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izvmimi · 3 months

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cw: gods au. fem!reader and izuku are both gods. violence and torture alluded to but not extensively described. angst.

War does not exist in the heavenly realm; at least it hasn’t existed for the last few thousands of years.

Your father, God of Heaven, God of All Things, really, will credit himself for the relative peace and harmony the celestial realm enjoys, but you know that this is a stasis that is enforced with a heavy hand. The immortals that live in this sprawling kingdom know what lines not to cross, what ties to hold dear, as no one wants to undergo the same destruction as befell the universe as they know it again.

You were too young to remember the bulk of the tragedy and what gods and goddesses were killed, only to become part of cosmic dust, and your father avoids all serious mentions of the matter, your mother reigning silently by his side. You are the only one of your father’s many children that is born of a true goddess as well, and for this reason, you have special privilege, and it is your only resort at this very point in time.

Your forever beating heart pounds as you glide your way through the skies, passing through the thick dense storm clouds that surround the portion of your realm that holds prisoners, and as you pass through the light of the sun barely reaches the ground. Storm winds and lightning crash at the heavenly soil incessantly, rain, then hail, then more thunder and lightning, to remind you that this land is intentionally barren and inhospitable. It matters little to you because the man you call home exists in this practically abandoned fortress, and you must see him.

The guards are surprised to see you, but are not bold enough to alert your father that you are here. This isn’t the first time, and it won’t be the last.

You hate them. You hate every single one of them, and you wish you had been granted just a fraction of your father’s power to harm every one of them that touched a hair on your love’s head, but there’s nothing you can do, so you move forward without so much of a word of acknowledgment and they part quickly, standing aside to let you through, knowing that as much as you trample upon the rules of your land, your heavenly father dotes on you regardless. They would much rather not be on the receiving end of his anger, lest they end up in the prison they guard themselves.

You march, head held up high, to the very last cell, in the back of the castle. There is a barrier that surrounds it with magic thick and potent enough to fry a limb to bits and turn it to dust, with a tiny break in the gold veneer to place a plate of food or a cup of water. It’s frigid, even for your body that is meant to be resistant to low and high temperatures, and it’s even darker than the rest of the castle and even the outside perimeter, but despite it all, you can still make out the soft features of your lover’s face.

He’s battered and bruised, wounds in different orientations than you last saw them. A right eye barely opens, but he recognizes you as soon as you come and kneel just millimeters away from the barrier, using the last of his strength to raise his head up high, the last of his ability to give you a warm, comforting smile.

“You came again.”

He can’t ask you to stop coming anymore so he’s decided to indulge himself into appreciating your visits. Any time he’s asked you to leave you’ve wept more, so now he smiles to limit your tears, to hopefully help assuage the pain in your chest.

“Izuku…” you whisper. Your hand wants to reach out to him, but you know, having once tried, losing the tip of an index finger in the process and having to wait weeks for it to regenerate, making sure your father could not see that you were harmed.

Tears well up in your eyes again, endlessly, as you watch him, poring over every inch of his battered body. He’s sitting in a heap, no longer dressed in brilliant robes like gods should always be, only covered in torn rags, aimed to cover his unmentionables and nothing else. For decency, the guards would tell you, but there is nothing decent about reducing a god to a prisoner, beating him repeatedly for months, then years, in preparation for his ultimate punishment - stripping of his immortality. In that way, he’d live out a meager human life, hoping for luck to be on his side for less than a hundred years, and suffering the toils of hunger, weakness, fragility, fear, fatigue and heartache.

The god of compassion with no compassion left for him.

“How I wish you would stop weeping for me,” he says, but his voice is still light despite the gravity of their content. He inches closer despite the weariness in his bones and the clang of the unnecessarily cruel golden chain on his neck sickens your stomach. Nothing is broken, for now, but his exhaustion is more than physical. Mentally tired despite his refusal to stop smiling, he makes his way close enough that his nose nearly grazes the barrier that could kill you both. You want to comfort him, to push away dirty, matted verdant curls from his forehead, and wipe dust and grime off of his beautiful face and kiss his swollen lips, but just like every other night for the past three years, you hold in your desire and pull back instead.

Hidden in a pocket within your gown is a satchel. You pour powder into a small patch of fabric, and before he can stop you, as he always does, pull out an enchanted knife, one that can actually cut through your skin, made of the same substance that stabs into his side repeatedly when he is being tortured, and slice right at the back of your forearm. Blood, silvery and thick, drips into the powder, as well as a couple loose tears running from your cheeks and you mix with your finger into a paste. He watches you as you inhale and exhale, then push it into the small hole meant for feeding, towards him.

You don’t tell him it’s for his wounds, but he knows. After all, his virtue is compassion but your blessing is life.

“Don’t injure yourself for me,” he insists.

You shake your head.

“I want you out of here,” you croak out. He sighs.

“I’ve sinned against heaven,” he reminds you for more than the hundredth time. If he could, he’d reach out and take your damp cheek in the curve of his palm. His eyes remain soft, the light in the green ever present despite the incessant torture.

“You did what you were born to do. Be compassionate.”

He lets air blow from his nose in an exhale and smiles. His legs cross and he holds his head a little higher, attempting to be strong for you, despite the fact that every part of his body aches.

“I interfered in another god’s sacrifice.”

Your father’s sacrifice. Not only is this an affront that is the most severe of your lands, he managed to upset the highest being of the realm.

“He’s wrong,” you insist. Izuku doesn’t say that he knows, he doesn’t have the same safety you enjoy. There’s another conversation you’ve had before that comes to your mind, the one from the very first time you stormed into this prison, demanding he explain himself, angry at the victim.

“Why did you do it? Why couldn’t you let it go this time? How many times do you-”

He interrupts your hysteria, voice cool and even.

“They prayed to me.”

You’re caught off guard, but the steadiness in his eyes make it clear that there’s no reasoning with him, the same way there’s no recourse.

“But what about me?”

You watch him swallow thickly, and he speaks assuredly, but this time his voice cracks, and you can feel the same twang in both of your chests.

“I know you understand me, my love.”

His execution is coming up soon, and you’ve been dreading this moment. You don’t know how to help him escape losing his immortality, but with your begging and pleading, his soul will not be destroyed. Perhaps as a human, you could find a way to live with him again, you could love him.

But he won’t remember these eons you’ve spent together. Will he still love you, head turned up to the sky, or will he pray to you for intercession like a regular mortal, not knowing that he knows you like the back of his own hand?

He asks you how your day was instead, to distract you, and while nothing you’ve done is worth hearing, he still insists you speak and forget that he’s spent every last hour in suffering, his only reprieve this moment with you.

You rush through this conversation - answered prayers, begged your father on his behalf, looked for loopholes in the celestial tomes, nothing. You don’t ask him how he spent his day, and he doesn’t tell you, because it will only make you angrier.

He asks you not to come witness his death.

He asks you not to come anymore at all.

“Izuku, I need to know the moment you leave this realm. To follow you.”

This is the part of this conversation that always manages to make him angry.

“You’re wasting your time,” he argues.

“Time is meaningless to us, and you know it.”

You hate that he sounds like the humans he wants so desperately to save. To this, his brow furrows, and you remember that time will soon mean something. He’ll be born to some mortal, he’ll grow, he’ll age, he’ll die, and you will not change.

“It will soon matter to me,” he says, finally. The tears well up again, and you bite your lip. Anger bubbles inside you yet again, just as fiery hot as it has every single day since he was sentenced.

You want to storm out, despite knowing you’ll be right back here tomorrow.

You rise to your feet.

“Why?” you ask again. “Why?”

Izuku looks up at you.

“She asked me for help.”

“Millions of people ask you for help every day. Why her? Why when you were warned so many times not to interfere in the Gods’ plans for humanity?” you ask, bitterly. “You could have ignored it, just this once.”

Izuku pauses for a moment, looking at the cold ground before him before deciding on whether or not. Your lip wobbles and your hands clench, and your eyes practically glow with unbridled emotion.

Finally he decides to speak.

“She cried out for mercy, and she looked just like you.”

#izuku x reader #izuku midoriya x reader #izuku angst #daydreams: bnha #mimi's notes

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apod · 5 months

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2023 November 27

LBN 86: The Eagle Ray Nebula Image Credit & Copyright: Vikas Chander

Explanation: This eagle ray glides across a cosmic sea. Officially cataloged as SH2-63 and LBN 86, the dark nebula is composed of gas and dust that just happens to appear shaped like a common ocean fish. The interstellar dust nebula appears light brown as it blocks and reddens visible light emitted behind it. Dark nebulas glow primarily in infrared light, but also reflect visible light from surrounding stars. The dust in dark nebulas is usually sub-millimeter chunks of carbon, silicon, and oxygen, frequently coated with frozen carbon monoxide and nitrogen. Dark nebulas are also known as molecular clouds because they also contain relatively high amounts of molecular hydrogen and larger molecules. Previously unnamed, the here dubbed Eagle Ray Nebula is normally quite dim but has been imaged clearly over 20-hours through dark skies in Chile.

∞ Source: apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap231127.html

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just--space · 1 year

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NGC 3572 and the Southern Tadpoles : This cosmic skyscape features glowing gas and dark dust clouds along side the young stars of NGC 3572. A beautiful emission nebula and star cluster it sails far southern skies within the nautical constellation Carina. Stars from NGC 3572 are toward top center in the telescopic frame that would measure about 100 light-years across at the cluster's estimated distance of 9,000 light-years. The visible interstellar gas and dust is part of the star cluster's natal molecular cloud. Dense streamers of material within the nebula, eroded by stellar winds and radiation, clearly trail away from the energetic young stars. They are likely sites of ongoing star formation with shapes reminiscent of the Tadpoles of IC 410 better known to northern skygazers. In the coming tens to hundreds of millions of years, gas and stars in the cluster will be dispersed though, by gravitational tides and by violent supernova explosions that end the short lives of the massive cluster stars. via NASA

#NASA #space #astronomy

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kim-seung-mo · 2 years

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can i request #31 from your list please? i really love your work, thank u 💖

𝕎𝕙𝕒𝕥 ℂ𝕠𝕞𝕖𝕤 𝕥𝕠 𝕄𝕚𝕟𝕕 𝕎𝕙𝕖𝕟 𝕋𝕙𝕖𝕪 𝕋𝕙𝕚𝕟𝕜 𝕠𝕗 𝕐𝕠𝕦

♩ gn!reader, pure fluff, just softness nothing more

♩♩ word count: 600

♩♩♩ A/N: this one’s for my hopeless romantics

wip list here

Chan

The Sea, Home, Smiles

When with you, all stress disappears.

When he sees you, it's as if he sees the ocean.

Wide, endless, shining, calm, beautiful and reminiscent.

Suddenly he realized, as long as you were there, he was home.

When with you, worries no longer exist.

Only smiles, and a warm sense of reassurance.

Minho

Mint, Clouds, Clean Sheets

Refreshing feelings, comfort, relaxation.

As if stepping on clouds, light and airy, as if in flight.

He wishes to lie with you in the sun, laughing and talking freely, the topic does not matter.

You always carry the smell he likes.

Was it the smell of clean sheets? Or was it just the smell of you? Always making him crave to be close.

Perhaps you were his catnip?

Changbin

Music, Marshmallows, Hugs

He has written countless songs for you, playing each one to you personally.

He describes your love as like roasted marshmallows, soft and sticky, with an endless sweet aftertaste.

When you stick together, the two marshmallows melt together, inseparable.

He wants to embrace you like marshmallows sticking together.

Melting you into his body.

Never to be separated for the rest of your lives.

Hyunjin

Security, Tears, The Smell of Paint

Since who knows when, he gets a rush of unexplainable feelings when he sees you.

He isn't afraid to express any feelings to you, whether it's smiles or tears.

But especially tears, he is not afraid to let you see his vulnerable side.

Because when he has you by his side, he feels secure.

You snuggled up to him or sitting in front of him.

Him painting your portrait for an unknown number of times.

Jisung

Studio Ghibli Movies, Strawberry Flavored Ice-cream, Naps

On a rainy day, the two of you cuddled up on the couch, watching a Ghibli movie.

Holding snacks and strawberry ice cream in your hands.

He seems to have gotten a bit of remain on his face, you gently wipe it off with your hand.

Or go up and kiss it off.

His heart melts as if it were the ice cream.

And after the movie ends, he nestles in your arms to take a nap.

Felix

The Sun, Beaches, Stuffed Animals

The sun, dazzling, the center of his universe, impossible to look away.

The one who shines on him, his one and only.

The two of you lying together on the beach, enjoying the warmth of the sun.

Walking by the shore as the sun sets, listening to the sound of the waves.

Returning home, lying in bed, you cuddle together.

Along with your favorite stuffed animal.

Seungmin

Wagging Tails, Wind Chimes, Ice Cubes

When he sees you, his invisible tail starts wagging.

People who are destined to love each other, soul mates hear wind chimes next to their ears when they meet.

The wind chimes never ceased, from the moment you first met.

A breeze blows through and melts his heart, the wind chime sways.

He felt like an ice cube you held in your mouth.

Slowly melting away to be devoured by you.

Jeongin

Love Songs, Grasslands, Visions of the Future

All love songs in the world are sung for you.

The lyrics all speak of his endless feelings for you.

An endless grassland with fragrant flowers and grasses, birds chirping in the distance.

Blue skies, white clouds, and a tree far away.

He saw you from afar, resting under the tree, under the shade of which are countless different possibilities of the future.

Each one, with you smiling at him.

permanent taglist: @zoe8stay @yutaalove @seungly @chewryy @cosmic-railwayxo @starlostseungmin

#stray kids #skz #skz imagines #stray kids imagines #skz x reader #stray kids x reader #skz reactions #stray kids reactions #skz headcanons #stray kids headcanons #skz scenarios #stray kids scenarios #skz fluff #stray kids fluff

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quartercirclejab · 1 month

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in the original Final Fantasy VII, Cloud Strife didn't have a theme of his own, per se. one might say the "Main Theme of FFVII" was meant to serve that purpose, but i feel that this is overlooking the possibility that Cloud's lack of his own dedicated theme was intentional. every other member of the party has one, which usually reprises for moments of key development. their themes reflect their character, their hopes and dreams- but Cloud's grasp on his own identity is tenuous. as the game progresses and his mental pillars of sand come down, he loses any real sense of who he is, and struggles to rediscover it

in that sense, Cloud could actually be said to have two themes: "Who Are You", the mysterious theme that accompanies Cloud's moments of confusion when he encounters his buried subconscious, and the companion piece, "Who Am I", the theme that plays during Cloud's mental breakdown.

"Who Am I" is something of a dark reprise of "Main Theme of FFVII", which lends credence to the theory that the main theme is, in fact, Cloud's theme, but i think it might be more accurate to say the main theme is the theme of Cloud's false identity. it's a sweeping, bombastic anthem of heroic adventure, encompassing all the traits Cloud wishes he had.

this view also makes sense when you consider that the moment Cloud gets lost in the Lifestream and his false identity collapses is also the moment "Main Theme of FFVII" disappears from the game, to be replaced by "The Great Northern Cave." no more heroism, no more pretending... just dread, and a great cosmic sword of damocles hanging over the earth. even when Cloud regains his sense of self and returns to the party, "Main Theme of FFVII" doesn't return with him. he's not running from reality anymore, there's no more hiding under a false sense of bravado. the reckless courage of facing the bitter truth is all that remains.

for Remake, Nobuo Uematsu wrote a new vocal piece called "Hollow." while it's not explicitly stated to serve as such, the new piece is pretty clearly meant to be Cloud's theme, putting his feelings of uncertainty and fear into words and melancholy guitar chords

it's a little on the nose, i think- part of what made the OG's twist so impactful was that Cloud really wasn't particularly uncertain or afraid. up until he begins to directly encounter Sephiroth, he doesn't seem bothered by the gaps in his memory, his unexplained headaches, or the sudden flashbacks that accompany them. his fall from sanity is incredibly rapid, which makes it all the more shocking

Remake has changed this dynamic by having Sephiroth appear earlier than he did in the original. his more aggressive approach to exploiting Cloud's confusion has lead to Cloud's characterization being much less confident in his own mind, and the certainty of his reality

"Hollow" reflects this new interpretation of Cloud, as does "Hollow Skies", the instrumental version that plays in some parts of FFVII Remake's overworld. it's a mournful, lilting piece that tells us much about where Cloud's head is at right know: he knows something's wrong with him, but he can't articulate what it is, and the only solid ground he can really find is in placing his trust in someone he knew a long time ago

#music #hollow #hollow skies #jab plays remake #final fantasy vii remake #final fantasy vii #ffvii remake #ffvii

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ocean-in-my-witchy-soul · 21 days

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A Prayer for the Eclipse

Blessed children of Mundilfari,

Fair of face and full of grace,

Carriers of sacred lanterns,

Bless us and walk with us today.

Though clouds are overhead I see You

Shining brightly upon Midgard.

Break through the overcast skies of my life

So that I may follow your paths.

Mark our time with your power--

Máni with the shape of your face,

Sól with the strength of your warmth--

That we may live and bloom under your lights.

Illuminate our paths and brighten our journeys

As we move through the cycles of our lives.

May you guide us as we run from our oppressors

And from those who wish us harm.

Let us ride with you upon your chariots,

Oh, drivers of the cosmic wains.

Bring us to solace and serenity,

Warmth and prosperity.

Máni and Sól, blessed twins of the skies,

I give thanks to you for the light you bring to us.

Hail, Charioteers of the Celestial Wagons.

Hail, Guardians of the Moon and Sun.

Hail and be well on this day when you meet,

And the skies darken with the force of your love of one another.

#heathenry #norse paganism #prayers #máni #sól

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ammg-old2 · 1 year

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Now that the world’s most powerful space telescope is finally up and running, we’re in for a constant stream of stunning images of the universe. Just a ton of galaxies everywhere, more detailed than you’ve ever seen them, and too many stars to count—all of it sparkling with an intensity that humankind hasn’t captured before.

Not every interesting image from the James Webb Space Telescope is going to be a pretty picture, though. Some will be charts, like the one that NASA unveiled last week, all lines and dots and squiggles. That chart doesn’t have the special oomph of Webb’s view of galaxy clusters, or the wow factor of the Carina Nebula snapshot. But the unassuming chart, and the many others like it that Webb will produce over the next 20 years, is quietly thrilling in its own way. These images will stretch our imagination about what the worlds that exist far beyond our solar system are like.

You do have to know what you’re looking at, first. The chart reveals detailed information about the atmosphere of a giant, gaseous exoplanet with Jupiterlike qualities. WASP-96b resides about 1,150 light-years from us, tracing a loop around its own sun in just 3.5 Earth days. Its temperatures are higher than 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit (about 538 degrees Celsius). By measuring starlight that passed through the exoplanet’s atmosphere, Webb was able to detect the unmistakable signature of water, and even found evidence of clouds. On a planet as scorching as this one, clouds are really something else. It’s so hot that rock can condense in the air the way that water does here on Earth. Which means that on WASP-96b, the clouds are made of sand.

Sand! When Nikole Lewis, an astrophysicist at Cornell, told me this, I nearly fell out of my chair. “There are lots of things that will condense, other than water, given the right pressure and temperature conditions,” Lewis explained, as if she hadn’t just upended my idea of something as seemingly simple as clouds. I looked out my window, at the clouds of this planet, fluffy white poofs hovering in a blue sky, and Earth suddenly felt like exactly what it was, one of many, many planets in the universe, each with its own story and potentially its own kind of atmosphere. This is what Webb is poised to do: transform exoplanets in our mind from unknowable cosmic objects to very real places with alien skies.

Astronomers so far have discovered more than 5,000 of these exoplanets using other space telescopes and ground-based observatories. They’re quite skilled at discerning, upon discovery, an exoplanet’s orbit, mass, density, and other fundamental properties. And they’re getting better at teasing out information about their atmospheres. The Webb mission will send that particular effort into overdrive, revealing hidden details in targets that astronomers have already studied, uncovering the unknowns of worlds that they couldn’t reach before, and detecting, perhaps, the molecules that we know to be associated with the presence of life.

Webb observes exoplanet atmosphere this way: The space telescope aims its gaze at a star system and waits, basking in the incoming light. When a planet comes into view, moving—from our perspective—across the face of the star, the world blocks a little bit of starlight. But some light makes it through, and it filters through the planet’s atmosphere on its way out. The light arrives at Webb carrying the chemical signatures of any gases in those cloudtops. The telescope’s detectors break apart the light, like a glass prism splitting sunlight into rainbow colors. Astronomers pore over those data, picking out signs of familiar molecules and compounds, and then display them all on a plot known as a spectrum.

In the WASP-96b spectrum, the peaks indicate the presence of water vapor. To spot the evidence of clouds and haze in there, it helps to be a trained astronomer. “When there are clouds and hazes in the atmosphere, they will actually cause the water vapor—those signatures, those big humps you’re seeing—to be muted, so they’ll actually be a little bit lower than we expected,” Lewis explained. “That’s because the light is also passing through those clouds and hazes, and that’s subduing the strength of that water-vapor feature.”

When NASA released the snapshot of WASP-96b’s atmosphere, Lewis and her colleagues raced to see how the findings compared with other observations of the exoplanet, particularly by the Hubble Space Telescope. Webb had spent only a few hours observing the exoplanet and its star, and yet the error bars on the new data were far smaller than previous, more time-consuming efforts, Lewis said. And Hubble hadn’t detected any signs of clouds at all. The exoplanet spectrum looked as magical to exoplanet scientists as that galaxy-strewn deep field was to galaxy researchers. Just as Webb can produce galaxy-strewn deep fields in a fraction of the time it took Hubble, Lewis said, “we can do the same thing with exoplanets, where we only need to observe the planet, say, once or twice, as opposed to 10 times,” in order to find the little features they’re most interested in.

Astronomers want to use Webb to spot compounds more intriguing than water, such as oxygen, methane, and carbon dioxide—or, better yet, more than one in the same atmosphere. “If you, like, took some water and some methane and put them in a box and left them at room temperature on Earth, they’d actually combine into carbon dioxide, and you wouldn’t expect there to be any methane left over,” Megan Mansfield, an astronomer at the University of Arizona who will use Webb to study exoplanets, told me. “The only reason we have methane in the Earth’s atmosphere is because it’s constantly produced by life.” Finding some particular combination of gases that shouldn’t appear together, not unless some form of life was producing at least one of them—that’s the dream.

As intriguing as such a detection would be, Webb won’t show us definitive proof of alien life. The space telescope can only reveal the presence of something intriguing, leaving astronomers to work out the exact cause. Astronomers are still locked in a heated debate over the origins of a gas that might be present in Venus’s atmosphere, and that planet is right next door. This kind of work will be even more difficult when scientists are dealing with planets many light-years away. “I don’t think we’ll necessarily be able to say there’s definitely life on a planet, but I think it is possible that we would find some really interesting planets that we’d want to follow up on,” Mansfield said—potentially with a whole new space telescope. When astronomers first started talking about building a telescope like Webb more than 30 years ago, exoplanets had not yet been discovered. It was only later, as exoplanet science began to blossom into a real field, that the necessary technical capabilities were added.

But until the next great space telescope comes along, Webb will familiarize us with the range of alien atmospheres in the cosmos. Nearly one-quarter of the telescope’s first year of observations will be devoted to studying exoplanets. Astronomers can search for other kinds of atmospheric gases, and other, weirder clouds. They can even use the data to infer what might lay beneath the clouds, and make predictions about alien surfaces. They can form theories about how and when these planets formed, telling us better stories about the worlds beyond us, including small, rocky planets like Earth, orbiting at just the right, cozy distance from their star—potentially habitable worlds.

When NASA says “habitable,” it doesn’t mean that we could live there, or even visit. Even our closest planetary neighbors, located 4.2 light-years away in the star system known as Proxima Centauri, would take tiny robotic spacecraft, equipped with little more than some cameras and curiosity, several decades to reach. The Webb telescope can help us become more familiar with all kinds of alien worlds, but we can only marvel from afar, looking to the data—at the little peaks and valleys on a plot—to guide our daydreams about what these places might be like. Knowing the mass of an exoplanet is no doubt scientifically useful, but it doesn’t exactly jolt the mind. Clouds of sand, though? That’s pretty out-there.

#astronomy #space exploration #planets #exoplanets #meteorology #wasp-96b #james webb space telescope #this article is from mid-2022 but still really interesting!!!

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xtruss · 10 months

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The First Light of Trinity

— By Alex Wellerstein | July 16, 2015 | Annals of Technology

Seventy years ago, the flash of a nuclear bomb illuminated the skies over Alamogordo, New Mexico. Courtesy Los Alamos National Laboratory

The light of a nuclear explosion is unlike anything else on Earth. This is because the heat of a nuclear explosion is unlike anything else on Earth. Seventy years ago today, when the first atomic weapon was tested, they called its light cosmic. Where else, except in the interiors of stars, do the temperatures reach into the tens of millions of degrees? It is that blistering radiation, released in a reaction that takes about a millionth of a second to complete, that makes the light so unearthly, that gives it the strength to burn through photographic paper and wound human eyes. The heat is such that the air around it becomes luminous and incandescent and then opaque; for a moment, the brightness hides itself. Then the air expands outward, shedding its energy at the speed of sound—the blast wave that destroys houses, hospitals, schools, cities.

The test was given the evocative code name of Trinity, although no one seems to know precisely why. One theory is that J. Robert Oppenheimer, the head of the U.S. government’s laboratory in Los Alamos, New Mexico, and the director of science for the Manhattan Project, which designed and built the bomb, chose the name as an allusion to the poetry of John Donne. Oppenheimer’s former mistress, Jean Tatlock, a student at the University of California, Berkeley, when he was a professor there, had introduced him to Donne’s work before she committed suicide, in early 1944. But Oppenheimer later claimed not to recall where the name came from.

The operation was designated as top secret, which was a problem, since the whole point was to create an explosion that could be heard for a hundred miles around and seen for two hundred. How to keep such a spectacle under wraps? Oppenheimer and his colleagues considered several sites, including a patch of desert around two hundred miles east of Los Angeles, an island eighty miles southwest of Santa Monica, and a series of sand bars ten miles off the Texas coast. Eventually, they chose a place much closer to home, near Alamogordo, New Mexico, on an Army Air Forces bombing range in a valley called the Jornada del Muerto (“Journey of the Dead Man,” an indication of its unforgiving landscape). Freshwater had to be driven in, seven hundred gallons at a time, from a town forty miles away. To wire the site for a telephone connection required laying four miles of cable. The most expensive single line item in the budget was for the construction of bomb-proof shelters, which would protect some of the more than two hundred and fifty observers of the test.

The area immediately around the bombing range was sparsely populated but not by any means barren. It was within two hundred miles of Albuquerque, Santa Fe, and El Paso. The nearest town of more than fifty people was fewer than thirty miles away, and the nearest occupied ranch was only twelve miles away—long distances for a person, but not for light or a radioactive cloud. (One of Trinity’s more unusual financial appropriations, later on, was for the acquisition of several dozen head of cattle that had had their hair discolored by the explosion.) The Army made preparations to impose martial law after the test if necessary, keeping a military force of a hundred and sixty men on hand to manage any evacuations. Photographic film, sensitive to radioactivity, was stowed in nearby towns, to provide “medical legal” evidence of contamination in the future. Seismographs in Tucson, Denver, and Chihuahua, Mexico, would reveal how far away the explosion could be detected.

The Trinity test weapon. Courtesy Los Alamos National Laboratory

On July 16, 1945, the planned date of the test, the weather was poor. Thunderstorms were moving through the area, raising the twin hazards of electricity and rain. The test weapon, known euphemistically as the gadget, was mounted inside a shack atop a hundred-foot steel tower. It was a Frankenstein’s monster of wires, screws, switches, high explosives, radioactive materials, and diagnostic devices, and was crude enough that it could be tripped by a passing storm. (This had already happened once, with a model of the bomb’s electrical system.) Rain, or even too many clouds, could cause other problems—a spontaneous radioactive thunderstorm after detonation, unpredictable magnifications of the blast wave off a layer of warm air. It was later calculated that, even without the possibility of mechanical or electrical failure, there was still more than a one-in-ten chance of the gadget failing to perform optimally.

The scientists were prepared to cancel the test and wait for better weather when, at five in the morning, conditions began to improve. At five-ten, they announced that the test was going forward. At five-twenty-five, a rocket near the tower was shot into the sky—the five-minute warning. Another went up at five-twenty-nine. Forty-five seconds before zero hour, a switch was thrown in the control bunker, starting an automated timer. Just before five-thirty, an electrical pulse ran the five and a half miles across the desert from the bunker to the tower, up into the firing unit of the bomb. Within a hundred millionths of a second, a series of thirty-two charges went off around the device’s core, compressing the sphere of plutonium inside from about the size of an orange to that of a lime. Then the gadget exploded.

General Thomas Farrell, the deputy commander of the Manhattan Project, was in the control bunker with Oppenheimer when the blast went off. “The whole country was lighted by a searing light with the intensity many times that of the midday sun,” he wrote immediately afterward. “It was golden, purple, violet, gray, and blue. It lighted every peak, crevasse, and ridge of the nearby mountain range with a clarity and beauty that cannot be described but must be seen to be imagined. It was that beauty the great poets dream about but describe most poorly and inadequately.” Twenty-seven miles away from the tower, the Berkeley physicist and Nobel Prize winner Ernest O. Lawrence was stepping out of a car. “Just as I put my foot on the ground I was enveloped with a warm brilliant yellow white light—from darkness to brilliant sunshine in an instant,” he wrote. James Conant, the president of Harvard University, was watching from the V.I.P. viewing spot, ten miles from the tower. “The enormity of the light and its length quite stunned me,” he wrote. “The whole sky suddenly full of white light like the end of the world.”

In its first milliseconds, the Trinity fireball burned through photographic film. Courtesy National Archives and Records Administration

Trinity was filmed exclusively in black and white and without audio. In the main footage of the explosion, the fireball rises out of the frame before the cameraman, dazed by the sight, pans upward to follow it. The written accounts of the test, of which there are many, grapple with how to describe an experience for which no terminology had yet been invented. Some eventually settle on what would become the standard lexicon. Luis Alvarez, a physicist and future participant in the Hiroshima bombing, viewed Trinity from the air. He likened the debris cloud, which rose to a height of some thirty thousand feet in ten minutes, to “a parachute which was being blown up by a large electric fan,” noting that it “had very much the appearance of a large mushroom.” Charles Thomas, the vice-president of Monsanto, a major Manhattan Project contractor, observed the same. “It looked like a giant mushroom; the stalk was the thousands of tons of sand being sucked up by the explosion; the top of the mushroom was a flowering ball of fire,” he wrote. “It resembled a giant brain the convolutions of which were constantly changing.”

In the months before the test, the Manhattan Project scientists had estimated that their bomb would yield the equivalent of between seven hundred and five thousand tons of TNT. As it turned out, the detonation force was equal to about twenty thousand tons of TNT—four times larger than the expected maximum. The light was visible as far away as Amarillo, Texas, more than two hundred and eighty miles to the east, on the other side of a mountain range. Windows were reported broken in Silver City, New Mexico, some hundred and eighty miles to the southwest. Here, again, the written accounts converge. Thomas: “It is safe to say that nothing as terrible has been made by man before.” Lawrence: “There was restrained applause, but more a hushed murmuring bordering on reverence.” Farrell: “The strong, sustained, awesome roar … warned of doomsday and made us feel that we puny things were blasphemous.” Nevertheless, the plainclothes military police who were stationed in nearby towns reported that those who saw the light seemed to accept the government’s explanation, which was that an ammunition dump had exploded.

Trinity was only the first nuclear detonation of the summer of 1945. Two more followed, in early August, over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing as many as a quarter of a million people. By October, Norris Bradbury, the new director of Los Alamos, had proposed that the United States conduct “subsequent Trinity’s.” There was more to learn about the bomb, he argued, in a memo to the new coördinating council for the lab, and without the immediate pressure of making a weapon for war, “another TR might even be FUN.” A year after the test at Alamogordo, new ones began, at Bikini Atoll, in the Marshall Islands. They were not given literary names. Able, Baker, and Charlie were slated for 1946; X-ray, Yoke, and Zebra were slated for 1948. These were letters in the military radio alphabet—a clarification of who was really the master of the bomb.

Irradiated Kodak X-ray film. Courtesy National Archives and Records Administration

By 1992, the U.S. government had conducted more than a thousand nuclear tests, and other nations—China, France, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union—had joined in the frenzy. The last aboveground detonation took place over Lop Nur, a dried-up salt lake in northwestern China, in 1980. We are some years away, in other words, from the day when no living person will have seen that unearthly light firsthand. But Trinity left secondhand signs behind. Because the gadget exploded so close to the ground, the fireball sucked up dirt and debris. Some of it melted and settled back down, cooling into a radioactive green glass that was dubbed Trinitite, and some of it floated away. A minute quantity of the dust ended up in a river about a thousand miles east of Alamogordo, where, in early August, 1945, it was taken up into a paper mill that manufactured strawboard for Eastman Kodak. The strawboard was used to pack some of the company’s industrial X-ray film, which, when it was developed, was mottled with dark blotches and pinpoint stars—the final exposure of the first light of the nuclear age.

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you-tolkien-to-me · 1 year

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One Piece Imagine:

Imagine being a Runaway Celestial Dragon and having the Celestial Celestial Fruit.

Devil Fruit: Celestial Celestial Fruit

(Idk if it should be a Logia or Paramecia type of devil fruit, But lets just go along with it.)

The power to manipulate the universe with heavenly influence.

You can create, shape and manipulate the skies and cosmos with heavenly influence, including all the aspects of the astrological, divine, elemental, mythical and cosmic powers.

Celestial Spirits:

You can summon Celestial Spirits by opening their gates through the use of Celestial Spirit Gate Keys.[1] These Keys are separated into two classes: the more common Silver Keys and the rarer Gold Keys.[2] The Keys for Celestial Spirits are counted in Units (collectively without regard of Gold or Silver).[2]

When you receive a Key and opens its Celestial Gate for the first time, you have to set up a contract with the respective Spirit. This contract consists of asking the Spirit which days it can be summoned by its contractor.[4] This simple agreement leads to a dedicated and serious bond between the Spirit and summoner.

Celestial Spirits also have different categories of sorts that fall under the basic summoning conditions from their owner. For example, Leo, Gate of the Lion, summons himself most of the time without your help.

Additionally, a Celestial Spirit may grow stronger when you grow stronger.

Examples of ability ---> (Click me!) (Click me!) (Click me!)

Star Dress:

You can incorporate the power of a Celestial Spirit into your body by placing the key of the Spirit in question on your chest. The power manifests itself in the form of a wardrobe change (similar to Requip), in this case in the form of a dress centered around the Spirit in question's own wardrobe.[1] Also, you, by adopting the powers and appearance of the Spirit they choose, also adopts a portion of their powers, being able to make use of their Magic.

You can also combine their star dresses into one, this is known as Star Dress Mix (星霊衣合成スタードレスミックス Sutā Doresu Mikkusu) which manifests itself in the form of a dress and a crossed keys tattoo at the back of your hand with each key representing the Celestial Spirit Gate Keys of the Star Dress Forms that are being merged together.

Examples of Ability ---> (Click me!)

Urano Metria:

When you recite the incantation, the 88 constellations of the sky come down as spheres and bestow their power upon you. You, then, aims at your intended target and releases the energy gathered into a tremendous attack.

Examples of Ability ---> (Click me!) (Click me!) (Click me!)

Glitter:

A radiance of merciless light that denies the existence of nearby foes.[3] It is also an exceedingly complex and unfathomably intricate energy that collects and concentrates the light of the sun, the moon and the stars.

Examples of ability ---> (Click me!) (Click me!)

~~~~~~

Meteor:

Your body is surrounded by a cloak of energy, allowing you to move through the air at incredible speeds. Even if someone could detect your trajectory, it is nearly impossible to catch you. With your speed, assaults on opponents with quick, but powerful, melee attacks.

Grand Chariot:

While in the air, you place both arms on top of each other, with the top hand having only the index and middle fingers spread out. Seven Magic Seals are then summoned in front of you and connect, creating a constellation of sorts. Each Magic Seal then releases a powerful light blast down on the opponent, forming the same pattern on the ground before exploding.

Jiu Leixing:

You transfigure nine lightning-made swords and directs them to simultaneously strike your target of choice.

Sema:

An attack in which you bow down and points your hands downwards, with all the fingers closed except the index and middle fingers. You, then, begins to slowly move your right hand until it points upwards, causing the clouds above you to begin circling, creating what appears to be a cyclone.[203] From the center of the swirling formation, a glowing orb begins to form, growing in size until a humongous meteor emerges, falling quickly to earth towards the intended target. When the meteor hits, the force is strong enough to create a large explosion, which engulfs a wide area and releases a strong hurricane of air, also leaving a large crater in its wake.

Examples of Abilities ---> (Click me!) (Click me!) (Click me!)

~~~~

You were the Daughter/Son of the one of the highest-ranking Celestial Dragons.

When you were little, you began getting curious of the outside world and decided to runaway.

Along your journey, You find a big egg and decide to keep it. It hatches and out pops a a kitty with wings, an exceed!

You name him Happy and he becomes like your adopted son! xD

~~~~~~

I don't own anything but the imagine part! :P

#one piece #one piece imagine #one piece reader insert #reader insert #fairy tail #lucy heartfilia #jellal fernandes #celestial spirit #celestial dragons #x reader #imagine #one piece x reader #devil fruit

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kestarren · 4 months

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Thor's Helmet Nebula, astrophoto & description by Bray Falls. "Thor's helmet is a wolf rayet nebula in the constellation Canis Major. It is quite far away at 12,000 light years, and it’s size is about 30 light years long. At its heart is WR7, a massive hot star in the pre supernova stage of its life. It is currently shedding its outer layers at very high speed, creating crazy bow shock structures and huge tendrils of hydrogen.

This type of star commonly leads to type 1B or stripped core collapse supernovae, the stripping of the star core is currently happening to create this nebula. When the star finally does go, the remnant it makes will be mainly Oiii!"

#Bray Falls #astrophotography #cosmic skies & clouds #Thor's Helmet nebula

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yakool-foolio · 8 months

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i really love your death knight au for yakou‼️it’s super fun to read and think about

i’m just wondering about your perspective when it comes to yakou slowly putting together everything about the homunculus stuff in chapter 5. because, god, as far as i can tell that is absolute existential crisis material (like yakou figuring out he himself is a homunculus? and that his original is probably dead? like dude)

(i also imagine that the way he initially starts putting things together is like. through the whole pink blood thing. maybe yuma somehow gets (non-lethally) injured in the beginning of the chapter and sheds red blood, which leads into yakou realizing that something’s off?? don’t mind me i’m just rambling here)

There's a lot to take in when the revelation finally hits. While venturing through the abandoned village with Yuma, Yakou is mortified by the ghastly sight. Many citizens he'd known over the years, despite their passing, are husks of their former selves, mindlessly attacking him and the rookie. He fights back against them to protect Yuma, who they seem to suspiciously target more than Yakou. There's not much room to dwell on it as Makoto fires the arrow containing the threat of homunculi feasting on human flesh to survive. A pit in his stomach begins to form. While being chased down, the two fall down a cliff, both suffering some cuts and bruises. Yakou quickly takes action to clean off their blood for fear of attracting more homunculi. He takes note of the difference in their blood color, but doesn't comment on it, assuming Yuma hasn't been in the rain long enough for it to affect his body.

In the factory, Yakou confronts the zombified Hitman Zilch, newfound anger coursing through him. He wants to get back at the hitman for all the harm he caused, killing Yakou's wife and massacring the five detectives on the Amaterasu Express. Shinigami and Yuma manage to break him from his rage-induced trance, telling him Yomi and Huesca were the ones who gave the orders; he only followed their commands. Hitman Zilch confirms this during his drawn-out speech. As they discover the remains of each of the NDA detectives, Yuma immediately begins to panic. Yakou remains skeptical, trying to calm the rookie down by telling him they could be fakes. He's too deep in denial to say why.

It doesn't take long before a portion of the truth comes crashing down on him. Hearing strange noises in the freezer, Yakou instructs Yuma to stay behind so he can check. In the bone-biting cold, Yakou feasts his eyes upon the horrors of Kanai Ward. Frozen corpses are mushed into meat buns, the main food supply for the entire city's citizens. Shinigami turns away as he vomits from pure repugnance. Despite his disgusting display, he can't cough up all the lives he consumed. Exiting the freezer, Yuma rushes to him, fearful of what his chief could've seen. Yakou tells him not to worry; the bitter cold got to him, is all.

The two detectives head down into the old facility, shocked by the near cosmic terror of all the vacant pods lining the infinite walls. Holes in the ceiling reveal cloudless skies. Yuma steps into the strips of sunlight in relief, allowing himself a faint smile as he revels in what little warmth he can gain. Yakou instinctively avoids the holes, staying in the shade as he observes Yuma with sorrowful eyes. Shinigami advises her Sir to let the fledging enjoy it while it lasts.

In the bathhouse, Yuma curiously pokes and prods at the rainmaking machine while Yakou investigates. Suddenly, the rainmaker comes to a stop. Yakou and Yuma freeze up. The thick dark clouds dissipate, the blinding sun enveloping Kanai Ward. It's far from a welcoming embrace. Yakou feels his sense of self slipping away, his thoughts colliding together as a deep forgotten impulse claws up to the surface of his weakening mind. Using as much energy as he can muster, he yells at Yuma to turn the machine back on, but Yuma's anxiety flares. As he fruitless attempts to power the rainmaker, Makoto enters the building. Yuma backs up and clutches Yakou's hand, who barely clings to consciousness. When Makoto offers to help, Yuma takes his hand, allowing the three of them to connect. The rainmaker turns on, a brewing storm surrounding the city once more. Yakou regains what he had lost of himself while Shinigami recovers from her own stupor. Taking it all in is nigh impossible.

#im not the same man i was before #death knight yakou au #rain code spoilers #rain code #yakou furio #yuma kokohead

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kiyfra · 10 months

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Chapter 3 of Scorpio is finished! can be read here or on AO3. Pokerus AU belongs to @monsoon-of-art

“God has allowed some magical reversal to occur, so that you see the scorpion pit as an object of desire, and all the beautiful expanse around it as dangerous and swarming with snakes.”

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

A crack of lightning tore through the sky from far above, fizzling out before it struck the ground. Many similar bolts snaked out of the gaping rift above the mountain, their blinding light unhindered by the storm clouds that blanketed the red sky.

Even through the haze of dark fog clouding his mind, he could feel a deep seated sense of wrongness from the heavens above and every crackle of electricity.

It was no ordinary storm, that much he knew. There was genuine malice pouring out of the hole that concealed something unfathomably vast and powerful. If he looked at the rift for too long, he could almost make out a pair of hateful red eyes from beyond the void and hear the whispers of a being that hated him simply for existing. It gave him second thoughts about occupying a nest so close to such an eldritch presence.

But wait, wasn’t his den further to the north? In a harsh tundra where a large gliscor would struggle to find enough food to sustain itself, let alone an alpha such as himself. The largest source of food for a predator were the stocky piloswines that roamed the ice lands. The aggressive ice types could turn any hunt fatal and his kind would rarely evolve, sticking to smaller prey. He never really belonged there and that must be why he was back on this mountain.

No, he returned to the seat of this otherworldly presence because his precious gligar was still missing. His fledgling shouldn’t be out alone for so long, especially under this ominous cosmic event and every instinct was telling him she was in terrible danger from something or someone that meant her harm.

You’re the one putting her in danger!

He knew she was strong, strong enough that she would surpass him one day. The leader of his pack had already been bested in combat by his hatchling and countless pokémon across Hisui swore allegiance to her in acknowledgement of her power.

She was such a good gligar and under his guidance, she would command an unstoppable pack with members from every kind of pokémon. Every strength and weakness would be hers to understand and wield after he imparted all that he knew. A pack so vast and mighty that the legendaries themselves would bow to her mastery.

But she was still too young to be fending for herself out in the wilderness. There were many dangers she was ignorant of and she was only just learning how to find her own food and shelter. Any halfway competent predator would make quick work of a young gligar without a parent to protect them.

Rain slicked down his dark carapace as he rested atop his perch in an old tree. There were no wormadams residing in the foliage for an easy meal as he had hoped or even berries to take the edge off his hunger. The gnawing pit in his stomach would have to remain unfilled as he caught his breath at the barren pit stop.

Climbing a mountain with the starvation induced weakness in his limbs was no easy feat and the tears in his wings prevented him from taking the winds to the top. As far back as he could remember, the injuries periodically forced him to abandon the skies and scurry along the ground, never seeming to heal.

Always full of holes.

His memory was full of them, black splotches obscuring most of his life from him. He couldn’t remember the people that were important to him; his friends, his family, even his own name escaped him.

Ingo! My name is Ingo!

He didn’t even remember his gligar hatching; was she adopted? There was another gliscor at one point, one that was precious to him, just as much so as the elusive pokémon that wielded flames with mastery.

It was time to continue his search.

He lurched dizzyingly before taking off, the strong winds sufficient for carrying him, despite how raggedy his wings were. Powerful gales tried to take him every which way across the mountain in a roundabout path, sometimes petering out and leaving him to clamber over crumbling cliff faces. He spent hours struggling against the wind and his own ineptitude in his haphazard search, pain and exhaustion ready to force him to collapse wherever he happened to be standing.

A bolt arced about a yard above him and he cried out in surprise and alarm at the crack of lightning temporarily blinding him. Unnaturally cold static radiated off of the electric discharge that threatened to tear apart what little of his mind remained.

He suddenly felt very small, a weak pitiful creature tossed about in the air and at the mercy of a being far beyond his comprehension. A dark snake-like being that had dragged him away from his home into its realm of swirling black skies and desolate islands. Malevolent red eyes glared at him as he screamed and fell while unseen claws violently scratched away at his mind.

All at once, the sudden awareness of missing digits raced through him, of nerves rerouted into body parts that shouldn’t exist. Every part of him felt misshapen and ill-fitting with the flash of comprehension.

The stretches of leathery skin protruding out of his back, an extra limb with a mind of its own extending out of his spine, the patches of sparse hair growing through his chitin; all of it evoked a visceral disgust and horror with the fragmented memories of being attacked and mutilated.

That entity was glaring down at him from beyond the rift and wanted him to suffer, the one that dragged burning red claws through his brain and left his body mangled. A loud strangled cry escape him at the sudden wave of distressing feelings, far too animalistic and lost in the roar of the storm.

The hateful presence made him want to crawl away in a hole and hide like a frightened pichu and he longed for the comfort of his nest on this mountain. It was familiar, it was safe and it still had the reassuring scent of sneasles left over from its previous occupants.

Would she have returned to his old den?

He needed to find her, then everything would make sense again. Her excitable nature and infectious enthusiasm had always managed to slowly coax back the memories that were torn away from his psyche. Knowing she was safe and keeping her tucked away in a warm nest would put his mind at ease.

It was a terrifyingly long time traversing the highlands, making chirrupy calls that couldn’t possibly be heard over the wind before he spotted a familiar cave entrance with an old stone dais not too far away. The notion that he should leave something upon the dais overcame him, but he had nothing to offer.

Later then.

He angled his wing to swoop down but he shifted far too quickly and lost all lift, his wing becoming trapped under him as he fell from an alarming height. His distressed screeching carried over the storm loud and clear for any pokémon that hadn’t abandoned this section of the highlands to hear as he plunged toward the rapidly approaching ground.

There was a painful wrenching on his arm as he dived shoulder first into the rocky slope and skidded to a halt several feet away from the den, tearing up his wing even further and leaving an ugly fracture in his carapace. A throbbing pain in the joint where his arm met his shoulder elicited small pitiful whimpers as he crawled towards the den’s entrance, something warm seeping out of the cracks in his chitin.

He was almost safe, just a little farther over the threshold then he could rest. A welcome darkness enveloped him as he dragged himself through the cave mouth and away from the unrelenting glare of the red sky.

Soft bedding made of dried grass and shed fur awaited him; a nest far more comfortable than any he could make himself. A few stray roots from tenacious plant life grew through the rocky ceiling and tiny claw marks marred the curved walls. The den was large enough that he could stand upright and fully spread his wings with room to spare. It would be the perfect height to hang upside down from if he had the energy for it, but tonight he would simply collapse on top of the insulating bedding.

Something else’s heartbeat and quiet breathing caught his attention. Was there an intruder hidden inside his den? He gave a low growl in warning followed by a hiss and the interloper’s heartbeat quickened.

A familiar scent came from under a pile of loose straw; the smell of wet fur, human pastries, and a plethora of other pokémon. His heart leapt at the smidge of blue amongst the bedding and he lurched over to its hiding place, splaying his limbs to keep balance as he swayed unsteadily.

The tiny stowaway looked up at the apex predator looming above, their eyes quivering and wide with fear. Its face was scuffed and dirty with fresh tear tracts, trembling so hard that it had shaken off most of the straw keeping it hidden. His gligar was here, scraped up and terrified of something, but she was safe and she was alive!

Anger flared in his rib cage at the sight of how many scrapes littered his offspring and the tears in her eyes. Was she attacked while he was far away and unable to protect her?

If the human or pokémon that dared tried to harm her ever had the misfortune of facing him, they could not expect a swift death. Spending hours being tormented while dying from a shot of venom and several broken bones would be protracted and horrible enough for the merciless gliscor. He relished the idea of letting it run just far enough to let them think they could escape before returning to punish it for such conceit.

But that could wait.

The gligar was still shaking, her eyes darting between his face and behind him as if expecting some hostile prowler to materialize out of the shadows. As if her progenitor wasn’t there to tear any intruder that tried to get close to her to shreds.

He wasn’t sure if she was afraid of some assailant that might be following or if she also felt the eerie oppressiveness from the rift. A blanket of black leathery wings could block out any stray strands of red light to let his nestling sleep easily, buried in the warmth and scent of her sire. He would brood and fuss over her until whatever had her so shaken up was nothing but a distant memory.

Heavy pincers were uneasily placed down behind her to keep the girl penned in while she tried to look as small as possible. He happily nosed at his young charge and set to work grooming the dirt out of her fur, eliciting a dismayed squeal. She tried to push his face away and wriggle free, but even injured and exhausted, he could handle a fussy gligar.

A rumbling formed deep in his chest as small squeaks and chitters escaped his throat to soothe his perturbed fledgling. It was slow to take effect and she would tense up at the needle like teeth combing through her fur, stubbornly shoving his head away over enthusiastic licking while squawking in indignation.

But eventually his tiny gligar stopped trying to fight him and let herself be tended to, resting beneath his chin and wrapping her arms around his broad chest plate as best she could, seeking comfort.

Her claw tips were chipped and speckled with partially dried blood, likely from inexperienced clambering over rocky terrain. He turned his head to gently lick at the uncleaned wounds and remove the flaky blood covering tender skin.

Though dry and stale, the coppery taste reminded him of the pained burning knot that was his stomach and how it made tiredness and pain radiate through his body. It was so cramped and agonizing that he couldn’t even imagine it accepting anything he swallowed, but it still grew angry and impatient at being teased with morsels.

Something was deeply wrong. A series of confusing and contradictory notions ran through him and an inky blackness crept over the edge of his vision. His innards coiled and twisted in anticipation of enjoying his captured prey and confused dread at what that would entail. He felt the world spinning as something heavy slithered up his spine and pushed down on his back with a force nowhere close to its full strength.

Faint whispering assured him he would be fed and his heart beat harder at the malicious promise. He licked faster and more fervently as his excitement and terror rose to a fever pitch, his skin prickling as he sensed the malevolent red lighting making its way into the den.

Crimson dripped into his eyes, ran in rivers and formed pools like the most sickly sweet candy. It once again cruelly promised to sustain his body; he could eat and eat as much as he pleased but he’d pay for his indulgence and it would never fill his belly. The constant aching and pain would remain as his body carried on, animated but unsatisfied.

His face was held close to it, knowing he was too pathetic and weak-willed to stop himself from accepting the rotten deal and gorging on it. He was a ravenous, base creature that couldn’t remember not being hungry. A slave to his instincts being offered food as sugary as the berries that failed to nourish him and as salty as the blood he dearly craved.

It wasn’t the first time he’d given into the temptation to feed, desperate for such a small relief only to be left with hallow disappointment. He knew it was a terrible deal, but the syrupy painkiller was dripping down his face and it promised to take the edge off and ensure his wounds wound never kill him. All he had to do was lick it off.

His tongue swiped across his lips in a moment of weakness and caught the delicious honeyed beads, giving him an incurable taste. It was pooling so close to his mouth, its bright cheri red too great of a temptation for him to resist, and he started greedily lapping it up.

The crimson liquid pleasantly slid over his tongue and clung to his teeth, tasting of the sweetest, most indulgent syrup and the metallic pang of meat. Heavy in his mouth and rich in sugar and protein, it should have been satisfying. But it cruelly dissipated in his throat, unable to fill the bitter hollow inside him. If he kept drinking bigger mouthfuls, he could delude himself into thinking he was filling his stomach by the mere act of swallowing.

As promised, the pain and heaviness lifted slightly and the leaden feeling of his carapace became a little more manageable. All he had to do for the relief was debase himself, submit his body and mind to the one that kept him hungry.

More and more, it was never enough, could never be enough. It could only provide more fumes to run on.

He plunged his face into the mocking red lake and started feverishly gulping down as much as he could, struggling to take breaths between mouthfuls. Air seemed so unimportant and he barely tried to keep his nose above the drink. His lungs started to burn and he hardly noticing the bubbles escaping him, then suddenly he was a drowning man fighting to surface.

The crimson liquid passed through his fingers and clogged his airway, sticky and cloying with the nauseating taste of raw meat. He was choking on the ill-inducing sweetness that was like overindulging on cake. There was zero weight or substance to push against as he thrashed to escape the pitch black depths, frantic for air.

It took all of his desperation and energy to ascend just a few inches and any pause would see his work undone as he was dragged back down. His fingertips grazed at the air above; he was so close but the arm’s length left to go demanded a despairingly long time struggling with all his might. With one final push, his head broke the surface, gasping and eagerly sucking in oxygen.

The darkness and fog receded and he saw with a clarity he hadn’t held in a long time. He was hunched over in Lady Sneasler’s den with Dawn in his arms, her shoulders trembling slightly and face pressed against his neck.

The lucidity wouldn’t last long, it never did.

He mentally shouted to himself in the brief moment before he forgot who he was again with the hope his urgency would carry over.

I am the subway boss, Ingo! These tracks are fraught with danger, you must get away from her before-

Something pulsating wormed its way into his brain through the back of his skull in smug contempt and it was gone. He grit his teeth and ignored the pain; now that his humandewottgligar was here, everything would be alright.

He would bundle her up and keep her hidden away deep inside the den, cradle her against his chest as she slept, shield her from the oppressive red malice outside...

and...

and... k...i...l...l.......h...e...r...

A dangerous stinger slowly circled around her back unnoticed, cautiously raised behind her and waiting for the perfect moment to strike.

Everything would be okay, she was safe now.

Such an act was probably overdoing it for something so small, but the venom would ease digestion, especially with such a young gligar.

He’d sleep soundly with a full stomach and his hatchling close to him where nothing could hurt her. She’d be able to keep her promise never to abandon him after the night spent feeding on blood and meat in their dark nest.

A strand of drool dripped down one of his fangs and landed with a splat on the girl’s shoulder. She looked up at the row of jagged teeth above her, his jaws parted and salivating hungrily. The girl’s eyes glanced backwards and she went completely still, perceiving some danger.

There’s nothing to be scared of, he’s proud of ensuring the safety of his passengers.

Nothing will get close enough to hurt you, I’ll shield you with my broken, mangled body, keep you hidden away forever, gouge and tear anything that gets close, I’ll sting them to death and I’ll eat you whole.

The stinger pulled back quickly to add force to its strike before it snapped forward into empty space.

A lack of comprehension left him staring blankly until he noticed the fresh stinging on his abdomen from something that had slashed at him. He dully noted the new injury, another one to add to his generous supply.

His hatchling was making great haste towards the cave entrance and he unhurriedly followed after her. The red light crept into the short passageway out of the den and grew stronger to closer he got to the exit, unease finding its way back into him and cutting through his stupor.

A crimson glow blanketed the barren mountainside, the dewott nowhere in sight. The realization that she had run away and he was abandoned once again dawned on him.

...

But I love you...

#legends arceus #pla #submas #ingo #pokerus au #pokemon #subway master ingo

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