i have thoughts about these funny little guys

This Was A Chain of Tweets I Just Wrote

Today was low key frustrating in some respects despite a few bumps of "OH RAD" moments, like breakfast, and the tournament thing I watched instead of streaming.

Honestly it doesn't feel as bad breaking my schedule or plans to stream for now because frankly, nobody watches me. Not consistently. I do it when I want and am up to it. Which is the way it should be right?

I've always been the kind of employee across the many jobs I've worked to show up on time, despite all my rabble-rousing about workers rights and better pay. And I always adjusted my life outside work around the work schedule. So when I think about streaming and where it could lead, should I be lucky enough, it's not hard to imagine my life would be centered on it. In the sense that, I'd regard it as any other job. Show up on time, schedule my outside activity around the schedule, etc.

But for now... it's a hobby I guess, and a place for me to vent my thoughts out. Personal or political. And the lamest ass attempts to get people to collectively act. Plasma donation, voter registration, organized feedback / cursing out the government, all that.

I guess there's a lot on my mind now about this, as it pertains to the big picture that is my life. Where I've been and suffered through, my mistakes, where I'm going vs where I want to go. And the memory of me after I'm gone. That last one has been fucking me up a lot over the past decade. I've simultaneously made efforts to fight against being forgotten, but also cave-in to self-destructive things that push people away. The past half-year, the self-destructive part of me is finally taking a break.

I say 'break' because frankly I don't know if it'll show its ugly face again. Says me, the guy in a mask. But I mean, I know myself. I struggle with anger management and have my whole life. It doesn't go away. And the self-destructive side of me, it won't go away either. I can only really guard myself against it, deflect or redirect it. With anger management, it's been an elaborate act of directing it into constructive action, or at least direct it at assholes who have shit coming. So how would I reverse-Uno-card self-destructive stuff?

Guess I'll sleep on it. I have a headache now.

literally just another giant post of Bakugou faces.

so I did this last year, but I only got up to chapter 120 before I ran out of steam. happily, though, this left me with an additional 190 chapters’ worth of glorious gremlin faces to choose from for this year’s edition! which I figure I had better do, before tumblr finally pulls the plug on my poor sweet image limit.

so without further ado, happy birthday to Kacchan, and happy birthday to Kacchan’s asymmetrical HAH face where his eyes do the thing like ( ◣益◢).

why I like it: so this is from Kirishima’s flashback in chapter 133, where Kirishima was getting all down on himself because his quirk Only Does One Thing, and Kacchan was all “nah bro don’t worry about it because your One Thing is totally fucking rad, and you’re strong enough to withstand anything.” so that of course was incredibly sweet, and one of the few times we’ve seen him give an actual heartfelt pep talk without so much as a single insult thrown into the mix. but what really puts this scene over the top for me is the fact that you can see the ever-so-subtle hints of guilt and regret when he talks about All Might and Kamino. for just a moment, he gets this distant look in his eyes, and his expression turns soft and contemplative. basically this is a rare collector’s edition Kacchan face you will not find in many other places.

why I like it: because this frankly needs to happen in every damn fight until this kid finally gets it through his thick skull to ditch the mask so we can see every fantastic facial expression in full 4k glory. work with me here please Kacchan.

why I like it: because character growth!! this was our first big moment of post-DvK2 Kacchan development, and the payoff was well worth the wait. it only took him 166 chapters to realize that it’s hard to grow as a person if you’re determined to be a humongous dick to every single person you meet!! lmao, but it’s progress though.

why I like it: these two panels are criminally underrated. the way his face transforms when Deku gets the answer wrong dlkjfldk. this is easily one of the funniest subtle gags in the entire series.

why I like it: “hey Bakugou do you want to play in our band?” “fuck you, no.” “pretty please.” “fine, but I refuse to call it a band.” “well then what do you want to call it -- ” “MURDER.”

why I like it: GONNA MURDER EVERYONE BY PLAYING THE DRUMS!!!! SOMEHOW WE’VE SUCCESSFULLY COMPARTMENTALIZED THIS SCHOOL-SANCTIONED DISPLAY OF PERFORMING ARTS AS A DEATH MATCH. OH TO UNDERSTAND THE INNER WORKINGS OF THIS YOUNG MAN’S MIND.

why I like it: hah?! I love how he has to tilt his neck all the way back every single time he does this. he’s so cute I love him so much.

why I like it: somewhere around this point in the manga Kacchan decided to do away with being handsome and decided to just be a full-time gremlin in every single panel. this persisted for the next 90 chapters or so and he was very dedicated. I’m pretty sure he was going for vulgar and intimidating, but unfortunately for him he’s too inherently adorable and so the end result is just endearing and almost charming in its own way.

why I like it: this was from chapter 194 when Aizawa was announcing that they’d have a special guest for the Joint Training arc, and so Kacchan was all “BOY OH BOY A NEW ASS TO KICK.”

why I like it: more character development! and just look at that confidence! he’s fully recovered from his low point after Kamino and the provisional exam. he knows what he’s about now, and he is THRIVING. and once again you can see how his conviction inspires the people around him and makes them more determined. just, he is going to be such a good number one hero you guys.

why I like it: it’s the three little “!!!” lines hovering in the corner next to his head for me. “oh my god it’s All Might, All Might saw me being cool and Saving To Win and stuff, what’s he gonna say what do I do omg quick act natural.”

why I like it: QUICK HIDE YOUR FEELINGS!! WE CAN’T LET THE NEIGHBORS KNOW WE CARE. fjkdlsjklk

why I like it: this is his expression when he first sees Deku activate Blackwhip for the first time. it’s one of the few unguarded expressions of complete surprise that we’ve gotten from him and I love it thank you.

why I like it: classic asymmetrical HAH face. he truly has perfected this look. look at him, casually clinging to a pole for no reason other than to look dynamic. this boy truly cannot sit or stand or walk or do anything normally. he spent three months working his ass off to catch up to Deku and the others, and now that he finally has he’s filled with so much pent-up energy that he simply cannot hold it back anymore and he’s gotta climb a pole. he’s just gotta.

why I like it: because he is so fucking good at saving people now you guys, he’s like a whole-ass professional and shit, and yet it hasn’t changed who he is one single iota. he will save your life and he will SCREAM AT YOU WHILE DOING IT and you’ll sit there and be grateful goddammit.

why I like it: o noo he was caught unawares. All Might was all “I’m gonna have a dad moment and nobody can stop me” and he walked right up to him and put his hand on his head because he’s All Might and so what is he even gonna do about it. nothing, that’s what. you got played, Kacchan. outmaneuvered and outfoxed. all he can do is stand there and make that grumpy face he makes when he’s receiving unwanted affection (҂⌣̀_⌣́).

why I like it: more unwanted affection. now they’re even feeding him ffs. how could he let this happen. mm chicken.

why I like it: GREATEST ASYMETRICAL HAH?! FACE OF ALL TIME. out of all the people to befriend him against his will, Todoroki is by far the most confusing to him and it’s just so great.

why I like it: this is when Hawks is staring at him in chapter 244 because he fake-killed his mentor and stuff and he feels sorta guilty about it. but meanwhile Kacchan just thinks he’s trying to start some shit, and so he’s all “I WAS FASTER THAN YOU BACK THERE YOU KNOW” and Hawks is all “hahaha okay little buddy you just keep telling yourself that”, because as previously discussed Kacchan is too adorable to ever be intimidating.

why I like it: this is from 246 when he’s in the middle of arguing with Burnin’ and all of a sudden Endeavor calls to him and he’s just like o shit what’d I do.

why I like it: because Endeavor’s mentoring them and shit and he’s just casually sitting there eating his lunch like yeah. with his lil hamster cheeks lulz.

why I like it: the look that instantly became iconic. this panel cured me of the misconception that Bakugou “goes to bed at 8:30pm” Katsuki was a morning person. the truth is he loathes all times of the day equally.

why I like it: this one is a team effort because Deku’s faces are equally as good. I’m genuinely shocked that this family dinner with the Todorokis didn’t prematurely unlock Danger Sense. you can tell that he and Deku have a silent agreement to call a temporary truce on their rivalry for as long as they sit at this table as outsiders in this strange land. this is by far the most hazardous meal Bakugou has ever experienced, and yet the mapo tofu is too good to go to waste, so he’s just shoveling it down his throat trying to finish as much as possible before shit inevitably hits the fan.

why I like it: Kacchan is New Here so he doesn’t yet realize that if the Todorokis are spilling family secrets, there is always inevitably going to be someone listening in the shadows just outside the door.

why I like it: the battle with Ending was probably peak gremlin!Kacchan. like, we’ve had gremlin before and afterwards, but never quite to this same degree. Horikoshi really decided to push the limits of contorting this child’s face in the strangest ways.

why I like it: peak. gremlin.

why I like it: nothing to see here, just Kacchan quietly realizing after 252 chapters that he MIGHT have been just a BIT of a cartoonishly villainous asshole to Deku back at the beginning there ha ha ha oh god oh fuck.

why I like it: because he found the answer to What It Is That He Lacks, and he’s all cool and calm and infuriatingly secretive about it. it’s such a sudden and stark contrast to the gremlin faces he was making only moments earlier, and it makes this moment hit home that much more.

why I like it: because this is him being friends with Deku!! like for real though!! because he’s fucking around and insulting him and making weird faces and stuff, but it’s because in his mind That’s What Friends Do. they clown on each other and help each other train and shit. half an hour after this they’ll go down to the training gym and play Catch-A-Kacchan, and then he’ll quietly confess to All Might that he wants to atone. he may be a gremlin, but he’s a gremlin with layers goddammit.

why I like it: because this is right after TomurAFO shows up out of nowhere and scares the shit out of him and Deku and makes them see a terrifying death vision and stuff, and you can see how shaken up he is by it. he definitely understands how close they came to dying just then and he’s sobered the fuck up. this is the moment when it really sinks in that shit has gotten real. eight minutes from now he’ll move without thinking and save Deku’s life.

why I like it: hydro homies. nothing restores those electrolytes like good old Raquaius Sports Drink.

why I like it: because this panel was when it started to become clear that the real reason he grabbed this sports drink was to pretend like he was busy so he could act like he wasn’t interested in Deku’s training because god forbid the neighbors know that he actually cares.

why I like it: because the sideways glance!! and the fact that he doesn’t deny it!! in fact he does the opposite of denying it, and he basically starts pouring his heart out about how goddamn worried he actually is. he’s guilty and anxious and restless and this entire conversation is amazing.

why I like it: he looks so goddamn young here. when he finally stops scrunching up his face and putting on his usual tough guy act and for once allows his actual emotions to show on his face instead, the result is so damn striking. for once we got an entire conversation with no gremlin faces, because Horikoshi had to drop them completely in order to show just how serious he is here. which was incredibly effective btw.

why I like it: because he’s basically just fidgeting with the bottle now to avoid making eye contact with All Might because he just revealed a deep dark secret to him and he’s precariously vulnerable right now. that’s the body language of a kid who knows how badly he fucked up, and just wants to hear from someone else if it’s going to be okay, if he can still make it okay. he looks so small here.

why I like it: the worry lines under his eyes. the look of uncertainty and wanting to believe that what All Might says is true (“you’ll get a chance to talk eventually”). the hesitance to turn back and look at him, and the way he doesn’t dare until he finally gets that small bit of reassurance. All Might isn’t judging him. All Might understands him and understands where he’s coming from, and he’s giving him his blessing. he’s giving him a thumbs up and reassuring him that he sees the change in him and sees that he’s sincerely trying, and basically saying that he has faith that he and Deku will be able to work it out. and you can see that it means a lot.

why I like it: because this kid spent his entire internship with Jeanist doing nothing but bitching nonstop, and then later on when Jeanist went missing he was all tight-lipped about it because once again NOBODY CAN KNOW THAT WE CARE GODDAMMIT, and it was all very Classic Bakugou. but then Jeanist finally shows up again at Jakku, and we get this little moment of happy, smirky FUCK YEAH, I KNEW YOU WEREN’T DEAD YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE, and it’s just the best.

why I like it: HE’S SO UNABASHEDLY PROUD GOD BLESS HIM.

why I like it: because he nearly died and then he woke up here in the hospital two days later not knowing where anybody else is or whether they’re even still alive, and this, my friends. this is finally the moment. the moment where he was all FUCK IT, MAYBE WE CAN LET THE NEIGHBORS KNOW WE CARE AFTER ALL. character fucking development. you love to see it.

BONUS:

WHAT HAVE I BECOME, MY SWEETEST FRIEND. EVERYONE I KNOW GOES AWAY IN THE END.

happy birthday Katsuki. feel better sweetie. HORIKOSHI YOU BETTER TREAT HIM RIGHT I AM COUNTING ON YOU.

Reality check

Fandom: DC Pairing: Damian Wayne x reader Word count: 4.1k Summary: It was a normal day for you when the sidewalk literally opens up and swallows you whole only to spit you back out into a world that you thought only existed in comics before. There you meet a certain Vigilante and things get more complicated very, very quickly... Warning: I think this classifies as angst, not sure though, Definitly almost drowning tho, also multiple instances of unconciousness, lil bit of fluff if you squint, also me trying to be funny and failing Requested by the incredibly, amazing, breathtaking @dudeidkwhattoputformyusername: Hi! I love your work! is it possible for u to do a Damian Wayne x reader one shot, where reader comes from reality and bumps into Damian in Robin form. Then u can develop from there anyway u like! preferably fluff tho. thank u!!!!!!!!!!

Everything was blurry and your head was throbbing like someone was working on it with a jackhammer. The pain was the first thing that you felt during the process of waking up, no other sense quiet activated yet. Next was the realization that your body was shivering uncontrollably and wherever you were laying definitely wasn’t a bed for as far as you remembered, beds weren’t usually wet, cold and stone-hard. Following was your eyesight that finally returned to you, alongside with your smell and hearing, and as if they were high-school bullies who were teaming up against the local geek in a 90’s sitcom, they all came crashing up upon you like a train. Now theoretically seen, you were able to see, hear and smell again, but practically seen, asking you to do either of the three was like asking someone to find a needle in a needlestack, or a single straw of hay in a haystack. It was just too much, definite sensory overload. A few minutes you couldn’t do anything but lay there, shivering and cold and miserable, before slowly your brain started to work through all the input and sort through it until you were able to comprehend it. The first thing you noticed was the smell. It wasn’t a very pleasant one, it smelled like you fish, water and something rotten and if you had any more control over your body you probably would have thrown up. The sounds that you could hear now put the smells a little bit more into perspective. What sounded like screams and the end of the world before was now identifiable as the screeching of seagulls, the honking of boats and the soft crashing of waves. So you were near a harbor or port? The last puzzle piece was the view you got when you opened your eyes. The cold, wet, stone-hard ‘not-bed’ that you had been lying on was in fact a concrete jetty. Only a few feet away from you was the cold dark sea and above you was the night sky. How long have you been lying here? What happened? How did you get there? As you were staring up into the sky something about it made you uneasy, the way the stars were shining, the darkness of the universe, the fullness of the moon- Wait, wasn’t it a new moon just a few days ago? You sat up suddenly, immediately regretting it when the pain shook through your head again, re-starting the throbbin at 100%, and - after you could open your eyes again - looked down at your body. You were wearing a soaked through sweater that you had bought a few days prior and just as soaked through jeans and socks, your shoes nowhere in sight. The sea was restless and splashed against the sides of the jetty, dops landing on your sleeves and face. For some reason, the sensation of the liquid against your skin brought forth a flashback that completely blinded you. It was like you were watching from above as you relieved the last thing you remembered, how you had been going home after your part-time job at the library when the floor had literally peeled open below you and you fell into a cold nothingless, only for water to come crashing down at you from all sides. When you finally realized that you were not on the sidewalk a few blocks away from your home anymore, but in raging water, somewhere below the surface you were already only seconds away from drowning. With all the power you could muster and adrenaline rushing through your veins you managed to fight your way upwards and upwards until your hand finally broke through the water’s surface. The breath that you took when you made it up completely must have been the best and somehow worst gulp of air you had ever taken in. The adrenaline was ebbing off and the exhaustion made its way through all your muscles, but when you saw the lights in the distance you managed to keep on going until you had managed to pull yourself up a concrete jetty where you finally blacked out. Your mind made its way back into your body and you grasped the situation, even though believing it still wasn’t the easiest task. I mean the earth quite literally swallowing you up? That doesn't sound reasonable. And yet, it was the thing you remembered so you would have to live with that truth until someone could prove you otherwise. More and more questions started to swirl through your mind - an unreasonable amount of them quite honestly - but you knew you had to take things one step at a time. Okay, what did you know? You were in an unknown location so there was no new there, but your former question of ‘how long have you been there’ was now answered. Given the state of your clothes and the fact that it was still deep, dark night you couldn’t have been unconscious for long. But that didn’t help you much - you were still sitting there freezing cold and soaked with no idea where you actually were. What would you do usually when you were lost? Phone, ah, right. You patted over your pockets and actually found it, only to be very unsurprised when it only gave you a black void to stare into. Sadly you didn’t have a bag of rice to put it into in the other pocket, instead only a set of keys that you didn’t recognize along with something that looked like a keychain in form of a piece of polished wood with the letters D and (Your first initial) with a plus in between engraved into it. “Great, I can open some doors now, too bad I don’t know which,” you spoke aloud to yourself, only for the worlds to come out stuttered thanks to your teeth that were shaking just as much as the rest of you. You stuffed the keys and the broken phone back into your pockets and managed to pull yourself up and stand, even though all your muscles were screaming in despair. The thing you really wanted to do was lie back down and fall asleep again, wait for the sun to rise and dry your clothes, but you knew that with the coldness and the water all around you, you’d probably be dead or at least deadly sick by morning, so you had to find shelter, warmth and - maybe most importantly - answers. With slow, little steps you walked down the jetty, towards the buildings that looked unoccupied at that time of day, with an unknown city stretching out behind it that promised life and warmth. For what felt like hours, but was probably just minutes, you managed to walk a few feet until you were a safe distance away from the water and near a bench that must have been put there for people who wanted to watch the water or have a break from work or similar things. It looked at you so invitingly, so comfortably, so perfect. Deep inside you knew that you should probably not sit down, even if you told yourself it would be just for a few minutes, but your exhaustion took over and you sunk down onto it, falling to the side and rolling as good as it was possible together into a little roll. You’d take a nap, just a quick one, only a few minutes, then you’d get up with new energy and find the warmth you were looking for. The longer you sat there the heavier your eyelids got until you couldn’t take it anymore and the darkness enveloped you into its safety again.

The next time you woke up, things weren’t so bad anymore, it wasn’t all that blurry and the throbbing had dialed down a bit, but your body was shaking worse than before. In fact, it was shaking so bad that your shoulder thumbed against the backrest of the bench before being pulled forward again and repeating the circle, the only weird thing was that it was just your shoulder. And there was this weird pressure around it. Wait! You weren’t shaking worse, someone else was shaking you as if they were trying to wake you up. You peeled your eyes completely opened and looked into white voids surrounded by black and like your eyes were the camera of a 2000’ kids-camera they slowly zoomed out and revealed the white voids to be the eye-parts of a mask sitting on the face of a masked (duh) boy who was wearing a very, very colorful and bright outfit. It seemed familiar and the gears in your head started turning. “Habibti, you’re okay,” the boy said in a relieved tone and while he helped you sit up you mustered him with a confused look. “That’s not my name, it’s Y/N.” The way his mask contorted gave off a sense of confusion that mirrored yours, just with a little bit more worry in it, but before he could say anything else you motioned to his outfit. “What is it with the outfit? It isn’t Halloween yet, is it?” “You don’t recognize me?” he asked you and the tone of voice he used almost made you feel sorry for him, but given that you had no idea what he was talking about you would probably be able to cope. “No, sorry…” you started before the gears finally fell into place and you recognized it, “Oh, wait, I think I do, you’re playing Batman’s sidekick right? I think it was Robin. That’s so cool, I myself was always more of a Marvel fan - you know with Black Widow and all that - but both are super valid so cool hobby dude. It looks pretty rad too.” Even with the mask you could see the complete bedazzlement in his face and you wondered if your weird world-swallowing-experience had magically changed the language you spoke from English to Mandarine. “What- What do you mean?” “You’re Cosplaying right? Dressing up as a Comic Character?” you tried to explain and you could feel a slight anger building up at how stupid he made you feel without even being able to see his eyes. “I’m not Cosplaying a comic character?” he said in a questioning manner. “Yes, you are. You’re wearing the outfit and everything, like the guy in the Comics who works with Batman. I think his name was Richard or something, but you should know better, you’re cosplaying him after all,” you tried to explain yet again, seriously questioning your sanity. Now he really didn’t need the mask to hide the fact that he was seriously triggered by what you had said - even though you weren’t quite sure why. Had Robin been cancelled over twitter while you were unconscious? “I think it’d be better if I bring you to safety and get you checked out,” he averted the topic of the conversation and started to position his hands like he wanted to pick you up, but you put a stop to it when you pressed him away. “Listen, I appreciate the help, but I’ll definitely not be going with a complete stranger in a comic costume, so if you could just give me your phone so that I can call my parents or my friends that’d be great.” For a few seconds he just sat there straight, as if unsure of the best course of action, before he sight and pulled a phone out, unlocking it and handing it to you. Your fingers hovered over the keyboard as you thought about who to call, thankful that your mum had made you learn her number by heart, but when you went to dial it your whole body stopped working, like there was a physical restriction keeping you from typing. Suddenly you realized it. You didn’t know the number - you knew you should, that you had been using it for years upon years and that you definitely should know it - and your eyes grew wide. You scavenged through your head searching for more numbers, but then you realized another thing. There were none. How was that possible? You didn’t even know the area code from where you lived. “I- I don’t- what?” you looked up at the boy with tearful eyes, the reality of the situation just too much for you. “It’s okay, I’m sure it will come back to you,” he tried to sooth you, but you were too frustrated and sad to be happy about soothing from some creepy geek. “Would you please finally tell me why you’re in costume?” you asked exasperated and moved further away from him. “I-” The answer of the boy was cut short when a ‘whooshing’ sound echoed around the area and a booming voice called out: “Robin”. The boy shot you another look before shouting back. “I’m here, I’ve-” he obviously wanted to add something, but he cut himself off this time and just looked at you. A man in a black, leather suit with a black cowl over his face that you noticed to be definitely inspired by Batman and very well done came rushing towards you. Again, you couldn’t see his eyes, but you recognized the same worried look that the boy already had. “Oh no, not another one,” you sighed and pushed your hair back, “Is there some kind of Comic Convention here? Or is this a weird sexual thing?” Now the man looked at the boy even more confused, and the boy just shrugged, but instead of answering you, he brought his hand up to where his ear was under the cowl and spoke to himself: “I’ve found Robin, he’s found her, we’re going to come back now.” If it had only been the first and last part of that sentence you would have made a joke about them being into LRPG or something, but the ‘her’ part scared you for some reason. You stood up and backed away, happy that the boy didn’t keep the grip on even though his eyes were following your every move. “This was fun and all, but I’m still soaked and really cold, and I had a nice swim earlier which I want to calm down from again, so I think I’ll just go back home now, call myself a cab or something,” you turned around, more than ready to strain your muscles yet again with running away, but it never got to that point, because a second later you were ripped up from the ground and sizzled through the air. It was so surprising that you didn’t even manage to scream before you found yourself with hard ground under your feet again. You looked up at what had pulled you through the skies and found the boys face yet again and - may it have been from the scare of everything finally becoming to much - the last thing you could say before you blacked out for the third time that night was: “That’s some on point cosplay dude.”

The soft sheets of your bed gave you a sense of relief as you woke up from that weird ass dream that you were having. You were unsure about why exactly your unconsciousness was making you see these things, but you made a mental note about checking the dream meaning of getting swallowed by the sidewalk later on. For now all you wanted was to go have some breakfast and call your mom to tell her about that dream. So you opened your eyes and threw the blanket back only to be surprised by the ceiling that was definitely not yours. There was a sound beside you and you looked over to see a boy about your age, black hair standing up from his head a little spiky and green eyes focused entirely on you. “Oh for fuck’s sake,” you cursed and moved as far away from the boy as possible, “Who are you?!” “What do you remember?” the boy asked you, completely ignoring your question. Your eyes flew to the door that was right behind him and you found that there was no way for you to get to it without having to overthrow the boy - but by the looks of him he’d knock you out easily. “I was on my way home from my job when the fucking ground opened up, swallowed me, thrw me back up into the ocean and then I met two werid ass cosplayers before I woke up here.” “You still think we’re cosplayers?” “We?” “Yes,” he just nodded with complete ease. “Well, I gotta admit that flying thing was pretty rad. What was that? Are you actors and you’re making a movie? Because if so then I’m sorry for bursting onto the shooting site.” “We’re not making a movie,” he stated, still completely chilled, even though there was something else lying under it. “What then? You telling me you’re actually Robin? Because if so I’m not the only one who needs to have her head checked out,” you scoffed and rolled your eyes, arms crossing in front of your chest. The boy just mirrored your look, completely stern and serious. “You’re not serious, are you?” you couldn’t help but let out an unbelieving chuckle. He kept silent and just observed you. “You fucking are, oh my gosh.” “How can I prove it to you?” he asked, still so incredibly serious that you felt like you were a clown walking in on a job interview. “Oh, I don’t know. Call Flash, Superman and the easter bunny over so we can have tea with the tooth fairy,” you answered ironically and made a ‘cray-cray’ gesture with your hand going in circles beside your temple, but instead of being offended by your comment, he just pulled out his phone - the same phone you had tried to use earlier you noted. “What are you doing?” you asked, but he just held his hand up to sush you and raised the phone to his ear. “Hello, it’s Damian Wayne,” he introduced himself to the other person -  and you noted that he was not a ‘Richard’ after all, “Yes, could you do me a favor? Could you come to the Manor real quick? Yes, yes I know, no it’s not an emergency. The suit would be great, yes. See you in a bit. You opened your mouth again when he hung up to ask who he called over, but he kept his hand up and motioned to you to wait, while he opened up the window, even though it was still cold out. A gust of wind filled the room and suddenly there was another boy standing besides the original boy - Damian as he had introduced himself - who was wearing a cape, a shirt with a logo that was definitely Supermans and ripped jeans. “H-How the fuck did he just? Was he here this whole time? What? How?” you stuttered and looked between Damian and the other boy who looked at you even more confused than you felt, but Damian waved him off and motioned for him to leave, which he promptly did. The new boy looked at Damian with question marks in his eyes, but he just waved him off. “You believe me now?” he asked, directed towards you and you had to admit it was pretty convincing. “But how? I’m in a comic?” “Y/N, this isn’t a comic, this is reality,” Damian told you with a soft voice, but your eyes just widened and you tried to move back even further. “How do you know my name?” “In your left pocket there is a set of keys and keychains. One of these keychains is a piece of wood with two letters engraved. A D and a (Your first initial), am I right?” Your heart stopped for a second and you patted the pocket where that exact thing was still lying. “H-How do you know my name?” “What do you remember about your life, about how you ended up in the water?” he avoided the question like a pro and you decided to play along, just in hope he’d answer your question sooner or later. “I was born the daughter of Y/Parents/N in Y/H/T. I grew up normally and went to school, nothing special, got a job on the side and when I went home yesterday the sidewalk started to open up like there was an earthquake and I was suddenly in the water, I told you about that part already.” “And you have never met me in your life?” he asked and sounded almost disappointed. “No, an hour ago I thought you didn’t exist outside of paper, the internet and movies,” you huffed and tried to figure out what his endgame was with this, when he pulled his phone out again and tapped on it for a bit before shoving it in your direction. “How do you explain this then?” You moved forwards with caution until you could see the screen and your breath stopped. It was a picture of you. Of Damian and you to be precise. The two of you were sitting on a bench, laughing and smiling and obviously happy, a cute dog on the ground between the two of you where something else drew your attention. In the photograph your left hand was intertwined with his right one. “W-What is this? Some sick kind of joke?” “You really don’t remember? Not at all?” he asked flabbergasted. “Remember what? What is going on here?” you almost shouted, the frustration becoming just a little bit too much, “Please just give me some explanation, please.” “You’re Y/N Y/L/N, you really are the daughter of Y/Parents/N, but you didn’t grow up in Y/H/T, you grew up here in Gotham. You went to Gotham academy, where the two of us met and...became friends. You found out about me being Robin and my father being Batman rather quickly too,” Damian explained and even though it didn’t match up even slightly with what you remembered, it felt weirdly accurate. You went to the bed again and sucked down onto it, before thinking back to the picture and raised an eyebrow at Damian. “Not that I say it’s true what you’re saying, but if we hypothetically say it was, then we weren’t just friends, right? We’re together?” “Yes.” “Okay,” a sigh escaped you and everything was feeling blurry, but you had to continue asking, wanting to know the truth, “Then how do you explain me ending up in the ocean?” “That’s where things get a bit harsher,” Damian sight too, but obviously for other reasons, “Yesterday evening you accompanied me to a party - a family thing - on a yacht and things were going great, but something went wrong. No one had an idea that the weather would shift like that, but a storm came and the yacht was thrown around and you - you were thrown off, I thought you died, I was devastated, but- uhm...well… You remembered that keychain? I gave it to you for our first year anniversary and it may or may not have a tracker in it, so that I could find you in a worst case scenario and if that wasn’t a worst case scenario then I don’t know what is.” For a few minutes silence filled the room as you worked through all of the new information, but the sad look on Damian’s face, the seriousness in his voice, the entire situation in itself? They made it hard to doubt what he was telling you. Your gaze was stuck on your fidgeting hands when you asked the one underlying question. “Why can’t I remember?” “I don’t know, I think you must have hit your head when you fell off and your mind mixed things up - mixed reality into something else and took a few actual things and made them fiction,” Damian gave you his half-assed, definitely not medically appropriate explanation, but you couldn’t blame him for that, you had no idea either. You pulled your legs up and hugged your knees close as you looked at him, really trying to see this supposed boyfriend of yours, but your mind just turned up blank. “What if I’ll never remember? What if that’s the way it’ll be from now on?” “I’m positive that things will turn out fine, we have friends who have the best medical experience you can get, we even have mind readers who could probably help you and if not, we’ll help you make new memories, I’ll help you and I’ll wait for the memories to come back just in case.” “That’s not fair on you though, Right now I’m not the girl you’re with, you shouldn’t have to go through this,” tears were now welling up at your eyes, even though you weren’t completely sure why your emotions were so strong. “I don’t care, I really don’t, because no matter what you remember or don’t, I love you and I really hope you’ll remember that you love me too…”

Knight of Heart

Sorry for the long wait but I’m still having lots of problems! So I can’t post as much, but here’s an analysis! Plus, as a Knight myself, I should have some interesting ideas about this!

Knight: Active Wielder. They start out with lots of competence over their aspect, but little to no confidence about it. Or much confidence in general. So they put up an act, though this act depends partially upon the aspect. Dave acted like he was too cool for everything, Karkat constantly acted angrier than he was, and Latula acted like she super rad. Their main challenge is to drop this mask, and let everyone in, realizing their ability with their aspect. They take the role of the leader and are the Active version of the Page. Their inverse is the Rogue.

Heart: Heart is connected with the soul, emotions and romantic relationships. Though, it is actually not connected to other relationships, only romantic ones, and shares this association with Blood. It is also tied heavily to identity.

A Knight of Heart would be one who wields the Soul. They would have insecurity about their sense of self, and would most likely have several existential crises. They would, however, put up an act of being solid, all while anxiety wrecks their life. I can definitely see them having anxiety related to their personality, thinking they’re horrid. They would hate themselves more than most Knights since they would think about themselves more than most. This isn’t in a selfish way, it's simply that they can’t stop blaming themselves for everything around them when it goes wrong.

However, they would wear a mask of confidence, as if they’re solid and know themselves well, even though they only see their negatives. I can also see them having problems with their sexuality or gender identity. They may be non-heteronormative but deny it. I can see them hating themselves for that too, forcing themselves to be straight or cisgender, simply due to what they think everyone wants. But really, the only one who wants them to be like that is themselves.

For powers, they could probably use other’s emotions against them, making them more intense than they would be otherwise, and making them mess up. Knights often have powers directly tied to the literal interpretation of their Aspect, and get them long before god tier. I can see them making gear that would be able to tell others emotions and whether they were lying or not, simply by their heartbeat. Or even electrical weapons made to stop the heart itself. 

strifespecibus wise, they’d be quite simple. Knights use traditional weapons, and heart players use something sharp, but personal. I can see a Knight of Heart using a spear, especially if they got it as a kid.

For their planet... Well, it really depends upon what EXACTLY they’re insecure about. Dave had his loneliness shoved in his face with the near-empty land, and Karkat had his blood color everywhere on his land. Heart player's lands are harder; Dirk’s was to do with the theme, and Nepeta’s was just a joke. I can see a Knight of Hearts land being something similar to Land of Tremors and Beats. The land would have a dead heartbeat and would shake whenever the Denizen moves. The Consorts would be comatose, with their spirits wandering. The Knight would have to restart the heart of the planet, reuniting the Consorts with their bodies.

CYBERVERSE WATCH: S3 Episode 13, 14, 15, 16

Episode 13

MACCADAM IS MY GRANDPA NOW

Jetfire!!! And Skybite!!! Skybite’s got a great laugh

Oh wow the cloaking still protects them? Nice!

CAN SOMEONE PLEASE FIX PERCY’S EYES, WHERE THE FRICK IS RATCHET

A MULTIVERSE DRIVE???

PLEASE...PLEASE LET US SEE OTHER UNIVERSES??? OTHER UNIVERSES PLEASE????

SPARE SOME MULTIVERSE STUFF FOR A POOR SOUL???

I mean as it stands, the fact that Cyberverse is talking about this stuff is more than satisfying, man I frickin love this show

“We can launch those squiggly things into a whole ‘nother universe!” his delivery of that line was so good and also Wheeljack pls, then it’ll be another version of you’s problem

MEGATRON REALLY *IS* POUTING, MEGATRON YOU BIG BABY

Maccadam fondly but watching them talk about their battle plans makes me feel so bad for him...

AW MAN IS MEGATRON GONNA CHUCK OPTIMUS INTO A DIFFERENT UNIVERSE

About time you showed up you big pouting pansy

Man these two totally were ex boyfriends

LMAO ARCEE AND SHADOW-STRIKER’S EVIL LAUGHS, THAT”S SO DELIGHTFUL

That Titan should just smack them out of the sky tbh

SKULLCRUNCHER THE CROC...NICE

I love that Soundwave and Roddy are manning the controls

“Commanders command. And you forget, we have backup” CUTE...CUTE....CUTE!!!

I’M SO PROUD OF MY BOYS!!!!!!

BEE!!!It’s been so long since I’ve seen you! I love my little yellow boy!!! Please take care of your dad Bee

OH NO IT”S CREEPY TENTACLE DOCTOR

GOTH GIRL AND PREP GIRL!!! 

MAN I JUST KNOW SOMETHING’S GOING TO GO HORRIFICALLY WRONG HERE

FRICK NOT THIS DUDE AGAIN

AW MAN NOT A WHOLE BUNCH AT ONCE

YEAAAHHHHH WHEELJACK AND MEGATRON WORKING TOGETHER!!! NICE

Two Decepticons and one Autobot...not a good sign

Oh shoot it’s the DECEPTICONS who wanna universe-jump, MEGATRON COME ON DUDE YOU DIDN’T EVEN TAKE YOUR ARMY WITH YOU DUMMY

OH NO!!!!!!

“It’s time for the commanders to join the battle” MAN YOU’RE SO COOL RODDY (YOU TOO SOUNDWAVE)

OH SHOOT THERE GOES THE TOWER

WELL FRICK

DON”T “WE DID IT” HOT ROD YOUR DAD IS IN THAT WRECKAGE

“Quintessons: Inferior. Cybertronians: Superior” MAN I”LL NEVER GET TIRED OF THAT

HE”S SO COOL!!!!! FIST BUMP BUDDIES!!! Man I’m so over the moon that these two wound up getting along

You know I’m suddenly having a revelation: I wonder if they could somehow re-activate all those other Soundwaves to help them against the (inevitable) final battle I’m sure they’re gonna have

WHAT THE FRICK

ARE YOU FRICKIN KIDDING ME

Starscream: CANCELED, CANCELED, YOU”RE ALL CANCELED

Well, Megatron certainly got the heck out of dodge at the right time lmao

Episode 14

I legit thought they were going to do an ATLA ref for half a second

Oh my gosh is this an Autobot recruitment video???

“The universe. You ever thought about it?” GOSH THIS VIDEO....

I’m frickin cackling, the Quintessons were like “Hmm, what’s the worst thing we could possibly inflict on this planet?” then went “Oh, of course, Starscream”

WHY DIDN”T YOU JUST LET GO STARSCREAM

Wow Starscream really did just sell out his entire planet huh

SOUNDWAVE NO!!!!! JEEZ HE GOT EVERYONE

Jeez and Starscream has to share with two other faces, that sucks

Lmao Starscream is just like “Nah judging people is what I was born for”

UNSPACE??? UH OK

WAIT isn’t that what Wheeljack made a few episodes ago????

LMAO HE’S GONNA WAIT TIL HE CAN GET OPTIMUS AND MEGATRON TOO bless Starscream and his pettiness

“First I must witness their humiliation!” STARSCREAM PLEASE the Quintessons really got the worst Judge

OHHH WHAT’S HE GONNA DO

SOUNDWAVE YOU’RE SO POWERFUL!!!!!

OH NO HE GOT THEM AGAIN....

GOSH I ACTUALLY GASPED WHEN THEY BROKE SOUNDWAVE’S AUDIO THING, NO!!!

“Well, it did for one of us, and it only takes one Autobot to make a difference” Bee? Whirl??? Wheeljack???

WINDBLADE!!! EVEN BETTER!!! The person with the braincell!!!

I love that Rodimus doesn’t even look worried, he just sighs like “aw man not this loser again”

On the one hand: Worried about my boys On the other: Man I love these two being buds

Also: Not To Be That Guy But it looks like Soundwave’s wearing white thigh-highs with little orange hearts on them and it’s VERY distracting

“You two work so well together!!!” OH NO OH NO OH NO ARE THEY GONNA FUSE THEM TOGETHER OR SOMETHING

THOSE HEAD MASKS ARE SO DISTURBING

uh oh what kind of loop is this

THE PLAGUE OF RUST OH NO

oh my gosh STARSCREAM’S MAKING THEM DO A BUFFING LOOP...THAT’S REALLY THE WORST THING YOU COULD THINK OF STARSCREAM....

“WHERE ARE MEGATRON AND OPTIMUS PRIME” well Optimus is under a pile of concrete, so

Lmao thank you for your peanut-gallery commentary Kup

OH SHOOT THEY DID JUMP THROUGH THE MULTIVERSE BRIDGE

MAN THAT LOOKS SO FRICKIN COOL???? YO SHOUTOUT TO THE BACKGROUND ARTISTS WHO WORKED ON THIS SHOW, YOU ROCK

SERIOUSLY IM IN LOVE WITH THAT I hope whoever did the background art shares their work online sometime, I’ll be ALL over that

AHH I ALWAYS FORGET HOW SHORT THESE EPISODES ARE

Excuse me, Jeremy Levy as WHO???

Episode 15

Kup you are an...interesting commentator choice lmao

MACCADAM..... :(

Windblade please save our favorite Grandpa

wINDBLADE!

HOW’S IT FEEL BEING THE COOLEST KID ON THE BLOCK WINDBLADE

Wait I *JUST* noticed the title calls this “Bumblebee: Cyberverse Adventures” ???? IS THAT NEW

CALL ME A SUCKER BUT WINDBLADE CRACKING HER NECK AND TELLING THE LITTLE SHARK DUDES TO BRING IT ON WAS QUITE POSSIBLY ONE OF THE BEST MOMENTS OF THE SERIES SO FAR

Windblade: *does anything* Me: IM GAY

“I don’t do fear” GOSH I LOVE MY TALENTED GIRL

OH NO!!! OH NO!!!! WINDBLADE NO!!!!!

AND HER WINGS TOO??? WHY!!!!

MACCADAM HELP HER OUT COME ON DUDE WHAT HAPPENED TO NO FIGHTING

lmao rip at the dude crushed by the juke box

Wait I thought they already woke up Iaconus??

YEAH!!!!!!!! MACCADAM AND WINDBLADE TEAMING UP

“UNFORGIVABLE CRIMES AGAINST ME!” LMAO I LOVE THAT LITERALLY EVERYONE IS TUNING OUT STARSCREAM get rekt Starscream.

Not to rag on people who like Starscream because I like him too but me @ Starscream stans tbh 

You guys just need to hold hands! I mean seriously, come on you guys!

STARSCREAM QUINTESSONS OMG I just noticed they’re all wearing Starscream’s colors pffft

AW.....MACCADAM’S FIRST HIGH-FIVE....:’) I bet Windblade and Maccadam both give the best hugs and best high-fives 

They’re so cute MAN I love Cyberverse!!!! I love how sweet these characters are!!!

A psychic trap??? Hoo boy

Windblade: How do I defeat this psychic trap? Maccadam: Well, it would help if you had any bug or dark-type Pokemon on you.

“Or you could just tell me!” I JUST SAID THAT TOO LMAO gosh I love the writing on this show

OHHH I LOVE THE CONTRAST OF IACONUS’ BRAIN WITH BEE’S BRAIN IN SEASON ONE, THAT”S SO GOOD

OH LMAO HE MEANT HER SWORD I thought he meant like “your inner-strength” or “your wisdom” NO HE MEANT “USE YOUR SWORD WINDBLADE” LOL

OHHH SPOOKY VOICE, I DIG IT

Wow Starscream’s really reading out his 1000 page long call-out post to a captive audience

LMAO THEY”RE JUST LISTING OUT DATE LOCATIONS

CHROMIA IS SO CUTE!!!!!!!! AHHH

OH NO ARCEE!!!!

I LOVE ARCEE, “HIT ME WITH YOUR BEST SHOT YOU BASTARD”

OH SHOOT JK I GUESS THEY REALLY DIDN”T TOTALLY WAKE HIM  UP LAST TIME I was wondering why he was just an arm

TITAN TIME!!!

Episode 16

To toast the flares off a neutron star....cute....

Wouldn’t it be cute if Kup was telling this story to a bunch of baby Cybertronians

Awh....Maccadam I’m sorry your old Titan had to re-awaken :(

“Too bad I won’t know how it ends” OH NO ARE YOU GUYS GONNA KILL OFF MACCADAM???? NO!!!!

Iaconus looks frickin RAD I’m sure Hasbro will make a killing off his toys

Speaking of I really hope they release Cyberverse on DVD in a bundle-pack

“War Titan, do NOT ignore me!” YEAH USE YOUR MOM VOICE ON HIM WINDBLADE!!!

LOVE THAT ROCK MUSIC

“This has never happened before” now THERE’S an interesting tidbit

OH NO....ITS THE OTHER TITAN....CROATON....

on the one hand, I’m SO glad we’re getting the Titan battle I crave, but on the other, CROATON NO!!!

TRIFORCE BEAM!!!

I love that Windblade is Jaeger-ing this frickin Titan solo

WHOOPS THERE GOES THE STADIUM

“Optimus had a fight of his own...with gravity!” oh how the mighty have fallen Optimus lmao

I wonder how this wonky universe would handle a flier

JUST THROW A BUILDING AT A TITAN, NBD

SOMEONE PLEASE CATCH ARCEE

THANKS GRIMLOCK

THERE’S RATCHET Finally, I was wondering where he was

“Well it’s not my fault this won’t be a fair fight” OH SHOOT THERE IT IS!!! THERE IT IS

I can’t believe Starscream is trying to back-seat drive this fight lmao

SOUNDWAVE NO!!!! Oh thank goodness they’re ok

OH NO OH NO

IS THIS IT IS HE GONNA DIE?? MAC DONT GIVE IN TO FATE!!!  NO!!!

MAC NO!!!!!!!!!! MAC YOU DIDN”T HAVE TO DIE NO!!! YOU LITERALLY DID NOT HAVE TO STAND THERE AND GET BLASTED WHY DID YOU DO THAT!!!!!!!

“My last citizen...he is gone” FRICK IM GONNA START CRYING

Quints > Murdered Croaton's citizens most likely > Enslave Croaton > Inadvertently kill Iaconus' last citizen (WHICH HURT BECAUSE WE'RE MADE TO ASSUME IACONUS ONLY CARES ABOUT WAR BUT NO, HE LOVES HIS CITIZENS DEEP DOWN) > BEHEAD IACONUS LIKE, WHY YOU GOTTA STAB ME IN THE HEART LIKE THIS

Wheeljack you’re so smart but ALSO IM STILL CRYING OVER MACCADAM

“Hehe, you’re a nasty little fella” NICE JOB COWBOY

OH NO ALL THE SOUNDWAVES DANGIT I KNEW IT

AND HE”S A BIG LIAR HE DID HAVE SOME BLUE SOUNDWAVES

OH NO WHAT ABOUT WINDBLADE

HECK THAT”S SUCH A BAD PLACE TO STOP BUT I CANT WATCH ANY MORE EPISODES RN I GOTTA STAGGER THIS SERIES

The last chapter in SF

Jan 25th, 2020.

An Introduction.

In 2017, Jess was introduced to our quiet, oversized, and mainstream lives... Little did we know, that everything was about to change. The winds swirled overhead as she landed and within a couple weeks our loud, mini, hippie-witch-grandma-babe became ingrained in our lives! 

Coming in hot with a list of must-see, -try, -listen, -taste, -climb items for SF, Jess managed to keep us busy trying new things and living our best fun-sized life.

In honor of one chapter coming to a close (and another very exciting one just beginning!!), we want to take a look back at some of the beautiful moments you’ve helped us create! Thank you for being a part of our lives in San Francisco, and we are so excited and proud of you for making big moves across the seas in New Zealand! Don’t forget us and please come back to re-visit your San Francisco community soon 😻

Love,

Everyone

Credit: (always) Inspired by the TinyTourist

2017

Let’s take a walk down memory lane back to 2017...

Enter 2017… when some of us all met Jess Tilles for first time. Something we may be too old to do but in our early 20s we were able to stick through 9 hours of drinking. Santa Con was the day into the night we were all obliterated… but Santas and mistletoe and FUN! We all look very youthful, oh what a few years in SF has done to our age. It was also one of the first and last times we all decided to go out in the Marina, and then proceed to eat Italian Homemade food. The beginning of an era!

Meanwhile at work... Jess quickly becomes a driving force of work parties with Holmes (and Eva and Jess discover they are both proponents of Bell sleeves). Of course Jess=where the party @ after having met most of the team at a highly questionable night tearing up the Castro prior Olga’s birthday.

Celebrating big moves to the bay, Jess, Shiri, and Leeza united in the gorgeous SF winter on Hattie St Balcony (a local’s hidden gem). It was then that Leeza and Jess instantly realized they were meant to meet and pursue all the best indie-folk-hippie music together. The rest of the concert saga is history!

2018

March 2018 

Jess and Leron feeling lucky on St. Patty’s day by wearing all black and going against the mainstream in classic Jess fashion.

April 2018

Jess and Eva jamtfo to Penguin Prison at at their favorite SF venue, The Independent on Eva’s bday. They groove from the front row where Jess has zero obstacles blocking her line of site. Eva gets to hold the gee-tar.

Parisa's first day in SF! A messy deep dish experience could only be ended with a super fun barcade.

August 2018

For many of us, it was our very first overnight backpacking trip that hot summer weekend in July. Leeza had on the heaviest pack and powered ahead of the group (per usual), while the rest of us fumbled behind. We all kept enthusiasm high and it was a glorious moment when we 1) dipped into the freezing cold water at the end of day one and 2) when we finally took our packs, shoes and socks off at the end of the hike, and we all agreed that we would not do that trail again if someone paid us a million fat ones. Such a memorable trip- it was a great shared bonding experience for us to be out exploring in nature, and struggling together but ultimately powering through. Caroline was peeing every 20 minutes of the hike as usual, Leron was making interesting jokes and Shiri and Jess kept our spirits high!

Jess has her first grown woman trip to LA with Eva. They stay in Sunset Junction (Micheltorena stairs pictured) and have a romantic werk wife stay at the legendary Casa Crawford Airbnb, where their room doesn’t lock and they share a bathroom with the elderly spooky owner. Highlights include swan boating on Echo Park Lake, yoga at Equinox, eating at Mh Zh and Sqirl, unwinding at Wi Spa, crashing a mansion party in the Hollywood hills, and celebrating Lauren’s 30th birthday. Jess also very much enjoys catching up with a friend in Venice Beach.

In spring 2018, Jess made moves in the city to make friends and become ~sporty~ with Shiri in the Play Recess league. Striking the perfect balance between minimal coordination and slap-cup, we learned to destroy the competition in what really counts! Culminating in an ultimate scavenger hunt debacle, Spinelli led the group to victory! (Not actually sure if we completed the scavenger, but the memories we do have were definitely winners :) ).

October 2018

Halloweenies with our favorite Grandmama. Photographed left to right: Grandmama (Jess), Wednesday (Caroline), thing (Cole), Gomez (Leron), Morticia (Shiri), Lurch (Jack) and Pugsley (Jacob)

In the spooky month of October 2019, the Fulton Fam got together to throw our first rager - an extravagant Addams family party. Thanks to the creative inspiration of the group, we were able to pull off some spooky vibes, including spider webs, grey hair, ridiculous mustaches, and more. 

Late 2018 marked the beginning of the Fulton house era- too many nights sitting around watching Fort Night, debating Zinc in double-blind tests, and hundreds more conversations that none of us can remember… We will never forget the eclectic energy Jess brought into the Fulton house. The large batches of pasta & pesto she cooked and the lotions & soaps she brewed up. Brew hahah. As the first alumnus of the Fulton house, Jess has since ventured out to #adult in her 2 bedroom apartment in Nob Hill.

Before Jess left us, we had one last BirthRight hoorah with Jacob’s new friends. There was a peculiar guy making brisket in our oven, and handing samples around like a Costco on a Saturday afternoon. Shiri infamously used her photoshop skills to crop the beloved Leron Gil into the house party he missed. Good times!

December 2018

How could we forget the numerous ski trips in 2019 with Jess? There were so many weekends bopping around down the slopes in Heavenly, Kirkwood and North Star. On this specific photographed trip, Jess and Caroline celebrated their birthdays with a weekend getaway to Northstar. Too much Secret Hitler was played. Things got wild. Other board games were forced upon us (lol). But looking back it was a great time hanging with friends, drinking champagne on the mountain and blasting some groovy tunes down the mountain.

Over the holidays, Chinese food is a tradition… a very delicious meal at Koi Palace! While living in Fulton, there was a 2 month hiatus where just Jess, Caroline and Jacob occupied the house. Some like to call that period of time “the cleanest time of Fulton”, others call bullshit. The three bonded over diverging political opinions, bitching about who never cleaned their dishes and doing korean face masks. 

2019

January 2019

Ringing in the New 2019 Year in San Francisco with a large group of our friends was quite the experience! Great to celebrate together together at the boom boom room with some live music (but also not great that the window got smashed 😂)

One of Jess’s many ascents at Mission Cliffs! Go Jess send it! 

 Only Jess and her gleaming charisma could rally coworkers to see a concert AND have work pay for our HH drinks (thanks for the sus hand-written receipt for expensing, @Madrone Art Bar). We saw her beloved Magic City Hippies at The Independent which was funky and upbeat Miami vibes all around. Also pictured are Mary and Georgine who are/soon working in New Zealand as well.

February 2019

Always remember the earplugs! Jess knows how to concert.

March 2019

Soccer moms go to Warby Parker. Epic picture and times of Jess with the Fulton boys.

April 2019

A new(ish) face joined the Holmes Fire SF team- finally Jess and Irene’s LDR was over! This was our first team building activity as a new group and with Jess in charge of course we ended up climbing!

Celebrating Eva’s Birthday with a fun rooftop HH at El Teco on a sunny spring day!

Jess, Eva and Irene order frozen pina coladas and take in the views before a Mission bar crawl of sorts, closing nice and early with burritos from El Farolito.

May 2019

Hanging out at the top of the SalesForce tower. Pro tip, bring a structural engineer for some great commentary.

Bay to Breakers with team eggs and team hippies (aka Jess’s typical aesthetic)!

Always discussing the most important topics at work- like water bottle sticker placement! #bigdecisions

July 2019

One of the best Holmes site visits ever!!

Jess and Eva drive up North for a wine country getaway they won a while back at a silent auction. En route they plow through La Croix cans, have a rad lunch in Sebastopol and dip their feet in the picturesque Russian River. Early evening, they taste and tour facilities at Moshin Vineyards in Forestville (shout outs to that delightfully dry pinot noir rosé) before stargazing (ft. skunk!) and cozying up in a cabin suite with the movie Sideways. The next day, they have a beautiful morning walk by the vineyards. By way of Jess’ parents, they land in Ronald McDonald’s home for a private tasting. Jess learns she loves fruit-forward wines!

September 2019

The second infamous backpacking trip! **GIRLS TRIP**!!!! The time we thought it’d be smart to not get camping food and cook kraft mac and cheese with no microwave. What it came out to be was a big bowl of cheese goop, with Ella, Anna, Olaf and unicorn characters drowned in there. A big SHOUTOUT to Marie for pulling through with the fancy face creams and sharing with the group, us talking about waxing *ahem* body parts and again, Leeza leading the charge with Foxy! At night, we laid out on the benches and stared up at the stars - the night was so clear! We couldn’t stop laughing over things I can no longer remember… except about discovering the world was indeed not flat. Once again, Caroline likely peed 20 times total, and was coughing and heaving (sorry for being sick!) 😅

Jess and Eva get weird in Portland! Where they sip rooftop beers, frolick in the Nike HQ ( a mass timber wonderland), meet Big Foot and Krampus, procure free passes to a saucy community event, dance to 80s music at a goth bar/visit crusty dive bars, have a prime strawberry cough (and beanie) experience @ Electric Lettuce, savor prime Bamboo sushi, and Jess gets a cute ass tragus piercing. Throughout the trip Jess wears a lot of black to Eva’s delight #moody #angsty. On their walks to the Portland office, Jess appreciates the changing fall leaves and residential neighborhoods, feeling reminded of home on the East Coast.

Just another amazing Jill Hike ;) 

October 2019

OK - San Francisco was filled with challenges… and Tough Mudder was one of them! Although we found out that at the end of the race - you would be electrocuted - we persisted. We - as a team - got through to the finish line. So proud of everyone for completing the race! Although Caroline was the only one who copped out of electric shock. The number of times we dunked into mud baths and climbed 10 ft walls… 

Jess’s favorite time of the year and a visit from Tariq! Jess and Eva decorated the whole office to look super ~spooky~ON ANOTHER LEVEL (featuring creepy clown photos, hella cobwebs and caution tape, bloody stickers, and of course fake plastic bugs) and organized a halloween bar crawl around North Beach (@ Maggie McGarrie’s and Tupelo)!

November 2019

A big fan of live music, Jess is a great Concert buddy. Always down to explore new music and venues! This was such a fun bonding night where we got greyhounds, beers, caught up on life and danced at Polo & Pan. So fun!

Proxima Parada at Milk Bar birthday concert where Jess got a shout-out from the band! ft. a blurry instagram story and classic typos. Prior, the whole squad turns up at Hobson’s Choice over punch bowls.

HP marathon or studying for PE? Well! let's master both!

December 2019

One of the best days in December was unexpected. It started out with a simple brunch plan but ended in a full day of activities!!  New spot on polk was where Jess and Maries’ friendship began and continued to blossom!

After having an amazing meal (great eggs benedict) and hours of catching up we decided to walk back to our houses together (since we are neighbors!!). Jess was excited to see Marie’s new couch (that was 50% off hehe) and decided to come over. Kap, Jess and Marie did a long (super difficult) puzzle (connected a few pieces) and watched netflix. We order Thai food (Kap ordered us cookies) and we relaxed all day. It was a special day where the three of us reminisced about San Francisco and all of our time here. It was a day no one wanted to end!!

Holmes Holiday Party- Jess’s favorite drink was the beet cocktail 😉

Cozy three course italian dinner with wine at 3pm! Best part of the afternoon was my hot date, Jess ;)

Jess and her neighborhood park (shoutout to nob hill, the real MVP) winning Shiri over with its views on views.

January 2019

On one of Jess’s final few Tahoe ski weekends, she SENT IT down a black diamond on her first weekend back of the season. Harrison found a great photo opp for Jess, Marie and Caroline against the Xtreme advanced only sign. The weekend was filled with playing Mafia, jamming to tunes down the slope, exploring Squaw valley, having some nice Apres Ski, and getting fed some good, slow-cooked food (haha!). 

[JESS, INSERT YOUR PHOTOS FROM THE LAST WEEKEND IN SF!!!] 

NOTES FROM YOUR BIFFLES TO SEND YOU OFF <3

Dear Jess, 

Thank you for entering into my life and being saggitarius soulmates. I love that we are on the same page about so many things - planning, me-time, boys (kinda), beards, skiing, tardiness, traveling, being avoidant, being wholesome and SO MUCH MORE. I’m so happy we bonded over the last couple years we’ve known each other. I miss all the times I would knock on your door and catch up while you marie kondo-d your entire closet. Thank you for pushing me in new and different ways which you may not have realized (like forcing me to vote) and inspiring me to do good with the environment (hehe). 

You are kind-hearted, loyal, so brave and bold and I’m so proud of you for going out on this adventure to New Zealand!! I will miss you lots in San Francisco and miss the ridiculous random shit we would laugh at during out ski trips or cooking or when we could catch up at home. Thank you for always listening whenever I felt like blabbing on and helping keep me grounded. So excited to visit New Zealand and can’t wait to explore! Plz don’t forget all the great memz we had in SF!!

Love you lots XOXO

Caroline 

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Jess!!! We have done it all together and now we can add New Zealand to that list too! I’m so glad that we got to overlap in SF and I had you here to show me to ropes. I can’t wait to follow your kiwi adventures and see all the fun things you do. 

Love you lots!! 

Xoxo 

Irene 

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JESSICA. My favorite small person to kiss on the head. I am so glad we could bond over our love of funky music and skiing. I’ll always be here to make sure you don’t look like an egg on the ski slopes and can’t wait to visit you and your Kiwi men soon. You are a sweet, funny, life of the party small person who’s going to find so much success and kiwi men in NZ. Love you so much, and may the yearly backpacking live on!

-Leez

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Dear Jess, You are such a sweet soul that is thoughtful and cares about everyone around you. I’m so thankful I had the opportunity to meet ya (ty shiri!!) and get to know you over the last year and a half. I always have so much fun on our walks, breakfast dates, or ski trips (and so much more). I’m so extremely happy for you to be following your dreams (and a lil sad that we won’t be neighbors anymore). I can’t wait to come visit ya and enjoy more adventures together! Love ya, Marie!! 

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Jess - I love seeing how far we’ve come since our truss-ty mechanics class, traveling across the country and seeking out all the best from life! Although your soul belongs in a hippy world, I know you will find your people and place no matter where you land (just keep being YOU). New Zealand is lucky to be getting the tiniest force around. You will certainly be missed, but know that I’m just a WhatsApp message (or a quick flight!) away :). Excited for the tiny tourist travels ahead <3

Love, Shiri

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Blonde Meets Brunette. Relatively Tall Meets Considerably Short. East Coast Meets West Coast. Engineering Major Meets Fine Arts Major. Happy Music Meets Sad Music. On paper we might come across as opposites, but internally and emotionally I am so grateful for the rich grey areas and nuances we’ve discovered that we contain. The odds were slim for us to cross paths in this big ol’ universe,and I’m so grateful we found each other to help tame and ground the ups and downs of being-in-your-twenties. You have been a guiding, real, and empowering force since Day 1, and you’ve taught me so much. I can’t wait to see all you accomplish in this new chapter and far beyond! ALL the love to the best work wife there ever was.

Eva Slusser

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Yo,

Glad we have been able to go on a bunch of snowy adventures. Look forward to visiting your weird kiwi fire life sometime and I'm sorry I always assumed you were the mafia.

-Dave

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Jess,

It was great getting to know you even if it was only for a short amount of time. Will always remember you bombing it down that double black diamond at squaw, the hike in Berkeley, and the constant disapproving looks sent my way.

GO PRO CAPTURE

- H

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Jess!! Thank you for being the kindest soul your are. I enjoyed every bits and pieces of our friendship from Stas' lab to smoke control class to getting to bond more here in SF.

Can't wait to follow the tiny tourist adventures through this new kiwi chapter. Auckland is lucky to have you!

Love you and see you soon!

Parisa

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This post serves as written confirmation that I have previously stated thank you and please and no longer require these societal norms to be restated. Once I see you in New Zealand, reside in your dwelling and depart back to San Francisco, I will not provide a thank you note. I expect the same from you. 

See you soon,

Leron

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Jess - We will miss you, but having a friend leave SF is easier when you know theres great adventures ahead for them. I’m excited for all your NZ adventures, and I would be lying if I said I wasn’t jealous. Keep us in the loop and I look forward to seeing you in the future.

-jacob

WIP’s & Main Characters; A List

It’s time I actually started functioning like an actual writeblr, folks! With this guide, y’all can (must, I mean. this is a demand and not a request) ask me questions, request info or short stories on certain WIPs or characters, and generally force me to put what's in my head on paper — er, screen.

Apex Tempest (Previously Perish & Prosper) 

My beloved main WIP, constructed from the corpses of about three or four other failed WIPs. This WIP is fantasy, but world-building heavy, partially founded on the idea that everything — and I mean everything — would be completely original. No borrowed gods, no monsters from real-world myths, and no Tolkien species; Apex's gods (entities) are vague and strange, it's monsters are grotesque, but elegant, and in later books that will take place in the same world, will feature a cast of original fantasy species. Apex Tempest's plot follows the story of the climax of two entities' eternal battle through their disciples — pseudo-demigods, for the folks at home — and how their plans are foiled by a deal, a rogue destiny, and gay rights.

Spirit In The Woods, or, El’ai is our intrepid main character. They are a special flavor of crouching moron, hidden badass. From being raised by skeleton smoke ghosts in the half-dead forest island of Akther, they have little to no social skills they can use when they head to the mainland (they’re also just naturally a bit oblivious). At the same time, El’ai is not only an incredibly good fighter but has a bold heart of gold; they do good for the sake of doing good, and while it may not seem too important, this sets them apart throughout the book as the one to move the plot along. 

Velvera is both our villain and love interest; surpassing enemies-to-lovers to the coveted, strange, and confusing grey area of enemies-AND-lovers. I could write a three-page essay on her character; she’s a bit complicated, so I'll be fleshing out her personality and relationship with El’ai through chapter tidbits and short stories. In short, she’s a dissociated biologist who is so dissociated that she literally agreed to end the world in exchange for the ability to manipulate cells — an ability which she almost only uses to study biology, like the big disaster nerd she is. 

Mauve City

2nd to main WIP right here, probably. Follows the story of Sodapop Bonegreive, affectionately nicknamed ‘Bone’; an 18-year-old boy looking to become an animator. However, his plans are thrown off the rails when his uncle‘s business goes completely downhill, leaving their little family with not very much to live off. Bone turns to the internet for job opportunities and acquaints Morgan, who guarantees him that he can earn enough money to fund both his family and college funds in just a single year. Bone accepts, and before he can pack his bags, finds none other than Morgan lounging on his windowsill the next day. What follows is a trip to Mauve City; a rust-belt city that both became prosperous and disappeared from the worlds’ memory in a matter of years, and Bone’s transformation from art student to mobster on the streets of the city with no rules. 

Bone is the main character, and of all my characters of any WIP, the most beloved thus far. I legitimately have no clue why, of all my characters, Bone has garnered the most affection over the past few years amongst my friends. At his core, he is awkward, unsure of himself, but generally well-meaning, but the circumstances he is put under force him to develop a new persona; sly, debonair, cold, and professional, but with wit and mischief to go around. 

Morgan is morgan. oh boy

Lucile is always at Morgan’s right hand; they were once in a relationship, but not anymore, though Lucile still sticks by him. She is grim, quiet, beautiful, but in a melancholy way, like a stone angel. She has a bigger part to play in the second book that is only hinted at, but here, she is a friend to Bone and something of a behind the scenes player. 

Below are my 2nd-Tier WIPs; they are far less active or developed than the ones above. 

Wind Up, Dollface, and Ickster

These are my oldest standing WIPs with, surprisingly, the least amount of details character-wise; Wind up and Dollface are two sister books that have events that occur at the same time, while Ickster is the two’s prequel. They can be read in any order. In Ickster, magic is discovered and thus known as ‘Ick’; the sentient plasma with strange qualities that is theorized to make up souls. This force can be used in many different ways, and thus, as It Do(TM), the government creates a branch of the military known as the Icksters, dedicated to using the new force as a weapon to fight in an upcoming war. Ick becomes the worlds’ most coveted technology, and the Icksters, whose masks and cowls were originally designed to hide their identities, become celebrities, and their masks and cowls individualized and made unique to give them special identities. One thing leads to another, bing bang boom, Ick-based armageddon and fallout time! Many years in the future, we find ourselves in our two sister books; in Wind Up, our main character is made of metal and glass and goes on a quest to discover her creators, and in Dollface, our main character is made of cloth and stuffing and goes on a quest to overthrow their creators. Why? How? I guess you’ll have to read it, bucko!

Ickster never got any solid main characters; I wasn’t even going to write ut as a book. It was originally just going to be the backstory discovered in the sister books until I realized that it was rad.

Dollface’s main character is Tink, who I am renaming sometime; a human-sized wind-up doll with amnesia and a missing dad. They go on a search to find said dad and end up uncovering ancient mysteries and wracking up a band of companions along the way. 

Dollface’s main character is unnamed as of yet, but basically, they’re a life-sized ragdoll who goes about freeing his people.

The Adventures of Deadhead, & How Charlotte Saw Red (ADHCSR)

We’re now getting into the Megaspace (will explain... sometime.) Earth books; this, The New Inferno, and Fairy Floss all take place in the same world. The setting is urban fantasy, and while there are quite a few sci-fi esc crazy metropolises in this world, our story takes place in mediocre not-big-enough-to-be-a-proper-city, but-too-urban-to-really-be-called-a-town Slatesburgh, and surrounding suburbs. We follow the story of Charlotte, daughter of a disaster of a witch, and her best friend; Deadhead, the living corpse her mother put together, because why not? They start a band with rotating other members and slowly make a name for themselves, playing against bands of satyrs, vampires, and more, all whilst trying to keep a considerable distance from Charlotte’s unwelcome admirer, Sweetheart. Meanwhile, local mistreated lad makes a deal with an evil warlock trapped in the body of a raven for power so that he can fix the mess that the adults of this godforsaken town created, and it’s up to Charlotte and the band to make sure he doesn’t create a regime in the process (because again, the adults of this place are useless). 

Charlotte fucking rocks. She’s quiet and straight-faced to create a no-nonsense image but is a purveyor of nonsense herself -- being one of the most responsible people in the book, whilst also having a solid philosophy of doing the first thing that comes to her head, which tends to be either a blessing due to having great ideas, or a curse due to magically-backed anger issues. She’s another character you gotta read to know, but what is for certain, is that her design is rad. 

Deadhead is a lovable wreck that moves the plot along by virtue of being kidnapped every 2 chapters -- no one knows how or why Charlotte’s mom made them, and since no one wants to deal with Charlotte’s mom, they tend to just snatch them up. They’re the type of person to take the cigarette out of your mouth and eat it when they pass by you.  

Ochre is the villain/main character of the semi-political subplot. After being kicked out of his house by his guardians and almost dying of hypothermia -- something the magic counsel was supposed to prevent -- Asmodeus, a warlock, comes to offer him a deal. Asmodeus is a warlock; once incredibly powerful and considerably evil, but after the crusade against warlocks, was turned into a bird like all the other warlocks. Asmodeus can’t use his power himself, but had figured out how to seep his magic into another being; and, stumbling upon this emotionally manipulatable teen, decides to take him under his literal wing. 

Welcome to Summersbook; the Quadrilogy

Though these four books are Megaspace books, they do not take place on the same earth as the others. But it’s still earth. I’ll explain later. These are all semi-realistic fiction; while they definitely could happen in the real world, there will be more than a few times where you will need to suspend your disbelief. They follow the stories of the Senior, Junior, Sophomore, and Freshmen classes of Summersbrook Highschool and their various hijinks, each with its own tone; the Senior book follows Gamboge, a wise and intelligent kid that speaks, dresses, and acts like a stereotypical ‘hick’ and is treated as such until other kids of his grade stumble upon him for wisdom, comfort, and good dialogue -- all until the end, where the people Gamboge helped band together to help him back. It’s focused on provoking thought and is centered around dialogue and character relationships rather than action. The Junior class follows Lucky Bird of the Bird family and her plucky, painstakingly nicknamed compatriots as they try to improve the quality of their town and the lives of their friends. This book is filled with hijinks and mischief, and while there are a good few emotional moments, it’s mostly a feel-good adventure between best friends. The Sophomore class is my favorite; Summerbrooks’ in-famed Cannibal Class is filled with a colorful array of inexplicable geniuses with too much time on their hands. This would be far from an issue, if not for one moment; when Wulver Bathgate asks his compatriots how they’d go about making a quick buck. What follows is a capitalist drama, taking up the mantle of ‘comedy’ only because of the whiplash that follows going between “there’s a communist coup d'é tat” and “in room 101 with the drama kids” in the same sentence. The freshmen class’s story isn’t quite decided yet.

Gamboge is, as previously stated, the stereotype of a hick at first glance. He’s almost as pale as he is pink with sunburn at any given moment in time, wears torn jorts, rarely a shirt, and some variety of a loppy-brimmed hat. Every day after school, he sits in the same patch of grass and moss under the same tree, and every day, more and more new faces show up for his rumored good advice. Though he does dispense some good words of wisdom throughout the book, he struggles to get through to himself

Fletcher Blue is someone who you get to know through bits and pieces of dialogue throughout the Senior book. 

Lucky Bird suffers big-family-with-cool-siblings syndrome; each of her siblings had a claim to fame, whilst Lucky, well, didn’t -- all except Lucky’s famed luck. Lucky begins her quest to improve her dingy town out of a need to validate herself but quickly finds herself with different reasons along the way.

The Sophomore Class’s characters are yet to be solid.

Fairy Floss

Dr. Bealiamonte, local space mutant scientist, created 6 super-artificial intelligences designed to watch over the world known as the Noble Intelligences; Helium, Neon, Argon, Krypton, Xenon, and Radon. What followed was an unprecedented period of peace and prosperity -- but, that period came to a screeching halt. The intelligences had been given bits of human emotion and empathy, but not too much. They were also given the ability to criticize themselves, leading to their eventual discomfort with the fact that they didn’t entirely understand their subjects, the humans, even if they ruled well anyways. Thus, the Nobles created the second generation of super-intelligences, effectively built with the emotional capabilities of a human and the computing capabilities of a supercomputer. These were known as the Halogens; they almost immediately became unstable and began wreaking havoc. In response, The Odd Fellows, a secret society bent on the protection of the world, sends out operatives to stop the raging robot-gods, with Fairy Floss amongst their ranks. Both sci-fi and fantasy, because hell yeah. 

Fairy Floss has the most beloved design of all my characters, in my humble opinion, though I accidentally made her look like a Black Panther; beret, small circular sunglasses, a pastel pink shawl, tall black boots, and braid-bun. Still working on the personality, but her first language is Esperanto. 

The New Inferno 

The New Inferno follows Dante, our local debt-swamped fresh college graduate, with nowhere to live except the particularly stereotypical haunted-house esc victorian home passed down to him by his eccentric rich grandfather. Dante is almost-but-not-really surprised that this house isn’t actually as abandoned as it seems; it houses a variety of ghosts that Dante’s grandfather had collected over the years. These ghosts reveal that Dante’s bloodline, which is able to be traced back all the way to the Dante, Dante mother-trucking-Alighieri, Durante-di-gott-damn-Alighiero-degli-trucking-Alighieri, has the unique ability to interact with those from the afterlife and its associated creatures. From this fact, his ghost compatriots suggest a way out of Dante’s financial issues; ghosts are actually quite plentiful, all stuck in the mortal world after leaving some sort of business unfinished. This is not-so-pleasing to demons and angels, as they are the ones who manage the afterlife, and having a soul out of place is like having an itch un-scratched or a box-unchecked; after all, mortals aren’t the only ones who can’t rest until things are finished. Thus, when Dante assists a ghost in completing their business and thus sending them wherever they need to be, he often gets a reward from the angels or demons that receive them -- usually via finding 50 bucks in the street or winning a lottery he never entered. But, things start getting hectic when those angels and demons begin requesting more and more -- and, before he knows it, there’s a demon on his futon and what looks to be a flaming mass of golden rings, eyes, and wings in his kitchen. Will our coffee-fueled protagonist make his way out of the forest dark? Who knows! Dante sure doesn’t. 

As my newest WIP, Dante is also very fresh and not too developed. Upon ask, I will actually start writing a solid personality. I’m not entirely sure on what hour of writing this I’m on, so I’m gonna leave this at that.

More? More! Marisol’s (Dr. Marisol Gutiérrez) character is developing even as I write: it seems she was a researcher involved with The Company (Jamf Research? IDK yet) that developed Julian but she was only involved in earlier iterations of the project. After a crisis of conscience, she got out (a story in and of itself) and got involved with Jack, Ryan, Phillip, and the rest. Phillip (Dr. Phillip Yeoun) was never involved in the project, but found himself involved in the “resistance” side of things through Jack--details still evolving. Anyway:

This is kind of long and a bit of a mess but it follows these events and sets things up for later. Julian is still under observation in his quarantine cell. Marisol has been monitoring him for most of the night (via camera feed) in the hopes that he’ll start showing signs of memory recovery. (Also, I think Phillip and Marisol are work-spouses, so that’s rad.)

Phillip pushed open the office door bearing aloft a cardboard tray in which stood two coffee cups. “Doctor.”

Marisol leaned back from the desk and computer monitor and rubbed her eyes. “Ah. Doctor.”

Stupid routines and inside jokes are sometimes the only way to get along without screaming.

Phillip set Marisol’s cup next to her keyboard, picked up his own from the tray and took a sip. Hot. “What’s the news this morning?”

“He’s taken his shoes off.”

“Okay...” He sipped.

“You probably weren’t at the house enough to see it, but he stayed barefoot around there a lot. I never quite figured out if it was conditioning or preference.”

“But he’s taken his shoes off now, so--”

“Don’t get your hopes up, but he could have some memory recovery, if being barefoot is his preference. Or he may think he’s off his mission, so he may have gone back into kind of a holding pattern. It’s too soon to tell.”

“Is he sleeping at all?” Phillip asked over the rim of his cup.

“If he is, it’s only ten or fifteen minutes at a time and he’s sitting up for it.”

Phillip dropped into the chair next to her and they both studied the gray, green, grainy feed coming up from the quarantine rooms below. Julian was still, sitting in half-lotus (barefoot) with his back against the far wall. Then, movement: he rolled his head on his neck, ducked his face to his chest, and yawned.

Phillip sat back with a sigh. “Even comatose patients yawn.”

“Yes, thank you, doctor.”

“You’re welcome, doctor.” And Phillip saluted her with his cup.

They were quiet for a time, both looking at the camera feed, waiting for some sign that might or might not come. Julian was still. Phillip spoke at last:

“Are you sleeping at all?”

“I survived my internship. So this? This is nothing.”

“No, I mean it. You know more about the project--”

“--I know.”

“We need what you know,” Phillip said, “but we also need you healthy.”

“I’ll be fine.” She waved him off.

“Marisol,” and Phillip’s voice was grave, “is this some kind of penance?”

Marisol turned back to the screen and spoke almost brightly, almost cheerful, “I broke the oath, Phillip. ‘First, do no harm.’ And I hurt him. Because I did the research that kept the project going until it was used on him. He survived when so few others did because of my research to get the right sequences and viruses. I hurt him, Phillip. So if it isn’t penance, it’s at least an apology.”

Phillip said nothing at first. And they were quiet, side by side, for a time.

“Have you talked to Ryan about this at all?”

She shrugged. “Back when Ryan was in with them, it was all military research contracts. They were looking ways to take any kind of volunteer and make them into high-alert special-ops types. They were trying to build an army, not...breed one.”

And they both looked at Julian’s small shape on the screen, crouched on the floor, in his quarantine room.

“It’s the memory issues that really give me pause. It’s so global. When I was involved, it wasn’t at all this sort of--”

“Meatball surgery?” Phillip suggested, sipping at his coffee again.

Marisol snorted, “Meatball surgery.”

Phillip counted that near-laugh as a success.

“They can do detailed memory alteration,” she went on. “They’ve been able to do that for years. It’s to the point that they can spark or deaden individual neurons. After all, they did it on me. They snipped out what they wanted and left the rest intact--with no reversal.”

She stared into the monitor, chin in hand.

“No reversal that you know of,” Phillip said.

She didn’t answer but still turned toward him and leaned on the arm of the chair. “Why not perform the alterations on his memory before the genetic enhancements? Create the scar-tissue before implementing the accelerated healing. They’ve all but set themselves up for failure, having to go back and block his memory all over again every few months. No sooner have they set up the amnesia, but he’s starting to recover from it. Is it a control tactic--to make him dependent on them? It is to keep him disoriented? Is there a memory boost from the enhancements they didn’t want to lose? I’m still trying to figure it out.”

Listening, sure, but Phillip leaned forward towards the screen.

Julian was up off the floor. Dusty, dried-mud footprints followed him from the corner to the sink. And Julian himself was standing, leaning over the sink. Distantly came the tinny sound of splashing water over the computer speakers.

“What’s he doing?” Phillip asked, still staring.

“He’s washing his face…” Marisol said, trailing off, trying not to let too much hope color her voice.

“Can we get Ryan on the phone? I want the boyfriend down there.”

“Call him. They’re both at Jack’s apartment right now.”

But even as Phillip was jumping up, leaving his chair spinning, he stopped at the doorway and spoke over his shoulder: “Marisol, how many more kids like him do you think there are still?”

A faint vision: white rooms and perfect lighting; endless tanks of frozen embryos; the cold stir of clouds of liquid nitrogen; needles finer than a human hair; artificial wombs and clumps, clusters, spines, hearts growing therein; fetal heartbeats in glass chambers; the human zoo; synthetic amniotic fluid that smelled faintly of maple syrup; jokes flipping between the Nobel and condemnation; pieces of small, translucent bodies but not the whole; life support for prenatal infants; steady streams of response testing and in-utero (“in-utero”) tests; cell cultures; the failures; the “births”; the newborn children. Meatball.

It was easy to trace the progression forward, branching out towards the behaviorists, the early developmental encouragement, the Skinner Boxes and dime-store Pavlovian conditioning, the new plan for foster parents, the obligate activities for the children, the expectations and the results, forward even unto this ever moment. But where was the root? Following back all the umbilical cords, placenta to cord to navel, placenta to cord to navel, in that bloodied tree, who was first? Who was the Zero? Who was the Firstborn? And now, who held the leash? What word had started the cascade and whose voice had sounded it?

“I don’t know. And sometimes I wonder if that’s what they had me forget.”

“Hey, Avery! Get your stuff--we’re going to see your boyfriend!”

His face was different: not the hard, sharp mask he’d been wearing at first, but softer now and faintly dazed. Even his eyes were roving more slowly around the small room (cell?), drifting and studying the ceilings, the patterns of lights, the doctors or nurses or researchers who passed by, the movement of the curtain in a thin stream of air, thoughts behind his eyes, sniffing the air.

And Avery smiled seeing him looking around the room, all moving lines instead of spiky planes and hidden teeth like he’d been before. Good. He sat down in front of the glass again and Ryan kept just aside, ready to move, ready to guard once again.

Julian came pacing over, slower this time than before, not a strike, just curiosity--again, so catlike in this half-crouch, curious. And he sat in front of the glass and yawned again.

Avery, slowly, hesitantly, laid his hand flat against the glass again. “Do you still recognize me?”

Julian mirrored him, setting his hand, palm to palm, though still divided, against Avery’s. He nodded, once.

“Do you--do you remember how we met?”

This time he shook his head, once: no.

“But you still recognize me.”

A nod. And he yawned again.

“Well, I guess it’s a start.” And Avery did his best to smile.

Julian didn’t (didn’t or couldn’t, Ryan wondered) return the smile. But he leaned forward, resting his face against the glass, resting his face against the glass as though he were lying against Avery’s shoulder. And he stayed very still for a time.

His eyes opened as Ryan passed behind Avery and his eyes followed him as he went to the electronic lock that kept the glass between them. Julian closed his eyes again. And Ryan reached for the silver keypad.

A voice popped from the intercom speaker near the keypad. “Don’t do that, Ryan.”

“Hey Phillip?” Ryan called into the air, “Trust me that I know what I’m doing here.”

Seven keys, a series of clicks and sounds, a tinny warning, another code, another warning, and then, a rush of air as the glass panel slid away from between them.

Julian tumbled forward into Avery’s arms--skinny, dirty, barefoot Julian slumped against Avery, one hand thrown over his shoulder.

A woman came running from somewhere back in the soft corridors near the elevator. She carried a pale blue blanket and knelt down beside Avery and Julian. “Is he all right?”

“He’s asleep,” Ryan answered.

“Finally.” She draped the blanket over Julian’s shoulders and checked his pulse from the hand hanging loose on the floor. She whispered, “I’m Doctor Gutiérrez. I’ve been monitoring him since he was brought in.”

Julian settled a little deeper against Avery’s chest. He smelled of dirt; his breathing was slow. Avery was looking down at his face and said nothing but his eyes were bright and wet.

She set one hand on Avery’s shoulder. “Can you pick him up?”

“Yeah,” Avery said, wiping his eyes, “Easy.”

Blanket and all, he scooped Julian into his arms--he weighed nothing, or next to nothing. Never tall or broad-shouldered, always on the skinnier side of the politeness of “thin,” Julian seemed thinner and smaller than Avery remembered. But he was asleep, with one hand hooked into the front of Avery’s shirt, and that was all right. Following Ryan, who motioned him along, Avery started with his burden back to the elevator.

Dr. Gutiérrez, Marisol, slipped back into the glass room and, with a glove on her hand, picked up Julian’s boots; sealed and locked, she left the room for more testing later--the blood, the dirt, the air itself, anything.

She caught up to them, a peculiar trio, in the elevator, waiting for her.

Slowly, they started to rise up to the surface again.

Avery looked over at Julian’s boots hanging from Marisol’s hand. She looked at him, looked at the boots, then back at him and she smiled faintly. No fool, this boy. Good.

“We have reason to believe he’s been dosed with stimulants, and possibly other drugs,” she said. “And we want to identify them. There should be traces in the sweat in his shoes.”

Avery smiled, more to himself than anyone, and nodded. But, slowly and quietly, his brows drew down and his smile tightened itself towards tears again.

Ryan rubbed his back. “Big relief, right?”

“Yeah.”

Marisol was looking up at the rising numbers on the elevator screen. Still, she spoke: “His recovery is going to take time. But this is a good first step.”

Three nurses were waiting around a wheeled bed when the elevator doors opened on the back side of the elevator. Avery turned to find sunlight--real and true sunlight--pouring in from a row of skylights. No, this wasn’t the lobby floor with its rows of glass offices; this was still one floor below that, at least, but there was more light and more air here. The walls were white, sure, but they didn’t have the kind of institutional darkness Avery had expected. It was more like, and he had to smile a little at the comparison when it hit him so instantly, walking into the hallway of a brand new school.

With the nurses leading him along, he laid Julian out on the bed and draped the blanket over him. “I’m going with him. Just so we’re clear.”

“Absolutely,” Marisol said and led the way down the hall to another room--bigger than the cell downstairs, but not exactly palatial. And it still had one glass wall, but okay, fine. On the other hand, it had a skylight.

One of the nurses set up an IV in Julian’s arm. Julian only barely stirred and tried to roll a little away.

Avery smoothed Julian’s hair back from his forehead. “Geeze, you’re so out of it,” he said and tried to smile.

Marisol was busy with the nurses, busy sending something on her phone, busy checking Julian’s pulse or heart or lungs. The nurses came and went, bringing in trays or carts of things, staying alongside for a while, then changing over and someone new came in. Low chatter, soft footsteps. And Avery just crouched by the bed, holding Julian’s hand and looking at his face.

He looked almost--almost--like himself asleep like this. Almost.

“All right,” Marisol said, pulling on a fresh pair of gloves. “Phillip’s on his way; let’s see how he’s healing. If he’s healing.” And Marisol and one of the nurses were suddenly both brandishing scissors.

As they cut away the torn black uniform, Avery rubbed at his face. “Please tell me you’re wearing underwear, dude.”

Marisol stopped cutting for a moment. “Well, if he isn’t, it won’t be anything you or I haven’t seen before.”

And Avery blushed.

He was quiet, though, and patient, staying nearby. And trying not to get underfoot. He held Julian’s hand and smoothed his thumb over Julian’s fingers and Marisol dabbed at the dozens of scratches, scrapes, cuts that seemed to litter, to crosshatch Julian’s body--even his palms (and Avery had to surrender Julian’s hand long enough to suit Marisol), his left temple, across his cheek and nose, his lower lip. And wherever there was a scrape, there seemed to likewise be a bruise.

But, slowly, the worst of the cuts and gashes were disappearing under gauze and bandages. And the bruises were covered by electrodes on his chest, wires. And the rest of him was softened with a little soap and water, to get the worst of the grime off his face and hands and away from the cuts and scrapes, then covered with a pale blue gown (with some tiny repetitive flower-petal print all over it and snaps at the shoulders). No giant tubes running in and out of him (yet), and for that Avery was grateful.

Marisol, content at last, stripped off her gloves. “Well. Nothing worth putting a stitch in.” Though maybe there had been a few days ago. Still, she looked at Avery. “That’s good. He’s healing. We’ll help him clean up more when he’s really awake again.”

Avery nodded and held back his question: What happened to him? Not now, he decided, but soon. He’d ask it. No more obscurity from these fuckers.

“Doctor Yeoun is on his way.” And she looked at Avery crouching there on the floor. “You can pull a chair over if you want.”

Avery met her eyes, steady. “I don’t want to let go of his hand.”

And Marisol had to smile.

Avery was dozing, leaning over onto Julian’s bed (and sitting on a chair Marisol had brought over to him), their hands still together, when the sound of the glass door sliding aside woke him and he sat up. A man, young, but definitely a doctor, came in.

Avery rubbed his eyes. “Are you Dr. Yeoun?”

“I am,” and he smiled. “Call me Phillip, though. I’m not quite as formal as my colleague.”

“Sure.” Avery sniffed, waking up.

A nurse came in just behind him, carrying a steel tray. He set it a little aside of Julian’s bed; even from his seat, Avery could see the syringe, the gauze, and the scalpel.

“What’s that for?” he asked, flat, grave.

“Can you stay and help me with this?” Phillip was asking the nurse. “Thank you.”

“Hey, Dr. Phil: what’s the knife for?”

And Phillip closed his eyes; the nickname would haunt him forever (whether he ought to blame his parents or Oprah…). But it only took him a moment. He pulled over a second chair and sat down across Julian’s bed and his covered legs (lumpy blanket mountains).

“So how much do you know already?”

“I know it’s not the bullshit witness protection story I heard. And I know my mom got dragged into it.” His voice rose near to cracking again.

“And you got dragged into it.”

Avery nodded.

“And Julian got dragged back into it.”

Avery nodded again.

Phillip laced his fingers together, let his hands hang down between his knees. “We’re dealing with some dangerous people. And they’re going to want Julian back, bad.”

Avery turned away, squeezing his eyes shut. “Yeah.” He dropped his face in his hand.

Phillip reached out across the bed between them, across Julian asleep between them, and set his hand on Avery’s (Avery’s hand still holding to Julian’s hand).

They were quiet a moment; only the machinery surrounding and monitoring Julian hummed and chirped, rhythmically.

Avery, his voice straining, spoke in a rush from behind his hand. “They already took him twice. Like--the first time it was bad enough because he just fucking vanished all of a sudden and he’s gone for months, and then his dad turns up and starts talking to me about him and wants me to bring him back and that’s already fucking weird but then they bring my mom into it and start saying she’ll lose her job or might get hurt--but maybe I can see him again if I do what they say, so it’s lose-lose and win-win at the same time--and I did get to see him, but just because they used me as bait and that time I actually saw what they do to him, like, when they gagged him and tied him up and threw him in the van? And that’s, like--that doesn’t even explain half of the bruises he’s got or why he doesn’t remember for shit or why he keeps looking like he maybe wants to kill everyone he fucking looks at.” And he broke at last, sobbing into his hand, loud, choking.

The nurse brought tissues and crouched beside him, rubbing one hand along Avery’s shoulder. Phillip kept his hold on Avery’s hand. They let him cry as he needed to, the choked sobs quieting at last, leaving Avery sniffling and wet; the nurse handed him a tissue and stayed crouched beside him.

“Will you be okay if we keep talking?” Phillip asked.

“Yeah, probably.” He shook his head to clear it.

“I’ll stop if you need me to, but I want you to know the truth as far as I can tell it.” (Avery nodded.) “Because they want him back, they’ll do what they have to to keep from losing him in the first place.”

“What, like giving him amnesia so he doesn’t remember--” he stopped short: the people who love him?

“That’s part of it. The last time he was with us, he had embedded telemetry in his body.”

Avery cocked his head, blinking, frowning. “Tracking devices.”

“Exactly. So--”

“You have to take them out to keep him,” and Avery paused, “hidden.”

And Phillip nodded, squeezing Avery’s hand one last time. “You got it. Now I can let you stay while we do this. It’s a little bloody, but hopefully the chip is in about the same place as before. One thing about these people is they’re pretty organized.”

“Yeah, I’ll stay.” And he managed a wry smile. “Please tell me the chip is somewhere embarrassing like in his ass so I can tease him about it later.”

Phillip stood up, trying not to smile. “I hate to break it to you, but it was in the back of his neck last time.”

“Damn.”

“Hey, Doctor Yeoun? I think he’s awake.”

One dark eye, shining in the blue glow under the surgical cloths that covered most of Julian’s head and shoulders, turned, roamed, and finally focused on Avery’s face.

“Well, we’re almost done back here. Any pain, Julian?”

Julian made no move and no sound.

“Hey,” Avery said under the cloth, “You doing okay? Don’t nod, just, I don’t know, blink.”

Julian blinked. Avery smiled.

“Yeah, he’s okay.”

But that stillness--nothing moved but his eyes (eye; the other was hidden under the folds of cloth). Even his breathing seemed small and slow, as though he were holding himself inordinately still. And that one eye: empty of purpose, focused only on Avery, waiting for something--to start, to end. An almost unearthly stillness. Avery reached under the cloths to hold Julian’s hand again.

“You can go back to sleep if you want, if you’re still tired. I’ll stick around here as long as they’ll let me.”

Julian blinked again, then again but slower. And, slowly and slowly, his eyes closed and, perhaps, he slept. From over his shoulder:

Phillip: All right, I think I’m pretty happy with that. Michael, let me hold onto the--yeah, perfect. I think we ought to take a look at this thing before we do anything else.

(The sound of surgical tools being laid back into the tray. The cloths are lifted and rolled away. Julian is rolled back onto his back, which covers the gauze pad taped to the back of his neck which covers the tiny line of sutures which covers the cut that had to be made to draw out the tiny sliver that was the tracking chip. Michael left, then Phillip left, bearing with him the chip in the bottom of a plastic cup. And Avery and Julian were alone again for a little while.)

Phillip caught up to Marisol in the hallway. He tipped the cup towards her to show her the bloodied chip. “Same as before, but a little deeper this time.”

Marisol set her mouth and nodded. “Well, that’s one thing solved. I said in the elevator that this was a good first step,” she paused, “but I have to wonder if this isn’t just a crash after the stimulants have worn off. He may seem better, but--”

“He may not actually be any better.” And Phillip nodded. “Yeah. This is new territory. We saw him so much later in his recovery process before.”

“He’s responding differently, though. I’d almost call it positively.”

“Well, maybe Avery can set a dopamine bomb off on him.”

“I’m determined to start an EEG recording on him--the sooner the better. But I’m not going to set it up with the boyfriend there. He’s about to lose it as it is. You should’ve seen him--”

“I did see him. He saw them take him back. He saw everything.”

“Is he still in there?”

“You’re going to have to get security to drag him out.”

Marisol shrugged. “We’ll send Ryan.”

Prelude xvi

...for the better {masterlist}

I’ve been busy, but I’m super excited for you all to rad this chapter c: There’s going to be a lot of, hopefully, good and surprising things for you to enjoy! It’s a bit different in perspective, but was still fun to write. I would really love to hear from you guys, if you have time, but I hope you will enjoy all the same. Thank you for reading!

warning: intended violence.

The feeling of the Supremacy’s chilly air were only felt on her cheekbones, her knuckles and ankles, yet she didn’t seem to mind it as much while every other inch of her body was still concealed with the numerous layers of thick cloth. Following the red armored Praetorian Guards swiftly, the upper tilt of her head as she walked with her own self confidence that wasn’t always found in many individuals aboard the ship. Her boots skid a few times on the marbled floor, in attempt to keep up with them, all while taking in their silent thoughts as near empty of a cleaned holochip.

Her curiosity of their thoughts and emotions were visible, yet she didn’t voice it or tried to pry deeper once they made it to the door. The hissing noise and whirrs of the mechanics working smoothly to present the throne room was true to its beholder, being escorted in by the two who marched forward, perfectly in synch with one another, as trained. Looking ahead, she could see the colossal creature sitting in his throne and garb, as if he never went to sleep. To her, she figured he never did, imagining him sitting there, pondering and planning…

Once the two Praetorian Guards came to the end of the aisle, they separated and joined their comrades behind the throne. Standing at the very edge of the walkway, she slowed to a halt and and looked up to meet his sharp gaze. Expressionless. Unreadable to the point of a haze flowers throughout the room, yet nowhere intending to break the connection of Master and his apprentice. Nothing but merely staring at each other in silence.

Taking a deep breath through his nose, Supreme Leader Snoke eased back to his seat, eyeing her attire completely and severing the gaze for her to blink once.

“Nova,” Snoke spoke, his voice starting out gruff, until, slowly, a grin spread on his shriveled mouth. “My child.”

“Snoke,” Nova responded, as her usual self at his presence.

“Tell me,” the Supreme Leader went on casually, “of what you thought of Starkiller Base. Tell me from your point of view.”

Nova’s eyes looked up above his throne, her lips twitch in what appeared to be a sort of thoughtless search of words that came up with no feeling. “It was always cold,” she began. “It snowed a lot, and I was inside for the most part; the stormtroopers and officers were fairly strong, but there were things they didn’t know. They took the lessons well, and often praised me quite honestly of helping them improve.”

“Did you enjoy Starkiller Base?”

Her eyes snapping back to meet his stare, Nova blinked slowly once more. “I appreciated the people who were patient with me, and the experience of the planet’s weather. However, it was only the surface of the Starkiller Base that I enjoyed...nothing underneath the snow and concrete were anything but appealing.”

“You don’t say, my sweet Nova,” Snoke responded, his smile twitch at one corner of his mouth. “Tell me why you say so, little one.”

She didn’t hesitate. “When the poison caused me to hallucinate, I felt everything that has been built into the mines. What the purpose of the Kyber crystals are for, and all they know is just what they’re being used for. Nothing but terror, violence, death and sadness - it reminded me too much of Bavva III.”

Her expression suddenly coming to the surface, a defined frown settled on her lips and her eyes narrowed to an unamused scowl. “Frankly, I didn’t see anything successful coming from what you aim to achieve for the galaxy with the Starkiller Base, Snoke.”

Snoke’s lips twitched once more, faltering in their false friendliness for a few short seconds. Nova tilt her chin up a little bit more, her body relaxed. “I can see it now. Starkiller Base will not work the way you wish.”

“Of the time I’ve taken you under my guidance, you’ve gained so much knowledge of the Force,” Snoke complimented through his teeth, standing up in his throne. “However, you forget who is the Master and who is the apprentice. There is still much for you to learn, to understand, in that empty little head of yours.”

“Wouldn’t it be the same for you? A Master can only succeed in mastering one thing at a time, and continue on to learn throughout,” she mentioned. “This goes for the whole definition of Master; whether you’re teaching a student, obtaining knowledge to become something greater...or even owning people’s lives over their heads like livestock.”

It was then that Nova’s eyes sparked with amusement, and a playful smile emerged on her face with her hands clasped together in front as she expressed her honest curiosity. “I often wonder, how much do you wish to know and have power over, for someone who claims to Supreme Leader. Exactly, what is so supreme of you that allows you to lead?”

Snoke snapped, striking his hand across the air to send an electric wave directed towards her. Nova, unmoving, took a calm breath as the electricity dispersed before it made a foot close to her, causing the humanoid to shout for the Elite Praetorian Guards to take a stance, surrounding the two, armed and ready. Nova’s gaze didn’t leave Snoke as he growled with stress and irritation, shouting at the red armored beings to strike, watching them activate their weapons and take one single step towards the woman -

Only for all eight of them to freeze, rigid and strained painfully with their own bodies.

Icy blue, hollowed eyes widened with shock as Snoke watched each of his Elites struggle with their own bodies, all while Nova stood in her spot, unmoving. Reacting quickly, Snoke outstretched a single limb in attempt to get a hold of the ill-looking woman only for any sort of action to remain impossible at Nova took a single step forward with a natural grace towards him.

“You remember, Snoke, that I do not like it when people try to harm me - more so try to kill me out of spite or bad temper,” Nova said to him. “Your guards, although Elites and ones familiar with the Force, were under my tutelage, by your request. Spending time with them for so long, it’s not difficult to hold them back from getting them killed by your choice.”

Before Snoke could retort, Nova offered him a soft smile. “As you have told me, Snoke, that the Force is what’s keeping me alive and powerful, and that I would become stronger with time.”

Lowering his hand, Snoke tense shoulders slowly ceased their stiffness and he carefully sat down once more upon his throne. Long fingers coming to rest on each panel of the chair, the Supreme Leader sat back and relaxed in his seat. Looking over the much smaller woman, Snoke whole body relaxed as he cackled a quiet, dry laugh. Eventually, the humanoid began laughing rather joyously in his throne, echoing the throne room to the point that the Force holding the Elites released. Each red armored being clamored to keep themselves upright, slowly returning to their original spot, evenly distributed behind the throne of the laughing leader.

Once the Supreme Leader eased in his unpleasant cackle, he grinned towards Nova with a rather pleasant expression. Tilting her head a bit, Nova watched him for a moment with her facial expression returning to its usual mutual state of nothing once more.

“I take it that you wish to kill me now, hm?” Snoke drawled. “Destroy me for having those toxic poisons injected into you? To see if I really could make you more of a mindless puppet and perfect killing machine?”

“I don’t need to kill you,” Nova responded. “Your future was shown to me, and there is nothing I need to do to make you pay for what you did to me.”

“Amazing, seeing the future of someone without direct contact,” Snoke praised cheekily, almost as a taunt. “What did you see?”

Looking to each Elite’s faceless mask carefully, she sensed each one of their heartbeats and thrumming emotion of neutral respect towards her. “As I have said, I don’t need to kill you. Things will not go the way you expect.”

Snoke let out a quiet chortle, shaking his head with absolute amusement as her simple answers. “How kind of you to warn me, but I still see nothing inside that little mind of yours, my dear little Nova,” he said. “As the experiment failed in using old tactics against you to comply more...to my needs, I won’t hold any grudge against you for showing such power from Mara’s reports...you will see it my way, in due time, little one. Soon, you will do more than just train people to survive, and want to take part in having the First Order become reign of the galaxy. And you, with time, can be a part of a new Empire with your marvelous power. People will bow to you, allow you to be in control of them this time around.”

Nova let him rave for as long as he wanted, until he eventually went quiet for her to respond with a simple and confident: “No, I don’t want that.”

“Then, what do you want?” Snoke asked.

“Nothing,” Nova answered, her hands dropping to her sides. “There is nothing that I want that is already provided to me permanently, with or without your power over others, Snoke.”

Snoke’s posture went lax and his expression ceased amusement. He wasn’t threatening any longer, nor held bad blood towards his female apprentice, instead seeming to grow tired of this one-on-one meeting. However, Nova knew better…

He was losing this conversation battle with her.

“Because you’re irreplaceable to me and a rather valuable apprentice - possibly more than Kylo Ren - I will allow this to lead a mutual respect between us, little one,” Snoke spoke after a while. “You will remain my apprentice and train others to be powerful, and I will ensure you remain alive and cared for within the First Order… Someday, you will learn the importance of your part within the First Order, young Nova.”

“As a free woman,” Nova pressed with a raised brow.

“As a free woman,” Snoke agreed. “You are proving to be more powerful and talented than expected, consider this to be a lesson for us both.”

Nova remained silent.

“You are dismissed.”

Nova finished tying the knot of her pajama pants, fiddling with the hem of the silk material before reaching for the towel to wring out her hair of access water. Having been escorted by limping Praetorian Guards back to the familiar small hallway of her quarters next to Kylo’s, Nova proceeded to enter her own personal chambers and use the refresher to scrub the faint smells of Starkiller Base and the throne room off her skin. As much as she did enjoy meeting the people in Starkiller Base, teaching them habits to protect themselves and see the Elites doing well, but the remaining stench of all she was displeased with was still bugging her underneath her whole facade. She was happy to find all the bottle of soaps and shampoos were still where she left them, just like Kylo promised her before their departure. She was happy to find her collection still arranged accordingly on her shelves, too, feeling more and more relaxed and comfortable in her environment. Kylo wasn’t back from wherever he was, yet sensed him through the Force.

She wasn’t too sure how to explain her meeting with Snoke to him.

Nova knew everything Snoke was looking for within her and Kylo, easily seen as something physically placed in her own hands. She wasn’t sure how to explain it, but every time she felt Snoke prying somewhere close to her or Kylo, she would just “push” him away from the both of them. With herself, Nova had no issue for Snoke to assume what he desired to see: empty, rather stubborn to the point of pushing boundaries of patience, yet bursting with an energy that wasn’t easily seen by many - the Force, that’s all she knows. With Kylo, however, Snoke looks for so much more than Nova would expect.

Emotions, weakness. Memories, thoughts beyond what Snoke thought was acceptable. A source of light within him that Nova couldn’t truly understand why was such a negative thing to Snoke…

Frowning, Nova looked down to her hands.

With the wall, as Kylo called it, Nova wasn’t too sure if she contained a sort of light that Snoke despised so much. Nova didn’t see any different in light wherever she went, or whoever she looked to; she only figured right away if she liked someone or not by their first impression, but that was as easy for anyone. She could tell who was a slave and who wasn’t back on Bavva III, even the finely dressed ones who would be fake escorts for their owners - fed well to get softer bellies, groomed properly to look healthier - not as many jewelry as the other, still too quiet to converse so freely in crowds. She didn’t see any stormtrooper, knight, guard or even Phasma glow with light, yet she got along with them for their own certain kindness. Unless it was the light catching off on the armor, but that couldn’t be it.

But Kylo was something special to her, but he didn’t have a glow of this light that Snoke hates, did he?

Perhaps it was something she had yet to learn, or to see in a text in one of Kylo’s scrolls or books. To Nova, there was nothing wrong with light. There was comfort and warmth with it, in comparison to dark that sometimes haunted her dreams to the cold cells back on Bavva III. Light was the sun that let her explore safely with the nocturnal predators slipping away for her to search for food, to warm her skin when she shivered all night with lack of proper clothing or blankets to trap heat.

Sure, light meant fire, and fire lead to destruction and burns - Nova doesn’t like burns, because it caused pain. Sometimes, too much light blinded her from seeing properly, but, other than those things, she didn’t think the light was all that terrible.

The constant snapping of the Supreme Leader towards Kylo bugged Nova, often worrying her of how Kylo would feel afterwards when he remained with his helmet on to conceal everything. She hoped that all she could do with kissing his forehead and cheeks would help him ease the tension she felt emitting from him. For her, she loved Kylo enough to want him to be happy as often as possible, ensure him that everything will be okay for him and that she wouldn’t let anyone take her away from him.

Blinking, Nova raised her head as she felt Kylo’s presence shifting, expanding - no, growing closer to their quarter chambers. Hanging the towel back over the railing of the shower, she left the room with her silk pajama set and damp hair to stroll barefoot to the lounging area of her chambers, knowing that Kylo would most likely want to see her before going to his own quarters to clean himself or ask to sleep. Through her own exploration, she sensed a spark of anxiety from him as he was hurrying towards her way, making her smile a bit as his own habit for her.

‘Remember your promise, Kylo!’ she chided him softly, hoping that he could hear her this time through all the walls. When she didn’t get a response, she figured it did not work until her blastdoor hissed open rather strongly. She realized that Kylo had used his own abilities to open it and march in, helmet, cloak and all.

Nova’s head tilt at him when he froze and stared at her. She blinked with a small frown as his leather gloved hands reached up to unlatch the helmet, igniting a release of air before removing it and dropping it carelessly to the floor. Nova opened her mouth to say something about the scratch on the metal rim of the visor, yet Kylo approached her and grasped her face with both hands…

And pressed his mouth against her own, hard.

Lips moving between languid to frantic within moments of the kiss, Kylo eventually stilled at the realization that Nova was completely frozen in place. Pulling back from the kiss, still holding her face with both hands tangled with the damp strands of her hair, his eyes wide with his own shock of his actions.

Nova blinked a few times, her expression twisting with slight confusion as she met his stare. There was a long, awkward silence, Kylo feeling himself becoming more flustered and irritated with himself for pushing himself onto her without warning or permission. Nova, however, only reached up to hold his wrists, keeping his hands in place of holding her head so carefully when he tried to let go. His large hands remained still in her hold before she pulled them back to cradle her jaw, carefully cradling her jaw.

He watched her move the muscles of her own mouth, her cheeks twitching and biting her own lips with a concentrated look in her eyes. It was like she was trying to figure it out for herself, as amusing as it was to see. Blinking once more, she looked up to him, feet rolling to make her inch up just a little bit to his tall stature.

“Again,” she whispered cautiously, hesitant and shy. “Please..?”

He searched her eyes for something - anything to tell him that he shouldn’t step over the line, thumbs brushing against her cheeks with the most careful stroke. When she only leaned her face into his palm, looking up to him expectantly, Kylo exhaled softly, almost in relief, as he leaned in once more, slower this time.

Soft. Softer than anything either one of them felt against their lips and feeling soothing in a way that made them both feel their own heartbeats hammering in their chests and blood flowing through their veins. Nova felt her face grow warm, going to her toes to try and deepen the kiss a little bit more, her hold on his wrist tightening with a sort of joy when she felt him respond immediately. Slipping a hand from her hold to press his palm against her back, Kylo bent further to ease her troubles as he pulled back from the kiss, her bottom lip gently sucked between his plushed ones, only for a moment before tilting her head back and connecting their mouths again with a breath.

For her, it felt like an eternity of peace, and she could only pout softly once Kylo registered her lack of air and pulled away carefully to look her in the eye. Feeling bashful, she instantly looked at the random stitch on his uniform, feeling her cheeks become hotter than she remembered in the refresher.

“I…” she began, taking a breath while he said nothing, “wasn’t too sure what to do with my mouth.”

A choked noise, somewhat of a laugh, escaped from him, causing Nova to relax in his hold when he kissed the crown of her head and hug her closer to him. Fixing her head to rest her chin on his shoulder, she sensed a form of calmness and joy within him. “Did I do okay?” she asked, making him squeeze her and hide his grin into her neck. “I didn’t know what to do, Kylo…”

“You did just fine,” Kylo whispered against the skin of her neck.

“Can...can we practice that, so I may do better?” she asked next, causing him to go still and pull back to look at her again. “When we’re alone, of course. The same with our other kisses - they’re still kisses...even when it’s our lips touching each other?”

Kylo nodded slowly at first, then speeding quickly when Nova’s smile grew into a big grin. “Y-yeah, it’s still a kiss. Kisses like this are...affectionate gestures between people who love each other,” he explained carefully.

“Oh!” Nova perked before going on her toes to give him a quick, easy peck on the lips. “And that?” When he nodded, Nova reached to hold his face to give him another, a little bit longer. She tried the mimic the move of softly tugging on his lip and she could swear she felt his sigh when she pulled back. “And that?”

“Yes,” he told her, his hand holding her face moving to cradle into her damp hair. Whispering carefully, Kylo couldn’t resist the small smile at seeing Nova lean expectantly towards him before he gave her another deep kiss: “This one does, too.”

She didn’t particularly needed to, but she didn’t mind going back into the refresher to join him in by tub, the water freshly colored with lavender swirls and the aroma of therapeutic oils easing any worries she had. She waited until he finished scrubbing and rinsing himself off by the shower station right next to the tub before letting her stop playing with the water; his mass causing the water to rise, he released a sigh before turning his chin her way, her own hands coming out of the water to reach for his face.

Showing him everything that had happened once she stepped foot in the throne room, to when she was dismissed, Kylo’s face twisted with concern when she showed her confusion towards Snoke’s desires of her to control people, to be in power. His cheek leaning into her palm, Kylo sighed when he watched Nova’s reaction to rejecting the idea.

“He tried harming you, yet you just tell him that he has nothing to give you,” he murmured, turning to kiss her wrist. “I can never imagine behaving that way to the Supreme Leader.”

“No, I wouldn’t want you to behave that way to him,” she agreed quietly, leaning against the edge of the tub and removing her hands. Kylo hummed, watching her intently before she noticed him and making her frown quizzically at how intense his eyes were on her. “What is it?”

“You told him there was nothing he could give you,” Kylo whispered, his brows coming together in a thoughtful furrow. “He’s the one who purchased your freedom, allowing you to join the First Order...and he has nothing you want?”

“No, he doesn’t.” Nova looked down to the water, flicking a finger to cause the clouding bath mix to erupt into amusing patterns. “He has nothing that I want.”

“What do you want, love?” he asked her next, his eyes never leaving her serene face. He noticed the small smile on her lips, prompting him to reach and trace her bottom lip and graze her cheek with his fingertips.

“I just want to be happy, which I already am.” Smiling bigger, she looked up to him. “Kylo makes me happy, and makes me feels things that I’ve always wanted to have. No one else makes me feel like that.”

“You feel happy when you’re with me?” he chuckled a bit, sitting up a bit more inside the water as he angled himself better her way. “You seem to be happy majority of the time, when I am by you or not.”

“You still make me happy,” she insisted, allowing him to hold her face by the chin and kiss the corner of her mouth softly. “You make me feel warm inside, and I know you feel the same way, too.”

“I do,” he admitted, brushing his large nose against hers, giving her lips light kisses.

“Then, I don’t need anything else from anyone, not even the Supreme Leader. I don’t need to be strong with the Force, be in control of anyone as long as long as I can love Kylo and Kylo can love me. I only want and only need you.”

Kylo sealing his lips with hers were enough to tell her that he completely agreed.

Fun fact: I originally had their first kiss planned very differently, when the plot was actually not finalized prior to chapter three.

taglist: @ayatimascd @ymariejp @yippee-ki-yay-motherfucker460@formerly-anonhamster @rosalynbair@redhairedfeistynerd@imyourdreamwife @kyloxfem

Remember, if you would like to be tagged for future chapters, please don’t hesitate to message me! I’d be more than happy to add you. Thank you for reading and I hope to hear from you!

The Apex Predator

(I had the idea for this a little while ago and finally got it all written out. This uses a lot of headcanons from @vrepit-sa including the Kariian sub-species, the planet Kariio 15-R, and their revuriar creature. They were really fun to work with. And yes, I asked first XD)

Streaks of blood stained fresh grey snow. Wind whipped the radioactive powder into a looming veil. The valley howled as white ribbons hushed along the grey slab of stone to his side. His ears, the only part of his body he'd left uncovered by his now tattered winter gear, perked at the howl. Was it the wind? Or something else? One hand pressed tighter against the dripping gash by his hip. Even through all the adrenaline every step, or limp as it were, was a new shot of pain like saw teeth tearing away at his leg from within. The other hand gripped his smoking Bell. It was the only reason he had made it out. It was the only reason he could still look over his shoulder and see nothing lurking within the veil. The creature was afraid of it. The massive revolver's cylinder glowed purple in the dim lighting. A show to anything watching that he was still dangerous.

He scraped the frost from his goggles and checked over his shoulder again. There was nothing to see. Everything was just a flat grey blur of snow in every direction besides the stone beside him. Were it not for the dark stains of blood in the snow it would be just as hard to tell if he was moving forward or backward. Even then the fresh snow was rapidly covering the viscera that followed him. A blessing in some respect. It covered his trail. At least the visual aspect of it. He was sure it had no trouble following his scent. So he hugged the wall. It kept him from getting turned around and it covered at least one direction.

Until his footing gave out.

Fragile snow had masked the drop until the weight of the galra sent it caving in. He could feel a slope beneath him as he tumbled down, somersaulting through layers of snow and outcrops of rock. It was hard to know how long it took before he reached the bottom. One look up showed him nothing but snow.

His eyes stung and he adjusted his goggles then blinked the pain away. Even though the anti-rad kept cancer away, the radiation in the air still burned his eyes. Of course the storm had only made it even more active.

When he pulled his hand away from the goggles he suddenly froze. He looked at his empty hand, registering in shock what was wrong. The Bell was gone. Belost furiously swept layers of snow to the side and punched his hands through the surface, desperately grasping at anything that felt like his weapon. "No no no no. Zarkon's throne, no! Fuck! How the fuck did this happen?"

_________________________

Belost stood on the command deck of the 3rd fleet's flagship, arms crossed impatiently. Why call him so damn early if the commander was just going to be too busy to speak to him? Then almost as if he could read minds, the towering galra that was his commander broke away from his lieutenant. Sendak stood in front of the tracker, an unamused look on his face. "You know, Belost, a little tact wouldn't hurt."

"What do you mean?"

"You don't have advertise just how annoyed you are. Leave a little to the imagination, if even just for your own benefit. Nobody gained anything by being an open book."

Belost chuffed and quirked an eyebrow, simply staring back at the other expectantly. Waiting to hear the reason he was there.

The other grinned somewhat. "That's a little better. Keep practicing and maybe next time I'll end my conversation with Haxus when I think you're annoyed rather than when you show me you are." He turned and scooped a datapad from his command pulpit. "Anyway. On to the reason you're here. You remember Xig Fadhe? Deposed prince of Tracaft Ga-"

"Yeah I remember," Belost cut him off. "What about him?"

Sendak let the breach in etiquette slide. He was never very committed to what was considered proper behavior and had come to expect a share of taboo behavior from the tracker. "We found his ship on the edge of the wilderness in Kariio 15-R."

Belost's ears perked up at that bit of news. "Really? Isn't that your home planet?"

"It is," Sendak said, though he seemed to gloss over the fact. Although he was somewhat impressed with how Belost knew that fact. But then Belost seemed to know a lot about him, even for a galra. "There's a dossier waiting for you. Despite how things turned out last time with Xig, I'm assigning you to this. Don't screw it up again." He paused and showed another amused grin. "You're doing it again. Tact, Belost. Leave some of that anger to the imagination."

_________________________

His arrival was unwelcome to say the least. The landing port was nearly barren. Red armor of a Galra soldier stood out in stark contrast to the traditional clothing worn by near everybody there. Finding somebody to help was a challenge in itself. He had been given a name, Kashden. She was not a leader, but rather a specialist in helping outsiders get what they needed from the Kariians.

She was far less welcoming than the job description implied.

"I've arranged for two of our hunters to take you to the crash site and accompany you on your search for this Xig Fadhe." She spoke fast and through a heavy accent native to her planet. "If there is anything you need, I suggest you turn to your own people first. We're limited on resources as it is without having to supply outsiders as well."

Belost merely blinked in surprise. If there was a skillset for blending cooperation and hostility, this woman was a master. "Well, if that's the case you can just give me the coordinates. I don't need anybody with me to help. If anything it just slows me down."

She looked up at him from the pad she had been typing into then shook her head slowly, holding eye contact. "That isn't an option. This man is hiding on our planet. We want our people involved. Those 'slow' hunters of ours would have already found him by now were your commander not so insistant on waiting for you. They will travel with you. They will make sure you find him." She stood up and walked across the room to the door and opened it for Belost. Two tall men in all white gear of thick hide and armor stood before the open doorway. They wore masks of skull over their faces.

Belost looked between the two and then back to Kashden. It seemed his 'escort' was ready. He remembered his short time in the presence of the Emperor's guard. Technically on his side but looking for any excuse they could find to turn him into a pincushion. The feeling was similar.

As he walked by the door, Kashden stopped him, her face as serious as ever. "Don't go wandering."

_________________________

There had been little left of the ship by the time he had gotten there. Lost to the elements the locals had said, doing little to convince him but daring him to say otherwise. It was typical of the attitude the kariians had given him. Little more than outright hostile, cooperative enough to say they helped.

There were enough signs to go off of. Shallow tracks in the snow, scraps of expensive personal effects half buried, the occasional campfire. The hunters said little. They flanked him nearly every step of the way, watching him closely every time he stopped.

Belost tossed a golden ring up in the air and caught it in his hand. He shook the snow off and took a look. The craftsmanship looked right. The tracker lifted his goggles and took a closer look through squinted eyes. The sun shone off the snow and nearly blinded him once the tinted goggles no longer knocked the sunrays back. But he found small bits stuck to the edges of the ring. "Looks like the rings started to freeze to his fingers. He'd been here about three hours I'd guess," he said to himself out loud. The cold air nipped at his eyes and he dropped the goggles back down.

He pocketed the ring and stood back up straight. "So we're moving about twice as fast as he was. Probably about a week behind him..." he thought quietly for a few moments. "I'm guessing he wouldn't be able to get shelter in any city or village given your.. welcoming nature." He pulled out a datapad and looked over a map of the area. It was good for a guide at the absolute best. The radiation of the planet made it difficult for machines to accurately map and the constant snow storms changed the lay of the land frequently anyway.

He circled an area on the map. "He's got to be somewhere in this area, then. A cave or maybe he built some shelter or something. Might be a few hours out, might be a few days."

If the hunters heard him they made little effort to acknowledge it.

Belost looked between the two and sighed. "Would be a long time to go without saying anything. Might get pretty awkward if-"

"What do you want us to say?" One spoke sharply.

"Wow, you know that's actually kind of annoying when it happens to you." He noted the interruption. "I don't know. Thoughts on anything?"

"You've said everything there is to know."

"Comments on the weather-"

"It's the same as always."

He sighed and shook his head. "Fine. Nevermind." They continued on in silence.

They hiked further along through the sprawling mountains, finding the occasional fire pit along the way. Each time they got more recent.

Belost looked between the two of them again. The sun drooped in the sky, the blinding sunspots on the snow vanished and the mountains and hills gradually became dark. His eyes adjusted and he focused on the masks they wore, only just barely able to see the glow of their eyes from within.

"What are those masks, anyway?" he said, huffing breath into the scarf covering his face.

"Revuriar skulls," replied the same one from before. The other remained silent.

"Revuriar, huh? Aren't those supposed to be a big deal around here?"

The other paused. It seemed he was actually having to consider his reply. Or consider even giving one at all. "They are what makes our work so dangerous."

"Ah. So the masks are trophies then?"

"Somewhat. Trophies, symbols of experience, mostly they're protection. Meant to keep revuriars away so we can hunt in peace."

"Well you've both obviously killed them before. They can't be that bad."

The kariian turned to face him, the skull of the beast looking down at Belost. "We've killed them in groups. You don't kill a revuriar alone. Consider yourself lucky that you don't have to find out just how dangerous they are."

Belost meant to speak but was cut off for a second time, in this instance by a powerful gust of wind. It kicked the capes of the hunters out and pushed Belost a few steps in the snow. The sky grew darker, more so than just a shifting time of day. The hunters looked up at the sky and then to one another.

"Snowstorm."

_________________________

The night had come and the storm was in full effect. Signs of Xig Fadhe had all but disappeared with the storm. Belost could barely see in front of him much less something like a possible footprint. The two hunters on his flanks were mere silhouettes, their white gear doing little to help him see.

But then the snow and frost coating his own armor did much to hide him from them as well.

Despite his lighter gear and lack of loose clothing, they managed to keep up with him well. Apparently his snow walking could use some work.

The wind stung his bare ears and he rose his gloved hands up to block the wind as best he could and flick the snow away. His hands cupped around his ears and blocked the howl of the wind for a few moments. In the silence he heard something.

He paused and focused. The hunters slowed to a stop and closed in on him.

"What is it?" The 'talkative' one asked.

"I hear something. It's him." Belost turned and stepped around a hunter. He pointed out in a direction to their side. "There."

They trudged through the snow, cutting across the wind. Belost leaned into it to keep from being blown over.

As they grew closer the others heard it too. It was a distinct voice. Different from any kariian. Different from a typical galra like Belost. It sounded like sniveling sobs. Something Belost might expect to hear from an ex-prince who was used to the pampering and regality of a palace suddenly tossed into an environment like this.

The crying echoed out from within a wedge driven between two walls of ice and stone. Belost placed a hand on the entrance and peered in. It was dark but it looked like it widened out the further in it went. He turned to the hunters and pulled a flare out from a pouch on his lower back. The tracker tossed the purple light overhand into the fissure. As soon as it clattered over the floor, the crying stopped.

He silently drew the Bell from its holster on his thigh. The pink / purple glow from the cylinder illuminated him somewhat for the hunters and the three filed in. He kicked the flare further inside. The sky gradually disappeared when the top of the fissure closed in on itself. Behind him, the kariians glanced between one another uneasily. The same unspoken worry acknowledged between them as they unslung their rifles.

Belost kicked the flare further in once again where it skidded off into a small puddle of near-frozen water. The lighting in the cavern was distorted from the flare in the water, still alight but frothing in the water around it. Purple accents flared and dimmed in a constant haze on the ice walls and floor. Belost slid on the ice beneath his boots. He caught himself before he hit the ground and steadied himself again, walking more carefully.

The light caught the rim of something on the ground. Belost stepped in to get a look. It was another frozen ring. This time, however, there was more than just blood and flesh stuck to it. An entire gnarled finger had fused to the metal and Belost grimaced, casually tossing it to the side. Somehow he doubted the prince had the stomach to self-amputate a frostbitten appendage.

He cast his gaze farther up ahead and shifted forward. What he found he felt safe in calling his target. Though there was no way to be sure anymore. He turned to the hunters. "I think we've found all we need to. Let's-" For a third time something interrupted him. The crying started again.

The crack of a rifle fired off, a shot wizzed just by him. His moment of confusion was answered when the cry turned to a roar and a hulking beast of white fur smeared with frozen red gore burst out from the back of the cavern. The hunters shouted in their native language as Belost found himself on his back with an immense weight bearing down on him. In the frantic shouting of a language he couldn't understand came the word 'revuriar.'

The beast's front paws held him in place while the second set of claws portruding from the beast's stomach scraped and floundered for purchase over his armor. The screech of claws on ceramic sounded and Belost grunted when a claw found his hip and scrawled itself in deep.

The hunters fired together. It was enough to get its attention. Long enough for Belost to fire a shot from the Bell. The beast howled deafeningly above Belost. The bullet punched through the side of the revuriar's abdomen, spraying a burst of blood over the walls of the cave. At this closer of range, the mass reactive bullet couldn't activate and it instead exploded upon hitting the wall. The simple mass of them, however, was more than enough to hurt the creature.

It leaped from Belost and jumped onto one of the hunters. By the time Belost could stand the hunter was dead and the other was soon to follow. He fired another shot. It went wide and left a crater in the wall. The wounded revuriar saw him aiming a followup shot and quickly ran around the corner, vanishing from his sight. Belost limped across the ice then peered around the corner. It was empty as far as he could see. He turned around to check the hunters incase either might survive.

One's head had been crushed in the jaws of the beast, the other lay with his organs strewn from his stomach. Belost slammed his fist on the wall in frustration. They had saved him. If he had hit something important with his shot or gotten a second one off, maybe he could have returned the favor. He took a deep breath and winced when the pain in his hip flared. There would be time to feel guilty later. For now, his mission was over. All he had to do now was make it back to the village. And not die on the way there.

_________________________

Even through the gloves Belost's hands had gone numb from digging through the snow. The wind blew harder and sucked the heat from the gouge in his thermal suit as well as his own body. The snow now packed into his open wound burned and he gripped at the wound, crunching frozen blood around the cut. He breathed heavily. The wind howled again. Along with something else.

He looked up and saw the silhouetted form of the revuriar standing on its hind legs. It could dwarf even the likes of Sendak. Belost hoisted himself to his feet with a grunt and yanked his large survival knife from its sheath. It wasn't the Bell, but it was something. If there was even a chance he could go down fighting then he would take it.

The revuriar dropped to its feet and lunged at him in one seamless act. It burst through the grey veil and lept. He dodged and swung his knife, feeling it drag deep beneath the layer of thick fur. It came back slick with blood as the revuriar disappeared back into the blur of snow. He took a step backwards and almost dropped at the sudden pain that shot up from his leg. He looked down and saw a fresh tear in his suit. He couldn't tell how deep it was. Maybe it wasn't that bad and the cold was making it seem worse than it was.

Heavy footsteps thundered towards him and he turned in time for the creature to lunge by him once again. Another draw cut from his knife. Another mauling from the monster's claws. He pressed his hand to his stomach and checked the blood that covered the glove.

He remembered how fast the others had died. It could have killed him before he even knew what was going on. But it had announced itself. Challenged him. Waited until his weapon was gone. The beast was smart, he had heard stories of their intellect before. But vengeful too? It was all he could think of. He had hurt it. Now it wanted to return the favor.

The blood on his knife gave him some measure of satisfaction. At least he could keep paying it back. Although the damage was disproportionate at best. He was feeling sluggish. He saw his blood in the snow and the cold seeping into his suit.

The revuriar slowly crept up in front of him. No quick strike planned. No surprise attack. It made sure he saw it. Belost flicked its blood from his knife and readied himself. There was a silent stillness between them. Where each understood the other. Then the moment was over and the revuriar jumped for him.

Belost felt the same weight bearing down on him, pushing him down into the snow. Red saliva dripped onto his face and teeth bore themselves, snapping wildly. But they couldn't reach. His eyes glanced to the side. His arm flexed and strained to hold the weight of the revuriar bearing down against him. Even with his knife buried into its neck it still snapped and growled, pushing him deeper and deeper into the snow, growing closer. The muscle of his arm screamed as he strained it, pushing the beast back as far as he could. Despite the viscera that ran down his hand and arm, it was still a losing battle.

He sunk farther into the snow, his head starting to fall beneath. He saw a glint of light. His eyes widened in realization and newfound strength surged through him, helping him keep the shearing teeth at bay while is other hand dug snow out by the fistfull. His hand found what it was looking for. He wouldn't make the same mistake again. Belost rammed the barrel of the Bell into the beast's stomach and without a word pulled the trigger as fast as he could. Bullets burst from the back and side of the creature and he swore it screamed. The final bullet hit bone and the explosive detonated, tearing a great hole in the monster and cutting it silent. Even nearly blown in half it was still enough to cover Belost. The hot gore pooled around him and the gun clicked a few times, he had yet to register that it was empty and that he was not dead. The beast's face went slack.

_________________________

A few days passed since the run in with the revuriar. Belost still lay in a recovery bed, having just been transferred from the Kariio 15-R's emergency medical facility, their version of a hospital, to the ship's med bay. The locals had looked at him differently since then. He still felt the distrustful gaze. But it was less openly hostile. More tactful as his commander might call it. Some of the children even looked upon the galra soldier with a sense of wonder. The outsider who had killed an adult revuriar single handedly and survived. It was something their parents were quick to demystify as an absurdly lucky break lest their own children choose to underestimate one.

He couldn't blame them. And he supposed it was a fair trade. Killing the legend of Belost the Hunter in exchange for saving Belost the tracker. The locals had found him shortly after he killed the creature. Hunters had heard the gunshots and scream from the outskirts of the village. They hadn't come out of concern for Belost, but to ensure the revuriar was dead. It had been indeed and while searching the body they found Belost underneath it. Still alive, but barely.

They retrieved the two hunters' bodies and returned them to their families. Belost was glad he didn't know what the Kariian ritual was for a dead loved one.

The guards in the med bay saluted and he looked to the side to see Sendak walking in. He hadn't seen him since he gave his report from planetside. Especially not in person.

The commander stopped beside his bed. "Belost," he addressed him informally. "You look good for somebody who just went one on one with my planet's apex predator."

Belost grinned and lay his head back with a sigh. "Yep. I'm pretty great."

Sendak decided to just let him have that one. "And after it did your job for you. Killing Xig Fadhe and all. You've got some way of showing gratitude."

"I didn't know you could tell a joke," Belost said with closed eyes. His mind was still somewhat a haze with the pain medication.

"I bet you didn't know I could give gifts either."

Belost felt a weight on his stomach and opened his eyes. He saw a familiar skull resting there and smirked. "Thanks."

"You earned it." He looked at the skull, an item he didn't expect to see added onto his ship, then to Belost. "Anyway, I have places to be and you still need some rest. I just wanted to say good work." He lifted the skull from the bed and looked at it face to face. "I'll add this to that trophy display in your room on my way back to the command floor. It's one you can be proud of."

notes on vigilantes (hero academia illegals) after reading all available chapters

the most striking feature of this spinoff is that every chapter is like an introductory chapter. the first one i read was #7 (like a month ago) and i was sure that that was the first time we were meeting koichi. that's just how it felt. then i started at the beginning and chapter 1 was an introduction to the concept of vigilantes in a world of heroes and an introduction to our three main characters. then chapters 2 through 6 were Also introductions to the concept of vigilantes and our three main characters. they kept getting nameplates on their first appearance in each chapter! chapter 4 opens with present mic being like "JUST WHAT IS A VIGILANTE?!" bitch you think i don't know what a vigilante is by now??? don't be so accommodating of new readers every single chapter! it’s so redundant!

popty ping's whole character design is so male gaze it hurts. she hits every point on the list i made of characteristics shared by too many horikoshi female characters: mask is only an eye mask (so you know she's pretty), form-fitting and unnecessarily revealing costume, no physical abnormalities, generic attractive face shape, long hair, average height, generic attractive body type, no prominent muscles or anything. the only thing that makes her appearance distinctive or memorable in any way is the way they draw the texture of her hair in those weird puffy chunks, which i kinda like. her "alter ego = glasses and no makeup and her hair is down" thing is the most cliche bullshit possible. she's a walking panty-shot who makes it a point to show her ass to everyone because... she wants to? it makes her feel good about herself? surely not just because the artist wanted to draw a girl's ass as often as possible, oh no, think about what SHE wants, she's a strong independent female character who totally wasn't created solely as a koichi love interest and audience eye candy and the occasional damsel in distress. she loves to objectify HERSELF, there’s nothing wrong with that! (there is.) her backstory about being saved by koichi is cute but dumb as shit tbh. and she's not even part of the vigilante team (as seen in chapter 7 where koichi is like "we're knuckleduster and the crawler!" and she's like "i'm not with them!") because she has no actual vigilantism-related motivations except to be vaguely interested in koichi for the aforementioned dumb reasons and to show her ass to everyone. she keeps getting these large panels of her face when she suddenly blushes, as though it’s a moment that holds any emotional weight whatsoever, rather than being a super predictable way to show that she has a crush on (who could have guessed?!) the protagonist. i'm not saying she's not a likable character... i'm saying she's a poorly-executed object of pure, unapologetic self-indulgence by the author and artist. almost nothing about her is justifiable.

hachisuka's character design is, by contrast, a bit better. at least she's not, you know, pop☆step. she's not a purely sexual object (though they do treat her very creepily at times). she has something gross about her (beehive eye), which is somewhat cleverly incorporated into her character design (though i don’t see why she wears an eyepatch sometimes but not always). she has short hair and a sneaky face; she's at least one (1) step away from purely generic horikoshi-style girl. but she, too, has problems with motivations. namely, she doesn't seem to have any? like, okay, working with whoever is studying the effects of "trigger" is apparently her part-time job. so she's doing their bidding, if in a slightly chaotic way. but Why is she doing their bidding? is she getting paid? if she's just doing it for the money, why is it worth it to her? does she need money that desperately? she doesn't seem to care about other people in the slightest. why not??? did something happen to her? we don't even really have any hints as to what's driving her, do we? like, with another mysterious villain, shigaraki tomura, his motivations weren't clear early on, but we had hints, like how his childishness and quickness to panic implied that he was only a puppet posing as the mastermind, and how he had his little tirade about hating heroes because violence is bad, which made it clear that he's against the system more than any one individual, implying that the system has failed him in some way. but hachisuka doesn't have any such hints, does she? as far as we know, she's not against anything, nor is she for anything. what does she want? if anything, it seems like she just wants to fuck shit up for no reason, and that makes her less interesting as an antagonist, not more. also her name (quinn hachisuka -> quinn = queen, hachi = bee -> queen bee) is pretty silly. also, how does she load up her bees with trigger without herself getting triggered...? i want to learn more about the mechanics of her quirk. oh shit, what if her hidden eye hive is one big hexagonal cell, that would be sick

koichi is a cute and charming bugboy. about as interesting as a deku, i.e. "not especially," but i really like his quirk and his face. he's somewhat generic in terms of design, but protags have to be generic to some degree, so i'll accept it. his whole "quirk forces him to be active scurrying around the feet of the citizenry, which creeps them out a little" thing is a good schtick, a good place to work from. his motivations are simple but clear: he likes to help people. his personality is simple but clear: well-meaning, slightly oblivious, easygoing and forgiving, easily roped into things, unsure as to how to go about what he wants to do, but eager to do what he can. he’s weak, scrawny, and emotionally a bit of a pushover, so he’s not perfect, which is good. i suppose his main flaw would be that he isn't really facing any active conflicts in his life, other than what knuckleduster has roped him into. and he's going to college, but what's his major??? 

also, this takes place several years before the start of heroaca, going by ingenium's quip that tenya can't even turn corners yet, so the tenya in that little flashback is probably less than 10 years old, and if i were to go with my gut, i'd say that tenya is around 8 years old, meaning this takes place around 8 years before deku's story begins, meaning that the iida tensei who appears in chapter 7 of vigilantes is approximately 22, MEANING... that he is a perfectly appropriate age to ship with haimawari koichi. score

i was surprised and intrigued to see proto-stain appear as a character in recent chapters... and a noséd stain, at that. (he even says so himself!) his costume is p rad. when it first became clear that this guy is probably stain, my reaction was "could this be... recycling?" as in, how convenient, we get to reuse an antagonist from the main canon, and it doesn't count as reusing because it's technically in the past. but i guess this is actually a little more than just recycling, so i'm fine with it. it's interesting how he has just as few qualms about killing as he does in regular heroaca, yet his character seems more... mature? self-assured? confident? healthy...? than stain. but that makes sense, because the stain who appears in heroaca is much more... eroded. by that point, he's spent years and years stewing in his own disillusionment, losing sight of anything but his ideology, losing faith in nearly everyone... and i wonder if there was one incident in particular that set him irrevocably on that hopeless path, an incident that occurs between now (vigilante time) and then (heroaca time) that results in the loss of the nose off his god damn face. (p.s. that moment when he was like "THE RED OF LIFE~ THE BLACK OF DEATH~" wow what an akaguro chizome thing to say, nameless stranger whose quirk and tongue happen to be 100% identical to stain’s. i can’t believe the heroaca wiki page on stendhal doesn’t acknowledge that he’s definitely stain) (and that dolphin cap he puts on omfg and he keeps his ponytail up, he totally puts his ponytail through the hole in the baseball cap like holy shit)

this porcupine fucker... (his name is souga, apparently...) they tried to treat his character as redeemed without actually giving him a redemption. as soon as he's reintroduced as a potential ally, he gets all pissy when they remind him (not accuse him baselessly, but REMIND HIM of what he ACTUALLY DID) about how he and his buddies threatened to literally rape and kill popty ping, like, THE LAST TIME THEY MET. and this fucker doesn't think of APOLOGIZING or making it clear in any way that he's REFORMED or promising to NEVER DO IT AGAIN; he just skips ahead to getting frustrated that they don't forgive him immediately. NOW WHY IN THE FUCK WOULD THEY FORGIVE HIM IMMEDIATELY? who would??? and then we get a humanizing moment at the hospital with lizard boy and flame boulder and then we're suddenly pitting him against stendhal, and he gets that page where we see how he feels like everyone is always laughing at him in a condescending way and it's like, we've actually seen two of the situations on that page (koichi and popty ping) and they weren't smiling condescendingly at all! you're seeing shit that isn’t there, so that’s your problem, not theirs!!! but that's supposed to make us understand this guy enough to root for him in this fight? all we've learned about him is that he expects forgiveness he hasn't asked for and he perceives ridicule and condescension where there is none! those are Not redeeming character traits in the slightest!!! in fact, they’re very worrying and abusive character traits! now, to be perfectly clear, i'm not saying that stain is right in trying to kill this guy. obviously stain feeling he has the right to be judge, jury, and executioner is at least as flawed as souga's perspective. so it's good that koichi is trying to save him. but that doesn't mean souga is anywhere near redeemed or even likable. don't be so careless in turning antagonists into allies!!! you can't just put the same character in a different slot and expect it to stick!!!

knuckleduster is the embodiment of the male gaze on male characters. he's cool, tough, muscular, mysterious, violent, and confident, and that's it. he's about as shallow as pop, but not sexualized, because they're not trying to make him Attractive (it is the male gaze, after all, which carries strong het connotations); they're trying to make him cool and ultra-masculine in a way that men are expected to aspire to be. it's not a good message, and certainly nothing new, but i don't think he's as much of a slap in the face as popty ping. so idk, i don't have any strong feelings about knuckleduster. he's badass and strong and even blander than koichi. we don't know his real name or age yet, do we? yet somehow it doesn't seem like something we urgently need to know. (i want to say "tell me his age so i can figure out whether it's appropriate to ship him with koichi" but a] koichi is 19 and can take care of himself, so i guess even a wide age difference ship wouldn't put me off too much, and b] knuckle is not even really interesting enough to ship tbh.) and note that i'm not equating quirkless with bland. his quirklessness is like, one of the few points of individuality his character has. but even that isn't played in a very interesting way, because it's not like we see him get hurt or put in any especially vulnerable positions as a result. so if they're going to build knuckleduster up from "a single pure, undistilled trope" to "a developed character of some interest" by giving him an intriguing backstory or something... hurry up and do it already, he's been in practically every chapter since chapter 0.

don't even get me started on the portrayal of midnight (the hero) in this comic. if you don't see something wrong with her deciding to be a high school teacher so she can (as she Almost Explicitly Stated) jerk off the high school boys, i'd like to encourage you to think once in a while. and the way she stopped that suicide bomber villain, that wasn't even in character with the already messed-up character of actual canon midnight-- she's supposed to be a dominatrix, but in that suicide bomber scene, she was just seductive and nurturing! isn’t a dominatrix supposed to be hot but neither seductive nor nurturing? she didn't step on him or anything. they couldn’t even get that specific over-sexualized character right without over-sexualizing her in the wrong way. smfh. did horikoshi-sensei really sign off on this?

in conclusion: the primary saving grace of heroaca vigilantes is the fact that iida tensei appears and is wonderful for a whole chapter. i’ll keep reading because it’s interesting in how it relates to the main heroaca canon, not because there’s much of anything that makes it worthwhile in its own right. though i do like koichi.

EDIT: no wonder there’s hardly anything about this on pixiv...

The Falcon and the Winter Soldier: Who is John Walker, the US Agent?

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John Walker, the US Agent will be one of the antagonists of Marvel's The Falcon and the Winter Soldier on Disney+.

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When The Falcon and The Winter Soldier starts up on Disney+ next year, one of its main antagonists will be the returning Daniel Bruhl as Helmut Zemo. At D23, it’s been announced that there will be another major antagonist in the form of John Walker, as played by Wyatt Russell. Walker is a B-lister-at-best to Marvel and it makes sense that this would be the project that would formally introduce him into the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

While there have been various people to take up the mantle of Captain America outside of Steve Rogers, there are only five who truly matter. Isaiah Bradley was the prototype for Captain America as revealed in the excellent Truth: Red, White, and Black. William Burnside became Captain America in the 1950s in response to Rogers’ disappearance after World War II. John Walker became the new Captain America after Steve Rogers was dismissed from the role. Bucky Barnes took over as Cap when Rogers temporarily died. Then Sam Wilson became Cap when Rogers (living again) lost his super soldier powers and became physically elderly.

While Bradley and Burnside have potential to show up in the future (though they’d have to get a good Chris Evans double for Burnside, if not Evans himself), John Walker is the perfect wrench to throw into a story about Sam Wilson wielding the shield.

So who is John Walker, the Captain America of the 80s?

Walker was created by Mark Gruenwald and Paul Neary, debuting in the pages of Captain America #323 in 1986. In his original appearances, he played the role of Super-Patriot, a glory-hound loud-mouth vigilante backed up by his own propaganda machine. He’d spend much of his time giving speeches about how Captain America was old news, falsely portraying him as a gun-toting psychopath, and he’d even stage fights with goons in Captain America masks called “The Buckies.”

Though respecting the First Amendment and all that, Captain America obviously didn’t like this. Walker, who was driven by fascism, couldn’t leave well enough alone and instigated a fight with Cap. It went on for a while and Walker considered himself the winner because he...threw a shuriken into Cap’s chainmail.

Yeah, I don’t get it either.

A few issues later, Rogers had issues with the US government. The two parties disagreed on the status of the Captain America identity and the United States’ ownership. Deciding that he answered to the dream and not the suits behind the desks, Rogers gave up being Captain America, choosing instead to fight crime as Nomad and later The Captain. Tony Stark even made him a new shield!

The high-ranking government types discussed who would make for the best replacement. Fittingly enough, one even suggested that Sam Wilson would be a perfect candidate...but the public wasn’t ready for a black Captain America. They instead went with Walker, because jerk or not, he was still pretty damn good at punching terrorists in the face.

read more: Everything You Need to Know About The Falcon and The Winter Soldier

Walker was taken aback, especially considering he made had made a name for himself specifically by telling everyone how much Cap sucked. He ended up agreeing to the terms, mainly since he would do just about anything the government tells him to. It was there that we also got to learn his origin.

Walker was the younger brother of a soldier who died in Vietnam and was celebrated as a real hero. Idolizing his brother, but stuck in his shadow, Walker decided to prove himself by joining the military. While he was active, the US wasn’t involved in any wars, so his attempts for glory and acknowledgement were empty gestures. He ended up getting powers from the Power Broker, a pro-wrestling promoter who was the lazy way out whenever a writer in the '80s needed to give someone special abilities without revealing that they were actually a mutant. Walker never entered the squared circle, as he instead got himself an agent and a dream to be America’s #1 patriotic hero.

Then again, he did stage pre-determined fights with the Buckies to get him more cheers from the public, so I guess he's more pro-wrestling than I originally thought.

After Taskmaster trained Walker to sling a shield like an expert, the new Captain America started kicking ass in the name of ‘Murica. For roughly two years, Walker played the role, where he was portrayed as a violent psychopath dressed in the flag. He wasn’t quite Frank Castle level of bonkers, but he had no problem tying his villains to explosives and leaving them to die. 

Over the course of his run, he started to chill out a bit, question authority a little, and the narrative made sure to make him sympathetic. For instance, he got doxxed and his parents were murdered because of it. Then he wasn’t even allowed to see their funeral because duty calls.

In the end, it turns out the big puppetmaster of everything was the Red Skull. Walker and Rogers teamed up against him and took him down. Then everyone decided to go back to the status quo with Rogers as Cap.

Walker was lucky, though. You see, the 90s were on their way and there was no better haven for an edgier copycat of an existing hero. It was a time when Iron Man was flying around with a giant gattling gun on his shoulder, Spider-Man’s alien double was eating the brains of drug dealers, a Thor knockoff was embarrassing all of us with a leather jacket and ponytail, a new Batman had a hideous costume covered in razors, and so on. Rather than go back to being Super-Patriot, Walker dressed in a black version of the Captain America outfit, got a shield of his own, and fought crime as US Agent.

Even though the two were never really shown to be close friends, Captain America and US Agent co-existed as politically-opposite counterparts with a mutual respect (usually). US Agent received a couple miniseries to his name, but never got a full-on solo series.

Instead, he spent the next few decades jumping from team to team. As part of the West Coast Avengers and later Forceworks (oof, the '90s), he often played opposite Hawkeye. Hawkeye initially was the Avenger who was a stubborn asshole to nice guy Captain America, so now he had to deal with a version of Captain America who was actually a stubborn asshole. US Agent later led the Jury, a team of armored soldiers who were originally put together as a revenge pact against Venom, then just kind of stopped fighting him after two stories.

For real, though, it's kind of amazing how nobody cares about the Jury and yet they still show up from time to time.

Speaking of teams nobody cares about, US Agent was also part of Superhuman Tactical Activities Response Squad (STARS) and one of the modern incarnations of the Invaders. He became the American liaison to Omega Flight (which he hated, because they’re filthy Canadians). This led to him joining Hank Pym’s Mighty Avengers during the whole Dark Reign thing. Funny enough, Walker was a big supporter of Norman Osborn being in charge of the superhero wing of the government for a time. Of course he was.

read more: Marvel Pulls Essay Over Political Fears

This came to a head in a Siege tie-in where the Mighty Avengers fought Osborn’s Thunderbolts and we got US Agent vs. Nuke. It was the battle of the I-can-see-where-you're-coming-from right wing patriotic super soldier and the crazy-email-that-your-uncle-sent-you right wing patriotic super soldier. The Mighty Avengers won, but US Agent took some horrible damage from the fight, losing an arm and a leg in the process.

No longer wearing the tights, US Agent became Warden Walker as part of the Thunderbolts. He remained in a wheelchair as he didn’t want to use cybernetic attachments to augment his body and be one step closer to becoming like Nuke, the unfortunate super soldier knockoff who first appeared in Daredevil: Born Again. The comic was bloated with characters, so his panel-time was limited, but Walker at least got a rad moment when he took care of a prison riot on his own, Bad Day at Black Rock style.

It’s the guy meekly bringing over the wheelchair that gets me.

Thunderbolts became Dark Avengers and US Agent was briefly sucked into an alternate reality where the heroes of NYC were at war with each other. Using a lobotomized Venom symbiote, the creature was used to replace the missing pieces of Walker’s body, making him whole again. Team member Toxie Doxie had US Agent under her control, but that was a series-ending cliffhanger that was never touched on ever again.

After that, US Agent has been just kind of kicking around Marvel, showing up whenever someone needs a cranky guy who can still kick some ass. Fittingly, one of his last appearances was him going after Sam Wilson Captain America, but that ties into Civil War II and Secret Empire bullshit and I really don’t want to have to discuss those events.

Outside of comics, the biggest appearance for US Agent was the Capcom tag-team fighter Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter. He was a secret character and really just a recolored Captain America to the point that they didn’t even make his outfit accurate. Still better than how the game turned Blackheart red and called him "Mephisto." US Agent would reappear in Marvel vs. Capcom as an assist character and would be an alternate costume for Cap in Marvel vs. Capcom 3.

read more: The Legacy of Marvel vs. Capcom

As a newcomer to the MCU, Walker is going to be a real wild card. He could be anywhere from a full-on villain to an eventual member of the Avengers. The most likely scenario, at least at first, is that the government isn't going to be thrilled with the idea that Steve Rogers bequeathed the Captain America legacy to Sam Wilson without checking in with them first, and Walker is probably their preferred candidate. I can’t wait to see what Wyatt Russell has to offer.

Gavin Jasper writes for Den of Geek and wonders how long until Forceworks shows up in the MCU. Don’t say they won’t because we’re getting the goddamn Eternals! Nothing is impossible! Read more of his articles here and follow him on Twitter @Gavin4L

Read and download the Den of Geek SDCC 2019 Special Edition Magazine right here!

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Feature

Books

Gavin Jasper

Aug 24, 2019

Marvel

Captain America

Disney+

The Falcon and the Winter Soldier

from Books https://ift.tt/2KTufay

I had a dream last night that I was in Fallout 4 via moving in with one of my mutuals who had inherited a fortune from an uncle that they didn’t really give a shit about, but they and their husband were friends with me via my blog? So they invited me to live in Boston with them because they had a new fancy house and my parents were More Shit Than Usual?

So i moved in and appearantly they also had a smol son named Shaun [yup] and I liked playing with him because i do like children, i just get tired easily? But Nate and Nora [this should have been more of a hint tbh] paid for my meds too so i had more energy and i helped care for Shaun and I got to meet their nanny? It was literally Codsworth, but he was this British guy that went to college with Nate? And he was Indian and had a fantastic mustache that i cannot find something even vaugly like online ok. Like this but with a very nicely cultivated facial hair that he would wiggle to make Shaun giggle.

Apparently Nate and Codsworth met in England because Nate was half English and had school together and Codsworth had gone on to be in the army, and fight in some of the resource wars. He ended up being honorably discharged due to an injury to one of his legs, and Nate came all the way to the UK to take him from the airport to his flat, and then offered Codsworth a spot in their apartment? Nora was going to be mad but really couldn’t be, because in Fallout once you’re discharged in the resource wars, not shit is coming your way. Then again the only reason they got enough rations to feed them all was because Nate was going through training for his entrance in the war with China or Mexico depending on which came first? And Canada was mid-uproar about troops going through their boarders, and the only people raising hell in the US was bloggers like me years later and people protesting on the ground.  That is of course, before the new plague.

So, there we all were in this new house, life having spiraled from Dumpster Fire to ‘The New Plague is loose, We are at active War, And Death Is Occurring’ and people were responding about as well as you would expect. Nora was suing the government for years, Nate had hardly been home since the government had started releasing Deathclaws into groups of protesters--- there was as much world wide outrage as there could be, but honestly it just lead to armed protest and more people dying or being too afraid to protest, or terrifying revelations about government experimentation after a server was hacked and leaked to the rogue social media accounts. I remember i was going to Temple in a synagogue that had reinforced the whole building with concrete and more or less made itself into a vault because we were all too terrified of people vandalizing and attacking people.  Codsworth refused to let me leave the house without something to defend myself, and he carried at least 4 different knives and one gun on his person at all times. He and Nora also took enough chems to not just stress themselves to death that i worried about their health. I didn’t take anything aside my meds because all the chems were New Things to me, 1, and 2 i had no idea what they’d do to me.

Nate came back from Alaska and told us he didn’t think things were going well, especially since he was sent home after refusing to follow some order or another-- he just got a haunted look and wouldn’t tell even Nora what the order was?  It was a couple days later when the VaultTec guy showed up, only it wasn’t “VaultTec” they called it “Shelter Solutions” and let me tell you even dream me only went with listening to this fidgetty white man in a suit in a time of panic because Nora let him into our home. She told me to go get Nate and he said for me to help Nora fill it out, and she said I was a sibling to them, so i could. She asked the Rep if we’d all fit in the vault and he said yes, just not the pets. I was so sad. But we got all the things filled out and in a bolt of inspiration I asked for directions to the Vault because yes, Sanctuary Hills, ye, but I know i am bad at directions and my sentimental Jewish ass will stop to help people and hardening my heart and thinking about directions would be the only way to survive. 

Because like fucking clockwork, Shaun started crying and Codsworth and Nate-- they’d been trying to play with him and hadn’t really succeeded. Nate had tried to use a little rubber bat and Shaun Did Not Approve. Codsworth’s mustache wiggle didn’t appease.  Nora got up and went to go calm down the kiddo. I was frozen on the couch, watching the news-- it was a habit, by then. It was in black and white, not because of technology, not because of culture, but because it was the Rebel News Source. Some really damn brave black people, probably Latinos, Asians, and Native Americans had started a roaming news station that jacked into the internet connections pretty much every american had: the phone line. Hook a line to your tv and your wall, you get the channel and your phone. Or, at least that was the logic. They’d talk about what was coming in regarding protests, what was actually happening out there, what the government was actually doing.  Park the van, broadcast the relevant info as you get it, run.  The guy sitting on camera right then was masked, not uncommon, and talking about how the larger black communities in New Orleans were being hit with another wave of the New Plague as well as something else getting in the water. He was scarred up and down his arms, not from fighting, though you could see some of those scars were defiantly from that. Nah, stimpaks and too many desperate stabs of Med-x and Rad-x. Radaway. You get protesters walking past those “new energy efficient” radiation powered cars-- i did like them for their lack of carbon foot print, but the price in a crash no-- and you give the soldiers coming for them a ready made bomb.  He was part way though talking about how to tell if a water source was tainted, and how to tell if someone is sick, when someone shoved some papers in his face. I was yelling before he reacted. I was grabbing things, my meds and the extras and all the chems i could as they all came in to the words over the tv. “What the-- Shit, fuck. They did it. They did it. They dropped the bombs, get to fucking cover, guys. Confimed flashes over New york and DC! Yo, Tyrone step o--” Static. Sirens and screaming.

“Run.”

So, they say when the first atom bomb was tested in the desert a blind woman several thousand miles away perceived the flash. Or at least, that’s a story that people who like the power of the bombs like to wave around with glee, instead of the fact that when they were first tested the scientists who fabricated them didn’t know if the whole of earth’s atmosphere would be destroyed.  This is something that was at the forefront of my mind about the time we were, as a family, running to the elevator down to the vault. I tripped on the ledge.  Codsworth paused to help me up, and i pushed him onto the platform as it started going down. The flash didn’t do anything for my vision about the time i threw myself into the chasm before the lid closed. I landed hard, but most it did was put out my back, because I have the annoying ability to handle long falls and sit there blinking while Codsworth drags me through the scanners.  I was ushered into another room than the three of them, and I worried. I knew how this went. I knew. I managed to make it past nuclear fire and i was going to die because of bad cryogenics. Then again, there were differences already, massive ones, perhaps it was enough, perhaps perhaps. They had me get dressed, and this lone scientist was eventually the only one with me. I was an extra. Everyone else supposed to be in this room hadn’t made it. I asked to wait to get inside until my eyes cleared a bit, and she allowed it. I asked how long the decontamination would take, watching from the side of my vision. She said, with some fidgeting, that it would take only a few moments. I asked, if that was the case, why was there a need for so many pods? Surely they could have saved money with two or so and had people stand back. She agreed but stated Shelter Solutions didn’t ask her.  I asked if there was a copy of the Torah in the Shelter, and she said she didn’t know. I asked why there needed to be insulation tubes to and from the decontamination pod if it was for that. She was silent. I said that I could see, by then, and that i knew we were not here to decontaminate. She asked what I wanted to do with that information. I said that I had studied biology and microbiology, and much of science, and as a scientist to another, i wanted to know if it would be possible to survive someone overriding the freeze and then refreezing everyone. She said yes, so long as the failsafe’s are in tact. I asked if there was a way they would not be. She said only if someone turned them off. I asked her, plainly, as a person of science to another, to please protect those failsafe’s. Because I would go into the pod, but my family is in the other room and i need them safe.  She agreed and shook my hand.  When the mutiny against the Overseer occurred, she hacked through his systems and protected the failsafe. Not only because I asked, but because she’d looked at the data they’d gotten from outside and didn’t want the people they had ‘saved’ to wake up and see it.

When Kellog came through, he could awaken people and keep them locked in, but not kill them that way. He didn’t really seem to care to. Nate had been holding Shaun, and he put up a fight Kellog didn’t see coming. He didn’t expect the protective curling and kicking, and lunging and biting his wrist and not letting go because he realized Kellog was after Shaun and harming him wasn’t an option. It was, but Nate wouldn’t accept that. He died regardless, but he tried. Nora cracked her window, and kept punching. She couldn’t refreeze, but she tried mightily to come for Kellog and he could respect that. If he didn’t need a back up. Codsworth knew better than to do anything than watch in horror. Or, specifically, he had no better way to react. He was refrozen angry and with tears on his face. I sat still and I waited to either die or awaken in time to find my friends angrily looking for their son.

What happened was i was awoken to Codsworth, face ice-burnt from his crying and wet from new mourning, and also incredibly angry ripping open my pod and shaking me to make sure i was alive.  “Mok, Mok-- Oh thank G-d you’re alive.” “Codsworth? Oh, oh g-d where are--” “Dead, they- someone killed Nate and Nora. They, they took Shaun and all the others are frozen! The bastards froze us!” “Wh- What? Both of them? They can’t both-” “Yes, and I’ve looked around, there’s skeletons, i think we and the stiffs are the only ones left. We must find Shaun, we must.” I just kinda stared at him for a second and nodded. 

We basically ended up wandering around being disabled angry “where is our communally raised child” seeking people and helping where we could and i kept adopting every child we saw and Codsworth kept telling me not to jump into the middle of Bullshit in spite or being the physical embodiment of Getting Into Bullshit. “Oh look Someone Having A Problem” “Mok, no” “I’m just saying” “Well OK”

He became general of the minutemen while I mostly planned settlements and made food. Because giant pots of soup are needed. Then he’d inevitably fuck off with a squad of people because someone made a passing comment about how a single raider looked at them sideways from a half mile away. And i’d be looking around with a scope like ‘where the fuck is he’. He also talked shit every chance he got about Mac because he and I would have shooting contests because look. I too am short, don’t walk too fast, and my teeth are fucked, but we both like money and can shoot good. I appreciate this. But when we’re doing this, occasionally Codsworth would feel left out and take a shot at what we were aiming at and just be a show off.

Hancock was very jealous of the mustache though. Said Codsworth was too dang classy for Goodneighbor. I ruined it by pointing out Codsworth used to do the squishy neck roll thing to make Shaun laugh and he never forgave me.

What i’m saying is please imagine me, as Me, and an Indian Codsworth, and a group of followers that kinda just roll with two disabled messes that are half informed about the world via 4th wall break, taking on the Institute.

Because we did.  I chewed Father out too btw. A whole 20 mins of “How dare you, young man, your parents would be ASHAMED, ASHAMED I TELL YOU.”