(Tw: Assault, Mentions Of Sexual Assault, Blood)

(Tw: assault, mentions of sexual assault, blood)

I stare at her. Sure, I grew up with overprotective siblings too. But why would she think that would work? The building is in the middle of nowhere, and nobody tracked her. No one is coming to save her.

"You will all fall," she intones ominously.

My comrade slaps her across the face. "Stop that, little girl," he hisses. "No one is coming to save you."

She blinks. We caught her off guard. "Why do you think that?"

"Girlie." My brother-in-arms spreads his arms, gesturing to the small room with boarded-up windows. "Where do you think you are? Surely someone with as much intelligence as you must have noticed we drove for an unusually long time. We're in," here his voice nearly reaches a scream, "the middle of nowhere."

She simply smiles, staring at him with a knowing smirk.

"No one is coming to save you," he hisses again, and makes to kick her. I stop him by tugging him out of the way.

"Boss wants a girl without interrogation marks," I remind him quietly. "Kicking her won't do anything until we can get back to base."

He huffs.

"There's a reason why I'm higher rank than you are," I remind him again.

He glares at me but stays silent.

"Start watches," I order. "Standard pattern, standard rotation. I don't want to see a mark on this girl when we move again, visible or otherwise."

One person grumbles, muttering something about how nice she would look on his-

I walk towards him and punch him in the gut before he can get the sentence out.

He doubles over, mouth moving but no air intake.

"What did I say?" I snap, tilting have a head towards mine.

It takes him a moment to recover his breath, but when he does, he chokes out "No... marks."

"Good." I release him and storm out of the room to fortify it.

- - - -

I'm on watch behind a piece of fallen concrete when I hear noises.

Scuffling. Grunts. The whine of something electrical.

I was on watch. Nobody got in to save the girl. That leaves only two options, and I'm really hoping it's the first.

The first is that two or three of my men are fighting about something and it got worse than they intended.

The second is that the girl is free, and she's fighting her way out.

I swear in my thoughts as I run inside, gun at the ready.

I'm not expecting for a foot to kick it out.

I take in the scene - two men unconscious, blood on the floor, a knife sticking out of one of the two standing men. The girl has a pistol, only sparing her left hand for it, and a taser that she must have gotten from one of the fallen men.

My gun is on the floor. She's starting to kick it away.

I grab my taser and flick it on, diving for her.

She isn't fast enough, and she crumples to the ground, her body contracting painfully.

I hold the taser against her side, and get her weapons out of her hands. When she shoves me away, she's still recovering. I start restraining her, but she manages to land a well placed kick to my knee.

It buckles, and I stumble, taking her weapons with her and falling on top of her.

I toss the weapons away and grab her hands, forcing her face down onto the ground. When she starts kicking, I sit on her.

I tell one of my men to wake the others and get medical attention for the unconscious ones. I'm not leaving this girl until she has no weapons and plenty of rope around her wrists.

She futilely twists against me.

Someone brings me rope. I secure her wrists as tight as possible before dragging her back inside the room and tying her to the support pillar she was tied to before.

Given that my men have all medical issues covered, I assign myself to watch the girl.

- - - -

We drive out with the girl tied to the door. She couldn't escape without a knife, which we've made sure she doesn't have. There's two other people in the same row.

She won't get out, and nobody will come to save her.

We enter the city where we'll stock up on supplies. It only barely passed the population count a year ago to be called a city, so there's enough stores without too many roads.

One person gets out at a grocery store. We wait for them to pick up canned goods and non-perishables. It only takes 31 minutes before they're out.

Another man gets ammo and electrical wires. Yet another gets fuel for the vehicle.

On our last stop, one to get small amounts of regulated liquor, the girl attempts to unlock her door.

At first, I'm amused. Then I realise that she's got both hands free.

I tell one of my brethren to retie her again. Rope is passed down, but just as it gets to him, she unlocks the door and sprints.

We aren't far behind her, and she's deprived of food and water. We'll catch her.

But then a foot sticks into my path, and I trip, cursing myself for falling for such an obvious trick. I roll to get up, but a shock from a taser hits me in the side and I am stunned for a moment.

Only a moment, as I am trained to avoid these things. Tasers don't stun if you get out of the way quickly enough. I did so this time.

Who hit me? The girl is 30 meters away and only losing distance as I catch up.

And then a bullet hits me - inexplicably - in the foot, and I go down screaming.

I can't even do the calculations now, it hurts so much. Bullets go everywhere, but I've never taken one in the foot before. You'd think that after previous shots I would know how to withstand the pain, and I can, but not yet, not yet, it hurts-

I fall, only barely managing to put out my hands.

Someone is dragging me away. Someone shot another comrade, and he's down too. Someone caught up to the girl, only to fall down dead in the next instant.

And I watch, horrified, as half of my brethren turn on me.

I don't know how it happened. I don't know how there are so many. I don't know why the girl isn't captured yet or why my foot hurts-

Calm down. You know what is going on.

Half of us turned on me.

The girl is getting away.

I still have a gun.

I find the grip, then the trigger, and I don't know how I manage to shoot, but I do.

It misses. My gun is taken away.

Another shot, this one in the arm. I might die of blood loss here.

My vision blurs. I squint, but that only makes things worse.

The girl comes up to me. She makes a face - baring her teeth? Smiling? and she says, the words clearl despite the roaring in my head, "I told you I had fifteen brothers. You fucked around. Now you found out."

The abductors looked at their young captive, astonished at their calm, almost pitying, expression. “I have 15 siblings. I am the youngest, and the only girl. You have absolutely no concept of how fucked you are.”

I am, quite simply, a dragon. Named Cactus.

reblog if you are your url

y'all ever reach the end of google

Swords according to my friend

So me, my friend, and I were talking over dinner with a few other friends around. Sometime during the meal we entered the topic of how every country has their own murder stick (yes I am taking that from that other tumblr post)

This was where I learned my friend has an alarming amount of knowledge on this topic. We started naming countries and he gave an example of their region's murder stick. Enclosed are a few excerpts from the conversation, with all words after the country as exact a quote as I remember.

The US: The country known for having loads of guns and you think they don't have a murder stick?

Argentina: Long ones. That's all I remember.

France: (general shout around the table) Rapier!

Saudi Arabia: Oh god. We're talking about the country that likes to go around conquering other countries. With scimitars. (Laughter abounds) No, no, people! Just imagine, a group of these people running across the sands with scary curved swords would be enough to make you fall down!

The UK: Do you remember the British Empire? You know, the thing that literally conquered half the world? Now do you remember?! They had murder sticks!

Mongolia: That was a place you couldn't turn your head without encountering a pointy object.

Italy: Okay. So, the Roman Empire. Familiar with it? They conquered a fairly huge chunk of Europe! And Africa! Oh, and they loved their short swords. They really loved their short swords.

Egypt: They had- (Massive giggle, someone yells "Khopesh!") I was going to say sickles but that works too.

Estonia: Oh. God. Okay, so I'm pretty proud of my ancestry, so I was looking up stuff about Estonia. And guess what they have? They're known for being very, very distructive. They actually have a plan in place so if anywhere invades, they bomb themselves and the place that invaded. You can get it but you certainly won't get out. And they'll take you with them. They were also very, very fond of two-handed weapons. So we've got these incredibly big people in full plate armor, absolutely covered in metal, and they're wielding giant sticks of steel. And guess what? The steel can cut. Nobody's invading Estonia anytime soon.

my advice to you is to never waste your time trying to fit into a club or hobby or any community who makes you beg for acceptance and approval just to participate when you could do the alternative—get involved in a niche and endangered hobby run primarily by old people.

i wanted to learn how to hunt ruffed grouse and train bird dogs so i sent an email to my local chapter of the ruffed grouse society explaining that getting into wildlife groups is intimidating to me because I’m trans

and all they saw was that someone under 60 wanted to learn to hunt grouse & several months into my mentorship I was told that like 7 old guys argued over me until they had to pick a number between 1 and 100 to decide who got to personally mentor me.

imagine vying for the acceptance of some gatekeeping weirdos when your mere interest could be inciting verbal combat among retirees

Watching the debate now. Kamala's face is really amusing when she responds to Trump's ridiculous claims. He just described the state of future America as "Venezuela on steroids".