#‘no we don’t want you’ like what a colossal waste of everybody’s time that was | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

notebooknebula · 3 years

Video

youtube

Jeremy Knauff - His Inspiring Story of Surviving A Health Crisis

https://www.jayconner.com/jeremy-knauff-his-inspiring-story-of-surviving-a-health-crisis/

If you are interested in hearing and learning the most inspiring story that Jay Conner heard this year, stay tuned and watch this video.

Jay is in the Mastermind group with a gentleman who is phenomenal. His special guest today has experienced a health crisis and survived it.

In today’s episode, they are going to dive deep into the inspiring story of Jeremy Knauff.

Jeremy has become successful not because of brilliance, charm, or a superpower, but rather because he’s always learning and refuses to give up. He is a speaker, author, and founder of the digital marketing agency Spartan Media.

He is an entrepreneur, digital marketer, author, proud father, husband, and a US Marine Corps veteran. Today, he runs Spartan Media, a digital marketing agency where they provide web design, SEO, social media, and PPC marketing services.

“A lot of the people I work with come to me because they have a website but they aren’t getting enough new business out of it. Other people come to me because they’re losing business to competitors, or because they don’t think their website presents their company to potential customers very well, or even because they’re starting a company from scratch and they don’t want to screw it up and waste a ton of money. If that describes you or sounds like anyone you know, let’s connect.” – Jeremy Knauff – https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeremyknauff

If you want to learn how to get funding for your deals using private money, get on over www.JayConner.com/trial for 30 days of free access to Private Money Academy.

Real Estate Cashflow Conference:

https://www.jayconner.com/learnreales...

Free Webinar:

http://bit.ly/jaymoneypodcast

Jay Conner is a proven real estate investment leader. Without using his own money or credit, Jay maximizes creative methods to buy and sell properties with profits averaging $64,000 per deal.

#RealEstate

#PrivateMoney

#FlipYourHouse

What is Real Estate Investing? Live Cashflow Conference

https://youtu.be/QyeBbDOF4wo

Channel

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZfl...

https://www.youtube.com/c/RealEstateI...

RSS Feed

http://realestateinvestingdeals.mypod...

Google Play

https://play.google.com/music/listen#...

iTunes:

https://itunes.apple.com/ca/podcast/r...

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

Jay Conner (00:04):

If you are interested in learning and hearing one of the most inspiring stories that I've heard this year, I want you to stay tuned. I'm in a Mastermind group where the gentleman that is just phenomenal, he has taken his filter off totally. And he has made it through and survive on the other side, just a very serious health crisis. And so if you are going through a health crisis or, you know someone that is going through a health crisis, stay tuned right now, you're about to be inspired.

Jay Conner (00:45):

Well, welcome to another episode of Real Estate Investing with Jay Conner. I'm Jay Conner also known as the Private Money Authority. And on today's show, we're going to take a little bit of a detour. We're not going to dive deep into real estate per se, but we are going to dive deep into a very inspiring story that can change your life and make a difference. But before we get to my guest, I have got a gift for you. And that is if you're interested in getting funding for your real estate deals, without relying on banks, mortgage companies, any kind of institutional lenders, then here's my gift. I launched earlier this year, it's called the Private Money Academy membership. And twice a month, I go live on a private Zoom coaching call, and I interview successful students. We taught deals. Talk about how we're finding real estate deals, how we're getting them funded with private money.

Jay Conner (01:43):

Again, without relying on banks and institutional lenders. We talk about all kinds of real estate, but I want to give you a free gift. Come join us and check us out at www.JayConner.com/Trial, after the show, get right on over to www.JayConner.com/Trial, And again, if you're on a YouTube or iTunes or Google play, we really appreciate it for you to like share subscribe, rate, and review and on YouTube, be sure and tap that little bell. So you'll be notified. So you don't miss out on any of these fantastic shows and guests that I have on here. Well, as I mentioned or alluded to a moment ago, I'm so excited to have a friend, and fellow mastermind brother, come on here to the show to tell his story and make a difference in your life. So let's bring out of the green room or right on here up front. Mr. Jeremy, Jeremy, are you there?

Jeremy (02:48):

I am here. How are you doing today, man?

Jay Conner (02:49):

Scott, I lost connection. So I'm going to sign out real quick and hop right back in. I'll be right back.

Jay Conner (03:00):

There we are. Jeremy, can you hear me?

Jeremy (03:02):

I can hear you.

Jay Conner (03:03):

All right. Well, welcome to the show, Jeremy. I appreciate so much. You've taken the time to come on and join me.

Jeremy (03:10):

Thank you. It's my pleasure.

Jay Conner (03:11):

You bet you. Well, as I mentioned to everybody here in the opening you and I are in a Mastermind together and a few weeks ago, I heard you speak on stage and I just really appreciated your authenticity and et cetera. But before we jump into your story of breaking through and living through the health crisis tell her about your background story and how you gotten to where you are today and tell a little bit about Spartan Media.

Jeremy Knauff (03:44):

Yeah, so I've had kind of a, an interesting ride. You know, I finished high school joined the Marine Corps, bounced all over the world there for a while. And then started my first business, which was a colossal failure. Pretty much lost everything went into massive debt from there. Spent a few years kind of rebuilding started my second company an agency, and ran that successfully for many years until the episode that you had briefly hinted at in the beginning here, when I had a health crisis that almost killed me. And then, you know, racked up hundreds of thousands of dollars of medical expenses and bills and burn through all of our savings. Basically had to start over from zero, well from less than zero, really because we had racked up debt and, you know, then I had the additional challenge of starting over, which in the marketing world, you know, at that point, I was pretty much on my death bed for about two years. So there was no case studies, there was no examples, there was no clients. So I had to start over from less than zero at that point. And now here I am today.

Jay Conner (04:52):

Wow. So I want us to get into your health crisis story and lessons. We can learn from that, but before we do tell everybody about Spartan Media and what your company does.

Jeremy Knauff (05:04):

So Spartan media is a, basically it's a full service digital marketing agency, but what we've been focusing on lately is taking people and turning them into an authority within their industry. Right now the website doesn't really reflect that because the cobbler's kids always gets shoes last, but what we've been doing lately is taking people and turning them into an authority within their industry. So there's a particular example that I like to use. And that's this example was kind of the pivot point for me. At one point in time, me and a good friend of mine, I ran my marketing agency, he ran a printing company, a particular client together. You know, he did all the printing stuff, we did all the marketing design and all of that. Well, at some point in that relationship, he decided to sell his printing business and go work for client.

Jeremy Knauff (05:58):

And he quickly moved up to become the Chief operating officer. But then because of some things that happened with the founder the company was kind of in turmoil. And they got to a point where I think it was 19 franchisees were walking away from the organization. They were trying to organize a class action lawsuit. They had all kinds of online reputation management problems to deal with. It was just, it was a complete toxic mess from top to bottom, but what happened was because of all the things we were doing for them with the search engine optimization, the social media, the PR, all of the various marketing components. He went from basically having no experience, being nobody in the industry. I left out a piece. He, the founder had to step down and he had to step up and become the CEO because at that point, the relationships were just destroyed.

Jeremy Knauff (06:49):

So as a result of all of the things that we were doing for them, he ended up becoming so recognized. And so authoritative within his industry that last year, before all this COVID stuff happened, I was actually in DC with him. He was lobbying Congress on behalf of his industry. So he went from basically being nobody in that industry to now he's up here talking with congressmen and senators about the laws that affect that industry. So we develop that into a front end service where we basically take someone and turn them into an authority within their industry so that they can get more media coverage, get in front of more people charge more money and you know, make more profit.

Jay Conner (07:31):

So what is your like ideal client? Like what type of industries does your service work well for?

Jeremy Knauff (07:38):

Generally, it comes down to somebody in a, like a professional business services, right? So it wouldn't be necessarily good for a restaurant owner. I mean, although it, theoretically it could help them in some ways it's not going to have the same impact that it might for somebody like you, where you want to be recognized as the person to talk to when it comes to this kind of stuff, private money, hard money lending, stuff like that. So generally somebody that's in a professional business service is going to see the most impact from this.

Jay Conner (08:06):

Okay. That makes sense. Well, let's let's dive into your personal experience and your personal story.

Jeremy (08:13):

Yeah.

Jay Conner (08:13):

So I'm going to turn it over to you to tell that story, Jeremy, and I'll interrupt you when I think I need to.

Jeremy Knauff (08:19):

Okay. All right. So this one was a, this was an interesting ride. I touched briefly on the crisis itself, but basically what happened was I was kind of on top of the world, had plenty of clients had plenty of money. Everything was going great. And then out of the blue, I get hit with this, with this health crisis. And, you know, I went to every doctor under the sun. I was going to the emergency room three to five times a week. I was trying to figure this out. Nobody had any answers and it just kept getting worse and worse and worse. So, I was pretty much on my bed for the first two years of this. You know, we did all kinds of things from a pharmaceutical perspective, from a diet perspective, I was seeing all kinds of specialists. I was seeing, you know, things I would have never considered like, you know, energy healers and acupuncturists and all kinds of non-traditional approaches.

Jeremy Knauff (09:13):

And throughout the beginning of this, it was incredibly frustrating because the doctors didn't know what it was. So they just dismissed it. It was, Oh, well, you're having a, you're having a panic attack. You're having an anxiety attack. Well, I knew that wasn't the case, right? Because I had this pain from basically head to toe from the skin down to the bone and it was constant. It was 24 seven. And it was a level of pain that I have never felt in my life. It was a 10 on my chart. And to put that in perspective, I took a tattoo off with a drum sander once. All right. So I have an abnormally high pain tolerance. So I've got this excruciating pain in basically every cell of my body, no doctors have any answers. There's no idea as to when it's going to end.

Jeremy Knauff (09:58):

And there was a point where I'm walking around my house, as you know, as this stuff is going on. And I didn't mention this on stage, but I have a lot of weapons in my house. A lot of firearms I'm Marine, this shouldn't surprise anybody, but I remember walking around and I would see these weapons in various rooms. And I would be feeling this incredible pain. And I knew that there was no answer. There was no idea as to when it was going to end, how it was going to be solved? And I got to a point where I actually understood how people got to a point where they chose to take their life.

Jeremy Knauff (10:39):

And it got to the point where I actually took everything, disassembled, everything tossed in a duffel bags. And I called a friend and I was like, look, I, we don't really have anything to worry about yet, but I'm just letting you know that I may ask you to come pick these up and store them at your house for a little while. Right. So I've got all these thoughts that are just like, absolutely outrageous. Like I've never had these kinds of thoughts before. And then right around that time, one of the toughest guys I've ever met, a guy I served with, his name was Todd Grant ended up taking his life.

Jeremy Knauff (11:18):

And as Terrible as that situation was, I also feel like it was a sign, right? Like I'm going through this, this happens. And I figured at that point, this is going to be, it's a sign. And we're going to find a silver lining in this situation. And where I saw from that was, this is an opportunity to help fellow veterans. I don't know if you're aware of this, but within the veteran community, we're losing 22 roughly per day to suicide. So from that point, I made it my mission to, despite going through this insane health crisis, despite being in massive pain with no idea what the hell is causing it, or when it's going to end, or if it, if we even could fix it. I'm going to get out there. I'm going to get back on top. I'm going to serve as an example to the other veterans, to the other people who are struggling. Even non-veterans everybody, people who are struggling, people who don't know what they're going to do, they don't see a solution to their problem.

Jeremy Knauff (12:22):

And, you know, I began being very vocal about the challenges I was going through. I was very vocal about what's going on, what you know, how to overcome these things. I was just completely transparent in all of this. And at the same time, I started reaching out to people who I knew were struggling, fellow veterans, as well as civilians. And it got to a point where my number was just freely passed around. And pretty much everybody knew that if somebody was struggling, they could give out my number freely to anybody. And as a result of that, I, there are several people that I've talked to. I've probably counseled hundreds of veterans over the several years that this health crisis has gone on. I remember one particular one that was really moving for me. And that was a buddy of mine from high school, reached out to me one night and he's like, Hey, we've got this guy.

Jeremy Knauff (13:20):

You know, he just got back from Iraq. He's going through all these issues. We've sent him everywhere. He's gone to all the counselors. He's gone to all the, you know, the doctors he's done everything and nothing's working. And he's like, do you mind if I give him your phone number? I was like, absolutely, have him call me. So the kid called me we were out of town visiting a friend of my wife's. And so I take the call. I go outside and I'm talking to this kid for, I don't know, probably two, three hours, get him to a point where I think he's in a good spot. Come back in the house now because of my health crisis, I've got my phone set to where at a certain time in the evening, it goes into do not disturb mode. So it's not going to ring things will still show up on the screen, but it's not going to make any noise.

Jeremy Knauff (14:06):

So, I come back in the house just a few minutes after he and I had talked and I got this little thing that dings up on the phone, no noise, just notification on the screen, it's a voicemail. So I pick it up and listen to it. Cause it was, it was him. And I'm like, well, maybe, maybe something went wrong. Maybe he's still got a problem, whatever. I listened to the voicemail and he's just sobbing uncontrollably. And he's like, I just, like, I don't know what to say. I've talked to all these counselors, nobody's had any answers. And like, I talked to you and you just, you get it. And now I'm like, I'm in a place where I see a light at the end of the tunnel and I see what's possible. And like I'm in a, such a different place than I was even before I was in the military.

Jeremy Knauff (14:45):

And he's like, you know, just thank you. And it was just such an emotional message. And that's the kind of thing that I took out of this whole experience is the silver lining here is had I not gone through this? Had I not had this pain, had this health crisis, had all this stuff happened to me, lose everything, start over and get to a point where I understood how people could take their lives. I may not have ended up on this path where I started helping other veterans and helping other people who are struggling. So that was something that I think I took out of that whole experience, just, you know, to be able to give back into the world in that way and, you know, save people who are struggling in that regard.

Jay Conner (15:28):

Wow. That's amazing. So I know you can't summarize a three hour conversation in three minutes, but what I mean? So you've council just, you know, a lot of people that have had suicidal thoughts and, you know, really, I mean, one of my best friends in the world is I mean, he actually speaks at my live events and a few years ago he took his filter off. And I mean, he had actually gotten to the point of, you know, Googling, you know, how to commit suicide. He'd actually figured out how he was gonna do it. And so he's got his story, but for people that are out there and you know, when the times are going on now, average suicide rates are just out the ceiling before, you know, as compared to historically. But what are some strategies or some therapies that you could share that maybe you have as a common thread when you're talking to people?

Jeremy Knauff (16:42):

From what perspective, as far as like somebody, for somebody who's trying to,

Jay Conner (16:47):

Yeah. Obviously you listened to them in every story is different because every person is different. But is there a way you can share, what are some ways that you get into think about to get into a better place as you?

Jeremy Knauff (17:02):

Yeah. So ultimately you have to look at the situation as an opportunity because every situation is an opportunity provided that you can allow yourself to see it that way. You know, and this was what I went through in the beginning of mine. It was like, well, why me? Why this, this is. Why should this, why should I have to deal with this? But the reality is things happen. The why doesn't really matter. It's up to us to figure out what value we can take from a situation. So what value I took from this, you know, I'm going through this particular thing. And then on top of it, a guy that I served with took his life. Well, I had to find some kind of value in that. And that was how I was able to get through this because now, I mean, think about it, what the hell happens if I decide to take my life? All these hundreds or thousands of people who have been looking up and I've got this thing, I call it the cookie jar, and this is something we'll actually touch on here shortly. Cause this is another way that can help get through these. But like, I've got various messages that I got from people over the years of, you know, how my posts have inspired them or motivated them to push through this particular challenge or that challenge or whatever. So that's a good way to do that is, is having that, what we call it cookie jar, but, had I not done this, had I not found that value in it.

Jeremy Knauff (18:22):

I would not have gone down this path. And I know I don't have the exact count in my head, but I know there's a certain number of people who would not be here today. So, let's say that I didn't, let's say that I got to a point where I took my life. What the hell is that going to show to those people? So now that that meeting is there. That's something to carry me through no matter how bad things get. So as long as we have a strong, why we're going to be able to get through anything, that's why you see, you know, the military doing things that ordinary people can't do. It's because they have a mission and it's not just the mission on paper. It's not, Hey, go kill these guys or blow that up or whatever. It's their mission is the guy to their left and their right in combat.

Jeremy Knauff (19:04):

It's their brothers and their sisters. So when we have a strong, why we have a powerful mission behind what we're doing, that allows us to go through something. And that's why people in general don't accomplish their goals because they want to do it. If it's convenient, they don't want to do it no matter what, they just want to do it when it's nice and simple. So that's, that's one aspect is having a really strong why. The second aspect is the cookie jar thing that I talked about, where you basically take things that you've overcome in your life, right? Like we've all had some pretty terrible things happen to us. So if you can go back and look at those significant challenges, those difficult times and use those as motivation. It's like, Hey, I got through this, I got through that, I got through this.

Jeremy Knauff (19:51):

Then you can use that as fuel. Well, that's just another case of this, right? So now you just, you have that, it's like, I've already done this. Let's just do it again. And the cookie jar, you can look at it in a number of ways. You can have it be something in your head. You could have it be something tangible, like the collection of messages that I've got from various people. It could be, you know, maybe you've got a what a buddy of mine in the military used to call his, I love me wall, all the awards and the recognition and the things he had accomplished. When we have this kind of thing that shows us that what we've done has prepared us for what we're going through now. And I mean, you can even purely look at that from a physical perspective, right?

Jeremy Knauff (20:32):

You know, you look at what we do in the military, or you look at what an elite athlete does, and they're not, let's say you're going to go run a three mile race. You're not going to go run three miles. Your training is going to consist of you running, you know, six, nine, maybe twelve miles. You might do a series of sprints. You might do all these different things that are larger than what you're actually trying to accomplish. So when we look back at the things that we've actually done to prepare for what we're doing in the totality, we've already overcome the thing that we're facing. We just haven't put all the pieces together to realize that.

Jay Conner (21:06):

That is wonderful. Now, you mentioned a moment ago that people you get feedback from people really being inspired and helped with your post. Where could people see your posts and, you know, the types of things that you're posting?

Jeremy Knauff (21:23):

I mean, I'm pretty active on especially on Facebook, but I'm active on most of the social media platforms. I'm not a hard guy to find considering what I do. I'm pretty public and pretty out there. So Yeah.

Jay Conner (21:36):

So Scott, let's put Jeremy's name up there. And so folks, the spelling there is, and if in case you're just listening is Jeremy, J E R E M Y. And his last name is K N A U F F as in farmer farmer. And I guess it's okay to give out your email since we've got it up there on the screen.

Jeremy Knauff (21:57):

Already out there now. It's all over the place anyway. So it's all good.

Jay Conner (22:03):

There you go. So Jeremy says it's pretty easy to find him folks if you want to start following him, I've got one curious question I have is you've talked with all these people. You've helped a lot of people that have considered taking their life. Do you think, or have you heard back and I think I know the answer to this question. Have you heard back, or do you think some of those people that you helped are now out there doing the same thing you're doing and that is helping other people with that situation?

Jeremy Knauff (22:35):

You know, that's a good question. I stay in touch with a lot of them. I don't know if anyone's doing that, but I would hope so. Right. Like, I think that that's something we all should be doing, not just this particular topic, but whatever the topic, right? Like I think we all should be putting value back into the world. And if you know that you've already struggled with the thing and overcome it, then you've got that knowledge, you've got that empathy. You can deal with it in a way that others can't. So I hope, I certainly hope they are. It's. I mean, if you've already got the background, we need to be adding value back to the world in that way. So yes, I hope they are.

Jay Conner (23:10):

Well, you know, it all comes down to serving and I mean, clearly Jeremy, you have got a servant's heart and you said it beautifully, you go through this thing, you overcame the thing and now you can help others do the same thing. I mean, in my education business, the Private Money Authority, it's the same thing I was, no, it's not the same thing. You're not the same thing. The concept is the same. I was, I mean, I've been relying on local banks to fund my deals for the first six years of investing. And this story pales in comparison to yours as far as its importance. But I was cut off from the banks. Then every way to fund my deals, I found a great way to get my deals funding with private money. And then what I started doing two years after that is just teaching other people what I know to do. So, you know, or how to fix the problem now, a mentor mindset years ago, I said, you know, Jay, if people didn't have problems, they wouldn't need us.

Jeremy Knauff (24:17):

This is very true.

Jay Conner (24:20):

And guess what? the world is your oyster because everybody's, got problems. So as we wrap up here on the show final comments Jeremy.

Jeremy Knauff (24:32):

Final comments, I just, I guess, look for ways to add value back into the world. You know, too far, far too often people look at, Hey, what can I get out of this situation or this deal, or this person or whatever. When we look at how we can make something, a win for everybody involved, it creates more value as a whole, and we all rise. So I just think more of us need to take that approach.

Jay Conner (24:57):

Excellent. So one more time folks. Jeremy's very, very easy to find all the social media and all the platforms. Again, you spell his name, J E R E M Y. Last name K N A U F F as in farmer and his company, [email protected] If you are any type of professional and you're looking to be known as the authority and expert in your space, then you definitely want to check out Jeremy and his team it's [email protected]. There you have it. Folks, another show, Real Estate Investing with Jay Conner. I'm the Private Money Authority, and I'm wishing you all the best and here's to taking your business to the next level. We'll see you on the next show.

#Jay Conner #Private Money Lender #Real Estate Business #Real Estate #Real Estate Investing #Real Estate Investor #Real Estate Profit #The Money Private Authority

19 notes · View notes

k7l4d4 · 3 years

Text

Midnight Striga: Fairy Tail/Owl House Cross Fic Episode 3 Part 5

Hello all, here’s the second to last section of Episode 3 of Midnight Striga! Everybody Clap Your Hands!!

‘This school is pathetic.’ Boscha mused to herself. ‘It enables stupidity and jeopardizes the potential of those who could be strong.’

“So,” Skara cautiously began, “what are you planning on us doing after school, Boscha?” She was nervous. It was only natural, her closest friend had brutally man-handled her not even ten minutes ago. ‘Don’t think about it.’ She thought to herself.

Boscha blinked, thinking for a moment, before a bloody grin crossed her face. “Practice.”

Skara cringed. For the past three days, practice basically meant Boscha going out and beating any and every demon she came across to a bloody pulp. Skara… wasn’t comfortable with this new Boscha. Sure, she was always aggressive, and really in your face, but she wasn’t a sadist or anything. This blatant cruelty was way beyond anything Boscha had ever been okay with before. Skara desperately glanced around, hoping to find something, ANYTHING, to get Boscha’s mind out of its current headspace. Thankfully, she spotted just the target.

“Oh my Titan, is that Willow?” Skara called out, shifting Boscha’s attention towards the named girl. Skara grimaced slightly; while she personally didn’t care one way or another about the girl, only really going along with Boscha’s antics in the past because Boscha’s her friend and Willow isn’t, she wouldn’t wish Boscha’s current attention on anyone, even someone she apparently hated.

As Boscha followed Skara’s gaze, her eyes fell on one Willow Park. As she stared at the girl who stood at the absolute bottom of the social ladder, Boscha didn’t fight the vicious grin that came over her. Willow was someone strong who acted weak. She would make a good test. As she walked up to Willow, Skara nervously following behind, Boscha contemplated how this would turn out. Willow clearly saw them, if the fact she darted closer to the wall was any indication, but Boscha was having none of it, slamming her palm in front of Willow’s path.

“Hey, Half-A-Witch. How are things?” Boscha faux-casually asked, visibly shivering. Skara recognized that shiver; it was the same one Boscha got just before she started breaking bones.

Willow marched down the hall, furiously brushing away the tears in her eyes. She hadn’t meant to hurt Amity, no matter how angry she got, but the thing she said… ‘Out of sight, out of mind.’ Willow internally recited, trying to close off the train of thought. Taking a calming breath, Willow soldiered on, even as she feared that she had ruined her chances of getting into the Plant Track, if she wasn’t expelled altogether!!

Willow just wanted some time alone, without having to worry about her temper snapping. As she caught sight of Boscha and Skara, two of her chief headaches, closing in on her, Willow’s heart sank. ‘Not now, of all times!’ She groaned to herself. She braced herself for the coming confrontation, making a token effort to avoid them. Boscha cutting her off was well-within expectations, she dryly noted.

“Hey, Half-A-Witch. How are things?” Boscha asked, shivering for some reason. Ordinarily,Willow would do her best to ignore the girl, maybe act a little more timid to get her to move on quickly. But now? Willow was angry, hurt, and very much willing to stand up to the school’s top jock.

“If you must know, I’m having a bad day, and I’m in now mood to put up with you.” Willow softly growled.

Skara and Boscha both pulled back, Skara in shock, and Boscha… in anticipation.

“So, looks like you finally grew a spine, eh?” Boscha grinned, heedless of the tugs to her uniform Skara was giving.

“And just what is that supposed to mean?” Willow demanded, eyes flashing.

“Just that you’ve been wasting your potential for years.” Boscha ruthlessly stated, arching an eyebrow. As Willow gained an affronted look, and Skara just looked confused, Boscha steamrolled on. “I mean, you’ve got all that power and skill for Plant Magic, but you wasted it on Abominations? Seriously, were you even trying?”

Willow grit her teeth. “It’s more complicated than that.”

Boscha rolled her eyes, smirking. “Sure it is. You know what I think?”

Willow snorted. “No, I don’t. And I honestly don’t want to, either.” She shoved between the two Witches, walking past as quick as she could. It wasn’t quick enough.

“I think you're a coward.” Willow stopped cold, almost rooted in place. Slowly turning, she took in the sight of Boscha’s mocking grin, Skara standing back in shock.

“What did you say?” Willow whispered, her temper starting to rise.

“It's so obvious!” Boscha gleefully cried. “You let yourself get stuck in a track guaranteed to be a dead end, never fight back, and just let everyone walk all over you! You’re a coward.”

“Stop.” Willow started.

“You’re lazy, never even trying to stand up for yourself, even though you could crush more than half the school if you wanted to, you never ask for help, letting yourself sit in mediocrity!”

“Quiet.”

“You could be queen of the school if you really wanted to, but instead you settle for being a nobody. I wonder what your parents would think, if they knew their little girl was this pathetic” Boscha finished, eager to see the reaction she would get, proof as to whether Willow was weak or strong.

“Shut UP!!” With a furious scream, tears rushing down her face, Willow summoned another colossal vine, sending Boscha careening into a wall, before storming off again, this time not bothering to wipe away her tears. Skara rushed over to the other Witchling.

“Boscha!” She cried. “What in the Titan’s name was THAT!?” That was far beyond anything Boscha had ever said to Willow before. Calling out her performance, her abilities, and implying her parents would be ashamed of her? That was ice cold.

Instead of a response, all she heard… was laughter. The soft, unhinged laughter of someone who really didn’t know what was happening anymore, and was just enjoying what they could of it all. “She really is strong! But she acts so Weak. I don’t understand her at all.” Boscha laughed.

“Boscha, come on.” Skara pleaded. “We really should get going. Ah!” Any further attempts on Skara’s part stalled as another girl accidentally knocked into her, as the girl and that one friend of Willow’s, Augustus, took off, with only a faint backwards call of ‘sorry!’ in response. “Oof. Rude.” Skara muttered.

She sighed, “Alright, you ready to go Boscha…?” Skara’s voice trailed off as she saw the state Boscha was in; she was sitting stock-still, teeth grit tight, eyes wide with disbelief and shock. Before she could say anything, Amity suddenly blew past, not even looking at the two. While this confused Skara, she decided to prioritize her friend(?) on the ground.

As she moved to help pick Boscha up, she overheard some of the other girl’s whispers, not that she understood them. “She’s here! Why is she here!? Is she here for me? Has she heard of me, is she impressed with me? I have to know, I have to know! Why, why, why?”

As Boscha took off in the direction of the group, Skara had a sinking feeling that things were about to get crazy.

As Luz and Gus rounded the bend, finally having caught up to Willow, they froze, uncertain at the sight before them; Willow, shivering in a corner, tears streaming down her face. Luz took a step forward, clearing her throat. “Hey, Willow? You okay enough to talk?” She was certain that, whatever else, Willow was most certainly NOT okay, but she might have it in her to talk about it.

“Y-yeah. I think I can.” Willow hiccuped. “I-I just… I don’t know what to do.” She sniffed, futilely wiping at her eyes with her sleeve, struggling to stem the tide of tears. “Bump will never let me in the Plant Track, not after I attacked a Top Student like that!”

“What!” Gus exclaimed. “Willow, that’s nuts. You’re amazing!”

“And that Amity kid clearly provoked you.” Luz chimed in. “He’d have to be pretty dumb to deny you because of someone else’s actions and choices.”

“Indeed.” The three gasped as Bump seemingly melted out of the shadows (He actually just used one of the hidden corridors known only to the Principal). “And while I may not appreciate the insinuation that I would blame a student for losing control of their emotions after being brutally slandered by another,” he aimed a pointed look at Luz, who did her best to whistle innocently. “I am far from willing to forgive such cruelty on school grounds.” He gave Willow a reassuring grin. “Make no mistake, Miss Park, you are not in any trouble. If it means anything, Miss Blight’s parents will be receiving a call for their daughter’s conduct.”

He chuckled at the look of amazed disbelief he received from the girl. “Yes, I am capable of looking past a student’s social and financial standing.” He stated, enjoying the sheepish flush of the three. “While I will have to assign you a small punishment for tearing up school property, if only to suspend any attempts by Mr. and Mrs. Blight to see you punished, I am happy to say that your display was more than enough proof of your skills.” With a cheerful twirl, the lavender coloring of Willow’s uniform faded, and was replaced with a rich, leafy green, much to her delight. “Welcome to the Plant Track.”

Willow gazed up with starry eyes. “Thank you, thank you, thank you sir!” She cheered, almost vibrating in place.

“Woo! Way to go Willow!” Gus cheered.

“Got to say, the color suits you better,” Luz smirked, only for her expression to shift to a more thoughtful look. “I know it’s not really any of my business but, is there some kind of history between you and Little Miss Perfect? Because, back there? That screamed personal business.”

“I must confess to being curious myself.” Bump admitted, with Gus adding in his own curiosity.

Willow bit her lip, nervously glancing at them, unsure. But then, as she glanced down, seeing her uniform, her will steeled itself. “To tell the truth, Amity and I used to be best friends.” Willow admitted with a sigh.

“Whoa, wasn’t expecting that.” Luz stated. “If the two of you were good buddies, what happened for you to both get to, well, this point?” She gestured around them, motioning to the small pools of tears at Willow’s feet.

Willow gave a bitter chuckle. “Your guess is as good as mine.” At the questioning looks she received, Willow elaborated. “When we were little, during Amity’s birthday, she told me she didn’t want to be friends anymore. That I wasn’t strong enough, skilled enough. That I wasn’t good enough.” Willow clutched the edge of her uniform. “After that, things just went downhill from there, and here we are.” Gus gasped in outrage, while Bump shook his head in disappointment, and Luz just stared off with a faraway look in her eyes, glaring at nothing.

Amity clenched her hands into fists, tucked around the corner. She bit her lip, having overheard every word. Having the dirty secret between herself and Willow aired at least semi-publicly was… frustrating, to say the least. As she steeled herself for the yelling, she moved to step out from her hiding place-

“HUMAN!!!”

Only to be knocked back by the furious form of Boscha rushing past, Skara frantically trying to keep up.

Luz groaned, annoyed at the sound of her species being shouted to the heavens, even as Willow, Gus, and Bump gave her quizzical looks. Turning, she saw another Witch girl wearing a Yellow-coded uniform, a girl with a red uniform awkwardly hovering nearby. “Can I help you?” She asked, arching an eyebrow.

Boscha paused, processing. She didn’t remember her? After what had happened!? Why was she here? She needed to know. She didn’t know whether to laugh, to cry, to scream. She needed to understand what was happening, she NEEDED to. “Why are you here!?” She demanded, ignoring Skara’s attempts to grab her attention.

Luz cocked her head, confused. “I came because I needed something to do, and I had something to find.” At the perplexed noises from the others, Luz remembered she never told them she was looking for something. Turning her head back, she added. “Yeah, part of the reason I asked Willow to bring me here was because I was trying to find a lead for… something I lost a few days ago.”

“Half-A-Witch?” Boscha muttered, heedless of the angry stares she got from the girl in question, as well as her.

“Yeah.” Luz replied, eyes narrowed. Suddenly, she gained a confused look, turning her head back and forth. “I’m sorry, have we met before? You seem kind of familiar.”

Boscha growled, caught between mind-numbing joy at the knowledge that she remembered her, and frustrated rage at how poorly that recollection was. “My name is Boscha.” She bit out. “You humiliated me in front of my friends and the town.”

“Ah.” Luz calmly replied. She wasn’t particularly worried, but it was good to know what she was working with. “So I’m guessing this is some kind of attempt to get revenge or something?” She hated those types of things, but it wouldn’t be the first time some idiot came after her because she “refused to show them proper respect,” or some crap like that.

“No.” Boscha calmly said, lifting her arms in a what-can-you-do gesture. “I already tried that, and I still lost.” She trailed off, remembering that night, as well as the jewel she found, and how it beckoned to her. “Our fight, if you could call it that, was a wake-up call to me. It seems so obvious in retrospect,” She gave a gaze of what Luz thought was admiration her way, “But you really put it into focus. What point is social standing, popularity, any of it, when one is weak?” She gave a bitter chuckle. “Nothing. Without strength, all that amounts to nothing but an illusion of real power. Those who cling to such things? Worthless. Like I was.” All present who knew Boscha rocked back at her statement. What she said was… very much contradictory to Boscha’s personality and beliefs. Boscha, calling herself weak? It made no sense.

Boscha walked forward, pushing her face incredibly close to Luz. “I kept thinking about, you know, what you said that night. About how you consider yourself neither strong or weak, merely continuing to find new ways to improve your skills and power.” A dreamy expression crossed Boscha’s face, much to Luz’s discomfort. “I couldn’t get it out of my mind, how much sense it made.” She pulled back, laughing. “What was I thinking all these years!? I let myself become complacent, I stopped pushing, assuming I had reached the peak, when in truth I was just another face in the crowd.” Her grin took on a manic hint. “I was really looking forward to when I ran into you again, so I could show you just what I was capable of, how far I’ve managed to grow!”

“Uh huh,” Luz said slowly, inching away from the unstable sounding Witch. “That sounds… really great and all, but I’ve kind of got other things to do. Maybe some other time?”

Boscha’s expression grew frightened. “What? No! You have to stay, you have to see what I can do!! You have to see how strong I’ve grown!!” The desperate, manic intensity in her voice grew with each word, the red color bleeding into her eyes growing more potent with each passing second.

“Look kid, Boscha, right?” At the girl’s frantic nod, Luz continued, “I only barely remember you. Whatever happened was only slightly above any other day for me. So, yeah, I think I’m gonna go.” As she tried to move, however, Boscha’s arm lashed out, gripping Luz’s arm painfully.

“No.” Boscha breathed out, utterly calm, aside from the mania in her eyes.

“Boscha, I must insist that you let Miss Noceda go,” Bump stated, pushing forward towards the two. “This behavior is unacceptable for a star athlete such as yourself!”

“Stuff it, Old Man!” Boscha shrieked, the hand gripping Luz’s arm growing hot. Everyone reeled from the extreme disrespect and hint of madness in Boscha’s voice. “She has to see what I can do, she has to!” She punctuated her statement by pointing her finger dramatically in Bump and the others’ direction, with Luz fixating on the object tucked in her fist; a very familiar looking jewel.

“Hey!” Luz spoke up, pointing at Boscha’s fist. “That’s what I’ve been looking for!”

“Huh? When did I put this in my uniform?” Boscha pondered, confused as to just when, exactly, she had brought the jewel with her. As much as she seemed to fixate on it at home or in private, she thought she had left it behind.

Hearing Boscha’s words, and getting some seriously bad vibes from what was said, Luz spoke up again. “Yeah, that thing is insanely dangerous. I’m really gonna need you to give that back.” She reached out for the Lacrima, slowly prying her arm away from Boscha’s burning grip.

“What?” Boscha said, her confusion rapidly morphing into panic, throwing Luz over to the others. “No! You can’t take it, it’s mine!” She shouted, desperately clutching at the jewel like a lifeline.

“Uh, Boscha, maybe you should?” Skara hesitantly spoke up, concern echoing across her voice. “You’ve been acting really weird ever since you got that thing. It might be dangerous, you know?” She slowly reached out, hoping Boscha would calm down.

Her anger suddenly spiking, Boscha spun around, her hand bursting into flames, slamming around Skara’s throat. “YOU STAY OUT OF THIS!!!” Without another world, she hurled Skara over towards the others, a scream ripping out of the poor girl’s throat.

“Skara!” Amity’s eyes widened in shock, almost uncomprehending of what she had witnessed; Boscha had just essentially branded Skara across the throat. With a shout, she broke out of cover, rushing for the wounded girl. “Boscha, what’s wrong with you!? This is insane, even for you!” While she had never thought highly of the sportier girl, she had honestly thought she was above such acts.

“You just maimed your friend!” Luz roared. “What’s wrong inside your head, kid!?” She demanded, bracing herself for a fight.

“QUIT CALLING ME KID!!” Boscha screamed, summoning a colossal wave of blood-red flames in all directions. “IF YOU WON’T TAKE ME SERIOUSLY, THEN I’LL MAKE YOU!!!!”

With a scream, the assembled Witches and human rushed for the door, desperate to escape the conflagration. With a heave, Amity tossed Skara over her shoulder, not willing to leave her in the same room as the apparently crazed Witchling.

“No, stop,” Skara croaked, coughing lightly.

Amity gave her an incredulous look. “Are you kidding!? She just burned your throat! You’ll be lucky if you don’t suffer permanent damage, and that’s IF we get you to a Healer in time!”

Skara stubbornly wiggled. “She didn’t mean it. That jewel’s doing something to her I think. I can’t just abandon her.”

Amity huffed, frustrated at Skara’s stubbornness. “Even if that’s true, she attacked you! Whether she meant to or not, she’s dangerous at the moment, and could Kill you!”

“You don’t know that!” Skara insisted. “I can get through to her, I know it!”

“You’re deluding yourself!” Amity spat back. “How could you possibly help in this situation?”

“I don’t know.” Skara bluntly admitted. “But it’s better than abandoning my friend when she needs me!”

That struck a chord with Amity, one she viciously stamped down on. Scoffing, she carried the protesting girl out the doors.

Just as they all were about to finish crossing the doors, Luz paused.

“Luz, hurry! Come on!” Willow insisted.

Instead, Luz grabbed the doors, silently mouthing out ‘sorry’ before slamming them closed, and quickly locking them. She turned back to the raging flames the Witchling had summoned, casting a shield to allow the flames to wash over her. Or, at least, it was supposed to. To her surprise, and alarm, the flames crashed against the Barrier, before cracking it, sending Luz scrambling out of the way as they roared past. To her shock, the flames pooled around the doors, all of them, completely blocking off the corridor from the outside world.

“Now.” Boscha crooned. “We’re all alone.”

“Yeah, so what?” Luz snorted, bracing herself for an attack, “You want a medal?”

Boscha laughed. “No, of course not! I just want to prove myself to you, that’s all!”

“Oh great, you’re one of those.” Luz muttered under breath.

“Now please, do me a favor, okay?” Boscha said. Her face morphed into the same manic intensity as before. “And BURN!” With another roar, a storm of flames came hurtling towards Luz.

Biting back a curse, Luz began to cast as quickly as she could. “Light-Make: Battlement!”

A glimmering fortification manifested before her, taking the brunt of the blast. Rushing around her defense, Luz barely ducked a flying Haymaker from Boscha, who had closed the distance in a blink. With a snarl, Luz called up a blast of light, hoping to send Boscha sprawling, only for the other Witch to take it without flinching.

Skittering back, Luz did her best to tune out the crazed girl’s cackling. ‘Damn, I can’t believe I forgot the first rule of battling Slayers,’ She internally berated herself. ‘Never let them set the pace of the fight.’ Slayers, those who practiced one of the Lethal Arts, such as Devil Slayer Magic, were all insanely tough, strong, and quick for their builds and ages. Apparently, Boscha had been channeling that Lacrima since she picked it up, and the synchronicity had started hitting its peak. “Light-Make: Spear Storm!” Crafting a collection of spears, Luz sent them flying, hoping at least one would hit the empowered girl.

It wasn’t meant to be. With almost laughable ease, the girl’s arms whipped forward, effortlessly shattering each spear. “Burn!” She roared again, launching a flame-clad punch at Luz, almost pulverizing her ribs. As Luz skid back, she clutched at her chest, feeling a familiar burning pain, and she didn’t mean the flames.

‘Yep, she broke a rib.’ Luz winced. “Damn it. Light-Make: Halberd!” She cried, swinging the colossal spear-like weapon, watching in satisfaction as Boscha slid backwards after catching the blade, a small ribbon of blood flowing from her hand at the point of contact. ‘But at least I got a hit in!’

“I won’t lose again!” Boscha roared, blasting away with her flames. As Luz desperately ducked and weaved around the blasts, she caught sight of something that chilled her to the bone; the Lacrima was sunk into Boscha’s wounded hand. That was very bad.

“H-hey!” Luz called out. “Are you sure you want to do this? We can end this right now, you know!”

“Not a chance!” Boscha cried, launching a barrage of punches towards the human, each connecting solidly. Luz held in the cry of pain that threatened to break out. ”Can you see it? How strong I’ve become!?” With a fierce shout, and a fiercer uppercut, Boscha sent Luz flying, jaw rattling from the head-ringing blow. “Now that I have this power, nothing can hold me back anymore!!”

“Is that seriously what you want out of life?” Luz ground out, teeth feeling dangerously loose. “To not be held back? Sounds a little lonely, you know?”

Boscha scoffed. “I Don’t need them, they don’t need me! I’m doing just fine on my own!”

“Yeah, but you’re completely alone.” Luz pointed out. “What’s the point of being strong without others around to use that strength for?”

Boscha paused, frozen in place. Why did she care so much about being strong? She shook the thought away. She wouldn’t be distracted, not now! So what if people were afraid, that just meant they acknowledged her power!

“Boscha, are you really okay? Maybe we can find something else to do.”

She roared, lashing out against the human that had beaten her so easily, utterly dominating the fight. A perfect reversal. It didn’t matter if she was alone, she was doing just fine!

“You just burned your friend!”

Who cared if she hurt Skara!? What did it matter if everyone left her!? Each thought was punctuated by a vicious blow against the human, who was curiously not attempting to defend herself.

“Hey, at least you’ll always have me, right?”

She didn’t care… She DIDN’T CARE!!! With a scream, she sent Luz flying again. “Fight back! How can I prove my strength if you don’t fight back!!” She needed to prove herself, she just had to! If she didn’t then everything was for nothing!! The fights, the attacks, the scared glances and whispers in the hall, ...Skara. None of it was worth it if she couldn’t prove it!! “Why aren’t you fighting anymore!?”

With a slow steady pace, Luz strolled over to Boscha, heedless of the harried blasts of flame sent her way; each went flying wide. Mentally, she tallied her injuries; her left shoulder was one good bop from dislocating, three of her ribs were cracked, she felt as if she had a hairline fracture running along the length of her right arm, and she’d probably have to be careful around tough foods for a while. As she finally made her way to Boscha, the almost rabid Witch twitching with violent energy, she looked her in the eyes, and said the only thing that mattered, “Because you’re crying.”

As the murderous fury cleared from her face, Luz watched as Boscha unconsciously relaxed, slowly reaching up to her face, astonishment clear as her fingers came away wet. “What? But I-! I don’t-. Why is this?”

Calmly placing both hands on the girl’s shoulder, Luz asked her, “Is this honestly what you want?”

“I don’t know.” Boscha mumbled, before gaining a feverish energy. “I Don’t Even Know!! All I know is that you came into my life, and the world doesn’t make sense any more!!” Her vision grew thick with increased tears, all but blinding her. “I don’t know what I want! I just keep feeling angry, and scared and I don’t understand anything anymore!” Snot started flowing from her nose as her tears increased even further, actively sobbing now. “I-I just, I just want the world to start making sense again.” She clutched her head, a pained look on her face. “What am I even doing!? I was attacking kids in the street! I went so far beyond anything I’ve ever done to someone! And Skara!” She cried out. “I BURNED SKARA!!! What’s WRONG WITH ME!?”

Taking a deep, shuddering breath, desperately ignoring the screaming pain in her limbs, Luz slowly helped lower Boscha to her knees, bringing her in close. She… was out of practice on giving this kind of comfort, but the least she could do was try. “I can’t say I understand what you’re going through, not entirely. But I think I might have an idea to help with your temper issues.” She gave what she hoped was a reassuring grin.

Boscha gave her a hopeful look. “You mean it?”

Luz nodded firmly. “Yeah. I’m not sure how to help you with the rest, but I can help you with this.” She held out a hand. “Just let me take a look at that wound on your hand, okay?”

With a shaking tentativeness, Boscha reached out, showing the injury to the girl.

Luz sucked in a breath. It was worse than she had feared. The Lacrima was sunk deep; any chance of extracting it was officially gone, not without the backlash killing the girl. She sighed. “Yeah, I can help with this, but it’ll hurt. Are you sure?”

“Yes!” Boscha exclaimed, an almost mad desperation in her eyes. “Please!!”

“Okay.” Luz stated, bracing herself for any sudden uncontrolled attacks in response to what came next. “This is going to hurt, okay?” At Boscha’s nod, Luz added. “And while I’m not sure I can help with your existential crisis, I can be there to help, if you want me to.” Not giving Boscha a chance to respond, Luz grasped the Lacrima… and shoved it all the way in, gritting her teeth at Boscha’s ear-splitting scream of pain. As the pain ran its course, luckily without Boscha letting loose any spells in a frenzy, the girl blissfully lost consciousness. With a tired sigh, Luz slung the exhausted girl over her shoulders, wondering how she could or would explain all this.

Eh, she’d figure something out.

#the owl house #fairy tail #owl house au #fairy tail au #owl house crossover #fairy tail crossover #luz noceda #willow park #gus porter #hieronymus bump #boscha the owl house #skara the owl house #magic #amity blight

3 notes · View notes

csykora · 3 years

Note

Hiii. So I had a quick question about Oshie. I’ve been seeing these compilations of hockey players that are Trump supporters in my TikTok feed, and TJ always seems to be on them. I honestly had never heard about it before, so just wondering if you knew or have heard anything about that?

This is a good question to ask. I’m not happy to be asked, but I want you to know it’s not at you for asking. You’re doing fine.

Information we have:

Early in the 2015 presidential campaign, Oshie attended a rally to hear Donald Trump, who was a conservative candidate flirting with Independents and not yet the Republican nominee, speak. I can’t show you the picture of him, which I believe with his daughters after the rally, because it was on someone’s social media 5 years ago, but that’s the gist.

Presumably after that he went home and the next year he voted. I do not, and should not, know who he voted for.

He is not politically outspoken on the internet: I’m not saying that’s a virtue or a flaw, it’s just part of the information we have to work with. He has spent the last five years using his twitter to promote Native youth hockey, Alzheimer’s research and adaptive programs for people with physical disabilities, and John Carlson. In recent years he’s also used it to like and retweet other BIPOC players and the NHL diversity initiatives. He does follow the President. He also follows a bunch of bakeries, National Geographic, and the ‘Genius’ series about Aretha Franklin, which I bring up not to make him seem cute but because I’m trying to make a point here about my research process: I wasn’t 100% sure of something I almost wrote, so I reread the last 5 years of his twitter before I wrote it, and those are the only remotely interesting things.

Thoughts:

There’s a lot of political history behind Native voting blocks that I would want to talk about (if we were in person, discussing sincerely) but I feel weirdly idealistic or like I’m doing a kind of virtue-signaling if I just rolled into that without acknowledging the issue that many hockey fans don’t know or acknowledge that Oshie is a Native American man.

Capitals fans, fans who identify as quite liberal, lots of people assume he’s White or, if they do know, still like to call him “basically White’’. (Because that’s a fun history to make fun of!) His identity doesn’t ‘excuse’ if he did vote for Trump or whatever views he may or may not hold that we don’t know about, but I hesitate over:

non-Native Liberal people on the internet thinking they know what’s in Native people’s political interests and just assuming how Native people vote without exploring that political history!

non-Native Liberal fans on the internet yelling at other fans, who will include Native fans, not to celebrate the most famous Native American man in the sport, when they might have had to reckon with a lot of way more important shit to get to this point

I wrote more, and took it out. I’m tired. You know? 5 years. I lost my dad and mentor around then, actually. Still feels like yesterday, and also, super not.

There’s a lot of really big shit that hadn’t happened yet back then.

I don’t mean ‘he couldn’t have known what was going to happen in the next 5 years, if he did support Trump back then.’ I mean that WE have 5 years of things, on top of centuries of them, that matter more than making cute little TikTok listicles.

I think about the 2015 campaign a lot. It was a colossal failure of the free press—we’ve all grown around the idea that everyone should figure shit out for themselves, but research and journalism are actual jobs that take deep effort and training and the public should have had access to information that we now take for granted way earlier.

We need to reckon with how we know what we think we know before it happens again.

My first mentor liked to say that in his Mexica way of thinking, history isn’t a line of progress or a circle that repeats, but a spiral: we come back around to the same sort of moments that have happened so many times before, and if we look down we might feel like we’re in the same spot, but it doesn’t have to be exactly the same.

In that spirit, I’d like to ask:

WHY are these LISTS?

Like, just a bulleted list of names? That’s zero-calorie information-free bullshit.

I don’t mean there isn’t anything to the story, I mean that that is a useless, wasteful, infuriating way of not saying anything about a something that might be important.

Why are we still doing this?

Why is a person telling you something is bad but not telling you what the bad thing was? You have a story to tell on someone? How they did you or your community or someone harm? Tell it! Tell people what they did, how it hurt, what to do now!

You don’t have all the pieces to string a story together yet? Get out there then!

Get in the dirt and dig. Do research. Cite your sources. Get every piece you find between your teeth and bite down hard to know if it’s real.

Why is someone just sharing a list with nothing in it? Why would they not share more? I have a lot of thoughts on that too, but I also took that out, because after the last decade of manufactured confusion and the sins it’s led us to, they’re not kind thoughts. But hey, maybe they’re onto something real—great! Then, again--they should get out there and dig until they find the heart of it and then cite that shit.

I’m turning off anon asks for a couple days or until I remember. Take care everybody.

#Anonymous

20 notes · View notes

foxtophat · 4 years

Link

hahah well here i am back on my 10k word bullshit

promise the next chapter is way shorter, john is just so fucking over the top that i spend so much time just trying to organize his thoughts for you guys lmfao. what a chad, right?????

anyway, i hope you guys enjoy nick and john bitching at each other, because that’s pretty much the theme of this chapter. i really enjoyed writing it, which should tell you everything you need to know about how bad a day john is about to have

as usual, i hope that you enjoy! if you do, please consider throwing me a bone in the form of a kudos, comment or reblog -- i eat those up like turkish delight, nom nom nom

also as usual, i got the fic text beneath a readmore for my friends who like to stay on one page. no matter what your reading experience, i will try to accommodate for you!!!

i hope you guys are all having a good day and that it continues to be good even after i’m done giving you fic to read!! that’s... all that’s all i got

John had known offering his help was a mistake as soon as he'd done it. Suggesting that he knew where hidden supplies might be was obviously setting himself up for colossal failure, but he'd had to think on his feet. He hadn't wanted to build up Kim's hopes, or encourage her to talk to Nick about it. All he'd wanted was for her to go back upstairs so he could sneak outside without her haranguing him for it. Then he'd seen how much it had reassured her, and the obligation to follow through had set in. Now, no matter how obvious a failure the endeavor may become, he has no choice but to push forward with the plan.

That's why John doesn't protest when Nick suggests they go sooner than later. He probably should, because it's been too hot to dig for the past week already, but the sooner he disappoints Kim, the less disappointment he'll incur. None of them will have time to blow things out of proportion. The cache he has in mind had been buried by Jacob a little under a mile outside of town, in some unused patch of farmland. They'll be back before sundown, and the sting of returning empty-handed won't last too unbearably long.

Of course, when the morning comes to go look for the cache, John can barely manage to drag himself out of bed. If he'd thought yesterday's heat was unbearable, then he doesn't know what he'd call today. The sun has barely risen and it's already baked his room, leaving him tangled up in sweaty sheets. Summer has always been John's least favorite month, even before the Collapse, but there has to be something wrong for them to be going through a second week of a heatwave. At least blaming the nuclear apocalypse for their shitty weather makes him feel slightly better.

He can't tell if he managed to sleep, but from the way his head aches as he slowly rises, John is willing to bed he failed that task yet again. God, what he wouldn't give for some fucking Ambien. Even a good, stiff drink would help, but John's shot tolerance hasn't recovered from his last encounter for post-apocalyptic liquor, so that's out of the question. Just his luck — he's going to have to suffer a whole day around Nick without much keeping him upright.

Even in the relatively cool shade downstairs, John finds himself blinking sweat out of his eyes. It's a struggle for him to focus on anything besides how miserable he is. If only he could blame it on trauma — but no, he's just never handled prolonged heat well. Montana might not have Georgia's overwhelming humidity, but the temperature climbs twenty degrees higher, and summer out here never seems to fucking end . That, combined with his pitiful heat tolerance, is probably why he's running on maybe two hours of sleep.

There are a handful of raw carrots on his plate, next to a few strips of old jerky that even Nick is leaving for last. It's going to be a long, long day, and he's not going to be getting much else until dinner, but John can't scrounge up any sort of appetite. He hasn't been hungry for what feels like days now, and his stomach barely tolerates anything more than water.

"Hey," Carmina asks, leaning into John's peripheral vision, "Can I have that?"

John doesn't know which part of his meal she's eying, but he slides the plate her way regardless. Kim watches him do it, openly frowning at him because she's also seen him picking around his food at every meal. So far, she hasn't said anything to him about it. Why would she? His lack of an appetite means that Carmina gets to have more. She can't possibly complain about that.

Nick is more vocal about his concern, furrowing his brow as he asks for the second time this morning, "You sure you're okay?"

"Yes," John replies once again. He's too tired to be exasperated, but he wishes Nick would knock it the fuck off, at least until after they leave. The last thing he needs right now is for Kim to hold some sort of intervention. Just in case, he qualifies his yes , choosing the most honest excuse he can this early in the morning. "I'm exhausted," he says. "I didn't get much sleep."

"Do you really wanna do this today, then? I mean, you said this thing was buried, and I don't wanna get stuck digging it out myself."

"I won't be any better rested tomorrow," John sighs, suppressing the yawn that tries to follow.

Nick doesn't look pleased, but he relents with a shrug. It isn't like they're going somewhere particularly dangerous, and even if they do happen to run into trouble, Fall's End will be within eyesight. The wildlife won't be much of a problem, and drifters are more common in the eastern part of the county, moving in from the 94 and occasionally trying to bully their way through. John's confident that they won't run into any trouble, even if he winds up passing out mid-dig.

John lets the rest of breakfast wash around him as he counts the minutes until they leave. He feels distinctly separated from the moment, the Rye family nothing more than white noise going in one ear and out the other. Silently dissociating around their idyllic family unit is still the norm, of course, but at least today he can blame it on too much heat and not enough sleep. Maybe he'll be able to get some rest in the truck, assuming Nick doesn't decide to test the suspension over every goddamn pothole.

Nick reluctantly says goodbye to Kim after breakfast, repeating it two or three times as Kim and Carmina see him off from the porch. John doesn't remember Nick as an anxious person; he doesn't know if there had always been long, uneasy goodbyes on the porch before work. The Collapse has turned most everybody into a paranoid mess, but maybe John just never knew Nick very well to begin with. He doesn't want to ask.

"Okay," Nick says once they're both buckled in, the windows cranked down. "You said we're looking for a silo outside of town?"

John waits until the truck lurches into drive to respond. "The silo was a convenient marker, but I doubt it's still there. I know where to look, though — assuming the landscape hasn't changed too dramatically."

"Well, let's hope so. I don't want to dig around for nothing."

"We both know who's going to be doing the digging."

"I thought it was gonna be you, until you nearly passed out at breakfast. Probably gonna leave me with the hard work like the selfish prick you are."

"I'll be fine," John replies, yawning unabashedly. He rests his head next to the open window, closing his eyes against the hot wind. "I've done more with less energy."

"Yeah, sure," Nick says, rolling his eyes hard enough that John can hear it in his voice. He waits a few beats for John to return the gentle banter, but John can't muster up the energy. He needs to save it all for the dig. It's going to be hard enough on Nick, who manages to sleep at night. John isn't expecting to have much left for anything else once this is all over. It'll be a miracle if he makes it back home.

Quickly figuring out that John isn't in the mood to talk, Nick falls quiet. There isn't a radio station to listen to, so he hums under his breath occasionally, gently swerving along the cracked asphalt to avoid potholes. He's usually happy to bounce through them, but John knows better than to think it's for his sake.

John opens his eyes briefly, just in time to see the washed out turn that once led towards the Ranch. He hasn't been back yet. He doesn't think he could bear asking the Ryes for permission, let alone see the place rotting in a field. Despite repeated assurances to Joseph that he didn't care about his stronghold, he had hand-picked the furniture, the paint, the bedding — all of it — and he had spared little expense. Now, all of his pride and poorly spent money has been abandoned, probably picked clean by scavengers over the harshest years. After all, the security systems he had dropped thousands of dollars into hadn't been able to stop a cop wielding a shotgun — he doubts they would do much to deter anybody now.

He should have listened to Jacob when he'd said it was a waste of time. Of course, John hadn't paid much attention to anything Jacob said unless it was directly related to the Project. Part of him wishes he'd made more of an effort to connect with his oldest brother, but he doubts that he would have made it to this side of the Collapse if he had.

Once he starts thinking about Jacob, it's hard to stop. It's not much of a surprise that his oldest brother is on his mind, considering how often his dreams are haunted by Jacob's presence. Thankfully, with the sun in the sky and the wind on his face, John's more inclined to remember him for who he was, instead of imagining him as the specter of his nightmares. There are no dark corners for him to lurk in, and for once John imagines him as the quiet, withdrawn man he was.

It might have been almost ten years ago, but John can still remember riding along in Jacob's truck, listening to him hum along with the radio. The heat had broken late in August that year, so while the heat had been awful when Jacob had picked him up, it hadn't wiped John completely out. Not that it would have mattered — Jacob had no patience for John's distaste of heat, and he would have forced the issue regardless.

He'd gotten a brisk call fifteen minutes before Jacob showed up at the Ranch, telling him to be ready. John hadn't known what to be ready for, but he'd stopped asking questions by this point — when Joseph or Jacob arrived unannounced, he would only follow after them and do whatever they asked. As long as he did that, they would mostly leave him to his own devices. It had been more freedom than John had ever had in his life.

"You're positive nobody saw them," Jacob reiterates from the driver's seat. The memory of his voice bounces like an echo in John's skull.

"Of course I am," John remembers saying. He remembers being exasperated. Frustrated that even Jacob didn't trust him with menial tasks anymore. He had understood Joseph's distrust, had it explained plainly to him, but Jacob wouldn't even give him the chance to earn back the trust he'd somehow managed to lose. "Not that it matters," he remembers adding. "What can they do? It's our property. We could bury a plane there and they wouldn't be able to stop us."

Jacob's heavy sigh belies his irritation. "That's not always going to be the case. We don't know how the Reaping will go. Or the Collapse. You don't know what will be the last straw."

He'd been stressed. In two weeks, the Reaping would begin, but for now, Jacob's only concern is maintaining a steady flow of willing and able soldiers. He'd been irritable all the time, ever since he and Eli had fallen out, getting short with everybody, even Joseph, who allowed Jacob to be openly insubordinate even while punishing John for the same crime. The main problem in the weeks before the Reaping had been the slowing influx of soldiers making it through the trials. Lots of people had made it through at first. Nowadays, the conversion rate has dipped significantly. Jacob says it's because the people aren't strong enough, but John has a suspicion that it might have something to do with the Bliss, which has become more potent and arguably more toxic since Rachel's arrival as Faith. John hasn't brought up his concerns yet, because nobody has bothered to ask for his opinion. He will never get the chance to find out if he was right.

"John," Jacob's voice calls from the far away driver's seat. He sounds deeply, strangely concerned. "I'm trying to save you."

The words aren't right at all. John's body feels heavy in his seat, the hot air scratching at his face through the window. Where is he? They're on their way, but where?

The next thing Jacob says is achingly familiar, down to his tired inflection. "Joseph is worried about you," he says. "He still worries about your commitment."

It had been a warning, clear as day, and at the time it had filled John with a deep dread. But now, John feels nothing. Let Joseph be disappointed in him. Let him regret ever bringing John back into his life. John hopes it's a bitter pill he chokes on.

John had been on the defensive that day, scoffing loudly and snapping, "And yet, I'm the one converting the faithless." But the defensiveness is missing in the words. The people he'd been using like points against his brother are all dead now, and bragging about the things he'd done only roils his stomach.

"I don't think it's about converting people." Jacob reaches for the rear-view mirror, checking it for the umpteenth time as the truck trundles towards the distant silo. "Forget the religious bullshit for a minute. What we're doing, what's going to happen — we can't afford mistakes. We have to be prepared for every possibility. You understand that, don't you?"

"Nobody saw them," John sighs. "I promise ."

"Good," Jacob mutters. He takes a deep breath, holds it, and lets it out.

"Honestly, though. There are caches all over the county. I don't remember you being so particular about the last dozen drop points I organized."

At first, Jacob hadn't responded. John had thought at the time that it was because he was tired of having to explain his every move to someone as soft and short-sighted as John. He'd figured, as he always had, that Jacob saw him as nothing but the PR arm of the Project, kept around out of blood loyalty and nothing else. He would grimace whenever John mentioned atonement, mentioned his hard work, and John had suspected he thought it was beneath him.

But now John wonders if that's all there was to it.

"I'm trying to cover for every possibility," Jacob says. "That's all. It'd be good if you could help me."

"I did help," John retorts. "I do help. I do everything Joseph asks me to, and I don't complain about it. I don't complain when you order my men and me around, either, even though that was never part of the deal."

Jacob clicks his tongue against his teeth. He's checking the mirrors again, all of them. John remembers him checking the glove-box during their conversation, but he doesn't do that now. It hadn't mattered — there hadn't been anything in there — but John remembers it being very, very strange. The glove-box hangs open for a moment in his memory, as he looks through the windshield and spots the tall, bright red silo down the road.

"I wish you would plan ahead for yourself," Jacob says at last. "Stop taking orders and start taking initiative."

John huffs. "You've seen how well Joseph responds to that."

"Yeah," Jacob replies. John had been too arrogant to realize at the time that Jacob was commiserating with him, leaving him feeling deeply guilty now.

"He's convinced that the Reaping is going to begin any time now," John continues, ignoring Jacob's visible-in-hindsight unease. "Do we really have time to be burying barrels of ammunition? Or is this your newest plan to stick it to Eli?"

"It's for after the Reaping," Jacob says.

"A whole lot of good it does us this far from the bunkers."

Jacob had a real response for John, once. It had even satisfied him, at least enough to stop his complaining. But John doesn't remember what Jacob's reasoning had been; all he has is his exhausted brain struggling to stitch together the memory.

"There's so much you don't know. That you'll never find out." Jacob reaches out, his hand resting on John's shoulder, but there's no physical connection. John can't feel the weight of his hand, and for a dizzying moment the world around him turns smudged and blurry. There's a distinct melancholy in the words that Jacob never exhibited. "You know that I didn't believe any of it."

The weight on his shoulder comes out of nowhere, startling John awake as Nick calls his name. He kicks the dashboard as he jolts upright, and Nick leans back as he flings his hands out to steady himself.

"Shit," he gasps, grabbing the door handle. One disorienting glance is all John needs to realize where he is; Nick has pulled up just past the church, and the late summer heat of the apocalyptic landscape reasserts itself as reality once more.

"Sorry," Nick says. "I just, uh... need some directions from here."

"Yes," John replies. The urge to bolt from the truck is overwhelming, but John clings to the door and manages to stay in his seat. "Of course."

They sit for a minute before Nick awkwardly prompts, "Uh... Well?"

John desperately attempts to reorient himself, still stuck in the fog of his dream. "There should be a left turn up ahead. The silo was in a field on the right side of the road, just before the turnout before Larry Parker's house."

"God, talk about whack-jobs," Nick mutters as he pulls ahead. The intersection is mostly washed out now, barely distinguishable from the dunes that have formed over the fields, but Nick has a local's muscle memory. "I mean, I believe in aliens as much as the next guy, but Jesus . You hear what happened to him?"

"Not specifically. I assumed he was killed in the Reaping or the Collapse." Despite himself, John finds his curiosity piqued. "Why? Was I wrong?"

"I mean... I guess it's up to your interpretation." Nick doesn't bother to ease around the potholes now that John is awake, bumping them down along the cracked asphalt. "So, the way Dep told me, they went to go check up on Larry, y'know, make sure he's okay. Larry's got his weird-ass machines going, and he's talkin' about aliens and shit, as he usually is, and Dep keeps going, 'Larry, there's no time for aliens, there are cultists coming for you!' But, of course Larry pushes the point until Dep caves, like, 'Fine, let's fix the generator first, then we can run from the cult.'

"Except the cult rolled up right on top of them before they could patch everything up. Of course, Dep manages to clear them out, and Larry gets his machine working in the meantime. He says, 'help me get to Mars, Deputy!' and they figure, 'hey, might as well humor him.' I mean, what else can you do when the guy you're trying to evacuate insists he's got a fast pass to outer space?"

"Is this honestly what the Deputy was dealing with while we were in the middle of seizing the Valley and its resources?" John asks. He probably shouldn't be surprised, but really . Larry Parker's life couldn't possibly have been worth all the effort involved.

"I guess," Nick shrugs. "People were asking them to do all sorts of weird shit. So, anyway, Larry says so long to Dep and to Earth, and tells Dep to flip the switch. Dep decides that the sooner Larry realizes this isn't going to work, the better, so they turn the machine on the way Larry told them to, and, well, long story short, I guess the thing vaporized the poor guy."

However the story was supposed to end, that hadn't been what John expected. His disbelief is momentarily overwhelming, and he can't help but choke out, " Excuse me?"

Nick shrugs. "I mean, that's what Dep told me later. They were real bummed out about it, too. I guess that makes sense, since they felt responsible. But, at the same time... he said it was a teleporter, right? So maybe he wasn't vaporized at all. Maybe he really did get zapped to Mars."

"The choices are 'vaporized' or 'teleported to Mars'? Are you serious?"

"I guess Dep could have been bullshitting me, but it fits with what I remember about the guy."

John frowns. "I suppose either option is better than what happened to the rest of us," he says, "Although realistically, the man was one paranoid delusion away from assassinating a government official. I don't think he was nearly as technologically savvy as he professed himself to be."

"He wasn't that bad," Nick says as he shakes his head. "He was just some kook who believed in aliens more than people. And, well... I mean, if he really did make it to Mars, then we probably look like a bunch of assholes from wherever he's sitting." He sighs, then admits, "I wish I could've gone to Mars. I bet Kim would like it there."

" Why ?"

"I dunno, she always wanted to go on foreign trips and stuff. Can't get much more foreign than outer space." He hums thoughtfully, then says, "I guess she would've been pregnant, though, and if you can't fly with a pregnant lady, I bet you can't vaporize them either."

John takes a deep breath through his nose before he responds, reminding himself that he owes Nick his life. "That's a logical assumption," he manages to say, proud of his nearly-neutral delivery.

"Oh, shut up," Nick snaps, although he doesn't seem particularly upset by John's back-talk. "I'm just saying, if that's what would happen. It's not like I'm gonna go hot-wire the thing and test it out now ."

"I certainly hope not. There's no way I'm explaining that to the bloodthirsty mob that comes for me after you've disintegrated."

They've nearly reached the end of the road. John can see the T-shaped intersection coming up ahead, but he doesn't immediately recognize the right-hand field. A copse of pine trees have put down roots, and although John can see the skeletal framework of the hay storage, there's no sign of the silo that once marked the spot. John doesn't know if it was destroyed during the Reaping or in the Collapse. It doesn't really matter — everything it held has long since rotted away.

"Here?" Nick asks as they roll to the end of the road. John remembers Jacob slowing along the empty field; he had barely come to a stop to investigate the location. It had been around here that Jacob had checked the tilled soil for any hint at what lay underneath. He'd seemed content with how John's people had handled it, leaving the field as unassuming and untouched as they had found it.

If there had been any hint left behind in the silo or the hay storage, it's been wiped from the face of the planet. Long, sun-bleached panels of what used to be a silo lay scattered across the ground, weather-beaten past their use. Some pieces are pinned in place by the nine-year tree growth, never to be moved again. It's a struggle for John to envision the spot as it used to be, but there's no doubt that this is the right place.

"Yes," John says. "This is it."

Nick puts the truck in park and climbs out of the cab. John waits a moment longer, hoping to spot some hidden bump or curve that would indicate where to dig, but of course nothing reveals itself. He should have paid more attention. At the very least, he should have paid more attention to Jacob's diatribes about preparedness. Maybe he would be able to determine exactly where to start if he had.

John's nerves ease as he steps out of the car and stands at the edge of the worn-out road. It doesn't matter if he doesn't remember the exact spot — there's always been an element of gut instinct in understanding Jacob's methods, and John has plenty of that to rely on in lieu of real information. If he has to waste his time out here, then he might as well try to waste it productively.

He meanders a bit along the shoulder, then takes ten paces onto the field. Instinct has him go another twenty steps, until he's halfway between the truck and the hay storage. "Here, I think," he calls out to Nick, who's wandered ahead to explore the wreckage.

"Are you sure?" Nick asks as he passes John, returning to the truck for the shovels. "I don't wanna be digging holes all day like some kind of Stanley Yelnats."

" I'll be the one digging," John replies tepidly. "I don't need your help."

"What else am I gonna do, sit around and watch you all day? C'mon, let's get to work."

Really, John had expected as much. Nick can't leave things alone, and he can't resist giving whatever help he can. Long ago, John had figured it was a sign of Nick's obsessive need for control, something dark to be manipulated hidden under a folksy veneer. He had never considered that Nick's stubborn helpfulness had really been a coping mechanism for some long-standing anxiety. Even now, knowing full well that Nick's biggest worry is seeming unhelpful, John struggles to accept it. It still rubs him the wrong way when Nick insists on giving him a hand on some menial task that he ordered John to do in the first place.

Digging a three-foot hole is easier with two people, though, so of course John doesn't argue. The two of them hit a rhythm pretty quickly, although John's lack of sleep is slowing him down. Normally, the beat of manual labor is the only thing that helps empty out his mind, getting him as close to meditation as possible these days. For the first few months with the Ryes, it had been the only tangible comfort he had. He could disengage mentally while performing simple tasks with visible results, then ascribe to them penance for any one of his crimes. Even now, John can't help but wonder which sin he's paying for as he buries the spade into the ground.

They dig three feet down before John calls it. "Okay, fine ," he hisses through gritted teeth. "It's close to here. Maybe..."

John ignores Nick's theatrical sigh as he takes a few paces to the left and begins all over again. Of course, it doesn't take long before Nick joins back in.

"Maybe we should hunt down a metal detector," Nick suggests when the second hole reveals nothing.

"Sure, Nick," John snaps, "Add that to the other rational shit on your wife's shopping list."

"Jesus, it was just a joke."

John is far too hot, tired and sweaty to handle any jokes right now, much less from somebody he's trying to help. If Nick thinks John is digging around under the blazing sun just for his own enjoyment, then he can go fuck himself.

Even with John's attitude tanking rapidly, Nick continues to help him dig another hole and a half. His help only makes the defeat sting worse when John has finally had enough. He has no energy left, which makes flopping down on the dirt as easy as giving up. He buries his sweaty, sunburned face into his dirty hands, unable to hold back a groan.

"God damn it."

"What, that's it?" Nick huffs, pushing his hat back to wipe at his sweating forehead. He's using his shovel as a prop, and no amount of bravado can hide how much John's wild goose chase has worn him down. "You're just giving up?"

" No ," John spits, despite that being exactly what he's doing. "I just need a fucking break ."

There was a time when Nick would have punched him for being so miserable, but he doesn't even comment on it today. Somehow, it manages to make John feel worse, as though Nick's pity is fueling his fiery self-loathing. Nothing helps, especially not when Nick jabs his shovel into the dirt and offers John an excuse. "Probably need something to eat," he says. "Some water, or something. Look... just stay there, okay? I got a canteen in the truck, it'll just take a second."

The most response John can offer up is an affirmative grunt. He drops his hands from his face, watching Nick retreat to the truck before turning his eyes on the derelict storage in the opposite direction. He should have known better. He should have known that it would be impossible to find the cache without Jacob's help. Other than a set of probably mis-remembered coordinates and a gut sensation of being so close , John is flying completely blind. Why the hell hadn't he known any better? He could have saved them the time, gas and disappointment, if only he'd just kept his stupid mouth shut.

He guesses it must be progress that he's blaming himself and not Kim, whose insomnia kicked this whole thing off. It doesn't feel like much to show.

The wind changes direction, finally sending the few clouds in the sky drifting past the sun. The breeze picks up, sending a ripple of noise through the young pines. Pink-flowered vines creep through the roots of the trees and up the metal legs of the shed, twisting and choking the rest of the weeds just like they do everywhere else. Despite them being a mysterious, invasive species, they soften the landscape, lending a pink sugar-coating to the wasteland. John watches the blossoms bob in the breeze and thinks that Joseph might have been wrong about a lot of things, but he hadn't been too far off in declaring Hope County a promising garden.

The flowers look so much like the ones that had decorated the hem of Faith's dress that it's impossible not to think about her. John remembers the silk blossoms stitched onto lace, trying to conceal the ripped hem. There had been a dozen women who had tried to take on the mantle left behind by Joseph's wife, but now the only one John can imagine is Rachel, dancing in the sunlight. Even now he sees her swaying along with the wind, although he only has to blink for the vision to fade. A dozen women hadn't made the same impression that Rachel had. They hadn't been as proactive as her when it came to the Path, and they couldn't hold a candle to her wide-eyed understanding of the Bliss. None of them had adopted themselves as a sister into the family, turning quickly into the golden child that Joseph could praise over all others. They'd tried to fill the shoes of a dead woman that they couldn't hold a candle to. Rachel had been much, much smarter than that.

After all, none of those women haunt the landscape the way Rachel does. John, tired as he is, can almost hear her playfully humming on the breeze. She would sing in his bunker, vibrant and full-throated hymns written by dead followers, but now he only ever imagines the quietest tunes. Faith always seemed to be everywhere at once, thanks to the Bliss, but now she only seems to exist where John's memory allows.

Although the music fades as quickly as it came, John feels it echoing inside him. He closes his eyes against the bright afternoon light, but that doesn't do much to ease the pounding headache that's swiftly developing. He can feel his pulse against the hard-packed dirt when he drops his hands to the ground. Faith's laughter in his mind is quiet and playfully condescending as he's overwhelmed by the urge to stagger to the safety of the trees.

Nick abruptly appears in front of John, his worried face hidden under his hat. "Let's get you into the shade," he says, his voice warped by the blood rushing through John's ears. Nothing improves as Nick helps him to his feet and drags him under the shady pines. His head pounds as he collapses against one of the trees; when Nick puts the canteen in his hands, he takes a few grateful pulls of warm water until the headache begins to recede.

"Goddamn it, John," Nick says. "You have got to knock this shit off. You can't keep pushing yourself until you get sick. What am I supposed to do if you get heatstroke? Do you think we have unlimited supplies to keep dealing with your bullshit? I can't keep taking care of you."

"Whatever," John croaks. "I'm fine. I just need a minute."

"You can't seriously think I'm going to let you keep going. You must be delirious."

Taking one more long drink of water, John finally drops the canteen into his lap. "You don't understand," he rasps. "I'm not — it's here. I know it is, I just..."

Nick waits a beat before he takes up where John trails off. " You need to rest. You think Kim and I don't notice you're not eating or sleeping again? Hell, even Carmina notices, and she doesn't give a shit about you. How exactly are you supposed to be any use to us if you're like this all the time?"

John scowls, but he doesn't respond. How can he? Nick is right.

When all he gets is silence, Nick finally heaves a tired sigh and crouches down to John's level. "Look, we'll compromise, okay?" he suggests, with a tone he usually reserves for Carmina. "You're gonna rest here for me, and I'm gonna go dig another hole for you. If I don't find anything, we'll go back home and try again once you're better prepared."

He should resent Nick for treating him like a child, but John can only surrender with a weary nod. "I promise it's here," he says, hating how audible his misery is. "I know it is."

Nick scratches his brow. "I believe you," he says, although John doubts his sincerity. "We're gonna find it — maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but we'll do it. You, uh, want me to keep digging where we were, or..."

John sighs, slumping against the tree. "Yeah," he rasps. "Sure."

It's a miserable feeling, knowing that he's sending Nick on a wild goose chase, but John doesn't stop the other man from heading back out into the sun. He watches Nick pick a spot at seemingly random, drifting in and out as he waits for Nick to give up. He wouldn't even have to dig a full three feet before writing the whole thing off as one of John's delusions. John wishes Nick were that kind of man.

There's nothing there. That much is obvious when Nick finally stops digging, knee-deep in the hole and scrubbing furiously at his forehead. John knows just enough about Nick to suspect he'd genuinely hoped to find it — which just makes the defeat that much worse. John is used to disappointing himself, but letting Nick down stings.

"It's fine," John rasps when Nick returns, not waiting for platitudes or empty reassurances. "Let's just go."

Nick helps John to his feet again, and to make things worse, he keeps making suggestions. "Maybe we can find a tractor that still works. I bet there's probably a back-hoe somewhere in the county we could fix up. That might make it easier, right?"

They cut through the trees to reach the road, and John covers his eyes as they move back into the bright light. He turns back to look at the empty holes they've left behind — and for just a second, he can clearly see the bright red silo where it once stood. It's only a fleeting glimpse of the past, but it's as clear as if he were staring at it from Jacob's truck, enjoying the air conditioning while ignoring Jacob as he says, "So long as we're prepared, we can always start again."

"Wait," John says. "Hold on."

"Come on," Nick groans loudly, "It's hot, I'm tired, and this is getting depressing ."

John rolls his eyes, grabbing one of the shovels from the truck before Nick can stop him. "Fine," he says, "Go home, then."

"For God's sake..."

John ignores Nick as he takes five quick paces forward, turning and staring at the nonexistent silo. It hadn't been here, it had been...

The spot is mostly random, but as John drives the shovel into the dirt, he feels suddenly vindicated . He'd been thrown off by the trees, and it's hard to see just where the road ends these days, and of course he doesn't have the silo's long shadow to guide him. But now he knows better, and he isn't going to make the same mistakes again.

Nick pitches in, because of course he does. Even worse, he does it without complaint. Still, John needs the help; his burst of adrenaline has faded, leaving him to rapidly flag behind until Nick is picking up his slack. They don't talk as they dig, even as time wears on without any indication of them being in the right place. John doesn't think he has the energy to chat, and Nick probably just wants to yell at him, so silence is their best option. This hole could be as pointless as every other one they've dug today, but blind faith pushes John on to dig just a little deeper, just a little longer.

They hit three feet without finding anything. John twists the shovel between his palms, the tip churning the dirt.

"Okay, now are you satisfied?" Nick asks, flopping to the ground beside their latest waste of time. "Are you ready to wrap it up for today, or...?"

John shakes his head, not even realizing he's doing it. He doesn't even know what he's rejecting — the idea of giving up, or the idea that they might come back out here? Why the hell should they? Just because John thinks he might remember a cache of weapons Jacob buried a decade ago? What good would it even do, finding it now? Kim's already made it clear that they don't want more weapons. They want food, they want peace of mind, they want things to be the way they were . There is nothing that Eden's Gate could possibly give them that could help.

Nick slides closer, brow furrowed. "John," he says."

"I know ," John snaps, "I'm sorry . This was a waste of time. Forget it."

Picking up his abandoned shovel, Nick jabs the scoop into the hole, aiming for the wall beneath John's feet, and the motion is met with a metallic thunk . As John steps around for a better look, Nick taps the shovel upwards, until the scoop slides between the flash of half-hidden metal and the undisturbed earth above it. There's no mistaking the green enamel barrel that's revealed as the dirt falls away.

Dropping into the hole, John takes Nick's shovel and begins to heave the dirt away, scraping the scoop along the sides of the metal container until it's half-exposed in the ground. John can't help a triumphant shout as he reveals it, like a paleontologist discovering an unknown species.

Nick grabs the second shovel and pitches in, making short work of the dirt John can't reach. The steel drum is two feet tall and a foot or so wide, and John recognizes it from the Bliss packaging plant. Thankfully, it doesn't have a tight-head lid that implies the cannister is full of drugs. It looks utterly untouched, save for a few scratches from their shovels; the rubber sealant sprayed around the lid hasn't even cracked.

"Well, shit," Nick says, staring down at the barrel in open disbelief.

"I told you," John pants, vindicated. "I told you."

"Yeah, you sure did," Nick agrees, bobbing his head. "So... uh, what now? Do we open it up here, or take it home?"

John runs a hand over the glossy paint. As much as he wants to open it now, he can't help but remember Jacob's paranoia, reminded momentarily of how he had checked over and over for any spies or tails they might've gained while driving.

"It might be best to take it somewhere... less open," John points out. "We have no idea what's inside."

"Oh. Yeah, you're probably right."

It takes some finessing, but the two of them manage to wrestle the barrel out of the hole and, eventually, into the truck bed. Nick cranks the air conditioning as soon as he turns on the car, and John thankfully slumps into his seat as the cold air washes over him. After making a loose U-turn that narrowly misses the hole, Nick shakes the canteen in John's direction.

"Kim's gonna be pissed if she finds out I left you out in the sun like that," he says. "Try to get a hold of yourself before we get back, okay?"

Nick is terrible at sounding callous, but John isn't going to tell him as much. "Don't worry," he sighs. "I don't want her to know any more than you."

The drive back is mostly free of potholes, thanks to Nick's careful driving. John can't help but reaffirm the cache's existence every few minutes, checking the rear-view mirror to ensure it hasn't fallen out or disappeared like so many figments of his imagination have. He wonders what's inside. Certainly ammunition and weapons, but what else? Jacob had always been prepared for disasters, so it could have emergency kits or expired food rations. There will probably be money, too, although that won't help them now.

If Nick is also wondering, he keeps it to himself. He's relaxed in his seat, one arm hanging out his window, fingers occasionally tapping aimlessly against the door. He'll probably be satisfied no matter what Jacob decided to squirrel away, so long as it's not rotten food and Project propaganda. If that turns out to be the case, John will burn the contents himself.

The sun has half-set by the time they return to the Rye homestead. Nobody is waiting anxiously for their return, but it doesn't take long for Kim to come around the side of the house. She whistles appreciatively as the two men maneuver the barrel out of the bed.

"You guys actually found it!" she exclaims. "I thought it would take at least a few days."

"We got lucky," Nick replies. He doesn't mention how many holes they had to dig, or how rough the going had gotten near the end. John hopes that he looks better than he feels, at least to keep Kim from lecturing them.

Even though the cache is only about eighty or ninety pounds, it takes some careful footwork for the two men to carry it inside without dropping it. By the time they set the barrel down next to the table, Carmina has claimed one of the chairs, standing on it for a better look. Nick doubles back to the truck and returns with a crowbar, which will hopefully be enough to pry off the lid.

"What's inside?" Carmina asks, grabbing the back of the chair as she cranes forward.

"Well, hold on," Nick sighs, "Let me figure this out."

Unlike the barrels John remembers, this one isn't sealed with a tight-head valve at the top. Instead, it looks as though the lid had been hammered down into place, and then sprayed with rubber sealant to prevent gaps. It takes Nick a few tries to bury the crowbar's teeth under the lid, but he's rewarded by a satisfying groan of metal. The seal finally gives as part of the lid warps under the force.

Nick peels the lid back and John's heart leaps into his throat. Part of him expects a cloud of Bliss, or some kind of bomb, or a countdown to a new Armageddon. But there's no bomb, no Mist, no doomsday clock. Instead, John finds himself looking down at a bundle of nondescript green canvas, packed tightly alongside a cylindrical nylon bag.

" Well ?" Carmina asks.

John glances at Kim and Nick, only to find them staring back at him. It's as much an order as a request for help, and John steels himself before reaching in and grabbing the fabric. He recognizes the generic duffel bag as soon as he pulls it out — they had been ordered in bulk for the Project before they'd even reached Montana. While it isn't full, it definitely carries most of the cache's weight, and John has to adjust his grip as he sets it out on the table.

With the pack out of the way, Nick is less cautious about poking around in the remaining supplies. He takes the nylon bag out next, rattling the contents thoughtfully. "I think we've got a tent, here," he says, pulling open the drawstring to check. "Yeah, poles, stakes and everything."

There are two cardboard boxes inside, and Kim pulls out one at a time. "I think these are... rations?" she suggests, setting the boxes down next to the unopened bag. "That's what the packaging says, anyway. And this one, the heavier one? It's completely taped up."

"Could be dangerous," Nick suggests as Kim goes back to check for any remaining contents.

John stares at the duffel bag, his fingers feeling clumsy on the zipper tab. None of this feels right. Just how many times had he seen Jacob take bags like this one to his truck? How many of those had been full of supplies for a back-up plan he had never been made aware of? There's no sign of the Project so far, but John can't imagine that will last. What is he going to do when he reveals a bag full of propaganda in front of Carmina? There's no way Kim and Nick will believe he didn't know.

Careful not to rip the fabric, John steels himself with a breath and yanks on the zipper. He expects guns and ammunition, or copies of Joseph's book, or intel that would have been vital for rebuilding after the Collapse. Instead, John finds silver mylar bags, packed nearly to bursting, each one labeled in permanent marker. One reads "RICE (3LB, KEEP)," while another says "POTATO (.5LB, KEEP)" — and still another bag, this one with one clear side, has two cartons of instant coffee sealed inside.

There are guns, too, although not nearly enough. John is careful as he sets out the two .45 pistols tucked into the canvas, along with two boxes of matching ammunition and a few more boxes of miscellaneous shells that might come in handy. He inspects every box for any sign of the Project, but everything is utterly nondescript. Jacob might as well have picked these supplies up at a sporting goods store.

He keeps pulling things out until the bag is empty and the items are laid out across the table for the Ryes to see. Not only does John find more food, but he also finds a crank flashlight and a pair of binoculars, two bundles of paracord, a roll of unused duct tape, two sealed cartons of cigarettes, two pristine hunting knives and a deck of playing cards. The biggest surprise is the fact that Jacob risked packing away two bottles of unlabeled alcohol in a dry cache, but then again, Jacob had always had a soft spot for liquor. They'd been wrapped in plastic wrap and taped up tight, so if they leaked, it hasn't affected the other supplies.

There's more food than ammunition, John realizes. Rice, sugar, instant coffee, dry beef stock, not to mention the miscellaneous array of military rations that have been packed into every nook and cranny. It's hardly a cache. It's more like a squirrel's stockpile for a long winter.

"Did you guys see this?" Kim asks, leaning over Carmina to lay a small nylon pack on the table. She opens it carefully, revealing a tri-folded emergency pack stuffed with medical supplies. One use antiseptic wipes, gauze, bandages and more, all still in its factory packaging. John remembers seeing them stocked at Lorna's ages ago. It's the kind of emergency kit that tourists would buy once they realized just how unprepared they were for rural Montana.

"I thought this was supposed to be for the cult," Nick says, frowning at the supplies spread out on the table. "But most of this is stuff you'd get at the store. There's not even one of those fake Bibles in here or anything ."

"That's what he told me it was," John replies, although it feels uneasily close to a lie. "...At least, that's what I assumed. He had my people handle it, he shared its location with me... It had to be for the Project." Saying it aloud doesn't make him feel any more certain, but he can't imagine what else Jacob could have been planning. "What does it matter?" he quickly deflects, gesturing towards the eighty-some pounds of supplies. "Who cares what he was planning. It's yours now."

Unlike her parents, Carmina doesn't need to be told twice. She immediately drags the box of military rations closer to her chair, eager to devour any new literature, even if it's nutritional information and website reviews. Nick takes one of the knives and uses it to slice open the heavily taped box that they still haven't investigated. John can't imagine that it could be anything dangerous, given the rest of the cache's contents, but that doesn't mean he's any less on edge.

"Uh... huh," Nick says once he finally cracks the box open. "It's just more of the same. 'Two pounds rice, barter.' 'Two pounds sugar, barter.' But didn't he already pack some rice in the bag?"

Carmina points her finger at the offending bag. "It says 'keep' on it."

"I thought you guys were going to be the only survivors," Nick wonders, frowning heavily at John. "I mean, those weirdos have been keeping to themselves since they came back. And I got the impression that you weren't gonna be friendly neighbors ."

"There weren't supposed to be neighbors," John replies. "Anyone outside of the Project who survived were our enemies. This should have been..." He gestures helplessly, unable to figure out what Jacob should have squirreled away for the end of the world. "It should have been weapons. Project intelligence. None of this would have mattered if things had gone the way they were meant to. I don't — I don't know what he was planning with this."

Or maybe, he hadn't been listening when Jacob had talked about starting over.

"This... is too much," Kim says, tearing John away from that horrible thought before it can take hold. "Right? This is too much for us. We can't possibly keep it all."

"Excuse me?" John asks, unable to mask how deeply the comment offends him. "You're joking . I went through all of this for you ." He points at the sugar, the salt, and says accusingly, "These were on your list!"

"That's not what I mean, John."

John is getting sick and tired of being treated like a child today, but that doesn't mean he appreciates it when Nick takes the opposite route. "Don't be a baby," he groans. "You know what she meant."

"We'll keep what we need," Kim offers, "But we can't keep everything . It wouldn't be fair."

"And it'll look bad if we're the only ones who benefit," Nick adds. "They'll know it's because of you, and the cult, and they'll get the wrong idea. They might've shut up for now, but we don't know how long that'll last."

It's hard to fight the urge to run from the conversation, if only to keep himself from saying something stupid, but John manages to stay rooted to the spot. They're right, after all. They can't expect other people to turn a blind eye to anything beneficial John provides. Hell, he has no doubt somebody noticed them driving today. Somebody had to have seen them out in the dirt. It would only take a quick trip to find the holes they'd left behind.

"Yes," he mutters at last. It comes as a relief, followed immediately by his own admission. "You're both right. I know that."

Nick clearly expected more of a fight, if his relieved expression is anything to go by. "Good. Okay." He grabs one of the mylar bags as he sits, which holds two cartons of instant coffee. For a moment, he only stares at the red plastic through the clear side of the bag, and then he sighs. "Of course, now I wanna keep it all."

"We can keep the coffee," Kim says. "Or, well... we can keep some of it. We should probably give the rest up..."

It seems that doing the right thing in this situation has left the Ryes at a loss. Really, it shouldn't be a surprise. Even for a small cache, these are a lot of supplies, and there are no clear benefits to divvying it up in any particular way. On top of that, there had never been much structure to the Valley's resistance — unlike the Whitetails, people in the valley had relied on guerrilla tactics and appropriating the cult's infrastructure for their own use. The fight here had been over before they'd had time to organize.

"Well, I guess we give away whatever says 'barter' on it," Nick finally says. "And... I dunno. I mean, Jacob was meticulous as hell, right? Wouldn't he have known what to keep? Why did he only want to trade this stuff?"

"I don't know ," John snaps. "It isn't as though he planned for this. I have no idea what he would have done. I don't know why he thought to bury this shit in a field! If this was going to be a backup plan, then there should be money, passports, blackmail — something to help him get out of trouble. Not — not cooking supplies and playing cards . This isn't what he was supposed to be doing with his time!"

The realization that John had never really known Jacob cuts deeper than he'll ever admit. John breathes hard through his nose, trying desperately to grab hold of his ballooning anger. He'd known Jacob hadn't taken the religious aspect of the Project seriously, but that hadn't meant he didn't believe in the Project's end goal. He'd been more integral to their success than John, for God's sake! The bunkers had been his idea!

But Jacob had been pragmatic. If he had felt even a twinge of doubt, he would have made plans to account for it. But if that were the case, why would he have shown his hand to John like he had, when John had been so deeply entrenched? Why risk Joseph finding out? Why not play this as close to his chest as John had played all of his own secret betrayals?

"I don't know what he would do," John manages to say. There's a tangled knot of emotion balled up inside his chest, but like so many other things, he forcibly sidelines it. "It doesn't matter what he wanted. He's dead now. All of it is yours."

Kim hears his voice catch, it's clear from her expression, but she thankfully doesn't comment on it. "Well, let's think about it logically," she says. "For one, I think Grace could use some of the ammunition. She might appreciate some coffee, too, Nick."

"Yeah, I guess," Nick says mournfully. "There are two boxes, after all."

Kim chews thoughtfully on her lip, then pivots towards John. "You had to deal with directing resources, right?" she asks. "I remember all of the deliveries coming in and out of the Ranch."

"They won't trust any decisions I make," John replies, trying to cut the suggestion off at the head.

"I'm sure they wouldn't, but I'm not asking for you to make a decision. Just... You know more about this than we do, and I want your input."

John frowns, looking towards Nick for an objection. Unfortunately, Nick doesn't have one, although he doesn't look happy about Kim's request.

Sighing, John considers the groups they need to satisfy. Between Grace, the town, the trailer park and themselves, it's unlikely they'll have much to store, but a surplus would be ideal in case they need to bargain with people coming in from the west. John doesn't like the idea of giving the weapons away, but they would be an easy way to ingratiate the Ryes to anyone still upset at them for taking him in. He wants nothing more than to keep the alcohol and cigarettes, but those would be better as bargaining chips.

He starts by breaking the ammunition up, followed by the mylar bags, until the random array on the tabletop begins to separate out into four distinct piles. Seeing the resources shift in real time is the easiest way to ensure things are balanced, but John remains fully aware of the three sets of eyes on him as he begins to take over the table. While Kim and Carmina move to give John more space, Nick remains seated the entire time, his arms crossed and his eyes on the food that John is moving from one pile to another. He's clearly worried that the family will wind up with too little. He probably feels guilty that he wants to take more from others who could use the supplies.

When he's mostly finished, John has five piles organized across the table — one for each group, plus one comprised of larger bags they'll need to separate. Hopefully, they won't comment on how much he's chosen to keep for them — if they disagree with his decisions, they can wait until he escapes for the night to argue about it.

Kim had been right, though. John had been the one to schedule deliveries, redirect supplies and organize Reaping trucks; hopefully they can appreciate his choices, even if they decide not to listen to him.

"Here's what we have," he says. "The ammunition is split between everyone, as well as the rations. Given the town's location and size, they'll be better off with basic ingredients. They already have hunting equipment and usable cookware. We haven't seen the trailer park, but it's in hostile territory, and I don't think they dedicate time to cooking, so we give them more rations to make up for it. The cigarettes will be a gesture of goodwill, and they can use the sugar more than any one group. At the very least, it means they won't be ingesting straight ethanol for a few days."

Nick sniffs loudly, but neither he nor Kim interrupt, so John pushes forward. "You keep the components," he explains, "But give Grace the knives and whatever ammunition she needs. We can split the rice evenly, but it won't be very much. It would be better to keep it for ourselves, or else give it to one group alone."

"Still seems like a lot is left for us," Kim points out.

"Then you give the rest of it away," John says through gritted teeth. "I did what you asked me to do. This is what makes sense."

Kim nods. "You did, and I appreciate it."

John wishes she would appreciate what Jacob did instead, but he holds the comment back. It's his exhaustion talking, or the long day, or the lingering headache from the heat. None of those things are worth risking the shred of goodwill he's garnered with the Ryes. And the longer he hangs around here, the more likely it is that Nick or Kim will do something to really upset him.

"If that's everything, then it's been a long day. I need some..." Space , he wants to say, but he can only tiredly commit to, "I need some air."

"Sure," Kim says. She tries to mask her pity, but there's no hiding it. "Just don't go too far. Dinner's almost ready."

As if John is going to eat anything. But he keeps that comment to himself as well, knowing that it'll just start a fight that he's too tired to win. Besides, watching the Ryes go through Jacob's supplies and divvy them out the way they'd prefer might be too much for him to handle right now. He needs to put some distance between himself and his brother, even if it's only the short walk to the front porch.

#fc5 #fcnd #john seed #nick rye #far cry new dawn #far cry 5 #p sure its only the first few tags but fuck it #also i actually love turkish delight so that's a legit comment #not just a reference to dumb narnia #my fic #mercyverse

2 notes · View notes

snarkwrites · 4 years

Note

Abandoned amusement part for spooky locale prompt

Oooh, thank you for sending this. I love this idea, by the way. One thing came to mind when I got this and that was that I wonder how this would play out in the Walking Dead universe . So, hope you don’t mind! I hope you like this. I also hope it’s actually worth a shit. The idea came to me like this so I went all in with it. And I really, really enjoyed doing it. FYI, I almost went with AHS:Freak Show, but yeah..

I enjoyed doing this, again. Thank you for sending it.

[ send a character name / spooky scenario and location and I’ll write a drabble about it ]

WARNINGS:

uhh.. An OC of mine, Evie Grimes has been revamped. And she may or may not be a little out there in some ways... Like.. Too much. Idk. Lots of swearing. Mentions of gunshots. Me, dicking around with my own alternate universes and what actually took place on the series.... Again, lol.

TAGGING:

@chasingeverybreakingwave

@kyleoreillysknee

@rampagewriting

@missjenniferb

** off the top of my head, these are the only people I could think might even want a tag.. If you wanna be tagged in my writing on this blog pls see the tag doc link below. Or tell me.]

OTHER STUFF:

[ masterlist - about page - tag doc ]

My lungs burned but I didn’t dare stop. A chain link fence stood between me and my doom and without thinking, I scaled the fence right as a decayed hand raised and very nearly got hold of the heel of my biker boot. I kicked free and tumbled down onto the other side.

I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t turn back. Give the finger to the horde of zombies I’d been outrunning. Probably wasn’t the smartest idea I’ve ever had, but... I did it. After turning away from the horde and moving quickly past a tattered and worn red and white striped tent close to me, I crouched down and started to work on reloading my gun. Once I got that reloaded, I reached behind me and produced my bow, making sure I still had a few arrows left in my quiver. Satisfied that I had my gun loaded and I hadn’t used all my arrows yet, I took a second or two to catch my breath.

The smell of smoke hung heavily in the air and I noticed it then... The flickering light over by an older model pop up camper. “What the hell?” the words came in a quiet gasp because I still hadn’t gotten my breath back completely yet, but curious as to who else might have taken cover in this empty amusement park, I made my way over to the source of light.

This was probably my first -and biggest, mistake. Before I even got halfway across the amusement park, I felt the cold metal of a gun barrel against the back of my skull.

“Where th’ hell you think yer goin, huh? You the reason them damn Walkers are lingerin outside the gate right now?” - that voice.. There was something so familiar about it. Take away the coldness and the anger in the tone and I’d almost swear on my life I’d heard the man currently speaking before. On numerous occasions.

“First of all, lower your fucking weapon.” I tried to stay calm as I said it. The man standing behind me chuckled. “You’re dumb if ya think I’m gon just put down my weapon. How do I know you ain’t with Rick’s group... Or that other sumbitch, Negan?”

And then, it clicked. Shane Walsh. My former childhood crush. My brother’s best friend and former partner at King County PD. ,, it can’t be. he died. Rick told you exactly what happened that night before you got separated...”

“I said... Lower your goddamn gun.” I repeated myself. “If you’d just let me turn around, you fucking idiot, you’d know exactly why I’m not the enemy. Now you on the other hand... You’re supposed to fucking be dead.”

I could hear him shuffle his feet. Clearing his throat. I didn’t have to be looking at him to know that my assessment shocked him. And yeah, parts of me were wondering if he’d put two and two together on his end of it all yet. Given what I remember about Shane, it’s highly doubtful. Man was kind of a meathead like that.

So it shocked me when he muttered in a quiet and shocked tone, “Evie? ‘At you?”

“Lower your gun and let me turn around and you’ll find out, meathead.” I retorted, tapping a heavy sole against the pavement and shivering at the chill in the air. He lowered the gun as I asked and I turned around, coming face to face with him.

Given what my brother told me before I went my seperate way from his little group, I had a lot of understandable concerns. So the first thing I did was to pull out my Bowie knife and hold it at his throat. He swallowed hard, eyeing me in confusion. “What th’ fuck?”

“Well, you’re alive when Rick saw you die with his own two eyes. Carl told me he shot you to make sure you didn’t come back. So... Until I know you’re not going batshit feral on me and attempting to eat my brains, I’m gonna have to keep this right here. You understand, yeah?”

“Evie, put the goddamn knife down. Carl didn’t finish me off, first of all. He tried but he couldn’t. I told ‘im to tell everybody that. Left and went my own way. Been stayin here, “ he swept his arm towards a particularly creepy clown mouth shaped entrance to a nearby funhouse and met my gaze to continue, “Since. Thangs were goin swell. Til you bought the fuckin Walkers right to my gate.”

He rolled his eyes in irritation and I fumed at him angrily. As I considered the story he presented, I held the knife exactly where I’d put it. A smirk formed as he suggested with a smug tone, “What, you want me to strip down and show ya I ain’t one of ‘em? Because darlin, I wouldn’t mind that one bit.”

“Oh I bet you wouldn’t, you colossal ass... But we have bigger problems right now. I wasn’t just running from those undead shitbags outside... I may or may not have pissed off that Negan guy you mentioned. I may or may not have set fire to some shit... Stolen some things. And he may or may not have been chasin me.”

“Woman, what the everlovin fuck?”

“Look. I went there, determined to get my goddamn revenge, okay? He... He killed someone I... I really cared about them. Then all that shit with my brother and his people and Negan.”

Headlights cut through the darkened night and I grumbled. I could hear Negan’s boys whooping and hollering and I gulped, taking a deep breath. “I’m gonna lower the knife. But if I even think you’re one of those zombies, Walsh, I swear to God. I’ll kill you in your sleep and I won’t think twice.”

“Fair enough... Guessin this ain’t because you’re feelin generous.”

“No. We’re about to be up to our asses in hillbilly dumb fucks. I can’t take ‘em alone.” I hated admitting I needed his help for anything, it left a sour taste in my mouth.

And his smug smirk didn’t help at all, either.

“First ‘f all, let’s get to higher ground. There’s a control tower back around where you came crashin over the fence at. If we get higher, we can see ‘em. And all my guns and shit are up top.”

I nodded and I didn’t waste any time, crouching amongst the tents. I passed the battered bumper cars attraction and I froze in place when I heard the shuffle-groan-shuffle heading our way. My heart started to race and my stomach jumped clear into my throat. I couldn’t move, no matter how hard I tried to convince myself it was move or get my ass eaten alive. I could hear the trucks getting closer too and that didn’t help. Gunfire was starting to fill the night. This was not a good situation, not by any stretch.

Shane ran up, grabbing me up by my hips, hauling me over his shoulders just as Negan’s vehicle came crashing through the back gate.

“Woman, you brought more trouble than y’ might be worth, y’ know that?”

“Less bitching, Walsh.. More getting us to higher ground.” I muttered as Shane stood me on my own feet and I scrambled up the stairs leading to a control tower. Once we were inside, Shane threw a heavy machine in front of the door and knelt down, loading up his Mossberg.

And outside, the shuffling and groaning got closer. The sounds of revving engines and the sound of bullets echoed through the night.

All I know is I’m not getting a good feeling about tonight, not even slightly.....

#Anonymous

3 notes · View notes

thedistantstorm · 4 years

Text

Project Compass 19

Read along on AO3 Here

<< Previous Chapter << >> Next Chapter >>

This time: Ezra tries to navigate the fallout.

Next time: Un’hee recognizes something from her past.

One step forward, two steps back.

The Chiss didn’t have a literal translation for this phrase, but that didn’t exactly matter. It still counted. Ivant had taught Un’hee the meaning of this phrase some time ago, when she’d heard him mutter it under his breath and not understood what the strange sounds were that made up his peoples’ Basic.

Un’hee had known something was wrong the moment Eli had called her into his office. She’d also known that her being called upon had nothing to do with the first part. Though, she had to give it to him. He played it well. She wouldn’t have known anything had happened, if she hadn’t crossed Commander Mitth’raw’nuruodo on her way to see him. Vah’nya eyed her strangely from the corner of the room.

“You did well, Un’hee. Better than the rest of the Navigators,” Ivant informed her.

“Even better than Vah’nya?”

Vah’nya smiled into the mug of tea she cradled between her hands. “Yes, Un’hee,” She said. “And Bridger, too, though we can hardly consider a first-timer decent competition.”

Ivant was quick to defend his fellow human. “He fell within the limits. He also did a damn good job of getting us back considering he’d never had to navigate a ship this way before.”

“I didn’t have to take the reins, not even once,” Vah’nya considered. "I was surprised."

“So why am I here?” Un’hee asked. “And why is Thrawn-”

“Ah,” Ivant scratched the back of his head. “You ran into him, didn’t you?”

“He was projecting again, Eli,” Un’hee frowned, accusing, “You’re hurting him.”

“Commander Mitth’raw’nuruodo is hurting himself,” Vah’nya defended, instead. “He makes his own choices.”

When both girls fixed each other with glares, Vanto held his hands out in a pacifying gesture. “Both of you need to stop,” He said gravely. “Whatever is happening between me and Thrawn is our business.”

“Right,” Un’hee said, displeased. “No offense,” She continued, playing with the end of her singular braid, “But I know there’s all sorts of ‘need to know’ things happening around here, and this is going to become one of them quicker than you think.”

Vah’nya and Eli shared a look, both showing some array of worry and panic. “Un’hee,” The Senior Navigator began patiently, “Why do you say that?”

The girl shrugged, leaving them in suspense for a moment. Then, “I talked to Ezra last night,” She admitted. “He told me that Thrawn is worried because of what happened on the bridge yesterday.”

“He told you? You haven’t been near him,” Ivant said pointedly.

“I have a datapad,” Un’hee rolled her eyes. “And we’re friends. And,” She emphasized, “Vah’nya wasn’t around to talk to. Ezra actually messaged me because he couldn’t get a hold of you,” She pointed at Vah’nya. “He was worried.”

Vah’nya tilted her head. “I was occupied,” She answered.

“Yeah, I know.” She crossed her arms. “We all know what happened. You had a vision.”

“You all?”

“We’re not stupid,” Un’hee rolled her eyes. “You didn’t cut our numbers back because we’re the weakest of the bunch. I noticed it first, but I wasn’t the only one.”

“You’re getting awful mouthy, Navigator,” Ivant said, his tone not quite stern, but the undercut of a warning lingered all the same. He evaluated her silently, and she squirmed under the scrutiny.

“I just don’t think that pushing him away is smart,” The younger navigator admitted. “I feel like that’s a bad idea.”

Ivant sighed, rubbing at his temples before speaking. The first bit sounded almost like an admission. “I don’t like it either, Un’hee, but it’s not about what I like or don’t like. Those orders came from Admiral Ar’alani. And, regardless of how I feel, it’s the smartest choice. The more he knows about the project, the more danger he’s in, and by extension, you and your sisters.”

She looked down and away, halfway between disappointed and ashamed. “We aren’t going to let the Grysk have him, or any of us,” She urged, looking to him for confirmation. “Right?”

“Not if we can help it,” Ivant assured her. “But I won’t lie to you, Un’hee. I can’t tell you it would never happen.”

Nodding the girl rose to her feet, pressing both hands down on his desk. “I know. I’m just worried,” She inhaled deeply, nostrils flaring as she reigned in the sharpness of her feelings.

“I’m worried too,” He said. She didn’t need him to tell her that, she could see it in the crinkling lines on his forehead, the way he pursed his lips. “I wish there was another way.”

Un’hee wanted to tell him there was, that surely Thrawn could help them, and they could figure it all out together, but she didn’t know what the Grysks were planning. She didn’t want to know. But something told her she’d be finding it out regardless. She turned to look at Vah’nya, but Vah’nya looked down into her mug with blank, expressionless eyes.

Un’hee resisted the urge to shudder. Something bad was coming, and she was pretty sure Vah’nya had already seen it.

Ezra usually gave Thrawn a wide berth when he was like this. The man was not above the occasional bout of cathartic destruction to release energy, but after about an hour of miscellaneous growling and banging and muttering, the Jedi very carefully knocked on his roommate's door and stepped back, waiting.

"What." Thrawn looked put together, but then again, he always did. His eyes were definitely scary though. Very Grand Admiral Thrawn of him, Ezra thought. And it made sense now, looking back. After all, at the end, the Grand Admiral had been out of control. He pushed the thought away, along with all of his thoughts about how if Thrawn snapped, he'd be in big trouble.

"Firing sims." Ezra indicated the weapons belt slung over his shoulder. He didn't waste words, already aware he was poking the beast on this one. "Wanna join?"

Thrawn eyed him, and Ezra saw the faintest indication of a snarl on his lips that came and went almost imperceptibly. "I do not want your pity."

"Pity?" Ezra shook his head. "Look, I don't know what happened, I-" Well, that wasn't quite true. He knew something had happened, he just didn't know the details. Except that Thrawn was clearly reeling from some emotional blow Ivant had dealt him, and everything he'd been talking to Vah'nya about had unironically come true.

"And there it is," The Chiss hissed, reading Ezra's face. "I wish to be alone," He snapped, already toggling the door controls.

Ezra caught it with a hand, reversing the hydraulic mechanism with the Force before Thrawn could turn away.

"Look, I don't pity you,” The Jedi began sharply. “I'm your friend, and I care." He sighed. "If you want to continue slamming things around alone, fine. But you could go shoot something in the sim rooms and that's got to be way more satisfying with a lot less consequence."

"Is that what you do when you are distressed about this sort of thing?"

Ezra's eyebrows went up. "Listen, my teenage years were one big 'ol nightmare, in case you forgot. The girl I liked had just discovered she wasn't into guys." He finished with an innocent shrug.

"Sabine Wren," Thrawn said.

"Yeah, yeah, I know," Ezra waved Thrawn's words away like they were a bad joke. "It was obvious to everybody but me. You probably saw it in her art."

"The colors she used in her later pieces were more indicative of self discovery," Thrawn mused, but the human didn't take offense.

Ezra laughed. "Well, if you ever want to hear a hilarious story about your ex-enemy's colossal failure at romance, you let me know." He stepped back, and angled his hands down, indicative that he wouldn't try to stop Thrawn this time if that's what he chose.

Thrawn eyed him carefully for a brief moment, considering. Then, his shoulders relaxed infinitesimally. Ezra considered it a victory. "The sims on the lower levels will be unoccupied at this part of the shift."

"Sounds good to me," Ezra said. He didn't look over Thrawn's shoulder at the chaos that had befallen his belongings, politely ignoring the wreckage the Chiss would have to set to rights later on. He couldn’t, however, help but notice the cracked screen of the datapad on the ground in the doorway, beside Thrawn's left foot. "Do we need to stop at the quartermaster on the way back?"

"My datapad is fine, Bridger."

"Right." He seemed less than convinced, but didn't argue. "Well, if it's not, I think I have an extra one."

Before he took a step, Thrawn glanced down at it. With a nudge of his foot, it skittered to the side. The screen flickered pitifully. "Perhaps,” He relented, “We should visit the quartermaster afterall."

Ezra cracked a smile. "Probably wouldn't hurt."

It had been a moment of miscalculation. At least, that's what Thrawn told himself. After all, what else could it be? It was as if he had been speaking Galactic Basic and Vanto had been speaking Sy Bisti. The translations were similar, but not equal, not entirely. Each language had its own nuances, own minute, tiny discrepancies. Undercurrents. Hidden meanings.

And, most importantly, to his shame, they had been on the bridge, of all places. Otherwise devoid of crew or not, the entire situation had been so vastly inappropriate. If a subordinate had approached him in this manner, he wouldn't have been half as kind. Or kind at all, really. The thought of it brought a rare heat to his cheeks.

Thankfully, his only company at the present was one very overprotective human Jedi who could not see the subtle glow in infrared, and was too distracted by his current simulation to note the mildest purple tint to Thrawn's cheeks, to see the evidence of his shame manifest.

What had come over him? It was not as though he were a fool. He understood desire, though he had not felt it in a long, long time. He would not have acted, he knows, if he did not think his feelings - feelings he was only just understanding the depths of, himself - were reciprocated.

But they were not.

Frankly, he should not feel as surprised as he did to find it so. It was one thing to be forgiven for his transgressions. Returning his feelings was something… other. Something more than Thrawn deserved. After all, Eli might be grateful for the end results of his manipulation, but it was manipulation all the same. As such, Thrawn could hardly blame the younger man for not being similarly interested in him, considering.

But he had cared for Vanto for a long time. Perhaps loved him for nearly as long, too. Hindsight was a valuable tool, but feelings were intricate, crystalline and fragile. And now, in his position, Vanto had to put his command, his duty first. Thrawn understood that as well.

He raised his weapon and unloaded an obscene amount of plasma upon the targets as they appeared. The smell of ozone, the smoky aftertaste of violent discharge did help.

It didn't change the way his chest felt heavy, or the way his mind seemed to cycle through possibilities, producing increasingly infuriating irrationalities, though, and after a third, flawless run of the console's most difficult offering he growled, holstering his weapon.

At this, Ezra stopped. He stepped back, then turned to look at Thrawn. "The Jedi part of me is supposed to give you some sage life advice, I'm sure," He said carefully. "But I've gotta be honest with you. There's nothing I can say to make it better. It just karking sucks."

"I have never-" Thrawn shook his head, as if surprised to find himself in this moment, as if waking up from a dream. Of all the individuals to have this conversation with, he thought sardonically. At least the Jedi was well-intending. Having this conversation with his brother, for instance, would have been far more mortifying. "I do not make these sort of… miscalculations," He said, scathingly.

"You're not perfect, Thrawn. I know that might be surprising to you, but you're not. And that's not a bad thing."

The Chiss looked away from the Jedi's clear blue gaze and ignored his comments entirely. "You clearly got over your previous… infatuation," He said, uncomfortably. "How?"

Ezra looked more uncomfortable than gloating. "Have you never-"

"Of course I have," Thrawn snapped. This entire situation was absurd. And yet, this was the only human for… well, aside from Eli, he might be one of fewer than a hundred in the Unknown Regions, not to mention the only other one within the Ascendancy's ranks of (reasonable trustworthiness), at that. He was a resource, as loathe as Thrawn was to admit he needed the assistance. "But not," He sighed. "Nothing like this."

"Okay. Well, I don't know how Chiss do it, but I kind of let it out…” As if realizing exactly what kind of admission he’s about to lay before Thrawn, he flushes. “I, uh, I don't think - if you'd want me to explain to you now teenage humans do things-"

"I get the idea," Thrawn gestured, leaning back towards the side of absurdity. He could be this brat's parent, he thought, swearing mentally. Jedi wisdom be damned.

"W-well, okay. Look. It sucks. I'm guessing it's worse since you're always right and this time you weren't-" He ducked his head at Thrawn's very displeased glare. "I'm also guessing anyone else you ever saw was either some military fling to blow off steam, no strings attached, or someone who liked you and you got bored quickly." Ezra looked expectant.

"The Force told you that?"

"Nah. We're both warm blooded. Besides, you can't be that old."

Thrawn's eyebrows went up in a sinister arch. "Remind me again how we've gone this long without killing each other?"

Ezra's shrug was over the top. "I'd say it's because we needed each other to survive, but you keep me around for the comedy."

"Right," Thrawn growled, not willing to argue that ridiculous point. "Your point, Bridger?"

"My point is that it sucks for now, sure, but it'll fade. Sabine and I worked through it. Now she's like a sister to me. Maybe Vanto could be like a brother to you."

Thrawn clenched his fists.

"Or," Ezra said carefully, recognizing the sharp snap of the Chiss’s frustration, his miserable anger, "He could come around. I mean, you were on the bridge."

"While I realize you're trying to soften the blow, I do not believe either outcome to be remotely achievable."

"Well," The Jedi shrugged. "If you want, I can talk to my sources and see what they think."

"Absolutely not," Thrawn said. "If it does not happen of his own volition, I'll not have it happen at all. Perhaps in this instance it is best I come to terms with swift and utter defeat."

Ezra tried to argue, but it was clear that Thrawn was finished listening.

#thranto #mitth'raw'nuruodo #vah'nya #un'hee #eli vanto #ezra bridger #eli vanto/thrawn #sw fanfiction #my writing

4 notes · View notes

cutepresea · 4 years

Text

1-3 Titan Symphony: A Moment’s Respite

Again, apologies for the spam.

If you want to blacklist these, you can use either the tag #titan symphony for just this event, or #xdu event scripts for all these posts in general.

Reminder that these are copied straight from XD Unlimited itself, so any grammatical weirdness, mistranslations, and/or mischaracterizations are not my doing.

Eren: "Mrf! Dish ish... sho good!"

Armin: "I can't believe it! This is meat! Real meat!"

Mikasa: "Mrm, really!"

Hibiki Tachibana: "Wow... They're, uh... Really going at that meat, huh?"

Chris Yukine: "Guess they just really like meat... I can't even hear myself think over the racket they're making."

Tsubasa Kazanari: "They must be starving after all the fighting they've been through."

Chris Yukine: "Even that wouldn't explain these meat maniacs...Hey, where's that Levi guy?"

Hibiki Tachibana: "He's with Elfnein-chan in the lab. They're fixing up the omni-directional mobility gear."

Chris Yukine: "Oh, yeah. They've gotta replace the blades and refill the gas canisters, right?"

Tsubasa Kazanari: "That equipment could be the difference between life and death. I'm sure he'd want to be there himself to oversee the repairs."

Chris Yukine: "These guys seem way more concerned with meat than with life and death, that's for sure..."

Armin: "Sorry about that... It's just that in our worlds, meat is so valuable that we rarely ever get to eat it."

Hibiki Tachibana: "There's plenty to go around, so eat up!"

Mikasa: "I'll have seconds, then."

Chris Yukine: "Sure, coming right up."

Eren: "Looks like you two are fast friends already..."

Armin: "Oh, that's right! I got so caught up in my food that I completely forgot! Eren, I have to tell you something."

Eren: "What is it?"

Armin: "After you transformed, all the other Titans circled you and started attacking, right? Well, she saved you."

Eren: "Huh?! What?!"

Mikasa: "You don't remember?"

Eren: "My memory's pretty hazy. You tend to get me out of trouble, so I just assumed it was you, Mikasa."

Eren: "...Why did you save me?"

Hibiki Tachibana: "Like I said before, if someone's in trouble, it's only natural that I'd want to help them."

Eren: "......"

Chris Yukine: "Don't waste your breath. At this point, saving people is basically her hobby."

Eren: "Her hobby, huh? But to put her life on the line for a stranger like that... She must be kind of an idiot."

Chris Yukine: "Well, yeah. We've all sorta figured that out by now."

Hibiki Tachibana: "Hey!"

Armin: "I wouldn't be so quick to judge, Eren. You and her seem to be two of a kind."

Eren: "Oh, come on, I'm not that much of an idiot!"

Mikasa: "No, he has a point. You're quite reckless."

Eren: "Seriously? What are you, my mom or something?!"

Hibiki Tachibana: "Ahahaha!"

Tsubasa Kazanari: "Each group of friends has its own reckless fool, it would appear."

Chris Yukine: "Are your friends back home all like this, too?"

Eren: "Well, they're... odd. One's a freaky researcher, and one goes crazy if she sees meat."

Armin: "Come to think of it, if Sasha ever finds out about these meals, there'll be trouble..."

Eren: "Yeah. Let's tell her all about it when we get back!"

Mikasa: "Not unless you want her to kill us, Eren."

Tsubasa Kazanari: "They really do sound like strange people."

Armin: "How about you? Are there any more of you?"

Hibiki Tachibana: "Of course! Now, were to start? Well..."

Levi: "...I should get back to getting ready."

Levi: "It was generous of them to offer us shelter, but I have to wonder... How often is this place cleaned?"

Genjuro Kazanari: "Good morning! Did you get a good night's rest?"

Eren: "Yeah, thanks. I feel much better now."

Genjuro Kazanari: "Make sure you're completely prepared before going out to fight again."

Genjuro Kazanari: "Before you head out, though, Armin had a suggestion that I'd like you to run by the wielders."

Hibiki Tachibana: "A suggestion?"

Armin: "Yes. During yesterday's battle, we ended up being surrounded by Titans.[1]

Armin: "The main reason for that was because we were fighting on flat ground, and couldn't use our ODM gear properly."

Chris Yukine: "Yeah, you're right."

Armin: "So, how about you Symphogear wielders combine your power with us Scouts, and fight together?"

Chris Yukine: "Easier said than done. Our fighting style's totally different, that's just obvious. How do we make it work?"

Armin: "Your Symphogear has the power to create large objects, right?"

Tsubasa Kazanari: "Yes. My blades, for example, and Yukine's missiles."

Armin: "I think that if we shoot our ODM gear's anchors into them, we can gain altitude even on the flat plains."

Chris Yukine" Wait, so you'd be shooting your anchors in our direction? Isn't that strategy a little unreasonable?!"

Tsubasa Kazanari: "Actually, it's rather ingenious. Combining our strengths will leave us with fewer weak points."

Eren: "Those two seem like they'd be fine, but what about you? Do you have the same sort of weaponry as them?"

Hibiki Tachibana: "Not to worry! I have a technique that lets me flip the ground. I can make a wall for you guys."

Eren: "Well, I wasn't expecting that..."

Hibiki Tachibana: "Anyways, I look forward to trying this plan out!"

Eren: "Yeah, let's hope it works out."

Chris Yukine: "Just don't throw off my missile speed."

Mikasa: "Of course. There'll be no issue there."

Levi: "I'll be counting on you for those walls."

Tsubasa Kazanari: "You mean blades, not walls! Although, I suppose I can try and use my power to form a wall for you to use."

Genjuro Kazanari: "Looks like we're joining forces. Good suggestion, kid."

Armin: "Well, the strategy works in theory, but I'm a little worried about putting it into practice..."

Genjuro Kazanari: "Don't worry about it. They're used to learning on the job."

Tsubasa Kazanari: "He's right. We won't stop until we've downed that Colossal Titan."

Eren: "Then let's do this!"

Chris Yukine: "Can we hurry this up already?!"

Levi: "Be patient. This sort of thing takes time. If we end up surrounded, we'll be completely helpless."

Hibiki Tachibana: "Yeah, we shouldn't just run blindly into the fray. If we rush in, we could end up at a disadvantage!"

Tsubasa: "Guh?!"

Levi: "Looks like they're not going to make this easy for us. There's far too much distance between us all."

Mikasa: "Perhaps we should split up and head for the cliff."

Chris Yukine: "Good plan. That way we can split up some of these Titans, too!"

Armin: "Pair up, everybody! One Scout and one wielder to a pair, just like we strategized!"

Levi: "We'll join up again to take on the Colossal Titan. Stay alive until then!"

Eren: "Yes, Lieutenant!"

Notes:

[1] Yes, the quotation mark was missing in the game’s text here and wasn’t a mistake on my end

#senki zesshou symphogear #symphogear #attack on titan #shingeki no kyojin #senki zesshou symphogear xd unlimited #symphogear xd unlimited #titan symphony #xdu event scripts #xdu scripts #crossover

1 note · View note

vibranch · 4 years

Text

The Keybearer’s Keychains (5/6) - Kingdom Hearts Fan Fiction

Rating: T Word Count: 3,870 AO3 link here (Contains some Author’s notes stuff) Part 5/6 The One-Winged Angel, Diamond Dust, Ultima Weapon

Part 1 Previous Part Next Part

Summary: So many Worlds, and so many people. Each one was unique and an adventure to Sora. But one thing that was constant on his journey, was the keychains he received. An exploration of Sora’s thoughts, experiences, and feelings for each keychain he received during his first journey in no particular order.

The One-Winged Angel

Sora didn’t like this Keyblade.

He wanted to. He’d fought so hard to earn it. It was another Keychain he considered a trophy. But he didn’t get the slightest feeling of satisfaction when wielded it. He felt the weapon sap his energy every time he held it in his palm. After every battle with it he swayed and felt dizzy on his feet

Donald noticed faster than Goofy that Sora was having trouble keeping up with them. It was especially noticeable when he used magic. The problems that arose while using this keychain never seemed to pop up when he was using the Keyblade’s other forms.

“Sora, go change Keychains!” Donald yelled at him after a particularly dangerous fight at the Ends of the Worlds.

“No way. I had to fight that Sephiroth guy to get it!” Sora yelled back. He was honestly the most frustrated with it. Sephiroth nearly killed him in their fight and if didn’t learn to use it properly then he would have nothing to show for it.

Goofy handed Sora an ether. An item Sora hungrily devoured. Because, despite how much Sora wanted to deny it, the One-Winged Angel was wearing him down faster than he expected.

Sora tried to focus on the things he liked about this keychain. Such as how the blade ignited the air with flames as he swung it. And, although it wasn’t an especially powerful version of the Keyblade, occasionally the blade would reverberate nicely off a satisfying blow against the Heartless.

Those two aspects were the only upsides to this keychain. But still, Sora kept fighting with it, determined to master it and become a stronger warrior to show for it.

And then it happened.

Sora passed out in the middle of battle. He didn’t even notice at first. He was knocked over by a Heartless and when he thought he blinked, everyone’s position on the field changed. Sora blinked a second time, and once again everybody seemed to teleport from where they once were or what they were doing.

Goofy now stood over him, his shield between Sora and the blade of a Heartless Jiminy had dubbed an Invisible. Donald wasn’t too far away, blasting away with all sorts of different magics.

By the third blink, the Heartless were gone and Donald and Goofy both hovered over him with worried looks on their faces.

“Sora, are you okay?” Donald asked in a tone so concerned, that Sora immediately felt guilty for making him worry so much.

Still delirious, Sora babbled half attempted tries to assure them that he was okay. Determined to prove it, even if he couldn’t say it, Sora summoned his Keyblade to his hand. A burst of flame surrounded the space in front of it as it burst into existence. The minute Sora grasped it, his arm shook from the strain.

Just holding it was challenge now. Immediately dropping the magical weapon on the ground, the rest of Sora’s body began to shake. Partially from exhaustion, but most of it was frustration.

“It’s not supposed to be like this.” Soar said, feeling even more frustrated at just how childish the statement sounded. His voice quivered. “I should be stronger than this!”

Donald drooped his head. “I know Sora, you don’t have to prove yourself to us. Just use a different keychain and see if you feel better, okay?”

“Yeah, you haven’t been able to keep up ever since we got here.” Goofy agreed. “We know you can do better, the only thing that’s changed is the keychain you’re usin’.”

Sora wanted to argue but he didn’t have the strength to even keep a grip on the Keyblade. It vanished from existence a short time later. He studied the ground where the Keyblade had once laid. Just a small burnt outline remained of where it used to lie.

Goofy handed Sora a potion. “Here, drink this.” Sora did, but only got halfway through it before the world changed again.

Sora awoke inside a one-use tent Donald had bought from Huey Dewy and Louie back at Traverse Town. Any trace of Donald and Goofy being in the tent was missing.

Sora was about to call out for the two of them when he heard Donald arguing about something from outside the tent.

“One use! It’s wasteful is what it is!” Donald yelled, his voice full of hot-tempered feeling. “I don’t know how you can be incompetent enough to make a tent that’s good for only one use! It’s clearly an example of planned obsolescence!”

“Gwarsh, maybe you should have a talk with yer nephews about it. Or we could try buyin’ one of them fancy one-use cottages instead.”

“A one-use cottage!? How is a cottage good for only one use?! How would we even carry a cottage with us the first place?!”

“Umm,” Sora hesitated. His voice instantly caught the attention of Donald and Goofy.

“Sora, you’re awake!” Goofy hollered as he wrapped him in a hug. Donald placed a feathered hand against Sora and allowed himself to let out a sigh of relief.

“Yeah, I’m awake.” Sora squeaked from Goofy’s crushing embrace. “Sorry if I worried you guys.”

“Aw, I wasn’t scared,” Donald folded his arms and tried to look disinterested.

“Oh yeah? I think you were,” Goofy hyucked.

“Who asked you!” Donald fired back before turning back to Sora. “Sora? Are you still going to use that keychain?”

“No,” Sora said, summoning his Keyblade to his hand and tearing the winged charm from it. Instantly it reverted to its original form with the Kingdom Key keychain hanging where the One-Winged Angel once hung. “I’m done trying to use it. It doesn’t want to be used. There’s a darkness inside this keychain.”

“Whaddya mean?” Goofy asked.

“It’s kinda hard to put into words,” Sora responded. “Just holding this keychain feels…” Sora trailed off, trying to find the right word. He didn’t want to worry his friends more than he already had, but they would probably worry even more if he said nothing. “Bad, or maybe wrong? It’s harmful at least.”

Goofy gulped in response. “Whaddya think we should do?”

Sora stared into the vast landscape of former Worlds before looking down at winged keychain still in his hand. An idea sprouted in his mind. His grip tightened on the small winged keychain as he knew what to do.

“Sora?” Donald reached out for his friend, trying to offer some reassurance to the boy who’d grown so quiet.

Jerking his body before Donald could touch him, Sora threw the keychain into the distance. He turned around to face Donald and Goofy.

They both gave him questioning looks. He loved gathering his collection of keychains, they couldn’t believe he’d just toss one away like that.

Seeing the question on their faces, Sora spoke before they could ask. “The One-Winged Angel, it’s not something for me to conquer, I see that now.” Sora spoke in a tone free of the doubts and insecurities his voice held earlier. “Like I told you, Goofy. It’s harmful, so I’m not going to bother letting it hurt me anymore.”

Goofy smiled and placed a hand on Sora’s shoulder. “If that’s what you think is best!”

Donald moved to do the same, but he wasn’t tall enough to reach, so instead gripped Sora’s hand and gave it a squeeze. “Yeah, good riddance to bad rubbish!”

Sora began to laugh. About what, he wasn’t sure. “Hey, don’t you two start getting mushy on me!”

“Aww, the three of us have always been mushy!” Goofy chuckled as he leaned against Sora and brandished his shield. “But that’s okay. So long as I’ve got my shield, I won’t let nothin’ touch us three mushies!”

Sora laughed as he playfully shoved him off his shoulder. “You guys keep talking like that and I’m liable to throw up!”

Donald and Goofy kept teasing as Sora looked back from where they’d come. He couldn’t help but be taken aback by how far they’d come together. Not just in this World either. Every World they’d walked through, every challenge they faced, it all seemed to form up in a straight line behind them.

They’d been through a lot of tough battles, but Sora knew their toughest ones were just ahead. Sora looked towards the road they still had to travel and steeled himself for whatever he’d have to face next. The future didn’t scare him at all. Afterall, Goofy still had his shield to protect the three mushies.

The Diamond Dust

Sora made his way back to the Gummi ship after a particularly grueling battle against a colossal being called the Ice Titan. As the name suggested, it was made of living ice and commanded said element in all manners of ice based attacks.

Despite mostly throwing solid ice at him, the Ice Titan occasionally breathed out a frosty breath that coated the ground beneath it with snow and froze what lay under as ice. Sora was amazed by it, his thoughts raced back to when he was first learning the Blizzard spell and could only produce small amounts of slush. It was the most snow Sora had ever seen. In fact, even now Sora still felt a chill cling to him as he walked along with Donald and Goofy.

“Say, Sora. You’ve got a little somethin’ stuck to ya there.” Goofy said, noticing a perfectly preserved snowflake on Sora’s hoodie. Goofy made special care not to accidentally crush it in his grip as he plucked it from Sora’s shoulder,

“Huh?” Sora turned to see what Goofy was pinching between his fingers. “What is it?”

“Looks like a snowflake.” Goofy said, in the comically serious way only he seemed to be able to do. He studied the small frozen water crystal as if it were a rare synthesis ingredient.

Donald looked up at the object in Goofy’s hand before turning to address Sora. “Must be a leftover from your exhibition against the Ice Titan.”

“Really…” Sora grinned, pulling his arms over his head and thought back to the battle he’d won singlehandedly. He tried to recall when the snowflake might’ve gotten attached to him, but he was dodging so much snow and ice being hurled at him it was impossible to figure out when it had stuck to him. “I’m surprised it hasn’t melted yet.”

“Gwarsh, good point.” Goofy said, finally looking away from the ice crystal. “Wonder how much longer it’ll last.”

“Well, let’s take it with us and find out.” Donald said as he moved on ahead from the rest of the group. “C’mon, you guys! We gotta get back to Traverse Town! Sora, you told Kairi you’d visit her as soon as you were done here, remember?” he called back at the two stragglers.

“Oh, right!” Sora shouted in return as he ran to catch up with Donald.

“Hey fellers, wait for me!” Goofy hollered after them.

Sora scurried down the streets of Traverse Town alone. He held the snowflake in his hand, careful not to drop it. Curiously, it hadn’t melted during the trip back to Traverse Town.

Sora bounded through the alley that eventually lead into the waterway. Sora figured Kairi would be intrigued by the miraculous snowflake that wouldn’t melt, and secretly he was excited to be the one to show her it.

“Kairi!” Sora shouted, once she was in sight.

Kairi jumped at Sora’s sudden and unexpectedly loud volume. For a moment, she worried something might be wrong.

But Sora ran right up to her and outstretched his hand holding the snowflake. “You’ll never guess what I found! He chuckled proudly.

Kairi looked at the tiny object, and then back at Sora. That was it? Kairi thought. She half expected Sora to be running in to tell her about some sort of emergency from how loudly he’d shouted to her, and here he was with a snowflake of all things!

“Sora, why do you have a snowflake?” she asked. Sora’s grin widened and she suddenly understood exactly why Sora had been so noisy. He get’s excited so easily. She thought.

“It’s not just any snowflake, Kairi. It’s a snowflake that refuses to melt.”

“It… Refuses?” Kairi repeated. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, I’ve had it for a couple hours now and it still hasn’t melted.” Sora extended his arm again, offering Kairi the chance to hold the small ice crystal.

Cautiously, Kairi took it from Sora, half worried that she might accidentally crush it if she wasn’t careful. She held the snowflake between her fingers and slowly turned it over in her hand as she examined it. “Why won’t it melt?”

“I don’t know.” Sora shrugged. “Donald said it might be magical or something… I mean it did come from a giant ice monster, that might be why it won’t melt.”

“An Ice Monster?”

“Well, I think its actual called an Ice Titan, but it wasn’t really much for conversation. So we didn’t get the chance to exchange names.” Sora admitted.

Kairi giggled at the thought of Sora sitting down to talk with a giant ice monster. If anyone could, Sora could, she figured.

After spending some more time examining it, Kairi at last spoke up again. “You know, this snowflake kind of reminds me of home…”

Sora’s smile changed into an expression of curiosity. “Really?” he hadn’t expected her to talk about that. She’d never talked about where she’d come from for as long as he’d known her. “How come? I thought you couldn’t remember anything from your home?”

“It used to snow on my World.” Kairi said, as she stared deeply into the snowflake’s patterns. “It’s weird, I still can’t remember much, but I can remember trying to catch the falling snowflakes in my hand to look at them when I was little. But they usually melted before I got a good look.” She looked back at Sora and gave him a grin that matched the one he had when he first arrived. “It’s nice to finally have a good long look at one”

Sora’s smile returned, he was glad that he had this chance to make her smile. But there was a pang of jealousy inside him that caused his smile to only stay temporarily. “You know, despite all the Worlds I’ve traveled to while looking for you and Riku, none of them had snow…”

Kairi thought back to all the events she could remember while being a passenger in Sora’s Heart. “Well, that might be a good thing.” She teased. “You’re kind of used to the beach. The snow might look kind of similar to sand, but it’s much colder.”

“Hey c’mon, I know that much!” Sora laughed. “I fought the ice thing!”

Kairi laughed in return. “I thought you said it was called an Ice Titan!”

“Whatever it was, it was made of ice!” Their laughter echoed through the cave. After a while silence slowly settled in again. “Anyway, once this is all over, we’ll be going back home. Back to the Islands.”

“Yeah,” Kairi said.

“I’m kinda disappointed that I won’t get to see any actual snow for myself. It’s not like it ever snows on the Islands.”

“Oh,” Kairi didn’t expect Sora to sound so down about it. “I’m sorry, Sora.”

“No, it’s fine. It’s not your fault I never got to see it.” Sora suddenly had a thought. He paused for a moment in nervous apprehension as he considered sharing it. “Hey Kairi?”

“Yeah?”

“Could you tell me what snow is like? Actual snow, not the small stuff Donald can spray from his staff.”

Kairi was a little surprised. She wasn’t sure she could do it. It had been nearly nine years, at best, since she’d last seen the snow, but she didn’t want to deny Sora his request. “Sure, Sora. Anything you want to know in particular?”

“No,” Sora shook his head. “Just tell me what it’s like for it to snow where you live.”

“Well, sometimes it’s really wet and slushy, and other times it’s more compact. You could almost walk on it, but I mean, I was only four at the time. So maybe I just didn’t weigh enough to fall through it.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, it was pretty magical. Sometimes I’d go to bed and there wouldn’t be any. Then when I would wake up, the whole place would be covered in the stuff!”

“Wow…” Sora said, trying to imagine what that must have been like.

“We even had a name for it back on my world, when we woke up in the morning and the landscape was covered in snow.”

“What did you guys call it?”

“Diamond dust. Because of the way the rising sun gleamed off it.”

“Diamond Dust, huh?” Sora brought his hand to his chin and tried to picture that as well. “That sounds really pretty.”

“It was.” Kairi said wistfully as more thoughts of a home she’d thought long forgotten flooded back to her.

She turned back to Sora. “But try not to feel too disappointed, okay?” She paused to gently place the small snowflake back into Sora’s hand. “After all. you’ve got a little piece of Diamond Dust for yourself.”

Sora looked at the snowflake, another small smile slowly grew on his face. “Yeah, I guess so!”

Another thought crossed Sora’s mind, if the snowflake really wouldn’t ever melt, maybe he could make a keychain out of it. It could serve as a reminder of this moment with Kairi.

“Do you still want to talk about snow?” Kairi asked, her voice cutting through his thoughts.

“Nah, I’ve got a better idea. Check this out,” Sora said, pointing his Keyblade away from Kairi. He could make a keychain out of the snowflake later. Right now, he wanted to see some real snow with Kairi. “Deep Freeze!” He shouted.

The Ultima Weapon

Sora spent a lot of time experimenting with the Moogle synthesis. It was an interesting curiosity to him at first. However, as his journey approached its end, Sora found himself visiting it more frequently.

When pressed about why he was so committed synthesizing, he’d claim that he was doing it to make something cool for everyone. It wasn’t untrue, he’d made all sorts of things. A staff of Donald, a shield for Goofy, along with an assortment of other objects. From bangles, to ribbons, to earrings, to even a crown, Sora had done it all.

But Donald and Goofy could tell there was more to Sora’s sudden interest in synthesizing than he was letting on. He just wouldn’t come clean.

One day, while rifling through the Moogles’s ancient synthesis recipe book, Sora stumbled upon an entry for Keyblade wielders of old, called the ‘Ultima Weapon’. It was the perfect recipe for Sora. It required materials from every World he’d been to, meaning it would take a long time to create. And since its name implied it would be of great use to the dangerous place they were heading towards eventually, Donald and Goofy agreed to postpone their trip to the End of the World

Unlike most keychains Sora had collected, Ultima Weapon was made entirely by him. Looking at the finished Ultima Weapon, Sora could see why it was given that name. Unlike all his other keychains, this one was truly a weapon. An actual sword blade was hidden beneath an elaborate wreath of gold. It vaguely reminded Sora of a sword he’d used once in a bizarre dream.

A dream he had just days before the Islands fell to Darkness. Those days felt so long ago to him now. And now with the Ultima Weapon finished, Sora, Donald, and Goofy were soon to depart to the End of the World and set everything back to normal.

But what even was normal anymore? Sora’s new normal was flying to new Worlds and making new friends with Donald and Goofy by his side. If things did go back to normal, the way he remembered normal being at least, then ironically the only thing that wouldn’t be normal anymore would be Sora. Was it selfish to wish that things could just stay they way they were now?

Holding the finished keychain in his hand, Sora was tempted to hide it someplace and tell Donald and Goofy the synthesis failed and that they’d have to try to make it again. But even they wouldn’t delay traveling to the End of the World a second time.

So, with a bit of apprehension, Sora showed off his entirely self-made keychain to Donald, Goofy, and Kairi, before taking off in the Gummi Ship.

Sora only used the Ultima Weapon occasionally. They stopped at various Worlds. Mostly to visit friends and make Testing it out on the various Heartless that showed up on the Worlds they stopped at, on their way to the End of the World.

It felt powerful, and if its name was anything to go by, it was powerful. But what Sora liked most about his keychains were the events that lead to him receiving them. Each one contained their own story and reminded him of the friendships he’d made.

When the time came that they arrived at the End of the World, Sora hesitated to take his newest keychain with him. Ultima Weapon had no real story to it. Sora had spent a lot of time making it, which held a certain satisfaction. But Sora had synthesized a lot of items along the way to Ultima Weapon. The thought of choosing the Ultima Weapon keychain over all his other keychains didn’t sit right with Sora, especially for what was likely the final new World he’d ever set foot on.

There was a temptation to take all of his keychains with him, to show no favoritism to any of them. But ultimately, Sora decided to only take the Oathkeeper and One-Winged Angel keychains with him.

“No point in traveling with a ton of stuff jangling around in my pockets,” Sora said to himself.

There was a thrill to taking the One-Winged Angel over Ultima Weapon. Sora hadn’t mastered it yet, but the End of the World could be his trial by fire with it.

“Sora are you coming?!” Donald called for him.

“Yeah, Coming!” Sora called back, giving one last look to his newest keychain. Sora set it down on his desk and gave it a slight smile. “Next time,” he whispered to it before running out the door.

Unfortunately for the Ultima Weapon, next time would never arrive. The reforming worlds would claim even the small keychains Sora had Collected. As these too, came from other Worlds.

The Ultima Weapon was ripped apart by the pull of the Worlds Sora had visited, each one claiming back the resources used to create the keychain.

Nearly a full year would pass before Sora returned to the Gummi Ship. By that point the promise of using the Ultima Weapon was a distant thought Sora no longer recalled. Not even the memory of setting it down on his desk remained. Even if he did remember, Sora was far more distraught over the total loss of his entire collection, to care about a promise he had made to a single keychain.

#Sora #Kairi #Donald Duck #Goofy #Sokai #kingdom hearts fanfiction #kingdom hearts #fan fiction #Sokai specifically during the Diamond Dust #My Writing

4 notes · View notes

mst3kproject · 5 years

Photo

811: Parts: the Clonus Horror

When The Island came out in 2005, the makers of Parts sued Dreamworks and reached a settlement for some millions of dollars. There are rumors that the film-makers were reluctant to actually bring the case, since they’d kind of hoped everybody forgot about this movie. If that’s true, they never had a chance. MSTies never forget.

Clonus is a high-security facility funded by Adidas, which raises clones so that their organs can be harvested for transplantation. After a rigorous physical fitness program, successful clones are told it’s time to go to Disneyland or something, and are then frozen and packaged. One day, a clone named Richard is inspired by an empty can of Old Milwaukee to investigate the ugly truth behind his world, and manages to escape Clonus and reach a city, where he kinda wanders around lost until a old man finds him. This guy is a retired journalist, who might be able to blow the lid off the whole Clonus project, as long as the company’s thugs don’t find them first.

My first thought on this movie is that I haven’t seen this much product placement since Mac and Me.

My second thought is that this is all extremely impractical. You’ve got this giant facility with hundreds of clones, all of whom need to be raised, educated, fed, exercised, clothed, cured when they’re sick, housed, entertained, etcetera… this would require hundreds more if not thousands of staff! What’s the payoff? Somebody gets a liver in forty years? Right, but you’d have to have your clone made while you’re still fairly young if they’re going to be mature by the time you’re old and sick, and then what if you never need a liver? That’s a whole clone gone to waste there. What if you die in a car accident without ever using your clone? Do they just throw it out? What if your clone dies before you do? Do you get your money back? Peter Graves talks about immortality through unlimited spare parts, but that’s not how that works… what if you have a stroke? You can’t replace your brain with a clone’s.

I have way more questions. Why are Richard and Lina different from the others? They’re ‘control’ clones, but what variables are the scientists controlling for? The ‘normal’ clones don’t seem that much different, just more complacent. If the clones aren’t supposed to know they’re being watched then why do the ‘guides’ talk into microphones right in front of them? What do the clones think is going on when an airplane flies over?

How do they keep this all a secret from the outside world? The staff must sign nondisclosure agreements and stuff, but do none of them ever have moral qualms and decide to talk? Most of the people with clones seem to know they have clones. They must have paid for it at some point. Do none of them ever decide this is fucked-up and withdraw from the program? What happens to their clone if they do? Do they ever get the urge to meet their clone? What if some narcissistic aging billionaire’s only child dies and they decide to adopt their clone as an heir… is that allowed? If your relative needs a liver and you’d be a close match but need to keep yours, can you donate your clone’s?

I think I just wrote six movies more interesting than this one, because Parts: the Clonus Horror is really, really boring. The first half of the movie is bland clones leading their bland lives in bland surroundings. I’m aware that’s supposed to be the point: the clones themselves are encouraged to be kind of dim and dull so that their keepers don’t get attached to them, and their lives are not very dramatic because stress would harm them. The Clonus facilities look like the world’s most boring wellness retreat because that’s exactly what they are. Fair enough, but you don’t have to show that to us in a way that bores the audience. Clonus doesn’t look like any fun, but it doesn’t look worth avoiding, either. Nothing that happens makes us feel like we know Richard and Lina as people, and so it’s hard to care about what happens to them.

It also undercuts the movie’s point. This is a film about human rights and how the rich and powerful are willing to violate them if it offers them some advantage. That’s an important thing to explore, but Parts does a terrible job because we don’t see the clones as people. They don’t have interests, or ideas, or relationships, they just wander around looking like they’re gonna bump into things. Richard’s curiosity and Lina’s journaling should make us like them, but it’s all so poorly-presented that we don’t care.

Part of this does come from the desire to show how the clones have been raised, but at lot of it is also bad writing, because the characters who are not clones aren’t any better. Peter Graves, his brother, and Hairy Son Rick chat about the morality of the whole thing but none of them have what one might describe as a personality. When they talk about the situation and its moral implications, they do so in a very ham-fisted way that’s talking to the audience far more than it is each other. We don’t care enough about them to be interested in their decisions, their opinions, or even their deaths. All the time that should have been spent getting us interested in these characters was wasted on clones jogging.

Guess what that makes Richard? Yep, sure enough, he’s a Main Character Who Doesn’t Do Anything! He doesn’t save his friends, he doesn’t save his girlfriend… he doesn’t even save himself. Even worse, during the second half of the movie, when the action should be happening, Richard is not even a part of it. Having escaped from Clonus he doesn’t know where he is and has no idea what to do next. He places his fate in his original’s hands, and lets others take over. The result may be the end of Clonus, but it is also the end of Richard and what few things he ever held dear.

I think Richard’s storyline might be an attempt to say something about the ‘hero’s journey’ trope, in which the Callow Youth sets out into the big, scary world to take on forces far greater than himself. It’s hard to imagine anyone callower than Richard, who has never really experienced anything, but that inexperience is his undoing. The outside world is just too big and scary for him, and having reached it, he just wants to go home. When he gets there, however, he finds that home is not a place of safety. He has not yet learned enough to know that it’s actually the worst place he could go.

If any of you remember Conquest, I was pretty sure that was an intentional subversion of the ‘inexperienced young hero saves the world’ trope. In Parts, it feels like an accident. The writing is just too amateurish to be trying to suggest anything so subtle. Richard questions his experiences and Peter Graves and his brother argue about the ethics of cloning, with all the nuance of Anakin Skywalker complaining about sand – which may be a bad example because that was at least an attempt at a metaphor, in a story that was intentionally about the hero’s journey gone horribly wrong. The closest Parts comes to a metaphor is to use the cloning project as a symbol of everything the rich get away with, and that would have been inherent in the premise anyway.

Since the clones themselves are mere pawns and almost all the other characters are villains, this leaves Parts as a movie without a hero. Richard certainly never does anything remotely heroic, the politicians are corrupt assholes, and Hairy Rick doesn’t know enough, himself, to know that taking Richard home will result in disaster (though at least he tried to help). The only characters who really do something heroes would do are the retired reporter and his wife. They do the right thing all the way through, trying to help this injured man on their doorstep and make sure the world finds out about something terrible, and they’re killed for their trouble.

You know what? I’m not done asking questions yet. What happened after the end of the movie, when the Clonus project was exposed? Paul notes in the Amazing Colossal Transplanted Sci-Fi Channel Episode Guide that since the villains of the movie are rich old white men, they probably got their way regardless, but what if they didn’t? What happened to all those clones? They have no skills or real education, and have never had to take care of their own needs. If they’re going to get jobs and apartments and so forth it’ll be a real steep learning curve.

Are the clones aware of sex? When the two of them are making out at the beginning they say things like “I’ve grown accustomed to you” and “I like you touching me,” which imply that they really have no idea what the logical conclusion is. Yet when Richard and Lina spend their night camping in the woods it’s implied that they went a little further than that. I hate to praise The Island of all movies, but it at least dealt with some of this stuff!

What we’re left with in Parts: the Clonus Horror is another one of those annoying movies in which somebody had a really great idea and yet couldn’t be bothered to think it through properly before rushing to a final draft. This is always a tragedy, because so many people put so much time, effort, and money into making a movie. It’s a shame to see it wasted on something that is fundamentally unfinished.

#mst3k #reviews #that guy from the university of minnesota #parts: the clonus horror #70s #why is there always a rick

54 notes · View notes

maserati-yokota · 4 years

Text

AJW We Are Running Thru Korakuen Hall 5/26/91 Commercial Tape

This one has links! So you know I'm not making this shit up!

Suzuka Minami & Takako Inoue & Cynthia Moreno vs. Bison Kimura & Mika Takahashi & Miori Kamiya part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mb9L6-ybHoc part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7Ok-L8g3Jc Kamiya gets to work tossing Suzuka around before getting piledriven into pudding. Moreno tags in and man it's a shame she was perpetually disrespected by this company. Moreno was a treasure, you rubes. Bison is in full beast mode and she doesn't even have the leopard-print yet! Takako is young and gets stretched a lot. Whatever happened to Kamiya you say? She's Cooga, ya dingus; the dullest part of any late-90s card. Takahashi gets tagged in, puts Takako in an upside down double-underhook STFU WITH A BRIDGE and goes back to her corner so Bison can dropkick some more. The 70s Miles Davis solo of tag-ins. Incredible. Suzuka does a gorgeous vertical suplex to signal to all of us watching that though this is a heatless spotfest, the spots are in season. So dig in. Suzuka's dropkicks are so snappy it's a wonder she didn't get CTE from them. Kamiya must've just been spent by the Cooga era because she busts out tons of fun stuff here. Youth is young on the wasted. Bison, sensing the lack of Classic Tag Match Heat, throws Moreno into the bleachers. Good on her. Takako wants revenge but eats a Bison Chop. This is an interesting era for a spotfest--ie the pre-CTE era--despite it still being built off of the video-gamey idea of "strong attacks wear down more HP". Everybody busts out the weirdest shit they can come up with in the hope something--anything--will do it. But I shouldn't complain much. This is heavy on action, light on pointless near-falls, the screwups are minor, and there are some really fun and odd spots I haven't seen before. And Kaoru Ito is there to moisturize the losers!

Toshiyo Yamada vs. Yumiko Hotta part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfHqj7TdoTY part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtYiI8pb5hQ Q: And kicks?

A: And kicks.

Yamada is as spry and bland as ever and Hotta is still pretending she isn't a violence pervert. But the crowd knows The Truth so Hotta gets 1000000 streamers. Yamada, mad at her comparative lack of streamers, comes out swinging, only to get swung. Hotta brings the UWF realism but Yamada is convinced the puroresu will WIN. One thing they can both agree on is KICKS. The first notable one busts Yamada's nose and we are off to the races--which is to say, we are witnessing the suffering of women who work for men and therefore are never encouraged to have healthily competitive relationships with their peers. Healthy competition comes from camaraderie and a sense of community. Bull Nakano spoke in interviews about how brutalized and casually despised she was by the other wrestlers when she started. The Crush Gals fucking hate each other irl. Aja Kong was made into a monster heel literally because she was biracial. These things and this match dynamic (hardway blood in basically a TV taping) are all symptoms of the same disorder: misogyny and the market sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G. Yeah, there's a ton of great work and powerful drama in this era, but how much of it was the inadvertent by-product of an unhealthy working environment? We'll never really know, since there was practically no other game in town--and what game there was (LLPW and JWP) was so consumed by the battle for market dominance, they could only mimic this model. AJW begat Rossy Ogawa which begat Arsion’s weirdly disjointed breed of misogyny which begat Stardom. “Send the girls out there and make them murder each other for the love of the fans! And fuck it! They're somehow also responsible for shilling all their merch, too, just to survive! And they’re little a nude sometimes! As a treat!” This match is pretty fun, don't get me wrong. But it's sometimes hard to distinguish a legitimately competitive match from all of what I just described. Did Hotta bust Yamada's nose cuz she was pissed about jobbing and there was no other outlet in the context of the company to properly express that frustration? Was that frustration even really directed at Yamada? Or was this more of a "Yoshiko shoot"-type situation, in which a wrestler makes a public display of frustration? Hotta turns the shoot into a work for good measure by attacking Yamada post-match. 1991 was 4000 years ago.

Aja Kong vs. Manami Toyota part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NI746sByB-g part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnKy0Kp5_MU part 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gdv67lFa5M Two of the most compelling figures this era produced--both of whom took the weird and bigoted roles they were given and turned them into powerful characters that transcended that small-mindedness. Aja set out to be a fan favorite despite the booking and it fucking worked. Manami didn't want to just be a pretty baby-face; she wanted depth and conflict. She also trained Tsukasa Fujimoto and Tsukushi, who carry on her legacy of being weirdos with pin-straight hair who love punishment. Aja still sells at this point and Manami is such a string-bean it looks like her boots are weighing her down. Apart from that contextual novelty, this is pretty classic Kong/Toyota. Toyota gets tied in more knots than those catalogued in Moby Dick; eats every kick ever and even takes a headbutt to the lower back. But contrary to their later body of work, Toyota's hope spots don't pop the crowd as much since they're not yet sure she's capbable of fighting from underneath. They like it when she fires up, but they don't yet believe in it. In defense of Aja and Toyota, their work is just as compelling as in 93, 94 or 95, the bookers just didn't believe it yet. It would take the hair vs hair match and Aja's teary performance at the end of Big Egg to convince them of what everyone else on earth already knew. It's as thankless to be out-of-step with the times as it is to be ahead of the times. If you haven't seen this and you're familiar with their higher profile matches, you should. It's more than just a curiosity or a template for later and "greater" things; it's a sign they already knew who they were and how prepared they were to transcend management's expectations. Wild finish and a moving post-match moment, too.

Akira Hokuto & Sakie Hasegawa vs. Bull Nakano & Bat Yoshinaga (2/3 Falls Match) part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=En6sdmXeMAY part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQ2crxtgZhY Hokuto's legacy is equally massive but differently complex. Hokuto was never really given an explicit role other than asshole. An early injury earned her a reputation with fans as a wrestler who refused to lie down--despite the fact that breaking her neck and refusing to abandon the match was probably due more to how toxic the work environment was in AJW. Can't blame her, or really anybody under these circumstances. Christ, they all started training when they were barely teenagers; what other reality did they know? But because she was picked by the fans long before management knew what to do with her, she had a far different arc. In the ring, she worked from underneath, but as an asshole. Imagine if Muta was somehow Cactus Jack: a being who existed outside the bounds of normal human morality but also took such a colossal beating it made you feel bad for them. Only a tremendously charismatic, well-drawn performance could carry that off. Hokuto is so hard-headed in every sense it's impossible not to root for her; she refuses to know her own limits and, subsequently, refuses to acknowledge the limits of any of her opponents. Anyhow, AJW was hoping Bat Yoshinaga would be Lil Bull, even though that never panned out. Sakie is comically timid in the pre-match promo and Hokuto seems doubtful but down to clown as usual. Bull comes out in a feathery gown only to reveal a tattered tie-dyed Grateful Dead shirt to let everyone know she a) likes to party and b) is ready for a call from Vince whenevs. Hokuto is fully on her Maeda shit: aloof yet nervy. She's still in her Marine Wolves colors, too. A woman without a country. Sakie looks literally terrified about what she knows is coming. Ten seconds after the bell, Bull clotheslines them both and powerbombs Sakie for the first fall. THAT'S how Bull do. Hokuto is having none of it and top-rope dropkicks Bat's clavicle into a billion pieces for the second fall. THAT'S how Hokuto do. Now it's Bull vs Hokuto, what the crowd was thirsty for. Hokuto gets thrown over the ropes onto the bare floor but rallies and comes back with a suplex and the same dropkick she gave Bat--proving her contempt for Bull. Double underhook driver for good measure, but Bull gonna Bull. Sakie gets a huge pop on the hot tag despite being the obvious Kikuchi in this setting. Bat kicks and stretches Sakie back into her place. In some ways its hard to tell if Sakie's time in AJW is compelling because she is obviously better than how she was booked or compelling on its own merits--and due to her repeated injuries and transition to trainer we'll never know. But either way, Sakie whips. Hokuto helps her get some good licks in on Bull to drive home that despite her crankiness she believes in this young upstart after all. Sakie capitalizes on this heat by delivering a gorgeous flying headbutt to Bat, following by a pair of god-tier heel-kicks. The crowd is SHRIEKING. Bull senses Bat is gonna whiff it, so bum-rushes Sakie to get Hokuto to tag in. Hokuto is rewarded with a German suplex to the base of her skull and a double-team. A few dozen harrowing exchanges later, Hokuto is back on top and Sakie is ready to die for her. Unfortunately, the moment Bull comes off the top rope with a legdrop, we all know the credits gonna roll. Bull leads the crowd in chanting "Bat-o, Bat-o, Bat-o" and it's a shame that never got legs. Bull feels bad about how things ended, so gives them another chance at a fall. Sakie and Bat slap each other instead of kissing.

Weird but fun card full of all your faves before their prime. Have at it!

Wait . Hang on. Plum Mariko vs Chigusa Nagayo (JWP, 2/11/94) is tacked onto this tape! Fuck YES. Lorefice: the beef been squashed. THANK YOU. (jk jk you're still a bigot)

Watch it here, with glorious pre-match training footage cut from the commercial tape: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQLWwEHP4FQ Plum comes out HOT and bloodies Chigusa early. Never seen Plum this vampiric and fired tf up. Chigusa is having none of it and Hulks out because she's deeply cynical about joshi audiences at this point in her career. She also doesn't mind getting blood in her eyes because, of course, she is still Chigusa Nagayo~! (*DVDVR shout-out interrobang) I've talked a ton already about how much Plum rules and how wistful I get seeing any of her matches. I'm not sure if I'm comfortable saying "the business killed her" so instead I'll say "the business let her die." (The business has let many die but few so blatantly.) Chigusa has yet to enter her dom stage so instead inhabits a kind of quasi-Dynamite Kansai persona appropriate to JWP. She kicks less often but smushes necks just the same. She also is 1000x better on the mat. The announcer mentions, in English (?!) this is a full house at Koruken Hall. Chigusa hits pause to talk shit and Plum is OUTRAGED. Chigusa is also rocking a tan that says "yeah, I took some time off to chill tf out, what of it?" Plum thinks she can restart the match with a respectable test of strength (this is Chigusa, she of fightingo-spiritu, after all) only to get immediately clowned by The New Chigusa. The Post-Crush Gal. Plum says "oh fuck that" and throws on the Stretch Plum and DDTs Chigusa thru the earth's mantle. Chigusa is takes a breather outside then demands Plum give her enough room to get back in the ring, thus going full southern heel. Plum caaaan't quiiiite sink in the Stretch so does a quick German for good measure. Chigusa fights from beneath but gets shut down QUICK. Weird that this legitimately feels like anyone's game, given Chigusa's legendary status. Chigusa sets the record straight by soccer kicking Plum's head into the Mir space station (topical). The crowd now hates her. Plum squishes her back to the mat where she feels safe and torques Chigusa's legs until she looks like Brian Yuzna's seminal critique of capitalism, Society. Despite the contortions, Chigusa chinlocks her way to a victory we all kinda knew was coming.

#joshi #joshi puroresu #all japan womens #ajw #1991 #jwp #toshio yamada #aja kong #manami toyota #akira hokuto #plum mariko #chigusa nagayo #vhs #wrestling tapes #sakie hasegawa

1 note · View note

lonesoldier332 · 5 years

Text

Chapter 3: Shiganshina Part 1

Everything was falling apart. The Scouts had been taken by surprise by the Beast titan and his forces: dozens of large titans forming a semicircle around the small village outside the Shiganshina district. The Armored titan and the Colossus titan were inside the walls, fighting with Squads Levi and Hange. The Scouts had no contact with them for too long. The Beast titan had thrown a large boulder at the gate, cutting them off, and leaving the new recruits and the horses exposed to the titans. He had also been throwing smaller rocks at the village, completely reducing it to rubble. The remaining veteran soldiers had all been wiped out. All that was left was Erwin, Andrew, Levi, and the several dozen new recruits, who at this point had no real combat experience.

Eren’s titan form had been thrown up onto the wall, and he was not moving. The Colossal titan likely hit him or threw him up there.

As the buildings in front of them continued to be completely leveled by the Beast titan’s barrage of rocks, the recruits devolved into a state of panic. Many of them broke down, some were crying, even fewer stood tall, but their eyes could not hide the terror they felt at facing their deaths. Andrew could feel the rumble of the Colossus titan’s massive steps as he slowly approached the wall, ready to destroy the gate, and wipe them all out with one kick. Though he wouldn’t admit it, Andrew knew that they were all going to die.

Levi landed back down next to Andrew and Erwin.

Another barrage of rocks destroyed more of the houses protecting them.

“The Beast titan has a good guess where we’re at. This place will look like a honeycomb soon,” Levi continued. “Erwin, if you’re saying we’ve got no chance to counterattack, let’s get ready to flee. You two need to go up and wake Eren sprawled up there. Ride him and flee with as many people as possible. At least that way, we’ll have some survivors.”

Erwin was silent.

“I can’t do that, Levi,” Andrew said. “I can’t just abandon everybody. We came here with a job to do, and I swore to either see it through or die trying.”

“Don’t be stupid,” Levi said. “This isn’t about promises or honor anymore. All of the veteran soldiers are dead. Hange, Moblit, my squad; for all we know, they’re all dead. It’s just us now. You have to live. You have to.”

More rocks shattered the houses. A horse panicked and ran off.

“We can’t scale the wall in our current position,” Erwin finally said. “The Beast titan will see us and kill us for sure.”

“What if whoever’s left of the recruits scatter on horses and try to make it home?” Levi said. “By using them as a decoy, you guys could escape on Eren.”

“Levi, what would you do?” Erwin asked.

“I’m going to go after the Beast titan,” he replied. “I’ll draw him away-”

“No, Erwin interrupted. “You wouldn’t even get close.”

“You’re probably right,” Levi said. “But if at least you two and Eren can make it home alive, there is still hope. At this point, isn’t that the best we can ask for?”

More rocks shredded the buildings. Several recruits cried out in terror, others curled up and started crying.

“What a huge defeat,” Levi lamented. “To be perfectly honest, I doubt a single one of us is getting out of this alive.”

Andrew closed his eyes and clenched his fists, know ing Levi was right.

“Assuming there is no way for us to counterattack, you’re right,” Erwin said.

Andrew and Levi both looked at Erwin in surprise. More rocks hit the buildings.

“You have a plan?” Andrew said.

“Yes,” Erwin replied.

“Then why did you keep your shitty mouth shut?” Levi yelled.

Erwin let a faint smile creep across his face.

“If this plan goes well, you may be able to kill the Beast titan,” Erwin explained. “But the recruits and myself will have to give up our lives.”

Levi’s expressionless eyes gazed into Erwin’s while Andrew’s widened. The three of them turned to look at the recruits who were all crying and screaming in fear as more rocks shattered the buildings and the wall behind them.

“Erwin, what the hell are you talking about?” Andrew said.

“It’s like Levi said,” Erwin explained. He walked over to a building and sighed. “Either way, most of us will die. No, it’s almost guaranteed that we’ll all be wiped out. In which case, we can stake our heroic deaths on a slim chance of victory.”

Andrew and Levi followed Erwin as he walked. More boulders collided with the wall.

“In order for this to work,” Erwin continued. “To ask these young ones to die, it would take an expert liar with a whole slew of lies. If I don’t lead the vanguard, none of them will follow. This means I will be the first one to die, without ever learning what is in that basement.”

“Erwin, don’t be ridiculous,” Andrew pleaded. “The recruits look up to me and Levi just as much as you. The three of us have been around longer than anyone else. Let me do it. You have to live.”

“No,” Erwin said. “It was I who inspired everyone to give their lives with the expeditions beyond the walls. It was I who convinced everyone to give their lives against the Armored titan. It has to be me. Nobody else can convince those terrified kids to die.”

“But Erwin, I-” Andrew stopped himself. “We need you.”

Levi noticed Andrew’s hesitation.

“I’m sorry Andrew,” Erwin said solemnly. “But I have to give my life up, without ever learning what’s in that basement.”

“Huh?” Levi said.

Erwin sighed and sat down on a box.

“I...” he said softly. “I want to go to the basement. Everything I have done up until now was because I thought this day would come. Someday, I thought I could see if I was right.”

Andrew’s eye’s shifted from Erwin to the ground. His clenched fists relaxed. As the buildings continued to disintegrate in front of them.

“There were so many times when I thought dying would be so much easier,” Erwin continued, his voice breaking. “But always, the dream I shared with my father flashed through my mind. And now I’m close enough to the answers that I can reach out and grab them. But...”

Erwin composed himself.

“Andrew, Levi,” Erwin continued. “Can you see them? Our fallen friends?”

Levi was silent. Andrew removed his goggles and wiped away a single tear.

“Yes,” he answered. “I can see them every day. Every decision we’ve made or will ever make, I can see them watching over us.”

“You’re right,” Erwin said. “They are watching us. Because they want to know what became of the hearts they gave. Because the fight isn’t over yet.”

The rocks were getting dangerously close to the recruits now. Only a handful of buildings stood between them and the Beat titan. Andrew, Levi, and Erwin continued to remain undisturbed by the panic around them.

“Is this all just inside my head?” Erwin asked. “Nothing more than a childish delusion?”

Andrew couldn’t answer. Seeing the man he loved more than the world itself lose hope was too much for him to handle. Levi noticed this, and knelt down in front of Erwin.

“You both have fought well,” he said. “It’s all thanks to you two that we’ve come this far. I’m making the choice now. Erwin, give up on your dreams and die. Lead the recruits straight into hell. I will kill the Beast titan.”

Erwin’s expression changed. He was shocked to hear that from Levi of all people. He was even more shocked to see Andrew’s lack of protest. He just stood there like a stone.

“You won’t die alone,” Andrew said finally. “If you’re dreams have to die, then I will die by your side. After everything that’s happened, I swear to you Erwin Smith, you won’t die alone.”

Erwin’s look of shock melted away. He looked down, and a smile flickered across his face.

“Andrew, Levi,” he said. “Thank you both.”

The Beast titan picked up another boulder and crushed it into pebbles. As he prepared to throw them, he was stopped by the sound of screaming and a faint rumble. He looked up to see the recruits charging toward him on their horses.

“All soldier’s charge!” Erwin yelled.

The Beast titan looked at the faces of every single person charging him. They all looked terrified, except for two, who’s faces were filled with rage.

“Well, I figured they wouldn’t just roll over and die but, a suicide charge?” the Beast titan spoke to himself. “For some reason, I thought they could do better than that.”

He wound up another pitch.

“Now! Fire!” Erwin yelled. He, Andrew, and the recruits fired off their green smoke signals in the direction of the Beast titan.

“Is that smoke?” the Beast titan said. “Oh yes, it’s from those signal things they use.”

“Incoming! Everyone scatter!” Erwin ordered.

The recruits moved out of a line and spread out, continuing to scream out in fear, the bravery of Erwin and Andrew being the only thing keeping them from breaking down.

A few minutes earlier

Andrew, Erwin, and Levi returned to the panicking recruits and stood at attention.

“I am announcing our final operation!” Erwin shouted. “All troops, line up.”

The recruits all stopped, looked up, and quickly stood up at attention, eager and waiting for Erwin to tell them how he would save them.

“We will be performing a cavalry charge. Our goal is to rush the Beast titan,” Erwin explained. “Now of course, this means we will be making ourselves easy targets. To counter this, we will fire our smoke signals together at the Beast titan right before he throws his rocks. That should somewhat reduce his accuracy. While we are acting as a decoy, Captain Levi will kill the Beast titan. That is our plan.”

There was silence from the recruits. Several of them started crying, knowing what this plan meant. One girl in the front fell to the ground and threw up. Two recruits in the front, Marlo and Floch, shook uncontrollably.

“We have no time to waste,” Erwin said. “Standing around means we’ll be showered by more boulders. Get ready on the double!”

“Wait,” Floch said. “Does this mean... we are all heading... to our deaths...?”

“Yes,” Erwin said solemnly.

“So, you’re saying if we’re going to die anyways,” Floch said again. “It’s better to die fighting?”

“Yes,” Erwin answered again.

“But wait,” Floch said, his voice now breaking. “If we’re all dead anyways, even if we disobey your orders, it all means nothing, right?”

Marlo looked at Floch. He was about to speak, but he was cut off by Erwin.

“You are absolutely right,” Erwin said. Everyone stopped and looked at him, including Andrew.

“It’s all meaningless,” Erwin said. “No matter what dreams or hopes you had. No matter how good a life you’ve lived, it’s all the same if you’re shredded by rocks. Everyone will die someday. But does that mean that all life is meaningless? Was there ever any point to us being born? Would you say that of our fallen comrades? Their lives... were they meaningless?”

Erwin took a deep breath, and his look of determination returned to him at last.

“No, they weren’t!” he yelled loudly, grabbing everyone’s attention again. “We are the ones who give meaning to our comrades lives! The brave fallen! The anguished fallen! We are the ones who remember them! And we entrust our successors to do the same for us! That is how we rebel against this cruel world! My soldiers, rage! My soldiers, scream! My soldiers, fight!”

The recruits charged the Beast titan as fast as they could. Andrew kicked his horse and ran ahead of Erwin. He looked up to his left and watched as Levi used the line of titans to get close to the Beast titan. He looked back at the recruits who were still charging, then he looked at Erwin, who stared straight ahead at the very face of death. For a brief moment, Andrew thought they might make it. He thought that maybe more than just a few of them would survive. Until a shower of boulders came straight at them, shredding many of the recruits on their horses. Their screams of pain however, were deafened to Andrew as he watched a single rock pierce Erwin’s horse, and his side. Erwin’s ODM gear was destroyed, and blood oozed from the wound.

Erwin and Andrew’s eyes met, and for Andrew, time stopped.

#aot #Erwin Smith #LEVI ACKERMAN #attackontitan #fanfic

2 notes · View notes

howtohero · 5 years

Text

We recently ran a survey where we polled various superheroes to discover what they thought the worst parts of their jobs were and proud to finally be able to share our findings with you! (We would’ve had them sooner but somebody decided to take a two week nap under a bridge in schenectady {for the hundredth time, I was mugged and unconscious! Thanks for looking for me by the way!} Thanks getting back here in a timely manner!):

2% of superheroes said that the worst part of their job was the giant gelatin monsters, because they get goop everywhere and everything sticky. 11% said prank calls to their superhero hotline. “Uh… hi, I’d like to report a crime? Yeah it’s… uh… what was it again? Oh yeah! Uh, I’d like to a report a crime and it’s your outfit hahaha get new clothes you trash bag!” 15% said it was the constant pain that they are in because they made a deal with the devil and their soul is constantly on fire but that it is a burden they gladly bear if it means that mankind can be safe for even just one more day. (Dramaaaaaatic.) 27.5% said it was having their memories or friends erased or altered due to time travel shenanigans. 54.5% said supervillains.

Unfortunately, all of those people were wrong and that was a waste of everybody’s time. {Are you kidding me? I spent two weeks in a coma for this!} The worst part of being a superhero is obviously…

#200 Supervillain Teams

{That’s basically what the majority of those people said!} No it’s different!

A single supervillain is plenty dangerous on their own (most of the time) they’re only limited by their own imaginations and their access to resources. (In today’s economy and privacy obsessed cultural climate, you actually need a lot of money to steal a lot of money. It’s kind of like how you need experience in your field before you can get a good job in your field.) So when a bunch of villains put their heads together and pool their cash. Hooboy. Then you’re in trouble. In most universes, the villain to hero ratio favors the villains. This is due to a number of factors. Most people are selfish and when given extraordinary abilities, they will choose to use to benefit themselves as the expense of others. Being a villain is honestly way more fun than being a superhero, especially if like you making your own hours and pontificating in front of large crowds. Also, most villains will kill heroes but most heroes won’t kill villains. So if all of your enemies team up, or if everybody’s enemies team up, you’re going to be in trouble.

Villains are a competitive and dramatic lot, so when a bunch of them sit down for a brainstorming sess, things are definitely going to get out of hand really fast. They’re all going to keep upping the evil ante, as I will now demonstrate for you.

(Scene 1 Act 1: Int. dungeon of some sort. There are skulls everywhere, there’s an actual demon chained to the wall, he’s very sassy and does not want to be there. In the center of the room there is a table, skull-shaped of course, There are several hooded and masked figures sitting at the table. The room smells of sweat and snake venom.)

Al “Da Boss” Marconi: I have called you all here today to finally put an end to those terrible, disgusting, super fools, that keep foiling our schemes.

Assorted villains: Huzzah!

Smuggles: I say we steal all of the dinosaur skeletons from the Museum of Natural History!

Tim the Fabulous Soul Muncher: Let’s replace them with live dinosaurs!

Professor Brain Scrambler: Let’s shoot the entire building with a de-evolution ray and turn everybody there into dinosaurs!!!!!!!!!!!!

The demon chained to the wall: Uh, that’s not how evolution works. Are you dumb? Don’t worry, we won’t judge. Just let us know if you are? You seem like a real moron to me. But what do I know, I’m just an immortal being who personally tortured some of history’s greatest minds.

(And then the demon chained to the wall was the first guinea pig for Professor Brain Scrambler’s de-evolution ray. End scene.)

And that’s just when I decided to end that conversation! Real supervillain meetings go on for way longer and you end up with a plot to turn the Earth into a giant dinosaur that can then be used to eat other planets. <Hey guys quick question and I swear it’s not a big deal. But why wasn’t I at that supervillain meeting. I mean I am the only supervillain you guys personally know. Like if I were writing about, I don’t know, a meeting of the scrawny blogger club, I would definitely put you guys in it. So what gives?> Not now Brainwave. <I mean if you needed a mad scientist, I’m a mad scientist. Did you know Professor Brain Scrambler isn’t even a real professor, he’s just wearing a real professor’s skin. Which I’m pretty sure doesn’t make you an accredited teacher but whatever. Like I said, it’s not really a big deal.>

Whenever you can you need to exercise your influence to try to prevent supervillains from teaming up in the first place. Whenever you’re fighting a villain, make sure not to mention anybody else that you’re fighting. Make them think they’re the only villain in your life. If they don’t know that other villains are out there, they can’t team up with them. Also, supervillains are very jealous and possessive. So if they hear you’re fighting somebody else on the side they’re going to get very upset and seek out the other villain and tell them that you’re a dirty two-timing superhero and then they’ll definitely team up to push your car into a river or something. I’d suggest keeping supervillains isolated from each other when they’re incarcerated as well. If you keep them with regular criminals, at worst they recruit a few new henchmen, but if you keep them locked up with other super villains you’re going to have a Legion of Really Really Mean People situation on your hands. However, this often is not feasible. There are only so many prisons out there that are equipped to hold superpowered criminals. But there are a few! More than one! Which gives us some room to play around here. You should try to work with other superheroes and these prison wardens to group villains together in the same prison that you think would never get along long enough to scheme together. For example, you could probably lock up Dr. Brainwave and Professor Brain Scrambler in the same jail without running into any issues. Because they hate each other. They hate each other so much. Also, police, superheroes, whomever, if you’re looking for wanted criminal Frederick Kaminsky aka Dr. Brainwave, he’s here. He’s in our basement and he won’t leave. I don’t know if that technically makes the rest of us hostages, I’m not like a lawyer [it doesn’t] but please come and pick him up. <Awww you mentioned me, that’s all I wanted. Thanks man!> Seriously, somebody come arrest him.

If you’ve colossally messed up and allowed a vast supervillain conspiracy team up to happen right under your noses then you need to get all hands on deck. Call every superhero you know. Even the the ones you hate. Even the ones who were dead last time you checked, they might be back now. Like I said, you’re already outnumbered so you need to call literally everybody you can think of here. Every noble-hearted magical creature and monster, every sympathetic quasi-deity, aliens that you’ve made alliances with over the years, heck even the members of that book club we had you join. Everybody needs to be on their A-game for this. If not, the villains could well succeed in wiping you all out and taking over the world. And we can’t give them that kind of satisfaction.

Once you’ve got your super army assembled, you need to begin a war on two fronts. Split your group into two teams. One team to actually go and fight the bad guys wherever they might crop up to perform evil deeds. It is unlikely that every villain is going to go everywhere at once, they’ll probably split up and pull off crazy evil schemes. So if you’re part of that team, be prepared for anything. I mean anything. 50-foot tall evil pants. (If your enemies are anything like mine, they have a wicked sense of humor. Trying getting the pants to tell a lie of some sort. I’m willing to bet that it’s rigged to burst into flames if it does. Nobody commits to a bit like a supervillain.) The ground turning into acid beneath your feet. (Pack a jetpack.) A dude with a blackhole in his chest. (Bring a really big cork). Anything.

The other group needs to start a whispering campaign to destabilize this villain alliance. Any team up between supervillains is relatively flimsy and a short term arrangement at best. As soon as the superheroes are all done away with, the villains are going to begin fighting amongst themselves for dominance. So if you can get that process started earlier, before all of the heroes are killed off or turned into monkey jesters, you could cause the alliance to collapse in on itself. You and your allies should start calling up your nemeses (don’t pretend you guys haven’t exchanged contact info at some point. I saw them at your last birthday party!) and ask them what the plan is long term. Ask them if they really want to share power with all these other villains, especially since they’re all highly likely to betray them. If you get enough villains antsy about the whole thing you can cause the entire thing to collapse and then you and your super friend can round up the injured and confused villains following the inevitable civil war.

Of course, not every supervillain team is the result of a large supervillain alliance. Some supervillains simply start out as a team, possibly because none of them on their own are really a threat. These villains have no independent resources to pool so even if they’ve got outlandish ideas, they’re pretty manageable. Here’s a list of a few other types of supervillain teams:

Gangs turned supervillains: These guys were a group of criminals before they got their powers. Unlike other villain teams, they don’t have their eyes set on world domination or the mass extinction of supervillains.

Mirror Universe Counterparts: These guys are just like your superhero team, but from another dimension and evil. To get an idea of what this might look like, take a magic marker to your team picture and draw goatees on everyone.

Cults: Cults are a lot like a regular supervillain organization. The leader is usually the only true supervillain, while the rest of the followers are just henchmen with creepy hoods.

Evil armies: As we’ve mentioned, some countries are unfortunately, led by supervillains. Meaning their armies are technically supervillain armies.

Villain families: This is just a regular family who bond by dropping spider-bombs into preschools or blowing up dams. It’s actually kind of sweet. You know what they say, a family who slays together, stays together.

Hopefully you now have everything you need to combat any supervillain teams that might rise up during your superhero career. Remember, supervillain teams need to be handled and dismantled as quickly as possible. So… heh… I guess don’t waste too much time reading this extra long post. Read this before the supervillains team up! Or have a speed reader read it and summarize! Any way good luck!

2 notes · View notes

airoasis · 5 years

Text

The 1 Bitcoin Show- VanEck SolidX is back (as expected)! Walk the walk, NEM? A 17 y/o's bank

New Post has been published on https://hititem.kr/the-1-bitcoin-show-vaneck-solidx-is-back-as-expected-walk-the-walk-nem-a-17-y-os-bank/

The 1 Bitcoin Show- VanEck SolidX is back (as expected)! Walk the walk, NEM? A 17 y/o's bank

Hiya every person this is adam meister the bitcoinmeister the disrupt meister welcome to the one bitcoin exhibit as a strong arms today is January the thirty first 2019 robust hand long-term thinking bow your wealth in bitcoin offended by shelling be a unique beast simple all okay everybody verify out the hyperlinks below everything I talk about within the video is linked to below disrupt meister calm tech ball te CH b LT okay this week in bitcoin the next day to come eight:00 a.M. Japanese Time that’s 1 p.M. In London we got three pleasing company i’ll go away it Oh it should be a shock you they are i do know who they’re expectantly they are going to exhibit up it’s hard to do a show at eight:00 a.M.Japanese Time i will let you know that but i am in Tel Aviv Israel so I received to do it cuz I obtained to head to shul as soon as the solar Goes Down on Friday town that like button for shabbat shalom all right relocating on so Friday’s exhibit can be exceptional however then Saturday there is gonna be one more awesome exhibit we’re gonna go past beyond Bitcoin and talk about a crypto dividend no it is not be hex why are you individuals pondering it can be be hex I stated we are debuting a new crypto dividend that has now not been stated anyplace but on Saturday at three p.M. Eastern time 1 p.M. Mountain time you know like in Denver Colorado and ya are aware of it’s once more I like it’s an airdrop mine i like crypt of dividends on account that you just you’re rewarded for maintaining your big coin I like it you get some new all coin you turning the significant coin babe you received more Bitcoin don’t forget the identify of the exhibit is the one Bitcoin exhibit so for those who get some free crypto dividends you flip it into Bitcoin also you acquired one Bitcoin you are good for your approach they day okay so yeah that is Saturday’s beyond Bitcoin show then Sunday goes to be one more distinct exhibit max Moe is approaching from Venezuela Juan Gault will also be also we’re going to talk so much about Venezuela on Sunday on this very Channel and so as to be at what’s that I consider 3:00 three:30 p.M. Eastern something like that i’m going to remind each person as it will get nearer some some three it’s going to be earlier than the Superbowl don’t worry it should be right earlier than the super Bowl on Sunday we’re gonna talk about like real lifestyles stuff in Venezuela as all of you who as so many humans get drunken fats within the cozy the usa you understand staring at the the Rams and would the Tom Brady’s play the bubbly individuals had been as well like you know coping with actual lifestyles due to the fact they need the Bitcoin down there all right so yeah moving on very first thing I’ve bought so many notes right here a few you know it’s a Sunday exhibit Saturday show oh and about Saturday’s show once more I stated it can be within the men and women who’re hanging on the script of dividend they may be in motion and i hooked a few of them up due to the fact that they three of the dudes know Minnie I had met them individually and you’ve gotten obvious them on the show handiest this for your Bitcoin show earlier than but once more I forgot to say the day prior to this that if you’re in motion and you adore what they’re doing you as a rule can do whatever with them i assume it can be continually good to be so don’t be afraid to contact them or contact me if you happen to got any strategies bear in mind probably the most character who got here up with this really cool air drop crypto dividend concept I feel contacted me I used to be like one of the first humans would contact maybe I was once the primary person you contact I don’t know so and i and i acquired him rolling and Wow it’s simply strong and so for those who’ve got just right recommendations you tell me i can put you in contact with individuals if you are a excellent man or woman I mean I recognize individuals who are emotion and men and women that I’ve conversed with online and who’ve been on the show and who i am in man or woman you know you get a think for men and women after a at the same time after you will have received some wisdom and expertise in life not after which i am no longer sensible like you know like my father used to be smart and a individual over 70 over 60 over 50 there that is wisdom there but yeah i am hopefully i am on light-weight you know you are making mistakes you attain you be taught your lesson you turn out to be you gain some wisdom by means of all of it right to be a whatever we must all a attempt for sir somewhat bit of wisdom and that i feel I’ve obtained it tad little bit of it from a few of this crazy experiences i have been by means of in life residing in Linden Avenue in Baltimore having three houses throughout a short period of time the Bitcoin you don’t seeing how impulsive folks are valuing my wealth see females and then doubling my wealth and bitcoin god it can be enjoyable yeah I can’t lie can’t lie acquired some excellent reviews you understand when you meet me a character good that is what you get k now but you get some more private experiences while you meet me first i try to like hold some matters that preserve off the air so this is a loved ones software with everything let’s get let’s get to the nitty-gritty of matters you want to hear in regards to the band act strong x bitcoin etf its again they the that is from one of the most guys over at van ax van eck pound that like button by the way and been from van eck you tweeted this out what’s this guy’s title Garber the van XIX Bitcoin ETF inspiration rule change has been resubmitted through CBOE hard work by way of all groups worried public document k so you you when you click on that hyperlink you’ll find the general public report oh what a shock its back of path its again of path now when will the hope the entire system begins again so who knows when it’s gonna get approved or disapproved or anything do not hold your breath men and women but of direction its again colossal deal you realize it’ll be time to have a good time once it will get authorized ok it is gonna get a proof eventually no one can say what eventually is though it might not be except 2020 so hello there you go maybe you obtained to put a smile to your face that they’ve resubmitted you failed to hear but there is a news for you so I noticed penny ling hams Twitter thread and he shared up a man who was a pal of his i guess a co-located is he’s a buddy that is they they found that a organization together once he he retweeted this guy’s tweet it’s about a new enterprise what’s this known as grasp on i’m gonna i would step calm certainly a well-funded or shall be a good-funded Silicon Valley but when they might pay for the step dot-com area now there’s a purpose i am bringing up this and you realize and on the grounds that clearly this individual is going with the aid of the rules and once enterprise funding they may be gonna they may be gonna follow the foundations that once they’re talking about young adults I count on they may be speaking about 18 and 19 year olds ok so and there’s a medium put up the guy explains what he’s doing and i am gonna quote from for the put up prior nine months i have been busy at the back of the scenes combining my passions and existence classes with my competencies to hooked up the next big task a trusted banking platform that works with latest trendy lifestyle and teaches not simplest young adults but additionally households the best way to higher manipulate their cash okay and it is step calm which you can go to step calm and you’ll find but I mean once more that that that lifeless URL failed to come low cost so you recognize this dude’s he is talking about a believe a banking a relied on banking platform nobody why do you need to stick me why do you need to persist with these traditions why do you wish to have to maintain it within the bank like the motive I deliver up all this given that I feel this is only a massive waste I believe the fellow’s gonna get some huge cash however he is linked and some thing he’s accomplished this before he’s situated firms he is obtained a good pitch oh he needs Bitcoin k so i’m gonna read i’m gonna read some more there are presently seventy five million kids and young adults under the age of 21 in the U.S. This underserved demographic and i agree it’s underserved demographic he’s overwhelmingly pressured to care for money despite the fact that their lives are digital they cannot use money to shop online pay for an uber order from Amazon download track or participate in online gaming sites like fortnight the potential to transact and have entry to your money immediately is major as tests and cash grow to be less primary in contemporary digital world well dude why don’t you just inform you understand I i will recognize that this man wishes to and in case you learn the whole submit he desires to coach persons to make not make silly financial errors no longer get bank cards with thirty five percentage interest rates I consider part of the schooling it most commonly would be the youngsters which can be under 18 in order that when they stand up for these credit cards they do not fall for it k that’s exceptional however for the rest of the I mean they could learn that from holding Bitcoin from being their possess back to start with they could they might get that schooling that way but I imply if they wish to play video video games on-line in the event that they wish to purchase matters from Amazon or go to over I imply it is a Bitcoin I imply you do not want your you are retaining them in the old mannequin you are preserving them in the bank card banking paradigm but why I don’t know I mean once more I I see you know the unbanked as being folks underneath 18 if you’re 17 if you are 16 free anything I suppose you maybe can have a heritage when you get your mother’s title on it again i’ve alluded to after I began tuition out of 17 so my mom’s identify is still on my banking account to this very day but I believe to preclude such nonsense you just be your own financial institution we’re just I consider it is gonna be a gorgeous world when there may be a bunch of seventeen yr olds available in the market that are their own banks due to the fact that of Bitcoin and i suppose that is and you know that’s you don’t need enterprise funding or an costly URL or you understand a best administrative center in Silicon Valley to bring that message to instruct folks you just want Bitcoin Bitcoin solves all the disorders this man is speakme about so it can be fascinating that Vinnie retweeted this I suppose in view that the fellows is buddy and used to be his accomplice in an extra industry but over again I believe there may be do people still begin tuition when they’re sitting when they may be 17 i do not even understand anymore that is if that’s a factor anymore if it can be if it is even rarer rarity it is it can be now not as long-established because it was traditionally i can anticipate that folks like to start their youngsters at all these moms want their youngsters to be the biggest and the oldest they do not need them to be the youngest in order that they hold them back raids and the whole lot so I do not know how many 17 year-olds institution anymore however that could be a excellent goal viewers target demographic for Bitcoin considering the fact that they’re no longer going to be capable to open their possess banks right now they’re going to be ready to want to have some financial freedom and no longer have their mother sign bank account or have get permission from their dad or whatever I suppose that that is going to be you understand again we have now talked concerning the unbanked in the 1/3 world I think in regards to the unbanked and i’ve realized this I forgot it I point out this on the show earlier than I consider about sixteen yr olds and seventeen 12 months olds simply being busy being equipped to be businessmen there if they’ve Bitcoin they could promoting stuff for Bitcoin they don’t need a financial institution account they don’t need their mom or dad’s permission and once more 17 year-olds go off to university I feel nonetheless I was once one of them as soon as so there you go so I combined plenty of things into that i suppose just right good fortune to Vinnie’s pal perhaps you should just you understand it’s forbidden simply motivate humans to make use of Bitcoin however once more he’s it can be howdy cursor professor he is a new counterculture that guy was once competent to elevate a lot of money for from Silicon Valley people have a quality place of work anywhere and Palo Alto San Mateo at any place good for him i guess i am gonna go inform us spread the massive factor phrase once more tech Bolcom disrupt meister comm te c HB alt on twitter that is me bitcoin meister bit backer and steam it all right so yeah uh the day gone by’s exhibit i speak about a further trendy topic in Silicon Valley uh you realize worried about women in tech females in Bitcoin minorities and bitcoin minorities intact you already know discontinue annoying about who’s speaking the talk it it doesn’t matter it can be not gonna make that so much a difference in your private life for those who go to should you pay some huge cash to go to a few conference where some anyone’s paid slightly of money to do what intercourse they are or what race they are you know if they’re talking about some ICO that is such as you gotta make certain you’re jogging the stroll and that you have Bitcoin bitcoin is running the stroll traumatic about who’s speakme to speak who’s talking about cryptocurrency who’s speakme about I cos he’s speaking about tech that is not productive so stroll the stroll before you worry about speakme that who’s speaking to talk and believe me it can be higher just to walk the stroll appear preserve the Bitcoin and let different individuals worry about who’s speakme about big okay with I do I do marvel if a few of these persons complaining concerning the demographics of Bitcoin if they even own any Bitcoin that’s how you make a giant difference you motivate individuals to be their possess banks to manage their own personal keys that helps you know women you already know humans from Greenland folks from at any place or each person’s got an possibility to purchase Bitcoin any there’s nothing protecting them back from from from buying Bitcoin mainly if you’re in the Western world there may be only a few obstacles you get yourself on Bitcoin so is it higher to attend a a speakme gig in San Francisco and pay like a $200 to see some woman talk about Bitcoin or is it higher to possess a fraction of a Bitcoin in your technique to proudly owning one Bitcoin I suppose I believe you received to prioritize right here folks let’s let’s get humans proudly owning Bitcoin not worrying about who’s speaking about considering that there’s nothing you recognize and that i inspire females in case you’ve been in case you think like you may have been discriminated in opposition to and you are not able to talk in the tech convention buy Bitcoin you can get the final left you are going to get the final snigger trust me about that for those who should you feel you’ve gotten been discriminated in opposition to or if you have been discriminated against Bitcoin will fight these big quickman Kansas for me in opposition to any one and it fights towards discrimination actually so there you go so let’s we’re talking about I stated I SEOs and cryptocurrencies and all coins why do not we have a flashback to I consider it was once 2017 when humans were telling me yeah ma’am is that this super Asian or chinese coin or some thing it can be the flavor of the month of some month in 2017 oh I recall it it used to be before iota and after who knows i don’t understand it was once the flavoured a month before ma’am there weren’t too many foot and after veritasium so yeah core desk and that i won point desks has this title and an editorial guys basis practically broke plans layoffs and pivot and in the article it says and that is what the foremost part is there is no longer a whole lot of humans engaged on this platform despite the fact that it can be easy the community is not really there until you go to Japan the enhance the developer stated we want more developer traction on this platform ok so yeah that is what happens the flavors of the month they have got folks don’t in reality use it and then their foundations go bankrupt and again i know the groundwork is not really named however it due to the fact says name is centralized and the truth that they’ve acquired some similarities that you can learn the article if you want to however the flavors of the month are going to maintain on coming they usually’re gonna roll in rather a lot faster as soon as the inexperienced persons roll it again once more we’re in a in terms of Fiat humans say this is a bear crypto advertise’s all cyclical will see the wildness once more there will likely be some why all of the flavors of the month and you know i guess best approaches it inexperienced is a taste of the month right now or anything like that or the opposite ones are the flavor of the month reasonable interesting stuff whatever k so i am adam meister the bitcoinmeister the disrupt meister recollect subscribe this channel like this video share this video verify out the hyperlinks under pound that like button bang the bell button follow me on twitter and consider day after today exhibit is quickly this weekend Bitcoin might be at 8 a.M.On Friday morning again there is a new show right here daily love you guys i’ll see you in the morning bye bye .