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deadsnothere · 9 months

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Gunslinger Girl!

Synopsis - After getting a call from Garp, Alias made her way to the Baratie for a nice bite to eat and a long needed reunion.

Part 2

WARNINGS!! - READER HAS A NAME!!

Request - no, not taking them sorry.

Word count - 2.8k

Speak Ali! - Both parts together make 5,340 words, this Fic has literally taken up my brain.

Monkey D. Luffy.

Garp was a cheeky bastard.

I, Alias Foreman, Swore to be on Monkey D. Luffy's pirate crew when we both turned sixteen and fled to the sea together. I had a dream of becoming one of the most versatile people known to man. I want to learn as much as I can, to cook, to clean, to navigate boats and ships, anything you can teach me I will try my hardest to understand and learn. Now I'm not saying that I want to be the best at everything, there will always be people better. But I want to at least understand the basics of as much as possible. But for all of my life I've been known as a Gunslinger.

I'm ‘The Cheshire Cat’. Cool name with a stupid job. I hate being a Warlord of the Sea, it's the stupidest job on this side of the east blue, and they wouldn't even give me a proper crew. Just a few bumbling idiots who don't know what being a pirate really means.

Luffy always understood what being a pirate meant. I remember watching Garp train him day in and day out. Parts of me understand why Garp was so hard on him, I mean people say he takes after Gold Roger. Imagine your grandson taking after someone you helped execute. I don't think I'd be fond of it either. I’ve never thought Garp nor Luffy were wrong for what they want but, I think one knows what he's doing and the other doesn't.

It's always quite bothersome when halfway through my delicious dinner, I get interrupted by a soggy mean fishman running in here and trying to take my table for dinner. If he had waited a few minutes I would've gladly given it up, I just wanted to finish my meal. But the inpatient idiot just had to have it now.

“I'm afraid there are no more tables.” Arlong and two of his crew members were walking down the stairs of the Baratie. They’re bodies are still wet and leaving water as they walk, which is just plain disrespectful. “I see a bunch of tables.” I couldn't help but roll my eyes, to think I would have a peaceful dinner, just hopeful dreaming. People started to whisper and get up from their tables but I stayed in my seat, intending to finish the nice meal served to me. Plus it's not as if they got far, Arlong was yelling at them as soon as he got to the middle of the staircase. “Sit down!” he yelled in his degrading, chalkboard scratching voice. I continued to cut my steak in pieces to eat, they over cooked it a bit but a fine job was done anyways. Seasoned almost perfectly. A little too much oregano, but I'm just too picky with my food. Arlong went around as if he owned the place. “No one leaves.”

He looked at me with malice in his smile. “Except you.” His webbed hand went to grab the collar of my shirt but I stopped it with my own, barely even looking back. “I only have a bite or two left, I'll give it up when I'm done.” I took another drink from my wine and let go of his hand, continuing on with my meal. I could tell it pissed him off from the way he growled close to my ear. A stupid amount of spit landing on my dinner plate and shoulder. I shivered in disgust and stood up from my table. “You know what- take it.” I grabbed my plate and wine and stood up, leaving the small round table for the fishmen to sit at. I felt bad not eating the steak so I got a to-go box from the reservations desk and put it in there to give to someone later. Deciding that maybe i'll get a nice drink from the bar instead.

I was a wine kind of gal so I got a nice glass of Merlot, it was tasty. Had lots of flavor, some of which I enjoyed and some I didn't. I was enjoying the peace. I always knew it wouldn't last long but god was i sad when it was over. “Which one of you is Arlong?” Oh shit. I knew his voice anywhere, the voice I was sent for by his grandfather, the voice of a new age. I got a refill on my wine, and bought the whole bottle while I was at it, due to the lingering feeling that this wasn't going to look pretty.

When I got back into the restaurant I decided to just rest a little under the staircase, hidden by the shadows hopefully. Seeing Luffy again made me nervous. Something about it..something about how he’d be even a little bit different. When I assessed the situation in front of me it confused me a bit. I could hear that Arlong was yelling from the bar but he's an idiot so I tuned it out and tried to enjoy the bit of ‘quiet’ I had. Arlong has an older gentleman by his shirt collar, while Luffy was halfway down the main staircase. He had two men behind him, one named Usopp the other Sanji. I heard about them both, one from a customer here and the other, from a bartender. “So this is the pirate I've heard so much about.” Arlong was starting to circle around some of the tables, pacing I guess. “You know, I was expecting someone… bigger.”

Sounds like my cue. I came out of the shady area setting the wine glass and bottle on the table and grabbing a pack of cigarettes and a lighter from a pocket in my shorts, picking the lucky one and placing it in my mouth delicately. “Tell me about it..I've had someone in my ear all day. ‘Find that dumbass.’ I have a headache at this point.” I laughed and leant on the chair. Luffy looks away from Arlong for a millisecond, to look at me but I don't think it registered in his brain. He couldn't have forgotten me. Luffy spoke, in his normal, nonchalant, Luffy way. “So was I.” I was puffing from my cigarette as I laughed. The snicker making smoke pour out of my nose. That got Luffy's attention. His head snapped to look at me, his eyes didn’t leave me, it looked like he was inspecting every part of my body. Probably looking for the one sign it was me. The small skull shaped scar just above my left knee. I wore shorts today just so he would see it.

His eyes were as wide as the plates they were using to serve that delicious soup I had for an appetizer. “ALIAS?!-” internally I let out a breath I didn't know I was holding. Externally, all I could do was smile. Luffy had a bright smile on his cheeks and I couldn't help but smile back. It was a smile I yearned for, for so long. I knew with even a bit of it, I was going to be addicted again.

I could see how excited luffy was that I was here (which made me VERY happy), but Arlong being himself did not like that attention wasn't on him for those few seconds so he cleared his throat obnoxiously. “Do you know who I am, boy?” Luffy's attention went to him but came right back when I spoke up. “Arlong the Saw.” There was a moment of silence, I taped the ash away from my cigarette into an empty glass off the table of people in front of me, and took another drag from it. “And just who are you-” - “I’m The Cheshire Cat.” I undid two of the buttons on my button up shirt with one hand, letting my collar fall back to show off the cat like scratches that laid on my collar bone (If those cats were lions that scratched almost all the way down my torso and arm). I did a stupid little bow. A few people reacted but I enjoyed the way Luffy looked so wowed. Arlongs eyes widened but they just went right back to a dumb smug smile. “You, Arlong, go for 20 million berrys.” I took another drag, exhaling calmly. “Which is impressive for the east blue but..Not so much other places.” He laughed from his chest, his friends going along with it. “What does the sell out have to say about it?” I sighed softly.

A part of me wished I was a sell out, instead of a kidnapped child forced to do the government's dirty work. The other part knew I would never do that, knew I would never betray my own crew like that. “Oh nothing honestly, I don't care about you.” I looked over to Luffy who still had a smile on his face. When we made eye contact he started to beam. I've only visited him once since I became a warlord, it makes me happy to see him so full of joy just from a moment of eye contact with me. “I'm here for him.” Luffy's hands started to shake, it was something small he always did around me. Blurted it out one day, said when I was excited sometimes I gave him a look, a glint in my eye that made him so happy his entire body shook. It was the sweetest thing he’d ever said to me. Arlong growled once again, leaving spit in someone's food. Those poor people.

He was circling the tables to get to me, circling around me slowly as if I was fish bait he was waiting to snap on. “Well I was here first.” I thought about correcting him, telling him that I was in fact here first. But Luffy interrupted the thought anyway. “How’d you find me anyway?” Luffy sounded completely confident in himself, Arlong just let out another horrid chuckle and made his way back to where he originally stood. “Old friend helped me track you down.” At first Luffy looked over to me, but I was drinking a sip of wine, just listening to what was happening in front of me. Arlong clicked his tongue and one of the other fish men grabbed the clown pirate's head out of a bag. “Heya, Straw hat. Did you miss me?” Luffy looked extremely confused, Sanji looked exhausted and Usopp looked terrified. “Burpy?” The name he called him almost made me spit out my wine from laughter (Which made Luffy happy, I could tell because he glanced at me. Even just for a second.) “What are you doing here?”

The fact that there was only a clown head confused and disturbed me, but I looked past it. “Believe me, it wasn't my first choice either.” He looked a bit nervous as he spoke. “But these fine fishy folk persuaded me to point them in the right direction, which ain't easy when you don't have any hands!” The joke made me raise my eyebrows and laugh a bit, it was funny i'll give him that. But Luffy still looked confused. “How’d you even know where to find me?” Suddenly the clown had the most serious expression I've ever seen him in. “I told you, I've got eyes and ears everywhere.” I noticed an ear start to climb out of the red band of Luffys hat. It was quite strange. The ear went back to the clown and popped right back in place, laughing. Luffy took the hat off his head inspecting it, while the two men behind him shared a look. “Stereo!” Luffy looked shocked. “You were listening all along? You heard everything?” The clown was quite happy. “Everything! and that old quick. 'Cause you shi-diots have no idea what you're doing.” The mashup word made me giggle a bit, it sounded so stupid, but it was kinda funny. (But luffy frowned a bit when he saw I laughed so i stopped as quick as i started).

The clown's head jumped towards the fishman with the huge lips. “Hey lips? How about a scratch behind the old ear, huh?” That made me roll my eyes, he was stupid enough to ask his captors that? The fishmen put him back in the bag. Buggy complaining about how sandy and wet it was.

“Listen here. I want my map.” It was so stupid. Watching them fight over the map to the entrance to the grand line, I understand why Luffy wanted it, but Arlong has a giant crew of thieves who could easily take it from another marine base. “Along with half of whatever you plunder as tribute.” Tribute? for getting a map, does he want tribute for his own existence now? “And if you bow down to me, I might even let you serve in my kingdom.” Stupid men. All of them were the same. Well not all, but most were extremely similar. “I don't bow down to any man.” Luffy stood tall, his head held up high as usual. That's my boy. “I'm no man.” Luffy continued. “Or fish.” That made Arlong growl and made me laugh. “And you’re no king.” There was a certain feeling in the air, the aggression that at any moment, one or the other would attack. Everyone was on high alert, my wine made that hard. It was just so delicate. Hard to enjoy in this environment but perfect in others.

“I will be, when I get my grand line map.” Luffy just smiled, which was a little bit attractive. “Then” He placed his hat back on his head. “You’re gonna have to fight me for it.” I take the attractive comment back, he's stupid. “Then let the fighting begin.” A bullet bounced off the fishmans skin. My hands almost drew closer to my own guns but instead I decided to pour another glass of wine. The old man that cooked my food was standing with a gun in his hand, the trigger pulled in his fingers clutches.

The thing about fishmen (I had learned the hard way) is that regular bullets don't affect them. I have very special bullets, made from some weird unmeltable ice, something about them coming from a town inside the grand line called drum town, from the deepest parts of frozen lakes. They're so sharp they even pierce fishman skin but don't go as deep as I would like.

Arlong turned to the old man, one of his crew members kicking him away and down before punching him into a pillar. Sanji called out his name and ran over, jumping on the table and kicking the fishman in the face. Which just pissed him off more. He got a few good kicks to the face and arms, even the legs but Luffy distracted him. “Really good fighter.” By the time he went to do a quite nice spinning kick to the face again, he caught his foot in his arm. I reached for both guns in my holsters, Checking that they had the correct bullets and shot multiple rounds from Alice, all of them making a trail up his arm and letting Sanji get away. The fishman looked back at me, anger and confusion in his eyes. “These bullets are made of ice, so sharp they even pierce fishman skin. I got them specially made.” There was a delicate smile on my lips, blowing the smoke out of my mouth and away from my guns. Normally i wouldn't touch these but i had a feeling about bringing them today, i'm glad i did. they may be expensive but Luffy was worth it anyways.

Everything was happening so quickly, Luffy's gum gum pistol, Arlong grabbing and pulling him closer. “Uh-” I could tell there was panic in his voice, but I couldn't tell if helping would really be helping at all. He was thrown at a pillar, landing on the floor with a thud. “Get up!” Arlong yelled, if i was him i would've stayed on the floor in spite, but he got up regardless. He kept stretching his arms three punches, one to each shoulder and one to the face. “Not bad for a human.”

I lifted my pistol to shoot Arlong but luffy put his hand up, his middle and ring finger were intertwined and the other three fingers touched. That was our sign when we were kids to stay out of it. It was our secret signal, not even Ace or Sabo or Dadan knew what it meant. I lowered my pistol, spinning it and putting it back in its holster. I grabbed the wine bottle taking a nice big gulp. Glad i’d gotten the entire bottle because this in fact, was not going to be pretty.

Part 2!!

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thefiery-phoenix · 2 months

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YANDERE CHEONLIANG FAMILY HEADCANONS

After reading the latest lookism chapter, my heart hurts for Seongji 😭 However I'll still continue to be delusional and pretend he's still okay. That's better than the bitter reality

You got down from the bus as you sighed and fidgeted with your bagpack over your shoulder before you started walking towards your grandparents house. You were supposed to spend some time at your grandparents place in the Cheonliang village since your parents thought you were getting a tad bit spoiled and felt like you were getting too sheltered in life. You need to understand how life worked and how things were different at a village from the city so your parents and grandparents agreed for you to spend your summer vacation with your grandparents. As embarrassing as it was, it was your first time stepping foot in a village, you had no idea what to even expect. But you weren't too fond of the wet sticky mud beneath your feet when you walked. However you had no choice but to suck it up and deal with it as you made your way to your grandparents house

While you walked, you spotted a few men dressed in sleek white suits and carried a few weapons with them and had menacing looks on their faces as they passed by you. You couldn't help but wonder who they were but you felt that you could probably satisfy your curiosity later after you've had something to eat. You headed to your grandparents house where they greeted you with a warm smile and open arms. Your grandmother patted your head and kept piling more and more food on your plate ready to spoil with her cooking and your grandfather started going off on a rant on how city folk wouldn't understand the ways of the Cheonliang village as you slightly smiled at your grandfather's rant and continued to eat your food. Little did you know what lay in store for you in the evening

Cheonliang was a small village and word traveled fast that there was a newcomer in their village, you. A city girl. People stopped to stare at you when you went out for a walk in the evening and you were unaware of a little girl with Raven black hair watching you with her curious eyes as she followed you around secretly. You eventually realized someone was following you and you spotted the little girl as her messy unkempt raven hair flowed down her shoulders. You gave her a soft smile and waved at her as she shyly waved back towards you and blushed slightly. However before you were about to say anything else she ended up rushing off in the opposite direction like her life depended on it as you felt slightly confused at the interaction

As the sun went down, you started getting familiar with the skeletons and dark secrets the village had to hide. You walked past the Shaman's residence as you spotted a crowd of people gathered there and there surrounded around something. Your curiosity got the better of you and you went closer to the crowd to see what was going on and you were shocked to see a guy who looked maybe one or two years older than you, with polycoria tied and bound by ropes to his wrists and ankles as he knelt down on the ground. The Shaman who was a slightly old man and had a cunning smile on his face with malice glinting in his eyes danced around like a madman to the sound of drums beating in the background, as he called out to an Infant God to get rid of the 'curse' upon the monster that was present before the people as your heart almost stopped beating. The villagers regarded the guy as a monster because of his polycoria? What disgusted you even more was the fact that people started throwing stones and rocks and whatever they could find at the guy while the guy just endured it with a stoic look on his face, his head bent down. A stone hit his head and he didn't even react as your heart wrenched at the sight. You were sure you might not be able to sleep if you didn't try helping out the poor guy

You immediately interrupted the proceedings and yelled for the Shaman to stop and tried to stop the people from throwing and hurling the stones at the guy. What surprised you even more was seeing your grandparents there and they were actually supporting this madness, you couldn't believe your eyes. "Y/N, don't be silly...this is a tradition that happens all the time in the village, you're new here. Quiet down child and let the Shaman do his duty of getting rid of the monster's curse" said your grandmother as she bowed down before the Shaman and requested for him to excuse you since you were new to the village and you weren't familiar with the customs. The Shaman surveyed you with a calculating piercing gaze as the guy next to him with blonde hair and a muscular frame stared at you. The Shaman finally smirked at you and requested for you to have a little chat with him later so he could get to know you better while his eyes roamed around your body and drank in your features with a lecherous perverse grin on his face which you weren't aware of

A while later, you didn't spot the guy who was being subjected to the torture and you hoped he was doing better as you went to see the Shaman as he requested. You sat down in front of him and he handed you some tea as you took a few sips to be polite. For a while he kept the conversation flowing and made light hearted conversation with you while you were still unaware of his perverted dark intentions towards you. He introduced his son to you as well who was Taejin and you could feel the atmosphere get awkward when it was just you and the Shaman. The Shaman started edging closer to you little by little and got closer to you for your liking. His hand started touching your thigh and finally when he grabbed it and tried to pin you down that's when you realized you had to get the hell away from the residence

You ran as fast as your legs could take you, trying to ignore the men in the white suits chasing after you. You started panicking after you realized that they were Yakuza members from the Yamazaki clan and one of them ripped your shirt in half as he tried to grab you but you screeched and continued to run for your life. You reached a mountain and you felt slight relief as you realized they stopped chasing after you and tried your best to blend in the darkness of the night. You knelt down on the ground after you ensured you were alone and hugged yourself as you sobbed softly, shaken up from the events that occurred till now as tears flowed down your cheeks and your quiet soft sobs resonated through the area. You were lost in your own little world to realize a large looming figure coming out of the cave. You looked up to see a man with a strong and a broad muscular frame with Raven hair and a wolf cut as he had a slightly annoyed expression on his face and glared at you

However a few seconds later, his glare softened when he saw the tears streaming down your cheeks and your almost half torn shirt as he strode over to you and silently surveyed you for a few seconds before his thumb slightly brushed against your cheeks to dry your tears. He sighed softly as he removed his jacket and draped it over your shoulders and zipped it for you as you looked at him confused. As you asked him who he was, his lips curved upwards into a slight amused smirk. "You're obviously not from around here are you...you would have run away by now if you were" he said. The man then bought you to a small gathering of other people where there were five guys in the similar jacket red, white and black jackets with sunglasses. You recognized one of the guys who was being tortured by the Shaman a while ago, a chubby blonde haired girl with glasses in a white judo uniform and the girl you spotted earlier when you first arrived into the village as the man offered you to join them for dinner. When you politely refused, his eyes narrowed at you. "Don't be stupid...You're tired and I can see the exhaustion on your face. Sit" he said in a stern manner as you obeyed and sat down with the others

"You know... I didn't need your help back there" said the guy who you were familiar with as he huffed slightly and his voice dripped with sarcasm and mockery as he continued to stuff himself with Tanghulu. Before you could answer him, the blonde haired girl in the judo uniform smacked his head. "Zip it, she stood up for you. Don't be a whiny man child" said the girl. "I didn't ask her to, elephant, mind your damn business" retorted the guy as they both started bickering with each other. One of the guys leaned close to you with a friendly smile on his face

"Sorry about them they're always like that. That's Vinjin and Mary Kim. I'm Jaewoo, that's Woosuk, Taebong and Hyungjae. Our teacher is there, the one who's stirring the Tanghulu syrup, he's Seongji. The girl next to Vinjin is Kim Sujin" said Jaewoo to you as the others waved at you in greeting and smiled except for Vinjin who looked like he was scrutinizing your every movement underneath his shades. "Again with the disciple teacher introduction...I'm not a teacher you know" said Seongji as he sighed softly and continued to stir the mixture in front of him. "We respect you sir" said Taebong as the chatter around you continued

You told them about you being from the city and how this was your first time visiting the village and what happened to you so far since you've arrived. "That Shaman bastard...he's going too far, someone needs to beat that loser to a pulp and make him puke blood" said Vinjin as his jaw clenched in anger and his fists tightened. Seongji might have looked calm and collected from the outside but inside he was actually seething, he was a raging volcano ready to erupt and beat those people to a pulp for doing something that horrendous to you

He handed you a plate of food and you spent the night with your new friends. When you and Vinjin were alone, he looked at you for a few seconds. "Thanks for you know...your help...but don't help me next time" said Vinjin with a huff as he awkwardly coughed and a slight blush on his face as he looked away. You could see a scrape on his cheek dripping with blood slightly as you patched him with a bandaid. Despite him whining and complaining about how he didn't need sympathy from you, he leaned towards your touch and felt comforted and glad that someone at least cared for him though he'd rather take it to the grave than admit it out loud

You decided to stay with the Cheonliang family and you grew close to all of them quite fast. Seongji might be stoic and aloof at times but he cared for his students. He cared for you too. He soon realized he couldn't bear to see you getting hurt. The other day while you were chopping some vegetables, you accidentally cut your finger and he frowned slightly as he caressed your finger gently. You were now not allowed to touch sharp objects and don't even think about cutting anything else. The only reason he hasn't gone to beat that moron Shaman till now was because he was worried something would happen to you and his other students. He still remembers the day you softly cried and everytime he recalls that moment, it stings his heart more than he'd like to admit. You were a sheltered naive city girl, supposed to enjoy your vacation at your grandparents. Instead they were brainwashed like everyone else in the village by that conman of a Shaman and made your experience miserable. He finds your naivety endearing and your innocence adorable actually. It amuses him. However he has to ensure you're always with someone since he doesn't want you picking off some berry or a mushroom that you don't know the properties of just for the sake of it. He grew attached and fond of you and would hold you in his arms and comfort you whenever you have a bad dream, silently seething and waiting for the right day to arrive to attack and finish off that pest once and for all

Jaewoo, Wooseok, Taebong and Hyungjae were silly at times but they loved being with you. They'd sometimes tease you for your sheltered lifestyle but it gives them a sense of satisfaction that they're protecting you and they're proud that you could rely on them. Mary likes spending time with you too and would teach you a few judo moves too if you were up for it. She won't hesitate to smack Vinjin across the head if it's needed at times whenever he says something about you. Sujin used to be a bit shy around you but she's slowly warmed up towards you. You got to know her history with the Shaman and hugged her which she felt quite thankful for. She likes receiving hugs from you now and basks in the moment

They start getting possessive and obsessive when they feel like you're leaving them or if you're in danger. A few days later a few men from the Yamazaki clan found you and dragged you by your hair since you were now supposed to be the 'bride' of the Shaman's son Taejin. Seongji saw red and seethed in rage as he immediately dealt with them. How? By literally stabbing them in the arm or chest with his Tanghulu rod and beating them mercilessly to a pulp. He'll caress your head softly and run his fingers through your hair and pat your head to ease your worries. Then he'll ask the other students to get to safety, however they refuse since they're itching for a fight now. They were all equally mad and pissed off that the Shaman tried to resort to dirty tricks again

Vinjin was a ruthless monster as he pummeled and thrashed the men with his bare hands and went completely feral. He might be an egoistic jerk at times but deep down he does care for you. Even if he'd rather die to admit it. No way in hell would he ever allow something to happen to you. Mary was busy kicking them and using her judo skills against the members as the others were fighting too. Before someone else is about to grab you, Seongji stabs his hand with his Tanghulu rod and breaks his hand as he glared at him coldly. "Tell that conman of a Shaman to face me directly instead of sending his lapdogs" he said as he kicked the Yakuza guy in the chest while Vinjin started breaking their ribs and bones

After this incident you won't have a moment of privacy to yourself. Rightfully so, you're a naive sheltered innocent person. You need to be protected. Seongji will always assign someone to be keeping an eye out for you. They're all equally possessive and obsessive of you so don't even think of running from them. Seongji will just hoist you over his shoulders like a sack of flour and carry you back where Vinjin will yell at you for being a dumbass for leaving but he's just glad you didn't get too far. The others are quite concerned for you as well and are glad you didn't make it quite far and they'll just scold you and treat you like you're some kind of baby. You won't even be alone in the night because they'll all be keeping an eye on you even when you sleep. You don't need to go back your real family when you have them. The Cheonliang family is now your REAL family...

#yandere lookism characters #yandere lookism characters x reader #yandere lookism x reader #yandere lookism #yandere Cheonliang family #yandere Cheonliang family x reader #yandere Cheonliang family headcanons #yandere Cheonliang family oneshots #yandere Cheonliang family imagines #yandere Seongji yuk #yandere Seongji x reader #yandere vinjin #yandere vinjin x reader #yandere mary kim x reader #yandere Cheonliang family scenarios #dark lookism characters #dark lookism characters x reader #dark lookism x reader #dark lookism

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joy-haver · 10 months

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When incorporating disability into your politics, it is good to remember that the allocation of resources is one of the central questions that divides political ideologies. It is the “why”, whereas most of the other questions are sorting out the “how”.

I think one of the core tensions that plays out between disability movements and other liberatory movements is that knowledge of disability fundamentally reshapes how you understand the allocation of resources. In one sense, to be disabled is to need resources allocated to you because you cannot get them on your own.

•Disabled people know, experientially, that we need flattened hierarchy; the hierarchies of the medical establishment kill us and further disable us. They strip away our access to the resource that is medical knowledge and medical care.

•We know that we need an ecological relationship that is sustainable and stable, because the current eugenic environmental management system is sometimes the cause, and more often the exacerbator, of our disability. But also because we know that the scarcity of resources it is progressively creating will kill us first

•We know that we need continual industrial production to maintain the means by which we can be diagnosed and treated, and that even a short term collapse of production will kill many of us.

•we also know that there must be a fundamental reorganization of all society because we know that the current organization is also killing us, and that methods of gradual change will not prioritize us, and that many of us will be dead by malice or neglect before they come into effect.

•we know that we need ongoing, active care to survive.

•we know that a society cannot meet the needs of those whose needs it does not understand. We know that any plan for meeting needs, or granting rights, or ensuring values must explicitly include us, because we know that the nature of disability is that things do not work the same for us as they do for others.

The lived experience of disabled people creates a direct challenge to the ideas of resource allocation that those with less experience have developed. We see the gaps in their proposals because we know we are the ones who will fall through them. It is easy for an abled political theorist to say “we will work it out when we get there”. But someone who will die with 2 missed doses? they must say “will we get there?”

This question is often met with dismissal, for understandable reasons. At its heart, the existence of the disabled reminds the theorists that their ideas are incomplete.

But, for a moment, I would ask you to consider us a prompt, instead of a threat. Yes, we can point to the gaps in your ideology. But we are not doing this to hurt you, or even to say you are wrong. We point to the gaps because we want to help you fill them.

So, political thinkers, take a moment to imagine your world. Imagine the look, the feel, the smell. Think of your social relations, your food, your housing. Conjure up every beautiful dream for society that you’ve built.

Now ask yourself

1. In this society, how would someone get their medication reliably, Every single day? How can they ensure the quality and safety of that medication?

2. In this society, how would someone seek information about what’s wrong in their body? Are there widely available high-tech diagnostics, like MRI machines? (Bonus question: how does your society go about inventing and creating new high tech diagnostics?)

3. How would someone who cannot move their body bellow their neck get around. How would they get food, water, shelter, socialization, and freedom to leave their domicile and participate in the world?

4. How would someone who cannot read, write, or speak due to intellectual disability be able to live, and to have meaningful access to all the things that you believe humans deserve in your society?

5. In trying to build this society, transitioning from our current world to this new one, how would the people mentioned in above questions survive the transition?

And try to answer these questions. It’s okay if you don’t know right away. It’s okay if you have to think about it, do some research, or talk to some people. You love dreaming about the world we could build, right? This is more information for you to develop and refine that dream.

These questions are not exhaustive, at all. But they are a good starting point to check for gaps in your plan for reality, and to see who is currently falling through.

#text post #disability #long post #politics #prefigurative politics #anarchism #cpunk #socialism #communism #leftism #rose baker #disabled #liberation #utopia #cripple punk

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northern-passage · 7 months

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I followed you for you game, not to see antisemitic propaganda.

I did not see you condemn hamas in any of your post.

if i've reblogged anything or said anything antisemitic, please tell me. i read the articles before i share them here and do my best to keep an eye out for any potential bias or bigotry, but it's possible i may have missed it. i do also understand anyone that may have been upset by my initial comment about dual citizenship; i regret being as dismissive as i was and i understand the potential malice behind such a comment regardless of my intent, and i appreciate the people that pointed it out to me.

but i'm not sure what me not condemning Hamas has to do with any of that.

you are trying to imply that me not condemning Hamas = me supporting violence = me supporting violent antisemitism, all of which are incorrect assumptions.

i support the Palestinian resistance. yes, this includes Hamas, as well as many other groups. i can think whatever i want about Hamas and still choose to support the resistance, because i understand the bigger picture, which is that Palestinians have been living under a violent occupation for decades, and now 9,000+ people are dead, including 3,000 children, all while Israel continues to block food and water and medical aid and telecommunications, all while Israel continues to bomb refugee camps and schools and hospitals and churches and mosques, all while people on the West Bank are being tortured and murdered - the West Bank, which Hamas does not control. and for some reason you really expect me to condemn the resistance that is actively fighting against the apartheid state that is committing this genocide? have you no shame?

when you ask me to condemn Hamas, what i hear is you asking me to reassure you that, yes, Israeli lives are actually worth far more than Palestinian lives. i hear you asking me to reassure you that the 9,000 dead Palestinians are worth it because at least you will be safe (you will not be, because Israel is a fascist, genocidal state and does not care about you or any Jewish person). i hear you asking me to reassure you that this retaliation is justified because, really, it's Hamas' fault, and they're "bad." this is what you're asking & i will not entertain it.

if you want Hamas gone, the actual answer is to end the genocide and to end the apartheid state. full stop.

#i am doing my best to be patient and show more grace and restraint #but if you could see the state of my inbox this past month.#criticizing israel is not antisemitic. supporting palestine is not antisemitic #if that is what this supposed ‘antisemitic propaganda’ is then we have nothing more to talk about #death #child death #ask #anonymous

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burst-of-iridescent · 9 months

Text

i’ve gone back and forth a lot on whether to respond to this because the last thing i want is more discourse, but since you seem absolutely determined to put me on some sort of trial, anon, i might as well get my two cents in.

so let's talk.

one, i have said over and over again that i am more than willing to talk to anyone i may have unwittingly hurt or offended, if they came to me directly and off-anon. despite the fact that you surely knew that, since you evidently stalk my blog, you did not do so. instead, you continued to yell at me and accuse me of racism anonymously, rather than actually engaging with me. what this tells me right off the bat is you're not interested in a productive conversation. you're interested in harassing me.

two, i've talked to indigenous zutara shippers. i'm friends with indigenous zutara shippers. i've read what many native and indigenous shippers in this fandom have to say. i know shippers who like the fire lady katara trope, shippers who are indifferent, shippers who dislike it. what makes your opinion any more important than any of theirs? and conversely, what makes their opinion any more important than yours? no singular person can ever claim to speak for their entire community, because people of colour aren't one monolithic entity.

as a desi girl, katara's relationship with aang makes me uncomfortable because it is characterized by patterns of imbalanced emotional labour and misogyny that i frequently see within my own community. and it is my prerogative to dislike the ship because of that, just as it is for any other woc. but it is not my prerogative to say that no one else is allowed to ship kat.aang, or is racist or misogynistic just for shipping kat.aang (and indeed i know women of colour who do ship kat.aang! because our cultural background doesn't mean that we're automatically going to have the same experiences and perspectives, and that's valid).

so am i really supposed to listen to indigenous voices, anon, or am i simply supposed to listen to those that agree with you?

three, i won't deny that the fire lady katara trope can be racist. i've seen it executed in ways that make me profoundly uncomfortable, and which i will never support. but more often than not in zutara fandom and content, "fire lady" is simply the name chosen for the fire lord's female consort, one that denotes katara as zuko's equal and a powerful world leader in her own right with her own title. if the trope is executed problematically, that fault lies with the person who wrote it and their own ignorance/malice/racism - not with the trope itself.

personally, as someone whose people were colonized by the british, and whose home was subjected to japanese imperialism, i completely understand why it can feel extremely empowering and wish fulfilling to have woc in positions of power within the systems that oppressed them. if i saw a desi girl on the throne of england, you can bet i'd be the first to celebrate.

but of course that's just my opinion, so if any indigenous or native shippers have thoughts on the trope, i would love to hear what you have to say, and discuss further.

four, despite your alleged care for katara and indigenous women, anon, you have never once engaged with my criticisms of the show for its depiction of kat.aang: a relationship where katara's partner is visibly disgusted at her cultural food, acts disrespectfully towards her cultural artifacts, attempts to dissuade her from finding justice for her mother (a victim of imperialist aggression), and tries to impose his own cultural/religious beliefs upon her without considering that she a) has no obligation to follow those beliefs and b) her own culture's beliefs are vastly different. all of which, by the way, he is never shown to apologize for or learn from. add to that the fact that 2/3 of katara's children show absolutely no connection to her culture and, in fact, seem to heavily prioritize their father's instead - to the extent that all of her grandchildren seem solely air nomad instead of paying respect to both sides of their heritage - and a very troubling picture is painted.

keep in mind that this isn't some fanon trope or problematic fic created by a small subset of shippers within the fandom on an internet space meant primarily for adults; it's a canonical depiction of a romantic relationship with a woc on a show written by two white men and broadcasted to an audience of millions, targeted primarily at young, impressionable children. what are the messages being sent here, and to whom, about interracial relationships featuring indigenous women, and the role said women are expected to fulfil within those relationships?

but instead of criticizing the white creators who did that, you chose to take out your anger on me, a fellow poc descended from colonized peoples, because... i'm an easier target? because i'm accessible, and they're not? because maybe, just maybe, this isn't actually about indigenous people at all?

five, being a shipper (or an anti) isn't the same as being an activist. it just isn't. people can read and write and enjoy things in fiction that they would never support in real life (though ofc sometimes people just suck and that bleeds through into what they consume and create - but my point is that you absolutely cannot decide by their taste in fiction alone whether they are bigoted or not) because if our fictional takes translated to real life, most of us would probably be mass murderers by now. the only thing you can really judge anyone on is what they say and do and how they treat others in real life.

and you made that abundantly clear with this ask you sent me after i reblogged posts spreading awareness of the fires in hawai'i and sharing links to donate:

so just to clarify here, you would prefer that i don't use my platform to try and help actual indigenous people, people who have lost their homes and families, who are actually suffering, who actually require assistance and money and resources... because you don't like my headcanon for a fictional indigenous-coded person?

(yeah, i'm sure you'll understand why i'm skeptical about this entire crusade being in any way about the welfare of indigenous people.)

ultimately, i know none of this is going to change your mind. if you ever intended to genuinely speak out for indigenous issues, or make me see what i was doing wrong, you would have messaged me personally and stood by what you had to say. but that was never your real aim, and you know that as well as i do, so i'm certain i'll see you in my inbox again tomorrow talking about my racism or lack of accountability or whatever else you can find to disparage me.

i wish you the best. have a good day.

#the discourse #again #anti kataang

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apparitionism · 8 months

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Tabled 7

And with this at-long-last final part, Tabled (my lengthy @b-and-w-holiday-gift-exchange offering for @barbarawar ) comes to an end. Does that end justify the tortuous (and torturous) trip? Probably not, but something something journey destination... it all began with “Myka sits at tables and tells lies,” and part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, and part 6 gave what I hope was a reasonable explanation for how Myka might have so fallen, as well as how she could have begun to scramble up (spoiler: with a lot of help). Anyway, she’s just got back to South Dakota—having come to a tentative understanding with Helena—only to find Mrs. Frederic waiting for her at the airport (!!).

Tabled 7

Myka has spent an evening, a night, and the entire subsequent day on her trek back to South Dakota, so her trip as a whole has now stretched to over thirty-six hours, during which she’s had emotional nadirs, shocks, and acmes; adrenaline overloads, ebbs, and re-overloads; minimal amounts of minimally palatable airport food; and far too much coffee, both interior and exterior. She desperately needs a shower, clean clothes, and, above absolutely all, some sleep lying down in a bed. Some sleep that way.

So she’s having trouble processing what she sees. Has Mrs. Frederic divined her ultimate intention and thus appeared here to prevent her from burning it all down? This possibility should strengthen her resolve; instead, it makes her want to turn and run away.

Unfortunately, she’s now through security, and she can’t turn around. Thanks a lot, DHS.

But please, she goes on to pray, not another table. And: Extra-please, not another lecture about children.

Can the people around her in the airport see Mrs. Frederic? They seem to be moving more slowly, less noisily, than reality usually offers. Or are they? It’s hard to know, here in this quiet, draggy little transit-place...

Mrs. Frederic puts a bow on the weird by pronouncing, “I have spoken with several people today. Yet you are my determinative interlocutor.”

That sounds like Myka might be a very few words away from being sent to a penal colony. Or, no: bronzed. The ultimate irony. Utterly Warehousian.

“I have for you the following salient information,” Mrs. Frederic continues, and Myka doesn’t even bother bracing herself, because she’ll have to take it, regardless. She might as well be rattled by the full impact. “I am prepared to have words with Agent Lattimer.”

She should have braced. “You are?” she asks, wishing she could sound indifferent about the prospect, wishing the idea of such words didn’t add fuel to her gut’s terror that Mrs. Frederic knows all about Myka’s meeting with Helena, a terror now compounded by the prospect of her telling Pete of it, and the further prospect that his having been told will be an additional, far higher bar over which Myka must clamber.

“Should those words occur,” Mrs. Frederic says, and now Myka does brace, “your brief liaison will seem but a dream to him.”

What... what? No bar, no clamber? Instead, deliverance? Myka, whiplash-befuddled, is struck dumb.

Mrs. Frederic waits. Her patience, as long as it lasts, is admirable, if surprising. Then she quirks an eyebrow.

It makes Myka think of Helena—and that allows her to breathe. To soften.

Mrs. Frederic softens too: she lowers the eyebrow. “Is that truly what you wish?” she asks, carefully, as if she’s prepared also to withdraw credit from the source who conveyed to her the substance of Myka’s wants. As if Myka, given one last beneficent chance, can surely be gentled into exercising her better judgment and choosing the certain path.

The sliver of solicitude allows Myka to consider Mrs. Frederic’s motives with a new charity: she may have been driven not by stereotype, as Myka has suspected, nor malice, as she has feared, but rather by a thoughtful assessment of availability—i.e., here are the Warehouse’s extant resources, and here is how they may best be deployed to ensure an acceptable balance of efficacy and safety.

Myka has spent a great many hours on airplanes and in airports preparing herself for the burn-it-down possibility, but the fact of the matter is that she, too, cares about efficacy.

She cares even more about safety.

The additional fact of the matter, however, is that she wants a future untethered from such calculations—except as reckoned by, and between, her and Helena.

So if Mrs. Frederic is willing to help fix what she had a heavy hand in breaking? There’s probably a downside, but Myka will suffer it for this unexpected upside.

“Yes. It is. Thank you,” she says.

“No,” Mrs. Frederic says, now differently severe. “Agent Jinks.”

“Steve? What about him?”

“Thank him.”

****

Myka finds the B&B dark and silent, lacking even a video-game glow and hum from Claudia’s room. Sadly, the quietude doesn’t yield sleep; rather than knitting up her exceptionally raveled sleeve of care, she tries and fails to keep “here’s how this might go” scenarios from playing in her head until she can reasonably go downstairs and begin making morning noises.

As the others appear, she tries to act as if nothing has changed.

Claudia enthuses, “Storms no match for you!” which is flattering but of course entirely untrue.

Pete is in his too-early-to-do-more-than-grunt mode, but he seems to care more about his bowl of Lucky Charms than he does about anything to do with Myka, which tells her that Mrs. Frederic has almost certainly had the promised words with him. The way that buoys her—her shoulders move down and away from her ears, where she hadn’t even realized they’d taken up residence—is probably unseemly, but she doesn’t care.

Then Abigail walks in, and her eye-flick between Pete and Myka suggests she knows everything, which she probably does, but even if she all she might have had were suspicions, they’ve probably been confirmed by Myka’s radical change in posture.

A twinge of guilt at having allowed her body to reveal her relief visits Myka... but she quashes it. That guilt is about parts of the past she’s supposed to be ignoring. Practice. Practice.

When Steve emerges, he busies himself with the first steps of making scrambled eggs. Myka reads this as a tactic, for on workdays Steve generally eats two unheated Pop-Tarts at speed. On lazier mornings, he might undertake toast, but eggs are the rarest of production numbers... and indeed, no one but Myka waits through his meticulous preparation.

“You want some?” he asks, but he’s already sliding his results onto two plates. “Airports,” he says, handing her one.

“So hard to find something normal,” she agrees, “and even when you think you might have, you’re still in a place that isn’t.”

“Sounds like you’re talking about every day here.”

His affect effortlessly encompasses both “perpetually surprised new guy” and “perpetually resigned old hand.” Myka loves him for that facility. “Not about these eggs, though,” she says around mouthfuls, “so thanks.” She pushes her empty plate away. “And, also, thanks.”

“I’ve never seen anyone eat food that fast, so thanks back for the demonstration. But also thanks why?”

“You’re welcome, and also you know why: I have you to thank. Or so I hear from someone who miraculously shifted her thinking about what’s best for me,” and she concludes, “you miracle.”

He gives a little smile and head-shake. “You said to protect you, so that’s what I did. Differently. Once I figured out you were telling me things had changed.”

His figuring? Correct, regardless of anything Myka might have intended to be saying. “Things did change,” she acknowledges, “like you said they would. But listen, what you did. The risk. You shouldn’t have taken that risk for me. In fact people in general should stop taking risks on my behalf.”

His smile grows wider. “We will when you will. Reciprocally.”

“No, no,” Myka says, “I need to take more. On my behalf and everybody else’s.”

“All the more reason you should have the right backup.”

“Well, so should you,” Myka says, fully aware, and fully remorseful, that she hasn’t provided any such thing.

Steve’s smile shifts in a way she doesn’t understand. “I think I’m going to. Maybe in not too long? You know Claud’s doing a lot more Caretakering now.” The doorbell rings. “Oooh, if that’s who I think it is, somebody’s timing is something.”

“Is it?” Myka asks. She trails, a confused duckling, behind Steve as he heads to the door.

“I think you’re about to meet my new partner,” he says.

Myka doesn’t bother asking “Am I?” as he swings the door open, because questions are not being answered sensically.

Her exhaustion is comprehensive, so it’s no surprise she’s hallucinating. She says it aloud, directing a slack-jawed “I’m hallucinating” at both Steve and the doorway-framed Helena as they stand before her, their smiles bizarrely rhyming blends of sheepishness and pride.

They don’t respond. This supports the hallucination conclusion.

Myka moves her right hand, minimally; in this way, she touches Steve, a little backhand to his torso. The purple cotton of his shirt is softer than her knuckles expect.

With her left hand, she reaches out, reaches through the doorway, and pushes, probably harder than she should, against Helena’s right shoulder. Nothing there is soft. The shoulder resists.

Fine. Not a hallucination. Not even a hologram. Everyone’s physically here, breathing and taking up space.

“Her timing,” Myka says to Steve. She’s not quite ready to speak directly to Helena. “It’s definitely something.”

Helena says, “Ssh. Let me reveal my shortcomings to my new partner in my own time.” She’s surpassingly beautiful, here in this moment: glowing with mischief and morning sun.

It’s too much. Myka squints and looks away, back to the comfort of Steve. “Your new partner?” she asks him. “Really?”

“Seems so,” Steve says, right as Helena offers, “As I understand it,” and Myka hears a harmony as their voices overlap. She hadn’t seen this coming, but she might have heard it, if she had thought to listen close enough.

But how could she have thought to, before today? “You both make the world turn a little faster than I’m comfortable with,” she tells Steve.

His smile persists. “Call me on that, no problem. But you really want to argue with H.G. Wells, who by the way is standing right here”—and he gives her a little “you really are, right?” look, which she answers with a minimalist palms-up “I suppose” shrug; more harmony—“about how time moves?”

“If history is any guide,” Helena says to him, “that and many other elements of the oeuvre.”

“I just didn’t think I’d be doing it this morning, is all,” Myka says. She’s trying to bring herself to speak to both of them, but Steve remains her direction of safety.

His brow wrinkles. “If this isn’t okay...”

It would be nice to be able to reassure him, but. “No idea if it’s okay.”

His face clears. “I appreciate your telling the truth. And I guess your voice is less agitated than it could be.”

This garners a snort from Helena. “My dear new partner. Your understatement is a balm.”

“We’ll see if I can keep that up,” he says, visibly nervous.

Myka is, now, able to address Helena. About Steve. “He can. Not always understatement, but the balm part.”

“I’m glad to know it,” Helena says, directing at Steve a formal incline of head.

That incline. Its sweet propriety. Glad. Glad. “I’m glad you’re here,” Myka tells her.

“Thank you,” Helena says. She doesn’t need to add “for saying.” Her hair is shining, here—here!—in this morning sun that illuminates the entryway. Such light visits this space every morning, but Myka has never before seen it ignite Helena’s hair.

This day: new.

“I have something in the car for you,” Helena goes on. “Wait.” She exits the doorway, moving out of the sunbeam’s path. A bright loss.

Myka turns back to Steve. “Wait,” she echoes, shrugging. “There’s not enough time in the world for me to explain to you why that’s ironic.”

“Your own private irony.”

“But you did spare me some waiting. Some not-knowing waiting. And way more than that,” she says, because it needs saying, “you spared me the hard part.”

“I don’t know her very well yet, but I’m pretty sure I didn’t.”

“Oh,” Myka says, because of course she’d meant detaching herself from Pete, but Steve is (also of course) wise and right: each day, however few or many she and Helena manage, will no doubt have its hard parts. Each day of those few or many might itself be the hard part. “But how did you... I mean, did you have this plan all along? Partner and all, and Mrs. Frederic started nodding along as you said it all out loud?”

“Oh god no. I was just trying to ease her away from the you-and-Pete thing, as gently as possible. Turns out she wanted H.G. back ages ago.”

No. No. “She what.”

Steve nods, looking sick. “But—and I hate to be the one telling you this—she thought you didn’t want H.G. back.”

Myka feels sick. The non-sense of this day... no: of these days. “She what,” she says again.

“Because you left her in Boone, she said.”

“Helena was forced to stay in Boone!” she protests, or tries to.

“But you didn’t fight anybody on it. So she thought you were okay with it.”

Of course. Here’s Myka’s inaction again, kicking her legs out from under her. “But if she wanted to bring Helena back, why didn’t she just... do that? Once she decided it was safe to let her out of Boone?”

“Like I said, she thought you didn’t want H.G. to come back. So she was trying to make sure it wouldn’t matter so much to you. If it happened. If you had something else to focus on.”

“Pete,” Myka says, the very idea a heaviness. “Kids?”

“I’m not saying I can read her mind, but yeah, I think that’s how that went. I can tell you she was really surprised to hear you were meeting with H.G. yesterday.”

“In a hotel room in an airport in Chicago,” Myka says. The base fact of it. “Do I want to know how you explained that?”

“All I explained was the airport in Chicago,” Steve says. “I didn’t know about the hotel room part.”

Right. Myka hadn’t said that part out loud. “It’s not what it sounds like.”

“Interesting utterance,” he says, cocking his head, like he’s waiting for more. “Not an immediate lie, But the eventual truth-value, plus my possible eventual headache, depend on what you think I think it sounds like.”

It’s a privilege, this glimpse into the complications of his gift; nevertheless, Myka winces. “I think you think it sounds like what I think it sounds like,” she says. “Like I wish it didn’t. Because I swear to you, it’s not that.”

She prepares herself to dig in and hash out the truth-values, but Steve says, “I get it. No dirty work in those words.”

No dirty work: it’s a diploma. In reverse. Disqualification.

“Anyway I don’t think I made a lot of sense explaining any of it to Mrs. Frederic,” he finishes.

“Enough to save me,” Myka says.

“Yes. Because if you could be happy.”

“You said that before.”

“I did. But now I mean, if you could be happy.”

“If... then?” she asks, logic being what it is.

“Then maybe I could too,” he says.

Myka wants to put an immediate stop to the idea that he would look to her, for that can’t help but end in abject failure. But she gets out only a weak “Don’t” before he continues, “Because I was thinking of a saying: ‘Happy wife, happy life.’”

“I’m not your wife.”

“Better for both of us. I’m just saying it’s a saying. About a person and somebody else. There might be a better word for where you and somebody else are—or, I guess, where you might be headed?—but it wouldn’t rhyme with life. And it’s probably important to rhyme with life.”

Myka’s heart hears him, but she shies away, scoffing, “That’s a leap. Not the rhyming. The saying.”

“Isn’t it always?”

“I don’t want to give you false hope.”

“But if we could both acknowledge that there is hope.”

She’s not sure. She’ll probably never be sure, but in the face of doubt and fear (and “endless wonder,” that misleading canard), she determines to acknowledge it. For Steve’s sake. “Okay,” she says. “In the full knowledge that you’re the one who made the hope possible.”

“No,” Steve says. Serious. Simple. Unfraught. “That’s not what I did.”

Myka has no counterargument. All she can do is say “thank you” yet again, quick and quiet, for suddenly Helena is appearing in the doorway, taking over the space. Myka suspects she’s been waiting for their conversation to end—speaking of timing, this reminds her of the hotel lobby—and she doesn’t know whether to hope Helena was eavesdropping their words or simply their tones.

She’s holding two cardboard coffee cups. Myka gestures for her to hand one over, but Helena shakes her head. “You haven’t texted me.”

So Myka dashes to grab her phone, and “Gh” says the message, the first purchase her fumbling fingers could find, sent as fast as she could remind those fingers how to do that.

Helena sets the cups down on the hall table when her own phone noises (and now Myka doesn’t know whether to be pleased or distressed that a text from her yields a generic ding). She extracts it from the interior of her jacket and smiles. “I bought these, in hope, in the Sioux Falls airport,” she says, “but they’re now cold. No doubt terrible.”

“‘Worth every penny,’ I once heard someone say about coffee,” Myka says.

“Fewer pennies here. In any event, worth to be determined.” Helena is jaunty; it’s very her, but on the edge of too her, hinting that she’s less certain than her initial doorway presentation implied. As Myka now meets Helena’s gaze, she imagines—but hopes she isn’t only imagining—that their vulnerabilities might for once be commensurate.

Helena doesn’t look away.

Steve says, “You know, ‘I was making eggs’ buys you only so much late-for-work in this job.” It’s a transparent attempt to excuse himself, but he does add, “I’m really looking forward to getting to know you, partner.”

“I hope to impress you,” Helena says.

He snort-giggles, then composes himself. Minimally. “H.G. Wells—who isn’t lying!—hopes to impress me. Okay.”

Myka can’t begrudge him his surprised delight, even if it does delay his departure. “Welcome to a world of endless... surprise. She kind of wrote the book.”

“A lot of books,” Steve augments.

Helena waves a hand. “That was Charles. So wordy.”

Steve’s brow furrows—which Myka reads as a bit of confusion over how to negotiate the Helena/Charles disjunction. He says, “Okay. I’m going to the Warehouse,” clearly (smartly) choosing not to start now.

This time he does leave, though Myka is tempted to stop him, to cling to the surer footing afforded by his buffering.

Coward.

But. Then.

Alone, precariously so, Myka and Helena situate themselves across from each other at the dining room table, their promised-coffee cups before them.

Myka supposes she should have foreseen this arrangement—table, coffee—and she should at the very least have queried the book as to what would ensue. Not that she’s had any time for that, which probably means she should now do that, should go and do that, before she finds a way to undercut its foreseen future and make blunders that will prove unsatisfactory.

“Surprise,” Helena says.

“Yes,” Myka concurs, trying for Steve-ish understatement. It doesn’t work; she knows she sounds distressed.

“May I explain?”

“I wish you would.” That comes out better, but Myka realizes that she is literally on the edge of her seat. She sinks backward, trying to make the movement look like relaxation. That probably doesn’t work either.

“The invitation from Steve,” Helena begins, but upon saying his name, she stops. “Before I continue: ‘H.G. Wells who isn’t lying’?”

“He can tell if you are,” Myka says, and she’s gratified to see in Helena’s ensuing eyebrow contortions that she’s conducting the “what exactly have I said to Steve” inventory everyone does when introduced to that fact.

Its result: “Well. Then it’s fortunate I haven’t. To him.” She seems inclined to reflect on the revelation’s full compass.

Myka does love (love!) to watch Helena think. But right now... “Explanation?” she prompts.

“It isn’t complicated,” Helena says.

“That’s unusual.”

Helena bows her head; she smiles, from that bow, up at Myka. It’s flirty. It’s beautiful. “It is,” she says, and she seems to be affirming Myka’s words and her thoughts. “Steve and I had a conversation during which I explained how you and I had left our... situation. And then, a bit later, came his invitation, which I understand was extended at the behest of Mrs. Frederic. The opportunity—the freedom—to be myself again? It was too enticing to refuse. Of course I never would have accepted in the absence of our rapprochement, but given that? Steve was so convinced, and convincing, that all would be well.” She raises her head fully now. “And it cut short the waiting.”

“I said I would hurry,” Myka says, resentful, unsure of why she’s jumped to that.

“Your return required so many flights. Any number of delays might have ensued.”

“Due to the flights?” Myka asks, but she can’t unhear the clear disjunction between those sentences.

“And everything else,” Helena acknowledges, with a head-duck.

Myka knows that duck; it’s worry. “You didn’t trust me?” she asks, but in the question she finds the reason behind her resentment: offense at the idea that Helena had such worries to begin with.

“Can you blame me?” Helena asks this with a little flinch, as if Myka’s judgment must be harsh.

“Yes I can,” Myka says, but soft. “You were supposed to be ignoring all that.”

Her answer causes Helena to raise her head again and smirk—or, no, this isn’t her smirk; rather, it’s a lip-twist that’s more... conspiratorial. She says, “And yet the foundation of trust is past experience. If I ignore the past, on what basis could I trust you?”

Playful, but a jab. Myka retreats into sarcasm, acknowledging it hit the mark: “There’s a flaw in my big idea? Shocking.”

Helena nods, slow with a sigh, as if in sadness at Myka’s imperfection. But she turns serious to say, “In any case, after all that’s happened, I certainly didn’t trust fate either.”

Fate. How they’ve been subject to it... but are they now trying to chivvy it, in a way that will backfire? Myka pushes her fear into words: “What if it’s too soon?”

“Then regret will haunt us to the end of our days,” Helena says, and Myka has to nod to the truth of it. “But consider this: rather than wasting precious time on such questions, shouldn’t we rather be grateful that, after such complications, there is even a whisper of a chance that it may not be too late?”

Too late, too late, too late. Those words have truly haunted Myka. Miraculous that they might not apply. “I don’t want coffee,” she says. Truly.

“What do you want?” Helena asks, like she might really not know.

Well, maybe she doesn’t anymore, given the vast conceptual distance between Myka’s initial saying and now. “I did tell you. I don’t know how many hours ago; I haven’t counted. I’d have to use my hands.”

“Save your hands, but tell me again. I challenge you, however: change the vocabulary.”

Myka can do that. Only a little, here and now, but she can do that. “To save the world. Our world.”

They are breathing at each other and the table is in the way; Myka ideates the drama of grasping its edge, flinging it sideways, clearing her path—but that’s not who she is. Now, more than ever, she needs to be herself.

She stands up and steps decorously to the side and around, slow, savory, even as her body threatens to effervesce.

“Can we do this?” she asks, but she knows, through her inexorable movement, with all its effervescent potential, that they will. Regardless now of consequences.

“I have no idea,” Helena answers.

These could be words of delay, but not here and not now, because regardless, regardless, they will—and at once they’re both moving, as if pressure from a familiarly heartless authority will relegate Helena yet again to disembodiment if they don’t make this fast, and thank god, god, god this once they’re fast enough; they meet and hands are at waists but they’ve touched with hands before... even so, the infinitesimal pause they both take before those hands pull and define is understandable but then over, and their at-last kiss begins as an action but swiftly transforms into a state of being: pressure, presence, soft, sharp, warmth, weight, low, lasting...

After some time—how much time? is this kind of time measurable?—they break apart into staring silence, in the stunned after of the prospect they have spent so long before.

“I can die now,” Myka is moved to murmur, even as she feels its banality as a response to this experience, this knowledge. Because she has at last truly gained the knowledge: she had hoped to gain it, and yet she now understands she had never fully believed she would, if only because fundamental questions—e.g., “what would it feel like to kiss Helena?”—aren’t often answered.

“You most certainly cannot,” Helena ripostes, bracingly practical. “One kiss is no culmination.”

Myka might object to the description of what just happened as “one kiss,” but she’s too busy being unable to process how an actual culmination might feel.

In fact she’s unable to process anything. “I have to sit down,” she says. Of all things, lightheadedness had not been among her expectations. It should have been: because of course her blood is nowhere near her brain.

Passing out will help nothing. Probably. So she backs awkwardly around the table, her logic, such as it is, being: I have to sit, and that is my chair; if I reach it, then I can sit. Fortunately, her reasoning bears out. She breathes into the relief, as she sits, of still being conscious.

Helena says, “If you can’t stand, then I’ll sit beside you.” More logic, here spoken as indulgence.

She situates herself in the closest chair and scoots it nearer, inch by accommodatingly sweet inch, and then she’s in fact sitting beside Myka, like they’re on a carnival ride together, and now they’re both turning sideways—with Myka devoutly grateful for her continued (seated) consciousness—as they steal (back) these kisses, these presses and exultations, that should so long before this have belonged to them.

“This is not enough,” Helena breathes, sultry against Myka’s mouth.

Myka makes a noise of agreement, and she moves for more, to start the movement to more.

Her hands have made their way to Helena’s shoulders, and are anticipating her hair, when she and her hands are startled by a crash-clatter from across the room.

Myka wishes she could simply ignore whatever such noise signifies... but that wish is unrealistic. She removes her hands and opens her eyes.

Claudia is standing in front of the sideboard. Much of the china that had previously adorned it lies around her in ruins. “I swear to god, this is not what it looks like,” she says. She glances down, then shakes her booted foot. A teacup handle falls from it, producing a tiny clink of pain as it hits the floor.

“It looks like you were trying to blink in but got the coordinates wrong,” Myka says. “That’s happened before. But this time you got tangled with the plateware?”

That yields an eyebrow-raise and a finger-point, then: “What I should’ve said was, ‘This is not what it looks like even to someone who knows all the words to my extensive back catalog of Caretakery mistakes.’ The thing is, I blinked in, saw something I was in no way supposed to be seeing, turned my back on that—faster than fast, and I swear I would’ve tried to blink back out but I can’t reset that quick—and I guess I did Wonder Woman arms, because...” She waves down at the china. “This stuff. Or ex–stuff. Unless you’ve got a lot of glue? Which you might. You were pretty stuck to H.G just now, like in a way I’ve never seen before and like I said was in no way supposed to be seeing, but it’s the most spectacular news of this century or any other because all the feels I can’t even!” She clasps her hands up high and squeezes her eyes shut, as if the scene Myka and Helena are presenting is too glorious to behold.

Myka turns from this emotional show to look at Helena. A half-beat later, Helena turns to Myka. Lacking any ready response, they both turn back to Claudia, who opens her eyes, drops her hands, and says, “Your faces are telling me all those words happened out loud.”

“Unfortunately,” Helena says.

“Hi?” Claudia offers, with an apology face.

Helena smiles. “Hello, darling,” she says, warmly.

Their interaction is lovely to witness, but: Warm, Myka thinks, because that’s how Helena’s body is, next to hers. Why, why, why has Claudia appeared now?

“I’d run over and hug you,” Claudia says, “but I see that seat’s taken. Instead I’ll just say I missed you.”

Myka can’t help herself; she accuses, “Not enough, you spy.”

“She called me. Was I supposed to be like ‘oh, it’s H.G., I better not pick up’?”

Myka’s immediate thought is YES. She says in its place an umbrage-laden, “You could have told me.”

“Maybe you don’t understand what you looked like every time you came back from seeing her,” Claudia says. “You think I wanted to make you look like that?”

Helena shifts position beside Myka, legible as a “you are failing to ignore the past” caution; Myka adds to it a self-admonitory on this day of all days. “Fine,” she says. “Not fine at all, but fine.”

“Anyway Artie’s already shouting about how you’re both late for work,” Claudia says.

Myka sighs. “Artie. Shouting. So everyone knows?”

“Well not about this. Which I double-pinky-swear I never meant to know about, even though it was always something to hope about. All Artie knows about, and probably even hopes about, is who works here. There. At that place. And is late. For it? So I guess we should get going?”

Myka can easily imagine agreeing that yes, yes they should get going: result being that she and Helena would proceed to the Warehouse. That place. Additional result, as history has shown, being that something would happen to once again put the promise of this day out of reach.

She sees, now, that she has to act against such results. Act against them. Act.

And she sees something else, something both sickening and enlivening: all her lies, those interventions against truth? They were acts. Sinful ones, but her agency in telling them has fortified her with the necessary heft for this moment.

Her lies were practice.

Morally inexcusable practice, but: she was a feral little fabulist. Now she must put ends before means. Use the muscle; ignore the exercise by which it developed.

So. “No,” she says.

Her refusal disturbs the space, shaping it into a new kind of silence.

In its wake, Claudia offers appraisal: eyes narrowed, jaw tilted. Eventually, she says. “Not entirely sure who I’m talking to now.” She squints tighter, sly-red-fox. “By the way,” she says, calculatedly casual, “your book buddy says hi.”

If anything could knock Myka out of her certainty... certainly, it’s guilt. “Oh god,” she says.

Claudia’s narrow tension relaxes. “Steve and I figured out you were the one doing ‘unauthorized use.’ And it took us a while, but we also figured out what you were unauthorized using.”

“Thanks for not telling on me,” Myka says.

Silence again, until Helena breaks it with, “Myka used an artifact? Was this for personal gain?” She doesn’t look at Myka.

“I literally would never. And neither would Steve.”

Myka wants to say Could we ignore that too. Instead she confesses, “For personal... desperation.”

Now Helena looks. “So at last you understand,” she says. It’s a softer condemnation than Myka might have expected, not that she had expected anything, because until this moment she hadn’t made the connection. Not through the clean line of “so at last.”

But then a new connection, or rather consequence, strikes her: “What’s its downside?” she asks Claudia.

“You don’t know?”

“I didn’t care.” At that, Helena grasps Myka’s hand, tight, and Myka knows she’s going to have to think very hard at some point about this newly realized kinship between them. Right now, though, she’d rather think about the fact that Helena is holding her hand. But for that niggling consequence. “Do I need to care?” she asks.

“It’s a downside, so yeah? But with this guy, it’s a downside-with-a-twist.” She pauses, as if waiting for... guesses? Applause? When neither Myka nor Helena responds, she says an aggrieved, “Anyway, it’s the same as the upside.”

This baffles Myka. “Seeing the future? How is that a downside? I mean maybe in the Cassandra sense, if nobody believes you, but—”

Claudia interrupts, “OOC of you to get that wrong. But I guess OOC is your new IC thing, Ms. ‘No’? Anyway I don’t think you grokked what the artifact is.”

“A book,” Myka says, because... it is? “A future-seeing book.”

“Book, schmook. And future-seeing... schmuture-seeing? It’s an oracle. It doesn’t see the future; it predicts it. Literally, it says in advance: you ask it a question about the future, and it answers. It says it. In advance of that future.”

Helena chuckles. “Etymology strikes again.”

To which Claudia nods. “Right?”

“I still don’t get it,” Myka says. “Saying versus seeing? In my defense, I’m very tired.” She is sorely tempted to put her head down, heedless, here on the table, but she feels Helena tighten her handhold again, a press intelligible as Stay with me. She breathes deep and refocuses.

“Its answer is a decision,” Claudia says. “About the future.”

Helena looks at Myka, then at Claudia. “Now that is power.”

“Also right,” Claudia says. “But it can’t make that decision if nobody asks it to. Myka.”

“I did ask it,” Myka concedes, “but now my head hurts. Are you saying that if I hadn’t asked, then none of this would have happened? Would be happening?” She can’t argue with the outcome, but: upside, downside? Her head does hurt.

Claudia’s face empties. She says, “Asking questions has consequences, Agent Bering.”

Has Claudia been taken over by... something? Myka can’t help it now: “What?” she asks. The word rings a little less desperate, here at home, as a thing she tends to say. But she’s no less lost.

“Sorry,” Claudia says, turning back into herself. “I was trying on my spooky-Mrs.-F suit. Bad fit so far.”

“The art of the gnomic utterance,” Helena intones. Her own utterance doesn’t quite rise to gnomic, but Myka can see more clearly than ever the helios toward which Helena-as-Caretaker might have troped. Losses. Gains. How can Myka place herself in relation to so many competing ledger columns?

“Did you just insult Mrs. F?” Claudia asks, her obvious confusion breaking into Myka’s reckoning. She might as well have said her own Myka-esque “What?”

“What?” Helena then asks, thus squaring that circle.

“The red hat?” Claudia says, gesturing at her own head. “And doing magic or whatever in your garden?”

Sense at last. Myka doesn’t quite suppress a laugh. “Gnomic,” she says. “Means terse. Mysterious. Not gnome-related... or actually, it is, but not those gnomes. Different derivation.”

“Etymology strikes yet again,” Helena says. She suppresses her own laugh—Myka hears it behind that overly serious observation—but not her smile.

“I’m really glad you’re here,” Myka tells her. The fact and experience—correct, appropriate—of their speaking together. “Claudia,” she says (and Claudia is looking at them like they’ve both lost their minds, which they probably have, but not about this), “go to the Warehouse. Keep everybody there. All day. Please.”

Claudia brings her hands together once again in a dramatically audible clap. “I get it. I mean I’d say something about a booty call, but I know that’s not it. You need your day.”

Our day? Our days. Our days, our weeks our months our years.

“Yes,” Myka says.

Helena follows up with, “We do.”

“Hey, but I’m no oracle,” Claudia says. “No predictions here.”

Myka and Helena give her incomprehension again.

“Not ruling out booty call,” she clarifies, laughing, but she backs away as she speaks, now blessedly making her exit—unlike her entrance, through the B&B’s front door.

That means Myka and Helena can—must—make their move. And they do, rising from the table, stepping toward the stairs—but not yet up them, for Myka can’t wait; her hands are at last finding Helena’s hair, and as they do, as she touches and feels, she says, in wonder, “It’s just us. It’s never been like this.”

“Why would you comment on it?” Helena demands, as if Myka taking even an instant to reflect threatens to make the entire situation evaporate. Her hands are busy too, running along Myka’s arms, not quite grasping, but then grasping, and then Myka can’t comment on anything, because her lips are busied, back in that new state of being.

The journey to her bedroom: she had in the past allowed herself to imagine such travel, but carefully, the fantasy within strictures. Policed possibility. The walk, but not its end... not, in fact, the culmination, the sense of which had increasingly eluded her, a frustratingly constant receding of possibility, as if her body were teaching itself over time to echo Helena’s incorporeality, her sensation waning, from body to limbs to fingertips alone, until all vocabularies of touch became words not near enough the tongue.

But now everything is nearing, nearing and blurring, boundaries dissolving, everything her body, her body everything, the stairs the hallway the room the clothes the hands the lips the skin the stumble the fall...

****

Myka slow-motions into consciousness, unable to discern where she is, knowing at first only that wherever it is, she was exhausted before she got there. Got here.

That’s mostly because she can’t remember the preceding events, and experience has established that extreme fatigue is one of the few states that interferes with her otherwise reliable recall.

So she begins to sort it out, blinking sleep-weighted eyes. Her initial perception is that she’s lying in a bed—a bed blessedly recognizable as hers—yet she also seems to be perceiving something else, something absurd: that Helena, of all people, is speaking to her. Speaking unclear words, near to her, while she is in this bed that is hers.

I’m dreaming.

The words resolve: “Are you all right?” Helena asks, and Myka snaps to.

Not dreaming.

She is in her bed, and Helena is here. Their skin is... together. Helena, propped on an elbow, is regarding Myka in full recline.

Myka wants to answer Helena’s question with a strong “yes.” But she isn’t at a table and she doesn’t want Helena to be reminded of her feral fabulisms, not here not now, so instead she dares to ask, “What happened?”

“I believe you fell asleep,” Helena says. “In the middle of things.”

Myka’s first thought is that she can’t imagine a worse blunder. Her second is that of course she can. Her third, which she formulates second by second and piece on piece as her memory returns, is the one she says out loud. “I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”

Helena shakes her head. “I brought you coffee. That was all.”

It’s a damning pronouncement. “You’re saying I could have caffeinated, but instead I ruined everything.” Myka raises her left hand to cover her face. She’d use her right one too, but Helena’s body is trapping that arm. Move, she wants to say. I need both hands. To cover her shame.

Helena uses her free, unpropping hand to remove Myka’s, revealing her face. She interlaces their fingers. “Your sleep has addled you. I’m saying that I brought you a small gift, but in return you’ve given me a far greater one.”

New bafflement. “I have?”

What could possibly be sufficient penance here? “Not the right one.”

“Witnessing your fulfillment of a bodily need.”

Helena offers a considering head movement, a cerebral back-and-forth. “Isn’t it? Proof that you trust me enough to lost consciousness—in this way—so near. Differently meaningful, but meaningful all the same. Particularly to someone who, as you know, occasionally forgets to ‘ignore it.’”

Her words have such depth, in sound and meaning, that Myka can barely process any of it. Particularly given that they are lying down in privacy... and far more.

“What am I supposed to do now?” she asks. Blunder some more, the book would no doubt reiterate... but she’d rather get her guidance, here in this moment, from Helena.

“Enjoy it.” Helena says, and she laughs—this sound not deep but high, high and so happy.

Myka has never heard this laugh from her. It’s as much a directive as her words are. “Enjoy it—I didn’t know,” she says. That comes out more terse than she intends... because she can barely speak. The joy in the room—occasioned by everything, but especially by that new, new laugh—is so thick, interior and exterior to bodies and souls, that forcing words through it takes great effort.

“Know what?”

Myka would worry about her answer sounding too intellectual, if this were anyone else. In her bed. But it’s Helena. Thank god, it’s Helena. So she feels safe to say, “It’s a corollary. Follows from ‘ignore it’? I think?”

“Yes,” Helena says, gratifying Myka immensely, “yes, ignore it, about the past; enjoy it, about the present; and thus one additional corollary, this one about the future.”

“Ask an oracle about it?” Myka tries.

Helena frowns—exaggerated, comic. “That doesn’t follow, either poetically or epistrophically.”

“It does follow epistrophically.”

“Minimally so,” Helena sniffs. The acknowledgment, itself minimal, further pleases Myka, even as Helena goes on, “But it should scan as well. My proposal does.” She pauses, doubtless for effect. Myka tries to think out what the teased proposal might entail, but she doesn’t get far before Helena pronounces, “Absolve it.”

“That does scan,” Myka acknowledges.

“Thank you. This next doesn’t, but I know you’ll want to take on blame for how our future unfolds, so I add: absolve yourself as well.”

Ignore it; enjoy it; absolve it. These strategies—despite Myka’s having insisted on the first—are all antithetical to her way of being in the world.

But she’s been unhappy, being in the world. Unsatisfied.

Now she is being satisfied, a new state that only this skin-to-skin with Helena could possibly have brought about.

She deliriously doesn’t care whether Claudia has kept, did keep, is keeping everyone else away.

This is hers and she can and will enjoy it.

This is hers and Helena’s and she can and will see to it—she can and will ensure—that they both enjoy it.

She has never before ideated such power—could never have, but here it is, in her hands, in her body, in giving and taking: power. And if she’s still too tired to remember, on next waking, that she had it, it’s all right. She’ll have another occasion to exert it. More anothers.

“Did you just say ‘more anothers’?” Helena asks, speaking and breathing with exertion.

Apparently there’s still room, in and amongst the joy and the power, for embarrassment. “Out loud? Are you sure?”

Helena calms enough to say, with indignation, “My hearing is quite good.”

“Evasive answer,” Myka says, recovering a little. “I’ll take it as a no.”

“Evasive?” More indignation.

“It wasn’t a yes,” Myka points out.

Helena runs a hand through her hair, as if in preparation for more argument. “I propose we table this debate,” she says instead.

“Good idea,” Myka says. “Because instead of talking, or asking about talking, you should be kissing me.”

“So should you. Vice versa. Me. Kissing.”

Transportingly charming near-incoherence... “You’re right,” Myka says, her heart overflowing. “So be quiet.”

“You first,” Helena ripostes, with what sounds suspiciously like a giggle.

Myka wants to keep that sound active, so she doesn’t comply. And they continue to speak together. Through it all.

This time, Myka stays awake. That’s probably a blunder too—but it’s most satisfactory.

****

In the weeks and months that follow, Myka takes time, as she finds it, to visit the book. Often, its pages ruffle and sigh, their invitation clear: Don’t you want to know? To know more?

The temptation is real, compounded by what she feels as an exertion of pressure from the volume: Did I not gift you this future? it seems to whisper. Surely you could gift me the opportunity to exercise. To provide still greater definition.

Then again, that could simply be her guilt—her ongoing struggle to absolve it—talking.

On one such occasion (though not the only one), she hears footsteps. The rhythm, the particular ring of heel-strikes: she knows the confidence of those strides. The knowing is calming, if not itself absolving.

“Back already?” she asks without turning around.

“Absurdly simple retrieval,” Helena says. “Steve found the entire exercise an insult to the considerable intelligence he and I bring to bear on any mission we undertake.”

Helena’s interpretations of Steve’s thoughts are often baroque—often, seemingly, more suitable to her own thoughts. But when she offers such interpretations in Steve’s presence, he doesn’t wince. “Really?” Myka says, just to make sure.

“He said aloud that he was bored.”

“That’s something,” Myka concedes.

“And you?” Helena asks. “Have you contrived to place new parameters on the future?”

“I keep telling you I won’t.”

“And yet I continue to find you here,” Helena says. More seriously, she offers words that have become customary: “If you could be happy.” Steve’s utterance, shared among the three of them, has become a mantra.

“You know that’s a work in progress,” Myka says, and although that’s customary too, it’s also true: while she knows she can be, and while at certain times she genuinely is, she is by no means consistent in that achievement.

Nevertheless she has to admit, now as always, that the book has been right. The blunders—the many, many blunders, even as she’s perpetrated them, even as she’s dealt with their aftermath—have been satisfactory. Such are the components of that work. Of its progress.

Helena nods. She lays her hand upon the book, as it lies there on the shelf, as if swearing an oath. “Everything is,” she says.

****

Myka sits at tables. She tells lies. But the sitting and the lying, as activities, are now uncoupled.

Coffee, too, has shed its significance; it’s a beverage, not an event.

However: she keeps a stained shirt in her closet as a reminder of earlier, pained, connected times—of, also, the work that was even then in progress, even as she was failing, spectacularly, to recognize it as such.

She needs the reminder, because with regard to the past, “ignore it” doesn’t always work. Nor does “absolve it,” as the future unfolds.

But on the best of present days, ignoring and absolving intersect. And on those best days, Myka does, in fact and in practice, enjoy it.

END

Instead of shoehorning thoughts into tags, here’s what I’ve got:

Did both Myka and Helena get let off the hook too easily? Your call... but I’m inclined to embrace the idea that instances of grace might manifest as the reward for hard work, and acknowledging culpability may be the hardest work of all. I mean, Elton John wrote a song about it, so put that on whichever side of the ledger works for you. Also, I like it when people help Myka in ways she doesn’t know how to ask for. She seems (to me) to be very bad at asking for help. Or maybe I mean that she seems disinclined to ask for help even (or especially) when she should.

Generally the only way to come out the other side of the hard stuff is to go through. But sometimes you do have to set some things aside if you want to move forward... and that’s what this story, at base, has been about. I hope. I offer all gratitude to @barbarawar for giving me the impetus to think it through in this particular way, at my snail-in-a-school-zone pace. Finally, if there’s a timeline in which Helena becomes an agent again and she and Steve don’t become partners, I don’t want to know about it. The potential perfection of their pairing thrills the bejesus out of me.

#bering and wells #Warehouse 13 #fanfic #Tabled #B&W holiday gift exchange #part 7 #barbarawar #at least it's done now #certainly did not intend to focus on this for over half a year #but I'm sure it happened because I needed to learn some lesson or other #and a narrative takes as long as it takes #now back to work on other tales #which are obviously taking as long as they take #Confection Run Propagator Sound I see you

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kiyfra · 10 months

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Chapter 3 of Scorpio is finished! can be read here or on AO3. Pokerus AU belongs to @monsoon-of-art

“God has allowed some magical reversal to occur, so that you see the scorpion pit as an object of desire, and all the beautiful expanse around it as dangerous and swarming with snakes.”

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A crack of lightning tore through the sky from far above, fizzling out before it struck the ground. Many similar bolts snaked out of the gaping rift above the mountain, their blinding light unhindered by the storm clouds that blanketed the red sky.

Even through the haze of dark fog clouding his mind, he could feel a deep seated sense of wrongness from the heavens above and every crackle of electricity.

It was no ordinary storm, that much he knew. There was genuine malice pouring out of the hole that concealed something unfathomably vast and powerful. If he looked at the rift for too long, he could almost make out a pair of hateful red eyes from beyond the void and hear the whispers of a being that hated him simply for existing. It gave him second thoughts about occupying a nest so close to such an eldritch presence.

But wait, wasn’t his den further to the north? In a harsh tundra where a large gliscor would struggle to find enough food to sustain itself, let alone an alpha such as himself. The largest source of food for a predator were the stocky piloswines that roamed the ice lands. The aggressive ice types could turn any hunt fatal and his kind would rarely evolve, sticking to smaller prey. He never really belonged there and that must be why he was back on this mountain.

No, he returned to the seat of this otherworldly presence because his precious gligar was still missing. His fledgling shouldn’t be out alone for so long, especially under this ominous cosmic event and every instinct was telling him she was in terrible danger from something or someone that meant her harm.

You’re the one putting her in danger!

He knew she was strong, strong enough that she would surpass him one day. The leader of his pack had already been bested in combat by his hatchling and countless pokémon across Hisui swore allegiance to her in acknowledgement of her power.

She was such a good gligar and under his guidance, she would command an unstoppable pack with members from every kind of pokémon. Every strength and weakness would be hers to understand and wield after he imparted all that he knew. A pack so vast and mighty that the legendaries themselves would bow to her mastery.

But she was still too young to be fending for herself out in the wilderness. There were many dangers she was ignorant of and she was only just learning how to find her own food and shelter. Any halfway competent predator would make quick work of a young gligar without a parent to protect them.

Rain slicked down his dark carapace as he rested atop his perch in an old tree. There were no wormadams residing in the foliage for an easy meal as he had hoped or even berries to take the edge off his hunger. The gnawing pit in his stomach would have to remain unfilled as he caught his breath at the barren pit stop.

Climbing a mountain with the starvation induced weakness in his limbs was no easy feat and the tears in his wings prevented him from taking the winds to the top. As far back as he could remember, the injuries periodically forced him to abandon the skies and scurry along the ground, never seeming to heal.

Always full of holes.

His memory was full of them, black splotches obscuring most of his life from him. He couldn’t remember the people that were important to him; his friends, his family, even his own name escaped him.

Ingo! My name is Ingo!

He didn’t even remember his gligar hatching; was she adopted? There was another gliscor at one point, one that was precious to him, just as much so as the elusive pokémon that wielded flames with mastery.

It was time to continue his search.

He lurched dizzyingly before taking off, the strong winds sufficient for carrying him, despite how raggedy his wings were. Powerful gales tried to take him every which way across the mountain in a roundabout path, sometimes petering out and leaving him to clamber over crumbling cliff faces. He spent hours struggling against the wind and his own ineptitude in his haphazard search, pain and exhaustion ready to force him to collapse wherever he happened to be standing.

A bolt arced about a yard above him and he cried out in surprise and alarm at the crack of lightning temporarily blinding him. Unnaturally cold static radiated off of the electric discharge that threatened to tear apart what little of his mind remained.

He suddenly felt very small, a weak pitiful creature tossed about in the air and at the mercy of a being far beyond his comprehension. A dark snake-like being that had dragged him away from his home into its realm of swirling black skies and desolate islands. Malevolent red eyes glared at him as he screamed and fell while unseen claws violently scratched away at his mind.

All at once, the sudden awareness of missing digits raced through him, of nerves rerouted into body parts that shouldn’t exist. Every part of him felt misshapen and ill-fitting with the flash of comprehension.

The stretches of leathery skin protruding out of his back, an extra limb with a mind of its own extending out of his spine, the patches of sparse hair growing through his chitin; all of it evoked a visceral disgust and horror with the fragmented memories of being attacked and mutilated.

That entity was glaring down at him from beyond the rift and wanted him to suffer, the one that dragged burning red claws through his brain and left his body mangled. A loud strangled cry escape him at the sudden wave of distressing feelings, far too animalistic and lost in the roar of the storm.

The hateful presence made him want to crawl away in a hole and hide like a frightened pichu and he longed for the comfort of his nest on this mountain. It was familiar, it was safe and it still had the reassuring scent of sneasles left over from its previous occupants.

Would she have returned to his old den?

He needed to find her, then everything would make sense again. Her excitable nature and infectious enthusiasm had always managed to slowly coax back the memories that were torn away from his psyche. Knowing she was safe and keeping her tucked away in a warm nest would put his mind at ease.

It was a terrifyingly long time traversing the highlands, making chirrupy calls that couldn’t possibly be heard over the wind before he spotted a familiar cave entrance with an old stone dais not too far away. The notion that he should leave something upon the dais overcame him, but he had nothing to offer.

Later then.

He angled his wing to swoop down but he shifted far too quickly and lost all lift, his wing becoming trapped under him as he fell from an alarming height. His distressed screeching carried over the storm loud and clear for any pokémon that hadn’t abandoned this section of the highlands to hear as he plunged toward the rapidly approaching ground.

There was a painful wrenching on his arm as he dived shoulder first into the rocky slope and skidded to a halt several feet away from the den, tearing up his wing even further and leaving an ugly fracture in his carapace. A throbbing pain in the joint where his arm met his shoulder elicited small pitiful whimpers as he crawled towards the den’s entrance, something warm seeping out of the cracks in his chitin.

He was almost safe, just a little farther over the threshold then he could rest. A welcome darkness enveloped him as he dragged himself through the cave mouth and away from the unrelenting glare of the red sky.

Soft bedding made of dried grass and shed fur awaited him; a nest far more comfortable than any he could make himself. A few stray roots from tenacious plant life grew through the rocky ceiling and tiny claw marks marred the curved walls. The den was large enough that he could stand upright and fully spread his wings with room to spare. It would be the perfect height to hang upside down from if he had the energy for it, but tonight he would simply collapse on top of the insulating bedding.

Something else’s heartbeat and quiet breathing caught his attention. Was there an intruder hidden inside his den? He gave a low growl in warning followed by a hiss and the interloper’s heartbeat quickened.

A familiar scent came from under a pile of loose straw; the smell of wet fur, human pastries, and a plethora of other pokémon. His heart leapt at the smidge of blue amongst the bedding and he lurched over to its hiding place, splaying his limbs to keep balance as he swayed unsteadily.

The tiny stowaway looked up at the apex predator looming above, their eyes quivering and wide with fear. Its face was scuffed and dirty with fresh tear tracts, trembling so hard that it had shaken off most of the straw keeping it hidden. His gligar was here, scraped up and terrified of something, but she was safe and she was alive!

Anger flared in his rib cage at the sight of how many scrapes littered his offspring and the tears in her eyes. Was she attacked while he was far away and unable to protect her?

If the human or pokémon that dared tried to harm her ever had the misfortune of facing him, they could not expect a swift death. Spending hours being tormented while dying from a shot of venom and several broken bones would be protracted and horrible enough for the merciless gliscor. He relished the idea of letting it run just far enough to let them think they could escape before returning to punish it for such conceit.

But that could wait.

The gligar was still shaking, her eyes darting between his face and behind him as if expecting some hostile prowler to materialize out of the shadows. As if her progenitor wasn’t there to tear any intruder that tried to get close to her to shreds.

He wasn’t sure if she was afraid of some assailant that might be following or if she also felt the eerie oppressiveness from the rift. A blanket of black leathery wings could block out any stray strands of red light to let his nestling sleep easily, buried in the warmth and scent of her sire. He would brood and fuss over her until whatever had her so shaken up was nothing but a distant memory.

Heavy pincers were uneasily placed down behind her to keep the girl penned in while she tried to look as small as possible. He happily nosed at his young charge and set to work grooming the dirt out of her fur, eliciting a dismayed squeal. She tried to push his face away and wriggle free, but even injured and exhausted, he could handle a fussy gligar.

A rumbling formed deep in his chest as small squeaks and chitters escaped his throat to soothe his perturbed fledgling. It was slow to take effect and she would tense up at the needle like teeth combing through her fur, stubbornly shoving his head away over enthusiastic licking while squawking in indignation.

But eventually his tiny gligar stopped trying to fight him and let herself be tended to, resting beneath his chin and wrapping her arms around his broad chest plate as best she could, seeking comfort.

Her claw tips were chipped and speckled with partially dried blood, likely from inexperienced clambering over rocky terrain. He turned his head to gently lick at the uncleaned wounds and remove the flaky blood covering tender skin.

Though dry and stale, the coppery taste reminded him of the pained burning knot that was his stomach and how it made tiredness and pain radiate through his body. It was so cramped and agonizing that he couldn’t even imagine it accepting anything he swallowed, but it still grew angry and impatient at being teased with morsels.

Something was deeply wrong. A series of confusing and contradictory notions ran through him and an inky blackness crept over the edge of his vision. His innards coiled and twisted in anticipation of enjoying his captured prey and confused dread at what that would entail. He felt the world spinning as something heavy slithered up his spine and pushed down on his back with a force nowhere close to its full strength.

Faint whispering assured him he would be fed and his heart beat harder at the malicious promise. He licked faster and more fervently as his excitement and terror rose to a fever pitch, his skin prickling as he sensed the malevolent red lighting making its way into the den.

Crimson dripped into his eyes, ran in rivers and formed pools like the most sickly sweet candy. It once again cruelly promised to sustain his body; he could eat and eat as much as he pleased but he’d pay for his indulgence and it would never fill his belly. The constant aching and pain would remain as his body carried on, animated but unsatisfied.

His face was held close to it, knowing he was too pathetic and weak-willed to stop himself from accepting the rotten deal and gorging on it. He was a ravenous, base creature that couldn’t remember not being hungry. A slave to his instincts being offered food as sugary as the berries that failed to nourish him and as salty as the blood he dearly craved.

It wasn’t the first time he’d given into the temptation to feed, desperate for such a small relief only to be left with hallow disappointment. He knew it was a terrible deal, but the syrupy painkiller was dripping down his face and it promised to take the edge off and ensure his wounds wound never kill him. All he had to do was lick it off.

His tongue swiped across his lips in a moment of weakness and caught the delicious honeyed beads, giving him an incurable taste. It was pooling so close to his mouth, its bright cheri red too great of a temptation for him to resist, and he started greedily lapping it up.

The crimson liquid pleasantly slid over his tongue and clung to his teeth, tasting of the sweetest, most indulgent syrup and the metallic pang of meat. Heavy in his mouth and rich in sugar and protein, it should have been satisfying. But it cruelly dissipated in his throat, unable to fill the bitter hollow inside him. If he kept drinking bigger mouthfuls, he could delude himself into thinking he was filling his stomach by the mere act of swallowing.

As promised, the pain and heaviness lifted slightly and the leaden feeling of his carapace became a little more manageable. All he had to do for the relief was debase himself, submit his body and mind to the one that kept him hungry.

More and more, it was never enough, could never be enough. It could only provide more fumes to run on.

He plunged his face into the mocking red lake and started feverishly gulping down as much as he could, struggling to take breaths between mouthfuls. Air seemed so unimportant and he barely tried to keep his nose above the drink. His lungs started to burn and he hardly noticing the bubbles escaping him, then suddenly he was a drowning man fighting to surface.

The crimson liquid passed through his fingers and clogged his airway, sticky and cloying with the nauseating taste of raw meat. He was choking on the ill-inducing sweetness that was like overindulging on cake. There was zero weight or substance to push against as he thrashed to escape the pitch black depths, frantic for air.

It took all of his desperation and energy to ascend just a few inches and any pause would see his work undone as he was dragged back down. His fingertips grazed at the air above; he was so close but the arm’s length left to go demanded a despairingly long time struggling with all his might. With one final push, his head broke the surface, gasping and eagerly sucking in oxygen.

The darkness and fog receded and he saw with a clarity he hadn’t held in a long time. He was hunched over in Lady Sneasler’s den with Dawn in his arms, her shoulders trembling slightly and face pressed against his neck.

The lucidity wouldn’t last long, it never did.

He mentally shouted to himself in the brief moment before he forgot who he was again with the hope his urgency would carry over.

I am the subway boss, Ingo! These tracks are fraught with danger, you must get away from her before-

Something pulsating wormed its way into his brain through the back of his skull in smug contempt and it was gone. He grit his teeth and ignored the pain; now that his humandewottgligar was here, everything would be alright.

He would bundle her up and keep her hidden away deep inside the den, cradle her against his chest as she slept, shield her from the oppressive red malice outside...

and...

and... k...i...l...l.......h...e...r...

A dangerous stinger slowly circled around her back unnoticed, cautiously raised behind her and waiting for the perfect moment to strike.

Everything would be okay, she was safe now.

Such an act was probably overdoing it for something so small, but the venom would ease digestion, especially with such a young gligar.

He’d sleep soundly with a full stomach and his hatchling close to him where nothing could hurt her. She’d be able to keep her promise never to abandon him after the night spent feeding on blood and meat in their dark nest.

A strand of drool dripped down one of his fangs and landed with a splat on the girl’s shoulder. She looked up at the row of jagged teeth above her, his jaws parted and salivating hungrily. The girl’s eyes glanced backwards and she went completely still, perceiving some danger.

There’s nothing to be scared of, he’s proud of ensuring the safety of his passengers.

Nothing will get close enough to hurt you, I’ll shield you with my broken, mangled body, keep you hidden away forever, gouge and tear anything that gets close, I’ll sting them to death and I’ll eat you whole.

The stinger pulled back quickly to add force to its strike before it snapped forward into empty space.

A lack of comprehension left him staring blankly until he noticed the fresh stinging on his abdomen from something that had slashed at him. He dully noted the new injury, another one to add to his generous supply.

His hatchling was making great haste towards the cave entrance and he unhurriedly followed after her. The red light crept into the short passageway out of the den and grew stronger to closer he got to the exit, unease finding its way back into him and cutting through his stupor.

A crimson glow blanketed the barren mountainside, the dewott nowhere in sight. The realization that she had run away and he was abandoned once again dawned on him.

...

But I love you...

#legends arceus #pla #submas #ingo #pokerus au #pokemon #subway master ingo

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spaceless-vacuum · 2 years

Text

Fandom‧˚｡ﾟ･° ｡✎ Legend of Zelda

Pairing‧˚｡ﾟ･° ｡✎ Yandere!Link x reader

Word count‧˚｡ﾟ･° ｡✎ 725

Summery‧˚｡ﾟ･° ｡✎ The idea was you’re just someone from some village he falls in love with. I couldn’t get the idea of how he’d ratioanlize and explain his own behavior to himself so I wrote this.

Misc‧˚｡ﾟ･° ｡✎ third pov, kidnapping, mentions of violence, murder, emotional manipulation, kidnapping

Link is unable to understand that you don’t want him. His worst tendency is the fact that in his mind you either do love him or will fall in love with him. There is no if or maybe. He has deluded himself into thinking that if he just tries one more time he can't fail. Seventeen tries later and he still isn't about to give up.

In his mind he has everything he needs to succeed; and anything he doesn't have he can go get. He faced hordes of monsters, killed ganon, and saved Zelda so many times it made him a bit too confident in his abilities. A warrior is never without a weapon if they train their mind and body after all. If you don't like what he has he just needs to try another way through.

That’s what being the hero of courage is. Perseverance.

The idea that no matter what he does you wont like he never crosses this man's mind. It can come off as childish and cruel. To him it doesn't matter what the issue is, he just needs to find a new way to approach the issue. You refuse to eat the food he cooks for you? That's ok! Hell just buy you food, or buy the ingredients so you can cook instead. The entire time he’s so proud of himself. He filled your kitchen with so much food you won't have to shop for the next month. To Link it isn't a big deal. Why are you even complaining?

God forbid you show interest in any of his advances either (unless you want to feed these tendencies?). Once interest is shown in one tactic he'll lean hard into it. You said thank you to him for giving you a gemstone one time? Now you have ten sitting on your table. The next day he brings you even more. Apparently he hunted down a magma Talos just for you. No need to thank him, except you have to. Seriously, don't be ungrateful, it will only make things worse.

This goes for anything you ask of well. Need some ingredients for a stew? You have enough stock to last for three months worth of ingredients. If you don't tell him to stop bringing you ingredients he'll never stop. It’ll just start to pile up in the pantry. The whole time he never stops to think it’s an inappropriate reaction. He's just doing his best!

Just don't treat him or any of his gifts with malice or disinterest. If you start to act cruel (ie: selling the gifts he gives you or by lying to him) he will take to more extreme measures. Rumors will spread about you. Starting with your hometown and then leading to cities and other kingdoms if your actions were that horrible. None of what is said is actually true, but sometimes the truth needs to be stretched to make a point.

Items in your home will go missing. The only way to get them back is to act nicely. To go along with the game in his head. Pretend you love him and give him his wholesome moments or he will start to take everything from you. There's where to run, no one to turn to, and no escape. Just accept Link and he will make you happy.

If you continue to push back he’ll grow harsh. Don't get him wrong he hates to enact violence against you, his love, but sometimes it must be done. Being a hero isn't all sunshine and rainbows. tough choices are made every day by people in power. If someone gets in the way there's not much that can be done. They will disappear and you will live by his side.

When push comes to shove he’ll do it. First he'll start with his usual methods. Just talk them away from you, threaten them a little, but if all else fails actions speak louder than words. A moment of rage and passion later the evidence must be destroyed. Monster attacks happen so often in this world. It’s a shame they got caught by one.

The remorse from having to take such an action hangs with him for a few days. However, getting to see you again makes it all worth it. For you, for Hyrule, no price is too high.

#eye write #yandere x reader #link x reader #legend of zelda #loz #headcanons

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celestiall0tus · 6 months

Text

Miraculous Paradise - Chapter 15 - Widow

Beginning || Previous || Next

Zoe opened her eyes to darkness. She looked around as a myriad of tiny, yellow eyes peered at her through the void. She tsked and moved around until she found the invisible path. She walked along it when distant memories flashed around in bursts of light like gunfire.

Zoe was brought back to her childhood in the States. She was the result of a one-night stand with a stranger. Not long after she was born, she was abandoned with the stranger, her father. He struggled to raise her as he was far from loaded like Audrey was. She remembered most nights being lucky to have some form of dinner and some days lucky to have a meal at all. She remembered complaining as a toddler, but once she was older, she began to understand through the pain and hopelessness always present in her father’s eyes.

Zoe watched the years fly by until she finally started school. She always kept to herself and didn’t dare to approach people. So many eyes that were full of indifference. She was left alone after that as her father worked endlessly to support her, at least as he always claimed. She often missed the days when he was there at her side, but soon grew used to his absence. Though it was a lonely existence until she found a new family.

Zoe looked upon that day. She was barely nine when she met a boy. When she looked in his eyes, she saw the indifference, but an all too familiar pain. It intrigued her and so she followed him around. He never let on if he hated it, but she doubted it. Not when it led her to his gang of other kids just like them. They looked at her with suspicion, but eventually accepted her into their group.

Sorrow clawed at Zoe seeing the brief few years of bliss. When she got to run wild and let out all her frustrations. The utter destruction she caused to property, the wild nights of being chased by cops, to the thrill of fighting other people. It was all euphoric to sit under the glow of a burning property. She chuckled remembering a few times they had roasted marshmallows to such blazes until they’d be chased by the law. At least until the coming fateful night.

One night when Zoe was eleven, she had been caught and brought home. It was a night her father was home. There was an argument where he attempted to be a parent again, but every word fell on deaf ears. She stopped as she watched herself lay it all out. How he had only been there for her when she was helpless but abandoned her just as Audrey had. That despite all his working, there was still barely any food or other amenities they needed to survive. That she didn’t need him anymore.

Zoe never regretted those words. Even when she saw the utter heartbreak and betrayal in her father’s eyes. It never cut her deep like it should have. About a month passed before the fateful night. She had returned home after a night with the guys. She headed for her room when there was a loud pop from her father’s room. She grabbed a bat and kicked down the door to find him in a pool of his own blood with a note and handgun.

Zoe should have felt something more in that moment, she knew it. She could have been upset. She should have bawled her eyes out over her father, but there was nothing like that. She remembered seeing his body and feeling angry. There were no loving thoughts. Just that he was a weak, loathsome coward. That he didn’t deserve to continue living.

Zoe disappeared that night. It took the cops a few months to find her. When they did, they shipped her off to Paris to the Bourgeois family. Andre took her in despite Audrey’s objections. He claimed he wanted to help an unfortunate child, but she could see the deception and malice in his eyes. She hated both of them and all that he did for her just to spite Audrey. The constant tutoring to learn the language, etiquette, and everything else. She wanted to burn their world down. That was until she was finally introduced to Chloe.

Zoe watched the short introduction. Andre had introduced the pair. In that moment, Zoe had been hopeful seeing the hatred Chloe had for their parents, but soon saw the indifference towards Zoe. That didn’t stop her from trying. She wanted Chloe to love her. She wanted Chloe to consider her a sister. She wanted a family again, but that wasn’t to happen. Chloe didn’t love her and never would so long as Adrien was around.

The eyes all converged as Zoe felt Silkii’s eyes on her.

“My, what a destructive child you are. You’re going to be fun to work with,” Silkii cooed.

“Then let’s begin.”

“Do you accept me in my entirety as the manifestation of betrayal?”

“Yes.”

“Do you promise to live your life severing all bonds of loyalty?”

“Yes.”

“And do you bring ruin to all who stand in your way, to utterly destroy your enemies hearts, and to never give your loyalty to anyone?”

“Always.”

Silkii grinned. Her body dissolved into shadow that covered Zoe. She sighed as the floor gave way beneath her and she fell into the void.

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news-of-the-day · 1 year

Text

5/23/23

Talks about the debt ceiling continue with little progress, and a default is looming come June. With Republicans holding the House, they want to use their position to reign in spending and are demanding a cap on future budgets. Another sticking point is requiring work for benefits (medicaid, food stamps, financial aid, etc.). There are other smaller issues, like releasing money sequestered for COVID, defense spending, and more oil drilling.

Russia and the Ukraine have been fighting for the city of Bakhmut for a long time, and Russia has claimed victory, although the Ukraine says they're still in and the Wagner mercenary group hasn't agreed with the win. Two Russian groups fighting for the Ukraine pushed into the Belgorod region of Russia to attack. It hasn't seemed to do much damage and Russia claims it has repelled it.

Fighting also continues in Sudan. After long standing leader Omar al-Bashir was ousted in 2019, power was shared between two individuals, Lt. Gen. Abdel al-Burhan and Lt. Gen. Mohamed Dagalo. who control two completely different armies, the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). Facing internal and international pressure to return to civilian rule, tensions between al-Burhan and Dagalo grew as they had to determine things like who who would subordinate to whom in the new power structure. Last April, suddenly the RSF attacked several SAF bases and since then it's been a mess with hundreds of civilians dying and hundreds of thousands fleeing, especially since a lot of the fighting is taking place in the capital, Khartoum. Attempted ceasefires have been brokered, but neither side is paying particular attention to them.

Trump appeared virtually in court over his trial for the Stormy Daniels payout, so the judge could issue a protective order on evidence, i.e. Trump or his lawyers cannot discuss evidence that isn't already public knowledge. Judges are known to put in such orders, but in this case it was prevent witness intimidation. Both the judge and the DA have received death threats already.

AZ, CA, and NV made a historic deal over the Colorado River. To put it quite simply, the river is drying up and will probably run out if nothing changed. Considering it nourishes over 40M people and provides irrigation for some of the US' most fertile land, this is a massive problem. The three agreed to decrease their intake by 13% in exchange for $1.2B in federal funds. This isn't enough to stop the problem however, but it's a move in the right direction.

E. Jean Carroll is seeking an additional $10M against Trump in her defamation case. Carroll sued Trump over her claim that he raped her back in the 90s. (It was too late for a criminal trial, but NYS briefly allowed civil sexual assault trials to proceed.) Two weeks ago the jury agreed with the sexual battery claim and awarded her $5M, and the defamation case is continuing. Forgive me, I am about to geek out because defamation lawsuits fascinate me. Although we recently have had two high profile verdicts (Alex Jones, FOX/Dominion), they are very hard to win, particularly if the plaintiff is a public figure because they need to fulfill the "actual malice" standard: i.e., the defendant said the statements knowing they were false or with "reckless disregard" with the truth. So for example, I write these posts and I may make a false statement. I don't mean to, sometimes I do poor editing, or I didn't understand the issue properly, or the source I got the information from may have been incorrect. It's unlikely anyone would win defamation against me since everything I write is researched and in good faith. In the FOX/Dominion case, it was pretty obvious after sifting through FOX's internal communications that they didn't care whether Dominion voting machines were rigged or not, they wanted to boost their ratings against OAN and Newsmax, and so brought on contributors who made baseless claims against the company. As for Carroll, I think she has a decent shot given that she won the civil lawsuit over the assault itself, so now Trump's ad hominem attacks on her would make him more liable. Of course this is all going to appeal, so we'll be hearing about it for a while.

1) BBC, The Hill 2) NYT, Al Jazeera 3) WSJ 4) Washington Post 5) Reuters 6) Politico

Thank you for your kind words while I was on break. I can’t cover everything I missed, but I’ll try to provide context for the latest news.

#news #default #debt ceiling #war in ukraine #war in sudan

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ndx94 · 1 month

Text

On a quiet Sunday afternoon

I wonder what is culture

I can go for a walk in the neighborhood

or read a book

I want to join the Amish

I see that different people

struggle

just to think well of themselves

satan has made this world

very mentally ill

and people end up nihilistic

looking for some consolation

in knowledge, sex, or food

Few people truly uphold

the norm of human dignity

the proper use of the body

avoiding poverty

and evil desires

How important it is

to understand that people

are made in God's image

and want to exalt

the Lord at heart

while remaining creatures

like the thirsty deer

of the Psalmist's song

I get tired

of people always trying to teach me

without truly sharing a thought

that could build my spirit up

people who just spew knowledge

and don't really think

about their audience

so professors

"establish one's authority"

I don't know why i feel nihilistic

about the business of improvement

The devil is the lord of death

but leaving the church building today

after the Brahms and Verdi concert

I didn't know what I should think

Has technology made the world better

or should I be one of the Amish

Should I try to rely

solely on relationship with God

I don't really know

even at the age of 39

what my true talents are

and in some ways I feel

that my life's work doesn't really matter

What's the point of teaching evolution

What's the point of teaching progress

People continue to suffer

Even the transcendence they find

in culture or science

is often bated

with a sublime of "scientism"

I also realized today

that I don't really have

a lot of good will toward the human race

I turn my mind toward questions

of the sort historians like to ask

and counter-factuals

even about the Bible

people's definitions of the good life

and i wonder

whether people today are just working

because they don't know what else to do

and how much of this life is striving

in the flesh, by the arm of the flesh

What if there had been

no Industrial Revolution

What if there had been

no Roman Empire

What if all day long

people just sought the face of God

Today there is access to the truth

but the Information Age

is also flooded full of lies

and many people

like Riddhi Patel

get seduced by death

thinking for no reason

that they need to solve

all the world's problems

I wonder what Christ would do

about the Palestinians

There have always been wars

It's something some people seem born for

and soldiers work

to restrain evil

or in some cases to propound and promote evil

and I don't really know

what the lesson in that is

Today the world order

is being shaken in Ukraine

and Israel

and people are wondering

whether these things will get worse

and I wonder

what if the internet had never been invented

What if the public school had never been invented

I might have married the girl down the block

and become a simple worker

I've had all kinds of bad habits in life

and I wonder, for example,

what if I'd never abused caffeine

or what if there hadn't been

in America

such an overabundance of food for some people

There's suffering in North Korea

but even thousands of miles away

people are subject to violence

and the social order

dispenses malice

Some people stand up for liberty

and some people stand up for "social justice"

but it's hard to tell really

whether anyone has a pure heart

People get seduced easily

by cults of personality

For me it was SNSD

For others it was Barack Obama

Donald Trump or David Cameron

and we all want to believe

that our hearts are not alone

I don't really know what to make

of Brahms or Verdi

They seem overly restrained

like they never think

truly exalted thoughts

in the shadow of Beethoven

They never achieve

complete extroversion

or complete development

but I don't know if that's just me

Lots of people live in apartments

Lots of people have trouble paying rent

This world looks down

on a person who doesn't want advancement

They have a day somehow

like in elementary school

when you choose your instrument

for the band or orchestra

They have a day

where people choose what to believe

and what they feel

they need to know

Other people make all kinds of arguments

about self-esteem

or the evils of racial hatred

or the hypocrisy of the powerful

or the psychotic nihiliism

of those who get lost in the fight

I don't really know what I should believe

but on a quiet Sunday afternoon

I feel like walking a while longer

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appetitecomic · 2 months

Text

I do wanna continue with this but i’ve genuinely been so demotivated to actually work on it, especially since i still haven’t figured out the entire story. so here’s a random lore drop.

(Catherine: David’s almost lover, beginning part; David: Victim. Living with Alice because he already relies on her for food and such; Alice: insane woman. Lives with David because she basically made him choose between this and homelessness.)

TW: topics of murder, cannibalism, drugging, implied s/a

——

After Catherine is brutally murdered and Alice makes David promise he wouldn’t tell anyone, they move in together. She wanted… a domestic life, i guess. It’s not real, anyway. They still work at the same office, only now, Alice has since been promoted for her hard work and now has even more of a grip onto David and the people he interacts with. She still has yet to physically hit him, so he, and everyone in the office assumes “It’s not that bad.”

She buzzes around his desk, keeping watch on him at all times. Anytime a coworker asks for help regardless of their gender, she tends to pull them away. But instead of the sweet, naive arm pulling, beckoning him to help her with the most mundane tasks (she already knew how to do them, she just always wants his attention)she just ends up helping the person themselves, glaring at David, because how dare he talk to someone without her permission.

It still doesn’t help. There’s always eye candy to drag him away, at least that’s what she thinks. He totally keeps looking at her. She keeps flirting with him. Does he even realize? Or does he and he just won’t tell me. I don’t understand, I’ve given him everything and he’s still unloyal. Why is he so unloyal?

But at the end of the day, they both return to their house without home charm. Alice cooks dinner again. She took special time with the meat, tenderly cutting it open, skinning it, putting just the right amount of ingredients to mask the smell of malice. He also notices she’s somehow always in the way of viewing the meat. Of course, he’d never dare coming up to her in the middle of cooking, especially with a knife in hand. That’d lose him a hand.

The anxiety keeps rising. Maybe he might be drugged again. His feet tap the floor impatiently and he begins chewing his nails. He feels dizzy. He hates being dizzy.

The kitchen smells rotten. His brain figures it’s the garbage. His gut is telling him it’s a sedative.

As usual, she hands him a bowl, and stares him down. That was her favorite habit. It scared the shit out of David and she got to watch him silently chew the bits and pieces of love she put into this dish. The stew looks different. She usually cooked stew. It’s all I really know how to cook anyway, she’d say with a too large grin.

They sat in silence for a few minutes. Just enough to watch David swallow the last bit of porky flavored meat in his mouth. Her eyes lit up.

You don’t know how long I had to search for a meat like this. It took forever to chop her up. Good taste right?

I think you’d like the leg better anyway.

At that moment, he somehow knew what she meant. He almost threw up all over the counter they sat at. David had been punished. Only now he did it to himself. That also answers where the smell came from.

He spent hours at the toilet, trying to relieve his body from the sin he had just committed on someone he loved. He ate her fucking flesh. How do you deal with that?

Usually Alice would drag him out of there at some point, making sure the sedative settled in enough to do whatever she wanted. He couldn’t fight back anyway. But there was no sedative this time, and she let him puke out his guts in the bathroom. He had already suffered enough.

At least he didn’t get the eyeball piece.

#appetite #story #webcomic #original character #original story #trigger warning #canibalism

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gazrgaley · 1 year

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Sin Eater (Part 1, chapter 2)

A little over a week in and he still felt like an outcast. The room he and the other boys stayed in was small, but Richard found it felt so much bigger as he noticed that very few of the boys would sit or sleep near him. There were a few beds, but these were reserved for the older boys, leaving Richard with no choice but to find a spot on the cold, hard floor and hope he would be able to get a blanket.

This was made even harder for Richard as he noticed that all the younger boys would sleep in a pile next to each other for warmth, excluding him completely. He was an outsider in a place he had never imagined he would end up in. Richard knew all the kids, or at least he had seen them around before all this happened. But it was entirely different now that he had to live with them. They had been on their best behavior when the adults were around, but they were completely different when they were alone.

As the new kid, Richard found himself at the bottom of the social hierarchy in the group. He had no say in where he slept, how much food he could eat, or even the respect he received. Everything he did was ridiculed, even down to the color of his eyes.

"Why dost thou have red eyes?" The question was oft repeated by the other boys, pestering him day after day. "Art thou some kind of devil? Devils are forbidden within the holy sanctum of the church. I shall inform the father," taunted the boys incessantly, mocking him without respite.

""They're not red, but brown," Richard would say every time, trying to defend himself. That had been what his parents told him. But in the right lighting, even he had a hard time believing this. In the sun, his eyes looked as bright as emeralds, but it was only in low light that they could pass as brown. Even then, it was a hard sell to the other boys who were relentless in their teasing.

One night, Richard tried to sleep, but his body was in pain. It wasn't just his stomach grumbling from lack of food like the other boys complained about. It was his whole body that hurt, all the way down to his veins. It felt as if they were being pulled, as if the blood was having a hard time passing through him. He had never experienced anything like this before.

Richard was used to a different way of eating. His parents didn't serve food as often as they did here. It was more of a social thing they did when they had people over. Instead, they gave him a red liquid to drink, which no one seemed to understand when he referred to it.

But the pain was almost unbearable now. Huddled in his thin blankets, he tried to sleep, but couldn't. That was when he heard one of the boys, the same one who had been teasing him about his eyes, move closer to him. At first, Richard hoped he was finally being accepted by the others, but he couldn't be that lucky. The boy whispered cruel and unkind words to him, his voice dripping with malice.

"Hark, thou demon boy! Pray, tell me, why are thine eyes so crimson? Why is thy hair so sable? Doth thy father, Satan, come to fetch thee soon? Thinkest thou thy parents perished in a fire to avoid thee? Surely, they must have detested living with thee!"

Richard clenched his fists, trying to hold back the tears that threatened to fall. He felt a surge of anger and frustration, but he knew responding would only make it worse. He closed his eyes tightly, hoping that sleep would come soon and he could escape the harsh reality he found himself in.

But the boy persisted. In an instant, Richard had climbed on top of the boy, grabbing his head and smashing it into the ground. He continued to kick even after one of the older kids pulled him off. "Cease thy tumult, calm thyself," the elder boy commanded, his voice firm yet soothing. Clasping a hand around Richard's mouth to silence him. Waiting for Richard to cease moving before releasing him.

A handful of the slumbering lads stirred and cast wary glances around. The elder boy, speaking with a tone of reassurance, declared, "All is well, lads. Return to your rest." Whether they truly went back to sleep remained uncertain, for none bothered to look up again.

Whilst still keeping Richard at bay, the elder lad drew nearer to the younger one and inquired, "Art thou well?" Since Richard was yanked off of him, he hadn't moved. He took a few steps towards the youngster, peeking back to make sure Richard was still there. He crouched down next to him and gave Richard a terrified look before turning away. "He's dead," he spoke in a low voice so no one else could hear.

Wrapping the child in the blanket, he escorted Richard out of the room and down the stairs.

"Pray, what is it?" Richard inquired, wincing as the older boy's fingers dug deep into his wrist. "Whither are we bound?"

The older boy didn't answer until they were deep in the forest. At that instant, Richard realized the gravity of his actions. The older boy laid the dead body onto the ground. Richard hadn't meant to hurt him, not like that. There was a tightness in his chest as he choked back his sobs.

"Verily, that was not my intention," Richard said through his tears, "I merely sought to cease his cruel taunts." His cheeks flushed with tears and his nose ran with snot.

"Aye, I'm well aware," the older boy replied, his voice calm and measured, as he knelt down to Richard's level. "Fear not, lad, such occurrences are not uncommon. I shall take care of it." His hands gripped Richard's arms firmly, conveying both sympathy and authority. "But henceforth, thou must follow my instructions to the letter." He released Richard and stood, scanning the surroundings. "I shall go fetch a shovel, so tarry here till I return."

Richard was all by himself with the body. As he approached, he saw that the child was around his age. His dead form appeared nearly unreal. His nose was bashed in and dried blood plastered his face. Despite being terrified and not wanting to view the body, Richard moved closer to it.

The ache in his body screamed louder than ever. His blood was practically begging him to take action. His teeth began to grow, then split. He hadn't noticed any of that before everything around him turned black.

The older lad had to draw Richard away from the younger one for the second time that evening. This time, though, there was blood in Richard's mouth. The older boy stood between Richard and the dead body so Richard was unable to see it.

A horrifying moment of realization as the red liquid in his mouth had a similar taste to the drinks his parents gave him. The older boy was staring at him intently. That gradually changed from skepticism to enjoyment. "What exactly are you?"

Richard screamed, unable to comprehend what he had done. All he could think about was why he had bitten the kid and why his body was no longer in pain. "Nay, I did not. I doth not comprehend. I did not partake in such actions."

When the older boy seized Richard's arm, he tried to flee. "Verily, thou art surely in league with the Devil!" Drinking the blood from aye little boy."

"No," Richard spoke up. Religion had never been something that was a big part of his life, not until recently. But it had become his one comfort.

"But I do know that if the Lord above hath cursed me, I shall never lay eyes upon my dear parents again," Richard spoke with fervor. "I am righteous, and God doth love me. I am not a devil, nor the spawn of Satan. I shall reunite with my beloved parents once more."

Richard started to calm when he discovered the older lad wasn't unhappy or furious. He appeared to be content."Verily, thou shalt indeed be reunited with thy parents, but thou must calm thyself presently," the older lad spoke with a commanding tone.

Richard paused as the older lad knelt down and met his gaze. "If thou art a devil, then so be it, for it is God who hath made thee thus," the older lad said solemnly. "Perchance it is a trial that thou must overcome." Richard nodded, taking heed of the lad's words. "I am willing to aid thee, young Richard, if thou wouldst but hearken unto my counsel," the lad said with a reassuring smile, his countenance glowing with warmth.

Greeting, fair sir," Joseph spoke with a formal tone, removing his hat and bowing slightly. "I am called Joseph. And might I inquire about thy name?" He extended his hand to Richard, who hesitantly took it, their fingers clasping in a gesture of greeting. Joseph then drew Richard into a warm embrace, which Richard found surprisingly comforting, feeling a sense of protection he hadn't experienced since coming to the church.

"Fear not, young lad," Joseph spoke softly, his words like a balm to Richard's troubled heart. "I shall take good care of thee. I shall make arrangements for thee to be reunited with thy parents." Joseph's words brought a glimmer of hope to Richard's eyes, but then Joseph continued, "And if thou hast a need for blood, we shall identify the proper individuals for thee to draw from."

Richard's eyes widened, and he took a step back, feeling a mix of confusion and concern. "Blood, sir?" he asked, his voice quavering. "I do not understand. What meanest thou?"

Joseph's expression softened, and he spoke gently. "Forgive me, young sir. 'Tis a complicated matter. We shall explain it to thee in due time, and only if thou art willing. Thy well-being is our utmost concern, and we shall ensure that thou art informed and consenting in all matters."

Richard looked at Joseph and nodded slowly, still feeling uncertain but willing to trust the lad's words. "Thank thee, sir," he said softly. "I... I just want to see my parents again."

Joseph smiled kindly. "Indeed, young lad. We shall do our best to make that happen. In the meantime, thou art safe here with us, and we shall care for thee as best we can."

Richard nodded, feeling a sense of relief mixed with curiosity about the mysterious ways of Joseph and the church. With Joseph's reassurance, he hoped that he had found a place where he could finally feel protected and supported, even amidst the uncertainties that lay ahead.

#warm blooded vampires series #vampires #writing #sin eater #chapter 2 #part 1 #gaz042 #vampire story #historical fiction #gothic novel

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vgckwb · 1 year

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P5R: Rebel Girl (A FeMC Story/P5R Rework) Chapter 139: Strength of Conviction

Hiroki was panicking. Out of all the people his friend Haru could have been betrothed to, it HAD to be his brother. Hiroki knew this was a problem. He knew his brother was a jerk better than anybody. He was more than a jerk even. He was malice incarnate.

“Haru…” He muttered. He knew she had a tendency to undersell things that troubled her, but this was on a whole other level. “Does she know? I mean, she KNOWS. But does she know how bad?” He was shaking. “Calm down. This isn’t going to get you anywhere.”

He thought about it some more. “Okumura Foods… Perhaps I should pay them a little visit.” He decided to go to bed. He figured he could deal with it tomorrow.

The next day, as Ren was on her way to school, she got a message in the group chat.

Makoto: Sumire, I know you just got in last night, but did you have time to read the messages?

Sumire: I read them this morning.

Sumire: I’m still trying to process Principal Kobayakawa getting killed.

Sumire: But we’re meeting tonight, right?

Makoto: That’s right.

Ren: If you want to put it off for a bit, we’ll understand.

Sumire: It’s fine.

Sumire: If the information we found can help get us to the person who had Principal Kobayakawa killed, then I think the sooner we figure it out the better.

Ren: I couldn’t agree more.

Futaba: Rest assured, the data I found gives us a big lead.

Sumire: Thanks Futaba.

Ryuji: Can’t wait!

Yusuke: Neither can I!

Ann: I can’t either.

Makoto: Don’t get so eager you can’t focus in class.

Futaba: I’m pretty sure you literally just described Ryuji.

Lena: Don’t worry. I’ll try to make sure he pays attention.

Ryuji: HEY!

Ryuji: I mean, I guess it’s true.

Ryuji: But you don’t need to say it!

Jose: See you tonight then?

Ren: See you tonight.

They put their phones away, and prepared themselves for the rest of the day.

While the Phantom Thieves were concerned about their next big move, they weren’t the only ones. Hiroki was on edge all day. He was lacking his usual luster, and it showed. At lunch, as he was about to leave, Ryuji said “Hey.” Hiroki turned to him. “Are, uh, you OK?”

Hiroki put on a fake smile. “Of course. Why wouldn’t I be?”

“It’s just…you seem kind of different,” Ryuji said.

“It’s true,” Lena said. “Is there a problem?”

Hiroki continued smiling. “It’s fine.”

“Well…if you say so, I guess,” Ryuji said.

Hiroki nodded. “I’m glad you understand.”

“But if there is something troubling you, we’d be willing to listen,” Lena said. “Not to mention Dr. Maruki.”

“...Yeah,” Hiroki replied. “Thanks.” He left to take care of some student council business.

As he was doing so, Makoto and Kisa approached him. “Hiroki?” Makoto asked. He looked up. “Are…you doing OK?”

“Hm?” Hiroki answered. “Yeah. I’m doing great!”

“Well, that’s good,” Makoto said.

“But it’s OK if you’re not,” Kisa added.

“Really, I’m fine,” Hiroki said.

“Well…if you ever need us, you know where to find us,” Makoto said.

“Of course,” Hiroki said. Makoto and Kisa were sure something was bothering Hiroki, but they couldn't figure out what. However, Hiroki was being so obstinate that they didn’t want to press the issue. So they just went back to doing their work for the student council.

Between classes and student council work, he was looking into Okumura Foods and Haru’s dad. He was aware that he was at the top of the poll for whose heart the Phantom Thieves should change, but digging deeper, he found out why that was the case. With each passing detail, he could hardly believe that this cold, ruthless person was the father of the warm and loving Haru.

Once school was over, Hiroki practically rushed out of his seat. He wanted to save Haru from the clutches of her father and his brother. He needed to. On his way out, he ran into Haru. “Oh!” Haru gasped. “Hiroki! I’m sorry.”

“Nah, it’s not your fault,” Hiroki said. “I was just in a rush. I’m sorry.”

Haru giggled. “It’s fine.”

“Right…” Hiroki said.

Haru looked him over. “Are you…feeling alright?”

“Why is everyone asking me that today?” Hiroki wondered.

“Well, I don’t think I can speak for anyone else,” Haru answered, “but to me, you tend to wear your heart on your sleeve. So when something is troubling you, it’s easy for me to tell.”

Hiroki processed what Haru told him. “It’s my brother.”

“What did he do this time?” Haru wondered.

Hiroki knew he couldn’t answer that. At least, not now. “It’s…nothing. I’m going to take care of it now. Don’t worry about it.”

“Well…if you say so…” Haru said.

“I’ll be fine,” Hiroki said. Haru still looked concerned. “Would I lie to you?”

“Well…no…” Haru said.

“See?” Hiroki said.

“Well then, good luck,” Haru said.

“Thanks,” Hiroki replied. He continued onward.

Haru watched on as he left. “...It looks like you might be in over your head. Then again, who am I to speak?” She continued on to tend to her plants.

Hiroki arrived at Okumura Foods HQ. The building was a little imposing, but he had to overcome that in order to save Haru. He entered and approached the desk at the front. The person manning it looked up at him. “Is Mr. Okumura in?”

The person manning the front desk glared at him. “Even if he was, he’s not going to meet with some random kid.”

Hiroki figured this might happen. Luckily, he came prepared. “Would 25000 yen change his mind?”

The front desk person was impressed. “I’ll check.” He got on the phone. “Hi boss…I know, I know…someone’s offering to meet with you for 25000 yen…hold on.” He put his hand over the receiver. “Are you sure you have it?” Hiroki took out a stack of cash. “Yeah, he seems to be good for it…very well.” He hung up. “Go on ahead.”

“Thanks,” Hiroki said. He took out more money. “And here’s 10000 for you for being so helpful.” The front desk person was stunned, but took the money. Hiroki left to find Mr. Okumura’s office.

Once he found it, he knocked. “Come in,” Mr. Okumura said.

Hiroki opened the door. “Hi Mr. Okumura. Thanks for-”

“The money,” Okumura said.

“Huh?” Hiroki said.

“You said you’d give me 25000 yen,” Okumura said. “You better not be lying.”

“Of course not,” Hiroki said. He took out the cash and handed it to him.

Okumura took the money almost immediately. “That’s better. You know, I’m the manager of perhaps the largest food conglomerate in the country. Not only that, I’m facing a PR disaster right now. I had to cancel a TV appearance I had planned because my lawyers say they need to figure out what I can and can’t say. So I don’t exactly have time for impromptu meetings.”

“I understand,” Hiroki said. “So, I’ll make this quick. I wish to talk about your daughter.”

“What about her?” Okumura said.

“Well, I understand you’ve promised her hand in marriage,” Hiroki said.

Okumura was stunned. “Are you planning to ask me if you could have her hand instead?”

“Well, I wouldn’t have said it so bluntly, but yes,” Hiroki said, slightly blushing.

“Hm,” Okumura scoffed. “You have guts kid. I like that. But I have to pass.”

“How come?” Hiroki said.

“Because,” Okumura answered firmly, “no matter how much money you’d offer, you can’t promise me an endorsement. I am planning on running in the upcoming election, and the person who is marrying my daughter is the son of an influential politician who will give me their endorsement.”

Hiroki was now stunned. “Well, what if I could promise you the same?”

“Oh?” Okumura said. “Aren’t you just full of surprises?”

Hiroki nodded. “See, the person you’re engaging your daughter to is actually my older brother. So the deal doesn’t have to change much.”

Okumura was impressed. He laughed maniacally. “Wow. You are very bold. But I’m still going to have to pass.”

“What?!”

“You’re not their first born son, so you don’t matter,” Okumura explained.

Hiroki was confused. “What? So that’s it? Just because I’m my family’s second child, I don’t matter as much?”

“Yes,” Okumura answered.

“But that makes no sense,” Hiroki protested.

“You don’t get it,” Okumura said. “In this world, people are determined by how useful they are. That’s just how it is. And a first born son is more useful than a second born son.”

Hiroki was shocked at just how cold Mr. Okumura actually was. “What about Haru?” he asked in desperation. “How does she feel about all of this?”

Okumura smirked. “Why, she’s grateful. She’s serving her father, as all good girls should. Really, it’s an honor for her.” Hiroki’s heart sank. “If you don’t have anything else to say, I suggest you leave before I have you escorted.”

Hiroki sighed. “Very well.” He started leaving.

“Oh!” Okumura said. Hiroki turned to him. “I almost forgot. If you don’t want me telling your family about this, I’ll need another 25000.” Hiroki fished through his pocket and got out the money. He threw it on Okumura’s desk. “Wow. Had I known it was that easy, I would have asked for more. But a deal’s a deal. You can leave now.” Hiroki pouted, but left.

As he was walking through the halls, he noticed he was catching the attention of some of the other employees. When he looked at them, they turned away. He knew they were being treated poorly. Why was he expecting something different?

He exited the building, and walked a few blocks. Once he was far enough away, he screamed. Once he finished, he was breathing heavily. People were looking at him, but he didn’t care. He was too distraught. The girl he loved was being sold to someone who didn’t care about anyone but himself by a man who only sees people based on how valuable they are to him. He continued on his way home, having failed to do anything he felt like he needed to.

Once he got home, he went straight to his room. He was too distraught to eat, work on school work, or even humor his brother by pretending to like him. Once he closed the door, he sighed. “My my,” Eris said.

Hiroki was alarmed at the strange figure in his room. “Who…who are you?”

“You can think of me as a guardian angel,” Eris replied.

Hiroki was confused. “Why are you here?”

“Because,” Eris answered, “I know you want to save her.” Hiroki’s heart stopped. “But why stop at saving just her? You know what her father’s like. He’s one of the most influential businessmen in Japan. If he’s treating you like that, God only knows how he treats others.”

Hiroki was shaken. Everything this figure was saying was accurate. Eris took out an apple. “If you wish to right all this man’s wrongs, all you have to do is take a bite.”

Hiroki looked at the apple, then at the figure. “But…But what about the Phantom Thieves? Aren’t they going to do something?”

“Who knows?” Eris said. Hiroki went pale. “I mean, if you want, you could wait on them. But who knows when they’ll act. Or if they’ll even act at all. It could be well after your little girlfriend is in the arms of your brother that they may do something. Maybe they’ll do nothing at all.”

She offered the apple again. “But this is a guarantee. This means you’ll for sure stop her dad from selling her. This means you can do it in record time. And guess what? YOU’LL be the hero. All you have to do is trust your guardian angel.”

Hiroki was shaken. The Phantom Thieves seemed reliable until this point. But she was right. Haru’s current plan was entirely faith-based. And he knew his plan to walk in today was also faith-based, and look how that turned out. If he wanted a concrete chance at saving Haru, he knew he had to take action. He took the apple and bit into it.

He chewed it slowly and swallowed it. A light went off in his head, and a fire lit up in his eyes. Eris chuckled. “Glad I could be of service.” She disappeared. Hiroki went over to his computer to begin planning something.

Meanwhile, Ren, Morgana, and Futaba were waiting in Leblanc watching the TV. Ren wanted to catch Akechi’s interview, just out of curiosity. “So Akechi, after the Phantom Thieves took down Medjed, do you still have reservations about them?”

Akechi nodded. “While I cannot deny that the Phantom Thieves have done good things, I’m still wary of their presence.” The audience was a little upset with him.

“Eh heh heh,” Futaba chuckled.

“You know, a lot of people have come around on them.”

“I am aware,” Akechi responded. “But I’m not one to change my entire stance on a whim. As long as they operate without some kind of check, they have the potential to pose a danger to the country.”

“But you’ve said it yourself, they’ve been doing a lot of good.”

“True,” Akechi said. “I don’t mean to come off as someone who just wants to hate the Phantom Thieves. Why, I’ll even admit, I do like them somewhat.”

There was some clamor in the audience. “Oh my. This is an interesting turn of events.”

“You say that, but in actuality, it’s a tale as old as time,” Akechi said. Ren, Morgana, and Futaba were curious. “This is a classic battle between master thieves and a world class detective. No offense to the common criminal, but they don’t present a case that is as compelling.”

“I don’t think you need to worry about offending criminals.”

“True,” Akechi replied. “But the Phantom Thieves… Love them or hate them, you probably have several questions about them.”

“Too true.”

“As a detective, it is in my nature to want to answer such questions,” Akechi went on. “Not just who they are, or how they do what they do, but why. They say they’re on the side of justice, as do I. In essence, we’re two sides of the same coin. If I can crack that why, maybe we can both stand on the same side.

But until then, I can’t afford to trust them completely. As long as they are a mystery, I have a duty as a detective to solve it. But I am grateful that they are presenting me with such a grand mystery to solve.”

“So THAT’S why you said you liked the Phantom Thieves.”

“Well, I will admit, it’s a bit of a childish reason,” Akechi said. “I’ve read a lot of detective books when I was younger, and the detective versus thief trope always appealed to me. Getting to be a part of it in real life feels like a once in a lifetime opportunity.” The audience seemed more understanding of Akechi’s position

“Well, there you have it.”

“Ooooooo. He’s good!” Futaba exclaimed.

The rest of the Phantom Thieves showed up. “We’re here!” Ann greeted.

Ren nodded. “Let’s head upstairs.” They followed Ren up to her room.

They were sitting around the table. Futaba got out her laptop. “Are you ready?” she asked.

“Hold on,” Sumire said. “Um, could we discuss what happened to Principal Kobayakawa for a second?”

“Oh right,” Jose said. “I almost forgot.”

“Well, from what my sister has told me,” Makoto said, “it appears that a cop went under a mental breakdown and began to attack Kobayakawa. He was outside of a police station when it happened.”

“I guess he was going to make good on his promise,” Ann said.

“But they got to him before that could happen!” Ryuji remarked bitterly.

“It is odd though,” Yusuke said. “Why not attack Principal Kobayakawa directly and give him a mental shutdown?”

“That’s…a good point,” Makoto said.

“Maybe it has something to do with the weird reading Futaba mentioned,” Lena suggested.

“Maybe…” Futaba said.

“I think it has to be related,” Morgana said. “The person who did this has the ability to mess with the metaverse. That’s no easy feat. If they couldn’t get to Principal Kobayakawa, there has to be a reason.”

“Should we be worried?” Sumire wondered.

“I’m not sure,” Ren said. “If they couldn’t get to Principal Kobayakawa, I doubt they could get to us as well. But we shouldn’t leave their power unchecked for too long.”

Makoto nodded. “He mentioned someone becoming the most powerful person in Japan. That could be related to the upcoming elections.”

“So, we just gotta figure this out before then?” Ryuji said.

“Easier said than done,” Yusuke pointed out.

“Well, we’re the Phantom Thieves!” Ann said. “We’ve done the impossible before. Let’s do it again!”

“Ann’s right,” Morgana said. “We can’t give up now!”

Ren smiled. “So, how about that data then, Futaba?”

“Oh, right,” Futaba replied. She opened her laptop. “According to Makoto’s sister’s information, there’s a pattern on a lot of the mental shutdown cases.”

“When you say ‘a lot’, what does that mean?” Yusuke asked.

“Well, there have been a lot of cases overall,” Futaba said. “But the ones connected here aren’t a majority. However, they are a plurality.”

“A what now?” Ryuji wondered.

“I believe a plurality is having the most without going over 50%,” Lena said.

“That’s correct,” Makoto said.

Ryji still seemed a little confused. “So, for example,” Ren said, “if you were asked to gather ten sports balls, and you gathered four soccer balls, three basketballs, two baseballs, and a tennis ball, the soccer balls would be in the plurality.”

“Oh! Gotcha,” Ryuji replied.

“So, this person has a lot of attacks under their belt,” Jose said. “Does that mean they’re the person Kobayakawa was talking about?”

“Even if he’s not, he still has a lot of sway,” Yusuke said. “If he’s not the person at the top, I’m sure we’ll figure out who is if we investigate.”

“So, who is this person?” Lena said.

“Well…that’s where things get a little complicated,” Futaba said. “It’s the head of Okumura Foods.”

Everyone was shocked. “Wait, the guy at the top of the Phansite Rankings?!”

“The very same,” Futaba said. The concern grew.

“Uh, I’m lost,” Jose said. “Why is that a problem?”

��It’s just odd,” Yusuke said. “The people want this, and he’s behind a lot of the mental shutdowns? It seems like too much of a coincidence.”

“Uh, no offense, but I think a lot of how we figured things out is coincidental,” Ryuji.

“I guess that’s true,” Sumire admitted.

“What’s different this time is that it feels too convenient,” Makoto said. “Almost as if we’re being funneled in this direction. And since we know something is up, it gives me cause for concern.”

“That’s true too,” Sumire said.

“So this is a trap?” Lena wondered

“Maybe,” Ren said. “But it’s one we may need to set off anyway. In case you’ve forgotten, there's one other element to all of this.”

“Right. Eris,” Sumire said.

Ren nodded. “So, Futaba, what’s his name?” She got out her phone.

Futaba was stone solid, but knew what she had to do. “Kunikazu Okumura.”

“Match found,” Ren’s phone responde.

“It’s a hit!” Ann exclaimed.

“And that’s not all,” Ren said. She showed her phone. Just as before, Okumura’s name was in black, as well as the line bellow it, but the line of the bottom was in white.”

“Looks like Eris sprung her trap,” Morgana pointed out.

“So, it’s damned if we do, damned if we don’t, huh?” Ann pointed out. A level of concern hung over the Phantom Thieves.

Morgana grew serious. “Well, I don’t know about you, but I’d rather be damned keeping someone alive than letting someone die just to save our skin.”

“Heh,” Ryuji laughed. “When you’re right, you’re right.”

“Yeah,” Ann said. “I was going on about how we do the impossible, but was about ready to cave in. But that’s not what we’re about.”

Ren smiled. “So, it sounds like we’re in agreement then?” Everyone nodded. “Great.”

Sumire yawned. Everyone looked at her. “I’m sorry. I’m still a little exhausted from my trip.”

Ann giggled. “That’s OK. Truth be told, I’m a little beat too.”

“Well, we got a lot done tonight,” Futaba said.

Makoto nodded. “We can start looking into this tomorrow then.” Everyone nodded. “Goodnight then.” They all said their goodnights, and then left for the evening.

Later, as Ren and Morgana were laying in bed, Ren commented “You know, you did a good job at rallying everyone tonight.”

“You think so?” Morgana wondered.

“Yeh,” Ren responded. “I think you’re getting some more of your own confidence.”

“Maybe…” Morgana said, not sure of himself.

“Don’t think I didn’t notice you dropping the ‘Lady’ in ‘Lady Ann’,” Ren said.

“Well, it seemed like the right thing to do,” Morgana said.

“And giving us the confidence to continue our mission is also the right thing to do,” Ren pointed out.

“I guess that’s true…” Morgana replied. “It just feels different. When I was saying stuff like that before, a part of me felt like I had to. I was created to serve this purpose, you know. But now, it feels like if I wasn’t I’d still do it. I just…want to help my friends.”

Ren giggled. “Well, it looks like you’ve found something.”

“I have?” Morgana said.

Ren nodded. “Once this is all over, you can still help us. Maybe not in the sense of taking on palaces in another dimension, but in other ways. I know you’ve been a big help to me ever since I came here.”

Morgana giggled. “You keep saying that.”

“When it stops being true, I’ll stop saying it,” Ren replied. They shared a laugh. “I think you’re gonna be alright.”

Morgana smiled. “Yeah.”

Magician-Morgana: Rank 7

“Well, we have our work cut out for us tomorrow,” Ren said. “Goodnight Morgana.”

“Goodnight,” Morgana replied. They were both soon asleep.

Meanwhile, Hiroki was again outside of Okumura Foods HQ wearing a poncho to hide his identity. This time, he wasn’t overwhelmed. He was more confident than he’d ever been. In his hand was a stone. He threw it through a window.

When the security guards came to investigate, he ran. They tried following him, but he lost them. As he was hiding, he took out a remote. On a nearby roof, a drone activated. Hiroki took out his phone to monitor the drone, and it quietly descended into the building through the hole the stone made.

From there, it discreetly made its way to the nearest computer, landing on top of it. Hiroki played around with a different lever, which activated a mechanical arm attached to the drone. It picked up a flash drive that had been loaded on as well, and plugged it into the computer. Hiroki monitored the progress. The drive was gathering information, and when it finished, the arm took it out of the computer.

The security guards came back in and discussed what they should do. Hiroki waited before making any further moves with the drone. When they decided to file a report, the guards went to their office, giving Hiroki enough wiggle room to escort the drone out.

One his way home, he looked at the flash drive and chuckled. “Success.” He gripped it tightly. “Don’t worry Haru. You’ll soon be safe from them.” He tucked the drive into his pocket. He walked home with a smile on his face and a spring in his step.

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