#a lost cause

[sketchyvero]

Oh it was NEVER about that damn card. 😛

NERD KATSUKI AND FRAT SHOTO? Wait a damn MINUTEEE.

[tomhoppusdelonge]

Nik.... Sigh. I need you to know I've lived on your blog long enough now that it's beginning to affect me. After doing my (stupidly expensive) necessity shopping, I decided, out loud, that I needed a choccy treat for being a responsible adult. There I stand, in front of the confection shelves strategically placed by the checkouts in dumbfounded silence, because I've never in my American life called anything choccy. My perverse perusing of your blog is beginning to turn me Australian. There is, it seems, a consequence of obsessing over you. If I end up saying G'Day to anyone I might need an intervention. 😅

just wait till you start seeking out the Bunnings snags. then you’re really in trouble

[spamatonsomeone]

don’t worry, you will be found

i think about that song a lot

i wish that i believed those words but i just cant anymore

i dont know if i can even say 'anymore'

i dont know if i ever believed i could be found

[arealphrooblem]

A Lost Cause

Synopsis: The trusted keeper of all the Heroes' secrets, Civilian's existence is kept a tightly guarded secret itself. So how did the villain find her? And how will she withstand the attempts of his scientist to break her open and discover those secrets himself?

CW: nonconsensual drugging, medical whump, medical experimentation, mentions of wounds from torture

 They ambushed her at one AM on a Wednesday night. She had just chugged a glass of water and was walking back towards her bedroom when five men appeared like plumes of smoke in the dim light of the living room lamp. 

Immediately she smashed the glass on the head of the nearest one. He stumbled back and tripped over the corner of the coffee table, blood gushing down the side of his face. A second man got a donkey kick to the knees and an elbow to the face. But then she tripped on the baggy hem of her sleep pants and that gave the other three men all the opportunity they needed to hold her arms down and chloroform her. 

When she woke up, mind foggy with cotton mouth, the familiar walls of her home had been replaced with metal. She sat tied to a chair and sitting across the metal table from her was a man she’d never seen before.

It wasn’t the why that perplexed her. Even though she never participated in the famous battles that raged across the cities of the world, or had her face blazoned on billboards, or plastered all over the news like the rest of her superhero brethren, she was the most valuable member of the team for one simple reason:

She knew everyone’s secrets. 

Their real names and social security numbers. Their home addresses and family members. Their bank app passwords. The limitations of their powers and their weaknesses. 

She knew these secrets because that was part of her job. She coordinated their lives. When someone got hurt, she arranged medical treatment. When the teammates that couldn’t fly had to go halfway around the world, she kept the private jet refueled and paid the maintenance crew. When someone’s family was in danger, she put them into hiding. She bought booked air bnb rooms under false names, she ran the grocery lists for their base, she made sure Mother’s day cards and birthday presents were sent on time.

Her teammates trusted her with this because she was a vault herself. Her power nullified everyone else’s in a wide radius around her. She had training in three forms of martial arts, could hack into almost any database around her and thus prevent from being hacked, and could shoot with fairly decent accuracy multiple types of guns. 

And when all of that didn’t work, she had a memory palace like an ancient Greek maze that no telepath could find their way through if they ever caught her at a distance.

But the best protection she had was her anonymity. Her association with her teammates was their most highly guarded secret. So it wasn’t the why so much as the how. 

How did Villain find her? How did he even know she existed?

Of course, no one was interested in answering her questions. 

The man sitting across the table from her gave her a bemused half smile when she demanded this information. It gave him a boyish, non-threatening air despite the dark tinted sunglasses he wore. 

“I’m afraid you have things rather backwards,” he said, voice soft and pleasant. Like they were on a coffee date. “I’m the one who gets the answers and you are the one who gets the questions.”

“You’re not getting shit from me,” she spat. 

Her hands wiggled against the bonds tying her to the chair. The zip ties cut into her skin, tight enough that she worried about her circulation. If the man noticed her testing them out, he did not reveal it. Instead that half smile grew slowly into a smirk. 

“I’m sure you believe that. You seem to have a very strong will. But willpower doesn’t really matter when I’m involved.”

He took his glasses off, folded them with care, and placed them with care inside his coat pocket. Brown eyes, sweet and warm like hot chocolate, looked back at her. He leaned forward, hands clasped before him, and focused those eyes on her. 

“You will answer every question I ask, truthfully, with every relevant detail you can think of.”

His voice was low and soothing, with an easy confidence of someone used to getting their way. It gave her great pleasure to respond to him, leaning forward as much as her bonds would allow.

“You will go to hell,” she murmured, matching his tone, “and on the way there you can kiss my ass.”

The man tilted his head, eyebrows raised. Did he really think she was going to give him everything, just like that?

“Tell me your name,” he commanded in that same soft tone.

“Go fuck yourself.”

Surprise spread across his face. “Do you really feel no compulsion to do as I say?”

“Did you really think it would be that easy?” she retorted.

He just stared at her, eyes wide in delightful curiosity.

“Fascinating,” he murmured, pulling his glasses back out of his coat pocket. “Well, I suppose you and I are at an impasse. I could advise you give me your answers willingly, rather than face torture. But I assume you would not take that advice.”

“Your assumption would be correct.”

“A shame. You have such spirit. It’s a pity they will break it.”

Fear curled in her gut but she refused to let it show. “We’ll see about that.”

He slipped his glasses back on, hiding those sweet brown eyes. “When you feel like death would be a mercy, please remember that I tried to give you a choice.”

That line haunted her as she experienced the worst days of her life. No food, no water, no rest. Endless pain. Even as she burrowed herself further and further into her own mind, the pain followed her through every passage of the maze. She intentionally twisted herself down paths with dead ends, paths that recurved on themselves, keeping herself away from the information they wanted so badly. 

If she could just hold out long enough, her team would rescue her. 

She just had to last. Just a little bit longer. 

The next time she found herself strapped to the chair in front of the table, the zip ties were the only thing holding her up, slippery from the blood. The light from the lamp felt like a laser in her eyes. A different man sat across the table from her, his features hazy from her blurred vision. The man was older, that much she could tell, and dressed in a sharp black suit. 

Villain. She’d seen his face in so many files, in so much research for her team on him. She would know him in her sleep.               

“You are remarkably stubborn,” he said, crossing his legs. “I see why they entrusted their secrets to you. A shame I didn’t find you first. That kind of loyalty is hard to find and even harder to buy.”

She had no quip for him, no scathing remarks. All her focus went to not puking. 

“I am not going to waste any more of my resources trying to break you. That may sound like good news at first, but it simply means you are now completely valueless to me. That’s a very dangerous position to be in. Normally I would kill you and dispose of every trace of your existence, but my top scientist has asked me to spare you.”

He stood up, brushing imaginary dirt from his suit coat. “Again, that may sound like good news, but you will wish that I had killed you before long, that much I can assure you.”

Before she could make sense of this development, something sharp pricked the side of her neck and then she knew nothing at all. 

Life passed in hazy flashes. She was in a bed. She heard birds and felt sunlight. She saw the man in the sunglasses. It was impossible to tell what was a dream and what was real. When she finally fully woke up, the world appeared in stages. 

First the beeping. Then the cozy heaviness of a blanket. A small pain in her hand when she jostled it. When her eyes flittered open, she saw walls of deep green and cream, an IV drip that ran to the back of her left hand, a row of succulents on the window sill. A desk and a man sitting at it, scribbling in a notebook. A familiar, bespectacled man. 

“Where am I?” she asked.

Or tried to ask. All that game out of her dry, dusty throat was a croak. 

The man’s scribbling stopped abruptly and he looked over his shoulder. 

“Are you finally awake?” he asked, standing up. 

Another groan filtered from her cracked lips. He walked over to a side table that held a pitcher of water and poured her a glass, dropping in a plastic straw. His fingers pressed something on the side of the bed and the front half lifted slowly up until she was sitting. 

“Drink slowly,” he said.

He held the glass to her lips and she sipped the water through the straw. It took everything in her not to chug it, not to rip it out of his grasp and drown in it when he pulled it away and set the glass on the table.                        

“Where am I?” she asked again, voice hoarse.

“Ah, here we go again thinking you can ask the questions,” he said with that crooked smile. 

She glared at him, which only made his smile grow wider. 

“I think though, this time I will be more generous with my answers. You are in my personal facilities. This is the medical recovery room. There is also my lab, my rooms, a kitchen. Everything we need, in short, for a long stay.”

Nausea roiled in her stomach, and she wasn’t sure if it came from the medicine he put her on or the implication of his words. 

“Are you . . .the scientist?” she whispered. 

It hurt to talk. 

“I am a scientist, certainly.”

Another glare. Another smile. 

“Why?”

Why was she here? Why did he want her? Why wasn’t she dead? All words that caught in her throat. 

“Why am I a scientist? That story dates to my childhood, and I doubt you have much interest in that. Let’s say that I have a fascination with the rules of the world and how you can manipulate them.”

This man was impossible. If she had any strength left, she would have strangled him with the cord of her IV drip. 

The steady beep of her heart rate monitor spiked with her anger. He glanced over at it with mild surprise.

“Don’t you feel at least a little hypocritical,” he asked, “expecting the truth from me when you refuse to give it yourself?”

Hypocritical? Hypocritical? 

“Are you serious right now?” she hissed.

“As a heart attack. Like the one you might give yourself if you don’t keep your anger in check,” he added. “Take deep, slow breaths. Your body is still fragile. We wouldn’t want to undo all the progress of your recovery, would we?”

She took deep slow breaths, hating him the entire time, if only to keep him from knowing how much he got under her skin. He watched with little nods of approval. 

“That’s it. Good. Now that you’re awake, I will take some of your vitals and check your bandages.”

Bandages? She resisted the sudden, panic laced urge to rip the blanket off and check her over her body. What injuries she sustained, he would reveal soon enough. 

She held herself very still while he listened to her chest with a stethoscope. She realized then someone, most likely him, had dressed her in a medical gown and done away with the tattered remnants of her pajamas. He took her blood pressure, pinched the skin of her forearm for dehydration, took her temperature, before sliding the covers back and revealing bandages on her thighs, her knees, wrapped around her feet. 

“Cuts and burns,” he explained at her morbidly curious expression. 

“I don’t feel them,” she said in surprise. 

“You have very good drugs in that IV drip.” 

He treated her injuries with an antibiotic salve, spreading it oh so gently with gloved fingers. Then he returned the blankets over her lap and tugged up her medical gown. She tried to fight it, fingers gripping the hem as tight as she could manage, but he easily overpowered her. 

“Relax, this is nothing inappropriate. You have bruised ribs.”

He checked her with the cold methodical touch of a professional before gently tugging her dress back down. 

“You’re healing very well,” he said proudly. As if she had anything to do with it. “I expect partial recovery within two weeks and a full recovery within the month.”

He straightened up and slid his stethoscope off. “You should get more rest. Sleep is the most crucial component of healing.”

Her hand snaked out and grabbed a fistful of his shirt. Her grip may have been weak and pathetic, but she held on with all her strength regardless. The man considered her, his expression impressible to tell with his sunglasses on. 

“Why?” she rasps throat aching. “Tell me why . . .please.”

It cost her to beg like that. And maybe he sensed that, because he bent down again and brushed an errant curl back from her face. 

“Villain may consider you a lost cause, but I do not give up so easily. You are a fascinating little puzzle box and I am dying to create the tools that will break you open.”

He chucked her under the chin, and made his way out.

[thedaily-beer]

Beachwood x A Lost Cause Party Crusher IPA (Picked up at Windmill Farms). A 3 of 4. A nice West Coast IPA that delivers the hop profile you'd expect on a lighter, clean body. Lots of orange citrus, tropical fruit, and just a touch of pine in the background, and a body that drinks super easily and carries some moderate bitterness towards the finish.

[sing-me-under]

Take the idea that “Bruce Wayne is friends with most of his Rogue Gallery”

and shift it into “Batman doesn’t kill because he believes in second chances”

and then you get something along the lines of “Even when everyone believes they are irredeemable, Bruce personally knows his Rogue Gallery and genuinely cares about them and their well-being, so he’s willing to give the benefit of the doubt and second chances to even the worst of the worst because he can’t be biased and believe the best only of the people he is friends with. Everyone has the potential to do better and do good and be kind even when it’s not obvious because Bruce personally knows the Rogues that have that potential.”

And also “Bruce’s goal later in his career isn’t to pursue revenge but to prevent crime and save as many people as possible, including his rogues. He can’t reverse the damage and the lives taken, but he can try to make things as livable as possible. Batman is a symbol of fear, a deterrent of crime, and a front-line first responder, but Bruce Wayne is the one actively helping Gotham.”

But I also raise you “Gotham is legitimately cursed” and “Joker is the only Rogue who Batman doesn’t know the real identity of. Batman is partly convinced that Joker isn’t even a real person but the physical manifestation of a curse that will forever plague Gotham”

[saturstay-oldblog]

ismail is flawed, that is true. they’ve always been portrayed as self-centered/self-absorbed with no braincell left to build their own opinion about things but I truly don’t think that the writers included the latest clip as a “hey kieu my please reassure me that I didn’t hurt Sascha as badly as he claims and therefor ain’t a bad person”. to me it’s just a normal teenager asking their friend for some comfort and I don’t see any harm in that.

[the-aggro-crag-car]

so obviously lake is really good at mentally separating a prime from their reflection, but do you think it might mess them up to have such a negative relationship with mirror jesse? yknow, assuming they actually have a relationship with him

like, do you think it's like when someone does something in a dream and it makes you feel like they did it in real life even though you know they didn't? or is lake just like Very Good at keeping the two people separate in her brain

I think Lake definitely considers Jesse and Mirror Jesse two totally separate people, it's not even something they have to mentally separate. She's not Tulip, Mirror Jesse isn't Jesse, reflections aren't their prime.

That being said, I do think it would still cause problems. Like, Lake doesn't see MJ as Jesse in the slightest, but it would be interesting if MJ does see himself that way. Maybe even more so than the typical reflection, Mirror Jesse sees himself as just another part of Jesse, he's his reflection, they're essentially the same person

and Mirror Jesse doesn't like Lake, he thinks they're dangerous and more trouble than they're worth. So he doesn't get why Jesse cares about them so much. Mirror Jesse is just really unhappy and really disapproves of his prime's choice of life partner.

all of this just leads to lots of petty little arguments like

Lake, talking to Mirror Jesse while Jesse is asleep again: okay asshole, you don't like me. I don't know why but you don't and ya know what, that's fine. You're going to have to get used to me though because I'm not going anywhere

Mirror Jesse:....

Lake: I know you can hear me

Mirror Jesse: ....I knOW you CAn HeAR me

Lake: are you mocking me?

Mirror Jesse: ...

Lake: why do you hate me? What did I do to you?

Mirror Jesse: ....

Lake: what, are you jealous?

Mirror Jesse: [extreme disgust]

Lake: Why. Are. You. Like. This?

Mirror Jesse: why are YOU like this?

Lake: oh yeah, keep playing up the reflection thing, that won't get old fast