"return of the mack, you know that i'll be back." in his bed, joe biden lurches awake, wild-eyed. many a year he has watched, waited for the mack's return. hes as ready as he will ever be. he t-poses
5 yrs ago
Today Show 9-11-01 ~ Live on NBC as Tragedy Occurred [s l o w e d + r e v e r b]
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like
5 yrs ago
40 hours into the mass effect remaster. gameplay is good but not sold on the plot changes. wish garrus would stop saying "reaper? i hardly know her!" laugh track on the normandy is a weird choice too
6
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5 yrs ago
fine, since you asked so nicely officer, i will confess my crimes. since i was seven years old i have refused to match any socks in my sock drawer. i practice sock hookup culture. i am a slut
Contrary to her reputation, Lauren Negasi did not put everything she could on the receiving end of her hands. Just ask Ben Lloyd, who had been sullen after a full week of being forced to use his own.
Anyone who really grew up on the streets knew that fighting everything was a good way to get your head stuffed sideways up your ass for good. In the name of continuing to work your grind, sometimes you had to book it in the face of something unwinnable - or, in this case, ignore the fight and focus on the grind anyway.
As much as she would have loved to help...
A true bad bitch knows her limitations, but never voices them aloud. And armed with only a fire ax and a quarter of her clothes, Lauren Negasi knew that she was gonna have to leave this Manticore on the shortlist of the things that remained unmolested during her time at Beacon.
Oh well. It could keep Cap some company.
Luckily, there was still one boy on the ground with her who Lauren felt very capable of molesting.
Her gaze drifted to the yard full of abandoned trucks they had first passed by hours before. A quick inspection of their inner workings from the start of their mission had confirmed some of them were in working condition, and though they weren't going to be any good in getting the ground team out of Dodge...they could probably be used to make a much, much shorter trip. One that could wrap up the last little loose end in this mission nice and neat.
Her gaze drifted back to the cargo door she, Luke, and Cian had opened on their way up. The lift was still waiting for them...along with untold barrels of spooky superpower-granting chemicals back in the basement they'd just abandoned. And since she was no good fighting the Manticore...she may as well make everyone some money on the side!
Now, the action movies liked to make a big deal out of sliding through the conveniently-sized driver's side window of the car you intended to steal. It looked cool, it was (supposed to be) quicker than opening a door, and it showed what an effortless badass your otherwise staid white boy secret agent could be when he wanted to put the effort in. And for little kids? It worked great! Lauren had spent the best part of two happy years slipping and sliding through all manner of open windows into a driver's seat of the car, from when she was ten to twelve. Unfortunately, as many a Beacon student could now attest, puberty had hit her like a truck.
And for a girl who bellowed like a bull with a bug up its ass when she was forced to so much as wear a bra outside missions ("AAAAAAAAAARGH HELP ME SANGUE") squishing her chest to fit into a little crevice like that just didn't do the trick anymore.
So instead of executing her old entry method of a decade past, her only options were 'milquetoast' and 'unnecessary.' She could open the car door like a regular ass motherfucker with a 9 to 5 job and a wife who wouldn't put out...
CRASH
Or she could wriggle in through the broken windshield and be thankful she had enough Aura to avoid getting cut up by the glass shower that rained upon the front seat and the floor of the truck. Rolling in and landing with a triumphant crow, she instantly dropped down below the dashboard, where she knew most of the older models of cab kept most of their wires. A minute of tinkering followed before the old beast finally revved to life with a husky growl, loud under normal conditions but almost lost underneath the sky-splitting sounds of fire from the airship and Luke's Not Jap no Jutsu.
And speaking of the little weeb...
Awkwardly splayed out along the front seat, with the truck set in reverse, her left big toe pressing down on the gas hard, and her right arm and head reached out the window, Lauren closed one eye and began to eyeball her drive-by grab of Luke. He had just landed in a pretty decent roll and was skidding to a halt, bringing himself up to full height--
"I think it might be mad now--HRRK!"
The last noise was made in shock and panic as Lauren, crying out an excited greeting, grabbed Luke's collar and pulled it backwards with the truck, digging the front of the collar into his throat as Lauren both dragged him along for the ride and attempted to hoist him one-handed into the truck. It wouldn't take her too long, and by the time he was settled in, the two of them would almost be perfectly aligned with the lift they would both ride all the way to payday. Everything would go perfectly!
...As long as she was careful with where she dropped Luke once she was done lifting him. After that electrocution stunt, he might be a bit more susceptible to the broken glass on the seat than she was.
...
...
He'd be...
Fine?
"Luuuuuuuuuke, hurry up and climb in! I'm gonna rear end the truck!"
--for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Hail Mary, full of grace. The Lord is with thee. Blessed be thou--
Ooof.
An attack!
An attack! They would need to mobilize for--
--realization set in.
No one else may handle this attacker.
Once the momentary shock and panic of being torn from her prayers for forgiveness had worn off, Joan's conscious had reasserted itself, turned off amidst attempts at absolution and thoughts of the pirates provoked by Yatogami. Thoughts she had been forced to confront all at once, pointless queries as to the moral standing of those they had been fighting.
What if...what if they really had been praying?
There was no time to wonder. She was being attacked. And it seemed like Father Joan would be making a habit of taking first pick of all attackers.
This one is mine.
Two arms wrapped around the short, sweet mechanic, drawing her tightly into the priest's lap as Joan hugged for several seconds. Faint relief began to wash over her, as expected. Her breath stopped up once, choking, as though she were holding back a sob...but released again in due time without any (fallen) tears, and after that it grew consistently calmer.
"Hi, munchkin," Joan greeted with quiet affection. Her eyes weren't open. "I'm okay, everyone. It was all just...quite sudden. Taxing, I'm afraid."
They opened up, emerald and clear - if, perhaps, a smidge watery. Her forehead pressed against Sasha's (oddly warm, feverish, the way it felt when Mackenzie was feeling devious and would pull the covers up over her head and lay in wait for Joan's arrival) and, as the tips of their noses touched, Joan got a good look at the mischievous blonde's face.
The small trickle.
"I knew you were a tiny little thing. But to get in fights with your own tools..." A knuckle gently brushed away the tiny nosebleed from the mechanic's face, cauterized by the warm smile of Jannah's chaplain. "How many times have I told you to be careful of letting things go in zero gravity? You'll walk right into them."
The Blue Danube had fallen victim to the Lord's judgement with nary a whimper, finally confronted with a mandate from the Reaper that even his upgraded machine could not feint away from. Newly free, Rising Star finished off the Bradley pilot in one cruel strike, exactly as she had called it. The close-combat HFV and its Messer both fell limp, floating through space. Father Joan's throat rumbled with a cry of congratulations--
--which was aborted in her throat when the reinforcements came. To her eyes, the pirate HFVs numbered ten (Lumen only destroyed five?) and, though damaged, that may have been enough to turn the tide. But upon seeing the cloud of smoke that had become of their vaunted ace and his hyperkinetic mech, they had turned tail and fled like the men of Egypt in the face of plague.
Only Paper Tiger remained, up to their cockpits in the wreckage of dead machines.
Pray hard tonight, boys. For yourselves, and those I took from you.
...
My...my head...
Was it supposed to hurt this much? She felt as though she were a little kid again, whipping it from side to side and laughing airily as her long white hair swooshed around her...she felt as though she were headbanging to her first metal CD again...
She felt like she was going through the windshield again. Woozy. Confused. Afraid.
Six Rooks. More than anyone on the field. More than all of Lumen combined.
Blue Danube. Who had avoided death at the hands of Lydia Popova's enormous Mega Beam Cannon and Rising Star's lightning fast Waverider. She had killed him in one strike. Left nothing behind.
It felt so thrilling while I was fighting...
Yet now, as she flew back to Jannah in relative silence and began proper docking procedure in a numb haze, Joan Heidenreich felt a familiar longing - one that, though no doubt soon to be ameliorated by the munchkin in the hangar, was still aching inside her. She needed a hug.
I only signed up to help them pray.
When she had climbed into Judah minutes before, she was nervous about her place as the team's newcomer. Now, as her cockpit opened with a hydraulic hiss and she tentatively stepped out, she was afraid that she had just become their Blue Danube. The Lion of Judah.
This didn't feel like a positive change.
Her helmet came off slowly, floating in the air before her, artificial gravity doing what it could to fix her mussed-up alabaster hair. Joan lowered her head wordlessly chin pressing against her collar to avoid the gazes of new and old arrivals both within the hangar. She hung, transfixed, before the chest of her Lion...
Hail Mary, full of grace. The Lord is with thee...