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littlemissnoname13 · 3 years

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love ur blog, btw this is a request for draco malfoy: can you make it where the reader loves coffee and draco also apparently is in love with it and they meet at some coffee shop and yeah u can continue how u like it

Hi lovely! Thank you for your kind words and your request. 💕

As a caffeine dependent human, writing this was so much fun. I hope you like it. X

Same Ideas. Varying Interpretations (Draco Malfoy x Reader)

Word count: 1517

Coffee shop AU

Warnings: None just excessive mentions of coffee and soft!Draco pining for the reader.

Draco Malfoy was never really a morning person.

The only reason he even dragged himself out of bed was the want for a decent sized cup of coffee from the coffee shop down the street.

Even though he was not a morning person, he was definitely becoming a weekend person.

Weekends meant he could wake up late, maybe prolong his otherwise quick shower.

To top it all off, that he wouldn’t even have to order his coffee to go!

In fact, he would get to sit on one of those infuriating little tables in the far corner that never stopped wobbling and look at you and whatever it is that you were drinking that day.

Sometimes you’d have a tall glass filled to the brim with iced coffee next to you. On other times, you’d be hugging a mug and absently licking whipped cream off your lips—making his heart palpitate in the process.

But within the unpredictability of your coffee order and the color of the dresses that you wore, two things remained constant.

One, you seemed to really like the buttered croissant they served.

Two, he loved watching you nibble into it as you flipped through the pages of your book.

And so, on a strangely sunny Saturday morning, Draco decided to stop beating around the bush and he finally managed to ask the lady at the counter to have a croissant delivered to your table.

“Oh. I didn’t order any today.” You said politely and shook your head when you saw the pastry.

“Courtesy of one of our regular patrons.” The server smiled before leaving you with a golden brown and perfectly curvaceous croissant.

Draco observed the whole interaction from afar—taking long slow sips of coffee as dark as his black suit.

It wasn’t that he didn’t want you to know it was him. He just wasn’t sure how you’d feel about a stranger buying you a croissant.

~~~~~~

The very next Saturday, Draco took his regular seat at the coffee shop and opened the daily prophet in front of him.

Your table remained empty as he scanned the paper—pretending like your absence didn’t bother him.

I drove her away.

That’s the only explanation.

Why is she not here?

Draco was so busy hyperventilating all alone that he almost didn’t notice a server bring what looked like a buttered croissant on his table.

He put his paper down for a second and arched a brow at the server who simply shrugged as he nodded towards the door.

You were just exiting the coffee shop with a to-go cup in your hands—clad in a lilac colored blouse that somehow made the freshly cut tulips wrapped in paper you had tucked under your arms look even more vibrant.

When Draco took notice of the to-go cup in your hand, he quickly paid for his coffee and followed you out.

“How did you know it was me?” He called out making him instantly regret this decision when you whirled around to face him.

To his utter surprise, you flashed him a small smile.

“Black coffee, no sugar or creamer.” You said. “Every weekend, I see you drink the same hot beverage mr. regular patron. It probably tastes horrible by the way.”

“It absolutely does not.” He retorted as you both started to walk down the cobblestone. “I don’t understand why you’d choose to ruin a drink that is perfectly good on its own.”

And both of you kept talking and talking as he walked you all the way home.

“It was nice talking to you.” You said as you stepped onto your front porch step.

“Likewise y/n.” Draco said as he put his hands in his pockets and started to turn away.

Throughout your walk, he’d wanted to ask if you’d like to have dinner with him sometime but the words refused to leave his lips partly due to his fear of rejection.

Just as he was walking away, he heard you call out his name.

“Draco. Wait.”

“Yes?”

“Dinner tomorrow? Seven-ish? No pressure.” You asked.

Draco didn’t know what you meant by seven-ish—if it meant after or before seven. What he did know was that he was going to be there early anyway.

Just to be sure.

~~~~~~~~~

When Draco saw you in your deep red dress that night, he quickly decided then and there that he’d never look at the color the same way ever again.

He was sure that he’d forever associate the color with your stunning little number for the rest of eternity.

And to his absolute and utter delight, the date went perfectly well.

It was strange how things flowed so naturally with you that it felt almost effortless.

So much so that both of you were the very last people that left the restaurant that night. And being the caffeine addicts that you both were, both of you found yourselfs craving a cup of coffee.

“I don’t think there’s anything open at this ungodly hour of the night Draco.” You said sadly as you walked with him down the sidewalk—moonlight casting terribly tall shadows of the two of you on the ground.

The tip of your fingers lightly brushed with his as if on accident and he seized this opportunity to intertwine your fingers with his.

He fought the smile tugging at his lips when he felt you hold his hands tight before finally saying.

“I know a place.”

~~~~~~~~~~~

You let him take the lead as you both ran along the sidewalks giggling like children towards wherever he was taking you.

From one of the houses along the way, an elderly man poked his head outside of his window and yelled at you both for causing a ruckus at two-thirty in the morning.

“Shhhhhhh…” Draco whispered, suppressing a chuckle as you both hid inside an alcove as placed his hands over your mouth.

His face was so terribly close to yours and you felt tingly all over your body when you looked into his shiny grey eyes.

He had the kind of eyes that could convince you to do just about anything with one simple look.

Terrifying yet so so comforting.

When the threat of being yelled at by the old man cleared, he led you all the way to a small 24/7 diner situated at the far end of the road.

The lady at the counter gave him a smile like he visited the place all the time.

“Are you a regular patron over here too?” You asked out of curiosity the lady poured you both a cup of coffee.

“I come here when I can’t sleep.” He said, taking a gulp of his coffee. “No one really comes here at this time of the night and the coffee isn’t half bad.”

You nodded and took a big sip from your own cup observing how his skin glowed a shade of bright pink from the neon sign on the window.

It felt good with him.

Even the black coffee that you were drinking felt nice and soothing.

Just when you thought the night couldn’t get any better, a slow song started to play on the radio at the diner. It didn’t even bother you that the song kept cutting off due to the static.

“This is such a lovely song.” You told him, making a crooked smile form on his face.

“Care to dance with me then?” He asked.

“Here? ”

“Yes here.”

You opened your mouth to object but he was already pulling you up—gently swaying you to the music.

The lady at the counter shook her head and went towards the back of the diner leaving you both to it.

With his arms around your waist and your head resting on his chest, your bodies moved with the music.

From where your head was resting, you could easily hear the wild thumping of his heart and you wondered if he could hear yours.

You slowly tilted your head upwards to look at him and he lovingly tucked a loose strand of hair behind your ears.

As his face drew in closer and closer, you closed your eyes and met him halfway.

His lips tasted like caffeine.

They woke you up, gave you a rush and had something addictive about them.

He kissed you so tenderly—his lips moving slowly in synchronisation with yours.

But somewhere between those soft kisses, you could tell that he was holding back something more ravenous and intense.

It only made you want to keep kissing him.

That night and the nights to come.

~~~~~~some months later~~~~~~~

“Not this again.” Your boyfriend shook his head as he took a sip from his mug before taking a bite from YOUR croissant.

“Well forgive me for wanting my coffee to actually taste good.” You rolled your eyes at him as you stirred your straw of your iced coffee. You’d asked for two pumps of vanilla syrup to be added to your drink and Draco gagged at the idea.

The way you both took your respective coffees was a perfect way to describe your relationship.

Same ideas.

Varying interpretations.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Taglist: @dracomalfoyisindahouse @dracomalfoys-wh0re @maybesandohnos @justfangirlthingies @desiredmalfoy @dlmmdl @trainintersection @fa-me @dracoswhore007 @paulina1998 @wh0re4blaise @marrymetheonott @quacksonsssandtea @letoof @rvaldez7569 @loloo22 @emma67 @berriemalfoy @thegaudess @itchywitch33 @louweasleymalfoy @lunar0se10 @savagelysarcasticslytherin @fleursbabe @teawineaddict @thebitchybeatle @malfoyxxdraco23 @fantasyfairysworld @trashyvicks @h0ggyw0ggyh0gwarts @l0vely-lupin @linasylveon @amwitherspoon

Love,

#harry potter #draco malfoy imagine #draco malfoy x reader #draco x reader #draco malfoy #draco fanfiction #draco fluff #draco lucius malfoy #draco malfoy fluff

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just-a-real-human · 3 years

Text

Silver Warfare: Part 2

William stood on the bridge of his ship, The Silver Warfare. At 2000 meters long, 150 million kilos and still growing, it was the largest battleship in the human navy, except of course the Deus Ex Machina, but that's mainly a base of operations and basically a mobile planet, not technically a battleship. They were expecting an attack by the Dr’acha’lians, and usually William would call in reinforcements, a carrier maybe, or perhaps a couple destroyers. But with the recent additions and improvements upon the massive warship, William was more than confinent in the power his ship held. "So, have the radar crew spotted them yet?" William asked, putting a hand on his chin, stroking his beautiful, silver beard. "No sir, they're not within the 100 kilometre range, sir." "Have the gunners fire a couple radar shots, see what they can find." Radar shots were a special type of shell that can scan an area of about 100 kilometres of where they were headed, the negative is that due to the fact they're launched so fast, they can only take small snapshot of anything they find unless it's at least planet sized. They don't really use radar, not anymore at least, but when they were invented about 100 years ago they still used radar, hence the name. "Hmm...sir, not in the range of radar shots either, do you think they aborted the mission?" "Unlikely...Welp, if they won't come to us i suppose we can go to them...Let's fire up thrusters to gain some speed and go into their general direction, let's beat them down like the beasts they are." "Very well sir, those reptillian bastards'll get what's comin' to them." William chuckled, patting his navigator on the shoulder, looking out into the vast space ahead. Dr’acha’lians we're a rather...simple minder folk, related to the Dr'achs, they had a burning hatred for humanity for...well, exterminating their entire sister species in a way that can only be described as...excessive. It had been about 6 months since that moment, and the Dr’acha’lians had attempted to take revenge on human about 7 times now, failing everytime. Hell, they once tried to attack the Deus Ex Machina! Suffice to say, they didn't get far. William stroked his beard, looking out as they moved forward at a respectable speed "Say, do you think they might be wanting to ambush us? If so, do you think we should ready reinforcement, artillery?" The navigator frowned "You have a point, cap'n, maybe ask that new secretary, Peter, right? He knows them aliens better than us, he should have something to say about it, right?" William nodded approvingly, he knew he could count on his navigator for advice in a pinch. With the introductions of ships this immense, navigators changed from simple pathfinders to assistants that can both navigate the ship and give advice to the captain, as they were expected to know the ins and outs of their ships like the captain themself. William tapped the communicator on his wrist. The communicator beeped for a little while... At Peter's end he was nervously working on the tasks captain William had laid out for him, simple inventory counting, weapons checks, crew counts etc. When suddenly the communicator on the monitor bleeped with an urgent call! Poor Peter almost fell out of his chair, looking at the call, it was William himself! "Uh, Hello sir! Sorry for not picking up, i haven't quite gotten the hang of this thing just yet!" "No problem boy, i just need some advice, do you know about Dr’acha’lian tactics?" "Uh...enough sir, why, are we getting attacked?" "No, at least not yet, i just needed some advice about if they might be planning an ambush, and subsequently, if we needed to call some reinforcements." Peter thought for a moment, digging deep in his brain... "Uhh, well, the Dr’acha’lians aren't known for ambushes, and if the previous battle have been a good example, they aren't exactly worth heavy reinforcements...but you can never be too carefull. Give me a minute sir, i'll see if i can calculate some risks and costs, see what's worth what." "Very well, just try to make it a little swift, i

believe you in the lack of proper ambushes, but still, we don't wanna just blindly stumble into eachother." William looked around, a hand on his chin, the other fidgeting with his hair a bit. He wasn't NERVOUS so to say, but like, a step below that. He knew SOMETHING was coming, and he knew they'd most likely win, but still, a battle's a battle, and you never want to lose men. *Beep beep beep* After roughly 3 minutes the communicator bleeped again, Peter's voice instantly talking as soon as he picked up. "So, sir, i think the best choice might be to call in a couple corvettes and MAYBE a destroyer, judging by the last battles, misslecrafts might be a good choice, and the destroyed should probably be a modified broadsider, the Dr’acha’lians aren't the fastest, but they're not very slow either." William nodded approvingly, eyebrows raised in surprise "Well, thank you Peter! You've done a great job, grab yourself a drink, there's a particularily good soda in the first layer of the drink storage. Though i suggest you don't take anything alcoholic just yet, let's save that for after the battle" Peter chuckled heartily "Thanks sir, but i don't drink, i'll take a look at the soda though! Good luck, sir!" William smiled, ending communications and switching it to the coms devision. "Communications, order some reinforcements, send in 5 corvette missleboats and a destroyer, modified broadsider if at all possible." "Very well sir, punching in the order now...and done! They will be in in about 7 minutes" "Good, thank you, keep up the good work" William closed coms again, leaning against the terminals. "So, now we wait! Let's hope those dull reptillians make themselves and easy target...fire some more radar shots, see if they find anything." "Yup, will do sir." The navigator pressed a few of the buttons, which then sends orders to the artillery garrisons to send out shots. A very efficient system, it simply worked with buttons and orders, of course if specifics were needed or the order buttons were defective/in maintenance, coms can always be opened. They though of everything in this top-of-the-line warship.

The minutes passed rather slowly, but after they passed, it was always worth the wait seeing the ships come in from lightfolding, dropping into line smoothly with the wide lightshow of colours as the ships quickly go from a simple mass of warped light to a proper ship. "Sir William, the ships have all arrived" Said the navigator "Good, we can start speeding up! Send the order to search around for recon, let's find those bastards!" Although looking puny by comparison, the corvettes were still missleboats 100 metres long, and those destroyers were about 300 metres! A fleet of those can quickly turn any ship to spacedust, i mean human missles are no joke, they often carry thermobaric explosives that completely incinerate the inside of a ship as long as there is fuel! Brutal...but as they say, 'All's fair in love and war' After about 10 minutes or recon, the message came in...The enemy had been spotted! "Good! Well done boys, place a tracker in their direction and we can start ranging our shots" William looked outside to the general direction the recon ships were headed, and ask and you shall receive, the radar showed a beacon. William looked at the direction for a long moment, and then he noticed the tiny specs...yup, those were Dr’acha’lian ships right, ugly, weirdly coloured and overall horrible. "Prepare the 120cm cannons, we're gonna be hitting them hard right off the bat." The navigator nodded, punching in the order and readying fire. "Any more orders sir?" "Yes, missleboats, get in position to speed in, lock on and fire with everything you have, destroyer, stay with the S.W and join in fire accordingly, prepare concussive shells." "Yes sir!" Said the navigator, punching in the orders and sending them to the ships. In unison the ships started moving along, the corvettes taking up a wide pentagon, silently preparing missles and roaring up their thrusters, ready to rush in and fire. "Alright...Let's now wait just a moment, tell the artilerry to fire the moment they have a perfect shot, as soon as they fire, we will engage" "Understood sir, you heard the captain, the artillery batteries have the say now..." Seconds passed, feeling like hours, and then, dissapearing as fast as they appeared, immense tremmors shook the ship as an entire salvo of 120cm cannons fired their shells, the corvettes swiftly firing the engines and catapulting forwards towards the enemy. The Silver Warfare herself quickly started turning, the destroyer joining the corvettes in their ambush. They could see the shells hit from here, the absolute power in those thing tearing apart entire battleships in a single hit, followed by a positively gigantic swarm of rockets enveloping the enemy fleet, passing by and hitting ships as it passed before the swarm turned around, hitting again and again, continueing to batter the ships, giving them no chance at retaliation. The silver warfare was approaching swiftly, readying arms and armor as the enemy ships scrambled to put a resistance. William opened up shipwide announcements "General quarters, i repeat men, action stations!" The ship quickly armed and armored up, shields glowing, weapons humming, beeping or making other noises. The ship's immense generator went into battle mode, whirring up a storm as electricety went skyhigh to keep up with the demands of the powerful shielding and weaponry. As soon as the Silver Warfare got in range, all hell broke loose as the Dr’acha’lians opened fire upon them, luckily, their weaponry was vastly inferior to the Silver Warfare's bleeding edge tech and simply immense firepower. As the ships started firing, the Silver Warfare started turning, exposing its side to the enemy as to release the full power of the ship. As soon as the cannons were in range, all of them started firing, a swarm of glowing shells starting to pepper the enemy, destroying small ships and leaving only rubble and dust in their wake. "Sir! The ship is keeping steady and the Dr’acha’lians are struggling to mount a proper counterattack, shall we test the experiment, sir?" "Yes, let's try

that! Let's see if we can live up to the name 'Silver Warfare', shall we?" The navigator smiled, opening shipwide anouncement "All hands, stear clear of the generator, the silver test is about to start, this is not a drill. I repeat, this is NOT a drill. The test shall commence in 5 minutes" As soon as the announcement was made, the gunner crews started scrambling to prepare the experiment, removing the barrels from the massive cannons, swiftly replacing them with different ones, luckily quickened by advanced machinery, then they loaded special shells into the cannons, taking great care to damage neither. William looked at the battle taking place, balancing him every now and then as a salvo hit them or the cannons fired. "Are we sure it won't overload the generator?" "Yes sir...well, in a way it will, but not in a harmful way, you know what i mean" William nodded, looking at the battlefield and opening the anouncements channel once again "The test is now starting, gunners may fire when ready" As soon as he finished, the cannons fired, blasting immense amounts of strange dust across the entire battlefield, the cannon's barrels were replaced with smoothbore ones, and this dust was actually... Silver As the dust spread around the battlefield, William quickly opened up a pannel at the command terminal, revealing a large lever. After the dust had properly settle around the enemy ships, he pulled the lever... In the generator room, the generator itself started going faster and faster, threatening to completely destroy itself with the extra charge, when suddenly... The entire comparment was slid open to space, revealing a massive gaping hole in the ship leading directly to the generator, this was a weak spot...what was the plan? That became clear as soon as the silver came close to the generator, a violent discharge spread throughout the entirely of the battlefield, travelling throughout the silver and electrocuting everything in its path. Silver, being one of the most conductive metals out there made the perfect choice. The enemy ships were being completely fried, not even able to fire anymore as all of their inhabitant were either busy dropping dead from electrocution or exploding since it was like being hit by a lightningbolt all across the field. William laughed, looking at the chaos "Well, report to Yeshua the test was a complete success! The silver warfare was baptised not by fire, but by lightning!" William laughed again, pushing the lever and closing the generator off. The generator would need a little while to get back up to strenght, but it's not like the enemy could put up any resistance. While the generator charged, the Silver warfare and supporting ships simply took care of all enemy ships, like shooting fish in a barrel. (Welp! that was that c: I'll probably not stick to a REALY schedule, but i promise i won't just DIE like that again without telling anyone! BUT I LIVE! I LIVE! I already have a million ideas for the series, and it'll be more around a band of adventurers moreso than these battles, as you might see i'm not the best at writing those '^^. Feel free to drop critisism, have a very nice day and i hope to see you next time :D)

#humans are space oddities #humans are space australians #humans are weird #humans are space orcs

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just-mirko · 4 years

Photo

lavender petals - part 1

MASTERLIST

Mirko x Reader

Angst, Slow-ish burn, fluff,

WC: 4.1K

MANGA SPOILERS IN LATER PARTS

A steady and constant roll of tapping continued outside

where the rain poured down in fleets of cold water. The little drops all

together sounded like thousands of typewriters; the tiny stamps pressing fresh

ink stains into parchment. The storm did not only darken the sky but slowly,

the concrete was dampened into a charcoal shade and the glass windows collected condensation. The scent of petrichor had not reached where I was, but the

second I stepped outside I could already feel it overtaking my senses. have caused me to be

upset, and make me curse the heavens, but today, the rain started just as the

the shop was about to close, only 30 minutes till I would lock the doors and turn

around the little double-sided sign; switching it to “welcome” to “come back

later. I could not anticipate any customers would actively rush to my store in

the terrible weather, so I accepted it as an easy break where I could stay inside

and relax with warm herbal tea.

My shoes squeaked beneath me when I turned back to the

service counter. Aromas and floral notes were everywhere I stepped. Even if you

stood still, they still changed. orchids, roses, daisies, and violets all

dancing together in harmony.

Once I reached behind the counter, I could see every

corner of the shop in its array of colors that seemed duller than usual from

the lack of sunlight. Nonetheless, they still stood out against the dull pots

and glass vases.

‘I should be done for the day’ I thought to

myself, already having swept the floor, put out the new flowers, and clipped

the old ones before the storm arrived. An overdramatized sigh passed my lips

when I went to sit at the stool next to the register.

Sitting behind the register was always slightly

inconvenient, because blocking my view of the entrance to the store was a

large, and I mean large, bouquet of fresh lavender sprigs. They were normally

used as filler plants but had just come in today and I still could not decide

what to do with them. Additionally, I lacked a new arrangement to add them too,

so they were left out to stand alone.

By far they were the most prominent in the store. Their

sized rivaled all the large wedding table pieces we had. And the smell, though

calming, gave me a headache after being with them all day.

It is not like anyone would buy them either. They were not

as easy on the eye as a rose, three times as expensive, and once again,

typically used as filler flowers.

I settled on scrolling on my phone to distract myself

from thinking about what to do with them. I did not want to wait too long to

sell them lest they wilt.

‘Oh look, my webtoons updated.’

Fifteen-minutes passed quickly and mindlessly. Only 15

minutes till I could lock up and go home. The storm still had not relented, and

now, the rain was accompanied by large clashes of thunder and lightning.

These days life was quite simple. It was not exceptional

nor terrible, but a mediocre and peaceful existence that brought me the chance

to do what I loved. I had friends I visited occasionally, a small business that

was doing well with the white day just around the corner (an eastern type of

valentine’s day). But no matter how many

flowers I had, it wouldn’t quell the little part of my heart longing for

something more.

“CLASH”

The lightning what getting closer outside. It got louder

and louder, making me jump in my seat a little.

“CLASH”

The rain slammed into the ground, but something else was

happening as well. Something in the background of sorts.

“CRASH”

A resonating bang that sounded nothing like lightning

erupted nearby. A car alarm blared as well.

‘Could it be a villain?’ I asked myself as I look

over the purple blossoms to see if I could see what was going on from outside

my window. Alas, it must have been a street down.

‘Why would they fight in this type of weather though?’

Villain activity has spiked rapidly in the last few weeks as the League of

Villains had risen to power than out of nowhere disappeared without a trace. Not

to mention the capture of stain had encouraged many of the morally grey

antagonists to step out of the shadows in pursuit of their own type of justice.

Everyone had their own definition.

I tried to stay up to date on villain activity but so

much was constantly happening. Three times a week we got a new story. In the

beginning, the attacks seemed petty and selfish. Things like; “3 criminals rob a

local bank” or “Enraged fire-type quirk user burns down workplace” but today,

they were more organized, harder to stop. All the villains were working towards

a greater goal that was easier to see.

A little bit ago, one of the most popular quirks inclusive

department’s CEO joined the LOV after an all-out fight. Many were injured. It

was practically a bloodbath. Citizens remember seeing ice and blue fire merge

in giant tornados in the sky. The entire building disintegrated without a

trace. A witness with still in shock commented that she saw a UA student emerging

from the rubble, but that claim was shut down instantly by that student’s very

own teacher.

Unease was everywhere. People even began to stop trusting

figures of authority out of fear they might not be who they said. I was not a

target to any kind of villain myself, but who knows if I could become just

another statistic on the news.

Police sirens came into earshot.

I guess it was a criminal after all. Soon enough I would

be able to find a nice little article online detailing everything that happened

with a cover image of an unscathed hero smiling at the camera as if all were

well. How they tried to convince us that all was wel-

The chime of bells interrupted my thoughts when someone

came through the store door, very close to closing time.

When I looked up at them, I completely froze, unknowing

of what to do say, even think.

Before me stood… Mirko? Mirko. Mirko the Rabbit Hero. The

number #4 hero. The best female hero. And she was- Injured?

She stood with her shoulders rolled back but she was

panting heavily. Her platinum hair dripped water onto the pristine checkerboard

floors I just mopped. Across her, the skin on one of her shoulders was a crimson

slash. The blood that came from it dripped partially into her hair, staining it

slightly; and partially mixed with the water she was absolutely drenched in. She

looked cold in the light hero gear.

In her weak state, she still held an air of strength. When

I looked up in obvious shock at her condition, I was met with piercing red eyes

and a smile I would describe as manic on anyone else.

“C-can I help you—are you okay?” I stumble out when I

started to panic, realizing that she just fought the cause of all the racket

down the street.

My response only looked to entertain her, and she smiled

wider chuckled then pulled her hair over one shoulder: twisting it to ring out

the excess water (and blood).

“Yea, you do sell flowers, right?” She said. We were

obviously on different pages. She seemed completely relaxed as she was still

bleeding a watered-down red puddle onto the floor. Meanwhile, I was seriously

concerned about her health. Online, I simply assumed that every pro-hero held a

façade. That they were not as cocky, brave, or positive as they seemed once the

cameras were cut. This though was a spitting image of every picture of her I

had seen. Despite that, nothing could have prepared me for this in person-encounter.

“Y-yes I sell flowers”

I frantically scanned across the store for something for

my eyes to latch onto. My fingertips pressed hard against the side of the

resister to the point where my fingertips were turning white and my knuckles

began to cramp.

Mirko walked forward. Despite her injuries, she did not

have any limp and strolled casually over to some of the display stands

near the front window. I fidgeted with my finger while I stumbled over to where

she was. Her gaze we currently focused on some white lilies, though she soon

switched to some yellow roses.

“What is the, um, the occasion- For the flowers?” The

words tumbled out of my mouth. They felt out of order and out of place. Seeing a

hero in public is a strange thing. As amazing as they are, you always suspect

that there is an underlying threat of danger. You are both drawn to them yet

repelled by the hint. It's always ‘Why would a hero be here.” That wasn’t

the occasion now though. She was just- here for flowers? She was definitely just

off from work and needed a few band-aids; at most, stitches. My mind still had a

rough time thinking over why she so casual. I hoped this doesn’t happen often

for her.

Mirko’s fingers paused when she traced the outline of an

imported lily.

“A friend of mine got his ass beat up by a walking flamethrower”

The way she said that, so lightheartedly, with a slight smirk on her face, but

sadness in her eyes confused me.

“Is he a hero too?” I inquired; taken aback by the lack

of filter. It had nothing to do with the

flowers, but my curiosity got the best of me.

“Hawks.” She shortly stated before turning back towards

me.

A look of recognition must have crossed my face as she did

not explain any further and just continued.

“So…” She crossed her hands over her chest and looked up

towards me (we using Mirko’s canon height today cause she short short lol).

“What flowers would be best for ‘get better idiot’” Her

hair was still disheveled and soaking wet but the ethereal glow the rain seemed

to give her face made me want anything but eye contact. I shouldn’t really get

flustered so easily, but when a celebrity built like a Greek goddess steps into

your shop looking like she’s straight out of war…

“Well, I wouldn’t be able to make any custom arrangements

today because I’m closing-“I looked down at my watch for the time. “5 minutes

ago, but we have many premade sets and custom vases if you’re interested?”

I tried to seem chipper and avert my gaze from her hair,

bleeding shoulder, and foot that was insistently tapping on the wet floor, but

in between each word I stole a glace that did not go unnoticed.

“That’s okay, I’m fine with a pre-made bouquet.” I

fiddled with my thumbs once more. She was really giving me nothing to work

with.

“Any flowers in specific you like?” I asked, grasping for

straws. Mirko’s expression was perfectly neutral and ambiguous. Even if she

gave me a color, I could work off that, but all I had was a name and extra

mopping to do.

‘I wonder if blood will stain my tile’

What she said next seemed to fit with the personality I

was slowly assembling her.

“You guess.” And with that, she turned to look at more

bouquets and potted plants that lined the shelves.

The lavender! I thought, finally thinking I had found a

way to get rid of them but realized that may not be well suited as a get well

soon gift.

Hawks. Hawks. Hawks. The bird hero. The bird men. Red

feathers, right?

Because of the hero’s color pallet, per

se, I was drawn to red roses and yellow daisies, maybe some red and white

lilies. I found an arrangement I thought fit on one of the shelves next to a

window, where it was still raining outside. I carefully picked the flowers up;

their silky petals caressed my hand. Two petals floated down onto the floor as

I relocated them back to the assembly station.

“Would you like a vase with this?” I questioned. Her ears

perked towards me, shocking me in the slightest. Of course, it was not unusual,

but with how she seemed to hear me from across the room without turning her

head made me fear that she would hear my heartbeat racing in my chest. This was

a hero. A real-life hero. God, I hope I do not mess this up.

“Mmmhnn,” She said, inflecting that meant yes. I walked

near a shelf where we stored them and looked at the variety of glass, plastic,

and even porcelain vases reserved for special occasions. My eye was stuck on a

red one that caught the soft lighting of the store beautifully. I reached up to

grab it and held the cool glass in my hand. With the sleeve of my jacket, I

began to brush off some of the dust, ignoring the mark it left.

“Ooh, I like that one” I heard from behind me. Quite

startled I jumped, and the vase left my hand, seconds from crashing into the

floor. Before I could blink, Mirko had caught it agilely.

“The color is nice,” She said as she turned it over in her

hands, clearly pleased with having shaken me.

Honestly, the banter was a nice break from today. I guess

it would not hurt to lighten up a little.

“Yea,” I said with a gentle smile.

I had almost finished totaling her order and was putting

the flowers in the box to protect from the rain when I looked over at Mirko and

saw her quite intrigued by the lavender practically overtaking my desk.

“We just got that lavender in! It's fresh and quite relaxing.”

I hummed to myself, pleased with the wrapping I did on Hawk’s bouquet.

“How much for them?” She asked turning to me inquisitively.

“Well lavender isn’t normally sold alone but that’s about

10 arrangements worth” I said pointing to the sheer number of flowers. Upon

the counter, they were more than two feet tall.

“So?” She said, resting her elbows upon the table and leaning

in to smell the lavender even more. The ivory ears atop her head sloped

downwards a little more reminding me of a little puppy when they got pet. An

obvious show of their aromatic effects.

“Two-hundred, though I could definitely get you a smaller

amount if you would like, they’re sold twenty per bundle just because of how

hard they are to transport and a how delicate they te-“

“I’ll take them all,” She said with an aggressive smile

and firm shake of her head. There was a switch in her tone like she suddenly

decided she revealed too much of herself to the general public. I did not like

thinking that though. That she saw me as the public. Everyone wants to be

special sometimes.

“How was errr- work today?” I asked, clearly insinuating

my concern for her condition.

A small shadow passed over her face. Her eyes got a

little darker and the corners of her mouth turned down before her typical passionately

a confident smile came back.

“Nothing I can’t handle” Those smug words were

accompanied by a flourished wink that was embellished her white eyelashes.

“I heard a crash nearby. Was there a villain?” This time

she did not hesitate to answer.

She finished paying and gave me an address to deliver

them to tomorrow. One to a hospital, and one to a home address. I expected a

PO box and assumed her address was not something she just gave away, but that was

not the only thing I was warmly excited about. Instead of signing “Mirko” her

formal hero title on the receipt, She signed her real name, Rumi Usagiyama.

---

The weather was much more considerate this morning. When I

awoke, golden rays filtered light through my lashes into my eyes. The faint

sound of birds chirping and bustling people in the city below faintly reached my

ears.

I lived right above my flower shop, making my commute to work

conveniently. I chose to dress a little bit nicer today, opting for a cream-colored

turtleneck and dark washed jeans instead of my normal gardening attire. Spring

was right around the corner in Musutafu Japan. Winter was leaving and the city

was in the awkward middle state where it's too cold to wear spring clothes but

too sunny to stay in jackets.

Since yesterday was Saturday, I had today off, kinda. I

just had a few flower deliveries to complete before I could go back home and lay

on the couch eating watermelon sour patch kids (ichor itself) and reading

terribly done 9k fanfics online. (Wow! Our reader!! Is super!!! Self!!!!

Aware!!!!!)

My brain had completely blocked out everything that

happened last night, so when I checked my order list and saw Rumi

written in neat handwriting, my confusion was immense.

‘So, It wasn’t a dream then…’’ huh.”

I walked downstairs into my store. I saw a few

schoolchildren peeking in the dark windows since there were no lights on to look

at the flowers. I waved to them and then chuckled to myself when they left tiny

little handprints on the glass. Tall buildings could be seen across. A café, a

tattoo shop, a little library, and many small businesses that were nestled right

in the center of town where they got lots of attention. Around the back exist to

the stores were where most of the employees parked. My friend and co-worker had

called in sick this weekend, so it meant I had to do all the deliveries myself.

I went over to the storage room. A wave of cold rushed

over me and sent tingles down my entire body. This was always kept cold to keep

the flowers alive longer, but always hated retrieving boxes from there.

I steadily grabbed the lavender-filled box and stacked

Hawk’s arrangement box on top of it. The white cardboard stood so tall in front

of me when I held them I could barely see when I walked out the back door and

over to my car where I nearly dropped them loading them into my car’s trunk.

I clumsily got into the driver’s seat and started the

engine to head to the first address. Hawk’s hospital. Right in the center of

town, it was only 10 minutes when you accounted for traffic.

The hospital was the nicest in Mafatsu, with white pillars

and balconies on some patient's rooms. Only the best for heroes. When I got out

of my car and drew near, the building felt like it was swallowing me whole in

its large size.

My soft footsteps appeared insignificant with prestigious

doctors and nurses bustling around in choreographed chaos. When I got to the reception

area, a pink-haired nurse with a kind smile greeted me cheerfully.

“Hello! How can I help you today?” She began typing before

I even said anything. Maybe a prediction quirk.

“Hey, I’m here to drop off flowers from Mirko for Hawks?”

She nodded in understanding and scanned her eyes over my

body, then the box I was holding, all while typing fluidly into a computer. Finally,

her gaze broke and she looked down at a small printer that made a small sticker

with the words visitor pass in bolded font.

“He will be on the top floor, level 60 in room 219. If he

isn’t in his room, just call a nurse with the pager in there, he’s been getting

out a lot recently.” She rolled her eyes in annoyance.

“He really just wants to get back to work but whenever he

flies he leaves a trail of blood and feather in his path”

Her hair swished when she leaned over to give

me the papery sticker. Her fingertips brushed against my palm for a second

longer than platonic before she went back and waved goodbye to me. Her cheeks were tinted slightly pink.

The encounter made my heart rush but that might just because

it’s the first romantic-ish thing that has happened to me in a while. I mean

she was pretty- but we scarcely talked. My palm still tingled where our hands

touched though. I was so distracted I did not notice when I found myself in Hawk’s

room.

I had never delivered anything to a hero before. Should I

just drop them in and leave? My hand rested atop the doorknob questioning how

to do this. The fluorescent hospital lights desaturated everything including my

ability to make cohesive thoughts.

Just as I opened the door, I heard a shattering sound,

something collapsing, and then

“Wait no shit-“Another thing fell to the ground. “-fuck” I

carefully opened the door. To see Hawk’s the pro hero, clutching his side with

one hand, and holding a sideways IV drip in one hand, but the fluid bag itself

was on the floor, along with some kind of glass and a medical device I couldn’t

identify from the various dents and scratches on it. It did not look like he

noticed me yet, he was much too preoccupied.

“Hey should-“

“AH!” He yelled turning towards me. I couldn’t flinch

fast enough before three-foot-long red feathers with murderous intent came

spearing towards my head. Within that instant in closed my eyes prepared to be

dead but when I opened them up, the feathers were hovering just centimeters

away from my skull.

I shocked me that I was still holding the flower box when

I checked. My eyes were wide as I stood still, jaw open, not a single breath

leaving my mouth.

“Are you a new nurse or something?” The feathers remained

there. I gulped before answering, my body felt light, flight, or fight already taking

place.

“I’m a- a florist.” I gestured down at the box with my

logo on it, and he seemed to relax a little bit.

“Oh.” He replied and the feathers returned to beside him.

He tried to make the IV drip stand back up again, but in a futile attempt he

gave up, just letting it fall to the group beside the other tools. He turned away

from me.

‘He is obviously in pain right now’ He faced away just

to hide the scowl and how much he was now clutching his side.

He looked over his shoulder “Who sent you?”

“Mirko” I responded relieve that he was no longer about

to kill me.

“Where should I leave the flowers?”

“The table next to my bed” I stepped over there. An

assortment of papers where there is messy handwriting that I had no place in

reading. Nonetheless, I caught the words “Touya.” Too bad I didn’t know any Touyas.

I sat the box down and opened it up.

Luckily with everything that went on, I didn’t destroy any

of the blooms.

“Did Mirko say anything about me?” He questioned quickly.

As much as he tried to seem tough, he valued her opinion very much.

“Get well soon and all of that, nothing much, she was too

busy teasing me, you know?”

“Mirko was? Teasing you?” His eyebrows furrowed in confusion

before settling into a knowing look.

“Ohhhh” He winked.

“No no, it's nothing like this I promise I just met her.”

“Mmmn k” He didn’t believe me in the slightest.

“Just watch out she packs a punch”

Hawks walked over to where the flowers were and observed

the arrangement. He had a particular fondness for the red lilies, the same ones

that Mirko liked. He talks about her punch though reminded me of the crashes

and villain attack last night.

“I hope she’s okay, she seemed pretty beat up last night

after the battle.”

“Eh, she recovers inhumanly quick. Something to do with the

rabbit in her.”

He looks over to me and paused.

“What’s your name?”

“(Y/N)”

“(Y/N Hmmm) He mumbled to himself like he was getting

used to the way it sounded.

“I can’t imagine this will be our last encounter (Y/N),

It was nice to meet you.”

I smiled graciously and sighed.

“Nice to meet you too.”

#bnhabookclub #mirkobnha #miruko #mirukobnha #bnha fanfic #bnha mirko #bnha x reader #flowershop au #kinda flower shop not really its just the reader who works at a flower shop lol ahaha #mirko x reader #rumi usagiyama #rumi usagiyama x reader #just-mirko #justmirko #Lavender Petals #pegahawks2020 #kinda gay

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pregnantcare · 3 years

Text

What Does Early Pregnancy Discharge Look Like

What Does Early Pregnancy Discharge Look Like?

There are many other symptoms related to the pregnancy, and we will talk about all of them. Before we can get to the discussion or pregnancy discharge, I would like to speak about psychological effects that will affect the symptoms noticed during pregnancy. Let me explain so that people have a clear idea about the whole situation that I want to discuss with you guys.

There are many things involved in pregnancy. The first thing is anxiety. Most medical experts who live in the United States of America say that there are many reasons why stress will affect a woman’s condition. Moreover, there are also many other reasons how anxiety will affect the state of the patient. You should keep in mind that it will cause damage to the baby also. People keep on making mistakes and do not make efforts.

Most people say that it is a terrible thing when they feel that some fluid is flowing out of their vagina

However, we will look into that later in the article. We will now see what the vaginal discharge in women looks like; however, before we look at the appearance of the vaginal discharge, let us know what people think of it. Many people live in the United States of America, and these people say that it is hazardous, and they get terrified when they feel that something is flowing out of their vaginas. Moreover, these people do not know about anything and make false assumptions. These assumptions do not stick to them only.

These people tend to spread these assumptions, and this way, most people say that it is a terrible thing when they feel that some fluid is flowing out of their vagina. As a result, you will see these people going to doctors and telling them about the situation. When they go to the doctors in the United States of America, they will tell the people that it is normal and not worry about it.

we talk about vaginal fluid,

However, these people still do not believe the doctors and go to many other doctors and tell them about the situation. When all of the doctors say that it is normal, only they will believe that there is no fault in it.

However, let us now get straight to the point. When we talk about vaginal fluid, we will relate all the senses to it and see how we can describe it. First of all, we will describe the appearance of the liquid, and secondly, we will explain all the other things that can tell us about the vaginal fluid. Let us start with the color. The color of the vaginal fluid will be white; however, there are many different shades of white, so what could be white when we talk about the vaginal fluid. The color of the vaginal fluid will be white, but the white will have some transparency to it.

The United States of America might confuse the vaginal fluid with sperm.

It would help if you kept in mind that the fluid will not be fully transparent. It will only have a shade of transparency to it. Moreover, there will be some situations in which the color of the fluid will change. You should keep in mind that the color of the vaginal fluid will remain the same, and there should be no changes in it if there are any color changes. You should visit the doctor immediately and tell him about the color change. If you cannot go to the doctor, you should contact him and tell him about it on the cell phone. He will ask about some things and some at-home tests that you should take. After the tests are carried, you should inform the doctor about the results. Moreover, we shall discuss this later on in the article and go into much more detail so that people living in the United States of America can better understand the whole concept of vaginal fluids.

In addition to this, you should also keep in mind that some people live in the United States of America, and these people will say that the vaginal fluid will be sperm. There are very high chances that many people in the United States of America might confuse the vaginal fluid with sperm. However, that is not the truth, and you should not compare the idea of vaginal fluid and sperm. Most people might question why people in the United States of America will think that the vaginal fluid is the same as sperm. The answer for this is that they look almost the same. If you look at the vaginal fluid that comes out during pregnancy, it will be white and transparent. Moreover, when you look at sperm, it will have the same appearance.

There might be something not related to pregnancy

Now that we have described the appearance, we shall now move on to the other senses. You should keep in mind that the vaginal fluid will also have a smell to it. Most pregnant women in the United States of America will say that they will smell a wonderful aroma, and it will be alarming. In addition to this, some people will not even know where the smell is coming from. Let me give you a tip, and it will be best that you remember the information all your life and share it with other people. The bonus is that you should keep yourself aware of all the things related to your health.

There might be something not related to pregnancy, but it will be better for your overall health. As a result, you should make yourself aware of all those things to benefit your health. Moreover, it would help if you also kept in mind that you will not go to the doctors for all the minor problems you face when you are aware of all these things. Let us now get back to the smell. The smell will be strong, and you might also get irritated by it. However, the intensity will be the same for everyone.

Allow me to clear out a vital point to have a clear idea of the whole concept

Allow me to clear out a vital point to have a clear idea of the whole concept. Every human in the United States of America, as well as in the rest of the world, has a different body. A lot of things can prove it. The prints on your fingers are unique, and you won’t be able to find them anywhere else. The same is the case with the retina inside your eye. Due to these reasons, the fingerprint and the retina scan are some of the best methods used in technology. Let us now related the idea of smell to it. The intensity of smell will vary from person to Peron. Some people in the United States of America might not even experience the smell of vaginal fluid. Moreover, some people might find the smell of the fluid very intense and will lead to other problems due to the smell.

Now that we have described the smell and appearance, we shall see the other sense. When you touch the fluid, it will be very thick in texture. Most people in the United States of America will say that the liquid will be just like water, flowing out easily and quickly. However, that is not the case. The fluid will not be like water. We will use the term viscosity here. We can say that the vaginal fluid experienced by women during pregnancy will be very viscous. It means that the liquid will move with a lot of difficulties. We can relate the texture of the fluid to the surface of honey. It means that it will not flow easily.

What Causes Vaginal Discharge?

There are many reasons why there will be a discharge from the vagina. Some of them are very natural reasons, and most people are aware of them. However, there are some other reasons as to why the vaginal discharge will occur. One of the vaginal discharges is very common amongst Women. This type of vaginal discharge will occur during sex. When a woman is having sexual intercourse with her partner, a time will come when she will climax, and hence it will release the vaginal fluid. We cannot relate this type of vaginal fluid to what people will experience when they are pregnant. Although the texture will be the same, there will be a difference between the types of liquid released.

The fluid released when having sex will be called semen, and it will not be released to the vaginal fluid that will be released when women are pregnant in the United States of America. Moreover, most people who might ask why the release of vaginal fluid during pregnancy will not know its real reason. Most people in the United States of America will know that when the person will g through hormonal changes, he will have something going on in his body. The same will happen when the person is going through pregnancy. She will face hormonal changes, and due to those hormonal changes, she will have different effects, such as the release of vaginal fluid.

The fluid released when having sex will be called semen

Moreover, there are many other reasons too that will affect the vaginal discharge in a pregnant woman. During pregnancy, there will be many changes, such as changes to the cervix, and these changes also contribute to vaginal discharge. However, it would help if you did not worry about it. Most people in the United States of America might not know that this vaginal discharge will benefit the people. During pregnancy, you will feel that the cervix and the vaginal wall will soften. As a result, the body will produce excess vaginal fluid to ensure no infections.

When we move further in pregnancy, a few notable changes will be experienced by pregnant women. One of the most apparent changes they will feel is that the size of their belly will grow. The size of the stomach will increase because the baby inside the money will grow. When the baby grows, its head will apply force on the walls of the cervix. The extra pressure on the wall of the cervix will result in vaginal discharge.

When To Call Doctor:

There are many issues with pregnant and to deal with those problems effectively, you have to make sure that you are in contact with your doctor at all times. Sometimes, you will have some issues regarding your vaginal fluid, and if you face any such cases, you should tell the doctor immediately about it. Some vaginal discharges will be known as abnormal vaginal discharges. However, according to most medical experts that live in the United States of America, there is a solution for all vaginal issues. Still, the condition is that you will have to report it to the doctor immediately and will also have to see what type of issues will be faced by it.

If you have an infection in your vagina due to any reason, you should immediately report it to your doctor. Moreover, some people who live in the United States of America might argue how they will see if there is an infection. There are many ways you can identify if there is an infection or not. One of the ways to identify any disease is due to the color of the vaginal fluid. You should keep in mind that if the color of your vaginal fluid is yellow, green, or gray, it would mean that there is some infection, and you should immediately tell the doctor about it

Moreover, you will also be able to identify the infection due to smell. If you think that the smell of the vaginal fluid is powerful, it would mean that there is some infection. In addition to this, if you feel that there is a lot of itching, it would mean that there is some infection, and you should report the problem to the doctor immediately.

Problems Faced Due To The Vaginal Discharge:

You will face many problems when you have vaginal discharge, and let me tell you a little about it. The first problem you will face is that you will feel very uncomfortable in your private area. You should keep in mind that when you face vaginal discharge, it will not be only for one time. You will be able to feel it for more than one time in your pregnancy. The problem will be caused when you have to get up and clean yourself all the time. Most people in the United States of America do not know that when you go further on pregnancy, a time will come when you will not feel like walking and will stay in your bed.

Moreover, even if you wanted to walk, you will not be able to due to a few reasons. One of the reasons is that when the baby grows, it will put a lot of burden on you, and hence you will not be able to move a lot. Even if you do carry a lot, you will face problems such as swollen ankles.

Most people in the United States of America do not know that women become extremely sensitive when pregnant. Some people in the United States of America will ask the reason behind it. The reason is that when a baby develops in the body of the mother, she will go through multiple hormonal changes. The hormonal changes will be very extreme; thus, she will face all types of signs. The most common problem caused by the hormonal changes inside the body of pregnant women is that they will feel a lot of nausea and will be irritated by it.

#For Healthy Pregnancy #Healthy Pregnancy Tips #Pre Pregnancy health suggestion #Best Guidelines For A Healthy Pregnancy

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tisfan · 4 years

Text

Ring of Thorns

Title: Ring of Thorns Written by: @tisfan 3023 Square: S3 – Science and Magic Rating: teen and up Triggers/warnings: none Tags: space AU, fairy tale format, sassy Jarvis, bunnies, a truly excessive number of bunnies, pre-slash Created for: @tonystarkbingo Word count: 3919 Art from @gayspacesprinkles (unrelated to the bingo!)

Ship’s log: Stardate 5239.281.5

Woke from hypersleep on schedule -- thank you JARVIS.

“You are welcome, sir.”

The Ring of Thorns is about two days on the sublight engines, which should give me plenty of time to make any course corrections. Course corrections. I say that like anyone has any idea where the best entrance is to the Ring. Several thousand cloaked glass arrows, left over from a war three centuries ago.

JARVIS’s records indicate that a single glass arrow has the explosive capacity to knock a good sized hole in the Malibu, which I have to say, is not an ideal solution. Even with crude calculations of where the bombs were originally seeded -- and let me tell you, that particular chart was not easy to procure -- we don’t know how much stellar drift has moved them. Dozens of ships have tried to fly into the Ring.

All have been, thus far, unsuccessful.

Pieces of the wreckage will add to the difficulty of successfully navigating the field.

I want it noted for the record, if I don’t succeed, I want you to tell Captain Amer -- no scratch that. I always know what I’m doing. This plan I’m gonna try and pull off tomorrow, it's got me scratching my head about the survivability of it all. What am I even tripping for? Everything's gonna workout exactly the way it's supposed to.

Stardate 5239.282.9

“Set for separation, J?”

“We are set, sir,” JARVIS said. He was the ship’s AI, navigation, piloting, engineering, physician. He served to take the place several key members of a ship’s crew. He was not, however, supposed to be the only other crewmate on a ship the size of the Malibu.

He was, because no one believed Mr. Stark that they could make it through the ring to whatever treasure planet was tucked away inside it.

JARVIS went because he was an AI and because Mr. Stark was his maker. But even if JARVIS had entire free will and he had some, because he was the one steering the ship, he probably wouldn’t have done anything differently. He could have refused to take Mr. Stark at all. Probably. He’d never really tried directly rebelling, and sometimes when he was feeling philosophical, he wondered if that was because he couldn’t rebel, or because Mr. Stark had not been wrong yet, and thus, rebelling was a waste of time.

Mr. Stark would, after all, prove everyone wrong.

And JARVIS wanted to be there, to record all of it.

Truthfully, JARVIS himself wasn’t at risk; he had two backup units hidden away. But if something happened to this version, well, the story would never be told. And he couldn’t have that, could he?

“Remember, sir, close--”

“But not too close, I got it. We got this. Launch the dummy section.”

“Piloting remotely,” JARVIS said. He separated the dummy section of the ship, broad and ugly with the best forward shields that money could buy. He should know. He’d purchased them. And then Mr. Stark had improved them.

The dummy section looked like, in all honesty, like a flying brick. But that was all right. All it had to do was shield the smaller craft behind it.

“Let’s plow the road, JARVIS,” Mr. Stark said.

“As you say, sir.”

Stardate 5239.282.11

“Well, that could have been worse,” Tony said. He was breathing hard, and his hands were shaking. Sweat dripped down the back of his flight suit. But he was alive.

He landed the smaller, more maneuverable craft inside the docking ring.

“Allow me to inform you, sir, there are four glass arrows affixed to the hull--”

“You just have to ruin my moment,” Tony complained. “Can I get a countdown, or is that too much to ask?” He was already unlocking his piloting harness, grabbed a stim patch on his way past the console -- he’d need to be on his mettle if he was going to disarm bombs without detonating them instead and all the juice from his hectic ride through the Ring had dissipated.

“They are quiescent, at the moment, sir,” JARVIS told him. “But core deterioration suggests they are not supposed to be in an atmosphere with oxygen, and they will explode soon enough.”

“Wait, there’s life support in the hanger?”

“It would appear so, sir.”

“Why?” The Ring of Thorns had been in place for several hundred years at least. There was no reason for life support to still be functional.

“I shan’t hazard a guess at this remove,” JARVIS said.

“Can we vent the docking bay?” Tony had more than enough O2 in his suit, as he hadn’t been expecting any such systems to still be in place.

“No, sir,” JARVIS said. “I was able to override the security systems to get us inside by claiming emergency repairs. The system will not let us out until the proper codes have been entered. As well as sudden venting often disrupts seemingly stationary objects--”

“Yeah, yeah, no need to turn the room into a pinball machine. All right, I’m on it.”

Tony had removed three of the bombs -- truly elegant, lethal little things. They were no bigger than two fingers wide and about four times as long, concealed by a mirror-shield that bent light around it, showing up as flecks of black and the occasional flash of light in a starfield. No propellant, no heat reading, not even any traceable particles emissions. Old school explosives. Not quite all the way back to pipebombs with horseshoe nails mixed in, but still. Household chemicals.

Ions only knew what the people who made them were thinking when they mixed them up and set them loose in space to guard their station and their planet.

They were all dead, at least.

Theoretically. No one could get close enough to tell.

“Uh, sir,” JARVIS said. “You have company. Turn around very slowly.”

Tony didn’t quite raise his hands, but he was expecting to see someone armed and presumably dangerous.

What he saw instead was-- an animal? With white and tan fur covering its entire body, including a set of very long ears. Red eyes peered at him curiously and the creature took a few hopping steps closer.

“JARVIS,” Tony muttered, keeping his eyes on the creature, “what is it?”

“A Lagomorpha, particularly a subset of Leporidae. Known as oryctolagus cuniculus domesticus, or more commonly, a bunny rabbit.”

“Does it eat-- meat?” Tony was an awfully big meal, but as he watched the-- rabbit-- carefully, he noticed there were more.

A lot more.

“I daresay, sir, unless the species has evolved along another path,” JARVIS said, “they are primarily interested in grasses, fruits, and vegetables. A garden pest, as they were described in older zoology reports. And, to some degree, a pet.”

“People pet them?” Tony wondered, looking around. They were fluffy and sort of cute. Some of them sat up on their hind legs to look closer at Tony.

“Other people raised them for food and fur stock,” JARVIS continued.

Tony took a step forward and the lead rabbit thumped his foot several times against the deck plating. Other rabbits took up the signal and stamped as well, until the entire facility was ringing like being inside a drum.

Tony found himself on the floor, hands clapped over his ears. By the time the noise stopped, three or four of the bunnies were very close to Tony, noses wiggling curiously. One of them hopped all the way up to him, put a soft paw on his knee and poked its face directly at his chin.

“I’m not made of food,” Tony told it, and he went to shoo it away, but he touched it instead.

Oh. Oh, it was so soft. Oh, Ions, so soft. He let himself sit down, let them hop up to him, sniffing curiously.

“It seems they have never seen a human, either, sir,” JARVIS commented.

“Do, uh, we have anything we could feed them? What are they even eating around here?”

“A closer look at the scans, sir,” JARVIS said, “the hydroponics bays seem to have overrun most of the station. They’ve been living in a perfect bunny paradise. All the food they could want, and no predators.”

“Sounds lovely,” Tony said, and one of the bunnies hopped into his lap and proceeded to turn around a few times before flopping over and going to sleep. “Although, gotta say, a cargo bay of rabbits wasn’t what I was hoping to find.”

Riches, technological artifacts, answers. Especially answers. What had happened here, why had the people gone silent, or died? Why did they leave behind such elaborate traps?

“We could set up a fur trade, sir,” JARVIS suggested and Tony could have sworn that every single bunny in the room gave him the stink eye. All at once. It was chilling.

“Yeeaaah, think I’m gonna go with no on that one, JARVIS,” Tony said. “Do you think there’s anyway to explain kaboom to them, because if I don’t get that last glass arrow off the hull, we’re all going to be in the fur trade.”

“You neglected to add lapine language skills to my databanks, sir,” JARVIS said.

“Smart ass AI,” Tony muttered, nudging the black bunny out of his lap. “Shoo. Go fetch. Something. Do you fetch? Yeah, go… go find a-- what to rabbits eat?”

“Strictly speaking, their diet is a mix of alfalfa and--”

“Whatever. Go… have a smoothie. Look, if you go into the galley on my ship, DUM-E will make you smoothies, go go.”

They didn’t go go or shoo shoo, but they did back up a little or hopped away as he stood up. He had to watch his feet as he moved back over to the ship, grabbing for the wrench. “Switch it up, JARVIS,” he said, and JARVIS triggered the color changing squares on the outside of the ship, one at a time, until Tony could physically locate the glass arrow, and only because he was looking really closely. The arrow changed colors, too, but at a slightly -- very slightly -- slower rate.

And then Tony was able to find it by touch, sliding his hand over the panel until he encountered a small projection.

Once removed from the ship, the colors swirled again until what Tony held in his hands was flesh and floor and bunny colored. The biologics didn’t blend as easily, they weren’t mathematical or predictable, so once he had it away from the hull, it was a lot easier to look at.

For something called a glass arrow, it was neither. More like a flat, thin package with a few grooves at each end. Not really accurate, but evocative, the imagery, he meant. Twisting the tail end, he slowly removed the detonation packet, wrapped in hyper thin plastics. Once that package was out, the arrow itself was rendered mostly harmless. Except that Tony would feel better getting all of it off the ship.

He found a couple of rolling bins in the docking bay, emptied them of the tools they contained, and then loaded the explosives into them. “Can I space this shit, or is the airlock broken, too?”

“The south side airlock appears fully functional, sir,” JARVIS told him. Tony grabbed a couple of remote-automatics and affixed them to the sides of the bins. Station gravity would eventually grab anything floating in proximity to the station; it had taken quite a few murderers getting caught before they realized you could not, in fact, just junk a body out an airlock.

But you could fire one into the nearest star. Which is what the remote-automatics were for. Small, one shot of fuel, affixable to a trash or discarded object -- or even at some of the largest ring world systems, to move supplies through space -- to propel them away. Once in motion, they’d stay in motion until a larger gravity well swallowed them up.

“Bombs away,” Tony said, setting the bins into the airlock. He sealed the inner door, opened the outer door, and then flew the trash off into space. The nearest star was several weeks away by sub light propulsion. Unless it hit a few of its cousins while out there, in which case, he could expect a pretty pretty boom in a few hours.

“Always so observant, sir,” JARVIS said.

“Yeah, yeah,” Tony said, pushing away from the porthole. “You got anything for me yet?”

“Their mainframe systems are so old as to be little better than hand-cranked automobiles, sir,” JARVIS said. “I’m having difficulty navigating their systems without overwhelming them. That said, the system suggests you might find an interpreter on the eighth deck, C-section.”

“I am not delivering a baby on this station,” Tony swore and chuckled to himself. It wouldn’t take JARVIS that long to find the reference -- it had always been a bit of a challenge with them. Could Tony, in fact, find a historical or cultural reference so old that JARVIS didn’t have access to it.

So far the answer had always been no.

Tony grabbed several tools to help him around the ship; a crowbar for opening unruly doors, as well as more electronic overrides. MagmaTorch, if he had to go through the door.

The vegetation was even thicker in the hallways. “Where are the plants getting food from?” Because really, dirt was a thing, even if Tony didn’t like standing on it. There was a thick coating of moss on the floor in places, and Tony found himself stepping around it. He did squat down long enough to take a sample, and send it off to JARVIS to analyze.

“Sample shows a flourishing, if unusual, ecosystem, sir,” JARVIS told him. “The sample appears to be similar to compost. Organic waste, sir.”

“Rabbit shit?”

“It’s likely the first plants would have started in the hydroponics area; if they outgrew their containers, they would have likely encountered fertilizer and soil samples there. My map of the station shows that system-recycling was only a deck below.”

“Old human shit,” Tony rephrased.

“And bodies that weren’t spaced, food waste, biological waste.” Many places stored that up, condensed into cubes, packed into bags, and then sold to terraforming colonies. Probably the same sort of idea. It was being used for its intended purpose, then, if not necessarily its intended place. “The ship’s lighting system has stayed on, providing material for photosynthesis. Since the late twenty-fifth century all human space-going vehicles utilize solar lamps to prevent crew depression, mood swings, and the inability to digest certain foods.”

“Yeah, we’re made for gravity and sunlight,” Tony said. He paused to force a door to the companionway. The ladders stretched up and down several levels, slightly offset to prevent a bad fall from becoming a fatal flaw. Smart. “So they’re not in any immediate danger of being wiped out?”

“The power banks are currently still at half capacity. With such a slow rate of decay, even without intelligent interference, this colony could continue on without problems for another three or four hundred years.”

“What are they using to power this place?”

JARVIS continued to analyze the station, providing more and more obscure data and facts. Frankly, Tony stopped entirely listening. It wasn’t that he wasn’t interested, but there were also interesting things--

He stopped in a long hallway with doors spaced equally, and pushed one open. Crew quarters, right? Had to be…

The room was empty. Not just of crew, he really was not expecting a skeleton -- or maybe he was -- but also of artifacts. It was just empty. Bed cubby with no mattress, desk with no terminal or ports. Closet with no clothes.

“People did used to live here, didn’t they?”

“Records suggest that this station had a population of approximately twenty-thousand human beings at the time that contact with the greater galaxy ended.”

“What the hell happened to twenty-thousand people? I mean, even if the rabbits ate them--”

“Let me remind you, sir, that rabbits are primarily vegetarian,” JARVIS said.

“Thanks, you might need to keep reminding me of that--”

He wasn’t going to be able to close that door again, since a handful of rabbits had followed him in, and he wasn’t sure how to get them out again. They didn’t really seem like herd creatures to him. And while they’d been surviving perfectly well on their own, he didn’t really want them to starve to death because of him. Right?

It was a working theory, at least. No rabbit murdering.

He made it all the way to 8th-deck, Section C. Finally. Plants. A lot of them, too. And more rabbits.

“What exactly am I looking for here?” Tony wondered. He pushed his way through thicker plants, almost jungle-like in their sheer stubbornness to give way.

“I might say you’ll know it when you see it, sir,” JARVIS said, “which would be quite helpful, since I’m entirely uncertain--”

“Oh.”

That.

Stardate 5239.283.02

“I don’t believe the situation is going to change, no matter how long you keep staring,” JARVIS commented.

“Sarcastic, I like that.”

“I know that, sir.”

“Still. This is not something I want to jump into right away. I mean, when the station AI--”

“It’s not an AI sir, the station’s computer systems are significantly less advanced in all ways--”

“Don’t be petty. It’s beneath you.”

“As I don’t, in fact, have a corporeal body, sir, you might add that everything is beneath me. Or nothing is beneath me. An interesting question for the next time you feel philosophical.”

“Which does not answer any of my current philosophical questions,” Tony said. “Like who is this guy, why is he asleep in that thing, and will he die immediately if we try to wake him up?”

“Probably not immediately,” JARVIS said. “He’s hardly a vampire and going to poof into dust at exposure to sunlight.”

“What?”

“I beg your pardon sir, I was looking up some of the various mythology typical to this station at the time. Did you know they believed the whole place was cursed?”

“Of course they did,” Tony said. “Also, why would I know that? How could I possibly know that-- cursed? What even does cursed mean?”

“A curse is the belief that powerful entities can take an interest in humans,” JARVIS said. “Faeries, witches, demigods and deities, for example. When these humans do something wrong, or offensive, or are in some cases, just being used as scapegoats for a powerful creature, that leads to a curse. A series of misfortunes that cannot be averted, except by a single act. Sometimes it’s ridiculously complicated, like when the moon loses her child if it happens in a week when two Mondays come together. And sometimes, all that takes to break a curse is true love’s first kiss.”

“Like that’s not complicated,” Tony complained. “So you’re saying I should kiss the guy awake to break the curse?”

“Much in the case of a week with two Mondays, sir,” JARVIS said, “you might want to take into consideration that your blood and cells are filled with--”

“Aesculapian nanintes,” Tony breathed. Which repaired injuries, protected him from disease and posion, and vastly extended his life span. Most infants born on Tony’s planet inherited some of them from their parents, but often required a booster injection every twenty years. And, in emergencies, you could share your nanintes with someone else, to heal their wounds.

Tony had gotten a booster shot last year, on his fortieth birthday, which meant his system was currently in top form.

“The fastest way to share nanites--”

“Is fluid transfer.”

“A kiss,” Tony corrected, directing a smug smile in no particular direction. JARVIS could see him.

“Indeed, sir, I’m so glad you thought of it.”

“What would I do without you?”

“Flounder,” JARVIS responded. “Badly.”

“Wow, you didn’t even hesitate with that one.”

Tony studied the casing a little while longer. The man was dressed entirely in white, except for a black cap where his left arm had been, he had long hair and just a hint of a beard. If Tony had to guess, he’d say the man had gone into some sort of healing tube while a replacement limb was vat-grown for him. Nanites could mend split skin and broken bones, but it wasn’t much good at regrowing parts entirely.

But Tony didn’t see any sort of vat system at all. Maybe they kept that somewhere else.

Theoretically, Tony’s nanites would keep the man alive, long enough to ask some questions, to find the bioregen chambers, or their historical equivalent. Get some answers, provide some aid. Something.

And, also, very quietly, to himself, where even JARVIS couldn’t hear him.

Tony might actually want to kiss the man.

He was stunningly, almost shockingly beautiful. His cheeks were just perfect, and the chin, with the hint of a cleft. Full, kissable lips, parted just a little. Long lashes. Tony didn’t know what color his eyes were, but he liked to think they were blue. Tony felt like he could see… everything.

“Sir?”

“Yeah?”

“Your brain is producing an increased amount of vasopressin, adrenaline, dopamine, and oxytocin.”

“Yeah?”

“And I believe you are experiencing mydriasis-- it’s a nerve reaction that causes your pupils to dilate,” JARVIS went on.

“Which means what?”

“Quite honestly, sir,” JARVIS said. “I think you are, as the poets would say, falling in love.”

“Yeah?” Tony found he didn’t quite care. It was almost like being drunk, a warm, fuzzy sort of feeling that just, made him generally happy. He wanted to share that with someone. A very specific someone.

He wasn’t sure how he knew which button to push, but the top of the tube slid away, and the man inside took a slow, stuttering breath.

“It’s all right,” Tony told him. “I’m here to rescue you.”

He leaned in, mouth open slightly, and kissed the man he hadn’t even really met. It was more than love at first meeting, it was--

A very nice kiss, warm, soothing, soft, with just a little heat in it.

The man pulled away, licked his lips as if tasting Tony on them and gazed up at him. “Uh… aren’t you a little short to be a stormtrooper?”

“What?” Tony blinked, then blinked again. “How-- how do you know Star Wars? That is Star Wars you’re quoting, right, late 20th century cinema? I-- I’m a--”

The man struggled to sit, and Tony helped him until he could swing his legs over the side. “So, uh, question-- who are you, and why is there a rabbit on top of my stasis tube?”

“Um, my name is Tony Stark,” Tony said.

“Bucky Barnes,” the man said. “Uh, nice to meet you. Great kiss by the way, hell of a wake up call. Is my unit waiting for me--”

“Uh, no, no, probably not.”

Bucky stared around the room, from the bunny to the greenery to the bunny, and then back to Tony. “How long? How long was I asleep?”

“I can’t say exactly, but-- it’s been at least three hundred years since we last had contact with this station.”

“Oh.” Bucky took a deep breath, and then another one, and a third. “Oh. I guess… I guess she won.”

“Who? Who did this to you? What happened here?”

“Hydra did this to me. Mother of serpents and dragons. A witch. It’s a long story.”

“I-- don’t think there’s any such thing as witches,” Tony said, hesitantly.

“Oh, there are,” Bucky said. “Believe me. There are.”

A/n - art from @gayspacesprinkles isn’t it LOVELY!? Now stop screaming, I already have a part 2 planned for this.

#tonystarkbingo2020 #winterironwidow #Tony Stark & Sassy JARVIS #bingo fill

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iohourtime · 4 years

Text

Think Note Vol #84 Space

Myojo 03.2020

(Translated from scans by MoMozzz32 on weibo. The photos are also from her account. Please let me know if there are any errors.)

The live (concert) is the best space where we can have a great time with all of our fans.

Sometimes in my everyday life, I will encounter places where the BGM is excessively loud and I don’t really like that. A live (concert) is the only place that is totally different [for me]. It is the place where the fans in front of us and the music become one.

----------

“What is my favourite space?” The first thing that popped into my head when I heard this question was the time when I’m alone. When I said I like being alone, I mean I’m not very good at making plans with people in advance. You know, I can’t really do stuff like “let’s meet 4 days later at [whatever] time”. I’d think “Ah, I got nothing to do right now”, then I’d contact someone and ask “Do you want to meet up now? Well, let’s meet.”; that’s the type of person I am. Although it is [partly] because I don’t know when work will end, it is more due to my personality. Even when I know for sure I will be off in 3 days, I can’t say how I will feel on that day. But isn’t it fun to do what I want on that day? Of course, not everyone can oblige to such spontaneous requests and the timing doesn't work for them, so I end up spending a lot of time alone. During those times, I usually immerse myself in the game world inside the so-called game’s room that is really my closet.

Of course, I also like to have fun with my friends. In my case though, [the group] should have a maximum of 3 people. Dinner meetings with work colleagues are a different matter, but for private meetings, there's a capacity of 3 people. Since I think that "I have to be excited", I have a habit of being fully committed to the talk; if there are more than 3 people, it'll be too tiring to pick up on all the [ongoing] conversations, and I end up not talking at all.

My home is [also] one of the spaces I like. If I have to use 1 word to describe my home… it is minimalistic (lit: “there’s nothing there”). There’s simply a bed and a TV in my bedroom; similarly, I only have a sofa, dining table, and TV rack in my living room. Oh, and for a limited time in December, I took out my Christmas tree (smiles). Although people who come to [my place] for the first time would probably be shocked to see “no signs of life” there, that is how I like it. When I am in the living room, I will sit on the sofa or work at the dining table; that’s perfect for me (lit: gets 10 points from me)!

Conversely, I do not like dark places (although I use indirect lighting at home), narrow places (although I am most relaxed inside this 1.5 tatami mat sized game room), and also noisy places! Although I have never been to one, I really can’t handle clubs where they play booming music. Sometimes, I am even bothered by the volume of music playing at restaurants. I’d think “Is there a need to play the music so loud when we are just eating?” That’s why when I play music at home, I mostly pick saxophone music as it doesn’t intrude on my life. Since it is also an instrument I like to play, it feels the most comfortable to me.

Since the live (concert) is a time we have fun together with our fans, it is a space I love. For the “Hey! Say! JUMP LIVE TOUR 2019-2020 PARADE” tour, there was nothing more important than the worldview, so we tried some new things and used music and lighting to create a space that the audience [could experience] from the moment they entered [the venue]. For the [pre-concert] recordings, we used the same announcer as the narrator for the opening video for consistency. While the goods’ names are indecipherable at first glance, all of us had discussed [and decided] “this could be that” (smiles). During the actual performance, we want to incorporate the worldview of “PARADE” in what we say between songs, so while I would normally rile up the crowd loudly, I held back [this time]; there were many places where we consciously made changes to how we used to do things. We have been working on this live (tour) for a long time since last year, so we think it would be nice if a lot of people could enjoy it.

“(Spending time) alone is fun~" - Ryosuke

#myojo #think note #yamada ryosuke #translations

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mrneighbourlove · 4 years

Text

Evil’s Bane: Ch 8. Looming Dread

Leere looked a round a massive red ballroom, with a large staircase leading up to more doors. There were chandeliers hanging above, and many routes that they could take. No exits outside of course. Turning to Bonegrinder, she was catching her breath with the other Mortuus. “Bonegrinder. And Hades? I’m surprised you made it here.”

"Bonegrinder?" Black approached the Anagari who was breathing hard. It was evident he was not fully healed. Hades did what he could, but it would take a while for Prama's magic to finish such horrible injuries, most of which could not be seen with the eye. The Wraith frowned, noticing how the Anagari was struggling to even stay upright. "... we need to go back. You're in bad shape."

"He has been in bad shape for a long time, Black." Bonegrinder always had that dry humor availible, despite the situation. "You will have to wait to go back. Summoning a portal is not easy work. He will have to rest some more."

“Can we wait here? What if danger makes itself known?” Bi-Hanzo asked. Grabbing his head, he shook it. Felt hot in the room. And, did he hear something in distance? Sounded like laughter. No. Must have been his imagination.

"Not unless you have readily available portal magic so we can leave." Black then stated. "If you want to go on, then be my guest. My responsibility is the princess. Not you."

"... this snake supposes that he should question where we are. There is a familiar feeling of this place... but worse than last time."

“Last time?” Leere asked.

Hades was pacing around, feeling uncertain about his surroundings. Kenshi wiped the sweat off his head, feeling sick.

"Wait... no... was that this snake or Prama?" Bonegrinder rubbed his forehead. "His memories... Prama's memories... when is where, and where is when..."

"Don't stress over it," Black knew this was not a good sign. Anymore stress, and his master's mind might snap again. Two souls in one body was really taxing and he had seen many of his master's so-called 'episodes'. The last thing the group needed was a huge blast of magic knocking everyone back and drawing the attention of Destroyer... or his minions. "We're here now. Let's focus on the here."

Leere paced, rubbing her head. There was something... bad. Something familiar in the air. And it made her feel anxious.

Kenshi suddenly looked up, feeble shock trembling in his voice. There was sweat gushing down his face now, and his widened eyes were bloodshot, as if he hadn’t slept for days. “Franeska?”

Leere and the others turned to see Kenshi suddenly running off. Bi-Hanzo was shocked by this. “Kenshi! Where are you going?!” The man chased after his fellow villager. When Kenshi reached the door, he opened it up with a kick. Inside was a small room with no natural light in the room. In that room, a little girl with her back to him facing the direct corner of the room was all that could be seen. Unnaturally she was perfectly illuminated with a bright red coat that covered her face from view. Leere looked to Black, hurrying along. Kenshi kept himself in the frame of the door from letting anyone else in.

"Don't follow after that apparition!" Black told Kenshi, sensing danger when the man ran off, but he did not chase him. He stayed with Leere. "Bonegrinder... something bad is coming, isn't it?"

"Bad doesn't even begin to describe it, Black... it's much worse than you could ever imagine."

Kenshi drew closer, relief on his face. “Franeska? It’s your father. It’s me.”

As Leere got into eyesight, all her instincts kicked in so fast she almost threw up. Memories she buried of being underwater and trapped with nightmares flooded back. She could sense the unique brand of demonic undeath now. It tastes like iron and vomit on her tongue. As her breath grew dry, and she tried to get the words out, Kenshi felt it too. “Wait...”

What turned around was no longer his daughter. A hideous monster with bone claws coming out of its hands and a disturbing contorted face of twisted flesh. With a shake of its head, as if confirming it was no longer his daughter, it stabbed those claws deep into Kenshi’s chest. Over and over it tore him slowly apart. Leere and Bi-Hanzo stepped back. From inside the room, a gargled roar echoed in its chambers. Turns out, in the dark, there was long, long tunnel that stretched far and wide. And it was filled to the brim with monsters. Leere looked to the door up the stair case, adrenaline rushing through her. “RUN!!!”

"Again with the running, why can't humans ever listen?" Black hurried alongside Leere, rushing, but looked over his shoulder to see Bonegrinder and Hades. At least his master could still move, but his speed was greatly reduced. The ghouls snarled, almost trampling over each other to tear the group apart. They had so much energy and hate in their being then any other undead the Wraith had seen. Once the doors at the top of the staircase were open, and everyone was through, Black used a touch of his own magic to seal it for the time being. There were multiple bangs against the door, and he frowned. "We have to find a place where we can rest for a bit. All this running is going to take a toll on all of us."

The bang on the doors grew more intense, and the ghouls crawled over the walls and ran to other doors to find other ways of reaching them. There were hundreds of undead that chased them from that room alone. How many more were there? Leere gripped her shadow medallion, sighing. “Let’s keep walking down this hall for now.” Looking to Bi-Hanzo, she nodded solemnly to him. “I’m so sorry about losing Kenshi.”

“Least I know what’s happened to my missing people...”

"We need to exercise caution. We don't know what to expect from a place like this." Black walked beside of Leere, glancing back every now and then to check on Bonegrinder. The Wraith was concerned about the Anagari. He had not seen him look this bad in a very long while. Black was one of the oldest members of the Hive and he had been through harsh times with Bonegrinder, thick and thin.

Walking down the hallway, it started to curve. On the walls were pipes and lights. Leere heard of this before, and seen it in Danjur. Electricity. Little bulbs of light glowing faintly to light of the room.

There were doors every once in the while on the left side. Staying alert, they saw a Mortuus at one of the doors, fumbling with keys to get in. Leere looked to Black. “Should we risk taking a guide, or move on?”

"Judging from what transpired outside this tower, these people rather shoot off their own foot than help a stranger." Black did not sound too enthused. "Let us try to keep moving until Bonegrinder can summon a portal."

"We cannot trust these Mortuus, Leere." Bonegrinder told the princess in-between slithers. He had to stop to catch his breath every now and then. Seeing he was larger than the humans and Hades, he could slither a little then rest for a moment. "Remember what he said about friend or foe; that does not apply here. They are both."

“Agreed. I don’t want to talk with these cultists of damnation.” It seemed Bi-Hanzo was in a charitable mood towards Bonegrinder. So they waited until the Mortuus was gone before contributing onwards. Walking up a spiraling staircase, they started to gain a view of the outside. The city held the sights of people arguing, children running through the streets, and monsters eating anyone who was foolish enough to have their guard down. High in the sky, a dragon flew by silently. Leere cringed when she saw how little skin it had on its body when it become illuminated by the moon.

Arriving at the top of the staircase, they came across a purple and red door. Creaking it open, Leere peered inside. A giant ballroom filled with cultists were strewn about. They were cutting apart bodies, experimenting with wiring, and praying to statues of various gods and demons. It seemed to be an active hub.

"...!!!" Bonegrinder felt physically sick. His scales flickered, sensing the danger. Carefully, he pulled Leere back with his tail and shut the door, praying none of the cultists noticed. "... he senses foulness there, tiny princess. Let us keep going."

"... they were making more puppets, weren't they?" Black asked his master.

"Yes, among other things. This snake can sense his brother's presence nearby... that or his magic one. Destroyer and Chaos have riddled this place with their disease of seducing black arts."

As Hades was about to turn back down the stairs, he paused. His powerful sense of hearing often lead to dread. “Those undead abominations have found our path. Judging by the smell, they’d be upon us in fifteen minutes.”

"There's no way all of us can take down a horde of those things." Black knew he could simply hide in the shadows and wait it out, but pulling in three other beings with him? That'd drain his magic excessively. There was no way he could pull it off for long and he refused to leave his master's side anyhow. "Do you think we can find a way to the outside? It'd even be safer to hang off a wall at this point."

Hades looked down at the room, scanning its contents. At the far end, he saw a sign of hope. “Very end of the room. There’s an elevator going upwards. Our chances are much stronger if we fight our way through to there then back down. Bonegrinder. Can you manage it?”

"This snake can move, though he is concerned about the elevator." The Anagari told the Lynel. "He is very weighty and so are you, old friend. There is a chance we both might not fit."

“Then we can take turns. Let us depart.”

Down at in the ballroom, one cultist was conducting an experiment. With a rat maze, he had a small worm like parasite travel through a fog identical to the one that the group traveled through the cave. Once it made its way to the other size and in a bigger container, it grew nearly ten times its size to fill the glass container. As he was writing notes, his head suddenly turned into red paste as Hades club utterly destroyed him with one swing. The Lynel short teleported over your cause first blood and sew confusion amongst the cultists.

Leere was running down the steps to the elevator, when she paused in her tracks at a monument she saw. A red obelisk with runes glew a menacing light glow on and off, and a deep anger filled her being. It was a construct just like the Beacon she shut down decades ago. “Sweet mother of god...”

When a cultist tried to hack at her with a sickle, Leere twisted her body around to dance around her attacker. With a graceful movement of her arms, she positioned her scythe at the other Mortuus head. Activating her blade, the blue hum of the energy easily decapitated her target, sending the head rolling in Black’s direction.

Black was managing to keep the cultists away from Bonegrinder with ease. He was using the darkness to his advantage. One by one, he took down anyone foolish enough to try to harm his master. Still, there was no place safe enough to rest and recover. The group would have to keep moving. Though when Hades suggested that all of them take turns on the elevator, Black shook his head furiously. "I will not leave Bonegrinder while he's like this. If he is alone and attacked, and another episode occurs, he could bring down this whole tower and us with it."

“Then you go up with him first!” Hades bucked his feet backwards, kicking another cultist into a statue. Leere watched Bi-Hanzo race for the elevator. When they got closer, he realized how big it was. More so, looking up at the opening, how far it traveled up. “Hurry!”

One Cultist threw a spear and chain at Black, stabbing through his shoulder blade and pulling him closer. His eyes were a mess with bloodlust, and with magic, a ghostly green fire spread up the chain to burn the Wraith. As the cultist was ready to turn up the heat, Leere cut the chain off, following up with chopping Black’s attacker in half. It left a messy pair of legs to stumble around for a moment. “Are you alright?”

Bonegrinder managed to slither into the elevator, fitting his coils inside tightly. There was just enough room for Black when the Wraith was suddenly pulled backwards. As soon as the assassin was out of the elevator, the doors suddenly shut and trapped the Anagari inside. Black, however, released a piercing screech as the blade struck through his body. He did not know what the tool was enchanted with, some kind of dark magic, but it made his limbs feel numb. Almost like the Cultist was trying to force his will. As soon as Leere cut down the cultist, he held his shoulder. Little drops of blood floated around the wound, able to see clearly through the hole. This would take a while to fix. "... that magic was trying to force me to obey." The Wraith then glanced at the elevator. "And we're separated from Bonegrinder. We must find him."

The elevator suddenly shot up, leaving the group the watch Bonegrinder be taken away. “No! No!!!” Leere reached a hand up in vein. She wasn’t fast enough. Looking around, she saw a lever to call it back down. Pulling it, she didn’t know how long they’d have to wait. Although the last of the cultists were dead or scattered, the danger wasn’t over. Back at the door they entered, a cultist was about to flee, when she was suddenly snatched away by the swarm of the undead. The hideous ghouls looked down the stairs, looking at the group. With a war cry of terror, they ran towards the flesh. Leere gripped her scythe, taking a few breaths. “We just have to hold out!”

"Hold out?! There's too many of them." Black was never an optimistic person. "If one of us gets pulled down, we're not getting back up---!!!"

DING!

The Wraith was interrupted by the elevator's appearance... without Bonegrinder inside.

Too late. The monsterous creatures were already on top of them.

Bi-Hanzo magically blasted ice and picked up a sword to hack away at them. When one slashed at his stomach, bleeding him, he retreated back into the elevator after bringing up a wall of ice between him and some of the ghouls.

Black might have been impressed by how quick and furious Leere was if both weren’t concerned with staying alive. The Shadow Sage kept hacking away at the fast undead, limb after limb after limb. But there were just too many. Covered in blood, unsure how much was there and how many cuts they gave here, she didn’t know if they’d make it out alive.

That was when Hades launched a powerful stream of fire to burn away a wave of the undead. “Into the elevator! Flee! Now! You must live!!!”

The ghouls were endless, one after the other, and he was down an arm. The Wraith had to improvise, pulling the undead around with his shadows and using the area to his advantage. Yet, even he was tiring. When Hades bellowed at him to move, the assassin started to protest. Bonegrinder would have his head if he knew he left Hades, but also if he put Leere in unnecessary danger. Damn it, why did this always have to happen to him.? Black had never moved so fast in this second chance of life, if one would call it that, as he chucked Leere over his shoulder so she could still swing her weapon and launched into the elevator.

Leere was ready to save Hades when Black suddenly picked her up. Her concentration disrupted, she could have used the shadows to give him a fighting chance, or give him reinforcements. As she got her footing again, the last glimpse she saw of the Lynel was being swarmed by the ghouls when the elevator doors slammed shut, and they made their way up.

“No!!!” Leere slammed her fists on the door. Still angry, she turned to Black, clocking him in the face with a surprise punch to the nose. “What the hell are you thinking?!?! You disrupted my concentration! Again! I could have helped give Hades a chance had you not suddenly grabbed me from behind! You’re not a knight in shining armour Black!”

Bi-Hanzo was still catching his breath, looking at this blood covered woman screaming at her comrade. Glancing at his own wounds, he winced.

"..." Black barely flinched when Leere punched him. He wiped away the floating blood from his nose and then retorted, "Bonegrinder gave me an order to look after your ungrateful ass. I promised him I would. I'm keeping my promise, no matter how much I think this whole idea of yours was a fool's errand. Now are you going to stop screaming at me like a brat and help me find my master or are you going to continue to berate me for my job?"

“I’m going to berate you for not thinking properly. Yes, I wanted to come here. But I know exactly what I’m getting myself into! I’m a warrior Black! This type of shit is my expertise. And if you keep fucking around and treating me like a Princess, you’re going to get others killed, or me! You want to save your master? Then use your goddamn brain.”

Bi-Hanzo leaned back against the wall, taking deep breaths. “What kind of shit are we in?”

Leere took a moment to use her shadow magic to peel off the blood stains from her clothes and onto the floor. “Nothing good at all. These Mortuus must be magical geniuses or morons. I’m going to say the latter seeing how they found a way to open up a portal to a dimension of madness and the worst undead I’ve encountered in my life. There’s no telling what else we’ll discover here. All I know is I’m not leaving until I shut it down. Again.”

"... fine then. You certainly have the bitchy temper of a princess." Black used the shadows to 'stitch' his shoulder wound closed for the time being. It almost looked like a dark parasite latching onto the Wraith's skin, but it would have to do for now. "I'm going to search for Bonegrinder. You do what you like." Once the elevator stopped, the Wraith took a look at the surroundings before stepping out.

Outside, was a narrow, metal caged hallway. The steel was rusting something fierce, and the darkness was overwhelming from all directions around them.

“What happened to sticking together?” Leere finally took a look at Bi-Hanzo’s wounds, pulling out a sewing kit from one of her pouches to help him out.

"You obviously care more for this Prama-forsaken country than you do for the well being of the one who has tried to protect you from all this darkness for years. I don't understand you. You're not the hero, you're the Shadow Sage. Heroic missions are for that kid swinging around a sword in green." Black stated very bluntly, "Bonegrinder is by no means perfect, but he does care for you for some reason that eludes me. I'm not going to guard someone who doesn't want me to do so and I'm going to go and find him so we can get out of his hell on earth."

“And what are you Black? An undead blade to your master? Klinge minus the smug charm?” She pulled tight on one of Bi-Hanzo’s wounds. “What I do I don’t ever account to my daughter or other children. This isn’t a fairy tale of a hero. But this is good vs. evil. There is a nightmare I need to put an end to here. You go find Bonegrinder. Leave if you want. But you save the good that can be found in this damned corner of earth.” She turned to him, a fierce determination in her eyes. “Because fighting for the good of humanity is always a noble cause.”

"Heh, now Klinge was someone I would admire. He had the lethality of an Echidnan when he was undead but gave it up for that woman and to play house." Black told the princess with no qualms about his statement. "I am an assassin. I was a bringer of death in life and now I am in this state. I killed many arrogant bastards, some who deserved it, some may not have. Either way, what 'good' I have seen in this world is debatable." The Wraith told Leere. "I am not here to protect the 'good' left in this earth. I am here to ensure the safety of Bonegrinder, the one being who tried to help me during the time where I was lost. I am not here to save the many, I am here to save only one." He then said, "Have you even thought about what would happen if Prama was ripped from Bonegrinder too early? No? Of course you haven't. Otherwise, we wouldn't be here, in the last place my master should be, but no. No, he's here because you made a deal with that damn Prama and he feels guilty. You manipulated him." Black barely showed emotion, but this was definitely a button for him. "You're right, Leere. I am no knight in shining armor. Never aimed to be. Yet, I will keep Bonegrinder save with the last of what I am because he helped me when no one else would." He scoffed. "Good of humanity... humans caused all of this. They had a choice. These Mortuus had a choice. And look what they chose. I have very little faith in humanity."

“You’re right. And it’s my choice to save what I can.” Leere stepped off the elevator with Bi-Hanzo. Activating her scythe, she used the blade to light the way forward. With blood long stained on the floor, it didn’t look pleasant. Leading them, she smirked at Black’s thoughts on the o. “Gave up his lethality? I pity you Black. You and the rest of the Hive. And I think I finally get it.”

"You don't need to." Black admitted to Leere almost with a chuckle. "We're all monsters here. The fact is, I've embraced it." He then looked at her. "But you haven't."

“And you think that’s a good thing? You lack humanity. You lack empathy for those outside your immediate bubble. It’s our connections to family, friends, and those we love that makes us strong. Why would you want to be a monster Black? Monsters are what threaten the innocent.”

”You can’t save them”

A tiny whisper ran out in their heads individually. It was like the wind in the air, briefly passing by.

Leere gripped her head, shrugging it off to paranoia that she’d fail. “I can be as vicious, bloodthirsty, and dangerous as I can be. But that doesn’t make me a monster.”

"It is a good thing, because the monsters survive, Leere." Black thought it was rather amusing. She still had no clue of why Bonegrinder wanted her to avoid all of this madness. Yet, perhaps it would eventually be her downfall. If only she had listened, the princess wouldn't be in this place. "And I am not human. Therefore, my lacking of humanity is for naught."

“But you where human once. Surely that means something to you. Tell me. Who do you love the most Black. Who’d you give your all to that wasn’t your job? Who do you miss in your heart?” Leere’s scythe went out, and she never got her answer. “Black? Bi-Hanzo?” Leere searched around in the darkness, and the assassin and the Mortuus warrior were gone.

"I was never fully human, I was am a hy---!!!"

Black was suddenly alone. He pivoted on his heel. Where did the princess go? He looked up and then down. No, he did not fall through a hole. Nor did he activate his shadow magic. What was going on? The Wraith jolted when he saw an outline of his old home. It was faint in his memories, but he knew it was there. He also recalled the pain that was held there. Recollections he'd rather forget. His parents were very much in love, but his birth was a bad omen to them. Yes, his beautiful mother, a human, and his mighty father, a monster from some of Mother's adoptive children, as she called them. A enchanting Nokken, otherwise known as a shapeshifter. Some could reproduce with humans. Others could not.

"Filthy halfling, filthy halfling."

This was an illusion. His parents were long gone. These faces which tormented him were dead. He knew that, he killed them. Perhaps it was now his turn to be haunted. Yet, that would be silly. A Wraith? Being haunted? A ghost haunting a spirit? That was laughable. Yet, the words still stung. The way the other children would chant 'filthy halfling' always irritated him. There was no love for anything remotely human in the world of monsters. It was easier to be a full monster, then anything resembling human. So, Black wanted to make sure that no one would ever mistake him for a pitiful human ever again. He'd change his shape and blend into the shadows.

"Don't you want to be a full monster? What if we could help you?"

"A little too late to play mind games, don't you think?"

"You could be of more assistance to Bonegrinder rather than a weak halfling."

"That's true. I probably would be stronger."

"Then accept our help. Let us help you break free of these human restraints."

"No."

"No? We thought you hated humans."

"I do. They're rotten creatures. But... they're crafty. And I'd like to hold onto that part of me."

“How about a test then?” A voice that didn’t belong called out. A shadow swept through the area, materializing with horns and a smell of brimstone. With flickering red eyes and a body that wasn’t all there, the Shadow Man confronted Black. “A choice then. Human? Or monster kind?”

"... you're the one that Echidnans call Tzitzimime..." The Wraith did not seem afraid or bothered. It was hard to have emotions being in a state of limbo, he supposed. Though, for some odd reason, he could still feel frustration. "The embodiment of Chaos."

“A humble avatar for my master.” The Shadow Man chuckled. With the wave of a hand, two doors appeared. “You have a choice to make Wraith. On the left door you will be led down a path to the fallen Echidnan God. On the right, the Mortuus Sage desperately clinging to hope. Both are about to become in mortal danger. If you hurry, you might be able to save one. Human or Monster? And I’d chose quickly.”

"So I suppose Mother of the Monsters was correct. You are split into pieces." Black simply stood there. "I'm surprised you haven't tried to kill me. Giving me a choice instead?"

“Because it’ll be more fun to see you fail in protecting not just one, but potentially two of your companions.” The insidious malice dripping from his voice was piercing. “Be fun to see your face twist with anguish when you see them dead.”

"You are mistaken if you believe I think of that human girl as a companion." Black was as stoic as ever. "Bonegrinder told me to protect her. She told me not to do so. If she dies, then the world will be rid of another one of your potential hosts you've waited for, obviously for a long while or you'd be here causing your havoc already." The Wraith asked, sounding a touch... pissed. "Do you think I'm stupid?"

“I do. That’s why you aren’t dedicated in a choice regardless by now. Save your master, or go out to kill the girl to stop my first plan of choice.”

"Well, you see, you made a mistake. I care about Bonegrinder. Not that shitty god inside of him. Also, one more thing," Black held out his hand before jerking it back. "You have to pay an assassin to kill someone. I'm not seeing any loot. So goodbye." The Wraith took the door to his master.

The Shadow Man’s eyes flickered with a smile. Closing the door behind Black, he made sure to single Destroyah that now was the time. “All too easy.”

Bonegrinder was in a hell of his own. The Anagari was frozen, unable to move. His limbs would not work and he could not find the strength to slither. He was tormented by visions of his family, lost long ago. The way they spoke was like a drug. He had not heard their voices in years, seen their faces in ages. The snake was content to die here since he saw his family one last time. Yet, Prama was trying to draw the snake back to rational thought, will him to get up and fight, but if he risked using too much magic, it would draw the attention of Dhakk. He could sense his brother nearby. This had to be a ploy.

Luckily, Black knew just the way to gain his master's attention. "Forgive me, Bonegrinder, but I am doing this for your own good." Black had suffered under illusions before and the only way to break free from them was... pain. So he stuck the tip of his blade into Bonegrinder's tail, earning a yowl from the Anagari.

Leere turned to see a white light shine down on a dark silhouette in the distance. It was a woman standing up, yet crooked in her posture. When she spoke Leere froze. ”My sweet little daughter... you shouldn’t have come here. You should have listened to your friends.”

Leere held her ground as a deathly version of Zelda walked toward her like a puppet on strings. Her eyes were gauged out, with bloody trailing down her cheeks like tears. It was sickening to see her mother used against her again. Especially now that Zelda had passed on. “Get out of my head. You aren’t my mother.”

“Why? Afraid you’re going insane? It’s ok. You’ll be dead soon enough you stupid girl.” The puppet suddenly ran at a frightening speed towards Leere. With no hesitation, she swung her blade to cut Zelda in half down the side. With her body splitting apart, the upper half of this sickening doppelganger of her mother leaped towards Leere, pinning her down. Zelda’s hands reached around Leere’s neck, squeezing tightly with rotting fingers. ”You’re a disappointment to the family. And none of them will see your body again. I should never have adopted you from that cage.”

Leere gasped as she was losing breath. Reaching to her side, she grasped at empty air until she found her knife. Turning purple in the face and her eyes growing bloodshot, she thrusted up in Zelda, stabbing the nightmare in the throat. Twisting the blade, she grabbed a lose hand up and snapped her neck. Gasping for breath and tearing up, Leere chocked on air as she kicked frantically to stand up.

However, her torment was far from over. The area exploded into a rush of yellow lighting, and the eerie cackles of children called out. Leere saw a large light in the shape of a door way. All around were tiny zombified children hissing and running at her from the dark. Every last one of them was a freakish version of her daughter Joy. Grabbing her scythe, and relying on instinct, Leere ran to the light. Everytime she was forced to cut down a version of Joy, a piercing taunt ran out in her head.

”Don’t you love me mommy?”

”Why did you never come back?”

”My mother didn’t love me enough to return.”

”You’re hurting me!” ”Die with me mommy!”

”It’s you’re fault we’re dead!”

With a frantic scream, Leere ran through the light. On the other side, she tripped and collapsed onto a clear floor all alone. Shuddering, she bit her lip hard to feel anything else other than fear. Rising up, she let out a roar so angry, so full of wrath, it’d shake the hearts of any who heard it. “I’LL KILL YOU FOR THIS!!!! YOU’LL PAY FOR TAUNTING ME!!!”

Leere wasn’t going to let these fuckers get away with torturing her and her friends anymore.

________________________________________________________________

Previous Ch. https://mrneighbourlove.tumblr.com/post/626094887593443328/evils-bane-ch-7-entering-the-tower

Next Ch. https://mrneighbourlove.tumblr.com/post/626630162211028992/evils-bane-ch-9-everyone-has-something-to-lose

#Crossover!#Love comments of your thoughts #ridersoftheapocalypse #Leere #Leere Dragmire #Bonegrinder #Black the Wraith #Ghouls #Horror #Bloodshed

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the-writing-dump-bin · 4 years

Text

Someone You Loved: A Black & Blue excerpt.

Well, I did it again. More sadness in this concept I wrote for my up and coming mini fic. AGAIN! THIS IS NOT A FINAL PIECE AND THINGS ARE CONSIDERED TO CHANGE!!!

I just thought of this and wanted to write and share it with you all. I will cut it since it’s basically a spoiler for the story.

(ahhhh my ADD is making me write in different parts and apparently I am sad if \i write sad things.)

It had been two days since Dabi visited Okami’s apartment for the last time to tell her that he didn’t love her anymore.

After he left, Okami had changed into her wolf form and let out a gut wrenching howl of pain and eventually went on a rampage in her apartment, destroying her living room, kitchen and bedroom. Shelves toppled over, cushions from the sofas and chairs pulled off and torn, pillows and blankets ripped to shreds and scattered around on the floor.

Once her outburst was done, she changed back into her human form, grabbed an old, over sized shirt to put over her and crawled to the window where she last seen her love. She stayed there, crying and whimpering, hoping that this was all just a terrible nightmare and that she would wake up in Dabi’s arms…but it never came.

Okami stared out onto the streets the entire time, watching people walk by without a care in the world while she sat there heartbroken. She didn’t eat. She couldn’t sleep. The best she could do was maybe doze off for an hour every so often from excessive crying and exhaustion. Going to the washroom was even difficult for her because she didn’t want to leave the window that had his scent on it and with each passing hour, the scent had seemed to be fading so she didn’t want to leave it.

Within the tiny bit of sleep she had gotten the second day, Okami woke up to find a letter next to her on the window sill. It just had her name on it and nothing else. Ears perking up, Okami sniffed around the window to search for Dabi’s scent but found nothing new other than a faint scent of a stranger. Putting down the Polaroid of her and Dabi she had in her hand down, she grabbed the envelope and opened it, pulling the letter out and unfolding it with shaky hands. It was from Dabi…

"Words can not describe how much pain you and I are feeling right now, but I have to confess my sins. I haven’t been entirely truthful with you and you deserve to know everything.

I am not the man I had you believe I was. I am a ruthless, cold blooded murderer. I have been a member of the League of Villains for almost half a year now and have killed numerous people and heroes. Remember when you saw on the news about the kidnapping of a UA student while they were at summer camp? I was in charge of that operation. You hadn’t seen me in a while after that because I was in hiding from the public. I even attacked Eraserhead, which made me wary of being around you in case Eboshi was ever around. More recently, I was involved with an attack against an organization called the Liberation Army and succeeded, but again, I couldn’t show myself in public.

I have done so many things that I thought was right. I was enticed by Hero Killer Stain’s motives to rid of the world of fake heroes and my thoughts on that haven’t changed one bit. When I met you that night in the alley, I had asked you if you were a pro hero. You had jumped into my flames without a thought to save your belongings from the fire and that’s when I knew you were different.

Aside from my cold, sadistic, murderous intentions, you were the only person to capture my attention and feel things that I had never felt before in my life. Being with you made me forget about all the bad things that happened to me. You showed me kindness, happiness and most importantly, love.

Because of that, I can’t have you caught up with me anymore. Okami, I care about you and miss you every time I am away from you. But I don’t want you in danger and that’s just what will happen if you stick around. Something is coming and there is no guarentee that I will survive.

In any case, you’ll be matched soon with someone who will take care of you better than I ever could. Live your life without me. If I can have just one wish, it would be for me to forget everything and run away with you, but I can’t. I love you, Okami. Despite what I told you, I love you with everything I have and it hurts, but if this is what I have to do for you to stay alive, then so be it.

You don’t ever have to forgive me and I understand if you grow to hate me, but this is who I am and I have a duty to fill.

Goodbye forever…my one and only baby…“

Just before she couldn’t look at it anymore, she caught sight of something else inside the envelope; a smaller piece of paper separate from the letter. Pulling it free, she opened it up and read it.

Okami’s eyes welled with tears again. She had suspected that he was up to something this whole year but it was nothing like what he had just confessed to her. A killer. He killed all those heroes and led other villains in doing horrible crimes that couldn’t be forgiven. She ached and shook as her eyes stared at the paper, re reading his words and memorizing his hand writing. It was a little sloppy, but it was unique to her.

"Okami…

"Hopefully you found this last, but there is one more thing I have to tell you. The name Dabi is just an alias I have been using to protect myself throughout this life of crime. Please, destroy this after you read it, but my real name is-”

Okami couldn’t breathe after she found out his real name. She couldn’t believe it. “Wake me up from this nightmare!” She shouted, beating her head against the window frame repeatedly until a trail of blood trickled down her face. Once she stopped, her tears fell and she destroyed the paper, burning it away with the lighter that was sitting on the floor next to her flipped table.

Once it was gone, Okami crawled to her washroom and threw up. Well, throwing up was a bit of a stretch…it was more dry heaving with a little bit of stomach contents exiting her body. Wiping her mouth, she staggered back to the window and resumed her position on the sill and waited for him to return to her.

—

“Still no reply?” Aizawa said to Eboshi who sat across from him in the teacher’s lounge at UA. Without showing it, he was concerned for her when she told him that she hadn’t heard from her best friend in two days.

“I’m worried that something happened…” Over the last ten months, Eboshi had noticed Okami acting a little different than what she used to be. Sure, she had seemed like her brooding, sarcastic self, but she had also noticed Okami with a new emotion she hadn’t seen: Happiness.

A silent moment passed before Aizawa sighed and stood up. “Go and see if Okami is alright. I’ll merge classes for the rest of the afternoon and they can train together.”

Blinking, Eboshi was taken back a little. “Shota…”

“Go. If something serious happened and she’s missing, call me right away and we’ll look for her.” Seeing the still worried look on her face for her students, Aizawa assured her that it was alright.

Nodding, Eboshi grabbed her things and headed to Okami’s apartment. It wasn’t like Okami to screen her phone calls or texts from Eboshi. She even asked some of the waitresses at the bar if they had heard from her and they all said the same thing; that they hadn’t seen or heard from her since she last worked.

Reaching the building, Eboshi got on the elevator and pressed the button for the fourth floor where Okami’s unit was located. “Okami?” She asked as she knocked. “Are you in there? It’s me, Eboshi.”

There was no response.

Remaining calm, Eboshi went over to where she knew where the spare key was to her apartment and returned to the door and unlocked it. Opening with caution, Eboshi called Okami’s name again to announce herself coming in but there was still no answer. Stepping inside, she was surprised to see the apartment was trashed. Broken dishes, ripped furniture, smashed TV, everything about it looked like there had been a struggle.

“Okami!” She shouted a little louder. If an attacker was still inside, it was nothing that Eboshi couldn’t handle. “Okami! Are you he-!” Reaching Okami’s bedroom, she seen that it looked just as bad as the living room and kitchen. Her bed was tossed and everything destroyed. Mirror broken and glass all over the floor. Scanning the rest of the room, Eboshi’s eyes finally found her best friend sitting on the window sill, her head leaning against the glass.

Okami looked completely disassociated with reality, not even acknowledging the person who just entered her home. “Okami!” Eboshi carefully stepped over the glass and reached out for her friend, shaking her as she repeated her name. “Okami, can you hear me?” Looking her over, she noticed the cut over her forehead and the blood that escaped from it.

She could also notice sleep deprived eyes and tear stained cheeks. “Oh my god, Okami… What happened…?” She had never seen Okami look so depressed in her life. Like she had completely gave up on everything. Then everything clicked when she noticed the picture and a letter in Okami’s hand.

Eboshi knew that Okami was dating Dabi. She had suspicion a couple of months ago and had found them one night after she followed Okami after she snuck away from a party they were at. After finding out, she had went home and thought about what she should do. Okami was dating a killer but she had looked like she had no idea of what Dabi had done. But she looked happy. Something that Okami had been chasing for years.

But she was conflicted.

She was a hero. Dabi had attacked Aizawa and kidnapped a student; killed multiple people and heroes. She could have easily told Aizawa about what was going on and they could of had Dabi under arrest. But then that also meant that she could lose her best friend forever. If they had taken Dabi away from her, she didn’t think that Okami would forgive her and lose her for good. With how the apartment looked, Eboshi guessed that they weren’t together anymore and he was still at large.

Turning, Eboshi walked to the washroom and filled the tub with warm water and returned to the bedroom. “Okami…” She said calmly although she was furious with her. “C'mon, we need to get you cleaned up.” She scooped up the limp woman in her arms and brought her to the washroom, stripping her clothes off and placing her in the water. She didn’t leave her side in fear Okami might do something drastic.

It had been hard to get through to her. Okami had completely shut down. If Eboshi hadn’t arrived, she felt like Okami would have eventually gave up and let herself parish of a broken heart. After cleaning her up and dressing her in fresh clothes, she laid her down on her bed and left to try and fix her something to eat. When she came back with toast, she noticed Okami left the bed and went back to the window. She was in her wolf form, sitting on the floor with her head laying on the sill, whimpering and whining like a sad dog. *She really loves him…* Eboshi thought. She was still angry with her, but seeing her in such a state pulled on her heartstrings. “Okami…you need to eat…”

“No, I don’t.”

Well…at least Okami heard her and acknowledged that she was here now. “Yes, you do.” Slowly coming up to her side, Eboshi turned the little table upright and placed the plate on the surface then took a seat next to the large black wolf against the wall. “Listen… I knew…about you and Dabi…”

The mention of his name made Okami close her eyes and rub her nose on the frame, whimpering her sadness.

“Okami… He is dangerous. I should have said something to you when I found out but I kept it to myself. At the time, and still, really, I was conflicted on what I should do.” Eboshi ran a hand through her purple hair. “When I found out, I was torn between telling Shota and the rest of the heroes and we could have had him arrested for everything that he had done… But then, if I did that, I feel like you would hate me for it.” She turned her head away from the wolf. “I felt like you wouldn’t talk to me anymore and completely remove me from your life for good…or worse…take your own life.”

Okami listened to her but remained silent. Even though Eboshi didn’t say anything, Okami was ready to slowly die in her apartment after Dabi had left her. Durning their time together, it was the most alive Okami had ever felt. Dabi was her escape from what she was groomed for all her life. She didn’t want to be the leader of a pack. She didn’t want to be forced into a Quirk Marriage and spend her life to a duty she wanted nothing to be a part of. She knew that he was dangerous, she sensed it the moment they met in the alley ten months ago. Even after experiencing his quirk that very same night, she was more intrigued with him.

Outside, the grey clouds started to form and soon enough, the snow started to fall. Okami watched them fall gently from the sky, still thinking about the man that walked out of her life. Pressing her nose to the window sill, she took one last long inhale to the faint sent of fire and closed her eyes. She then moved to Eboshi beside her and laid down, head resting on her lap and put a paw on her knee as she cried with howls and whimpers.

Eboshi kept a cool composure, but she was also hurting to hear her best friend in so much pain. Putting her hand on her back, Eboshi moved her hand to pet her. She wanted to tell her that everything was going to be okay but even she didn’t believe that. So she did what best friend’s always did. “I’m here Okami… Let it all out.”

#my writting #boku no hero academia #my hero academia #Dabi #villain #league of villains #fanfiction #fanfic #read more #spoilers #wip #work in progress

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cummunication · 5 years

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Are you Dating a Sociopath?

1 in 25. Research indicates that’s how many people are diagnosable sociopaths. When it comes to psychopaths, (luckily) the number is higher… 1 in 100. But let’s not get them confused. “Sociopaths are often called psychopaths and vice versa but there are differences between a psychopath and a sociopath. … And while sociopaths and psychopaths do share some traits, sociopathy (antisocial personality disorder) is generally considered less severe than psychopathy.” For example, a sociopath might be someone who takes advantage of others for money, fame, sex etc. while a psychopath is more likely to be a serial killer and commit mass murders. You can go your entire life without anyone knowing you’re a sociopath while psychopaths are the people more likely to commit severe crimes and end up in jail.

Antisocial personality disorder is the diagnosis in which sociopathy and psychopathy fall (cluster B) and it has been on the rise over the years. If you’re swiping daily on tinder, how many people do you pass each day? (I wouldn’t know because I’m not on the app but I suspect a decent amount). Let’s say you swipe 25 times each day. That means over the span of one week you have passed roughly 7 sociopaths. This can be alarming whilst dating because sociopaths don’t look like Hannibal Lecter and you can’t tell someone is mentally ill by looking at them. Sociopath’s actually tend to be extremely alluring and charismatic. It’s no surprise you may end up falling for one and not find out until it’s “too late”. So what are signs to look out for? Could you actually be dating a sociopath? Let’s learn more.

“When you’re in love, it’s easy to gloss over some of your partner’s less flattering traits. But if your gut tells you something might really be off with this person, don’t write off those feelings ― especially if you suspect they could be a sociopath. Sociopaths don’t look like the Joker and show up cackling and howling and ready to manipulate They’re not always so easy to recognize. They can appear to be the guy next door. And until you get to know them, you wouldn’t necessarily know they are sociopaths. So what is a sociopath exactly? Characteristics include a persistent disregard for right and wrong, a tendency to lie and manipulate others, a lack of empathy and remorse, emotional volatility, an inflated ego, and engaging in impulsive and irresponsible behavior. And though the label is frequently used in the media and pop culture, it’s not actually a clinical term. The closest clinical diagnosis would be antisocial personality disorder, which is characterized by a pattern of disregarding or violating social norms, laws and the rights of others without remorse ― not being a loner, as the name might suggest. It’s estimated that roughly 3 percent of men and 1 percent of women meet the criteria for antisocial personality disorder. It’s worth noting that some experts prefer to use the term “psychopath” instead. Some use sociopath and psychopath interchangeably to describe a person with a more extreme case of antisocial personality disorder. Others, contend sociopaths and psychopaths are similar, but differ in some key ways ― for example, sociopaths lack empathy but are capable of it, while psychopaths are incapable of it altogether.” If you frequent my blog you are well aware I was in a life-threatening relationship several years ago. Although my ex never sought professional help (as many sociopaths don’t) I would bet my life on him being a sociopath. Since I am not a licensed professional, I can not technically diagnose him but like I said, I’d bet my life on it. I’ve also had my mental health professionals refer to him having a personality disorder… narcissistic, borderline as well as sociopathy. In the beginning, he was beyond everything I could’ve asked for. Little did I know what was to come or who he was behind the mask. If only I’d known what to lookout for I might’ve saved myself years of misery. So due to my own experiences I’m here to help you. Here are some of the most prevalent, common warning signs you or a loved one may be in a dangerous relationship with a sociopath. “RED FLAG #1. Having an over-sized ego. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-V) notes that sociopaths have an inflated sense of self. They are narcissists to the extreme, with a huge sense of entitlement. They tend to blame others for their own failures. They prey on your good qualities. People with sociopathic tendencies are accustomed to lying, so it’s not as hard for them to fake feelings. Some sociopaths are skilled at pretending they’re wounded and hurt. Sometimes a sociopath will target a woman because she’s big-hearted and maternal and vulnerable to wanting to care for someone who’s been emotionally hurt.” RED FLAG #2. Lying and exhibiting manipulative behavior. Sociopaths use deceit and manipulation on a regular basis. Why? Lying for the sake of lying. Lying just to see whether you can trick people. And sometimes telling larger lies to get larger effects. Their professions of love feel false and hollow. They often will say things like, ‘You’re the girl I’ve always wanted.“ Or, ‘I couldn’t be luckier to find someone like you.’ Sort of pat, trope, cliche expressions, as if they heard that in a movie and they’re merely repeating it. Their professions of love and caring do not feel genuine. Something about it feels off. They do not feel emotions in the same way that regular people do. What they do is see others express emotions in real life or on TV and then they mimic them.” My ex-boyfriend once dropped off a note on my car while we had been broken up and I had gone no contact for several weeks. What first appeared as a heartfelt, long, love letter, I later found out he copied off the internet. Of course he claimed to have created this beautiful poem himself but I guess he forgot the internet is a thing and how easy it would be to access the lyrics. Needless to say, it didn’t mean much after I found out it was copyrighted. “RED FLAG #3. Exhibiting lack of empathy. They don’t really have the meaningful emotional inner worlds that most people have and perhaps because of that they can’t really imagine or feel the emotional worlds of other people. It’s very foreign to them. They treat you or others with contempt and cruelty. You might also want to observe not just how they treat you, but how they treat other people in the room. Sometimes you’ll catch them behaving heartlessly to someone when they don’t know you’re watching. RED FLAG #4. Showing a lack of remorse or shame. The DSM-V entry on antisocial personality disorder indicates that sociopaths lack remorse, guilt or shame. They have volatile mood swings. This person might have unexpected, unstable and abrupt mood swings. You say something and suddenly they go into rage. A sociopath likes to control and manipulate. So if they thought their ability to control was being threatened, that might send them into a tizzy. RED FLAG #5. Staying eerily calm in scary or dangerous situations. A sociopath might not be anxious following a car accident, for instance. Experiments have shown that while normal people show fear when they see disturbing images or are threatened with electric shocks, sociopaths tend not to.” This is due to a difference in biology. FMRI scans show people with antisocial personality disorder have a different sized amygdala than someone without. This physiological difference may explain their constant need for stimulation as the amygdala also known as the “fight or flight” part of the brain, is in charge of emotions such as fear; which sociopath’s display less of. “RED FLAG #6. Behaving irresponsibly or with extreme impulsivity. Sociopaths bounce from goal to goal, and act on the spur of the moment, according to the DSM. They can be irresponsible when it comes to their finances and their obligations to other people. They may have a criminal past and refuse to take any responsibility for those misdeeds. Particularly if they tell you there was a criminal past but say, ‘It’s not my fault. They just did it to me. I happened to be in the wrong place and I was blamed.” Side note - My ex happened to say the same exact thing when he was convicted of a felony. According to him, however, nothing was ever his fault. “They’re constantly making messes you’re left to clean up. There would be regular crises in your life related to money going missing, or other relationships with family or friends breaking down, this is because the psychopath prioritizes his or her needs and enjoys risk-taking and sensation-seeking behavior. You would be left to clean up the mess. RED FLAG #10. Showing disregard for societal norms. They break rules and laws because they don’t believe society’s rules apply to them.” My ex boyfriend would smoke cigarettes inside of public restaurants, and whip out his penis in the middle of a family park. He would also frequently disregard traffic signs and make safety violations while driving. I’m not sure if he did this to be funny, to scare me, or because he felt he was above the law. Perhaps it was a mixture of all three. “They are also extremely controlling. You begin to detect that your partner is excessively controlling, dictating when, where, what time and under what circumstances you’re going to get together. They attempt to manipulate your behavior and control who your friends are and your activities. RED FLAG #7. Having few friends. Sociopaths tend not to have friends—not real ones, anyway. Sociopaths don’t want friends, unless they need them. Or all of their friends are superficially connected with them, friends by association. They don’t have many friends or close relationships. The individual is very, very evasive about their personal life and details of past relationships and very overly guarded and evasive. And if they get irritated when you probe them about it, that could be a bad sign. RED FLAG #8. Being charming—but only superficially. Sociopaths can be very charismatic and friendly — because they know it will help them get what they want. They are expert con artists and always have a secret agenda. People are so amazed when they find that someone is a sociopath because they’re so amazingly effective at blending in. They’re masters of disguise. Their main tool to keep them from being discovered is a creation of an outer personality. They seem too good to be true. They are that man or woman at a club or at a bar who just seems to be paying you too much attention and is too solicitous. However, you quite like the attention. That’s the thing about psychopaths: They can at first be fun to be around, and so you get drawn in. They need to do this, as they are later going to use you and all the information that they have extracted from you during this courting phase. They establish a closeness only in as much as it is useful to them. There’s something glib about their charm. There’s no depth to it. It can be turned on and off. RED FLAG #9. Living by the “pleasure principle. If it feels good and they are able to avoid consequences, they will do it! They live their life in the fast lane — to the extreme — seeking stimulation, excitement and pleasure from wherever they can get it. RED FLAG #11. Having “intense” eyes. Sociopaths have no problem with maintaining uninterrupted eye contact. failure to look away politely is also perceived as being aggressive or seductive.” I’d like to add, even if your partner does in fact, have many or all these characteristics, if you are indeed in a relationship with a sociopath you might dismiss them and brush it off as being “all in your head”. This is due to something called “gas-lighting” which is a manipulative tactic sociopaths use to make you believe you’re crazy. That’s why it can be so difficult to end a relationship with a toxic person. I’d like to reassure you if you suspect something is up with your significant other, you’re probably right. Especially if you spend a decent amount of time researching “am I in an abusive relationship” or look up videos on sociopaths. They’re very good at making you doubt yourself so you don’t leave them. I’d suggest listening to your intuition. Your instincts are there it just becomes harder to recognize while dating a dysfunctional person who abuses you. I hope this helped in even the slightest way. Feel free to reach out with any further questions or comments. Help is available and you are not alone. Contact the national domestic violence hotline for more information/resources.

#sociopath #sociopaths #clusterb #abuse #domestic abuse #domestic violence #mental abuse #emotional abuse #verbal abuse #dating #dating advice #relationship #relationships #redflags

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pikkish-moved · 5 years

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Best of Both Worlds ~ 10

In which a new creature is discovered

Chapter 10

In all honesty, Alph was more than happy to be going on today’s expedition with both Charlie and Olimar. Aside from Grandpa Drake, he had decided, they were just about the two people he had come to respect most in the world. Charlie was a war hero and an amazing captain, and Olimar, though not as galactically recognized, had more than proven himself to Alph through his repeated survival on the planet as well as his mechanical knowledge and excessive research on the planet’s biology.

Landing in the sand beside the Drake, Alph took a moment to appreciate the stunning beauty of the surroundings. Charlie and Brittany had described the place, and he had seen the images from the Drake’s scans, but nothing could quite compare to the actual sight, the wide stretch of white sand, the water as far as the eye could see, the enormous waves.

But, Alph reminded himself, shaking his head, they had work to do here, and not a whole lot of time for appreciating scenery.

As he turned back to Olimar and Charlie, he found they were already deep into consideration of their next move. “It’s a definite possibility,” Olimar was saying, “but I still think we ought to try the tidepools again. We have the time right now, and we can come to explore the grass forest when the tide is high and we don’t have access to the tidepools”

Charlie nodded sagely. “I guess it is true that Brittany and I could have missed the pikmin, if they were there. You have much more experience in locating them than we do, so it bears worth checking again.”

“And you’re right about the tides,” Alph jumped in. “We’ve only got around nine hours left before we wanted to be back!”

With that, it was decided, and they set off towards the tidepools.

Thanks to Alph actually landing the ship today rather than a crash landing, he was able to get them quite a bit closer to the tidepools than yesterday. However, at Charlie’s request, to minimize the likelihood of some form of attack, there was still some distance from both the tidepools and the grass forest, so they still had a little ways to walk. Unsurprisingly, as captain, Charlie took the lead, and Alph quickly fell in behind him.

“So, Captain,” Alph began, “what are the animals like in the tidepools?”

Charlie shot a mildly amused glance back at Alph. “You’ll be able to see soon enough for yourself.”

“Actually,” Olimar joined in, jogging a little to catch up to walk beside Alph, “a little preparation would be nice. As your designated xenobiologist, I wouldn’t mind a little more information on what I’m going to be dealing with. You didn’t really tell us a whole lot last night.”

Not looking back this time, Charlie just kind of gestured vaguely. “That’s because we didn’t really do a whole lot of investigating. We decided that since we didn’t have any pikmin with us, it would be smarter to avoid any conflict.”

Alph thought that seemed fair enough, and going by Olimar’s lack of a response, he thought so, too.

Presently, they arrived at the tidepools. On reaching the pools the size of large ponds or even small lakes, Alph paused.

The tidepools were stunning.

After another moment or two, he shuffled forward a bit, kneeling down to peer over the edge of the pool. There was a little school of puckering blinnow darting around above a waddlepus, and a couple sputtlefish chasing after wogpoles. And, kneeling next to Alph, Olimar pointed out towards the bottom of the pool a pearly clam clamp, commenting that he hadn’t seen one of them since the first time he had been on the planet.

“They’ve usually got a pearl inside, but getting it can be tricky. They’ll snap shut as soon as pikmin go for it, and any caught inside will be killed.”

Alph didn’t have to ask how Olimar knew the pikmin would die. The very nature of PNF-404 was more than enough evidence.

Still, Alph thought, it was impressive that Olimar could pick out the vaguely shiny shape, distorted by the water, and still know well enough what it was.

“So, what, they’re mollusks?” Alph asked.

“Yeah. Though, I don’t think the pearl is a real pearl. It’s too weak, and breaks too easily.”

Alph frowned thoughtfully, looking at the shape underwater. “Huh.”

Then Charlie was calling out to them. “Hey! We’re still on a time limit, here!”

Olimar nodded a little, standing up. “He’s right, we’ve still got to find the pikmin.” He offered a hand out to Alph.

Accepting Olimar’s help up, Alph nodded in agreement, and then they were off.

As they wandered between tidepools, avoiding the more wollywog populated areas, Charlie began, “Olimar, you’re the pikmin expert here. What exactly should we be looking for?”

“Well seeing as there’s so much water here, I’d expect that, if any, blue pikmin would be the ones we’d find here.” He paused a moment, peering into a pool as they walked by. “Though, in my experience, the onions are typically landed in relatively sheltered areas, and I don’t really see anywhere like that.”

Following Olimar’s gaze, Alph couldn’t help but agree. All the tidepools he’d seen so far were well populated with hungry animals, and the rocks they were walking on were hardly any safer, with yellow wollywogs in the immediate vicinity. The area off in the distance didn’t seem much better, either; Alph was able to spot a bulborb off a ways, thankfully sleeping, though a handful of dwarf bulborbs were close by, sniffing at what looked like a lump of seaweed. The other way, swooping snitchbug was flying around a tall rock peak- though, it swooped down once, and a peckish aristocrab darted out of a dark crack in the rock, snapped up the snitchbug in its claw, and disappeared back within its cavern.

Alph pointed to the rock in which the aristocrab must’ve now been enjoying its meal. “We should probably avoid that way for now.”

“Yeah,” Charlie agreed.

And they continued walking on.

Until, as they passed a pool, Alph saw in his peripheral vision a pinkish blob sliding out of the water, onto the rocks behind them.

Letting out a startled shout, Alph spun around, stumbling into Olimar as he backpedaled.

The creature was a large one, though not especially so by PNF-404 standards. It’s body was a bright pink, sluglike mass, though its head was lifted off the ground, and it sported a long, thin, tubelike snout no doubt used for sucking up food, two round, black eyes, and a pair of antennae covered in a fine, pink fuzz. And worst of all, the creature was coated in a thick slime, only its snout and antennae penetrating the gooey armor.

As Alph continued backing up against Olimar, who was, in turn, forcing Charlie to keep backing up, the creature continued forward, slowly sliding towards the trio.

“Olimar,” Charlie breathed, voice barely audible, “What is that?”

Olimar’s reply was short, quiet and contained just as much nervousness as Alph felt. “I have no idea.”

Alph’s heart leaped into his throat. This thing was completely new. Even Olimar didn’t know what it was, had never seen it before. They had no idea how to deal with it, and no pikmin to protect them.

And then, the creature stopped, looked at the three of them, and turned and glided away.

For a long, long moment, all three of them were still. Then, as Alph turned to look at his companions, Olimar let out a nervous chuckle. “Well, I guess it doesn’t want to eat us.”

“That,” Charlie replied, his brow furrowed, “or it just isn’t hungry right now.”

Alph cast a glance at the pool the thing had sunken into. “I don’t know about you guys, but whichever one of those it is, I think we shouldn’t be here to find out.”

“Agreed.” Charlie took a few steps forward, then suddenly slipped, apparently not having anticipated the gooey residue the creature had left behind on the rocks to be quite so slippery. It was only Olimar’s quick action, reaching out to grab Charlie’s life support pack, that prevented the Koppaiate captain from plunging headlong into the very same pool the creature had disappeared into.

“Now we really should get out of here,” Olimar said, helping Charlie regain his balance, “before anything else can happen.”

And making their way carefully across the slimy trail, they did just that.

PIKLOPEDIA: The Slippery Heiliug

#pikfic #Captain Olimar #Alph (pikmin)#Captain Charlie (pikmin)#pikmin #pikmin fanfiction #BoBW fic #hey a new creature!#that’s what took me so long #coming up with a name for this thing #the slippery heiliug #also #I’m still not sure how I want to link to the Piklopedia #so bear with me on that

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thedcdunce · 6 years

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Martian Manhunter

“I am Mars' sole survivor. There is a reason for that.” - Martian Manhunter

Real Name: J’onn J’onzz

Aliases:

Fernus

John Jones

Bronze Wraith

Bloodwynd

El Hombre Verdad

Charley Dimes

Isobel de la Rosa

Jade Warrior

Joan J'onnz

Marco Xavier

Secretary of State Kakalios

William Dyer

Yuchiro Takata

Hino Rei

Goldie Johnson

Josh Johnstone

Mrs. Klingman

a cat

Nathaniel Mackelvany

Paris Jackson

Officer Mike Sherman

Officer Perez

Lora Denton

Gender: Male

Height: 6′ 7″

Weight: 300 lbs (136 kg)

Eyes: Red

Hair: Bald

Skin: Green

Race: Martian

Powers:

Martian Physiology

Abilities:

Genius Level Intellect

Investigation

Multilingualism

Meditation

Weaknesses:

Vulnerability to Fire

Chocoholism

Equipment:

Kuru pendant

Base of Operations:

Mobile

The Astral Plane

Mars

Middleton, Colorado

Denver, Colorado

Detroit, Michigan

Z'Onn Z'Orr

JLA Watchtower

Universe:

Earth-One

New Earth

Origin: Martian survivor living on Earth as a superhero.

Parents:

M’yrnn J’onzz; father

Sha’sheen J’onzz; mother

Marital Status: Widowed (M’yri’ah; wife)

Citizenship: American

Occupation:

Adventurer

Detective

First Appearance: Detective Comics #225 (November, 1955)

Powers

Martian Physiology: Martian Manhunter has been described as "the Swiss Army knife of superheroes." His powers come from his alien physiology. Born on Mars over a millennium ago, from a super advanced civilization, boasting advanced technology and genetic modifications over its people, the Martian Manhunter would appear to be a genetically modified being with incredible powers stemming from the changes made in his body. Whether this is their natural state or an advanced state given to only a few individuals is unknown. The Martian's physiology would seem to be composed of a complex molecular chain that resembles polymer bonds but with the ability to be altered at will. The Martian Manhunter can change his mass, color, relative shape, imitating even clothing if desired. The biopolymer is extremely flexible, durable, incredibly strong for a biological material and apparently self-sustaining. It is unknown if the Martian Manhunter actually needs to eat or not but he has been seen consuming food, particularly "Chocos," a brand of cookies.

Shape-Shifting, Malleability, Plasticity, Elongation: Arguably one of the most incredible powers possessed by the Manhunter is the ability to shape-shift. He is able to literally control the molecular structure of his body's biopolymers and manipulate them into any construct he desires, in addition to and including his own body. He can form clothing and weapons with non-moving or non-functioning parts. There does not seem to be any limit to the number of people the Manhunter can imitate and has stood in as a double for many famous people. His ability to imitate people and their mannerisms has stood him in good stead for his disguises. He has recently been seen to shape-shift into the size and shape of a common house fly and to enormous sizes comparable to skyscrapers. He is also able to change colors and turn himself into objects.

Invisibility: The Manhunter can cause the biopolymers in his body to lose their ability to reflect light, rendering the Manhunter invisible to normal light and human sight. With more increased concentration, he can render himself completely invisible along the electromagnetic spectrum, including the infrared and the ultraviolet ranges of the spectrum. This invisibility does not affect every other sense and he could still be detected by touch.

Phasing: The Manhunter can phase through solid matter. No explanation of this power has been given, but it might possibly be an aspect of his psionic powers, perhaps shifting his mass into another dimension or out of vibrational phase with other objects in this dimension. Since it is known that he can alter the density of his biopolymers, it may be that he can simply become less substantial than solid matter, thereby decreasing the molecular density of his body by loosening the bonds within the biopolymers, due to - and further demonstrating - the absolute control he has over them.

Superhuman Durability: The biomorphic structure of the Manhunter's body allows him to absorb almost all kinetic energies such as high caliber bullets, shrapnel, or flying debris easily. He can harden his biopolymers by rebinding them and increase his durability. Along with his nigh-invulnerability, his shape shifting makes him even more difficult to harm. Hazardous environments practically do not affect the Martian Manhunter. In addition, Martian Manhunter's immune system protects him from all toxins and diseases.

Superhuman Strength: The Martian Manhunter is one of the strongest beings on the planet. The Martian's superhuman strength comes from his Biomorphic structure formed from immensely long and complex molecular chains, augmented with his psionic and telekinetic abilities allowing him to lift incredible weights without these weights crumbling under the stress. By modifying the density of these biopolymers, the Manhunter can make himself stronger by forcing them into tighter bundles. While at a resting state the limits of his strength are unknown, the Manhunter can lift 100 tons without much effort.

Superhuman Stamina: J'onn's endurance is just as formidable as his strength and invulnerability. He can operate under extreme conditions for an indeterminate period of time without showing signs of fatigue. The exact range of this power is unknown.

Regeneration: The Martian Manhunter has shown amazing regenerative capabilities. So great are they that he has been able to completely regenerate from nothing but his severed hand, regenerate in moments from nothing more than a puddle of green liquid, and in another instance, survived beheading.

Flight: The Martian Manhunter flies by manipulation of gravitons, manipulation of magnetic fields and control of his absolute molecular movement. These combine to give him the ability to fly great distances with little fatigue and at great speed. The Manhunter has also been seen flying in space with no difficulty. J'onn can therefore fly at speeds exceeding the escape velocity of earth under his own power.

Superhuman Speed: Either through flight or natural movement, the Martian Manhunter can maintain speed and demonstrates reflexes far in excess to that of most metahumans, and for far longer. Like the power of flight, this is accomplished by manipulating the magnetic fields of energy surrounding his body, as well as ambient gravitational particles. Traditionally, J'onn only uses his superhuman speed while flying. He can process thoughts, move, and react at super speed as well. J'onn has also demonstrated that he is fast enough to comfortably catch bullets and other exceedingly fast projectiles.

Extrasensory Input: J'onn possesses nine different senses. One of these senses could account for instances of the Manhunter's perceived precognitive abilities.

Longevity

Super Hearing

Super-Breath: The inner valves and chambers inside the Martian Manhunter's air canals are very dense and greatly enhanced, allowing him to create strong hurricane force winds just by exhaling pressurized air from his lungs in an incredibly strong burst.

Enhanced Senses

Martian Vision: The actual nature of this power seems to vary depending on the reports. It has been seen to be a bolt of force, directed by the Manhunter's eyes causing considerable damage. It has also been seen to cause flammable objects to catch fire. It also grants J'onn the ability to see into other spectrums of light. J'onn can use his Martian vision to see people and objects that are invisible to others.

Electro-Magnetic Spectrum Vision

Telescopic Vision

Microscopic Vision

Heat Vision

Telepathy: The Martian Manhunter is the most powerful telepath on the planet, and is one of the strongest telepathic beings in the Universe. He is able to read the mind of any human with no difficulties, and the only minds that can cause him trouble are insane minds. He can even read the subconscious mind as well. He is able to read minds over great distances and has been known to scan the mind of every person on Earth within a matter of moments. This telepathy extends to distances as far away as the moon, since it is known that the Martian Manhunter can telepathically communicate with someone on Earth while on the moon. It is not known whether there is any limit to the number of people he can be attuned to or whether there are any special requirements to being attuned to him. In addition to reading minds, the Martian Manhunter has a multitude of other telepathic capabilities, one of which allows him to literally reprogram the mind of a subject into believing whatever he wants them to. He can use this ability to help subjects forget things that he does not want them to remember as well as set up post-hypnotic suggestions.

Illusions

Possession

Astral Projection

Mind Control: The Martian Manhunter can also control other beings mind's. Insane minds seem to be the only minds he has some trouble controlling.

Telepathic Relay: Otherwise known as a telepathic link. The Manhunter is able to use his telepathic prowess as a relay station for a group of minds, who can then "speak" to each other through him. This relaying ability seems to be limited to the same range as the Manhunter's normal telepathic range.

Telepathic Assault: The Martian Manhunter can also use his telepathic abilities in an offensive manner. He has the ability to cause mental shutdown in a target using his psionic powers. The Manhunter does not use this power often due to the invasive nature and harshness of such a telepathic attack.

Thought Sensing: The Manhunter can use the mental signature of a being to track it, and can detect life forms by their empathic as well as telepathic signatures. He can detect whether a being is intelligent or not, and can communicate with it empathically if it does not have a communication-driven frame of reference with which normal telepathy may function. He can also detect various states of mind from anywhere in the world.

Mayavana: One of the most prized abilities of the Martians is Mayavana. It is the ability to reach into another mind and create a mental reality as real as any normal reality. The strain of Mayavana is such that it can only be used once in a lifetime, and so is normally used on the one that a Martian loves the most.

Telekinesis: J'onn possesses the ability to move objects with his mind, which he described as ""molecular hypnosis" and "Martian mind-over-matter".

Abilities

Genius Level Intellect: The Martian Manhunter possesses highly advanced reasoning and logic capabilities, and uses them to great effect. The Martian Manhunter's particularly astute reasoning capabilities and long-term association with Earth's global population gives him an edge in dealing with humans of diverse governments, cultures and religions.

Investigation

Multilingualism

Meditation: Martians enter a meditative state as a form of sleep.

Weaknesses

Vulnerability to Fire: The Martian Manhunter has a psychosomatic fear of fire. The Guardians of the Universe have built in a fear of fire when they first confronted the Burned. Exposure to fire, causes him to lose his powers, and in the case of extreme fire, to lose his control over his biomorphic form. The Manhunter is more vulnerable in this form and can take damage in this vulnerable state.

Chocoholism: It has also been suggested that something within J'onn's physiology makes him addicted to the chemicals used in the Earth snack, Chocos. Withdrawal symptoms include violent bursts of rage and loss of intellect. However, these claims have never been accurately substantiated, and may even be false.

Equipment

Kuru pendant: The Martian Manhunter owns one of two Kuru pendants. The pendant acts as a repository of ancient Martian lore and knowledge. The second pendant belonged to the late Martian, Roh'kar.

Personality

Like all Martians, J'onn has a somewhat cold and stoic demeanor. He has very restricted emotional expressions. J'onn typically acts as the voice of reason in the Justice League and is one of the wisest leaders within the hero community, along with Batman and Superman.

Despite his cold exterior, J'onn is one of the kindest and most noble heroes operating on earth. The Manhunter has demonstrated enormous willpower, as evidenced by his ability to retain his sanity after the death of his race. He has a subtle sense of humor and an affinity for the chocolate cookie sandwiches called Chocos. The Martian Manhunter is considered by many to be the heart and soul of the Justice League.

Origin

Centuries ago on the planet Ma'aleca'andra, the Green Martians known as M'yrnn and Sha'sheen gave birth to twin sons. The bearing of twins was uncommon among the Martian culture, and as such, the first of the twins was named J'onn J'onzz, whose name means "Light to the Light." J'onn's brother, however, was born a mutant, bereft of a Martian's innate ability to communicate telepathically. He was named Ma'alefa'ak, whose name means "Darkness in the Heart."

As an adult, J'onn became a Manhunter and married a Martian woman named M'yri'ah. The two established a modest home for themselves beneath the windswept Martian plains and gave birth to a daughter named K'hym.

Years passed, and J'onn's brother Ma'alefa'ak grew to despise everything about Martian culture. In an ambitious endeavor to commit full-scale genocide against his own people, he engineered a contagious virus known as H'ronmeer's Curse. The virus reacted to telepathic energy and carried from one Martian to the next whenever they elected to use their psionic powers. The plague responded to a Martian's innate fear of fire, causing them psychosomatic stress so intense, that their bodies and minds would literally burst into flame. J'onn desperately tried to keep his wife and daughter from using their mental gifts, but they were unable to do so, and thus ultimately contracted the virus. K'hym was the first to experience the symptoms, and M'yri'ah followed soon after. J'onn was anguished as he watched his family burning to death before his very eyes. The trauma of the event shattered his psyche, and nearly drove him mad.

Welcome to Earth

Meanwhile, on the planet Earth, a would-be scientist named Dr. Saul Erdel developed a transmitter machine based upon ancient Martian technology. Seeking to make contact with extraterrestrial life, he aimed his device towards the vicinity of Mars and activated it. The transmitter beam streaked across both space and time, striking the Martian Manhunter at a point in time several centuries before Erdel would even be born. The beam brought J'onn back to Erdel's natural time era, where he collapsed on the ground outside of the doctor's Colorado laboratory.

Erdel brought the distraught Martian inside and attempted to nurse him back to health. The anguish of J'onn's mental state created a psychic bond between the two, and Erdel became aware of the events that took place on Mars. In an effort to heal J'onn's mind, Erdel used the mental link to fabricate a new history for the Martian. He created a back-story inspired by the writings of famous science fiction novelists such as Ray Bradbury and Edgar Rice Burroughs. Eventually, J'onn's sanity was restored, and he was prepared to function in this strange, new world. Erdel put the idea into his head that he should become a great champion, and thus J'onn adopted the heroic guise of the Martian Manhunter.

When J'onn shapeshifted into a human-like form, Erdel was shocked and suffered a heart attack that killed him. As he was dying, Erdel asked J'onn for forgiveness for making him a prisoner of Earth.

It was later revealed that Mars was dead when J'onn was taken, killed by a mental plague deliberately started by his brother Ma'alefa'ak. He took the identity of the Bronze Wraith, and fought crime with the Justice Experience.

John Jones, Police Detective

J'onn was able to use his powers to fit into human society. He adopted a human appearance and called himself "John Jones." He became a police detective in the city of Middleton. For a long time, he worked as a policeman while secretly using his alien powers to solve cases and help people.

Some time later, the existence of the Martian Manhunter was accidentally revealed. From this point on, J'onn stopped hiding his superhero feats from the world, but he kept his double-identity as John Jones secret. It was at this time that he began to publicly appear in his green-skinned humanoid form.

He subsequently acquired policewoman Diane Meade as his partner, and an pet Zook who helped him solve cases.

J'onn J'onzz was one of the founding members of the Justice League of America.

J'onn's career as a police detective was ended by the Idol Head of Diabolu. This evil statue expelled a deadly cloud. John Jones saved a child from the cloud, but in doing so he was engulfed by it. His fellow policemen believed he must have died. J'onn took this as an opportunity to abandon his double life. He allowed the police department to believe he had died, and as the Martian Manhunter he even attended his own funeral.

Martian Manhunter Without John Jones; Justice League of America

After this, J'onn J'onzz and Zook began a quest to combat the Idol Head of Diabolu, which they finally managed to destroy.

J'onn then briefly assumed the alias "Marco Xavier" in order to infiltrate the international crime cartel known as VULTURE.

J'onn served as a regular member of the Justice League of America. However, when a group of evil Martians led by General Blanx destroyed the surface of Mars, forcing all the good Martians to flee in a rocket, J'onn accompanied them into space, leaving the Justice League.

Over the next few years J'onn was rarely seen, but he occasionally showed up to help the JLA. Eventually he returned to the JLA full-time.

When the original Justice League of America disbanded, J'onn became the leader of the new "Justice League Detroit". He remained with that team until it, too, disbanded.

Justice League International

J'onn was one of the founding members of the Justice League International.

J'onzz revealed that his familiar appearance is not his true Martian form but a "compromise" between his true form and a human appearance - explaining that his real form is private and that, even on Mars, his "public" appearance was the familiar version.

In addition to serving in the League under his own identity, he also joined as "Bloodwynd."

JLA

The Martian Manhunter is the most recognized hero in the Southern Hemisphere, and he maintains a number of different secret identities, many of them outside the United States. However, following two incidents, he decides to focus on his original human identity and retire the others.

Later, the Martian Manhunter attempts to conquer his fear of fire and makes a deal with a flame-wielding villainess named Scorch, who wants J'onzz' telepathic help in dealing with her own mental issues. 20,000 years before, an extremely dangerous race of beings called "the Burning" caused large fires to help themselves reproduce asexually. In order to prevent the Burning from destroying much of the universe, the Guardians of the Universe split the species into the Green Martians and the White Martians, changed their reproductive behavior, and instilled in them a fear of fire. When the Martian Manhunter confronts his fear of fire, he reverts into one of the ancient creatures and changes his name to Fernus. His genetic memory identifies threats such as Vandal Savage, who killed one of the Burning on ancient Earth. This same genetic memory also makes Fernus hate the Green Lantern, due to his association with the Oans.

Fernus increases the strength of the powers he inherits from J'onn: For example, he can phase other beings rather than just himself, and he has access to pyrokinesis. He can breathe fire of such intensity that it harms Scorch, who had previously been thought immune to damage from fire. Fernus' tremendous strength also allows him to dominate the Justice League in combat even without his Martian telepathic powers. He can also heal himself from almost total destruction within seconds.

The Justice League eventually defeats Fernus by re-enlisting Plastic Man, who is immune to Fernus' psychic powers and has superior shape-changing abilities. It is implied that Batman recruited Plastic Man to the Justice League as a balance in case the Martian Manhunter ever got out of control.

After destroying Fernus, J'onn grieves for Scorch, who had fallen into a coma, and with whom he had fallen in love. J'onn later tells Superman that his aversion to fire has changed: he is now invulnerable to flames unless they are "flames of passion" or of some other "psychic significance."

Infinite Crisis and "One Year Later"

Although J'onzz is initially thought killed in the explosion of the Justice League Watchtower, Justice League member Manitou Dawn receives a telepathic vision of J'onzz assuring her that he "will reveal himself in time," but needs her help to keep an eye on a mysterious, newly-powerful telepath - the mind-controlling villain, Key - whose abilities he had always managed to dampen before.

J'onzz resurfaces during Infinite Crisis, unconscious and connected to Alexander Luthor, Jr.'s vibrational tower, along with Lady Quark, the Ray, Black Adam, Power Girl, Nightshade, and Breach. Wonder Girl, Superboy, and Nightwing free J'onzz and the others from Alexander's tower.

Oracle asks J'onzz to telepathically coordinate the heroes' response to the Society's global jailbreak. He joins the assembled heroes in the defense of Metropolis from the combined might of the world's super-villains and in the battle against Superboy-Prime.

In the following months, J'onn masqueraded as U.S. Secretary of State Kakalios in an attempt to bring down Checkmate. He was successful in eliminating it as a U.S. government-controlled agency. However, it soon reorganized under the United Nations.

One of the most dramatic changes in J'onn's life occurred a short time later. While operating under the guise of William Dyer, he discovered that several Green Martians had crash-landed on Earth, and were being held by high-ranking members of the Defense Department. One of the Martians, Roh'kar, broke free of his confinement and made contact with the Martian Manhunter. The union was bittersweet, however, as a brainwashed assassin ended Roh'kar's life with a weapon designed to target Martians. J'onn found five of Roh'kar's colleagues and rescued them from the bowels of a government think tank. He established a safe house for them and pledged to do everything in his power to keep them safe from government scrutiny.

Salvation Run and Final Crisis

When Checkmate decided to capture a number of super-villains and exile them on a "prison planet" in an event known as Salvation Run, J'onn volunteered to disguise himself as Blockbuster and infiltrate the planet to keep an eye on things, making periodic reports to Batman. Catwoman finds out his true identity and, to save her own skin, outs him to the other villains, who torture him. When the villains escape the planet, teleporting back to Earth, they leave J'onn in his cage to die.

He is "rescued" by Libra and the new Secret Society of Super-Villains who open a Boom Tube between the planet and Earth. Libra brings him back to Earth with the express purpose of killing him, doing so with his spear tipped scale staff, for the Human Flame to show the Society members that he can give them their hearts desire--Human Flame having wanted J'onn dead for foiling a crime of his years ago. In his final moments J'onn broadcast a telepathic message to fellow heroes Batman, Superman, Green Lantern Hal Jordan, Gypsy, and Black Canary prompting them to say his name and, hours after his death had been discovered, simultaneously record part of his life story in their sleep.

His remains were interred in a pyramid removed from Egypt and placed back in its original location on Mars in a ceremony attended by many heroes. He was eulogized by Superman.

The Blackest Night

During the events of the Blackest Night, the dead rose across the universe and J'onn was one of them. After his resurrection and admission to the Black Lantern Corps, he went to confront Barry Allen and Hal Jordan, who were talking over Batman's grave being robbed. He approaches them saying that they should be dead and begins to fight the two, and is soon joined by Black Lanterns Elongated Man, Sue Dibny, Firestorm, Hawkman, and Hawkgirl. When the Atom arrives, Barry and Hal create a fire tornado to destroy J'onn. This fails to stop him, and the heroes are cornered until Indigo-1 and another Indigo Lantern arrive to drive them off. At the end of the Blackest Night, J'onn is revived by the Entity along with other heroes and a few villains. When Superman asks if J'onn is truly alive, J'onn responds, "It appears so."

Brightest Day

J'onn is a very prominent member, finding a water source on Mars and seen talking with the daughter of Doctor Erdel. J'onn was seen last tucking her into bed in a retirement home, in the form of her father. J'onn then visited the doctor's laboratory, but plant life around him starts to die every time he gets near. He later went to see M'gann M'orzz in Australia during her mediation search, but found her beaten and tied up. While tending to her, he is contacted by the Entity, who instructs him to burn down the newly-formed forest. When J'onn's asks M'gann who did this to her, M'gann says she was attacked by a female green Martian. J'onn presumes the forest he is to burn down is in Star City but is questioned by Green Arrow. He attempts to burn down the forest before being telepathically attacked by the Entity. The Entity reveals to him that the newly-formed forest he is to burn down is on Mars. After J'onn lashed out the Star City's forest, he starts to return home.

When J'onn enters his home, he is confronted by a female green Martian named D'Kay D'Razz, who is the one responsible for M'gann's attack. D'kay explains her origins and wants to be his mate. J'onn refuses, learning she is a psychopath when D'kay angrily lashes out to attack and enters his mind. J'onn tries to resist influence from D'kay's mind, but her control over his mind tempts him with visions of a fantasy world where all the Martians and J'onn's family are resurrected by the Entity. While reunited with his lost family, J'onn discovers that they are false and realizes that they are a ruse and the death corpse is carved of Martian symbols of love and hate from D'kay's influence. J'onn arrives vengeful and wrings D'kay's neck in disgust. J'onn defeats D'kay by forcing her into the sun but is saved from the same fate by the White Lantern Entity, who informs him that his mission has been accomplished, and returns his life to him. The Entity then told J'onn to choose between Mars and Earth. J'onn chose Earth and returned only to be absorbed into the Earth by the Entity and Deadman as "part of the plan."

When the "Dark Avatar," made his presence known, Martian Manhunter is revealed to be one of the four Elementals, the others being Aquaman, Firestorm, Hawkman and Hawkgirl. He becomes the element of Earth to protect the Star City forest from the "Dark Avatar," which appears to be the Black Lantern version of Swamp Thing. The Elementals are then fused with the body of Alec Holland in order for him to be transformed by the Entity into the new Swamp Thing and battle against the Dark Avatar. After the Dark Avatar is defeated, Swamp Thing brought Martian Manhunter and the other Elementals back to normal. Afterward, J'onn helps Melissa Erdel and removes the piece of machinery from her head that made her lose her mind.

Fun Facts

Although obviously alien in appearance, the form that most Earthlings associated with the Martian Manhunter is not actually his true form. In his natural state of being, J'onn has a slender body, with sharp, angular features and a tapered cranium. The more muscular "beetle-brow" appearance was inspired by Saul Erdel, who convinced J'onn to assume a form derived from the literary works of science fiction authors such as Edgar Rice Burroughs and Ray Bradbury.

Batman left one Choco on his casket.

In his earliest appearances, the Martian Manhunter resembled a normal human, albeit with green skin. He was drawn with standard human eyes and eyebrows. In later years however, creators decided to give J'onn a more alien appearance and provided him with the more modernized beetle-brow look.

In some of his earliest adventures, the Martian Manhunter possessed the ability to see into the near future. However, there have been scant examples of this, and it is no longer a power that he possesses in modern continuity. By his own account, the Martian Manhunter cannot perceive the future.

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actuallyadhd · 6 years

Note

Have you heard of the seven types of adhd? And what do you think of it?

Hello friend!

Personally, I think the seven types is not useful. It doesn’t specify all, there are way more ‘types’. It doesn’t work well becuase there may be a mix of the types. It just sets out types that personally feels pressuring that we have to fit under a label. Nobody has the same exact issues as another, may be similar, but not the same. That is my take on it. - B

I agree with B. My reading of the seven types is that they really describe different types of things. Because I am procrastinating on going to bed, I’ll break it down for you. (The information about the seven types is coming directly from Dr Amen’s web site. Note that the only thing I find helpful about Amen is the ideas in his book Healing ADHD. Aside from that, I think his seven types of ADHD are bogus and SPECT scans are really not a good way to diagnose ADHD.)

This is really long, so I’m putting in a cut.

All types include these “core symptoms”: A short attention span for regular, routine, everyday tasks (homework, chores, etc.); Distractibility; Organization problems (like having a disorganized room and/or always running late); Procrastination; Problems with follow-through; Poor impulse control (saying or doing something before thinking it through).

1. “Classic ADD”---Symptoms include: Inattentive; Easily distracted; Disorganized; Impulsive; Poor follow through; Trouble listening when others talk to them; Making careless mistakes/poor attention to detail; Forgetfulness; Restlessness; Being fidgety; Difficulty awaiting their turn; Act as though driven by a motor; Being noisy; Talking excessively; Interrupting others. The description says that babies are colicky, active, and wiggly; children are restless, talkative, noisy, and demanding.

This reads like Hyperactive/Impulsive ADHD to me.

2. “Inattentive ADD”---Symptoms include: Trouble focusing; Easily distracted; Disorganized; Poor follow through; Trouble listening when others talk to them; Problems with time management; Tendency to lose things; Making careless mistakes; poor attention to detail; Forgetfulness; Excessive daydreaming; Complaints of being bored; Appearing unmotivated or apathetic; Being tired, sluggish or slow moving; Appearing “spacey” or preoccupied. This is the type that is why they refuse to use “ADHD” as the name for the disorder, because not all people who have ADHD are hyperactive. It gets missed because these people don’t cause the problems those with “Classic ADD” cause.

This is definitely Inattentive ADHD. I want to note that technically there is supposed to be a / in the middle, so it’s actually AD/HD, indicating that hyperactivity may or may not be present. But anyway. Pedant and all that.

3. “Over-focused ADD”---Symptoms include: Core symptoms of ADD; Excessive or senseless worrying; Getting stuck in loops of negative thoughts; Oppositional and argumentative; Tendency toward compulsive behaviors; Difficulty seeing options; Excessive worrying; Tendency to hold grudges; Difficulty shifting attention from subject to subject; Tendency to hold onto own opinion and not listen to others; Needing to have things done a certain way or they get upset; May or may not be hyperactive. Apparently the hallmark of this one is hyperfocus. And people who are related to addicts or alcoholics are more likely to have this type.

Considering the fact that most ADHDers hyperfocus, this must be the most common type, right? Not according to Amen. WTF, dude, this is like a hallmark of ADHD. It’s not a necessary thing, but almost all of us hypefocus.

4. “Temporal Lobe ADD”---Symptoms include: Core symptoms of ADD; Memory problems; Auditory processing issues; Irritability; Episodes of quick temper; Periods of spaciness or confusion; Periods of panic and/or fear for no reason; Visual changes such as seeing shadows or objects changing shape; Episodes of déjà vu; Sensitivity or mild paranoia; Headaches or abdominal pain of uncertain origin; History of head injury; Dark thoughts (may involve suicidal or homicidal thoughts); Possible learning disabilities; May or may not be hyperactive. As you see in the list of symptoms, this is the type found in people with brain injury.

I’m going to leave aside the stuff about brain injury, because it’s a known fact that brain injury can cause a lot of ADHD symptoms, and in some cases stimulant medication can be really helpful. Instead, let’s look at the fact that the list of emotion-related symptoms are incredibly common among all ADHDers. I’m also not sure how having a learning disorder can be a symptom of ADHD. Comorbid, definitely. But a symptom? Nah, that’s weird.

5. “Limbic ADD”---Symptoms include: Core symptoms of ADD; Moodiness; Negativity; Low energy; Frequent irritability; Tendency for social isolation; Feelings of hopelessness; Perceived helplessness; Feelings of guilt; Loss of interest in things; Sleep changes (too much or too little); Chronic low self-esteem; May or may not be hyperactive. The SPECT scans show subtle differences between this and depression, so that plus developmental history helps to diagnose.

Sorry not sorry, this sounds like depression and the differences in the SPECT scans (which, as I said at the beginning, are suspect) are probably due to the fact that the person also has ADHD.

6. “Ring of Fire ADD”---Symptoms include: Core symptoms of ADD; Sensitive to noise, light, clothes or touch; Cyclic mood changes (highs and lows); Inflexible rigid thinking; Oppositional; Demanding to have their way; Periods of mean, nasty or insensitive behavior; Periods of increased talkativeness; Unpredictable behavior; Periods of increased impulsivity; Grandiose or “larger than life” thinking; Talks fast; Racing thoughts; Appears anxious or fearful; Irritability; May or may not be hyperactive. This is the one that can be confused with bipolar disorder, but apparently with this type of ADHD you have the behaviour issues all the time. Also, more subtle differences in the SPECT scans.

This sounds like ADHD with comorbid bipolar disorder and sensory processing disorder. The clarifying paragraph talks about “bipolar kids” and to my knowledge, it is incredibly rare for children to have bipolar disorder. It states that adults with bipolar will have mania while those who just have this type of ADHD will not. Given that a lot of these symptoms are pretty common ADHD symptoms regardless of type, I call bull.

7. “Anxious ADD”---Symptoms include: Core symptoms of ADD; Frequently anxious or nervous; Physical stress symptoms such as headaches; Tendency to freeze in social situations; Dislikes or gets excessively nervous speaking in public; Predicts the worse; Conflict avoidant; Fear of being judged. There’s not much else here beyond SPECT scan information.

Anyone else recognize signs of rejection sensitive dysphoria here? RSD is practically universal. Aside from that, you can actually have ADHD plus an anxiety disorder.

So here’s the main problem with this whole idea: while it’s certainly possible (and likely) that the current three types in the DSM-5 are not an accurate sorting method, neither are these seven types. He’s conflating ADHD plus comorbid disorders AND confusing comorbid disorders (and common symptoms of ADHD in general) with symptoms of these specific types.

He says that it’s important to know which type you are so that you can tailor treatment to your type. The whole basis for all of this is the SPECT scans, which show differences in blood flow during concentration. The thing is, we know that the ADHD brain actually develops differently from the non-ADHD brain. Some structures are simply not the same. So I’m not sure if blood flow is even relevant, since it could be related to which brain structures have developed in which ways.

He also says multiple times that since ADHD is different for everyone, there’s not really a one-size-fits-all treatment. While I agree with that, I’m confused about why that means we need more boxes to squeeze us into. I mean, reading the symptoms lists I fit into at least three different types on his list of seven... probably because I have Combined ADHD.

So anyway, that’s the breakdown. I’m sure someone out there has more science about why this is bunk, and I’d love to share if you want to submit the information.

-J

#Anonymous #the seven types of adhd #actually adhd #adhd #asks #Dr Amen #treatment options

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4mumy · 3 years

Text

Kdney stones

Have you experienced the pain of kidney stones? I have. It is one of the most excruciating pain possible. Fortunately, kidney stones can be easily prevented.

Kidney stones (medically called renal lithiasis) are small stone-like materials that form inside the kidneys. Normally, a person has two kidneys, and each kidney has a collecting tube (similar to a funnel) called a ureter. Both ureters are then connected to the bladder, where urine collects and is stored. From the bladder, the urine goes out through the urethra, which is located within the male and female genitals.

Because of the human anatomy, kidney stones can get stuck anywhere from the kidney itself, down to the ureter and bladder. These stones are usually made up of calcium and other minerals. The smaller the stone, the easier it is to pass out. However, when larger stones form, usually 3 millimeters or larger, these stones may block urine flow and lead to kidney failure. Hence, the need to diagnose the condition early.

The pain due to kidney stones is difficult to describe. It’s a deep and searing pain, similar in intensity to a toothache. The pain is usually located at the groin and lower abdominal area, but can also be felt at the lower back.

However, the tell-tale sign of a stone is when the urine color becomes pinkish or red-tinged which means that there is blood in the urine. In some cases, the patient experiences nausea, vomiting, and pain upon urinating. When fever and chills are present, there could also be a urinary infection.

What Causes Kidney Stones?

There are many factors that predispose one to have kidney stones.

1. Hereditary factors

If someone in the family has kidney stones, then you are also at risk of developing stones. If you’ve previously had kidney stones, then this condition might recur if you don’t follow the preventive measures.

2. Adult males are at higher risk

Statistics show that males and persons 40 years old and above are more prone to develop kidney stones. Maybe it’s because men work and perspire more, leading to dehydration.

3. Lack of fluid intake

People who don’t drink enough water often develop kidney stones. This is because the urine contains crystal-like substances like calcium, oxalate and uric acid, which needs a lot of water to stay in a dissolved form. Just like you need enough fluid to dissolve the sugar in your coffee, so does the body need enough water to keep these substances from crystallizing.

4. Living in the “kidney stone belt”

Based on statistical data, researchers have mapped out a geographical area referred to as the “kidney stone belt.” This pertains to warm climate regions where the hot weather causes the people to develop more kidney stones. Since the Philippines is part of the Afro-Asian “kidney stone belt,” we are all at risk of getting kidney stones.

5. High sodium (salt) and high protein diet

The Filipino diet of salted fish, soy sauce, fish sauce and bagoong all contribute to the high incidence of kidney stones in the Philippines. A high salt diet increases the amount of calcium being excreted in the urine. Moreover, a high protein diet releases excess amino acids and uric acid components, which acidifies the urine and makes one prone to develop stones.

6. Other factors – Overweight people are at greater risk of having kidney stones. There are also some kidney conditions and digestive diseases that predispose one to develop kidney stones.

If your doctor suspects kidney stones, the following laboratory tests may be requested:

1. Urinalysis

A urinalysis may reveal two things. One is the presence of red blood cells, which means that the stone may have injured the lining of the urinary tract. And two, the presence of white blood cells, which would indicate a concomitant urinary infection.

2. Blood tests

Tests of blood calcium and uric acid are useful to determine if the person is susceptible to form these stone components. A creatinine test is also done to check for kidney function.

3. Imaging tests

Your doctor may request for an ultrasound or a CT-Scan of the kidneys and bladder area. These tests may reveal the actual location and size of the stones.

4. Analysis of the passed stones

According to Dr. Roberto Tanchanco, a kidney specialist, it would be ideal if the patient could catch the stone itself by urinating into a strainer. If a stone is found, then this specimen can be analyzed in a laboratory.

As nature would have it, there are four common types of kidney stones.

Treatment may differ for each kind.

1. Calcium stones

By far, majority of stones are the calcium oxalate stones. Oxalate can be found in common foods, such as nuts and chocolate. To prevent calcium stones, your doctor may prescribe potassium citrate tablets or a certain diuretic.

2. Uric acid stones

Uric acid stones can form in people with gout and high blood levels of uric acid. Those who enjoy a diet high in animal protein may be at risk to get uric acid stones. Doctors may prescribe allopurinol tablet to reduce uric acid levels.

3. Cystine stones

Some people have a genetic disorder that causes the kidneys to excrete a high amount of cystine in the urine. As with all types of stones, doctors advise increasing the amount of fluid intake daily.

4. Struvite stones

Struvite stones are usually associated with urinary tract infections. Some struvite stones can become large and cause serious kidney damage. Antibiotics are given to treat the infection.

Treatment Options:

Here are some general advice depending on the size of the stones and the severity of the symptoms. For patients with small stones, treatment simply consists of drinking 8 to 12 glasses of water a day to produce a nearly clear-colored urine. Some doctors also prescribe medications such as potassium citrate (to reduce stone formation), a local diuretic called sambong, or an alpha blocker drug to relax the ureter muscle lining.

For patients found to have larger stones, several procedures may be considered. First, there is shock wave therapy (called extracorporeal shock wave lithotripsy) done under sedation or light anesthesia. This procedure uses sound wave vibrations to break the stones into pieces small enough to pass out the urinary tract.

Second, if shock wave therapy fails or if the stone is very large, then actual surgery may be done to physically remove the stone. This procedure is done under general anesthesia.

A third less invasive option is the use a special scope (ureteroscope) to scoop out the stone. This thin tube is carefully inserted by the doctor through the urethra and bladder, to reach the ureter.

Ask your urologist about the pros and cons of these procedures. Your doctor will know which option is best for you. In the meantime, drink lots of water every day. Good luck.

0 notes

jinjikook · 7 years

Text

Laundry Day (M)

word count: 5k

genre: smut; domestic au

pairing: reader/jeongguk

warning(s)/kink(s): dry humping, clothed sex, dirty talk, swearing, fantasizing, slight nipple play, teasing

summary: jeongguk always pioneered one household chore: laundry. now why he had such an affinity for it, you had no idea. that is, until you come home and he lost track of time, causing you to stumble upon him in the midst of something strange and yet altogether intriguing.

music: work out - j.cole ; touchin’, lovin’ - trey songz ft. nicki minaj

masterlist

gif credit

“Guk?”

You shuffled past the threshold, keeping your grip steady on the several plastic bags that held all the groceries you’d bought to last you the month—or less, depending how many times Jeongguk’s friends came over because they ate like bottomless pits and seemed to always have a knack of appearing whenever something was being cooked up. As you struggled to carry the many bags on each arm, the plastic screaming as it stretched thinner from the weight of the groceries, the straps dug into your arms and made you hiss in pain as they no doubt striped your arm with its tracks.

You could’ve spared yourself this cruel and unusual punishment by just taking a few bags at a time but you steeled your jaw and huffed through your nose because two trips are for pussies.

Kicking the door to your shared apartment shut, you do some odd wobbling shuffle towards the small living room that is the common area of your home. You let one arm go stiff straight to make all the bags on it slide down ungracefully, plopping in the general area of the couch and you groaned at the sudden weight off your left side. Doing the same for the other arm, blood finally began to course through the veins of your limbs and you rubbed the track marks achingly.

Moving past the living room into the dimly lit kitchen, you continue to rub at the sore plastic burns as you reach for a bottle of water from your fridge, taking a quick scan and surveying if you’d bought everything needed. When you looked down at where Jeongguk kept his Gatorades, you groan to find that you bought the wrong flavor, forgetting that Jeongguk had changed his favorite yet again to one of the newer ones. You figured he’d just have to deal with the yellow ones for now and if he wanted the others so badly then he can go get them himself.

After a swift gulp, you wipe your damp mouth with the back of your hand and craned your neck to look down the hall of your apartment.

“Jeon? You home?” You swore you’d seen his motorcycle parked outside, in the shade of one of the bushier trees in front of your apartment complex. You were going to remind him to move it to the actual covered parking spot that you’re assigned when you move in, because it looked like it was going to rain later on and you knew how much he hated having to dry his seat.

Capping your water bottle, you set it down on the corner of the kitchen island and begin to pad out towards Jeongguk’s bedroom, wondering if maybe he had his headphones in or if had just fallen asleep as soon as he got back from work.

You poked your head into his bedroom, the door slightly ajar, to find no one there. A lump of covers was balled up in his bed but no Jeongguk was to be found. His stuff was around, his headphones strewn over his nightstand, phone plugged into the charger and his keys dangling from the pocket of his leather jacket as it lay perched on his dark desk chair.

Where was this kid?

Letting out a sigh, you resign to check the bathroom only to turn up with the same results. You thought maybe he’d gone out with a friend tonight. Yoongi or Jin could’ve easily picked him up and taken him to some party or a nice place to eat out. But usually Jeongguk would let you know when he wouldn’t be home, so you wouldn’t have to worry about cooking or buying for two. Plus it’d be strange for him to leave without his phone or his house key, especially if he planned on staying out late and you were sure to lock up for the night.

Then you heard the telltale tumble of clothes and you had an aha! moment, realizing that he was probably doing laundry, a habit he learned from his mother. He always did laundry, sometimes to the point that it was excessive but you never judged or questioned it, it wasn’t like he was hurting anyone and it meant that it was a chore that you rarely had to worry about doing.

The laundry room you two shared was fairly small, almost the size of a closet with the top loading washer and dryer smushed against each other, just enough room to fit past the door with a laundry basket and shut it behind you but it still felt too small to actually close it; for fear of the walls closing in on you and the room getting stuffy with recycled oxygen.

But if Jeongguk was in there, he had the door shut for whatever reason and you worried for him. You knew just how hot and clammy it got in there if the door wasn’t left open, the confined space barely circulating any crisp air conditioning and the heat from the two machines made everything that much more warmer.

You reached to pull open the door, your mouth opening to say Jeongguk’s name but you choked on your words as you caught sight of what was happening.

Jeongguk was in his signature cobalt gray sweatpants, rocking a hell of a boner and leant over the washing machine as it rumbled to life, clothes tossing and turning inside and making the machine churn and jerk with movement as its cycle progressed. From where you stood, you could see the muscles of his back tightening as he pushed his crotch against the machine, the white t-shirt he had on doing absolutely nothing to conceal his slightly sweat-damp body convulsing with every bump of the washer.

His voice broke the relative silence, a tiny whimper as he pushed the head of his sensitive cock closer to the heated machine, relishing in how the vibrations coursed into his body and left him in shambles. He was shaking slightly, trembling from the immense pleasure that shot through him, his veins bulging in his arms as he gripped the sides of the off-white machine with all he had, his ass tightening as he pushed into it once more.

Was this why he always did laundry?

Jeongguk turned all the sudden, eyes wide and hands coming to cover his crotch as he nearly screamed in surprise; apparently you voiced that question out loud.

“Y/N! I-It’s not what you think! I was just—you see, I had to—well, what had happened was—”

You were caught off guard from being caught watching him, your mouth gaped open and closed like a dying goldfish as you were at a loss for words, unable to voice both your concern and apologies all in one go without being sure it’d tumble into a bunch of word vomit.

“Please don’t tell anyone, I swear I don’t do this all the time,” Jeongguk pleaded hurriedly, his eyes as wide as saucers and lip wobbling as a sheen of wetness glistened his shaky gaze. You could tell it was hurting him to keep eye contact, tips of his ears the most vicious shade of red—probably as red as the tip of his dick, if you had to be honest—but his puppy dog eyes were pleading you, slightly overgrown front teeth digging into his bottom lip as he tried to convince you to keep his filthy secret from spreading.

“Guk, I would never… that’s your own personal thing, you entitled to your own privacy in these type of things.” You finally managed to make words that weren’t mush make it past your lips, eyebrows furrowing at the prospect of mocking Jeongguk for what he did in his time alone. “As long as you’re not like, jizzing in my clothes or anything like that, you do what you gotta do. You just caught me by surprise, I seriously wasn’t expecting this.”

“I didn’t think you’d be home so soon.”

You breathed out a laugh, the first moment you felt some of the tense awkwardness dissipate from the air.

“Jeon, it’s been like 2 hours and it’s nearly 8 o’clock, how long did you think I’d take to shop for two people?”

Jeongguk let out his own chuckle and removed one hand from covering himself to rub at the back of his neck, ruffling the chestnut hairs on the nape of his neck in the process.

“Guess I lost track of time.”

“Do you do this a lot? Like, is this why you’ve secured laundry duty?” Jeongguk actually laughed at that and as his hand shifted, you couldn’t help but spare a glance down to find him at half-mast, slowly softening in his sweats.

“Not that often, I still jerk it like a normal guy. But, on occasion, when no one’s home, it’s something different.”

“Do you mind if I let my curiosity get the best of me for like, two seconds?”

Jeongguk eyed you warily for a second, lip snug in his overbite, before giving you a small nod, his fluffy hair jostling with the movement.

“What does it feel like? What makes it so good?” You couldn’t help but dive right in, wondering just how Jeongguk could find pleasure in rubbing up against a washing machine like Bender from Futurama probably would.

“It’s like… God how do I put it?” Jeongguk looked up into the air at nothing, mouth trying to form around words as his thoughts ran into each other, trying to describe the amazing feeling he got when he played with himself like this. “Like how a girl would use a vibrator. You get all the good stuff you normally get when you’re going at it but you have that added element of the vibrations, extra tingles. Does that make sense?”

You nodded, tongue suddenly too fat for your mouth as you tried to stomach the information without letting it get to you. It was hard, your roommate and very close friend was extremely attractive, if you had to say so yourself. More than once had you checked him out, knowing whoever ended up with him was lucky as all hell. You did this to yourself, letting yourself stupidly ask questions with answers you knew were going to keep you up at night.

“You okay there Y/N? You’re looking a little pale in the face.” Jeongguk’s face entered your field of vision, a little too close for comfort in the already stuffy room.

“Y-yeah, totally fine. Just kinda got lost in my thoughts there.”

Jeongguk let a small smirk toy on his lips, his words speeding past his brain and shooting out before he could think twice about it.

“Oh yeah? What’re you so lost thinking about?” You looked at him wide-eyed, not wanting to admit how hot the idea was once he put everything into perspective. As a woman, you learned the good use of a proper vibrator so knowing that this was Jeongguk’s equivalent made your skin crawl with an innate need to see it again, to watch him unravel from something so simple, so innocent to the untrained eye. You’re sure you could never wash clothes again without thinking something lewd about the machine itself or your friend making use of it.

“C’mon ‘Guk, quit being so weird.” You playfully shoved at him, ignoring how firm he felt under your fingertips. He grinned widely and you would’ve found it adorable had his dick not been right there, in all its softening glory just smack dab against his pants. “All these loads of laundry and you couldn’t wash a pair of briefs to wear?” You meant for that to come out playfully but the way Jeongguk paused, his smile faltering and his length most definitely twitching in his sweats made you think he interpreted otherwise.

“It feels better like this, lets me get hard easier.”

“Oh.”

Jeongguk looked over you, biting his lip again—he needed to stop doing that, it was one of his greatest weapons, tied with his big ass doe eyes, defined musculature and his unfairly petite waist that you’ve pointed out far too many times whenever he tucked in his shirt to reveal his broad shoulders that tapered down into the slimmest of mid-lines to exist in the history of bodies.

“Y/N, did you want to stay and watch? I don’t mind, as long as you keep this between you and I. Don’t need the guys giving me shit because I prefer to hump the washing machine instead of fucking the dates they set me up with.”

You felt your body heat instantly drain from your face to pool down lower, fingers clutching at nothing at your sides at the mere thought of seeing firsthand how Jeongguk got himself off.

Was this the fine thread that hung between the distance of “friends” and “friends that have seen one another touching themselves in an odd but interesting way and getting aroused from the other’s presence”? Specific? Yes. True? Entirely in every way possible.

You were so deep in thought you hadn’t even noticed that Jeongguk was slowly touching himself through his sweat pants, his length slowly filling up with blood once more and making a sizeable form in the crotch of his bottoms. His eyes still stayed on you, though they were no longer as wide as his lids lazily came down, making his eyelashes look darker and longer against his brown irises.

“I’ll put another load to wash then, why don’t you make yourself comfortable?” Jeongguk turned to take the wet clothes out from the washing machine and threw them in the dryer, making sure to toss in a sheet of the lavender scented dryer sheets that Jeongguk loves so much. You’re sure you hadn’t said anything to confirm you wanted to watch but you also minimally remembered moving your head a fraction, something that is easily a nod to a trained eye. He closed the lid but hadn’t pressed the button to turn on the drying cycle, instead patting on the metal with a clunk to signal for you to take a seat on the machine.

Hesitating for a moment, you finally steel your limbs to walk you towards the dryer, hoisting yourself up to sit on it and have a perfect view of Jeongguk and his now nearly fully erect cock inside his bottoms. You tried to refrain from staring, feeling like you shouldn’t look so long at your friend’s dick.

“Like what you see, baby?” His words made you want to curl in on yourself, not anticipating the rush of pheromones he sent whirling down your body. He huffed smugly and heaved a heavy load into the washer, sure to throw in some of the tougher to wash items. “If I put in things like these,” He spoke, throwing in clothes as he did. “It makes the washer jerk around more, especially if I fill it up a good amount.” He looked like he discovered America with how shit-eating his grin was; having unlocked the secret to the perfect masturbatory session.

He put in the suds he needed and shut the lid, turning on the machine and pressing the button for a heavy cycle with hot water. As it roared to life, water began to fill the basin and you sat there watching as Jeongguk worked himself up, palming his length and letting his head roll back. Your breaths were labored as Jeongguk used the time he had before the real movement started to touch himself further. He let his hand trail under his slightly sweat-sticky and semi see-through shirt to pinch and pull at a nipple, the other perked up visibly under the fabric as it awaited the same fate. His Adams apple bobbed with the electric touches he gave himself, finally moving over to tug at the other and repeat the treatment.

Something in you wanted to hop down and take him by the teeth; take him apart before he could do so to himself.

“Hey Y/N, the cycle’s starting: ready for a show?” He grinned lazily and you couldn’t help but smile minutely back, feeling aroused but still seeing the dorky little bunny of a friend you had behind all the sweat and half-lidded eyes. Even as your mind was sloshing heavier than the now full bin of the washer, you still felt clarity tugging at your fingertips, making you squirm in anticipation for what you were going to see; what no one else has had the honor to know, let alone watch.

It started slow, just the light press of his crotch to the wall of the machine. Jeongguk clearly did a great job getting himself hard because the light gray was already dark and damp from the slick that was leaking from his head, dotting and smearing on the fabric in a way you could only describe as sensually artistic; made to be cut out and framed in some big shot New York sex museum or something.

You cocked your head, unable to stop the question from coming out of your mouth as your curiosity got the best of you once more.

“Do you always do this with clothes on?”

Jeongguk paused and chuckled, never once stopping the small movement of his hips, pushing just the tiniest bit of his cock further against the washer.

“For the most part, yeah. Though there was this one time that you were at your chick friend’s house and I knew you wouldn’t be back soon so I just threw in the clothes I was wearing and just went for it. Pretty sure all I had on were my glasses, you know, the round ones you really like? And a beanie, I think.”

The vision made you shut your eyes tight, only making the fantasy form clearer as the darkness behind your eyelids allowed a blank canvas for your mind to paint a dirty, disgusting, painfully arousing picture on. All you could do was exhale shakily and lick your lips, feeling a certain dryness coating your throat. You’re sure it’s because all the moisture in your body was drained to reside elsewhere, if the feeling in your underwear was anything to go by.

“Man, I knew you liked those glasses but I didn’t think it’d be that much. That’s hot Y/N. And kinky, especially for you.”

“You’re one to talk! You’re here grinding against machinery instead of your hand like any other guy!” You exclaimed, voice slightly pitchy as you tried to defend yourself.

“Never said I wasn’t, doll.” He winked and returned his focus on the task at hand. One hand was on top of the washing machine, steadying himself as he ground down harder while the other hand shucked up his shirt high enough to expose his (damned tiny) waist, toned stomach and a peek of a perky pink pebbled nipple, slightly reddened from his earlier pinching. It also gave way to show the solid and rose colored head that just barely showed past the waistband of Jeongguk’s sweatpants, the color a deep contrast from the washed out stone of his bottoms.

A bead of pre come bubbled to the surface, wobbling like Jell-O with Jeongguk’s movements until a particularly hard grind made it spill over, back down to soak into his pants. At this point, there was no containment of Jeongguk’s moans and whimpers; he was clearly not afraid of holding back any longer and you’re not sure if that was for his benefit or yours.

“Everything okay, baby?” His eyes were still closed but Jeongguk spoke past the clear wall of tension, the hand on his torso still circling his nipple teasingly, as if anything more would set him off and he wanted to hold back, just for a while longer. “You ready to join?”

“Join?!” Your thoughts came to a screeching halt, eyes bulging as Jeongguk threw you for a loop. Your reaction garnered none from him, his eyes on you while he continued to roll his hips languidly. “The fuck do you mean Jeon?!”

He cocked a smile, shook his head and stepped back, letting you—once more—get an eyeful of his seriously endowed package. As his hand left his chest, it allowed his shirt to drift down once more, the soft white cascading onto his exposed skin like a silk curtain and recovering his decency as the head of his cock disappeared behind it like the world’s naughtiest magic trick.

“You didn’t think I’d be the only one in on all the fun? Plus, this way,” He reached over once he stepped up to where you sat, shifting a knob or two behind you and hitting a button with a beep and click. “I get a show too.” Suddenly the machine under you erupted with a cacophony of sounds, the once static block now vigorously shaking beneath you. It made your thighs jiggle and you wanted to arch off the machine, the sudden onslaught of tremors to your more sensitive places making you keen out of both pleasure and surprise. But Jeongguk’s hot and heavy palms rested on your hipbones now, pushing you back down to take the currents as they are, unable to water it down and ease the immense sensations that now pulsed in your underwear.

“How’s it feel, gorgeous?”

Your breath was shaky, words stuttered as your practically tripped and nearly bit off your own tongue trying to speak but still stifle your moans as a rush of tumbling clothes hit a part of the dryer that made you jerk in Jeongguk’s grip.

“G-good, oh god so, so, so good ‘Guk.” Your tongue was fat and heavy as saliva finally made its way back into your mouth and throat, making every whine leave you wetly, much to Jeongguk’s satisfaction.

“Atta girl, just let go.” Jeongguk’s hands pressed a little less, reserving themselves to rub circles into your hips now as your let your body move on its own accord. Every little hiccup in your grinding made Jeongguk smile, finding the little stumbles in your rhythm cute. He remembers when it first felt like that for him; something deliciously indescribable as pleasure licked electric shocks from his cock to his spine. He’s sure that’s what you were experiencing now, the purring of the machine making you cry out for more as your hips tried to match the pace of the clothes tumbling inside.

“’Gukkie, please don’t stop.” You managed a whimper, nothing more than a whisper over the loud machines running the laundry but he still heard it, eyebrows furrowing under his fluffy bangs before he caught on. A smirk toyed on his lips and he made room for himself between your legs before bracing his hands on either side of your hips, caging you in, before rolling himself into the machine you were on; taking part in the pleasure you were feeling.

It was a rollercoaster ride, the two of you rolling, groaning messes as the machine continued to shake through its cycle progression—at some point, the heat kicked up and you hadn’t realized why the dryer seemed to make you tingle even more than before until the heat lapped a long stripe on a downwards grind, the gentle burn feeling so much more intense than the cool metal when you first began.

His head came down on your lap, the veins in his hands and arms prominent as he fucked into the dryer harder than before, clearly reaching his limit.

“Y/N, do you have any idea how good you look?” Jeongguk moaned from your lap, the movement of his lips and hot breath fanning over your thigh where they lay. “Fuck, it sounds like I’m fucking you, do you know that? You sound so good, so fucking depraved.” Jeongguk’s words made you push down harder, seeking both friction and vibration on your clit to help you reach your peak as well.

Something in you twinged at the sight of his soft, cocoa brown locks flopping around wildly in your lap; partly due to your body writhing and also because Jeongguk couldn’t keep his head still, constantly mouthing and nipping where he could reach, where he could taste the slight salt that glossed over your skin. You reached to lock your fingers in his hair, feeling the silky smooth strands in between your digits and resisting the urge to yank and tug until his head reached somewhere more productive. Instead you reserved to just grip tightly there, use him as an anchor as everything became so much more prominent, sharper and easier to taste on your tongue.

Surprisingly enough, Jeongguk was the first to come.

He stilled in your hold as he pushed his hips flush against the machine, bones aligned directly with the straight line of the front. His voice was angelic and rough, rasped with lust as he groaned directly into your thigh, in between your legs as lewd thoughts permeated your mind; this was what he’d look and sound like if he was eating you out, like a man starved. The thought alone sent shivers up your spine and involuntarily made you tremble with the machine, goosebumps breaking out over your skin and your toes curling until they were sore from just how hard you were coming.

The dryer didn’t stop—not when you were whining out Jeongguk’s name, not when you were riding out the waves of your orgasm like the most skilled surfer, not when you were shaking with oversensitivity and trying to push the dead weight of Jeongguk’s head off your lap so you could lift off the giant vibrator before you creamed yourself a second time, no doubt the feeling would be more painful than pleasurable.

Jeongguk finally got the memo as he lazily lolled off your lap, letting you leap off onto shaky legs; too unstable to keep you standing so you leaned onto the washer and laid back there. Jeongguk breathed hard, but you could clearly hear him chuckling in between the heavy breaths, something cocky and confident in the way he laughed.

You were panting but still managed to strangle out a few words, feeling parched once more now that you were aware of the minute changes to your body, to the atmosphere in the room. Like how everything was fuzzier, blurred with the scent of sex or how your lips never seemed to plump up with moisture—every time you passed your tongue over the chapped surface, the saliva would wick off and leave you twice as thirsty.

“What’s so funny, ‘Guk?”

He shook his head and finally lifted his forehead from the dryer, elbows supporting nearly all his weight as he looked up at you.

“Nothing, just can’t believe this actually happened. Like, how am I supposed to jerk it normally now?”

“I mean,” You swallowed, trying to ignore the tight clench as the muscle screamed for some sort of relief in the form of liquid consumption. “Not like you jerked off like a normal guy anyways.”

“I told you, I do it normally on occasion. You’re not away often enough for me to always be doing this. Plus, imagine how shitty our power and water bills would be.” Jeongguk huffed another laugh, though this time you joined him as the ridiculous thought of Jeongguk always being pressed up the metal like a refrigerator magnet from the corner store instead of just pumping into the circle of his own hand permeated your thoughts.

“Seriously though Y/N, that was wicked. We should do this again sometime, I think it’d be fun to try to see just how hard you’d get from that glasses ensemble I mentioned earlier.” Your roommate’s eyebrows wiggled seductively, causing you to roll your eyes almost painfully.

“Women don’t get hard, hate to break it to you.”

“I dunno, I’ve heard lady boners are a hell of a thing, something to be experienced. But hey, if you say you don’t get hard then,” Jeongguk mustered up energy to stand up straight—the crotch of his pants completely soaked and slightly diluted in a sheen of white all the way to the hem of his t-shirt—and got back in front of you, your body too weak to react properly and push him away. “I’d like to see how soaking wet you’d get from seeing me in just those pretty round glasses, framing my eyes as I fuck against the washing machine, with you riding on top.”

That definitely garnered a response, your legs trembling at the knees and arms failing to support you, causing Jeongguk to scoop you up in his own arms and breathe right in the space in front of your face. His breath fanned over the tip of your nose, big brown eyes meeting yours just inches away.

“You know what, Jeon?” You murmured back, his response whispered back as a small what?, trying to spur your reaction even further, the slight jump in your heartrate hopefully going unnoticed by the male, though judging by the quirk of his eyebrow after it occurred, your hopes seemed to be dampened. “None of this macho bravado can change one fact,”

“And what fact would that be, doll?” He smirked lazily, acting like he had all his pawns where he wanted them, ready to call checkmate and have you under his every command in a second.

You mimicked his expression, knowing you had a hell of a trick up your sleeve.

“You still came first.”

Jeongguk nearly dropped you as he stormed out the room, middle finger up as you clutched your midsection, laughing raucously from his mini-tantrum. You wiped tears from your eyes and called for him to come back, shouting that it’s okay! It happens to a lot of guys!

He simply slammed his door shut and plotted for the next time he needed to do a load of laundry, sure to make you pay for being such a brat.

And boy, did you pay.

4K notes · View notes

wickedbananas · 6 years

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Trust Your Data: How to Efficiently Filter Spam, Bots, & Other Junk Traffic in Google Analytics

Posted by Carlosesal

There is no doubt that Google Analytics is one of the most important tools you could use to understand your users' behavior and measure the performance of your site. There's a reason it's used by millions across the world.

But despite being such an essential part of the decision-making process for many businesses and blogs, I often find sites (of all sizes) that do little or no data filtering after installing the tracking code, which is a huge mistake.

Think of a Google Analytics property without filtered data as one of those styrofoam cakes with edible parts. It may seem genuine from the top, and it may even feel right when you cut a slice, but as you go deeper and deeper you find that much of it is artificial.

If you're one of those that haven’t properly configured their Google Analytics and you only pay attention to the summary reports, you probably won't notice that there's all sorts of bogus information mixed in with your real user data.

And as a consequence, you won't realize that your efforts are being wasted on analyzing data that doesn't represent the actual performance of your site.

To make sure you're getting only the real ingredients and prevent you from eating that slice of styrofoam, I'll show you how to use the tools that GA provides to eliminate all the artificial excess that inflates your reports and corrupts your data.

Common Google Analytics threats

As most of the people I've worked with know, I’ve always been obsessed with the accuracy of data, mainly because as a marketer/analyst there's nothing worse than realizing that you’ve made a wrong decision because your data wasn’t accurate. That’s why I’m continually exploring new ways of improving it.

As a result of that research, I wrote my first Moz post about the importance of filtering in Analytics, specifically about ghost spam, which was a significant problem at that time and still is (although to a lesser extent).

While the methods described there are still quite useful, I’ve since been researching solutions for other types of Google Analytics spam and a few other threats that might not be as annoying, but that are equally or even more harmful to your Analytics.

Let’s review, one by one.

Ghosts, crawlers, and other types of spam

The GA team has done a pretty good job handling ghost spam. The amount of it has been dramatically reduced over the last year, compared to the outbreak in 2015/2017.

However, the millions of current users and the thousands of new, unaware users that join every day, plus the majority's curiosity to discover why someone is linking to their site, make Google Analytics too attractive a target for the spammers to just leave it alone.

The same logic can be applied to any widely used tool: no matter what security measures it has, there will always be people trying to abuse its reach for their own interest. Thus, it's wise to add an extra security layer.

Take, for example, the most popular CMS: Wordpress. Despite having some built-in security measures, if you don't take additional steps to protect it (like setting a strong username and password or installing a security plugin), you run the risk of being hacked.

The same happens to Google Analytics, but instead of plugins, you use filters to protect it.

In which reports can you look for spam?

Spam traffic will usually show as a Referral, but it can appear in any part of your reports, even in unsuspecting places like a language or page title.

Sometimes spammers will try to fool by using misleading URLs that are very similar to known websites, or they may try to get your attention by using unusual characters and emojis in the source name.

Independently of the type of spam, there are 3 things you always should do when you think you found one in your reports:

Never visit the suspicious URL. Most of the time they'll try to sell you something or promote their service, but some spammers might have some malicious scripts on their site.

This goes without saying, but never install scripts from unknown sites; if for some reason you did, remove it immediately and scan your site for malware.

Filter out the spam in your Google Analytics to keep your data clean (more on that below).

If you're not sure whether an entry on your report is real, try searching for the URL in quotes (“example.com”). Your browser won’t open the site, but instead will show you the search results; if it is spam, you'll usually see posts or forums complaining about it.

If you still can’t find information about that particular entry, give me a shout — I might have some knowledge for you.

Bot traffic

A bot is a piece of software that runs automated scripts over the Internet for different purposes.

There are all kinds of bots. Some have good intentions, like the bots used to check copyrighted content or the ones that index your site for search engines, and others not so much, like the ones scraping your content to clone it.

2016 bot traffic report. Source: Incapsula

In either case, this type of traffic is not useful for your reporting and might be even more damaging than spam both because of the amount and because it's harder to identify (and therefore to filter it out).

It's worth mentioning that bots can be blocked from your server to stop them from accessing your site completely, but this usually involves editing sensible files that require high technical knowledge, and as I said before, there are good bots too.

So, unless you're receiving a direct attack that's skewing your resources, I recommend you just filter them in Google Analytics.

In which reports can you look for bot traffic?

Bots will usually show as Direct traffic in Google Analytics, so you'll need to look for patterns in other dimensions to be able to filter it out. For example, large companies that use bots to navigate the Internet will usually have a unique service provider.

I’ll go into more detail on this below.

Internal traffic

Most users get worried and anxious about spam, which is normal — nobody likes weird URLs showing up in their reports. However, spam isn't the biggest threat to your Google Analytics.

You are!

The traffic generated by people (and bots) working on the site is often overlooked despite the huge negative impact it has. The main reason it's so damaging is that in contrast to spam, internal traffic is difficult to identify once it hits your Analytics, and it can easily get mixed in with your real user data.

There are different types of internal traffic and different ways of dealing with it.

Direct internal traffic

Testers, developers, marketing team, support, outsourcing... the list goes on. Any member of the team that visits the company website or blog for any purpose could be contributing.

In which reports can you look for direct internal traffic?

Unless your company uses a private ISP domain, this traffic is tough to identify once it hits you, and will usually show as Direct in Google Analytics.

Third-party sites/tools

This type of internal traffic includes traffic generated directly by you or your team when using tools to work on the site; for example, management tools like Trello or Asana,

It also considers traffic coming from bots doing automatic work for you; for example, services used to monitor the performance of your site, like Pingdom or GTmetrix.

Some types of tools you should consider:

Project management

Social media management

Performance/uptime monitoring services

SEO tools

In which reports can you look for internal third-party tools traffic?

This traffic will usually show as Referral in Google Analytics.

Development/staging environments

Some websites use a test environment to make changes before applying them to the main site. Normally, these staging environments have the same tracking code as the production site, so if you don’t filter it out, all the testing will be recorded in Google Analytics.

In which reports can you look for development/staging environments?

This traffic will usually show as Direct in Google Analytics, but you can find it under its own hostname (more on this later).

Web archive sites and cache services

Archive sites like the Wayback Machine offer historical views of websites. The reason you can see those visits on your Analytics — even if they are not hosted on your site — is that the tracking code was installed on your site when the Wayback Machine bot copied your content to its archive.

One thing is for certain: when someone goes to check how your site looked in 2015, they don't have any intention of buying anything from your site — they're simply doing it out of curiosity, so this traffic is not useful.

In which reports can you look for traffic from web archive sites and cache services?

You can also identify this traffic on the hostname report.

A basic understanding of filters

The solutions described below use Google Analytics filters, so to avoid problems and confusion, you'll need some basic understanding of how they work and check some prerequisites.

Things to consider before using filters:

1. Create an unfiltered view.

Before you do anything, it's highly recommendable to make an unfiltered view; it will help you track the efficacy of your filters. Plus, it works as a backup in case something goes wrong.

2. Make sure you have the correct permissions.

You will need edit permissions at the account level to create filters; edit permissions at view or property level won’t work.

3. Filters don’t work retroactively.

In GA, aggregated historical data can’t be deleted, at least not permanently. That's why the sooner you apply the filters to your data, the better.

4. The changes made by filters are permanent!

If your filter is not correctly configured because you didn’t enter the correct expression (missing relevant entries, a typo, an extra space, etc.), you run the risk of losing valuable data FOREVER; there is no way of recovering filtered data.

But don’t worry — if you follow the recommendations below, you shouldn’t have a problem.

5. Wait for it.

Most of the time you can see the effect of the filter within minutes or even seconds after applying it; however, officially it can take up to twenty-four hours, so be patient.

Types of filters

There are two main types of filters: predefined and custom.

Predefined filters are very limited, so I rarely use them. I prefer to use the custom ones because they allow regular expressions, which makes them a lot more flexible.

Within the custom filters, there are five types: exclude, include, lowercase/uppercase, search and replace, and advanced.

Here we will use the first two: exclude and include. We'll save the rest for another occasion.

Essentials of regular expressions

If you already know how to work with regular expressions, you can jump to the next section.

REGEX (short for regular expressions) are text strings prepared to match patterns with the use of some special characters. These characters help match multiple entries in a single filter.

Don’t worry if you don’t know anything about them. We will use only the basics, and for some filters, you will just have to COPY-PASTE the expressions I pre-built.

REGEX special characters

There are many special characters in REGEX, but for basic GA expressions we can focus on three:

^ The caret: used to indicate the beginning of a pattern,

$ The dollar sign: used to indicate the end of a pattern,

| The pipe or bar: means "OR," and it is used to indicate that you are starting a new pattern.

When using the pipe character, you should never ever:

Put it at the beginning of the expression,

Put it at the end of the expression,

Put 2 or more together.

Any of those will mess up your filter and probably your Analytics.

A simple example of REGEX usage

Let's say I go to a restaurant that has an automatic machine that makes fruit salad, and to choose the fruit, you should use regular xxpressions.

This super machine has the following fruits to choose from: strawberry, orange, blueberry, apple, pineapple, and watermelon.

To make a salad with my favorite fruits (strawberry, blueberry, apple, and watermelon), I have to create a REGEX that matches all of them. Easy! Since the pipe character “|” means OR I could do this:

REGEX 1: strawberry|blueberry|apple|watermelon

The problem with that expression is that REGEX also considers partial matches, and since pineapple also contains “apple,” it would be selected as well... and I don’t like pineapple!

To avoid that, I can use the other two special characters I mentioned before to make an exact match for apple. The caret “^” (begins here) and the dollar sign “$” (ends here). It will look like this:

REGEX 2: strawberry|blueberry|^apple$|watermelon

The expression will select precisely the fruits I want.

But let’s say for demonstration's sake that the fewer characters you use, the cheaper the salad will be. To optimize the expression, I can use the ability for partial matches in REGEX.

Since strawberry and blueberry both contain "berry," and no other fruit in the list does, I can rewrite my expression like this:

Optimized REGEX: berry|^apple$|watermelon

That’s it — now I can get my fruit salad with the right ingredients, and at a lower price.

3 ways of testing your filter expression

As I mentioned before, filter changes are permanent, so you have to make sure your filters and REGEX are correct. There are 3 ways of testing them:

Right from the filter window; just click on “Verify this filter,” quick and easy. However, it's not the most accurate since it only takes a small sample of data.

Using an online REGEX tester; very accurate and colorful, you can also learn a lot from these, since they show you exactly the matching parts and give you a brief explanation of why.

Using an in-table temporary filter in GA; you can test your filter against all your historical data. This is the most precise way of making sure you don’t miss anything.

If you're doing a simple filter or you have plenty of experience, you can use the built-in filter verification. However, if you want to be 100% sure that your REGEX is ok, I recommend you build the expression on the online tester and then recheck it using an in-table filter.

Quick REGEX challenge

Here's a small exercise to get you started. Go to this premade example with the optimized expression from the fruit salad case and test the first 2 REGEX I made. You'll see live how the expressions impact the list.

Now make your own expression to pay as little as possible for the salad.

Remember:

We only want strawberry, blueberry, apple, and watermelon;

The fewer characters you use, the less you pay;

You can do small partial matches, as long as they don’t include the forbidden fruits.

Tip: You can do it with as few as 6 characters.

Now that you know the basics of REGEX, we can continue with the filters below. But I encourage you to put “learn more about REGEX” on your to-do list — they can be incredibly useful not only for GA, but for many tools that allow them.

How to create filters to stop spam, bots, and internal traffic in Google Analytics

Back to our main event: the filters!

Where to start: To avoid being repetitive when describing the filters below, here are the standard steps you need to follow to create them:

Go to the admin section in your Google Analytics (the gear icon at the bottom left corner),

Under the View column (master view), click the button “Filters” (don’t click on “All filters“ in the Account column):

Click the red button “+Add Filter” (if you don’t see it or you can only apply/remove already created filters, then you don’t have edit permissions at the account level. Ask your admin to create them or give you the permissions.):

Then follow the specific configuration for each of the filters below.

The filter window is your best partner for improving the quality of your Analytics data, so it will be a good idea to get familiar with it.

Valid hostname filter (ghost spam, dev environments)

Prevents traffic from:

Ghost spam

Development hostnames

Scraping sites

Cache and archive sites

This filter may be the single most effective solution against spam. In contrast with other commonly shared solutions, the hostname filter is preventative, and it rarely needs to be updated.

Ghost spam earns its name because it never really visits your site. It’s sent directly to the Google Analytics servers using a feature called Measurement Protocol, a tool that under normal circumstances allows tracking from devices that you wouldn’t imagine that could be traced, like coffee machines or refrigerators.

Real users pass through your server, then the data is sent to GA; hence it leaves valid information. Ghost spam is sent directly to GA servers, without knowing your site URL; therefore all data left is fake. Source: carloseo.com

The spammer abuses this feature to simulate visits to your site, most likely using automated scripts to send traffic to randomly generated tracking codes (UA-0000000-1).

Since these hits are random, the spammers don't know who they're hitting; for that reason ghost spam will always leave a fake or (not set) host. Using that logic, by creating a filter that only includes valid hostnames all ghost spam will be left out.

Where to find your hostnames

Now here comes the “tricky” part. To create this filter, you will need, to make a list of your valid hostnames.

A list of what!?

Essentially, a hostname is any place where your GA tracking code is present. You can get this information from the hostname report:

Go to Audience > Select Network > At the top of the table change the primary dimension to Hostname.

If your Analytics is active, you should see at least one: your domain name. If you see more, scan through them and make a list of all the ones that are valid for you.

Types of hostname you can find

The good ones:

Type

Example

Your domain and subdomains

yourdomain.com

Tools connected to your Analytics

YouTube, MailChimp

Payment gateways

Shopify, booking systems

Translation services

Google Translate

Mobile speed-up services

Google weblight

The bad ones (by bad, I mean not useful for your reports):

Type

Example/Description

Staging/development environments

staging.yourdomain.com

Internet archive sites

web.archive.org

Scraping sites that don’t bother to trim the content

The URL of the scraper

Spam

Most of the time they will show their URL, but sometimes they may use the name of a known website to try to fool you. If you see a URL that you don’t recognize, just think, “do I manage it?” If the answer is no, then it isn't your hostname.

(not set) hostname

It usually comes from spam. On rare occasions it's related to tracking code issues.

Below is an example of my hostname report. From the unfiltered view, of course, the master view is squeaky clean.

Now with the list of your good hostnames, make a regular expression. If you only have your domain, then that is your expression; if you have more, create an expression with all of them as we did in the fruit salad example:

Hostname REGEX (example) yourdomain.com|hostname2|hostname3|hostname4

Important! You cannot create more than one “Include hostname filter”; if you do, you will exclude all data. So try to fit all your hostnames into one expression (you have 255 characters).

The “valid hostname filter” configuration:

Filter Name: Include valid hostnames

Filter Type: Custom > Include

Filter Field: Hostname

Filter Pattern: [hostname REGEX you created]

Campaign source filter (Crawler spam, internal sources)

Prevents traffic from:

Crawler spam

Internal third-party tools (Trello, Asana, Pingdom)

Important note: Even if these hits are shown as a referral, the field you should use in the filter is “Campaign source” — the field “Referral” won’t work.

Filter for crawler spam

The second most common type of spam is crawler. They also pretend to be a valid visit by leaving a fake source URL, but in contrast with ghost spam, these do access your site. Therefore, they leave a correct hostname.

You will need to create an expression the same way as the hostname filter, but this time, you will put together the source/URLs of the spammy traffic. The difference is that you can create multiple exclude filters.

Crawler REGEX (example) spam1|spam2|spam3|spam4

Crawler REGEX (pre-built) As I promised, here are latest pre-built crawler expressions that you just need to copy/paste.

The “crawler spam filter” configuration:

Filter Name: Exclude crawler spam 1

Filter Type: Custom > Exclude

Filter Field: Campaign source

Filter Pattern: [crawler REGEX]

Filter for internal third-party tools

Although you can combine your crawler spam filter with internal third-party tools, I like to have them separated, to keep them organized and more accessible for updates.

The “internal tools filter” configuration:

Filter Name: Exclude internal tool sources

Filter Pattern: [tool source REGEX]

Internal Tools REGEX (example) trello|asana|redmine

In case, that one of the tools that you use internally also sends you traffic from real visitors, don’t filter it. Instead, use the “Exclude Internal URL Query” below.

For example, I use Trello, but since I share analytics guides on my site, some people link them from their Trello accounts.

Filters for language spam and other types of spam

The previous two filters will stop most of the spam; however, some spammers use different methods to bypass the previous solutions.

For example, they try to confuse you by showing one of your valid hostnames combined with a well-known source like Apple, Google, or Moz. Even my site has been a target (not saying that everyone knows my site; it just looks like the spammers don’t agree with my guides).

However, even if the source and host look fine, the spammer injects their message in another part of your reports like the keyword, page title, and even as a language.

In those cases, you will have to take the dimension/report where you find the spam and choose that name in the filter. It's important to consider that the name of the report doesn't always match the name in the filter field:

Report name

Filter field

Language

Language settings

Referral

Campaign source

Organic Keyword

Search term

Service Provider

ISP Organization

Network Domain

ISP Domain

Here are a couple of examples.

The “language spam/bot filter” configuration:

Filter Name: Exclude language spam

Filter Type: Custom > Exclude

Filter Field: Language settings

Filter Pattern: [Language REGEX]

Language Spam REGEX (Prebuilt) \s[^\s]*\s|.{15,}|\.|,|^c$

The expression above excludes fake languages that don't meet the required format. For example, take these weird messages appearing instead of regular languages like en-us or es-es:

Examples of language spam

The organic/keyword spam filter configuration:

Filter Name: Exclude organic spam

Filter Type: Custom > Exclude

Filter Field: Search term

Filter Pattern: [keyword REGEX]

Filters for direct bot traffic

Bot traffic is a little trickier to filter because it doesn't leave a source like spam, but it can still be filtered with a bit of patience.

The first thing you should do is enable bot filtering. In my opinion, it should be enabled by default.

Go to the Admin section of your Analytics and click on View Settings. You will find the option “Exclude all hits from known bots and spiders” below the currency selector:

It would be wonderful if this would take care of every bot — a dream come true. However, there's a catch: the key here is the word “known.” This option only takes care of known bots included in the “IAB known bots and spiders list." That's a good start, but far from enough.

There are a lot of “unknown” bots out there that are not included in that list, so you'll have to play detective and search for patterns of direct bot traffic through different reports until you find something that can be safely filtered without risking your real user data.

To start your bot trail search, click on the Segment box at the top of any report, and select the “Direct traffic” segment.

Then navigate through different reports to see if you find anything suspicious.

Some reports to start with:

Service provider

Browser version

Network domain

Screen resolution

Flash version

Country/City

Signs of bot traffic

Although bots are hard to detect, there are some signals you can follow:

An unnatural increase of direct traffic

Old versions (browsers, OS, Flash)

They visit the home page only (usually represented by a slash “/” in GA)

Extreme metrics:

Bounce rate close to 100%,

Session time close to 0 seconds,

1 page per session,

100% new users.

Important! If you find traffic that checks off many of these signals, it is likely bot traffic. However, not all entries with these characteristics are bots, and not all bots match these patterns, so be cautious.

Perhaps the most useful report that has helped me identify bot traffic is the “Service Provider” report. Large corporations frequently use their own Internet service provider name.

I also have a pre-built expression for ISP bots, similar to the crawler expressions.

The bot ISP filter configuration:

Filter Name: Exclude bots by ISP

Filter Type: Custom > Exclude

Filter Field: ISP organization

Filter Pattern: [ISP provider REGEX]

ISP provider bots REGEX (prebuilt) hubspot|^google\sllc$|^google\sinc\.$|alibaba\.com\sllc|ovh\shosting\sinc\. Latest ISP bot expression

IP filter for internal traffic

We already covered different types of internal traffic, the one from test sites (with the hostname filter), and the one from third-party tools (with the campaign source filter).

Now it's time to look at the most common and damaging of all: the traffic generated directly by you or any member of your team while working on any task for the site.

To deal with this, the standard solution is to create a filter that excludes the public IP (not private) of all locations used to work on the site.

Examples of places/people that should be filtered

Office

Support

Home

Developers

Hotel

Coffee shop

Bar

Mall

Any place that is regularly used to work on your site

To find the public IP of the location you are working at, simply search for "my IP" in Google. You will see one of these versions:

IP version

Example

Short IPv4

1.23.45.678

Long IPv6

2001:0db8:85a3:0000:0000:8a2e:0370:7334

No matter which version you see, make a list with the IP of each place and put them together with a REGEX, the same way we did with other filters.

IP address expression: IP1|IP2|IP3|IP4 and so on.

The static IP filter configuration:

Filter Name: Exclude internal traffic (IP)

Filter Type: Custom > Exclude

Filter Field: IP Address

Filter Pattern: [The IP expression]

Cases when this filter won’t be optimal:

There are some cases in which the IP filter won’t be as efficient as it used to be:

You use IP anonymization (required by the GDPR regulation). When you anonymize the IP in GA, the last part of the IP is changed to 0. This means that if you have 1.23.45.678, GA will pass it as 1.23.45.0, so you need to put it like that in your filter. The problem is that you might be excluding other IPs that are not yours.

Your Internet provider changes your IP frequently (Dynamic IP). This has become a common issue lately, especially if you have the long version (IPv6).

Your team works from multiple locations. The way of working is changing — now, not all companies operate from a central office. It's often the case that some will work from home, others from the train, in a coffee shop, etc. You can still filter those places; however, maintaining the list of IPs to exclude can be a nightmare,

You or your team travel frequently. Similar to the previous scenario, if you or your team travels constantly, there's no way you can keep up with the IP filters.

If you check one or more of these scenarios, then this filter is not optimal for you; I recommend you to try the “Advanced internal URL query filter” below.

URL query filter for internal traffic

If there are dozens or hundreds of employees in the company, it's extremely difficult to exclude them when they're traveling, accessing the site from their personal locations, or mobile networks.

Here’s where the URL query comes to the rescue. To use this filter you just need to add a query parameter. I add “?internal" to any link your team uses to access your site:

Internal newsletters

Management tools (Trello, Redmine)

Emails to colleagues

Also works by directly adding it in the browser address bar

Basic internal URL query filter

The basic version of this solution is to create a filter to exclude any URL that contains the query “?internal”.

Filter Name: Exclude Internal Traffic (URL Query)

Filter Type: Custom > Exclude

Filter Field: Request URI

Filter Pattern: \?internal

This solution is perfect for instances were the user will most likely stay on the landing page, for example, when sending a newsletter to all employees to check a new post.

If the user will likely visit more than the landing page, then the subsequent pages will be recorded.

Advanced internal URL query filter

This solution is the champion of all internal traffic filters!

It’s a more comprehensive version of the previous solution and works by filtering internal traffic dynamically using Google Tag Manager, a GA custom dimension, and cookies.

Although this solution is a bit more complicated to set up, once it's in place:

It doesn’t need maintenance

Any team member can use it, no need to explain techy stuff

Can be used from any location

Can be used from any device, and any browser

To activate the filter, you just have to add the text “?internal” to any URL of the website.

That will insert a small cookie in the browser that will tell GA not to record the visits from that browser.

And the best of it is that the cookie will stay there for a year (unless it is manually removed), so the user doesn’t have to add “?internal” every time.

Bonus filter: Include only internal traffic

In some occasions, it's interesting to know the traffic generated internally by employees — maybe because you want to measure the success of an internal campaign or just because you're a curious person.

In that case, you should create an additional view, call it “Internal Traffic Only,” and use one of the internal filters above. Just one! Because if you have multiple include filters, the hit will need to match all of them to be counted.

If you configured the “Advanced internal URL query” filter, use that one. If not, choose one of the others.

The configuration is exactly the same — you only need to change “Exclude” for “Include.”

Cleaning historical data

The filters will prevent future hits from junk traffic.

But what about past affected data?

I know I told you that deleting aggregated historical data is not possible in GA. However, there's still a way to temporarily clean up at least some of the nasty traffic that has already polluted your reports.

For this, we'll use an advanced segment (a subset of your Analytics data). There are built-in segments like “Organic” or “Mobile,” but you can also build one using your own set of rules.

To clean our historical data, we will build a segment using all the expressions from the filters above as conditions (except the ones from the IP filter, because IPs are not stored in GA; hence, they can’t be segmented).

To help you get started, you can import this segment template.

You just need to follow the instructions on that page and replace the placeholders. Here is how it looks:

In the actual template, all text is black; the colors are just to help you visualize the conditions.

After importing it, to select the segment:

Click on the box that says “All users” at the top of any of your reports

From your list of segments, check the one that says “0. All Users - Clean”

Lastly, uncheck the “All Users”

Now you can navigate through your reaports and all the junk traffic included in the segment will be removed.

A few things to consider when using this segment:

Segments have to be selected each time. A way of having it selected by default is by adding a bookmark when the segment is selected.

You can remove or add conditions if you need to.

You can edit the segment at any time to update it or add conditions (open the list of segments, then click “Actions” then “Edit”).

The hostname expression and third-party tools expression are different for each site.

If your site has a large volume of traffic, segments may sample your data when selected, so if you see the little shield icon at the top of your reports go yellow (normally is green), try choosing a shorter period (i.e. 1 year, 6 months, one month).

Conclusion: Which cake would you eat?

Having real and accurate data is essential for your Google Analytics to report as you would expect.

But if you haven’t filtered it properly, it’s almost certain that it will be filled with all sorts of junk and artificial information.

And the worst part is that if don't realize that your reports contain bogus data, you will likely make wrong or poor decisions when deciding on the next steps for your site or business.

The filters I share above will help you prevent the three most harmful threats that are polluting your Google Analytics and don’t let you get a clear view of the actual performance of your site: spam, bots, and internal traffic.

Once these filters are in place, you can rest assured that your efforts (and money!) won’t be wasted on analyzing deceptive Google Analytics data, and your decisions will be based on solid information.

And the benefits don’t stop there. If you're using other tools that import data from GA, for example, WordPress plugins like GADWP, excel add-ins like AnalyticsEdge, or SEO suites like Moz Pro, the benefits will trickle down to all of them as well.

Besides highlighting the importance of the filters in GA (which I hope I made clear by now), I would also love that for the preparation of these filters to give you the curiosity and basis to create others that will allow you to do all sorts of remarkable things with your data.

Remember, filters not only allow you to keep away junk, you can also use them to rearrange your real user information — but more on that on another occasion.

That’s it! I hope these tips help you make more sense of your data and make accurate decisions.

Have any questions, feedback, experiences? Let me know in the comments, or reach me on Twitter @carlosesal.

Complementary resources:

Google Analytics spam & bots (FAQ): Common data quality questions and concerns answered

Ultimate guide to stopping bots and Google Analytics spam (Always up to date)

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