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daisybeewrites · 3 years

Text

Academy Blues — Prologue

word count: 1.8k

warnings: not any for this chapter

ship: Dousy, background Fitzsimmons and Philinda

okay y’all.. here it is. the first installment of my first LONG TERM SERIES!!!!!! ahhhh i’m so excited. literally i cant wait to continue this and see where it takes me. i have an idea and a few different planning sheets, but honestly i have no idea where exactly this will end up. i love each and single one of you <3 thank you for reading!! this is also posted on Ao3, and linked in the masterlist.

Daisy hated the sound of the bells at The Academy. Screeching, awful, way too loud, the bells were the bane of her existence. They all wore standard-issue watches from the lab that monitored vitals and gave them reminders, and also told the time, for god’s sake! Fitz had even modified hers so that she could play snake on the tiny watch face! There was no need for the bells to be so excruciatingly disruptive. Though, Daisy guessed, there were many things more tortuous than bells ringing every hour and fifteen minutes.

Daisy slowed to a jog, cutting her morning run short. The bright side to being a third-year was that you chose your schedule, for the most part, and that meant Daisy had a free first period for four out of five days of classes. She usually spent this free period getting an extra hour in at the gym, boxing or sparring with Mack or Bobbi, two fourth years that had reluctantly taken her under their wings, or sleeping in. She reserved sleeping in for especially rough nights where visions of ashes and earthquakes and lightning returned time and time again, no matter how many deep breaths she took or sheep she counted.

But this morning was not one of those mornings. She had been up before sunrise, a little before her usual alarm and silently headed out of her dorm for a run. It was humid this time of year on most Virginia mornings, but never so hot that it made Daisy feel as if she was being smothered. The cooler air chilled her sweaty skin, her chest rising and falling as she jogged up the three flights of steps to the second years’ dorms. Down one long hallway, and she arrived at her room.

Daisy had been given her own room at the start of last year, complete with poly-adaptic-proto-whatever panels, which she had painted a pastel shade of purple, to compliment the greens of her cacti and the dark purples and blacks of everything else in her room. Even May had agreed that the stark white was too ”psych wing” for a bedroom. Daisy was grateful for the space, but considering the panels and the private room were only necessary since...

She shuddered. Grabbing her shower caddy, Daisy set off to the bathroom at the opposite end of the hall, hoping no one else was spending a free first period at the dorms.

Her shoulder-length waves were wet from bouncing against her neck, and starting to become annoying now that the sweat had dried and was starting to itch. Picking the white tiled shower furthest away from the door, Daisy quickly turned the water on, checked the temperature, pulled her sports bra and shorts off and hopped into the shower. Shampoo, condition, soap body, rinse. Checking her watch, Daisy found that she had showered in record time, less than three minutes. After spending another five just enjoying the hot water, she hopped out and changed into her class clothes.

Dark purple leggings, Coulson’s grey vintage SHIELD tee and a pair of white running sneakers she had “borrowed” from Jemma completed her look. Passing the mirrors, Daisy tried not to glance at herself. If her hair was messy or her undereye bags a bit too dark, she didn’t want to know. Instead, she headed back to her room to pack her bag for the day.

SHIELD-issued laptop, extra hard drives and a charger, Advanced CS 3: Ethical Hacking: Theory and Application, Advanced CS 4: Secrets of The Coding Languages, Physics notebook, an essay that was three days late on some boring book about international laws, and her sparring gear were all thrown into the black bag. She gave a second glance at the Russian notebooks Bobbi had loaned to her, promising that she’d learn without taking the class. Oh well, she still had all of this term to start. Plus, would she ever really need more than the dirty words?

One look at the alarm clock that sat on her dark hardwood night table showed that she still had almost forty-five minutes before she had to be in the computer lab. Sitting down on her bed, Daisy ran a hand over the grey blanket May had given her.

Daisy’s relationship with May and Coulson had been something of a problem with other students when she first got here. Some had been okay with the obvious paternal love Coulson showed for Daisy, showing her around and checking up on her, scheduling lunch dates and reminding her of tests. May was more subtle, texting her links to tai chi videos when she noticed Daisy getting too stressed or letting Daisy do her own thing if she saw that she was overwhelmed. Of course, none of the other students knew her family history, what she had gone through just to realize that May and Coulson were more her parents than her biological father and mother could ever be. She would see them later today—May during field training and Coulson in between lectures in the canteen.

Daisy walked over to her window to open her blinds, staring out at the campus she had grown to love. The large brick buildings scattered around acres of the Virginia countryside; green fields meant for physical activities like sparring or obstacle courses, or simply basking in the weather to study or chat; the dorms—red brick and concrete melded together to upgrade and expand the charming style of previously-built homes.

Grabbing a protein bar, Daisy headed to the canteen to make a green smoothie (and maybe snatch a cup of joe before she had to listen to an hour-long lecture on the reason SHIELD must cooperate with the UN’s stupid rules at 7:30 in the morning). Smelling the pines and morning dew surrounding her, she smiled slightly. Maybe this term wouldn’t be so bad.

———————————————————————

Daniel Sousa was a man of honor. He was a man of great strength. Agent Daniel Sousa, previously Officer Daniel Sousa in the US Army, was a man who could fix his damn alarm clock on his own.

Just, not today. Or the day before.

So, Agent Daniel Sousa was now hurrying his way to class at The SHIELD Academy, books in hand and gym bag slung over his shoulders. Catching a glance at himself in the shiny glass doors of the bio-chem building, he groaned. He hadn’t even brushed his hair. And, looking down, he discovered he was wearing two different shoes.

This is the college experience everyone raves about, he thought bitterly. You see, Daniel Sousa had enlisted to the army straight out of high school, forgoing university. He climbed the ranks impressively quickly, earning his place as second-in-command and reconnaissance scout in the 28th Infantry Regiment. Unfortunately, after only four years in the army, Sousa was injured in the field, losing his leg and almost his life.

He came back to the US a war hero, and yet, he felt he wasn't finished. So, when a recruiter named Peggy Carter knocked on his door claiming to be from SHIELD (“Wow, you guys are still a thing?”), he leapt at the chance to continue fighti-...doing good. The Academy wasn’t exactly what he had bargained for, though. Trying to earn his B.A. and training to be an agent at the same time was grueling, but nothing he couldn’t deal with.

No, six different one hour and fifteen minute long classes plus mandatory physical therapy every day wasn’t going to break him. Learning how to be a communications agent and re-starting field training and catching up on general college education was no problem. Pressuring himself to be the best, to break the limits, to get past all his weaknesses was just another miniscule feather to add to the pile.

Unless his stupid alarm clock broke. Then yes, Agent Daniel Sousa would fail, buckle under the weight and be left on the floor to die.

Maybe he was being a bit dramatic.

One bunny-slippered right foot and a sneakered left leg carried him forward, propelled by a quickly chugged orange Celsius and his sheer will not to be late.

Daniel heard the late bell ring out, understanding that, on his first day of class, he would be counted late. It wasn’t like him, not at all. Especially when his first class was a refresher course on field tactics and covert strategy, something in which he was already aces.

He let out a sigh, slowing as he rounded the corner into the comms building. At the Academy, most buildings were grouped into categories: the cafeteria, gym and pool, and student resource building all to the south; the gun range, obstacle course, and specialized gym to the east; bio-chem labs, tech labs, and smaller rooms for lectures to the west; the computer labs and comms buildings right smack in the middle; and dorms to the north.

He swiped a key card with his driver’s license picture and student ID, unlocking the sliding doors that led to the computer labs. It was quicker to short cut through them than to walk around the building to the entrance closest to communications classrooms.

It wasn’t because he knew a certain broody brunette spent her mornings in the lab.

No, it wasn’t, because she wasn’t in her usual seat in the corner, typing away.

He slowly walked through the rows of computers, searching for a familiar black backpack. Nothing was there.

“Hey, Sousa,” an accented female voice called behind him. He whipped around to see who it was, feeling just a twinge of disappointment when Elena, or, as most people knew her, Yo-Yo, was leaning against the door frame. Yo-Yo, a fourth year operations trainee, who was very close with Daisy.

“Hey, Yo-Yo. Good morning,” he called, “I’m running a bit late.”

Elena checked her nails casually, “Way to state the obvious. You were running faster than I could trying to get here before the bell.”

Daniel rubbed the back of his neck and blushed. “Yeah…”

“Daisy’s running late today, too.”

Daniel looked around, pretending that hearing Daisy’s name didn’t make him want to smile. “Oh, of course. She’s usually here early.”

Elena nodded, chuckling a little at his response. She couldn’t tell if he was oblivious or just a bad liar. It was charming, really. “Right. See ya ‘round, Sousa!”

“See ya,” He replied. He thought he heard a quiet ‘Lovable nerds’ coming from the direction she left, but he couldn’t be sure.

And so, with a last look around the computer lab, Daniel set off to arrive late to May’s lecture.

———————————————————————

okay okay,,, what do y’all think?? like/reblog and let me know! it’s the best way to support writers and it only takes a second! stay tuned for more chapters!!

#academy blues #daisy johnson #agents of s.h.i.e.l.d.#dousy #daisy johnson x daniel sousa #timequake #daniel sousa #jemma simmons #leo fitz #fitzsimmons #philinda #philindaisy #ashby’s fics #marvels aos #au!

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disrepairhouse · 4 years

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::Return - Chapter 1

Metal clanged and screeched as the steel barrier attempted to open for the first time in several years, fighting against the heavy wear and tear. Plating cracked as the massive structure jerked and stuck; the mechanisms pulled against the deep dents on the iron walls and gave in with an ear-shattering crack. Scorched earth fell away from the outer edges, revealing the damaged and clanking mechanics of the battered base while the house inside filled with an angry red glow – the first natural light the residents had seen in eight years.

“What happened?”

A tall, slim blue hedgehog with glowing red eyes and long, white-striped quills pulled back into a low ponytail crossed from one side of the darkened basement lab to the other. The only light in the room came from the giant computer screen, one of the few that remained intact on the long wall of scratched and worn computer screens. A desk stretched across the wall underneath with two sets of keyboards: One built into the desk that had long since stopped working and another that had been salvaged and hooked up to replace the first. A bright red error flashed across the working screen, glinting off the silvery metallic right arm of the red-eyed hedgehog as he reached the two other figures that stood beside the desk.

He scanned the error screens and opened dialogue boxes across the monitor before his gaze returned to the other two, one of whom had moved to the keyboard to try and fix the problem. The smaller of the two, who barely reached the hip of the other, was a burgundy hedgehog with teal streaks down her spines and large, wild, purple and green eyes that looked up at him when he approached. The red echidna beside her not only dwarfed her in height, but the red-eyed hedgehog in build. His one good eye glowed green against the emergency reds of the computer while a simple black eyepatch covered the other. Two long, metal claws protruded from the back of his right hand, leaving several indents and scratches on the table as he fought the malfunctioning system, the keyboard fairing no better against the hook attached to the opposite hand. He gave a grunt of a reply and continued poring through the defense system’s error codes to find the answer the hedgehog was seeking.

With another set of footsteps on the stairs behind them, the echidna sighed in frustration and turned to the others to address the issue, “The shield is too damaged. The mechanisms can’t open it on their own anymore. We may have to force them open ourselves.”

“That shouldn’t be a problem, should it?” the blue hedgehog questioned, raising an eyebrow as he scanned the four bodies around the room, “I think between the three of us, we should be able to manage.”

“It’s not getting it open that’s going to be the problem,” the echidna sighed, “it’s getting it closed again afterwards. I’m going to have to see how bad the damage actually is, but if we break it further, we’ll be without any defenses.”

The approaching figure stepped into the light of the screens, revealing a yet taller, more humanoid figure with long, blonde hair, sharp blue eyes, and a sword hilt strapped to his back. Though his overall shape was more human than the others, his body was covered in thick red and white robotic armor, from his torso, to his arms, to his legs. On his head, he wore a sharp, though scuffed and dented, red and white helmet. He had several inches on the echidna, dwarfing the small girl beside them further.

“So how do we fix it?” his voice was sharp and curt, a trait the household had gotten used to over the years yet the anxiety was still plain as day.

“Manually, likely,” the echidna explained, grabbing a thick bag of tools near the stairs as the others followed after. The smallest of the four stayed behind to examine the computers, watching with silent apprehension. It had been the most activity the household had seen in a great many years. Once the other members quieted down and accepted the state of the ruined world, it grew quiet and mostly uneventful. She was correct so far about the base being safe and the iron shield holding up despite the destruction outside, though it clearly took a number of heavy hits that took their toll. Their supplies also held out, as she said they would. All in all, they were likely the safest and most well-prepared the world over for the destruction that came eight years ago. How lucky, for them, to know a time traveler.

But now it was finally time to open up again. The answer to their problem was near and they could hide no longer. They were as ecstatic as they were wary. They couldn’t run off after the source right away, they needed to track down another surviving group first, but at least her powers made them easier to find. Though, none of them were overly pleased at having to face the occupants of the other group, especially after so long. It would be no easy conversation, but it was a necessary step to saving the world.

First, though, they needed to be able to get out of their own protected base.

---

It had been eight years since the Ancient Gods reawakened and wreaked havoc on the world. What started with roaming monsters across Soleanna, turned to drowned coastlines, ravaging fires, and craters the size of cities opening across the world. Chaos was the first to rise, consuming all seven of the Chaos Emeralds to destroy Station Square once more. Dark Gaia was next, flattening Spagonia with earthquakes for weeks before finally opening a hole to the middle of the earth and swallowing it whole. The final God, the most destructive of them all, was Solaris. Soleanna fell to the fires first, but the rest of the world wasn’t far behind. The fires consumed everything: the land, the seas, even the sky. The air grew hot and dry and day and night ceased to exist. Mobians and humans, alike, fought back however they could. G.U.N. organized. The Freedom Fighters rose once again. Sonic was everywhere and nowhere.

But none of it mattered.

G.U.N. fell.

The Freedom Fighters were reduced to scraps.

With the world in-between, the Gods clashed and Crisis City returned.

Several miles east of what was once Soleanna, in one of the last remaining safe zones, a group of survivor mobians were gathering in a panel room. A barely functioning computer console sat in the center of the room, blinking lazily with several broken screens, an exhausted, heavily bandaged fox stood above it, fighting against the damaged keys to bring up a map of the area. Around the edges of the room, several small groups stood about, tending to wounds, mumbling quietly to themselves, watching the computer in tired desperation, or simply resting and waiting. A white bat fought with a black and red hedgehog about bandaging a gash on his arm. A red echidna stood near the fox, bouncing from foot to foot with obvious irritation but remained silent to let him work. A pink hedgehog sat near the wall going through a medical supply box to take inventory with a purple chameleon, though their supplies were running thin.

The room was silent besides the heavy clacking of the console’s buttons, the echidna’s shoes against the concrete floor, and the quiet argument at the back of the room. Several pairs of ears turned towards the door, however, as a whirlwind of clanking and boisterous chatter filled the hallway outside. The heavy steel door slid back with a noisy clatter, revealing the banged up blue hedgehog with a forced grin and a bulky black and red robot following closely behind. The others quickly dropped what they were doing as the two appeared with sighs of relief and concern.

“Sonic! Thank goodness you’re back,” the fox sighed, jumping from the console to join his friend’s side. The robot crossed the room in silence to join the bat and black hedgehog.

“Told ya I would be, buddy,” Sonic grinned, though the usual levels of cocksure certainty had diminished over the years and even the hero hedgehog appeared tired and ready to fall apart, for those who looked close enough. He did his best to hide it, to remain optimistic as he’d always done, but it became increasingly difficult even for him as the world around them fell to ruin and nothing they did could stop it.

“Omega, sweety, we’re glad to see you back in one piece,” the bat smiled up at the towering robot, “how are things looking out there?”

“Outlook negative,” the bot responded, gaining him several wary looks from around the room, though they turned back to Sonic once they caught sight of the scowl on the black hedgehog’s face. He already looked ready to fight, no one wanted to push their luck today.

“It’s not as bad as all that,” Sonic reassured them, though quietly. He looked up towards the map that was projected on the wall-sized screen, “there are some… slightly less desecrated sections of land over here,” he explained, pointing south of their location, “the monsters are thinner but…” He trailed off and the echidna stepped up to nudge him on. “There’s a crater beside it about the size of a Gaia hole. It’s… possible it’s one of his retreats.”

Silence filled the room again until the black hedgehog finally stood and approached the console. “I’ve had about enough of this running and hiding. We ought to focus on one of these Gods to take out first and go through them one by one. If we take care of Chaos first, we can get the emeralds back. It’ll be easy from there,” he growled, his temper boiling as the others moved well out of his way on his path to the blue hedgehog.

“Shadow, we’ve talked about this,” Tails sighed, though was quickly interrupted.

“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but for once I’m agreeing with Shadow,” Knuckles huffed, though twisted his face up in displeasure afterwards, “I’m tired of this. We haven’t gotten anywhere with anything else, maybe it’s time we just take them head-on.”

“We tried that, remember? You nearly got snapped in half by Gaia, and Chaos almost drowned Sonic,” Tails huffed in annoyance.

“Yeah but…”

“C’mon, Tails, we could try again. Surely, they’ve gotta be getting tired, fighting each other this long. We tried when they first showed up, maybe if we tried again,” Sonic nearly pleaded, the desperation more prevalent with every word. Even he was at his wit’s end and wanted an answer. He’d always found an answer, no matter how dire the situation. The guilt of doing nothing to help for so long was becoming too much to bear.

Tails sighed again, but remained silent as he turned away from his friend’s pleading eyes. He didn’t know how to respond. It was dangerous and they still had so little information. Not to mention, they weren’t at their strongest anymore, either. Everyone was injured and exhausted, fighting every day to find the solution to the rampaging Gods, their only rewards being more injuries every time. But what else could they do? There didn’t seem to be an end in sight and they were getting nowhere. Maybe they should give it one last, good fight.

However, as the room silently debated what course of action was best, a notification popped up on the gadget around Tails’ wrist, informing him of a presence outside the base. He pulled the screen up to find out who, or what, it was, secretly grateful for the distraction, brief as it likely was. There were no other bases that had survived near them. They’d either been smoked out, buried, or destroyed, so the motion sensor was more than likely picking up another monster. However, once the camera feed cleared enough for him to make out what it was, his brows furrowed. It wasn’t monsters. It was three mobians, one of which looked to be a small child. He showed Sonic the video feed when he approached and even Sonic looked surprised to see living people again.

“I didn’t see anyone at all on my way back,” but he shook his head and jumped for the door, “let’s get them in here before any monsters show up!”

“Hold up,” Shadow growled, grabbing the speedster on his way out, “how do we know they’re safe to let in here? If you didn’t see them, where did they come from?”

“C’mon, Shads, this isn’t the time for suspicion.” Shadow scowled at the nickname, for likely the umpteenth time. “They’ve got a kid with them.” Sonic wriggled free and darted for the door, gone before anyone else could argue further. Shadow growled again and stiffened into a defensive posture, knowing Sonic would do as he pleased, as he always had. If the strangers tried to attack once inside, at least they wouldn’t get far. The room had no shortage of fighters available, it’d be three on eight and one of them was a child.

The others waited on bated breath for Sonic’s return, curious but wary about the strangers, for a variety of reasons. Their concern was anything but relieved as Sonic returned with a look of obvious discomfort, leading the three back to the console room. He said nothing, but his eyes darted back and forth between the group and the room, almost seeming to keep from ever turning his back fully to them. Tails gave him a questioning look, but turned his attention back to the three new arrivals.

The group was led by the small child he’d seen on the screen. Even for a young mobian, she was small and thin, with dark burgundy fur striped in teal, oddly similar in pattern to Shadow. She wore a short, tattered purple dress with scuffed up tennis shoes and her wild spines barely contained in pigtails. Despite her size, she looked strangely confident and calm and her enormous green and purple eyes blinked with an unreadable, deadpan stare. She briefly scanned the room as she entered, her expression hitched ever so slightly when her gaze fell over Shadow, but quickly moved on and returned to the calm stare.

But it wasn’t the strange girl that put the rest of the room on edge. It was her companions, one of which being the obvious source of discomfort for Sonic. The two ‘mobians’ that followed close behind the little girl entered, one after the other, both studying the room and others present in silence. The one closest to the little girl was a tall, fluffy red echidna with one glowing, green eye, the whites of his eyes a shiny black. He wore loose and torn black pants, tall black boots, a blank tank top, and a torn grey jacket. He remained closest to the small child, almost protectively so, and kept the sharpest eye on the others, though his gaze seemed to all but avoid Knuckles.

However, while the other two no one was entirely certain of their identity, the third ‘stranger’ was no stranger at all. The tall blue hedgehog with one metallic arm and bright red eyes was recognized immediately by everyone present and garnered exactly the defensive reactions that would be expected from Metal Sonic waltzing into the room. He acknowledged the recognition by grinning and crossing his arms, though remained equally silent. Sonic inched further away from the group while Tails watched them closely and Knuckles stared the other echidna down with heavy suspicion.

Shadow was the first to break the tense silence, “Metal Sonic, so you’ve survived this long.”

“Of course. You think even ancient gods can defeat me?” Metal grinned, which got a side-eyed glance from the small child.

“So why are you here, Metal?” Sonic challenged, though continued to keep his distance.

“Well, obviously to-,” though he was cut off shortly by the small child stepping forward and interrupting.

“We’re here to help,” she stated quickly, though her expression didn’t change much. The room fell to uncomfortable silence once more as attention moved to the tiny, apparently very brave little girl. She glanced around a moment, though avoided Shadow this time around, and turned back to Sonic and Tails, “well, perhaps ‘stop you from doing something stupid’ is a more accurate description.” Her dead stare turned dark as she centered on Sonic, “Do not fight the Gods. Not yet. You’ll lose and everyone involved will die.”

Sonic’s expression twisted to confusion, but before the conversation could go any further, realization struck Knuckles as he glared wildly over at the other echidna, “You’re Metal Knuckles, aren’t you?!”

Once again, attention was brought back to the robots as RK resisted his own smirk. “I am, though I’ll be honest, you’re one of only two people who have realized in a few hundred years.” Mumbles and whispers broke out around the room. The already on-edge mobians only further bristled at the realization that they let two of the most dangerous of Robotnik’s creations waltz into their safe zone. Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, and even Amy and Espio dropped what they were doing to go on the defensive. The only one who didn’t make further commotion, ironically, was Shadow, who only stared the three down.

The others debated what to do and how to respond, every suggestion from ‘two on eight’ to ‘maybe they aren’t here to fight’ echoed around the increasingly panicked meeting room. But once again, it was Shadow who finally broke the atmosphere as he turned to the small, sighing child that apparently led the two robots. “So, we’ve got Metal Sonic and Metal Knuckles, walking into the middle of our base, outnumbered and mostly unresponsive. I’m going to go out on a limb and say you’re no mere child, either. There’s trouble written all over your face and I suggest you come clean immediately.”

His threat silenced the others and drew attention from the small girl who had been otherwise avoiding eye contact with him. Sonic frowned at the insinuation and offered a small, “c’mon, Shadow, she’s just a kid…”

Shadow scowled at him, barely missing the brief distracted look on the girl’s face, before she shook her head rather quickly and spoke up again, “No, he’s right. I’m no child. In fact, I’d hazard a guess… you may even know me, Shadow.” Her voice remained calm, but there was a small hint of unease in her claim. The black hedgehog turned back to study her closely, though the sharp gaze of the notoriously violent being put RK on edge enough to inch closer to her, just in case. When Shadow said nothing, however, she smiled and explained, “you saved me from one of Gaia’s Nightmares before all this started. On the rooftop of my school. Remember?”

Shadow’s brows furrowed in confusion, giving a brief rest to his dangerous scowl, but the small girl only sighed and continued, “though, that was the last of many interactions we’ve had. Through many timelines. Solaris is active again and I thought, of anyone, you’d be the most likely to remember. Normally I wouldn’t put this so bluntly, I used to work more… subtly, but this is an emergency situation, we should get right to the point.” Without further explanation, the purple and green in the girl’s eyes swapped and the whites became a molten red as her quills shifted and rose, crystals consuming every inch of her fur as her muzzle greyed out.

Confusion and gasps filled the room and Shadow took an immediate step back. His eyes swam with vague memories rushing back, nearly splitting his head as he reached up to grab hold of it. Rouge moved beside him, casting the strange girl sideways glances. Finally, Shadow seemed to remember what she wanted as a name slipped through the tense air:

“Mephiles.”

The girl nodded and explained, “Thought so.” The crystals retracted, but the girl’s eyes remained the same, “We’ve never formally met, though, so let me introduce myself for the first time in several timelines. My name is Itara, I was originally created in one of Robotnik’s labs from a separated part of Mephiles’ power, put into the body of a mobian child. I was created just before you and Rouge stole that scepter, the day Mephiles was released. I wandered the world for two-hundred years in the original Crisis City timeline before he taught me to use my powers and I spent the next several timelines assisting him in releasing Iblis so they could become Solaris again. But my mobian vessel was also killed that day and my shard of power returned to him. After the battle, he gave me a body of my own again and I’ve been living, without my powers, without him, since.

“Also, now that you’re aware of my identity,” her deadpan stare finally broke into a scowl, “I didn’t much appreciate you laughing at me that day on the roof! That was the second time I tripped that day and I had half a mind to tell you how stupid you were for not knowing who I was!” Shadow narrowed his eyes in suspicion, but said nothing as her expression calmed again, “But I couldn’t. Because I didn’t even have my powers at the time. I wasn’t scared of the Nightmare, that day, I was worried that you would recognize me and I was relieved when you didn’t.”

Shadow scoffed and crossed his arms, but Tails spoke up first, “Wait, so you’re… part of Solaris?”

Itara nodded, “I’m sure you don’t believe me but,” she turned back to Shadow, “you remember me now, don’t you?”

“If what you say is true,” Shadow growled, having regained his composure much quicker than even she expected, “then destroying you will be a start to my plan, the easiest of the three.”

RK moved between them at the threat, though she showed no hint of concern, despite knowing better than most that Shadow wasn’t one for empty threats. “Destroying me would only give my tiny shard of his power back to him. It would, in fact, do the opposite of what you hope,” she explained. Admittedly, she knew her father gave her a body again for a reason and that he very much wanted her alive, but she wasn’t about to offer that information so freely.

“Why are you here, then?” Sonic questioned, stepping up to try and keep Shadow down.

“As I said, we’re here to help. You may not believe me right away, but I don’t want what my father wants anymore. I helped him once and died for it. I have no doubt he’ll do the same thing once the threats are dealt with,” she turned back to Shadow again and scowled, “which is why you can’t attack the Gods outright. You take one of them out of the equation, it’ll only make the other two worse. Their ongoing battle is the only thing keeping the timelines intact, we need their focus to remain on each other for the time being.”

“Why would we ever believe the likes of you?” Shadow hissed, despite Sonic’s attempts to make him back down. “You’re part of Mephiles, you helped him destroy the world once before, you walked in here with two of Robotnik’s most powerful robots.”

“And you nearly destroyed the world for Black Doom,” Itara countered, getting a moment of shocked silence from the group, “We’ve both got pasts we’re not overly fond of.”

“Also, I’ll have you know neither of us work for Robotnik any longer,” Metal Sonic snapped, “and neither is the tiny child working for that manipulative Sun God. We’re all on our own these days and as much as I loathe the lot of you, it’s going to require more power than the three of us have to defeat the Gods. Why else would I come and not immediately eradicate the faker?”

Sonic’s scowl returned while Shadow’s shifted into bitter consideration. Before anyone else had the opportunity to interject, Itara stepped out from behind RK and spoke up again, “Listen, let me explain in full,” her eyes returned to their normal colors and she motioned towards the map projected on the far wall, “Believe us or not, right now is a crucial point of the battle and if we don’t all move carefully, all really will be lost for good. Since Solaris’ return, I’ve had access to my powers again and I’ve been keeping an eye on the timelines. For the past eight years, it’s been an unwinnable battle, which is why we’ve been in lockdown in the meantime. But there’s a change. Something is happening, to the timelines, to the energy of the universe, itself. If I can find the source of that energy, I think it’ll lead me to the end of this battle. I can’t say for sure what it is yet, but something in the near future is going to upset the balance of Chaos Energy. I suspect, those closest to it like Shadow and Sonic, have already felt the effects.”

She glanced between the two and nodded in confirmation when they both avoided her gaze, then continued, “and like Sparky said, we don’t have enough power to find it on our own. Why else would we literally walk into the lion’s den like this? As strong as Sparky and RK are, it’d be eight on three and my powers are extremely limited and not meant for direct fights. As battered as you all are, it’d still be a losing battle if we started anything. We’re not here to fight, despite Sparky’s highest hopes,” she shot the blue bot a sideways glare, “we just want to help save the world. For once. It’s down to just us. So please… help me save the only family I’ve ever truly had.”

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imjustthemechanic · 6 years

Photo

Natalie Jones and the Golden Ship

Part 1/? - A Meeting at the Palace Part 2/? - Curry Talk Part 3/? - Princess Sitamun Part 4/? - Not At Rest Part 5/? - Dead Men Tell no Tales Part 6/? - Sitamun Rises Again Part 7/? - The Curse of Madame Desrosiers Part 8/? - Sabotage at Guedelon Part 9/? - A Miracle Part 10/? - Desrosiers’ Elixir Part 11/? - Athens in October Part 12/? - The Man in Black Part 13/? - Mr. Neustadt Part 14/? - The Other Side of the Story Part 15/? - A Favour Part 16/? - A Knock on the Window Part 17/? - Sir Stephen and Buckeye Part 18/? - Books of Alchemy Part 19/? - The Answers Part 20/? - A Gift Left Behind Part 21/? - Santorini Part 22/? - What the Doves Found Part 23/? - A Thief in the Night Part 24/? - Healing Part 25/? - Newton’s Code Part 26/? - Montenegro Part 27/? - The Lost Relic Part 28/? - The Homunculinus Part 29/? - The End is Near Part 30/? - The Face of Evil Part 31/? - The Morning After Part 32/? - Next Stop Part 33/? - A Sighting in Messina Part 34/? - Taormina Part 35/? - Burning Part 36/? - Recovery Part 37/? - Pilgrimage to Vesuvius Part 38/? - The Scent of Hell Part 39/? - She’ll be Coming Down the Mountain Part 40/? - Stowaways Part 41/? - Bon Voyage Part 42/? - Turnabout Part 43/? - The Apple Part 44/? - Vesuvius Wakes Part 45/? - Fire At Sea Part 46/? - The Real Jim Part 47/? - Return to Naples Part 48/? - La Mela

Okay, back to the plot. At last, the Philosopher’s Stone!

The pigeons flew off in a chorus of squeaky fluttering feathers that was almost loud enough, with so many of them, to count as a thunder. They swirled over the city like a slow-motion tornado of birds, and then, slowly at first but soon by the hundreds, they all flew to land on and around a particular building on the outskirts of the city.

“I feel like I should be doing some evil laughter,” said Sam. “Declaring myself the Pigeon Master or something.”

“Or you could be the Pigeon Man from Hey Arnold,” Nat told him.

“Who’s that?” asked Sam.

“It’s not a compliment,” she promised.

The pigeons had taken the direct route but the humans, of course, didn’t have that option. They had to pile into two abandoned vehicles and find their way through the winding streets, now all but empty as the Neapolitans had fled the volcano. They found the flock of pigeons perched all over a little palazzo that had once been the home of a wealthy family, but was now home to the Coral Palace, a museum and workshop of coral jewelry and shell cameos.

The Palazzo would have been quite a pretty building if it hadn’t been entirely covered with pigeons. Instead, it made for a very strange sight indeed. From a distance it looked almost as if the entire building and the empty car park outside were covered in a fluffy gray snow, with the close presence of the volcano suggesting ash, but as they got closer they began to see the birds moving. There must have been thousands of them. Iridescent heads popped up out of the mass, looked around, and then vanished again.

“That is probably about the creepiest thing I ever saw,” Sharon decided.

They pulled into the car park. As they did, the birds moved out of the way ahead of them as if they were the Red Sea parting for Moses. Sam brought the lead vehicle to a halt, then rolled down the window and leaned out.

“We made it!” he announced. “You guys can go!”

The pigeons all took off at once, and for a moment nothing was visible except for thousand upon thousand of smoky gray feathers passing by. Then they were gone, leaving behind a three-storey building with a pink and white columned façade. Above the colonnade were the words Manifattura Corallo. Everything, from the roof to the decorative architecture to the pavement in the car park, was coated with evidence of the pigeons.

“Nice,” said Nat, not bothering to hide a snicker. She was imagining the faces of the Palazzo employees when they returned and found this.

“I’ll tell them to hold it next time,” Sam said.

They got out of the vehicles, and tried not to think about why it was slippery underfoot as they climbed the steps to the porch, where there was a row of windows. Nat rubbed a place clean and peeked in – all the merchandise in the cameo factory showroom appeared to have been taken away, leaving empty glass-topped tables in a grand columned room with gray stone floors and peach-coloured walls. There was nobody there.

This was a public building, Natasha thought. How could anybody work here unseen? Unless there was something else… something hidden.

They made their way around the back, and there they found a door with a Solo Dipendenti sign on it. It was propped open, and beyond it was a hallway that joined the loading dock that took deliveries. In the other direction was an employee washroom and a blank wall.

The latter showed a deep, flaking crack in the whitewash. Nat got her fingers into it and pried it open. Sure enough, there was a secret door there… one that had been forgotten long enough to be plastered over, but which had been recently opened. She turned on a flashlight and found the door opened on a flight of steps. When she turned the light off again, she could just barely see a blue light shining around the corner at the bottom.

They started down.

The wall on their left, as they descended cautiously into the dark, was smooth. The one on the right was rougher, and when Nat shone the light on it, she saw markings where decorative architectural features, half-columns and rosettes, had once been attached. This had once been the front of a building, before the new palazzo was built on top of it facing the other way. In one spot, there were even some letters.

She traced them with her fingers – La Mela, they said. The Apple. That must be the original name of the villa. Nat was betting she knew who had built it.

At the bottom of the steps they turned right, and found themselves in a tiny little room, almost a dungeon. The walls were stone blocks – not modern cinder blocks but actual cut lumps of limestone – and the floor was big stone slabs. In the middle of this was a huge bubbling cauldron, overflowing with what Natasha would have taken for dry ice smoke if it hadn’t been softly purple-blue. Inside the cauldron itself was the source of the purple-blue light, which was not exactly bright, but it was difficult to look at, as if it would give a person a migraine if they let their eyes linger on it too long.

The cauldron itself was made of gold, glinting by the glow of Nat’s flashlight. It stood on three legs, and between each a pipe, also made of gold, emerged from its belly. Nat followed these across the floor into a corner, and then stopped. There was a big crack in the floor there, as if an earthquake had broken it open, easily big enough for a person to climb into. The golden pipes fed into that.

A ladder was also propped within the crack. There didn’t seem to be any question where Newton had gone.

Natasha gripped the flashlight in her teeth and started climbing down. When she put her weight on the rungs of the ladder, she felt them sag under her weight. The ladder, too, was made of gold.

At the bottom of the ladder, twenty or thirty feet down, Nat found herself in a rough tunnel about six feet in diameter, with an arched roof and a flat bottom. A lava tube. Behind the ladder, it came to an end where a big boulder was blocking it. In the other direction, it continued on at a slight upward slope. The golden pipes continued off in that direction. They should have been opaque, but they were glowing softly, in the same uncomfortable shade of purple.

“Do you still have your sunscreen, Sam?” asked Sharon.

“No,” he replied. “I didn’t think I’d need it after sunset in the middle of the night.”

“If we’re all burned tomorrow we’ll blame your lack of foresight,” Nat told him.

“Thanks,” he said.

“I know this isn’t the time,” Jim observed, “but I gotta say, I enjoy the part where you guys are all giving each other shit as you’re saving the world. It makes me feel like I’m in action movie.”

“Keep feeling it,” Nat advised him. “In the movies the good guys always win.”

“You don’t think we’re gonna win?” Jim asked, honestly surprised.

“I’m definitely planning on winning, but it’s not a given,” Nat said.

They started following the pipes uphill. The floor of the tunnel was crushed rock and sharp sand that would have been unpleasant to walk on had Nat still been in high heels, but much worse in just pantyhose. At first, it just looked like stone, but as they continued up the slope, she began to catch glimpses of things glittering in it. Eventually she stopped and reached down to pick up one of the stones. It was no different in shape or texture from the others around it, but it was very, very heavy.

“It’s gold,” Desrosiers said.

Nat tossed the nugget away again. “He said he didn’t want to make gold,” she said.

“The cauldron and the pipes must be gold, because it is chemically inert,” Desrosiers explained. “Because the Philosopher’s Stone is in contact with this equipment, as long as it has no other template…”

“… the reactor will make gold,” Nat finished for her. That must be how alchemy had come o be so closely associated with precious metals.

They kept going. The tunnel snaked back and forth a little, it got narrower and wider, but it was definitely going east and uphill. The further they went the more gold they found, until the stones under their feet were clinking instead of crunching, and people’s shoes began getting heavy. Nat wondered if it were dangerous for them to be exposed to this. Would their very bodies begin to transmute if they stayed in here too long?

They couldn’t turn back though, not now – they were here to save the world, after all. After narrowing until they almost had to crawl, taking great care not to touch the glowing pipes, it widened out again and joined a larger channel. The air was starting to get warm, and Natasha reached to wipe sweat from her brow. It glinted golden as it dripped into the dirt at her feet, and she wondered if that were just a trick of the light. In here, maybe she was literally sweating gold.

Finally, after what felt like hours walking in the increasing heat, the dust and the painful glow of the pipes, the tube opened out into a huge chamber. Steam was rising from the ground all around them, mixing with the purplish fog and rising up to where the rocks arched above them, forming a space the size of a cathedral nave. There might have been a couple of holes in the top to let it all escape, but Natasha couldn’t tell, because there was a huge thing hanging in the middle of the cavern. A network of the golden pipes, arranged in hexagons and pentagons like a geodesic dome, surrounded it and fed the purple smoke into it, and in the middle was…

It was difficult to describe. It looked like a huge round crystal, twenty-five feet in diameter, glittering with millions of tiny facets. Inside that was a thing she could only have compared to photographs she’d seen in National Geographic, of the surface of the sun as seen through a special filter. It was glowing dull purple, and seemed to be made of millions of tiny, squirming grains that appeared and disappeared and occasionally erupted, spewing little geysers of purple steam. Where these touched the walls, the rocks turned from dark basalt to glossy yellow. Gold.

“Well, hello!” said a voice.

They all turned. Walking towards them from underneath the hovering monstrosity was Newton.

He was still wearing a t-shirt and frayed denim shorts, crocs and that beat-up green hat. It didn’t look much like an outfit to make the philosopher’s stone in, and when Natasha compared it in her head to the image of the man in the wig and frock coat in the famous portrait by Kneller, she almost wanted to laugh. She thought better of it when she remembered that she and her companions were all still dressed in their evening clothes, which was if anything even more ridiculous.

“You people are remarkably persistent,” Newton observed.

“We know,” said Natasha.

“We make a habit of it,” Sir Stephen agreed.

“Well, as you can see, you’re too late,” he told them. “I have the Stone now, and I intend to use it. ‘Nelle,” he added with a smile at her, “your advice was invaluable. I need to use it before I can let it blow, obviously.”

Desrosiers nodded, her face calm but her fists clenched. She caught Nat’s eye, then looked at Newton again. “Since we’re all about to die anyway, perhaps we could give the Committee a demonstration of its powers,” she said.

#fanfic #natasha romanov #steve rogers #sam wilson #clint barton #sharon carter #bucky barnes

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rogerblackwolf · 3 years

Text

The Mt. St. Helens Incident

Containment Site 93

Mt. St. Helens, Washington.

-May 17-18, 1980-

A violent rumble shook the facility, metal supports creaked and moaned as the earthquake shook the room and everyone inside. Concrete cracked and fractured, the sound of pieces breaking off were heard throughout the facility. As quickly as it started it was over, the aftershock was barely a tremble that sent an empty cup shattering to the floor. In one room, the researchers in lab coats got out from under their cover and checked the seismo monitors. One man stood, straightened his lab coat, combed his fingers through his brown hair, and stroked his bushy goatee before speaking to the young man at the monitor.

"How big was that one?"

"It was a 4.3 magnitude sir." He responded looking at the latest recording.

"Is the epicenter the same as the others?" The man asked.

"Yes Dr. Hamilton, it's Object 317. It's been causing seismic activity for the past two months and getting stronger every time...if it continues, the volcano could erupt." The man said.

The room was silent for a few moments before Dr. Hamilton spoke again.

"How much time do we have?"

"Based on these readings, anywhere between 36 to 48 hours before it sends a shockwave powerful enough to bury this facility and us along with it." The man said.

Dr. Hamilton stroked his chin in thought, to the facility's data and the roughly three hundred personnel. As Lead Researcher of Level 3 he knew that Object 317, or the Red Crystal they coined it, had been dormant for roughly a thousand years but two months ago it became active. What's worse is no one knows why. Suddenly a phone rang stirring him from his thoughts, a female researcher answered it before turning to Dr. Hamilton.

"It's Overseer Westbrooks. He wants to speak to you." She said, extending the phone to him.

"This is Dr. Hamilton." He said, taking the phone.

"Nicholas, you and your team alright?" The Overseer asked.

"Yeah, we're fine. A little rattled but nothing bad." Nicholas responded.

"Good, good. I just got off the phone with Laura on Level 2, I've given her the same instructions I'm about to give you. I'm enacting Protocol Omega, you all have 24 hours to get all your research together. If you and your team are not at the evac hanger before the deadline, you will be left behind." Overseer Westbrooks explained, his tone adding to the urgency.

"Understood sir. We won't miss it." Nicholas said before hanging up the phone.

"Alright people, Protocol Omega is in effect, we have 24 hours to get all our research. Dr. Park, take your team down to the data room, get all our server data. Dr. Maxwell, take your team to the archives, get as many files, notes, papers, journals, Anything pertaining to our research. Come on, time's a-wastin." Nicholas said as his team went about getting their work.

The halls were filled with researchers in moments, all frantic to get to their stations. The server room was being cleared of its data banks, the archive shelves were being emptied as each journal was filled with critical information on the Occult and Supernatural. The file cabinets were filled with sensitive and classified material so rather than try to fill tons of luggage, the researchers opted to take the entire cabinets. Security personnel were also helping with the evacuation of the researchers and the moving of the artifacts. The purpose of this facility was the secure containment of powerful objects that in the wrong hands would spell disaster for not just the United States, but the very world itself. It took nearly the whole night, plus a few more tremors, but when the rays of morning began to show, the majority of the facility was evacuated, the data had been all removed, and there was only one last object to extract, Object 317.

Secured within a bright lit, fifty by fifty foot room, levitating in a slow rotation was a dark crimson tetragonal crystal. It was twelve feet tall and the energy it gave off was a mix of menacing and grim. Two researchers, along with half a dozen security personnel armed with M16s and Colt Commando carbines, began attaching a harness to drag the floating crystal to the exit. Dr. Hamilton met with the head of security in the observation room overlooking the cell, he was a black man, average in build, dressed in full kit but lacked the helmet and balaclava of the other personnel. Holstered on his hip was a Colt 1911 Commander, along with three extra mags, and slung on his shoulder was a CAR-15 carbine. Dr. Hamilton smirked as he knew that this man took the safety of everyone seriously, sometimes even disregarding protocol to help his fellow man.

"Clay, thought I'd meet you here." Dr. Hamilton said.

"Dr. Hamilton, figured you'd be the last one to evacuate." Mr. Johnson said with a smirk.

"I'm the Head Researcher of Level 3, it's my job to ensure the objects are safely transported." Hamilton said watching the researchers secure the crystal.

"And it's My job to ensure you don't get unnecessarily harmed doing so." Clay replied with a chuckle.

Dr. Hamilton grinned with a light chuckle before a call on Clay's walkie caught his attention.

"Guardian Actual, this is Guardian 2-1, come in Guardian. Over."

"Guardian 2-1, report. Over." Clay responded.

"We've reached the sealed vent in Sector 3-7, we're placing the FAE now. Over." Guardian 2-1 said.

"Copy all, Guardian 2-1, give me a sitrep when able. Over." Clay said.

"Copy. Guardian 2-1 out." The voice said before going silent.

Clay's sudden watch alarm startled him, he checked the time, 8:00 am. He took a breath before turning the alarm off.

Dr. Hamilton had read about FAE's, or Fuel-air Explosive, in the facility's classified files. When Protocol Omega is enacted, security personnel will place an FAE device in the room of the sealed thermal vent that leads directly into the volcano. The room of the vent's seal was locked behind a magnetic locked door built to withstand a shot from the 120mm cannon of the M1 Abrams tank. The theory, and hope, was that the explosion would cause a controlled vertical eruption, destroying the facility and limiting possible civilian casualties. Suddenly the crystal pulsed with energy, the force made everyone in the cell back up a step before the shaking began.

The cell walls cracked and the floor fractured as a violent tremor rumbled throughout the facility. The lights went out as the fixtures came loose from the ceiling, the glass in the observation room cracked and spiderwebbed from there before it shattered into the cell. Once the shaking stopped the observation room and cell was much darker, many of the lights were off, aside from the ambient emergency lights.

Hamilton and Clay got to their feet with some scrapes but nothing bad, unfortunately one of the researchers was less lucky.

"Man Down! Man Down!" One of the men shouted.

Hamilton and Clay immediately ran down to the cell to see one of the younger scientists impaled by pieces of glass through his back, a pool of blood slowly forming around his body. The group stood in silence for a moment before the room was filled by a new light. The Red Crystal began emitting a low crimson glow, followed by a low pulsing sound, the glow flickered in rhythm with the pulse...like a heartbeat. Dr. Hamilton and the remaining researcher noticed that blood had gotten on it, the next thing they noticed was the pulsing got faster and faster until it cracked. Everyone watched as a dark shape inside the crystal became larger and larger, the cracks got bigger as they began to run the length of the crystal.

Clay commanded everyone to leave just as the dark shape filled the crystal but before they could move, a great roar shattered the crystal, the force sending everyone to the floor. A stillness took over, dust hung in the air for but a moment, before the sound of heavy feet landing and claws clicking on the floor. A pair of wings flapped to clear the room, it was then everyone saw the remnants of crystal shards scattered around the room in a circle and what was standing in the center of it all. It was 9 ft in height standing on canine legs, horns protruded from it's brow curving downward then pointing forward just past it's chin, the body was ripped with muscle and deep scars decorated it's flesh, the face was human in shape but that's where it ended. A pair of massive leathery wings folded behind it's back as it's glowing red eyes focused on the men in the room.

It's lips curled into a wicked smile, baring long pointed canines and sharpened teeth. Alongside the scars were branded symbols that began to glow with a crimson hue. He said something in a language no one understood before from his hand he summoned a wicked curved blade, red in color and covered in symbols, and with a swing he cleaved the second researcher in two.

"Open Fire!" Clay ordered.

The men started firing at the massive humanoid only for it to start attacking them, in one swing he bisected one man from his right shoulder to his groin, he kicked another through the open door and down the hallway, his kevlar body armor was shredded but not punctured but his ribs were definitely broken. Clay grabbed Dr. Hamilton before shutting the magnetic sealed door, but it was proving to be only an inconvenience for the creature as every blow against the heavy metal door made it creak and give.

"All Guardian Teams, we have a Code Black, I repeat, Code Black! Guardian Actual has sustained casualties, does anyone copy? Over." Clay shouted into his radio.

"Copy all Guardian Actual, Guardian 2 is enroute to meet you at Sector 3-2." One team leader responded.

"This is Guardian 3, on our way to assist." Another replied.

"Guardian 4 has linked up with Guardian 5, enroute." A third responded.

Dr. Hamilton helped seal the second door at the end of the hallway just as the being broke the door off its hinges. The team then ran to meet the other teams as they gathered on the 2nd Level, Dr. Hamilton even disabled the elevators after the other teams confirmed they used the stairs. Clay knew that'd only buy them a few minutes at best so he asked Guardian 2-1, his ID tag reading "Flint", for a sitrep.

"The FAE is in place and armed, but during the last tremor, the timer was damaged. The only way to set it off is a direct detonation." Flint said.

"So one of us has to go down there and detonate it ourselves?" Clay asked.

"Yeah." Flint responded.

Clay looked down at his watch, 8:20 am, before he took a deep breath.

"I'm going down there, alone if I have to. I won't ask any of you to follow me." Clay said.

"Bullshit." Flint replied.

"What?" Clay asked in surprise.

"I said Bullshit. I'm going with you, me and my team will make that thing wish it crawled back into whatever hole it spawned from." Flint said, his team having similar looks as do the rest. Clay smirked before turning to Dr. Hamilton, placing a hand on his shoulder.

"It was good knowing you doc. The last evac should be on it's way, make sure you take care of my team." Clay said.

"Not a problem...it was an honor to work with you, Mr. Wright." He responded, helping the wounded man with one more taking the lead. Guardian 5 decided to act as security, but the ten men each saluted the other teams who would stay, wishing them all luck before following after Dr. Hamilton.

Clay and Flint along with their teams headed for the stairs into Level 3, where everything suddenly became much darker. Along the halls were slashes from claws and a blade, bloody prints and trails went in multiple directions, and when Clay found the aftermath of his slaughtered squad mates he shuddered in fear. Their bodies were aged severely, wrinkled and bony, and their eyes were burned from their sockets, their expressions that of overwhelming terror.

"I smell your Fear...like little children. Children who are afraid of the Dark." a distorted, male voice spoke from the darkness but remained unseen as the squads looked everywhere.

"Move, Move!" Flint ordered, leading the way to the vent. They heard laughter now all around them before the voice spoke again.

"Yes. Run! Run if you like. There is Nowhere to hide!" It chuckled with glee.

They felt it all around them, the running of feet on the concrete floors and the whoosh of wings set everyone on edge since it kept hidden in the shadows. Guardian 4 was first to face its wrath, one second it appears from the darkness the next two men are dead. The team stayed to try and stall the creature as it appeared again, when it was shot at he roared before charging, cutting with his blade, swiping with his claws and goring with his horns. Flint showed the others a shortcut, through a hallway that had two blast doors on either end.

Clay, Flint, and the rest of Guardian 2 made through but as Guardian 3 and his squad neared the door it suddenly closed. Guardian 3 banged on the door begging them to open the door, but no matter how hard they tried the door wouldn't budge. Suddenly the door on the other end closed, metal groaned as darkness filled that end along with low guttural breathing. The darkness was then illuminated by the being as his brands lit with crimson, his eyes glowing bright, and his blade ablaze with ungodly fire. The squad immediately fired at the being as he walked forward a swing of his blade felling one man after the next.

"HELP US!" Guardian 3 shouted desperately on his end of the door. The creature came closer as he slayed man after man, he used some telekinetic ability to pin one man to the ceiling, his tail stabbing through the man's vest and torso with no effort. He slowly came to Guardian 3 and silenced him by piercing his blade through him and the door. Everyone sprinted through the next corridor as the door was thrown off it's frame, locking the other doors as they went. Finally they came to the corridor where the bomb was set, thankfully it hadn't been tampered with.

Flint began setting the trigger, as his team covered the hallway, when Clay got a call on his radio;

"Guardian Actual this is Evac Team Jericho, we have your men aboard. What's your ETA? Over."

"Say again you have my men aboard including Guardian 5 and Dr. Hamilton? Over." Clay responded.

"Copy, we are waiting for you sir. Over." The pilot replied.

"Negative, do not wait for me. I am ordering you to leave now. Over." Clay said with a heavy heart. There was a silence on the end for a moment before the pilot responded.

"Wilco, good luck sir. Out."

Clay and Flint were interrupted by the sound of gunfire and death cries in the hallway nearby. Flint grabbed his carbine in one hand and gave the trigger to Clay.

"I'll buy you some time." He said heading to support his men. Clay went into the chamber and set the second charge, synched it to a deadman trigger, and armed it with a firm squeeze.

It was only then he noticed the gunfire had stopped and the only sound he heard was the door creaking open. Clay didn't hesitate spinning around, shouldering his carbine, and dumping a mag into the creature's torso. The tail stabbed at the barrel, knocking the gun from his grasp, immediately Clay pulled his 1911 firing all seven rounds at the beast, one even grazed its brow. The creature cocked its head and gave him a mocking smirk that made Clay's blood boil. He discarded his sidearm and from his left front shoulder unsheathed a combat knife, keeping a firm grip on the trigger as he took a fighting stance.

The beast responded by summoning a dagger of its own, an unsettled grin revealed its blood soaked teeth as it spoke.

"You are a warrior."

"And I'll die one too." Clay said defiantly.

"You have earned the right to know my name, mortal. I am Arkal, General of the 17th Legion, Servant of the great Glasya-labolas and I will enjoy devouring your soul." The creature said before Clay charged him.

The creature dodged his attacks and in one thrust impaled Clay on his dagger. He lifted Clay to his eye level as he coughed up a mouthful of blood.

"Any last words?" He asked with a wide grin.

Clay looked at his watch even with the blood on it he could see the 8:32 am, to which he returned the beast's smile with his own.

"When you see that goat faced bastard Satan...Tell him Clayton Wright sent you." He managed before releasing the trigger.

The explosion was so violent and forceful that on the outside the entire northern face of Mt. St. Helens collapsed in a massive landslide, releasing a large mix of lava and heated rock. The ash cloud towered until it reached into the atmosphere, thankfully the evac helicopter was far enough away to barely feel the force of the explosion. Back at the ruins of the facility there was only one survivor. Arkal stood unharmed in the ruins surrounded by lava and walked on heated stone. He heard a sound like thunder on the wind, looking skyward he spotted what looked like a falling star heading straight for him.

The star stopped above him, the light at first made him squint before it died down to reveal a figure draped in golden light. The male figure unfurled his large white feathered wings, revealing the grandest of gold and silver plate armor covered in holy symbols and engravings, he was not armed but he looked like he was familiar with the art of combat. The demon growled before he summoned his blades and pointed one at the angelic being.

"Camael! Face me and meet your death!" He roared.

The angel chuckled under his helm, his eyes glowing through the eye slits.

"You forget Arkal, I am no mere angel. I am the Archangel of Courage, you are not my executioner. I am Yours!" Camael's voice boomed, he turned his right palm skyward, a beam of light pierced the ash cloud and to his hand came an elegant and beautiful longsword bathed in glowing white flames.

The demon flew skyward to meet him only for the Archangel to teleport behind him, in one stroke sliced Arkal's wings from his back. The demon general fell towards the earth, but Camael displayed his superior speed by teleporting and slashing the demon. When Arkal landed he landed with only one arm, his legs and other arm were severed, his tail was cut at the tip and even one of his horns was cut clean from his head. Camael landed softly on the ground, his boot falls filled the demon with an emotion he hadn't felt in centuries. The same emotion his enemies felt when he dealt their killing blows, fear.

Camael stood over Arkal and without hesitation plunged his blade into the demon's chest. Arkal let out a primal roar as his body burned to ashes, the flesh burned revealing charred bones that turned to dust to be blown away on the wind. Camael, seeing his work was done, took back to the skies to return to his Realm. Knowing that this disaster, while a tragedy, would not claim more lives to fuel Arkal's brethren, or his master.

#BSRC #Story 8

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yourplasticlittlespastic · 4 years

Text

ᴏᴜʀ ᴡᴇʙ ᴏꜰ ʟᴏᴠᴇ -- Peter Parker fanfic (3/of many)

Part 1 Part 2

"I chopped you some fruit" Thor offers me a plastic bag and he sees me eyeing it confused "I couldn't find a proper container a'right? you better enjoy this... I'm going away for some time"

"thank you" I nudge his bicep and offer him a smile

At the car, I curiously googled Spider-Man just to see if there was something new, not at all. Maybe is one of those called 'heroes' that one day just disappear.

"Whatcha doin'" Happy asks looking at me through the mirror

"googling news about the Spider-Man"

"oh yeah, I checked some yesterday... " he casually says

"and?"

"mm nothing, but he looks like a modern Tarzan" he adds

"that's exactly what I'm thinking!" we laugh in sync and arrive at school "see you in some hours!"

Walk, walk, walk... Stares, stares, stares... This is how this year is going to be? When I finally open my locker, hundreds of photos fly all over, dragging everyone's attention to me, I lower myself trying to collect them all when a pair of hands pop beside helping me, I look up and it was Peter.

"what's all of this?" he curiously asks

"I really don't know.. I opened my locker and all of this pictures fell, they're not mine"

His hand grabs one picture and spin it around, the word "MURDERER" written all over it. I quickly snatch it and scan the other pictures... they are all about the accident at Sokovia, really disturbing pictures...

"Whoever did this, is trying to make a point" I mutter cleaning the floor and standing up. Peter following me.

"yeah but they're not proving it, you are not a murderer," he says with a small smile

I give him a sympathetic smile and unconsciously squeeze his shoulder "has anyone told you that you dress like an old man?"

"mmm thanks? I mean if that's your thing okay.." he catches how I want to change the subject

"no!!" I slap his chest and a bubbly chuckle escapes his lips "ready for economics?"

"oh! my books! my locker is at the other hallway" he starts walking backwards and accidentally crashes into some girls "sorry! sorry! see you at the classroom"

At Economics, Peter and I fought to answer what the Teacher was asking so we were stealing each other turns, then we walk to Algebra. This year the school divides students into their respective levels. Lists were glued to the wall and I squint my eyes searching for my name, obviously, I wasn't in Basics nor Intermediate, I skim the advanced level but I'm not there

"I'm not in any class..." I frown looking at Peter

"yeah me neither" Peter peeks his head trying to find a teacher

"it's because here are the other ones, there's a new class that was opened for request" Morita walks behind us pasting a list besides the others

"request from who?" Peter asks confused

Morita glares at him "the Board Mr. Parker" he leaves and I read the list

The name of the class is Algebra P.R.O (Practice, Reenforce, and Optimization for future professionals) Jesus, who invented that name.

"guess we are Pro" I turn to Peter who's skimming the list

"oh, no..." he whispers

"what? you cheated on your exams?" I snort

"No... Liz Toomes is there" he says with a terrorized face

"yeah, she's smart?" I point and see his face crumbling "ohhhh I see, you like her Peter" I whisper at him

He then touches both of my shoulders looking down at me because he's taller "no one must know, please"

"of course not..." I don't have anyone to tell, except Happy but he doesn't give a flying potato for high school gossip "act cool, relax Peter"

All the class, Peter was avoiding contact with Liz, I look at her, she's pretty and smart, she's going to kick ass like me one day. In the end, I had Ethics, nothing important just Plato and Socrates, then I ate my lunch in my usual spot. At P.E. I'm a badass, Steve taught me some moves and how to run without breaking into pieces and also my daily exercise helps me.

"Aren't you tired, Tannie?!?!" Ned shouts in agony trying to do a crunch while Peter helps him

"a little but it feels good" I mentally count 50 and I stop trying to soothe my breathing, I crawl to the mat they are working out "let me tell you, Steve, I mean, Captain America helped me train" when I said it both of their faces change to the best scene I've ever seen

"You're the coolest chick ever!!!" Ned shouts even louder "okay cool no more crunches I'm going to sit right over there" he spins landing on the floor

"So umm... how is living with the Avengers," Peter asks while sitting on the floor "I can totally see myself texting with Captain America"

"HA!" I snort too hard "no way, he hates mobile phones trust me and he is waaaay behind pop culture, I'm just explaining to him who are the Kardashians, he thought it was a music genre"

Peter then starts laughing "unbelievable but well... after all, you are Tony Stark's daughter"

I sigh "sometimes is the best thing, sometimes is a nightmare" With a grunt I stand up "I'm heading to the changing lockers... see you at English!"

----------------Flashback at Stark's Expo 2010 (Iron Man 2)-----------

"Mommy where's Daddy?" I scan the area but he's not there

"he's working baby, he's fine, he'll be with us sooner than we expect" she palms my back and walks faster to the entrance

"Are you coming with us?" A police officer asks my mom eyeing me as well

"No, I'm gonna stay until to park is clear" she nods and I let my eyes observe what I used to think it was the best Expo of all times

All I can see was people running, some people tearing up and a lot of fire

"Baby... are you sure you want to stay with me?" my mom questions me and I tighten my grip

"Yeah, we'll be okay mom" I smile at her and she sighs just waiting for my dad to appear

Little did I know that the robots spread throughout the expo will be exploding all around us...

What a tremendous feeling for a nine-year-old. The uncertainty of not knowing if my dad will survive and return safe and sound to me. The images of drones flying all over and people injured was part of the nightmare of being Tony Stark's daughter.

------------------end of Flashback-------------

"Listen, everyone! the class is not dismissed until I say so!" the teacher exclaims but fails when everyone starts rushing out of the classroom

"see you at the club?" I ask Peter

"Yes! yesterday uh, I couldn't come because...I..." he pauses thinking of an excuse and I roll my eyes

"it's okay Peter I know why you didn't come" I naturally say and he abruptly stops staring at me

"what? like...how?He gnaws his bottom lip and his pupils dilate

"yeah... come on, it was the introduction to the club, we didn't do anything and it was so boring. I actually wanted to skip it too"

He longly sighs and scratches his neck "Oh my God yeah! you already know my secret hehe" He then starts walking and we enter to the classroom

The first hour we just made a huge list of materials we would need at this course, then we all put the benches in a middle circle and the presentation of previous works begin. And yes Morita was right, three people built Automathic back scratchers.

"thank you, Tyler!" Chung chrips "well now...Tannie Stark please" everyone claps and I turn to Peter who is nodding at me

"okay well... Ummm I built it this in summer break- I say opening a bag and taking out the robot

-ohhhhhh- everyone awes

"its name is EMMA... and it's for Emergency Machine. This is a medium size but my idea is to make it bigger because it's designed for yeah....emergencies such as fires, floods, earthquakes, and daily accidents. It includes a complete first aid kit inside this part of the belly and its operative system is built on a normal binary algorithm, my wish is that once I perfect it... there is at least one in every building of New York and then of all the country"

The claps emerge, mingling in loud cheering. I nod knowing I killed it.

"This is amazing Tannie! we weren't expecting less!" Taylor Chung claps walking to awkwardly palm my back

When the bell rang announcing that the second day was over, I quickly pick up my stuff and stroll to the exit

"hey! wait!" Peter then approaches me "before you go, let me tell you that if I was rich I would totally invest in your emergency machines" He flashes a toothy smile, kinda cute...

I snort and offer my hand "A pleasure doing business with you Parker" I shake hands with him

"so I was thinking that we could uh... trade phone numbers just in case we need help with homework?"

"sure! just...don’t share it with others" I hand him my phone and I take his

"no! of course, no" he writes his number on my phone and I do the same on his "here, ready"

"cool, text you later I suppose..." I walk to the car while throwing my hone into my backpack but suddenly I crash with someone "Oh... sorry!"

"ha no sorry, I was a little confused and lost...this is a big school," A really tall guy with messy blonde hair and blue eyes purses his lips at me

I snort "I think you arrived a little bit later, classes finished for today"

"oh no! I'm here to turn in some papers, tomorrow I'll be early though"

A horn booms all over the street, I turn to look at the owner of the car... figure... it's Happy

"desperate much?" the boy mutters "well I need to..."

"Yeah, sure! mmm I need to go as well, see you soon...?" I shyly wave goodbye at him and quickly enter the car

"since when you are so desperate Happy?" I huff

"since when you are so unpunctual Tannie?" he fires back making me stick my tongue out at him

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

"what if I alter this part?" I move the hologram of a new model of a robot I'm building

"let me recalibrate the function T" FRIDAY says while I write down some notes "the system is operating normally with a minus 5% of failure"

"really? that's great! let's make it minus 30% shall we?" I grin feeling the ambition and excitement rushing through my body

"I am a genius" I whisper to myself

"And I am the genius who created the genius" obviously, my dad says entering the lab "did you check the fusils?"

"yes"

"the code of chips and the binary set?"

"yes!"

"what about the part underneath the-"

"the fourth and sixth compartment of the first box of cables... yes dad I did" I sigh

"uuuhh you are on fire kid!" he happily claps "here, a gift for you" He hands me an empty carton box

"Oh my god, I wanted this, you know it's the last edition?!" I excitedly chirp

"very funny, but I wanted to tell you that next month we are moving"

"wait what? I thought that the others were uh the only ones moving...?"

"yep, we are taking our shi...I mean, our things and we are moving them to a new place where we are going to live" he explains it as if I was dumb

"what about the tower? it's a clean energy-powered skyscraper dad" I move to table to turn the hologram off

"I know, I designed it... but the place we are moving to is better trust me... I'm surprised Steve hasn't told you about it..."

"where? Brooklyn?" I huff

"nope, a little far away up north but you'll love it! it's like our Disneyland T" he grabs my shoulder playfully shaking me

"okay dad...actually I don't care if we live in a small cabin or in a big mansion... as long as we are together" I warmly smile at him but he crunches his nose

"that's too corny T" he walks to the door "there are more boxes at the entrance ok? bye bye"

My dad's interruption cut off my inspiration so I take some boxes and begin putting the things I use less and marking the boxes, it took me some hours and then I went to the kitchen and turn the TV on, it was my mom who was live on a press conference about Stark Industries, I make a quick dinner and I eat it silence until my phone rings, a message notification emerge.

I lock my phone and prepare to sleep but before my room, I hear someone opening a door in the main hallway, I take a knife and prepare myself to attack when I spot it was only Vision.

"you scared me!" I touch my heart in a dramatic manner

"Sorry Miss Stark, not my intention" his British accent and the politeness makes me wrinkle my nose

I walk around the kitchen island "please Vision, call me Tannie or just T"

"very well, 'just T '" he proudly smiles knowing he just joked with me "I'm just taking Wanda's boxes to the new place"

"oh sure, go on" From the corner of my eyes I see how he walks but stops seconds later

"you know, you should probably check the third box of the second box of cables at your robot, that'll give you a minus 45% of failure," he says and then walks away

I quickly blink and immediately go to the I+D floor where the lab is, I then spent 3 hours working and I remember sitting on the floor, closing my eyes and sleeping

A/N: hope you liked it! Also available in Wattpad! https://my.w.tt/sw2CZNdCv1 .

#peterparker #peter parker x reader #spider-man #spiderman #tomholland #tonystark #marvel #marvelcinematicuniverse #Marvelfanfic #fanfic #wattpad fanfic #tumblr fanfic #civil war #Avengers #midtown #steverogers #pepperpotts

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newstfionline · 7 years

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Letter from Mexico: Lessons in a quake zone

Whitney Eulich, CS Monitor, September 21, 2017

MEXICO CITY--Back in 2013, I was in Mexico City for a work trip when the light fixtures started swaying in a ground-floor hotel restaurant. In the United States, we’re taught to find a sturdy table to crouch under, or a doorframe to stand in when the earth starts to tremble. So, I did just that, throwing my hands up against one of the hulking doorways of the 1920s building.

Seconds later, waiters and cleaning staff were running past me--in some cases crouching to squeeze through the space between my arms and the floor--to get outside. I looked around at the empty restaurant perplexed and a little amused, and decided I should probably follow.

But, this week, when Mexico City started jerking to a 7.1 earthquake, I was grateful for that lesson in local quake culture.

More than 40 buildings were toppled in Tuesday’s temblor, including one wing of a private elementary school. The death toll has reached more than 137 people in Mexico City alone, out of more than 270 nationwide. And in a city like this one, where many neighborhoods are built upon a squishy former lakebed, a building that survives one quake won’t necessarily make it through the next. Getting outside is the priority, even if there are other risks once on the street.

I rushed downstairs as my office began violently shaking Tuesday, meeting up with my daughter and her caretaker outside the front door. We held each other as we walked slowly down a tile pathway toward the building’s front gate, trying to keep our balance. The caretaker called out the Lord’s Prayer in a steady lilt and I peppered her with questions. “Is this big? Is this stronger than the last one?” I asked, referring to the 8.1 quake that rocked the capital just 12 days earlier while I was out of town. My 11-month-old daughter, thankfully, seemed oblivious.

Out on the street, we heard glass breaking, loud snaps, and watched, horrified, as a seven-story building around the corner bounced and swerved, throwing bricks from its façade. The structure didn’t fall, but apartments were visible through the broken walls.

A group of construction workers gathered with us in the middle of the street--as far away from buildings, trees, and electrical wires as we could get--their arms wrapped around each other’s backs to form a human chain.

The moment the earth stopped swaying, the workers were off, like many around the city, jumping in to help trapped residents escape their damaged homes or clear rubble from fallen buildings. An older woman came walking down the street, leaning on a teenage boy, sobbing. “It was just like ‘85,” she cried, taking stock of the buildings on the block. That was the year of Mexico’s deadliest earthquake, which left thousands dead and hundreds of buildings destroyed.

It was heartening to see people bolt into action. A trio of carpenters--grandfather, son, and grandson--working on a neighbor’s home rushed from one site of wreckage to another with their tools to offer help. Bicyclists, some with whistles, started directing traffic on a four-lane thoroughfare where stoplights had gone dark.

The day after the quake, volunteer turnout was astounding. Support centers were overwhelmed with donations of water, men and women slapped together simple sandwiches for volunteers, and crates of water bottles blocked sidewalks. Local restaurants and shops opened their doors to volunteers and displaced residents, offering water, meals, and other support. Some areas of the Condesa and Roma neighborhoods, where numerous structures fell or were deemed inhabitable, were so clogged with volunteers it was difficult to move through the street. As the day wore on, there were moments where the outpouring of support felt almost alarming.

Although official search and rescue teams, the Army, and firefighters are on the scenes of collapsed buildings, there is a distinct feeling that no one is really in charge. Guidance or explanations from authorities are scant, leading to misinformation, even if intentions are good.

Earthquakes have been on my mind since I moved here three years ago, in part because my partner likes to geek out on seismic activity. Before renting our first apartment, he studied maps of the 1985 quake destruction, and suggested we choose a building with fewer than six floors, because they respond better to the vibrations of temblors here. I guess it’s rubbed off on me, because I started asking about earthquake risk when making decisions here, too.

When interviewing surgeons for a throat operation I was met by surprised laughs when I asked what would happen if a quake hit mid-procedure. The carpenter who built shelves for our kitchen was dismissive when I asked her if we should put on cabinet doors so that dishes didn’t slide out during a quake. I don’t know if these reactions are indications of the normalcy of earthquakes here or a coping mechanism: we can’t always know what will happen until it happens.

But being a parent changes things. The everyday risks of letting your children grow and learn as independent people feel suddenly much higher after this week’s disaster.

A young girl known as Frida Sofia was believed to be buried under the rubble at the Enrique Rebsamen school in the south of the city, capturing the nation’s attention--and instilling waves of nausea in parents like me. She reportedly wiggled her fingers through the rubble on Wednesday, and rescuers worked around the clock to free her and five other students supposedly trapped there. By Thursday, however, authorities said they doubted “Frida” exists, or, at any rate, is trapped in the school.

My daughter won’t be going to school any time soon, but even so, this quake raises tough questions. How do you know the school you send your child to, or the home he or she goes to play in, is structurally sound? How do you know that building codes are truly met in a nation seeped in corruption, where a bribe can possibly get a building approved without actual inspection?

These aren’t pleasant things to think about. But, luckily, there are plenty of reasons to feel hopeful in the aftermath of this disaster. Mexicans have come together this week, helping and supporting neighbors and strangers alike. The solidarity is inspiring, whether it’s volunteers trying to coordinate rescues before officials arrived on the scene or men and women standing in the pouring rain Wednesday night, removing rubble in hopes of saving lives.

And, if the aftermath of the ‘85 quake serves as any indication, this citizen unity could lead to concrete change in Mexico. That could mean pushing for stricter standards around building inspections or simply realizing that together, Mexican citizens are a powerful force.

#Mexico #Mexico City earthquake

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ntrending · 5 years

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The shakiest earthquake myths debunked

New Post has been published on https://nexcraft.co/the-shakiest-earthquake-myths-debunked/

The shakiest earthquake myths debunked

The San Andreas Fault is actually visible in the Carrizo Plain (Doc Searls/)

Back-to-back tremors shook up Southern California last week. A magnitude 6.4 quake struck Thursday morning, followed by a magnitude 7.1 event Friday night. Both occurred near the small city of Ridgecrest, located about 122 miles east-northeast of Los Angeles. While there are no reports of deaths or injuries, the U.S. Geological Survey says economic losses to the area are at least $1 billion.

The earthquakes have also raised questions among SoCal residents, some wondering if the tremors have somehow mitigated the ongoing threat posed by the precarious San Andreas Fault. The shaking also brought back many other old earthquake myths. Like many natural disasters, quakes are scary and out of our control. And since humans don’t like uncertainty, we sometimes we attempt to make sense of events like these with poorly interpreted geology. “People don’t like having their world come unglued,” says Susan Hough, a geophysicist at the USGS. “They’re looking to make sense of it.”

But the complex reality of earthquakes evades many of these beliefs. Here’s a few common myths and their corresponding realities.

Small earthquakes help prevent big ones by releasing stress

Earthquakes do release stress within the earth—that’s why this idea feels so intuitive. Fundamentally, the planet’s plated crust is shifting to release energy originating in its hot core. As plates push against each other, they occasionally slip and slide to release pent up stress. Faults are cracks in the earth in which one side has moved relative to the other. Large faults like the San Andreas occur at plate boundaries, but smaller faults—like those that caused the recent earthquakes—often form outside this border.

The two earthquakes that rocked SoCal have no bearing on the activity of faults outside of that localized zone in the eastern part of the state. “No pressure was released from the San Andreas,” says Hough, referencing the infamous fault, which runs north-south through the state where the North American and Pacific plates meet. Many Californians live in fear of the ‘Big One,’ a catastrophic shaking that appears imminent based on the fault’s historic activity. But, Hough says that the Ridgecrest faults are too far away to relieve pressure from the San Andreas Fault.

In fact, “the odds of a big earthquake are never higher than right after a big earthquake has happened,” says Hough. “You relieve stress but you’ve also shaken up the crust.”

USGS officials stated in a press release that in the week after July 6, there’s a 2 percent chance of at least one aftershock greater than magnitude 7.1. And indeed Ridgecrest has been rocked by many magnitude 5 aftershocks since the first quake, says Christine Goulet, executive director of the Southern California Earthquake Center, who was out studying the initial earthquake when the second, larger one hit.

While quakes relieve pressure along the bodies of faults, their ends haven’t moved, so now those parts are more stressed, says Hough. And then the actual shaking can rumble other faults in the area, triggering more quakes.

That’s why earthquake odds are now elevated in Southern California—and could remain so for years to come. “You can think of every earthquake as a parent that is potentially going to generate daughters,” says Hough.

So, while earthquakes could theoretically relieve stress, it just doesn’t work that way in reality. Goulet explains it another way. It takes many, many smaller quakes to release the same energy as a big one. Say you had a fault that you wanted to release the energy of a magnitude 7 earthquake from. For that to happen, you would need about 32 magnitude 6s in exactly the same place to release that energy—that’s because a magnitude 7 earthquake releases 32 times as much energy as a magnitude 6. That scenario is extremely unlikely and definitely not something to rely on.

The view from the Ferry Building looking west on Market Street, just after the 1906 earthquake that devastated San Francisco. (National Archives and Records Administration/)

Earthquakes occur during a certain time of year or part of the lunar cycle.

Hough says a common myth that she encounters is that earthquakes occur when it’s hot and dry. But there’s no evidence of that. Goulet says she hears it all the time, too, and adds that there’s no way surface temperatures can impact earthquakes, which are fueled by fault activity miles below the ground.

Nor does the moon play any substantial role. While the moon does bring us tides and can even exert some stress on the solid parts of the Earth, that force isn’t enough to bring on big quakes. Hough even investigated this very question in a study. She took all earthquakes magnitude 8 and over from the 1600s to today and ran an analysis to see if there were any meaningful patterns in what time of year they occurred or at which point in the lunar cycle. The abstract of the study, which is titled “Do Large (Magnitude ≥8) Global Earthquakes Occur on Preferred Days of the Calendar Year or Lunar Cycle?,” should win an award for academic brevity: “No.”

“It’s all consistent with random chance,” Hough adds.

Our pets can predict earthquakes

Accounts of animals acting weird before earthquakes date back to ancient times. Today, some people describe their dogs barking or their cats taking shelter in the hours leading to a tremor.

“There’s a chance that there’s some germ of truth to that,” says Hough, because pets might be able to sense the first wave of an earthquake, called a P or compressional wave, which rolls through just before the obvious movement occurs. “Sometimes dogs and some animals will react to the first wave, the compression wave—they’ll feel it and we won’t,” says Goulet.

But this ability would only kick in in the seconds before an earthquake. Hough says that there’s no scientific evidence for pets having a built-in early warning system for earthquakes. She says that in one study, scientists tested this hypothesis by looking at shelter records to see if pets were more likely to run away before an earthquake. But that didn’t hold up, and there were actually more pet escapes after earthquakes than before.

It’s probably another case of us searching for order—a way to make sense of a shocking event. We might not normally notice or care if our dogs are acting antsy, but this observation takes on a new significance after an earthquake. “Maybe Fluffy ate something she shouldn’t have,” says Hough. “You can identify all sorts of things that you think are significant that aren’t.”

California is going to fall into the sea as a result of a major earthquake

Wait, what? Hough says she’s not sure if this is real myth or a joke, but Goulet says people genuinely ask her that.

It seems this idea is based on the fact that the state is split between two tectonic plates. The central and southern coast of California lies on the Pacific Plate, while the rest of the state is part of the North American plate. But these plates are moving along the horizontal plane. Some plates do move away from each other, and other fault lines have one plate sliding beneath another, but the San Andreas fault isn’t like that. Los Angeles is scooting toward San Francisco at an average rate of about two inches a year. In 50 million years or so, the cities might meet, and who knows what that will do to NorCal/SoCal animosity if we’re still around then. But no one’s getting submerged as a result of an earthquake.

“Relax, it’s up to code”

A building that was deemed earthquake-safe decades ago might not meet the best standards today. Although cities actively identify old buildings to retrofit, there are still a lot of out-of-date structures in cities like San Francisco. “The building code evolved over time as we gained knowledge,” says Goulet. And, being up to code is also based on probability—not exceeding a two percent chance of collapse in 50 years. Those are pretty good odds, but even if your home or office doesn’t crash like a stack of pancakes it’s not necessarily safe. “You may lose all the contents [of the building], or it might have to be torn down,” says Goulet. “There’s no such thing as earthquake-proof.”

There’s a lot we don’t know about earthquakes. Predicting them is impossible now, and may be for a long time. Seismologists can only—based on past events and statistics—offer forecasts that say what the odds are of a certain magnitude earthquake occurring within a given time frame.

One thing we do know is how to be prepared, something many people in earthquake-prone regions neglect. Goulet recommends the website earthquakecountry.org for tips on preparing an emergency kit and having a plan. Even basic steps like securing bookshelves and water heaters to walls or stocking up on disaster supplies could significantly impact your well-being after a big quake. And it’s always better to over-prepare than the alternative.

Written By Ula Chrobak

#Technology

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mikemortgage · 5 years

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When will a house burn? It may depend on when it was built

PARADISE, Calif. — The sky was turning orange and the embers were flying from the Camp Fire when Oney and Donna Carrell and Donna’s father sped away from their Paradise home.

“I thought, ‘Oh, well, the house is done,”‘ Oney Carrell said.

A few days later, they learned otherwise. The Carrells’ home survived the deadliest and most destructive wildfire in California history with a couple of warped window frames, a partially charred down spout and a stubborn smoky smell inside.

Most of their neighbourhood was destroyed. A guest house in their backyard, where Donna’s father lived, was reduced to ashes, along with a couple of sheds. Yet their beautifully restored 1940 Studebaker sat untouched in the garage.

The arc of destruction the Camp Fire carved through Paradise was seemingly random: Why were some houses saved and others incinerated? As millions of Californians brace for another wildfire season, a McClatchy analysis of fire and property records shows the answer might be found in something as simple as the roofs over their heads — and the year their house was built.

A landmark 2008 building code designed for California’s fire-prone regions — requiring fire-resistant roofs, siding and other safeguards — appears to have protected the Carrells’ home and dozens of others like it from the Camp Fire. That year marks a pivotal moment in the state’s deadly and expensive history of destructive natural disasters.

All told, about 51 per cent of the 350 single-family homes built after 2008 in the path of the Camp Fire were undamaged, according to McClatchy’s analysis of Cal Fire data and Butte County property records. By contrast, only 18 per cent of the 12,100 homes built prior to 2008 escaped damage. Those figures don’t include mobile homes, which burned in nearly equal measure regardless of age.

“These are great standards; they work,” said senior engineer Robert Raymer of the California Building Industry Association, who consulted with state officials on the building code.

Yet despite this lesson, California may end up falling short in its effort to protect homes from the next wildfire.

Mushrooming cities such as Folsom, where an 11,000-home development is springing up, have the ability to bypass the state’s safety standards in spite of considerable fire risks. The state, which offers cash incentives to bolster old homes against earthquakes, so far has done nothing to get Californians to retrofit homes built before 2008 for fire safety.

It hasn’t helped that housing construction went into a deep dive in 2008 and has been slow to recover. Raymer said only 860,000 homes and apartments have been built statewide since the code went into effect. That’s just 6 per cent of the state’s housing stock.

According to Cal Fire, as many as 3 million homes lie within the various “fire hazard severity zones” around the state. Dave Sapsis, a Cal Fire wildland fire scientist, said there’s no way to know definitively how many of those homes were built before 2008, but he believes “it’s the preponderance of them, the majority.”

The situation is worse in rural California, where housing construction lags but the fire hazards are among the worst in the state, Raymer said. Fewer than 3 per cent of the homes in the path of the Camp Fire were built after 2008.

“Most of our inventory that was here prior to the fire was (built) between the ’40s and the ’70s,” said Paradise Town Councilman Michael Zuccolillo, a real estate agent. “The average home here was from the ’70s.”

That leaves thousands of homes at risk from the next inferno across California, their wood-shake shingles waiting to ignite.

“What are we going to do about the existing housing stock that’s been built in these places?” said Max Moritz, a wildfire specialist at UC Santa Barbara. “For the existing housing stock that’s out there, that isn’t built to these codes, we have a massive retrofitting issue on our hands. They have structure ignition vulnerabilities that are built into the situation, they’re baked into the problem.”

——

‘THE WEAKEST LINK’

The Carrells, now living in a rental in Roseville, designed their Paradise home and did much of the interior work themselves; they knew that home was built with fire safety in mind.

“I knew we were in the middle of the forest,” Oney Carrell said during a recent visit to Paradise. “Why wouldn’t you do everything you could to make it last?”

But even he’s amazed that their home made it. Stepping over a blackened patio drain just a few feet from the back of the house, he wondered aloud: “I don’t know why it stopped here.”

It’s almost impossible to say for certain why some homes are still standing in Paradise, while others were ruined. Landscaping surely played a role; fire experts say homes buffered by so-called “defensible space” probably did better than those wrapped in shrubs. Luck was a big factor, too, as homes were no doubt spared by last-second shifts in the winds.

Nevertheless, experts say, McClatchy’s analysis reinforces their belief that California’s fire-safe building code can make a difference in an era of increasing vulnerability. Daniel Gorham, a former firefighter and U.S. Forest Service researcher who works for the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety in South Carolina, said the California code is becoming a model for other fire-prone states.

“California is leaps and bounds ahead of other parts of the country,” Gorham said. “California is on the forefront.”

Advocates say fire-resistant building materials aren’t particularly expensive. A study last fall by Headwater Economics, a consulting firm in Bozeman, Mont., found that “a new home built to wildfire-resistant codes can be constructed for roughly the same cost as a typical home.”

But getting Californians to retrofit homes built before 2008 is an enormous task. The state requires property owners in fire zones who replace at least half their roof to install “fire-retardant” materials on the entire roof. Other than that, however, there’s nothing forcing Californians to safeguard their existing homes against fire hazards.

A few California cities have taken matters into their own hands. In 2008, the City Council in Big Bear Lake, a community of 5,200 in San Bernardino County, passed an ordinance declaring wood shake shingle roofs “a severe fire hazard and danger” and ordered homeowners to replace them by 2012. Armed with state and federal grants, it offered cash incentives of up to $4,500 apiece for new roofs.

Although the grant program has run out, “I can’t think of the last time I saw a shake roof in Big Bear,” said Patrick Johnston, the city’s chief building official.

Most Californians, however, are on their own when it comes to spending the tens of thousands of dollars needed to replace a roof or install fire-resistant siding. The state offers no financial incentives for fire safety the way it does, say, for earthquakes — homeowners in quake zones can get up to $3,000 apiece from the state to gird their homes against seismic disaster.

There are signs, however, that the state is beginning to get more serious about retrofitting homes for fire safety.

A law signed last year by former Gov. Jerry Brown requires the state fire marshal to develop a suggested list of “low-cost retrofits” by January 2020. The state would then promote these retrofits in its education and outreach efforts.

California also might start throwing cash at the problem.

A new bill, AB 38, introduced earlier this year by Democratic Assemblyman Jim Wood of Santa Rosa, would create a $1 billion “fire hardened homes revolving loan fund” to help homeowners retrofit their properties.

The issue is personal for Wood, a dentist who spent weeks helping identify victims from the Camp Fire and the wine country fires of October 2017. Although eligibility terms haven’t been spelled out, the bill would offer low-interest and no-interest loans to help those who otherwise couldn’t pay for new roofs or other safeguards.

“A lot of these small towns are not as well off financially,” he said. “We need to find a way to help them, especially if they’re poorer.”

The fund might not be nearly enough to go around — not with hundreds of thousands of homes in need of retrofits, and a new roof alone costing $10,000 or more. “The $1 billion, indeed, that’s not enough to rehab every home,” said the Building Industry Association’s Raymer. But he said it’s “an absolutely excellent way to kick things off.”

Wood said state officials would have to figure out a plan for parceling out the money to where it’s needed most — probably starting with lower-income areas near forests.

“Obviously we want to affect the areas with the highest risk first,” the assemblyman said. “A lot of these small towns are not as well off financially. We need to find a way to help them, especially if they’re poorer.”

——

MAPPING ‘SEVERITY ZONES’

The fire-safe building code had its origins in two significant fires from a generation ago — the Panorama Fire of 1980, which spilled out of the mountains into the city of San Bernardino; and the monstrous Oakland Hills Fire of 1991, which wiped out 2,500 homes and killed 25 people.

In response, the Legislature ordered the Department of Fire Protection and Forestry to start mapping major fire risks in California, in the hinterlands as well as urban areas. The result was a collection of maps of the state’s “fire hazard severity zones,” encompassing more than one-third of California’s land mass.

Based on factors such as terrain, vegetation and weather patterns, the zones represent Cal Fire’s attempt to predict the probability of a fire starting and the likelihood that it could become significant, said Cal Fire’s Sapsis.

The maps spawned tighter building standards. The Legislature mandated fire-resistant roofs in these fire-prone areas. Then in 2008 the state laid out a more comprehensive scheme. The California Building Standards Commission rolled out a suite of regulations, known as Chapter 7A, that set strict rules for roofing materials, siding, windows, decks and other elements of a home built in 2008 or later — right down to the minimum specs for the wire mesh that must be installed on attic vents to keep embers out (no more than a quarter-inch of space between the wires).

Experts said the regulations seem to be particularly effective at protecting structures from the types of wildfires that are increasingly common in California, where wind gusts can blow embers a mile or two ahead of the main wall of flames and do some of the worst damage.

“A window breaks, a vent breaks, the fire gets into your home and you’ve got an interior structure fire,” said Joe Poire, the city of Santa Barbara’s fire marshal.

Enforcement of the building code carries a few wrinkles. In the mainly rural areas where Cal Fire is in charge of fire protection, the Chapter 7A code is automatically enforced in any region that Cal Fire has designated as a “severity zone” — moderate, high or very high.

In urban areas that have their own fire departments, the code is generally used only in spots where Cal Fire says the threat is very high. Local governments have the discretion of rejecting the Cal Fire designation, and Sapsis said some city councils have been squeamish about the state’s maps because of fears that the Chapter 7A code will inflate construction costs, or for other reasons.

Yet interviews with local officials throughout California by McClatchy indicate that the vast majority of cities and towns go along with Cal Fire’s recommendations. Santa Barbara city officials extended the building code to coastal areas that had been overlooked by Cal Fire’s mappers. The map omits small portions of Paradise, but the building code is enforced across the entire town, said Paradise public information officer Colette Curtis.

——

DANGER IN SANTA ROSA, FOLSOM?

Nevertheless, there are places where local officials are reluctant to impose strict building codes — even where fire has caused catastrophe.

Before Paradise exploded, Santa Rosa’s Coffey Park was the poster child for recent California wildfire disasters: Five people died and 1,321 homes were destroyed by the Tubbs Fire in October 2017.

Coffey Park wasn’t subject to California’s Chapter 7A building code. It still isn’t.

Unlike some areas of Santa Rosa, the neighbourhood hasn’t been designated a “very high fire hazard” zone by Cal Fire. City officials are OK with that. Although developers rebuilding Coffey Park are being urged to consider fire-resistant materials, city spokeswoman Adriane Mertens said the city doesn’t see any reason to impose the 7A code in the neighbourhood.

“There were very, very high winds that night,” Mertens said. “There were embers that were blown across the (Highway 101) freeway, across six lanes of freeway, into Coffey Park.”

Jack Cohen, a fire scientist in Montana who helped develop the 7A code, said he thinks Santa Rosa is committing “an error in judgment” by rebuilding without the safeguards.

In any event, Cal Fire is updating its fire hazard maps over the next year or so, taking into account more sophisticated data on wind and other climate factors, and Sapsis said spots such as Coffey Park could wind up designated as high-risk areas. Once the maps are done, any region placed inside Cal Fire’s “very high fire” zone will have no choice but to comply, under a bill signed into law by Brown last year.

But there will still be ways for cities to skirt the state building code.

Look at Folsom, widely considered one of the most vulnerable places in greater Sacramento to fire. The county’s hazard mitigation plan says 44,000 residents of Folsom are already at “moderate or higher wildfire risk.”

Now the suburb is building a development called Folsom Ranch, eventually to be home to 25,000 people, on a parcel south of Highway 50.

The development is on land that used to be subject to the strict state building code. Now it isn’t.

How did that happen? Years ago, the land was outside Folsom’s city limits and Cal Fire was responsible for its safety. Cal Fire’s maps put the land in the “moderate” risk zone — a threat level high enough that, under the state’s regulations, the fire-safe building code took effect. As it happened, no construction took place during that time, city officials say.

The situation changed when the city annexed the land to forge ahead with Folsom Ranch. Because the land has never been in the state’s “very high” risk zone, the city feels comfortable letting Folsom Ranch develop without the Chapter 7A building code.

Fire Chief Felipe Rodriguez said Folsom officials are still open to “the possibility of strengthening, hardening, our future homes.” But for now, the city is only requiring homeowners’ associations to implement a “vegetation management” plan and install fire-resistant fencing around properties that abut open space areas, Rodriguez said.

Is Folsom courting danger? Rodriguez doesn’t think so. The city will build two fire stations in the development and will “be able to suppress a fire during its early stages,” he said.

——

‘STICKS IN A FIREPLACE’

The hundreds of thousands of older homes in fire zones aren’t just more vulnerable in their own right.

Experts say they spread danger to new homes built to stricter standards.

“One little house built to a new standard, surrounded by a bunch of older stuff, is likely to get swamped,” Sapsis said.

Paradise provided a grim reminder of that problem. The Camp Fire destroyed more than 80 per cent of the 4,100 mobile homes in its path, whether they were built to the new code or not, according to McClatchy’s data analysis. That isn’t surprising, Sapsis said, given that many of Paradise’s mobile homes were jammed alongside one another in mobile home parks.

“They’re stacked so close together, they’re like sticks in a fireplace,” Sapsis said.

Sapsis and others say the lesson is that strong building codes aren’t enough. In particular, experts say communities must pay more attention to how they lay out their neighbourhoods, allowing for firebreaks and enough space between houses.

“In the name of affordable housing, we’re moving housing closer and closer to one another,” said Chris Dicus, a forestry and fire expert at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo. “That serves to have house-to-house-to-house ignition.”

The problem isn’t limited to densely-packed urban areas. “I live in a rural community, and I have got six feet basically separating me from my neighbour,” said Dicus, who lives outside of Morro Bay.

In addition, experts say California is struggling to enforce the state law regarding “defensible space” around properties.

The law requires that property owners maintain as much as 100 feet of defensible space around homes and other buildings in and around “a mountainous area, forest-covered lands, brush-covered lands, grass-covered lands, or land that is covered with flammable material.” That means keeping trees and shrubs pruned and spaced far apart. Within five feet of the building, property owners are supposed to remove anything that could catch fire: mulch, plants, woodpiles and so on.

In practice, however, enforcement of the defensible space law has been spotty at best. Raymer, of the California Building Industry Association, said most property owners don’t understand how to maintain their yards. The state doesn’t impose penalties for non-compliance, and only a few local governments have chosen to do so, Raymer said.

Legislation could change that. SB 190, by Sen. Bill Dodd, D-Napa, would require the state fire marshal to develop a “model defensible space program,” including penalties, that local governments could adopt.

The problem extends beyond homeowners’ property lines. Gov. Gavin Newsom, finding some rare common ground with the Trump administration, is advocating for more aggressive management of forested lands.

A thinned forest northeast of Paradise provided one of the rare victories of the Camp Fire. As the fire raged out of the tiny community of Pulga, it essentially spared the northern part of Magalia. The reason was a series of forest-thinning projects conducted in recent years and overseen by the U.S. Forest Service, Sierra Pacific Industries and the volunteer Butte County Fire Safe Council. The council also worked diligently with area residents to clear brush from their property.

All that work “did exactly what we hoped it would do,” said Calli-Jane DeAnda, executive director of the council, which secured $1 million in grants to remove fuels from forested areas. “This investment of public money is so worth the effort.”

——

THE PARADISE ‘LAB EXPERIMENT’

The rebuilding of Paradise means thousands of homes are going to be constructed in the coming years to the stricter standards promulgated by the state in 2008. It represents the single largest test of the effectiveness of the building code.

“That is an absolute lab experiment for us,” Sapsis said.

On the streets of Paradise, though, community leaders are taking a more measured view. Zuccolillo, the town councilman, said asphalt roofs and stucco siding might “give us more of a chance” but he doubts they will guarantee Paradise’s safety.

“I saw metal buildings, metal and stucco buildings, burn to the ground,” he said.

Still, there’s plenty of evidence, all over Paradise, that the state’s building code can protect property.

The other day, Sean Herr pulled into his driveway on the west side of Paradise, where he and his wife Dawn were raising their two young children.

The first thing he did was bring out the ultimate symbol of resiliency: an American flag, the same one that flew on his front porch the day of the Camp Fire.

Like the flag, the house is still standing. The Herrs’ home, built in 2010, suffered a bit of scorching and some interior smoke damage — the smoke is bad enough that they’re still temporarily living in Chico and aren’t certain they’ll move back.

Still, they marvel at what a close call they had. A Ford Excursion and a boat parked in the front yard, just a few feet from their porch, were destroyed. Five motorcycles locked in a shed behind the house got ruined. Most of their neighbourhood is gone.

The Herrs believe their attention to defensible space — the house is mostly encircled in gravel — and the strictness of the building code probably made the difference.

“Our yard and the construction of the house saved it for sure,” Dawn Herr said, gesturing to a small scorch mark by the side of the house. “You can see it tried to catch on fire.”

——

Ryan Sabalow of The Sacramento Bee and Steve Schoonover of the Chico Enterprise-Record contributed to this report.

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davidoespailla · 5 years

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Ritzy Rentals: America’s 10 Priciest Neighborhoods for Apartment Dwellers

iStock; realtor.com

If it seems that rents just keep on going up and up and up, well, that’s because they do.

With all of the obsessive attention paid to the thrill-packed, roller-coaster ride of rising prices and falling inventories that characterize today’s home-buying market, it’s easy to overlook the fact that roughly a third of Americans are renters, not owners. And rents—which, last time we checked, were already too damn high—have increased by 13% over the past five years for a two-bedroom place, according to Apartment List data. Ouch!

If it’s any consolation, there’s always going to be someone shelling out more than you. Maybe way more. In fact there are entire neighborhoods in the U.S. where the typical renter is throwing down $10,000, $15,000, even $30,000 a month. Realtor.com set out to find these exclusive nabes in some of the biggest, most desirable cities in the country.

And before you play the sad trombones for folks coughing up these amounts, let’s acknowledge that many are whiling away their days and nights in luxe high-rises offering everything from valet parking to robot butlers. And plenty are high-income individuals renting by choice, not necessity.

“The math between renting versus buying is starting to lean toward renting,” says Dolly Lenz, a New York–based luxury real estate broker. “They can’t deduct as much on their taxes anymore—so it makes less sense to buy.”

To find the most expensive places for renters, we pulled every two-bedroom rental on realtor.com in March and calculated a median rent price for every ZIP code. A bit of perspective: The median rent for these types of apartments across the U.S. is $1,100 per month.

We excluded ZIP codes with fewer than 12 listings and limited the ranking to no more than two neighborhoods per state (sorry, California and New York) and no more than one neighborhood per county.

Got it? It’s time to plunder those trust funds, have a blank check ready for first and last months’ rent and security deposit, and take a tour with us of the priciest rental markets in the U.S. Buckle up!

Most Expensive Rentals

Claire Widman

1. The Hamptons (Montauk, NY)

ZIP code: 11954 Median two-bedroom rent: $30,000

Montauk, NY, rental for $76,000 a month

realtor.com

This lovely seaside community in the Hamptons—widely known as “The End,” since it’s the easternmost point of Long Island—has gone through some big shifts in recent years. A longtime summer magnet for stressed New Yorkers fleeing the city, it’s still more family-oriented and lower key than nearby beautiful people playgrounds like Southhampton. But prices here keep escalating. While it’s far from the most expensive Hampton town to buy a home (median list prices here are $2.1 million, compared with $3.8 million in Water Mill, NY), rentals are another story.

These can range from one-bedroom units in full-service luxury buildings that lease for around $20,000 a month, to four-bedroom houses with an ocean view that rent for more than $80,000 in the summer and fall to under $30,000 after September.

It’s worth noting that, for an ultrapricey community, amenities here don’t always scream luxury. Simple things such as AC, pools, and parking for family and friends are highly sought-after.

Still, it’s hard to deny the lure of a place where world-class beaches and world-famous lobster rolls are just a bike ride away.

“Montauk appeals to folks looking for a quieter, more laid-back beach experience than you might find in the more ‘stylish’ Hamptons,” says Joe Cordes, owner of Comax Properties.

2. Aspen, CO

ZIP code: 81611 Median two-bedroom rent: $12,000

Aspen, CO, rental—yours for $250,000 a month

realtor.com

It’s always been difficult to snag an apartment during ski season in Aspen. Now, it’s becoming nearly as hard to line one up in the summer as the wealthy are beginning to stay here year-round.

Prices are so high in America’s premier ski town that units renting for upward of $10,000 a month aren’t even considered luxury here. The most expensive Aspen rental right now is an eight-bedroom mansion complete with a wraparound balcony and an outdoor fireplace for a sweet $250,000 a month.

Naturally, all of these rentals are just a short trek to the Snowmass Mountain with its 3,362 acres of terrain, and 94 trails and Buttermilk Mountain, home to the Winter X Games.

3. Century City (Los Angeles, CA)

ZIP code: 90067 Median two-bedroom rent: $10,750

Condo building in L.A.’s Century City neighborhood

realtor.com

Developed on the former backlot of film studio 20th Century Fox, and nestling Beverly Hills, Century City has become L.A.’s destination for luxury high-rise rentals. Its new crown jewel is Ten Thousand, a 40-story tower equipped with Botox rooms (yes, it’s a thing) and a private rooftop terrace with views of the ocean and downtown Los Angeles. It opened in 2017 with rentals starting at around $10,000 a month—although the penthouse will set tenants back about $60,000.

“This area is so expensive because most of the rental properties are true full-service buildings,” says local real estate agent Jennifer Okhovat of Compass. “Tenants have valet service, a concierge, 24/7 security, cleaning crews, tennis courts, you name it.”

Century City gets a mix of wealthy executives and Hollywood elites who are downsizing from their mansions and looking for a lower-maintenance lifestyle.

4. Fisher Island (Miami, FL)

ZIP code: 33109 Median two-bedroom rent: $9,250

Condo complex on Miami’s Fisher Island

realtor.com

Fisher Island, a go-to for Russian oligarchs and ultrarich and famous American home buyers (hello, Oprah!), has a rental market too—albeit a small one. This island is dotted with low-rise condos with views of the water that can go for around $20,000 for four-bedroom units.

The ZIP code is home to the highest-earning folks in the nation, with annual incomes topping $2 million, according to Bloomberg News. Just off of Miami, it can be accessed only by boat (usually a yacht), ferry, or helicopter.

“Fisher Island is very private and exclusive, and it’s not really for a crowd looking to have excitement,” says Sepehr Niakan, a real estate broker with HB Roswell Realty. “These people get to have their privacy and amenities without the ruckus of South Beach.”

Despite clocking in at just about 200 acres (Central Park in Manhattan tops 800 acres), the island has 18 tennis courts and a golf course—which renters can access with a temporary membership for $150 per day. There isn’t much in the way of shopping. But who needs to shop when you can lie on a beach with sand imported from Bermuda that’s raked to perfection each day? And leave your car on the mainland: Folks here get around on golf carts.

“If you have a giant, 250-foot yacht, there are not many places you can dock it in South Florida,” Niakan says. “Fisher Island has a deep-water marina, which is a must-have for the international crowd.”

5. Tribeca (New York, NY)

ZIP code: 10007 Median two-bedroom rent: $8,195

Tribeca loft

realtor.com

In the early 1900s, Tribeca was mostly textile factories and warehouses. Today, these spacious, airy buildings house some of Manhattan’s priciest lofts and trendiest boutiques. Actor Robert De Niro, who co-founded the world-famous Tribeca Film Festival, helped popularize the neighborhood decades ago. And today it’s home to A-listers such as Taylor Swift and Justin Timberlake, who can be seen hopping from bistro to bistro along the neighborhood’s cobblestone streets.

“The lofts here have very large floor plans,” says New York City–based real estate appraiser Jonathan Miller. And in space-starved Manhattan, “there is a premium for larger space.”

Sunny apartments in Tribeca’s low-rise buildings can easily exceed $10,000 a month. This two-bedroom loft with an enormous dressing room/walk-in closet, marble countertops, and electric blinds is priced at $12,500.

The rentals are becoming even more popular as luxury sales are slowing. Well-heeled buyers have more brand-new developments to choose from and are waiting to see what will happen with prices.

“In the past six months, we’ve begun seeing buyers camp out in the rental market, waiting until they’re comfortable to buy,” Miller says.

6. Park Shore (Naples, FL)

ZIP code: 34103 Median two-bedroom rent: $6,500

Park Shore in Naples, FL

Murmakova/iStock

Oceanfront high-rises started popping up on Park Shore’s white-sand beaches in the ’60s, transforming it into a winter destination for affluent snowbirds. There’s plenty of seafood restaurants and other fine dining and upscale shopping options. But it’s the lack of new development that has kept prices high.

“There is an unbelievable amount of wealth in Naples. There is a private airstrip that can accompany any-sized private plane,” says broker Lenz. “More people are testing out the Naples market. They are renting out a two-bedroom, and checking out the area before they move from New York.”

And there are some amazing rentals to choose from. Take this two-bedroom ,1,600-square-foot beauty with ocean views going for $8,500 a month.

7. South Beach (San Francisco, CA)

ZIP code: 94105 Median two-bedroom rent: $6,499

Apartment building in San Francisco’s South Beach

realtor.com

This former shipping and warehouse district along the San Francisco Bay is now filled with high-end stores, nightlife, and new luxury condo and rental apartment buildings with floor-to-ceiling windows. This walkable neighborhood has a mix of new development and historic homes built after the 1906 earthquake, which leveled much of this area.

“You are going to pay more for this location,” says Masti Pahlbod, a real estate adviser at Engel & Volkers San Francisco. The area is popular with highly paid professionals ranging from techies to lawyers. “It has new cafes, restaurants. … And it’s just a walk to the waterfront.”

Units with views of the bay and San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge are much sought-after. This 1,300-square-foot rental with a chef’s kitchen is going for $5,500 a month.

8. Pinnacle Peak (Scottsdale, AZ)

ZIP code: 85262 Median two-bedroom rent: $4,950

Pinnacle Peak rental for $7,500 a month

realtor.com

In Pinnacle Peak, a 40-minute drive outside the heart of Scottsdale, rattlesnake and mountain lion sightings are common. Well-off renters come to swap the big-city life for the outdoors, playing 18 holes at Pinnacle Peak Country Club, a green golf course in the desert, or a spa visit at the Four Seasons Resort.

Renters can find five-bedroom houses in the gated community of Troon Verde for $7,500 a month. Those who want to save a few bucks can score a three-bedroom apartment for just under $3,200 at complexes with poolside cabanas and wet bars.

Having a car is a must in this sprawling neighborhood, which is dotted with large homes and in-ground pools. At the edge of Coconino National Forest, Pinnacle Peak attracts the more adventurous renter who wants to visit during the still-warm Arizona winter months and go backpacking or rock climbing.

9. West End (Washington, DC)

ZIP code: 20037 Median two-bedroom rent: $4,339

Apartment building in DC’s West End

realtor.com

Many of the historic, Victorian-style row homes that the nation’s capital is known for have all but disappeared from the West End. These days cranes are busy putting up new office buildings and low-rise, luxury apartments and condominiums throughout the neighborhood to meet the demand of buyers and renters.

One of the newer developments, the 10-story Westlight, features street-level retail with about 70 apartments on the upper levels. Units start at around $3,000 and go over $12,000 a month.

“We absolutely have a lot of high-earning professionals renting there,” says local real estate broker Julie Brodie of Engel & Volkers Tysons and Landsdowne. There are also a lot of retirees who “want less square footage and [to] be near the city life.”

This area also includes Foggy Bottom, a posh DC neighborhood that is home to the Washington National Opera and National Symphony Orchestra and plenty of George Washington University off-campus housing. The ZIP code is also home to a complex called the Watergate Hotel. Maybe you’ve heard of it?

10. Capitol Hill (Salt Lake City, UT)

ZIP code: 84103 Median two-bedroom rent: $3,813

10,000-square-foot mansion for rent in Salt Lake City’s Capitol Hill neighborhood

realtor.com

Loads of software engineers are moving from high-priced tech hubs like Silicon Valley and Seattle to work in smaller, more affordable Salt Lake City. And the lower prices means they can splurge on a swanky pad in the quieter, primarily residential, old-money neighborhood of Capital Hill.

“A lot of younger professionals are moving here and making decent money, but they are renting because they don’t know yet if they’ll be here long-term,” says Trey Leonard, a global real estate adviser at Engel & Volkers Park City.

That’s created a boom for upscale neighborhoods near the city center like Capital Hill and Greater Avenues. This area is squeezed between downtown and the Wasatch Mountains north of town. There are some large two-bedrooms units in recently built luxury condo buildings with pools and rooftop lounges that rent for around $3,500.

“Many of these homes have simply amazing views of the city skyline and the mountains,” Leonard says.

Allison Underhill contributed to this report.

The post Ritzy Rentals: America’s 10 Priciest Neighborhoods for Apartment Dwellers appeared first on Real Estate News & Insights | realtor.com®.

Ritzy Rentals: America’s 10 Priciest Neighborhoods for Apartment Dwellers

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theconservativebrief · 6 years

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As we grapple with the aftermath of Hurricane Florence in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeast, it’s clear that our development choices contributed to the staggering damages — estimated to be between $17 billion to 22 billion — of this extreme weather event. Now that the rain has subsided, the destruction to houses and buildings in Hurricane Florence’s path is all that remains.

Mostly, though, we’re stuck with a harder question: What to do before the next storm to prevent such losses?

One solution is strategic retreat: moving out of harm’s way. As seas rise, flooding is becoming almost a weekly occurrence in cities up and down the East Coast. Wilmington, North Carolina now is subject to chronic tidal flooding due to sea level rise. As storms grow stronger, so are the calls to walk away from the most flood-prone places.

For many, the notion of retreat brings to mind post-apocalyptic visions of empty highways, rusty skeletons of buildings, and houses grown over with weeds. It’s daunting. But scenarios that involve retreat don’t need to be. Innovative thinking about the role of relocation can foster cohesive, rich communities as some move to safer, higher grounds.

We have studied applications of strategic retreat in 22 countries, from the US to Mozambique to Fiji. The process of moving out of harm’s way has taken many different forms — from a few households to whole communities, before and after disasters, and in response to earthquakes, floods, and hurricanes. We found that moving to safer ground can be an attractive option for many reasons: It protects livelihoods, restores coastal ecosystems, and reduces damages from extreme weather.

But the potential of strategic retreat remains largely untapped, even though sea level rise threatens to inundate 4 million to 13 million Americans this century. North Carolina alone is home to 1,132 “severe repetitive loss properties” worth $280 million — properties that, on average, flood every two to three years and have been rebuilt five times with the help of taxpayer money.

Perhaps it’s time to think more about how the government could purchase some of the homes flooded by Florence and restore those properties to open space.

Moving to safer ground will be just one strategy among many: We’ll need sea walls in some places, stricter building codes in others, and a change in where new subdivisions, highways, and hospitals are built. Attacking global warming must be part of the solution: Continued emissions of heat-trapping gases drive up the risk of rising seas.

We can’t build our way out of this. Estimates suggest it would cost $400 million to improve stormwater drainage in Miami Beach, at least $8 billion to build floodgates around Houston, and north of $12 billion to barricade New York City. Barring a dramatic increase in resources, we simply cannot block out water at every turn.

Before we look to the future, it’s useful to consider the forces that brought us where we are today. Local governments — especially in states with no income tax, like Florida — rely heavily on property taxes. That creates a strong motivation to let development occur with as little governmental interference as possible. Then when disaster strikes, it is the federal government that foots most of the recovery and relief bill. Development benefits local and state governments and private parties in the short term; the federal government is exposed to the growing risk.

The US government is not unaware of the problem. With support from FEMA’s Hazard Mitigation Grant Program, hundreds of communities have spent tens of millions of dollars each year to purchase flood-prone properties from willing sellers. Harris County has purchased more than 3,000 floodplain homes since 1985. These investments save about $4 for every dollar spent, making them a sound federal investment.

But the program already faces limitations, ones that will only be magnified as sea levels rise and the potential value of strategic retreat grows. The program’s current capacity doesn’t meet existing demand from homeowners, much less demand from millions more who may be displaced. What’s more, some people who’d like to make use of the program cannot, because the amount they’d receive for their current home wouldn’t be enough for them to move anywhere else nearby. And all of these buyouts are voluntary, so this version of strategic retreat can end up instead as an awkward patchwork of houses and empty lots.

Most importantly, the buyouts are rarely accompanied by a coherent land use plan. Consider Staten Island after Superstorm Sandy (where 20-foot waves reached third-story windows in some neighborhoods). Many homeowners whose properties were damaged or destroyed were interested in selling their homes.

The city government was hesitant to give up residential land, so the state government stepped in to administer the FEMA buyout program. But as a result of financial constraints and the city’s reluctance, the option to participate in FEMA’s buyout program was only extended to a select few. Instead, many of the surrounding neighborhoods were given the option of selling to the city of New York. Why does that matter? Under the terms of the FEMA program, properties purchased cannot be redeveloped in the future.

Homes sold to New York City, on the other hand, were auctioned off for redevelopment. So while some houses were taken down for good, others were rebuilt larger than ever. Adding to the chaos, the Army Corps of Engineers is set to construct a sea wall around much of the area — empty parcels, brand new homes, and all. The cost: $579 million, two-thirds of which would come from the federal Sandy aid bill that passed in 2013. That certainly sends a mixed message about the long-term future of the Staten Island waterfront.

A scene from Vilano Beach, Florida, September 13. Sean Rayford/Getty Images

Mayors across America are incentivized to keep residents in place and promote growth, and that’s now what shapes our current flood risk management system. The Army Corps of Engineers — the federal agency leading the charge — responds to local requests on a project-by-project basis, lacking any mandate to conduct regional- or national-scale planning. (That must be authorized by Congress.)

But if we invest in more ambitious, coordinated plans, resettlement can deliver much more than peace of mind for the households moving to higher ground. Nearby neighborhoods are made safer as well: Water that used to flow over pavement into the next town can be absorbed into newly open landscapes. In some cases, making space for water can also mean creating urban parks and protecting critical habitat. Governments — that is, taxpayers — can reduce spending on constructing and maintaining infrastructure in flood-prone places.

Communities can start by taking a close look at the most egregious of the repetitive loss properties mentioned earlier. For Florida, a recent analysis identified about 530 such properties across the state in communities with high social vulnerability, significant flood exposure, and high potential for habitat conservation. Whenever relocation is on the table, equity and environmental justice are essential priorities.

Fresh strategies for relocation can establish safer ground that will sustain resilient communities for the long term. A flexible approach is key. Buyout programs will still play a role but they will not be sufficient. Market forces can be part of the solution, if insurance is priced appropriately and risk is communicated clearly. For some tight-knit communities, relocating as a group might be the solution.

The need to make room for the floodwaters is especially pressing in South Florida, where even stout seawalls and levees cannot prevent seawater from rising up through the porous bedrock.

The answer is not to build everything back the way it was, before Florence struck, nor is it to buy and demolish every flooded home. It will take a combination of infrastructure reinforcements, elevated homes, insurance policies, and relocation to manage flood risk in a changing climate. Moving out of harm’s way can play a key role in this challenge, but we need to think creatively and strategically about the best way to do it.

Miyuki Hino is a doctoral student in the Emmett Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources at Stanford University. Katharine J. Mach is director of the Stanford Environment Assessment Facility at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment and senior research scientist at Stanford. Christopher B. Field is the Melvin and Joan Lane Professor for Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies at Stanford.

The Big Idea is Vox’s home for smart discussion of the most important issues and ideas in politics, science, and culture — typically by outside contributors. If you have an idea for a piece, pitch us at [email protected].

Original Source -> Hurricane Florence’s floods caused severe property damage. Here’s a solution.

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Luis Minero.

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