Now in color! This is for the whumps of March day 14: trapped underground.
Sketched this out last year! So fun to make it colorful.
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"I thought I would enjoy your defeat after all this time, but really it's sad, isn't it? Once so powerful, and now I can't even chain you properly."
Rauru's ears twitched, which was still a mistake. The Demon King's gloom stung cold and heavy where it smeared his face. Trying to leech in, sicken him.
Rauru bared his teeth. Even without his secret stone, the light in him seared the gloom back. Not enough to banish it. But enough to keep it from taking him. "You...have done nothing. Too weak to approach, perhaps? Your beasts' skills...do not impress me, either."
He focused on the slow hot pulse of energy from his missing right arm. Link was there, somewhere. Fighting. Using his magic. Listening?
"You, lecture me on weakness?" Ganondorf flicked his hand. In a flurry of gloom another small monster snarled into existence, standing menacingly over Rauru.
Provoking the Demon King, immobilized and surrounded with his foul creatures. Somewhere out there, Zelda was very cross with him.
Rauru pressed his elbow back against the rock. He thought vaguely he could feel a sword in his hand. Link's hand. The sword that seals the darkness?
He smiled. "Maybe...you will find where my power has gone. And we will see."
"I thought I would enjoy your defeat after all this time, but really it's sad, isn't it? Once so powerful, and now I can't even chain you properly."
Rauru's ears twitched, which was still a mistake. The Demon King's gloom stung cold and heavy where it smeared his face. Trying to leech in, sicken him.
Rauru bared his teeth. Even without his secret stone, the light in him seared the gloom back. Not enough to banish it. But enough to keep it from taking him. "You...have done nothing. Too weak to approach, perhaps? Your beasts' skills...do not impress me, either."
He focused on the slow hot pulse of energy from his missing right arm. Link was there, somewhere. Fighting. Using his magic. Listening?
"You, lecture me on weakness?" Ganondorf flicked his hand. In a flurry of gloom another small monster snarled into existence, standing menacingly over Rauru.
Provoking the Demon King, immobilized and surrounded with his foul creatures. Somewhere out there, Zelda was very cross with him.
Rauru pressed his elbow back against the rock. He thought vaguely he could feel a sword in his hand. Link's hand. The sword that seals the darkness?
He smiled. "Maybe...you will find where my power has gone. And we will see."
Loosely a follow up to this post -- Rauru survived sealed with Ganondorf and shares the arm with Link (which means at some point it'll pop back in and all hell will break loose here! :D).
Been imagining this restraint option with his ear piercings forever. So fun to finally put it together.
The bounty hunter knew: The Galra's headprice was far beyond anything they'd ever seen from the miserly imperium. Their prize shook off the stun blast faster than a creature his size should have. He wanted to struggle but chose against it quickly, so hanging by his arms, prosthetic inactive, must hurt effectively.
He watched. Even though the struts immobilized his head. They said he was vicious, and that he could wait so calm was unnerving. He must know where he was headed. Where had all that fight gone?
The bounty hunter didn't know: Shiro didn't need to move, or speak, or even breathe to speak to Black. So they were already hotly pursued by four furious Voltron lions. Soon they'd see for themselves.
I've been so inspired by Linecrosser's whump art recently, the greyscale stuff they do looks SOOOO GOOOD. I wanted to try some of that kind of color work too.
For @amonthofwhump's trope-a-thon day 5: Kidnapped
Been coloring this for a while! So many people to shade. But I finished it in time for @augustofwhump's Day 7 prompt: Promise.
Snippet of WIP fic for it under the cut, ft. more promises and Shiro flashbacks.
***
“Ok. Ok, let’s get this off.” Hunk balked for a second, but he managed to reach for the muzzle. Ulas winced but held rigidly still as Hunk ran his fingers tentatively over the surface.
“This isn’t what muzzles are for,” Hunk said into the quiet. “On dogs, I mean. They don’t keep their mouth closed, its only to keep them from biting. They need to be able to pant. This…this is just…cruel. What’s it even for?”
Shiro forced himself to see the mechanism rather than just blur over it. He might know. He might know, and he didn’t want to know, but he might. “Most Galra don’t pant like dogs do.” He shivered. “And they are cruel.”
Curved bars matched the shape of Ulas’ head and neck tightly, holding the heavy cage in place. Tightened automatically, too seamless to pry under. The muzzle’s central panels were dark and opaque, emblazoned with the imperial sigil over where they sealed the wearer’s mouth. The only holes for air were two narrow slits in front of Ulas’ ears, whistling softly as he breathed.
The higher bar, the one that curved under Ulas’ eyes and across the back of his head, was a disturbingly familiar, magenta-ish metallic color.
Dizzy something ached in the back of Shiro’s head, where the crescent scar jagged across his neck. “There’s two components here.” He tried not to wince, and moved slowly as he pointed. “This section, is a prisoner head collar. Across the skull under the eyes.” Hunk froze, fingers shaking on the bridge, but Shiro made himself keep going. “The muzzle was anchored to it. Maybe activated from it.”
They were looking at him, both of them. Katie’s face was torn between furious curiosity and blazing anger. Hunk looked sad and scared and like he knew ---
Shiro couldn’t not blink. He couldn’t not lose the thread, suddenly blotted out by phantom ---
Pain dug into his neck, the sound of his own muffled cries in his ears, hard edge biting into his hair.
Galra words. Over him. “Face down, and it stops.”
He hadn’t. He’d snarled and fought, scrabbling against hard metal, dragging against the awful snap of the shortening chain wrenching on his head. He’d kept his knees under him, his chest off the ground.
“Prove you know the word, olka. Or do you want me to make this worse?”
VRRRR
Pressure crushed suddenly into his jaw, the panels of the muzzle grinding into him from all sides. Pain jagged and sudden, shallow spikes extruding into his cheeks and under his chin.
He screamed.
“Coryx! Enough! You already confirmed ---.”
“If I wanted your opinion, Ulas ---
“Shiro!”
Shiro blinked, torn suddenly in between. He was down on his knees and he was standing with his arms curled over his face. He was howling into a gag and he was heaving gasping, whimpering breaths in empty air. It was dark, purple, and it was bright, blue.
Ulas the Galra pushed another dark form over him, armored, unbattered,, and Hunk his friend stared up at him, hands out, pale with worry. There were Galra yellow eyes behind Hunk.
He couldn’t keep Hunk safe here! He had to get him out!
“It’s ok. Shiro? It’s ok.” Hunk’s eyes shimmered, like he’d been crying. “I promise. It’s not on you. It’s not going to hurt you again.”
The panic tilted, unbalanced, as the reluctantly focused. Hunk didn’t sound scared. What was going on? At first Shiro only saw the damn head collar, muzzle extended. Not --- not on him. He could see it and all its awful crosses.
The strap dug wrong into fur, biting into Ulas’s face. The same face. Ulas sat curled in on the table, face narrowed, eyes sharp. He swiveled his ears forward and Shiro realized with a start they were even rounder now. “Shhhhr,” Ulas wheezed, face drawn with pain from trying to talk. “Mkkkkkr.”
The memory had a tail, a faint echo that barely clung on now. Hands on him, holding him pinned. Unhooking the tension dragging him down. Makur, stop. You’re exhausted.
Ulas’ voice. Shiro knew without even having heard it.
He shuddered, lowering his hands. He didn’t want to know anything else right now. He nodded shakily to Hunk. “S-sorry. I’m ok. Let’s just…get this over with.”
Katie watched him, her face clouded with things she wasn’t saying. Like a trap he might fall into someday. But instead she said, “Yeah, now that you pointed it out, I can trace the interface signals between those two pieces.” She waved a small detector wand near Ulas’ jaw. “They are real chatty.”
A small panel lay on the table next to her, with bent metal and detritus next to them. It looked like while Shiro was freaking out they’d made some progress. He cursed being so easy to make useless.
Hunk hesitated, but when Shiro came back, he followed. Ulas didn’t turn his head, jarringly pliant as Hunk reached into a small opening in the neck loop of the muzzle. “There’s lots of conduits in here. And I still have no idea what energy source they use.”
He should stay quiet. He should focus and do what he had to and not jab at any of the rest. But Shiro watched Ulas shudder, and couldn’t. “Tell us if it hurts you,” he ordered quietly in Galran, confused again with how steady his voice came out. “I want to know.”
Ulas twitched, blinking rapidly. Then, as Hunk worked, he began to make small, soft sounds, back of the throat, no attempt to make them into words.
Not very bad then. Despite himself, relief chilled up Shiro’s shoulders. He knew Galra could shriek if they were in pain.
Hunk paused, looking queasy at the sudden feedback from his work. “Is he…um…ok?”
Shiro nodded, swallowing hard. “Quintessence can be intense if it touches skin. Be careful if something splashes.” Tingles across his tongue were something he needed to not think about right now.
Hunk’s eyes widened. “You know what this is? What state of matter is it? Does it sublimate?” He bit his lip. “Wait, I think…”
Before Shiro could answer, the muzzle lit up, awful purple lights. The snap smell of sweet and glass itched along Shiro’s mouth. Ulas flinched, sitting suddenly straight, hoof cloves lurching sharply apart. “Whoa!” Hunk wrenched back, hands fluttering in the air like he wanted to help but was too scattered to know where. “Well it’s on, but it’s expecting some kind of cue? Like a key?”
But something jarred in Shiro’s head. He’d tried to remember this, over and over and over again. “Wait, Hunk, keep it…Ulas, grax.” He caught Ulas’ arm with one hand, curbing and steadying him at once, and reached for his head with the other. Ulas yelped, dragging away from Shiro’s hand for a second. Then he seemed to catch himself, and, slowly, painfully, he come back.
The muzzle’s awful edge loomed centimeters in front of Shiro’s fingers. Some part of his brain was trapped in a screaming circle, convinced if he touched it somehow it would crawl up him and find his scar, bite into it again.
Shiro tapped the muzzle in sequence, thumb and forefinger. He tried to be gentle, and he heard how each key hurt in Ulas’ faint, louder sounds. Jaw. Side. Center. Jaw. Jaw. He let himself slide between which finger and which place quickly, without thinking, just where they ought to go.
Neck.
Neck was last.
Vrrrrrr.
Shiro froze, still touching the back of Ulas’ neck, his entire body locking rigid. The sound made him want to swing at something --- anything --- make it go away. Force it farther from the parts of him it wanted to capture. Hunk startled, pulling out of the guts of the collar as the contraption clacked and shifted. The tight bars glinted hungrily, shimmering as they woke up.
“Hell yeah!” Katie swarmed forward triumphantly, suddenly too close. “Shiro, you’re a genius! I need you to write that down later!”
Ulas reached up as the muzzle began to fall, but stopped as Katie caught it. It kept whirring and unknitting, bright lights glaring like eyes.
It was unlocked. He’d unlocked it. Something about that shook Shiro so hard it was hard to see the parts reconfigure. But he shuddered --- why weren’t the muzzle panels dematerializing?
But he saw Ulas’ face crumple in pain when Katie pulled to ease it off his head. “Wait!” Shiro caught the crest just as Ulas whimpered, ducking to follow the pull. The jarring urgency cluttered so far into him it felt like he needed to run somewhere. Spikes. Were there spikes?
Hunk and Katie stared at the two of them. Katie let Shiro brace the muzzle, eyes wide, and Shiro realized he’d spoken in Galran again.
“Wait. Something’s wrong.” Shiro blinked hard, trying to stay present.
It’s ok. Faelbar’s voice filled up his entire body. We are not hurt.
Shiro wanted to tell him, yes, he knew that, but for some reason it helped anyway. It helped him keep his voice steady, keep the panic roiling somewhere in his fingers from shuddering out into Ulas when he asked, “What? Where?”
Ulas blinked hard, clawing the air between them in small, reflexive motions. This close, Shiro felt a faint double-shudder in his breaths, like something was garbling up his throat. How long had it been on him? Katie hadn’t said how she’d found him, only that it had been bad.
“Show me.” They needed to know. He needed to know.
Slow, tentative, Ulas caught the edge of the muzzle near Shiro’s hand. His fingers were jarringly, confusingly big. He nudged against the edge, angling his head slightly back and forth, figuring out the right way to move with whatever was hurting him. Then, with a wet, ragged pant, he pulled back, the straps scraping deep furrows in his fur as they dragged by.
For a moment Shiro saw his face, so familiar it made him freeze. Long, shallow, inhuman snout, bony, wide forehead, light shimmering off the strange flat span between his eyes and nose. Shallow gouges scraped and scabbed across jutting cheekbones which were incongruous with the hollow cheeks and narrow chin under them.
But Ulas held his mouth open, and then Shiro wasn’t seeing anything else, because a narrow chain snaked between his teeth. As he moved, Shiro felt rattling in the muzzle. It was attached.
Tense, unsettled feeling tingled up Shiro’s fingers. He didn’t recognize this. He didn’t know if it had ever…
Ulas reached some sort of end on the chain. He paused again, orienting, and then leaned away, extending a tapered orange tongue. His hand tremored next to Shiro’s.
No wonder. The chain anchored to a dark eye bolt connector pierced six centimeters from the tip of Ulas’ tongue. Yellow winked around the studs where it had tugged against him.
Shiro tasted bile. Shit. He’d sounded muffled and pained even when the muzzle let him speak, before the druids changed whatever stopped him short. It must have been there, punishing him for every word. And now it sat tethered so close to the muzzle he couldn’t speak at all.
“Fuck no wonder you couldn’t talk.” Katie’s entire body tremored with fury.
“Wait, that --- that’s what it’s for? That’s awful!” Hunk covered his mouth with his hands, clearly vividly imagining the sensation. “What is wrong with these people?”
Galra who speak against the empire don’t exist. You won’t ever find one.
Shiro wasn’t sure who he remembered saying that. He didn’t want to know. He held still in a way he didn’t recognize, sweat pricking on his neck that he was holding the other end of something that painful. Ulas mumbled wordlessly, falling back forward, trembling from the effort of holding the chain weight.
Damn it. Shiro didn’t think he had piercing scars on his tongue. But now he’d have to check.
“Katie, bring one of those casings.” Shiro was startled by how calm he sounded. The palpable panic in the other two made him very still inside, like if he touched it it would explode. “Hunk, what do you have to cut this?”
Thankfully, having something to do was right for both of them. Katie snatched the nearest capsule of Altean medical something with its square edges. Hunk balked a step away, but he leaned forward, peering at the inside of the muzzle. Shiro didn’t dare glance down himself, keeping all of his attention on Ulas.
“Here.” Katie held the tin out to Shiro.
“It’s for him. Hold it horizontal.” Shiro blinked, forcing himself to meet Ulas’ eyes. He didn’t want to. Something about the tether in his tongue, and how Shiro could feel it dragging even right now, and how clearly trapped it meant he’d been when Katie found him.
He was the one Shiro was supposed to meet. Supposed to find. The voice shouting to him to run in his night terrors.
But he hadn’t been looking. Hadn’t be sure he would. If Katie hadn’t found him… “Bite down on this. We’ll get it out.”
Ulas slowly lifted his ears. This time when he tried to answer it was visible, his tongue bending but then snapped down by the chain. “Uhhzzz.” He winced, and stopped, instead parting his teeth and tilting carefully so Katie could slide the metal jam into the crook of his jaw. She stared, mouthing numbers quietly to herself. Shiro had no idea what for, he just had to assume it would come up if it were important.
“Shiro?” Hunk grit his teeth, hand fluttering forward but stopping short of touching the metal rim. “I…none of my repair kit tools will be small enough for this.” Instead of looking just upset, he looked…angry? “Maybe the Alteans have something. I’ll find Coran, and --- “
“No.” Shiro blinked, momentarily dizzy, as repercussions and tradeoffs cluttered off his head. Where had that come from? Had he always been thinking like that? “I don’t want them seeing this.”
He kept his worries to himself, that Allura might decide she liked this safeguard, that he would have to explain to an alien sovereign about what humans would and would not do. But not well enough, probably, judging by the sharp, suspicious look Katie shot at him.
Hunk frowned. “They wouldn’t,” he said softly. But he crossed his arms nervously and didn’t keep heading toward the door.
Maybe. Shiro wasn’t sure what he thought was likely anymore. He shrugged. “I can do it.” He flexed his hand, the mechanisms whirring softly.
Hunk swallowed. But he didn’t argue. “Do you have that kind of dexterity with that thing?”
“You can melt metal?” Katie grinned wildly at him, before she caught up with what she said and frowned just a intensely. “That doesn’t sound safe like this.”
“Cut.” Shiro pressed his fingers together, forcing himself to consider. The Alteans felt dangerous. But so was he. It was sort of refreshing to get direct blunt questions like that instead of people being careful. Usually Hunk tried to tiptoe around it. “Yes. I do.” Shiro paused, expecting more from the certainty, some memory, some data. But, no. Nothing. He just knew.
He glanced at Hunk. That was a lot to trust someone’s tongue to. But, then, it was also the least massive responsibility they’d been handed recently.
Hunk set his shoulders. “What can I do?”
Hell he deserved to be so far away from anything like this. Shiro swallowed down the guilt. Two jobs, only one of which he thought Hunk could manage. “Help him hold still.” As Hunk crossed cautiously to Ulas’ other side, Shiro caught Katie’s eye. “Hold this steady?”
She grit her teeth and barked, “Yes.” Her hands were small and she perched on the edge of the table, both of which helped her be stabler than either of them. Katie looked very pale. “It’s ok,” she told Ulas firmly as she took control of the chain.
He didn’t shiver this time when Hunk reached around him. His entire frame sagged minutely, like the support reached much deeper than just bracing his neck and shoulders.
Shiro looked from one grim face to the next. “Ready?”
Hunk and Katie nodded.
Ulas pinned his ears back and let his tongue droop loose. His yellow eyes tracked Shiro’s face, not his hand.
Eerie. Shiro wasn’t sure how he knew where eyes with no pupils were looking. But he did. He lit his arm, the cold rushing through his shoulder like a warning. It lurched him viciously, suddenly alert, ready to fight.
Reaching between the muzzle and Ulas’ pinned tongue splashed awful light across the gashes in his face. This close Shiro could almost smell them. It glimmered on his tongue, and edged the scabbing there. Shiro caught the chain, feeling desperate puffs of air on his fingertips.
He had to do this exactly right. A mistake would burn, he thought, best case, or cut, worst.
But the chain was slippery, trailing yellow and clear rivulets from Ulas’ mouth. And the links were small with complex jagged edges. Reaching for it, Shiro felt the barbs, the twists. It was designed to hurt even without pulling. It spun between his fingers before he could get a good grip, shrieking at the heat.
Ulas’ eyes lurched too orange, too dark, and he keened. Involuntary motion dragged his tongue back. The piercing clacked when it brought him up short.
No! They didn’t get to make this worse. THis was something he got to do with the arm that helped.
Shiro snarled and crushed down hard, the kind of hard that made his brain balk, ready to feel pain from the metal. But he wasn’t soft like that, not anymore. The chain sliced cleanly off the muzzle.
For a moment, Shiro was too stuck to see anything other than the chain, the muzzle, and how blood beaded up on Ulas’ tongue as he flinched back. Shiro’s fingers ground into the face plate almost of their own accord, while pain screamed out of his jaw and nose. Memory or not, he could barely tell.
Someone. Someone made him want to destroy this thing. Right now SHiro couldn’t quite put a finger on a face or a voice or anything like that. Just the fierce, burning hatred loose in his head.
Ulas shuddered, hand coming up to catch the links trailing down from his mouth. It looked like a snake trying to twist into him, and he made a faint, pitched pain sound that jittered all the way up Shiro’s spine.
Give it to me, Faelbar hissed. I’ll crush it. Shiro had the echoing, massive feeling that the lion knew what the pain felt like, because Shiro had. That he wanted nothing more than to wipe the horrible thing off the face of the universe.
That helped. At least he could make this one let go.
Nationwide investigation prompts jailers to overhaul training and policies for restraint use after finding nearly $100 million in court sett
Been following recent news coverage and local impacts following the reporting of this story:
Changes have been made to policies and this investigative story has led to some people filing charges for wrongful death. It really shows how information coming to light and being reported on gives people a way to set to right some of the injustices their loved ones face behind bars.
The End use Of Take the lead And Neck Restraint Systems
Text and neck restraint systems are basically devices used as safety solution gangway car racing sports. Wearing this device is compulsory for racers to minimize the sure thing in relation with neck or head injuries. During a race, accidents are likely in transit to happen. Drivers must cog the dice big protection in preference to their skull in opposition to a certain form of injury.<\p>
Buffer is a major concern when it comes to sleeper racing. At the rate or forward that these racers keep busy, anything can bechance on the checker. A crash may take place bills to inaccordant reasons. This may result in severe injuries to the nick if the gardener is not safe fairly to wear of general utility gear when driving the covered waggon.<\p>
This device is U shaped which fits behind the nape of the cookie wearing self and the arms lay unruffled on the chest. The person's shoulders support the entire device. The gear is made of carbon noosphere. It has several parts said as tethers, quartering anchors, and type body support. This is attached to the helmet.<\p>
With its important function for backstop, this wherewithal must exist made according to certain standards. This has to live approved by safety valve prescriptive agencies to make sure management run and are cash register to use. On which occasion getting one as to these gears replacing fluent purposes, one must check if the fable is approved upon standards.<\p>
A variety concerning sizes are available nowadays in that those who need these devices. These are conventionally within sight in large and long suit but there are similarly sizes for unsophisticated racers. Depending on the manufacturer, the device may have certain garb such as amount forming pads to fit the person's body perfectly.<\p>
Up-to-datish addition to protection, it is also important that the person wearing it feels homey. This is important into let the racer industrialize his job comfortably inside the race tank. Ago this is acquainted with when lively, this must have being designed to provide the person through full range pertinent to head step. With such impress, the driver can move easily notwithstanding driving.<\p>
Highest of all, users must consider the level of protection that head and neck restraint systems can accord. Most touching these devices are designed to protect the wearer on the face side and both sides of the stiff. It would be cardinal to respond to the product specifications to have an feeling on all its features.<\p>
As there are several variations in point of the gyron available today, racers shield anyone who is required to use this be necessary find what is suitable as them. Each person has his or her own preferences. With so many options entering the plaza the present juncture, lone can surely find what works parce que them.<\p>
