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lu-undy · 3 years

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Sniper/Spy request #2

Here it is: "Spy draws Sniper and the Aussie finds out."

"Mh…"

No alarm clock? Oh, yes, it was Saturday.

He opened his eyes.

The light outside was faint, turning the sky from blue to pink. It was the early morning and the Aussie rolled on his bed to push away the blanket. It was summer and already warm enough for him. He closed his eyes but after long minutes of waiting, he did not fall back asleep.

Well, better get up and ready up the laundry or something, before the rest of the base woke up.

First things first. Clothes.

Sniper climbed down his bunk bed and grabbed a shirt as well as a pair of trousers. He went to the sink and splashed some water on his face to better wake up.

Now glasses, hat, and let's go to the base.

The Aussie stepped out of the van and turned to face the base when-

"The hell…?"

There was a silhouette. It was far away, a man sitting on a little boulder. It wasn't the first time that Sniper had seen it. But usually the silhouette disappeared before he thought about acting about it.

However, that day was a Saturday, the Aussie hadn't anything else in mind but the usual chores. He went back to his van and grabbed his kukri. Whatever lunatic was over there surely couldn't be one of his mercenary colleagues. And the base was in the middle of nowhere, so whoever was there had driven for more miles than was reasonable, making them thus, a lunatic.

Sniper walked to the silhouette on the boulder and as he got closer, the tension on his body melted away. He recognised the pinstripe pattern on the trousers, he recognised the white shirt and mask.

"Bonjour, Sniper." The man said in his native tongue, still giving his back to the Aussie.

[Good morning, Sniper]

"What the hell are you doin' here this early? And on yer own?"

"Capturing the colours."

"What?" As Sniper got closer to the Frenchman, he saw that he was holding a sketchbook and drawing. "You're drawin'?"

"Mh-hm."

"With a black pen."

"Very observant, Sniper."

"What colours are you capturin' if you're drawin' in black and white?"

"Look in front of you."

Sniper raised his eyes from over Spy's shoulder and looked at the rising sun. The colours were stunning, Spy was right. The hints of orange through the pink early morning was a treat for the eyes.

"Yeah…" Sniper looked at Spy again. "What the hell are you doin' now?!" The Frenchman had lit a cigarette and was now burning the page of his sketchbook with his lighter. "You lunatic…"

Spy slowly turned to his colleague.

"Says the man who is investigating a shadow he saw from the confines of the van he calls home at some terribly early hour of the morning?" He cocked an eyebrow and smiled. Sniper rolled his eyes up with a grin. "You are a lunatic too, mon ami."

[My friend]

"Guess I am." Sniper chuckled.

"Coffee?" Spy took a thermos that was on the ground.

"Oh, why not." Sniper watched as Spy poured the hot beverage into two cups. "You were waitin' for someone?" He asked as he raised an eyebrow. The presence of the second cup surprised him.

"Oui."

"Oh, I can leave you if you want."

Spy chuckled and sat at the edge of the boulder.

"Pray take a seat."

The Aussie obeyed and took the cup that Spy handed him.

"Thanks, eh."

"You are welcome."

They both took a sip.

"I'll drink quickly and I'll be on my way." Sniper said.

"Oh, are you on a schedule?"

"No but you said you were waitin' for someone. I don't wanna be the third wheel, eh." Sniper put the cup to his lips.

"You already are."

… and the coffee nearly sprang out of the Aussie's mouth. He gulped down and turned his head left and right trying to look for the guest that Spy was awaiting. No one was in sight, and the base was far behind them.

"Where's your mate?"

"Sitting right next to me." Spy turned his eyes to Sniper's and smiled.

"Me?"

"Oui."

"What?"

"It has been weeks of me waking up this early, especially on the weekends. The season is showing its best colours early. Look at the pink, the rose, the fuscia, the peach, the flamingo and strawberry…" Spy pointed in front of them and his finger trailed in lines, as if he was painting the canvas of the sky itself. "Oh, and from the peach, then it all leans towards more orange tones, doesn't it? Coral, and yet tangerine, maybe even a fiery tiger tint sometimes, ah..."

Sniper looked at his colleague as he went on and on. The colours he was describing made his irises even lighter...

"That's a lot of words to say pink and orange, Spook."

"Because it is so much more than that. Like anything else, or anyone else."

"Like you?" Sniper asked.

"And you." Spy answered.

Silence fell just the time for them to take a sip.

"So you come here early, draw the sky and then burn the page?"

Spy chuckled and raised his eyes to Sniper.

"Non, I do not. I usually do not draw the sky."

"Oh? What're you doin' here then?"

"The colours of the sky help my nerves."

Sniper frowned as he changed his position to sit cross legged. He did not really follow his colleague.

"They are warm and soft colours, non?"

"Yeah."

"Don't you find it soothing? Here, far from the base and the rest of the lunatics that our colleagues are, just you, your thoughts, and the colours that God chooses to display for the day. It brings some peace to me and helps me draw."

"I didn't know you liked drawin'."

"Neither did I until there was a picture that I could not get out of my mind."

"What is it?"

Spy took a deep breath. He was sitting at the edge of the boulder, one leg on the other, his varnished Italian shoes dangling off of it.

"A sight of poetry on a scruffy canvas."

Sniper chuckled.

"You make no sense."

"Oh but I do." Spy insisted. "I do, but only to myself, I guess. Such things are hard to describe if you don't feel them yourself."

Sniper turned his head and realised that his colleague was staring at him with something painted on his face, an emotion that the Aussie didn't manage to decipher. His eyebrow twitched, but then he blushed as he thought that he himself had just been staring for a few seconds. He looked away into the immense desert.

"One day, God graced me with this vision." Spy started. "A man, taller than me and his shoulders broader than mine. It was an evening in a crowded place. There was a lot of noise, people's chatter, their laughter, and the room smelt of cheap beer. But I could see only him." Spy paused to take a sip of his coffee. "That man, he was closing his eyes and whispering in the ear of a golden dragon. It breathed a fire that did not burn, a fire that was… enchanting. It was shy, woody threads of air that tied a knot here." Spy put his gloved hand on his chest and sighed. "His eyes were closed and his lips moved with such mastery, such elegance… Even the dragon was melting in his hands, under his agile fingers."

Sniper raised a curious eyebrow. Had Spy drunk something odd, or did he replace his nicotine for something else in his cigarette that morning…? He seemed normal enough, his eyes were clear, no signs of funny cigarettes in his breath.

"Sniper?" The Frenchman hadn't moved his eyes away from the Aussie.

"Yeah?"

"I fell in love that day."

The Aussie's body temperature soared as his cheeks burst in crimson.

"With a guy?"

"Oui."

"Who's… talkin' to dragons…?"

Spy chuckled.

"It is a metaphor."

"Ah…" Sniper exhaled, relieved that his colleague wasn't high or drunk, he was just being a bit too poetic for the Aussie. "So you fell in love with someone?"

"Oui."

"If it's all a metaphor, I guess it was with a woman?"

"Non."

"Oh…" Sniper nodded to himself and looked away. The way that Spy was looking at him was impressive. It was almost as if the Frenchman could read Sniper's thoughts straight through his eyes.

"It happened months ago now, on a Friday evening." Spy went on. "We were celebrating the victories of the day in the common room. Some of us were playing music."

"Yeah, as always."

"One of us is the one I described." Sniper's eyebrows jumped. "And since that day, I could not get that image out of my mind. That fool who was playing did not know that a few metres away, the old man that I am was falling in love. With what, you ask? The way his brow furrows when the intensity of the music gets to him, the way he gently rocks his hips along his instrument to better flow on the rhythm, and the way his eyes are always hidden behind a thin, yellow curtain of mystery."

"Woah… Really deep in love you are, eh. And I didn't know you liked blokes."

"It is a curse."

"Why?"

"I can see beauty in a lot of things and in a lot of people, yet my work requires me to see none."

"Hey, you can still see beautiful stuff and say 'it's beautiful'. You're not gonna get shot for that."

"I guess you are right."

They took a break from the conversation to finish their coffee. Sniper looked at his colleague who was looking at the horizon and the sky. He didn't know Spy could be that poetic. Maybe that's why he was so secretive, maybe he just didn't want people to know that about him. But then why would he tell Sniper?

"So you drew that vision you had in your head in your book?" Sniper asked and Spy gave a sad grin.

"If only I did." He answered. "I have tried. I have filled sketchbook after sketchbook of it. But in the end, it is never good enough and I end up destroying it."

"You burn all your sketchbooks?" Sniper asked, surprised.

"I burn the pages, oui. And then I am left with an empty sketchbook."

"Why d'you do that? I'm sure you're gettin' better at drawing. Practise makes you good, you can't get worse."

Spy sighed.

"Perhaps you are right. But seeing that person on a sheet of paper tears my very heart apart. When I finish drawing and I look at it, I am tempted."

"To do what?"

"To keep the picture with me, at any time. But it is too risky, what if someone found it? So instead, I destroy the evidence of my crime."

"Hey, quit the drama. You're just in love and can't get the bloke out of your head. Makes sense."

"I suppose so." Spy answered and raised his eyes to Sniper. "Are you not curious to know who it is?"

"Well, if you wanna tell me, go ahead. If not, it's fine. Feels special enough that you tell me you have feelings, and for a bloke at that."

They exchanged a smile.

"What about you, Sniper? Is there anyone in that wild heart of yours?"

"Wild? Heh, maybe." Sniper blushed and averted his eyes. He stared down at the empty coffee cup he was nervously fiddling with.

"Here." Spy handed him the sketchbook.

"Why're you givin' me your book?"

"I am giving you a choice." Spy said. "You can either draw him or her here, or you can have a look at my latest drawing of that special man."

"So it's either I get to know who you fancy or you get to know who I fancy?"

"Oui, why not?" Spy smiled. "On my end of the bargain, I have nothing to lose."

Sniper raised an eyebrow.

"I cannot have more with him but short chats, like we are having now, you and me. I sometimes see him and try my best to not stare when all I wish is to take in his charms for as long as I can."

Sniper smiled.

"Y'know, you sound really different."

"I don't believe I do." Spy answered. "I think that you never heard me on such topics before."

"True…"

"So, what do you choose?" Spy put the sketchbook and the pen on the ground, between them both.

"Spook, listen, I-I can't really tell you who I fancy…" Sniper removed his hat and scratched his head. "It's complicated… It's just… I like it when I see him and-"

"Him?" Spy repeated.

"Y-yeah… Oh, bugger I've said too much already…" Sniper let a hand sink on his face from his brow to his chin.

"Then have a look at the sketchbook to see who is in my heart."

"You sure?"

"I think so."

"Not gonna regret it?"

"What could happen, hm?" Spy asked. "The second you will know who it is, he will too and this weight I have been carrying on my shoulders for months will be no more."

"Why tell me who it is rather than go and see him to tell him straight."

"Open and see. I think you will have the answer to your question." Spy took his cigarette case out of his inner pocket and lit one.

"Alright…" Sniper took the sketchbook and put it on his lap. "You really sure?" He looked at Spy. The Frenchman held the cigarette between his fingers and exhaled the smoke elegantly between his parted lips. He nodded.

Sniper took a deep breath and opened the book. Spy hadn't destroyed it yet, it must have been his latest book then.

"Holy…"

The Aussie looked at the sketches, page after page. It was the same face drawn from different angles, with different expressions. Spy really had an obsession with that man, it was the only thing drawn there covering all the paper!

Sniper blushed intensely and as the sweat broke on his brow, his heart started pounding in his chest.

And as Sniper turned yet another page, he started to understand Spy's metaphor. The man wasn't whispering in a golden dragon's ear, he was playing the saxophone. The dragon wasn't breathing threads of air, it was music, and the thin, yellow curtain of mystery was nothing else but the Aussie's yellow tinted aviators…

Sniper shut the book for an instant and took a deep breath.

"Now you understand." Spy simply said.

But Sniper was boiling on his seat, on the bare ground. So that was the man Spy had been fancying? For months? How did Sniper not see anything coming? How did he not guess?

Maybe because Spy wasn't alone playing the game of averting his eyes whenever they got too close to Sniper. Maybe because there was a reason as to why the Aussie needed to close his eyes when he played the saxophone on Friday. Maybe because if he kept his eyes opened, he would stare at the man he was playing for? Maybe the movement of his hips as he played betrayed him?

Sniper grabbed the pen and quickly found an empty page in the sketchbook. Spy's eyebrows jumped but he remained mute and didn't dare ask what was going on. After all, his colleague seemed way too agitated to be able to answer.

The Aussie scribbled and scratched the paper recklessly. He could sketch too, in his own style. He had learnt from drawing animals, and that skill he had transposed it to humans too.

It took him a few minutes and when he was finally done, he slammed the book shut and put it down between Spy and him.

"May I?" Spy asked and Sniper nodded, still not making eye contact. The Frenchman put his cigarette between his lips to hold it there, and took the book between his gloved hands. He opened it and turned the pages until the style changed. "Mon Dieu…" He whispered to himself when his eyes fell on the portrait of the man who made Sniper's heart beat.

There was an atrocious second of agony before Spy shut the book and put it away.

"Do you smoke, Sniper?"

"Huh? Y-yeah, sometimes…" Sniper's brain was turning faster than a hamster in a wheel trying to understand why Spy would ask that.

"Good." Spy leaned on his colleague and took a deep breath. Sniper was petrified.

"Why?"

"This is about the only bad habit I have." Spy answered. "That, and singing when I cook. Some previous partners did not like it."

"Why're you tellin' me all this?"

"Because, given the portraits in that sketchbook, it might be a good idea to start knowing each other better."

"Ah, yeah… Ok…" Sniper cleared his throat. "Well uh… I-I don't really know what to say."

"Then don't say anything."

"Isn't that unfair?" Sniper asked.

"It is not about fairness." Spy answered. "It is about feeling the best way possible."

"C-can I do somethin'? I feel like-"

"Oui."

"But you don't know what I was goin' to do?"

"If doing that thing makes you feel better, then pray do. I do not wish to know more." Spy answered and closed his eyes as his head rested on Sniper's shoulder.

"Right." Sniper opened his arm and wrapped it around Spy's frame. He let his hand hang in the air next to Spy's hip. It might be too much. Yeah, yeah it was, he shouldn't have been so upfront, he should've -

"Merci." Spy answered.

[Thank you.]

He pulled Sniper's hanging hand to his hip and snuggled closer to him.

"Spy?"

"Oui?"

"Thanks."

"The pleasure is all mine."

"Nah, really. Thanks." Sniper leaned his head on top of Spy's.

They stayed there, perched on that boulder for long minutes that felt like a flash. The temperature rose slowly in the desert while the air was already very hot between them.

#tf2 sniper #tf2 spy #sniperspy

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stellar-imagines · 5 years

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SCENARIO REQUEST: ❝buried in art.❞

[ Fandom: Boku no Hero Academia ] [ Characters: Class 1-A ]

「You developed a habit of drawing in your sketchbook and often drew in the middle of the class. Aizawa catches you drawing in class and make you go up and share it with everyone.」

You didn't know when it started but before you realized it, you've completely turned into someone who's obsessed with drawing. At the very start, it was supposed to be a method to relieve stress but it soon changed into a hobby. When you're free, you would sit on your desk, drawing something. On the day your friends decided to go for a picnic, you were dragged to a spacious field with a huge carpet of grass and a few trees providing shade. The sky was blue and the weather was just right, the girls had decided to play some game while you sat under the shade, watching your friends run around while drawing the landscape.

You loved your classmates. They were all amazing people you came to appreciate, and they each had a special place in your heart. Maybe not Mineta that much, but it’s not like you wished the guy was dead, he just seriously needed to respect women and keep his fantasies to himself. You've been drawing a bit too much of landscape that you wanted a change of pace. It started with doodles of the girls since you have a lot of pictures taken together with them but you would just change up the style a bit. They had great style and dressed up in cute clothes. Slowly, you decided to draw some of the boys.

By now, you had at least drawn half of your classmates, your sketchbook was packed with various landscape drawings in the first half of your sketchbook and in the other half, there were doodles of your classmates. It wasn't that you're too shy to share it with your friends but they never seem to be bothered by the fact that you're always carrying around that book with you. Some managed to get a peek of what you're drawing from time to time but have never seen the end product.

As Aizawa went on and on about something during homeroom, you found yourself daydreaming a bit. The day before you were training your quirk and exercising in the gym, with everyone improving so vastly, you wanted to change to and decided to train all on your own. You looked down to see your sketchbook opened, a half-empty page greeting you. The occasional on taps from Todoroki who sat behind you kept you awake and you seriously have to thank him once class is over.

"[Last Name]."

The moment your teacher called your name, you were wide awake and alert, wondering why he suddenly called out to you. Maybe it was because you almost fell asleep 10 times? It has to be. Despite the anxiety swelling in your chest, you swallowed the saliva that pooled beneath your tongue and nervously gazed at your teacher.

"Yes, sir?" For a moment, you felt his gaze on you and you instinctively blinked, hoping that you were just imagining things. Aizawa's eyes were focused entirely on you and you couldn't help but think that you're in trouble now. You hoped that he would just tell you to go and wash your face to stay awake or remind you not to fall asleep and stay awake or something. By now, everyone had their attention on you.

"Is there something you want to share with us? Your face was practically buried in that sketchbook of yours."

"N-No! It's not like that, sensei!" you tried to wave it off with a smile, hoping that he would let you off.

"Get up here and share it with the class, maybe that way you won't be sleepy for the rest of my class." Aizawa said. With an exasperated groan and the realization that you can never win against your teacher, your grabbed your book and sauntered to the front of the class.

"Now that I think about it, what kind of stuff does [Last Name] draw anyway? She's always drawing something in her sketchbook." Kirishima muttered out loud.

"I've seen her draw some landscape, kero. But I've never seen the end product." Asui answered.

"Isn't it a bit exciting!?" Ashido quipped with a bright smile.

"It feels like we're back in elementary school doing show and tell." Sero said.

"It's nothing special, guys....." you mumbled with a small smile. Aizawa picked up the book you placed on the desk and flipped through the pages, his tired eyes quickly scanning over your sketches

"She says nothing special but I can't tell if she's being humble or not." he raised your book and showed everyone one of your most recent drawings. There was a moment of silence when your friends eyed your drawing closely.

"Amazing, [First Name]-chan! You drew all that!?" Ashido broke the silence, rising from her seat and skipping over to the front, leaning closer to the book being presented. Aizawa handed it over to the eccentric girl who shifted her gaze to you. One by one, your classmates began crowding you, flipping through the pages to find a drawing of themselves in different parts of your book. Aizawa stepped aside, muttering something about waking him up once this whole ordeal was over. In the midst of the chaos, you stood in the middle next to Ashido, overwhelmed by the attention. Even the ever so stoic Todoroki was next to you, eyes showing surprise when he stumbled over a drawing of himself.

"Ah, I'm there."

"You have the face of an ikemen! This is truly one of my favorite drawings of you! I hope I'm not creeping you out but you have such finessed features, and it felt like I'm redrawing a masterpiece by Van Gogh......" you muttered.

"I'm not that good looking." he replied casually.

"Please apologize to all the guys in UA." you pouted.

"Oh! I'm there too! You're a great artist, [Last Name]!" Kirishima pointed excitedly, slinging an arm around your shoulders.

"A-Ah, thank you!"

"I'm a bit embarrassed, you drew me in such pretty clothes that I can never afford.....!" Uraraka said, turning to you with a teary expression. Just how broke is she?

"You're a natural artist [Last Name], I find myself drawn to you." Kaminari wiggled his eyebrows while you laughed nervously, unsure of how to respond to that.

"Stop embarrassing yourself." Jirou huffed.

"How do I look? Did you get my charm point?" Aoyama peeked over Kirishima and Kaminari's shoulder to examine the drawings. They all had different reactions but none of them said anything negative which made you relieved. Midoriya was in tears, saying things about how he doesn't deserve that much respect from you but when you told him that he was an amazing person and that you admire his hardworking nature, his face turned red and he cried even harder.

"The detail in all the drawings are amazing! Not to mention,

"Yo, Bakugou, you should have a look!" Kirishima called over to the ash blonde who remained seated the entire time.

"Why should I?" Bakugou barked back, narrowing his eyes at the red-haired teen who just beamed back at him. Kaminari nudged Sero and whispered something into his ear. The black-haired male nodded and turned to Kirishima who was given instruction on whatever plan they were hatching. The red-haired male had nodded enthusiastically, a sign that he's in.

"Well then, suit yourself! I guess you don't want to see how [Last Name] draws you." Kirishima replied.

"Hah, just look at that. I can't believe you drew him like this, [Last Name]." Kaminari turned to you. Still unsure why they were talking like this, all you could do was tilt your head in confusion.

"Is this how you perceive Bakugou, [Last Name]? I guess it's a very accurate image." Sero turned towards you with a smirk on his face.

"Eh? Um, thanks?" you mumbled.

Bakugou rose from his seat, the sound startling you. He began making his way towards you and everyone immediately made way for the angry boy who was marching over with an irritated look on his face. They all dispersed, including the ones who deliberately provoked Bakugou into coming. You stood there dumbfound, stepping back when the ash-blonde moved closer to you. When your back hit the board, you gasped. The loud slam of his hand hitting the board beside your head made you squeak. Without saying a word, he snatched the book from your hands to see a drawing of himself. The guys had made it sound like you drew a monster but it was the complete opposite.

He looked so fucking cool.

"It's just okay." he told you before returning to his seat. He tried to play it off by acting like he doesn't care but he's actually pretty happy to see your drawing.

"Bakugou, are you perhaps blushing?" Sero teased.

"Shut your mouth, you extras!"

Total: 1458 words Published: 17.09.2019

We’re now open to requests for Kimetsu no Yaiba! Please have a look before requesting!

Thank you for requesting! *｡٩(ˊᗜˋ*)و*｡ This happened to me uwu It was suuuuper embarrassing and back then I was super awkward with people can’t barely had any friends. It was just public humiliation. ― author Hibiki/Lou

Thank you for requesting! Lou loves drawing and owns like three sketchbooks. True art nerd. We hope you’re okay with this scenario, anon. ― author Natsuki

Please do not mind the grammar mistakes and typos.

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alexconfusion · 5 years

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1-100 please (I’m serious... or at least do like 20 of em. The first twenty. But I’d prefer them all)

Is this a challenge

1 Middle Name- Katherine

2 Age- 13 (yah I know I’m a baby blah blah blah shut up guys djskdjjd)

3 Birthday- May 8, 2006 (8:29am, to be exact)

4 Zodiac- sun: Taurus moon: Virgo, I believe

5 Fav Color- blue is my aesthetic but purple is my fav

6 My Lucky Number- five

7 Pets- two guinea pigs (ginny and lily), two dogs (bailey and maya) [i will provide pics if you want]

8 Where I’m From- Massachusetts

9 Height- 5’1

10 Shoe Size- eight

11 How Many Pairs of Shoes I Own- three

12 My Last Dream- Shane Dawson fixed my family issues and helped me come out to them (it was awesome, 10/10 would do again)

13 My Talents- piano (I have soundcloud check it out if u want), writing

14 Am I Psychic- HELL YEAH I AM shoot me an ask if u wanna know more cuz it’s kind of a long story (ok maybe not actually psychic but it’s a fun story)

15 Favorite Song- Amnesia - 5sos (it makes me cry every time and I don’t even care)

16 Favorite Movie- Into the Spider-Verse

17 My Ideal Partner - idk u tell me

18 Do I Want Kids?- potentially, but if I did I would adopt

19 Do I Want a Church Wedding- nah they look boring. I was part of the wedding party for my cousins wedding and it was absolute torture

20 Am I Religious- not really

21 Have I Ever Been to the Hospital- yeah, I was seven and stepped on glass at the beach (huge gash, kinda gorey, wouldn’t reccomend) anyways I didn’t know I cut my foot open at first and walked around the beach and a fuck ton of sand got in it (I had a very rough summer)

22 Have I Ever Been in Trouble With the Law- fuck no who do you think I am??

23 Have I Met any Celebrities- nope

24 Baths or Showers- showers duh, they’re good for so many things: crying, hair washing, pretending you’re standing in the rain,

25 What Color Socks am I Wearing- striped gray with blue owls (yes they are lit)

26 Have I Ever Been Famous- uh no

27 Would I Like to be a Celebrity?- sometimes I think it would be cool because if I make a lot of money I could help a lot of people, but usually no because having privacy is important to me

28 What Type of Music do I like- pretty much anything but acoustic versions have always had a special place in my heart

29 Have I Ever Been Skinny Dipping?- no gross

30 How Many Pillows do I Sleep With- one on each end of the bed so I can flip upside down and still have a pillow

31 What Position do I Sleep in-

(It’s comfy)

32 How Big is My House- two main floors, attic, basement

33 What do I Have for Breakfast- usually nothing, either because I slept through the normal breakfast time or because I didn’t have time to eat

34 Have I Ever Fired a Gun- no

35 Have I Ever Tried Archery?- Hell yeah I did, summer camp was a wild time almost shot someone in the face

36 Fav Clean Word- twilight

37 Fav Swear Word- fuck

38 Longest I’ve Ever Went Without Sleep- forty eight hours (those were two of the best days of my life btw)

39 Do I Have Any Scars- yeah

40 Have I Ever Had a Secret Admirer- nope but I wish

41 Am I a Good Liar- fantastic, actually

42 Am I a Good Judge of Character- what,, what does this mean??

43 Can I do Any Accents- I can do a really terrible British accent but nobody likes it

44 Do I Have a Strong Accent- nope

45 What is my Favorite Accent- Australian

46 What is my personality type- on the Myers Briggs test I’m an Adventurer (it’s creepily spot on, I highly recommend taking it)

47 My Most Expensive Piece of Clothing- Are vans clothing? If so my blue high top vans that I fucking adore. If not, probably my adidas shorts or something

48 Can I Curl My Tongue- I can do the classic fold in half one and the three leaf clover. look it up, it’s cool as hell

49 Am I am Innie or an Outie- innie

50 Right or Left Handed- right, but I’m ambidextrous when playing golf and I play lacross lefty

51 Am I Scared of Spiders- a little, not a phobia

52 Favorite Food- pears or frozen yogurt

53 Favorite Foreign Food- sushi

54 Am I a Clean or Messy Person- tbh it fluctuates but mostly clean. Like I myself am clean but my room is a wreck yknow

55 Most Used Phrase- “oh shit”

56 Most Used Word- oof

57 How Long do I Take to Get Ready- ten minutes, fifteen tops and five minimum

58 Do I Have an Ego- I don’t think so?

59 Do I Suck or Bite Lolipops- bite

60 Do I Talk to Myself- sometimes, it’s usually just strings of curse words

61 Do I Sing to Myself- yeah on occasion

62 Am I a Good Singer- no but my friends seem to think so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

63 Biggest Fear- losing everyone I care about/everyone I care about hating me

64 Am I a Gossip?- only if it’s not something serious and only to my closest friend

65 Best Dramatic Movie I’ve Seen- schindlers list, haven’t seen the whole thing (I’m kinda scared to) but it looks incredible even though it’s so horrific

66 Do I Like Long or Short Hair- I don’t really care, but I do kind of like longer hair on other people (i.e I like girls) (yes girls with short hair are awesome too but long/medium length hair is just.. yeah.)

67 Can I Name all 50 Stares of America- I could when I was 8 but now I can only list like 10

68 Favorite School Subject- English

69 (haha) Extrovert or Introvert- introvert

70 Have I Ever Been Scuba Diving- no and I don’t think I’d want to

71 What Makes Me Nervous- talking to people I don’t know

72 Am I Scared Of The Dark- not really. unless I like hear a noise and start imagining all the possible causes of the noise and freak myself out

73 Do I Correct People When They Make Mistakes- yeah sometimes, but I try to do it as nicely as I can (unless I don’t like the person *cough* my brother *cough*)

74 Am I Ticklish- yes. very.

75 Have I Ever Started a Rumor- no, but people thought I did and that was a whole mess

76 Have I Ever Been in a Position of Authority- I mean I was a captain when we played kickball in gym (does that count)

77 Have I Ever Drank Underage- nope, and I don’t intent to

78 Have I Ever Done Drugs- nope, and I don’t intend to

79 Who Was My First Real Crush- olivia, fifth grade. I pretended I had a crush on the guy next to her so I could stare at her and pretend I was looking at him

80 How Many Piercings Do I Have- none

81 Can I Roll My Rs- no matter how hard I try I can never seem to get the hang of it. and I’ve tried, believe me, I sound like an idiot every time but I still try

82 How Fast Can I Type- 135 wpm

83 How Fast Can I Run- Moderately fast, but not for very long

84 What Color is My Hair- dirty blonde

85 What Color Are My Eyes- they switch between gray, green, and blue, but they’re mostly a combination of all three with green being the most noticeable (I ask people this question a lot and they usually say blue or green)

86 What am I Allergic to- nothing I’m invincible.

87 Do I Keep a Journal- yup, eight years and counting. fun fact my first entry ever was a full two and a half pages about dolphin facts, complete with a picture

88 What do My Parents do- my moms a vet, idk what my dad does (it’s something with pharmaceuticals I think)

89 Do I Like My Age- eh on the one hand I can say I’m a teen but on the other people are like “omg!!! babey???? ur a babey omfg..”

90 What Makes Me Angry- when people are condescending or hypocritical

91 Do I Like My Name- I hate my first name (irl it’s not alex but I’ll probably end up changing it) and I hate my last name (long story) but I kinda like my middle name cuz it reminds me of Six

92 Have I Thought if Baby Names, if so What Are They- idk I’d probably name them after my friends (i.e hailey, lander, flan, drew, finn, that’s about it)

93 Do I Want a Boy or Girl For a Child- first of all when did I say I wanted a child and second of all I don’t care

94 What Are My Strengths- shitposts

95 What Are My Weaknesses- dealing with emotions, controlling anger, handling criticism, there are definitely others but I’m tired okay

96 How Did I Get My Name- first name: bible, middle name: my great grandmother, last name: my dad

97 Were My Ancestors Royalty- not that I know of

98 Do I Have Any Scars- see #39

99 What Color is My Bedspread- I don’t have one but my sheet is dark blue

100 What Color is My Room- a light blue teal-ish color

7 notes · View notes

ouuuuki · 3 years

Text

Stormbringer ((Page 41 - 60))

Of course, I asked him to browse the government's military materials. Of course, the materials related to the research were kept confidential and were disposed of immediately after the war, but it turned out that a unit of the army was seeking donations for human experimentation in the west. That's the first clue, I'm the biggest contributor. "Chuya seemed to understand the flow of the story, and he turned his terrifying gaze toward the last man. For Iceman cold blood. "::: I'm not doing much," he said, offering the final material. "I found the sibling composition of your parents and the family tree beyond, the location of the school you attended, the report card and grade photo, and the birth record of the government office. Don't let the chief know the investigation. I could rely on the report card because I was a small finger, and I did the burglary eight times. "Iceman Nakaya made his eyes black and white while receiving the materials. The cold blood nodded, and for the first time today, with a faint smile. Iceman Odas Few people know him normally. But when he wasn't working, his cold blood was mild, and he was a mild-mannered man who loved coffee and Leonkou code. There aren't many people who know it. I know all five people here. Chuya Nakahara looked at all of them in turn. Everyone was smiling. Piano man. Stupid bird. Surgeon usually Abatros

Libman Iceman spokeswoman. Toshihide Tatsuhide of the cold-blooded port mafia "Why" Chuya saw the photo "This is ::-I think it's an action against the chief." It's a photo. As long as it was, Chuya wouldn't betray the Mafia, but the Pianoman shrugged his shoulders with a light face. "I was asked to watch if Chuya knew the secret, but it wasn't said to hide the secret." Chuya stared at the piano man to find out the intention of each bite. .. "Why" Chuya's expression makes me feel uneasy. "Why do you go that far?" "Why?" The piano man made a natural look. "I told you. 1st Anniversary 0" It's not a big deal. "The spokeswoman looked around, as if he was rather embarrassed by Chuya's attitude. "Speaking of which, that's right," the spokeswoman said with a very natural look. B. "Because they are friends, is it different for" Sheep "?" Shun ...

Chuya's upset expression was that in "Sheep", all humans relied on Chuya. The reverse never happened. "Let's think about it like this, Mr. Chuya-a spokesman opened his arms and made a gentle expression." It's not a gift. It's a flag. The army has raised the flag since the time of ancient Rome. There is only one reason, to let you know. Ku We are here, and every time any of the six of us, a party of the elected ones, are in danger, you remember the flag, and of the flag. Gather below .: I'm looking forward to it. " As expected, Libman "Fufu ::: A famous speech in the middle. As expected, a public relations officer, and countless women deceived by his speech: ・:" The surgeon said like a soliloquy. "I don't know what you mean," said a spokeswoman with a cool smile. "Oh yeah, by the way, this Flags Meisho Tsu Youngkai has the official name" Flag Association ". I took the current metaphor from there. However, only the founder, Piano Man, remembers the name and uses it. "Flagsus" "Flag Association"? "A fool bird shook his head. "It's like I heard it for the first time." "Hey, did you forget it? Hey, you're in trouble, did you explain it first?" Ito Pianoman looked around at everyone, but no one changed his expression. Wait, maybe no one really even remembers? The name Natsudon that I've been worried about for three months. "Uyo, Tsu Albatross Bensetsu Dama Ribman, everyone.

"What?" Everyone turned their eyes away from the piano man. Only Chuya was staring at the photo in his hand. It's not what you see there, but the existence of the photo itself, as if all the answers were written. "Congratulations on the first anniversary of joining the Chuya Mafia," everyone said. For a moment-for a few seconds, Chuya made a child's expression that he didn't know what to do. He compared everyone, compared the materials, and compared himself in the picture. "What happened?" Chuya suddenly returned to me when the piano man said so. "Oh, then I made an effort to make an angry face, and when I opened B and tried to yell at something, I didn't think of anything. 0 Everyone was wondering and saw Chuya. Nakaya hurried. I turned my back and shouted at the entrance. Sugu "Oh, that's right," Chuya's voice was unnecessarily loud. "In other words, if I suddenly showed this, I was impressed. I wonder if I'll cry and apologize, or that kind of aim! "Australia"

"Do you want to get on such a hand, okay, I'll never get on it!" Chuya walked toward the entrance with a rough step, with his face turned away. "I'm going home! Okay, I'm not following you! You shouldn't look at me!" The piano man looked around everyone, and then said to Chuya. "Well, it can't be helped if Chuya returns. According to my schedule, everyone would play a billard game after this ::: Will we do it alone?" Shuhin "The guest of honor will return. What? ”A spokeswoman lifts his eyebrows. Lots of "I can't help it. Fortunately, I have a lot of sake. Fortunately, there are prizes for trying to relieve my work after a long time." "It's wonderful." "Hey Chuya. "Turn it on and go home!" The stupid bird waved toward the entrance 0 "Do it yourself!" Chuya kicked the door open and went out of the store. "Hmm" Lee Everyone looked at each other's faces, and then looked at the door to say nothing. Ten seconds and twenty seconds have passed, with the silence. Abatos

Thirty seconds when no one is sick and does not relax. Forty seconds-a little less than the 丨, the door of the store opened small. "Shit. Explain the rules. I'll get all the prizes!" Chuya stood at the door with an expression that seemed to mix regret and anger equally. I have to do that. "The piano man smiled. It became. From then on, the scenery inside the store is quite natural, the sound of striking the ball, footsteps, cheers, swearing, moaning, clicking the glass, the sound of the ball falling, and the laughter of young people. A common sight all over the world. If you add the assets of everyone in the room, you can buy many lots of this city. However, such speciality could not be seen there. It was a conversation of ordinary young people everywhere. "Who was the last person at the bottom?" "It's still time to say such a light word." Su "I don't have enough alcohol." "Haha, I'm drunk and my hands are crazy! And lose." I'm crazy. It seems that I can only put balls about three times as much as you. "Sentence" I'm sorry! "Who?

Someone in the lively store played music with Juke Pox. With the music of old wind instruments in the background, billard balls, champagne glasses, and all the street corners where light mouths are exchanged are commonplace. Everybody wants it, it's not too difficult to get, and when it's lost, it disappears in an instant. It was there for a champagne foamy time. "Ufufu: ・: ・ I will decide with this" You Kinba "By the way, I saw you walking in the harbor with a blonde woman. Is it a new girlfriend?" "Ah, eh? , This is terrible "" What's wrong, you, etc., do you want to lose to me so much? "" Wow, the placement of the ball is dangerous, don't turn it to Chuya! The invincible Prince I-sama gets on with it again 2 " Who is the prince of me! "" Rabbit horns, decide! I'll ask the next guy! " It was a perfect blow. The hand ball given the rotation of the push ball rolls and hits the target ball. The target ball bounced the second ball

I'm sorry. The target ball, which became a chain of billiards, further flicked the table balls one after another, and changed its trajectory. The colorful balls that were given the power of movement drew intricate geometric patterns on the table, and "Oh," someone breathed. After a complex reflex reaction that was hard to follow, the final targets, yellow and nine-all-white No. 9, flowed into the central pocket. Kanman Ninepo City And-with a deep breathing slowness, No. 9 was in his pocket, and after a moment of silence, everyone cheered. "Wow!" "What can I see in a professional game right now!" "Artistic trajectory" "Unfortunately Chuya Nakahara, your consecutive championship was prevented by this" "The new champion "It's birth." "Who did you squeeze now?" Kimi, something strange happened there. Everyone was surprised. And everyone was looking for the person who sown. There were six people in the room until a while ago, but now there are seven people, "praise is fine," said the seventh person. Kurokami and Biiro Hitomi sentence A blue suit. Long limbs. Long black hair and dark-skinned eyes. A well-organized but serious face combination shot energy surprise

I'm just following the basics of the investigation manual, which says, "Prize is fine. To get information from humans, you should interact more and more intimately," holding the stick vertically like a ceremonial cane. So. As planned, it seems that the ritual game has deepened the relationship. Now you can move on to the mission. "The voice of the young Shinken often goes through in Hirakawa. And his eyes are forever serious. The peaceful Billard tournament ended there. Kukuri Knife-The hatchet sprinted to the young man's head, making a sound like burning the space. "Oops," the young man in a blue suit turned his head away to avoid the blade that broke through the air. It was a stupid bird who shook the Kukri knife hatchet with the tip of his hair scattered in the air when he was late to escape. The stupid bird avoiding the blade does not lose its calm expression and sinks the whole body deeply 0 Iceman What appeared from behind was a cold-blooded whole body holding a sniper and bending like a twisted sword, The young man in a blue suit, who was shot like a sniper bullet, avoided it without difficulty. In addition, a series of pursuit stab attacks are fired, and a stubborn stick grazes the skin of his nose, burns his hair, and pierces the hair growth of his ears, but there is no direct hit. All of them are avoided at intervals of several sentences. Put them in Albatos.

"Don't do it" Funny "Haha, it's funny-I think people in this shop without a wolf want to be killed by the soul! Let's make our wish come true-" This is Despite playing the game in a friendly manner, the aggression of the subject of the investigation is increasing. It is unreasonable. Why? "The wolves did not wait for the reply of the young wolf. Behind the young man who had lost his posture due to the avoidance of the stick, a thin, brilliant thread stretched out in a circle from the watch of the piano man who had already wrapped around. "Would you like me to continue the excuse on the floor?" The thread slowly fell on the young man's neck. A thread that is almost visible to the eye and can only be seen as a line of light reflection is wrapped around the young man's neck. When the piano man shakes his wrist, the circular thread contracts sharply and winds into his sleeve. It started to be taken. Naka-ya destroyed only one-armed winder. Pianoman has a winder on the sleeves of both arms. And once the electric winder hidden in the sleeves starts Subun, who is the decapitation stand for death that cannot be removed by any superhuman strength, immediately put a striking stick around his neck. However, the rolled-up piano wire is made of wooden sticks.

It was chewed and cut like sugar confectionery. The circumference of the piano wire perfectly matched the thickness of the young man's neck. Mujihi Wire After that, the ruthless steel wire did not just level the young man's neck into a table. "I didn't avoid the young man. I didn't even try to remove it from my neck. I didn't have to do that. The piano wire was slipping on the surface of the young man's skin. The plow winder roared. It digs into the skin, but that's it. It doesn't get scratched, and "detects the load on the outer skin contactor," said the young man with no expression. "I will follow the assetd self-defense routine and take an escape action," and suddenly turned sideways. The body rotated like a wheel without any preparatory movement. The piano man's take-up device, in which cute leather shoes draw a circle in the air, can withstand the rotation speed, and the pieces torn off along with the piano 0 line fly in the air. "Huh, this is wonderful." The piano man is retreating. It was. "There is only one fighting talent or one to get into the mafia's burrow." Everyone took a quicker distance than I quickly. The iron rules of normal combat do not apply to those who are incompetent in combat. It's different from a gun or a knife, an unknown

This is because it was a disaster of ease. If mishandled, the young people, who were at immediate risk of death, quickly moved away and moved into a formation of anti-combat. "No, I'm not a lonely man," said the young man, who pulled out a black emblem from the chest of his suit. "My name is Adam. That's right, I'm a detective of Europol." The air in the room changed. "Is it the police?" The piano man smiled sharply like a knife. "In that case, Mr. Yumu Adachin, as you said, there seems to have been a misunderstanding. It is wrong to think that the police power will enter this society and return alive! Public relations officer!" "I received it," said a young man in a blue suit who called himself Adam, who took out two machine guns from the back of his cloak and fired ten shots per second at high speed. , Raised the back of the hand to protect it. A nine-barrel bullet slides on the front 0 side of the back of his hand and bounces diagonally. "Detect the impact! Percentage to the limit of breaking stress!" Exclaims a European detective named Adam. "You may be doing damage to an international investigator!" "You're still a talented person who can't attack physically." Pianoman looks at the other person with a calm eye. Official, keep him in check and switch to the tactics of detention. "Nanacho, Tsu Machine Pistol Jin Yes

Iceman "Wait" Cold blood made a bitter voice while holding the stick. "Iceman's cold blood, which doesn't feel uncomfortable on his skin, made a startling expression for the first time today." For the first time, a confused expression appeared on the faces of everyone who wasn't a talented person. A human who can't pass through and even plays a nine-piece bullet with his bare hands is not an incompetent person. That is the same phenomenon that Iceman's impossible gravity reverses and the sun and moon collide. But cold blood is the intuition. (It is impossible to make a mistake), Tsukiyo, Tsumujun It was quite possible that human beings would be faced with two completely contradictory situations, and it would be difficult to maintain the front line, leading to confusion and escape. 0 But they weren't all ordinary people. The "interesting" piano man laughed. "If so, it's first come, first served! It's all about one topic! Everyone is allowed to use different abilities!" Iriyo / Tsukasa "Uncovering the secret of different abilities, I understand" S sentence "Haha! If you try to kill him, it will take a week

Immediately after "Fufu ::: Laparotomy", countless light spots appeared in the room, as light as a fist. It has no heat or weight, and it begins to rotate around Adam in a blue suit, like a revolving star. Immediately after that, Adam's posture collapsed. "Oh?" Saba', Adam's leather shoes sink into the hard floor. As if he had stepped into a soft desert. The floorboard crumbles like sand and swallows shoes. He steps on to pull out, but his other leg to step on is also beginning to sink. He involuntarily puts his left hand on the floor. His hands are also sinking. "This is ...:" Adam twisted his body and tried to grab the legs of the Pilard stand. Something grows from the back of his hand, and the skin is covered with fine scales. A bird-like slender head lined up with a lot of fangs in the cavities Mi-yo Tsuriyu, Tsusu It was a dinosaur. Above the neck of a small dinosaur, from the back of Adam's hand, it grew like a plant. B. "There is no corresponding information in the knowledge module." Adam shook his neck. A Subun dinosaur shouted and ate Adam's neck. Scales

Adam shook his head and managed to avoid it, but because of that, he lost his posture and sank into the floor. Suddenly, thin threads spewed out from the ceiling in a radial pattern. The thread was entwined with Adam and then rapidly wound up to the point of ejection. The flax-colored sand slammed on Adam's ceiling scatters the wood on the ceiling, and at the same time Adam moans, the thread disappears. Attracted by gravity, Adam crashes into the falling floor. And he is once again sunk into the flooring that has turned into sand hell. Ninshiki "The battle evaluation module can't recognize the situation." Adam's neck was entwined with the piano wire again. "Challenging the six people here alone was a daring calculation mistake, the police. "My husband" A piano man with a spare winder smiled with a stern smile. "For this reason, if you receive the different abilities of the first anniversary at the same time, it's a gift that even the world champion will not have in ten seconds. You can destroy your arms and legs, Chuya." Lee You "Chuya" Adam reacted to the new leaves and changed his expression. "Are you still?" Suishun Then it was a momentary event. Funshiyu

At Migiu, Adam deliberately sank his right arm to the floor. A dinosaur screamed and disappeared into the floor. His left leg recoiled from the floor as he sank his right arm. Adam kicked one of the nearby Billard stands with his left leg. The stroking stick on the table rolled down. The toes of Adam's toes came back to catch the stick Tsumaki Tora. And he kicked up. To even look at him. Adam's left hand grabbed the falling bar, which was kicked by his long legs, spinning in the air on his back. After turning the bar several times, his body slips out of the floor in reaction to piercing the sand floor. "Are you a musician!" Cried the stupid bird. "Don't move him to your own mountain anymore!" The piano man skips the instructions. A spokesman fired a submachine gun. Twisting in the air, Adam evaded all his bullets. Every bullet goes through 0 through the body. Adagum flies in the air as he walks through the maze of death created by the rain of bullets with a minimum of physical effort. And landing (the place where it landed-in front of Chuya, in order to prevent Chuya and others from sinking, Adam, who has not yet been desertified to the floor, raised a stick. Machine Pist Albatross

"Chuya!" Someone shouted and threw the stick on the floor. "Mr. Chuya Nakahara" Adam kneels on the floor, hangs his head, takes the most salute attitude to you, and "I came to protect you." Chuya Nakahara was confused. Seeing a European who takes a obedience attitude in front of him with an incredible look, "This machine is a first-type autonomous thinking calculator Adam Frankenstein manufactured by Dr. Walston Craft, a talented engineer. The purpose is to arrest an assassin who is aiming at you: The name of the assassin is Verleen Paul Verleen. "" Verleen, what? "Hearing that name changed Nakaya's complexion. "Why do you know the name?" 0 "Do you know Chuya" Is it an assassin? "Su" Did you use a calculator? "A. Young people buzzing. Adam stood up and was serious. I said it with my eyes. Oshu

Colorful spheres fly in the air. Mostly bruise, orange, dark green. A flock of bright colors to the eyes. All of them returned in arcs of different heights, "Suge :::", stunned by the stupid bird. Adam was throwing a ball of Pilard. It is thrown into the air and caught in the manner of a beanbag. Nine spheres draw complicated arcs of different heights and dance 0 in the air like a living thing. "Sure, it's not a work that a street performer can do." However, Adam said with a serious face. "The numbers of the two spheres in the highest position are always disjoint, that is, they are always arranged so that they do not have a common prime factor." "Mr. Chuya. You cannot repel Verlaine alone. He was dispatched. He is not just an assassin. He is the assassin king Paul Verlaine your brother. "Albatros

The piano man folded his arms and stared at the dancing ball. "Hmm. 5 and 8, next 4 and 9: ・: I'm sure." "What? Common element ・ :: ・ What?" Albatross said, "Absurd bird, I'm asking you to become a little stronger in numbers. Give me. If you go up, you need numbers. "Pia Aki Nomain said with a dismayed face. Inside the Billardo store. Six young people are sitting on the billard stand so as to surround Adam. Everyone is watching Adam's acrobatics in the center. "Is this what you are good at?" Simple "It's a simple physics operation," Adam said with no expression. "Gravitational acceleration, air resistance, rotational moment, motion, Coriolis force. The physical quantity that constantly acts on a substance is calculated over time to predict the behavior of the sphere. This kind of physical calculation ability is greater than that of the human brain. Because the computer is far better. "Wow: Do you understand?" "Hmm, awesome." The stupid bird sighed. "I don't understand at all." I understand. "Ribman with cold blood" Public relations officer, you. "What?" A "I don't know here, you're the only one," said a spokesman, looking forward. "It's the last." Adam threw the ball over his shoulder and into the rear Billard stand in the blind spot. Albatross Ribman

All the balls were exactly sucked into the pocket. In a row, all nine are blamed and quiet. "Tara!" Adam opened his arms and suddenly shouted out. Everyone was scared. Adam looked at everyone, saw the Pilard stand that threw the ball, and then shook his head. "Okokuya? No applause. It's different from the information in the external storage storage." Iceman "Um. Yahari This guy doesn't seem to be a human being." Cold blood said with no expression. "Fufu ::: European genius is more than a rumor :::" The surgeon smiled dimly. "I would like to apply the technology of the living body part to the treatment of my patients: Ukai Ue," Well, I will introduce myself again. "Adam bowed to Chuya and others. "This machine is an Adam acorn secret. I'm an artificial intelligence investigator who came to this country secretly. My favorite foods are dumplings and grass fruits. I don't like the metal detector at the airport security checkpoint. My dream is to establish a criminal mechanism consisting only of machine detectives, and to protect humans with the excellent investigative power of machines. "0" Machine-only criminal mechanism? Why? " "Of course, humans are imperfect and illogical, and we are better at being perfect machines." A "I suddenly said something scary :::" S "Well, you are a machine." Let's believe, "said the piano man. "But it's still a problem.

0 notes

lightshadowverisimilitude · 7 years

Text

Responsible Adults and Lab Safety Protocols 1/3

For my bingo square “sex pollen.” Challenger @miss-kitty-fantastico

Watch the cut!

All in all, Tony was disappointed. With rumors of a super thinktank trying to combine all the worst aspects of sodium pentothal, E, and alcohol, Tony had expected more. They’d been hard to find, he’d give them that – as in digitally hard to find. Out in the non-digital world, they were operating out of a strip mall on the main thoroughfare in a tiny township in Minnesota unfortunately named Embarrass.

Since the Avengers trooping through Small Town, Anywhere tended to call a lot of attention, they’d driven from Duluth in a rental van. By the time they pulled into the cramped parking lot, Tony was ready to put a stylus through Clint’s eye. If he had to hear one more chorus of “99 bottles of beer on the wall/ Shoot one down, it shatters on the ground,” ad infinitum, he was going to throttle someone. Since they were mere yards away from a bad guy he could theoretically throttle, he didn’t try too hard to suppress the urge. Nat and Steve had both fallen asleep in the middle row almost as soon as they doors had shut, because they had that whole ‘can sleep anywhere’ thing in common. Sam had earbuds stuffed into his ears, though Tony’s had mysteriously disappeared out of his bag. He felt an acute sense of betrayal.

“Karmic pay back,” Rhodey said, climbing out of the driver’s seat. “Do you remember that trip from Boston to New York your sophomore year?” He smiled sweetly and held out a twenty. Clint snatched it out of his fingers and blew Tony a kiss on his way past, surreptitiously rubbing his jaw.

“It’s not karma if you interfere,” Tony said, but he was secretly impressed. Putting up with three complete rounds of the beer song just to get Tony back for an unfortunate road trip two decades after the fact was dedication.

Rhodey shrugged. “What can I say? Sometimes karma happens to you. Sometimes you’re the karma that happens to someone else.”

“I’m going to remember this,” Tony warned him, snugging his baseball cap down further over his eyes. He guessed that as far as ‘We’re tourists, just passing through,’ disguises went, they probably wouldn’t pass muster for long. He checked his phone, and then looked up. According to his scan, nothing in the area had so much as security camera to its name.

The smallest space on the end of the strip didn’t even have proper signage. When they drew closer, he saw that a set of letters had been frosted onto the glass in what was probably 12-pt font. Dionysus Labs. Original.

Steve, annoyingly alert after his ninety-odd minute nap, casually pulled the door open, and then stuck his foot in front of it and gestured everyone else through. Tony kept his phone up, sweeping the area with infrared as he went. He’d done a satellite pass over the area less than an hour before, and there had only been two heat signatures in the building. He wasn’t surprised to see the same two human-shaped blobs on the other side of the back wall. In two weeks of monitoring, he’d never seen more than two human-shaped blobs.

The reception area was a closet-sized space that they crowded to capacity. It was complete with ugly industrial carpet, three folding chairs under a painting of a lake that might have been stolen from a motel, and a reception desk about the size of a podium. It was empty of even a bored receptionist, which made sense, since there didn’t even appear to be a phone. Rhodey leaned around the desk, feeling underneath the shelves for a weapon, and then shook his head.

Nat put her back to the cheap plywood wood and waited for Clint to give her a nod. She flicked the door knob, and pushed the door sharply inward. It banged against the opposite wall, though the sound was almost drowned out by the startled shouts from within. Clint ran in with his sidearm drawn, leading Steve, Sam, and Rhodey after him. Tony stayed in the waiting room and kept an eye on his screens. Nothing was putting off any troubling energy, and the floor seemed quite solid.

Steve stuck his head back out the door. His lips were twisted in a bemused grimace. “It’s clear,” he said, gesturing Tony in with a twitch of his fingers.

“I am disappointed,” Tony said, following him in. “I was going to be disappointed anyway, but I assumed there would be something for me to do.” The only reason he hadn’t trundled in with the rest of them was that he’d thought a high-budget operation like this one had to be hiding a few nasty tech surprises under their very mundane exterior.

(keep reading)

The room beyond was… a lab. It had been outfitted with metal tables that were stacked with the usual medical lab detritus. Half of the space had been converted into a sterile room, and a ventilation hood took up most of the real estate in the opposite corner. The eye wash station and chemical shower had clearly posted instructions and warnings, and there was a red lab safety handbook on the shelf backed with OSHA posters and cheesy I Am Safe! Graphics of a pencil figure in a hardhat giving the thumbs up. There was a picture of a chambered nautilus on one cabinet, the Milky Way galaxy next to it, and a boxy spiral across the room. Sam was in the process of taking down an enlarged poster of Dr. Foster’s most recent appearance in Reviews of Modern Physics. Thor would have never forgiven them for leaving it.

“Wow. Now I’m… Now I’m just depressed,” Tony decided. Two youngish men in lab coats had already been handcuffed and were slumped in lab stools, still wearing their eye protection. “I mean… I approve of your lab safety, with the exception of the paper thin door that anyone with reasonable hand-eye coordination and baseball bat could get through, but. Wow.”

One of the men sighed dejectedly. He was wearing a plaid shirt with a no-kidding pocket protector. Tony couldn’t decide if he was wearing it with his expensive, tailored khakis as nerd-chic or not. “We were finally getting results,” he mourned.

“We were going to be so rich,” the other added. “I was going to go to Tahiti.”

Tony exchanged a baffled look with Rhodey, who only shrugged.

“We have got to get a better class of supervillain,” Sam said.

Pocket Protector perked up. “Supervillain? Think they’ll write a book about us?”

Rolling his eyes, Sam dropped a heavy hand to the back of the guy’s neck to propel him out of the stool. “No.”

Natasha grabbed the other Supervillain Hopeful by the arm and gave him one of those really creepy Russian doll smiles. “You and I need to talk,” she said.

The guy looked pretty happy with that idea. Tony guessed that they’d have an itemized list of the entire chain of operations by the time the van made it back to Duluth.

“We’ll take these two back in the van,” Sam said, giving his captive a squeeze on the back of the neck that made the man bunch his shoulders up like a cartoon turtle. “Quinjet should be here to help you transport all this…” he waved a hand around the orderly lab with a grimace. “Stuff.”

Tony tossed him a salute and opened an app. He hummed as he tapped away at the commands while Clint, Nat, and Sam lead their docile captives out of the door. Satisfied with the results, he pointed the infrared at the floor to look for a secret lair, occasionally stamping on the floor in likely places.

“This is absurd,” he decided finally. “There is really… nothing. It took us two months to find this place.”

“Well,” Steve ventured, “it did keep them under the radar for more than a year. There’s something to be said about low-tech when you’re going up against Iron Man.” He was thumbing through a binder of pages in sheet protectors, so he didn’t see Tony preening. Tony could just barely make out the words ‘Employee Handbook’ between Steve’s fingers. He shook the binder slightly and held up a page. “They had a 401k plan, and health benefits. They get more vacation days than I do!”

Rhodey snorted. “Guess we’re in the wrong line of work.” He was crouched down beside the transparent door of the sterile room. Tapping one knuckle on the Plexiglas, he noted, “This is more like what I expected to find here. This is four inches thick and bullet proof.”

“Ooo,” Tony said, hurrying around the central table to Rhodey’s side. “Boobie trapped?”

Before Rhodey could answer, his phone went off. He settled back on his heels to answer it, and then instantly jerked the phone away from his ear. ‘Achy Breaky Heart’ played loudly in the background and Clint shouted, “I’m never letting you pay me for favors ever again!”

Tony grabbed Rhodey’s wrist to get at the phone. “If he’s paying you for it, it’s not a favor.”

“Fuck you so hard, Stark!” Clint shouted over the chorus. Tony could hear other voices shouting in the background, and then the van’s sliding door opened. It slammed shut a second later, cutting off the caterwauling of Billy Ray Cyrus and the dismayed shouts of the two unfortunate prisoners. “It better turn off,” he huffed into the phone.

Tony shrugged. “Eh.” He loved high-tech cars with their very hackable computers.

Groaning, Clint said, “Do not pull me into whatever weird prank game you have going with Rhodes, Stark, I swear you’ll regret it.”

Tony fluttered his eyelashes at Rhodey. “Hey, blame Rhodey. He’s the one who got you into this.”

Leaning on Tony’s shoulders, Steve grabbed Rhodey’s arm just under Tony’s grip and pulled up. Rhodey scowled, and Steve ignored him. “Just leave those two locked in the car for a few minutes, and then send Nat after them.”

“Torture tactics? From Captain America?” Clint gasped. “I am shocked. Shocked and severely disappointed.”

“Pleasure to be of service,” Steve said warmly, and then released Rhodey’s arm and levered himself back up without even using Tony’s shoulder for balance. That kind of core muscle response was absolutely not fair. Before Tony could say as much, Steve’s Running Man ringtone went off. He stepped away to put it to his ear.

“Sam -… I’m sure it will turn off eventually,” he said, laughing. “I wouldn’t, if I were you. Well, it’s your life.” He covered the mouthpiece with one hand and leaned over to ask, “You are going to turn that off when they start traveling, right?”

Tony made a vague sound, already more invested in the keypad to get into the sterile room than Clint’s comeuppance. He could feel Rhodey’s eyes on the side of his face and guessed that there was a pre-emptive retaliatory prank already in the works in case Tony had something in mind for him. Tony was going to let him stew in it for a while.

Snagging Rhodey’s wrist again, Tony said, “Hey – stick your head back in the van and say ‘one, one, two’ please.”

“Oh, please, is it?” Clint grumbled, but the vague thumping of music grew louder. “Hey, asswipes! One, one, two,” he shouted over the music. The car door slammed, cutting Billy Ray off at ‘- And if you tell my –‘ “I’m not telling you what he said until you promise to turn that off.”

“I promise I’ll turn it off,” Tony said, pointedly not including when.

“He said, ‘three.’ Mean anything to you?”

Tony hummed, but Rhodey was already keying in the sequence before he could say a word. The door popped open with a hiss. Tony groaned. “Why? I am so..! Two months.”

Steve looked in between them, confused. He frowned at the open door. “What just happened here?”

Rhodey waved vaguely toward the posters of spirals dotted around the room between safety posters. “Zero-one-one-two-three-five. Fibonacci sequence. I am embarrassed for these guys.”

“They sure picked some good real estate then,” Steve said with a grin. He bent over to open a lower cabinet, his face briefly appearing somewhere around his knees. He saw Tony watching him and winked, mouth stretching into a devilish smile.

“I see what you’re doing,” Tony told him, just so he didn’t think he was getting away with it.

“I do not,” Rhodey said, “but whatever it is, stop.”

Steve chuckled and bent his knees, folding smoothly into a crouch. He started pulling out boxes of pipettes, shaking each of them like they were Christmas presents. Tony finally yanked his eyes away from the motion of Steve’s shoulders and followed Rhodey into the sterile room. A row of incubators were on against one wall, the shadow of petri dishes visible behind the dark glass. On the opposite wall was another ventilation hood, and the center of the room was taken up by a workspace and a bank of computers. He glanced up to see five industrial ventilation units in the ceiling – for the size of the room, he would have expected only one, or two. He frowned. Between the heavy-duty sterile room and the ventilation, they must have made a lot of progress over the latest version of the compound they’d encountered.

Rhodey was already taking pictures of the setup, so Tony perched on a lab stool and jiggled the mouse until the computer woke up. The username had been saved, so he tried the Fibonacci sequence again, and then a few others. At least they were a bit smarter with their computer security – not smart enough to keep him out of the system, but smarter than they had been with any other aspect of the operation.

“You know,” Rhodey said, snapping a picture of the incubators, “If it was this difficult to find the lab jockeys, figuring out who bank rolled them is going to be a pain in the ass.” He turned a circle, frowning at the sterile room. “Where are the rats?”

Tony plugged into the computer tower and then looked around again, himself. “Huh.” He frowned. He would have expected a whole wall of test subjects. Shivers skittered down his spine. “They’re either testing offsite…”

“Or they’re not testing on animals,” Rhodey finished for him.

The lock screen vanished and Tony dropped his head into his hand with a helpless laugh. Rhodey came over to stand behind him. He rested one hand on Tony’s shoulder and leaned down to look over the last document their intrepid chemists had been working on.

“… They were testing it on themselves?” Rhodey said incredulously. He reached over Tony’s shoulder to click through the open tabs at the bottom. One was an Amazon page displaying search results for ‘soft stuff,’ two were lab results that they both looked over quickly, but neither of them were chemists. Bruce would have to do the heavy lifting on those. The last tab was a video dated the evening before. Rhodey’s hand curled away from the mouse, and then reluctantly pushed play.

Pocket Protector sat in front of the camera in a hotel room, looking stoned out of his mind. His mouth was reddened from either a lot of rough kisses or an allergic reaction, his eyes were glassy and red, and his shirt was half unbuttoned. It had been pulled open and left that way, his lab coat pulled haphazardly over the top of it. Judging by the dark smear of a bruise under his collarbone, Tony was guessing that he hadn’t been experiencing an allergic reaction.

He stared at the camera with a distant, stupid smile on his face. A woman walked across the frame, only visible from the neck down, and not wearing anything except an equally rumpled lab coat. She dragged her nails down the back of his neck and he shivered visibly, almost violently, before slumping back against her and giggling.

“Thanks for the fun time, sugar,” she said. She leaned down to kiss his forehead, but a curtain of auburn hair hid her face from the camera. “Let me know if you want to do it again sometime.”

“’Kay,” Pocket Protector said drowsily. He turned in his chair to watch her pick up her clothes and walk into the bathroom. The door shut, and then the shower turned on. Pocket Protector turned back to the screen and made an exaggeratedly excited face. He bit one knuckle, slightly muffling his giggling. “Oh… my God,” he said, and then scrabbled around the desk until he came up with a vial of white powder. “Screw AIM, we’re taking this commercial. Fucking fuck. So much fucking, Matt, so much fucking.”

“Okay, well, that was helpful,” Rhodey said, pausing the video. He stepped away with his cellphone already out. “Fucking AIM,” he said under his breath as he left the sterile room.

Shaking his head, Tony scrubbed his hand across his face. They may as well have just left behind an envelope with a big label that read, “EVIDENCE OF ALL MY WRONGDOINGS RIGHT HERE.” Considering how well everything else in the lab had been labeled, Tony wouldn’t have been especially surprised. He clicked through the computer while he downloaded the hard drive, finding detailed records on the entire process. One of the Viagra Duo was apparently a neat freak, because Tony found a spreadsheet outlining every conversation they’d ever had with their benefactors.

Tony started to laugh again. “I am completely stunned that you can be so incompetently competent,” he told the screen.

“Having lots of luck?” Steve asked, peering curiously into the room.

“We can call the interrogation off,” Tony said. “Don’t even bother to give them the yellow legal pad and the pen. We’ve already got their confessions here.” He held up his USB drive for illustration. “Though it looks like what they came up with is more along the lines of fun-time recreational drug than hardcore interrogation chemical.”

“I heard Rhodey muttering about AIM on his way out the door?”

Tony pulled up the spreadsheet and leaned back so Steve could read it over his shoulder. Steve barked out a startled laugh and slapped a hand over his face. “I don’t know who’s worse. These two, or whatever idiot at AIM hired them.”

“If only all the villains kept such impeccable records,” Tony agreed, leaning subtly into Steve’s chest. “We’d be out of a job.”

“We could retire,” Steve said with a pleased hum. “We could move somewhere warm, with a beach. I could learn to surf.”

Twisting around, Tony demanded, “How have you never learned to surf? We lived in California.”

Steve leaned down and nipped at Tony’s neck in mild rebuke. He nosed under Tony’s jaw and set a soft kiss on his pulse point. “Do you know how to surf?” he asked innocently.

Tony sniffed. “Of course not. I’m not a supersoldier.”

“Of course. Only supersoldiers surf.” He tightened his arms around Tony’s chest and rested his chin on the top of his head. “Mellow recreational drug, hm?”

“Seems to just make for good sex,” Tony replied, wiggling suggestively. “Could be fun.”

Steve chuckled. “Too bad we’re more responsible than our friends, here.”

At the sound of the lab door opening, Steve straightened up, and stepped away. Rhodey came back in, shaking his head. He pointed at the computer, not mentioning the on-mission cuddling he’d certainly seen. “I don’t suppose they mentioned any useful names?”

Sliding backwards off the stool, Tony motioned to the still-open spreadsheet. “The AIM representative was at least smart enough to give them a codename. Mr. Wine.”

“With this group, I wouldn’t be surprised if that wasn’t a codename at all.” He shook his head, and then leaned back. “Bruce should be here in a few minutes. Let’s start packing this junk up.”

#ladyshadowdrake writes #stony #established relationship #team bonding #harmless pranks #incompetent badies #sex pollen #stony bingo 2017

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ii-thiscat-ii · 7 years

Text

Hey, do you remember my horribly self-indulgent Hogwarts AU? Well, now there’s more of it. 10k words of prequel, in fact. On the upside, I think I won against my writers block. It took half a year, but I did.

On Ao3

At a corner table of the outdoors section of a small London café one summer afternoon relatively soon after the turn of the millennium, a creature of incomprehensible power haphazardly folded into the shape of a young man approximately two decades of age sat reading a newspaper in which the pictures moved. He talked as he read. An outside observer might think he talked to himself, and maybe he did.

“Wizards,” he muttered, turning a page apathetically. “Such boring, unchanging creatures. Stuck centuries in the past of everyone else.”

But things have been changing recently, haven’t they? It’s the 21th century. With the advent of the internet, you know muggle-borns won’t accept their antiquated practices as superior much longer. Not with the way the world is changing. And the world is changing. Things are starting to get more interesting.

He turned another page and paused at a headline. A small smile crossed his face.

“Maybe, maybe. I nothing else it could be interesting to watch the stubborn old buggers be forced to confront the world progressing.”

Considering all their spells are still developed on principles that reject modern technology as a matter of nature. It will be a tough transition.

His smile widened as he read the article. “They’d have to finally admit that theirs is not the only kind of magic. Yes, that might be interesting to see. Maybe I do want to give them that push. A wizard, huh…”

You have been wanting to try this for a while.

A woman’s voice cut through his muttering. “About time, isn’t it?”

He looked up from the paper to see the owner of the voice stand by his table with a new cup of tea and a paper of her own. Her skin was lightly coloured and her hair was long and unwieldy, tied back to keep out of her face.

He put the paper down without closing it, displaying the title, ‘New Law Passes! The Definition of Human Redefined?’

“I don’t know,” he said. “It’s a victory for basic logic, sure, but as far as I’m aware, there doesn’t exist anyone yet who will actually be affected by this one.”

“That’s not the point!” she said. Then she smiled a little sheepishly. “I’m sorry, may I sit down? I should’ve asked.”

He gestured for her to sit and she did. “Then what is the point?” he asked.

“Well… it’s a first step. It seems like such a small thing, right? It’s just saying that anything that is indistinguishable from a human in any way must be treated as a human, and that’s not a difficult thing to agree with, especially since no homunculi that good have ever been created, but it’s about the change in attitudes.”

He sat back with an expression of polite curiosity and tilted his head as she took a deep breath to continue.

“It’s not that far, mentally, from ‘you don’t need human parents to be human’ to ‘you don’t need to be human to have human rights’. Not really, not if we play it right, and that’s really what we’re trying to do, right? Make sure what you’re allowed to do and what people are allowed to do to you depends on your capacity for understanding and not whether you belong to this particular species. This is the first step towards that, and we can build on it.”

He picked up his own cup and smiled into it, while she had set her down to gesture. “I admit I wouldn’t mind human rights,” he said.

She froze and closed her mouth with a click. “Oh,” she said, and instinctively ran her eyes over him.

His smile widened. “You couldn’t tell, can you.”

“Ah, no I-” she said, faltering. “I’m sorry, I was just surprised. Do you mind if I ask?”

He gestured for her to continue with a wave of his hand.

“Werewolf?” she asked tentatively.

“Really,” he said. “You of all people should know werewolves are just as human as the rest of you.”

“Well, not all people think so,” she said with an apologetic smile. She fidgeted with her cup on the table, and suddenly she was not quite sure where to look. She might have been staring a bit. “I’m sorry, I just- I honestly can’t tell, and I can’t think of any non-humans that can pass that convincingly.”

He took a sip from his cup and chuckled. “I’m not surprised. There’s more between heaven and earth than you wizards are aware of.”

“Oh,” she said, and went back to studying him.

He gave her a strange feeling. It was like unrest, made her fidget on her chair as if she should be moving, walking away. His eyes, following her every movement, were filled with amusement. Every part of him looked utterly human, and she could not quite understand what about him made her so convinced he was telling the truth. It took her a minute to realize he was not blinking.

“Technically,” she said with a dismissive snort, trying to calm herself down a little. “I’m a witch, not a wizard.”

His amused smile stayed the same, but he raised an eyebrow. “What’s the difference?”

“Well, I’m female, for one.”

“Still can’t see a difference,” he said, draining his cup.

She paused for a moment. “Was that some kind of insult?” she asked.

He laughed, and closed his eyes as he did so, which made him look a smidge more human. “It was mostly a comment on human gender norms,” he said, “but if you want to know the truth, ‘witch’ was a word wizards stole some eighteen hundred years ago when they didn’t want their women to be called the same as themselves anymore.”

“Stole from who?” the woman asked, blinking.

“The witches, obviously,” he replied with a grin.

She gave him a dry look.

His grin widened before he continued. “Again I’m not surprised. There weren’t many of them in the first place before your predecessors exterminated them, and they weren’t quite as… loud… as you tend to be. It wasn’t too difficult for them to hide the records of their actions from history.”

A minute or three passed in horrified silence. Well, she was horrified. She had a feeling that if anything could horrify him, she did never, ever want to see it. She thought. He turned a page in his newspaper and chuckled at a notice in the margin.

“If you don’t mind,” she said, eventually. “How do you know this, if they erased it so well?”

“Hm?” he looked back up. “I was there. It was worth seeing.”

“Oh,” she said again, then, quieter, “I imagine you don’t have the best impression of wizards, huh?”

He shrugged. “Eh, it’s human nature. You’ve been getting a lot better lately.” He indicated the article that had prompted her into approaching him in the first place. “I can’t really dislike you too much when you give me opportunities like this.”

“Uh-huh?” she said. Her hands were shaking. She forced them flat on the table. “What opportunity, exactly?”

“There doesn’t exist anyone for this law to apply to… yet. Right?”

He grinned sharply. As she processed the implications of his statement, he neatly folded up his paper and put it down on the table. Then he got up.

“Well, it’s been a pleasure to meet you, Ma-am. I enjoyed our conversation, but if you don’t mind, I have places to be.”

She could only nod dumbly at him, and then he was gone.

It took her a few moments to convince herself that he had in fact been there. The newspaper folded up on the table beside the empty cup, along with her own nearly untouched cup indicating a conversation partner proved it.

It just felt like he had never been there.

One moment he was, and another he was gone, the moment in-between conspicuously missing.

She drew a deep breath and drank her cooling tea.

She had a lot of thinking to do. There was research to be done, things to set in motion. The world was moving and she wanted to be one of the people moving it.

She had a strange feeling they would all have to be ready to run sometime soon.

---

The creature shed his disguise once he came into the confines of his own home. Still, he snickered.

“Ah, that was hysterical,” he said to himself and whoever else might be listening. “I’ll never get tired of doing that to people.”

She did stop talking very quickly.

The creature laughed at that for a few more minutes before he calmed down. “Well,” he said. “If I’ve decided to do this I might as well get started.”

A few movements were made in a dimension any human present would have trouble processing, and a bright point of light started growing in the middle of the space. The creature fuzzed at it and poked at it as it grew. Soon it faded, losing the glow to reveal a red, fleshy lump, and still it grew.

It started taking shape, and move around a little under its own power, and the creature grinned and hummed a melody that shore through the fabric of sanity with a single piercing note. He was happy with himself. The lump growing, floating in the air did not seem to notice.

It settled, eventually, pushing at the membranes confining it with small, chubby hands, and the creature reached up with a pair of hands of his own, momentarily almost human-like, and caught it as it ripped free.

“Hello there, little one,” the creature said.

“Nyah!” said the baby.

The next grin the creature gave once again had a veneer of humanity, if a flimsier one than he had shown the woman at the café.

“You’re going to need someone with more specific human experience than I have, aren’t you?” he asked the baby.

The baby sucked its thumb in reply.

The creature considered this. “Five years, maybe?” he wondered, and then his human shell solidified, and at once he was a child, barely big enough to hold the baby in his arms. Another adjustment and they stood on the floor of a small, empty apartment.

You have a lot of hard work ahead of you.

The child looked down at the baby he held and smiled. “Hard, maybe,” he said, “but I bet it’ll be interesting.”

---

A few years later, a certain woman walked down a block of apartment buildings. This was not the first home she had visited this week, and it would not be the last, but it was important work, so she could deal with being a little tired.

Double-checking the address, she walked up to an apartment on the third floor and knocked on the door.

A boy of about eleven years opened it, and something about him make her pause for a couple seconds before she smiled at him. “Hello,” she said. “Are you Tyrone Evergreen?”

The boy tilted his head, looking up at her, and then smirked. “Yeah. Are you from the school?”

“Ah, yes,” she said, caught off guard. “Well, I don’t actually work for the school, normally, but this is a busy time, so they called me in to help out. Are your parents at home?”

“No,” the boy said, still smirking. Then he opened the door all the way. “You can come in though.”

She thanked him and followed him into the apartment. He led her to a couch and then walked towards where the kitchen had to be.

“You want tea or something?” he said.

Something about the way he moved put her off. Something about his face, or in his voice. She could not quite put her finger on it, but it made it impossible for her to relax into the couch properly.

A quick glance around the apartment revealed a couple of chairs and a table, frames on the wall with the default pictures from the store still in them, and a few scattered items, but it did not really look like the home of a family. It struck her as lacking something, as if it was fake, constructed by someone who almost knew what a house should look like, but who had not lived in one for any large amount of time.

“Hello?” Tyrone said, and she realized she had not answered his question.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Could you repeat that, you think?”

Instead of complying, he studied her for a few seconds. “What are you worrying about?” he asked.

“Oh, nothing,” she said. “I thought maybe you look a little familiar. Have we met before?”

She said it with a joking smile, so when he grinned and said, “Sure,” it took her by surprise. “Six years ago, at a café a few miles south of here. You were excited about legal reforms and I was reading a newspaper.”

A cold chill ran down her spine as she remembered, and it took her half a minute to remember how to breathe. “Oh,” she said, and he grinned.

“So, do you want tea?” he asked.

“I think I might want a drink,” she muttered.

He laughed and walked into the kitchen. “Oh please, I’m eleven. Do you really think I have access to alcohol?” he said as he pulled a bottle of gin out of a cupboard.

A few minutes later, they were situated on opposite sides of the living room table, with her on the couch and him on a cosy chair. She held a glass of gin and he had a cup of tea.

“So,” she said, voice shaking. She coughed a bit and tried again. “So, I assume you know why I’m here?”

“I’m on the lists for the school and they don’t have any records of my parents,” he confirmed, “so they sent someone to have a chat and make sure we know all the important parts.”

She nodded, then she asked, “Can I ask, how did you even get on the list? You’re not… really… a child, right?”

“Right, well, I’m not gonna claim it was easy,” he said, adjusting his position. “Unless anything else is specified, the Hogwarts registry is enchanted to find and record any child with magical ability within a fairly large range. All I had to do was to make myself similar enough to a wizard child for it to notice me, which was tricky, but not impossible.”

“I see,” she said. “You were right, by the way. About the witches.”

He raised an eyebrow. “You found records of it?”

“I’m not gonna claim it was easy,” she said with a small smile. “it was a long time ago, as you said, and while it was buried pretty deep, no one really cared about hiding it anymore. You gave me a date to start looking for, so a bit of digging through the Ministry’s archived gave me enough to confirm it.”

“Colour me impressed,” he said, and took a drink from his cup.

She had a taste of her own glass, because she had a strong feeling she was going to need it, and that she was going to need something stronger once she got home.

Before either of them said anything else, a small shape ran up to Tyrone’s chair. A shape that on closer investigation was actually a small child. The child whispered something to Tyrone, and Tyrone said something back. The woman’s breathing stalled again as she realized what was going on.

“Ah,” she said. “About six years old?”

The child looked at her and grinned, adorably and far more human than his… family member ever had. “Yeah!” he said.

“Alvie?” Tyrone said, ruffling the kid’s hair. “Do you mind leaving us alone to talk for a bit? There’s cookies in the closet if you want.”

“Okay!” the kid said, and then he ran off, beaming.

The woman stared after him. “You really did,” she said.

“I did,” he replied. “He’s on the list too, in case you’re wondering. I didn’t need any tricks to manage that, it just found him in the usual way.”

She looked back at the… child, in the chair, and took a long sip from her glass. “This is why you’re doing this, isn’t it? For the kid?”

“Oh, you are smart,” he said, grinning. “Yes. He’s my son, after all. I owe him that much.”

She almost laughed. “That’s a little disconcerting to hear from an eleven-year-old, you know,” she said.

The man sitting in the chair across from her was at least halfway through his twenties. She was confused for several seconds before she caught on to what had happened, and after that, the knots her brain tied itself into by trying to remember what had just happened were painfully familiar.

She closed her eyes. “Okay just… stop. Please. Stop doing that.”

When she opened her eyes, he was eleven again, looking at her with a smile on his face. “Okay then,” he said. “Why don’t we have the conversation you came here to have in the first place?”

She nodded, and then she paused. “Do you even need it? I mean, you have your-” No, in fact he did not. She reached into her pocket and pulled out his letter, which she should have handed him to begin with, but had gotten distracted from. She gave it to him now, and he immediately opened it and started reading. “Your list of necessary school supplies, additional information and your ticket for the train. I’m supposed to ask if you need monetary help from the school, but…”

“Yeah, money isn’t an issue,” he said without looking up from the letter.

She nodded again. “I think,” she said, “it’s safe to assume you know where to get it, and don’t need school-provided supervision?”

“Reasonably safe, yes.”

She finished her glass of gin and was grateful for the buzz calming her down. She watched him read the letter and she bit her lip in worry.

He looked almost entirely human like this, head bowed so the hair of his bangs covered his eyes. She thought he might be mouthing words as he went. Then he looked up at her.

“Was there anything else?” he asked.

She considered the question before she answered. “I think I found you in the history books,” she said. “I think I might know what you are.”

His eyebrows went up. “Really? Well now I really am impressed,” he said. “My kind rarely bother with humans as it is, and it’s been ages since any of us bothered with wizards specifically.”

“There are always records,” she said. “Notices. Illustrations and mentions. Myths. Very little specific, and nothing that’s known to be fact and not just ramblings of diseased minds, but I’ve found you there.”

“And?” he asked. “What are you planning to do about it?”

She chewed her bottom lip and thought about her wording. “I don’t think I could stop you even if I wanted to, but I just need to make sure, absolutely sure, that it’s safe to let you loose in a school. You understand?”

“Of course,” he said. “I’d expect nothing less.”

“Is it true that you follow agreements religiously?” she asked.

He put out his hand and tilted it back and forth to indicate ‘more or less’. “Eh. I never break a deal if I can help it, but religion doesn’t have anything to do with it.”

“I see.” She thought a bit more, and then said, almost to herself, “A deal. Okay, I can do that. How about this?” She raised her voice again. “For as long as you, or anyone you’re directly connected to, attends the school, you promise not to harm anyone that belongs to or is under the protection of the school, and in return I will promise not to tell anyone about your true nature.”

He looked her in the eyes, unblinking, and finished his tea. “You’re not too bad at wording,” he said, eventually. “Anyone I’m connected to?”

“I won’t insist on that including anyone else than your…” she waved a hand vaguely in the direction of the door Alvie had left through, “creations. And possibly anyone you can expect to follow your orders if you feel like giving them.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Almost literally anyone will follow my orders if I really feel like giving them.”

“You know what I mean,” she said.

“I do, but wording is important.”

She nodded in response. “Subordinates, then. Of any kind.”

“That is fair,” he said. “And by ‘harm’, you mean what exactly?”

“Permanent, long-lasting or otherwise serious damage to mind, soul or body, caused directly or indirectly on purpose.”

“I can tell you’ve been writing laws,” he said, making her smile. “Alright, one last thing. You ‘won’t tell anyone’ means what, exactly?”

“It means I won’t act in any way so that someone other than myself is likely to learn of it. Is that acceptable?”

He leaned his head against the back of the chair, apparently thinking it over before he said, “Yes, I think so. I believe we have a deal.”

He reached his hand out to her over the table.

She hesitated for a moment before she shook it.

“Then, unless there was anything else…?” she fished, leaning forward preparing to get off the couch and really hoping there was not, so that she could leave.

“No, I think that was all,” he said, going back to perusing his letter. “Busy week?”

“Oh, you know,” she said, trying to make small talk as she got up to leave as quickly as politely possible. “Lots of muggle-borns this year. Lots of conversations. They had to call for people like me from outside the school to help, and the workload is still heavy.”

He walked her to the door. “I’m glad it happened, then. It’s been a pleasure to see you again.”

“Likewise,” she replied weakly as she walked out, and if she had drunk a little bit less gin, she never would have said the next line. “I truly hope we never meet again.”

He grinned, and closed the door.

---

Hersheba Hutton-Ollivander had worked at her father-in-law’s wand shop for five years, and officially been his apprentice for three. She fit well into the place, tall and rail-thin as she was, with ghostly pale skin, long black hair that hung in front of her face, not quite hiding her large, too-dark eyes that blinked too little. She finished the look by keeping her nails long, her head bowed slightly, and by wearing a simple, light grey dress. Even people who had known the dusty shop for decades had trouble believing she had not always been lurking in a corner of it.

The shop fit her too. The work delighted her, the precision and, yes, the creativity of it. The way she could spend hours, days in her half-lit workroom, breathing life into something few considered alive. She took to it like fish to water, and these days she could almost always match a wizard to a wand on her own with only a little trouble. This year, her mentor had decided to stay in the upstairs workshop, hidden behind a shelf in the storage, instead of helping her at the desk, even at this time of the year, when the children passed through by the dozen to get their wands.

The flow of customers distracted her from her beloved slow and steady work, but it held its own pleasure. Her fingers tingled with warmth each time she successfully found a wand’s child, and the first time a child was chosen by a wand of her own making, her usually small smile could almost be called a grin.

She had rightful faith in her own abilities.

Yet, when the door opened to reveal a boy walking in the door hand-in-hand with a child of maybe six, she listened to the change in the hum in the air, and immediately called for her mentor to help.

“I hope you don’t mind Alvie tagging along?” the boy said, with a hand on the head of the child, who smiled innocently. “He wanted to come with me.”

“All are welcome here,” Mr Ollivander said.

The boy introduced himself as Tyrone Evergreen, and they began the process of finding a wand that wanted him.

Spruce, phoenix feather, twelve inches, average flexibility. “It has a personality, this one. It needs confidence from its wielder, or it may betray you.”

As the first few wands refused him, Hersheba began to worry, which was unusual. Almost no wizard matched with the first wand they tried.

Laurel, unicorn hair, eleven and a half inches, very flexible. “A powerful, trustworthy wand. Well suited for a wizard with ambition.”

It might have been the hum of the wands in the air. They were agitated, growing more so, slowly but surely, and as they were, so was she.

Chesnut, unicorn hair, thirteen inches, flexible. “This wand will learn to suit its wizard. In the right hands it would be an exceptionally reliable wand.”

The child looked at the growing pile of wands with wonder and curiosity. Evergreen absentmindedly ruffled his hair.

Ebony, dragon heartstring, ten and a half inches, rigid. “Suited for powerful spells. This wand could decide the outcome of many duels, though relying on it above your own skills would be a mistake.”

Evergreen himself did not seem to mind as it dragged on, though it might only feel to her as if it dragged on because of the oppressive air developing. He smiled and patiently tried wand after wand, even as one or two of them unusually began to complain with electric shocks to his handling.

Sycamore, dragon heartstring, fourteen inches, very flexible. “This is an unusually powerful wand, ill-suited to a wizard that is anything less than exceptional. However, you must beware the sycamore. It is always looking for something new, and if you allow it to grow bored, it may combust.”

Mr Ollivander was smiling too, a smile she recognized as one of elation. This challenge excited him, and he walked through the storage shelves as fast as his old legs could carry him, picking out increasingly unusual wands. She thought he was searching for something, triangulating from reactions from the wands that she was yet too inexperienced to sense.

Dogwood, phoenix feather, eleven and a half inches, flexible. “This wand will choose a wizard who is likely innovative and mischievous. This one wants to have fun.”

Then, before Evergreen could even reach out for the next wand, the familiar rush of warmth of a wand choosing its wizard rolled through the room. Mr Ollivander froze, new wand half extended. Hersheba squinted at both of them, confused, and Evergreen started, before he laughed, and looked down.

The child had grabbed the sycamore wand from the pile, and now he grinned up at them, hair standing on end. “Oops?”

“Fascinating.” Mr Ollivander leaned in close to the child and adjusted his glasses. “I have never seen a wand match a wizard under the age of nine. Indeed, I was convinced it was impossible for one so young.”

“Does that mean I can keep it?” the child asked, clutching the oversized wand to his chest and looking up at Evergreen with large eyes.

Evergreen smirked, and answered, “If you don’t break anything before we’re done here, we’ll talk.”

The child beamed at him and nodded, and Evergreen looked back at them, holding his hand out for the next wand to test.

Hawthorn, dragon heartstring, twelve inches, unusually flexible. “A powerful wand with a contradictory nature. You might find this wand to excel or fail at tasks that should be all but identical. This is not a simple wand to use.”

Eventually, after an increasing number of violent rejections, Mr Ollivander picked out yet another wand. This time he hesitated just a little before he handed it over.

Hazel, unicorn hair, eleven and a half inches, rigid. “This is a sensitive wand. It will pick up on your thoughts and emotions more easily than any other, but may react badly to… extremes.”

For the first moment after Evergreen took the wand, nothing happened. Then, with a crack, it shattered, splitting lengthwise into several long splinters and leaving a shallow, bleeding cut across Evergreen’s palm.

Hersheba drew a horrified breath at the sight, but Mr Ollivander’s face gained another level of fervent enthusiasm. Evergreen let the pieces of wood and a single fluttering unicorn hair drop to the floor, looked blankly at his hand with an eyebrow raised and absently raised it to lick the blood off his palm.

“I see,” Mr Ollivander whispered, elated. Then he started down the lines of shelves and called out, “Follow me, if you would please.”

He led them to the back of the room, through a door hidden behind a shelf and down two ladders into the sub-basement. There was a storage room here, where raw materials for wands were kept carefully contained. Further in were other things, tools of the trade that the public had never seen, failed experiments and projects that might be dangerous to use or destroy, and other things, stranger things, gathered through a long life of searching for the most potent magical materials obtainable, things that were stored because there was nothing else that could be done with them.

It was out of this collection of items that Mr Ollivander picked a simple wand box.

“When I was young,” he said, carefully running his hand over the lid of the box. “When I was… much younger than I am now, I travelled many places in search of the best materials for wandmaking.”

Evergreen listened politely, and Hersheba intently. She had heard stories beginning like this before, and she had learned to always listen, for they would not be repeated. The child with a wand a third his height in one hand clutched at his relative with the other, and he listened too.

“I don’t remember where I was, exactly,” he continued, beginning to ease the lid off the box, but making no move yet to show them its contents. “It was a forest, somewhere on the continent. Far away from any people at the time.

The room was deathly silent aside from the dry sound of Mr Ollivander’s fingers brushing over the box. Even the hum from the wands seemed distant here.

His eyes were distant too, watching the box, but, she though, watching it as it had been when he first hid it away.

“At some point,” he said, “I contracted a rather serious fever. I became delirious, convinced I was moments away from finding something for which I had been searching for years. As I was alone on my trip, with no one present to stop me, I walked out into the forest in search of it, though I was too ill to walk straight.”

Finally working the lid off the box, he paused, looking into it with a look on his face she could not decipher. Carefully, he put the lid down without taking his eyes off the contents of the box, and then he lightly ran his fingers over its rim.

“I found something, that day. When I searched again later, I could never locate it, but as I remember very little of the trip itself or what I saw when I arrived, it might be my memory failing me. What I do remember is a tree, vast enough to reach the sky over the canopy, leafless and black as soot, yet as alive as any tree can be.”

He stilled his hand and seemed to return to the present, if only a little bit.

“When I woke, from my fever dreams, some days later, there were branches in my tent unlike any I had ever seen before. After some work, I found it to be the single most difficult kind of wood I have worked with in my life, and that is still true today. It rejected any form of wand-core I tried to give it, and eventually I had to settle for making it without one, hoping the wood’s own magical qualities would be enough. Of the wands I did finish, most did not work right. They did not function as sticks, let alone wands for living creatures to touch, or use. They were cut wrong, or they lay wrong in the world, I could never figure it out. I finished, in the end, one single wand of my fever-wood, but before today I did not believe I would ever meet someone capable of wielding it.”

He showed them the contents of the box then, finally.

In it lay a single wand, black as ebony, but not, carved with shallow, intricate patterns that flowed against the grain and seemed to extend beyond the edges of it, or…

She blinked, several times, to make sure there was nothing wrong with her eyes. She heard the child give a sharp intake of breath, but she did not look.

It was hard to tell how long the wand was, or whether it lay in the middle of the box or not. It was hard to tell whether the patterns covered it completely, and if not, which parts they did cover. It seemed to move around itself without ever moving, like something out of a dream. If this was the wand that lay right in the world, she shuddered to think how thoroughly wrong the others must have been.

Mr Ollivander picked it up, sliding his fingers in from the sides of the box rather than attempting to judge where it was to take it directly. Hersheba flinched as his fingers touched the wood.

He held it out, and Evergreen considered it for a moment. Then he picked it up.

Just like that.

Like it was easy.

And all of a sudden it was. Like it fit into a track, the instant the wand touched Evergreen’s skin, it stopped looking wrong. Suddenly, it was just another wand, long and dark with intricate engravings. It fit in his hand as if it had always belonged there, and he twirled it once, traced a glowing golden line through the air, and smiled.

“It suits you,” said the child.

“Thank you, I think so too,” Evergreen replied.

And that was it.

There was no warm rush of recognition and approval, but there did not have to be. None of them could imagine any better pairing than this boy and this wand.

They went back up to the first floor at a different pace.

The hum of magic in the air, once they walked back around the store’s counter, had calmed down to normal levels, and Hersheba composed herself.

They hesitated just a moment at the counter.

“I didn’t break anything,” the child said.

“That’s true,” Evergreen said. “If you promise to keep that up until you start school, I guess I’ll have to let you keep it.”

The child grinned wide and nodded, and so Evergreen took the sycamore wand and held it out together with his own.

“…Legally, we are not allowed to sell a wand for a child under the age of ten,” Hersheba said, hesitant to deny any wizard a wand that had already chosen them.

“Then of course we will not,” said Mr Ollivander, a smile on his face. Then he fixed Evergreen with a stare. “You came here to buy a single wand for yourself, yes? But I don’t believe your wand was even mine to sell. You can take it, but I will not take payment for it. I will sell you a single wand today, and if you choose to use another, that is not on me.”

The child giggled into his hands. Evergreen grinned gleefully, paid eleven galleons for the sycamore wand, and left the shop

The two people left in the shop silently began to put the discarded wands back into their places. It was simple, methodical, calming work, and it was over far too quickly.

“I think I will retire,” Mr Ollivander said eventually. “I believe you still have work to do.”

She nodded acquiescence and turned towards the front door when he had left to see yet another set of parents with their first-year-age child in tow walk in the door. For once, she thought as she stalked in from among the shelves and startled the family, the chatter of the outside world might even be welcome.

---

Thomas was giddy. More than anything else, he was giddy.

Having received final proof just a few weeks ago that not only did magic exist in the world, he was one of the people who could use it, Diagon Alley was what made it feel real.

All the little things, the ruined books he cried over that were just fine the next day, the school bus that stalled at the stop just long enough for him to catch it, the cockroaches that never touched his stuff even when the house was infested with them, those things he could rationalize. He could imagine he had imagined them, or that there was some rational explanation. Even the frazzled woman calling herself a witch appearing on their doorstep with a letter written on parchment and a long and fascinating explanation was hard to believe. Over the time since then, Thomas had repeatedly asked his parents whether it had actually happened just to make sure it had not been just a very vivid dream.

This though, the undeniable magic of this place made it all settle in his mind. He stared through the windows of a shop selling beetle eyes and pickled slugs, and the lump in his throat informing him that he was just going insane dissolved. Diagon Alley was colourful and gorgeous, and he stared and stared and stared.

Bookstores with titles that seemed too fantastical to be true (he glimpsed one in black leather that said ‘Bones in Potions and Alchemy’, and he knew he would want more money for things in this place than he was likely to ever have,) people selling protective charms on the street, creatures that were definitely not human weaving through the crowd, a woman with a fish on a hat that sang sea shanties. They stopped in front of the most intimidating bank building Thomas had ever seen, though to be fair, he had only ever seen one bank before and was not quite sure what was the norm.

His dad stopped, swallowed deeply, and asked for a minute.

If Thomas was giddy, Theo was anything but. He was a muggle to the core, and while he would support his son in anything, he was still reeling from the first shock of finding a witch at his doorstep. The thought of casually walking into a building that all but threatened to kill thieves at the doors… well, he needed a moment to gather himself.

Thomas was fine with waiting. It gave him more time to watch, though he also wanted to go see what Gringotts was like on the inside. He could just barely see the… goblins, she had said it was that worked there, from where he stood, and he wanted to look closer.

As he was craning his neck to see if he could get a better view, the boy approaching him went unnoticed until there was only a meter left between them.

“Hey, you guys need help?” the boy said, and Thomas damn near jumped out of his skin.

The boy was probably around Thomas’s age, though a little shorter, unremarkable appearance, with brown fluffy hair and a plain white T-shirt that still somehow managed to look more expensive than Thomas’s own. The look in his eyes was intense, his smile was sharp, and the tilt of his head put Thomas in mind of the side alleys he had glimpsed on the way to the bank that were dark as dusk despite the gleaming sun. The boy also stood hand in hand with a young child, who grinned like the sun itself.

“I don’t know,” Thomas said, looking back at where his dad looked decidedly pale. “I think we can manage?”

“Hmm-m,” the boy hummed. “Muggle-born, first day in the magical world?”

Thomas grinned sheepishly and scratched his neck. “Is it that obvious?”

The boy grinned back, sharply and slightly off. “You were staring and your father looks like he’s just been dragged through a spell specifically trying to make him forget its existence. You could’ve just never been in the city before, but this time of year this is a better guess.”

“I guess that makes sense,” Thomas said. “You’re also here for your school stuff, or…”

The boy nodded. “Yeah, just gotta get some more cash first. You’re exchanging yours for a currency that actually works, I figure.”

Thomas nodded slowly and glanced back at his dad again, who seemed to be calming down a little. Part of him wanted to grab his dad’s sleeve and drag him along as fast as possible, and another desperately wanted to know everything about what felt so weird about this boy.

The boy suddenly thrust his hand out. “Right, ‘scuse me, I’m Tyrone Evergreen, and this is Alvie.” He gestured to the kid, who looked like he might have just elbowed him in the side. “Nice to meet you.”

“Thomas,” Thomas answered, and took the hand. “Thomas Strange. Nice to meet you too.”

Tyrone tilted his head to the other side and furrowed his brows, and Thomas sighed internally. He was more than familiar with people teasing him about his name, but Tyrone just said, “Are you sure you’re muggle-born? Because that is a very wizard name.”

“Oh,” Thomas said, and then he remembered to pull his hand back from the handshake, which had honestly gone on for a little too long. “That’s good. I mean, are weird names common here, or…? Er, I mean, no, definitely muggle-born.”

Tyrone laughed. “Oh, you have no idea.” Then he addressed the kid at his side. “What was the name of that woman we met last year, again?”

“Lizabella Scorpelflee,” the kid answered, and giggled. “Her hair was full of bugs too.”

“You see?” Tyrone told Thomas. “You’re basically normal here. Hell, people might assume you’re from some old wizarding family and you’ll end up facing less discrimination than you would otherwise.”

“Who knows,” Theo said, having regained some colour, though his smile was still rather frail. “Maybe we are, and just lost the spark. Would explain a few things.” He briefly ruffled Thomas’s hair.

“You never know,” Tyrone said. “So anyways, you want to go with us to get your stuff sorted out? It’s a busy time of day, and the goblins are always happy to get to do two trips at once, to cut down on time.”

Theo nodded almost a little too quickly and gratefully at the offer.

Thomas wondered for a moment if his dad could even sense the weird, dark feeling he got off Tyrone, or if this was another magic thing, or just something he was imagining, but he found himself grateful too when they finally started moving and the hall beyond the doors of Gringotts came into view.

The hall was huge, ceiling domed far above them. Dozens, maybe a hundred doors along the walls opened and closed regularly to admit people through. Ahead of them, a single long counter ran the length of the room. The marble floor was smooth beneath their feet, and their shoes made clear tapping footsteps against it that Thomas suspected would have echoed against the walls if not for the noise of the crowd.

Beside the room, the crowd was the most interesting thing. Hundreds of people of all kinds of interesting shapes and sizes walked back and forth, lined up by the counter and being lead around by the goblins, and the goblins were something else again. One had bowed them in by the door and Thomas had caught himself too late not to stare. They were all business, working diligently at the counter and regarding their clients with the same cold efficiency they did their piles of actual gold coins and other valuables. Here and there, he glimpsed what looked to be non-goblin employees, but the vast majority of them were goblins.

His dad held his hand in a vice grip, obviously feeling very far out of his depths, but Tyrone walked with a casual confidence that made it easy to follow him.

They walked up to a goblin behind the counter who seemed busy idly reading a document, but was otherwise unoccupied. Tyrone stopped in front of… him? All the goblins appeared male, but they looked strange enough that it was hard to tell. Tyrone stopped in front of the goblin and waited politely

The goblin noticed them after a few moments, and looked up. The moment he saw Tyrone, his eyes widened and he hastily folded up the document and put it down.

“Ah, Master Evergreen, forgive me the distraction,” he said. “We have been expecting you.”

Tyrone grinned. “Ominous as always, Pirkratt. I hope you have; I did give word we were coming, after all.”

The goblin nodded gratefully. “Then tell me, what can we do for you today, sir?”

Thomas glanced around the room curiously. The goblins behind the counter seemed mostly cold and professional, efficiently directing people around, but this one, Pirkratt, was smiling. Admittedly a smile filled with small, sharp teeth, but a smile.

Tyrone was smiling too. His teeth were flat, normal human teeth, and they did not suit him at all. “Oh, nothing big,” he said. “We need to get down to my vault, is all. I was wondering, though. Think you could help these guys exchange their money while you’re at it?”

“Certainly.” Pirkratt threw Thomas and his dad a brief, calculating look. “If it will not trouble you?”

Tyrone casually waved him off. “Nah, we’re not busy. Take your time, don’t worry.”

Pirkratt then turned his attention to Theo, and Thomas felt the grip on his hand jolt in surprise before it loosened, and his dad started nervously discussing their money with the goblin.

Tyrone was talking to his little brother, saying something or other in a low voice with a smirk on his face. The boy laughed in response, and Tyrone ruffled his hair.

Thomas showed his hands in his trouser pockets and looked around at the transactions going on along the counter once more. “They’re very polite to you,” he noted.

“Hm?” Tyrone looked up at him.

“I mean…” Thomas gestured vaguely along the counter. “They seem kind of… They’re a lot more polite to you than they are to everyone else.”

Tyrone shrugged. “I have a few titles.”

For some reason the little boy giggled.

“Really?” Thomas said.

“Yep.” Tyrone nodded, and then he said, “Noble titles are actually pretty common among old wizarding families. They don’t really mean anything, and some of them are dirt poor even with them, but they’re a thing.”

“Cool,” Thomas said. “You’re, er, from an old family, then?”

Tyrone looked him straight in the eyes, and a shiver ran up his spine. They were blue eyes, but a dark, solid colour that did not seem quite natural. “We’ve been around for a while,” Tyrone said.

Thomas broke eye contact first, looking over at his dad, who was just handing a small stack of money over to Pirkratt. He had looked into those eyes for no more than three seconds, yet it felt as if it had been a staring contest. One he had lost.

“Yeah?” Thomas said, still looking away and pulling at the collar of his shirt. It abruptly felt a little too small. “How long?”

“Well…” When he looked back, Tyrone was smiling again, and the worst of the feeling had passed. “Our vault is one of the oldest ones in the bank.”

“You’re serious?” Thomas asked, eyebrows raised in surprise and curiosity despite the cold sweat inexplicably running down his back.

“Completely. We helped build it, though you won’t ever hear any goblins admitting that. Anyways, I think we’re about ready to go.”

Thomas looked to his dad again to see that another goblin had materialized next to them, standing on their side of the counter this time.

“Kark will accompany you down to your respective vaults,” Pirkratt said. “Unless you would prefer separate rides, sir.”

“That is perfectly acceptable. Thank you,” Tyrone said, nodding to the goblin behind the counter.

The new goblin, Kark, bowed and gestured them towards one of the walls full of doors. “If you would follow me, Master Evergreen.”

Tyrone gave a little wave and they walked out the nearest door, and the mood changed abruptly. Where the hall had been bright marble and golden embellishments, they were now in a dim, cold stone passage with a set of rails coming out of a torch-lit tunnel.

With a snap of his fingers, Kark summoned a cart that came hurdling up the rails and screeched to a halt in front of them. Tyrone almost immediately walked up and lifted his little brother into it.

“Come on guys. This’ll be an interesting ride.”

Thomas glanced at his dad, who glanced back. The cart did not in any way look safe, but, well, magic. It probably was.

Once they had all climbed aboard, Kark followed them, carrying what looked like a storm lamp. He left it unlit at the floor of the cart, and then they suddenly shot off at breakneck speed.

Thomas broke out laughing, mostly from terror, as they flew by twists and turns more quickly than he could count them. “Where are we going!?” he shouted over the wind.

“Vault 966!” Tyrone shouted back. He sat casually leaned back against the cart as if it was a lounge chair. “It’s one of the ones they keep the bank’s money in, so you can get your exchange!”

As quickly as the trip had started, it stopped, the cart nearly throwing them all out as it screeched to a stop in front of a pair of imposing doors.

“Please stay here wile I get your money,” Kark said. He nimbly leapt out of the cart and walked over to the doors. He spent a moment doing something they could not see, and then he disappeared through the doors.

Thomas’s dad stumbled out of the cart seconds later, then leaned on it with a shaking arm and tried to catch his breath without losing his lunch. “That,” he said, swallowing. “That was bad.”

“It’s awesome!” the kid exclaimed. “It gets even better deeper down. Sometimes they have loops!”

Theo had no answer for that, and so just stared numbly.

“Why would they want loops?” Thomas asked, slightly dubious.

“Security measure,” Tyrone shrugged. “If people are dizzy and throwing up, they’re not about to steal anything. Don’t worry. They almost never take those routes unless they’re worried you’re a thief, and you don’t look like one.”

“That’s good,” Theo said weakly. “Anything else horrible I need to worry about?”

The kid chewed his lips and looked up, visibly thinking. “Umm, I don’t think so, ‘s long as you don’t fall. They don’t even have dragons in here anymore.”

“Dragons?” Thomas sat up, all nausea forgotten. “Really?”

“Yep,” Tyrone said. “They really did stop using those for guards, though. After someone used one of them to break out during the war. Tore down the whole facade on the building.”

“You’re kidding,” Thomas said, almost laughing from glee.

Tyrone gave a predatory grin. “I’m not. It is technically possible to break into this place, but it’s almost always spectacular when it happens, and it never happens twice the same way. This one’s probably in your history books, so you can check that out when you get them.” He tilted his head a smidge. “I actually think I heard that one of the guys who did it is a substitute teacher at the school sometimes, so you might even get to meet him.”

Thomas could only laugh at that. Either way, this was when Kark came back and handed his dad a bag full of gold, and so easily ended that conversation.

“And now to the Deep Vaults, yes?” Kark said, ominously.

“Yes please,” Tyrone answered. “The Lightedge Vault, deep levels.”

Kark nodded, everyone got back in the cart and they set off again.

The pace seemed slower now, but still too fast to be reasonable under any circumstances. Thomas’s dad was white as a sheet, gripping the sides of the cart until his knuckles whitened. Thomas himself hunkered down and gripped the cart almost as hard, straining to watch the rails ahead of them. The little boy stood on his tiptoes, enthusiastically leaning out over the edge and whooping at every turn, with only Tyrone’s hand firmly hooked into his belt to keep him from falling. Tyrone, like Kark, was entirely unbothered.

The rails had been sloping downwards from the beginning. As they passed through the maze and the turns and intersection became less frequent, the slope increased, until they seemed to be falling as often as they were driving. They passed by vaults with intricate carvings on their doors, over ravines into a void below, and through passageways so narrow the cart threw sparks where it hit the walls (Tyrone casually pulled his brother closer.) Still they plunged deeper.

They passed through a stretch where the stones looked less like walls than they did teeth, reaching for them, and Kark lit the storm lamp. Soon after, there were no more torches to light their way, and they could only see by that one, flickering light.

The trail wound down and down, the forks in the road thinning out and the cart slowing down. Soon they were going slowly enough that talking without shouting would be viable, yet no one said anything.

The caves around them were dark as night, the light from the lamp only occasionally reaching walls and heavy, unused vault doors. The rails levelled out, and they passed through expanses that sounded from the echoes like vast, empty caverns, knife-edged crystals growing from the floor around them. They turned a bend and were suddenly rolling alongside the shoreline of a dark lake.

The cart did not screech to a stop this time. It let its momentum bleed out until it parked neatly just at the end of the rails.

“Whoa,” Thomas breathed.

In front of them, a pair of huge doors looked to be embedded in the rock, more as if they had been halfway excavated out than built into it. There was a symbol carved across the top half of them, one that implied sharp things and water, the chill up your back on dark, lonely nights and the sight of glowing eyes in the forest. It slipped from his mind the second he looked away. The mere presence of those doors in his vicinity made something in him scream ‘danger’. He wanted desperately to see what was on the other side.

Tyrone climbed out of the cart and turned around to stop the kid from doing the same. “No,” he said.

“But Tyrooone,” the kid complained. “I want to come too!”

“You stay out of that vault until I know you won’t touch anything that’ll vaporize you,” Tyrone said. Then he continued when the kid opened his mouth to retort, “And don’t argue with that after what happened at the wand shop.”

The kid closed his mouth with a click of his teeth and sat down, pouting.

Thomas saw a chance and took it before he could think too hard about it. “Um, can I come?”

Tyrone blinked, and looked at him. “What?”

“Can I-” He took a deep breath. Well. He had already said it. “Can I come with? To see the vault? I promise I won’t touch anything.”

Tyrone considered him, expression blank. “Well,” he said, eventually. “If you really won’t touch anything unless you’re absolutely sure it won’t hurt you, and your father says it’s alright, I guess that’s fine.”

Thomas immediately turned to his dad while behind him, the kid complained again. “What? Come on! You trust him more than you trust me?”

His dad looked dubious. Behind him, he heard Tyrone answer. “That’s not it. For one thing, I know for sure you can’t be trusted with this, which makes him more likely to be trustworthy by default. For another, if you’re vaporized, it’s my responsibility and I’ll be really sad, because I love you. If he’s vaporized, it’s his own responsibility and also I won’t care.”

Thomas’s dad looked at him and raised a concerned eyebrow. “Are you sure?”

Thomas glanced back at where Tyrone looked impassively at him, then at the doors that seems to have walked right out of his most implausible fantasies. Then he looked back. “Yes,” he said. “I’m sure. I’ll be careful.”

His dad closed his eyes and sighed. “Alright. Just- Be really careful.”

“Let’s go then,” Tyrone said, and started walking towards the doors again.

Thomas got out of the cart and scrambled after him.

The doors had no visible opening mechanism that Thomas could see, but Tyrone licked his middle finger and traced a circle across the surface, then he laid his hand flat in the middle.

A ripple of something seemed to spread out across the doors, something in the black surface inverting itself and then turning back. The next thing Thomas thought was that he could not understand how he had not seen the plain, normal-sized door embedded in the larger doors before. Tyrone turned the handle and they entered.

Somehow, the collection of bones longer than Thomas was tall standing just beside the door was entirely unsurprising. Tyrone walked purposefully deeper into the vault, and Thomas lingered by the door, looking at everything, but careful not to touch anything.

There were tables stacked high with items of various kinds, bookshelves with books and scrolls with titles he mostly could not read, one giant, empty cage standing on the floor. It looked like something had tried to scratch its way out of it, and almost succeeded. There were weapons hanging on the walls, from intricately carved spears to a collection of machine guns that looked like they had last been used in world war one.

He leaned closer to a table to see a miniature pyramid, apparently lined with gold and built out of teeny tiny pieces of rock. A simple picture frame showed a man standing on the edge of a cliff in a sunset, and only the faint movement of his hair in the wind showed that it was indeed a magical picture. A cup filled with pens, each topped by an ornate animal head in what looked like bronze. Among them were several whose needle-sharp teeth had dark stains.

What finally caught his attention was something that looked like a snow globe. It was a smooth glass ball on a stand, within which something was floating; a spherical, dark, gently wobbling something, flecked with pinpricks of light so small he was not entirely sure they were real.

“What’s this?” he asked.

Tyrone came back into view, tucking a small moneybag into his pocket. “That?” he asked. “That’s a universe. A small one. It’s probably safe to touch, though if you break it, our own universe might just fall apart.”

Thomas’s fingers were halfway to the glass when he yanked them back. “Oh,” he said.

Tyrone smiled at him. It looked sharper than it should be. “It’s very unlikely, of course. The casing isn’t easily breakable, and even without that it’ll probably just dissolve away, but still. Should we go?”

Thomas just nodded.

The trip back to ground level passed quickly and haphazardly. The goblins bowed at them as they went, and then Tyrone bid them farewell, the kid waving at them before they were both gone in the crowd.

Thomas and his dad stood at the bottom steps of the bank for a few minutes, not saying much at all. Then Theo cleared his throat and unfolded their shopping list.

“So,” he said. “Should we just start at the top?”

Thomas nodded mutely and followed him down the street as he looked around, looking for the signs of the stores they had been recommended.

In the privacy of his own mind, Thomas thought that he would at least try not to have too much to do with the Evergreens if he could help it. He also had a feeling that it was a battle he had already lost.

---

Tyrone Evergreen had a train compartment to himself. He did not mind it much. In fact, he hardly noticed it. People walking through the train looking for empty seats glanced into his compartment, got a funny feeling they should be somewhere else, and left.

If he had remembered that this behaviour was unusual, he might have tried to fix it, but for now, he figured he would make enough friends once he got to the school, so he kicked back and covered the empty seats in candy wrappers.

At times, he talked to himself, unless he was talking to something else, invisible to human eyes. At times, he leant back, unfocused, as if he was somewhere else entirely. Not that being two places at once was difficult for him, but it could be distracting at times. The landscape passed by his window and the sky slowly turned black.

He shared a boat across the lake with a girl named Elizabeth, who did not say a word to him and kept throwing him suspicious glances. He might have purposefully unnerved her with a smile or two, but certain temptations are irresistible.

Then came the hall. And the Sorting.

Elizabeth was sorted Slytherin, and she looked at him as if he was the venomous snake from her seat at their table once he walked up to the stool with the hat on it.

“Oh,” said the voice in his ear. “This is new.”

‘Problems?’ he thought at it.

“I’ll say,” said the hat. “I will sort any student that puts me on during the Sorting Ceremony, no matter who or what they are, but I do need something to work from. It seems I cannot see any of your memories.”

‘Yes, that would be problematic, wouldn’t it?’ he thought at it. ‘Hmm. Okay, I think I know what the problem is. Give me a second.’

Quietly and as quickly as he could, he collected a random selection of his own memories and organized them neatly before he converted them into a form that was a little closer to human.

‘Is that better?’

“Oh yes,” the hat said. “This should be more than enough. Now, let us see… You are presumably brave enough for Gryffindor, though I must question what bravery means when you have nothing to fear. Loyal, certainly, to those you choose, but I believe a Hufflepuff needs a certain amount of… cordiality. Still, someone like you could blossom in Hufflepuff.”

The hat chewed on its thoughts for a while.

“No, maybe not. You are cunning enough for Slytherin, but you have neither the personal ambition nor the willingness to use people. Ah, well. I suppose, in the end, you did come here to learn, more than anything else. In this case, it must be RAVENCLAW!”

Tyrone stood up and removed the hat from his head, let the chosen memories sink back to their proper places. He walked down to the table that had just broken out in applause, looked around at the countless number of students and thought, Yeah, this could be good.

#transcendence au #My writing #TAUwarts #victoryyyy!#whoop whoop

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