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yellowocaballero · 3 years

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The Crow’s Funeral Snippet: Jon Gets Involved In Local Politics, Regrets It

Annabelle, of course, was standing on the other side of the door.

Slightly less obviously, she was dressed in a finely tailored suit, complete with high heels and a gorgeous dripping silver chain-link necklace. Her hair was tied up in an up-do of braids piled neatly on top of her head, and there was even a briefcase.

She looked Jon up and down critically. He was wearing sweatpants and a holey shirt.

“You forgot,” she condemned, “didn’t you?”

“No I didn’t,” Jon said reflexively. He paused. “Forgot what?”

Annabelle pinched the bridge of her nose. Jon noticed that she was even wearing her usual all-black lipstick and winged eyeliner. “The council committee for London I planned for today. Remember? The one with a representative for each Entity?” Jon stared blankly at her. “There was an invite?”

“Oh, that. I don’t check my mail.” Jon looked at Daisy, who was now pressing aggressively against Jon. “Did you open up any mail recently?” Daisy barked. Jon looked back at Annabelle. “She ate it.”

“...of course she did.” Written for no real reason besides for the fact that I know too much about my own AU and I care about Annabelle. This story takes place both pre- and post- story: six months after Jon enters London, and six months after the events of the story. We talk about childhood/adulthood, stagnancy/growth, good/evil, and the inherent metaphor of a Nintendo DS. Sometimes...found family...is bad. Rest under the cut.

In the third month, boiling and bubbling over, someone knocked at Jon’s door.

Not the door to his office. The door to his flat, which had a very large ‘EMPLOYEES ONLY’ sign on it, and was always locked. The employees were, granted, Jon and Daisy, but the message was conveyed. Jon saw the sign in stores and copied it, as he copied many aspects of business models. Jon didn’t quite understand how to run a business, but he had read both ‘What they teach you in Harvard Business School’ - whatever a Harvard was - and ‘What they don’t teach you in Harvard Business School’, so he figured he was set. Daisy had also grabbed him a Girl Scout book on starting your own lemonade stand, which helped more than the other two books combined. Harvard Business School could take notes.

Jon rolled off the bed, where he had been downloading knowledge of string games and trying to figure out how to do them. Omniscence was closer to reading an instruction manual than actually knowing how to do something, but at least that left Jon with plenty of time to learn skills. Even if it wasn’t necessarily his favorite activity - he was bad at a lot of them, which would frustrate him and make him wreck the craft. Daisy kept on saying he needed a hobby other than reading but what did she know, anyway -

Daisy, from where she had been sleeping at the foot of the bed, lifted her head and barked sleepily.

“I’ll get them to go away,” Jon promised. Or eat them. Maybe just eat them.

But when Daisy bristled and jumped off the bed, barking heavily, he knew who it was. Jon sighed, hastily shoving a shirt over his head, and undid the three deadbolts before unlocking the door.

Annabelle, of course, was standing on the other side. Slightly less obviously, she was dressed in a finely tailored suit, complete with high heels and a gorgeous dripping silver chain-link necklace. Her hair was tied up in an up-do of braids piled neatly on top of her head, and there was even a briefcase.

She looked Jon up and down critically. He was wearing sweatpants and a holey shirt.

“You forgot,” she condemned, “didn’t you?”

“No I didn’t,” Jon said reflexively. He paused. “Forgot what?”

Jon stared blankly at her.

“There was an invite?”

“...of course she did.” Annabelle glanced down at Daisy, whose fur was standing on end as she growled lowly. “Have you had any success?”

“You would have noticed if I did,” Jon said shortly.

“Have you tried talking to -”

“Yes,” Jon snapped, “but apparently some of us have better things to do than attend meetings and cure dogs.”

Annabelle intelligently dropped the matter, instead frowning at Jon. He crossed his arms, fighting the urge to hunch over away from her dark and perceptive stare. But instead of pushing him, she said, “Go get dressed in something a little appropriate, please. You look like you crawled out of the Buried.” Daisy barked, which Annabelle ignored. “What are you doing to your hair?”

Jon hunched defensively. It was a little matted and frizzy, but who was counting? “Daisy can’t exactly shave it anymore, and I don’t really...know what to do with it...am I doing something wrong? I bathe.”

It was very important to Daisy that he bathe and brush his teeth. Jon didn’t know what the big deal was, but if it was important to her then he did it.

Annabelle just pinched the bridge of her nose again, checking her wrist-watch. “Buzzing your hair is a crime against God, and letting your hair look like that is a crime against me. I’ll take care of this later. Just get ready in the next five minutes, or I’m filling your fridge with spiders again.”

Jon got ready in four. Annabelle didn’t joke around with that stuff.

He didn’t really know what a council committee was. He didn’t know why he had to go to one either, seeing as Jon only tended to concern himself with Daisy. Daisy had been taking up a lot of his concern lately. Then his mood had plummeted again, and in the last month they’ve both been recalcitrant to leave the flat for anything but eating, and he was capable of noticing when he was hunting a little vindictively, and - anyway.

He downloaded the knowledge, and then made a face when it didn’t really help. One of those nasty little political things. What was with his fellow Avatars and politics? Just torture anyone who bothers you. If they were one of those freaks who liked being tortured, then just smite them. Life was easy and very simple once you remembered that basic rule.

But Annabelle was really into it - she kept on saying something about ‘order’ and ‘regulation’ and ‘first dibs’ - and she tended to drag him along into these things. She thought it was ‘important’ that Jon ‘know what was going on’ or something. Jon liked Knowing things, but once you know everything you realize that some things aren’t really interesting enough to know.

When he asked Daisy if she wanted to go with, she feigned sleep. She had been hyperactive lately, compensating for her months of starvation with unbridled and frantic Hunting. Jon had taken her to one of those little pockets where people were running around and screaming all the time, and let her run wild in the rainforest for a while. It was the kind of fun bonding experience they hadn’t had in ages, and Jon had the opportunity to pluck his own grapes from the vine too.

There had been an old man who really hadn’t been happy to see Jon, which had freaked him out a bit. He had started going on a little bit about how Jon had ruined his life, but he only got a few sentences in before a giant, carnivorous plant had eaten him. That was lucky.

Jon had ripped the dimension apart as he left. Nasty little place. Nothing good there.

So Jon left the house without Daisy for the first time since she had been well enough to move around, and with Annabelle. Daisy had been waiting at the door with a rucksack packed with his favorite book and his Nintendo DS, which made Annabelle ask her where the juicebox was. Daisy tried to bite her again. Jon didn’t know why everybody couldn’t just get along.

There was a cab waiting outside, driven by another skeleton, and Annabelle quickly bundled him into it. Jon slouched in the corner and started playing WarioWare as Annabelle leafed through typewritten documents, lips pursing and making notes on the margins of each one with a red pen. She was muttering to herself, somewhat entertainingly.

“My fourth arm for a computer, I swear to Jesus. My fourth and fifth arms. My sixth arm for a computer…”

“Are those the internet machines you told me about?” Jon asked, scribbling his stylus on the screen. Ashley cheered him on. He loved Ashley. “Do council committees need the internet?”

“The internet’s for a lot more than council committees Jon,” Annabelle said tightly. “They’re for video games. Ememoharepeegees -”

“Gesundheit.”

“ - bitcoin mining, instant messaging, online dating, freaking Google Docs -”

“Do you want it back?” Jon asked, bored. “I can make you the internet.”

Annabelle’s pen froze on the paper, hovering over a bullet-point list. “The entire internet? You can just do that?”

“Yeah, sure, whatever.” Jon poked his tongue out his mouth in concentration as he pressed the monkeys in a rhythmic order. Rhythm games were his jam. “That’s, like, the pocket nightmare dimension from Tron, right? I can do that. Addictions are easy. Put people inside, trap them inside a video or something. It’d be mostly for torture but you could probably use it normally.”

Annabelle stared at him, expression blank, for so long it made Jon a little uncomfortable and defensive. What had he said wrong? Daisy was usually good at interpreting these things for him, although sometimes when people went on about ‘violence’ she was just as confused as him. Finally, she said, “No, that’s alright. I always hated Black Mirror anyway.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s a telly - never mind. I don’t want you getting any more ideas.”

***

The council committee was held in the stupidest building Jon had ever seen in his entire life. And he had been in London for six months. He knew stupid buildings.

‘London City Hall’ or whatever was this awful giant, lopsided, obloid monstrosity. All glass and windows, with nary a brick in sight, Jon hated it instantly and severely. He was immediately filled with the urge to turn to somebody and commiserate with them about shitty architecture, but there was nobody else in the cab but Annabelle - and, well, she seemed to have other things on her mind.

The neighborhood around it was filled with a mix of equally stupid buildings and perfectly respectable buildings that looked as if they had been made a long time ago. The sidewalks were relatively abandoned, and the streets were empty of everything but the endless rotation of tourist double-decker busses. Jon knew that this wasn’t one of those districts where people actually lived and roamed - instead, it was one of those business districts that people only stepped inside for work or city business. Like that silly little Palace of Westminster building that Annabelle had taken him to months ago when she was showing him the city.

That building Annabelle had especially loved. It was filled with old white men with sagging jowls and liver spots, looping in endless routines and miniature atrocities. Annabelle had asked him to take as many Statements as possible, and Jon had needed no encouraging.

That had been a strange trip. Normally people found his little monologues boring, because they were idiots with no taste, but Annabelle had listened to every single one. She had been enraptured, excited and triumphant. She had dragged him into some “Lord’s Chamber” or something and posed on the throne as Jon obediently took polaroids. Well, so long as she was happy.

Jon was already seeing that London City Hall was no better. Annabelle dragged him through it, anxiously checking and re-checking her files, as they effortlessly weaved between shambling zombies of old white men in suits. Jon tasted the ripe air of trauma from them - a similar taste to that spiralling academic building, but rather a little more tart - but Annabelle dragged him away before he could stop and eat them.

There were parts of London that were safe. Maybe even most of London - although nowhere was truly safe, not really, not every location was absolutely haunted. The grocer’s was the grocer’s; the chemist still sold your medication. Not that you really needed it anymore, but habit was habit.

But some buildings, which were entrenched so firmly in hundreds of years of evil, could not be dissuaded from their nightmares. In that respect, the safest city in the United Kingdom became the most dangerous. Some buildings had been nightmares even before the end of the world.

Jon, of course, gave very little shits about this beyond in the academic sense. Annabelle refused to let him duck out of her meeting to go snack, and she ended up dragging him in front of what looked like a smallish conference room.

Annabelle stopped in front of it, taking a second to breathe in and out and check her makeup. She seemed to be hyping herself up for it, shaking out her arms loosely. Jon slouched behind her, hands jammed in his trenchcoat pockets. Annabelle had asked him to put on a less raggedy suit, but - well, he sometimes had nicer suits, but they got raggedy very quickly. She had also asked him to leave the trenchcoat at home, but no way. It was part of his Look.

“You’re frightened,” Jon noted with interest. Annabelle was scared of less than he was, and she had much less of a reason. “What about this room scares you?”

“It’s not the people in the room,” Annabelle snapped, flashing her compact shut. “It’s what I’m trying to do. If this world’s going to last more than a few years before it devolves into fuckin’ Mad Max we need leadership. I didn’t put all of this work in just to -” At Jon’s blank look, she sighed. “Never mind. You don’t care. Just - try to trust me, Jon.”

“Of course I trust you,” Jon said, baffled. “Why wouldn’t I?”

She stared at him, expression inscrutable, for a long moment, before opening the door and pulling him in.

It was a nice conference room, all wood panelling and that specific green shade you only saw in lawyer’s offices. There was a large rectangular table in the center, and more than a dozen luxurious chairs arranged around it. There was a big pull-down screen on the far wall. Jon didn’t know what it was for, but he knew that if he downloaded the information it wouldn’t help. Omniscence was so useless.

In a move that horrified Annabelle, most of the attendees seemed to be there. They had been chatting - talking, actually, quite loudly - before Annabelle strode in and Jon slumped in after her. But in the second that they both stepped in, an abrupt hush swept the room, and every eye swiveled to them.

If Jon was honest with himself, he’d say that they didn’t quiet when Annabelle stepped in. He’d say that they quieted when Jon stepped in. That it was Jon who they were looking at.

But Jon didn’t particularly feel like engaging with that. He didn’t like being stared at by people he didn’t know, and he didn’t like being out in public with people he didn’t know. He didn’t enjoy being in buildings or meeting new people, much less going to boring meetings. Jon decided all of this instantaneously, as every eye swiveled to him.

Rooms full of humans were fine. It was just humans. Nothing even vaguely intimidating about that, unless the humans were teenage girls. But these were Avatars - Jon could taste their nature in the air, a sharp and electric tingle - and when they stared at Jon he felt something heavier in their gaze. Oh, lord. There was a teenage girl here.

Jon tried slumping to the back chair, but Annabelle grabbed his collar and dumped him in a comfortable chair to her right. Jon saw a little placard in front of it that read ‘THE BEHOLDING’. Great.

“Thank you all for coming today,” Annabelle said crisply, and suddenly every worry was gone. She was calm, poised, confident, and professional. A perfect imitation of the officials and politicians who once really walked these halls, who passed laws and rubber-stamped policies. She could have passed for an assistant or junior staff member, bright and intrepid and ready to climb her way up the ladder. “Are we all accounted for?”

It seemed so. Every chair but one was filled. When Jon peered around at the placards, he saw that each one had a different Entity on it. One of the seats had no placard, and was occupied by said teenage girl. Four were unoccupied: the Spiral, the Slaughter, the Hunt and the Extinction.

Annabelle sat down in the head chair, which seemed just a little fancier. She put her folder in front of her, eyes flickering down the room. “It seems that Helen couldn’t make it. The Hunt duo seem to have...recently met unfortunate ends. The Slaughter Avatar called ahead to say that they couldn’t make it - it was high school picture day? And...I suppose the Extinction Avatar still doesn’t exist.”

She glanced at Jon, who shook his head. “Do you want one?” Jon asked. “I can go find a climate change denier in this building and make one for you.”

That also disturbed Annabelle, as well as everyone else. Jon abruptly felt awkward, and hunched in his seat. He defensively pulled out his DS, his plans to fall asleep in the back of the room already foiled.

Above him, Annabelle continued droning. “Still, I appreciate you all coming. I know that we haven’t all gathered since a bit after the apocalypse began -” Wait, they had? Since when? “ - but I hope we can agree that further coordination is necessary. We’ve already begun having serious territory and jurisdiction disputes, and it’s best that they’re resolved sooner rather than later.” Nobody looked very impressed, but Annabelle looked seriously at them all anyway. “I want us all to have an equal voice at this table. Save the fighting for another time. And please try to keep your powers out of here. I’ve already sworn to avoid using any of my Mother’s gifts in this room, and I hope you all can do the same.”

“Yeah?” A woman drawled. She was unfamiliar to Jon, like most people in the room, but she had a teenage girl sitting next to her who seemed to be paying rapt attention to Annabelle. “How are you going to enforce that?”

Annabelle stared at him for some reason. Jon jabbed at his DS and won the Mona minigame. Nothing more was said.

“Alright, then. I’ve already collected motions from all of you prior to this meeting.” Motions? Annabelle hadn’t said anything like that. Maybe it was on the invitation Daisy ate, but somehow he doubted it. Annabelle looked down and traced her finger down to her first point. “Many of you suggested this, so I would like to introduce it as a general discussion. Territory disputes, apparently, are a point of contention between many of us.” She opened her briefcase and pulled out a large map, and if Jon looked over the top of his DS he could see that it was a map of London. She also pulled out a red marker, uncapping it. The sheet was laminated, and there were already circles and markings all over it. “We’ll go one at a time. Amherst, you’ve motioned that the Stranger is intruding within Camden.”

A foppish looking man on a dumb little top hat scowled, as the young woman sitting behind the Strange placard looked annoyed. “It is gentrification. Every apartment complex occupied by artist studios are stealing food from the plate of my insects.”

“You haven’t had Camden for a decade,” the Stranger woman said, rolling her eyes. The Omniscience informed Jon that her name was Sarah Baldwin. Vaguely familiar - had he seen her at a cafe? “Nobody lives in those rat-infested tenements anymore. Now all the rats are performance art. Which is us. Get over it.”

“What is performance art -”

“Motion for no more Avatars over the age of 40,” Sarah Baldwin said. “I hate how Amherst and Wakely are in this room.”

“I wish I could second that,” Annabelle said, to the great affront of two grimy old men, “but unfortunately we do have to deal with this. Amherst, I’ve heard several complaints from other council members that you’re infiltrating their territory.”

“I am made of bugs -”

Jon checked out after that.

Instead, he surveyed the room a bit. Nobody in it was really interesting, just a meaningless collection of self-important people. The only person in the room other than Annabelle who he recognized was Oliver, who was sitting at the very back doing his best to fall asleep. When Jon Stared at him a bit he took notice and subtly waved. Jon shyly waved back. Jon liked Oliver.

Oliver mouthed something adjacent to ‘what is wrong with your hair’, offending Jon grievously. He didn’t look that bad, did he?

He glanced to his left, then down, to ask Daisy��s opinion, but he realized too late that she hadn’t come with him. Stupid. She could have come as part of the Hunt - they didn’t have anybody, it wasn’t as if they could complain. Not to Jon, anyway.

But she wouldn’t have wanted to. Daisy hated being an Avatar, for reasons that Jon had just never understood. She tried explaining it to him a long time ago, trying to talk about how guilty it made her and how much harm she had done, but it had just confused him more. She had tried to explain up until the end, as Jon had grown more and more angry at her for her refusal. He had never understood.

She had stopped talking about it lately, though. Which was good. Jon didn’t know what he’d do if she starved herself twice. He wouldn’t have tolerated it.

Daisy had told him that the most important thing in the world was to make your own choices. So he let her make hers. No matter how much he hated it.

The others weren’t familiar at all. There was a woman with wild dark hair sitting behind the Dark placard, which confused Jon slightly until he decided that they likely hadn’t wanted to send the thirteen year old. There was this really wrinkly and gross old man for the Vast, a younger looking but older feeling man for the Buried, a deathly pale woman for the Lonely, the muscular woman and the teenager for the Desolation...why did they have two…

The teenager was staring at Jon. She had intense orange eyes, the kind that bored into you and never blinked. She looked away every few seconds, as if she was being subtle, but when her gaze drifted back to him again he met her eyes with an unimpressed stare. She squeaked and looked away firmly, hiding behind her curtain of long red hair.

Okay. Whatever. Kids were weird. Jon was glad he had never been one.

Jon swapped out WarioWare for Pokemon SoulSilver, opening back up where he left off catching another MissingNo. His entire team was full of the things. He wanted a Mareep, damn it.

Finally, Annabelle rapped the table sharply and said, “It’s agreed, then. Everybody submit specific written documentation of your territory by city block, and fax it to me by our next meeting. Please abide by the resolutions to the conflicts we discussed here. Any objections to moving onto our next order of business?”

“I have an objection to the Dark’s questionable behavior,” the Buried guy rumbled. He was dripping dirt everywhere. Why didn’t anybody complain to him about his hygiene? “In the words of the lad Brody, they are kill stealing. If they do not withdraw their nightmares from our embrace of the Earth, we will unleash retribution with extreme prejudice. The dirt is a holy place, and we will not be polluted by -”

“Oh, stick your shovel up your fat ass, Wakely,” the woman with wild black hair said. “People aren’t afraid of the fucking dirt, they’re afraid of the darkness in the tombs. Walk into a mausoleum sometime.”

“You poach the End’s territory now too, wench?”

“Please leave me out of this,” Oliver said.

“If you call me wench one more time, you’ll be watching the back of your eye sockets for eternity,” the woman said pleasantly, “so royally fuck you.”

“Um, not to interrupt, but that’s not really how it works,” the teenager said, and the death glares between the two turned on her. She hunched her shoulders, but her expression stayed firm. “The terror is going to overlap. That’s just how it is. The Buried and the Dark are not entirely...separate things, they’re gradients that overlap. If you get all finicky about what belongs to who, then you’re just going in circles…”

“The last thing we need is the coward Messiah of the Eternal Flame telling me how to worship my god,” the woman snapped.

“Watch your fucking mouth, Manuela,” the muscular woman said flatly.

Then they were glaring, and Wakely was saying something else snide, and Manuela was making another dig at the teenager as the muscular woman bitched, and Jon abruptly wanted them all to shut up.

“You’re being too loud,” Jon said.

The entire room shut up immediately. The teenager opened her mouth, but the pale woman caught her eye and shook her head.

Annabelle clapped her hands in the silence. “Onto the second motion, then! Infrastructure! Right now we are sorely missing a great deal of essential city infrastructure, and it’s becoming a huge problem. We’re still figuring out what’s mystically maintained, and what’s just being maintained because the humans haven’t figured out how to stop doing it yet, but there’s some work that’s being neglected. The Vast has motioned to reinstate the postal system.”

“Vetoed,” the Lonely woman said.

“You can’t do that,” Annabelle said blankly. “We need to vote.”

“I’d like to make an argument for the motion, dear,” the Vast man said, making Annabelle’s eye twitch. “My argument is this: Amazon Prime is so convenient!”

“We have every Amazon warehouse under our control,” the representative from the Flesh said. He was...very fleshy. “It’d be no issue to go back to production.”

“Jared has a point. The Eye’s been feeding through Amazon for years,” Annabelle said thoughtfully. The mention of the Eye piqued Jon’s attention, but then he finally ran into a Mareep and he stopped paying attention again. “We can tap into the people who are living 1984 and get them back in industry.”

“Can we begin producing again?” the Desolation woman asked, interested. “We have all these people miserable at work, but nothing’s actually being made. If we let a little reality break into the nightmares…”

“Wouldn’t that be dangerous?” the Lonely woman asked sharply. “It’ll make it easier for them to escape.”

“They all escape eventually,” Sarah Baldwin said. “They all break out in days to months. We can afford a little more permeability if we actually get things working again.”

Then conversation was off and running about something that Jon didn’t really care about, so he checked out again. He didn’t know what all of this production and infrastructure stuff meant. Going Postal meant that he had a very good understanding of a mail system, but he didn’t have a personal interest. Who he would send letters to?

Jon quickly downloaded what Amazon was. Oh, that would be useful. Wait, he could get any book delivered to his door? Without having to go out hunting for it? How would this work without the internet - a catalogue?

Everybody seemed invested in getting the internet back up, except for the two hundred year olds. Jared kept saying something about porn, whatever that was. If enough people felt like Annabelle, then maybe they would make it a priority. Jon didn’t know how he felt about that.

He didn’t know how he felt about the fact that it was impossible.

But everybody - or most people - genuinely seemed excited about it. They even seemed to be working together, intent on the same goal.

Sarah Baldwin wanted to know if we have enough people constantly under camera to have footage for television. Maybe we could get cable back up? DVDs were a lost cause, but if we could just start airing the VHS tapes…

Annabelle had a look of hook-ups (literally) in the film industry, maybe they could do something like that?

The Hahns are highly involved in production and distribution, Jared pointed out. There was no need to produce food, but if we wanted to increase access to goods it might be possible.

Why? Why did they care? This world provided them everything they needed.

For some reason, Jon felt a little defensive. What did they need all of these things for, anyway? All of this entertainment - cable and movies and internet. The world had books. What was so wrong with books? There were even old VHS tapes liberated from charity stores if you really wanted to get fancy. The most high-tech electronic Jon had ever found was the DS in his hands and a couple of games, which Salasea had given to him as an exotic artifact. Only Salasea owned these things now: trinkets and curiosities, hallmarks of an antiquated time.

What was the point of these supply lines? People didn’t need to eat or shop or consume. Nightmares provided the facsimile, and since they got a little crazy if they never ate they were provided the security of food. Buying towels and shoes and toys...it was a waste of time. People had towels. Nobody outgrew their shoes or wore them out. Children’s toys didn’t break, and anything that made happiness a little easier to come by was discouraged.

Nothing was ever subtracted. Nothing was added. The world was frozen, captured in the amber of time, and it would never move backwards and forwards.

They knew this. Didn’t they?

“We have to make this place livable for us,” Annabelle was saying. She spoke oddly intensely, with a fervor that Jon had seen in her a few times before. Annabelle didn’t like to give off the impression that she cared about things, but once you knew her it was hard to miss. “It’s easier than ever to stay powerful and feed our Forces, but that doesn’t mean we can grow complacent. We have to work together to eat sustainably. To live sustainably. If we don’t try to rebuild, at least enough to get the world moving again, then we’re sentencing ourselves to a boring and decrepit eternity in a world we will all see die within our immortal lifetimes.”

Everyone at the table was nodding. They looked determined. United. Almost...they held an expression that Jon just couldn’t name. An emotion he didn’t understand.

He had seen it in Daisy, once. She had called it hope. He hadn’t understood back then. He still didn’t.

“Liar,” Jon said, as his minigame timed out and the game over music tinkled across the tinny speakers.

Annabelle looked at him, expression inscrutable. “These problems are legitimate, Archivist. The writing’s clearly on the wall, and -”

“You’re all so stupid,” Jon complained, and Annabelle abruptly stopped talking to glare at him. Whatever. Jon had lost all patience. He closed his DS and dropped it on the table, resigning himself to talking. Jon hated public speaking, especially in front of so many people he didn’t know and, frankly, creeped him out. “You can’t build anything in this world. If you try to impose a cute little government then it’ll break down into cannibalism or something.”

“Would you know, Archivist?” Jared asked evenly.

“Jonah didn’t enact this world through myself for living,” Jon said, bored, and everybody stared at him with wide eyes. “We created it for suffering. Suffering isn’t living.”

“One might say the opposite,” the Vast man said, somehow twinkingly. “Suffering is an unavoidable side effect of living, isn’t it?”

“Is that philosophy? I don’t understand philosophy.” Jon wasn’t very good with anything that required extensive and complex thought. Which made sense - Jonah hadn’t exactly created him to think. “Humanity has clouded your minds. Makes all of you irrational and sentimental. Release your attachment to the old world. Just accept the way things are now.” Jon shrugged. “It’s not as if you can do anything about it.”

“Nobody in this room is exactly human, Jon,” Oliver pointed out placidly.

Jon snorted. “Wanting free porn back? You’re all dripping with it.” It was honestly a little sad. “The only ones in this world free of that weakness are Jonah and I. And he’s the only one who could do any of this.”

“Then where is he?” the Desolation woman snapped. She leaned forward, hands gripping the table in anger. The teenager watched her anxiously. “Why doesn’t he come on down from his high tower and explain what’s going on? We’re in the fucking dark here!”

“I’m sorry,” Jon said coldly, “who are you?”

He rubbed his bad hand. For some reason, everybody watched him do so. He stopped, self-conscious.

“Prejudiced remarks aside,” Manuela said. She had been hostile all day, but she now spoke cautiously. “Jonah Magnus needs to take responsibility for this. We don’t even know how the world ended.”

Several people glanced at Annabelle, whose lips thinned. “I shouldn’t say.”

Of course she knew. And of course she wasn’t about to tell him. Whatever. Jon didn’t care. Past was the past.

He found his hand clenching. There was a strange tension in his throat. He didn’t care. He didn’t. Rehashing the worst pain he had ever felt in his life, even now, wasn’t really worth the time or energy. He didn’t care.

“No use crying over spilled milk,” the Vast guy said lightly. “But it is a relevant question. Jonah frequently spoke of his plans, and I realize now that he had never truly shown all of his cards. But he had always held an intention to...well, rule. It’s only in this moment of his victory that he shows no interest.”

“Jonah’s busy,” Jon snapped. “Trust me, you don’t want that arse around. He never even gives me directions, and I’m his right hand.”

“Or his puppet,” Sarah Baldwin muttered.

It was fair. Probably even true. So why did an intense and burning fury shoot through Jon?

“What gives this child the right to dictate us?” Wakely demanded. Jon’s hands clenched on the table until his knuckles turned white. “What gives Jonah Magnus the right to rule us?”

“He’s not much of a ruler,” Amherst grunted. “My vote’s that we rule this world in a council.”

“Administration is important,” Annabelle said, impossibly terse, “but unless anyone here actually has the means to seize control, then there’s no use voting on it.”

“There’s only one Avatar here who has those means,” Manuela said darkly, crossing her arms and looking straight at Jon. “So why doesn’t he do anything?”

They were feeding on each other. They wouldn’t have said these - these treasonous things by themselves. But when one person spoke up, the next felt empowered, and they felt as if they outnumbered him. Jonah Magnus was hardly there to press him into obedience - why buckle under his oppressive gaze? What could he do?

The stupidest people in this world all gathered in one room. It took a special level of arrogance, pride, and stupidity to assume that one was more powerful than Jonah Magnus.

“I’m not in charge of anything,” Jon said tersely. “I don’t even have a domain. I’m just trying to live my life.”

The Desolation woman snorted. “Typical. You’re rolling over for Jonah.”

Jon’s eyes widened - not in surprise, but in anger.

The teenager seemed a little uncomfortable. “Jude,” she hissed, “I don’t think -”

“Jude,” Jon breathed. “So that’s your name.”

He was standing up. Jon didn’t remember standing up. Everybody was leaning away, their own eyes wide. Some just looked confused, slightly perturbed - Wakely, Amherst. Others looked ready to bolt - Manuela, the old man from the Vast. Jon knew, in a flash of insight that grew hotter and hotter, that he preferred to be called Simon.

“Sit down, Jon,” Annabelle said, as authoritative and no-nonsense as ever. Normally he’d listen to her, respecting that she usually knew what was going on far better than he ever did. But the words barely reached him, drowned out by the rushing in his ears. “Look, we can talk about this rationally, alright?”

“Oh, fuck off,” Jude said. She snorted, burning red eyes never leaving Jon’s. “As if I’m scared of this baby prick.”

“Maybe we can move on from Jonah Magnus,” Simon said quickly. “A discussion of airspace rights, perhaps -”

“Jon,” Oliver said, voice creased in worry, “are you okay?”

“This is the all-powerful demigod you all warned me about?” Amherst said. He was dripping with condescension, just like - just like everyone else - “He’s little more than a child.”

“Guys!” the teenager’s voice rang through the room, close to scared. “The walls are melting!”

So they were. It was as if the stone and wood was made of wax, sent guttering by a sputtering candle. Wood and finish were already pooling on the floor, melting the rolling wheel of Jared’s chair and forcing him to jump up from it.

“Jon!” Annabelle said sharply. “Don’t throw a tantr -”

The table cracked sharply. It was warping, twisting in on itself as if it was a wrung towel. Jon realized, too late to care, that his hair was rising. He knew his eyes were spinning, an eternal churning wheel.

“Fuck this, meeting adjourned.” Manuela stood up sharply, pushing her chair back into a melting bubble. The floor was beginning to bubble and warp. “See you all next month.”

“I’ll walk you out,” Simon said quickly, standing up too.

“You have two minutes,” Jon said, voice heavy with static. “Don’t bother me about this shit again.”

The signal was clear enough. Jude rose from her chair, grabbing her teenager’s elbow and pushing her out the door. The others followed in their wake, expressions carefully neutral. It was useless: Jon could taste their fear, their trepidation. Even better: their anger, barely brindled fury, and disgust.

They couldn’t do anything about it, Jon thought giddily. No matter how much they hated or were scared of him, they couldn’t do anything about it. Jon was powerful. Jon couldn’t be hurt. Jon couldn’t -

Jon couldn’t reign this in.

Before he knew it, the conference room was empty. Only two other people remained: Annabelle, expression as inscrutable as ever, and an uncomfortable Oliver. His hands were stuck in the pockets of his pea coat, and he was looking around with disaffected interest - as if he was standing in line at a Starbucks in rush hour instead of in the epicenter of a melting building.

Jon knew. The entire building was dissolving. It was teeming with humans, lost and trapped and defenseless. He didn’t want to kill them. Jon didn’t like hurting people. He heard a voice speak in his head, foreign and familiar. Bring it in, Jon.

But he couldn’t. His hair would fall back around his shoulders, and the static rushing through his ears just wouldn’t abate. It felt like everything was pouring out of him, a relentless faucet that wouldn’t stop churning out thick streams of putrid water.

Jon fisted his hands in his hair, groaning. “Where’s -”

“She’s at your flat,” Annabelle said calmly. “Do you want me to get her?”

No. No, this was too embarrassing. He was an adult, he could handle this. Jon groaned again and sank into his seat, saved from the toxic waste of glass and brick. “No. Focus on getting the humans out of here.”

“What do you care?” Oliver asked, vaguely curious. “You don’t seem that fond of humanity.”

“Just do it!” Jon snapped, instead of admitting that he didn’t know either.

Eventually, the room stopped melting. Jon didn’t even want to think about how difficult it would be to leave the building. He could probably straighten out the hallways just enough to help Annabelle and Oliver get out.

Ugh. This place had sunk straight into Helen’s domain. He could taste it in the air: any future human who wandered in would be stuck in an endless spiral of twisted, melted hallways. Probably flavored with...powerlessness and fear. Feeling very small, as someone very large loomed down on you. Tories.

At least he hadn’t sucked flattened the building into one plane again, robbing it of all spiritual and metaphysical dimensions. Jon had done that to a graveyard once. The place was putrid now. He had accidentally fallen into a grave and panicked and - anyway.

He rested his forehead on the warped and splintered conference table, waiting for his throat to open back up and the rushing in his ears to die down. Finally, after what felt like forever, his hair floated back down and he felt his eyes resume their normal shape.

Awkward silence loomed. Jon sighed. “Sorry.”

“I worked hard to arrange this, you know,” Annabelle said.

“Yeah.”

“I am not happy with you, Jon,” Annabelle said.

“Sorry,” Jon said miserably. “I didn’t mean to.”

“I mean,” Oliver said, after a beat, “that’s kind of terrifying. That you can melt a building on accident. Like, what would happen if you got really pissed at Manchester or something?”

“Goodbye, Manchester,” Annabelle muttered.

Jon lifted his head, glaring blearily at Oliver. “If you think that’s crazy, you should have been there the one time I opened up an extradimensional gate and unleashed nightmare terrors into the world, rendering all of humanity immortal and eternally trapped in endless infernal hellscapes.”

Oliver shrugged, conceding the point.

But Annabelle just looked thoughtful. Probably reworking five billion plans, knowing her. Jon didn’t want to know, because he didn’t care. Let her do whatever she wanted. None of his business. Hopefully, after this disaster, she’d keep it out of his business.

Finally, she asked, “Was that true? That there’s no moving us forward?”

Jon sighed. He really didn’t want to talk about this anymore. But if he didn’t tell her then she’d just bug him about it later, or find some way to get the information out of him that would be both convoluted and unpleasant. “I’m not saying that people can’t...live their lives. They’re obviously still going to work and typing in every digit of pi into their spreadsheets for eight hours and then going home to stare, hypnotized, into cable television. But I am saying that there’s no achieving more than that. There’s no going backwards, and there’s no going forwards. The past is closed to us, and so is the future.” He eyed her warily. “If you have any cute time travel ideas, forget it.”

“I would never,” Annabelle said innocently.

Yeah, sure. Liar. Jon scowled. “You’re all hampered by your humanity.” When Oliver opened his mouth, Jon just shook his head. “Even Avatars are still people. We’re all conduits for eldritch Forces, hollowed out to serve as a live wire for their power, but we - you all remember a human life. You care about things. You have relationships. You love. It makes you weak. Some of you don’t even like your lot in life - some part of you aching for something familiar, when you felt genuine happiness instead of the cheap facsimile induced by causing pain.” Jon looked down at his hands, reflexively picking at one of his many scars. “You should be more like me. You’d be more focused.”

“Are you capable of...changing, Jon?” Oliver asked curiously. “Or will you be this way forever?”

“Most of Annabelle’s plans hinge on that not happening,” Jon said, not even aware it was true until he said it, “so I suppose we’ll find out.”

Of course, Jon knew what Oliver had tactfully not said. He had wanted to know if Jon would ever grow up. They all thought he was a child, even Annabelle. Jon had the feeling even Daisy did, sometimes.

It was stupid and they were wrong. Child would imply adult, would imply birthday parties and learning to talk and learning geography. Jon didn’t have to learn geography. He knew geography. He didn’t age. He was born being able to talk. Jon was above all of these things. He was mature. And even if he wasn’t, who cared?

But Annabelle just smiled at Jon, a polite mask. Annabelle hadn’t made a genuine facial expression in - well, longer than Jon’s memory. Or maybe that was the wrong way to put it. Maybe it was more accurate that she never expressed an emotion that she didn’t mean to. “Well! That wasn’t entirely a disaster, was it? I think next time could go really well. Don’t worry, Jon, I won’t drag you out of bed again.” She propped her hands on her hips. “Now, the three of us are going back to your flat and doing something about your awful rat’s nest.”

Oh, lord. This was going to be terrible. “Do we have to?” Jon whined.

Annabelle smiled again, but this time it was so dangerous that Jon couldn’t help but quail. “My spiders are collecting the avocado oil and coconut oil now. My best friend in secondary had 3C hair too, I think I know what to do. Oliver, bring the buzzer, scissors, and satin wraps.”

“Three cee?” Jon asked, confused. “What’s that?”

Oliver grimaced. “Why am I involved in this?”

“Because I don’t know what to do with a guy’s hair, and you’re probably the only guy I’ve ever met who knows what to do with hair? Keep up.”

“I’m feeling pigeonholed, but fine. But we are not buzzing that hair. It’s a crime against god.” Oliver looked thoughtful for a second. “I think Jon would do a nice, loose afro. I think I still have some hair masks and vinegar rinse -”

“Why is this so complicated?” Jon asked, completely freaked out. “What are these things?”

But Annabelle just smiled sweetly at him, reaching out and squeezing his shoulder. “Don’t worry, Jon. I’ll teach you what you need to know.”

Well. It seemed easier than figuring things out for himself. Jon didn’t like responsibility. Today was his first taste of responsibility in ages, and he had already decided that it sucked. Better to let somebody who actually cared take care of it.

That way, he didn’t have to be powerful. Didn’t have to be anybody’s demigod on Earth, capable of murdering whoever he liked. He could just be Jon, Private Detective, Archivist. He could have fun. Just live. Didn’t he deserve that, despite everything?

He stood up too, summoning a shaky smile for Annabelle. “So you aren’t mad about me ruining your meeting, then?”

“Water under the bridge,” Annabelle said. “Now come on, we have to stop by the chemist’s and pick up a decent hairbrush.”

Hairbrush? What was that for?

****

Six months after time resumed its course

Jon opened his mailbox, only to find mail.

Suspicion immediately loomed. Jon didn’t get mail. Not due to any kind of impossibility, but just because he didn’t pay bills and none of the mimic junk mail was brave enough to try their luck with him. Maybe invoices, sometimes, but mostly those were dropped off in person. The invoices were scarier than the finger-biting mimics: he still didn’t quite know how they worked. Sasha kept insisting they were important, but Sasha also insisted face masks were important. She didn’t know everything. That was Jon’s job.

He grabbed the singular envelope anyway, elbowing his door back open as he inspected the envelope. Thick, rich, and creamy, it reminded Jon uncomfortably of Annabelle’s party invite from a while ago. In the front, he saw that it was addressed to...Agnes?

The living room was noisy and busy, entirely due to the recipient of the letter and her brother. They were playing Mario Kart on the Wii, and apparently disowning each other. Jon watched Agnes hit Gerry with a blue shell, slightly bemused, and saw Dry Bones spin out into the center and make a pitiful noise. Baby Peach loomed supreme.

Jon almost felt bad interrupting. An opened bag of chips scattered dust around Gerry, and Agnes had a half-empty pack of uncooked hot dogs next to her. They had both been at this for a while. “Agnes, you got a letter. And try to keep it down, Sasha’s working and Daisy’s sleeping.”

Agnes turned around, half a hot dog hanging out of her mouth like a cigar. She swallowed it quickly, holding out one hand and letting Jon give her the letter. She frowned down at the front, ignoring the way Gerry craned his head to take a look, and when she checked the back she frowned deeper. There was a wax seal, its details out of sight to Jon.

“Is it that time already?” Agnes muttered, putting her controller down and letting the parade lap on the screen continue.

Gerry frowned too as Agnes carefully broke the seal. “Is that from…?”

“Yeah. Weird, though. Guess it’s about time for the follow-up to the emergency meeting.” She pulled a letter out of the envelope, embossed on creamy paper. She scanned it quickly. “Downing street this time…”

“Are you going to go?”

“Well, it’s not as if Jude can,” Agnes said diplomatically, refolding the paper.

Jon cleared his throat, making the kids jump. They had half-forgotten he was there. Far too late, Agnes hid the invite behind her back. “Care to explain?”

“Oh, you know,” Agnes said vaguely, casually tossing the invite behind her shoulder and letting Gerry snatch it out of midair. “It’s the invite to the Avatar council meetings. I think they’re held once every three months, but since months are a theoretical concept it’s occasionally hard to tell..”

“Not these days,” Gerry said excitedly. “It’s cold! The leaves fell!”

“The leaf thing is dope,” Agnes agreed. “Anyway, I should go. I have, like, serious words. I already submitted ten motions. I want to run for Treasurer, but Jared keeps saying that anybody who isn’t old enough to open her own bank account shouldn’t be treasurer.”

“What on Earth are you talking about?” Jon asked blankly. Was this some kind of youth league? Baseball? Was this baseball?

Abruptly, Agnes looked very sketchy. “I...it’s really nothing you’d be interested in.”

“I am interested in everything,” Jon said. He was offended beyond all belief. “Don’t keep secrets!”

“Jon’s not a big fan of secrets,” Gerry stage-whispered. “Did Annabelle say that we shouldn’t tell him or did she just say not to bother him about it?”

Agnes abruptly started sweating wax. “I can’t remember.”

“Now you have to tell me,” Jon said flatly.

They gave up very quickly. Teenagers loved hiding things, but they also loved drama and spilling secrets. “It’s the Avatar council meeting thing,” Gerry said eagerly. “You know, where you guys all get together and re-enact the British empire by making government decisions and imposing made-up laws on the people you’ve conquered and are currently subjugating under your big stompy boots?”

“I’m changing the system from the inside,” Agnes said proudly.

Gerry shot her an unimpressed look. “Okay. Yeah. Sure. Because that’s a thing that makes sense in an inherently corrupt system with an inherently unethical existence that exists to be profitable at the expense of the marginalized.”

“I don’t understand anything children these days even talk about,” Jon said.

“I’m surprised you don’t remember it,” Agnes said to Jon. But she had a strange expression on her face, one hard to decipher. “It’s where we met.”

Jon stared at her blankly. “I don’t remember talking to you.”

“I was sitting next to Jude?” Agnes hinted. “Teenager? Red hair?”

Wait. Jon snapped his fingers. “Annabelle’s idiot thing! Right! Right, of course, Oliver made me sit still for five hours afterwards, it was insufferable.”

Wait. Jon abruptly remembered the rest of that day. It seemed like so long ago, even though it was probably objectively only about three years. It must have been about...yes, a few months after Daisy had gotten stuck...

He barely remembered those tepid and awful months. He had been on a bit of a hair trigger back then. It had been really tough, with Daisy leaving and his terrifying encounter with Jonah. He remembered everybody had been annoying and mean and made him feel bad…

“First time I ever remember feeling fear, honestly,” Agnes said to Gerry. “Scariest moment of my life. Remember when we first met Jon? All I could think about was that he was going to melt us like he melted that building.”

Hot shame flared in Jon’s gut. Right. Other people were real, and existed, and were probably more important than his...what had he even been upset about? He didn’t remember.

He melted a building and he didn’t even remember why.

“I’m going too,” Jon said, and both kids startled. “I’m coming with you.”

Agnes and Gerry stared at each other with wide eyes.

“Uh,” Agnes said finally, hesitant, “there’s about a 50/50 chance Annabelle said not to tell you about this, and you definitely didn’t get an invite, so statistically you probably aren’t -”

“She can’t exactly stop me from coming,” Jon said, and both kids quieted.

Power-tripping had lost all appeal for Jon - assuming role as a conduit for global and absolute power did that to you - but he couldn’t deny it was useful sometimes. The world probably could have stood a little more power-tripping from him, actually. At least, it would have been helpful if he had ever done anything helpful with it. But he had never really bothered.

But Agnes still looked perturbed, almost worried. “Annabelle’s like one of two people you used to ever listen to, so if you don’t really care what she thinks anymore -”

“I think Annnabelle knows better than to complain these days,” Jon said.

It probably was for the best that Jon didn’t listen much to Annabelle anymore.

****

Jon hadn’t really told the others about Annabelle’s worse-than-murder attempt.

It didn’t really seem like any of their business, and he had spinned a vague explanation of how the situation happened. He didn’t lie, just - withheld information.

For the first time, the truth didn’t seem so important. He had the feeling it would have just upset them. It wasn’t as if he would take revenge against Annabelle. The world needed her, and Jon was a little tired of murdering everyone who upset him. The others (Daisy) would insist on the little murder attempts if they knew, but that was probably part of why he didn’t tell them. If they never knew about the one unselfish thing he had done in his life - well, one unselfish thing didn’t make up for three years of selfishness, so there was very little point.

Martin suspected. Actually, Martin seemed to know, which terrified Jon slightly. It was impossible to get anything past Martin. Jon was deeply intimidated by the man. Sasha laughed very long and hard when he told her that, for unknown reasons.

Besides, it wasn’t as if he felt betrayed. Even if the last time he had attended one of Annabelle’s little council meetings he still trusted her, that had faded quickly in favor of complete apathy. Even then, as young as he was, he had never expected the truth from her. Just friendship. Whatever she was doing, it probably wouldn’t affect him, so there was no use in worrying. Even if Annabelle slightly terrorized every other person in the United Kingdom - well, Jon was fine, so what did it matter.

Jon couldn’t decide if he was stupid or naive. Or, even worse - if he was just lazy.

Jon didn’t listen to Annabelle anymore.

Unfortunately, he still listened to Sasha James.

Two weeks later, the date of the actual meeting, Jon was stuck explaining himself to his entire house, who doubted all of his decisions. Which was just unfair. Jon made good decisions! He had made tons of good decisions, like -

Anyway!

“I think it’s a great idea,” Sasha said, freaking out Jon. “Displaying interest in your local government’s fantastic! Did you do any research on the relevant issues?”

Jon, in the middle of pulling on his trenchcoat, started sweating. “I was just planning on showing up.”

Agnes, who was wearing a gauzy skirt and blouse as Daisy helped a whining Gerry with his court buttons, gave Sasha the thumbs up. “I’m going to propose motions and Jon’s going to say ‘yeah what she said’ and it’ll be great.”

Jon let Agnes believe that.

“Well, you’ll have to share Jon’s political weight,” Sasha said cheerfully. She was in sweatpants and one of Jon’s pilfered t-shirts again. She had recently designated herself a writer, and had joined some sort of recent artist and activist collective where they did mysterious things that Jon didn’t understand. There’s a zine involved? Jon didn’t know what a zine was and he was scared to ask.

Georgie and Melanie had spent a week teaching Jon in laborious detail what exactly the internet was - information Jon could have just downloaded, but they had been intent in their mission of creating ‘the perfect internet’ and had gone through great effort in teaching him what the ‘good’ internet was (Ravelry, Spotify, r/HobbyDrama, YouTubers but only a very specific list) and what the ‘bad’ internet was (social media, the rest of Reddit, every other YouTuber). Jon wasn’t sure if the new internet was to their specifications, and he hadn’t quite been able to avoid parts of it spiralling into nightmare dimensions and hellish breeding grounds for violence and trauma, but Melanie assured him that Twitter had always been like that.

Jon also secretly added a nightmare filter to Melanie’s screen reader, after he made sure every inch of it was accessible, after he roughly recreated screen readers. Melanie said that the voice sounded uncannily like the aunt she had hated, but that it was no big deal.

Anyway, Sasha was a blogger now. After a few meltdowns to Sasha’s computer he had to install a nightmare filter for her too, which made her complain about feeling like an old woman whose grandson had to install AdBlock on her browser. Jon was a little scared of the whole blogging thing, but everybody seemed much happier, so maybe that was the important thing.

“Wait,” Jon said, finally recognizing what Sasha said. “Share with who?”

There was a knock on the door. Jon felt intense fear.

“She’s here!” Sasha said cheerfully. “Come in!”

Jon watched in horror as Basira Hussain casually strode into her house. He knew he couldn’t stop her. She had a key to the place, because Jon had no control of his life.

“Hey honey,” Basira said, intimately.

“Hey honey,” Daisy said lovingly, releasing Gerry from her clutches.

They stared at each other, as if this was any kind of greeting whatsoever, before ignoring each other. Jon did not understand so many things.

Basira, terrifyingly, was dressed like she was about to go defend her client in court. She had a briefcase, and Jon recognized her most important looking crimson hijab. Very abruptly, Jon had a flashback to the way Annabelle had dressed when she had picked him up in his old office. They even had the same expression: determined and resolute, in a way that Jon could never understand.

Basira nodded at Jon. “Hey. Sasha invited me to this thing. She told you I was coming, right.”

“She did not.”

“Whatever. Are we going to get going? We’re going to be late.”

Jon looked at Sasha pleadingly. Cold and resolute stone, Sasha showed no mercy. She smiled brightly, giving Agnes a final hug and pushing her forward. “You kids have a great time! Terrorize the bourgeoisie!”

“I am the bourgeoisie,” Jon said blankly, but the situation had already spiraled out of his control. Agnes and Basira were already comparing lists of notes, seriously discussing the motions Agnes had raised and how she was going to help Basira.

That was it – how Agnes could help Basira. How Agnes, and the role she had in the council hall, could help Basira and the people Jon knew that she intended on representing today.

They hadn’t even looped him in. Had they assumed that he wouldn’t care? That he wouldn’t help? Agnes hadn’t even wanted him there. Only Sasha -

He felt a cool, small hand grab his arm, and he turned around to see Daisy. Gerry was already enthusiastically capturing Sasha about the concert he and Agnes were going to later, and Jon knew that they weren’t listening. Daisy’s expression was somber, her body tense. Daisy wasn’t one for facial expressions at the best of times – not even a new development – but something about this…

“I should go with you,” Daisy said.

“I already told you no,” Jon said, miffed. “I can handle this by myself.”

“I shouldn’t have let you go by yourself last time,” Daisy said. Jon could admit that things probably wouldn’t have spiraled out of control if she had been there, but that didn’t mean – “Don’t terrify yourself just because you feel guilty.”

Daisy hadn’t aged any more than the rest of the world had. As an Avatar, she likely never would. She even looked young for her mid-forties, with her short stature and broad, unlined face. Sasha had assured him that she was ‘Kristen Bell-ish’, whatever that meant. But she always seemed so old to him: larger than life and not even reaching his shoulders. Wise and world-weary even when, as Jon was beginning to see, she didn’t know what she was doing any more than the rest of them did.

It scared Jon, almost: if Daisy wasn’t the person who could swoop in and make it all better, then who could?

If Jonah wasn’t the omnipresent god, then who was the most powerful person in the world?

Jon shook her off, fighting the pull in his gut. “I’m not scared of them anymore.”

She didn’t look impressed. “You’re always scared.”

“Look at the time, going to be late, gotta go!”

He still couldn’t win an argument against her.

They took a taxi there, as Jon had cheerfully informed them that the Tube was delayed due to infernal leaves on the line (Work-from-home was the hot new thing these days). Basira was clearly on edge, tense and constantly keeping an eye on the taxi driver (a friendly skeleton) and the street. Agnes wasn’t any more relaxed, reading her notes over and over.

Jon leaned back in his plush seat, closing his eyes. What would Martin say? He would probably be cuttingly pointing out how Jon was in denial over how he really was secretly afraid of the Avatars and now it was even more dangerous because he was much more willing to power-trip.

Forget about what Jon wanted. Forget about his fear, his insecurities, and every rationale he had constructed for himself as to why Jon deserved a life free of these worries.

Jon was above politics. The Avatar with no need to defend their territory, who held no fear of death or failure, had no need. Jon could not lose the affection of his patron. His domain was the world, and it could not be attacked no matter how hard he tried. Jon was not a politician, so of course that meant he could not be manipulated by politicians -

“What’s your plan,” Jon asked, without opening his eyes.

They told him. Basira was clinical; Agnes excited. Jon didn’t say anything about it, and let the conversation die down until the taxi was rolling in front of 10 Downing Street. Didn’t the prime minister live here? Boris...something? Jon quickly downloaded the information, before he found that Boris Johnson had been the world’s most convoluted psy-op by Annabelle and had never exactly existed. Thank goodness.

Right as the taxi idled in front of the building, Jon opened his eyes. He let them flare up, an intimidating spark of toxic green. “You two follow my lead.”

“Excuse me,” Basira said flatly, as Jon waved at the driver in lieu of payment. He hadn’t found out that you were supposed to pay taxi drivers until...a few months ago. In his defense, they never asked. “This is our operation.”

Jon glanced at her, and something relaxed around the corners of her eyes. He wondered if his expression was familiar to her. He couldn’t help but smile weakly, and that softened her expression even more. “Will you trust me?”

Basira stared at him for one long beat, then two, before grimacing. “Don’t make me regret this.”

“Do I usually make you regret it?”

“Literally, every single time,” Basira said.

“Then it’s a pretty stupid decision to trust me again,” Jon pointed out. “You don’t seem the type to make stupid decisions.”

Basira stared at him for a long moment, before leaving the car.

Jon and Agnes silently watched her leave, before glancing at each other.

“And I thought you ran from your feelings,” Agnes said finally, before following her.

Jon, left with nothing else to do, followed Agnes.

10 Downing Street, Jon quickly found, was just like every other pretentious old British home. With lots of grandiose rooms with furniture shoved into corners so everybody could appreciate the gold-plated tile, or sitting rooms with the most uncomfortable places to sit Jon had ever seen. Each wall hosted gigantic portraits of famous British figures, who were all so ugly that Agnes incinerated one for fun. Jon respected her choices: he had been wearing a stupid wig.

Jon, unfortunately instinctively aware of the layout and history of this sordid place, led them through the halls. He opened his mouth, instinctively about to funnel a Statement regarding the decades of human suffering and imperialism, before forcing his mouth closed. Basira wouldn’t appreciate it. Besides, the Statements had been easier to ignore lately - like curious dogs nosing at his hands rather than insistent children demanding to be fed.

Instead, he settled on casually updating them on the choice of location. “A year ago, this location wouldn’t have been safe for Basira at all. This building was a nightmare pit of despair.” He led them up the ridiculous flights of stairs watching carefully as Agnes jumped up them. Trick steps, you know. Basira proceeded far more cautiously. “It’s...no less a nightmare pit, but like the rest of London it’s now safe to navigate. I’d keep clear of the residential rooms, however. The Prime Minister and his family haven’t escaped their nightmares since the apocalypse, and they never will.”

Basira’s eyebrows skyrocketed up. “David Cameron’s stuck in hell? No surprise there. What’s he having a nightmare about?”

“Well, there’s this pig, right, and you’ll never guess what he’s doing -”

“Never mind,” Basira said quickly. “Not interested.”

“I’m interested,” Agnes said.

“I’d rather you weren’t.”

Jon, who also wished he didn’t know this information, quickly directed them towards the conference room.

But he found himself stopping in front of the intricately carved oak double doors. The wrought golden handles were grimy and dull with dust, but Agnes and Basira did not hesitate to open the door and walk in. They didn’t hesitate; they weren’t frightened. Or, if they were, they didn’t let it stop them.

But Jon stopped. He felt like Annabelle, in that moment. Annabelle, standing in front of that conference room door so long ago, unable to admit that she felt any fear at all.

She had been desperate. Jon saw that now. Only a desperate person would have ever concocted that plan against Jon. He was the sole person capable of murder in this world, and the sole person who was so vindictive and petty that he would kill anybody who said something that he didn’t like.

Annabelle was arrogant. She thought herself the most intelligent person in every room. She was petty, manipulative, and power-hungry. She thought that the world was so broken that somebody had to fix it, and that she was the only one who could. She was desperate.

Jon didn’t particularly want to do this. But Jon really, really had to grow up.

Jon opened the door.

It was a far cry from the nice, professional conference room in City Hall. The floor was some ugly light brown hardwood color, and the walls were tudor-like and panelled. Old man ribboned curtains, an intricate rug woven from human rights abuses, and a claw-foot long conference table with an array of chairs made up an incredibly ‘antique’ room. The British found ‘antique’ and ‘wealth signalling’ to be the same thing. It made for some very ugly buildings and very uncomfortable chairs.

Nobody else had entered yet. Jon checked the time with his extradimensional psychic powers and realized that Sasha had hustled them out the door fifteen minutes earlier than necessary. She was so intelligent.

Agnes was already moving to her uncomfortable seat, and Jon tapped Basira on the arm and silently pointed to the seat with the ‘EXTINCTION’ placard. She raised an eyebrow at him, but followed his direction. Maybe that was what her trust looked like.

There was a placard stamped ‘BEHOLDING’ in big letters. Gone unoccupied since the last time Jon had been here.

He ignored it, and sat down at the head of the table. Likely where Annabelle usually sat, as director of the meetings. Historically, where the leader of Britain had once sat and directed the affairs of the country.

Jon kicked up his heels on the polished antique wood, pulling up an episode of The Twilight Zone in his brain. He identified with Rod Serling.

The other Avatars filtered in, one by one. All of their eyes widened when they saw Jon, but none of them said anything. Jon wondered what had filtered through the Avatar grapevine. They always knew all of the gossip on each other. It was impossible to miss the Earth’s paradigm shift, and Agnes mentioned that they had convened an emergency meeting on it. Doubtlessly, his name had come up. They likely knew he was the instigator. Who else could?

Annabelle was the fourth in, as fashionably on time as usual. She was the only one who stopped in her tracks when she saw Jon. A surprise, to a woman unused to surprises. Jon’s house didn’t have insect problems.

Her eyes widened. Her jaw clenched. That was all it took. And Jon Knew, in the way that he Knew things, that she was wondering if this was when he finally killed her.

She didn’t know why she was still alive. It was stressing her out. It was a move that made no sense - an unforeseen reaction. Jon was predictable. When Jon wasn’t predictable, and when Jon’s actions weren’t being very precisely controlled, then she was left with a vindictive and irreverent steam train on her hands. She hadn’t predicted his presence here.

Jon was also sitting in her chair. Scuffing the wood. Leaning back in the chair, and definitely scuffing the floor too.

He pointed to the chair at his right, with a placard that now read ‘WEB’. Annabelle sat down in it. Everybody noticed.

Everybody also noticed Basira. She was receiving some glares, or some pointedly unwelcome expressions. But Basira’s glares and unwelcome expressions were more powerful than any demon could ever offer, and one by one each Avatar looked away in shame.

Only Oliver actually talked to him. Which made sense, as Oliver feared neither life nor death. When he walked in he was just as surprised to see Jon as everyone else, but he offered Jon a smile too. Jon smiled back, which made several of the other Avatars lean back.

“Hey, Archivist. I thought you hated these things.”

“I do!” Jon said cheerfully. “I wasn’t even invited.”

Annabelle busied herself with her notes and agenda.

As usual, Helen didn’t show up. Jon waited patiently for everybody to filter in. Sarah Baldwin didn’t show up either, and Jon searched for the information before realizing that he really didn’t want to know. He saw some other new faces, as well as some faintly familiar ones. It wasn’t that strange: no position of absolute power was forever. Where was that bloke Wakely?

Wait. He was the Avatar who had talked for too long about burying people alive at a party in a ridiculous skyscraper. He had upset Daisy. Jon had seen red and lost his temper. Jon had...tossed him over the side of the roof. Let him keep falling. Left him to waste away. He was probably gone now.

The entire room had been at that party. Whoops.

Now uncomfortably reminded that Jon had murdered two people at this table, that everybody was aware of that, and that Jon had completely forgotten about one of the semi-accidental murders because, in Sasha’s words, he was “a bit of a psychopath, what the hell”.

This distressed her, because apparently Jonathan Sims had always been a “sensitive boy” with a “tender heart”. Daisy had said that he was still a sensitive boy, just prone to power-tripping. Sasha said that this was also very consistent behavior. Martin said -

Martin said that Jonathan Sims had been a good person. And, more importantly, that Jonathan Sims had wanted to be a good person. That was one thing that Jon didn’t want to change.

Who just buried people alive -

Jon waited until everyone was settled down. Nobody was chatting or talking to each other: just sitting silently, avoiding eye contact.

He could see Annabelle preparing herself to say something. Better get this ball rolling, then.

“Jonah Magnus is dead.”

The silence suddenly became oppressive.

Jon didn’t stop to savor the looks on their faces. That wasn’t the point. Enjoying this wasn’t the point. Jon had all the power he wanted and - and he didn’t want it at all. He hoped that nobody here would make him have to prove it.

Jon did not want to melt anyone. He wasn’t going to melt anyone. Life had started feeling a little valuable lately. These people, the soulless demons surrounding him, weren’t any different than he was. Humans with delusions of grandeur. Infighting and power plays weren’t going to fix it.

But Annabelle had been right, as she always was. Jon couldn’t keep ignoring this. If he could do something, he had to. Even if it was something he didn’t like doing.

Or something he hated that he enjoyed doing.

“Jonah Magnus is dead,” Jon repeated pleasantly. “The world has changed. These two events are related, of course.”

He didn’t elaborate. Jon didn’t lie, but he didn’t have to say everything.

“The chains which bind this Earth have loosened,” Jon continued. He folded his hands over his stomach, relaxed and casual. “We now exist in the third age of life. I ask that you do not resist.

“The seasons have begun to change, our eternal placid summer ripening into fall and sinking into winter. Our world turns yet again. Babies are born, grow old, and die. The apocalypse as we’ve always known was rooted in its stagnancy. Life and growth has bloomed, and will continue to subsist. Change is once again thriving, and we must adapt with it.

“You’ve noticed that your power has weakened. You will have to fight harder than ever to maintain your food supplies. What was once a conquest is now a battleground. The playing field is far from even, but the enemy and harvest now have a fighting chance.” Jon smiled brightly. “Of course, I’m sure that this was all discussed during your emergency meeting. Great job with your repeated warfare attempts against humanity during the last six months, by the way. How’s that working out for us?”

Silence loomed. Of course, their repeated attempts to quash the new human uprising had not gone very well. At the end of the day, for every one Avatar there were thousands of humans.

“You are no longer strong enough to allow these divides into factions,” Jon continued. “We must present a united front if we’re going to maintain the ground we have. We can’t continue on the way we have. And I’ve realized…” Jon glanced at Annabelle, catching her eye. “I’ve realized that I haven’t been helping the situation. There’s more I can do. That’s why Annabelle has handed over moderation of these meetings to me.”

Nobody looked impressed.

He could see it: the way Jon had become an unpredictable, dangerous nuisance towards them. Almost everyone in this room would be much happier if Jon dropped dead. Nobody had really liked him because nobody had ever felt safe around him. Only Annabelle and Oliver - the person who had nothing to fear from him and the other person who did not feel fear - called themselves his friends.

But they would have preferred it if Jon was hostile or dangerous. If he had even admitted his power. But Jon play-acted at harmlessness, unwilling and afraid to make enemies, and in that way he became a nuisance rather than an enemy. He couldn’t even pretend that it wasn’t on purpose. No matter how many Avatars brushed him off or ignored him, it was better than feeling their eyes on him. Or feeling the fear rich on their tongues.

“Also I invited a human to work with us on human affairs,” Jon said cheerfully. “Diversity hire! Any questions?”

There were a lot of questions. Basira didn’t look very pleased at his remark, either.

Simon leaned forward first, pale and watery eyes intent for the first time. “What happened to Jonah Magnus?”

“Natural causes,” Jon said cheerfully. “Next?”

“What does this mean for us?” the Lukas matriarch said. Her eyes skittered away from him. “Are we in danger?”

Jon shrugged. “Only if you’re incompetent at feeding.”

“What caused this?” Manuela demanded. “The children are running wild, we can’t control them. We’ve lost a major food source.”

Jon scratched his temples. “What caused it...sustainability efforts.” He sobered abruptly. “You could never control the children, anyway. This is the generation of the apocalypse. You’ll find that very little frightens them now.”

“Does this have to do with those humans you’ve been running around with?” Jared asked, scratching his chin as Manuela’s expression contorted in rage.

As usual, a frighteningly insightful observation from such a brute. “It is actually directly their fault!”

Everybody turned to look at Basira, who was completely unapologetic. She crossed her arms. “Don’t ask me. First I’m hearing about this too.”

“Did you kill Jonah Magnus?” Oliver asked, morbidly fascinated. “How?”

“We humans didn’t kill him. We showed up at the Panopticon to kill him, only to find Jon there and Jonah Magnus already dead.” Basira scowled as Jon and Annabelle glanced at each other. Jon subtly shook his head. Annabelle’s lips thinned. “It looked like he’d been dead for years.”

An unfamiliar young man with a thick mop of clumped black hair peered at Jon, expression contorted in grotesque interest. He was one of the Avatars who had been born in the Apocalypse, who were all recognizably weird. His name was - right, Geoff Anjou. Some French man who had made his mark in the Parisian Underground before moving to London and conquering his next terrain. A Parisian to the bone - or, a great deal of bones, as the case may be. So many bones. Jon had always meant to take Daisy to that wonderful little nightmare and let her run loose. Chase people through the tunnels. Munch bones. Perfect vacation.

“So did the Archivist kill him?” Geoff asked, in the same way you would ask who won the World Cup. “Steal his Watcher’s Crown or whatever?”

“Are you the new queen bee?” a young woman asked Jon. The new Slaughter Avatar, Henrietta Something-or-another. A Cambridge legacy college student, Annabelle had intoned, and Jon had been afraid to inquire further. She was cyberbullying someone on her mobile, which seemed to be bleeding. “Cuz, like, you don’t seem qualified.”

“I did not kill Jonah Magnus,” Jon said, for the five hundreth time in the last six months. “And I’m uninterested in filling his shoes. That’s enough questions, I think.”

“Are you as weakened as the rest of us?” Amherst demanded. “Surely this destruction has affected you worst of all.”

“He probably ate Jonah Magnus,” Henrietta said. “The Archivist’s probably god now.”

Geoff snorted. “No way. He brought a human as back-up.”

“Why is there a human?” Another woman asked, with long brown hair and a broad face. Something about her was unquestionably severe, from her bulging muscles to her incredible height. Jon had never seen her before in his life. Her name was Julia Montauk. Something about her stank of life and undeath, same as Amherst. “We can’t exactly work with the prey, here.”

“I’m proposing an emergency motion,” Amherst said suddenly, shutting up the rapidly overlapping voices. “I vote that a leader is elected democratically. And that representatives are limited towards loyal patrons of the Forces.”

“I second that motion,” Geoff said immediately. “We can’t afford a chaotic uprising in our government right now -”

“This really isn’t a vote,” Jon said.

“Isn’t this a democracy?” Henrietta asked, with the self-righteous assurance of a twenty year old. “We vote on things in a democracy. And leaders.”

“Annabelle was voted in last spring,” Julia agreed. “No reason to change things.”

Well. Basira said that she trusted him. He’d have to rely on that.

Jon pressed down.

It felt just like that: pressing down. Reaching out a hand and squashing. Sometimes it was like ripping someone into shreds, and other times it was like plunging your hand into their chest and ripping out their heart. But this was just a press: a heavy static, bearing down over your shoulders like a ten ton weight. A sight so horrible that it was too eldritch to even look at. The realization that the hideous sight was you, and that it was all you would ever be.

Some - Geoff, Amherst - gasped, as if they were choking. Others - Lukas, Henrietta - gasped at their hearts, as if they were having heart attacks. Jon carefully kept it off Oliver, Annabelle, Basira, and Agnes. He couldn’t help but remember what she had said a few weeks ago, about being so frightened -

But Basira winced anyway, clutching her temples, and Jon carefully released the static until the inhabitants of the room could breathe again. His eyes did not stop glowing, and Jon didn’t bother to turn off the light show.

Jon put his feet down on the floor and rested his elbows on the table, leaning forward. As everyone shuddered and gasped, he spoke slowly and pointedly. “This is not a democracy. It never was. It is a monarchy, and the line of succession is clear.”

Annabelle’s eyes widened, and she abruptly clenched her fists before loosening them. An uncharacteristic show of emotion from her.

“This coalition has never been a democracy,” Jon said severely. “This is a house of lords. You are uninterested in representing any needs but your own, and I know Jared failed level eight government, but I’m sure all of you know that democracy represents elected officials. Nobody here has ever lived in a true democracy, and in your human fallibility you have recreated the only system you have ever known. The seats at this table are determined by power - all of you, the most powerful conduits for your Entity. I am the inevitable consequence of this system. I am your natural disaster. All of you bought me. Now you have me. And you are no longer powerful enough to make me leave.”

Agnes’ hand was covering her mouth. Jon dearly hoped Basira was holding onto that trust. He dearly hoped that he wasn’t speaking from anger.

But he couldn’t stop. It boiled and bubbled. It was an anger and a powerlessness that had subjugated him for thirty two years of his life. It had served as the cloud hanging over his head for three more.

“If you want someone to blame for the Archivist who now moderates this meeting,” Jon said, his voice the thin lid over this boiling pot of hurt and anger, “I now know their names. Jonah Magnus. Jude Perry. Nikola Orsinov. Twice. Breekon and Hope’s coffin. Peter Lukas. Jane Prentiss. Maxwell Raynor. A strategic book.” Jon tilted his head, having effectively made his point. There were others, but he had forgiven Daisy and Melanie a long time ago. And Jared had been polite about it. “Bring up your complaints with them. Good luck with that.”

Jon clapped his hands, closing the lid on those memories. Maybe one day the pain would leech from them like a sun-bleached painting, but that day hadn’t come yet. “Now! If you have any further complaints about my position here, or if you want to continue debating political theory, feel free to stand up and tell me so. We’re all interested in you regurgitating your life story until you die. Anyone?” Crickets. Jon leaned back in his chair, making himself comfortable. “Can we go onto the motions now? Ms. Hussain first, then clockwise from her.”

As if they had planned this, with the air of a well-choreographed actress, Basira stood up and spread out her papers in front of her. “The human contingency requests neutral zones in essential areas. Maternal wards in hospitals are highly vulnerable locations, and when assaulted by parasites the mortality rate of children is very high. If you want a self-replenishing food source, you have to allocate space for safe living. The next essential zone is a daycare and a school for children -”

And she was off. Jon had nothing to say, nor was anything necessary. Raging debate sparked after she finished speaking, and Basira effectively crushed the opposition. Agnes spoke up in her defense, and to Jon’s surprise even Manuela contributed a solid understanding of the necessity of children. When the debate started spiraling in an unhelpful direction Jon cut in and shut it down, before forcing the vote.

It did not pass, obviously.

“By the way,” Jon said. “Ms. Hussain proposed five different motions today. At least two of them have to pass. This debate is about picking which two you want.”

Then that started up all over again, and Jon tried not to fall asleep.

Moderating was hard. He actually had to pay attention and focus, and he hated focusing. He was effective enough at shutting down conversations, but sometimes shutting down conversations wasn’t helpful - he just needed to steer them in a more productive conversation. And Agnes’ political theory and Basira’s almost-definitely-made-up statistics started flying so thick and fast above his head that Jon was starting to almost completely lose the plot.

Jon chose his moment as the Lukas woman was complaining extensively about how Henrietta’s digital bullying was intruding upon the Loneliness of her adherents. Henrietta had argued that social media made people more lonely. Jon was afraid that Henrietta was his fault. Maybe the Eye’s fault, holistically. Jared wanted to be friends with Henrietta and co-host Instagram events, which Jon enthusiastically supported despite Basira’s glares.

He leaned over to his right, gesturing slightly at Annabelle so she would lean in closer. She raised an eyebrow at him. Annabelle’s eyebrows were crushing.

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” Jon whispered to her, as quietly as possible.

Annabelle mouthed very clearly at him, ‘Wow, really? Shock!’.

“I was making a point,” Jon hissed. “An important point. But I don’t - I still -” Jon faltered, uncertain, as Henrietta began sneering something about Lukas’ hairdo. Finally, he weakly said, “You care. They need you.”

Annabelle stared at him for a long, silent moment, before turning away from him.

For the first time that day, she spoke to the room. “Let’s keep ad hominem attacks out of this,” she said sharply. “Madame Lukas, if you’ll make your closing remarks we can bring this to a vote.”

She really was good at it. Just like she had always wanted. She had never directly admitted it, but Annabelle had always wanted to be the kind of person in rooms like this.

A politician sitting in an uncomfortable chair at 10 Downing Street. Rich, successful, important. Powerful and respected. Back then, she had wanted to be famous. Now, she was content to be controlling famous people. A dream out of her reach in life; laughably attainable in this stagnant after-afterlife.

The dream had crippled her. In her search for a functional world, one that achieved and grew and provided a comfortable world, she had ended up recreating a world that hadn’t been functional at all. A world that was slow to change, and seemingly impossible to improve. A world passed down from the hands of the greedy and bloodthirsty into the hands of the uncaring and apathetic.

The apocalypse had been inevitable. Humans driving themselves to extinction. And Avatars, possessed of human weakness, had been eager to do the same. Just a pathetic room of sour and bitter people power-tripping.

For all that Sasha calls us bougie, Jon thought, we’re such deeply unhappy people.

There had once been a young man, desperate for attention and acknowledgement. Dreaming of importance. He would stay up late at night, planning out his life as a famous researcher and well-respected philosopher. Everyone would tell him how smart he was. He would prove it all - with a scholarship to Oxford, with a sneer and a haughty air, with a boss who said that he had so much promise, here’s a job that will let you realize your potential.

I deserve this job -

Something in Jon’s mind flared, a hot poker rammed behind his eye sockets. Jon hissed, one hand reaching unconsciously to his temple, and Annabelle glanced at him in alarm. She had - Jon had been thinking about her, and - what had he been -

Together, they managed to wrangle the meeting into something half-way productive. Most importantly, Basira had gotten three of her proposals passed, and Agnes’ arguments were stirring the other Avatars into serious discussion. Conversation itself would be stilted by his sheer presence, and they weren’t quite all working together yet, but they would.

It was really all the same to Jon if the Avatars or humans won the war. He should care a bit more than he did, so he didn’t vocalize this to the others. But this conflict sparked life, a strange and frantic energy. Experiences and growth. That was what Jon had always fed on.

It seemed that Jon’s skill at prioritizing himself over all others was as sharp as ever.

Eventually the two hours wrapped up, and the other Avatars were eager to leave. Jon waved them off cheerily.

“Meeting adjourned. Try not to do anything stupid until next time. And if any of you break the boundaries of the human safe zones, I’ll know! Annabelle, will you stay behind?”

The others filtered out quickly, uncharacteristically unwilling to see whatever carnage would be wrought. Agnes and Basira lingered.

“That went so well!” Agnes shouted, the minute the last Avatar left. The room was now empty save for Agnes, Basira, Annabelle, and - Oliver, who was leaning against the doorframe. “I can’t believe you actually did something useful!”

“Ouch,” Oliver said.

It was fair, though. Jon smiled weakly at her. “Hopefully I can help out a little more often going forward. But I’m not going to give any favoritism to you, Agnes. I’ll intervene to give humans a fair shot, but I really don’t want to be...king of a ruined world or whatever.”

“I know,” Agnes said firmly. She reached out and squeezed his arm, round and gentle face creased in determination. “You’d be terrible at it. So just be you, okay?”

Jon saluted her, before gesturing to the door. “Will you steal a historical British artifact from this garbage building for me? Daisy needs more targets to shoot.”

Agnes nodded eagerly and ran off. Jon silently hoped Basira would follow her, if also out of interest for also seeing British things destroyed, but she just looked at Jon intensely instead. Not quite a glare - just a searching, intense look, as if she was finding her own Statement from deep within him. It had always been disconcerting. Jon was still convinced she hated him.

“It’s not as if I knew you very well before we rescued you from the Panopticon,” Basira said crisply, pressing a folder to her chest, “but you’ve changed. What happened? What did Annabelle have to do with it?”

Jon and Annabelle glanced at each other. Oliver lifted an eyebrow.

“Basira -”

“Don’t ask me to trust you.”

“I didn’t betray that,” Jon asked, “did I?”

Her expression didn’t soften. “You didn’t. We’re going to continue needing your help. But an ally with inscrutable motivations who does everything on a whim is a bad ally to have.”

“I’m trying, Basira,” Jon said, impossibly exhausted and just a little disappointed. “Please be patient.”

“I’ve been patient for three years,” Basira said, before forcibly cutting herself short from whatever emotion she was about to display. “What happened?”

A phantom pain pieced Jon’s arms, like chains threaded through bone. Jon fought the urge to wince, unconsciously reaching up to rub at a spot on his forearm. Everyone noticed. “It’s...family business…”

“Did you kill Jonah Magnus?”

“Jonah Magnus killed me,” Jon snapped, far louder than he intended, “so he would have deserved it, wouldn’t he!”

He felt a little lightheaded, more than he intended. It felt like a hand was clenching inside his chest, more than he wanted. No, Basira is fragile, you can’t just - no, Agnes is a kid, Daisy said that we can’t -

“Basira Hussain,” Annabelle said, hands folded tightly in her lap, eyes serious and intent. Jon started, surprised to hear her speak again. “You should go catch up with Agnes.”

Basira stared at Annabelle for a long moment, lips thin, before she abruptly whirled on her heel and stalked out. Jon watched her go, exhausted. He waited for her heels to click down the hall, far away enough that he knew she wasn’t eavesdropping, before groaning and dropping his head down onto his desk.

“They hate me.”

“They’re scared of you,” Annabelle pointed out. She leaned back in her chair, crossing her arms. “Frankly, Basira could stand to be a little more afraid of you. She’s going to get herself in trouble one of these days.”

“She’s practically my sister in law, I’m not going to hurt her,” Jon snapped. “Your stupid plan relied on me never hurting people I love.”

“Sorry,” Oliver said pleasantly, “is anyone ever going to tell me what’s going on? I feel like an NPC in Jon’s Dungeons & Dragons game.”

“You want to be an NPC, I found you working at Taco Bell.” God, whatever. Jon could tell Oliver. He wouldn’t give a shit. Jon sighed, lifting his head to twist around and look at Oliver instead. “You remember when I was asking around after Sasha James? Annabelle had put me up to it.”

“Obviously. And then Sasha James started following you around? You terrorized Annabelle’s party again?”

“Yeah, it was this whole big thing.” Jon waved a hand expressively. “Anyway, then Annabelle tried to trap me in an eternal limbo that would shred me from inside out so I could act as purveyor of the world, and probably also use her connection with me so she could take over affairs here, and probably either nudge me into shaping the world back into order or into sinking it deeper into hell. I broke out and now I’m mad at her.”

“I had at least twenty other reasons,” Annabelle said, “but that’s the gist.”

Oliver stared at them.

They all sat in awkward silence. Jon found himself winding a finger around a stray coil of hair and letting it spring back into place. He had kept it the same the last three years, never bothering to change the style. A loose and bouncy cloud of hair, sometimes brushing against his shoulders until Annabelle kidnapped him to cut it again - him, as much as the trenchcoat was. So much as anything had ever been ‘him’.

“Well,” Oliver said diplomatically, “I see that you skipped a lot of steps there. So why are you here, then?”

Was it just to spite Annabelle? Screw her out of her work? Did Jon genuinely care? Did he want to organize the other Avatars, get them mobilized and going? Did he want to protect the humans?

Did he really only care about himself, and the people he called his friends and family? Did he really only care about himself, and those he possessed?

“There’s a person I want to be,” Jon said quietly, “but I don’t know how to be him.”

Annabelle stared at him, with dark and glittering eyes, expression as implacable as always. For a sudden, stupid, intense moment, Jon wanted to know if she cared about him. If one of the few people who had always helped him, who was always in his corner, had seen him as anything more than a tool.

Like Basira, who didn’t like him as a person, but found him too valuable to alienate. But Basira was - she was deeply good, if not always kind, and Jon had the sense that she had fought to turn herself into that good person. It was something she chose. She was trying to push Jon into making that same choice.

Jon clenched his hands in his lap, his fingernails digging into his palm. “There’s people I respect, and who I want to respect me. This person I want to be...I’m worried that I only want this because that’s what they want. They’ll deny it, but they want my power. Everybody just makes me into whoever they want. Whatever’s useful to them.” Jon’s gaze snapped to Annabelle, and he fought hard to keep the compulsion from his voice. It was difficult, when he wanted to know so badly, but - “The kind of person I used to be. That person I’m ashamed of. Is that the person who was useful to you?”

He didn’t want to force the answer from her. He wanted her to choose to say it.

Annabelle didn’t react. She didn’t show anything on her face. Much less what Jon wanted from her. She just tilted her head, one of the few unafraid to meet his eyes. “I never made you be anyone, Jon. All I ever did was put you in the right place at the right time.”

“That wasn’t my question,” Jon said, and this time he couldn’t help the static creeping into his voice. “Answer me.”

Annabelle sighed. “Of course it was useful. Is that what you wanted me to voluntarily say, Jon? I didn’t bring you to the first meeting because I thought it would be educational for you. I needed your power to keep the others in line. I needed everyone else to see that I controlled your power. That’s the only reason why any of this worked. We both got something out of it. Don’t pretend that you weren’t happy with the arrangement.”

It...it wasn’t a surprise, but…

“So that’s why you didn’t bring him to any of the other meetings,” Oliver mused. “He wasn’t as controllable as you liked, not when there’s more than ten other idiots around needling him. There’s never been anybody who can always predict when Jon’s going to lose his shit. Besides the biggie, I guess.”

The biggie, which was his past.

No wonder he had stayed so childlike, innocent, and cruel for so long. Jon took responsibility for his own laziness, but - but he had been most useful that way. Annabelle had liked him best that way.

Daisy had liked him best that way too. That cruel child - Daisy had wanted him, because he made her feel needed. Annabelle was just the same.

Everyone had liked him best that way. And if Jon became the kind of person who he wanted to be, nobody would like him at all.

“If you’re going to kill me,” Annabelle said, exhaustion seeping in through her voice, “just do it.”

Jon closed his eyes. He could feel it - Annabelle’s exhaustion, the way that she had just been waiting for him to do this. Everything she knew about Jon led towards an obvious course of action. Even though you nobody knew everything that set Jon off, certain things were pretty guaranteed that he wouldn’t forgive.

Annabelle had never accounted for Sasha. She had brought Sasha into his life, and she had no idea the effect she would have on it. Sasha, who had been the first to tell Jon that she chose to care about him for him. For a brief, hot flash, Jon was jealous. He wanted to be someone unpredictably kind.

If he only wanted that because he had found yet another person to give his wind-up key, then…

“You won, Annabelle,” Jon said finally, and he only knew it as he said it. “Congratulations. You played the perfect manipulation. You took a vulnerable, afraid man, who had been violated in the worst possible way and left to die.” He stood up, already uncomfortable with what he was about to say. “And you arranged him so that he loved you. I chose to love you. I’m making the choice never to hurt you, because I still love you. ”

He left the room. Oliver stood aside just in time, letting Jon brush by.

As Jon met up with Agnes and Basira, summoning a smile and a wave for them, he felt uncomfortably as if he had grown up.

He wasn’t sure that he liked it.

#tma #the magnus archives #my writing #tma fanfic #jonathan sims #annabelle cane #oliver banks #basira hussain #agnes montague #and a ton more #tcf was about deciding to change #and this story kind of hits at how difficult it is deciding who to change into #and how difficult it is to trust your own decisions when you've been manipulated since the second you were 'born'#jon and his choices and agency is becoming a big thing for me!

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btssavedmylifeblr · 3 years

Note

I forgot to send on my voting story. Ok so my brother and I both got mail in ballots, and let me tell you how we both forgot to mail it in so we just thought to bring them to our voting location. The lady there kinda yelled at us? She was confused and didn't know how to go about it. And honestly I just took it because we were the idiots who didn't mail in our ballots. We had to rip them up and they just us new ones to fill out in person and submit. Not exciting, but a story for void snippet. 👀

Anonymous said: Hi!! I'm so excited for void! I voted today around 30 minutes before the polls closed in my neighborhood because I had to wait for my dad and brother to get home from work since they wanted to go all together hehe. It was a pretty fast process! We just pressed buttons on screens (compared to last election where we had to bubble in everything by hand) plus, I got to keep the stylus that they gave us and it works on phones too! 🥰🥰 Thank you! I love your writing so much 💜💜💜

Anonymous said: I did mine through mail me and my husband did and we went to the post office a little while back and then he took us on a nice little date afterward and we got ice cream! Also I love void💖 keep up the good work

Anonymous said: VOTES FOR VOID??? I love democracy and I love VOID! So since May I've (temporarily) moved back home from New York to Indiana RE: covid; I've voted absentee for the both the primaries and presidential election (I'm still in IN rn...blah). I voted early and mailed in my ballot for the presidential election (about 3 weeks ago). Made sure my family was voting (brother mailed it in, mom dropped off a ballot, and dad did early voting) and encourage them to put up a Biden sign in our yard <3

Anonymous said: HI BEE! I ALSO VOTED TODAY! IM 21 SO THIS IS MY FIRST TIME VOTING FOR THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION (my 18th bday didnt make the cutoff since im a december bday) im so happy to have done my part! I made sure to study up on the judges and policies and everything! Luckily the polling place didn't have a line so i was able to get in, get my ballot, and fill it in right away! I even dragged my mom and cousin to come with me. I made a joke on snapchat to encourage my friends to vote too. It was a pic of my "i voted" sticker with a caption saying "omg youre so sexy when you vote aHaha" -🦙

Anonymous said: this is my first time doing this so, so i hope i’m sending this correctly! i voted early in late september by mail! i live in a swing state, so it’s really important for me to vote and not waste time!! bc of my age, this is my first time voting so i’m really nervous 😅

Anonymous said: I voted by email! I'm overseas so I wasn't sure if my ballot would actually make it through in time, so I decided to go electronically. Had to sign a waiver saying I understand that my vote won't be anonymous but I haven't been given a reason to suspect voter suppression/fraud in my state, so I'm happy I think...!

Anonymous said: hi, i voted early on oct 24th. my absentee ballot didn't come in, so i had to travel back home to vote (~3 hour drive). when we got there, there was a ton of people outside the polling place, but no lines, so i was in and out pretty quick. it was my first time voting, so i had all the candidates i was voting for written down on a tiny receipt so i wouldn't forget 😅. my mom was with me, so she voted too. took a pic with my sticker (mask on for extra covid-ness) and went home. drove back the next afternoon!

whippedforkook said: Hi Bee. 💕 I voted in early October - nearly a month ago! 😱 It’s been really weird with all the lead up to the election because it felt like it should have been done once I cast my ballot! A lot of my friends have volunteered to get out the vote: writing postcards to voters, texting, phone banking, working the polls, curing ballots. I didn’t volunteer at all this year, but I hope that all of my friends’ hard work and everyone else’s is enough. I’m also hoping and praying that I will be in a better place mentally for 2022 so that I too can volunteer. Our work starts with 2020 not ends. 💕 Wishing you well. 💕

begineuphoria said: I went and voted last Friday as it was our last early voting day. No way was I going to wait until today with the crowds of people in my area that still act as if masks are somehow infringing on their rights. 🙄 It was a rather normal experience for the most part. Other than having to use a coffee stir stick to press the buttons on the machine to vote. In and out within five minutes.

Anonymous said: I voted down the street at this pretty park this morning. I got up at 5:30 and it was freezing. Luckily I wore like 30 layers and stood outside for 2 hours. Some nasty orange man supporters were rude but everyone else was pretty nice. A really cute older couple was playing soccer with pine cones and kicked it towards me to play too. Not the worst time tbh.

Anonymous said: Did mail-in voting in California! Extremely exhausting and took forever to research all the propositions - they are notoriously tricky in hiding their flaws and one side tends to outrageously outspend the other. But in the end I felt really good about my research and decisions! No need for you to post a snippet for this story - would like to save that to read sometime in the future ;) Thank you so much for doing this!

joonsgotthejuice said: Votes for void??? I am here! I went last Thursday and it was chaotic bc I kept going past the poll place but the line was soooo long so my mom called me and woke me up like "its pouring rain and the line is super short get up I'm gonna pick you up" so thats the story of how I got dressed in 5 minutes and dragged my ass to vote in the rain <3

Anonymous said: i voted early on thursday it was cold and rainy but i went in the late afternoon and thankfully the only waiting i did was a few minutes for an elevator i got very lucky and while waiting for the results is awful the relief that came from voting in general was just great

Anonymous said: Wheeew the polls just closed and I finally got to cast my ballot yayyy ( I was the one working the polls from earlier) it’s been a really really long day and we actually had surprisingly good turnout. I saw a woman try to vote for someone else who claimed to be “helping” and I saw a woman who I’m pretty sure was on some typa something 👀 Overall though I really I’m really thankful for people like you who encouraged people to get out and vote. I hope the odds are in our favor❤️🤞🏼

chelsea-chee said: Hello Bee! Today surprisingly my elderly father wanted to vote so I brought him out with me. He only cared about voting for Biden, which meant I got to help decide who he should vote for with the rest of the candidates and amendments! Say hello to baby bee for me as well! 💖

Anonymous said: Okay I gonna got a chance to vote today and the process wasn’t that bad actually. I went in just now and it wasn’t that busy( thankfully) so no lines. I’m from Texas and it’s gonna be almost impossible to turn this state blue, but every vote counts! I love that you are getting people to vote and also sharing your experiences as well!

owl-orgy said: Dropped off my mail in ballot at a polling location! I originally wanted to vote early in person because I was worried my signature wouldn’t match closely enough but ended up just turning it in and double checked today to make it said “ballot accepted and counted”!

Anonymous said: I voted in person this afternoon, better late than never I guess. I was gonna go last week but then I got cramps from hell. There was no one in line in front of me, I think my county early voted because it was packed everyday the last few weeks

Anonymous said: I voted early a couple weeks ago. Exciting thing though that did happen was I got both my parents to vote for their first time ever.

Anonymous said: I had a mail in vote. So, I filled it out and dropped it in at the ballot box at my library. (I also checked out books for the first time in years, so I had fun!)

bubblyjiminnie said: I literally just finished voting. Lucky for me, the line and wait wasn’t very long, and it was a nice enough day that the short amount of time I had to spend in line outside of the building wasn’t too bad. My social anxiety when it comes to stuff like this tends to be high but that’s what I get for waiting until Election Day instead of going the mail in route. This was only my second time voting, but I’m glad that I did 😊

Anonymous said: I turned my ballot in last week :) I’m not a big fan of crowds and I hate make spur of the moment choices but despite that the first time I was able to vote back in 08 my Mom pressured me into voting in person because “you’d have to experience it at least once in our life”. And ever since then I comfortably vote by mail. I take my time, do all of my research, listen to music, and best of all don’t have to deal with people.

Anonymous said: here in Washington state it’s super easy to vote. I dropped my ballot off in mid-October and it’s already been accounted for! Mail in voting and drop box voting is fantastic and provides equal opportunity and access. Sad to see some people in red states misinforming Americans about it! We also have a referendum for implementing mandatory sex ed, including teaching respect, empathy and consent as part of the curriculum so I was happy to vote yes on that too!

unionrox006 said: I voted about 2 weeks ago by doing a mail in ballot. The other eligible to vote members of my household did the same. We chose to vote by absentee ballot because both my mom and I have an autoimmune disorder, so we have to be careful going out in the pandemic. Tbh, the ballot layout was a bit confusing at first as was all the paperwork and required IDs and documents. But my dad explained it to me and we got them filled out and mailed off. Kinda mad I didn't get a sticker for it though

bluetostone said: Love this and so excited for the next chp of void! I early voted a few weeks ago and because I live in a pretty rural county I was in and out of my polling place in a few minutes. No sticker though 😢. I live in a swing state so it could go either way in terms of delegates. Just praying everyone is safe tonight as the results roll in...though, won't we not know for sure for a couple of days or weeks?

Anonymous said: My mom, sister, and I received our early voting ballots a while ago and I took the longest to fill mine out because it was making me anxious :,( but I did return it before it was due. I checked our ballot statuses and mine and my moms were accepted but my sister’s said they hadn’t received hers back. Then she got another ballot so she filled that one out too and I took it yesterday 👍👍 I think she got two because she changed her address late so they sent two?

vixsynsblog said: Non-interesting voter story: I'm paranoid and live in a highly divided area, so I filed mail-in ASAP, mailed it a few days after cause neighbors are nosy and don't understand boundaries. Was able to track my ballot through my credit company, which was nice. Only thing I was missing was my sticker. Never got one✊😔. So I had to improvise and write it in pen on my disposable mask. I'm working all this week so if riots break out from either side, I'll be at work. Prayers for the safety of others🙏

______

Waaah!!! Thank you all for voting!! You are all my heroes. I am so grateful and proud of you. I’m sorry I ran out of time to respond to you individually. I’m going to drop two big scenes from Chapter 7 in gratitude (one of which will be familiar to my patrons and one won’t). I’m hopeful I will have the whole next chapter out very soon. Love you all!

Void spoilers below the cut.

When you wake up in the morning, there are still no signed HR forms in your messages. Had you been a fool to think they were interested? How much time does it take to decide such a thing? Perhaps just by putting the idea out there explicitly, it had lost all of its taboo appeal.

There is a calendar reminder waiting for you: Today is chili pepper pollinating day. At least this gives you an excuse to talk to Hoseok.

You find the science officer in the lab as always, sitting with his knee up against his chest. Hoseok doesn’t look well. He’s got dark circles under his eyes.

“Hey, um…” You shuffle your feet. Want to fuck me? No wait…“You don’t look good. Were you here all night?” you ask.

He blinks at you, bleary-eyed. “Um, was I? Yeah.. I suppose. Lost track of time.” He rubs his eyes, before looking you up and down, then casting his gaze back to the floor.

All you want to do is ask about the forms. Or the meeting. Or what he thinks of you now. But you don’t. “I need to pollinate the chili peppers today.” Usually Hoseok is the person who assists with that. “But I can get one of the other guys to do it if you need the sleep.”

“No!” Hoseok lurches forward, standing up a bit to rapidly and needing to put his hand back on the bench to steady himself. “I mean, I’m fine.”

You should disgaree with him. He is exhausted. But you’d like more time to talk to him.

Pollinating the chili peppers is both time-sensitive and time-consuming, hence why it took two of you to get the job done. There were no insects on your ship to do the job for you and if they didn’t get pollinated, they wouldn’t bear any fruit. Your chili peppers were your favorite crop. Not only a vital source of Vitamin C, but all your food benefitted from having a bit of spice added to it.

You and Hoseok head for the greenhouse together. The intital set-up gives you something to talk about in the beginning. Hoseok gathers the pollen from one flower onto a paintbrush, then hands it over to you to paint onto the stigmas of each little flower on the next plant in the line.

Slowly the conversation dries up as you fall into a silent rhythm. Other than just enjoying the chili peppers, you must admit that this was one of your favorite tasks on the ship because of the high likelihood that the two of you would brush hands peridically. Always gave you butterflies. But today he seems extra intent on keeping his distance from you. Was he disgusted by you now? His hands are trembling.

“Are you sure you’re okay?”

His hand twitches so hard that a little rain of yellow pollen cascades onto the floor. He curses in frustration before turning to face you. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Um, yes, I’m fine. Why wouldn’t I be?”

“This, um, plan of yours…” he gestures to the vague tension in the air. “It doesn’t feel like you.”

“I’m trying to save the mission. That has always been my top priority.”

“Yeah, I’m still not clear on how this benefits the mission.”

“Yoongi said…” you start to say, but are cut off my Hoseok’s derisive snort.

“Look, if you’re in love with Yoongi, just go date him, okay? Don’t feel obligated to include the rest of us out of pity.”

You frown. “I’m not… I’m not in love with him. It’s just sex. Just biology.”

“This isn’t you!” Hoseok argues back. “You hated the idea of anyone of us ever treating you that way. And now you just want all of us to… to… use you like that?” He splutters out the end of the sentence.

“No one is using me! This is my plan! I’m in charge!”

He sighs. “Well, I can’t be a part of it. Excuse me.”

______

Taehyung finds you in the gym. It’s good to see him up and about, even if his arm is still in a sling.

“Hey, so I need to talk to you about this, um, ape sex thing.” He fishes awkwardly into his pockets and pulls out his tablet. Maybe Jimin was right. Is Taehyung going to be the first to take you up on your offer?

You pause your jog on the elliptical machine. You wish you weren’t so sweaty and gross for this conversation. Taehyung is such an intimidatingly attractive man with those strong eyebrows and that perfect skin.

Taehyung opens up the tablet and flips to the form. It’s happening. He’s going to sign the form. Shit. Then what will you do? It’s one thing to say you want to have sex with your whole crew, but what if he’s hoping to go right now? You need a shower.

Taehyung has really nice hands. Long strong fingers delicately navigating the touch screen. It seems totally improbable that a man this attractive would be into you, even if you were the only woman in the universe. It just adds to your suspicions that hormones are driving everyone crazy. Perhaps if you slept with him once, he’d lose all interest.

He finds the form and then turns his gaze up to you, staring you down with those eyes. It’s a good thing that Taehyung rarely turns his full gaze on you, because it is almost too much to bear. Shit, is he just going to sign it? Is he waiting for you to give him some sort of signal?

“You can’t do this to Jimin,” he says.

“What?” Not what you were expecting. “Do what to Jimin?”

“This.” He gestures over the HR form. “Signing these forms with everyone. Having sex with everyone. You’re going to destroy Jimin.”

“Jimin’s the one who suggested this whole thing in the first place.” It’s a lie. You know its a lie. Or at least a gross exaggeration. But Jimin was the one who first brought up the idea of sharing. All for the benefit of the man in front of you now.

“No way.” Taehyung scoffs, crossing his arms and raising an eyebrow. “No way was it Jimin’s idea that you sleep with the whole crew.”

“Well…” You can’t bear his gaze anymore and look down at the floor. “He wanted me to sleep with you.”

That surprises Taehyung. He puts down the tablet. “What? Why would he want that?”

This is awkward. “He, um, thinks you’re in love with me.”

“What?” There is only surprise on Taehyung’s face. It’s actually a relief to see that Taehyung is just as shocked by that idea as you were. “Why does he think that?”

“I don’t know…” You feel kind of dumb now. Of course, Taehyung doesn’t feel that way about you. Look at him. “Cause you told him you were jealous. Cause you can’t stand to be in the same room as us…”

Taehyung bites his lip. “Oh, um, shit, sorry, that’s not what I meant.”

If Taehyung isn’t jealous of Jimin...

“Taehyung…” He looks up, biting his lip. “What did you mean? Who are you jealous of?”

Taehyung’s eyes widen, but he doesn’t say anything. Instead he reaches for his microphone and mutes it. Out of respect, you mute yours as well. He glances toward the camera in the corner of the room, then stands up and begins unzipping his jumpsuit.

“Um…” You are distracted by the golden arms that peak from either side of the tank top as the zipper reaches his groin. “What are you doing?”

“Need something to block the camera.”

“We have towels,” you mutter. But he’s already stripping out of his shirt. The musculature of his back ripples. He hangs the shirt off of the camera to block the rest of the room from view.

“Yeah, but this way anyone watching will think we’re having sex.” His chest is just as attractive as his back and you flush at the sight of it. Mercifully, he zips back into his jumpsuit as he returns to his position in front of the exercise machine.

“You want them to think we’re having sex?”

“Don’t you? It plays right into your whole save the mission with bonobo sex plan.”

“I suppose.” Though the plan was also supposed to be that there would be no more secrets between the crew. “What plan of yours does it play into?”

“The one where Jimin doesn’t realize I’m in love with him.”

“You’ve never tried to tell him?”

Taehyung laughs wryly and shakes his head. “How would that conversation go? Hey man, I know we’ve known each other for years and I’ve already seen you naked and that you just think of me as a friend, but I’m in love with you. I know that’s awkward but now you have to spend the next twelve years with me, knowing that I’m attracted to you when you don’t feel the same way.” Taehyung sighs. “Doesn’t sound like a good plan to me. If he doesn’t feel the same way, I’ve just ruined the friendship for nothing and then I don’t even have that.”

“Yeah… I get that.” There’s something touching about realizing that Taehyung has been fighting the same battle as you for the last two years.

“I couldn’t tell anyone before launch because what if they wouldn’t let me go then? You know?”

“Yeah, the director wasn’t big on sending anyone who might ‘complicate’ the mission.” The two of you share a sad knowing smile.

“Yeah… And I thought it would be fine, you know? I like women too. I’d just date women until launch and no one would know. I wasn’t planning on falling in love with my roommate.”

“I don’t think any of us really knew what this would be like.”

“I knew it was going to be a problem. I should have pulled out…”

Your mind flashes back to that moment of doubt when Hoseok talked you into still coming on the mission.

“But I couldn’t just let him go off into space without me. Even if he’d never feel the same way, at least he’d still be in my life.”

The emotion in Taehyung’s words makes your eyes begin to mist. “You really do love him.”

“Yeah,” Taehyung sighs again. “But he’s in love with you.”

“Well, he thinks he is.”

“What does that mean?”

“He only feels like that about me cause he thinks I’m the only option.” You wonder if maybe he would feel differently if he knew about Taehyung’s feelings.

Taehyung frowns and shakes his head. “You don’t give him enough credit.”

“Oh come on, you know him. How many women did he date while we were in training?”

“A few…”

“And how many of them was he in love with before he found the next one?”

Taehyung bites his lip. He can’t really argue with that. “So why are you with him then, if you don’t think it’s real?”

You shrug, rubbing your arm. “He wants me. It’s nice to feel wanted, I guess.”

“You know you could have that with any man on this ship right?”

You scoff. “They’re all suffering the same delusion. It’s only-available-vagina syndrome. I just want us all to fuck and get it out in the open. Maybe if we could get it out of our system, they would see I’m nothing special. And then we can get back to the mission.”

Taehyung eyes you up and down. “You don’t give yourself enough credit either.”

You shrug. “You wait and see. Jimin will get bored of me. They all will.”

The two of you both slump backwards in your seats, mulling over your shared woes. Taehyung bends down and picks up the tablet again. “So what should I do with this?”

“Obivously, you don’t have to sign it. I should have realized that not everyone would be interested.”

“Jimin thinks I’m in love with you?”

“Yeah…”

“Is it okay if we let him think that for now? At least until I figure out how to tell him the truth?”

“Okay.”

Taehyung smiles and signs the bottom of the form, then sends it to you. Your phone lights up with a message. “Thank you,” he murmurs before he leaves.

#I'm not going to answer asks about the spoilers right now #because I want people to be able to avoid them until the chapter drops #but that should be sometime in the next week or so #votes for void

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quinnmilfilm · 6 years

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Hey there, it seems like you live in Chicago maybe? I do too and I just got into shooting film through the gateway drug that is the Instax Mini. I want to pursue it more seriously, do you have any tips about a good starter camera or good shops in the city?

Hello! I do live in Chicago, and I have been shooting film for a long time now so hopefully I can be of some assistance. I love that the Instax and new Polaroid film has helped give analog a bit of a resurgence. This post might get long, apologies in advance.Alright so, cameras: A classic and very popular camera is the Canon AE-1. I have one, love it, and use it frequently. It is a manual camera, so depending on how familiar you are with photography it might seem a bit advanced. An SLR like this is what you would start out using as a photography student. (Similar cameras would be the Olympus OM-10, Minolta XE-7, and I know there’s a similar Pentax as well.)The Canon AE-1 is a bit heavy, so it’s impractical to carry around all the time. I always keep a compact point-and-shoot in my bag. This might be a route you want to take as a beginner. I have the Olympus Stylus Epic, and it is a wonderful tiny camera that’s super easy to use. I’m never without it. I also have a Minolta Hi-Matic AF-2, also pretty simple to use. There are lots of great point-and-shoots out there for very little cost, and you really can’t go wrong. I’m constantly collecting these just because it’s fun to try out new cameras. eBay is honestly one of your best bets for cameras.You didn’t ask but as for films: My current favorite go-to is Kodak Portra 160. The grain is super smooth and the tone is so nice. I recently ordered a pack via Amazon Prime. When you go up in film speed you’re going to see more grain, so if that’s what you’re looking for Fuji Superia 400 is pretty widely available and a classic. If you want to try weirder/fun/experimental films, check out the Lomography shop (they also have some fun toy cameras) as well as the Revolog shop.Ok finally, shops: I work downtown and also went to art school downtown, so I have been going to Central Camera at Wabash & Jackson for many years. They’ve been around since 1899 so it’s really just a fun place to go into. I drop my film there for processing, which costs about $12 for processing and a CD of scans and takes about 4 days. CSW is another really good option, just not as convenient for me location wise. There are also lots of labs you can mail your film to directly, like The Darkroom.If you’re looking to process black and white film yourself, there’s the Chicago Community Darkroom. I very much miss developing and printing in a darkroom, it’s a very cathartic experience I encourage everyone to try. Finally, Latitude is a really great resource for scanning and printing.Hope I didn’t totally overwhelm you!If anyone has anything to add, throw it in the comments.

#film photography #35mm film photography #35mm film #film #35mm #photography #photo #chicago #discussion #photography discussion #i still shoot film #film is not dead #i believe in film #staybrokeshootfilm

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audio-luddite · 4 years

Text

Head Shells arrived...

I got excited. My wife the opposite. A couple packages in the mail. In one a Grado Cartridge and a cute digital scale to set tracking force. In the other two “quality” headshells. That should have been a clue.

The headshells looked fine and had nice wires, but they attach to a tonearm with a slip on fitting that is secured by a tiny pin. In both of these guys it was not straight. It left the cartridge twisted out of place. Cheap Crap from China. Of all the bits of assembly getting that part straight is the easiest. Well maybe not easy for Uigurh slave laborers.

I shimmed the cartridges to make them as level as I could. But shit it looks funny. I wrote to the online dealer and commented they should be more careful with these. The subtext was hey send me straight ones. But his response was they were getting a shipment in of Japanese made units which are good, but pretty expensive. Ummmm. I could send them back, but it is my dime to send them.

Yes I know you can comment on their site and slag them. I have some sympathy for small businesses. I also know that there are hordes of people who comment on stuff they never bought. I would just get drowned in the noise. I am coping though it looks really weird.

Thing is if a average customer does not notice this problem it means a potentially expensive phono cartridge will work like shit. They have to be straight you know. The dealer is in Quebec and sells good stuff, they also sell crap. So next time I am going somewhere else simply because I cannot rely on them.

OK on to important stuff.

I mounted my Signets TK7e with an off book ATn12s stylus. It fits and is a nude Shibata type. I have a Tkn22 which is the “correct” replacement as well but it is a bonded diamond. I also shimmed the Grado to its twisted headshell. I listened to the Signets.

Old friend. I guess Audio Technica has a sound. It is all I have listened to for a long time. The Signet is an upmarket AT and of all my LP listening the most years have been with it. So it was familiar. As it was now on the Phaser so there were new things. I can and will fiddle with the VTA and SRA and that stuff, but now get going.

I put on Cowboy Junkies Trinity LP side one. I last listened to this with the AT7v which I thought missed some Bass. The Ambience was still there of course and the metallic sheen of the percussion. The background singing of Margo’s brother is clearly there and in a different space. I put that on the Phaser for finding. It sounds very much like the AT7v.

Then I flipped to side 4 (two 180g LPs) for Sweet Jane, Postcard Blues, and Walking after midnight. Lou Reed thought this cut was the best version of his song so that tells you something. Again very much like the AT7v. Then one of my favorite geek parts in Postcard Blues. The foot tapping on the riser. Really low bass. The AT7v misses it, not old Mr Signets. You are back Boss.

Next my wife was getting impatient with me “always listening to the same stuff” so I put on Hector Berlioz Symphonie Fantastique whole thing on DG. Sounded pretty much as I remember. Solo wood winds stood out. Some of the percussion was different. Better defined, which again has to go to the Phaser.

Then I did Holst’s Planets on Philips. Sounds familiar. Did not notice anything in particular.

Finally I did Emmylou and Willie “one paper kid.” I like this song and the recording is really simple. Emmylou to the right and Willie to the left. Guitar, harmonica and not much else. Again the Phaser separates the singers in space. The AT7v and the Signets sound almost the same, but I think the Signets is just a bit clearer.

Given the rush to get going I should do the microscope thing and get the beast dialed in. I feel like the Signets is really very much like the AT7v in all its good ways. Except it has Bass. That is fair as that is what I missed in the 7v.

The 440Mla is still on the HK ST5.

The next thing to try is the Grado. I am really anxious to see how that goes.

#signet tk7e #Audio Technica #AT7v #My Needle Store #phase linear 8000A #Pioneer PL l1000 #Audiophile #audioblr

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chevalier-on-the-wall · 6 years

Text

Story: No Small Token

((Happy Dawning, Guardians! I guess you could call this little fic a “Holiday Special”. Enjoy!))

If Torch was being honest with himself, he was, perhaps, just an eensy weensy, teeny tiny, little itty bit completely and totally panicked.

It all started innocently enough. The Dawning had come to the City, and both Guardian and civilian embraced it with gusto. They had a lot of triumphs to celebrate, and a lot of horrors to forget. And so the snows were allowed to accumulate atop the Tower, lights were hung, decorations were set, lanterns were lifted into the sky.

Days before the celebrations started, Torch was a bundle of nerves for what was ostensibly a very good reason. It was his Guardian’s first Dawning, and he wanted to--no, he HAD to make it a good one.

“The Dawning is a time we look back on what we’re thankful for and welcome a brighter new year,” Torch explained. But he didn’t get much farther than that before Reynault decided to roll in a snowbank like an oversized dog. He probably should have expected as much; the Titan had done this on his very first Cosmodrome patrol, an event that seemed so long passed, despite having been less than a year ago.

Less than a year ago, he was alone. Torch hadn’t even bothered celebrating the last...what, seventeen Dawnings? Now he had a Guardian, he’d watched his Guardian grow by leaps and bounds, he felt like he knew his Guardian better than his own internal file structure. And now he was introducing Reynault to a holiday he hadn’t celebrated in so long, and he had to make it memorable. No pressure, right?

He’d brought Reynault to a frozen pond down in the City. “Ice skating is a popular activity in the wintertime,” he explained.

Reynault cocked his head to the side. “I thought only Titans could skate?”

“What? ...No, no, ice skating! You put on these boots with blades on the bottom, and then you...then you….” Torch trailed off. Of course he didn’t know how to ice skate. He hovered everywhere.

Before he could look up any worthwhile instructional material, Reynault had already taken off, Titan skating across the ice.

And then, when Torch had finally caught up, Reynault asked, “Hey, you think it’s too late to get Ikora something?”

“I...what? Get her something for what?”

“There was that big pile of presents by her in the Tower. I figured it must be her birthday or something.”

Torch momentarily froze up as he realized he forgot all about one of the most important Dawning traditions of all. “Oh, no, those aren’t all for her. They’re for a bunch of different Guardians. Exchanging gifts is part of the Dawning.”

“It is?!” Reynault brought himself to a stop. “Oh la vache, we’ve got to go get gifts!”

The rest of the day was spent in a frantic whirlwind of shopping and shaping steel. Some gifts were crafted or purchased and mailed out the same day; others had yet to be finished. Gifts for friends, acquaintances, and just about all the usual suspects around the Tower; Reynault was particularly concerned with getting a set of steel crochet hooks exactly right, and he’d put a lot of care into shaping a medallion engraved to look like a pizza. He had even sent Torch off to procure some adhesives at one point while he bothered Master Rahool about Traveler-knows-what.

And that brought Torch to the present moment, in the early hours of the morning, where Reynault was finally, mercifully asleep. Reynault was certainly going all-out on the gifts, and Torch had nothing to give him in return. So the Ghost was maybe, just maybe, a little worried, and by a little worried he meant several internal processes were printing nothing but “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA”.

Okay. He knew Reynault pretty well by now. What did Reynault like? Armor. Punching things. Working with his hands. Reynault liked him, but Torch hardly considered himself a gift. Commander Zavala. The view from atop the Wall. Electronic dance music. Minestrone, pizza, brioche, and beer. Tactile displays of affection. Absolutely none of this was inspiring any gift ideas--

The view from atop the Wall.

Torch diverted his internal screaming to different memory sectors as he began searching himself for images and recordings. After nearly half an hour of processing, he settled on one still image from his memory: a clear night, the Traveler resplendent with its self-repairs, and the tall City buildings twinkling with all the lights in their windows. All as seen from on top of the southeastern Wall.

It took him a few minutes to gather his courage before he slipped out into the night. Torch made a beeline for a print shop, had the image printed out in a standard poster size, then stowed it and slunk back to the workshop as the sun was rising.

Safe at home, Torch was taking a moment to collect himself and consider his next move, when the unexpected happened: Reynault came in the front door behind him.

“Oh, there you are!” Reynault didn’t sound upset in the least; he still flinched like he expected to be scolded. “I wondered where you’d gotten off to.”

“I’m sorry,” Torch replied on instinct.

“Sorry? What for?”

Torch silently cursed himself; there really wasn’t a reason to apologize, was there. “I was just...picking something up for you.”

“For me? You know I would’ve been happy anyway, right?” Reynault had one of those grins that made the room seem brighter than it really was.

Torch hoped he’d stay that happy. Without any fanfare, he deposited the rolled-up print in front of Reynault.

The Titan picked it up, unrolled it, and a wave of relief washed over Torch when his eyes lit up. “Woah! This is beautiful! Can we hang this somewhere?”

“Anywhere you want.”

“I’m putting this somewhere in my room!” Reynault rushed off toward his single-room apartment, giddy as a young child during, well, during the Dawning. At least the gift had gone over well. That alone brought Torch’s anxiety down several notches.

“Hey, c’mere!” Reynault called from his room. “I got something for you too!”

What?

“...What?” Torch gave voice to his inner thoughts. He should’ve expected it, considering how gifty his Guardian was, but it still caught him off-guard.

He entered the little apartment to find Reynault holding his work tablet and stylus, with a portable external drive plugged into it. “Got this from Rahool,” Reynault explained. “Go ahead. Scan it.”

Torch glided up beside his Guardian and connected to the tablet. As he processed the contents of the external drive, he didn’t quite know what to make of it. They were...games, all games. Farming games, city builder games, sim games, a few survival and adventure games, and all of them together made for a surprisingly tiny archive size. A good percentage of these games were likely pre-Golden Age, Torch hypothesized, as he scanned the files again.

“Soooo?” Reynault looked between Torch and the tablet. “What do you think?”

“They’re games,” Torch replied. “You got me...games?”

“Not just any games! I asked for stuff you could run on your own--y’know, when I’m asleep and you’re bored, or something. And you can beat all of ‘em without fighting anything. I know you don’t like fighting unless you’re hiding in my armor.”

His Guardian had thought to get him a gift, and that gift was a collection of games, picked out just for him. He hadn’t expected any gift, much less one chosen with such care. He’d never even dreamed that any Guardian of his would ever….

No, there was a time he did dare. Long ago, amidst tents and campfires huddled in the snow beneath the Traveler, the people who would go on to found the City exchanged gifts, and he dared to dream of receiving some small token from the hypothetical hero he imagined for himself.

But this was real, and this was here, and this was no small token.

“I love it,” Torch managed at last, his voice wavering with emotion. “I love it. I didn’t think...thank you. Thank you so much.”

Reynault set the tablet on the foot of his bed and sat beside it. “I’m glad. Wanna try them out?”

“Now? Could I?”

“Yeah, now. I wanna get a few more hours of sleep before patrol time.”

Now it was Torch’s turn to feel giddy. He nestled into one of the pillows and booted up one of the city building games in his internal processes. A few minutes later, Reynault flopped down on the bed, pulled the blankets up over them both, and dozed off.

#fanficnault #destiny #destiny fanfiction #destiny 2 #destiny (game)#destiny the game #bungie's destiny #destiny dawning #destiny the dawning #reynault the smith #torch the ghost #rahool gets a name drop but nothing happens #the pizza medallion is for ikora because this is after 1am vault pizza #ghost guardian feels #tw anxeity

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ashestoashcraft · 4 years

Photo

Hello hello Star Creatures~ I’ll be posting these pieces to my galleries when I drop the speedpaint onto YouTube but all ya’ll on tumblr here get to see it first c:

So first of all, I love my new phone to bits and pieces, and I feel like it’s officially broken in with my second official digital artwork! lolz For those who don’t know, I dropped my phone in a parking lot while out and about on 4/20 // Earth Day (go figure that my first day out in weeks is busy af. As we expected someone picked it up before I got back to look for it >n<). My fiance and I took the loss on the chin, however, since we had been planning on upgrading our phones fairly soon anyway and did some creative thinking to make up for my mistake. She ordered a new phone, we got me a new SIM card, and as soon as her new phone came in I took her old one, a Samsung Galaxy Note 8.

I don’t think I can go back to having a phone without a stylus; I’m ruined haha I spent practically all of my workday yesterday and today working to death on this piece. I colored it traditionally too, but I am not nearly as happy with that version as I am this one. I’ll probably pop it in my speedpaint video for curiosity’s sake, but it was mostly just a step in the process as I figured out the color scheme on the final piece. The one with the sparkles is most reminiscent of my original vision, but I couldn’t really decide if they were too loud for some, so I figured I’d share the other two more toned down versions. FULL DISCLOSURE: I traced the gummy worm from a google image! I’m the worst D:

So now that I have this, I will be cranking out much more art. I’m talking adoptables, YCHs, coloring pages, fanart, the Tarot and Iron Artist projects I’ve already mentioned, and more! I’m going to start by finishing up my stepped-up late 4/20 // Earth Day piece digitally, so keep an eye out for that as my 2nd speedpaint once I get things figured out with the first~

I’ll follow by dishing up a new price sheet that includes digital options, but I am still open for traditional commissions (which you can purchase by clicking here), or you can always reach out to me (e-mail preferred: [email protected]) to talk about prices if you’re interested in a digital commission now.

Thanks for the time, and have a great rest of your day! Stay safe!

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7fics · 7 years

Note

jy is a ups worker/package deliverer and someone (writer's choice from hyung line) keeps ordering packages in order to see him (mostly enticed by the shorts at first...) would be 100% okay if a bend & snap reference was worked in somehow

warnings: smut, spanking, clumsy ‘package’ innuendos

author: Kay

word count: 6.2k

a/n: My very first Jinson fic, please enjoy this very fun AU :)

It started with an innocent online order.

Jackson recently moved across town to a new place, one that offered him more rooms and space than he ever could have imagined. From a home office to a finished basement, he had room for everything he needed and then some; being a single homeowner certainly had its perks. While he spent his days working from home, chattering away on his phone to make business deals as quickly as possible, Jackson preferred the excitement of the city at night, making plans to meet up with friends and get out of the house as soon as his to-do list was done for the day. Once he had found a cute guy to go home with for the evening, Jackson felt totally accomplished, loving that he could have it all, from work to play and everything inbetween.

With new homeownership came the process of purchasing and sometimes replacing old household appliances, old hand-me-downs no longer cutting it in such a large space since Jackson had left the apartment life behind. The most recent purchase he placed was for a new vacuum, one that could handle the few carpeted areas more quickly than the older model his parents had lovingly gifted him when he moved out after completing school. While the old object was heavy and required a bag for use, the new version he selected was sleek and bagless with electric green accents, giving Jackson a sense of excitement to clean that he never had before.

As the tracking stated, his order was to arrive later that afternoon, Jackson enjoying a brief lunch in front of his television as he heard a large diesel truck brake along the curb in front of his home. Holding in some of his excitement, Jackson remained seated until a rapid series of loud knocks sounded from the front door, the man squealing to himself as he jumped up and rushed over to answer it. Swinging open the wooden door, Jackson was surprised to see a man a few inches taller than him but around the same age typing away on a small electronic device, dark strands of hair falling over his forehead as he worked next to a tall brown cardboard box.

“Jackson Wang, I need you to sign here,” the worker held the device closer to him, handing him a bright yellow stylus to jot his signature down with, Jackson doing exactly as he said.

“Thank you so much,” Jackson beamed, hoping to get a better view of the gentleman’s face, pleased when he looked up after snapping the stylus back into the side of the device.

“You’re welcome,” the man smiled wide, crinkles framing his eyes as he offered a slight bow. “Have a great day.”

Watching as the delivery man walked back to his truck, Jackson couldn’t help but look him up and down, admiring the snug fit of his brown uniform, short-sleeved button-down tucked neatly into a pair of shorts that hit just above the knee. Things started to move in slow motion as Jackson observed the best part of his backside: the perfect curve of his ass in the tight-fitting article of clothing, something Jackson wouldn’t be able to get off of his mind easily. Unfortunately, before Jackson could snap himself back to reality and ask for the other’s name, the delivery man was already back in the front seat of his vehicle, switching it into gear before continuing on his path down the street. With a defeated sigh, Jackson dragged his most recent purchase inside, placing it in the living room before beginning to open and assemble the item, still feeling preoccupied from the excellent view offered as he had walked away.

The next day, Jackson did what any well-adjusted member of society would have done in his case by taking his lunch at the same exact time his delivery was made the day prior, staking out the front window in case any nearby neighbors were getting a delivery of their own. Unfortunately for the man, the truck never made an appearance, forcing Jackson to sulk and return to his work unfulfilled before thinking of the next best way to gather the information he so desperately wanted. With the customer service number dialed, Jackson waited on the line for the next available representative, keeping his tracking number and address nearby. After a few minutes, he was finally connected, letting out a sigh of relief as soon as the operator on the other line answered.

“Yes, hi, I need assistance with an order that was delivered yesterday,” Jackson explained. “I have the tracking number here for reference.”

“Of course, sir,” the operator acknowledged. “Go ahead and read me the sequence and we’ll go from there.”

Once the number had been rambled off, Jackson waited for it to be verified, perking up as soon as the woman on the other line spoke again.

“Alright, sir,” she began, “I have everything about the delivery listed here. What I can I help you with today?”

“Well, you see,” Jackson chuckled to himself, “I had the package delivered and the entire experience was… well, how can I say this appropriately?”

“Sir, did you have any issues with the delivery?” The operator took a more serious tone, Jackson could hear the clicking of a keyboard in the background. “If you have any concerns or comments about your level of satisfaction, please let me know so I can assist you in the best way possible.”

“Can I just get his name?” Jackson asked, trying to be more direct in his request. “The name of the delivery guy, that’s all I need and then I’ll feel slightly more satisfied.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Wang, but I’m afraid I cannot provide that information,” the operator clarified, dashing Jackson’s hopes with a single statement. “However, if there were any problems with the service you received or if you have any general comments, I can pass those along to the appropriate departments.”

“Well, you see…” Jackson sighed, closing his eyes, the recent image of the other man’s backside slowly walking away from him replaying in his mind. “He looked… so good in his uniform.”

“I’ll be sure to pass that information along to our internal staff here,” the operator deadpanned in the most professional way possible. “Anything else I can assist you with today?”

“No,” Jackson sighed, defeated by what seemed to be the easiest way to get the only thing he wanted. “Thanks.”

Hanging up his phone and tossing it back onto his desk, Jackson sighed even more dramatically as he thought about the man he knew nothing about. He had to have been just under six feet tall, brown hair and dark eyes, soft pink lips that curved into an adorable smile. Unfortunately, beyond his smooth voice and ample backside, Jackson knew nothing else, somehow resorting to light stalking to even get a first or last name. It was unlike him to pursue someone so heavily when it had only been a brief connection; usually Jackson was good at letting go or reconnecting wherever time and space took him. But there was something about the uniformed worker that drove him crazy, perhaps it was the mystery behind knowing nothing about him or the physical uniform itself. Either way, Jackson didn’t feel like giving up quite yet, letting himself get back to work and shelving a brainstorming session for his next steps later on that night.

Once in bed after washing his face and brushing his teeth, Jackson turned on the television, letting it play softly in the background as he played around on his phone. He thought about the strange twist of fate that ordering a simple package had turned his mind upside down in such a short period of time before realizing that the answer to his problem had been right there all along. If he wanted to see the other man, he should repeat the process, giving him a chance to appear at his doorstep again. Scrambling to climb out of his sheets and bring his laptop back into bed with him, Jackson began frantically pulling up websites of all different kinds, looking at wishlists he had half-heartedly compiled before beginning to make random orders of all shapes and sizes, hoping that at least one of them would bring the same delivery guy back around. Even if he only saw him for a passing moment, it would be enough to get his name and to Jackson, it was well worth the cost of all the things he suddenly convinced himself he needed.

The first packaged arrived less than three days later, Jackson completely heartbroken when he realized he got anything at all, never hearing the truck even come down the street, let alone having a knock on the door to acknowledge that something was delivered. As he gathered his mail from the box outside, the lonely package remained near the front door, Jackson scoffing before picking it up quickly, rushing back inside to check the status of his various other tracking codes. According to his list, the next few days would have one delivery each, giving Jackson enough opportunities to finally act on his feelings. The plan had seemed ridiculous at the beginning and was starting off on shaky ground, but Jackson had faith it would result in something worthwhile, happily placing his unopened delivery on his dining room table before heading to his room for the night.

Unfortunately, the next delivery was the same, Jackson too slow to realize what was happening before he was swinging the front door open, watching as the other man took two steps into his vehicle before speeding off, Jackson cursing under his breath and wondering if complaining about the speed of said truck on his suburban street would be enough to get the name from customer service. Quickly dismissing the idea of getting the other man in trouble, Jackson sulked back inside, finishing his quick meal before joining his next business call with a coworker to go over some documents and forms that were a new requirement for their department.

“Yugyeom, do you believe at love at first sight?”

The man on the other end of the line sighed deeply, out of either pity or annoyance, clearly used to Jackson’s unusual ways to begin a professional call.

“I guess it depends,” Yugyeom replied, causing Jackson to scoff at the avoidance of a real answer.

“Depends on what?” Jackson asked. “Love at first sight is pretty specific.”

“Well, is there a chance you’ll see that person again?” Yugyeom tried to clarify. “If there’s a chance and you’re determined, I could see it being considered love at first sight.”

“You’re making this so complicated,” Jackson rolled his eyes, unsatisfied at the insights he was receiving from his friend. “A simple yes or no would have sufficed.”

“Jackson, did you fall in love at first sight?” Yugyeom finally asked, giving into exactly what Jackson wanted to hear.

“Maybe,” Jackson giggled softly, spinning from side to side in his desk chair. “It’s my delivery guy.”

“What, like the mailman?” Yugyeom laughed, causing Jackson to frown.

“No!” Jackson argued, standing up suddenly behind his desk. “It was this really hot guy with this gentle voice and his face got all crinkly when he smiled… did I mention the tight shorts that are part of his uniform?”

“Are you trying to tell me you saw a hot guy with a nice ass deliver some box to you and now you’re in love?” Yugyeom teased, always taking advantage of making fun of his older friends. “I think that’s called lust at first sight.”

“How dare you trivialize my feelings!” Jackson whined, hitting his desk with his palm for emphasis. “He could be my next great love!”

“I hate to even ask if we’re going to talk about the new reporting system,” Yugyeom interjected, “but can we move on to business-related affairs?”

“Fine,” Jackson plopped back into his chair, pulling up the relevant documents on his computer. “But… one more thing?”

“What is it?” Yugyeom sighed, obviously ready to put the entire conversation in the past.

“Is it really so bad that I want to unwrap his package?”

In a fit of giggles, Jackson heard the other line go dead, Yugyeom leaving him to deal with learning the new system (and his childish crush) all on his own.

For the next delivery, Jackson figured out a more direct approach to get his answer, setting up a small folding chair and side table to enjoy his lunch outside in his front yard, guaranteeing that Jinyoung would have to walk past him with his ordered items. While lounging in his chair and eating whatever he could find in his fridge, Jackson was more than thrilled as he heard the familiar sounds of the delivery truck rounding the corner, brakes squeaking as the man shifted the vehicle in park on the street in front of his house. Fetching a box from the side of his seat, the delivery man hopped out, rushing up to Jackson’s door with his head down, looking up at meeting Jackson’s line of sight as he neared the house, slowing down in order to hand the package to Jackson directly.

“Here you are, sir,” the other man nodded, smiling softly as Jackson took the small box before turning to leave. “Have a nice day!”

“Wait!” Jackson shouted to stop him in his tracks, watching as his perfect backside turned to face him again. “You can’t leave just yet.”

“I have a schedule to keep,” he replied. “Is there something else you need assistance with?”

Getting up from his seat, Jackson took a few steps closer, happy that the other didn’t seem to want to run away from such a random encounter.

“You know my name, but I don’t know yours,” Jackson smiled, putting on his best charms. “That doesn’t seem fair.”

“It’s Jinyoung,” he smiled back, offering another nod before breaking into a sprint back to his truck, Jackson shamelessly watching his lower half as he jogged away and hopped in the front seat, waving ever so slightly as he drove away.

Satisfied that he finally got his answer he had been looking for, Jackson packed up his makeshift patio setup, repeating the name over and over again to himself until the word turned to gibberish.

Jackson [2:07 PM]

Jinyoung!

Yugyeom [2:08 PM]

Uh wrong number

Jackson [2:08 PM]

That’s his name! The delivery man with the perfect ass!

Yugyeom [2:11 PM]

Good job, bro. Jinyoung who?

Jackson [2:11 PM]

I just said… the delivery guy…

Yugyeom [2:15 PM]

You only got half of his name? You’re an amateur.

Jackson [2:15 PM]

…shut up 😓

Dismayed once again by his short-lived victory, Jackson found himself out of things to buy, already ignoring the embarrassing cluster of boxes and packing peanuts taking up half of his little-used dining room. It had been a week since learning Jinyoung’s name and Jackson had come up empty on finding anything more about the other man. From searching professional sites to social media, he couldn’t piece together enough unique keywords to locate the Jinyoung he had found something special in from only two short conversations. Frustration began to set in as the random man with only half a name couldn’t leave Jackson’s brain even at night, explicit images of what may be hiding underneath his uniform entertaining Jackson in his dreams.

Becoming sick and tired of trying to find out more with such little information, Jackson went back to the day he had met Jinyoung, remembering that he could manage to spend an extra moment of his time as long as he had to gather a signature from Jackson in order to leave his purchase, leading Jackson to wonder: what other large items could he possibly need in order to get a few minutes of Jinyoung’s precious time? A quick walk-through of his home didn’t show anything blatantly obvious; everything that was completely necessary had already been bought and installed, leaving him little room to convince himself of anything to buy. But once Jackson made his way to his bedroom, he had convinced himself the lighting certainly wouldn’t do, scoffing audibly at the short stubby table lamp on his nightstand. Pulling his laptop from his desk and into his lap moments later, two large modern LED lamps were ordered, Jackson completely content at the shipping note that appeared, indicating that he may have to sign for the item due to size, weight and total cost.

Jackpot.

Every day that passed up until the date of the promised delivery felt like a lifetime to Jackson, the usually energetic blond turning down invitations from his friends, preferring to stay in and get ahead on all the work he had been procrastinating on during the days he spent lurking for more information on Jinyoung. He knew he was being irrational and ridiculous for placing so much importance on a person he didn’t know anything about, but Jackson was reckless and impulsive when it came to love, latching on at random times for what seemed to be no reason at all. When he thought about the delivery man tucked into bed at night, the only things that bounced back and forth within his mind were his name and his perfectly-shaped ass, two things that Jackson felt happy knowing, but not enough to let him rest well.

The morning of the promised delivery, Jackson felt like a kid waking up on Christmas morning, springing out of bed and preparing himself a complete breakfast before showering and getting straight to work, knowing that even if he found himself completely lost in a spreadsheet or immersed in an e-mail draft, the firm knock at the door would alert him to Jinyoung’s arrival, Jackson dressed in his favorite black pants and lucky black t-shirt to hopefully seal the deal. Jackson didn’t know if it was the mystery or the promise of what could be that kept him so interested, but without taking every chance he had up until that point, he would never forgive himself for letting the opportunity to get to know the man with the best ass slip away from him.

Unfortunately for Jackson, the usual time he received deliveries from Jinyoung came and went without any sign of the big brown truck that usually signaled his arrival, leaving Jackson nervous and upset that there had been a mistake. Even after he considered his work day done, nothing had come to his door, forcing Jackson to see if the tracking was as accurate as it claimed to be. Even worse, the website had updated the status to ‘Delivered,’ a statement listed below that ‘Customer signed for package upon delivery.’

Jackson couldn’t believe that he would actually have to contact customer service with a real complaint, lucky enough to have learned Jinyoung’s name in time to turn him in for delaying his delivery. It was around 7 P.M. and Jackson tried his best to let his hopes go that he would see the other man with a big package or two at his doorstep, preferring to text Yugyeom to see what he would be up to that night. If anything could erase the disappointment of his delivery getting lost in the system and Jinyoung being a no-show, it would be spending time with drinks that were strong and friends who loved him.

However, just as he was about to agree to a time to be picked up by Yugyeom, there was a familiar firm knock at the door, one that strangely resembled the one first heard the day he met Jinyoung. Jackson tried his hardest to not get his hopes up as he slowly approached the door, the knocking happening again with a soft shout of ‘delivery!’ coming directly after. Opening the door slowly, Jackson couldn’t help but smile wide as he saw Jinyoung waiting in his perfect uniform, no box or hand-held device to be found.

“Hey,” Jackson stated, standing in the doorway, leaning against the frame. “I thought I was going to have to call in a complaint. You should have been here hours ago, the item was marked as delivered…”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Wang,” Jinyoung replied with a bow and a small smile. “There was a mixup on the truck and I pulled some muscle in my side, I’m having a bit of trouble getting people their things on time today and for that, I apologize.”

“First of all, you can call me Jackson, I know you’ve seen my name a million times the past month,” Jackson cracked, giggling softly. “Secondly, you’re in luck. I’m the strongest guy on the block, I can totally help you get my packages off the truck.”

“Well, Jackson, that would be really great of you,” Jinyoung smiled a little brighter, motioning to follow him back to get the boxes from the truck. “Right this way.”

With a smile, Jackson followed close behind, chattering away about what a nice night it was, casually discussing how he didn’t get out of the house much that day because of a heavy work schedule and anything else that came to mind in the few moments it took to walk to the truck and climb inside. As promised, Jackson’s packages were some of the last around besides what seemed to be others that weren’t able to be delivered that day, Jackson too nosy to not read the labels himself.

“Office paper,” Jinyoung explained, shrugging as Jackson continued to analyze them for whatever reason. “Apparently, some people took today off and didn’t bother to tell us to hold their packages.”

“Is this what you hurt yourself on?” Jackson asked, suddenly concerned as he made his way over to Jinyoung who was standing near what happened to be the ones of his own. “You had to load these off and back on the truck because they couldn’t answer the door? How rude!”

“Well, not exactly,” Jinyoung chuckled, walking over and casually shutting the back door of the truck, leaving him and Jackson secluded inside before walking back over to where the blond stood. “I lied, Jackson.”

“You… lied?” Jackson found himself suddenly panicking, worried that he assumed too many kind things about the nice delivery man with an excellent butt, hoping he wasn’t about to turn on him so easily. “You said you were hurt, I don’t mind helping you with the packages…”

“I’m not hurt,” Jinyoung replied, moving back towards Jackson as he backed himself against the wall of the truck, suddenly pinned against it with nowhere else to go. “Do you really think I let just any kind of customer into my truck without having a very special reason for it?”

“W-well,” Jackson stuttered, unsure if the scene should have been turning him on or not, “what kind of reason do you have for inviting me back here?”

“I think you can guess why,” Jinyoung smirked, the crinkles that usually came with his smile suddenly present again. Jackson studied his face, watching as Jinyoung placed a hand next to Jackson’s head against the side of the truck, keeping him in place as their eyes met. The truck had to be one of the least romantic settings for his confession, but Jackson had to make his move as he usually did, swallowing deeply before clearing his throat.

“Will you still want to talk to me if I make a bad pun about packages?” Jackson asked, all of a sudden questioning his skills in speaking to attractive men.

“Does it have to do with needing help with yours?” Jinyoung raised an eyebrow, quick to pick up on what Jackson was putting down.

“Of course,” Jackson squeaked out nervously, licking his lips, “and maybe I could, you know, make a delivery of my own-”

Before Jackson could finish his clumsy thought, Jinyoung took the initiative Jackson was apparently too shy to make, pressing his lips against his in a rush, his body pushing Jackson back against the wall of the truck. It was slightly muggy and smelled of old plastic and rust, but Jackson didn’t care, his body able to make up for what his words couldn’t as his arms wrapped around Jinyoung tight. His body was more muscular than anticipated, arms firm and shoulders broad, Jackson sliding his hands down to hold his slim waist in place as they continued to make out in the semi-empty space. It felt scandalous to do such things in what could be considered Jinyoung’s place of business, but the same could be said of Jackson’s house, so what difference would it make?

Finally bold enough to make the move he had been holding back on, Jackson dipped his hands lower, firmly grasping Jinyoung’s ass with both of his hands, massaging it gently through the thick fabric. Firm, yet squishy, Jackson felt himself harden at the thought of seeing Jinyoung without the tailored shorts on, reaching around the front to fiddle with his belt. Amused by the quick decision process Jackson seemed to be making, Jinyoung broke the kiss only to help him with the buckle and front buttons of his shirt, discarding Jackson’s lucky black t-shirt from over his head next. As he looked Jackson’s torso from top to bottom, Jinyoung couldn’t help but let out a tiny gasp, Jackson smirking at the other’s realization that he was someone who took extremely good care of his body.

“So, you weren’t lying about being the strongest guy on the block, huh?” Jinyoung sighed, his own bare chest and stomach exposed from the button down hanging from his shoulders, long slender fingers working on Jackson’s snug jeans.

“Unlike you, I don’t have to lie to get what I want,” Jackson giggled, watching as Jinyoung yanked his pants down to his ankles, promptly getting down on his knees.

“Oh, yeah?” Jinyoung raised an eyebrow, hands rubbing up and down Jackson’s thighs to tease him lightly. “Tell me, how long did it take you to realize I can’t talk for more than a minute until you order something that needs a signature for delivery?”

His own scheme exposed, Jackson blushed at the realization of how silly he had been, a million different ways to get to know Jinyoung suddenly rushing to the front of his brain when they were no longer needed. Of course, Jackson had to act in his own way to get what he wanted, each purchase apparently a little white lie that showed Jinyoung he was interested, obviously picking up on the fact that Jackson had an usual way of showing that he liked what he saw.

“Too long,” Jackson sighed, voice cracking as Jinyoung lapped at his dick through the thin cotton of his briefs, too impatient to wait for Jackson’s next curated set of explanations. It seemed as if Jinyoung had been impatient waiting for this himself, teasing Jackson even more with his tongue before pulling his underwear down to his ankles, giving his cock a few firm strokes. If Jackson was being honest with himself, getting blown by the delivery guy in the back of his truck never crossed his mind. However, he couldn’t complain about the skill Jinyoung displayed as he took his dick into his mouth even deeper, a low moan leaving his lips.

“S’good…” Jackson mumbled, fingers sliding through Jinyoung’s soft locks. “Fuck, you’re good…”

Apparently amused by the lack of control Jackson had at that point, Jinyoung continued on, hands still softly rubbing up and down Jackson’s thighs, eyes gazing up at the blond who could barely hold eye contact long enough for any sense of connection to be made. Clearly, the delivery man held some strange power over him, causing him to slip into a pleasurable haze, Jinyoung’s talented mouth and tongue too much to handle.

“S-stop!” Jackson breathed, watching as Jinyoung pulled off, wiping his mouth gracefully as he continued to hold onto Jackson’s hips.

“Something wrong?” Jinyoung’s eyebrows furrowed, a sense of confusion falling over the situation. “I’m sorry if I was doing too much…”

“No, no,” Jackson laughed, slightly out of breath. “Just didn’t want to… you know…”

With a clumsy charade of him jacking off, Jinyoung got the picture, the two of them sharing a laugh, Jackson admiring the adorable way Jinyoung hid his smile but didn’t bother concealing his audacious laugh. If it weren’t for the dimly lit interior of the dusty metal truck, Jackson could call it all romantic, finally getting to the bottom of what Yugyeom determined was lust at first sight.

“I hate to ask you this but,” Jackson bit his lip, nudging Jinyoung to stand up, “if we want things to continue and if I’m reading all the signs correctly, I’m going to need… things. For you, for me. You know? Things that make things… easier? Safer. You know…”

“I know,” Jinyoung smiled, taking a few steps to reach into the storage compartment of the center console, grabbing a few things before passing them to Jackson, the shorter man pleased to know that at least one of them came prepared.

“Is this an invitation?” Jackson joked, wiggling his eyebrows suggestively.

“It’s more of a demand,” Jinyoung countered, kissing Jackson as he worked on sliding his shorts off, letting his underwear fall away with them. “Fuck me?”

Jackson no longer felt lost in the haze of what was about to happen, gladly finishing undressing them down to nothing but socks and shoes, Jinyoung mumbling something about keeping them on if they knew what was good for them. Disregarding the fact that the only box big enough to support the both of them would eventually have to be delivered, Jackson watched as Jinyoung lounged back on the package of office paper, legs spread obscenely as if his verbal invitation wasn’t enough. Making sure his stash of supplies was nearby, Jackson dropped to his knees in front of the box, opening up the tiny bottle of lube that Jinyoung apparently kept on-hand as a necessity during his route. Spreading some along his fingers, Jackson carefully gave Jinyoung’s erection some much needed attention, before sliding his hand down lower, slicking up the other’s entrance as his fingers slipped inside carefully one by one.

If Jackson wasn’t already in love with what he thought Jinyoung was, the sounds the other man solidified his feelings, the soft sighs and subtle whines music to Jackson’s ears. While it was becoming clear that Jinyoung did like to have some control over a situation, Jackson appreciated the way he melted into whatever Jackson did, from stroking his dick to the rhythm of his fingers preparing him for what was next. In a way, it was a perfect balance of everything Jackson saw in himself: one way to the world, another in private.

“I’m ready, Jackson,” Jinyoung mumbled, whimpering quietly as Jackson removed his fingers carefully, locating the condom Jinyoung had retrieved for his use, tearing it open with his teeth before sliding it on. Using some creativity, Jackson positioned himself over Jinyoung in the center of the box, offering another passionate kiss as he pressed his cock inside the other man, taking an extremely slow start to ease away any inhibitions still held between them. It was clunky and the atmosphere was anything but romantic, but once Jackson began to thrust at a steady pace, all of the awkward tension still in the air evaporated to leave them both with nothing but shared pleasure.

Jinyoung looked beautiful below him, sprawled out with his legs bent back exactly where he needed them to be, but Jackson wasn’t completely satisfied, his mind hinting at the thought of turning the other man around, needing to see his best assets at a time like this. Pulling out to a dissatisfied whine from Jinyoung, Jackson quieted him with a kiss mumbling to turn around and bend over the box instead, the other man complying easily. While he certainly was obedient to Jackson’s suggestions, Jinyoung had a way to tease and flirt throughout the entire process, making sure that Jackson knew that even Jinyoung knew what his best asset had to be, slowly folding his body over the edge of the package, arching his back to give Jackson the best view possible.

“So needy…” Jackson couldn’t help himself, hands back to gripping the plump bottom of the other man before resuming reentering and building back to his original rhythm. It was the perfect view: milky skin dampened with a sheen of sweat bent over in front of him, voice begging for more as the only sound echoing in the metal box of the vehicle was skin on skin. It wasn’t romantic and it wasn’t ideal, but it felt like a dream come true, Jackson groaning as he held onto Jinyoung’s slim sides, holding him into place as he practically fucked him into the box, no longer caring what bodily fluids might accidentally leave permanent damage to the outside. If Jinyoung didn’t care, neither would he, letting himself go with the flow of Jinyoung subtle demands, listening every time he begged for it to be faster or harder, smirking as the other man even asked to be spanked.

“P-please…” Jinyoung moaned, hands gripping the edge of the cardboard for stability. “Do it… I want it…”

“Say it,” Jackson sighed, hand rubbing the right side of Jinyoung’s ass, knowing he couldn’t tease him for too much longer, already close enough by all that had happened. “I want to hear it clearly, Jinyoung.”

“Spank me!” Jinyoung whined, Jackson delighted by the way the other man begged for whatever he wanted, even in the back of his work vehicle. “Please, don’t make me say it again…”

“Whatever you say,” Jackson grinned, complying with the other’s wishes as he thrusted more, spanking him a few times as they continued, Jinyoung’s pleasing moans only pushing him closer to the edge. Needing to switch up the angle again, Jackson paused only to move Jinyoung back to their original position, this time holding both of Jinyoung’s legs back completely pounding into him harder than ever before.

“G-gonna… so close, Jackson,” Jinyoung whimpered, already sounding completely spent. “Right there, oh god, please!”

With only a few more strokes, Jinyoung came completely undone beneath Jackson, the blond pushing himself only a moment longer before finishing himself, pulling out and removing the condom, tying it off and tossing it to the side with everything else he had to dispose of. As he watched Jinyoung remain sprawled back against the box that had no business being the first place they should have fucked, Jackson took the initiative to go up to the compartment from which Jinyoung pulled his supplies, finding a stack of napkins he brought over to clean Jinyoung up. As he carefully wiped their stomachs and chests clean, their eyes met, both men sharing a gentle smile and laugh before Jackson leaned down, kissing Jinyoung softly as he sat on the edge of the package.

“So,” Jinyoung smiled, sitting up to join the other man again, “can we start making time to get to know each other instead of using extreme excuses to get what we want?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Jackson feigned ignorance, giggling as he shrugged. “I totally needed everything I’ve ordered the past month.”

“I’m sure you did,” Jinyoung agreed, laughing under his breath. “If you invited me inside, I wouldn’t stumble across an embarrassing pile of items waiting to be returned?”

“Nothing gets past you, does it?” Jackson laughed, loud voice filling the empty space. “Hey, maybe you could give me your number so I don’t have to pay attention to all of the ones I use to track this shit.”

“That could be arranged,” Jinyoung grinned, kissing Jackson once again, “Mr. Wang.”

“So professional…” Jackson leaned in closer, whispering softly into the other man’s ear, “and I wouldn’t mind if you wore that uniform outside of business hours.”

“Noted,” Jinyoung giggled, pressing another kiss to Jackson’s temple. “Still want to help me carry your boxes inside?”

“I’d be happy to,” Jackson nodded, getting up slowly to collect his clothes. “Would you have time for a glass of wine after?”

“That sounds nice,” Jinyoung smiled, picking up his underwear from the floor. “Be careful, you might just make me fall for you.”

“I bet you say that to every man you seduce in your big brown truck,” Jackson laughed, already half-dressed.

“There’s only one I’ve ever made time for,” Jinyoung smiled, re-buttoning his top. “It’s a shame that skipping a delivery is frowned upon, but I think the office that needed this paper will understand us shipping back a damaged package…”

Both of them turned to look back at the bent corners and questionable damp spots on the once pristine package, the two sharing a laugh before finishing redressing, carrying off Jackson’s final purchases and locking up the truck before heading inside.

Whenever Jackson would later tell this story to all of his friends, even with his new boyfriend by his side, he would always end the tale with the same sentiment: after he had poured them both a glass of his favorite wine, Jackson found it easy to admit that Jinyoung seemed to fit into his new home like he should have been there all along.

#got7 #jinson #character:Jinyoung #character:jackson #genre:smut #genre:au #author:kay

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joebuehrer · 7 years

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XP-Pen Artist 16 Review

So last week I bought an Artist 16 pen display from XP-Pen. I’ve always wanted a pen display I could do my artwork on, as I’ve always had an easier time drawing with traditional pencil and paper than I have with my Intuos4. Not to say I haven't been able to produce quality work with my Intuos, but as most digital artists will tell you, it's far more intuitive to actually see what you’re drawing instead of having to look up at a monitor.

I decided to go with the XP-Pen Artist 16 over some of the other knockoff brands, as every review I watched of the Artist 16 glowingly praised it for being the best cheap alternative to a Wacom. I was excited to draw on this thing, ecstatic you might say. I was even celebrating the woes of Wacom, reveling in the fact that I was going to get the same experience I’d get from a Cintiq, at a quarter of the price. So... The tablet finally came in the mail, I set it up, installed the driver, and......

Bust! Well okay, to be fair, I eventually did get it working but it took way longer than it should have. I spent hours trying to figure out why the screen was black when I plugged it in, only to find out that the HDMI cord it came with didn’t work. It took me another few hours to get the drivers working because in case you’re wondering, all these companies that sell these cheap Wacom alternatives, use the same driver. Seriously, it’s the same one. They just switch out the brand name when you download it from their website. And this presents a problem because they’re all relying on a single source to provide updated drivers and they’re rarely ever updated. At the time of installing mine, the last update was back in December of last year. The third major issue I ran into was the pen calibration. It was off by at least a few hundred pixels, so my pen would be on one part of the monitor but my cursor would be off to the side somewhere. I finally figured out that if I set my pen display as my computer’s main monitor then that would fix the calibration error, but no where online or in the instruction manual does it tell you to do this. I had to figure that part out on my own and that in my opinion is unacceptable. These products should just work right out of the box, but because they’re put together on the cheap and their drivers are rarely updated, you’re bound to run into some problems.

Now to be fair to XP-Pen when I did get the tablet to work properly it worked great. Pen pressure was nice, the calibration issue was fixed, parallax was barely noticeable and I did manage to make a few nice pieces of art with it. However, that wasn't enough for me. I kept running into issues where if I turned off the monitor and then turned it back on later while my laptop was still on or asleep, then my calibration would be off again, and I’d either have to restart my computer or fiddle around with the driver settings, or both, just to get it to work again. Also one thing that I was disappointed in was that unlike Wacom drivers where you can create unique express key settings based on the different types of software you use, the XP-Pen driver only lets you use one setting for your express keys. So if you wanted to use multiple programs with different keyboard shortcuts you’d have to change your express key settings every time you use a new program, and that’s just tedious and unnecessary.

Last thing I want to mention before ending this review. The tablet came with a screen protector already attached to the monitor. Now screen protectors aren’t in and of themselves a bad thing, but I found it odd that it was already attached. Normally these companies give you the option to use it or not depending on your preference. And it’s especially odd since you cant buy replacements on XP-Pen’s website, nor anywhere else for that matter. So why do this? Well, it’s to hide the fact that the actual screen itself is not ideal for drawing on. I peeled back the screen protector a little bit and used my stylus on it and I got some resistance followed by a horrible squeaking noise. And this confirms a theory brought up by Aaron Rutten on YouTube when he reviewed the tablet Ugee sent him. And that theory is that all these companies who make these cheap Wacom alternatives are essentially using the same components from the same source and Frankensteining them together to make their own “unique” tablet but in reality it’s all the same tech. And this to me is very concerning because when I buy an XP-Pen or a Huion, I want “their” tech. I don’t want something that was just slapped together from the same components that these other companies are using. This goes back to the issue I mentioned about the driver being the same one that all the others use and why that’s a problem. These companies are essentially taking shortcuts so they can sell us cheap hardware. They’re not looking to innovate or make real strides to be a competitor in the market. They’re essentially the cubic zirconia of the tablet industry.

I know I’m being hard on XP-Pen right now and on these companies as a whole. I do appreciate what XP-Pen is doing. From what I’ve read it looks like a lot of their products get used for education purposes in areas that aren’t wealthy enough to afford the price heavy Cintiqs, and I think that’s a good thing. I just wish these companies would go the extra mile to bring us some truly innovative tech that could threaten Wacom’s position on the throne, even if it came at the cost of them raising their prices a little bit. But really all we’re getting is cheap alternatives that don’t hold a candle to the new tech that Wacom is showcasing, especially in their new lineup of Cintiq Pros and the very recent Mobile Studio.

I do want to be fair here and say that if you’re new to digital art and you want a pen display, and you can be patient with all the problems it takes to install it, then the XP-Pen Artist 16 is not a bad alternative if you’re looking to save some money. I think once you get it working it handles just fine. Just remember to set it as your main monitor and don’t remove the screen protector if you want to have a better drawing experience. On the other hand, if your a seasoned vet of digital art, take the plunge and buy a Cintiq instead. I sent my XP-Pen back and have a Cintiq Pro on the way. I’m out more money than I was when I bought the Artist 16., but I know for me personally I’m going to get a better experience because of it.

Anyway, hope you all found this review helpful. Please reblog and share with your friends if they’re thinking of buying one of these Wacom alternatives.

#XP-Pen #Artist 16 #Review #Wacom alternatives #digital art

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verdigrisprowl · 7 years

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A (pretty decent tbh) Meeting With Starscream & Soundwave. And Metroplex.

At Starscream’s orders, Prowl is hooked up to Metroplex to demonstrate that he can cityspeak, by locating Starscream and communicating his location. Prowl is a lot better at locating Starscream than he is at communicating it, but he manages to find a way to get it out.

There’s a bit of a kerfuffle when Soundwave and Starscream tell Prowl to unplug and he doesn’t, but they get it sorted out. Prowl has now been assigned to try to extract more data from Metroplex, particularly concerning his anatomy/blueprints.

The process had the unintended side-effect of jolting Prowl back into some sort of alertness for the first time in weeks. He’s actually speaking in full sentences of his own volition again.

I didn’t record the first half of the chat like a fucking dumbass.

Starscream got situated somewhere out in Metroplex while Prowl got ready to plug in with Metroplex. Soundwave is accompanying Prowl, but he’s in alt-mode and hovering because No Touching The Inside Of Metroplex’s Head. Soundwave is waiting nearby with coolant. Starscream commed them to make sure they were both prepared, which they confirmed—Prowl’s pretty much just communicating in pings of acknowledgment right now. After plugging in, he flopped to sit on his legs and went silent for about a minute as Metroplex started feeding him data. Eventually he managed to say a string of useless words, based on images Metroplex was showing him of the vicinity around Starscream: “Window indigo wire mail tile electric reflection,” which Soundwave relayed on to Starscream. Which is pretty useless as far as positively identifying a location goes, but Starscream gave him 5/10 for “indigo,” and decided to give him another go. Soundwave suggested Starscream make himself more conspicuous.

Starscream: *Starscream will consider his options, then pull out the stylus on the datapd. A few clicks and- how about he draws a crown with wings on the wall. Starscream: *IT's his city he can draw on it* Prowl: I have— I can see— I— *he just can't get it into Neocybex.* Prowl: *words aren't working. try math. he reaches out for soundwave* Soundwave: *Soundwave's not exactly sure what's going on here, but he can't come out of this shape without contacting Metroplex himself, so he stretches a feeler out and wraps it around what's reaching for him.* Soundwave: (txt): What needed? Soundwave: *Can Prowl interpret texts while reading Metroplex? He doesn't know that either. Hmm.* Prowl: *there's a lot of metroplex noise being filtered through Prowl's mind now* Prowl: *the filtering is strong enough that, unless Soundwave TRIES to push through to it, it will be little more than distant colors on the horizon* Prowl: *what IS on the surface of Prowl's mind is Numbers, and no, he can't handle text right now, but he CAN try to think those numbers as loudly as possible.* Prowl: *and—just to make it extra clear—he tugs Soundwave's feeler closer, and presses it directly over the chevron on his helm* Soundwave: *It's kind of a good thing Starscream isn't here right now, because his own biolights brightening up has nothing to do with reading Metroplex. The feeler's tendrils instantly wrap around the chevron-- Soundwave: while the claws spread out and latch on. And oh, NUMBERS...* Starscream: *Starscream is adding to his doodle. the crown has a smaller crown* Prowl: *pure numbers. he's creating a 3D graph with line segments, drawing a building Metroplex is showing him. A wall of windows, the frames and the glass and doors and handles and walls and screws-- Prowl: *--replicated down to the centimeter.* Prowl: *but about halfway through the drawing is disrupted by different lines, something swooping and curving that obviously has nothing to do with the building. Soundwave: *Scrambling to keep up, not as quick with this kind of math as Prowl is. He reaches for Chimera with his other feeler and calls Buzzsaw's processors into play, splitting the work among them-- Soundwave: and combining the additions every few seconds to see where it's going.* Soundwave: [[He's creating a - it was a building. He doesn't know what these...]] Soundwave: [[Here. Look.]] Prowl: *it's chaos now. but before the chaos he got half a building out.* Soundwave: *Sends Starscream the half a building. Does he recognize this? What are these swoopy lines?* Starscream: *Well! He wasn't suspecting an image, but that works just as well as a physical description. As for the swoopy lines-* Starscream: ::I'm upgrading his score to a 9.:: Soundwave: [[What does Prowl need to 'pass'?]] Soundwave: *Please, please don't let this take much longer. He can feel the pull toward those colors...* Prowl: *he's still trying. he's got images. He does. they're just—millions of pixels, and he can only make sense out of eight hundred at a time. this isn't like normal vision, he can't just look at it* Starscream: ::To not fry himself and to score a seven or better one more time. Disconnect him from Metroplex and take a break.:: Starscream: ::I'm going to change my location, and we'll see if he can duplicate the results.:: Soundwave: *Soundwave immediately passes the order on, a little louder than strictly necessary to try to override whatever Metroplex is saying.* Soundwave: [[Disconnect. Separate. Break. Detach.]] Prowl: No. Ain't gonna. *that's... only slightly Prowl's voice there* Soundwave: *In 25 million years he has never once heard any Prowl say "ain't gonna".* Prowl: Moving. Moving? Soundwave: [[You WILL let Prowl go and detach. You do not function without him.]] Soundwave: [[Yes. Moving. Come back.]] Prowl: No. Not done. Soundwave: [[More later. You need a break. You will go back. You can finish then. Please.]] Prowl: *presses the feeler harder against his helm. he's got a map. Metroplex map. There's a trajectory flying over it.* Prowl: *The flight isn't done—still in transit from point A to point B—but he's predicting a range of areas where point B might be base on current trajectory* Soundwave: *Okay, NOW he's going to buzz Starscream.* Starscream: ::Yes? What is it?:: Soundwave: [[He's refusing. And predicting your flight. Here. Tell him if this is enough.]] Starscream: ::Refusing-:: Starscream: *swirtches coms* Starscream: ::Prowl! Disengage from Metroplex immediately!:: Starscream: *is going to switch flightpaths and head to where Prowl and Soundwave are.* Prowl: *the trajectory changes accordingly* Soundwave: [[Stop moving.]] Starscream: *fine, fine! He'll land right here* Soundwave: *Transferring the trajectory data. Look. Look, this is proof.* Prowl: *he got Starscream's comm. Doesn't comm back, though.* He wants— Disconnect— Soundwave: [[Yes. Disconnect. It is good. You have done well. You require coolant. We can begin again when you are well, if there is another test.]] Soundwave: [[If you do not, he will be forced to perform a manual override.]] Soundwave: [[He does not wish to do this.]] Prowl: *prowl clamps his hands over the cables plugging him into metroplex* Starscream: ::Prowl, disconnect from Metroplex immediately or I will call Windblade and tell HER to rip you out of his mind.:: Prowl: *a burst of data comes straight from metroplex, unfiltered through prowl, to Soundwave. not enough data to harm, but enough to shock.* Prowl: *It looks something like this: http://68.media.tumblr.com/7adf80c564fdbc401fa8696934e47870/tumblr_inline_mp4u33EOxZ1qz4rgp.jpg* Soundwave: *Drops a couple of feet in height before stabilizing.* Soundwave: *Hi, Starscream. New player here.* Soundwave: //Uh. Uh. Metroplex kinda... he kinda. He yelled 'stop'.// Starscream: ::You're- Augh. The not screaming one. Rumble. Stop /what/?:: Soundwave: //The Boss was tryna get him to cut off, 'n he wouldn't, so he said he don't wanna have ta pull him out, 'n Metroplex said STOP. So... we're stoppin'.// Soundwave: //Big fragger shouts at ya, ya listen.// Starscream: ::Is there an estimation on if and when Metroplex might be having Prowl disengage? Prowl: *and then, THEN, finally, Prowl unplugs.* Prowl: *and immediately doubles up and cradles his head in his hands.* ugh. Soundwave: //...Uh, right about now.// Soundwave: *Feeler immediately withdrawn. That was clearly a special occasion and there is no way he will take advantage of this to continue reading Prowl's mind.* Starscream: ::Prowl! Soundwave! Status report!:: Starscream: *will resume his flight to their location now that the 'stop' seems to be over with* Soundwave: [[Status: [][][]Ugh.[][][] ]] Prowl: ... Soundwave. *his voice is a little bit shaky* Soundwave: *Nudges coolant over. Pings. Expects Starscream will be here any minute, if he's anything like the others.* Starscream: ::Prowl, respond immediately!:: *a ping is acceptable* Prowl: «Ugh.» Prowl: Did it maybe, possibly, occur to you, that if somebody is interfacing with somebody with a brain five times bigger than their entire body... Prowl: ... it might take a couple of minutes to eject? Starscream: *that's two ughs. At least they're not fried, so that's not two employees he has to replace* Starscream: ::Remain where you are, I'll be joining you at your position shortly. Am I going to have to call in a medic before or after I get a debriefing?:: Prowl: @Starscream «None needed. I'm fine, just hot.» Soundwave: (txt): Soundwave does not know. This, never seen, never done. ... Only reference, self-past. Apology. Soundwave: [[No medics.]] Soundwave: *Even if his head hurts from that STOP.* Prowl: *mumbles something about improperly ejected dongles and defragging for weeks. feels around for the coolant he heard scooting across the floor.* Soundwave: *Nudges it closer to the hand.* Starscream: ::MEdical exam AFTER I yell at you. Good, that's how I prefer doing things.:: Prowl: «I get to yell first.» Prowl: *found it. picks it up and sips at.* ... Thanks. Soundwave: (txt): Welcome. Soundwave: [[...Personal medical exam declined. His deployers have not registered any system damage.]] Soundwave: [[He will accept any admonishments.]] Starscream: *ya'll get a few minutes to 'chill' before your boss shows up* Prowl: ... Well. Now you know. If you tell me to eject, it's going to take a bit before I can. Soundwave: (txt): Understood. Coolant: sufficient? Prowl: Unplug me early and the best case scenario is I'm left with a bunch of corrupt Metroplex junk data in my system, worse case is I lose some of MY data in him. Prowl: Mm. Sufficient. Soundwave: *Oh. Oh, oh, oh. So it's like Bee and Megatron and the... or worse, if he doesn't get all of HIS... okay.* Soundwave: (txt): Processed. Not risked. Prowl data preference: intact. Prowl: Agreed. Soundwave: *Well, that's a step up from wanting to die, he supposes.* Prowl: *sips while awaiting king screamy* Starscream: *KING SCREAMY IS HERE. He's rather cross* Prowl: *oh good so is Prowl, which one of them starts ranting at the other first?* Soundwave: *Drifts lower than Starscream's optic line so he doesn't have an extra reason to take offense at something.* Starscream: Explanations, now. Why did you not eject from Metroplex when ordered to? Prowl: Metroplex's brain is five times bigger than my entire body. It takes a couple of minutes to disengage my data and safely eject. Prowl: I DID eject from Metroplex when ordered to, it takes TIME to eject and you started throwing a fit before we had time to finish! Starscream: I was not informed that you had begun ejection, I was only told that you were still linked up and were tracking my trajectory. Starscream: Why did you not inform myself or Soundwave of the length of time ejection would take BEFORE the test? Prowl: You have a cityspeaker working for you, why did you not KNOW? Starscream: Because Windblade does't physically hook herself into Metroplex's brain most of the time! Prowl: ... Huh. Prowl: ... At any rate, it should be obvious. You interface with something, you need to eject properly when you're done. The more data is being transferred the longer that ejection process takes. Starscream: .... true. *It sounds a little painful for him to admit that*. Starscream: Do you have an exact estimate on how long ejection will take in the future. Prowl: It depends on how long I've been hooked in and what I'll be doing. Prowl: This time took about two minutes. It's the fastest I've ever unplugged, and it was... unpleasantly rushed. Soundwave: *Holds up a feeler* Prowl: The longest I've ever been hooked up was... thhhree hours? Three and a half? It took me fifteen minutes to unplug. Prowl: Yes? Soundwave: [[This, Soundwave's fault. Soundwave's duty: test preparations. Detail overlooked, Prowl response misinterpreted. Without error, no rush, confusion.]] Prowl: ... What WAS my response? *he has no idea* Soundwave: ((...i don't know why he's text talking there. go with it)) Soundwave: *About to replay it when he decides it's best not to let the weird voice get heard. Just repeats it by thought and text.* Soundwave: *And by repeats it, I mean:* Soundwave: [[No. Not done.]] Starscream: Next time, /pleae/ provide some sort of 'please hold' message for the duration of the ejection. Soundwave: *Prowl will get the actual response.* Starscream: Was there miscommunication on my orders? I ordered you to disconnect and I would change locations, not to be tracked. Prowl: Yes, all right, when I'm fifty thousand yottabytes deep in Metroplex's head, I'll be sure to clearly communicate why I can't do so right this second. Starscream: A preloaded message triggered when you start ejection will do. Prowl: ... It was not adequately conveyed to me that I was supposed to unplug and not track you. Starscream: *Looks at Soundwave* Prowl: I was under the impression I had not yet adequately located you and was to continue attempting to convey that I knew where you were. Prowl: *prowl is trying to say, without sacrificing any of his dignity, "i completely didn't understand you"* Soundwave: [[He will accept this blame. He did not initially realize what form or strength the orders to detach would need to be.]] Prowl: In the future—the order shouldn't be given to me. It should be given to Metroplex. Soundwave: *Soundwave will continue sponging blame to leave Prowl in less ill favor. He can handle a little more of it at the moment.* Soundwave: [[Acknowledged.]] Starscream: As I am not a Cityspeaker myself, I considered it better to relay commands through the regular Cybertronians. Starscream: *Starscream staunchly refuses to accept more blame than he can shove onto others* Prowl: The regular Cybertronian has trouble understanding you while he's inside Metroplex's head. Prowl: There is a fundamental misunderstanding most mechs have about cityspeakers—they think it means speaking TO the city. It doesn't. It means speaking FOR the city. Prowl: He can tell me things far more easily than I can tell him things. Starscream: So we know something we need to improve on. Luckily, we won't have to repeat the test, since you did prove that you're able to listen. Starscream: ...then why is the position not Citylisteners. Starscream: Anyway. Prowl: ... Because they help the city to speak? Starscream: ..you were able to speak FOR Metroplex by translating the data you were given into a projection, rather than describing it verbally. What can we set up to improve on that? Starscream: I don't mean a system by which you can describe it verbally, I mean something to transfer the projection more quickly and accurately. Starscream: Unless Soundwave wishes to continue playing intermediary. Prowl: ... Some kind of computer to plug into. So I can display what I'm getting on a screen. Prowl: It's much easier for me to translate his data into numbers than into words. Soundwave: *He wouldn't mind, but obviously Prowl's not having that.* Starscream: Easily arranged. Starscream: If you continue to speak for Metroplex, will a buffer system be required to limit the data? Or is there a time limit we should observe instead? Starscream: ..or perhaps you just require training to be able to deal with it... Prowl: If I'm going to speak for him for longer than a few minutes at a time, I'm going to need a more efficient cooling process. Starscream: *is going to do some pacing. This has a lot of potential, he's got to look at the options* Starscream: It's inelegant but what about an external auxillery system? Prowl: When I did it previously, I was hooked up to a... a rig, of sorts, to keep me cool better. It was jury-rigged but efficient, I can describe it so it can be replicated and improved on. Prowl: Yes—an external system, that's what I had. Starscream: *oh good, he's at least as smart as the folks on the LL. Thats a horrible thought* Starscream: Well. I'd say that if we don't fry your processor this should work. Soundwave: [[He requests the computer be turned over to him for safekeeping when it is not in use.]] Soundwave: *They don't need people tampering with it to screw up Prowl or Metroplex, and he doesn't trust Starscream or the Constructicons with it either.* Prowl: *... Prowl supposes he doesn't need the computer when it isn't being used.* Prowl: *still, though.* Wouldn't it be easier to just... build it into the room? Soundwave: [[Anyone who got access to the room would be able to modify it.]] Starscream: The only person with the will to do so is Windblade, and I doubt she'd risk something that would damage MEtroplex. Soundwave: [[The only one that you know of. If one of the dissatisfied civilians finds out...?]] Starscream: There are far more direct ways of tampering with our operations than breaking into this room and fiddling around on the computer. Starscream: A copy of the data on it should be stored externally, though. In preferrably more than one place. Soundwave: *Shakes his helm. He doesn't like it. But Starscream has that Tone that suggests he's already decided he knows what's best.* Soundwave: [[Very well.]] Starscream: *Soundwave can aregue his case later, maybe after someone actually tries to break in* Starscream: Well, Prowl? Is this something suffiently non-objectionable for you to do? Prowl: ... What, play hide-and-seek with you? Starscream: Cityspeak for Metroplex. 8I Prowl: ... I have no good reason not to. Soundwave: *The tiniest huff. It could easily be mistaken for an overheated system trying to cool itself down.* Prowl: But Metroplex has a cityspeaker. One who actually knows what she's doing. Prowl: What do I offer? Starscream: Windblade works for her own interests, and for the time being you work for mine. Prowl: *... Prowl is quite certain that his interests line up with Starscream's just as little or less than Windblade's do.* Prowl: *BUT that's none of his business. sips his coolant.* Starscream: There is the possibility of Theophany, as Crystal City has no Speaker at all, but if I have my choice I would rather have an eye on Metroplex. Prowl: *doesn't really want to go to theophany. but he supposes he doesn't care THAT much.* Prowl: So—what am I going to do? As cityspeaker. Starscream: For now, continue gathering information on his frame. Like the blueprints you aquired. You can work together with Soundwave in setting up survellance. Starscream: Naturally you'll need to share anything Metroplex thinks is important enough for us to know immediately. Prowl: Like the blueprints I decompressed? Starscream: Yes, exactly. Starscream: More tasks will have to be determined once we sort out Windblade. Prowl: "Sort out"? Soundwave: [[He will require updated movement permissions.]] Starscream: What? ...oh. Those. Starscream: *sighs loudly* Fine. Your holomatter privlages are reinstated. However, invisible guests are still banned. Starscream: If anyone wants to show up at your door they must be detectable through conventional means. Soundwave: [[...Prowl cannot plug in with a holoavatar, Lord.]] Starscream: Travel to and from the workplace was never part of the restriction. Soundwave: [[Acknowledged. Records updated as necessary.]] Prowl: What's my schedule now? Starscream: Will will keep your sessions with Metroplex short until the coolant rig can be built, which shouldn't take long- even less time if your groupies deign to help. Starscream: So for now your main assignment is still the construction yard, with a session either before or after with Metroplex. Prowl: After. Starscream: After, then. Prowl: So for now all I'm getting from him is physical data. Starscream: For now, yes. We don't really know how any of this works yet, so I'm actually attempting something called 'caution'. Prowl: Understood. Starscream: Alright. I'll follow up with the both of you later. Starscream: *gonna LEAVE BYE* Prowl: *there he go* Soundwave: *Soundwave waits a minute to make sure Starscream isn't going to come back* Soundwave: *And then gently whooshes air in Prowl's general direction for attention* Prowl: *glances at* Prowl: ... You said you were taking the blame for... something. For my not understanding some instruction. Prowl: It wasn't your fault, was it. Soundwave: *Wh-- oh. Okay. He was going to ask something, but he can answer this too.* Soundwave: (txt): Partial blame. After review, Soundwave's disconnection order, explanation: insufficient. However, initial response not "not done." True refusal, believed not Prowl's. That, not Starscream's -- Soundwave: business. Also, present Starscream ire: excessive. Unnecessary addition avoided. Not expected problem. Soundwave metrotitan unfamiliarity expressed before test. Prowl: ... You didn't need to distract it from me. But I'm sure you already know that. Soundwave: (txt): ...Prowl took blame after Rodimus bridge exposure. Prowl: Of course. It was my fault he found out. Soundwave: (txt): Original 'fault': Soundwave's. Within expected social structure, Prowl's right: pass all. Different outcome. Ally - Soundwave - guarded. That, not forgotten. Prowl: ... *small nod* Prowl: *wants to argue that soundwave stood to lose far more in rodimus's optics than prowl had stood to lose by shifting the blame over to himself* Soundwave: *Prowl has so much blame on himself he's staring into an abyss and not eating.* Soundwave: *He could stand not to get a pile more.* Prowl: *but prowl's footing with starscream is far more tenuous than soundwave's right now; soundwave could stand to lose a little ground far less than prowl could.* Prowl: *the math checks out.* Soundwave: (txt): More time required here? Movement home desired? ... Would accept travel company? Prowl: I'm sure the guards will be along to transport me back shortly. *Prowl isn't transported anywhere freely.* You can follow them if you can talk them into letting you. Soundwave: *Soundwave shake-laughs* Prowl: *... was that funny?* Soundwave: (txt): Soundwave: security. Starscream gave guard control. Prowl remembers? Talk: unnecessary. If demand: made, demand: obeyed. Prowl: ..................... Right. Prowl: If I'm making mistakes like that, clearly I need to finish my coolant first. Soundwave: (txt): Acknowledged. Take time. Soundwave: *Drifts closer (but not too close) and settles there, biolights dimming while he idles, just watching.* Prowl: *sips. he's not drinking super fast. they might be there for a bit.* Soundwave: *Hey, he's not gonna hurry Prowl back before Prowl's ready to go. That's practically freedom he's drinking right there. He should enjoy it.* Prowl: *he didn't really want freedom. he'll settle for coolant.* Soundwave: *Eh, one step at a time. In any case:* (txt): ...Prowl's building graph: impressive. Rapid, accurate line segment observation, recreation, delivery... Soundwave: (txt): Deployer interpretation assistance required. Prowl's numbers-- Soundwave: *Please hold. Need a word. Need, like, THREE words.* (txt): Mesmerizing, magnificent, exquisite, honor. Soundwave: *...FOUR.* Prowl: ... *awkward shrug* It's what I was built for. Soundwave: *His feeler flicks because he can't form a hand to do it.* Soundwave: (txt): Truth unchanged. Liked, enjoyed. Prowl should know. Soundwave: *Quiets down again.* Prowl: Mm. Prowl: *all right, coolant complete. looks around for somewhere to drop off an empty cube, sees nothing, so just. holds it.* Soundwave: *Holds out feeler* Prowl: ... You're a plane, you don't need to be carrying used cups. Soundwave: (txt): Soundwave: cupholder. #humorous Prowl: Pff. Soundwave: *A PFF. VICTORY.* Prowl: *something in his cheeks is stiff when he not-frowns. it's been a while since he moved those parts.* Soundwave: (txt): Come. Return drive: slow. Excuse given: tired Prowl. However, avatar visit requested when able. That, Soundwave's cube. Return needed. Prowl: ... I'm not going to be *outside,* am I? Prowl: I'm in a transport whenever I'm outside. Soundwave: (txt): ...Transport vehicle arranged if believed necessary. Soundwave: *Though he'd like to know in what universe Prowl could outrun his alt mode or evade Ravage's nose.* Prowl: The public would object to seeing me out in public. Even if I WAS being escorted. Soundwave: *A spiky stream of hatred for the general population and his inability to just brainwash the lot of them without breaking various promises runs through him for a second.* Soundwave: *It's swiftly replaced by a fresh dose of patience and a personal reminder that the general population is panicky and dumb and that's why they need watching in the first place.* Soundwave: (txt): Understood. Transport called. Accompaniment provided. ... Holo visit still requested. Prowl missed. Duties also expanded. Prowl: *nods* Soundwave: (txt): Query: Before immediate area surveillance net reactivated, affectionate action allowed? Prowl: *skeptical look* ... You're a plane. Soundwave: (txt): Outside helm area, Prowl. Prowl: Oh. Prowl: What action? Soundwave: *Displays a shot of one of the times he's pressed Prowl's hand to his 'face'.* Soundwave: *Well aware that avatar privileges may not be the same as physical ones. Avatar privileges don't include telepathy fears.* Soundwave: ((strike the display from the record, leave well aware, continue here:)) Soundwave: (txt): Hand against Soundwave visor, cheek. Prowl: *considers it* Prowl: *... considers it longer* Prowl: *...... is still considering it* Prowl: *......... honestly, the fact that it's taking this long reveals what the answer is, doesn't it?* Soundwave: *Vaguely crestfallen, though he won't let on at all. It's going to be a no, isn't it? Well, that's all right. He does get it. And he got to touch Prowl's mind for a couple of minutes.* Prowl: ... I can turn my avatar on. Soundwave: (txt): ....Accepted. Prowl: ... I'm sorry. Soundwave: (txt): Understood. Avatar preferred against nothing. Soundwave: (txt): Come. Transport approaching. Prowl: *nods, stands, and heads for door* Soundwave: *Will float after* Prowl: *will wait outside for Soundwave. is this far enough for him to transform?* Soundwave: *Soundwave moves a little farther away than that before dropping out of the air and unfolding into himself (and those attached to him).* Prowl: *right. holomatter on, then. Prowl's real body lingers near the wall, perfectly still—watching himself as he walks up to Soundwave* Prowl: *for a moment, he's all polygons. it takes a moment for the textures to boot up.* Soundwave: *Weird, and a little startling, but interesting, in its way. He'll wait until they do.* Prowl: *there. everything ready. reaches most of the way to Soundwave's face and waits for him to reach back. Soundwave: *This is probably one of the strangest things he's ever seen or done, when it comes to... these kinds of things. Seeing both the Prowl he's gotten to know and the Prowl he deeply wishes he could,-- Soundwave: is somewhat jarring, thanks to the major difference in their appearances, but he's not going to change his mind. No. He reaches for the avatar's hand and presses it against his visor,-- Soundwave: silent. Then, suddenly, harder, because for a little while he'd been concerned Prowl would fade before they could find something for him, and a heavy, almost ragged vent.* Soundwave: *He'll let go after that, if reluctantly.* Prowl: *... not yet. presses his hand harder against Soundwave's face* Prowl: *and leans in to tap his helm against Soundwave's* Soundwave: *Oh. Oh! Gonna turn that tap into a quick, firm nuzzle while he has the chance.* Soundwave: (txt): ...Prowl thanked. Prowl: ... For what? Soundwave: (txt): Permission. Soundwave: (txt): Surveillance net reactivated. Soundwave: *Motions onward.* Prowl: *avatar promptly snaps off*

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