#and to top off all the mundane stuff my cousin is very possibly going to die and I can't even visit her in the hospital

[kristenbeeapples]

Fic idea: Kristen Applebees trying to be a good big sister after leaving her family

Allison you absolutely READ my MIND. Thank you for giving me an excuse to finally put all my (many, many) thoughts about Kristen and her siblings onto paper. Under a read more because this spun wildly out of my control!

***

“Ready?” Fig asks.

Kristen blows a loose strand of her out of her face, pockets her crystal, and nods. “Ready.”

Fig takes her hand and squeezes it, and then they appear with a burst of fire in her younger brothers’ bedroom. Adaine steps out of nothingness next to them a moment later.

“Kristen!” Cork yells, and leaps off the bed into her arms.

“Hey, buddy,” Kristen says, smiling. He smells like he hasn’t had a bath yet, he’s spilt something sticky down his t-shirt and he’s drooling a little, but she does not care one bit. She squeezes him tightly. A second later there’s another thump as Bricker runs up and hugs her from behind. With difficulty, she extracts an arm from underneath Cork so she can hug him too.

They start chattering excitedly, I missed you and Guess what I did at school today and Mom and Dad said – but Kristen interrupts, putting her finger to her lips. “We have to be quiet, okay? We don’t want Mom and Dad to hear.”

They both nod, their faces determined. It’s very, very cute.

Helio – no, not Helio, Yes – she’s missed them.

“Alright, Cork, you go with Adaine, Bricker go with Fig,” Kristen says, lifting Cork down off her hip next to Adaine. “I’m going to go get Bucky.”

“Okay,” Bricker says, and darts over to Fig.

“Hey, kid,” Fig says. “Let’s do this!”

“Yeah!” he says.

Fig holds her hand up, and Bricker jumps to give her a high-five. They both vanish.

Cork has suddenly gone shy, and hides behind Kristen’s legs. He’s met Adaine before – all her brothers have met the Bad Kids, after a weekend towing them along on investigations when she was meant to be babysitting – but it’s been a while, and it dawns on her that the last time was probably the night of prom when the house was attacked. She crouches down and gives him another hug.

“It’s okay,” she says. “Adaine’s cool. She won’t hurt you, promise.”

Adaine, who’s been hovering to the side a little awkwardly, kneels down beside them too. “Here,” she says, and hands over Boggy to Cork. “This is Boggy the Froggy. He helps me when I’m scared. Can you look after him for me?”

Cork takes Boggy, his eyes wide. “Coooooool,” he breathes.

Kristen presses a kiss onto the top of his head. “Go with Adaine and Boggy, I’ll be there in a minute, okay?”

Cork nods, focused on Boggy’s big eyes, and takes Adaine’s hand. Kristen mouths a thank you to Adaine as she misty-steps away, and then stands and sneaks out into the hallway.

Bucky’s room lies at the end of the hallway beyond the stairs, and as she creeps past, she can hear her parent’s voices from the floor below. Kristen freezes, heart rate picking up. She thought she would be okay coming here, but now all she can think about is angry voices, axes thrust in her face, get that out of our house -

A door creaks open, and Bucky pokes his head out. “Kristen?” he whispers.

Kristen steadies her breathing, using one of the tricks Adaine taught her. “Hey,” she whispers back. “Ready to go?”

He nods, shutting the door quietly, and gives her a hug. He’s so tall now, she thinks, but doesn’t say it out loud because she knows it will annoy him. Instead she takes out the Sword of Shadows, on loan from Riz, and misty-steps outside after the others.

Cork and Bricker are happily playing with Boggy on the street, but both stop and rush back over to her when she appears, so that all her brothers are gathered in her arms for the first time in months. The Applebees siblings, she thinks, and grins over the top of their heads at Adaine and Fig.

“Alright,” she says, as they break apart. “Who wants ice-cream?”

***

It’s early evening on a Saturday, so Basrar’s is fairly busy, but since he owes Adaine a favour they manage to get them two booths next to each other. She and Fig take one, and Kristen sits with her brothers in the other. She buys them as much ice-cream as she can with the last of the money she’s been saving from her old allowance, and tells them all about how the Bad Kids slayed a dragon and saved the day (the PG version, of course, and she neglects to tell them she died again.) They listen in awe as she tells the story, oooh-ing and aah-ing in the appropriate places, and then ask her lots of questions about what it was like being inside a dragon, delighting in the grossness she describes.

In return, she asks them about their lives, school and church and home, all the mundanity she’s missed, and listens contentedly as they all start talking at once. Possibly, this much sugar was a mistake, but Kristen doesn’t care. They’re here, they’re together, and that’s what matters.

As Bucky regales a story about his class trip to Bastion City, Kristen begins anxiously checking her crystal. She ignores the frantic calls from her parents (she’s sent them a text, it’s fine), and scrolls through her messages with Tracker. She said she’d be here at half seven, and it’s nearly eight – where is she? Did she bail? Does she not want to be Kristen’s girlfriend anymore?

Just as she’s about to ask her brothers to wait a sec and call her, Tracker appears at their booth. “Hi,” she says, with a nervous smile.

“Hey!” Kristen shuffles over awkwardly – Cork decided halfway through his ice cream that he wanted to sit on her lap and hasn’t moved since – so she can sit down. “Guys, this is my… friend, Tracker. Tracker, this is Bucky, Bricker and Cork.” She looks at each of her brothers, pointedly. “Say hi, and be nice, okay?”

“Hi!” they all say in unison. 

There’s a pause for a moment, all of them a bit unsure in front of a new person. Tracker, too, doesn’t seem to know what to do; when Kristen asked her to come, she admitted she hadn’t been around a lot of kids.

“Tracker’s a werewolf,” Kristen blurts out to break the silence before she can stop herself.

Tracker raises her eyebrows, and Kristen mouths sorry, but the boys all light up at once.

“How loudly can you howl?” Bricker asks.

“Can you transform right now?” Bucky says, excited.

“Do you bite people?” Cork asks, worriedly.

Tracker laughs at that last one. “Okay so – pretty loud, I could but I won’t because I don’t want to scare anybody, and no, I don’t bite, I promise.”

Cork sighs, relieved, and leans back into Kristen, whilst Bucky and Bricker look like they’re gearing up to ask more questions.

“Guys, don’t be rude,” Kristen says, vainly.

Tracker smiles at them in a way that makes Kristen melt. “No, it’s okay. Come on, what do you want to know?”

Her brothers spend the next ten minutes grilling Tracker about lycanthropy before Tracker starts telling them funny stories about her and Jawbone. Kristen can’t keep a dopey grin off her face as she watches all her brothers fall as in love with Tracker as she’s found herself falling in the past couple of weeks, and she thinks: this is what family should feel like.

When there’s a lull in the conversation, Tracker says, “I’ll be back in a bit, I’m going to go say hi to Adaine and Fig.” She stands, giving Kristen a thumbs up like they’d rehearsed, and goes to sit with the others in the booth behind them.

“So, do you guys like Tracker?” she asks, pulling Cork closer to disguise the shaking of her hands.

There’s a chorus of enthusiastic yeahs. “She’s awesome,” Bricker says fervently.

“She is.” Kristen takes a deep breath. “How would you feel,” she says, “If I told you Tracker is my girlfriend?”

Cork doesn’t seem to be listening, licking the remainder of his ice cream from his bowl, but the older two both look solemn as they process the information.

“Like, how cousin Nick has a girlfriend?” Bricker says.

Kristen nods. “Yeah, just like that.”

“But you’re a girl,” Bucky says, slowly. “And so is Tracker.”

“Yeah, we’re both girls.” Kristen says. 

“Does that mean you’re gay?” Bricker asks.

Saying it still feels a little like a confession, an admission of guilt, but she’s trying not to think of it like that. She’s trying to be proud.

She lifts her chin up, looks them directly in the eyes, and says, “Yeah, I am.”

Bucky narrows his eyes. “Mom and Dad and Pastor Amelia say that’s bad.”

Kristen’s heart sinks, though she keeps her expression neutral. She had known this was coming, had practised with Tracker to prepare, but it still aches.  “Yeah, they do,” she says. “A lot of people think that. But a lot of people, like me, and Tracker, and my friends, think it’s actually a good thing. What do you think?”

Both of them consider this. “Well,” Bucky says, eventually. “Tracker’s cool. And you’re, like, fine. So I guess it’s okay.”

“Rude,” Kristen says, but she’s smiling. They don’t hate her. They don’t hate her. There’s still hope for the Applebees. “But, thank you. And you know, if you guys have any questions about this stuff, about me being gay, or religion, or literally anything at all, you can always, always, come and ask me, okay?”

Bucky and Bricker both nod. Cork, who’s wriggled off her lap to play with the sugar packets on the counter, looks up and says, “Does that mean you guys kiss and stuff?”

Kristen grins mischievously. “We do. A lot.”

“Ewww!”

“Gross!”

“Bleugh.”

***

On the way home, Fig and Tracker race ahead with Cork and Bricker on their backs, Adaine misty-stepping ahead of them to judge the winner. It’s a warm summer evening, the setting sun bathing the neighbourhood in honey-coloured light, and a cool breeze carries her friends’ and brothers’ laughter down the street towards her. Kristen walks slowly with Bucky, swinging his hand up and down like she used to when they were younger, and thinks about how lucky she is. Her family is not broken: she is building it up again, better and stronger this time. Things are going to be okay.

As they round the corner onto the Applebees’ road, Bucky says, “You’re not coming home this time, are you?”

Kristen looks down at him, surprised. He’s a smart kid, but she forgets, sometimes. In her head he’s still just her little brother, running around causing chaos and annoying her when she’s supposed to be praying. “No,” she says. “I don’t think so.”

He nods. “I thought so. Mom and Dad wouldn’t say, but I could tell.”

“How are –” She bites her lip. “Are things okay, at home?”

Bucky shrugs. “They were better when you were here.”

“I know,” Kristen says, pushing down the guilt that overwhelms her. “I’m sorry, Buck. If I could stay, I would, but Mom and Dad are… they don’t want me around, anymore.”

“Because you have a girlfriend?” Bucky says.

“A bit because of that. A bit because of some other stuff.” Kristen says. “But even though I’m not at home anymore, I’m still your big sister, okay? If Mom and Dad ever say or do anything that upsets you or Bricker or Cork, you call me on your crystal, and no matter where I am I promise I’ll come get you.”

“Okay,” Bucky says, and squeezes her hand. She squeezes it back, and they carry on walking.

Outside the Applebees’ house, Kristen gathers her brothers to say goodbye, taking a sleepy Cork from Tracker’s arms.

“Did you guys have fun?” Kristen says, as they walk up the driveway.

Bricker nods energetically, still hopped up on sugar. “Yeah! Can we do this again?”

“Absolutely,” Kristen says, smiling. “Just don’t tell Mom and Dad where we went, okay? It’ll be our secret.”

“Okay,” Bucky says, “We pinky-promise.”

The four of them put their little fingers together, and Kristen laughs. “I love you,” she says, hugging them one by one. “I’ll see you soon.”

There’s a chorus of goodbyes as Kristen lets them go and bolts back down the driveway before her parents answer the door.

“Don’t go!” she hears Cork say from behind her as the door opens, and though her heart breaks she doesn’t look back.

She runs back to the others. “We gotta go,” she says, panicked, her parent’s yells echoing behind her.

Fig nods, grabs Kristen and dashes away on her skateboard, Adaine and Tracker chasing after them. She manages to keep the tears from falling for a bit, but by the time they’re safely back at Strongtower Luxury Apartments, she’s fully sobbing down Fig’s back. Tracker pulls her off the skateboard into a tight-armed hug, and Fig and Adaine pile on too, until they’re all in a wet, sweaty pile of limbs. She cries and cries and cries, feeling joyful and sad and terribly old all at once.

“Kristen,” Fig says, breaking away as she starts to catch her breath. “I gotta say, your little brothers are awesome. I’m gonna to teach Bricker to play bass the next time we do this.”

“You’d do this again?” Kristen says, blowing her nose on a tissue Adaine silently produces from her jacket.

“Yeah, of course, dude!” Fig slings an arm around Kristen’s shoulders. “I don’t have siblings, this is my one chance to spread anarchy to the next generation.”

Kristen laughs, wiping away her tears. “Oh, god.”

Adaine hands her another tissue. “As someone with an absolutely terrible big sister,” she says quietly, “I think you’re doing great. They love you so much.”

“Fuck, Adaine,” Kristen whines, sniffling. “I just stopped crying.”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to – ” Adaine starts, hands flapping anxiously.

“No, I didn’t mean it, you don’t have to apologise,” Kristen says, taking her hand and squeezing it. “Thank you. Really.”

Adaine and Fig hug her again, and then head upstairs with a knowing glance, leaving Kristen alone with her girlfriend. The word still feels new and lovely, and she gets a little burst of happiness every time she says it. My girlfriend. My girlfriend.

Tracker loops her arms around Kristen and pulls her in close. “I really like your family,” she says softly.

Kristen gives her a watery smile. “I think they really like you, too.”

Tracker kisses her, and the sadness doesn’t go away, but it feels a little lighter. “You’ll see them again soon,” she says.

“Yeah,” Kristen says, and it’s a vow. “I will.”

#this is literally 10x the length of my last prompt asdhfgasjdhf #i got a little carried away #whoops #my fic #also: yes i know that misty step can only be used for one person its called creative license/shut up #also also: this is set the summer between freshman and sophomore year but boggy is there bc little kids interacting with him is too cute #screw canon i want frog #tw: coming out #tw: homophobia #fantasy high #kristen applebees #trackerbees #dimension 20 #adaine abernant #fig faeth #tracker #asks #allsevenmaidens

[goliath-de-senfina-sango]

Things get darker right before they get brighter in the end, something three plucky teens are about to learn. Sometimes you just want that darkness to have never had a reason to come for you in the first place. One has to be careful what they wish for, of course.

Welcome to the end, friends

Danny was on the ground, unmoving.

The ghost left with a cheerful wave, saying, “Tata!”  Like he hadn’t just ruined their lives worse than the first time Tucker had heard Danny’s screams at their loudest.  Like it was simply a wonderful day and they had engaged in the most wonderful of conversations, not a fight that ended with one of them-

Danny was in Tucker’s arms, unmoving and pale.

Tucker was trying everything he could think of, removing most of Tucker’s tops and trying to perform every life-saving action he knew off, pressing against his chest, trying to breathe more breath into his lungs, keeping pressure on the bleeding and burnt wound when he saw it.

Danny was in Tucker’s arms, unmoving, pale, and bleeding.

Tucker knew everything was blurry because tears were clouding his vision.  He knew he was crying. He knew he was shaking with the force of his sobs and for once in his life, he couldn’t bring himself to give half a damn about that because Danny-

Danny was in Tucker’s arms, unmoving, pale, bleeding, and his heart wasn’t beating no matter how long Tucker listened for it.

Sam was doing something, pulling out Danny’s weapons, and Tucker wanted to scream at her that she’d done enough with Fenton weapons already.  He wanted to scream and rage at her for what she had done so far with Fenton Tech. He wanted to go to the Fentons and rip them all a new one for making what they made.

Because Danny was dead in Tucker’s arms, and screaming and crying were the only things he could do about it.

But he didn’t scream at Sam, he just watched as she pulled out one of Danny’s paintbrushes and dipped it in the ectoplasm of the cartridge in one of his guns.  She started drawing on Danny’s face, his arms, his chest, and then pulled out another cartridge of charged ectoplasm in another gun and poured it in Danny’s mouth, tilted his head so that he would swallow.  “Chant with me. Chant with me Tucker, we have to fix this!”

Tucker didn’t know any Hebrew, decided he’d learn both because Sam was his friend and because apparently, she could do things that could save their lives with it.  Tucker didn’t need to know what he was saying to say it, and he did say it, over and over again for the next 10 minutes, until the drawings on Danny’s body lit up like fire and every ray of light rushed toward him and everything went dark.  Tucker could hear the song of the universe dimming in his ears and knew nearly for a fact that Danny was sucking the ectoplasmic energy into him along with every other flavor of power within blocks of him. Tucker would let the sun itself go black just to hear Danny’s laugh again.

The darkness faded, Danny’s body was outlined in light, the markings were gone, and Danny groaned.  His chest rose and dropped, his heart was beating, color was coming back to his skin, he was as warm as he’d been since the accident.  Danny was alive in Tucker’s arms, and Tucker wanted to cry even harder than he already had. Instead, the put Danny’s binder back on him, Sam grabbed his shirt and jacket, and Tucker carried Danny out to their hoverboards.  They flew to Sam’s house, Tucker staying as high and close to the sun as he could to let Danny soak in all the light he needed. When they got to Sam’s house, Tucker didn’t let Danny go until he was being set on a love seat on Sam’s balcony.

There were, of course, jokes to be made about the way Danny curled up in the fleeting October sunlight and how his fluffball curls and height combined with this to make him much like a kitten.  Jokes about him being a cross between Superman and the Martian Manhunter could’ve also been made. Danny was a white-haired anime boy, that could be remarked upon with laughs aplenty. Tucker made no such jokes.

Tucker put to use the information he’d gathered at his last LARPing session at furrycon after a shank attempt by a guy who’d wandered into the park where he’d been LARPing at that took their cosplay a bit too seriously.  That being that leather was wonderful armor, silk blocked stabs fantastically when a blade slid through said leather, and that one should always wear cotton under silk anything because sweating to death after a fight near to death wasn’t fun.  He’d smacked a crazy guy upside the head and gotten a useful lesson out of that. Tucker’s older cousin could supply the leather, Sam could order fine silk jackets and pants for all of them, Danny had cotton shirts already, and Sidney offered to use intangibility to fuse the two together.  Tucker commented that the leather would look fitting on Sam since she was more of a punk anyway. She called him a furry, he called her a weeb, and they both explained the concepts to Sydney.

That was all fine and dandy against most blunt force, stabbing and slashing that even a ghost could probably do, but against ghosts and their intangibility, there were few places to go.  Sam had her magick book but Tucker didn’t want to touch on anything supernatural for a while and unless she could prove that her wards were working, he wouldn’t exactly trust Danny’s life with them.  Convincing Jack Fenton that he needed some easily worn and hidden accessory to prevent possession was almost sadly easy, the only condition being that Tucker had to wear one of those horrible looking hazmat suits.  Tucker let it hang in his closet, as he had no intention of matching Jack Fenton’s fashion sense.

One might feel that Tucerk and his friends were being a bit excessive in their measures to keep Danny padded up against the world, but such an individual hadn’t seen their best friend since age 1 die in front of them by the same person’s hand twice so that particular person could kindly go shove their opinion where the sun don’t shine in Tucker’s very polite opinion.

Danny himself was groggy for most of his recovery time and had clearly caught on that they were being extra protective of him.  While Sam was introducing Sidney to anime and videogames and Tucker was showing him the best comics and music, Danny always had whoever wasn’t with the others within arm’s reach.  He was jumpy when it came to his ghost sense telling him that Sidney was there, had his hood up whenever they were outside, and even though they’d been near forcing Agatha’s cooking down his throat at every meal they could, Danny had yet to Go Ghost.  Sam brought up the idea of taking down the shapeshifter and Danny balked at the topic, bringing up the frogs, the latest anime that she had shown Sidney or really anything else when she did this. Tucker was more than fine with this since no ghost mode meant no seeking out danger which meant that the only fights they were dealing with included Dash, Kwan and Dale making fun of them for being a furry, a weeb and a Fenton.  Seeing Sam put her martial arts to use when Dash tried to stuff Danny in a locker was worth the detention he got for tripping Dale as he rushed in to help. He spent it with Sam anyway so that was fine. If wanting Danny safer than Amity was selfish then Tucker was as far from selfless as possible.

“Hey, Danny,” Tucker said while he worked on finishing up the Spector Deflector that Dr. Fenton had started for him in Danny’s workshop.  “There’s a swap meet coming up in Harrison Park this Saturday. Wanna come with? I’m gonna get a set of dice if I can and see if I can show Sidney DnD.  Maybe we all can play even.” He grinned. “We can get you a new bowling ball so you can destroy Sam in bowling.”

“Bro, you’ll be wrecked with her,’ Danny challenged from where he drew in his art book instead of doing his homework.  Tucker was procrastinating by making ghost hunting tech, he couldn’t blame Danny. “That sounds cool.”

“Awesome.”  Tucker set down his tools and pulled up his safety goggles.  “Can you come over and poke this? Very lightly and just a little in case I’m as done as I think I am.”  Danny obliged and there was a loud SNAP accompanied by a yelp and Tucker patted Danny’s shoulder.  “Looks like I’m done with the internals. Now all I gotta do is adjust it so that it can ignore your ectosignature, and Sidney’s and Agatha’s, and it’ll really be done.”

“Done for your armor idea, right?”  Danny scoffed, slugging Tucker in the shoulder while he looked for the blueprint he’d downloaded of the part that’d track ectosignatures in the Fenton Finder.  “Sidney told me about it while we were watching Star Wars. Or should I call it his guard duty shift? Cause I know what you guys are doing and while I appreciate your concern over my safety, I’m the one with powers here.”

“20 hours straight of unconsciousness and tears say that superpowers don’t mean you don’t need protection against people with the same superpowers.”  Tucker huffed. “If we’d been wearing some armor like we’re making then that fish thing probably wouldn’t have been able to bite through me like it did.  Silk and piercing ya know.” He bumped shoulders with Danny when he went quiet and forced his lips up into a smile. “And besides, your parents have literally no fashion sense.  A leather jacket lined with silk? Leather pants, probably with studs in it since Sam is involved? Dude, that’s cool as fuck looking. You’ll be the best-dressed ghost out there.”  Danny laughed and shook his head. Tucker got to work setting up the design for the Fenton Fabricator™ to make for the Spector Deflector. He also considered asking for a cut of the royalties when the belt inevitably became a Fenton Brand item, since he’d finished it.  “You think putting on clothes in ghost form will invert their colors like your suit?”

“Fuck you, Tuck, now I have to find out.”  Danny huffed and Tucker snickered. For a moment everything was quiet, and then arms were wrapping around his middle.  “Thanks, Tuck. For everything.” Tucker looped an arm around Danny and smushed him against his side.

“That’s what bros are for, man.”  The room was a comfortable quiet after that.  The Fabricator and the generator were humming softly at the edge of Tucker’s once again human limited hearing, the only other sound was their breathing and - Tucker could swear - their heartbeats.  The air was charged with something more than ectoplasm and electricity and Tucker wasn’t sure if Danny knew that as well, but he knew that he could hardly know anything else right then. So naturally, Tucker lowered his hand at Danny’s side and started tickling him.  Danny squeaked, squealed out some giggles, and phased out of his grip when wriggling didn’t work.

“You dick!  Get over here!”

Danny appreciated the effort Sam, Tucker and Sidney were putting in for him, he really honestly did.  Sidney still went to his therapy session with Jazz which Danny could tell were helping him by how bright his aura had gotten, and between him and Jazz at school there were at least a few bright auras to go around, but with how things were going, Danny felt at least a bit suffocated.

Half the auras at school - both student and teacher - were dim enough that Danny almost couldn’t see them.  Dash and company had been especially vicious as of late, calling them every name under the sun and getting into actual fights with him, Tucker and Sam.  Between the three of them they managed well enough - being dragged to martial arts lessons with Sam and fighting eldritch abominations from the afterlife did things for your confidence in facing up to bullies - but it hadn’t ever been this bad before.  And while Tucker and Sam both were clearly brighter than everyone else emotionally, they were skirting around things in the most unsubtle way imaginable and Danny wondered how they kept anything hidden. Sam tried to get him into ghost form to see how fast he could fly, Tucker changed the topic from anything ghostly to something nerdy and Sidney seemed to stare at him as much as he did the movies they were watching.  Sure, Sidney was keeping his eyes on the screen but Danny knew ghosts could see more than just with their eyes and the feeling of being constantly watched was getting more than unnerving.

Saturday was a breath of fresh air.  Sam was maybe coming down with something and Sidney was off exploring the city on his own, so it was just Danny and Tucker buying the stuff they’d come for and laughing their heads off at their dumb jokes.  It was sunny, the crowd was bright with positivity abound, and he was having fun with his best friend in the world. It was nice.

Of course, a ghost attack ruined it.

Cotton candy erupted and flooded the place, and Danny slid under a table while the crowds stampeded away, yanking Tucker under as well.  He reached inside, past the void of darkness into the soft and splintered light at his center. It exploded out to the surface and in a flash of silver glass, shimmering shadows wove his hazmat suit around him and unraveled gravity’s hold on his body.  He shuddered, glitching out of reality - or what he was so very hopeful and sure was reality anyway - and gave Tucker a smile. “Wish me luck.” He slid down into the ground and forward, rising out of a mound of cotton candy as big as himself. There was a woman with long black hair, dark green skin, and blue scarce clothing floating over the sweets and stretching her arms.  “I understand a sweet tooth and all that, but this is a bit dangerously Much.” Danny held out a hand with a smile when a sneer was turned his way. “I’m Danny Phantom, hopefully nice to meet you.”

“ I am Desiree,” she said in some accented blend of every language that Danny knew.  It was headache-inducing and he definitely didn’t like it. “ This confection explosion was hardly my intention boy, I am cursed to use my power to grant the wishes of all those who make them. ”

“What, like a jinni?  If I find and rub your lamp and say ‘I wish I had a dick’ do you complete my tra-”

“ So you have wished it, so shall it be. ”  Her hands went up, green smoke curled around him, through him, within him, caressed that inner light and warmth that was his human body, and Danny shuddered in the wake of power well beyond his ability to fully process.  Before the smoke even cleared, Danny could hear Desiree speaking through gritted teeth. “ Yes, boy I am a Jinni.  One of your kind cursed me, both to be trapped in that infernal bottle, but also to use my power for all who catch my ear. ”

Danny was reeling when the smoke cleared, giving himself a mental review of what he could feel on himself and gawked when he realized what had happened.  “Um. Wow.” Desiree was clearly unimpressed. “Uh, well, I know a way I can he-” a ball of ectoplasma, charged up with energy, raced into Desiree’s gut and knocked her back and Danny really wished that people would stop interrupting him.

“Stay away from him, damn it!  Can’t we have one nice day?” Tucker readied another shot and Danny waved his arms to tell him not to.  “I wish I had stopped you from going into that stupid fucking portal! Then we wouldn’t be in this mess!”  crud.

“ So you have wished it, so shall it be. ”  FUCK .  Green mist filled Danny’s vision, and everything went dark.

#Danny Phantom #Danny Fenton #Bertrand #Tucker Foley #Sam Manson #Sidney Poindexter #Desiree #fanfiction #fanPhiction #Phanfiction #fanfic #Phanfic #fanPhic #Phanphic #PhanPhiction #Monstrous Chosen Spellslingers #Mundane to Monstrous Ghosts #Monstrous Mundane Magick #Rexy Writes

[moonlit-tulip]

Umineko Post-Arc-4 Theorypost

Um. Wow. Okay. So I just finished Umineko’s fourth arc, and that was A Lot wow. Anyway, at this point I want to do an Umineko theorypost, inspired by my vague recollection that @itsbenedict (whose recommendation was what got me to start actively working through the game rather than just idly having it on my to-play-eventually pile) did one when he reached this point in the story. I figure it could be pretty fun to compare my notes from this point in the story with his, once I’ve gotten to the end and don’t need to worry about spoilers.

So here’s my theorypost, then. Below the break: major Umineko spoilers, as well as some incidental Higurashi spoilers.

Let’s start with the magic system, and let’s divide it into two broad categories: magic in the actual world, and magic in meta-space. The first sort includes summoning minions, reviving the dead, et cetera. The second sort includes being able to speak in red and blue, to cause something to cease to exist by arguing sufficiently persuasively for its nonexistence, to time-loop the island, et cetera.

Magic in the actual world seems pretty clearly at this point to run on a mix of imagination, deceptive scene-setting, and unreliable narration; but meta-space magic seems to run on less consistent rules. The time-looping seems like it ultimately boils down to unreliable narration as well, with the stories-in-bottles, and speaking in blue isn’t actually overtly magical (aside from the bit where it directly injures Beatrice, which is a similar sort of mystery to the red’s ability to render people or things nonexistent), but speaking in red seems pretty unambiguously magical in a fashion whose true explanation I haven’t yet figured out. I expect an explanation to eventually arise in the form of some sort of actually-authoritative source on the events emerging, but I’m not yet sure what form that source will take, because I’m not sure how a mundane source could be as trustworthy as the red seems to be.

Next up: the witch’s riddle. Clearly solvable, and I suspect that had I been cleverer I’d have been able to solve it based on the discussion in the third game and the knowledge that the solution is reachable through that discussion; but I haven’t, in fact, solved it myself. It seems likely that the solution involves Kuwadorian in some capacity, because “solving the riddle involves finding Kuwadorian” seems more likely than Eva having solved both of those mysteries independently (and she does need to have solved the Kuwadorian mystery, she couldn’t have lied about that, because if she’d gone “I was hiding in the extra hidden mansion deep in the forest, but I can’t show you where it is” she would have come across as even more suspicious to the investigators than she in fact did.) I lack clear hypotheses, beyond that.

One detail that struck me about the fourth game in particular is that there are a lot of weird weapons flying around. We’ve got the golden thread attested to by Gohda and Kumasawa and Kyrie, we’ve got whatever it was that pit-trapped everyone in the dining room, we’ve got whatever Kanon used to cut through the bars... and, of course, there are the Seven Stakes of Purgatory, which are somewhat less mysterious in that they could easily just be fancy mundane stakes, but are still indicative of the general trend of nonstandard weapons around the island, with no obvious leads on where exactly they came from. It’s very possible that all of these weapons are unrelated to one another, but it’s also occurred to me as a possibility that there may be some sort of designer of fancy custom weaponry, off of the island but contributing resources to one or more of the parties involved here. This is a pretty weak hypothesis as far as they go, like I only give it maybe 10% odds of actually being true, but I figure it’s still worth mentioning.

Moving on to specific characters:

Kinzo is dead. It’s unclear where his corpse has been being kept, but it has to have been refrigerated in some capacity in order to avoid either decomposing excessively or smelling up the house prior to its being burnt, so that limits the possibilities somewhat. Nanjo and Genji are definitely in on the his-being-dead part, and Krauss probably is as well. Nanjo, at least, is in on the his-corpse-being-preserved part as well, given that he never expresses confusion over finding the corpse in the boiler.

Battler’s theory that someone has taken on Kinzo’s name seems off in a similar fashion to his theory that someone had taken on Kanon’s name, even if it wasn’t explicitly denied like the other theory was; but in absence of any better ideas about what’s going on there I’m tentatively subscribing it for now.

My current top suspect for who’s acting in Kinzo’s place is Genji, because he’s the only one who evidence suggests that Kinzo genuinely trusted and who would be able to persuade others to accept him as acting as Kinzo without the siblings’ squabbles leading them to try to sabotage his authority. (Nanjo, although also trusted by Kinzo in some capacity, seems much more in-the-dark about parts like the mass-sacrifice stuff and less likely to be accepted as The New Kinzo by the siblings.)

This theory may or may not be hindered by the red truth that Genji isn’t a killer, because it’s unclear if that was a general comment or if it was made specifically about the Genji of the first game; but even assuming it holds across all four games, it seems plausibly loopholable by way of his having others do the killing for him. This would require some way of tricking or persuading Gohda and Kumasawa into reporting both him and Kinzo as separately present at the conference in the fourth game, and reporting him as having been killed; but that’s a problem that every other plausible candidate would have as well, since everyone not in the cousin room was (reportedly) at the conference, so it’s not a problem specific to Genji.

Nanjo remains a mystery thus far. There’s no way he’s unaware of Kinzo’s death, and I get general vibes of suspiciousness off of him in light of his knowing far more than he says about various important Kinzo-related secrets, but there are no specific incidents I feel any particular inclination to pin on him, just a general sense of “he’s plausibly an accomplice to some of the stuff going on”. He’s in a similar not-a-killer-but-maybe-only-in-the-context-of-the-first-game-it’s-unclear boat to Genji.

Kumasawa is also a mystery thus far. Her tendency to try to run from danger leaves open the possibility of her doing things in secret while nobody has eyes on her; but unlike Genji and Nanjo she lacks the degree of clear closeness to Kinzo that would mark her as particularly suspicious. She definitely has something more going on than is currently clear, especially in light of her connection to Virgilia (more on that later), but for the moment my thoughts about her are pretty fuzzy and vaguely-formed.

Gohda, by contrast, I’m relatively willing to trust as being basically who he’s presented as. Likes cooking, likes showing off, dislikes being in danger, prone to petty obnoxiousness against the other servants, but he’s not in Kinzo’s inner circle and he lacks any obvious motive for involvement in the murders. Maybe there are subtle cues of suspiciousness I’m missing, but for the time being, I’m inclined to class him as among the most straightforward and easy-to-understand of the characters.

Kanon and Shannon are in Kinzo’s inner circle at least somewhat, if less closely than Genji, and most likely know things they haven’t shared (even if I don’t know what things specifically). Moreso than any of the other servants, they’re actively working against the murders happening, and have clear motives for doing so with their respective romantic interest in Jessica and George. While they have some amount of motive for knocking off disapproving guardians in particular, none of the bunches of murders that happen resemble what such an attempt would look like, and so I’m pretty confident they’re not doing that and are instead relatively straightforwardly on the murder-is-bad-actually side of things.

Also, they have magic. I mean, not really, but they do things mysterious enough that they seem like they have magic, and with the fourth game’s proverbial spilling-ink-on-the-white-squares their magic can no longer be chalked up entirely to unreliable narration, because testimony of it managed to reach Battler through Kyrie’s call. Shannon spent most of her time shielding against threats invisible to everyone else, such that her seeming magic is relatively easy to dismiss; but Kanon, with his ability to cut through the various bars in their way using something that looks like a glowy red blade, is harder to explain. I’m stumped on that one for the time being, assuming the implausible custom-weapon-designer hypothesis is false.

Krauss knows things. Among the characters who Kinzo distrusted, I suspect him to be the best-informed, if still not actually all that well-informed relative to Kinzo’s inner circle, about Kinzo’s various machinations; he knows that the gold is real, he most likely knows about Kinzo’s death (and, if he doesn’t, he definitely at least heavily suspects), he knows that the servants are in on Kinzo’s plans, et cetera. That said, it’s not clear how much more beyond that he does or doesn’t know.

He’s one of the first to be killed in the first two arcs, and honestly has much less incentive for murder than any of his siblings given his being the current top contender for the succession, so I’m inclined to trust that he’s not one of the murderers.

I’m not all that confident in my read on Natsuhi, but for the moment, I’m inclined to take her as at least moderately suspicious. Unlikely to be the sole murderer in any of the games, but potentially one of the murderers. The first game, in particular, gives her a clear motive, with her fight with Krauss over the gold being followed with (a) his death and (b) her grab for power by way of visiting Kinzo’s study and then beginning to present herself as his successor. Supporting this is the detail that, in the third game, she was gouged with the Stake of Satan, which while not a super reliable metric of what’s up with her is definitely at least a tick in favor of anger being a thing that motivates her, which fits with Krauss being among the first twilight’s victims in the game wherein she was particularly angered.

Eva is, while probably not the sole murderer in the third game, most likely at least one of them. (Not the sole murderer for two reasons: first, Nanjo’s death while she was occupied shooting Battler; second, George and Hideyoshi’s deaths, which don’t line up either with her love for Hideyoshi (which is pretty unambiguously genuine) or her desire to make George her successor.) She had means (with Hideyoshi’s covering for her and making openings), she had motive (the gold she’d found), she was the sole survivor of the incident, and just generally all evidence suggests her culprithood.

Hideyoshi, assuming that the Eva-as-third-game-murderer hypothesis is correct, was her accomplice. More generally, despite his tendency to deescalate the sibling-fights, he’s pretty firmly in her corner when it comes to wanting the money and wanting George to be the successor. I’m thus inclined to mostly treat the pair of them as a unit, and assume that important information known by one is known by the other as well, although it’s not clear for the moment that either of them does know much in the way of important information, outside of the case where Eva managed to find the gold.

Rudolf has mostly not had much chance to show us what’s up with him, having died on the first twilight in three of the four games and not accomplished all that much prior to his death in the remaining one. Probably the most striking thing that happened with him was his confidence, in the first game, that he would be murdered that night, as he in fact was; while he framed it at the time just in terms of the inheritance dispute of the moment, it seems plausible, in light of Beatrice’s story about his making some play six years ago that involved Battler in some capacity and ultimately led to all the murders happening, that that play of his was the true reason he was worried. Sadly, I have very little idea what he actually did back then, beyond “probably something, unless Beatrice was lying about something important having happened then, which I can’t totally write off as a possibility”.

Kyrie is the most overtly prone to Plotting of the bunch, but nonetheless seems pretty non-suspicious for the time being; when she’s not killed on the first twilight, she seems pretty genuine about turning her Plotting skills towards not dying, rather than infighting. Furthermore, she lacks any obvious motive for any of the murders that happen while she’s alive, and plenty of motive for making Rudolf’s murder in particular not happen. Thus I’m inclined to trust her.

Rosa is the single most suspicious person in the whole cast. In the second game, when she’s the one leading the survivors, she tosses around so much suspicion and paranoia-building that she comes across as deliberately sabotaging them. In the third game, she’s the one non-Eva person who’s found the gold, making her an obvious suspect there too, albeit less so than in the second given her death. I don’t think she’s the sole murderer of the second game, given that it ends with her being chomped by demons rather than escaping with the gold the way she’s trying to do, but she’s definitely among the more significant suspects. Oh, and let’s also toss in her history with Beatrice onto the reasons-to-suspect-her pile for good measure, because her “but I killed you!” rant just before her death in the third game didn’t make it seem like she was being entirely truthful about her “she fell off a cliff in a manner that I was moderately at fault for” story during the siblings’ conference, and thus she may well have a history of murder.

Jessica is another of the characters who I haven’t got a great read on. She likes Kanon, she’s rebellious towards but ultimately loves her parents, she gets Very Angry when people she cares about are murdered, and... that’s about all I’ve got. She seems pretty safe on the not-being-a-murderer front, but my sense of what’s actually going on with her is nongreat.

George is also probably not one of the murderers, but he’s at least not a complete write-off as a suspect in the way that Jessica is, given his level of martial-arts competence and his determination to fight Literally Everyone if they try to get between him and Shannon. Still, in practice there’s no evidence that anyone actually tripped over his Fight Everyone plan in that regard, and he doesn’t strike me as the type to preemptively do murders before being challenged, so I’m inclined to write him off on the basis of his lacking a motive.

Battler... has some interesting backstory stuff going on, with the reveal of his possibly being not the original Battler at all. For the time being, I’m inclined to continue trusting him as the Central Viewpoint Character Whose Observations Define The Boundaries Of Which Mysteries Need Explaining, since that role kind of inherently precludes his having seen the murders happen; but if Gameboard!Battler and Meta!Battler turn out to be more divergent than I currently believe them to be then I’ll have to revise that assessment.

Maria is, of the cousins, by far the most suspicious, and the only one who I genuinely think might be one of the murderers in some of the games. She has all these spells made for murder-related purposes, she explicitly has plans to kill the witch possessing Rosa (who is, of course, really Rosa herself), she’s allied with Beatrice, et cetera. Lots of points of suspicion. One particularly suspicious incident is Rosa’s death in the third game, given the two of them having been alone together; I’d be pretty non-shocked by her being the murderer there.

And then we come to Beatrice herself, who is by far the most mysterious member of the cast. According to Rosa’s testimony, she killed someone who looked just like the Beatrice of the portrait during her childhood, long before the events of the game; Captain Kawabata’s story about deliveries to Kuwadorian suddenly halting about thirty years ago (eighteen years prior to the main plot) seem to corroborate this. And yet Beatrice is able to show herself directly to Battler near the end of the fourth game, suggesting that an identical-looking person is alive and furthermore is one of the no-more-than-seventeen people on the island. If we suppose that she’s not secretly one of the seventeen previously-named non-Kinzo characters, then one of them has to be dead as well, which isn’t nearly as plausible as Kinzo’s death because Battler meets all of them at one point or another, so we’ve got to assume furthermore that this person who looks identical to the old dead Beatrice is furthermore actually identical with one of the seventeen.

In terms of pure physical resemblance, Eva is the obvious suspect; they have similar haircuts, and both Beatrice’s dress and Beatrice’s suit conveniently cover up the arm where Eva has the conspicuous tattoo. Their voices differ, as do their manners of speaking, but nonetheless that physical resemblance raises her slightly above the others on my suspicion pile. Her being dead at the time of her would-be interaction with Battler would ordinarily be a significant problem, except that Beatrice explicitly states in red that she’s dead at the time she kills Battler at the end of the fourth game, making it no more of a problem for Eva (being also-dead-at-that-time) than it would be for any of the other possible suspects.

(I have no idea how that particular murder happened, incidentally.)

My other, weirder suspect for Beatrice’s identity is Kumasawa. She’s old enough that I have no idea how she’d pull off the disguise, but she’s good enough at flitting around offscreen that she’s got plenty of opportunity to set scenarios up, and furthermore she’s old enough to possibly be the dead-eighteen-years-ago Beatrice’s implausible identical twin. Honestly I rank this one somewhat higher than I rank the Eva possibility, because while the physical-appearance issue is admittedly tricky, the identical-twin possibility explains some stuff relatively neatly. Under this hypothesis, she’d presumably be exaggerating her age somewhat in her Kumasawa persona, which could potentially explain part of the gap in how-she’d-pull-off-the-disguise. The main challenge to this hypothesis is that she was the third subject of the same ambiguous declaration-in-red of non-killer-ness that Genji and Nanjo were subject to, which in light of Beatrice being confirmed in red to kill Battler at the end of the fourth game means that she can be Beatrice only if that declaration was restricted in scope to the first game only.

So that’s all the humans on the island. I’m going to refrain from talking much about the characters in the Ange flashforward, because for the time being they seem relatively unimportant to the main events of the game; they reveal a bunch of interesting information, with the hundred-million-yen packages they received-but-didn’t-take and with Ange’s exploration of magic having significantly improved my understanding of the rules at play there and so forth, but they don’t have any more direct involvement than that as far as I can tell. Eva’s mysterious resurrection-and-subsequent-death might be another mystery for the pile, or might be just more of the same magic-of-unreliable-narration that drove the rest of the scene in which it took place.

Next up, the various more-inherently-magical figures:

EVA, MARIA, ANGE, and Goldsmith are respectively Eva, Maria, Ange, and Kinzo. Not much more needs to be said here, I think.

Bernkastel and Lambdadelta are respectively Rika and Takano from Higurashi, except not really; they’re clearly related, but Bernkastel is somewhat less straightforwardly benevolent than Rika, and Lambdadelta is pretty different in a few ways from Takano (less creepy, more tsundere, more of a personal rival to Bernkastel where Takano’s relation to Rika was more impersonal, actually has magic beyond High Willpower). I’m not entirely clear on the precise relation there, and mostly it’s tangential to their role here, which is as more-powerful witches who occasionally interfere with Beatrice’s gameboard. They seem to exist exclusively in meta-space, with no direct involvement in the murders.

Sakutaro is a stuffed lion animated with magic (specifically the imagination-based version) in a mostly pretty self-explanatory fashion. The one big interesting thing there is that, judging by the way Beatrice choked on an attempted bit of red text when ANGE was forcing her out of the Golden Land, it seems like Rosa probably made a new vessel for him some time after killing the original (or before, I suppose, although that seems less likely); I’m not sure yet how that’s going to become significant, but I’m pretty sure it is.

Virgilia and Ronove have an interesting link to respectively Kumasawa and Genji. I’m not yet sure of the nature of that link, beyond that Virgilia has made a nonzero number of mackerel comments and was originally Kumasawa before waking up in the third game and that Ronove shares a name with Genji and directly alludes to himself as sort of magical parallel of his; but there’s definitely a link there. Given my preexisting suspicion of both Kumasawa and Genji, it seems relatively reasonable to think that the link might be more literal than it appears onscreen to be and they’re actually just the same people, although it’s also possible that something more complicated is going on with them.

Gaap... I’m honestly not sure what’s going on with her. Anthropomorphic personification of the pit-trap weapon, whatever that weapon happens to be? That’s the best I’ve got for her. The Chiester Sisters and the Seven Sisters of Purgatory are in a similar boat in that regard, respectively for the mysterious gold-thread weapon and the Seven Stakes of Purgatory. And then I’ve got even less idea what’s going on with the goats; I suppose if I wanted to force them into the same mold as the others I could argue that they’re anthropomorphic personifications of ordinarily mundane guns and clubs and so forth, but that seems like much more of a stretch than it was for the more-fantastical weapons, given the fashion in which they directly threaten people during the fourth game such that testimony of their doing so reaches Battler, so I haven’t really got any idea what’s going on with them.

So that’s the characters covered. For the most part, I lack any hypotheses on the individual locked rooms or on the fourth game’s mysterious testimonies, beyond the broad comments I’ve already made in my setting and character analyses; while I’ve got my various hypotheses on who did some of the murders, I’m sufficiently fuzzy on how most of them were done that I don’t have much to say on them that wasn’t already said by Battler at the end of the fourth game. As such, I think I’ll leave this post off here for now, and hope I haven’t forgotten to mention anything too important.

#Archive #Analysis #Umineko #Higurashi

[gripefroot]

When Life Gives You Melons

The dull fluorescents and the tinny radio station over the speakers make the grocery store a hotbed of discomfort. Keeps him glancing over his shoulder, waiting for someone with a gun to pop out between boxes and rows of pasta, cackling madly against the liminal backdrop. So, Bucky isn’t exactly in the habit of ‘grocery shopping’ - but he does it for you. 

Or, should he say - with you.  

His knuckles are white on the handle of the shopping cart, and the metal beneath his glove creaks slightly. He tries to ignore the crackling music. The other people standing around - barely moving, barely aware - so slow at ten a.m. on a Tuesday. It’s easiest to keep his eyes on you.  

Whether you’re aware that he’s watching or not - and he fancies you do - there’s no shiver of discomfort, no hesitancy. Fingers curling around bright, plump lemons; weighing them in your palm with a bitten lip in concentration. It’s all very domestic, but that doesn’t make it less sexy. Bucky swallows thickly as your tongue hovers on the cusp of your top lip - still thinking? - and then with a breathy sigh that reminds him of dark nights in the bedroom, you put that particular lemon back.  

Testing his patience? He wouldn’t wonder.  

“You’re pretty,” he blurts, but keeps his voice lazy. Make sure you remember that two can play at this game - this cat and mouse dance where he isn’t sure who’s the cat and who’s the mouse - except that both parties seem to end enormously satisfied. His lips curl into a smug smile as you glance over, eyes dancing.  

“Lemons turn you on?” A suggestive wiggle of the brows, and he barely manages to suppress a laugh into a snort - draw less attention, that way. “Do we need to look at the bananas, next?” you add, and Bucky nearly chokes.  

“You tryna kill me, babe?” 

“You’re cute when you’re flustered.” Another lemon weighed, while your gaze, all hot and heady, stays on him - he swallows again, and your smile is all satisfaction. “What’s next on the list?” you ask, twisting the bag of lemons closed.  

“Um - it just says ‘fruit’.” 

“Let’s go see what looks good, then.” 

Nectarines and plums are out of season, looking small and sad. Pineapple is overpriced. Bucky pauses to sniff some peaches, dragging a scarlet-and-orange globe to his nose to catch any hint of ripeness.  

“Hey. What do you think?” 

He glances ahead - facing him square on, wicked smile on your face - a honeydew in each hand, held chest-high. He blinks. And then he laughs.  

“Nice melons,” Bucky jokes.  

“Thanks. I thought you might like them.” 

“So, you’re saying - we don’t need any because you already got some?” He quirks a brow.  

“Well,” your brows pinch in serious thought. “We can’t eat mine for supper, now can we?” 

“I could.” 

“Won’t fill you up.”  

He shrugs. “Overrated.” 

“If you’re really not interested in food,” a glint in your eyes now, that prickles heat across his skin, “I can offer alternative...eating options.” 

“I’ll take them,” he says promptly. 

“Perfect.” A sly smile - but a honeydew goes into the cart anyway, and he smiles back a sloppy, lovesick grin that makes his bones vibrate with joy, and he forgets how much he hates grocery stores as he follows you towards the misty display of fresh herbs. 

This rare day off together makes Bucky wish for more. His last mission in Neuquén, yours in Kuala Lumpur - still half-jet lagged, but every moment special. Even in the mundane ones, like opening a plastic bag so that you can slide some basil in as you slant a smirk up at him.  

“What?” he asks.  

“Oh, nothing.” 

“Uh, huh. What is it?” 

“Can’t I enjoy shopping with my boyfriend?” A blithe question, almost accusatory - but really, it’s a challenge. He’d be able to hear it in your voice from a mile away.  

“Without ulterior motives?” Bucky teases. “Fat chance, babe.”  

A tiny gasp, breaking off into a laugh.  

“I know you just want a piece of this,” he adds in a low voice, and by that glint in your eyes - he knows he’s right. Makes his belly flame hot, and he smiles as he drives the cart behind you, watching how you sway just so… 

It’s a shame there’s no thigh holster, today. But it’s a grocery store. And your knife is beneath your shirt, anyway. 

Maybe he can disarm you, later.  

“You know what we haven’t done yet?” you ask absently, as the checkouts beep. Putting goods on the runway, as Bucky surreptitiously tosses in about three packs of gum. 

“Hmm?” 

“We haven’t gotten anything for the baby.” 

Oh. Right. The baby. His lips press together in his usual contradiction of emotions when he considers this - happiness for 41 and her glowing smiles, annoyance at Clint for desecrating her, and maybe a little jealousy. Not that he’s brave enough to bring that topic up to you - he’s not even sure if such a future is possible for him - but with a sigh he shakes off these feelings for later. 

“We can go later,” he suggests. Gets a flash of a smile for that as you glance over.  

“After lunch?” 

“Sure.”  

Carrying bags of groceries back to your apartment should be tedious. But it’s not. Not with your elbow linked through his, making an obnoxious plastic bags-assassin-plastic bags-secret agent-plastic bags train, plowing through the Manhattan sidewalks as New Yorkers cast scowls for the inconvenience. Bucky doesn’t care. And he knows you don’t, either.  

Over sandwiches, a quick search into baby stores. He doesn’t know any, and you admit to only being familiar with baby stores in your hometown. He chuckles to himself, resting his chin on your shoulder as he gazes over at the screen of your phone, too.  

“A mall?” he says suddenly, good feelings gone. “Babe - no.”

“We won’t find anything anywhere else,” you point out. “Not unless you want to travel an hour.” 

“I don’t like malls.”

“I know, Buck.” A twist of your head, the lightest peck to his pouting lips. “Don’t worry. I’ll be there.” 

Bucky wrinkles his nose. Pretends to think. “Well, gee,” he drawls at last. “A pretty girl to hold my hand?” 

“And pinch your behind,” you interrupt. 

“And that? Well - how can a fellow say no?” A grin - which you return with a laugh, and he presses a noisy kiss to your cheek. “But if you drag me into a candle store, I’m rioting,” he promises, and you wriggle in his embrace.  

“I like a good riot every now and then,” you say lightly. “Don’t tempt me.” 

A groan, a roll of the eyes, a laugh - teasing all the way out the door, a casual pair in sneakers and jackets with fewer weapons than usual, still stowed away… 

As much as Bucky detests busy places, it’s not so bad with you. Your whispered comments on the subway and into the mall, teasing about this or that, murmuring quips at a hundred miles an hour as he tries to keep from drawing attention by laughing the entire time. But he’s grinning, his face hurts, and your smirk is the prettiest, most lethal thing he’s seen.  

The baby store, a sign lit up bright blue with little bunny and fox decals filling up the massive windows in the front. Bucky squeezes your hand more tightly, seeing families milling around and hearing the high-pitched whine of babies -  

It’s okay. Of course it’s okay. He’d rather listen to a baby cry than gunfire, any day.  

“I’m gonna text 41 and see what she needs,” you decide. Pause you pull out your phone, and Bucky lets his eyes rove. Bright displays - tiny baby shoes in every color and pattern and style, lined up on a rack. Headbands and hair clips and hats and bow ties and neckties...Bucky wanders over, curious in the oddest way. They made stuff this little? For babies? 

Without thinking, his lips draw down in a concentrated frown: hesitating only for a moment, before picking up with one hand - suddenly looking very large - a pair of black Converse shoes, which look like each one might fit one of his fingers. He looks at them one way, and then another. 

Maybe it’s just been too long since he’s seen a baby. Bucky doesn’t remember his sisters or kid cousins ever being this tiny.  

“Do we - ” he starts, wondering if baby Barton needs little shoes. Glances over at you, wanting an answer - but you’re staring, and he starts. Hadn’t noticed how intently you’re looking at him - phone limp in your hand, blinking fast, and if he tilts his head, listening to the rapid pitter-patter of your heart rate, suddenly elevated. “Are you okay, babe?” Bucky asks, concerned with a pinch of his brow - puts the shoes carefully back on the rack.  

“Ye - yeah.” A squeak. High-pitched and thin. He frowns now - this is unlike you. Keeping his eyes fixed firmly on your face, searching for any hint of illness or otherwise, he strides back to your side, clasping your elbow with the fingers of his flesh hand.  

“Did 41 text you back already?” Bucky asks. Watches the widening of your pupils, the sudden catch in your breath. 

“Oh - um, yes. They need…socks.” 

“Socks?” 

“And, um, bibs.”  

“Perfect. You wanna…” He lifts a brow. “Divide and conquer? Or…?” 

“Let’s…” You swallow. “Let’s stick together.” 

“Fine by me.” Bucky smiles - a reassuring, bracing smile, to you in the midst of the baby store chaos, and he reaches down to squeeze your hand lightly. Your flesh is hot and damp. “They’re having a girl, right?” he prompts, as you lick your lips. Almost hungrily. Hmm.  

“Uh - yeah.” A flicker of a smile, a shake of your head. “Maybe they’ll name her after me,” you joke, and he laughs as he tugs you towards the sock display.  

“What? 28? Or Agent?” 

“Ha, ha.” A dark, mischievous look. Bucky snorts with a shake of his head. Turns his head to study the rack of socks. Frowns some more.  

“How about these?” he asks dubiously. Pokes a pack of striped socks. 

“No,” you say. “Bucky - those are 6-9 month size. The baby comes out a newborn. See?” And with a tap of the fingers, you point towards the sizing, printed clearly at the top of the package. Eyes twinkling, as Bucky shakes his head. 

“This store is complicated.” 

“Just look for a pair labelled ‘NB’.”  

He does. Looks past the printed airplanes, the animals, the solid colors. You bench slightly to examine the lower racks, all lace frills and bows. Cars, alligators, unicorns.  

“Oh. This one.” Bucky reaches out - picks up an appropriately sized pack. Six pairs - doughnuts, lollipops, hard candy, cake, and pie. You laugh.  

“Perfect.” 

“Gosh, they’re so tiny.” With some effort he wiggles a finger into one of the doughnut socks - terribly soft and stretchy, but teeny - chortles to himself as he glances down at you, still crouched - and sees, again, that funny expression on your face as you stare. You let out a long, low breath. Are your hands shaking? “Babe?” Bucky asks, baffled. 

“It’s just - it’s getting hot in here.” A taut smile as you rise to your feet again. A meaningful look in your eyes. Oh, is that - oh. Bucky swallows, hard, and your fingers reach to unzip your jacket. “Really hot,” you add, with some exertion in your voice. Jacket pulled off. He swallows again.  

“Oh - er, ok.” His finger is still inside the sock. He pulls it off, groaning softly.  

“Maybe it’s best if we split up,” you suggest. “I’ll - I’ll go find...something. You’re on bibs.”  

“Okay, babe.” 

He watches the top of your head out of the corner of his eye - picking out jammies that look about the size to hold a banana, he thinks wryly. And he rifles through bibs. Finds a set to match the socks amongst the seeming hundreds of options, and feels immensely proud.  

Oh. Oh boy - Bucky catches sight, on top of the bib rack, of a basket full of stuffed animals. Bunnies, elephants, monkeys. Pink and purple and blue. At one end, a crowning jewel: a pale-tan alpaca llama, decorated colorfully with bangles and a saddle and reins.  

He has to get it.  

“Babe,” he hisses, arms full of merchandise - wandering over to the jammies, where you have at least four pairs slung over your arm as you hold up a purple-and-pink striped pair for view. “Babe, we have to get this.” Wriggles the llama for your inspection, and you lift a brow.  

“Of course we can,” you say with a smile. “It’ll look great next to your bed.” 

“Not for me,” Bucky says, affronted. “For the baby.” 

“Sure.” The striped jammies go over your arm, too.  

“You ready to go?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I think we got enough.” A smile, gazing over the merchandise in his arms. Bucky offers a hopeful smile. Your bottom lip catches between your teeth - another once over, this one slower. He hears, yet again, the pickup in your heart beat. Glazed eyes, shifting your weight slightly… 

“You sure you’re alright?” he asks doubtfully. “Your heart is going really fast.”  

“Oh, yeah,” you say. Breathless and soft. “Um - can we...we should stop somewhere before heading home.” 

“You sure?” Absently Bucky’s flesh fingers run down the alpaca - freakishly smooth and fluffy alpaca - whatever it’s made out of. He’s sure he’s never touched anything so soft… “What’s so important?” he asks, as your lashes flutter so slightly, your burning eyes still on his face.  

“Umm…” Darting tongue, wet lips. Skin radiating more heat than usual. “Having my way with you in the nearest bathroom.” 

“Let’s go,” he suggests. “Sooner the better.” 

“Yes,” you agree. “Let’s.” 

Nervous energy at the checkout - fumbling with cash, grabbing the bag too fast to be polite. Shared, secret laughs as the baby store is left behind, bag swinging, and you jerk your head towards a family bathroom. Unlocked.  

“This is nasty,” Bucky announces, as you lock the door behind him - creepy lights, a ripe smell. But then your hands are on him, pawing at his belt as he groans aloud - bag drops to the floor, and he doesn’t hesitate to lift you by your hips, pressing your back to a wall.  

“You,” you pant. Teeth gnash against his neck as he tugs down your jeans with some difficulty - underwear pushed aside. “Are so sexy. Bucky, you’re so sexy.” 

“Huh?” Not that he’s complaining - especially when his brain and senses are so doped up on you.  

“Ugh - holding those baby socks. You’re lucky I didn’t pull off your pants and suck you off right then and there.”  

Bucky shudders head to toe, eyes fuzzy - and with some magic because he ain’t thinking right now - sinks right into; hot and wet and moaning so pretty in his ear, and he’s so warm still mostly-clothed, but he doesn’t care - thrusting up and in as you melt around him. Barely staying on his shaking legs, ignoring the distant sound of mall-goers walking by - no, this is more important.  

He buries his face into your neck, losing himself in the husky vibrations of your moans - clenches up when you do, choking out a grunt as you bear down on him.  

Like, two minutes. Efficient. His head is still rushing, though.  

“Oh, oh, Bucky - look.” A twist of your head, and blearily, Bucky follows your gaze. 

The bag on the floor, discarded in aroused haste - above just peeking out of the top, the beady black eyes of the softest-ever alpaca. Staring right at him. Sewn-on smile frozen.  

“Do you...do you think he saw?” Bucky asks hoarsely.  

“Definitely.” A little kiss pressed to his temple, but he barely feels it.  

“Babe...we can’t give the baby that alpaca.”  

“No?” you ask with some amusement. Hold around his neck tightening. “We can adopt him, then. It’s a he? Have you named him yet, Buck?”  

“Robert.” 

A tinkling laugh in his ear. “Robert? That’s such a grown-up name! Not even Robbie or Bobby?” 

“He’s an adult,” Bucky says firmly. “After what he just saw? No llama has ever grown up so fast in the history of llamakind.”  

“Bobby,” you counter. “Now let me down. I can feel the germs crawling on me.”  

There’s a softer light in your eyes after that - heat still lingering in the back, but it makes Bucky feel cozy and warm as he zips his pants back up. Hands washed. Bag picked up. Awkwardly he pushes Bobby’s head further down in the bag with a wince, as you laugh again.  

“Melon for dinner?” you chirp, as he wrenches open the door.  

“Uh - sure. Melon for dinner.”  

[lookatthisdork]

Batman AU Idea - Ghosts

I’ve always been a sucker for supernatural-element AUs in otherwise (near-) magic-less settings, and Batman generally leans hard on the (COMIC) SCIENCE end of the science/magic spectrum, so naturally I’m always on the hunt for Batman AUs with magic stuff happening. The worldbuilding that some authors put into a Gotham where immortal beings are just part of life is amazing.

But there’s so many vampire AUs. Don’t get me wrong - I love them, and I love their writers. But I just want more variety sometimes.

Ghosts

(Shout-out to my favorite Ghost-Batman fic where all of the batkids (Pre-Flashpoint) are ghosts with human-Bruce-dad. And Lost Boys Fly by hauntedlittledoll, it’s completed and just really well done.)

Imagine a Gotham where the laws of reality are just a bit thinner than usual - where magic and the supernatural bleed into everyday life due to a combination of natural geography and concentrated human misery. On top of all the mundane evils of the world, Gotham deals with demons and satanic cults and the like.

Also, ghosts. Lots and lots of ghosts. Usually victims of murders or suicides. Ghosts aren’t super common even in Gotham, but they’re near unheard of outside the city (in America, at least - I doubt Gotham is truly unique in this AU).

Most ghosts are short-lived echoes that disappear within a day or two. Some linger for longer - weeks, months, years, even decades by some accounts. The amount of time a ghost remains is directly proportional to how self-aware and powerful (read: dangerous) they are. 

And in modern Gotham, there’s an urban legend that at least one ghost has been stalking the city’s streets for centuries.

Miscellaneous world building:

The Manor was gifted to the Pennyworths rather than the Kanes when the Waynes died, which means Alfred owns the estate in modern-day. He had no idea that his dad left him a house frequented by (a) ghost(s), but he’s grown very (disturbingly) used to the company.

People that like Kate Kane: she exists in this AU! Just because the Waynes died out ages ago doesn’t mean the Kanes aren’t still around. In fact, Gotham probably relies on Kane Enterprises instead of Wayne Industries. (But Kate keeps her personal background and has a working relationship with her “cousin”)

One of Bruce’s self-appointed jobs is to help other ghosts move on as fast as possible and to deal with the already-crazy ones. This involves a lot of reaching out to surviving family members and haunting the shit out of a lot of murderers.

Also a lot of haunting the GCPD and its detectives’ homes. (Gordon did not sign up for this shit, he should have just stayed in Chicago where all the dead people stay dead.

At least half of the Batkids are ghosts that refused to move on even after meeting Bruce. The other half are vigilantes he insists on haunting watching over.

Dick died in the same fall as his parents. (Age 12)

Barbara is alive and dealing with these dead assholes for some reason.

Jason died on the streets of exposure. (Age tbd, either 10 or 14-15)

Tim, Stephanie and Cass I’m undecided on (though Stephanie would have died of torture at Age 16 and Tim would have died of something no immediately visible that still left his shirt soaked in blood, Age tbd) 

I have no idea how to write Damian into this AU, haha oops

Bruce is quite possibly the oldest-known sane ghost. No one know why he’s the exception to the general crazy-in-a-year rule - people that know him assume he’s just too stubborn to go off the deep-end

The other dead batkids end up the next-oldest ghosts - the stubbornness is contagious?

This universe’s Ra’s would probably be interested to know what makes Bruce tick

Yes, the ghosts look the age they died at, though they can change their appearances with some will and imagination

If they’re particularly stressed or not paying attention, they look exactly the way they died - fatal wounds included

For obvious reasons (cough Bruce’s eternal eight-year-old babyface cough), they almost never show their faces. Dick in particular is fond of the disembodied voice trick when he wants to make his presence known.

Ghost powers! The older the ghost, the more they can do. Powers may include moving objects nearby and at a distance, moving through walls, disappearing and reappearing anywhere within one’s preferred haunts, localized illusions (more like hallucinations really), manipulation of emotions, manipulation of temperature (mainly making things colder), fucking with electromagnetic equipment and possession.

Possession is the hardest, and Jason tends to use it most often; Bruce almost never uses it

Weaknesses are the old favorites: salt, iron and holy ground.

Note: the salt must be unrefined with no additives; common table salt only works on younger ghosts. Iron doesn’t stop teleportation and only works if you swing directly at a ghost’s projected form. And desecrated holy ground (made by harming an innocent on former holy ground) is fair game.

Crucifixes do absolutely nothing! Nor does holy water! Getting your local priest to bless some salt doesn’t help either. (Gotham criminals still try all of these, though)

When Bruce joins the Justice League, Hal refuses to believe it and mocks the fuck out of “Casper” in that first meeting. He then spends the next month haunted by his “coworker.” And thus begins a beautiful friendship!

#batman #batman au #au #ghost au #batfam #bruce wayne #cameos by #kate kane #hal jordan #making AUs is fun #did I mention how this is basically the dead children au #none of the main ghost cast are adults #fun! #I forgot to finish Tim's death smh at myself

[joh-gaming]

Watch Dogs 2 Critical Review

I don’t post many reviews of games here, mostly ‘cause you can find reviews everywhere and in any format. So why make one for Watch Dogs 2? Because they went the extra mile and they deserve more than what they got.

After the failure of the first game, it’s understandable why the sequel sold so poorly. Not even counting the amount of solid games that came out around the same time, but people have been burned by Ubisoft’s marketing far too many times. Take The Division, which I actually like and play, the downgrade wasn’t just in graphics but gameplay. It was far more interesting in the original trailer than what we ended up with. The Division is fun but also boring, and to a point you can say the same about Assassin’s Creed Syndicate (another game I like). Syndicate however has the benefit of having the twins, Evie and Jacob Frye are really fun characters and the Assassin’s Creed formula has its moments. But one thing was clear, Ubisoft was making cookie cutter missions in their open world games and that gets boring fast.

Finally they made a game that breaks away from the GTA clone Fed Ex formula (mostly anyway) and people weren’t buying it. Gaming sites were more concerned about getting hits, so while most of them praised the game, it was mostly as “it’s better than the first” which we all knew would be ‘cause that one was terrible. So why did I ignore the game? Well, to be honest it was Marcus. Don’t get me wrong, even without playing it I prefer Marcus over Aiden any day, but the promo videos kept showing Marcus as this dull character, and his clothes are something I wouldn’t wear even if I was cosplaying. I knew you could change clothes but have you seen the outfits they chose for the promo? he looks like a clown most of the time.

What I’m saying is, I couldn’t find myself in Marcus. Thankfully, they decided to offer that 3 hrs trial which I took. Played the hell out of the game to get a feel for the clothes, missions, characters and story. So I’m going to start my review with that, click keep reading if you’re interested.

The 3hrs Trial

OK so the first mission was kind of hard, but it was fun. Talk about a tutorial in the middle of a war zone and with a timer no less. (trial timer, not mission timer) I had to learn fast to make the most out of it. The script is... well have you seen TV shows lately? yea not great but not as bad as some people make it out to be. The gameplay was solid, animations were pretty good and graphics are impressive. I was unimpressed with the characters, even Sitara which I liked from the promo material. I did a couple of main missions, stole the Cyber Driver car, played some co-op missions and 1 of the events, opted out of PvP ‘cause I’m not interested in that. I don’t go to the Dark Zone in The Division either so yea, PvP is not my thing. I did a lot of the ATM side quests which are quite fun and funny. By the end of the trial I knew I really wanted this game. It was already on my list, but I was going to buy it as cheap as possible. I talked to my friends (the ones that played the trial with me) and we all liked it, they bought the game before I did but we all got it. Not only that but we bought the Gold Edition, which is still on sale at the time of this post.

Gold Edition

Why the Gold edition? Well, it comes with the Season Pass and it was $60 for the whole thing. So technically, it was finally priced right, the whole game for the price of a full game, I’m OK with that. It’s probably the only way I would recommend the season pass of any game.

Characters

Like I said before, during the 3hr trial I wasn’t impressed, but they slowly grew on me and I prefer that. In Life is Strange it was the same, I didn’t like Chloe until the third episode.

Marcus

Look at those clothes... wtf is that? He looks like TV static or something. Anyway, took a while but the guy grew on me thanks to moments like this one

Wish he had had more to do outside of doing the impossible. Also wish he had more interaction with Horatio.

Sitara

She’s cool, the Sombra of the group (a lot more serious though) and more of an artist than a hacker, even though she’s brilliant. She knows the power of a brand and works hard to turn Dedsec into “celebrities”. Just don’t wear a man bun in front of her.

Wrench

Cynical, sarcastic, weird af and with a short temper. This is Marcus’ best friend in the crew. Throws tantrums every now and then, I can relate to this guy a lot more, except for the thongs... yea... can’t relate to that.

Josh

The walking super computer, he is a bit stereotypical as well as cartoonish but I still like this guy a lot. There’s a lot of potential with this character.

Horatio

And Horatio, you barely get to talk to this guy and that’s a real shame. The few moments he had with Marcus were great. With the amazing animations and expressions, their funny scenes were actually funny.

I’m pretty sure this is the first time Ubisoft went with this approach on the characters. We’ve seen games where the companions are just as important as the main character, games like Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Fallout 4 and of course the Saints Row series. I can say this was just a few interactions short of being as good as Saints Row’s. I applaud Ubisoft for this and hope they keep evolving this part of their story telling, with gameplay to support it.

Gameplay

This game has variety, to the point where I haven’t tried everything it offers yet. Sure some of it is mundane, but I do love to have some mundane stuff in my open world games. As long as I don’t get a call from a cousin every 5 steps asking to go bowling. Still, the mundane stuff gives you an excuse to explore the beautifully crafted map. Same with the collectibles which help you unlock some skills later in the game.

They also added events, now since I locked my game as a single player experience (except when I join my friends in co-op) I’m not sure if the events are part of the co-op experience or if you have to open your game. You can choose to open it so that only friendly players show up in your session, however that doesn’t mean they won’t troll you, there are a lot of asses out there. But that’s another positive, the ability to lock the game as a single player experience or open its multiplayer options in ways that work for you. In any case I had a lot of fun with these events when playing with my friends. Especially one that has low tolerance for stealth (it was kind of hilarious as I was marking enemies and studying the locations, then suddenly he was blowing people up with traps)

I do recommend that if you don’t want to participate in PvP, that you turn off Bounty Hunter and Invasion but leave the friendly options open. Why? because even though there’s a chance trolls might find a way to hinder you, you also miss out on unscripted events that can only happen when some crazy dude has the cops or gangs on his tail. You can help them out or troll them yourself if that’s your kink.

One last thing, I know I’m keeping the gameplay details very vague but I prefer if you found out everything you can do in the game on your own, the drone and remote car are fantastic mechanics. I love it when a game introduces a mechanic that suddenly every game after it should build upon. Not unlike the Last of Us with their bow and on the fly crafting which was arguably improved by the competition in the Tomb Raider games.

Missed Opportunities

The game is VERY good as is, so if you can afford it, go ahead and buy it ‘cause unless you hate Open World Games, you should like this game a lot. Remember, there’s a 3hr free trial if you’re still unsure, it’s not a demo, it’s the full game and you have access to it for 3 hrs.

That being said, a few things could have turned this game from very good to great (at least in my opinion)

1- No way to donate money

A- can’t tip performers on the streets B- can’t give money to beggars C- can’t even donate to bank accounts of people you know have some kind of illness or problem

Sounds pointless, but if you do it often enough in a game, the reason why you did it may carry over to the real world. A pebble in a pond or whatever but I think it can work.

2- Chatting NPCs

A- it’s only used to deliver low level context B- should have an “affection” rating tied to it, even if the reward is some spray or clothing item C- can’t use intel from NPCs (unless scripted) to prepare better for a mission

You can talk to your crew and get their thoughts after every mission, but that’s ultimately pointless. I understand they didn’t want to lock people out of content, nor wanted to force people into something they didn’t want to do but hey, I didn’t talk to Garrus every single time after a mission and he still became one of my favorite characters of all time. Same with Liara and Tali.

3- Tone

A- too serious at times B- it should have been more about their branding, at least most of the game (it kind of is but they already have the main game’s goal from the start) C- after a particular story event, some missions should be locked for a substantial amount of in game time

Saints Row games know they are a parody and work with it. Yes they shift tone in a way. From being funny and satirical to Ling, Carlos, Gat and even you dying, but it still felt within the themes of the game. In Watchdogs 2 you can have a gang after you, then you’re joking about some stupid shit. It shifts too abruptly sometimes. It’s not annoying just something that could be ironed out in the future.

4- HQ Hackerspace

A- you have your main hideout in a game store and you didn’t Gwent it? B- no hideout customization C- Marcus can’t recruit for Dedsec

Seriously, why didn’t you make a game within a game? You could have made a table top game and go all Gwent with it. And not being able to customize at least one of the hideouts is kind of a first in a Ubisoft game. Also, for story purposes I wish that Marcus had his own recruits. This could have been a game of its own where you could recruit the wrong person and then having to deal with that. Of course this wouldn’t be scripted, the NPCs are out there, (I call them trigger NPCs) if you recruit those that are under cover or from P8 or whatever, then that’s on you.

5- Social Locations

A- no interesting NPCs in most of them B- they serve no purpose other than one interaction and as a fast travel point

Something could have been done with these, especially if tied to the whole Marcus being able to recruit for Dedsec thing. A little initiation or test could have been done here.

6- Canon vs Player Actions

A- Marcus can kill a lot of people if the player wants B- at one point in the story Marcus does kill some people but gets no reaction from the crew

This is the same problem I have with the new Tomb Raider games, killing is not a big deal for these characters. It should be, like I said with the change in tone. They are hackers kind of having fun exposing the big corporations and the corrupt. They like to feel like super heroes but then the game is designed to have lethal weapons that the player can use, which is fine, that’s a gamified action which doesn’t have to be canon. But when it does happen in the story I expect more, taking a life shouldn’t be as uneventful as changing clothes

7- Clothes

A- nobody cares what you wear once you buy pants B- changing your outfit doesn’t affect in any way the follower multiplier

When you start the game, right after your initiation, your first mission is to buy pants. People react to what you were wearing before, taking pictures and laughing at you. But that’s where it ends. Also when you buy your first set of clothes, your follower number (XP) rises, would be nice if it had some kind of multiplier tied to it. The only game I remember that went through with that was GTA San Andreas.

Disclaimer

No, I’m not a Ubisoft fanboy, in fact they piss me off sometimes. I signed up for The Division’s beta almost as soon as registrations were allowed but didn’t get a code. Which sure, I can see that you have a limited number of codes to give, but when it happens that you gave away codes to people that didn’t register, that’s when I get annoyed. I had to preorder the game to get in, I honestly was considering skipping the game entirely.

Thank you Ubisoft Montreal

On the chance that someone from Ubisoft is reading this, I want to thank everyone that worked on this game. It was a lot of fun and looking forward to more of it.

#watch dogs 2 #review #personal thoughts

[therightnewsnetwork]

Never Date A Colored Girl

“Never date a colored girl. They’s all got the clap. They get it from they mamas.” My grandmother’s sage advice to me at five years old.

In spite of all the glamour shots of Spanish moss, and cypress trees, Louisiana is about as out of luck as one can get when it comes to being from somewhere. It’s hot, muggy, racist, and nobody’s family tree has a fork in it. Mine was no exception. My grandparents were first cousins, and I guess that’s why we all look alike, have every health condition known to America and some third world countries, Louisiana being among that group in spite of it being positioned at the tail end of the Mississippi River.

Long about the time I was three years old God decided it was time to kill me so I contradicted polio and something called the “sleeping sickness.” I lived, no thanks to the medical care of the day, and the following year they gave me a polio vaccination. You can’t make this stuff up folks. So at five I was deaf in one ear, which still rings till this day, blind in one eye and walking like a duck, but by golly I was white and that counted for something I guess.

Being white in a Klan based state had its perks, the main one being there was a whole race somewhere just a below white trash, which is what I was. What that amounted to was we could vote without getting lynched. Now we couldn’t marry a girl with all her teeth because that meant she’d been to a dentist and obviously was a blue blood, not capable of finding love unless black folk raped her. Then, of course then there’s the hanging, and Scarlet grows a new hymen just perfect for her fiancé Buddha Montgomery, heir to the gas station and thirty second degree Mason to boot.

All of this meant nothing to a kid growing up in a shotgun shack, living on liver gravy and bread with a flea bitten dog and a yard full of chickens, even in town. The difference between our “neighborhood” and “Nigger town” was the distance between the shacks. Theirs were closer. My most vivid memory was my uncle and dad “gigging” frogs and butchering them in the kitchen sink. All they’d eat were the legs, but they had to cut their heads off anyway, I suppose for the entertainment factor, and I’d watch them eat the frog legs while the heads blinked at them from the counter. They’d actually position the heads so they could see that. And poor old Martin Luther King tried singling “We Shall Overcome” to these guys. He’s lucky he wasn’t blinking from a sink.

I really did end up in a hospital when I had polio, but for minor ailments like nails in the foot, cut throats or pneumonia, you’d get taken to some camp in the swamp where a voodoo woman would blow smoke up your butt (literally) or put a penny on the wound so the spirit of Mr. Lincoln could draw out the poison, I crappith thee not!

I went to an all white school, but let me clarify. There’s white, then there’s white. The whitest kids had clean clothes and smelled good. I had neither. I usually wore a flannel shirt, and blue jeans with iron on patches. Iron on patches were the rage of the age. We was proud of iron on patches. I’d sit by the ironing board and watch in snake amazement as the patch cleaved to the fabric as if by magic. I really didn’t understand the social structure in school, only the fact that certain kids could hit me anytime they wanted to. There was this spoiled brat, Vance, I still remember him, who’d seek me out and beat me up during every recess. One day, in a moment of clarity, I hit him back and he fell, crying, so I hit him again. The teachers had to pull me off, but I think that was possibly the most memorable day of my life, that is until Velma Prigmore took off her blouse under the football stand years later, but I’ll save that for another chapter.

I was surrounded by family but none of us liked each other. I remember that every time there was a get together it ended up in a drunken fight with the kids all screaming, followed by that wild ride back to Shreveport across the Red River bridge with the car bouncing off the rails. The only good thing was at that age when you life flashes before your eyes it doesn’t take long. I know because every time I got my butt beat my life flashed before my eyes. Usually involving blinking frog’s heads.

My life flashed before my eyes when my grandmother got a hold of me once. I think I was five. We had this fat little dog named Maybelline. One day I had to pee, and couldn’t make it so I peed on the wall in the hall. My grandmother came along, saw the pee, then me, then the dog, picked up a stick and beat puppy crap out of Maybelleline. Wow! Remember, this was the days before internet. Next day, pee a little higher, bigger thrashing for Maybelline. Finally, I decided to kill the dog. I peed about two feet ABOVE my head. Now Maybelline was about the size of a fat possum. I have to give my grandmother credit. She did everything she could to match that dog’s butt with that pee before my life flashed before MY eyes!

Louisiana people will eat just about anything, steak, road kill, all manner of guts, small negroes, you name it. After the frogs I realized my dad was crazy and I generally stuck to liver gravy at home. Wonder Bread was safe. Rice. Beyond that was pot luck. Crawfish. Oh my LIVING God! Etched into my still developing mind was the image of huddles of inbreds sucking crawfish butts. Now, I’m not saying that’s wrong, some of you might suck crawfish butts, just not me. And Boudin sausage. I think there might be an FDA warning on that now. For those of you who do t know what that tastes like, take a dirty sock, pee on it, wring it out and stuff it in your mouth. There you go. Don’t forget to wash it down with some of dat good ol’ Jax beer.

And Jesus? God, did they have Jesus. My grandmother on my mother’s side, you know, the one who married her cousin, well, when we was living on Laurel Street, she would drag me down the the Baptist church and sit me right up there in the amen pew while this crazy old man screamed that me, and practically everyone else there was going to “hayell” and there wasn’t a damn thing we could do about it except put money in that little plate he had passed around. Jesus scared me to death until I was twenty-eight years old! I was just glad I wasn’t Catholic, and double glad I wasn’t black, or God forbid a black Catholic. Hell, if I turned out to be one of those I’d have just jumped into the Red River and been done with it.

I was told, when we lived Kaywood Apartments in Bossier City, to never go near the river. Now this is how much common sense we had at that age, and survival skills. With God, mosquitoes, teachers, the Klan and your parents all trying to kill you, you knew damn well not to go surfing on the Red River. This factor wore off by the time you got to high school because they were forever fishing teens out from under logs where the gators had stuffed them for seasoning. Oh yeah, we had those too. See the contrast; kids these days don’t know any better than to eat a dishwasher tablet and we used to play among the gators. We knew better than to eat a dishwasher tablet, one, because there weren’t any, and two, if there had been we’d have ended up down on the bayou with some old black lady blowing smoke up our butt. That’s called preventive medicine.

Not all things were bad. School lunches were a bitch. Till this day I have a prejudice. You see, all the school cooks were big, fat black women, and the result was whatever they come up with. Liver and onions, fried chicken, chicken and rice and courtesy of Huey Long you could eat all you wanted. They all had them Aunt Jemima wraps on their heads, a big smile, and even bigger spoons. They would throw mashed potatoes on the plate and it would drip over the side. Even today I have a hard time eating white woman cooking to the point of giving it to the dog when she looks away. Then you’d come home on the Good Ship Reality and find your uncle and dad in the kitchen with a case of Jax beer and a croak sack full of unfortunate frogs.

Louisiana weather sucks like a French lady of the night, and I know something about Them because Louisiana is full of them. You can’t see the tornadoes for the trees. I still remember the alert coming on the TV, the one you had to slap on the top to get reception from the station five miles away, and a very serious voice saying, “This is a severe tornado alert!” As opposed to the more mundane kind I suppose. Now, you didn’t know where it was, couldn’t see it, I’m told you could hear it, but that’s hard from under the bed. If you lived you’d stay up all night anyway just in case it had babies on the way through. Then the next day, in school, you have a bomb drill because everyone just knew the Russians were gonna bomb Barksdale Air Force Base at any given moment. All of this and the grown ups were worried about the blacks drinking out of the wrong water fountain. But . . . they all had Jesus!

By the time we moved to Texas I was ten years old, and pretty much bat-crap crazy. Had a permanent ringing in my ears, constantly looking over my shoulder for bombs, blacks, and bloody crosses, and the scary part is I left an entire state behind that thought just like me, and they’re still THERE! Well, the ones the gators didn’t get. Texas was a whole new deal, and I had to work it, which has only taken me fifty-five years, six wives, ten houses and three fortunes. This book is my story and thousands of baby boomers just like me!

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Never Date A Colored Girl

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Never Date A Colored Girl

“Never date a colored girl. They’s all got the clap. They get it from they mamas.” My grandmother’s sage advice to me at five years old.

In spite of all the glamour shots of Spanish moss, and cypress trees, Louisiana is about as out of luck as one can get when it comes to being from somewhere. It’s hot, muggy, racist, and nobody’s family tree has a fork in it. Mine was no exception. My grandparents were first cousins, and I guess that’s why we all look alike, have every health condition known to America and some third world countries, Louisiana being among that group in spite of it being positioned at the tail end of the Mississippi River.

Long about the time I was three years old God decided it was time to kill me so I contradicted polio and something called the “sleeping sickness.” I lived, no thanks to the medical care of the day, and the following year they gave me a polio vaccination. You can’t make this stuff up folks. So at five I was deaf in one ear, which still rings till this day, blind in one eye and walking like a duck, but by golly I was white and that counted for something I guess.

Being white in a Klan based state had its perks, the main one being there was a whole race somewhere just a below white trash, which is what I was. What that amounted to was we could vote without getting lynched. Now we couldn’t marry a girl with all her teeth because that meant she’d been to a dentist and obviously was a blue blood, not capable of finding love unless black folk raped her. Then, of course then there’s the hanging, and Scarlet grows a new hymen just perfect for her fiancé Buddha Montgomery, heir to the gas station and thirty second degree Mason to boot.

All of this meant nothing to a kid growing up in a shotgun shack, living on liver gravy and bread with a flea bitten dog and a yard full of chickens, even in town. The difference between our “neighborhood” and “Nigger town” was the distance between the shacks. Theirs were closer. My most vivid memory was my uncle and dad “gigging” frogs and butchering them in the kitchen sink. All they’d eat were the legs, but they had to cut their heads off anyway, I suppose for the entertainment factor, and I’d watch them eat the frog legs while the heads blinked at them from the counter. They’d actually position the heads so they could see that. And poor old Martin Luther King tried singling “We Shall Overcome” to these guys. He’s lucky he wasn’t blinking from a sink.

I really did end up in a hospital when I had polio, but for minor ailments like nails in the foot, cut throats or pneumonia, you’d get taken to some camp in the swamp where a voodoo woman would blow smoke up your butt (literally) or put a penny on the wound so the spirit of Mr. Lincoln could draw out the poison, I crappith thee not!

I went to an all white school, but let me clarify. There’s white, then there’s white. The whitest kids had clean clothes and smelled good. I had neither. I usually wore a flannel shirt, and blue jeans with iron on patches. Iron on patches were the rage of the age. We was proud of iron on patches. I’d sit by the ironing board and watch in snake amazement as the patch cleaved to the fabric as if by magic. I really didn’t understand the social structure in school, only the fact that certain kids could hit me anytime they wanted to. There was this spoiled brat, Vance, I still remember him, who’d seek me out and beat me up during every recess. One day, in a moment of clarity, I hit him back and he fell, crying, so I hit him again. The teachers had to pull me off, but I think that was possibly the most memorable day of my life, that is until Velma Prigmore took off her blouse under the football stand years later, but I’ll save that for another chapter.

I was surrounded by family but none of us liked each other. I remember that every time there was a get together it ended up in a drunken fight with the kids all screaming, followed by that wild ride back to Shreveport across the Red River bridge with the car bouncing off the rails. The only good thing was at that age when you life flashes before your eyes it doesn’t take long. I know because every time I got my butt beat my life flashed before my eyes. Usually involving blinking frog’s heads.

My life flashed before my eyes when my grandmother got a hold of me once. I think I was five. We had this fat little dog named Maybelline. One day I had to pee, and couldn’t make it so I peed on the wall in the hall. My grandmother came along, saw the pee, then me, then the dog, picked up a stick and beat puppy crap out of Maybelleline. Wow! Remember, this was the days before internet. Next day, pee a little higher, bigger thrashing for Maybelline. Finally, I decided to kill the dog. I peed about two feet ABOVE my head. Now Maybelline was about the size of a fat possum. I have to give my grandmother credit. She did everything she could to match that dog’s butt with that pee before my life flashed before MY eyes!

Louisiana people will eat just about anything, steak, road kill, all manner of guts, small negroes, you name it. After the frogs I realized my dad was crazy and I generally stuck to liver gravy at home. Wonder Bread was safe. Rice. Beyond that was pot luck. Crawfish. Oh my LIVING God! Etched into my still developing mind was the image of huddles of inbreds sucking crawfish butts. Now, I’m not saying that’s wrong, some of you might suck crawfish butts, just not me. And Boudin sausage. I think there might be an FDA warning on that now. For those of you who do t know what that tastes like, take a dirty sock, pee on it, wring it out and stuff it in your mouth. There you go. Don’t forget to wash it down with some of dat good ol’ Jax beer.

And Jesus? God, did they have Jesus. My grandmother on my mother’s side, you know, the one who married her cousin, well, when we was living on Laurel Street, she would drag me down the the Baptist church and sit me right up there in the amen pew while this crazy old man screamed that me, and practically everyone else there was going to “hayell” and there wasn’t a damn thing we could do about it except put money in that little plate he had passed around. Jesus scared me to death until I was twenty-eight years old! I was just glad I wasn’t Catholic, and double glad I wasn’t black, or God forbid a black Catholic. Hell, if I turned out to be one of those I’d have just jumped into the Red River and been done with it.

I was told, when we lived Kaywood Apartments in Bossier City, to never go near the river. Now this is how much common sense we had at that age, and survival skills. With God, mosquitoes, teachers, the Klan and your parents all trying to kill you, you knew damn well not to go surfing on the Red River. This factor wore off by the time you got to high school because they were forever fishing teens out from under logs where the gators had stuffed them for seasoning. Oh yeah, we had those too. See the contrast; kids these days don’t know any better than to eat a dishwasher tablet and we used to play among the gators. We knew better than to eat a dishwasher tablet, one, because there weren’t any, and two, if there had been we’d have ended up down on the bayou with some old black lady blowing smoke up our butt. That’s called preventive medicine.

Not all things were bad. School lunches were a bitch. Till this day I have a prejudice. You see, all the school cooks were big, fat black women, and the result was whatever they come up with. Liver and onions, fried chicken, chicken and rice and courtesy of Huey Long you could eat all you wanted. They all had them Aunt Jemima wraps on their heads, a big smile, and even bigger spoons. They would throw mashed potatoes on the plate and it would drip over the side. Even today I have a hard time eating white woman cooking to the point of giving it to the dog when she looks away. Then you’d come home on the Good Ship Reality and find your uncle and dad in the kitchen with a case of Jax beer and a croak sack full of unfortunate frogs.

Louisiana weather sucks like a French lady of the night, and I know something about Them because Louisiana is full of them. You can’t see the tornadoes for the trees. I still remember the alert coming on the TV, the one you had to slap on the top to get reception from the station five miles away, and a very serious voice saying, “This is a severe tornado alert!” As opposed to the more mundane kind I suppose. Now, you didn’t know where it was, couldn’t see it, I’m told you could hear it, but that’s hard from under the bed. If you lived you’d stay up all night anyway just in case it had babies on the way through. Then the next day, in school, you have a bomb drill because everyone just knew the Russians were gonna bomb Barksdale Air Force Base at any given moment. All of this and the grown ups were worried about the blacks drinking out of the wrong water fountain. But . . . they all had Jesus!

By the time we moved to Texas I was ten years old, and pretty much bat-crap crazy. Had a permanent ringing in my ears, constantly looking over my shoulder for bombs, blacks, and bloody crosses, and the scary part is I left an entire state behind that thought just like me, and they’re still THERE! Well, the ones the gators didn’t get. Texas was a whole new deal, and I had to work it, which has only taken me fifty-five years, six wives, ten houses and three fortunes. This book is my story and thousands of baby boomers just like me!

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Job & Family DS: Aftermath - The Matter of Ms. Pond

Words: 3,613 Spoiler warning:  Contains spoilers for the end of Job & Family.

10/04/11

“I’m going to get him.”  Dylaniel said as he stood up from his seat at Sam & Ruby’s dining table.

Sam, Ruby, Kay, & Dyl had all been called together to hear Castiel’s account of Dean's emergency meeting after being questioned by the DEPA agents.  Tom hovered in the living room, trying to listen to news about his uncle while trying to distract the family's infants.

“Dean doesn’t want to leave.”  Castiel told Dylaniel while taking a step toward the nephilim to potentially try physically stopping him.

“I don’t care what he wants, he’s in danger.”

“You can't just take him.”  Kay warned her cousin.  “He’s not an idiot, he knows what's going on and he probably has a better idea of the actual danger than us.”

“He doesn't want to leave his partner.”  Castiel voiced the underlying issue.

“I'll take his boyfriend too.”  Dylaniel revised his plan.

“Dyl, you can't just going around kidnapping people.”  Ruby cautioned.

“Leaving him exposed like this is a bad idea.”

“Nobody likes it, but we can't force him to do anything.”  Sam joined in the attempt to get Dylaniel to back down.

“Maybe I can't force him to come here,”  Dylaniel conceded.  “but I can explain to him how stupid he's being.”

“Don't contact him right now.  The DEPA has to know what you look like after that whole church video thing.”

“Dyl, just sit down and take a minute to get yourself under control.”  Kay told him.  Dylaniel’s lips thinned, but he sat back down.

“So the DEPA were watching Dean, but what do they want?”  Ruby redirected their focus back to diagnosing the specific threats & issues.

“He said they asked about Sam and he suggested to them that Sam was dead.”  Castiel explained.  “They had identified Bobby & Rufus as hunters and were investigating Jody.”

“Bobby’s out of state with Jody.  I'll let them know to stay on vacation until we get this sorted out.”  Ruby updated everyone.  “And he knows how to get ahold of Rufus.”

“Dean was also asked about a woman whose name he couldn't remember, either Paloma Martins or Martens.”

“She isn't any hunter I've heard of.”  Sam said with a shrug.

“Does that sound familiar to you too?”  Kay asked her cousin.

“Vaguely.”  Dylaniel's brow furrowed imperceptibly.  “That's alarming.”

“Great.”  Ruby sighed.  “I'll add the names to my persons of interest list.  I can't wait until one of those DEPA souls comes through my workshop, then maybe we could get some better intel.”

“I'll see what I can do.”  Dylaniel commented.

“Don't go killing Feds.”  Kay warned, uncertain if he was joking or not.  “The last thing we need is an act of war.”

“I'm not affiliated with any faction.”

“Good luck explaining that.  Heaven knows you're related to Dean & Kay’s related to Sam.  It doesn't take a genius or a paranoid to connect those dots.”  Ruby pointed out.  “Any more intel we can use, Cas?”

“The agents also questioned him about an Amy Pond-”

“Amy Pond?”  Sam & Kay both asked at the same time, then looked at each other.

“She’s- is she alive?”  Sam asked Kay, who apparently had heard of her.

“She should be.  I think she died… around-”

“2018.”  Dylaniel filled in the blank.

“Who's Amy Pond?”  Ruby raised an eyebrow

“She was,”  Sam paused for a moment trying to figure out how to describe her.  “an old friend of mine when I was a teenager.  We were pen pals until I went to Stanford and then we met up a few times.  Near the end of my freshman year she just dropped off the map… I assumed she’d died.”

“Died?”

“Amy's a kitsune.”  Sam explained, then his face dimmed a bit at some memory.  “I... figured a hunter probably got her.”

“Why is the DEPA asking Dean about her?”  Ruby mused.  “If you thought she was dead for so long and Dean's never heard of her, I'm guessing she hasn't just been crossing too many paths with you guys.”

“Because she's going to try to contact him.”  Dylaniel speculated.  “Kit originally contacted my dad in an attempt to reach my uncle.  If she's come out of hiding it's probably because she's trying to find Sam.”

“Who's Kit?”  Sam asked.

“Her son.”  Kay explained.  “In our time, after things started falling apart her pack was attacked by Lilith’s demons.  She died in the attack and Kit went looking for help from the only nice hunter he'd heard of.”

“So she might be looking for the only nice hunter she knows this time around.”  Ruby agreed with the theory.

“My dad was a lot easier to find than my uncle in our time.”  Dylaniel continued.  “It stands to reason that Dean will similarly be an easy point of contact.”

“We need to go- warn Dean and find out how to help her.”  Sam said as he shifted, seemingly to get up, but Ruby put her hand on his arm silently asking him to hold still.

“You aren't going anywhere.”  Kay told Sam.  “If there's a chance that DEPA is watching Dean, you're staying the hell away.”

“Same goes for you, Dyl, & Cas.”  Ruby added.  “You all are pretty recognizable to the right eyes.  I'll switch meatsuits and make contact with Dean.  I can let him know to watch out for her.”

“While we're at it, we need to find out how closely he's being watched.”  Kay suggested.  “It’d be nice if it turned out to be a one time shakedown and we can cut down on this cloak & dagger stuff.”

“I have something that might help.”

Dean had barely been at work long enough to start the coffee maker and begin reviewing parts orders for the last week when he heard someone walking into the garage.  He'd mostly calmed down after the unnerving run in with the agents, but he still felt strangely exposed.  They'd dragged him through the mud, threatened him in nearly every way imaginable, and forced him to isolate himself.  But on top of it, the experience had made him feel vulnerable in a way he wasn't used to.  He leaned to peek out the doorway of the garage’s small office.  The woman who ran the bodega down the street was looking around for something.

“Need some help?”  He called out to her.  When she saw him, she quickly walked to the office he was in, entered, and closed the door behind her.  Before he could ask what was going on, she started.

“Dean, it's Ruby-”

“What are you doing here?”  His mind was racing trying to imagine all the ways things could go wrong- or maybe how they had.

“We’ve got a bit of a situation.”

“No shit- is everyone okay?”

“We're fine.  Cas told us about the DEPA goons dropping in on you-”

“If I get spotted with you-”

“I know, but right now we're okay.  Here.”  Ruby handed him an analog wristwatch.  “The dial in the bottom right tells you how many people are observing you at any given moment.  We use spells like this for our agents in the field.”

When he put it on the dial only read one, presumably Ruby.  He wasn't a fan of wearing a spell that was probably patented by Hell’s spymasters, but it was better than constantly worrying about surveillance.

“When you say observing?”

“Seeing, hearing, scrying, et cetera.”  She explained.  “It's the best I could do on short notice, but with some time I might be able to get more data output into other dials or subtle displays.”

“Thanks, even this is a big help.”  Dean studied the watch.  “I'll track the numbers, see if they're watching me and if it's a routine or random.  Until then I'm pretty much stuck and you should get back out of dodge.”

“I haven't finished all my business yet.”  Ruby moved closer to him.  “We think Amy Pond might try to contact you.”

“Who?”  He recognized her name from the conversation with the agents, but he didn't have a clue who she was.

“I guess she was Sam's friend when he was a teenager- You met her son, Kit, back in 2039.”

“Kit…”  Dean pursed his lips.  She was a kitsune- and she was trying to find him, potentially putting all of them in danger.  “What does she want?  I can't be seen with her.  I told them I didn't know her.”

“We think she's looking for help, couldn't tell you what with though.”

Dean pinched the bridge of his nose.  In general he didn't have anything against trying to help her.  He'd barely interacted with Kit, but he seemed like a decent guy.  That was enough to overcome the resistance that he felt about Amy being a kitsune he'd never met.  But having her ambush him, while he was potentially under surveillance and she was wanted by the DEPA… as much as it made him feel like a horrible person, he wanted to get her away from him as fast as possible.

“If I see her I'll send her to a crossroads demon.”

“Like she's gonna go talk to a stranger.”  Ruby argued.

“I’m a stranger.”

“You're Sam's brother.”

“She knew him when we were teenagers?”  Dean shook his head.  “Me being his brother might not earn me too many points.”

“She’s coming for you.  I know you don't want trouble- I get that you want out.”  He hadn't made a big deal about cutting back on hunting and focusing more on the mundane.  No one had asked him if he wanted out of the life.  It felt bizarre to hear, but her nonjudgmental tone made him feel less ashamed at the thought of retiring.  He just had to keep his head down and make it past a rough spot.  “But trouble is coming for you and you're gon-”

“Excuse me?”  A woman called from the other side of the door.

“She needs help.”  Ruby mouthed to Dean.  

He got up to open the door.  If it was Amy he wanted to get her out of view as quickly as possible.  A woman with pale skin & messy brown hair stood just inside the door to the garage.  She was holding an oversized sweater around herself in a very nervous posture.  Her eyes flicked around the room and her nose twitched curiously.  Dean immediately saw the resemblance to Kit.

“Excuse me, are you Dean Winchester?”  

“Yeah, come on in.  Have a seat.”  Dean invited her to the small office where Ruby was still waiting.  When Amy saw Ruby she hesitated to enter.

“I need to talk to you about something private.  It's not about a car.”  Amy explained to Dean.

“I can wait outside.”  Ruby started leaving.

“Don't go far.”  Dean suggested, hoping to keep his sister-in-law away from the line of sight of anyone on the street.

“Are you Sam's brother?  The hunter?” Amy asked as soon as Ruby was outside and the door was closed.

For just a moment it was so tempting to find a way of deflecting Amy, but he couldn't do that to her.  The closer he looked at her the more he could see that something was wrong.  Her skin was pale & clammy, with a bit of shadow around the eyes- she hadn't been sleeping enough.  She was pressing her limbs to herself & the office chair in order to conceal that she was trembling.

“I’m Sam's brother, but I'm not much of a hunter anymore.”  He hoped that put her more at ease.

“I need to see him, it's an emergency.  I need his help.”  

“Sam's in a bit of a tight spot right now.  There are some very powerful & bad people looking for him, including the DEPA.”  Amy's eyes widened at the mention of the organization.  “I might be able to help you.  Our friend Ruby- she's the one waiting outside, she might be able to help also.  So if you can tell us what you need, maybe we can make it happen.  Okay?”

Amy thought for a moment, then nodded agreement.  Dean tapped on the window into the area where Ruby was waiting, letting her know to come back in.  While Ruby was coming back in, Dean poured Amy a cup of coffee, which she eagerly accepted.  He quickly checked his watch to confirm they weren't being observed before they started getting to the meat of it.

“My name is Amy Pond.”

“Sam's friend from way back.”  Dean offered to show some level of familiarity with her, hopefully reinforcing a sense of trust.

“He told you about me?”  Amy asked a bit surprised.

“Very little.  He said you're,”  Dean lowered his voice a bit to show his sensitivity to the elephant in the room.  “a kitsune.”

She nodded and absentmindedly pushed some hair behind her ear.  The sleeve of her sweater fell down her arm a few inches revealing several day old bruises.  After spotting Dean looking at them she covered them back up.

“What happened?”

“My pack has been under attack for weeks.  A group of hunters hit us, so we've been on the run, but even non-hunters are looking out for monsters these days.”  Dean's heart broke a little when she called herself a monster.  “We'd lost our leader & most of our fighters.  We haven't been able to hunt enough, so we’ve been scavenging off corpses & animals.  Our children are getting sick.  Half the time there's a guard at the morgue now- it's a fight just to get scraps or we can try to get fresh food and risk having another attack on us- we can't take another.  The children are too weak to keep running like this.”

“How can we help?”  Dean asked.

“I can talk to Kay.”  Ruby suggested to Dean.  “She might have access to some end of the line meatsuits.  That'd be a little food, but that's just part of the problem.”

“Any food would be incredible, but I need to get my pack out of the country.”  Amy replied.

“Where are you trying to go?”

“Hachijō-jima.”

“That island in Japan?”  Dean had read something about it in the news just recently.  “They're evacuating that place.”

“The island’s being converted to a refugee camp for non-humans.”  Amy explained.

“If there aren't any humans, how’ll you survive?”  Ruby asked.

“The government said it will delivering shipments of food & other supplies- the brains are animal, but it's possible to live off of them.”  Amy answered.  “They’ll let us live, they just want to keep us together in one place.”

The whole thing seemed wrong somehow.  The cynic in him expected the non-humans to simply be slaughtered upon arrival- even it they weren't, they'd still be more or less confined and almost certainly in meager conditions.

“They're making an internment camp?  If you're lucky.”  Dean speculated.  “You're talking about putting your lives in the hands of a human government while the world is still relearning to be scared of the dark.”

“That's my people’s homeland before we scattered.  We're part of their culture.  If any government is going to protect us it's Japan.”  Amy added, but didn't deny Dean's characterization.  “I know it's dangerous, but… We have claws & fangs and we eat people.  We're horrible monsters- and scared people don't think twice about it.  Six of my pack have been killed in the last month.  Our people are dying out.  At this point I don't care if we're stuck there as long as I don't have to worry about my son getting killed in the street.”

“Being locked up on an island, that's not a long term solution.”  Dean looked over at Ruby.  The coven’s sanctuary wasn't large enough for them to just take in every sympathetic person they met.  Not to mention, there wasn't a close hunting ground for the kitsune that might not be as self-restrained as Kit or Amy.

“Anything is better than this.”  Amy told him.

“I'm hearing two different issues.  You're worried about your pack and you're worried about your species.”  Dean said.  “I know that kitsune are endangered- I can't imagine what that's like, but if there was a way to keep your pack safe without stuffing you in the cage with the rest of the species-”

“My pack needs to rejoin our people.  We don't have any fighters left let alone someone capable of leading a pack.”

“What about your son?”  Dean asked.

“He's too young for starters.”  Amy rejected the idea.  “Jacob might be able to be a fighter someday, but he isn't ever going to be leader of a pack.”

“Why can't he lead?”  Dean remembered Kit’s speech impediments, but he found it hard to believe that something as small as that would be a problem.

“There's… there’s a problem with his status… his legitimacy.”  Amy rubbed the back of her neck anxiously debating whether to tell them something.  “I temporarily ran away from the pack when I found out I was pregnant.  There was a chance it was Sam's kid- the pack would've…”

Dean’s brain hiccupped on the thought that Sam had had sex with Amy and might've had another kid.  He glanced over at Ruby, who was just staring at Amy.  It was hard to imagine what she was going though.  Amy wasn’t like a mistress, she’d been with Sam before he’d even met Ruby.  Maybe she was an ex-girlfriend or a friends that he'd experimented with, they’d been teenagers after all.

“Is Sam the kid’s dad?”  Ruby asked slowly with more composure than Dean suspected he'd be capable of.

“No, Jacob’s a purebreed.”  Amy shook her head.  “But it looked bad disappearing and then coming back to the pack with a pup- especially since I'd disappeared before, when I was visiting Sam at school.  I stayed with him a few times when I was in heat because I didn't want the guys in my pack to… Nothing really went 100% to plan, so when I got pregnant I panicked.”

“Sam said you stopped talking to him all of a sudden.”

“I didn't want him to know about the baby.”

“He would've tried to help.”  Ruby sighed knowing full well that Sam probably wouldn't have even cared whether he was the biological father.

“He'd been talking about going to college for years.  I thought he might drop out.”  Amy had avoided meeting Dean’s eyes while explaining what had happened a decade earlier.  After a painful silence, she looked to Ruby & Dean with apprehension.  “Are you going to tell him?  I don't want to mess up whatever is happening in his life, I swear.  I just thought he might help us, for old times sake.”

“I'm gonna tell him.”  Ruby said after a few moments of consideration.

“Rube-”  Dean started.

“He thought she was dead and now he what, thinks that she just left him?”  Ruby gestured at Amy, clearly upset at the idea.

“It's simpler if she just left him.”

“Simple isn't always better.  You know that, Dean.”  Ruby told him pointedly.  His stomach knotted and guilt flared in him on so many different fronts that he didn't know how to respond.  “I’m not gonna just go along, with me knowing about his ex & break up while he’s in the dark.  This whole thing probably already reopened an old wound, the least we can do is clean it up...  Anyway, he’s an adult- he’ll survive a little fresh heartbreak.”

“You're…”  Amy asked Ruby, realizing that she had some greater connection to Dean & Sam.

“I'm Sam's wife.”  

“Oh god…”  Amy’s eyes widened in horror, then covered her face with her hands and recoiled into herself with visible embarrassment.  She shook her head a bit causing a few exhausted tears to fall to her lap.  “I'm so sorry.  I didn't mean…”

Before Dean could figure out what she was doing Ruby stood up, walked over to Amy, then knelt down and hugged her.  He couldn’t remember seeing Ruby comfort someone outside of the family or coven before.  His assumption had been that Ruby would want as little to do with Amy as possible, but trying to reassure & console her was far from that.

“I'm not upset.  I tried to protect Sam a long time ago.  You're trying to protect your family now.”  Ruby spoke in a very gentle voice, that reminded Dean of Kay’s mom.  “If you really want to go to that island, we’re gonna get you there, and I'm gonna do everything I can to keep you & your son safe.  I promise.”

“I know you're scared, but you just got a promise from one of the most politically powerful demons in existence.”  Dean explained the gravity of Ruby's statement.  “You're gonna have a lot of people in the shadows ready to help if you need it.”

“You're a demon?”  Amy stared at Ruby, startled that she was being embraced by hellspawn.

“And you're a kitsune- I guess Sam has a thing for women that can dismember him.”  Ruby observed, earning a weak chuckle from Amy.  “Drink your coffee and rest for a few minutes.  I'll go get your travel arranged- if you want to talk to Sam-”

“No.”  Amy quickly replied, then added.  “Not yet, maybe when things are simpler, but it's too much right now.”

“Okay.  I'll be back in just a minute.”  Ruby said, then disappeared.

“Is Sam happy?”  Amy asked Dean after a few seconds of quietly looking at her cup of coffee.

“Yeah, he is.”  He could see the relief on her face, despite the faint longing in her voice.  “He has three kids.  The oldest is about your son's age- he's adopted-”

“We should set up a play date.”  Amy joked.  

“I'm sure they'd be friends.”  Dean smiled sadly.

“Another time maybe.”

#job & family #Deleted Scenes #Deleted Scenes: Aftermath

[jones573]

New Year’s Party Set Up

umm pretty much whatever the fuck you want. guests, activities, foods, if you like it it shall be there.

Here’s my thoughts:

Personnel

like all excessive events, there is a veritable army of folks to keep it running smoothly. Security are wearing those black tux tee-shirts with white print of ‘security’ on the back. Waitstaff and all other help are wearing white tee-shirts with ‘staff’ across the back in black with a screen printed black tie, bowtie, or bow/tie with suspenders on the front. Annabelle thinks these uniforms are fucking delightful, Maria thinks they’re atrocious, and so they reappear year after year 

unlike the staff at the New Year’s Eve party, those at the New Year’s Day party are largely unaware of the supernatural or the nature of the family employing them. This excludes Janet (annabelle’s personal assistant and a human), the top security staff (annabelle’s cousins, a mix of born and bitten vampires) and some various others. idk how many really- more than a tenth but less than a fifth?

Silver Stars

upon checking into the party, each guest receives a nametag and a personalized list of what they might be interested in (particular activities Annabelle thinks they might enjoy, people they may want to speak with, food suggestions based on their dietary needs, what have you). Nametags all have a star in the bottom corner. if a star is outlined in black, that means the guest is underage and will not be served alcohol, though the interior color of the star is largely random. BUT

anyone who is ‘supernaturally’ aware gets a silver star (this applies to staff as well). this grants the guest access into the upstairs of the house (it is roped off and guarded, generally), will mean they can get ‘specialized’ food items, and other such privileges. blood, for instance, is not offered to the general public, but if a vampire were to go the bar, tap their nametag and ask to see the selection, the bartender (regardless of their own status) would present the vampire with a closed menu that the vampire could peruse. the vampire would then ask for ‘number five’ and the staff member would retrieve that for them from the cooler Annabelle has already prepared. the vampire would be sure to close the menu before returning it to the mundane bartender, who is being paid enough that he or she does not really care about the weird things rich people do. (annabelle does try to have at least one silver star staff person at each ‘zone’ of the party, tho, and usually silver star guests would interact with them)

assumedly, annabelle would explain this all to these specific guests and alert them of any changes that may have been made from last year, like unfortunately if you would like a raw steak you will have to get that from the house kitchen (which deno would be able to get into by showing the security guard his nametag)

some humans dislike nametags as everyone should know who they are, but alas, they will then not be served alcohol. so. they put up with it.

transport

as previously alluded to, annabelle does offer plane tickets to guests to get them in and out of town. she also rents out the local hotel and car service - guests may check into the hotel as early as 8 am on New Years Day, and the rooms are booked until 8 am on Jan 3. towncars with staff drivers perform regular runs between the hotel and the Yates plantation to discourage drunk driving, and though guests are welcome to drive their own vehicles to the party, they will not receive their keys back until security determines them safe to drive. otherwise, a towncar will return them to the hotel and a valet will drive their car back for them, or they will driven back in the morning to pick it up. annabelle is all about safety yall

layout

assumedly, the Yates plantation was at one point at least 500 acres or so and perhaps still is, but most of it is farmland that annabelle pays other people to manage or has since sold of, so. i imagine ‘party’ activities are only really happening in maybe a 5 to 10 acre area that is more residential (has buildings, lawns are mowed, flowering tree, etc)

also im all about historical accuracy BUT a significant portion of the original mansion and other buildings did burn down after the civil war (actually NOT annabelle, i think, but who knows) and renovation of the property only began in the 1950′s when annabelle and matt decided to start trying to have children and some of that was redone anyways in the year before Alex’s birth. 

assuming the main house faces south, one would drive north on a very long driveway for some time before coming in view of the house- long circular drive, huge ass trees lining it, etc. towncars use the circle drive, everyone else pulls off into the lot on the right before reaching the house. on the lawn between the lot and the house’s main entrance is the check in table

on the back right hand side of the house is the separated kitchen, annabelle has converted it to industrial kitchen and office space for her various pursuits. family and silver guests would have access to this.

behind the main house is a patio/deck and garden combination that is almost excessive even by annabelle’s standards , and beyond that is the pool, which is drained and fenced off

on the eastern lawn (right of the house and kitchen and bit more northern) is the largest bar, and a more traditional bar set up with a smaller dance floor, karoke, what have you. maybe some dance dance revolution and arcade games off to one side?

north and west of that area (but more east than the pool?) is a silent auction that runs most of the night. items might include any number of things, as they are amassed by Annabelle and donated by guests or friends. So like, a piece or two by matt or even a commission from him might be on there. Super classy kitchen stuff from Annabelle’s line of products, or subscriptions to her magazines. A grand piano. A breakfast date with Justice Sotomayor. Random historical artifacts. Who the hell knows. Whatever you want to be there, it is. All guests can vote on which charities they wish the proceeds to go to, and which charities they’d like to see included next year  

on the western lawn (north of the house but maybe not as north as the karoeke bar area) is what used to be the carriage house. it is open on two sides so that a large L shaped dance floor goes through it if that makes sense- some people can dance inside or make requests of the dj, but the elevated platform itself spills out into the night air. the space between the two exposed floors is filled with chairs and tables and even some couch and benches, as well as towers of cubbies to put your shoes or things in. the ends of the dance floors parallel to the walls of the carriage house have tables of drinks and refreshments, as well as a bar each. the third side of the sticking out floors have tables and tables of food lined up, and chairs and tables to sit and eat at arc between these two ends so that the carriage house is completely encircled by festivities.

south of the carriage house and the main house is an art display, set up in zig-zagging aisles. Matt does the curation to highlight new and upcoming artists that he thinks are promising and deserve exposure, as well as old favorites of his that he has ‘on loan’ from museums. (matt owns a shit ton of art that he has given to galleries over the years in exchange for anonymity and if the possibility that he could maybe ‘borrow’ back a piece or two on occasion.) there are usually a few of his own pieces as well, though he thinks that is stupid and self-promoting and he tries to change the piece information to list the creator as ‘unknown’ or ‘anonymous’ late enough in the game where Annabelle won’t notice or wont have time to change it back) there is also a bar and food over here as well, though not nearly the selection, and Matt is known to hover near guests who are examining a Monet and eating SLOPPILY RIGHT NEXT TO IT DEAR GOD

hmmm what else is there

okay well obviously the main house- guests are allowed on the main floor, and generally the people in the house are more of the snooty-rich variety than the buy-gold-leaf-glitter-because-i-can variety, and they have minimal interest in mingling with the masses and enjoying themselves. so they stay in the soundproofed house and eat and drink things off serving trays and pride themselves on their good taste and breeding. if they are really feeling wild they might play cards (and resent that they are not allowed to smoke indoors) or ask the girl on the harp if she could switch to the piano a bit so they can really let their hair down. you know

there’s also random places across the massive lawn- another garden maybe, or a large table with a stack of boardgames and smaller tables about it (probably several of those ‘stations’). i imagine one can get sparklers somewhere and perhaps other small explosives, but they are not allowed inside house, the auction or art gallery.  maybe those are located north of the carriage house? somewhere alex is hoping bram and winona will not find

pretty much there is ample food and drink anywhere you go, but food central is at the carriage house and booze central is at the formal bar area. it’s night but everything is lit up with strings of twinkling lights, and there are a lot of ‘paths’ laid across the lawn, but they are largely ignored except for by staff wheeling food trolleys about. tablecloths and other decor are bright, solid colors and lanterns hang off of the flowering trees and are embedded throughout the garden areas. annabelle is an exuberant but tasteful decorator and she knows her audience- this party is mostly for enjoyment and has a wide range of guests, so things look ‘fun’ but not cheap. dishes are not disposable but napkins are, and guests can either leave their dishes at their tables or deposit them in the large rolling trays marked for such a purpose 

other things on the property but not accessible or easily in sight would be the stables and current ‘carriage house’/garage, perhaps some barns or farming related buildings, and the remains of the slaves quarters- those with good eyes may see some in the thick woods to the left when they heading up the drive , perhaps a quarter mile from the house

activities

hmm so obviously all the locations described above have various activities that might go with them, but im sure there are others. there are some ‘games’ that are usually played as well. for instance, there are often food tables (usually the ones not at food central) that have a theme to be guessed, and guests can submit their ideas. the submission box says how many tables there are this year and may give hints on possible themes and a guest might guess ‘table 77- foods eaten in disney movies. table 52- foods of french aristocracy circa 1650′ or whatever. there is also a game of trying to trip the hostess up by greeting her with your nametag turned over and seeing if she remembers who you are- annabelle says this is fair as she insists she knows everyone she invites and is introduced to, but has outlawed the participation of those under 10 due to their rapid aging (twins and multiples are fair game). idk there can pretty much be whatever

other (?)

lalala i dont know

#st georges #st georges info