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alastorswifee · 2 years

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Bitch i need you to write something for me 😩🤝 DESPERATE RNNN IM IN NEED FOR MORE LEO X READER CONTENT

Okay so Rise! Leo, the teetlez plus reader meets their 2k12 counterparts

And 2k12! Leo kinda likes reader and even subtly flirts with her, her being oblivious and Rise! Leo gets really jealous 😫

Stfu you nagged me everyday for this😭😭 you owe me! @kitomon

When the boys speak, the 2012!turtles’ dialogue will be in bold whereas the rise!turtles’ dialogue won’t be. I will also be referring to the 2012!turtles by their full names.

Rise!turtles: Leo, Donnie, Mikey, Raph

2012!turtles: Leonardo, Donatello, Michelangelo, Raphael

Then during the phone call you told me to mention Mel(my oc)for comedic purposes so sure. And yes I was rushing this stfu😟

Leo smirked smugly as he lifted his sword above his head with both hands “you guys gotta trust me, I got this! Haaaa chi! Ma chi!” He announces to which everyone widened their eyes “NONONON-“ before we knew it, a portal had opened right below our feet which we immediately fell through including Leo.

You all let out a synchronized ‘oof’ sound as you all fell onto the floor or onto each other “you’ve gotta stop doing that you know” you slightly glared at Leo who quickly got back onto his feet again. “Oh cmon we got where we needed to be” Leo proudly smirked, Mikey rubbing his arm and looking around “this isn’t the underground city..” he mumbles to which everyone started to slowly look around the alleyway. “Looks like we’re in an alleyway, let’s get up top” Raph quickly suggests to which everyone nodded, each climbing up one by one.

As you all got to the rooftop and looked around, something didn’t feel right. “We’re in New York” you simply stated to which Donnie placed a hand on his chin “you’re right but..something’s off..” he mutters to which everyone kinda nodded in agreement, Leo shrugging “nothing’s off, we’re probably in a part of New York we haven’t been in before” he tried to defend himself to which everyone gave him a doubtful look. You sighed and rubbed your temples gently as you tried to think about where here was. “Uh guys..” Mikey suddenly piped up “do you have a feeling we’re being watched?” He quickly stayed close to the others. Raph perked up a bit and looked around “I think so..” he paused for a bit and carefully reached for his weapons “who’s there?” He called “show yourself!” You sighed “we just got here and now we’re attracting attention..” you mutter quietly to which Leo chuckles “don’t overreact, it can’t be anything bad”

That was until four figures jumped down onto the same rooftop as us, our eyes suddenly bulged out of our eyes upon seeing who were standing infront us.

The first twirled his twin katanas with such ease between his fingers, skillful yet careful.

The second pulled his sais out and twirled them a bit before getting into a menacing fighting stance.

The third twirled his bowstaff around his body before pointing it at us with a harsh glare.

The last one was..eating pizza? Oh nevermind he got his nunchucks out.

You couldn’t believe your eyes, there were four more teenage mutant ninja turtles?! You could tell you five weren’t the only shocked ones as these new four faltered a little before slowly giving a confused look. “Who are you.” The blue masked turtle asked but before anyone could do anything, Leo stepped forward and looked down at the shorter blue clad turtle “my question goes to you as well bud, who are YOU?” Your eyes slightly widened as you stared at both turtles who were basically giving each other a stare down. “Did we jump dimensions?” You heard donnie speak up from next to you, tapping away at his wrist band. This peaked the interest of the..other donnie who looked much different from the donnie you knew. Now that you’re looking at them, they were all different.

Your Leo had his signature markings on his face and arms meanwhile the other blue clad turtle didn’t have those markings.

Your Donnie didn’t have a gap tooth and used tech, your donnie also has his shell protector meanwhile the other purple clad turtle didn’t.

Your Mikey had his markings, stickers and cute matching gear meanwhile the other orange clad turtle had cute freckles.

Your Raph was much much larger than the other red clad turtle and they both gave off a different vibe. The much shorter and smaller red clad turtle gave an intimidating aura meanwhile your raph gave a welcoming aura.

Were their personalities different as well or is it just appearances?

“Well I opened a portal with my sword here and-“ “he opened a portal to a different dimension..fascinating..” Donnie interrupted Leo which resulted in Leo side eyeing the genius a bit. You watched as the other four turtles looked at each other in a bit of shock, curiosity and confusion. They slowly put their weapons away and the blue clad turtle stepped forward “my name is Leonardo Hamato, these are my brothers..Donatello, Raphael and Michelangelo” he would introduce which caused you and your turtles’ jaws to drop in shock..Donnie’s eyes sparkling in amazement at the fact that you all jumped dimensions. “Wait wait..you’re me..” your Leo would mutter out and look at..Leonardo in utter shock “I would assume I am.”

You had to think, if there were other versions of the boys does that mean there’s another version of you? Now that you need to know about.

Leonardo would slowly look at you and he would take a minute to pause and examine you “i figured what these guys’ names would be but..what’s your name?” He smiles a bit at you to which you couldn’t help but smile back at him “Y/N..L/N.” Leonardo would nod “nice to meet you..let’s get to the lair, being up here for too long might attract trouble” Raphael would raise an eyebrow bone “might he says” he slightly had a mocking tone to his voice, causing Leonardo to slightly grumble under his breath. Without much of a choice, you and your turtles followed these other turtles to the sewers.

As you walked through the sewers with now eight turtles, you listened to them all chat with each other and try to understand each other. Apparently in this dimension, Leonardo is the leader and he’s much different from the Leo you knew. Donatello was extremely impressed by your Donnie’s tech and even asked what alien tech was used to build it which confused both you and your Donnie. Both Mikey’s got along just fine, they weren’t that different compared to the others but this dimension’s mikey seemed almost..a bit not so smart? Raph was completely different, one was soft and kind meanwhile the other was tough and rude. This would take a lot of getting used to but when it comes to their names, it’s making your head spin.

As you all got to the lair, you and the guys admired it all as it was different from the lair you knew but it was definitely cozy and nice.

“Make yourselves at home” Leonardo left the room and walked into another leaving you to question where he had gone. As the turtles dispersed and tried to get comfortable or speak with each other you sat on a beanbag chair and felt your pockets for your phone. You didn’t have it..crap. You looked at the tv and tilted your head a bit..well might as well pass the time with space..heroes? “Space heroes? Is that like Jupiter Jim in your dimension?” You heard leo excitedly ask Michelangelo to which he grinned “Jupiter Jim? Dude what’s that?” You couldn’t help but grin as Leo gasped rather dramatically “it’s only THE BEST show in the entire galaxy!” You laugh softly at your best friend’s sudden burst of energy.

Leonardo would soon walk up to you and scratch the back of his neck a bit “hey..would you like to have some tea with me?” You would turn your head to him and smile softly “sure” you would respond to which he would gesture for you to follow him into the kitchen as he started walking. You did so and sat on a seat, not really knowing what to say or do as you watched Leonardo put the kettle of water on the stove to heat up. “So..y/n” you heard the blue clad turtle speak up to which you looked up from staring at the counter “yes?” You played with your fingers. “I talked to master splinter and he said you are all welcomed into our home until you find a way back” he informed you as he turned and leaned back against the counter. You nodded and smiled a bit “thank you, I appreciate the hospitality tho I think Leo can most likely take us back..he probably wants to know more about this place before he leaves” you let out a soft giggle at the thought. As you didn’t hear a response, you looked up only for your eyes to lock with Leonardo’s. “Leonardo?” You called out in a soft tone, tilting your head a bit to which the turtle blinked a few times before snapping back to reality. “Is something the matter?” You asked in a slightly worried tone to which he blushed a bit from get caught staring at you “oh uh no no it’s just..” he took a moment, almost debating with himself before he spoke up once more “you’re just..really beautiful is all”

This caught you off guard which sent you in a flustered frenzy, your cheeks blazing to life into a bright red tint. Leonardo widens his eyes “I’m so sorry did I make you uncomfortable?” He slightly panicked to which you shyly shook your head meaning ‘no’ and looking down at the counter causing your hair to fall forward and block your face. You took a deep breath and worked up some courage before looking up at him with a slight grin on your lips “thank you..” you mumble to which he matched your grin “of course..” he mumbles in an almost in-love like tone, both of you looking at each other with soft eyes. You both broke the almost love like staring contest when the kettle whistled to life making you both jump a bit, you both letting out a soft laugh. Leonardo would turn around and start making the tea, you resting your elbow on the counter and your chin on your palm as you watched him work on the drinks. Unbeknownst to both of you, Leo was standing outside the kitchen with his fists slightly clenched. Were you two seriously flirting? No no maybe his other self was just being polite..he is right, you’re beautiful.

Leo was about to shake it off and walk away but he couldn’t help but turn around and peak into the kitchen area. There you and Leonardo sat opposite each other, waiting for the tea to cool down. You both talked and rambled on and on, he’s glad you’re getting along with this dimension’s version of himself but he can’t help but feel a deep pain inside from seeing the interaction. Leonardo would slightly slide his hand forward and his fingers would touch the tip of your fingers “do you think..there’s a version of you here?..” he would question to which you tilted your head a bit “most likely..there should be” you responded. Leo raises his eyebrow bones and clenched his teeth a bit “there’s no way he’s not flirting..” he would mumble under his breath. At least both Leos had a certain something in common when it comes to y/n, their crushes on her. He really can’t blame him but he wants to storm into the kitchen so badly and give him the what for.

“Well not all dimensions work the same way” you would smile a bit and blew your tea before taking a sip, Leonardo nodding “that explains why I haven’t met my dimension’s version of you yet” he chuckles and lifts his own cup to his lips. You suddenly paused upon hearing footsteps, looking up to see your Leo walking into the kitchen. “Oh Leo hi!” You greet him happily to which he grinned wide and sat next to you “what’re we talking about?” He asked as if he wasn’t ease dropping on you two for a bit now. “Nothing really, just trying to pass time” Leonardo would respond and sip his tea again, Leo nodding slowly before turning his attention to you. He was mentally debating on what to say to you, he wanted to subtly flirt with you as well. “You look really pretty..” he mumbles, Leonardo raising his eyebrows in surprise at the sudden compliment. “Hm? What was that Leo?” You would lower the tea cup and turn your head to him, a wave of nervousness sudden washing over Leo “uh- I said you look shitty!” The tension suddenly rose causing Leo to mentally swear at himself, a cringe visible on his face.

You clearly weren’t happy with what you heard, you slowly stood up and starting walking away from both blue clad turtles “gee thanks, I’m gonna go see what Mikey’s up to..” you muttered and left. Leonardo turned to Leo and looked at him in disbelief “what was that?” “What do you mean?” Leonardo rubbed his temples “was that supposed to be you flirting?..” he questioned his other self to which Leo would cringe a bit more “maybe..” he muttered. Leonardo blinked in surprise at the other “how long have you liked her for?..” this caused Leo’s eyes to shoot wide open “like her? Psh I don’t like her-“ “real smooth, you’re bad at hiding it” Leonardo interrupted him.

Was it really that obvious? He thought he was great at hiding it..did y/n notice? Did everyone else notice?

“Is it that easy to notice?” Leo mumbles in a slightly shameful tone, Leonardo chuckling “very yeah” he slid another cup to his other self and poured him some tea “now what’s your answer to my question?” “What question?” “How long have you liked y/n.” Oh..

“I’ve liked her not too long after I met her and that’s like..a year ago” Leonardo blinked in surprise at the information he was being told..a YEAR? “That long? Have you two not confessed or flirted with each other once?” As Leonardo said this, both Donnie’s walked into the kitchen. “What’s up?” Donatello would ask as he leaned against the counter, Donnie standing not too far away from him. “My other self here likes y/n but he’s really bad at flirting with her” Leonardo lets out a bit of a chuckle “I am not!” Leo would retort. “Actually Leo, you both like each other, you’re both just painfully oblivious” Donnie suddenly spoke up causing the other three turtles to look at him “what? Did you want me to lie?” He questioned.

“Hey I’m not oblivious, what do you even know about love hmmm?” Leo would immaturely respond to which Donnie scoffed a bit “as the turtle who has a girlfriend, I beg to retort” Leonardo and Donatello’s jaws dropped making Donnie look at them in confusion “what?” Donatello slowly picked his jaw up off the ground “you..have a girlfriend?..is it April?” He had a bit of hopefulness in his tone. Both rise turtles cringed upon hearing that “April? That would be awkward, she’s like a sister to us” Leo spoke up “agreed, my girlfriend is Melanie” he reached for his phone “who?” Donnie would raise an eyebrow “do you not know her?” “Dude, this Leo hasn’t met y/n yet so I dunno if this Donnie met Mel yet either” Donnie opened his phone and pulled up a photo of himself and his girlfriend, Melanie, turning the phone to Leonardo and Donatello. Both turtles nod slowly, a soft smile on Donatello’s lips upon seeing Mel “most likely if we met these girls then so will you two and according to events that I have lived through, she should most likely be your girlfriend as well” Donnie almost jabbed his finger in Donatello’s direction to which he nodding, too flustered to say anything. “Now back to my point, as the turtle to have a girlfriend..I know a thing or two” Donnie smirked smugly, crossing his arms.

Back in the rise!turtles’ universe, Mel would be tidying up Donnie’s work desk with some help from Shelldon. She paused her little cleaning session to let out a soft sneeze “bless you mama, are you sick?” Shelldon would ask her with concern to which she smiled softly “no no sugarplum I’m fine” she pat his head gently

As the topic got brought up again, Leo came to the realization “wait did you say y/n liked me?” “Yeah-“ “since when?!” “I dunno, I don’t monitor you two like a creep” donnie stretched a bit “your flirt game is embarrassing tho” he points out to which Leonardo had to sheepishly nod in agreement to. “I..I know..” Leo rubbed the back of his neck, not wanting to deny the painful truth. “I want to flirt and give her hints but the idea of her not feeling the same way is always at the back of my mind you know?” The other three nodding slowly as they listened to the blue clad turtle open up. Both Donnie’s silently nodded to Leonardo and left the kitchen together. Leonardo crosses his arms “in my opinion you’ve waited long enough and it’s better to express your thoughts and feeling because bottling it up inside isn’t good for you. One day you’ll burst and it wouldn’t be the best experience..” Leo looked at his other self in a bit of shock, nodding a little. “If she doesn’t feel the same way then that’s okay, the world isn’t going to come to an end and if you two really care about each other then something like love and rejection wouldn’t keep you two apart” he continued explaining. “I guess you’re right..thank you..” leo would smile a bit at Leonardo “anytime, you need it” he jokes to which Leo laughed a little “don’t remind me.”

The turtles and y/n hung out with their other selves for a while longer until it was time for them to head back home. Mel, Splinter and April were most likely worried sick.

“Bye guys, stay safe”

As everyone came out of the portal and dispersed to go do their own thing, Leo put his hand on your shoulder “can we talk?..” he clearly was nervous, you slowly nodded. Leo walked with you to his room and you both sat down on the edge of the bed “what is it you wanted to talk about?” You spoke up, breaking the silence. “I..I’m sorry..about earlier” he started “I didn’t mean to say you looked shitty..I panicked and it was the first thing that came out of my mouth..” you smiled a bit “I was honestly so confused” you admitted with a little laugh. Leo cracked a smile and laughed a little “I meant to say..” he paused, his mind flashing back to what his other self said “you’re beautiful..” he finally admitted out loud to you which resulted in you snapping your head in his direction, completely shocked by the sudden honesty. “You..really think so?” You felt your heart fluttered in your chest to which Leo nodded slowly “yeah..I’ve been wanting to tell you that for the longest while..” he mutters to which you blushed brighter. “Oh wow..” you were mentally building up the courage, deciding fuck it and pressing your soft lips against his cheek.

The blue clad turtle suddenly froze and his eyes widened, did you just..kiss him? On the cheek? Holy shit he’s never washing this cheek again-

You pulled away and laughed a little upon seeing his reaction “Leo? Are you alright?” You asked to which he blinked a few times, slowly nodding “uh huh..” a grin slowly grew onto his lips, you laughing softly and looking at him lovingly.

God did you love this idiot..

#tmnt leonardo #tmnt donatello #tmnt #tmnt raphael #tmnt michelangelo #tmnt x reader #tmnt 2012 #tmnt 2018 #rise michelangelo #rise of tmnt #rise of the tmnt #rise leo #rise leonardo #rise donatello #rise donnie #rise raphael #tmnt 2k12 #tmnt 2k18

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feverista-11 · 1 year

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arcane women sports headcanons pt.2!

track and field

mel - distance runner

-I’m struggling with this one😭

-either she’s a sprinter, hurdler or distance runner

-logic tells me to make her a distance runner but my heart wants hurdler mel

-DISTANCE RUNNER MEL IT IS💯

-specializes in the 1,000 meters, 1,800 meters and 3,000 meters and there’s a big gap until the 10,000

-I don’t even know how but she manages to barely break a sweat in the 1k

-the 1k doesn’t tire her much, the 1,800 manages to take her breath away at the finish line, the 3,000 makes her want to completely quit on the 5th lap but manages around the last 100 meters, the 10,000 well… she absolutely nails it.

-since the 10k (25 laps around a 400 meter track) is more technique than just running, the first 5 laps she does them at a slow and steady speed, in the 6th-10th she tries to get the lead by a good advantage and stay there for the rest of the race, in the 11th-15th laps she’s wondering why she even joined track, she slows down there but since she’s got at least a 100m lead it doesn’t affect her much. In the last 10 laps she switches from slow to fast, fast to slow and in that progression she ends up getting first always.

-trains to death at least 2 months before any major meet

-every single local athlete knows her and fears her if they race against her

-has a very surprising resistance

-she’s quite mentally strong and ready for any inconvenience with a fellow runner

-always rushes to see any of her teammates after her races even though she’s crazy tired

caitlyn - long jumper

-she started off as a high jumper but failed since she just couldn’t get her arch right

-tried long jump once and completely fell in love with it

-not to mention her marks were crazy

-in her first try she managed to make an astonishing 6.13 meters

-after a few weeks of perfectioning her technique, she marked a whopping 7.12 meters, but it was scratch😭

-girlie stepped 10 centimeters over the limit

-her biggest struggle is synchronization

-which leads her to a lot of scratch jumps

-but she’s working on it, give her a break🙏

-her leap force is so strong she once developed a shin injury because of the leap strength

-has a perfect running in the air technique

-her height helps her a lot, her legs reach the highest extent to land on the farthest spot possible

-reaches insane speeds on the run down

-refused with her heart on her hand to never take any synthetic drugs/supplements

-but ended up doing some anyways (being realistic, the majority of athletes take synthetic boosters even if it’s not right, it’s real)

-as much as she loves the sport, it drains her incredibly

-struggles a lot mentally

-maniacally looks up the profile of every single person she’s going to compete against weeks before the meet

-but the fact that she’s just so good brings her some reassurance

-has the potential to be a sprinter but she gets too tired💪💪‼️

-hits the gym very often too (I pretend she works glutes and arms a lot)

jinx - sprinter

-she’s so fast on god

-runs a bit chaotically but still wins most of her races

-gets mad at anyone who boos her

-gets ankle injuries so often she’s even used to running with them

-specializes in the 100 meters and 150 meters, very casually she runs the 300m

-underrated strength

-will jump after she wins the race

-she’s pretty desperate, causing her to casually start running milliseconds before the gun goes off

-gets very mad when she’s ejected off the track

-always says “nah, I’m quitting man” after losing but never actually quits

-craves reassurance from her teammates and coaches

-so she always tries to meet their standards

-and destroys herself if she doesn’t

-when at practice, she busies herself with the sand in the sandbox causing the long jumpers to scold her

-once, caitlyn kicked a mouthful of sand into jinx’s eyes cause she’d been disturbing their practice for half an hour

-which caused an unspoken tension between them, always getting chances to throw dirt on each other, literally sometimes

vi - thrower

-she’s most likely a disc thrower so I’ll hold on to that

-struggles so hard to maintain herself in the circle

-in her first try, she reached a very decent length…but outside of the ring

-the disc landed in Caitlyn’s arm

-jinx was passing out from laughter

-her fellow thrower was no other than jayce

-although she was having higher marks than him very casually

-she doesn’t even train before any meet, not even nationals

-doesn’t care about what she gets, it’s just to have fun

-but she ends up snatching first places and pr’s anyways

-makes fun of the jumpers, says they’re ridiculous

-knowing damn well she can’t jump all that much without any pre-run

-the fact that she’ll see pretty girls in meets motivates her more than winning

#arcane #caitlyn #caitlyn arcane #caitlyn headcanons #caitlyn lol #jinx arcane #league of legends #lesbian #vi arcane #caitjinx #track and field #sports #oneshot #headcanon #vi headcanons

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lullabyes22-blog · 1 year

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Forward, but Never Forget/XOXO - Ch: 3 - Chess

Summary: Zaun is free—and must grow into its unfamiliar new dimensions. So must Silco and Jinx. A what-if that diverges midway through the events of episode 8. Found family and fluff, politics and power, smut and slice-of-life, villainy and vengeance.

AO3 - Forward, But Never Forget/XOXO

FFnet - Forward, But Never Forget (XOXO)

Playlist on Youtube

Chapters: 1| 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | 48

CH 3: Silco and Mel Medarda negotiate a peace treaty. An unexpected condition is thrown in.

Delicate in every way but one (the swordplay) God knows we like archaic kinds of fun (the old way) Chance is the only game I play with, baby We let our battles choose us

~ “Glory & Gore” - Lorde

The meeting is at the Riverside harbor.

Ordinarily, it is the liveliest hub in the Undercity. The merchants are the second-earliest risers—that is, second to the rats. The harbor vibrates with the music of boundless industry. The clanging of crates stripping off their metal clothing to unveil their wares. The riot of seafarers swapping prices in dozens of different languages. The skillet-fried sunfish and steaming mussel-soups at the stalls; the shrill calls of the gulls circling for easy snacks.

It's a chaotic microcosm of Zaun. Hard bargains struck, a knife up every sleeve, the air bleeding with fragrance and filth.

But oh! What cornucopia.

Now the harbor is nearly deserted. The exoskeletons of burnt-out ships cast massive shadows. Here and there, stragglers ply their trade. A clutch of sumpsnipes strip metal off a bomb-scored motorcar to resell at the black-market. In the feeble glow of a street-stall, an old woman skewers live eels on stakes to sell to passersby. Clusters of young men and women crouch in fire-gutted alleys, passing bottles of local rum.

A few of them stare in shock as Silco’s armed entourage stalks past. Others call out—cheers that hold the same savagery as curses.

The revolution has stoked the fierce fire raging inside every citizen against Piltover. The atmosphere is still volatile as a powder-keg. The least friction between Zaun and Topside could ignite into a fray.

Piltover's envoy—ten men flanking one woman—stay tensely rooted.

The harbor was their appointed spot. But Silco has barely kept to the appointed time. They are in Zaun's territory now. Let them wait. Let them stew, and sweat and second-guess. Whatever gives his own network the extra leg-up to surveil the surroundings. His teams have already made two circuits of the harbor, one wide, the other narrow.

Now they meet in the middle: Zaun with its colorful coterie of cutthroats fanned out into a claw, Piltover with its darkly-uniformed soldiers in rigid marching rows. Each party keeps their hands open. A peaceable sign, or the absence of its opposite. They each watch the other, a crisscrossing connection of sharp gazes.

Chess sequences. That's how the game is always played.

A half-minute ticks by. Then Silco deals the King's Gambit. He steps forward, a measured tread of footsteps and a piercing directness of eye.

"Councilor Medarda," he says. "Apologies for the delay."

It is a perfunctory pleasantry. So is Medarda's nod, languid as if passed over the rim of a champagne flute.

"An Undercity custom, I take it?"

"Zaun, if you please."

"Zaun. Of course." Her voice, all suave vowels and sumptuous consonants, is devoid of humor. "Please accept my congratulations. New nation. New notions of timeliness."

"In the Fissures, we move at our own pace."

"Shall I synchronize my watch?"

"You esteem your time so highly?"

"Or yours." A tart smile touches her lips. "You're a busy man, of late."

Silco meets her gaze with a sedate veneer, but a crooked twist to his mouth.

The opening bell has rung. The game begins.

A strip of sunlight flashes at the smog-hazy horizon. It silhouettes Medarda in gold. In the squalor, she is splendidly incongruous. Looking mint, as Vander used to say of an attractive woman. Her gown is of clinging off-white satin, with dapples of red, like parchment under a downpour of blood. The fabric, hand-woven textile from the Undercity's mills, probably cost real blood in every stitch. Her hair is twisted up off her neck in a sheath of dark rich curls, and the tips of her bare shoulders gleam like the golden geometry embellishing her skin, everything shellacked from the charcoal scrubs and mineral clays in the Undercity's mines.

In every player's arsenal, there are a variety of weapons. Silco doesn't miss the sartorial message Madarda conveys. Wealth and style—but also Piltover's indispensable commercial ties with the Undercity. It strikes him with a bitter breed of poignancy that this woman is the end product of his peoples' toil: a pureblood feline grown sumptuously glossy on their suffering.

Whereas Silco's own wardrobe, rather than the upshot of that suffering, is its well-tailored symptom. A cutthroat secondhand couture of worsted suits lined in Kevlar, silk cravats edged with garottes, high-buttoned boots with steel-plated toes. In Zaun, stylishness does not serve as a signpost of idleness. It signals threats subdued and obstacles surmounted.

It symbolizes survival.

"How was your journey downriver?" Silco asks.

"Eventful."

"No unpleasantry, I trust?"

She tilts her chin. "Five checkpoints. Each with full body searches. Until I showed the guards your seal. Then it was like an escort to a Demacian gala."

Keep it that way, is the cautionary message.

Silco's smile twists deeper. "Well, you're certainly dressed the part. A Vyx label, I believe?"

"Just what was on hand in my cabin."

"Oh, indeed? We value the patronage."

"And we, the effort."

"It's a living." He gestures along the riverwalk, washed in the first faded waves of sunlight. "Shall we?"

They stroll shoulder-to-shoulder. Their entourages follow at a distance, each keeping a radius of space as if readied to draw their firearms. Neither Silco nor Medarda pay them much mind. They make small-talk, permafrosted politeness layered over sharp-edged wariness, each feeling the other out.

Strangely, they've seldom crossed paths beyond rare glimpses at Topside soirees. Silco despises pedigrees; she disfavors parvenus. Her reputation as a disinherited Noxian heiress with a chip on her shoulder is well-known among men-about-town. But it barely compares with her reputation among Topside's political players as the steel dagger in a velvet glove. Diplomacy is polished into her bones. She works by clouding judgement with a tweak of that Minerva's brow, and swaying emotions with a purr from that Venusian throat.

Ah, but what are honeyed tactics in the Undercity? Simply a confection to suck all sweetness out of.

"Candidly," Silco says, "I am surprised they sent you. I was expecting the Wonderboy."

Or the Yordle. Do they bob like a cork if punted into the water? Or sink to the bottom? Silco has always wanted to seize Heimerdinger by a fistful of fur and find out.

Medarda neither bobs, nor sinks. She meets his good blue eye, and extends an exquisite hand. "Disappointed?"

"On the contrary."

They shake hands. Silco's own is hard and chilly; it envelopes hers, the sharp phalanges pressing into her softer flesh like something locking its jaws. Medarda's smooth face shows no discomfort. Instead, she holds onto his hand and turns it over, eyeing it like a palmist.

"So many calluses," she says.

"A commoner's lot."

"Miner's calluses. Knife calluses. But here—" Her fingertip traces the rough joint of his middle finger. "A scholar's callus."

"Reading my future?"

"The past yields more wisdom."

"A regressionist and an oracle?"

"Merely well-informed." She detaches but stays within arm's reach, regarding him with hazel eyes that appear golden in the slow-creeping sunrise. "After the recent furor, the Council delved into your background. Their efforts yielded little. I took the initiative to do my own digging."

"Did you strike gold?"

"Not enough to write a novel. But certainly a synopsis." She measures him with a dark ascent of lashes. "Perhaps you'll be so kind as to fill in the gaps."

"I will do my utmost."

She keeps her eyes fixed on him. Her manner is all playful refinement; beneath that, it is reflexively probing. Tossing pebbles into the stillness of the blackwater; seeing what leaves a ripple. Silco knows she expects him to play the game accordingly. Mutatis mutandis, as the saying goes.

She doesn't realize such games are topsy-turvy in Zaun.

"You're a self-made man," Medarda says. "Undercity born and bred. You've made a fortune in the steel industry, with an extensive operation of integrated mills. Some say you have a virtual monopoly in contracts to supply Ionia with warship metal."

"Piltover cold-shoulders Zaunite businessmen. I must meet the rising demand elsewhere."

"The breadth of your assets is impressive. But your origins are modest. You were the youngest of three sons, from a hardscrabble fishing district north of the Bonscutt Pump Station."

"Somewhere between nowhere and Das ist mir egal."

She stares at him. "You speak Va-Nox?"

"My mother was Ionian. From the Sotka River in Zhyun. The Void Wars left their language a bastardization of colonizer and colonized."

"Indeed. Family records state that she fled her war-torn island with nothing but the clothes on her back. She settled in the Sumps, where she met your father, a riverman by trade. He patrolled up and down the watercourse circling the Old Hungry. On clear nights, it was his duty to haul out wreckage that had fallen into the river."

"By wreckage, you mean bodies."

She blinks, but doesn't balk.

"One thousand. That is the number of bodies Daddy dragged out of the river before his death. Suicides, drunks, children. Each one doomed as soon as they quaffed the toxic run-off from Piltover's factories." Silco's smile shows no nastiness. Yet the lulling calm of his tone is edged with something sinister. "I was three when I first saw the river's capacity for ruination. Thirty-three when I experienced it firsthand. It discombobulates human beings into shapes that defy description." He sketches a little nod, deference with overtones of derision. "But please go on."

Medarda levels an unflinching look. "You were six when your father drowned in the harbor. There were rumors that he was murdered."

"Shipping magnates don't care for backtalking unionists."

"Your older brothers passed soon after. A blaze tore through your neighborhood. Entire tenements gone up in smoke. In total, nearly eighty families perished. You and your mother escaped unscathed. A year later, the Coroner's inquest unyielded evidence of poor insulation and mass overcrowding in the district."

"Parsimonious slumlords and public safety? Poor bedfellows."

Tactfully, Medarda says, "I'm told your mother suffered a … collapse… soon after."

"Collapse?" Silco repeats with a flat scoff. "Mother went bat-raftered barmy. The Asylum of the Irreparable took her away. She stayed an inmate for the next fifteen years." He shrugs. "I'd visit her on holidays. Wished she'd die, truth be told. I think we'd both have liked that. But bodies can be stubborn."

For a moment, Medarda's expression shows the sweet bareness of shock. She recovers with swiftness.

"By seven, with no living guardians, you were sent to the Hope House Orphanage. By twelve, you volunteered to serve in the mines. By sixteen, you'd cut your teeth on smuggling and racketeering. That same year, you were arrested for stabbing a Patrolman to death. Owing to a self-defense plea, you were released into the care of the Hölle Correctional Facility for juveniles. There, you enrolled in several educational programs—and excelled. By age nineteen, the Warden himself penned a letter of recommendation on your behalf.”

Silco tilts his head in remembrance. “Warden Lascelles. A good man.”

“You have fond memories of him?”

“Fond isn’t the right word. He was, de facto, my jailor. But he understood the impact fatherlessness and a lack of support has on Undercity youths. He preached a firm voice for morale, and a soft hand for discipline."

“His style seems to have agreed with you. Your transcripts from Hölle are exemplary. You even wrote a series of short stories and essays, that captured the mood of the Undercity. One, titled A Death in the Pilt, attracted notice from Piltover's Ministry of Education. That year, the Academy of Piltover accepted you into its school of commerce to meet the Fissures quota."

"Admitted, yes. Accepted? Never."

Her curlicued eyebrows arch. "You found Piltover's hospitality lacking?"

"Topside lets you sit at the table," Silco says mildly. "It never lets you eat."

"Trouble filling your belly?"

"Or my wallet. A bright mind is no currency in the City of Progress. What buys true respect are connections. I began at the very bottom, the lowest of the low. That made me nothing, in the eyes of patrons. To get anywhere in Piltover, you must be next-to-nothing. But that is the privilege of those ensconced in Topside's embrace. The rest of us fall through the cracks."

Medarda's lips pucker slyly. "You sketched a similar narrative in your speeches."

"My speeches?"

"Before the Day of Ash. You rose to prominence as an outspoken advocate for Zaun and Piltover's separation. The spokesperson for the youth wing of The Liberated Lanes, with a treatise published by clandestine press, titled Pay the Lessons Forward. I took the liberty of skimming through its pages.” She quotes, “’In the call for resistance, there is no profound difference between a layman and a soldier.’”

Silco nods gravely. "A frank assessment of our situation."

“It would seem so. Your words struck a nerve—or tapped into a vein—for many Undercity dwellers. Street-corner vigils. Sit-ins. Protest marches. Your presence was invariably linked to each. The then-editor for the Sun & Tower Newspaper attended your rallies. He called you, and I quote 'A dangerous ideologue whipping the underclasses into a frenzy with illusions of victimhood.'"

"The article did say something to that effect." Silco blandly feigns nostalgia. "My small claim to fame."

"Or infamy. On the night known as Bloody Sunday, tensions boiled over. Enforcers were anonymously tipped off about smuggled artillery in the Temple of Janna. They raided the building with flashbombs. In the explosion, fifty-five worshipers—including thirty-two women, twelve children—were killed. Rumor has it one woman was paralyzed below the waist by a bullet. Instead of calling for an ambulance, the Enforcers beat her to death."

"After taking worse liberties."

"How do you know that?"

"I entombed her ashes afterward."

Medarda stares in finely-diluted disbelief. "You knew her?"

"Somewhat." Silco's good eye is unnervingly blank, reflecting nothing. "As per common law, at any rate."

On Medarda's expression, the barest twitch of alarm. But her gold-dark eyes stay guarded.

"No artillery was found at the Temple," she says. "The Enforcers were never indicted for the attack. For the Undercity, it was the last straw. Five months later, the Day of Ash began. A mob gathered at Bridgeside. You were in top form. Your speech was exceptionally fiery. A call to arms. Payback for desecration—then, now and always. It whipped the crowd into a frenzy. Once Enforcers arrived, the scene erupted into a bloodbath. Afterward, there were barely any Undercity dwellers left. The few who survived were arrested and summarily sentenced. You were among them."

Silco nods minimally. "Three years in Stillwater."

Three years. Enough to pare a scholar into a scourge, or grind a warrior into a worm.

That's what the three years—marked by failure and fatherhood—did to Vander. In Silco's absence, the righteous rage had drained out of him. In its wake was a soppiness that reeked of self-hatred. And for what? The deaths of friends and families? The loss of old loves? As if succumbing to the status quo would honor their sacrifice.

To Silco, it was the cowardliest rationalization. Far better to honor the fallen by carrying the torch of revolution in their name. Turn Piltover into their funeral pyre. That's what a revolution was at its core. Not blood or brick or mortar. It was an act of love. A natural cataclysm, with the capacity to sack cities and birth civilizations in the same breath.

Medarda swallows, a subtle movement of her satiny neck. "After that?"

"Hm?"

"After the sentencing. What then?"

Silco leans an elbow alongside the dock's walkway. His other hand trails lazy-fingered over the railing; pockmarked in rust. He rubs his fingertips together, then dips them into his coat to withdraw his silver cigar case. In the background, Piltover's bodyguards snap into alertness.

Silco stops halfway. A smile tugs the split scar on his upper-lip.

"You don't mind, do you?"

Medarda proffers the faintest frown. "I beg your pardon?"

"If I smoke? A wicked habit, but one I cannot forgo at this hour." He dips his head to light up, his pomaded hair picking up the diffused sunrays in a blood-red patina. Smoke curls from his parted lips; Medarda coughs delicately. "Oh dear. Allergies?"

She disguises her distaste with a twitch of her nose. "A potent tobacco."

"Zaun's own brand. Brightleaf."

"It lingers."

"Hmmm. Like bloodstains on a good suit."

"Have you much trouble with the latter?"

"I'd lead a blessed life indeed, if that qualified as trouble." Silco tips his head back, expelling a sharper stream of smoke. "Now where were we?"

"After the Day of Ash." Medarda slinks closer. Her fingertips trail along the railing until her hand nearly meets his own. "You were sent to Stillwater. What happened?"

"I served my penance. The guards at your prison are miracle workers. Truly. They change a man to his marrow." He removes the cigar, contemplating it with an idle roll of his knuckles. "When the rotting slop cores a hole through your gut, they slug it out of you in a river of puke. When the darkness closes in after lights-out, they keep you company in your cell. When the winter nibbles chilblains into your feet, they strip you naked and drag you outside to remember that life could be much, much chillier."

Medarda doesn't flinch. But her hand slips nervelessly off the railing.

"Afterward," Silco says. "I returned a reformed man. I wiped my hands clean. I put my nose to the grindstone. I pulled myself up by the bootstraps. All the things Fissurefolk do, to drag themselves from their natural state of undeservingness. So they may one day—a fortunate day!—look good, upstanding citizens like yourself in the eye."

She stares at him, disturbed or dubious, it is hard to tell. "Simple as that?"

"Simpler."

He tenders the cigar toward her. A pantomime of politeness—Care to try? She shakes her head.

"There remains a shadowy chapter in your life," she says. "I've heard only rumors."

"Oh?"

"Perhaps you'll confirm or deny them. Give me the proper… elucidation … to understand you as a man."

Silco's shrug is a shameless lure. "Whatever helps us see eye to eye."

Predictably, she pounces. "What about your eye?"

"Mine?"

She challenges him with a bold once-over across the dark disfigurement of his face, hidden beneath ashen layers of make-up. "You had a brother-in-arms. The cocky fist to your crafty tongue. You preached revolution from the pulpit. He pummeled revolution into the streets. Old mugshots and police reports mention your boyhood of shared misdeeds. They called him The Hound."

"Man's best friend."

"After your release, you had a falling out."

"All bark, no bite."

Medarda sidles closer. The heat of her body radiates through her gold-speckled gown. Silco takes in the spray of subtler gold on her cheekbones. She smells headily of hot-house hyacinths.

"They say," she whispers, "that he gouged out your eye. And you, his heart."

"Sick dogs deserve mercy."

"They say he left behind an orphan. A troubled girl."

"The Lanes are full of them."

"She was special." Her voice descends into a hush of intimacy. "You took her in. Kept her close amidst a campaign of terror."

"Raise a boy, raise terror at every turn. Raise a girl, and terror becomes you."

"You trained her for years. Not just to fight, but to do what you do."

"I taught her to survive. To never back down. To always win."

"And to unleash chaos on Piltover."

"Chaos is never unleashed," Silco says, their eyes locked from inches apart. "It surfaces wherever injustice takes root."

"And does she share your dream?"

"As she's shared far worse."

Silco's cigar glows red; a wisp of smoke curls from the side of his unscarred mouth. He thinks of Jinx, that night. The pale cleverness of her hands across Fishbones. The eye-searing blueness of her flying braids. The glow of Piltover's wreckage touching the curve of her tearstained cheek.

(We showed them, didn't we, Jinx?)

Victory cost dreams. Dreams cost blood. Blood cost love.

But what did the love of a father for his daughter cost?

He senses Medarda's deep-set scrutiny. The sun expands hazily behind the harbor's jagged escarpment. He glances off, smoke twirling from his untasted cigar. One careless hand meanders along the other's sleeve, smoothing the cuff so the barest half-inch of embroidered fabric shows. It seems like a self-soothing tic disguised as vanity.

Except it is just theater. Offering Medarda the illusion of power—then snatching it away.

In an eyeblink, he swivels.

"Shall we end on a cheerful note, or a bloody one?" he says.

"I—what?"

"Not to cut the reminiscence short, my dear. But the breadth of my life bores even me. The worst way to charm a man is to remind him how heavy his years weigh. And the best rule of a negotiation is to know when to stop belaboring."

He glides closer, Medarda sways back, and he glides closer still. Then—oh my!—she is snatching at the hem of her fabulously unfeasible gown to steer away from a puddle of dead seagull rotting on the cobblestones. Her dainty shoes skid. She barely keeps her balance. Her fingers flutter in the air, the fleeting impulse for a handhold.

Silco's cold fingers fold through hers. The grip is cocksure as a frigging in a Sumpside street-corner. She startles, he steadies her. They disengage with a mutual swiftness: affront on her part, amusement on his.

"Watch your step," he says. "Rough roads in Zaun."

Medarda squares her elegant shoulders. Her poise isn't gone. But it is off-center. Silco knows why. He is not acting according to her private script; he is not adhering to the rules of engagement.

Worse, he is no longer languishing. He is looming.

Bright fingers of sunlight poke through the smog to trace the harbor: all bullet-pocked scaffoldings and scorched ship hulls. In the intensifying glow, the ravages of war are irrefutable. Medarda's eyes pass over them, and Silco's scarred visage. A vein rises and falls in her throat. It seems to dawn on her that she's not drifted downstairs on silk slippers from her warm boudoir to her basement. She's entered a different society, with different rules.

A blind spot in the shadow of civilization.

Silco takes in her discomfort with relish. Dilettantes and despots—they both seek novelty for its own sake, a temporary rescue from their privileged bubble of boredom, which is the profoundest (the only) horror they must endure. They descend en masse to disaster zones. They gawp through prison bars at inmates on death-row like monkeys at the zoo. They size up the madmen in the padded cells of asylums like ghouls at a party séance. The reduce the victims' suffering to comedy and censure, cabaret and consumption.

Then they move on, while their leftovers are left to rot.

Medarda—prodigy of Piltover—is no different. She deigns her presence as a fragrant cloud of charity, with Zaun no better than dung under her shoe. She thinks to reopen the wounds of Silco's sad history, then wield her own attentions as a benevolent balm. His selfhood is an oyster she wants to crack open, to slurp up what's inside, leaving him an emptied husk that does her bidding.

Such sweet delusion.

Whatever she finds inside of Silco is enough to consume her entirely.

"I give you full credit," Silco says. "You blended record with hearsay most cleverly. The rest? She filled in for you."

"I'm not sure what—"

"Her. The girl staying with the Kirramans. Lapping up Piltover's kindness, in exchange for dirt on the Lanes." He flicks his cigar over the railing. "Well, every guttersnipe deserves a day in the sun. Just as Piltover deserves its nose rubbed in the dirt."

"I hardly think—"

"Ah, ah. No belaboring." He gives her a slithering stare-down. "Now listen closely, my dear. I enjoy your wit and your dimples. But I don't have time to play with you. What do you have in mind with this parley? Beyond purveying children's games?"

"I am purveying peace."

"Not payback?"

"One needn't describe it in such terms."

"A little of each, hm?"

"Or something longer-lasting." Keeping a smile in place, she closes the space between them. "Our nations needn't be at an impasse. We can help each other."

"I'm not sure I follow you," Silco says, though of course they both know better.

"It's quite simple. The girl under your charge stole something from us. Used it to tear down our city. We could demand her as tribute. One terrorist as recompense for months of mutual terror. But last time—" Her eyes shade a fraction. "—you esteemed the bargain too little."

"Talis demanded too much."

Too much for a deal struck too late. Jinx is born to blaze through Zaun's history as a miracle, not a martyr. Weighed on the cosmic scales, her crimes are barely a fraction to Piltover's crimes against Zaun. Their inhumanity, their indifference. Never a finger lifted; never a moment's mercy. In taking Jinx, did they expect Silco to show mercy in turn?

(I won’t lose my child again.)

The strangling blackness returns to his chest. Pressure thick as drowning.

Quietly, Medarda says, "I think I understand."

"Oh?"

Something drains from her eyes: a gloss melting into gentleness. "A child's life, for any crime, is no even trade."

"You demanded it, all the same."

"It was a bargaining counter. But those, I find, are best suited to tangibles."

"So what is the new tangible in question?"

"The Hex gem. We would see it returned. In exchange—" her small hand rests on his forearm, "— Piltover will support Zaun."

"Once, you buried us under hostility. Now, you'd bind us through humility?"

"On the contrary. We will recognize Zaun as a new nation. We will help to rebuild it into an equal. You're at a vulnerable juncture. We can ease the transition through aid and access to our Gates. Establish a mutual prosperity between our citizens. A paradise—each in our own image."

Her gaze holds a magnetic glow of goodwill. Meanwhile, Silco feels the bullet click into place within the inner-chamber of his own skull. He gives her the first truly genuine smile that has stretched across his features in nearly three months. It isn't a pleasant smile.

"Your family," he says. "They hail from Noxus. Correct?"

Medarda nods, then blinks down at her hand on his arm. Through her fingertips she can feel it: the low-down vibrations of something monstrous uncoiling inside.

"What's it like?" Silco wonders softly. "Banishment for having a spine of watered silk instead of steel? Perhaps if you'd profited from your family's lessons, you'd have kept an eye to the horizon—instead of your coffer. Then again, Piltover has blinded itself with hubris for years. We are simply its rude awakening."

Medarda darkens and draws away, her eyes flashing.

Much better, Silco thinks.

He is too old—too damned rabid—to be led by his cock like a cunt-struck mongrel. He'd known from the beginning that she would choreograph the meeting on her terms, then offer a backhanded peace-deal like a benevolent mistress doling out scraps, while letting Zaun believe it was a banquet.

Zaun is done being Piltover's mongrel.

"It isn't cowardice," says Medarda, "to prevent more killing."

"My, aren't you the pristine pot to my tar-black kettle."

"What do you mean?"

"You had the temerity to regurgitate my life like a storybook. Yet you never noticed?" His accent carves itself into a cultured contempt that mimics hers to the letter. "My life is any Zaunite's life. My driver's, my lieutenant's, or my bootblack's. Piltover doesn't look us in the eye when it kills us. But it kills regardless—with dirty water, toxic air, gridlocked housing, rigged ballots, and Enforcer's bullets. Now you dare to offer us decolonization through political dependency?"

"Aren't you guilty of the same?" Medarda's gaze, which was golden gentleness a moment ago, is now a tigress' glower. "The Shimmer you've crippled the Undercity with. The terror you wield to keep them in line. The crimes that corrupt the very core of your shining vision."

"Two wrongs don't make a right, eh?"

"Nor good a pretext to do evil."

Silco smile becomes a mouthful of shark's teeth around a throatful of blood. "Ah, but what is evil? A game of semantics. Kick a man to death and you're a murderer. Enslave an entire nation and you're a conqueror." His good eyelid shades to a death-pall. "Surely, your mother taught you that lesson? I've met her a time or two; proselytizing for peace isn't her style."

Medarda's eyes flash brilliantly.

Silco enjoys the effect. Poised, she is attractive as an architectural edifice. You take a roving eyeful and move on with your life. Angry, she is erotically charged, and vulnerable as an exposed vein.

He can imagine how many men have dreamed of stripping away that lustrous façade to sink their teeth into the hot throb of tenderness beneath. He wonders how many more have imagined her as he can: on her elegant knees, her throat baring itself and her lips wet and distended to take what he drives inside.

"Pity," he murmurs. "It seems her lessons didn't stick. Personally, I'd pack you off to the trenches until you learned, and never forgot. You cannot create a perfect society with your eyes wide shut—while shit soils your feet. You want Paradise? Such things aren't built on lofty ideals. They are made in naked ambition, and war, and blood."

"Until there is nothing left."

She doesn't raise her voice. But the ferocity of her tone rips the words into a snarl.

Silco's polite smile becomes a lopsided rictus. Go on.

Medarda drags in a slow breath. Her anger, no longer held at a dignified distance, now suffuses her entire body like a sunlit aureole.

"I am trying," she says. "To protect both our interests." Her hands make supple curving motions in the air, describing a set of scales—or a pair of wedding rings. "We were once a unified nation. A marriage of equals. Now every moment Zaun stays separate from Piltover is moment of peril."

"Marriage? Do they beat and rape their spouses in Topside?"

She doesn't balk at the depthless hatred in his voice. Her expression is grave.

"Today, you celebrate independence from Piltover," she says. "Tomorrow is another story. A nation forged in war remains at war. The Undercity's loss will briefly unbalance Piltover. But we have the Hex Gates. The resources and international goodwill. We will recover. Zaun will not."

"Rather sure of yourself, aren't you?"

"I know that in destroying the Bridge, you have dealt yourselves the cruelest blow. The Council is already on the warpath for reparations. They will enforce sanctions. They will pressure our neighbors into doing the same. All of these are serious barriers to Zaun's growth. Remember—a newborn is most vulnerable in its first months of life."

"Now we've been demoted from battered spouse to newborn?"

She shakes her head, subtly seething. "Jeer your fill. But you are burying yourself in a hole."

"A hole has two ends."

"Isolation or Hell? Then the Fissures are doomed."

"Are they?" He tilts his head. "You destroyed our trucks, but not our depots. You burned our ships, but not our harbor. You stole our wealth, but not our mines. You've certainly not killed our potential. A population of multitalented, highly skilled and ruthless workers. Unlike Piltover, we eat, sleep and bleed innovation. You gave us no other choice. In time, we have the capacity to become a free trade zone."

Medarda's lip curls downward. "Perhaps so. But in the interim? You'll need more than schemes and Shimmer. More than your chem-barons' checkbooks. A nation needs roads, rails, flyovers, highways. It needs schools and hospitals. It needs a lynchpin of humanity. Not this den of wolves you seek to create."

"Wolves are loyal. I can't say the same for foxes."

Something in Medarda's face occludes. It is brief, but not beyond Silco's threshold of perception. On himself, such displays are farcical diversions. On her, he senses something different. The perfect mask of diplomacy dislodged by a moment's doubt.

Slowly, she says, "I'm asking you to reconsider."

"Fall in line, rather."

She shakes her head. Her mask is back in place, but so neutral that she seems to be effortfully clutching it.

Silco says, "You're taking a lot of risks, my dear. Some might argue that, with the blow we've dealt Piltover, things are irreparable between us. You should cut your losses. Cut us loose. Yet you refuse."

She smiles, but it doesn't sit right on her face. "We are the City of Progress and of Principle."

"Is that right? Or—"

"What?"

"Are you trying to prove something?" His tongue flirts absently around his mouth; a rake of incisors and chipped teeth. "Trying to earn someone's respect? Show them that diplomacy is the best recourse. The fox can outwit the worst of the wolves."

"What would you know of that?"

Her words are modulated but also fiercely wound. Her fingers trace the gold ring on her left hand—the Medarda crest. Silco takes it in, and knows he is on to something.

"I think I understand," he says. "If Piltover chose, they could defeat Zaun without bloodying their hands. Get Noxus involved, perhaps? They've a mighty army. They'd thrash us soundly. But what then? Piltover would be in Noxus' debt. In time, the City of Progress would be the City of Paupers—its funds drained and its potential decimated. Just like any Noxian colony. And should Demacia enter the picture? Well." He spreads his arms. "You'd start another Void War. All because we dared to shove your boot off our necks."

"It needn't go exactly as you describe."

"It needn't. But is the risk worth it?" His voice drops conspiratorially. "I'm told you've a taste for risk. But not for war. You're one of those decaffeinated Noxians. Conquest-free, low on bloodshed, with civilized traces of mercantilism. But scratch deeper beneath the surface, and your neurosis is based in guilt. You believe in taking responsibility. In showing mercy."

Caught between self-revelation and self-protection, Medarda scowls. His words have struck a nerve.

"In that case," Silco says, "I have a proposition."

"What?"

"Zaun will not return the Hex gem. Possession is nine-tenths of the law. Under Piltover, we've already possessed so little. However—" He crooks a sharp-knuckled finger. "We will offer reparations. Safe passage to refugees; secure zones for diplomats. Mercy, in exchange for access to the Hex Gates."

Medarda tosses her bejeweled head in defiance. "Ludicrous! The Council will never accept."

"Would they prefer more bloodshed?"

"Now you threaten us?" She lets off a sweetly gilded laugh. "Zaun hasn't the manpower to lay siege to Piltover. Nor the weapons to sustain it. We would outlast you in a month's time."

"Or perhaps we'd ambush you from the inside." Silco bares his crooked teeth. "Remember, we are a den of wolves. You've starved us and suffocated us. But you've taught us to survive, in spite of yourselves. Piltover has a reputation to uphold as a beacon of fairness. Fairness doesn't factor into Zaun's vocabulary."

A hot silence grips the air. Silence like a strangulation.

Medarda struggles against its pull. "You are bluffing."

"Then call it."

"You'd sacrifice your people for pride?"

"You'd sacrifice yours for mercy?"

"War is never mercy! Curbing bloodshed is!"

"Well then."

Silco takes a step closer. Before she can recoil, he snatches her dark hands and brings them up to frame his pale neck. Lets her feel the beat of his pulse in the veins. Her wrists are satiny-hot in the callused cold of his grip. He feels the rapid thrum of her heartbeat in his fingertips.

Their eyes lock. The expression that skims Medarda's face is fleeting. But Silco sees something there. Shock, disgust. And fear that veers into a speechless subspecies of fascination. Like a nymph looking into the mouth of a deepsea monster, its jaws laid open, teeth glinting in the aquatic twilight. Her hands roving deeper inside.

"Show mercy," Silco whispers. "Curb the bloodshed."

Medarda sucks in a shaky breath. Her pupils are dilated around golden threads of iris. Their gazes stay fused in a frozen loop, two animals sizing each other up. But when Silco's good eye drops to Medarda's mouth, half-parted and inches from his, her paralysis breaks and she jerks away on a strange noise, equal parts choke and snarl.

"You—" she says.

"I, what?"

She suppresses the adrenalized tremor racing through her body. "You are intractable."

"Thank you."

"That wasn't a compliment." Her voice smooths over at the last word; a forcible repossession of self-control. "Eliminating you will not solve the crisis."

"Then what will?"

Medarda searches for something inside of herself, then shakes her head. Regret, refutation. Her eyes drop a few degrees to stare down at the graceful clasp of her own hands. The Noxian ring glimmers in the gloomy daylight.

"I make no guarantee," she says.

"Hmmm?"

She draws in a breath, then releases it steadily. "I make no guarantee that the Council will accept your proposal."

"Let them consider it."

"Letting them agree to our parley was a feat in itself."

A surreptitious smile edges Silco's lips. Hmm. A two-pronged goring in a lambskin sheath: appeal to his logic by reminding him of Zaun's precariousness; appeal to his emotion by claiming that she is in his corner and has already worked wonders on his behalf.

Well, she's good. He'll grant her that much.

"What do you suggest, then?" he asks.

She lifts her chin; a gentle summons. "A treaty."

"Entailing?"

"Peace."

"My dear." He starts to smile, then cuts it off with a warning stare. "Learn to be more explicit."

"Zaun's terms and Piltover's, merged into one. Zaun will keep the Hex gem. But we must have its surety that it will never be weaponized against us. Zaun will have access to the Hex Gates. But Piltover will have its just desserts through reparations. We will grant Zaunites amnesty for war crimes. In exchange, Zaun must host Piltovan journalists safety within its borders."

"You mean tattlers and spies."

"The price of freedom, First Chancellor."

"Or its worst impediment."

A corner of Medarda's lips curves. "Except Thyself may be/Thine Enemy—"

"Captivity is Consciousness," Silco says, deadpan. "So's Liberty."

Silence creeps like the coronal threads of sunlight through smog. Medarda blinks, then catches hold of herself.

"I confess, Chancellor, I had you somewhat typecast."

"Oh?"

"I didn't consider poetry to be your speed."

"A bit of poetry never hurts the shank end of a revolution."

"Then we are in accord?"

"I leave our future—" he says, mock-graciously, "—in your soft hands."

One of Medarda's brows spasms. Then she glances off, but not before Silco glimpses a private frown. As if she's taken his full measure, as surely as he's taken hers. She meets his eye again, and her face smooths itself, once more a study of serene sophistication.

"Thank you for attending the parley," she says. "First Chancellor of Zaun."

"A privilege, Councilor Medarda."

They shake hands. Their arms slide into synch, fingers interlocking. Two players after a satisfactory chess match.

Except, like before, Medarda holds onto his hand, and turns it over in both her own. Her smile holds no edge. Her eyes glow warmly: sunshine and honey.

"I'd like to make a small request."

"By all means."

"It will prove pivotal in convincing the Council of your good intentions." Her hands are a coaxing squeeze around his own. "It involves a citizen of Zaun."

"Anyone I know?"

"A mutual acquaintance, in fact."

A chill of premonition rises. Silco smiles, thinly, "Whom might it be?"

"The girl at the Kirraman's home. Violet."

Silco's expression snaps shut with a renewed charge of hostility. Suddenly he is all venom, as if his body is a siphon for the blackened ichor trapped within Zaun's core.

"What of her?" he hisses.

Medarda drops his hand as if singed. But her eyes stay glued to his, because the waters are chummed and the net is unfurled, and there he is: caught.

"She is a former citizen of Zaun," she says. "She asks to visit the Fissures."

"To see the corpses?"

"To see her sister."

"She has no sister."

"She does." Demurely, "Shall I be more explicit? Your daughter. Jinx."

#arcane #arcane netflix #arcane league of legends #arcane silco #arcane mel #arcane jinx #arcane sevika #arcane vander #silco #mel medarda #sevika #jinx #vander #fanfic #silco fanfic #forward but never forget/xoxo #forward (never forget)/xoxo #silco x mel #melco

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bookgeekgrrl · 1 year

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My media this week (25-31 Dec 2022)

📚 STUFF I READ 📚

🥰👂‍Hogfather (Terry Pratchett, author; Sian Clifford/Bill Nighy/Peter Serafinowicz, narrator) - I thought this was gonna be a reread but it turned out I hadn't actually read it before! It's Pratchett so of course it was very entertaining. Excellent narration as well - really clever way to do the footnotes.

🥰do you get déjà vu? (dreamtiwasanarchitect, liadan14) - pt 3 in the AU where college bro Joe is the newest immortal - it's 7 years on, Joe & Nicky are heading back to college to search for a missing person and find someone they definitely do not expect

😍😍4 Minute Window series (Speranza) - 179K, canon-divergent stucky au - annual reread of one of the best series series/fics in the entire fandom (all but the as-yet unfinished 2022 advent story)

😊Fuckboi Hob vs The Endless Family Dinner (dancinbutterfly) - 41K, human AU - enjoyable fic prompted from that craigslist ad about a fake holiday date to piss off your family

💖💖 +496K of shorter fic so shout out to these I really loved 💖💖

The First Rule of Book Club series (Deisderium) - MCU: stucky, 28K - reread of this fave - post WS, Bucky moves to a small town in NC and joins a book club - I adore the outsider POV/OC in this so MUCH!

Can’t you see I’m ready now (Bittersweet_in_Boston) - MCU: stucky no powers AU, 3K - pretty much just PWP but seriously 🔥🔥🔥

the queen of spades (magneticwave) - James Bond: 00Q, 21K - nice little fic where Q has siblings which confounds & intrigues Bond

Synchronicity (stereobone) - James Bond: 00Q, 7K - "It goes on like that for months, and then Q realizes that James Bond is "hanging out" at his flat." - reread, this one is a fave

undersell, overcommit (silentwalrus) - MCU: stucky, 10K - reread, love this one so much - Bucky could really benefit from massage therapy, so Steve just…becomes a licensed massage therapist. The characterizations/character voices are SO FUCKING GOOD in this.

Not In The Answer But The Question (aimmyarrowshigh) - MCU: shrunkyclunks, 27K - love me some shrunkyclunks goodness like this! man-out-of-time/defrosted cap!steve finds an anchor to his past in a deli in brooklyn (and the cute jewish deli owner) - lots of flashbacks & steve healing

📺 STUFF I WATCHED 📺

Midsomer Murders - s23, e1-3

Enola Holmes 2

A Very British Murder with Lucy Worsley - e1 "The New Taste for Blood"

The Last of Sheila

Hot Ones - Kevin Bacon Needs Six Degrees of Separation From Spicy Wings

Hot Ones - Tessa Thompson Feels Alive While Eating Spicy Wings

Hot Ones - Daniel Kaluuya Listens to His Ego While Eating Spicy Wings

Hot Ones - Lizzo Earns Her Hot Sauce Crown While Eating Spicy Wings

🎧 PODCASTS 🎧

Off Menu - Ep 174: Mel Giedroyc (Christmas Special)

Ologies with Alie Ward - P-22: The Life & Death of an L.A. Cougar with Miguel Ordeñana & Beth Pratt

Vibe Check - 2022 - That’s a Wrap!

Desert Island Discs - Baz Luhrmann, director

Decoder Ring Plus - The Mailbag Episode

Hot and Bothered - Live from Pemberley: Sexuality in the Regency (with Emily Nagoski)

Into It - Are We Into or Not Into 2022?

Come As You Are - Prelude: Pleasure is The Measure

Weather Geeks - Weather in Hollywood

Weather Geeks - Lights… Camera… Climate!

Ologies with Alie Ward - Bonus Episode: Secrets, Advice + Ask-Me-Anything

Hit Parade Plus - Hits of the Year Edition Part 1 & Part 2

🎶 MUSIC 🎶

Classical Calm

Timeless Classics

Feel-Good Classic Rock

RENAISSANCE [Beyoncé]

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decembermoonskz · 2 years

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txt and #s 9-11 :D (for me, the answer to 9 is now a yes after i watched this video today T.T)

hi there mel! (is it alright to call you that? or do you prefer smth else?) thank you for coming to play! ;)

txt

9. Have they ever made you cry?

actually yes HAHA i haven’t even stanned them for very long despite liking them casually since predebut. but recently i bought their concert in seoul, and watched the replay with @kitty-lixie and i started getting more emotional watching it the second time. something about them performing crown got me really emotional. i think it’s bc i always liked their debut song and still listened to it for years so that song is just special to me. also the ending of the concert got me twice, plus at the end they had a behind the scenes of their concert vcr and they played our summer which is the go-to txt song to make me cry. HAHA i was like “i’m so sick of this” when it started playing and i started crying haha our summer never fails to make me emotional. the first time i watched the concert with my mom and when it was nearing the end and after it was over i literally pouted and was like “aww, mom, i love them.” haha xD

10. Favorite music video?

nooo omg this is such a hard question. i think 0x1=lovesong’s mv is my favorite (shocker. not. given it’s my favorite song) i love the overall like storyline of the mv and yeonjun in that mv kinda hits different (i miss black hair yeonjun highkey). i also love loser=lover, blue hour, and eternally’s mvs as well!! :D

11. What do you love about this group?

oooh that’s kind of hard to put into words?? maybe i can hmmm i think i mainly am a fan of the people first. soobin is the reason i got into the group to start with, and i came to love all the members after that. as a group, i am a very big fan of their choreography, their synchronization is amazing and all of their choreo is very energetic. there’s a lot of level changes and line sequences as well which i’m a fan of. another thing i like is the variety in their discography, which is smth i always like with skz, so it’s nice to hear all kinds of vibes from them.

send me a kpop group and a number from this list here

#inbox mini games #njaems

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luthordamnvers · 1 year

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🙋‍♀️🦅🛠🎶 :)

🙋‍♀️ Do any irl people know you write fanfic?

I have a few friends that know. My brother also knows. But they are not on my fandom, and they don't read my stuff as far as I know. And if they do, I don't wanna know...

🦅 Do you outline fics or fly by the seat of your pants?

I've done both. But I do enjoy outlining and talking with a couple of people while I craft the entire story. Not to say that I cannot change the story later, but I enjoy the outlining aspect very much, and it makes the entire thing easier to write.

🛠What tools/programs/apps do you use to write?

I write on docs. Because I write from my phone A LOT. Like, I've written entire fics on my phone. I like that I can jump from desktop, to phone, to tablet with Docs, and it's synchronized. Other than that, I've used an app called "story plotter" that helps me create/visualize AU characters, but rarely. Other than that, pinterest and canva for images/moodboards. And an actual chalkboard to outline, sometimes.

🎶 Do you listen to music while you write? What song have you been playing on loop lately?

I listen to instrumentals, classical music and soundtracks. I always go back to Experience by Ludovico Einaudi, on repeat.

Thanks for asking Mel

Fanfic Writer Emoji Ask

#asks #fazedlight #fic writing

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overlooked-tracks · 2 years

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Executive Turntable: Sony Music Taps SVP of Strategy & Investments; L.A. Radio Legend Retires

The following article has been posted on October 13, 2022 at 10:17PM:

An Overlooked Tracks News Finding: Here’s an article you might have overlooked. Having a partnership with NewsAPI, we try to catch music entertainment news for you to view, read and possibly enjoy. We will continue to find what’s available in the world of music entertainment, concert information and music releases. But obviously you – the listener and reader are the biggest source for news in your area, so if you can share with us. For right now, look at what we found for you:

“From The Billboard Magazine Website – Executive Turntable: Sony Music Taps SVP of Strategy & Investments; L.A. Radio Legend Retires”

Angela Lopes was promoted to senior vp of strategy and investments at Sony Music Entertainment as part of the company’s newly-announced combination of its corporate and digital investments, M&A and strategic planning teams. In the role, Lopes — who was previously senior vp of digital strategy & investments — will work with Sony Music’s executive leadership and global digital business teams to develop strategies and investing opportunities to support the company’s creative and financial growth. She will also focus on expanding Sony Music’s investments across development areas, including global streaming, artist services, the creator economy, social media, gaming, NFTs and the metaverse. The New York-based Thomas reports to COO Kevin Kelleher and president of global digital business Dennis Kooker.

Pat Prescott, the longtime morning show host at Los Angeles’ KTWV-FM (94.7 The Wave), retired from mainstream radio after 47 years and 21 years at her current home. She hosted her final show at the station on Sept. 30. Over her career, she has worked at stations including New Orleans’ WNOE and New York City’s WRVR, WBLS-FM, WLIB and CD 101.9 and served as an anchor for The National Black News Network. While at The Wave, she hosted and produced the station’s annual Black History Month tribute Making the Waves and the 20-part social justice series Justice Now, created in response to the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police. Among other honors, she received the Genii Award from the Alliance of Women in Media. She will continue hosting Favorite Things with Pat Prescott, a daily specialty radio show at New Jersey’s NPR jazz station WBGO (88.3 FM).

Kristy Gibson was promoted to senior vp of film/TV & video games synchronization at Atlantic Records. Gibson will oversee the placement of music from Atlantic artists in film, TV, trailers, promos and video games. She reports to Atlantic president, West Coast Kevin Weaver.

Executive Turntable: Sony Music Taps SVP of Strategy & Investments; L.A. Radio Legend Retires

Also at Atlantic Records, Drew Maniscalco was promoted to vp of sales and streaming. He will continue to pioneer Atlantic’s data strategies while working with several of the label’s emerging and established acts.

Mel Carter, the former senior vp of A&R at Republic Records who departed the label at the end of September, launched Second Estate Records, a joint venture with Warner Records. Under the deal, Warner Records will provide Second Estate with its full spectrum of marketing and distribution services. Carter will also serve as a consultant to the A&R team, including president of A&R Steve Carless and executive vp and head of A&R Karen Kwak. Second Estate’s first signing is Philadelphia rapper 2rare, who was recently featured on Lil Durk‘s “Q-Pid.”

Secretly Group hired Mark Czarra as managing director of radio, effective immediately. He will run the North American radio department out of the company’s Los Angeles office, overseeing campaigns for Secretly’s four record labels: Dead Oceans, Jagjaguwar, Saddest Factory Records and Secretly Canadian. Czarra, who was most recently senior vp at Downtown Records, reports to vp of operations Kraegan Graves.

Berry Gordy appointed his longtime advisor and attorney Carol Perrin as CEO of his companies. Perrin started her career as a partner in the law firm Ball Hunt Hart Brown and Baerwitz before launching her own practice. She ended her law career as a principal shareholder at Greenberg Traurig.

Danny Wimmer Presents (DWP) promoted Del Williams to global head of talent. In the role, he will oversee the curation and booking of all DWP festivals, one-offs and special events. He will also work closely with Billy Brill and Seth Shomes to grow the representation of DWP Talent Services, which focuses on entertainment for casinos and fairs. Williams can be reached at [email protected].

Natalie Wade BEM, the founder of Small Green Shoots and The Cat’s Mother, joined PPL as director of music industry engagement, a newly created role. Wade will help develop PPL’s relationships with the U.K. music industry, promoting PPL’s work collecting hundreds of millions in neighboring rights revenue for performers and rights holders. She reports to chief membership & people officer Kate Reilly and joins CEO Peter Leathem‘s executive management team. PPL will continue supporting Natalie’s work with The Cat’s Mother; she will also continue as a part-time consultant to Small Green Shoots for a transitional period.

Ralph W. Peer was named managing director of peermusic Australia. He will be based out of the company’s Sydney offices and report jointly to Kathy Spanberg, president of peermusic in the region, and global CFO Bill Gorjance. In addition to his new role, Peer will continue directing peermusic initiatives as vp of the company’s African and Middle East operations. Peer is the grandson of late peermusic founder Ralph S. Peer.

Sony Music Nashville promoted Nicole Marinake to vp of partnership marketing & new ventures; she was previously senior director of partnership marketing. In the role, Marinake will work with the label’s regional promotion and artist development team to expand the label and its artist footprint in the branding space, specifically on a regional level. She will also explore, identify and pursue business in new technology, innovation, gaming and Web3 while continuing to oversee all national brand partnership efforts and build the Sony Music Nashville Live brand. She reports to senior vp of marketing Jennifer Way and can be reached at [email protected].

AEG appointed Matthew Zweck vp of partnership sales for the Asia Pacific, leading the company’s expansion in the region. Zweck, who will be based in Melbourne, has been with the company for 10 years. Among other duties, he will focus on securing naming rights deals for new AEG venues in Thailand, Japan and South Korea that are currently under construction.

The Canadian Musical Reproduction Rights Agency (CMRRA) hired Elyssa Macri as director of communications and industry relations, effective Oct. 17. She will lead strategic communications, marketing, events and sponsorship opportunities for the company while working with other members of the CMRRA and its U.S. partner SX Works to develop strategies designed to support CMRRA’s client base and amplify the work of both organizations. Macri will also be a key liaison with Canadian industry organizations. She joins the CMRRA from The Canadian Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences/The JUNO Awards, where she served as director of marketing and communications. She can be reached at [email protected].

Music producer Gary Gray and music expert/author Dave Kusek partnered to launch TEAM, an A&R pathway and music licensing-focused training academy for aspiring musicians. The company’s flagship service, TEAM Premium Access, offers an “assembly line” training model that includes an online music education program and support community along with exclusive licensing opportunities for users. The service — which offers training in music production, marketing and more, as well as mentorship opportunities — launches on Tuesday (Oct. 11).

The Songwriters Association of Canada appointed Tiffany Ferguson as executive director. She was most recently manager to Australian R&B artist Hoodlem.

SPIN added Vans Warped Tour founder and producer Kevin Lyman to its board of directors. Lyman currently owns and serves as CEO of his production agency KLG, which produces branded festivals and cause marketing events.

Read More Music Headllines

and can be found on the Overlooked Tracks website: https://ift.tt/Ge0iJ3B. Check out more music news from Overlooked Tracks! Music Headline News, Coporate, partnership, retirement

#Music #Musicislife #musica #MusicLover #podcast #podcaster

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burninlovebutler · 1 year

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does it ever drive you crazy

just how fast

the night changes

#austin butler #baby butler #his hand thing 😭#his smile 😭#mel’s synchronicities #young austin butler #baby austin butler #austin butler elvis #elvis 2022 #night changes

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vehiclepiner · 2 years

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Textastic app

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leadaugust8 · 2 years

Text

What Everyone Seems To Be Saying About Massage And What You Must Do

Our CREPE periodicity measure is the sequence of probabilities associated with the pitch bins chosen by Viterbi decoding. We dither the extracted pitch with random noise drawn from a triangular distribution centered at zero, with width equal to two CREPE pitch bins (i.e., 40 cents). CREPE outputs a distribution over quantized pitch values over time. LPCNet autoregressively predicts the parameters of a categorical distribution over 8-bit mu-law-encoded excitation values. Second, the YIN pitch and periodicity exhibit significant noise, which harms the efficiency of LPCNet. First, pitch values are encoded because the variety of samples per period. For example, if a phoneme is spoken for a hundred milliseconds (10 frames), we will stretch the phoneme to 200 milliseconds by decoding twice as many samples from every frame. CREPE normalizes every body of input audio, making it invariant to amplitude. POSTSUBSCRIPT invariant (contradicting claim C0). swedish massage on a per-frame basis. POSTSUBSCRIPT (inexperienced dots)umrigar93 as a function of the variety of DMC steps. A unique feature of non-Hermitian (NH) programs is the NH pores and skin effect, i.e. the edge localization of an intensive variety of bulk-band eigenstates in a lattice with open or semi-infinite boundaries. With Delta the facialist makes use of a combination of active ingredients to soothe and calm irritated pores and skin.

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So while emotions might bubble up, you're calm and able to face what will come. POSTSUPERSCRIPT flops are required for each relaxation iteration, and these zebra relaxations should alternate between every coordinate path. However, to successfully apply zebra relaxation to 2D grids which can be stretched in both spatial directions, a pair of relaxation iterations are required (one in each coordinate course) at every step within the multigrid algorithm, rendering tweed much more efficient as, we are going to demonstrate. Alternating tweed/wireframe relaxation would possibly show helpful sooner or later, when grid clustering will not be isolated to localized areas either near the centre or close to the boundaries, but instead is utilized in multiple areas, in numerous directions, within a computational domain. 20 % costlier than tweed relaxation or one route of zebra relaxation. 50 % costlier than tweed relaxation. Another approach price mentioning here is the sequential software of tweed and wireframe relaxation, akin to alternating-course zebra relaxation strategy mentioned above.

Performance is in contrast (each analytically and numerically) with multigrid leveraging the standard checkerboard, one-path zebra, and alternating-path zebra relaxation schemes. 128128 × 128 grid with totally different ranges of grid stretching, utilizing the tweed, wireframe, and alternating tweed/wireframe relaxation schemes discussed above. POSTSUPERSCRIPT flops are required per relaxation iteration, as 9999 flops are required at each gridpoint. 0 means that the remaining nodes are isolated in small clusters and they cannot entry each other. The truth that these smoothing methods work in apply suggests that the conditions to improve the nodes are extended beyond the exact equivalence to a Gaussian form. Neural vocoders are deep neural networks that convert acoustic features (e.g., a mel-spectrogram) to a waveform. Using a neural vocoder, we are able to carry out speech manipulation by encoding speech audio as acoustic features, modifying these acoustic options, after which vocoding to provide a brand new waveform. Modifying the pitch and timing of an audio sign are elementary audio editing operations with applications in speech manipulation, audio-visible synchronization, and singing voice modifying and synthesis. LPCNet resembles a source-filter mannequin, which decouples the residual (pitch and noise) and spectral (timbre) structure. However, our work demonstrates that, with out modification, LPCNet doesn't carry out accurate pitch-shifting (Figure 1). We hypothesize this is due to a few issues: (1) limitations in the pitch illustration used in LPCNet, (2) insufficient disentanglement between pitch and acoustic features, and (3) a lack of training information for very excessive- and low-pitched speech.

However, even present DSP-primarily based methods for pitch-shifting and time-stretching induce artifacts that degrade audio quality. However, these algorithms can alter the timbre of speech to sound unnatural. However, no analysis of time-stretching performance is offered. Marcantoni, Egidio. "Massager to be inserted within the again of a massage chair or the like, supplied with massage stress adjustment." United states patent application 6,454,731 B1. To evaluate the bounds of the community recovery algorithm for growing failure charges, we ran a set of experiments where your complete network’s topological info was offered to all nodes, in their local reminiscence, at initialisation time. Next, SVM is used to categorise the balanced data set. Data from 1990 until 2016 present a 10% (6.24years) enhance globally and 16% (8.12) increase in India. For goal evaluation, we present that CLPCNet performs pitch-shifting of speech on unseen datasets with excessive accuracy relative to prior neural methods. In our subjective analysis, we present that the quality of pitch-shifting and time-stretching with CLPCNet meets or exceeds competitive DSP-based mostly strategies. HFC demonstrates variable-ratio pitch-shifting performance with worse accuracy than WORLD, and its subjective high quality is considerably degraded by noise induced during vocoding.

#massage #health #well-beng #beauty #spa #aroma #healing #life #theraphy

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taz-writes · 6 years

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the real question is, how did I manage to give four main characters birthdays within two weeks of each other and then not notice this for ACTUAL YEARS

#taz talks #that would be kyrina dusk aelia and mel by the way #oh and i guess rysandra counts bc she’s aelia’s twin but she’s super MIA so it doesn’t matter #i mght move mel more towards the august zone again #sayara and fianora have birthdays 6 days apart but there’s actually a reason so that one is valid #fi is able to connect with sayara because sayara’s evolutions lined up with fi’s magical ebb and flow #and it made mystical waves of ghost energy #or something #mostly fi and sayara can connect because of starshard and the necklace #but yah if their birthdays weren’t close together it would be a lot harder for them to synchronize #also their birthdays are close because they’re both facets of a self insert #fianora is the elementary school avatar of power and authority and coolness and stuff #sayara is the high school avatar of fucking everything up while trying to be cool and powerful

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nemo-of-house-hamartia · 2 years

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In the Heat of The Moment

Chapter 3 - Confrontation

Ch.1, Ch.2

Words Count: 8736

Warning: None

23rd January 1909

The small room on the second floor of the hideout was veiled by a soft penumbra, giving the whole place a dreamlike appearance. Only a few rays of the rising winter sun were daring to peek through the drawn curtains of the old room, with its antiquated wallpapers and the worn-out leather upholstery of the armchair close by.

But neither of the two people hiding in that small alcove gave thoughts to their surroundings, their attention captured by each other's low voices and hushed moans, enveloped as they were in the deepest of embraces.

Fingers gripping tight, almost digging into her soft buttocks, the man held the young woman's hips against his own, guiding her as she rode the waves of her own pleasure.

At the sound of her breathy voice calling for his name - desperate, wanting, needy - the man felt his own release coming, bucking his hips and blocking hers against his own, burying himself so deep into her, all he wanted was to get lost in that moment of stolen ecstasy.

Both in a blissful daze, the young woman plopped on the man's strong chest, dark sensual eyes meeting steel grey ones in a gaze filled with languid satisfaction, their heartbeats synchronized and slowing to a peaceful rhythm.

For a second, they both stood still, the moment of the afterglow so surreal they thought even one breath might break that fragile reality.

Then, Emmett Frye spoke.

"I can't keep seeing you like this, Melanie," he murmured, his voice low, coated with a huskiness that came from pleasure, as he kissed the young woman's brows, soft pecks that left her wanting for more. "You know I can never make an honest woman out of you,"

He trailed down her nose and found her lips with his, brushing against them at first, then gently pressing so that she would open them for him.

The young woman whined a little as she wrapped her arms around the older man's shoulders.

"What if I don't want to be an honest woman? What if I want to be just your woman?”

Emmett chuckled against her lips, as he trailed down her neck, finding where her pulse was. He gave her a little nip and was rewarded with a low moan that brought a smile to his face.

"Your father would kill me, Miss Abberline,"

"My father would have a reason to kill you for what we already do. Besides, he did know your father, Mr. Frye."

"Precisely why we can't keep seeing each other like this. He would get a heart attack knowing that you are mingling with me,”

"Why are you so afraid of my father finding out? Or others, for that matter?"

Emmett looked at her for a moment; then, his lips twitched up, his smile never reaching his eyes.

"Fear has nothing to do with it, Mel.”

“Lies,” she smirked.

He raised an eyebrow, barely blinking.

“I am not afraid, Mel. I never am. Of anyone.”

"That’s a lie, Emmett Frye," she chuckled, leaning in to kiss him again.

"Maybe," He conceded once, knowing instead that now he was lying.

After what had happened to him, to his family, in 1888, fear had no business having a place in his soul.

He had been scared once, and his fear had cost him something so great, he still bore the consequences - the scars- of that moment of weakness of his heart.

Never again he would be afraid. Never again he would let terror rule him.

Was he happy about everything he had done to preserve his family, to help his father take back the gang after that demon Jack had devastated all that his parents had built together in twenty years… to everything that he had witnessed throughout the years, everything that had molded him to become the man he was today?

The truth was he couldn’t really say, and there wasn’t really anything that he could do to change what had been.

But if he were proud of himself, of who he had become, that was a totally different matter altogether.

“What’s this?” asked Melanie, taking him away from his thoughts, as she looked at the necklace around his neck.

It was a leather cord with a ring hanging from it.

“My wife’s wedding ring,” he said, grabbing a cigarette from the packet on the bedside table and lighting it up, taking a drag from it.

The young woman looked at the golden band, inspecting it carefully, her eyes gleaming with curiosity, an unspoken question on her lips.

“She’s dead,” Emmett murmured with his low, raspy voice, gently taking the wedding band from her hand and hiding it underneath his woolen shirt.

“What happened?” she asked,

The older man looked into her eyes, not speaking at first, his gaze so intense the young woman thought he could read right into her soul.

“Life happened, Mel,” he said, his voice final, hiding a warning to not thread any further in the murky waters where all that he pained about still dwelled.

Even if almost a decade had passed, reminiscing was still intolerable for him. There were certain memories he had sworn to keep barred from anyone, including himself. His wife belonged there, deep within his heart...the only place where he knew she would truly be safe and sound.

He sighed, keeping his hand on the now hidden golden band, an unconscious protective gesture that he had started to do ever since his wife had been taken away from him.

Melanie stood pensive for one moment. She was sure that there was much more behind that, but she dared not to ask any further.

She raised her big dark eyes, staring into his for a moment: she was so curious to know more about him, to know more about that man whose gaze saw everything that happened around him and yet never let anything transpire through them.

But she knew that with him, probing and insisting would do no good.

If anything, it would make him grow more distant.

She leaned in to take the cigarette from his lips and brought it to her own.

“Keep your secrets, Mr. Frye,” she chuckled with a tiny smile. “ One day, I will be able to discover them all,”

He looked at her, his face growing even more serious.

"Don't tread in places where you should not go, little dove," he murmured, caressing her cheek with his knuckles, each of his gestures always so delicate, as if she was a doll made of the most delicate material.

Melanie felt the coarse, calloused skin of his hand, looking at the grazed skin - a testimony to all the fight he had taken part in?

Or maybe, she pondered, a testimony of all the fight he had caused?

She knew so little of the man in front of her, whatever he decided to show her. Yet, she wanted to know more. She had seen glimpses of a fire burning in his cold eyes. And she wanted to find out what ignited those flames.

A loud knock on the door made them turn their heads.

"Em," called the rough voice of Uriel from outside the room. “We got a call from one of our strongholds in Lambeth. Trouble is brewing in the neighbourhood. The Carvers are at it again. We need to go now.”

Emmett kept his silence, his face a pool of still water, as he quickly considered all of his options.

“Duty calls?” inquired Melanie, beaming with excitement. “Can I come with you? I have never seen what you actually do! I could be of help!”

He looked straight into her eyes, his stare so cold it felt as if winter had found its home there.

“That’s out of the question, Melanie. This is not a game. You are not to go anywhere near where the Carvers operate.” He said, getting out of bed and starting to put his clothes on. “Now dress up. Jeremy will bring you back to your parents’ home,”

“I’m not a child, Emmett! I don’t need to be chaperoned!” she blurted out, jumping out of the bed to follow him. “You can’t order me around! I’m not one of your underlings!”

He turned and took her face in his hands, caressing her cheeks with his thumb.

When he spoke, his low voice was so soft, almost jarring to hear compared to the chilliness of his gaze. Yet, the younger woman was sure she had seen it softening as well.

“I am not ordering you, Mel,” he murmured, kissing her brow, lingering there, taking in her perfume of violets and roses. “God only knows that no force on Earth can actually make you do something you do not want to do. No, I am asking you not to follow me. It is not your place to do so, and I want you out of harm’s way,”

She relented, for just one moment, her eyes lowering to find where his golden band was still hidden.

“It’s because of what happened to your wife?” she blurted out, without thinking.

Emmett kept his silence, his face hardening at that.

“Em! Kiss that harlot goodbye and let’s go! We need to go!” knocked Uriel again, with more insistence this time.

Melanie’s face morphed in a mask of bewilderment, her mouth gaping.

“W-what did he just call me?” she bellowed, making way to the door to face the man herself. “Why, of all the things I have been calle-”

Emmett took her by the arm, and stopped her in her tracks, pulling her back against his chest.

He took her face in his hands and dove down to kiss her in that way that always sent chills of pure pleasure down her spine, taking her breath away.

Melanie could do nothing but mellow in that kiss, a soft moan drowning in her throat.

Damn the man for knowing how to make her melt in his arms!

“We do not have time for this,” Emmett murmured, breaking the kiss. “I need to sort things out in the borough,”

With one last peck, he put his coat on and kissed her lips one more time.

“When will we see each other again?” she asked, resisting the urge to throw herself in his arms.

He stopped and looked at her.

“Mel, I told you-”

“I know fairly well what you’ve told me, Mr. Frye. And I’m asking you: when will we see each other again?”

Emmett could only smile at her. Stubborn like no one else in the world. He knew she wouldn’t let go of him until she heard what she wanted to hear.

“Soon, I hope,” he conceded. “My men will see you are delivered back to your parents safe and sound,”

Then, for the spark of a moment, he hesitated, his eyes wandering on her determined expression. He gripped the knob of the door, willing himself to go.

“Go home, little dove, and be safe. Leave the danger of the world to this old rook,”

And without turning back, he left the room with a quick stride.

As Melanie accompanied him with her gaze, she noticed Uriel glancing at her, an amused look on his clean shaved face.

“Sorry to interrupt, Missy, but duty calls. You know how it is,” he snickered, smirking as he eyed the woman in front of him.

She narrowed her eyes, knowing that the young man wasn’t sorry at all.

Offended yet relentless, she held her gaze, defiant as ever: she knew Uriel, more than she cared to. Growing up, she had plenty of opportunities to get to meet the most boisterous of the Frye children whenever Mrs. Dorothea would come and visit her mother, Magnolia. Uriel was the exact copy of his twin Gabriel, from his curly dark hair down to his tall frame; but where Gabriel’s eyes always twinkled with a mischievous yet kind light, in Uriel’s there was always a hint of coldness that made them appear like two dark voids, where no warmth ever dwelled.

“You should learn how to properly talk to a lady, Uriel,”

His smile widened, turning into a crooked smirk.

“When I meet one, I’ll make sure to remember your advice, Mel,”

And before she had the chance to answer him, he tipped the brim of his hat and closed the door behind himself with an unceremonious bang.

*****

“About fuckin’ time, Em,” growled Uriel, his smile all but disappeared, as he followed his brother down the stairs, his dark coat flapping behind him. They crossed the street and a car passed so close to them, Uriel turned to shout at the driver, his curse drowned by the roaring of the engine as the vehicle sped up. Rolling his eyes, Emmett caught him by the arm, dragging him toward where their car was.

“We don’t have time for this. We need to hurry,”

“Yet you had all the time to kiss that harlot goodbye, it seems,”

“Uriel, you are my brother and I love you...but call Melanie a ‘harlot’ one more time, and we are going to have a problem, you and I,”

The younger man huffed as he started the engine up. “Not calling her that won’t make any difference about what she is. You know about her reputation,”

Emmett glared at him. “Uriel, enough. That is not one of your bloody business! I do not know what Mel has done to you-”

“She’s an Abberline, Emmett! You know I don’t have much love for coppers or any of their offspring, no matter how much Papa used to like her pa!”

“But she is also Eva’s friend! And Mrs.Abberline is one of Mother’s dearest friends! Couldn’t you show some respect at least for their sake?”

Uriel stared him square in the eyes, not relenting for one moment.

“You know that bringing up our sister and mother won’t make a difference, don’t you?

Emmett sighed. His younger brother had always been a piece of work, ever since he had started to talk coherently.

“Keep all that animosity for the Carvers, Uri. We will need it. Drive now, and inform me of the situation,”

"We have captured two of their men. Underlings, but they seem to know something. Still, Albert hasn’t managed to make them talk yet,”

"No torture on them, I hope?"

Uriel smiled for the first time, his lips thinning in a cruel smirk.

"No need for that. We just told them that The Executioner was on his way," he chuckled, turning to look at his brother, a light of admiration in his eyes. “Should’ve seen their faces, Emmett. I could swear one of’em pissed himself when he heard that.” Emmett heard Uriel snigger, almost unable to contain his excitement. “He ain’t going to have mercy on you,’ I said to those pissers,”

The Executioner, Emmett thought, his lips pursing in a thin line of disapproval. That moniker had been following him his entire adult life. He knew he had long earned that reputation ever since that name had been given to him, but funnily enough, the moniker hadn't belonged to him in the first place.

It was a misconception.

No, that name truly belonged to the one that had killed Jack The Ripper, after Jack had sent London in a frenzy during the Autumn of Terror; it was given by the press after Abberline had found Jack slashed to death, his face butchered beyond any possible recognition.

Emmett mused, for a moment, what the people would think if they knew that The Executioner had been, in truth, a woman.

My own mother, he thought, clenching his jaw.

Feeling something dreadful bubbling up in his chest, he grabbed another cigarette and lit it up, taking a long drag to fill up his lungs and soul with that poison fumes that always brought him relief.

He smoked too much, he knew that. His parents never ceased to tell him to reduce the number of cigarettes he smoked each day, and yet, he couldn’t help himself: since 1888, it was one of the few ways to calm his frazzled nerves.

He still remembered Inspector Abberline offering him one cigarette- his first - after the policeman found him, his aunt Evie and his mother Dorothea in one of Lambeth's underground cells, the three of them standing as a human wall around his half-dead father and his siblings Eva and Robin, maimed and beaten and scared to death.

Emmett closed his eyes, all memories flooding his mind, unwanted, unsought, yet unrelenting as they gripped his soul with those unforgiving talons.

He still recalled the foul stench of that cold dark cell, a gagging mixture of molding walls, human waste, and lingering sickness, so strong and pungent, it still made his stomach queasy at the mere thought.

Emmett had only been a boy of sixteen years of age, but seeing his father - his hero - curled up on the cold floor, barely moving, barely breathing, and yet, still holding his younger maimed children in his arms, still trying to protect them even when he had no strengths to spare for himself… that sight had filled him with such hopelessness, such fear, he remembered starting to shake like a leaf at the mercy of the chilling winter winds.

Emmett shuddered, as the memories shifted once more, to the cracking of a whip as it lashed against the soft tissues of a body, over and over and over again, each cracks followed by a scream of pure wrath and agony.

It was all still as clear as the day he had witnessed all of that.

Seeing his father and siblings like that had left him broken.

But seeing his gentle, placid mother - a woman unwilling to even raise her voice to reprimand her children - become possessed by a murderous blind rage at the sight of her husband's limp body and her abducted children wasting away… seeing her infer lashes after lashes to the miscreant -the demon- that had dared to try to destroy their family...it all had left a mark on Emmett that still came back to torment him, in sleep and wake alike.

And only smoking could help him calm down.

He reckoned that it was due to the fact that the cigarette offered by the kind Inspector had been the first gentle gesture after all the horrors he had witnessed, after all the despair he had felt, and that small gift had seemed like a blessing, at that moment. He only remembered being beyond grateful for it, and for the help the older man had offered when his hands had been shaking too much to allow him to light it up.

He closed his eyes, to chase away those nightmarish thoughts that were still haunting him, almost twenty years later.

"Let's move and get over this. I need to meet with Gabriel at the Pub, afterward. He said he has something of urgency he needs to discuss with me," he murmured, trying to hide the strain in his voice with a small cough.

"Goddamnit, Em, don't tell me Gabriel’s still looking into that stupid cross he has found during Christmas,"

Uriel’s exasperated reaction caught him by surprise. Turning his complete attention to the younger sibling, Emmett raised an eyebrow.

“How do you know about it? Did Gabriel inform you?”

Uriel snorted, shaking his head. “As if! He didn’t need to! He mutters about it even in his sleep, for Christ’s sake! I’ve thrown him so many pillows to make him shut up, I was this close to tossing him out of the room! Ever since he came back from London last week, he’s started to talk to himself! ‘Leviathan this, Starrick that!’ I swear, if I hear about these poppycocks one more time, I’ll become a Templar myself and give Briel a real reason to brood over!”

Emmett’s face hardened in a mask of complete stillness at the mention of those names, his blood running cold deep within his veins.

The Leviathan. The connection to Crawford Starrick.

Gabriel must have found his correspondence.

Emmett took another drag from his cigarette, feigning nonchalance, despite the immense maelstrom of emotions whirling in his gut.

“Did he tell you anything of relevance?”

“Nothing whatsoever. The last time I saw him, he had closed himself in the library in Dover working on some codes. He looked like a madman because he couldn’t manage to decipher them,”

The eldest of the Frye brothers let out a shaky sigh of relief, that he immediately tried to hide with a small cough.

“And what are your thoughts on it?” he then asked, interrupting his younger brother’s harangue. ”Do you think we have reason to worry about anything he might find?”

Uriel dared to take his eyes off from the road for a little moment, just to give his brother a look of incredulity.

“Not you as well, Emmett! Come on, we all know they are a whole load of bollocks right there! Our father was an Assassin, the one leading our branch of the Brotherhood for the last three decades! What’s so surprising in finding a Templar memento in our home?” he huffed, as he honked to catch the attention of a friend passing down the road. Then, he focused once again on the road ahead of him. “I would’ve tossed that cross into the sea as soon as I first saw it and never thought about it ever again! I’d have just moved on and focused on something more urgent, instead of bringing Lily and Eva into this! Good thing he hasn’t bothered Robin as well, otherwise I would have smacked Gabriel myself! Who cares about it? Who fuckin’ cares about it all!? But no: leave it to Briel to make a giant fuss about philosophy, conspiracies and Templars and all that footle!”

Emmett remained silent. On one hand, he was relieved to know that his younger brother -always more focused on fighting and dallying around- wouldn’t give much attention to what Gabriel had found; On the other hand, the fact that Briel had entangled both their sisters in his conjectures made him wary and more nervous than he cared to admit.

He needed to meet him, as soon as possible, and assess how much he already knew, before he would turn to their parents - because Emmett knew that it would be his brother’s next step.

"You know how he is, Uri: when he finds something that he deems important, he is a hound that never quits," the eldest Frye murmured, at last, swallowing his worry as he kept his eyes on the road ahead of him. He heard his younger brother snort.

"That's one big bag of bullshit right there, Em, and you know that as well as I do. He quits when he sees fit to quit. He just loves to poke his nose in businesses that don’t concern him,"

Emmett allowed himself a small, sad smile. He knew the youngest one of the family had the reputation of being nosy, especially among his siblings, but Emmett knew better than the rest of them.

"He is driven by his need for the truth, whatever that might be. That in itself is not necessarily wrong. The only problem with Briel is that he does not know when to stop. And that can be dangerous." “dangerous for him and all of us,” he thought, without letting those words pass beyond his lips.

He brushed a thumb against his brow, before taking another drag from his cigarettes. When he spoke again, his tone was final. "Now, drive. I want to be over with all of this as soon as possible,”

*****

The snug room of the pub was quiet, intimate, entirely different from the joyful sound of laughter and chit-chat of the patrons enjoying their beers after the end of their shifts. Gabriel was sitting as still as his own will allowed, but impatience was eating him alive, as he looked at the timepiece in his hand.

He knew his eldest brother was always on time, precise and punctual to the point of being irritating, and always ready to call out others on their lateness.

So why, why was he late? Today of all days?

He tapped his foot impatiently against the golden leg of the table, fidgeting with his timepiece, as he took in his surroundings to distract his racing mind. He looked at all the carvings that ran around the edge of the table and without thinking, he caressed the intricate details, relishing in the smooth sensation of the lacquered wood against his fingertips.

His eyes followed the engraved vines until they found a detail he hadn’t seen in a long while: carved in one of the four corners of the table stood a small rook, holding a star underneath its wing and six smaller stars circling it.

The Rook, ever vigil, and the Morning Star, as splendent as ever and protected beneath the bird’s powerful wing, both surrounded by the glimmering six results of their love.

The Symbol of their Family.

A sad smile appeared on his face as he caressed it with gentleness: his father had designed and carved that small exquisite marvel, a token of love for his beloved wife and his children.

Gabriel felt a clenching in his chest, his shoulders slumping down at the memory of all that he had found after visiting his childhood home. All the doors that had opened, one after the other, in an uncontrollable cascade of discoveries that he had started, and had left him with more questions - and more regrets - than answers.

He knew his family was not perfect. He knew his parents were not without their faults, and he knew that they had lived full lives before he had been brought into that world by their love…but after finding the cross, the torn pages from his father’s journal, and those blasted letters under his brother’s wooden floor, he couldn’t wrap his head around the fact that his family was not what he had believed it to be. He looked at the box - another one of his findings- snuggly placed beside him on the wooden bench and frowned, half in guilt, half in disquiet, but whole in confusion. After all his findings, he felt as if he had turned all his carpets in his house, and found them hiding blood and dirt and worms, and he couldn’t, for the life of him wrap his head around it.

He wanted so desperately to understand, to be comforted, to be told that it had been all a humongous jest and that it shall carry no consequences whatsoever.

And yet, he knew, there was no possible way to undo what his curiosity had brought him to do.

There was no possibility to unknow what he had learned.

The sudden creaking of the room’s door opening brought Gabriel away from his mulling, and when he turned toward the newcomer, he narrowed his dark eyes.

“About time, Emmett,” he grumbled, tapping his foot against the wooden floor. He looked at his eldest brother from above his thin glasses and glared, unable to contain his disapproval.

“Have you been waiting long, little brother?”

“More than I wanted to. For being the one recommending us to never be late, you are not very good at doing as you preach,” Gabriel snarked, pursing his lips in a displeased grimace as he looked at his brother closing the door behind him, a lit cigarette already hanging from his lips.

Emmett smirked, amused.“I got caught up in something along the way. Duty called.”

Gabriel looked at his brother, examining his appearance with keen eyes. Smudged against his neck was the faint trace of lip rouge.

“Duty called alright”, he thought, scoffing.

Melanie Abberline, his paramour.

He said nothing, keeping his silent observation to himself; instead, he leaned over and took one of the cigarettes from his brother’s pocket, ignoring the raised eyebrows on his brother’s face.

“Does Mother know that you have picked up smoking?”

Gabriel didn’t answer right away, letting his defiant gaze speak for him as he lit up the cigarette.

“Does she know that you have been the one influencing me?”

Emmett smiled his sphynx grin, the one that never truly reached his clear eyes, as he finally sat directly in front of his younger brother.

“Your memory is failing, Briel, because I don’t recall ever giving you a cigarette in all my life. You were the one sneaking them out of my secret stashes, even when I changed their hiding place,”

Gabriel puffed out the smoke, squinting with a reproachful look.

“So you knew?”

Emmett smiled again. “I did, little brother. I always know what’s going on around me,”

“And yet, our siblings have the galls to call me nosy, when they have you who have more experience than me at it,” grumbled the younger Frye.

“In my defense, it is my job to know everything,” he said, letting out a raspy chuckle, before turning toward the barmaid. “Miranda, bring a Scotch for me and a Bitter for the bitter,”

Gabriel scoffed, rolling his eyes.

“Miss Stratton, make it three glasses of Scotch and a cup of rose tea, if you do not mind,” he intervened, staring straight into his oldest brother’s eyes as he did so, defiance in his tone.

When the barmaid went to do as she was told, Emmett turned to look toward his youngest sibling, his brows now slightly furrowed in a silent question.

"I was under the impression it would have been only the two of us, Briel,"

"Wasn't your job to know everything, oh brother of mine?" Gabriel sneered at him, as he took out his timepiece and looked into it.

“Almost time,” he thought. He quickly put out his half-finished cigarette in his pocket ashtray and raised to open the window, to let out the smoke.

Emmett cocked an eyebrow, confused. He could see how hard his younger sibling was trying to rein in his anger, how tense his shoulders were as he let the chilling wind enter, the flashes of disappointment and wrath that came from his eyes each time their gazes met. What did he find, that had rendered him so furious?

“What did you do this time, Gabriel?” he asked with a calm murmur.

“How does it feel to be the one not knowing what’s going on around you, Emmett? How does it feel, for once, to be the one kept in the dark?”

Emmett furrowed his eyebrows, uneasy at the younger man’s words, unable to read into his brother’s intention, in a moment that seemed infinite.

He didn’t like to be taken by surprise. Not even by his baby brother.

“Let’s get over with this whole farce, Briel. Uriel told me that you have been blabbering about Starrick, about the Leviathan. He told me you got Lily into this as well and told me you went to our old house and made a whole fuss about it all. So, pray tell, why did you call upon me?" Emmett said, letting his annoyance seep through his words just enough to warn Gabriel not to try his patience.

Gabriel's smirk turned into a grimace: he felt his heart hesitating for one single moment before the fury of the betrayal came back to him.

"If you know about that, then you know precisely why I called upon you. I need you to be completely honest with me, Emmett. Because now-” Gabriel dropped what he had found -the letters, the torn journal page - on the table. But before Emmett could even dare to pick them up and examine them himself, Gabriel also dropped the small box that had been sitting beside him all that time, with a loud bang against the surface of the table. “ Now I have proof that you, Mother, and Father have been lying to me - to all of us - all these years!”

Emmett opened it, his raised eyebrows the only readable reaction on his face, as he scoured the content of it all. Several letters were neatly stuck together and tied by a bow, another small leather-bound journal, a marriage certificate, and yet another daguerreotype.

The picture took him by surprise.

‘Damn,’ he thought, ‘He is a bloody hound. His time as an apprentice under Magnolia had given him more than just writing skills,’

"Now tell me, brother of mine: is this also a memory from Mother's past? Or is it from your past in the arts? Because I didn't know that you as well were an actor! “ Gabriel sneered. “Or perhaps, you are such an exceptional thespian that you have managed to deceive all of us with your pantomime, hiding from all of us that you were a Templar!"

Emmett didn’t answer right away, taking a drag from his cigarette, his face completely unfazed, careful not to show the turmoil that was hiding just beneath the surface.

The tips of his fingers touched the papers of the letters, and a corner of his mouth raised ever so slightly in a small melancholic smile, as he recognized the different calligraphies of the letters: the Leviathan’s, spidery, almost incomprehensible due the vernacular chosen; his mother’s, elegant and meticulous; his father’s, bold and clear…his grandfather’s, angular and ornate, almost ostentatious against the parchment. His eyes ran over the marriage certificate - beautifully decorated, with lilies and robins painted on it- and his eyes fell on the names written on it, and the date.

As he looked upon all of that, he understood what had caused Gabriel’s turmoil.

"I… can see why you need answers," he said with a cautious voice, weighting each word as it if was a grenade.

“And that’s all you have to say to me? ‘I can see why you need answers’?” Gabriel scoffed unable to stop himself from mocking his brother’s words. "I found your exchange with this… this “Leviathan”, written in a code that I couldn’t decipher! I found his Cross hiding in one of Mother’s boxes, a whole journal of yours dating back to 1886, and this wedding license that doesn’t make ANY sense at all. Dorothea Marianne Starrick?” he hissed, taking the piece of paper and tapping at it with harshness. “Starrick! As in, Starrick, the Grand Master of the British Rite in 1868! Our own mother, a bloody Templar! What else am I going to discover? That father was a Templar as well?”

Emmett looked at him in the eyes, steel grey meeting ebony, and for the first time in his life, he found himself at the loss of words.

"That, I can assure you, has never been the case. Father is and has always been an Assassin. He has always belonged to the Brotherhood, much like Aunt Evie and Uncle Henry," was all he could say, in a low cautious voice.

Gabriel gave him a skeptical look, unconvinced. How could he know that he was telling him the truth? For all he knew, there could be a whole vault hidden away somewhere with pieces of evidence that even his father was not who he told them to be.

That thought made his heart clench in his chest.

“And what about Mother then? What about you?" He continued, tossing the daguerreotype toward him. " What's next that I am going to find? That Queen Victoria is our grandmother? That Father almost disrupted our economy?” he hissed, his voice steadily growing more and more distressed with each word that came out of his mouth, spitting out one theory more improbable than the other. “What more will I find? What, Emmett? WHAT?”

Emmett stood silent, aggrieved by the pain he felt coming from his brother. He took the faded daguerreotype, and stared at it for a long moment: he looked at his younger self with pity and almost sadness for that tall, wide-eyed boy who had so many dreams and so many hopes, still so untouched by life. Physically, he hadn’t changed that much, despite the photo being over two decades old: his features had become sharper, the wrinkles at the corner of his eyes and on his brow not fading away even when his face was relaxed; the same, however, couldn’t be said about his heart. His lips thinned in a grimace, as he looked now at the other man in the picture standing at his side, whose prideful, unforgiving gaze he still felt burning upon himself, after all those years.

The Leviathan himself.

He looked back at his brother, studying his face, yet keeping his silence.

Gabriel felt himself growing more and more miffed with each passing moment.

“Why, Emmett? Why have I been fed lies all my life?” he finally hissed through gritted teeth, unable to bear the silence any longer.

The oldest Frye sibling took a shot at the whiskey, before refilling the glass again and gulping it down.

“Have you considered that there might be a reason if all of these has been buried away because the people involved did not want to see them ever again? That maybe -just maybe - these “so-called lies”, these secrets, are not yours to know? “

“But they are yours, now, aren’t they, Emmett?” Gabriel bellowed, jumping on his feet and slamming his hands on the table, now more incensed than ever. “Why did Mother and Father choose you and not any of us? What makes you so special that you were to partake in their secrets, while leaving us in complete darkness, believing something that is not true?”

“Because Emmett did not have a choice, Briel,” said a soft voice behind them.

Both brothers turned their heads toward the newcomer and found the steel gray eyes of their mother Dorothea staring at them, her face a mask of concern as she leaned on the cane she had been using for walking for the past five years.

Beside the petite woman, with his strong arm firmly wrapped around her waist to support her, was their father Jacob, his brow furrowed as he gazed toward his sons, his eyepatch always covering his left eye.

Emmett’s jaw clenched, mortified as he looked into his parents’ faces. He turned to look at his brother, his eyes flashing with anger as his lips pursed in a thin line. “You didn’t-”

“I did,” Gabriel answered, his gaze not faltering despite his brother’s piercing gaze, despite his own guilt at the sight of their mother's worried face and their father's severe stance.

“You had no right, Gabriel. No right at all!” Emmett spoke with a sharp tone. He had to call upon all his considerable self-discipline to not let out the rage he felt for his youngest sibling. Instead, he stood up, greeting his parents with a soft voice and motioning toward the barmaid to bring some pillows for the elderly woman.

“What is the meaning of all this, Gabriel?” asked Jacob with a stern tone, as he gestured toward the chaos of mementos laid on the table. “Why were you screaming at your brother?”

Gabriel, fueled as he was by his anger and doubts, driven by his own disappointment, didn’t answer immediately, nostrils flaring as he looked at both his parents with defiance and anger on his otherwise gentle features.

He saw his father turn to look at Emmett, a quizzical look painted in his eye a look answered by his brother’s sigh and saddened expression.

“He knows,” Emmett murmured to both his parents.

Two simple words.

It was all it took for them both to understand.

Gabriel felt his heart sink in his chest when he saw his mother’s sweet face blanching at those words and his father’s features morph into a mask of pain.

“Was it necessary, Gabriel?” Emmett said through clenched teeth, as he sat next to their mother, wrapping an arm around her shoulders.

““I-I believe it is,” he said through gritted teeth, before turning to look at his parents, wriggling his hands under the table, his heart beating so fast, he was sure he would burst through his chest. ”I want an answer, Father…Mother. I- want the truth,”

He was afraid beyond words, terrified that all he had ever known was nothing more than smoke and mirrors. Facing his older brother was one thing; facing his mother and father was another one entirely.

When he saw that no one answered him, he felt his fury grow once more. He jumped on his feet, slamming his hands against the table.

“Now, young man-” Jacob started to reprimand his son for his behaviour, but Dorothea rested one hand on his shoulder stopping him.

“Let him speak, Jacob,” she murmured, her voice laced with guilt as her eyes never left her youngest son’s angered face.

“I cannot believe that all my life I have lived surrounded by liars! First, the letters, then the cross, then these pictures and the journal Emmett wrote in 1886? And this certificate of Marriage with this name?” he bellowed, turning to look at his mother, his frustration growing each passing moment. “You have always told us you were a Harrison by birth, Dorothea Marianne Harrison! Harrison! And now, instead, I have found proof that you are Dorothea Starrick, the only daughter of the Grand Master of the British Rite….our grandfather,” his voice turned low, as the reality of his words sank in. “Our own grandfather was a Templar. You were a Templar, the very same people that our father, Emmett, Lily, and Uriel have been hunting down all their lives! Or so I believed since it appears that even my own brother was inducted into the British Rite!” Gabriel looked at his mother, his piercing black eyes looking at her with barely contained disappointment.“ How can all of this be possible? How? Why?”

He felt his heart sitting on his stomach as he stared at her for a long moment, a desperate light in his eyes as he silently begged for all of this to be a misunderstanding. But his mother’s silence, her gentle face contrite in an expression of pure grief and heartbreak, was all he needed to know to confirm that all he had found - all the mementos - was the truth.

“I…I don’t even know who you are anymore,”

Emmett’s face hardened when he saw his mother lowering her gaze, shame painting on her face. He was about to reprimand his brother for his words, when he felt his mother’s gentle hand on his chest, stopping him before he had the chance to talk. He saw her looking at him, shaking her fair ringlets, her kind, understanding smile ruined by the tears that ran down her cheeks.

“No, my duckling. Briel is right. He-” she murmured with a heartbroken sigh. “He deserves to know the truth, if he wishes for it so ardently,”

She turned to look toward Gabriel, her gaze filled only with immense love for her youngest son: her bright, witty, splendid son, whose insatiable thirst for knowledge had always been his greatest virtue, one that she had always encouraged.

When she spoke again, Dorothea couldn’t stop the pride she felt for him from seeping into her voice, despite the pain laced in each word that left her lips.

“You know me, my love. I am still the same person you have known all your life. I am still the same person you always ran to when the storm outside scared you out of your wits; the same person you always ran to whenever you hurt yourself and needed a small kiss to steal the pain away; the same person you always came for counsel and help when writing those letters to brave Lancelot, to ask him when you could join the Knights of the Round Table-” she brought a small, trembling hand toward the pile of mementos in front of her, sighing. There was no way to run from her past. She closed her eyes for a moment, as a carousel of faces appeared in front of her: Byron, Phillip, Charles, Markus, Christopher, Ambrose, her mother Annette...her father Crawford, she thought with a pang of pain, seeing his loving gaze behind her closed eyelids. She took a deep breath, opening her eyes again.

“That cross you found-” she continued, “those pictures you found, my letters, my journal...they are just a part of who I am. They are a part of my life that I rather forget about, something that I have been. But They are not the only thing I am. They are not all that I am,”

Gabriel paused, a grimace appearing on his face, as he turned toward his father.

“I found a page of your journal too, Pa,” he murmured, taking it out of his pocket and passing it to his father, who took it carefully in his calloused hands, Without a word, Jacob opened it held it so that both he and his wife could read it together.

Gabriel stared intently, his keen eyes ready to catch any possible reaction from his parents’ faces. His father’s features were still, inscrutable, if not for the slight furrowing of his brow; but when his mother let out a choked “Oh, Jacob,” bringing a hand to her eyes, his father’s only reaction was to wrap his arm around his wife and bring her closer to him, kissing her on her brow and closing his eyes in a pained expression.

Gabriel’s heart clenched in his chest.

They didn’t need to speak any further.

The confirmation he needed was written all over their faces.

“Mother…how can I make my peace with this, if everything you are is all that Father has always warned us about? We have spent our entire lives hearing that the Templars are our enemies, that we are to protect this City of Light from them… from you!”

Dorothea was unable to contain a smile at those words; her grimace, however, was a sour one.

“Your grandsire used to refer to London as the City of Light. Your grandfather, my own father-”

“Crawford Starrick,” Gabriel finished her sentence for her, as he plopped on the chair behind himself.

He hoped he had been wrong. Hoped with all his heart.

But when he saw his mother nodding, he felt something inside himself break.

How big or small of a break, he didn’t know yet.

He took a few deep breaths, his eyes running all over the tables, unsure of what to do. When his mother wrapped her hand around his, gentle, soothing in her touch, he didn’t move his own away. He just paused, trying to find the courage that had abandoned him.

“Tell me-” he whispered in a small voice.“tell me this is all a misunderstanding. Please, mama,”

Dorothea saw his face turning pleading, with that same expression he always had as a child, whenever his insecurities would take over him and all he wanted, all he needed, was a word of comfort from his mother. Her heart clenched at that sight, feeling tears pooling in her eyes. She brought one hand to his cheek, caressing it with soothing tenderness as she drank from her youngest son’s sweet features, terrified as she was to lose the love he bore her.

“Briel, my child, my little angel…” she whispered with trembling voice.“ I wish I could do that. With all my heart, with all that I am, with all that I have, if I could tell you that nothing of this is true, I would do that, without even thinking about it twice. I wish- I wish I could say that all of this is just a lie, a mistake, a mystification…” she paused, her words choking in her throat. ” But I can’t. I am a Templar, my sweet child. I have been one since birth. My father and my mother were Templars too, and so they were their parents and their grandparents. It’s in our blood. It has been in our blood for generations, and that cannot be erased, no matter how much we try. But I swear to you, I only wanted the best for this city and for our family,”

“I-”

Gabriel turned to look at his father, and once more saw sadness in his hazel eye.

“Papa..you knew? You knew Mother was a Templar when you married her?”

Jacob turned to look at his wife, in a moment that seemed to last forever, his love for her so vivid in the way he looked at her, it was impossible not to notice. In a gesture of protection, he wrapped his big hand around hers and held it tight.

"I knew it," he said, his voice turning low but firm.

“And you knew who her father was?”

“Not immediately. But eventually.”

Gabriel let out a sigh, feeling himself deflecting like a hot air balloon. He didn’t know what he had hoped, asking his father that question. Maybe that only her mother was responsible for all that, that at least one of his parents hadn’t lied to him.

But now he knew that both of them had known.

“Then...why hide this from us? Why not tell us this from the very beginning?” He asked, in a feeble voice.

Dorothea lowered her head once more, closing her eyes as a traitor tear rolled down her cheek.

“Because what your grandsire had done, who I was, what I did-”

“ What we did, Goldilocks,” Jacob added, giving her hand a gentle squeeze. The woman took a deep breath, smiling at her husband for his support. Even after more than forty years spent together, she still thanked the heavens each night for putting him on her path.

“-What your father and I did,” she continued, trying to drown the pain that she felt bubbling just beneath the surface. “...our actions almost cost us our family. What we did almost cost us everything. And I couldn’t bear-” her voice choked in her throat. “I couldn’t bear to think that my mistakes, who I was, could hurt any of you in any way ever again,”

But before she could continue, she felt her own heart shatter once more at all the memories that still lived within her soul, as she saw them cornering her like wolves after their prey, growling, baring their teeth at her.

Gabriel pursed his lips, taking another deep breath, and offering his mother his own handkerchief to dab away her tears, before speaking once again.

“Then, if you love me, if you truly love me, Mama, please, tell me. Tell me everything. I want to know. I have the right to know who you are. I have the right to know if the woman I have loved all my life is someone else entirely,”

Dorothea sighed, looking into her husband’s eyes to find the courage she needed to dive once more into those dark, cold waters she thought she had long left behind herself, hoping, praying with all that she was she would not lose her child's love after he had heard their whole story.

“Very well, Briel. I shall give you all the truth. I shall spare you no detail, I swear it on my life and honour. Are you willing to listen to all of it, with an open heart?”

“I-” Gabriel faltered, swallowing hard. Pandora’s Box all over again. And his mother was offering it to him. He took a deep breath, squaring his shoulders. “I am. I want to know everything. I am ready,”

Dorothea nodded, her expression turning solemn.

The waters were churning beneath her, calling her like syrens, reclaiming her, ready to swallow her whole. With one last deep breath, she closed her eyes, plunging into the ocean of memories head first.

“We need to go back to 1868, then. The year I came back to London to officially become a Templar. The year my whole life changed forever,” she turned to look at her husband, her Jacob, to find the courage in his comforting gaze. For a moment, she didn’t see his candid hair and beard, nor the eyepatch covering his eye, nor the wrinkles that graced his face; for a moment, she saw his twinkling eyes -both sane and as beautiful as they had always been- his dark, unruly hair and that mischievous grin that still sometimes appeared on his lips. She saw him as he was when he stole her heart.“We need to go back to the year I met your father,”

[PREVIOUS CHAPTER - Echoes of The Past]

[NEXT CHAPTER - "Homeward Bound" ]

and I am officially here, presenting you the third chapter of my story!! view, that was a JOURNEY right there!!!

Be ready to say your goodbye to sweet Emmett and Gabriel, for we are heading to 1868 in the next chapter! WOHOOO!! Lots of new characters arriving, and I cannot wait to dive into the next chapters!!

Not gonna lie, I will miss my Starrick-Frye babies, but this isn't going to be the last time you will hear from them!!

Once more, huge huge HUGE THANKS to all my friends for supporting me and for believing in me and in my story, for encouraging me to keep on writing. I love you all so much, THANK YOU FOR ALL YOU HAVE DONE FOR ME.

Melanie Abberline and Magnolia Benson belong to my dear buddy @thatcrazycrowgirl , who was so gracious as to lend them to me for my story (ngl, Melanie and Emmett are kinda my OTP when it comes to the Starrick-Frye children, so I was SUPER HAPPY when she allowed me to insert her in my story! thank you, girl!)

well, UNTIL NEXT TIME!!

--Nemo

#Assassin's Creed #Assassin's Creed Syndicate #ac syndicate #Jacob Frye #Dorothea Starrick #Jottie #my ocs #Emmett Starrick-Frye #Gabriel Starrick-Frye #my writings #In The Heat Of The Moment #Nemo Writes #ocfairygodmother #ocappreciation

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