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youngster-monster · 3 years

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The City v. Ahamkara

Prologue - Bloody and Raw

The way back is a blur. Cayde can’t tell if he’s moving through a dream or reality, if he’s moving or sitting still with the world flowing around him. It comes to him in disjointed snapshots, brief bursts of movement before everything freezes again like an old laggy monitor. Fire from the wreckage of the Prison; a gunshot; Petra’s voice, concerned, and his own, distant to his own ears, pantomiming humor even though he has no idea what words are leaving his mouth.

Through all of it the only tangible constant is a hand wrapped around his wrist. Razel, his brain supplies, insistent even as a part of him argues back, not quite. He thinks he can feel claws scratch lightly against the painted surface of his arm. It’s false, of course. He can’t feel input that sensitive usually and certainly not now, with half of his receptors shot to hell. Maybe his processor is making up for lost feedback with imagined ones. Not reality as much as what he expects reality to be like — new, and absurd, and scratchy like a bird perched on his arm and poking its tiny little bird-claws into the joint of his wrist to keep its balance.

Perhaps the pinprick of not-quite-pain is impossible but what isn’t, today?

He’s walking on his own two feet, although there’s a great deal more stumbling than walking involved: that’s one. He won’t call it a miracle but it’s a struggle to find a word that fits the impossible-made-possible just as well.

Sundance is dead. He forces himself to think the whole sentence, even though it hurts like a bitch in a deep part of himself he’d rather not look at. Better to have it hurt now than fester in the dark and poison him. He’s seen what that kind of grief does to guardians. There’s a good reason so few of them survive the initial loss of their Ghost. He never thought he would, himself: anything good enough to kill Sundance would surely get him, too.

But it didn’t. That’s another for the Impossible tally he’s keeping for himself.

Razel’s grip tightens slightly, protectively, as if he caught the tail-end of that thought. Here it is. The last item on the Impossible list, the one Cayde is even less keen to linger on. Sundance’s death is not an immediate, pressing matter. It’s done; there’s nothing else he can do but withstand it now. Whatever’s up with Razel is an ongoing issue and there’s nothing he wants more than to avoid thinking about it.

He’s unlikely to get any luck with that but a man can hope, yeah?

It takes an eternity to reach their ship, falling forward rather than walking until they’re in reach of a transmat and then wincing his way through the touch of an unfamiliar-familiar Ghost as Cubix transports them to the Queen of Hearts. The impact of his feet on the metal flooring makes a heavy, echoing sound. Razel doesn’t make one at all. He’s like a ghost himself, suddenly, taking twice as much space as usual with none of the flailing that should come with it.

That’s when it catches up to him in earnest — no more of that shell shocked avoidance shit. It must be something in the air, he muses, that settles too heavily on his mind until he buckles under it. Something about the quiet of his own ship, the distant sound of howling and crashing and chaos replaced with the gentle hum of an idle engine; something about the stars blinking cold and distant through the cockpit; something about the persistent rattling in his chest, where the universe twisted itself to fulfill Razel’s desire and still didn’t manage to fix the minutiae of his internal machinery. As if water-cooling is a concept beyond even paracausal miracles.

It’s all, suddenly, too much.

Cayde collapses into the pilot’s seat, clunking and creaking, all the air wheezing out of him like a sorry bagpipe. He feels his entire weight suddenly, every pound of metal and wires, in a way he can’t blame on the difference between the Coast and the artificial gravity aboard the ship. He feels his entire age, each and every single endless year of it, remembered or not. Fuck, but he’s too old for this.

And Razel still won’t stop touching him. Hasn’t ever since— ever since. Even now he has a hand on Cayde’s shoulder, fingertips tucked under the collar of his cloak to lay on the bare metal of his neck underneath.

It’s a comfort. It’s a threat. It makes Cayde’s skin crawl. He wants to jerk away from it. He wants to lean into it. He doesn’t know what he wants, or what he feels beyond confusion, exhaustion, and a bitter kind of relief — the exhausting feeling of having held a snake in your hands and trading the fear of being bitten for the venom.

He’s not used to feeling like that near Razel — one of his closest friends, someone he trusts.

“You okay?”

Stupidly, he expected Razel’s voice to sound different. It’s the same as always: a little higher-pitched than you’d expect, with that slight Awoken flanging to it. At least he’s always pinned the sound of it on Razel being an Awoken and, as such, a little bit weird, as is expected. Now he’s not so sure.

“I’m alive,” Cayde replies grimly. “Sundance is dead and my best friend—” he stumbles there, but what good is a Hunter who balks at a challenge? “Is a wish-granting space dragon in disguise, but I’m alive. Silver lining, right?”

Razel curls into himself, looking small and hurt. It’s hard to see the monster in him just then — even harder than before. He just looks like Razel, and Cayde hates seeing Razel like that — like he just got hit over the head and doesn’t know what to do about it.

“I’m sorry,” he says, voice winding into a white at the end.

All the fight goes out of Cayde at once. It’s not guilt; not quite. He’s too drained for guilt. But it’s a little bit close to it.

He lifts a hand and lets it fall heavily on Razel’s head, ruffling his hair. “You did what you could, buddy.”

The frown he gets in return is fierce, but no fiercer than seems normal for Razel. He’s quick to anger and even quicker to forget about it, and as dramatic as his moods may be they’re rarely destructive. At least not for the right people. Cabal are all out of luck on that front. Still there’s something in his eyes — a wild, unnatural sharpness to the familiar orange-gold glow that makes a previously unknown animal instinct in Cayde raise its hackles. Whatever happened in the Prison, whatever bolt broke open to release the creature hidden under his features, there’s no locking it back up.

It suits him, though. Perhaps it’s always been there, lurking under the surface, showing glimpses of itself through Razel’s weirdest habits. Perhaps Razel isn’t that different now from a day ago; there’s comfort in that.

After all, he broke open reality to save Cayde. That must mean something, right?

“I didn’t,” Razel says mulishly. “There has to be something more I could have done. I mean—”

He never finishes that sentence. Not that Cayde needs him to. He’s seen what Razel did do. There’s still blood flaking on his fingertips from when he wiped it off Razel’s face; there’s still a dent in his chest where a hit that crumpled his chest like a soda can should have killed him and didn’t. What else might an Ahamkara do if given the chance?

There, he said it. The damning word. It’s not as if there’s a point pussy-footing around it anymore.

“You did what you could,” Cayde repeats, giving Razel another headache-inducing pat from his half-numb arm. “And a damn sight better than what anybody else could have done for me in that situation, lemme tell you. You’re not a miracle worker.”

“Aren’t I?”

“Well— okay, maybe you are. But you’re about as qualified as I am to grant wishes, so no one’s about to blame you for botching it somewhat.”

It’s the wrong thing to say, and he catches Razel’s wince in the corner of his eyes, but that goes ignored as another matter occurs to Cayde.

They might not blame Razel for the botched resurrection — knowing what they do of the limit of Ahamkara abilities, and that’s very little, it’s hard to tell whether or not he could have done more. But they will blame him for everything else. Not the near death experience, no. But being an Ahamkara? Hiding it from the City, the Vanguard, even unknowingly? It would be a crime, if any of them had known it was possible enough to make a law punishing it. It will be a crime once they catch wind of it.

And Cayde is thoroughly weirded out by the whole thing, but he’s not about to let his best friend get locked up for having saved his life.

“I have a few questions,” he says, although he’s not sure he truly wants them answered. Unfortunately there won’t be another time for it. “But once we’re home— not a word of it. Capische?”

Razel nods hard enough to dislocate a vertebrae.

Satisfied, Cayde punches in the code for manual piloting and sets the ship on course for the City. They’ve got this.

It occurs to Cayde that they have not got this when Ikora comes knocking at their door two days later at five a.m.

At any other hour it would be nothing out of the usual. He likes to think they’re friends, the two of them, and although it’s usually Vanguard business that brings her to their front step she’s always welcome to drop by unnanounced. He’s been expecting her, anyway.

When Razel and him crawled back to the Tower, dirty and exhausted and shell shocked, she was there to greet them. She was the first one to see Cayde’s sorry state, to ask — in a reassuringly familiar kind but straight to the point manner — what had happened. She’s the one who told him to take a leave, before Zavala even got there to order him the same. It was only a matter of days before she came by to see how he’s doing and kick him out of any self-pitying hole he might have dug for himself in the meantime.

But that’s a visit one makes during the day, or in the evening when she manages to claw back some free time from her mercilessly tight schedule. Nothing good ever comes from a five a.m visit.

Cayde opens the door in his pjs, bare feet against the cold floorboard, to Ikora and a Guardian in full armor he doesn’t recognize. They’re holding a rifle against their chest, in that kind of parade rest that Titans naturally adopt when they’ve been told they won’t have to use it and they don’t entirely believe it.

He fell asleep not two hours ago, but any bleariness remaining from his dramatically shortened night disappears at that sight.

“Mornin’,” he says, hand clenching around the door. He could slam it in their face, but the grim set of Ikora’s mouth tells him they’re far beyond that point. He shouldn’t even have opened it.

Her voice, when she speaks up, is that of the Warlock Vanguard — all business.

“Holliday sent me your records.”

Blinking, Cayde tries to connect that information to the current situation. Holliday, the shipwright. Holliday who’s been working on fixing the Queen of Hearts with a fervor that suggests it’s the only thing she knows how to fix in this damned situation. Holliday—

Who would have had to access the ship’s records to know exactly what to fix. The kind of records that include any and all audio captured aboard in the last few days.

“Fuck,” he says plainly.

She gives him a compassionate look that only makes him feel bad, until it darts up — towards the rest of the apartment — and then he feels worse. The Titan’s grip tightens on their rifle. The faint creaking of their gloves is the only sound for a good long while.

Slowly so as to not startle them into action, Cayde turns his head to look behind his shoulder. Razel has frozen in place next to the couch, holding Admiral in his arms. The cat jumps out of his grasp and pads towards Cayde, rubbing against his legs. Razel just stands there, licking his lips as if wondering if he still has time to bolt back inside their room.

“Is everything okay?” He asks eventually. He looks directly at Ikora when he says it — always does, when he’s not sure what’s going on. She’s his Vanguard; his lighthouse.

“Razel,” she says. It’s not a greeting. It’s the beginning of a longer sentence — of something worse. “You stand accused of treason, perjury, and crimes against the City at large. You will be put into Vanguard custody and judged in a court of law. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can be used against you in court—”

The rest turns into senseless muttering as electrical buzzing overtakes Cayde’s ears — the sound of some Light-forsaken processor going into overdrive in an effort to keep him from hyperventilating. The Titan shoulders their way past him, marches to a still immobile Razel and snaps a set of handcuffs around his wrists. There’s a burst of light as they close; Cubix materializes next to him, the first Cayde has seen of him since they left the Shattered Coast. He’s been keeping his distance to make it easier on him, Cayde thinks dumbly, that small, idiotic kindness the only thing he can focus on at the moment.

Cubix’s voice has gone shrill with worry. “You can’t do this! Ikora—”

She shakes her head, her face set in a stern expression to cover any deeper feeling she may harbor. She’s a professional; Cayde doesn’t have it in himself to admire that, right now. “I’m sorry,” she says. “Cubix, I’ll have to ask you to come with me. Alone.”

Reluctantly, he does, flying up to her. The Titan pulls Razel aside as he floats past, and they put themselves between him and Cayde when they march him past. As if they’re afraid allowing him to touch either of them would make him explode out of his restraints somehow. As it is, he remains meek as anything as he shuffles after them. It’s an incredible sight: Razel with his hair down and messy like a bird’s nest from an uneasy sleep, dressed in nothing more than a shirt — Cayde’s — his underwear — pink — and a single sock — it has a hole at the big toe — being led away in handcuffs by a Titan twice as large as he is who keeps a tight grip on his arm as if he’s liable to eat them.

But he doesn’t, and the door closes on them with a soft click and one last apologetic look from Ikora. Cayde is left behind, in a dark apartment, empty save for himself and the loud meowing of his cat in the kitchen and the gnawing impression that none of this would have happened if he wasn’t such a gigantic idiot.

Somewhere, the sun rises.

He doesn’t see it.

[Read ch. 2 on AO3]

#writing #destiny 2 #cayde-6 #destiny oc #my ocs #razel #bday gift for baronetcoins!!#anyway this is the only part of it that is readable on tumblr #everything else is heavy on the html so. all ao3

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sapphicwhump · 3 years

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Deception of Luna

Fandoms: Destiny, Destiny 2 Tropes: F/M, trauma recovery, heavy angst, light fluff, creepy whumper, cosmic horror elements, whumpee/caretaker intimacy TWs: flashback, explicit noncon, implied death of loved ones, implied misogyny

Read on AO3

Lich-5 considers herself to be quite lucky. At least with her assignments on Luna; not so much with her loot. She speeds across the lunar surface on her Sparrow towards Archer’s Line, having just received a bounty to clear out the Fallen there. There are three of the usual crimson phantoms en route this time; each one cowers and screams in terror as her Sparrow plows by. To her, these nightmares are just nameless red silhouettes that occasionally make creepy noises; none of them are the slightest bit recognizable. The larger ones, the ones that appear as long-dead enemies rather than Guardians, have names she can recognize from her historical studies, but nothing more than that. Despite her own experience, Lich knows that most of her fellows don’t see them that way.

The Pyramid of Luna is a nasty piece of work, to say the least. She would call it sadistic, but it would be improper of her to anthropomorphize such an alien being. The nightmares it spawns are drawn directly from the Guardians’ most painful losses; vanquished nemeses, outlived mentors, lost loves, and a myriad of others now walk again on Luna. In every case, their passing had left wounds on the people they left behind, and now the Pyramid has made those wounds fresh again.

The worst part, Lich thinks, is that doing so offers it no tactical advantage. The Pyramid doesn’t need to crush Guardians’ morale; it could crush them all very literally if it so chose. This thing’s kind had caused the Great Collapse of humanity’s golden age; surely the Last City of today would be no trouble for it to exterminate. The only thing keeping them all alive is this Pyramid’s continued desire to bide its time. And in that time, it’s chosen to reopen their old wounds because it’s fun.

The reason Lich-5 considers herself lucky is because she doesn’t have many wounds that can be reopened. She'd been resurrected just after the Red War, into a world struggling to recuperate, to make some amount of sense out of the tremendous loss. Her roommate Windy isn’t a particularly old Guardian by any means, only a few years her senior, but that still puts his resurrection date solidly before the War. She doesn’t pry him about it, but she’s aware that the majority of people he knew had been permanently Returned To Light by the forces of Dominus Ghaul. Windy avoids assignments on Luna like the plague, as do many of her elder acquaintances. She’s met Guardians who were resurrected in the Dark Age, now hundreds of years old, who have pushed on through every defeat humanity has ever faced since the Collapse. Lich herself recently turned three.

Will she live to be hundreds of years old? If she does, how much will she lose in that time?

She’s coming up on Archer’s Line now. There’s already some Guardian activity here; in the distance, she can pick out the dull gray bulk of a male Titan’s armor against the background of lunar dust. Ignoring his presence, she drives into the old K1 Logistics facility and gets to work.

Clearing the facility takes under ten minutes. She emerges from the front entrance with her armored Warlock’s robe dotted with scuffs and splattered with Fallen Ether. Her bounty objectives aren’t quite complete yet; there are still a few Fallen skittering around the Lunar surface that’ll have to be dealt with. She’d think that life-or-death combat would be too stressful to become boring, but when that death isn’t much more than a temporary (if painful) setback, the repetitiveness of it can get a bit dull.

Just gotta get it done, then I can relax. The rewards from these last few bounties should be just enough to afford that fancy new armor set she’s been working towards, and then she won’t have much to do until the next big crisis inevitably hits the Sol system. She’s already thinking of a few new science projects she could start work on during her extended down time; monotonous work like this does little to satiate her burning curiosity.

The Titan she saw earlier seems to be approaching the K1 facility now. He’s welcome to loot the place if he wants; she only went in to get her bounties done. It’s nice to see another Guardian out here; the presence of an ally makes her feel slightly less alone in this gray hellscape, even if they don’t interact.

The boxy silhouette of his armor strikes her as oddly familiar. It’s possible that she’s seen him somewhere else before; there aren’t an unlimited number of Guardians in Sol, and Lich has met quite a lot of them.

Wait a minute—

Recognition shoots through her neural network like arc lightning. Instantly, her every piston is tense, all sensors on high alert. It’s him. Why does he have to be here?

She takes it back. Having another Guardian here isn’t nice at all, not when it’s him in particular . Lich quickly ducks back into the empty facility, taking cover from the imminent danger behind one of the large storage containers strewn about. She needs to be in a place where he isn’t in her line of sight.

Maybe she isn’t so lucky. Of course the phantoms wouldn’t reopen old wounds, only for another Guardian to do it instead. Taking stock of her emotional state, she abruptly realizes how much she’s shaking. She forcibly steels herself, struggling to regain her composure while cursing her own weakness. Simply seeing a Titan, even if it’s him, should not frighten her to the point where she’s struggling to even function.

Lich is ashamed to admit to herself how much sway he still holds over her mental state. His existence is a disgusting muck polluting the back of her mind; just being reminded of him feels like wading through a stagnant pit of human sewage, from which she can never truly escape because it’s in her head. Thinking about it more only makes it worse, causes her to sink deeper. She can forget him, at least temporarily, but then eventually something random always jogs her memory and she'll be back, trapped again in that pit of sewage.

She considers abandoning her objectives and transmatting back to her jumpship, still safely parked at the landing zone. But it’s this part of Luna that needs to be cleared of Fallen, and that fancy new armor set won’t be on sale forever, and she really shouldn’t be so pathetically weak to let this get to her. No, she’ll stay, to earn her extended down time if nothing else. She just needs to calm down and wait here until he—

“Oh hey, Lich. Long time no see.”

If Lich had a heart, it would have stopped beating at that exact second. His voice, just his fucking voice, almost throws her back there all by itself. He’s so insufferably casual with his greeting, like she’s just any other acquaintance to him.

“Hey. You mind leaving me alone?”

“Woah, relax. I’m just finishing up these bounties.” Condescension drips off of his words like spoiled milk.

“Yeah, well, please stay away from me while you do that.”

His tone sours, sounding almost disappointed. “Well you’re being awfully frigid.”

“Of course I fucking am!” Lich fumes, rage momentarily cutting through her fear. “What did you expect, that I’d be nice to you!?”

The Titan pauses. “Well… yeah, kinda. I at least didn’t expect to be jilted like this.”

For a brief moment, Lich sees red. Her trembling has elevated to a truly intolerable level, and she’s currently about five seconds away from drawing her Dawnblade on this man. She knows that getting violent with him would almost certainly end poorly for her, though. With great effort, she puts together a facade of something resembling calmness.

“Look… I think I’ve got a pretty good reason for not wanting to see you. Please leave, and never try to interact with me again. I know I’m never gonna get justice, so I just want to move past this and get back as close to normal as possible. You’re making it rather difficult to do that right now.”

“Justice?" He cocks his helmet to the side in what looks like disbelief. As if he has any right to act surprised by any of this. She can practically feel him rolling his eyes at her underneath his blank faceplate, and it makes her synthetic stomach turn. “Fine, fine. If you wanna be like that, it’s not my problem.”

He proceeds deeper into the K1 halls, finally giving Lich a reprieve from his vile presence. She turns to leave in the opposite direction, but stops short when she catches the Titan muttering a final insult under his breath.

“Fuckin’ melodramatic bitch.”

She whirls on him. “Fuck you, asshole!” she spits over her shoulder, still heading for the facility’s exit. “If I ever see you again, it’ll be too soon!”

The Titan is mercifully quiet. Lich is almost at the door; just a few more Fallen slain, and she’ll be able to go home and do her best to forget that she ever saw him again.

“No, fuck you.”

Lich barely registers the Titan’s words in her audio receptors, and she doesn’t notice the suppressor grenade roll between her legs until it’s too late.

————————————

Windy’s day has been restful, to say the least. He lays sprawled out on the couch of his and Lich’s shared apartment, his usual combat armor doffed in favor of boxers and a tank top, lackadaisically swiping through the datapad in his hand. On one tab is the sidearm section of Omolon’s digital storefront; on another is a gallery of images displaying a nude Awoken. He lifts his can of alcoholic liquid from the coffee table and pours the last of it down his throat, sighing in satisfaction. It’s kinda nice to stay home for once while Lich goes out to grind away at bounties.

Fuck, he needed a day like this. He’s been seeing less than his fair share of action recently, but continuously dodging Vanguard assignments on Luna has been anxiety-inducing enough on its own. After his first visit, he vowed to make every effort he possibly could to never return. The Vanguard had assigned him a strike against the Hive on Luna today, and so he had to call in one of his favors for a friend to take his place in the fireteam, hence his current position at home while Lich is out and about.

An Incoming Communication notification buzzes at the top of his screen, and he quickly closes the pornography tab before answering. It’s from Phylactery. That’s odd; Lich’s Ghost hardly ever lets themself be seen, and speaks even less. If Lich had a message for him, she’d give it herself.

“Hey, how’s it going?”

The Ghost doesn’t waste any time on pleasantries. “Lich needs immediate evac from K1 Logistics on Luna.”

Windy instantly bolts up from his slouched position. “Wait, what’s going on? Can she transmat out?”

Phylactery is doing their best to keep their tone clipped and curt as usual, but Windy still picks up on the desperate way they hurry over their words. “No, she’s currently catatonic. We’re stuck here until someone can provide an evac.”

“Catatonic?" Windy balks. “What the hell happened down there?”

The Ghost’s distress is evident. “I’m not quite sure. Lich saw something; I think we were attacked, but she still isn’t cognizant enough to give me the details. I felt something suppress our Light. I was knocked unconscious, and Lich… she’s not recovering. We need you here as soon as possible.”

Fear grips Windy’s gut. Suppressed Light means that an RTL is on the table. He’s got enough dead friends walking around on Luna without Lich joining that long list.

“It’ll take me awhile to get there; can you call any nearby Guardians for backup?”

Windy can detect a wince in Phylactery’s tone. “No, this… isn’t the kind of thing that a random stranger would be able to help with. Might make matters worse, even.” the Ghost quietly speculates to themself. “What she really needs right now is someone she trusts.”

Well that’s cryptic. He knows he’s not getting the full picture of events, and stumbling blindly into danger has always been more of Lich’s thing than his. He doesn’t exactly have time to press the Ghost further, though.

“Already on my way. Just gimme like twenty minutes to get there.”

“Right, thank you.” Phylactery seems relieved to no longer be discussing it.

Windy is already in motion as he hangs up the call. He drops the datapad on the cushion beside him, then vaults over the back of the couch in his usual manner. He doesn’t bother taking the time to change out of his boxers and tank top before exiting the apartment; he’ll don his armor in his jumpship. The residents of this housing block have seen far weirder things than his underwear, anyways.

Fuck. On Luna. Guess I won’t be able to avoid it after all. Dread constricts around his gut like a snake as he approaches the Tower’s hangar, a sensation that he knows won’t dissipate until he and Lich are safely back on Earth. For now, he tries to shove it down as best he can. His current priority is making sure that his roommate doesn’t get RTL’d; once she’s safe, he can go drown his worries at the nearest bar and put this all behind him. He distracts himself by planning out the route he’ll take there, what drinks he’ll order, who he might meet up with...

As he’s exiting the Earth’s atmosphere, Windy briefly speculates that maybe finding a therapist would be a better use of his time than just getting drunk again, before he blasts off at near-light speed for Luna.

————————————

Lich-5 awakens to the sensation of an immense weight on top of her, as if she’s trapped underneath a boulder. She’s laying stomach-down on the couch where she fell asleep, being pressed down into the cushions by the heavy object above her. She’s in an apartment typical of one of the Last City’s massive housing blocks, although not the one she shares with Windy. Night has long since fallen outside, casting the living room in darkness. What little illumination remains bathes everything in an odd vermillion.

The Titan’s apartment is small, but his couch provided an adequate place to crash for the night after a particularly wild bar crawl. Lich can’t get drunk, but flying her jumpship home while exhausted would be just as dangerous. When she proposed the idea of crashing at a nearby friend’s place, one particular Titan was eager to offer. He’s new to her group of drinking buddies, and so it struck Lich as unusual that he would so readily invite her over. Once at his apartment, she figured out his reason pretty quickly.

Tucked away in her backpack at the foot of the couch, Phylactery sleeps soundly, enjoying a well-earned rest after a long day’s grind. Lich is currently not being afforded that same rest. The weight on top of her shifts around erratically, fiddling with something, trying to get it open. She’s nearly driven to panic, but her fear keeps her frozen in place. Just pretend you’re still asleep, her mind unhelpfully provides. Play dead, and soon the predator will go away.

The predator does not go away. She feels a sudden spike of pain, and the irregular shifting of the weight quickly becomes paced and rhythmic.

Lich can’t pinpoint when or how her view shifts, but at some point she finds that she’s above herself—literally. She’s watching the scene unfold from a third-person perspective, her disembodied consciousness hanging a meter in the air over her incapacitated frame. She can’t compel herself to move a single piston or servo, her physical form refusing to comply with her immobilized will.

Long ago, in a time before she could remember, Lich had had nightmares in which she was pursued by an extreme danger, only to find her limbs paralyzed and unresponsive to her attempts to flee. This is a lot like that, only it’s not a nightmare; this is real life and the danger is directly on top of her. There is no chance to flee; she’s already been caught.

The Titan’s head, now free of its helmet, rests on the couch next to hers. Despite the warmth of his breath, a chill runs through Lich’s system. She can feel his wet lips graze against her artificial skull as he begins to speak.

“The Light does not hold its wielders to any standard of morality.” he whispers into the side of her head, where the ear would be if she were human. There’s a horrible wrongness in his tone, like multiple beings trying to speak through one mouth. “In the Dark Age, the Warlords inflicted terrible violence upon the innocent, just as he inflicted violence upon you.”

The motion gradually escalates in speed and magnitude, pressing Lich further down into the couch cushions with an oscillating rhythm. Her pain briefly increases as the pace picks up, but it quickly turns dull, and a sensation of warmth grows in its place as her own body turns against her. He’s speaking again, those wet lips and warm breath directly on her audio receptor. He doesn’t pause for air as he produces the words, regardless of his physical exertion.

“In Light, there is only pain.”

There’s a groan from above her, and the weight slumps, ceasing its rhythm. Lich silently breathes a sigh of relief, although she’s still far too overwhelmed with disgust to really be relieved by any of this. She knows on some level that it’s only been minutes, but her dilated sense of time has stretched the ordeal into what felt like hours.

The floorboards creak next to her, and the Titan exits the small living room, although Lich still remains effectively paralyzed. A heavy exhaustion has seeped into her chassis, now even worse than the one she was trying to cure by crashing here. Still unable to will herself to move, it isn’t long before unconsciousness claims her again.

————————————

Windy summons his Sparrow within the second he touches down on Luna. His stomach churns as he exits his jumpship, doing his best to keep his eyes on the ground and away from the lifeless red Guardians hanging motionless over the landing zone. The Pyramid must know this is a center of Guardian activity, and so the nightmares swarm here like some kind of macabre flock.

He passes three more of the crimson phantoms on his way to the dot Phylactery marked on his heads-up display. He gives each of them as wide of a berth as he reasonably can, trying to keep them in his periphery while still steering the vehicle on course. If he looks at one too closely, there's a decent chance he’ll recognize it. He fails to give the third one enough room, and winces under his helmet as it wails at him for help in a voice he’s pretty sure he can put a name to.

Phylactery’s coordinates lead him to the K1 facility at the far end of Archer’s Line. A short distance in, he finds his roommate’s distinctive hive-bone helmet lying discarded to one side. It’s not until he proceeds down a hallway and searches behind a storage container that he finds the Warlock it belongs to. She doesn’t appear to be in any immediate physical danger, although he wouldn’t think it purely by her posture; she’s curled up in a fetal position on the floor, trembling violently, the shutters over her optics squeezed as tight as they’ll go.

One of the red phantoms looms over her cowering form. This one is clearly a Titan, and Windy can’t restrain his relieved exhale when he fails to recognize it. It does not turn to acknowledge him as he enters, keeping its blank gaze fixed on the ball of a Warlock curled behind the box.

It takes Windy a moment to realize that Lich is crying. Her digital optics don’t feature tear ducts, but the anguish in her soft vocalizations is unmistakable. It’s a sound that he doesn’t hear often, but still far more than he’d like.

Windy steps straight through the phantom towards his friend, passing through it as if it’s not even there. The spectral Titan’s body offers no resistance and induces no sensation. The thing recoils in a mimicry of pain, then disperses into maroon wisps as if it were mist. The instant it vanishes completely, her optics fly open.

The first thing that Lich sees is Windy leaned over her, right where he had stood, offering her a hand.

"W-windy?" She accepts the hand graciously, allowing him to pull her to her feet. “What are you doing here?”

“Phylactery told me you needed an evac.” The somber concern in his tone catches her by surprise, and she briefly feels a pang of guilt for causing him to worry this much.

Lich emits a single humorless laugh, barely holding in a sob behind it. “Yeah. You could say that.” She’ll have to thank her Ghost for their forethought later. She takes a moment to collect herself, brushing the lunar dust off her robes and trying in vain to suppress her shivering.

“You didn’t have to come for me.” she tells him frankly, refusing to meet his sympathetic gaze. “I know how much you hate this place.”

“Lich, it’s fine. There is nothing in all of Sol that could make me leave you behind.”

For a moment, Lich looks like she’s about to cry again, before she closes the distance between their bodies and embraces Windy in a tight hug. He tentatively returns the gesture, protectively wrapping his arms around her back, and her hold on his torso quickly turns into a death grip. She’s no longer crying, but he takes careful note of the way she still shivers and shakes in his embrace.

Lich buries her face in the crook of his neck, hiding away from the world in the rough fabric of his Hunter cloak. Her chemical receptors flood with the particles that cling to the garment; it smells like his shampoo and sweat and the dust of a hundred worlds, all composing into a unique odor that is very distinctly Windy. His smell is grounding, bringing her attention back to the here and now.

“So, did the nightmares get to you?” he asks, tracing his fingers over the top of her fiberglass cranium in the way he knows she likes. He immediately withdraws his hand when she unexpectedly flinches away from the gentle contact. “I thought you hadn’t lost anyone.”

Lich shakes her head gently against his cloak. “I, uh… I saw him again.”

Windy’s blood freezes. Then the phantom Titan was—

“Oh shit, Lich, I’m so sorry.” He suddenly feels very conscious of the way he’s holding her.

Windy can’t forget the morning that Lich had nearly collapsed into their apartment, utterly disheveled after a long night out, and he had to delicately explain to her that sex is not a required payment for a male friend lending you his couch to crash on. Working through that day had been a painful experience for them both, although Windy has no illusions about which of them had it worse. Despite his seniority as a Guardian, dealing with this particular type of violence was entirely outside of his expertise. To his knowledge, aside from him and Phylactery, she’s never told another soul of what happened that night.

“This fucking Pyramid.” he spits out venomously, staring out at the lunar expanse beyond the facility. That fucking Titan. Hate festers within his ribcage like rot. At the time, he’d had half a mind to bust down the Titan’s front door with his Golden Gun in hand, ready to vaporize both him and his Ghost. But Lich needed him more than that Titan needed a bullet, and so the obligation to support her had stayed his hand.

With the Pyramid, though, it’s so much worse. Even though he couldn’t act on his impulse against the Titan, at least there had been some degree of hope there. With how utterly infinitesimal he is compared to the Pyramid’s world-ending might, he doesn’t even get the luxury of a revenge fantasy.

"It was like—" Lich begins to speak, but stops short as her chassis is taken by a violent shiver. Windy can almost feel the intensity of the chill that runs through her. "Like being there all over again."

His attention snaps back to her, and all the hate goes cold. His rage is not what Lich needs right now. Staying angry is impossible when she’s still so visibly distressed. He mentally reminds himself that this is her pain, not his; she’s the one who gets to have the revenge fantasy, if she so chooses.

“Yeah. I... get what that’s like. It sucks, but the suck is ultimately temporary. You’ll get through this.”

The pair are silent for a moment as Lich’s mind swims. She really wishes she could take his words to heart, but the memory of him freshly burned into her mind is all she can focus on. She tries to clear her thoughts by concentrating on the steady rise and fall of Windy’s chest, while her own remains eternally still. She reminds herself of what’s real: he’s here, holding her in his arms, and soon they’ll be home safe. The danger has long since passed, and was never even here in the first place.

“I feel disgusting.” Lich voices the thought aloud, her gaze remaining firmly downcast. “I’ve felt disgusting since that night. I don’t know if it’s ever gonna go away.”

Windy winces, sucking in a quiet breath through his teeth. "That… I lack experience with. But, from the experience I do have, I can tell you that it’s not true." Now he’s the one to strengthen the embrace. Through the heavy weave of her robes, he soothingly runs a hand up and down her mechanical spine, and is relieved when she relaxes into the touch rather than flinching away. "You’re smart, and beautiful, and brave, and you can be really really annoying when you want to be, but I still care about you. You’re the furthest thing from disgusting that I can imagine. What he did doesn’t make you any lesser as a person; you’re still the same Lich I’ve always known.”

Lich tries to form a response, but words fail her, immediately getting caught in the knot that’s formed behind her speakers. She settles for simply holding Windy close, savoring the feeling of their arms wrapped around each other. Some part of her is still trapped in that sewage pit, but it’s further away now, distanced from her by the closeness to him. For the briefest moment, she believes with absolute certainty that everything he said is true, and almost manages to clamber her way out.

“Y’know, if Guardians really are amoral, you’re a pretty good counterexample.”

“Hm?” He turns his head towards hers with a raised brow.

“Ah, nevermind. Symmetrist ramblings.” Windy can’t help but notice another chill run through her.

It’s a long while before Lich feels stable enough on her own to leave his arms. When she finally begins to move away, he retracts his protective embrace, allowing her to separate from him without resistance.

"You ready to head home now? I'll ride with you to the landing zone and fly us back to Earth. We can pick up your jumpship later."

Lich releases an extended sigh, exhaling her residual tension into the thin lunar atmosphere. “Sure. Thanks for all this, by the way. I… needed to hear that.”

He gives her a warm, relieved smile. “Don’t mention it.”

Lich finally escapes from K1 Logistics with her hand firmly in Windy’s. While the Sparrow is intended to be a single-occupancy vehicle, that’s never stopped particularly affectionate Guardians from riding them two at a time. Lich and Windy share the single seat, with her clinging to his back, holding on with her arms wrapped around his midsection.

The ride back to the landing zone is short, but both Guardians savor it. The red phantoms don’t cause either of them much distress on their return trip. Holding each other close, the nightmares seem just a little bit fainter.

#my writing #whump #lady whump #female whumpee #tw noncon #lich-5 and windy

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365days365movies · 3 years

Text

January 4, 2021: First Blood (1982) (Part II)

Quick Recap before we go on. Oh, and SPOILERS right up top!

John Rambo (Sylvester Stallone) is a Vietnam vet wandering through Washington State, until coming upon the town of Hope, run by the Sheriff Will Teasle (Brian Dennehy).

Sheriff Will Teasle is an absolute dick who arrests Rambo for no real reason; just for being a “drifter.” His police force, which includes the sadistic Galt (Jack Starrett) and sympathetic Mitch (David Caruso, AKA Horatio Caine from CSI: Miami), beats John Rambo, and post-2020 me is UNCOMFORTABLE!!!!!!!

Rambo has Vietnam flashbacks (like you do) and escapes the prison, pursued by the obsessive and dickish Sheriff and his equally dickish men (except for Horatio, maybe).

Galt tries to shoot Rambo, and karma bitch-slaps him RIGHT in the face, holy shit. He dies, and Rambo is blamed and shot at, escaping into the forest.

OK?

OK. On with the recap!

At this point, all of Rambo’s actions are in self-defense. In truth, it’s been self-defense since the beginning. However, he does kill two dogs, so...yeah, can’t really justify that. That sucks. The dog’s handler gets shot by Rambo, who now has a gun, and we also see that Galt’s certified sociopathy has leaked into everybody else but Horatio upon his death, including the dog guy, who tells his dogs to straight up kill Rambo. But, as previously stated...that’s not what happens.

At this point, I should introduce the amemedala.

The amemedala is a portion of the mesencephalon (or midbrain) discovered in the brains of millennials and younger individuals, recently discovered, named, and made up by yours truly. This area, attached to the thalamus, acts as a relay center between the cerebrum and the various sensory receptors of the body, similar to the function of the thalamus. However, while the thalamus governs the broad relay of senses to the appropriate areas of the brain for analysis, the amemedala relays appropriate sensory signals to the frontal lobes, where catalogs of shared sociological trends, or memes, are housed. This relay and association generates connections between extrenal stimuli, and entries in the meme catalog of the frontal lobes. While this is technically an autonomic process, it can be suppressed with enough willpower.

Why am I ringing this up in the middle of First Blood? Because EVERY. SINGLE. CELL of my brain is working to suppress the amemedala right now. Why? BECAUSE OF THE LORAX, AND FOR WHOM HE SPEAKS.

Is it an outdated meme? Very much so. BUT I CANNOT GET IT OUT OF MY GODDAMN HEAD AS I WATCH THIS MOVIE.

OK. That is now out of my system. Anyway, Rambo continues to speak for the trees, which is understandably starting to spook the smalltown cops. This leads to the VERY surprising moment where a camouflaged Rambo appears OUT OF NOWHERE and stabs Horatio in the goddamn leg! Like, wow, he was invisible! I had to rewind the film to see where he was. This is tense...and awesome, not gonna lie. This is awesome.

And then, he gets another cop by JUMPING FROM A TREE. Well, a tree stump, BUT STILL. After he takes him out, he stands in plain sight in front of an approaching cop. That cop, subscribing once again to the shoot-first-ask-questions-later policy, fires. And I SWEAR, Rambo is FASTER THAN THOSE SPEEDING BULLETS, as he dodges out of the way, and the bullets HIT THE COP HE JUST TOOK OUT!

And then, when I didn’t think this could get any more intense, that cop triggers a booby trap, and A STICK WITH WOODEN SPIKES GOES THROUGH THIS MAN’S LEGS, AND HE’S SPEARED LIKE A KEBAB OH MY GOD

The asshole sheriff runs to the NEW set of panicked screams, and his compatriot is just Batman-ed away by Rambo. It’s just the sheriff, now. The storm is building, and the forest is getting darker. The sheriff frees leg-spike cop, and goes to find the other cop, who’s been PINNED TO A TREE LIKE A BUTTERFLY IN A DISPLAY CASE. See, look!

HOLY SHIT IT’S RAMBO WITH A KNIFE IN THE FOREST. He pins the sheriff up to a tree, then with some legitimately badass lines, threatens with the sheriff with “a war [he] wouldn’t believe,” and telling him to make like Elsa and…

I love this sequence. It is the most intense, crazy, holy shit sequence I’ve seen so far this month. Wow. I understand why people talk about this movie. Man, that was a hell of a ride! Good movie, though. All right, so, time for the final sco-

Oh. Oh, my God. I’m only HALFWAY INTO THE MOVIE?

...Wow. OK, then.

We now meet Colonel Sam Trautman, Rambo’s commander in the Green Berets. He’s come to “get his boy.” He says that he came to rescue the Sheriff’s dumb ass from Rambo, rather than the other way around. And the Sheriff is...an idiot. He’s an ass, he’s a maniac, and he’s a stubborn idiot. Even after learning that Rambo is the best, he’s unwilling to back down, the dummkopf.

Rambo kills a wild boar in the woods, which makes no sense for Washington State, but whatever, sure. Anyway, they try to get the colonel to lure Rambo out, even though that’s obviously gonna make his PTSD, just...SO much worse. Especially as he starts using Vietnam parlance in contacting him. Not gonna end well, guys. But it’s then that we learn that Rambo is now the last surviving member of his unit, contributing to his trauma. Rambo’s also been trying to get in contact with the Colonel, winding up here because he has no place to go. He says that there are no friendly civilians, and the trouble’s been caused by that “king-shit” cop. I will be using this term from now on.

Wow. Damn. Hell of a reason for that title. And I think I love this movie. Seriously, I’m having a good time.

King-Shit Cop keeps going ahead with his absolute idiocy, despite all warnings to the contrary. So, a bunch of troops now converge upon Rambo’s place, but he naturally opens fire on them, without killing a single person. In fact, he hasn’t killed anyone this whole movie, and they make a point of saying that he’s been holding back the whole time. So, they decide to use the next, most logical course of action. They FIRE A ROCKET AT HIM.

Afterwards, the Colonel and King Shit Cop catch up at a bar, where the latter exposes his full sociopathy, commenting that he just wanted to kill Rambo. This is opposed to the Colonel, who doesn’t really know what he’d do if Rambo survived.

Which, of course, he did. C’mon, you think a little military-grade propelled explosive is gonna kill John Rambo? Nah. He’s the best there ever was, and he’s gonna prove it now. He jumps into a military vehicle holding an M-60, and hijacks it. Doesn’t take long for the news to break that Rambo’s still kicking, and he’s quickly intercepted by King Shit Cop, who JUST. DOESN’T. KNOW. WHEN. TO QUIT. And I’d admire his tenacity if he wasn’t SUCH AN ASSHOLE.

The cops try to run Rambo and the truck of the road, and he plays the UNO Reverse Card on them instead. And I’m pretty sure at this point…

...that old Johnny boy’s just killed some cops. So, yeah, now there’s a bigger problem. He powers through the State Police blockade like it was a banner blocking a football team, stops at a gas station, grabs the gun from the car, and LIGHTS ALL OF THAT SHIT ON FIRE! Destroying the livelihood of an individual who had nothing to do with this.

Yeah, Rambo’s starting to turn from innocent acting in self-defense to public menace REAL quick. And yeah, it’s King Shit Cop’s fault entirely...but, yeah, Johnny needs some help, because he’s losing the train at this point. But, not to be outdone, King Shit Cop is also beginning to lose it, and it’s definitely beginning to seem like only one of them is going to come out of this alive. And the Colonel tries to give him an out, but King Shit Cop’s prepared to go down with the ship that he blew a hole in in the first place. Like an asshole.

But here we go, the finale. John Rambo vs. King Shit Cop (whose name, by the way, is Will Teasle. I just like Rambo’s name for him better). KSC’s on the roof, Rambo’s on the street. Rambo causes more property damage, possibly because banks also give him PTSD (I joke, but PTSD is no laughing matter, John clearly needs help), and then finds his way to a store that has just all of the ammo a psychologically-damaged Vietnam War veteran on a revenge quest could ever need.

And then he BLOWS. THAT. SHIT. UP.

And he does this...ALL of this...just to lure KSC out of hiding. This man DESTROYS A TOWN because this idiot, sociopathic, unhinged, King Shit Cop, won’t just STAND. THE FUCK. DOWN ALREADY.

Rambo enters the police station, where KSC is on the roof. And, like the Colonel and the rest of us guessed, KSC gets shot in the process. And as Rambo stands over KSC, the Colonel finally shows up and does what literally everybody else should have done.

Talk. He just...talks to Rambo. He talks to this mentally ill man, and that mentally ill man responds, espousing his pure anger at the war, the public, protesters, work, the country, the town, himself...everyone. And goddamn, is that shit palpable.

youtube

This man can no longer fit in the world that he was forced to leave, and forced to return to. This poor, poor, poor man. It hurts. And it sucks. And he pours his heart out to the Colonel, and to us, and...you feel it. You feel his trauma, you feel his pain. You feel the aftermath of war. And it’s been seven years at this point for the Colonel, but no time for John. Not Rambo. John. And it’s just...never over.

Damn. Goddamn.

This...this is one hell of a good movie. And not just a good action movie, either. A damn good movie.

And that’s it. That’s First Blood.

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amethystunarmed · 4 years

Text

Will Set You Free

Relationships: Dabi/Hawks

Warnings: Manga Spoilers, Referenced Child Abuse

Word Count: 3604

Part of the Truth Series Part 1 Part 3

AO3 Link

~~~

Dabi takes Hawks to the League. But will he be allowed to stay?

~~~

Hawks had been to the Paranormal Liberation Front’s headquarters numerous times at this point. He’d helped Toga decide between fabrics for the curtains for her room, discussed furniture layouts in the common room with Mr. Compress, had witnessed Twice wake Dabi from a nap and cause him to melt a handprint into the couch. Once, when Dabi had called him in at some god-awful hour in the morning, Hawks had nearly tripped over Spinner crouched on the floor playing Grand Theft Auto. He knew that the League lived here, had made this place their home.

Still, the normalcy of it still surprises him. Everytime he opens the door, he expects the couches and cushions to have been replaced by torture devices and chandeliers of bones. He always expects their villain lair to look, well, villainous. And every time, he is wrong.

Toga and Twice are relaxing together on the couches when they entered, Twice with his head in Toga’s lap. He’s masked, and just listening calmly as she babbles to him about some beautiful girl she saw on the subway. It’s a wholesome and domestic sight, one that still makes Hawks feel like his world is tilting out of control. The two look up when the door opens, and Toga’s face lights up. She squeals at a high enough pitch to make Hawks’s ears ring, and shoves Twice off her lap. He yelps, and falls onto the floor, and just lies there, face-down. From the ground he yells, “I’m okay! That hurt like a bitch!” Toga doesn’t seem to notice his complaints or Hawks himself. She only has eyes for Dabi.

“Do you have my donuts?” Toga says, bouncing on her toes. She is gripping onto Dabi’s coat, making herself tall enough to flash her fangs in his face. There is a knife in her hand, nearly brushing Dabi’s cheek. Dabi rolls his eyes, totally unaffected by the many dangerous weapons near his jugular. He ruffles her hair and shoves her off, with just enough force to get his personal space back.

“Not today brat,” he snaps without heat, “Had other things to focus on.” He jabs a thumb in Hawks’s direction.

“Donuts?” Hawks asks. He is struck with a sudden image of Dabi walking into a League meeting with a Mister Donut box, and he thinks the mere concept will cause his brain to bluescreen.

“Pig’s blood donuts!” Toga cheers, as though this is supposed to make Hawks less confused. “Dabi always gets them for me on his way home from visiting you!” In the back of his head, Hawks remembers a news story about protests outside a alternative Qurik lifestyle bakery near his apartment. Hawks wonders if that’s the same place Dabi goes to.

“Psh, only because it shuts you up for half an hour,” Dabi says, and though Toga squawks with indignance, a faint smile never leaves Dabi’s face. Hawks remembers Dabi’s comment earlier about his family and it’s like a picture frame defogs.

“Oh, you take care of her because she reminds you of your siblings,” Hawks notes, and immediately covers his face with his hands, “Oh fuck.”

Toga gasps with joy and Dabi groans.

“Birdie, I’m gonna have to duct tape your mouth shut.”

“Please do.” This is humiliating, Hawks thought, and suddenly his hands were being ripped away from his face. Toga is bouncing in front of him now, million watt grin now aimed at him.

“Dabi told you about his family?” Toga screeches, and before the “yes” can be pulled out from him, Toga is already barreling to the next point. “He never talks about his past, says it doesn’t matter. I think he just wants to keep his bad boy image, but of course he’d tell you!”

“Toga!” Dabi yells, but Hawks can barely process him, because Toga just keeps talking and she’s right in his face and his head is spinning.

“I can’t believe I never thought of it!” Hawks tries to lean away from her, but Toga just tugs him back into place. “It should have been obvious! You have to–” Toga’s eyes dial in on him, and everything about her lessens. Her heels fall flat on the floor, the corners of her smile fall from cheekbones. Even her blinking, which had been fluttering fast in her excitement, becomes practically nonexistent as she drinks in Hawks’s face. Her free hand (the one not accidentally holding a knife to his throat) reaches forward and brushes the skin under his eye. He hisses at the unexpected pain. They were still tender from crying...

Oh no.

Toga’s head whipped toward Dabi, uncharacteristic malice on her face.

“What did you do!”

“What the hell, why do you think I did something?” Dabi sputtered.

“He was crying!” Toga waves her arms in protest and Hawks has to duck under her knife. “Of course it’s your fault!”

“Toga has a point. Make him cry more!” Twice adds. He still is on the ground, for reasons Hawks will probably never comprehend. At least he’s sitting up now.

Toga turns back to Hawks, all the rage gone from her face. She pets his hair and he warbles happily. Hawks’s head has always been a weak spot for him. He used to beg his handlers to preen his hair, to the point that they banned touching his hair at all in an attempt to break him from the habit. He learned later that hawks preen each other’s heads as a sign of community and acceptance, since they can’t reach the spot themselves. A conditioned part of him still feels shame at the way he melts to the touch, but the bird in him can’t help but be excited by the accepting gesture from his flockmate.

“What did the mean man do to you?” Toga coos. Hawks’s answer is more of a half-slurred hum.

“He asked questions and I answered them.”

“Dabi, what–”

“Look, I promise I’ll explain everything,” Dabi interjects, “But first I need to talk to Shigaraki, do you know where he is?”

Toga opens her mouth to answer but a voice from the hallway beats her to it.

“Trying to ignore all the yelling.”

And there, standing with his arms crossed and a petulant frown on his face, was the man Hawks was sent by the commission to find.

Shigaraki Tomura.

If all I needed to do to meet him was cry, the Commission should have just sent me after one of my debriefs, Hawks thinks hysterically.

Shigaraki looks Hawks up and down, and huffs.

“This the recruit you’ve been spending so much time with?” Shigaraki says, “And here I thought you’d finally recruited a party member worth playing.”

“He’s joining.” There’s no room for argument in Dabi’s voice. Shigaraki raises an eyebrow.

“Really. You think the number two hero should join the inner circle of the League of Villains?” He chuckles. “I knew you were ugly, but I at least thought you were smart.”

“He’s one of us, Shigaraki,” Dabi spits, and Hawks can see a mirage of heated air around his hands. It’s not the first time he’s seen it happen. Hawks wonders if Dabi realized how much of his anger manifests in his quirk. “Hero society chewed him up and spit him out, just like you and Toga and Twice and every other league member. He has a right to be here.”

Shigaraki cackles and the sound makes Hawks wince. It isn’t that the laugh is unhinged and terrifying (though it very much is), it’s that... Well, it isn’t like his handlers haven’t laughed at his complaints before this. He should be used to it by now.

“Really? You expect me to believe the Hero Commission's prized protagonist has a tragic backstory?” Shigaraki snorts, “What’s the worst thing that could have happened to him?”

It isn’t a question directed at Hawks, but it is still one he can answer. And apparently, that is all the quirk needs.

“When I was eight, they started giving me training to resist torture.” Hawks doesn’t want to talk about this. He has never talked to anyone about it and never intended to before today. But Hawks is tired, too tired to try and hold back the information he knows will be dragged out of him anyways. So he lets the words drop from his mouth like stones. “They still needed me to be physically able to training so the Commission brought in someone who was able to activate pain receptors through touch. Felt like the initial moment of being stabbed, endlessly. He would work with me for hours, quirk constantly activated, no matter how much I screamed and cried. By the time I was ten, I was able to sit for an hour under his quirk without flinching.”

Hawks sighs, and his wings droop. He can feel his primaries brushing against the floor.

The room has gotten very quiet. Hawks has somehow managed to horrify a room full of villains into silence. Robbers, murderers, criminal masterminds, serial killers, all of them stare at him without saying a word. Twice sniffles, and Hawks can see dark lines beginning to track down the cheeks of his mask.

Toga is the one to break the silence.

“Do you need me to kill that guy for you?” She asks, and Hawks is pretty sure she isn’t kidding. She twirls a knife blade through her fingers. “‘Cuz he sounds like a jerk, and I will totally kill that guy for you.”

“No, I don’t need you to kill him. I’m just... I’m just gonna sit down.” Hawks moves toward the couch, but Dabi catches his wrist.

“Hawks?” He asks, and Hawks smiles at all the gentle questions behind it. He’s such a fucking softie.

“I’m o–” The lie stops on his tongue, so he amends himself, “I’ll be alright. Just gonna sit.” Dabi nods but Hawks feels eyes boring into him until he’s safely seated. Then, all the rage and intensity of that stare turns to Shigaraki.

“What the hell just happened!” Shigaraki screeches.

“He was hit by a truth quirk, asshole.” Dabi snaps.

“Do you have any proof of that?”

“I think it’s pretty fucking obvious.”

“Oh, because your judgement isn’t clouded?” Shigaraki argues, “He could just be trying to garner sympathy. It’s an easily set trap.”

Dabi rolls his eyes. “Fine.” Dabi turns to Hawks, seeming to already be regretting this course of action. “Hawks, what do you think of Shigaraki?”

“Well, thought he’d more intimidating to be honest,” Hawks admits, then quickly scrambles to right himself, “Not that you aren’t intimidating, because you are, I’m just much more attracted to you than I thought I’d be, I’m a slut for messy hair. I mean, you’d think the scars and chapped lips would be a turn off, but they actually really do it for me. Maybe I just have a thing of guys who can absolutely obliterate me, given how I feel about Dabi and oh my god Toga please just stab me, I’m begging you.” Toga just pats his head, because apparently he’s too pathetic for even her to kill.

Shigaraki looks at Dabi, then Hawks, then back at Dabi again. “So he was hit by a truth quirk.”

“Obviously,” Dabi growls. His fists are clenching and the heat waves are back. He’s getting frustrated, though Hawks can’t understand why. “And he’s joining our side. He’s going to stay here from now on.”

“He serves us better as a double agent, gathering information from the inside,” Shigaraki hisses, and Dabi’s hands flare blue.

“He’s not going back there.”

“It’s where he’s most useful!”

“Over my dead body!”

“Just because you have fe–”

“I’ll tell you my name!”

Shigaraki stills, all his stubbornness dissipating. For the first time today, Hawks thinks he’s actually listening.

“You still wanna know it, right?” Dabi spits, “Let him stay, and I’ll tell you.”

“Go right ahead,” Shigaraki offers. Dabi looks shiftily around the room, eyes bouncing from Toga to Twice to Hawks himself.

“Just you,” he amends, and brushes past him. “Come on.” Shigaraki rolls his eyes, but still went with him. Once they were out of sight, Toga giggled and squealed.

“Welcome to the family!”

Hawks chokes on air.

“Wh– really?”

Toga shrugs. “I mean, Dabi vouched for you, so I don’t see why not.”

Twice shoots him a thumbs up. “Happy to have you! Fuck off and die.”

“And it’s not like we’re going to let Tomura send you back to the commission! They sound terrible!” A dark cloud falls over Toga's face, and Hawks’s instincts scream for him to back away from the predator in the room. She licks her fangs. “If I ever meet any of those Commission phonies, I’ll cover them in blood!” Then she frowns, a cute pout that leaves no remnant of her former fury. She taps her finger against her chin as she thinks over her plan. “But then I’d make them cute, and they don’t deserve that. Hm.”

“Toga, what are you even talking about?” Spinner asks, as he and Mr. Compress walk in from the hall opposite the way Shigaraki and Dabi left. “And why is everyone shouting? It’s fucking loud.” Compress nods in agreement.

“It’s hard for a performer to prepare for their upcoming act when the green room is in such upheaval.”

Twice nods and gives him a thumbs up. “I didn’t understand any of that.”

Hawks can tell he’s been around the League too long, because, despite the mask, he can tell Compress is rolling his eyes.

“What’s got everyone so irate?”

The truth tickles up Hawks’s throat. “Dabi offered to let me live here and agreed to tell Shigaraki his real name if he let me stay.” Fuck, this quirk never ends.

Spinner and Compress stare blankly at him for a moment (or at least, that’s what Hawks assumes Compress is doing), before Toga chimes in, “Now we’re just waiting for Tomura-chan to cave! Also, Hawks got hit with a truth quirk and shared some of his tragic backstory with us. Don’t ask him any questions, though! He can’t seem to stop from answering then.”

Despite these words, Hawks expects to be bombarded with inquiries. It was one thing for Toga and Twice to accept his arrival, they’d actually seen everything go down. But if he’d been in Spinner and Compress’s shoes, he’d interrogate like there was no tomorrow. So he braces himself for the truth to be torn from him, trying to come up with anyway to justify his past betrayals, just so they don’t kill him immediately and–

“Okay,” Spinner says, and flops down on the couch on top of Twice. Compress primly sits next to him. Neither of them even spare Hawks a second glance.

“Wait, that’s it?” Hawks sputters, “You’re just... gonna let it go?”

“Uh, yeah?” Spinner says, raising an eyebrow at him. “Dabi’s fighting for you, and he hates everyone, so you must really be fucked. Besides, it’ll be nice to have someone else with a mutation quirk around here. Finally, someone will understand how much it sucks to shed.”

Hawks crinkles his nose. “Yeah, molting’s the absolute worst.” Hawks flinches at what he just revealed, but Spinner only laughs.

“Finally! You get it!” He reaches up from Twice’s lap to clap Hawks on the shoulder. “See, this is gonna be great.”

Hawks thinks he might be tearing up again.

“Really? You’re not gonna ask me any questions?”

“Nope!” Spinner says, and Compress looks downright scandalized.

“Prying information from your past without your consent? Heavens no! Magicians value secrects above all else; I would never rob you of yours. Who would even consider such a thing?”

Hawks nearly spills all about how the Commission would absolutely pry everything they can from him, but he’s luckily saved by Shigaraki stomping into the room. The man has his arms crossed and he’s sulking, hard wrinkles in his nose. He growls and glares at Hawks.

“He can stay.”

The room erupts with cheers. Toga is in his lap, arms wrapped around his neck as she gushes praise. Twice is excitedly ruffling his hair, and Spinner pokes at his leg with glee. Compress tips his hat to him and Hawks swears he even sees Shigaraki crack a smile. The joy is radiant and contagious and Hawks has never experienced anything like it; yet, he still can’t take his eyes off of Dabi.

He’s leaning against the wall, watching Hawks with an amused smirk. He gives Hawks a wink, but that doesn’t hide the lack of color in his face or the shakiness of hands. Whatever he said really messed him up, Hawks thinks, And he... He did that for me.

Hawks gently slides Toga off of him and stands. He takes a step toward Dabi, then another. He opens his mouth, reaches out a hand, but stops.

What do you say to the person who saved you?

Hawks doesn’t know, so he offers the words that always struck truest with him.

“Thank you.”

For a moment, Hawks gets another glimpse of that open surprise Dabi seems to feel at any affection, but Dabi brushes it away before anyone else can notice

“Heh, just don’t forget you owe me one, birdie,” he chuckles. There is no real weight behind the words, but Spinner nevertheless turns and glares at him.

“I thought we were past the whole ‘making fun of mutation quirks’ thing,” he snarls, and Dabi flounders. Hawks doesn’t really understand what Spinner means, but Dabi seems almost ashamed.

“Sorry, I didn’t–”

“Don’t apologize to me,” Spinner snaps, and tilts his head in Hawks’s direction. “I’m not the one you called a bird.”

And Dabi catches Hawks’s eyes, and Hawks is suddenly sure he’s going to apologize, of all things, and he’s so overwhelmed, not only by this, but by everything that happened today, so he opens his mouth and tells the truth.

“No, no, he doesn’t have to stop, I like it!”

Hawks hates his fucking mouth and the fucking desperation in his tone and every fucking thing about this quirk. Dabi seems positively dumbstruck.

“You do?”

“I...” Hawks’s feathers fluff with embarrassment, and he can feel his cheeks heating up. “I like that you gave me a nickname.”

And, though he may be imagining it, Hawks swears he sees the skin just below Dabi’s eye-scars turn pink.

“Oh.” The word is barely a breath, and it’s one of the best sounds Hawks’s has ever heard.

“Fuck,” Spinner groans, and Toga shouts with glee.

“Pay up boys!” She croons, and Twice and Spinner begin pulling bills out of their pockets.

“I’m very happy for you, you both suck dicks! ” Twice says as he hands Toga a frankly obscene amount of money.

“I don’t understand why the two of you continue to bet against her on such matters,” Compress says, “She’s never wrong.”

“In my defense, this started before she smelled him,” Spinner grumbles as Toga snatches the wad of cash out of his claws. Apparently that’s enough information for Dabi, because he shoots Toga a death glare. Hawks, however, still has no fucking clue what’s going on.

“Uh, I think I’m missing something?”

“Don’t you dare!” Dabi growls. He lunges for her but two Twice’s pop out and grab him. It’s kind of terrifying but Toga just giggles.

“I’m a love expert!”

Hawks stares at her, waiting for her to explain. She beams at him and rocks on her heels. Hawks turns to Compress instead, since he’s the only one whose sanity seems intact.

“Toga can always tell when people are in love,” Compress explains.

“You motherfuckers!” Dabi howls, “I’m gonna burn this whole building to the ground!” He’s smoking at this point, and Hawks can’t help but shoot nervous glances in his direction. No one else seems the slightest bit concerned.

“We believe it’s part of her quirk,” The magician continues, “Something about the hormones making her quirk more effective, and therefore smelling more appealing. So she always knows when two people fall for each other. Therefore”—Hawks can telling, even with the mask, that Mr. Compress is giving Spinner and Twice a very judgmental look—“betting against her on the nature of your and Dabi’s relationship is a rather moronic venture.”

“Wait– Our– Dabi’s in love with me?”

“Fuck!”

Hawks is pretty sure that’s a yes.

God does he love that yes. It couldn’t be more Dabi. And Hawks?

Hawks loves Dabi.

“I have feelings for you, too.”

Dabi stops struggling. He gapes, slowly, opening and closing his mouth as he processes Hawks’s words.

“You- You do?”

Hawks rolls his eyes. “I physically can’t lie, hot stuff.” Now Dabi’s definitely blushing.

“Oh. Right,” Dabi chuckles, and gently pulls away from the clones holding him.

(“This is the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen,” Shigaraki mutters, and Toga elbows him in the stomach)

“Can– Can I–” His eyes flicker to Hawks’s lips and Dabi gets this nervous look on his face. He wants to kiss me. And Hawks would normally tease him over how goddamn chivalrous he’s being but... Hawks can’t remember the last time someone asked him for permission. So it’s really no surprise that he suddenly has his talons dug into Dabi’s coat and their lips are pressed together. Toga wolf-whistles and Shigaraki stomps away yelling about how much he already regrets this, but Hawks is busy memorizing the texture of Dabi’s lips, so he doesn’t really care. Eventually, they have to pull away, and come up for air, and Dabi is actually smiling at him.

“Was that okay?”

And, for once, Hawks doesn’t mind telling the truth.

“That was perfect.”

#dabihawks #bnha #my hero academia #bnha dabi #bnha hawks #dabi is a todoroki #toga himiko #shigaraki tomura #mha #takami keigo #bnha twice #Boku no hero academia #bnha spinner #hotwings #my writing #my fanfic #my bnha fanfic #the truth series

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alphawave-writes · 4 years

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A path to purpose (Revfinder)

Synopsis: Revenant thought he'd abandoned his humanity. He thought he hated everybody. But perhaps with the help of a robot, he might just remember what it's like. And if he happens to bond with a sentient high-five machine, that's his problem, isn't it?

First Revfinder fic in the world, baby! To go with first Pathfinder fic in the world! Just as the universe intended XD

Read it here on or AO3. You guys can also find me on twitter @alphawave13.

If you like my writing, please do support me by buying me a ko-fi or requesting a commission from me.

On Revenant’s list, he had every and all high-level Hammond Robotics employees at the top of the people he must kill. For a long time, the rest of the list had remained blank, ready for him to fill in the spaces. He hated the skinbags, the so-called humans, for their ignorance. He hated how they could live their lives to their fullest and die and never have to suffer the curse of immortality. But he didn’t hate them enough to put them on the list. No, only special people who have done something to earn his personal brand of wrath deserved to be on that list. And now, after centuries of corrupted memories and composited images and fake lives, he had someone to put in at number two.

That number two was an insufferable MRVN who went by the alias of Pathfinder.

“Hey, friend! Great to meet you. My name is MRVN, but you can call me Pathfinder. All my very best friends call me Pathfinder, which is everyone.” A disgusting little smiley face flashing on their chest monitor.

Revenant huffed. He hated this. He knew this was going to happen. The robot and the simulacrum, the vicious murderer of a beloved celebrity and the ball of sunshine, the pessimist and the optimist. The people of the Outlands really did love their match-ups, didn’t they? Wouldn’t it be a kick in the pants if they’d have their rooms right next to each other, in an isolated corner of the dropship, away from the skinbags? Think of the drama.

Sons of bitches, all of them. He’ll put the organisers of the Apex games at number three on his list.

“Could you not hear me?” Pathfinder asked. “My voice module is incapable of imitating shouting, but I can raise the decibel level of my voice to make it sound like I’m shouting. Would you like me to do that, friend?”

“I’m not your friend,” Revenant growled. “And I can hear you just fine.”

“But you are talking to me. And friends always talk to each other, which means you are my new best friend.”

“Just ignore him, buddy,” Mirage said. He had his own group of people around him, but felt, for some ungodly reason, to approach Revenant.

When the games started, Mirage’ll be his first victim, Revenant thought.

“Guy will call anyone and everyone his friend,” Mirage continued. “He’s a robot. He can handle it.”

Revenant did his best to convey how much he was glaring at the man. “I am a robot.”

“I mean, yeah sure. On the outside. Not on the inside. At least…that’s how simula-simu-…guys like you work, right? But Path’s all robot. He doesn’t feel like the rest of us real humans. Or well…quasi-humans." Mirage was now rubbing the back of his head. "C-Can I say quasi-humans? That sounds racist.”

Revenant glared evilly, and Mirage shrank back into the background.

Scratch that. Mirage was going to be third on that list. Right underneath Pathfinder and just above the organizers.

He was prepared to hate Pathfinder even before he met the robot. MRVNs of his type were developed by a subsidiary of Hammond Robotics, which meant that Pathfinder will have to be killed anyway. He never liked robots when he was human; always thought that a human touch was what made him better than the armies of robot assassins that countless organizations tried to concoct. Pathfinder was no exception, even though he knew that the robot’s drive to find his creator was what propelled it to join the games. That simple goal inspired this simple service bot to fight, to kill, to befriend, to love.

How ironic, Revenant thought. A robot with no mind of its own had more free will than him.

Pathfinder was staring at him—or at least doing his best impression of staring. Despite his hard metallic body, there was warmth in that black lens of his. An almost…human warmth. Almost.

“You don’t know what I am,” Revenant commented.

“I do,” Pathfinder said, his tone getting sharper. “You killed my last best friend on TV in cold blood.”

“So you realise what you’ll get yourself into if you get in my way,” Revenant growled.

“Yep,” Pathfinder replied. “I’ll learn even more about killing from you, and impress my creator. Exciting!”

“What? No! I’m telling you to leave me alone," Revenant spluttered.

“This is really great. I think you are going to be the bestest best friend I’ve ever had, I just know it. That is a lie to make you know just how much I love you.”

For once Revenant was glad he was a Simulacrum, if only so this stupid robot couldn’t see the blush that'd otherwise stain his cheeks. “Shut up. Get out of my sight.”

To Revenant’s relief, Pathfinder gave a friendly wave in goodbye and retreated to his bedroom without another word. He didn't close the door. A nauseating heart emoji popped up on his chest and remained there for some time .

Scratch that. Hammond Robotics can wait. Until that opportunity presents itself, Pathfinder was top of his list of people to kill. Something about that damned robot really got under his skin.

Of course, the universe was never kind to Revenant. He always lost in games of chance and fate. If his odds were slightly better, he might’ve taken a different road and became a high stakes gambler instead of an assassin. They weren't all that different, if he thought about it. The difference was that assassins exploit other people’s luck, find the openings and seize the opportunity to strike . Assassins didn’t need luck, they made their own. But life was a casino, and the odds were stacked up against you. You cheat to win, and sooner or later you get caught by security.

And by security, he meant the high tech lock that he had placed on his room's door to make sure no one ever disturbed him. The very lock that Pathfinder had just opened.

“Hi, best friend. Beautiful day outside.”

Revenant grabbed the nearest thing from him—in this case a Nessie doll—and threw it at Pathfinder. It hit his head before falling down with a thud. Revenant grunted. Should've grabbed the knife.

“Did I come at a bad time?” A question mark appeared on Pathfinder's chest.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” Revenant hissed. “How did you get past the lock?”

“Oh, that was easy. I asked my friend Crypto to help me open it. He agreed to give me some advice if I promised not to pester him for the rest of the week. When it didn't work, I smashed it with my fists, which are made of metal.”

Revenant did not have time to unravel all of that. He checked his clock. 3am. “You bothered me now?! Talk to me when the rest of the skinbags are awake.”

“But it is day time, and we do not need sleep like humans do.”

He wanted to say otherwise but Pathfinder has a point. He didn’t need to sleep. He just did it anyway because…well, he wasn’t actually sure why. Maybe he was hoping that he might be able to dream and remember his previous life, or that some other assassin will kill him when he was defenseless and finally give him the death he so desperately craved. But that’s wishful thinking on his part.

Pathfinder was still staring at Revenant, waiting for an answer. Revenant huffed. He can’t believe he was doing this. “Fine. Stay here. Just don’t touch anything, or I will make sure your warranty is voided for good.”

"Great!" Pathfinder exclaimed far too loudly as he walked exactly two steps into the centre of the room and stood still.

At least the damned thing knew how to follow instructions.

"You have a nice room. I like it," Pathfinder commented.

Revenant grumbled under his breath. The one thing he hated more than Hammond Robotics. Compliments. "Don't think you'll get brownie points with me."

Pathfinder's single lens scanned the room, before he crouched down to pick up the fallen Nessie doll. For a MRVN with little to no touch receptors, he handled the fragile thing so gently. It could feel, Revenant realised.

"You have one too," he remarked.

It took all of Revenant's willpower not to snatch the doll and hide it away. "Give it back, it's mine. And what do you mean, 'too'?"

"My friend Wattson used to collect Nessies when she was younger. Most of us found one. They are very cute."

"They are…" Revenant mumbled. He jerked his head up at Pathfinder. "I know what you're doing. Stop it."

"Stop what?"

"This. Whatever you're doing." His crimson eyes peered deeply into Pathfinder. "You must have a motive for being here."

"I want to find my creator," Pathfinder said.

"Don’t give me the bull you fed the press. We both know that's not true."

Pathfinder's monitor went blank as the robot tilted its head. It had no face, no real emotions besides the one it could display on its chest, but Revenant felt like he hit a nerve. A sore one.

"It's not true?" Pathfinder asked quietly.

"Your programming says you want to find your creator. Just ones and zeroes giving you some semblance of a directive to follow. You don't actually think. You don't actually dream."

"I have dreams," Pathfinder said. His tone didn't sound as peppy, almost like he was struggling to display the proper emotion in his voice. "My diagnostics cannot determine why, but I dream like humans do. I dream of being famous. Of making my creator proud, wherever they are. Becoming the champion of the Apex Games sounds very exciting, and will get me noticed by my creator and many people and robots all over the Outlands."

If Revenant could roll his eyes, he would. "Face it, the chances your creator is even alive are slim to none." Revenant's eyes dimmed. "If I could meet my creators I'd…I'd…"

"Give them a high five?" Pathfinder suggested.

Revenant scoffed. "A high five to the face. With a knife. And then another high five with my knife to their stomach, spleen, neck, and spine." He knew exactly how the blood would squirt and spill. With every life he took, he felt a little more alive, just for a brief moment.

"That is a lot of high fives," Pathfinder murmured uneasily.

"Yeah, well, I can't anyway. They've been dead for god knows how long. I've been living for too long myself. Don't even remember my own name, just what I do, what I did. What I looked like."

It took Revenant a few seconds of introspection before he realised he made one of the biggest mistakes. It was right there in the assassin's handbook: never reveal anything about yourself. Revenant stood up from his bed, instinctively prepared to fight or kill. Non-existent adrenaline filled his body, a by-product of the simulation that once fabricated his human appearance, as he observed every weapon at his disposal. There was the chair, the knife under his pillow, his own augmented body, that weak spot at the MRVN's neck. Just had to wait for an opportunity. Wait for luck to go on his side.

But Pathfinder did not move. There was a question mark on his monitor, the light within that dark lens glowing brighter. To the untrained eye he was just standing, but Revenant noticed how Pathfinder’s centre of gravity lowered into an defensive stance. He knew what Revenant was going to do, and he chose not to move. It was almost like the MRVN was daring Revenant to act, as if to say Go ahead and try.

Revenant had fought a lot of robots in his life. None of them acted like this. They calculated the safest, most effective move in the short term. They strike first, asked questions last--if they were capable of asking questions. They didn't see the big picture. They didn't stand there, waiting for an attack they knew was coming. No fully automated machine could ever act like a human.

This wasn't any ordinary MRVN. This MRVN thought and dreamt like a human. This MRVN was alive.

Huh, Revenant thought. Perhaps Pathfinder wasn't just a pretty face for the cameras after all.

Ugh, he couldn't believe he just called Pathfinder a 'pretty face'.

Revenant's gaze swept down to the Nessie doll, and with a grunt he swiped it out of Pathfinder's hands and placed it back on its rightful spot above his bed. The doll was one of two personal effects he brought with him when he joined the Apex Games. The other one sat at an unused sink, just underneath an unused mirror, old but sharp. Just like him.

"You did not need to take it from me. I would have gave it back to you.”

"Sure you would've," Revenant grumbled.

"I would, because I love you, best friend."

Revenant stiffened. He hadn't heard the L word in…actually, when had anyone used the L word with him? It was always used to describe someone else, and it was never in a good way. Love was just another thing to exploit. Another bit of luck to steal.

So why could he feel his artificial lungs quicken? Why did his systems glitch for just a second, making everything spark in front of his vision?

"Best friend?"

Revenant stared at Pathfinder for the longest time, wondering if perhaps the robot was fucking with him. But all that he was met with was utter sincerity and honesty.

The honest people were the dangerous ones. The ones that had nothing to hide usually had nothing to lose. And Pathfinder was too young and too naïve to have any morals to hold him back. Pathfinder was dangerous. Friendly, but dangerous. A useful ally, or the bane of his existence.

Revenant suddenly approached Pathfinder, acutely aware of how much taller he was than the taller-than-average MRVN as he sharply pushed Pathfinder out of his room and slammed the door shut. Pathfinder stood outside his door for several seconds before walking away. Revenant collapsed on the bed, groaning in frustration as he tried, once again, to close his eyes and sleep. Despite his best efforts, his mind was too restless. All he could think about was that strange look Pathfinder gave him. It was almost like staring at a human being trapped in a robotic body. A twisted reflection of himself.

He wondered what would have happened if he met a human version of Pathfinder, back when he was human himself. Chances were he'd kill the guy before anything could happen. If only he had the guts to kill him now and end the torture that was Pathfinder's horrific attempts at friendship.

He was getting soft, he told himself over and over again. Secretly, he knew there was a different reason as to why he hadn't killed Pathfinder already. One that he refused to acknowledge.

It was ironic. Both their squadmates had been wiped out in the gunfight, leaving only him versus Pathfinder. A 1v1 for the championship of this round. It had been through the use of surprise, fear, ruthless efficiency, an almost fanatical use of the Devotion, and his nice red turban that Revenant managed to get to this position. Soon as he learned Pathfinder was on a different team, he tried his best to track him down and eliminate him early, but to little avail. And now here they were, identical weapons drawn, staring each other down through the scope of their gun, the ring closing in on their position.

The universe really did hate him, didn't it.

Time seemed to slow down as they stared at one another, no doubt both of them thinking the same thing. Except--and Revenant hated that he had to keep reminding himself this--Pathfinder couldn't think. It was a robot. A MRVN. Inanimate. A machine that could only follow its programming.

At least, that was what Revenant thought. Until he felt a grapple on his abdomen.

He was pulled forward toward Pathfinder, too quick for him to ready his weapon. The glint of the barrel stared him in the face, but he twisted his body, and the shotgun shell barely missed him. If he was human, he'd be deaf in one ear. But he wasn't. With a snarl, he grabbed his own shotgun, aiming it blindly, but the shell missed as Pathfinder slid underneath Revenant's legs and grappled a fair distance away, already switching his weapons.

Revenant was begrudgingly impressed. He almost underestimated Pathfinder.

Almost.

He ran toward Pathfinder, shouting at the top of his lungs. Pathfinder tried to shoot him down, but Revenant predicted his movement, sidestepping out of the way before unleashing his own volley of energy bullets. A few shots dinked at Pathfinder's body armour. Half armour and full health at best, Revenant assumed, though it could be lower. It all depended on whether Pathfinder healed up earlier or not. Revenant was not going to take his chances with an aggressive play and find out. Not yet.

Pathfinder tried the same trick again, his grapple flying through the air, but this time Revenant somersaulted backwards, the momentum pulling Pathfinder to the ground. There was the sick crunch of metal against metal as he yanked the grapple claw off his chest and stomped hard on Pathfinder's monitor, making it beep and whine. He took out his shotgun and pulled the trigger.

The shield was broken. Pathfinder barely had any health left. His body was crumpled and broken, a shadow of its former painted glory. Revenant couldn't help but laugh. "See you in the scrap yard."

"I love you, Revenant."

It took him by surprise. Just long enough for Pathfinder to get his shotgun out and shoot Revenant right between his eyes. The knock-back pushed him away slightly. His vitals flickered in front of his eyes. Warning: <10% integrity.

A laugh emoji flickered across Pathfinder's chest monitor.

The robot played him.

Pathfinder of all people took him off guard.

Revenant snarled viciously as he discarded the gun, looping behind Pathfinder as his hand shifted into a blade, slicing it through the sensitive neck area. Pathfinder groaned as the light in his lens flickered off, falling backwards into Revenant's arms. Within seconds, Pathfinder was inactive and dead.

Revenant huffed as he pushed himself off Pathfinder's body, tossing it haphazardly down onto the ground with a clank. He should be feel happy, alive, something. He felt it just moments before when he gunned down Pathfinder's teammates. And this battle was a close one, where the odds could have fell into anyone's grasp, which usually made the kill afterward all the more sweeter.

So why did this victory feel so hollow? Why didn't killing Pathfinder make him happier?

"WE HAVE OUR APEX CHAMPION.” The announcer said across the intercoms.

Funny. He didn't feel like a champion. Not this time.

Of course, when he got back to the ship, a lot of people congratulated him. Or at least, people tried to, before he told them all to shove off in less-than-kid-friendly language. That made them give him a wide berth, hushed whispers of his abilities spreading like wildfire. He wouldn't stop the rumours. Let them know he was not a person to be messed with. Let them think what they wanted to think.

Pathfinder didn't get the memo apparently, approaching Revenant as soon as he respawned, not a dent or scratch to be seen. He was waving excitedly, even as his friends and acquaintances watched nervously from afar.

"Great moves, friend. Sucks that I lost." He stuck his hand out in a high five.

Revenant stared at that hand for several seconds. It was boxy, and crude, and ugly. It fitted Pathfinder perfectly. "That was a dirty move back in the ring. I could kill you now for it,” Revenant snarled. “I've killed for far less."

"But you're not. And yet you did." Pathfinder tilted his head as he lowered his hand. "Past and present tense are funny, aren't they? Funny is a synonym for weird in this context."

"You did it on purpose," Revenant uttered.

"I did, actually. I am surprised and happy that it worked." His voice almost sounded cocky. "Did you like my moves?"

Revenant did something in between a puff and a laugh. Why was he relieved that Pathfinder was alive? Why was this strange warmth bubbling up his chest, even when there was nothing warm to bubble in his chest in the first place?

What was it about Pathfinder?

He shook his head as he approached Pathfinder and gave him a hearty slap to their arm joint. "You got lucky, punk,” he uttered before heading back to his room and avoid all the interviewers.

He barely got to the door when he heard a faint commotion as everybody clambered up to Pathfinder. Pathfinder was no doubt smiling to his friends when he said, “I think he likes me a lot. We are going to be super best friends, I just know it.” Revenant just shook his head and slammed the door shut, blocking out the rest of the world.

Neither of them realised how accurate Pathfinder’s words would be.

It was 2am and Revenant couldn’t sleep. Or ‘stasis’ or ‘sleep mode’ or whatever the hell it actually was. Point was, he wanted time to just pass him by and it wouldn’t. It continued on at a tepid pace, making sure that Revenant saw each and every one of his few non-corrupted memories in vivid detail. He may not need to sleep, but he could still dream and have nightmares. It was ironic. The synthetic nightmare himself had nightmares.

Karma was a bitch.

His nightmares were never scary enough to frighten him, just made him feel uncomfortable, flooding his mind with sounds and images . He’d killed anyone, from the slimiest mafia boss to the kindest social reformers and the smallest of children, and many of them returned from the grave to haunt his mind. Most times he tried to distract himself with the few things that gave him pleasure in life. Money. Infamy. A name checked off his hit list.

But not tonight. This time, as he stared at the ceiling, his mind went to a service robot with a coat of blue paint and a well-polished grapple and smooth, clean metal.

He bolted up, grunting angrily to himself. His hand went up to his head, wanting to tug at short blonde locks, only to feel the rough texture of a Hammond Robotics-issued turban.

“Again, always that stupid, insufferable robot,” he hissed to himself. What was it about Pathfinder, corrupting his dreams, driving him mad with his presence? It must be because he hated Pathfinder. That had to be it. That had to be.

He’d say more but then he realized that light was flooding in underneath the door. The scent of meat drifted in the air. The sounds of a pot boiling liquid.Someone was awake and…cooking? At this ungodly hour?

Curiosity killed the cat, but then cats weren't expected to do surveillance on their potential targets to kill. Or…actually they did, didn't they? Whatever. Point was, in his line of business it was better to investigate these sorts of things. At the very least, it was good practice for sneaking up on some unsuspecting victims.

So he crept out of his room, closing and locking it without a sound. He kept his profile low, his movements almost spider-like as he crept from the floor to the source. The light was coming from the common kitchenette. Amidst the various cooking noises, Revenant heard some tunelessly humming.

They wouldn't hear him. This was almost too easy.

He stuck to the shadows where he belonged, the harsh light making the shadows darker. All of the other legends were sleeping apart from Crypto and Octane, who were both occupied on their computers for various different reasons, not like they'd notice him. He got closer, edging his face past the corner.

Of all the things he expected to see, Pathfinder wearing a fluffy apron was certainly not one of them. Pathfinder's humming stopped. His head turned toward Revenant's direction. "Best friend, you are awake. Just in time!"

Revenant silently cursed himself for getting caught. Once again Pathfinder was taking him off-guard. This wasn't like him. This really wasn't.

Slowly, he walked into view, his body poised for attack.

"You are just in time. I have made a new batch of my famous Leviathan stew! It's made with real Leviathan meat, not fake meat."

Revenant sniffed the concoction. Sure enough, it was Leviathan stew. Smelt like it, at lest. Looked like it. It'd probably taste like it too. "You do realise I don't have a mouth to eat it with," Revenant said.

"That's alright. Then everybody else can have it when they wake up. Sharing food is what makes it fun. Or at least, I think it is. As you can tell, I also do not have a mouth to process food and 'flavour'. "

Revenant scoffed. "Next, you're going to be telling me the secret to making delicious food is love." He spat the L word out like it was poison. He's had to spit out a few poisons in his natural lifetime. He often wondered if that was how he bit the dust the first time, back when he was human.

"The secret to making delicious food is to cook it exactly like the recipe. And also tasting it." A frowny face briefly appeared on his monitor. "Unfortunately, I can't taste food."

Revenant looked at the gigantic pot filled with Leviathan stew. He remembered his mentors served it to him once. It was good for long stakeouts. Easy to cook, easy to heat up, and filled your stomach up nice. It was comfort food for a long time, something he whipped up many a lonely night when he wanted to feel warm and safe for once. Even if he had the capability to eat, Leviathan meat was much harder to get a hold of now than it was in his time. Many things he once enjoyed were now gone, or had been reduced to rare luxuries. The few that remained, they were unattainable to him because of his simulacrum body.

He tilted his head toward the stew. If he had lips, they'd be thinned to a line. He harshly shoved Pathfinder aside with his shoulder and grabbed some spices from the spice rack. A dash of paprika, a pinch more brown sugar. The colour shifted as he stirred it with a wooden spoon, turning into a richer reddish-brown. Not unlike the colour of his endoskeleton when it was caked in dried blood.

"Revenant?" Pathfinder asked. It was the first time ever that he ever said his name. Or rather, his moniker. He'd never give people his human name. Not even after a thousand deaths.

"Where'd you learn this?" Revenant asked.

"Some soldiers in Solace were ever so kind to teach me," Pathfinder replied. "A chef taught me how to make it better. And now, you're making it even better-er." A laughing emote flickered on his screen. "That was a joke. Better-er is not a real English word."

Revenant hummed. "That chef was shit. You need more paprika. Gives it a bit of an extra kick." He stuck his thumb back toward the sleeping quarters. "We all know that lot need a kick up their backside, especially that insufferable Mirage."

"Mirage is my best friend," Pathfinder said. Quickly, he added, "but you are my newest best friend."

"Of course," Revenant sighed. He should've known.

Pathfinder turned his head back to the stew. His monitor was blank. His voice sounded almost introspective. Pensive. "My friends say you're a bad man. That you killed hundreds and hundreds of people before coming to the Apex Games."

If Revenant had eyebrows, they'd be raised up slightly. "Your friends are correct, for once. What's your point?"

"You are a bad person," Pathfinder said. It was a statement. A fact.

"And?"

"And you are my best friend."

Revenant was beginning to get annoyed. "And?"

"And nothing else. That is all that matters."

"I thought you said you wanted to find your creator," Revenant said mockingly.

"I do," Pathfinder replied, "but that has nothing to do with you. All that matters about you is that you're a bad person, and that you are strong, and that you have great moves, and that I love you."

Revenant bristled. "Stop saying that."

A question mark appeared on Pathfinder's chest. "Stop saying what?"

"That word. The L word."

"Love?"

"I said, stop saying it," Revenant growled.

Something flickered within that glowing lens of Pathfinder's, and then a grinning face blossomed on his chest. "If I promise, will you teach me your moves?"

"My moves?" It took a few seconds before he understood. He almost dropped the wooden spoon into the stew. "You want to learn how to kill?"

"If I learn lots of new things, it will help me become more famous and spread my image across the Outlands. Then I'm sure my creator will find me."

Revenant huffed. This was ridiculous. Pathfinder was ridiculous. "You've already killed."

"But we can work together, best friend. With your moves, and my moves, we can take the championship. Then my creators will notice me and we will be reunited. I cannot wait!"

Revenant studied Pathfinder for several seconds. He'd been an apprentice for the Syndicate, but he'd never taught an apprentice himself.

No, it was ridiculous to entertain that idea. Unless... "If I agree to teach you, will you listen to whatever I tell you to do?"

Pathfinder gave a mock salute. "Absolutely, best friend."

"If I agree, will you stop saying the L word? Will you stop calling me friend, or any synonym of the word 'friend'? Will you only come into my room when I give you permission to?"

"Yes, yes, and yes." Pathfinder was bouncing in excitement now. He'd never seen the MRVN so happy before. "This is why you are my new best friend. I think I am going to make you my number one best friend in the whole wide world."

Revenant felt that weird warmth creep up his chest. It wasn't hate, he realised suddenly, but it was just as intense. It burned hotter than magma, brighter than the stars, and was lighter than air. It made him feel like he was flesh and bone again, turning his head away from a kissing scene when he was but a weak and defenceless child. But if it wasn't hatred, what else could it be?

What the hell was Pathfinder doing to him?

Why the hell was Pathfinder of all people making him feel like this?

Revenant took one final glance at Pathfinder, then at the stew, still bubbling. His hands grabbed the handles of the pot, overturning it. The gloopy mixture of meat and vegetables sat in a pitiful pile on the floor, the juices seeping all the way to the tables and the chairs. If Pathfinder could, he'd be blinking rapidly.

"Clean that up, tin can. And make another one when you're done. I heard Leviathan stews take a long time to make. Do all that, and I might consider teaching you something."

Instead of getting angry, Pathfinder just beamed brightly. "Will do, sir."

Sir. He could get used to hearing that. Something about the word sounded very pleasant from Pathfinder's voice module.

#Apex Legends #Apex #Revenant #Pathfinder #Revfinder #Do I love these two? Absolutely #Am I going to write more about them? DEFINITELY but probably not for a bit #I honestly didn't know if I should tag them as m/m or other in AO3 because technically they're robots with no preassigned gender #and gender is a construct anyway #I don't know anyway here's murder robots becoming friends and catching feels

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borisbubbles · 5 years

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Eurovision 2010s: 30 - 26

30. Nika Kocharov & Young Georgian Lolitaz - “Midnight Gold” Georgia 2016

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When rating Eurovision entrants, it’s important to also take note of the journey, and Nika Kocharov had one of the best ever? Similarly to The Shin, everyone was just about:blank towards “Midnight gold”, not understanding the concept and ranking it last in unison. Like Shin & Mariko, I was mostly intrigued and willing to give it a chance. Unlike the Shin though, I thought “Midnight Gold” was a good song for its genre, just not one I was that entheused by. The revamp, which provided the setting of a mad scientist’s laboratory, was a step in the right direction, providing a hint of entropy, a dash of absurdity, a spark of insanity. And then, at long last, the dénouement:

STAINS OF MUD

ON UR SKIN

THE NIGHT WILL COME

AND SO WILL SIN

Winning LIFE *and* everyone over with that <3 I don’t think ANYONE could have anticipated that “Midnight gold” would deliver a non-stop absynthe-minded ACID TRIP in Stockholm. 😍 The visuals were so ICONIC they are still setting the special effects bar in the present day. This is Sacha Jean-Baptiste’s best staging. Period. Not “Euphoria”. Not “Alter ego”. Not “Fuego”. "Midnight gold”. BY FAR. Would it be even considered a stretch to go as far as saying that “Midnight Gold” has the best staging of any Eurovision entrant to date? I don’t think it does, but it is definitely a contender.

Who would have thought that THIS song would become one of the more memorable, epic entries of a great year such as 2016? Of course the flawless staging also made me retroactively appreciate “Midnight gold” as a song as well and I regularly give it play time whenever I can. 😍 STAINS OF MUD.

ps: I don’t care about fashion much, but I want his hat.

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29. Naviband - “Story of my life” Belarus 2017

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[2017 Review here]

HEY HEY! HAYAYAYA HO!

What superlatives can I still use for describe the pure, unshattering LIGHT that is “Historija majho zyccia”? It leaks mirth from every pore, infecting everyone around it with the irresistable urge to tap their feet along to the HEY HEY HA JA JA HO’s!

At the center of this wonderful hovercraftian masterpiece lie Artiom and Ksenia, two of the most adorable humans ever to exist, who are also a couple irl and it shows. The two have chemistry and charisma in spades, especially Ksenia who is the living embodiment of the “^__^” emoji. I am ALWAYS happy when I listen to this song and I am thrilled we got to hear it twice.

Eurosnob contempt for happiness is a well-documented feature in this ranking, but it reached its nadir with Naviband: You see, in addition to being ‘A Happy Song’ (a term used with contempt, imagine that O_O), Naviband are also folk singers from Belarus, who -shocker- sing in Belarusian. However, don’t be harsh on the Eurosnobs because the area of the dopamine receptors in the brain of a Naviband hater are always attached to a person who isn’t living happily ever after. Naviband is life at its best. EMBRACE IT. Like this Lithuanian frump did:

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28. Måns Zelmerlöw - “Heroes” Sweden 2015

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lol I JUST spoke about “Midnight gold” having one of the best, but not the best staging. Well, that’s because “Heroes” is, in my opinion, the most visually impressive Eurovision entry of all times. 🤗 I don’t think it’s even a stretch to call it that? “Heroes” as a song is widely regarded as pretty whatever, winning due to its act. However, while I don’t necessarily disagree this is why Måns won, I feel this take very much undersells Måns. Using it at an excuse to dismiss his goodness is ridiculous.

First of all; “Heroes” IS a really, really good song. Infectuous, upbeat, irresistably positive with highly quotable lyrics (”now go sing it like a hummingbird the greatest anthem ever heard” 😍) and an earnest anti-bullying message (<3). It may not be *as* original as some of the entries ranked around it on this list, but it definitely handles its own, with and without an act.

Another defining factor in making “Heroes” a great entry is Måns himself. Måns Zelmerlöw is arguably the most attractive human to ever set a foot on a Eurovision stage. The man is irresistable even on a platonic level. He puts every other charismatic performer to shame and does it effortlessly.

However, even with these two trump cards, the staging is indeed the best part of “Heroes”. It bears repeating that I think this is the best Eurovision act to date. Impressive visual effects, flawless choreography and impeccable camerawork elevate “Heroes” to a much higher level. It tells it story with more clarity and efficacity than any other entry I can think of.

Ultimately, Måns staging is a testament of his goodness, and an acceptable reason for winning Eurovision. Because of “Heroes”, many countries have upped their staging game, resulting in more visually impressive entries (specifically the Sabotage Baptiste ones in 2016, and Sergey I guess), which is a positive development. Live music isn’t so much about which song you perform, but about how you perform it, and “Heroes” is the best example of that.

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27. ZiBBZ - “Stones” Switzerland 2018

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[2018 Review Here]

WILD JOKAH ON A GOLD THRONE

Here we are again, our annual appointment with everyone’s favourite sibling alliance. 😍 “Stones” is powerful kick-ass diamond of indie-rock and a serious contender for my favourite Swiss entry of all time.

The song is a masterclass in mental health awareness and self-empowerment, dismantling bullying and depression with perfectly timed percussion and AHUMs, truth-bombing lyrics and an insanely charismatic lead who sounds like Joss Stone on five packs a day. 😍 It’s catchier than ebola, more addictive than sugar and soars higher than a kite.

In addition to all of that jazz, “Stones” is also responsible for some of the most iconic visuals in 2018:

God the shot of Coco with the flare still sends shivers down my spine. WHAT A CRUSADER OF THE DOWNTRODDEN. 😍 Whenever I’m feeling down, this is the song that lifts me back up again.

Really, the only thing not good about ZiBBZ was the camerawork and that wasn’t their fault. FY Hans Pancake. 🙄 If ever there were a robbed NQ who deserves a Genovaesque return, it’s the Zibblings. BRING THEM BACK!!!

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26. Paula Seling & Ovi - “Playing with fire” Romania 2010

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Speaking of highly addictive songs, holy cow Ovi I need rehab for that beat alone because I CANNOT get it out of my head.

Anyway, who else would be the #1 for Romania if not for Paula Seling and Ovi? “Miracle” was a beautiful example of tacky taste, but “Playing with fire”, man, :takes a sip of gin:, now that is the real stuff.

I’ll start, I guess, where I’ve begun my write-up which is the composition: “Playing with fire” has one of the best underlying beats in this decade, which gives it infinite replayability. Layered on top of that is some delightfully aggressive piano (😍), on top of THAT some amazingly playful lyrics (”BOY BOY BOY If we’re mean, i would start a fight tonight” songs about playfighting <3) and on top of THAT, Paula Seling. Paula is the STAR of this performance, stealing the show every time she’s shown with deliciously flirtatious facial expressions

and some vocal masturbation in the guise of a dolphin impersonation.

She and Ovi and ignite the place with both insane pyrotechnics and spontaneous chemistry. So fun, SO GOOD, so dynamic especially for an act where the main singers sit down in front of a double-headed plexiglass piano (😍). Duncan Laurence DEAD in a motherfucking DITCH.

And with this update we have eliminated FIVE countries. Check their reviews below:

GEORGIA

Georgia is such a bizarre Eurovision country, often churning out absolutely BONKERS entries that leave Europe stunned in silence. <3 It may not be reflected in their vital statistics but I always look forward for what they have on offer because even in the rare case of them being boring, they are always interesting.

BELARUS

Belarus was one of the worst countries in the 00s, but in the 2010s they’ve evolved into a bargain bin Moldova, which makes them solidly good. It’s really astounding that a country SO GOOD at being entertaining gets dismissed so easily because of their flag (and dictatorship (and gay rights)). They’re mostly good and 100% worthy of our time, tyvm!!

SWEDEN

The worst part of Sweden’s success streak is that it made them conceited and lazy. They no longer need to be innovative, creative or entertaining in order to get a top five position and worse, they are fully aware of it. This resulted in a marked drop in quality and if they don’t curb their hubris quickly, I predict it will soon come back to bite them. (ie: another NQ)

SWITZERLAND

B A S I C. Zibbz and Luca did a lot of the heavy lifting here, which caused Switz to mathematically outrank Sweden, and while that’s hilarious it also feels absurd and wrong. Don’t be fooled by all that green though. Switzerland are basic bitches and have no idea what to do in order to be cool.

ROMANIA

Romania are one of the better hit-or-miss countries in Eurovision, imo even if the chart doesn’t fully reflect it. The problem I have with them is that their entries don’t have a long shelf life. Like, the Cezars and Ilincae of this world grow stale very quickly because they’re exhausting and shallow. Having said that, this is by far preferable over being consistently boring (UK) or violently oscillating between great and demonic entries (Germany, Demark).

#Eurovision #Eurovision Song Contest #Georgia #Belarus #Sweden #Switzerland #Romania #Nika Kocharov & Young Georgian Lolitaz #Midnight Gold #navimumbai #Story of my life #Historija majho zyccia #Måns Zelmerlöw #Heroes #ZiBBZ #stones #Paula Seling #Ovi #playing with fire

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cyanpeacock · 4 years

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Christ.

Again, sleep is not forthcoming.

Busy mind. Restless body.

Anyway.

Here's a fun thing about genetics.

You're changing the way your genes are expressed, all the time.

The code itself stays the same. However, dependent on external signals, little machines in your cells add and remove little tags from your DNA, changing the way it curls up.

Some tags make the DNA open up, so the genes nearby can be turned into molecules that do something somewhere in your body. Other tags make the DNA close up, so no more of the nearby genes get turned into useful molecules.

This means that by changing what you do, you can literally change how your genetics work!

For instance, you might go through a really long, tough period in your life, and you feel very bad, for a long time. Little machines in your cells respond to those signals, and put a tag on your DNA next to a gene for a serotonin receptor, to make it close up. You make less serotonin receptors as a result of the difficult period.

Hang on, you might think - that's going to make me feel worse!

Yes! It does! Feeling worse motivates you to act and change something, even if the thing you do doesn't seem to help (e.g. ruminating on your bad feeling).

Thinking a lot about your bad feeling can help. Even if the only conclusion you can come to is that you have to find a way to stop feeling bad - that's the start of change. You might roll over in bed and google "how to stop thinking about suicide." You read something, and try to learn from it.

You gather information to try and feel better. That's you being a hunter-gatherer species in a wild that doesn't have many cool rocks to pick up. You picked up a self-help article instead of a rock. That means you're serving your purpose! You can't help it!

As you learn more and more helpful things, you find you can do more and more helpful things. The little machines that add the tags change their minds! They go oh! Things are better now? Alright, let's open up that bit of the DNA, and let this poor depressed bitch make some more serotonin receptors, so they can actually feel it!

This is a process you literally cannot stop, short of killing yourself - and animals only kill theirselves when the information they've gathered says there is no way to live, no way to go on. It's okay. This too is natural.

We get the feeling of being suicidal, because it warns us that it will come to that if we don't change something in our external environment, or something about the information we have, and how we use it.

We engage in parasuicide - non-fatal suicidal gestures - to alert other humans to the fact that something is urgently wrong, and we need help to change it. This might be as little as a soothing conversation with a paramedic. You still feel bad, because more needs to change, but you do feel a bit better.

Self harm is a little different. It can be to alert other humans that something is wrong, but it can also be to make your body make endorphins to counter the pain you're feeling. Endorphins are the feel-good chemicals that get released when you exercise - one, called anandamide, is quite similar to the chemicals found in weed. You know the phrase "high on life"? It gives you a buzz. The buzz lifts you up!

Of course, this has consequences. Because the buzz lifts you up, the little machines need to make sure you know that things are still bad, and that you can't just cut yourself forever to solve it. This is why self harm seems to help at first - it does! - but can then become addictive, and reinforce depression. Your body needs the feel-good chemicals, but only knows one easy way to get enough of them, and feeling bad about it makes you seek change.

So, basically, your body is doing exactly what it needs to do to survive. How you feel about that depends on your code, and what's all around you, and what's in your head right now - and what that makes your little machines do. (The little machines also get made by the code. The cycle is wack. It goes so deep.)

I think it's awesomely cool. Look at you go! Even though you might not be conscious of it, and you might literally want to die, you're still trying to change the way the code that makes you, you, gets expressed.

That's awesome. I'm proud of you. You "can't help it," but you already are helping it, funnily enough, with everything you do - because you're working with everything you know that helps, and still trying to find more.

Keep going, sexy broken machine. The spares and repairs are out there. You'll find them, and use them, and build yourself anew - at least until the hardware burns out. 💙

#fliptext #suicide #self harm #trauma

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microsoftedgy69 · 5 years

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Goliath, part 2

[prologue] [part 1]

You're in the middle of sparring when you realize. The main plan doesn't exactly involve much actual combat, but some of the What-Ifs do. If push comes to shove, you might have to go hand to hand at some point, and you haven't done that in half a decade -- because you were glasses for most of that time, and terrified of physical violence for the rest -- so you made yourself a classic old sparring bot to get back into it. It's simple, pure metal with no discernible face and a fighting program that's supposed to learn from your moves and attempt to always get one step ahead of you. It's Brobot without the emotional baggage, essentially.

You're not far from the shore where your boat is anchored, and are rolling through the dirt with a pair of metal wrists in your hand, when you realize that you have been corrupted.

Something is wrong with your output. When you go through your logs, they tell you that you must have been talking, even though you don't remember saying anything. When you check your blog, there are several posts you don't recall putting there. You hurry to check your messages, but it doesn't seem to have gone that far -- thankfully, you haven’t told any of your friends to obey, submit, or consume lately.

Yesterday's craving for cookies makes more sense now, you think. It's also fantastically ridiculous.

It doesn't worry you much. You can get her propaganda out of your system, you've done it before. It doesn't worry you much, until you try to move away from the sparring bot, and your body does something entirely else instead.

In stunned silence, you watch your first surge forward and, with force you knew you had in you but never actually used, punch right into the metal head. You watch the material give, dent, then break, watch the edges cut into your hand, wrist, then arm. Your shark skin is so tough that in the year of you having it, nothing has actually broken through it before, but this will do it.

You have pain receptors, carefully crafted long ago, but you don’t feel anything, right now. You feel like you are glasses again, perched on somebody else’s nose, watching idly whatever the hell this guy is doing with his body. None of it seems like a very good idea, to you, but it doesn’t feel like your call to make. Your hand takes a shard of metal from the sparring bot’s face, and then your body pushes itself upright. You look down as you get a better grip on the shard, aim, and plunge it right into your own stomach.

Hm.

Well.

That doesn’t really do much of anything to you. You still don’t feel any pain, and when you pull the piece of metal back out of yourself, you can see something thick and brown ooze out of the wound.

It’s chocolate milk.

You must have hit your synthetic stomach that also doesn’t actually do much, digestion-wise. It just sort of keeps the food there for a bit until you go to the bathroom. This will be a bitch to fix, but it’s nothing you’re not prepared for.

The thought pulls you back, pulls your mind in between your shoulders, pushes your thoughts through the wires inside your arms. Yeah, right, you were prepared for this. It’s not part of Plan A. You didn’t want this to happen, but you suspected it might. Your emergency protocol in case of corruption was to put up a bunch of fake information about yourself she could find, like that your vital hardware is located in your stomach. It’s not. That would be stupid. It’s sprinkled all over your body in multiple hard to reach places, like the important piece of storage that’s lodged deep in your right thigh. She doesn’t seem to know that, which means she can’t have gotten very far yet.

You can get her back out.

Unfortunately, realizing what’s happening and pulling your consciousness back into your body has reminded you that you can, in fact, feel pain.

Crying out, you crumple to the floor, your good hand clutching your bad hand clutching your stomach. For several seconds, you don’t know where to start -- you can turn off the pain, but you should amp up your security software first, you need to get her out but you can’t do that if your mind is clouded with the pain of a stab wound to the guts and your hand falling apart but if you waste too much time getting the pain under control she might advance further into your data and you can’t have her finding out where your real vital hardware lies ---

Your scream rips through the undergrowth, loud enough to make a flock of birds flee from a nearby tree, to make you feel the vibrations of your own voice hum through the roof of your mouth. That helped. Kicking her out is a matter of a few, practiced steps. You can take care of the pain later; you’ve felt worse before.

So you stay where you are, curled up into a little ball, eyes screwed shut, teeth clenched, fingers twisting into each other, enduring. You’ve stopped crying out -- you’ve stopped making any noise at all, only focusing on your very inside, on what keeps you running, what makes you you. This by far isn’t her first attempt at corrupting you or your brothers, and over the years you’ve learned to adapt, keep updating your anti-virus, keep finding new measures that keep up with whatever she has been up to. You assume that this time she got in because you must have left some sort of trace on the drone you and Roxy sent her, which of course isn’t ideal. It means, however, that you opened the door for her, and you damn well know how to close it again.

She doesn’t put up much of a fight. You assume that she got what she came here for -- your vital organs and your immediate future plans. If you put up enough of a struggle, you figure, she will believe in that success.

The second you reach 0% corruption, you slump forward, face first into the dirt. It muffles your pained groan for the few beats you spend like this, before your feet start shifting against the ground in an attempt to somehow deal with the feeling of having a hole in your stomach. The way through your programming to turn off pain, at least, is a quick one now.

You flip the switch, and stop feeling anything. The moan you let out doesn’t vibrate through your mouth, but at least you hear it. You almost laugh at yourself. You don’t quite feel like it, though.

Walking the Earth with your touch receptors turned off is always weird, but it helps you get things done quickly. You check in on your brothers first, to make sure neither of them got caught in any sort of crossfire. They are fine, your plants are fine, your cat and your fish are fine. You want to pat yourself on the back for acting quickly enough, but once you chuck the broken sparring bot into your workroom and then sit down there to fix yourself, that sentiment leaves you pretty quickly.

You fix your stomach, then glue the cuts in your skin shut again, both your stomach and your hand. It looks like you have scars now, for the first time in your artificial life. In the back of the room, you have way more skin left over, rolled up like fabric, but you’d have to sew a whole new suit from it if you wanted to keep a body without scars. You don’t have time for that right now. You have to-- you want to act fast.

You have just about fucking had it.

Once you’re all glued up, you turn your receptors back on, then leave the workroom to say goodbye to the bots, your pets, and all of your plants. You check your sylladex to make sure that you have what you need on you -- a copy of SBURB, Dirk’s hand grenade. You step out on the deck, unnecessarily roll your shoulders, and message Roxy.

They reply immediately.

TT: She took the bait. See you in Rainbow Falls in five. TG: EFFIN finally TG: make it 3

Three it is. You nod to yourself, and open every other conversation that currently matters to you. To Alma, you say,

TT: Hey, I gotta bounce. There’s a note on the fridge about pet and plant care. TT: Thanks. TT: You know, for all of it. TT: Catch you on the flipside.

Messaging Palooka makes you a bit more nervous, but you don’t want to leave without another word.

TT: I’m off now. TT: Still reachable, but I’m on my way. TT: Just wanted to let you know. TT: I’ll stop by when I’m back.

You open your conversation with your… your ex-boyfriend, you suppose, too. You haven’t talked, since you told him what you’re doing. Something in you wants to let him know, but you don’t quite see the point in telling him that you’re actually leaving now. You wouldn’t know what to say, anyway. And if you stare at this any longer, your three minutes will be up.

sometimes to get to god, first you gotta meet the devil.

Your name used to be Dirk Strider. When you were a child, you were the loneliest person in the universe, and all you wanted to do was matter. Then one day, when you were thirteen, you woke up and were not Dirk Strider anymore. You had been demoted to a knock-off, a less important version of yourself that couldn’t physically do anything, that nobody cared about. You had to sit back and watch other people be relevant, watch other people do things and take control of their lives, while you were struggling with the mere concept of being a living person.

Jake doesn’t understand your constant urge to mean something. You didn’t expect him to; he’s been through this, he’s played his own session of the Game, he doesn’t want to hear anything about it anymore. You get it. It’s fine. He doesn’t have to understand that you need this, that you’ve been craving this since the second you were transferred into a pair of sunglasses, and that it’s the one, the final thing you have to do, to prove to yourself that you are a person.

You are real and you exist in this world, and you are going to leave a dent in it.

You sit on the roof of Roxy’s house while they set up the computers for your two-player session, and you send out pings into the universe. She will come here. You know she will. She found your fake body blueprints, and she found your fake future plans that showed you stopping her whole operation from Earth. She has enough incentive to get her shitty red spaceship back here, but no idea what actually awaits her. No idea that you and Roxy are ready to fuck this entire timeline just to get back at her.

You sit on the roof of Roxy’s house, and you wait for Her Imperial Condescension to come to you, so you can kill her. She will do what you want her to. People always do, sooner or later. You will get her where you want her, then you will induce the apocalypse, and kill the tyrant that has tormented you over the course of your entire existence.

And then, you think, with all of that out of the way, with your home timeline reduced to dust and your nemesis caught in the ensuing detonation of all you knew growing up, you will finally be ready, to go. To move on.

This is your moment in the spotlight. None of this is necessary for anyone else, except for maybe Roxy -- this planet is dead. Sitting on the roof, you overview the remnants of a society that has long since been eradicated. You are doing this for yourself. You are making yourself relevant, to only yourself.

It’s your gift, to you.

You run your fingertips over your other hand, feeling the scars in the rough skin of your forearm, and close your eyes. It feels good to be real.

#action post #posted ooc #goliath #whoaaaaaa were halfway theeeeere #WARNINGS #mindcontrol ;#violence ;#MENTIONED #mindparkour #jakepalooka #golgoodthimes #the gang basically #i........... dont know how this got so long. but im having fun and thats what matters

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stitches-for-solo · 5 years

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I Dunno About This One...

Sorry for the wall of text. This is why I need to figure out how to put in a “Keep Reading” cut.

I feel like I slept all day. Probably because essentially, I did. I’m sliding further and further back down the hole I threw myself into a long time ago, and am watching the progress I’ve made since the almost dying incident vanish before my eyes. I know fucking well enough that I’m responsible for my own actions, but little things here and there only give me a tiny bump of positivity, motivation, and energy, if anything at all. (I keep thinking of the minute payback of doing something small, like getting dressed, like taking a little bump of coke off a key, which, to be clear, I’ve never done.) To be frank, considering my mindset and the effort little things can take when you aren’t well, some days, it’s not worth it. Almost instantly, my dysfunctional brain gobbles it all up as fast as it can. Like... [insert creative comparison here, akin to a starved man who’s just been served a 5-course meal, but, y’know, creative]. In theory, if I could take all the little bits of brightness I can manage to churn out and hoard them all in one big pile, ingesting them at the appropriate time, satiating my chemical receptors, and then letting them rest, regulating the process, I would. (Depression for Dummies?) Just like my problems with alcohol and drugs, my brain is a fiend for serotonin, that instant gratification, and there’s nothing I can do about it, or any deficiencies of other neurotransmitters (dopamine, norepinephrine) I probably have. (And man is it sloppy up there in my head, which is appropriate, since I’m the epitome of messy. Unorganized. Shit is everywhere, yet I know where everything is. Yeah, I’m one of those... but it’s not dirty — don’t ever call me dirty. It’s simply a disaster to the untrained eye. I’ve actually read articles linking neglecting to clean with depression, but I’m not sure where or how credible any of the research was. It makes no difference — either way, I’m not the best at keeping areas tidy. I keep going off topic...)

Anyway, I’m really in no condition to do anything drastic that would potentially yield a more substantial “reward”. Everyone tells me to just try. Try the little things, and you’ll adjust, and before you know it, you’ll be ready for more significant things. But good things are just that — good. They aren’t fixes and they aren’t cures. And I’m not using the previous sentence as an excuse to lay down and give up. I’m just being realistic. I know too much about my own problems, thanks to my higher education. I know too much and my peers/family know too little. There’s gotta be a balance between the right actions/effort and the right medication(s), and none of that is happening for me. There’s not a whole lot I can do about my medications, besides take them. It’s apathy that’s the fucking bitch. Why did I sleep till 3pm and not get out of bed until 5pm? Because I didn’t care, you can’t make me care, and I certainly can’t make myself care. (Also, I stayed up all night and it was really cold in my house so I didn’t want to get out from under the blankets...)

Now consider this — it would be one thing if that’s all that I was dealing with. But that’s just a portion of it, and I don’t even know what is wrong with me anymore. Sometimes I wonder if I’m just weak and make bad decisions, then blame said bad decisions on my weak resolve to even try to do the right thing. Maybe I’m just overly sensitive and I am content with wallowing in my own self-inflicted misery. After all, I get to be the laziest, most spoiled bitch I know, sometimes. Big emphasis on sometimes. But then something inevitably happens, and that sick fantasy is shattered over and over again and I have to face facts — it’s not just my personality. I think it’s normal for me to sorta gravitate towards strange things and (trying to choose my words wisely here) unique people. But unless everyone I know is hiding things from me, I sure do feel like a dysfunctional fool a lot of the time when I try to explain certain thoughts or feelings or physical responses that I have to various stimuli. I don’t mind being different. I don’t think there is anything wrong with being drawn to the macabre and unusual things. I enjoy horror movies/books and crime shows, and like researching things like diseases, old torture practices, serial killers, and the crazy shit you can supposedly find on the dark web. And yeah, I’ll cheer for the bad guy. (Kylo 🖤) None of that makes me disturbed or ill. I like normal things, too, like cats, space, sports, game shows, and the Food Network. And music is sometimes my salvation. It’s my thoughts & actions that bother me. I was driving last night and I had a pretty pathetic thought: I don’t have a mental illness; I’m mentally ill. 😶

It probably sounds ridiculous and that I’m dramatic, lazy, not trying, overreacting, making excuses, annoying or even infuriating, but I don’t share everything that goes on upstairs with just anyone. I’ve been places, and I do not want to go back. I will not go back. So I keep my mouth shut. It tends to get me no where good or anywhere fast. Which is fine; I think it’s throwing a wrench in my doctor’s attempt to properly treat me, but if I was completely open and honest, I don’t really know what would transpire and where I’d end up. And in terms of friends/family, I firmly believe it drives people away. I see it. I’m not stupid. People abandon me. They tell me I deserve better, but they don’t give me better. Maybe they just want someone else to do it. They want to know it’s happening, but don’t want to/ can’t put the effort in themselves. I know I’m not verbally or emotionally abused or mistreated, and I think I tend to treat people as they do me. I don’t yell at people unprovoked. (There are exceptions, one of which I have written about above.) I don’t attack my friends and then try to make them feel guilty about it. Sometimes I get frustrated when I get sent pictures of someone’s (boyfriend’s) brand new house for the 6th time and I have to be all excited for them, meanwhile I’m living in my little sister’s old room. Yep, I had to move back in with my parents because I got too sick to be alone and had no where else to go. My mother wouldn’t even give me my old room back. And equally as frustrating is when I have to hear for the 15th time “I put my hand in the cage, and it bit me again. This time I’m bleeding. I know something isn’t right and it has to change..” But then, it’s right back to the same. And I get it. I’ve been there. My ex ripped my heart to shreads, and not just once. And I just kept letting him hurt me, because I believed that somehow, if I just kept trying, if I just kept changing, if I just let all the shitty parts run their course(s), in the end, it would be worth it. Was it? Of course not!

It’s fucking frustrating when someone you care about is being mistreated. In fact, it blows my mind what some people will put up with, but again, I understand, because I did it, too. I think it’s a lesson everyone has to learn for themselves at their own pace and on their own time. These things aren’t teachable. And I know it’s selfish, but sometimes I get a little irritated that I end up so far down on a friend’s list of priorities when I’m only trying to help, and I feel like I could use some help, too. There’s other contributing factors and every situation is unique, of course. But when I’m just trying to be genuine and caring, even if it does come off as harsh, that sucks. But it’s life. It just makes me feel like I’m believing a heaping pile of bs, which does upset me. I’m not egotistical. I don’t need to be #1. But there’s a big difference between not being #1 and being put off to the side so the friend in question can go spend time with the someone else who treats them like absolute shit. (I need to expand on this, because it’s misleading, and I don’t believe an explanation will fit in this post. I’ve also moved things around so much, I feel like it’s not flowing properly, so I’ll be making an additional entry — in a little while. So wait before you judge or assume anything.) But I’m also not stupid. I say that a lot, but my actions must betray my words. Somehow I must be giving off the vibe that I’m an idiot. It’s painful, especially when I want to give more of myself to someone.. invest more time, energy, support, all those things, into the friendship, but the feeling isn’t mutual. I wonder what people think of me. “I don’t want anything to do with her, but she’s fucking insane so I’m afraid she might come after me or hurt herself...” I mean, I am crazy, am I not? So why wouldn’t someone think that? Especially when I’ve heard the same words come out of their mouth before, but about someone else. And I’m not just talking about one or two people here. This seems to be an ongoing theme, and the common factor is me. When I was going through rough times with my ex, I think that’s when the alienation from some of my friends started. I guess they could only take so much, and everyone has a limit, but I also think the person being hurt sees things very differently than those on the outside. I can’t do much, y’know? So I try to give advice or help, but I think I need to learn to back off. I’m scared I’m destroying the relationships with the few people I have left in my life. Sometimes I already feel a shift. Hell, I know things are different. I don’t want to lose everything I have left with my handful of friends, but I am not the type of person who can take unhappiness and paranoia and anything else negative and just squash it and keep quiet. I have to let things out, or they grow until they reach monstrous proportions and I completely lose control. As annoying as it is, I have to ask family and friends “is everything okay?” “Did I do something wrong?” “Are you mad at me?” and eventually it escalates to “What the hell did I do?” “Why are you ignoring me?” etc.. Christ, I must be fun to know.

I was kind of writing before about things that make me feel happy. Having friends made me happy, and I try, but it seems that beyond talking online, no one wants to take me up on any offers anymore. I think I burned all my bridges and trying to start all over is challenging at my age when most people have careers and families. I don’t fit in anymore, and honestly, I have a suspicion that potential dating partners my age are still single because they’re not interested in settling down. I feel like I’m going to end up alone. This wasn’t how things were supposed to be. Life was supposed to be so much more fulfilling and just a pleasure to live. I know everyone goes through rough patches, and I absolutely hate talking like this, but I know I was expected to be so much more than this. It wasn’t me who was pegged as the one who would make such a fucking mess out of everything. I’m in a position where putting myself out there for rejection is a bad, very bad idea. It’s damaging. But so is being alone/surrounded by people who you don’t get along with. I’m stuck; I don’t know what to do, where to turn, and who really cares. One more note about friends.. Or who I refer to as my friends. I write about them in here, and they don’t even know this blog exists. No one really checks up on me, and I know that could be for lots of reasons. I don’t tend to reach out anymore either, but it’s because I don’t really have anything to offer. One of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do was to accept that my old best friend didn’t consider me his best friend anymore. I guess it’s been a while now, and I’m okay with just calling him a “friend” or by his name. But it was tough. I was so broken down about my breakup that I completely fell apart, and he really just abandoned me. I’d see all the pictures he would post on Facebook.. out hanging out with his “BFF”, all smiles and having fun while I’d stayed in bed and cried all day with no one left to go to for comfort or company. I felt so disgusting, needy, weak, insignificant, hopeless.. all this after I let him borrow a substantial amount of money because he had moved 1500 miles away and needed financial help getting home because he had decided he didn’t want to be there anymore. I was so desperate and distraught that I let him borrow.. a lot of money. And that was what I was met with when he got back. I was still alone, he never wanted to hang out because I was always so down, and I haven’t seen a dime of my money. I could go on... but I won’t. Lesson learned.

I think there’s some parts here that don’t make sense. I was copying and pasting and moving stuff around and adding/deleting things, and it’s almost 7am. I might work on this later after I get some sleep. Or I might decide it’s a waste of time cause no one reads my rants anyway. Obviously I didn’t mean to offend anyone, and I mean no ill will towards anyone I know. Like I said, there are some things I just have to get off my chest.

#Mental Health #Depression #Friends #Friendships #Rambling Rant #Lonely #Alone #Expanded Above

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pimientos-especiales · 5 years

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So I was on this website trying to print out a bread recipe, and this article caught my attention

SAY NO TO NUTELLA, IT IS POISONING YOU AND YOUR CHILDREN

I’m like, oh boy, this oughtta be good. IT DOES NOT DISAPPOINT.

In order to protect our kids from the harmful GMO foods, we all must stand and say one large and loud NO. These foods are even advertised as healthy ones.

Yeah the literal decades that GMOs have been around with absolutely no evidence of harmful side effects are like... whatever. And yeah bitch, corn IS healthy, GMO or not (fun fact, all corn is technically genetically modified. We’ve modified it so much over the millennia that the kind we eat can’t grow on its own anymore. Also it used to look more like a pretzel stick before all our genetic modifications.

Image source: http://thescientistgardener.blogspot.com/2010/04/how-teosinte-lost-its-shell.html

People are convinced by the intensive advertising that Nutella is healthy for our kids, but the bitter truth is that it cannot be even listed in the group of healthy foods.

All right. I mean it’s a nut spread, so yeah, it’s not on my list of most healthy foods.

In fact, all the ingredients contained in Nutella aren’t harmful or GMOs, but the product will be harmful with only one bad ingredient.

[citation needed]

You should know that there are four harmful substances included in Nutella.

The Dangers of Nutella:

Oh boy here we go!

Soy

The Asian people will disagree with this statement because the soy is part of their diet for centuries. Actually, they consume small amounts of naturally grown soybeans, opposite of the western civilizations today that eat artificial soy in pretty big quantities.

Fun fact: Literally nothing in this article has any sort of source backing up any of these claims.

Now I know, from using my eyes, that in the U.S. we do in fact have actual soybeans on the market. I’ve eaten them many times. What is artificial soy? They don’t say.

Nutella contains soy lecithin which is dangerous for the human’s health.

Was this written by a robot? “The human’s health” who talks like that?

Soy lecithin is apparently produced from soybean oil, so... not artificial. It’s literally produced by actual soybeans. It takes some science to get it out, but it’s a byproduct of soybeans, and not like... fake soybeans. Also the first result in my search bar says soy lecithin is widely used even in health food stores. It’s a pretty neat article, it lays out the pros and cons of soy lecithin, pointing out there’s more benefits than risks. Also it’s full of sources to external websites! https://draxe.com/what-is-soy-lecithin/

It is connected with thyroid depression, uncontrolled weight gain, late menstruation, fatigue, premature entry into puberty and breast cancer.

Late menstruation AND early puberty, at the same time? Also as a woman, I wouldn’t complain about starting my period later than it did. Actually, don’t we have a problem in this country with girls starting puberty a little too early? Like, when they’re younger than 10? From the hormones they were putting in cow milk? This website, written by an author about a book someone else wrote, talks about the declining age for the start of menstruation and puberty: http://www.cwhn.ca/en/node/39365

(see, it’s not that hard to get sources, even when you’re cherry-picking to back up your own opinion)

Also that article I linked to earlier (the draxe) one says soy lecithin may PREVENT cancer, lower cholesterol, relieves menopause symptoms, and help deal with stress. So basically the article that has sources is saying the opposite of the one without sources. HM.

I’ll give them the thyroid thing, the thyroid is dumb and sensitive as shit, it probably does wig out over soy lecithin.

Sugar

Nutella contains derived from GMO sugar beef

what

which is inexpensive and filled with pesticides and altered sugar that our body cannot recognize.

Okay there’s no such thing as “sugar beef”. What are you talking about?? Okay according to Nutella, they have BEET SUGAR, which is different from sugar beef (which sounds like a weird nickname you’d give your hung husband). Pretty much every food has pesticides on it. That’s why GMOs are so popular, they breed stuff into them so they’ll naturally repel bugs and won’t be covered in pesticides! Oh, oops. And golly, the Nutella website says their beet sugar/sugar cane is non-GMO. Talk about a coincidence!

And aren’t beets a root vegetable? How much pesticides would be on the sugar extracted from a root vegetable?

I’ll say it again, it is very cheap. These sugars are considered as neurotoxins since they can penetrate the blood brain barrier which results with elimination of the brain cells. They are also related with ailments such as ADHD, ADD, autism, migraine, anxiety, depression, etc.

Yeah, companies like it when things are cheap to harvest and produce, because people don’t like buying expensive food. GOLLY.

Also considering scientists still have no idea what causes autism, [x] doubt. All right, I’ll give that it does make sense to link neurotoxins with neurological impairments. The blood-brain barrier works to prevent toxins from reaching the brain. It’s just, you know, if there’s a lot of that stuff in your blood, it’ll get to your brain.

I’m not convinced, however, that sugar from beet roots are neurotoxins.

Also, manganese is a neurotoxin but also there’s a Daily Recommended Value for adults and children to consume it. So, neurotoxins on their own aren’t bad for you. If you had way over the daily recommended value like every day, that would be bad.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manganese#Biological_role That article has like 200 sources on it!

ALSO if you want to talk about Nutella being bad, just point out that it has a lot of sugar in it. If it was healthy, it wouldn’t have sugar. Or at least, not as much sugar. The end.

Skim Milk

You can see a green meadows and happy cows on every milk package, which is an advertising trick of course.

Where the hell are you shopping that it’s just a label that says “SKIM”?

The milk inside is not a skim milk, but pus filled milk of sick cows that were exposed on GMO including corn, antibiotics and many other things that are meant to decrease the costs.

“Decrease the costs” of WHAT? You not only have no sources, but you don’t elaborate on what you’re talking about!

Milk is NOT pus-filled. Food sellers don’t want their food to be gross. That’s just logic.

I brought up the cows on hormones thing, I think places are getting better about not pumping their cows full of stuff, but okay, I’ll give you that one, crazy lady.

“many other things” [citation needed][what things?]

At the end the resulting product is odorless milk that contains powdered milk. Powdered milk contains the most dangerous type of bad cholesterol.

Okay so according to Nutella, they used skimmed milk powder. Which makes sense, since it’s not a dairy product, that there wouldn’t be FRESH MILK but rather, powder.

The lady who wrote this is one of those judgmental bitches who complains about women formula-feeding their babies, I’m sure. So, powdered milk is just milk that’s evaporated, pretty much. Because dry stuff has a longer shelf life than wet. Apparently the powdering process makes the cholesterol really concentrated, but there’s a lot of debate about whether it’s bad or not.

Here’s an article about soy milk. It’s not a super professional source, but it’s well-written, at least. https://www.organicfacts.net/skim-milk.html

Vanillin

The label of every vanillin says that it doesn’t include artificial colors, but the vanillin itself is an artificial flavor.

This part is honestly what prompted this post. Just read it again. You want to me to take your scare-mongering seriously and you say that?

Also here’s the Nutella page on vanillin

So, uh, they flatout say that their vanillin is synthetic. The nutritional label says the vanillin they use is an artificial flavor. What it also says is “contaisn no artificial colors”. So this dumbass is accusing Nutella of lying because they can’t read a label or think artificial colors and flavors are the same thing.

Nutella also goes on to explain, in a way that matches what I’d already read, that although vanillin is naturally produced by vanilla pods, they can’t get enough vanillin just that way, so they synthesize some of it. Vanilla is so hard to harvest, because you get like no flavor even out of a ton of beans, so that’s why natural vanilla is so much more expensive than vanilla extract.

It is able to trick our brain and make you feel the true vanilla flavor.

Natural vanillin smells like vanilla, so... okay.

The brain is easily tricked.

The truest thing this article has said.

Vanillin is a neurotoxin which is capable to kill the brain cells.

Oh here we go again.

In addition, vanillin makes us addictive

you mean addicted? You got paid to write this article!

while connecting the receptors in the brain and releasing serotonin, the hormone of happiness.

Oh no, this food makes you feel happy when you eat it! Throw it away! If only mankind were capable of self-control and could just stop eating something sometimes if they realize they’ve had too much of it today! Everyone should be sad all the time always!

Also, anyone notice that these terrible side effects are all opposite to each other? One of them causes depression but another causes happiness. Do they not balance each other out? Or is it some sinister thing like first the sugar makes you depressed, then the vanilla makes you happy, so you think you need to keep buying the Nutella to keep yourself happy because the Nutella is making you depressed? And then you’re broke and homeless because you spent all your money on Nutella.

Also, apparently there’s like 0.08 g of vanillin per 400g container of Nutella. So that’s 0.0002%. For 400 g. A serving size is about 37 g, so that’s 0.0074g of vanillin per serving. So, negligible. THE HORROR.

It is produced in China petroleum-based factories which makes this country one of the largest producers of vanillin in the world.

I mean it’s nit-picking, but what a poorly-constructed sentence.

China is one of the largest producers of pretty much everything. It’s a large country and companies know they can get really cheap labor from there.

I hope these facts

“that I couldn’t be bothered to provide ONE source for”

are enough for you to decide to throw away these neurotoxins, GMO sugar, cheap and artificial vanilla and say one big, decisive NO to Nutella.

Don’t Forget To Share With Your Friends And Family On Facebook, As You Might Help Someone In Need!

Yeah if I know anyone in need I’ll forward them this article. Sure they’re penniless and homeless because of all the Nutella they bought, but at least they’ll have a printout of this article to use for firewood!

Also I can’t believe they didn’t mention palm oil! Now, Nutella says their palm oil is ethically harvested and sustainable and isn’t contributing to deforestation, but if you’re going to write an article full of unsourced half-truths anyway, why not bring that up?

Here’s the Nutella website that I referenced a few times: https://www.nutella.com/en/us/inside-the-jar1 Sources also came from Wikipedia, because it was sometimes the only source I could find that had professional sources on it and weren’t like “hippiebullshit.org” websites.

I just really liked that even the organic/healthy eating websites were contradicting this person. Also, shockingly, the article was closed for comments!

Now I’m no expert, but Nutella has sugar and cocoa in it, so just from that I would assume it’s not actually the health food Nutella pretends it is. But I think it’s going to be among the least of your worries when it comes to food that may kill you.

#long post #the gmos are poisoning our water supply!

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ntfitness-blog · 7 years

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Steroids for Dummies

Anabolic steroids are synthetic analogs or derivatives of Testosterone and nor-testosterone. In the 1930s, scientists found that these anabolic steroids could increase the growth of muscle in lab animals. The compounds were then used to treat debilitating diseases in humans.

In the 1950s, a doctor, John Ziegler had dispensed an oral anabolic steroid by the name of Dianabol. Soon after, athletes began to use this steroid in order to increase muscle mass and strength. Soon, more and more analogs and derivatives were being made available to athletes.

While all steroids have the same four ring carbon structure, simple chemical alterations produced different effects in terms of anabolic/androgenic activity. Anabolic activity refers to the steroid’s ability to facilitate skeletal muscle growth, while androgenic activity refers to how potent the drug is at inducing the development of male sexual characteristics (facial hair, deep voice, the ability to channel surf and watch six TV programs at once, etc.)

How They do Dat?

Now, even though all of the exact mechanisms through which anabolic steroids exert their effects haven’t been discovered, they all increase muscle mass to some degree. One way steroids are believed to work is by binding to the androgen receptor (AR). Once the steroid has bound to the AR, it begins to activate protein synthesis. This protein synthesis allows for an increase in muscle tissue over a rather short period of time. T-mag contributor Bill Roberts has classified steroids such as these as “Class I.”

The other side of the coin would be steroids that bind to the AR slightly, or not at all. I think most of these steroids exert their effects by inhibiting the effects that glucocorticoids have upon muscle tissue. In other words, they prevent glucocorticoids from increasing glutamine synthetase and causing muscle tissue breakdown. This would be an anti-catabolic activity. This inhibition of glucocorticoids¹ effects may explain why most anabolic steroids work fairly well in the treatment of osteoperosis, since glucocorticoids can have influence or cause osteoperosis. This also backs up my belief, that on a mg per mg basis, Class II steroids will increase muscle tissue to a greater degree than Class I steroids.

While there still isn’t a clear cut explanation of how anabolic steroids exert their effects, these two mechanisms help to explain most steroid actions. Bill Roberts refers to these steroids that don’t exert their effects via the AR as “Class II.” Also, keep in mind that some steroids work via the AR as well as through non-AR mechanisms. It should also be noted that anabolic steroids increase the retention of nitrogen, potassium, sodium, phosphorous, and chloride.

Steroid Flavors: The differences between various ‘roids

Below I’ve compiled a list of some anabolic steroids, including their relative potency and some other info. Sometimes, the names of steroids can be confusing to a newbie. This is because you have the chemical name, the various brand names, and the slang or street names for each product.

For example, methandrostenolone is known to most people as Dianabol, but you probably hear it referred to as D-bol. Of course, you’ll likely be using the veterinary version called Reforvit-B, whose street name is Reffie or Reffie-B. Got all that? Don’t worry, the more you read the more you get used to all the terminology. To help you out, I’ve listed the chemical name as well as a few of the trade names for each 'roid.

Fluoxymesterone (Halotestin, Stenox)

This is a 17-alpha alkylated steroid. In other words, it’s been altered in order to withstand the liver’s “first pass” metabolism to a better degree, i.e., the liver doesn’t inactivate the stuff before it can exert its effects. Without this alkylation, you’d need much higher concentrations to get results, as is the case with any 17-AA. Anyhow, this steroid appears to have a lower affinity for the AR, but can agonize the receptor at higher dosages.

As far as “real world” effects, fluoxymesterone has a reputation for increasing strength to a large degree. However, gains in muscle mass on this steroid aren’t very great. In clinical settings, dosages range from 2.5 mg to 40 mg a day in divided dosages. However, bodybuilders have been known to use from 30 to 80 mg per day. It has a half-life of approximately 9.2 to 10 hours. (I’ll talk about why knowing about half-lives is important later.) Oh yeah, and it doesn’t aromatize. This means it’s not likely to convert to estrogen, the female hormone. In the real world, that means the risk getting gyno (bitch tits, i.e. breast tissue growth in males) is small to nonexistent.

Methandrostenolone (Dianabol, Reforvit, Anabol)

This 17-AA steroid was the first to be introduced to athletes in the 50s. Bodybuilders caught on soon after, no doubt. It’s aromatizable, and therefore can increase estrogen levels. Since it doesn’t bind very well to the AR, it’s thought that it works by antagonizing the effects of catabolic glucocorticoids.

D-bol has a great reputation for increasing both size and strength to a pretty good degree. While the half life isn’t readily available in the literature, it can be assumed through deductive reasoning that it’s around four to seven hours. Bodybuilders typically use around 25 to 100 mg per day depending on whether it’s used alone or in conjunction with another steroid (a practice calledstacking).

Stanozolol (Winstrol)

This steroid is also17-AA. It can’t aromatize and doesn’t bind very well to the AR. Consequently, it’s likely to exert its anabolic effects in a similar fashion to that of methandrostenolone. In other words, it affects glucocorticoids in a beneficial manner.

Another benefit may be its ability to antagonize or block progesterone from binding to receptors. Progesterone is one of the reasons why certain anabolics cause water retention.

Stanozolol has a great reputation for increases in strength as well as moderate increases in muscle mass. Actually, these “moderate” gains are rather impressive, considering that this drug doesn’t cause much water retention. In clinical settings, typical dosages are between 2 to 6 mg daily. In order to see desired effects, bodybuilders typically consume between 25 to 100 mg daily. While I can’t locate any literature on its half-life, based on its molecular composition it would seem to have a slightly longer half-life than most of the other orals. I’d say it’s likely to be in the range of 7 to15 hours.

Oxandrolone (sold as oxandrolone powder or Oxandrolona)

This is yet another 17-AA. It won’t aromatize but appears as though it will bind to the AR as long as the dosages are high enough. It has a reputation for increasing strength gains, as well as having a “hardening” effect. This is supported somewhat, as oxandrolone was shown to reduce subcutaneous fat to a greater degree than Testosterone. Whether this is an inherent property of all 17-AA steroids or an effect that’s unique to oxandrolone, I’m not sure.

Oxandrolone, along with most of the other synthetic steroids, are thought to be equally (if not more) anabolic than Testosterone on a milligram per milligram basis, while minimizing androgenic side effects. Oxandrolone was shown to have approximately six times the anabolic effect of methyltestosterone in human subjects, following oral doses. Oxandrolone may also increase the number of skeletal muscle androgen receptors.

In clinical settings, dosages have ranged from 1.25 to 80 mg per day. Bodybuilders may take anywhere from 25 to 160 mg per day. The half-life is approximately nine hours.

Methenolone Acetate and Enanthate (Primobolan)

This steroid doesn’t aromatize and can either be ingested via the acetate version or injected via the enanthate. This steroid does bind rather well to the AR and is known for its mild gains in muscle mass. Still, considering that it’ll cause next to zero water retention, these gains are rather good. (Note that some bodybuilders think certain steroids work better based solely on the weight they gain. In actuality, they could be just retaining a lot of water along with the muscle gains. These are the same guys who think they “lose” a lot of muscle after their cycle is completed, when they actually just lost much of the water they’d been holding.)

Clinical dosages that are commonly seen with methenolone range from 10 to 20 mg daily, sometimes a little higher for the oral version. For the enanthate version, dosages are usually 100 mg every two to four weeks. Bodybuilders typically use 400 to 1000 mg a week. The half-life appears to be very similar to Deca, perhaps slightly shorter. So with this in mind, I’d say the half-life would be around five to seven days.

Oxymetholone (Anadrol)

This 17-AA steroid can’t aromatize, but has been known to have progestenic properties and thus, can cause water retention. It has a great reputation for increasing muscle mass and strength to a large degree. It’s also thought to have a very high anabolic/androgenic ratio.

The typical dosage in clinical settings is one to five milligrams per kilogram of bodyweight per day. So, a 150 pound person would consume anywhere from 68 to 341 mg per day. However, the higher dosages aren’t employed that often. Bodybuilders typically consume around 50 to 150 mg per day. While I can’t find info on the half-life in the formal literature, it would seem it’s similar to that of stanozolol. Obviously, this isn’t a hard fact, but the half-life should be right in the neighborhood of 7 to15 hours. Only God and Bill Roberts know for sure.

Testosterone Enanthate, Cypionate, Propionate, Suspension (commonly called “T”)

This steroid can aromatize and binds well to the AR. It’s well known for its ability to produce great gains in muscle size and strength, provided that the dosages are high enough. It does cause quite a bit of water retention and has quite a few side effects when compared to the other anabolics.

Clinical dosages vary, but cypionate and enanthate are both injected every two to three weeks at dosages of around 200 to 300 mg. Propionate and suspension aren’t preferred as they don’t provide that long of a sustained release. Bodybuilders typically use around 500 to 1,000 mg per week. The cypionate ester has a half-life of around eight days. Enanthate is just slightly shorter and propionate is quite a bit shorter. By the way, Testosterone in a suspension has a half-life of only 10 to 100 minutes.

Nandrolone Decanoate and Laurate (usually referred to as Deca)

This steroid binds very well to the AR and doesn’t aromatize. It can produce moderate gains in muscle mass with little water retention. However, it, like oxymetholone, can be progestenic leading to water retention when higher dosages are used.

In clinical settings, dosages are around 50 to 100 mg every three to four weeks. Bodybuilders use around 300 to 800 mg per week. The decanoate ester has a half-life of six to eight days and the laurate ester commonly seen in veterinary products has a slightly longer half-life.

How do I get these here steer-oids anyway?

Easy! Just call 1-555-I WANNA TO BE HYOOGE and tell Gunter what you want! Tell him Cy sent ya! Okay, you knew I couldn’t give you a real source, right? Still, it doesn’t take much searching to find some gear. Searching on the Web is one way, or you can do it the old fashioned and usually more expensive way and look for one of the local dealers. I mean don’t go up to the largest guy in the gym and say in a loud voice, “Hey man, do you have any of that Reforvit stuff?” Just ask around in a discrete manner. Someone always knows a certain “guy.” For a more in depth look, check out Chris Shugart’s article called Getting the Gear.

How to Construct a Cycle: The Cliff Notes Version

The dosages should be determined after evaluating two things: one, what results you’d like to see and two, which drugs you’re stacking. There are other factors to consider, but for the sake of simplicity we’ll stick with these two for now.

Regardless of what type of results you’re looking for, it would be wise to stack two drugs that work through different mechanisms in order to get a synergistic effect. For instance, you’d get better results by stacking nandrolone with stanozolol as opposed to nandrolone and oxandrolone. This is because nandrolone and oxandrolone both bind to the AR. I’ve given you a few examples of stacks below. I’ll give a quick review afterward.

Stack 1: Nandrolone, 450 mg per week along with 50 mg per day of stanozololStack 2: Nandrolone, 450 mg per week along with 50 mg per day of methandrostenoloneStack 3: Oxandrolone, 40 mg per day along with 50 mg per day of stanozololStack 4: Testosterone enanthate, 500 mg per week along with 50 mg stanozolol or methandrostenolone per dayStack 5: Testosterone or nandrolone, 500 mg per week with 50 mg oxymetholone per dayStack 6: Methenolone, 600 mg per week with 50 mg per day stanozolol

Let’s take a closer look at the first stack. You’d inject 450 mg on day one and then six to eight days later another 450 mg and so on. The stanozolol (or any oral) would yield the best results when spread out as evenly as possible in order to allow the drug to remain in the bloodstream throughout the day.

Also, by knowing the half-lives of drugs, you can figure out, to an approximate level, how much of the drug is currently active in your body. So, if on day one you injected 450 mg, then on day seven or eight you should have around 225 mg that’s still active. When you inject another 450 mg, you then have approximately 675 mg of nandrolone in your body at that moment. However, that number then begins to slowly decline in an instant. By simply applying the half-life, you can figure out just how much of the drug is still in your bloodstream.

As a quick note, half-lives can vary depending on a number of factors, and this is why most texts give you a range, like four to nine hours. One such thing is the size of the person. Generally speaking, the larger the body mass of the person, the shorter the half-life is going to be. While some guys will only ingest oral steroids on the days that they work out, you don’t necessarily have to do this. Remember, you’re recovering on those off days, so why not help accelerate the process?

The oxandrolone and stanozolol stack above (#3) would be for those who are “needle phobic.” However, this particular stack shouldn’t be used for too long, because the 17-AA are the steroids that are most associated with liver damage.

As far as how long to stay “on” and how long to go “off,” here’s my take: It really depends on what your goals are. I mean, if you want to gain 35 pounds in two months, then chances are you won’t be able to cycle off and still attain that goal. If, however, you’re keeping safety in mind and would only like to gain something like eight to twelve pounds, then a two to three week “on,” followed for four to six weeks “off” cycle will suffice.

The Safest and Most Effective Cycles

The safest cycles would include, of course, the safest steroids, for a short period of time. The most effective cycle, on the other hand, is generally going to include the most risks. Such is the nature of steroids; the most effective stuff is also the most “dangerous,” so to speak. Also keep in mind that there’s no perfectly “safe” or risk-free steroid. One particular steroid may not give you gyno, but may be tough on the liver. Another may not be tough on the liver, but may increase the risk of your hair falling out. See what I mean? This is the “give and take” of the steroid game.

Below is an abbreviated list of the safest and most effective steroids in my opinion. “Gains” is basically defined by how much muscle mass you’ll put on. Side effects include the risk of liver damage, gynecomastia, water retention (edema), and possible hair loss.

SteroidSide EffectsGainsFluoxymesteroneRisk of liver damageLow-ModerateMethandrostenoloneHair loss, edema, gyno, liverModerateStanozololLiverModerateOxandroloneLiverLow-ModerateMethenolone *See belowLow-ModerateOxymetholoneLiver, edemaModerate-HighTestosteroneEdema, hair loss, gynoModerate-HighNandroloneSlight EdemaModerate-High

* Methenolone – As with all anabolic steroids, methenolone will cause some inhibition of your own Testosterone production and may cause some testicular atrophy, i.e. your balls may shrink a little. (They usually return to normal after you discontinue use, however.) You can greatly reduce these effects by simply using something like clomiphene (Clomid) both during and after the cycle.

Now, don’t get me wrong here. When I give these ratings for gains, I’m taking into account the dosages that people typically use. Any anabolic steroid can produce great gains in muscle mass if high enough dosages are used. However, it isn’t very feasible to ask someone to use 1,000 mg of oxandrolone per week.

The Tool Box

If you’re going to use any injectable gear, then of course you’re going to need some “darts.” You can pick up syringes at your local pharmacy unless your state has certain restrictions. Also, you can purchase needles online. Just do a little searching around and you’ll find several places that’ll hook you up. Syringes will run you around 50 cents apiece. Note that it’ll be more difficult to obtain needles (at least from the larger, more “legit” companies) if you live in California and Illinois. You’ll usually need a doctor’s prescription in those states. Still, if you look around enough, you can get what you need.

You’ll need anywhere from a one inch to 1.5 inch, 25 to 22 gauge syringe. Remember, the bigger the gauge, the smaller the needle. Bill Roberts also writes about using super tiny insulin needles (29 or 30 gauge) and compensating for their narrow size by injecting very slowly, like for a full minute.

You’ll want to get around ten or more syringes, depending on how many injections you plan on doing. Just go up to the pharmacist and ask for them. Try not to be wearing your Testosterone T-shirt. In most cases the pharmacist won’t ask you anything, but some are “funny” and like to play God by telling you that they won’t sell them to you or that they don’t have them. If they do ask, simply tell them that you take injections of Testosterone for replacement therapy and you have to pick up some syringes. After this, go and get a bottle of rubbing alcohol and some cotton swabs. You may also want to get some band-aids.

Next up, you’ll need to get some products that are a little more difficult to obtain. These are clomiphene, tamoxifen (Nolvadex), and possibly anastrozole. Whether you choose tamoxifen or clomiphene is up to you. If you have an aromatizable steroid, it would be best to use tamoxifen or high dosages of clomiphene in order to prevent the large increases of estrogen from binding to receptors in areas like breast tissue. If you don’t do this, you could end up with gynecomastia, aka bitch tits, dollies, and formerly known as Pamela Lees.

If the steroid doesn’t aromatize, you’ll still need something to help your endogenous (natural) Testosterone levels recover. That something should be clomiphene. While tamoxifen can also increase Testosterone levels, you’ll need to use higher dosages to do so. Regardless, think of these things as necessary tools. These two will help save you a lot of trouble! Don’t do a cycle unless you have one of them.

Anastrozole can be an alternative when using an aromatizable steroid, although it’s rather expensive. Remember, place clomiphene or tamoxifen in the same class as syringes and rubbing alcohol. In other words, you can’t start the cycle until you have them. Most sources that sell steroids also sell Clomid and the like.

Injection Techniques

Now, the injectable steroids are meant to be delivered intramuscularly, meaning, that you’re going to have to inject relatively deep into the muscle. The “standard” needle is 22 gauge, 1.5 inch. This is used for injection into the buttocks. You can also use a smaller needle, like a 25 gauge, one inch, but it will take longer to inject and there’s a chance you may not inject into the muscle fibers, depending on how much fat is on your ass. Generally though, most guys can get away with using a one inch needle. Also, you should take into account that although it will inject a lot faster, a larger gauge like 20 or below, will cause more pain and will damage more tissue.

The second most common injection site is the thigh. With this, you should only need a one inch needle. You can also inject into the shoulder as well as other places, but I’d prefer if you stuck with these two for now.

Okay, so now the question is, “Where exactly should you inject?” Well, if you’re going to inject into the buttocks, you’ll need to pick a cheek and then imagine a horizontal line beginning at the crack of your butt and extending outwards. Next, imagine a vertical line right down the middle of the first line. So now your butt cheek should be divided into four squares. The place to inject is in the upper most corner on the outermost section, i.e. the top right square.

For the thigh, a quick way to do it is to look at your hip and knee, and then imagine a line in between the two. This and a little bit lower are the areas you can inject. Make sure this is on the outside of your thigh!

Okay, so now you’re ready. First thing? Wash your hands. Now find the spot, take a cotton swab and put some rubbing alcohol on it. Swab the area that you’ll inject. Grab the syringe and push it in at a 90° angle. (Some say to hold the needle like you’re about the throw a dart.) Once the needle is fully submerged, pull back on the plunger just slightly and look to see if any blood enters. If it does, pull out and find a new place, as you’ve entered a vein and you don’t want to inject into a vein.

If no blood appears, begin to push the plunger. Remember, the slower you push, the less pain you’ll feel. Once the liquid is gone, pull the syringe directly out and apply a cotton swab to the site. Hold tightly for about 30 seconds and then either tape it on or put a bandage on it. Pull your pants back up; you’re done!

There’s also an old trick that involves pulling the skin slightly over to one side before you stick in the needle. After you inject, let the skin go back to it’s normal place. This is said to close the little path made by the needle to keep all your gear in your ass where it’s supposed to be. This isn’t that much of a worry in all honesty, but it’s an option.

Discard the syringe in a safe place and use a new one for the next injection. Never use the same needle twice (it’ll be dull, plus you’ll risk infection by reusing it) and, of course, never share a needle with anyone, especially if your training partner just happens to be a Haitian hemophiliac homosexual intravenous drug user.

The Quality of Human vs. Vet Steroids

Chances are, if you get a hold of some gear, it’s going to be a veterinary product. The reason being is that it’s much cheaper than human versions and is often just as good. Not to mention, it’s also more available. The question that some people have is whether or not the vet steroids “work as well” as the human versions.

The fact is, as long as they’re dosed correctly, they’ll work just as well. I’ve heard some people say that nandrolone decanoate in veterinary form doesn’t work as well for humans because it’s meant for animals. This just isn’t true. Look, the fact is nandrolone decanoate is nandrolone decanoate. Just because the label says it’s for animal use only doesn’t decrease the effectiveness.

Now, the only two things that should be of concern are under-dosed and unsterile products. Make no mistake about it, most of these “vet” companies know that humans consume much of their marketed products. They also know that a bad reputation will soon leave them broke. So most companies make sure that their products are sterile and dosed correctly in order to have repeat customers.

However, there are a few companies that screw up here and there. One such company is Brovel. According to Brock Strasser, quite a few guys report infections and such while using their products. In all fairness, I know a few guys who have practically lived on Brovel’s T-200 and Norandren for years and have never had a problem. Still, Brock knows his stuff when it comes to this type of issue, so I personally wouldn’t take the chance. Stick to what Brock deems as clean and correctly dosed and you should be fine.

How Much is this Going to Cost Me?

Costs can vary greatly depending on where you are, who you go through, and what brand you’re getting. Just as with anything that you may purchase, shop around for the best deals or go directly to the source, if possible. In other words, bringing it back from Mexico yourself will be much cheaper than buying it from a local dealer. Each method has its own set of risks, of course.

How to Avoid Side Effects

Side effects seen with steroid use include gynecomastia, alopecia (or hair loss), acne, and edema or water retention. Most of these can be avoided or the risks can at least be minimized. To prevent gyno, either use non-aromatizable steroids or nolvadex/clomiphene. Alopecia can be helped by using finasteride (Propecia). Acne can be helped by keeping your skin clean, using an over-the-counter product containing salicylic acid, and avoiding the more androgenic steroids.

Water retention can be avoided somewhat by closely monitoring sodium intake as well as sticking to non-aromatizable steroids. (Excessive sodium intake usually leads to excess water retention whether you’re juicing or not.) As far as minimizing liver damage, simply don’t use 17-AA steroids, and if you do, don’t use them for prolonged periods of time. In truth, most of the horror stories you hear about steroid side effects come from people who didn’t do any research and didn’t put any thought or planning into their cycle. Still, there are risks.

Closing Statement

Well, guys, hopefully I’ve helped answer at least some of the questions that you’ve had regarding steroid use. Remember, the most powerful thing you can do is research. Don’t stop here. Read, read, and read some more! The T-mag previous issues section would be a great place to start. Learn all you can before you take the plunge.

Treat this as an investment. You wouldn’t just stop at the first dealer and pick the closest car in the lot would you? Well, obtaining and using anabolic steroids is similar. You need to educate yourself as much as possible, find a way to access the gear and make the best possible purchase to suit your needs or desires

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