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#sometimes 2 different ways at once? an investigation is still underway as to how she got out last time
hedgehog-moss · 1 year
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Just some animal friends hanging out on a balmy May afternoon :)
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ladykatakuri · 3 years
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Pairing: Wrecker x Reader
Word Count: 2221
Warnings: Just fluffy and a kiss! Wrecker is not just the hug-a-bear we all love, he is more !
Song Lyrics: Faith of the Heart performed by : Russel Watson
Summary: People always judge you by your so-called defects, but Wreck…” Carefully you place a finger under his chin and lift it. “You are a man with so many layers to discover. Beside your sweet and gentle nature, your love of explosions and bets with Cross on who can destroy the most clankers and your deep affection for your family, there is so much more.
So a Wrecker one shot i made. I think there is far more to the man then has been shown until now and i hope that we will get to see more in depth about all of our sweet Batch in season 2 ( and yes I mean all of them when i say Batch! Crosshair included! )
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The Havoc Marauder always seemed as a small home to you all. There was enough space to sit and relax, sleep after a mission or work while underway to whatever planet it was the lot of you would go to, to earn some credits. It was a home away from home, even though you also had a new home base on Ord Mantel. The Marauder was that bit more special because it was the last part of home that the guys had left after defecting from the Empire. Today it seemed to be a refuge for one of the guys and you were glad it was parked on Ord Mantel. Now at the very least, you could spend some time with him, without having to worry that one of the others would walk in on the two of you, without having to worry that he would shut you out again.
“Wrecker….” You walk up to the man currently sitting with his back against the wall of the Marauder. It took you a minute to realise he had taken refuge in the hull and you would not let him get away with withdrawing himself from you again.
“Wrecker, you know you can talk to me right? If not me, then you should find someone to talk to. Please Wreck, don't shut me out.” You slide down next to him on the floor and put a hand on his arm.
When he turns his head to you, you see his watery smile. As much as he is always the cheery and positive man around his family, he now seems to have withdrawn from it all to suffer alone. “I… I don't know where to even start Mini.”
Mini, the name he has given you when you first met and it never left. It became his sweet nickname for you, knowing that you never felt secure about yourself. You had always been well aware you were more weighty then most of the women crowding around the troopers at 79s and all the women flocking towards the men of the Bad Batch whenever they showed up in a bar. The clones who were the majority of the visitors to 79s never looked at you as someone different because of looks though and Wrecker and his brothers were very quick to point out how sweet they found you and how special you had become to them when you joined their little family. To Wrecker you were the most beautiful person in the galaxy as well. He named you Mini, because compared to him, almost everyone was small and you were no different in that. Softly patting his arm you tell him to start where he wants to start.
It's been a long road
Getting from there to here
It's been a long time
But my time is finally near
“I guess, I just wonder where it all will end, or when it all will end. Omega is still just a kid ya know? She is growing up fast, but she is supposed to be a kid. She should be playing with other kids and having fun, bringing home stray animals as pets and kiss a special someone…. Well not kiss, that would not be alright with me and the guys, but when she is older…. But she is learning how to fight and kill now and she is a fugitive with us. It ain't right.” He almost shouts out the words, as if it was blocking his every thought and had to be thrown out there. “I know it wouldn't be much of a life on Kamino for her and all, but still… Is this the right thing to do for her? To keep her with us where she is always in danger?”
You know it is a sentiment that all of the men have had at one point, but Wrecker who bonded strongly with the young girl, as the older brother, felt strongly protective of his little sibling and feared greatly for her safety. With what you hoped to be a reassuring smile you look at him. “Wreck, I know you worry. But this is also Omega`s choice. You all wanted to give her a chance at a more normal life with Cut and Suu. She chose to be with you and live her life with you. You are her family and family is all that matters to her and to you.”
For the first time he grins. “Yeah, she is stubborn ey? Guess she has that in common with us.” Reaching to his side, he grabs a bag of his favorite snack, most times shared with the young girl after a mission. “Want some Mantel Mix too? “ He offers you the bag and you grab a handful of the mix. Popping some in his mouth he chews while staring at the wall opposing you. “Remember how we first got to talk? It was in the hull of the Marauder as well.”
And I can feel the change in the wind right now
Nothings in my way
And they're not gonna hold me down no more
No they're not gonna hold me down
No they're not gonna hold me down
You had been travelling with the guys for a while now, getting used to the day to day business and to being somewhat of a sister figure to Omega. You were no warrior, no clone and no mechanic or medic. You were just the person who was easy in making connections with people when you decided to give it a real try and you knew how to prepare meals from whatever was lying around that was edible. And even more important, you befriended the Bad Batch and covered for them when it was first announced they had defected from the Empire. Knowing how close you had grown to the men, you were under investigation and the guys quickly decided to get you away from the Empire's clutches as fast as they could.
Each of the Batch had grown rather attached to you and Omega clung to you, especially when it came to doing the girly stuff. You enjoyed it immensely but it was Wrecker who surprised you the most. The man had always been considered a simple person that loved explosions and fighting and having his sweet snacks. He could party like the best of them and that was all there was to him. Boy, did he surprise you when you walked in on him one night.
You had been on the way to some remote planet in the Outer Rim. The possibility of finding an ally or foe was small and you needed supplies. Tech and Echo were in the cockpit as usual while Crosshair and Hunter were sound asleep. Omega shared her private sleeping space with you and after a long talk and reading a fantasy story she finally fell asleep. Lula was tucked snugly in with her after which you softly stepped down a ladder and moved to grab something to drink. You stumbled in on Wrecker, concentrated on something on a pad and not hearing you enter the hull. “What ya doing Wreck?” Carefully moving around a crate, you stand beside him and look down.
“Y/N ! You surprised me!.” He quickly puts the pad beside him and looks up to where you stand. I was, well… I was reading something.” He scratches his neck and a slight blush creeps up on his cheeks as he looks at you.
Tilting your head you slide down beside him. “What are you reading?”
For a moment he seems to be debating whether or not he should let you know. Then, he grabs the pad and hands it over to you. When you look at the text displayed you look up. “Wreck, I didn`t know you were interested in this.”
He shyly smiles at you as he takes the pad back. “I like to read about things… Do you know about this man? Asimov? He is really smart. I thought maybe… There is something we can use from what he writes when we face clankers and all.” The sincerity in his voice surprises you a bit.
“I won't say I understand everything this man writes, but it is very interesting. Honestly, I prefer reading different kinds of stories. Romantic novels, historic stories or thrillers and all that. Biographies can be very interesting too and sometimes it can still teach us still I guess.”
Wrecker nods at your every word and a smile beams at you. “You love reading too! Why didn't you tell me? We could share favorites and talk about them if you want? I mean, if that's something you'd like?”
From that moment on, the two of you would share time together whenever you could to talk about the latest story you discovered, about the things either of you did not understand and the other could explain or just reading the same book. More than once it happened that the others would walk in on the two of you, you with your head against him, him with his head in your lap or the other way around, just enjoying the stories you were reading or discussing the stories. Those moments were also the start of Wrecker opening up even more to you about the past and sometimes about his deepest feelings and fears.
Cause I've got faith of the heart
I'm going where my heart will take me
I've got faith to believe
I can do anything
I've got strength of the soul
And no one's gonna bend or break me
I can reach any star
I've got faith
I've got faith
Faith of the heart
Now right here in the present, you realise that the man you came to love for his love of life and his hidden, deeper layers of personality is severely struggling with everything that has happened up until now. And he needed to work through it, alone and with you. Carefully you lay your head against him. “What else is wrong Wreck? I know it is not only Omega you worry about. You always shut people out when things bother you and you retreat to wherever you can go to vent.”
Wrecker inhales deeply and shifts to wrap his arm around you. “You know Mini, there is so much that happened. Omega is young and a fugitive with us, my chip activated and I almost killed them! Crosshair…. well you know his chip also activated and we lost him for a little while. I`m just happy we got him back again, but he has a lot to work through and he still blames us sometimes. And you….. Mini, you are not safe with us either. They will hurt you if they ever get you. I don't want you to get hurt Mini. I mean, we all have been injured on jobs and stuff, but you and Omega? I would die if something happened to either of you!”
You can hear his heart race as he speaks and feel his body shudder at the thought of you and Omega getting hurt somehow. But, you let him vent every bit of emotion, every bit of anger and fear he has deep inside of himself. He finally decided to open up and let this out. He decided to let you be the one to hear every thought and every struggle he has been fighting with on his own. To so many people he appeared to be a simple man, but you knew better. You knew all too well how many layers there were to this gentle giant.
Pulling away from his body you sit up on your knees in front of him. “Wrecker. You are the most gentle man I have met. You care so deeply for your own and you would sacrifice all that you have and all that you are to ensure their safety. People always judge you by your so-called defects, but Wreck…” Carefully you place a finger under his chin and lift it. “You are a man with so many layers to discover. Beside your sweet and gentle nature, your love of explosions and bets with Cross on who can destroy the most clankers and your deep affection for your family, there is so much more. You are smart, Wrecker. You have an intelligence that defies the understanding of those who always considered you only by your CT number and purpose. And Wreck? You are also the only man I truly, deeply, love.” You place a gentle kiss on his lips as you look him in the eyes.
As you pull back from him, a grin forms around his lips. Without any warning he embraces you and then stands up and slings you over his shoulder. With a high pitched yelp from you, he walks out of the Marauder and into the streets of Ord Mantel. “Time to treat you to some proper dinner, my sweet Mini!”
Before he lowers you back to your feet, he kisses you with a smile.
Out in the back, a man grins and turns around. You only see a glimpse of a red bandana, as Wrecker walks off with his arm wrapped tightly around you. Your Wrecker, a man of deep devotion and many layers to him.
@loth-wolffe@hellothere-generalangsty@chaoticvampirejedi@nahoney22@reluctant-mandalore@kin-rokku@cyroku@m-o-o-n-s-g-o-o-n-s@catbustours@uponrightful
I have tagged people I think might like this, if you want to be tagged in future works or do not want to be tagged anymore, please let me know in a messege <3
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ryik-the-writer · 4 years
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Chapter 26 - Temporary Fix
[A03]
Chapter 1: Pan meets a Wendy Chapter 2: Scars (Felix’s Story) Chapter 3: Day One Chapter 4: Revenge and Fireflies Chapter 5: Brighter than Stars Chapter 6: filler: The Tigress Chapter 7: Operation Spotless! Chapter 8: Operation Spotless: Reporters Down Chapter 9: A Dance with the Devil Chapter 10: filler: Felix and the Pancake Chapter 11: The Girl with Blue Eyes pt. 1 Chapter 12: The Girl with Blue Eyes pt. 2 Chapter 13: The Girl With Blue Eyes: Underground Chapter 14. Recovery Chapter 14.2 Recovery some more Chapter 15: Trapped Chapter 16: Filth Chapter 17: Fairydust pt. 1 Chapter 18: Fairydust pt. 2 Chapter 19: The Mystery of the Dead Nun pt. 1 Chapter 20: The Mystery of the Dead Nun pt. 2                                         Chapter 21:  The Mystery of the Dead Nun pt. 3                                         Chapter 22: Reflections pt. 1                                                                       Chapter 23: Reflections pt. 2
Chapter 24: Closing
Chapter 25: Felix is helping Pan
So guess what…
THIS BITCH FINALLY GOT A JOB AND HER OWN PLACE TO LIVE!!
HELL YEAH!!
So slight negative note on that: that kind of means updating is going to be REALLY slow for a while. The place I moved to, while really nice, is kind of out of my budget and I am pulling as many hours as possible to pay for it and such.
On top of that, the place doesn’t have internet and I’m trying to see what my budget will look like after I pay bills so I can consider getting my own (which I really need as a writer and as a journalist).
So just know, I’m not giving up on any of my stories. I’ve just started a new chapter of my life and have to let the ink dry before I can pick up my old interests.
Anyway, here’s Papers and Sleuthers…
-,-,-,-,-,-,-,-,-,-,-,-,-,-,-
Wendy half-heartedly checked that she had her notepad full of her old notes before she locked up to head to Peter’s. If he started acting up she could use her lack of supplies as an excuse to slip out. She truly hoped it wouldn’t come to that. She wanted this week to be a sort of awakening for them, a chance to finally pull the hatchet away from each other’s throats.
She was linked to him now in the worse way. They’d been through hell together so many times but it hadn’t done anything to shift their relationship into a more stable light. Perhaps if they took the chaos out of the equation something would change. Things really needed to.
She found herself checking her hair as she exited her apartment before she chastised herself. This was an after-hours investigation, not a date!
Wendy scoffed as she locked her door. Her and Pan on a date? What a nightmarish thought!
She grimaced when she reached his door, the unpleasant memory of confronting him the day Mother Superior died still vividly fresh.
“Tosser,” Wendy muttered, wanting to call him something much crueler. However, learning to tolerate him now that they were going to be in close proximity for an unknown amount of time might be beneficial.
With that, she took a deep breath and knocked softly on the door.
There was a light thud behind the wood before it opened, a wild Pan greeting her with a sharp once-over.
“You’re wearing that road-kill?” he scoffed, pointing harshly at her feathered sweater that had been more than appropriate for the weather.
So much for patience.
“Shove it,” Wendy hissed, pushing him into his trashed living room.
“The hell happened in here?”
Pan circled her, not answering, and pulled a giant marker board from the kitchen.
“I’ve started putting some notes together,” he said, adding a picture of Cruella de Vil on the board.
“Um…” Wendy started, her heart speeding up at the site of their old nemesis. “Where are we starting?”
Pan pondered at the start of his chaos. “From the beginning. The devil woman is our best bet. Somehow she set all of this off.”
“How do you figure that?” Wendy inquired.
Pan passed a folder over his shoulder to her, eyes still trained on the board.
Wendy shifted through its components, her gut dropping at the various photos of the dog murderer.
Her brow wrinkled in thought as she went through de Vil’s information. Exact date and location of birth unknown, though her last address was in Manchester…with her now-deceased husband. Wendy whistled at the rap sheet of her marriages. Four times, all but her last ending in death (the last abruptly ended in divorce following a major arrest of the husband.)
There was a scan of her passport as well, signifying that she had been in the country at least six months before she kidnapped Storybrooke’s dogs.
“Why here?” Wendy wondered aloud. “Why Storybrooke, and why dognapping? It’s such a cartoonish villain move.”
“Except in cartoons the villains wouldn’t bleed the dogs out and turn their skins into coats,” Pan muttered, back still to her.
“Coats?” Wendy gasped, the mental image making her stomach twist.
“Last page in the file,”
Wendy balanced the folder to find the page and blinked at the printed out copy of a news article before her.
MANCHESTER WOMAN CHARGED WITH 13 COUNTS OF ANIMAL CRUELTY
Wendy gulped at the picture of the drunk-looking mugshot of de Vil, her intense eyes seeming to stare right at Wendy, as if blaming her for her past crime.
 A local woman is being charged with the kidnapping and death of several dogs.
The dogs, all of Dalmatian and mixed Dalmatian breeds, were taken out of the Manchester and Liverpool areas within a three week period, according to authorities.
The woman, identified as 39-year-old Cruella de Vil, was apprehended at an abandoned windmill outside of the Liverpool area where over 20 dogs were being kept. Upon her arrest animal control discovered the mutilated remains of eight dogs. The remaining five dogs very rushed to the Wrightsville Veterinarian clinic for emergency treatment, and are expected to survive.
De Vil is being held at the Wrightsville Police Station without bail.
This story will be updated as more information becomes available.
Wendy checked the date of the incident to find that Cruella committed her first act three years ago. She shifted to Pan’s slightly cleared off the counter to spread out the devil woman’s file and located an additional article.
MANCHESTER DOGNAPPER TRIAL UNDERWAY
The trial Manchester dognapper Cruella de Vil will begin Monday morning.
De Vil was charged with 13 counts of animal cruelty following the torture and murder of several dogs in January.
De Vil’s lawyer originally declined to comment of her client’s state for her case, but De Vil stated to the press before being led to the jail: “I’m not worried, Darlings. Who would sentence a woman in diamonds?”
Wendy snorted. Now that was quality journalism! She flipped to the next article.
‘DEVIL WOMAN’ CRUELLA DE VIL EXPOSES PLOT FOR DOGS DURING TRAIL
Manchester dognapper Cruella de Vil stated during her trial that she abducted the Dalmatians with the purpose of using their pelts for ‘the perfect coat’.
De Vil continued to go into great detail about how she mutilated the dogs ‘when it was their time’, much to the disturbance to the court.
“I took one pup by his stringy little tail and hoisted him up,” de Vil, who was clothed in an elaborate gown and furs, detailed, “The little bugger wouldn’t stop squealing, even after I slashed his throat open.”
Evidence shows that De Vil had dozens of sketches for coats not just for the Dalmatians she abducted, but also for poodle and Shi Tzu breeds. The sketches also showed plans for various muffs, boots, and glove items.
When asked what she was going to do with all the coats, De Vil said, “Why, wear them of course! I’ll be the envy of every bitch at the social club.”
 De Vil's criminal record includes dozens of speeding tickets and two cases of vehicle homicide attempts. Records show that De Vil was acquitted for both cases and never paid off the tickets.
De Vil’s sentence trial will be held in October. Until then De Vil will be held in Manchester Sanitarium for the Mentally Unwell for further observation.
Wendy sighed in exhaustion. What a story! How could someone so heinous be so close to her neck of the woods?
The other articles were faded from an obvious lack of printer ink, but Wendy was able to make out enough from the headlines to guess what happened next.
De Vil was sentenced to two years in a different sanitarium that specialized in disorders like her. She was deemed “cured” after a year and released due to a special project. She left for America right afterward for a “fresh start”.
“Oh she stared fresh alright,” Wendy commented.
“Great,” Pan said from the board. “You’re where I was thirty minutes ago. Let me know when you get where I’m at now.”
Wendy resisted throwing De Vil’s folder at his head.
“I don’t think there’s anywhere else to go with this one,” Wendy pointed out.  “She went crazy, killed a bunch of animals, ran here and started all over again. That’s really it.”
“But the motive!” Pan growled, looking her dead in the eye. Desperate. “There had to be something else. Maybe she was working for someone or trying to start a multi-dognapping franchise here or…”
Wendy edged back at the desperation in his voice. He was grasping at straws, but there were none left for him in this case.
“Pan,” Wendy tried carefully, “There’s nothing left,”
“How the hell would you know!” He shouted.
“Because sometimes people are just bad,” she shouted back. “Sometimes they do a few terrible things just to do them! There doesn’t have to be a reason or a great scheme behind their actions! They just cause chaos and kill over!” with a spike of adrenaline, she stepped up to him, feeling his hearted pounding in the buzzing air.
“Don’t they?”
Pan twitched, glaring at her with a raw sense of hatred.
Wendy thought for a moment he might throw her out, and she really didn’t want him to. Pan had to see logic, had to stop filling his mind with information that just wasn’t there, and she couldn’t just run off and leave him to fill in such non-existent gaps. 
He’s scared. He’s frustrated. He needs to be kept busy.
With a deep breath, she stepped back to locate one of the other boxes on the couch, tensing a bit when she saw Jekyll’s name on the cardboard.
“We can start with him now,” she said, pulling out a folder.
In a flash, Pan slapped it out of her hand.
 Wendy gasped and brought her stinging hand to her chest where a shallow papercut was surfacing, staring at Pan.
“I didn’t mean to do that,” he said, looking just as surprised as she did.
It was the closest thing to an apology she would get from him, she knew, and she expected it, but it still did not stop her from hating him.
“What is your problem!” she yelled as she sucked the blood from her stinging cut.
“Nothing,” Pan defended, though he was tenser than a tightly wound spring.
Wendy looked him over, trying to pinpoint the root of his harsh mood. Of course, going through their old cases was certainly stressful, with the memories that surfaced as they saw photos of their former nemesis faces…
Ah.
She stared at Jekyll’s case box where the corner of his photo was just peeking out, turning Wendy’s stomach.
Gods know what the site of him was doing to Pan.
The journalist stepped away, twisting to pick up de Vil’s box.
“What about her lackey’s?” Wendy inquired, picking through her file.  She didn’t meet his eyes as she dug through the very scarce information. “We don’t know how they play into all of this outside their association with de Vil.”               
Pan looked at her, his expression solid and unreadable, but Wendy swore she saw a glint of something in his eyes.
Gratitude?
No, Peter Pan didn’t thank anyone for what they did, for him or otherwise.
Good thing Wendy didn’t expect it from him, or anything else for that matter.
They began adding Horace and Jasper’s notes to de Vil’s board, though a now were quick glance told Wendy it wouldn’t add much. They were jailbirds on and off as far back as the records could show, became acquainted with de Vil sometime after their most recent parole hearing, and thanks to her and Pan were tucked safely in a Boston prison until they could be moved to one in London. Nothing more, nothing less.
But Pan wasn’t ready to accept that, so Wendy pretended to stay busy until she commented on ordering from the Chinese menu on Pan’s fridge.
Half an hour later they were sitting silently in his living room, munching on greasy eggrolls as they stared absently at the evidence before them.
Fuzz the cat made a lazy trail from Pan’s bedroom to where they were eating, plopping himself next to Wendy.
The blonde smiled, charmed by the odd-looking cat, and reached out to pet him.
Pan readied a warning. Fuzz was known to scratch first-time visitors to bleeding shreds, but with a flash of naughtiness, decided to let the little bird find that out for herself.
However, Fuzz the cat purred in delight at the attention and collapsed next to Wendy, hungry for more.
“You…slut!” Pan hissed at his sorry excuse of a cat.
Wendy’s eyes widened. “Excuse me?”
“The damn cat,” Pan barked, turning back to his food to begin another round of silence.
Wendy shrugged and quietly offered him another eggroll, which he took with no additional fuss.
It was strange, this quiet domesticity. No violence, no fighting, no apprehension of what was to come.
It would have been peaceful if it weren’t for the wave of uneasiness Pan was letting off.
His leg was shaking with antsiness, and he kept making small sounds to break the silence.
I suppose it’s better than him yelling, Wendy thought. Might as well attempt conversation.
“So…” she begun, earning a questioned glare mid-chew. “I…ran into someone today,”
Pan looked up at her, looking slightly bored.
“And?” he shrugged, mouth full.
Wendy shrugged. Of course it was a stupid thing to bring up. Pan probably knew everyone in Storybrooke, and he had little interest for all of them.
“It’s nothing,” Wendy responded. “Just thought he was…” She searched her vocabulary for the word to describe the man with unsettling charming manners.
“Different,”
Pan’s eyes flickered at that.
Wendy Darling was smitten.
“Sounds like a scoop,” Pan smirked. “Let’s go find him.”
Wendy coughed on her fried rice as he stood. “What?” she laughed, truly mystified.
“Let’s go meet this mystery man,”
Wendy blinked trying to comprehend his shift in emotion as he put on his coat.
“Pan, it was dark out, I didn’t get a good look at him,” she explained. “I don’t even know his name!”
“It’s Storybrooke,” Pan waved her off. “We’ll find out who he is in an hour.”
“This is insane,” she barked with a laugh.
Pan wadded up her jacket and threw it at her, earning a yelp.
“Well, I’m bored. Are you coming or not?”
She stared at him, wondering just how high up the cliff of insanity he had already climbed. Boredom was making him scattered-brained and seeking action in the tiniest occurrence.
It was sad, like watching an animal trying to chew its way out of a trap, but also fascinating. Pan needed her, whether he would say it in words or in action. He needed her to keep him from jumping off that cliff, especially when they had no way of knowing what was waiting for him at the bottom.
With an exhausted sigh, she unraveled her jacket and followed him into the icy night, missing his satisfied smirk as he closed the door.
.=.=.=.=.=.=.=.=.
Wendy was having trouble keeping on his heels. It was dark and cold and he was the only one who really knew where they were going.
If he even knew himself.
Pan was all over the place tonight, and Wendy was starting to get dizzy from his back-and-forth.
She was practically having to skip to keep up with him. It was like he was forgetting that she was with him. Already he was trying to focus on something else.
Her loud cobbling seemed to echo through the street of Storybrooke, and in the dim night she felt a wave of paranoia run up her spine. It sounded like there was someone behind them, following them.
“Do you hear that?” she asked Pan.
“No, here we are,”
He stopped so suddenly Wendy ran into him, her face hitting him square in the spine. She gained her balance and glared at him before she stepped to his side, staring into the bright building ahead as it spilled vibration into the night.
“What is that?”
“The Rabbit Hole,” Pan smirked. “Sleaziest place in town.”
Wendy snorted through a shiver. “And you thing the well-polished man I ran into tonight is in there?”
Pan shrugged. “Maybe. Either way I want a drink. Come on,”
Wendy followed him with a sigh. At least she would get out of the cold.
Her ears began ringing as soon as she entered the nightclub, her eyes cloudy from the flashing lights.
“I don’t know about this,” she shouted, her voice lost in the sound.
This time, Pan took hold of her sleeve and pulled her through the cluster of tipsy people.
“Good thing it’s not a workday,” Wendy muttered to herself as Pan pulled her to a cluttered table.
She swept bits of food off the sticky surface, wincing at the music and hard chairs. Across her Pan was staring out into the crowd, his eyes glistening bright as he watched the gyrating bodies.
“You…come here often,” Wendy joked, feeling claustrophobic and savagely out of place.
“Once or twice with Tiger Lily,” Pan shrugged, somehow able to hear her over the music.
“And you’re not deaf?” she shouted.
“It’s not loud enough. It never is.”
“Huh?”
Pan looked up from the dancing sin to stare at her. Really stare at her. Truly look at her for the first time in days.
Her hair was growing out more evenly, her curls had even started to come back.
But the bags under her eyes were darker, hollower. She was tired, and he knew it was his fault.
“You want to dance?”
Pan looked as shocked as Wendy was when he looked back up at her.
“Did I…did I hear you right?”
Pan’s bright red face was hidden by the flashing strobe lights. The fuck did he say that?
“You’re not deaf yet are you?” he smirked, standing. “Let’s go.”
Wendy glanced out onto the dance floor. “I…think I’m overdressed.”
Pan glanced out at the half-clothed bodies and chuckled. He slipped off his jacket and undid the first two buttons of his shirt.
Wendy’s heart leapt and her throat tightened.
“You’re turn.”
Wendy shot from her chair, her clothes suddenly feeling stuck to her skin.
“Oh don’t be so damn modest,” Pan cackled, easing out into the dance floor. These little outbursts were giving him some energy.
Wendy shivered, feeling naked under her multiple layers.
Damn it! Why the hell did he have to get under her skin so easily!
She clutched her sleeves, watching as he began to get swarmed by dancers.
Yet…strangely enough…he was still waiting for her. As if he actually wanted her to come out there with him.
Keep him distracted. Keep him busy.
And he was actually smiling!
Well…leering, but he wasn’t as threatening as usual.
With a groan, she shed her feathered coat and eased out into the crowd, instantly getting sucked into the vortex of sweat.
She reached out for stability, hoping she wouldn’t accidentally grope anyone. Out of the sea of grinders a hand grabbed her wrist and—thankfully or unthankfully, she wasn’t sure yet—she fell into Pan’s chest.
“Bet you didn’t do this kind of dancing in your London prep school,” Pan snarked against her hair.
Wendy detached herself from his chest, getting some much-needed space between them.
“I went to a public school, thank you,” she barked, a smile tugging at her lips. It was hard to find a balance with so many people crushing them together.
“What do we…how…” she yelled, desperate for just an inch for space.
She felt Pan’s laugh rumble against her chest, the feeling much more put-together than the vibrations in the air. His hands snaked up her shoulder and gave them just enough space so that they could look into each other’s eyes.
“Just do what I do.” He said.
I already do.
He took her hands and helped her sway in their tiny space. Wendy could have fainted from the heat and the shock of the situation. Here she was dancing with the biggest arse in the entire world! She must be as mad as he was bored!
Her heart pounded as she copied his movements, almost afraid to let him go. So many people were brushing and bumping into them. She could easily be trampled, and something told her she wasn’t leaving the bar tonight without at least a cracked rib.
She looked up to find Pan watching her. He looked strangely human. Less territorial and ready to fight.  
Like he was actually…enjoying himself.
“Okay,” he instructed, pulling her arm over her head. He began twisting her wrist and Wendy caught on quickly, letting her twirl her until spots flashed before her eyes.
But he didn’t stop, and she kept going, catching the light in Pan’s eyes each time she spun back to him.
And before Wendy knew it, she was laughing, the sound much more soothing than the trash flowing through the intercoms.
For a moment Peter Pan and Wendy Darling weren’t small-town reporters who got into too much trouble far too often.
They were just two normal adults who were having a fun, random night.
Wendy couldn’t remember the last time she did something like this. Perhaps back in college…when she wasn’t as dark, before the bloodshed and the grittiness of the world became part of her daily routine.
And it was nice to be having this fresh taste of life with the person who had drug her into it.
“Not bad, Wendy Bird,” Pan teased as she grabbed on to his shoulder to stop the dizziness.
“Same to you, Peter Pan,
He scoffed, covering the hand on his shoulder and grasping this one.
“Let’s make you fly.”
With that, he pushed into the crowd, anchoring her with the hold on her arm. She spun back into him naturally, howling like a fool.
“Don’t let go if you’re going to do that,” she laughed.
“I promise, I won’t.”
Wendy had to admit, she rather liked this fun side of him. Sure, he was really just distracting himself from his current issues, but he was doing it in a constructive way that was keeping them both out of harm's way…mostly.
She nearly slammed into a dancer during her second twirl. When she spun back to Pan she was ready to tell him to try something else, but he looked so…happy.
She couldn’t do it…and had he had said he wouldn’t let her get hurt.
And she was safe…
Thank you.
Until he spun her out again…
Time to fly.
And let go.
He was gone in the blink of an eye and she stumbled out into the crowd.
The more drunkard dancers shoved her away and she stumbled to find stable ground.
“Pan!” She called out, drowning.
She was wedged between so many people, blind and hot.
“Pan!” She yelled again, feeling for him. “Where are—“
Someone’s elbow pounded into her lip and she flew to the sticky ground. Blood filled her mouth in seconds, and she stopped caring if she found Pan or not and started searching for a way off the dance floor.
Pan had taken them too far out. She had no idea where she was. People were stepping on her like she was nothing. On her hands, her hair.
She was going to die here. Had Pan done this on purpose? Had he really hoped her death would somehow entertain him?
She was going to die and no one would know until the club closed, or morning at least.
She was going to die…
“I got you lass!”
She was picked up effortlessly and drug from the crowd, the person clutching her moving through them like Moses through the parted sea.
A savior, it would seem.
Before her brain truly recognized what was going on, her savior had her outside, away from the noise and her unintentional murderers. Her lungs painfully filled with fresh, icy air and she started coughing up blood from her wound, very uncaring how disgusting she looked to her companion.
“There you go, love,” the savior—a man?—instructed, patting her back. “Get the sin out of your lungs.”
Love…
Wendy brushed her bangs from her eyes and met the haunting blue eyes of her earlier savior, the very man she and Pan had set off to find.
“You!” she gasped, nearly laughing with the insanity of it. “I…we…hi!”
He chuckled. “Hello again.”
She tried to catch her breath as she went back and forth with the odd coincidence and Pan’s disappearance.
Disappearance…or abonnement?
Wendy’s stomach flipped when the idea passed through her mind. It seemed almost too cruel for him to do, yet it seemed like something that he would do.
He was all over the place tonight, jumping back and forth like a frog on a scorching lily pad.
But really, he was always like that, she just hadn’t accepted it yet.
And now he had left her to be trampled to death in a night club, wandering off to gods’ knows where.
And he didn’t care. He just didn’t care.
“Are you alright?”
Wendy blinked, not realizing that her eyes had been misting.
“Yes, of course,” she breathed deeply and stood. “I just…I need to get home.” And get a club, she added to herself.
“I’ll walk you,” he offered immediately.
“Thank you, but I’m fine.”
The man chuckled. “Each time you say that I find you in peril,”
Wendy made a sound, not wanting to be rude but really not wanting to stick around much longer. “Really I’m fine. But thank you.” She nodded at him and began walking away, the raging fire in her heart, melting the ice in her bones.
“Killian Jones.”
Wendy paused and glanced back at him. “What?”
He smiled, at pearly whites and charm. “My name. I think it’s about time, you learned it.”
Wendy worried at her lip, letting the name rest on her mind. It suited him somehow. An old-world name for an old world charmed man. It was an interesting combination.
“I see. Well then, thank you, Killian Jones.” She said with a nod, picking back up her step.
“Wait.”
Wendy halted, slightly aggravated. If he turned out to be a maniac like Jekyll she’d bash his lights out with a chunk of ice.
He stepped forward, his hands resting in his pockets, showing he meant no harm, posed no threat.
“Would you like to get a drink sometime?”
Wendy laughed, her face burning. “That’s…forward.”
Jones chuckled with a shrug. “With your track record, the next time I may see you is in a hospital.”
Wendy shrugged that was true. She gave him another look over. Mysterious creature of the night.
She had learned already that trusting people was too dangerous, especially the kind who lurked in the dark. 
She didn’t know him, and he, despite his multiple rescues, didn’t know her.
“Why on earth would you want to have a drink with a perfect stranger?” she inquired aloud.
Jones cocked his head, his eyes gleaming with intentions Wendy couldn’t trace.
“To get to know you, of course.”
Wendy stiffened, her anxiety rising.
“That’s not a good idea,” Wendy gasped, desperate for space. “I have to go find…” she shook her head, her mind too cluttered to find a definition for her current view of Pan.
“If you change your mind,” Jones called after her. “I’ll be waiting. Tomorrow at the diner.”
Wendy increased her speed, making a direct line to Pan’s apartment.
She was going to kill him. She’d made the threat many times before but this time she meant it.
He left her.
He pulled her into all of this madness, and then just released her to break her neck without him.
Where had he gone? What temporary rush was he following now?
Why hadn’t he taken her with him?
She found his apartment the same way they had left it: locked up and dark. She searched for a spare key in the places anyone else would, but Pan wasn’t like everyone else and thus wouldn’t think to leave a spare key.
Out of aggravation, she picked up a loose brick, check over her shoulder, and hurled it into the glass.
It was exactly something Pan would do, and Wendy couldn’t help the small flame of satisfaction that came with damaging his property—which she had to plan to fix thank you very much.
She stormed in, flicking on lights and opening doors to find him. Fuzz the cat ran out of the bedroom as she checked behind checked in his closet.
“Pan!” she howled, her hands shaking.
Why?
“Where are you?”
Pan wasn’t there. He hadn’t returned to hide from her or even to continue their work. He had vanished completely with no warning for her.
With a stiff sob, she collapsed on the couch, feeling right at him with the shattered remains of his home.
“Peter…”
He left you.
“He left me.”
-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.
He wasn’t sure when or where he was.
But it was bright there, and surprisingly warm. It couldn’t be a memory of his childhood. Those were always dark and cold.
But he was somewhere…at least he thought it was him. There was glass in front of him, well-made and clean, and big enough to cover an entire wall.
But he couldn’t see his reflection…
Nor anything outside the window.
That’s why when the little bird flew closer, it terrified him.
“Stop…” he tried to scream just as the bird hit the window.
A loud bang…
It landed at his feet—
Its neck was broken.
He startled into consciousness, his fuzzy mind going into an automatic death mode.
Someone had grabbed him…he thought.
One second he was throwing Wendy out—letting her fly just enough from him—and then she was flying out of his grip while he was being pulled further from her.
He wasn’t sure what happened after that, but now he was tied up in some sort of darkroom, his hands above his head on some kind of meat hook, by the fill of it.
Something equivalent to a lantern was in the corner, giving him just enough light to keep him from going into a state of complete panic.
Jekyll’s prisons were always too bright.
A noise indicated he was no longer alone. A second later a door in the corner opened, and a man stepped in, the light behind him silhouetting him just long enough for Pan to get a good idea of him.
“Good to see you again,” the man said as he pulled a chair up and straddled it.
“Again?” Pan scoffed. “Go to hell, you wanker.”
“That’s captain to you, boy,” he returned firmly. “Captain Killian Jones, if you don’t mind.”
“I don’t care, and know, who the fuck you are.”
“I don’t expect you to,” Killian said casually.
“I tend to forget people who aren’t worth remembering,” Pan smirked, his face warmer from the trail of blood leaking from his temple.
Killian chuckled, charmed. This was going to be the most fun he’d had in a while.
“I suppose it won’t matter anyway,” he sighed. “Not with you knocking on death’s door.”
Pan licked his lips. A challenge at last!
“Oh really?”
“Yes,” Killian said. “You see m’boy, I’ve been sent by someone who really wants you dead.”
“You’ll have to be a bit more specific,” Pan winked.
“No one you’ll need to worry about,” Killian alluded. “Just know that you’ve caused enough trouble that it warrants a very clean—and if you behave yourself—a very quick one.”
Pan scoffed. “If I’m scheduled to die, know that I’ll make my last days your worst,”
Killian seemed unphased by Pan’s threat, and while Pan wasn’t yet worried about it, it did make his gut turn just enough to be noticed.
Then, Killian laughed, and tapped his fingers on the back of the chair.
“You know, you actually gained our attention after that boy with the scar inquired Henry Jekyll’s files,”
Ice…the blood can’t move.
“Oh…I can’t quite remember his name…”
You have to keep count of the spasms…you have to know where the blood is going…
“That’s his benefit I suppose,” Killian smirked, watching as the blood drained from his face.
Felix…oh Felix I’m sorry…
“After all, it’d be a shame if that poor boy succumbed to one of his little fits in the privacy of his own home one afternoon…”
Pan bolted against the restraints, blood raging and teeth desperate to break skin.
“You fucking go near him I’ll kill you!”
Killian grabbed Pan by the jaw and forced him into the wall, pressing his knee into his stomach.
“I’d love to see you try,” Killian husked, his ice blues evenly hitting Pan’s forest greens. “I’d love to see you help any of them. Him, that pixie of a girl who hates you more than life itself…” his grin widened. “And that pretty blonde distraction you brought into this whole bloody mess.”
“Wendy…” the word left his lips before could stop it.
He didn’t know how to protect her the way he did the others.
“Such a pretty name,” Killian gloated. “Such a pretty girl at that. And she’s so desperate to find you, even after to abandoned her on a dangerous dance floor,”
Pan glared at him. “You bitch,”
Killian released him and made his way to the door.
“I’ll take no pleasure from killing her, m’boy,” Killian said, surprisingly quite truthfully. “However, this is as much to do with her as it does with you.”
Pan dug his nails into the cloth binding his wrists, trying desperately to stare a whole through Killian’s heart.
“How quick or how slowly she goes depends on what you can do for me within the next few days,”
Pan winced.
“Goodnight,” Killian winked, turning off the light and enclosing Pan in a blanket of darkness.
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trendingnewsb · 6 years
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5 Crazy Recent News Stories That Didn’t Get Enough Attention
Most people read the headlines of a couple of political stories shared by their most untrustworthy friend on Facebook and feel like they’re pretty well-informed. But the daily large-scale dramas of the Trump administration, mass shootings, Russian agents being assassinated, and the world generally seeming like a montage of newscasts from a ’50s sci-fi movie have overshadowed some utterly insane news that, in a different era, would have dominated headlines for weeks.
So here are five stories that have yet to receive the proper “Wait, what the fuck?!” reaction that they deserve.
5
The Government Said It Has Mysterious Alloys Recovered From UFOs
Two Pulitzer-Prize-winning reporters made public some fascinating footage captured by military pilots of an unidentified flying object zipping across the skies, making sharp turns and occasionally hovering like a helicopter, and all with no visible signs of propulsion. With the internet as it is, we should’ve been drowned in stories about how “Independence Day PREDICTED THE FUTURE” or whatever.
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The footage is odd, for sure. But it only makes up like 0.5 percent of the craziness within the New York Times article it came from.
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The article says that between 2007 and 2012, there was something called the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program running out of the Pentagon, where at least one employee had the X-Files theme as their ringtone and their co-workers hated them for it. Their task was to investigate mysterious aerial phenomena. While there’s a good chance they had a rubber stamp that read “It’s just another damn drone from Walmart” so they wouldn’t have to write it out all the time, the AATIP’s creator, former Senator Harry Reid, fought to secure the program’s findings, fearing that the United States would be helpless to defend itself from the technologies it discovered. That’s the kind of shit you say to justify keeping Magneto in a plastic cell underground.
Luis Elizondo, the former head of the AATIP, referenced “the many accounts from the Navy and other services of unusual aerial systems interfering with military weapon platforms and displaying beyond-next-generation capabilities.” And most of the program’s $22 million budget over five years went to an aerospace technology company owned by a billionaire named Robert Bigelow, who 100 percent believes aliens have visited earth. And that brings us to the pant-shitting part:
“Under Mr. Bigelow’s direction, the company modified buildings in Las Vegas for the storage of metal alloys and other materials that Mr. Elizondo and program contractors said had been recovered from unidentified aerial phenomena. Researchers also studied people who said they had experienced physical effects from encounters with the objects and examined them for any physiological changes.”
Ah, OK. So. WHAT THE FUCK. Is it just a rash, or a headache, or are these people District 9-ing and morphing into a new species that should be shot in the head?
Live Science tried debunking some of the article’s claims by asking scientists and professors what they thought about it. Their grand conclusion is that there is no way an alloy could be unidentified. Thanks, guys. Excellent observation. There’s no way there are things out there that we don’t know! is some shit-ass expertise. They didn’t even try explaining the claim that the alloys are physically affecting people who interact with them. And it’s hard to blame them. If I think about it for a second, my brain goes to scary places that make me want to hide under a bed and cry.
The whole article makes it seem like there are a lot of high-ranking government officials who are certain aliens are real, that they have visited us, and we should probably fear what they might try to do to us. So on a day-to-day basis, you should feel a tinge of anxiety about your career, the well-being of your children, whether democracy will hold in America, and maybe also aliens with their poisonous ship junk.
4
A Man Spent Years Building His Own Submarine, Then Allegedly Used It To Brutally Murder A Journalist
Every once in a while, a sensational murder case — usually involving an attractive female victim — will take over the country for months. This case is weirder than every one of those combined, and nobody cared.
Peter Madsen had been building his own 55-foot submarine for years. We even wrote about his efforts back in 2010. Kim Wall was a freelance journalist who was just another in a long line to document Peter’s impressively productive waste of time. This sounds like the start of a quirky indie film.
But it’s fuckin’ not.
She set up an interview and two-hour test ride for August 10th, 2017. After the two hours were up, Wall’s boyfriend got suspicious that he hadn’t heard from her, so he called the police. Madsen was later rescued from his sinking submarine off the southern coast of Copenhagen — without Wall. Unless your passenger reveals their true kraken form, it’s weird to return to shore with fewer people than when you left. Madsen claimed that he dropped her off onshore hours earlier, which doesn’t quite align with the fact that her torso was found at sea days later.
At a pretrial hearing a couple of weeks later, Madsen testified that he buried Wall at sea after she was killed by a blow to the head from a 155-pound submarine hatch. Ah, the classic “She was murdered by the submarine, not me” defense. This did not hold up, as forensics found that her skull had no fractures and her throat had been either cut or strangled when she died. More of her body parts started washing up, and they concluded that her limbs had been forcibly removed with a saw and stuffed into plastic bags that were weighed down with metal pipes. She had also been stabbed 15 times.
Madsen’s trial is underway, and maybe it’s not getting any attention because everybody thinks they already know who did it? If so, doesn’t the fact that a man allegedly spent years building a murder submarine specifically so he could do this seem worthy of notice? What in the hell does it take to capture the national imagination these days?
3
There Is Now Software That Can Put Any Real Person Into Porn Videos, Including You Or Your Mom, Or Both
The future is NOW. Sadly, it’s only for creeps who want to jerk off to fake Scarlett Johansson porn. The technology that’s making it possible is called Deepfake. It’s an AI-driven software that can swap out a person’s face in video footage with someone else’s. Sometimes it’s convincing, other times it looks like their heads are painfully phasing in and out of reality.
That’s how you get Raiders Of The Lost Ark starring Nicolas Cage:
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It’s also how you ruin the joke of an SNL sketch starring Nicolas Cage:
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But it’s mostly for porn. And like all pursuits popular among sad lonely men, it was very popular on Reddit. Luckily, Reddit banned the Deepfakes subreddit not long after it was created — a bold moral stance for a site that lures you in with memes and then knocks you out with a one-two punch of white supremacy and misogyny. Bans on other big platforms like Discord, Twitter, and even PornHub soon followed, even though the underlying technology still exists for free on the internet.
What’s odd is that once it was banned across multiple sites, we reverted back to a pre-Deepfakes mindset, as if we don’t all live in the prologue of a new world where Donald Trump’s rumored pee tape might surface and the mere existence of Deepfakes would be enough for his supporters to call bullshit. We might one day look back at people on a subreddit putting Taylor Swift’s face on a porn star as innocent compared to a future in which a murderer whose face was clearly captured by security footage gets off scot-free because of the plausible deniability of Deepfakes. It’s a scary future where documented proof could be brushed away with a simple “That’s not me, that’s a fake — a deep fake” *winks at camera*.
Also, it means literally every woman who posts her face to the internet will wind up in a fake porn video / sex tape at some point. So there’s that, too.
2
A “Swatting” Prank Finally Got Someone Killed
You know what’s a real gut-busting joke that always leaves audiences rolling in the aisles? When SWAT teams charge into innocent people’s homes with shotguns and semiautomatic rifles drawn, intent on killing someone if it means stopping a hostage situation, all based on a tip obtained from a prank phone call. My sides! The sheer terror everyone involved must feel is making me pee a little!
If you don’t think it’s funny, then you’re not one of the many teenagers who’ve performed this “prank” because they’ve yet to develop a tangible fear of how utterly screwed their lives will be if the 9-1-1 call is traced back to them. The targets tend to be Twitch streamers, since a SWAT team’s entrance can turn an Overwatch stream into the drug raid scene from Goodfellas. Dozens of celebrities have also been swatted, like Miley Cyrus, Tom Cruise, and Clint Eastwood. Many of these people were lucky to not have been killed. SWAT teams have a long, horrific history of killing innocent people and/or their dogs during raids, in case you needed a cartoonishly ghoulish detail to further turn your stomach.
In an era when the media will drum up a moral panic over everything from violent video games to eating Tide Pods, you’d think this swatting thing would have been the subject of several congressional hearings by now. Especially since in December 2017, a swatting prank ended with someone dead, like every human who’d heard of swatting knew would eventually happen. Some random guys had placed a bet on the outcome of a Call Of Duty: WWII multiplayer match. An argument broke out, and one of the participants decided to get his just desserts by having a SWAT team sent to another person’s house. You know, as one does. The target of the swatting gave a false address. It was the home of a guy named Andrew Finch.
The person who initiated the swatting hired an intermediary to do it for them, Tyler Barriss. He was essentially a swatting hitman with a reputation for calling in swats on behalf of people who don’t want to get caught doing it themselves. And his Twitter handle was “SWauTistic,” because he’s a professional who believes in discretion. Barriss called the Wichita police and reported that someone at Finch’s house had shot their own father in the head and was holding their mother hostage. When Finch answered the knock at his door, a Wichita SWAT officer immediately pulled the trigger. Finch was unarmed and nonviolent. His friends say he didn’t even play video games.
Barriss has been charged with involuntary manslaughter, giving false alarm, and interference with a law enforcement officer. Finch’s mother is suing the Wichita Police Department. And even with a cop’s itchy trigger finger, there’s no denying that if Barriss had instead called and asked if Fincher’s refrigerator was running, he would still be alive today.
Swatting has become a dangerous trend which, unlike the aforementioned Tide Pod eating, is actually happening and is actually harming people. California State Senator Ted Lieu, New Jersey State Assemblyman Paul Moriarty, and Massachusetts Congresswoman Katherine Clark have all proposed anti-swatting legislation — all three have been swatted in response.
1
A Scandal Involving Cops Forcing Nude Photos From A Teenage Boy Ended In Suicide
Before I get into it, just know this story deals with the sexual molestation of a minor. So it’s not going to be as rip-roaringly funny as swatting.
17-year-old Trey Sims sent a video of his penis to his 15-year-old girlfriend. In the state of Virginia, this paradoxically made him the creator and victim of child pornography. The detective assigned to the case, David E. Abbott, obtained a warrant to take pictures of Sims’ penis to match it with the penis in the video, as if the police have a dick pic database that analyzes head-to-balls distance and pubic hair density to find a perfect match. Of course, all of this is necessary, since it’s so difficult to identify a dick when it doesn’t have a tattoo or a peg leg. Why that warrant wasn’t contested from the start is a mystery.
Another mystery is why, at one point, Abbott decided to start taking pictures of Sims’ penis with his personal cellphone.
Detective Abbot deemed the pictures insufficient, because somehow Sims couldn’t get erect with cops recording him masturbating. Which they had asked him to do, you know, so the pics would match the ones he was accused of sending. Wait, who is this law supposed to protect, again? Anyway, Abbot asked for a second state-sponsored permission slip to photograph a teenager’s erect penis. Abbott also threatened to force feed Sims erectile dysfunction pills, because he was determined to get a picture of a kid’s erect penis come hell or high water, goddamn it.
It was granted, but then halted after Sims’ lawyers made a big deal about the first dick pic photo shoot in the media, claiming the police had infringed upon Sims’ Fourth Amendment rights. That’s the one that prevents the government from conducting unreasonable searches and seizures, in essence calling James Madison an idiot for not foreseeing the need to include a line about the sovereignty of teenage dicks in the Constitution.
Charges against Sims were eventually dropped after he served probation. And with that out of the way, it was time to sue Abbott. But the focal point of the lawsuit shifted from Abbott to Claiborne T. Richardson II, the guy who approved both warrants. This shift happened after Abbott shot himself in his goddamned front yard right before county police officers were going to arrest him on suspicion of molesting boys when he was a youth hockey coach. I just want to reiterate here that this story was barely a blip on the national media’s radar.
Sims’ lawsuit was thrown out when a judge said that Richardson and Abbott were immune, since the Fourth Amendment surprisingly makes no mention of cops taking pictures of a teen’s penis. Everyone up and down the chain kept coming up with creative interpretations of the law to protect a dead detective who killed himself to avoid charges of molesting a minor. The common argument was that Abbott was just following orders. But he was the one who asked for the warrant. Has your head exploded yet?
After four years of this shit, the Fourth Circuit Court sided with Sims, finally deciding that teenage penises are in fact covered by the Fourth Amendment. See? Everything is fine. Nothing to see here.
Luis’ brain feels funny after he played with unknown alloys. In the meantime, you can find him on Twitter, Tumblr, and Facebook.
A previous version of the column stated that Andrew Finch was playing Call of Duty and had been directly involved in the online argument before he was swatted. That was incorrect. The text has been changed to reflect that.
Uhhh … have a stress ball or several.
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For more stories you should have heard about but probably didn’t, check out 29 Pieces Of Good News That Got Choked Out By Trump Stories and 7 Pieces Of Good News About Huge Stories (No One Told You).
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newstfionline · 7 years
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Kim Jong-nam’s Killing: A Geopolitical Whodunit
By Richard C. Paddock and Choe Sang-Hun, NY Times, Feb. 22, 2017
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia--The two young women were what South Korean intelligence calls “lizard’s tails,” expendable assets to be cast off after an operation.
Guided by North Korean agents, they practiced at malls in Kuala Lumpur, then set their sights on their target: the estranged elder brother of North Korea’s erratic leader, Kim Jong-un.
With hands doused with toxic liquid, they rubbed the face of their victim, who was waiting to check in for a flight at Kuala Lumpur International Airport. Minutes later, their target died on the way to a hospital. The two women washed their hands and fled.
The suspected assassins--one from Vietnam, the other from Indonesia--were swiftly taken into custody as circumstantial evidence mounted that North Korea was responsible for the attack.
The very public killing of Mr. Kim appears to be another remarkable episode in the annals of bizarre North Korean behavior, a whodunit with geopolitical implications. Speculation swirled that the victim, Kim Jong-nam, had been killed to remove him from the line of succession in North Korea. He has long been on a hit list drawn up by his half brother, according to South Korean intelligence, and his death could complicate North Korea’s relations with its main ally, China.
North Korea has denied any involvement in the killing, which is likely to anger Beijing. Kim Jong-nam is thought to have long been protected by the Chinese government. Kim Jong-un, 33, who has ordered the execution of scores of senior officials, including at least one disfavored relative, may have been prompted to act if he believed that Beijing saw his half brother as a possible replacement for him.
Malaysian authorities say the two women arrested, Doan Thi Huong, 28, and Siti Aisyah, 25, were recruited, trained and equipped by four North Koreans, who have since fled to their home country.
On Wednesday, Malaysia’s police chief, Khalid Abu Bakar, said a senior diplomat at the North Korean Embassy and an employee of the North Korean state-owned airline, Air Koryo, were also wanted for questioning. A seventh North Korean, who was not identified, was also being sought. Mr. Khalid also said that extra police officers had been sent to the morgue where Mr. Kim’s body was being kept after an attempt to break into the facility was detected.
North Korea has refused to even acknowledge that the dead man was Kim Jong-nam and has accused Malaysia of carrying out a politically motivated investigation to placate South Korea and the United States.
North Korea has nonetheless demanded that the body be sent to North Korea and, in a statement on Wednesday, the North Korean Embassy said the two women were innocent and should be freed.
If the women really had poison on their hands, the embassy statement said, “then how is it possible that these female suspects could still be alive?”
One possible theory to answer that question could be that each woman used a single chemical that became lethal only when mixed with another. However, Malaysian police said the substance, or substances, used in the attack was still unknown.
If the attack was a plot by North Korea, it would not be the first time it had tried to kill Kim Jong-nam.
In 2010, according to South Korean investigators, a North Korean agent based in China received a special order from Pyongyang: “terminate” Kim Jong-nam and bring his body to the North.
The agent, Kim Young-soo, was told that Kim Jong-nam was going to travel to China from Singapore, where he was then living. The agent’s boss gave him a bundle of cash and ordered him to bribe a taxi driver to run over Mr. Kim in a fake traffic accident.
The plot was scrapped when Mr. Kim failed to arrive as planned. But it came to light in 2012, when the agent was caught entering South Korea and confessed under interrogation.
Since 2011, when Kim Jong-un succeeded his father as North Korea’s ruler, there has been a standing order to assassinate his half brother, South Korean intelligence officials said last week. There was another assassination attempt against him in 2012.
Mr. Kim was so afraid that he begged for his life in a letter to his half brother in 2012.
“Please withdraw the order to punish me and my family,” Mr. Kim was quoted as saying in the letter. “We have nowhere to hide. The only way to escape is to choose suicide.”
The Kim family, which has ruled North Korea since its founding in 1948, has presided over a Shakespearean nest of internecine plots and family intrigue, with rival relatives sent into exile and occasional bloody purges to kill off anyone of questionable loyalty and set an example for others.
Kim Jong-nam was an early dropout in the Kim dynasty’s third-generation power struggle. Sidelined from the race to succeed his father since the 1970s, when his mother was abandoned by his father, he had been effectively shut out of power, and shut off from his father, since he was a teenager. South Korean officials say he never met his half brother, Kim Jong-un.
The final straw for Kim Jong-nam was when he was caught entering Japan on a false Dominican Republic passport in 2001, embarrassing the family. He told Japanese officials that he had wanted to visit Tokyo Disneyland.
Mr. Kim lived in exile, mostly in Macau, but enjoyed the affluent life of a globe-trotting playboy, sometimes traveling with a female bodyguard. While his father was still alive, the government in Pyongyang sent him cash allowances.
His uncle, Jang Song-thaek, became a father figure and his main connection to his country. South Korean officials said Mr. Kim was thought to have used that connection to conduct business for himself, like handling contracts involving North Korean minerals.
Mr. Kim often visited Kuala Lumpur, where Mr. Jang’s nephew, Jang Yong-chol, served as North Korean ambassador until 2013.
Mr. Kim sometimes stayed at an embassy guesthouse and sometimes at five-star hotels, according to Steve Hwang, a restaurant owner who became a friend.
Mr. Kim would often come to the restaurant, Koryo-Won, with his wife, dressed casually and always wearing a baseball cap. A bodyguard would sit outside in the mall, visible through the window.
“He was very humble, very friendly, a very nice guy,” Mr. Hwang said.
Mr. Kim never gave his name, but Mr. Hwang, who is from South Korea and has family in the North, recognized him. To be certain, he said he collected Mr. Kim’s dishes after a meal and sent them to the South Korean Embassy for fingerprint and DNA analysis, he said. The word came back that it was indeed Mr. Kim.
When Kim Jong-un took power, he cut off his half brother’s allowance. In 2013, he executed their uncle, Mr. Jang, on charges of corruption and sedition. Mr. Jang’s nephew, the ambassador, was recalled the same year and is thought to have been executed.
Kim Jong-un may have been angered by reports that his half brother had once considered defecting to South Korea. After Kim Jong-nam’s assassination, some defectors claimed that he had been asked to serve as head of a government in exile. But Kim Jong-nam never formally proposed to defect, according to South Korean officials, and he had told reporters that he had no interest in politics, although he also criticized the dynastic succession in Pyongyang.
When Mr. Kim arrived in Kuala Lumpur on Feb. 6, he was using a diplomatic passport with the name Kim Chol.
By then, it appears, the plot against him was already underway.
Four North Korean men accused of organizing the attack had begun arriving on Jan. 31, nearly a week before Mr. Kim, the police say. Each one landed on a different day. The last one arrived Feb. 7, a day after Mr. Kim.
Unlike most countries, Malaysia allows North Koreans to enter without a visa and makes it relatively easy for them to work. North Koreans have established a number of businesses in Malaysia to export products to other parts of the world and earn foreign currency to send home.
The four North Korean conspirators apparently recruited Ms. Doan and Ms. Siti from entertainment establishments. Ms. Siti worked as a “spa masseuse,” the police say, and Ms. Doan as an “entertainment outlet employee.”
Ms. Doan grew up in a small farming village in Vietnam about three hours south of Hanoi and studied pharmacy at a community college. Ms. Siti, grew up in a farming village east of the Indonesian capital, Jakarta. She quit school after sixth grade, was married at 16 and divorced at 20, before she left for Malaysia.
There were reports that the women were duped, that they had been told they were participating in a prank. Indonesian officials said they thought Ms. Siti was tricked into thinking that she was part of a comedy video involving spraying liquid onto unwitting victims in public.
But Mr. Khalid, the police chief, said they knew what they were doing. The women had practiced the attack at two malls, he said.
“We strongly believe it is a planned thing and that they are being trained to do that,” he said. “It is not just shooting movies or a play thing. No way.”
The police say the plotters also brought in Ri Jong Chol, a North Korean who had been living and working in Kuala Lumpur since at least August. He was almost certainly a government agent, according to Thae Yong-ho, a North Korean diplomat who defected to the South last summer, because he was allowed to live with his family abroad.
On the morning of Feb. 13, Mr. Kim went to the airport to catch his flight home.
Security videos show him entering the departure hall at Terminal 2 carrying a shoulder bag, checking the departure board and walking toward the check-in counter for AirAsia, a budget airline.
After his encounter with the women, Mr. Kim approached airport staff and security officers, waving his hands toward his face repeatedly as he told them of the attack. They walked with him to the airport clinic one level down.
Within minutes, he was in an ambulance, but by then the poison was taking effect. He was dead before he reached the hospital, the police said.
His last words were, “Very painful, very painful. I was sprayed liquid,” China Press, a Malaysian Chinese-language newspaper, reported.
The police say the four North Korean conspirators watched the attack unfold. Soon after, they passed through immigration, had their passports stamped and left the country before the authorities realized Mr. Kim had been murdered. All are now believed to be in North Korea.
Mr. Hwang said Mr. Kim had stopped coming to his restaurant around 2014, after his uncle’s execution, and may have fallen on lean times--which may explain why he had no bodyguards last week as he prepared to fly home on a budget carrier.
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5 Crazy Recent News Stories That Didn’t Get Enough Attention
Most people read the headlines of a couple of political stories shared by their most untrustworthy friend on Facebook and feel like they’re pretty well-informed. But the daily large-scale dramas of the Trump administration, mass shootings, Russian agents being assassinated, and the world generally seeming like a montage of newscasts from a ’50s sci-fi movie have overshadowed some utterly insane news that, in a different era, would have dominated headlines for weeks.
So here are five stories that have yet to receive the proper “Wait, what the fuck?!” reaction that they deserve.
5
The Government Said It Has Mysterious Alloys Recovered From UFOs
Two Pulitzer-Prize-winning reporters made public some fascinating footage captured by military pilots of an unidentified flying object zipping across the skies, making sharp turns and occasionally hovering like a helicopter, and all with no visible signs of propulsion. With the internet as it is, we should’ve been drowned in stories about how “Independence Day PREDICTED THE FUTURE” or whatever.
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The footage is odd, for sure. But it only makes up like 0.5 percent of the craziness within the New York Times article it came from.
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The article says that between 2007 and 2012, there was something called the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program running out of the Pentagon, where at least one employee had the X-Files theme as their ringtone and their co-workers hated them for it. Their task was to investigate mysterious aerial phenomena. While there’s a good chance they had a rubber stamp that read “It’s just another damn drone from Walmart” so they wouldn’t have to write it out all the time, the AATIP’s creator, former Senator Harry Reid, fought to secure the program’s findings, fearing that the United States would be helpless to defend itself from the technologies it discovered. That’s the kind of shit you say to justify keeping Magneto in a plastic cell underground.
Luis Elizondo, the former head of the AATIP, referenced “the many accounts from the Navy and other services of unusual aerial systems interfering with military weapon platforms and displaying beyond-next-generation capabilities.” And most of the program’s $22 million budget over five years went to an aerospace technology company owned by a billionaire named Robert Bigelow, who 100 percent believes aliens have visited earth. And that brings us to the pant-shitting part:
“Under Mr. Bigelow’s direction, the company modified buildings in Las Vegas for the storage of metal alloys and other materials that Mr. Elizondo and program contractors said had been recovered from unidentified aerial phenomena. Researchers also studied people who said they had experienced physical effects from encounters with the objects and examined them for any physiological changes.”
Ah, OK. So. WHAT THE FUCK. Is it just a rash, or a headache, or are these people District 9-ing and morphing into a new species that should be shot in the head?
Live Science tried debunking some of the article’s claims by asking scientists and professors what they thought about it. Their grand conclusion is that there is no way an alloy could be unidentified. Thanks, guys. Excellent observation. There’s no way there are things out there that we don’t know! is some shit-ass expertise. They didn’t even try explaining the claim that the alloys are physically affecting people who interact with them. And it’s hard to blame them. If I think about it for a second, my brain goes to scary places that make me want to hide under a bed and cry.
The whole article makes it seem like there are a lot of high-ranking government officials who are certain aliens are real, that they have visited us, and we should probably fear what they might try to do to us. So on a day-to-day basis, you should feel a tinge of anxiety about your career, the well-being of your children, whether democracy will hold in America, and maybe also aliens with their poisonous ship junk.
4
A Man Spent Years Building His Own Submarine, Then Allegedly Used It To Brutally Murder A Journalist
Every once in a while, a sensational murder case — usually involving an attractive female victim — will take over the country for months. This case is weirder than every one of those combined, and nobody cared.
Peter Madsen had been building his own 55-foot submarine for years. We even wrote about his efforts back in 2010. Kim Wall was a freelance journalist who was just another in a long line to document Peter’s impressively productive waste of time. This sounds like the start of a quirky indie film.
But it’s fuckin’ not.
She set up an interview and two-hour test ride for August 10th, 2017. After the two hours were up, Wall’s boyfriend got suspicious that he hadn’t heard from her, so he called the police. Madsen was later rescued from his sinking submarine off the southern coast of Copenhagen — without Wall. Unless your passenger reveals their true kraken form, it’s weird to return to shore with fewer people than when you left. Madsen claimed that he dropped her off onshore hours earlier, which doesn’t quite align with the fact that her torso was found at sea days later.
At a pretrial hearing a couple of weeks later, Madsen testified that he buried Wall at sea after she was killed by a blow to the head from a 155-pound submarine hatch. Ah, the classic “She was murdered by the submarine, not me” defense. This did not hold up, as forensics found that her skull had no fractures and her throat had been either cut or strangled when she died. More of her body parts started washing up, and they concluded that her limbs had been forcibly removed with a saw and stuffed into plastic bags that were weighed down with metal pipes. She had also been stabbed 15 times.
Madsen’s trial is underway, and maybe it’s not getting any attention because everybody thinks they already know who did it? If so, doesn’t the fact that a man allegedly spent years building a murder submarine specifically so he could do this seem worthy of notice? What in the hell does it take to capture the national imagination these days?
3
There Is Now Software That Can Put Any Real Person Into Porn Videos, Including You Or Your Mom, Or Both
The future is NOW. Sadly, it’s only for creeps who want to jerk off to fake Scarlett Johansson porn. The technology that’s making it possible is called Deepfake. It’s an AI-driven software that can swap out a person’s face in video footage with someone else’s. Sometimes it’s convincing, other times it looks like their heads are painfully phasing in and out of reality.
That’s how you get Raiders Of The Lost Ark starring Nicolas Cage:
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It’s also how you ruin the joke of an SNL sketch starring Nicolas Cage:
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But it’s mostly for porn. And like all pursuits popular among sad lonely men, it was very popular on Reddit. Luckily, Reddit banned the Deepfakes subreddit not long after it was created — a bold moral stance for a site that lures you in with memes and then knocks you out with a one-two punch of white supremacy and misogyny. Bans on other big platforms like Discord, Twitter, and even PornHub soon followed, even though the underlying technology still exists for free on the internet.
What’s odd is that once it was banned across multiple sites, we reverted back to a pre-Deepfakes mindset, as if we don’t all live in the prologue of a new world where Donald Trump’s rumored pee tape might surface and the mere existence of Deepfakes would be enough for his supporters to call bullshit. We might one day look back at people on a subreddit putting Taylor Swift’s face on a porn star as innocent compared to a future in which a murderer whose face was clearly captured by security footage gets off scot-free because of the plausible deniability of Deepfakes. It’s a scary future where documented proof could be brushed away with a simple “That’s not me, that’s a fake — a deep fake” *winks at camera*.
Also, it means literally every woman who posts her face to the internet will wind up in a fake porn video / sex tape at some point. So there’s that, too.
2
A “Swatting” Prank Finally Got Someone Killed
You know what’s a real gut-busting joke that always leaves audiences rolling in the aisles? When SWAT teams charge into innocent people’s homes with shotguns and semiautomatic rifles drawn, intent on killing someone if it means stopping a hostage situation, all based on a tip obtained from a prank phone call. My sides! The sheer terror everyone involved must feel is making me pee a little!
If you don’t think it’s funny, then you’re not one of the many teenagers who’ve performed this “prank” because they’ve yet to develop a tangible fear of how utterly screwed their lives will be if the 9-1-1 call is traced back to them. The targets tend to be Twitch streamers, since a SWAT team’s entrance can turn an Overwatch stream into the drug raid scene from Goodfellas. Dozens of celebrities have also been swatted, like Miley Cyrus, Tom Cruise, and Clint Eastwood. Many of these people were lucky to not have been killed. SWAT teams have a long, horrific history of killing innocent people and/or their dogs during raids, in case you needed a cartoonishly ghoulish detail to further turn your stomach.
In an era when the media will drum up a moral panic over everything from violent video games to eating Tide Pods, you’d think this swatting thing would have been the subject of several congressional hearings by now. Especially since in December 2017, a swatting prank ended with someone dead, like every human who’d heard of swatting knew would eventually happen. Some random guys had placed a bet on the outcome of a Call Of Duty: WWII multiplayer match. An argument broke out, and one of the participants decided to get his just desserts by having a SWAT team sent to another person’s house. You know, as one does. The target of the swatting gave a false address. It was the home of a guy named Andrew Finch.
The person who initiated the swatting hired an intermediary to do it for them, Tyler Barriss. He was essentially a swatting hitman with a reputation for calling in swats on behalf of people who don’t want to get caught doing it themselves. And his Twitter handle was “SWauTistic,” because he’s a professional who believes in discretion. Barriss called the Wichita police and reported that someone at Finch’s house had shot their own father in the head and was holding their mother hostage. When Finch answered the knock at his door, a Wichita SWAT officer immediately pulled the trigger. Finch was unarmed and nonviolent. His friends say he didn’t even play video games.
Barriss has been charged with involuntary manslaughter, giving false alarm, and interference with a law enforcement officer. Finch’s mother is suing the Wichita Police Department. And even with a cop’s itchy trigger finger, there’s no denying that if Barriss had instead called and asked if Fincher’s refrigerator was running, he would still be alive today.
Swatting has become a dangerous trend which, unlike the aforementioned Tide Pod eating, is actually happening and is actually harming people. California State Senator Ted Lieu, New Jersey State Assemblyman Paul Moriarty, and Massachusetts Congresswoman Katherine Clark have all proposed anti-swatting legislation — all three have been swatted in response.
1
A Scandal Involving Cops Forcing Nude Photos From A Teenage Boy Ended In Suicide
Before I get into it, just know this story deals with the sexual molestation of a minor. So it’s not going to be as rip-roaringly funny as swatting.
17-year-old Trey Sims sent a video of his penis to his 15-year-old girlfriend. In the state of Virginia, this paradoxically made him the creator and victim of child pornography. The detective assigned to the case, David E. Abbott, obtained a warrant to take pictures of Sims’ penis to match it with the penis in the video, as if the police have a dick pic database that analyzes head-to-balls distance and pubic hair density to find a perfect match. Of course, all of this is necessary, since it’s so difficult to identify a dick when it doesn’t have a tattoo or a peg leg. Why that warrant wasn’t contested from the start is a mystery.
Another mystery is why, at one point, Abbott decided to start taking pictures of Sims’ penis with his personal cellphone.
Detective Abbot deemed the pictures insufficient, because somehow Sims couldn’t get erect with cops recording him masturbating. Which they had asked him to do, you know, so the pics would match the ones he was accused of sending. Wait, who is this law supposed to protect, again? Anyway, Abbot asked for a second state-sponsored permission slip to photograph a teenager’s erect penis. Abbott also threatened to force feed Sims erectile dysfunction pills, because he was determined to get a picture of a kid’s erect penis come hell or high water, goddamn it.
It was granted, but then halted after Sims’ lawyers made a big deal about the first dick pic photo shoot in the media, claiming the police had infringed upon Sims’ Fourth Amendment rights. That’s the one that prevents the government from conducting unreasonable searches and seizures, in essence calling James Madison an idiot for not foreseeing the need to include a line about the sovereignty of teenage dicks in the Constitution.
Charges against Sims were eventually dropped after he served probation. And with that out of the way, it was time to sue Abbott. But the focal point of the lawsuit shifted from Abbott to Claiborne T. Richardson II, the guy who approved both warrants. This shift happened after Abbott shot himself in his goddamned front yard right before county police officers were going to arrest him on suspicion of molesting boys when he was a youth hockey coach. I just want to reiterate here that this story was barely a blip on the national media’s radar.
Sims’ lawsuit was thrown out when a judge said that Richardson and Abbott were immune, since the Fourth Amendment surprisingly makes no mention of cops taking pictures of a teen’s penis. Everyone up and down the chain kept coming up with creative interpretations of the law to protect a dead detective who killed himself to avoid charges of molesting a minor. The common argument was that Abbott was just following orders. But he was the one who asked for the warrant. Has your head exploded yet?
After four years of this shit, the Fourth Circuit Court sided with Sims, finally deciding that teenage penises are in fact covered by the Fourth Amendment. See? Everything is fine. Nothing to see here.
Luis’ brain feels funny after he played with unknown alloys. In the meantime, you can find him on Twitter, Tumblr, and Facebook.
A previous version of the column stated that Andrew Finch was playing Call of Duty and had been directly involved in the online argument before he was swatted. That was incorrect. The text has been changed to reflect that.
Uhhh … have a stress ball or several.
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