#made of extraterrestrial iron
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Can we talk about how badly Rick nerfed Jason when he broke IVLIVS at the end of the book it was introduced in? And by nerfed I don't mean the destruction of it held him back in terms of power in any way, I mean in terms of the narrative and particularly his ability to stand against/alongside Percy.
Percy already had five books of context, backstory and time for the reader to get attached so Jason had to do a lot of heavy lifting to not get completely overshadowed but at every opportunity Rick had to let Jason have something to puff him up, it fell flat. Percy had a cool transforming weapon so Rick gave Jason one but then destroyed it in the first book of the series. It reminds me of Rick giving Jason a flying horse in the form of Tempest so he would have his own Blackjack but then Tempest hardly showed up and didn't have a fraction of the established bond that Percy had with Blackjack (also Tempest definitely should have been a giant eagle especially since it was established that Venti can appear as giant eagles).
The worst part about it is that IVLIVS could have been so cool! First of all, ranged weapons are incredibly underused in Rick's books. Clarisse had her electric spear that was relevant for one book but everyone else just has swords or knives, occasionally bows and arrows. It's especially annoying because in most historical military units, Roman and Greek ones included, swords and knives were mostly kept on person as a last resort. In an ideal fight, they never would have been removed from the sheath. The spears should have been enough and most of the time, they were enough. Jason being a Roman demigod could have made him using a spear much more impactful because it would have emphasised the strict and regimented approach the Romans have towards fighting. It would have contrasted with the way the Greeks fight. Since Rick already had the whole arc of Jason deciding he's as Greek as he is Roman, it would have made the whole thing about IVLIVS being both a spear and a sword may more narratively important. The spear represents his Roman side and the sword represents his Greek side.
Second of all, the functionality of it could have been very well-utilised. It's a coin toss. It's inherently random. It would have been cool to see Jason in a fight where he wanted to use one weapon but the coin gave him the other and we would have seen him improvise on the fly, showcasing his years of military experience and the skills that made him a praetor to adapt an ill-suited weapon for the situation and use it effectively because he knows these weapons very well and knows how to use them even in unfavourable contexts. Or you could have it the other way. He wants weapon A, gets weapon B which is much worse for the fight he's in and does poorly, extra points if it draws attention to the Greek/Roman debate he's having. Maybe he wants to use a spear when he's fighting the ghosts at the start of BOO but gets a sword and because of this, gets stabbed by the ghost guy who emphasises how Roman he is. Jason internalises his failure to be Greek (failure to use his Greek sword and fighting style to protect himself against the Romans) and how it caused him to be in danger of 'dying like a Roman' but does character development stuff and heals his wound with the power of believing in himself and realising he can be both Greek and Roman (*cough cough* because I'm a bi!Jason truther his dual identity could have been a great metaphor and parallel to his sexuality *cough cough*).
Lastly, it would have given him something interesting to help him stand out in a cast full of interesting characters with their own 'flair' to make them memorable. Percy obviously has Riptide, Annabeth had Luke's old knife (which she should have gotten to keep), Piper had Katoptris and later on the Boread's sword (which she should have gotten to use more), Frank was the only significant character with a bow and arrow, Leo had his magic toolbelt and Hazel had her spatha (but should have gotten to use it while on Arion a lot more, it's a cavalry sword). And Jason had a sword. Just a regular ass sword. Even Nico's sword had some intrigue because it was made of Stygian iron and it has its kopis shape (idk if that's canon or fanon because it's shaped like that in virtually all fanart of him but I can't remember it being described like that in the books. I could be misremembering this but I have no idea where that idea came from). Jason's already at a huge disadvantage and loads of readers (particularly when the hoo books were being released) just saw Jason as boring and unnecessary.
#pjo hoo toa#percy jackson#heroes of olympus#jason grace#all I'm saying#is that if Tutankhamen can have a dagger#made of extraterrestrial iron#with a fucking DIAMOND pommel#Jason can have a little coin#Q
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03
ellie williams x f!reader
you basically find a hot girl at the strip club.
word count: 3.4k
genre: smut
warnings: stripper!reader with subtop!ellie - usual lesbian shenanigans like oral/fingering/facesitting, mentions of alcohol, you are referred to as ‘miss’.
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you’d watched her for half an hour now through the glowrings. a face that, although perennial in remaining innominate, highlighted it’s unaccredited self in psychedelic neon. you can’t decide if it was the way she looked around, eyes mind-altering, or just quick wedges of having worked here for over a year; growing accustomed to older faces that new ones became refreshing.
but even with serving drinks from one booth to another, she’d never looked your way - adhesive to the bar with eyes of timidity that stayed concealed; a face on your list of priorities for tonight.
fishnets suffocate your arms, desirable twirl of fabric that sheathed your chest yet had left your shoulders bare and at the mercy of the lambent. and eventually, you came to terms with the appetency of the taste of liquor against your tongue as much as your skin wanted to be a metres distance from hers.
so you’re traipsing over to the bar, pleather shorts sweltered against your thighs amongst your netted body stocking; carbonados scintillating against your stomach in the fiesta spotlights.
but you feel hedonistic optics leer your way from an approaching booth, a woman shuffling towards the end of the foam seat when you observe them. “excuse me, is it okay if we can get 3 more of the red wine?” her hand enveloping some notes, which empty into your palm when you flatten your hand out.
“yeah, of course.” you nod, scents of apple cider and root beer clouding the ambience when you advance towards the bar, a disarray of empty glasses and decks of cards amongst the elm. you shuffle beside her, and it’s intoxicant - musky firewood contaminating each skin cell in your cheek with lechery, although ironically felt sanctifying when you inhaled. you lean over, sliding the notes across to the bartender. “3 reds please.”
he nods, and you try to inspect the nitery around you - flaxen beams that concentrate to a seductive vermillion against the stage of stripper poles, but your eyes are more obdurate than intended within trying so fucking hard to not look at her. but impulsively, you’re examining her side profile before you can register, unable to escape this hypnotic pool of looking at her that looking away seemed paradoxical.
“hello.” your voice divulges that curiosity you wanted so badly to secrete, and you can’t repress the interminable searching of how perfectly fuckable her face is - eyes that you could decipher were the shade of dresden, framing an intangible sensation of inclination in your stomach when they are too shy to look at you. “hey.” her voice dry and gutless, a creamy tone that anchors at the very pillars of your hips.
her hands superlunary against her glass, fingers that scream they were made for this; your limbs weakening under how godly-structured her veins were along her knuckles. “you don’t look like the type to come to strip clubs.” you smile, and although you felt pathetic for generating ludicrous fantasies of her lips on your body already, you were complacent when you saw the corners of them turn upwards for a second.
“my first time, miss.” she swivels her drink, and you realise how extraterrestrial she made you feel upon the realisation that you were always the grand prize here; having people at your knees for a taste - but now you were the one yearning for just a quick lap of what was infront of you. you watch as she swigs the rest of her glass, lips dewy when her tongue skims them; it’s sexually aggravating to watch, sampling the taste of the bitterness of not being able to lick them dry for her rather than the alcohol she’d drank, amplifying when her sleeve rolls up to exhibit an adorned arm of tatted leaves that fade in the incandesce.
“do you wanna see my tits?” you tilt your head, and she’s wide-eyed at you; almost thankful that she’d swallowed her drink mere seconds before. eyes of eau de nil that are diluted to such submission it catalyses the excitement in your clit, unworldly irises that bite the bait of flickering down to your cleavage every now and then.
she’s about to speak after her train of thought, lips of delectability parting until the bartender calls your order. “3 wines.”
but you feel irked at the epiphany that unfortunately, you were at work, and had some serving to do. so you slide the platter towards your chest, before delving into her with a sultry glance. “it’s free.” you whisper teasingly, which wasn’t contrivance, you couldn’t fabricate the fact you wanted to pay her to lay you bare; unearth every fragment of your body that possessed the most sensitivity and utilise it however she desired.
but once you’d distributed the orders and amassed your own multitude of tips through the art of availing yourself to get what you wanted, your irises blew hot and cold around the club when you’d cottoned on that something just wasn’t right - your coworker ambling towards you.
“someone’s requested you..”
“but i’m not stripping tonight?”
she shrugs. “someone in 03 ordered some stuff and specifically wanted you to deliver it or something.”
“what’d they look like?”
“i don’t know, like.. awkward, freckles, brownish red kinda hair..”
and amongst the blether, your eyes were rifling through the bar; running short of the customarily lascivious vigour of interest it gave you before, stools void of the figure you were hoping to see. at first, you’d thought she’d been intimidated by your valiant act - but you’d read intertextually through the lines of kinda hot, cute freckles, brownish red hair that
never mind, you were stripping tonight.
she was a whiskey drinker, something that was cavernous incongruity to the velvety timbre she had. but she was duality altogether - maple tennessee and vanilla bourbon, the spicy grain of japanese scotch; even the woody and rich malt of scottish barley. you’d chaperoned yourself towards 03, a room in which was enshrouded by rosewood curtains, and a beam of what felt like tuscan sun whenever you’d take a step; with one hand supporting the platter of glasses, the other drapes the curtain to one side.
you step in, walls of boysenberry suffocating you momentarily - that familiarised furore of carnality in your stomach when you inhale her, earthy lemongrass and sage. it’s slightly quieter, stifled music orchestrating in the background as you look around, adjusting to the sentimentality of the onyx sofas; the rhythm of fuchsia and apricot lights against the metal pole situated in the middle of the room.
and then your eyes meet with ones of juniper, so soft and succulent. she doesn’t maintain eye contact for long, staring ahead at the floor - but she’s so divine that it dilutes how fucking awkward she can be. “i take it you accept my offer?” you smile, situating the platter against the table, pouring the rye whiskey she’d solicited into a glass.
she doesn’t answer, only looking up with doe eyes of sheepishness when you hand the glass to her with delicacy. you want her to feel ameliorated with you, because quite frankly, you’re feeling morally profane and unprofessional from wanting to ride her face so fucking bad. “what’s your name?”
she’s intrepid enough to ogle at your body piece, not only the glints of obsidian on your skin, but how your skin embraces the curves. “ellie.” she mumbles, her skin otherworldly with flares of honey and marmalade.
ellie. it was simple elixir, marshmallow and purification sizzling on your tongue. “can i sit on your lap, ellie?” you whisper, fingers tracing the sewing outline of her jacket, calibrating to the faint sturdiness of her shoulder.
she nods after a few seconds, and you feel erotic when you hitch your leg over and plant yourself on her thighs. it’s humid between you, and you can admire the texture of her skin - skilfully formulated freckles along her curved nose as if they’d been saintly sculpted with intense precision, framed with hues of rose on her cheeks that compliment her lips, so inviting and fuck you’re staring at her.
she’s getting flustered, and only amplifying the brewing anticipation in your clit when her thighs rub against yours; with fern globes flickering over your body, you reconstruct what you’re really here for, dipping out of the spellbind she’d put you in when you realise she keeps peeping at your cleavage.
so you swathe the straps of your bra off, glacial wisp against your bare shoulders; your skin feels hounded by taffy fog around you, and the magnetism oozing from her ironically enough to put you at the bottom of the food chain - your breasts recoiling from the material when you slowly pull it down, exposed to the experimental tints of the room.
you hear her exhale, hips tensing when she admires how your fingers grope at them. “you can touch them.” your whisper is reassurance, and you feel the levitation on your knees when angular fingers that you’d pedestaled oh so well tenderly stroke your skin, an epidemic of goosebumps on your netted arms when they reach your breasts. you observe how her pupils dilate, irises surrounded by hankering pits of jade only erupting with predilection when her fingers brush up your stomach.
she’s reluctant, but when she notices the indistinct smites on her fingertips from your cudgelling heartbeat, she brushes over your nipple. “they’re so soft, miss.” she whispers, observing how your nipple erects between her fingers.
you’re unbeknownst to your helpless grinding on her thigh and the lewd arousal between your folds; she’s getting confident, gently rolling your nipples between her fingers with ascendency - it’s astronomical, enough to skyrocket you into seventh heaven, and you hadn’t even taken your pants off yet.
“can i put them in my mouth, miss?” she whispers. you feel as though you’re under hallucinogens, the narcosis that was she, but she’s solemn when you blink at her. your fingers caress at her shoulders, a scorching sterilisation when they touch at her neck, and your fingertips feel so holy upon her skin that you could hear the symphony of each skin cell celebrating. “don’t ask, just do.”
maybe she wasn’t that shy at all, her tongue plumose against your breasts, tactically twirling around your nipple. it’s only when she envelopes it with her lips and gingerly sucks that you distinguished how wet you were, the fabric of your underwear thick with your arousal with every thrust against her thigh. but something’s different, something that was truly incorporeal, your clit blitzed in a way that feels foreign. “fuck..” you whisper, because you’ve clocked that you’d never been this fragile before.
everything is nirvana, the sensitivity in your clit only intensifying when you can feel her lips slurp at your other nipple; tongue flicking against it with enough expertise to force your legs into tremor. you can feel the clarity of the explosive latchstring in your hips as much as you can decipher how desperately you’re rocking against her, and with every sound of her lips leaving your tits with a pop, it’s almost as if fresh nerves that you hadn’t known built you up were being elicited.
you look down to see the blooming disorder she’d made of your breasts, nipples that were swollen and torrent with callous red; unrelentingly vulnerable to the masterly manipulation of her tongue stroking against them, glossing them with her spit. “you like sucking on a stripper’s tits, huh?” you exhale, and feel your limbs tingle when she hums.
you’re still twitching on her in waves of rupture when she looks up, lips glistening so pornographically; lashes that fan against her lacy cheeks so innocently that you feel as though you’re being made fun of.
you can’t comprehend anything through the overload of indecent fantasies - fantasies that became fuelled when you were victim to her hands, staring at how obscenely her knuckles contracted; raunchy veins of lapis operating her fingers so seductively. she notices how you feast your eyes on them, and teases you by slithering them down your stomach, a feathery stroke that explores the ebony pearls on your waist. “do you want them inside you, miss?” she whispers, tongue still fondling over your nipples.
please.
you feel your organs molten inside, and you’re nodding under automatism. you want to appreciate a sneeze-like high; head a carousel with the addiction that she provided, that only she provided, because you’d never nosedived off such a tremendous cliff into such heavenly bliss like she had done just by wrapping her pretty lips around your breasts.
your hands mount her jaw tenderly, because you want a lick of that addiction - her lips a gleam so vivid that it made a dullsville of the neon authenticity. you lean in, slotting in the key with the lock when she tilts her head for you; it’s mellow when you submerge her lips, and although the tempo between you was simpatico, you found that you were the one initiating. so you sink into her, tilting your head to enhance her taste - she’s smoky, with subtle tints of citrus and cedar on your tongue. but it’s medicine, warm and stimulant on your tongue, gentle laps that create a string of spit when she’d part from you - and you’d be quick to swallow, desperate to be polluted by her fluids.
she’s becoming assertive.
“please just fuck me with your fingers.” you whisper against her lips, hand mechanical to glide the fabric shielding your cunt to one side; you can tell by her eyebrows dipping in foreboding and the way basil optics bleach with daunt that her blood’s running cold about this. “i’ve never done this before, miss.” she whispers, and you’re about to ask her if she wants to stop if it wasn’t for her boldly slewing her finger through your folds, the texture of your slick glossing her skin deliciously - you couldn’t only feel it, but you could fucking hear it.
“that’s okay..” you whisper, shuffling against her, your fingers hallow against her wrist as you orient them with your entrance. “i’m gonna ride them.” you hum, and you know she’s taking a shine to the idea by how her other hand harmonises your hip; fingers supporting your weight against her.
and she commends how ravaged you look right now - disordered stray hairs adhesive to the sides of your face, scleras that had adjusted to the holiness of being able to stare at her tongue glossing your body.
it’s euphoria when you slowly descend into her fingers, feeling her fingertips massage your walls when you sink. the raw-boned chords that you’d known were her knuckles stroking against every explicit hormone surrounding your hips, and you can taste the crisp grass from the promised land when she twines both of them inside; it’s not enough to bullseye that spongy target, and so you whisper to her. “just a little more, babe.”
she’s supervening, serenity boiling inside when she wreathes her fingers just a little more for you - that spongy target fondled under her influence. you can’t repress the pathological trembling of your thighs against hers, nor the psychosis of feeling as though you’d been hovering in the untainted vapour of afterworld clouds. “your cunt feels so good inside, miss.”
is she fucking dirty talking?
you’re instinctual to start bouncing on her fingers, that inflammable sponge being hammered with every rock, some more dynamic than others. “fuck, that’s it, babe.” you whimper with breathless difficulty. and she watches how your body reacts, the sensitivity in your clit augmenting whenever she cunningly rubs her palm against it; the way your tits bounce with such sap before her very eyes and how her palm radiates how fucking thickly drenched your cunt is - her tongue ready to onslaught you, sour to stay in her mouth.
she wants to ask you if you want to sit on her face, but upon remembering your don’t ask just do stratagem, she’s conflicted - it still felt wrong for her to assume. so she glissades her fingers out slowly, browsing how your discharge oozes out onto her palm, and looks back up at you. “please let me taste you, miss.” she whispers.
but you want her to lose patience; you want to activate whatever barbarity is concealed in those flaming fucking eyes. so you whisper,
“earn it.”
“please, let me, miss.”
you slowly shake your head with a smirk.
“i’ll make you feel good, promise..”
you shake your head again, and you can see it melting away, irises narrowing with pique - but she tries her luck again.
“i’ll be good to you, miss.. i’ve been so good..”
and when you shake your head and tut, you clock that something’s different in her expression, nefarious globes that pierced through you with such warped lechery and belittlement.
oh, that’s good.
you feel her hand frame your jaw, and it’s claustrophobic when she presses her forehead against yours. she’s not hostile with you, her touch so sincere, and that’s what’s starting to make you feel so hot inside. you can see her eyes look around for the words, but they seem to flow out so instinctually despite the internal struggle.
“you feel this?” she whispers, her tongue wheeling up your cheek, and you nod.
“i’m gonna use it to lick your pussy dry, you hear me?”
bingo.
“and i’m not gonna stop until i can feel your cunt come in my mouth.”
what have you done to this girl?
“so let me taste you, miss.” she’s stern, and slow, and it forces your leg to lift slightly; reserving that special vip seat you were hoping she’d fill as soon as you saw her.
her eyes are venomous when your slit is before her, damp fingers that clamp your thighs and are tender yet so hungry to plummet you down to her face. you can feel her nose brush against your mound, and your legs brandish against her when you feel her tongue flick your clit, your hips can’t repress the pathological shaking; it’s transcendental, the wetness of her tongue making you feel like morphinism. with every swipe against your clit only magnified how eager your back arched, yet had deteriorated the strength in your limbs.
but what was aggravating taps was only a dip in the waters, becoming one long interminable lick - you’re rocking against her tongue tenderly, the planetary strokes of her lips contagious enough. and if the coil in your hip wasn’t assaulted enough, it’s at the edge of the cliff when she teases your entrance with two fingers, your slick glossing the tips. they stream into you slowly, and she goes deeper than intended with how silken you feel inside.
“shit.” you whine, feeling higher than the fucking himalayas when they wreathe into you, searching for that fucking spot.
you’re about to give her a helping hand, but after a few seconds, she finds it by herself - fingers twining into that extraterrestrial latchstring, waiting with anticipation to detonate.
good girl.
she grows accustomed to how it feels, how it moulds itself pathetically around her, impulsive fingertips thrusting against it as your thighs wreak havoc against her shoulders. “fucking dirty talk me.” you exhale, and the saturated slap on your clit was enough to make you squeak.
your cunt leaking onto her fingers, how the skin of your folds slaps against her hand with desire; it’s getting too much, that savage corkscrew spiralling your hips at velocities that seemed inhumane. “you’re gonna fucking come on me, aren’t you?” she hisses against your folds. “i can feel you getting tight, you filthy whore.”
you hear it, translucent and crystal clear. “you like being used as a sex toy, huh?”
oh, you have no idea.
“dripping all over my face, you fucking prostitute.”
you spurt cum onto her tongue, body tense as everything tightens; you can’t bleach the blemishes of beryl in your vision, swimming in rhythms of seraphic orgasm. you hadn’t even noticed how smeared your face was with tears, having being recent since they were still freshly running.
your hips dynamite, thighs shuddering against her violently - you’re catapulted into cloud nine, clit feeling as though it had exploded from the gritting assault of humping against her fucking lips. “fuck.. you just..” you try to speak, but your breath is jagged; prioritising instant relief to alleviate your havocked pulse. “made me come..” you whine, only registering throughout the dopamine that you’d been clawing at her hair, your fingers numb from nipping at her with such hankering. “made me come..” you repeat dreamily, and blink through the haze.
she sits beside you, legs spread and patting the space between them. you can’t decipher her expression through the amaranthine and your smushed cheek against the sofa, only her voice in your ear. “was that good, miss?”
thank god you came to work tonight.
#ellie williams x reader#ellie williams#ellie x reader#ellie williams smut#the last of us#the last of us x reader#tlou
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I want to see meteorites
well lucky for you, i just took a whole class on planetary geology, so here's a couple of fun meteorites.
but first, a definition. meteorites are fragments of the primordial solar nebula that were not accumulated into the present planets or come from planets in our system.
widmanstatten structures are very cool and present in many meteorites and look like the photo below. they are brought out by acid etching meteorites after cutting and polishing them. they are thought to be formed in the centers of planetary and smaller bodies, and probably what the earth's core looks like.
stony-iron meteorites are popular favorites for slabs because they often are a mix of, as you might guess, iron and olivines. they look like this:
among the famous meteorites is allan hills 84001, a carbonaceous meteorite found in antarctica and from mars made famous for the potential biotic (made by living creatures) structures. this one has been the subject of heated debate, but personally i'm not convinced that it's biotic.
and another famous meteorite, angra dos reis. this is one of 6 meteorites classified as an angrite, a meteorite that (might be) from mercury. angrites are cool as hell and there's a lot out there about them and why they may or may not be from mercury, too much for me to discuss in this post, but i definitely recommend looking into them because they're really interesting.
meteorites are super cool! if you want to learn more, looking into the research around the two meteorites is a good intro to how meteorite research works, the challenges that comes with studying extraterrestrial objects, and the rigorous scientific debate that occurs within the planetary geology community. enjoy!
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2/?? Prometheus attempts to establish themes
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Several minutes into Prometheus, we have had no dialog, and we are going to wish that it stayed that way.
This is by little fault of the actors themselves. They all put in solid work. Many of the problems come from the writing, and others from the mismatch between their characterization what we’d call “informed traits”: What the movie tells us we should know about these characters.
Elizabeth Shaw and Charlie Holloway are archaeologists. We see them with a dig team on the Isle of Skye, where they have just discovered their latest piece of evidence towards a radical theory. They have noticed something astounding that nobody else has dared to consider: evidence of alien contact with Earth, recorded in the art of disparate cultures from around the world. We, the audience, already know that they’re right.
And we, the audience, know that the History Channel has had kooks on it for ages, ranting about Ancient Aliens. We’ve all seen the meme guy.
Okay. Let's try to meet this movie where it wants to be, thematically. These are its first two scenes, it's still establishing its direction, and nothing openly egregious has happened yet. We will ignore nitpicky stuff, like the fact that this previously undiscovered dig site is right next to a well-known tourist spot on Skye with 400 reviews on Google Maps.
This movie is establishing an existential premise for its themes. It implies aliens had some hand in shaping not just our culture, but our evolution. The questions it invites at this time are equally existential: why would they do that? What was their purpose here? What was their purpose for us? Why did they stop contacting Earth?
Whether life has a purpose is one of the core debates of philosophy and religion. This movie is beginning with the premise that terrestrial life does have a purpose, implied by the deliberate sacrifice of a thinking being to shape it. This supposition could create a more focused exploration of one possibility, within its narrative space.
I think it fails to deliver on this. The writing specifically fails to deliver on this, which will become apparent once we have more dialog. But there is also an issue with the framing of this premise, which the movie ultimately does not manage to avoid. An issue of cultural context.
Because this is where I, as somebody with a background in history, start to brace. The idea of extraterrestrials visiting ancient peoples is a discredited mid-20th century theory, which stems from ignorance of the historical record, and assumption of ignorance and incapability of ancient peoples to achieve great things, particularly outside of the cultures placed in the prized pedigree of European civilization.
Such theorists look at the Great Pyramid of Giza and scoff at the idea that they it have been made without outside help, completely unaware of the century of more experimental pyramid-building that had preceded it, and the fact that we have written records that help us chart the progress of Egyptian mathematics for six hundred years prior to its construction.
They point to the Ramayana–likely written down around the same time that the Ancient Greeks were getting along just fine without aliens–and they say that the flying castles and chariots described in the text must’ve been aliens, who were mistaken for gods, and technological achievements such as rust-resistant iron must have been alien-made. Never mind that the period had a lively scholarly culture that was incorporating ideas from their Greek and Egyptian counterparts, and the people of the Indus Valley built well-planned metropolises with the world’s first known urban sanitation systems three thousand years before that.
They think the Moai of Rapanui, some of which were being erected while Shakespeare was writing his plays, were erected with the help of aliens. The actual answer, as usual, seems to be much more interesting: the Moai walked there:.
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This is what ideas of ancient aliens are culturally tied to. You throw this into a movie, and even with the foreknowledge that they’re going to be proven right, I start out skeptical of these people from moment one. I was less likely to give them the benefit of the doubt, and less able to suspend my disbelief around them specifically. This will not get easier as we go.
Which is unfortunate, because most of the next scene is back to being phenomenal, and managed to bounce me back into going along with their premise.
...A side note as we close this out: Getting way too deep into the weeds here, but the art style of the cave paintings is worth mentioning. It appears to be a mashup of two famous cave’s painting styles: The animals are near-replicas of those famously seen in Chauvet (35,000 years old), and the humans and attendant dots are somewhat similar to Lascaux (17,000 years old), both caves in France. Here's an excellent little video from Tom Scott about the former, and the way that you can go see the cave paintings without endangering the site itself. There's a similar museum for Lascaux, shown below!
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I say the human figures are somewhat similar to Lascaux, but I can’t find a match for the style anywhere. The closest I can find is from Tassili n’Ajjer in Algeria (6000 BC) or the Cave of Beasts in the Gilf Kebir mountains in Egypt (5000+ BC). This is because depictions of humanoid figures in european cave art are rare–ranging from a single bird-head figure in Lascaux, to the possible hoax at La Marche.
This produces an interesting implication, if we take the movie’s premise at face value. If humanoid figures were avoided as subjects for cave art for thousands of years, their inclusion here is especially significant. Perhaps indicating that the alien visitors instructed that some visual representation of this scene to be made, or did so themselves. Thus, it is slotted in amongst the pre-existing animal art, creating a culture clash.
…However, cave lions never made it as far north as Skye. Their known northern range tapped out at about London. While it’s certainly possible that people could’ve traveled that far during this period, local animals tend to be the focus of cave paintings. So we’re getting the visual sense that a French stone age painter was doing a residency at Skye. Amusing, but odd.
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Citations for alt text ramblings:
1. https://www.isleofskye.com/skye-guide/top-ten-skye-walks/old-man-of-storr
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chariots_of_the_Gods%3F
3. https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/
4. https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/royalty-calculator
5. https://search.worldcat.org/title/7625265
#Prometheus 2012#The Storr looks amazing#so does Chauvet 2#isn't it cool that we have physical recreations of art that's over 30000 years old?#So that we can experience some fraction of the life and works of people otherwise lost to us#without disturbing their legacy#also there's a movie I'm talking about in here somewhere#I guess I can thank the movie for getting me thinking about this
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this is extremely tenuous as a fan theory, but at one point we know at least one meteor fell in yharnam because that siderite iron was used to forge the burial blade and the blade of mercy. given that yharnamites don't know what germs are (the metals used are, in fact, antimicrobial. they just don't understand why it's working), its possible that it brought extraterrestrial microscopic life (or invisible to those with low insight, like vermin) with it. thinking about where the impact site might be made me think of that stupid worm canyon at forsaken cainhurst castle that dead ends.
i had assumed that it had once been the entrance to the chalice dungeons but maybe it can be both...? at one point a meteor hit and the pthumerians below were cut off from pthumerians above. the newest translation vid from shetani about sekiro builds a convincing argument that the same thing occurred in alt timeline japan. and, well. you know how fromsoft loves to iterate on the same idea over and over lol. i dont think this part is so out of pocket.
the rest of this is pure unbridled speculation tho: the pureblooded pthumerian royalty above ground became annalise, who retains many pthumerian features in what we can see of her. the rest of the pthumerians intermingled with humans and "outsiders" resulting in the whacked out height and gaping mouths of the hemwick grave women (who are located right outside of what used to be the bridge to cainhurst).
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I've got a lotta thoughts about the final cut scene but I don't wanna talk about that right now. I wanna talk about Eramis right now.
And how this is, legitimately, all her fault.
Eramis wanted safety for her people. A new start. She wanted Riis Reborn to be the new home for Eliksni. It was supposed to be a safe place from Guardians or humanity who attacked them.
It was. And it was for a long time. Decades. Maybe even a century or two. Riis Reborn was not built in a handful of years. Eliksni have been building and crafting Riis Reborn for a long time. And no one bothered them. Earth had no reason to investigate or go to Europa. We thought it was an abandoned ice world. That not even the Traveler or our Golden Age had been able to colonize the frozen ocean moon. We had no reason to even look at Europa. So we didn't. Even if there was a Pyramid there so what? There are Pyramids everywhere in our system. I'm sure there's one on every moon. I mean there's one on Earth's moon so why not?
Riis Reborn was a safe place for Eliksni. They were sheltered against the elements, ether probably wasn't so strictly rationed, the city was big enough to produce its own food and the Eliksni are smart enough to do so!
But Eramis couldn't be happy with Riis Reborn being as it was. It wasn't enough. She hated the Traveler. It had abandoned her and made her lose her mate and child and she blamed it for all the wrong doings of the uncaring universe. She needed revenge.
And she fucked it all up! She fucked it up for all the normal Eliksni living in Riis Reborn trying to have a normal life without fighting where they could raise their children and not be afraid they'd end up at the other end of a Guardian's gun or Light.
Eramis' need for revenge spoke to the Darkness. And the Witness spoke back. And it offered her a boon. A boon of Stasis; to get her revenge.
From what I understand Eramis' need for revenge is 1: Traveler=Whirlwind, 2: hates humanity for being Traveler's next chosen, and 3: hates humanity for the slaughter of her people.
I know a lotta people like to go 'yeah! Humanity sucks they killed a lot of Eliksni for no reason when they came in peace' as we get from Inaaks' lore book from Season of Plunder. The books tells how humanity gleefully killed Eliksni without a second thought and how they were monsters.
And here's why this part always bugs me. It bugged me in Beyond Light, it bugged Splicer, it bugged me in Plunder. It's bugged me since the Eliksni got more lore and became Eliksni and not just the Fallen. Everyone loves to point the finger at humanity for 'mindless' killing and slaughter of Eliksni, especially with what we found out Saint did in Splicer. I'm not saying he should have done that, he definitely shouldn't have, but the sympathy stick is used heavily in Splicer.
When the Eliksni arrived in Sol humanity was in the middle of its Collapse. We'd just suffered a system wide level of devastation we'd never felt before against a threat we had no idea how to fight. That we couldn't fight. A wave of Darkness fucked up our shit and caused a system wide catastrophic extinction event for humanity. It cut us off from our colonies and our colonies from Earth, it destroyed ships, it crashed Exodus ships. It left humanity at a state I'd say somewhere around the bronze or iron age but with the knowledge that we could rebuild and we could get back to where we were it'd just take time. But we were a broken, defeated, species who'd just been toppled from it's highest point of the Golden Age by an extraterrestrial threat: Nezarec (and I assume some Hive).
And then these other aliens show up. We can't speak to them and they can't speak to us. And maybe humans did strike first but humans also have a long long LONG history of showing up some place and colonizing it and killing the natives who live there. So how did we know that wasn't what these aliens were??? Or that they weren't working with Nezarac. In D1 and a lot of D2 the Fallen are 'minions of the Darkness'. We see them as being directly in line and aliegenced to the Darkness. This started a war because the eliksni are like 'wtf we came in peace and you killed some of us!??!!?' without any insight of what humanity was going through or dealing with.
In BL, Splicer, and Plunder there's a lot of 'this is YOUR fault' at humanity. When really, these aliens show up after a system wide extinction event, we have a bad first meeting and then the Eliksni go 'okay murder it is then!' and we end up where we are. Neither side is right. Neither side is wrong. Both are completely justified in their distrust and even hatred of the other. Eliksni and humans have devastated each other and been at war for literal centuries.
And back to Eramis.
Eramis was there for that. She was alive for that. She saw what happened, or at least heard about it. And then she comes to Riis Reborn, a safe, neutral moon that the Earth doesn't know about, that the Guardians do not care about. And Riis Reborn had normal Eliksni style strife like House infighting or petty bickering. But the people weren't being slaughtered. And it's like she went 'yeah man. That's cool. But also fuck humanity now that we have a foot hold here let's get them'. And as sOON as she was given Stasis by the Pyramid she didn't even hesitate to go 'okay now I can attack the Guardians, Earth, and the Traveler.' Even though Stasis is very heavily a defensive subclass. It is meant for CC and defensive positioning and possibly given to Eramis by the Pyramid as a gift to protect Riis Reborn.
Can't have that.
And that's why Variks sends out an SOS. He sees what this has done to Eramis and how it will destroy the peace here on Europa if she's allowed to attack Earth. How it will cause those who want to live peacefully to be brought into a war they never wanted to be in to satisfy Eramis' need for revenge. And he knows whatever happens will also not be good for Riis Reborn but it's better than watching Eramis destroy House Salvation (and kill Servitors).
And then the Guardian arrives on Europa. Because the Eliksni we trust (sort of) sent out a desperate SOS knowing we were the only hope for Europa before Eramis did her very best to ruin it.
And from there Eramis blames everything on us. Her friends getting killed. Her people fleeing Riis Reborn. What's happened to House Salvation. All of it is somehow our fault. Even though Eramis is just reaping what she sewed.
None of this would have happened if Eramis had been able to move on and forgive, or at least try to, the way Saint has, the way the City is doing, the way House of Light is, and probably a good amount of House Salvation as well. But she can't. So she blames us for all of her misdeeds, all of her torment, all of her dead friends. But if she'd put her need for revenge after the need to keep her people safe none of this would have happened. Riis Reborn and House Salvation would have been whole and Europa would have had a whole House full of Stasis users to protect it.
I fucking love Eramis so much she's so fucking cool and interesting and deep as shit.
#destiny#destiny 2#destiny the game#eramis#the witness#before you come for me know I fucking love eramis okay#but GOD#girl makes shitty fucking choices#Deep Thoughts
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Actress bios on the Workin' Girls playbill:
ZOEY CHAMBERS (Henrietta) is humbled beyond words to be part of such a groundbreaking production. Zoey has been entrancing audiences for years with her portrayal of badass girl-bosses like Sandy from Grease and Fantine from Les Misérables. Zoey would like to thank her brother, Zack, for giving her the acting bug all the way back in the third grade! It's ironic that Zack thought he was the actor of the family, but Zoey would go to completely overshadow him in every way. Sucks to suck, doesn't it, Zachary? Zoey would also like to thank her roommate and fellow cast member, Hailey! Hailey is perfectly cast in her small and inconsequential part. The role of Marge is just so uninteresting and one dimensional that it masks Hailey's limited range as an actress, as well as other flaws, such as not being pretty enough to pull off an ingenue. Enjoy the show and be sure to check out Zoey's Only Fans for spicy pics, [something I can't really read, it kind of looks like it says JQls], and other lewd content!
HAILEY DILMORE (Marge) is so lucky to be part of the best cast in the world! She has no idea how she managed to worm her way into this talented group of ladies! You may recognize Hailey as a Pink Lady from Grease or Disciple #3 from Godspell. Hailey would like to thank her fellow cast member, Zoey Chambers. Zoey has been and inspiration, a mentor, and above all, a friend. She'd also like to thank her parents and her dog, Walter. Also, she'd like to apologize to the cast for blowing up the bathroom every day during rehearsal. She's so sorry she made it stink so bad that everyone had to cross the street to use the toilet in Bank of America. She really doesn't know what's happening to her bowels. She's going to the doctor after the show closes to get everything sorted out. Enjoy the show!
RUTH FLEMING (Secretary #4) is so fucking stoked for her acting debut! This is the best thing that's ever happened to me, I mean, her. Ruth ran the lights for her school's shitty production of The Barbecue Monologues and was the Assistant Stage Manager for The Wizard of Oz... it sucked. She got bullied and excluded by the whole cast, even though her job was just as important as theirs. More important, actually! Being in the cast is way better. You don't have to think of an excuse to barge into the dressing rooms. You can just waltz right in! Everybody takes off their shirts and lets their titties tumble free! It's the most awesome thing I've ever seen... I mean, she's ever seen. Anyways, Ruth doesn't wanna thank anybody because nobody ever did anything for her.
Richie's hand is in the way for Bryce's character, but her name is Cassandra King (Eve), Matt said she's being haunted by extraterrestrial forces
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pov: your camera roll if you were an avenger (chaotic ed.)
when this picture was taken, tony and bucky still had animosity between them. steve had the "genius" idea to host game night to boost team morale and strengthen friendships or whatnot. in short, tony and bucky got in a fight while playing candyland and were put into time out together.
when nat proclaimed a girl's night. you and yelena were expecting face masks and gossip; instead, nat took you to a vineyard where you all got hammered. yelena was complaining, but she cheered up instantly after getting the number of the pretty girl working up front.
tony had just ordered an iron man themed electric toothbrush only to have it go missing two days later. the poor man had accused a total of six SHIELD agents of petty crime before he ransacked the entire tower. turns out, morgan had taken it.
bruce had invited dr. strange to his lab to study the mirror dimension using quantum physics analysis. tony was conveniently hosting a backyard barbeque and strange was confronted by his greatest weakness: hot sauce. once he started eating his spicy wings, tony quickly got him drunk and he never ended up returning to the lab.
after fighting extraterrestrial creatures that had escaped from asgard, thor suggested getting a snack. instead of destroying a shwarma restaurant like last time, tony ordered takeout. a lot of takeout. they had leftovers for three days.
yelena wasn't the best cook, and after all the leftovers had been eaten, she ended up having to make her own meals. you took this picture after the two of you had managed to turn off the smoke alarm. (she burned her chef boyardee pasta.)
wong had challenged wanda to a game of jenga—with a twist. instead of removing blocks with their hands, they had to use their magic. the two of them got so competitive that they ended up playing until 3AM. the game only stopped when wanda fell asleep and fell onto the table, knocking the tower over altogether.
strange and wong had gone out to go shopping for their new apprentice's birthday gift when bruce had flagged them down. banner had begged them to let him investigate their emporium, which they reluctantly agreed to. it was better than hours of quantum physics equations in the lab.
shang-chi had recently set up a room in the tower but was still traveling between his personal apartment and the avenger's residence. you didn't understand why until he'd invited you to his apartment, where you met his hyperactive dog. yelena wasn't the biggest fan of dogs.
.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.
moodboard made by me (i do not own any of these images)
taglist: (comment to be added)
@yourallihave @im-a-slut-for-fluff @bambamwolf87
masterlist | marvel masterlist
#avengers masterlist#avengers moodboard#marvel crackfic#avengers camera roll#bucky barnes camera roll#bucky barnes x reader#marvel reader insert#avengers reader insert#avengers team#peter parker x you#yelena belova
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Brighter Than the Sun
Lex is starting to feel like herself again after the events on Bouvetoya Island... with a little help from a tall, dreadlocked knight in shining armor at her side! | Lex/Scar |
part 1 of 3
my Scar & Lex series on ao3: here
*no cw, just humor and fluff*
✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧♡‧₊˚
hunterssm00n © All rights reserved by me. I do not allow this work to be used or adapted in any way without my permission.
For the first time in forever, Lex Woods awoke without all the lights on.
Her first thought, ironically, being wow, my electric bill isn't gonna be completely outrageous this time. Aside from her silly self jibe, it really did feel like an accomplishment. Stretching luxuriously in her bed, the rays from the sun being the only light source through the curtains, she felt better than she had in a long time.
A lot of things contributed to this, like the fact that a year and three months later, she was finally allowing herself to move on. She wasn't ignorant to think that she could ever move on completely - she already knew this would be a scar she would bear forever (both literally and figuratively). But she could accept it for what it was, and she could forgive herself.
It didn't hurt that she also had her partner in crime back. That was a positive.
A smile crossed her lips as she lazed in her bed, folding her arms under her pillow behind her head. She had managed to befriend an extraterrestrial from another planet... If someone had told her ten years ago that that would await her in the future, she would've laughed in their face and told them they needed counseling. Right now it didn't sound nearly as silly as it had a few days after the incident had happened; it was a bit more believable in her mind now that she'd spent over a year thinking about it (and now a few months living it, breathing it, etc.). And now, this creature, this alien - this guy was now her best friend in the whole world (and beyond, she liked to tease herself by thinking). This thing they had been through together had indeed been horrible, but it had brought them together.
As much as Lex hated the fact, she knew that it was because of this reason that she couldn't wish Bouvetoya hadn't happened. She wished with all her heart that there hadn't been casualties (on either side of the spectrum, as Scar had lost brothers as well), but if they hadn't gone in the first place, then there wouldn't have ever been the possibility of the two of them meeting. It was a small world, but what would the chances of meeting have been if it hadn't happened on the island? And if by some chance they had met, what would the circumstances have been? And also, what would the actual meeting have been like? Probably would've made my skull into one of his trophies he adores so much. She shuddered at the thought - her friend definitely had some interesting hobbies.
In the past three months, Scar had figured out that she was not at all impressed by his human skull trophies, and absolutely did not want to hear about them. Begrudgingly, but understanding why, he didn't prod her about his escapades on Earth - unless of course he was describing scenery or something else that he'd seen. That is, describing being using all of clicking, hand motions, growling and broken english. It was kind of like charades, except he was able to speak some english, so it wasn't a complete guessing game. And the more he saw her, the more he learned. She knew he could understand everything she said - it was just getting him to actually talk to her in her own language that was a trial. Not that she minded - he didn't need to do that to make her happy.
Really, he didn't need to do anything to make her happy other than exist. It sounded really cheesy, but she felt more connected with him, an alien, than she did with anyone on her home planet. She suspected that he felt the same; otherwise, he wouldn't be visiting her as frequently as he did.
And she certainly wasn't complaining. In fact, she actually was attempting to figure a lot out for the near future, such as how the hell she was going to cope with her feelings for him.
Lex sighed, crossing one leg over the other under her sheets. It was certainly a dilemma in her mind. She didn't even know if he could feel such a thing, himself. It worried her more than she would ever let on. Idly, her finger stroked the warrior mark on her cheek, the fingers of her left hand tracing the familiar edges. This would eat her alive if she didn't get it out, and no one in her life knew about Scar but herself. Her therapist didn't even know that she had interacted with, ahem, aliens during her nightmare journey.
Maybe she would start by asking if his species had such a thing as partnership, of the romantic aspect. Yeah, that sounded innocent enough. He probably wouldn't question her motives, and if he did, she would just pass it off as curiosity.
The fact that she actually cared what he thought about her said something. She didn't care what anybody thought of her; she never had.
Lex knew how crazy it sounded to have a romantic interest in an alien - she was a rational minded woman, of course. But no one knew her quite like he did. No one understood her, but he came pretty damn close. No one made her feel like he did. Through all the time they'd spent together in the past few months, on his various visits to her planet, it had become even more clear. She sounded corny as hell, even to herself. She'd had boyfriends before, but never had she felt this strongly; like the God damn love bug bit her right in the heart.
She could go on all day... Laying there, in her bed, feeling content for the first time in a long time, another thought came to her, and it made her snort: Who knew it would take a seven-foot-something humanoid with dreadlocks and mandibles to make her swoon.
Wow.
✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧♡‧₊˚
AN: I do not own the Alien vs Predator franchise or any of it's characters. Karen is an OC made up by me. I also do not own the song 'Brighter Than the Sun' by Colbie Caillat.
part two
#alien vs predator#avp#scar x lex#scar#alexa woods#my work#my writing#mine**#my drabbles#yautja#predator#alien#alien boyfriend#scar is a jokester#interspecies romance#yautja fluff#hunterssm00n#ao3#fanfiction
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Alone, Chapter 14 - Eyes of the Father
Summary: On the farm, Clint spirals after the disappearance of Laura and the kids. In his grief he leaves Lacey and Tommy, and she turns to her brother for protection.
Length: 3.9 K
Characters: Lacey, Clint, Tommy, Terry (older brother), Steve, Natasha, Rhodey.
Warnings: Abandonment, Clint completely loses it. Natasha being shaken by Clint’s despair.
Author notes: Lacey’s brother makes his permanent entry into the story as he does have an important role in coming chapters.
<<Chapter 13
🚜 🏃
Lacey looked at the time and wondered why Bucky hadn't called yet. It had been three days since they argued and two days since he apologized, explaining how he had been dealing with a growing sense of dread. She thought for sure he would call when word came of the spacecraft appearing over New York that left taking a sorcerer and Iron Man with it. When he didn't call she wondered if he even knew. She called but there was no answer and she assumed he was out in the fields working.
At the farm Clint and Laura had set up a picnic table and everyone was out there except for Lacey and Tommy. He had fallen, scraped his knee and Lacey was performing first aid on him, Mom style. As she kissed his knee and sent him outside the TV showed a breaking news alert. Standing up she watched as the announcer reported that a strange phenomena was being noted all over the planet. People were disappearing into dust. There was no rhyme or reason to it either. Sometimes whole families disappeared and other times just one or two members. Going to the door she went to call Clint and Laura in to watch it. In the distance she could hear Clint calling for his wife and kids, almost hysterically.
"Oh no," she said, then in desperation she called her son. "Tommy! Where are you?"
"Here, Mom," he said from the side of the porch. "What's wrong with Uncle Clint?"
"Something bad has happened, honey," she said, picking him up. "I think it's happened to him as well. Clint!"
She called him several times before he finally came over, his face tear stained. "Where are they?" he asked, his voice choking. "They were here, then they were gone."
"It's happening everywhere," she replied. "I don't know why but people are disappearing everywhere. It's on TV."
He pushed past her to the living room and stood in front of the TV, watching the news coverage. It was unbelievable then finally there was word from someone in government and the announcement was officially made as the TV screen showed the Oval Office and a shaken Vice-President.
"Today, the Earth was attacked by an extraterrestrial being," said the Vice-President. "This being, Thanos, was behind an attack on New York yesterday, and Scotland last night. Today, his forces attacked the country of Wakanda and Thanos did the unspeakable. In an act of genocide, he somehow caused the death of a significant portion of Earth's population. Our own President and the First Lady were among the casualties. We are still trying to get in contact with people who were involved in the battle of Wakanda to find out exactly how this heinous act was committed. Our thoughts and prayers are with everyone who has lost a family member today. We grieve with you."
The Vice-President began to cry and the broadcast from the White House was stopped, replaced by somber music playing over nature scenes. Clint stood there, unmoving then grabbed his phone and began calling. He called Nick Fury and it went straight to voice mail. Then he tried Maria Hill, and several others. It was only when he tried Natasha that he got an answer.
"Nat?" he cried. "They're gone ... Laura, and the kids...they're gone, disappeared. What the hell happened?"
As Natasha tried to explain Clint became more and more upset then slammed his phone down, damaging it. He looked at Lacey with agony on his face.
"Vision is dead, the Mind Stone taken from him by Thanos," he said. "Wanda is gone. So is Sam, T'Challa, Shuri, and ...."
"Bucky ...," whispered Lacey. "He's gone, isn't he?"
He nodded and as Lacey began to cry he opened his arms and they held each other, crying loudly. Tommy sat quietly watching what was happening. Finally, Lacey stopped crying and blew her nose. She sat on the couch and motioned to Tommy to sit with her.
"A terrible thing has happened," she said, holding his hands. "A very bad man found a way to kill a lot of people all at once. He's killed Aunty Laura, Lila, Cooper and Nathaniel. He also killed your Dad. They're all gone, honey. They won't be coming back."
"Where did they go?" he asked, confused.
"I don't know, but they aren't here any more," said Lacey. "They're just gone."
"So I don't have a dad anymore?" asked Tommy. "We won't talk on the tablet?"
"No honey," said Lacey. "I'm sorry."
She looked up at Clint and she noticed something had changed in him. His face had hardened and there was something in his eyes that wasn't there before. Without a word he left the house and went towards the big barn. Carrying Tommy she followed him out there and saw him walk into his workshop. He scanned the tools and found what he was looking for, industrial cutters.
"What are you doing?" asked Lacey. "Won't that send a signal to them that you've cut them off?"
"Yep," replied Clint. "That's why I'm going to the edge of my perimeter to do it. I'll leave you the truck. I have a motorcycle."
"Clint, they'll arrest you," said Lacey. "Laura wouldn't want you to do this."
He glared at her. "I wore this happily when she was alive," he said. "Now that she and the kids are gone there is nothing keeping me here."
"What are you going to do?" she asked. "What about the farm?"
"I'm not going to sit here and mourn my family," he stated, walking out of the barn with the cutters. "You can have the farm. It means nothing to me now."
"You'll be leaving us unprotected," cried Lacey, grabbing his arm.
He stopped, breathing heavily. "Steve will protect you," he replied. "Agent Jones, if he made it through this will protect you. I can't stay. I'm sorry."
He went up to his room and Lacey could hear him packing a bag. Then he came out with a back pack and put the cutters into it.
"Don't leave," pleaded Lacey. "Please."
He touched her arm and looked at Tommy then turned away and left the house. As she watched from the porch he went into the garage, then came out a few minutes later on his motorbike. He slowed down briefly to look at them then sped up and disappeared from the property. Lacey slumped into a chair on the porch and began to cry. Tommy patted her arm trying to comfort her. She held him closely, crying with him for some time.
"Well, kiddo," she finally spoke. "Looks like we're on our own. Do you think you can run the farm with me?"
"Yeah," he said. "We can do it, Mom."
Lacey hugged him then grabbed her cell phone. She thought for a moment then took a breath and dialled a number, thankful she had asked Nick Fury for it some time before when the one he gave her at the funeral didn't work.
"Terry?" she said. "You're alive! Thank God. Is Nancy alright? Tommy and I are okay but the family we live with disappeared, except for the husband. He's had a breakdown and left. Did you mean what you said about protecting us? Would you live with us?" He spoke for a bit then Lacey's face dropped. "Bucky disappeared, in Wakanda. He was part of the battle against Thanos." Terry said some more and Lacey began to smile. "Okay. You call me at this number. Thank you, Terry. I didn't know who else to call." She looked at Tommy. "Your Uncle Terry may come to live with us. He has some things to deal with first then he'll call."
She looked at the second number and debated about whether to call him but she dialled it and when it went to voice mail she hung up. Agent Jones wasn't answering his phone and had possibly been one of the disappeared. Then she dialled Steve and waited for some time before hanging up as he wasn't answering. She took a deep breath and tried one more number. Just like Agent Jones this one went to voicemail and she wondered if Phil Coulson had also succumbed to Thanos' snap. Taking Tommy by the hand she went back into the house and tried different channels on the TV to see if they had anything different to say but it was all the same. Billions of people had just turned to dust and disappeared. She and Tommy were likely on their own.
One year later
"There's an aircraft approaching!" yelled Lacey's brother Terry as he stopped the tractor and jumped off.
Lacey came out of the barn where she and Tommy had just finished transferring the straw bales from where they had been dropped off outside the doors. She knew the farmer who sold them to her was short on help but it would have been nice if he had put them in the barn. Still, Tommy was strong enough to drag them in almost by himself. She looked up at the sky and smiled.
"It's a quinjet," she said. "Probably Steve. About time he showed up."
The aircraft landed about 100 yards away and she strode towards it, removing her gloves in the process. The ramp came down and it wasn't just Steve but also Natasha and another man she had never seen before. He had some sort of external bracing on his lower legs and she wondered if he had suffered an injury at some point.
"It's about time you showed up," she repeated for Steve's sake. "For a year you've been saying you'll come. I'm not angry, just disappointed it's taken you this long."
"I'm sorry," Steve apologized as he hugged her. "There's only a few of us now and it's hard to keep things going when we're spread so thin. This is Colonel James Rhodes, War Machine. Lacey Williams also known as Lacey Chapman."
"Rhodey is fine," said Rhodes extending his hand. "I thought it was time I met you and this little guy."
"This is Tommy," said Lacey. "That big guy coming in from the field is my brother Terry Williams. He lives here now."
"The football player?" asked Rhodes. "I didn't know you were related. What's with the two names?"
"Chapman is my pen name," replied Lacey. "It seemed easier and more secure to keep it when I first went into hiding. At least Nick Fury thought so." She looked at Natasha who was hanging back. "Hey Nat. I've had no word from him. It's like he's dropped off the face of the Earth."
Natasha looked at Lacey then at Steve and Rhodes. "That's partly why we're here," she replied. "We kind of have a lead on him. He's gone rogue."
"What do you mean?" asked Lacey, as her brother joined them. "Terry, this is Steve, Natasha and Rhodey, who's apparently a fan. What do you mean gone rogue?"
"Let's go in the house," said Steve. "Hey Tommy. Ready for a workout?"
"Sure, Uncle Steve," replied the boy. "I'm a lot stronger now. Uncle Terry set up a gym in the barn and we lift weights together."
"I don't overdo it," said Terry. "But it won't be long before he can out lift me. If I didn't see him doing it I wouldn't believe an almost 4 year old can do the things he does."
Together they walked to the house and Lacey put the coffee on, bringing out enough cups for everyone. She gave Tommy a juice box and asked him to watch TV for a bit while the grown ups talked. No one said anything as Lacey poured coffee for everyone. Terry brought out sugar and milk.
Steve took a deep breath. "When Clint left what did he take with him?" he asked.
"Industrial cutters, a back pack of clothes and his motorcycle," said Lacey. "Why?"
"Did you notice if he had a sword with him, like a samurai sword, except shorter?" asked Natasha.
"No, but it's possible he kept it in the barn where the motorcycle was," replied Lacey. "He may have carried it in a travelling case attached to the motor bike."
"Do you mind if I look?" asked Natasha. "I know where he kept his weapons in the barn."
"Go ahead," said Lacey.
Natasha left and went to the barn. Her face was grim. "You're going to have excuse Natasha," said Steve. "She hasn't heard anything from Clint and she's worried."
"What do you mean about him going rogue?" asked Lacey again.
Rhodes cleared his throat. "There's reports of a ronin, fully disguised, who's going after criminals," he said. "Not the run of the mill ones either. He's going after heads of drug cartels, mafia, Yakuza, anyone of them that survived the Snap. He uses a katana, a shorter version of a samurai sword. Clint knows how to use one."
"You don't think he's doing it, do you?" asked Lacey incredulously. "He's a family man, kind and a gentleman."
"Without his family," said Rhodes. "Angry that his loved ones are gone and these criminals still live."
They saw Natasha returning to the house and she looked downcast. "It's not there," she said. "He must have taken it."
She took a deep breath and Lacey could see she was shaken. Grasping Natasha's hand she squeezed it and was rewarded with a sad smile. As Natasha picked up her coffee cup Lacey could see her hands were shaking slightly.
"Are you going to try to stop him?" asked Lacey.
"So far, he's eluded us," said Natasha. "I know him better than anyone and even I can't find him. I just worry that he'll reach a point where he can't come back. I owe him so much and I can't even ...."
She began to cry and Lacey pulled her up, hugging her. Looking back at the men she took Natasha upstairs. Steve sighed then he looked at Terry.
"Thank you for coming out to stay with Lacey," he said to Terry. "Like I said we're spread so thin that none of us really can spare the time to be here with her and Tommy. Have there been any incidents?"
"Nothing," replied Terry. "That FBI agent that was supposed to check on her and Clint hasn't shown up so we assume he disappeared. Apparently, he's the only one who knew about the farm. Phil Coulson dropped by a couple of times but like you he couldn't stay as SHIELD is short staffed as well. We've heard nothing from Tony Stark."
"You likely won't," said Steve. "He still blames me for not supporting him. As if that would have stopped Thanos. How's Lacey holding up?"
"Okay mostly," he said. "She's working on her third book. I do hear her crying sometimes so I know she still misses Bucky. Did you know after he finished his treatment he was going to turn himself in so he could come back to the States? I guess Thanos interrupted that plan as well."
"He never told me," replied Steve, upset at hearing it now. "I'm not surprised he wanted to be here. He wanted to come back as soon as he found out about Tommy when he was still a baby. He wanted to make it right."
Terry nodded. "At least Lacey and I are close now," he said. "When I was still playing I was quite the asshole and she didn't want much to do with me. After I found out the danger she was in I offered to help and she called me after the Snap to move here. Best decision of my life. Tommy is an awesome kid. Even as strong as he is he doesn't show off or get angry and abuse it. He loved Bucky and I think he misses the relationship, even though it was over the tablet. He doesn't want to disappoint Lacey."
Steve looked at Tommy sitting in the living room and watching TV. "I'm going to do an assessment of his physical skills while I'm here," he said. "Since you're already monitoring him lifting weights it's probably a good idea for you to encourage him to be as physically active as possible. Running, jumping, parkour type activities. He should be fully capable of all of it."
"What about self defence?" asked Terry. "Tommy said you were teaching him to box but I know nothing about any type of fighting."
"There's a possibility he has a genetic memory of how to fight," said Steve. "I was a 98 pound weakling who got beaten up a lot before I took the serum. Once my body changed it was like it knew what to do all by itself. Bucky's change was from a different serum but Bruce Banner, a scientist and doctor, thinks it's possible he passed on the memory of how to fight to Tommy." He drained his coffee and looked over at Tommy. "Hey buddy, want to show me what you can do?"
Tommy turned around with a big smile on his face. Together he and Steve went outside and Steve ran up to the top of the barn parkour style, using the smaller outbuildings beside it to jump up. Tommy looked up at him and ran towards the first outbuilding, easily jumping on top then he continued on and pulled himself up to the top of the barn. They high fived each other and Steve jumped straight off down to the ground. Tommy followed him. Steve picked up one of the straw bales and carried it into the barn then stood in the doorway and watched Tommy as he lifted the edge of one then tried to lift it onto his shoulder. It's bulk was too much for him and he dragged it in instead.
"It's too big," he said to Steve. "Maybe when I'm bigger."
"Maybe," agreed Steve. "You've seen martial arts on movies, right? Do you think you can do what those guys do?"
"I haven't tried," said Tommy. "It would hurt Uncle Terry if I did."
"That's why I'm here," smiled Steve. "Go ahead, show me what you can do."
Terry and Rhodes watched from the porch as Tommy suddenly adopted a martial arts fighting stance and began attacking Steve. He was just as fast as Steve and landed several blows and kicks, getting past the bigger man's defences more than once.
"It's like he knows instinctively what to do," said Terry in a low voice. "He's only ever seen it on TV."
"He's definitely a super soldier," said Rhodes, impressed. "No wonder HYDRA tried to breed Barnes. He could have fathered a whole army of them."
"They tried to breed him?" asked Terry. "Lacey said he thought he was sterile and didn't believe that Tommy was his at first."
"He was because of all the chemicals they were pumping into him," said Rhodey. "Our guess is once he got away his body was able to detoxify itself. By the time he and your sister got together he wasn't sterile anymore. Of course, he didn't know that at the time."
"Have there been any encounters with HYDRA since the Snap?" asked Terry.
"The odd sighting of a known operative," replied Rhodes, "but nothing organized. They were probably hit as hard by the Snap as all of us."
Steve called a halt to Tommy's fighting and kneeled down to talk at eye level with the boy. "You can fight without even thinking of it, can't you?" he asked.
"It's like my hands and feet know what to do," said Tommy. "Does that mean I am a super soldier?"
"Looks like it, buddy," said Steve. "I know it's hard but you have to make sure no one sees you doing that except your Mom and Uncle Terry."
Tommy nodded in understanding. "I know," he sighed. "Can I be an Avenger when I grow up?"
Steve smiled and ruffled Tommy's hair. "If that's what you want to do," he replied. "Let's go for a run."
They set off running at an easy pace for them. To the men on the porch it looked like they took off at top speed. They came back about ten minutes later and Tommy's face was glowing. As he stepped up to the porch he looked at his uncle.
"Did you see me?" he asked.
"I did," replied Terry. "You're fast, much faster than I ever was. It must have felt good to run like that. I watched you fight as well. You looked like you were pretty good at it."
Tommy beamed and hugged his uncle. "Thanks, I'm going to tell Mom what I did," he said, entering the house.
Rhodes looked seriously at Steve. "So, the kid has the abilities," he stated. "What now?"
"He stays here," said Steve. "Even though you're here Terry, Tommy has more than enough physical ability to protect you and Lacey than you do. He could disable a normal human. I'm going to see if we can get a satellite in position to monitor the comings and goings on the farm. If anyone does try anything we have access to the sorcerers now and can get a portal here within seconds. I'll talk to Wong and see if he can also put a protection spell on the farm. Not that I'm expecting trouble. The world is still reeling from the Snap, friendlies and non-friendlies alike."
The sound of Tommy's voice drew their attention to inside the house where Lacey and Natasha were coming down the stairs with the boy. Natasha had been crying but she was smiling kindly at Tommy as he continued to tell the women what he and Steve did. When they got down to the bottom of the stairs she kneeled down to him and touched his cheek.
"You look after your Mom and Uncle, okay?" she said. "You're strong enough to keep them safe. Don't ever forget that."
"I won't," said Tommy, and he hugged Natasha hard.
She returned it just as hard and stood up with a deep breath. "Are we ready to go?" she asked briskly, then turned to Lacey. "I'll try to come more often. Thanks for the shoulder. Good luck with the book."
Lacey rubbed Natasha's arm and smiled grimly at her. "You're welcome," she said. "Don't be a stranger." She looked at Steve and Rhodes. "Both of you as well. You're always welcome here."
She hugged Steve and Natasha hard then looked at Rhodes. He gave her a small hug. Terry shook their hands. Together they all walked out to the quinjet. The three Avengers walked up the ramp and Steve took the controls. He waved at the three still standing together on the ground. Tommy waved back while the other two just raised their hand in farewell. Terry went back to the tractor while Lacey and Tommy watched the quinjet lift off and fly away. Then she put her hand out to Tommy and they walked hand in hand back to the barn to finish taking the straw bales in.
Chapter 15>>
Series masterlist
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#bucky barnes#bucky barnes fanfiction#buckybarnes original female character#steve rogers#natasha romanoff#james rhodes#clint barton#abandoment issues
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hi that alien oc sounds uhhhh wow 😍🥵 tell us more 🥺
i'm afraid i only have drawings of her from like 8 years ago, i'm only somewhat good at art now, you'd be better off not seeing art from when i was like 16/17.
now get ready for oc description and backstory hell, this is gonna get LONG
so, ehem, the story goes that that a corporation in the future of spacetime warping set out a planet-sized space station somewhere deep in space in the past, the past part isn't relevant unless you wanna bridge the gap with some other ocs.
out of this station, research vessels with colonies in the thousands depart and return almost immediately but in truth it's been hundreds of years for the crew, like the great-great-great-great-grandchildren of the crew return or something like that. i didn't iron out the details.
one research vessel, ΓΠΛ (gamma-pi-lambda), was tasked with the study of extraterrestrial life. many subjects were contained in its containment cells, filled with gas designed to keep them docile.
subject Ω-34, codename "stomacheache". was a 10ft tall species, humanoid in shape. she had pale green skin and long, pale pink hair. her face had 2 eyes narrow cat-like, white pupils with black irises. she had one nose and one mouth with pale pink/purple lips. her hair was full of snarling mouths and gazing eyes with similar narrow, white pupils but deep blue irises.
she had four arms, two connected at each of two conjoined elbows. her species do not have the organs for speech, they communicate through a sign language that requires 4 arms. despite this, she did only half 2 human-like legs. her most striking feature though, was on her torso, the reason for her codename, a long vertical mouth spanning her chest and stomache, from her collar to her hips. containing countless razor-sharp, white teeth and a single red, large, tentacle-like tongue. either side of this mouth were four large eyes (picture where her breasts are, now imagine she had 6 of those equally distributed down her torso, 3 on each side, but replace the lower 4 with huge eyes). the whites to these eyes were a vast black, they had large white irises, centred with 2 conjoined irises that resembled like cells partially separated (you ever seen the eyes of hermaeus mora from the elder scrolls? something like that).
(i made this girl when i was 16/17 like i said so she was purely sfw but feel free now to speculate on her alien penis if you don't just wanna get fucked by that tounge.)
now, i should mention. something bad happened. an event known as "the Ω-34 incident". the specifics are not really known as there wasn't really any time to find out. was there a fault with the chemical composition of the gas? did it have an unforseen side effect? does her species simply not have the same response after prolonged exposure? all i can say is that within moments, like a switch was flipped, she went from docile to extremely, extremely aggressive. violently so. a containment breach occured.
while the vessel was equipped with an emergency task force, ready to use lethal force to supress an incident like this, it turns out her skin was very... um.. bulletproof? in a matter of hours, all the other subjects were... lost. the thousands of crew members? reduced to one. and what did she get? she did lose half an arm (rear-left, up to the elbow) to an explosion, one eye in her hair is now all black, other than that, just some cuts and scrapes.
so who survived? well each subject had a biologist assigned to study them. a woman known as Pip was disregarded by her peers who were simply there to do their jobs and leave due to her passion for her work, fueled by her fascination for her assinged subject and her love for the wonder of the infinite possibilities of space. was pip the only one who could have averted disaster if only people had listened to her? perhaps. it doesn't matter anymore. what matters is that being the only one to know what this subject was capable of and how to calm her led to her survival... sort of... pip was mortally wounded. before her death, however, she managed to preserve her body. her consciousness is projected through the ship's hard-light hologram. though not truly there, she is able to live as long as the ship is able to support her as a three-dimensional image with physical properties aboard the ship, this advanced technology allows her use of all her senses and feelings and to communicate as if she were truly there. the only problem is the hologram system was partially damaged in the incident, so it's not able to project in colour.
many parts of the vessel were damaged infact. there is no way to contact the base, anyone outside they have no way to control the ship, it is stuck on its current trajectory, space is vast and empty though so it'll be a long time before it collides with something destructive.
until then all we have is a big empty ship. with one immortal woman tied to the ship and one alien woman who's killed thousands of people and probably has a long enough lifespan and enough supplies to outive the ship. a big empty, lonely ship with two women drifting near-eternally in space.
uh-oh besties, the biologist is taking care of the alien and helping her with coming to terms with all the people she killed (sorta subconciously, it's not like she wanted to kill people). uh-oh besties, in their eternal loneliness, they're finding comfort in each other. uh-oh besties, pip gave the alien a name, max, and developed a device that synthesises speech out of her thoughts allowing the two to talk to each other. uh-oh besties, the ship's holodeck is still functional and the two are able to live out artificial, homoerotic adventures together. uh oh besties, max does not know who long humans live and does not see in colour the same way as humans, she does not know pip is a hologram. uh-oh, besties there are drifting in space alone learning to love each other forever until things one day something happens and idk they're gonna burn up from drifting too near a star or hit a planet or something and pip will be left with a choice of letting max know the truth, that she was never really there and removing herself from stasis, allowing max to hold her dying body as the two die together or to let them die with max oblivious. who knows, it'll be hundreds of years probably.
oh god i forgot about these two. btw max is trans, i am not taking questions about this.
#saved#<-tagging this cause this is probably the longest and most solid thing i've written about their lore
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Apollo (Brooch)
I have been meaning to post more of my artwork here, so here's one:
July, 2020
Gibeon meteorite, sterling silver, stainless steel wire
54mm x 48mm x 5mm (HxWxD | Measured at the thickest point.)
Iron meteorites are hunks of metal which amble through space for billions of years. Sometimes, against all odds, these extraterrestrial objects will find their way to our small planet, where they will sit for millions of years until one of our own discovers them through chance.
If you cut one of these meteorites in half you will reveal an intricate lattice-work structure of two different nickel-like alloys. They call these “Widmanstätten Patterns”, and they are unique to every meteorite. (Meteorites are sort of like deadly cosmic snowflakes if you think about it.) These patterns are the product of phenomenal cosmic forces acting upon the metal as it aimlessly drifts through space for a truly unimaginable amount of time.
This brooch features a fraction of one such meteorite in the center of it that I cut, shaped, polished, and then etched to reveal its unique pattern. The formal aspect of this brooch was heavily inspired by the Voyager 2 space probe, as well as fictional interstellar objects depicted in retro-futuristic illustrations from the 1970s and 80s. The silhouette was designed to direct attention to the extraterrestrial centerpiece and signify space exploration through iconic design elements.
In the end, everything is made of stardust; some of it is just a long way from home.
#metalsmithing#jewelry#metalsmith#handmade#metalwork#meteorite#gibeon#space#nasa#brooch#art jewelry#wmvmetals
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Next in DCxTouRabu we have to talk about Clark. Because his sword is kinda important. His sword has a whole background character arc going on like he’s very important. Sayo’s off quietly to the side being Bruce’s lil bundle of vengeance personified and Kiyomitsu’s —Kiyomitsu is very important okay he’s like— he’s over there being Jason’s platonic FL-equivalent or something. And then there’s Clark’s sword. And Clark’s sword is Yagen.
SO FIRST OFF you know Yagen Toushirou if you know anything about tourabu. But if you don’t, don’t worry! The in-comic narrative (this doesn't actually exist) shows you Yagen’s arc when he shows up (retrieved from the enemy on an extraterrestrial mission, probably?). It gives you the five-second rundown on Yagen’s past. He’s a sword for battle. He assassinates people of not quite entirely his own free will. He’s fully understanding that some of his previous masters were bad people and that he was loyal to them and able to calmly coexist with both inside him.
He’s not someone worthy of such a pure and righteous mission such as Superman’s (“Nonsense!” Clark insists, because he doesn’t think he’s any more worthy of Superman’s mission himself). He’s not someone who’s able to protect or heal or comfort, hurting is all he’s ever known and all he’s ever been made of (“See, that right there tells me that you want to, and that definitely sets you apart because if you want to, you can do it.”). He stays by Clark’s side anyway, because there probably is something he can offer in terms of battle considering all the active threats (he diligently works in the farm, the horses love him even if Yagen doesn’t quite love them back, he tears through Clark’s old biology books and the new ones he brings back because sue him if his passion is medicine okay he wishes that could be what he was made of instead—)
Yagen’s slow character growth throughout the story starts from Clark giving him a chance to be what he wants to be instead of what his past has made him be — he wants to be a healer. He wants to be nurturing and protective and isn’t that just ironic? Also yes his glasses were given to him by Clark.
Yagen is the sword that makes swords a well-known aspect of the DC. Think multiverse back in the days that the JLA was only just going “We think a multiverse may exist?” Of course, Yagen does exist as a very confusing sword that hangs around the JLA tower and diligently heals people with the very ordinary power of very human medicinal knowledge. And then once in a while a major threat occurs and Superman picks up a tiny knife to go wipe out the battlefield alongside him. Or maybe Lois is about to do something stupid and Yagen will just be shadowing her down the street, a quiet preteen who’s been tasked with protecting Superman’s love and eventually wife.
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Essential Avengers: Avengers West Coast #54: THE TROUBLED EARTH
January, 1990
Wasp: "My stings are useless against the Mole Man's creature, Hank!"
Dr Pym: "Torch, help us!"
Robot Human Torch: "Don't worry, Dr Pym, the Avengers have only begun to fight!"
US Agent: "All of you, shut up and fight!"
Wonder Man: "The five of you can't do it alone! It's time for Wonder Man to take a hand!"
Iron Man: "It'll take more than rubble to keep Iron Man out of action!"
Hah.
Fantastic Four #1 homage.
With the Human Torch playing the role of the Human Torch.
And look at US Agent criticizing everyone else's performance when he's never around.
I guess the Avengers West Coast are fighting Mole Man for Acts of Vengeance. If the Avengers ever have, I don't really remember it.
Good job, Acts of Vengeance! Finally an Avengers matchup that hasn't happened yet!
Last times in Avengers West Coast: Everything keeps happening to Wanda so now she's catatonic. I don't blame her. She's had her husband disassembled and then put back together different. She's been stuffed with racism goo. Her children were eaten by a devil-worshipping Hollywood phony and then turned out to be devil chunks. And she keeps having to participate in bad event comics.
Also, a secret conspiracy of top villains and the Wizard have schemed a scheme but actually it's Definitely Loki's scheme to destroy the Avengers and other heroes by wearing them down fighting fights they don't usually fight.
Doom robots sank Avengers Island. The U-Foes attacked the Avengers West Coast Compound. Freedom Force Attacked Avengers Park (the original location of Avengers Mansion before it was moved to an island). And now the Avengers are being confronted with a rogue Fantastic Four homage.
Stuff just keeps happening.
For example, this.
Wonder Man and Iron Man happen to be flying above the city when this happens.
Actually, they're looking for the U-Foes from last time. So that plot line gets carried at least this far before the Avengers get side-tracked by giant monster attack.
Honestly, when a giant monster starts smashing things up, you do have to put some stuff on the backburner.
Iron Man flies up at the monster. Since knocking it over with repulsors could cause more damage, Iron Man instead zips underneath the monster and lifts it into the air.
Why, yes, the Iron Man armor can lift that much.
You're pretty cool, Iron Man.
Although, one hopes he's lifting by the stomach and not by the monster junk.
US Agent shows up, for once, and asks why Iron Man doesn't just kill the monster.
Iron Man: "That might be a trifle rash, don't you think? We've both read enough science fiction stories, I'm sure, to know this might be a confused alien... even an extraterrestrial child."
I legitimately like this moment. It's a good point to make.
And it's a good contrast between both Iron Man and US Agent and US Agent and the real Captain America.
Iron Man decides to dump the giant monster in the off-shore shallows. And he has to use his repulsors to quickly make a wall of sand to keep the resulting tidal wave from flooding the area.
Another good moment of thinking the situation through.
Meanwhile, Wonder Man has found the giant hole the monster clawed its way out of and decides to follow the tunnel to find its origin.
The robot Human Torch shows up to join him.
Wonder Man asks if he's okay from last issue, where he got irradiated pretty badly. But Jim Hammond repeats his claim from last issue that radiation doesn't do much to his robot body.
It's actually lucky that robot Human Torch showed up. Because it gets pretty dark pretty quickly as they fly down the giant tunnel.
While they go, Wonder Man muses on the differences between the Vision and the robot Human Torch. They're made out of similar stuff but Jim Hammond is so lifelike it's hard to believe that he's a robot man. While Vision always sounded so cold and robotic, even when his brain worked good.
Huh. In Byrne's grand new vision for, uh, Vision, I wonder why that is.
Arguably, Dr Horton was just better at programming brains than Ultron. Heck, in Vision's original backstory, that was true. Ultron had to bring in Professor Horton to work on the Human Torch body since Ultron wasn't up to snuff.
It's funny that Hank Pym will later become known as the god of robotics, for creating Ultron, which led to Vision and Jocasta and others. When Hank Pym's method "cheats" by using human brain patterns while back during World War II Professor Horton was just able to create a robot brain that behaves indistinguishably from a human.
Ain't it sad, Hank?
Anyway, once Wonder Man and Human Torch hit about a mile down, they start seeing beasties.
Who immediately start attacking.
Because Mole Man told them to.
Hi, Mole Man.
Meanwhile, above the Rocky Mountains, an Avengers quinjet on autopilot flies Dr Pym, Wasp, and Scarlet Witch back to the west to rejoin the rest of the team.
Annnnnnd.
Scarlet Witch is catatonic again.
She came out of it in West Coast Avengers #53 when Dr Pym lied that Vision was in danger. And she was fine(ish) during Avengers #312. But after they left Vision behind in New York, Wanda just went catatonic again.
I WONDER WHAT THE COMMON CONNECTION IS?
Anyway.
Unpacking what's wrong with Wanda has to wait.
The Quinjet just got into a traffic accident.
Geez. They lose so many Quinjets.
Tricephalous really just appears out of nowhere. The autopilot tries to dodge but the Quinjet still gets clipped by the back toes of the giant beastie.
And by clipped I mean half of the Quinjet gets sheared off.
Geez.
I sorta wonder how Tricephalous knew to find them out here. It's not like the Giganto Iron Man just dumped into the sea knew where the Avengers were specifically. It just emerged into the city and started smashing stuff.
That's a huge difference from a flying monster intercepting the Avengers' exact flight plan in miles of open air.
And if it wasn't intentional, what was Tricephalous doing all the way out there?
Hopefully questions to be answered later.
The Quinjet crashes because that's what happens when it loses its top half.
Dr Pym tells Wasp he'll shrink Wanda so Wasp can carry her to safety. But Hank can't safely shrink anymore so he's planning on dying, I guess.
But then the Quinjet gently floats above the ground instead of impacting in a giant explosion.
Hank speculates some kind of magnetic field just. Set the Quinjet down.
He's not going to question it.
HE SHOULD BUT HE'S NOT GOING TO RIGHT NOW.
BIGGER PROBLEMS TO DEAL WITH.
Dr Pym: "Quick! Take Wanda! Get her to cover! There's one last chance we may have against this monster!"
Wasp: "Hank... What are you going to do...??"
Dr Pym: "Don't ask questions, Janet. And for god's sake don't distract me!"
Sigh.
Remember how I complained that Wasp, a veteran Avenger and proven leader in her own right, has been jammed back into the role of Hank Pym's sidekick?
Anyway.
Hank shrinks Tricephalous.
Just makes him a tiny li'l monster.
With that taken care of, Hank instructs Wasps to go over to a ranger station they can spot about a mile away and arrange transport.
Meanwhile, Magneto lurks in the woods.
Because, duh. Was it going to be anyone else once the Quinjet was gently set down with magnets?
Magneto muses that his daughter and Dr Pym will be perfectly safe in Magneto's care.
I don't know whether that means he's going to magnet them away someplace or whether he's just magnetically keeping bears away.
How did Magneto know to be here?
Magneto also thinks he's the true mastermind of Acts of Vengeance, just like how every one of the top villains and Wizard think they're the mastermind but really Definitely Loki is the real mastermind.
Meanwhile, back underground in California, Wonder Man asks why the heck is Mole Man hassling the Avengers. Doesn't he usually just bother the Fantastic Four?
Look, just because we have a Human Torch and almost hired the Thing once and just because Mr Fantastic and Invisible Woman were Avengers once doesn't mean we are the Fantastic Four!
Is what Wonder Man would have said if he were cool.
But it's none of those things. Mole Man is mad because Wonder Man and Iron Man attacked Monster Island!
Mole Man: "I had returned once again to my former home, seeking peace in this troubled world. But you so-called superheroes were not about to let me find the tranquility I craved. Miraculously, I survived your assault. I chose, then, to strike back with the mightiest creatures of my subterranean realm. With Giganto, the largest creature ever to walk the land. With the flying Tricephalous, dispatched to attack your comrades in the east."
Okay. So Tricephalous was just flying cross-country to attack the East Coast Avengers and happened to cross paths with Hank, Wasp, and Wanda.
And then they happened to crash near Magneto.
Pretty contrived.
Jim Hammond, robot Human Torch speaks up to vouch that the Avengers definitely haven't attacked Monster Island.
Humorously, this whole time Mole Man was assuming he was Johnny Storm until Jim spoke up and didn't sound like him. Now he's thinking its a weird, not very good imposter. But he doesn't particularly care either.
Back above ground, Giganto starts walking back towards the beach.
Iron Man tries to think of a new plan while US Agent ignores Iron Man's request that he show some restraint.
So US Agent wheels around his sky-cycle and then hits the accelerator to blast the Giganto in the eye with the rocket exhaust. Then he wheels back around and flares the engine again to do the monster a startle.
While narrating everything he's doing just so we know what it is.
Very kind of you, US Agent, talking to no one.
Then the monster smacks him out of the air and it is
So
CATHARTIC.
I'm sad that Iron Man saves him from plummeting to his death. But Iron Man is a nice guy like that.
US Agent: "Ugnn! Didn't even see it start to move! How..."
Iron Man: "I'll make you a deal, Agent. If you don't say 'how can anything so big be so fast'... I won't say, 'I told you so!'"
Ha.
Meanwhile, underground.
Wonder Man and the robot Human Torch have been fighting Mole Man's smaller monsters for a while. Long enough that Wonder Man's costume gets torn in that leading man way.
You know, to show off his chest but still over one shoulder like he's Tarzan.
But now Wonder Man decides "enough is too much!" and declares that the Avengers had nothing to do with the attack on Monster Island and to prove it, he's going to let Mole Man murder him!
He's really just going to stand still, not defend himself at all, and let Mole Man do whatever.
And this will prove he doesn't mean Mole Man any harm, right?
Although after blasting Wonder Man repeatedly, Mole Man stops. Why would the guy take so much punishment if he's not telling the truth?
He doesn't necessarily believe Wonder Man but there's a shred of doubt now that someone is playing him for a fool. And he doesn't like that.
So Mole Man blows a whistle and up top the Giganto retreats back to the ocean like Godzilla.
Iron Man is able to detect the signal with his fancy suit sensors and figures big guy has been called home.
So he drops US Agent into the ocean so can follow the Giganto under the water and sees a giant hole where the guy must have burrowed back underground.
Well, that solves that.
Later, back at the Avengers West Coast Compound, the Avengers listen to a news report about Congress debating a super powers registration act with one ear while also discussing the happenings with Captain America with the other.
Hank has looked at all the supposed isolated incidents plaguing superheroes and connected the dots.
Someone is out to destroy the Avengers.
There have been attacks on other heroes but those attacks have been less organized compared to the ones on the Avengers which seem to keep targeting their headquarters.
The attack that sank Avengers Island, the U-Foes attack on the Avengers West Coast Mansion, the attack on Avengers Park (although that one wasn't actually part of the conspiracy so never mind).
Dun dun dun!
I mean, we already knew this but I'm glad the Avengers have caught up to the audience.
Next time, Avengers #313, where the conspiracy starts to unravel with barely any effort from the Avengers.
Follow @essential-avengers for more words arranged in sentences and paragraphs that talk about Avengers and Avengers but in California. Like and reblog maybe.
#avengers#essential avengers#west coast avengers#Acts of Vengeance#Mole Man#and his monsters#hank pym#dr pym#US Agent#iron man#wonder man#robot Human Torch#the Wasp#Scarlet Witch#Captain America#Quasar#but only really cameos for those two
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Oh snap so what’s your favorite meteorite??? Both type and specific rock! ;)
I have a soft spot for Iron meteorites, cause they're the ones I did my PhD on. I love a good Widmanstatten pattern.
Iron meteorites come from the core of (destroyed) differentiated extraterrestrial planetary bodies. They're called Iron meteorites but are actually an alloy of Iron and Nickel. The amount of Nickel dictates the mineral phase: kamacite is poor in Ni, taenite is richer. The co-existence of both phases will create the Widmanstatten pattern.
(source)
Pallasites are quite lovely too.
(source)
Pallasite are thought to come from the boundary between the core and the mantle of differentiated extraterrestrial bodies. the Iron-Nickel metal part comes from the core, while the big olivine crystals come from the mantle.
Fun fact: meteorites are the only way we know what the Earth's core and core/mantle boundaries are made of, cause it's actually easier to get a rock from far away in the Solar System than dig 3000 km into the ground.
I don't have a specific rock that. There's the ones I've studied, like Copiapo or Mont Dieu. There's the famous ones among cosmochemists: Canyon Diablo, Murchison, Allende, etc...
(Meteorites are named after the place they're found at. If it's a desert, they get a matricule. ex: NWA + number. NWA = North West Africa, for all the ones found in the Sahara desert)
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For the @friendly-neighborhood-exchange and @iron-mum! I hope you enjoy this fic and I wish you a Merry Christmas!
Relationships: Peter Parker & Tony Stark, Pepper Potts/Tony Stark, May Parker (Spider-Man) & Peter Parker & Tony Stark
Characters: Tony Stark, Peter Parker, May Parker (Spider-Man), Happy Hogan, Dummy (Iron Man movies), You (Iron Man movies), Friday (Marvel), Karen (Spider-Man: Homecoming), Pepper Potts, Other Character Tags to Be Added
Warnings: Swearing
Ao3 link
"H'y Kar'n." Peter paused, taking a moment to swallow the bite he'd taken out of his sandwich. "Can you crank up the heat a little? It's getting chilly up here."
"Of course, Peter." Not even seconds later after she said that, there was a low sizzling and Peter leaned back into the suspended hammock he'd strung up earlier, basking in the warmth.
It was times like this when he really appreciated Mr. Stark's suit. Especially now that it was the middle of December and temperatures were way colder than they had any right to be.
Peter was pretty sure if he had been wearing his old suit — and no it wasn't a onesie. Stop calling it that, Mr. Stark — he would've probably gone from Spider-Man, and this was in May's words, to 'Spider-Popsicle'.
Which was something Peter found a little ridiculous since it hasn't even started snowing yet.
He would've been fine.
Well, he wouldn't have gone into a coma like last year when he was waiting for Mr. Stark to fix his usual suit after the wiring got damaged in the fire and he was stuck with his old one.
Maybe.
Peter groaned and threw his arm over his eyes, cursing his stupid spider DNA. Why couldn't he just have gotten the cool powers without basically having snow as his kryptonite?
Was that too much to ask of the universe?
"Peter, there's a police report of a bank robbery two blocks down from us."
"Wait, really?" Peter perked up at that and lifted his arm; all thoughts on spiders and the overprotective adults in his life flying out of the window.
"Yes, there are reports of six armed individuals holding several hostages in the building." Karen paused. "They appear to be possessing extraterrestrial firearms."
"Wait, extraterrestrial?" Peter froze, his outstretched wrist hovering mid-air from where he aimed it. "As in alien?"
"It appears so." That was the last thing that Peter expected to hear today. Especially since Toomes had been in jail for the better half of this last year. It couldn't have been him that sold these.
So it wasn't him, that meant it had to be someone else that sold these weapons…
"Should I contact Tony Stark?"
Peter blinked. "Uh, no. No." He shook his head. "You don't need to do that, Karen. I'll be fine."
At this point, he'd gotten very much used to Karen suggesting to call Mr. Stark. He had a sneaking suspicion that she'd been programmed to do that but decided to not question it. It was nice to know help was there if he needed it.
"Are you sure, Peter?"
"Yeah, besides what's the worst that could happen?" Peter paused only for a moment. "Hey Karen, do you think Mr. Stark would like an early Christmas gift?"
"While I can't speak personally, I believe he'd appreciate it. May I ask why?"
Peter grinned. "Send Mr. Stark a message that I'll be swinging by to drop off a present."
Tony had been having a pretty good morning if he had to say so himself.
For once, he actually got in a full night of sleep. And no; he didn't mean his usual two hour power catnap that came with ditching the other five in the lab way.
This time, he clocked in all seven hours and was energized in a way that he hadn't felt since forever.
Hell, even the cheese burgers and coffee he had ordered had tasted better than it had in ages. It felt as if nothing could ruin this day. Not even one of those dreary meetings that Pepper had set up for him seemed to dampen his mood.
That was until he got a message from Peter.
Tony didn't want to think the worst of the kid.
But goddamn, Peter made it hard. The newly-sprouted grey hairs on his head - that certainly weren't there before the kid practically bulldozed into his life like a bull in a China shop - were enough evidence of that.
So when he got the notification from the kid's suit about Peter dropping off a 'present', all sorts of possibilities immediately started whirling through his mind.
With the kid involved, that 'present' could range from a 'minor' stab wound to being shot or even impaled.
Tony tried not to think about those 'worst-case' scenarios as he glanced at the workshop's window. It was the one of kid's favorite spots to crawl through when he popped in for lab days after patrol.
The kid had to be fine. If he wasn't, Tony would've already known from the suit which was programmed to send out an automatic distress signal if something had gone wrong.
This time around, he'd even made sure to put extra encryption so that the heart-attack-inducing kid wouldn't be able to hack into it again with his grubby fingers.
Unless the kid somehow managed to bypass the codes again and was bleeding out somewhere without Tony knowing. Too far away to call for any help.
Alone. Cold. Hurt and -
"Hey, Mr. Stark!"
"Holy shit!" Tony jumped, the soldering iron that he'd been holding clattering onto the metal table below as he whirled around to where the offending voice had come from.
"No, just me." The kid's head popped through the window, and even through the window, and even with the damn mask on, Tony could practically see the grin from where he was standing
The little shit.
"Oh, hey, kid." Tony crossed his arms, watching Peter as he crawled through the window. The kid seemed fine, his movements didn't seem jerky, there wasn't any visible blood that he could see and -
"What the fuck is that?" Tony knew what it was. He recognized it as soon as the kid landed on his feet and turned to face him but still.
"Uh." The kid shrugged as if the glowing alien weapon wrapped up in his arms wasn't a big deal. It was comically picture perfect to the whole damn turtle fiasco from a few months ago. "Merry Christmas?"
"Where the hell did you get that thing?"
"I found it on patrol." The kid answered like it explained everything and Tony stared.
So much for a good morning.
"What are we going to do with it?"
"We're not going to do anything." Tony leveled a glare with Peter. "I'm going to take this Happy and have him deal with it the way he wants to and you're going up to your room."
He should've known that with Peter, it wasn't going to ever be that easy.
"Why do I have to go to my room?" The kid looked awkward but determined as jutted his chin up and shifted on his feet the same way he always did when he didn't agree with Tony.
In a way, it reminded Tony of May whenever they would get into an argument. Which didn't happen a lot even after finding out about Peter's alter-ego.
"I didn't even get hurt this time and technically, I got the weapons here. Finder's keepers."
Kids these days and their damn loopholes.
Tony scowled. "One, because I said so and two, I know for a fact that you have one of those fancy language quizzes tomorrow. May called me earlier to make sure that you study for it if you swung by."
"Wait, you talk to my aunt?"
"Just give me the weapon."
"But—"
"No." Tony shook his head. "Kid, I value my life. I'm not going to risk it with your scary aunt."
Tony wasn't exaggerating there. May was terrifying in her own right. He'd been there to witness how May transformed from Peter’s usual sweet aunt into a pissed off mother bear who’d tear his head off if it meant protecting her cub.
He wasn't going to go through it again.
"Please?" Goddammit. The kid was on the verge of pulling out the big guns; those damn puppy eyes that made even the coldest of men melt into a warm puddle of goo. Tony knew if he didn't get this finished quick, it was going to be game over.
"Come on, Pete." He was on the verge of begging the kid to throw him a bone. A small chance. He could feel himself crumbling, just as he had with the turtle. "Just hand it over. I promise later after you've finished studying, we can blow up some other stuff here in the lab."
The kid didn't miss a beat. "Can we work on it for five minutes, please?"
And there they were. Those puppy-dog eyes that not even Tony on one of his best days he could say no to.
His mouth dried as he stared at the kid, who was clutching the weapon against his chest. Like it was a stuffed animal rather than something capable of massive destruction.
He groaned, throwing his hands up, finally waving the white flag of defeat. "Fine! But if your aunt asks, say that you were doing boring non-dangerous shit."
The kid grinned, all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed as if he didn't con Tony into risking his life on the line. "Thanks, Mr. Stark! You're the best!"
"Uh-huh." Tony waved Peter off. "You better remember that next time when you're grounded."
The kid giggled and Tony rolled his eyes as he turned back to the table and picked up the soldering iron that he'd dropped before.
He faced the kid again, gesturing to the table behind him. "Okay, gently, place here. We don't want to accidentally blow that thing up. For all that we could know, just sneezing the wrong way could make it go off."
Tony took a small step back, making room for the kid but keeping an eye on the weapon as Peter moved past him.
Once it was on the table and he was satisfied that it didn't look like it was going to blow up anytime soon, he felt the tension in his shoulders loosen.
"Alright." Tony tore his eyes from the weapon. It was fine. Nothing bad had happened. They were fine. Peter was fine. "Alright, I'm going to get a few tools."
He paused, giving Peter a pointed stare. "Do not touch that thing while I'm gone."
"Yeah, mom." The kid snarked back. "I'll be fine, don't worry. What's the worst that could happen?"
"Famous last words," Tony grumbled under his breath, stalking away and passing Dum-E on the way. He pointed a stern finger at the bot, who had for the past hour been trying to find the screwdriver that Tony 'lost', and asked the bot to find. "Don't let the kid get into any trouble, you hear? If he does, I'll be donating your parts to MIT."
The bot whirled at that and Tony shook his head. However, he'd barely taken another step when it all happened at once.
He felt the blast of heat hit his back before even hearing it. He was blown forwards, his insides feeling as if they were ricocheting against his skeleton as he hit the ground.
And just like that, as quickly as it had started, it was over.
Everything was silent as Tony pushed himself up, having been blown forward hard enough to have lost his balance in chaos.
It was quiet. Way too quiet. Even straining past his ringing ears, Tony couldn't hear anything. All he could hear was his thundering heart beating against his chest.
Oh God. Peter.
"Kid!"
Tony scrambled to his feet, whirling around to where the kid was, his heart in his throat at the cloud of smoke covering the whole lab.
"Pete!" He ran, a million possibilities running through his head. Distantly, he heard the lab sprinklers turn on but paid little to no attention to them. "Buddy, you there?"
He didn't get any reply and Tony was almost scared as he came to a stop where the kid should've been. Where he left him with that damn weapon. He should've known better, shouldn't have turned his back and now Peter was -
That was when Tony heard it. The smallest of coughes but it was enough to jumpstart his heart faster than a V8 roaring to life, but something stopped him from running forward.
Terror gripped Tony so that he stayed rooted in place as it overwhelmed him. Fearing that he'd just heard the kid's final breathes.
"Kid?" Tony took a hesitant step forward, almost too scared to peer through the smoke and -
He blinked once. Twice. And then a few more times because there wasn't the burnt-to-a-crisp corpse or pile of ash that he'd conjured up from the darkest depths of his worst fears.
No, no, no. It wasn't that but rather, there was a baby.
A baby, who barely reached to Tony's knee and was waist deep in the Spider-Man suit with hair soaking wet from the sprinklers. It was rubbing its eyes, letting out the smallest of coughs and whinning, its little chest heaving with the action.
Tony stared. He was a genius. He could put two and two, together. Heck, he could do even more than that.
That didn't stop him from freaking the fuck out.
This had to be some sick part of his imagination or he'd finally gone crazy from the blast hitting the back of his head too hard. Because there was no way that this was possible.
Still, Tony swallowed and opened his mouth. "Kid?"
If it wasn't possible for Tony's heart to beat faster than it had before, it certainly was now. The baby tensed at Tony's voice, its head turning up to him, blinking up at him with those oh-so-familiar brown eyes. "Mr. St'k?"
It was muffled, choppy, and barely coherent but it was enough. The final nail in the coffin. It confirmed everything. Any sliver of hope that Tony had that the baby in the middle of his lab wasn't who he thought it was, vanished with that single word.
"Oh God." Tony stumbled back, gripping onto the table nearest to him to stop his legs from giving out from under him.
He stared at the very small and fragile baby a few feet in front of him while his heart throbbed in his chest. It felt ready to jump out from his throat and throw itself out of the nearest emergency exit.
"Shit, Pete." Tony closed his eyes and shook his head, letting out a small giddy laugh that felt as if it quaked his heart with it. "You're a baby."
And May is going to kill me.
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