Surely being sent to Fukuoka couldn’t have damaged Scandal’s memory that much?

“Not Team Hormone, I still talk to them. I meant you lot you genius,” Scandal points out, grinning through her teeth, knowing full well that it would rile them up.

“We’re not your team! They’re my team!” Uonome as always, is completely indignant over any insinuation that the formation of Team Hinabe isn’t a hundred percent due to her.

“Uh-huh, sure. Who convinced you make a team again?” Scandal takes great delight in needling the younger girl. It’s hilarious when she goes a little purple, but to Scandal’s surprise, Uonome remains relatively calm. That’s a good sign, guess the kid is making progress after all.

“Whatever. We’re doing good. We practically run this school you know, we keep the other schools in line,” Uonome is also a boastful braggart, but that part isn’t new.

“Really now?” Scandal says indulgently, before looking around in mock confusion, “This doesn’t look like the Rappapa club room to me. I thought you had to be Rappapa to be on top? Or has that changed in the last two years?”

Uonome scowls, and it’s Jisedai who answers her, “Nah, Rappapa’s still technically in charge.”

Scandal feels an eyebrow rise, “Technically?” now this has got to be interesting.

“They’re still the strongest around, but their presence has faded quite a bit,” Dodobusu explains in a way that isn’t really an explanation, like she’s hedging her answers because she’s afraid Scandal won’t like it.

“Elaborate,” Scandal demands flatly. Because last she checked, Otabe is still stomping around school (something about avoiding her father, Scandal hasn’t exactly been able to pry much out of her), and so the Rappapa can’t have gotten that weak over the last two years.

“Well, they’re still monstrously strong as ever. On a technical scale, you could probably say they’re actually one of the strongest Rappapa teams in the history of Rappapa. But well...compared to Yuko’s time...” Uonome sighs, and rubs her temples, as if this is a problem that has been plaguing her for years. It probably has been, “They just don’t care.”

Scandal frowns and makes waving motions in the air with her chopsticks, “Keep elaborating.”

“Like, Shibuya used to push people around for fun. Black was quiet but terrifying when she got serious. Gekikara was a nightmare no more explanation needed there. No one messes with Sado, I mean, her nickname was Sado. When Torigoya got going, you got the fuck away. And Yuko was the psycho who smiled when she jumped into twelve vs one fights. This Rappapa prefers to just keep to themselves, if you pick a fight with one of them directly, they’ll make you sorry for it – well Yoga makes you sorry for it – but if you just beat up a random Majijo gang, they don’t care. We’re getting kinda scared that the other schools might get it into their heads that they can start attacking Majijo without any consequences.”

Scandal blinks, taking that in, “Well...can’t say I’m that surprised. Disappointed, but not really surprised. Otabe was always passive. She only ever got off her ass when Yabakune declared all-out war. I’m just surprised she has a Rappapa who aren’t itching for a fight. Lord knows we were seconds away from mutiny-ing in my third year.”

Dodobusu starts counting down using the fingers on her left hand, “Bakamono is really the only one who fights for fun but Otabe has her on a pretty tight leash. Magic is unmotivated unless it amuses her, Yoga only gets barely motivated if you get in her way or try to challenge the Rappapa, and Salt is apathy made human.”

“Exactly, I’d rather run into one of Salt’s Rappapa in a dark alley than Yuko’s any day,” Jisedai says, “Technically better fighters or not, there’s no fear factor, Salt’s more likely to yawn at me than beat me up.”

“Hold up,” Scandal places a hand out in front of her, brain struggling to come to terms with what she just heard, “Did you just say Salt’s Rappapa? That salty bitch is the president of Rappapa!?”

“Oh yeah, Salt became president last year,” Uonome states casually, like the information didn’t just fry Scandal’s brain.

“How? Why? What? Who the hell thought...I thought she didn’t give a shit about the presidency? She barely agreed to be a Queen.”

Dodobusu snorts, “She still doesn’t give a shit. See, after you left, there was a huge fight for the open Rappapa positions. Then Nezumi’s father forcibly transferred her to a private school, something about a politician having a daughter in a yankee school not looking good for him. And without her, Centre dropped out and joined the army. So that was most of the Rappapa gone, and there was a huge power vacuum.”

“And what? Salt decided that then was the perfect time to knock Otabe off her throne? Actually, what did happen to Otabe?” Scandal presses, perhaps she should’ve kept in closer contact with her friends back in Majijo, because this is just a little too interesting to have missed.

“Article 230 subsection 1 of the Penal Code: A person who defames another by alleging facts in public shall, regardless of whether such facts are true or false, be punished,” Kenpou says solemnly, earning a blank look from Scandal.

“…translation?”

“It means we don’t know, and this is one of those rare topics that they actually care about. So if we keep talking about it, someone might snitch and Yoga will beat us black and blue,” Uonome explains in a strangely cheerful tone.

“Huh...I have a feeling I need a nice long chat with Otabe sometime soon,” Scandal muses, she’s missed out on so much, “So where does this put you lot this year? Planning on challenging the Rappapa?”

Jisedai snorts, “As if. Salt is a monster, and Bakamono nearly killed Kusogaki that one time – ”

“—hey I nearly beat her!” Kusogaki exclaims indignantly, only to wilt with a half-hearted, “I was only kicked back by like thirteen metres.”

“Article 37 Subsection 1: An act unavoidably performed to avert a present danger to the life, body, liberty or property of oneself or any other person is not punishable,” Kenpou growls threateningly at Kusogaki, who merely stares back at her blankly.

“In other words, we will beat you up and tie you down ourselves if you pick a fight with Bakamono again. In one kick she broke your wrist, cracked three of your ribs, fractured your shoulder blade and gave you a concussion,” Jisedai deadpans as Kusogaki sulks into her bowl of hinabe.

“The concrete wall did most of that.”

“Anyway, they’re all third years, so they’ll be gone by next year – well maybe not Otabe, if the past few years are anything to go by. But they’ll mostly be gone, and we’ll take on the Rappapa title. Not like it’ll change much, we’ve been pretty much doing their jobs for them anyway,” Uonome says.

“I don’t know whether to commend you on your dedication to Majijo, or be disappointed in your lack of confidence,” Scandal says wryly.

“Well, Majijo first right? That’s what you taught us neechan.”

“Damn right I did. Well, Salt is the president huh?” Scandal chuckles, which then transforms into full blown laughter, clearly finding something that only she knows funny.

The members of Team Hinabe exchange a look of concern, “...Should that be that funny?” Dodobusu asks uncertainly.

“Nah, this is just gonna be an interesting year is all,” Scandal says, though the full teeth grin does nothing to dispel the rest of them of suspicions.

“You know something,” Uonome accuses.

“I might,” Scandal shrugs non-committaly.

“And you aren’t going to tell your poor ‘team’ about it? After all, you helped found us,” Dodobusu says innocently.

“Laying it on a bit thick aren’t you? Just ten minutes ago, you were denying that. Very loudly too.”

Whatever Scandal is going to say is interrupted by a very loud crash as someone goes careening into a desk. The girl who steps through the door – and clearly the one who kicked the other poor girl over (something Haruka?) – is not one who looks familiar.

The new girl walks over to an empty desk and sits down.

“Here’s a hint for you kids,” Scandal says, shit-eating grin still ever present on her face, “Stay away from the transfer student. Sakura’s been in a volatile mood lately.”

Uonome blinks, “You know her?”

“Went to my school in Fukuoka. She’s dangerous.”

“Ch,” Dodobusu glances over the girl with her hair cropped to her shoulders, “Bendy Legs over there doesn’t look too tough to me.”

“Don’t say senpai didn’t warn you.”

“Article 38 subsection 3: Lacking knowledge of law shall not be deemed lacking the intention.”

“I don’t know what that means kid.”

__________)

Meanwhile, two floors above Team Hinabe’s classroom, sits a particularly spacious attic that the Rappapa have commandeered for their clubroom. It’s a somewhat dark space, with the one lightbulb perpetually turned off, and the only light source being the rays of sun streaming through the windows.

Magic has set herself up under the area with the most sunlight, citing that all good magicians perform in full view and don’t rely on something as cheap as darkness to hide their tricks. She shuffles her deck of playing cards and spreads them out over the table as Bakamono watches in rapt attention.

“This is your card,” Magic states with a clear certainty while flipping over a queen of diamonds.

“Yup!” Bakamono nods excitedly, clapping her hands together with enthusiasm, “That was awesome!”

“How many times are you going to amuse her with the same trick?” comes Yoga’s bemused voice from the table she’s meditating on.

Magic’s eyes flicker over to where Yoga is sitting in her default pose, “Is somebody jealous that I’m not paying attention to her?”

“Don’t be childish. I’m just sick of seeing you do ‘pick a card’ for the last three days,” Yoga sighs dramatically, trying to get rid of the memories

“Alright then,” Magic acquiesces with a too-smug-to-be-innocent grin, before pulling out a cup, which immediately catches the attention of Otabe.

“Oh no, not this one,” the elder girl drops the hacky-sacks she’d been playing with and sits up from her armchair with a groan that predicts an incoming headache, “Don’t you dare –”

“ – Tada!” Magic ploughs on, ignoring Otabe as she seemingly drops a coin through the solid upturned glass cup and onto the table.

“Whoa! That was like magic! How’d you do that?” Bakamono exclaims, picking up the glass for inspection.

“Bakamono it’s solid,” Otabe says in the tone of a person who has long passed exasperation and is now stating things out of obligation, “Don’t –”

“—can it pass through the table too?” Bakamono throws the cup onto the table, wincing as it smashes into pieces, “Oops,” she mutters sheepishly while Otabe lets out a long sigh.

“If I step on a shard of glass, I’m going to choke you out Magic,” Yoga warns without opening her eyes.

“Kinky,” Magic smirks, but her attention is on the door on the far side of the room, the one plastered in ‘solt’ stickers.

They’d made quite a commotion.

Sure enough, it slams open with a bang. A rather bleary eyed and irate girl stumbles out.

“Salt-san!” Bakamono (who is clearly unable to read the atmosphere) bounds forward with an exuberant greeting, “Good morn – ow!” only to be rudely interrupted by a fist to the face.

Salt’s voice is hoarse, likely due to sleep and disuse, “Shut. Up.”

Wow just two words Magic notes, and mentally adds a reminder to stay away from Salt for the next few hours. At least until their president manages to get enough sleep to resemble a functional human being.

“Was that really necessary?” Otabe asks mildly, pulling Bakamono up from the ground. Not that she actually needs the help (Salt is usually more bark than bite), but Bakamono looks like a kicked puppy and sometimes if left alone, she would just sulk on the floor like a child.

“Don’t you start. I don’t need a lecture this morning Ota—” Salt stops mid-sentence and looks down, “There is glass on the floor.”

“Magic will be cleaning that up,” Otabe says like it’s a fact, and Magic will very much like to contest that.

“What? Bakamono broke it,” she points out, and rather reasonably too, if she does say so herself.

The meditating one with her eyes closed this entire time apparently believes otherwise, “You knew exactly what would happen when did that trick. So you clean it up.”

“Shut up Yoga. Mind your own damn business,” Magic snaps back.

“Magic – ” Otabe starts.

“—No,” Magic interjects before the elder girl can start lecturing, and wonders if disappearing for the rest of the day will make Otabe forget, the elder girl is wonderfully absentminded about unimportant stuff like that.

“Magic. Clean. End of discussion,” Salt states.

And that is that. Magic isn’t in a belligerent enough mood to argue with Salt this morning, so she changes the subject, “So…I hear there’s a second year transfer student starting today.”

Otabe grins, “Is that right? Second year transfers are always interesting. She might even liven the place up, right Salt?”

“Whatever,” Salt disappears back into her private room, most likely to take another nap on her red sofa.

“Well she’s fun today,” Otabe comments dryly when the door clicks shut, before taking the conversation back to the previous topic, “The last second year transfer student was you, right Yoga? Isn’t this nostalgic?”

“From what I hear, you were a transfer too,” Yoga points out. Her transfer from Sutegoro had been…rocky to say that least. But this isn’t that story.

“Third year,” Otabe clarifies, sounding almost a little disappointed, “All the interesting ones are second years.”

Bakamono chooses this moment to chime in with a cheeky, “Oh that’s right, you came in your third year. Oi Otabe,” she pokes her fingers at the dark blue collar of Otabe’s seifuku, “Just how long have you been at this school for?”

“Idiot,” Magic mutters as Otabe slams Bakamono into a wall. Trust the moron to push Otabe’s one berserk button after triggering Salt’s.

“It’s all about the timing you understand? If you don’t understand, I’ll rearrange your brain and perhaps then you’ll understand.”

“Sorry sorry sorry!”

Yoga cracks open an eye and smiles at the scene, from Bakamono falling over apologising, to Otabe glowering over her, and Magic shuffling a deck of cards while pretending that she’s not watching the proceedings highly amused, to even Salt who is most likely listening to them, because they’re all being loud and she hasn’t come out to kill them again.

All in all, it’s shaping up to be a usual, boring school year.

_______________)

[asia-correspondent]

excerpts ~

CHAPTER 1 ~ RITUALS

SKY FUNERAL VULTURES IN TIBET

On the rocky outskirts of Lhasa, Tibetan mourners whispered prayers while hungry, brooding vultures circled overhead. Cawing. "This is our sky funeral. We let the vultures eat the bodies of dead Tibetans," a mourner told me at the beginning of the somber rites. "I personally think it is too gruesome. But this is our Buddhist tradition." Cremations and burials are difficult to perform. Firewood is scarce throughout much of Tibet. The ground is often frozen or rocky. In 1984 a gray boulder looming 30 feet high, served as the cold altar for Lhasa's Tibetan corpses. The flat boulder's 20-foot by 20-foot surface could be used every day except Sundays. Sky funerals -- bya gtor or "alms for the birds" -- began at dawn with attendees moaning prayers. "Today, four bodies," the mourner quietly explained. "You can see, three of the dead are village women. Also a merchant. He is a murder victim. He was killed two nights ago in the Lhasa market at a card game. Stabbed. We are all friends of the dead. The brothers, sisters, parents and children don't come to these funerals." This morning was chilly and clear. The sun smoldered behind snow-covered mountain peaks while four Tibetan undertakers -- rogyapa or "body breakers" -- and two assistants laid the four corpses face down on the boulder. The undertakers pulled off the bodies' shoes. Mourners glanced at the slumped, immobile humans, then looked away. More friends arrived to honor the deceased. Visitors came in battered, dusty, green Chinese trucks. The vehicles veered off a dirt road, rattled across a small, flat garbage dump, and splashed through an icy, shallow brook. The trucks stopped near the blood-stained boulder. The all-male passengers climbed down and solemnly trudged towards the rock which rested amid treeless lunar foothills dotted with ragged Buddhist prayer flags on the northern outskirts of Lhasa below the stone wall of the 15th century Sera Monastery. Vultures swooped and spiraled, or simply loitered atop a nearby cliff. The birds of prey looked down upon the living and the dead, waiting for the ritual to begin. Six undertakers, reeking of cheap Tibetan chang beer, used thick ropes to noose the necks of the bodies. They attached the ropes to a very heavy stone. This prevented the bodies sliding off the boulder's slightly angled surface. The mourners were becoming increasingly miserable. They clustered around small campfires a few yards away, below the boulder. Some used dented aluminum tea pots to brew hot tea laced with yak butter and salt -- a popular nourishment. Overhead, more vultures circled and cawed. Some of the birds hopped unafraid onto the boulder and inspected the cadavers. A few of the two dozen mourners quietly joked and gossiped among themselves. The undertakers, in filthy, blood-splattered aprons and knee-high boots, pulled out their whetstones. They sharpened vicious, 18-inch knives and heavy cleavers. Someone tossed a mixture of dried yak dung, roots and seeds onto eight small campfires below the rock and five tiny fires on the boulder's surface. The heaving smoke was to signal distant vultures that a sky funeral had started. A noisy flock of about 150 vultures now swooped above the boulder but didn't land. The drunk undertakers appeared numb to the slowly...

*****

THE DALAI LAMA & THE DEAD

Looking vexed during our third interview at his Namgyal Monastery in McLeod Ganj in 1992, the Dalai Lama revealed that secretive investigations indicated his long dead arch-enemy, China's Chairman Mao Zedong, had been reincarnated. This was the Dalai Lama's first mention to any journalist about Mao's reincarnation, or anything about an investigation. A reborn Mao was alive and well? Somewhere in China? Reincarnated as a child? The Dalai Lama's surprise disclosure about the possibility of a reincarnated Mao emerged when I asked what happens to people who do not believe in Buddhism, or reincarnation, and then die? And what punishment in the afterworld would these people suffer if they committed acts of evil while alive -- I randomly tossed out Mao's name as an example -- according to Tibetan Buddhism? Frowning slightly, the Dalai Lama leaned forward and replied: "According to some indications, Chairman Mao has already emerged as one Chinese boy. According to some mysterious investigations. Usually when somebody has passed away, we start to investigate where they'll be reborn. According to some indications, Chairman Mao may be reborn three times among the Chinese. Three times." Were these investigations into Mao's reincarnation being conducted by Tibetan Buddhists? The Dalai Lama nodded and replied while repeatedly laughing: "Oh yes, of course, of course. No Chinese sources. Certainly not Chinese communist sources. But really I don't know where. Also I have no interest to recognize the reincarnation. Unless we create an institution for Mao Zedong's reincarnation." According to Buddhist teaching, all people whether they are Buddhists or not, are reborn after they die either as a human or a creature. It is difficult to be released from these repeated rebirths because all people, including Mao, are trapped on the Wheel of Life. Each dalai lama is believed to be a reincarnated manifestation of Avalokita, also known as Avalokiteshwara, the Bodhisattva of Compassion. A bodhisattva is a person destined for enlightenment, reborn to serve other people. The Dalai Lama said he could not remember his 13 past lives as previous dalai lamas. As usual during our interviews, I again asked the Dalai Lama -- who was older than me and now 57 -- if he achieved nirvana. He replied: "I think you may achieve it first, or before my age. Even a one month retreat is almost impossible now. When I recite some prayer, or remain in a secluded area with no contact with anyone for 24 hours, I still feel a mixture of happiness and sadness," because longer meditations are impossible. Since 1983, I don't think I've had much spiritual progress." Despite Chinese efforts to control and crush Tibet's elaborate forms of Buddhism, many beliefs survived in...

*****

HOLY SADHUS IN INDIA & NEPAL

"Soon, probably he starts smoking hemp -- for it is a curious fact that a large proportion of Indian mystics are addicted to this form of intoxication. Later, he becomes a paramahansa, which means a 'great goose,' and is the highest order of holy man."

~ Lowell Thomas, 1930

Meanwhile in Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal, half-naked sadhus are so highly respected that they were allowed to join privileged guests witnessing the cremation in 2001 of nine murdered members of Nepal's royal family and the princely assassin. "I saw them burn the king and queen and the others," Rada Kris Mudari, a 40-year-old sadhu told me at the Pashupati Temple complex where the cremation took place amid Hindu pagodas, shrines, and sadhu caves. "It was not good when they burned them because the public was not allowed. Only the government people and the army people and us sadhus were here" during the mass royal cremations. "But all people become like this," Mudari said, gesturing at a bleak row of flame-blackened cement funeral ghats. The ghats are raised, rectangular platforms along the Bagmati River where most of Kathmandu's deceased -- royals and commoners -- are brought and cremated according to Hindu and Buddhist rites. "The rich, when they die, do not take anything. They lose everything. Even the royal family do not take their palaces. They don't even take their names. They only take their karma," said bearded, turbaned, barefoot Mudari. Another sadhu sitting nearby, white-bearded Bogindra Das, 55, told me: "Unlike royal people or rich people, we sadhus don't need anything. We give up everything and are always in a peaceful place. Rich people live with money. Poor people live with God's name. So when rich people die, they don't have anything. But poor people, when they die, they have God. But we are all equal because anytime we can die. I've been here at Pashupati Temple for nine or 10 years. I have seen thousands and thousands of bodies burn. "When a king burns, it is different. When royal people die, a lot of army people come here and they make music. When normal people burn, undertakers just put them on some wood and make a fire. Everybody has to go, even we sadhus have to go. We don't have to stay here on earth." Asked if he would like to be a king instead of a sadhu, Das grinned, exposing a few missing teeth. "I do not want to live like a king. I like to live this kind of sadhu life. A king is a king and he is a god in Nepal, but he also dies. I am a sadhu without money, but I don't worry about getting food. God takes care of everything, if I do good karma. I have been reincarnated many times, as many things, as animals and so on, and had many, many different lives. I cannot remember my past lives, but in the Hindu religion there are many powerful books and we have learnt about this. Earth is the place to do karma. We are coming naked into this world and going out naked. "But it is better to be born a sadhu than a king, because a king is only a king of the public world. A sadhu is a king of kings, because when a king goes to learn about God, the king comes to the sadhu." During the past few hundred years, Nepal's various monarchs, prime ministers and other rulers often turned away from the deadly intrigue of Kathmandu's treacherous politics and consulted sadhus and other holymen to find wisdom and bliss. While the sadhus spoke, another holy man, Raday Das Biraghee, 42, quietly adorned his forehead with a thick splat of bright yellow powdered dye. Biraghee also covered his nearly naked body in white ash from the sadhus' camp fire, in keeping with ancient Hindu tradition which regards all ash as auspicious because it comes from fire, which is sacred. Stroking his powder-speckled, bushy black beard, Biraghee said: "I agree with Bogindra Das, I also don't want to be a king in my next life, because a king has to take care of everyone, and has to look after rich people and poor people. A sadhu's life is better. A sadhu is carefree. A sadhu can go everywhere. When a king visits another place, he has to take bodyguards and look everywhere and worry. When a sadhu visits, he doesn't have to worry at all. If a sadhu wants to go to another country, such as India, and stay a long time, no problem. But if a king wants to go and stay a long time, it is a big problem." Soon, the group of sadhus rose to look for food, which they got by begging from visitors at the Pashupati Temple complex. The sadhus strolled past the charred ghats where several people had been cremated...

*****

CALCUTTA'S DOM CASTE UNDERTAKERS

India's spiritual rituals also have a miserable downside for those who cannot escape Hinduism's traditions. When Hindus die in India, regardless of how wealthy or high caste they are, only impoverished and scorned Untouchable caste Doms can prepare the cremation fire and prod the smoldering corpse to ensure it burns. Doms are even allowed to facilitate the last rites of Hinduism's highest Brahmin caste members, but Doms have been forced for generations to remain trapped into being India's undertakers. They are widely despised and discriminated against. Except at the gates of death. "We think Doms are lowly because the work they do is unsophisticated," Rajiv Prakash, a middle-class Hindu told me in his Calcutta shop where he sold home appliances. "I would not marry a Dom. I cannot go against society like that. I think it is wrong, there should not be Untouchables, and they should not be treated like that. But if I marry a Dom, I would suffer and be rejected by my society. Even if I love the girl, if I came to know she is a Dom, I would break it off," Prakash said. Madhab Ghosh, a Toshiba salesman from Bangladesh visiting Prakash's shop agreed and said Hindus can identify a Dom even if the person lies about their caste. "A Dom would not be able to conceal their caste. You would know from the way they dress that they are a low caste. Or the way they talk would not be so intellectual." The Indian government meanwhile has officially tried to end "caste discrimination" but the problem remains widespread. "The president of India was an Untouchable," Ghosh said. He was referring to the 1997 election of 76-year-old K. R. Narayanan to the largely ceremonial role. Narayanan was India's first Untouchable caste president. "I could marry his daughter, but that's because it would be different. Because if it were the president's daughter, people would forget that she was an Untouchable," Ghosh said. "But I cannot be a rebel against millions of Hindus in India. If I wanted to be like that, it is better I go to America or Germany or some place. Even I know it is wrong, it is already inside my brain. It is like with computers. There is ROM and RAM inside. I would not accept a glass of water from a Dom. I would say, 'I am not thirsty' so as not to hurt their heart. If I were alone, OK, I might take it. But not if someone could see me. Because then my circle would reject me. I can't help it. You cannot go against your society." Foreigners who happen to die while holidaying or working in India are often given by their embassies to the Doms, who see that the corpse is neatly stacked atop wooden logs of a funeral ghat in whatever city the foreigner happens to die in, or placed in a modern "electric crematorium" if one is available nearby. Foreigners' relatives who oppose cremations, or want the body sent back to their country of origin, can pay airlines expensive fees to ship the corpse home in a sealed coffin. Less costly is to send an urn of ashes by air freight. "I am a Dom, my work is dead bodies," Sham Sharma, 22, told me while a funeral began in Calcutta's squalid cremation zone at Kali Ghat. "I burn bodies every day. In one day, maybe five bodies. My uncle, father and my grandfather are Doms and they also burn bodies. I don't know how many bodies I've burnt. In my life, maybe 2,000 bodies? "I'm working here six years. My only one problem is money. I like working here. No money, then it's not good. Money, it is then alright. I collect the bodies and put here. And do everything. People say, 'He is Dom. Very, very good. Here is a dead body, come here." As he spoke, a relatively rich group of men arrived. Twelve of them carried a bamboo stretcher which supported the body of an elderly woman. She had been tied to the stretcher's green bamboo slats, so she would not slide off when the small procession walked to the ghat. A Brahmin priest offered instructions to the men on how they should perform age-old Hindu funeral rituals. The eldest son, bare-chested and head freshly shaved as required by the rites, picked up a red clay pot of nearby Hooghly River water and poured it over his mother's corpse. The son's "thread" -- a white string worn throughout life and slung diagonally across his chest and back, from shoulder to waist -- showed he was a Brahmin. The woman on the stretcher had been wrapped in a blue sari, concealing all but her wrinkled face. Her dead mouth was open. The family quietly fussed over her. They removed a bright marigold cloth which was emblazoned Hare Krishna, Hare Ram repeatedly printed in red ink. The son sprinkled flower petals upon her. He watched as nearby Doms built a rectangular pyre...

*****

CHAPTER 2 ~ KILLERS

JAMPA PHUNTSOK & TIBET'S ARMED REBELLION

"The Dalai Lama had already left the palace and was traveling to India, so I did not have a special conversation with him about my decision to pick up a gun. Instead, I went and prostrated three times before the Dalai Lama's empty throne and I spoke my heart for the cause of Buddhism and Tibet's independence. Then I asked the Dalai Lama to please kindly forgive me for giving up my vows." In the dim firelight of the Potala's butter lamps, Jampa then took off his maroon woolen robe and changed into civilian clothes. Jampa told other monks about an armory of ancient weapons stored in the Potala Palace's basement. But most of the monks withdrew to follow the Dalai Lama's caravan. Only a small group accompanied Jampa into the dark, musty cellars. They removed dirt-encrusted rifles, swords and other outdated weaponry. Jampa knew they were no match for China's well-organized People's Liberation Army. But he distributed the inadequate weapons to rouse the monks to fight, and he hoped to get better weapons very soon. Grasping a rifle for the first time, the monks were unsure how to shoot. Through the palace's windows they could see Chinese troops storming the Potala's walls and entrances, hunting for the Dalai Lama. Some monks were so frightened by the loud explosions and falling masonry that they dropped their guns and fled. Even Jampa was alarmed when he watched the Chinese troops advance. "I thought the Chinese were cowards and we could kill them easily. But the Chinese troops were attacking. Never retreating. They were courageous. Tibetans were forced to retreat by the sheer number of Chinese soldiers. We weren't able to defend the Potala for very long." A messenger told the monks the Dalai Lama had safely escaped Lhasa. Elated, Jampa decided their tiny group should leave the Potala before it was completely cut off. They would regroup later and attack Chinese convoys and outlying camps. To engage the Chinese army in the capital now would be suicidal. Several weeks later, Jampa was no longer recognizable. He traded his clothes for a traditional horseman's outfit. He would now wear a brown woolen knee-length chuba coat, fur hat, and tall leather riding boots. Like many Tibetan warriors, he protected himself from bullets by wearing a gau amulet box, slung on a leather strap across the left side of his body. Inside the box, two small statues of protector deities included a traditional blessing from the Dalai Lama, written in gold ink. Jampa now saw himself as a guerrilla. He brandished a rifle and galloped alongside other Tibetans across the rugged moonscapes and forests of Tibet. "There was a highway robber called Samphal and he collected a large gang. Together we rode our horses across the countryside fighting the Chinese. We had tents and all the utensils and extra horses to carry our rations and equipment. There were 150 in my group. They were 100 monks from various monasteries, plus some lay Tibetans and soldiers. Also included were five or six bandits. Many in my band died." Jampa and the other rebels used hit-and-run tactics. He believed the Dalai Lama protected him through supernatural powers. Jampa said he never suffered major injury in any fighting. And he felt he was also fulfilling his great-grandfather's tradition to defend their homeland. "I fought the Chinese until 1960. I killed about 30 Chinese. But I'm not sure the total number, because I don't know how many I killed in battle. I'm very sorry to tell you now that I felt satisfaction when I was killing Chinese. I know as a monk I should not tell you, but honestly, I feel I achieved something and I wished I could kill more Chinese. "We divided ourselves into units of 100. I was appointed the gyapon, or leader, of one unit." The duty of the gyapon was to carry out decisions arrived at the guerrillas' secret meeting...

*****

TONY "POE" POSHEPNY, CIA IN LAOS

America's Central Intelligence Agency actively supported the failed guerrilla war in Tibet against the Chinese, and the defeated Dalai Lama's escape to India, with training, weapons and cash. Years later, the CIA moved into Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam during the US wars in those three countries, all of which also ended in failure. But unlike Tibet, the regional Vietnam War included direct, deadly roles by Americans on the ground. In Laos, the macabre CIA paramilitary officer Anthony A. Poshepny became infamous because he demanded -- and paid for -- dead Lao communists' ears and their chopped-off heads. Poshepny, popularly known as Tony Poe, said he dropped some of those human heads onto America's enemies while flying over his targets. He also boasted about impaling communists' heads on spikes in the jungles of Laos and joining his tribal fighters in celebratory tribal dances around the dead heads of the vanquished. "I threw two heads from an airplane, it was a Dornier plane. The heads landed right in that [Lao] bastard's front door. We were flying at 100 feet," Poe, laughing, told me in his loud, tough, gravelly voice in the living room of his San Francisco home in May 2001. Whose heads? "Any [communist] Pathet Lao or someone else we didn't like. I had a bunch of heads in my hut and the blood was seeping through the floor. It was sticky. And [CIA officer] Bill Lair said, 'Get rid of those goddamn heads'." Poe gleefully described how he also let his ethnic minority Hmong guerrillas celebrate in their stronghold deep in the jungle of northern Laos. "These people are animists. After fighting, they had to have a ceremony. They'd put the heads on bamboo stakes and did a traditional dance around the heads, and throw pebbles at the heads. To show they were victorious." Poe would also explain why he personally executed Vietnamese doctors who he imprisoned in a hole in the jungle even though they begged to defect from the communists. The loquacious Poe said he rewarded his Hmong guerrillas when they brought in, as he demanded, the sliced-off ears of communists killed by the Hmong. It was Poe's way to confirm his Hmong fighters were not lying. He paid them for each ear. But Poe soon demanded the hacked-off head of each enemy, as much more reliable proof. After several years based in the rugged highlands of Laos where he was seriously wounded three times, Poe grew angry at attempts by senior CIA and American Embassy officers to control his activities. In response to US officials' complaints that Poe's gruesome behavior was counterproductive, he sent a bag filled with his Lao enemies' ears to the CIA station in Vientiane, capital of Laos. Poe wanted to prove his Hmong guerrillas were successfully killing communists. The unopened bag arrived on a Friday and sat in the CIA's office over the weekend, he said. "The ears were putrid. I shouldn't have done it because the secretary opened it up and she went crazy. The ears were in cellophane. They dried right up. You know, ears are mostly water. The human body is 80 percent water. And those...

*****

JAMES "MULE" PARKER, CIA IN VIETNAM

When asked during our interviews about the CIA's Vietnamese spies who Parker and others relied on while writing CIA reports for Washington during the war, Parker replied: "Ah, the lying spy syndrome." For the CIA throughout the world, "it's hard to recruit spies, to find them, develop them, recruit them to steal secrets, dispatch them, and then debrief them on their return. "To the uninitiated, it's tougher than it looks. And here's another thought: when that guy or gal you've recruited to be a spy comes back in with the secret information you sent him to get, it's only at this point where the whole process gives a return on our country's investment of time, money [and] risk. "Not the meeting, assessing, developing, recruiting, training, dispatching and the debriefing when he returns. No. You and your agent are only of value to the intel community when you finally, finally write up the intel report. The process can take years sometimes, progressing from one case officer's development to another." Parker recalled how in South Vietnam during the war, "you find a new [Vietnamese] guy through your own spade work or maybe by referral from the US military or South Vietnamese police, and you go on to assess and vet him and recruit him and train him and send him out. And then sometimes he just disappears, losing his nerve when it comes down to actually doing what he has been tasked to do. "And out in the bigger world of spydom, what's the life of a productive [mercenary] spy? Five years maybe, sometimes longer, but not often. They lose their edge -- their interest in having their lives disrupted and endangered -- or they lose their access. Or, after two or three [CIA] case officer handlers, the personal attachment can become weak and the [mercenary] guy maybe just doesn't gee-haw [get along] with the new case officer. "It's a tough business under any conditions. In Vietnam, this difficult business had to be done under combat conditions, where to be found out, meant sure death for the spy." During the Vietnam War, the CIA's American "case officers turned over every couple of years as their tours expired, and the new [CIA] guy was often taken advantage of by the existing [Vietnamese] agents. "For example, if these [Vietnamese] agents were what is known as 'principle' agents, they sent out other Vietnamese contacts as their intel gatherers. These sub-agents were hard to keep up with...as does accountability and chain of acquisition of their information. And, perhaps most common, these hard to verify sub-agents were often ghosts, as in not really there. Vietnamese agents were found out to be 'fabricators' time and again." As the war dragged on, some of the CIA's Vietnamese spies became increasingly corrupt. "We're talking the end of the war here where [Vietnamese] 'principle agents' had come to know pretty much what the CIA generally was looking for. So the good scammers would just stay in place for years -- up until the end really -- feeding marketplace mush to the CIA case officers. "And for years, if 'principle agents' who had worked for the CIA were found out to be phony, or if they hyped low-level info into something that sounded sexy [and] were found out and terminated in one province -- since they knew the business, these slicky boys would often just move to another province and make indirect contact with Americans there with a whole new invented network of sub-sources and sell their fabricated newspaper-inspired stuff, or general ground truths, to an unsuspecting new CIA guy as 'intelligence'," Parker said. "All that new local [Vietnamese] intel entrepreneur had to do was mix in a little truth, and he would look like he had potential. Some of the [Vietnamese] agents identified as 'fabricators' were not necessarily criminal and deceitful in their work but had, along the way, lost their access or their agents were killed or just didn't come back from missions. But [they] continued to pretend that they had sub-agents, when in fact the 'principle agent' was just making up what the [CIA] case officer wanted to hear." Among the CIA's American staff, problems arose because their own bosses demanded more and more information. "You gotta remember that there was pressure on us CIA case officers to produce intels," he said, referring to intelligence reports. "So the emphasis, certainly from say 1968 to 1972, was to believe your [Vietnamese] agent over reasonable doubt sometimes, and keep him on -- to provide the necessary number of reports you need for promotion, or to keep the [CIA] base you were operating from, up to standards." As a result, CIA case officers experienced a "lot of resistance to cleaning your stable of [Vietnamese] assets, or vetting them anew after a year or so in which they had produced five or ten reports a month to you," he said. "It does get into sources and methods that I want to avoid. Suffice it to say that good clandestine trade craft involves constant vetting of your intel agents, and there are probably a great number of case studies that show how a lack vetting resulted in bad ops and funky 'intelligence'. "The general feeling by most [CIA] case officers is, and was, that your [mercenary] agents will always lie to you...”

*****

INTERNATIONAL "BIKINI KILLER" CHARLES SOBHRAJ

"Let me please introduce myself, I'm a man of wealth and taste. And I laid traps for troubadours, Who get killed before they reached Bombay."

~ Mick Jagger & Keith Richards

During our interviews while Sobhraj inside Tihar Jail, he still appeared suave, muscular and excited. He moved easily among guards and other prisoners in the visitors' hall. He had been advising wealthy Indian jail mates how to present their cases to the courts and local media. When I asked how many people he killed during his lifetime, Sobhraj replied in aggressive, French-accented English: "Officially, I am denying I killed anyone. Of course I am denying!" Wearing his typical gear of neatly pressed slacks, slip-on shoes, a shirt rolled up at the elbows and a big golden wristwatch, Sobhraj resembled an urbane Vietnamese salesman, with high cheekbones, giving a hard-sell to a customer in a snazzy showroom instead of a convicted prisoner in the bowels of a wretched prison. He projected bravado while a cluster of Indian prisoners watched in awe from a respectful distance. The now-balding Sobhraj told me his priority was to block extradition from India to Thailand, where he feared certain execution because the statute of limitations had not yet expired for the wanted Bikini Killer. "According to the Thai constitution, they can shoot anyone without trial. So I don't think you can get a fair trial there. There is no evidence to connect me with the crimes there. If I go free from this jail, I will try to stay in India, get residence here and do my writing," Sobhraj said, grinning. "I have my own cell. I make it like an office, with an electric typewriter. I find pleasure in writing short stories. I will try to get married. I don't know yet. I want to settle. Kids is what I want. There is no question of my going back into crime. I've been trying to legalize my situation. I fought my cases patiently. Years ago, I said I would win. Now I want to live quietly." Sobhraj tried to project a woeful image of innocence and repentance during our interviews -- a performance he repeated since childhood to everyone close to him. "My advice to a young person is, it will not be worth getting into crime. As far as possible, a young criminal should try to get out of crime. Society will have to play a role in that. But the most important role is yourself, the psychological changes, your thinking and instincts. Accept the advice of specialized people." Then came Sobhraj's classic, ghoulish cliché: "Here," he said, handing me a bottle of soda. "Have something to drink." For several years, he lorded over Tihar Jail's miserable universe including the prison's superintendent who Sobhraj blackmailed. Whenever Sobhraj went to the superintendent's office, their conversation inevitably turned to ways that the superintendent could profit from Sobhraj, who generously offered to cut him in on a slew of devious business deals which would easily profit the delighted jailer. But Sobhraj also planted eavesdropping devices which recorded the superintendent's illegal rackets. When Sobhraj later played a few sound bites, the frantic superintendent had no choice but to agree to share power with the usurping inmate or else suffer exposure. That scam worked for a while but eventually leaked and hit India's media. The government investigated the superintendent's activities, and transferred him elsewhere. Despite denying that he ever killed anyone, Sobhraj wrote descriptions of himself promoting his never-published memoirs, shamelessly hyping that he was a "master jail breaker," "master criminal" and "master murderer." He showed me short stories he wrote while in prison, including his version of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's 1984 assassination. Sobhraj's written description of her two Sikh bodyguards shooting her dead in the garden of her New Delhi residence was filled with his own fantasies and macabre, bloody imagery rendered in graphic slow motion detail with her splattered blood reverently depicted in words. When I asked about various charges against him in seven other countries, Sobhraj smiled and replied: "Nobody has applied for my extradition except the Thais." Sobhraj said he enjoyed sharpening his wits by reading German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche and Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung. "I believe the childhood I had played a lot in my development. Certain traumatic things in my psychological setup." He enjoyed respect among Tihar's staff. "He is a good man," a policeman guarding the main gate told me. "I know Charles very well. Maybe he is a killer. But he is a very brave man." In 1986, about a year after our prison interviews, Sobhraj did the thing he knew best: he escaped Tihar Jail by hosting a birthday party for the Indian guards and serving them drugged sweets. They nodded out after stuffing their faces. Sobhraj drove out through Tihar Prison's gates in a shiny white car...

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INDIA'S "BANDIT QUEEN" PHOOLAN DEVI

She glumly sat in Gwalior's squalid jail fearing extradition back to her home state of Uttar Pradesh, which had a list of her alleged 22 Behmai village murders and where she faced a possible death sentence. Sitting on a bench in the bleak, sun-baked yard of Gwalior Jail, Phoolan Devi winced while denying direct involvement in the massacre. Dark-eyed, short and dowdy, Phoolan Devi did not appear as anyone's idea of a female gangster. Barefoot, she wrapped herself in a black-and-purple sari. She wore a cheap metal stud in one nostril. A few green plastic bangles jangled on her arms. Phoolan Devi looked like a stubby village woman with a defiant expression, perpetually on the verge of tears. "In the Behmai massacre, I didn't kill anyone. Everyone else in the gang did," she told me in a Hindi dialect at the jail. "I searched the houses." Later in our interview, she boasted of having "killed some people" during other escapades. "I didn't want to become a dacoit. People misused me," she said, alternating between sarcastic, earthy remarks and genuinely frightened weeping. When asked what she would do now that she was imprisoned, she smiled and bragged, "I'll escape and become a dacoit again." Her advice to any young girl trying to decide whether or not to follow in her footsteps? "Oh yes, be a dacoit," Phoolan Devi said, sneering and sassily tossing her head to the side. "If she's been harassed, she should harass." Beneath the bravado lived a terrified woman who knew that India's justice system often twisted slowly and brutally. Suddenly bursting into tears, she said softly: "I don't want to be released. I want to die. I want to be punished, because I don't want this burden carried over into my next life. When I am reborn, I want to be a man. It is much easier for men to live. "They're not oppressed. And there's not so much revulsion against them. I regret surrendering because of all the problems I have now." Authorities said her surrender was unconditional, but she insisted the government verbally promised to give her family a gun license so they could buy a weapon to protect themselves in their vulnerable village. No license had yet been issued. And a cousin had seized her defenseless family's land, police said. Phoolan Devi also complained she was not being allowed to leave prison to visit her family, who often stayed in Gwalior just to be near her. Phoolan Devi had expected occasional day-trips as part of her rehabilitation program. When news of Phoolan Devi's surrender appeared in American newspapers, Susie Coelho Bono, wife of former American entertainer Sonny Bono, flew to India and wooed Phoolan Devi with dreams of fame and fortune. Susie, of Indian parentage and a model bent on becoming an actress, reportedly smuggled a tape recorder into Phoolan Devi's cell and spent four hours a day, for two weeks, taping her story with the aid of a translator. "We became good friends," Susie was quoted as saying at the time. "In fact, by the time I'd finished interviewing, I felt as if we were sisters. I hope one day to get her out of India and bring her to the United States." Phoolan Devi now cursed Susie Bono. "She told lies," Phoolan Devi said, gazing out the door at Gwalior's dusty, hot prison yard. "Nothing ever happened. Susie said they would make a film and pay me 60,000 rupees [$5,000 at the time]. But all she did was send me some clothing and paid me 3,500 rupees. I feel used because of this." Phoolan Devi's short-lived notoriety did attract other fans. "Someone from France came to Gwalior wanting to marry me," she chuckled. Bombay's giant film industry made a box-office hit about Phoolan Devi. Not amused, she filed a defamation suit against the Bollywood movie makers for $50,000 in damages. One of her objections to the film, titled Kahani Phoolwati Ki, was that dacoits do not dance around trees when they fall in love. Though Phoolan Devi felt abandoned, she had not been forgotten by the man who risked his life...

*****

JONATHAN "JACK" IDEMA IN KABUL

"That's what I love about Afghanistan, if you tell someone you are going to kill them, they fucking believe you," Idema said during our interviews in December 2001 and January 2002 in Kabul. "If I'm in New York and I tell someone I'm going to kill them, they say, 'Yeah motherfucker? Well, I'm going to kill you first.' But not Afghanistan. Here they believe you." Born in Poughkeepsie, New York in 1956, the short, stocky Idema dyed his salt-and-pepper hair black and loved to show off his weapons which he occasionally fired to intimidate people. He traveled with a handful of young, armed Afghan men who he ordered about, often shoving wads of US dollars into their hands and waving his big military knife at them while theatrically laughing with glee. His knife was the same blade he used in Kabul at home, to eat thick, grilled steak when he invited me for dinner alongside his Afghan gang. Meanwhile, in a worrying display of intimidation, Idema also threatened to murder an American foreign correspondent representing the Stars and Stripes newspaper. The reporter remembered interviewing Idema in a federal prison during the 1990s after Idema had been sentenced to three years for defrauding dozens of US companies for a total of $260,000. When the journalist revealed this overlooked and disgraceful biographical information to other correspondents who were gathered together during a December 2001 party in Kabul, Idema went verbally ballistic. "I just might have to fucking kill you! Now get the fuck out of here before I do!" Idema shouted at the reporter while other worried correspondents hurriedly exited the dining room. The two men then loudly argued while I discreetly stood behind them, eavesdropping and slowly scooping frosted cake into my plate. "You don't believe me? Test me. Just test me! But get the fuck out of here now or else," Idema ranted. The shaken journalist was hosting the party and politely mentioned that this was his rented house. Idema responded: "I said get the fuck out of here. Now!" "But this is my house." "You think this house is yours? This wasn't your house before, so shut the fuck up. If I hear another word out of you, I swear I will..." Several days later, the correspondent told his colleagues: "Look his name up on Internet, and the story of him in jail will come up. His name is spelt I-D-E-M-A." Most foreign journalists avoided Idema and warned everyone else that he was an unstable trouble-maker who liked to brandish weapons and take advantage of Afghanistan's anarchy. Idema insisted he was acting to protect innocent Afghans from being exploited and abused by all sides, so they would not suffer from the US invasion or revenge attacks by recently ousted Taliban and Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network. "I work for God and country," Idema, who wore military-style fatigues with a US flag shoulder patch, said. After much coaxing, he showed me his supposed, impossible-to-confirm resume, which he kept on his laptop. It listed military badges he claimed to have earned and his experience including: El Salvadoran Master Parachute Wings Royal Thai Army Balloon Wings Royal Thai Army Master Parachute Wings Royal Laotian Combat Parachute Wings Kuwaiti Police Commander Badge German Senior Parachute Wings Nicaraguan Senior Parachute Wings 11 years in the United States Army Special Forces 18 years in Special Operations 1978: Military adviser in Nicaragua and South Africa 1979: Primary SWAT instructor for New York State police Olympic SWAT team, Lake Placid 1980: Primary weapons and tactics instructor for British SAS commandos during Operation Honeygift 1982-83: Special Forces adviser El Salvador 1984: Chief instructor/adviser for the USAID Diplomatic Protection Guard during the Haitian coup attempt 1984: Chief tactics and firearms instructor for Ron Reagan, Jr., David Morrell, author of First Blood Rambo 1985: Chief instructor in tactics and hostage rescue training for SEAL Team Two, Counter-Terrorist Group Academy 1986: Director of training for United States National Park Service and Park Police for the Statue of Liberty rededication ceremonies, SWAT, counter-terrorism and explosives training 1987: Led a classified successful rescue recovery mission to the Caribbean for a Mid-Eastern prince 1991: Adviser to the Lithuanian national police, National Academy and ARAS Commandos, The Eagle, Lithuania" Idema also named a slew of courses he completed at Fort Dix in New Jersey, Fort Benning in Georgia, Fort Bragg in North Carolina, Fort Drum in New York and Fort Devens in Massachusetts. His biography stopped in 1991. "For the past 10 years, I've been 'black'," Idema said, hinting at secret missions he could not divulge. In Afghanistan, Idema dubbed himself "a civilian adviser to the Northern Alliance." The alliance was comprised of the late Ahmad Shah Masood's former mujahideen and other guerrillas who were now helping the US invade, hunt the Taliban and their al Qaeda allies. "I am a [former] Green Beret." Idema also boasted that armed enemy Afghans recently threatened him on a road near the eastern city of Jalalabad, until he shouted that he was an American and bluffed that if anyone hurt him, a retaliatory US air strike would obliterate the place and everyone there...

*****

CHAPTER 3 ~ WAR

AMERICANS, SOVIETS & MUJAHIDEEN IN AFGHANISTAN

"What has war brought them? Grave instead of shelter. Shroud instead of clothes. Bullet in the stomach instead of food."

~ Marxist Afghan President Najibullah

"I command 5,000 Tajik tribesmen, 1,000 of whom are armed," Roziya told me, smiling in front of her Dohab home in the undulating desert. "I usually carry my Kalashnikov, but I know how to use a pistol, rifle, hand grenades and all other weapons. "I was a mujahideen from 1980 to 1984. But I left the mujahideen to join the government of Afghanistan. The mujahideen were deceived into thinking Islam was in danger in our country. But I realized it wasn't true. I like the Russians. They help us. When we don't need their help, their army will go back." Her direct, challenging brown eyes scanned the horizon's low hills rippling towards Iran and peppered with deadly landmines buried by the Marxist regime to ward off cross-border rebel attacks. Most women in Afghanistan are forced by Islamic tradition to wear a chador, covering her head and upper body. Less popular is a head-to-toe burqa sheet, which allows only hands and feet to remain exposed. While covered in a chador or burqa, females peer out through a lattice of embroidered tiny holes at eye level. Women work, shop, chat and travel while draped. A chador or burqa is enforced by most males because they fear the exposed face or bodily shape of a female can be an immoral, shameful display of tempting sexuality. As a result, Afghanistan's women spend most of their lives apart from men, secreted away in a curtained-off purdah room at home -- purdah means curtain in Persian -- or in female-only huddles at mosques, on buses, and even among friends. After the 1978 revolution, the Marxist government shocked Afghan society by announcing women could, overnight, enjoy freedom to dress as they pleased, work in the civil service, fight in the armed forces, join institutions, and receive other equal rights. Commander Roziya said she emerged from the revolution in a stronger position than before. Her husband sheepishly admitted that in some ways, she also had become superior to men. "We have been married for four years. Maybe she's a better fighter than I am," Roziya's 32-year-old husband Ali Mohammad said laughing. "She knows things better than me, that's why she's a commander. In my home, she is also my commander." But even among the government's supporters, not everyone was pleased with communist-style feminism. In the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif, the top Muslim clergyman inside the city's big-bubbled, blue-domed mosque said in 1987 he loved the Russians and the Afghan regime, but he never allowed women's liberation in his own home. Moulvi Abdul Hameed, 47, was the burly imam of the ulema, or Islamic clergy, of Mazar-i-Sharif and the surrounding desert and mountains of northern Afghanistan's Balkh province which bordered the Soviet Union. He was surprisingly blunt about whether or not women should be unveiled. "The wearing of clothes such as a chador or short skirts does not make a woman a Muslim or an infidel," Hameed told me inside the Blue Mosque. "Women now have this freedom. But Islam says every woman who makes herself beautiful only for her husband is good. For example, I am married with two sons and two daughters. My wife is a housewife. She wears a chador when she goes outside. Why? Because it is our custom and our tradition. It doesn't show man is superior. It is for the decoration of women." Hameed chuckled. "For those women who are very ugly, it is better for them." He chuckled again. "I don't tell you if my wife is beautiful or not. But I like for her to wear a chador. She looks more beautiful with a chador than without!" If Hameed were born a woman, would he want to wear a chador? "That is a funny question! It is nonsense to ask me because I am a moulvi." Elsewhere in Mazar-i-Sharif, at an all-girls' school named after Afghan female poet Fatmay Balkhi, none of the students wore veils. Wajma Nahi, an 18-year-old student, told me in a classroom interview: "I wore a chador until last year. I stopped because conditions here became better. Now it is peaceful. Some years ago, the counter-revolutionaries [Islamist guerrillas] said, 'You should wear the chador.' It was compulsory. I don't like wearing it because everyone likes freedom and I didn't feel free." Back in Kabul, the Marxist regime continued to discourage chadors and burqas...

*****

INDIA'S KASHMIR

All along the route, distraught residents in tiny villages described tortures inflicted upon them by Indian troops. While riding in the car during the last section of our journey to meet Salludin, one young, laughing mujahideen sitting next to me in the backseat, held up a hand grenade for me to admire, as if he were displaying a delicious ripe apple. The rebel proudly vowed, if Indian troops tried to stop this vehicle, he would throw the grenade at them. Then we could all run away and escape. Soon, a low-roofed house appeared, heavily guarded by a dozen mujahideen armed with AK-47 assault rifles, rocket launchers, walkie-talkies and hand grenades. The young mujahideen gently rolled his grenade back into his pocket, stepped out of the car, and dutifully took up a watchful position along a wall. Salludin had confirmed by walkie-talkie that he would be waiting inside. When he appeared, Salludin explained to me how he was leading a jihad, or holy war, to rip valuable Kashmir away from India, attach it to Pakistan and establish a fundamentalist Islamic society where true Muslims could be protected and dwell in peace. "If someone does a theft, his hand must be cut off, so society can be saved," Salludin said in a voice which initially hid its gruffness. "But we do not cut the hand of every thief. First, the government is bound to provide the necessities of life for every citizen. And we can't stone a person to death who is not married. It is a person who is already married, who rapes a woman and uses an illegal way for sexual satisfaction, and has brutal behavior. We want to save the society, so we want to give him a stern punishment." Salludin's rebels also traveled to Afghanistan which was admired by Islamist guerrillas around the world as the best and most violent campus available to learn how to fight, because it offered sophisticated weapons training and proven, experimental insurgent tactics. "More than 4,000 Kashmiri militants have received training in Afghanistan and, at present, more than 3,000 are there in Afghanistan now. That's a total of 7,000," Salludin boasted. "As Afghanistan has done in winning, and the Soviet Union has disintegrated into so many pieces, India will also disintegrate if it does not recognize the self-determination of Kashmir's people. "The Indian army kills the innocent masses. When we are going to hit a military convoy, we feel they will take their revenge on innocent people. In spite of that, we attack them. Then the people suffer. So, we try to hit them out of the population areas. But the people are ready for this cause, and tell us, 'Don't lose heart'. "We hope to obtain a corridor along the border area," Salludin said, describing what he hoped would be the first-ever slice of guerrilla-held territory in Kashmir which could allow them to enjoy better supply links from sympathizers in northern Pakistan's part of Kashmir. "It is in the best interest of Kashmir to become a greater Kashmir with Pakistan, and make a great Islamic nation." As the fighting worsened, ardent Islamist guerrillas from other Muslim-majority nations sneaked in to help Kashmir's rebels battle India's army, which often appeared confused and poorly disciplined. The most admired of these new, foreign combatants were battle-hardened Afghan mujahideen. At another of Salludin's safe houses, one of his "battalion commanders," Mohammad Abu Nasar, 36, proudly introduced a handful foreign Muslim guerrillas who had clandestinely crossed into Kashmir and joined their fight. From Afghanistan, heavyset Akbar Bai, 27, showed me his sinister "two-in-one" AK-47. He had the assault rifle customized with an additional, built-in, fat-barreled rocket launcher. Bai said he captured the rocket launcher from Soviet forces before they lost the war and withdrew, and he realized it could fit onto his rifle. From Khartoum, Sudan, came curly-haired Yasin Salin Masood. "I went to Afghanistan two years ago to fight, and came here to Kashmir one month ago," Masood told me. "I came to share in the jihad. There are 300 to 400 Arabs here, from Libya, Algeria, Bahrain and other places. My organization in Sudan, the Akhwan Muslimeen (Muslim Brotherhood), first sent me to Afghanistan and then said: 'If you'd like to go to Kashmir, go'. They sent me for the experience. Here you feel the meaning of Islam and jihad." Back in Srinagar meanwhile, victims languishing in...

*****

THE LIBERATION TIGERS OF TAMIL EELAM

A much more devastating war was ripping apart Sri Lanka, turning its popular cliché of being a "teardrop-shaped island" into a grim reality. "He deserved to be shot," an excited Tamil businessman said loudly, waving his hands at a limp, gray-haired corpse tightly roped to a lamp post in Jaffna city's central bus station in the early morning. A horrified crowd gawked at the bullet-riddled body -- a grisly public warning not to inform on Sri Lanka's ethnic minority Tamil guerrillas. "You see the sign next to his body?" a Tamil housewife angrily announced to the gathering crowd. "It says he informed to the army about the boys." The dead man had been positioned and tied so he slumped upright, leaning against the lamp post. Bare-chested, he wore a blood-stained white cloth knotted around his waist. His weight caused the thick coarse rope to squeeze into his chest under his arms and thighs. His bare feet rested, slightly splayed, in the gutter. Alongside him was a big, taller sign which displayed a long message handwritten with blue paint in Tamil language. It also showed three signed documents stuck to the sign with thumbtacks above an illustration of an elephant using its trunk to grab and lift a bicyclist off the ground. A striped tiger -- symbolic of the guerrillas -- pounced on the elephant's head, drawn to resemble Sri Lanka's President Junius R. Jayewardene. The big blue text said the dead man was Nirmalan of Chithankarni village on Jaffna's outskirts. He was executed by the Tamil Eelam Army, one of the smaller guerrilla groups among about 35 Tamil rebel organizations fighting for independence for northern Sri Lanka's Jaffna Peninsula and Eastern Province. Frowning shoppers, workers and bus passengers jostled to get a closer look at the body and read the sign. Many of the Tamil witnesses muttered that the man got what he deserved. One shopkeeper, gazing at Nirmalan's corpse, said to me the killing was "correct because he put the lives of the militants in danger by informing to the army. "We have not yet gained our independent Tamil nation, so we do not have our own police, courts and prisons to give the fair trials usually held in democratic countries for these people. So, though I do not like to see bodies in our streets, there is no alternative." As he spoke, several men clustered nearby and angrily blurted: "Yes! Yes!" A businessman insolently gestured at the body and caustically told me: "We feel he has received a fair trial because the militants are well-educated university boys under strict discipline by their leaders. This dead man must have received warnings, and would not have been killed unless the militants were absolutely certain he was an informer...”

*****

CHAPTER 4 ~ SEX

MICHELLE, IN PEEPLAND ON 42ND STREET

"I was on Stage One. She was on Stage Three. And it was not too far from Thanksgiving, and there were not too many girls there because it was a Sunday afternoon. I was alone on stage and I was making pretty good money. What you could do is, you stood on the little coin box that's in front of each booth. And then you could look over the partition and see, like, the other stages and the guys. "And when I was standing up there, because usually we call guys in that way, I saw Alison on the other stage and she bent over. It's like she took the money. And she bent over. And all of a sudden, this guy just took a knife and stabbed her in the butt. "And then she just screamed like it was an unbelievable sound. It all happened very quickly. She fell. So another girl grabbed her, someone yelled for security. There was one [security guard] who came inside on stage to see what happened. And the [customer] guy was still in the booth, so the security guard went and basically held him inside. "I didn't see him after this, but this is what they told me -- he was crouched down on the ground like he was in shock or something and, um, they just locked the door and called the cops. "Alison was pretty bad. There was blood everywhere. "I wanted to stay off stage because I went there to see how she was doing and, um, basically they told me to get back to work because they didn't want to leave the stage empty, because there were still customers there. "It was truly bizarre because you had security guards screaming holding this guy, you had Alison screaming with blood everywhere, and you had all of these customers who just continued to go into the booths and um, you know, wanted to, um, ha, ha, just, you know, continue working business as usual. And it was funny, because the money was very good too. It was like just the fact that the place was in such disarray, there were people screaming, it's like it turned them on, they wanted to spend more money. "And then the cops came and they were all over the place. "They came into the booth, and they asked me if I wanted to go out. They tipped and touched me and asked me for my phone number and they were totally like no one had cared that this girl had just gotten stabbed. They just carted her away in the ambulance and dragged the guy up from the booth, kicking and screaming. He was really freaked out, yeah. So I guess that was one of the freakiest things. "Alison stayed away for several months. She went on to marry her pimp. "It seemed like the guy [with the knife] had been there before. He was regular customer who just lost his mind. It was the first time I realized the real threat that there is, when you are working with a customer. "They would have things, like, guys who would do stuff. Like, they'd put something on their hands that would burn you. I don't know what the substance is, but a customer is touching you between your legs and he has something on his hands or on his gloves. There were guys who used to come in and they would wear these kind of surgical gloves. If you were not really watching a customer, he has access, he can do anything to you. So if he put some ammonia on his fingers, or some liquid that was alcohol-based, he would try to put his fingers in your pussy to burn you. "So that stuff happens. Then you have to be careful of guns and hypodermic needles because we were on 42nd Street and all of the locals would come down. I mean these guys were basically drug dealers and gang members and, of course, pimps. Like these are the guys you didn't want to piss off because you always had to walk back outside again. "I had a customer and then, after work when I was leaving, he followed me out of the building and was trying to talk to me. But because I was outside, I became myself again and I wouldn't talk to him. I was ignoring him. "And, uh, he freaked out on me and he screamed at me when I was half-way down the street: 'You stupid bitch. You think you're too good to talk to me, but I just touched your pussy for five dollars.' "It was mortifying. Because it was like, you know, when there's a scene, everybody watches you. So all of a sudden there are dozens of people who all turned to look at me because of his screaming and carrying on. And now they know I work in a peepshow. "There was one particular who used a flashlight and he would want you to kind of, like, you would have to hold onto its handle and you would have to...

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     Rituals. Killers. Wars. & Sex.

~ Tibet, India, Nepal, Laos, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka & New York

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B086Y7D48L