Despite the hell solders attack on their ranks, the vanguard held their formation, blades and arcs of holy energy smashed into the demons. Isabella let loose several shots into the horde, before sending a massive arc of holy energy out from her blade, and into the horde itself. The grunts were already mowing down the encroaching zombie, making sure not too many overran the vanguard. When the drones missiles came down, all Isabella gave was solid nod, before returning ear attention to the fight. As for Shlaereen, she let lose another shot, this one dead center at the Hellknights body, before she had her rifle morph into a blade, charging right for the Hellknight.
“This calls for some music,” Astrid commented before deciding to use her powers to make a specific song play. Have some fight music to go with this battle. “Yeah, that’s the stuff!”
Meanwhile, the Hellknight took Shlaereen’s round and decided to make the angel his target, attempting to pummel her with his demonic fists, which would still be able to wound the angel even with her divine protection.
The Hell Soldiers continued to hack and slash away at the Templar, heedless of their losses from the sudden attacks from Red, they were dead-set on smashing through the Templar’s ranks. Most of them were outright ignoring Ruler and just speeding right past her to get into the thick of things.
Nora’s responses to the music ranged from curiosity to mild enjoyment, to irritation with the noise, using her own powers to lower the volume slightly, before watching the combat unfold, her third eye analyzing the combat styles on display
“It really is interesting how these creatures fight. such calculations in their savagery, brutality with cruel intellect masquerading as mindless… I wonder if such a thing could be turned to our side, given the chance… Also, Joseph? Aim for their lower right sides. that seems to be one of the only weak points in their defenses, at least one that this casual glance of mine is noticing”
“You aren’t seriously suggesting we try and bind demons to our side, are you?” Joe commented as he blasted another Hell Soldier with his missile launcher. “That is the exact opposite of what I signed up for with this mission.” Still, Joe seemed to be letting the music keep the adrenaline flowing for him, since it was a very hype song to be listening to while killing demons, even if rock and metal music was considered classical by his standards.
Not particularly concerned or caring about the music mysteriously playing throughout the battle, Red focused down another Hell Soldier, shredding them with rounds from the Rifle of Absolution as particle lances speared through and disintegrated another.
The Templar force still faced trouble, though. A telepathic message flashed from him to Ruler, the Servant crushing several Imps with a single sweep of her standard as she grouped up with him. “Jeanne, cover me. I’ll see what I can do to hurt these pests.”
Wordlessly, Ruler moved forward again, drawing attention to herself while her Master began shimmering with biotic radiance.
A moment later, it was as if a nuclear weapon had gone off in the midst of the hordes pummeling the Templar front, most of the mobbed demons simply vaporizing as a Flare detonated within their ranks in a blinding flash of blue-white energies.
I will never forgive them for cutting out this scene.
Tumblr app doesn’t show this gif set but I already know what it is. No need to hesitate to reblog.
And he did this just before a road trip, stuck in the car with his parents asking what he was thinking.
The look of utter defiance Dudley gives Vernon as he steps over the fence though
And how he does it really slowly as well as if to say “What you gonna do about it huh?”
The phone rings. It was an absurd wedding gift from his father in-law, and one which much to Harry’s surprise, had actually worked when he’d plugged it into the landline. Arthur had taken to phoning him on it, just for the pure novelty of the thing—though how they’d managed to get a BT engineer out to the Burrow without causing an incident, Harry doesn’t know. He’s not sure he wants to.
“Hello?”
“Uhm,, is this…is this the Potter residence?”
There’s a beat of silence as Harry adjusts the receiver against his ear, not quite sure he’s heard who he thinks he has. “…Dudley?”
“Yea…uhm, Harry?”
“Dudley.” Harry repeats numbly, turning to look at Ginny who is looking at him expectantly, eyebrows raised. “Uh…Christ, Dudley, hi how did…how did you find this number?”
There’s another beat of silence and the crackle of static that might have been a sigh or simply just the line breaking up. “Hi, sorry I know you probably…sorry this was stupid. I uh, I put your name in the computer and this was the only thing that came up.”
“Oh.” Harry breathes, still trying to recover his equilibrium. Ten minutes ago he’d been using his wand to clear away dinner, he’d been getting ready to sit down and read through some reports before putting the kids to bed, and now somehow, he’s talking to his muggle cousin who he hasn’t seen since… “How, how are you?”
“Good, yea” Dudley replies, seeming to rally, “You?”
“Yea, uh, doing well…”
The conversation lasts maybe a half hour, faltering and awkward. But they’re going for a coffee at the end of the week and Harry supposes…that’s…that’s a thing that is happening.
*
“Harry…”
Harry turns and looks up, and looks up some more at the looming figure blocking out the light.
“Dudley,” he says, standing up and hoping the pang of something awful doesn’t show on his face. For a moment he thought he’d been looking at Vernon. “It’s good to see you.”
Dudley gives him a look that says he clearly knows Harry is lying, but is thankful for being humored. “You too, you’re looking good…”
They pass the first few minutes with awkward pleasantries and even more awkward silences. But it’s…nice would be too strong a word, but it’s not bad either. He even manages to get a smile out of him when he calls him Big D, the other man shaking his head with a self depreciating eye roll.
“Dad died,” Dudley says after a while, and Harry feels an icy hot flash go down his spine, curdling in his gut.
“Oh,” he says, not quite sure how he’s supposed to feel about that, “I’m sorry to hear that.”
Dudley snorts into his coffee. “Somehow I doubt it.” and it’s not accusing, but Harry still can’t help but feel like he should defend himself. The words they locked me in a cupboard are on the cusp of his tongue but Dudley gets there before him. “There’s a lot of things…looking back…lot of things…” and it’s not an apology, not really. “Took me a long time to realize certain things weren’t right…too long.”
Harry nods at that, because yes, it had also taken him a long time too to understand the full of extent of what had gone on in 4 Privet Drive. He still doesn’t like tight spaces.
“You realize things though, when you have kids,” Dudley carries on, shaking his head, “Like they’re just kids, how can you do that to a kid? They need you for everything.”
And Harry can relate to that too. Lily is three and Ginny is pregnant again and James already has an alarming alacrity for finding trouble and with or without magic Harry doesn’t have enough hands to deal with it all. But he loves it, and he loves them, and the thought of anyone ever treating his children the way he remembers his first eleven years of life is enough to make the electric lights over their head flicker.
“You’ve got kids?”
“Two,” Harry says, “third one on the way. You?”
“Nice. Just the one, so far.” He hands over his phone, the image of a bright young girl with dark skin and tight ringlet curls staring back at him from the grasp of Dudley’s arms. “Effie.” He smiles ruefully at Harry’s obvious surprise. “Dad wasn’t too happy about that either.”
“She’s gorgeous.” Harry says, handing the phone back and pulling out his own wallet to reveal the moving pictures inside.
Dudley flinches a bit at that, but he guffaws broadly when he spies James. “Cor, he don’t half look like you. No glasses though.”
“No,” Harry says, pushing his own glasses back up his nose. “He’s got his mother’s eyes, thankfully.”
“Actually, Harry, there was something I was hoping we could…talk about.”
And ah, there it is. “What about?”
“It’s…it’s about Effie…”
And when he’s done talking Harry just wants to lean back and laugh and laugh and laugh, because of course Vernon Dudley’s granddaughter is a witch, of course she is. But he doesn’t, because Dudley is doing the one thing he can think of to try and help his child, and Harry can’t fault him for that.
*
They keep in touch after that. Christmas cards, postcards—gifts for the kids on birthdays. The year Effie turns eleven—the same as James—Harry drops a casually long thought out text into the familial void.
“Diagon A this weekend, if you’re up for it?”
The text comes back quickly, a little too quickly for the way Dudders pecks at his phone whenever Harry has seen him typing. “Snds gd, 1st pint on u 😉 – Big D 🍺🍺🍺👌👍”
It’ll be painfully awkward, it always is. But it’s something.
So recently, I got calls from the phone number, (937) 353-8319. They claim to be a job service, and one of their “employees”, Carrigan, is friends with whoever the call recipient is, and that Carrigan has recommended you for this $15.00/h “job”. I also got a text message from (937) 607-1493, claiming to be Carrigan, and that they need stuff to “win a scholarship”. I do not know anyone by the name of Carrigan and I know very well that this is a very dangerous scam.
If you receive a call from a number, and they ask you if you would like a job for $15.00/h, HANG UP IMMEDIATELY. If you accept the “job” offer, and you go in for an interview, they will give you a drugged bottle of water and you will wake up somewhere you don’t want to be.
These phone calls & texts are from a human trafficking service, and if you oblige to them, you will be sold to people and you will be raped, no doubt about it. So PLEASE PLEASE DO NOT ANSWER THESE CALLS OR TEXTS. I have listened to the voicemails, and allowed my dad to do the same, and he learned that anyone offering a $15.00/h “job” is a human trafficker.
PLEASE SIGNAL BOOST THIS ALL OVER TUMBLR
Okay, I am reblogging this because it is relevant again. I got another call from a 353 number. Not the exact same number, but I know that it is a trafficker because it’s 353 just like the last one. I also want this to signal boost so PLEASE REBLOG THIS.
Why are people deleting the captions though I had to search for what the pictures meant don’t do that
a side note, because theyre very popular around the DMV, If you ever see a sign with something akin to ‘free debt erasure’ ‘15/h job’ etc and ONLY A PHONE NUMBER, ignore it. tear it down if you can, because those are well known scams and sex-trafficking baits.do not, by any means, call or respond to these messages. do not let your friends do it. do not.
At the sight of the Hellknight, Shlaereen was already in point, aiming her holt rifle at the head of the Hellknight, and letting out a single shot of raw, holy energy. “It’s go time! Vanguard, form up!” Isabella called out. The Templars immediately formed a shield wall formation in front of the horde, while the gunners in the vehicles immediately started to unleash a hail of modified holo bullets, each one blessed by a cleric of Astrid. As for the grunts, they immediately dismounted the vehicles, and started firing at the mass of demons.
“Man, not even 5 minutes in and we’re already getting ambushed,” Astrid commented. “Hell really wasn’t happy to see us here, huh?”
The Hellknight ducked under Shlaereen’s attack and began charging the Templar, intending to bash them aside with its flaming fists while the Hell Soldiers charged forward, intending to hack away at them with their axes. There were enough of them, and they were durable enough, that they could close the gap with some casualties, but there were also the zombies to deal with, which were slowly approaching the party, moaning, as if wanting a release from their suffering.
Nora had been watching the battle with a bored and annoyed expression on her face, constantly muttering something to herself. if one were to get closer to her, they’d discover she was muttering directions through the fight, like it was a game and she was trying to optimize her players’ moves, before suddenly snapping back to Astrid
“Considering how much Holy energy I placed into those weapons, it’s probably sending a massive signal out to every demon in 100 miles… you’d think that the energy would discourage them…but I guess demons are as stupid as any other race in the universe” She sighs
looking at the zombies,and goes from being irritated, to rather contemplative… even a little sad”…makes you wonder… do you think any of them were people you or I knew?” She asks, scrutinizing each one, trying to find some identifying mark
Joe was quick to open up fire on his targets, first by unleashing the Seeker Missile on five Hell Soldiers, then parrying an ax and countering with his sword. “Yeah, I’d assume all of our holy everything is making these demons just a little bit irritated,” Joe commented, apparently unconcerned about everything going on. He was focused on his mission, but apparently still had the ability to make quips.
If not for the fact that they were in a battlefield, one might have been forgiven for assuming they were in a bizarre rave when Red unleashed his arsenal upon the demons.
Every offense-focused omni-drone that he’d created opened fire, rapid lances of pulsed particle beams going off in a shrill cacophony of noise and light.
While not as deadly as a full-sized particle weapon, the lethality of these drones was still formidable.
Silent as he engaged microthrusters to rapidly hop around the party, Red fired single rounds at any and every target he saw with his Guardian rifle in one hand and the Rifle of Absolution in the other.
In front of him, Ruler parried blows from demonic axes and other weapons of the demons with her standard, knocking them off guard as Red put a hypersonic round in their heads less than a second later.
The sheer fluidity of these spoke to how in-sync the two were, of how much training they’d done over the years.
Noticing that a few particular Hell Soldiers were giving the Templar forces trouble, Red glanced at them before mentally directing a few omni-drones to their targets.
Said Hell Soldiers were eviscerated a moment later in brilliant streaks of energized particles.
that’s actually exactly where you want to keep a nuclear plant. When nuclear plants are built they are put by large bodies of water so that they have a constant water supply as well as a radiation sink should they catastrophically fail. the key to making meltdowns manageable is shielding and distance
Distance is important because radiation obeys the inverse square law. That is, if you double the distance, you only get ¼ the radiation. If you were four feet from a radiation source that put you in a 600R/ hr field, but immediately jumped back to 8 feet away, you would only be in a 150R/hr. As you can see, the exposure drops off VERY fast with distance.
Shielding matters because different particles (the “radioactive bits” that radiation describes) can’t penetrate certain things. alpha particles (the most numerous particles as well as the weakest) can’t penetrate more than a sheet of paper, beta particles cant penetrate more than a few mm of aluminum, but gamma rays (the powerful, deadly particles) need a lot of lead, though they’re half lives are short and they’re are very few gamma emitting particles. neutron radiation, the thing most people worry about, is easily contained by substances containing hydrogen (two metres of water will stop all but the most energetic neutrons).
The ocean just happens to have the perfect combination of great distance and shielding, and areas of it that experience spills often only see their rads increase by a just few integers or decimals. The sun increases and decreases local rads more significantly than that. This is why places like Chernobyl are worse off than Three Mile Island, where almost all of the radiation dissipated into the sea. Hell, that’s why the immediate land around Fukashima is uninhabitable while it’s coast has practically normalized.
This is why nuclear power plants are designed and built by people who understand nuclear physics rather than by smartasses on twitter.
Shlaereen could overhear their conversation, but she didn’t speak up, instead she just started to make her way toward their destination. As for Isabella, she had ordered her Templars to form a square formation around the convoy, to bolster the vehicles holy aura as much as they could. The armored trucks slowly moved behind the group, the gunners fingers never leaving the trigger, as their eyes peeled for anything that could be considered a threat to them.
“Very good, I’ll send a message to Lord Adam to know that you’re here,” the demon replied. “And, welcome to Hell. I do hope you’ll enjoy your time here.” The demon chuckled darkly as the group left.
“What a friendly sort,” Astrid commented. “Didn’t know there were demons like that here in Hell. Oh well!”
“Hell is a facet of reality, like anything else, Astrid” Nora casually informs her,”There are all sorts of demons in hell. Timid, out-going, strong, weak, the list goes on,” She finishes, before rolling her eyes, addressing the demon directly
“If that’s your best attempt at humor, I believe my response is supposed to be ‘maybe you should keep your day job.” She commented, crossing her arms underneath her chest
“Somehow I doubt that was intended as a joke,” Joe commented, once again taking point in the group. His Power Suit had a well-build scanner for these things, and his Light Suit upgrade made him immune to possession attempts. Of course, the party did not get too far away from demon before they came across what looked like human corpses, though they looked more akin to zombies than anything else.
Joe quickly scanned the corpses with his Scan Visor. They marked them as dead, but Joe didn’t trust what his visor was saying, especially down here in Hell. As he moved forward, a groaning noise came from behind him. The corpses were moving again.
“Zombies, of course there are zombies in Hell. Why just be dead and in suffering when you can be undead and in suffering as well?” Joe quipped. Surely enough, some demons began to teleport in, mostly Imps and a few Hell Soldiers, with one Hellknight leading them. The Hellknight was the biggest threat, both figuratively and literally, and the Hell Soldiers were equipped with wicked-looking demonic axes. Hell’s welcoming wagon had come to say hello.
With that simple flash of telepathy, Red jumped back and drew the Rifle of Absolution as Ruler raced ahead of Joe to serve as the party’s lead guardian. A flash of light reformed into a long, spear-like shape as her battle standard appeared, unfurling into an elegant flag.
Red’s omni-tool glowed an ice blue as he fabricated spherical omni-drone after omni-drone, some granting overlapping energy shields to the entire party while others charged up rapid-fire particle lances. Red himself aimed at the Hell Soldiers, finger on the trigger.
Initiative Archival Network 