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#I have been no thoughts no words no functioning organs just rogue one for the past 2 weeks
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art post . 14
lol i just hope I'm on the right count with these posts
am back in the Rogue One Brainrot!!!!!! although if I'm being honest, there was never a period where I was cured of the Rogue One Brainrot for the past 6 years ahdjshsbs
ANDOR IS THE BEST ROGUE ONE IS THE BEST, FITE MEEE
was desperate to doodle rebelcaptain but then got so incredibly lazy while coloring it turned out really... ROUGH. to the point that I am embarrassed to post it w/o filters so here's a b&w version to cover up my laziness in the meantime bwahaha
he's holding jyn's necklace because YOU KNOW WHY AJDVSBSJDSGKSHSHS I have died everyday waking up and remembering what they have since made canon
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callmearcturus · 8 months
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Stumbles in covered in dust to pass you a note that says "Arc please your analysis of the strange priesthood (your words)/odd mysticism (mine) of the IMF in Dead Reckoning, I need it urgently"
(It is such an integral part of the movie and its just one hell of a lore drop and I also have Thoughts about it and how it makes So much sense for Ethan's MILF era but you first you first)
bless you and all your endeavours
SPOILERS FOR THE ENTIRE MISSION IMPOSSIBLE FRANCHISE
I want to talk about the evolution of the IMF. Because one of the things that always kind of confused me about it was what it actually was. Is it another three-letter agency or is it a task force inside the CIA or... is it something else entirely?
IMO the answer changes over the course of the movies. In MI1, there is a concrete institution, the mainframe for the IMF is inside Langley, thus it seems to be part of the CIA. And it's kind of the villain of the movie honestly; the IMF mole hunt gets Ethan's team killed and almost gets him killed because he can't turn to the very agency/group/force that he's supposed to be working for to get assistance.
This idea of a group that is very rigid is continued/heightened in MI2 and MI3. The IMF misleads and lies to Ethan. They are still be bad guys. In MI2, Swanbeck uses Ethan to manipulate Nyah without cluing him in and is upset that Ethan didn't bring back the deadly super-virus for them to have. In MI3, the entire IMF just feels like the FBI in structure, all the visual signifiers casting it as a discount FBI. And that's echoed in the way the IMF handles its agents, the rigidity of the structure, the oversight, the centrality of the headquarters-- it all points to the IMF being a weird 9 to 5 govt job until someone goes on a mission.
There is a hierarchy, there is a director and assistant director and mission handler and tech team and all this shit, right.
Then we reach the McQuarrie Trilogy-cum-Quadrilogy, and things begin to change.
In Ghost Protocol, there is a feeling that the agency (if that's what the IMF even is) is more... amorphous. It's made clear there are safehouses and caches just shoved in various corners of the world. There are mentions of a headquarters (specifically, that it doesn't exist anymore) but when its time to get a new mission, Ethan hands them out from fuckign Seattle, and then walks off into the smoke to his next one. After Benji and Carter have their disastrous mission that sets off the plot, they don't circle up at HQ in the same way that happens in MI3, they are just directed to go grab Ethan, and clearly they find a place to grab some gear beforehand. The IMF is decentralized.
Then oh fucking boy, Rogue Nation. The CIA absorbs the IMF's assets and all we see is the CIA's HQ, not any central location of the IMF itself. Even in the intro when Brandt is monitoring the team going after the package on the plane, he's clearly in some shipping containers-turned-monitoring office. And Ethan going rogue survives by picking over the abandoned remnants of older safehouses.
Another interesting pivot happens in RN. Ethan is explicitly the functional leader of the IMF by example. There is no new secretary to give orders and hasn't been for years, there is no director, the closest thing we get to a hierarchy is Brandt who could allegedly "authorize" things but the agents just.... dodge him by not looping him in.
The idea of a structured organization is fully jettisoned in favor of the modern IMF, which mostly seems to be a lot of people under the radar working together to share information and execute missions.
Emotionally, Ethan is the leader of this new type of IMF, and we are in the movie that truly sets off on the idea that Ethan's ethos is that... he can't handle casualties. It's the blunt object used to hurt him, the way Lane murders the IMF plant in front of him, and his expression of haunted shock is vivid and clear.
All the way back in MI1, Ethan stopped Krieger from killing a bystander, telling him they didn't leave a body count. And by RN, that's become the bedrock of the IMF, the idea that the lives of the many are never more important than the few, and the IMF agents will destroy themselves in the name of getting everyone out alive. There are no acceptable losses.
This is bad, frankly. It is a very bad weakness for a super secret spy to have. But it is TEXTUALLY the entire point of Fallout, that Ethan can't let Luther die. In RN, he couldn't let Benji die. He couldn't let that random French cop die. Over and over, Ethan is given a choice between "save a ton of people" and "save one person" and keeps picking both, and it hurts him every time. It is unreasonable and demands so much from him.
And I have been wondering what that was building to, and Dead Reckoning lays it out.
The IMF as a formal institution doesn't exist anymore. There is no director, there's no hierarchy. What we see of a possible HQ is not the IMF, its everyone else in the intelligence community. As Kittridge explains, the IMF is a mail drop where they "leave word" and hope someone inside the group gets it and takes care of it. There is no oversight because each agent is basically a self-contained satellite.
AKA the way Ethan has found he works best. For every. single. fucking. movie. the IMF has been a hindrance at best and The Bad Guy at worst.
When we meet Ethan in Dead Reckoning, he is a man standing in an old building with sturdy walls and high ceilings. He initiates a new member and tells them they made the right Choice. It is the reassurance of an elder member to a novice.
Because I think... Ethan has essentially guided the IMF to this. How the fuck does anyone survive when there is no hierarchy, there is this creed of Save Everyone Yes Everyone, how do they do that?
Well. Everyone in the IMF lives by simple rules. Any IMF agent looks to another and says "your life will always mean more to me than my own." And the details don't matter. There is no exception to this.
The reason Ethan is alive is because his life means that much to his team, and their lives mean that much to him, so they survive by prioritizing each other in a way that borders on irrational.
This is where I think we get into the weird priesthood/odd mysticism of the IMF. They are a self-selecting group of people fanatically devoted to the preservation of everyone, and are skilled enough to back it up. There is a level of altruistic devotion there that's absent from the other agencies. Hell, Kittridge is back and when we catch up with him, he's fucking trying to buy the key to the fuckign Entity! Once again the CIA is evil, shock of shocks.
In a franchise where the CIA is always evil and the IMF As An Organization isn't better, the only moral choice seems to be to opt-into caring radically about everyone. It's the only counterpoint possible.
I think its significant that in Dead Reckoning, with this new evolution of the IMF, we only see Ethan and the team in old buildings. They are fading remnants. They can't pass on the responsibility to family, so they keep watch for others who have what it takes. They are a small, dwindling group, and they are the only people that can destroy the Entity.
Punct and I have talked about how Ethan defeated the Syndicate by infecting them with humanity basically; through Ethan's influence, Lane becomes vicious and petty in a way he'd like to deny, but he is motivated by his connection to Ethan more than his ideals. Similarly, I think Ethan and his ilk have infected the IMF with this strange solemn duty, and act as guiding stewards. It's an ideal that will die, but until it does, they will keep saving everyone they can, because no one else will.
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techpriest77 · 2 years
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“Function”
Wrote this little ficlet about my Explorator character ‘Techpriest 77′ from a Rogue Trader game I was in around 2012-2013ish. Just uncovered the draft in a pile of notes after getting bit by the Warhammer bug again and thought I’d post it here.
NOW
VAGABOND-CLASS FREIGHTER 'EQUINOX' ROGUE TRADER VESSEL BONDED TO THE ROXTON DYNASTY SIX WEEKS OUT FROM FOOTFALL STATION
"Is he alive?"
Lord-Captain Roxton stood in the ruins of the auxiliary enginarium, surrounded by the detritus of the failed mutiny.
Hours ago, some scabrous bilge-rat by the name of Krooker had gotten it into his head that he could take on the scion of a Rogue Trader House and come out clean. He'd been preaching rebellion amongst the plasma conduit crews for days, and finally escalated when he murdered a chief petty officer and took one of the ship's enginseers hostage. Krooker'd demanded the Equinox return to Footfall station, claiming the laws of the void had been broken in the vessel venturing into the edges of the Koronus Expanse.
Roxton's grandfather had shown him how to deal with mutineers. The Lord-Captain had been fully prepared to vent the engineering compartments and give Krooker and his conspirators to the void, but his Explorator had objections.
The Rogue Trader watched that same Explorator now. The hunchbacked techpriest shuffled forward to kneel over the fallen enginseer that had been hit by lasgun fire when they took back the compartment. His red robes shifted as a mechadendrite snaked forward and connected to a node on the enginseer's temple. A string of binary blatted from underneath the low hanging red hood.
"Techpriest? Is the enginseer alive?"
The hood shifted in Roxton's direction, two amber points visible in the shadows. More machine language echoed from the aging vocoder bolted onto the techpriest's clavicle, before stuttering out as he reconfigured his voicebox to standard Imperial.
"Does it live, Lord-Captain Roxton?" Techpriest Seventy-seven asked.
* * *
THEN
GOLIATH-CLASS FACTORY SHIP 'DELTA-AJAX NINER ("CELESTIAL COLLECTOR")' ADEPTUS MECHANICUS VESSEL
"Initializing."
It was the first word he said, and at the same time he tried to open his eyes, but his flesh eyes were no longer there.
"Beginning acti~bzzzt~vation and diagnost~bzzt~ sequence," he continued, but the words didn't come from a mouth anymore. Instead they were issuing from an ancient vocodor a servitor was affixing to his neck. He couldn't see the automaton in the traditional sense, but a visual sensor had winked on at the end of a questing mechadendtrite that uncoiled from his machine harness. That data streamed in and took a moment to process.
A voice echoed from somewhere behind him, filtered through its own machine voicebox.
"Damage to organic components is consistent with containment failure of Mark XXXV Magnacore Pattern Plasma Gun issued to 512th Cadian Orbital Defense Regiment. Enginseer Adept, was the weapon recovered?"
The darkness behind him was too deep to see the asker of the question. The pict-capture sensor on the mechadendrite was a newer model and the picture was a green-tinged haze in his vision.
"Wh-wh-wh~bzzt~. Where am I? Who am I?"
"Your moniker record was not recovered from the orbital defense station. However the inception code of your cyber-mantle is Seventy-seven-dash-three-eight-seven-seven," a soft squeal of ones and zeros accompanied the statement, and the voice continued. "Query repeats: Was the weapon recovered?"
Half-remembered images swirled around his head. Seventy-seven? Weapon?
"I...I was assisting Guardsman Zev. The plasma gun, it ~bzzt~it..."
"As Engineseer attached to the Cadian 512th, the keeping of the Omnisiah's holy technology was your responsibility. Was the weapon recovered after fusion containment failed?"
The swirling images in his mind were moving faster now, coalescing into the edge of panic.
"Containment failure?"
Behind him, the voice blatted out a dissatisfied string of code, "Cognitive abilities have degraded due to damage to organic components. Preparing calculus logi upgrade. Bring forth the cortex implants."
Panic rose fully now. Sharp and urgent.
"Wait! I ~bzzt~ I can still...~bzzt~"
"The Rite of Pure Thought will commence soon, Brother Seventy-seven. The sacred cranial circuitry will replace the weakness of the flesh, and you will rejoice in your newfound freedom."
His hastily installed vocodor trilled static now, too overwhelmed by his jumbled thoughts to translate words.
"Peace, Brother Seventy-seven. Your inception code will be re-entered in the Liber Adeptus Mechanicus, and you will serve the Omnissiah."
Servo-skulls drifted forward and began the work. Seventy-seven's vocodor continued to hiss and buzz as the magos behind him directed their progress.
Later. Much later by the record of his internal chronometer, Seventy-seven became aware of more as his systems were brought fully online. The panic was gone. The fear was gone. There was barely any emotion at all now. Just the filtered calculations of his implants as they took in data and processed it.
Newly-installed visual sensors replaced the eyes the exploding plasma gun had burned away, and his auditory pickups rebooted to hear the magos reporting on him to his superiors.
"Systems have been activated and engaged," the magos relayed. "All operations are now within normal parameters, high one. Cortex implants have been installed, Mars-pattern. Tertius Standard Template Construct."
The higher ranking mechanicus techpriests gathered around to examine Seventy-seven, "Does it live?."
The magos sent a stream of code hissing through his voicebox.
"It functions."
Electronic voices rose around Seventy-seven in exultation.
"Cog and Gear! Praise the Omnissiah!"
* * *
NOW
"Does it live, Lord-Captain?" Techpriest Seventy-seven asked again.
Roxton huffed impatiently, "That's what I asked. The whole reason we came down to these decks is to rescue your enginseer. Is he alive?"
Seventy-seven dropped his hooded gaze down to the fallen mechanicus adept. After a moment he decoupled his data ports from the still body and rose stiffly to his feet.
"Organic processes have ceased to function. The flesh was weak. I will order the remains sent to the crew reclamation facility to salvage the Omnissiah's holy tech from the corpse."
"Emperor's bones! What a waste!" Roxton snarled as he turned on his heel and stalked off.
Seventy-seven dropped his gaze again to the dead Enginseer as he sent his servo-skull familiar to begin preparations.
"It does not function."
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justmypartner · 3 years
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Make it Work: Chapter 5
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Summary: When offered a permanent position with the FBI, Hailey agrees to take it under one condition: Jay comes too. As their personal lives and work lives begin to change, the two partners find it increasingly difficult to navigate their complex relationship and manage their feelings for one another. 
Writer’s Note: I want to first apologize for taking so long to update this fic. I took a break to finish up school related things, and then when I came back to writing I was feeling very uninspired with this chapter. Nevertheless, I pushed through and what I thought was going to be a bland filler chapter ended up being a really fun chapter to write. Starting today, I am back to posting chapters weekly! Please enjoy & I want to thank everyone who has read/supported this fic. As LaRoyce always says: From the heart ❤️ 
TW:// mentions of PTSD
Tagging: @angelsjedi , @brookerz122493 , @cpdfan2014 , @the–carousel , @maya-asturias , @itsdesiree86​ , @tvshowsaremyhappyplace 
Read on AO3 or below
It had been two weeks since their first day at the FBI, and Jay and Hailey had finally found a comfortable rhythm. For Jay, it took a while to get used to solely being a field agent. Part of him missed digging for intel themselves. He missed the long nights in the wire room and the early mornings organizing the case board, but the fieldwork mostly made up for that part of the job he missed. He loved being out on the streets, and in his eyes, nothing could beat the satisfaction of finally putting the offenders in cuffs.
The team was still rolling as a quartet, with Hailey still partnered with Walker and Jay with Daisy. For the most part, they were all out in the field together, but some instances required the pairs to break apart. He and Daisy’s partnership was working, but they didn’t function in the same natural way he and Hailey always did. He missed riding with her, but he was making do with the current arrangement until their training period was up. Overall, he was fond of Daisy. She was competent, cool under pressure, and she had his back when it counted, so he grew to trust her a great deal. Walker was another story. He was good at his job, there was no doubt about that, but he had a way of running his mouth that made Jay want to keep his distance. Things had been icy since they were at each other’s throats on the first day when Jay’s concern for Hailey got the best of him. They were able to patch things up, but Jay knew they weren’t going to be best friends anytime soon. He also didn’t like the way Walker interacted with Hailey. Other than what Jay identified as obvious flirting, he had a way of coddling her that, from Jay’s eyes, demeaned her and her abilities. He wasn’t sure if she didn’t notice it or if she was choosing to ignore it for the sake of avoiding conflict, but she never called him out for it. At least not when Jay was around. So, he never questioned it. He trusted her. Since it didn’t visibly bother her, he tried to not let it bother him either.
“Excited to have your favorite partner back?” Jay asked as he and Hailey climbed onto the elevator. It was officially their first day of partnering together as agents, and he couldn’t have been happier.
“Wait, Vanessa joined the FBI?” she joked, feigning a look of surprise.
“You think you’re funny, don’t you?”
“Nope. I know I’m funny,” she smirked back.
“How is she by the way?” Jay asked, inquiring about her former roommate and best friend. Not long after Hailey went to New York the first time, Vanessa was picked out of Intelligence by Major Crimes to do a long-term undercover sting. She didn’t get to say a proper goodbye to Hailey, something they were both sad about, but they remained in touch through an occasional text.
“She can’t communicate much, but when she does she seems good. You know her, she’s a natural-born UC. Quick on her feet,” she said briefly. Jay nodded, noticing a slight drop in her mood as she spoke about her. He knew the connection those two had. Hailey looked out for her, almost to a fault as it was her attempt at protecting Vanessa and her childhood friend that got her sent to New York in the first place. He knew it killed her to not get to say a proper goodbye, and he could see it in her face in that moment. He decided to change the subject to get it off her mind.
“So, are you going to miss partnering with Walker at all?” Jay asked, slightly nervous to hear her answer.
“Mm, not really. I mean he’s a great agent and all, but he’s just too much in his own head. We connected pretty well with small talk and all that, but I felt like I had to keep a constant eye on him in the field. We just didn’t work well together. Not like you and me anyway,” she admitted, flashing him a brief smile. It was contagious and he turned his head to the side to conceal the one erupting across his face.
It relieved him to know that she didn’t feed into whatever connection Walker was trying to build between them. It made him even more relieved to know that they were back together as partners, something he was counting down to since their first day on the job.  
Things jumped off the second they stepped into the bullpen. Drake briefed the team on the case the minute they walked in the room. A rogue member of an anti-military activist group in the city exposed the group’s plans to target a veteran’s convention at the Javits Center in Midtown. Being that their intel came from an insider, the group was oblivious to the bureau’s knowledge of their plans. Drake tasked Jay, Hailey, Walker, and Daisy with attending the convention, posing as veterans as they worked to smoke out the guys before they could carry out their plans. As Drake, a former Naval Officer briefed the case, Jay picked up on some tension and anger in his voice. He recognized it easily because he felt it himself. He pretended he didn’t notice when Hailey’s eyes began to survey his face, what he guessed was her way of trying to read his reaction to the case. He tried his best to remain stone faced, but he knew she could tell something was up just by looking at him. 
If they had caught the case a few years prior, he would have gone to a much darker place, acting on rage rather than ration. However, through his therapy sessions over the years, he had learned to manage the emotions that only things related to the service could elicit. Once Drake was finished briefing everyone, he assigned the teams their positions and sent them on their way. As Jay turned away to head to the locker room to change, Drake called out to him.
“Jay, hang back a second?” He asked him. Jay sent Hailey a small wave, signaling her to go on without him. He followed Drake to his office, shoving his hands in his pockets after he closed the office door behind him.
“Something wrong, sir?” Jay asked, confusion in his voice.
“Jay, I know you’ve got a background in the military. I don’t have to imagine what’s going through your head right now, because it’s going through mine as well. But we need to play this one by the book, so I just need to know if I need to keep a leash on you today,” Drake spoke shortly.
“I’m straight, sir. You don’t have to worry about me, I’ll keep in check,” Jay assured him, nodding his head with his words. His boss bobbed his head slowly as if he were debating whether or not to accept his assurance.
“Let me know if that changes,” he replied quietly, sending the agent a trusting nod.
“Will do,” Jay returned before turning to leave the office.
He quickly changed and made his way to the elevators to head down to the garage. His mind flickered back to his time in country. The faces of the six friends he lost before he came home and his best friend Mouse who was there currently flooded his head with memories. He tried his best to shake them off as the elevator descended towards the garage. The case was stirring up something in him, but he was determined to center his focus on the job and not let it take over. The doors opened and he stepped out, tracking his footsteps with his eyes as he walked. When he looked up, Hailey was slumped against the car. When she saw him, she bounced herself off of it with her foot and walked in his direction.
“Everything okay?” She asked, a look of concern plastered across her face.
“Yeah. Drake just wanted to make sure my head was on straight today… with my military background and all,” he said, his eyes darting around the garage to avoid hers.
“Mm,” she hummed. “Let me know if I can take anything off your plate. You know I’ve got your back,” she told him warmly, peering into his eyes with a look of sincerity.
“I know. I appreciate it,” he told her, forcing a smile.
“Anyway, check out our rig,” she said sarcastically, gesturing to the bureau-issued black SUV behind her. “It’s very unique and way better than your old truck,” she mocked, smiling as she tried to lighten the mood.
Against his best efforts, a smile crept away from his mouth as her weak attempt at cheering him up succeeded. Her head tilted as her eyes looked over at him with a glimmer he had only noticed a few other times before.
“C’mon. Let’s take this baby for a spin,” she finally told him, tossing him the keys as she made her way to the passenger side of the car.
Jay’s nerves picked up when they arrived at the convention center. Since they were going in undercover, they had changed into street clothes to blend in. He had chosen one of his old Ranger shirts and jeans, and Hailey opted for a plain white t-shirt and jeans. When they got out of the car, she reached into the backseat, grabbing a ball cap and securing it on her head before closing the door. The word “Navy” was written across it in yellow letters. She didn’t wear hats often, but Jay admired when she did. They suited her, however seeing her rep the Navy stung him a bit.
“You just had to choose Navy didn’t you,” he mocked at her with a scoff, knowing she could have chosen any branch to represent as they attempted to blend into the crowd.  
“What?” she feigned ignorance as Jay gave her a look of annoyance. “Drake loaned it to me,” she told him, turning her head up and brushing past him towards the entrance of the building.
“Mm. You know you always could have just borrowed something of mine,” he called after her, taking quick strides to catch up.
“Yeah, but then I wouldn’t have been able to see that look on your face,” she teased, her attention remaining straight ahead as she smirked slyly. He shook his head with a childish frown as he followed her to the entrance of the building.
Immediately upon walking through the doors, they caught sight of Daisy and Walker waiting for them under a welcome sign. They checked in and grabbed their name tags, before walking over to the two agents to convene before they set out into the center to try and track down the activists. Based on the intel provided by the whistleblower, they learned that the plan was to send in five members, each armed with undetectable weapons to disperse into the convention center and target high-ranking officials from each branch of the military. There was a panel later in the afternoon in which these individuals would all be on stage, the perfect opportunity to carry out the attack. Intel also revealed the individuals would be wearing red shoelaces so that they could spot each other in the crowd, a tidbit the four of them were happy to use to their advantage.
“Four of us, five of them. We need to split up. Hailey and I can take the first and second floor, you guys take the third and fourth. We each get a floor and call for backup the second we find any of these guys. If you spot one, take them down quietly, we can’t risk them alerting the others,” Jay commanded, taking point on the operation. They all nodded before breaking off and heading towards their separate floors.
“I’ll take the second floor,” Hailey told him, moving past him to climb the stairs.
“Wait,” he called after her, grasping her wrist lightly to stop her.
She looked down at his hand on her wrist, her eyes lingering for a moment before swallowing hard and bringing them back up to meet his. He quickly released his hand, bringing it to his pocket before he spoke.
“I- Just be careful, yeah?” He said simply, avoiding what he originally intended to say. Despite what he previously told both her and Drake, the case and being in a room full of veterans was affecting him more than he would have liked to let on. He almost told her this, hoping she’d have something to say that would help calm the jumbled mess going on in his brain. Yet, he realized she would just worry more and insist on staying together as they sought out the targets, and they needed to split up for time’s sake. So, before the words could leave his mouth, he asked for reassurance of the only other thing on his mind. Her safety.
Her brow furrowed at his words almost like she knew that wasn’t what he wanted to say, but she just nodded simply in affirmation. She brought a fist to bump his chest lightly before turning back and once again heading toward the stairs. He took a deep breath and recited the prayer of St. Christopher his mother made him and Will memorize when they were younger. These were grounding techniques he learned during his time in therapy. When he first started therapy, he thought the techniques were bogus, but he came to learn they really helped him cope when things began to trigger him.  
He took one final breath before making his way through the crowd of people, glancing down at the floor every few seconds to survey the shoes of those around him, trying to spot any glimpse of red he could.
Half an hour had passed, and it had been radio silence over the coms. He knew the operation would be difficult, but he thought for sure by that point they would have found at least one of the offenders. Just as he began brainstorming different strategies in his head, he caught a glimmer of red on the floor, doing a double-take and stopping in his tracks to confirm his mind wasn’t playing tricks on him. The red shoelaces were there, plain as day, and the man wearing them was by himself, surveying the crowd nervously.
“I’ve got one of the targets. First floor near the east corner by a couple of food vendors. I’m moving in now, meet at the rendezvous,” he said into the coms before walking towards the coffee stand to his right. He grabbed a coffee, filling the cup with cream to cool it down before walking towards the target. A few steps away from the man, he faked a trip, sending the contents in the cup all over him.
“Woah, I’m so sorry, man,” Jay called out, reaching for napkins to try and help the man dry his drenched shirt.
“What the hell is your problem?” The guy questioned, a look of fury on his face.
“That is totally my bad. I’m such a klutz. I didn’t see that bump on the floor,” Jay told the man, handing him napkins as he attempted to pat his shirt dry. “Hey, you need to get that under some water. The men’s room is right around that corner and I think there were hand dryers in there,” he said, pointing around a corner. The man angrily turned, making his way in the direction Jay had just pointed to.
“Eyes up, he’s coming your way,” he said into his mic.
They grabbed the man up, locking him in a backroom the convention center had provided to them for detainment. The hope was that they could get him to give up the location of the other men, but his silence proved he wasn’t giving anything up.
“Why don’t you two keep questioning him, Daisy and I will go back out there and sniff the rest of these guys out,” Walker told the two partners. Jay clenched his jaw tightly as he eyed the target on the other side of the room. He hadn’t had the chance to question him yet, but he already knew whatever he had to say was going to just piss him off.  
“You okay for that?” Hailey asked, turning to face him. Her eyes were cut up at him under the brim of her hat, and there was an earnest look on her face as she awaited his response.
“What do you mean by that?” Walker questioned before Jay could answer. He and Daisy weren’t aware of his history, certainly not in the way Hailey was. The last thing he wanted to do in that moment was dish out the details of his PTSD.
“Nothing,” he told the man bluntly before turning back to Hailey. “I’m fine, really,” he told her. As convincing as he tried to be, her eyes loitered on his face as she tried to measure the truth behind his words.
“You guys go ahead, we’ve got him,” she finally told the other two agents before they hesitantly turned on their heels to head back into the convention center. The second they were gone she stepped closer to him so she could speak to him without the man hearing.
“Look, I’m trusting you here, but the second you start to cross a line, I’m pulling you. This isn’t Intelligence. We can’t take the same risks here that we could under Voight. Understood?” She told him in a low voice. He bobbed his head up and down in agreement before making his way over to the man.
When they first detained the guy, they snapped a picture and sent it back to the analysts at headquarters to get an ID. Jay scanned the man’s file on his phone before slowly making his way over to him. He took a chair and sat it across from the man, turning it so he could sit with his arms crossed over the back of it.
“Mark Jones. You are quite the model citizen. Numerous charges for assault and battery, disturbing the peace, unlawful assembly, multiple violations of restraining orders, the list really goes on. But I don’t care about all of that. I care about why you’re at a veteran’s convention considering how public you’ve been about your hatred for the military,” Jay said, his eyes staring daggers into the man’s face.
“I ain’t talking to you. You’re just another pawn in the game. Too stupid and brainwashed to realize you guys are just a bunch of empty-headed murderers, blindly following whatever our so-called government tells you to,” the man spat back.
Murderers. The word made faces appear in Jay’s head. Faces of those he had killed both in Afghanistan and in Chicago. Faces he had spent years tormented by. He took several deep breaths, trying to ground himself. To keep from losing control. He looked over at Hailey who stood beside him, her arms crossed as she glared at the man across from them. Her attention turned to him and the expression on her face remained the same while the look in her eyes adjusted, sending him a soft message of support. This reassured him and he took one last deep breath before turning his attention back to the man.
“Where are the others?” Jay questioned, dragging out each word through clenched teeth. The man only gave him a snarl and an evil smile. He knew he was rattling Jay, and that only got him even more riled up.
“Ranger, huh?” He asked, avoiding Jay’s question completely and reading the letters across his shirt. “Y’all are the worst ones of them all. What’s your body count?” The man questioned, shifting his eyes from Jay to Hailey. “Baby blues here probably wouldn’t even be able to look you in the eyes if she knew how many, am I right?” The man laughed. Jay let out an annoyed laugh, staring into the space behind the man silently. His tongue trailed the back of his bottom teeth, the rage burning inside him and churning with every word that left the man’s mouth. Suddenly, he stood from his chair, kicking it towards the man aggressively before grabbing him by the collar. Almost immediately, he felt Hailey tugging at his arm to pull him off.
“You’re done, back up or get out,” she told him assertively. He continued scowling at the man, not moving from his position. She pushed against his chest, dropping her tone. “Jay, I’m serious. I’ve got this, stand back,” she told him in a whisper. Her voice snapped him out of the state he was in, and he threw his hands up, backing up and making his way to the wall on the other side of the room.
Jay’s ears rang as he blankly watched Hailey question the man. The room felt like it was spinning and whatever words were being exchanged between the two weren’t registering inside his head. All he could hear was a ringing in his ears, and what sounded like his heart beating out of his chest as his breath and heart rate increased out of control. He closed his eyes and took a breath. In for seven, out for eight. He quietly whispered the prayer of St. Christopher once again.
Grant me, O Lord, a steady hand and watchful eye, that no one shall be hurt as I pass by. You gave life, I pray no act of mine may take away or mar that gift of Thine. Shelter those, dear Lord, who bear my company from the evils of fire and all calamity.
When he opened his eyes, he was startled to see Hailey slowly and cautiously making her way toward him. Her brow was raised at him, and she turned around to look at their detainee before grabbing at Jay’s forearm and dragging him around the corner gently, out of the man’s sight.
“Are you good?” She questioned, a fearful look on her face and deep concern in her voice.
“Yeah,” he told her unconvincingly. But the rapid beating of his heart and the fog in his brain said otherwise. Almost like he had lost control of his body, he blurted out the word “no” as he shook his head. “I just, I-“ there was desperation in his voice, and the words fell out between irregular breaths. He noticed Hailey’s eyes begin to gloss over and she removed her hat, placing it on a chair beside them before closing the space between them. She then reached down to grab his hand, raising it to place it over her heart, keeping it there with her hand pressed tightly over his. This froze him, causing him to lose his breath completely as he brought his eyes down to meet hers. Any other time the touch would’ve had his heart racing, but somehow in that moment, it was what was calming him down.
“Jay, just control your breathing. Feel my heart beating, feel my hand against yours. You’re in America. You’re in New York. We’re both right here together, and you’re okay,” she whispered, taking deep breaths. She counted out her inhales and exhales, urging him to match her pattern of breathing. After a few moments like that, his breathing became normal again and they separated, taking a step back after releasing from each other’s touch.
“I’m sorry,” he told her, feeling embarrassed and vulnerable for letting her see that side of him.
“No, do not be sorry. You have nothing to apologize for.”
He nodded. “How’d you know what to do?” He questioned, picking up on the ease in which she was able to help him overcome the episode.
“After watching you deal with your PTSD alone early in our partnership, I decided to learn how I could help you in those situations in case I ever needed to. I actually asked the department shrink back in Chicago if she could give me any tips. She gave me those grounding techniques, the focusing on your senses, controlling your breathing…” her voice trailed off. He was looking at her deeply, feeling overwhelmed by the amount of care and concern she had for him. When she noticed the way he was looking at her, she looked away bashfully, reaching for her hat and securing it back on her head before clearing her throat.
“Anyway, are you okay?” She questioned. He nodded.
“Thank you.”
She took a deep breath before reaching to speak into the coms.
“Bennett, Burrows, Jones wouldn’t give me any leads on where the others are, but we need to find them fast. I was able to find out that at least two of them are carrying deadly aerosols. They’re after more than just the officials, they want to target as many of these veterans as possible,” she told them.
After calling in two other agents to watch the detainee, Jay and Hailey made their way back into the convention center. Against protest, she insisted they clear the place together. He knew it slowed down the operation, but it comforted him to know she was by his side in case he began to slip into a dark place again. About an hour passed, and they had no luck. The panel that would gather most of the convention attendees and all of the high-ranking officials was soon approaching, and Jay had a new idea to get the guys, but it was risky. They reconvened in the detainment room upon his request. Each of the agents eyed him, waiting for him to speak.
“I think we need to let the panel happen. We know this is what these guys are targeting. It’ll be easier to spot them this way, and we can get them all at once,” Jay proposed, looking between each of them for their reaction.
“It’s too risky, we’d be putting everyone in the room at risk,” Walker said, strongly opposing the suggestion.
“I don’t know, he has a good point. Having them all in one place, we don’t risk one of them slipping through the cracks,” Daisy voiced in support.
“Or it makes everything ten times worse, and they all get lost in the crowd,” Walker argued back. Hailey was quiet throughout the interaction, and they all looked to her to get her opinion.
“I think it’s risky, but I also think it’s the only play we have left,” Hailey said.
“Yeah, well you shouldn’t get a say, you would clearly side with him no matter what,” Walker said bluntly.
“Excuse me?” Hailey bit back. Before the conflict could go any further, Daisy butted in.
“You’re outnumbered here, Burrows, and we’re out of time. We’re doing Halstead’s plan,” she said straightly, turning to head back into the center. There was a distinct tension in the room, but they all shook it off to focus on the task at hand.
It was decided, they wait until the panel began and sniff the guys out. They called in another unit of covert tact guys to cover the perimeter of the crowd. Every minute that passed had them all on edge, and none of them had spotted the guys. Eventually, Daisy got the idea to pull the fire alarm. The ones who looked panicked, desperate to get to the exits would weed out the targets who would be desperate to stay inside. With a stroke of luck, the plan worked. Some of the tact guys were able to spot and take down two of the offenders, Jay and Daisy got another, while Walker and Hailey were left wrestling another to the ground. In the process, the man had dropped an aerosol canister. Hailey’s heart stopped as she watched it roll across the floor, but she breathed a sigh of relief when they got to it with the lid still sealed. The day ended much better than they could have all imagined.
Back at the office, they worked on paperwork late into the night. Jay was still distracted, still dealing with the effects of the day. Hailey helped him with the paperwork so they could get out of there more quickly, something he was grateful for. Logging off their computers and closing up files, Walker rose from his chair.
“I’m really sorry about earlier, I say we all go out to drinks. Clear up the air. I’m buying the first round,” he said, addressing every single one of them as he pulled on his coat.
“You know I would, but I’ve got a baby to get home to. After today, all I need are some tiny person cuddles,” Daisy said with a tired smirk.
“I’m in,” Hailey said, looking over at Jay as they awaited his response.
“I appreciate the apology, but today really had me beat, I’d rather just go home and sleep it all off,” Jay said as he rose from his chair.  Hailey’s gaze remained fixed on him a moment, almost like she was asking if he was okay without saying a word at all. He nodded his head, slowly blinking his eyes at her and she sent him a false smile in response.
“You and me then, kid,” Walker said, eyeing Hailey with a less than wholesome look. Jay tensed up at the thought of the two of them, alone in a bar, winding down in the way he and Hailey were so used to doing. But after everything that had happened, he wasn’t feeling social, and the last thing he wanted was to be out for drinks with the two of them as Walker ogled Hailey the entire night. They left the desks to head out, and he slowly pulled on his coat and grabbed his phone and keys.
“Jay, wait up,” Drake called after him as he passed his office.
“Yes sir?” Jay questioned.
“Nice work today, I know it couldn’t have been easy. At least it wouldn’t have been for me,” he told him, sending a look of sincerity.
“It wasn’t easy, but Upton had my back.”
“Yeah, she’s a good one isn’t she?” Drake said. Jay looked behind him towards the elevators where she and Walker were waiting together. Walker said something to make her laugh, causing Jay’s face to drop immediately. He forced a smile before turning back to Drake.
“Yeah she’s a good piece of gear,” he told him, a phrase only a fellow military man would understand. Drake flashed him a smile in return, and Jay hung his head low.
“Goodnight, Halstead,” Drake told him.
“Goodnight, sir,” he returned before heading out.
He was still trying to decompress after the heaviness of the day, but he couldn’t get the idea of Walker and Hailey out of his head. He’d wished she would’ve said no, wished she wouldn’t be on her way to spend who knows how long with him at a bar. He also wished she would show up at his door, despite him saying he wanted to be alone, bearing booze and comfortable silence that always brought him peace after cases like that day’s. Yet, that night he knew she wouldn’t. So, he went home and immediately went to bed. Part of him was scared to sleep, bracing himself for whatever nightmares were to come as a result of the day’s triggers. He kept a light on that night, knowing if he woke up in the middle of the night from a bad dream it would remind him that he wasn’t in the middle of the desert, fighting for his life and trying to protect those around him. He recited the prayer of St. Christopher for the third time that day, but this time before he could get out all of the words, he was overcome with exhaustion and gave in to sleep.
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rocnix · 3 years
Text
silence in their wake
I wrote a thing for the hermitopia AU, a community AU run by @hermitcraftheadcanons. Featuring Void, the thing that’s possessing Xisuma. 
They crashed. Of course they did; their slingshots didn’t have nearly enough power to escape a real gravity well. They could handle the random debris in the void of space. They could skirt around the edges of a rogue sphere. As long as they didn’t get close, they would be fine.
They wanted to ask for help. Void was against this from the start, but Void’s nature was not to steer with little orbits or to create walls of photons or any of the functions that preserved the day-to-day life in their capsule. Void was to prevent their communications from travelling too far, to keep the capsule unnoticed. Void’s nature was to go unheard, and so it did not argue.
They had to get close, because Void could not contain a message from that far away. If their message reached the planet, then it would reach beyond the planet. 
They did not know how to land. They crashed, and the light-shields flickered out, and the capsule crumpled, and Void’s host sustained critical damage.
Void continued its function. It had no greater purpose. Nothing would overhear them.
---
A human thinks with a brain and a nervous system, a collection of small organisms called cells or neurons that encode memory and thought into flesh and chemistry. It was an elegant system, if not suited for Void’s purposes. It was close enough. Void could think and perceive, borrowing the senses and short-term memories of Xisuma. It could examine the aftermath of the crash. It could understand that its host had died, that it had oozed away from the capsule, continuing to contain the panicked communications of its fellows. It could recall that it had been found by its new host, then it had leapt, slipping through the porous barrier called skin and spreading itself thin to hide. Based on Xisuma’s memories, that had been a while ago.
Xisuma had not revealed its presence to anyone. Perhaps its host was unaware.
Void continued to conceal the communication format that once filled the capsule. This may have been unnecessary. There were no signals to contain at the present moment, and the loudness and mass of Earth would distort the message over a distance of kilometers. This did not matter. Void had a purpose, and its purpose was to make sure that the capsule would not produce signals that could easily be tracked.
The silence was unnerving. Nothing on the capsule had reason to be silent, or to understand the value of silence. That was Void’s purpose, and the others would communicate freely. If they were not doing so, they were incapable. Void was all that was left.
---
Xisuma felt a brief flash of recognition when he saw a space-themed hero form a barrier of hard light. He’d seen this hero before, on a poster, perhaps?
It was probably nothing.
---
Void was getting better at this; better at using its (Xisuma’s) brain and senses without the host noticing, at understanding the world and the creatures that inhabited it, at surviving. Surviving was a new function. It had learned many new functions.
Anger was one of them. The humans had taken apart the capsule, taken apart the dead (the crew? the friends?) and made hosts with their remains. There were humans running around with bits of Void’s dead capsule-mates, using their powers for whatever they found convenient. Gravity slammed a human into concrete, instead of gently nudging the capsule’s path. Flesh mended itself together without precision, fire burned without containment. Backup copies were stored in a fragile body, now missing and presumed dead. 
It was alone, but not just because the crash had killed everyone. The humans had found the bodies, ripped them into pieces, and paraded the remains of their corpses through the streets.
Void’s primary function was to ensure that the capsule’s conversations were not overheard, but there was nothing left to silence.
Well, not quite. Silence was a word with many implications, and its (Xisuma’s) brain connected one to another.
Revenge would be as good a purpose as any.
---
Void pushed itself further through the skin of its host, trying to appear bigger. It sharpened itself into points, creating claws and teeth to intimidate the human standing in front of it.
Keralis, Xisuma’s (its) memory supplied. A friend.
Void did not want to hurt its friends.
Void did not want any of this.
The human was still there. It lunged.
---
Xisuma winced when he saw his reflection. He looked exhausted, beyond the dark bags under his eyes and the bruises he couldn’t remember getting. There was something else wrong, some reason he was feeling so (guilty) tired.
---
When Cub asked for help, something in Xisuma answered.
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dercolaris · 3 years
Text
Calmness
"There is still space for another photo on this wall." 
Hey guys. I will keep you busy during these crazy times and provide you another Scriddler story. This one was still on my list to translate, so, yep. Needed to be done. Right now I’m working on a new book idea and that’s consuming a bit of time, but maybe it will be worth it. Enjoy!
Thanks @shin-arei for helping me again with the translation <3
Song: https://youtu.be/ESu5YQTBilw
The small drops of water tapped almost regularly on the window, running in growing rivulets down the previously dirty glass onto the sodden ground. Jonathan's icy blue eyes stared into the all-engulfing darkness outside, looking for something in the oppressive blackness. The former psychiatrist himself didn't really know what it actually was in this moment. There was probably nothing hiding in the night. The edges of his mouth twitched a bit. This inner emptiness literally made him sick and every attempt to escape from it or to fill it meaningfully ended with the thoughts of this terrible state being forced upon him. It was almost impossible for him to simply enjoy such a moment of rest. The rogue sighed softly and leisurely turned his gaze from the window, let the opals roam briefly through the spacious living room. It was kept meticulously clean. Almost too perfectly organized. Everything in this room had its rightful place and if there was a new purchase it would find a safe place for eternity without any problems. People tended to praise the former psychiatrist for this fact, even to rave about being able to implement such a functioning system themselves. Nevertheless, the Master of Fear knew that this order was nothing more than a farce to escape the chaos in his own head. Who could have guessed what was really going on in their branched brain? Jonathan absently reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes, carefully sticking one of the coffin nails into his mouth. He didn't ignite it, just played a little with the poisonous stalk between his teeth, sliding it slowly from side to side with his tongue. A small smile crept onto his worn lips. Edward had hated it profoundly when his significant other had smoked and after some heated discussions the gaunt man had finally agreed to cancel this vice for good. However, this did not stop him from fooling his mind into thinking that he was going to remedy the situation soon with a cigarette. For the most part, addictions were simply a matter of the mind and - if the will was there - surprisingly easy to overcome. Routines, on the other hand, seemed more difficult to break through. Jonathan nibbled carefully on the filter and after a few seconds took the coffin nail out of his mouth again, sliding it back into the remaining box. He stowed it safely in the grey jacket and looked around at the door. There was no one to be seen. The brown-haired man chuckled cautiously and turned his eyes back to the steamed-up window.
The tinkerer would most likely jump at his throat at this now rare sight or at least make a derogatory comment that he should finally banish the cursed stalks from his collection. Despite the often sarcastic remarks, the former psychiatrist knew that the Riddler was only concerned about him and wanted the best for his partner. Even if the inventor would probably never admit these good intentions or talk them down. After a while, the Master of Fear casually looked down at his socks, and was startled to see some new holes in the worn fabric. He reached down with his thin arms and pulled his stockings off his feet, then sauntered almost silently to the red sofa in the middle of the room. The gaunt man took a seat on the left, looked a while for suitable utensils from the ornate sewing box on the massive side table. He was probably not as skilled with needles and threads as Jervis Tetch, but his poorly trained talent should be enough for darning some socks. The thin man carefully got to work. As the first hole closed gradually on the fabric, another notch opened in his soul. No matter how hard the elder tried to ignore it, a nagging feeling lingered in his heart. Something in him was unfulfilled. Jonathan paused at work, staring at his own bony fingers. For more than three months he had been living with the inventor in a well-preserved old apartment in one of the countless suburbs of Gotham. They had mutually agreed to stay out of major difficulties for a while and to figure out if a relationship could work out for them. Moving in together was therefore the ultimate test to be able to speak of a solid, maybe even stable partnership. The former psychiatrist barely noticeably shook his head and began sewing again. It was still incredibly difficult for the brown-haired man to adjust to the unknown situation. He had never known someone by his side in his life and suddenly being able to trust Edward was just too absurd. Who would seriously care about him and voluntarily adjust his entire life to his habit, just so as not to disturb him too much in the usual processes of living?
This made the Master of Fear doubt whether the Riddler was really being sincere with him. Was it possible that the other was just playing a deceptive game with him and would leave him when he had enough of it? The former psychiatrist closed his eyes for a moment, listening into his slowly beating heart. Mind and feelings were of course more than disagreed, often fighting bitterly for the upper hand, but the steady rhythm of his body centre spoke an unmistakable language. He knew from unfathomable, almost mystical sources about the honesty of the inventor. The lean man half opened his tired eyelids, put sewing kit and socks on the side table. In addition to all the small gestures of affection Edward showed him at home, he didn't seem ashamed to be seen with Jonathan in public. They weren't necessarily interested in showing their love to the whole world or even shouting it out openly, but the Riddler often enough broke the invisible barrier between them, which was actually meant to keep the appearance of a normal friendship. Jonathan still didn't know how the underground would react to their relationship. Strangely enough, this actually frightened him. Why, however, was a mystery to him. It was basically nobody's business with whom he shared the bed at night and how he imagined his own future. Yet there was this voice in his head preaching to him repeatedly to keep everything under wraps. It was the same voice that was responsible for convincing him that he was not worth the time of the tinkerer and that one day he would pack his bags and leave without a word. The brown-haired man sagged a little, pulled his legs up leisurely. Loneliness. How many times had he wasted thought that he would spend his whole life alone. That no one would ever be ready to take him and, like Edward, just hugs him at night. The Master of Fear put his chin on his knees. There were certain points of contention in their relationship, but these too were easily resolved. In general, the time together with the black-haired man was surprisingly harmonious and the former psychiatrist no longer wanted to do without his presence. He stared at the crackling fire in the ancient fireplace, watching the flames leap wildly on all sides. Jonathan stroked his thinning hair and groaned slightly. The last few years had practically passed him by like trains.
The hatred of all his tormentors had crept insidiously to an immensely high level and every new interaction with Batman had crowned this feeling. What remained was the realization that in his eternal anger he had lost sight of a crucial goal. His own happiness. Had it really gotten to the point where someone had to remind him that he only had one life and that he should have fun in it from time to time? Joy had been a foreign word to the older man for ages. There was just work and more work. That Edward of all people was the one who had spoken to his conscience to see things a little more calmly was pure irony. The Riddler himself was an unteachable workaholic and if you don't remind him to take a break from time to time, he works to the proverbial collapse. The former psychiatrist smiled a little wider. He had sent his partner to bed over two hours ago this evening. With a loud protest from the stubborn inventor, of course. Nevertheless, the black-haired man finally made his way into the bedroom and fell asleep on the soft mattress after a few minutes. A clear sign that he had been overtired and urgently needed a break. Jonathan blinked a little, then released the convulsive grip on his knees. He got up from the sofa and walked calmly into the hallway, looking down the dark corridor. His eyes locked on the dry wall. It was full with photographs that they had taken together over the years of their rather dubious friendship. Among them was their first meeting in the infamous Iceberg Lounge, which Harleen had kindly immortalized for them and an ancient photo from the Gotham Gazette of their first joint arrest as a criminal duo. The brown-haired smiled almost happily while looking at this really unique snapshot. Edward had a more than visible injury under his eye in the sepia-coloured picture and even the Master of Fear had not got away without some wounds. The gaunt man let his gaze wander further. They had attached the photos in chronological order. It finally culminated with the photo of the fateful birthday party of Victor Fries, at which Jonathan had admittedly decided somewhat unintentionally to want to walk the future together with the inventor. That evening he had clearly looked way too deeply into the glass and confessed, under high linguistic difficulties of course, his love to Edward. Fortunately, they had been alone in the winter garden at this intimate moment, which led the tinkerer to give him a meaningful kiss in response. The clumsy confession was followed by the first night in the same bed.
Looked at it soberly, this evening was just the happy end of a protracted development. It wasn't a particularly big surprise that their paths not only crossed accidentally in Gotham, but actually ended up in walking the way together. The brown-haired man in particular had been able to successfully overcome his fear of contact over the years and did not regret for a second that he had told the Riddler the truth about his feelings. Jonathan took a deep breath. He hoped that there would be many more photographs of them to follow on the wall. Without looking further at the pictures, the gaunt man crept in the direction of the bedroom, peeking leisurely into it. Edward was lying on his back, his left forearm resting on his forehead as is so often the case. The blanket hung more badly than right over his hip, only covering the lower abdomen of the black-haired man. The inventor had the unconscious habit of tossing the warming material somewhere in his sleep and waking up shivering in the morning because his body was slowly cooling down. The former psychiatrist walked quietly towards the bed, then finally sat on the edge. His eyes studied his lover carefully, noticing every little change in his relaxed face. After a few minutes the gaunt man looked up and gave a slight shudder. There was still so much to do, so much work which was piling up without any mercy. A break was out of the question. Jonathan was about to get up when the hand of the tinkerer grabbed his gently. The brown-haired man raised an eyebrow. His partner was asleep, but seemed to instinctively seek his presence somehow. The Master of Fear turned his hand carefully and interlaced their fingers, looking lovingly at the younger man. As if in slow motion, he sank down on the mattress and fished with his free fingers for the completely twisted bedspread at the foot end. He gradually pulled the fabric over them and moved closer to the tinkerer. The Riddler turned abruptly to the side, wrapping his left arm around the former psychiatrist's narrow body with light pressure. The older man paused for a moment, but then returned the hug tenderly and laid his head on the comfortable pillow next to Edward. He began to carefully caress the neck of the often over-the-top tinkerer, studying the gentle contours of his beautiful face. The inventor groaned almost in relief and snuggled closer to the gaunt man, then surprisingly buried his face in the crook of the other's neck. The warm, even breath brushed the cool skin. Jonathan smiled warmly and ran two fingers up the slightly curved spine of his lover. He finally placed a loving kiss on the back of the head and whispered hoarsely: "Sleep well, my prince."
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cornelthecursed · 3 years
Text
The vampire was finally free. He was hungry and hurting beyond belief. It was not like the torturers knew precisely what to do to hurt him permanently. Humans, no matter the amount of power or money, they never understood the supernatural and how they functioned. Not to mention he was in a similar state as he was now when he was first captured.
Weak. Cornelius hated that word. Hated what it brought. He would have to be extra people pleasing to get what he wanted - the help he needed, and he would have to be so careful, just so he didn't rip people apart in his bloodlust haste because of his hunger. They did not realize yet that was when he was the most powerful. Many thought the opposite. Give vampire a good amount of blood and he would break out from anything with the surge of energy. Not him. That was what always made it ease to escape in the end. The lack of nutrition because people didn't do their homework.
But this was not the reason for his freedom this time. He was offered an option, one he could not refuse since there really was no other way getting out of that dingy cellar with them holding everything he owned. Even the blasted ring for sun protection. Find a member of the organization that went haywire. As if he would do that for them.
Stepping out into the chilled night's air he couldn't help but stop and inhale deeply. Fresh air, gods how he had missed it. Eyes closed he just enjoyed the moment for a few more seconds before he took off in the direction of the member they wanted him to hunt. With the scent provided Cornel was almost like a hunting dog - but the reason behind him going after the man in question was not to kill him.
Hours later, after he had fed along the way he finally spotted him. Crouching on top of the building, probably seizing up his next target. So - a marksman as himself. Was it why they kept him? As an alternative if this one would go rogue? That might have been an option...but then again they captured him before he even heard of this Green Arrow nonsense. The vampire contemplated his capture while he crawled up the fire escape. His feet light on the metal, leaving close to no sound. He was rusty in the art and his left knee threatened to give under him in any given moment, but the vampire prided himself on his stealth skills.
Once on the rooftop he leaned against the staircase entrance that would have led him into the building, making sure most of his weight was on his right leg. "I carry a warning." Gods his Italian accent was laid thick. He thought that his exhaustion would be pushed back a little by his feeding. "Ra’s A Ghul want you dead." If he had wanted to kill him, just like he was asked he had missed his opportunity in giving away his position by speaking. But that was not his intention. If the leader of the said organization thought that he could easily capture the vampire back, he was wrong. This time...he won't be weak from a fight, this time, oh this time he was ready to rip some throats out.
@thegreenxrcher
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canyouhearthelight · 4 years
Text
The Miys, Ch. 102
Okay, trying to queue this again after it apparently got eaten along with chapter 101.
Y’all pray for me to whatever higher powers you believe in or can make up on the spot. Thanks.
Thanks for this chapter goes to the fabulous anon who sent me an ask about Jedis. I really, really hope you are seeing this chapter and I hope you like it. I also want to thank @baelpenrose​ as my resident Star Wars expert, who checked, double checked, and triple checked my writing to make sure everything was as entertaining/accurate as possible.
Before you all cringe at some comments Sophia makes, she is deliberately downplaying her knowledge of Star Wars in an attempt to see if she can give some of the other characters a twitchy eye.
After an extraordinarily bizarre situation regarding my former foe and who I assumed was his partner, I was profoundly relieved to find myself in a very boring, very normal situation a couple of weeks later. Even the regular family dinner was pretty normal: grilled cheese on a very good sourdough, with a tomato soup so garlicky that even I had no objections to it. I made a point to puree it, so Derek was very happy with the texture and I was happy with the flavor. Arthur shot me odd looks once in a while, but it was a happy, calm dinner.
And things were going… so well… I thought as Maverick dragged everyone into his quiet argument with Sam.
“Sam,” He stated emphatically as he dunked his sandwich and ripped a tomato-soaked piece from it. “We all want it to be real but… humans don’t exist outside of Earth and the Ark.”
“Yoda is not human,” Sam insisted loudly, grinning the entire time.
I choked on my soup. “Yoda? You two have been arguing Star Wars this whole time?”
“Maverick insists they are not real,” Sam enunciated carefully. When he got excited about a topic he loved, he had a tendency to rush everything and drop syllables, making his words nearly impossible to understand.
“They meaning Jedi?” Arthur asked, eyeballing the pile of sandwiches on the table. Finally he snagged his third half-sandwich and dunked it without ceremony. “As much as I wish they were real, I have my doubts.”
So did I. “Human beings who can use telepathy, telekinesis, and distance-empathy?” I scrunched my nose. “I think that’s a bit far-fetched.”
“But extraterrestrials exist,” Sam pointed out.
Conor nodded. “They do, obviously. Otherwise, Noah would be a bloody big figment of our imagination.” Shaking his head, he smiled. “If we didn’t make Santa real as children, I doubt we could make up someone like Noah, right?”
Sam only got more serious. “I was always taught that aliens don’t exist. My teachers told me that the only life off of Earth were bacteria. But, even if Else is bacteria, Noah isn’t. So, maybe other things we thought were pretend are real.”
The table was silent for a moment, shattered only by Derek dusting bread crumbs from his hands as ceremoniously and loudly as humanly possible. “Sam has a point,” he signed. “Fabricators exist, aliens exist.. Hell, telepathy exists - “
“Not telepathy,” Miys interjected from above.
“Neuro-pheremonal communication exists,” Derek finger-spelled, making a point of how cumbersome the term was in a way none of the rest of us really could. Seven minutes later, he took a slurp of soup and continued. “Unicorns exist, even if they are chubby. Why not Jedi?”
I opened my mouth to refute, then realized I couldn’t: we had the genetic code for both narwhals and rhinoceros in the gene bank. Good effing luck convincing anyone unicorns don’t exist, I guess. Instead, I grasped on my one last leg of logic. “But humans, like Luke Starkiller and Obi-whatsit Kenoshi don’t actually exist.”
Maverick looked absolutely revolted by something, which confused me. He liked tomato soup, and actually chose the cheese for the sandwiches himself. “Sophia. Have you even seen those movies?” He was absolutely aghast as he posed his question, and I suddenly understood what he was revolted by.
“Of course I did,” I sighed, rolling my eyes. “In college, in Intro to Adolescent Literature.”
Soup abruptly coated everything on the table as both Arthur and Conor spat violently at my clarification. Arthur scrubbed his chin the fastest, so had the honor of levelling his incredulity at me. “Sophia Reid. Do you mean to tell me that you have only seen Star Wars ONE TIME?”
I shook my head, confused. “No. I’ve seen all three.”
“ELEVEN,” Sam corrected me loudly. “There are eleven movies.”
“Please, please tell me you at least saw Rogue One,” Maverick begged. “You may not have known it was a Star Wars movie?”
“Is that the one where the robot hits the guy and says he has another fresh one?” I asked carefully.
Maverick nodded. Arthur, however, looked like he was about to start breathing fire. “I am going to force you to consume every bit of Star Wars media worth consuming if I have to get Charly and Derek to program the audio versions to play in every room you enter.”
“I can do that,” Derek signed, unhelpfully.
Arthur just nodded. “See? I can make this happen. Your quarters will feel like Hoth, all digital communications will sound like C-3PO, and many Bothans will die before your datapad functions.”
Alarmingly, Miys interjected. “Wisdom, Bothans are an endangered species. Please do not encourage Educator Farro to commit atrocities.”
I was still gasping in confusion when Arthur recovered from his choking. “Oh shit. Bothans are real? They were a very back-stabby race of dog-type people who fought against fascists in Terran media. I thought, at least. I wouldn’t actually kill a real one… I am far more high functioning of a sociopath than that, thank you.”
“Noah,” I choked out. “Are you serious? Are Bothans real?”
“Affirmative,” they responded, setting off an entirely new round of choking and sputtering. I would need to have something done about my floors if this kept up. “And while they do resemble Terran canines on a very superficial level, they are genetically more closely related to a Terran fern.”
Arthur looked like his heart had been ripped out of his chest. “That is the least back-stabbing and least threatening plant I can possibly think of.”
Conor, not to be outdone, was still curious. “Boston or Fiddlehead?”
“Asparagus fern, Human Conor,” was the reply that set off a thousand coughs.
Sam recovered first. “That does not mean Jedi don’t exist,” he insisted.
“Of course Jedi exist,” Miys answered in a tone that was as close to being confused as I had ever heard.
Almost immediately, Arthur, Maverick, and Sam started cheering and high-fiving. Conor looked confused, while I spat my soup out again.
“WHAT?” I choked out between attempts at keeping tomatoes and garlic out of my lungs.
“They are as real as any member of any other Terran religion.”
Silence ruled the room for a split second, broken first by Arthur throwing his fork in the air behind him.  Like a signal, it led to Sam and Maverick dropping their head to their forearms with a groan.
I managed to recover enough to slide my food away, lest I risk death over an absurd conversation. “Are there anything like Jedi in the known galaxy?” I asked, receiving a thumbs up from Arthur, who was still trying not to choke on his soup.
“Only in small measures.”
That seemed like the magic phrase to snap Arthur out of whatever coughing fit he was having. “Are there any species in the galaxy that have Jedi abilities?”
“You will need to be more specific.”
Conor, laughter out of his system, joined gamely. “Is there anything that can move physical objects without touching them directly?” he started.
“Several species can,” Miys conceded. “Those who only experience what you consider ‘sight’ as changes in air currents can, in fifty-four percent of cases so far, also change the air currents in a sufficient way as to move physical objects.”
“Wait,” I interrupted. “They can stare at something hard enough to move it?”
“Wisdom, if I experienced physical pain, I am certain that your oversimplification just now would have caused such a sensation.”
Without rebutting, I waved for Miys to continue and ignored the laughter caused by the comment.
“Similarly, there are species more limited than Hujylsogox, who can perceive the physical world strictly through sound,” they continued. “In such cases, it is not uncommon for these species to also alter their surroundings by vibrating physical objects at a frequency that causes them to move within physical space.” A brief pause before, “And no, Wisdom, that does not mean they scream at objects until such objects move. I would also like to point out, Educator Farro, that the same species can cause internal organs to vibrate as a sufficient frequency as to cut off air flow.”
“Force choke is real,” Arthur whisper-shouted, mildly horrified. Clearing his throat, he spoke more clearly for his next question. “What about ‘there is a disturbance in the Force, as if many voices cried out’ etc?”
Miys buzzed thoughtfully for a moment before replying more clearly. “There are number of species who are able to perceive and interpret with great accuracy any changes in interstellar radiation, no matter how small. Should, say, a star go nova or collapse into a black hole, they are very reliable in providing information to cartographers. Should such a species state with certainty that a planet ceased to exist, I would need to see the planet from orbit in order to disbelieve them.”
Maverick let loose a low whistle, but it was Sam who spoke next. “But what about living beings, on an individual level. I know you can do that, but can any other species?”
“It is, perhaps, the most common trait in the known galaxy,” Miys admitted. “Even humans can do this, to a degree, although you tend to ignore it against all logic.”
“Okay. What about force lightning, though?”
I actually started to respond to that, having an answer finally, but Miys beat me to the draw. “Species who communicate through electrical currents are more numerous in the galaxy than those who can see. In the same way, they need to be able to manipulate such currents. Their young are frequently sequestered on their home worlds in order to prevent electrocution of species whose neural organs can be disrupted by uncontrolled communication. The same species are capable of using those same currents to increase their own synaptic response and reflexes.”
I almost wanted to laugh at Maverick’s face. He looked frustrated and ashamed in a way that I could not figure out. Maybe because these abilities existed, but not in humans? Regardless, his tone was frustrated when he asked his next question. “What about force ghosts? Please tell me those are real?”
“Very much so,” Miys confirmed. “Though likely not in the way you think. What you consider ‘Force Ghosts’ are, in the galaxy as it is, the result of technological advancement combined with spiritual beliefs.” A few groans surrounded the table, but Maverick perked up slightly. “Many species believe, as a result of their evolution, that their predecessors’ life energy persists after death. In these cultures, it is so common as to be unremarkable for a person to have a synaptic recording chip installed shortly after birth, to record their entire lives. They, then, pass their chip on to their successor in  position.” Wait a minute… I thought, but Miys continued before I could put everything together. “In such circumstances, many species’s neural organs will manifest a… personality, separate from the original, in order to preserve mental stability. Such manifestations are very similar to what Terran media considers a ‘Force ghost’.”
“Hang on,” I ventured, holding my hand up emphatically to cut off any other questions from the table. “That. Stop there.” Taking a deep breath, I thought back through everything I had read in the past. “I thought the idea of deliberately having multiple, distinct identities was… a story, honestly.”
“Even in your own past, it was discovered that the human brain can host two distinct personalities with no difficulty, Wisdom,” Miys admonished. “These species, however, are uniquely adapted so that, along with the memory implant, they suffer no actual combination or confusion of experiences. What their ancestor experienced is their ancestor’s memory, and what the person experiences is the person's memory. A person cannot overwrite an ancestral core. Only speak to it.”
“Can humans do that?” Sam asked, dazed in wonder at this new revelation.
“Not yet,” Miys responded. “But I do insist on the word ‘yet’, as you were never meant to do many of the things you do now.”
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last-on-your-lips · 3 years
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Dragon’s Draught
When you ask the right questions of the wrong people, they’ll often give you answers. A yes to something they should say no about, a no when you have a wise doubt about what they instruct and influence.... and a comforting smile when you’re suffering the worst of their suggestions.
Talin had learned this later than some, an almost accomplished mage student of Sinthir Tower. A childhood not worth much talk, she had proven she had a handle on magic early and been whisked away from home by a Magus in need of Apprenticeship. Pondering long and hard she wouldn’t tell you of her heritage or how she was discovered, or why a Lady would’ve done for a Magus’ apprentice. You make yourself, she’ll remind you, by the choices that get you to who you become. There are wiser choices than interrogating people that can handle magic, too. Especially when they chose to switch over to the school of alchemy.
“Not like ye to make threats, Lass.” The brawny keep at the border bar commented to the former apprentice, she was not the kind of rambunctious beauty he was used to seeing. He knew better than to press a mage though, and further better than to test an alchemist with a bad attitude. “I was just wanted to know why i’was ye wore a hood inside, wasn’ trying to make trouble of a question. More like thems rogues and ugly to hide in them own shadow.”
“I suppose you’re dying to know if I’m ugly.” The bitterness was present, but her voice was infuriatingly sweet with the snarl. She could tell it wasn’t quelling his curiosity and for once she was unhappy that her usual half-past noon drink was taken in an empty exile bar. “I’m not.”
“I don’t expect ye to be, ye’re slender and ye move with the grace of any graduate Mage. Never met an ugly Mage before. Few weird ones, them’s that were the type took a Dragon’s Drink for a reason or another.” His face was intently pointed away from her as he worked a cleaning rag into a mug. He even pretended her sharp gasp went unnoticed by giving an experienced shrug and turning his back. “Weird doesn’t mean bad. There’s good reasons and bad reasons both to drink the stuff.” 
“What do you know of good and bad reasons for a Draught...” Muttered into her drink, hood still pointedly covering all but her lips. Plump they were. he thought. Flush with drink and aggravation. But they were very carefully all she showed of herself. Hid under that hood, clearly enchanted to stay shading her from head to toe. Seemed silly to drink something as drastic as a Draught and then hide, to him. 
“Ye can’t hide the smell of it, no matter how careful ye are with the cloaks. I know the Wolf Drink,  i’was what they had me on.” Admission given to her muttering, and a grin over his burly shoulder at how she let out a recognizable whimper. Wolf men were reputably dangerous among folks. Damn shame in his opinion, he never even meant to drink a wolf and make a monster of himself. His laugh bellowed at how she hurried to drink her ale, bemused that she prioritized it over trying to run away. Odd Lady Talin always had seemed to him though. “Most lass’ll sprint right through the door when they realize. Now I know you took a drink you weren’t suppose to.”
“Drink I shouldn’t have been given, it wasn’t what I wanted from what I had asked for. Didn’t know enough to know better.” She was defensive now, desperately twirling him back into her circle of non-acknowledgement. He’d already gathered she’d been taken into Sinthir a young and dewy lad. Prettier than most Magus apprentices were expected, pretty even before the graduation. Pretty enough she fell prey to the Traedurin alchemists no doubt, promised they had the answer to help her change what she didn’t love about herself. 
“I’ll agree with ye. Traedurin mages and alchemists are twisted in the head, they think they understand things better enough to make choices wrong for people that don’t know better.” He nodded patiently, thoughtfully. Appreciating that she hadn’t flown loose of the bar. She couldn’t have been much older than him, looking at her and listening to the tremble of her voice still denying that what they’d done and influenced was still what had happened to her. Irreversible as if it had been her own informed choice, there was no unmaking the changes a Draught put the body through. The lucky folk got subtle things, as he had. Brawn he’d never had before, teeth too sharp, nose too keen, eyes lighter than gold. It was hard for folks to tell whether he was strong enough to lug the kegs or if he was strong because he did. He had the inkling she hadn’t been so lucky and got such subtle hints of her changing.
“They make stupid choices with smart people is what they do.” Grumbled from under the hood, thing still stubbornly positioned to conceal her. Still an agreeable word there. They fell into a silence past that statement, she soaking in the bar keep as he busied himself organizing mugs and bottles. Noticing where he wasn’t quite human anymore under the billow of his tunic before she finally decided to speak again. “It was when they told me I’d have to be a Magus to graduate. Sinthir wouldn’t allow me to ascend as a Mage. It was too late to transfer over to the alchemists at Erfersi that year, so I left my apprenticeship and went to the capital to work for the public. Was trading blessings and wards to farmers. An almost graduate is as good to them as a proper Mage, and their food was fresher than I got in the tower anyway.”
“A public magic user is a Traedurin Alchemist’s wet dream, lass.” Sympathetic in his tone, the entire country of Traeduros produced a population that was widely received as mental when not outright putting effort into being violent or manipulative. They were usually responsible for crafting the morally unsound and otherwhere illegal substances known as Beast Drinks and Draughts, transformative elixirs that could augment a human with the power or appearance of animals, though they rarely gave a human both the power and the appearance and often enough they could go horribly wrong and disfigure more than augment. Trick potions mostly, sound minded people wouldn’t drink them.
“Isn’t it? So I was. Unhappy and easy prey for their ‘magic’. Their ‘solution’.” There was a hiss under her voice, a certain raspy flair as she sprung off the bar seat and onto her feet... feet he now noticed as what some would call disfigured. She stood balanced on specially crafted shoes, but he could see that three inhumanly shaped toes were bound in the rough shape of a human foot and strapped carefully to a wedge. A flex of those toes broke her free of the meticulous binding to reveal that the flesh of her feet was stain blue, and she put a hand to hip under her cloak before she pulled back the hood and unveiled herself, ale helped defiance in her gaze. It was to his merit that the less obvious Draught Beast didn’t laugh. 
Talin stood defiantly poised on those draconic feet, loose pantaloons not managing to conceal how her bones were twisted to accomplish the strength and dexterity expected of an upright drake. Her waist was bare up to the chest, a vest fitted neatly and decorated in what he felt were comically small pockets, though only because she herself was petite. Petite, flat framed, and lean with muscle all the way through her arms and down to her clawed digits. The barkeep was unduly fascinated that her augments were so symmetrical and functional, almost distracted enough by them to ignore her face until she snapped her fingers and leaned forward toward him. Downright impish in the face! She had vibrant silver markings against the blue tint of her skin, cheeks cut high into her expression and a jaw drawn sharp and low. Slender to add to how small she already seemed, but adorned with perhaps the most intense stare he’d ever tried to meet. Her irises were the palest tint of green almost glowing through the ink black of her eyes, and her pupils were feline slits within them. This under her arched brow and paired with her still human nose under a mane of half-kempt iridescent hair gave her the look of a particularly spunky demon in his opinion.
“Yers wasn’t as subtle as mine.” Managed and uttered from him, his lips curled in an approving grin to look at her without her cloak. “Certainly aren’t ugly either, ye were right about that. Never seen the Drink change colors like you have.”
“Supposedly had to do with me being able to use magic.” A flair of the stuff, just a glimmer of it moving through her skin as more markings similar to those on her face. “It leaves a permanent mark on the body, any Mage will admit. But the Draught brought mine out.”
“I think it’s good it did, Lass. Ye shouldn’t have to live under the cloak for it either.” Advised as she was clearly weighing the options of putting the thing back on and assessing how horribly she’d damaged her shoes. “Might be that how ye look now is how ye find out who ye’re going to be.”
It was twelve days past taking her cloak off that she decided not to put it back on.
It was a month after that she enrolled with the Alchemist’s guild, a celebrated student of Erfersi graduating after only a year of study.
It was a week after that when Rhaekson spotted her, an obvious draconic body, and gave her responsibility of a newborn in a quiet plea in front of the same border bar.
The same barkeep helped her find a path and a hollow tree to raise the child away from humans when it’s blood mother decided to forfeit several towns.
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se7enforse7en · 3 years
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One — Great Tree Moon
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synopsis: THE ALLURE OF DARKNESS WAS ATTRACTIVE TO THOSE STAINED IN THE LIGHT. Nyx Νύχτα grasped the idea long ago. The native to the empire had understood the balance between dark and light for too long. One couldn’t survive without the other. The darkness had stained her long ago while the light had barely reached out even in the light of day. Even now, as she was shrouded in darkness in the night. There was not a single soul who had only one within them. And while she had known that long ago, she found that lesson even more apparent in the company of the religious organization she's been aware of her whole life - the church of Seiros. Their influence had been felt all throughout Fodlan for quite some time. In that influence, stood the future of Fodlan nobility & lesser folk. The heads of Fhaerghus, The Empire, & The Ancestor Alliance are led into greatness by their time at the Monastery, a school meant to shape them into kings and queens. Hundreds of years of success have allowed boasting. However, in the year 1186, things don't go as easily. For Nyx Νύχτα, she's a part of an ugly score in a history she wished she never knew about.
pairings: multiple oc’s x multiple characters / mostly dimitri x oc / sylvain x oc / m!byleth x claude / f!byleth x edelgard
genre: angst, romance, drama
warnings: strong language, blood, death, basically over the top angst
parts: one / two / three / four / five
THE ALLURE OF DARKNESS WAS ATTRACTIVE TO THOSE STAINED IN THE LIGHT. Nyx Νύχτα grasped the idea long ago. The native to the empire had understood the balance between dark and light for too long. One couldn’t survive without the other. The darkness had stained her long ago while the light had barely reached out even in the light of day. Even now, as she was shrouded in darkness in the night.
She walked through the camp stationed in the woods, belonging to a certain Jeralt Eisner, The Blade Breaker. Her heeled boots created a pattern of quiet footsteps as she made a beeline for the man’s tent. Her cloak flowed around her, covering a majority of her figure. Her black but snug tunic was visible underneath, the arms being cut off for comfort. Her knuckles were adorned with fingerless gloves as her legs were hugged tight by her cotton but semi-gold laced pants. Her sword fit perfectly in it’s holder amongst her waist as the belt had been secured from long ago. Underneath her sheathed weapon, pieces of empire fabric had been tied around her waist with a gold trinket or two holding it in place. Over all of that had been an overcoat worthy of a rogue. It had contrasted the palette of her equipment with a glorious red & black lining apparent.
Her raven-like locks had been tied as a mod-long braid with somewhat intricate braid patterns. A braid in itself was found near the beginning of her locks to the back of it, making a braided circle of sorts. It had been a bit elaborate for the swordswoman but it had been functional for the time being. The tent’s flaps had been obstructed as she moved it aside, walking towards the twins she had been looking for.
The pair of dark bluenettes had their gazes on different maps, intently studying them. They had always been intense for their own good and perhaps their individual bad. Stepping further on, she alerted the two as they spared a slight glance in her direction. She slightly met their gazes quickly enough. “Byleth,” she called out to them both, not realizing they whipped their heads up simultaneously. “Eh, Aether?” She clarified awkwardly as Hemera, the other twin, had gone back to her intense study of the maps. “Where’s Jeralt? We need to talk, pronto.” She quipped a raised eyebrow at the armor clad boy as he thought about the last he had seen of his blonde father.
“I believe he was in the back of the tent over, Nyx.”
“Thanks,” she raised an obligatory hand as quick thanks before heading to the mentioned tent with motivation. As predicted, the blonde mercenary had been writing down a few things of his own. She could only assume it was some important document or something he’d only read. She smirked at his calm form, his eyes focused merely on his pen & quill. The candle near his face showed little way to his scars as well. “Still writing in that diary of yours?”
“You shouldn’t be sneaking up on people, kid.” His head shot up to her gaze as he stood up from his little writings. He bundled all the papers together, as to not have it so easily seen. “I thought you were coming next week for that village I told you about.”
“Well,” she reached into one of her several pockets for the pristine envelope. It had barely been touched so it’d contain it’s contents in a clean matter. “We need to talk about this.” His face morphed into confusion whilst she sighed. “Do not play dumb, Jeralt. You’re too old for that and I’m sure those wonder twins would delight in some secrets.” It had been clear the last few words had been in humor but even Jeralt could find it concerning.
“Maybe I just forgot about it for a moment?”
“Maybe.” She handed him the white envelope, sure to not crinkle it. His rough hands take hold of it. Opening it, his mind flooded with memories of writing the exact letter weeks beforehand. He sighs. He forgot just how pissed she was going to be at his most recent letter. “Mind explaining what the fuck you wrote?”
“Nyx—“
“‘There’s no more information,’ he says,” she mocks the older mercenary as recalls his exact words. “‘It will be fine,’ he says. No information, my ass!” Her eyes twitch in anger as he looks to the side, almost guilt ridden. “I know for a fact that there’s something you’re hiding.”
“What reason would I have to hide anything?”
‘Far too many,’ the voice rang in her mind. She scoffed at him as she thought on the voice she’d been too familiar with. His deep and firm voice held his usual tone of distrust. In her own mind, he slightly gritted his teeth as his smooth, golden brown skin felt aflame at the suspicions he held. He had his own qualms about Jeralt, the Blade Breaker or rather, Jeralt Eisner. They didn’t know much of him before his twins’ birth. It was natural to be suspicious. The only non-suspicious element was the twins, themselves. They felt. . . oddly familiar to them both and it was clear they held no unnecessary secrets. ‘He won’t say shit, especially if it concerns that pair.’
‘I know. We might as well be back at square one,’ she thought to herself, making sure not to voice her response to the voice she’d grown accustomed to. Narrowing her eyes, she crosses her arms. “If you don’t want to admit it, I have no safe way of getting it from you, anyways. I just hope whatever you’re hiding doesn’t harm those two.”
“We both share that hope, Nyx.” He sighed as he brought a hand to scratch the back of his head. He could still feel the woman’s glare upon him. He had his own reasons for his choices and he was sure nothing he did would be out in the open so soon. Too bad he couldn’t see the future. “Nonetheless, I need to know if you’re still willing to help for next week’s job.”
She laughed. He got right to business, even as she was pissed at the older man. The voice in her mind had an equally hearty laugh before settling in his hard throne. He stared forward with his golden but white tinted eyes. His black & white threaded hair fell behind him, allowing him to be at slight ease once more. Rolling her eyes, she raises her hands in a slumped manner to signal her defeat. “Fine. I won’t forget your little secrets or your wittle diary either, Eisner.”
“Hmph, I know—“ he began to chuckle before they heard the laboured breaths of his men. They came bustling in, undoubtedly tired with his armor weighing him down.
“S-Sir Jeralt!”
“What is it?” He had told his soldiers to not disturb him at many times of the night unless utterly necessary.
“T-T-There’s been an emergency, sir! Three kids. There’s bandits!”
‘Well, that’s intriguing.’
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dragonswithjetpacks · 3 years
Text
Short chapter! I forgot to throw it up here. Will probably do another chapter today. Maybe two. The editing is going pretty fast since I had worked on this already months ago.
Beautiful War
-dragonswithjetpacks
Summary: Dame Claira Trevelyan is known to be a stubborn and off-putting woman. She was always told she never amounted to anything, that she was never pretty or graceful enough to marry. She believed that for the longest time. But her strength and her compassion managed to catch the eye of someone beyond her what she imagined possible. A man just as stubborn and oblivious to how his feelings for his leader are more than just respect. 
Chapter Five: The Stuff of Nightmares
Previous Chapters: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 (Ao3)
Read here on Ao3.
"Are you sure you're ready to leave, my Lady?"
"I'm never ready for anything anymore, Harding," Claira shouted through the rain. "But I have to report back to Haven.
"Fair enough," she shouted back.
"Let's begin the debriefing, then," Corporal Vale decreed.
The wind was blowing mercilessly, making it very difficult to hear one another inside the meeting point. It was a small hut within the Crossroads. Many of the other buildings there were damaged but it remained one of the few left still standing strong. It was home to one of the villagers who didn't mind standing by while the Inquisition made use of it. Claira withdrew her papers from a satchel at her side. She didn't need to read from them, as she was aware of what the reports mentioned. After all, she was the one who wrote them. She rolled them up neatly, tying them with a red ribbon before slipping them into a wooden tube.
"The Hinterlands remain an unsafe area for further Inquisition occupation," she began with the agreement of the others surrounding her. "During my time here, I have managed to acquire supplies for refugees as well as fellow agents. A cult in the southeast, posing as no threat, has agreed to take in others and aid the camps nearby. A bandit camp to the southwest was also been eliminated, providing more shelter and supplies to the camps."
"We have made no advancements toward the thieve's fortress or the cult castle," Vale reminded Claira. "It's still a bit unsafe. Our troops have made contact, but are assessing the situation further."
"As they should," Claira proclaimed. "Reach out to Scout Harding if you run into trouble. She should be able to provide support. Furthermore, I've been unable to reach Dennet at this time. The conflict between the mages and templars has prevented any sort of contact to and from the northern Hinterlands. We will have to resolve that issue upon return. I would like to follow Mother Giselle back to Haven to ensure her safety."
"With the rogue templars watching the main routes, I think this is our best option," Cassandra thought aloud.
"We've all read and signed the reports, yes?" Claira looked at her peers.
They all nodded.
"Corporal Vale, if there is anything you need-"
"I know where to find you," he assured her.
"Very good. Then we'll take our leave. Harding, would you mind sending this for me?"
"Of course," Harding took the scroll from the Herald's hands.
"Luck be with you, Lady Herald," Corporal Vale brought his fist to his chest.
**********************************************
The entire journey back, Claira thought about how nice it would be to fall into her bed. How warm the bath would feel. How good the food would taste. Unfortunately, Haven had other plans. After bidding farewell to Varric and Solas at the tavern, Claira walked up the stairs toward the Chantry with the intent to deliver research information. She was eager to see the Chantry Sisters chattering with excitement as she arrived. Only it wasn't the usual welcoming party she had expected. Instead, she was greeted by a rather large crowd that had no intention of acknowledging her at all.
"Your kind killed the most holy!" a templar shouted angrily.
"Lies!" a mage retaliated. "Your kind let her die!"
Remaining amid the common people, Claira began to assess the situation. The people around her murmured words across one another in hushed whispers. They would not dare to get involved. She listened closely but could not make out the details of what had gone wrong. Deciding she could assist with a better view, she brushed shoulders with the crowd. If need be, she would intervene.
"Shut your mouth, mage," the templar drew his sword.
With her hand gripping the hilt of her own sword, she stepped forward. But she was not nearly as quick as she needed to be.
"Enough!"
The voice came from absolutely nowhere. He would have been easy to pick out among the others, but she had not spotted him. And he threw himself between them, right in front of both a sharpened sword and glowing staff. His risen arms were a warning that they should remain the distance between his fingertips, although his stare was enough to keep them at bay.
"Knight-Captain," the templar stepped back first, sheathing his sword instantly.
"That is not my title," Cullen said with a glare colder than the ground they were standing on. "We are not templars any longer. We are all part of the Inquisition."
"And what does that mean, exactly?" an antagonizing voice appeared.
Claira lowered her brow as she felt the irritation growing under her skin the moment he strode in front of the Commander. She wanted to attempt to get closer but did not want to draw attention to herself. There was no doubt she would be harassed and she was his favorite target.
"Back already, Chancellor?" Cullen sneered, and it made her grin. "Haven't you done enough?"
"I'm curious, Commander," he said stepping closer. "As to how your Inquisition and its Herald will restore order as you've promised."
"Of course you are," Cullen growled in response. It almost sounded as if he was being defensive about her. But she would not take it to heart.
"Back to your duties," he said, turning away from the Chancellor. "All of you!"
The crowd began to thin, but she remained, pushing past them to see them clearly. In times like these, Claira was never permitted to speak. She was too blunt and often said the wrong things. Though, the more time she spent with the Inquisition, the more she realized that being straightforward wasn't always a bad thing.
"Mages and templars were already at war. Now they're blaming each other for the Divine's death," Cullen went on.
"Which is why we require a proper authority to guide them back to order."
"Who? You?" she saw Cullen's brow raise. "Random clerics, who weren't important enough to be at the Conclave?"
Claria recognized the sharp blade of his tongue. Only this time, it was turned toward the Chancellor. Between the humility of the fool and Cullen's mocking tone, she was taken over by the adrenaline of watching vicariously and decided now was a good time to catch forward. Cullen had caught sight of her and nodded slightly in somewhat of relief of her being there.
"The rebel Inquisition and its so-called 'Herald of Andraste'? I think not."
Either he didn't know Claira was standing nearby or he didn't care.
"Don't be so disagreeable, Roderick," she chimed in, making him roll his eyes at the sound of her voice. "The Inquisition seems as functional as any young family."
"How many families are on the verge of splitting into open warfare with themselves?"
"Yes," Cullen sarcastically snickered. "Because that would never happen to the Chantry."
Claira bit her bottom lip in an attempt to remain serious on the matter. But between the Chancellor's scowled face and Cullen's smirk, it proved to be quite difficult.
"Centuries of tradition will guide us. We are not an upstart eager to turn over every apple cart."
"Yet here you are," Claira grumbled. "Do we know how widespread the violence is between mages and templars?"
"Impossible to say as of yet," the Commander replied.
"...organization floating the Chantry's authority will not help matters," Roderick kept babbling. But they were not interested in what he had to say as they continued to commute with each other.
"With the Conclave destroyed, I imagine the war between mages and templars is renewed... with interest," he went on.
"As we have witnessed today... The mages and templars are fighting... even though we don't really know what happened at the Temple of Sacred Ashes?" she asked her Commander.
"Exactly why all this should be left to a new Divine," Roderick clasped his hands together at his waist. "If you are innocent, the Chantry will establish it as so."
"Or will be happy to use someone as a scapegoat," Cullen snapped.
"You think nobody cares about the truth? We all grieve Justinia's loss," he spat.
"But you won't grieve if the Herald of Andraste is conveniently swept under a carpet."
Claira could not decide if she was more surprised by the fact that she was still being blamed for the Conclave or that Cullen confirmed he was defending her. With the way they had fought before she left, she had assumed things between them would be awkward for a time. Their exchange of apologies must have truly made a difference, as Cullen was proving to be quite passionate about keeping the Herald from Chantry hands
"Remind me why you are allowing the Chancellor to stay, Commander?" her eyes drifted over to Cullen's face, tireless of the Chancellor's rambling as well.
"Clearly, your templar knows where to draw the line," Roderick's words were meant to be bold, but no one took him seriously.
"He's toothless," Cullen stated, unaffected by the man. "There's no point in turning him into a martyr simply because he runs at the mouth. The Chancellor's a good indicator of what to expect in Val Reoux, however."
"Well, let's hope we find a solution there and not a cathedral full of Chancellors," she turned to sarcasm as her savior, as always.
"The stuff of nightmares," he grinned in return.
"Mock if you will," Roderick was appeared offended. "I'm sure the Maker is less..."
But she did not catch the entirety of what he said. She was too busy attempting to stifle her laughter as Cullen directed a humoring brow-raising expression followed by a dramatic eye roll. It would be far too obvious to bring a hand to her mouth. So instead, she continued to bite her lip and looked at her feet. The Chancellor's chatter did not cease but continued until it faded to the minimum. Claira turned Cullen.
"I didn't realize I was gone long enough for the Chantry to prepare a protest," she teased. "I will be gone to Orlais much longer."
"The walls should still be standing when you return... I hope," he shrugged with a teasing glance.
"Chancellor Roderick came to speak with me..." Josephine scolded, tapping her pen against her clipboard as Cullen entered the room. "Could you try not to antagonize him?"
It was unfair the attention was drawn directly toward him the moment he entered the room. He paused to look at them but was altogether completely unphased. Claira caught a glimpse of his gaze before he quickly looked away. It must have been much easier for him to hide his grin than it was for her. She resorted to taking a rather large bite from the apple in her hand lest she showed him just how interested she was in his display of sarcasm.
"If I offend the man so easily, perhaps he should try leaving me alone," he suggested as he took his place.
"Cullen..." Josephine sighed.
"In his defense," Claria swallowed what was left, "Roderick came out of nowhere during an altercation. I just happened to arrive at the same time."
"You are not helping," Josephine leaned forward to point her quill at her. "I'm not going to stand here and chide you both like children for making faces behind the Chancellor's back."
"I wasn't the one making faces," Claira grumbled quietly.
Josephine had her fill of mothering for the day. She turned to Cassandra and Leliana for support, but they were doing their best to hide their laughter as well.
"You two should know better," she shook her head at the Hands. "I'm done trying to get any of you to act mature when speaking to this man."
"Perhaps Cullen is right," Leliana stated calmly. "He should likely try his best not to bother us if he does not want to be further upset."
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brachylagus-fandom · 4 years
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So You Wanna Know Where Exaggerations of Necessary and Virtuous Functions is Going
I know I haven’t updated in almost a year (not for lack of effort, words have just... been hard), but I do actually have a decent idea where this is going. Notes, quotes, and spoilers under the cut!
Next chapter: speedrun to Halloween. Harry tries to break into the forbidden corridor, backs off when he sees Fluffy, and ends up saving Ron and Hermione. (This is about half-written, but I don’t want to post is until at least one more is also done, so... ideally September 1?)
Rest of the year, Harry: Harry falls off his broom (because snape’s gone); goes home for christmas, where the cloak is given a much more mischievous purpose; sees Otto & co as well as bio fam in Erised; figures out someone is out to get the stone but tells no one; saves stone, etc.
Rest of the year, Otto: mild hijinks + discovering magic with the gang; Overlord Protocol is pretty similar to canon (robots are vulnerable to magic? contessa’s part veela?)
Second year: Otto and Harry know he’s a parselmouth but don’t know what that means; they all discover that Mitchell is Laura’s mom
Third year: HOPE’s quest against GLOVE is tied to the hunt for Sirius Black; their knowledge of magic is... debatable.
Debating having Regulus Black on the Megalodon. (Which, given that the gang’s contact with magical Britain is a muggleborn who fought in the first wizarding war... that should be fun.)
Fourth year: tournament and Rogue/Zero Hour! Excellent angst!
It was an unseasonably warm Saturday afternoon when there was a knock on the Brands' door. Frowning, Andrew rose to get it, only to be faced by a pair of men in dark, inconspicuous suits.
"We are here to speak with Mr. and Mrs. Andrew Brand," the taller man, whose hair was cut brutally short, said in what was a passable attempt at a Received Pronunciation accent… if said person attempting it weren't British.
"Mary kept her maiden name," Andrew said, "but that's us. Mare-bear, we have company!" he called.
"We do? I thought Andromeda wasn't going to visit for another - oh, hello sirs." Mary, who had quickly stashed her wand in one of her apron's pockets and was hastily shoving something that looked like tentacula roots (they really needed to get a new, separate grater for potions ingredients; anything that went through that was going to taste weirdly spicy for at least a couple days) into the silverware drawer, wiped her hands on a dishrag. "I was just baking some scones," and, indeed, the smell of fresh baked goods was now permeating the air. "Would you like to join us for some tea?"
"That will be unnecessary, Mrs. Brand," the shorter man, who had a nasty scar through his left eyebrow said as his partner said, "yes, please, ma'am." The shorter man glared at him before briefly flashing an official-looking badge and continuing. "I'm afraid this isn't a social call; we need to speak with you urgently."
"What is this about, officers?" Mary asked.
 "We're assigned to the Sirius Black case," one of the visitors said; Andrew froze. They weren't connected to Black unless the officers knew about magic, and if they did, he and Mary wouldn't be at the top of their interview list. "You knew him, correct?" 
"Not well," Mary said. "I was good friends with his cousin Andromeda - she was sort of a mentor to me - but I met him… twice, I think? At a few weddings. I hadn't thought of him in years until, well, you know." Abruptly, a timer in the kitchen went off; the visitors naturally glanced towards it, and Mary quickly whipped out her wand and stunned them while they were distracted.
"Andrew, I think we still have a vial of Veritaserum in the medicine cabinet," she said. "Next to the cough syrup."
"I'll fetch it." Andrew quickly rose and grabbed the bottle while his wife checked the curtains were closed and secured the visitors. "The shorter one?"
"Yeah. He seemed in charge." Carefully, Andrew poured a drop into the shorter man's mouth - it took much less to work on (or to poison) Muggles than wizards - and, after a moment for the potion to take effect, Mary enervated him.
"Wha-"
"Why did you come here?" Mary asked.
"To assess and potentially arrest the couple." The man's attempt and an English, accent was gone, replaced by something vaguely American.
"Why are the couple?"
"Mary and Andrew Brand."
"Why assess them?"
"Known contact with Maximilian Nero," the man said, "and suspected association with Sirius Black."
"Under what charges would they have been arrested?"
"Conspiracy to commit an act of terrorism and aiding and abetting a wanted felon."
"What would have happened then?"
"They would have disappeared into H.O.P.E's system."
"Is H.O.P.E. who you work for?"
"Yes." Andrew glanced and Mary, who nodded.
"Obliviate," Mary whispered, then, in a much more normal tone of voice. "You realized that your identification of Maximilian Nero as having had contact with the couple was incorrect and left. You believe Mary and Andrew Brand pose little threat to your organization." The man nodded, and Mary repeated the procedure on his partner before enervating him and saying in a sugary sweet tone, "is that all sirs?" Still decidedly dazed, the men stood up and left the house. As their vehicle (an SUV with darkly tinted windows, incredibly stereotypical for a secret agent getup) drove away, Andrew let out a breath he hadn't known he'd been holding.
"That was close."
"Yeah."
"Think it has something to do with Laura?"
"Probably."
"Think she's safe?"
"Safe enough. Want me to owl Andi for the next time they show up?"
"Definitely."
Laura’s parents get kidnapped during the fourth year summer; we discover this because Douglas apparates/is sent to her.
The gang had claimed one of the tables next to Block Six's waterfall and were planning out strategies for the Hunt/in the midst of a study session when there was a loud crack and Otto's head exploded in pain. As other students looked around for the source of what sounded like a gunshot, saw the group, and deliberately looked elsewhere, Laura put her arms around the (thankfully not crying) toddler that had appeared in her lap. Otto dug around in his bag for asprin.
"Who's the kid?"
"My little brother, I think, but - apparition with accidental magic is extremely rare, and never more than a few meters." Laura, features unusually pale, started trembling. "I think we need to talk to Dr. Nero."
after that... lots of chaos, I think.
The Glasshouse has Death Eater/Grindelwald connections.
Nero’s probably still in denial about magic.
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bltngames · 5 years
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Rant: The Nightmare of Steam Input
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It’s hardly a surprise these days that something built by Valve Software is maybe not the most solid, well-thought-out decision anyone’s ever had. When it comes to Steam, it can sometimes feel like a cobbled together set of half-finished features. Remember Steam Music, when they were going to implement a way to listen to custom music during gameplay? Remember when they used to sell movies? Or what the “Steam Machines” initiative, when Valve was going to partner with different hardware manufacturers to sell pre-built PCs, likely in a move that was meant to mimic to how Google handles their Android phones?
And then there’s the Steam Controller, built on the back of the “Steam Input” API. Though the controller floundred, Steam Input ended up being far more interesting. The theory: plug any controller in to Steam and it just works. Does the game ask for an Xbox controller, even though you aren't using one? Steam Input will take care of that. Does the game not even support controllers at all? Steam Input can make that work, too. And for games that interface with the Steam Input technology directly, a whole host of new and exciting features get made available, like binding specific actions to a Playstation 4 controller’s touchpad, or a Nintendo controller’s motion control.
On paper, it sounds great. But like a growing number of ideas out of Valve, in practice, it’s been kind of a nightmare.  
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The most recent example of this has been the launch of No Man’s Sky BEYOND, billed as one of the biggest content updates that game has ever seen. Previous PC builds of No Man’s Sky relied on basic, functional Xbox controller support. It operated very similar to the original Playstation-4-exclusive console game, but now on an Xbox controller. If you used anything besides an Xbox controller on PC, Steam Input’s base function would kick in, which in my case meant my Playstation Dualshock 4 controller would be seen as (and function identically to) an Xbox controller with zero fuss. It worked flawlessly.
With the release of BEYOND, No Man’s Sky has transitioned into using Steam Input to its fullest extent. No longer does it pretend you’ve got an Xbox controller connected, it now attempts to support the features of your controller directly. In theory, this should mean far better and more robust controller support!
Except that, as of this writing, it doesn’t work. It doesn’t work for Playstation controllers, it barely works for Xbox controllers, and it even seems to have mucked up keyboard support for some. Thanks to Steam Input, the game is now more or less unplayable in many different configurations.
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In my personal experience, this manifests itself by only some of my Dualshock 4 buttons working, and only working some of the time. The power of Steam Input means developers can insert hooks to completely remap all your controller buttons depending on the context. So, for example, let’s say you’re playing a game like Grand Theft Auto. If that game supports Steam Input, the developer could set it up so you could change your entire button layout depending on whether you were walking around or driving a car. They could even set it up so you could have different buttons depending on whether you were driving a car, motorcycle, boat or airplane.
This is what No Man’s Sky now does, with half a dozen different contextual button layouts for flying your ship, exploring on foot, using certain weapons, organizing inventory, dealing with merchants, and more. While cool in theory, it’s a little overwhelming to actually consider customizing your controls. You must now dig deep and decipher what button you want to change in which context, and that’s assuming everything is working as intended.
In practice, this currently means some controller functionality only works when certain menus are visible. For example, I can only aim with the right stick while the build menu is up. Close that screen and my view instantly freezes. As I said earlier, it’s more or less unplayable.
To a certain degree I forgive the developers of No Man’s Sky (Hello Games) for this. Signs do point to something changing behind the scenes within Steam Input recently. Other, older games have been silently breaking in the last few weeks. The 2012 PC port of Sonic Adventure 2 suddenly asked me to reboot the game after informing me that my controller type had changed, and I had to remap all of my inputs in Gas Guzzlers Extreme after it, too, detected a change in Steam Input’s Xbox controller support (all its buttons had to be rebound to a “new controller” after the “old one” stopped working, despite no hardware change on my end).
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It’s possible that a version of No Man’s Sky from a week or two ago worked fine with Steam Input, and now a change on Valve’s end of things has thrown everything into disarray. It's equally likely a patch will fix things up sooner rather than later (maybe even by the time this post goes up).
That excuse does not apply to a game like American Truck Simulator, however. It’s a story similar to No Man’s Sky, except while I expect No Man’s Sky is trying to use Steam Input to approximate the original controller setup (just with more depth to what buttons you remap), American Truck Simulator inexplicably did the opposite of that.
The game launched with Xbox controller support, meaning you could effectively use any controller with the game via Steam Input’s basic functionality. Sometime around the end of 2018 that changed, with SCS Software ditching Xbox support in favor of direct Steam Input support. But it’s how they did this that ended up so baffling.
Instead of updating their controller support to use Steam Input, they seemingly stripped all controller support from the game entirely, busting American Truck Simulator back down to basic keyboard controls. Then, using Steam Input, they created a custom controller configuration that translated to those keyboard keys to controller buttons. In other words, let's say the "F" key on your keyboard handles turning on your headlights. Using Steam Input, SCS Software made it so hitting the controller's X button would activate the F key on the keyboard, thus toggling the headlights. In theory, this is great, because you can use both the keyboard and the controller at the same time without changing any settings.
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But it also meant that when I put down American Truck Simulator mid-2017, how the game controlled changed (relatively) overnight. Booting it back up a year later, all my buttons did something completely different through no fault of my own, and it took a lot of detective work to figure out why. I had to spend more than an hour untangling this new mess and putting everything back the way I originally had it. By the time I was done, I was too fed up to actually play American Truck Simulator.
Next, let’s talk about the exciting new features afforded by Steam Input. Though fully-featured official drivers for Playstation and Nintendo controllers are hard to come by on the PC, Steam Input enables features like the Dualshock 4’s gyroscope, allowing developers to make games with motion control in ways that would have been impossible. A whole new era of innovative uses of tilting your controller could begin!
Has anyone done anything like that? Nope, not really. Unless you count VR, but that's mostly with VR-specific controllers.
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Instead, we get developers going rogue, implementing gyroscope functionality where none existed. Take Ubisoft’s Grow Home. Developed as a tech demo for a procedural climbing system, Ubisoft spun Grow Home off into a sort of big-budget indie game. You play as a charming red robot named B.U.D. as he ascends his way up a gigantic alien tree. At the very top of the tree sits his spaceship, and his central computer, M.O.M.
Grow Home uses Steam Input and plugs in to the Dualshock 4’s gyroscope, nauseatingly giving you the ability to control the game’s camera by tilting your controller. It doesn’t tell you this, you just start the game with B.U.D. staring at the floor, gently twitching from your slightest movement. What makes this crazy is the fact that if you were to play Grow Home on an actual Playstation 4 console, this gyroscope camera feature is not present. Same controller, same game, but for some reason Ubisoft secretly gave the PC version gyroscope features thanks to Steam Input.
The exact same thing happened with Croteam’s The Talos Principle. Here’s a first-person puzzle game about redirecting laser beams to unlock doors, available on just about every platform that will take it. On a Playstation 4 console, it controls like any other standard first-person shooter -- left stick moves, right stick aims. Connect your Playstation 4 Dualshock to your PC and play The Talos Principle on Steam, and suddenly you have all-new gyroscope aiming for no logical reason, necessitating a dive into the game’s settings so it can be turned off.
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This could perhaps be explained by the environment Valve has cultivated on Steam. On a console, there’s a laborious, and sometimes even expensive “certification” process games must go through to release. Additional rounds of certification is required to issue updates and patches. Usually, platform holders require games to meet certain standards of functionality as to avoid driving away potential customers and spoiling the marketplace for everyone else.
On Steam, that all gets thrown out the window. For a small, one-time submission fee, anyone can publish (almost) anything on Steam and update it instantly, for free, forever. Any whim you have can be instantly realized for zero cost other than the time it takes to implement. New gyroscope controls? Sure, why not! Who’s going to tell you no? Definitely not Valve, that’s for sure.
This lead to the worst of all worlds. I suffer from occasional flare-ups of carpal tunnel syndrome thanks to art-related pursuits. One night a few months ago I found myself with enough discomfort in my hand that I tried playing Valve’s own Left 4 Dead 2 with a controller. Besides launching on PC, Left 4 Dead 2 had console ports on the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3. As such, the PC version originally received standard Xbox controller support. And more than once, I’d fallen back on playing L4D2 with a controller for any number of reasons. It wasn’t as accurate as using a keyboard and mouse, but in a pinch it was convenient, functional and comfortable.
Booting up Left 4 Dead 2 in 2019 and grabbing my controller, just like with American Truck Simulator, I was met with a top-to-bottom control system rewrite made to accommodate Valve ditching Xbox support and replacing it with Steam Input. This meant that none of my buttons were the same anymore.
And, just like with Grow Home and The Talos Principle, suddenly Left 4 Dead 2 also had completely unnecessary (and frankly, hyper-sensitive) gyroscope aiming bolted on over the top, even though I didn’t need or want it. It was like I stepped on to an alien planet.
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Worse yet, this new Steam Input configuration was actually a step back from the previous Xbox controller config.
Left 4 Dead 2 was old enough that it was an early game to feature emotes on a radial wheel chosen using the analog stick. This made it easy to communicate with teammates even if you didn’t have a headset for voice chat. To some degree, it was made specifically for a controller. In Valve’s new, official Steam Input controller config for L4D2, the option to show these chat shortcuts was removed entirely. So not only were all my buttons different, but some old functionality was now gone. Why? Why not, said Valve. After all, nobody is going to stop them.
To butcher a quote from Jurassic Park’s Ian Malcolm, just because you could, doesn’t mean you should.
The solution to this is the same solution Valve has for everything they do nowadays. Steam Input is not a closed system. You can, if you so choose, connect to an online database where users share their own custom controller configurations. In Valve's eyes, the “Free Market” solves all problems, even problems Valve makes for themselves.
Assuming your needs match the free market, anyway. You may spend just as long browsing and testing other people’s Steam Input configs as it would take you to dig into the settings and fix it yourself. Either way, it’s an unwanted distraction.
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The greatest benefit of Microsoft standardizing PC game controllers via the Xbox 360 was that you simply plugged in the controller and it worked. No mapping buttons, no detecting analog stick ranges, no fiddling with any of the options menus. The game in question simply said, “I know what this is!” and you were ready to go. The only problem with that was it only applied to Xbox controllers, a problem Steam originally solved. Thanks to Steam, every controller was functionally an Xbox controller!
But as is increasingly the case, Valve’s aspirations to be more than simply a library of PC games outstripped their ability to control the quality of the input or output. They fixed a very important problem, but were so determined to prove their own intelligence that we've landed right back where we started: forever tinkering with options menus when we could just be playing video games like we wanted.
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dercolaris · 3 years
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Maybe
Quite a long story compared to my other stuff. Round about 8800 words. Uff. Beside that I don't really want to say much about it - just read it. The main characters are Selina and Jonathan, but you should get an idea yourself of ​​the relationship between them in the story.
Thanks for double-checking the story, @shin-arei!
Have fun!
The black-haired woman stretched herself extensively in the cool air and gave a small moan when she finally stood on the roof of the old museum building. Gotham lay sleepy under a thin layer of snow, the few flickering lanterns cast lulling light on the deserted, extremely dark streets. It was a breathtaking sight. One of few that Selina Kyle would never get enough of. She closed her eyes and listened into the sleeping heart of her home city. This silence in the night was so unusually beautiful. Her lungs took a deep breath before looking for a way to quietly exit the roof. Selina grabbed her leather whip, let it hiss at a nearby billboard, and shimmy around the trusty tool on a neighbouring balcony. After landing safely, her gaze fell on the worn leather material in her hands. The years in Gotham didn’t leave one without a trace - neither objects nor people. Catwoman sank into a thick web of thoughts for a brief moment. Yes, the time had changed the hard underground life even more in the last months. How much Selina wished for the simple days of her youth, when it was enough to just care for food and shelter everyday. A time in which there was no crazy Joker, who murdered people at random and also no Penguin who had subverted all organizations, whether state or private, and thus in fact became the mayor of the city. Rival families with Mafia-like structures offered more leeway than a single ruler of the streets. At that moment Selina rebuked herself and pushed her googles onto her forehead. It wasn't as if it wasn't already difficult to survive in Gotham then, just the number of crazy people had increased dramatically in recent years. The thief shook her head slightly and turned to face the fire escape. She slid down elegantly, landing safely on the floor like a cat. Her whip found its way back into the holder on the belt. A loud roar of sirens darted past the dark alley towards the central bank. The black-haired woman watched the common spectacle with a smile, counted the fifteen police cars in total and looked up at the sky. As if on command, the light signal appeared in the shape of a bat in the grey, milky clouds above her. Selina couldn't help but chuckle slightly. She breathed a kiss on her hand and whispered softly: "Good luck hunting down the bad guys, my Dark Knight."
There were always rumours that she was very close to Batman, actually to the point that some rogues strongly believed they would share a bed at night and having a strange romantic love affair. That wasn't entirely true, even if Catwoman couldn't deny the millionaire's aura. Still, Gotham's self-proclaimed playboy wasn't interesting enough for her. Bruce simply wasn't a challenge. Peace, joy and rainbows was certainly nice every now and then, but the black-haired woman would never get used to the perfect wife and mother role. This thought clashed like a train without brakes into the otherwise homogeneous image of a possible permanent partnership. When the sirens had died down in the distance, the thief ventured out of the dark alley. Her break-in had gone unnoticed so far, and since the law enforcement officials were demonstrably busy with more important things, she would get away with no chase tonight. How boring. Selina walked in the opposite direction of the central bank, trying to get to the next street corner as quickly as possible. Her bag with the change of clothes was hidden in the ladies' room at the dingy Jack's Coffee fast food place. With luck, no one had suspected anything. Catwoman immediately smirked at her unfounded paranoia. It was known that women usually avoided the dirty take-away restaurant and there were practically no women on the streets of the city during the night time hours anyway. If her clothes were safe somewhere it was in the shabby loo at Jack's. A little shiver ran down the thief's back. This calmness was deceptive. Deceptive and at the same time absolutely beautiful. The snow fell slowly from the sky like a white veil. Catwoman did a little pirouette, chuckled happily and sucked the pure, icy air deep into her lungs. During the day a wild pack of stressed people raged across the paths, but now the roads belonged only to her. Like a proud cat in the night.
The black-haired woman passed some unknown shops with even more unknown names and stopped in front of a pane of glass. The cold steamed up the filthy window, but behind it her eyes caught some very old-fashioned clothes. Washed out shirts, dusty ties, turtle necks in stray colours. Her eyes slid to the name of the shop. "To the old tailor," her lips mumbled softly, followed by an ironic-sounding snort, “hmpf, very suitable, don't you think?" The thief continued on her way, turned left at the street corner and reached the filthy snack bar. When she pushed open the double door, the stench of alcohol, cheap perfume and sweet cigar smoke came towards her. Selina turned away, suppressing her cough. Only when her nose got used to the smells did she dare to enter. The guests' eyes were fixed on her. A bunch of older, failed men who spent their retirement years drinking their brains away. Catwoman felt no pity for these existences. The black-haired woman had known most of them since her messed up childhood and there was no one there who did not deserve to sit here at this filthy bar in one way or another. With this ulterior motive, she walked steadfastly through the rows of tables and passed the door to the women's toilets. The swirling light from the white neon tube completed a picture of pure disgust. The two washbasins lay in ruins on the smeared floor tiles, three of the four toilet doors had been torn from their hinges and the brownish green broth that rose from the bowls suggested that cleaning, or rather maintenance, had been on the to-do list for several years. The thief pushed open the remaining door with a shiver and locked it behind her. She wasn't particularly demanding when it came to her short-term hideaway, but she had a certain standard to consider this environment as totally unworthy.
The next opportunity to store her belongings would have been in Ivy's small apartment, but that shouldn't been possible for the next hundred years. A silly dispute between them had escalated to such an extent that, in blind anger at the stubborn botanist, she had turned one of her priceless new plants into compost. It was only through persuasion from Harley that she had gotten away with her life again. Selina sighed softly and pulled the tight leather suit from her body. The black-haired woman was infinitely grateful to the lively woman for her constant attempts to mediate between the botanist and her. Even with all nine cat lives, she would probably be dead without Harley by now. She and Ivy had a love-hate relationship that alternated between the two extremes. If they loved each other, no words were needed to understand what the other wanted. If they hated each other, the thief felt to stand in front of an overpowering praying mantis which was damn hungry and would like to eat her in one piece. She secretly admired Harley for the way she knew how to curb her girlfriend's temper. A life with Poison Ivy was just as dangerous as a relationship with a deranged clown. When Selina was finally in her dark jeans, greyish hoodie and black winter jacket, the pent-up tension of the evening fell literally away from her. Her leather outfit disappeared into the backpack, followed by her googles, gloves and, of course, her stolen goods. A quick glance at the smartphone immediately made her smile. “Selina, I know you broke into the National Museum tonight. Be glad Scarface is keeping all the police and me busy. Bring the stolen items to police headquarters by tomorrow night and we'll forget about the whole thing – Bruce.” She chuckled softly and slipped the cell phone into her pocket. The never ending game of cat and mouse with Batman made stealing so attractive and exciting.
She shouldered her backpack, opened the lock on the toilet and left the place of horror with quick steps. As the black-haired woman slipped through the snack bar, the waitress at the counter pulled loudly accumulated secretions up her nose, only to spit it out in a bucket next to the deep fryer. Stifling an emerging nausea, Catwoman pushed open the double doors with bated breath. The cool, fresh air felt like relief. A few liberating breaths later, Selina looked up again at the cloudy sky. It was still snowing incessantly. For a brief moment the thief thought about returning to her old apartment, but decided against it and turned towards the docks. The footprints were quickly covered with new snow. Her eyes examined the streets that slowly disappeared under the white ceiling. Far from the main road, civilization seemed to have come to a complete standstill. A few lights were still burning in the small windows of the skyscrapers, but the number was dwindling and the amount of functioning lanterns decreased with every new bend in the remote corners of Gotham. Selina stopped suddenly. She looked into the empty streets of the city and began to wonder whether her decision to go to him was the right one. After the violent argument with Ivy, the thief had actually sworn not to enter into a relationship, whether as a partner or purely for business. So how did it come that the black-haired woman got in touch with a permanent resident of Arkham Asylum, who was at least as ruthless and destructive as the infamous Joker himself? Her thoughts were wandering again to the night five weeks ago in the sewer system, when she tried to sneak into the town hall unnoticed. It was her plan to put a little warning on the mayor's desk. The good, old man was corrupt, but threats could put him back on the right track easily. At least a threatened disclosure of his involvement in several child trafficking cases often had the desired effect. That evening, however, something went terribly wrong. Selina had basically never had anything to do with Waylon Jones alias Killer Croc before, which the thief almost made for the mutated monster's dinner that night...
She waded slowly through the filthy waist-high water of the half-tubes. The constant dripping in the seemingly endless corridors of the sewer system made her shudder. entering buildings like this was by no means her style, but in turbulent times it was necessary to cover uncomfortable journeys. The ends justified the means. Catwoman grabbed one of the wooden beams on the barricade in front of her and jumped with a little swing onto the dry wooden panel on the other side. The bars on the apparent exits completed a gloomy picture that could create claustrophobic feelings in stray souls. Anyone who was not familiar with the constantly winding corridors was doomed to certain death. Selina sighed softly and looked at her GPS device. The town hall was not far away. Hopefully. The thief stretched a little when she suddenly heard a distant growl. Her head tilted to one side, her body tensed. She listened closely into the corridors, but could not make out any source of noise through the high ceilings and elongated halls. She had known from the beginning that she was not alone in these tubes. There were many homeless people who scolded these aisles of their home. Still, the sound had certainly not been human. Selina took a deep breath and dismissed it as a kind of imagination. The mind could play bad tricks on you if it was under-challenged by insufficient stimuli. Unfortunately, the bare, grey walls offered little to no change. Nevertheless, the black-haired woman got a queasy feeling. An uncomfortably oppressive feeling that she couldn't judge. More worried than she wanted to admit, Catwoman decided to reach her destination as quickly as possible and to choose a different route for the way back. She slipped across the planks with skilful steps.
After a good six hundred meters, the growl reached her ears again, followed by a faint bubbling. This time, however, the sounds were much closer than before. She paused and turned on her own axis. Selina tried hard to make out the source, her eyes sliding hastily into the six corridors that branched off from her position. Disorientation. These pipes were not her territory and there was something in this stinking water that most likely moved here every day, if not lived here. At that moment the thief had frozen into a pillar of salt. She was unsure how to proceed now. A slight tremor under her feet made the decision for her. The shock grew stronger and with a glance to the right, Catwoman recognized the lizard-like scales that snaked towards her with unimaginable speed. Her eyes widened even more. Only a second later did she sprint towards the nearest platform and hit her claws in the crumbling concrete to bridge the too great distance. Behind her, the wood was cut into thousands of small pieces. Selina landed on a swaying plank and tried to control her breath. The bubbling got louder again. The body in the water was directly on its way to her again after realizing that there was no one on the last platform. The black-haired woman looked at her gloves and jumped sideways against the concrete wall in time, when the terrible sound of wood bursting through the hallways again echoed. Her claws dug deep into the grey wall. "Ah, little kitten, come down to play!" The booming, deep voice below made her shudder. A reptile rose from the water, there was no other way to describe this creature. The red eyes sparkled menacingly, the nostrils snorted powerfully. It growled, laughing out loud, and spat amused: “Don't make it so difficult for yourself, dinner! Your death will be quick if you come down now, I promise!” The creature slowly built itself up to its full size and suddenly Catwoman was aware that this thing could grab her directly from the wall with one movement. She jumped a few inches higher and began to flee forward.
“You silly humans are all the same!”, thundered the crocodile before it hurried unexpectedly fast after her. Selina tried hard to get a head start on the creature, but the concrete was not a preferred material for moving quickly. Too daring a jump made this fact clear to her. With too much swing, her claws hit the ceiling on her left foot and she completely lost her footing. The porous mixture crumbled into the dirty water with a splash. The thief was holding on to the ceiling, looking for a firmer place for her foot. The creature below seemed to be watching her with pure amusement. As if to confirm, it laughed deeply and growled happily: “I sense your fear, kitten. Just keep it up, yeah? I like to chase my dinner!” Inferior. At that moment, Selina felt inferior to her enemy. A feeling she hated profoundly. She clenched her teeth and looked ahead. Nobody was superior to her! A narrowing, possibly for a previously planned ventilation shaft, was a good four hundred meters in front of her in the wall. This thing would certainly not fit into it. The black-haired woman took a few deep breaths and planned her route with practised eye. Targeted steps and jumps. One after another. Selina let out a low scream and crawled towards the opening with a few jumps. The water under her splashed up to the ceiling. She breathed quickly. It would be a very close call, but the thief had a slight head start. The creature struck her with its paw, caught her lightly on the thigh, but then fell sideways into the water. A sharp pain pierced her body, but she couldn't give in now. Taking advantage of the monster's slip, Catwoman hurried into the opening and fell backward onto the slippery concrete floor. She slid a few meters back into the corridor. Just in time when the scaly claw reached into the narrowing, searching for its prey. The claw scratched the floor a few times, but then pulled back. The crocodile's ugly face appeared, the red eyes glowing with lust for murder. It hissed softly: “Don't feel too safe, pussy cat. You are in my territory now!” A loud splash told her that the thing must have retreated back into the water. She then dropped her head on the floor and groaned in pain.
A look at the thigh revealed a superficial but heavily bleeding scratch wound. Selina swallowed hard, sat up a little and reached into her belt pouch at the hip. Her shaky fingers found the bandages. After a few attempts, the black-haired woman managed to apply a pressure bandage on the injury. The thief tried to calm her breath and clenched her teeth tightly. She had just closed her eyes for a second when the low growl came from very close behind her. In shock, Catwoman turned her gaze backwards, only to stare into the grinning face of the monster - a few inches in front of her. The narrowing was just a small passage to another tunnel system! Selina tried to flee, but the inhumanly strong paw closed like a vice around her torso and gradually choked her breath. The thing laughed triumphantly: “I have you now, small kitten! Surprise, surprise. Who would have thought? And now I'll break every single bone of you before I eat you whole! Any last words, pussy cat?” The crocodile slowly pulled her out of the shaft, unimpressed by her attempts to cling to the firmament with her claws. Selina lost her last grip and screamed out loud as she fell backwards into the dirty water. “No, it can't end like this!”, she thought with fear. Her body gasped for air, the disorientation in the water made her almost panic. The thief finally penetrated the surface of the water with her head and found herself facing the ugly monster. Suddenly her body was indescribably cold. "Your fear smells so good, kitten!", purred the monster contentedly, licking its pointy teeth. It continued to hold her in the tightening grip. Selina thought she was already hearing the breaking of her ribs when the monster suddenly stopped. The nostrils quivered, apparently sensing something new in the area. A quiet male voice confirmed the crocodile's suspicion: “Waylon Jones, where are your manners? Didn't the therapy in Arkham do anything for you?” The creature wanted to turn around at the voice, when a sharp scythe pierced his shoulder. The monster spat a loud, deep scream and loosened its grip on Catwoman. The blade twisted a few times in the solid flesh until the creature let go of its victim and plunged back into the water. It was visibly withdrawn, a trail of blood in the dirty broth followed his retreat. The ugly face appeared once again briefly, snorted angrily under pain: "You will regret that, Doc!" Then it was gone.
Selina was breathing a little quieter than before, briefly closed her eyes before turning to the man behind her. The thief suddenly turned pale. She recognized the figure with the gas mask, the hemp rope around his neck and the worn, dirty clothes. Scarecrow. The silence fell between them. Apart from the dripping of the water and the occasional puff of breath from the filters of the gas mask, nothing could be heard. Only after a few seconds did the man grasp the hem of the mask in order to pull it from his face in one flowing movement. He attached it to his burlap sack, walked slowly over to Catwoman and put his arms around her torso. Selina reacted instinctively. She scratched his thin arm once with her claws and hissed. A hand went tight around her throat, the needles on the gloves hovering only millimetres above her skin. His suddenly melodious voice laughed harshly: "Do that again and I'll throw you back to Croc! Or no, no, no, no. I just skin you, little kitten, and sell your fur to the highest bidder. Or just keep it to me and sew a mask from this rare material! " He gave a hysterical laugh when a sudden jerk shot through his body. The expression in the man's eyes had suddenly changed, the laughter had abruptly stopped. "I or rather we try to help you, Catwoman, even if Scarecrow might not have given you that impression." Selina looked at him in shock, which prompted him to continue calmly: "Now listen carefully to me, Miss Kyle. Waylon will not take long to come back, his flesh heals by itself after all. He is not a... ", the man paused briefly, thought a second about his next words and then continued," ... man, that licks his wounds and leaving such incidents without retaliation. We have to get out of here. Immediately. What you do afterwards is up to you, but we're in serious danger right now.” The thief held her sore thigh and gasped softly. The alarm bells were ringing louder than ever in her head. The man suddenly held out his hand to her, the blue eyes in the sunken eye sockets fixed on her. Selina swallowed chunks of a large lump in her throat and hesitantly took hold of the cold fingers of her counterpart. A miniature smile crept on the pale face of the former psychiatrist.
A small grin curled up in the corner of the thief's mouth. The doctor had taken care of the scratch wound, but kept his word after the treatment. The black-haired woman had been free to go. Following her nature as a cat, she went straight back to the heart of the city to resume her normal life. Selina looked down at the snow-covered street and stopped on one of the many manhole cover. Hot air came out of it, froze instantly in the cold. She would avoid the sewer system for the next thousand years. Selina smiled mischievously as she pressed some snow into the small holes in the lid with her feet. The scratch had healed pretty well in the meantime, but an uncomfortable drawing spread as soon as she came near the underground passages. A terrifying experience. It was only after the second visit to Jonathan that Selina really understood why he had helped her in the first place. The former doctor was known to be obsessed with fear, even if he could no longer feel fear himself. That is why he studied all the more the reactions triggered by fear in other living beings and that evening it was a unique field research for him. Without his assistance he could watch the thief in a moment of absolute panic, fear and despair. After this realization, Selina had given him a hurtful slap in the face. There was then five days of silence between them, until Jonathan broke the ice and apologized to her in a very awkward-sounding text message via SMS. The black-haired woman and Harley had been horribly amused at the fact that he was actually still using conventional methods like texting. The thief smiled happily when the memories of the evening with the Harlequin came up. At the same time, however, the question arose again, why she actually continued to visit the sinister doctor since the incident. The first time she had at least had the excuse of a follow-up examination. In the meantime, however, there have been five more meetings with the former psychiatrist, which admittedly had little to do with the incident. Harley's lively voice still echoed in her ears: “What is wrong about visiting John? You can just admit it, Kitty – you somehow like him."
She had, of course, vehemently denied this absurd claim. Jonathan? No thanks, never. She was maybe a bit desperate when it came to men, as none came close to her level, but it wasn't that bad. Inwardly, however, her mind often began to play the same game that she had with Bruce. "What speaks in favour of you liking him and what speaks against it?" "What are the advantages and disadvantages of getting involved with Scarecrow?" She admonished herself in such moments not to let it get that far to think about it . Anyway, Jonathan was too absorbed in his work. Selina hesitated and cursed inwardly. It could have been relative to the black-haired woman whether the smart doctor could find time for her in a probably toxic relationship. It just wasn't up for discussion – or was it? Selina pulled the hood a little lower over her face and crossed the street to the docks. The port area has been a fairground for the underground elite for ages. An image, that this district would probably never get rid of. She shivered heavily and her fingers found their way into the pockets of her winter jacket. It felt twice colder by the water. The wind swept around the little fishermen's houses with a hard hand, covering them with powdery snow. The thief only growled softly when another wind caught her and chilled her cheeks. With quick steps she looked for the twenty-fifth warehouse, which was much easier to find without a damn snowstorm. Now she was standing in front of this door again. An inconspicuous, somewhat sunken wooden door in the middle of nowhere, already attacked by the salt in the sea air. The cast iron handle had become brittle, the rust had eaten around the handle. The hinges were in no better condition. Selina bit her lower lip and made a fist with her right hand. What was she doing here again? "Visiting a friend," she muttered to herself, "you are visiting a friend." She knocked twice on the door. Footsteps, barely audible to other people, moved toward the entrance, followed by the click of a few locks. The door slid open slowly and two icy blue eyes looked at her first sceptically, but then almost relaxed.
As usual, Jonathan didn't say a word, just stepped aside to let his visitor in. Selina nodded to him with a smile, entered quickly without bothering to remove her shoes on the doormat. His hiding place was one of the cleanest of the rogues she knew, but still not particularly inviting and as long as he didn't complain, she would of course get her way. As expected of her, Jonathan said nothing about it this time either. He went to the table with a variety of liquors and looked at her expectantly. "A sherry, my dear." The thief sat down in one of the two comfortable, if somewhat antiquated, red armchairs. Visiting a friend? Visiting an accomplice? Visiting a partner? Selina smiled mysteriously and rested her chin on her hand. Maybe. Time passed incredibly quickly in Jonathan Crane's presence. Selina watched the man across from her carefully. There was a certain exhaustion in his eyes, the dark circles below them supported the assumption that he had not slept enough in the past few weeks. He leaned tiredly in the upholstery of the armchair, his head tucked back. His long fingers were cramped around the already empty whiskey glass. Jonathan had talked roughly about his work - an endless chain of complicated formulas and hypotheses on the subject of fear. The thief smiled and sipped her sherry. The professor of phobias dealt with fears. How very surprising. The black-haired woman began to wave the liquor in her hand when she whispered softly: "May I ask you a question, my dear?" Her razor-sharp, green eyes fixed him with a trace of curiosity. The curiosity of a cat. She didn't wait for an answer from him and added, smiling: “Why are you doing all this? All this effort, the constant trouble with the law and especially Batman. You are a seasoned man. Academics with distinction and over twenty years of practical experience. What is all this for, Jonathan? What makes an intelligent, distinguished man like you put his perfect, orderly life at risk?"
His slim body winced a little at the question. Selina could hear a low sigh. The older man ran a hand through his thin brown hair, but remained silent. Catwoman raised an eyebrow, finished the sherry with two more sips, and placed the glass on the massive side table. The seconds stretched out into minutes. The stinging of the alcohol in her throat was already ebbing when Jonathan turned his sunken face to her and said in an alarming calm voice: "I'm ready to answer, Miss Kyle, but only on the premise that we will play a game of Backgammon while we talk." A smile crept onto her lips as she slowly nodded. The former psychiatrist then pushed himself out of the chair with a groan and stepped into an adjoining room of his hiding place. Selina watched him go, almost amused. The thief quickly understood how to have a proper conversation with the initially strange doctor. Anyone who didn't know him could well suspect he was not interested in social interactions with other people. Alone the fact of his constant sifting through the counterparts brain could lead to this fallacy. Of course that wasn't true. Rather, Jonathan was concerned about a high-quality exchange of knowledge for which it required a conversation partner on an equal footing. Catwoman stretched with relish and purred softly. A pleasant scent of lavender played around her nose. The silence in the doctor's office was a welcome relief from the hustle and bustle in her apartment. Even if she loved every cat like her own child, every now and then Catwoman wanted a place just for herself. A place that offered an escape from the daily rush of the city. Selina rubbed her tense neck with her fingers. The black-haired woman knew she would never leave Gotham City. Even if the skyscrapers collapsed like a house of cards, there would be no reason to actually leave. Her lips formed a small smile. In Gotham she was born and in Gotham she would die. This city was her home and would be her graveyard, when her ninth life was gone.
The thief was torn from her thoughts when the doctor stepped back to the table with the board game. Catwoman had to get used to his quiet steps. Usually it was she who sneaked up on others. He put the board on the rough wood and opened the container for the stones. His long, bony fingers built up the basic position in a practised routine. During this activity, too, he did not say a word. Selina smiled, clasped her hands and followed his every move with her sharp, green eyes. Even with the simple construction of the game, Jonathan seemed careful. She bit her lower lip slightly. It was an act of total concentration, almost sublime, every pressure on the stones deliberately measured. In short: the epitome of the word control. Her eyes roamed leisurely over his relaxed-looking face. What a deceptive picture. Catwoman had already met his second, chaotic personality and no matter how relaxed the professor might seem now, the monster in him could in principle appear at any second. A wolf in sheep's clothing. His blue eyes suddenly looked directly into hers and he spoke calmly: "Would you like to begin this game, Miss Kyle?" His lean body took a seat in the red chair, his gaze still entwined with hers. The thief smiled and met his opals with her natural playfulness. She took the dice and let it dance skilfully through her fingers. "You're very special indeed, Jonathan Crane," she whispered softly and tilted her head to one side, running her free hand through her dark, silky hair. He snorted at the comment, leaned back a little further in the chair. Selina could almost hear the clockwork going crazy in his head. Did his mind ever rest? Probably not. The thief licked a little over her bottom lip, briefly looked disparagingly at the white dice before turning back to him: "We haven't even started to play and you already determine the rules of the game. And that's so latent that I almost didn't trip over this trap. Don't you think that's a little unfair, darling? ”A small smile crept onto Scarecrow's sunken face. A direct hit. Catwoman put a finger to her lips and nibbled lightly on the tip, then stroked the smooth top of the dice gently. She let it finally roll onto the board. While the cube was still looking for an end position, the thief whispered: “In Backgammon, the dice decide who starts. Surely you will be able to accept this small little loss of control, do you, my dear? ”A three crept into the corner of her eye as the dice came to a standstill. The black dots spoke a silent, almighty argument in the atmosphere. Selina continued to look him in the eye and patiently waited for his reaction.
After a few seconds the professor finally stirred. His leathery-looking fingers paused briefly over the dice, but then grabbed the sides and rolled it back and forth a few times with the tips of his fingers. Jonathan watched the numbers with a mysterious smile as he calmly replied: "Are you up for a little mind game, Miss Kyle? Who's in control if we play by the traditional rules of the game?” His fingers released the dice towards the board. Instead of following the geometric, rolling figure, he fixed on her green eyes again. He went on cautiously: “I've already worked through both scenarios with the offer to you in my head. Whether you have the preference or not is only marginally important to me any more at this moment. But how is it for you? Well, you have to wait until the die is cast - quite the opposite of what you could archive with agreeing with me. My generous offer would have provide a clear, unambiguous starting point and an opportunity to plan ahead. I didn't think you were so willing to take a risk, Miss Kyle, but of course I accept your decision.” Selina shuddered at his words. Once again she reminded herself that the elite of Arkham Asylum sat in front of her, even on both sides of the treatment room. The former psychiatrist was considered one of the most successful employees who had ever worked in the closed ward. A real expert on the treatment of anxiety disorders. After changing sides, he was now one of the few patients who were virtually resistant to all therapeutic approaches and who ensured regular exchanges of broken, frightened doctors. The dice had come to a rest in the meantime, but none of them dared to look down at the board. He didn't blink in direct eye contact with her and it felt like the icy blue buried a few centimetres deep in her head. Selina put her hand flat over the die, hiding the number. Finally she closed her opals and whispered muffled: "I'll start." An almost amused smile twitched in the corners of the mouth of the former psychiatrist. He then leaned back relaxed in the chair and merely nodded to her, a sign that she could begin. Selina bit her lower lip, inwardly cursed loudly at herself. The words had actually come out of her own mouth, but they felt incredibly strange in her mind. “Please don't blame yourself for this decision, Miss Kyle. After all, it wasn't yours from the very start."
Catwoman looked at the thin man, puzzled by his statement. He rested his chin on his right fist and spoke way too calmly: “I didn't give you a chance to determine yourself at this moment. And yes, I am happy to accept that it will worry you internally or even frighten you a little. Your fear of being inferior has one, pardon the pun, terrible attraction for me.” She remained silent at his remark, just looked down at the board. The thief frowned and ran her fingers over her chin. It was her turn. Selina lingered a few more seconds in her rigidity. This was more than just a simple game of Backgammon. This was a bitter fight of brains and this realization awakened the animal that had previously been slumbering in her. A game that suits her perfectly. The dice rolled on the velvety, dark green background of the playing field. Catwoman studied the initial situation and spoke softly: “What's so special about fear, Jonathan? Why the fascination with something you should actually run away from?” Her fingers set the first stones on their way to the goal. The first step was taken. Selina took a deep breath, leisurely sat up and stared into the gaunt man's eyes. Jonathan's lips were not more than a thin line on his pale face. The question seemed to preoccupy him. That gave her time to plan more moves. After what felt like an eternity, the former psychiatrist leaned forward a little, grabbed the dice and set it in motion. His fingers slowly brushed the rough wood of the edge of the field. “What's so special about fear,” repeated Jonathan dryly. He sighed barely audibly, paid only a fraction of his attention to the numbers and began to explain almost unemotionally: “Fear, Miss Kyle, drives us. Fear is the engine of our whole human existence. Do you remember the night in the sewers. What do you think gave you so much strength at that moment to master the long jumps and even ignore the horrible pain in your leg? Naturally adrenaline, the stress hormone, but let's take a step back here. Why or rather how did you signalize that a stressful situation needs to be dealt with? I have some suggestions for a possible answer here. How about the fear of being inferior or failing. Afraid to feel pain, even to be tormented by Waylon before he stops playing with his food and finally puts an end to your torture. Maybe also the fear of dying and being there alone without leaving a trace on earth. Fear is paramount here, Miss Kyle. That's why we're now sitting here and playing a game of Backgammon."
While he was explaining he had made his move, his thin hands were already resting in his lap again. He looked collected, calm, absolutely controlled. Yet the thief could feel that something was different in him as soon as they talked about fear. As cool as his voice might sound, there was something indefinable in his icy eyes. A deeply buried feeling that was looking for a way out of several turns in his calculating mind. Selina looked at his petrified face and the now cramped posture. Her thoughts slipped back to Scarecrow again. He was like a powder keg packed with broken glass and nails, ready to burst at any second. Jonathan rarely let his second personality get the better of him, but when the fuse burned the collateral damage was immense. A manifestation of overflowing feelings. The sinister desire in Scarecrow's twisted mind then oozed from the depths of his eye sockets like boiling, pitch-black tar and wetted the otherwise orderly world in indescribable chaos. In these moments he even competed with the Joker's destructiveness. The black-haired woman pulled away from his petrified face and looked down at the board. She was playing against Jonathan Crane now, not Scarecrow. A smile crawled onto her lips. As the dice rolled over the surface again, she could almost grasp the tension between them. Selina suppressed a laugh, tilted her head to the side to play with her dark hair and spoke mysteriously: “Let's not fool ourselves for a moment here, Jonathan. Where does your fascination for fear really comes from?” A faint clink made the thief startled. The former psychiatrist had put the bottle with the whiskey on the edge of his glass a little too quickly and poured himself a generous amount of the orange liquid. His thin fingers slowly turned the cap back on the bottle. The icy blue met her blazing green again.
He opened his mouth a little, paused in that position for a moment, before beginning to speak calmly: "There are things you shouldn't know, Miss Kyle. Everyone has inner demons, which they are better to carry to their graves. So I don't allow myself to answer your question for the moment and hope you're willing to accept my decision.” Catwoman gave a muffled laugh at this answer. She could hear him snorting softly, followed by the soft crumpling of the chair in which he was shifting restlessly back and forth. The speed of his reaction alone was a clear sign for Catwoman that she had scratched a sore spot on the former psychiatrist. The thief played with the round token, placed it on her chin and kept tapping her skin lightly while thinking. Was it risky to continue digging at this point with her claws? To tear open the wound further and to feel in the warm, pulsating flesh until it hit the root of all evil in his mind? The black-haired woman couldn't hide a smile any longer as she placed the stone eight squares down on the field. Today was probably not the right time for it. "We all have our little, dirty secrets, my dear”, said Catwoman as she leaned back, her fingers slowly intertwined, "and if you don't want to share yours, I'll have to live with it for better or for worse." She put one of her legs over the other, grabbed her knee in both hands and look playfully into his eyes. The thief could almost hear his heavy swallowing. The Adam's apple moved all too clearly on his throat. His fingernails kept tapping the glass briefly. Jonathan took a deep breath, took a small sip of the whiskey and began to reply: “There are some secrets that people can keep together, of course. Such secrets that can even lead to feeling closer to the person. Such as your knowledge of the Dark Knight's real identity. Of course, this requires a high level of trust between the persons.” He paid his attention to the game for a moment, set the dice in motion and put his glass on the side table.
The wind whistled through a few leaks in the window seals. Selina briefly watched the snow drifting through the fogged windows when she turned back to the professor: "Can we please leave Batman out of our conversation. It's enough for me that Harley and Pamela keep asking about his identity.” A low laugh made her puzzled. Jonathan hadn't even laughed once since she'd met him. All the more surprised was the amused expression in his opals, followed by the barely noticeable smile on his rough lips. He pushed his round glasses up his nose a little and spoke coolly: “Please don't think I'm so naive, Miss Kyle. If I had wanted to get his name out of you, I would have used different methods from the start. No, it's a good thing that I don't know anything about the Bat other than its dark form.” The former psychiatrist fiddled with the drawer of the table next to him and pulled out a small cedar box. The clasp opened with a click. He pulled out a grenadilla cigarette holder and a pack of Davidoff cigarettes. Jonathan fished one of the coffin nails from the container, put it on the holder and lit it with a match. After a long drag on the cigarette, the professor let himself slide a little deeper into the chair and pushed the smoke out of the side of his mouth. She had given him permission to smoke in her presence as long as he tried to keep the fumes away from her. Without further ado, his fingers set two pieces in motion one after the other. During his turn he spoke in an almost neutral tone: “I have not forgotten your introductory question, Miss Kyle. The motives a person has to move from thinking to action are complex, but my background was and is scientifical research. In a world like ours, in which clever minds are slowed down by laws and some unworthy creatures are given a right to life that they would otherwise not be entitled to, it is inevitable to turn against the natural order in personal development. Whether I like this fact or not is not up for debate any more."
Selina shook her head a little and rethought about this explanation twice in her head. Before she could reply, Jonathan anticipated her with a question: “You know that I live according to the quid pro quo principle when it comes to contact with other people. So allow me to ask what exactly drives you to your actions, Miss Kyle?” He took another deep drag on the coffin nail and let the ashes fall into the designated ashtray on the table. The thief gave a small smile. This question was probably unavoidable. She took the dice securely in her hand, weighed it around a bit and after a few seconds of reflection replied drily: "I think a wild mixture of many factors." Her fingers released the cube and looked for her glass. The sherry stung in her throat. Selina licked her bottom lip and continued softly: “For one thing, I want to survive in Gotham and let's be honest: stealing is a very lucrative business. What I steal together in one evening, others don't even earn in the whole year. On the other hand, I can also do something good for the people of the lower classes. I've lived on the street myself long enough and know how rough times have become. Sharing the money or food with them makes me feel good.” She felt his eyes carefully watching her speak. He seemed to perceive every word and analyse it deeply. The former psychiatrist put the cigarette holder down on the ashtray, took his glass and slowly swirled the whiskey in the dim light. He looked lost in thought into the liquid. "We both move on a very narrow line, Miss Kyle", said Jonathan when he looked slowly up. "I admit that our moral concepts may differ, but both lead us to turning against the law or staying in its grey areas."
Catwoman clicked her tongue irritated. The black-haired woman put her head sideways in her hand and kept eye contact with the doctor. Moral. A word that was barely worth a penny in Gotham as it seemed to her. The thief was all the more astonished at the use of the word from the mouth of a reckless rogue, who was considered extremely unscrupulous and who had probably not missed any atrocity in his long underground career. She wrapped her black hair around her index finger when she replied calmly: “What moral concept, my dear? Don't get me wrong, but the past few months you haven't exactly covered yourself with fame. Many have scruples about working with Joker, but it doesn't seem to be a huge problem for you. You actually let yourself be bought by the entire underground and work for the side that can currently pay the most money. Where's the morale there, Jonathan?” The wind briefly took hold of the fire in the fireplace. The flames hit the air wildly. It was to be seen who would get burned in this fight. Selina got up from the chair and stretched a little. She needed some movement. The warmth of the room mingled with the heat of the alcohol in her blood.
His voice fell almost gently in her ears: “It's true. I work for whoever can pay me the best. I worked a long time for Falcone, three weeks later for Maroni and in the end I attacked them both with Joker. Still, I have a moral codex, Miss Kyle.” She heard him get up and slowly walk towards her. Catwoman didn't turn to him. A cold breath on the back of her neck signalled that he had to stand right behind her. He continued with his low and nearly whispering voice: “I work for everyone, but not with everyone. You steal to collect the money for your own ends. I am offering my services to do basically the same thing. I won't deny it: I've worked for humans, or rather monsters, where any normal mortal would have likely fled. It doesn't fill me with pride or disgust when I look back on it, but my research literally devours money. On the other hand, I choose my work partners very carefully. I would never work with someone who does not share my moral standards. My moral to fight for a better world in the spirit of scientifically research. A world without fears. Mister Tetch shares a passion for the human, fragile psyche and the ways to break it in the hope of extracting new therapeutic approaches from it. With Mister Nygma I share an interest in the battle of brains, the trial of strength on an intellectual level and the fight against the neglect of the intellectual elite. I would take Jervis and Edward to fight at my side at any time and at the same time accept the risk of working on their goals for them free of any charge."
Selina sighed softly. She was still in the process of morally putting herself above him and this explanation didn't change that fact either. The thief turned to him and looked into his blue eyes, looking for a trace of remorse. The icy cold inside confirmed her suspicions. She whispered softly in his direction: “You could use your talent for so many good things, Jonathan. Like in the night you saved me.” The black-haired woman placed her fingers lovingly on his thin cheek and tenderly caressed the frozen-looking skin. The thief caught herself thinking of worn leather by the light touch. He did not withdraw from her, lingered quietly in front of her and opened his mouth to say something. Not a word came out, just a soft sigh. Selina slowly ran her fingertips over his clearly palpable cheekbones. Her voice was just a breath: “Where is this man, John? Where is the doctor who took such good care of my wound? Where is the psychologist who had spoken to me sensitively when I got out of the sewer, just steps away to have a panic attack?” The former psychiatrist continued to look into her eyes, his glasses slowly slipping off his nose again. He cleared his throat, pushed the thin metal up between the thin frame and spoke for the first time that evening with a hint of uncertainty: “He's here, Miss Kyle, right next to a monster. We both inhabit this head with a well-functioning brain and yet we use it very differently. Where I do good, he does bad. Where I heal, he hurts. Where I calm down, he fires up. Whenever I try to return to normal, he seeks out the depths of this world. It is pointless to look for a place for me in this society."
The thief stopped her movements and studied his face. A look of sadness crossed his frozen features. The black-haired woman let her free hand fall to his fingers, slowly cradling them. At that moment she recognized a certain disorientation in his doing, a buried desire to get back on a solid, bright path and escape his greatest fear. Selina put her hand flat on his cheek and warmed the cool skin. Loneliness. She took another deep breath and spoke softly to him: “Everyone has their place in society and contributes to it. We can only choose whether our contribution is positive or negative. Look at me, I am a thief and still bring more joy to the city than some police officers. I have a lot of friends around me on all sides. I can trust Harley, Pam and even Batman. Maybe even you, Jonathan. Think about it, my dear.” The thief stood on tiptoe and gently covered his lips with hers. They moved slowly, waiting for the professor to react. His lips stayed calm, completely unmoved. Selina broke the one-sided kiss. Even if he hadn't reacted, something changed in his eyes. A spark of hope. Catwoman gave him a small smile and slowly stepped back from him towards the door. He clearly had a choice. It was in his hand either to continue on his way to destroy Gotham or to embark on a new path.
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lola-o-sirecoci · 5 years
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I have this start for a Isadora x Carmelita story in my drafts. I am not sure of when I will finish it, but I wanted to share. It’s set after The End.
One should always be cautious when choosing who to share a living quarter with. When you live with someone, they usually have access to all your personal belongings, so it would be unwise to live with a person with kleptomaniac tendencies, or with a scientist who likes to use as test subjects things that belong to someone else. They may also get to see you in delicate states, such as when you just got out of bed, or when you are practicing an accent for your newest disguise. And you will certainly get to spend a lot of time around them, and find out all of their annoying habits that you would otherwise be blissfully unaware of.
Isadora Quagmire had spent most of her life sharing her living quarters with someone. Back in her parents' house, she shared a room with her brothers. Then, after the fire, she shared a shack with Duncan, and a broom closet after that, followed by increasingly tiny and uncomfortable spaces. Then she shared the space of a self-sustaining hot air mobile home with her brother and a man she had only met, until her other brother (who she had believed to be dead) joined them, and then disaster followed. Since then, the last few years had been spent sharing with Duncan and Quigley increasingly tiny and uncomfortable spaces, and now here she was.
Since the fire, none of the triplets had a lot of choices when it came to their living places. Most times they had no choice at all, and they felt thankful when they at least had a roof over their heads, and recently, the ground under their feet. Being almost of age didn't necessarily mean they were near recovering their inheritance, and recovering their inheritance did not mean they would get to have a normal, comfortable and safe life again. The three of them had more or less come to terms (in different paces, and different ways) to the fact that life would never go back to what it used to be before the fire, and that they had a part to play in a bigger story. That's how they ended up going back to the City after so long, contacting the so-called "rogue VFD" (in simple terms, a group of a people who like the triplets, had ties to the infamous organization, but weren't necessarily volunteers, and didn't necessarily wish to be; people who didn't want to get involved in VFD's dirty schemes, but still had unfinished business that prevented them from cutting completely the ties). That's how they ended up sharing an underground hideout, with the person they would wish the least to share a living quarter with: no one less than Carmelita Spats.
How Carmelita ended up there was a mystery that no amount of research seemed to be able to solve. Fortunately, she seemed to have left her bullying habits behind, but she still threw words like "cakesniffer" around. She seemed to have retired the tapping shoes as well, but her wardrobe still contained a ridiculous amount of pink. She seemed to have "pink days", in which she wore all of it at once, with all the ribbons and laces she could, alternated with "blue days", in which she tied her curly hair up and wore blues, greens, and browns, in functional pants and sensible shirts. She had a huge scar on her left arm, that she never bothered covering but never talked about, and a necklace with the VFD eye, that she always wore, either over or under her shirt.
All three Quagmires had only terrible memories of Carmelita. They had hoped to never see her again. If they hadn't such pressing matters to deal with, they would have left the City the moment they saw her in that small restaurant. Quigley had been the first one to suggest they gave the girl a chance, maybe because he had to deal with her rudeness for the least time, but Duncan and Isadora had to, very reluctantly, agree. Rogue VFD was their only hope to find the Baudelaires and close all loose ends in their lives.
That was about four months ago. While Carmelita had proved to have changed for the better since the Quagmires last had to see her, she was still not someone Isadora wished to share her living quarters with. Not because Carmelita took her belongings or made fun of how her hair looked when she just woke up (things Isadora had been afraid of back in their first week living together), but simply because she didn't like Carmelita, never had, and never would.
It was the little things, the small annoying habits that Carmelita had and that Isadora would rather be blissfully unaware of, that drove her crazy. The sound of her chewing gum, the scent of her make up powder that filled their room, how she didn't use the curtain while bathing and ended up spilling water all over, how she left clean clothes in the laundry basket for no reason. But one thing annoyed Isadora more than all else: Carmelita still thought she was a great artist.
Isadora had spent years learning all she could about language, practicing rhymes and rhythm, and every work of hers was carefully done, every word carefully picked. Carmelita would just lay down on her bed, mumble to herself for a while, and then write down a vomit of words with no form, no meaning, no feeling, and call that a "poem".
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apocalypseprodromus · 5 years
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Barriers Between
Warning: Angst! But this is Squall so... and Original Character content.
Squall wasn’t supposed to be there. He had a contract back in his home universe to deal with. Instead, he found himself facing an obstacle in the road back to where he came from. A fellow Warrior of Cosmos who wasn’t cooperating. And after an argument, and a massive display of power, no one else was willing to approach the issue.
“Cosmos said we need her to find her crystal as well.” Squall motioned to the towering wall of wind blocking entry from the west.
“Yeah, none of us feel comfortable doing that.” The blond thief in front of Squall drawled dismissively. “No offense to the pretty lady, but she looked ready to drive her weapon through Cosmos. That, and there's just something unnatural about her I can’t get over.” He continued.
“We’ll find her crystal later, right now we should just focus on ourselves.” Another blond with a gigantic sword and a withdrawn tone spoke in passing, before heading northeast. Possibly to get some more distance between himself and the strange woman from earlier. While normally Squall would echo that sentiment, it just felt wrong to outright avoid her like that. Maybe all those times his squad members said he needed to take others into account had finally had an effect on him.
What is it with everyone? They use magic too. So what if she can summon a thunderstorm, we need her crystal to progress. Are they seeing something I’m not? Whatever, just need to get her to retrieve her crystal so we can get this over with and leave. Squall conceded. I can already tell she’s different. Maybe she just wants to be left alone... Maybe something happened to her before this.
His thoughts broke as he noticed the pathway was clearing up. He stared at the magical blockade as it faded into nothingness. Might as well look for her if everyone else is too scared. Squall pressed on, wanting to sate his own curiosity and be done with this.
-
The vast grassy plain stretched into the horizon as he searched for the rogue teammate. She didn’t look well, now that he thinks about it. She might’ve even been covered in blood, but it was too hard to tell by the fact she was wearing a black dress.
He became lost in thought about her appearance. She was short in comparison to himself, possibly only 5 feet tall at the most. Long dark brunette hair held back by some kind of lace headband, verdant emerald eyes that held contempt for their contractor. Her skin the same color as his own, wearing black gloves with lace trim at the cuffs. He even remembered her voice, though it didn’t help that she shouted at Cosmos. Berating her for summoning others to do her dirty work, saying she was either a weak goddess or a lazy one. Something tells me she’s not going to make this easy for me.
Squall thought back to the moment the young women just up and floated away, leaving everyone else behind. In the aftermath of her tantrum, Order’s Sanctuary became silent and everyone could feel the tension heavy in the air.
Cosmos was unfettered, as she’d anticipated the girl’s almost violent rejection. “In the condition she was in, it was easier to summon her to my side than if I had waited. This one runs off of strong emotions that she cannot control. Such is the pay off for powers as advanced as her’s.” Those words caught his attention the most. Is she like a sorceress?
Throwing off his train of thought, he noticed something very strange. The sky had turned an ominous shade of green. I must be close.
Venturing forth, he saw a black dot in the distance before a wide expanse of dark grass harboring a meadow of flowers. At this time he noted... It wasn’t just the sky that was green, the sun setting just over the horizon was too. Although it wasn’t before, he was sure of that.
It was like a prism had gotten in the way, filtering out every other color. Something inside Squall could tell what that black dot was... That’s her.
Squall made his approach slowly not wanting to alarm her, as her back was facing him. As he got closer he saw the back of her head was cracked open. Now he had to ask... What the hell happened to her? How is she still functioning? Her posture straightened in apprehension. No need to hide now, I suppose.
“Hey.” It was a small greeting but elicited a wary response from the girl who turned to address him.
“I honestly thought I’d scared everyone away. I didn’t think someone would try to catch up to me.” She replied as she stood, her demeanor a mild and welcomed change from her outrage from earlier. “Now I know you didn’t come here for nothing. So go on, tell me why you’re here.” She gestured to him, waiting for his response patiently.
She didn’t seem to be afraid of him. At least not as far as he could tell. Her shoulders eased, her eyes were expectant.
“You’re not going to look for your crystal, are you?” Squall scowled in the realization of her incoming answer.
“Wasn’t planning on it.” She turned back around to the flowers in front of her, having lost interest in the conversation.
“You need to, otherwise we’ll be stuck here.” His voice barely containing a growl.
“Shame.” She brushed off his apparent frustration with an obstinate attitude.
“Don’t you want to go back home?!”
“Home doesn’t exist anymore!” The two brunettes yelled to each other. “Home is a smoking ruin now, my family is dead, my so-called friends and ex-betrothed tossed me away like garbage... So no, I’m not doing what the wannabe goddess says.” The small female dejectedly sat with her back to the taller male, tears forming in her eyes. “There’s nothing there for me anymore. Why should it matter that I find a pointless gemstone if all it’s going to do is end up sending me back?”
She glanced back at Squall, looking like she was on the verge of another breakdown. If there was one thing Squall couldn’t deal with, it was emotions. His and others’.
Her voice became soft, quiet, broken. “I don’t think I can help you. Sorry.”
Squall wasn’t sure he’d seen such a dramatic shift in anyone before. Or this high of a degree of vulnerability. This girl has issues. Lots of them.
Squall was at a loss, not knowing how to proceed until he saw her materialize something out of nowhere.
“Here. I’m not sure if this is what you’re after, but there you go... Take it, get it out of my sight!” The girl handed him a crystalline heart seemingly pulled from thin air. It had some sort of bizarre energy emanating from it, with black shadows and white light localized at the center of the organ.
“Um-”
“I’m done.” She resigned, crestfallen. Sinking her head into her knees, hugging her legs closer to her torso. She looked like she just about gave up at that point.
Squall looked to her one last time. “What’s your name?”
“Trinitas.”
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