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millers-planet · 3 years

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Makeshift - Poe Dameron x GN!Reader

Storyline: Celebration is most definitely in order. (themed in ep viii)

Warnings: Fluff, slight NSFW undertones

Pairing: Poe Dameron x GN!RebelPilot!Reader

POV: Reader

“Poe Dameron, what the hell were you thinking?” I ran up to him, my feet clanking with each heavy step I took. “I’m assuming suicide was what you were going for, yes?”

He got off of his X-Wing and turned around, a big ‘I just blew something up’ smile across his face. “Y/N! Did you see that? I just blew up a dreadnought!” If someone didn’t know what really happened, they’d probably assume we just saved the entire galaxy and didn’t lose our entire bombing squad. “Babe you did great out there, I saw you take out those TIE’s like it was nobody’s business.” He pulled me into a hug and kissed me, my face pressed in between his hands.

I smiled and blushed faintly, until I realized why I was yelling at him in the first place. “Yes, you did just blow up a dreadnought,” he smiled, “but not until losing our entire bombing fleet and most of our fighters. Poe, this isn’t the time to be celebrating.” I looked behind me and saw General Organa approaching. Quickly, I pulled him down and kissed his cheek, whispering: “that was some kick-ass flying, though.”

I stepped out of the way and watched the General glare at Poe, before he could get a word out, she slapped him. “You’re demoted.”

His face dropped, reaching his hand up to comfort his now red cheek. “Wh-For what?”

“For making us lose almost our entire fleet. We got out of there with barely the skin and clothes on our backs. You’re irresponsible and disobeyed direct orders.” Without another word, she turned around and looked to me. “Nice flying, I can tell you learned from him, just don’t catch on to his attitude.” Leia walked away and returned back to the ship deck.

I covered my mouth with my hand and stifled a laugh as Poe looked to me with his jaw dropped. “Did she really just tell you ‘Nice flying’?” We both broke out into laughs and headed towards the main part of the ship, leaving the hangar. “Are you hungry? Because I am.”

“Poe,” I started, “you’re always hungry.”

“Not true! When I’m flying my appetite is completely filled from defeating stormtroopers.”

I smiled, “ah, bloodlust.” We both broke out into laughs again, walking towards the dining hall with smiles that were ear-to-ear. For a few minutes, we just walked in silence, holding hands, his thumb rubbing gentle circles into mine. As we approached the Dining Hall, I got the best idea ever. “I have a surprise-”

“Is it my rank back?” Poe smiled sarcastically.

I punched his shoulder gently, “nope. Grab some food, take your time, and meet me back at our room. I’m gonna make something up for us, we haven’t had any alone time recently.” Poe smirked and winked, making me drop my jaw with satire, “Poe Dameron! How dare you imply such vile acts,” my tone was formal briefly, making him chuckle. “I just want something cute for us, I’ll meet you back there.”

He bent his neck down just a little to meet my height, putting his hand on my cheek and kissing me slowly. “Okay, don’t destroy anything, like a dreadnaught.” Poe was such a tease, thankfully this also means a day is never boring without him.

As I was running back to our room, I grabbed anything I saw or could think of that I needed to craft up my idea. Thankfully, I ran into Finn on my way back. “Finn! Can you do me a favor and distract Poe? I’m making up something in our room and I need as much time as possible. Can you help me? He’s in the Dining Hall.” He gave me two thumbs-up with a wink, running to where I directed him.

I quickly dumped everything on the counter of our small living space, it composed of three rooms: a bathroom, a bedroom, and a more open space with storage and a table for two. In this large room, I stripped our messy table down, jamming spare items in a closet or drawer, or setting it aside to place out for decoration.

I laid a white cloth down on the table, which was actually a reusable sheet from the medical side of the deck, flattening it out to remove any wrinkles. I had BB-8 upload a hologram of a candle onto a portable holoprojector, which I placed in the center of the table. Lastly, I dimmed the lights and had the circular droid play some smooth music in the other room, just loud enough to add ambience.

I sat down, waiting for Poe to arrive with our meals, realizing I was still in my pilot gear. Scrambling for some nicer clothes, I found a pair of pants that hugged all of my placed properly, same with a darker colored shirt. I noticed a familiar jacket in Poe’s side of the closest, noticing it was one of his older piloting jackets. Putting it on, I heard the door to our living space open.

“Y/N?” He called, a chuckle coming from him, “Y/N what’s this?” I walked out of our bedroom and leaned on the door frame, giving BB-8 a hand signal to start playing the music.

I walked up to Poe and kissed him, “well, I thought maybe I could craft this up to make up for the day you’ve had. It could be a little celebration for the upper hand we have against the First Order, or..” I winced my face a little, “it can act as compensation for your demotion.”

He sighed and acted offended, “I can’t believe you’d bring that up!” He placed a kiss on my forehead and handed me my food, “thank you, Y/N, I love it.” I smiled and sat down, opening up the covered trays to see he brought me my favorite sandwich and some chips. “How’d you get all this stuff, anyways?”

Opening the bag of chips, I smirked, “oh, y’know, just some stuff I found lying around.... the ship... that I ‘borrowed’.” I put a few chips in my mouth to evade any further questions, Poe just laughed and shook his head. “What can I say? You’re dating a crafty thief.”

“That is most definitely true, I would’ve never thought to do this.”

“Poe, you never think.”

“Wow!” He exclaimed honestly, “you are just ruthless today, aren’t you?” Poe took a few bites of his sandwich. “That’s okay, it just means karma can come in later,” his voice was deeper and more rough when he spoke that sentence, I gulped, realizing what situation I had put myself in.

“Not my fault you’ve been giving me a window for all of these punchlines, which happen to be you,” we both laughed and sat in silence for the next few minutes as we finished eating. When I was done, I sat back and stretched, “I am stuffed. That was some nice food choices, Poe.”

He wiped his mouth with a napkin, “well, I still have room for desert.” He got up and walked over to me, placing his hands on the back of my chair and on the table, slowly leaning down and kissing me. Poe eventually got down to his knees and spun me so my body was now facing him.

Just as he was about to make any further moves, BB-8 came from around the corner and began beeping frantically. “The First Order did what?”

I looked at him with concern, knowing the droid wouldn’t interrupt us unless it was something dire. Poe sighed and looked back up to me, placing a small kiss on my lips before standing up, “according to Finn, the First Order has tracked us through lightspeed. I’m sorry, but I have to go, don’t think this is over.”

“Send me updates, I love you!” I shouted as he walked out the door.

He placed a hand on the frame and made eye contact with me, smiling, “I love you, too.”

tags: @blondekel77 @mysticdeerpolice @gabile18 @whatvflaotsurgoat

join the tag list! - part two

#poe dameron #poe dameron x reader #poe dameron x you #poe dameron x y/n #poe dameron smut #poe dameron fluff #star wars #star wars x reader #poe x reader #poe x y/n #poe x you #star wars episode viii #star wars the last jedi

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sailorfailures · 5 years

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December 5th is Makoto Kino/Sailor Jupiter’s birthday!

So how can you celebrate?

♃ Rewatch or reread your favourite Jupiter-centric chapter, episode, or musical! Start with episode 025, her introduction and the first instance of her famous “senpai crush”; then move to episode 039, where she crushes... again, this time on a handsome figure skater; episode 049, where her close friend Shinozaki is put in critical condition by a Cardian and she goes looking for revenge; episode 055, where she expresses her love for alien-turned-senpai Seijuro by way of homemade lunch box; episode 096, where Makoto gets a crush on Haruka and learns to explore her own presentation; episode 105, where she loses to a Daimon in a contest of strength and starts to second-guess her abilities; episode 134, where she visits a friend from her old school whom she encouraged to pursue writing; or episode 147, where Makoto waits for her “prince charming” Tiger’s Eye at a dance and launches a thousand MakoAmi shippers yes I see you there.

♃ Sailor Jupiter has several official image songs across different canons you can play for her big day:

90s anime: Anata no Sei Janai [“It’s Not Your Fault”]; STARLIGHT ni KISS Shite [“Kiss Me In the Starlight”]; Wasureru Tame ni Koi wo Shinaide ["Don’t Fall In Love to Forget”]; WE BELIEVE YOU Live Action: MIRACLE DANCE NIGHT; LOVELY YELL Crystal: cherry pie Musicals: Zigzag Slash She was also given a totally new image song in Dic’s original English dub that took the place of “Anata no Sei Janai” in episode 49, Rainy Day Man.

Here’s a playlist of all these songs and other Sailor Jupiter BGM cues!

♃ Whip up Makoto’s favourite foods, meatloaf and cherry pie. Unlike some other fellow Sailor Guardians she’s not a picky eater and has no least-favourite food, so why not challenge yourself to try something new or revisit an ingredient you thought you hated? You never know, you might grow to love it!

♃ Makoto’s very self-reliant, and her hobbies reflect her practical nature, particularly as she had to look after herself from a young age after the deaths of both her parents in a plane crash. She’s also intentionally pursued hobbies considered traditionally “feminine” out of concern that her outward appearance and mannerisms don’t convey who she is inside.

Her most oft-portrayed hobby is cooking, which is both something that brings her personal satisfaction and a way for her to express her love for the people closest to her - she shares her lunch with strangers, serves her friends fruit sandwiches & tea when they meet at her apartment, and daydreams about giving a personalised boxed lunch (bento) to her sweetheart. She’s also a natural teacher, showing the gang how to make curry (which becomes the one dish Usagi can make) and cookies, and showing Motoki how to make hayashi rice (“hashed beef”). Why not host a little dinner party or pot luck for your friends, teach yourself a new recipe (or teach someone else a favourite recipe of your own), or simply celebrate food by patronising a small cafe/bakery like Makoto dreams of owning someday?

She’s also a demonstably skilled sewist, making anything from stuffed toys (apparently, her specialty is teddy bears), to knitting, to bespoke patterns for her class’s maid cafe stall at their high school festival. If you’re a beginner, why not start with some simple DIYs or by altering clothing you already own/thrift, and if you’re experienced, now is a good time to revisit that project you have lying half-finished in the back of your crafts cupboard you keep saying you’ll finish someday when you unpick that one bit I SEE you there.

Makoto loves flowers and has quite a green thumb, perhaps influenced by the Japanese element she draws her powers from - wood. She tends to the strawberry patch at their high school with great success, and though she is often associated with roses, her favourite flower is actually the sasanqua (a type of camellia). She loves flowers so much that she dreams of being a florist someday, a dream she actually achieves in the live action! Pick up a new plant from a local nursery, fill your house with flowers from an independent florist, or start your own produce garden in your back yard, flower pots, or a small indoor terrarium/windowsill. If you don’t have the means to tend to a garden of your own, why not look into seed bombing with plants native to your specific area to combat invasive plant species. Or simply visit your favourite nursery, arboreum, or public garden to surround yourself with nature!

For sports, Makoto is proficient in martial arts, specifically karate (in the original anime) and judo (in the manga and Crystal). She’s also shown to be naturally gifted at ice skating thanks to her past life as Princess Jupiter, since it was a popular sport in the Moon Kingdom, pulling off even very difficult moves like lifting her partner over her head. Check out some local martial arts classes in your area or take some friends to the ice rink! She also enjoyed, and was quite good at, ballroom dancing, so take your partner or a small blue gal pal to some dance lessons - just not ballet, which she can’t quite finesse.

♃ Dress like Makoto for the day! Particularly in the first season, Makoto stuck mostly to “tomboyish” fashions, again reflecting her practicality and sporty side, rarely daring to wear skirts or dresses. However, as the series went on we learned that she in fact admired traditionally “feminine” clothes but feared they wouldn’t suit her. With encouragement from her friends like Usagi and role-models like Haruka, later seasons saw her branch out into a secondary style, with a more mature, “womanly” edge than the young, girlish styles of her friends - though she still enjoyed her original “boyish” fits. Wardrobe staples include casual jackets/hoodies, cable knit sweaters, slacks, shorts, loafers, and sneakers, and later midi skirts, turtlenecks, and bodycon mini-dresses. She wore a lot of green in varying shades, but also orange, teal, and increasingly pink.

As Sailor Jupiter, her image colours were dark green and “sugar pink”, and she wore green ankle boots accented with bright white laces. Her most iconic accessories were her pink rose earrings which, unique amongst the Sailor Guardians, she wore both transformed and not, even throwing them once as a makeshift weapon. Her nails were painted apple/avocado green from her second transformation onwards. Her hair, which to the disbelief of her teachers was naturally curly, was usually worn in a high ponytail with a bobble hairtie (plain teal in the 90s anime, green with petal-like accents in the manga/Crystal/PGSM) and two locks falling over her ears, though she did sometimes swap the hairtie for a ribbon or scrunchie.

Makoto didn’t seem to wear much makeup but did wear cologne/perfume, almost certainly rosen/floral; in fact, it’s one of the first things Usagi notices about her when they meet. If you don’t already have your own signature scent, browse for some local indie perfumers to find something that speaks to you - or look up how to make your own!

♃ Makoto wears a belt of potpourri around her waist in the manga and live action, so you could try mixing a blend of your own dried flower petals and displaying it in a bowl or tucking it in sachets amongst your clothes. In addition to the obvious rose petals, consider including oak leaves or pine needles for an earthy, woodsy note.

♃ Fall in love with someone you met 3 minutes ago!

♃ Crack some skulls!

♃ Clean up your living space! It’s good for the body and the mind.

♃ Fav and read some Sailor Jupiter fanart and fanfic on sites like Pixiv, Twitter, and AO3 - or contribute your own new content! Don’t forget to tag!

Feel free to reply and reblog with your own ideas of how you’re going to celebrate Makoto’s day!

Happy Birthday, Mako!

#this one is the longest to compensate for her getting shafted on individual episodes #(actually these just get longer and longer every time I write one)#(next year I'll be rewriting some of the earlier ones to be more consistent and contain more info too)#sailor moon #sailor jupiter #LONG POST #VERY VERY LONG #birthday #I... may not queue this one as many times on the actual day on account of how long it is

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margoshansons · 4 years

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Desperate Measures: 17/?

MASTERLIST

Summary: Y/N and Bellamy come across a survivor....and reunite with a familiar face.

Warnings: canon-typical violence, swearing, guns, gore

Notes: I am officially off of hiatus!! We will be back to our regularly scheduled programming soon enough, but I really wanted to post this today so enjoy! As always, I’m down to talk about any of it! Based on 2x04 “Many Happy Returns”

***

“Are we gonna talk about it?” Bellamy asked, dropping in next to her, his tone disapproving.

“Talk about what?” Y/N feigned innocence, really not wanting to discuss anything about what happened in the bunker. Bellamy pulled her aside, “You were ready to die for me.” He stated, hand growing tighter around her bicep, intense gaze never leaving her face.

She swallowed nervously, pushing down the butterflies fluttering as she ripped her arm out of his grasp, “Yes, I was.” She confirmed, moving forward so they didn’t fall behind. Bellamy chased after her, not wanting to end the conversation.

“I need to know why.” He pleaded, eyebrows raised, waiting for her answer.

She sighed annoyingly before dropping the bomb, “You’re more important than me.” She stated as if they were discussing the weather instead of their self-worth. “You’re a better leader, a better tracker, and you keep the rest of us grounded.” She began to explain, “You’re older, and have more experience, it’s simple logic.”

This time his grip refused to let up, grasping her wrist and turning her toward him so she could see the desperation hidden in his gaze. “That’s not true.” His voice cracked, throat bobbing up and down as he scanned her face, “The grounders respect you, you’re the best engineer we have--”

“Had” Y/N corrected, her mind wandering toward Sinclair, “The Ark’s down now. There’s plenty more engineers.”

“And you’re a damn good leader.” Bellamy continued to press, refusing to let her believe that her life was worthless. “I may keep the rest of the hundred grounded, but you keep me grounded.” He confessed, breath hitching as they moved closer. “I need you alive.”

Y/N threw her gaze up, sighing at the unfairness of her own words thrown back in her face. “That’s not fair,” She joked, playing with Bellamy’s fingers as they stood on the edge of a clearing, hoping Finn knew what he was doing.

“Are we finally taking a break?”

The couple inhaled sharply as Murphy’s voice interrupted their moment. Just as the two of them were about to answer, Finn cut them off. “No breaks.” The Spacewalker said, eyes still trained on the map, “We have to keep moving.”

Y/N moved forward, “Look,” She pleaded with her former friend, “I know you want to find them, I do too. But we need a minute or we won’t be in good enough shape to rescue our friends.”

Finn finally took his eyes off the makeshift atlas to meet her own, a snarl curled on his face, “No we don’t.” His gaze turned to Bellamy’s, “You heard the grounder, ‘they’ll outlive their usefulness’ we need to keep moving.”

Bellamy stepped in front of the anxious kid, “Y/N’s right,” He told Finn, hand pressed against the other kid’s chest, “Besides, you had a gun to his head, who knows if he was telling the truth.”

She stood there watching the two go at it, trying to find a peaceful way to resolve the tension when she heard it. A slight buzzing in her ear.

“Guys be quiet,” Y/N ordered, training her ear toward the buzzing, trying to discover the direction it was coming in, “Do you hear that?” “Hear what?” Bellamy asked, brows furrowing.

“I think your girlfriend’s gone crazy” Murphy sneered, a glare from Y/N thrown his way.

She followed the buzzing until they broke through the thicket of trees, the road beginning again as they found themselves near the edge of a cliff. But the fear creeping up inside her wasn’t because of the height.

Thousands of Arkers lay before her, the flies picking off what nutrients they could from their decomposing bodies, creating the buzzing that had drawn her here. Their crimson blood splattered against the tan ground, creating a grotesque painting that each delinquent viewed in horror as they moved through the clump of dead bodies.

When they reached the edge of the cliff she held up her hand, telling the rest of them not to go any further.

“Now we know why we never heard from Factory Station.” Bellamy stated numbly, a hint of sadness developing in his voice as the group stared at the debris in front of them.

“Rough landing” Murphy muttered and Y/N glared at the insensitive delinquent, her hand brushing against Bellamy’s arm.

Finn joined them on the edge, “There’s nothing we can do for these people.” The emotionless tone from earlier had returned and despite every bone in her body screaming otherwise, Y/N found herself agreeing with the now murderer.

Their footsteps were cut off by a scream coming from the bottom of the cliff, Bellamy stopping the group again, “Did you hear that?” Something akin to hope returned in his eyes as they peered over the edge, catching sight of a lone figure hanging onto a tree branch jutting out of the cliff, her feet swinging wildly.

There was a survivor.

“Please!” The voice called, female, “Help me!” Sterling joined the leaders at the edge of the cliff, “Mel?” He asked, disbelief written across his face.

“Sterling! Help me please!” Mel called, her voice desperate.

Finn stopped Sterling from grabbing his pack, turning toward Bellamy. “We can’t stop.”

Sterling pushed past Finn and looked back down at Mel.

“This isn’t a grounder Finn,” Y/N pointed out, her voice growing hard, “We have a rope. We can save her.”

“We can save our friends!” Finn countered, the anger coming back to play. “The longer we wait, the less we can save.”

Y/N wanted to scream in frustration, “We don’t know if our friends are still alive!” She finally brought up, knowing it was on everyone’s minds. Finn went silent. “What we do know is that there is someone here who needs our help.”

Finn looked about ready to snap, his lips thinning at her argument. The sound of rocks clattering caused the three of them to swivel around, catching Sterling’s blonde hair disappearing behind the cliff edge.

“Sterling what are you doing?” Bellamy asked, running forward, getting there much too late as Murphy joined the trio at the edge.

“Looks like we’re taking that break after all.”

Bellamy and Y/N shot another glare at Murphy and she watched his eyes widen at the synchronicity of the two leaders before they turned their gaze back to Sterling’s heroics, holding their breaths as he began to creep closer to the ledge that Mel was holding onto.

“I’m almost there!” He shouted up, “Once I have her pull us up!” A sigh came from Murphy and the trio as they released their breaths in relief.

“Well I’d say he’s heard one to many of your motivational speeches,” Murphy joked, relieving some of the tension.

“Shut up Murphy,” Bellamy responded, his eyes never leaving Sterling’s frame.

Y/N’s gaze moved from Sterling to the quivering rope beside her, watching anxiously as it began to shake more until she caught the rock the rope was tied to. The knot flew apart and her eyes grew wide. She jumped on the rope, trying fruitlessly to wrap the edge around her hand, only to watch in horror as it slipped from underneath her, sliding off the cliff and sending Sterling to his death.

His scream rang in her ears, only silenced by a smack as he fell limply against the ground.

Her breathing was ragged, muffled sounds unable to pierce through the cotton like substance in her ears as she replayed Sterling’s screams over and over in her mind, replaying it like the music Marcus used to play.

Suddenly, another scream entered her ears, Mel’s screams.

“We need to figure something else out.” Maria uttered, shaking herself out of her stupor. She owed it to Sterling. She owed it to Mel.

“We’re out of rope.” Finn spoke matter of factly and she knew what he was trying to do.

“So we make a new one” Y/N pushed, sending a small look toward Monroe, the other girl tensing up.

Finn moved closer, invading her space, “We don’t have time. We can come back to her after we save our friends.”

Bellamy exploded. “We don’t know if we could save our friends!” He moved closer to Finn the two men continuing their argument from earlier, “We’ve all thought it. But, Y/N was right, we can save this one girl.”

Finn clenched his jaw, sending a dirty look the engineer’s way before moving closer to Bellamy, “Just because the person you love is safe--”

Bellamy tilted his head, mouth tightening in anger, “I would be very careful with what you say next.”

Monroe stepped in beside the two leaders, “Sterling died to save her, and I’m not leaving until we do.” She spoke, determination hiding whatever grief she was feeling. “How do we do it?”

“We make rope from the wreckage,” Y/N pulled her gaze away from the two silent men, sliding into leader mode, “Seatbelts, wires, anything you can find.”

Murphy and Monroe nodded, the three of them going off to craft a new rope that was going to save Mel’s life. It had to.

***

“I’ll be fine.” Bellamy assured her, pulling tightly on the makeshift rope to make sure it was secure. “You made it.”

Y/N chuckled slightly to break through the unnerving feeling that something was going to go wrong. “You better make it back alive.” She told him, squeezing his hand as she joined the assembly line to lower him down, Murphy and her holding the front of the rope, watching anxiously as Bellamy lowered himself down.

The seatbelts cut through the skin of her palms, the knots in her stomach weighing her down. She hoped it actually added physical weight as well. She didn’t like this one bit, and she couldn’t shake the feeling that something awful was going to happen.

As soon as Mel latched onto Bellamy her prophecy came true.

A buckling sensation sent her lurching forward, the momentum threatening to send her flying off the cliff interrupted by a pair of hands wrapping themselves around her waist, pulling her backward as their feet slid against the rocky cliffside.

“Don’t worry Sparky” Murphy’s strained voice entered her ears, moving his hands from her waist to the rope, “You’ll get your chance to kill me.”

The two of them pulled, Monroe and Finn joining the pair, the four of them trying as hard as possible to keep Bellamy and Mel from falling.

“What the hell happened up there?” Bellamy’s voice rang up from cliffside, and Y/N forced herself to look down, the two Factory station residents swinging helplessly as he tried to find a placement for his foot.

Something buzzed past Y/N’s head and she turned just in time to see an arrow land inches from her.

“Grounders!” She heard Finn yell, “Take cover!” Monroe reached over to grasp her gun, leaning on one knee to protect the trio trying to lift up Bellamy and Mel to safety.

“Everybody pull!” Y/N shouted, having enough faith in Monroe to focus on the task at hand. The seatbelts burned against her palms, and the sweat dripping down her back refused to let up, even as the sun disappeared behind the clouds.

A scream pulled Y/N away from Bellamy as she watched Monroe collapse to the ground, gripping an arrow that had embedded itself deep in her thigh. She released her grip on the rope, grasping the gun in earnest.

“Get back on the rope,” She ordered Monroe, “Now!”

Y/N stood her ground, raising the scope to her eye, recalling Marcus’ lessons.

She pushed another magazine in, locking her eye on the trees above her, bullets striking true as grounders began to fall forward, the arrows slowly dissipating.

Except they weren’t.

Instead it felt as if she was battling an endless hydra. Whenever one fell, two more seemed to be there to greet her in their place. They only had so much ammo, and she knew they were running out soon.

It was only the sound of a foghorn that saved her.

She turned toward the thicket, searching for the familiar yellow orange clouds that could kill them at any second. Instead she found herself locking eyes with a familiar pair of green ones, a wide smile on their savior’s face.

“Octavia?” She breathed.

The two girls collapsed into each other, unable to believe that they were here together. That they had finally found each other.

Their reunion was nothing compared to the relieved one between her and her brother. The siblings refused to pull apart, almost as if they were afraid the other would disappear if they did.

“Where’s your boyfriend?” Murphy asked, the atmosphere growing sour as soon as he made any mention of Lincoln.

Octavia froze, and Y/N caught her gaze as she helped tie up Mel’s arm. “He’s gone,” the younger sister replied curtly, tying off Monroe’s leg as she held the arrow up to her vision.

Bellamy moved toward her, a regretful look on his face, “I’m sorry O,” He uttered, unsure about how to comfort his sister.

Pain shot up Y/N’s side as she stood back up, her knee buckling underneath her as Bellamy moved to catch her, setting her down on the same boulder Mel was on moments before.

“I’m fine.” She lied through her teeth, clutching onto her hip.

Bellamy shook his head, a smile reaching his eyes as she continued to deny her own injuries. “God, it’s a good thing we’re both stubborn as hell.” He muttered, untying the fresh bandages to glance at the wound.

The two of them stared in horror at the sight of blood staining the gauze, and a few stitches tugging at the skin, fraying as one popped open.

She almost thought she saw regret cross Murphy’s face.

“We need to get you back to camp.” Bellamy announced, “And don’t even think about trying to argue with me.”

This time it was her turn to smirk, “I wasn’t...dad” She threw in his face, biting her lip to stop her smile from growing any wider. “But you’re going with Finn and Murphy,” She whispered, her smile replaced by something more serious.

“No way,” Bellamy shook his head, not wanting to leave her, “I’m not leaving you alone.”

“You said it yourself,” Y/N inhaled sharply, “Finn’s a loose cannon, so is Murphy, you need to keep an eye on them.”

Bellamy shook his head, refusing to agree with her, “I just got you back, and I promised myself I’d never let you out of my sight again. Especially after you got injured. I’d never forgive myself.”

Silence stood between the two leaders as they examined each other’s faces, gazes locking onto the bottom half of the other’s face. The gap threatening to close.

Her chest constricted as the words ran themselves over and over in her head.

I need you alive.

She nodded her head slightly, turning her gaze toward Murphy before chucking her rifle at him. “Shoot me again, and I’ll kill you” She breathed heavily, a playful look in her eyes as she extended the olive branch between them. Murphy caught the gun, a smirk playing on his lips as he gave her a mock salute, following Finn into the bushes.

“Let’s go home.” She smiled, tilting her head up to meet Octavia and Bellamy’s gaze, the two siblings nodded.

She hoped she did the right thing.

***

DM Taglist (closed): @chloe-skywalker @im-a-writer-right @clarkewithameme @shatteredlovesick @your-typical-giggle @rhyxn @amongthewildthingss @furiouspockettoad @niammain @cxddlyash @lena-davina @kaylinfayezink @gingerxarmy @super-marvel-dale @travelnottogoanywherebuttogo @nerdbookish @valeskasecco @strangerliaa @simsvetements @molethemollie @thebookisbtr @im-a-stranger-thing @jordangdelacruz @oopsiedoopsie23 @multifandombookstore @okj232 @asian-male-enthusiast @minigranger @jooheonbee @libraryoffandomsuniverse @pancakefancake @weird-pale-blonde-person

#the 100 fanfic #the100fanfiction #bellamy blake imagines #bellamy blake fanfic #bellamy blake x reader #bellamy blake imagine #bellamy blake #reader x bellamy blake #bellamy blake x kane!reader #bellamy blake x franco!reader #fic: desperate measures #series: desperate measures #otp: you have me #my fics

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sourbat · 4 years

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omg 17 feels so magnus/toki to me 8) if you wanna, of course!

Aw, thank you. Nothing like a dose of playful magtok to end the day :)

Tucking their hands beneath the other person’s shirt, just to watch them break the kiss and gasp in surprise at the sensation of cold/warm hands on their skin.

This took a slightly different path than intended, but hopefully it brings a smile. Thanks again for the request.

Three hours after Magnus arrived at the luxury resort, some jackass came running into the lobby with a makeshift bomb, demanding that he see Dethklok or blow up the entire building. He and Toki didn’t catch wind of the event until making their way out of the elevator, intent on leaving the building for rush of the city, only to have the band’s manager and several hooded men warn them the entire resort was on lockdown for the next several hours.

Not willing to let one crazed fan get in the way of their fun, Toki took Magnus back to their shared room and forced him into a pair of swim trunks before dragging him down to the poolside. With the resort on lockdown, the massive cool area was more crowded than usual, and Manus used it as an excuse to not remove his shirt and remain comfortably situated by the poolside, reclined on top of a cushioned seat. In truth, Magnus didn’t care too much for the crowds, but there was no way in hell he would be caught dead shirtless, exposed in front of strangers and contrasted against his younger, more svelte half currently poised to take a dive.

“Hey, Magnus!” Toki waved an arm up high in the air, catching the attention of Magnus and a small collection of onlookers who didn’t recognize him with goggles on. “Looks!”

Magnus lowered his sunglasses, right eye twitching until is adjusted, and quickly fixing in on Toki. “I’m looking,” Magnus repeated, voice dropping as his stare cast downwards, internally screaming at the streaming trails of cold, pool water dripping down Toki’s sculpted abdomen, making him glisten under the sunlight. Toki performed one final wave, earning a slightly strained smile from Magnus, then turned around to face the water. Back now turned, Magnus went ahead and slowly traced the indent of Toki’s spine before leading into a pair of dark swim trunks. His stare further narrowed as Toki’s back stretched into position. “Boy, oh boy. I’m looking.”

And Magnus liked what he was seeing.

No amount of jet lag or exhaustion could tear his eyes from Toki’s long, slender legs. Nothing short of having his good eye being gouged could tear him from that sculpted side profile, that wonderfully crafted abdomen and Toki’s sheer ignorance of the effect he had on him and others.

Toki took a dive, and though Magnus was at quite a distance, blinked and felt a chill settle as he watched and waited for Toki to resurface. He stared at the chlorinated pool water, grinning once Toki breached the surface and showed off his long, dark hair cling to his face, those long, flexible arms of his reaching to pull it all back and, in doing so, exposed that delectable set of muscles, shallow belly button and Adonis belt.

Just then, Toki sank underneath the water. With a kick of his legs, he jettisoned over to the edge of the pool, then resurfaced in front of Magnus.

Magnus pulled himself upright, enjoying how the water reflected the sun’s ray and gave Toki’s already glistening body a more otherworldly glow. “You look like you’re having fun.”

Toki rested his arms on top of the marbled edge. “Comes swimmins with me!”

“Oh, well.” Magnus looked around the pool area. The crowds had admittedly started to dwindle. No big surprise seeing that it was getting close to lunch, and Magnus had caught a glimpse at what the buffet lines were offering before entering the poolside. It was also getting warmer, and Magnus knew they only had half an hour left before the sun became too much for him to handle with just an umbrella covering his top half. He really ought to join Toki. This was Toki’s day off, after all. Magnus let a hand slip over a button, but when he thought to remove it, felt his anxiety double and push against his chest. “Maybe later,” Magnus said, watching the side of Toki’s mouth slant into a disappointed, but understanding frown. “I’m still recovering. Jet lag.”

“Oh. Okays.”

Some time passed, and just as he predicted, it got too hot for comfort. Magnus grew tired of pretending to read, and looked around the poolside to locate and convince Toki that they return to their room. He couldn’t find the guy anywhere, at least not without doing a thorough search underwater, but he did see that the nearest poolside bar had no lines. Magnus checked the time, figured he could do for ten more minutes if booze was involved. A fancy mixed drink just might be the ticket he needed to get Toki back inside, and just the way he liked him: grabby, flirtatious and overly ticklish.

He left the seat and ordered two drinks, picking out a top shelf bourbon for Toki’s orange mint julep, and the second he mentioned the younger man’s name, had the two drinks awaiting him in only a few minutes. Magnus carried the cold drinks back to his chair and accompanying table, placing his down first before giving one auspicious glance at the fruity, refreshing scented drink.

“Whatcha doins?” A voice rang up behind him, startling Magnus and nearly causing him to spill the overpriced julep.

“Christ, man. You nearly gave me a heart attack,” Magnus complained, grabbing his shirt and watching Toki sink in reaction.

“Sorry.”

“Nah, it’s fine.” Magnus offered the glass to Toki. “Got you something,” he said, heart returning to a calm rhythm once Toki’s mouth parted, finger pointed at himself in disbelief at being offered any kind of gift. Fuck, if that wasn’t the cutest thing ever. Toki took the drink, cheeks rising into a perfectly pink smile as he brought the straw to his lips and sipped. The heat grew more pronounced as Toki swayed in place, cupping the glass and nursing a few more gulps and unassumingly awarding Magnus with glimpses of his drenched, flexible physique.

“This ams good!” Toki hummed a pleasing noise, rubbing the side of his face as he knelt to place his half-consumed drink next to Magnus’. Once finished, Toki stood up, took Magnus’ hand in his, and Magnus shivered against the cool, wet hand, and frightfully cold fingertips. Toki leaned forward, closing in the gap until Magnus could feel the evaporating pool water covering Toki now being to sprinkle across his face. And then, Toki grinned. Not his usual, opened-eyed or coy grin, but a mischievous snicker; one that harbored a tongue firmly pressed between his shiny teeth, and playfully luring Magnus closer.

“What’s this?” Magnus asked, letting his exhale shift into a mild chuckle as Toki dared to brush his wet face against Magnus’. The cold, wet hair made his entire left side shudder.

“Just thinkins about how I ams going to rewards you for the drinks,” Toki replied, lowering voice sending an exciting throb down Magnus’ abdomen.

No longer suffering from the lag, Magnus asked. “What’s my reward?”

Cool, wet minty-orange tasting lips smashed into Magnus’ thin grin, nearly causing him to stumble back, were it not for Toki’s generous hold. His nose flared, and he inhaled that scent of chlorine, sprinkled in with a bit of the refreshing mint and heat of the sun, and Magnus happily allowed himself to close his eyes and get lost in the sweet taste of Toki’s lips, the feel of the sun and Toki’s hand slowly riding up his arm. Should’ve got him a drink a while ago, Magnus privately mused, widening smile daring to end the kiss, and Toki fighting it with increasing vigor and possessive yearning.

Then, suddenly, a hand slipped under Magnus’ shirt, and shockingly cold, wet fingertips felt up his back. He hissed out a gasp, breaking the kiss as he stiffened, goosebumps springing up as Toki’s fingers continued to trail across his back. Startled, Magnus jumped back from the overwhelming sensation. In his mind, it was the perfect thing to do. With Toki snickering at him, it was the premeditated, totally rational thing to do. Anything to get away from the onslaught of cold, probing fingers. In his haste, Magnus failed to consider their positions, and it wasn’t until he tried taking another step back and realized his foot failed to touch land, did he remember that it was Toki whose back was towards the table, his to the pool.

Toki’s eyes turned wide and white. “Magnus!”

Toki grabbed Magnus by the wrist, yanking and barely stopping the older man from falling into the pool. There was a wet pop from his wrist, and it was more loud than painful; but otherwise, Magnus was safe. Another sharp yank, and Magnus slipped forward, straight into cold, wet arms.

“Fuck.” Magnus complained at the unwelcoming sensation, but a wet hug was far better than slipping and possibly cracking his head against the pool’s inner walls. Or just making a huge ass of himself. Both would have been equally humiliating for Magnus, though the constant Norwegian whispers uttered by a still frantic Toki suggested things could’ve been far worse. Hearing the skittish prattle made the hug feel less invasive, and after a few seconds, Magnus calmed Toki down with a returning embrace. “Thanks, man. You saved me.”

Toki nodded into Magnus’ shoulder. He continued murmuring, first in Norwegian, then in English told Magnus to be careful where he was jumping, and then finally settled into silence. Magnus pet Toki’s crown, waiting until he could no longer feel that racing heart beat against his own before dropping his hand to the side. “You can let go of me now.”

Toki shuffled, pushing his face into Magnus’ shoulder. The grip around his waist tightened.

“Toki?”

Another squeeze. “Magnus?” Toki whispered into his ear. “Wants to go swimmins with Toki?”

Fear rattled up Magnus’ spine at the question. He grabbed an arm, only to feel it withdraw and strengthen its hold on him. Then, came the push, and Magnus felt his heart rate spike up, and he became painfully aware of his bare, wet feet, and the lack of friction he had compared to Toki’s strength and determination.

Magnus quickly glanced over his shoulder. “Toki, don’t you dare, he warned, then turned back to see Toki peering over his opposite shoulder, concentrating on devising what Magnus guessed would be a safe, shared dive into the pool. “Toki, I’m fucking seri–” Magnus started, but then shifted into a yelp that he just knew everyone around the damn pool heard once that same miserable slip from before returned, only now couple with the weight of an additional man pushing him into the sparkling depths.

The last thing Magnus witnessed before hitting the water was Toki’s inquisitive, curious stare, followed by that once innocent, coy grin. Then, the cold blast. The defeaning fold as chlorinated water toppled over him. Once submerged, Magnus opened his eyes, and he saw the same, menacing profile circling around him, smiling and pushing bubbles through a satisfied grin while he bitterly sank to the bottom of the pool.

#lampmeeting #kissing prompt thing #woohoo #this was fun #magtok #hammertooth #Thank You

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ms31x129 · 4 years

Text

Gypsy Journey: By Ms31x129 (Existence AU - Part 6)

Summary: Nightmares intersect with reality on a gypsy journey with no end in sight.

“I can’t forgive you for hiding him from me Dana. A man has a right to see his grandson grow. “

Part 1- A Child Is Born, Part 2- Desperate Lullaby, Part 3- Sacrifice & Part 4 - Faded Love Part 5 - Haunted Dreams

If I tagged you and you aren’t interested please ignore and sorry for the wait. Link HERE for AO3 or if you prefer reading on Tumbler it’s below for the newest chapter and linked on each chapter title.

@cultureisdarkbeer @season4mulder @baronessblixen @kikocrystalball @kyouryokusenshi @piecesofscully @monikafilefan @today-in-fic @improlificinsarcasm @lappina @skullsmuldon @wholeperson @mobygirl21 @faithfirst2016 @postmodernpromartheus @lmsmith099 @alienbaby-babymama @sandymans-world @blossom-ofsnow @rationalcashew @thatsaprettycoolposter

Part 6: Gypsy Journey

Georgia

They’d been travelling for almost 7 months and they’d stopped in Peachtree City just outside of Atlanta in Georgia when Gibson heard him - it for the first time in months.

“Come to me. Do not run.”

Gibson looked around, Mulder was still in the restroom with William. There at the rear of the building stood an Alien Bounty Hunter. Gibson swallowed and hoping he wasn’t about to make a mistake walked closer.

“I could have killed you many times over, human.”

“Then why haven’t you?”

“You know why.”

The hunter reached out and placed his hand on Gibson’s head. “You have been damaged.” Gibson felt a warmth pass from the Hunters hand, his head felt like it was on fire. And then just like that it wasn’t. The Hunter stepped back and Gibson heard Mulder calling his name, he turned and had to brace himself against the building wall when dizziness passed through him.

“You okay Gibson?” Mulder began to walk towards him; William in his arms. William called out to him in his own way verbally “Gi, Gi…” And a mental thought of a dark ominous beach - waves crashing forcefully. William’s arms were outstretched and he wiggled in Mulder’s arms. Gibson looked behind him one last time - the hunter was gone.

Gibson met Mulder halfway, “I think he wants you to hold him, Gibbs.” Mulder had started calling him that several months ago. He liked it. Mulder handed William to him and William snuggled close, almost like he was comforting him.

Batesburg-Leesburg, South Carolina

As they moved up the east coast the nightmares kept them steady company on their gypsy-like journey. Scully walking away holding William, William reaching out to Mulder, a plaintive “Da-da...” fading as both mother and child became one with the endless sand.

They took a circuitous route north driving west in South Carolina first. The plan was to spend a night in Spartansburg. Gibson stared out the window and noticed the silence first, then a vibration that grew louder. He turned his head and looked at William whose eyes were wide with fright.

It was only a few moments until he read the mind of the man he once accused of being afraid of him.

“Krycek thought he could kill me, he was wrong. I’m going to give you another chance Marita, even though you did nothing to stop him from pushing me down the stairs.”

Gibson could feel the satisfaction from the man taking a deep slow drag from his cigarette. “I want my grandson found and when you do you are going to bring him to me.”

Suddenly Gibson heard other sounds - dark, dangerous - something was in Spartansburg. The sign ahead read Spartanburg Exit 14 A Route 85 North. Gibson grabbed Mulder’s forearm.

“Mulder - don’t take the exit. We can’t go to Spartanburg. I, I can’t explain exactly - there’s something - danger. WE can’t go there.”

Mulder looked at the fear in the earnest young man’s face and nodded in unspoken agreement and merged into another lane. Gibson closed his eyes and sighed in relief, but William was projecting - the dark ominous beach was back.

The nightmare that came while in the safe house in North Carolina was the worst. Gibson didn’t know how much longer any of them would survive without restful sleep.

A triangular UFO made of sand, lifting up, up - changing into weather stained metal. A low humming began as more craft of all sizes now dotted the skies, the beach became a city of rubble. Screams of the dying, explosions, buildings toppling as the crafts above continued their reign of destruction.

A baby’s wail shattered the dream and a new one crept in. William crawled across the sand toward his father. Mulder was sick, dying, skin pasty his face and body moist with sweat, eyes red. William on his knees hands on his father’s chest, grasping Mulder’s shirt in his small hands. “Daa-Daa… Daa-Daa….” Mulder raised his arm weakly, a thumb wiped at the tears on his son's cheek. He swallowed his throat, felt raw, tight and it was getting harder and harder to breath.

In the distance Scully ran toward them, in her hand - a syringe. “Mulder… ” her voice echoed. Everything would be okay now. Scully was coming. “God, I love you William.” Mulder’s hand fell just as Scully dropped to her knees beside them. “No, no, no, no… Mulder. Damn you!” She plunged the needle into his neck. “C’mon, c’mon don’t do this to Me! To our son!” Scully ripped Mulder’s shirt open and began chest compressions continuing to scream at him to wake up.

William was still on his knees beside her when she noticed the change Mulder’s skin had turned gelatinous… No! She looked at William as he was pulling his hands away from his father's chest, a stretchy, viscous slime coating his hands. Scully looked at her own hands pressed against Mulder’s now translucent chest and the creature writhing within. Scully scooped William into her arms, got to her feet and backed away.

The creature burst from Mulder’s chest, it seemed to sniff the air until it swiveled its head and looked directly at Scully and William. Scully took several steps backward, her eyes never leaving the creature, until she bumped into something - someone. CGB Spender held a gun to her back. “Give the boy to Marita, Dana… I can still call you Dana can’t I? After our oh so memorable road trip… I’d rather not shoot you in front of the boy.”

Marita stepped forward and Scully reluctantly relinquished William; his cries grew louder as Marita carried him away toward a car. Spender also began backing away the gun still trained on Scully.

“I can’t forgive you for hiding him from me Dana. A man has a right to see his grandson grow. I wonder if there’s anything left of Fox in that creature? Perhaps you’ll be the one to survive? I think not, it’s unfortunate - I could have given you the world… It’s too late for that. I’ll raise William as my own, my heir. Finally a child to mold who can be the son I always wanted.”

The Mulder-Creature slowly slinked forward closer to Scully. “Goodbye, Dana.” The creature moved like lightning striking driving Scully into the sandy beach. William struggled in Marita’s arms. “Da-da, da-da… n, n, nooo….” The creature turned toward the sound of William’s voice and took a few steps away from Scully. “Get the boy in the car, Marita. NOW!” Spender hissed.

Scully rose shakily to her feet and launched herself at the creature, instinct took over and it turned on her, slashing with its claws. Marita was still trying to get the struggling William in the car, his cries reached a fever pitch. “Nooooooo…...M, M … Ma….Mama!”

A sonic bomb, a wave of psychic energy consumed them, scouring everything clean.

Pure Darkness.

William was crying out for his father. Both Mulder and Gibson stumbled to the makeshift nursery, Mulder took his son in his arms. “Shhh, Will… it’s okay, I’m here.” Gibson shook his head, the remnants of the dream fading. His head was pounding, he felt the familiar wetness above his lip, he reached up and swiped, blood on his fingertips. Gibson noticed blood beneath Mulder’s nose as well, as their eyes met.

“What just happened?” Gibson shook his head, the dreams were fading, becoming hazy. William was calming, becoming quiescent in his father’s arms.

*****

Miles away the ABH felt the child’s power spread, an invisible wave - so much untapped potential - so untrained. The ship responded, absorbing the energy even as the readout from a monitor went static. His brothers surrounded him. “It is done,” one of them said. “Call the boy,” intoned another.

#msr fanfic #msr #xfiles fanfic #The X-Files #xf fanfic #txf fanfic #xf season 8 #xf existence #xf fanart #xffanfic #xf fanfiction #today-in-fic #mulder and scully #xf william #Gibson Praise #XF au fanfic

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dangertronic · 3 years

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leighhhh, top ten forest moments? c:

Hell to the yeah! Before we launch into this a quick explination for anyone who doesn’t know this game (because hey, it might make some stuff clearer). This is a horror survival crafting game you play with up to like 12 people where you’ve survived a plane crash, someone’s son is missing, and the island is infested with cannibals.

That being said, here are our top ten moments!

10) Kota built a trap mine field outside the front of our base so now whenever anyone tries to get in the base all you hear is “please don’t trigger the happy birthday -” Trap snapping and Shane giggling. “HAPPY BIRTHDAYYYYY.”

9) We ran through two caves in one playthrough and when we got to the base Amy wanted to get on so we saved and backed out to the lobby so she could join on Dave’s order. We load back in and I turn to see Dave’s name looking very far away. There is an instant “oh no” from Dave as he discovers he did not save all the times me and Shane did and has now loaded into a cave alone so we get a full ten minutes of Dave screaming as he tries to get out of a cave and back to the base alone.

8) I spent 3 hours building a staircase to the cliff so it would be faster to get up there. Kota claps down a bluprint and asks me to finish building it. Me, being me, trusts my teammates on this game whole heartedly. I finish the bluprint and stare at it to see a flashing red light. Filled with dread I ask Kota what the fuck I just built and why it’s flashing red. “It’s a trip wire bomb so cannibals can’t come down the stairs.“ “IT’S GONNA BLOW UP THE STAIRS.“ “NO IT WON’T WATCH WHILE I TRIGGER IT.“ Guess what happened. That’s right. It blew up the stairs and I haven’t forgiven him since.

7) Me and Kota were the only two on the file one night with Amy watching us. We got under a cannibal attack (pretty impressive we took out six of the bastards with just two high menaces) and started to burn the bodies. One of the bodies was too far back so Kota was like “can I put this on the sled?” And threw the body at the sled. I don’t pretend to know much about physics but a cannibal dude’s dead body that weighs roughly 170lbs should not send a full log sled yeeting 5ft into the air and 5ft across the field.

6) Related to 7. I was standing guard on a boulder with a bow and arrow and I turned to look at Kota’s back like huh he always does shit to hurt me... I aimed and then considered shooting my own friend, decided against it but then forgot that you can’t just lower a bow and arrow in this game you have to fire it. It ended up with me doing a janky shot that somehow HIT Kota and Amy going “what the fuck” as she watched his screen go black and white. Kota, ten seconds after repeats her sentance while I innocent turn back around and then go “what what? what’s happening.” Kota if you see this somehow I’m fucking pissing myself to this second that you did not consider for a moment that I shot you and still think you caused damage to yourself throwing a dead body at a sled.

5) Me and Kota killed a cannibal because we didn’t want to find out if they could cross our makeshift bridge as they seem to fear water. One dashes across the bridge so we take him out and I slowly turn to the most horrific sight ever. Another Cannibal has shown up and is stradling the one across the bridge and eating him before slowly looking up at me and laughing.

4) Me and Amy went on an adventure for food and supplies while Jess and Jason built a base wall, on the way back the following day I spot a cannibal and I tell her to keep an eye on her right when suddenly something shoots at the trees and I scream “WHAT THE FUCK.” Jason: I thought you weren’t scared of this game? Amy: I JUST WATCHED THAT BASTARD SHOOT OUT A TR- FUCK I’M DOWN. Me, in a panic, trying to pull Amy up: GET UP GET UP GET UP THERE’S TWO OF THEM I NEED YOU TO STABBY STAB.

3) A cannibal tried to kill me and Kota slapped him back so he was forced to jump back. The cannibal landed in the water and I guess they can’t swim cause he died instantly so Kota has deemed him the bridge troll named Bob.

2) We went to the cold area to find hogs for fur and I was standing on top of a hill with Amy mimicking anything Dave said in a bitchy voice while Amy giggled. A cannibal ran between us and Amy slapped it with a stick and he ran off with Amy going “YEAH RUN AWAY.” The cannibal proceeded to climb into a tree and launch himself at her and he only missed cause she panicked and knocked a button to move to the side.

1) Okay this is my all time favourite moment. Second ‘night’ with Jess and Jason five cannibals get into the base and we fend them off but a sixth one shows up and slaps me into incap mode. Amy stands there panicking for a moment cause a second cannibal pack showed up and you only have so long before it respawns you in the plane (which not too bad when the plane is literally a two minute run if that). Jess, being the nice person, constantly checks on my death status with me going “im good it’s only at [x area] just kill those bitches.” After the fray Amy says “we better get tam back up” and the pure excitement of Jason will never not amuse me as he screams “NO. LET ME DO IT SHE’S MY CHILD AND I’VE NEVER HELPED ANYONE BEFORE IN THIS GAME.”

#leigh plays a game #i love my chaotic survivor buddies #<3 #Anonymous

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machinakrpx · 4 years

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>> OPEN LEE YANI’S FILE …

:// AGE — 25 :// OCCUPATION — drug runner :// CLASS — elysium native

>> LOADING DEVELOPMENT ...

:// MAGIC —

on the point of biochemical magic, yani is a newcomer to the science. to the art. it’s a lost talent in so many ways, and one that she had no exposure to as a child. maybe things would have been easier, if she had. but yani has always had books, the promise of the old, of sprawling forests and wild grown gardens. yani has always had a deep, near spiritual connection to the biological, the natural, almost in defiance of her mechanized and austere surroundings. since beginning to work with apollo, she’s become adept at the hydroponic arts as much as the magical, becoming a provider of materials, grown in test tubes and under stark lights, recreating heirloom plant varieties and hunting down long lost seeds, attempting to scientifically and magically recreate the germination process, propogating long lost flora in modified greenhouse boxes, imbuing them with the enchantments that apollo has shared with her.

:// MODIFICATIONS —

moderate reflex enhancement system - wired in under the skin, implanted in her neural network, yani has taken on the physical advantage of an enhanced reflex system, programmed to anticipate danger signs in order to systematically avoid those clients who might attempt to take advantage of her. this was implanted after her time with apollo began, necessary for her to efficiently complete her jobs for him.

microscopic eyes - she has implanted natural appearing visual enhancements that allow her to more accurately pinpoint potential issues with her crops, machinery, and so on. alongside her enhanced reflexes, this allows her the ability to work more successfully and precisely with her hydroponics, in terms of creation and maintenance of both biological and mechanical components.

cranial bomb - in order to ensure her discretion as a runner and apprentice to apollo, she’s had a cranial bomb installed, designed to specifically target the section of her brain storing information relative to the enterprise. should she attempt to start her own business, short apollo in general, or share relevant industry secrets, the bomb will detonate. while she won’t die, she’d be assuredly damaged, lose the relevant secret information, and be incapacitated requiring hospitalization for an indeterminate period.

>> LOADING BIOGRAPHY ...

“i taught you to fight and to fly. what more could there be?”

lee yani is born to elysium like a peter pan is born of neverland. perhaps as soon as she existed, the city welcomed her, open armed, it’s cavernous maw yearning and open, eager to take in one of its own.

her mother dallied amid late night suitors with full enough pockets, her father a footnote left forgotten. and in time yani too was forgotten, with a pat on the head and the instruction to come back by supper.

and so the city raised her. slick streets and neon lights her playground, the dull slick of the rain on her cheeks companion to the dreary concrete structures she made her home. hours spent honing clever fingers and making use of childish winsomeness to fill her stomach and her mind. crushed into the back corner of cramped school rooms, overworked teachers that didn’t notice if she was there or not, didn’t notice if she snuck into the classes of older children, if she stole textbooks from the cluttered shelves, dusty and unraveling at the bindings.

and when she returned one day to find her mother absent, she took this new reality in as much stride as anyone can. it’s a common scenario in the slums of a slum, after all. people go missing. and when she appeared there was a spark of enthusiasm and cheer, but there was also a changing that had occured, an acceptance of individuality and independence. a trust that had died.

and so when her mother did disappear, for good that time, she wasn’t all that surprised.

“they have to be one thing or the other, because being so small they unfortunately have room for one feeling only at a time.”

raised by the city, she thrives in it. it’s not the sort of thriving that comes with full pockets or a full stomach, but she survives. she adapts and overcomes. it’s a band of them in the end, a tangle of lost children who carve out a home for themselves in a dark world, under the glare of the lights.

but she feels.

she’s a creature of emotion, from one to the next in record time and impossible intensity, a signal flare in the dying light of a burned out city, a beacon. it brings people to her, it draws them in. they turn a blind eye to her half empty pockets, they keep her just above the edge of destitute. let her take the empty back room of the basement as a makeshift home, and someone leaves a spare space heater for her. it’s broken but she fixes it, discovers a knack for the mechanical.

a knack for survival.

she’s a young girl forced to grow up too soon, and there’s a spirit of youth she holds onto. a wild intensity and an innocent selfishness. she eschews the benefits of implantations and augmentations, at first for the sake of finances and later for some misplaced integrity. retains a strange purity of body that leaves a rosy flush to her cheeks and a lingering youthfulness to her expression, some gleaming promise of what innocence and beauty might once have been. like a rose in a case, a relic of a lost time.

“sometimes, though not often, she had dreams, and they were more painful than the dreams of others.”

she’s a ringleader, though she doesn’t know when it happened or how. there’s something innate to it, a kind of charm that is lost on many and loved by few. but those who respond to it, they pull into her thrall. she steals her way through life, a mix of odd jobs and slight of hand to get where she’s going, to take what she needs. and usually not much more. she’s got a bit of a moral compass- just a little. its an old book that takes her by surprise, a biology textbook, a botany grimoire, one that offers up knowledge of long lost materials, plants and flowers and herbs that she’s never been able to imagined, more than she can fathom. she becomes obsessed, reclusive, fascinated with the promise of greenery, lushness, the garden of eden calling out to her in siren song. she devours information, collects samples, and they wither under her hands, left unable to master something with one piece of the puzzle missing.

that’s when she finds him, apollo, and his concoctions. whispers of a magic that calls out to her, sings it’s song siren to some secret part of her soul that is yet unexplored. she hears of it and it sounds right. it feels right. she gets her hands on a potion and when it hits the tip of her tongue she knows.

she just knows.

the formula plays itself out in her mind, a catalogue of herbs and adjustments, a latticework of molecules and modifications that she only partly comprehends. it rattles around in her head, a buzz of information on overload. and like a child she is obsessed, fascinated, begins to try to piece it together, attempts to recreate the drug on her own time, her own turf. it’s a herculean task for a girl without resources or training, and as she goes about stealing and purchasing and chasing down ingredients, she draws attention to herself, at first unwanted.

when she’s hauled into apollo’s backroom, she wakes strapped to a chair with an unfamiliar face sneering down at her. the whirr of a mechanical arm rearing back for a slap is the first precursor to the pain that erupts next, has her spitting a mouthful of blood to the floor.

they want to know what she knows and they want to know who told her.

and in the end, it takes hours before they acknowledge that, perhaps, she’s telling the truth. that the knowledge came from within. this is what earns her an audience with the sun himself.

“ you can have anything in life if you will sacrifice everything else for it.”

its as good as medicine, as bright as the sun. salvation in a bottle. she salivates for want of knowing, and when he offers her apprenticeship with strings she leaps first and doesn’t look back.

its not until she’s on the table that she thinks she might have made a mistake. she’s strapped down to cold metal and pinned beneath instrumentation. they craft her to the task, lay implantations in her eyes and a wiring through her nerves, snaking along the lines of her bones and in the fibers of her muscles.

they offer her the chance for cosmetic upgrades- wild hair or holographic tattoos, multicolored eyes or jeweled implantations, but she denies.

and as she learns those secrets, as she trains in endless hours of bent heads and hyperfocus, she is reminded of that excruciating trade she has made. of how they’ve opened her skull, fingering the line of a scar that runs beneath short shorn hair, growing back slow where it was shaved for surgery. a failsafe, a modern non-compete clause, a cyanide pill hidden in her teeth to keep her silent, remote detonated and programmed, hopefully, not to kill. but it’s an illegal technology and as always, your mileage may vary.

but she trades in secrets and magic now, and such a failsafe is to be expected, insurance of her trustworthiness in this wholly untrustworthy world.

“and thus it will go on, so long as children are innocent and heartless.”

what does it mean to be too much? to feel too much, to love too much, to hate too much. she is a creature of absolutes, she is all or nothing, she is all and all and all and all. erratic and wild, like hebe she is a force of life, she is a wild thing that breathes youth into those around her. feeds ambrosia to the miserable and uplifts the fallen, a creature of excess and of gladdening, cupbearer to the broken. and, oh, there are many. she has too much heart for elysium, for a girl born into its clutches, too much want and too many dreams for a world long barren of hope or promise. anachronistic and native to the landscape of elysium, she is an impossible creature of contradiction. she is as much beholden to the hedonism of elysium as she is the desire for the purity of long past times, at odds fascinated and enamored with the progress of neo seoul and disgusted with the opulence and austerity of olympus. she dreams of impossible things, lush gardens and the promises of eden, and lives eternally unsatisfied, selfishly chasing after her own longings.

#neobio #neohebe #neo kang seulgi

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papa-rhys · 5 years

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New Dawn: Where are they now?

Here are my headcanons for what Hope County folk would be up to in New Dawn (if they all survived). I stuck to main characters (catergory 1 and 2) for this and I didn’t count anyone who died in fc5 canon because there’s 100% no chance they’d be in New Dawn and this is meant to be a “what I expect from X character if they appear in ND” thing. If I missed any important people out, then let me know and I’ll see about adding them in!

Holland Valley

Mary May Fairgrave: Lives in Prosperity, even though she doesn’t enjoy it as she can’t quite shake the thought that John used to live there. She runs a makeshift bar in the kitchen. She tells everyone that it’s because it boosts the morale of the people living there, but really it’s because she misses the connection that the Spread Eagle had to her parents. She grew up behind the bar, so in the first 10 or so years after the bombs fell, when she was kept away from the Spread Eagle, she didn’t feel like herself. Making her own replica of the Spread Eagle in John’s old kitchen makes her feel like she’s a little closer to home.

Jerome Jeffries: In charge of Prosperity. He lead a few people to John’s ranch to look for shelter after they crawled out of their bunkers and as the group has steadily grown in size, they all look to him as the founder/man in charge. He doesn’t like to sit indoors and let people do his bidding though, so if he sends someone out on a supply run or a job, he’ll likely go with them. Otherwise, he feels like a bossy control freak who doesn’t care about his people and just has them running around and working themselves to the bone for him. It makes him feel too much like Joseph and he obviously hates that.

Casey Fixman: Casey still cooks for the people of Prosperity primarily (also sending nice home cooked meals to the Wolf’s Den once a week as a treat for the remaining Whitetails), but he also provides valuable knowledge about combat and the inner workings of human beings. He’s a very knowledgeable guy and Jerome can often be found having hush-hush meetings with him behind the kitchen whenever Jerome needs advice on how to handle a problem.

Nick Rye: Nick looks after the kids of Prosperity. He doesn’t fly much anymore as he’s found happiness in other things, like spending time with his family and looking out for the children that were born into this new world. He finds it incredibly rewarding to give them some kind of normality in the form of reading to them or playing hopscotch with them in the grass – things that he believes all kids should do.

Kim Rye: Kim works with Nick as a duo. Whilst he has fun with the kids, she gives them an education. She teaches them basic things, like reading, writing, maths (the important bits), etc. But she also teaches them basic (and age-appropriate) combat. Among other things, she teaches them how to hold a knife, how to fire a gun, and how to break free if someone grabs them. She loves working with the kids and takes pride in knowing that she’s helping them to stay safe. Nick is also super proud of the work she does and tells her everyday, of course.

Carmina Rye: Much to Kim and Nick’s misery, Carmina is a total brawler and is always desperate to go out on runs with the supply team. She wants to explore the world outside the walls of Prosperity and meet new people, often sneaking out of Prosperity and scaring her parents to death. She gets into trouble with Hudson a lot, mainly for silly teenage pranks or generally causing trouble. She likes Wheaty a whole lot and always finds an excuse to go with the trading team when they deliver things to the Wolf’s Den. She denies that it’s a crush, but it 100% is. Safe to say Nick doesn’t like Wheaty much anymore.

Grace Armstrong: Grace runs an adult combat training program. The kids get basic training from Kim, but once they get to a certain age, they move up to the adult tier, where Grace will give them full training. Including, but not limited to: how to use all types of firearm, how to properly use knives, how to fight without weapons, how to free yourself from restraints, different signals used in combat (and what they mean), and how to stealth kill. She’s basically doing the same job as Jacob, except she does it way better than he ever could.

Joey Hudson: Hudson is still a cop! She’d live in Prosperity and she’d patrol the place and make sure that everyone is getting on okay. She’d handle any arguments and disputes that people had, because even though they’re all on the same side, they’re still bound to fight. So she keeps the peace. She has a shorter fuse these days and has a tendency to get mad at people pretty quickly sometimes, but everyone knows what she went through and they cut her some slack, knowing that she doesn’t mean any harm.

Whitetail Mountains

Tammy Barnes: Tammy lives in the Wolf’s Den and still does the same kind of stuff. She “handles” what’s left of the cultists and still looks after Wheaty (who is now 36 years old and still doesn’t do his own laundry). She’s toned it down with the torture in recent years though, and has more time to do mundane things (like cooking, cleaning, and spending time with Wheaty) which she finds a lot of solace in doing. She also managed to find her true calling – knitting copious amounts of scarfs that Wheaty wouldn’t be caught dead in, although he appreciates the sentiment.

Wheaty: Wheaty now runs what’s left of the Whitetail Militia out of the Wolf’s Den. He went straight to the bunker when the bombs hit and after things had settled, he focused his efforts on rounding up as many of the remaining Whitetails as he could, desperate to hold onto Eli’s legacy. Now he trades with Prosperity and offers the help of his men and women should Prosperity ever need it (and vice-versa). When he’s not swamped with work and making sure his people are safe as they scavenge for supplies, he’s winding down by watching old tapes of Eli’s favourite TV show or home videos of Eli and his family celebrating Christmas or birthdays. He also still enjoys his music; often playing records for Tammy - the same ones that the Deputy collected for him all those years ago.

Hurk Jr: Still resides in Fort Drubman, which he’s built upon and fortified since his dad’s death. He doesn’t really do much outside of shooting at beer bottles and setting off rockets in his backyard, which he claims to have a good reason for beyond “it’s a whole heap of fun, amigo.” He occasionally works as a hired gun, helping out on supply runs for the Whitetail Militia whenever they need someone a little more… “heavy-handed.” In exchange, they give him a fraction of the supplies that were found (which is increased if he sustains an injury on the run). Other than that, he’s all about “kicking back and gettin’ buzzed, man.”

Jess Black: Jess lives in the wilderness, setting up her camp in a different place each night. She makes an effort to stay pretty clear of other people, suspecting that human beings have only gotten more dangerous since the end of the world. Tammy gets in contact with her from time to time, just to make sure she’s okay (after Eli and Dutch died, Tammy took on the responsibility of checking in on Jess), but other than that, Jess rarely has contact with people. She dedicates all of her time to surviving in the wilderness and any spare time that she has is spent on hunting and crafting. I could see her sat in front of a campfire crafting arrows or cooking a rabbit for her dinner. She doesn’t really care for anything else and is more than happy to live a secluded life alone in the forests of Hope County.

Staci Pratt: Pratt needs something calm, easy, and mundane ever since his brains were scrambled by Jacob. He can’t handle stress anymore and isn’t safe enough to be in combat or unsupervised around people. So he assists Casey in the kitchen, cooking food for Prosperity, which he enjoys more than he thought he would. In his spare time, he likes to read – mainly because it helps him to practice focusing his mind. He struggles picking out individual thoughts, often jumbling things together and getting stressed out by it. So reading a book and forcing himself to take time focusing on each individual sentence is really helpful for him. He also enjoys the escapism and seeing characters get happy endings. Other than reading, he likes spending time with friends; especially Hudson, who he feels very connected to after going through similar things.

Henbane River

Earl Whitehorse: He tried to secure the prison after getting out of his bunker, but it was too far gone, so he moved on to Prosperity. For a while, he acted as Sheriff of Prosperity, helping Hudson keep the peace in the ever-growing settlement. But he eventually began thinking of the apocalypse as his second chance. He figured that if he survived the war in Hope County, the Bliss, and then the nukes, then that has to mean something. And he didn’t want to waste his new lease of life on doing the same thing he’d been doing for the previous 30+ years. So now he spends most of his days fishing in the river behind Prosperity, providing fresh (albeit oddly coloured and disproportionate) fish for Casey to cook and providing himself with a taste of the well-deserved retirement that he never got to see.

Tracey Lader: Tracey has a whole lot of anger to share with her enemies (and people in general) so she found her place as a soldier. She acts as one of Jerome’s most trusted lieutenants and is second in command (and sometimes completely in charge, when Jerome isn’t there) of most of the supply run teams that are sent out. She debated going it alone like Jess for a while, but she ultimately likes human contact too much to live like that – no matter how annoying people can be sometimes. She’s pretty busy running the show for Jerome, so she doesn’t get much spare time, but when she does, she spends it in her room, brooding.

Sharky Boshaw: Sharky goes back and forth between locations; sometimes living in Prosperity, and sometimes living in Fort Drubman with Hurk. He still likes fire. A lot. But he contributes a little more to the grouthan he used to, using his “creative genius” (his words) to devise traps for enemies, ideally keeping said enemies as far away from the walls of Prosperity as possible. There’s sharpened branches, there’s tripwires, and most importantly; there’s fire. In his spare time, he messes around with Hurk, getting up to all kinds of trouble and not being inconspicuous in the slightest – much to Jerome’s dismay.

Adelaide Drubman: Adelaide is 83 years old now so it’s a miracle she’s still alive and you best believe she doesn’t let anybody forget it. She’s still rampantly horny, but doesn’t have the energy to keep up with her own needs anymore. So she spends most of her days messing with people around Prosperity; picking on them and getting a kick out of getting adverse reactions from them. She’s quite close with Carmina Rye (unfortunately for Nick and Kim), who keeps her feeling young, and Carmina finds her hilarious. The pair can often be found sat on the front steps of the former ranch, giggling at passers by and enjoying some time away from the destruction and misery.

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nika-the-hunter · 5 years

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The House of Mist [Ch.6]

Abandoned Industrial Sector, Pacific Northwest

+24 Days

Unfortunately, Nicole’s hunt for viable building materials and decor had turned up nothing that she could actually use. They had found more than one warehouse full of old building materials, however the issue changed into how they were going to transport the resources they found. The Ghost mentioned that if she located some sort of Jump Ship, he would be able to store items there, but she had no idea where to find something like that. Her Ghost however, had some ideas.

Nicole hoisted a plate of sheet metal and tied it to her back with a pair of salvaged straps. There were a lot of those around the area. If she was only going to be able to take one piece, it would have been the one made of the lightest material.

“Alright, which way now?” She glanced down to her helmet's internal clock. They probably had five or six hours of sunlight left.

“If my memory serves, I once saw a ship that had collided with a building across those tracks just south of us,” her Ghost chimed.

Nicole turned and started off in that direction. She could see the berm that the railroad tracks rested on top of in the distance less than a kilometer away; however she did not see any sign of a ship. “What makes you think that it still works?”

The Ghost chirped in her ear. “Well... we Ghosts are actually very good at bringing the dead back to life.”

“I would think that a ship is much more complicated than a person”

“Not entirely, in the past I’ve peeked into the inner workings of that crashed ship, and it looked far simpler than you were.”

“If you say so, Ghost.” Nicole rolled her eyes. She crossed the tracks and saw the tail of the craft sitting in the wall of a nearby building. Old, torn tarps fluttered in the wind and were secured to the fuselage as some sort of makeshift camp; the former residents were long gone, judging by how ruined the camp was. Walking closer, her Ghost emerged from her back and flew towards the old aircraft. She stepped around a pile of bones that were buried in the dirt. The Ghost stopped momentarily near another pile of bones. “So why didn't you bring any of these back, not that I’m not grateful for the second chance.”

“Well, they didn’t have the spark that you had,” he replied. “Some were close, but I was confident that I would find the right one.”

“Hmm...” Nicole carefully stepped over a single rib cage. It was grim, but they had been dead for a very long time. “Any idea who they use to be?”

“They were soldiers, that’s all I was able to figure out; but let’s let the dead rest, and see about getting this ship running.”

One of the ship’s wings had broken off at one point, and come to rest against a toppled train car. Nicole pointed over to it. “Well isn’t that something we’re going to need? I don’t think that you can fix that.”

“Oh nonsense,” The Ghost flew into the craft’s troop bay and vanished from sight. His voice now came from her helmet again. “With all that glimmer we found, I could just make a new wing.”

Nicole shook her head, and took a cautious step back as a shimmer of light pulsed across the hull of the spacecraft. The vessel began to shake and the engine whined to some stage of life. Bits and pieces of building crumbled and bounced across the hull. “Okay, I'm really impressed.” She said

An engine activated and the vessel lifted, leveling out in the ruins. “It’s working!” The Ghost shouted. Despite the lack of a wing on the right side, the ship appeared to be functioning just fine. At Least that was what Nicole thought.

“Wait... what are those... oh... OH... oh no.” The engine burped and the entire thing shook. Her Ghost appeared out of the bay and rocketed passed her shoulder, appearing just as a blur to Nicole.

“What’s wro-” The ship dropped, falling nearly a meter back into the crash site. She did not get a chance to see it actually land before there was just a white light and a sudden bone shattering pain that engulfed her entire body. It was over in an instant.

The flames burned for hours.

Once the fires had died down enough to traverse the crater, the small Ghost ventured forth. There were bits of... well everything scattered everywhere. Hopefully he would find a large enough piece to restore his Guardian from. If not, he would just use his internal reserves, though that was supposed to be more time consuming. The craft had been fully armed when it had been shot down during the Collapse; the rigging that held the munitions to the craft had degraded over the centuries and his attempts to restore the craft only furthered the failure.

The Ghost’s eye found what it was looking for; her upper torso had been shielded by the piece of metal she had been carrying around. The light swirled forth from the machine, restoring the Guardian’s body from nothing.

Nicole took a sharp breath and looked around at the burning world around her. It had been mere seconds as far as she could tell, but everything had changed. The sun was gone, long passed beyond the curve of the Earth, and everything was ablaze. Her Ghost looked down at her, shining into her eyes with his light. She looked up at him, and blocked the light with her hand. “What the hell happened?”

He twitched slightly and turned off his light. “Well... I sort of blew you up.”

She pulled herself up off the ground and found her assault rifle still attached to her back. “What do you mean, you blew me up?”

“There were bombs... and they were volatile... and they exploded.” He chirped in an uneasy tone, “I would have warned you, but you need me to rez you.”

Nicole stuck her head and shook her helmet enough to scratch an itch on her head. “At least you can do that right...”

“Oh what-ever, you’re alive Guardian.” The Ghost swooped in and bonked her on the helmet.

Nicole laughed a bit. He was right there, she was alive and the ship was not. She climbed out of the crater and back to street level. The building and tracks she had been near were now completely gone; bits of metal rail were sticking out of a building face like arrows not too far behind her. It had been one hell of an explosion. “Well my metal plate is gone now, what do we do, just head back home empty handed?”

“Sorry, looks like we will,” he replied.

“Damn...” Nicole stretched and pushed at her chest armor which seemed to be back to its original tightness. “This stuff sucks.” She sighed and started back towards the highway. “It seems really weak too.”

“Well it was made out of the barebones materials I had on me.” He replied.

“Any of that metal that we found good for armor?” Nicole asked.

“It did not seem like it, that was all light decorative metal. It doesn't have the strength for armor.” He orbited her head like he usually does when trying to work out a solution. “I also do not have the necessary engrams, or blueprints, for a better armor set.... though I might be able to restore and edit some of that old armor by the...ship... never mind.”

Nicole glanced back at the crater. “Yeeeaaahhh... no... Nothing survived that.”

Something dropped down from a roof not too far ahead of her and skittered across the street. Nicole caught a glimpse of what looked like a Fallen running on all six appendages, or at least four. The figure stopped in an alley shrouded in darkness. Four glowing blue eyes blinked at her.

Nicole raised her left hand, and gave a little wave at the eyes, while her right moved to the grip of her sidearm. She was a bit unsure whether or not they were friendly. “Hello?” She called out in Fallen. It was one of the first words Rykis had made sure she got right.

The Fallen emerged from the shadows, and Nicole actually recognized them. Well, recognized the armor, she hardly ever saw any without their masks. It was Jasix, the other Fallen that met with Rykis regularly. She could speak english well as far as Nicole could tell. “Guardian, Guardian, Guardian, what kind of mess have you created here?” Jasix looked towards the burning buildings behind Nicole.

Nicole coughed and pointed over at her Ghost, floating just beside her. “He did it.”

“I was just trying to restore an old ship for my Guardian here.” the Ghost said, blinking at her.

Jasix shook her head and rubbed her forehead with one of her hands. “Why, we have a very.... skilled...” She seemed to work through her words slowly, making sure she was using the right ones correctly. With what little Fallen Nicole knew, she did the same. “Skilled mechanic here at Mist. Should have gone there. She could help with your armor issue too!”

“How long have you been listening in?” Nicole was curious.

“Turned up after the explosion, Rykis was wondering where you went.” Jasix replied. “There should be transport passing soon if you want to go to Tansis tonight?”

“Transport... Tansis?” the word sounded familiar, but Nicole was just not sure.

Jasix nodded and waved for Nicole to follow. “There is a... train, I think, passing here. And Tansis is Mechanic and armorer.”

“Ah...” Nicole went to follow the Vandal, as she led her towards another set of tracks she had passed earlier in the day. “Sure, take me there.”

“Yes, yes, this way.” Jasix found a spot nearby the tracks and pulled something off her back. It was a small tripod with a flashing light. She placed it down and aimed the light up north. She then climbed up the side of a building and perched on the roof with her rifle out.

Stepping back, Nicole was not expecting Jasix’s sudden movement. “Uh, is everything okay?” She called.

Jasix scanned the area around them. “Yes, yes, though others may have been alerted by the boom.”

“Do we really need to worry about the Devils this far west?” Nicole asked.

“Likely, no. But never know; they came all the way from the other landmass to bother us, it seems like a very small jump to come a bit farther west,” Jasix replied.

“True, I hope they’re not going to respond though, I don’t have anything to really help against that.” Nicole glanced down at the rifle in her hands. It had served her well in her first and only real engagement, but it seemed to lack power.

Jasix looked down as well. “Maybe we’ll get you something better there too.”

Nicole nodded and smiled under her helmet. That would make her feel better about being out in the middle of nowhere; maybe she could go out even further on her own in the future. Over the sound of the raging fires, she could hear a deep rumbling sound coming from the metal tracks near the platform.

She glanced down the rail and into the darkness. Other than the occasional streetlight or other intact lighting system, there was nothing she could see approaching their position.

Nicole glanced up at Jasix and the Fallen held up a set of binoculars to her four glowing eyes. “Here they come.” She looked down at Nicole with a nod.

“I don't see anything though.”

But that was when she spotted a dull red cluster of lights, further down the track. The rumble grew louder and louder; sounding deeper, but very similar to the tank from weeks ago. It was still barely discernible from the darkness when the sound suddenly changed in tone, winding down rapidly. The machine slowly glided across the rails into view.

She had seen plenty of rusted out trains while walking outside the ruins of Bellevue, but this one was not a normal train. The base of it had been one at some point in time, but the Fallen had attached the front end of one of their Spider tanks over the original engine compartment. Armored plates covered the train's cab, and a multitude of sensors had been affixed to the rooftop. It was pulling flatbed cars, too many for her to count in the dark. There was one box car directly behind the engine.

The train came to a stop just passed the light Jasix had placed, the door to the boxcar slid open and a group of Vandals spilled out in a loose formation. They swept the area, making sure it was a safe place to stop. Jasix jumped down from her rooftop and approached one of the Vandals; they spoke quickly and quietly, Jasix gestured to Nicole and the Vandal nodded.

“Come aboard, human.” The Vandal said, waving to Nicole. “We must be on our way.”

It surprised Nicole that the Vandal spoke better english that Jasix, but she hopped aboard anyway. The boxcar had seats attached all around the walls, but only a few of them were occupied. Nicole took an open seat next to Jasix as the train lurched back into motion. It rapidly began to pick up speed and head further south.

Nicole’s Ghost appeared at her side and blinked at the surroundings. “I have to say, these Fallen have done wonders getting old human technology working again.”

“Right? I think this will save me a lot of time getting around the area in the future.”

“You should ask about how far it goes,” he said.

Jasix leaned over and poked the Ghost, turning him towards her with a single finger. “I can answer that, Little Machine. Rail runs all through Mist land, we have some that is starting to head further south, but it still being restored.”

“Hmm, interesting... Can you answer a few more questions?” He asked, sort of hovering towards Jasix. “How did you combine the spider walker and the engine?”

Nicole watched her Ghost and Jasix float away towards the forward door and out of the car, leaving her with seven other Fallen sitting on the wall. On one hand, Nicole was glad her Ghost was talking to the Fallen on his own, but on the other, he just floated away without saying anything. She frowned but remained seated.

The train rumbled south for nearly half an hour. They did not make any more stops after she had come aboard. Jasix and her Ghost had been gone the entire time; Nicole was starting to think that maybe they had left her on the train; in a joking manner of course.

Nicole suddenly felt the tug of deceleration as Jasix and her Ghost returned from the engine and she took her seat. “Enjoy your time alone?” She asked the little machine as it came to her side.

“Only now that I have you to come back to, Guardian, yes.” He replied. That made her smile a bit, and she opened her palm for her Ghost to land. He settled down and vanished into a flash of particles, going somewhere in her armor. “Looks like we are arriving, let’s see what Tansis has to offer.” As the train came to a stop, one of the Vandals opened the sliding door and Nicole hopped out of the train car. Jasix lead the way off the platform and towards a group of buildings that were outlined by a cluster of flickering lights. A Fallen Captain stepped out from a doorway, ducking on their way out. He walked over to Nicole and Jasix, greeting them in the Fallen language. Nicole’s rough understanding of the language let her pick up some of the conversation. “What can we help you with, Vandal Jasix?” the Captain asked. Jasix bowed her head, “We are here to see Baroness Tansis to provide armor for the Guardian.” “Hmm, that would be a problem right now. Tansis is asleep, she and her crew have been hard at work bringing our reserve vehicles online,” the Captain motioned for them to follow him. “I will let her know you visited in the morning. We can provide accommodations, follow.”

Nicole glanced across the runway; the formerly uninterrupted concrete apron was broken up by centuries of cracks and plant growth. Large clumps of grass dotted the area, only dimly illuminated by the flickering light poles that dotted the area. She could see the outlines of aircraft resting at odd angles; surely they were long gone in terms of operational status.

The Fallen lead her into a short structure with small windows. The old lettering over the doorway denoted the building as one of the bases barracks buildings. There were the spotted tarps that the Fallen liked to use scattered all over the building, covering holes and broken windows. This seemed to be one of the only non-hangar buildings in the area that was still relatively intact.

She walked in and could hear the chattering of unseen Fallen elsewhere in the building. There were strange rounded chairs around the first room with similarly styled platforms that she interpreted as beds nearby.

Their escort spoke and Jasix translated for Nicole. “There is an open room for you just down this hall. He says that you can pick any bed, the room is not in use right now.”

“Oh, thank you,” Nicole replied, using her limited understanding of their language.

“You speak Eliksni?” He asked, cocking his head to the side.

“Just a little,” she shook her head and returned to English for Jasix to translate. “Not enough to hold a good conversation yet.”

“Ah, I understand,” he replied and said something else that she did not know the words for.

“He says that the kitchen has a working... war... um... Ah, water pump and food in the store room. It’s upstairs.” Jasix nodded in an affirming motion.

The Vandal gave a small sudden nod and left the two of them in the hallway.

“I will be going as well, Guardian. The day is just beginning for me.” Jasix adjusted the strap of her rifle and drew a hood over the top of her head. “Tansis knows your language better than I; just let her know what you need.”

“How will I tell who she is?”

“She stands out from others here. Just ask for her. Have a good rest, and may the Great Machine bless you.” And she just jumped out of an open window, disappearing into the night.

“Well that was an interesting exit,” her Ghost piped up from her helmet speakers.

“There was a door, just down the hall.”

“Fallen, what can you do, huh?”

Nicole walked to the end of the hall and into the open room and glanced around. There were plenty of the Fallen styled beds with folded fabric sitting on them. She removed her helmet and took in the air, and found it surprising that the smell of mildew that she had become accustomed to in her tower was absent. Picking a blanket off a bed, she brought it to her face and smelled it. It was fresh, clean; there was some sweet scent there that Nicole could not place.

Her Ghost appeared in the air around her and took a look around the room. He flew through a door in the back, and she could see the light of his eye flashing about in there. “It looks like their shower room should work. You should take one while you’re here.”

Nicole nodded; she had never taken a shower or heard the word used before, yet she understood what it was. It had been a few weeks since she had been brought back, so it was probably a good idea.

She unclasped her thin armored chest plate and stripped down out of the padded bodysuit. There was not a smell, which was something she was surprised by. Though it made sense, her Ghost had rezzed her less than twelve hours ago. That probably refreshed her. Nicole would still take the shower; this was probably her only chance with working water.

The floor was cold, but clean; it looked like it had been cleaned recently. She turned a pair of knobs and there was a groaning sound from the walls. After a few moments, water sputtered from an overhead nozzle. Nicole stepped beneath the flow and let the hot water rain down upon her. It was really a great feeling, like sitting on the tank in the snow. She was calm and relaxed again.

Her Ghost flew into the shower room. “Don’t forget to use soap.”

“What soap?”

“I think that might be some.” The Ghost flew towards a canister on a shelf.

Nicole grabbed the canister and twisted the lid off, and then took a scoop of the paste. It was gritty and slick, almost like it had tiny bits of stone. It was all she had, so she used the soap. Once she was finished, she turned off the water and glanced around the room. “So... what do I use to dry off?”

“Oh... I don’t know.” Her Ghost scanned the space. “That appears to be an issue.”

It seemed that there were no towels in the shower room or in her view back out in the bunk room. She resorted to just shaking the water off of her skin and stealing a blanket from one of the empty beds. The blanket was rough, but acted well enough as a substitute towel. “Next time, we make sure I have one before.” “Sure thing, I’ll mark that down for later.” the Ghost blinked. Nicole rolled her eyes and sat down into her chosen bed; it was much more comfortable than her old flat mattress in her tower, perhaps she could get one in the future. That was something to talk to Rykis about when she got back.

It felt weird to be out of her armor, nothing except for the blanket to protect her. She felt vulnerable, and of course, naked. She had slept in that armored bodysuit for the last three weeks, it was all she knew. But the comfort she felt and the warmth of an actual blanket; that far outweighed any concern she had.

Nicole slept so well, she did not hear the rustling in the room that morning.

#Destiny #destiny the game #Fallen #Eliksni #Human #hunter #Guardian #House of Mist #HoM #fanfiction #fan fiction

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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Jimmy Stewart and the WW2 Mission That Almost Broke Him

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The sound of the impact is deafening. More than 18,000 feet above the German city of Fürth, the World War II B-24 bomber they call Dixie Flyer has just delivered its full payload onto a German manufacturer, devastating its ability to build military aircrafts and turning the airfield into a scrap heap. But even before making the full turn out of Bavaria, Dixie Flyer’s copilot and the leader of this bombing group, Maj. James Stewart (Jimmy Stewart to his fans), is nearly lifted out of his chair.

That’s because a German shell (or flak) has pierced directly through the center of his B-24 Liberator. The whiplash is so intense that only harnesses keep him in his seat. Still, Stewart rises in the air; pilot Capt. Neil Johnson’s hands are briefly shaken from the controls; and for a moment, the entire plane is consumed with smoke as it violently ascends. When Stewart finally gets his bearings, he’s able to look down and see the hole in the aircraft—the edge of it is inches from his boot. Almost two feet in width, the gap offers a clear view through the plane’s fuselage and straight on to the German landscape below.

There is little time to worry though. The German ground defenses and their .88 shells are rattling the sky with more flak, and out of the corner of his eye, Stewart can see one of his planes, and his crews, also get hit. They’re not so lucky as a wing comes off and the craft falls to the earth. Meanwhile, German Focke-Wulf 190 fighters are beginning to swarm.

Stewart’s 445th Bombing Group only have each other and the tightness of their formation for protection—the Eighth Air Force and RAF fighters that accompanied the mission are spread too thin across the rest of Operation Argument’s ambitious list of targets to help—and they’re a long way from home.

It was the fifth day of the Eighth Air Force’s Big Week in February 1944, and Stewart was on his 10th combat mission in the air as either a group, wing, or squadron leader. This is what he left Hollywood for, circumvented Louis B. Mayer to participate in, and felt a lifetime of obligation to fulfill. It would be his finest moment in the air. It also would be the one that almost broke him.

The Mission of a Lifetime

Long before he entertained the idea of movie stardom, James Maitland Stewart felt the call of military service. In many ways, it was viewed as his birthright. His father’s father, the original James Maitland Stewart, served in the Union Army during the Civil War, participating in the valley campaigns of Shenandoah and serving under Gen. Philip Sheridan and a young officer named George Armstrong Custer. His maternal grandfather was at Gettysburg and Fredericksburg (he would die before “Jimmy” was born). And as a boy in the 1910s, the younger James Stewart would sit on his namesake’s knee, hearing eyewitness accounts about the war that preserved the United States.

Around the same time, young Jim was also receiving German helmets and paraphernalia shipped home by his father Alexander Stewart, who was off in Europe serving in World War I. Jim would use these real mementos of war in the makeshift plays he’d put on at his home in Indiana, Pennsylvania.

Biographer Robert Matzen, who authored the definitive account of Stewart’s World War II years, Mission: Jimmy Stewart and the Fight for Europe, tells us this background had a formative influence on the rest of Stewart’s life and his sense of duty, which he carried with him on the train to Hollywood and then, eventually, on the plane ride out of it.

“All of these things added up into this sort of nexus of ‘I will serve, I have to serve, it’s my duty, it’s my time,’” Matzen says during a Zoom conversation. “And when the time came, he answered the bell. He was so fast out of the gate in the sweepstakes for World War II that he was in the first draft class. He willingly went. It’s not that he enlisted, he was drafted, but he was happy to be drafted. He called it winning the lottery.”

Indeed, Stewart’s then-recent status as a movie star of the 1930s was practically an accident, at least as far as MGM, the studio which held his contract, was concerned. The studio’s top brass viewed Stewart as a possible character actor or background comic talent. But then Frank Capra saw the everyman appeal in Jim’s thin frame and irrepressible earnestness, and cast him in You Can’t Take It with You (1938) and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)—on loan at Columbia Pictures.

Stewart of course positioned himself to have that career, just as he positioned himself to be ready to serve if his country ever needed him. Hence alongside his sense of service and sacrifice, he also carried a passion for flying. And as soon as his movie star bona fides were cemented, he celebrated by flying his personal aircraft, a military trainer, learning his way around the skies.

“There’s so many things to think about up there that you forget things down below,” Stewart told an interviewer in the late 1930s. “Flying is something altogether different from the way I’m earning my living. That’s what I like about it… Flying is sort of a guarantee that life will continue to have variety.”

According to biographer Matzen, it also was a guarantee he’d be ready to serve when the time came.

“Step by step, he set himself up to end up in England in a bomb group,” Matzen says. “One of those steps was taken years before he was drafted, and that was when he became a star in Hollywood and bought a plane that was an army trainer and proceeded to learn to fly and train, and log hours on that plane so that he could be a pilot when the war came. And war seemed inevitable by 1938.”

Stewart even used his off-time to prepare for it. Says Matzen, “He took out a trip to Europe toward the end of ’39 to get the lay of the land because he thought he was going to end up fighting there.”

James Stewart and Margaret Sullavan in the 1930s about to fly in his Stinson Voyager plane. Courtesy of Robert Matzen and the Jay Rubin Collection.

The ‘I’m a Movie Star’ Card

That preparation served Jim well. While he was initially rejected from service in 1940—more than a year before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor—his capability as a flyer, and ability to find a doctor to explain that this 32-year-old man’s unusually thin frame was due to genetics and not ill-health, kept him in line to not only be drafted early but excel in the U.S. Army Air Corps.

“He was deferred in October of 1940 and his father was furious,” says Matzen. “He thought that Jim was in on the deferment for some reason. And Alex called him and chewed him out, and it made the papers that his father chewed him out. But it wasn’t anything. That’s what I think sent Jim back to talk to that doctor and get this letter written that was his carte blanche to get into the military.” That same letter was also the first record Matzen found at the top of Stewart’s military file more than 70 years later. It was the piece of paper which got him into the service and, along with his capability as a flyer, helped him rise all the way to the rank of brigadier general while serving in the Air Force Reserve in the 1950s.

That talent is also how Stewart circumvented the wishes of commanding officers and Louis B. Mayer, who likely applied pressure on the government to keep Stewart stateside during the war, essentially to make propaganda films for the First Motion Picture Unit.

“Jim was furious when that happened, because that was not his intention,” Matzen says. “He was a movie star of the first order who walked away from Hollywood. He took his fame with him and it did allow him to speak to officers that otherwise would not talk to a private and then a corporal, and then a second lieutenant. He got his way by playing the ‘I’m a movie star’ card. But it wasn’t, ‘I’m a movie star, don’t send me in harm’s way.’ It was just the opposite.”

In November 1943, Stewart would get his wish when he was sent to England as part of the 445th Bombardment Group in the Eighth Air Force.

Maj. Stewart circa 1944 waiting for his group to return at the Station 124 control tower in East Anglia. Courtesy of Robert Matzen and the Film Stills Collection, L Tom Perry Special Collections, Brigham Young University.

Squadron Leader

Stewart almost never spoke about his experiences during the war. Just as he would refuse to ever star in a World War II picture, he abjectly refused to give an interview to the press after arriving in Tibenham, a remote and perpetually damp village in East Anglia. His reticence is even the reason Matzen was first wary of writing a book about Stewart’s war experiences. Yet, for whatever personal recalcitrance the actor had toward talking, the story left by his military file, records of his bombing runs, and even the testimonials, diary entries, and occasional published memoirs of the men under his command paint a strong picture.

As the oldest man on the plane and in the air—with his pilots frequently being between ages 19 and 23—Stewart offered a precise and measured authority that made him a natural leader who was too good to keep stateside.

Air Corps officer Beirne Lay Jr. recalled, “Things seemed to go all right when Stewart was up front. He made free use of the radio, like an aerial quarterback, to advise and encourage the other boys during a mission, and here his experience in films gave him a novel advantage. Because of his precise enunciation, people could understand him. It sounds like a little thing, but clear, quick communication between formations was of extraordinary importance.”

The talent made Stewart a natural choice to become a commanding officer in the 445th. Always from the copilot seat of a B-24 Liberator bomber, Stewart would command anywhere between 25 to 150 aircrafts, depending on if he was lead, wing, or squadron commander. But even on the days he didn’t fly with the men he trained, he would brief his boys about the day’s missions. Then came the long wait in the cold mud of Tibenham, below the radio tower of Station 124. Those hours of seeing if all his crews would return felt interminably longer than actually flying the missions.

“He had very few of what they call milk runs,” Matzen says, “which were the easy ones where you hopped over the North Sea to the Netherlands or you hopped over the Channel to the coast of France, and you bombed something easy: a submarine pen here or a gun emplacement there. His very first mission was to Kiel in the very Northern tip of Germany, near Denmark, to bomb submarine pens. It was this long mission east over the North Sea.” It was a clean one on a bright December day, despite encountering countless rounds of flak.

A few weeks later, they would not be so easygoing. On Jan. 7, 1944, Capt. Stewart was wing lead of the 445th when the 389th, the lead bombing group that day, took a wrong turn over the Rhine. The formations had successfully carried out a bombing raid of the German city of Ludwigshafen, but the 389th turned at a mistaken angle that put their return flight on a path over Nazi occupied Paris instead of Tibenham.

Despite the 389th ignoring Stewart’s radio communication, the 35-year-old officer made the even-headed choice to follow the 389th and keep formation tight (as opposed to creating chaos and isolation in the sky), which came in handy after the 389th inevitably became a target of the German Luftwaffe air force outside of Paris.

American Thunderbolts and British Spitfires ended up saving the 389th that day, which still lost several planes and even more lives, but the tight flying of the 445th led the Luftwaffe to not even tangle with Stewart’s group.

It was the mission that earned Jim the rank of major. His confidence grew, yet day by day, and mission by mission, the stress likewise increased as he saw fewer faces he trained return home. For instance, on one mission, Stewart’s aircraft suffered engine troubles while crossing the English Channel and had to return home. The plane that took their place in the formation as group leader, the Liberty Belle, was shot down in their place. Only three parachutes were spotted getting out in time.

Similarly, Jim was at the barracks in December 1943 when they celebrated the 22nd birthday of his pilot Dave Skjeje. In February, he was writing to Billie, Dave’s widow of the same age, about how her newlywed husband died.

“He was told don’t get personally involved,” Matzen says. “There is a hierarchy here and he stuck to that pretty well, but he also was the one to write the letters to families, to wives, to mothers and fathers when somebody was lost, and it really weighed on him.”

It would soon reach a tipping point.

Jim Stewart and the crew of the B-24 Liberator called Lady Shamrock. Courtesy of Robert Matzen and the Eckelberry family.

“The Roughest 10 or 15 Minutes”

Operation Argument (aka “Big Week”) was the campaign the Eighth Air Force spent the winter of 1943/44 waiting on. In the span of six days, the U.S. military would drastically ramp up its daytime precision bombing campaign and cripple the Luftwaffe ahead of what would become the D-Day invasion.

Says Matzen, “The Eighth Air Force was determined to knock out the German aircraft manufacturing capabilities, so they looked for one week where they could have clear weather to have a series of campaigns, bombing missions to hit strategic targets related to aircraft manufacturing. Those missions were extremely dangerous.”

Jim flew the first day of Big Week over the Netherlands. It was considered a major success even though three planes in the 445th went down. One of his pilots called it “the roughest 10 or 15 minutes I ever spent.” But it was about to get much worse for the 445th.

On Feb. 24, Stewart was standing below Station 124’s tower when the remnants of the day’s planes limped home, some of them still smoking and on fire. Twenty-eight planes had taken off that morning, headed for the German city of Gotha, but three needed to return due to technical troubles while over the English Channel. Of the remaining 25 bombers in the air, only 12 returned to East Anglia. More than half had been shot down.

The next day, Jim would lead the 445th again in the skies for his second Big Week mission… over Fürth, an area just northwest of Nuremberg. The mission was part of an ambitious push that would send 754 B-17s and B-24s, with an escort of 20 groups of Eighth Air Force fighters and 12 squadrons of RAF Spitfires and Mustangs, into southern Germany to attack three Messerschmitt aircraft production centers and a ball-bearing plant.

With the bomb bay doors open at 18,500 feet, the air was already 40 degrees below zero in a Bavarian February. After a .88 shell nearly blew a hole between Stewart and pilot Neil Johnson’s feet, the temperature was dropping around their oxygen masks so quickly that ice began forming inside of the plane and on their gear.

Immediately after Dixie Flyer was hit, the first of several planes in the 445th went down in the hail of flak. Stewart could see as the wings of one B-24 under his command came off and the aircraft disintegrated midair. Only one parachute made it out as the rest of the crew plummeted. Perhaps it was in this moment that Stewart noted his crew’s parachutes were already sucked out of the vacuum in Dixie Flyer when the shell hit.

“How he didn’t die that instant is amazing,” Matzen says. “He looked over to his left and another plane [Nine Yanks and a Jerk] had a shell go directly through the cockpit on one side and out the other, and he thought that the pilot and co-pilot certainly must’ve been killed, and that plane was going to go down. But they lived, they made it back too. It was crazy.”

Relief from Allied fighter planes never came, but most of the 445th somehow made it back to the English Channel that day, with Dixie Flyer and Nine Yanks and a Jerk limping home. Indeed, with its fuselage in tatters, Dixie even lost two of its engines before it saw the English coastline. While running on fumes, Johnson and Stewart had to use every muscle in their fiber to brake the collapsing plane when it finally landed at Tibenham. The pair were unaware at that moment that their plane was literally breaking apart as it touched down, with a crack ripping from the bulkhead to the cockpit.

The plane’s bombardier Jim Myers recalled, “[Stewart] was blue from the cold whistling through the holes in the plane, but he hadn’t received a scratch.” At least not physically.

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As Matzen says now, “It was very interesting. The plane cracked and Jim cracked.” No one officially ever said Maj. Stewart became “flak happy” (the Air Force nickname for PTSD at the time) after the mission over Fürth, but Matzen contends no one needed to. In the first instance since December, more than two weeks passed before his CO allowed Stewart to go back in the air.

“This was the first time that he had to miss turns in the rotation, the leadership rotation leading missions,” Matzen says. “And that’s a huge deal to him. That’s him letting himself down in his crazy dedicated mind, in his perfectionist mind. All of a sudden, he’s not up to commanding in the air because he had been flying steady, steady, steady, then all of a sudden you look after February 25th, and he didn’t fly again till March 15th, and that’s a long time for him, and then he flew again on March 25th, then he didn’t fly again at all for a while.”

The pressure of leading, and perhaps more acutely the pressure caused by seeing so many of the men he trained go down, at last got to him.

Says Matzen “He had to just do what a lot of them did, which is go off into the country, take sodium amytal, and just chill and get reprogrammed. They’d sit and they’d talk to you, and they would give you perspective and they’d calm you down. Then they sent you back online.”

Left: 2nd Lt. James Stewart before combat missions in 1942. Right: Maj. Stewart in early 1944 after first two months of combat. Courtesy of Robert Matzen, the Margaret Herrick Library, AMPAS, and the Film Stills Collection, L. Tom Perry Special Collections, Brigham University.

After the War

Jim would fly two more missions as group leader of the 445th, including a bombing run over Berlin. However, the gaps between the final two of his dozen missions in the 445th belied that he was essentially becoming grounded. Shortly after his run over Berlin, he reluctantly accepted a transfer to the 453rd in Old Buckenham. He effectively became a chief of staff there, briefing the crews of his new group, including on the bombing runs in June 1944 that paved the way for D-Day. To his regret, Stewart did not fly on any of those tactical missions.

He eventually would make it back into the air, leading a total of 20 combat missions, although by his final mission in 1945, the Luftwaffe was all but destroyed and a near collision course between bombing groups under his command convinced Stewart and his commanding officers that his time in the air was done—Stewart even vowed never to fly again (he did not keep that oath).

When he finally returned to the States in the fall of ’45, the gawkish and youthful leading Mr. Smith had vanished. Graying and gaunt—features which came from spending the end of the war so stressed he could only keep peanut butter and ice cream down for weeks at a time—Stewart was nearly unrecognizable to his proud parents when he disembarked off the Queen Elizabeth in New York. He was also unsure if he’d ever work in Hollywood again.

“He was ever thinner with skin hanging from him” says Matzen, “He lost his hair and the rest of it went gray. That’s what dragged himself back from Europe and arrived in Hollywood. He thought he was only fit for character parts now.”

Like the first time he arrived in Hollywood, the only person waiting for him at the Pasadena train station in 1945 was his old acting buddy Henry Fonda. While Hank had maintained his movie star status during the early part of America’s WWII years, he ended up following Jim into military service by joining the Navy. But he also had taken a shorter break from the silver screen. When Stewart arrived back, the only place he had to move was Hank’s “play house,” a small home he built in his mansion’s backyard for his children Peter and Jane Fonda. But Hank assured Jim, it had a fully functional kitchen and bar. Priorities were covered.

“They just decompressed together,” Matzen says, “and I think Hank saw what the toll had been on Jim and just helped him. Neither of them was a big talker. So they came back together and they started building model airplanes, which is what they had done before the war. They flew model airplanes, they flew kites, Fonda had access to these war surplus military grade kites that they would take out and fly together and do their thing: not talk much, listen to records, make airplanes, and re-assimilate in the peacetime world.”

Hank also helped Jim get a new agent to adjust to the postwar Hollywood where actors could truly be free agents. Which came in handy since MGM terminated Jim’s contract after he refused Mayer’s idea of capitalizing off Jim’s wartime service with an adventure movie about him as an ace pilot called The James Stewart Story. According to Stewart, after he flatly refused to do the movie, LB called him a son of a bitch and said “you’ll never work in this town again.”

Best friends Jim Stewart and Hank Fonda in their ladies men era in 1930s Hollywood. Courtesy of Robert Matzen and the Jay Rubin Collection.

It’s a Wonderful Life

Of course Stewart did work again, making his comeback in the film he is still probably best remembered for: Frank Capra’s seminal holiday classic, It’s a Wonderful Life (1946). Like Stewart, Capra had enthusiastically joined the military and war effort back at the beginning, running the Army’s Motion Picture Film Unit. The phone didn’t ring for either man after they came home. And while It’s a Wonderful Life received an initially muted box office reception (it only became a classic after it started airing on television), it gave Stewart the confidence to rebuild himself as a leading man who carried long shadows.

“It’s a Wonderful Life has become synonymous with the holidays and with spiritual rebirth and perseverance, all those things that really embodied Jim were infused into this picture and captured for all time,” says Matzen. Nonetheless, even as Stewart was able to recapture the youthful energy that made him a star in the movie’s early scenes (wearing a hair piece as he plays twentysomething George Bailey), there was something harder there as the character aged throughout the picture.

Says Matzen, “When he comes back and he’s so much older, he has a dark streak from the war. He has rages, he can’t sleep, he’s got shakes, and he learned to channel it early on in a couple of places in It’s Wonderful Life when he flies off the handle [on the school teacher over the phone] and when he destroys the model he’s got in the living room, and he throws things and he terrorizes his family. I was never comfortable with that scene long before I wanted to write a book about Jim and the war. I was very uncomfortable with just whatever this menace was inside of him.”

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It would become a hallmark of some of Stewart’s most popular postwar roles. Director Alfred Hitchocck particularly enjoyed taking Capra’s all-American everyman and casting him against type, leaning into the menace. It’s there, faintly, when he becomes an obsessive voyeur in Rear Window (1954), or a snobby misanthrope in Rope (1948), and it’s all-consuming when Stewart channels Hitch’s own obsessions about molding blonde women into his fantasy idealizations in Vertigo (1958).

“Strategically, he was brilliant in recrafting his career,” says Matzen. “The same brain that had taken all those steps to get him to Europe, he ultimately applied that brain and took steps to get his career back in order and relaunch himself.”

Capt. Stewart newly arrived at East Anglia’s Tibenham in 1943. Courtesy of Robert Matzen.

Haunted by the “Happiest Times”

Until the end of his days, James Stewart refused to speak candidly about the war. Once in a while, however, he would hint at the importance of those memories. He even volunteered, “I was, in many ways, far happier in the service than I was at any time in my life. Closeness and camaraderie with all those wonderful guys. Feeling I was part of a whole, part of a divine scheme, with an obligation to do my best. It wasn’t playacting then. I was living it.”

Perhaps this is why he revisited Tibenham twice in his old age, making the long muddy journey from London to East Anglia, allowing his companions a few photos as he walked with his ghosts along the same ramparts of Station 124 where he used to wait for his men to return. What he thought during these reunions, however, remains a mystery. He kept his own counsel about those days. He even kept that part of himself closed off from the men he remembered so fondly.

“He did not keep in touch with [men he commanded],” Matzen says, “but he would be polite if they tried to get in touch with him. He did not seem to be a sentimental soul. He was too closed off for that…. They wanted him to come to their weddings or their kids’ weddings. ‘Oh wouldn’t it be great if Stewart would come?’ But nope.”

Like so much else, Stewart kept the happiest times of his life locked away with the scars they left.

Says Matzen, “His wife talked about the nightmares. His daughter talked to me about the nightmares and about how she would find her dad sitting alone in his study just staring. So yes, it was the time he felt was the most rewarding in his life because he did get to serve his country and he called them this family, this group of people dedicated to a cause all pursuing this common goal. And that really made him feel good, being part of this brotherhood. But he remained an introvert and a closed off person throughout his life… I think his wife understood him and Hank understood him, and boy, I don’t know beyond that. That’s a small group.”

Nevertheless, during the war this introvert was a part of a larger bombing group whole; it carried him through his darkest days in the air—and those that came long after.

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sillyandquiteawkward · 7 years

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Name: Assmcgee (Nickname) Role: Professional Ass Kicker Age: 227 Gender: Male, he/him pronouns Height/Weight: 5′6″, 208lbs Species: Glowing ghoul Faction: He himself and I Alignment: Chaotic Good SPECIAL: S10 P1 E10 C1 I1 A1 L10

Bio/Story: 2077, Assmcgee was in his senior year of highschool, although no one would say he was a good student. Assmcgee hung with a group of teens his age that notoriously hated authority and skipped school. Why stay in school if war could break out at any moment? They had extensive plans of what they would do if the Reds attacked and the world ended. Maybe not make it to one of the fancy vaults that got built, but they’d hide out in their own “vault,” a secret place for just the four of them. It would be their home base to conduct raids on the crumbled society, they predicted.

Assmcgee found the perfect place, hidden away, there was a metal shed in the shadow of a rocky hill, just out of town. Now instead of ditching school for ice cream and hamburgers, the gang of kids scoped out their hideout, and thought up plans of their future. This was the life, the kids agreed. Of the group, Assmcgee was hardly the leader. The real leader of the group was Daisy, who was Assmcgee’s girlfriend. She was a real spitfire and she and Assmcgee were crazy in love. Daisy spurred on their criminal activity and general menace behavior that included shoplifting and some mild arson.

Despite Assmcgee’s mind for criminal activity with his friends, his family life had always been full of love. As an only child Assmcgee was cherished, however the stresses of impending war and inflation took a toll on his parents and divided their attention towards their misbehaving child as he was growing up. Assmcgee fell into a bad crowd of teenagers, swept up in young love and adrenaline.

And then the world ended. The reports were coming in, and Assmcgee left his family home for their secret vault, leaving his parents behind, to never see them again. He met up with his friends, relieved all three of them had made it safely. In that moment, the group was nervous. Of course now that the world really was ending, things were different. But Daisy, steadfast as ever, calmed her friends and got their spirits up, settling once the bombs stopped, they could start their pillaging and start living like kings. But for now, they would feast on their snack cakes and other treats they stored in their makeshift vault.

The four of them stayed holed up for quite some time, unsure when they could safely leave their shed, their radio informing them of the devastation that occurred. After a few days, their food supply dwindled and Assmcgee and Daisy decided to head out to get more supplies. Returning to civilization, they saw how damaged their hometown was, buildings in tatters and bodies on the ground. Daisy lead them to a general store and climbed through to retrieve food and water that hadn’t already been taken. This started their periodic visits to the city for loot and supplies. The group managed to steal things like terminals, hoisting them back to their hideout, as well as all the cash and jewelry they could find. The group also acquired quite a collection of pornography.

But within the following month, the group started feeling ill. Assmcgee was the healthiest of the bunch so he continued to leave and return on journeys to the city, trying to find medicine or drugs to alleviate their suffering. But one morning Charlie was found dead. And then Daisy died. Assmcgee couldn’t believe how terrible things had gotten, everything was perfect, everyone was healthy, how did things mess up so badly? Assmcgee tried to support Owen, his last surviving friend, who was also ill, but predicted it would take him too. At this time Assmcgee’s skin was peeling and his ghoulification was starting at a slow pace, although he just assumed he was going to die as well, finally. Owen eventually passed and Assmcgee found himself alone. Burying his last friend next to the rest of his gang, Assmcgee retreated back into their secret vault. Over the months, Assmcgee slowly turned into a ghoul, his hair falling out, skin falling off. He had no idea what was happening, and assumed somehow he was just turning into a zombie. His eighteenth birthday came and went, and he decided to leave. There was nothing for him here, so he gathered a pack of things and left his hometown. It was about then when he noticed during the night that he could see his skin in the darkness, and that soon developed into a soft green glow even in the day. It was probably the most hilarious thing he’d seen in a year. He wasn’t dying (as far as he understood) and he was a zombie that glowed in the dark. Hilarious. Assmcgee spent the next 40 years wandering the Commonwealth’s area sticking with some groups of survivors. Early during this time, Assmcgee adopted the name “Assmcgee” in a sort of way to preserve the memory of his friends prewar, as it’d been an inside joke of theirs as well as made for a cool name. He rejected any use of his old name, willing to beat it into people if they would not honor his request, until he was solidly known as Assmcgee. It was around then that he realized that something was off. That he was nearly 50, and yet he’d hardly aged, if you didn’t count his nose falling off and most of his hair leaving as well. Other ghouls he met felt the same, that somehow they had stopped aging. Assmcgee during this time also learned he was putting out radiation, the same thing he learned that killed his friends and caused his glowing skin. This left him aloof in how he interacted with others, keeping away from his friends to spare them the rads. As years passed, Assmcgee left groups and joined them, sometimes spending the time alone by himself. He had a terrible habit of picking fights when things got comfortable, causing rifts and leaving when people got upset. But he always came back to people, hoping to find something good again and find people that could stand him and would satiate his need for attention. He spent more time with ghouls than humans, as they didn’t care about his radiation, however his personality often clashed with most reasonable people. Assmcgee even took to joining raider gangs, comfortable with their tight knit groups and rowdy personalities.

As the Commonwealth was setting itself up, many decades later, Assmcgee found himself finding steady work, as a heavy hand others could pay. Assmcgee bounced around the Commonwealth, no real home in sight as he beat up others for caps. He never liked killing, making sure others knew his services would be for roughing others up, and not for murder. He worked as a bodyguard and settlement guard for short amounts of time, sticking mostly to protecting ghouls and ghoul settlements, humans tending to not like ghouls and especially ones that are bright green. For the most part now, Assmcgee hangs around the Slog and Goodneighbor, taking jobs as they come, and picking fights when he can. Personality: Loud, rowdy, and ready to fuck, Assmcgee is one tough cookie. Boasting unbeatable strength and raw power, this foolhardy ghoul will throw down with anyone. Despite his power and desperate need to win, Assmcgee will hold back and pull punches if his opponent is way under his skill level, however hates any sort of pity from others. Under this tough cool guy exterior however, is a childish and desperate man willing to do anything for affection and attention, even at his own expense. Often Assmcgee will attach himself to people who say that they like him, doing anything to fit in, be it heavy chem use, drinking alcohol, or even changing the way he acts or talks. With a guilty conscience, Assmcgee finds himself protecting feral ghouls from settlements and others, using his radiation to lure them into safe places and away from civilization should they stray. Hobbies: Assmcgee loves fighting. He’ll start a fight with anyone or anything if he’s bored, be it a random person or a deathclaw (if he has an audience). Assmcgee also has a quiet hobby of art. He likes to draw,craft, and weave. Inspired by his favorite comic books, Assmcgee is fairly talented at drawing, but he rarely practices in front of others in fear of losing his cool guy look. He particularly enjoys making gifts for friends, in attempt to make them like him more. Assmcgee has made friendship bracelets on several occasions. Companion: Assmcgee travels alone for the most part, although he loves any company that is willing to withstand his presence.

[Playlist]

#fallout 4 #assmcgee #silly art tag

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marcoacesabo · 7 years

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If you ever feel like doing part 6 of reverse roles feel free to kill us all with anything. We will most likely be grateful for it, just so you know

Blackbeard- Teach dead in his mind the moment he betrayed the family- was odd. He would come in some days with food, small portions so the blond couldn’t get his strength back, and feed him.

Others he would come in a chat up the prisoner about his new members like Sabo wanted to hear them- which in fact he didn’t. But the overweight bastard didn't to mind his glare and continue speaking anyway.

The weirdest days, however, were when he could walk into his little makeshift prison and stare at him. Wouldn’t say a word. Wouldn’t move for hours. Just sit on one of the many crates outside the bars and run his eyes up and down Sabo’s body with a blank look in his eye.

It took Sabo a while to figure out why. It was honestly due to one sentence, his captor slipped.

“I can see why Commander Marco liked you so much,” Blackbeard comments one day as Sabo takes small bites from the fork he’s holding out. He’s starving and even though it may be tampered with he needs food.

The blond flickers up to him in surprise but the older man is already turning, leaving with a loud Zehahahahaha before he can ask him what he meant.

That night the blond sits in his cell weighing the pros and cons of what he suspects is going on and if he should encourage it.

Sabo has worked for the Revolutionary army during his puberty years. He grew into a fine looking young man during that time, not to be vain but to speak the truth.

His superiors took notice of that.

They had asked him if he was interested in covert missions where he would charm noble women and sometimes men into giving him much-needed information.

The blond had no problem with it, and after a few well learned lessons he was out in the world breaking hearts. That is until he high tails it out of the scene with an escape plan crafted by his team.

He may be alone but Sabo thinks if he plays his cards right maybe-just maybe, he can escape with this skill set.

That’s why little by little each time Blackbeard comes down for a visit the blond starts to “open up” a little more. His glares lessen, his face more curious at each story and Sabo makes sure to add little gestures- fluttering eyelashes, quirking of the corners of his lips, shifting a little towards him- knowing that the disgusting eyes watching him, turn more and more interesting each time.

It takes time, weeks maybe but soon he has the fat male wrapped his finger.

It’s not long before Laffitte is releasing him of his chains scowling the whole time. Sabo’s joy is short lived, however, when the skinny man snaps a thick collar around his neck, and two silver bands on his wrist.

The ticking that comes from them lets him know what they are.

“In case you get any ideas of jumping ship.” The man chirps, happily tightening the slave coallor on him. Sabo winces. He’s face darkens once more, pushing the blond forward out of the cell “The Admiral will be bore of you soon. You’re just a twenty something fling for him. Don’t think you’re special.”

Well good to know someone is jealous. Let him suffer along side Sabo.

Sabo is taken up stairs, tumbling every so often as his legs give out from the lack of use. Laffitte takes great please in smacking his cane on his knees to get him moving.

The Revolutionary grinds his teeth but heaves himself to his feet though sheer willpower. He will get out of here somehow, and one day he will make everyone on this stupid ship pay.

He has to close his eyes when they make it out on deck. He hadn’t realized how long he’s been out of the sun till now. Everything was so fucking bright.

“The Admiral said you will bath, then dress and meet him for dinner. Here.” The blackbeard pirate says cheerfully even if his eyes hold shadows. He throws Sabo a bundle of clothes, nodding his head to a door on the blond’s side. “He likes his pretty arm ornaments in black. Get used to the color boy.”

The young man stumbles to catch the clothing, feeling his skin crawl at the idea of being dressed up for someone else’s pleasure but pushes the urge down.

He knows he’s too skinny, too gross smelling for the other man to lay a hand on him. Until he gets pretty again he’s safe.

Now all that’s left is to wait out an opportunity to contact the Army and maybe get the hell out of here with their help. He refuses to be bait any longer. Ace will not find him here, even if he has to activate these bombs himself.

He will not be the reason his best friend dies.

Sabo inhales and turns into the bathroom, stripping his clothes with burning eyes, aware of the man watching him across the deck with a lust filled gaze.

#MarcoAceSabo #Reverse roles Au #Part 6 #Blackbeard is gross #Sabo is going to filrt his way to freedom or die trying #haikyuumon

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grapsandclaps · 5 years

Text

GRAPS AND CLAPS REVIEWS 'FUTURESHOCK TAPPED III' - TAPPED WITH A VENGEANCE

Hello and welcome everyone to this edition of Graps and Claps this time taking me on a short journey to the Piccadilly area of Manchester for Futureshock Wrestling’s Tapped III event at the Fairfield Social Club for what will be in the first in a line of special Wednesday night events which seems a regular thing now in the British Wrestling sphere with many a midweek show taking place up and down this land, with the now defunct Lucha Forever being the innovator of said ‘midweek graps’.

Getting into Manchester for 6pm, I swiftly made my way to The Piccadilly Tap to meet up with some of the Graps gang (Steve, Ben, Andrew and our Geoff) for a couple of pints before walking around the corner to the venue. Only two pints before the show which included in the Piccadilly Tap – a pint of Marble/Heart & Craft Macchiato Porter (5.1% £5.80) that smelt coffee like but only tasted a smidgen like it’s supposed flavour which was maybe cancelled out due to it being a cold keg drink.

It was then a walk across the road to the Store Street Craft Beer Bar which is adjoined to the Double Tree by Hilton, so it is basically a glorified hotel bar offering supposed ‘Craft’ beer from Brightside Brewery and JW Lees plus the usual Craft legends called Foster’s and Heineken – they will literally stick the word ‘Craft’ to bloody anything nowadays. Anyways the £4.60 pint of Brightside IPA passed as a solid 6.5/10, but I did feel sorry for Ben who bought a £6.50 pint of Goose Island IPA which is an example of hotel bar prices. Décor though in this place is welcoming but it is certainly one place where you would only visit to have 1 pint and nothing else if especially you are on your way to the Apollo as it is very sparse in good pubs on that route.

Drinks done, it was time to get to the venue – whilst on the way my mate Andrew was telling me about a recent Kaiser Chiefs gig he had been to that wasn’t all it was cracked up to be with lead singer Ricky Wilson having a reet bad night on the mic. Arriving into the Fairfield Social Club I would estimate the audience to be around the 150/200 marker with many people taking in the fantastic ale selection (around 16 on tap on this evening anything ranging from £3.50 - £6 a pint), plus the food selection from Vasos Kitchen offering fries with different Indian style toppings including a Keema Option for £7.50 and a Masala option for £4 that I frequented – very fragrant in smell and a taste that certainly packed a punch but was well worth the price to fill a corner in my tummy!

Taking our seats at the back near the commentator’s desk which wasn’t being used, as Rob Halden and Matthew Richards decided to do their commentary from the couches near the bar watching on monitors from G-Man video editing lair – probably the best option as our singing would have deafened their ears in the first match between Angst Strongman – Big Joe and one of our personal favourites Sugar Dunkerton who was making his debut in Futureshock in what was if I am right in thinking – his 1 year anniversary wrestling in the UK since his debut on a cold Leeds Afternoon.

Early on in this match there were many chants aimed at Joe’s stature and also the Sugar chant was in full force thanks to his adoring fan club (us lot) meaning that his debut instantly got off to a great start with this response. As we eventually got into the action, we had Joe showing off his strength as Squatted Sugar but in turn after 3 squats, Sugar had him locked in a sleeper which left Joe laying on the floor. This lead to Sugar trying to quieten the crowd so he could pin Joe whilst he was asleep, but a big shout from the Nordic Alarm Clock on the outside woke Joe up at the two count.

Once Joe was back awake, he laid a beatdown to Sugar but Sugar was only playing possum during this as he fired back with a Pimp Slap to Joe then a DDT for a 2 count. As the match reached its conclusion Joe used his strength to power up Sugar to hit a fireman’s lift then a Vader Bomb for a 2, but when he went to the other side of the ring to hit a splash, Sugar rolled to the other side of the ring and offered Joe to jump anyways which he duly did after much persuasion from Thomas Wolfe on the outside and Sugar inside the ring, sadly for Joe there wasn’t enough distance on the dive and no water in the pool as he went SPLAT! Sugar took advantage of this by rolling up Joe for the 3 count to get the popular victory to start proceedings. In terms of Comedy style wrestling these two were a match made in heaven with the charismatic Sugar and the ever improving Big Joe who has his character down pat – just all around entertainment that you can’t ask much more of!

Second match now with the Futureshock Women’s title on the line with a clash of goodies as the Champion, Lana Austin took on her protégé of sorts – Hollie who was looking to possibly get the shock victory and maybe a championship by the end of this match even in her early infancy as a wrestler. The early feeling out process ended up with Hollie getting the best of it, but once Lana got into her stride she did so with hard forearms to the face. Hollie though came firing back with a couple of knee shots to get near falls. As the match was going on though, out came two newcomers to Futureshock (but already two regulars in WrestlePro), that being Alexis Falcon and Taonga who came to keep a watching eye, but they would soon get involved by attacking Lana from behind as the referee wasn’t watching.

When they chucked Lana back in, they willed Hollie to pick up the scraps but her conflicting head got the better of her as she refused to pin Lana so instead Taonga and Alexis took offence to this and came in the ring to attack both Lana and Hollie to cause the No Contest – BOOOO!!! So it looks like we have a possible tag match for a future show with Hollie & Lana taking on Taonga and Alexis Falcon which is a good thing to see as it is a change from the monthly Queen Bees vs Lana & Partner match we have got often in Futureshock recently. Match wise with Lana and Hollie it was a decent follow up from the first match and hopefully we possibly get to see it again in the future.

A special bonus match now as the sirens rang out in the Social Club with the appearance of the Futureshock Champion Crater, much to the disgust of some in the crowd (my friend Mike especially). His opponents for the evening were not 1, not 2, but 3 opponents with the appearance of Karl Stoxx, Tom Thelwell and PCW favourite Philip Michael who got a good reception from the crowd even though this was his debut in the promotion – probably due to his familiarity on the North West scene. Sadly, though for the three lads, it didn’t turn out great as Crater smashed his way through them in quick style, despite them getting in little offence like double dropkicks to try and knock the big fella down. Crater soon finished it by hitting a double choke slam to 2 of them and putting a foot on the other to bring an end to proceedings. After the match though we had an appearance from Crater’s nemesis Henry T. Grodd who came out to spear Crater to the chants of ‘Grodd! Grodd! Grood! to once again stake another claim to a title shot against Crater in the future. To be honest though I do feel at this stage that the crowd are certainly behind a Grodd victory against Crater more than a John McGregor one!

Half time Main Event now, with The Young Guns (Ethan Allen and Luke Jacobs) taking on the makeshift team of Sam Bailey and James Drake – this was due to Zack Gibson being unable to compete due to Injury. Gibson though did get on the mic before the match to explain why people were asking – Why are Gibson and Drake friends again in Futureshock after a 9-month feud? To their credit they explained it as more of a friendly tiff between great friends/colleagues – which I am glad they have explained it (They must have read my comments about the lack of explanation at the Stockport show). Just to report – no chants of ‘NXT’ on this occasion! They did promise the Guns though in the future that they would eventually get a match against the Grizzled Young Veterans with possibly some gold on the line – but we shall just see!

Anyways with Gibson’s chatting out of the way, we got down to business with the Young Guns on top early with Jacobs first working on Bailey, then dissecting Drake. Ethan Allen then tagged in but was soon beaten down by both Bailey who hit a big superplex to young Ethan and then Drake followed up on Ethan with a Back Breaker to the boos of the crowd. The continuous beat down carried on to Ethan, that was until he got the hot tag to Luke who came in like a house on fire flooring both Bailey and Drake. It was interesting to see during this that Ethan was selling excellently on the ring apron from the beating – just the little things like that shows that this lad could be headed to the top. With Ethan back to full health, himself and Luke hit a Big Back Cracker double team to get a 2 fall, also in the home stretch we had Drake & Bailey hit their version of the Vets finisher which I will name for the purpose of this occasion – ‘The Ticket to Bailey’s House’ for a 2 count.

With the Guns on top though, Luke was ready to finish off James Drake, but from behind Zack Gibson waffled poor Luke to leave him in prime position for Drake to hit the 450 to get the win in a fantastic tag match, but sadly for the Guns another one in the loss column – which I do hope for their sakes they can pick up some wins soon!

Back from the break, we returned with Adrenaline Title action with No Limit after CJ Banks and Joey Hayes (Champion) went to a 15-minute Time Limit draw in Stockport, which has led to this match where the winner of the match will then go on to face Chris Ridgeway in Prestwich on the 23rd February. The early bulk of this match was CJ showing his dominance beating down Joey, including winning the best of the exchanges on the outside as they fought near the bar. Back in the ring though, both Joey and CJ went hold for hold for a good 20 minutes, that eventually ended in both guys’ double pinning each other much to the annoyance of the crowd who wanted an outright winner – so for the Prestwich show we now have a Triple Threat match with CJ vs Joey Hayes vs Chris Ridgeway for the Adrenaline Title.

Couple of things to point out from this match, included a post-match beat up of Joey from CJ, plus my overriding opinion of this match the day after and also on the evening, was that this was a good wrestling match but it did suffer from crowd heat and not one to be a toss as I am not a wrestler, but this always seems to be CJ Banks downfall as a baddie – when he is on the offence especially as he was against Joey, he doesn’t attempt to jaw jack with the crowd to get them to boo him, he just goes straight into the next manoeuvre with no response. CJ is a good wrestler but he is as bland as anything.

Second to last match as the time was coming up to 9:30pm and with our Geoff wondering if he should go home as he had work at 6am in the morning, but he decided against this. In this match we had two up and comers on the North West scene with JJ Webb taking on Callum Corrie, with the latter trying to making 2019 his own, like he did in the latter part of 2018 in GPW. Corrie had the bulk of the crowd noise for him with chants of ‘Sandy Beach’ and ‘Callum Corrie’ blaring in his ears and it was this support that got him over the finish line in this match as he hit poor JJ with a DDT to pick up the 3 count in a good under 10-minute scrap that kept the audience’s attention throughout the match.

After the match though, this loss got too much for JJ who attacked Callum and then locked in a Crab to make Corrie moan like buggery, so this feud is going to continue so happy days as these are two good young up and comers.

Main event time now with John McGregor trying to prove he has what it takes to dethrone Crater in March, by testing himself against former Futureshock Heavyweight Champion Ashton Smith who was looking himself to get back on track after a quiet couple of months in the promotion due to WWE commitments - plus as ever it was good to belt out a rendition of ‘All of the Lights’ once again as Ashton made his way down to the ringside area.

A bulk of this match was very much Ashton being the aggressor as he beat down the much smaller McGregor, but John over these last couple of months is showed those fighting qualities from underneath that helped him win the Legacy Tournament, especially his match vs Zack Gibson where he was excellent. With John fighting through, he looked like he was ready for the loss as Ashton hit a GTS then a ‘Roll of the Dice’ for an agonising 2 fall that had the crowd on the edge of their seats but John managed to somehow recover from this as he hit a Jumping DDT to Ashton to get the 3 count in around 15 minutes in a very good main event.

After the match though, Ashton got on to the mic to say to congratulate John on the win, but then the pleasantries stopped at that when he said bluntly to John that ‘You are not ready for Crater off that performance’! – Which instantly I think puts in the crowd’s head that the Gentleman is not good enough to beat Crater in March, but this writer though thinks differently and can see him pushing Crater all the way, but with the threat of Grodd I can see John ultimately failing – we shall see!!

Show done, it was time to leave but not before having a quick chat with Ashton, ring announcer Neil and also Sugar Dunkerton who as ever was a gentleman to chat to. Overall as a show it was a good 2 ½ hours of entertainment with the Young Guns vs Sam Bailey/James Drake, Dunkerton/Big Joe and the Main Event being matches you should check out on Futureshock’s On Demand service.

Next time we will be at Futureshock will be the 23rdFebruary in Prestwich for the visit of PAC who will be taking on Soner Durson. Next time you will be hearing from me will be for Breed Wrestling’s debut show in Sheffield on Sunday 10th February – so as ever go and give this a share, likes and retweets and spread the word. So until then – BYE !!!!

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fanforfanatic · 7 years

Link

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Supernatural Rating: Mature Warnings: None. fluff? Implied smut? Relationships: Castiel/Original Female Character, Castiel/Reader. Word count: 1600

Summary:

Cas comes to live in the bunker full time and Ace has a hard time adjusting.

This is a little one shot-thank you gift for @pixikinz for inviting me to the Louden Swain concert (and also because she’s da bomb)

Ace loved living in the bunker, she really did. Look at the place. There are things, though, she didn’t think she’d ever get used to.

Like the fact that there were no windows. It took her a while to even understand that was what was bothering her. She’d gotten grumpy and snappy and overall unpleasant after three weeks of hitting the books without a glimpse at sunlight. It had been Dean who’d shoved her our the door and told her to take a walk and not to come back until she had a sun tan. Make it a sunburn, Ace. He’d grumbled.

The way the floors were always so cold was also hard to adapt to. She’d basically become a gymnast sitting in the oddest positions on chairs so that her feet didn’t have to touch the ground. Until Sam came back from the grocery store one day with a collection of fuzzy socks and a plea for her to stop squirming distractingly whenever they were researching.

The boys were really great, she even secretly liked with they said that they ‘have an Ace up their sleeve’, but there were things she didn’t think she’d ever get used to, living with them in the bunker.

Like how Dean was always adamant on keeping the place pristine. She could swear up and down that she would bring her plate back to the kitchen when she had to get up for something, but Dean would have none of it. He’d insist on her cleaning up right the second she’d finish eating. Sometimes she thought that he’d watch her swallow her last bite just so he could hound her. Ace normally rolled her eyes and complied. She didn’t really bother delving too far into his psyche about it. She figured Dean had a right to keep his home how he wanted it.

She’d also never really be okay with how Sam thought that six a.m. was the best time to use the blender. The bunker was big but somehow the whirring sound always made its way through the halls and to Ace’s room, rousing her from whatever sleep she was managing to get. She didn’t complain about it, though. She wouldn’t want to take away the comfort and normalcy she knew Sam found in his routine. He was always so excited when they’d return from a hunt and he’d get to practice his morning ritual of going on a run and having a shake, again.

Then there was Cas.

Ace didn’t think she’d ever get used to Cas...being there.

The angel had come and gone as he pleased and as he needed to for the longest time, but three months ago he came and then he stayed. He settled down in the bunker and made it his home too. He picked out a room, bought pajamas, asked Sam for his Netflix account password. He essentially nested.

Which was good, it was great. Cas had been working hard on mending bridges in heaven but progress was slow and it had taken its toll on him. So him accepting the bunker as home was significant.

It’s not that Ace didn’t like having him around. She loved Cas. He was family and he’d taken her in just like the brothers had. But... He was always there. Wherever she went, whichever room she entered, Castiel was there.

Looking gorgeous.

Whether he’d just rolled out of bed and looked frumpy, or had put himself together, trying out the hair gel Dean had bought him. He was never not overwhelmingly attractive. His hair so black, Ace thought Snow White had nothing on him. His eyes so blue it was comparable to calling the sun bright. His lips plump and pink wrapping around words Ace could barely register. Every day was a bit of a surprise on whether they’d be soft looking or chapped and she was into both.

Point is, Castiel was behind every corner she turned. She couldn’t walk into the kitchen without finding him making a mess. She couldn’t hit the training room without seeing him there sparring with Sam. She couldn’t get to her car, to escape, without him coincidentally being in the garage with Dean learning car stuff. She thought her room would provide solace but she’d gone there once only to find him looking through the stacks of books she’d borrowed from the library. Ace thought she heard him he try to explain himself but she was already down the hall, hightailing it out of fucking dodge.

Cas had even developed a sense of style, so he was hard to miss. He still opted for his suit and trench coat when they went out but in the bunker... In the bunker he made questionable choices as far as attire goes, let’s just say he didn’t fear colour and pattern, straying from the customary hunter uniform. Still, somehow he managed to make it work. Maybe that had nothing to do with the clothing combinations and everything to do with his body being his greatest accessory.

Ace got suspicious that he knew it, too, when one day she stepped out of one of the stalls to find him standing there- of course, he’s always there - wet from head to toe from his own shower. He was holding the two ends of a towel pulling it taught against his ass, but open in the front, leaving the long expanse of his chest, and what was just beneath it, bare.

“Ace,” He sighed with relief. “You take an awful lot of time in there.” He continued distractedly, almost like he’d been waiting on her, clearly unable to grasp the meaning of the word modesty, or the fact that Ace was about to self-combust. “Can you help me with this?” He got back on track and finally, finally, brought the two ends of the towel together. “I can never get it to stay the way Sam and Dean do.”

Then, he opened the towel right back up, making her mouth dry, and raised a brow at her like it was the question mark to his request. If Ace didn’t know any better she’d think he was doing it on purpose. That he’d caught on to her feelings for him and was having fun fucking with her. But she did know better and Cas standing there as naked as she’d ever seen him, asking her to help him tie a towel around his waist wasn’t a ploy. It wasn’t a prank. It wasn’t a seduction. It wasn’t anything but sincere. Just her luck.

Ace sighed, she sighed, she didn’t release a shuddering breath. “Sure thing, Cas.” She agreed, securing her own towel a little more tightly before making her way over to him.

She took the two towel ends from him blindly, looking at his face and nowhere else, trying not to think of his naked dick between them. Trying not to think of how terribly cliche it would be if their wet fingers brushed against each other. Trying not to think of how nice, electric, jolting, it felt when they did.

“That’s intricate.” He told her, nodding at her towel wrapped hair.

Ace couldn’t help her fond smile. “That’s some next level shit, Cas. Let’s start with getting you covered up, yeah?” She answered him, bringing the cloth together so that she could brave looking down. He wasn’t as exposed anymore but the wasn’t any less intoxicating.

“What level am I?” He asked her curiously making her smile even wider and shake her head.

“Watch.” She told him, not bothering with his question, focusing instead on shaking the heady feeling he was submerging her in.

She did her best not to be acutely aware of his proximity. Of the water drops making their way down his chest. Of the single one dripping down her spine. Ace did her best not to imagine it was Cas’ touch.

She transferred the towel ends in her hands so that she was holding opposite ones. She wrapped one side tautly against his pelvis and didn’t even notice the gap caused by his hip bones jutting out. She pulled the other side of the fabric tightly over the first end, wrapping the rest of the towel around his waist.

“It’s all about the tension.” She breathed. She wasn’t sure what she was referring to anymore but in either case, it was an accurate statement. “Then you’re going to want to tuck the corner in-” She folded the end into the towel so that it was snug between Cas’ warm skin and the rest of the fabric. “Just like that.” She patted her makeshift knot.

Ace dragged her eyes up the angel’s body to meet his eyes.

“Congratulations, Castiel. You’ve leveled up.”

Ace should go now, she should step around him and walk away. Leave the shower room and head to her own and maybe never leave it again because she didn’t think she could handle seeing more of Cas after she’d just seen so much of him.

She couldn’t make her great escape even if she wanted to, though. Cas kept her rooted to her spot, pinned down by his piercing gaze.

“I don’t know.” He finally spoke.

His voice rumbled out of his chest and it’s all Ace could do not to step right back into the shower for a cold one. Though, she isn’t sure that steam wouldn’t sizzle out when the water hit her skin because she was hot all over. Burning up, really. She might just melt.

“Maybe you should show me again.” Then Cas’ deft fingers pulled the knot she’d carefully crafted apart, letting the towel drop to the ground, not unlike Ace’s jaw.

Cas raised his brow again and it was the punctuation to a completely different question.

One Ace could get used to answering.

#supernatural #spn fanfic #castiel x reader #castiel x ofc #castiel x you #spn fic #supernatural fic #spn fluff #supernatural fluff #supernatural reader insert #spn implied smut #spn smut

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catherindonald · 4 years

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Spring Holidays: Imbolc & How To Celebrate This Old World Festival

According to the Old World Celtic calendar, February 1st (and sometimes the 2nd) marks the first day of spring in the Northern Hemisphere and August 1st (and sometimes the 2nd) is the first day of spring in the Southern Hemisphere, and this day is known by a few different names.

Imbolc, Candlemas, and Groundhog’s Day??

The pagan Celts call this day Imbolc, and it is one of the four fire festivals representing the beginning of each season—Imbolc marking the beginning of spring. This festival was also the time when the Celtic people honor Brighid, the goddess of fertility, handicrafts, and dairy work and keeper of the home and hearth.

After Christianity came to the Celts of Ireland via St. Patrick, converted pagans wanted to continue celebrating their seasonal holidays, so the names of the holidays were changed to Christian names and saints of the Christian faith were worshiped instead of the traditional pagan gods and goddesses. Imbolc was changed to Candlemas, a feast celebrating the presentation of Jesus Christ at the temple as well as the purification of his mother, Mary. In the Christian faith, the focus was taken off of the goddess Brighid and placed on St. Brigid, the Irish nun who devoted her life to the people of Ireland and is often referred to as Saint Brigid’s Day in her honor.

In America, we celebrate Groundhogs Day on February 1st or 2nd. This is a fun tradition that is used to “predict” whether we will have six more weeks of winter or if spring is on its way. Interestingly enough, this tradition actually has pagan Celtic roots. On Imbolc, it was believed that if the weather was nice, then a creature of Irish folklore, the Cailleach, would go out and collect all the wood available because more winter was to come. However, if the day was wet and windy, the Cailleach would stay inside and sleep and warm weather would be on its way. Hmm…

Today, you will hear this day called by all of the above names depending on who’s using it.

So is Imbolc or Candlemas a Religious Holiday?

Well, sort of, but it doesn’t have to be.

I’m not pagan, but I do have a variety of Celtic ancestry. I’m not Catholic, but I am of the Christian faith and have some close Catholic friends. I am American, but I don’t put much stock in whether or not a groundhog sees his shadow or not.

To me, this day represents more of a seasonal holiday than a religious holiday, but if I were pagan, Catholic, or superstitious, then I guess I would celebrate it from a seasonal and religious viewpoint, which I’ll talk even more about below. Alas, because I am none of the above (well, I may be a little superstitious!), I like to think of it as the first of the spring holidays. As far as what to call it goes, I usually call it Imbolc since that’s what it was first known by.

Seasonal Living & What The Beginning of Spring Represents

So why does Imbolc matter to those of us who try to live seasonally?

Well, first, we must understand what Imbolc represents which is the end of winter’s dark, cold days and the coming of light and warmer weather. The time of rest and renewal has passed, and now we must resume our active lives. Imbolc also represents new life as this is the time of year when flowers begin to burst forth from the earth and many animals give birth to spring babies.

At this time of the year, the days begin to warm, the hibernating animals begin to wake from their winter sleep, and the spring bulbs start to pop from the soil slowly filling the brown landscape with their colors. It’s a hopeful time of year!

Imbolc Traditions

Imbolc is traditionally celebrated with fire and light. People would burn fires in the hearth or keep candles lit all through the night. Pagan Celts believed that the goddess Brighid would come to visit in the night blessing them with prosperity and protection. Likewise, converted Celts believed St. Brigid’s spirit would come to bless and protect them. Some people would make dolls out of rushes (called a Brideog), dress them in white dresses with flowers in their hair, and put them in a basket or a makeshift bed near the fire. Others would take rushes, tie them together, and hang at the entrance to the home. Some people would even leave coins, cloth, and other items out to be blessed, and others would make beds by the fire so she would have a place to rest. These and many other old traditions were observed on this festive day.

So how can someone interested in seasonal living celebrate this first day of spring while honoring the traditions of the past if they choose? Here are # ideas to help you if you choose to celebrate Imbolc or Candlemas, no matter what your religious beliefs are.

7 Imbolc Traditions To Celebrate This Year

1. Build A Fire

As I mentioned above, Imbolc is one of the ancient fire festivals that marks the beginning of each season, so what better way to celebrate the significance of this day than by starting a fire. Starting a fire in the fireplace or woodstove will be more in line with ancient traditions, but if you don’t have access to a hearth or stove, you can light lanterns or candles in your home.

Don’t forget to say this little blessing over your home as you do:

Hearth and home, home and hearth, welcoming close our family and friends. Home and hearth, hearth and home, the light returns as winter ends.

2. Make St. Brigid’s Crosses & Brighid Dolls

St. Brigid’s Crosses and Brighid Dolls are common crafts that are made and placed in the home on Candlemas or Imbolc. Here is a St. Brigid’s Cross YouTube tutorial that will show you how to make them. When it comes to making St. Brigid’s Crosses, you can make them with anything. You don’t have to have rushes! You can make them out of strips of paper, pipe cleaners, straws, or other types of grass. Hang these in your home to symbolize the blessing of the home.

Here’s a Brigid Doll YouTube tutorial that is really easy to make. Your kids can play with these, set them up in their rooms, or place them in baskets in the kitchen or near the stove (not too close though!) to honor St. Brigid.

3. Eat Symbolic Foods

If you’re looking for symbolic foods that represent traditional festivals and holidays, Gather Victoria is THE website to visit. If you’re looking for some special foods to celebrate Imbolc or St. Brigid’s Day, check out these recipes for inspiration: lavender and rosemary seed cake, rosemary oat bannock, lavender tea milk, and these rosemary and lavender lemon curd tassies.

4. Take a Milk Bath

The goddess Brighid is associated with dairy as is the increase of new births during spring and the resulting mother’s milk that follows. New birth is more than humans and animals. New plants emerge from the soil and sap and nutrients begin to flow through trunks, stems, and branches. For that reason, bathing Cleopatra-style in a milk bath is the perfect activity on Imbolc. This layered wintery milk bath by the oh-so-creative Miss Wondersmith is my go-to!

5. Research the Jewish Tradition of Purification and Presenting Children at the Temple

Curious about the Feast of the Purification of the Virgin or the Presentation of Jesus Christ? If so, do an online search about these Jewish traditions and find out why they are important to Jews and Christians and how they are celebrated in modern times.

6. Start Seeds or Make DIY Seed Bombs

Imbolc is THE time to start seeds indoors so you have seedlings ready when the fear of frost has passed. So grab your seed trays and seed starting soil or some peat pellets, purchase your favorite seeds, gather your heat mats and grow lights (or head to the greenhouse), and get to planting those seeds! If starting seeds isn’t for you, try your hand at making seed paper. Here’s a great seed bomb YouTube tutorial on how to do it with minimal supplies.

7. Predict the Weather

You don’t have to have a groundhog to try your hand at predicting the coming weather. Just head outside to see what the weather is like. If it’s sunny, chances are there are six more weeks of winter weather ahead, but if it’s cloudy, warm spring weather is just around the corner. You can even make this a fun activity by having everyone write their weather predictions down on paper. After four weeks or so, read everyone’s predictions and see who was right.

So now you know all about the spring holiday known as Imbolc, Candlemas, and St. Brigid’s Day. Are you interested in living a more seasonally aligned lifestyle? If so, how will you celebrate this spring holiday this year? Share your thoughts and plans with me in the comments below.

Let me wish you a lovely February and spring season with your friends and family. May your hearth, home, and health be blessed, may your cup overflow, and may your world be filled with warmth, light, and color over the coming months! God bless, friends.

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Spring Holidays: Imbolc & How To Celebrate This Old World Festival published first on https://marcuskeever.blogspot.com/

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