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leeknowsintrusivethots · 5 months

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Marked By Him

| Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Pairings: Vampire!Lee Know/OC, Vampire!Bangchan/OC (suprise!!!!) Summary: Vampyres dominate the entertainment world with their otherworldly beauty and talent. It’s a world you must be born into, but a few lucky ones are Marked. Stripped from her home and everything she knows, Minji’s Marking means that she has to rely on the Devil himself, Lee Minho, to be her mentor. He’s cute and sweet to the public, but behind closed doors the monster comes out to play. Content: Angst, Slow burn, lotsa plot, eventual smut, vampires, dark themes, original characters, first person perspective, general 18+ content, alternate idol universe, asshole Lee Know, surprise love triangle, discussion of blood, discussions of death, depictions of violence, sexual tension, petnames/kitten, WC: 3164 Minors do not interact. Do not repost my content to other websites, this includes translations. Notes: Mother, may I trust the government? No. Never. Always question authority.

My heart was set on drastic action. If there was some Earth shattering plot going on with the Association at the detriment of Marks, it would be in my interest in self preservation to jump ship. I had to get out before the ship capsized and the captains revealed themselves and their true colors.

But what was I even running from?

Every person in my life who could help me seemed intent on letting me sink or find out how to swim on my own. Maeri was human. Our conversations consisted of talks about schedules, food, our hometowns, and what idols we hoped to one day interact with. Yoojin was more connected, but she never spoke of the Association. I knew it was a part of the front she put up to protect my feelings, but she never even seemed to take notice I was Marked. I was usually grateful for it, but the only other two people in my life who were connected enough to inform me were brick walls with secrets encased in cement.

My lack of insight was only compounded by facts of science. As a Mark, I was reliant on the same people who seemed to endanger me for survival. Without the contact of a fully fledged Vampyre, I would die.

Ordinary Vampyres existed. They were regular citizens working run-of-the-mill jobs with families and taxes to pay. They rarely advertised that they were Vampyres in the yellow pages. Tracking one down would be a feat of modern communications technology, but getting one to take in stray Mark would be a battle of life and death. It was not plausible, and it was potentially more dangerous than simply accepting my fate at JYP.

Maybe it was the Vampyric hormones running rampant in my system, but the battle of wits and instinct was taking a toll. I didn’t know whether I was scared, sad, or angry. A small part of what rational thought was left told me I was probably overreacting, regardless. The only proof I had of anything was based on my own wild speculation and the cryptic hints of two near strangers. They were beautiful strangers, but strangers still. I didn’t really know them, so why should I trust anything they said when they weren’t even saying much?

My brain was simmering with sudden anger.

Bangchan was forgivable. He owed me nothing. He was not tied to me nor obliged to help me. He was kind, but I had no right to even expect that from him.

Lee Minho was a different beast. I didn’t know how he was assigned to be my Mentor. He could have volunteered or been randomly drafted by the company for all I knew, but it didn’t change the fact that he was my Mentor.

The stupid informational packets the Association handed out to new Marks and their families made Mentors out to be the angelic saviors of poor young adults thrown into an unfamiliar and scary world. They were supposed to be wise leaders who could teach and guide Marks to have a more comfortable adjustment into Vampyrism: the Dumbledores of the Vampyric world. The pamphlets had even stated the bond between Mark and Mentor was something so special that it went beyond the roles of student and teacher. It could even transcend typical human relations such as friendship and family.

Instead of a guiding angel, I had gotten a trickster demon with a penchant for confusion and misery. He had no intention of helping me - he didn’t even seem to care if I lived or died. Thoughts of his apathy spurred my fury. It was a blind rage, but one with intent.

One second I was simmering in anger at the countertop where Bangchan had left me, and the next I was boiling in vitriol at my usual seat in Conference Room Zero. I hardly remembered my angry walk and elevator ride, but the wait will forever be burned into my memory. The magical looking baubles and books that normally occupied my wait didn’t even register on my radar. I felt like I was feeling everything and nothing at the same time. My mind flashed with images of violence and terror that should be reserved for nightmares.

The subject of every single image: Lee Minho.

One second he was looming above my bloody and desecrated corpse with a grin of manic evil. The next we had switched places and I became the murderer. Then his mouth was at my neck, draining me of my life’s essence with ecstasy all over his face. Then I was draining him in pure, blissful rapture. It was a brutal back and forth between predator and prey.

It was a confusing, twisted, endless barrage that fueled the primal rage coursing through my veins and mixing with adrenaline. I didn’t want to die. I didn’t want fate to make me another unknown statistic in a long list of Marks that didn’t make the Change.

Become the predator. It was a thought. It was unbidden, and unfamiliar. It had my adrenaline in overdrive.

When the conference room door opened, all I saw was red.

I spent my life hearing about tragedies that happened to others in the news. They often spoke of out-of-body experiences: they knew what was happening but it didn’t feel as if it were happening to them. I never thought to experience the phenomenon myself, but I knew what I was doing. I could see my body lunge from the cushiony chair with a speed I didn’t know I was capable of. I could see Lee Minho’s beautiful face turn from mild annoyance to shock. I couldn’t feel him, but I could see my body collide with his, slamming the heavy door shut as we collided.

I was out of control, and I didn’t know how to stop it.

“Minji!” Lee Minho called out. It wasn’t his usual sardonic, laissez-faire tone. It was authoritative. It had my mind compelling my body to stop with fervor. I was internally begging. I didn’t want whatever was happening to happen, but I was not a master of myself at that moment.

Violence. Rage. Aggression.

Devour him. Tear into his pretty neck. Feed. Murder.

“Dammit, Minji,” Minho grunted from below me. I was straddling him, my knees to either side of his waist and my head bending to the smooth crook that gracefully fell off to his shoulders. It was so beautiful, clear, and pristine. Vampyres had heartbeats, contrary to common belief. They were simply much more faint than humans, but I could see his. It was all I could see. It was the source of his life, and the monster inside of me wanted to claim it.

There was a scuffle. Limbs twisting, entangling. His hands were on me, fighting back against my instincts even as I was helpless to control them. I didn’t understand. I didn’t want to. I had one clear, and singular goal: to taste, consume, and destroy.

Instincts were often at odds with logic. I was a new Mark, and Minho was a full, grown Vampyre. He was stronger. Had I been capable of thought, I would have known that. I would have never attacked him in the first place, and I would have certainly stopped when he switched our positions. I was on my back, chest heaving under him and body still fighting despite the odds not being in my favor. My hands clawed at him, scraping against the fabric of the shirt covering his chest. He was quick to incapacitate them, clasping both in each of his own and holding them above my head as his face hovered inches from mine.

I still struggled against his hold - the fight coursing through me like an addictive drug. Nothing could stop it - stop me - until the length of one of his thighs pushed between mine to better pin me to the ground. The sound that escaped my mouth was animalistic. Want replaced rage.

“Minho-” I started. I didn’t know what I would say. I didn’t even know who I was. Everything was a mess of emotion - all in shades of red. It was the first and only lesson Lee Minho had taught me: rage and desire were two sides of the same coin.

“It’s happening sooner than we thought,” he mused. He said it out loud, but he didn’t appear to be speaking to me. His focus was on the Mark above my eyes.

“Minho,” I whined his name again as he shifted obliviously above me. The movement had his thigh pressing further into my clothed sex. The excitement from the fight had transferred easily into a much different excitement, but I was slowly regaining control of myself and mortification and horror were becoming prominent.

It took him all but a second to catch on. His eyes trailed down to mine, then to my lips, and further until he took stock of the way our bodies pressed together. I could feel him shift again, and I gasped in response. With brain and body mostly in unison again, I resisted the powerful urge to move my hips against him, seeking more of the delicious pressure he was teasing me with.

“You’re doing it on purpose now,” I grunted in annoyance.

“Doing what?” He asked with wide, innocent eyes.

“Please,” I whimpered when he did it again. My hands were still trapped by his - my entire body held captive by him. I was begging, but I didn’t know if it was for release or pleasure.

“I think I like you better like this. You’re much sweeter,” he mocked with his familiar smirk curving his soft lips. I hated it, but I still felt it all the way to the tips of my toes.

“You’re an asshole,” I grunted in frustration.

“I’m an asshole? You just attacked me,” he stated calmly.

At the reminder of my inexplicable actions, my mood sobered. Something was happening to me. I didn’t understand it, and I could not control it. “Why? Why did I do that?”

The world was turning upside down again. Lee Minho’s expression softened. The teasing light in his eyes extinguished. The smirk on his lips fell flat. There was pity written all over his face - pity aimed in my direction.

“Don’t do that,” I snapped at his change in demeanor. “I don’t want your sympathy. Just explain. Help me learn to control whatever is happening.”

“You can’t.” He was moving, climbing off me and freeing me from him. He stood above me, almost hesitant, before dropping into his usual chair with a concerning lack of his normal grace. I scrambled to my feet on my own, but I didn’t sit. I was too emotional. If I sat, I was afraid I would crumble.

“Why not?” I demanded. I could feel myself working into a frenzy, spinning out of control all over again. Is this what life would be like from now on? “I can’t handle it, Minho. I came here with intent, but not to murder. I just wanted answers: that’s all. I swear it, but-”

“But then emotion took over, and you became its slave,” he helpfully supplied. He was studying me intently. Watching my reaction to his statement like it was the most important thing in the world. “You wanted to kill me, drain me.”

“Yes. How did you-”

“That's how -” he cut me off before halting himself. He weighed his next words before continuing. “That’s how I’ve heard it described: like a monster lurking in your subconscious.”

“It doesn’t happen to full Vampyres?” I asked curiously.

“Sort of. You feel the urges: feed, kill, fuck,” he spoke softly despite the crassness of his statement. I would be lying if I said such dirty words coming from such a beautiful face didn’t affect me, but I fought against it. This was the most information he had offered yet, and I would not waste the opportunity. “It’s in our nature, but not to that extent. Marks feel it more.”

“It’s not my nature. I’m not violent. I cry when characters die in shows, even the supporting cast!” I insisted with a strange desire to prove my morals to myself.

“Whatever you were before, forget it. Trying to fight it only makes it worse. It's instinct - it can be misguided, but it’s not usually wrong.” His words felt like ice water being dumped over my head. It was uncomfortable, and chilling.

“Minho!” I exclaimed in exasperation. “I just tried to kill you.”

“But you didn’t,” he replied easily. Maybe a complete lack of care for the sanctity of life was a staple of his personality. He shrugged off a murder attempt on his life with barely a thought given to it.

“But I tried! How is that not wrong? What if I try to murder someone who isn’t as strong as you?” I asked in horror. Maeri came to mind - her face bright and sweet. What if I lost control during one of our spats and tried to murder her? She didn’t have Vampyric strength. I would succeed.

“Why did you try to kill me, Minji?” Minho broke into my panic. He leveled me with his intense stare again.

“I was confused. There’s so much I don’t know, and you won’t tell me anything. It made me angry, and admittedly scared.”

“Anger. Fear. Self preservation. These are not negative things. One day, they may even save your life,” he guided gently. His sudden willingness to help me had me reeling with conflict yet again. He was cold - sometimes even mean - but he held a certain softness that he tried to hide. I had only gotten brief glimpses, but I could see it. Maybe his beautiful but cruel face was a mask after all.

“Would killing you save me?” I asked. My voice was dripping with sarcasm, almost venomous. That in of itself was instinct - self preservation. Cold Minho would kill me. Soft Minho would unravel my entire world before ending in homicide.

“No. Your demise might be a bit more abrupt without me around.” He stood as he spoke, never letting his gaze drop mine. I was becoming accustomed to his searching and often condescending looks, but as he got closer, I became increasingly more frustrated. He was intent, focused. I might have daydreamed many times about him looking at me like that but under very different circumstances.

“Come here,” he crooned as he took my hands into his colder ones. Without giving me a chance to protest, he tugged me along until we stood in front of an old, standing mirror. He stood behind me, nudging my attention to my reflection with the command, “Look.”

I didn’t need his guidance to find out what he wanted me to look at. It was obvious, and it chilled me to the depths of my soul. The outline of a crescent moon that had once graced the skin of my forehead was no more. The shape was still there, but it was filled with a dark purple that was even more ostentatious than before. Surrounding it were fainter, more delicate lines that swirled from the core of the moon to my temples.

“What the fuck,” I gasped in shock.

“Don’t worry,” Minho cajoled from behind me. His hand had dropped mine only for him to grip my waist lightly with both. He stared at me in the mirror, watching my reflection with curious eyes over my shoulder. “It’s supposed to do that. It’s actually a good thing.”

“Why is it good?”

“I didn’t think it would happen so fast, but it’s a sign of the Change advancing. Your chances of death have decreased by…” He trailed off, squinting his eyes in exaggerated thought. “Two percent?”

“Joy,” I grumbled out, earning the rumble of a chuckle that I could feel at my back.

“The Change itself can kill you, Minji. It’s fairly common, actually. Your book covers it briefly, but the Mark expanding is a sign that your body is adjusting,” he informed me.

“Just another ugly truth that the Association doesn’t want to share?”

“Good, Kitten,” he praised, using the infamous pet name he called me at our first meeting. I felt my toes curl in my sneakers. The Change was a confusing beast, but Lee Minho was worse. “You’re finally catching on.”

“Minho,” I called to him suddenly, seriously. I held his gaze in the mirror feeling bolder and more brave with the glass acting as a barrier. “Is the Association a threat?”

“Government entities are always a threat when absolute power is placed in their hands.”

“You’re being vague again. I want a proper answer.” My words were hard, unfaltering. I was determined to know. I couldn’t protect myself if I didn’t know what I was protecting myself from.

“That was a proper answer. The Association has absolute power in the Vampryic world and close ties with human governments,” he supplied.

“That doesn’t explain how they are a threat to Marks - to me,” I insisted.

I saw it before it happened. His face closed off, his mocking grin marring his features as his eyes hardened to dark crystals. Then his hands left me as he stepped out of my range. Lee Minho had put his mask back on.

“I never said they were,” he refuted nonchalantly. “Our time is up for tonight.”

“You-”

“A last word of advice,” he called as he headed for the door. He turned back around to face me with his lithe fingers on the knob. His words were more ice water being dumped over me, drowning me in cold and misery. “All of us, you included, have a part to play. It’s how the system works. They say dance, and we do. They want us to sing and look pretty, so we do that too. Sometimes the strings break.”

His gaze dropped mine for just a fraction of a second. He was faltering, and for that moment, I saw it: uncertainty, maybe even fear. Why would Lee Minho be scared of anything? Before I could ponder it, he was continuing.

“When they break, we marionettes get a moment of reprieve to think. Just a moment, because if you stop dancing for too long they will notice. What do you think happens if we ruin the performance?”

I didn’t answer. I wasn’t even sure I knew how to. He was back to his cryptic warnings - confusing and tormenting me all in one.

“Dance, Kitten. Know your place and dance within the lines they’ve defined or you will be dealt with.”

“What is my place?” I all but screamed. I was getting frustrated again, the anger building back up to mix with fear. If I had learned anything from the night, it was that those two emotions were a dangerous combination that could combust with devastating consequences.

All I got in response was a mocking smirk as Lee Minho left me without proper answers once again.

#stray kids smut #lee know fanfic #lee know ff #lee know smut #lee minho fanfic #lee minho smut #skz ff #skz smut #lee minho ff #lee minho imagines #lee know imagines #skz imagines

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anotherblblog · 1 month

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Dead Friend Forever episode 12 blurb/series retrospective

wellllllllllllllllllllll that was the goriest, slasheriest, kill 'em-ness I've seen in Thai or any bl series

the episode was kinda short and the pacing made it seem rushed but not I'm sure if I really felt rushed or if it was just a breakneck pace

I do like that a lot of the theories and wishes weren't achieved/realized and the series still feels good. Like I know I wanted White and TanNew to live and at times Jin and Phee too but all of them ending up in this ceaseless purgatory slaughterhouse is kinda fitting. Non couldn't escape his fate due to the actions of others and the rest of the group couldn't escape the fallout aka TanNew's life implosion and his pursuit of vengeance for his brother and family

Cuz like yeah White, it truly seems, was just at the wrong place and wrong time. The theories and sentiment of White being part of some Perth and TanNew third killer ace in hole was nice and could have worked but it didn't happen and I don't feel the show really lacked for it

Like we saw one of the masked killers with crutches and the killer always had a maybe magic, maybe mundane vibe the show liked to play with. So perhaps Non really did survive somehow or maybe he just really had a rather unmarkable end after his harrowing captivity and enslavement

anywho standouts for the episode and series -

TanNew going full slasher - lovely, wonderful, great job Mio. You sold and I bought. And as an elder sibling, bitch I don't necessarily condone your behavior but I motherfucking understand you and also why you were Phee were destined to have a falling out. Phee did geniunely love and care for Non but the information that Phee had because Non specifically and intentionally lied to Phee meant that Phee could ultimately move on with Jin but TanNew was frozen in that grief and by Phee interrupting TanNew's attempt, Phee sealed his own fated too

Jin's hallucation montage - kinda campy in a good way and also like really modern. Like this type of voyuerism enabled by modern technology is really scary. Like gays have been fucking and sucking in bathrooms since before bathrooms were existed and will continue to (and last night at this bar I was at - there were several gays keeping me from peeing because they were fucking in the bathroom stall). So I compare how the leaked sex tape was used in this series with Only Friends and I do feel DFF really did that subplot and theme so much better

The first third of ep 12 aka the slaughter house - like it's a series so total suspension of disbelief to let the series tell me that Top can get shot in the stomach (or near enough) after a series of beatings and days of high stress and still have the gas in the tank for a final fight. But the tension and motivations were really high and going from the joker class clown who kinda started a lot of the Non ends up a slave plot by Top breaking Por's camera and Fluke mister always trying to keep my hands clean but always being near and having the truth but not sharing taking themselves out together was obvious symbolism to me and still really good. Then going from that to Tee being made to inadvertently kill his lover and the person who inspired him to better himself while White's last images are his boyfriend who he like 3 minutes ago learned was a really massive piece of shit and a victim and victimizer and (I don't know about Thai laws and accidental death or manslaughter and all that) but learning your bf is connected and inarguably one of the biggest participants in this Non situation surely must have not felt good, then he stabs you while you think it's because you're not pretty. Madness and chaos and really cool scene.

Phee, Phee, Phee, our series lead - overall I think Ta did a fantastic job. Like so many times, he would enter a scene and I would think "this dude has stage presence" - highlight of him was the revealation he was Non's boyfriend as he saves Non from his attempt. That episode and the one prior with this abscene were fine and good but when he came back onscreen, it was like, yeah, you've got IT. Now the finale arc with him is frustrating because of the discourse and the piety of people and shipping. Yes Non was groomed. Por is the closest person in series to call out the massive inappropriateness of Keng and Non. But it is critical to point out, that Phee did not know about that and saw Non being hugged and comforted by Keng, so he made the deduction that Non was hot for teacher. And then the disappearance and police stuff happened and Phee was motivated to find the truth. He was fueled by his own guilt at his last words to Non but even as he was trying to find Non, as he told his dad, he wasn't sure how he felt about forgiving Non because Non told Phee to his face there was nothing wrong and then Phee watches Non and Keng fucking. So yeah, it makes sense he could could join in on TanNew's plan but he didn't have the same stakes that TanNew did.

The mean girl messy clique worked because you saw that it was largely a friend of convenience for them and you had two different type of alpha girls (Por and Tee) and then a lacky Top and two people who seemed to be voting for the leopard eating face party because they didn't want their own faces ate

The heat was decently high and the NC scenes were really good, that ass slap is iconic

Lows

we didn't get enough with Jin. He was arguably the 2nd or 3rd most "important" character to this maybe and we just didn't get enough of him or his character for him to be fully realized for me

Overall BoC's second series was really good. I think they avoided the sophomore slump.

Maybe the dead friend forever is the friends we made along the way

#dead friend forever #dead friend forever the series #dff the series #dead friend forever episode 12

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grumpygreenwitch · 2 months

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The Witches and Wizards Job 7-8

Around this point I actually read back and asked myself, "Is this moving too fast?" Then I remember the speed at which a Leverage episode actually moves and the kind of beating Harry usually picks up each book, and went, "Nah."

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SEVEN

The divide between magic and technology is a known quantity. Every wizard knows to stay away from most mechanical things; the more complex they are, the more likely they were to break. The more powerful the wizard, the quicker it was gonna happen. Even knowing these things, I hadn't realized how deep that boundary ran until I tried to find out anything about my prospective employers.

If it had been a magical entity, a spell, an artifact, between Bob and I we could have probably found out at least the basics, but Bob couldn't find out anything about the Leverage people. I wasn't crazy enough to try and scry something in Boston, never mind the range.

All I could tell was that Leverage was, apparently, a purely mundane affair. Based in Boston as they were I didn't doubt they'd run themselves into something other that the average human, but as the afternoon dragged on I began to realize I was going to have more luck finding out what, rather than getting any sort of information on whatever Deveraux and Ford actually had going on.

A smart man would have said no on principle. What little I could find out told me that if things had gotten so bad that an entirely non-magical outfit like Leverage had come looking for a wizard, then they were bad enough that walking away unscathed to enjoy that absurdly large paycheck was not guaranteed. Not even 50/50 odds.

But 50/50 was still better than no odds at all.

And I hadn't lied when I told Deveraux that I'm a curious man.

She'd written a number on the back of the card. Not a hotel, so they could have been anywhere. I eyed it while I called Butters and asked him to look after Mister while I was away. Then I called it.

"Harry." Deveraux actually sounded happy to hear me; it was refreshing.

"Train. The older the better," I told her. "That applies to any tech you want near me, too. Mouse comes with me."

"Yes, of course."

"The daily fee is… good." My voice cracked a bit despite my best attempt at sounding like it was not a holy-heck amount of money. I cleared it. "It's good. But I can't go longer than a week. One week and I'm coming back home, even if your problem's not solved."

"That's fine."

"And I need a basement."

"A b… A basement?"

"It's contained in case something bad happens."

"Ah." The fact she didn't ask questions told me containment was a common concern in both her line of work and mine. "Anything else?"

"I can't think of anything off the top of my head. I'm sure something will come up." Something did almost immediately. "A full briefing as soon as I'm there. No secrets, no lies. If I find out you've lied to me, I'll leave."

"We'll tell you as much as we know," she assured me, and I found myself believing her. "Welcome to the team, Harry."

It felt weird to be welcomed, to be made to feel as if I were part of a team that actually wanted me there. "When do you think you'll have everything ready?"

There was laughter in her tone. "When do you think you'll be packed?"

Three hours later I was at Union Station, being escorted off the oldest VW minibus in existence and onto a rail car that apparently I had all to myself, like something out of an Agatha Christie book. I'd packed Bob, my tools, a quick-spell kit, any books I thought might help, and a change of clothes. Mouse looked mournfully at me as the train began to move, and I couldn't blame him; it felt as if I were leaving a piece of myself behind.

I knew Chicago. It was home. I knew the people, the streets. I knew its seasons, its weather. I knew the hangouts of most of the dangerous creatures in it, both human and inhuman. I knew every layer of it, every mood, every current.

I knew very little about Boston except that it was a supernatural melting pot. Most creatures that crossed from the Old World or from Other Places and didn't come through the Nevernever landed in Boston; many stayed there, made lives there. There were inhuman families that were generations old, living side by side with the descendants of human immigrants. The divide between mortal and supernatural was as thin as my willpower in Boston.

Look, Deveraux had handed me a really big number.

The train never stopped. That struck me as weird, but then I'd never traveled first class on a train before, so I had no bar for normal. I tried to sleep, but the novelty of everything wore off a couple of hours into the trip, and panic began to settle in. What the hell was I doing? I was Chicago's wizard, not Boston's!

Well, it was done. The AC broke about halfway through the trip, but with the windows open I never even noticed. I got my books out and read, trying to give myself a crash course on the magical scene in Boston, so to speak. Mouse took over one of the windows and seemed to have forgiven me, head thrust out into the wind of our passage, jowls flapping and the plume of his tail wagging sedately. He scared the crap out of the one person I did see, a young man who brought me breakfast and lunch, somehow still warm.

The sun had just set when the train pulled into the Back Bay. I could feel the air buzzing all around me with an imperceptible, invisible charge, the ambient energy of hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of supernatural creatures crackling against my senses. I felt both supercharged and itchy, and Mouse shook himself furiously when we finally made it off the rail car.

There was a man waiting for me on the concourse. He was tremendously solid, the sort of build I used to wish for when I was young, heavy muscle under a worn leather jacket, faded blue jeans and comfortable curb-stomper boots. He had long, very fine brown hair and oddly guileless blue eyes. He had stubble matching mine and he straightened up from his lazy slouch with the ease of someone perfectly at peace with the world around him.

I couldn't see the bulge of a gun anywhere, but I was pretty sure this was Leverage's heavy hitter.

Then he grinned at me, and his whole face lit up, and I thought maybe I was wrong. "Dresden?"

"That's me," I admitted.

He offered his hand without hesitation. "Eliot Spencer. Eliot's fine. Sorry to drag you so far from home."

This man was a walking contradiction. His hands told me I was right. His attitude told me I was wrong. He was the nicest, friendliest man with violence as his main occupation that I'd ever met up to that point in my life. He meant every word of his apology. He was sizing me up for threats.

Belatedly, I realized that Boston was literally supercharging me. My senses, both magical and normal, were trying to run away with me. I had nothing else at the moment; I clung to the hand Eliot Spencer offered, to the strength in it. "Oh, you didn't, not really. Too curious for my own good. Give me a second, would you?"

"You ok, man?"

"Just a little… drunk on the night air," I said, knowing how that had to sound to him.

I was not expecting the change that went over him. It was seamless, instantaneous. One moment Eliot Spencer was welcoming me to his home like a ray of sunshine; the next he was all deadly intent, a sort of quiet, intangible menace radiating from him like the darkest light. "A problem?" he asked mildly.

It told me two things; one, that I was right after all and two, that whatever had brought me to Boston was big enough to have this calm, steady man on a hair-trigger. "No, it's…. Boston's busy. Boston's real busy when it comes to magic. It hangs in the air, makes it thick, and it's giving me a head rush."

"Chicago's not like that?"

"No. The Lake grounds it. Water's good for that."

"I could take you by the Charles if it would help - hey!" And just like that the ray of sunshine was back when Mouse came trotting back from wherever he'd gone to take care of his business. Eliot dropped down to a crouch. "Who's this, Mouse, I think?"

"Yeah. Just watch out, he's not always -" Mouse, tail a blur, charged the Leverage man with a delighted huff and proceeded to lick anything Eliot didn't vigilantly protect, making him chuckle. Well. That was new. And good news for me. "Friendly. He was also a lot smaller when he was a puppy."

Eliot straightened up, rubbing Mouse's head with rough affection. My dog looked blissful, tongue lolling to one side. "Bait-and-switched you, huh."

"It might've been, if he'd given me any choice in the matter."

"He's big for a Tibetan Mastiff," Eliot pointed out. "Wrong color, too."

"He's not. He's a Tibetan Temple Mastiff."

Again that brief pause. Eliot looked down at Mouse. Mouse looked up at him.

The Leverage man grinned again and rubbed Mouse's ears. "Eh, he looks dog enough for me. Anyway. If you're feeling better, let's get you settled. I rented a van."

"Cars get temperamental with me around."

"Dresden, if you can break down a u-Haul, I'll believe you're a wizard no further questions. Where's your luggage?"

EIGHT

Apparently the Leverage people weren't unfamiliar with what happened when you put magic too close to tech. I was put up in their 'temporary' quarters, a small house a lick away from their actual place of business, a loft over a bar by the incredibly Irish name of John McRory's Place.

The house was nice. It had a fenced yard that Mouse promptly claimed as his own and a finished basement that I promptly claimed as my own. The bedroom looked suspiciously like someone had ordered it directly from a catalog, sheets and all. The only other rooms that were accessible were one bathroom and the living room, which had been set up as a meeting area of sorts. The kitchen was empty. The other rooms were full of crates.

There was dinner from the pub waiting for me that night, and a phone in a manila envelope. I offered to share my beer with Eliot; the phone died with a sad little squawk before we finished it.

"That's gonna make things hard," he admitted wryly, examining the dead screen of the phone. "I take it a bluetooth's out of the question?"

"The more parts to it, the quicker it goes."

I saw him get very thoughtful. "What about size? The bigger it is?"

"How big are we talking about?" I asked mildly, sensing a chance to finally get some information as to what had brought me to Boston.

"TV screen," Eliot answered without hesitation, then spread his arms. "Yay big."

"What were you doing at the time?"

"Trying to get a composite from a bunch of blurry pictures."

"What happened?"

"It cracked." He grinned wryly. "Top to bottom. We took that thing out to the recycling in two halves." His jovial mood faded. "I don't like the look on your face right now, Dresden."

"You shouldn't." I was trying to think of creatures that could shatter a screen like that, with just their image, without actually being there. It was a short list; it was also a very scary list. "It wasn't anything else, it had to be the picture?"

"The man who works our tech is the best, hands-down. His equipment doesn't blow up like that without a good reason," Eliot said calmly, then put his hands up. "Wait, no, I'm supposed to let you rest tonight. You're gonna hear all this tomorrow morning anyway."

"I did nothing but sleep on the train ride," I told him. I won't lie, it felt nice to know the Leverage outfit, whatever their business might be, gave enough of a damn to give me the night to myself. Most people who hire me for that kind of money expected 24-7 service, never mind what kind of shape I might be in at the end of the day. "Tell me what you can."

He gave me one of the few measuring looks I've ever gotten that didn't have my harm at heart before he made a decision and tipped his head toward the pub. "Come on."

"Mouse, watch the place." Mouse flopped in front of the door and settled down with a yawn.

The front of the pub was roaring, but we came in from the back. Eliot knocked softly on a door, poked his head in and murmured something to someone in there. I caught a faint whiff of something sweet, almost like licorice - probably a storage room, and a bottle of liquor had broken and been cleaned up. Eliot got his answer; he closed the door and we moved on. He peeked out into the main floor and called out something I couldn't hear over the noise of the crowd before heading to a pair of elevator doors.

I stopped walking. "Uh…"

He paused, turned, and led me to the stairs, grinning. "You know, I don't even think about most of this stuff. Tech's embedded so deep into our lives."

"I just wish for a hot water heater that didn't break in under a week," I told him.

"Yikes."

"Yup."

"Just keep your distance from Hardison's tech," Eliot warned me as he led me into a vast, elegant little loft. The bare brick walls had paintings on them that looked… modern. Expensive. I didn't know enough about art back then to appreciate what they were. A spiral staircase led up to what was probably a bedroom, and behind it was a typical modern kitchen. Most of the open space was taken up by a very modern, very sleek meeting room sort of setup, a wall full of screens and a small curve of desks before it. "He's still sore about those screens."

"Screens? More than one?"

"Yeah, a second one a day after -"

A young woman came flying into the loft. "Where is he? Where's the wizard?"

"Parker, don't -"

She whirled and faced me, and immediately made a face. "Aren't you supposed to have a white bushy beard?"

"Not for another couple hundred years."

I hadn't expected my quip to bring her up short, but it did. She seemed to really think about it, and it gave me a chance to examine her. She was young, wiry, blonde, pretty. She had the same kind of intensity Karrin had, but her focus seemed to change from minute to minute.

"Oh. I didn't think about that. There have to be young wizards to get old wizards."

"Parker." Eliot sighed.

"No robes?"

"Not if I can help it."

"Fancy spell books?"

"I do have one of those."

"Can I see it?"

"Parker, let the man catch his breath." Sophie Deveraux looked cozy and elegant and beautiful in a flowing blue blouse and a shimmering gray skirt. She beamed at me and I felt warm and fuzzy. Look, I'm man enough to admit it, I'm a sucker for a pretty lady, particularly one that doesn't want me dead. "Harry."

"Miss Deveraux."

"Just Sophie, Harry, please. Are you sure you wouldn't rather wait?"

"I'm good. I got all my rest in the train ride. Boston's full of energy, and it's making me buzzed, I rather put some of it to work, get it out of my system -"

"Why do you carry a stick?"

I whipped around. Parker had my wand in her hands.

Hell's Bells, I'd never even felt the theft. My wand, and I would have never known she'd gone for it if she hadn't said something.

Something in my face clued Sophie and Eliot that things had gone very badly, very quickly. "Parker!" Sophie cried out.

With all the care of someone handling live explosives, Eliot closed a hand over the 'stick'. "We are trying," he told her, sticking to his calm demeanor like tar, "to make a good impression, Parker."

"Oh, fine. Should I give everything else back?"

I took the quickest stock of my person I'd ever taken in my life. Immediately I found another thing missing that I would have never thought could be taken from me without my notice. How in the hell -!

"Yes!" Sophie told her firmly.

"Well, he didn't have anything interesting anyways," Parker put out her hand with my wallet on it.

And my shield bracelet.

Eliot offered me my wand back, looking sheepish. "Sorry, man."

"I just - how?" Seriously. Never mind the theft, everything was coming back to me, nothing was broken, no one was hurt, I just wanted to know how she'd done it.

"Parker is the best in the world," Sophie said, somehow managing to convey warm pride and icy disapproval all in one. Parker squirmed uncertainly. "She should also bear in mind that as of now you're part of our team, and we don't pickpocket teammates."

Parker held strong under the tone of disapproval longer than I would have. "Sorry," she muttered with ill grace.

"No harm no foul if you teach me how to do it."

She grinned, just a little. "Deal."

"Also, where should I stand so I'm as far away from anything tech-y as possible?"

"Right there." Nathan Ford had arrived, and the mask was off. He still looked vaguely friendly, a little rumpled, somewhat distracted. But there was nothing hiding the ruthless ice in his eyes anymore, or the deep mistrust in the gaze he leveled at me. I was in his world, in his domain, I was his employee. The carrot had done her job, the stick didn't have to mind his manners anymore. "Right there's fine, mister Dresden."

Ford passed everyone by and moved to the kitchen to find himself, apparently, some coffee. "Where's Hardison?"

"He said he wanted to take a few more pictures of the cylinder we found at the museum," Eliot told him. "He's in the storage room."

"What cylinder?" Something was bugging me. It wasn't big, at least not big enough to pin it down, but it was there, nagging at the back of my mind like a toothache after too much sugar.

"There was an issue at the Isabella Gardner Museum," Sophie told me. "Someone tampered with the fire suppression system. They attached some kind of homemade cylinder to the system and it started pumping something out in the air, some sort of perfume." She shrugged lightly. "We don't know why, there was no need for it."

"Perfume?"

"Yes. Fernflower."

I was running the next moment, going on a guess and a prayer. The guess was that the closed door was the storage room. The prayer was that I wouldn't be too late.

The moment I hit the bottom floor a faint reek of sweet, rotten candy and burning flowers made me reel back, coughing, my lungs burning. I could definitely smell the fernflower; worse, I could also smell night's breath. This was some deep, deep magic. Deep and old. Someone had cooked up a Burning Witchwell, and Leverage had blundered right into it. Only luck had kept any of them from being magically inclined, but that luck had run out with the fernflower.

Eliot was right behind me, and he threw a hand over his face. He snatched a bunch of cloth napkins from a nearby shelf and shoved them at me. "What is that?!"

I ran on and shoved the door open to the storage room. There was a man kneeling on the floor before a table, wheezing. The fernflower fumes burned my eyes and I actually heard my skin hiss on contact with the night's breath, but I was running on Boston air. I was so charged up I barely registered any pain.

"Venti, ventum!" I shouted. Wind poured into the storage room. Everything went flying off the shelves. I felt my magic careen out of control, as supercharged as I was, and fought to bring it back under control. I didn't want to wreck the room, I just wanted to get the man to safety, away from the fumes.

"Hardison!" Eliot had already dashed past me, catching the man. He was lanky, lean, deceptively muscled, possibly an inch or so taller than me. His skin was very dark and it had gone blotchy where the night's breath had had time to settle down and sink in. He slurred something unintelligible and squinted intently at me; I couldn't even begin to imagine what he was seeing.

"Dresden?!" Eliot asked, spitting his own hair out of his mouth.

"Go, get him out!"

He didn't question me. I could have danced a happy jig at that show of trust. I backed out of the room; I was one step past the doorway when helpful hands slammed the door shut. "Does the ventilation system here connect to the pub?"

"No, it goes straight out," Ford replied.

"Then just put some…" The borrowed energy from the Boston ambiance ran out. I felt pain creep up over any part of me not covered by fabric. "Put some…"

"Sophie, put some towels at the bottom," Ford's voice was full of calm, focused competency. "Parker, go tell the front of house no one is to come into this room until one of us says otherwise. Eliot." There was a pause. "Dresden, is a hospital going to help either of you?"

"He's fine." Oh, that was Ford's shoulder under my arm, holding me up. When had that happened? "Unless he's got magic, he's just drunk. Sort of."

"And you?"

"I'm a little blistered." I was a little more than blistered, but I had the advantage of knowing the damage wasn't real. "No hospital. A bath."

"Alright. Let's get you and Hardison up to the loft, then."

I wasn't in any shape to argue. I got shoved under a spray of miraculously hot water. Someone peeled my clothes off. At some point I realized I trusted only two people in the loft, and one of them was helping undress me. "Wash your hands," I told Eliot. "Wash the clothes."

"Can we burn them?"

"Don't burn my clothes, I didn't bring any more." I stared at him suspiciously; well, there was only one person I trusted anymore. "Tell Parker to watch my things."

Eliot offered a sound of deeply amused disbelief. Somewhere nearby a man's voice was tunelessly singing what sounded like a church song. "Drunk?"

"Intox… Intec… Sort of. Fernflower gives you magic. See things. Talk to animals. Sorta thing. But it's eph… emph…. It fades quick. You gotta lace it with… other stuff. It It wasn't the weapon, the night's breath was."

"Night's breath?"

"Old plant. Burns up magic. Night's breath was fire. Fernflower was gasoline. 's called a… a Burning Witchwell."

"You aren't breathing right, man."

"Fake. I'll be fine when my…. when my magic comes back. Easy, in this place."

"Fake damage." At that Eliot did look disbelieving. "Hurt's hurt."

"Particularly if you believe in it," I shot back, then put my head up to the spray of hot water. "Oh, that feels good."

I heard Eliot snort in amusement. "Well, enjoy it while you can. Haven't blown up this heater."

"Give me a chance, I just got here."

#leverage #nathan ford #alec hardison #sophie devereaux #eliot spencer #parker #the dresden files #harry dresden #crossover #my writing #fanfiction #urban fantasy #mild violence

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spiderh0rse · 9 days

Text

freeman's mind notes part 13, e61-68, plus 61.5. Finale.

e61

new intro! The dam.

HATES the giant teleporter room.

doesn't know the makeup of the HEV suit.

it's been a long time since he overprepared!

so so bothered by radiation always

almost trips and falls into the reactor core

keeps hitting buttons without thinking about it

sufficiently advanced technology quote. Claims it doesn't rule OUT magic

"if I start to die, then I'll stop"

shocked some doors arent locked

doesn't tolerate tardiness outside of his own, but doesn't mind sleeping on the job

genuinely thinks the teleporters may be magic

prepared to fight an old man

i hesitate to inform freeman the origins of the term "aspergers"

missed the long jump module <3

I love how he makes little motions as if he's taking the rocket out of the launcher

still refuses to touch the hivehand. I don't blame him it looks painful

picks up the Gauss Gun! Doesn't know its name

wants to get teleported to Massachusetts.

thinks he could get along with clones of himself. There's utility in that.

asking after a snack machine.

just needs to reach Massachusetts.

needs a plan to unite himselves if he gets clones of himself. Plans to leave contact info where the gold is.

BACKRUBS (shephard's mind cameo!)

e61.5

screams and falls into some water. silly noises

Not in new mexico anymore!

SO happy that his worst problem at the moment is Lost In The Woods

still hungry but he is in a forest

his sense of the passage of time is awful

thinks he may be in Europe

CAR FOR GORDON

crackliest laugh I've ever heard

turns on some silly music on the radio

e62

we're in Xen, everyone

"I TOLD THEM EXACTLY WHAT TO DO AND THEY FUCKED ME"

[whimpering]

hyperventilating so much right now. Sooooo panicked

not taking a survey team members helmet (germs on it)

"BLAH"

actively states that he might "blow [his] brains out"

keeps making noises every time he jumps from spinning platform to spinning platform

totally not freaking out

interested in how gravity and atmosphere work on what seems to be a single giant rock

wonders how many people Black Mesa dumped into Xen

the dead houndeyes jump around as they die

thinks a plant stole a piece of his soul. Considers it not worth it to get it back

lots of water! prepared to live in this one room if anything is edible

this flooded room isnt the worst apartment he's ever had

he's pretty sure he can't eat rhombuses

gets near-blinded and considers this the Second worst apartment he's ever had

e63

new intro, the gargantuar killing those two HECU

incredibly pessimistic about the survey team

thinks he can kill the gonarch easily

screams that he's freaking out, yells at the gonarch to die, mimics the gonarchs cry

white spiderweb hell milk

these are some crusty noises he's making they're kinda cute

thinks hundreds of researchers may have been dumped into Xen and a lot of them just. Missed land.

prioritizing explosives with the gonarch

having rockets brings him closet to his comfort zone

fully expects the trip to Xen to be one-way. Keeps working on the task given to him anyways

thinks he would not make a good ambassador

thinks he may be fighting god

"BLAH-"

actively screaming at and trying to kill supposedly-god

a wise man once said jesus tapdancing christ

thinks instead of being teleported reality was mostly destroyed and the remainder just got a bit weird. Rescinds that.

hits his head on the ceiling twice. He's out of it today.

would beat the shit out of the scientists that sent him to Xen if they brought him back

fizzly teleporter :>

e64

we open with a NOISE

he's confused and bothered by how much is happening right now

"THUD."

the rotating platforms-dactar island is slightly better than the gonarch one

declares himself a zoning inspector

explodes the weird pits in the island

thinks the island's ecosystem is neat.

"I'm a scientist with a shotgun. I'm unstoppable." Immediately cowers away from a weird plant

considering living in this cave as well

thinks he would've worked at Black Mesa even knowing this was the future. It is studying his field. I suppose he values the company greatly.

wondering how the gonarch managed to eat at its size

[coughing sputtering spitting] YEAHHHHH

bullsquid gunk in his mouth :(

wants to put a stick against the rising/sinking pillar and make a funny noise.

envisioning his own horrible death at every turn

does NOT like being this high up. Got his panic voice on

he's prepared to adjust his expectations to make an awful situation less terrible in comparison to other awful situations. Or equally bad!

"it's glowing. That means it must be important."

so good with his magnum aim here. Admits he may not be able to claim skill here, its just THAT good. Must be fate.

still wondering about the gonarchs diet

e65

"if you're not insane you're just ignorant."

very concerned about how all the survey team died

impressed at the dual stars of Xen but the sky is clearly mirrored. I think there's a plane of gasses the islands float in.

he wouldn't expect him here

happy with the gauss gun

theorizes the alien grunts are nearsighted

AMAZED some aliens aren't trying to attack him. Tells them theyre doing everything right for someone who wants to live.

gets his foot stuck in some rock :(

earth does indeed kick ass compared to here

MORE ROCKETSSSS

not happy to be here but sure he can make something of the place.

pretty sure the gargantuars are idiots

still not a bug fan. Cringe.

realizes he hasn't been using the tripmines. Makes em work

oh this is such a fun noise. Subtitled as "BLAAHHHBLAHHBLAAAH!"

yeah he just hates this and expects the teleporter to send him to beeroom

e66

new intro! We... Are in Xen.

makes bee noise as he lands!

still delighted at the vortigaunts being nonchalant about him. Would've assumed they worked at Black Mesa if they'd been this calm there.

climbs up a layer of the factory by climbing on a vortigaunt's head. No issues arise

keeps hearing weird noises

impressed by the industry of the healing tubes

clocks the factory as manufacturing or processing.

ripe for colonization.... Gordon.....

hits a forcefield and just starts making blubbering noises

recovers, deep breaths

he is NOT a barrel he never WANTED to be a barrel

HOT WATER WHERE ARE HIS TOWELS

the barrels are not full of laundry detergent

he thinks company policy should just be to run away when they see him

specbio fan :>

very confused about the technological development of the aliens

"SHIT POPPERS"

wonders if growing soldiers is more efficient than making bees

basically every hit he takes is punctuated with an "ah!"

cannot climb that barrel

has seen Phantasm

mind your ableism

big screen tv on the wall :> wants to watch alien tv

e67

talks as if he doesn't like tvs you can't operate without the remote.

doesn't like the red spores in the vents

still hoping Xen illnesses won't know how to adapt to humans

compares Xen to a living creature

metaphorically in the pit

impressed at how much effort it took to put him in a nigh-unwinnable scenario

"aliens... Come out to play~" x3

thinks the scientists don't care about anyone who got sent to Xen

dizzy again :(

surrounded by electricity and plasma and he isn't even slightly dizzy

he's got so little food in him he wouldn't be able to vomit. Just dry heave

thinks very poorly of the Xenians

thinks killing a major religious figure would make them largely subservient to him or demoralize them

thinks wearing someone's head around your neck sends a universal message

knows how many people died in the space program

knows tricks to deal with dizziness or reduce it

familiar with Dr. Who

only willing to teleport once more

infinite black void. Thick cloud or cavern, he thinks.

funny noises as he jumps around the rocks

thinks the Nihilianth teleporter is "heavy metal"

hears the science team talking over the big ol radio teleporter

breathing hard as he falls into the Nihilianth room, screams the moment it's done saying his name

e68, Finale

New intro. We close in on the tram in stasis.

familiar with Lovecraft's works.

none of this situation is going well for him he's just panicking constantly

thinks reality is breaking down more the longer he's alive

thinks the security guard advertisements are to send random people into Xen

seeing him using the grenade rounds on the Nihilianth before breaking the crystals,, painful

tells the crystals to stop helping his adversary

treats his scavenging like making all these deaths worthwhile

he's the low-g man :)

a final bit of underwater mumbling....

the electricity is WORSE when he's wet. Sounds outright painful

once more he does not know Morse

wants to use this room as a low gravity basketball court

stuck his palm to the ceiling. Neat stuff.

yeah this gravity is too low to support an atmosphere...

downright cheery about killing the Nihilianth now. I think he's in shock.

swan dive purgatory :/

he doesn't know what the gauss gun is but it is VERY expensive

wants to become god now??

checks himself when Gman mentions taking his weapons

does not like the teleportation tour

thinks Gman is from the CIA

he wants a pardon if he's to work for the CIA. Wants lab work in Hawai'i

he's done being shot at.

thinks Gman is a time lord

doesn't respond to anything after entering the portal.

AND ALTERNATIVE TIMELINE

refuses to work for Gman.

wants the space tram to turn around and bring him back to earth

not sure where he is! It's bad though! He dies!

Alright! It's been an eventful series! I'll say that I started this expecting to slowly work my way through and be clinical the whole time, but... Well. He started making silly noises. I genuinely find him kind of adorable now, and have far more serious thoughts about him than I anticipated. He's a deeply unserious person. He's incredibly stressed by everything going on. He doesn't like killing people. He sustains a fair bit of head trauma. HE HASN'T EATEN ANYTHING SINCE THOSE BAD DORITOS. It really does stand out to me that being well-fed is such a motivator of his all series. He really is horribly hungry. Anyways. It's been a pleasure doing this, and I'll absolutely being doing more notes on other Mindverse series in short order. Stark's Mind is up next.

#freeman's mind #gordon freemind #mindverse #rmanotes #anddddd a few further notes on the series as a whole and my final thoughts at the very end

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smilesrobotlover · 7 months

Text

Whumptober day 4- Shock

Ok I did as much research on this as possible and idk if it is actually accurate but I tried. Some of the stuff that is inaccurate can be assumed because they don’t know what they’re doing lol. Anyways, king of the Gerudo stuff! Centered around Orman, Ammon, and Terrako! Important to note that Ammon has a Sheikah prosthetic. Also fair warning, there is an electrical shock. Lofty, you know what’s about to happen….

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

Terrako sprinted across the ruins, hopping when he reached a strange looking pedestal on the other side. Orman and Ammon slowly followed the little guardian, cautious of their surroundings. They were investigating ruins found near the castle, and Orman was surprised at how unique the ruins were. He’s seen many Sheikah ruins, and even the legendary Zonai ruins, but they didn’t look anything like this. Inside the ruins, there were strange lights that lit up the place, and even though it was filled with debris, it was surprisingly empty, save for the pedestal Terrako was at.

“What is this place?” Ammon muttered underneath his breath. Orman shrugged and walked over to Terrako, noting an electric circuit near a door.

“What is that?” Ammon asked.

“Dunno. Looks like it keeps the door open.”

“How is it still working after all these years?”

“I don’t know.”

Ammon put his hands on his hips and gave Orman a teasing smile.

“Why don’t you know anything?”

“Because I like to remain blissfully ignorant. Now come on.”

Ammon stared at the door for a moment before catching up to Orman.

“What exactly are we looking for anyways?” He asked when he reached the pedestal.

“Dunno, we need to investigate this place and report back whatever we’ve found, so that’s what we’re doing.”

“Investigate… investigate what?”

“Investigate something, I don’t know. Didn’t you listen to Rhoam during the briefing?”

Ammon scoffed and crossed his arms, looking around for a moment. “Welp, there’s nothing here. We can go home now.”

“Hold on now, we haven’t seen everything.”

Ammon groaned and spun around, staring down the empty room. “It’s just an empty room.”

“An empty room with technology still working! I’m sure that’ll be useful information.” Terrako beeped in response and Orman rubbed his little head. “See? The guardian agrees with me!”

Ammon rolled his eyes. “Just get him to record everything so we can leave.”

“Sure thing,” Orman put his hands on his knees and looked at the little guardian. “Ok Terrako, be a good little guardian and record everything so Ammon doesn’t blow a fuse!”

“Hey!”

Terrako made some beeps that Orman assumed was giggling, and he chuckled while Ammon huffed.

“Just wait until Rhoam hears about this. Harassment while on the job is no joke, you know!”

Orman smiled and rolled his eyes while Terrako looked around at some debris. He himself stared at the pedestal, having to agree with Ammon that there was nothing special of note here. He watched Terrako while Ammon continued to complain, curious at what the guardian was doing. Terrako studied every piece of rubbish and debris left in the ruin, and the little guardian found itself near a wall with a strange mark on it. Orman titled his head and walked over to Terrako, eyeing the symbol.

“What is that?” Ammon asked, not moving from his spot. Orman knelt down and brushed his hand against the symbol.

“You ask a lot of questions, Ammon.” He pulled back his hand to look at the dust on his gloves. Ammon scoffed and turned back around.

“I ask a lot of questions you don’t know the answers to apparently,” he grumbled to himself.

“It’s a mysterious ruin that has stuff we don’t understand, how do you expect me to know everything?”

“I don’t know, why don’t you know?”

“I’ve never seen it before!”

“Sounds like a weakness to me…”

“You’re a weakness to me.”

“No you are!”

Orman burst out laughing and Ammon did the same. Such ridiculous banter, what were they? Children? Terrako made a beep noise and Orman rested his hand on his head.

“What is it, little one?” He asked, and Terrako continued beeping, staring at the symbol on the wall. Orman narrowed his eyes as Terrako’s beeping got strange.

Suddenly, a bright light appeared, and electricity burst out from the symbol, hitting Terrako. Orman yelped and jumped back from the guardian as electricity spewed out of him. The lights in the ruin went out one by one, and all the technology started to spew out electricity and shutting down. Including…

Orman gasped as he spun around and saw Ammon’s prosthetic arm spew out electricity. His whole body convulsed and he collapsed to the ground, his muscles continuing to spazz.

“AMMON!” Orman cried, running to his friend. He grabbed his spear and brought it down on the emergency release button on the prosthetic, releasing it from Ammon’s arm. He ripped Ammon’s sleeve off and threw the prosthetic far away from both of them. “Ammon,” his voice shook as his hand hovered over his friend. His eyes fluttered open, and he stared up at the ceiling, dazed. He wasn’t unconscious, that was good, but it didn’t mean that the injury wasn’t serious. Orman listened closely to his breathing as he checked Ammon’s nub, cringing at the burns on where the skin was in contact with the prosthetic. That looked painful.

“Ok,” he whispered, “what do I do, what do I do?” He stared at the arm for a moment, then reached into his pouch and grabbed a bright bloom seed, smacking it on the ground to light up the area he was in.

“Ammon,” he said as calmly as he could, and Ammon looked over at him. “Are you feeling alright?”

Ammon frowned, taking in a shaky breath. “I—I can't feel my arm…”

Orman stared at him for a moment, then pursed his lips. “Which one? You’re kind of missing one of them.”

Ammon glared at him and Orman looked down.

“I guess you still have some of it…”

Ammon took in another shaky breath. “It feels… numb…”

“Well, I’m not surprised. Just focus on breathing alright? I’ll take care of this.”

Ammon nodded slightly, and Orman listened to his struggled breaths. That wasn’t good that he was struggling to breathe, but he could worry about it when it got concerning. He pulled out his canteen and began pouring it onto his burns. When his water emptied out, he grabbed Ammon’s canteen and emptied that as well. He then grabbed bandages he had in his pouch and gently laid them over his burned nub. He checked Ammon’s breathing again, and it seemed to have evened out.

“Ammon? How are you feeling now?” He asked.

Ammon shuddered and squeezed his eyes shut. “Like sh—“

Orman jumped when he heard a loud beep coming from Terrako, and he spun around to see the little guardian beginning to wake up. He sighed, and looked down at Ammon who was beginning to sit up.

“It’s just Terrako,” he muttered, and Ammon nodded.

“Ok… we should get out of here before something like that happens again,” Ammon said, laying back down when he wasn’t strong enough to sit up

Orman looked at the door that they came through and sighed.

“I don’t think that’s gonna happen any time soon.”

“What do you mean?”

Orman stood up and walked over to the door. “The door is shut.”

Ammon groaned. “Are you serious?”

“All the technology here shut down, including the door that you showed no interest in earlier.” He looked over at Terrako who was beeping slowly and barely moving. “I doubt he could open up this door in his state.”

“Wonderful… we’re stuck here…”

Orman walked over to Ammon and watched him carefully. He looked exhausted, and his expression was pinched in pain.

“You alright?”

“No…”

Orman rested his hand on his shoulder. They needed to find a way out, Orman would feel much better if an actual doctor took a look at him. Maybe princess Mipha or Queen Kailani would be able to help him. But he couldn’t do anything while stuck in here. He looked over at Terrako who began to crawl towards them, and he hummed.

“Terrako, do you have enough energy to call for help?”

Terrako beeped and Ammon sighed. “Shouldn’t he… save his energy… to open up the door?”

“It might take too long to do that. If we could call for help on the Sheikah slate, maybe someone can come for us?”

“Will that… even work?”

“I don’t know! Technology is weird, so it might!”

“Ah… well… let’s hope… so…”

Orman looked at Ammon worried as he began to drift off. He panicked for a moment and shook him gently.

“Hey, I don’t know if it’s safe for you to sleep, Ammon.”

Ammon groaned and kept his eyes closed, and Orman shook him again.

“Come on Ammon, please don’t fall asleep. I—I don’t know if I’ll be able to wake you up.”

Ammon opened his blue eyes and gave Orman a blank look. Orman sighed.

“I’m sorry, I’m sure you’re tired, but I’m not taking any chances until we can get out…”

Ammon sighed, annoyed and rested his head back, staring at the ceiling. Orman smiled slightly, then looked back at Terrako, who was barely moving. He didn’t know what the right thing to do was. They needed to get out to help out Ammon, but Terrako seemed to have used up all his energy on crawling towards them. Waiting for him to be strong enough to send a signal or to open the door would take too long, but what else was he supposed to do? And which one would be the fastest option? Orman groaned and leaned back against the rock, feeling his mouth drying up. Just great. He used up all of his and Ammon’s water to deal with the burn. They really couldn’t stay for long. Terrako beeped and began crawling to a wall, examining it.

“Hey, don’t send another electric shock through the building,” Orman warned. Terrako beeped again and clawed at the wall, and Orman gasped when some of it crumbled away. He shot up and knelt at the wall, pushing some of the rocks away. He felt a draft from a gap in the rocks and he cheered. “I think I found a way out!” Terrako made an offended beep and Orman chuckled. “Sorry. Terrako found a way out.”

Ammon cheered tiredly as Orman began moving the rocks out of the way, feeling the fresh air hit his face as the wall crumbled away, and soon there was a big enough hole for Orman to crawl through. He jogged over to Ammon who had his eyes closed, and Orman’s heart skipped a beat.

“Hey,” he shook him, a little too aggressively, and Ammon groaned. “I’m sorry, but I need you to stay awake.”

Ammon glared at him, lifting himself up shakily. Orman helped him sit up and he pointed to the hole.

“Do you think you could crawl through that hole?”

“Yeah, yeah I can do that,” Ammon muttered, slowly standing up with Orman’s help. But when he took a step, his knees buckled, and Orman nearly yelped when he caught him.

“Ok, just wait here…” Orman gave Ammon a pat on the shoulder before standing up and grabbing Ammon’s arm. He then took his belt and Ammon’s belt and strapped the exhausted Terrako to his chest. He swung Ammon’s arm over his shoulders and walked over to the hole.

“I’m fine, Orman. I can crawl through on my own,” Ammon said, sounding more sure of himself this time. Orman nodded, figuring Ammon needed to get used to his legs a little more. Orman went in first, sighing with relief when he was outside, and helped Ammon crawl out. He stood up, helping Ammon on his feet and looked at the castle.

“How are we gonna explain this?” Orman muttered to himself, thinking about what they found at the ruins. “The weird electrical shock, the symbol that caused all this… all of it…”

“Just tell Rhoam Terrako did it,” Ammon said, causing Terrako to make an offended beep. “Hey, I’m not technically wrong.”

Orman chuckled at the two and pulled Ammon’s arm slightly.

“Well, we have time to figure it out, come on, you need help.”

Ammon nodded and stuck close to Orman’s side as they began walking towards castle town. Orman kept a close eye on his dear friend, the feeling of worry never really going away even as he walked along the field. But he supposed that there was not much else he could do except to make sure he was well enough to make it to a healer. Until then, all he could do was worry.

#king of the Gerudo #hate it when I look up an injury and google is like #‘seek professional help’#ok but like. what do I do in the meantime? or what do I do if I’m hypothetically stuck in a ruins with all technology shut down???#what do I do then????#lol anyways #smiles writes #whumptober #whumptober day 4 #whumptober 2023 #I mean Orman really doesn’t know what he’s doing #Sheikah technology is supposed to not conduct electricity anyways #and then boom #it explodes electricity #maybe It really is safe for Ammon to sleep but idk that so Orman doesn’t know that and he’s not taking any chances

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pb-dot · 3 months

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Film Friday: Inception

Today I'm writing about a movie that's a bit outside of my regular wheelhouse. Inception is not my favorite movie, it probably doesn't even get on the Top 10 shortlist if I'm honest, but it's probably one of my favorite movies ever to think about for a couple of reasons that I suspect are a bit unusual. This is all to say I'm going to go a bit deeper into Film Nerd mode than usual for this one. I'd apologize, but I'm not sorry. Inception spoilers beneath the cut.

So, to start off, I'm not particularly fond of Nolan as a filmmaker. He's extremely gifted on the technical side of filmmaking for sure, and his authorial voice is very strong. That said, his oeuvre seems entirely too cold and clinical to me. Sharp suits, sharp men, complex plans that pivot on perfect twists, near-realistic aesthetics. If there are any emotions involved it's what's ruining everybody's shit. Sometimes, Batman is there. You know, the whole bag.

Nolan makes complex clockwork movies that frequently fuck with time in an interesting way, but there's an emotional distance, or perhaps I should say "distance from emotion" to the whole thing which makes very few of them stick in any meaningful way. For example: I remember Dunkirk being a technically impressive movie that did some spicy things what narrative pacing is considered, but I couldn't tell you a single thing about who it was about, or even what those spicy narrative decisions were in service of.

There is, however, one notable exception. In his 2010 movie Inception, Nolan assembles one of, if not the most complex mechanism yet, and somehow it manages to be his most emotionally honest film. It's quite the impressive magic trick, and I would argue he achieves it by reaching a level of emotional honesty that one seldom sees from mainstream filmmakers.

Inception is a film about a crew of exceptional thieves specializing in cracking the final vault, the human mind. Using technology that lets them enter the dreams of their targets, they seek to extract company secrets, classified intel, and other pieces of knowledge that can most easily be hidden in memory. However, their troubled leader Cobb finds himself compelled to attempt a job thought impossible, Inception. Their mission is to plant in the mind of energy company heir Robert Fischer the idea of breaking up his company through a dream heist. This heist is complicated not only by the sheer deftness the crew must show in planting an idea without leaving any trace, but also by Cobb's own psychological scars that threaten to destabilize the carefully planned multi-level heist.

The first level I want to look at here is the central metaphor of the Mind Heist gang being analogous to a filmmaking crew. They're all creative and immensely focused people coming together under the direction of a man with a vision, Cobb. This description is perhaps a bit over-general, but what elevates the Filmmaking-as-heist idea to me is how the heists in Inception are specifically about creating a narrative. It is especially important with the main heist as creating a narrative in the head of the target is part and parcel of the inception, but even in the other heist we get to see, setting up a narrative is pivotal to stealing the information they're looking for.

As an aside, this narrative-making and the need for realism that comes with it also justifies what I consider to be my main sticking point with the film, in that the dreams are so very true to life and low-tech, while dreams in my experience tend to be strange, surreal and malleable experiences. This explains at least from the Watsonian perspective. From a Doylist point of view, it's more likely because Nolan is most comfortable with a near-realistic style of narrative, and this strict adherence to something approaching the realitylike makes his complex drama puzzleboxes easier to follow.

So, the heist crew are, essentially, filmmakers, which would, at least in today's Western film tradition, would make Cobb the director. In much the same way as Roy Neary in Close Encounters Of The Third Kind can be read as a stand-in for director Steven Spielberg, Cobb functions as our Nolan stand-in for Inception. Cobb is, however, far from a blank slate, or frankly a particularly idolized self. He is, in short, a mess.

After going deeper into the world of dreaming than anyone before him, Cobb has crossed some ethical Rubicons, especially when attempting to deal with his now-dead wife Mal and her reluctance to leave the world of dreaming. After performing the first-ever inception to plant the idea in Mal's head that the dream world is, indeed, not the real world, Cobb finds himself constantly troubled by anxiety as to whether he's asleep or awake. Whether this is a direct consequence or reaction to the act of inception, paranoia stemming from such a perspective-shifting thing even being possible, a manifestation of the guilt he feels over Mal's return to the waking world ending with her suicide, or even a sign that Mal did some incepting of her own, is something we can only speculate on.

Regardless of what exactly is eating Cobb, it manifests in his work. The heist crew frequently finds their efforts frustrated by incursions from Cobb's mind. The most common of these is Mal, or at least Cobb's mental recreation of her, throwing a wrench in their plans, and, in one particularly memorable case, a freight train running through an area a freight train really has no business being. Cobb tries to minimize the risk of this by not taking point and not being too directly involved, but this does little to dissuade his cocktail of trauma and troubled emotions from coming damn close to upending the entire thing.

The heist, however, does succeed. Through a series of bluffs and maneuvers, they manage to navigate Fischer Jr. to what he believes to be the deepest corner of his mind, where lies the comprehension, represented by a deathbed conversation with the man. Through this, Fischer realizes his recently departed father wishes for Robert to break up the energy conglomerate Fischer Sr. built, and instead make something for himself. It's a scene of high drama, and no small amount of catharsis as the troubled Robert realizes his father was never disappointed in him, and merely wanted his boy to be the best version of himself he could be. It's quite stirring stuff.

It is, however, a lie. This isn't Fischer Sr. revealing himself to be a caring father with trouble communicating the same, hell, it isn't even Robert's interpretation of the man. It is a scenario set up by the dream heist team with the express intention of making the dreaming Fischer Jr. believe this was his unconscious mind telling him to break up his energy conglomerate. It isn't Fischer Sr., not even as an imperfect mental construct by Fischer Jr., it's a construction of the heist crew. It's an act of manipulation, a triumphant act of manipulation, yes, but an act of manipulation all the same.

And still, even upon rewatching the movie with this knowledge well in hand, it's hard to not be swept along by the sheer force of emotion in that moment. Part of it is because it feels so necessary for the character. Fischer Jr. isn't just a target in the context of the scene, he's a troubled man with a complicated relationship to his father. He needs to settle his self-doubt and dismay with the stern and aloof parent he grew up with, and after his death, he still needs the catharsis. So in a way, it doesn't matter much that Fischer Sr. isn't the real deal, Fischer Jr. knows he's in a dream at this point, hell, it maybe doesn't even matter if the dream construct isn't his own. Perhaps what the dream-construct father says is what the wayward son needs to hear, although it'll certainly change the energy market in some pretty dramatic ways. Perhaps, or perhaps Cobb has become such a skilled manipulator his reach extends to the audience, but returning to our metaphor of Cobb as a Nolan stand-in, what is filmmaking if not manipulating and eliciting emotional reactions?

To further reinforce the point that this cathartic, but fake, heart-to-heart isn't the climax of the story, Cobb's journey isn't done. In the process of doing something thought impossible for the second time, Cobb is forced to do something impossible yet again, parallel to Fischer's revelation. This time, it is to dive deeper into the layered dreaming still in pursuit of his exit strategy, to the unconscious, chaotic under-realm of Limbo, from which there is no waking. This was from whence he managed to rescue himself and Mal back after the first inception, and although it is far from pleasant, he yet again manages to pull through and emerge from the dream.

Or does he? The movie does play with the possibility that the reality that Cobb emerges into is merely another dream in Limbo. It could be because of this the cinematography gets somewhat less focused as the heist concludes and Cobb finds his highest wish fulfilled, exoneration both in the eyes of the law and himself from any wrongdoing in Mal's death and the opportunity to return to his children.

Now, before I bring this all home, I feel I should speak briefly on Totems in Inception. The Totem is a series of different objects made by the various members of the heist crew. These items, Cobb's is a spinning top, are modified by each individual member and is only to be handled by them. The logic here is that these items are supposed to be a way to check whether you're in somebody else's dream, as you can check the object and how it interacts with the world to verify that it's doing what it's supposed to do, the weighted die falls to the number it's supposed to, the spinning top spins out and tips over like you'd expect it to. Throughout the movie, Cobb has a spinning top he checks regularly, some would say with obsessively, only feeling fully safe once the top tips over.

This is all to explain the lead-up to the final moment of the movie. Cobb, true to his habit, spins his top before meeting his children. He does, however, not wait for it to tip over, and instead goes to meet his children. The camera remains on the top, and moments before it becomes clear whether the top will fall over or continue, the movie cuts to credits.

Many have taken this as a challenge of sorts, a call to action to analyze the logic and events of the movie for signs. Is this a movie about a man succeeding or about a man succumbing? Is what we see in the closing minutes of the movie real, or is it a comfortable lie Limbo has formed around Cobb like it once did around him and Mal?

Personally, I say it does not matter. The story of Cobb ends with him leaving behind his totem for a reason. He has rid himself of the fear that has plagued him since emerging from Limbo and Mal's death. What if it was Mal who was right, and the quote-unquote real world was nothing more than a particularly elaborate Limbo dream. What if he never incepted anything, what if he's still dreaming within dreaming, stuck in a holding pattern until the impossibly long dream ends, his mind rent asunder by experiencing more time and place than a human mind is meant to bear. What if the top never stops spinning?

As my sequence of retelling might imply, I believe it was experiencing the inception scene with Fischer that helped Cobb clear the final hurdle and face his fears. Even if what Fischer experienced wasn't real, it had a powerful, arguably positive effect on the man. It gave him something he'd never get in the real world, closure. It wasn't real, but it was real enough.

So that is, I believe, what we're meant to take from that spinning top. The point isn't whether the top has stopped spinning or not, but rather that Cobb has stopped checking. Spin or not, Cobb's journey is not real. It's a movie, told by a crew of talented creatives, guided by a man with a vision and the willingness to show us things that aren't real to give us catharsis, show us wonder and terror, entertain us, and perhaps, give us some closure. "Try not to dwell on it," the movie says, as if aware of the deluge of movie buffs and wannabe theorists that would descend on this movie like they do on every movie with their red circles and reading metaphors as mechanics, "Even if it's fake, it's Real Enough."

#film friday #inception #oh lord this turned out long #I always feel conflicted while talking about this movie because I try not to psychoanalyze the author #I mean I've never even met the man #but it is hard to avoid while talking about an auteur making a movie about being an auteur #but I did hold back on it a bit - hope it doesn't read as too egregious #also for the record I'm so so on auteur theory #but that's another post for another day

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actress4him · 9 months

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Querencia 15 - Park Day

The enthusiastic response I got on the last piece I posted helped motivate me to keep going! This is the actual chronologically next chapter, coming in a month or two after Mind Control. Enjoy!

Taglist: @darthsutrich , @inky-whump , @painful-pooch , @pigeonwhumps , @bookworm2107

Previous | Next | Masterlist

Contains: referenced mind control, referenced parental abandonment, fear of abandonment, broken bone, a couple more warnings in the tags to avoid spoilers here

Things have been fairly normal since the whole “supervillain getting in Jamil’s head and making him attack everyone” incident. Dagger is still a near-weekly problem, along with Meltdown and whoever else he happens to be hanging out with at the moment. Other villains come and go, too, some low-level Supers like Reaper and Gibbous, along with non-Super nuisances that the team does their best to curb, too - bank robbers and muggers and kidnappers and such.

No one has heard anything from or about Luna. Then again, no one had heard of her before the incident, either. Which means she’s probably still out there, and could very well be biding her time until she can strike again. None of them ever really talk about her, but Liliana can feel anxiety hanging in the air that wasn’t there before, especially on poor Jamil’s part.

Luna knows exactly where they live, what they look like without their masks on. Probably knows their names and where they work, thanks to rummaging through Jamil’s brain. So not only could she easily return, but she could also tell others the information she learned. They don’t know who she might be associated with. They managed to pin down Reaper one day and quiz him about her and any other new villains in town, but he was less than helpful on the subject.

Even if they could track her down and catch her, Liliana has learned from snippets of conversation that they really have nothing to do with her. It’s something she’s never thought of before, but one reason that there are still so many supervillains around is that there’s no way to arrest them. The government likely could detain them, but no one trusts that it would be humane or that the heroes wouldn’t also be captured in the process of trying to hand them over. Just the thought of the government locking them up makes Liliana sick to her stomach, villains or not.

Normal jails can’t handle them. Normal courtrooms can’t, either, in order to convict them to send them to jail. And no hero wants to be in charge of locking them away themselves, even if they did have the space and technology.

So all they can do for now is damage control, really. Try to stop their crimes as often as they can, try to disrupt whatever plans they have. She doesn’t envy the team their jobs. Between supervillains, regular criminals, and their day jobs, they’re constantly busy.

Every other Saturday, though, after everyone who’s working gets home, they make it a point to go do something together. Since Liliana’s been with them they’ve seen a couple of movies, gone to an arcade, had a picnic, gone to the mall, and eaten out at restaurants a few times. Every experience is a huge deal for her, though she tries to make light of the awe she feels. It’s just been so long since she’s done such normal, fun things. Sometimes she feels like she’s watching someone else’s life.

Today, they’re at the city park. No one can remember whose idea it was to start with, but “the children” - as Quinn likes to fondly dub Nari, Alex, and Jamil - went crazy over the thought of playing on the playground, so here they are. It’s late enough that all of the actual children have gone home. Jamil is trying out every slide, while Quinn judges Nari and Alex in a series of competitions on the monkey bars. Liliana watches everyone from the side, a small smile on her face, but every once in a while she glances over at the empty swings.

Swinging used to be her favorite. Especially on park or school swings like these, with the long chains that could take you so high you felt like you were flying. She and Mila used to see who could go the highest, and try to swing themselves right over the top bar.

It feels silly and childish now. She can’t swing herself right now, anyway. She healed another broken rib - on Nari this time - earlier this week, just a couple of weeks after the pain from Alex’s had finally faded. So there’s no way that she can pump the chains on a swing.

Still…she could just sit in one. That won’t hurt anything. Glancing over at the chin-up contest again, she makes her way over and settles into the plastic seat, gloved hands gripping the chains loosely. Her toes just barely reach the ground, giving her enough leverage that she can give herself a little push. The swing rocks gently. Liliana watches her sneakers as they brush across the dirt, back and forth. She pushes again and swings a little more. Such a simple motion, but it brings so many childhood memories flooding into her mind.

“May I give you a push?”

The sudden question makes her jump and look back over her shoulder, though she recognizes the voice. Jamil is standing behind her with a smile on his face, cheeks flushed from his adventures down the slides.

“Oh, um…y-you don’t have to, I’m…I’m fine.”

“I know I don’t have to, but I’d like to, if you’d like to swing. If not, I’ll leave you be!”

Now her mind is at war. She automatically wants to say no, not wanting to inconvenience him or make him do things for her.

She also really, really wants to swing.

Somehow, without her actually deciding what to say, “Sure?” slips out.

“Alright, hang on!”

Suddenly, she’s flying through the air, and it’s exactly how she remembers it. Colors rush by as the wind blows her curls back off her shoulders, then tangles them around her cheeks again. She grabs onto the chains tighter. Her legs automatically fall into a pumping motion, toes pointing out at the horizon, her eyes bright with exhilaration.

Yes, it pulls at her rib a bit. But she finds she doesn’t really care.

She’s been swinging for a few minutes, oblivious to anything else around her, when another voice breaks in. “Hold on tight, I’m coming through!” A set of hands grab the swing by her hips and shove forward, higher and faster until she’s sure she actually is going to go over the top bar, or more likely, fall out the back of the swing. She squeals in shock, though this sensation is familiar, too. Then she’s dropped abruptly, her stomach following the motion, the swing’s momentum twisting it back and forth as it reaches the bottom again.

Alex is turned around watching her, laughing. He’d come up from behind and grabbed the swing, running all the way underneath it.

Her brother used to do the very same thing, back when she was small enough he could lift her.

“Did I scare you?”

“A, a little.” She’s smiling, though. She can’t help it, even with the pain in her side and the melancholy of missing what used to be.

These people…they treat her like a family should. Better than her family ever did, though she feels like a traitor for thinking it.

She shouldn’t fall for it. If her real family taught her anything, it’s that what seems like love and care won’t last and can’t be trusted. If her own flesh and blood eventually turned on her, then she can’t expect people who were strangers a few months ago to be any different.

But right now, she’s shoving those thoughts deep, deep down. She can worry about all of that later. Right now, for once, she’s going to let herself enjoy the moment.

Nari is shoving and punching Alex and playfully fussing at him for scaring Liliana, and Jamil has jumped up on the swing next to her, standing on one foot and pumping with his arms. She doesn’t move from her spot, just keeps smiling and watching their antics. They’re so full of life and joy, even with the stress they constantly face.

Before long Quinn takes up Jamil’s position without a word, and she’s swinging again. Alex and Jamil balance on the seesaw, attempting circus tricks, screaming like girls when Nari uses her power to make the metal move beneath them, which sends her into fits of laughter.

It’s late when they finally pile into Quinn’s car to head back to HQ. Everyone is tired in a contented way. Alex leans the passenger seat back practically into Nari’s lap, claiming he’s going to take a nap, while she kicks his headrest repeatedly and threatens him. Quinn clears his throat loudly, though, and quiet falls to let him focus and not overwhelm him with sound in the small space.

Liliana leans her head back and watches the moon out the sunroof. Her hands are tucked between her knees to keep her arms from brushing up against Jamil and Nari, who each lean into their respective doors to give her more space. It’s…peaceful. She’s pretty sure she hears someone snoring. She could fall asleep, too, honestly, which is surprising for her since she doesn’t usually feel comfortable sleeping unless she’s alone.

The motion of the car does lull her into a near-dozing state. Her eyes are closed and she’s absentmindedly trying to picture which turn they’re taking when someone gasps and the car suddenly jerks to one side. Liliana’s eyes fly open and she sits up abruptly. There’s a bump and a loud popping and hissing sound, then the car is swerving uncontrollably, headlights sweeping back and forth across the empty road.

The seconds seem to pass in slow motion. Her hands are gripping the seats in front of her, eyes fixated out the front windshield. A cacophony of screams and shouted words fill the car as the steeply sloped side of the road looms in front of them, cutting off abruptly as they tip over the side and begin to fall.

Gravity inverts, and for a moment she’s weightless before being slammed back down. Her temple smashes into something hard and unyielding. Images are swimming through the darkness around her - a cracked window, slumped figures. A beam of light making her wince and turn away.

Someone groans. The car shakes as a door is forced open.

“This one’s still awake.”

“Here, use the syringe.”

There’s movement around her, the click of seatbelts unbuckling too loud in her ears.

“Wait, why are there five?”

“What?”

“This one, who is she? She’s not one of the usuals, is she?”

“Doesn’t matter, just grab her.”

Something is very, very wrong, but she can’t make her body work to do anything about it. The darkness outside is creeping closer inward. She feels her seatbelt loosen and a pair of hands latch onto her, but the darkness closes in completely before she can protest.

#querencia #liliana the healer #quinn the leader #nari the hero #alex the hero #jamil the hero #lady whump #lady whumpee #broken ribs #referenced parental abandonment #fear of abandonment #referenced mind control #car crash #kidnapping #urban fantasy #superheroes #heroes and villains #whump writing #whump series

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kopawz · 8 months

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what up gamers it's wip wednesday and the girls are FIGHTINGGGGGG

He was staring with mild alarm, but to Chai, it felt like he was glaring daggers through him,

"...How do you know that."

Chai pointed at him, as if he should have known, "You're the one who told me!"

"No I didn't?!" His pitch was slightly higher with indignance.

"What, so your A.I. got the information wrong?"

"No, but–" Kale paused, before pinching the bridge of his nose, "I'd rather you not interrogate parts of my personal history out of it."

"Interrogate? Do I look like–?" Chai huffed, disappointed in him, "Dude. We were just playing a game of 20 questions, and it just came up in the game."

"...You convinced an A.I. of myself," Kale paused, still not wanting to believe what he was hearing, "...To play a game of 20 questions with you."

"Yep. He was trying to get info out of me, too– but," Chai tapped his temple, "Can’t get nothing outta me. I don’t crack."

Peppermint looked over her shoulder from offering the poor frazzled technician a glass of water, "And then you brought it all up anyway, while watching a kid's movie and painting your nails." She sits back on the bed, snickering at Chai’s offended gasp of a reaction.

"CNMN did an awesome job on my nails, thank you very much," He pointed across the room at her, displaying said red nails– "They didn't even chip during the fight."

Her response was flat, "Sure. Because that's the most important thing you got out of this, Chai."

"Exaaactly." He glanced at his hand and the painted nails. His eyes followed up to his wrist, where the two bands he was given rest. …Nervous. Yeah, right. He's handling this meeting very well, actually.

Looking a bit more to his left, Kale had picked up a pencil and started writing again.

Chai leaned over on the sofa, craning his neck to see what he was pencilling down, "...Wouldn't it be easier if you typed all that up with a keyboard, instead?"

Kale hadn't looked up from writing, "Yes, but apparently I'm not allowed technology privileges."

He briefly glanced up at the technician's goggled gaze,

"Thanks, Buffy." Sarcasm coated his tone.

"You’re welcome!" He muffles out as he wipes the last of his muffin from his face and onto his sleeve, "It's just inmate patient protocol– can't have you being known to the public if you get your hands on anything with a signal."

Sighing, Kale flexed his metal hand. This temp body had nowhere near as much articulation as the original. He missed the claws that not only had multipurpose utility, but looked intimidatingly good. He ignored the dissonance, and continued jotting down a laughably incorrect chapter of his life story.

"...It's better I write like this, anyway. Good to move my hands often. Practice for when I'm in the real deal again."

"See?" Buffet smiled, tossing the muffin's wrapper into the bin beside the door, "You get something out of this after all, and so did I."

"Of course," Kale coldly remarks without thinking, "I'm sure you've been getting a big laugh from my suffering."

"What?... No," Buffet frowned at him. He pats his stomach, "I meant breakfast… You think so little of your fellow man, man."

The technician tsk'd with disappointment, and decided to stop hugging the wall. He walked over to a work bench beside a one-way window, opposing the door.

The window had a generous view of a sizable chunk of the residential district…

"Hm…" Chai got up from the paper-infested sofa, vaulted himself over Kale’s bed (startling him and making the man swear under his breath) and peeked above the AC unit at the distant buildings.

"Hey, you didn't see me getting my ass kicked–" He peeked back over his shoulder, "Did you, Kale?"

Kale hummed, before scrunching his nose and shaking his head, "Not really,”

“I remember the power flickering out briefly, and seeing what looked like a light show going off in the distance on top of one of the apartment buildings."

"It was giving me a headache, so I shut the blinds." He shrugged, reaching for another empty sheet of paper, "No more than that.”

Chai blinked, confused– "Oh. I just thought you'd be more excited to see your weird… pet project at work."

"First of all–" Kale glared daggers at him, jabbing a clunky finger down to press on the wooden table.

“It wasn’t some *pet project*, it could have been my magnum opus,” He notes with a particularly sharp scrawl of pencil across paper, “If you had thought with your head instead of your guitar for once.”

This fucking guy.

“You–?!” Chai stifles a laugh and rests his back against the AC in the window, before frowning at him, “You seriously thought I'd just live with your dumbass A.I. turning all of my dreams into nightmares?”

“Hell no.” He glowered at him, crossing his arms. Chai continues to ignore the rattling of his right by holding it just a bit tighter than the other one.

“Look–” Kale pinched the bridge of his nose, irritated, “I have no idea why the hell it insisted on some lofty, overdramatic revenge scheme of haunting you instead of running as a background process,"

He rolled his eyes, gesturing dismissively to Chai, "Clearly, you broke it somehow.”

Chai didn't notice he had raised his voice, "Oh! So now it's suddenly my problem!"

"Yes!" Kale shouts back–

He sighed an angry breath out of his nose, frustrated to be losing what remained of his composure, and lowered his voice,

"...Okay, so there may have been some minor problems with the program I didn't account for."

"Minor problems?" Peppermint raised her brows, gesturing at the window, "You were planning on using it to mind control everybody that used your tech, dumbass."

"Fond of that phrase, aren't you?" Kale snips, explaining himself with a tired excuse, "For fuck’s sake, I was going to be helping them make better consumer decisions!"

She leaned back on her seat at the edge of the bed, "–Better, huh? Yeeeeah, I'm sure that's what made it easier for you to sleep at night. You literally mind controlled mom for three years you piece of shit–!"

…808 wiggled off Peppermint’s shoulder, and hopped down from the hospital bed. She stalked over to Chai, and leapt onto his shoulder–

She buried her face into the side of his hair with folded ears. 808’s fur was bristling, lashing her tail in annoyance.

"Oh." Chai patted her on the head sympathetically, before deciding this probably isn’t his shouting match to have.

"...The cat usually doesn't accompany Miss Mint's visits, see. They're always this loud."

Chai turned to face who said that, and noticed that the technician was staring at him from the workbench. The funny goggles gave his discomforting gaze more emphasis. After a moment, he turned back to his work, letting the shouting match continue.

Kale, more than happy to insist on having the last word, continued his argument, "...All I'm saying is that it took ages to get the lofty concept of actual artificial intelligence actually working,"

"Hours of recorded data was transferred each night at midnight to let Spectra be on par with the head subject's–” He brought his hand to his chest; Kale must have been referring to himself, "Mental fortitude."

"Mental fortitude?" Peppermint squinted at him, before shaking his head, "Kale, I think it just inherited your dogshit personality–"

"Nice pun."

"That’s–" She groaned, shoving at the wooden table, "NOT WHAT I MEANT AND YOU KNOW IT–"

"WATCH THE DRINK, YOU’RE GOING TO SPILL IT–"

"I'LL GET YOU ANOTHER ONE YOU BIG BABY–!"

Chai decided he would rather tune out the circling argument.

He moved to hold 808 in his arms, and headed over to the workbench himself. He wanted to take a peek at whatever this techie was doing.

#hi fi rush #hi-fi rush

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the0ldmann · 2 years

Text

I just had the biggest realization while at my retail job that could make for some of the perfect headcanons. (Please note I'm a broke bitch so I've not played the newest version of the demo, just the now-prototype demo.)

So, as far as we (I) know, the main player character (who I shall just shorthand as MC) has known Sunny Day Jack for a month. During this time, MC has not tried to interact with him while other people are around (so mainly while in public) because they don't want to seem like they've lost their mind.

This is something I have noticed is a popular thing to do for most stories involving ghosts in modern times.

One thing all these stories seem to forget, however, IS THAT EARBUDS (both wired and wireless) PLUS CELL PHONES MAKE FOR THE GREAT EXCUSE OF BEING IN A PHONE CALL EVEN IF YOU'RE REALLY NOT!!!

The rest of my headcanon scenario will be under the cut. It got a little away from me in terms of length. ^^;

Maybe one day MC and Jack are at the store. Groceries are a necessity, and they can't lie, having someone around that's capable of helping keep track of the list is quite nice. Up and down the aisles they go, and along the way, they pass someone. A random customer neither of them have any relation to, but Jack finds himself entirely confused by what they're doing.

They seem to be talking to themselves.

There's a phone in their hand, yes, but the screen looks dark. The phone is also being held at about chest height- nowhere near their ear.

He looks around, but there's too many people, so he keeps the question burning in his mind to himself for the time being. He's patient.

Or at least, he's patient for a bit.

After a while he does his best to get their attention, trying to pull them to a quieter part of the store- those seasonal aisles that are hardly touched and homegoods that are hardly ever replaced.

They sigh and go along, because they know if they don't go now, he won't stop pestering them about it. Besides, it's not often he does this, so surely this must be something import he wants to talk about?

How important it is, they won't grasp the gravity of until later.

Jack asks his question, innocent enough as it is.

"What was that person back there doing? Do some people really talk to themselves in public?"

They shake their heads, amused that somehow they missed explaining this bit of modern technology to him (dying in the 80s has left him a bit behind the curve.) They'd caught him up on computers, cell phones, and the internet at large as best they could, but somehow earbuds and headphones had gotten left out.

Probably because they didn't own a pair. They'd lived alone for so long, why would they need to worry about what others could and couldn't hear? Jack never complained about their music choices either, and he was respectful enough to listen in to phone calls- well except that one time their boss called them into work when...

So they explain to Jack- in as simple a way as they can manage- that that person was on the phone. That customer just had a device in their ear that let them hear what was coming through the phone without having to use the phone's built-in speaker.

They then laugh, as a thought comes to them. Later on they realise they should have kept it to themselves, but in the moment it seems fine to share.

"Or maybe they were just talking to themselves and simply faking a phone call!"

Jack seems satisfied with the answer he received. He lets them go back to shopping while he mulls over this new information.

Faking a phone call is something one could do, huh?

Could they maybe, then, fake a phone call to talk to him in public?

Nobody would ever know except the two of them.

Him and his Sunshine, with their own little secret…

Naturally, he proposes the idea to MC a few days later.

"Wouldn't it be nice to be able to talk to each other more? You wouldn't have to pretend I don't exist. Maybe you'd have to pretend I'm somewhere else… But we could talk!"

They think it over. While they're not sure there'd really be that much to talk about, the ability to just ask him a question after a little bit of phone fiddling would make some things a lot easier. Plus it'd be easier to keep track of stuff they forgot to put on their grocery list…

After a few more minutes of consideration, they relent. It'd be just a potential few more minutes of shared words, and it'd make having him around feel a tiny bit more normal in a way.

Surely, it couldn't be all that bad, could it?

At first, it wasn't. Just a few minutes here and there, on the walk to work, at the store, the few times they'd splurge to get their favourite tex-mex burrito bowl…

But then he became insistent on talking more. Talking often. Minutes, turned to half hours, turned to hours. Sometimes the whole day outside of their apartment could be spent "on the phone" with Jack.

They tried to talk him into toning it down a bit. Maybe giving them a trip or two that wasn't filled with chatter?

"Aww, but Sunshine, don't you like talking to me? Don't you want to keep talking to me? I know you *need* someone to talk to… And who better to talk to than me! We're best friends! Best friends talk all the time, don't they?"

His guilt tripping was effective. They couldn't bring themselves to reject him entirely. He was just so sweet and helpful… That's all he was trying to do was help.

Extra shifts at work are good for money and useful for silence.

They couldn't talk on the phone while they were working, after all.

After getting called in on their off day for the third time in a row (and subsequently working a thirteen day work week), Jack hid their cell phone from them so they couldn't answer it.

"You need to stay home and rest, Sunspot. Pushing yourself to work as much as you have been isn't healthy."

Their arguments fall on deaf ears. Jack isn't having any of it today.

"I know why you've been picking up so many shifts, MC. Do you not want me around? Do you really think you don't need me?"

Something about the tone of his voice sent a shiver down their spine.

"I can take care of you. I love you, my Sunshine, and I know that you know you need me to take care of you. How often do you need to be reminded to do so much as eat?"

They had no argument, and sat in silence as he continued.

"I just want to make you happy, MC. Stay home today, and we'll get you back on track starting tomorrow."

As he scooped them up in his arms, they were starting to regret telling him about something as seemingly small and inconsequential as earbuds. They knew they weren't going to be allowed to feel that regret for long, though.

#whoops over 1k words #minors dni #18+ only #sunny day jack #something wrong with sunny day jack #sdj #swwsdj #oh no I've fallen for a fictional clown ghost #and i choose *not* to get up!#yandere

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doumadono · 1 year

Note

I've read in one of the replies to precious asks that you're a doctor. How would you describe the experience of being a doctor, what type of doctor are you, and what aspects of the profession do you find particularly engaging or compelling?!

Hey, Nonnie :) Well, you've hit on a topic that I could talk about for hours on end, because I'm so passionate about my work. So if you're ready for a bit of a rant, I'm more than happy to oblige!

Being a doctor can be a rewarding and challenging experience. We play a crucial role in the healthcare system, working to diagnose and treat illnesses and injuries, and improve the overall health and well-being of our patients.

Those who know me personally are aware that I'm a certified neurosurgeon, but I haven't limited myself to just one specialization - I'm currently working towards completing my second specialization, which is clinical neuropsychiatry ❤️ 👩‍⚕️

PROS:

Ability to help people: One of the most fulfilling aspects of being a doctor is the ability to make a difference in people's lives by helping them overcome illnesses and injuries

People and their stories: Another great aspect of being a doctor is the opportunity to work closely with people and to learn about their unique stories and experiences. As a doctor, you become intimately involved in the lives of your patients, and you have the privilege of helping them through some of the most challenging and difficult times of their lives. You get to witness firsthand the resilience and strength of the human spirit, and you have the opportunity to make a real difference in the lives of others. There is truly no greater feeling than helping a patient overcome a serious illness or injury, and seeing the joy and relief on their face as they recover ❤️

Dealing with critical situations: Another imprtant aspect of being a doctor is the training you receive to handle extreme situations. I have seen and dealt with a lot of drastic things in my career and life overall, and I can confidently say that nothing really scares me anymore. It's a unique skill set that you develop as a doctor, being able to remain calm and focused in high-stress situations (it helped me oh so many times!)

Job security: The demand for doctors will always exist, which means there will always be job opportunities for qualified professionals

Opportunities for lifelong learning: As a doctor, you never stop learning. New treatments, technologies, and procedures are constantly being developed, and we must stay up-to-date on the latest advances in our field. This can be intellectually stimulating and rewarding!

Varied career paths: There are numerous specializations within medicine, which allows doctors to pursue a career path that aligns with their interests and strengths

Respect and prestige: Doctors are often held in high regard by society, which can provide a sense of respect and prestige

Collaborative work environment: Neurosurgeons work closely with other healthcare professionals, such as neurologists, radiologists, and nurses, to provide the best possible care to their patients. This collaborative environment can be both challenging and fulfilling

Deathbed phenomena: As a neurosurgeon, I am frequently confronted with the reality of death. Many of my patients come to me in critical condition, and while I always do my best to save their lives, sometimes the outcome is not what we hoped for. Working with dying patients has given me the opportunity to explore the intricacies of the human body and mind during the dying process. It might sound morbid to some, but understanding the physiological and psychological changes that occur in a person's brain as they near death is a fascinating area of study. It's not just the physical processes that interest me, but also the psychological and spiritual aspects of death. I'm currently working with my team to gain a better understanding of what happens in the brain as a person approaches death, and how we can use this information to provide better care for our patients and their families

CONS

Long working hours: (OMG, how much I hate the night shifts!) We often work long and irregular hours, including nights, weekends, and holidays. This can make it difficult to maintain a healthy work-life balance and can lead to burnout, and it becomes even more challenging when you have young children at home

High stress: The job of a doctor can be incredibly stressful. We are responsible for the health and well-being of our patients and may have to make life-or-death decisions on a regular basis

Emotional toll: We are often exposed to the suffering of our patients and their families. This can be emotionally draining and can lead to compassion fatigue. As a doctor, it feels like a personal failure when I am unable to save someone's life. I often experience intense remorse and replay the entire situation in my head, on and on. I constantly question whether there was something more I could have done? Maybe I could have applied a different medication, or ordered another blood test? The what-ifs can be exhausting, but they drive me to constantly learn and improve so that I can provide the best possible care for those in need

High expectations: Doctors are held to a high standard of performance and are expected to be knowledgeable, skilled, and compassionate. This can be a lot of pressure to live up to 🤷‍♀️

High cost of education: Becoming a doctor requires a significant investment of time and money. Medical school and residency programs can be very expensive (I would like to express my gratitude to my beloved grandmother here, who sadly passed away last year. Her unwavering support (also the financial one), encouragement, and unwavering faith in me have played a significant role in getting me to where I am today. Despite doubts and skepticism from others, including my own parents, she never wavered in her belief in me. She often told me, "If you ever think about giving up on your dreams, just remember that I'll be watching you from the other side, so make sure to think twice before making any rash decisions - or I'll come back and haunt you until you change your mind." Thank you, Nanna ❤️❤️❤️)

So, that's the end of my long rant. For those who made it through to the end, I want to say thank you for reading!

#asked and answered #anonymous #author's rant #long rant #neurosurgeon #clinical neuropsychiatry #young doctor

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simon-x-billy · 8 months

Text

Simon x Billy

Year of the OTP: June

Chapter 6: Where’s the helipad?

June prompt: Soulmates

AN: Enjoy the sweet sweet sounds of helicopter blades slicing through the air. I love the helicopter scene so much. It is happy-making. It just makes me love both of them for each other. (Let's ignore the fact that I wrote it.)

We are so close to the sex, guys. So close. This is the last SFW chapter for a while. Bask in the virginal dude-bro vibe, and let people know that you read the chapters before they were cool.

TW: Rewrites. Mystifyingly late posts. Drunkenness. If alcohol is triggering for you, no need to read the last teeny section after we first meet Barry. Rest assured that Simon gets home safely and says cute stuff, then happily goes to bed.

Masterlist || ao3 || Prev || Next

————/Simon/————

I am trying to stop thinking about falling to my death. Give me a minute.

Ok, so this is…………This is a long flight of fucking rickety, wind-blasted wood. Not like that metal set of stairs with all the switchbacks I was complaining about last time I encountered stairs. I take all of my complaints back about that place. That was the height of stair-building technology by comparison. This place is just…..language fails me, like I’m picturing the stairs failing me any second now.

Shush, I need to concentrate.

————/-/————

Oh my fucking god. I can’t breathe. Metaphorically kissing the ground due to sheer survival has become a feature of my stay here. Just cuz I survived. So much ground kissing happening in Italy. Especially near stairs.

So from the size and schmanciness I’m guessing this place was either for a huge schmancy family, or hardcore party animals needing lots of bedrooms (the olden days version). This coastline has been a summer getaway spot for centuries. Scratch that. For millennia. What, like maybe three thousand, four thousand years?

But actual beaches are rare here. Anybody with two inches of it will stick a beach umbrella in it. So imagine owning an entire beach. Right? Beside the hotel, the only other possible access is from the water. And there are a lot -- I mean a lot of yachts around here. They will never, ever look normal to me. But they’re starting to look like a normal thing around here. And I’m told these aren’t even the big ones. Fuck me sideways.

Both shots are from the website of the actual Hotel La Tonnarella, which is the hotel I based my fictional hotel on. Yes, it really looks like that. Yes, I did stay there. Totally worth going into debt. Best decision I’ve ever made. You can faintly see the stairs, at left. It’s that pale diagonal line down the cliff from the hotel at top left down toward the beach, crossing right in front of that ruin in the middle, halfway down the cliff.

Anyway, we’ve seen the (only) road and there’s definitely no place for me to do my morning run. It doesn’t even have a shoulder. I guess if I can’t run without going airborne off a cliff, I could do the steps when I wake up. Better than nothing. It’s just-

Well, we’ve seen that I hate stairs. Steep stairs. Cliff stairs.

Fuck. Besides being terrifying, it was tiring just getting down here. What am I going to do when I have to go back up?

Anyway, Billy’s working down here today. And I really feel like disrupting his job well done.

“Will yeh take a look at yer man now. Down the beach, explorin,” he calls, as I approach the hotel’s tiny beach bar. “You didn’t take the stairs, did yeh?”

“Um, yeah? Certo. I wanted to see the beach.” Obviously.

“Why didn’t yeh take the lift?” he asks me.

I fix the man to his spot with a very frowny, very deep, “Would you mind repeating that, Billy?” Exactly like if Kronk was playing me in the movie. I can barely see through my eyes that have now narrowed to slits of disbelief and distrust and discomfort. “There’s an elevator?”

“Well, yeah man. How else are people meant to get down here? The cliff’s a dangerous way down, innit?”

It’s ok, Lewis. You can incorporate this new information without flipping out. Just be proud of yourself for facing your fears. You descended steep, unsafe stairs. Good job! And you were only vaguely terrified the whole time. Good job!

“Is the cliff so dangerous that they should close it down due to the mounting death toll? Or is it only dangerous in an inoffensive, cute way?”

He huffs out a quick laugh, then returns to slicing up lemons.

“Billy? That was an actual question. Care to provide an answer?”

“Meh, it’s safe enough,” he says. And that, ladies and gentleladies, is all I need to convince me I can indeed use this as my new Italian Morning Exercise. 1. Cliff, 2. Coffee, 3. Cliff, 4. Vomiting coffee. Perfect.

————/-/————

I’ve spent all this week forging a grudging relationship with the beach stairs.

I’m getting a little more accustomed to it. I have a few specific stones and broken twigs I’ve chosen as landmarks, whenever I require reassurance that I am indeed climbing down the right cliff. And if I’ve survived it the last four mornings, I can survive it a fifth time. Flawless reasoning.

Behind the beach bar, Billy spots me and gives me a wave. “You packed, man?”

My insides instantly start fizzing. I am so fucking stoked. I got us an airbnb in Naples for the weekend so we can check out Sabina’s gig tomorrow night. Billy could not say yes fast enough. He’s a social guy, and there’s not a lot of nightlife around here. I have no idea how he’s managed it all this time. Oh wait, that’s right. He’s managed it with women. Lots of women.

Over the last week, I’ve come to the realization that management does not mind a guest hanging out at the bar distracting their employee all day, because while that guest is distracting the employee, he is also ordering drink after frothy fruit-based drink, and healthy fruit-based foods. It’s like they’ve realized that my distraction of Billy might actually be lucrative for them. I even have my own barstool. Officially.

I have an announcement to make. “I have come to a decision,” I announce. “We need a convertible.”

“Sorry?”

“A convertible. We need one,” I repeat.

“Yeah, mate, heard yeh.”

“What, it’s a convertible!”

Billy remains unmoved. “Why can’t we take the train? It’s simplest-”

“We are not taking the train.”

“But I quite like the train,” he claims.

“Because you’re insane and don’t like convertibles.” J’accuse!

“See now, I never said I don’t like convertibles. I-“ he begins.

But I totally interrupt him. “I need to go do something.” Because my brain just exploded with potential.

“What?” He might be alarmed.

Whereas I’m enthusiastic. “Be an Ugly American.”

“Er, that sounds terrible,” he says.

“If you’re gonna be American, you might as well own it. Watch me own it, Billy, watch me.”

Oddly, Billy still looks wary. “That sounds-”

“Awesome.”

“-terrible. You’re not plannin to wear one of them caps with straws into beer cans, are yeh?” He snorts at whatever he’s picturing. “Actually, I might pay yeh to do that.”

“Nah. Not my brand,” I say, sliding off the barstool. I snag an olive and pop it in my mouth, to avoid grinning like someone who grins because they’re about to do something awesome. “Ciao, Beelee.” I wave behind me.

I’ve got the phone out and I’m already dialing before I’ve even reached the stairs. And then I remember I can also take the elevator.

———/-/———

Billy has finally met up with me at the fountain by the hotel entrance. Thank god, cuz I really don’t want him to miss the arrival of that Ugly American thing that required a phone call. Ever notice there’s an ugh in ugly? Just occurred to me.

“There you are, Delaney. MWAH hah ha ha hahhhhh! Prepare to hear the sweet sweet sound of helicopter blades pulsing through the air. It’s done, and there’s nothing you can do to stop it.”

“Simon-”

“So where’s the helipad?” I inquire.

“The what now? Mate, it’s not that kind of hotel. Why are we taking a helicopter to Naples?”

“The correct response would normally be ‘because we can’-” Obviously. Certo.

“That is not a normal response.” Billy looks mystified, yet still amused. So that’s a thing.

“-but not this time,” I finish. “That’s not the real idea.”

“Oh, so you’re tellin me this is a superfluous helicopter. That is ugly.”

“No! It is most definitely not superfluous.”

“Your carbon footprint’ll be spendin all eternity in hell, man.”

“Billy.”

“Simon.”

“Stop talking. And just enjoy the mounting anticipation. The mellow sense of horror, or at the very least a nasty case of creeping dread. MWAH hah ha ha hahhhh!”

“Stop it, mate. You’re gettin evil genius all over my uniform. And you know how I feel about laundry.”

“Just a little bicarbonate of soda. Gets out even the most organic of stains. MWAH hah ha ha hahhhhh.”

“Simon.”

“Billy.”

“Stop talkin. Like an evil genius. We’re gettin complaints.”

“Are not.”

“From me. I’m complainin.”

“What am I going to wear?” I ask. It’s a fair question.

“Simon. Oh my god.”

“I’m serious! I packed for Italy in ten minutes. It’s all socks and shorts.” And sunblock. And chargers.

He’s shaking his head at me. For some reason, this makes me happy. In my tummy. How novel.

“Is that the fire alarm?” he asks.

“Huh? I mean, MWAH hah ha ha haaaah, oh no. What you’re hearing is the sweet sweet purring of a helicopter bearing my booty.”

“You didn’t think that one through, mate.”

“Oh, but yes, yes I did. This booty is worth baring. Can you feel it? The heady excitement of anticipation? The mellow terror?”

“Yes. I feel the terror,” he says blandly. He finds my terror bland.

Wait. “That would be the best cologne flavor ever. Mellow Terror, by Simon Lewis. Pour homme.”

“Are you manic right now?”

———/Billy/————

I was joking, but Simon just went very still. I’ve put my foot in, haven’t I?

“I am a bit manic, am’nt I?” he offers, tossing off a fake laugh.

“Somethin wrong with your shoes, mate? Simon, man, my eyes are up here.”

“Just wait til you see what I’ve done,” he says sheepishly, eyeing me from under his furry eye caterpillars.

“Simon. Should I be worried?”

“Oops?”

Oops? I haven’t a clue what to do with oops.

He grabs me excitedly by the forearm and starts dragging me toward the hotel gates.

That’s…Wait, is that-

“Simon. Did you buy a Mini Cooper?”

“A convertible Mini Cooper.”

“But why?” I ask the reasonable question.

“Because I can!” He’s practically vibrating. I can tell he wants to do his jumping-clapping thing by the way he’s currently bouncing on his toes.

“Simon.”

“Billy.”

“You bought a Mini Cooper. Convertible,” I swiftly add. “You’re in the land that built the Maserati, the Lamborghini, the Ferrari, and every other sports car that ends in i-”

“Not Audi.”

I huff in annoyance, “-and you bought a convertible Mini Cooper. And had it airlifted here. Because you could.”

“I’ve always wanted a convertible Mini Cooper.”

“But not a convertible Ferrari,” I clarify.

“No.”

“Who are you?”

“I’m awesome,” he answers, because he’s Simon.

I decide not to mention that we could have skipped the car altogether and taken the helicopter to Naples.

This is so childish, and impetuous, and reckless, and I refuse to find the actions of a grown man adorable. Jaysus.

“Oh my god!” he squeaks. “They were driving Minis in The Italian Job!!!”

Shaking my head. Just shaking my head. “Did you have them airlift in some clothes, too?”

“Shit! I totally should have!” He appears to actually mean that.

“You should see your face,” he hoots. Feckin hoots, all half bent over from laughin.

And now he’s ignoring me. Suddenly I’m not even here. He only has eyes for his Mini. “Oh my god it’s so kawaii.”

His smile is kawaii.

“Go away,” he flaps a hand at me. “I want to fanboy freely and without judgment from a judgy Irishman.”

“Fine. I need to pack anyway.”

And off behind me I hear him call, “Wait! What am I gonna wear?”

Shaking my head. Just shaking my head.

————/-/————

I’ve gathered my gear, and I can see Simon out by the car park. I’m hitching up my pack, so it isn’t really until I’ve cleared all the foliage that I realize Simon is humping his Mini Cooper convertible. “All right?” I ask, tryin to keep a straight face.

“Oh, yes. All is definitely right,” he purrs.

“Have you turned her on, too?”

He slides off the car til his Converse hit the pavement with a slap.

Now he’s draping himself over the boot. I can’t help it that I’m laughing. Sometimes he hits me just right to set me to belly laughin. Doesn’t happen often with Simon, but when it does, he wears the greatest surprised happy face I’ve ever seen. This time there’s giggling. Off to a good start, which is good. Yes. Good.

I hesitate. “Look, mate. Will this thing actually fit us?” I eyeball the car. “I am quite seriously concerned that we might actually need the top down to ride in this thing. How tall are you, anyway?”

“Six feet. Why? How tall are you? Mate, get off the boot so I can shove this in there and we can go.” He does, and I do.

I have to say it, “Thanks for not getting the red, white, and blue one.” There is a god. Thank you, Poseidon.

“They were out of orange, white, and green, too,” he says with regret.

“You asked about the tricolor, did yeh?” Alright yes, he’s got me laughin again. Simon Lewis. Driving the Irish flag.

“Fuck out of the driver’s seat!” he’s suddenly roaring.

Blimey. He looks proper angry. I may have just flinched. “Don’t you want a car and a driver? No, serious, don’t yeh want me to drive, since I know the way?”

“Get the fuck out of the driver’s seat, Billy. Now!”

“Alright! Fine, fine. You’ll be usin GPS then, will yeh?”

“Si si si, certo.”

I groan. “This is all about to go so very-”

“Awesome,” he declares. “This is all about to continue to be awesome. Be the change, Billy. Be the change!”

“Oh my god Simon.”

“I can hear you rolling your eyes from here,” he says from behind the boot, which he slams shut a little too hard. I feel it in every moving piece of this tiny automobile. Bigger than a SMART car, so I suppose I shouldn’t be complainin.

Well, here’s hoping he’s still so enthused about it at the other end. “Gotta say, mate. I’m surprised you’d want to drive at all.”

“Why not?” he’s askin.

“Because mate, it’s Italy, innit. Famous for frightenin foreign drivers.” He has to remember what the drivin was like on our three other trips down this road. “Well,” I sigh. “At least you get to drive on the ‘right’ side of the road in Italy.”

—--/-/—--

“See? I told you you’d fit.”

“Alright man, you did,” I admit to the muppet.

“Come on, give it up…”

“What?” I’m not laughing, I promise. “Is she a smooth ride? I don’t know, man, why don’t yeh start her up ‘n find out?”

“Well there is that. So yeah,” he says as he pulls out of the car park and up to the mouth of the hotel driveway. “It’s to the left, right?”

“Em, yeah. Yes, the city of Naples is still in the general direction of left. Like the other three times we’ve done this road together.”

He rolls his eyes, and all is right and well with the world. Until the moment he pulls out onto the road. Then I’m brought up quick by the realization that between us we know fuck all about the convertible Mini Cooper. “Wait, where’s the GPS on her, for the flat’s address?”

“I dunno, check the screen thing.” So helpful, yer man Simon is.

“Do you even have an Italian driver’s license? Or insurance? I love this guy. How’ve yeh managed to live this long?” I pause for an answer, but none is forthcoming. “I mean, fucksake, Simon. You called someone to buy you a car and suddenly you’re on the road to Naples. Do you even know where the directionals are? Or like, the wipers? Should I be concerned for my safety?”

“Shoosh. Don’t jinx us,” he sternly admonishes me. “Do you need to have registration in Italy? Or insurance? I don’t know. Italy doesn’t really strike me as a big insurance-y type of country.”

“Fair point. But I take it you have….whatever, I dunno, papers and all that?” How is he like this?

“Don’t know. What’s in the glove box?” He makes a flappy gesture in the general direction of my knees.

“How are you like this? Were you actually born like this, or did it come with fame and wealth?”

“You mean, was I actually born a flaming asshole, or just become one?”

“Meh. Yeah ok,” I shrug. “We’ll go with that. So, what’ll it be?”

“Ow. Straight for the throat, Delaney.” His tone is recriminating as he protects his throat with both hands. “Uncool, man. Uncool.”

I’m flipping through the owner’s manual. Before long I’ve programmed everything, located the GPS, found Simon’s Only In Italy playlist, and even found the button to pop the bonnet. “There you go. It’s workin now.” I toss the manual in the glove box.

“What’s working?” he asks.

I shrug. “Everything, man. Everything.”

He barks out a laugh, the grumpy fuck, and I realize I’m laughing as well.

I plug in the address for the flat and immediately the voice pumping out the speakers is a woman speaking Italian. So I’m maniacally fumbling with it again, while Simon drives on in a fit of laughter.

“Aw, come on! Let’s see how we do in Italian,” he gasps out.

“Fucksake. See how we do in Italian.” Shaking my head.

“No, seriously. Let’s hear what she has to say, this ummmmm, what should we call her - Maria! Because obviously.”

“Certo.” That gets me another laugh.

“Santa Maria, Holy Madonna, show us the way, in Italiano,” Simon pleads in a truly horrendous Italian accent. “I am so happy right now.”

He says it with a laugh. Such a thing to so easily roll off the tongue. Fella I met a few months ago, I never would have pictured bein happy, let alone noticing it, naming it, declaring it. Nice to see. Unexpected, know what I mean?

“I don’t trust you when you’re quiet that long, Delaney.”

“Hm?”

“Exactly.”

Am I missing something?

“Ok, so.” He clears his throat. “We know who I am. Who are you? Let’s hear it. Who is Billy Delaney?”

Aw, man. Serious? “How long we got?” Please don’t make me.

“How would I know?” he shrugs. “Maria’s speaking your language, not mine.”

“Fair enough.” I hit play, hoping the music will make the conversation trail off from there. But of course it doesn’t, because this is Simon. Si. Certo.

“What. Do you have some horrible second identity thing going on? Are you really even Irish? Truth time, Delaney.”

“You show me yours, I’ll show you mine?”

“Yeah, ok,” says the cheeky monkey.

“Oh,” I answer, not sure how else to dodge Simon’s inquisition. Uh, erm….. “Soooo, what mate? What do you want to know?” I ask, though truthfully I wish he’d just let it go.

“Is your name really Billy Delaney, and are you actually even from Ireland at all?”

“Yes.”

“Boring.”

“Brief,” I counter.

“Obtuse,” he counters.

“Si.”

“Oh my god, Billy. So where are you from?”

“Ireland.”

He looks around us rapidly. “Is she going to start speaking Italian? Cuz we just passed Ercolano.”

“Already?”

“Yeah! I know, right? Time flies when you’re torturing someone for information. So should I panic?”

“Nah,” I reassure him. “We've a bit more road before we turn aside. Maria can sleep on.”

“Alright. But I swear to God, Billy. If you don’t start coughing up some details, I'm serious, I will pull this car over. Do I have to pull this car over, young man?”

“Wow, that’s forceful.” Cos it is. “Ow!” I flinch when he swats my shoulder with a backhand. “Fine, ye bastard. My name is actually Lola, but I go by Billy Delaney. And I’m only mostly joking. One of the summer cousins I used to play soccer with couldn’t say William when we were little. So for a few months every year, I was Lola. There. Was that not juicy enough for yeh?”

“Charming. But from that I got these few details: 1. You have cousins. Conceivably fertile ground. We could continue that way. 2. You play soccer, and you call it soccer. Isn’t that illegal outside the US? No- don’t answer that. I’m not finished. 3. You go someplace where there are cousins to play soccer with in summer. Are we even still in Ireland?”

Em. I just sort of sit here and wait.

“And you really don’t want to talk about this, do you?”

“You are so easily distracted,” I tease. “No, but seriously, here’s some details for yeh. I’m 27. Left Ireland at 18, after graduating culinary school, and was sent out to do my apprenticeship. That was at a manor house near Galway,” I say, wrapping up the conversation.

“And…..”

“That’s not enough?” I thought that was a fair bit of information, to be honest.

“Do I have to turn this car around, young man?”

“I fear I might be missin some essential cultural reference here, mate.”

“Don’t distract me with your distractions, Delaney. Feed me.”

And that’s when Maria tells us to turn left.

—--/Simon/—--

I can’t fuckin believe that there are Irish pubs in Italy. Nor can I believe I’m in one. I mean, where do real Italians go to watch soccer? This can’t be right.

“All right?” Billy asks the bartender.

“Howeyeh,” says the man back to him, and Billy’s eyes go comically wide.

Next thing I know, I’m bored stiff, pretending to find the intricacies of European football interesting with a Welsh guy named Barry.

And whoa, turns out Billy’s day-to-day accent is pretty washed out in comparison to the thickness of his accent when he’s speaking to his new BFF. They’re speaking so fast that I can’t understand a word through their accents and grammatical errors. Welsh is so much easier.

That is, until I hear a voice disturbingly similar to Billy’s, requesting a Bud.

I swing back around in time to see Billy’s new BFF nod at him and begin turning toward the draft beers.

“No! Wait,” I wave. “He’s only joking,” I say, emphatically shaking my head no.

“Oh,” the Irish bartender looks back to Billy in surprise. “Were you?”

What, he thinks I’m lying? “Course he was! Certo.”

“Why ‘of course’?!” Billy turns on his barstool to face me. “What the fuck, Simon?”

“Sorry if I fucked up your joke, dude, but don’t drag it out, ok?” I say under my breath.

Disparaging other people’s beer of choice is like a national pastime in Brooklyn, because it frequently employs irony, and we are naturally good at it from birth. Don’t blame him, he’s new.

“I’ll take that Bud,” Billy reiterates. “Ta, mate.” The barkeep returns his nod and goes about the business of it.

“Billy? We’ve talked about this. You swore you’re Irish. Were you lying to me? Are you a lying liar who lies?”

“Why do yeh say that?”

“Because you can’t – you’re not – you’re not, like, allowed to drink bad beer when you’re Irish. Isn’t that illegal? Or fatal, or something?”

The big ape is just lazing back against the bar, sipping his pint of piss beer, looking at me in amusement.

“You’re like a caricature of yourself sometimes, Simon, d’yeh know what I mean?”

“Fuckin- What?! That’s not very nice! I’m outraged.”

“You should see yerself, mate. Yeh look like your face is about ready to split down the middle and outrage’ll start pourin out like lava from the fissures.”

I stop and cock my head at him. “That was both specific and descriptive. Nice one. But that said, how dare you! I demand an apology.” I’m trying really hard to keep a straight face. He has no intention of making it easy for me.

“Apologize? For what?” He gives me a cock-eyed grin. Oh look, his cock eyes are doing that twinkly thing again.

“You have offended my good taste and have let down your countrymen and native soil. Or water or whatever it is that makes all beer taste better in Ireland. The least you could do is the decent thing and apologize to your countrymen, and me, and then hide it in your jacket where no one can see you sneaking sips!”

He laughs because he thinks I’m joking.

“Do you just not like beer at all? And that’s why you don’t order the good stuff?” I prod.

“Simon, you are such a snob,” he says, and goes right on twinkling.

“Correct. And if you’re going to drink cheap beer, for god’s sake, order PBR and salvage at least some of your self respect.”

“Do you know this man?” the bartender asks Billy. “Is he harassin yeh?”

Billy is now laughing so hard that he’s almost fallen off his stool.

“We know each other,” I reassure the barkeep. “Don’t know how long that’ll last, all considered, though. Check back for updates.” I raise my pint of Guinness in respect.

“It’s czech. Budvar,” the man informs me.

“Ah, no! Why’d yeh tell him, mate!” Billy raises his hands theatrically. I’m telling you, theatre school. “Yeh just had to put him out of my misery, yeah?”

“And my misery,” says the man.

—--/-/—--

Ok, so what is it with the whole pub drunkenly singing “oh-ay-oh-ay” at the top of their drunken lungs, sloshin beer out of their pint glasses, whenever Europeans play soccer. Mebbe they sing it in Southmerica, too. Butwhatevercuz I don’ really care.

If you can’t – beat em then join em. Thassmymott, um, -o. Thassmy motto. Motto.

Where’s Billy? I can’t see him. If thissperson would get out of the frickin way. He’s all backed up against my face’n I can’t see. Anything. Nothin to see here, folks. Move along, people, move along.

Where’s Billy? Oyeah, right right right. Right here in my face.

I figure it’ll be easier to keep track of him if I hold onto his belt loop. Or a pocket or something. Yeah, I’m just gonna hang on to his pocket.

Pocket.

I like the word pocket. Lossa hard consnits that pop. Pop.

Pop.

I like the word pop. It sounz like it pops. And it’s the same backwards and forwards an’itsall about the lips. Pop ’ing.

What? Where’s he going? I’m trailing after him with my hand in his pocket. He keeps pullin it out and I keep puttin it back in. Oth’wise I’m gonna get lost and then where would I be? Huh? I wouldn’t even know!

“Oh! Now I know where we are! We’re on the block where we’re were where gonna sleep.” If make it up th’stairs. But Billy’s helping. He’s nice like that.

“You’re nice like that,” I say with a big smile. “And you‘re funny lookin.”

Wait.

“Oops! I mean yerlookin funny at me right now. Whass funny? ‘m’I funny? ‘r’Juss funny lookin?”

I crack myself up. Like in real life, cuz I’m laughing. Right now. Sometimes iss hard to stop laughing but I’ll be ok.

“Billy. Billy! Hey, Billy. What’re you doing? Tryin to get in my pants? That tickles! Oh, hey! Did we win? I mean, I don’really care - just wonren.”

Hey! Tickles! “Stop that! How’dyou know I don’t wanna wear those? I’ll take ‘em off when I feel like it. Prollymaybe take ‘em off tomorrow. Hey! I was wearing that! And that!”

He’s very pushy. “You’re very pushy. Stop pushing!”

I land on the bed and it’s like fluffy clouds of teddybears. “K, fine. I’ll go to bed, jeez.” Alls I wanna do is bury my face in pillow, but can’t breathe when I do that.

“Don’t close the door all the way, Ma. And leave the hall light on, K? g’Night, love you too.”

————/-/————

Masterlist || ao3 || Prev || Next

————/-/————

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forbesjobs · 8 months

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Forbes.jobs delivers a first-of-its-kind career and employment experience that supports talent, recruiters and companies throughout an employee's professional life. Forbes.jobs provides career opportunities, education and skills development, community connections, and coaching to support the career journey. Leveraging the internationally recognized Forbes brand, hiring managers and recruiters seek accomplished Forbes.job candidates for senior manager, leadership jobs, director-level and management jobs, vice president, CEO, CFO and all C-Suite executives in the areas of banking and finance, accounting, information technology and computer science, supply chain management and logistics, biomedical and medicine, sales and marketing and much more. Find high paying jobs in the USA – in-person or remote, contract workers or full-time – at Forbes.jobs.

#ceo jobs usa #ceo jobs near me #chief executive officer jobs usa #ceo's job #healthcare ceo jobs #nonprofit ceo jobs.

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thenewfuture · 9 months

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I dunno, I've never really bought into the idea of the Remnants as a functioning team. Now admittedly I'm going into some headcanon territory here. But the fandom idea of them as a gang of supervillains criminal masterminds has never been very believable to me. You might remember a previous message I sent about how Novoselic being genocided out of existence through nukes seemed farfetched to me (as well as thematically inappropriate). That's one example.

The issue I have with that idea is that in their Despair-ridden states they'd just be too goddamn irrational to be anything more than vicious murderous idiots. Like take Akane for instance. Or whoever it was that supposedly starved themselves to near-death. Someone as self-destructive as that would not be able to operate effectively as any kind of world conqueror.

What I think makes the most sense based on what information we're given is that the real danger they posed came not from what they themselves were capable of, but their ability to inspire millions of other copycats. As well as by spreading the brainwashing technology around.

And splitting off into small groups would be a borderline necessity. On their own they'd already be spiraling towards their inevitable self-destruction (before Makoto entered the picture). Sticking in a group of more than like four people at a time? They'd do the Future Foundation's job for them, and tear each other apart within like a few months of the Tragedy. SDR2 already proved that they don't even need to be brainwashed to have the capacity to murder one another. In their Despair state, they'd just be a powderkeg with all those volatile personalities. The only explanation I can think of that would handwave that away would be Junko mentally programming them to not turn on one another. But we got no hint that that was the case. Nor does it really seem all that likely that she would bother. If anything it would be more amusing to her if some of them shanked each other.

I mean at this point, it’s a matter of: what’s your ideal form of the Remnants. Do you like brainwashed or not brainwashed? Do you like them being their own entities committing crimes separately or together? That’s kind of what it boils down to it sounds like…

And while some are scattered and do their own things and most likely don’t tell the others about it. A lot of them do work together, especially if their idea of spreading despair is the same. Or if they’ve already known each other before coming to Hope’s Peak Academy.

And I think it’s also a matter of timing too. Maybe early on, Akane was fighting fit but as she starved herself more and more she fell back from fighting too much.

Again, it falls down to your preferred take on the Remnants.

-Mod

#asks #anonymous #the new future #mod freeze

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grumpygreenwitch · 29 days

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The Witches and Wizards Job 23-24-25

Advance warning, the wizard cuts a little bit loose here. Tagged for some fantasy violence.

I'm aware the links to the back chapters are borked up, but it's nearly midnight right now and I just finished uploading everything to the queue. I'll try to fix them between Thursday and Friday.

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Remember: Tumblr has no algorithm. Reblogs give me life.

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TWENTY THREE

I think no one expected to get together that night and count nothing but wins. But no one was hurt and our knowledge of the situation had grown by leaps and bounds - at least, that was what Ford claimed.

"I'm not happy that you all have Dresden working on the side," he told the room, throwing me a quick look.

I put a hand up; I really didn't mind. I was still trying to digest the truth both Eliot and Hardison had offered me. I'd done my job, and I'd done it well, and with their help I'd done it so quick I was still trying to get used to the fact that both cases were done, had been done nearly as soon as they'd been picked up. But the technology Hardison had used just wasn't something I could ever, would ever, have permanent access to. On the other hand, my expertise, my knowledge, everything I knew about magic and the creatures of that world, was information to be found in no database, no internet search. It was maddening.

"But it's done, so we move on to the auction. Odds are both our targets, as well as the mark, are going to be there: the lady, the portrait and the man in black."

The last bit seemed to startle the night's guest, who'd been lounging sedately on a brand-new couch near mine while nursing a vodka neat. Ford had introduced him as the client. He'd introduced himself as Vanya Fedorov. His accent had introduced him as part of the Russian mafia. Mouse had lifted his head from the moment the man had walked into the loft, and he'd never once looked away. Between him and my dog, I was getting more than a little nervous.

"Nate, there's a problem with the auction," Hardison pointed out as he rejoined us around the coffee table with its sharpie'd circle and anti-tracking ward, as well as a few other newly added protections. He'd left his phone behind by the row of desks after sorting out the delivery of the selkie skins, and he gestured at me.

"Most of the people attending aren't human," I informed the room.

Fedorov's drink paused on the way to his mouth. "My uncle is a hard man," he said levelly. "But his first loyalty is to our business. He knows I am good for it. He would not betray me."

"I don't think he has," Sophie replied. "The bird-woman, the -"

"Alkonost," he supplied.

"She wasn't there to harm you. She was there to protect you."

I was still trying to wrap my head around the fact that this gorgeous woman had decided, on the fly, to bluff one of the most powerful creatures of Russian lore, and she'd stuck the landing. God but I could only hope Ford knew how lucky he was.

"We were immune thanks to Harry," Sophie pointed out, "but you weren't affected at all. She did come looking for you, but to keep you safe."

"Safe from what?" he demanded restlessly.

"The man in black?" Eliot suggested.

"He doesn't want Fedorov hurt." Ford said mildly. I was beginning to recognize that tone as a warning signal. "He very nearly derailed one plan already for you," he told the Russian.

"For me?"

"The museum!" Parker exclaimed in sudden realization.

Nate nodded, then looked at Fedorov. "You made plans to go visit the Sokolov collection. Made them in advance. I had a look at your electronic ledger. You did have plans - for the day after, the last day of the exhibition."

"I did," the Russian admitted readily.

"You changed those plans when someone told you we were there."

Fedorov grinned ruefully. "I thought to press my case and enjoy Sokolov's work. Two birds with one stone. It seemed efficient at the time."

Nate nodded thoughtfully. "See, I was wondering about that. Because our presence there wasn't really important enough to merit derailing anyone's plans. It was you. When he came up to the room, it was to make sure you were there and he had to cancel the plan. You weren't supposed to be there that day."

"But then he did come up, and saw Grandmother," Sophie pointed out. "And getting her was worth more than protecting you."

"Mm," Nate nodded. "It was a rush job; the sort of rush job that happens when someone first says 'go', then 'stop', then 'go' again, and tempers are getting frayed, the timeline is off, everything just this much out of whack…" He waved a hand at us all. "You know the sort."

I did know the sort; I couldn't help but be amused that, from the look on their faces, so did the rest of the Leverage team.

"Explains why the guy was still there fiddling with the system when I got there," Eliot muttered. "He was waiting to put the Witchwell back in place. That's why the nitrogen tank was attached, but still closed."

"How do you know all this?" Fedorov demanded.

"The cameras," Ford replied. "Our… consultant pointed out that it's only the presence of beings like the man in black that blows up technology, and Hardison has created a number of failsafes so we can tell when a screen is about to fail. Turns out you can track someone by their absence nearly as much as by their presence."

The Russian took all of this in slowly, carefully, and finally frowned minutely. "I don't think I care for the Blackbird's interest in me. Or my family. Or my business."

Ford said nothing, but I could see in his face that he was holding back. I risked a glance at the other deadly intelligence in the room. Sophie was looking at the mastermind very closely. She caught my eyes and shook her head tinily.

I said nothing. I had just noticed that, behind Sophie, Parker was frowning, staring at nothing. Apparently Ford was contagious.

"I think your uncle's loyalties are a matter between you and him. For what it's worth, I believe he honestly thinks meeting with these people will help you take over from your father."

"By binding the family to these creatures." Fedorov scoffed. "What do they know of the family business?"

I didn't need to see the look Ford shot me to recognize a cue when I heard one. I picked up the printed photographs next to me on the couch and started handing them out one by one. "The lovely lady in white? Fey. Specializes in erasing evidence. The man next to her in red? Also fey. Specializes in erasing memories." Another picture. "Fat toad-looking man? He's actually a toad. His people love toxic waste. If someone gets a contract with them, they'll never see another fine for dumping again. The gorgeous thing next to him might be the deadliest we've identified so far. She's from Bangkok. Jade Court. Vampire. Human trafficking. This one? I'm not sure, but gosh, things sure do seem to catch on fire whenever he's around, mostly out at sea. Mostly when they're well-insured."

Between Hardison and me, while the 3D printer churned away and I stuck mirror-masks to everything it was spitting out, we'd sifted through enough information to identify thirteen of the twenty four people who we knew were going to the auction. It had been risky, using Koschei's invite to create a resonance spell that would let me find where the other invites were, but God it had paid off so well. We'd done weeks, maybe months of footwork in one long afternoon and half an evening.

It was enough to impress Fedorov - and to worry him. "No. I will not deal with these creatures. They are no better than the Blackbird, and if he's involved then each of them is a trap."

"I'm not telling you this to impress you," I corrected him. "I'm telling you to warn you. They might wanna make it look like you have no choice but to agree with whatever they say. You need to be prepared."

Fedorov took the stack of printouts and stared sightlessly at them. He looked oddly familiar at that moment, as if a touch of deja vu had come at me out of nowhere; he looked like something out of antiquity, like one of the paintings I'd seen in Hardison's screens while he studied Sokolov's work. "Can they die?" he asked.

Ooops, nope, we were back in mafia mentality. "Depends what you shoot them with. And in some cases, where."

"Then I believe you and I should speak, wizard." He shook his head and gestured impatiently. "He just stole the damn portrait. Why is he turning around and selling it already?"

"Because after the auction he won't need it anymore. Or at least that's what he thought, until he met Parker and she stole his key, and all of those." He waved a hand idly at the table's worth of knick-knacks. "So between now and the end of the auction he has to get that key back. You," Nate told Fedorov, "are going to trade it for the portrait. Make sure to tell them that when you RSVP."

"You are sending me into a den of monsters alone, Ford," Fedorov gritted out. "If you want me dead have the decency of doing it yourself."

"Not alone, no. You're bringing Sophie with you. If Dresden can get the tracker off of the other invitation we have, we'll even send Eliot in with you. And we will all be nearby to provide support. We don't want another 'situation', Fedorov, no one wants that."

Fedorov eyed Eliot, who shrugged calmly. He eyed Sophie, who smiled at him. "No offense," he told Eliot, "but I will feel safer with her."

Eliot beamed at the man. "None taken."

I had to agree with both of them, honestly.

"What about Grandmother?"

"She'll be there," Ford assured him. It was the only part of the plan I didn't like, because Ford had no explanation, no reason as to why he believed Baba Yaga would show up at the auction when Koschei was sure to be there. Last I'd checked, and from all Bob had taught me, those two were not on speaking terms, and got along about as well as fire and gasoline.

Fedorov looked thoughtful. "Wizard."

Oh, I did not like where this was going. "Uh."

"Since you are taking jobs on the side, will you take one more?"

"Uh." I looked at Ford, but he said nothing. He was giving me a keen, level look. I liked that even less. "That depends on the job."

Fedorov grinned at me. "He has tried too many times to harm Grandmother. Perhaps to kill her outright. I don't know if this is possible, if he can do this thing. I know he's trying, and I do not like it. I will pay whatever you ask, wizard. If you're there and do your best to protect her."

I felt as if the silence in the room were crushing me. "You want me to protect Baba Yaga."

"You are what I have."

"This is Baba Yaga. Grandmother Winter. Close to a living god as it gets. Not to mention I've already met the Blackbird. He won both times, in case you weren't listening."

"Did he? You walked away and he did not follow. Twice. The way I see it, you won the only victory that matters."

I wanted to scream. To walk away. I would have laughed in Fedorov's face but the truth was, I was scared. He was asking me to stand between what I saw as an unstoppable force and an immovable object. However, and I hated that he was right, but he uh. He was right. I'd stood up to Koschei twice, and I'd walked away both times. Either the man sucked at killing people, and I knew that wasn't true, or I was doing something right. I just didn't know what.

I felt as trapped as Fedorov did, but I could also see his reasoning. Koschei was an asshole. An unparalleled one. No one disagreed on that. But Baba Yaga, even if she was mercurial, alien, inhuman, still cared about the land and the people in a way her pupil didn't. If there was a line on the sand, I knew which side I was on. "I'll do what I can," I couldn't make the words come out civil, but at least I could make them come out.

Fedorov nodded at me. "In that case," he grinned minutely, leaned forward and picked up one of the chicken bones and the little carved wooden cup from among the many knick-knacks on the table and dropped the one inside the other. The bone let out a little rattle. "Let me tell you a fairy tale about Koschei and Grandmother."

TWENTY FOUR

The leshy came back that night, and they brought friends once again.

I was dead asleep in spite of every thought and worry wrecking chaos in my mind. I was worried, and I was pretty sure I had a right to be. We were about to throw a bluff in the face of some of the deadliest, smartest monsters ever to come out of the Nevernever, Leverage also wanted to steal from them at the same time. There was just so much going on that I'd given up trying to keep track of it all, and resigned myself to doing my part of it and never figuring out what, other that stealing, these people did.

Mouse's low growl woke me up as if someone had punched me. He'd been asleep at the foot of the bed, which was big enough for five of me or two of him, and when he stood up I could see his ruff standing up on end, outlined against the faint light coming in through the window. I sat up just in time to hear a muffled yowl of pain, and the creak of the door swinging open.

They'd found me. Of everything we'd picked up, all the trinkets, all the traps, I was still the easiest source of magic to find. I just hadn't known if they'd be willing to gamble that Koschei's stuff would be with me and not in a vault somewhere, or with the Leverage people.

The house had no lintel to speak of, no doorway. It was a safehouse, a fancy storage unit where I'd spent two nights. I'm sure the leshy had expected some trouble getting through the door, but I already knew they had humans in the roster, and humans could pick a lock or break a window, slip inside and invite the leshy in. There wasn't enough of a presence in the house, mine or otherwise, to kick up a passive defense out of habitation alone.

Which was why Eliot had lined every doorway and windowsill with iron nails.

Another muffled yowl and I was quietly on my feet, reaching for my shirt and my duster. There were a few traps between the leshy and what they sought, but once again I was counting mainly on them not being able to use magic to find the stuff. I drew a deep breath, stepped back from the bed, called Mouse to me, and flicked a throw blanket on the bed.

I'm not good at Veils. I know people who can hide entire stadiums worth of people, sight, sound, scent, every sense. Me, I was counting on it being dark so that when the leshy came up, as they must, it would look like I was still asleep on the bed. It didn't make sense for them to risk waking me up while they tore the place apart, which they'd likely do. Not to mention they could always ask me where everything was, and provide all sorts of incentives for me to tell them.

I managed to get my sneakers on before I heard the stairwell creak minutely. I fell back into the shadows of the closet, Mouse by my side, staff on one hand and wand on the other, and waited.

The door to my bedroom opened very slowly. The same dim, reflected streetlight glow that had shone on Mouse showed me the paw-like hand of a leshy as it stepped forward, sniffing the still air in the room. Its eyes locked onto the bed and it moved forward with a little more confidence. It cleared the door and another one came in behind it. They moved to flank the bed. A third one came in.

The moment it was clear of the door I surged forward, slammed the door shut, and pointed my staff at it. "Forzare."

It might have come out a little angry. I was getting real tired of leshy, to be fair. The blast of force threw the leshy through the window in a shower of glass and wood; it screamed as it went, the iron nails on the windowsill scraping it raw.

Mouse flew at another leshy with a snarl. Its nature betrayed it; not only was my dog very big and fairly terrifying despite his youth, leshy were creatures of the field, their nature very close to rabbits, to hares, to moles. It shrieked in immediate terror and went down, scrabbling and writhing, all the fight gone from it, wanting only to get away from its natural predator.

The last one didn't stop to think. It leapt up and kicked me in the chest. I went through the bedroom door like the old oak wasn't even there. The pain was immediate, immense, blinding. Next thing I knew I was on my knees out on the hallway, and I couldn't breathe. I'd be lucky if nothing was broken. Leshy kick like the hares they look like, and the fairy-thug's reaction had been so quick I'd had no time to summon my shield.

Mouse was barking furiously in the bedroom; I couldn't get wits or breath enough to get back on my feet, but I had just enough of them to see motion coming up the stairs. I swung my wand around and let a stream of fire blaze out. The figure in front shrilled inhumanly; behind it, someone cursed entirely too humanly.

I had to get up. I had to move. I was easy prey if I didn't. I got one leg under me just in time for one panicked leshy to come sprinting out of my bedroom, and we both went down in a tangle. It tried to bite my face, and I just barely put an arm up. Its teeth caught it, but couldn't quite punch through the duster's defenses. It didn't feel like roses, though, and someone let out a very undignified howl of pain. Couldn't have been me.

I'd lost my wand when we'd gone down, and I didn't have enough room to bring my staff to bear, so I let go of it, put my free hand on the leshy's face, and let go with all the electricity I'd collected the past day. I didn't have the breath to call it - the words aren't part of the magic as much as an exercise in focus, a visualization aid. I could throw everything around without them, but I'd been using the word to try not to get zapped myself. It was a sacrifice I was willing to make.

Electric fire lit up the leshy's skull from within, made its ears stand up on end; it rolled down my hand and up my arm, but I was far more interested in the fairy-thug not getting another bite in. Fortunately, it crashed down limp on top of me, smoking faintly.

I shoved it aside and groped around for my staff. The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end and I threw my shield up instinctively.

A net crashed over it and came to rest on the gleaming half-bubble, and I was in trouble. The net had magic, unknown magic, probably meant to counter mine. I couldn't let go of the shield without getting caught in the net. I couldn't do magic without dropping the shield. The hallway was narrow, and they couldn't get to me any more than I could get to them, but that left them free to tear my house apart.

Which was apparently the going plan. The leshy I'd singed on the stairwell called out something to the human behind it, who shouted in Russian down the stairs. I heard the door to one of the rooms slam open, and a crowbar start work on the crates.

I forced myself to draw a deep breath. Mouse was still engaged with the last fairy-thug in the bedroom. My ribs were still screaming. My lungs had mostly forgotten how to work. But I needed that breath, I needed the focus of it.

At the peak of it, I dropped to a crouch, dropped the shield and called out, "Ventus!" more or less at the same time.

Have I mentioned I'm a hammer when it comes to magic?

Wind roared out, coming out of me in every direction. It threw the net for parts unknown, it sent the people on the stairwell flying back, stumbling down the steps with startled squawks and something that sounded very much like cursing. I wouldn't know, I don't speak Russian. I found my wand under my foot, lifted my staff and for good measure threw a second gout of wind down the stairwell. "Mouse!"

He came charging out of the room. I peeked in. The leshy was crawling away for the gaping hole in the wall that had been a window, both legs a ruin of greenish blood. I closed what was left of the door between it and us and began to inch my way down the stairs.

There was a hissed, angry argument going on at the bottom of the stairs, probably wondering if I was worth the trouble. Oh, I was not. So many people could've told the thugs, I'm very much not worth the trouble. I'm a burr, and at that point I was an angry burr, and to compound their misery I was an angry burr that could do magic.

Someone shouted a warning in the dark of the first floor. I threw my shield up.

Three bullets bounced off it, along with a shower of sparks. Oh, ok. Uh. I hadn't expected them to decide I was that kind of trouble. Hell's Bells. Boston had powered up my shield, but I'd apparently finally hit on the limit of what the damaged bracelet could do. If it hadn't been made to hold back more mundane threats as well as magic, I would have been very much in trouble.

I could see, vaguely, four of them gathered in what was supposed to be the living room. I was pretty sure there was at least one more crashing and wrecking one of the rooms. I saw one of them grab and yank at another, and some tiny part of me was glad to know the leshy themselves didn't want me shot, but that didn't mean one of their number, likely one of their human buddies, didn't have a gun he was entirely too willing to use. I had to finish this quick, before someone else got trigger-happy.

I dropped the shield. Mouse leapt the moment it was gone, with a snarl like a roar. I love my dog. I know my dog. At that moment I was absolutely terrified of my dog.

So were the thugs. I slammed the butt of my staff on the ground before any of them could get any ideas. "Forzare!" The shockwave sent two of them tumbling - the humans. The leshy tottered, but managed to stay upright. One of them immediately went down with a panicked screech when Mouse slammed into it.

The other twisted one hand sharply and threw something at me that glittered in the dark. I threw my shield up automatically.

The night's breath powder settled on it and began to burn.

I heard a howl, realized belatedly that it was mine; my shield-bracelet had gone instantly white-hot while it tried to defend against the very thing that was attacking it. I dropped the shield, felt the poison sink into my magic. The leshy charged me, as aware as I was that I couldn't throw magic around wildly anymore; I could very well run out of energy mid-fight.

So I swung the staff at it as hard as I could.

The impact drove it into the wall and it staggered back, dazed. I stepped into its space and punched it. Hey, it worked for Eliot. It went down on its knees with a cry.

But the two human thugs were getting up, and one was lifting his arm in a familiar fashion. I couldn't gamble, I called up my shield, gritting my teeth against the pain. The goon slammed the taser into it, electricity arcing from it over the roiling surface of the half-bubble.

I put my hand out, the one with the wire bracelet, dropped the shield and called the electricity to me. It burned down my already singed fingers, and into the bracelet, and I threw it at the other man before he could get it into his head to start shooting again. He made a sound like a broken police siren and crashed down, twitching.

I'd been keeping my eye on the group in front of me and that open bedroom door, but in the middle of the chaos I forgot that leshy are like roaches: there's always more than the ones you see. Something came at me from the kitchen and hit the back of my head. It wasn't even painful; it was just instantaneous darkness; everything shut down. My cheek hit the floor, but I didn't feel it so much as vaguely registered that my perspective on things had changed radically. I heard Mouse snarl, and someone screamed - the natural order of things.

Things went blurry and uncertain for a while. I heard the group talking, and Mouse barking furiously, but I was only aware of it because it was Mouse, and I was worried that they'd hurt him. The night's breath had settled on me like the weight of the world, burning, hissing in a way only I could hear. I felt crushed. I couldn't breathe. My magic felt sluggish and foul, like blood poisoning.

"It's not just the circle, he's got a ward of some sort around them," a man's voice said in English. Someone else spoke in Russian. I was beginning to understand Hardison's comment about learning a language by infection.

"Koldun", a hoarse, gravelly voice said. Something grabbed my face and picked me partially up, talons prickling my cheeks. "Wizard," the leshy said in terrible English. "You hear me?"

"I thought leshy didn't speak." I was trying to get myself in the game, but the night's breath was burning into my bones, my ribs hurt like someone had kicked them out of my chest, and my head was pounding.

The leshy growled - its way of laughing, I realized. It said something to one of the people around. We were in my basement. There were glow-sticks all over, illuminating my work: the brass circle on the concrete floor, closed and holding strong around a small shoebox full of Koschei's knick-knacks. Inside the circle were two more wards: the tracking foil I'd copied from the key, and a little bubble of force, very much like my shield, meant to keep things and people from this side of the Nevernever from getting through.

See, I could learn. I'd remembered that the leshy had been working with humans back at the museum, and I'd been ready.

"He says, 'the world changed, we changed with it'." It was the man who'd shouted a warning earlier, likely the one who'd shot at me. He was wearing all black, the better to be impossible to distinguish from the rest of the group. The leshy growled something at him. "You will dismiss the circle and remove the rest of your protections."

I gritted my teeth. Those talons were like shoe cleats, sharp and solid, and the fairy's grip was incredibly strong. They'd stripped me down to my pants and tee, and I was pretty sure they'd taken off anything that wasn't nailed down. I couldn't even feel the familiar weight of my pendant around my neck. My arms were bound behind me and my shoulder was really unhappy about that. They'd even taken my shoes off. "Bite me."

The leshy growled again and it occurred to me that it probably wasn't a good idea to invite him to do that. It said something a little longer this time. I was trying to figure out if I could use their ignorance to my advantage: the outermost circle was just that, a circle. Any of their human buddies could have made it past it. But because the leshy knew magical circles to be impregnable, they apparently hadn't thought to have the humans try.

"You will dismiss the circle," the translator said. "Or we will shoot your dog."

My lunge was instinctive. And pointless. The leshy stopped me before I could get an inch closer and slammed me back against a wall. It was just hard enough to be painful, but not enough to knock me out again. He even gave me a few minutes to find the wits he'd just send scattering all over with that casual bit of controlled violence.

"I drop the circle, you shoot us both."

The translator spoke. The leshy examined me, head cocked, golden eyes throwing an occasional red gleam when the light hit them just right. He said something long-ish.

"He considered it," the man translated. "But is not worth a death-curse, and you obviously love dog. What assurance can he provide?"

"Lock my dog up in the bathroom. Everyone else waits outside. I'll break the circle for him, and him alone."

"Nyet." The leshy wasn't stupid, though I'd hoped. He spoke at length, the translator asking a couple of questions.

"The dog stays in the net, goes in the bathroom. Three of us stay here. You drop the circle, remove the wards. We take you to the bathroom with your dog. You do not follow."

"I get your gun, you keep the bullets," I added.

That created a brief argument between the man and the leshy, but the translator caved eventually. Not that I didn't think they had a dozen other ways to kill me and Mouse, but the gun was the quickest one.

"And I'll need my hands free."

The leshy didn't wait for the translator. "Use feet."

"Fine."

He dragged me to my feet. Off to one side I could see Mouse, all but wrapped into a net, bound up inside a blanket that had been secured with duct tape. Ah, the net hadn't been for me, it'd been meant for him all along. He snarled, but didn't bark, probably out of pity for my throbbing skull. In the basement the sound would have echoed like thunder. Two humans picked him up warily, and while he tried to snap at them, he couldn't do more than twitch and drool. All but two leshy and the translator followed them out of the basement.

The translator pulled out the gun, removed the clip and the loaded bullet, and I twisted so he could give it to me. He didn't look happy. I made a show of muttering under my breath and calling up some magic. The effort bent me over double and I nearly felt my legs go to jelly. Bile rose up in my throat, and the lead leshy had to hold me up. I had to make it look like I was doing something, though, otherwise the leshy would catch onto my bluff about the circle.

But Boston, ah, Boston. The night's breath couldn't corrode what the city was giving me fast enough. If I could just get away, purge all of the corroded magic, I'd be fine. As it was, I had the power to throw a punch, I just had no way of knowing if it was going to blow up in my face or theirs.

I took a couple of deep breaths, tried again, and scuffed my foot over the circle and the two wards beyond it. And very calmly said, "Ignitum".

The circle broke. The lead leshy gestured the other two forward. The shoebox was plain, empty of anything but the rough dozen or so things Parker and I had got from Koschei. Everything was there, even the feathers and the invitation.

Except for two things.

The leshy grabbed me by the throat. "Key, koldun." He snapped at the translator.

"You are missing things. Where are they?"

"I only agreed to break the circle. It's not my fault if you didn't check your shopping before you paid the bill."

The leshy didn't like that. It slammed me against a wall and snarled. The translator opened its mouth -

The other leshy, who'd managed to grab the box, squealed in pain when something hot dripped down on it, then shrieked, clawing at its shoulder as a sizzling sound and the smell of burning fields began to fill the room. One of the ceiling tiles crashed down.

Everyone looked up. I just grinned at them.

Eliot had set up the trap for me, and he'd honestly had a blast doing so. The basement was bare concrete in every direction; to hide the fact that he was putting iron everywhere he could reach, he'd put up styrofoam ceiling tiles. He'd glued them to the concrete.

He'd laced the glue with iron filings.

Throwing a magical punch? Fifty-fifty. Melting fresh silicone that wasn't even hard yet? Child's play.

The lead leshy barked an order. The translator started for me. While they were both distracted I balanced myself on one foot, lifted the other, and kicked the leshy as hard as I could in the gut. He went sprawling back and crashed down on the floor. I snapped out the word of command. The circle snapped into life and cut him in half.

I dropped to my knees, most of my focus on not throwing up. The rest I channeled into forcing all the corroded magic the night's breath had poisoned out of me. I didn't even bother giving it shape, I just threw it out. It flattened the last two thugs and sent me crashing down on my face, even as I tried to force myself to get up, get to the box, I couldn't let them have the box -

More melted silicone dripped down. The last leshy squalled something that didn't sound nice, and the one human cursed. He came at me, trying to take his gun back. I drew in a deep breath and threw what little clean power Boston had given me in his face as a flash of light. He staggered back, blinded, swearing.

His buddy caught him and they both ran out of the basement, and I was left there, breathing hard, wondering if I should pass out. Or throw up. Or both, maybe. Somewhere above me Mouse was barking fit to bring the house down.

Passing out it was.

TWENTY FIVE

The gunshots woke up the neighbors. The neighbors woke up the cops, who expected to be summoned to such an address to bar brawls or petty theft, not to shots fired in a staid, elderly Boston neighborhood.

The gunshots also roused Nate. He came sprinting down the block to find half a dozen people peering out nervously, each one demonstrating vividly what they considered a safe distance, and none of them agreeing. The mastermind, who knew exactly how far a bullet could travel on kinetic energy alone, never mind inertia, didn't want to think of what would happen if there were more shots. He began taking stock of the problem by waving his phone at three of the people on the street. "Did someone, uh, did someone call the cops?" When the neighbors confirmed, he let out a long breath. "Good, good. Hey, those weren't gunshots, were they?" he asked as he dialed. "Hardison."

The Leverage team roused like a nest of wasps. A Crime Scene van and a two-man team nearly beat the cops to the site; the truck from Animal Control rolled in with them, and the one man joined the two masked people at the door, the cops making a path for them. All three of them winced as they walked in, pausing to yank their earbuds off.

"He's here," Eliot confirmed to the other two as they lit their flashlights, everyone taking a moment to hold their breath and see if they held - which they miraculously did. "You go ahead with the distraction, I'll find him." They had to find Dresden, get him out of the line of fire, and set up something appropriately gunshot-like but wholly accidental before the cops started looking in earnest. At the moment they weren't setting foot in the house, but Leverage could only guess as to why, rather than confirm.

"I need three minutes in the kitchen," Hardison said from behind Parker.

"I need two in his bedroom."

"I think we can buy you that," Eliot assured them.

"We?"

Despite the worry gnawing at him that the wizard had gone and gotten hurt (again), Eliot could only smile faintly. He whet his lips and whistled lightly.

From somewhere in the dark Mouse started barking immediately in response, a sound like thunder. Nate and Sophie, part of the crowd outside, saw every cop wince and twitch away. None of them went for their guns; none of them looked willing to go into the house. The crowd shifted restlessly, and stepped back without being urged to it. They crossed a look, but said nothing.

Parker threw a clean suit and a mask at Eliot and they split up. Alone in the dark, Eliot launched himself to the guest bathroom, just to one side of the stairs. "Harry!" When he got no answer he tried again, just a little louder. "Dresden!" No answer. He sniffed; there was a faint, familiar scent in the air that he couldn't readily place, but which left his gut tightening in anticipation of a punch he couldn't see coming. That, however was immediately set aside when he opened the bathroom door and found Mouse trussed up like a Bolivian hostage. "There you are."

Tied up or not, the Temple dog wagged his tail at him. Eliot started sawing on the duct tape, then paused; there was something sticky on either the ropes of the net or the blanket. Or the dog. Eliot considered shining the light on it, then decided he was better off not knowing. "We need to be quiet," he told Mouse, who whuffed nearly soundlessly at him. "And we need to find Harry, fast."

The moment he was loose, the mastiff sprang up on his feet and charged out of the bathroom. Eliot followed him down the stairs to, where else, the basement. The air was hot and full of the scent of burning plastic. Styrofoam tiles had fallen and shattered, leaving the tidy space a wreck. Eliot smelled rotten candy and recoiled. "Mouse, don't!"

The dog froze, and stepped back, whining.

Eliot knew that smell. He'd only smelled it once before, but sometimes that was all it took. He'd smelled it again, faintly, by the stairs. Rotten candy. Burning licorice. The basement cloyed his senses with it. Someone had come in prepared to take down both wizard and dog, and the hitter gritted his teeth. "Night's breath," he murmured, looked down at the dog. Moused looked up at him, ears perked. "You gonna be alright in there?"

Mouse eased himself gingerly into the basement. Paused. Whuffled.

Eliot followed. "Harry?"

A groan answered him, and he charged in. His boots squished on something very much not blood, but he didn't stop to check what it was. "Harry!"

"I'm gonna be sick," the wizard moaned. Eliot found him slumped in a heap against one side of the basement, tied up very efficiently, looking ashen under the light of the flashlight, Mouse licking his face enthusiastically.

"Place reeks of night's breath, man."

"That was me," Dresden admitted as Eliot worked to free him. "Someone dosed me upstairs. Burned it off here." He let out a vague sound of pain when his hands came loose and he started working feeling into them immediately. "They took the box."

"Who's surprised," Eliot grimaced when he nearly lost his grip on his knife sawing at the ropes around Harry's feet. "What… Why is everything slimy down here?"

"That was me, too," the wizard admitted. "I killed one of the leshy. Things from the Nevernever kinda melt when they die."

"They m- You mean- " Eliot found himself suddenly realizing he was, apparently, wading knee-deep through someone's equivalent of bodily fluids. "You mean we're covered in fairy blood?"

"Blood, guts…" Harry waved a hand to encompass a nebulous whole.

Full of violence as his life was, Eliot definitely had feelings about the situation, and none of them were good. "Damn it, Dresden!" he snapped as he helped the wizard to his feet and dragged him up the stairs.

"It'll evaporate to nothing soon!"

"And what part of 'don't get hurt' didn't you get?"

"You also said 'make it believable'," Harry protested wearily. "And they had humans with them. Again. And the humans had guns so. You know. The night's just been full of surprises."

Eliot hissed a breath out. Of course they would. "Alright. Get dressed." He thrust the clean suit and the mask at Harry. "We're going out the front door."

"Out the - They're gonna notice there's more people going out than came in."

Parker choose that moment to pop up next to them, making them both jump. "I'm not going out the front door." She had Harry's duster on, which made her look even more elfin than she already was, and looked terribly pleased with herself. "I found everything. They had it all stashed together. Amateurs."

Eliot merely imagined strangling the thief. Only a little. Just to soothe his rising temper. "They weren't thieves, Parker." When she gave him a pointed look the hitter realized what he'd said. "Ok, yes, they were thieves, but they weren't here to rob Harry!" Her brows went up. "You know what I mean! Is Hardison done?"

"I'll go check." She turned to look at Harry, and frowned minutely. "Are you hurt?"

"If I answer that, Eliot will get mad at me," he told her as he zipped up the clean suit.

To the hitter's chagrin, she took in that answer solemnly, nodded, and raced off for the kitchen.

"You are hurt," Eliot accused mildly.

"Leshy like to kick."

"Is anything broken?"

"No." Dresden breathed in, deep and very slow. "I don't think so. I'll get back to you on the concussion, though."

"You have a helluva sense of humor for someone I just found hogtied in his own basement."

Eliot saw the wizard grin, hard and bitter. "Eliot, I'm used to going down. I'm also used to waking up in a cell of one kind or another after." He popped the medical mask in place and put up the hood. "This is a distinct improvement."

The hitter had to pause at that. "Harry, don't you have anyone? Anyone that has your back?"

The wizard paused, went very still. "People… don't do so good when they get involved in a wizard's affairs," he admitted slowly, and the burden of pain and guilt and regret in his voice brought Eliot up very short. It had been years since he'd heard such a refined, complex mix of exactly those emotions from someone, but he remembered the day well enough.

He'd been staring in a mirror at the time, and he'd been horribly young.

"And not a lot of people accept that 'men in gray and big swords' trump a lot of the answers they sometimes want out of me."

The hitter caught the wizard's good shoulder. "Harry, for what it's worth," he said evenly. "I know it's hard. I know how it is when you've drawn a line on the sand and no one sees you holding it. Me, I'm here to keep my team safe. Twice, so far, I wasn't there - but you were. And that's enough for me. Thank you."

Dresden blew out a long breath. "Don't suppose you guys want to move to Chicago?"

"No more than you wanna move to Boston." Eliot looked up to see Hardison coming out of the kitchen, passing his backpack to Parker and taking hers in exchange. "Come on. The timing Hardison cooked up is tricky."

They marched out, the Animal Control guy first, leading the friendliest, most gigantic and slobberiest ball of fur out, leaving all the cops vaguely embarrassed that they'd been afraid to step into the house. Mouse hammed it up, tongue lolling to one side and tail wagging cheerfully. The crime scene people cleared out, the cops poured in, and everyone jumped into their respective vehicles.

It took a while to put both the Animal Control pick-up and the Crime Scene van back in place, none the worse for their small adventure, and everyone reconvened back at the loft. Sophie reported that there had been plenty of cops in the kitchen when the same security system that had destroyed the bedroom window interacted badly with an ancient electric board, entombed in the walls. The system had blown the garden door out onto the overgrown grass, and the antique board had gone off like a gun once again. A report had been written; fines would have to be paid. The owner had been summoned, and she'd been most grateful for everyone's prompt response, gracious and elegant even in her concern. Everyone had gone home somewhat disappointed and secretly reassured that life could go back to what it should be: quiet.

While Sophie soothed the mood at the safehouse, Nate came to see Dresden as Eliot, once again, patched up the wizard in the small spare bedroom behind the kitchen. Harry's entire chest was a rising, ugly bruise. When Eliot moved away to wash his hands, he spoke very quietly to the mastermind. "You know, when I said I'd like a job where I wasn't a punching bag, this wasn't what I meant."

"I know." Nate's mouth was pressed to a thin line. It wasn't just the injuries, or the attack. Violence threatened them all, that was just part of the job. But the violence that kept coming at Dresden was unpredictable and far too big for any countermeasures to readily work. "He's getting more hurt than you have in our worst jobs," he murmured quietly at the hitter.

"He's a civilian, Nate."

"So are you," the mastermind pointed out. "But I know what you mean."

"He doesn't have the training, he doesn't have the mental firewalls."

"Can you teach him?"

"In what, two days?!"

Nate gave the hitter a very keen, very level look. "I think he'd be grateful, and better off, with whatever you do give him." He pitched his voice to carry. "Dresden, what did they get?"

"Everything," Harry replied, testing his arm until Eliot flung a sling at him. "Everything but the key and the Witchwell."

"Mm. But he doesn't need those two back nearly as urgently as everything else. Not once Fedorov's offer gets to him. And he already has the portrait, he doesn't need help stealing it."

"He does if the Witchwell's not his and he needs to return it to the proper owner," the wizard pointed out, frowning thoughtfully.

"Does he?"

"He might. I'm guessing," Harry admitted, "but I don't think it's his. It's too modern, it doesn't fit what we know of the guy."

"I agree with Harry," Eliot added.

"So do I," Nate replied. "His reaction at the bagel shop was very telling. But the man in black has to know we can't destroy it, and he has to know it'd be much easier for him to recover it after the auction." He seemed momentarily lost in thought. He was wondering if Koschei would think of the many ways in which the Witchwell could be turned against him; if that potential danger would force him to divert attention and effort to its recovery.

And in three days' time, I will grant you and your people your heart's desire.

"He'll wait. He'll wait until he can simply take it back."

"He could take it back right now," Harry muttered.

"Could he? That's twice you've faced his hired thugs, and twice you've survived, Dresden. Twice you've almost won, until an external factor stepped in. Have a little faith in yourself. From his side, his odds don't look good."

Eliot understood. "He doesn't gamble. When he wins, he likes it to be by overwhelming force."

The mastermind nodded. "And every time Dresden steps in, it doesn't matter what the man in black throws on the field, it never ends up with a clean victory for him. He'll wait. We go on with the con. Get some rest, Dresden. You're no use as a monkeywrench if you're in pieces."

"I live to please, boss," the wizard declared wearily.

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