reminder that when/if tumblr implodes or becomes to intolerable im jumping ship to forums
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Chum 251: Agent Jennings
“How did you get involved?” Jennings asks me.
Casual. Conversational. The question of someone making small talk, except small talk doesn’t get recorded on a tablet.
“I volunteer here. Mrs. Patterson runs the day-to-day operations - she’s been doing community work in Philadelphia for twenty years. I coordinate the mentorship program for powered youth specifically.”
“And that’s the program we’re most interested in. Walk me through how it works?”
So I walk her through it. The structure - power work first hour, life skills second hour. The philosophy - meet kids where they are, build trust, develop control in a safe environment. The outcomes - Zara’s range control, Liam’s transformation endurance, Jasmine’s intentionality exercises. I don’t name them by their full names. I don’t describe their specific powers in detail. I give enough to sound cooperative and not enough to build a file.
Jennings nods along. She asks about safety protocols, liability coverage, whether we have a relationship with any medical providers. Good questions. Professional questions. The questions of someone who is evaluating a program, not investigating one. And that’s the trick - she’s doing both and making them look like the same thing.
We move through the kitchenette. I show her the food pantry setup - the shelves, the donation bins, the sign that says TAKE WHAT YOU NEED in three languages. Reeves photographs it. Jennings opens the fridge, sees leftover pizza and a gallon of milk and someone’s labeled Tupperware, and closes it. She doesn’t comment. She doesn’t need to.
“The GED prep runs in here,” I say, leading them to the secondary room. Folding tables still half-stacked from where I was breaking them down twenty minutes ago. “We partner with the Literacy Council for materials. It’s open to everyone, not just powered individuals.”
“Integrated programming. That’s smart. Reduces stigma.” Jennings touches one of the folding tables, running her finger along the edge like she’s checking for dust. “How many powered individuals use the center on a typical week, would you say? Ballpark.”
“Hard to say. The mentorship kids come regularly. Beyond that, people drift in and out. We don’t ask everyone who walks through the door if they have powers.”
“But some of them do.”
“Some of them do. Philadelphia has a higher-than-average metahuman population, as I’m sure you know,” I say, unable to resist the obvious bait when it’s put so delectably in front of my face. “That’s part of why the center is here.”
“Of course.” She nods at Reeves, who types something, trying to look like I didn’t just bop her in the snout.
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Chum 250: Agent Torres
“Turn around,” Torres says.
I turn around. Slowly. Every movement deliberate, nothing sudden, hands staying exactly where they are, laced on my hair.
He looks older than I remember. Same broad jaw, same serious eyes, but there’s more grey at his temples and the lines around his mouth are deeper. Three years of NSRA fieldwork will do that, I bet. Or maybe it was always there and I was fourteen and didn’t notice. The taser is at his side now, not holstered, not aimed. Somewhere in between - the position of a person who doesn’t think they’ll need it but isn’t ready to commit to that belief.
“I’m going to ask you again,” he says. “What are you doing here?”
“I was trying to catch the pharmacy kid.”
“You were trying to catch the pharmacy kid,” he repeats, clearly incredulous.
“Yeah. Argus Corps’s SSI thing, five hundred bucks for turning in teenage vigilantism. What’s more teenage vigilantism than stealing shit from innocent drugstores?” I can hear myself talking and it sounds right, it sounds like a teenager explaining something obvious to an adult, which is the register I need. “He got away. Went through the walls sideways. I tried to cut him off from the roof but by the time I got up there he was already through the strip.”
Torres studies me. His eyes move the way trained eyes move - not scanning, assessing. Taking in details and running them against a mental database of tells and indicators.
“You were on that roof,” he says. “I heard the gutter.”
“Yeah. Old aluminum. Sorry about that.”
“And before the roof. You were in the alley.”
My heart does something. Not a skip, more like a stutter. “I was coming around the back when I saw him exit. I tried to–”
“You tried to cut him off. You said that.” His voice is patient. Not aggressive, not threatening. Just patient in a way that’s worse than shouting because it means he has all the time in the world and I don’t. “Walk me through the timeline. You were where when you first saw the target?”
I note the word choice.
“I was on the street. Frankford, south side. I saw movement in the alley behind the strip mall and went to check it out.”
“On foot.”
“Yeah.”
“At ten-forty-seven at night.”
“I was walking home from–” I almost say the community center and stop myself because that’s a bread crumb I’m not dropping. “From a friend’s house. I cut through the Roosevelt corridor sometimes. It’s faster.”
“What friend?”
“Is that relevant?”
Torres tilts his head slightly, choosing, very deliberately, not to push on that.
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LIKE WHAT IF I JUST PASSED AWAY INSTEAD. A LOBOTOMY PERHAPS? WHAT ARE OUR OPTIONS IM THINKING EXTREMES
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YES LET’S GOOOOOOO YET ANOTHER EVIL DEFEATED!! and that second place schedule is gonna be a ROUGH one i fear, i didn’t buy into the weak schedule stuff bc it felt kinda overblown but. then i actually watched the game. whew… good luck drake “drake maye” maye, you’re gonna need it bud
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56.7kg! My climbing has really improved with very little training
I’m feeling so good and so happy about my new blue
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RRRAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH I HATE ANIMATING <- he says taking on another animation project because he wanted to do it again
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For my own mental health, I’m glad I’ve accepted multiple shades of blue for my hair and not just one (1) shade
Accept the imperfections
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1. schefter saying he expects them to bring in a “proven offensive mind” PLEASE i need it like air, i’ll pack kevin’s bags for him. what i’m torn on is sirianni bc like, yes his win-loss record, yes 2 superbowl appearances and 1 ring, yes playoffs for five years straight. but also 2 epic collapses, an insanely good roster wasted, incapable of calling plays or scheming good football, both his hand-picked ocs were trash, “players coach” that the players seem to hate. if he can’t even be trusted to pick coaches, what CAN he do?? like SERIOUSLY, after 2 seasons under his belt like this and the absolutely rancid vibes on the offense this season, what DOES he do here??? question of all time irt sirianni but im genuinely wondering…
2. on my knees begging for a competent oc at ALL, howie and lurie GOTTA be stepping in bc i will actually lose my mind if we waste ANOTHER season of jalen’s career. ive seen a lot of names but i am honestly completely ignorant of basically everything outside of the eagles so i can’t pretend to have an opinion on WHO i want at oc but PLEASE howie work ur magic and lurie PLEASE pull out the checkbook and make something happen
3. ive been saying since like week 2 that this is maybe the best season ever to start paying attention to the nfl bc it’s been crazy insane from the start (jalen carter spitting on dak 6 seconds into the season may have altered the timeline & im only kinda joking). so i love how the playoff field has turned out, parity is so fun and exciting!!! and im also rooting for the bears, the alliance was very fun and for lgbt reasons i want caleb williams to get a ring (im not above rooting for a man just for painting his nails, im kind of bare minimum with professional athletes icl), plus one of my only coworkers that i actually like is a bears fan so. fly bears fly or whatever LOL
4. never apologize for yapping, eagles yapping is my favorite thing to do & i can’t do it irl so i’ve gotta get it out on this blog. sending u good vibes as well!! may all negative energy any eagles fans face today be doubled and put on kevin patullo 🙏
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pure MISERY man, just complete tragedy. kevin patullo and nick sirianni must be Punished for their Crimes. if kp isn’t gone asap i vote we take the law into our own hands.
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Feeling very body positive (and all around positive) lately. For one week now I’ve been putting a lot of effort into taking care of myself. Taking care of my body, trying to work hard. I’ve been taking my medications, and not snacking, and sleeping more than 6 hours a night at least 5 out of the past 7 days (I think).
The medication I have been taking has cut my appetite, so not snacking is actually easy. So I have been trying to make sure the calories i do get are high quality, nutrient dense, and high protein. Anyhow result of 1 week of this is that I feel MUCH leaner.
Might just be the pose, but I feel like my waist is smaller (or my waist to hip ratio is more significant). I actually measured myself and uhhh yeah no difference really from my norm. 71cm (27.5in) around the waist and 92cm on my butt (36.5). 57.3kg. Anyhow I feel good and that’s what matters.
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Chum CM.1: “Claymore”
Progress. Sort of.
Ghostwriter sits up, closing his book with a soft thump. The novel is Bulgakov, I can see now - The Master and Margarita. I read it in high school, back when I was a person who read Russian literature for fun instead of a person who spent her evenings learning how much of her own body she could safely detonate.
“You good, Clay?” he asks. His tone is different from the banter earlier. Genuine.
“I’m fine.”
“You’re calculating again. I can see it.”
He is right. The math runs in the back of my head constantly now, like a song I cannot stop humming. This basement is roughly eight meters by twelve. The ceiling is two and a half meters high. If I detonated a full hand’s worth of fingernails at the center of the room - about a thousand joules, give or take - the pressure wave would…
No. Stop.
“Occupational hazard,” I say. “Still getting used to it.”
“It gets easier,” Red Scare says. He has finished his stretches and is now leaning against the wall, arms crossed, watching me with an expression I cannot quite read. “Knowing what you can do. Eventually it stops feeling like a threat assessment and starts feeling like… I don’t know. Awareness. Like knowing where the exits are.”
“Does it ever turn off?”
“No,” he admits. “But it gets quieter.”
I think about the Commons. The crowd. The flash and the pressure wave and the screaming. The smell of burning hair - my hair, I learned later, vaporized by my own activation event. The feeling of my body doing something I did not choose, something I could not stop, something that hurt almost a hundred people who were on my side.
It has been four months. The math has not gotten quieter yet.
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I met a man named carrot , and he informed me that the fruit (carrot) was , in fact, named after him! The person (carrot)
The world is lovely