Prompt #4

Prompt #247

The villain leaned in for a kiss, and the hero met them half way.

But one of them kept their eyes open the whole time.

The work I got done from 9:00 to 21:00. And I will continue. #school #math #quarantine #quarantinelife #productivity #mathematics #homeworks https://www.instagram.com/p/B--MwAbBtRe/?igshid=omhm4b830ay0

May I offer you some Bellums.

Outcast Heroine x her rival

The thought of inviting her, 

it didn’t even cross their mind, did it?

Heroine stared at the rest of her team, who never seemed to notice her existence. By the loud laughs and noticeable drop of seriousness, they were heading to the bar. Leaving her to be the only to work on their shared case. Again.

Who cares.

She will be the one who laughs at the end.

She might be the outcast here, but it only proved her worth. She works harder, she is more serious, she will solve this case. I will get to see the shock of her so-called teammates as she stares with cold, satisfied eyes.

She just needs to wait patiently until that happens.

Yet it somehow still hurts. And unwillingly, she caught herself stealing glances at the noisy group. Especially at one she thought would act differently. Her rival. 

He laughed with the others, seemingly forgetting her existence. He just never acted that way. He always argued with her, competed against her, sent her way his grin when he cracked a case and eye rolls when she beat him to it.

Called when she was sick, noted her insights, listened to her

But apparently there was a company he liked better.

Heroine’s tension calmed a bit when the noisy group finally left. She went over her suspect’s files again, looking for a loose thread. Loneliness was her curse, but mysteries her blessings.

The man she suspected was a history professor.

He is known to lock himself in his apartment and write books, rarely interacting with his colleagues and students.

The victim was a writer who’s newly published first book became the crowd’s favor immediately.

The two have barely known each other. 

But Heroine knew how deep jealousy could go. There were days she planned in her mind how she would hide the bodies of her teammates.

He had sent to someone else, the victim’s advisor- several ‘erroneous’ emails. They were clearly separated by words, but each was complete gibberish. 

Still, it seemed too weird, and she never saw an ‘error’ such as that.

She had earplugs, a workspace all of her own, and the calming feeling of unveiling another secrecy. 

Nothing could invade the mind, 

block any worries  and make someone forget about their existence like a good mystery.

She didn’t know how long she was in peace, until someone coughed from the other side of the room.

Rival stood there, with a lopsided smile, holding two cups of coffee.

“Something interesting?”

He walked to her desk and placed one cup beside her, having some awkwardness in his movements.

It was a cold coffee, with little milk and ice cubes.

He remembers-

“Oh, umm, thanks.”

Heroine cleared her throat.

“I have a hunch,”

She said, then questioned his motives.

“but it’s just a theory.”

He nodded slightly, getting the hint. But didn’t go yet.

“Well, you, want some quiet or-”

“Aren’t you going with the others?”

He blinked. Then shrugged, still having some awkwardness.

“I can’t let you be the only one who stays over. It makes me look bad.”

“Don’t blame your ugliness on me.”

“Ouch.”

He gave her a half-laugh, and sat in his place. There was silence for a little while. Heroine continued to go over emails, silently listening to Rival unpacking his equipment and playing with his pen.

“So, wanna share some ideas?”

He said it trying to sound unintrested, she noted.

Is this why you stayed?

“What’s it to you?”

“My job, actually.”

He expected a reaction for a moment.

Rival cleared his throat.

“I won’t take your credit.”

Heroine crooked an eyebrow.

“Promise. I wanna catch this bastard as much as you.”

Another’s comments may be helpful, and Rival, as cocky as he is, always kept his word.

“Come take a look.”

He came over, a little too quickly. Then leaned into her desk, right next to her chair. close

“The emails. There are several supposedly emails with errors, they make no sense and only contain one line or so, but there are too many of them.”

Heroine completely immersed herself in the mystery, trying to ignore the warmth she sensed from Rival.

“I tried to check some simple ciphering methods. The thing is, some words make sense when decoding them using straightforward letter-shuffling. But in each email there’s at least one word that never makes sense after deciphering.”

She passed him her papers, and he tilted down to examine it. For a moment, she could see his face from so close. Her gaze immediately turned to the printed emails.

“I highlighted these words. They are the only ones with special characters. If we decipher them, we might have proof that the suspect purposely wrote these emails to hide messages.”

“hmmm…”

His hand was quite close to hers, she realized, some part of her wanted to touch it. Learn exactly how warm he is.

Heroine took her coffee and drank almost all of it in one slip.

“He is not a mathematician, isn’t he? or a puzzler?”

“An historian.”

“It’d be tough to convince he made up a cipher.”

“True.”

“What did he research?”

“He had a fondness for royal families. He’d write about grand schemes and falls and such.”

“Did he write anything about Mary, queen of the scots?”

She tilted her head, trying to remember if she read about such character. 

“She’s been the queen of Scotland since she was six, but also wanted England. She got imprisoned and plotted to assassinate Elizabeth the first from a cell.”

“Well, you are knowledgeable, I’ll get you a paper star later,”

Rival rolled his eyes.

“but how does it help us?”

“She communicated her plot using a cipher.”

Heroine’s eyes widened.

“What kind?”

“Quite simple, but hard to decrypt- she used letter switching like you did, but she also made special symbols to refer to people.”

“So if we try to assign to each special character a possible name-”

“We’ll reveal the message.”

She was smiling. This mystery could be solved. Her hunch might be right. Oh, the looks on her teammates’ faces will be wonderful

“This is so much better than a drinking night.”

Rival chuckled, probably amused by my rapture as always.

Only now she noticed that he was smiling brightly, too. But it looked different. It looked softer.

She cleared her throat.

“We should get into it. I made a chart of how the letters shuffle, here, take, just think of things he’d want to hide and see if the texts make sense.”

She leaned over her desk, making a list of possibilities that jumped into her mind.

“Mind if I’ll work here?”

“Sure”

It only took an hour.

Heroine eagerly showed Rival her findings. A possible interpretation of the messages, in which the victim’s name and the place of the murder had code words.

Her hand rushed to her cup, only to see that it was empty long ago.

So this was it. She looked at Rival, and and he seemed a bit saddened, too.

“You can take some credit, you know.”

He waved his hand dismissively, packing his things.

“Nah. You’d figure it out anyway.”

“Oh, absolutely.”

Heroine started packing as well, already realizing she’ll immediately miss… whatever this is that they have now.

“Still, we… we did this together.”

Rival froze for a moment, staring at her with something akin to… awe.

“It’s yours,”

He smiled, incitement returning to his features.

“the fun is enough for me.”

They started walking together towards the door.

“More fun than drinking night?”

“Much more.”

Fortunately, their cars were in the same direction. There was still one more mystery.

“Why did you stay?” “Hm? I told you-”

“Seriously. You never stay overnight. You could actually be drunk right now, with, you know…”

The more amusing parts of our team

There was silence for a few moments, growing more noticeable every second. Rival was rarely out of words.

“It’s kinda nice when it’s just us”

Heroine stopped mid-walking and stared at him. It was her turn to be speechless. Is this…? Is he really…? 

“It is”

She agreed, eventually. Both of them stood on the road, blushing.

“We can… um… be tog- ”

She took a big breath.

“We can hang out the office. If you want.”

A small smile came back to Rival’s face.

“Yes. Sure. Great.”

MUCH better than drinking night

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Naama Levi is back home

 This is truly truly truly incredible! 

In the Bible, we learned that because of righteous women, the Jews were redeemed from Egypt. 

Listen to this story! 

Meet Inbal Rabin-Lieberman.

She’s 25. And she is superwoman. No, I’m not joking. She’s an actual super hero.  

Inbal single handedly saved Kibbutz Nir Am from terrorists. It is practically the only village in the Gaza border strip that was not seriously damaged by the Hamas attack.

On Shabbat morning, Inbal was one of the first in the country to realize what was happening. How? No one knows! 

Let’s rewind. 

In December 2022, the kibbutz appointed her to the position of military security coordinator. Inbal was born and raised in Kibbutz Nir Am, served in IDF combat units, and studied at the Women's Leadership School.

The Military Security Coordinator is responsible for the security of the community in normal and emergency situations until IDF or police forces arrive.

She made history in Sha'ar ha-Negev - first female security coordinator in a kibbutz! 

Inbal, replacing her uncle Ami Rabin. “I am filled with pride at this choice. There is no 'glass ceiling' at Sha'ar ha-Negev - we have equality in all positions," Liebstein wrote at the time.

So this last Shabbat, on that dreadful morning of October 7th, a date that will never be forgotten, she correctly assessed the threat and quickly distributed weapons to a "rapid response team" ("kitat konenut") of the settlement's residents.

"She was the first in the entire State of Israel to realize what was happening. She ran like crazy from house to house, organised a self-defence unit, prepared a plan to defend the kibbutz and arranged men in ambushes at the kibbutz fence," the southern Israel kibbutz website wrote about Inbal.

Terrorists who came to kill civilians were met with fire. All Hamas militants who tried to break into the kibbutz were killed. Twenty-five militants' bodies were later counted at the fence.

After the kibbutz residents managed to fight off the terrorists, Inbal and her family, like many other kibbutz residents, evacuated. The heroine stayed in a hotel in Tel Aviv. On October 9, she was celebrating her birthday. The mayor of Tel Aviv came to meet her and congratulate her.

"Inbal is a heroine," he wrote on Facebook. "Her story leaves no one indifferent - for her coolness, courage and bravery. 

Thanks to Inbal, dozens of lives have been saved. 

Thanks to her, Kibbutz Nir Am was saved. 

Today, Inbal arrived with her family at one of the hotels where we host border residents. I was honoured to meet her."

Thank you for your heroism, Inbal! I hope to meet you one day. No, scratch that. I must meet you one day!

@HilzFuld

Prompt #16

Hero walked into the department store a few hours after it had closed for the day, looking around at the many shelves. “Villain? I know you’re here!” They adjusted their glasses, held together by duct tape after their last fight with Villain.

“Oh, Hero! Excellent timing! I’m so sorry about yesterday, so I decided to get you all the glasses money could buy- I mean steal. Money could steal? I mean-“

“Other people need the glasses too, Villain. And I’d need to get the right prescription.”

“Oh... should I put them back?”

“Why’re you asking me?! Ooh, those ones look pretty...” They grabbed a pair of fancy looking glasses, then forced a stern expression. “But this doesn’t mean I condone stealing.”

Villain smiled. “Of course not.”