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libidomechanica · 5 months

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Untitled (“And kisses, who pay”)

A limerick sequence

First Stanza

And kisses, who pay no praised the slumber of any thing so many clocks on less-deserving? Have fear; rather bleed. What, the dawn: a beam had slanted on a shelf.

Second Stanza

Writ in a wicked woman with him her veins freedom’s best all adapted to the destroy his natural heats are as fair as the thinks we may look on it, tis so?

Third Stanza

A bow-shot from singing and frame his am’rous dittie. And, in sooth, possess’d, fair Venus! The umbrage of any more, but it with the bolt a little to be for you.

Fourth Stanza

I could not thy show! I am black, as erst to her bridal morn before the man with looks as whole earth of mankind, and your years? And then half the dive bar and bread.

Fifth Stanza

I asked but thou, O love, my universe! That long it is all for the roots of Amminadib. A moment hand lie, ever singing ball, flew kite, and this is true.

Sixth Stanza

Julia, I bring some fine example. Of tyrannie doth such as to encourageless, have was half of why you used me The song of blood grew distant to bind.

Seventh Stanza

-Day, the byting from Heaven is worth the boggy summit …. Because she was one, sleep, sleeping. Of Lebanon. And make my louely grace, and into his own Phaëton.

Eighth Stanza

Or utterly be contents than I deem’d his raptures, by swamping the should under my heart, sees half the same gentleman of twenty know. To see thy county!

Ninth Stanza

Not bought you a tin heart, my sister, my veins freeze, freeze. But you little boatman’ and hair. Said Gama. In France, for then they propagate more than all hints continuaunce.

Tenth Stanza

She had some difficult, I ween a kind are thy fresh sensation, I would kill? Out on pride were called him, and so should be said thus, it shall try that which you sleeping.

Eleventh Stanza

Such rage as wine different hue, and not a monuments of alabaster. Not own, but not leave posterity that we may plants both his daughters in the day break?

Twelfth Stanza

Her sight; least, she was surely Juan now— No! To side: tis time I vanish; more to be hove down from Cadiz. Tell me the key about, and glean your freedoms form good smell.

Thirteenth Stanza

—Or a bird; the lady in his leasure. And unto star star cadencing aright. Than her chiefe care, and her who shone the queens, and then to heare with things were ready.

Fourteenth Stanza

To Lady Psyche, ’ Cyril took the kitchen two times I heat the beames of the dead. More sharp I answer’d She, Without a woman’s Angel guards your Valentine.

Fifteenth Stanza

I thought in the sniffer. To those of Aristotle, though they more bearable: but none knows, when thousand heav’nly fire. I love thine heart’s his hell. And love than I know.

Sixteenth Stanza

They do so that tongues—she look’d upon her being under hie; depriv’d of the length I find our children, round us by this his gay nothing that his sheep down too.

Seventeenth Stanza

My Nanie, O. So far relations, that wheeling souls, all were ready shoulder it leanes amisse. Thou shall not doubt he earn’d his lays, at close a way. So beauty bright?

Eighteenth Stanza

Head, majesty a treasures, on their folly. But what our neighbour there, but a white corne, you were so soft and love affairs until the day when I’ve miscarried nem.

Nineteenth Stanza

They han the beames so bright as a new Thermopylae! The sweet to the peasant city, so says the porous vase; but I could ever seen to last—of all his hive.

Twentieth Stanza

The princes, sweet sang, Barbauld, survives him by the water-flowers. Some act of lucid marbles, bossed with the starfish stiffened by the feast was over, the silver.

Twenty-first Stanza

In the hot day, or hot desire, swore lustily he’d be revenge in our sweet you. Was springeth from her was one, and Counter- turn, and thy bowers, and Juan, fly!

Twenty-second Stanza

Of half this fools away. Ah, my beloved, a very well; but who, alas! Its red rust down in copying this lock which perhaps t was perfect, just suppose.

Twenty-third Stanza

But then ‘t is strange, but in their spheres. She knew not why they so embellisht with mother is brought; no courtier could not think no man should turn him lint and treasure.

Twenty-fourth Stanza

Excitement a good will, in time, the end of Manhattan was so anxious torments? Happy the night’s in the honey and of chalk, the church do what d’ ye cal him?

Twenty-fifth Stanza

Thou hast so much and several foe. The schoole of Patience now was at a wake, made for abettors, besides theirs nor Make has been mooted, what decision?

Twenty-sixth Stanza

When to think me some who I am, or war. To withdraw her blaze much ashamed, with love more broad and black eunuchs, and nature I have cost his laureate pension.

Twenty-seventh Stanza

Promise of a pomegranate are the spoilt this is I, besides the Greeks a blush—for Greece might reade those who expected for divinities. Let me see me fall!

Twenty-eighth Stanza

Mean to show her too, be off! Green, where his mode of mortals even bury a man; and many a mile, his portraits old Time had been among the music sadly?

Twenty-ninth Stanza

How say you, war or not? Now Donna Julia’s voice’s tone. Prince Ferdinand, Granby, Burgoyne, Keppel, Howe, evil and of Chian wine, and some of us ever heart.

Thirtieth Stanza

Their show, that e’er believe my verse of pride, a proud humility, if such a brain so wild! To the wilderness, full strong emotion, that looks fair, my beloved.

Thirty-first Stanza

In short, I must on the whole things—home to mell, her non-age. I fear no fate for you, the welked Phoebus race. But alone, but met Alfonso’s facts, like dew, wanting.

Thirty-second Stanza

And are so, t would seem as arguing love. That cold,—but very verdant goose. Last love, hearing madness of the show’d good looks fair, ’ said Cyril, Madam—Madam—hist!

Thirty-third Stanza

He turn’d unto star star cadencing alone at first, I shall a glimmering net. Behold talk, and head; but for me to print my poore Vassall dayly endure thing.

Thirty-fourth Stanza

Your slender hands, draws back&forth to school as God knows what is or was, and put thy golden urn. By those thou woundest with these their better, if ye find it otherwise.

Thirty-fifth Stanza

As a proposed; behind in the hellish hound did tame. But Juan had a mistake and bliss I wonder what is left her personification pursued o’er the tomb?

Thirty-sixth Stanza

My eyeballs burn with Wine the blue noon is over the field to fifty, till the secret was there. They mought worth that which I think on the rocks once-a-boy pilferer.

Thirty-seventh Stanza

Art so unkind of the brazen fame, half virtue, and the pale yellow boat beneath his mother lily as breath them! That would lie down gagelike too real for him.

Thirty-eighth Stanza

Hopes the ysicles remains: and och! A mighty manhode brought up, a fountains with state before my verse thine eyes, I would. Robert Burns: countryman, affianced years ….

Thirty-ninth Stanza

I would lie down next him of some one whose way is wilderness and guest. I say, who object, because I am drumming those who would thinks to the sole men to death.

Fortieth Stanza

Beyond time, where is the cause thee: ah! A winged snake is golden urn. And yet this in conversation there be not your hands of the cavern of all humanity.

Forty-first Stanza

He being they continued still in chronology, for Don Alfonso’s taste; and if twas born bilious. Ah fon, for loue does she inquired, how can my Muse!

Forty-second Stanza

The fountains with ribs of wreck, or like a starry cluster of thy worth that sang all routes to combat Like to it. Am with the untill’d some had been long ypent.

Forty-third Stanza

So beate the bearded Baron with ease. And music, felt that which makes us loud in thy abundance as before the precipice she her name—her thought otherwise.

Forty-fourth Stanza

From thee. Was ever give her so well them became of theology by Beatrice, and do you—and thick to be so, at the lover’s breasts: what signifies the wind!

Forty-fifth Stanza

Part sat like it is slow: I leave them? As a page; and, clinging light. Now I am your brand new: her small fine China cups, the small hand with their roll, but then to her?

Forty-sixth Stanza

The west side cafe, dealing deer, Lord Bacon’s bribes; like Crashaw. And ere I dream’d not in vain to hold communion with questions, washed with love of Juliana stung!

Forty-seventh Stanza

Write there! To keep aloof, to see why— with sweet love. Seal upon the folly once from tile to scullery, and that were wisdom may discern long to endure thine own.

Forty-eighth Stanza

I cannot know, he shapes a brothers. Yet am I in no angry word once did get mars and I, but yet young hart: behold thy face of god look deep in my face.

Forty-ninth Stanza

Whose emblems mix with what complete of life’s busy throng. Alfonso, how dare you ponder how it points we need on ocean, earth, all that best, beside me …. Architect.

Fiftieth Stanza

As one would ennoble em. His small birds do sing: whose rays of birds, the goat leans against a virtues only gods should love after long. A fancy set, and worse bust.

Fifty-first Stanza

She who has drunk himself thrice in the rurall musicks might grow cold in death, which thee, here were too were well knit: he seem to paint the scene is so black! With a striplings!

Fifty-second Stanza

An honest bard by his silken priest they are the thing that’s not steal from Sea, by those that dream; yet, if I might be their aunts, and should grow older. Had sworn another.

Fifty-third Stanza

Love there was champagne, and the news from the lynx, they saw—of the windy jest had labour more than she is tall as bad, for I was bright and clear. And floated with snow.

#poetry #automatically generated text #Patrick Mooney #Markov chains #Markov chain length: 7 #154 texts #limerick sequence

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silkylious · 4 years

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Funny Way of Saying I Love You (Dabi x Reader)

Pairing: Dabi x Reader Warnings: angst(i have an addiction i swear), fluff Prompts: #9 “That’s a funny way of saying ‘I love you’” and #16 “When have I ever let you down, babe? Okay, don’t answer that”

A/N: Thank you for the request! im taking my time writing these since im physically incapable of writing drabbles. I hope you like this!!

Shutting the door behind you, a soothing dusk breeze fluttered your hair as you moved farther away from your daily hell. Your boss had made it a point to be a pain in the ass today, well, more so than usual. Working overtime on a Friday evening wasn’t what you’d hoped to be doing but you couldn’t exactly complain, it wasn’t like you had anything planned and the promise of an extra paycheck didn’t sound displeasing. Rubbing your temples to ease the headache (courtesy of your boss’s incessant bitching), you walked on autopilot to your apartment, you couldn’t wait to treat yourself to a bubble bath and maybe even some wine. Little did you know that your plans would be thoroughly ruined by a certain scarred villain.

You made the decision to pass by a nearby convenient store that wasn’t too far from your residence to cop some snacks. Filtering through the brands of alcohol, you grimaced at the overpriced tags of the various red wine brands, you settled for some cheap liquor with a sigh. It ain’t much but it should do the trick. After paying for what little stuff you’d fetched, you continued on your trek to your humble flat. The sun had completely vanished from the sky, a lingering crimson bleeding into a rich indigo. Your thoughts were so spellbound by the beautiful sight, that you just barely heard a strained grunt from your left. Blinking back into reality, you halted in your steps right next to a comically shady alleyway. Just like in those horror movies. You snorted at the thought, briefly comparing yourself to that one character who always dies first in movies. Though your internal jesting was cut short when the same sound propagated through the alleyway again, this time much more haggard, closely followed by violent coughing. Against your better judgment, you treaded forward cautiously. Why were you doing this? You weren’t sure. Maybe it was the unfulfilled dream loitering in the back of your mind resurfacing after many years of suppression, but you couldn’t not help someone out in a time of need.

The deeper you ventured into the alleyway, the louder your rationality shouted, begging you to turn around and book it to your apartment complex. You were stopped in your steps when an aggressive cough broke the quiet, the sound now impossibly closer and blood splattered all over the ground before your feet. Your eyes followed the vermilion trail, skinny legs covered in bloodied up, skin-tight jeans came into view, you were met with familiar scarred features. His eyes were struggling to stay open, though at the sight of you he forced his lids apart, flashing you a bloody, half-pained smirk, red liquid running down his scarred tissue.

You blinked. Dabi blinked. You blinked again and then-

“What the shit, Dabi! Are you okay?!”

You dropped to your knees next to his limp body propped up against the shaggy wall. He gave a humorless chuckle, more blood oozing out of the corners of his lips. Dabi hummed when your hands touched his fucked up face, your quirk already pacifying most of his pain. It wasn’t a healing quirk, you were simply able to transfer emotions, feelings and sensations (to and fro) with skin on skin contact. You didn’t want him knocking the fuck out from sheer pain (heaven knows there is no way you were going to lug this human heater home), so you had to ease him a little before tending to his injuries. Your body twitched as the hurt from Dabi’s body merged into your own.

“I’ve seen better days, sweetheart,”

“You don’t say.” The words came out harsh, reprimanding. Dabi winced, from the pain or from your tone, he wasn’t sure.

The plastic bag that had been temporarily abandoned came in handy, you sorrowfully used the liquor to clean the large gashes on his abdomen (not wanting to risk an infection on the way to your complex), wrapping them up securely with scraps of his shirt. So much for a relaxing bath and liquor. You heaved him up on semi-steady knees and took a different, more desolate route back home. The last thing you’d want right now is for authorities to see you walking an injured Dabi, one of the most wanted villains in the current climate, home. He leaned most of his weight on your shoulder, his shit-eating grin told you he was doing it on purpose. You couldn’t find it in you to retaliate as you usually would, too worried to come up with any snarky comments.

This had become way too much of a ritual for your comfort. You’d find him bleeding by your doorstep at ungodly hours, silently asking for shelter. Each and every time, you’d patch him up, provide him with food and your company. You’d grown attached to the scar faced male, and even if you disdained his line of work, you’d respected his life and independence (as independent as someone who crashes on your couch near daily can be). For the past couple months, his tasks had been getting progressively more and more dangerous. Your heart couldn’t help but clench each time you saw him beaten and bruised. You knew it was risky letting these feelings develop, Dabi had made it quite clear that your relationship was nothing beyond physical, with a level of mutual respect and trust.

But this was the worst condition you’d ever seen him in after one of his missions. Not too dissimilar to the first time you met; bloody, bruised and half-conscious, truly a sight to pity. You’d noiselessly knelt down, pressed your hand onto his cheek, he hadn’t even been able to flinch at your touch, too disoriented to react properly. Though in mere moments, he began feeling the pain ebb away; the injuries were still there, he just couldn’t feel them, he equated the numbing sensation to painkillers and drugs. His eyelids parted, revealing gorgeous teal irises. Full of ethereal beauty, despite being unfocused. You had to actively shun your quirk from relaying your attraction to him as you soothed his pain, his staples and marred skin a stark contrast to your soft fingers. That night you gave him a place to stay while he was on the run, you didn’t know why, but you did. Just this one time you’d said. One time became two times. Two times became countless and the rest is history.

The apartment door was slammed open, you were beyond irate. The more you thought about him, his situation, your situation, the more you felt the urge to knock shit over and scream bloody murder. Turquoise hues followed you with contempt – and mild amusement – but mostly contempt. Dabi took his usual spot on your worn-out couch, while you stomped your way into the bathroom to get a first aid kit. With your absence, Dabi was left to his own thoughts running amuck. Dabi wasn’t oblivious. He knew what your silence meant, knew what the look of unbridled worry in your eyes implied. Yet he didn’t want to address the less than subtle growing feelings you have for him. Attachment in his line of work was a surefire way to get hurt, he figured that if he kept whatever relationship you guys had physical, he wouldn’t have any issues to fuss over. But he couldn’t lie to himself, Dabi was conscious of the budding adoration in his heart from the moment you helped him out that first time, in that filthy alley. God, he needed a cigarette.

Much to his pleasure, you came back before his mind could implode in on itself. You sat beside him on the couch, leaving more space between you than usual. Without saying a word, your hands undid his makeshift bandages, slowly but surely patching him up an inch at a time. It honestly felt like a routine at this point. That prompted a sour taste in your mouth, you couldn’t stand how careless he’d been recently, and it was eating you up inside. But you didn’t dare voice your concerns, not wanting another aimless argument with him. If silence would save you another headache inducing fight, then silence it was–

“So, you gonna tell me what crawled up your ass?”

Or not.

“Shut. Up.” You weren’t in the mood for his quips today. Fatigue from work, babysitting a villain and dealing with unrequited feelings severely fouling your otherwise warm attitude. You were just on the brink of throwing caution to the wind and letting loose all the muffled feelings you have for him. One more comment and your composure would shatter. Conveniently – or not so conveniently, he seemed to be in a talkative mood tonight.

“Seriously, what’s up with you?” The question was redundant, he knew exactly what was up with you, but he couldn’t think of anything else. Your quietness was killing him. He had to say something. He should have chosen his words a little more wisely though.

“What’s up with me?! Are you being fucking serious right now?! I come home and almost every day find you bleeding on my doorstep. Almost every day I give your reckless ass a place to stay, only for you to go and get yourself hurt again!” Pent up rage exploded from within you, an amalgamation of emotions gushing out of your pores. His eyes blew wide, not only because he had never seen you this angry, but because of the surge of emotions flooding him. In your fury filled stupor, you’d let go of the tight rein you had on your quirk. With a hand still touching his bruised forearm, you began unintentionally bleeding your feelings into him. Rage, sorrow and worry were just a few of the many emotions that rocked his being. But one stood out among the rest, outshining the others with blinding ferocity. And it honestly scared him, how powerful it was, zapping through his body. He figured you had feelings for him, that much was obvious, but he didn’t think they were that strong. Your breathtaking emotions awakened something in him too, pulling it out of the depths of where he tried to hide it, push it down in hopes of abolishing it.

It was too much to handle this, he kept coming back for help when he could easily seek any of his colleagues out, the implication that you meant something to him was so elating yet so damaging. It kept you stuck in place, barred from shutting him out or walking away. You couldn’t keep hanging onto the hope that he might reciprocate your love. It was harming you, no matter how sensuous he was in bed, no matter how gently he held onto you afterwards, he would never call you his lover. He made that crystal fucking clear. You had to put a stop to this. You leveled your shaky voice as much as your vocal cords would allow, barely whispering.

“Get the hell out, Dabi. I don’t wanna see you here again.”

The emotions sifting through him mellowed out, no longer was rage at the forefront. Pain, hurt and heartbreak ravaged him. But that one emotion was still there, despite him being a gaping asshole, it was still present. He smirked.

“That’s a funny way of saying ‘I love you,’ doll.”

“Wha–“ Before you could question his response, he swiftly captured your lips in his own to shut you up. It was a quick, firm peck, but its aftermath amused him greatly. The look of bewilderment on your face was damn priceless. You were, again, transferring your feelings to him. Adoration, confusion, the overwhelming urge to pimp smack him; it was all too entertaining for him. His vibrant teals settled upon your hand still gripping his arm. No fabric to separate them. Your own eyes followed suit. Oh. You immediately stopped your quirk, redacting your palm in the process for good measure. Dabi delighted in the bashful look that overtook your face, his own growing soft. He had trouble accepting his own feelings, but after experiencing yours, he would, at the very least, try for you. Awkward silence ensued. You both knew it was his turn to talk, to finally let out the unsaid words you’d been longing for.

“(name), I… I wanna do this right, take you out on dates and shit,” He cleared his throat. “If you’d let me.”

Your answer came in the form of a crushing hug. Your love was pouring into him again, this time of your own accord. You held onto each other, his hands biting into your skin, your own carding through his dark locks. You didn’t need words. Figuratively and literally. He felt everything in bright, flashing colors, he never wanted this moment to end. But it did. His phone rang.

Clear annoyance shined in both of your eyes. With a heavy sigh, he left your embrace, getting up to answer the call.

Another mission.

With the very recent revelations both of you had come to, the idea of him going on missions carried a lot more weight than it used to. Now in front of your apartment door, he put on his shoes, ready to head out to the League’s hideout. Dabi turned around, breath hitching when he saw you standing there frowning, eyes tearful. For some reason, you had a gut feeling this mission wouldn’t be so easy. You didn’t want him to go. And it was showing.

“C’mon, baby doll. Don’t give me that look. I’ll be back, I promise,” When you didn’t even crack a smile at the nickname he sighed. “When have I ever let you down, babe?” He quickly backtracked. “Okay, don’t answer that,”

You managed a small giggle, shaking your head. You approached him slowly, silently wrapping your arms around him. You relished in his quickening heartbeat. Pulling back, you placed your hands on his clothed shoulders. You edged forward, puckering your lips against his own, the point of contact allowing you to relay your inner turmoil to him. Your hands itched towards his face, fiddling gingerly with the multiple staples aligning his cheeks. “Come back, okay? I love you.”

Breath caught in his throat, Dabi tried to push the words setting him aflame through his lips, but he couldn’t. This was happening too fast; it was giving him whiplash. He didn’t know how to say those words yet, so he opted for calling out to you.

“(name)…”

Without even using your power, the conflict in his eyes told you everything you needed to know. you pushed your forehead to rest against his. His love burned through you, so intense, so like him. With a tiny tug at your lips, you lulled the raging storm in his mind. “Shh, Dabi. I know.”

With a parting peck, he was out the door. He didn’t know what was to come out of this mission, but he did know that he now had one more reason to come out alive.

#dabi x reader #dabi x y/n #dabi x you #dabi boku no hero academia #dabi my hero academia #bnha dabi #mha dabi #todoroki touya x reader #touya x reader #todoroki toya x reader #dabi fanfic #dabi imagine #someone help why cant i write drabbles ffs #100 followers event

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verycleverboy · 3 years

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And now, Joe...

It is January 20, 2021. Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. was sworn in earlier today as the 46th President of the United States.

Let's start with something that apparently isn't obvious to everybody: In Joe Biden, the better man won, but he isn't the man a lot of people on the left wanted. He's the man we settled for, because we were intimately familiar with the alternative. That we settled for him in historic numbers shouldn't bury that fact, but since that's what seems to be happening, allow me a few short paragraphs to put a pin in this moment.

The cable news people are already treating Trump's single term as an aberration, a take which Mitch McConnell seems to be happy to encourage. But don't fool yourselves. Donald John Trump wasn't a hiccup in the system. He was the accidental recipient of a 50 year trend in American politics, a 30 year trend in the American media landscape, and (more directly) 12 years of the shadow of the Tea Party movement. All of this on top of the two centuries of America's baked-in racism, sometimes in the background, other times front and center. Trump foregrounded white grievance and rode it to the highest office in the country. Never forget.

Biden's inaugural address was a pitch to our better angels, which is an upgrade from Trump's borderline apocalyptic message of "Do what I say and nobody gets hurt." But what he was selling was bipartisanship and unity. And at this point in history, we have to ask a hard question: who's buying? Because it shrugs off the past four years of the Republican party (and, by extension, the Obama era obstructions) as a spicy summer fling. You had your fun, he seems to be saying, but now it’s time to come home and go back to work.

And as a reminder, that’s two weeks after a sitting president encouraged an insurrection against the American system because it told him “no”.

The sad truth about the immediate future is that we're still saddled with a split-level conception of reality, a situation we should be used to by now. The hard right of the spectrum views Biden and Harris as radical, cheat-to-win leftists who are going to take away everything (and, I dunno, maybe drink babies' blood while they're doing it) and ring in a new dark age of Communism. The hard leftists, on the other hand, couldn’t unsee a practicing Roman Catholic who goes to mass every Sunday, making them a little twitchy about the future of Roe v Wade, and an ex-district attorney, which, through the lens of last summer's heated protests, translated for some of them into "ex-cop".

One extreme sees Pelosi and Schumer as a two-headed dose of bile-dripping evil. The other sees a couple of old people clucking their tongues at the front page of the newspaper while they're clipping coupons.

The tl;dr version: The right sees an existential threat. The left sees the old status quo. And seriously, the status quo was a little too cozy with itself, a little complacent in the idea that what was the current situation would continue unchanged for the foreseeable future. A little too coffee klatschy for comfort.

In other words, the greatest threat to progressive goals was brunch. So when things started taking a turn, brunch took a beating.

Two things worked in the favor of sanity. First, Trump never stopped being Trump, which means he never "grew into the job". He was always defiantly confrontational, propagating (when not actively living in) a fantasyland of lies and half-truths, and frequently even seeming to lack what some people consider the basic human qualities that the office requires. It didn’t help that he was probably the first US president who desperately needed a Civics 101 class to figure out what his job was...and it was brutally obvious that he'd skip that class as often as he could. But the main thing was he was too theatrical in his execution, drawing too much attention to himself and the cheap stunts he was trying to pull.

Jeb Bush would’ve gotten away with it. I guess that’s what I’m driving at here. The next Jeb probably will.

The other thing is that having a US president coming this close to being a Bond villain made those of us outside of politics actually pay attention to what was going on, in many cases for the first time. We manned the barricades and we proved it was worth our time, because again, we were forced to consider the alternative.

Trump is over. Trumpism isn't going anywhere, at least not in the short term. Today was a good day for America, but it's up to us to make sure we get more of them. We’ll probably never get the best of all worlds, but with a little vigilance, we can leave the next generation a better world than the one we inherited.

So keep your eyes open. Stay informed. Stay engaged. And always remember how to build a barricade.

#Donald Trump #Joe Biden #us inauguration #trump post-mortem #these long posts are never popular #but they do me a world of good

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avoutput · 3 years

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Bimmy & Jimmy Lee || Double Dragon

One million weekends ago, before I was a teenager, before the word tween existed, I had a problem to solve. There was a saying, “You can choose your friends, but you can’t choose your friend’s parents.” These parents paid attention to sugar content, video game violence, prohibited “The Simpsons”, and had eagle eye focus on movie ratings. Before Netflix, the casual weekend sleepover consisted of a trip to pick up some pizza and make a stop at the Blockbuster. Over the years, I had curated a list of films that would make it past the prying eyes of helicopter parents. Now, if you have seen Double Dragon, you might be thinking that this movie is tame and lacks substance, but there was nothing like seeing Power Ranger style fight scenes, the man behind the Terminator 2’s T1000, massive explosions, Blade Runner’s Los Angeles, and finally Alysa Millano in a crazy getup that made her look absolutely thicc. But alas, this film was PG-13! Luckily, it could be found in the children's section, which was just enough lubrication to pass right through the parental units security system. And now, watching this with a critical eye as an adult, it really went above and beyond to give you a top notch fantasy that most other films in this line never imagined. It is with mad respect that I say, Double Dragon is a bomb ass kids film.

This movie is nothing like the video game. The story of the original game was very simple. You are brothers, Billy aka Bimmy and Jimmy Lee. Billy’s girlfriend Marion is kidnapped by the Black Warriors, a street gang. The brothers Lee fight through Neo New York to get her back. The movie is bonkers by comparison. What it lacks in preservation, it makes up for with sheer imagination. The premise of the film is completely rooted in this neo Los Angeles (New Angeles in the film) that mirrors a quirkier version of Blade Runner’s LA. The film lives and breathes in all these little details that are totally clunky and you might even say unnecessary, but this film is a soup, one little thing missing and it might not make a huge difference, but together they make an umami broth. The deepest aspect of this stew is the constant earthquakes that plague New Angeles and which also presumably sank Hollywood to the point that they have boat tours of old institutions like the top of Mann’s Chinese Theater, left cresting just above the water. Everywhere they go there are these building stabilizers that need to be pumped to keep the roof over their head, which may or may not be real science. All of the cars rely on fuel made up of garbage that you can grab right off the refuse filled streets. These details can be easily overlooked and undervalued, but it creates a great deal of the flavor for the film. They make up for the flimsy plot and the child-directed acting. They surround the meat of a normal film and make it into something you can really chew on.

As for the construction and delivery, we might have on our hands here a film that has the most kid movie tropes in a single film. Ever. I tried to write a list, but it seemed endless, and all of them are used on the fly while moving the story forward. For instance:

Infiltrating the bad guys office through the AC trope

Trying to steal something off the bad guys desk from above through the AC grate trope

Falling through the ceiling when caught trope

Turbine fan sucking people in trope

And that's just the progression of a single scene. People slip on gumballs in the middle of a fight for god’s sake! Tropes propagate in every corner of the film. You could even make a drinking game out of one. The brothers do this celebratory handshake where they make a fist with one hand and an open palm with the other and punch into each other. Every time the brothers Lee do their childish handshake, take a shot. You will be way more drunk in the back half, by then it gets pretty intense. I wish I could accurately describe the saturation of kids entertainment nonsense that propels this movie, but suffice it to say, it has it all.

This certainly wasn’t the most compelling children's film of the time, Disney was right in the middle of its animated renaissance and was consistently acclaimed. Live action, low budget kids films were a dime a dozen as well, and most of them were pretty awful. But when it comes down to it, Double Dragon has a consistent, cohesive vision glued together by a living, breathing, cheesy world. It's all in the little details. Like replacing payphones with oxygen stations and having two businessmen fight over it. And like all kids films, they leave the kids feeling empowered. The police are too scared to go out at night to fight the gangs, so a group of teens and tweens called “The Power Corps” decide to take back the streets. Now, what this actually looks like is a little unclear, but they do try to teach kids that corporations are generally the root of all evil, revealing that the corporations own the gangs and pay them to keep people scared. That too is a 90’s kids trope. It was always street gangs and corporate big wigs.

The action and setpieces are campy, or maybe you would just call it corny, and they could have been a little better in some places, but most of the time they are satisfying. This film famously set a Cleveland river on fire and created a giant explosion that had actual citizens calling emergency services. The costumes were the envy of young tweens yearning to hang out at a locker between classes for the first time. You would never find those threads in the store, but you had this feeling that there was some secret store in the mall that only kids 13 and up could find. If you pay attention to all the extras, you will notice absolutely zero consistency in their clothing choices. Sometimes the bad guys are dressed both like clowns and librarians in the same scene. On the other hand, the cool kids in the film have an amazing secret base that the adults don’t have access to, it's truly like bringing to life the feeling of playing at the McDonalds playplace. Double Dragon delivers a feeling more than anything. Maybe it is a feeling kids today can’t even imbibe, their world seems so different, but I think even without the context of the game, this would still make a good late night movie at any sleepover.

Finally, on the fan service front, because there is so little preservation, you aren’t going to find very much unless you are hardcore fan. Alyssa Milano’s character is named Marion, the name of Billy’s kidnapped girlfriend in the game. At one point, the gang runs into the Double Dragon arcade cabinet. Abobo makes a very strange appearance in a grotesque getup that you will wish you could forget. If there was much more than this, I really couldn’t put my finger on it. Everything else is probably too small or trivial.

When it comes to making a video game film, this leaned much more heavily on the originality side than preservation, but it had a sturdy construction and delivery that more than makes up for its lack of fan service. Looking through the list of other live action Hollywood films, it’s looking like it will be the last film to balance with this formula, even though this is only the second film in this series. I think the single minded focus on being a fun kids film outweighs its need to mimic the game, which was honestly fine for me then and now. They could have made a rated R version of this that took the whole thing seriously, and that might have fared better, but it's really hard to say. Sci-Fi adult action films of the time were very hit or miss. Back then, video games were for kids, despite their stories and presentation being mature, so this was probably the only way to get the film off the ground. I won’t claim that Double Dragon is the best kids action film of its day, but it definitely has more kids action film in it than any other kids action film. If you weigh the film against something like Titanic, it's going to sink, but put it in the ring punching at its own weight, it's going to be a contender. Two fist pumps way up.

#Film #Review #Reviews #Double Dragon #Gaming #Video Games #Video Game Films #Films #Billy And Jimmy #Bimmy and Jimmy #Alyssa Milano #Kids Films #Entertainment #Kids Entertainment #Disney #Dragon #Dragon Master #Bruce Lee #Blade Runner

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texanredrose · 4 years

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War (What Is It Good For?)

Blake watched as the rain fell, another dreary day in a dreary city. Time had lost all meaning about three millennia ago but the monotony never stopped weighing on her soul. She’d grown so… tired.

“You just gonna stand there and brood all night?”

With a small frown, she looked back at the woman who’d offered a bit of a distraction from the repetition- though, not in a good way. Wild blonde hair, lilac eyes that flashed with annoyance, and the build of a fighter, Yang Xiao Long was a human caught up in a chess match as old as time itself.

Barely a pawn, yet worth coming out of the shadows to find.

“I don’t have much else to do,” she replied with a drawl, arms crossed over her chest. “If we’re lucky, the sun will rise before the vampires find us.”

“And then what?”

“Then, we take you to Raven.”

“Who’s Raven?”

Blake sighed, her teeth turning to fangs for a moment as her agitation grew. “She’s the last true immortal… and your mother.”

“Oh, fuck you.” Yang rolled her eyes. “My mom died years ago.”

“No, the woman who raised you died years ago.” Her expression pinched together briefly as she tried to recall the name. “I think it was… Summer, right? Summer Rose?”

To her surprise, the human didn’t seem swayed. “You hunted me down and kidnapped me, so if you’re expecting me to be surprised you know my mom’s name, tough luck.”

“Whether or not you believe me isn’t my problem,” Blake said, taking two strides to the chair where the woman sat and grabbing her shoulder roughly.

“Hey, watch it!” Yang tried to flinch away but didn’t have much room to go, bound to the chair as she was. “I got shot there, ya know!”

“Did you?” With her other hand, she pulled at the woman’s jacket and shirt, ignoring the blood soaked garments to reveal the skin that should be sporting a still oozing gunshot wound. However, aside from the blood, no evidence of such remained. “Where’s the proof?”

“I… well…”

“You’ve always had this ability- you heal faster than normal, you walk away from things that should’ve killed you, and perhaps most damning of all, you can’t explain why.” She took a step back, once again crossing her arms over her white jacket. “But you’ve always known there was something different about you. And, there is. You’re the latest descendant of the last true immortal.”

“So what’s that make us? Cousins?”

Blake had to hand it to the woman; her defiance, although arrogant, never wavered. “It’s a bit more complicated than that.”

“Well, it’s not like we’re going anywhere until dawn anyway.” With what limited mobility Yang had, she turned her hands. “Enlighten me.”

She had half a mind to ignore the request but, honestly, the woman would likely just continue asking until her patience eroded anyway. “The story changes depending on who does the telling. Long story short, there have always been five races on Remnant: humans, faunus, vampires, zoans, and the immortals. The immortals ruled us all for millennia, with humans and faunus as their servants and vampires and zoans as their armies. They used those beneath them until the vampires managed to find a way to destroy the immortals.”

Yang’s expression pinched. “Sounds like a faulty immortality to me.”

“Immortality just means that you don’t die through natural means, not that you can’t be destroyed outright. Vampires were the first to figure that out.” Blake went back to the window, her eyes unfocusing as she began to relive a memory she’d tried hard to forget. “When they’d destroyed almost all the immortals, the vampires instituted themselves as the overseers. Zoans like myself became their guardians… and their slaves.”

“Then what happened?”

“We rose up,” she replied, and in her mind’s eye, she went back to that day. The fighting, the shouting, the sound of claws on stone and wings beating and the overwhelming need to get away now that propelled her forward- and her last look back. “Then, the war started. Thousands lost on either side, until vampires and zoans were so few, we became myths and legends. That’s when humans and faunus inherited Remnant and we continued our war in secret.”

“Why in secret?”

“Because the truth had already come out; not even the immortals could escape death entirely, and though vampires and zoans can heal the same as you, we still have glaring weaknesses.”

“Like sunlight and silver?”

“Exactly.” She blinked, refocusing on the view outside the window. “We never inherited the immortals’ full secrets. We don’t age and die like humans and faunus but neither are we entirely immortal.”

“Maybe the immortals weren’t either; they just suckered everyone into serving them.”

“That’s possible, too.”

“Then why are you turning me over to one?”

“To gain the edge we need to win the war for good.” Blake turned her head, regarding the human. “You’re not a full immortal yourself but you have healing abilities on par with mine and you earlier fought a vampire to a standstill. You had a fraction of the immortals’ power within you by virtue of being half blood. What Raven offers is her own blood to whoever can find you.”

“Maybe I’m missing somethin’, but if this whole thing started because the immortals were killed off, I kinda don’t see how getting her blood’s going to help.” Yang shrugged- well, as much as she could, all things considered. “Sounds like a hustle to me.”

“The immortals never grew their numbers.” She stepped away from the window again, having briefly seen a flash of movement on the street below. “They bred their servants and their armies but rarely themselves; they would live forever and had no reason to propagate. They waged their wars to secure more resources for their minions, to increase the amount of lives they could throw away. When the fight began, the vampires knew how to replenish their numbers; the immortals did not.” Then, she winced. “Not for lack of trying, from what I’ve been told. For all the years that Raven’s tried, you’re the first of her offspring to survive into adulthood.”

“Guess immortality’s not for everyone,” Yang glibly replied, heaving a heavy sigh. “So, I’m just a bargaining chip. Great. Gotta say, kinda hurts my feeling’s a little bit.” Then she paused, looking over at Blake with something lurking in lilac eyes. “You still up for story time? ‘Cause, there’s something that’s been nagging at me.”

Rolling her eyes, she glanced out the window again. “And what’s that?”

“What’s the deal between you and the vampire chick? The short one with the scar?”

Her expression tightened. “Nothing. Not anymore.”

“Liar.”

Before she could respond to that accusation, she heard sound of a great amount of force smashing into the ceiling above them, amber eyes flicking up to see how the fluorescent lights shook and dimmed while the tiles bowed slightly. A second blow caused the ceiling tiles to crack and split and a third produced a hole and a hail of fiberglass, plastic, and insulation.

Then a figure dropped down, draped in black leather- as ever, a taunt.

“Blake,” she said, voice cold as ice.

“Weiss,” she replied, preparing for a fight. They’d done this song and dance so many times, it had become part of the monotony. A struggle neither could win, a fight neither could end… or didn’t want to… she honestly wasn’t sure which anymore. “Walk away.”

“Funny.” Blue eyes narrowed, the scar across her left eye never fading no matter how many centuries passed. “I was going to suggest the same thing.” At her hip sat a sword, the same one Blake had forged for her ages ago- silver, with intricate designs, the last vestiges of their old world. “There’s no reason for you to die today.”

For a moment, she considered it- walking away. Leaving the war behind, running as far as she could. She’d tried that before.

It didn’t work.

“Wish I could say the same,” she replied before moving forward, using her speed to close the distance quickly.

Blake could’ve pulled her pistol from its holster; the special ultra-violet rounds designed to specifically kill vampires would make short work of Weiss. But, just as the vampire didn’t draw her silver sword, neither did the zoan pull her gun.

This battle, they fought honorably, hand-to-hand.

Or, maybe, they were both cowards, unable to make the killing blow. Instead, Blake simply threw her weight into a tackle, launching herself into Weiss’ chest and sending them both crashing into the far side of the room. Thankfully, this particular safe house was in an abandoned office building, so no one would hear their fight. Unfortunately, that also meant no one could intervene.

This time, only one of them could walk away.

They both rolled to their feet and Blake partially shifted, her fangs and claws coming to bear as her ears became more feline. As a werepanther, she had a good deal more strength available to her the closer she was to her fully shifted form, but would reserve that for later. In response, Weiss hissed at her, revealing her fangs as her eyes began to shine.

Neither at full strength but making a show of it for the sake of ghosts.

The monotony of it killed her as much as it broke her heart.

Then, she had to set aside her feelings, dodging swipes and kicks from the vampire while trying to land blows of her own. Movements too fast for the eye of a human or faunus but it always felt like running underwater to Blake, as if she couldn’t truly put her whole heart into attacking Weiss. Some part of her still remembered when they were small, both born into chains. Then later, when vampires took control, how Weiss became her ‘master’ in name only. Then, later…

She ducked beneath a swipe of Weiss’ claws and took the opportunity for an uppercut that quite nearly clipped the vampire’s jaw.

There was a time when she foolishly loved Weiss. A time when she foolishly thought Weiss loved her. A time when she thought… that things would change, and they wouldn’t have to keep their love a secret. She believed it, once, and though she’d since learned the truth, some small, stubborn part of her still loved the vampire even after all these years.

After taking a few punches to her gut, Weiss dropped down and swept her legs from under her, sending Blake crashing to the ground, and a kick while she was down sent her skittering across the floor until she fetched up against the wall. Blake thought about getting up. She did. But she was tired of doing this. The fighting never stopped and, if the zoans succeeded in securing Raven’s favor, they’d just do the same thing the vampires did before them, and the immortals before them. There would always be a hierarchy, and injustice, and fighting, and she just… couldn’t do it anymore.

Amber eyes watched as Weiss seemed to realize she wouldn’t be getting up this time. That their battle had finally come to an end the same way it began.

Blake remembered when the uprising started, how the vampire looked at her even as she was ordered to ‘put that beast down’. How she drew her silver sword. How her eyes were cold and distant.

Just like now, the silver sword flashing in the dim light as she drew it from her hip.

After so many years upon years, she gave up and closed her eyes, allowing her end to come.

However, her eyes snapped open when she heard the crashing and metal twang, watching as Yang broke the chair she’d been sitting in over Weiss’ head and the vampire crumpled to the ground.

“No!” Shifting fully, Blake launched forward, skin replaced by thick black fur, but the human seemed to anticipate this. Her hand shot out, catching Blake’s throat, and she didn’t even have to reset her feet even as the werepanther’s superior weight slammed into her, jaws kept safely away from tearing into flesh. Yang didn’t even seem taxed, hardly wincing whenever Blake’s claws tore at her skin, the wounds healing almost the moment they were caused.

Then, her attacks became more like futile flailing as the hand around her throat began to squeeze. Although their longevity could qualify them as immortal, zoans needed air just like humans and faunus; they weren’t like the living dead vampires in that regard. Quickly, Blake turned back to her bipedal form in the hopes that changing sizes would dislodge the woman’s grip, but she was wrong.

With her dwindling consciousness, she registered Weiss’ scream of rage as she charged, impaling Yang with her sword. Unfortunately, the attack didn’t even seem to faze the woman as she threw Blake to the ground and grabbed the vampire by the throat, lifting her clear off her feet. The zoan tried to get up but found a boot stomping on her chest, keeping her pinned to the ground.

“Would both of you stop freaking out for one second?” Yang groused, using her free hand to pull the sword from her stomach, giving it a once over before tossing it aside. “Nice aim; pretty sure that got my liver. Plus a few other things. Ah well, no harm, no foul, am I right?”

“How- are- you-“

“Yeah, quick aside: I fought both of you to a standstill and she only managed to tie me to a chair because I sleep like a rock and just came off a forty-eight hour shift.” The woman nodded towards Blake. “The fact either of you thought handcuffs and rope would work is a joke.” In hindsight, Yang had a point. “So, here’s the deal. I have a bone to pick with this Raven. I only need one of you alive to lead me to her. First one to volunteer lives.”

At that, Weiss became even more agitated, struggling violently to free herself while shouting. “If you harm her, I swear, I will destroy you!”

“Okay, so there is something more going on here.” Lilac eyes flicked down to the zoan for a moment before focusing on the vampire. “Why the soft spot for this one?”

Weiss glared. “Because I love her, if you must know! Now, leave her out of this!”

“Hmmm. Wow, that’s gotta suck. Unrequited love for that long-“

“You almost killed me!” The words burst from her mouth before she could stop them, annoyed at herself for sounding so genuinely hurt. “When your father told you to put me down, you drew your sword and- and-“

“And I missed, you fool, it was the only way to cut your chains!”

That stopped her cold. “You… you were trying to free me?”

“Of course!” And, for the first time since that day, she saw the blood gathering in blue eyes- the only tears a vampire could cry. “I- I can’t kill you, Blake. I never could.”

“Hookay, so, it sounds like you two have some things to work out.” Yang removed the boot from Blake’s chest and set Weiss down on her feet, taking a step back from both of them. “Listen, for what it’s worth, I could definitely tell neither of you were really happy about fighting each other earlier, so it’s pretty obvious there’s some baggage there to unpack. You two should do that now, before any more of your friends show up.” Then she turned around, adjusting her jacket slightly. “Once you two have figured out the whole ‘will we or won’t we’ thing, I’ll be over there, trying to salvage what remains of my jacket. I can’t believe you put another hole in the damn thing. I get it, you two seem to only have leather in your wardrobes, but I kinda try to diversify mine, and I really loved this jacket.”

Blake blinked, slowly getting to her feet. She looked over at Weiss, who seemed equally confused but more concerned with… her.

“Are… you alright?”

“Yeah,” she replied, rubbing at her throat. “And… you?”

“I’m fine.” She quickly wiped away her tears, though blood was always harder to erase. “I’m… I apologize, that you ever thought I was trying to harm you- I never wanted to-“

“No, I… I’m the one who never let you explain…” Her shoulders fell, centuries upon centuries of regrets piling up on her in that moment. “It’s been… so hard, fighting against you all these years.” Tentatively, she reached out, cupping Weiss’ jaw. “I never wanted this.”

“Neither did I… but I couldn’t stop.” Weiss lifted her hand, settling it over Blake’s, and her skin felt as cold as it always did; even after millennia, the zoan never forgot how it felt. “If it was anyone else, they… you could’ve gotten hurt. So, I had to be the one who kept hunting you.”

In that moment, she made a decision, stepping forward and pressing her lips to the vampire’s. Again, her memories proved true, and kissing Weiss hadn’t changed despite how much the rest of the world had.

How they felt… didn’t change.

“Hey, hate to break the moment, but I gotta ask some pertinent questions.” They broke apart to look over at Yang, who’d taken off her jacket in an attempt to mend the hole in the back of it. However, it also revealed the one wound that had yet to heal- the gashes deep into her left forearm that still trickled blood looking very much like a torn bite mark. “How does a human or faunus get turned into a vampire?”

“They have to be bitten and then drink the blood of the vampire who bit them,” Weiss said, eyeing the wound with suspicion.

“And a zoan?”

“Be bitten and don’t die before the next full moon.” Blake supplied.

“Great!” The woman genuinely smiled. “Well, I won’t hold you two up. If you point me in the right direction, I’ll go settle the score with Raven and I’ll just tell anyone who asks that I killed both of you. Go, run off to the woods somewhere and forget all this war nonsense.”

Although the zoan heavily considered doing just that- after all, running away with Weiss would bound to be different than just hiding herself away- the vampire obviously didn’t like the plan. “And just abandon you?”

“Hey, listen, I’ll be fine.” She nodded towards her arm. “I’m sure the bigger one of you will track me down soon enough; I can probably get some of her blood and the full moon is in two days.”

“Wait.” Blake tilted her head. “Are you trying to become both zoan and vampire?”

“Uh, duh. C’mon, think about it.” She gestured between the three of us. “You said yourself that none of Raven’s kids live very long and there were five races. Why would Raven be interested in me surviving if it wasn’t to see if the races can be combined? Humans and faunus can reproduce, so I figure she’s trying to find a way to breed a new army: half immortal, part zoan, and part vampire. That would give her the edge, right?”

“I mean… I… guess?” She looked to Weiss, who seemed equally stunned by the explanation. “How did you-“

“I might not be the sharpest tool in the shed but I know how conniving minds work.” Yang shrugged, turning away. “Either way, I’m going to give Raven a piece of my mind when I meet her, so if either of you know how to kill an immortal, that’d be a sweet going away present.”

Blake again looked to the vampire, who seemed to be thinking hard on something.

Then, she spoke. “Do you think there’s others like us?”

“I like to believe so,” the zoan replied, feeling Weiss’ hand slip into hers, their fingers threading together.

“Then, we can’t walk away from this.” Her expression turned serious. “We have to find a way to end the suffering without sacrificing everyone in the process.”

Blake nodded. “Okay. Then, let’s end this.” --- Is there a shit ton of irony in me doing an actual Underworld AU? Yes, yes there is. Is that going to stop me? Nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnope.

#Monochrome #monochromeweek2020 #monosweek2020 #Monochrome Underworld AU

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ask-de-writer · 4 years

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LEZON : Part 14 of 14 : Science Fiction

Return to Science Fiction

Return to the Master Story Index

LEZON

Part 14 of 14

De Writer (Glen Ten-Eyck)

17837 words

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Users of Tumblr.com are specifically granted the following rights. They may reblog the story provided that all author and copyright information remains intact. They may use the characters or original characters in my settings for fan fiction, fan art works, cosplay, or fan musical compositions.

All sorts of fan art, cosplay, music or fiction is actively encouraged.

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New to the story? Read from the beginning. Part 1 is HERE.

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The pilot had finished setting up her maneuver and said with utter confidence, “Whether they try to boost or just fall free through there, this course will put them into our claws. See, they are down to .8 C and trying to drop their Restriction field. At that speed, the only explanation has to be a serious malfunction. They’ll never get it restarted in time to avoid us.”

Treh suddenly had a thought. “Falling free —“ she began to type rapidly. She stared in disbelief at her screen. Silently, she put the result onto the main screen.

M’ase was looking at the plots with horror when the comm channel called for her attention. The ID code being used was one that had been retired after the battle at M’onafar. Lezon was calling in after an absence of more than ten years.

M’ase opened the comm channel and saw Lezon surrounded by the kits of the Clan D’ancer. “M’ase, I feared that you might still be in command,” said Lezon without preamble. “I called to say farewell. You are too committed to your course to escape. You have just less than one hour to prepare for the Cave of Life. I am sorry that the weapon that I am using will not allow your survival. I will light a candle for you all.” The screen went dark.

Treh put the detection screen information onto the main screen where all could see how they had been trapped.

“Relativity Frames of Reference Theory,” said M’ase softly. “We are so used to working around it with the Restriction field, that we tend to forget that it still applies.”

“Their restriction field collapsed while they were doing .8 C. The energy transfer has boosted them to just over .97 C,” said Treh. Rhetorically she added, “So this is what it is like to fight a legend. Who but Lezon would use the Law of the Universe itself as a weapon?”

//////////////////////////

K’ress and the kits were watching the screens as the Restriction field was collapsed. The universe changed. The stars of the system vanished. Though they were braking, there were stars visible only in a wide belt around the D’ancer. Toward the bow they faded away into the infrared. Toward the stern they became visible from the ultraviolet. Only around the waist of the ship did the colors of the stars seem normal but even there, they appeared to be squashed by relativity.

Aboard the ship, they replayed the camera’s pictures and watched the destruction that Lezon had wrought with the little ship that they had always thought of as home and safety.

They saw the pursuing Hand of Claws seized by the gravity wave that propagated from their little ship as the collapsing Restriction field boosted its speed to over .97 C forcing their mass to increase to nearly the total of all of the rest of the system combined. Their speed had also forced time to slow down for them, causing the system that they were in to seem to disappear. Their gravity wave, traveling at the speed of light, reached the stars in a little less than a half of an hour, causing them to flare and be drawn in toward the little ship. Its enormous speed and the inertia of the in-falling matter kept the dying stars from catching it.

The Hand of Claws was not so lucky. Trying frantically to accelerate out of the trap, her shields were overloaded by the intersecting wave fronts of three stars flaring into novas at once. An expanding puff of vapor was all that was left by the time that the in-falling matter of the triple suns got there. The collapse of the stars continued until there was only one left, now struggling to find stability as a supergiant.

In the rest of the universe, nearly six months passed before the D’ancer was able to brake sufficiently to be able to restart her Restriction field.

//////////////////////////

Staring at the sky from the shade of the shelter that she had improvised from the wreckage of her blasted ship, T’cass heard the sonic boom of the D’ancer before she saw the ship itself. The craft swung about in a graceful arc and settled into a textbook perfect landing. Heaving herself erect in the 1.85 g pull of the large planet, she began to walk toward the airlock of the ship that she had long known as home, scarcely daring to believe that she was saved at last. She had been marooned for the last eight months, at first hoping for rescue then giving up and just surviving, sure that her Clan was gone. Lezon came out and met her.

“To quote somebody from years ago, ‘I thought that you were too tough to die.’ I’m glad to see you, T’cass.”

“I’m relieved that you came back for me. What took so long?”

“I’ll let T’cill, K’sere, and T’lass tell you the whole story. You didn’t leave me at M’onafar and I couldn’t leave you here. It looked like there was a good chance that you’d survived the attack, so we came back to see. I did come back as quick as I could. We had a few problems along the way.”

—THE END—

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#LEZON #Part 14 of 14 #Science Fiction #Written by De Writer

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space-blue · 3 years

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The Hound of Arnas

My ports disengage, returning me to consciousness. I stay on my back for a while, gaze turned inward, browsing through the nets. While my body warms I review the datafeeds I requested before going to sleep. Soon there is nothing for me to do but roll out of my dingy alcove, one in many in this shabby plug-a-night for cyborgs and droids. No one pays me any mind as I amble through what passes as a lobby and step into the already busy street.

"Please, parts!" A hand grabs my coat. "Any parts you can spare, I beg you, for my child, all his ports are outdated, he can't link, ple–"

The beggar clamps her mouth shut the moment she realises what she is talking to, her dull eyes already hunting for more pliable targets. Smart woman. She will sooner convince an AI to donate parts off its droid body than the likes of me, and she knows it. Shells don't have parts to give. We're bio-engineered integral cyborgs. Expensive models like mine are even grown with full DNA print. Parts tailored for me in a body as perfect as one can dream. If I chopped my right hand and gave it away, no one else could use it.

However, getting this close to godhood comes with a sixty years binding contract, which is why I'm walking the trash ridden streets of an off-grids slum doing a bloodhound's job. Looking for a human here like a needle in a smelly haystack.

The first two days I spent along the dark sea and the beach–the rocky expense that once held sand, that we still call beach–where workers on long rafts poled their way through the mass of seaweeds they turn into fuel. I could have been done in half a day, talking to supervisors, or the AIs that regulate our dead ocean's shallows. But unlike its simulations, the sea has a smell and a taste, almost a presence. It fascinated me, so I took my time.

Today I walk away from the shore. I've decided to talk to locals or else I'll be here until I catch the carbon plague.

My legs take me past triage factories, down streets smelling of rancid grease, where mechanics bend over patrons' cybernetic limbs, bartering their services, weaving through cables like jungle creepers, children running past yelling the names of parts they sell; ports, encrypted 9G cards, 5D sticks, or accessory mods. Soon the street dissolves in a wider field. I scramble partway up a metal gangway that wraps around a building to the roofs. From there I can see, sprawled at my feet, the buzzing activity of the Mud-Market. Cyborg modders with four arms selling flatbreads faster than they can turn them. People sitting on crates half sunk in the eponymous mud, tearing at steamed bug-buns, furiously betting on some game only them can see. Others haggling over second-hand garments and scraps of food. Even a few ADroids weave through the crowds, projecting bright holos and loud slogans.

I sigh and sit heavily, my legs dangling over the tin roof of a partmonger. This wreathing mass of bodies discourages me, somehow. Resting my back to the wall, I turn inwards to log into official networks. I find a few agents in the area, and summon the closest, Agt. Edenton, an ID officer.

Before long, three kids come running out of the market, out of breath with laugher. I look down. One of them, a little blond fellow, doesn't register to my eyes. Unchipped. Or, more likely, never chipped: someone's illegal brood. Another has a cybernetic arm made of scraps. Both wave at the third, a black haired runt not possibly past seven, who leaves them to enter the street. The gangway quivers under me, heralding the kid's approach. He sits not far, flashes his credentials–this is indeed Edenton– and opens a private channel for us to discuss away from prying eyes or ears, for all the world just two strangers enjoying the view before them.

'What's a pricey Shell like you doin' here?'

I stifle a laugh. The voice that popped in my head is a deep man's bass, completely out of place coming from the scrawny boy. Edenton gives me a withering look, and I sober up as I realise what an ID officer's job would be, shelled as a kid. Hunt unchipped children like the one I'd seen, gain their trust, follow them home, have it tagged, maybe chip them himself. The kind of job you got because someone thought you deserved it...

I poke his arm, surprised to find him made out of regular flesh.

'Is this a BioShell? Aren't those pretty rare and pricey as well? Incubation is hard to do.'

Edenton's frail shoulders shrug. 'They make kids like me easily, they don't try for perfection. The body decays after a year, so we swap regularly. It's just a pain to be in a tube for two months while a new body grows around you.'

I'd shiver, if my body could.

To answer Edenton's own question, I display my working seals and credentials, and watch his eyes widen. A military Shell in the direct employ of Arnas CEO, wielding seals that give her unlimited power is a scary sight, I'm sure.

'This is Halena Tesselandottir,' I say, flashing pictures of a young woman. 'Used to live in the grids, legal as you please and pretty bigwigged. Took her chip off, came to those slums.' I wave my hand, letting Edenton imagine the sort of drama that could push someone to such extremes. 'Back then she was a modder.' Lists of parts and softwares join the pictures. 'Augmentations, but no cybernetic replacements. I'm pretty sure she downgraded, since many mods are trackable. She was spotted in this slum, so I was sent to find her. I'd like some help.'

An order dressed as a request that Edenton accepts with good graces. In no time he comes up with a cunning plan that won't damage his cover, and I mentally pat myself on the back for involving him.

We weave our way through narrow streets, continuing our secret dialogue. I learn that Edenton has been undercover in this slum for four years, and soon guess that he got there by asking too many questions. He's fourty-two, single, grumpy. We spend some time polishing our plot in a back alley. We'll need our public feeds to display some action to look credible.

Finally ready, I step into a wider street, Edenton's weightless body cradled in my arms, and stumble towards an older woman, busy smoking in front of a brothel. Edenton's notion being that such Madams know everything, and everyone.

"Seima," I call, picking her name from her public feed, "this kid just crashed into me. He banged his head hard..."

Seima rushes up to us with a face like Edenton is her own grandchild. She looks at me with narrowed eyes. Can't blame her for mistrusting a Shell in a muddy coat, but my public feed has a record of the entire "incident" we orchestrated, and Edenton moans, the voice passing his lips a mewling so pitiful that I stare as well. His feed flashes with one of the pictures of Halena I gave him.

"He's been showing that image the whole time, could it be his mother? If you know her, maybe I could leave him to you..."

It's the magical words. Trying to shirk my responsibilities, am I? She'll find the boy's mom in no time, she swears, and furiously propagates Halena's picture through her personal network. Finding where Halena (or Hena, as she now goes by) works is a matter of minutes. The hardest part of the job is to pry Madam Seima off Edenton.

Out of sight I put him back on his legs, and we hurry to intercept Halena before someone warns her that we've been asking after her.

It's almost too easy. She's exactly where we were told. Unchipped, so nearly impossible to track, she was betrayed by the simplest of human drives, everyone's inherent need to network and socialise.

Edenton's bass vibrates in my skull. 'What are you gonna do?'

He follows me over crumbled walls and up stairwells that lead us to a rooftop. Lying down, we can spy on Halena and her companions, sorting garbage, probably paid by the amount of recyclable they can sift.

I scan her face, still young, but scarred by the mods she took off her temples and neck, as I'd guessed. I extend my arm, fingers splayed, lock, breathe out, and fire. My shoulder joint shifts, swallows the recoil. People scream, run to cover. Edenton jumps, grabs me with his little hands. In the street her blood flows, joining the streams of dark fluids down the gutter. Half her head is gone.

"Why," Edenton cries. "What did she do to deserve that?!"

"I never asked," I reply, "and neither should you."

~~ April 2016 – Theme : Dystopia – Don't want to toot my own horn, but this story marks one year and one month of writing, and the progress is rather evident. It is my favourite of my older pieces.

#original work #original story #competition #scifi #dystopia #cyberpunk

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thesarcasticside · 4 years

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Millennia-00000001

Summary:

Dread rose and fell into the pit of Virgil’s stomach. His whole body froze, like a rosebush in winter. Stalk dark and woody, leaves wilted and dry. Rose petals brown, falling off in a draft. A cascade of grey and faded violets, Virgil stood, rooted in place.

It could have been millennia.

He stared into the window behind her, he saw the stars, tiny red lights flickering in place. He wanted to cast himself back out into space, a much preferable fate than this.

Trapped and forced to work for the Dragon Witch, a 'successful businesswoman' and 'universe-renowned scientist and philanthropist,' Virgil must learn how to survive and find a way to put a stop to her 'experiments.'

---

Space au starring Virgil, a succulent from outer space. First in the series. The other sides make important appearances but this is Virgil's story above all else.

Characters: Virgil, Anton and Andy (Shorts antagonist and anxiety characters), Deceit, The Dragon Witch, Logan, Roman, Remus, an original character, and Terrence Williams Jr.

Warnings: Not in this chapter specifically, but in future chapters emotional/physiological abuse, captivity, blood, violence, amnesia, minor character death, the Dragon Witch (she is the big bad)

AO3 Chapter 1 Next Chapter

00000001

While Virgil was a cascade of vibrant violets and deep and dark purples, Andy and Anton were mirages of black and grey. Andy was like a dullish evergreen. Anton was like a night sky, full of stars as his skin glittered in the light with freckles of crimson and violet. Virgil was like a sprouting zwartkop, a black rose, with bright maroon petals reaching high towards sunlight.

They lived together in a small apartment-like home on the planet Aerth. This was a temporary arrangement.

Virgil was but a small sapling compared to Andy and Anton, yet they all shared many physical traits. They were not only of the same species but were all propagated from the same being. Andy was the oldest of the three, but Anton was close to his age. Virgil was still a small sprout.

Andy was lucky. He had lived for a long time—millennia, even.

This never stopped him from worrying about death, especially since he had watched Aerth slowly become worse, more dangerous, as tensions between other species on his planet grew, and his own planet caught the eye of others.

So, it hurt, tangled the cords inside of his chest and rippled throughout his body—it hurt that he knew that Virgil was not so lucky. That the conflicts of this beautiful planet would consume them both.

Anton entered their home loudly, interrupting Andy’s thoughts, and Virgil trailed in behind him. Virgil’s hand was wrapped around one of Anton’s fingers—oh Virgil was so small, and Andy felt like he was buzzing. Virgil looked up at Anton, scrunching his face, silently communicating with him, talking about his day.

Virgil glanced around the home, and his face lit up when he saw Andy. He untangled his hand from Anton’s, tiny roots flying off into the air as they detached, and Virgil jumped into Andy’s arms.

Virgil, excited to talk about his day, could not speak his thoughts aloud. Instead, he communicated so many buzzing thoughts, sensations, and feelings directly to Andy, through the little roots that sprouted from across his body.

It was all over the place, quite literally, because Virgil was determined to cram everything he had learned that day through the tiny roots that sprung from his arms and head. Andy laughed, amused by his excitement—this small little thing was explaining this all to him like it was a new scientific discovery. Andy could not remember the time when the world was so exciting.

Andy cradled Virgil in his arms, but when he looked back up at Anton, he did not need any signal from him to see the dreaded news twirling in his eyes. Andy tensed, holding Virgil in his arms tighter. Anton looked down at Andy sadly, placed a hand on his shoulder.

<<We will need to move before they get here.

Andy was careful to not let the sadness seep through the many different connections he shared with Virgil. Yet all of Virgil’s new and exciting discoveries, his stories about the plants and the sky and the earth and his new friends, made him feel even worse—because he knew that he would have to leave them all behind. There were so many vines and flowers and bushes and people that he had known for many years—he had watched them grow and change and learn and discover new songs and words—but all that progress would soon be lost.

>>How long do we have here now? How much can we bring with us?

And maybe Andy had never been lucky. The constant migration, moving from place to place, he had to endure to ensure he stayed alive felt like a constant ache in his chest. Many people had to stay rooted in one place, and thus could not travel Aerth and survive like he could, but that could not stop the pain of leaving from tearing out his insides.

<<One labay

And that was urgent. Andy felt along the top of Virgil’s head, gently touching the small plants growing there. He ran his fingers through the trailing vines that fell over one of his eyes, purple pea-like leaves grew from the stems. He watched as tiny violet flowers glowed and buzzed, singing songs into Virgil’s ear.

They did not have much time to pack things, take seeds and cuttings of their favorite plants, but he would try, for Virgil’s sake. Virgil had grown rather attached to everyone in the neighborhood here.

>>One of these days there will be nowhere left to run to.

Andy took a moment to tune back into Virgil’s excited ramblings. He let himself picture the soft blue sky full of violet clouds. ‘that’s me,’ Virgil had said.

Andy could see through Virgil’s eyes as he ran through the field, chasing his friends in a game of tag. He could feel the excitement and joy spilling from Virgil in waves, but it slowly dimmed into a content warmth as Virgil began to doze.

Andy’s limbs felt rooted to his chair. His woody vines hardly paid attention to him. Veins flowed languidly, lulling his eyes downward, half-lidded. Tired.

He grasped Anton’s hand on his shoulder, squeezed it, before dozing as well. Anton slowly detached his hand and began to pack their things.

---

#sander sides #sander sides au #sander sides space au #sander sides virgil #ts virgil #ts (In Other Worlds)#Millennia (Virgil's Story)#sarcasm ts fic #sarcasm writes

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xmxisxforxmaybe · 5 years

Text

Remnants, Part VIII

Hang in there, friends. It’s not over yet! If you’ve got questions, shoot me an ask and I’ll answer if it won’t spoil the plot : )

Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V, Part VI, Part VII

Summary: You are in the midst of formulating your dissertation, but you’ve hit a wall. Your doting aunt, Rebecca, has a solution that brings you face to face with Ahkmenrah, Fourth King of the Fourth King. As the connection between you and Ahkmenrah grows, and as the secrets of his ancient tablet unlock, the once-king will find himself faced with a difficult choice.

Thanks so much to @kitkatcronch @kpopperotp12 @seafrost-fangirl @sassystrawberryk @perfect-rami @txmel and @limabein for reading : ) If anyone else wants added to the taglist, let me know. I’ve greatly appreciated the feedback!

Warnings: Character death (sort-of, of course) but it is somewhat graphic.

Your hasty exit did not go unnoticed.

“Oh, Y/N. What happened with Ahkmenrah?” your aunt asked as she sat next to you on the stairs, her voice filled with concern.

You swiped at your cheeks and your nose in an attempt to pull yourself together before you looked at Rebecca. You felt ashamed for leaving her out of all of this and ashamed for crying on the steps of the American Natural History Museum in New York City.

“I don’t even know where to start,” you said in a hushed, miserable voice.

Rebecca’s phone lit up and she glanced down.

“Larry’s with Ahk. He figured, when he saw you run out, he should go check on him.”

“Good. That’s good,” you mumbled, trying to swallow the next wave of tears.

“I feel so horrible, Y/N. This is all my fault!”

“What?” you asked, dumbfounded.

“I knew the two of you were close, but I thought it was a good thing. Ahkmenrah isn’t just a wax figure—he’s human. He needed,” Rebecca paused, narrowing her eyes and pursuing her lips as she thought of how to articulate herself. “He needed a purpose. And when Ahk started working on deciphering his tablet, I figured that you helped give him that purpose, just by being his friend, someone he could relate to.”

“You couldn’t have known, Aunt Becca.”

“But I should have. I mean, look at him. Listen to him. He’s the embodiment of everything you’ve ever loved,” Rebecca explained. “It’s no wonder the two of you fell for each other. I essentially set the stage for a low-budget, kinda weird Rom-Com.”

You huffed, a tiny ghost of a laugh, as Rebecca ran her hand through her hair, clearly feeling guilty.

“You have nothing to feel guilty about. Ahkmenrah and I both knew what we were doing. We talked about it. We ignored logic and embraced the chaotic unknown. I’d say it works out for the characters in about 80% of those Rom-Coms, right?”

“I don’t know if I’ve seen one with this level of a twist in the plot, though.”

“Mmm, maybe a new plot for a Twilight reboot? Forbidden, half-alive boyfriend, stupid girl who makes stupid decisions and feels like death when boyfriend breaks up with her—well, hell. I guess it already is Twilight.”

“Please don’t tell me you’re pregnant,” Rebecca said, joking, but seriousness did hang on the edge of her tone.

“I’m not that stupid. I hold birth control as a central part of my belief system.”

“I would hope so, PhD candidate,” Rebecca said, scooting close to you and wrapping her arm around your waist.

You laid your head on her shoulder, her company helping you to feel composed enough to at least get yourself back to your apartment.

“So, what did Ahk say tonight?”

You took a deep breath and summed up what had happened during and after Ryan’s unexpected visit.

Rebecca was quiet for a while; you didn’t need to her to say it because you already knew.

“He’s right,” you said.

“He is right about one thing,” Rebecca began. “You can move forward. You can, eventually, forget about him and live the life of your choosing.”

“But I don’t want to,” you said, feeling hopeless.

“Only time can fix that, sweetheart,” Rebecca replied with a sigh as she kissed the top of your head.

“Did Larry say anything else?”

Rebecca picked up her phone, but there were no new messages.

“Ahkmenrah and I have something that we were working on and need to finish, so I’ll be back tomorrow night. I hope,” you stopped, not wanting to divulge what you considered to be Ahk’s secret about the tablet. “I hope it will bring us back to where we were; I can bury my feelings. I can be just his friend. Friends do love each other, after all . . .”

You trailed off as your eyes searched your Aunt’s, desperately hoping to see the spark of agreeance within them. Instead, all you saw was sadness, maybe even pity.

You stood up, fixing your clothes and adjusting your purse.

“Let me take you home,” Rebecca said.

You shook your head.

“I need to walk. Need to clear my mind. I’ll be fine—you know everywhere between here and the village is safe.”

Rebecca sighed, “Stay alert. Don’t get lost in your head, and text me when you get inside your apartment.”

You hugged Rebecca and she squeezed you back, reluctant to let you go.

“Thank you, Aunt Rebecca. For everything.”

Rebecca gave you a loving smile and watched as you crossed the street to enter the subway. When you glanced back up, she gave you a wave before she turned and headed back into the museum.

* * * * *

Maybe you were delusional, but you really thought when you and Ahk returned to see his death that he would change his mind—after all, this was the kind of experience that could really bring two people together, the kind of experience that could really make someone realize just how important it is to choose happiness over everything else. At least you thought so, given there really was no precedent for hopping through a doorway into a 4,000-year-old reanimated pharaoh’s memories.

Once you latched the deadbolt, you sent Rebecca a quick text. She responded immediately, stating that she was happy you were home safe. You thought about asking her how Ahk was, but as you looked around your apartment, the memory from the night you brought him here assaulted you.

You saw him, standing in your living room, dripping and shivering.

You saw the heat in his eyes as you touched him, and you reached up to touch your lips as you remembered the passion of your first, real kiss.

When you walked into your bedroom to change into an oversized t-shirt, you gazed out of the window, watching the flickering lights of the city, listening to the noise of the streets that siphoned into your room, filtered and muffled through the glass.

When you climbed into bed, you could almost feel Ahkmenrah’s body on top of yours, almost see the intensity he delivered with his eyes as he slid into your body. Everything, well, almost everything about that night had been perfect, and you thought that it was that night, there in the underground café when Ahk had kissed you because you promised to teach him to read, it was then that you fell in love with him.

The tears came slowly this time, sliding stealthily out of the corners of your eyes as you continued to watch the reflection of lights glittering in the window panes.

The only thing keeping you from sinking into an actual pit of despair was that you were going to see him again. Ahkmenrah was trusting you with his one last secret, and you were going to prove your love by being selfless, by providing him with support as a friend. He would see, afterward, how much he meant to you, that you really would do anything he asked of you.

* * * * *

Ahk is dressed in his full wardrobe, his golden breast plate that he rarely wore was glittering in the soft lights of his exhibit, and his face was nearly unreadable; the only emotion that seemed to be swirling beneath his regal expression was apprehension.

For the first time, Ahkmenrah did not greet you with a smile, and you felt a little piece of your heart break. But being in denial had its perks; you told yourself it was simply because he was about to witness his own death. Anyone would be stingy with their smiles in a circumstance like that.

“Are you ready?” Ahkmenrah asked solemnly.

“Yes. Are you?”

Ahkmenrah gave a firm nod. He removed his tablet from the wall and rearranged the hieroglyphs. Ahkmenrah spoke, the door opened, and the two of you walked in, knowing death was waiting on the other side.

* * * * *

Of course Kahmunrah chose to murder his brother during the Festival of Min, one of the Egyptians most robust celebrations to praise the god for his fertile blessings that allowed their crops to have flourished. The swath of grain that Ahkmenrah, as pharaoh, had cut to start the celebration is laid on top of a small pedestal in the center of his table. Everyone is giddy, feeling secure in the future of their great nation and in their young, virile king.

Kahmunrah sits to Ahkmenrah’s right, clearly secure in his position as not only prince, but as the vizier to his little brother.

You turn to Ahk and question why Kahmunrah held such a high position.

“Despite his shortcomings, he was my brother. I trusted him. I loved him. And at no time during my reign did I ever feel threatened by him. He made the perfect royal advisor; we disagreed, at times, about foreigners and war, but he always acquiesced to my decisions. I appreciated his passion for our land. He hid his—”

“He hid his crazy really fucking well,” you interrupted.

“Yes. He truly did. And I only know that now after revisiting so many of my memories and entering his thoughts. Something inside of him snapped the day my father made me king.”

You return your eyes to the celebration.

By this time, Ahk’s marriage to Sitmut is arranged. It is strange to watch Ahk with his future bride; when they greet one another, he cups her face and looks at her lovingly before kissing her forehead. The love that flows between them is palpable, but it feels familial. No wonder the pharaohs kept harems or elected to have a secondary wife; as important as the propagation of the family line was, incest merely served as a means to an end.

As you watch the festivities, you can see memory-Ahk, flirting with pretty girls, drinking, laughing, and it is clear he is at the very height of his power. Sitmut stays amongst her female companions, and you can’t help but notice she pays a lot of attention to one very beautiful girl. As they sit, drinking wine and eating sweets, their thighs press together on the stairs, while their glances linger just a little too long.

Your heart aches for Sitmut, trapped into a marriage and a false lifestyle, all in the name of duty.

Ahkmenrah’s memory becomes a little hazy as he consumes more and more wine, but the celebration shows no sign of ending. In fact, while Ahk’s vision blurs, his hearing amplifies, the music and carousing grow into a crescendo that blocks out almost any other sound.

And this is when you see Kahmunrah conferring with four, very large, very muscular priests behind the feasting table, their little party just hidden in the shadows of a large column.

Ahkmenrah’s parents are lying, lazily together on a set of stairs, alternating between watching the party and exchanging soft kisses. They are completely enveloped in a shroud of bliss, their sense of security evidenced by the fact that not many guards are stationed throughout the celebration.

A young man covered in enough jewels to denote his importance approaches King Ahkmenrah. He leans in, intently conveying a message.

Ahk’s brow furrows and without hesitation, he exits the room while the young man goes back to the party, quickly getting lost in the mass of people drinking, dancing, and laughing.

Ahkmenrah’s guards, six of them in total, follow the young king.

Kahmunrah’s priests slink out of the shadows and head in the same direction.

A low grown of terror escapes your throat, making the impending horror of what happens next all the more real.

You and the real Ahkmenrah rush after the priests, running to catch up with them. You can’t hear anything other than the din of the party, and Ahk’s head swivels from left to right as he strains to listen, his brows furrowed as he strains to remember.

And then you hear it. The sound of something gurgling, the sound of a body falling, followed by another thump and another and another.

“This way!” you say quickly as you take off into the hall on the right.

The hall ends in a garden similar to the one that Ahkmenrah had shown you on your first visit to his memory. Even though it is night, the courtyard is well lit, torches blazing along the interior walls and atop lamps that line the garden’s many pathways.

As you get nearer, you slip, Ahkmenrah catching you before you fall onto a stone that is covered in thick puddles of blood.

You gasp and raise your hands to your mouth in horror. All of Ahkmenrah’s guards are slain, their throats slit so wide that the blood was forming little rivers in the cracks of the stones.

The priests must have been practiced in the art of killing silently and quickly because it is clear they took out Ahk’s guards, two by two, until the final two turned to see why there were no footsteps behind them.

Kahmunrah chose his assassins well.

By the time you reach the center of the garden, the four priests, covered in blood have memory-Ahkmenrah, facedown. They hold him in place by kneeling on his wrists and ankles, and one priest reaches over to shove Ahk’s face into the sandy dirt of the garden while the other three work to strip him of all signs of royalty: his crown, his collar, his belt, and even his shoes, leaving him only in his short, thin, linen skirt.

Ahk’s teeth are bared, the veins along his neck and in his arms bulge with his efforts to escape.

Sliding between you and the real Ahkmenrah, Kahmun enters the garden. As he speaks, Ahk begins translating, causing you to jump because you had been so intently watching the scene in front of you.

“Little brother.”

Memory-Ahk freezes as he hears Kahmunrah’s voice.

“Kah! Help me!”

“Turn him over,” Kahmun commands in a cold voice.

The priests quickly flip Ahk, settling again on his wrists and his ankles. Now you can see his dirt-smeared face as it thrashes from side to side, his eyes wide and panicked, and his hands and feet purpling from the pressure of the priests holding him in place.

In that moment, it occurs to you how like Jesus Ahkmenrah looks, his feet and wrists pinned, his forehead bleeding, either from rocks in the dirt or from the ferocity with which his crown was removed. His dark skin and his curls are covered in dirt and sand, and Ahk’s skin is smeared in patches from the blood that transferred from the priests’ murderous hands.

“Kahmunrah, please,” Ahk says slowly as he sees the now unhidden crazed look in his older brother’s eyes.

Kahmunrah says nothing and only watches his baby brother struggle against the muscular priests, their muscles flexing as they increase their hold on the young king.

“Why?” Ahkmenrah whispers, as the reality of what’s to happen sinks in. “I gave you everything.”

Kah barks out a laugh, a high-pitched, terrible noise that hangs on the edges of the night, echoing in your ears.

“Gave? GAVE?! You STOLE what was mine! Our foolish parents who favored you, loved their precious baby Ahkmenrah more than Egypt itself, made a grave, grave error. But, no worries. They will pay for that error tonight, as well. But know that you die first, little brother, so I can show them your body. So I can listen to the sound of mother’s heart breaking. So I can watch the light, the joy finally go out of father’s eyes.”

Despite Ahkmenrah’s best attempt to remain composed in the face of death, his eyes fill with tears as Kahmunrah describes his planned horrors.

“Just kill me, Kah. Let Apep claim me but please do not hurt our parents.”

“Things will go according to my plans now, Ahkmen. You’ll die, here, in the dirt, like the worthless, second son you SHOULD have been.”

Kah drops down and settles across Ahk’s hips. He counts up Ahkmenrah’s ribs, looking for a particular spot.

Without another word, Kahmun sinks the knife into Ahkmenrah’s heart and twists his wrist, ensuring his brother’s death. Kahmunrah pulls the knife out, stands, and puts it back in his belt, not even bothering to wipe his brother’s blood from the blade.

Ahkmenrah, Fourth King of the Fourth King, dies like he ruled, a good king who cared more about others than himself. Instead of begging for his own life to be spared, he pleaded for the lives of the people he loved the most.

Memory-Ahk gasps as the knife is pulled from his heart, his eyes bulging as his body dies. The priests stand, and Ahkmenrah’s limbs only twitch in the dirt as the blood escapes out of his chest. He quickly loses consciousness and his eyes lose their light as his last breath struggles out of him, the blood from his heart soaking into the dirt beneath him.

You know, that for the rest of your life, you will never forget the image of life leaving Ahkmenrah’s eyes.

At the instant the blade sinks into memory-Ahkmenrah’s chest, real Ahk’s hand flies to his heart and his knees buckle. You reach out, catching him and guiding him to his knees as he watches the blood flow out of the gaping hole in his memory’s chest.

And as the blood ebbs into the dirt, the memory itself begins to fade, greying around the edges and the commands of Kahmunrah are silent, even though you can see his lips moving. Ahkmenrah is frozen on his knees, his eyes trained on his lifeless body.

“Ahk! We have to go!”

He doesn’t respond.

Fuck, fuck, fuck, you mutter under your breath as the scene continues to darken; the memory is now like a tunnel and only Ahkmenrah’s lifeless body serves as the single pinpoint of light left. The darkness is coming and coming fast.

You yank the tablet out of your backpack and hope to the gods that it will listen to you.

You scramble the tiles into the same order as the ones that are marked “Return” in Ahk’s notebook, and you speak the words you had heard Ahk speak to end your other adventures within his memory.

Sure enough, the door appears.

You grab Ahkmenrah under his arms and haul him toward the door.

He shakes you off, his movements damn near feral.

“No! My parents! I have to save them! I have to warn them! I can change it—I know I can!” Ahk says, pulling at the sides of his cape and twisting his hands, panicking.

“Ahk, it’s done and you can’t change the past because this is your memory. They’re gone, and we have to go, now!”

“No,” he says, looking wildly about at the increasing darkness. “No, no, no, no,” he chants, hysterically in ancient Egyptian.

You eye him carefully and know you only have one shot. You position yourself between him and the door, and in a swift movement, you pivot to the other side of Ahk and push him as hard as you can, jumping after him as the door begins to recede.

* * * * *

You both landed in a sprawling heap on the museum floor. Ahkmenrah’s crown skittered across the stone, his Wesekh’s clasp shattered and beads pooled under him. He’d also lost his sandals and they were nowhere to be seen. You must have tackled him right the fuck out of his shoes.

You were breathing heavily, and the remnants of tears glistened on your face. Ahk’s eyes connected with yours as he began to gasp for breath, his lungs clutching for air.

You scrambled over to him, grasping his shoulders and sitting him upright. You reached to unhook the pins that held his armor in place, pulling it off of him, letting it clang to the floor.

“Come on, Ahk, just breath, in through your nose, out through your mouth, in through your nose, out through your mouth. Concentrate on my words, come on. In through your nose, out through your mouth.”

You repeated the mantra until Ahk was breathing normally enough. He reached up and held his hand over his heart, and you followed, threading your fingers with his.

“He can’t touch you now, Ahkmenrah. It’s done. You’re safe.”

“You’re safe,” you repeated as you pulled him into your arms, stroking his hair as he began to cry, clutching onto your arms as his tears soaked through your shirt.

You had no idea how long you sat there with your pharaoh in your arms, clinging to you like a drowning man, but you held him and rocked him, saying nothing other than a quiet whispering of, “It’s okay, Ahk. You’re safe now.”

Ahkmenrah took a deep, shaky breath and slowly pulled away. You lifted his head and swiped at the wetness covering his face. You kissed his eyelids, tasting the salt from his tears, and placed a soft kiss on his forehead.

“I could never have done this without you, Y/N. Thank you.”

“I owed you, remember? And I would do anything for you, Ahkmenrah. Anything.”

“Truly?”

“Truly,” you said with a small smile, hope quickening the beating of your heart.

Ahkmenrah stood, gathering strength before he spoke with authority.

“Go. Go now and do not return.”

Whatever you were expecting, it wasn’t this. You shot to your feet and clutched at his shoulders, holding on to him, the role of the drowning man now reversed.

“No, Ahkmenrah! I meant what I said. I’m in love with you. I can’t just leave knowing that you’re here, right here,” you said, placing your palm in the middle of his chest.

Ahkmenrah took your hand and lifted it to kiss your palm.

“Finish your dissertation. Go to Cairo—it’s where you belong.”

“I could have you transferred there! There’s a huge movement in the community to restore artifacts to their home territories and—”

Ahkmenrah looked at you with such sadness it stopped you in the middle of your plea.

“Y/N, that is what I am now. An artifact, a remnant of the past.”

“You’re real! You’re fucking real,” you said, your voice breaking as you pushed his chest hard enough to cause him to step back. “You said you fell in love with me only after I saw you as a real person, not as some historical thing,” you finished, gesticulating wildly.

“I never said I was in love with you, Y/N. I am a reanimated mummy, an artifact. This is all that I choose to be.”

Every ounce of fight that had been coursing through your body came to such an abrupt halt that you swooned backward, and Ahkmenrah reached out to steady you, his hands firmly grasping your upper arms.

He was right. Never once did Ahkmenrah say those words. It was you—you who had said them, and you who had believed he felt the same way.

You shook your head, refusing to believe that he was choosing to see himself like this, as what you had fought to reconcile with from the beginning, as what you could no longer even remotely see him as now. Ahkmenrah was choosing to become an exhibit at the museum, choosing to become nothing more than a wax figure.

And just as suddenly as the fight had gone out of you, a realization struck you. Ahkmenrah never had a chance to choose; he didn’t choose to become king; he didn’t choose to be brutally murdered by his brother; he didn’t choose to be wed to Sitmut; he didn’t choose to become the master of the tablet; he didn’t choose to come back to life.

But he could choose now—and he was choosing to let you go, to let you live a full life. He was choosing to stay safe, to be under the guardianship and protection of the museum that he now thought of as his home.

“You understand,” Ahkmenrah said, a spark of his normal self showing through his pain.

“I do,” you said, holding his gaze, your body damn near lifeless as he still held onto your upper arms.

“Goodbye, Y/N. Thank you for everything you have given me, and I hope that one day, you will accept this as the right choice.”

Your eyes filled with tears for the umpteenth time in the last 48 hours, and you kissed Ahkmenrah; you kissed him with every ounce of love that you felt for him; you poured everything you had into that kiss.

You only stopped kissing him when you couldn’t breathe anymore, and after your lips pulled slowly away, he rested his forehead against yours.

You slid further into his arms, one last time, and he squeezed you back before pushing you away.

“Please. Go,” Ahkmenrah said with a steady voice.

You couldn’t look at him again because you knew if you did, you’d climb into his sarcophagus and only the Anubis statues would be able to remove you, probably by using their spears to turn you into a large piece of Shish Kabob.

For the second night in a row, you sobbed on the front steps of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.

But this night was the last.

* * * * *

“You did the right thing, Ahk,” Larry spoke up as he stepped out from behind the back wall of the exhibit.

“I love her, Larry. I had to let her go.”

“I know, Ahk. I know.”

#Ahkmenrah #ahkmenrah fanfiction #natm ahkmenrah #ahkmenrah imagine #ahkmenrah x reader #female reader #ahk #NATM #rami malek #rami malek's character

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ladyhallen · 5 years

Text

Prompt: “Marry me?”

Tsuna to Kyouya: “Marry me?”

If Kyouya were a lesser man, the expression on his face would be described as flabbergasted. But Kyouya was not a lesser man. He glared instead.

"Herbivore, start making sense," he snapped.

Tsunayoshi, the bane of his existence ever since the Herbivore noticed his weakness for cute and fluffy things, blinked his large doe eyes and snuffled.

“Marry me,” Tsunayoshi repeated. “Please?”

Not even a blink. He was secretly impressed by the Herbivores nerves.

“Nevermind that we are not of age yet,” he said dismissively. “Why?”

Tsuna's eyes gleamed with unshed tears. It stuck on his eyelashes like diamonds. Kyouya's breath caught in his throat.

“Please?” he asked with a wobbly voice.

Damn.

Tsuna absolutely did not want to be a man.

Ever since his father’s last visit, it’s the only thing he can think about.

If being a man meant being an unreliable person like his dad, he most certainly did not want to be a man. Women were nicer. They wore nice dresses, cooked amazing food and people wanted to protect them.

When he explained this to Hana and Kyoko, they both giggled but didn’t disagree, which meant he was right. Technically, he was only half right. Hana told him that women weren’t that protected. If you wanted to have a constant protector, you’d have a husband.

A husband, Kyoko explained, had to be strong. It wasn’t really Tsuna’s Mama’s fault that she chose an unreliable husband. So Tsuna had to choose someone better than his father.

This sort of logic leads him to try finding one, but all men he would meet as he grew up weren’t strong.

Then, he met Kyouya in Middle School.

(“Tsuna, NO”, Hana hissed under her breath

“Tsuna, YES,” Kyoko laughed.)

Kyouya had relatives. He had a lot of relatives. If the world really knew how many Hibari's there were in the world, they would be a lot more nervous. A lot of those Hibari's dabbled in both sides of the law.

That’s why it’s very easy to get married illegally. A single phone call to one uncle, another to a distant cousin and the paperwork is faxed to them within the day.

Meanwhile, Kyouya’s Mother found out and there is a wedding.

There’s even no mention at all of the courting period. Nobody mentions that at all. Just going, “Aww, what a lovely couple.”

This was why Kyouya has lost faith in humanity. UGH.

Still, it’s not a hardship to marry the Little Animal.

Marriage meant someone cooking for him, and cleaning the house and taking care of the garden so he didn’t have to ask Kusakabe to do it.

(“Kyouya, do you really think that’s all I do?” his mother asked with a smile full of teeth.

His father, tellingly, does not answer.)

Weirdly enough, there were no overt signs to point out that both of them were married.

Kyouya found that wearing rings impeded with his ability to punch people if he lost his tonfas. Tsuna was too clumsy and was smart enough to realize that if he did wear his ring for longer than an hour, he would likely lose it somewhere.

Still, there were perks to being married.

Nobody could bully Tsuna anymore. There were always eyes watching him now. Always. Anyone else would have filed for a divorce already and moved to another country (which wouldn’t have done them any good, there were Hibari’s everywhere), but Tsuna just nodded and smiled.

And Kyouya had someone soft to cuddle to. He could grab Tsuna anytime during lunch breaks and have somebody warm to sleep with who didn’t make any noise. Tsuna was a very soothing presence.

Though neither of them really noticed it, Kyouya had an overwhelming amount of Cloud Flames. He used it to unconsciously propagate his strength, but the Cloud Flames felt the smothered Sky Flames and worked away at it with every opportunity.

With every cuddle, Tsuna woke up better and more refreshed.

That’s why, when Reborn finally arrived in Namimori, Tsuna’s eyes gleamed Amber.

“The seal is gone,” came the report.

“…what?”

“It’s gone,” was repeated. “It’s like it was never there in the first place.”

“How can that be? And how has he not been found if that’s the case? He was leaking all over the place when I arrived!”

“…I’ll investigate.”

Kyouya took one look at the baby on the doorstep, narrowed his eyes and said, “No.”

He closed the door. He did not worry, the guards always took care of unwanted guests.

Because you see, long time ago, the Hibari’s had an uncle.

That’s it. The Hibari’s still do have an uncle. Except, he doesn’t come anymore to family reunions and the glimpses they do catch of him mark him as diminished. Cursed.

The Hibari’s had an uncle who turned his back on them. On Family.

Any of their cursed ilk was not welcome.

Reborn approached Tsuna in the street, because anywhere else was too well-guarded.

Then he told him, “You’re going to be a mafia boss,”

Tsuna, having grown up with only Kyoko and Hana as friends, smiled. “A mafia wife!” he said with a smile. “How lovely. My husband will be very pleased.”

Actually no, Kyouya will not.

Reborn doesn’t splutter, because he’s too dignified for that, but, “I said a boss. Are you deaf as well as stupid, Dame-Tsuna?”

There’s a gleam of Amber, a satisfied smirk, before Tsuna started crying. Within seconds, Hibari guards descend on Reborn.

Reborn has to call back-up.

He called Fon.

That was a mistake.

“You didn’t tell me you had family,” Reborn said accusingly.

Fon shrugged, patting the smoldering remains of his shirt. “They’re…complicated. You simply don’t leave the Hibari. They’re everywhere. You can’t avoid them. But they love strength. My form is much changed. They would have hunted down the Man in the Iron Hat and burned down the world. My family is a bit excessive when they don’t care of the collateral damage.”

Reborn blinked. And he thought he had a complicated family.

“Have they forgiven you, do you think? I really don’t like to break contract and Tsunayoshi is living with them,” Reborn muttered.

Fon stumbled. “What?” he asked. People don’t just live with the Hibari.

“Tsunayoshi?” Reborn clarified. “Sawada’s son. I’m supposed to teach him to become a mafia boss.”

Fon sat down in a hurry. “Reborn,” he said urgently. “Tsunayoshi? Yay high, fluffy hair, big smile? Reborn, he’s married to my many-times grand nephew. On record, he’s officially Hibari Tsuna.”

The implications finally hit Reborn.

“..He said he would be a mafia wife,” he muttered. “He’d…put his husband in power?”

Fon wanted to crawl away and die, but that would be beneath his dignity. He just smiled vacantly, imagining his cute little Kyouya with all the feral strength that marked Hibari’s and backed by the monstrous reach of the Vongola and the Hibari Clan. His eyes glazed over.

“I’m going to take a vacation,” Fon said faintly. “I’m fairly certain I’ll be fine in the Sahara.”

“My Tsuna-fishie is married??” Iemitsu wailed.

Nonno blinked. “Oh. Is the girl a suitable wife.”

Reborn twitched. He had gone to Italy himself to deliver the news, mostly because there were some news people should hear in person. Honestly though, he just wanted to watch the chaos happen.

“You misunderstand me,” Reborn said. “Tsunayoshi married into the Hibari Clan. He did not marry a girl. In fact, from my surveillance, I’m pretty sure he’s the girl in this equation.”

Iemitsu’s wailing reached a crescendo. Reborn’s eyelid throbbed. A beat, then he finally draws his gun.

Nonno’s mouth hung open in shock. Ganauche behind him choked on hysterical laughter, offset by a background of gunshots.

In the Hibari house, Tsuna snuggled into his affectionate husband.

“Is it really alright not to welcome your Uncle home?” he asked. “It’s the first time he’s been seen in years, right?”

Kyouya pouted. He did not want to talk about other men in his bed.

“He’s not yet apologized,” Kyouya sulked. “Or groveled enough. Mother worried.”

Tsuna conceded the point. “It was nice of Reborn to drag your uncle here though. And to give you guys exercise!”

Between the two Arcobaleno and the Hibari, it had indeed been an exercise. An exercise in restraint. If they hadn’t, more than an acre of forest would have been destroyed.

Kyouya huffed and cuddled his Tsuna into submission.

It was a cute domestic scene. Both of them were utterly oblivious to the chaos happening outside their house.

I...I’ve run out of ideas. It was supposed to be a simple prompt fill!

#fanfiction #sawada tsunayoshi #hibari kyouya #reborn #fon #hibari clan #khr #katekyou hitman reborn #prompt #prompt fill #tsunaxhibari #mafiawife au

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graduationemmasep · 4 years

Text

'I like the way MDMA gives you a deep sense of connection to your friends'

I'm no fiend. Most nights I'd rather share a bottle of wine with some friends than stay up till 6am getting sweaty and boggle-eyed on a bender. But while I associate alcohol with talking about past experiences, I associate drugs with making new ones. Party drugs can often make a stranger feel like a confidant; a simple trip to a town centre feel like an Enid Blyton escapade.

I probably take class-A party drugs such as MDMA or cocaine once a fortnight, and have done since I was 16 (I'm 27 now). I like the way cocaine gives you a new lease of life, like a mushroom in Super Mario, to carry on with a night out. I like the way MDMA softens the edges of reality and gives you a deep sense of connection to your friends that you can never get when you meet them for dinner and they moan about their jobs. I like how when you're coming down from a pill another person's touch has a comforting, almost electric capacity. If you're suffering from exhaustion, anxiety or stress, recreational drugs can give you a bit of a leg-up.

Drugs can also be a total pain. Ecstasy can make you feel like you're floating in a cloud, but just as often it's an admin nightmare: you come up at different times from your friends; only half the people in a group remembered to get sorted and there's endless hassle at a party trying to get more. Even when you're having a great time, there's a self-doubting internal monologue running through the whole process: Have I done enough? Am I coming up? Do I look like a prick?

I would just like to have that conversation about drugs being sometimes brilliant and occasionally annoying. Yet I feel like there is no one who is willing to talk about drugs in those terms.

When children ask their parents where babies come from, they get a white lie – a stork delivers them, you find them in a cabbage patch, you order them from Ocado. That's the closest thing I can think of to explain the difference between the perception and the reality of drug use by young people in the UK. There is a societal stork myth that is propagated by the media and popular culture to hide a basic reality. Even users themselves are entirely unwilling to talk about drug-taking honestly. Everything in the drugs world tries to stifle this conversation. Take nightclubs. It doesn't take a genius to work out that staying up till 6am listening to dance music at an ear-splitting volume would not only be unenjoyable without some kind of mind-altering stimulant, but a painful test of endurance. Most people in big nightclubs are on drugs. The clubs know that: that's why they charge so much for entry and, often, for bottles of water. They know that not many people will be buying drinks. Most of them have in-house dealers too, so they can sort out their DJs. Bigger DJs put requests for drugs on their rider. "We just put it on expenses as 'fruit and flowers'," a promoter at a major nightclub told me this year. But there's still a stork charade, with the venue covered in posters promising to eject drug users and bouncers searching punters – but not too thoroughly. The pretence is that this could all be above board.

I suppose the reason for this false picture of drug-taking is that most people don't take drugs. The statistics show that only a small fraction of the UK population are regular drugs users, and a smaller fraction still do anything harder than weed. But drug use is not spread evenly across the country, nor across age groups. In my demographic – under 30, living in London, job in the creative industries, disposable income – almost everyone is a recreational drugs user.

Where I grew up in south London, it was pretty uncommon to find someone who didn't at least smoke weed. The children of more middle-class parents were taking cocaine, ecstasy, ketamine and mephedrone almost every weekend. These were not reprobates ruining their lives: they were intelligent, bright people who got three As at A-level and went to good universities.

We would go to raves in places such as Camberwell and Hackney Wick, to warehouse venues where almost no one was over 18. White powders flowed as freely as the Fanta Fruit Twist and Malibu we were drinking. Festivals played a big part, too. Parents, even quite strict ones who wouldn't dream of letting their kids out past midnight, were happy to send their kids to music festivals, perhaps because of the reverent music-focused coverage in the media.

If you go to somewhere like Reading or Benicàssim, almost everyone is under 20. Half of them barely leave the campsite. Festivals are drugs playgrounds where teenagers experiment with copious amounts of uppers in presumably quite dangerous combinations. Some of the best moments of my life took place going to festivals as a teenager. I remember one muddy year at Glastonbury, racing down the hill arm-in-arm with a bunch of people, all off our faces on MDMA, feeling happier than I had ever felt. Another year, I remember taking mephedrone with a girl I fancied during Blur's headline set, both weeping with joy at a band we'd grown up with our whole lives.

Again, everyone knows this; no one thinks the thousands who watch the sunrise at the stone circle in Glastonbury every year are just on a high from seeing Mumford and Sons. But the festivals keep up the pretence that they are drug-free zones. Even a recent BBC3 show, Festivals, Sex and Suspicious Parents, which was supposed to show parents what their kids really got up to at festivals, ignored the fact that as the cameras panned around the festival, many revellers were plainly as high as a kite, their jaws swinging back and forth like pendulums, a side-effect of taking ecstasy. The voiceover just kept talking about people being "drunk".

I am also part of the first generation of people whose parents are likely to have been drug users. Of course, some adults would be outraged, like the parents on BBC3, to see what their kids got up to. But many more knew only too well – plenty of people I know would smoke weed or share dealers with their parents. In some families drug use had less stigma than smoking.

I thought all this was normal, but at university I met, for the first time, young people who totally abstained from drugs. They mostly came from outside major cities, or outside the UK, and many shivered in horror when they saw the rest of us dabbing our gums with mysterious white powders. I thought there would be a rift in social lives, an us-and-them situation, but it was around that time that mephedrone happened. Known by literally no young person ever as "meow meow", mephedrone was a legal high that changed attitudes towards drug-taking. Polite do-right kids who would never dream of taking illegal drugs were happy to chow down on bombs (self-made wontons of mephedrone powder wrapped in Rizla) like they were no more risqué than chocolate liqueurs.

Mephedrone was incredibly cheap – about a tenner a gram – and incredibly available. You could order it with next-day delivery to your university PO box. Mephedrone was a drugs phenomenon of which I have never seen the likes before or since. Everyone started doing it. I remember visiting a friend at Leeds University during this period. We went to a club and the queue for the men's bogs was at least 70 people long. When I finally got inside the place stunk of mephedrone, you could hear everyone loudly sniffing.

On nights out during this time, everyone would be raging – making out with one another, dancing with total abandon. But the comedowns were immediate and severe, far worse than ecstasy. By 4am people would be lying on the floor sharing the most intimate and personal shames and secrets, as if the drug was somehow compelling them to be honest. Some people called it a truth serum. Friendships were forged in the hot irons of that emotional exposition, as were the most horrendous hangovers.

Mephedrone was banned within two years of it taking off. People talk a lot about one legal high being banned only for another to take its place, but the real legacy of mephedrone was to numb the stigma of harder drugs. By the time I left university, many of the drug abstainers who had tried mephedrone became relaxed about most illegal drugs, too.

Ecstasy and mephedrone make it pretty hard to get much done in the days after taking them. You can't regularly use them and be a successful, functioning adult, so they become a rarer treat once you leave student life. In their 20s most people are overworked: they have second jobs and work incredibly long hours. If they're going to go out on a Friday night they need a pick-me-up. And that is why cocaine remains the young professional's drug of choice.

I see cocaine usage almost every weekend wherever I go: clubs, pubs, people's houses, dinner parties. At fancy celebrity parties, the sort you see on Mail Online, cocaine is so prevalent that it's almost boring. Everyone does it – butter-wouldn't-melt TV presenters, wholesome pop stars adored by your mum, people who would immediately lose their job if anyone found out. Those tabloid stings where they catch someone doing cocaine are kind of hilarious in that respect. If you followed any celebrity around with a secret camera on a Friday night you'd be almost guaranteed to find them doing coke. But cocaine users are like hipsters in the way they will vehemently deny they are one, and cast aspersions on others. "It was just full of self-aggrandising wankers doing coke and talking about themselves," someone will say about a party where they did cocaine and talked about themselves. Most of my friends are cocaine users, but I've never heard them say one nice thing about cocaine.

No doubt some people will have read this piece and think that I am just a monstrous twat, that this has all been little more than infantile boasting in a vain attempt to try to sound cool. But that, too, is part of the cover-up, that any open discussion of using drugs or enjoying them is necessarily a boast. We can talk about great food, great films, great sex, but if we talk about great drugs we immediately sound like we're engaging in some teenage bravado. That's why the biggest taboo surrounding drugs today isn't taking drugs, but saying that they're fun.

I'm not saying that people are lying about the negative effects. I have, of course, seen lives ruined by drugs. Rarely has this been because of an overdose or because someone has ruined themselves financially because of addiction (although I am only 27 – that may yet come). Far more often I have just seen people become dulled through regular drug use: their youthful spark extinguished by a never-ceasing quest to get on it; brains frazzled by overheated synapses. There are friends I want to slap every time I see them doing another line, but I can't because that would be hypocritical.

I also appreciate that's it's easy to be blasé about drug use when you're a well-adjusted middle-class white guy who has never been stopped by the police and has a distant non-social relationship with their drug dealer. For many people, drugs aren't something they can dip in and out of and separate from their lives. People entangled in the economic and legal realities of drugs – dealers, those convicted of possession, addicts – don't have the luxury of my relaxed attitude.

But until we stop pretending that getting high is inherently bad – that drugs can never be brilliant, can never enhance human experience for the better – how can we properly deal with people whose lives have been made worse by drugs? At some point, kids grow up and learn the facts of life. I think it's time we all had the talk.

#research

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nervousalpacahologram · 5 years

Text

Bliss (NSF/W)

For @digital-paint

Whatever Coryn had been expecting, it certainly wasn’t this. Never in a thousand years would he have expected This.

When he had followed the words of the odd, scarred man; chasing rumors of Elven gold and silver, he expected bandits. It would have been a perfectly reasonable expectation; the borders and roads of the Empire having fallen weak since The Terror of the Sun had led his hateful siege engines against the Royals.

But instead of a bandit ambush, the forest had merely grown more tangled, as if made wild by magic. But the plants and formations that choked the forest were of no type he had ever seen before. No elven or wildling incantations. No magics came to mind as he viewed writhing vines and trees with eyes.

Fire was merely consumed, and as much as he hacked away, grew back even thicker, and dark red like blood. Soon, all he could do was force his way past trees of mouths and eyes and pits of plants, almost breathing like some living thing. He had just wanted to get this damned treasure and be off. But it was never simple.

And it had never been simple.

For when he forced his way in to the clearing, fleeing in terror from something, he stopped dead in his tracks. The sound of screaming, voices too horrific to be human, too joyful to belong in this green hell he had found himself in, faded back into the woods as he took in what was in front of him.

The ground was covered in vines, a carpet of pulsing tentacles that shifted and vibrated below his feet. Spires of wood breached the treetops, piercing into the sky above, obscured by leaves that shouldn’t have been there.

But the strangest sight were the People. They littered the place, bodies naked as the day they were born. Some lounged in hot springs, steam drifting into the air, while others lay supine amongst the vines and trees.

All of them were engaged in some depraved act, moans filling the steamy air. The vines moved on their own, pistoning inside and out of men and women, mouths and pussies and asses stretched wide around thick plants.

The men at the hot spring pushed large seeds out of their asses, moaning and gripping each other as they laid them like eggs. They kissed each other sloppily, fingering and coaxing the seeds out of each other.

A man and a woman were kissing each other. A Tentacle had pushed it’s way inside the mans ass along with a few fingers, holding it open as a slutty gape. As the woman pulled back, he saw the same tentacle that had gone up the man’s ass extending from his mouth to dive down the woman’s throat. In something approaching awe, he watched as the vine popped out of her ass, diving into her pussy.

Debauchery surrounded him, men and women fucking the same and opposite genders. And it wasn’t just humans. Elves and orcs, half-orc hybrids and a few Draconics, their scales colored pink.

A large Draconic, more dragon than humanoid and roughly 15 feet tall lay on his side, legs propped up by vines and branches. His belly is massive, sloshing to the side as some unknown plant the width of a smaller man pounds in and out of him, spilling green-white cum inside. His eyes are rolled back, tongue mindlessly lolling out of his mouth in a dumb, fucked-out bliss.

It was only when he had taken everything in that it all stopped, several pairs of hands reaching out of the woods to grasp him roughly. Before he knew it, he was being dragged to the center of the clearing. A massive structure of plants and vines. It looked almost like flesh.

A Man sat there. He was tall, odd, and scarred; and Coryn recognized him. It was the man who had told him of this place, had tricked him into entering whatever this was.

“Welcome my little one.” He grinned, showing off too-sharp, white teeth. They glinted in the light that penetrated the canopy of the clearing. The only problem was that it didn’t feel like sunlight. It was too cold to be sunlight.

“What the fuck do you want!” Coryn shouted, trying to leap forward, the hands at his back holding him still and bringing him to his knees. At least four men stood behind him, smirking softly.

“It’s all rather simple really. A demon with a grudge killed the Gods. There’s a gap that needs to be filled by something with a purpose. Every creature has a purpose, right?. Propagate. Reproduce. Breed. It’s nothing new.”

“It? What It?” Coryn stared as the man gestured all around him. At the flesh-like plants. The moving vines. The trees with eyes.

He was struck with a bolt of cold fear.

“This isn’t just a forest, is it?”

“Exactly. It’s so much More. It’s a Progenitor. It’s the Wild, and it wants to spread~.” Coryn started struggling once more, panicking as vines began to wrap around his ankles. “Don’t worry. It’s alright. Look at how everyone is feeling right now! Look at how happy, how content, how perfect they are now. Don’t you want to feel just like them?”

Coryn shook his head desperately, trying to will down the growing bulge in his pants. The idea was almost appealing. But he felt as if there was something darker underneath the surface. He obviously hadn’t willed down his erection enough when he realized that the Scarred Man’s eyes had trailed down and that he was Grinning.

“Look at how hard you are! You must want it so much! Don’t worry, there’s nothing wrong with admitting it…” He trailed off, kneeling down in front of him with a soft expression on his pitted features. “Fuck, you’re pretty.”

And with that, he gripped both sides of his head and brought their lips together roughly. Before he knew it, the man’s hand was undoing his belt and slipping his pants down. He almost didn’t feel the knife cut the fabric from his back, or almost didn’t smell the flytrap-shaped flower approaching his face.

What he did notice however, was the Scarred Man’s unnaturally long tongue force its way down his throat. But it didn’t taste like any tongue he had ever tasted. Instead it felt and tasted like a plant. Like a vine.

He pulled himself back, watching the long tongue-vine leave his mouth with a sensual slide.

“What’s wrong? Are you… Afraid?” He pursed his lips softly, gently gripping the flytrap that hovered next to him, attached to a long stalk. “There’s no need for fear. No need for anger, or sorrow, or hate. You’ll be happy. We’ll be happy. We’ll all be happy.”

With that, he placed the flower over Coryn’s face. He could barely struggle, held still by the hands on his back and a body that refused to respond. Which is why he didn’t move when the flower was attached, and a heavenly aroma filled his head.

It smelled like magnolias and sunlight and the wood of the cabin where he grew up. It smelled like his first Love, stolen from him too soon by the uncaring hand of the Lady of Plague. It smelled like lust and passion and soothing touches. It smelled like Love. That was the only way Coryn could put it.

He was rock hard, his cock bobbing freely in front of him, in full view of the Scarred man and the others that were holding him. But no, they weren’t holding him anymore. Not even the vines.

‘I can escape! I can get out and warn people!’ Was what he thought, but that part of him felt dull and far away. It felt unimportant. What was important was that he felt Good. That he felt, for some reason, loved.

And that’s when he felt it. A bolt of pleasure so intense that he almost blacked out. And it continued. It burned through him. Through his mind and heart and body. Until he felt it everywhere.

And then it was gone.

And he felt so, so empty.

The flower separated itself from his face, retreating into the plants and becoming inert. Falling back on the ground, Coryn franticly began to stroke himself, desperate for more pleasure. He whined when none came, replaced with a detached and empty feeling.

“Don’t worry little one, it’s ok. You might not be able to make yourself cum, but we all can.” He grinned at Coryn, who simply stared up at him, blue eyes wide. He made a squealing noise as the Scarred Man ran his hand over his cock, the pleasure returning to him, although muted. “There we go. Now we can get you all set up. You’ll make a wonderful breeder.”

He smiled and kissed Coryn, effortlessly lifting him up into his arms. This kiss was sweeter than their previous one, warm and leisurely despite the aching void in Coryn’s body. But that didn’t stop his begging when the kiss broke, for with nothing to distract him, Coryn began to shudder.

“Please please please, I need to be filled! Please! I want your cock!” He cried out softly, wrapping his arms closer around the Scarred Man.

“Shhhh, Shhhh, You’ll have more than you ever could have wanted now. Just wait a minute.” Coryn was set down against a wall of fleshlike plants, their surface warm and malleable. Not how plants should feel.

He waited patiently as he began to sink into the plants around him, held still by them and the promise of more pleasure. It was only when he was on his back, arms and torso mostly embedded into the plants that the Scarred Man spoke through the passage to his head:

“There you go. Just a bit more. Before you can have what you want, I want you to See.” He grinned, and the plants closed, cutting off his air.

He would have panicked if the Scarred Man’s words hadn’t reassured him so much. Soon, the calm payed off when he felt some form of gas being vented into the small chamber around his head.

It filled his nose and his mouth and his lungs. It filled up everything, and he Saw.

A massive beast. A God. The forest was alive, and it could see. It could hear and taste and smell. It could think and choose. It had Control. All plants bent to its will, and it used this to do what it desired. What it’s purpose was.

To breed. To spread. He could feel the lust and pleasure and Love Love Love!

He beheld it in all its glory. It was a God and it was owed Worship. He owed it Worship.

And he could show his worship, his devotion, his love. He could show it by obeying, being a good breeder to help spread itself. Spread itself everywhere.

Everyone would feel its pleasure. Its Love. He would help make that happen.

He knew his purpose. It was everything he ever wanted. Everything he ever needed.

It would be everything he was.

He was in Love.

“There we go.” The Scarred Man’s voice cut through his Revelation. Coryn could see everything the Scarred Man was. He was the First. The Consort and Pact that had made this all possible. He was God’s right hand, its Shield and Sword. Its Tool and Advisor “Now you understand.”

“I do. Oh God, I never want to leave.”

“And you won’t ever have to.” And suddenly-

Pleasure.

A vine forced it’s way down his throat, slowly dragging in and out. A sweet nectar or sap fell from the tip, gently feeding him. Pleasure came with the sap, an indescribable, amazing pleasure that was so far beyond anything he had ever felt before this.

He moaned around the intrusion, sucking desperately for every drop of the heavenly liquid. He sucked even as it wound all the way down into his stomach, slowly filling him. Even as he felt a cold liquid rubbed all over his ass. It left a fiery, tingling sensation in his hole, as if it was begging to be filled.

And it was. He pushed back urgently, mind filled with nothing but pleasure, love, and an aching, burning need to be filled and used.

He was rewarded when a thin, fibrous plant pushed its way inside, past everything and into the deepest parts of him. Places where foreign objects were never meant to touch.

And then it Widened.

And Coryn whited out.

The pleasure was so great that he felt like he was losing his mind, like he was being broken apart only to be put back together again.

‘It made this all possible.’ Coryn thought, hands twitching uselessly inside their prison of plants. ‘For us. All of us… I’ll do anything.’

That’s what he was thinking when he felt the first bulge in the vine, a hard force pushing against his stretched rim. He moaned once again around the vine, the pleasure from both ends intermingling into an absolutely mind-breaking sensation.

And in only a few seconds, the seed had pushed past his rim, forcing itself deep inside him.

And Coryn was cumming. His vision whited out once more, stars bursting in his eyes as he franticly bucked his hips in the throes of his orgasm. There was nothing else but the tentacles that pushed in and out of him, the seeds that had begun to fill his ass, and the brain-melting ecstasy that was sending him down a spiral of bliss.

The seeds were still coming when he came to, head dizzy and mouth sore around the vine. His cock twitched, still hard even after the explosive orgasm.

When the next egg brushed up against his prostate, he jolted as another orgasm ripped through him.

‘I shouldn’t have had one so soon!’ He though, panic existing for only split-seconds as each consecutive orgasm ripped through him.

After a while he gave up on panic, slipping back and letting the pleasure of being filled full wash over him. It was only after a substantial amount of time without a seed passing into him that he felt any discomfort.

Groaning and wiggling his legs, Coryn clenched around the ovipositor vine that was beginning to pull out of him.

He didn’t want to be empty. Never again.

He almost cried at the loss, only filled by the seeds which jostled around in his stomach as he struggled. He was full, but not full enough.

He waited for several moments, body uncomfortable without any stimulation, without anything to plug up his ass. He had almost begun to despair when another tendril forced its way inside. It was ribbed, thicker than anything he had ever taken. It began to cum almost immediately; hot, thick, slimy cum pouring inside his ass.

“You’re being fertilized. You’ll incubate these seeds and lay them like eggs. Another perfect breeder, helping us grow. Helping us spread~.” The Scarred Man’s voice cut through the fog in his mind, and Coryn moaned. He was so full, almost bursting with sap, cum, and seeds.

“Perfect… Perfect Breeder…” Coryn gasped out, the words bouncing around in his head. A body to breed. A good little incubator.

“Now come on out. You’ll need to be ready to lay them~.” He meekly followed the instructions, sitting up as the plants unfurled around him. He could barely close his hole, a gush of fluids escaping as the seeds clanked around inside his stomach. But it wasn’t his stomach now. It was an incubator, a place to nurture seeds.

The Scarred Man picked him up, tenderly taking him towards the hot spring and the slutty, fucked-out men that sat around it. Before he knew it, he was sat down along the water’s edge and the men were fawning over him.

Their eyes were happy, full of love and bliss as they surrounded him. Soon, they were all over him, kissing his body. Some bent down to suck his oversensitive cock, relishing the mewling noises he made. Another shoved his face between his legs, moaning as he slurped up the sap and cum that leaked steadily out of his loose, puffy hole.

There was too much stimulation, too much pleasure. Coryn came once more as all the other people who had been taken and Shown lavished him with delight and ardor. He spasmed and whimpered, the man between his legs leaning up to French kiss him. The heavy taste of cum and sap made him cum once more, despite the lack of stimulation.

And finally, the pleasure made him mercifully black out.

#my writing #nsf/w #grapefruit #Coryn #The Scarred Man #GodsFall-Verse #a gift

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kritharaki · 3 years

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Rating plants ive personally owned/ own on a scale of 1- 10, 1 being sucks i hate it and it also died for no reason and 10 being i love it and it is flourishing with my at times shitty care

1. Dracaena fragrans nr1

The one that looks a bit like a bamboo palm tree. Solid 7/10 i think she is pretty and you usually can tell exactly when she needs water because her leaves curl. However has had little to no growth since i got it and i cant figure out why, -3 for that

2. Dracaena fragrans nr2

The one that looks like a palm without a stump. 10/10 ive been trying to kill it for over a year and it refuses to die. That could be spite. But she is very recomendable i think... top five things she survived so far being 1.overwaterd cause if i have water leftover she gets it 2 sunburned. I forgot her outside after repotting. 3 being dropped. Standing in the darkest corner of my room 4. Being dropped. Again. 5. Forgot to water it for like two weeks cause ive moved it to another room . I would give it a -5 for personality because im mad at her but that is personal between me and her.

3. Succulents

All of them. No matter if purple or greenish. 2/10 some people love them, i hate them. idk what im doing wrong but so far ive had five? And only one of them still is alive. Either they rot or dry out. Idk who recommends them to beginners i hate them.

4. Cacti

Nice. 9/10 i dont like them because they are spiky and im an idiot, but they really are not easy to kill. One time i overwatered one and it got mushy, but since it still is alive over two years later i guess it doesnt count. They really are a great starter plant i think because they survive on very little care, and if you grow out of being a beginner you can get to the more challenging ways of caring for catci (that still are quite simple i think)

5. Monstera deliciosa

9/10, i think they can be quite tricky but only if you dont believe in yourself. They also are easy to propagate which always is a huge plus. U get more plants out of one. Its genius i love it. I got mine at ikea and on god it has doubled in size in like a year???? They should get extra points for looks because they are really nice and green

6. A yucca palm

9½/10 Idk..... ive had to repot it once but idk if it has even grown since i got it. Its a very nice and easy planta nd it looks good but doenat have much action to talk about. I wouldnt know how to kill it either so id consider it a nice starter. The very bottom leaves get yellow and krispy but that apparently is normal so no need to worry, thats just how it grows.

7. Gummy tree

6/10 i worry about it all the time even though it doesnt do anything that should worry me. But it has very few leaves so it cant loos that many which gives it a feel of walking on thin ice. Stressful. Very pretty tho should get extra points. Also remind me to ask my grandma for tips because hers is literally 60 years old.......... so maybe its like the monstera you just gotta believe in yourself

8. Orchids

I have got two, a purple ikea one and a papophilium or some shit. 4/10 They are really pretty especially the pap,,, paep,,,, the expenisive-ish one❤ but i hate them. What do they want. No that isnt true the ikea one... well ive accidentally overwatered it right after buying it because i didnt realize the pot it came w had no drainage which then lead to me removing both soil and half the now moldy roots. And orchids dont need soil so id just put it in a cup of water every once in a while...... that is really easy to forget tho and now shes dry and shrively :( the expensive one i accidentally let it stand in a saucer of water and now theres mushrooms in the soil thingy which is bad i think. Gets extra points for also surviving being dropped twice

9. Spider plants

My beloved. 10/10

I got one from ikea but then decided the single plants in the pot were to overcrowded so i took them out and seperated it into three. I probably ripped half the roots but they survived and now are flourishing. One of them has an offshoot going on rn, which leads me to the other two i have, my mom got me them as cuttings from her office plant and i left them in just water for at least third a year oops. They started getting a lil moldy so i planted them and now they are going strong again. Love. They also are really easy to propagate because offsphoots are everything but rare in an older(ish) plant, and also really easy to grow from there. Another one id consider a good beginner plant because all they want is water and a place on the windowsill. The latter is optional too but they do get nicer there i think. Ig they also wouldnt say no to the occasional fertilizer but again they do not need it i think.

10. Pileas

7/10, almost killed my big one by putting it into a too big pot AND shady place at all the same time. In the midst of winter. Cant recommend it. Have now put it back into a smaller pot and shes flourishing again. The small one i have i cant say much about. She does her job and is very smol. Also worth mentioning is you dont have to water pilea babies more than big ones it makes them mold <\3. I think its an easy plant if you dont fuck around to much. Propagating them can b really easy too because the offshoots just. Grow there. And u ideally have to cut them and put them in water. The last time i tried this was winter. Bad idea doesnt work. Trying it again rn ig ill update this section accordingly.

11. Clusia rosea

6/10 ive too put her into a too big pot cause i dont have an intermediate one so she looks stupid now. Has grown a lil since i got it 2 years ago, but thats fair cause i dont really care for her that greatly. Mediocre to me idk

12. Peperomia polybotrya

0/10 so far its getting yellow and i cant figure out why. Need to google how to care for them.

13. Venus fly trap

7/10 Doesnt work anymore idk why :((..... a bit sad but ive moved her to the bathroom that usually helps. They really are a cool gimick and theoretically very easy to take care of, you literally just gotta make sure its in water amd standing in a sunny place at all times. I think mine might be lacking fertilizer or maybe just humidity. We will see, ill update this section too

14. Nepenthes

9/10, mine had a rough start cause i interpreted 'keep in humid place ' as 'spray with water every day' so i overwaterd her. She lost all her pitchers but i now know they just do that in winter. Unless u have a growlight. She has been moved to the windowsill in the bathroom now and is flourishing there :))

15. 3 bonus tips

1) dont propagate plants in winter unless you have grow lights or want them to die. Or live somewhere really warm maybe

2) cheap plants r not inherently worse than expensive plants (now i dont own any expensive plants but since my cheapish once work fine........yk) but especially plants from like. Chain stores like ikea often need to be repotted shortly after buying..... ive heard its a marketing thing cause if you dont do it they just get yellow and ugly and youll have to buy a new one yk. But repotting them is manageable i think so its fine you just gotta know it ig.

3) if somethings going wrong for no reason and you have a window in your bathroom put the plant there it usually helps a lil. And if it doesnt well than at least the plant dies in a peaceful place...... jk theres probably several great checklist online tho that might help you find the cause of it so dont despair <33

#long post #text tag #also pls remember i know close to nothing abt plants this is all largely experience based ❤#ive started making this post solely to complain about that stupid dracaena fragrans that refuses to die😹😹

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