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sirfrogsworth · 6 months

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Regarding your Plex server, do you have any tips for compressing media to save space?

Right now, almost all 1080p content is encoded in the H.264 codec. So my biggest tip would be to convert all of your H.264 content to a newer codec called H.265 10-bit.

First, you'll want to make sure that all of the devices you play media on can handle the H.265 10-bit codec. Pretty much any device that says it can do 4K HDR will suffice. It's okay if you have a device that can't do this, as Plex can transcode your media as you watch it, but you are going to use up a lot of computer resources and it can also be slow and buggy.

So to get the best experience, I would definitely recommend upgrading anything that cannot do H.265 10-bit. Thankfully, even the cheapest $30 4K Fire TV Stick is capable.

H.265 allows you to heavily compress your media and maintain quality. The 10-bit color, even if the original file was 8-bit, can reduce color banding in gradients which can often be a consequence of compressing video.

The rule of thumb is you can reduce the file size by 50% of H.264 and not take a hit on image quality. But you can actually go beyond that and still get acceptable quality.

Yes, H.264 will play on pretty much any device these days, but eventually that will be true of H.265. So if saving space is more important than dealing with a few compatibility issues that may crop up (and are usually solvable), then you can definitely shrink the size of your media library while maintaining image quality.

The bad news is that converting your media, depending on how much you have, could take a while. Even with a super beefy computer, compressing in H.265 is a slow process. And you can't use hardware encoding because that is meant more for streaming than media preservation.

Also, I do not recommend compressing 4K content at this time. Only 1080p. Re-encoding and compressing a 4K file takes more time than it is worth. A 4K movie could take 12 to 24 hours even on a very fast computer. Though if you have a 4K file and you don't care if it is 1080p, that might be worth it.

Handbrake is pretty much the only game in town as far as re-encoding your media. It can have a learning curve if you want to use it to its full potential, but there are a ton of decent presets you can use if you don't have the time to learn the fine details of what everything does.

I can give you some recommendations for a few important settings.

In the video tab...

I'd start by finding a preset that is close to your end goal. In this case I chose the H.265 MKV 1080p30 preset in the "Matroska" presets that I will slightly tweak.

I usually want to make MKV files because they can hold subtitles in the file container without a separate subtitle file. I want H.265 10-bit. Most of my content is 1080p. And most of it is 24fps, so I'll just ignore the 30 frames the preset uses and change it later.

So once you select the preset, change framerate to "same as source" to just carry over whatever it was originally. You do not want to monkey with the framerate unless you have a really good reason.

You'll want "constant quality" selected. And then the RF or "rate factor" is basically how much compression you want to use. A lower number is less compression and a higher number is more compression. Once you have experience using Handbrake you'll be able to make a pretty good guess at what RF you should use, depending on the content. But I can give you some basic guidelines for you to test out.

When picking an RF, a higher number will give you a smaller file and a lower number will reduce the chances of creating unwanted compression artifacts. Since you are doing 10-bit, that will help a lot with color banding, but if you overcompress you may get unsightly blocks, especially in dark and fast moving scenes. If you watch dark content on YouTube, you probably know what I mean.

So before I compress media, I ask myself a few questions...

How important is this content to me?

Is good image quality what makes this content special?

Does this content have a lot of dark or fast moving scenes?

If this is my favorite show or movie, then I am going to want to preserve it at the highest possible quality. Or if the content is a visual spectacle, like Avatar, then I am going to want to make sure I preserve visual fidelity. And if this content is prone to compression artifacts due to dark and/or fast moving scenes, like a horror movie or an action movie, I am going to want to use less compression to avoid distracting artifacts.

However, if it is just a game show I like to put on in the background, I might not care if I compress it more. As long as it is watchable, I am not going to be precious about the compression quality.

Typically I choose an RF between 17 and 24.

17 will give bigger file sizes but will almost never create compression artifacts that were not already in the original content to begin with. This is for the stuff you really care about. Your absolute favs.

And if it is the game show I play in the background, I will probably choose 24.

But all of that space in between 17 and 24 is where you have to figure out what you can tolerate for different media. It may take some trial and error and test encodes to figure out what you prefer.

Like, when I compressed Law & Order for my mom, I knew that wasn't a huge visual spectacle. So I did 22. But for an action movie for my dad, I'd probably do 20 because of all of the fast moving scenes. And for my precious Batman TAS cartoons, I went with 17 because I wanted those files to be as close to perfect as possible.

The final slider I will talk about is the encoding speed. In the image above the preset is set to "slow." This ranges from "very slow" to "ultra fast." (Don't use placebo.) This setting basically allows Handbrake to either take its time and figure out the absolute best and most efficient compression... or to hurry up and just get the job done.

Think of this as the efficiency slider. If you give your computer more time to think, your compression will be more efficient. It will be the best compression possible for the quality RF you chose.

If you set it to a slower speed you will be able to get smaller file sizes with fewer compression artifacts, even if your chose a higher RF. But it could take one file many hours to encode.

At faster speeds your filesizes will get a little bigger and there is a chance some compression artifacts may sneak into your video, even if you chose a lower RF.

It's a little confusing, because the RF is supposed to be the only factor in image quality. But the encoding speed does factor in a little bit too. Especially in difficult to compress dark or fast scenes.

I was pretty happy with the "medium" setting. I have a fast computer with a lot of CPU cores and a lot of free time. So I didn't mind how long it took. But I actually think the "fast" and "faster" setting still gave great results while still shrinking file sizes.

Again, if it is super important to you, maybe do medium or slow for those files. Otherwise the fast setting is probably acceptable for most other things.

And finally the audio tab...

You are not going to get much benefit from compressing the audio. You might save a few megabytes. So I highly recommend just preserving whatever the original audio was. And you do this by selecting a "Passthru" codec. Handbrake will not touch the audio data and just copy it exactly to the new file.

However... if there is an audio codec that you know does not play nice with one of your devices, then you might want to convert it to something that works better. Though if you are using Plex, it can usually transcode audio without using significant CPU resources.

When I finished converting my media collection, I think I calculated that I saved myself about 20 TB of hard drive space when all was said and done. I think I have around 250 shows and 2000 movies. This left me a lot more room to keep more 4K content that is not worth compressing.

I definitely recommend watching some Handbrake tutorials and learning about some of the other functions. I also recommend learning how to do "batch encoding" so you can set up a bunch of files and just let your computer compress while you aren't using it.

But I covered the most important settings to get your started. Definitely do some tests and familiarize yourself with the process before you start converting your entire media collection.

I hope that was helpful. I promise explaining it is a lot harder than picking a few settings and hitting "start."

#long post

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wakeupandchooseviolets · 3 months

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"Do you... enjoy this?"

Shit.

I need to deflect, but when I open my mouth, all that comes out is a low moan. I feel so... massive. I can barely think.

"The first time, I was just worried about you. The second time... I just thought it was a weird coincidence. But now," she gestures at all of me with both hands. It's a big gesture. "Three times feels like more than coincidence."

She's not wrong. I've got to say something.

"I've known other people who've gotten blown up, you know? And after they get... you know, fixed, they've- they've all developed phobias, or left town, or gone through really intense therapy. But you," she says, placing a palm on my exposed belly, "have been completely unfazed. You just keep coming back for more."

My skin feels electric where she touches me. Everything is so full and tight, every little brush of breeze against my exposed skin is searing pleasure. I moan again, and she whips her hand away like she'd laid it on a hot stove.

"Sorry! I know I shouldn't be so casual about this. I should really call someone to come help you." She starts patting her pockets looking for her phone. "Sorry," she says again, then she stops. She looks back up at me.

"Should I even call for help? I should, right?"

Is that even a question?

"But what if you just do this again?"

Ouch. I've been lax, I guess, but I haven't been doing this on purpose! I mean... I have thought about it, but... it hasn't been intentional.

I think.

"It just takes up my time. The medical crew's time. Company resources." She looks conflicted. "Maybe I should just leave you like this."

Oh.

I try to plead my case, deny it, but all that comes out is a halfhearted "Nnnnnnnnnn-" before she cuts me off again. I'm just too full to speak.

"I could have you transferred to taste-testing," she muses. "Putting up with weird shit is, like, their whole job description." She starts dialing on her phone. Someone answers promptly.

"Hey, you'll never guess what happened again. Yeah, again again. Third time. Yup, big enough to roll, for sure."

She absentmindedly pats my belly with her free hand, like I'm some sort of bad boy you could fit so many things in. It's thrilling, that small touch. I nearly lose it, right then and there. Thankfully though, she remembers I'm a person just in time to give me an apologetic look before clearing her throat and returning to her call.

"Can you see if R&D has any openings for a QA Consultant? I know, right? All my ideas are good ideas. She's clearly more interested in being a giant balloon full of wasted product than an accountant."

I guess she's not wrong.

"No, no need for a trip to the squeezer. Put a note in her file that she's only to be reduced if she asks for it explicitly. Maybe have them bring a safe-suit, too. Hm?"

She looks me up and down. It's a long, curious look.

"No idea what size. Big. Really, really big. Yeah. One of the ones with the belt. Mhm. Yeah, she's not exactly naked, but... yeah, let's not give HR anything to complain about. Right. Yes, I'll follow up with her landlord and emergency contacts as needed. Yup. Thanks. See ya."

She turns back to me. She takes another long look, and then sighs.

"Congratulations on your promotion," she says, with a weird mixture of sincerity and irony. "We'll obviously miss you in Finance, but we're happy that you'll be rolling onward to bigger opportunities."

Oh good, she's got jokes.

"Sorry, sorry, I shouldn't make fun. Company policy is to treat this as a medical emergency, so I'll be staying with you until help arrives."

She checks her phone again.

"If you want, I can come visit you once you get settled in? I know I've always been happy to see friendly faces amidst all the strangeness of a new job."

She looks up at me again, sadly this time.

"I was looking forward to getting to know you better, you know? I noticed how you started dressing differently after your first... incident. HR would probably have something to say about how much I was... noticing. I thought maybe you were trying to get away from the trauma by being more poised and put-together."

She kicks her heels off and slides down the wall until she's sitting, obscured by the curve of my body.

"Oh well. Probably better for everyone that I didn't start hitting on a coworker."

Wait.

"Especially not one who keeps finding excuses to swell up until she's spherical," she adds, wearily.

Fair.

"I really should have seen this coming, shouldn't I? I mean, you've been touring the factory floor on your lunch break weekly. That's on me, I guess."

She hops back to her feet. "I think I hear the Medical folks." She brushes her skirt out, and looks me in the eyes one last time. "Hey, listen... I'll see you a-round."

She smiles and rolls her eyes at her own terrible pun, and walks away.

#inflation kink #body inflation #full body inflation #local inflated woman fails to lesbian #more news at eleven #my words

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simlicious · 1 year

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Hi, I’m loving the advent so far! How do you get your patterns to look so natural? Whenever I make patterns I either get these crusty lines at the edges of some channels where one channel bleeds into the other. Or, I get these super sharp unnatural edges on them that never look any good. Teach me your magic please lol.

Thank you so much for the compliment :) I made a fancy tutorial, because more people might be interested in this topic!

There are a few things you can do to solve color bleed and crusty lines while making the Sims 3 patterns. These tips are for Photoshop and the TSR Workshop pattern tool, though they also work for Delphy's pattern tool. The EA CAP tool compresses its image files automatically, so you have no control over it afaik. Save your textures uncompressed! Most of your problem should be solved by saving your images in an uncompressed DDS file format (depending on what DDS plugin you use, it "8.8.8.8 argb 32bpp unsigned" or, in newer versions, "8.8.8.8 bgra 32bpp unsigned". This is an image of the newer dds plugin export dialog with the settings I use:

This reduces blockiness and color bleed significantly! Note: For maximum visual clarity and the sake of our eyes, starting from now, I will show just the contents of the individual color channels of the image, specifically green and blue. If you click on a single color channel in Photoshop, it will be represented in greyscale. My screenshots therefore also represent a single color channel and do not show how the colors interact with each other. I thought it would be distracting and hard to see if I presented everything in color and this tutorial is not about how to build a pattern, but how to get crisp outlines and the best possible quality.

What is the issue with compressed textures? EA's pattern textures are DDS files that use DXT compression (DXT1 for non-alpha/5 for alpha images, BC1/3 in the newer plugin). If you save your image as a compressed DDS file and reopen it, you will notice that certain areas are blocky/blotchy. That is because lightness and color information is not retained for every pixel, but areas get grouped together in a more or less chessboard-like fashion. In this first example, I increased the contrast to make these compression artifacts more visible so you can see what's going on: Notice the grey blocky areas?

These cause color bleed in the final pattern and the textures look blurry or washed out. EA's textures have this issue too, because they use compression. In some patterns, the effect is less noticeable than in others, but compressed files will always have a reduced image quality compared to the original image. Deciding to go with uncompressed textures was essential for me to achieve the quality I offer. I reasoned that the patterns are only 256px in size and the performance impact should not be very noticeable. I once made a survey in which I asked whether my patterns cause performance issues, and most said they did not, so I stuck with it.

You could test it out for yourself and decide! If you want to continue to use compression, make sure to change the quality of the compression algorithm to get the best possible result. In the screenshot I posted at the beginning of the tutorial, you can see that I set it to "highest" instead of the usual default "fastest", though this is not really needed if you save uncompressed files. The old DDS plugin used on older Photoshop versions also has that setting, it is just a bit more obscure. I do not have that anymore so I cannot say where exactly. Is it a bug? Lines all around the edges of some channels could also be a Photoshop bug*. This was a regular occurring bug in older versions (before CC 2020 or so.) The issue was that when you scaled down or sometimes even just saved an image that was not just the background layer but had stuff on other layers, there would be a faint line around the whole image. Suuuper annoying! *clarification: It's not an official bug, but a lot of people get annoyed by it. I still had this happen to me with the current 2023 Photoshop version when using bicubic (sharper) on an image with layers, but I do feel there are less problems with saving layered images now. Idk, this might be "feature quirk" after all... Anyway, to avoid the faint lines around your image, follow these tips: Using the bilinear mode when reducing an image's size helps, as does flattening the image before image reduction or file export. I like to create a copy of the entire document using the shortcuts ctrl+shift+alt+e to make sure it appears flattened without actually flattening everything. You could also paste the flattened copy into a new document, merge it down and export the dds file from there. Just try what works best for you. Retaining maximum quality on resizing Most images need to be resized to the pattern size, or you might have made a larger pattern and want that in smaller sizes. You may never have paid much attention to the settings in that image size dialogue, but it holds some key elements to make sure your pattern comes out in the best way possible! Per default, the resizing mode that is used by Photoshop to make an image smaller is "bicubic (sharper)". This mode has a sharpening algorithm that causes halos if the pixels are not white or black, which can create unwanted effects such as white outlines around grey pixels, or grey ones around black areas. Note: even if you have the "bicubic (automatic)" setting, it will still use the "bicubic (sharper)" if you reduce the image size! Let me show you an example: Below, you can see a comparison of bicubic (sharper) reduction vs bilinear reduction. The channel with the black and white checkers has some greyish edges after using bicubic (sharper), which can cause the texture to become unwantedly transparent in these areas, making the colors become muddled in these areas. Using bilinear or nearest neighbor modes (the latter is great for very geometric, crisp shapes), the result is very clean.

This is why do not recommend to use the bicubic algorithm on your textures. Go for bilinear and nearest neighbor modes, these are perfect for patterns. I do any sharpening of the channels in a more controlled way later.

The best way to sharpen your texture To make the textures look as crisp as possible, you immediately think about the "unsharp mask" feature, right? This might not be your best option though!

If you have a white shape on a black background with a rim of dark grey pixels around it and you want to make it crisp and want that dark grey outline to disappear, unsharp mask will actually do a pretty good job, because it mainly targets those grey pixels and there is nothing to lighten or darken on pure white or pure black. But if you have a lot of grey tones, the algorithm "attacks" a lot in your image, depending on how you set your radius in the options dialogue. Most of the time, the radius is set to a small number, for sharpening details, but it creates a problem for us in the form of halos/bright or dark rims around shapes.

I like to increase the contrast of the individual channels to make the image appear sharper without those halo effects that the "unsharp mask " feature often creates. I love to use the "levels" tool for adjusting the contrast, I use it all the time! I have grey pixels as a starting point and then applied an aggressive "unsharp mask" (strength 100, radius: 1px) to it so you can see the effect. The results are bright halos around the shapes. This will make the edges of the shapes more opaque on the final pattern and can look strange! On very delicate lines, this might be what you want, but for larger areas, this is less desirable.

Sharpening without actually sharpening

Instead of using "unsharp mask", I like to increase the contrast of the individual channels to make the image appear sharper entirely without those halo effects that the "unsharp mask " feature often creates. I love to use the "levels" tool for adjusting the contrast, I use it all the time!

On this layer, I have some intricate shapes, which should appear fully opaque. The are already bright white, but the edges are a bit too soft right now to get a truly crisp result, so I use the "levels" tool to increase the contrast and make the edges crisper. You can also use the curves tool for this, but I find the levels tool a bit more intuitive for this process! The curves tool gives you even more control over pixel values and lets you adjust them individually, which can be great, but for the purpose of creating controlled contrast, the levels tool will suffice.

By moving the marked sliders towards the middle, the contrast is increased. This also works nicely on grey pixels without creating the halo problem.

Another use for the levels tool in this context is to control the thickness of your shapes by moving the middle slider too, like this:

Final words "Levels" is your friend when adjusting contrast and making things sharper. In some cases, "unsharp mask" or other sharpened options can create a desired effect, such as on more realistic textures such as carpet/fabric textures, wood and stone, where you might want these halos to increase the depth of details. There is always a right time to use any tool, so if levels alone do not give the effect you desire, by all means, give "unsharp mask" a go! Experiment, and find the best way for you. The biggest gain in quality will come from saving in an uncompressed format though. Thanks for reading through the tutorial, I hope it was helpful!

#photoshop tutorial #sharpen without halos #ts3cc tutorial #ts3 pattern tutorial #s3cc tutorial #the sims 3 cc tutorial

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crowfeatherquill · 6 months

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Spider and Songbird Sunday!!!

Super special gift this week and that is that this chapter is Two Chapters, Actually. (Read: I got really excited and wrote way too much and had to break it up into bite sized pieces.)

To a certain degree, he almost believed that the ones who were put on transports to Menzoberranzan were the lucky ones. At least they had some inkling of what would happen to them. Some were left to rot at Velkynvelve, as if forgotten. He watched them wither. They’d lose that spark behind their eyes that he’d come to recognize as the sign of a will to live. Then they’d usually start refusing meals. None of them were generally considered important enough that any rank-and-file soldier was willing to force them to eat.

Much as it pained him to see so many submit themselves to as slow and agonizing a death as starvation, he couldn’t begrudge them the opportunity to take some agency in how they’d die. Occasionally he found himself thinking he’d do the same if he thought he could get away with it.

Every now and again, though, there would be something that broke the monotony. A turncoat deserter from another outpost who they said had slaughtered half his regiment before they’d finally managed to contain him. A monk, who had spent his entire imprisonment in quiet contemplation, never once reacting no matter how much the other soldiers tried to goad him. A fiery woman from one of the mountain forts who’d kicked, scratched, headbutted, and bitten anyone who’d gotten close enough until they’d been forced to cocoon her in restraints to reduce the strain it was putting on medical. Not that long ago, he swore he’d spotted a child in one of the cells, trembling and pale and far too small.

The next time he’d gone to look, whoever it was had been gone. He couldn’t even really be sure if he’d seen them at all. There was no record of any children being transferred in or out, but that didn’t mean much. It wouldn’t have been the first time a prisoner had fallen conveniently out of the paperwork before they arrived here.

And now, there was Derendil. Derendil, who carried himself with the posture of nobility despite his battered and weakened body. Derendil, who claimed to be a prince from Cormanthor, whose copper hair and sun-kissed skin would seem to support the notion, though Tathlyn knew little enough about the lands east of the fork in the Chionthar that he’d likely have believed it regardless.Derendil, who talked to him. Asked him questions and seemed to be genuinely interested to hear his responses. It was a breath of fresh air in a long tenure of stagnant misery -- and that made it dangerous. He should have asked for a different rotation. He should have alerted someone to the behavior and seen the man muzzled or otherwise muted in some worse, more permanent way. Instead…he chased the warmth like flowers chasing the sun. Hoarded each interaction as if they were stores for a long, harsh winter. In some ways, he supposed they were.

#bg3 #bg3 fanfiction #baldur's gate 3 #bg3 oc #baldur's gate 3 fanfiction #baldur's gate 3 oc #bg3 tav #m!tav #male tav #bg3 au #cults and coffee shops #this time there's #insert peggle 2 jumping guy dot gif #TWO chapters!!!!

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eartht137 · 2 years

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So, I had a really spur of the moment idea and it grew. Soooo......here it is. I don't know if it will go beyond this...possibly, but it depends on how ya'll like it. I am still working on my other works but I only have so much time to spare nowadays. Tell me what ya'll think about it, Kay Kay?

MINORS DNI

WARNINGS: Mutual Masturbation, Voyeurism, Mentions of 💨 da smokity smokity.

Dark August Walker × Plus Size Reader

ACQUIESCENCE

Summary: Brandon needs help keeping his family safe while he serves his 18 months with the feds, but having someone on the inside look after his family does not come at a cheap cost.

"I need your help. I don't have anyone else to turn to. I cannot let them kill my family." Brandon said, desperation dripping in his voice.

"Hmm...well what do I get in return?" August said smugly. Brandon could only look at him in shock. This was not expected, he never said he wanted anything. August noticed and continued to corner his prey to get something good out of the deal. "OH come on. Don't tell me you thought I'd save your ass for free. The shit you're in, I should honestly take you in myself...but I'm a merciful guy and believe it or not I can tolerate you. Still, no service comes for free and the help you require, deserves handsome payment."

"I...." Brandon was struck silent, what could he give that could amount to keeping his family safe while he went away to federal prison? All of the fraud and money laundered; the deaths, the madness, the chaos, all those things-all that fun come back to bite him in the ass. Luckily he had a few friends in high places and his sentence reduced to 18 months. Not nearly as long as the first proffer of 18 years that was drastically knocked down to give the right info to the right person who could ensure his safety while locked away. Now he just needed to keep his family safe. "I don't have anything to give you...I have information...I have 100k stashed in an off-shore."

"I don't need your information I already know enough and your fucking petty money won't suffice." August said getting bored and losing interest.

"All I have right now is my family...I don't-"

"Family huh?" August said brow arched and curiosity piqued. "How many sisters do you have?"

"Are you serious?"

"Are you? Do you want them safe or dead? Really doesn't cost me any sleep. You don't have much of shit to offer..." August said letting the fact linger in the air. He watched in sick delight when he saw Brandon resign, he didn't have a choice.

"Three. I have three sisters."

"I'll give you my answer in a week." August said leaving Brandon in dreadful suspense of what he was going to do, and August knew it. He fed off of people's dread and anxiety. Fact was August already knew Brandon and his little tight knit family. He was the oldest of 5, with his 3 sisters and his baby brother coming in 4 years after everyone thought the baby phase was done.

Yes, Mr. Walker was a man of thorough research, and once Brandon crossed his person's of interest file, he did enough research to figure there was benefit to "helping" him. So, August did his norm and got surveillance on everyone in the household. Lo and behold, there was sister #2. The middle girl, the quiet one that was always in the shadows of everyone else. Sister #2 was the heaviest and shortest of the girls and the ladies of the family had something to say daily, and he could see that it hindered her. She was an accountant, even though she fussed about how much she hated math. She was the sweetest of the sisters, and was a bit of a loner, didn't have many friends. She liked to sing and read, and he often shook his head at her choices of literature, if it could be called that. She didn't have a boyfriend, didn't go out much and August honestly wrote her off as prude.

At first he didn't pay much attention to her himself until one night, she'd just gotten out of the shower. Her thick thighs and smooth wet skin made him lick his lips and lean forward a bit. He watched her apply lotion to every inch of her body, and then a big pink toy came out to play. Miss innocent and quiet wasn't so innocent. He watched her quietly glide the pink dildo up and down her pretty fluffy lips, getting herself nice and wet. He chuckled when she could barely get it all the way in, and arched her back for a bit more pressure. He could tell she couldn't get out of her own head for 5 minutes to get the sweet release she needed. He groaned when he realized his pants were constricting his hard cock. He unzipped his pants, letting himself spring free, hard and throbbing as he watched her quietly toying with herself. He stroked himself matching the pace of her toy. He wanted to taste her, to stretch her until she couldn't help but scream. 'Such a beautiful tormented sight' he thought his hand speeding up with hers. She was getting close, he could see it in her face. Faster and faster he watched her go and he kept up until she slammed her legs shut, the dildo still vibrating hard on her pulsating clit. His hot cum sprayed on his desk and on the screen where she lay writhing on her bed. Both of them breathless and spent, but not really satisfied. That was the night plans were set into motion, and while Brandon thought it was a decision on a whim, he'd never guess that everything that was happening to him was a big ploy so that everyone got what they wanted.

So, August let Brandon stew in his pity and misery for a week, and he worked- getting everything he needed ready for his new little toy. He called Brandon, knowing he had all the cards in his hand.

"Yeah." Brandon answered. August could hear the the defeat in his voice and an evil grin spread across his face. 'Got him.' He thought to himself.

"Which one is your favorite?" August asked, knowing full and well who he was closest to, who confided in and who he never argued with.

"Fuck man! You can't be serious!" Brandon said tears evident in his voice. "Anyone but her. I will give you my girlfriend-"

"Deals off." August said pretending to leave the call, but before he could, he got the answer he wanted and that evil grin grew.

"Wait! I....you promise, no you swear you will keep her safe?" Brandon asked almost childishly.

"You have my word."

"I...I'll do it."

"I will message you with the coordinates of where to bring the asset. Once the exchange is made consider out agreement official." August finished and hung up

"Okay, I-" he was cut off when he realized the other end was disconnected. He sat there regretting every decision that led him to where he was, but if he could keep everyone safe he'd do what he had to do. "Hey Y/n!" He called up to you. You made your way downstairs smiling.

"Hey brudda!" You said throwing your arms over his shoulders from behind.

"Hey!" He said with a smile. When he turned to face you, you assumed his eyes were red because he was high so you didn't think much of it. "Wanna go out? I got my stash in the car."

"Hell yes! I need to get out of the house."

"Cool, cool. Um..." he said looking around, lost like he was forgetting something.

"Bro??? You good?" You asked a bit concerned. He looked troubled, you knew he had been having work issues but you'd never seen him so disturbed.

"Yeah...just a lot on my mind. That's why we gonna go get the stash!!" He said getting back to his normal self before walking off to his car with you behind him. All you could do was hope everything worked out for him and you hoped you could help cheer him up. Once you got in he started the ignition and he hesitated before he started driving. He sat for a long time staring out his window, after a minute or so he looked at you and grabbed your hand.

"I love you sis. Don't you ever forget that." He said with tears in his eyes.

"I love you too, but dude...eww??? What the hell is your problem???" You asked almost afraid, but hoping he wasn't hinting at nothing horrible.

"I think Misha is pregnant." He said as if finally giving in and tell you what was up. You bought it too. Your little naive mind was blown and you bought into his lie and deception. You didn't realize the betrayal your brother had placed upon you. Love would take on a brand new meaning as he drove you too the end of your old life.

#plus size reader smut #smut fic #female reader #dark fic #august walker

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lindsaywesker · 9 months

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Good morning! I hope you slept well and feel rested? Currently sitting at my desk, in my study, attired only in my blue towelling robe, enjoying my first cuppa of the day.

Welcome to Too Much Information Tuesday.

Venustraphobia: the fear of beautiful women.

Drinking alcohol doesn't actually kill brain cells.

One-third of people over 70 are still sexually active.

The Victorians made tiepins out of badgers’ penis bones.

Having large breasts can take five years off a woman's lifespan.

The word pencil comes from a Latin word meaning ‘small penis’.

That friend that always gives relationship advice … yet is still single!

No response is a response. And it's a powerful one. Remember that.

In Australia, there are spiders that are so big, they can even eat snakes.

Cocks don’t have cocks. In 97% of bird species, the males don’t have penises.

Climacophilia: where someone is sexually aroused by falling down the stairs.

Meupareunia is sexual activity enjoyed by only one of the participants.

If you can’t send an Excel file because it’s too big, save it as .xlsb. This will shrink the size.

A report by the World Health Organisation says that alcohol kills one person every ten seconds.

80% of the time, it's not that a person changed, you just never knew who they actually were.

In Sweden, it is legal to be a prostitute, but it is illegal to be a customer of a prostitute.

‘Synesthesia’ is a neurological condition that can cause a person to see, smell and taste music.

It takes longer to say "www" than it does to say "world wide web" because of all the syllables.

Beer and marijuana are cousins, beer's hops are in the same family of flowering plants as marijuana.

A person that truly loves you will never let you go or give up on you, no matter how hard the situation is.

95% of women say they would opt for true love over great sex. Though most have to settle for neither.

A lot of problems in the world would disappear if we talked to each other instead of talking about each other.

Due to the new discovery of many brain parasites, scientists say that a zombie apocalypse is actually possible.

Due to the release of endorphins, shopping can help relieve pain, reduce stress and boost your self-esteem.

Go where you are appreciated, not where you are tolerated. Your confidence, health, and life will be much better.

Sometimes you can't explain what you see in a person. It's just the way they take you to a place where no one else can.

You should delete your browser cookies before buying airline tickets. Ticket fares go up when you’ve visited a site multiple times.

Marrying your best friend eliminates the risk of divorce by over 70%. These marriages are more likely to last a lifetime.

When you remember a past event, you are actually remembering the last time you remembered it, not the event itself.

80% of people keep their feelings to themselves because they believe it's hard for others to understand their pain.

Ironically, the human mind tends to forget the things it should remember and remember the things it should forget.

Twerking is actually good exercise. It works the deep muscles of the hips, as well as the core muscles of the lower back and abs.

Americans are less likely to wear nightclothes than people in Japan and Germany, while British people sleep naked the most often.

Psychology says staying quiet doesn’t mean you've got nothing to say. It means you don’t think they're ready to hear your thoughts.

A chemist who tested drugs for police departments in thousands of court cases was high almost every day she went to work for eight years.

When Ashton Kutcher was 13 he almost committed suicide by jumping off a hospital balcony so he could donate his heart to his dying brother.

There are roughly seven people in the world that look exactly like you and there is a nine percent chance you will run into one of them in your lifetime.

In 1992, six visitors to the Memphis Zoo demanded a refund after discovering that the ‘Dinosaurs Live!’ exhibit did not contain any living dinosaurs.

In 2008, a microbiologist compared samples from 33 computer keyboards with those taken from a public toilet seat and toilet door handle. One keyboard had to be removed from the premises as it was five times dirtier than the toilet seat and had 150 times the acceptable limit of bacteria.

Okay, that’s enough information for one day. Have a tremendous and tumultuous Tuesday! I love you all.

#mixcloud #mi soul #dj #music #new blog #lockdown #coronavirus #books #democracy #brexit #cronyism #election #radio #tuesdaymotivation

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mainstodo · 2 years

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Nch soundtap file size limitations

#Nch soundtap file size limitations mp4#

Those screen recordings are automatically in Flash (I think it is. I chose Flashback from the dozens out there. As you know, these things have exploded popularity, maybe for all the wrong reasons, but nonetheless, they can do a lot. One of the things that has helped me in the area of formats, size, and other specs is the lowly screen recorder. Most of us have experienced conversion from WAV to MP3 and know it seems to take no time or energy at all, very quick and easy.įor the purpose of my current interest, quality is not the issue, but rather quality/cost meaning, exporting to specifications that will be the cheapest possible acceptible quality.

#Nch soundtap file size limitations mp4#

As far as I know, the audio track code/decode on Flash is the same as it is on MP4 that is, AAC + MP3. Last I heard, YT converts everything to Flash. I hadn't known about an optimal window, though do not doubt it. Yes, I think Matt's idea of uploading the best quality available will yield the best YT presentation. One limiting factor has been the storage cards, which have made great strides in speed and cost. Steve is uploading 4k video he shoots with his drone. I thought YouTube could handle pretty much anything thrown at it, at this point. Obviously, with YouTube, money is no object. This is all reflected in the cost of streaming. HD videos of 6-8 Gb can be reduced to a matter of a few MB, for the internet. This is where that "file size project" comes into play. The host I use, In-Motion, recently added that feature for subscribers. Now, though, we are seeing more and more sites taking video, including Facebook. I should explain, You Tube contributed beyond all expectations to the world of content distribution. That's when I received my pleasant surprise, when I heard it. Which brings us to exporting or rendering to an MP4 on Video Pad.Įxporting to MP4, they only give you AAC encoder and sample rate on the audio panel. Still I didn't want to EQ the mix, just this one annoying feature that I could have lived with. Reaper, which has great EQ panel, claims to accomodate videos, though, have yet to find it. Even if I had wanted to go that route, the original audio tracks were long gone. My objection was to a persistent clang in the guitar. I had an MP4 video on the timeline and was in "export." The soundtrack was a mixed down WAV. In many cases, once the song has been learned, the Band in a Box has served its purpose, a mighty purpose, at that. Please bear in mind, some of us use Box as rehearsal and practice aids. I had never considered sample rate to be anything other than something we always wanted the most possible of. When I played it back, some of the rough edges of the guitar track were smoothed, as was the overall song. Without really intending to change the sound, I lowered the sample rate from something like 256 to 128, just to see. I was in the "export" function at the time. It so happened I am at the same time working on a project that aims to reduce video file size to its smallest practical size for Facebook and some others. Fairly new to Video Pad, I couldn't find an EQ panel among the audio effects. If it had just been the Band in Box tracks, pretty sure I could have gone back into the Box and EQ'd it. I had a track which was my guitar played over a Band in a Box backing track, a song that I just could not get the "clang" out of. I wish they would get tired and go to sleep. Hah! OK, Matt, I will confess to hearing a family of crickets more or less non stop.

#Nch soundtap file size limitations

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dizzydancingdreamer · 3 years

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Steve Rogers, The Man On Fire

Hey y'all, as Pride month draws to a close I would like to post this fic. It's been in my drafts for a month and I finally today found the motivation to finish it. This is special to me for many reasons, one of which being that I'm proudly a part of this community. Some of the anger written in is my own. I think a lot of people will resonate with it. I really hope you all enjoy this and happy Pride Month <3

This was based loosely off a headcannon and once I re-find it I will credit!

Synopsis: Steve is freshly thawed, queer, and pissed | A.k.a. Steve's experience in 21st Century America

Characters: Steve Rogers, Mentions of Bucky Barnes, (loosely a Stucky fic but Steve thinks he's dead here)

Warnings: Angst but not bad, Steve Rogers being volatile and chaotic (we love), poorly written accents (I literally read this with an accent in my head), literally a 2k monologue

Word count: 5.1k

Steve Rogers came out of the ice angry.

No— not angry— Steve Rogers came out of the ice fuckin’ furious.

He came out of the ice with his hands curled into two fists, with his jaw clenched so hard his teeth were liable to snap, and with a bone to pick with every damn reporter and historian and too loud opinion on this side of the Brooklyn Bridge.

He came out simmering— no, erupting— like the serum in his blood couldn’t keep his body from hibernation all those years ago but it sure as hell won’t keep him from setting the entirety of New York on fire now. He’ll burn it all down if he has to and rebuild it the way he remembers it— the way Bucky would have remembered it— and at the end of it all no one— not the bigots or deniers or the homophobes that seem to be the only thing that came with him from the forties— will be able to say that Captain America can’t love whoever he wants.

No one will be able to say that Steve Rogers didn’t love James “Bucky” “the man I’ve loved since twelve years old” Barnes with everything he had and then some.

No one.

So he starts with the museums in Washington— because sure it isn’t New York but where else would a relic like himself belong more?

He still has hope when he enters the building. They didn’t make them like this when he was a kid— they had science fairs in the town hall and culture fairs in the backstreets near the docks but never anything this grand. No tall marble pillars or enough stairs to make him wonder if he would have been able to climb to the top when he was half the size he is now. It’s strange. It’s kind of wonderful. Yeah, the Smithsonian museums make Steve Rogers feel small for the first time in a very long time and that gives him hope.

That hope doesn’t last long, though, because soon he’s wandering through the halls, following the signs that say Captain America: The First Avenger— what the hell is an Avenger? Is that what they’re calling soldiers these days? Now he feels small and old.

Turning the corner is like landing on another planet, one devoted entirely to him. His picture is everywhere he looks, his name is in lights, even his damn uniform has been replicated and presented on a little stage and he hates it. The rage is back, sparking at his fingers— he’s a match and lucky for everyone this building is made of stone because if it wasn’t he’s sure it would be reduced to nothing but ash by now.

It only worsens as he begins reading through the plaques and the paragraphs flashing across screens on the walls— he doesn’t think he’ll ever get used to that. The more he reads, though, the more he wonders if the stone is really, truly safe from the fire in his blood. He doesn’t think it is.

He surely isn’t at least— he feels like he’s going to explode. This isn’t him— none of this is him. War hero. Martyr. Golden boy. He has to stop reading that plaque— clearly no one did their research. Clearly no one dug up his medical files— or his police records. Brawls at the pub, disorderly conduct behind Mr. De Luca’s sandwich shop, public nudity at the beach that one time— thank you Bucky for the best night of his god damn life. Golden boy— ha.

Golden nobody with the black eye and broken hand is more like it.

For a moment he thinks he’s fine— he thinks it can’t get worse than this. Then he gets to the early life section and for an even longer moment his tongue tastes like gunpowder.

Steven Grant Rogers grew up in the streets of Brooklyn alongside his friend James Buchanan Barnes—

He can’t bring himself to finish the sentence— not when they already got the most important part wrong. Friend. Friend? No, no, no. No! There are a million words in the english language that Steve could use to describe Bucky and ‘friend’ will never be the first one.

How about best friend?

How about partner in crime?

How about soulmate who loved Steve so much that every night for the past forty-eight days since he woke up in an era that Bucky doesn’t exist in he’s cried himself to sleep with the same cherry cola taste of his ‘friend’ on his tongue.

It’s the final straw— Steve loses it.

“Anyone got a marker?”

The museum is quiet before he speaks but when his voice— steadily rising and taking on that New York headiness that his troops used to jazz him about— cuts through the exhibit— his fuckin’ exhibit— it’s silent. It’s dead, almost as dead as Buck— Nobody dares move a muscle as he rips his ball cap off his head and throws it at the statue of himself. Everyone knows who he is— everyone is going to know who he is so help him god.

“I said—” he tries again— “does anyone have a marker?”

It takes a moment for the people around him to pick their jaws up off the floor and he allows them that moment with a smug grin starting to tug on the corners of his lips. Finally— they’re starting to get it.

He’s not a hero; he’s a supernova of every scrawny, queer kid who’s ever gotten beaten to a pulp for kissing who they want.

Maybe then it’s fitting that the marker— when it’s finally produced and placed in his waiting palm— comes from a teenage girl with a shaved head and a blue, pink, and purple denim jacket and a busted lip. She doesn’t say much— only a mumbled here you go— but her eyes say everything that her words don’t. Give em’ hell, Cap. For the first time since waking up he flashes a genuine grin back— yeah, this one’s for you kid.

Steve wastes no time uncapping the sharpie— he’ll look that one up later— and scratching out the error. The blasphemy to his unholy name. It takes him a little longer to decide what to write in its place. There are a million words, sure, but somehow none of them feel right at this moment. None of them are enough. That’s something he’ll have to come to terms with later, though— how much nothing feels like enough anymore without Bucky.

Finally Steve settles on a word and he scribbles it as neatly as he can given the fact that he hasn’t had to write anything in eighty years. When he takes a step back, feeling alive for the first time since waking up, he beckons over the girl with the shaved head and points to the place where he’s taken it upon himself to correct history.

“Hey kid, why don’t you go ahead and read that outloud for everyone here.”

He allows another moment— this time because she deserves the time it takes for her eyes to light up and the smile to stretch across her bruised mouth.

Steve laughs— a rusted, croaky laugh; another first in forever— when her head whips around, facing him as she loudly proclaims: “It says boyfriend. Steve Rogers grew up in the streets of Brooklyn alongside his boyfriend Bucky Barnes!”

“Damn right I did—” he mutters to the kid before taking a step towards the crowd of gaping mouths. “Did you all hear that? Don’t worry if ya’ didn’t— I’ll say it one more time. Boyfriend. Bucky was my boyfriend and if he was here today he would be my husband. If any of you have a problem with that then feel free to take it up with me. I took on half of Brooklyn for that man and I’ll do it again.”

When no one says anything Steve nods, turning to hand the girl back her marker and to thank her— he may be angry but he hasn’t lost all his manners— but when he looks at her she doesn’t look back. Instead she takes the same step forward that he had, one of her hands balled into a tiny, shaking fist at her side and the other wrapped around a cell phone that’s pointed towards the crowd. He doesn’t understand the mechanics but he thinks she’s recording.

“You hear that?” She parrots the super soldier with a wavering but fierce voice. “Captain America likes men! And none of you can deny it!”

This time it’s his mouth that drops, watching as she shakily turns the camera off and spins back around. Before Steve can say anything, though, she’s talking again, this time hastier, and he can’t help but think that she sounds so much like him. All flushed and scrawny and pissed.

“I’m sorry, I’ll delete the recording if you want but, I jus’ know these bigots are gonna’ try and cover everything up and that would be a fuckin’ shame. I don’t know if you know how many kids need to hear this. I did— and I think they should too. Only if you want, of course.”

He doesn’t answer right away— he can’t. It’s like looking at himself at fifteen. Suddenly he’s back again, his feet hanging in the water as his boyfriend paces behind him, asking if he’s ready to have him look at his knuckles yet. He didn’t get that many good punches in— the scrapes are mostly from the pavement— but Buck always worries too much so it doesn’t matter. The protective idiot.

Steve shakes his head, blinking away the sunset lingering behind his eyes. “Bucky woulda’ loved you, kid.”

The next time he loses it— the next time he turns into more flame than man— is after he saves the city he’s been trying to burn down for three months.

It isn’t long after that day in the museum when Nick Fury decides it would be best for everyone if Steve goes back into the field. Of course, no one really asks him what he wants— they pretty much just shove a new suit into his hands and tell him to get training, Captain— but what else is new?

No one really comments on his outburst besides that either. Can you really call it an outburst when you’re just trying to reclaim the parts of you that have been stolen? Sure, the press gets a hold of the story and, true to what the kid had said, tries to twist it into something more digestible, but no one actually addresses it up with Steve. Apparently when someone saves the world as good as he does no one cares that they kiss men.

Or that they don’t wanna’ to actually save the world anymore.

See, in those three months— between the training and training and even more training that Steve Rogers begrudgingly obliges— he has time to catch up on the world. More importantly, he has time to catch up on what the world thinks of him. He scours a plethora of documentaries, scholarly essays, and whole books of information about his time as Captain America. Well— his time as Captain America when it mattered. In all his scouring he learns one thing: everything written about him is wrong.

It’s all so fuckin’ wrong.

Just why the hell would he want to save a world so bent on destroying who he is?

The Smithsonian exhibition was nothing compared to what’s been written in the eighty years he spent in the ice. Better yet, nothing compared to what hasn’t been written about him. They’ve taken an eraser to every part of his life that doesn’t fit with the golden image that they constructed for him. A.k.a. every part that matters. His relationship, his past, every little thing that made him supposedly perfect for the role he was given. Gone. Erskine told him he was a good man— apparently he was the only one who thought so.

Apparently being a good man isn’t good enough.

They only wanted the perfect soldier. Yeah, well, they had one and they fucked him over too. Don’t even get him started on what they did to Bucky— Steve doesn’t want to think about what Winnifred— Winnie for short— Barnes would do if she saw the history books erasing her baby’s Jewish roots. Or his relationship. It wouldn’t be pretty, that’s for damn sure. If ever there was someone more protective than Bucky it would have been his mother. Not that there’s a damn note about her in anything either though.

Maybe that’s the final straw that does him in this time— watching the place that Mrs. Barnes loved more than almost anything else in the world crumble, while also knowing that the world no longer gives a shit about the two people she loved more.

“Mr. Rogers, this is where you grew up, is it not? Is there anything you would like to say about what took place here in your home city today?”

Maybe he pretends not to hear the last part— maybe he really does only hear up until where the reporter asks him if there is anything he wants to say. He’s been around quite his fair share of explosions; it would make sense that his hearing is a little off. Maybe he just doesn’t care anymore, though.

Scratch that— he definitely doesn’t care anymore.

And why the fuck should he? He does have something to say and propriety be damned he’s going to say it.

Steve stares into the crowd of faceless reporters and flashing cameras with a scowl on his grimey face. Around him stand the other Avengers— his ‘team’. The last time he had a team the historians screwed up the history for every single member. Dugan, Morita, Falsworth, Jones, Dernier, Sawyer, Juniper, Pinkerton. Barnes. All of them were brave men with families and sacrifices and all of them were treated like jokes by ‘reporters’ just like the ones in front of him now. He really doubts there’s a difference between old and new journalism.

The only difference is that now he’s here and this time he’s not going to let them write anything but the damn truth.

“It is—” Steve muses, brushing the sweaty hair from his forehead— “I’m surprised you know that though.”

The reporter cocks his head, clearly confused, and it makes the super soldier’s blood boil. “Come again, sir?”

“I said I’m surprised you know where I was born, kid.” This time when he says the word— kid— it’s derogatory. “Ya’ know, considering how you all seem to know nothing about me otherwise.”

Steve almost smiles at the way the crowd tenses. He actually would if it weren’t for the white hot rage coursing through his veins, mingling with the last of the adrenaline leftover in his system. It gives him an extra kick— not that he needs it. Even when he was just a runt from the wrong side of the tracks he needed nothing more than an offhand comment to raise his fists. Fighting to Steve Rogers has always been intoxicating— the aftershocks of winning the battle just makes it more thrilling now.

Who knew, right?

“Sir I asked—” The reporter sputters and Steve simply holds a hand up, silencing him before he can start again.

“Yeah I know what you asked, alright. You want me to talk about the battle here in New York today and how I am more than happy to have risked my life to save it. But I can’t do that, kid. Because I didn’t save it for you. I didn’t save it for any of you.”

Steve feels his team tense— maybe were it any other time he would stop talking. He would just leave it, let the issue go, because Bucky would tell him too. They aren’t worth it, bruiser, he would say, they aren’t worth your blood. Maybe he would listen to his boyfriend because usually he was right. Bucky was always right. So yeah, maybe he would list—

Who is he kidding; he knows he wouldn’t.

Not then and certainly not now— not when Bucky isn’t here to defend himself against everything Steve has been reading about. That’s exactly why he doesn’t stop talking. Someone has to defend him and who better of a person than him? So, yeah, he keeps going, even when he hears footsteps behind him.

“You wanna’ know who I did save it for? James Barnes, that’s who I saved it for! You see, just around that corner there is a bookstore. Rickley Books. That was my boyfriend's favourite bookstore. You know, the man who gave his life to stop a train in Austria from reaching the enemies? Yeah that was him. That train was filled with supplies. Had it reached their headquarters, who knows if we’d be standing here today. If there would be a New York at all. Not that you would know that. But who cares about that dead sergeant from the 107th, right? There’s plenty just like him.”

Steve shrugs nonchalantly— a move he picked up from the very man he’s speaking about— but he spits his words at the reporters with enough venom to cancel out any peace that the action brings. That’s his own move.

He keeps going. “You know who else I saved it for? His mother. Yeah, his mother Winnie Barnes. Wonderful lady. She used to run a soup kitchen a couple blocks from here. Kept the rift raft like myself from going hungry most nights— I was a brawler, you know.”

A couple of reporters in the crowd laugh at that and Steve flinches, his vision tinting red as he cranes his neck, seeking them out.

“Oh you think that’s funny, do you? You think I’m joking? I’m not. You ever been backed into a corner, son? Had people hurl slurs at you that I can’t even repeat today? Ever been beaten up for loving your best friend? No, I bet you haven’t. You weren’t a queer kid in the thirties. That’s hard— that’s borderline impossible actually. I only made it because of people like Winnie Barnes. That woman was a saint but nobody talks about her either.”

Steve has to take a deep breath, clearing the rasp in his voice that rises as he dwells on the woman he called his second mother for so long. She wasn’t just a saint, she was an angel. He can’t cry here though, not now. Not even as his throat begins to tighten.

“Winnie was the type of lady who didn’t let anyone walk over the little people. She used to sit me down and say Stevie you gotta’ fight for what you want because ain’t nobody gonna’ give it to you. She told me that I shouldn’t have to but that there were going to be people who would try to tear me down just for being me. And she was right— just like her son— because that was the era, you know? But now, here in the twenty-first century, you’re all still trying to tear us down.”

A hand lands on his shoulder, small fingers tugging at where his suit has begun to tear. Natasha Romanoff. He meets her gaze quickly, neck craning to stare down the red head, and in the few seconds their eyes meet it’s like Bucky is next to him. Somehow the blue in her irises catches the falling sun just like his used to. Steve can hear the gruff of his voice in the depths of his mind. Back down, bruiser. The sentiment is echoed across Nat’s face.

Steve shakes her hand off him, turning back to the reporters— don’t they know that he can’t?

“You all say you care about me, huh? That I’m a hero? You know nothing about me— you don’t want to. Before I was a soldier I was a kid. A queer kid. I said that already but let me repeat it. Queer. Did you write that down? None of you certainly did before. That’s how I know that you don’t care— because in an age where being queer is infinitely more accepted you still don’t bother to write it down.”

He pauses for another breath, shutting his eyes against the blinking red lights of the cameras. They’re like little demons, always watching his every move. Recording. Everything’s always recorded these days. Will he ever be used to that? Bucky was the technology guy, not him. Not then and not now.

When Steve picks up again— eyes open and shoulders freshly straight— it’s on a new note— a clear note.

“You don’t care about me— you certainly don’t care about the real heroes of the war because if you did you wouldn’t erase our history. Do you know how much it would have meant to Bucky to see our relationship accepted? The man who died for you? How much it would’ve meant to his mother? You can’t just pick which of our stories and our sacrifices are worthy and which aren't.”

He hasn’t spoken this much since he’s woken up, not all at once at least. Maybe he should have, though— maybe if he had then he wouldn’t feel like ripping the heads off everyone in front of him right now. Call it fight or flight. Call it revenge. Hell, call it whatever you’d like because it doesn’t really matter. Either way he feels like a kid again— again— backed into a corner behind the deli with his fists up and his teeth bared.

He feels feral again.

“So now you just want me to save the world like I did— like Bucky did— all those years ago— or maybe jus’ New York— as if that’s any better— and you don’t even bother to write a proper article about me? Hell, I never even asked for an article, let alone a whole exhibit! I’m just a soldier— and before that I was just a kid. If there’s never another article written about me I’ll be grateful. But now that I’m here, standing in front of you, I’ll say this—”

Just as Steve’s voice is cresting into a shout that would no doubt be heard regardless of whether or not the microphones were in front of him, Natasha tries one more time, her fingers slipping between his.

Her voice is a dull buzz compared to his, only reaching his ears by sheer will. “C’mon Stevie— we gotta’ go now.”

Like before he’s stunned but this time instead of seeing Buck— instead of hearing him in his head— he hears Winnie.

You fought good, honey. You fought good for us. You can rest now.

It’s jarring and it’s not lost on him the handful of awkward seconds that it takes for him to respond. That’s just the effect Winnie had on people though— still has, apparently. Steve shakes his head— I know, mama. But I gotta’ finish this fight.

“No, Nat— I’ve got to say this.” Steve mumbles— voice just beginning to waver despite how hard he clenches his jaw— before sneering at the crowd one last time.

“If I ever read an article from any of you that discredits Bucky Barnes, our relationship, or myself just know that I’ll come for you. I’ll come for this city. Don’t you ever forget who I saved it for. James Barnes, Winnie Barnes, and every queer kid who’s ever felt erased because of people like you. The bigots in the forties couldn’t stop me. The Nazis couldn’t stop me. Not even the Atlantic Ocean could stop me. So don’t think for a second that any of you could either. Have a good day.”

With that Captain America turns, marching off the impromptu stage and beginning the trek back to his apartment. He doesn’t bother looking at his team as he passes them— he can imagine their stunned faces well enough on his own. No doubt he’ll be getting another assignment from Fury soon enough to make up for this ‘outburst’ too. Still, he feels a little bit better. There’s an ache in his shoulder, and one under his ribs too, but he still smiles as he passes Rickman and Sons Books. That must mean something good.

The last time Steve Rogers burns he doesn’t burn the way he’s expecting to— he doesn’t vandalize his own name or blow up at a reporter. No, the third time— the final time— that Steve Rogers burns it’s with nostalgia— and with a damn good cup of coffee in his hand.

“I had no idea this place was even here.” The girl across from Steve muses, tiny hands shifting the steaming cup back and forth.

Her name is Ellie, he learned that back at the museum after asking for a copy of the video she took. He barely knew how to use his phone back then, let alone his email— hell, both still confuse him more often than not— but she had been patient. A little awestruck and a little riled up too but he took it in stride— easily. It’s not hard being nice to the spitting image of him.

“I’m glad I’m good for something other than making the news.” Steve chuckles and this time he means it— there’s no malice or ill intent, only humor. “O’Malley’s ‘s been here longer than I have. Looked a little different then—” he takes a moment to let his eyes wander the old coffee shop and it’s new appliances— a moment to feel his age catch up to him— “but I guess I did too.”

Ellie’s laughter joins in there and it’s strange— strange that he hasn’t laughed with another person in seven, almost eight, months; strange that her laughs sound so much like Bucky’s when they were younger; strange that Bucky isn’t here to hear. Here to laugh, too. Because he would have.

He would have called Steve an old man, would have wrapped his arm around his shoulders, would have asked— no, demanded— that Ellie try the plum cobbler. They always made the best cobbler. Bucky always had the best laugh. All grit and breath and him. Steve feels warm just thinking about it.

“Well thanks for letting me in on the secret, I’ll make sure to guard it carefully.” She even has Bucky’s warm sarcasm.

Maybe it’s not so much like looking in a mirror as it is looking at what he wishes he and his boyfriend could have been back then.

“And thanks for letting me interview you—” Ellie continues, setting the cup down but not before nodding at it, her eyes wide— “wow. You weren’t kidding about the joe, huh? Anyway— thanks for scheduling this. I know you’re probably super busy— and that there are more well established people you could have gone to.”

Steve sets his own mug down too— if he hadn’t there’s a possibility it would be more puddle than porcelain. “Well established means nothin’, kid. Not when you don’t have heart. They’re parasites, all of ‘em. The press couldn’t care less about me.”

Ellie nods, lifting the lid of her laptop. It’s a little bit dented and slathered in stickers, not quite the newest model— he would know, he has the newest one and it’s still sitting in his apartment in the box. Yet another testament to how little the people around him truly know him.

“Welcome to the twenty-first century, can I get you a side of classism with that commercialism?”

Now she sounds like Winnie too.

“Say, has anyone ever told you that you’re funny?”

She shrugs, tilting her head, a lopsided grin glued to her face. “Once or twice— I never know if they mean it or if they just want me to shut up. I never do so I guess we’ll never know.”

Steve sputters out another laugh because; “I guess we’re the same then— never give them a moment, kid. That’s the best advice I can give you.” He pauses— again— he supposes it’s going to be a day of pausing— he supposes it’s about time he pauses— before adding, “Bucky would’ve scolded me for saying that.”

Ellie’s fingers, swift and deft over the machine— Steve hadn’t even seen her begin to type— pause too as her smile softens. “What would he have said instead?”

Her question shouldn’t catch off guard— this is why he asked her to meet him; to finally, properly write his story— their story. Still he pauses— Steve’s empty hands feel hot, his shoulders warm; bare— what would he have said? It doesn’t take long to hear his boyfriend’s voice, not there but somehow loud in his ear all the same.

Just relax— they aren’t worth it. It’s too nice out to care about anything but the water— are you coming in or not? Summer doesn’t last forever, you know?

It’s impossible but Steve can feel the sun on his back and on his ears again, like he’s there— like he’s back, sixteen and on fire. Those were the days where everything made him cold. The days where his skin burned no matter the season but especially in August which was when the ocean was warm enough to swim in. It never stopped him from joining Buck— nothing could have stopped him. His cheeks warm, too, at the thought.

Steve blinks, his own smile— perhaps a little lopsided in it’s own right— shaping over his mouth. “He would have told you to relax— and to try the plum cobbler. It’s fantastic.”

With another giggle— and a reiterated comment— has anyone ever told you you’re funny, Steve?— they fall into a conversation, just a kid and a relic, about life. It’s not an easy conversation— but then again those kinds never are. It’s real, though, and unedited. Unfiltered. Just the way Erskine and Winnie and Bucky would have liked it— the only way Steve wants it. It’s not perfect but, hell, Steve has never been perfect.

He’s never wanted to be.

Maybe Steve doesn’t know everything his boyfriend would say— and maybe he’d be lying if he said he doesn’t blow up once or twice after today— but he can confidently say that he gave Brooklyn a run for her money— twice— and lived to tell the tale. He can say then when it mattered, he burned. That he still burns. That he will until he doesn’t— until he’s extinguished.

But, hey, though Summer doesn’t last forever, not even the Atlantic could extinguish the flame that is Steve Rogers.

That’s what he writes— in Sharpie— on the card he writes to Ellie— the one attached to the computer he knows he’ll never use.

#Steve Rogers #Bucky Barnes #Stucky #steve x bucky #Queer!steve rogers #Queer!Steve #Queer!Bucky #Queer!Bucky Barnes #Captain America #pride month #Steve angst #steve fluff #Marvel cinematic universe #Mcu #mcu fic #steve fic

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thelordofdarkreunion · 3 years

Text

The Experts

The second story of this story-line. Another caveat of the request was to have the Imperials and Dr. Strange here, so here they are. I have decided to name the planet ‘Polaris C,’ so as to give it some sort of name. Enjoy Dr. Stephen Strange, Lord Inquisitor Hector Rex, and the Grey Knights meeting the Scoundrels. As usual, I own no one here except Drake.

“It is the duty of the Sorcerer Supreme to defend Earth and humanity against all magical and extra-dimensional threats.” -Dr. Stephen Strange

“I am the hammer, the right hand of the Emperor, the instrument of His will, the gauntlet about His fist, the tip of His spear, the edge of His sword!” -Motto of the Grey Knights

When Doctor Stephen Strange had received a message from Peter Quill, he had almost laughed aloud. Quill. Peter Quill, in his opinion, was not only an idiot but a slight egotist. He had almost laughed. Almost. If the message was not a missive asking for help. His help, specifically. Strange knew that if Quill, of all people, was begging for his help, then things were very serious. So with slight misgiving (he didn’t quite know what he was getting himself into), Strange’s cloak had affixed itself to his shoulders and he had opened a portal to the bizarre planet Quill described in the message.

He almost wished he didn’t come. The planet itself was filled with strange red mist from an unknown source. Not a problem, though. His magic could easily take care of that. It was the commotion. People and aliens of all sorts, from all different places, were running about up to god only knew what. A huge, bipedal metal robot (at least he thought it was a robot) trudged around, seemingly scanning a collection of long abandoned black buildings in the distance. Soldiers of various sorts, all dressed differently, many of species he did not recognize, ran around doing things he couldn’t even guess at.

To his left, greatcoat swirling ominously in the mist, lenses of his mask blending in with the background, was Peter Quill. As soon as Quill saw the sorcerer, he ran up to him, almost hugging him before Strange stopped him.

“Oh thank god you’re here!” almost shouted Quill. “I don’t know what the hell’s happening and neither do we and neither to the GA and Cooper is trying to scan the structures to see what’s happening and he’s the only one who’s actually helping and Cain called the Imperial Inquisition who are arguing with the aliens and this reminds me way too much of when my father possessed me so can you help?” Strange’s mouth worked spasmodically for a moment at Quill’s rant. Quill almost hugged him and was now begging for his help. This was a serious situation, then. Strange held up his gloved hands.

“Calm. Down.” Quill took a few deep breaths.

“Okay. Okay. I’m calm.”

“Good. Now, take me to them,” commanded Strange. Quill gave a nod and beckoned Strange forward. The swirling mist parted to reveal a series of tents, the sort that he recognized from disasters he’d seen on the news. Cold and clinical. They ducked underneath a flap and passed swiftly through an airlock before getting into the main area of the largest tent. It was much bigger than Strange thought it would be. Various humans, all wearing whatever armor they had on at the time of the event, lay on cots lining the walls. All of them were out cold.

It was not the people on the cots, though, that caught Strange’s attention. An imposing blond haired woman stood in the middle of it, bickering with two aliens: a small, bug-like creature and an eight foot tall, four armed, blue carapaced alien. The woman wore a tight black bodysuit, and was currently glaring daggers at the black, bug-like alien. The four armed one stood behind the bug, both pairs of arms crossed in a gesture that was remarkably human.

“You can’t tell us what to do!” shouted the shorter insectoid. “We rule this galaxy, and we will do this our way.” The blond haired woman sneered at the two aliens.

“Chairwoman.” The word was imbued with so much venom that it made Strange look up sharply from where he was studying one of the unconscious forms. “You have no idea what any of this does, not to mention that-” She was cut off by the beeping of her comms device. She held a finger to her ear, and paused to listen to what was being said on the other side. “Understood,” she replied. She turned back to the chairwoman. “Well then. Do it your way. Xenos no longer has authority here. Take up the matter with Malleus.” She spun on her heel and strode out of the tent. On her way out, she almost slammed into a brown haired man wearing high boots and a leather jacket. He sharply avoided her, then gave her a glare as she walked out. Following him was an utterly massive individual in heavy green armor. Super soldier, though Strange. He’d bet his life on it.

“Well, looks like that’s all done now,” said the newcomer. He walked over to Strange and held out his hand. “Han Solo. You must be the expert that Quill called in.”

“Indeed I am,” replied Strange, still puzzled of what precisely was transpiring here.

“Master Chief John-117,” replied the green armored man with about as much emotion as a bag of rocks.

“Good to know we have a true expert on hand,” said the strange, bug-like alien as she walked over. “Hopefully you will be more agreeable. I am the Chairwoman of the Galactic Assembly,” she announced.

“Doctor Stephen Strange,” replied Strange politely. “And I am here to help.” The large, blue carpaced alien introduced herself as Sunny, chief weapons officer of the Omen. With introductions out of the way, Strange approached the cots of the unconscious humans. “Now, what precisely happened here?” he asked.

“We were inside one of the larger buildings in the middle of the abandoned city over there,” said Sunny, pointing to a direction outside the tent. “We went through it… seemed like some sort of weird laboratory. There was some sort of main central room. The room had blast doors; big ones to keep something out. They were open though. There was some sort of glowing white orb on a central pedestal. When Wilson, one of the scientists,” she pointed out Wilson, lying unconscious on another cot, “Touched it, it emitted a blast of white energy. It knocked out all of the humans. No aliens were harmed, and, oddly, the humans from one particular galaxy were not affected. They all seem to have some sort of glowing white light around their eye areas, and Adam muttered ‘Deus’ under his breath while still unconscious.” Strange didn’t know who Adam was, but this sounded… serious. And weird. Weirdly serious? No. Perhaps seriously weird? Stop getting off track, Stephen.

“Okay. It is good you called me,” said Strange. He paused for a moment, considering what he should do next. “Can you take me to the orb?” he asked. The chairwoman opened her mouth to speak, but was cut off by the tramping of boot soles on the tent’s artificial ground. A double file of soldiers came into the tent, along with three hooded, red robed individuals.

“Scions,” hissed Sunny. The soldiers all wore heavy black armor, and carried blocky rifles, at the moment pointed downward, but ready to fire. The red robed individuals hugged the shadows, their cowls concealing their faces. All of the newcomers had the same symbol emblazoned on their clothing: a stylized “I” with a human skull in the center. Sigil of the Imperial Inquisition.

“What is the meaning of this?” roared the chairwoman. For a bug, she had a pretty impressive voice.

“This planet is now interdicted,” replied one of the Scions. Strange glowered at him. If looks could kill, the chairwoman’s would have reduced the man to cinders at this point.

“Under whose authority?” she snapped. The arguing figures all turned around as massive footsteps sounded behind them.

“Mine.” A huge man tore his way through the airlock of the tent. Long grey hair was thrown uncaringly across his head, and a red cloak across his shoulders. Ornate power armor, fitted to his large frame, glowed a dull silver in the weak light. He was utterly massive, coming to reach the height of the Master Chief. A beautifully crafted sword rested on his hip, and a bronze breathing mask covered his lower face. However, it was not at this man that Strange’s eyes turned to. It was the group of individuals that followed him. If the man in front was a giant among men, the coterie that followed him were gods among giants. They stood eye to eye with Sunny, towing a full foot above the Chief and grey haired man. Each of the five wore silvery grey power armor, covered with strange runes, inscriptions, and seals. Huge, twin barreled cannons were attached to their left arms, and in their right they all held halberds, suitably sized for their massive frames. They stared at Strange and the group clustered around him from behind silver helmets. Vision slits, glowing white-blue, seemed to peer into their very souls.

With a start and a huge sense of foreboding, Strange realized what they were. The size of genetically engineered soldiers, the strange runes and seals on their armor, the magic resonance of the ammunition in their guns and the power whispering through their halberds, all augmented by the fact that each of the silver warriors was a sorcerer of fearsome potency spoke of one thing. These individuals were created and trained for one purpose, and one purpose only: slaying demons.

If Strange could take a human being and make them into a weapon perfect for destroying the extra-dimensional beings that some called demons, he would have a result very similar to these silent, silver soldiers. He could already feel the icy trickle of sweat as it made his way down his back. This was not good. Things had gotten a lot more serious.

“Who are you?” half-whispered the GA chairwoman. The sheer presence these newcomers had put Strange and everyone else in the room on edge.

“I am Lord Inquisitor Hector Rex of the Ordo Malleus of the Holy Ordos of His Divine Majesty’s Most Holy Inquisition,” replied the grey haired man. Well, this guy’s very dramatic and, apparently, very holy, was Strange’s first thought. “We are here to investigate the possession of these individuals,” went on Rex.

“As am I,” cut in Strange. He was the Sorcerer Supreme of Earth, dammit, and he would not be intimidated by the likes of these men. He could sense the Inquisitor, too, was a sorcerer, and a damn good one at that. “Doctor Stephen Strange.” Being polite couldn’t hurt, could it? The Inquisitor gave no response as the lead silver giant stepped forward. Strange and the various aliens winced as the temperature in the room dropped noticeably. The giant warrior held out a hand and touched Strange’s forehead with his fingers; not too gentle, not too rough, it simply just was. Strage felt the man peering into his very soul, but remained silent and still. He had a feeling the giants would respect that more than any protests he could muster.

“This one is pure of soul and strong of mind,” announced the warrior. His deep bass voice rumbled and reverberated through the tent. Strange found it disquieting. The man introduced as John-117 had a flat, but normal human voice. All the super soldiers he’d met in his home galaxy all had relatively normal voices. It appeared that this one was so heavily augmented his voice was stronger and went much deeper than a usual human. How intriguing.

“Very well, then,” replied Rex. “You.” He pointed at Strange. “Come with us. Everyone else, stay here. No one leaves.” On that ominous note, Rex spun, and with a swirl of his cloak, walked out the door, followed by the giant warriors and Strange.

Elsewhere

“Ah, shit,” swore Thomas Drake. He looked around him. Groups of his armsmen, GA marines, and redshirts stood up, confused. Shepard, Kirk, and Vir brushed themselves off and stared.

“Where the hell are we?” asked Shepard. “And where the hell is everyone else?” They stood in an open, endless expanse of white. The ground was pure white, the sky… or whatever was located above them pure white. It was like being inside a sterile room. Or an insane asylum.

“Don’t know,” replied Vir. “Wilson touched that orb-thingy and now here we are.”

“Where is here, exactly?” asked Kirk.

“An excellent question,” replied another voice. The Scoundrels whirled around to face a man, ethereally floating in the non-existent air. The figure was a human man, obviously so. However, something seemed… off about him. There was, of course, the fact that he was in this strange realm, and that he was floating several feet off the ground. His face… Well, his face was the strangest part. It looked a perfect blend between every human variation: the eyes, the coloring, the hair, all of it. A perfect blend of every human to ever exist. How is that possible…?

“What are you?” asked Drake. His hand went for his sidearm, only to find it wasn’t there. The ethereal being chuckled.

“I’m known by a lot of names. You can call me Adam… Adham, and variation of the name, really. You can call me the First, or you can call me Deus. Your choice, really.”

“Deus…” muttered Vir.

“Great. Why are we here?” asked Shepard, cutting straight to the point.

“Quite simple. You are now imbued with my power. The power of what you may call a god. There are things out there that would see you corrupted, and we can’t let that happen.”

“Good luck trying to corrupt us,” said Shepard. The being frowned.

“Many more powerful than you have been. Many. It is simply a failsafe. Through this, you gain a portion of the power of the combined gods of humanity throughout our realms. While you can’t do any sort of god-like things; you’ll be the same as before except in one regard. You are all now utterly immune to any sort of corrupting influences. No one can hijack your brains.”

“Great,” said Vir bluntly. “Now what?” Deus smiled.

“Well, unfortunately, you can’t remember this conversation.”

“Why not?” snapped an indignant Drake.

“Two reasons: it’s best if you don’t, and there is a small chance that if these memories remain, you might go slightly insane. Slightly. Still don’t want to risk it. However, there is one other thing that I can do safely. I have a favor to ask you. There are artifacts hidden in several locations around my galaxy. They carry a taint. There is one on each of the places that this planet reaches out to. You can figure it out from there. I want those artifacts destroyed.”

“Okay. Can you send us back to... wherever we are supposed to be?” asked Kirk.

“Yes,” nodded Deus. He snapped his fingers.

On Polaris C

“This is the chamber,” came the reverberating voice of one of the massive, silver armored warriors. Strange had learned they were called the Grey Knights. They didn’t tell him anything else. Lord Hector strode forward to the white orb on the central pedestal.

“It doesn’t look like any… Chaotic artifact,” he murmured. “Hmmm.” At that moment, the orb, which had been glowing brightly, suddenly went dark.

“What was that?’ asked Strange.

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

Drake’s head shot up so quickly it smashed into a medical orderly who had been tending to him. With a cry of pain, he went back down into the cot, only to miss with one hand, lose his balance, and fall on the floor. Over his muttered curses and the orderly’s apologies, the rest of the unconscious humans woke. Sunny rushed over to Vir’s side.

“Adam! What happened?” she asked. Vir rubbed his head.

“Don’t know,” he said. “There was the orb, then Wilson touched it, then we got knocked out.” He looked up, seeing the Scions guarding them in a strange tent. “What the hell happened?” he asked, slightly miffed. At that moment, the flap leading to the airlock parted, revealing Dr. Strange, Lord Rex, and the Grey Knights.

“That is precisely what I am wondering, Admiral,” said Rex. He came forward, and held out a hand, touching Vir’s forehead. The temperature of the room dropped, and Vir felt the uncomfortable sensation of the grey haired man staring into his soul. Rex dropped his hand and turned to the Grey Knights. The temperature returned to normal. “He appears… untainted. Normal.” A pair of inky brown eyes stared down at the waking humans. “However, we must be sure. Our testing shall be… rigorous.”

There we have it. Now, unfortunately, you ought to know that the Grey Knights have a scorched earth policy. They fight daemons, and daemons corrupt. Therefore, anyone who is near them is at risk. Also, they are a secret organization, and if anyone is left alive to know about them, Chaos could use it against them. They have been ordered to not harm the Scoundrels themselves, as they believe they are vital to some future events. They won’t harm Strange, as they see him as a protector of his realm, much like them. The GA people though... Tell me what you think should happen, and if you like this story line. If you have any comments, questions, requests, criticisms, or concerns, tell me!

#magnificent scoundrels #story #writing #my writing #crossover #warhammer 40k #empyrean iris #dr strange #humans are space orcs

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bedlamsbard · 3 years

Text

Part 10 of the other side AU concept! Next up will be the epilogue scenes. As a reminder from Part 1, the current state of the New Republic here takes more from the EU than it does from the new canon (though has some nods in that direction), because I’m more familiar with the EU and like it more.

Previous: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9

About 6.5K below the break.

***

Only General Airen Cracken, the head of Rebel Intelligence, and Leia Organa were present when Hera did her post-mission debrief. She suspected that this op was going to be the kind whose reports were mysteriously lost – that if they ever existed at all – but as it was she gave Cracken and Leia the truth as best she could.

When she had finished, Cracken and Leia glanced at each other. The small office was quiet for a long time, broken only by the hum of the air filters on the big warship and the sound of steps in the corridor beyond the closed door.

Cracken turned the data card with the Cluster-Prism files over in his fingers, frowning to himself. He was a human male with graying fair hair, his mild expression belying the sharpness in his eyes. After a few moments, he said, “I would say that none of what you just told us leaves this room, but I assume under the circumstances you’ll be informing members of your old crew the details.”

“I could hardly not,” Hera said, forbearing to point out that most of them had been there when she had returned. Luke and Ahsoka had taken Kanan off to talk to him privately; since Hera hadn’t heard any alarm klaxons yet, either they had all killed each other quietly or it was going as well as it could under the circumstances. Luke and Ahsoka didn’t get along at the best of times and this wasn’t those.

Cracken tapped the edge of the data card on his desk, then shrugged and said, “This should get us a step ahead of Warlord Zsinj – several steps ahead, with any luck. Will you be transferring back to the Lodestar? You’re due some leave that I assume you’ll want to take under the circumstances.”

“Airen, you know as well as I do that a general never really gets to go on leave,” Hera said dryly, which made the corner of his mouth quirk up in a grin.

“I do that.” He pulled open a desk drawer, removed something, and tossed it to her. “By the way, the Council vote was four days ago. Alliance commissions are automatically transferred to the New Republic, but if you did want a new assignment, this would be the time to ask.”

Hera caught the neat circle of embroidered fabric and inspected it; the new insignia was the Rebel Alliance starbird surrounded by fifteen starbursts. She turned the patch over in her fingers, thinking.

“Hera?” Cracken said, when she had been silent too long for comfort.

Hera put the patch down on the desk in front of her, smoothing her fingers over the starbird, and looked up at Cracken. “I’m going to resign my commission.”

His sandy eyebrows shot up. “Why?”

“There’s something I’ve needed to do for a long time,” Hera said slowly, “and I’ve put it aside for far too long. I can’t do that anymore.”

“You’re talking about Ezra Bridger,” Leia said.

Hera glanced at her. “Yes.”

Cracken rubbed a hand over his chin. “I’ve read those files. Vanished off into the Unknown Regions with Grand Admiral Thrawn and what was left of the Seventh Fleet.”

Hera nodded.

“I met Thrawn, back in the old days,” Cracken remarked. “If he ever returned, we could be in for a bigger fight than Zsinj and Isard and the rest of that lot have been giving us. Do you have any reason to think they’re out there? Bridger, Thrawn, the Chimaera, any of the other ships from the Seventh?”

“No more reason than to think they’re not,” Hera said. “I won’t be alone.”

“Mmm.” Cracken tapped his fingers on the table. “Not being from Starfighter Command or representing High Command in this case, I can’t accept your resignation, General Syndulla. I will say that since the Council vote, we’ve already had a rash of personnel resigning, officers and enlisted alike. Some of them aren’t interested in going legit, others believe that the Council vote means the war is over.” He shook his head. “As long as there’s even one Imperial Remnant ship or base out there, the war will never be over. You’d be surprised at how many people don’t believe that, though.”

“No, I wouldn’t.”

He snorted. “No, you wouldn’t. You’re like the rest of us old-timers. We saw too much. Kills our credibility as far as the kids who joined up after Yavin or even Endor think, let alone the ones who lived through Cinder.” He leaned back in his chair, sharp eyes considering. “You’re too good an officer to lose, Hera.”

She stiffened, but he held up a finger to silence her before she could protest.

“Let me finish before you tell me to go to hell and flounce off with that resurrected boyfriend of yours.”

“I never flounce, Airen. And it’s fiancé.”

His eyebrows went up. “Congratulations are in order, I suppose.” Then he frowned. “Is this for the damn pension? Because as I recall, technically Jarrus was never an Alliance officer –”

Leia stirred and said, “It’s in the Articles that members of informal rebel cells have the right to apply for retroactive status if they couldn’t formally join the Alliance due to captivity, distance, or other reasons –”

“Such as being dead?” Cracken said.

Hera met his gaze. “Prove it.”

He massaged his forehead. “Oh, for love of the Force.”

“The last formal rank he held was commander,” Hera said.

“In the Grand Army of the Republic, I assume.”

“There’s precedent. Rex –”

Cracken waved a hand. “I’ll sign the datawork if that’s what you want. If it’s just for the pension rather than actually finding him a command –” He tapped a finger on the data card. “This does count for something, but we’re a bit short of commands at the moment.”

“What, even with officers resigning left and right?” Hera asked.

“That’s not the problem. The Governing Council wants to reduce the size of the military, despite the fact that nothing actually changed after they had the vote and we’ve still got Zsinj and Gideon and half a dozen other warlords out there.”

Her voice very dry, Leia said, “There’s a faction in the Council that believes that once we have an established government again with a senate and maybe a chancellor or a president or whatever we decide to call it that most of the Remnant holdouts and the independents will fall in line.”

Hera rolled her eyes. “Has Borsk Fey’lya actually talked to any of the independents?”

“You can tell me if you think your father would pick up his calls.”

Hera snorted softly. Ryloth had refused the offer to formally join the Rebel Alliance until certain conditions were met, which the Alliance Council had been refusing to grant for the past year. With the Curia in disarray after almost twenty years of the Empire doing its best to delegitimize it, Cham Syndulla had managed to get the bulk of political power on Ryloth in his own hands, for better or worse. “Not the last time I spoke to him, which was only two weeks ago. We’re getting off-topic, Airen. And yes, the pension would be useful; just use the carbonite forms and leave the being dead part out of it; it isn’t like it’s never happened before. But that’s not what I’m talking about.”

“Starfighter Command won’t accept your resignation without a good reason, and maybe not even then,” Cracken said, with a wince at the words “carbonite forms.” They hadn’t been used often, but they were a datawork nightmare for everyone involved.

“Why not? I’m a decent combat commander, but there are plenty of others who are just as good or better, and you can’t tell me that some of the people thinking about retiring wouldn’t be just as happy training pilots, so I’m not exactly necessary there.”

He ticked off reasons on his fingers. “You’re young, you’re pretty, you’re a woman, you’re not human, you’re a general – for that matter, you’re from one of the independent worlds in the Outer Rim and in high society back on Ryloth, even if most Core Worlders see that as the back of beyond – because most Core Worlders see that as the back of beyond –”

Hera frowned. “What does any of that have to do with it?”

“Apparently Ackbar had this conversation with Wedge Antilles while you were gone over some hot new project Antilles has in mind – nothing to do with you, but Antilles pointed out that most of the best-known officers in the Alliance – excuse me, the New Republic – are human, and mostly male. Except for you,” he added to Leia, who grimaced. “You, General Hera Syndulla,” Cracken went on, pointing at her, “are a PR officer’s dream. I guarantee that whenever you get back to the Lodestar there will be a message waiting for you with orders to report for a HoloNet interview and probably a photoshoot. All very reserved but sexy, to make it clear that the New Republic is open to everyone and that we’re not the Empire; even a Twi’lek woman can rise high.”

Hera fought down the memory of the younger Hera’s anguished voice saying, Most humans just think certain things about Twi’lek women. I’m sure even your Rebel Alliance is like that. “If you’re trying to convince me not to resign, it’s not working.”

“It won’t matter, because Starfighter Command won’t accept your resignation, and Ackbar won’t for the same reason if you try to go over their heads to him. He doesn’t look good on the front of a holomag unless you happen to be another Mon Cala.”

Hera rubbed a hand over her face. “Please just stop talking or I won’t even bother with resigning and just desert.”

“Yes, please do,” Leia said dryly. To Hera she added, “You’re not the only one, but I don’t work as well for it because I’m human and a princess of Alderaan. And married, but a really good reporter could spin that if they wanted to.”

“I’m trying to get married,” Hera pointed out. “Get to the point, Airen.”

“You were seconded to Intelligence for this operation,” Cracken said. “I can’t accept your resignation, but I could give you a new assignment. And right now no one’s going to notice if you’re transferred here permanently, with all the datawork chaos from the transition.” He held up a hand to still her protest. “You may need a New Republic general’s authority if you’re out in the Unknown Regions searching for a missing Imperial fleet. We’ve had rumors about Thrawn for years; he’s been the bogeyman beneath the Alliance’s bed since well before Endor. Since Jakku, more than a few Imperials have vanished, claiming they’re off to find him. If he’s out there, then we need to find him before they do, and they have a head start.”

Hera leaned back in her chair, frowning. “Starfighter Command is not going to like you poaching me anymore than they’ll like me resigning.”

Cracken and Leia exchanged a glance. “I can handle the fallout,” Leia said. “There’s enough else going on right now that no one is going to notice for a while, since you’re seconded already.”

Hera turned her frown on Cracken. “What do you get out of this?”

“We get someone out in the Unknown Regions looking for Thrawn,” Cracken said, raising an eyebrow. “Which I’ve been asking for since Endor, but we’ve never had the resources to send anyone out there. We still don’t, but if you’re going anyway –” He tilted his head.

Hera suspected there was a trap in here somewhere, but as it went Intelligence didn’t have so many generals in it that anyone but Cracken could give her orders. “I agree with conditions,” she said.

“What are those?”

“I don’t answer to anyone but you – or Ackbar,” she had to concede, since as the commander-in-chief of the New Republic military he had precedence even over divisional commands, “– and my crew draws a salary.”

Cracken closed his eyes briefly, clearly annoyed, but just said, “Agreed. We’ll discuss the specifics later.”

Hera and Leia left a few minutes after that, letting the door slide shut behind them as they stepped out into the corridor.

“I have something for you that I didn’t want to give you in front of General Cracken,” Hera told her quietly, drawing her aside into an empty room. She withdrew the box Bail Organa had given her from the bag slung over her shoulder, holding it out to Leia.

For a long moment Leia just looked at it. Eventually, she reached out, her fingers hovering just above the silver insignia inlaid in the fine wood of the lid, then she snatched her hand back as though she couldn’t bear to touch it. Hera didn’t protest, just waited patiently as Leia stared at it.

She hadn’t left her meeting with Bail Organa out of her report, though she hadn’t conveyed the exact content of their conversation either, not having a Jedi’s near-eidetic memory.

Finally, Leia reached out with shaking hands and took the box from her. She didn’t open it, just drew it in against herself, cradling it against her chest. Her voice a little shaky, she said, “He was…well?”

“Yes,” Hera said. She started to reach out, then hesitated, not certain if Leia wanted the comfort or not.

Leia didn’t seem to see her. She whispered, “They’ll live. They’ll all live. Somewhere else, even if not…here. They’ll live.” She bit her lip, then looked up, her eyes brimming with tears. “I’d like to be alone now.”

Hera nodded. She touched Leia’s shoulder briefly and found that the younger woman was trembling; Hera squeezed her shoulder and then left her alone, letting the door slide closed behind her.

She was on her way back to the Ghost, docked in one of the massive warship’s several bays, when she ran into Ahsoka. Hera stopped at the other woman’s gesture, stepping aside into a mostly empty wardroom. The only two officers already there cleared out when they saw Hera’s general’s insignia, saluting her briefly before they left.

Hera eyed Ahsoka a bit warily. While they had been friendly in the old days with Phoenix Squadron, Hera had never been able to feel anything other than resentful of Ahsoka’s return from Malachor, nor had she been able to shake the suspicion that the other woman was keeping something from her. Something had changed there, something more drastic than the circumstances had suggested. Hera was vaguely aware that that was more than a little unfair, given what those circumstances had been, but she couldn’t bring herself to care. It helped that since her return Ahsoka had avoided her and most of the other members of the Rebel Alliance, preferring to go off on her own rather than take any formal role.

“Before you ask,” Ahsoka said, “it was my decision to bring Jacen here. Sabine went to get him from Ryloth. I spoke to General Syndulla before she arrived.”

Hera felt the muscle in her jaw twitch. Political reasons meant her father couldn’t set foot on a New Republic ship and thus couldn’t have come with Jacen; Ahsoka must have been very convincing to get him to agree to this. “I hope you have a good explanation for why you thought my five-year-old son ought to be on a warship.”

Ahsoka tucked her hands behind her back, frowning. “Believe me, Hera, if I hadn’t thought it was necessary I never would have brought him here. Rex didn’t find me until after you had already left.”

“That still doesn’t explain why my son is here,” Hera said, crossing her arms over her chest.

“Because I didn’t think we would be able to get you back without him,” Ahsoka said. “And we nearly didn’t even with him here.”

Hera frowned at her. “Explain.”

Ahsoka sighed and looked around, then dropped into the nearest armchair and folded her legs in front of her. Hera sat too, a little stiffly; the chairs and couches in the room were all mismatched and hard-worn, but comfortable enough compared to the inside of a cockpit.

“When Luke sent you away – sent you over there – he had to have a – for lack of a better word, an anchor, a target. That was why they had to use you and not someone else.” She rubbed briefly at her forehead, suddenly looking every day of her thirty-odd years.

Hera nodded warily. “No one else with a high enough clearance for this op could be relatively certain of being able to access the same place they probably were before Scarif. We weren’t even sure just using the Ghost would work, except it did.”

“She – the Hera Syndulla from that universe, I mean – was there when you arrived?” Ahsoka inquired, looking briefly curious.

“Not in the room. She said she was just outside the ship – the Ghost was docked in a hangar on Naboo.”

“Hmm.” Ahsoka smoothed the side of her thumb over the armor plate resting across her crossed legs, her expression academically curious for an instant before she drew herself back to the subject at hand. “Having her there, in the Ghost, in a specific time span, gave Luke something to aim for. It could have been any number of other universes, too, other – other possibilities.”

Hera nodded. “Kanan – the other Kanan – said that the reason Luke had to use those constraints because he wasn’t aiming for anything very, very specific. He had to have a range, but not one which was too wide.”

Ahsoka frowned in thought. “I suppose. I didn’t think about it like that, but the dialect on the artifact is very archaic. My grasp on it is better than Luke’s, but I came to the same conclusion he did.” She looked up, her brows drawing together. “The…other Kanan. He didn’t use an artifact or a focus of any kind?”

Hera shook her head. “He said he didn’t need to. He said that Jedi didn’t use artifacts like that for anything they couldn’t do naturally, those just made it easier, but he also didn’t think he would be able to manage it if he didn’t know who he was looking for or if I wasn’t there, because otherwise he would have to – to sort through all the options, and he didn’t think he could do that.”

The other woman nodded slowly, her frown deepening. For a moment she looked like she was considering commenting on that, then she shook her head and said, “Anyway, that’s going there. Coming back is harder, especially since you’re not a Force-user and can’t direct yourself. Going there, the other Hera Syndulla could act as an anchor for you, to – to pull you into that universe. But to come back to this universe – well, you’re not here. You’re already gone. One of the holocrons Luke found talked about people getting lost in the transition.” She flattened her palms on her knees. ��We didn’t find the reference until after you had left.”

“What does Jacen have to with any of that?” Hera asked, deciding to worry about that later.

“Jacen is your son,” Ahsoka said. “Blood of your blood, bone of your bone, to be old-fashioned about it. Your father probably would have worked just as well, but –”

“But he can’t set foot on an Alliance – a New Republic ship unless Ryloth joins the New Republic,” Hera said, rubbing a hand over her face. “You could have taken the Ghost to Ryloth instead of bringing Jacen here.”

Ahsoka shook her head. “The same reason but the other way around. And General Cracken wouldn’t allow it, since this was an Intelligence operation. I did ask.”

Hera ground her teeth and bit back her first few responses to that. When she didn’t say anything, Ahsoka went on, “We thought that Jacen would be able to serve as an anchor for you in this universe, especially because he’s Force-sensitive. We weren’t counting on –”

“Kanan?” Hera filled in for her when she hesitated, and Ahsoka winced.

“No. He…probably helped you along, but it’s hard to tell. It’s not like any of this has been done in living memory.” She glanced aside, clearly uncomfortable.

“Jacen is Kanan’s son too,” Hera pointed out.

“Yes,” Ahsoka admitted, looking even more uncomfortable. “I’m sure that helped. I don’t know what would have happened if your father had been here instead of Jacen.” She added with the ghost of a smile, “You should probably comm your father when you have a chance.”

“I’ll do that,” Hera said dryly. “He’d probably like to know that Kanan’s back and we’re getting married, too.”

Ahsoka sat up so abruptly that Hera heard her back pop. “What?”

“We’re getting married,” Hera repeated, raising an eyebrow.

Ahsoka pushed to her feet and paced the room, as if she suddenly couldn’t bear being seated any longer. Hera turned her head to watch her, frowning. “Do you have a problem with that?”

“No, of course not,” Ahsoka said, her voice strained and the words seemingly automatic; almost in the same breath she finished, “Yes.”

Hera felt the muscle in her jaw jump. “You and Kanan used to be friends.” You and I used to be friends, she thought, but held back the words. They weren’t enemies, but it had been a long time since they had been friends. Some of that was due to Hera’s inability to look at any Force-user without thinking, it should have been Kanan, but Ahsoka had pulled away from everyone except Rex after she had come back from Malachor.

Ahsoka stopped pacing. She was still facing away from Hera, but Hera could tell that she had her arms crossed over her chest, her shoulders hunched in. “We were. We are.”

Hera rubbed a hand over her face. She wanted to go back to the Ghost, reassure herself of Kanan’s presence, hug her son, and comm her father, but apparently she had to deal with this first. “Do you have something against my son?”

“Jacen’s a very nice boy,” Ahsoka said without turning around. She was quiet for a long moment, then she said, “Do you know who Luke’s father is?”

“A Jedi Knight who was killed during the Purge,” Hera said. She and Luke had talked about it a little when they had been stationed on Hoth together; he had sought her out after someone had told him about Kanan and Ezra.

“Anakin Skywalker,” Ahsoka said, a wealth of pain in her voice. “He was my master. And he didn’t die during the Purge.” She took a deep breath, then turned around to face Hera. “You might know him better as Darth Vader.”

Hera blinked rapidly.

“I don’t think – I know Kanan. I knew Kanan. The situation isn’t the same. I just –” Ahsoka bit her lower lip.

“You had better not be saying what it sounds like you’re saying,” Hera said quietly.

Ahsoka closed her eyes briefly. “After – Malachor – I did some digging. During the Clone War I’d made assumptions – well, we all had. It’s not as though Jedi never had affairs, though we weren’t permitted commitments outside the Order. And Padmé – Luke’s mother – had been a friend of mine. We all knew they were having an affair. Except it wasn’t an affair. They had been married in secret just after the war started.” There was agony on her face as she looked at Hera. “Anakin broke his vows, and because of it the Order died. They all died.”

Hera got to her feet. “Kanan isn’t him.”

“I know that!” Ahsoka snapped. She took a deep breath, putting one hand on the back of the chair nearest her.

“And the Jedi Order is a generation in its grave. There’s no one left but you and Kanan.”

“I know that too,” Ahsoka said. She was clutching the back of the chair so tightly that Hera heard the suede of her gauntlets creak.

Hera crossed her arms over her chest. “Does Luke know you knew his father?”

Ahsoka shook her head. “Knowing wouldn’t serve any purpose. The Anakin Skywalker I knew…” She let the words trail off, then shook her head again. “I can’t look at him and think of anything but what Anakin did, and I won’t burden him with that more than he is already. That’s not a ghost he needs to carry with him.”

“Is it one that you need to?” Hera asked her quietly.

“If I could set it aside I would,” Ahsoka said. She sounded unspeakably weary. “But everyone I know died. That isn’t an exaggeration. Everyone I know – except Rex – died because of him, because he decided to break his vows and we all loved him so much we let him.” She rubbed a hand over her face, briefly dislodging her headband. “Hera, it’s nothing against Kanan, truly, or you, or Jacen. But Anakin was a good person too, and so was Padmé. And – and everyone died. All of them. Padmé, Obi-Wan, the Order, the clones, the Republic – they all died because of Anakin. The Emperor as well, but – Anakin sided with that. And I’ll never know why, not really. I did what I could to find out, but – but everyone is dead. There’s no one left who knows. They’re all dead. And Anakin did that.”

She looked up at Hera. “That’s what I see every time I look at Luke. I won’t give him that burden, but I can’t set it aside either.”

“Is that what you think about Kanan and me?” Hera asked her. “That we’re on the knife’s edge of everyone dying?”

“No,” Ahsoka said. “No. But when you said it –” She hesitated, then went on, “– when you said it, it was the only thing I could think of. And I know you and I knew Kanan, but I knew Anakin too.” She looked at the chair she was gripping, then sighed and moved around to drop into it. “I knew you and Kanan were involved before, but I didn’t – I didn’t have to know it, if that makes sense. And I didn’t know about Anakin then. When I came back, I did know, and – and you had Jacen. And Luke was there too, and I couldn’t…I couldn’t bear it. I know it’s not fair,” she added defensively as Hera glared at her.

“No, it’s not.” She tried to bite back the sarcasm in her voice, but suspected she didn’t succeed. She stood there, looking at Ahsoka’s slumped form in the armchair, and said the first thing that came to mind, “Did you tell Kanan you were worried about him snapping and murdering us all?”

Ahsoka looked badly startled. “No, of course not. We had other things to discuss.” She grimaced, then added, “And Luke was there, and some of what I have to say to Kanan I won’t say in front of him.”

Oh, this should be good, Hera thought. She had always thought of Ahsoka as fairly even-tempered, but the handful of occasions where she hadn’t managed to avoid Luke had been memorable for everyone with the misfortune to be in the vicinity. “Then if you’re not going to say it to me, I need to go comm my father.”

She was almost at the door when Ahsoka said slowly, “Hera –”

She turned back. “What?”

Ahsoka bit her lower lip. She was quiet for a long moment, then she said, “Ezra could have brought Kanan back six years ago, when he brought me back, and I stopped him.”

Hera froze.

Ahsoka looked back at her, her gaze weary. “There was a reason –”

“I don’t care,” Hera said. Her mind felt as though it had gone blank with either shock or rage; she wasn’t sure which at this point. She balled up her fists at her sides, not certain either whether she just needed something to do with her hands or if she was trying not to hit Ahsoka. “I don’t care,” she said again, and was surprised to find that it was the truth. She took a shuddering breath, because Kanan was here now and it really didn’t matter as long as Ahsoka didn’t try to remedy what she clearly thought of as a mistake. Then her mind caught up with the rest of what Ahsoka had said and she snapped, “Do you know where Ezra is?”

“No,” Ahsoka said. She had sat up straight, but not risen. “This was before he went missing – from what Sabine’s told me, from when he went inside the Jedi Temple on Lothal.”

Less than a day after Kanan had died.

Hera stared at her, trying to think of something to say. She only realized she had put her hand over her stomach when she felt the edge of her belt buckle pressing into the side of her hand. She had been pregnant then and only just beginning to realize it; she wouldn’t be certain for another few weeks.

Hera still had nightmares about that day.

“I told Ezra I would find him,” Ahsoka said.

“Don’t bother,” Hera said. “We’ll do that.”

She turned and left.

She felt as if she was having an out of body experience, her hands still shaking, the ordinary ship sounds around her strangely muted, even the recycled air moving across her face every time she passed a vent seemingly alien. Whatever expression was on her face seemed to warn anyone off; passing crew members or pilots veered around her.

Slowly – painfully slowly – reality reasserted itself, and by the time she had reached the hangar bay where the Ghost was docked she was breathing normally again, the sound of her footsteps on the durasteel floor familiar instead of muffled. When she tapped her code into the Ghost’s locking mechanism and waited for the ramp to lower she almost didn’t feel like screaming anymore.

Once inside she raised the ramp again, then just stood with her forehead tipped against the ladder leading up to the cockpit, aware of the sound of voices from up above. Kanan’s was one of them, though several layers of deck and closed doors made it impossible for her to make out the words. She let the cool metal of the ladder leech out her remaining anger until she finally felt calm enough to climb up and follow the voices into the common room.

She stopped in the doorway, fighting back her instinct to burst into immediate tears. Kanan was sitting on the floor with Jacen, his expression somewhere between stunned and awed. Jacen had brought out the box of toys Hera kept on the Ghost, as well as some that he must have brought with him from Ryloth, and was gravely showing them to Kanan. He did this by putting each one into Kanan’s left hand, then guiding Kanan’s right hand over the toy – at the moment it was a large stuffed anooba plush that Numa had made him several years earlier. Sabine and Zeb were sitting at the holotable, watching them and looking like they weren’t terribly far from tears either. Chopper was watching too, and somehow managed to look as emotional as it was possible for an astromech droid to get, though at Hera’s approach he chortled a greeting.

“Mama!” Jacen said gleefully, abandoning the anooba in Kanan’s hands, and scrambled up to run to her.

Hera hugged him, kissing his hair. “Hi, baby. Are you and your father and Auntie Sabine and Uncle Zeb having fun?”

Jacen nodded enthusiastically and tugged her towards Kanan and the pile of toys. “Look what Grandpapa gave me!”

Hera sat down next to Kanan and leaned over to kiss him, then turned her attention to the delicately carved nunas-and-gutkurrs set Jacen showed her. After he was certain she had seen it, he took each small animal out of the case to hand to Kanan, who inspected it solemnly with his fingers before passing it back and accepting the next one. Hera had had a similar set when she was a child, but had lost most of the pieces by the time she was ten.

“So are you heading back to Starfighter Command now?” Zeb said eventually, his voice elaborately casual. Chopper echoed the question, curious.

“No,” Hera said. “I’m transferring permanently to Intelligence, and there’s something I need to talk to all of you about.”

Sabine, who had been slouching and picking at some peeling paint on her knuckle plates, sat up straight. “We’re going after Ezra?”

Hera stared at her. “I didn’t even say anything!”

Sabine waved a hand. “It’s the only thing it could be, now that Kanan’s back.” She grinned happily at him. “Unless you wanted to stay and help Luke with his mission to restore the Jedi.”

Kanan grimaced. “He seems like a nice kid, but I just spent three hours in the middle of a doctrinal dispute and I didn’t even think I still had standards for heresy.”

They all stared at him.

“…what,” Zeb said eventually.

He winced. “Don’t ask. I was afraid to because I’m pretty sure I disagree with both of them, but pointing that out just now seemed like it was asking for trouble.”

“Amateurs,” Sabine sniffed. “No one’s dead yet. By Mandalorian standards that’s barely even a spirited debate.”

“To be fair, two of us were dead,” Kanan pointed out dryly. “We just happened to get better.”

“Yeah, but you didn’t die from the doctrinal debate, so it doesn’t count.”

“That’s because every time the Jedi have a doctrinal debate that results in someone dying it also results in a galactic civil war that lasts for years and kills hundreds of thousands of other people,” Kanan said. “So we try to avoid getting to that point.”

Sabine shrugged. “Maybe if you had those more often you’d have smaller civil wars.”

Zeb frowned at her. “Isn’t that why all you Mandalorians hate each other in the first place?”

“Not as much as we hate anyone who tries to interfere in our civil wars.”

Zeb gave Hera a pained expression.

“Don’t look at me,” Hera said, gathering Jacen into her lap. “Ryloth was still having blood feuds between clans three generations ago, and even now you shouldn’t try to get a Fenn and a Kru in the same room together if you don’t want trouble.”

Sabine pointed at her. “See, someone who understands me.”

“I don’t think anyone understands you,” Zeb muttered. “Back on Lasan – and Lira San – we all just sued each other.”

“Well, that sounds boring.”

“And dueling, but that’s been illegal for a century – two on Lira San. And that’s only for extreme cases anyway.”

“Now we’re talking,” Sabine said, sounding more satisfied as Chopper chuckled agreement. “I was starting to get worried for a moment there.”

“About what?” Kanan wondered out loud. “It’s not like there aren’t lawyers on Mandalore.”

“Well, not anymore,” Sabine said.

Kanan raised an eyebrow at her, then visibly decided not to pursue that line of questioning any further and went on, “And I’m pretty sure under the circumstances trying to kill either Luke or Ahsoka would have been a bad idea.”

Hera felt the muscle in her jaw twitch again. Jacen turned his face up to her, feeling her sudden tension, and Hera hugged him. Kanan picked up one of Jacen’s discarded toys, a small stuffed Loth-wolf, and balanced it briefly on the palm of his hand. Then he turned his hand sideways, the Loth-wolf remaining suspended in mid-air, and sent the Loth-wolf galloping towards Jacen. He bounced with glee, making Hera let out a soft oof, and caught it.

“I can do that too!” He narrowed his eyes in concentration, then sent the Loth-wolf back to Kanan. It wobbled a little in mid-air, but Kanan caught it easily, grinning. He picked up the anooba Jacen had shown him earlier.

Jacen put his hands out gleefully, not waiting for Kanan to send it to him. It sailed through the air to him and he hugged it, then he caught the Loth-wolf that Kanan sent after it.

“Hold that for a few minutes, love, we need to talk,” Hera told him. She settled him more comfortably in her lap – he was heavier than she remembered him being, but then again she hadn’t seen him in person for several months – and looked at the rest of her crew.

Her crew.

She, Zeb, Sabine, and Chopper had only been in the same place a handful of times over the past six years, and Kanan hadn’t been there at all. Hera had served with a number of people whom she had gotten along with, many of whom she had liked, but none of them were the three beings and one droid in the room with her now – in the Ghost with her now. She had thought that she would go to her grave without ever having this again.

Hera swallowed past the lump in her throat. “There have been rumors about Grand Admiral Thrawn and the Seventh Fleet for years,” she said. Zeb knew some of this, but she didn’t think Sabine did and Kanan certainly didn’t. “Rebel Intelligence has never been able to confirm that they’re still out there or that Thrawn was in touch with the Emperor – or anyone from the Remnant, for that matter. Because we’ve been busy dealing with the warlords since Endor, General Cracken – that’s the head of Intelligence,” she added for Kanan’s benefit, “– hasn’t been able to send anyone out into the Unknown Regions to investigate the rumors.”

“What happened to General Draven?” Kanan asked, startled; the previous head of Rebel Intelligence had been on Yavin while they had been there.

“He died,” Hera said. “Five years ago.”

Kanan winced.

“So since we’re going to be out there anyway, we might as well do it with Alliance – Republic – authority?” Sabine said. She cocked an eyebrow at Hera. “That is what you said to Cracken?”

“More or less,” Hera said. “Doing it with Republic authority was his idea. I was just going to resign.” She hesitated, then added, “I can’t order you – any of you – to come. But I’ve let this go long enough and I won’t wait any longer.” She couldn’t help but look at Kanan as she went on, “Ezra is family, and we’ve all lost enough family to the Empire.”

“I’m in,” Sabine said.

“Me too,” Zeb said. Chopper chortled agreement.

Kanan just leaned over and kissed her.

Hera let out her breath, relief making her shoulders slump. “All right,” she said. “Make your arrangements. We have to take Jacen back to Ryloth.” She smiled at Kanan. “And we’re getting married.”

That got them a round of back-slapping and congratulations and promising not to actually do it until both Sabine and Zeb could be there. By the time they were all settled down again, Hera was flushed with happiness, leaning against Kanan’s shoulder with her other arm around her son.

We’re all right, she thought, looking around at her crew – at her family. We’re all going to be all right.

#cut scenes and concept writing #other side au tag #also a peak example of 'I prefer to work things out in fic versus writing meta' re ahsoka here

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felassan · 3 years

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Dragon Age development insights from David Gaider - PART 4

This information came from DG on a recent SummerfallStudios Twitch stream where he gave developer commentary while Liam Esler continued playing DAO from where they had left off in Part 1, 2 and 3. I transcribed it in case there’s anyone who can’t watch the stream (for example due to connection/tech limitations, data, time constraints, personal accessibility reasons, etc). A lot of it is centered on DAO, but there’s also insights into other parts of the franchise. Some of it is info which is known having been put out there in the past, and some of it is new. There’s a bit of overlap or repetition with topics covered in Parts 1-3. This post leaps from topic to topic as it’s a transcript of a conversational format. It’s under a cut due to length.

The stream can currently be watched back here. Next week LE will be streaming a different DAO playthrough with commentary from another guest. Two weeks from now LE and DG will return to continue this playthrough for another stream session like this one.

(Part 5, Part 6)

[wording and opinions DG’s, occasionally LE’s; paraphrased]

The Loghain sequences, where it jumps out of the HoF’s point of view to let the player see what Loghain is up to, were added quite late on in development. Some of the dream sequences (like the HoF’s dream of the Archdemon) were also probably added quite late. Those sequences were added as they felt that they needed to have more indication of the larger goings-on in terms of what Loghain was up to, since they had cut some stuff that was meant to have shown this. Cutting things can be funny like that as you’re then left trying to explain the holes.

An original Archdemon concept drawing had them as a lot more demonic as opposed to draconic, with blank all-black faces, a giant ornate crown, smoke, tentacles and a Cthulhu-esque feel. Things change a lot during the concept phase however. At the time, DG wasn’t sure if he liked the changing of the ‘demon’ into a ‘dragon’, but over time he digs it - it sorta implies some things about the nature of dragons in the world that they later decided “yes, that is probably the case”. They then worked that more into the lore so that dragons weren’t just there to be huge lizards. Given the difficulty the team had modelling things like tentacles and snakes, the original Archdemon concept would probably have been iterated on and would’ve had to become something else eventually anyway.

Having the party camp was probably always part of James Ohlen’s plan. Originally, there was going to be different camps in specific places around the map. They then made it a sort of ‘pocket area’ that the player always ‘took with them’, but here they had problems figuring out things like what would happen if the player rested while in an interior location as opposed to somewhere out in the wilderness, “like, does that change it?” For a while there was a complicated system where the party members would do things in camp that would give the player items and help out in such ways - like a party member who made potions, ones that could be interacted with and asked to craft, a whole crafting system relating to that, etc (this all got cut). This was supposed to act as a reason for the player to return to camp and have more interactions at camp; they didn’t want the camp just to be ‘the place you go just to talk to followers’. A good portion of the team considered dialogue to be boring and not an activity that was engaged in.

As soon as hair/beard hair came past the ‘clipping plane’ of the neck, they had real trouble getting it to move due to lack of proper cloth physics and the troubles they had with hair. Beards were rectangular strips that dangled from the chin with the beard texture attached to it. Sometimes certain points were connected to the chest which is why there’s the weird stretching if models move in certain ways. This happens with robes as well. The reason they did this is so that there’s no clipping. For some reason the BW animation team was so averse to clipping compared to other games from elsewhere which sometimes have a bit of clipping that they’re actually not fussed about. At one point they had a big fight on the DA team because the art team said “We need to make every entrance and doorway [including tents] about twice the size that it is, about Shale-size specifically, because of Shale” because they were worried that there would be scenes where Shale would clip through the wall, and about how this would look to players. Others responded that it’d be rare where Shale would be seen going through a door and also that nobody really cares (as in it’s not a big deal). DG half-seriously suggested that instead of making every door bigger, have it so that after entering the door’s texture at the sides and above it would look cracked and have an outline of Shale’s arms and head as if she’d just barreled her way through the stonework. In the end Shale’s size was reduced as a solution to this (so Shale was originally intended to be a lot larger). This is an example of a place where different parts of the team had different priorities in development. It was pointed out that in the end having giant doors may not have made much difference, as every interior in DA is massive in terms of floor and ceiling-space, as well as items (huge jugs of ale etc) anyway.

Weapons and staves hover on characters’ backs due to the team’s aforementioned aversion to clipping. Originally there were plans for scabbards and straps, but they didn’t have the resources for these and they were also concerned about staves clipping through straps, especially when being ‘drawn’ for combat, even though that would just be a second or so. So this is why we instead have floating magnetically-attached-looking weapons.

DG wrote Nature of the Beast including all of the Brecilian Forest, it’s possibly his favorite plot/questline out of the ones he wrote for DAO. It’s one of the plots that survived best from first inception to final result. One of the prominent cultural features of Ferelden is the werewolves, and so DG had to make ‘the werewolf plot’. All the initial plots were split up like that (the werewolf plot, the dwarf plot, etc). Originally there was a separate ‘elf plot’ but it got joined together with the werewolf one. DG had an idea for a being that was like male and female, terrible and kind, beautiful and horrible and so forth - both at once, like the way nature is. This was the vague initial idea from which this plot grew. The nature spirit encountered is the flipside of the being. The spirit of the forest is both male and female, or something akin to being bigender (both rather than neither). There’s not much difference between the Lady and Witherfang. DG finds it so weird hearing the DAO Dalish elves’ American accents (since their accents were changed for the next game). The American Dalish elf accents bugged DG enough that when they got to DA2, he said to Caroline Livingstone “can we just retcon this” and she was like “yeah”. “I think we underestimated how weird prevalent American accents in the game alongside the British ones would be”. Zathrian is voiced by Tim Russ (Tuvok from Star Trek).

The Cammen-Gheyna plot is a fairly ‘nothing-y’ sidequest relatively speaking, but is so complex in terms of how many options and paths through it that it has that DG got a big of a finger-wagging for it and some people were not happy. LE commented that this quest is “an extremely Gaider plot”, as the player can ruin everyone’s lives in it. Gheyna’s pronunciation of Andaran atish'an is incorrect. This phrase is one of the ones that got mixed up in the pronunciation guide and one of the ones that when they got to DA2, DG was like “ignore what we did before, here’s the new pronunciation files”. One of the first ‘images’ the team had of the Dalish was that they had reindeer-like creatures that pulled the aravels. In DAO aravels look more like standard wagons than the ones in the ‘images’, and they weren’t shown properly. Aravels are wagons but they’re supposed to have big sails (not naval-style sails on top) all over the place to catch the wind, so that they look like a bunch of ships being drawn across a field. They got closer to how they’re supposed to be in DAI. At one point the artists sat DG down and asked him what should set the Dalish apart visually. “Funny you should ask, I have some very specific ideas about what the Dalish should look like that have just never been done”. [I think here he meant hadn’t yet been implemented in the franchise] “Oh, we just thought they were ‘people with wagons’.” “Nobody reads documentation...”

The lamps in the Brecilian Forest are a bit random. They put light sources everywhere and it seems like the Brecilian lamp thing was art-asset use that boiled down to “guess it’s an elven forest?”. The Deep Roads were supposed to be properly dark. The team had a lot of conversations over how dark they could or should make the Deep Roads. They constantly had beams of light coming from above and it was like “this is supposed to be like a mile underground, why are there sunbeams coming through cracks in the ceiling” - the answer is it looks good and they didn’t want to do proper darkness. By DAI, they got closer to the ‘look’ the Deep Roads are supposed to have. This is a recurring theme in the DA franchise lol. “This was a weakness in our team and processes, that it took two titles before we got on board with each other and with the vision.” But they had plenty of good strengths too! DG wishes they had iterated a bit more on the werewolves’ look.

“Evil options” was always one of the big conversations that they had. DG wasn’t a fan of the evil options because they mostly boiled down to being a big jerk. The reason for this is a lengthy design discussion that relies on interface - proper, smart evil usually implies some kind of deception, and how do you indicate to the player that the option they’re about to take has a more cleverly-sinister aspect to it (as opposed to simple Intimidate options)? They didn’t really enjoy just letting the player run around being an asshole to people, “do we have to service this hyuk-hyuk-hyuk, particular type of enjoyment?” DG wishes they had figured out how to do the evil stuff a little better (feeling that in a game, doing good has less merit unless there’s temptation to do evil, and that evil paths should be more materially rewarding).

DG wrote The Dawn Will Come with some help from PW and Karin Weekes. It was the first song he wrote. Trevor Morris sent him the tune and he listened to it many times and wrote out the lyrics. PW and KW helped him make it “less awkward and cringey”. “They’re very good at that”. PW is good at poetry, KW is more musical and knows more about music. “If you get something which is as ridiculous as it is memorable, it’s probably Sheryl. If you get something that’s beautiful prose, it’s probably Mary. Something in-between is probably PW.” The DAI bardsongs were written by an external party brought in specially to do so. This required a fair bit of review and revision to make sure they followed DA lore. “It’s a problem we’ve always had trying to work with third parties, they tend to think that anything that falls under the umbrella of ‘medieval fantasy’ would fit in DA”. (Here DG groaned a bit thinking about Orson Scott Card.)

On the Grand Oak and co: “After I finished writing this I totally regretted it. It’s a big dialogue and there’s a lot involved in this quest. Do you know how hard it is to make somebody rhyme in a way that’s not completely cringey for the entire dialogue? I was three quarters into it and I so wanted to stop but I was past the point of no return. But I did it! And it worked out.” The Grand Oak should have been a LotR-style ent-like being in terms of animations and presence. When DG sees the Oak’s stationary pose he’s reminded of Silence of the Lambs. When he finished the Grand Oak and hermit quest he was like “I make way more trouble for myself than I should”. The Hermit cycles through random animations outside of conversation because he’s supposed to be twitchy and weird.

The haunted empty camp side encounter was a pain for the tech designers to make work because there’s no NPC to talk to. It was a pain whenever companions had to offer critical information like in these sorts of parts in fact, as they had to write 9 versions of each ‘line’ (1 for each companion).

There are certain spells/abilities in D&D that can make a GM’s life frustrating, such as teleportation, telling the future, resurrection. The fact that death is not permanent, for instance, should be a huge thing that affects society and how the people in it view death. This is why they were thinking stuff like “If every low-level mage in the setting had a skill like ‘Charm Person’, what would non-mages make of that?” This ties back to discussions in previous part/s where there are lore rules like no teleportation. DA was originally envisioned as a low-magic setting, but this didn’t last long [this subject is also covered in previous part/s]. The rules of magic didn’t really change though, they just weren’t really communicated that well to the other teams in the early days. They slowly realized that it was incumbent on the design team to explain and sell to the other teams the vision, not just expect them to read documentation. They were also constantly fighting against their own presuppositions of “DA is like D&D”.

Desire demons were supposed to be genderless. DG isn’t a fan of how the Fade turned out in DAO. The quests themselves were too long; they couldn’t do all the original plans they had for them so there was a lot of iteration, “then we ended up settling for something not very exciting”. Another big fight the team had was about whether they should have permanent death since DA was a more realistic world? One side’s argument was that ‘if you don’t allow for resurrection then we can’t have death in combat’. DG wondered if there was a different dichotomy they could get to but didn’t want to dictate how combat should work or tell combat designers how to do their job, as he wasn’t the one doing that work.

One of the best moves they made when working on DAI was the concept artist consulting cosplayers. This was good work not only in a fashion sense but also in that it led to making outfits for characters that someone could actually wear (contrast those with Sebastian’s outfit, which DG remembers cosplayers having trouble making functional/wearable and putting together). DG really wasn’t keen at all on Cole’s hat. When designing the clothing-clothing in DAO, the artists were trying to get the most variation for clothing out of assembling pieces. For the sake of variation they allowed pieces to go together that really shouldn’t go together. This allowed for a larger number of clothing options to be made out of a smaller number of clothing models/textures.

In Neverwinter Nights they added a “jiggle mesh” to the engine, it was used in only one place (Aribeth’s cleavage).

Writers are the first ones that jump onto a project, so when last touches and polish is being added to a game they’re often not aware of it. Once the writing is more or less locked down for a game, they start working on the next project. On every project at some point they had to have what they called the “profanity meeting”, where they decide what types of profanity exist in that world, what level of profanity they’re accepting, establishing the standard on this front, etc. This leads to fun meetings where they go through every profanity that they know and try to create new ones. “Maker’s breath!” and “Void take you!” are some of these kinds of things. They needed exclamations akin to “Goddamnit” but which made sense in this fantasy setting (“Goddamnit” implies the context of God, and the concept of damning, for example, so it doesn’t hold up) and weren’t just word substitution like “frack” instead of fuck or something.

The Grey Wardens gained their trademark blue and silver uniformed look for DA2. When the new art director Matt Goldman came on before DA2, he wanted to re-approach a number of things such as the darkspawn (mentioned in previous parts) and the Wardens. He wanted factions like the Wardens to be more uniform and easily identifiable at a distance by silhouettes and colors. He wanted factions to be more visually distinct and to introduce more color in general, as DAO was very brown and muddy. This was something of a standing mission of his when he came onto the project. He disliked the idea that there wasn’t anything unifying or distinct or ‘easily identifiable as a DAO screenshot’ about DAO screenshots, other than that brown muddiness.

Deciding how to design the Lady of the Forest was a long conversation due to the potential nsfw elements. It was a long haul to get her to look a certain way.

The thing DG found easiest/least painful to write was probably Zevran’s dialogue. He felt less pressure about it and had a bit more fun with it. Zevran has a certain story about trust that DG found pleasurable to build on; Zevran had grown up with a certain expectation of deceit and trauma, and when confronted with earnest feelings, that was the more puzzling part for [Zevran] to process. “When you expect everyone around you to deceive you, you’re kinda like, okay, this is life. But then to figure out, ‘oh, I guess it doesn’t need to be that way’, well how do you even... not?” DG remembers straight male players complaining on the forum after accepting Zevran’s massage tent-invite and not clocking that that was an invite of a certain nature. Overall Zevran was a more relaxed piece of writing for him. Shale came later but writing Shale was also a lot of fun. Like HK-47, “you can string together a few quirks that you find amusing and people will still treat that like a character and love it”.

In DA2 there was an entire subplot centered around the Carta and Varric. It spanned all three Acts. Mary Kirby had written it to completion and it was good. DG had to tell her it was among the cuts they needed to do because it was written a bit later relative to other stuff and because cutting it offered the most return according to the schedule and resources/subsequent downstream work. In cases like these they sometimes take the cut plotbeats and put it in a ‘box’, in the hopes that they may be able to use it for DLC or something later on. In practise this doesn’t happen very often at all. On DAO it did happen once with Shale. Shale was cut from DAO and had to be moved to become Day 1 DLC. Work on Shale therefore took place after most of the game had been finished. If they hadn’t done this, she would have been cut completely. It also sort of happened on DAO with Loghain. It originally had a whole plotline in Denerim involving him which had the player figuring out his background, motivations and interacting more with Anora. All of that got cut (requiring the cutscenes mentioned at the start of this post being added), and this is where the idea came of writing a novel (The Stolen Throne). This occurred in the period when the game had been delayed and DG particularly regretted that particular cut. He thought, “I could take this story that you were going to learn about the history of Loghain and his relationship with Cailan, and rescue it in a way.” [source]

[Part 1]

[Part 2]

[Part 3]

[Part 5]

[Part 6]

[‘Insights into DA dev from the Gamers For Groceries stream’ transcript]

#dragon age #bioware #video games #cole #spirit boy

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falseroar · 3 years

Text

Dog Days Part 8: Doctor’s Appointment

((A look around one doctor’s office leads Abe to check in with another, although an unexpected find throws the hunter off in his investigation.

Yeah, again, sorry this took so long to get here. This part is on the longer side though, and I have a few more that should be ready to go up over the next couple of days. I’m also hoping to get this story done without any more big breaks.

Since it’s been a while, here’s a link to Part 7: Leaving the Clinic, and one for the entire series so far.))

It was a long night, and Abe might have almost dozed off once or twice or half a dozen times, but he kept his watch on the front door of the clinic and the steady trickle of people entering and leaving throughout the dark hours. Some were in and out in less than half an hour, others took longer, but by his count no one went in that didn’t come out. So that was one easy point in the doctor’s favor, although missing patients sure would have made ending this case early a possibility.

No, the last patient left around 4:30 AM, and it was in the still darkness of 5 AM before the doctor himself stepped out of the clinic and locked the door behind him.

Interesting--even with the late sunrise in the fall, that didn’t leave much time before dawn. Unless the vampire was willing to cut it close, he couldn’t live that far from his clinic, especially as the doctor turned and began walking away rather than going to one of the cars parked on the street.

Abe hesitated. He had two immediate options: follow the doc and see where he holed up during the day, or check out the clinic.

As soon as the doctor rounded the corner, the hunter impulsively jumped out of his car, only to nearly wind up face first in the gutter along with the leaves and trash when his head and body refused to cooperate.

Right. How long had it been since he last got some real sleep? And that little binge he went on back at the house yesterday hadn’t helped much. His head pounded as his vision shifted before resettling, and he swallowed back a bad taste in the back of his mouth while he leaned against the car and waited for his legs to wake up.

On second thought, maybe checking out the doc’s clinic while he could be sure it was empty was the real way to go. There would be other chances to see where the vampire spent his days.

Abe trudged across the silent street to the front door of the office and looked around, despite the obvious lack of anyone else out at this unholy hour of the morning, before kneeling down in front of the lock. A few minutes working with his personal set of lock picks, followed by a quick search that turned up a spare key hidden behind a loose brick, and he was in.

He closed the door softly behind him, waiting for several heartbeats to make sure the building really was silent, before he started looking around the place.

First up was the waiting room, which was clean and well taken care of, but Abe noticed that not all of the chairs matched, like they had been bought secondhand separately rather than as a set, and while he didn’t know much about art, the calming paintings on the walls all had a bargain bin look to them. Behind the receptionist’s desk, he found an older PC that he didn’t bother with turning on, and more importantly a binder full of dated sign-in sheets.

For a moment, he perked up at the idea of a record of the kind of people who came here, but after turning through a few pages of obviously false names, including the occasional that looked like someone couldn’t even be bothered (unless some parents out there really decided to call their kid ‘Burnt Arm’) he decided that was a bust. There was an appointment book, but all of the entries were little more than a time and set of initials, with the occasional note in what looked to possibly be German, although the writing was so cramped and hurried that it might as well have been scribbles to Abe.

Seeing nothing else of interest, Abe opened the door next to the desk onto a small hallway, where the first door was to the office of the doctor himself. Right where he could keep both doors open in order to keep an eye on the waiting room if needed, a suspicion that grew stronger when Abe spotted the twin door stoppers near the wall. There were only a few examining rooms, a set of swing doors, and then a door at the end of the hall marked as the supply closet, and that was the entire place.

So, the clinic took on patients who weren’t keen on giving their real names, and judging from the décor and the size of the place they either weren’t the kind of clientele to pay out a lot or the kind to care about the look of the place, although both was definitely an option. If this handwriting belonged to the doctor like Abe suspected, then he was doing desk work that could be put off on a receptionist or nurse. Either this Henrik guy worked alone or he couldn’t keep someone else around every night, and Abe was just self-aware enough not to start guessing why that might be.

Deciding to work his way from the back to the front, Abe checked the supply closet first and found nothing out of the ordinary, or at least as far as he could guess. It was a large room, with a cot set to one side with a neatly folded blanket on top of it, which combined with the lack of windows must have made it a decent enough back up plan if the doctor couldn’t get home before sunrise. There were bulk packages of standard medical equipment and first aid supplies, but it wasn’t like this place was equipped to be a pharmacy or anything. And no body bags or stash of refrigerated and conveniently labeled stolen blood packs, which was…probably fortunate, although Abe would have appreciated an excuse to wrap this case up early and get the information he wanted in exchange already.

But walking through the set of swing doors next showed that this place wasn’t just for taking care of the occasional burn or bruise. Abe took one look at the small area with its sinks and gowns and other prep supplies and the glass window that showed the surgery room beyond, and quickly backed out again.

There was nothing wrong about the room, it was thankfully clean and the most well-maintained place he had seen so far in the building, but the silent and waiting table in the center of a tiled and easily cleanable room surrounded by lights and waiting equipment gave his imagination far too much material to work with. The examination rooms also looked absolutely ordinary, although he tried not to think too hard about why someone would feel the need to use so much air freshener on top of the sharp scent of cleaning supplies when taking care of one room in particular.

Which just left the office of the doctor himself.

Despite being roughly the same size as any of the exam rooms, the space felt smaller thanks to the choice to add in shelves crammed with row after row of texts that hid any wall space that wasn’t already covered in framed diplomas and certificates, some of which looked a little sketchy to Abe. The desk was turned so that anyone sitting at it could see straight into the waiting room when both doors were open, again confirming Abe’s theory about the doctor running this place alone at least on occasion. Said desk had a stack of files waiting to be returned to the waiting cabinet, along with some random pieces of papers and other odds and ends.

A look at the shelves found a lot of medical texts, but Abe was surprised to find more than a few familiar titles. He pulled off one that was identical to one of his own, until he opened it and found that the doctor had taken a vastly different approach to his notes and underlining compared to the hunter’s when it came to, for example, the sections on the anatomy of kappas or the habits of nagas. While his own personal notes made corrections based on what he’d had to do to survive past cases, the doctor’s notes were about how to spot warning signs of blood loss or recommended hours of sleep.

Interesting, but not helpful.

Returning the book to the shelf, Abe turned to the desk and took a quick look through the files that were practically just begging for someone to take a peek. Again, any patient names or anything that could be used to identify them was reduced to a series of letters and numbers that meant nothing to Abe, but he could at least read the notes on suspected conditions and treatments. He even found “Burnt Arm” again, and more than enough to guess that at least half of these patients weren’t, in fact, human.

He closed the last file and made a conscious effort to forget what he read there as he tried to focus on what else was there on the doctor’s desk. A paperweight that looked like a spiral trapped in glass, a foam stress ball, some scattered notes that Abe skimmed over without actually reading until he realized that one of said notes was actually written on the back of a prescription note from a local hospital. The handwriting on the prescription was different but somehow just as terrible as the doctor’s, and while he couldn’t read that he could read the type on the header: “From the desk of Dr. Iplier.”

“Finally,” Abe muttered to himself as he made a note of the name and hospital in his own notebook. A lead, or at least a contact of Dr. Schneeplestein’s who might have something to say against or in defense of the vampire.

There was nothing else of interest on the desk, and Abe took just enough of a look in the file cabinet to determine that it was full of more confidential patient files. Even if he had the time to go through them all, he felt just uncomfortable enough about the idea to give it a pass for now. Ready to call it a day and get out of here before the rest of the city woke up and someone spotted him leaving, Abe did pause to check the drawers of the desk.

The top drawer was filed with an assortment of pens, pencils, paperclips, and other office supplies, and the one underneath was filled with spare paper and notepads and a few more files.

And, tucked away in the corner where Abe might have missed it if it hadn’t caught the light overhead, a small, round plastic container with a label on the side that proved to be blank when he pulled it out.

And resting inside was a misshapen, used bullet, blood still clinging to its silver surface.

---

Abe spent too long, checking the files, looking for any sign of the patient who had entered the clinic with that silver bullet inside of them, but there was nothing. Nothing, except for a scribbled note on one of the crumpled pieces of paper that littered the desk.

How to trace?

Nothing on its own, if Abe hadn’t recognized the names and numbers of some local weapons dealers, along with the contact information of the Institute that was hastily but not completely scribbled out.

Abe made his own copy of the list, although his hand was shaking so bad that he could barely read his own handwriting. When he stepped outside of the clinic a few minutes later, he had to lean against the brick wall outside and catch his breath in the dawning sunlight before he locked the door behind him and returned the spare key to its hiding place.

He should go back to the office, try to get some sleep, think about this, he knew all that. Just as much as he knew that he wouldn’t be able to sleep at all while the image of that used bullet was still in the back of his mind. At least, not until he was so exhausted that there wasn’t any other choice but to close his eyes.

Determined to at least get something useful done until then, Abe got back into his car and took a little drive.

Aside from the patients who had to be there early for surgery and the regular ER crowd, the hospital was relatively quiet when Abe walked in the front doors, feeling close to naked without his heavy hunter’s jacket and accompanying weapons that for some reason weren’t welcome in this establishment. Muttering under his breath and rolling up his shirtsleeves, Abe made his way to the reception desk only to stop short at the familiar face standing behind it.

“What the hell?” Abe said aloud before he could stop himself.

“Good morning,” Google answered, although his stare suggested anything but it. “Do you have an appointment?”

“Wha—Is that it? Is your client another doctor, is that what’s going on here?” Abe asked, and the Google unit’s frown only grew more pronounced.

“I do not understand what you are talking about. If you wish to make an appointment, please specify the doctor you are looking for. If this is an emergency, I can direct you to our Emergency Room where trained staff is standing by.”

“You don’t understand—” Abe sighed and ran a hand over his face before moving closer to the desk and lowering his voice. “I’m here about what we discussed yesterday, remember?”

Google looked him up and down behind his glasses, and Abe swore he could hear the hum of magic and electricity whirring behind that chest before he spoke again. “Your face does not match any of my records. Perhaps you are thinking of another magitek unit?”

“Look, if you can’t talk about it now, just say so, but don’t pretend you’re someone else just because you have on a different shirt now,” Abe said. The green shirt was literally the only difference he could see between this man and the one standing outside his office yesterday, and even then, they both had the same “G” on their chest for crying out loud. “I’m here to see a Dr. Iplier. Which way to his office?”

“…I would argue this point further, but I suspect that would be an inefficient use of my resources. Please wait while I check Dr. Iplier’s schedule,” he said before freezing, his eyes focusing on some point in the mid distance while Abe wondered if he had just been insulted. Just as Abe was thinking about checking a directory and hoping for the best once he found the right floor, Google suddenly came back to himself and said, “Dr. Iplier does not have an official appointment until 9 AM. However, he has noted that he is expecting someone to come by this morning and that I am to let them pass without question.”

“Fantastic,” Abe said, already questioning the security around here but not about to look a gift horse in the mouth. “Can you tell me the way to his office?”

Hell of a name, Dr. Iplier. Part of Abe was tempted to ask if there was a relation, but he knew Mark had changed his name when he started acting and even then he only picked a name he liked the sound of. Still didn’t sit right with him, when he had to say it out loud after all these years.

Said doctor barely had time to look up at the knock before his office door opened and the hunter let himself in. There was only a slight pause before he asked, “Can I help you?”

“Yeah, yeah I think maybe you can,” Abe said. “That Google thing up front, he work for you?”

“Google is considered to be hospital property, so in a sense, yes he does,” Dr. Iplier said, slowly putting his pen down. “Why do you ask? He hasn’t caused another...incident, has he?”

“Another one?” Abe paused at that but decided to press on with the train of thought already in progress. “Hospital property. So if someone who worked for the hospital, maybe a doctor perhaps, were to send that thing to, say, my office, you could do that?”

The doctor started to say something, stopped, and then started again. “I’m sorry, are you saying that you saw that Google outside of the hospital yesterday? Because that’s impossible, that magitek unit is bound to these premises, it literally cannot leave the building without a serious rewrite of its system.”

“…What?” Abe said, feeling the sudden rush of having figured all this out just as quickly evaporating with each passing second. “Wait, there really is…more than one…”

The doctor nodded with almost condescending patience while Abe felt he could have started this conversation off better by just going ahead and shooting himself in the foot. But one doctor using someone else to accuse another doctor of some vague and as yet undiscovered scandal just to put his practice under and maybe gain some new business, it would have been so simple.

“Yes, that Google was a donation, I believe, straight from the creator, but I really don’t know much more than that,” Dr. Iplier confessed. “You’ll have to ask someone else if you want to know more, magic and technology aren’t really my area of specialty. Now, unless you’re here about a medical issue and willing to make an appointment, would you kindly leave?”

His tone more than anything was enough to snap Abe out of his disappointment and straight back into his usual resting state of anger and accusations.

“How about if I have a medical question for someone else? One I think you might be familiar with,” Abe said, pacing slowly across the plush carpet of the doctor’s office which was much less cluttered than Dr. Schneeplestein’s and offered more space to move around and ignore the waiting chair opposite the doctor’s desk.

“When a vampire enters the city, they have to get through a whole rigamarole to get registered, right? Been that way for—a while, yeah?” Abe started, pausing only slightly when he tried to recall when that became a thing. He could remember clearly the whole upset that caused along with the other Bronson Institute-backed policies, but it all started to blend together after a while. “Public hospitals like this one are involved in that process, right?”

“That’s…correct,” Dr. Iplier answered, his tone and expression clearly showing his confusion at trying to piece together how this was connected to Abe’s other questions. “Mercy Green is one of several hospitals that are part of the sponsorship program. I can’t speak of the number, of course, but we do have some…participants who are scheduled to come by and pick up their rations.”

“You do know you can just say blood, right?” Abe said. “Where’s that blood come from, again?”

“Well, we do have some donors who come through us to give to certain participants in a safe, controlled environment, but the majority of it comes from recently deceased people who had already agreed to be donors, similar to how we get organ donations. We can’t use that blood for living patients, but the vampire immune system is capable of handling it.”

Abe nodded along like he was listening, but this was all stuff he already knew. His real focus was on the doctor, the way he sometimes hesitated before choosing the “appropriate” word, the way his eyes watched the hunter but at one point flickered downward and to his left. Moving on the pretense of examining the doctor’s license on the wall (from Nicaragua, a fact which on a normal probably would have earned a few questions on its own), Abe turned around and caught a glimpse of the mini fridge under the doctor’s desk.

Interesting.

“Why exactly are you asking me about this?” Dr. Iplier asked. “This is all public information; you can literally find all this out by looking online or attending one of the Institute’s outreach events. And I would hope that a hunter would know this.”

Abe couldn’t resist glancing down, wondering what had given him away with all of his usual gear back in his car. Deciding to brush it off for now, he answered, “I like to brush up on what I think I know every now and then. For example, I know registered vamps are limited on how much they can ‘withdraw.’ But what I want to know is if there are any signs that a vampire might be sucking a little off the top.”

The doctor’s expression became very fixed, and after a second to hear to replay what he just said, Abe quickly corrected himself, “I mean, what’s it look like if someone’s drinking more than they’re allowed?”

“…Right,” Dr. Iplier said, after a cough to clear his throat. “Are you familiar with the feeling of coming off of a hangover?”

“We’re acquainted,” Abe answered. Acquainted, lived together with so long that he might as well be common law married to the feeling, same thing.

“Based on the way they describe it, one step above that is where your typical vampire is at while on the current ration. Just enough to keep them from, and again not my choice of words, going ‘feral.’ With the right support network and regular rations, they can control their impulse to feed, but in my experience, most turn to something else to take the edge off, such as caffeine or alcohol or binge-watching sitcoms, that sort of thing.”

“Sounds like a recovering addict waiting to snap,” Abe pointed out. “One missed ration and it’s over.”

“Unfortunately, yes. That’s what comes of keeping people at the bare minimum to survive,” Dr. Iplier said, and Abe saw the small wince around his eyes as the doctor immediately regretted his words. “That is, I can see why there are campaigns to change the arrangement, and it’s less surprising when a vampire turns to alternative methods for acquiring additional blood. In that case, I suspect the obvious signs would be…more energy, less reliance on coping mechanisms, greater tolerance for typical weaknesses such as garlic or sunlight in limited doses, such as being able to go out on cloudy days, that sort of thing. Depending on the quality and how much of an illegal supply they have access to, they’re also more likely to forget about their official rations, which makes a registered vampire failing to show up a huge red flag for multiple and equally bad reasons.”

The doctor fidgeted with the pen in his hand before firmly placing it down on the desk and sitting back in his chair. “Fortunately, I’m proud to say that this hospital has had a 100% success rate in keeping our registered undead healthy and a non-issue for Institute…employees such as yourself.”

Abe’s palm hit the doctor’s desk with a loud smack and honestly a bit of a sting, but the hunter didn’t allow himself to wince as he leaned toward the doctor and said, “I may be a hunter, but I’m not with the Institute. Believe it or not, I have standards, and I need to know if—if I can…”

He trailed off, distracted by a scent he had failed to notice before, one that he was quickly able to trace to the bottle on the corner of the doctor’s desk. Despite being sealed, the smell of the liquid inside had managed to penetrate out, and just a whiff of it was enough to completely derail any of Abe’s remaining thoughts.

“…Hunter?” Dr. Iplier prompted once the silence went on a little too long, his eyes nervously tracing out the bead of sweat that had appeared on the hunter’s brow while his mind seemed to be miles, or decades, away.

“Sorry, that’s…I knew a witch who made a burn cream that—it just smells the same, I…” Abe’s words wandered out, his mind back on the small bottle he left on the District Attorney’s desk all those years ago.

“Yes, I wouldn’t be surprised if more than a few of our medicines came from that kind of source,” Dr. Iplier admitted as he picked up the bottle and shook the contents inside. “I could see why a hunter would use it, it’s certainly strong stuff.”

Strong enough to heal silver burns on a werewolf. Abe swallowed, remembering the color draining from the District Attorney’s face, their hand pressed to their side.

“Are you okay?” The doctor’s voice sounded far away as Abe’s mind went back to that house, to the used silver bullet in Schneeplestein’s office, to his promise to get them out of there, to the blast of the gun firing and his own chest burning with each heartbeat he shouldn’t have.

It was the knock at the office door that snapped Abe out of it, or at least gave hive him the sense to get out of here now before he said or did something he would regret. How long had it been since he’d had any sleep? And add that little binge at the house yesterday before keeping watch in a car all night, and it was becoming more and more obvious to Abe that coming here was a stupid mistake. Mumbling something about needing to keep an appointment, Abe yanked open the door just in time to surprise the young man standing on the other side, his hand raised to knock again.

“Oh, uh, sorry, I didn’t realize someone else was in here,” he said. “I’m just here to pick up something—"

“Don’t worry about it, I was just leaving,” Abe muttered as he brushed by, only to pause and look again once he was out in the hallway. “…Do I know you?”

Young guy, bright eyes under the brim of that dad cap he was wearing even if they were ringed with dark hollows that looked like Abe’s own bags, jeans, t-shirt, he looked like every other kid Abe saw around these days, but he couldn’t shake the feeling even as the guy shrugged.

“Don’t think so, unless you’ve seen my vlogs?” he answered, although his tone suggested he didn’t think Abe fit in the usual audience. A good guess, since Abe didn’t even know what a vlog was.

“Never mind,” Abe muttered as he shook his head and kept walking, eager to get some fresh air.

Chase looked over his shoulder at the hunter and then back at Dr. Iplier, who could only muster a half-hearted shrug before inviting him in.

((End of Part 8. Thank for you reading, and thank you all for being patient with me!

Link to Part 9: Preparations.

Tagging: @silver-owl413 @skyewardlight @withjust-a-bite @blackaquokat @catgirlwarrior @neverisadork @luna1350 @oh-so-creepy @weirdfoxalley @95fangirl @lilalovesinternet-l @thepoolofthedead @a-bit-dapper @randomartdudette @geekymushroom @cactipresident @hotcocoachia @purple-anxiety-blog @shyinspiredartist @avispate @missksketch @autumnrambles @authorracheljoy @liafoxyfox ))

#markiplier #fanfiction #monster hunter au #abe the detective #traces of silver #googleplier #dr. iplier #dr. schneeplestein #for the record #practically everything abe did in this part is super illegal #terrible role model

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noahtechno · 3 years

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GreenGeeks Best WebHosting Service

Fun fact: do you know why Facebook moved its massive data center to Northern Sweden?

That’s because servers run hot, and cooling them down is expensive. Might as well keep them in a cold part of the world.

But more to the point in this GreenGeeks review: maintaining servers uses a ton of energy.

In fact, the Internet is one of the largest polluters in the world. Data centers account for 2% of the world’s CO2 emissions, about the same as the airline industry.

Well, if that’s a concern for you, I’ve got good news because the ‘green’ in GreenGeeks refers to their commitment to providing eco-friendly web hosting.

This is how it works, according to their website:

The platform is designed with a maximum use, no waste mindset.

For every amperage the company pulls from the grid, it matches it x3 in the form of renewable energy via the Bonneville Environmental Foundation

So they claim your website could be operating on a 300% green hosting platform!

While a growing number of hosting providers take the problem of energy seriously, (here’s an example from DreamHost), GreenGeeks really puts their ethos front and forward.

But what about other pros and cons, features and alternatives? Let’s put GreenGeeks through the wringer to see how it fares.

Table of Contents

GreenGeeks Prices

GreenGeeks Pros & Cons

What is GreenGeeks used for?

When not to use GreenGeeks hosting?

GreenGeeks Backups

GreenGeeks and WordPress

Final GreenGeeks Review Comments

Frequently Asked Quesitons

GreenGeeks Prices

Let’s first look at how much it costs per month to host your website on GreenGeeks. The first option is for shared hosting (the one most website owners need). You’ll also find that they offer WordPress web hosting. As far as I could tell, there is absolutely no difference between the WordPress and the shared hosting option.

As always, we’ll only be mentioning the regular price, which is what you pay after a first year at a discounted price. The first 12 months can be 50 – 70% cheaper.

Ecosite LiteEcosite ProEcosite Premium

Price (after renewal)$10.95 / month$15.95 / month$25.95 / month

You can purchase the plans for 12, 24 or 36 months. There is a significant discount for the longer terms, as you can see below:

GreenGeeks also offers VPS hosting, which comes with better performance, but a lot of limits depending on the plan you choose.

Price$39.95 / month$59.95 / month$109.95 / month

Finally, I should also mention that GreenGeeks has a few add-ons you can purchase to expand your hosting capabilities. These include:

Dedicated IP address: $48 per year

Premium AlphaSSL Wildcard: to secure SSL on multiple subdomains all at once.

WHMCS license: useful for resellers who want to bill hosting to their clients (note that GreenGeeks does offer a reselling option).

Last but not least, you’ll have to pay $25 for every backup restore, if you do it more than once per month (the first one is free).

What can you expect from each GreenGeeks plan?

As you can see in the above table, there’s a lot of unlimited stuff with their shared hosting and WordPress plans. That includes:

Unlimited bandwidth (or data transfer, which means the same thing)

Unlimited disk storage

Unlimited databases

Unlimited email accounts

Free SSL

The key limits to keep an eye on are maybe the number of ionodes, which is another way of saying the number of files on your site. It’s a very large number, mostly there to ensure you don’t abuse GreenGeeks’ generosity by hosting a file sharing website.

GreenGeeks Pros & Cons

Pros:

Green-minded: GreenGeeks is attempting to offset their server’s electricity consumption by using as much renewable energy as possible.

Unlimited data bandwidth: you can host one or multiple sites with complete peace of mind when it comes to visitor numbers and bandwidth.

Unlimited data storage: your site can be as large as you like, so good for video, high-res photos and ecommerce with loads of products. Just keep an eye on the number of files. Hosting more than 150,000 could void your plan’s contract.

Server locations: three continents to choose from, the US, Canada and Europe.

Heavily reduced long term plans: it’s not unusual to pay less for 24 or 36 month plans, but GreenGeeks is slashing their monthly prices by up to 70% for long term users.

Cons:

Missing advanced features: serious website owners and developers will need to look elsewhere for staging or premium DNSs.

No team management: it’s not possible to add multiple account users and to give permissions.

Lack of free backups: you get one automatic backup every 24 hours. One free restore per month, but the rest are paid. Not good enough.

Outdated design: Not a deal-breaker, but the whole system could do with a new coat of paint, which could also help with the user experience.

What is GreenGeeks used for?

I’d say GreenGeeks is best for website owners with green goals in mind. You can even show one of their green badges, to highlight on your site.

The generous bandwidth and storage is advantageous for those who own multiple sites. As far as the performance to price ratio goes, it’s good, and becomes more acceptable when you buy a long term contract of 24 or 36 months.

When not to use GreenGeeks hosting?

Anyone managing a team should consider that inviting others to join the account isn’t possible, and the lack of developer-friendly features could be a big no-no for certain businesses.

Developers with complicated workflows that need staging areas probably won’t be big fans of GreenGeeks’s platform either.

GreenGeeks Backups

Backups and restore are one of the areas I start considering a lot more these days when it comes to choosing a web host. A Sod’s law states: if something wrong can happen, it probably will, and at the worst possible times. This happened to us, and please learn from our mistakes when I say you should backup as often as possible.

GreenGeeks cPanel Backup Feature

Anyways, this is how it works with GreenGeeks. Option 1 is to use the cPanel backup tool. I’s a bit clunky and manual but by no means too difficult to do:

Click Backup in the Files section

Click Home Directory under Download a Home Director

You can also download a database instead, or a full Zipped account backup, which is what you’ll need to keep on your local drives.

A couple of important things to note:

If your account is larger than 10GB in size, the whole cPanel backup option will be disabled. You’ll have to pay $5 per backup.

cPanel backups saved to your home directory will be deleted automatically after 48 hours, so it’s better to download the ZIP file locally.

The first monthly restore is free. After that, each restore costs $25. Note that it’s not unusual to restore at least a couple of times if there’s an issue (e.g. you chose the wrong backup to restore).

Option number two is to download files manually using an FTP program. If you use a CMS like WordPress or Drupal that also means you’ll need to backup databases. I always find that a big pain to do, and also slow. Which is why a better backup tool would have been useful.

GreenGeeks and WordPress

Although GreenGeeks has a special section on their website for WordPress hosting, I couldn’t find a difference between these plans and the share hosting ones.

In any case, here’s what you get for both if you want to install the world’s most popular CMS.

Easy installation: it’s not 1-click, but they use an install app called Softaculous, which simplifies the process for you. Maybe 4 or 5 steps, which you can read about here.

LiteSpeed Cache plugin: it’s a caching plugin that will make WordPress run faster on your site when properly configured. Be aware this is not GreenGeek’s own solution, but just a generic plugin they recommend.

LiteSpeed Cache Settings

To be honest, I feel like all the WordPress-optimized stuff is mostly there for marketing purposes. If you are really serious about WordPress experts (and you have the budget for it), I’d consider other options like Kinsta or WP Engine. SiteGround is also a great option if you need something a bit more affordable.

Final GreenGeeks Review Comments

GreenGeeks is certainly the provider we’ve tested that’s the most committed to protecting the environment. It’s an admirable choice, and businesses with a green goal will certainly be pleased to hear that they can host a website with a reliable performance, price, and low carbon footprint.

But there are nevertheless a few downsides to consider. The lack of advanced options like staging and team management features can be a dealbreaker for professional business owners. The limited backup features may be not enough for most.

And if you need a top-performing host, other (and more expensive) solutions like SiteGround, Kinsta or WP Engine could be considered.

It’s also not the cheapest provider out there. For example, at renewal DreamHost is more affordable and offers similar performance levels.

> Try GreenGeeks risk-free for 30 days

Frequently Asked Quesitons

How Do I Pay for GreenGeeks?

You can pay via all major credit cards and PayPal. No checks, money orders, wire transfers or Western Union payments.

Is Everything Really Unlimited?

Yes. Just keep in mind that there is a limit on the amount of files you can keep on your sites, though. It’s a really high number, so mostly a precaution against file-sharing websites.

Can I Get My Money Back?

There is an unconditional 30-day money back guarantee offer.

Is There an Uptime Service Guarantee?

Yes, if your website hosting drops below a 99.9% rate, GreenGeeks will refund some of your hosting fees.

Is GreenGeeks Really Environmentally-Friendly?

They’re certainly advertising as such. In practice this is how it works: GreenGeeks tells the Bonneville Environmental Foundation (BEF) how much electricity they use. The foundation calculates how much green energy they’ll need to use to make up for it. GreenGeeks purchases that amount in renewable energy.

So it’s not like their servers use less energy than standard hosting. However, they are certainly committed to making up for what they consume, and using as much green energy as possible.

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#Best Web Hosting Services #Best Web Hosting Providers #best web hosts #web hosting #web host #web hosting provider #web hosting services #wordpress hosting #hosting

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promptis-imagines · 4 years

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How about Promptis go on their first ever date at an arcade or a fair and they're both nervous at first. They relax after a nice chat and some junk food and Noct notices a giant chocobo plush at a stall/prize counter and tries to win it for Prompto

nananasonatra: Noctis taking Prom on a summer carnival date. They both act like teenagers in love and at the end of the night they ride the Ferris wheel .Noctis bribes the operator to make them stop ontop .Sorry my heads fried in this heat lol

yes this is exactly what I need. You two have galaxy brains. So I will combine them: first date to the fair complete with shitty carnival games and a ferris wheel extravaganza

They are both very obnoxiously awkward. Prompto can’t stop talking even when he desperately wants to shut up. Noctis is having a hard time speaking at all. They went to the fair because hey, it’s in town! Surely that’s gotta be cheesy and fun. Thing is, both of them are too shy to admit that they love cheesy things (even tho they literally...are going on a date there. They’re doing their best). It’s the way there and the getting tickets where they’re still acting the nervous couple bit, but once they feel the adrenaline of a rollercoaster and stock up on junk food (a horrible choice before going on more rides), they start to loosen up and laugh off the nerves.

Also I can just...picture that scene. So vividly.

The sky was growing darker by the minute, which was only accentuated by the carnival lights dotting the view. Most of the rickety rides had been conquered, though not without a fair share of screaming on the couple’s part, so the tired boys decided to take a break for snacks before taking on the rest of the event.

Okay, maybe calling them “snacks” was a bit of an understatement. Two orders of fried oreos, an entire funnel cake, some wildly-oversized corndogs, and a large lemonade. They might have forgotten to grab dinner before the fair in their nervous endeavors, and nothing was healthy at the fair.

Sitting on that bench, laughing and munching on their food, any hint of awkwardness or fear was left behind in some gross seat of a rollercoaster car. Well and truly, this was a real date.

There was only a bit left of the funnel cake in the end. Prompto heaved a sigh, shoving the plate onto Noctis’ lap while his head flopped onto his shoulder. “You eat it,” he murmured.

Noctis pouted. “No, you.” The plate was passed back.

“Noooo, I’m so done, dude,” Prompto whined. “Just take one for the team.”

That earned a snort from Noctis. “What team? And why do we have to finish it?” he questioned.

Prompto paused, then sat up straight again. “I dunno. Feels wrong to just throw it away?” he reasoned. Especially considering that Noctis was the one who paid for all of it. He would feel bad, prince or not.

Noctis lightly bumped him with his shoulder. “It’s not that big of a deal. It’s the last thing we have, and I’d rather toss it than have either one of us get sick before our date is over.”

He couldn’t lie, Prompto’s stomach still erupted with butterflies at legitimately hearing Noctis say they were on a date. He’d been dreaming of this for so long that he’d chalked up his hopes to wishful thinking. But no, they were here, and they were having a good time. It was enough to make him grin. “Fine, fine. Throw it away, and we can walk around for a while before hitting something that could make us lose all that food we just ate,” he conceded.

“Right.”

The two of them hauled their trash to the nearest trash can, and Prompto had to laugh at just how much powdered sugar had attached itself to Noctis’ all-black clothing. “Y’know, I applaud your choices to start wearing white,” he teased, making Noctis look down at his shirt.

“Oh, come on,” Noctis grumbled.

Prompto ran his hands along the worst parts. “No worries, I got you.” It only took a few seconds more for him to note how low the powder had gotten. “Um...”

Noctis huffed a laugh, getting the rest off. “You’ve got some on you, too.”

“I do?” Prompto asked with a confused expression. “Could’ve sworn I dusted myself off, already. Where’s it at?” he rambled, hoping he didn’t look like a mess.

“Hm, right here.” Suddenly, Noctis’ hand was on his cheek, his warm lips pressed gently to Prompto’s in a kiss that lasted all of three seconds. Nonetheless, his cheeks were absolutely burning afterwards.

When they parted, it appeared that he wasn’t the only one. Noctis’ cheeks were dusted a soft shade of pink, though it was hard to see under the harsh lighting around them.

It took a moment for either of them to say anything. “Did...you get it off?”

Noctis’ lips turned up in a faint smile. “Think so.”

Now it was Prompto’s turn to smile. “Cool. Thanks. What would I do without you?” he joked.

“Dunno. Have powdered sugar all over your face?” Noctis returned teasingly.

“All over? You saying I’ve got more on me?”

Noctis hummed in thought, once again brushing his fingers along Prompto’s cheek. “Nope, got it all,” he confirmed.

An eye-roll from Prompto. “Dork. Let’s move away from the trash can, yeah?”

The two headed back into the bustle of the fair, hand in hand without Prompto even realizing they'd reached for each other. It made him giddy all over again.

Before long, they stopped. A long row of carnie games sprawled out before them, vendors shouting for patrons to step up and take their chances. Stuffed animals of all shapes and sizes were presented along every surface, and it was a safe bet to assume they’d been waiting to be claimed for far longer than necessary.

Prompto looked over to his date. “Got something in your sights?” he questioned.

That got Noctis tugging him towards a nearby stall. “Does a giant chocobo sound good? I’ll try to win it for you,” he stated, all the determination in the world lighting up his eyes. It was rare to see Noctis this enthusiastic about something. Gods, it was cute.

Still, Prompto couldn’t help the laugh that escaped him. The thing Noctis had pointed out was giant, which also meant that it was going to be near impossible to get. “I mean, it sounds great, Noct,” he started, leaning against Noctis’ shoulder. “But I’m not gonna get my hopes up.”

Noctis knocked his head against Prompto’s. “What, don’t believe in me?” he returned in mock-offense.

“Oh, c’mon, you know these things are rigged,” Prompto reasoned. “Plus, this is a shooting game. One, that’s even more rigged. Two, we should both know by now that I'm the better marksman out of the two of us."

His boasting earned him a scoff from Noctis. "While I might cave and admit that, it doesn't mean that I'm bad at it. Have a little faith," he requested, giving Prompto's hand a light squeeze. Without waiting for a response, he was off towards the unattainable holy grail of stuffed animals. Oh, to be the carnie that got to proctor this little event in history.

Watching with an air of amusement, Prompto leaned on his elbows over the counter. "Heya! What's the requirements for getting that Behemoth up there?" he asked, gesturing to the comically large bird in question.

The carnie's polished grin focused on him. "Well, buddy, it's fairly simple!" he chirped. "All you've gotta do is shoot at those little targets that are moving across the planks." He made a grand gesture towards the back wall, which sported plenty of painted wooden ducks with red and white targets on their sides meandering in a single file. "Each duckie has a different number on the back. Shoot as many as you can before the time runs out, and your score will be tallied afterwards. Get over fifty points, and the chocobo is all yours. But watch out! Some of the ducks are hiding negative numbers that will reduce your score. So, care to test your skills?"

His speech had sounded so trained and NPC-like, Prompto had to laugh. "No, not me. But this guy wants to give it a go." He tugged on Noctis' sleeve, a grin of pride bright on his face. Noctis, on the other hand, had lost some of that brazen confidence in his expression.

It was always funny to watch people's eyes go wide. "O-Oh, Prince Noctis! Er, that is you, isn't it?"

"Nah, but I get that a lot," Noctis replied nonchalantly, rolling his shoulders in preparation. "Just a guy trying to win a chocobo for his boyfriend. Can I start?"

The man, seemingly recovered, nodded with his previous vigor. "Of course! Here is your weapon, good sir." After ducking down to grab one of the dingy guns from under the counter, he handed it over. "The timer starts when you first shoot."

Prompto cast a smirk at his boyfriend. "Let's see what you got, sharpshooter," he teased.

Noctis took aim. "Oh, hush. I'm doing this for you."

After a quick "Good luck!" from the man behind the counter, Noctis started the timer with a pop from the toy gun. One duck down, who knew how many more to go.

"Wohoo, got one!" Prompto exclaimed, beaming at a smug-looking Noctis. "Think you can keep it up?"

Still keeping his eyes on the targets, Noctis gave a little nod. "You bet I will. I've got someone to impress," he replied before knocking another off of the shelf.

Prompto snorted, slumping more over the counter. "You say that like you're on a date," he continued.

Another duck toppled. "And what if I am?"

That earned a dramatized gasp from Prompto. "Are you, now? Didn't know you had it in you to snatch a date. Always thought you were too shy." The mocking edge to his words were light, and he couldn't hide the slight giggling that followed. The next few shots hit the wall. He poked Noctis in the shoulder before wrapping an arm around his middle. "Trying to win him something?"

Noctis gave him a knowing glance. "I would be, if he wasn't doing stuff to distract me. Don't be disappointed when I can't get the prize for you," he warned, getting another target down.

Prompto leaned in to press a kiss to Noctis' cheek. "A good marksman should be able to work well under pressure." Still, deciding that he'd messed with him enough, Prompto let go and returned to being an encouraging spectator.

As the timer drew nearer to zero and the little duckies came crashing down, Prompto did have to admit that he was impressed. Especially considering the hindrance that was a rickety carnival gun, the sizeable amount of targets Noctis had managed to hit was most likely more than the average. Though he hadn't expected much of a reward from this mess, part of him was thinking he might be going home with a giant stuffed chocobo.

When the timer sounded, the carnie bounced back to life. "Aaalrighty, let's see how you did!" he said in his merry speech. He collected the last few fallen ducks, then laid them face up on the counter in front of them.

"Sweet, let's count 'em up!" Prompto was grinning as he began to turn over the targets. "Noct, count with me. This one's five," he stated, "and then eight, and…damn, negative six." Oh well, there were plenty more to bring the score up.

Noctis continued flipping over the next few. "Hey, got a fifteen," he boasted, shoving it over to the counted pile.

"Aw, so proud."

The scores varied for the rest of the ducks, some on the smaller or negative sides, presumably to keep the prizes from all being taken. Still, Noctis had gotten a few of the higher numbered ones. With one left to check, he had reached a whopping forty-five. Prompto was tingling with excitement; that chocobo was as good as won.

The last one stared them down with its chipped paint and bright, ducky smile. "You want to do the last one?" Noctis offered.

With a nod and bated breath, Prompto turned over the last one to add the number….

"Negative twenty?" he cried. "Why is that even in here!" Noctis groaned as well, and the two boys slumped against each other in defeat.

The man behind the counter drew up an apologetic smile. "Sorry, fellas, luck of the duck. But you still get to choose from one of the smaller prizes!"

He gestured to the side wall that sported the rest of this booth's treasures. They were way smaller than the grand prizes, more hug-to-your-chest size, but they were still something.

Noctis nudged Prompto's shoulder. "Go ahead and pick one."

"Mh-hm." Prompto's eyes flitted over the options: stuffed dogs and coeurls, moogles, various fruits for some reason, and a mini version of that giant chocobo above their heads. "Not to be predictable, but I do want the chocobo," he decided. So what if he consistently chose them? They were his favorites!

As it was being retrieved, Prompto turned to Noctis with a bright smile. "By the way, good job, dude."

Noctis shrugged, a light mix of embarrassment and pride in his face. "I would've won if it had just been about knocking them over," he reasoned.

Prompto chuckled. "Sure would've. They weren't ready for you," he teased.

"Here you are, sir." Holding it in his hands, Prompto decided that this was officially the best first date ever. How cool was it that his boyfriend won him something at a shitty carnival game?

They ventured back into the crowds, a bit dissuaded from trying any of the other booths for now. The chocobo plush was held securely with one arm while his other hand held fast to Noctis'. Now there was just the matter of deciding what else to do before calling it a night.

"Got any ideas what to do next?" Prompto questioned.

Noctis pursed his lips, doing a quick glance around. "Well, I think we already went on all of the rollercoasters, and you're not putting me back on that drop thing," he said definitively.

That drew a laugh from Prompto. "I half expected you to warp right off of that thing, by the way," he commented. "But fine, something else. How about…." He trailed off, rubbing his thumb along Noctis' hand. "Oh! We haven't done the ferris wheel yet."

What other way was there to end a night at the fair than being sappy while overlooking part of the city from the top of a rickety ferris wheel? Prompto hoped he wasn't coming across as too sappy, though; it was embarrassing, but he really did enjoy those dumb romantic fantasies. Even after being asked out, he was still worried that Noctis might laugh at him for wanting to do cheesy romantic things. Noctis just didn't seem like the type to enjoy that. He knew he was probably being ridiculous, but that didn't dispel the doubt in the back of his mind.

Thankfully, Noctis gave a casual shrug and nodded. "Sounds good to me. We can hit the ferris wheel and then head out for the night," he said.

Relief flooded back into Prompto's lungs, and before long, they were speeding up towards bright lights of the their last ride. Giggling, the two kept it up until they were running and dodging people in the crowd to get there first. Nevermind that they were still holding hands.

The pair stumbled to a breathless halt at the entrance gates, turning to each other with a full-out laugh. Prompto still had his chocobo clasped tightly between his arm and chest.

"After you," Noctis said, finally letting go of his hand to gesture to the open gate.

Prompto landed a playful punch to Noctis' shoulder as he walked past. "Really acting like a prince today, huh?"

"What, I don't normally?"

"Gonna have to give a no to that one, bud."

"Rude."

The worker got them situated in the seat, Prompto first. Noctis lagged behind slightly, turning to the lady in charge before climbing in next to his boyfriend.

Once they were snugly hip to hip, Noctis sighed. "How old do you think this ride even is?" he asked.

Prompto looked up. "Proooobably pretty old," he reasoned. "But I'm sure it's fine. They have, like, inspections and stuff, right?"

Noctis huffed a little laugh. "Hope so. If something does happen, I'll just grab you and warp off of this thing."

"My hero," Prompto teased. Though, as they began their ascent up and around the ferris wheel, the idea that it might break down did start to creep into his mind. A jarring bump halfway there didn't help one bit.

He pressed closer to Noctis' side just as he did the same. Prompto took a deep breath and closed his eyes, letting the feeling of being close to him soothe him. The warmth they shared was a nice defense against the cold winds, too.

A tiny smile formed on his face when he felt Noctis nuzzle slightly into his hair. "Sorry I couldn't get you the giant chocobo," he heard him murmur.

Prompto gave a slight shake of his head. "Nah, don't worry about it. This one's just as cute. And it's travel sized." He gave the toy a squeeze. Honestly, he was thrilled to have a gift from him in the first place. It was a silly little thing, but it made his heart swell in a way he thought he'd never feel.

As they completed the first rotation of the wheel, Prompto decided to look around more at the fair below. By now the sky was completely dark, making the colorful lights shine brighter. Laughter and shrieks of children reached even where they were up high. He even saw someone drop their cotton candy in a puddle, which he pointed out to Noctis so they could both grimace at the sight.

All of a sudden, they were stuttered to a halt at the top of the wheel. Prompto swung his leg a bit and laughed. "Welp, looks like we're up here forever," he joked.

Noctis snorted. "We'd better not be. I'm not sleeping on a ferris wheel."

"That's your problem with it?" Prompto laughed, making the seat sway slightly.

"There's other issues with living on a ferris wheel for the rest of my life. That one just came to mind first," Noctis said in his defense.

Prompto's laughter continued while he squeezed the stuffed chocobo to keep from dropping it. "Yeah, okay. Sleep is always your first thought."

"Don't judge."

"Wouldn't dream of it."

Being stuck at the top really wasn't so bad. They could see everything, and it was just the two of them, despite there being hundreds of people around. It was as if they'd been brought up just to be alone for a few minutes.

A hand rested atop his thigh, and Prompto turned to face his date. And gods, did he look so good with the lights of the city behind him. Noctis' dark hair made him a silhouette, though his features were close enough to make out. His cool gray eyes had a soft shine to them, and he was looking at Prompto in a way that stole his breath. He had to be the luckiest guy in Eos right now.

Noctis quirked a small smile. "Is it…too cheesy if I ask for a kiss right now?"

Prompto paused, then cracked a smile as well. "Very cheesy. Do it," he replied.

"Then can I kiss you at the top of the ferris wheel?"

Without speaking, Prompto slid a hand along the side of Noctis' neck and pulled him in. His lips were tinged with slight cold, but they felt soft as they touched Prompto's. And just like that, they were sharing one of those dumb movie kisses on their first date at the fair. The thought made Prompto's smile grow as he leaned in more.

Once they pulled away, there were a few moments of silence between them. Then the ride began to move again, starting through one more loop before they would be let off.

Prompto couldn't hold back another little laugh. "Good way to end that?"

"Definitely," Noctis said, looking equally relieved and happy. "Now we can't say anything else for the rest of the time so we don't ruin it."

That earned a shoulder punch from Prompto. "Oh, shut up."

"See, like that."

Prompto grinned, taking Noctis' hand in his. "Too bad you're stuck with me, then," he retorted.

Noctis smiled back. "What a shame."

#I finally finished it lakfjagahgkjdk #this took me forever I am sorry #y'all be like: give me the tooth rotting fluff #and I try to provide #promptis #ask #thedarkrose17 #nananasonatra #answered

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randomguywithwords · 4 years

Text

The Student (Geten Short Story)

The figure was cloaked in a blue parka and his face shrouded under a hood. He pushed open the doors of the council room. In the room was a crescent shaped table symmetrical from where he was standing. A lone man sat to the left of the centre, dressed in that pin-stripe suit. That man used to sit in the centre, but he was dethroned – Dethroned by a ragtag group of hooligans.

“Geten.” Rikiya Yotsubashi acknowledged as he looked up at the creak of the door.

His boots clacked against the tiles, echoing throughout the chamber as Geten walked up to the man in the suit.

“So you come here to relive the old days.” Geten crossed his arms. “Back when it was just the five of us.”

“I have other reasons to be here tonight.”

“I only have one.” From his pocket, Geten took out five ice cubes, each the size of his palm, and placed them on the table. “Do you remember these?”

“Yes. Your third lesson.”

“Good. I’m here to finish my training.”

“Training meta abilities is a ritual, a ritual spanning one’s entire life.” Re-destro quoted his father’s book verbatim.

“You misunderstand.” A chill crept into his voice and down Re-destro’s spine. “I’m finishing my training under you.”

“I see. You think you’ve learnt everything from me?”

“I know I have.” Geten waved his arm with the carelessness of a king dismissing his servant, and the cubes separated into smaller cubes with flawless precision. “I’ve learnt everything I needed to, and even more that I should never have.”

Geten clenched his fist, and the cubes combined into one, which slammed onto the table. “Separate the cubes and then combine them. That was your lesson, which I failed at first. And you punished me heavily.”

“Is this about the grudges that which you bear against me?” Yotsubashi leaned back on his chair.

“It’s more than that,” Geten hissed. ‘I accepted my torture because I strived to improve. Even when I was on the brink of death, all those years ago, you told me that to die is to be a martyr for the others to liberate themselves. My death would not be in vain.”

Geten fixated his eyes onto his old mentor’s, all respect for him shattered. “So what did I learn, Yotsubashi, from your last lesson? It was one you never meant to teach, but I learnt it from afar. As I watched you chop off your legs to survive, and as I watched you kowtow to Shigaraki, I learnt that you’re nothing more than a hypocrite.”

“So you wish to finish Shigaraki’s job?”

“Not yet. I want to pour my eighteen years of sorrow unto you first.”

“You see the state I’m in? I have no qualms about that.”

“Oh, I’m sure you will. Because when a man is going to die – when they think they’re going to die, they will want to live, no matter what cause they stand for. And I’m going to prove it.”

“Carry on, then.” The lack of emotion on Re-destro’s face incensed him.

Geten forced himself to stay calm. “When you tossed me into the Arctic Ocean for my tenth lesson, to survive with the ice I had, I nearly died. I was shivering in the cold, wasting away on a floating piece of ice, and I thought I would never see Deika City again…” He swallowed. “I told myself, my death would be a stepping stone for others. You told me to take comfort in that fact. But no, I didn’t want to die. I didn’t care if I would be glorified in death. I wanted to live.”

Geten tightened his fists in his pocket as he stared at the ground. “I struggled with that ever since then, believing that I was a blasphemer against Destro’s teachings, for wanting to live rather than strive for liberation for all, even at the cost of my life.

He stared at Re-destro. “Then I saw how you survived rather than perish as a martyr. It confused me at first, but then I came to this revelation.”

“There is a beating heart within us. Destro said as much, but it is not for the glories of Liberation,” He spat the phrase as he said it. “It is because we are alive, and we want to keep it that way, no matter what beliefs we ascribe to.”

“Then you have twisted Destro’s teachings,” Rikiya said, matching Geten’s coldness in his tone.

“No, no. You lie.” Geten hissed. “You were afraid of death, so you reduced yourself to this...pitiful form, a husk of your former glory — if there was any to begin with, to simply survive.”

“No.” Re-destro said, but there was an edge to his voice. He was slipping.

“Admit it!” Apocrypha snarled. “You could not die a martyr, so you lived a cripple.”

“Silence!” Yotsubashi roared as he rose to his feet, towering over Geten, but the Iceman stayed defiant, glaring at him in the eye.

“It’s time I removed you from a position you had no right to be in. I’ll make strength my own teaching,” Geten said as the ice levitated off the table, thrumming with power. “And I don’t need books and sermons to learn.”

The supersized arm came at him in a sweeping motion, a blur of blue-black. Geten leapt back as the ice cubes flew towards Geten, unravelling and interlocking. They formed a platform underneath Geten that he rose above Yotsubashi with.

Yotsubashi bellowed, his form expanding. Once Geten had beheld and feared that titan, but now a malicious grin on his face, . Now the fight would be interesting, and when he won, it would prove he won indisputably.

“I could go for your legs. They are your weak points…” he mused, eliciting a roar from Rikiya. “But no.”

He sent a barrage of ice spears at Re-destro. They pierced into his arms as thick as tree trunks which he used to block.

“A weak attack.” Re-destro snarled.

Geten smirked. He opened his palm. Rikiya’s face was ghost-pale as he stared at his wound. It barely penetrated the many layers of skin, but it was enough to reach his bloodstream.

“Getting cold, Yotsubashi?”

“You...what did you –” He gasped as he dropped to his knees, his eyes forced to stare, unblinkingly, at Geten’s raised arm.

“I froze the water in your blood. Were you unaware of how much I’ve trained?” Geten swept his right arm downwards, which forced Re-destro to the ground. While his hand shook to keep the rabid dog on the ground, he slowly lowered the temperature, until he had no more strength to struggle, a sufficient anaesthesia. His form deflated, returning to the skinny man shuddering on the cracked tiled floor.

“So?”

Geten’s voice was tiny compared to the vastness of the chamber, but it had the weight to fill it. Once upon a time, Re-destro’s voice did, but no more.

“Finish it, then.” Yotsubashi whispered, his tongue growing numb.

Geten raised his hands again, and the ice around him collected like iron filings to a magnet to form ten icicles.

“You sound...resigned,” Geten said, moving the icicles closer, like a pack of vultures over a lion keeled over the grass.

Re-destro looked up to see needles hovering an inch from his face. His skin bleached, as though the chill of the ice was sapping his life.

“You wouldn’t dare.” Was what Rikiya said — but Geten found the term “whimpered” more appropriate.

The wielder of Cryokinesis hopped off his platform, squatted down and grabbed Re-destro’s head, tilting it up to look at him.

“No, I wouldn’t. Not when you can still prove your strength, when you can prove to me you deserve to live.” Geten dropped his head like a toy and stood up.

With a flick of his arm, the ice coalesced and rooted themselves to the ceiling like a crystal chandelier, beautiful and deadly like a stiletto. The sharp tip glistened with the promise of death as they hung over Yotsubashi, a sword eager to pierce true.

He waved as he left the room, sending a small fissure through the ice, enough to make it hang there for a while before it cracked.

“Five minutes to crawl out of there, Rikiya. I’ll leave the decision to you. Have a good night.”

Geten closed the door behind him.

––––––––

My entry for the first day of the Geten week. I was always planning to write something on the MLA teachings. I originally planned to write a multi-POV short story of random soldiers who died, but in their last moments they didn’t want the MLA preachings of martyrdom. Then the Geten thing came up and I switched.

Hope you guys liked it. Prompt was power/weakness right?

AO3 Link

#bnha #mha #bnha fanfic #bnha fanfiction #mha fanfic #mha fanfiction #boku no hero academia #my hero academia #geten #getenloveweek2020 #bnha geten #mha geten

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