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ganon-binary · 3 years

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Overwatch Heroes Ranking & Honest Opinions part 3

Part 3 of my ranking and opinions of the playable characters of Overwatch. Last one started a bit negatively but i'll make up for it with this one. Parts 1, 2 and 4.

Mako "Roadhog" Rutledge: 8/10

A great contrast to his best buddy, Junkrat. Rich backstory and great personality, He is the grumpy and cool uncle of this group. Really interested to see what they decide to do with his story, especially if the Junker Queen will actually be in the game. His design is very iconic, from the scary hog mask to his cute pig tattoo. He is my least favorite character gameplay wise, but i'll excuse that bc he is so cool. 8/10, i should eat less pork.

Siebren "Sigma" de Kuiper: 3/10

I'll admit to first liking his origin story, which was beautifully produced. Cosmic horror was something that we didn't have in Overwatch yet so his reveal was super exciting. However as a character, Sigma's design is so problematic. Stigmatizing mentally ill people in 2019 was so low. I think they will "fix" his character in OW2 due to backlash so I'll be looking forward to that. Personality wise, he seems like a lovely man, but I am not happy with his personality in his origin story video. Big scary mentally ill villain? Ugh. In game he can be a bit frustrating. 3/10, put those feet away.

Jack "Soldier: 76" Morrison: 6-/10

He is the generic vigilante character. I really like his backstory involving Ana and Gabriel, those 3 have a really good dynamic. Personality wise he is so generic but i think that was the point? Oh and he is gay i guess.. they could have explored that a bit more even though it's not a really big and important part of his character. Kinda bland in the game, i never play him. 6-/10, good on you, gramps.

Sombra: 9+/10

I don't like her fanon portrayal. I get that she has really funny lines but can we stop acting like she is a gremlin and not an actual threat. I really like her personality and her snarky and belittling comments, she clearly sees herself so much superior than everyone else. She is unapologetically a bastard. That being said, I truly think she cares for other people, maybe not many people, but still some people. Was not a big fan of her "portrayal in the "Searching" comic. I really love her OW1 design, a stealth character being covered in neon LED lights is so funny. Not that big of a fan of her OW2 design though. She is my 3rd most played character and i love her kit, and i am anxiously waiting for her rework. 9+/10, never change you magnificent bastard

Satya "Symmetra" Vaswani: 10/10

This character is so important to me, and i love her a lot. She is the character that got me into Overwatch, so she kinda changed my life lmao. She is such a multi dimensional character and i am eagerly awaiting for her storyline in OW2. She is a really beautiful character, but i think her design could be improved in OW2. She is my 2nd most played character and my controversial opinion is that she deserves another rework, she feels so clunky to play compared to other characters. 10/10, you deserve way more love.

Torbjörn Lindholm: 8/10

The meme man himself, Torbjörn is a surprisingly well written character. Being one of the creators of the omnics, his viewpoint of this whole charade is super interesting. He is a hilarious and nasty old man, with the most memeable voice lines in the game. His OW2 design has such nordic dad vibes, i appreciate it a lot. I almost never play him, but he is very fun. 8/10, don't get caught with your beard in the letterbox.

Lena "Tracer" Oxton: 7/10

Culturally a very iconic character, seeing a lesbian character being the poster girl for one of the biggest games in the world was so cool. She is such a energetic ray of sunshine. She just makes me happy. Really dig her design, they really nailed her vibe. The "London Calling" comics were a waste of comics imo. Nothing else to say, she is funky in and out of the game. 7/10, her death screams sound like Link from The Legend Of Zelda.

Amélie "Widowmaker" Lacroix: 9+/10

Widowmaker really is held back by being called "emotionless", because she is not. Detached of her sentiment is much more accurate way of describing her. She is a really proud and boastful lady with an ego the size of Reinhardt. In my opinion her design fits her, because she is so prideful and she definitely thinks herself as the sexiest being in the world. Nobody can tell her shit. Really interested to see what they will do with her in OW2, but personally i don't think she needs a redemption. She is my most played character with almost 500 hours for her. 9+/10, je ne parle pas français.

Winston: 8/10

A scientist. Everyone loves Winston Overwatch. He is such a really cool dude and he really pulls you into the story in every animated short he is in. Can't believe his siblings killed his dad.. that's brutal, man. I never play him. 8/10, no monkey business.

Hammond "Wrecking Ball": 0/10

Literally such a pointless character, he doesn't need to exist. They could have released Sojourn instead of him. Convinced the only reason he exists is because of the plushies. I hope he gets eaten by a snake in OW2. He is so annoying in the game and i love ruining people's day who play him by playing Sombra. 0/10, go away, snake food.

#overwatch #overwatch 2 #roadhog #sigma #soldier: 76 #sombra #symmetra #torbjörn #widowmaker #winston #wrecking ball

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justjessame · 3 years

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Babysitting Butcher Chapter 36

I have taken great pride over the years in my cleverness. Hell, I took tremendous fucking pride in my intelligence in getting one over on Homelander right before my little trip to the women’s clinic to take care of his invader spawn. That’s why having this nugget of horrifying reality slip through my fingertips, my brain matter, and my very marrow so fucking difficult to process.

I’d been in their clutches this entire time. Right in the lap of their power, where they could have crushed me, but thinking on it, that wouldn’t do. Mallory had stood in this room, or the room I’d first been treated in and warned, no threatened the lot of them with the importance of my health, hadn’t she? They couldn’t have taken a chance, not the scientists (not that I believed any of them had the authority to make that decision), and Edgar was trying to rehabilitate the image of Vought International. If they didn’t want to harm me, then-

My eyes shut, tight against the steady beeping that belied the upheaval inside of me, as I swallowed down another round of harsh truths. Everyone knew how Billy felt about supes now, it wasn’t as though he wouldn’t tell anyone who asked, so someone in this twisted company probably hoped that my fear would bear fruit. If Billy Butcher killed me, then not only would it ruin him, proving once and for all that he was just as dangerous as believed, but the Office would be shuttered as a failure. The contingency, since a backup plan is always needed where humans are concerned, would be to utilize the free reign that comes when staffing becomes run thinner. I’d never fully staffed, it hadn’t seemed necessary. I managed to cover more tasks than most, Billy aided several areas, and so on and so forth. Knock me out, even with the bit that I was doing from ‘home’, and a wiggle space was created for someone or someones to dig in and push forward. Surveillance. Or monitoring in person.

I made a truly rookie mistake. Cockiness, a belief in my own superior intelligence and abilities, and it got us here. Now how to fix it?

The first on my list of things to accomplish toward the goal of getting things back on track with Billy and me in the pilot and copilot seats would be to have a confidential sit down with him, alone and unobserved. Paranoia thy name is Dr. Veronica Taylor.

“Ronnie?” Billy was staring at me like he thought I might bolt, and I was considering it, honestly. “Love, you alright?” I nodded, picking up my fork and absently eating while trying to think of where we could go off to, how I could find a way to let him know what I’d realized.

“I’m fine,” I smiled, or at least I tried to. From the look that Billy was giving me, I had doubts that it was convincing. “Just can’t wait to get out of here and have you all to myself.” Truer words. Just not in the sense that he might think. “In fact, Mr. Butcher, spring me from this joint, and maybe I’ll show you a preview.” His smirk grew to a full blown smile and I felt my heart speed up in response, the entire building becoming privy to how this man made me feel.

“Let me see what I can do, Veronica.” A soft kiss and he rushed off, leaving me to my own rushing thoughts of how to find a way to tell him just how fucked up the entire situation really was.

First of all, I knew that Vought could and did implant chips into certain supes (recall Starlight’s removal of hers). If they had the capabilities to GPS their supes, what else could they chip them for? Could they implant audio/video chips? I racked my brain for any CIA tech knowledge of gadgets and gizmos that might have crossed my desk recently, but then again, I was out of the office for an extended period of time now.

Even if they ONLY implanted a GPS tracker ON ME, that didn’t mean they couldn’t use it to access the surveillance video of nearby equipment. Look, paranoia comes from knowledge, and I work for the CIA. We’re not called the Central INTELLIGENCE Agency for nothing, people.

I was worried about the antidote, too. What if it wasn’t actually a cure? What if it was another fucking variant? Or hell, what if it was just regular fucking Compound V, forcing my fucking body into regular old fucking supe soup? Damn it, I fucking was in KNOTS.

Billy came back after work, after a day filled with more tests, more questions about how I felt. More “are you feeling warm”? More “is your abdomen tender”? And more times for me to actually feel like a fucking spy than any other time in my entire fucking existence.

“There you are,” his voice, the only fucking voice I fucking cared to hear finally. “Good news, love,” I looked up from the book I’d been hiding behind for what seemed like fucking hours. “Not only can I spring you for the day tomorrow, but the entire weekend-”

I tossed the book and would have jumped into his arms, but I was still wearing my catheter. Fuck. “Back to our house?” I was excited, but then I stopped myself. Vought had had over a month to gain access to our house. Freedom to install whatever they wanted inside our home in order to keep track of me, Billy, our private lives and our progress at work and- I was still missing something, but what?! I felt like screaming, but instead I smiled.

“Actually, I thought I’d spoil my girl with a weekend away,” I let him pull me into his chest, snuggling into the warmth of him, his broadness, his strength. “Away from doctors and needles, and beeping, and noise and questions.” Was I imagining the undertone in his voice? The undercurrent of suspicion, that paranoia that I knew existed within him. Maybe the old Billy Butcher wasn’t completely scrubbed clean after all. “Gonna surprise you, Ronnie,” he pulled back, eyes twinkling, and with a wink and a swat on my behind, he told me to grab only my purse, since he had a bag ready for me in the car.

He meant a different car from his or mine. Completely different. Not even a company car. And that meant I was right, because we left Vought in HIS car, met Frenchie and Kimiko in this unmarked blah of a car, and then drove off in the opposite direction from where we’d gone to see the house we wanted to buy.

I was still afraid to speak, even with my purse left behind in his car. Billy’s hand reached for mine, and I sighed when our skin touched. “It’s safe, Ronnie.”

“How can you be sure?” I muttered, jaw tense. Unsure, so damn unsure that I wasn’t a ticking time bomb. For all I knew, we knew, the cleanser I was told to use on the catheter was a fucking solution to keep the kaboom at bay. “How can we be sure I’m not fucking bugged, or chipped, or fucking-”

“Trust me?” I glanced at him to see that he was darting looks my way. Nodding to let him know that I most certainly did trust him, he smirked. “I’m taking you to some people that Mallory found to have a peek see. She’s had some doubts for awhile now, but it takes time, Ronnie.” I sighed, still tense. “Told you, I won’t lose you.”

“How far are we going?” I wanted to know how long I had to sit on pins and needles.

He kept his eyes on the road, but his hand stayed with mine. “Not far, ever been to Mallory’s house?” I shook my head and he took note out of the corner of his eye. “She don’t give out many invites, so that don’t surprise me. This is one of her hideaways. She don’t count it as her home, so she deemed it a safe spot. Don’t think it’s in her name even. She’ll meet us there, not even Frenchie or the others know where it is, just in case.”

In case I was chipped, I thought, so the collateral damage was minimal. “What if-”

“The clean up crew is on standby.” His voice was clipped, and I knew he hoped that if push came to shove, that the clean up crew was going to be used simply to clean up HIS mess, not Vought’s.

The “house” we went to was glass and concrete. Reminded me more of our office complex tucked into a shale hillside than it did a home or even a safe house. Not that it really mattered since I was simply there for the damn doctors and science nerds to poke and prod at me to see if I was fucked up or fucked over.

I was happy that Mallory didn’t treat me like an invalid, that was a saving grace. She didn’t tisk at me, or cluck her tongue and tell me how sorry she was that this was happening. Instead she asked what I thought the plan of attack could be. We discussed things as though my body were merely a secondary object, even as I was worked over.

One scientist/doctor took the cleansing fluid for a sample, another took a sample from the catheter itself. Bloodwork, because of course, was taken. My vitals, because what day would be completely without me hearing my heartbeat in surround sound along with internal and external temperatures. On and on, but no one asked me the usual questions, or the ones that Vought asked, so I started to puzzle out those questions.

Why would they focus on those particular questions?

First, how was I feeling today? OK that one was standard regardless of where someone was a patient. Skip that one. Second, was I feeling warm? That one was slightly more focused. Given the fact that my first NOTICEABLE symptom of my pregnancy was the steaming skin, and my temperature rising when Billy was anywhere near me, or when I was pissed off. OK, but once the tiny intruder was yanked and scraped out of me, the regulation it afforded me left as well, causing that symptom to go off the rails. When they asked that in the early days, it made sense, if I was feeling warmer it would mean that the blood cleansing wasn’t working and holy shit balls clear the room, right? But once I was doing better with the ‘antidote’? Why was it so fucking shocking then? If it’s a fix, even if it’s a trial period, they were asking more fucking often-

“Hey, doctors?” Everyone stopped what they were doing and stared down at me because I was prone AGAIN. “What are my internal and external temperatures?” They noted them and they were both normal. “Take them again, please.” I waited, and considered how my nerves felt and how I wasn’t just anxious but irritated. They told me it had risen ten degrees and I groaned. Fuck. “Yeah, not a fucking antidote.” Shit. “Rush the test on the cleanser, would you?” I heard the movement and the muttering.”

“Ronnie?” It was Mallory, and I felt Billy’s hand on my cheek. “What’s going on, precisely?”

“They always ask the same questions.” I kept my eyes closed. Trying to gather my wits, and calm myself, since I was now my best fucking regulator. “First question is a throwaway, probably habit or hell for all I know it’s meant to make me think as much. Second one is ALWAYS about how warm I feel. Always. Even after-”

“They gave you the ‘cure’.” Billy’s voice was a hiss. “Those fucking cunts.”

“Are there other questions?” Mallory sounded sick, and I understood because I felt sick.

I nodded, feeling like the bile was rushing up. “Just one more. ‘Do I feel any tenderness in my abdomen?’” I could FEEL both of them staring at the catheter embedded in my abdomen. “I thought it was because that’s where I-”

“Where you hemorrhaged,” Billy whispered, his hand touching mine gently. “I signed for them to put that in you,” his voice sounded tortured and for a beat I had to hand it to Vought, they did something that even Homelander hadn’t managed to do. They’d hit Billy lower than even that caped fucker.

The cleanser solution, what I’d taken as a benign solution to flush out a catheter whose redundancy would soon be made obsolete, had a tiny added substance that seemed to have a bit of my least favorite supe included. Yes, you read that right, I’d been flushing my catheter out with a wee bit of Homelander swimmers. I don’t even want to try to understand the genetic logic of that, and I nearly threw up when they attempted to explain it.

Billy punched a fucking wall. I envied him that, since I couldn’t actually get fucking pissed enough to do that, or I’d probably blow up and kill us all.

The antidote was clearly an antidon’t. It didn’t have Compound V, from what the doctors could see, what the determined was that with the TINY bit of Homelander leavings that they were adding into the solution to clean the catheter, they hoped to delay the inevitable, which was basically my body shutting down rather than going POP. Yes, Vought fully expected me to die, but they seemed intent on me dying in their clinic as a terrible side effect of a horrible mistake gone wrong. Sort of bandaid a bullet wound situation.

Another wall got a rather forceful introduction to Billy’s fist and once again, I was envious, but resigned.

Luckily, the doctor who seemed far more relaxed and confident assured me that he was fairly sure that I wasn’t as doomed as Vought hoped. In fact, he offered if he could have more time to study me he felt convinced he could not only remove the problematic substance, but return me to my normal human self.

I caught Mallory’s eye, hoping she would give me a sign that somehow she hadn’t accidentally pulled a fucking psycho from the pile. She smiled and shook her head, so I asked him how precisely were we going to manage this extended visit, since I was pretty fucking sure that Vought had me bagged and tagged to the hilt.

“Simple,” his smile grew as my heart sank. “We remove any chipped bit that might be within your body.”

#Billy Butcher x ofc #the boys #angst #fluff #alternate universe

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cheshiresense · 5 years

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More discord shit. Featuring king of hell!Tsuna, for some reason.

tsuna as the king of hell because nobody else wanted the job, and tsuna nice guy that he is (sometimes) volunteered mukuro travels through his realm six times, and he doesn't have the heart to keep the boy's soul so he doesn't snap the tether mukuro has to lief and lets the boy return to the living every time. it makes him wonder though, what the humans are thinking. he knows they've always been capable of some truly depraved and disgusting acts - he deals with those on a daily basis, but sending children to hell and then dragging them back into the world of the living just to do it all over again is admittedly new.

on mukuro's part, he cannot believe the king of hell looks so normal. also, he's actually nice?? certainly nicer than the Estraneo, and his trips to hell are actually more of a reprieve than the living hell he has to endure when he's alive. tsuna plies him with conversation and hot chocolate and pie and warm bubble baths whenever he shows up, none of which he's ever had the chance to try, and he always resents being dragged back up to the living world when it's time to go. he kind of wants to ask to stay but he doesn't know if the king of hell's goodwill would stretch that far, and he doesn't want to be told no.

but eventually, it gets to be too much. crammed into a cell and strapped to a table and cut open at the scientists' mercy - it all becomes too much, and the sixth time mukuro is dumped in a crackling pit of fire, only to be scooped up a moment later by a long-suffering demon and taken to it's boss, he begs tsuna to let him stay.

tsuna can't just let him though, even if he does feel sympathetic for the boy. only demons and damned souls can stay in hell, and mukuro is neither. tsuna's influence prevents hell from touching mukuro's soul, but if he stays long-term, it'll eventually twist even him. the boy's also ten; he's barely even lived, and hell very rarely damns the souls of children, especially when they have committed no crimes.

but tsuna's also gotten fond of this boy, who keeps his chin up and smirks through everything, even when his soul-body is covered in surgical cuts and stitches and scars, and his right eye won't stop bleeding, who doesn't flinch at the sight of blood or the sound of distant screams, and isn't afraid of tsuna. so tsuna offers him a bargain instead, "i'll help you destroy the people holding you captive and give you the power to come and go from hell anytime you want; in exchange, for however many years you live after you are free, you will come and stay in hell for an equal amount of time once you die. consider it a future job contract. you can be my assistant."

for a moment, they both eye the towering paperwork creaking on a separate desk in tsuna's office.

"I'd rather be a reaper demon," mukuro counters, because even as a technical lab baby, he wasn't born yesterday.

the king of hell shoots him a dirty look. "to be decided."

and mukuro agrees because this is a better deal than he ever thought he would have. his lot in life might not be good, and he would've given it up in a heartbeat if that meant he could stay with tsuna, but he wouldn't mind living a little longer either if tsuna is giving him the opportunity to see the world (and maybe set it on fire a little).

fast forward estraneo being burned to the ground with extreme prejudice, mukuro gains two minion-friends, and then he decides why not get started on his job a little early? he'll even do it pro bono, and he's spent enough times with both tsuna and some of tsuna's demons to know what to look for - the really nasty pieces of scum hidden in human society, destined for a rack in hell the moment they die, and even better - it'll double as revenge against the mafia for mukuro.

(tsuna moans about troublesome brats and rebellious teenage stages and extra paperwork whenever mukuro visits with half a dozen or so damned souls in tow. but he also gives mukuro cookies, and the demons come by to pet mukuro's hair with razor-sharp claws and toothy coos before dragging their prey off for some fun, so mukuro knows they're not really mad at him.

he learned right and wrong at the devil's feet. tsuna cares very much about that sort of thing - it's one of the reasons why he has so much backlogged paperwork, he never condemns a soul without proper research, just in case an innocent soul accidentally slips through the cracks, and so mukuro has learned to be equally careful when he kills. hell has a criteria for the truly unforgiveable ones, and there are never a shortage of those kind on earth. it's bloody justice in a world filled with people that don't care, and it suits mukuro perfectly.)

of course, eventually, inevitably, he makes a name for himself. he kills one too many mafiosi - all filthy excuses for human beings of course, but some were connected to the most powerful mafia family in europe, and vongola doesn't like people touching what they consider theirs, doubly so when word gets out of mukuro's kill count, his potential as a mist, and even how young he is.

some think him still malleable, if they can break him and tame him, they could make a loyal asset of him. others think him too much trouble, or an affront on their pride, and those just want to kill him.

so it doesn't take long for assassins and hitmen and recruiters alike to be sent out after mukuro. as a rule, if someone tries to kill him, then even if their souls aren't quite as rotten as he usually goes for, they're still fair game for him to take out. tsuna screeches at him for creating extra extra paperwork when he does this but the king of hell can deal.

clashing against so many famiglia-connected hitmen though brings vongola straight to mukuro's attention, and he's been thinking about it for a while because even just some of the rumours about that family are bad enough to deserve eternal damnation, and opposing rumours might say they're an upstanding family now and they don't stand for the truly evil actions, but mukuro knows you don't get to where the vongola is - the most respected is just another way of saying the most feared - without getting your hands dirty.

and if they're actively coming after him now, to make him kneel or kill him, then they deserve everything mukuro's about to rain down on them. so he researches and he digs, and one by one, he pulls their skeletons out from the bloody mountain that their precious throne sits upon. the more he finds out, the more contemptuous he is, and he thinks - for the first time - that just killing them really isn't enough.

it's tsuna who gives him the idea, when mukuro visits just to pace back and forth in his office and rant about vongola.

"well, why don't you give it a try?" he suggests, and when mukuro looks up, it isn't ordinary tsuna, neck-deep in paperwork and sobbing over how much grief mukuro gives him, that's watching him from across the desk. it's the king of hell, eyes full of a fire that reflects the flames in his realm, and a glint of fang in his mouth as a smile - faint and sly and just this side of not-quite-right - curves his lips like the gentlest of poisons in the dark. "you've only killed them so far. why don't you try... giving them their just desserts too?"

mukuro blinks twice at the echo in tsuna's voice and the pitch-black horns and flame-cracked skin that superimposes itself on tsuna's normal human face for a moment, and then he stops pacing and sits down on one of the couches.

nothing about the king of hell has ever frightened him.

"you mean torture?" he ponders that for a moment. he supposes he could try. for all that he's destroyed entire famiglia - estraneo and others like it - he's never actually chained someone up and drawn out their deaths. maybe he's been remiss. although that's definitely going to take some time if he has to do that with every single vongola that makes it onto his hit list.

but tsuna rolls his eyes. "you know we don't just physically torture people in hell all day long, right?" he smiles again, that same strange twist of his mouth that makes his face flicker with something eldritch for just a fraction of a second, that turns his brown hair into a crown of flame and his deceptively naive face into a thing of teeth and hunger and neverending darkness. "for some, physical pain is not the worst thing they can suffer. tell me mukuro," his smile widens. "how do you topple a king?"

and mukuro gets it. he's always been a quick study.

to topple a king, one must first destroy their kingdom. lay waste to everything they’ve built and everything they rule over. a king without prestige or place or people is no longer a king at all.

reduce them to nothing, and then bury them.

mukuro starts with vongola's allies. over the years, the past centuries, since their inception and particularly after secondo began his reign, they've done some nasty shit to people and then covered it up later when alliance proved to be more beneficial than continued enmity. so mukuro starts with those particular skeletons, leaks them to the families who would care more about such insult and betrayal than they would fear vongola, especially when they begin to realize they have allies in this too. the families that vongola have wronged begin to stir, restless, outraged, resentful, bitter, and for a long time, vongola is too arrogant and self-assured in their own power and superiority to even notice.

when they finally do notice, their upper echelon are slow to action, arguing over what to do, and then too quick to stamp out the dissent using brute force instead of diplomacy and apology.

a king does not bow. that will be their downfall.

even vongola can't stamp out all their upset allies, and for every opposing voice they silence, three more crop up in its place, because at this point, the whole underworld is watching. the allied families vongola never wronged wonder if they could be next, if they could be discarded just as easily. and vongola's enemies are even quicker to leap on this golden opportunity to sow further dissent among their ranks.

war is inevitable. tempers snap, ultimatums are thrown down, and vongola still does not bow. perhaps they do not know how anymore. armies gather, flames are lit, and the underworld holds its breath for that final spark to this powder keg.

mukuro is snacking on dango in tsuna's office once more when War herself sweeps in, double swords at her waist, dressed to the nines and prepared for battle, looking positively chipper. she beams at mukuro, smacks a kiss that smells of fresh blood to mukuro's forehead, before sweeping back out again with a cheery "best crack those gates open, milord. the streets will be red by sunrise."

tsuna heaves a sigh and mutters about traffic problems, but he gets up to go unlock the gates. mukuro accompanies him.

"souls pour in in times of war," tsuna complains as they travel up the spiraling staircases that lead to the surface of hell. "this is going to give me-"

"-so much paperwork, yes," mukuro finishes brightly. "how dreadful."

he gets tossed off the stairs for that. luckily, a winged demon catches him and politely deposits him only a floor down from where tsuna is scowling at him.

"consider your paid vacation cancelled!" the king of hell hollers after his minion.

mukuro laughs. it's a rare sound, and it draws tsuna's attention immediately. the king of hell studies him for a moment before his features soften, and he waits for mukuro to catch up before continuing on.

for his part, mukuro does not think about where he would be if he had never met the king of hell. it does not matter. this is his life now, in all its chaotic bloody glory, with a ruler and his legions at his back, supporting him and urging him on. it's not the life he once thought he would have, when he thought about it at all, the what if i get out one day that used to plague him when he was curled up in a corner of his cage. but he has no complaints with his lot in life, and if ten years with the Estraneo was what he had to pay for this opportunity, then, well, one day, he might even visit his father in his little corner of hell where he's strapped to a lab table and cut open again and again and again.

he was the one who killed mukuro that very first time, after all. it's only polite to say thank-you.

#khr #sawada tsunayoshi #rokudo mukuro #headcanon #myscrap #when your first friend is the king of hell verse

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perspective-series · 5 years

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Exposed Perspective (7)

By: @arc852 and @hiddendreamer67

Warnings: Guilt, fear, panic, being trapped, people being used/treated like test subjects and injury.

THIS IS THE THIRD STORY IN A TRILOGY. READ “A Third Perspective” AND “Switched Perspectives” FOR THIS TO MAKE SENSE!

(Check the reblog for the links to the previous chapters and the TWO prequels!)

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“Fascinating.” Dee breathed, staring down through the lens as he turned the knobs this way and that. “Oh, simply marvelous!” It was in this tedious fashion he continued, inspecting every inch of Virgil’s hair first. As he moved onto the blood slide, a pounding at the door startled the professor so much that he nearly dropped it entirely.

Virgil jumped, startled at the sudden sound. Patton, too, jumped awake and both looked at each other as they recognized the sound. They grinned, it had to be their humans!

“Be careful!” Dee yelled to the other side of the door, quite irritated by the interruption that had nearly destroyed his progress. Of course, he was sure it was just those meddling kids again.

“Dr. Dee?” A voice that was most certainly not one of the previous students made the dean pale. “May we come in?”

The borrowers’ smiles fell. That wasn’t Logan, Roman, or Thomas’ voice. They looked at each other with panic.

“Oh, ah, not right now!” Dee hurried to explain, already attempting to push the table closer to the door. “I am quite preoccupied at the moment and unable to open the door-” Before he was able to succeed, the door creaked open, revealing four figures on the other side.

“Well, it’s a good thing I have a key myself, then.” Dr. Picani noted, flanked by three friendly faces who looked ready to murder the dean. Dee gulped.

The borrowers’ panic left as soon as they saw their three friends. “Guys!” They both shouted at the same time, though Patton’s shout came out a little quieter as he was still a bit dizzy. The fourth human with them threw them off but if he was willing to help them out then they couldn’t complain.

“Virgil!” “Patton!” All three students rushed over to the cage, relief flooding their features as they completely ignored Picani’s startled looks. Dee tried to step in front of them briefly, only for Roman to promptly punch him in the nose. The dean groaned, falling to the ground and clutching his face.

“Roman!” Picani gasped, shocked at his behavior.

“Sorry professor,” Roman said, not at all sounding sorry as he didn’t even look over his shoulder before joining the others.

“Are you alright?” Logan asked worriedly, practiced hands unlocking the cage.

“We are now,” Virgil said as he grinned up at Logan and helped Patton up, Patton swayed on his feet and Virgil winced. “But Patton might need some help. Dee took a lot of blood from him.” Patton just nodded.

Logan only nodded, not trusting himself to speak as he carefully scooped up Patton.

Roman stepped forwards next, putting a hand out for Virgil.

Virgil climbed on readily and happily, settling down in the center of Roman’s palm. “I am so glad you guys are here.” Virgil felt as though he could cry.

Patton just barely registered he was being held now and looked up at Logan with a tired smile. “Hi, Logan.” Patton greeted, his words slightly slurred.

“Hi Patton,” Logan said softly, holding Patton close to his chest.

“...what happened to your hair?” Roman raised an eyebrow as he pulled Virgil out.

“Ugh, he happened.” Virgil pointed to Dee, who was still on the floor, with one hand as the other went to where his hair was cut. Virgil grinned though. “Nice punch by the way.”

“Thank you,” Roman said, looking pleased with himself despite the fact his knuckles were bruised.

“How dare you.” Dee snarled, getting to his feet by clutching the edge of the table. “You come in here, defile my work, invade my sacred zone-!”

“I think that’s our cue to leave,” Thomas commented, ducking around Dee towards the door. The other two followed, both clutching their borrowers possessively.

“Hold on a moment.” Picani put out an arm, stopping them all in their tracks. His eyes lingered on the tiny people. “I think you all still have a lot of explaining to do.”

Virgil flinched, suddenly remembering the fourth human that had come in with all of them. He grit his teeth. He was tired of all these humans stopping him from leaving. He just wanted to go home. “Alright, fine.” Virgil surprised himself by speaking. “He kidnapped us and tried to run experiments on us while completely ignoring the fact that we are sentient beings with feelings. End of story, now let us go home already!”

“How could you do such a thing?” Thomas turned to Dee, looking distraught. He still couldn’t believe a human was capable of such malice.

“Thieves!” Dee protested. “Liars, hooligans, the lot of them.”

“Ah...perhaps this would be a good time for a more...civil discussion.” Picani took a moment to look sternly at Roman, who didn’t even look sheepish.

“It’s not my fault his face appeared so punchable, professor.” Roman shrugged. As Picani’s gaze grew harsher, Roman had the good sense to duck his head and at least attempt to look repentant.

“Upstairs, my office, all of you.” Picani paused, looking at Logan. “It seems your claims were well-founded after all.”

The students began to follow Picani upstairs, as did a begrudging Dee. Both Logan and Roman kept him at a safe distance, keeping an eye on their respective borrowers.

As the borrowers were brought along, Patton looked up at Logan. Things were getting a little clearer which was nice. “Who’s that? Patton asked Logan, motioning towards the new human.

Virgil, hearing Pat’s question, couldn’t help but wonder the same thing.

“Doctor Picani,” Logan explained in a hushed tone. “He’s the true head of the natural sciences department, which makes him Dee’s superior.”

“Sorry about him.” Roman looked down at Virgil apologetically. “We didn’t want to get any other humans involved, but… we really didn’t have any other options.”

“It’s...okay. He got you to us and us away from Dee. That’s all that matters.” Though Virgil glared at Picani’s head. “As long as he stays on our side...we should be fine.” Virgil wasn’t too keen to trust another person of science though, not so soon anyway.

The group reached Picani’s office, a large room with a wooden oval desk. On one side Dee sat down, and on the other, the students sat. Picani went into an adjacent room, pulling out an ice pack and offering it to Dee before taking a seat next to his fellow professor.

“Thank you, Picani,” Dee said in an almost sickeningly sweet tone, clearly trying to get on his colleague’s good side.

“Dee, do you know why you’re here?” Picani asked, looking concerned.

“You took pity on a few students who wanted to sabotage my work.” Dee shrugged, glaring across the table.

“It’s for a far more serious reason, actually,” Picani explained. “Logan here believes you are guilty of illegal experimentation.”

“Oh, is that so?” Dee leaned over the table towards Logan. “I think he’s just mad because I took his pet away.”

“They’re not. Pets.” Logan growled, his fingers curling protectively around Patton. “How dare you accuse them of such a title when they each possess more humanity than you could ever hope to achieve.”

“Yeah!” Patton exclaimed.

“Also, he literally just admitted to kidnapping us, which I believe is illegal, right?” Virgil said, directing his words at Picani.

“Ah, yes that would be correct.” Picani nodded, still looking a bit thrown off. “I’m sorry, who are you, exactly?”

Virgil sighed. “I’m Virgil and that’s Patton.”

“Hi!” Patton waved.

“Like I said before, we’re the sentient beings Dee kidnapped and planned to experiment on.” Virgil crossed his arms.

“I see.” Picani’s eyebrows furrowed.

“This is all just a big misunderstanding!” Dee protested, leaning back to look over at Picani pleadingly. “Surely you can understand a single mistake in my long history of beneficial research to this institution.”

“One mistake, huh?” Roman scoffed.

“I have in my possession files indicating over two decades’ worth of ‘mistakes’,” Logan explained, adjusting his glasses. “Countless violations of the human code of ethics throughout your means of research that you so tactfully hide in your papers yet fail to hide in the video evidence you’ve accumulated of every interaction.”

Dee paled. “How did you…?”

“I have a certain interest in computer hacking,” Logan smirked. “Consider this payback for all your cruel grading these last few weeks. Which, coincidentally, is biased and also illegal.”

Indeed, ever since Dee had turned on Logan the biology student had set to work digging up dirt on his foul professor in the hopes of having the faculty member removed from the institution. It seemed his hard work was finally paying off.

“Logan sent me the files and the evidence speaks for itself.” Picani shook his head sadly. “I wanted to give you the chance to share your side of the story before I take this case to the board of trustees.”

Dee looked across the table, eyeing the group with a certain amount of scrutiny. “So it seems I’ve finally met my match…” He chuckled softly.

“Heck yeah, you did! You won’t be bothering us anymore!” Virgil yelled at Dee and smirked smugly.

Patton, who was slowly but surely getting less dizzy, grinned. That was definitely a nice thought. Not having to deal with Dee anymore.

“Dee, this is no laughing matter,” Picani explained sternly. “It’s very possible that you will go to jail for this.”

“Oh, most certainly.” Dee looked almost bored, pulling out his phone with his free hand.

“...what are you doing?” Thomas asked, confused. The professor didn’t answer.

“Hold this, boy.” Dee tossed the ice pack at Thomas who caught it with a startled yelp. Now free to use both hands, Dee typed twice as quickly.

“What tricks are you playing, villain?” Roman sneered, leaning over the table to try and view Dee’s phone.

“All scientists are entitled to their secrets.” Dee looked meaningfully at Logan. “Of course, given the fact you’ve ruined me, I have no need for secret-keeping anymore.”

“I’m not sure I follow.” Logan frowned. He didn’t like being unsure.

“Aaaand send.” Dee hit one final button, repocketing his phone with a smirk. There was a quiet ping, and Picani pulled out his own phone.

Virgil’s eyebrows furrowed and he looked between Dee and then at Picani’s phone before his head snapped to Dee once more in sudden realization. “...You didn’t.” Virgil said, voice barely above a whisper, not wanting to believe it had actually happened.

Patton was still confused. “Did what?” Why was Virgil looking so pale?

“One mass email sent out to every faculty member of the college of natural sciences.” Dee held up a single finger, looking pleased with himself.

“Dee, why...why would you send this?” Picani frowned at the email’s contents. “This is just your laboratory recording from earlier today. All it does is prove your guilt.”

“Oh, it does far more than that.” Dee chuckled darkly.

“...oh no.” Logan paled, catching on as well.

“Oh yes.” Dee grinned, leaning over and addressing the borrowers directly. “Guess who’s not a secret anymore.”

#gt #Giant/tiny #thomas sanders #sanders sides #infinitesimal!sides #au #borrowers #borrower!patton #borrower!virgil #human!deceit #human!roman #human!logan #human!picani #character!thomas #platonic #lamp #exposed perspective #part 7

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chaniters · 5 years

Text

MOTHER’S DAUGHTER

________________________________ Sorry about the long delay, writing comes and goes for me and last time it went away for quite a while. I’m trying to get back into the mood and finish amazing @kruk-art‘s Awan Cormac fic! It’s been a long time so here are the previous chapters.

1 https://chaniters.tumblr.com/post/185591914314/only-human

2 https://chaniters.tumblr.com/post/185662034909/crisis-control

3 https://chaniters.tumblr.com/post/185824503359/reaper

4 https://chaniters.tumblr.com/post/186475284144/sunken-town

Hope you like this, and as always there might be spoilers for Fallen Hero ahead.

Added a new villain in this.

_________________________________

“Seriously?”

“This tunnel’s the best way to get inside unseen” Elyise answers.

“Best way to get crushed to death you mean!“

“The other side is safe” she replies as her powers methodically remove the debris pieces blocking the tunnel

“You know there’s not a single safe thing in here!” you say amazed that it’s you concerned about safety for once.

“Well we could always go back to the main entrance and knock,” she says smiling.

That’s a no-go. You took a brief peek at the facility, and the place is swarming with guards and cameras. Someone took the time and money necessary to restore most of the ruin and turn it to a death trap to infiltrators such as yourselves.

“This is a bad idea” you concede walking trough.

“Well it’s the only idea”

“Not sure if suicidal ideas count”

“Oh, they totally count believe me”

You have to turn back the night vision mode since the way ahead is pitch black. The tunnel Reaper’s console detected goes through several sections of different collapsed buildings. As you advance you go trough a ruined subway tunnel, then to a cracked apartment building corridor, then a set of bent scaffoldings on top of a seemingly bottomless pit and finally a collapsed staircase.

Advance is slow, as the way is littered by all manner of obstacles, random debris, furniture, and even some rusted cars. Elyise goes on ahead since her powers can clear the way.

“So how did you get involved in this mess?” you ask breaking the silence

“What do you mean?” she says

“You must have been following a different lead into the kidnappings?”

“Oh. Yeah, I have” She nods

“...so?”

“So what?”

“You’re not going to tell me?”

“Alright, hmm... Let’s just say I'm mostly interested in finding the villain behind this”

“Void or Psycopathor?” you ask

“Neither. Those two don’t normally assault hospitals for a living. They’re working for someone”

“And you know who that is?

Elyise doesn’t answer, focused on clearing out a broken wall. You have to get into it and aid, pulling some rocks by hand to create a passage wide enough to come through.

The other side seems to be a store-room, pitch black, but relatively clean. Several boxes are piled up against a wall, bearing logos of pharmaceutical companies.

“We’re in” she states, hopping trough the crack and landing on her feet. You follow closely, studying the room.

“Ah, there she is” she says pointing to a graffiti on one of the walls. IT looks like a masked nun holding both hands together in prayer, in red paint. Some melted remains of candles lying on the floor next to it.

“What.. is that?” you say walking closer.

She takes a few seconds to answer that.

“Have you ever heard about… Mother?”

“Mother Superior you mean?” suddenly remembering the urban legend

“Same one,” she says walking on

“Yes, I’ve heard about her. Mostly that she doesn’t exist.”

“She exists,” she says pointing at the graffiti, which on closer inspection looks more like an improvised shrine ”And I’ve been after her for a very, very long time”

You struggle to keep up her phase as she turns and walks avoiding piles of boxes towards the door

“Alright. Let’s say she’s real. They say she has the power to save people from hero drug secondary effects. That she’s created of a lot of villains. And that her costume looks sort of like a nun.”

“You got two of those right”

“Which ones?”

“Her outfit does look like a nun. And she’s generated a lot of villains. But she doesn’t have powers”

“What? So how does she do it?”

“She’s a scientist. And she’s figured out how to calculate the odds anyone has for surviving hero drugs. All she does is find people with good chances and use them, then pretend she can do the same for everyone else ”

“If she can do that, why aren’t the pharmaceuticals doing it too?”

“What makes you think they aren’t? They just can’t talk about it, because hero-drugs are illegal outside labs and the military, and no one can be 100% accurate either.”

“Alright… so what is she to you?”

“It’s personal”

“So It’s all about her then? That’s why you contacted Reaper?”

“That, and Reaper is one of the few people who actually knew her”

“What? How?”

She sighs looking at you. “You ask a lot of questions, you know?”

“Well, I like to know what I'm up against”

“Alright fine. She’s been active since the ’70s. She worked on the original drug, became the pharmaceutical’s scapegoat and then pariah in the scientific community. So she went into the black market, providing aid to anyone wanting to take the drugs. Claimed she wanted to atone and end all hero-drug deaths with her illegal research. Lots of powerful people saw her as a saviour”

“So when did she meet Reaper then?”

“Rich guy wanting to take hero drugs? What did you think he just bought some in a dark alley? No way. He paid her a small fortune and she tested him in every way possible before he took them.”

You can sense her mind’s holding back something else. But now ‘s not the time to push.

“What’s your interest in this?”

“It’s personal too” you answer drily. They attacked the Hauswald hospital.”

“Oh. I saw those promos. Didn’t think it was more than publicity”

“Well, it is. They do amazing work there. I’m going to rescue those patients.”

“We are going to rescue the patients” she corrects.

“Hold!” you say in a hushed voice pulling her back behind a corner.

“W…” she mumbles before a pair of masked, robed figures, a man and a woman walk through the corridor you were about to go through.

“Hurry up! Mother needs these samples right now” the woman says moving forward as the man struggles to follow carrying several vials of fragile chemical samples

“What are they wearing?” you whisper. Dark robes, hoods, masks, metal necklaces…

“Sorry. When I told you she’s seen as a savior I should have actually said “Big and crazy cult-leader. Wherever she goes these guys follow. I’m not sure how are we going to get close enough to...”

“Hm... that’s going to be the easy part. Take this and follow me” you say before handing her a metal pipe from the floor before rapidly closing the distance towards the two cultists. You know your infiltration techniques well.

………………………………………………

“I think I'm allergic to this fabric” Elyise complains whiles scratching her neck under the stolen robe “And it smells funny too”

“Shush,” you say while scratching your own arm. You’re pretty sure you’re insulated under your nanomesh but somehow you’re feeling itchy as well.

Cultists seem to be wearing their own individual masks, so you and Elyise are just keeping your own costumes under the hoods. Your powers are making up for anyone noticing something odd, and this plan can actually fool the numerous security cameras as you go deeper into the facility. If you had known about these costumes before, you could have just walked through the main door.

Black curtains cover the next tunnel and a couple of guards wearing the powered suits stand at each side. They let you pass as soon as you present the samples they were expecting.

A stair opens up into a huge open room, probably the lunch area for the workers that used to work in the plant. Unlike the rest of the facility, it seems to be pretty much intact. It’s been refurbished as a small amphitheater, with numerous robbed figures attending some sort of event.

You instinctively raise your shields as you notice the giant standing over the improvised stage.

Psycopathor, talking to a few guards. He briefly looks your way but his gaze doesn’t linger. Whatever is going on it hasn’t begun yet and the audience is scattered talking among themselves.

“Let’s split… I think there’s a small bathroom there” she points to a line “I’ll get in and try to contact Reaper again, see if he could call the rangers You see if you can find the hostages?”

“Alright, we meet here in 15’t” you whisper back before walking into the crowd.

Performing a scan with so many people around is awful, but on the bright side, there’s little chance of Psycopathor noticing anything wrong since he must have the same problem. You end up sticking to a corner next to a chatty group after implanting the suggestion that you’re part of their clique.

Only as you wander through the minds of those around is that you begin to understand the scope of this “Cult”. THere’s not only the desperate but also the super-rich. Fanatics and working people looking for some excitement. The disillusioned mix with the optimists in Mother Superior’s cult as they all look up to her to do something that will change the world.

No. Not something. They want her to change their lives. Change them personally. Make them better… make them… the idea reveals itself as you dig deeper...

Boosted. The realization comes as a bucket of cold water. Every single person here hopes that Mother Superior will give them boosted powers without having to take any risks. That somehow she’ll magically make hero-drugs safe and let everyone realize their dreams. They have absolute faith in her plan.

All of their thoughts go in the same direction, and simply following the flow lets you find the mind you’ve been looking for. The cult leader.

“Found them?” the hand on your arm startles you bringing your mind back inside your skull as hard as a rock. “Sorry! Are you ok?”

“Yeah... I'm alright,” you mutter struggling to recover. Now’s not the time for a migraine. “Mother Superior’s behind the stage, and the hostages too. She’s about to start the show”

Mother Superior is behind the curtain on the stage where Psycopathor’s standing. Ready to start the show. The hostages are with her”

“The rangers are in the area but they’re having trouble tracking our location inside the facility and they don’t have Reaper’s tech. There must be some sort of jammer working here. We need to…”

“Everyone, be seated” Psycopathor interrupted her with a commanding voice aimed at the audience.

“This way,” Elyise says pulling you to the side behind a few columns and out of immediate sight as everyone heads for the stands.

The curtain opens, revealing a tall, thin masked figure. It is wearing a powered suit, but unlike the guards, Mother’s power suit looks really advanced. Behind her, in a semi-circle facing the audience are the hostages, tightly secured to rectangular slabs with medical tubes attached to each of them. All of the devices are connected to a central machine at Mother’s right side.

A large table stands by her left, full of… syringes with a blue transparent liquid. You almost choke as you realize what it is.

Hero drug doses. Hundreds, ready to use. You can sense the crowd looking at them as well, in anticipation.

She steps forward, up to Psycopathor. Her suit seems to include a pair of mechanical arms with claws that seems deadly to anyone with skin. A faceless white mask with a golden crown on top of it looks onto the audience. The rest of the armor is covered by an elaborate black dress over it, though it’s layers are still revealed where it’s bare. You can tell high tech from miles away and this is top-notch. She has clearly spent a fortune on it.

She taps something in her mask -possibly activating the mic- and speaks in a clear, warm voice. A distorter is clearly at work.

“My brothers and sisters! Thank you for joining us tonight. I know it is difficult to reach this spot, but it is what the government has reduced us to. Hiding in the shadows, while we struggle to perform the work that they have refused to do for decades. But we never surrender!”

The crowd cheers loudly at that.

“Thank you… thank you” she goes on as the cheering dies out. “Tonight, as was foretold by our precognitive allies, we take the first step towards a new beginning as a species! Yes, my brothers! The time for ascension has come!”

You’re not sure what “Ascension” means but when a madman speaks about it to a room full of fanatics over tables full of hero drugs it sounds really concerning.

“This…” she says motioning to the machine “...is the culmination of three decades of study on one particular problem. How to materialize a boost without risk to human life.” you can sense every single mind enthralled by her words “For a long, like others, I worked in perfecting the drugs themselves. It took me a long time to realize, there is nothing wrong with the chemistry of it. It is not the drugs, but the human body which is at fault. Only now, I have the means to correct this injustice!”

Two women whom you can only assume to be her lab assistants walk on stage and begin operating the device.

“Not every individual exposed to our holy drugs can produce every power. Each strand of DNA is unique and will react differently, we’ve known that for a long time. These individuals…” she now focuses on the hostages to her left “... each of them possesses unique DNA strands that prevent them from developing dozens deadly boost, the kind that would cause immediate death. These others…” she turns to the other half of them “...have each developed antibodies that make them immune to different hero drug reactions that would poison their bodies in a matter of hours. However, individually, none of them stand a chance to be immune to hero-drugs. They just have a better chance than average, that’s all.”

Your mind finally grasps the reason behind Void and Psycopathor’s kidnappings. They weren’t taking boosts at random... they only wanted ones with complete medical records for Mother’s crazy experiment. She’s truly the one behind this all.

“Oh no,” you whisper realizing what she’s about to do. Elyise frowns as Mother Superior’s exposition reaches its high point.

“However, if all of their uniqueness was to be combined into one individual,” she says as she approaches the seat by the central device “... then complete immunity would be achieved.”

“Shit,” Elyise says. She now realizes it too. The crowd has gone completely silent by now.

“You shall all be witness to my ascension. I will drain what I need from them, produce a hybrid DNA infusing their life energy with my own. I will make my body a temple ready to receive the gifts of our greatest evolutionary science! Once I undergo Ascension, I will be Immune to the danger of our sacred Drugs. I will become more than human! I will be an angel from the heavens, able to take on as many powers as I choose to boost myself with… and I will invite everyone here to drink from this chalice after me!”

The crowd erupts in deafening, fanatical cheering of their self-proclaimed savior angel.

“We, are made of light, and today, we all become better! Today, we all shine together! Today, we become gods!” she cries out to her followers.

Psycopathor seems interested as he observes… maybe he’s even considering it as well. Just what the world needs.

“She’s gone completely nuts. We need to stop her long enough for the rangers to get here” you say bringing Elyise back to earth.

“I’ll distract her. You just find a way to show the rangers the way.”

“Distract her? How are you going to…”

But she’s already walking towards Mother Superior, making her way through the crowd.

“You are not a prophet or an angel. You’re no savior! You’re just lying to all of these people! You will only bring death!!”

Mother stops her speech turning towards Elyise as she climbs the stairs onto the stage.

“So you wish to interrupt me, young one. Why don’t you tell us all your name?”

“Gladly!” she answers, removing the robes in a swift motion letting the crowd gasp at the reveal.

The villain studies her up and down.

“Elyise… I should’ve known. You’ve been tracking me and my church for years now.”

“Let me take care of her” Psycopathor says walking forward, ready to take her down right there. Elyise raises an arm preparing her powers, but Mother motions for Psycopathor to stop.

“Stop. Let the fool say her piece. This ought to be interesting” she says with soft laughter, the crowd focused completely on the stage. “I’m attempting to stop the killing and bring a new age of free access to boosted powers to mankind. What right do you have to stop me?”

“You’re insane, and you’re dangerous. You are making everyone believe they can be boosted when you know it’s a lie! You hear me?” she speaks to the crowd ”She’ll just get you all killed!”

The crowd doesn’t respond the way she expects tough, eyeing her with hostility. They’ve bought Mother’s lies for a long time now to trust a complete stranger over her.

“You’re wrong, hero. No matter the lies of the government, I know everyone CAN be boosted, and I’m the one who will make it happen. Lead mankind into its next stage! It is the only logical consequence of human intellect. Artifical, endless, precious evolution”

“You’re killing people! Is that part of your vision too?”

“Necessary sacrifices! So-called Heroes like you have far more blood on your hands, and you will bring no end to the scourge of boosted deaths. Only I can make hero-drugs safe for everyone!”

“Your vision? Don’t make me laugh. You’re just a fake, a liar, and you are… you are...“ her voice breaks.

“And what.? Can’t even finish your own insults?” she says laughing again

“... you are a murderer! A terrible person. And a horrible mother!” Elyise says defiantly, removing her mask.

Mother steps back clearly shocked, and uncomfortable silence lasting for a few seconds. “R.. Riley?!”

Wow. You knew something was up between those two but you didn’t see this coming... A second reveal?! And she’s her daughter? That’s just nuts.

No one stops you as you make your way to the control booth since as far as distractions go, Elyise has gone above and beyond.

“Elyise… Riley… Was that some sort of failed attempt at an anagram?” Mother seems to say finally regaining some momentum. “Nevermind child… It doesn’t really matter. What do you expect to accomplish?”

“You know precisely what I’m doing. I’m ending this madness!”

“Selfish brat! Can’t see beyond yourself and your misguided feelings! You should be helping me! You know the importance of my work! Why I have to do this!”

“The only thing I ever learned from you is that you need to be stopped!”

“Stopped? You can stop me, ingrate! I’ve almost delivered my dream! After tonight, boosted deaths will be a thing of the past!!”

“And how many will you kill for this?” Elyise points at the hostages behind her “How many will it be this time Mother? Have you told them about your OTHER experiments? Have you showed them how many of them failed?!” she says turning to the cultists who look like they’re caught inside some sort of soap-opera dimension. Some do actually seem a bit unsure now.

“All will be will be worth it after tonight!” she says in a confident, reassuring, angelical voice.

“You experimented on me! Your own daughter!”

“I made you BETTER! That is what everyone wants. You just can’t appreciate the gift for what it is! If anything you’re proof of my abilities! You have some of the strongest powers i’ve ever given to anyone!”

You finally reach the tech-booth. As fascinating as this is, you need to actually tell Ortega where you are Elyise’s family reunion will go badly.

“Move,” you say holding a hand over the guy’s shoulder. Your tone is soft, but the mental command is irresistible. He simply stands and joins the others as they watch the scene, Elyise (Or Riley) and Mother throwing barbs at each other.

It takes a few moments to find the Jammer controls and deactivate it, setting up a beacon instead, hoping the rangers will find it. You manage to turn off the alarms too.

You focus on the rest of the systems and realize you can access Mother’s DNA machine from here. The computer shows the status of each of the hostages' slabs, and the patient's life signs are indeed dropping as the process has already begun some time ago. The devices must definitely be extracting something out of them and concentrating it on the central device for Mother’s “Ascension”. You have to be quick, yet you’ve no idea how this. The first few attempts at canceling the extraction fail, as prompts immediately pop up stating that it can’t be done at this stage.

Your fingers race trough the keyboard exploring alternative routes and nothing seems to work until…

You can sense the mind standing behind you. Masked among the crowd, he approached knowing you’d be distracted. Your hand reaches for your targeting scrambler but he is faster, holding your wrist.

“Stay still and don’t do anything stupid. Nobody knows you’re here, at least not yet”

“Void” you grumble.

“Oh, not calling me Nath anymore Sidestep?” he says mockingly.

“Why are you helping madmen? I thought you were in it for the money”

“There is money in this. More than you’d possibly think”

“Well I'm stopping it,” you say ready to rain fists upon his face

“You’re too late. I’ve already done that” he says tapping the screen. Your gaze turns to it, and you can see one of the pods is reporting a critical error… and then another.. And another. All of the patient’s slabs are failing, one after another as the process reaches 50%. “I set a virus to shut it down after half of it is complete so Mother won’t be able to tell the difference. It’s going to be a blast when she fucks up her own DNA up on that machine for all her followers to see.”

“You sabotaged this?” you say incredulously “What’s your angle?”

“So many angles. I’ve been paid by Mother to help keep her base secure, I got paid by Psycopathor to help him on the kidnappings. Also, I'm getting paid by three different lobbies that want Mother’s illegal research into hero-drug immunity to fail publically. Big-Pharma shares would crumble if suddenly anyone could get boosted without risks And I’m keeping a copy of her research too, in case I need a bargaining chip later, so I might get paid again later If I find the right buyer. All in all, it’s been VERY good business to visit in this hell-hole.”

“So you’re betraying everyone at the same time. For an asshole, you’re really consistent. And you’re telling me this why?”

“Because I’m going to be extremely rich. So, rich, I could even afford to forgive you. One last chance. We could be a team again. Join me, we get out of here together, and forget about all that nonsense” he says motioning to the escalating confrontation

Your gaze falls upon Elyise, who’s keeping back a few cultists with a telekinetic shield as Mother commands them to capture her, then back to Void.

“You know I won’t do that”

He sighs and pats your back, which makes you cringe on the seat.

“Suit yourself. When you realize your mistake it’ll be too late... Anyways, I’m leaving. Between you and me, I don’t think Psycopathor will the patient once Mother’s big experiment fails, so if you want to save anyone I'd hurry up,” he says turning and walking away before disappearing as his cloaking device activates.

As he goes out of sight, Psycopathor steps forward, going through Elyise’s telekinetic barrier and punches her chest while Mother simple observes how her own daughter is sent flying into the crowd.

She sits on the central device’s chair, steepling both pairs of hands in a decidedly diabolical gesture.

“Beggin Ascension” she orders her assistants who promptly remove a piece of her armors back, needles coming into her exposed skin while Psycopathor jumps down the stage approaching the fallen hero. The crowd moves out of his way.

“Shitshitshitshit,” you let out before rushing to stand in his way, taking off your hood and robe, not very sure about what to do next as he stares at you with incredulity before giving you a murderous smile.

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

My fanfics: https://chaniters.tumblr.com/post/181692759294/my-fanfiction-for-fallen-hero

DISCLAIMER: This is a work of fan fiction using characters and the setting of the Fallen Hero: Rebirth and upcoming Fallen Hero: Retribution games written by Malin Riden. I do not claim ownership of any characters from the Fallen Hero wold. These stories are a work of my imagination, and I do not ascribe them to the official story canon. These works are intended for entertainment outside the official storyline owned by the author. I am not profiting financially from the creation of these stories, and thank the author for her wonderful game/s, without which these works would not exist.

#fallen hero: rebirth #fallen hero fanfic #spoilers!#Awan Cormac #Psycopathor #Elyise #New villain

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bleedingcoffee42 · 5 years

Text

Eureka AU- Part 10

20k words was a gross underestimation. Maybe this ‘pilot episode’ will be wrapped up in 30k-40k but fuck me for already thinking about making more episodes in this AU and making it a series. Cause I have that time. But the ‘working together as well as married Royai AU’ element is not getting used enough in this fic and that would be a shame to not work with that more.

Click the Eureka AU tag to see prev parts of this serial flash fic.

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While Mustang and Edward where taking what they needed from Comanche's lab, Marcoh went over to have a conversation with Alphonse about the concerns he had with the chelation process. He had caught a few glances from Dr. Knox that said 'You better bring this up before I do' and he appreciated the good doctor allowing him to have the floor to discuss the matter. He was a little apprehensive about disturbing Al as he was controlling the nanites within Hawkeye manually. “Can we talk without it disrupting what you're doing?

“This?” Al said cheerily. “Oh this is actually easy for me. Ever since that little accident a few months ago where I had to transfer my consciousness to the bots to become a suit of armor because my body was in another dimension, I really fell like they're a part of me. Controlling them is second nature at this point.”

Marcoh had just assumed the kid was really into cosplay or prepping for a renaissance festival during that week he was walking around like a knight. There was a lot that happened in these halls that nobody really wanted to question. “If you can make them anything you want, why did you pick that?”

“Well, our Dad used to collect vintage armor when we were kids and had them lining the walls of his study. That's where Ed and I taught ourselves science. That's also where Mom would bring us cookies and tell us how proud she was of us and since we were trying to bring her back I was thinking of those days. She always smiled the most when we were in there. That's how I remembered her. So when I was being deconstructed and I quickly transferred myself to the nanites, I was already thinking about that time and place. It was the first thing I thought of.” Al smiled and then got more serious. “Plus I had to be taller than my brother and that was the biggest human size specimen I had ever seen.”

“If these nanites are a part of you.” Knox finally interjected himself into the conversation. He was blunt and that was what was needed or Marcoh was going to bring out the tea and cookies and start chatting about something else. “What's going to happen when we neutralize them with the chelation process?”

“They're not fragile, they'll just go offline until I can set them in repair mode once they are back in their tank. The chealors will bind to specific metals they are constructed of and disassemble them, they'll be partially broken down but nothing they can't fix themselves. If anything they'll come out of this stronger and with more experience than before.” Al said confidently. “So Dr. Knox, please place a catheter and collection bag if you have not already.”

“Not without Mustang's approval.” Knox said and sat down next to his patient. “First why don't you start by explain to me how you're going to avoid causing renal failure?”

“We're using a biological so that it will take time and collect the metals and deposit them in the kidneys so they can be processed like any other waste.” Al said. “I could program the nanites to do this themselves on a metered basis, but I would have something far more complex than the kidney's are prepared to hand. That's why we're going with chelation because it will transfer control of the process back to a biological competent instead of a mechanical. Nature can work in ways that mental I can't anticipate. “

“The chelators will bind to and break down the metals in the nanites themselves.” Marcoh reiterated.

“I get all that.” Knox said dryly. “What about the virus? The chelation process is going to destroy the carrier for the virus that we're counting on carrying it out of her system. Removing it from the blood stream is only a first step, depositing an active virus in the excretory system is worse.”

“My nanites have mapped the strain we're dealing with. We need an anti-viral to target them.” Al replied.

“There we go.” Knox opened his hands as they came back around to the missed step.

“Oh, yeah.” Al said and bit his lip. “I guess we didn't talk about that. I just assumed Dr. Marcoh was waiting on me to get him the profile of what we're dealing with so he could make something.”

“I was.” Marcoh shrugged. He had just assumed this was the route and he watched Knox mumble about 'fucking researcher' and 'I don't read minds'. “I'm sorry Doctor. We're used to working on our own and even in collaborations we leave each other to work on our respected specialties. I don't think any of us would work with someone without knowing something about what that person could bring to the collaboration and respecting their ability to contribute to the process.”

“Right.” Knox nodded. “I'll sit over here and commiserate with my patient who has to deal with the repercussions of that way of thinking in her job and life every damned day.”

“I guess...” Al thought about it. Knox was just an ordinary doctor, even if he was exemplary. He treated patients using the tests and technology they produced but he was an end game user. “We should be better about explaining things but it's just not how we operate.”

“We honestly wouldn't work well together if we told each other what to do. It usually devolves into a lot of yelling and not much progress.” Marcoh mumbled. “No offense, doctor.”

“None taken.” Knox said. “Just looking out for my patient.”

“I'll get to work.” Marcoh said. “I'll go to my lab. Call me if you need anything.”

As Marcoh left, Ed and Roy returned. Roy saw Marcoh was engrossed in his tablet and on a mission so he asked Al, “Is he off to make the anti-viral?”

“Yes.” Al said sheepishly and Knox mumbled so more. “Can I get your permission to have a collection bag placed?”

“I thought you would have done it already.” Roy replied and Knox threw his hands up, cursed a little and got up to leave. He wasn't sure why he was upset but was pretty sure it had to do with being around scientist who liked to assume a lot of things and did not waste time explaining anything unless they wanted money or supplies. “Did you check to see if there was any blood in the blood bank from Riza? I know she donated a lot and we have at least one bag in storage from her annual physical which is required.”

“Nothing fresh.” Knox said. “It's been a busy few months around here and you can understand why she only donates when there is downtime.”

“I do understand that completely.” Roy nodded. 42 days was still the standard for keeping fresh blood refrigerated. They hadn't pushed those limits yet.

“We should have something frozen but I didn't want to pull that out in case we needed it.” Knox replied. “We have plenty fresh in her blood type.”

“Our storage facility is state of the art.” Roy assured him. “Dr. McDougal's advancements in freezing technology mean we can store frozen plasma way long that the conventional year. In case you have your concerns.”

“Yeah, so I'm told.” Knox replied. “Thankfully I haven't had an occasion to need it since I've worked here. One nice thing about dealing with scientists instead of soldiers.”

Al frowned and the doctor got up to leave and collect his necessary supplies. Mustang looked over at him for an explanation and he quietly said, “I guess the whole anti-viral step wasn't obvious to everyone.”

“It was obvious, you doing something about it was not.” Knox snapped right before he left and tried to slam the door.

“Sorry.” Al called out after him.

“We're all a little stressed.” Roy admitted. Then he went back over to Riza and sat down. He rubbed his eyes and leaned back in the chair. “Once Marcoh makes the anti-viral we'll proceed with the chelation. We'll have to give the anti-viral time to work, but if he's making it it should be extremely efficient. He already knows the Xerxes virus since he made it, it's familiar territory and the hold up will just be the equipment producing what he needs. Time will also give Riza a chance to take her body back from all this and once Knox gets back I think plasma will help. Al, how are you doing?”

“I can keep this up all night.” He assured him.

Roy reached over and took Riza's hand again, weaving his fingers between hers and gently squeezing. “Ed, now that we have a profile of this pathogen we're dealing with, see if you can't do some digging and find out who made it.”

“I should be able to narrow it down by finding out who got an extra dose of Marcoh's Xerxes Vaccine.” Ed said and slid his laptop over. “We are pretty good at monitoring who we distribute our products to, even if the government isn't. Did you want to give me your access to....”

“No.” Roy said and flashed a smile at him. Give Edward Elric his password to gain complete access to everything this facility had on it's servers? Ha! “I'll send you the invoices. “

“We could just ask Dr. Marcoh.” Al said. “He'll know how many he made.”

“I think the good doctor feels bad enough about how this all turned out, let's not compounded it unless we have to.” Roy said and took his phone out and opened up the app he used to keep track of billing. He did a quick search and found the invoice in question and forwarded it to Ed. “Knox pulled the records from her unit, did he leave those notes here?”

“Yeah, it's in the file.” Ed gave an embarrassed grin. “'Cause someone likes to share information, unlike us.”

“Occupational hazard.” Roy said. “He's over it, he just wants to make sure it doesn't keep happening. We have to make sure we include him even though I know you all think he's just a doctor.”

Al sighed. The superiority complexes and egos did get out of hand here where almost everyone could brag on multiple doctorates, and too often did. Mustang and Ed were no exception and Al thought he was above that but he had been the one to offend Knox. “It's not like a medical doctor is a lesser field of study or occupation. We do respect him a lot.”

Roy knew that Knox was on edge, not just because of his patient, but because his own history as an army doctor had put him in the position to do some ethically questionable things while under orders. This, the way they were approaching Riza's treatment, felt more like experimenting on a patient than saving her. Roy knew that Knox would never say anything, he knew that wasn't the case, but he could see it in the Doctor's eyes when they bounced from solution to solution. He understood for sure that there was no time to test, just react, but it didn't mean it felt right to him. Both Knox and Riza were the same in that respect, they trusted instinct because their job was rooted in practice. Roy and the other scientist saw practice as a sign of complacency, if something was already established it was meant to be reconstructed in some way to make it better. There was no settling for how things were, it was always a process of moving forward especially because the results were uncertain. Science was about knowledge and pursing a greater truth, bending the rules of nature and shattering the standard practices because they had been established by scientists before them who failed to push boundaries any further than that. Roy squeezed Riza's hand again, it drove her crazy that he would rush into the unknown with a grin on his face when she wanted to default to reconnaissance and defense until it was safe to proceed.

“The order for the Xerxes vaccination was originally for a dozen doses.” Ed reported. “However Marcoh demanded blood samples from the Army so he could test the vaccine while also regulating how much he was sending out. So each vaccine he made was labeled for a specific person to avoid a surplus. Comparing to the records Knox got from his Medical Corps contacts, there is an extra dose intended for a Private Mobuta Mobuo who was not in that unit.”

“Did you say Mobuta Mobuo?” Knox asked as he returned with supplies.

“Do you know him?” Ed asked.

“Yeah, I made him up.” Knox said and shook his head and walked over to his table to set his box down. He turned to see three surprised scientist and wished he could be satisfied with being the one to cause that reaction, but his own heart was pounding as a name from his past came back to haunt him.

“I got the idea from an episode of M*A*S*H where they made up an officer in order to give his pay to an orphanage. I created a fictional soldier who 'used' up a lot of supplies during my attempts to save him from injuries, which I instead sent to a pair of doctors who were treating patients from both sides in the war. I had to 'kill' him in action in order to avoid having him promoted and given a medal of honor for as many times as I reported him being my 'patient'.”

“Dr. Knox, “ Al said with a hush whisper of awe. “That's amazing.”

“Yeah, well someone brought him back from the dead and that's not a coincidence.” Knox tried not to loose his cool but he was worried. Not about himself, but because this was a sign someone was trying to eliminate a lot of loose ends.

“Don't worry Knox, apparently that happens a lot around here.” Roy said and leaned back in his chair. So this was as well orchestrated move on raven's part. Knox would have done the autopsy if they didn't step in and save Riza from certain death. Knox would be thorough, use all the resources available to him, and would eventually find traces of the Xerxes virus. Then it would all play out like a scripted murder mystery: Eyes would turn to Marcoh for creating it, Roy would defend him and pull the invoice and they would be at this stage right now, asking who the hell Mobuta Mobuo was and why he wasn't real. Blame would shift to Knox who created the fake personnel file and by the end of the day he would be in handcuffs heading to a military camp to await trail.

“I got those doctors killed.” Knox said and the three of them once again looked at him shocked. He leaned on his patient's bed to support himself as the guilt of actions long ago ripped his heart out. “The Rockbells. They were good people. They volunteered their services to a humanitarian medical organization that treated patients no matter who they were. The army saw them as problem, putting enemy soldiers back on the front and replenishing numbers, so they would confiscate their supplies as contraband and try to dry up their resources. They were heroes, real doctors without allegiance to anyone but patients, and when they were killed....I suspected it a bit too convenient of an ambush to be coincidence.”

Ed watched the doctor slump over further, weighted down by the guilt. “That was not your fault!”

“I helped provide a trail of stolen supplies to their camp.” Knox said. “I gave them a reason to write off a murder as a 'tactical move'.”

“No.” Roy said with a flat monotone that said there was absolutely no doubt in what he was saying. “Raven bought himself a promotion in blood from that campaign. His corruption runs deep and now he's trying to erase the evidence. You and Hawkeye are both loved and respected soldiers, exiling both of you here was the only way he could ensure nobody asked questions about your disappearance from the ranks. Being off the radar for so long, you've both lost contact with your original units and life has moved on.”

“Yeah, I don't have to have the obvious explained to me now, Mustang.” Knox looked up at him. “These eyes have seen a lot and I know a set up when I see it. I also know I wasn't going to be seeing a trial.”

“We can't let him get away with any of this Mustang!” Ed said and slammed his fist into the table. “This son of a bitch is losing sleep tonight because he's excited he's going to get this gift wrapped and delivered to him like a present tomorrow.”

“He's underestimated us.” Roy said and looked at Riza. “So let's get back to work saving our Sheriff so she can have the pleasure of arresting him tomorrow.”

#fic #royai #eureka au

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ahloveisboo · 7 years

Text

Long Forgotten Sons | pt 4

Pairing: OT7 Genre: Zombie!AU, mature (includes violence, gore, death, explicit language, future major character death) Word Count: 3.5k

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***

“So… What brings you here?”

Yoongi all but scoffed at the question. “Not sure. It’s either being on the run from brain dead zombies trying to eat us alive, or a nice, long, romantic road trip. A broad trip if you will.”

“Yoongi,” Namjoon warned, but he was smiling. Yoongi rolled his eyes and puffed out a laugh.

“Right. Technically, they’re everything but brain dead. I heard you the first seven times.”

Jimin craned his neck, casting a glance over Jungkook’s shoulder. “What do you mean, everything but?” His eyes flicked from Namjoon to Yoongi and back. Yoongi cocked his head and smiled.

“Namjoon has… intel.”

Jungkook frowned and stepped forward. The others silently followed to surround the newcomers, making a crescent shape in front of them. It wasn’t meant to be threatening but Namjoon found himself backing away instinctively.

Jimin pursed his lips and squinted. His voice sounded smooth when he spoke. “Intel,” he repeated. “Like, military level shit?”

Seokjin took a seat in one of the pews up front, eyeing Namjoon as he waited for a reply. Namjoon’s eyes flicked to Yoongi, who was waiting for Namjoon to continue what he started. Namjoon wasn’t sure what he expected from him but took a breath and focused back on the people before him.

“I’m- well, was, an intern at Hudson Corp.”

Hoseok failed to hide his surprise. “Hudson. As in the company that’s responsible for all this?”

Namjoon bit the inside of his cheek, nodding. He could see Jimin’s hands ball into fists in the corner of his eye but continued. “I’m a biomedical engineering student, specializing in neuro. I got the internship as a final step to graduating next semester.” He paused and averted his eyes. “I was on the team that created the virus.”

It happened in a flash. Namjoon’s back hit the ground before he could fight back, knocking the air from his lungs. Jimin’s fists balled into Namjoon’s hoodie, pulling his torso from the ground and smacking him back down. “You son of a bit-“ he cursed, eyes ablaze as he met Namjoon’s own bewildered gaze.

“I can explain,” he choked, grabbing at Jimin’s hands to fend them off. Jimin only hissed in response, raising a fist in the air.

Jimin promptly went still. His hands dropped when he felt fingers tangled in his hair and the cold touch of Yoongi’s dagger to his throat. His head was yanked back, forcing him to stare into Yoongi’s face.

“Do that again and I won’t hesitate next time. Let the man finish.”

Jimin nodded but did nothing to disguise the loathing written on his features. He pulled himself off Namjoon, who scrambled to his feet and nervously started smoothing out his hoodie. Seokjin and Jungkook exchanged glances as Jimin took a seat between them. Seokjin put his hand on Jimin’s thigh, digging his fingers into the skin in support.

Yoongi gestured at Namjoon with his free hand. “Go on.”

Namjoon fixed his gaze on Jimin as he continued. “The team I was put on was working on a drug to cure or reverse certain elements of Alzheimer’s disease. I was pretty stoked about it, too because my family has a history. I would be a part of making a fucking cure for fuck’s sake.” He raised his voice in proud excitement but toned it down as soon as he saw the others’ blank stares. He cleared his throat. “As you all know, Alzheimer’s disease leads to brain deterioration, which was what our team was trying to stop or even reverse.” He paused again, putting his hands in his pockets.

“Researchers have been trying to determine the cause of Alzheimer’s for decennia but keep coming up empty. And since we don’t know how it develops, we were having a hard time finding the right code to fight it. Studies show that genetics only account for a certain percentage of cases and there have been some genome studies which found 19 genes that could potentially be affecting the risk of getting Alzheimer’s but that wasn’t enough to base our entire project on. There are multiple hypotheses out there, and we decided to build onto the Tau hypothesis and go from there.”

“That’s the one with the protein changes, right?” Namjoon’s head whirled at Hoseok’s comment, jaw mid-drop before realizing no sound was coming out. His mouth snapped shut but he couldn’t hide the confusion on his face. Jimin leaned forward, crossing his arms over his knees and grinned at Hoseok, enjoying the reaction it got out of Namjoon. Yoongi stared at Hoseok a little too long for comfort.

“What? I read a lot,” Hoseok shrugged, focusing his attention back on Namjoon.

“Right. The tau protein changes the microtubules in a way that they start to disintegrate. I won’t bore you with any more details but that’s what we built our approach on.”

Hoseok nodded, draping his arms over the back of the pew. “Did it work?”

“Science takes time. They were already developing a-“ He raised his fingers in air quotations. “-cure when I arrived. It was prepared for testing a few weeks after. One night I couldn’t sleep because this feeling kept gnawing at me, like I had overlooked something that just didn’t make sense. So I went back to the lab to go over my notes by myself.”

Somewhere down the line, Namjoon had started pacing, hands motioning wildly to support his words. It made Taehyung restless, shifting in his own spot as he watched Namjoon adjust his glasses. He wanted to say something to make him stop but the words died in his throat. The atmosphere was tense and sultry, settling over everyone’s chest in anticipation. Namjoon took a long breath and continued.

“I found an anomaly in the sequence we used. It would basically fuck up everything we’d been working on. It was meant to treat the first few symptoms, the ones that affect the episodic memory. You know, things like short-term memory loss, being disoriented, occasionally forgetting vocabulary, etc,” he added, as though the boys would understand even without clarification. Taehyung grimaced.

“Instead the anomaly would make sure to skip those and go straight to the second stage, which is when long-term memory and learned facts get affected, as well as muscle memory. Walking, eating, shit like that. Things you don’t usually have to think about.”

“Isn’t that a good thing?” Jungkook interrupted, going over the information in his head. “If it attacks the second stage before having to work on the first symptoms, wouldn’t people heal faster?”

Namjoon halted, hands clasped together as though Jungkook had just discovered an option he hadn’t thought of. He smiled at the youngest. “I understand why you’d think that. At first, I was willing to consider the possibility, too, even if everyone knows to always go for the lower ranks first. Every action movie can tell you that.”

“What happened next?” Hoseok asked politely, urging Namjoon to complete his story.

“I talked to my colleagues first. They dismissed it, of course. Called it a rookie mistake in my findings. And that was it. I couldn’t take this to my superior without solid proof after that. So I broke protocol,” he explained, glancing at Yoongi who had taken a seat on the floor. Yoongi shifted his weight backward, his hands spread out behind him for support. He sucked in a breath before speaking.

“I came home one night and he had stolen three mice from the lab,” Yoongi chuckled. “For a second I thought he’d joined one of those animal rights groups and that he’d walk out of his room in a “stop animal testing” shirt. I did not expect a syringe and a vial of some zombie virus.”

“Obviously I had no fucking clue back then,” Namjoon retorted, gesturing dismissively. “But I had no other choice. I needed to know if we were heading for disaster or a miracle.”

Seokjin leaned forward, grabbing everyone’s attention with the sudden movement. “You experimented on them yourself?”

Namjoon nodded in confirmation. “It wasn’t ideal. I couldn’t separate the mice but figured it wouldn’t make that much of a difference. They were disoriented and slow since they suffered from most of the symptoms humans show in those stages. I injected the first one that night before we went to bed. My plan was to expose them to the drug in different doses and time frames. It should have taken me months to see any significant results but when we got up the next morning..,” he trailed off, biting the inside of his cheek again.

“The one he injected the night before was hanging by a thread,” Yoongi picked up the story. “Namjoon had gotten up early to get into the lab but I didn’t have classes until late afternoon so I slept in. It was 9 hours after the injection and it was clear the sucker didn’t have long to live. I texted Joon as soon as I noticed.”

“I couldn’t leave the lab early without attracting attention so I told him to write down observations the best way he could. By the time I got home, it had died.” Namjoon paused long enough to let the information sink in and answer questions, but neither of the boys said anything. Finally, Taehyung spoke up.

“So basically you spent months, if not years concocting poison instead of revolutionary treatment.” He couldn’t suppress the edge in this voice. It sounded accusatory and Namjoon didn’t blame him. It took him a few heartbeats to reply.

“Here’s the kicker, though. It did work.”

Now the boys started to stir, words spilling from their mouth in both confusion and disbelief. Jimin jumped to his feet and pointed a finger at Namjoon’s chest. “The hell it did! You killed us all. You and your fucking crazy scientist friends.”

Yoongi shot him a warning glance but Jimin chose to ignore it. “This-” he raged, spinning on his heel and motioning with his hand. “is all on you.”

Jimin hadn’t noticed Hoseok coming up behind him until he felt his hand on his wrist. Hoseok fingers wrapped around the delicate skin and tugged it down. “As much as I want to punch him in the throat right now, this isn’t the way to deal with it.”

Jimin locked eyes with Hoseok and snarled. “How are you so calm? He killed your family.”

Hoseok flinched but shook his head. “That’s not fair.”

Namjoon waited for the racket to die down. He wondered if the others could hear the way his heart pounded in his chest as silence settled, but he managed to keep a calm façade.

Yoongi got up and pat the dust from his trousers. He looked over the boys’ faces and cocked his head. He spoke as if there had been no interruption. “Namjoon doesn’t take failure well. He spent the next hour staring into the cage as though he’d bring it back to life through sheer force of will. I went to get us food and when I got back, the damn thing was alive. Walking, squeaking, whatever mice do. It was unnerving. I mean, fuck, I watched it struggle and perish with my own two eyes hours ago.”

“At first I thought we actually did it. That it must have just looked like it died and we had found what others hadn’t been able to. I was over the moon. I couldn’t tear my eyes away and didn’t even care about the possible side-effects we had just witnessed. But then it happened.” Namjoon folded his hands in his lap. “It attacked the other mice, basically tearing them apart. There was blood everywhere. I was so stunned I just stood there watching. And then it hit me. The drug had sparked the brain back into action. The mouse’s body had died in the process but the brain had not. It was fully functioning. Just not in the way we were expecting.”

Jungkook swore audibly, “What the fuck, Namjoon. You bred zombie mice and didn’t tell anyone?”

Namjoon’s gaze was blank as it met Jungkook’s. “Do you really think I’m that stupid? I did tell. I managed to catch the infected mouse unharmed and took it to my superior. He didn’t care. He gave me a lecture and scolded me for breaking protocol, for putting the entire project in danger. He showed me the door and basically told me to shove it. But not before reminding me of the confidentiality clause I signed upon entering the company. He made it very clear I was good to go and never to come back.”

Seokjin rubbed his face in a desperate attempt to hide his disbelief. “They knowingly let this happen. They put the entire population in danger over a greedy longing to succeed where others had failed.” Namjoon nodded in confirmation. Seokjin straightened and tensed his jaw. “What did you do?”

“I broke his nose,” Namjoon deadpanned. A grin broke onto Yoongi’s face as he listened to his friend retell the story. “I would’ve done worse if I thought I’d get away with it. Instead, I focused on how to make sure the drug would never make it to the human trial stages in this state.”

“Surely they wouldn’t have let it come that far if they came to the same discovery as you,” Hoseok stated, cocking an eyebrow.

“I’d like to think so but at that point, I didn’t trust any of them anymore.”

Jungkook didn’t realise he was staring until Jimin snapped his fingers in front of his face. Startled, he blinked, but he focused back on Namjoon instantly. “Considering the situation we are in, I assume you didn’t find a way to stop them,” he concluded.

Namjoon shook his head. “I didn’t. A few weeks later the explosion happened and all I could think about was that drug, that virus we created and the idea that they just unleashed hell on earth.” The tone of his voice did nothing to hide his frustration and it took every ounce of self-control for Namjoon not to scream. Yoongi cleared his throat, the look in his eyes too subtle for the others to notice but Namjoon accepted the silent support with gratitude.

“When I heard the news, I panicked. If that virus had infected even one of my colleagues without anyone knowing the consequences, we’d be done for. I told my family right off the bat and they didn’t even think to doubt me, but getting anyone else to believe me turned out to be one hell of a job. Zombies aren’t real, you see. We don’t live in some weird dystopian, post-apocalyptic wasteland where people rise from the dead to eat your brains.”

“Except now we do,” Taehyung noted. “So where’s your family now? Did they evacuate with the others?”

“Nah, they fled to Europe way before anyone else got out. They packed up and left instantly. We were supposed to be on the plane with them but turns out I have a knack for losing things. Including my passport.”

“We?” Hoseok asked, letting his eyes drift from Namjoon to Yoongi. “Why did you stay?”

Yoongi shrugged, idly playing with his dagger. “He’s a shitty roommate but I’ve grown fond of him. Besides-” He paused, as though internally debating how much of himself he wanted to share. His words were cold as he continued. “I have nowhere to go.”

“To be honest, if I didn’t have Yoongi by my side, I wouldn’t have survived the first week,” Namjoon added, trying to take the edge off Yoongi’s comment.

“Hey, just out of curiosity,” Taehyung interrupted before Namjoon could say more. “What did you do with the mice afterwards?”

“We killed and buried them. The virus only affects the brain so we crushed their skulls, disabling brain activity,” he explained. “Brutal, but effective. They don’t necessarily feel pain since their nervous systems died with them. They only react to violence because the brain registers that the body is being attacked, which is why they scream when you stab them for example. But you’re not actually inflicting any pain. It’s just a reflex response. If you want to kill them, aim for their heads,” Namjoon concluded. “Crush it, stab it, pierce it, hell- even decapitation would help since it disconnects the brain from the rest of the body. But yeah, always go for the brain.”

He looked at Seokjin when finished and feebly nodded once to indicate this was all the information he could provide. Seokjin returned it with a look that Namjoon couldn’t quite decipher but he was glad there weren’t any more questions to be answered.

Namjoon sat down next to Hoseok to catch his breath, suddenly aware of how heavy his limbs felt and how exhausted he was. It was the first time he told the story to anyone that wasn’t his family or Yoongi, and he was surprised how easy it had been to come clean to total strangers. He instinctively rubbed his chest looking for any bruising left by Jimin earlier. He sighed. They’d been on the run for two weeks, and these were the first people - alive and breathing - they’d encountered along the way.

Namjoon glanced at Yoongi, who had sheathed his daggers and hooked the machete back in his belt. His hands were leisurely tucked into his pockets as he stared at the far wall. Yoongi could feel Namjoon’s gaze burning holes in his skin and turned to look at him. Bewildered, Namjoon noticed he looked just as tired as he felt.

They had barely slept the past nights. Being up against aggressive walkers was bad enough, but there were only two of them and even with Yoongi’s skills and Namjoon’s wits, each fight against those monsters took its toll. Yoongi’s body hurt in places he didn’t even know had muscles.

Namjoon allowed a flicker of hope to spark in his chest, turning back to the boys who were now chatting amongst each other. Processing everything Namjoon had just told them. He cleared his throat loud enough to draw attention. “Listen,” he said as soon as everyone’s eyes were trained on him. “I heard news about a safe place up in Daegu. That’s where we’re heading. You can join us if you want. Yoongi has family there that we could probably turn to for help.”

Hoseok’s eyes widened in surprise as he looked at Yoongi. “But you just said-”

“I know what I said,” Yoongi gritted his teeth and turned away from Hoseok, no longer able to stand the way he looked at him. The all too familiar pity-filled look made his stomach churn. Hoseok took the hint and dropped the subject.

Seokjin and Jungkook sat on the farthest end of the front pew, animatedly talking to each other. It was too loud around him for Namjoon to listen in on their conversation, but he assumed they were discussing the option of joining him and Yoongi to Daegu. They’d be stronger as a group of seven. No more sleepless nights of taking turns to watch their backs and look out for the faintest sign of walkers. They’d finally have someone else to depend on besides each other.

He let his eyes fall shut, steadying his breath as his exhaustion washed over him. Namjoon almost fell asleep there and then, until he realized Seokjin had gotten up and was now standing before him, sizing him up. Namjoon jerked his head back up and blinked.

“First of all,” Seokjin started, his voice steady and dominant. “Thank you for sharing your story with us. It helped us understand and figure out how to deal with things easier. I want you to know that we-“ Seokjin glanced at Jimin, who had chosen to blatantly ignore the conversation. “Don’t blame you for what happened. You did everything you could. Don’t let this guilt weigh you down.” Seokjin could easily spot the relief flickering over Namjoon’s features but it disappeared as fast as it came and morphed into a faint smile instead.

“However,” he continued. “We appreciate your offer but I think we’d be more comfortable finding our own way. We will stay the night here and leave first thing in the morning.”

Namjoon’s smile faltered as his heart turned to ice in his chest. The little flicker of hope he’d allowed himself to hold onto earlier, slipping through his fingers. “I understand,” he said, trying to hide the disappointment in his voice. “Thank you for listening and not judging my actions.”

Seokjin nodded and turned away, making room for Yoongi to step closer and put a hand on Namjoon’s shoulder. His eyes were cold and unreadable. “It’s fine,” he said quietly, gently squeezing in reassurance. “We’ll be fine on our own.”

Namjoon acknowledged him with a faint tilt of his chin and grimaced. Yoongi turned to face the others to speak one last time.

“Now if you’ll excuse us, we’re going to try and catch some sleep. If you are gone by the time we wake up, good luck. We’d appreciate it if you don’t let any walkers in on the way out.”

By the time Yoongi’s head hit the hard wood of the pew next to the one his friend was occupying, Namjoon had drifted off to sleep.

A/N: I did some research into the disease but obviously I am not a scientist, so take everything mentioned here with a grain of salt. I’m also well aware that the travel from the Seoul area to Daegu would not actually take weeks but let’s pretend it does for the sake of the story. Thank you so much for reading this for and again to @eradikeats-writes for editing.

#long forgotten sons #noonanet #kwriterskollection #kpoptrashtag #bts zombie au #bts au #bangtan au

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batfoggywolfbouquetblr-blog · 5 years

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History of Educational Technology

There may be no written proof that could inform us precisely who has coined the phrase academic technology. distinctive educationists, scientists and philosophers at one-of-a-kindwireless time intervals have put forwarded one of a kind dewirelessnitions of instructional era. academic generation is a multifaceted and incorporated procedure regarding humans, method, ideas, devices, and corporation, in which generation from one of a kind wi-fields of technological know-how is borrowed as consistent with the want and requirement of schooling for enforcing, comparing, and managing answers to the ones troubles worried in all components of human gaining knowledge of.

Academic generation, broadly talking, has passed thru wireless degrees.

the first degree of educational technology is coupled with the usage of aids like charts, maps, symbols, fashions, specimens and urban substances. The time period academic generation became used as synonyms to audio-visual aids.

The second stage of instructional era is related to the 'digital revolution' with the advent and establishment of sophisticated hardware and software. Use of diverse audio-visual aids like projector, magic lanterns, tape-recorder, radio and television introduced a modern change inside the educational scenario. therefore, instructional era concept became taken in phrases of these sophisticated gadgets and equipments for powerful presentation of instructional materials.

The 1/3 degree of instructional era is linked with the improvement of mass media which in flip caused 'conversation revolution' for academic purposes. laptop-assisted education (CAI) used for training because Fifties additionally became popular at some stage in this period.

The fourth level of instructional generation is discernible through the individualized procedure of training. the invention of programmed studying and programmed training furnished a brand new measurement to academic technology. A device of self-gaining knowledge of based totally on self-educational substances and coaching machines emerged.

The modern-day idea of tutorial generation is inspired by using the concept of system engineering or system technique which makes a speciality of language laboratories, teaching machines, programmed guidance, multimedia technologies and the use of the pc in instruction. in keeping with it, instructional era is a systematic way of designing, wearing out and evaluating the overall technique of coaching and gaining knowledge of in terms of wi-fispeciwiwireless objectives based on research.

Educational era all through the Stone Age, the Bronze Age, and the Iron Age educational technology, in spite of the uncertainty of the foundation of the term, can be traced lower back to the time of the 3-age system periodization of human prehistory; namely the Stone Age, the Bronze Age, and the Iron Age.

Duringthe Stone Age, ignition of wireless via rubbing stones, manufacture of various handmade weapon and utensils from stones and clothing practice were some of the simple technological traits of maximum wi-ficancewireless. a fragment of Stone Age humans advanced ocean-worth outrigger canoe ship generation emigrate from one vicinity to every other throughout the sea, by which they advanced their wirelessrst informal schooling of expertise of the ocean currents, climate conditions, crusing practice, astronavigation, and superstar maps. all through the later Stone Age period (Neolithic period),for agricultural exercise, polished stone gear were crafted from wi-fi of toughwireless rocks in large part by way of digging underground tunnels, which can be taken into consideration as the wirelessrst steps in mining generation. The polished axes have been so powerful that even after appearance of bronze and iron; human beings used it for clearing woodland and the status quo of crop farming.

Even though Stone Age cultures left no written information, however archaeological evidences proved their shift from nomadic lifestyles to agricultural settlement. historic equipment conserved in distinctive museums, cave artwork like Altamira cave in Spain, and other prehistoric art, consisting of the Venus of Willendorf, mom Goddess from Laussel, France etc. are a number of the evidences in favour of their cultures.

Neolithic Revolution of Stone Age resulted into the advent of Bronze Age with improvement of agriculture, animal domestication, and the adoption of permanent settlements. For those practices Bronze Age human beings in addition advanced metallic smelting, with copper and later bronze, an alloy of tin and copper, being the materials in their choice.

The Iron Age people changed bronze and developed the information of iron smelting era to decrease the price of living for the reason that iron utensils were more potent and less expensive than bronze equivalents. in lots of Eurasian cultures, the Iron Age became the closingwireless length before the development of written scripts.

Academic Era all through the Length of Ancient Civilizations

In step with Paul Saettler, 2004, instructional era may be traced returned to the time when tribal priests systematized bodies of know-how and historical cultures invented pictographs or sign writing to report and transmit records. In each degree of human civilization, it is easy to wireless an academic method or set of processes meant to put into effect a selected tradition which were also supported by using variety of investigations and evidences.

The more superior the way of life, the extra complex became the generation of training designed to mirror wi-fi methods of man or woman and social behaviour intended to run an knowledgeable society. Over centuries, every tremendous shift in instructional values, goals or objectives led to various technology of guidance.

The wiwireless advances in technology and engineering got here with the rise of the historic civilizations. those advances inspired and knowledgeable different societies in the world to adopt new ways of living and governance.

The Indus Valley Civilization was an early Bronze Age civilization which changed into located in the northwestern region of the Indian Subcontinent. The civilization changed into in the main flourished across the Indus River basin of the Indus and the Punjab vicinity, extending upto the Ghaggar-Hakra River valley and the Ganges-Yamuna Doab, (most of the component is below modern Pakistan and the western states of present day-day India as well as some a part of the civilization extending upto southeastern Afghanistan, and the easternmost part of Balochistan, Iran).

There's a long term controversy to make sure approximately the language that the Harappan humans spoke. it's miles assumed that their writing changed into as a minimum appears to be or a pictographic script. The script seems to have had approximately four hundred basic symptoms, with lots of versions. human beings write their script with the route generally from right to left. most of the writing turned into located on seals and sealings which had been probably utilized in trade and respectable & administrative work.

Harappan human beings had the expertise of the measuring tools of length, mass, and time. They have been the first within the world to develop a system of uniform weights and measures.

In a study completed by way of P. N. Rao et al. in 2009, published in science, computer scientists observed that the Indus script's sample is in the direction of that of spoken words, which supported the proposed hypothesis that it codes for an as-but-unknown language.

In keeping with the chinese Civilization, a number of the predominant techno-services from China include paper, early seismological detectors, toilet paper, suits, iron plough, the multi-tube seed drill, the suspension bridge, the wheelbarrow, the parachute, herbal fuel as gas, the magnetic compass, the raised-comfort map, the blast furnace, the propeller, the crossbow, the South Pointing Chariot, and gun powder. With the invent of paper they have given their wi-first step towards traits of tutorial technology by using in addition culturing unique handmade products of paper as means of visual aids.

Historic Egyptian language was at one factor one of the longest surviving and used languages within the world. Their script changed into made of pictures of the actual such things as birds, animals, wi-fic equipment, etc. those photos are popularly called hieroglyph. Their language changed into made up of above 500 hieroglyphs which can be referred to as hieroglyphics. at the stone monuments or tombs which had been located and rescued latter on offers the evidence of lifestyles of many styles of artistic hieroglyphics in ancient Egypt.

Academic technology all through Medieval and modern-day period Paper and the pulp papermaking method which was developed in China at some point of the early 2d century ad, changed into carried to the middle East and become spread to Mediterranean by the Muslim conquests. Evidences support that a paper mill was additionally set up in Sicily in the twelfth century.

The invention of spinning wheel accelerated the productiveness of thread making technique to a wiwireless extent and while Lynn White delivered the spinning wheel with increasing supply of rags, this brought about the production of reasonably-priced paper, which become a high issue in the improvement of printing technology.

The invention of the printing press became taken region in approximately 1450 ad, by way of Johannes Gutenburg, a German inventor. the discovery of printing press become a high developmental factor in the history of educational generation to bring the preparation as consistent with the need of the complex and superior-technology cultured society.

In the pre-commercial levels, at the same time as industry was absolutely the handwork at artisan stage, the instructional approaches have been relied closely upon simple matters like the slate, the horn book, the blackboard, and chalk. It turned into limited to a unmarried text e-book with some illustrations. instructional technology become taken into consideration synonymous to simple aids like charts and pictures.

The yr 1873 can be taken into consideration a landmark within the early records of generation of schooling or audio-visual schooling. An exhibition was held in Vienna at worldwide level wherein an American school won the admiration of the educators for the exhibition of maps, charts, textbooks and other equipments.

Maria Montessori (1870-1952), the world over famend infant educator and the originator of Montessori method exerted a dynamic impact on academic generation through her improvement of graded substances designed to offer for the right sequencing of situation count for every person learner. contemporary academic generation shows many extension of Montessori's concept of organized baby centered environment.

In1833, Charles Babbage's design of a general cause computing device laid the muse of the modern-day laptop and in 1943, the first computing gadget as in step with hi layout changed into constructed through global enterprise Machines corporation in united states of america. The pc Assisted instruction (CAI) in which the laptop functions basically as a tutor as well as the speaking type writer became evolved through O.ok. Moore in 1966. when you consider that 1974, computer systems are apparently utilized in schooling in colleges, schools and universities.

Inside the starting of the nineteenth century, there were noteworthy wi-fications within the subject of schooling. British Broadcasting business enterprise (BBC), right from its start of faculty declares in 1920 had maintained speedy tempo in making sound contribution to formal education. inside the usa, by using 1952, 20 states had the supply for academic broadcasting. Parallel to this time approximately 98% of the schools in uk had been ready with radios and there have been ordinary daily programmes.

Sidney L. Pressey, a psychologist of Ohio kingdom university evolved a self-coaching system known as 'Drum show' in 1920. Professor Skinner, but, in his well-known article 'technology of studying and art of teaching' posted in 1945 pleaded for the utility of the knowledge derived from behavioral psychology to study room procedures and suggested computerized teaching devices as way of doing so.

Although the primary sensible use of ordinary television publicizes changed into in Germany in 1929 and in 1936 the Olympic video games in Berlin have been broadcasted thru tv stations in Berlin, Open circuit television started out to be used by and large for broadcasting programmes for enjoyment in 1950. due to the fact that 1960, tv is used for instructional purposes.

In 1950, Brynmor, in England, used academic technological steps for the first time. it's far to be cared that in 1960, because of commercial revolution in the us and Russia, different nations also started progressing in the wirelessled of educational generation. in this manner, the beginning of educational era befell in 1960 from america and Russia and now it has reached England, Europe and India.

During the time of around 1950s, new technocracy changed into turning it appeal to educations while there was a steep shortage of instructors in america and therefore an urgent want of educational generation became felt. Dr. Alvin C. Eurich and a little later his partner, Dr. Alexander J. Stoddard added mass production era in america.

Team teaching had its foundation in america inside the mid of 1950's and turned into wi-first started in the year 1955 at Harvard college as part of internship plan.

Inside the 12 months 1956, Benjamin Bloom from u.s. brought the taxonomy of educational objectives through his publication, "The Taxonomy of instructional goals, The type of educational dreams, guide I: Cognitive domain".

In 1961, Micro coaching technique turned into wi-first adopted by using Dwight W. Allen and his co-workers at Stanford university in usa.

Electronics is the principle generation being evolved in the starting of twenty first century. Broadband internet get right of entry to have become famous and occupied almost all of the essential workplaces and educational places or even in not unusual places in evolved countries with the wi-fi of connecting domestic computers with song libraries and cell phones.

Modern-day study room is much more likely to be a era lab, a room with rows of college students the use of internet related or enabled laptops, palmtops, notepad, or possibly students are attending a video conferencing or digital classroom or may additionally had been being attentive to a podcast or taking in a video lecture. speedy technological wi-fi within the field of educational have created new methods to train and to research.

Technological wi-fi additionally inspired the lecturers to get entry to a spread of facts on a global scale via the net, to beautify their classes in addition to to lead them to in a position expert in their region of situation. at the equal time, students can make use of huge resources of the net to enrich their learning enjoy to manage up with converting trend of the society.

Now a days college students as properly instructors are attending seminars, conferences, workshops at national and global level by way of using the multimedia techno-assets like PowerPoint and even they pursue a ramiwiwireless of crucial publications of their desire in distance mode thru on line gaining knowledge of approaches. on-line getting to know facility has opened wi-fiendless quantity of doors of opportunities for contemporary learner to make their existence happier than ever earlier than.

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tastydregs · 6 years

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AI Uses Titan Supercomputer to Create Deep Neural Nets in Less Than a Day

You don’t have to dig too deeply into the archive of dystopian science fiction to uncover the horror that intelligent machines might unleash. The Matrix and The Terminator are probably the most well-known examples of self-replicating, intelligent machines attempting to enslave or destroy humanity in the process of building a brave new digital world.

The prospect of artificially intelligent machines creating other artificially intelligent machines took a big step forward in 2017. However, we’re far from the runaway technological singularity futurists are predicting by mid-century or earlier, let alone murderous cyborgs or AI avatar assassins.

The first big boost this year came from Google. The tech giant announced it was developing automated machine learning (AutoML), writing algorithms that can do some of the heavy lifting by identifying the right neural networks for a specific job. Now researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), using the most powerful supercomputer in the US, have developed an AI system that can generate neural networks as good if not better than any developed by a human in less than a day.

It can take months for the brainiest, best-paid data scientists to develop deep learning software, which sends data through a complex web of mathematical algorithms. The system is modeled after the human brain and known as an artificial neural network. Even Google’s AutoML took weeks to design a superior image recognition system, one of the more standard operations for AI systems today.

Computing Power

Of course, Google Brain project engineers only had access to 800 graphic processing units (GPUs), a type of computer hardware that works especially well for deep learning. Nvidia, which pioneered the development of GPUs, is considered the gold standard in today’s AI hardware architecture. Titan, the supercomputer at ORNL, boasts more than 18,000 GPUs.

The ORNL research team’s algorithm, called MENNDL for Multinode Evolutionary Neural Networks for Deep Learning, isn’t designed to create AI systems that cull cute cat photos from the internet. Instead, MENNDL is a tool for testing and training thousands of potential neural networks to work on unique science problems.

That requires a different approach from the Google and Facebook AI platforms of the world, notes Steven Young, a postdoctoral research associate at ORNL who is on the team that designed MENNDL.

“We’ve discovered that those [neural networks] are very often not the optimal network for a lot of our problems, because our data, while it can be thought of as images, is different,” he explains to Singularity Hub. “These images, and the problems, have very different characteristics from object detection.”

AI for Science

One application of the technology involved a particle physics experiment at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. Fermilab researchers are interested in understanding neutrinos, high-energy subatomic particles that rarely interact with normal matter but could be a key to understanding the early formation of the universe. One Fermilab experiment involves taking a sort of “snapshot” of neutrino interactions.

The team wanted the help of an AI system that could analyze and classify Fermilab’s detector data. MENNDL evaluated 500,000 neural networks in 24 hours. Its final solution proved superior to custom models developed by human scientists.

In another case involving a collaboration with St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, MENNDL improved the error rate of a human-designed algorithm for identifying mitochondria inside 3D electron microscopy images of brain tissue by 30 percent.

“We are able to do better than humans in a fraction of the time at designing networks for these sort of very different datasets that we’re interested in,” Young says.

What makes MENNDL particularly adept is its ability to define the best or most optimal hyperparameters—the key variables—to tackle a particular dataset.

“You don’t always need a big, huge deep network. Sometimes you just need a small network with the right hyperparameters,” Young says.

A Virtual Data Scientist

That’s not dissimilar to the approach of a company called H20.ai, a startup out of Silicon Valley that uses open source machine learning platforms to “democratize” AI. It applies machine learning to create business solutions for Fortune 500 companies, including some of the world’s biggest banks and healthcare companies.

“Our software is more [about] pattern detection, let’s say anti-money laundering or fraud detection or which customer is most likely to churn,” Dr. Arno Candel, chief technology officer at H2O.ai, tells Singularity Hub. “And that kind of insight-generating software is what we call AI here.”

The company’s latest product, Driverless AI, promises to deliver the data scientist equivalent of a chessmaster to its customers (the company claims several such grandmasters in its employ and advisory board). In other words, the system can analyze a raw dataset and, like MENNDL, automatically identify what features should be included in the computer model to make the most of the data based on the best “chess moves” of its grandmasters.

“So we’re using those algorithms, but we’re giving them the human insights from those data scientists, and we automate their thinking,” he explains. “So we created a virtual data scientist that is relentless at trying these ideas.”

Inside the Black Box

Not unlike how the human brain reaches a conclusion, it’s not always possible to understand how a machine, despite being designed by humans, reaches its own solutions. The lack of transparency is often referred to as the AI “black box.” Experts like Young say we can learn something about the evolutionary process of machine learning by generating millions of neural networks and seeing what works well and what doesn’t.

“You’re never going to be able to completely explain what happened, but maybe we can better explain it than we currently can today,” Young says.

Transparency is built into the “thought process” of each particular model generated by Driverless AI, according to Candel.

The computer even explains itself to the user in plain English at each decision point. There is also real-time feedback that allows users to prioritize features, or parameters, to see how the changes improve the accuracy of the model. For example, the system may include data from people in the same zip code as it creates a model to describe customer turnover.

“That’s one of the advantages of our automatic feature engineering: it’s basically mimicking human thinking,” Candel says. “It’s not just neural nets that magically come up with some kind of number, but we’re trying to make it statistically significant.”

Moving Forward

Much digital ink has been spilled over the dearth of skilled data scientists, so automating certain design aspects for developing artificial neural networks makes sense. Experts agree that automation alone won’t solve that particular problem. However, it will free computer scientists to tackle more difficult issues, such as parsing the inherent biases that exist within the data used by machine learning today.

“I think the world has an opportunity to focus more on the meaning of things and not on the laborious tasks of just fitting a model and finding the best features to make that model,” Candel notes. “By automating, we are pushing the burden back for the data scientists to actually do something more meaningful, which is think about the problem and see how you can address it differently to make an even bigger impact.”

The team at ORNL expects it can also make bigger impacts beginning next year when the lab’s next supercomputer, Summit, comes online. While Summit will boast only 4,600 nodes, it will sport the latest and greatest GPU technology from Nvidia and CPUs from IBM. That means it will deliver more than five times the computational performance of Titan, the world’s fifth-most powerful supercomputer today.

“We’ll be able to look at much larger problems on Summit than we were able to with Titan and hopefully get to a solution much faster,” Young says.

It’s all in a day’s work.

Image Credit: Gennady Danilkin / Shutterstock.com

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canayata · 5 years

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Digging 9 Most Things All Intelligent People Do

New Post has been published on https://www.apegeo.com/similar-behavior-intelligent-people/

Digging 9 Most Things All Intelligent People Do

People often say that intelligence is something lucky individuals are born with but that’s not always the case. Intelligence can be both inherited and acquired. According to experts, the environment around you can drastically affect your brain’s skills and the way you think. Whatever the case may be, it’s been observed that all intelligent people show similar behavior and have a lot of things in common.

We at Apegeo have done some digging and discovered some of the things all intelligent people do.

1. They mind their own business.

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Judging others and gossiping are things intelligent people stay away from. They don’t indulge in “petty talks” and are never bothered by what’s happening in other people’s lives. In fact, according to a recent study, intelligent people are happiest when they’re left alone so they can do their own thing without getting distracted. They’re not loners, their brains just need some space to breathe and function.

2. They make a lot of jokes and have a great sense of humor.

This one is a no-brainer. A person who is capable of turning every little thing into a joke and making everyone around them laugh is nothing short of a genius. It requires amazing creative skills to find humor in everyday life and the idea of creativity being liked to intelligence goes way back, according to scientists.

And in case you need any more convincing, let us share some examples with you. Conan O’Brien, the famous American comedian, has an IQ of 160 while normal people usually score between 85-115. Phoebe Buffay from the sitcom Friends, played by Lisa Kudrow, scored 154 on her IQ test. You do the math.

3. They talk to themselves.

Did you know that Albert Einstein, one of the greatest geniuses the world has ever seen, used to talk to himself? Researchers have found that people who often talk to themselves, be it in their head or out loud, are more intelligent than the ones who don’t.

Talking to yourself sharpens your brain, boosts your memory and helps you organize your thoughts. It’s not being “bonkers” — it’s called being a genius!

4. They listen to music very often.

Everybody listens to music but the ones who are always spotted with earphones are true geniuses. In a recent study, it was found that not only do people who know how to play a musical instrument possess a higher level of intelligence, but the ones who treat their ears to music often are extremely smart too.

The study also adds that intelligent people prefer to listen to music with no vocals over songs with meaningless lyrics, so if you’re one of those people who likes beats and rhythms over words, you might be more intelligent than you think you are.

5. They work smart, not hard.

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Contrary to popular belief, intelligent people don’t study or work all the time. Instead, they’re actually lazy and due to the same reason, they try to find the easiest way to carry out tasks assigned to them flawlessly without having to work hard.

According to science, people who are less physically active tend to be more intelligent than the ones who hustle all the time. Intelligent people have their brain running all the time and as a result, require less cognition compared to others.

6. They’re always looking for answers.

Intelligent minds are curious. It bothers them if even a single leaf is left unturned. They’re always looking for answers and exploring mysteries. According to a study, having a curiosity to learn more is a clear sign of superior intelligence. Intelligent people also read a lot and often keep a diary to take notes.

7. Intelligent People admit their mistakes.

According to Jeff Bezos, the founder of the successful shopping hub Amazon, the biggest sign of intelligence is the ability to accept mistakes and learn from them. Nobody’s perfect but the ones who come forward to admit their wrongdoings are the most intelligent ones.

By default, humans are inclined to believe that they’re right and that the other person is wrong. But it takes a highly functional brain to understand the other person’s point of view as well and find fault in oneself.

8. They eat chocolate.

Chocolate lovers, this is your time to shine! According to a study, eating chocolate regularly improves the functioning of the brain and as a result, makes you sharper and smarter. It’s been found that people who eat chocolate often have a better memory and are great when it comes to cognition and reasoning.

9. They don’t talk too much.

Intelligent people don’t participate in useless jibber-jabber. They like keeping to themselves since they’re always surrounded by their thoughts. It’s been observed that people who are smarter tend to talk less to others and there’s a reason why. According to experts, intelligent people are more aloof because:

They’re too logical to keep a conversation going when it doesn’t benefit them in any way.

They don’t really care. They’d rather do something productive than entertain gossip.

How many of the above signs were you able to relate to? How do you separate intelligent people from the not-so-smart people? Let us know in the comments.

Illustrated by Alena Sofronova

#Digging #discover #Intelligent People #Tips

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outsourcininsit · 7 years

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Knowing Your Candidate Better with Big Data Analytics

The author John L. Smith has written a book about the entrepreneur of America, Steve Wynn, in which Steven has said

“Human Resources aren’t a thing we do. It’s the thing that runs our business.”

Well, he’s right. The foundation of your business is dependent on human resources, and such resource comes in your company for the first time as an individual candidate who might shape your business strategies and industry ideas in the coming future. Eligible candidates come for recruitment in the firm; the procedure is same since ages that depend entirely upon the thought process of the recruiter.

Recruiter identifies the capacities, dedication towards the work, soft skills, management, etc. in the candidate. That is the procedure we all know, but with changing time, the recruitment process is also changing its structure.

Emerging procedures and role of Analytics in the hiring process

The new methods introduced are not fully dependent on just the mind or skills of the recruiter; data analytics and big data have started playing a significant role in recruitment process already.

With massive data aggregated from multiple sources like social media channels, candidates leave their digital thought prints over there. And with the required ability to transform all that information into intelligence using prevailing algorithms, recruiters now have the chance to depend more on facts than on some of the framed initial intuitions before they put forward job offers. The new sector of talent analytics, also known as people analytics is now playing a big role in the hiring practices including planning interview questions, recruitment marketing, filtering prospective candidates, identifying outliers, and determining who to hold on to and who to promote in the recruitment structure.

What Steven has said is right, many companies frequently repeat his lines that people are most valuable assets of their organizations but this statement only falls right when the specific decision makes an impact on the specific performance of the company.

Otherwise, the employees will come on time at the office and leave on time as well and there is a chance that the performance will remain stable but not be increasing, that’s a sure thing.

Investment in analytical tools and systems

The company must invest in analytics-driven tools and systems for talent acquisition process just as companies would in marketing or product development. This new method is showing positive results, and many companies are following it. For example, Josh Bersein writes in an article on Forbes.com of how a client enhanced sales performance by $4 million in just six months merely by applying a new candidate screening procedure based on insights fetched from data the company always had readily available.

Likewise, Xerox actually reduced attrition rate at its call centers by more than 20% by utilizing different Big Data tools in hiring for its 48,000+ department.

Josh Bersein writes that

“If we can apply science to improving the selection, management, and alignment of people, the returns can be tremendous.”

So it’s clear. By using Big Data, recruiters can alter their image from “reactive,” responding to the “just-in-time” talent needs of the business, to a “proactive” business partner that has the forethought to make superior and swifter hiring process.

Several specific applications and advantages of data analysis that recruiter can use to improve their processes, some of which are listed here:

1. Tune hiring policies

Data accessible from a company’s internal systems and external sources like demographic data, public transportation, compensation surveys, and social media will reveal patterns which will facilitate an organization verify wherever to hire from and at what cost.

2. Focused recruitment marketing

Online job listing sites consume data as much as possible that can give insights into what is likely to expect the best qualitative and quantitative response. A recruiter can extract data of similar job sites and apply analytics or work with one to settle on the likelihood of being able to fill a detailed position in a chosen location all based on the past and historical data patterns. Moreover, information like what day of the week to post definite job types or precise factors that persuade potential candidates to act in response to a job ad can be used to better capitalize on recruitment marketing resources.

3. Increase quality of hire

The ability to trace new hires across the employee life-cycle helps you discover what makes an efficient applier — and a foul one. This suggests wanting on the far side however quickly somebody was employed and if it had been at rock bottom worth potential. Recruiters who are specialists and data-driven always dig deep into metrics such as:

Qualified applicants-per-requisition which indicates whether your sourcing practices are producing those efficient employees

Involuntary turnover or resignations for less than 3 months of overall service

New hire performance by lead source

Top talent characteristics

4. Improve the candidate expertise

The Talent Board’s 2015 American Candidate proficiency study report take up and convey that: Organizations are better able to deliver higher quality talent, improve recruitment efficiencies and align more closely with business objectives when the candidate comes first. While candidate expertise has been a hot topic for many years, several organizations still struggle to boost this necessary a part of the hiring method. There square measure variety of areas recruiters, and therefore the talent acquisition team got to work on, but how do you know which one your company is guilty of? Analytics bring the factors that impact candidate expertise to the forefront, and a hands intelligence answer will assist you quickly live the effectiveness of every. Whether or not it’s time since initial contact, the time between stages, enquirer name, etc., you’ll be able to tell what’s increasing or decreasing the probability of a candidate retreating his or her application — and build ways to minimize the chances of losing sturdy candidates.

5. Diversity into recruiting method

Traditional recruiting strategies create it arduous to inform whether or not you’ll hit your diversity targets or guarantee equity throughout the technique. Rather than the estimate, use analytics to unendingly monitor your hiring funnel for necessary demographic ratios like gender, ethnicity, and veteran standing. This permits you to raised track diversity and implements the proper evidence-based programs to extend diversity throughout your pipeline.

6. Deliver on recruiting capability

Recruiting may be a fine balance: over-hiring will produce an unnecessary cost burden, whereas under-hiring will scale back the productivity. So as to remain on the right track, recruiters would like fact-based hiring plans that are incessantly updated to mirror the foremost current state of the corporate. Data-driven men coming up with, worn out collaboration with Talent Acquisition and Finance, allows enlisting to form a lot of correct hiring plans, ones that use forecasts supported historical rates for factors like employee turnover, internal movement between departments, and hiring success. In addition, this sort of coming up with, which contains knowledge from men analytics, provides a full image on spending. You’ll know instantly if you’re overspending on recruiting — or not outlay as effectively as you will — because you'll simply compare the overall costs of activities like internal, agency, and RPO recruiting.

7. Recruiters are still important

People analytics faces some challenges before its widespread adoption. These problems are chiefly people and skills-related considering that data analytics needs competence in multiple disciplines: data analysis, statistics, visualization and problem-solving. Most hr professionals presently lack these skills, and finding such people and obtaining them to work on hr data becomes imperative. Companies should also keep in mind that they can't rely on data analytics alone for the recruitment method. Recruiters still remain vital to the process: data analytics will only perform as a tool that can help improve the success rate. It’s not all ‘Moneyball’ and to hope that data scientists alone can solve talent challenges is naïve. Data-based insights can solely act as indicators by themselves. Domain specialists like hiring managers, hr professionals, and recruiters concerned must be able to identify the problem and raise the proper queries before applying analytics. If you are longing for job postings data to power your HR analysis, some tools provide clean and ready-to-use job feeds extracted directly from specified company websites.

Positioning the enlisting team for achievement

If you’re just beginning your data-driven journey, you will be using spreadsheets and generating reports from numerous systems to search out the data you would like to strengthen your recruiting method. This journey in the future can be an extended, complicated and tedious method but will still allow you to take advantage of the ability of analytics.

However, if you wish to build a sophisticated analytics performance platform for better enlisting of essential possessions, think about investment in new technology which will build it quicker and easier to reach out the vital data requirements you need. Cloud-based hr analytics solutions offer the whole end-to-end view needed to not solely monitor your entire recruiting pipeline (and determine any bottlenecks), however also pull all the historical information on top-performing employees into a single place, enabling you to hire better and quicker, and also get ahead of business demand. Whatever technique you utilize, keep in mind that analytics isn't a “one-and-done” method. For recruitment to achieve success, you must endlessly seek for ways that to boost hiring. Analytics empowers you to assertively double down on your strong points and eliminate the areas where you are weaker thus you will be able to meet up every talent need of your organization further.

from Outsourcing Insight https://www.outsourcinginsight.com/big-data-analytics-in-recruiting/

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sending-the-message · 7 years

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Amerikan Historie by JohnHenrysHammer

This is the story of the last time I saw my grandfather. It was the summer before I started college, and a group of my high school buddies and I were on an extended road/camping trip. One of our camp sites was within a few miles of my grandfather's hunting cabin, where he was living for the summer. I decided to make the drive and spend the evening with him. I'm still not sure whether or not that was a good decision.

I arrived early in the morning, unannounced. He turned as he heard my truck make its way up the long drive. "Tommy!" he roared with glee when he saw me. "What in the hell are you doing here junior? I thought you were Clarence."

"Who's Clarence?" I asked as I stepped up onto the porch. It was clear he was expecting someone. There was an extra coffee mug set out as well as some bagels and oranges. I helped myself to an orange and tried to hide my disappointment. It never occurred to me that my grandfather would have visitors out there in the middle of nowhere. I had been looking forward to an evening of stories and good conversation. My grandfather was always good for staying up half the night, ready to debate or discuss anything. I had been hoping for some sage advice, some words of wisdom before I headed off to school. Be careful what you wish for I guess. I sat down in the chair next to him. He was staring thoughtfully out at the meadow in front of his property.

"In some ways I have no idea who Clarence is," he said. "None of us really ever did. But I do know that he's brilliant. Maybe a genius even. I met him when I was in college, about the same age you are now. He was an anthropology major, obsessed with American history. And he was a tough customer boy," he chuckled. "He couldn't accept the account of history we were given. It was unbelievable to him that no great civilization existed here. The native people were 10,000 years behind the rest of humanity when the Europeans arrived. The world had complex systems of mathematics, sciences, had built large scale cities, developed ways to keep records. Here there was none of that. No innovation beyond the basic needs of life. It bothered him immensely. There was no evolutionary difference to account for it.

"He rejected all the usual explanations: No contact with other cultures - Bull, Clarence said. There had long been evidence of occasional brushes with explorers, but they were few and far between and deemed insignificant by historians. Different religion or value system - Rubbish, he said. There are always those who question, who act against the status quo, who desire to leave a legacy behind. Clarence didn't buy for one second the stereotype of the Native American Indian, a people who lived in such harmony with the land and each other that they had no need of anything else. 'When has that ever worked?' he would ask. 'Utopias are an idealistic dream. They are not reality. Sure everyone agrees that they are a good idea, but human nature will not allow for it. There is always somebody who wants more. Then there is someone else who wants even more but wants to do less. It's the story of us, of humans.'"

"The mystery consumed him," my grandfather continued. "It became all he ever thought about. He worked tirelessly on solving it. It wasn't easy work. Most of the history of Native Americans was written by Europeans. Their writing had all kinds of motive, and truth was almost never on the list. At graduation he got an offer from the Smithsonian to join their anthropology department. Clarence was the top student in the country, and they were prepared to give him free reign; expenses paid and government permission secured to study, research, and dig wherever he wanted. He would have teams of people working under him. Wouldn't you know the crazy bastard turned them down. Instead he headed west to the remaining reservations, to attempt to speak to natives and learn whatever he could. He was aware they might want nothing to do with him. He told me he turned down the job because he was afraid that if it was discovered who employed him, any chance he had to learn the truth would be crushed forever."

"And then he was just gone. No one ever heard from him. Until last week. He got in touch and wanted to know if he could come by to talk. I was surprised to say the least. He was not the social sort. But age changes our priorities I suppose." He gulped down the last of his coffee and looked at me, eyes sparkling. "I am curious about him," he confessed. "When I spend time out here, in the middle of nowhere," he paused to wink at me,"I think sometimes that this right here is what this country used to look like long ago, before war, and revolution, and progress, and destiny, or whatever they're calling it these days. Evey now and then I would wonder about old Clarence and if he ever got anywhere with his research." He stood up and began to gather up the remains of the breakfast he laid out. "I hope he makes it. You'll get to meet a genius. Or a madman, who knows?" We laughed, and just then a car turned up the drive. My grandfather whistled. "Well now we will see, won't we." My disappointment vanished, replaced by curiosity. Whether this guy turned out to be brilliant or bonkos, it would at least be entertaining.

We settled ourselves in the kitchen. Clarence seemed to be unsettled by the woods. "Boy you really are far out into the wilderness here Jack," he said. When he first got out of the car he had peered around nervously. My grandfather laughed and made jokes about the city boy meeting the country.

"Don't worry, I haven't seen any bears since yesterday."

Clarence didn't seem to hear. He looked at us, and said hesitantly, "Have..have you ever seen anything, you know, unusual out here?"

"What do you mean unusual?"

Clarence looked down and kicked the dirt with his boot. "Nothing I guess," he muttered. My grandfather and I exchanged a look. The eccentricities of a genius, I thought. Now that we were inside, he seemed only slightly less on edge. He would constantly glance out the window. My grandfather tried to keep him focused.

"I was telling Tommy here all about your research," he said. "But I'd bet he'd rather hear it from you. Go on, tell us, did you make any big discoveries?"

He sighed deeply and looked around again. "Do you like it up here Jack? I mean, do you plan to spend a lot of time out here?"

I could tell my grandfather was tiring of humoring our visitor. "Well, yes. I'll head back to the city in a few weeks, but I come out here every year. Have done for a long time now. Ever since this one was a boy," he pointed to me.

"Well then, I suppose I have to tell you. Even if it puts you in danger. Because it might be more dangerous if I don't tell you." He looked at me. "What do you plan on studying in college son?"

"I'm not sure yet," I replied.

"Do yourself a favor. Study something sensible. Technology or medical, or something like that. Don't get it into your head to start running around the world and asking questions. You never know what you'll find." He ran a hand through his wiry gray hair. His thin frame shuddered a little, and I wondered if he had completely lost it. I found myself watching and listening very closely, mentally cataloguing every word and movement. Which way would the scales tip, sane or insane?

My grandfather was similarly transfixed. "You found something didn't you? How come you never published anything? I looked in the journals all the time."

Clarence snorted sarcastically at that. "I was never taken seriously enough to get published. My entire objective was deemed ridiculous, racist even. I was too much of a pseudo-scientist for academia, and too much of a scholar for the mysteries of the unexplained rags. Not to mention the fact that all my evidence was anecdotal."

"Evidence!" my grandfather said. "So you did find something!"

He nodded. "I was on to something. I know that now. Damned if I can't un-know it." His gaze shifted suddenly. "What's that!" he cried in fright, pointing out the cabin's back window.

"It's nothing, it's a decoration, don't worry about it." My grandfather gestured to me and I rose to close the curtain. When I came back I saw that he had given Clarence a beer. His head was tilted back, downing nearly half the bottle. I looked questioningly at my grandfather, but he just nodded at me and I sat back down. I wasn't sure giving alcohol to a crazy person was such a good idea.

"My original question," he began, "was why had the typical progress of civilization not occurred in North America? I had several theories in mind to follow. One was the possibility that there had indeed been a great civilization here, but all physical evidence had been destroyed over time. In such case it was possible that indigenous people had preserved evidence in the form of oral traditions. It would further be possible that they saw no reason to share their history with the Europeans. I believe they view that sort of thing as tarnishing the sacred memory of their ancestors."

"A second possibility was that the records we have are in fact true; that factors such as isolation, the environment, and the availability of natural resources all contributed to the delay in development. Yet another possibility hinged on the superiority of their culture. Beings at once behind in time, yet so far advanced that they had no use for material matters." He looked at my grandfather. "You know well Jack, that I never accepted that last one. It's an apologists story. It's white people bestowing a kind of saintliness to a group that suffered immeasurably at their hands." He shook his head. "I dislike it because it robs them of their humanity. The natives were no worse and no better than anyone else. I believe among their number existed great men and women, intelligent leaders, mothers and fathers who loved their sons and daughters, as well as those who were difficult, lazy, prone to temper, jealous, power driven, murderous." He paused and rubbed his hands over his face. "I just wanted the truth. Their truth. Not the version written by their conquerors. And I would understand if they didn't want to give it to me. But I had to try."

"So off I went, west into the unknown. It took so long to gain the confidence of the people I met. But I had expected this and I was persistent. The trouble with myths and legends is that they change over time. After several years among the natives I heard hundreds of versions of the same stories. I discovered only that their history was shaped by all of the influences previously theorized. Just like the history of any people anywhere. The only question that remained unanswered was Where were all the great thinkers? I was stubbornly convinced that there had to be someone who looked up at the stars like in ancient Greece, someone who shirked off their responsibilities to draw and make art like early man had done in the caves of France, someone who tried to explain, to make sense of the world in which they lived. But no one seemed particularly interested in my question. Or they acted as if they didn't understand.

"I was completely dejected. I had wasted years of my life out here. Academia thought I was a fool, I had passed on one of the biggest opportunities anyone could ever hope to get." He paused and finished the rest of his beer. He pushed his chair back from the table and hung his head in his hands. Then he breathed in deep and raised his head. He continued. "And then one day everything changed. I met the grandchild of a highly respected medicine man. He agreed to talk with me. He said he was going to tell me so that I would stop asking. I was putting people in danger by continuing to ask about forbidden things. He would speak to me only under the condition that once we spoke, I had to leave and never come back, and I could never again set foot on Indian land. It would be too dangerous."

Clarence looked at me, then at my grandfather. "Jack, have you ever looked back on your life, all the changes you went through, and tried to pinpoint the exact moment you've changed course? He looked at me again. "You can't recognize them when they happen. It's only later that they become the most important moments of our lives. My life changed forever the day I agreed to talk to that man. I can never go back to being who I was before. So I want to tell you both that I'm sorry. Because a few months or a year from now, you might look back and realize that this, right now, is one of those moments you cannot come back from."

"I'm an old man Clarence, I'm pretty sure I can handle it. Tommy's young yet, he can bounce back from anything, isn't that right Tommy? Now go on and finish your story," my grandfather said. He had a beer as well now, I noticed, and he placed another on the table in front of Clarence. He sat down and looked at me. "Aw hell," he said, "go on and grab yourself one too." I hurried to the cooler. The ice was cold, and I felt that strange cold-burning sensation on my hand as I fumbled through, feeling for a bottle. Clarence waited until I was seated to continue.

"The man I was to meet called himself Whitewolf. He was adamant we meet off the reservation. I had to drive an hour to some little diner. When I arrived I asked him why he wanted to come so far away. He said that we were being watched. By who, I asked him. The trees he said." He looked at my grandfather who had started to laugh. "Exactly what I thought Jack. But I had come all that way. So I decided to stay and listen. And pretty soon I forgot about any urge I'd had to get up and leave."

"This man Whitewolf explained that from the beginning, the native people had lived alongside a presence. It had always been there, and it always would be. Calling it a presence was not exactly accurate. It was a struggle to explain these things in English, he said. To them it's an ancient fact, so ingrained it does not need explaining. All attempts to put such a concept into words falls ridiculously short. Which is the point, he said. The presence wants to exert its influence unnoticed. It desires control, and it goes about it's work by any means necessary."

"Is it malevolent?" I asked him. I was thinking this would be a great story to scare my friends with when I got back to camp. Except I would say evil instead of malevolent when I told them.

"It can be," Clarence answered. "It seems to enjoy chaos. Many of the earliest people succumbed to the influence. It whispered things in their ears, made them afraid, jealous, or angry. People couldn't get along with each other. Groups were split, and it made survival very hard. So the wise men, the medicine men decided they had to do something. They tried to figure out ways to ignore it, to block the influence. Whitewolf claimed he was a descendant of one of the first men to battle the presence. It was very difficult and took much time to achieve the skill. It became an essential part of every child's upbringing. Before they were taught how to hunt, or how to collect and grow food they learned about the presence and how to fight its influence.

"Soon the elders discovered that their efforts weren't enough. The presence was evolving, growing stronger. A few courageous medicine men dedicated themselves to learning all they could. Their task was very dangerous and they knew they may not survive. Some never came back. Some returned changed, given over to evil pursuits. The presence had turned them from goodness. And whatever knowledge that person had, the presence now had."

"Sort of like possession," my grandfather mused.

"Yes, exactly. Silence became a way of life. Languages became complicated in order to confuse and mislead the presence. Names became carefully guarded secrets. The medicine men who survived continued to discover more. The presence played on desires. The overly ambitious were eyed with frightened suspicion. Were they under the sway? After awhile it mattered little if they truly were. It was socially unacceptable to have or to want more than anyone else."

"So it seemed that I had my answer. It was the combined effect of belief and social conditioning that had arrested the development of their society. Because of course I believed none of it. I began to get depressed as I sat there listening to Whitewolf. I wanted the truth to be different. I wanted stories of remarkable individuals who had made great advances in learning. I was sure I would find them here. Their achievements perhaps lost to recorded history, but living on in memory. Stories and legends so sacred they were never shared with the white man. But it seemed that the greatest minds were caught up in a ghost story. All their energy was devoted to shadows. Whitewolf kept talking though, and I kept listening. Maybe it was because he was a good storyteller. Maybe it was because he was the only one who would talk to me at length. He had gotten to the point in his tale when the colonists began to arrive."

"At first the natives wondered how to go about warning them about the presence. By this time it was instinct for them. They knew how to guard themselves mentally and emotionally from the dark influence. But it was becoming rapidly clear that the colonists had no interest in learning the native ways. They had strange ideas about ownership and conquest, and they were desirous of everything. And they talked non-stop. Words were scattered about, dropped carelessly, trampled on. They would say one thing and the next day say something completely different. It shocked the natives, who had long used words with the utmost care. So there arose among them an informal agreement to let the colonists fend for themselves. They would learn soon enough about the dangers posed by the presence. The more pressing matter was how to co-exist with these new people whose numbers never seemed to stop increasing."

"What happened next caught the natives by surprise. The clash between the cultures reverberated like a shockwave. Loved ones were lost, food became scarce, violent uprisings occurred over ownership of land. High levels of anxiety, grief, and anger weighed upon the natives. The mental strength that protected them from the presence began to weaken and splinter. They knew it, and they were afraid. But they didn't have to be. Because the presence had discovered the colonists. And it liked what it had found. These new people were full of weaknesses. They were so easy to manipulate and bend. The presence no longer needed to try and turn the natives, who were too good at resisting anyway. How could the new people resist when they never knew they were under attack in the first place?"

I looked at my grandfather to see if he saw it too. His eyes met mine in conformation. Something was happening to our guest. He was no longer the meek, anxious man he was when he first arrived. His eyes had a sort of glaze, and he was swaying to and fro in his seat. He took on the aspect of a southern preacher spewing out a fire and brimstone sermon. My grandfather cleared his throat."Well Clarence, that's an amazing story. We should invite the old gang over sometime and you can tell them. Say you ever hear what became of Frank Delacroix?"

Clarence was having none of it. "Do you know what became of Whitewolf? On the way back from meeting me he was killed in a car wreck. Witnesses say he lost control when he swerved to avoid a deer that ran out in front of him. Well some of them said it was a deer. Others saw a coyote. Others swear it was a man. Think of it though," he hissed. "What if it's true? There are stories that personify temptation as the devil on your shoulder, we all know that one. Where did that story come from? Wherever did man get such an idea? Especially those who, like the natives, had no exposure to Christian belief, to the idea of Satan the tempter? And yet these people believed, they believed more strongly than certain churchgoing folks I know. What horrors did they see to convince them this was real? Whitewolf told me some of them. They are awful stories. Stories of men who set their sleeping villages ablaze. Mothers who skinned and roasted their babies. The hunting party who stopped hunting animals and began to hunt each other. Three of them were discovered in the woods chewing on the entrails of a man still alive. And yet, if you added up their crimes, their offenses, the natives capacity for evil was nothing compared to what just arrived."

He stood and began to walk aimlessly around the cabin. He shook his head violently, as if he were trying to shake loose the horrible imagery lodged in his mind. "Keep an eye on him, I won't be a minute," my grandfather said. I nodded and tried to look brave. This man was really starting to scare me. I could hear my grandfather rustling around in the other room. Why had he agreed to let Clarence come here? He didn't really even know him. Now we had to deal with him. How were we gonna get him out of here? Should we call an ambulance? It would take them forever to get here. I was watching Clarence as my mind ran through these options. Suddenly he whirled around to face me, and I jumped.

"What if the presence whispered to those weary colonists? Showed them all this country could give them. Led them on with promises of prosperity. And why not? What would it whisper? Would it say to them, look what you've been through? You deserve better. Never mind these people here, look how they live. All the potential that lies in this land, and they don't know what to do with it. But you, you know what to do. You shouldn't have to do the work. You've done so much already. You've nearly starved coming here. Why don't you sit for a moment. Rest. Think. You've suffered so much. Look at these folks here. They are so strange. Let them do the work. Look at those funny looking ones. They don't know anything. Can they even take care of themselves. Whats that? They can't even read? Put them to work. They can labor and toil. You have more important work to do." He turned from me abruptly and made for the window. He pulled back the curtain, and let loose an earth shattering howl. My grandfather was at my side in a flash.

"What is that? What is that?" Clarence screeched. He pointed out to the backyard along the edge of the woods.

"it's nothing Clarence, it's a decoration, calm down," my grandfather said.

"I can't be - I'm not supposed to be here!" Clarence screamed. "You tricked me! Why didn't you tell me - " He collapsed in a heap onto the floor.

"Some sort of panic attack I guess," my grandfather said. "C'mon, help me get him to bed." He had been busy making up the guest bed, anticipating that Clarence would probably need a few hours to calm his nerves after getting so worked up telling his story. "I don't want him leaving here in the dark in such a state. God knows what could happen to him." We lifted him onto the small spare mattress. "But then that means I don't have room for you. You better get a move on kiddo. I know you know these roads in and out, but it's still not good to be on your own after dark. Give me a call when you get home from your camping trip alright? Send my love to your mother."

I walked out to my truck. I felt drained. It was near sunset now. I had spent all day listening to this crazy tale. I started the engine and took off down the drive. I honestly can't remember now if I really did hear screams in the distance as I turned on to the road or if my imagination is making up that memory. In any event I kept going, a decision that probably saved my life, and one I know my grandfather wouldn't blame me for. I still can't understand how it happened. It was my grandfather's hunting cabin, he had all kinds of guns and knives up there. He should have been able to protect himself.

I went back to the cabin once, a few months later with my father. The mess of blood, broken glass, splintered wood, flesh, and bits of brain had long since been cleaned up. I pretended not to notice the dark stains on the wood when we entered. My father pretended not to notice too. My grandfather did not own the cabin. He rented it from a woman who was now selling it. She said it freaked her out to go there after the the murders. So my dad and I were summoned to gather up my grandfather's belongings. The woman met us there with a key and waited outside while my dad and I loaded up the van. She refused to come inside. I remember seeing her wander around the backyard. She stopped and looked up at the totem pole that stood at the edge of the property. Her black hair shone in the sun.

#reddit #nosleep #scary #story

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