In which I look into the biology factors of the Dimitrescu daughters being made out of insects and create headcanons for them that are so deep and in-depth that they couldn't be any farther from canon.
This episode: the girls and temperature!
Overall
They are quite literally cold-blooded and unable to generate their own body heat. Because of this, they would be ectotherms.
We all know they are weak to temperatures under 50°F, but they are also vulnerable to temperatures over 100°F, similar to how flies are.
Because they can't thermoregulate, their normal body temperature tends to fluctuate with their environment, but the usual for them is around 70°F. So their skin is very cold to the touch.
Their ideal temperature is 85°F.
Cold
They sleep more in winter. Alcina calls this "diapause" and she has dubbed it as a form of hibernation in her notes on her girls, though they don't actually do a long-term hibernation--not normally, at least.
During diapause, their metabolic activity decreases. Because of this, their appetite goes down as well, as they don't really have the energy to digest their food.
Because, despite being inside, I imagine it's still quite cold for them while in the middle of a Romania winter. Again: they can't regulate their body temperature. It won't be the same for them as it is for us. I don't think being in a house, out of the wind and snow, will instantly make them have a comfortable temperature.
But they usually eat very little at this time. Sometimes they go a full day without eating anything, though they'll still drink blood, which they get most of their energy from.
Winter is also where they use their acid vomit the most because sometimes they're just too tired to chew. They rather regurgitate, drink, then go back to sleep.
They can sometimes sleep for eighteen hours a day.
Winter can be very lonely for Alcina at times. It's also eerily quiet.
Cassandra once slept for four days in a row without waking up and Alcina thought she fucking died.
It's really hard to wake them up during diapause. They go into this state of deep sleep in a way. Like, during the Comatose Cassandra incident, Alcina was full-on shaking Cassandra and screaming in her face in a panic, but Cassandra just snoozed on.
Moderately low temperatures make them sleepy.
Very low temperatures cause physical pain, as we see in the game.
Being in extreme cold can make them shiver, but it's not the same way we shiver.
Instead of their muscles contracting to generate thermal energy, it's their fly bodies violently gyrating and buzzing in a vain attempt to get warm, thus causing tremors throughout the body. Unlike normal shivering, however, they get nothing out of this and are unable to produce proper heat.
Heat
Whereas in the winter they slow down and eat less, during the summer they speed up and eat more.
Sleeping hours reduce down to the normal amount, but they can sometimes become fidgety and sleep even less due to a build-up of energy.
In the mornings, they often have a period of sunbathing at their windows to reach a desired thermal optimum, which will give them energy for the rest of the day.
The first few days after winter ends are usually characterized by constant zoomies around the castle because their metabolism suddenly shoots back up and they're full of all this vigor.
They also eat. A lot.
The girls gorge themselves on literally anything they can find to make up for all that time spent without eating.
The maids call this the "feeding frenzy" and it is a very scary time for them because at any moment they could be grabbed and devoured while still alive.
Even when this "feeding frenzy" eventually goes down, they still eat a lot more during the summer months.
Unfortunately, the heat isn't always their safe place.
Similar to the cold, too much heat can be damaging to their bodies, as it won't be able to regulate itself when comfortable becomes uncomfortable.
And even more similar to the cold, they become sluggish when they get too hot.
Fatigue sets in at around 90°F, which is when their metabolism will begin to lower. They will start to eat less and become slower and lethargic rather than just sleepy like in the cold. Moving becomes like a chore and their body gets heavy.
95°F is when discomfort really comes into play. Their breathing shallows and their muscles begin to ache with the exertion of moving. Their body is heavy and slow to respond to movements. Dizziness starts, usually accompanied by ear ringing and double vision.
Anything over 100°F is painful, like how the cold hurts them. Their skin will begin to dry out and flake off, as though they were shedding their exoskeleton. They feel like they're burning from the inside.
They will also begin to "sweat," which doesn't actually cool them down like it would for a human. It just makes them dehydrated and sticky.
Fevers
Obviously because they can't produce excessive body heat, the girls are unable to get fevers on normal occasions. They can, however, get them in two different ways.
One: Behavioral fever.
Despite the actual symptom, they still feel the effects it causes, like dizziness, weakness, fatigue, body aches, trembling, and chills.
Chills usually come up when whatever sickness they have is Really Bad because something like that isn't usual for them. Chills is the feeling of being cold even when it isn't necessarily cold--but they shouldn't be able to make their bodies feel something like that without an actual external source. So it's pretty worrying.
But without the actual heat from a fever, the bacteria inside of them is free to run rampant.
Additionally, their immune system won't do anything, as it isn't stimulated by the fever.
So when they get this feeling, they know something is most likely wrong with them, so they have to do a behavioral fever, which is what cold-blooded creatures do when unwell.
They crawl into a scalding hot bath to wake up their immune system to actually start fighting the infection.
The heat from the water will essentially mimic the effects of a fever and then induce one inside of them, heating up their core.
The second way is through their flies.
Basically, their flies will realize something is wrong and essentially be like "don't worry, Boss, we gotchu."
They will then begin to furiously generate heat through excessive flying and buzzing, as flight does create thermal energy. This is actually the response used in the cold, which causes the “shivering,” but in a moderate climate, it actually works, heating up the body.
This then filters into their human bodies in the form of a fever, warming them up like coals in a furnace. They can even slightly feel the flies doing their work, usually from tingling in their fingers, toes, and orifices.
This process can only be done in certain climates, which is why it doesn’t work in the cold.
And because it is supposed to be a response for something different, the “shivering” symptom of a fever will occur.
However, if either created fever becomes to high, then the girls will start to hurt, especially if it goes over the 100°F mark.
So it's honestly a double-edged sword.
Temperature Regulation
They have to rely on their environment to warm up or cool down since their bodies cannot do so themselves.
For both the cold and the heat, the best go-to solution is a bath. It's the quickest, easiest, and most effective way to help. It's relaxing, too!
However, there are other options, of course.
For the cold, one of their favorite options is to snuggle with their mother. Unlike them, Alcina still produces body heat, so curling up in her side or lap will warm them right up. Plus, sharing body heat is the most effective solution to defrosting.
They will also spend a lot of time by the fireplaces or wrapped in blankets. It isn't uncommon for them to have dozens of covers on their beds and still be chilly.
They wear more layers (i see you, Capcom, stupidly making them wear a dress with their tits hanging out just to get in some more fan service even though it was fucking winter time and they should be more covered up)
They will huddle together for warmth.
They may try to fly more often to get their muscles working, as insects can create a tiny amount of thermal energy while in flight.
And for the heat, there isn't too much they can do, really. It isn't the same. The best thing to do is stay adequately moisturized.
They wear looser clothes. It helps some.
Alcina makes sure they're hydrated. It's very easy for them to become thirsty because their version of hot is literally a human's regular body temperature--even below it.
They like to stay in the cooler areas of the castle, so the basement.
They will sometimes become nocturnal, sleeping through the hotter hours of the day and staying awake during the cooler ones.
Just being in moisture, like lukewarm baths, will usually be enough for them--unless their temperature raises too high.
I don't generally request stuff and the reason why I am doing this is because I absolutely love your work, especially the Kingdom Series and the Mermaid!Younghoon and I am a little embarassed to put out my little imagination request out
But I would like to request
Sunwoo + colour lavender but could you make it best friends to lovers au too? (It is okay if you can only work on one part too!!! Whatever you are comfortable with)
Thank you so much! Congrats on your 4 years, and thanking for alllllll the amazing work you have put out!!!!! Really big appreciation for you and your writing!!! Ly❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
hi love! there's no need to be embarrassed at all about this - it's a lovely idea, and thank you so much for your kind words and the request! I hope you enjoy this token of my thanks for your support <3
4 year anniversary drabble game: send me a Stray Kids/The Boyz/Golden Child/Ateez member + a prompt (check out the post for ideas) and I’ll write a drabble for you!
~
Title: Palette
Pairing: Sunwoo x gender neutral!reader
Word count: 1.8k
Triggers: none
~
"What color am I?"
The question comes on a hot day spent on the couch with the air conditioner broken, when everything feels like it's melting under the heat of the sun baking your apartment to a crisp. Somewhere in the building, a repairman is trying to figure out what's wrong.
You and Sunwoo, however, are melting into puddles on the sticky hardwood floor.
"What?" You shake yourself out of the blank state you’ve slipped into, staring at the empty ceiling. You've never spent much time looking at the ceiling. It's off white, maybe eggshell, a little cracked and blemished but not enough for you to say to no to the cheaper rent. Looking at it now, though, it's kind of ugly.
"You said Juyeon is yellow, like sunflowers.” He pauses. “Eric’s... green, I think. Sangyeon was red, Changmin was also green, but brighter than Eric. Right?”
Something tugs at the back of your mind, a memory of using your paints to describe some of your friends. Your eyes drift to the abandoned easel in the corner of the muggy room. You can almost feel the canvas melting off of it into a paint-splattered puddle on the floor. “Right,” you reply, wiping a bead of sweat off of your head.
“You didn’t give me a color,” Sunwoo says. You can’t spare the energy to look in his direction even though he’s literally right next to you, but you imagine he looks about as wiped out as you feel. “So I wondered.”
Colors. Yes, colors like the off-white eggshell of your ceiling, the blue of the sky outside...
What color is Sunwoo?
Orange is the first one that comes to mind, orange like a sunset, burning as it slowly dips under the horizon. Its rays wisp into the sky, fading in some places, intensifying in others, turning it into a mural of oranges and pinks and yellows, burning like the passion that fuels Sunwoo’s soul...
Oh, but yellow. Yellow exists - maybe not as golden as Juyeon’s yellow, maybe not as bright as the burning sun, but darker, deeper, like marigolds - orange mixed in, perhaps, but still yellow in abundance, like flower petals bursting into bloom.
You frown. Sweat drips down the side of your face, but this time, you don’t even notice. Orange and yellow - they’re right, but not quite right. Not exactly. Not yet...
Sunwoo’s voice interrupts your thoughts. “Still thinking?”
“Shut up.” You flail around a limp arm, smiling with satisfaction when it hits his stomach with an audible thump. “Rome wasn’t built in a day.”
“You’re thinking about a color.”
“How long do you think it takes me to mix the exact right shade for each part of a painting?” You turn just enough to let him see your raised eyebrow. “Thinking about colors takes a lot of work.”
He grumbles but shuts up, eyes closing as he settles back onto the floor. You keep watching him though, follow the curve of his jaw down to his chin, tanned skin shiny with the sheen of moisture that seems to have covered everything in this tiny apartment...
Bronze comes to mind, warm, metallic, rich like the color of his skin. They made weapons out of bronze in the past - strong, steady, unyielding, like Sunwoo’s will to push past obstacles no matter how hard they seem at a glance. He could be a bronze statue, for all you know - he’s handsome enough for that, certainly some sculptor from the past would have been taken with Sunwoo’s looks if he’d been around and created a statue that would have lasted for centuries afterward.
But it’s warm. Too warm. And maybe it’s just because of the hot sun pouring into the room even with the shades drawn, but thinking about metal, about bronze, makes you feel like you’re touching a burning hot stove on a day like this. There have to be other colors, right? Other colors that aren’t bronze, green, pink, maybe blue -
Blue. You latch onto the thought. Not the color of the relentless sky, but maybe like the ocean - cool, deep, ceaseless in its flow but not overbearing until a storm comes, whipping the waves into a chaos of whirling water that slashes and swipes across the beach. Sunwoo’s a little bit of both, you think, the part of the ocean that goes with the flow, but also the part that gets a little angry, a little passionate, a little too worked up about some things sometimes.
But his anger isn’t quite blue. Not really. Sunwoo is quick to anger but also quick to calm when dealt with correctly. The storm builds up its rage and lashes out as long as it wants, but Sunwoo... no. He’s not that way. Not quite.
You stifle a groan. Is there any color that fits Sunwoo perfectly, then? Any single color on the stained palette next to your easel, any single color in the world? He’s too complex, too much of everything all at once - he could be blue, could be bronze, could be orange or yellow or pink, of all things - you could find a way to justify every single one but none of them would be enough -
Your gaze rises from his chin to his lips, and your mouth goes dry.
Maybe he’s red, like the first time you ever noticed the fullness of his lips.
No, don’t think about that. You squeeze your eyes shut tight before opening them as though that’ll erase the image of his lips from your mind. It was in high school - you’d handed him his water bottle after ten minutes of running laps and you’d watched him tip it against his lips so full and soft, and for a moment, you had let yourself imagine what it’d be like to have those lips against yours.
You force yourself to look somewhere else, anywhere, just away from the lips and the shade of red beginning to shimmer before your eyes. Red, right - your mind scrambles to turn its thoughts away - red - colors - that’s what you were supposed to be thinking of - not lips, colors -
Your gaze rises above the lips to Sunwoo’s closed eyes.
Only they aren’t closed anymore.
You can’t breathe. You literally can’t breathe - how long have his eyes been open? How long did he see you watching him like some stupid creepy stalker?
Did he realize you were looking at his lips?
“Done yet?” he asks, breaking the silence. Is it just your imagination, or do his eyes flicker down to your lips too?
Just your imagination. “Shut up.” Even the jab comes out weaker than you’d like to. You want to look away, but you can’t seem to do it - something’s rooting you where you are, eyes fixed upon his. “Give me a minute.”
“How many minutes has it been?” It’s just your imagination, just your imagination... “Is it really that hard? You thought of Eric’s in, like, a second.”
You’re too much, you think. Too many colors all at once. But instead of saying that aloud, you just swallow, like the idiot you are. “Let me think,” you say. Your voice almost cracks.
Red. Shades of red, beautiful red, the color of his lips, the core of the sun burning at sunset, smoldering embers on a dying fire splashed across the canvas of your vision. And yes, it’s almost perfect, almost there - you have his flaring temper caught in a color, now, but it needs something to cool it off -
Blue. Blue, like you thought before, the ocean and its ceaseless flow. Blue and red, blue and red, blue and red...
“Purple,” you whisper, too close to his lips. Rich, royal, the coolness of blue and the fire of red... “Some shade of purple.”
“Purple.” Sunwoo repeats the word with curiosity on his lips, almost like he’s tasting the color on his tongue. “Why purple?”
“I -” You swallow when the soft puff of his breath hits your face. When exactly did you two get this close? It wouldn’t take more than a few inches to close the gap between your lips. “I couldn’t choose between blue and red,” you say honestly. “You’re both. In fact, it feels like you’re a bit of every color. But purple... that’s the closest I can get without giving you a specific shade.”
“Which shade?”
Something clicks into place in your mind, and it is definitely not your imagination this time when Sunwoo’s eyes fall down to your lips.
The dryness in your mouth makes it difficult to swallow. You try anyway. “Give me a moment,” you murmur, heart beating unnecessarily quickly.
Think. Shades of purple. Do you go darker or lighter? Warmer or cooler? Is he magenta? Mauve? Violet? Your mind flicks as quickly as it can through the catalogue of colors in your mind. Cooler, probably - he’s more the ocean than the fire, more embers than a full flame - lighter, too, like a breath of fresh air -
A blast of cool wind gusts down from the vent. It’s gone almost as quickly as it comes, but it stays with you in the name of the color forming on your lips.
Your voice comes out like a whisper. It feels wrong to speak any louder. “I’ve got it.”
Sunwoo blinks. His lashes look so lovely, framing his eyes. “Really?” he asks, and you have wonder if he closed the distance slightly since the last time you spoke - the few inches that separated you before seem to have decreased to a mere centimeter or two. “So what color am I?”
There’s another blast of cool air. Neither of you reacts to it. Instead, as blissfully cold air begins to filter through the vents, impulse drives you to lean forward, to close the entire distance at last -
Sunwoo’s lips are softer than you ever thought they’d be. They feel cool and warm all at once, purple as a base but lighter, cooler, a breath of fresh air on your face after a horribly hot day spent in the sun.
“Lavender,” you whisper against his lips. “You’re lavender.”
You don’t offer an explanation, but he doesn’t ask you to elaborate, like he did with purple. It’s okay. You think he knows it. Feels it, at least, when you kiss him once more, fresh air washing over your bodies, painting the canvas of your skin in cool, blissfully cool strokes.
Hi! I’d like to request a hq match up if you’re still accepting them!! Feel free to ignore if you’re not! Boundaries are important!! I’m a sag sun cap venus. ISFP, 6w5. I’d like a male character match up. My pronouns are she/her. Three words my friends might use to describe me are caring, quiet, & dedicated. Yachi & I’d be best friends!! I’d like my match to choose what to do for our date! I’m cool with a cute kiss on the cheek on the first date if the vibes are right!! Ty & congrats again!!! 💖
❄️ Your Secret Santa Date is... ❄️
Kuroo Tetsuro!
You met Kenma through Hinata who you met through Yaichi who you had met in your third year of high school.
It wasn’t uncommon for the three of you to grab coffee or lunch together on the weekends just so you could catch up on each other’s lives, and through that you had all gotten to know each other relatively well.
And at one of your lunches together, after you had ended up on the topic of environmental stability and the responsibility of large companies to decrease their carbon footprints by using more eco-friendly energy alternatives that were scientifically researched and tested, Kenma turned to you and said:
“Y/n, I think you and Kuroo would get along really well.”
Hinata -who hadn’t been following most of the conversation but understood that- said, “Woah, yeah that’s a great idea!”
“Wait, you mean the really tall guy with the spiky hair?!” Yaichi asked, with a tone like she was concerned for you safety.
Hinata nodded with a big smile. “Yeah, don’t you think it would be perfect? You both use such big words all the time, for no reason really…” He mumbled the last part.
Kenma agreed. “It would be nice for him to have someone else to talk to about all that stuff besides me.”
“You should text him and see if he wants to meet her!” Hinata suggested.
“Okay.”
Kenma pulled out his phone.
Across from them, your brain was spinning.
How did that happen? How had that gotten out of control so fast?! All you had said was that when scientific research is available, people shouldn’t be ignoring it just because it’s cheaper for their business.
And somehow that got you a… date?
Yes, that’s exactly what had happened, and how you found yourself stepping off the train into Tokyo to meet up with a boy you had never even crossed paths with before.
“Yo,” Kuroo greeted you cheerily when you came off of the platform. He had texted you that he would be waiting for you when you got off; at least he was reliable.
“Hi,” you said a little timidly, though his friendly demeanor did make it a little less awkward.
Kuroo seemed like the type who didn’t ever let himself get too uncomfortable.
“So Kenma told me you were pretty smart,” he grinned. “But he didn’t tell me you were so cute.”
You bit your lip and heat rushed to your cheeks.
After a moment you managed to say, “I heard the same about you. Guess we were boring them too much and they decided we should just bore each other.”
Kuroo laughed. “Well I hope you’re not bored today. I tried to come up with something fun to do, but it’s hard when it’s so cold and you have to be inside all day.”
Kuroo pouted a little and your expression matched.
“Ugh, I know right? I hate snow,” you spat, instinctively burying yourself deeper into the nest of your scarf around your neck.
“Good thing I didn’t plan to take you snow tubing then,” Kuroo smiled and you giggled in agreement.
When you asked what he did have planned instead, he only offered you his arm and said, “Guess you’ll just have to wait and see.”
Thankfully you didn’t have to walk too far in the cold to get to your ultimate destination. You went only a few blocks and a couple streets over before Kuroo stopped you in front of a large, old warehouse.
“I have to admit, I’ve been wanting to come here since they opened it up a few months ago so the decision to do this today was a little self-indulgent, but,” - his gaze flickered down to you with a happy sparkled- “maybe I was just waiting for the right company.”
Kuroo had decided to take you to an interactive pop-up museum; a temporary art exhibit that was only set up in Tokyo until the end of the holiday season.
The whole thing was based around winter and the holidays and once you set foot inside, you had to agree with your date; it was a really fun idea.
There was tons of cool art from local artists that you could touch and take pictures with (Kuroo was an excellent photographer, you discovered).
They had fake snow you could play in (which you liked) and real snow you could play in (which you didn’t like, though it was cool because it was inside).
Christmas lights had been incorporated into almost every display, and the hodge podge of thrown together light strings lining the ceilings, walls, and floors of the giant warehouse made it light up like the milky way.
It was, all around, really really cool.
There was no shortage of things to do or interact with in the space; it took you a few hours just to see everything, and there were a few you wanted to go back to for a second look.
And, as it turns out, your friends were right about you and Kuroo getting along so well, because you never ran out of things to talk about.
Kuroo (of course) dropped as many fun science facts as he could.
“You know that snowflakes are just frozen hydrogen atoms so it’s one of the reasons we know that it’s shape is hexagonal? Pretty cool.”
“Did you know that Thomas Edison was the first person to put Christmas lights on display in the 1880’s? Which makes a lot of sense actually...”
“Alright, serious question, do you think Rudolph’s nose is red because of bioluminescence or a parasitic or bacterial infection? I’ve heard arguments for both. ”
But despite the joke you had made earlier, you never once grew bored.
After you finished up at the exhibit, you still had time for dinner before you needed to catch a train home for the night.
You found a small restaurant down the road from the museum; the food cooking smelled so good, you had caught a whiff of it when you walked by and instantly you both turned around deciding this was the place you wanted to try.
The restaurant staff was very polite and welcoming, and the food was beyond delicious.
When you joked that you would make the trip to Tokyo again just to come back to the restaurant, Kuroo smiled and said he’d be happy to come too.
The sun went down while you two ate together, and talked more, just genuinely enjoying each other’s company.
But when you were done, your time was up for the night, and you knew you’d have to head to the station if you were going to catch your train home.
When the waiter dropped the check on the table, Kuroo instantly grabbed it.
You offered to pay for your part, but he waved his hand with a playful grin.
“No way,” he said. “Did you see how cute our waiter was? I can’t look like a bad date now, or else you might go out with him next time instead.”
You laughed. “Nah, I think I’d have more fun with you.”
For the first time that night, a light shade of pink formed on Kuroo’s cheeks.
You felt a bittersweet feeling pulling on your heart as you headed to the train station together. Your train was still a few minutes away from arriving, and so Kuroo said he would wait with you and make sure you got on safely.
“Thank you,” you said turning to the raven-haired boy, and when he gave a little nod you clarified, “For everything today. I was kind of nervous, but you made it really fun.”
Kuroo smiled. “I’m glad. I had a really great time with you too,” he said, and then a playful little glimmer flashed in his dark orbs. “Really great, actually. I’d go so far as to say we had great.... chemistry~”
“Oh my god, stop,” you laughed, but of course he didn’t.
“I guess I should have taken better notes because I’m interested in making this chemical reaction happen again.”
“Kuroo!” You swatted at him playfully, and he easily scooped your hand into his. He locked his fingers in between yours and pulled it to his lips.
“I mean, I’m pretty smart. I can recite one hundred digits of pi…” His warm breath danced over your knuckles as he spoke. “But what I’d really like to know are the digits of your phone number.”
His eyes locked with yours for just a moment, and there was such a fire in them that it immediately brought heat to your cheeks. Then, softly and gently, his lips pressed against the top of your hand in a very gentlemanly kiss.
For a moment, you felt frozen in place. His eyes were so sincere and so hopeful, you knew he meant it, that he wanted to go out with you again, despite his joking.
Finally, you managed to compose yourself and shake your hand away from his. “I think you’ve got the cheesiest pick-up lines in the world,” you asserted and Kuroo laughed.
“Sure,” he agreed. “But are they good enough to get me a second date?”
You rolled your eyes, curling your lips into a curious expression; you wanted to make him think you had to consider all of your options first.
But you had already decided what you wanted hours ago. So after a minute of making him wait, you pulled your phone out and handed it to him.
“I must be an electron and you must be a phasor, because you’re making me excited for a second date.”
Kuroo had to bite his tongue. If he didn’t, he was worried he might have dropped to his knees and proposed right then and there, because he was pretty sure he had just fallen in love with you.
AN: HI RINA <3 My last matchup, but certainly not least. I loved, loved, imagining this little date. And I really got to milk the Kuroo is actually a total nerd hc. I’ve been itching to go to one of these museums myself, I think they’re soooo cool! And I just had a feeling that Kuroo would too. Since you were the last request I got, I had to try my best to avoid biases because I know your self-ships lol, but honestly, I think you’re pretty spot-on with them because I did almost choose Atsumu, or Iwa and I considered Oikawa too. These boys would all work to get your attention. They’re confident, strategic, and if they went after your heart they would have no problem proving to you that they weren’t going to be a waste of your time. I see Kuroo the same way, but I think his goofy charm really won me over for this match up. He’s as happy staying in with you on a rainy day as he is going out and sharing in a new adventure. He’d be patient with you when you protected your heart, but wouldn’t ever take it personally or give up on you either. He’d understand when you showed him you liked him with your actions more than with your words, but he doesn’t shy away from serious conversations when they need to happen either. I was really excited about this one, so I hope you had some fun! Thank you for your continuous support, I’m so happy we had the opportunity to connect this year! I hope you have a wonderful holiday with your fam, and cheers to 2021 bringing a little more fun, right? <33 Happy Holidays!!
Have Yourself a Super Merry Christmas 1/3 Christmas Past: Before those hands pulled me from the earth (Branjie)--athena2
A/N: I love my Powerless babies so much, and I also love Christmas, so I just had to write this! (You probably need to read Powerless and Overpowered if you’re new to this series). Thank you so much to Writ for not only beta-ing, but also encouraging me to keep doing this when I almost gave it up and brainstorming ideas with me. I appreciate you endlessly. Please leave some feedback if you’d like, each comment really does encourage me!!
Chapter title from Like Real People Do by Hozier.
—
It’s Christmas morning, and Brooke Lynn Hytes is six years old.
She stares at the ceiling, one small hand holding a stuffed monkey and the other running along her purple fleece blanket. Above her head, anchored by painted ballet slippers, big pink letters on the wall spell out her name, as if she would ever forget something that important.
Her feet kick around in excitement. She gave up on sleeping an hour ago, and she’s not sure how much longer she can possibly wait before going to see her tree sparkling, presents with bright paper and bows stashed underneath.
Her clock reads 5:43. She usually woke up at 7:30 for school, but she doesn’t know how much longer that will take. They haven’t learned that kind of math in school yet and 7:30 might as well be hundreds of years away. She can’t wait anymore. She pulls on her bunny slippers and bolts to her parents’ room, launching into their bed like a rocket.
There’s more than a few groans and exasperated glances at the clock before she tugs them both into the living room with her.
The presents are piled in red and green paper, with sparkling bows that will take her forever to untie. There’s a large box to the side, and Brooke decides to save that one for last in case it’s the new big-girl bike she asked for. She shreds paper on clothes and shoes and toys and a pink music box with a small blonde ballerina inside, just like her, shouting while her parents smile from the couch. She holds her breath when she gets to the last box, opening it to reveal a light purple bike with streamers on the handlebars and she shrieks in excitement. She climbs on it and her father says she can ride it when the snow melts, and Brooke smiles all day long, even in the itchy dress she has to wear for dinner at her grandmother’s.
She doesn’t know what’s coming. She doesn’t know that 14 years from now her parents won’t be there. She doesn’t know that 12 years after that, she’ll be pulled from the wreckage of a plane by evil people whose needles will give her powers and take this memory away from her. She doesn’t know that a year after that crash, in the high heat of summer, she’ll fall in love with a fierce, warm-hearted woman who will thaw the ice she built up around her heart, who will help her out of the darkness and give her new memories.
But she doesn’t know this. It’s Christmas morning, and Brooke Lynn Hytes is six years old. And she is happy.
Brooke sits up in bed and has her fingers clenched around her pen before she can even fully see. Her pen flies over the notebook, writing down every detail of the memory as it swirls in her brain: her mother’s laugh, her father’s promise to teach her, the silky smoothness of the streamers flowing from the handlebars, the gentle, melodic turns of the ballerina in the music box. She can still feel the cool weight of it in her lap. She’s seen flashes of her mother before, but this is the first time she’s ever seen her father and she wants to remember his dark blond hair and brown eyes. She wishes she could hold the memory in her hands, lock it up in a box and carry her treasure of memories around with her so she never loses them. Even though there’s no lab to take them from her anymore, time is just as much a thief, and she can’t lose this one. She can’t.
“Brooke?”
She must have woken Vanessa. It barely registers in her mind, thoughts still floating somewhere in time.
“Are you okay? You’re crying.”
She is? Her cheeks are wet, she notices suddenly. When had she started?
“Was it a bad dream?”
She puts down her pen, positive she’s gotten it all–the tear of wrapping paper, the pile of it brushing against her legs. The click of the camera shutter as her mother took pictures. The way it felt like the morning would never end, like every day after would be Christmas too.
“It-it was a good dream.” she answers finally, turning to see Vanessa’s worried eyes. Those eyes have looked at her countless times in the night, though getting fewer as the nightmares decrease. Those eyes ground Brooke when she wakes up and can’t understand where she is, mind still wholly convinced she’s in the lab, sitting on the exam table with a cold stethoscope pressed against her chest and a light shining too bright into her eyes, or pulsing with energy as her fist smashes into someone’s jaw, fulfilling her promise to the General that she wouldn’t fail because then she would be bad. Those eyes remind her that she’s not there, she’s home. Those eyes are her home.
“A good dream? Did you see one of your memories?” Vanessa’s voice brims with concealed excitement. She knows how much it means to Brooke when she regains a piece of her past, and she gets just as thrilled as Brooke does.
“Yeah. Christmas morning when I was a kid. I saw…I saw both my parents this time.” She’s aware of the tears now, falling thickly down her cheeks. Vanessa wipes them away, her fingertips replaced with lips as she kisses Brooke’s cheek softly.
“I’m happy you got to see it,” she breathes against Brooke’s face.
“Me too.” And she is. She just wishes it was never taken away in the first place, that she could have had this moment to relive over the years. But she knows from hours with Nina that she can’t ruminate on it. All she can do is take things day by day, memory by memory.
Vanessa’s stomach growls like thunder. “Oops. Way to spoil the moment, huh?”
Brooke smiles. “The half-dozen cookies you ate yesterday weren’t enough?”
“You know me,” Vanessa offers by way of apology.
“I sure do,” Brooke replies, going in for another kiss.
—
Patrol is miserable in the cold, but things have been quiet lately, almost like the criminals of the world are giving them a holiday break. Despite the chill, it is kind of pretty to be perched on the roof with red and green lights glowing below, shimmery wreaths and bows visible even from up high.The city is a large snow globe spread beneath her, filled with people she doesn’t know, all going about their lives, some struggling, some thriving, but all living; and maybe it’s her sessions with Nina or the Christmas cheer, but for once, Vanjie isn’t separated from the world below but is part of it, on the inside of the glass rather than the outside, and she’s never been happier to.
“Anybody need ice?” Frost asks, and Scarlet groans in response.
Vanjie refuses. She has several new bruises on her back, but when you’ve been doing this for years like she has, you just stop noticing after a while. Just another bruise to add to the collection, another ounce of pain when her shoulders have already borne tons.
There’s a cold sensation on her back, a ball of ice pressed against it as Frost stands at her side. She nods knowingly, but doesn’t say anything, and Vanjie is grateful. It’s still strange for her to be taken care of the way Frost–Brooke–takes care of her. But a good strange. One she can’t imagine living without, even if is still hard for her to accept that care, accept that her shoulders don’t have to carry it all alone anymore.
“Alarm went off at a toy store on 32nd,” Silk informs everyone by ear comm.
“I told you my vision would be tonight!” Yvie brags. “You owe me five bucks, Vanj.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Vanjie stands up and looks around at them, the people that make up her loud, dysfunctional, cutthroat board game-playing family, a burst of affection bubbling up in her.
“Let’s go catch a criminal.”
—-
She and Brooke drive to a mall upstate to do some shopping. They haven’t been to a mall in a while, since their first attempt didn’t go very well. Being somewhere so big, with blinding white tile, had reminded Brooke of the lab, but she said all the people and the noise–which weren’t allowed at the lab–made her think something bad would happen. She had insisted they stay, but her scrunched-up shoulders and the way she jumped when there was a loud noise made Vanessa’s heart hurt and they left after a few stores.
But Brooke is confident today, growing to feel safe in unfamiliar locations. Nina says it’s good for Brooke to explore new places, and they go to new coffee shops and restaurants regularly, Vanessa ensuring Brooke is safe and calm.
They pass a pretzel stand by the entrance and Brooke gasps.
“Ness, did you see those pretzels? They’re huge! Can I get–” she takes a quick breath, “–I’m gonna go get one,” she says.
Vanessa’s heart swells with pride. With Nina’s help, Brooke’s gotten better at being more assertive, at saying things she wants to do instead of asking permission or deferring to someone else. Not to mention that standing in line and ordering for herself are also big accomplishments, and Vanessa can’t help but marvel at how far she’s come.
“Okay, baby.”
She stands off to the side, knowing not to go too far, and Brooke returns with her hands full of pretzels bigger than her head and a smile like the sun on her face.
“One is plain, and one has garlic and Parmesan, and one has pepperoni, and one has cinnamon sugar! I couldn’t pick so I got them all.” she blushes.
There are moments when Vanessa’s love for Brooke hits her so hard it knocks the breath right out of her, and Brooke chewing on a pretzel and holding out one for her to try is one of them.
—-
Once Brooke adjusts to all the noise and people around, the mall is… nice, actually. It’s not as scary as it was last time, her medication easing some of the fear she used to have. Vanessa shares pretzels with her and says they can have lunch at a diner in the mall if they want, and Brooke can’t stop looking at Vanessa and smiling, Vanessa smiling back at her.
They pick out ugly Christmas sweaters to wear on Christmas Eve and get presents for everyone, and Brooke is calm.
They’re walking past a store with watches and jewelry when she sees it in the window.
A light pink music box, with the cover open to reveal a blonde ballerina twirling gracefully. She stops in her tracks, eyes glued to the box, the movement of the ballerina hypnotic, spinning thoughts into her head.
After the bike (which, though she doesn’t remember, she learned to ride with only one scrape on her leg), the music box had been her favorite present. Has she watched it like this before? The idea pops into her mind that she would watch it spin when she was lost in thought or worried about school, that the repetitive motions calmed her.
A few seconds later the dull early signs of a headache poke out behind her eyes, and she blinks furiously.
White floors and white walls. The la–no, she’s not there. She’s never going back there again. It’s the mall.
Warmth on her hand.
Vanessa.
She looks to her side and breathes, Vanessa silently asking if she’s okay.
“I’m good,” Brooke replies. “I-this was in my dream the other night. I’m okay.”
Vanessa nods. “What do you say about some lunch?”
—-
“This whole page is just milkshakes?” Brooke brandishes the menu at Vanessa in wonder.
“Yep.” Vanessa grins. “You wanna get one to share? You can pick if you want.”
She’s gotten better at it, (she still laughs when she thinks of the time she couldn’t pick what she wanted from a Chinese restaurant and Vanessa ordered so much food they ate leftovers for a week) but making decisions still cuts at her stomach. There simply weren’t any decisions to make at the lab. She did what they told her, and that was that. It’s dizzying to have so many options now, to see so many things she didn’t know she was allowed to want, though sometimes it gives her an indescribable fear that she’s choosing the wrong thing.
Remember to breathe when you’re deciding something, Nina’s voice reminds her.
Air floods her lungs. She looks up at Vanessa, who is undoubtedly the best choice she’s ever made. “Um. There’s one with peanut butter and chocolate?”
They both get a grilled cheese and French fries, and Vanessa suggests she dip the fries in the milkshake and it’s so good they have to get another order of fries.
Brooke is wiping the whipped cream off her nose, unsure of how it even got there, when she notices Vanessa smiling at her.
“What is it?”
“I just really love you.” Vanessa answers.
—-
They spend the days leading up to Christmas making cookies until the kitchen looks like a train swept through it and Vanessa has to take two showers in one day after finding sprinkles down her shirt.
They move around each other like a dance, and the hours tick by in perfect happiness as they cross cookies off their list. Sometimes they didn’t even have to talk, almost like they could read each other’s thoughts, sense their needs before they did. Vanessa hands Brooke chocolate chips before she could ask for them; Brooke gives Vanessa the biggest cookie to taste-test. Laughing in that kitchen with Brooke just might be the best part of Christmas.
It could be Brooke’s dream still on her mind, or the holiday spirit hitting her now that tomorrow is Christmas Eve–their second one together, Vanessa thinks in wonder–but Vanessa pulls out her old photos that night, after Brooke is asleep, curled up under her weighted blanket and so adorable Vanessa has to smile.
She rifles through years’ worth of pictures, cringing at her rat’s nest of hair and those God-awful middle school years when taking her picture should have been illegal, blinking away tears at pictures of her parents and little brother. Miguel. She doesn’t talk about him, doesn’t even think about him if she can help it, the pain just too much. Sometimes it’s easier to pretend she never had a brother. Even now, as she thinks of how he always passed her his pizza crusts at dinner, or the hours they spent pretending to be Batman and Robin, the wound stings like the fire was just yesterday. She gets to the picture when she was six and he was four, the two of them in front of the tree, trying to hold their new puppy still for the camera. That was the year they got Taco. She closes her eyes and lets it consume her…
It’s Christmas morning, and Vanessa Mateo is six years old.
Her eyes snap open and she rolls over. She doesn’t know what time it is, but if she’s awake, it’s morning, and that’s good enough for her. She sticks her head over the edge of the bunk bed, her brother sleeping below. She hurls her stuffed tiger at his face.
“Wake up, dummy, it’s Christmas!”
She slides down the ladder of her bed without using the rungs, pretending she’s Batman sliding into the Batcave.
“Do you think Santa brought our puppy?” she asks him as his feet pad behind hers on the way to their parents’ room.
“Maybe.”
Their father whines for a few minutes after they both pounce, their mother shushing him and following closely behind as they race to the living room. She and Miguel each try to out-do each other on their shouting, and her mother jokes that she’ll need earplugs next Christmas as they destroy wrapping paper on toys and games and clothes and shoes, crumbling it into balls and whipping it at each other when they’re done. They’re planning the next saga to create with Miguel’s new action figures when her mother announces that there’s one more gift for them to share, and their father comes in with a big white box with holes punched in the top.
They ease off the lid and Vanessa pulls the chocolate lab puppy out of the box and rests him on the floor, her and Miguel fighting over who gets to name it, hands petting its silky fur. Their mother is saying how they’ll have to clean up after it and train it and Vanessa doesn’t even mind as she kisses its soft head, her and Miguel still smiling in the matching outfits they had to wear for Christmas Day.
She doesn’t know what’s coming. She doesn’t know that 20 years from now, everyone in this room will be gone. She doesn’t know that the same fire that takes them from her will leave her lying alone in the ash, body burning with flames that crackle both inside and out. She doesn’t know that less than two years after the fire takes everything, she will fall in love with a sweet, soft-hearted woman who will freeze the flames she built up around her heart, who will help her out of the darkness and give her a new family.
But she doesn’t know this. It’s Christmas morning, and Vanessa Mateo is six years old. And she is happy.
Vanessa puts the pictures away and wipes furiously at her eyes. She shouldn’t have done this, it was just asking for the pain. But maybe it’s a good thing too, to let it all out and not keep things so buried. That’s something Nina would say, she muses with a smile. She slips down beside Brooke, who sleeps so much better now with therapy and meds helping her out. Brooke has been her anchor through the busy times at the salon and patrolling injuries and memories of her family that pop up uninvited in her mind on nights when she swears the fire is still singeing her skin and turning her breaths to ash, nights when Brooke’s cool skin drives the fire away and keeps her safe. She nestles against Brooke’s chest. Brooke suddenly stirs at the movement and lets out a sleepy mumble, pulling Vanessa closer like she senses her distress.
She knows she should talk about it, knows she is safe enough to, but no matter how good she’s gotten at letting herself be vulnerable and accept help, it’s just too raw to take it out of her head and put it into words. She can’t do it. Not tonight, at least.
Vanessa is sure Brooke knows this, so the blonde just grips her tighter, effectively holding her together.
When they wake up, it’s Christmas Eve.
It’s Christmas Eve, and Brooke and Vanessa are happy.
We have only 12 years to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 4 percent, according to an October report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The feat, it admits, would require “rapid, far-reaching” societal transformation. If we fail, coastal cities will be inundated, food will run short and the damage will cost $54 trillion by 2040, when babies born this year will be old enough to graduate from college.
The clear path to curbing these catastrophes involves rapidly phasing out carbonintensive fuels, which requires changes on a scale for which “There is no documented historic precedent,” the report’s authors note.
But more dramatic approaches have crept into policy discussions, like solar radiation management, known as SRM. First imagined by scientists during the Cold War, SRM promises a comparatively cheap, quick fix: the continuous dispersal of aerosols into the atmosphere to reflect and absorb sunlight, cooling the planet. In effect, SRM means dimming the sun.
For proof of concept, advocates look to volcanic eruptions, which spew out plumes of aerosols. The 1883 eruption of Krakatoa, for example, reportedly lowered global temperatures by 1 degree Celsius. The best modeling suggests SRM, too, would work like a charm.
Like a volcano, however, SRM is enormously risky. Side effects could include decreasing crop yields, melting the ozone layer or irreparably altering the water cycle, flooding some parts of the world while causing prolonged droughts in others—and those are just the few we are able to model.
If starting SRM is risky, so is stopping once we’ve started: Stanching the flow of aerosols would risk the Earth rapidly warming by several degrees within a decade, known as a “termination shock.” This sudden heating would do more damage than the current, more gradual warming, disrupting the climate while giving species and ecosystems little time to adapt.
But given the stakes, many SRM boosters say the benefits seem to outweigh the risk. After all, what choice do we have?
If it sounds like we’ve crossed into science fiction, we have: This scenario is more or less the opening narration of Geostorm, a critically panned 2017 film about climate-controlling satellites gone rogue. The better-received 2013 class-struggle flick Snowpiercer also starts with a similar premise: an attempted SRM-like scheme backfires into endless winter.
Yet SRM and other risky high-tech climate interventions inch closer to reality by the day. The IPCC report has reignited a long-running debate: How far are we willing to go, and what risks are we willing to take, to keep the Earth from further warming? Humans have altered the climate for centuries by pumping out greenhouse gases. What’s so different about interfering with the climate to save the world instead of cook it? Do we have any other options left?
Stratospheric Aerosol injection — the type of SRM described above—is one of a suite of technologies aimed at large-scale manipulation of the climate, known as geoengineering. There are two broad categories: solar geoengineering to block or reflect sunlight (like SRM), and “negative emissions technologies” to suck greenhouse gases out of the air. Negative emissions technologies have been factored into climate modeling for years and have a long-established (if controversial) role in IPCC mitigation strategies; solar geoengineering has been more fringe.
But in the past few years, the governments of the United Kingdom and United States have each sponsored research into solar geoengineering, outlets from The New Yorker to the New York Times have commissioned lengthy articles on it, and an editor at The Economist wrote a whole book on the subject, The Planet Remade. Just after the release of the new IPCC report, Council on Foreign Relations President Richard N. Haass opined that world governments should “accelerate R&D on geoengineering,” and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) called to “incentivize oil companies to help.”
SRM has even found a research base in the Ivy League. Thanks to Harvard’s Solar Geoengineering Research Program, founded in 2017, the first steps toward implementation may soon float above the United States through the program’s Stratospheric Controlled Perturbation Experiment.
Known as Scopex, the experiment is not an SRM test, per se—to truly test the concept would require a global scale. But it is an attempt to go beyond computer modeling to understand the chemistry and microphysics of how particular aerosols interact with the stratosphere. A propeller-powered balloon will disseminate the aerosols; a small gondola, attached, will carry sensors. Researchers hope to launch in 2019.
Opposition to SRM has increased as well. As IPCC researchers met in South Korea to finalize their report, 110 civil society organizations across five continents, from First Nations peoples to think tanks to environmental NGOs, issued an anti-geoengineering manifesto: Hands Off Mother Earth, or HOME.
It reads, in part: “Geoengineering perpetuates the false belief that today’s unjust, ecologically and socially devastating industrial model of production and consumption cannot be changed and that we therefore need techno-fixes to tame its effects.” Signatories fear the development of SRM will be used as an excuse to continue the carbon status quo, calling it a “dangerous distraction” from real solutions and a “further entrenchment of fossil fuel economies.” Fossil fuel corporations have yet to throw their weight behind SRM specifically, but Shell’s chief climate change advisor, David Hone, praises the “sulphur solution” (referring to SRM) as the simplest in his book, Putting the Genie Back.
Harvard scientist David Keith, a contributor to the Scopex project, has emerged as something of a public face of SRM. He disagrees that geoengineering protects fossil fuel companies, envisioning it instead as a complement to decarbonization. “If solar geoengineering was much better understood, I don’t think it would make all the environmental forces give up and let Exxon win,” he says. “There’s not an alternative to cutting fossil fuels. We have to get them out of the energy system.”
Keith isn’t pushing for SRM deployment—just research— and says it’s important to understand all of the risks before moving forward. He worries about the Trump administration or other fossil fuel-friendly governments grasping onto SRM as a perceived quick fix. Still, he thinks we should be able to simultaneously research SRM and take action against fossil fuels.
The HOME manifesto, however, calls for a ban on open-air field experiments like Scopex. “[Scopex] makes no sense if you are not going to pursue deployment later,” says Silvia Ribeiro, one of the manifesto’s authors and the Latin America director of ETC Group, which addresses the social and environmental impacts of new technologies. “All powerful technologies have started with small experiments.”
Oxford physicist Raymond Pierrehumbert, a lead author on the IPCC’s third assessment report in 2001, sees Scopex as a crossing of the Rubicon. “Proceeding to field experimentation,” he writes, “crosses a thin red line beyond which lies the slippery slope down to ever-larger field trials and, ultimately, deployment.”
Skeptics also note that SRM only addresses some of the effects of global warming—those stemming directly from temperature. It does nothing to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the air, which means ocean acidification would continue apace, causing irreversible damage to coral reefs and other ocean life that will reverberate up the food chain. The continued accumulation of greenhouse gases would also heighten the impacts of potential termination shock.
This post is 2500 words long. Therefore, here’s a preemptive TL;DR so you still experience how cool these solar panels are:
I now own 4 portable solar panels and 2 power banks
Total investment of $320
They store 93.6 Amp hours of energy, which is enough to charge my Galaxy S7 phone for an entire month without sunlight.
You can take these things friggin anywhere, literally.
Hiking, golfing, swimming at the beach, driving, eating at a restaurant, ANYWHERE.
Charge phone at same rate as a wall outlet
If I charge my phone once per day, it will take me more 400 years to pay this off
I need to continue to integrate more devices and appliances to make this investment worth it
I have too much energy and can’t use it quickly enough
Best approach at the moment is to share as much energy per day with as many people as possible
Future outlook: connect laptop, lamps, and smaller appliances in apartment
Despite current financial flaws, it’s just insanely cool and convenient
Free and infinite energy no matter where you go
I am now extremely conscious about how much power I waste doing mindless things on my phone
Alright, there’s your TL;DR. Now let’s get to this.
PART 1: THE TECHNICAL STUFF
May 31, 2017, was the last time I plugged my phone into a wall outlet. That night, my first portable solar panel arrived, and my phone has been disconnected from the grid ever since.
As of my writing this on July 1, I’ve grown my solar production and storage to four panels and two power banks, and I haven’t felt worried about charging my phone at all (anymore). I’m someone who always promotes and advocates for solar energy, but until recently, I never used solar for myself. There came a point when I needed to take my advocacy a step further. As they say, if you’re going to talk the talk, you have to walk the walk. My mission is to show people the power of solar, and what better way to do that than to get some portable panels and show them off?
Such as in a restaurant after a day of golf...
Or, quite literally, while golfing...
My first purchase was one portable solar panel, for just about $50. I purchased it from a company called iNiCE, which, I’ve found, was probably the best company to buy these from for one simple reason: this version of the iNiCE solar panels has 10000 mAh (10 Amp hours) of internal energy storage, which is enough to recharge my Samsung Galaxy S7 a little more than three times (it would charge the iPhone 7 four to five times). This means that with the panel’s 2.4 Amp, 5 Volt output, it takes my phone about 1.2 hours to recharge from empty, which is the same as the wall plug in your house.
For some technical clarity, storage capacity is defined in terms of how long it takes a battery to recharge at 1 Amp/hour. A 10 Amp hours battery (10000 mAh), takes 10 hours to recharge. The iNiCE solar panel functions optimally at 2.4 Amps under direct sunlight, so, optimally, it takes 4.1 hours to charge (but efficiency decreases as the panel heats up, so allow time in the shade or find a way to cool the panel if you want to maintain peak performance in one sitting).
Trust me, these things get HOT.
Looking at other products, most competitors don’t have energy storage attached to their panels. This makes iNiCE convenient and reliable, because I can sit my solar panels out in the sun for a few hours and charge their batteries to full capacity. But if you put a competitor’s panel in the sun all day, it won’t store energy without a separate power bank attached.
That’s the other reason iNiCE panels are so convenient: you can charge them, then drain their batteries into a power bank. Granted, you’ll lose some energy in the transfer, but you won’t notice the loss without physically measuring it yourself.
Along with my first solar panel, I purchased a 26800 mAh power bank (26.8 Amp hours) from Anker, for $60. This power bank can charge my phone just about nine times at full capacity.
In the image below, the power banks are the black boxes behind the panels (each bank is 7 in X 3 in).
Alright, all the technical stuff is out of the way. Let’s get to the fun parts, shall we?
PART 2: SOLAR PANELS ARE FUN AND EXCITING
The sheer awesomeness of owning solar panels definitely put me on a high for a few days. I was, and still am, very conscious of putting my panels in the sun when it’s out. There’s just something so beautiful about opening the panels under the sun and seeing your phone screen light up, indicating a charge has begun. I can be out in the middle of my yard, driving down the road, playing golf, even going for a hike, and these work absolutely everywhere. Solar gives you that freedom. I’d even go so far as to say that solar panels should be a priority for anyone who goes long-term hiking and camping. No need to worry about your phone going dead in an emergency, ever.
The image below was taken as I was driving 9 hours to vacation.
It's just exciting. Every morning, when I need to, I wake up and put my solar panels in the sunlight to make use of every photon the day has to give. I eat breakfast, take a shower, go write my book in a coffee shop for a couple hours, come back, and the panel is fully charged. By then, it’s usually only 10 or 11 in the morning! Three full phone charges – more than enough for two days – all in the time it takes me to edit a few pages in my book and drink a few coffees.
Weeks of phone charge, that is.
You may be wondering about range anxiety, a common issue people bring up about electric cars (the general argument is that gas stations are everywhere, electric chargers are not. If you’re running low on charge, will you make it to an EV charger before you lose power?) I will admit, at first I was definitely using more power than I had available. Wasting time on the phone, bright screen, playing music and videos off the phone a lot, etc.
My restriction on power made me self-conscious of how much power I, as an individual, use every single day. And I consider myself to be on the low end of power usage. I know people who watch YouTube for hours. Play mindless games. Text nonstop. Even more power consuming, using Snapchat for most of their communication. Imagine how many full phone charges a day some people require, maybe even yourself!
I started limiting myself on my phone. I set time restrictions, restrictions on things I’d download, how long I’d use my phone for videos and music, how I would communicate with people. This conscious effort not only made me aware of how much energy I waste, but made me think, if I’m somewhere on the low to middle end of the spectrum, how much energy are we wasting when hundreds of millions of people are combined? What if we, the consumers, are responsible for higher costs of energy because it is so convenient to access, because we almost always near a wall outlet (except for the Starbucks I wrote my fourth book in. That place was a power outlet void).
Let me point something out:
Sunlight, if you didn’t notice, IS FREAKING EVERYWHERE.
As a guy trying to use sunlight to generate electrical energy, to prove the concept that solar panels work and are exciting and should be adopted en masse, I’ve already caught myself wishing for cloudy days. No pun intended, but that’s where I think solar power really shines. The fact that I can literally step outside and immediately charge my phone is amazing in itself, but is, in the end, just a cheap trick I started taking for granted in the first week of owning solar panels. The true proof of concept requires you to sustain yourself day after day like that, even on the cloudy ones.
Even in the rainstorms.
Even in the blizzards.
Even in the asteroid apocalypse.
If the sun is always out, there’s nothing to prove. It gets boring. You stop noticing where your energy is coming from. The real excitement--the stuff that gets your blood pumping--comes when the sun isn’t shining. Are you feeling it now, Mr. Krabs? When that first power level light drops down a bar, does your heart start racing, and your mind start thinking, “I need to recharge, NOW.”
Yes, the proof of concept for bringing solar energy to the world’s infrastructure is not in producing energy, but in storing energy. Fast fact: enough sunlight hits the earth every hour to power the world for an entire year. The trick is, do we have the ability to store that energy and use it later? And if we don’t have enough storage, can we use that energy quickly enough, and begin storing even more energy, in a way that is deemed a successful economic investment? Or is it being used simply to show off, to look flashy?
Ooooh, shiny: the only thing missing is some good ol’ Star Trek lens flare.
Above, I said there is simply too much energy for me to use. I’m not lying. As of writing this, I haven’t even touched my power banks in almost three weeks, because every day, I charge my panels when I’m writing, or at work, or literally driving around town. I am always collecting energy, but that doesn’t mean I’m using it. I know I can fill 100% of my storage capacity in less than two days of sunlight (15 hours of peak performance). But I use less than 4% of that energy per day, which means the rest of the energy is just…existing. Nobody is touching it. I would need to connect every phone in my house, every laptop, and every television, just to use most of the energy I can store each day. And the thing is, I can keep upgrading. I can keep adding storage. I know with my current 48 inches by 12 inches of surface area (all four panels combined), I can collect about 200 Amp hours every day. That’s 24 laptop charges, or 66 cell phone charges. I just need more storage to accomplish that.
Finding more ways to use this energy will help me pay off my investment. At the moment, if I charge my phone once a day, it will take me a whopping 400 years to pay off this entire system. You can see the problem. As I said above, I need to use as much energy as possible, as quickly as possible, to make the return on this investment worth it, and chop down that time. Fortunately, I’m conscious about this sobering fact, and when I see family and friends charging from a power outlet or computer, I immediately connect them to my panels. I also leave the panels in the open, with the cords already attached, to encourage them to connect to the panel instead of plugging into the wall. Going even further than that, I’m going to start offering for other people to plug into my panels and power banks in public, rather than outlets. It’s free energy. It’s there for everyone to use. So here, have some, on me!
Down the line, I plan to integrate my laptop, and build up to where I’m running lamps and appliances in my apartment on solar energy. Only then will the investments will pay off in years, even months, not centuries.
PART THREE: ENERGY USAGE AND AN ECONOMY OF SCALE
The typical phone is recharged twice to three times a day. On average, over the course of a year, that adds up to about $2.40 USD added to your electric bill. Not much money, right? And that money is spread out. You don’t charge just at your house. You charge at work. At the airport. At your friend’s house. At a restaurant. You, the individual, might not be paying that $2.40, but it exists collectively, a few cents here, a few cents there. Someone, somewhere, is paying for a portion of the energy that goes into your phone.
Imagine one million average people charging their phones each year. That’s $2,400,000 spent on energy. Now, let’s say they all drastically change their phone habits and charge just once a day. That price becomes a mere $800,000. By limiting their usage, one million people are saving $1,600,000. That’s an extra $1.60 in every person’s pocket, just by reducing the wasteful time we spend our phones. It might not seem like much on a small scale, but imagine that amplified across the world. The savings in just one year would be incredible.
And that’s just from the energy on a phone. Imagine lights. Refrigerators. Air conditioning. Computers. Televisions. The savings from reducing wasteful usage on a large scale would add billions, perhaps trillions, into the world’s economy.
Let me slow down a bit, because I’m getting ahead of myself. I’m sitting here saying that limiting our energy usage will save the world billions of dollars, but I’m supposed to be talking about solar panels. I made an investment. Sure, not using your phone will save you money, but you want to use your phone, obviously. So how does solar let you get your money’s worth?
In the first week of June, I went to the beach and charged my panel every day, letting my family connect, too, so I could drain the power each day and maximize my energy investment.
By the second week of June, I had four solar panels and two identical power banks. Altogether, 93.6 Amp hours of storage, enough to charge my laptop, from empty, 11 times. Altogether, this investment cost me $320. So again, you ask, “Is it worth the money?”
My answer is complicated.
You know what I’ve found? There is simply too much energy to collect, and I don’t have enough storage to collect it, nor do I have enough devices connected to the solar panels and power banks to make good use of all the energy I do have. As of my writing this, three solar panels and both power banks are 100% charged. The fourth panel is 50% charged, because I’ve had my phone hooked up to it all day during and after extensive use. I even had my panel charging in the middle of a restaurant to gain energy when I didn’t need it.
We take energy for granted. We see a wire that runs into our house, and we know that wire provides us with all the power we can ever hope for. But we never see the substation the energy comes from. We don’t see the coal or gas that gets burned. Energy is simply given to us, with the promise that it will always be there.
What about blackouts, then? When a substation overloads, or a massive storm rampages up the coast, hundreds, thousands, even millions of people can lose power, because suddenly, the single line into their home is no longer receiving energy from the source. Solar energy, and all renewables, I should add, is different because of storage. When you put solar panels on your house, you can also add a box that collects the energy to save surplus energy for later use, and it can be located inside the house, not out in the weather.
What happens when a storm takes out the neighborhood? You won’t lose power.
What happens when a tree smashes through a power line? You won’t lose power.
What happens when lightning strikes the substation, or a transformer explodes? You won’t lose power.
What happens when ice snaps electric wires? You won’t lose power.
There are still pitfalls—such as cloudy days, or not enough storage capacity—but solar energy, in the long term, is meant to be shared. Energy collected on one side of the world can be transferred elsewhere as needed. Live in Portland, Oregon, or the UK? You could be getting your energy from a location that receives copious amounts of sunlight, too much for that area to use. In fact, there are already entire islands running on solar energy, such as the American Somoa, Haiti, the island of Kauai in Hawai’i, and other small islands. And soon, following massive rolling blackouts, southern Australia will be powered by solar, thanks to an initiative by Tesla and Elon Musk that has led to a worldwide solar energy arms race. It is this kind of competition -- healthy competition that forges an energy revolution -- that is steadily rising as renewable energy takes center stage away from limited fossil fuels.
So there it is, the experience of my first month with portable solar panels. It’s been fun, and I’m looking forward to building up my solar array even more! I will continue to update as I experiment and grow, and hopefully one day my life will be running on free, clean, and infinite solar energy, and all the other renewable sources nature has to provide.
In just one month, these four small panels have begun to transform my life and energy awareness. What else are they capable of?
Do you want your own portable solar panels? I purchased mine HERE
@ursy153 & @imberbimber, can I prevail on you two to read this chapter 3 and tell me your thoughts. I was editing it, and put more in, then edited that... and it’s 3am again. Also tumblr stole the italics, again.
-> “No Quick-Fix for the Common Cold” Unedited Ch3
Chapter 3: Getting Uber Your Differences
The world burns as if Pyro had turned their flamethrower on it, until it’s almost unbearable; then, without any warning whatsoever, turns icier than Spy’s heart.
Someone’s talking at him, he thinks, but he can’t be quite certain. Sounds like they’re asking… something he can’t seem to make out; the words, the sounds… they don’t make any kinda sense?
Failing to understand who or what is being spoken just heightens the sense that something is so very, incredibly wrong… like he was broken, or the world was. And just when he thinks he’s maybe grasped onto a familiar syllable or tone, the voices start again with new phrases that sound alien in origin.
He doesn’t know what they want…
What do they want?
He can’t tell these mystery beings he doesn’t understand what they’re trying to communicate, however. All chance to do so ceased what had to have been eons ago; his throat felt as if all of Dustbowl was trapped in there. Searing heat and burning sand that had never known rain, rubbing everything red-raw, eroding his voice all but completely.
Everything is… everything is nothing more than impressions and ideas. Shades of hot and cold that flush through his body, head to toe; wracking his overtired frame with shudders that make his joints ache. It feels... like the two teams are facing off against one another, and his body is the battleground; the clashing roams all over, different areas experience pain seemingly without any warning or pattern, before the war moves to a new capture point.
Sure, maybe that’s a weird-as-fuck analogy, but it’s all he has.
The only certainty in Scout’s mind is that he is at RED base right now… probably. He clings to the familiarity of that scenario… it’s all he can do to stay in the moment.
Red, Blue, battle, team, win, lose, war… game. The words mean everything and nothing.
There is no equilibrium, up and down are utterly subjective for the moment, but he doesn’t want to open his eyes and find out which is which. It seems so superfluous, so… unhelpful, to be aware of. All he knows is that his body shivers, aching and numb in odd little bursts that seemed designed to undermine his tenuous grip on reality.
But he could not sleep. It eluded him, any and all rest that might bring a moment’s peace… held so far out of reach that he could cry, if that were still an option.
And then, something changes.
At first, it feels imagined, like the phantom fingers that had held fast his throat earlier in the evening. The ones that dredged up one of his single worst memories, and saw the runner strike the Doctor, even though the man had only tried to help.
He hadn’t meant it…
Medic… so angry…
He didn’t mean to hurt the doctor…
Before he could concentrate on the thought, the memory... it happened again. Someone… touched him. And he felt his heartbeat accelerate in panic, as fingers brushed against shoulder, cheek, wrist, and finally, throat. He jerks back at the last tentative touch, not wanting to have to think about That Time again.
They said something, but it didn’t feel like it was for him; perhaps the other voices were sharing amongst themselves. That sounded like a thing they would do, right?
He is aware of something clamping firmly about his shoulder, a solid something to focus on, even as it causes overstressed senses to go on alert.
Why couldn’t he open his eyes and see who, or what, it was?
Why was that so hard all of a sudden?
The pressure decreases, as if they thought he wanted them away… as if they intended to leave; and he flails out, with an odd almost-word of a cry. He wanted them to stay, he didn’t want to be alone in this. Alone in the dark and unable to communicate.
Someone shouts in alarm, as he realises he’s struck something.
Had he done it again? He hadn’t meant to… you know, strike them; Scout just wanted them to stay, and couldn’t think of how else to tell these soft-voiced beings that. Especially as the cry from a moment ago refuses to make a repeat performance; his throat has closed for good or ill. Hah, probably because he was, ill that is. It was an oddly amusing thought.
Still, no matter how much Scout feels like he wants to scream and beg them to remain here; there is nothing emanating from his ravaged throat. And worst of all, the hand is gone… his one anchor had abandoned him.
It feels like an eternity before something else happens, and he Bostonian is aware of every passing second in the void. In a way you might never put properly into words; like the first time you experience respawn, and you find there can be no true description of the sensation in anything as crude as words, it simply is.
Every sense is overstimulated, trying to work out where the voices went, even if his eyes refused to open and ears failed to translate the words they had spoken. A muffled whine of alarm escapes as hands return, touching first the pulse of his wrist and then brushes at the one in his throat; the memory rises like a tidal wave and threatens to consume him.
As in many of the recent nightmares he’d had since the team’s reintegration; the ones so vivid that they wrenched him from sleep in a cold sweat, screaming for help, and spurring him on to seek out even the most rudimentary form of comfort. Funnily enough, Scout always seemed to end up in the Infirmary perched on a cot, or sitting in the soft armchair in Medic’s room; shaking and muttering gibberish as the memory faded slowly. The German physician always just sighed, wrapped the runner in a blanket, and provided him with a myriad of reassurances in a soothing tone. Sometimes the intervention was nothing more than the calming repetition of ‘all is vell und you are safe, hase’, along with a cup of some of the best hot cocoa the Scout had ever had; but it worked miracles. He never remembered falling asleep again after a nightmare, only what happened afterwards; when he’d wake up in his own bed the next morning, the rest of the team none the wiser of the previous night’s incidents.
Perhaps it did not show, but Scout had always been grateful for that.
The memory, so recent, etched so deeply on his mind, made him shudder once more. He would quite literally pay just about anything to erase it completely… to remove the sick flashes of little things that seemed to make it all the more realistic. The taste of dusty air heavy in his mouth, the groan of a wooden floor... that suddenly wasn’t, and the strong certainty of a rope looped about his neck, holding fast when his beloved Miss Pauling grew distracted in her attempts to save his life.
“Nnngg...ooooh… nnnnnoooo…” he manages, using what little energy he had left to exert enough control over his aching arms, in order to shove the intruding person away. “Nnnnooo… pl-...ss…”
“Crikey!” comes the startled response, and the runner cannot make hide nor hair of what it was supposed to mean. Only that the figure is close by still, hovering and uncertain what to do. Scout cannot really give them any suggestions, as he did not know himself. Nor could he think of himself as a singular being, at the moment… he was just a group of loosely connected aches and pains, extremes wrapped in confusion and left to suffer.
There’s someone else there too, he thinks; their voice is different but… he thinks he knows it. He can’t understand the words, exactly, but the tone is low and soothing; full of familiar sounds that might be phrases of comfort and explanation. It feels like they’re trying to tell him something, but it just doesn’t… translate.
But… most importantly, it feels safe. He wraps the cadence about his mind, almost like a physical thing, to block out The Memory… and it seems to work.
He tries to focus on them, he does. It’s a lot harder than he initially thought it would be, but they are patient. Up is down, the sun is cold, and his throat burns even as he struggles to make some verbal acknowledgement that he can sorta hear them. Can understand they are helping… but his mouth and brain are not on speaking terms.
And then someone is dabbing something cold on his lips… it’s cool and wonderful on the chapped flesh, with small dribbles of liquid seeping through. Not a lot, not enough to truly quench the burning in his throat, but even this taste of rain on the parched desert of his dry mouth is a blessing. It is appreciated, and he wants to say so… but all that comes out is a slurred, ‘Thah...kssss’.
“No problem kiddo,” sighs the voice, taking away the cool-wet thing, much to Scout’s distress. He knew that voice, he knew… knew who it belonged… to… why couldn’t… he think… of the… name?
“Kid, ya’in there?” they queried again, gently touching his shoulder. Then more vigorously, “C’mon Son, open those baby blues… we need ya ta stay with us.”
The hands that began to shake him were broad, and the voice familiar; but he couldn’t place them. His aching body protested the treatment, but the dribble of water seemed to be just what he had needed to finally feel the call of sleep. They were growing more frantic, and he… he really did want to respond, but… it was just so much easier to let himself drift off into the welcoming void of dreamless rest.
So he did.
~)0(~
Relentless banging jerked Medic back to something approaching consciousness. He shuffled upright, mind foggy and body aching from where he had fallen asleep over his desk… in what was possibly the worst possible position for someone his age. Ach, so much paperwork!
Donning his most scathing expression, Medic wrenches the Infirmary door open. “It is four in zhe verdammt morning, vhy zhe hell are you here?” he shouts, glaring daggers at the unexpected form of Sniper. The sharpshooter seemed oddly flustered, and had a welt on his neck that looked suspiciously like he’d taken a blow there, possibly due to a delirious teammate.
Medic immediately knew why he was there, but let Sniper explain the situation anyway.
“It’s Scout, mate. Looks like he’s gotten worse in the last little bit and Truckie said he’s real worried about the ankle-biter. He can’t seem to open his eyes or stay with us for more than a minute or two at a time… most of that is this weird strangled screaming, or trying to give you a good old shot to the chops.” Sniper grinned a little at that. “Oh, yeah, and Engie said the kid’s a lot hotter that anyone has a right to be… said he could feel the heat through his Gunslinger. Which I thought was impossible, but you never know with Truckie.”
“One moment,” Medic says, striding across the room for his bag; which had been dumped unceremoniously on the floor when the doctor had stormed in hours ago. “Yes, I seem to have everything I need, lead zhe vay, Herr Sniper.”
“You sure it’s just a cold, mate? Just seems to me like he’s gotten pretty bad real fast.” Sniper asked in his unobtrusive way. They’d never been overly close before… the whole Classics nonsense… and Medic dragging the man back from the dead had not improved relations overmuch. Still, he was less than totally indifferent towards the German, so there was that.
“Yes, vhatever zhis is, it has acted far more rapidly zhan anticipated.” Medic conceded, musing aloud. “But zhen, ve are not normal men… it vould not surprise me if the rapid acceleration of vhatever he has contracted vas in some vay linked to zhe fact his blood is most likely more than half BONK! at zhis point.”
Sniper huffed out an almost-laugh in response, more an acknowledgement, if anything. Medic was delighted, even if he hadn’t really been joking all that much; he was quite concerned with the youngest member’s continuous utilisation of that radioactive drink. It would be no great shock to anyone if it was altering the Scouts on a biomolecular level.
Reaching the room changed everything, however. The almost-companionable dynamic Medic had been sharing with Sniper was immediately crushed underneath the sudden realisation that pretty much the entirety of RED team was crammed inside the medium-sized Scout Class quarters. Those who did not quite fit, or had retreated to avoid being an accidental casualty, littered the hallway outside. The whole scenario sent Medic’s heart hammering wildly within the confines of his chest.
Many of the mercenaries present still harboured perfectly logical grudges against him, considering the whole situation with the Classics had been resolved not even three months prior; and even those who deigned to look past it, in the name of group cohesion, were still somewhat cagey about interacting with the good doctor. Holiday periods and feasts excluded, obviously, as both Thanksgiving and Smissmas had been delightful events where hatchets had been buried so that all may enjoy the celebrations.
The only problem… was that many of the mercenaries had recalled where, exactly, they’d buried them. Medic could see it in their faces as he entered, the brief flicker of mistrust that spoke volumes; he was not now, nor may never be, forgiven his transgressions. A fair call, from an objective perspective on the situation… but it still hurt Medic deeply to be alone in a room full of people he once considered family.
Individually he could bear their sullen stares and simmering ire, accept their curses and comments regarding his temporary defection as part of the road to reconciliation. There was time to hear them out, let them vent and talk them through it; but in a group, such as this, he held no chance.
A cold, clammy sweat broke out over the doctor’s entire body; though outwardly he managed to maintain some degree of his usual calm and collected persona. Though perhaps not as well as he had first anticipated; for Sniper, who always seemed to just know when someone was distressed, out a companionable hand to Medic’s back and steered the other through the crowd.
The others parted, silent as tombstones, but unlikely to stonewall this ‘home visit’ as it were, with the stoic sharp shooter standing guard. Of all those gathered, it could be said that Sniper had the greatest claim to mistrusting Medic; but if he chose to vouch for him, then no one on RED would contest it.
Slightly reassured, Medic found it possible to focus on the patient before him, and his hovering Texan guardian.
Engineer had taken a real shine to Pyro and Scout when they’d all originally arrived, liked to think of himself as some degree of father figure towards the pair; so when one of them went down for one reason or another, he was always there to throw down a dispenser to heal what ailed them, offer words of encouragement to keep going, or help them get a revenge kill. Engie tended to be a versatile paternal figure with more patience than most; he was perfect for the role he’d adopted.
In anycase, it was no great surprise to anyone that the builder had placed himself by the bedside of the team’s youngest member; monitoring Scout’s every breath and twitch like some sort of living medical monitor. Although, Medic himself had had a… well, a hand, in helping Engineer affix his Gunslinger; a [piece of technology for which the specifications were both impressive and ambiguous. There was a very real chance that the metallic hand lightly holding a concerningly limp, bandaged wrist, was taking an accurate reading of the runner’s resting pulse and oxygen saturations.
The silence was beginning to press, as Medic tried to perform a visual assessment of Scout; mentally comparing current observations with those he had taken earlier in the night. Indeed, the lack of proper response to stimuli was of concern, and the majority of symptoms appeared to have increased in severity over the previous hours. It seemed to be acting rapidly, though for all his medical knowledge, Medic could not think of what this could be outside of a rather virulent strain of a cold or flu. Those sorts of everyday infections tended to breed like wildfire in cities, after all; every person who contracted it mutating the disease to a degree before passing it on. Children, of course, were the most frequent carriers of the pathogens; therefore Medic was feeling quite confident in the prognosis, given the information the runner had imparted before their rather unfortunate encounter ended.
“Vhen did you first notice he vas in zhis state?” he enquired aloud, moving closer slowly, so as not to raise anyone’s hackles. “Or, I should ask, vas he conscious or coherent vhen you first saw to him… how long ago did zhis unresponsiveness start?”
“Ah… ah reckon it was about ten or eleven when ah came ta look in on him again after ya checked the boy over,” Engie answered, goggles fixed on Medic’s every movement. “He seemed a bit shaky, real tired and the like, but he was talkin’ a little. Said his throat was bad, but didn’t wanna be touched, and ah can respect that.”
Medic nods, both in affirmation and as a polite means of requesting that Engineer continue speaking. There’s a pause.
“He did say he wanted me ta tell ya he was right sorry about hittin’ ya, made me promise ta say it if ya came back and he’d finally gone ta sleep. Thought about comin’ ta getcha then, so he could at least hear me say it, might help him settle down and all, but ah couldn’t leave him. Didn’t wanna be left alone, see?” Engineer tossed a meaningful glare over his shoulder. “And ain’t none’a ya gonna hold that against him when he’s better, ya hear?”
After everything the team had been through, it was doubtful anyone would be callous enough to mock a teammate for finding comfort in the presence of another living being when they were unwell. Though many had a feeling it might be more aimed at the Spy, who had a tendency to prod each mercenary’s weak points when he felt rankled, or was just exceptionally bored and ready to start drama to relieve the doldrum of it all.
“Alrighty then, now that’s settled.” Engie turns back to face the Doctor. “About an hour back aways, me’n’Stretch thought he’d dropped off ta sleep finally. We were gonna switch out, so he wasn’t alone but ah could get some shuteye… when Scout starts shaking worse, mumbling and the like, and we realise he ain’t asleep… just can’t open his eyes. Tried to talk ta him, calm the little fella down, but then he clocked Sniper one… and went real still.”
Medic was nodding, half-listening to Engineer and focusing on the rabbit-face heartbeat under his stethoscope; the crackle was still there, but perhaps not as severe as earlier. Satisfied, he takes the runner’s hand, and pinches him. There was a full second where he thought the Texan was going to lay him out for the movement… but it passed, as the doctor tutted worriedly. There had been a slight flinch, but it was very weak.
“What’s the prognosis, doc?” prods the inventor, after Medic seems disinclined to elaborate on the purpose of his tutting.
For his part, Medic starts somewhat, as if he’d forgotten there were other people present. “Oh, yes. Vell, apart from zhe fact he did not respond properly to zhe external stimulus of pain… it is also apparent zhat he is somewhat dehydrated, given the lack of elasticity in his skin. Und, it vould most likely not be far off zhe mark to suggest he may not have eaten in approximately zhe same amount of time, given his sore zhroat. Neither of vhich vill be helping him.”
“You might be right there, mate. Truckie and I got a little bit of fluid in the ankle-biter earlier with the old cottonball method, but it didn’t sound like he was able to do anything even close to swallowing with a throat that scorched.” Sniper adds in his no-nonsense manner, quietly watching the physician who had brought him back to life not a few months back, lift one of Scout’s eyelids.
“Mmm, at least zhere seems to be some dilation occurring in zhe pupils…” Medic mutters to himself, snapping the penlight off as he straightens. “Indeed, Herr Sniper. I zhink it vould be best if he is moved to zhe infirmary so I can start some intravenous fluid und do further tests to see vhat else can be done to hasten zhe virus’ egress from our resident Scout. I vould caution you to perhaps consider laundering your attire and showering, to prevent any spread of infection; und, could someone tell… Her… zhat Scout vill not be able to attend any match in zhe foreseeable future, should Blu be returned in zhe next veek or so?”
“Of course, docteur.” Spy answered, materialising far closer to the bed than anyone would have assumed him to be. For once, the man does not take out a cigarette to smoke, with his ominous statement; clearly having heard and understood Medic’s warnings pertaining to potential contagion.
“Danke, Herr Spy.” he nods in acknowledgement, and turns to the problem of transporting Scout. Of course, he could carry him, but then he would have to leave the boy alone in order to retrieve his medical bag, and-...
“Doktor, I vould be happy to carry small Scout to infirmary for you.” Heavy offers, resolving the problem, and acting as if this wasn’t the first time they had exchanged more than a fleeting verbal exchange since being back at RED base. The Russian mountain of a man moved over to the small bed, slipping his hands under the ashen runner and lifting him with all the care one would take with a baby, or a puppy.
To be so large, to have such power and yet be so kind, so gentle and caring… it was one of the many reasons that Medic had loved the man. Well, before everything happened. Heavy’s curtness held more weight than that of the other members of their team, for the ‘good doktor’s betrayal had struck on many personal levels. Medic understood, and he bore the weight of such a burden silently.
“You have my thanks, Mi-... Herr Heavy, danke. Let me grab my zhings und I vill precede you to open zhe infirmary door…” Medic pauses as he clasps the bag shut, turning to address the rest of the room. “Und everyone else? I vill let you know in zhe morning vhat is happening vith zhe junge, or sooner should something change drastically, zhough I do not feel zhat is a distinct possibility in zhis case. Rest assured, from vhat he told me, it is most likely just an unintended Smissmas present from one of his nieces; for vhich rest und some fluids are zhe answer.”
There was grumbling, but not even Soldier had anything to say regarding the matter, so Medic decided now was the best time to take his leave of the room. Heavy followed behind at an even pace, cradling the runner carefully, as he had no doubt done for ill sisters in the past.
Neither man said anything; the only sound filling the corridor was the soft, wheezy rasp of Scout’s breathing.
And when it stuttered slightly, both men unobtrusively picked up their pace; urgent footfalls echoing throughout the seemingly never-ending corridors of the base complex.
~)0(~
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Tell me your thoughts, people... most has been re-edited, but thee’s about a quarter I can’t get to or i will fall asleep in the shower, as it’s 3am. Ch4 is well under way but I was double-checking this chapter for continuity, and... got distracted. Also 1 & 2 are on AO3, if you want to read them with italics and bodl in place... >.>
