#i kind of expected spirits in the data storm also

[gravitysoda]

Relief.

#mobile suit gundam #mobile suit gundam the witch from mercury #gundam witch #gwitch #sulemio #suletta mercury #miorine rembran #the last few episodes were messy as fuck ngl #but hey at least sulemio are canon married #just wish the series had done a better job of establishing its stakes near the end #like they never really even explained what was so bad about quiet zero #or what it would do in general #the giant space laser was just pointless and ultimately affected nothing #i kind of expected spirits in the data storm also #but would have liked to have seen notrette more than el4n #anyway here’s my ramble in the tags #overall good show just wish the end hadnt been so messy #soda art

[dragontamer-nia]

Max [Parental figures and fighting spirits]

Max and Judy Mizuhara 

Max Mizuhara is the child of two very different people. 

On one hand, we have Taro Mizuhara: a cheerful and friendly man who lives a simple life, owns a little hobby shop, and has taken a passion for a kids' game which requires a certain degree of technical knowledge. He's basically a mechanic, he has a rather small but very functional training ground in the basement of his shop, and he encourages Max to do his best, but most importantly to have fun with his friends. 

On the other hand, we have Judy Mizuhara: an ambitious, strong-willed woman, whose research and abilities have made her rise from the already prestigious position of university professor to the director of the most important and reputable research centre for beyblades, where she has all the resources, funds and technology she could ever need to work with at her disposal. We know the PPB is held in such high regard that her role requires her to answer directly to the goddamn Secretary of State. 

And… Taro and Judy love Max. However, while all we can gather about Taro's opinion on this whole "taking beyblade seriously and winning the world championship" thing is that he supports Max because he wants to see him happy, we know exactly what Judy thinks. 

She thinks Max doesn't have what it takes to be a champion. 

Max's crisis is, in a way, the opposite of Rei's: while Rei at one point already had everyone believing in him, and had to prove that the his actions are atypical but ultimately right, Max has to prove that he is worth believing in because the way he is is right; and that his fighting spirit is just as tough and resilient as everyone else's in this field, if not even more so than most, but his friendly, kind and bubbly personality throws people off. 

And the fact that, of all people, it's his own mother who rejects him almost crushes him. Judy loved him when he was just her fun, adorable child, but when he dared try and assert himself as a person with dreams and a fighting spirit, suddenly she turns her back on him. 

Worse yet, Judy has new children in America. Kids she personally chose as the best in the whole US. Kids who lived and breathed to follow whatever she said. Kids who are very explicitly competitive, who are sports prodigies and know it, who parade around wearing their sports' uniform like a badge of honour, knowing that they're just so much better than anyone else that they're backed up by the effin government... and people love them. They are stars, they are heroes. And so, people shower the All Starz with admiration and attention, and the All Starz love the glory Judy has granted them, and Judy loves them in return and supports them. 

Of course, not only has Max to deal with whatever is going on with his mother's behaviour, not only has he to endure his mom's new, arrogant kids, he also has to face their feelings of jealousy: after all, he is the coach's actual son. And he's a nobody. This is Max, the son of their beloved coach? He's weak, right? Not a trace of ambition, no competitiveness at all, only smiles and "lEt'S bE NiCe tO eAcH oThEr". Why does Judy love this guy? 

Poor Max is having the worst time of his life as the finals for the A block approach, and the night before the finals Kyouju bluntly tells him that he shouldn't fight at all in the coming matches. "They have your data," he says. "They don't have Kai's data," they all say. Max knows what's up: his own team is starting to believe in the All Starz, they are starting to lose faith in him too. What is his team thinking? Would the PPB not have taken his data, had he been stronger, had he been like Kai? They, his own team, his friends, think that even giving Max a mere chance at proving them all wrong would jeopardize their chances of reaching the world's finals, and they’re not willing to take that risk. 

Max is not the type to lash out at people and impose his own world view onto others, as Takao would, but he knows this is an injustice, he knows he doesn't deserve this treatment. Max storms off, leaving the rest of the team appalled: clearly, no one expected nice, friendly Max to react so strongly. They do eventually change their minds after the team finally understands just how badly he needs to. 

Because, after running on the roof of the hotel to get a bit of fresh air… Max finds his mother there. 

Judy thinks she's being objective, because that's what she's used to as a scientist: research is based on numbers, and numbers tell her that Max truly doesn't have a chance. But she's also a professional, and the spot she was put into requires her to not help her own son at all. She can do absolutely nothing but accept that Max is bound to lose, and Max has got to understand this as soon as possible.

Judy knows what it takes to rise to the top, because she has done it. Cold and merciless, ambitious and strong-willed, tough and resilient: she is a champion, in her own way. And she didn’t obtain the most prestigiuos position in her field by being nice; this is why, when choosing the players who would represent the US in the world tournament, she selected kids with a competitive background, who are capable of being cold and merciless when required. And now that her own son is competing against the PPB, a big machine that receives all the funding they need, a whole building full with equipment and any machine they could possibly think of to study their opponents, gather data, prepare a strategy, keep their bladers in top condition… she doesn’t want Max to even try and enter this ruthless race to the top. He is nice, and she accepts it and loves him for it, but... he’s too nice to survive in this world.

I think Judy is the one who chose this role for herself. She knows Taro. She knows she has to be the realistic and disillusioned parent to balance him out, because Taro is just so carefree and happy, with no trace of ambition or fighting spirit, and Max is just like Taro. 

Except… 

This is why the necklace is important. 

Max's fighting spirit doesn't just derive from the fact that he wants to prove his own progresses to Judy. He quite literally inherited his mother's fighting spirit. Max is just as ambitious and strong-willed, Max is just as tough and resilient. Who decided that someone cocky like Michael, or cold and merciless like Judy, is clearly inherently stronger than someone like Max? Max is having none of this shit, and he's having none of this shit as nicely as he can, because he will not bend: Max is not worth believing in even though he's nice and friendly; Max is worth believing in because he's nice and friendly, and it's perfectly fine, thank you. 

And Max proves that Judy was wrong about him, he proves that everyone was wrong about him, and the moment he does, the moment he finally wins against Michael and secures the path to the finals… 

He's just happy. 

At this point, Max would have every reason to brag. He'd be justified to take the spotlight, flip the bird to the All Starz - the kids who really thought the BBA guys were just a bunch of noobs - and laugh right at their dumbstruck faces. 

But the thought of doing so doesn't even cross his mind. He smiles and he's happy, and his team is happy for him, and they all celebrate the fact that Max has won. 

On the other side of the stadium, Judy is forced to face a hard truth that she, deep down, had always known: there's no number understandable by a computer that can describe how fucking stubborn and creative the both of them can become to reach the goals they have set for themselves. 

As she smiles at her own blindness, she walks to Max to congratulate him, and as Judy recognizes and owns her mistake, Max simply smiles and lets it all go, water under the bridge. Because that's who Max is.

The fact that, at some point, someone in the production crew decided to include Kyouju openly glaring at Judy in this fundamental shot is very telling in my opinion LOL

#beyblade #bakuten shoot beyblade #max mizuhara #BBA team #All Starz #parental figures and fighting spirits #authority and fighting spirits #I promised myself I would stop clowning around for these posts #I went for a nice screenshot for the last part #And saw Kyouju's face LMAO #sorry

[concussed-to-pieces]

The Mettle Of A Man; Part Twelve

Fandom: Fallout (4)

Pairing: Eventual Paladin Danse/Female Sole Survivor

Rating: Holy shit M.

AN: Enjoy!

Part One: ArcJet

Part Two: The Prydwen

Part Three: Orders

Part Four: Finding Brandis

Part Five: Weston Water And Oberland

Part Six: Meeting Preston And Matthew

Part Seven: Radstag And Radstorm

Part Eight: The Return To Sanctuary Hills

Part Nine: Domestic Ruminations

Part Ten: Institutionalized

Part Eleven: Two Weeks, Three Days

[!TRIGGER WARNING!: This installment contains a brief scene of attempted sexual assault. Stay safe!]

Mark twenty-eight nuclear warheads .

  Backhand squinted down at the paper, up at Ingram and then back at the paper. "Oh, is that all?" She asked sarcastically. "What, you don't want me to grab milk and eggs while I'm out?"

  " Easy , smartass." Proctor Ingram laughed. "We know the general location. All we need is for you to sweep the area, get rid of hostiles and secure the payload. Simple!"

  "Yeah? Where's the general location then?" Backhand challenged.

  Ingram spread the map out on the desk, tapping the area circled in the lower left hand corner. "It's a military site, Prescott I think? One of our scribes was able to triangulate it using the documents you and Danse scooped from that veteran housing development."

  "In the Glowing Sea." Backhand groaned. "I had kind of hoped to never need to go back out there." I'd better start getting some damn perks for all the legwork I'm doing , she thought uncharitably.

  " Theirs not to make reply, theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do and die ." Ingram quoted at her, laughing again when Vega grumbled under her breath. "C'mon Vega, you're like the Brotherhood's poster child for Commonwealth recruitment. Where's your Ad Victoriam spirit? You have to spearhead this, if only for the eventual publicity."

  "Ah, the press ." Backhand retorted. "Who's my backup, then?"

  "Your sponsor, obviously! Though I'm guessing after this you'll be welcomed into the fold for real." Ingram mused, her expression thoughtful. "Danse seemed better when I saw him last. I think the time off the Prydwen has really done him some good."

  Vega tried to hide her flush of pride, quickly asking, "Other than the lack of big boomers, how is Prime looking?"

  "Pretty good, I'd say! It was a real stroke of luck that you got us Madison back, even if working with her makes me want to set my pubes on fire." Ingram answered frankly. "We're both too stubborn to function well together, but sometimes we can shut up and actually get shit done. Those are the times I believe we might have a shot here."

  "Your confidence is overwhelming." Backhand said dryly. 

  The other woman gave her a lopsided grin. "I've seen too many ops go south to put all my eggs in one scientist's basket, Vega. At least we'll have the numbers of the Minutemen on our side in case Prime can't get off the ground."

  "Has Quinlan had any luck getting that information unscrambled? My buddy hit a dead end pretty early on with the encryption, and he's dying to know whether he actually helped or whether it's all junk data." 

  Truthfully Sturges had gotten much further than either of them had expected (the fact that he knew there was data on the tape at all was a miracle), but Ingram didn't exactly have to know that. The older woman's sigh didn't sound overly promising though.

  "Nothing yet. He and his scribes have been working as close to around the clock as they can get without disrupting Cade across the way. It's always a process in close quarters." The proctor hummed. "With any luck, maybe a few more days?"

  "I'll keep my fingers crossed." Backhand promised. "I know it'll probably all be considered confidential information, but still."

  …

  "No."

  " Excuse me, Paladin?" Arthur snarled.

  Danse stood by the door to the elder's quarters, his posture perfect. "I said no, Elder Maxson." He repeated. "I will not be engaging with you any longer." 

  "Dare I ask what has brought about this insubordination? " The younger man queried.

  Danse stood firm. "This is not insubordination, Elder Maxson. You have exploited me long enough and I refuse to let you continue."

  "I'll have you exiled, Paladin." Maxson threatened. "One word from me and your status goes up in smoke. We are on the brink of war with the Institute and you wish to weaken our ranks? You're a good soldier, Danse. Don't make me send you away."

  Danse shook his head. His hands, clasped at the small of his back, trembled nervously until he clenched them into fists. "I'm sorry, Elder Maxson, but I refuse to allow you to manipulate or abuse me any further." 

  "Are you disobeying a direct order from your elder, Danse?" 

  "I am simply-"

  A knock on the door to Maxson's quarters interrupted whatever Danse had intended to say, and a split second later Knight Vega poked her head around the door. "Apologies, Elder Maxson." The woman said with a salute. "I was unaware that you two were having a discussion. Paladin, we are departing in ten minutes."

  Arthur jerked his head to the side to indicate that Elizabeth should leave. " Get out , Vega." He barked. 

  She hesitated and Danse closed his eyes in defeat, knowing that he was screwed the second she departed.

  He heard the door close and Arthur was abruptly on him, one hand gripping the paladin's throat to force Danse's head against the wall as he tore at the zipper of the other man's jumpsuit. "You are going to fuck me, Danse, so I suggest you warm up to the idea." Maxson hissed against his ear.

  Danse felt nauseous, dirty as Arthur pawed at him. Say no, damn it! What's wrong with you?

  The only warning either man got was a barely-audible knock on the door before Paladin Brandis barged in. Arthur whirled on the older man, murder in his eyes for the barest second. " Brandis! " Maxson roared. "How many-"

  "I have sixteen new aspirants seeking to rise to knight or scribe, Elder Maxson!" Brandis waved a sheaf of papers at the younger man. "I also have seven squires who believe they are ready for evaluation to ascend to aspirant. Oh, was I interrupting something?" He remarked, blinking in a befuddled manner at the clearly-furious elder.

  Maxson stared back at the older paladin, his chest heaving. "Don't think for one goddamn second that I don't know exactly what you're up to, you old fool!" Arthur's blue eyes were fairly crackling with rage. 

  "Me? The only thing I'm up to is trying to get this paperwork taken care of." Brandis protested blandly. "You're so suspicious , Maxson. It won't do you any favors." Brandis seemed to finally notice Danse standing there slackjawed and the older paladin began to scold, "zip up your uniform, Danse! We're a military , not a frathouse!" His eyebrows raised, all but begging Danse to take the opening and flee.

  Danse gulped and floundered to apologize, zipping up his suit. He caught the barest glimpse of Maxson's thunderous glare before he turned tail and bolted. The cowardice burned at him, but really, what else could he do?

  He shouldered past Vega lurking just outside the door, and stormed down the catwalk to the grease pit without a word.

  Their aerial approach to the Glowing Sea was silent and riddled with turbulence. Danse could identify the territory of the area from a fair distance away, the way the radiation tinged the sky to a sinister yellowed bruise a sure indication.

  Waypoint Echo was precariously positioned on the very edge of the Glowing Sea. Danse felt a fair amount of trepidation as he and Knight Vega approached the area after they disembarked the vertibird. He had never ventured into the Glowing Sea, but he supposed there was no time like the present.

  He was glad to at least find a familiar face, although Haylen didn't appear happy to see him and Vega. The scribe looked tense, wary. Danse supposed he could understand that; the post was much less than favorably placed. They were only just outside the heavy haze of radiation, and the radstorms weren't inclined to remain stationary for too long. To say nothing of the deadly creatures that tended to emerge from the area and wander north. Waypoint Echo was not a hospitable assignment by any stretch of the imagination. 

  His scribe had never searched for the easy jobs. Danse felt a wave of pride for the woman he had sponsored back when she was nothing but an initiate. Haylen had rolled with the punches and become an admirable scribe, a loyal friend and an incredible asset to any team she joined. "Scribe Haylen!" He greeted her warmly with a salute. "Ad Victoriam. Another day, another assignment."

  "Paladin Danse," Haylen addressed him through gritted teeth, oddly not returning his salute. "Can I get a word with you before you depart? It's urgent." She was already grabbing his arm before he even nodded, the scribe leading him away from the camp. Knight Vega was listening intently while the other field scribe briefed her on their current situation and any observations they might have made.

  "Scribe Haylen, is something amiss?" The paladin asked, a little concerned once Haylen had moved him out of earshot of the encampment. 

  The petite woman whirled on him, looking more furious than Danse had ever seen her. " How could you not tell me?" She hissed. 

  Danse stared at her, bewildered. "I...what do you mean, Haylen?"

  "Don't play dumb with me, Danse! Quinlan got the list decoded. He knows . Maxson knows. Hell, maybe even Vega knows! Maybe she's leading you into a trap right now." Haylen took hold of his gauntlet once more. "Danse, you have to run ."

  "Haylen, I'm afraid I have no idea what you're talking about." Danse replied, thoroughly puzzled. What would Quinlan decoding the Institute information have to do with him?  

  Haylen's fingernails scraped at the worn red-orange paint denoting his rank as she gripped down even tighter. "Danse, you...do you really not…" she appeared to be trying to ask something, but couldn't seem to amass the words.

  "Take your time. Get your mind straight." Danse said kindly. "Whatever it is, I'll hear you out."

  She sobbed suddenly, her small frame rattled by the outburst. "Oh Danse , I'm so sorry." She whispered.

  …

  Backhand lingered on the edge of the camp, half-watching Haylen appear to argue with the paladin about something. Trouble in paradise? she wondered, turning the distress pulser for their endeavor over in her hands before she tucked it away in her satchel. 

  "Man, I guess whatever Rhys passed along to her earlier really has her in a twist." One of the other scribes commented. "I dunno' if I've ever seen her this heated."

  Danse thundered back towards the camp, leaving Haylen to call his name plaintively. "Ready to continue our mission, soldier?" He gritted the words out at Backhand. 

  Backhand raised an eyebrow at his sudden change of mood, but then recalled what she had interrupted earlier that morning and reasoned that he had more than every right to be a little testy. The woman simply nodded and fell into step behind him. "See you guys soon!" She said to the soldiers occupying Echo, waving in farewell. Haylen didn't wave back, the scribe looking wholly dejected. 

  Was she crying?

  "Hey Danse, is Haylen alright? She seemed upset." Backhand inquired after they had been walking for several minutes.

  "We had a discussion." was all Danse said in reply. His tone didn't exactly encourage further questioning, so Backhand decided that she should probably, maybe , just this once, not attempt to converse.

  "Sorry, didn't mean to pry." She mumbled. 

  "I'm certain you didn't. But we can't afford to be distracted on this mission." Danse instructed firmly. "There's too much at stake, Knight Vega."

  "Oh, absolutely!" Backhand agreed. 

  "I need you to take point during this engagement, as you're the one who knows where we're going." Danse paused, letting her come up alongside him. "We can't lose sight of what's important. If we do, the Institute has already won." 

  The paladin, in spite of his words, seemed out of sorts. Spacey , even. His grip on his rifle was uncharacteristically slack, especially considering how hostile their environment was. 

  Backhand was reminded of his behavior during their search for Brandis and she said as much, prodding the paladin to respond. "I'm fine. Just...thinking," he muttered. "I apologize, I'm not very good at following my own orders. I lecture you on distraction while also being distracted."

  "After this campaign is over, I vote for a little R and R. The proverbial run ashore. Sound good to you?" Backhand asked, tilting her head.

  Danse cleared his throat. "I wish I had your optimism." He said plainly. "Once the Institute hears we have these munitions, assuming the bombs are even here in the first place, it will be all-out war. I'm not so foolish to think they'll surrender or melt back into the shadows under the threat of our superior firepower. They will demand a live test." The paladin gestured vaguely around him at the blasted landscape. "I know for a fact that Maxson won't stop until the Institute is nothing but a fractured husk. The idea that there are innocent people down there, good people who will be slaughtered with the bad…" He shook his head. 

  "It's sobering." Backhand murmured in agreement, not sure why she was surprised by the paladin's display of humanity. She had been in and out of the Institute over the last few weeks, building a rapport with the various scientists and synths and also passing along pertinent information to the Brotherhood. All the while Shaun pressured her to take over his position, " before I am gone, Mother. " She hadn't known that Danse was actually listening to her field reports.

  "It's grotesque entrapment. People who wanted a better life, people who wanted to help the world, people who thought they were helping." Danse sounded disgusted and strangely upset. "Bodies snatched in the middle of the night, or lured in by the lie of bettering mankind!" He had turned to her as he ranted, his pauldrons rising and falling rapidly from the force of his body against the frame of his armor. "He's your son , Vega, how could he--"

  "He's not my son anymore." Backhand cut him off, stung by his heated words. "The man who leads the Institute may be related to me through biology, but he is not my son, Paladin Danse." She heaved a sigh, looking away. "I guess he really never was, in a way. His father...his father told me he wanted children. Once I got pregnant, though, it was like the reality of it became too much for him." Her laugh was a sad noise, mirthless and hollow. "And if he thought it was too much, imagine how I felt. I didn't really have a lot of agency in the matter, I just wanted to make him happy and when I realized that not even that could make him happy, I kind of lost it. Hence the divorce and stuff. I loved that baby more than anything in the world, but I know that I wasn't a great mom. I was in way over my head. Scared. Terrified . Alone. And then...then he was taken from me. Just like that."

  "Knight Vega, I...forgive my outburst, please. I didn't mean to imply that any of this is your fault." Danse mumbled. "I simply...I-I mean, I see you, the way you interact with the people of the Commonwealth, and I can't wrap my head around the fact that someone even tangentially related to you could be capable of such...heinous machinations."

  "I'm a byproduct of the Great War, Paladin Danse." Backhand smiled thinly. "A relic from times of pretend plenty. The Institute raised Shaun, shaped him into their perfect leader. He doesn't understand the struggles of the real world. He can't understand the ugliness of war, not like how someone who lived through it can." 

  "You would think the perfect leader would want what's best for his troops." Danse remarked.

  "He's dying , Danse. The only reason he thawed me out again is because he's dying, and the Institute wanted me to take over." Backhand confided, scoffing a little. "Can you even believe that shit? His board of directors really thought my altruistic, bleeding-heart ass would take over their body-snatching extravaganza. Hell, they seem confused every time I tell them to fuck off."

  "You turned them down?" 

  The bewilderment in his tone caught Backhand by surprise. " Yeah , Danse. Obviously."

  "The promise of returning the Commonwealth to its former glory wasn't enough to sway you?" The paladin queried, his voice laden with that rare sarcasm he employed. 

  Backhand chuckled wryly. "Did you forget the part where I've seen the Commonwealth at the peak of that former glory? It wasn't better. It was just a little less irradiated." She thumped her pauldron against his own after a moment. "Hey, I'm with you, okay? No matter what happens, we'll get through this and enjoy that sweet off-time." She promised. "I know you can't see, but I'm definitely smiling under here."

  "I can tell." Danse lapsed into contemplative silence, and Backhand wished she could see his expression. Something, anything to clue her in as to what he was thinking about. 

  They passed a crashed plane, the trail of wreckage from it extending well past Backhand's limited field of view. Danse tuned into its distress signal like a reflex, and Backhand half-listened to the mayday broadcast of Skylanes one-six-six-five. 

  "... left engine failure, we're out fifteen three at this time …"

  The plane had been coming in the day the bombs dropped. Due to its location in the Glowing Sea, Backhand could only assume no one had survived. She almost wanted to ask Danse to turn off the broadcast, but the signal quickly petered back out into static as they carefully descended the ridge past the plane.

  The shattered remains of sparse buildings jutted from the caustic ground like the incisors of a gargantuan beast, offering a semblance of shelter only to roving feral ghouls or ambitious mole rats.

  It was a man-made hellscape, awe inspiring in its grim misery, and Backhand felt like she understood Danse's taciturn mood a bit better now.

  Abruptly, a towering monolith was brought into sharp contrast against the green sky by a sullen flash of lightning. Backhand swallowed, unnerved by the stark stone structure that loomed up out of the wan light like a dark pyramid to a forgotten, terrible deity.

  She tried to shake off her fanciful thoughts, scolding herself for being so easily influenced. This wasn't some silly story, some maniac rumination on the subject of doomed expeditions and places where man shouldn't go. This was just one more thing that humanity had built.

  "And here we are." She announced needlessly. "You ready?"

  "My power armor is within nominal parameters, so I would say I'm as ready as I'll ever be." Danse replied simply. 

  Working together, they muscled the double doors open and cautiously made their way into the pyramid-like structure. Backhand grimaced at the bank vault-esque door that greeted them, raising an eyebrow and cocking her helmet at Danse. "I'll bet...fifty caps that I can just give this a spin and it'll bust wide open." She said confidently, resting a gauntlet on the handle.

  "Nice try, Vega." The paladin replied, his tone dry and humorless. "Don't forget we have a job to do."

  Vega grumbled to herself and spun the handle, watching the ancient tumblers creak and separate before the door slowly swung inwards. "Bingo." She breathed, stepping gingerly out onto the old catwalk. "Shit, it looks like ArcJet in here."

  "Remarkably similar." Danse agreed. "Be very cautious about what you shoot in here, we don't know what will explode. And remember to check your corners. I don't want to lose you to something we don't see." 

  Backhand swallowed hard, saluting while inclining her head to indicate that she received and returned the order. "Ad Victoriam, Paladin Danse."

  "Ad Victoriam, Knight Vega." 

  Silence hanging heavy in the air, Vega plodded down the rickety stairs of the catwalk. She briefly debated just hopping the railing and taking the plunge, but ultimately decided against it. The stiff gusts of wind from the door had stirred the centuries of dust into a thick haze, and warning lights still spiraled in amber circles, casting disorienting shadows over everything.

  "It would appear that this facility was converted into a launching silo as well." Danse commented, gesturing at the large gantry-like structure that took up the majority of space in the middle of the pyramid. 

  Down, down, down they went, past multiple security doors. Feral ghouls rose to greet them, some still clad in the tattered remains of army fatigues. 

  "I've had nightmares like this." Backhand admitted during a brief moment of reprieve while she painstakingly tapped away at the keys of a terminal. "Sergeant Cathan and the rest of my squadron turn into ferals and I have to put them down." Danse's heavy gauntlet landed on her pauldron, squeezed once, and then departed. "I know it's dumb to be worried about. They've been dead for…" Vega trailed off, finally getting the double blast doors open and turning off the weakly buzzing alarm in the same stroke. " That's it." She said in relief. 

  Danse took point during this secondary half of the expedition, the paladin staying unusually quiet. Backhand chalked it up to him focusing more on his targets, lest a stray laser hit one of the caged warheads. 

  Down into the bowels of Prescott they trudged, soldiering onwards through tunnels made tight by the bulk of their power armor. The headlamp on Danse's new helmet illuminated the cramped, half-collapsed areas as he scanned from three to nine and back again.

  "Left up here." Backhand broke the silence, directing him through a hole in the wall to circumvent a rubble-filled dead end and then overtaking him when he paused to check his rifle. "We should still be able to pick up the tunnel around this junk."

  "Affirmative." Danse replied shortly. "I would advise that we not attempt to clear any debris. We don't know what will collapse on us."

  Vega grimaced, "good point. That's why you're the paladin." Oddly, he made a scoffing sound, but she dismissed it as him being sarcastic again.

  When the tunnel finally opened up into an enormous room, Vega breathed a little easier. Ahead of them loomed a massive set of red double doors, tarnished with age but still holding strong. What appeared to be a control room was situated over the doors, and Backhand quickly spotted the stairs that would lead her upwards.

  The body sprawled across the top of the stairs gave her pause, however. It wasn't a feral ghoul, but a Child Of Atom. Backhand glanced up to the door to the control room, then back down at the body. 

  Up. Down. Up again.

  And she continued over the body, one massive gauntlet knocking comically gentle on the door.

  "Enter." Intoned a voice from inside the room. Behind her, she heard Danse's rifle hum as he primed it.

  " Easy , cowboy. Let me see if I can get this settled peacefully." Backhand whispered. She had no idea whether Danse had heard her or not, but she prayed he had as she set sabaton into the room. 

  The Children Of Atom had always been a ragged-looking bunch, their lives dedicated to the pursuit of " the Glow " and worship of what they called " the Great Divide ". This man was no exception, though the room was also occupied by a turret and assaultron. Two things no one wanted to deal with in close quarters.

  "Halt, stranger. You stand upon Atom's sacred ground." The religious fanatic announced grandly. "Speak your business or be divided where you stand."

  Backhand mused over her reply for a moment, finally stating, "we seek the Glow of Atom, my uh, brother ."

  " You? " The man scoffed, "you, who slaughtered Atom's most faithful as you stormed this compound?"

  "We sought to release them to Atom's embrace. Return them to the universe to be...divided anew. After all, matter cannot be created or destroyed, only repurposed," Vega replied smoothly, "as dictated by the Law of Conservation of Mass, writ by his most holy eminence Antoine Lavoisier." 

  "Ah, I see you are a scholar of the sacred texts as well!" The man remarked, a smile crossing his stern features. "Forgive my ignorance, sister. When I saw your armor, I feared that you came to destroy this holy ground." Backhand blinked behind her helmet. That had been strictly high school science bullshit, but she would take the victory. "I assume you wish to bask in Atom's Glow then, as one of his faithful?"

  "We seek to spread Atom's glory via the use of these munitions." Backhand explained. "Our organization requires these vehicles to distribute Atom's might. Please, permit us to utilize them."

  "You will put them to good use? That is all we can ask for!" The Child Of Atom's eyes filled with tears of what Vega could only assume was gratitude. "I had thought we would stand guard over this holy ground for all of time. Please, take this and prepare to enter His inner sanctum." He took her gauntlet and pressed a scrap of paper into it, gesturing at the worn-looking terminal on the table beside the sputtering turret. "Follow the brilliance of the Glow, and it shall lead you to the relics. May Atom's radiance warm your soul." He breathed, those teary blue eyes focused on the visor of her helm. 

  Vega inclined her head respectfully, praying that Danse would stand aside and let the man depart without a fight. Clearly she needn't have worried; the paladin obligingly shifted the bulk of his armor out of the way so the religious zealot could leave the room peacefully. 

  "' His most holy eminence' ?" Danse repeated, his tone wry. "You certainly have a gift, Knight Vega." 

  Backhand grinned under her helmet, reading the password off the scrap of paper and then carefully punching it into the terminal. "What can I say? A little diplomacy and a healthy sprinkling of mumbo-jumbo goes a long way." With a simple keystroke, the massive doors creaked open. The woman bowed as best as she could in her armor. "Shall we?" 

  Danse appeared to have returned to his silence, simply nodding and walking back out of the room.

  What's gotten into him? Backhand wondered.

Part Thirteen

#fallout 4 #fallout four #paladin danse #fallout fanfic #fallout fandom #paladin danse x sole survivor #paladin danse x f!sole #Eventual romance #slow burn #spoilers #brotherhood of steel #fo4 companions imagine #fo4 companions #fo4 paladin danse #paladin danse imagine #canon-typical violence

[revlyncox]

The Wisdom of Love (2021)

Love as presence, embodiment, and interdependence from the perspectives of Black humanists and freethinkers. 

This talk was revised and expanded for the Washington Ethical Society, February 14, 2021. 

There is an annual occurrence that I look forward to at this time of year: leftover Valentine’s chocolate is about to be on sale. I hope this turn of events brings comfort and joy to many. I do wonder, though, if there ought to be more to this season of commitment than a box of candy. Love is wild, powerful, wise, just, and compassionate. We don’t need to be romantically partnered to pay attention to love.

Knowing what I know of this community, even though it feels like I just arrived, I admire so many of you for your efforts to repair the world. I see healers of the mind and body, teachers, people devoted to caring for family members, scientists, activists, and artists. At the root of each person’s quest, I hear the voice of love: love for family and friends, love for the earth, love for humanity, love of beauty, love of the dizzying possibilities for discovery in our universe. Our minds can provide the analysis and our hands can provide the skills, yet the longings of our hearts keep us engaged and refreshed along the pathways of hope. We need our whole selves—rational, embodied, spiritual, and emotional—to make manifest the dream of a better world.

In this community, there are several labels that circulate, though I also know there are those in our community who prefer not to carry any label at all. We might call ourselves Ethical Culturists or Humanists or Free Thinkers. A few of us might call ourselves Unitarian Universalists. These movements all have a tinge of intellectualism to them, even as we insist that our values must be demonstrated in our actions. We prize reason, and we also need to remember that reason alone, without love, is incomplete.

Egbert Ethelred Brown, who was a Unitarian minister in Harlem in the early twentieth century, saw the wisdom in bringing our whole selves into community. Though early twentieth century Unitarianism and early twentieth century Ethical Culture were different movements, I think what he said can also apply in a place that Adler said is a religion for those who want it and a philosophy for those who don’t. Rev. Brown wrote, “Religion is ethics touched by emotion. If the intellect dominates and there is no hint of emotion, a cold and barren matter-of-factness results. Conversely, if emotion leads, unguided by intellect, we are doomed to a wild sea of fanaticism. Yet mind and soul united create one music, grander than before.” (Quote from “Cold Services,” p. 33 in the anthology Been in the Storm So Long, edited by Mark Morrison-Reed and Jacqui James; see also, Darkening the Doorways by Mark Morrison-Reed; more resources here, here, and here.)

I believe that emotions bring us a great deal of wisdom. We need to consult our feelings and gut instincts to make the best decisions. In particular, I think love in the broader sense offers three lessons that will help us live out our faith: groundedness, embodiment, and interdependence. Love keeps us here, rooted in the world as it is. Love is active, practical, and at one with our physical selves. Love remembers data and frameworks that our intellect may have forgotten, and revels in the unpredictable dance of change and growth. The wisdom of love teaches groundedness, embodiment, and interdependence.

Love Keeps Us Here

To be a community that brings out the best in each other and helps create a society where everyone can grow into being their best selves, we must be rooted in the world as it is, flinching neither from the pain nor the joy that is possible in the here and now. Each of the senses available to us helps us to understand the universe and our place in it. We think, touch, taste, and feel our way into making sense of the world. Love is the capacity that helps us to keep the doors of our perception open rather than escaping into abstraction or obsession. When we are able to truly love the world and the lives it holds, trying to hide is a less attractive option because escaping would separate us from love.

The power of love to draw us into the here and now, to embrace our souls with gentle, cupped hands and breathe fire into the embers, is a spiritual perspective. Lewis Latimer shared it. Latimer was an African American engineer in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He was also a poet, as demonstrated in this piece, “Love is All.”

“What is there in this world, beside our loves,

To keep us here?

Ambition's course is paved with hopes deferred,

With doubt and fear.

Wealth brings no joy,

And brazen-throated fame

Leaves us at last

Nought but an empty name.

Oh soul, receive the truth,

E'er heaven sends thy recall:

Nought here deserves our thought but love,

For love is all.”

(“Love is All” by Lewis Latimer, p. 39 in the anthology Been in the Storm So Long, edited by Mark Morrison-Reed and Jacqui James; see also biographies here and here.)

Latimer suggests that our loves, plural, collectively form the strongest force that keeps us “here.” I can imagine several meanings to where “here” might be. It is not a fixed point. “Here” moves with life and time. Here is where we put one foot in front of the other. Here is the present moment, this time and place and plane of existence. Here we are, gathered in strength, rooted in the world as it is. Love keeps us connected with the ground of our being.

Love is Embodied

The second piece of wisdom is that love is embodied. Love inhabits physical form and manifests in the real actions of human beings. This is true at the personal level and at the societal level. When we are able to fall in love with the world, to keep faith with humanity while fully recognizing the human capacity for causing harm, affection becomes action. Similarly, when tangible actions and their effects lead to suffering, we know there is something is amiss. Love needs mindfulness and compassion to bear the best fruit.

Humanism, to me, is a movement of people who believe in people. We value human creations like art and literature, we seek human solutions to our shared challenges, and we value dignity and equality as humanitarian goals. Love is an irreplaceable ingredient in this tradition. People can do (have done, are doing) terrible things, individually and collectively. Love helps us to be humanists anyway, to believe that positive change is possible, that society still has something to celebrate, and that creating an environment for healing is worth the effort. We are sometimes disappointed and often heartbroken, yet we persist in the spirit of love.

Within the Humanist movement, there are those who say that it should be exclusively atheist, those who don’t think belief or non-belief is relevant or needs discussion, and those who find room in Humanism for theists who don’t mind saying so out loud as well as atheist and agnostic humanists. In all three cases, Humanism is rooted in human experience and human responsibility to create the world we long for, as well as an insistence on the worth of every person.  

Wade McCree, Jr., was the third kind of Humanist. He was a vice moderator of the Unitarian Universalist Association in the late sixties. He was also the first African American to serve as the United States Solicitor General, and so had plenty of opportunities to see the best and the worst in people. He supported the idea of love as a force that helps us to be humanists anyway, even when the evidence challenges the idea of human goodness. He wrote:

“To me, one's religion is expressed in the manner in which one relates to other human beings. If one fights relentlessly against injustice, want, hate, and every form of exploitation, then one is a religious person. The love of God is not expressed by ritual or ceremony, but by loving.” ("By Loving" by Wade H. McCree, Jr, p. 18 in the anthology Been in the Storm So Long, edited by Mark Morrison-Reed and Jacqui James; obituary here)

Across the decades, leaders agree that fierce, open-hearted, actual-feet-on-the-ground love is an expression of their deepest commitments. People are worth caring for. Love longs for the well-being and abundant life of the beloved.

Love for people in general is embodied, and so is love for individual people in particular. For anyone who has ever cared for a child or an elder or a loved one who needs direct physical care, the earthiness of love is undeniable. Lifting, holding, and carrying are physically exhausting. Sleep deprivation depletes people mentally and spiritually. Yet people care for others, often without expectation of return. Within the wisdom of love, a person doesn’t have to produce anything or contribute to the GDP in order to matter.

Advocacy is also embodied. When it’s safe to do so again, people will be walking the halls of legislatures to demand policies that help people stay alive, and this is an act of love. Marching is embodied love. Vigils are embodied love. Using your voice and your dialing fingers for phone banking is an act of love.

Audre Lorde spoke about the intersections of poetry, dreams, care and advocacy - and about how this is different from a purely intellectual project - in her 1984 book, Sister Outsider. She wrote:

The white father told us: I think, therefore I am. The Black mother within each of us — the poet — whispers in our dreams: I feel, therefore I can be free. Poetry coins the language to express and charter this revolutionary demand, the implementation of that freedom.

However, experience has taught us that action in the now is also necessary, always. Our children cannot dream unless they live, they cannot live unless they are nourished, and who else will feed them the real food without which their dreams will be no different from ours. “If you want us to change the world someday, we at least have to live long enough to grow up!” shouts the child.

From Fannie Barrier Williams (who was featured in the Time for All Ages story earlier in the Platform) to Audre Lorde, it is clear that the wisdom of love is concrete, it is not a theoretical exercise. For over a century, Black freethinkers have been saying, with love, that all people deserve equality of access to health care, housing, and public services. Love feeds our commitment to abundant life. Wisdom knows that embodied care and advocacy are aspects of love.

We value people of all ages, races, levels of economic activity, genders, sexual orientations, and abilities. The force of our conviction is made real with concrete actions. Love is embodied.

Love Remembers Interdependence

We can fool ourselves into thinking we are logical all the time. I can appreciate the attraction of making moral choices through what seems like a coldly rational framework. I don’t believe that any of us are as rational as we think we are, but even if we could be, love brings us some of the data we actually need to make good decisions. Furthermore, sometimes data gives an illusion of permanence that doesn’t match the experience of being fully human.

If we only look at short-term consequences, we may fail to take into account the expense of disaster cleanup when we are figuring the cost of energy. Without love, we might not realize that it is against our long-term interests to cause species extinction as we scrape up the Great Barrier Reef. Without love, humans appear to be statistics. When humans become statistics, the result can be disastrous policymaking. Statistics might obscure the fact that Black lives matter, and that justice for immigrants makes us healthier as a nation, and that we have a choice about whether people go hungry and get evicted during a pandemic. Love is what reminds us of the fierce importance of looking out for each other.

Ethical arguments for environmental and social justice might be dismissed as mere sentimentality, because love is made out to be less reliable than money. But of course that’s not true. Our gut instincts are sometimes on to something. When we love without apology, we come to our senses. We remember that the potential results of our actions go beyond the predictive models. We remember the interdependence of all life. We remember our connection with the earth. We remember that community can be life-giving, in all the ways that community is defined. And we remember that the essence of life is change.

Alain Locke is another history-making Black freethinker whose ideas are relevant here. WES members have heard about Dr. Locke before, especially in the work of my Ethical Culture colleague Jé Exodus Hooper. Dr. Locke lived from 1885 to 1954. He was a philosopher, patron of the arts, and a professor at Howard University. Dr. Locke didn’t use the word “love” as often as he used the word “culture,” yet from the essayists and poets we’ve already heard today, I think it’s clear that there is a connection between the practice of love and the way we understand ourselves to be related to others. I am indebted to philosopher Leonard Harris for his journal article to help me understand what Dr. Locke had to say about culture and community.

Two of the ideas Locke wrote about might seem to be in tension with each other until they are closely examined. One idea is that race and culture are social constructs; that is, what draws people together in shared identity is influenced by what we see, hear, and experience; and that therefore it should be no surprise when the definition of an identity is unstable. That’s not a very controversial idea now, but he went out on a limb academically in the 1920’s for rejecting the idea that biological races exist and are biologically caused to express cultural traits.

The other idea provides creative interplay, but is not mutually exclusive with the first. Locke argued that people have an instinct to seek out people with whom they share some kind of similarity, and that even though that similarity is a social construct, this instinct to form communities is good. A shared experience with what it means to be assigned to a group as it is defined in that moment still provides what he called “a consciousness of kind,” with associated common interests and responsibilities, and is enough of a reason to lead to a sense of belonging. He wrote:

The final thing is that we shall see that human society must [have] a … consciousness of kind, and that consciousness of kind is a healthy[,] and a normal[,] and a fundamental social instinct.

(From A. Locke, Race, Contacts and Interracial Relations, Quoted in “Alain Locke and Community” by Leonard Harris, The Journal of Ethics 1:239-247, 1997. This article is behind a paywall, but we might be able to find someone with access. For a free resource on Alain Locke, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has an entry that is thorough and peer-reviewed.)

Dr. Locke warned that the social instinct can go astray, and that the construct of an identity begins to be harmful when the identity becomes regarded as static. He goes on:

… normal and healthy instinct has a very abnormal expression from time to time in the false notions, the false conceptions[,] of kind which are not conceptions of social kind--not conceptions of civilization type, of the American civilization type--but [rather] conceptions of racial kind and conceptions of race type [as permanent and invariable].

(Ibid.)

Dr. Locke's support for the healthy social instinct is part of what drew him to be a patron of the arts. The 1925 publication that launched his reputation as “The Father of the Harlem Renaissance” included art, African artifacts, articles by Black intellectuals, and poems by such writers as Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, and Angelina Grimke. In retrospect, Dr. Harris writes that this publication was “intended as a work ‘by’ rather than ‘about’ African Americans. It was a text exuding pride, showing African-American historical continuities, and revealing a new spirit of self respect.”

In other words, the things valued and created by the people who share an identity should be celebrated, not because they represent an objective reality or timeless virtues, but because the particulars draw people to connect with one another in a healthy, human way that helps people find a feeling of belonging.

Dr. Locke’s insistence that community is both always in the process of being socially constructed and vitally important as a human instinct reminds us that love isn’t just about who we think we are, it’s about who we are becoming, and about continuing to find ways we are related beyond the current social constructions. Everything that makes us who we are and leads us to places where we feel that we can belong is subject to change because we are part of an interdependent network of living, changing, mutually-affected influences and relationships. Even in this constantly-moving dance of being, Dr. Locke says that it is still important that we find community, and that we guard against the absolutes and the inflexibility that lead the instinct for community to go awry.

Love is wise because love remembers connection. When we love truly and deeply, the tug of emotions and relationships help us to account for data and frameworks that short-term thinking has forgotten. Even if identity and community are formed on ever-changing parameters, our human connections fuel compassion and a flexible landscape with room for healing.

Conclusion

I’ll be coming to a close soon, but I wanted to say a bit about Black History Month and how my thinking has developed with this Platform Address. I originally just wanted to say something about love, because today is a day for talking about love. As I researched sources, I came to understand that I had a great deal to learn about the perspectives of Black Humanists and freethinkers. While I am very far from being an expert on Black history, I believe all of us have a responsibility to study the whole history of the movements of which we are a part. The poets and essayists I have drawn from today bring lenses that are vitally necessary for understanding how we, in our close communities and in our larger society, have arrived where we are, and give us important perspectives from the history of the Humanist and free thought movements. I anticipate that I have made some errors. I look forward to learning more.

If you happen to be enjoying some discount chocolate later this week, I hope it will remind you that love is wise. Love goes beyond romance, beyond sentimentality, even beyond human concerns. When love works in harmony with all of our senses—the clarity of reason, the skillfulness of our hands, the renewal of our spiritual path—the combined wisdom helps us to be our best for each other.

Love keeps us here. In our caring relationships, we hold secret pockets of ourselves, treasures that help us stay connected to the forces that create and uphold life. May love call us back to our truest selves. May we carry resilience and hope for one another.

Love is embodied. Whether our bodies are part of a movement for justice or part of a team that cares for one person, our actions make wisdom visible. Love knows that people matter.

Love remembers interdependence. Cause and effect transcend the next quarter and can’t be measured by a single yardstick. We take the big picture into account when the wisdom of love invites us to take a second look.

Let us love deeply. Let us love boldly. Let us love wisely.

May it be so.

[kaelinaloveslomaris]

Whumptober 19: Asphyxiation

The forth and last part of the series that started with “Dragged Away.”

Vader rage murders everyone responsible for holding Luke captive in “Isolation” and gains an unexpected tagalong.

There’s some fairly graphic Murder in this one, FYI.

—

“It is too bad that there was a prison break. Everyone escaped, and there were no Imperial survivors.”

The commander’s face paled at Vader’s threat, and though Vader was not actively paying them any attention, he felt the current of fear pass through the rest of the Imperials in the room. He spared a thought to lock all the doors leading out of the detention wing of the facility.

“My - my Lord, please,” the commander begged.

Vader paused, not because of the coward’s pleading, though he enjoyed the momentary hope on his face in response, but rather because a thought occurred to him.

“Did he beg?” Vader asked.

“What?”

“Luke. Did he beg?”

“I’m… I’m sure he did. They all do.”

“Did you listen to him?”

The fear oozing from the commander spiked into a roiling storm as he grasped where Vader was going with this. Vader smiled grimly, relishing his panic.

“No, please! Lord Vader, would you have us release every Rebel that asks for it?” He was backing up, trying to put space between them, but Vader stalked forward after him until the commander hit the wall.

“Of course not. But if there is an important Rebel who is to be captured alive only, I expect them to be kept alive until I arrive to claim them. You are lucky he does not appear to have sustained any permanent damage.”

“Lucky?” he whispered, a spark of hope in his eyes. Vader crushed it.

“I would make your death ten times more painful had he died.” Vader reached out and wrapped his hand around the commander’s neck. It wasn’t often he physically strangled someone, but this man… he wanted to feel his throat collapse beneath his fingers.

His hands grasped at Vader’s, nails pressing into the leather of his gloves and scraping against the unyielding metal underneath. His eyes widened as he slowly suffocated, his body spasming as Vader starved it of oxygen. The Dark Side consumed his fear greedily, and Vader reveled in the rush of power it gave him.

Just as the life was almost drained out of him, Vader clenched his fist tighter, crushing his trachea and snapping his neck. The crunch of bone was satisfying.

Vader released him, watching as the body slumped to the floor. It wasn’t enough, and the Dark Side’s appetite was nowhere near sated.

He let the darkness in, let it bolster his rage as he drank in the fear permeating the room. Every one of the Imperials in the room had had a hand in mistreating his son. Every one of them was a legitimate target for his bloodlust. Vengeance was in his power to deliver, and he would repay Luke’s suffering.

He turned slowly to face the room. Everyone was watching him cautiously, hopeful that he had taken his displeasure out on their senior officer and would leave the rest of them alone, despite his earlier threat.

They would learn not to underestimate his rage.

~*~

When Vader finally extinguished his bloody blade, he and Luke were the only beings in the room still breathing.

The Dark Side was still singing in his veins. It had been a long time since he had indulged it so thoroughly, and he had forgotten how difficult it was to come down.

Vader looked at Luke, draped across the chair he had set him in, and didn’t dare to touch him. The darkness in his mind was whispering that his son was a weakness, a threat to his position as the Sith apprentice, and he would be better off without him. Vader would never forgive himself if, in a moment of carelessness, he hurt Luke.

Like you hurt his mother?

Vader growled at the unwelcome memory. The voice in his head sounded suspiciously like Palpatine, but the whisper had not come through their bond. He shook it away.

Needing a distraction to calm himself before he could trust himself in close proximity to Luke, he focused on the control console.

He downloaded a copy of the security footage from Luke’s cell, then traced his son’s footsteps back to the point where he and his team had been captured. He saved copies of everything involving his son, then scrubbed the data from the last few days. A quick error code, and all the cameras in the detention facility suffered catastrophic failure. It would still be obvious to anyone who examined the scene that it had not, in fact, been a prison break, but Vader was not too concerned about covering his tracks. There was only one person he needed to answer to, and he could only hope the Emperor would find the whole thing amusing, as he often did when Vader let himself fall into a murderous rage. As long as no one the Emperor had his eye on was caught up in the fallout. Vader doubted anyone here would have that dubious honor.

His eyes drifted to Luke again. He looked so peaceful, oblivious to the carnage around him that had been caused on his behalf. Unable to help himself any longer, he crossed the room to Luke. He reached for him without consciously deciding to, but stopped with his fingers just shy of his hair. He clenched his hand into a fist and pulled it back. There was still a slight current of rage coursing through him, beyond the normal level of background radiation of anger that he lived with.

He spun around and stalked back to the computer. There was one more part of his threat he had yet to carry out. He leaned over the console and keyed in the code to unlock all the cell doors.

Vader felt the confusion of the Rebel prisoners, and a few of them poked their heads out of the cell doors. Their eyes flew wide as they took in the state of the control room.

“You are all free to go. I have what I came for,” Vader said. It didn’t matter to him whether they ran or stayed here to rot. But he had told the commander that all the Rebels escaped, so he might as well give them the chance.

He went back to making sure the computers were wiped clean of any evidence that Luke was his son and tried his best to ignore the Rebels. None of them would be foolish enough to attack him, and even if they did, the Force would warn him.

“Luke!”

Vader turned at the shout of his son’s name to see Antilles rushing towards Luke. Vader stepped between them, cutting him off. He hadn’t gotten this close just to have another irritating Rebel spirit his son away.

“Let him go!” Antilles snarled. Vader was startled by the utter lack of expressed fear. There was a little bit tainting the Force around the pilot, but it was not for himself and it was eclipsed by his concern for Luke.

“I think not.” He turned his back on Antilles to scoop Luke up in his arms again. His child was still soundly asleep, and would be for hours yet, Vader guessed. It hadn’t taken much to put him under, but the Force compulsion he had laid on him was strong. Vader wanted him fully settled into his quarters before he woke.

Some of Antilles’s fear broke through onto his face when Vader turned around again and he caught sight of Luke limp in his arms.

“What did you do to him?” Antilles reached for Luke, and Vader took a step back, pulling Luke away from him. Antilles frowned.

“I did nothing. And what was done to him shall be rectified.”

Antilles’s eyes wandered around the body-strewn room, his brows furrowing in confusion. His gaze snapped back to Luke cradled in Vader’s arms.

“You did this because of Luke? Because of what they did to him? Why?”

“He is not to be harmed.”

Antilles snorted. “Like you’re not just going to take him back to your ship and torture him yourself for destroying your precious Death Star.”

Vader bristled. “I will not lay a finger on him. And his ability to take that shot should be commended, not condemned. No harm will befall him in my custody.”

“You can say whatever you like, but it’s not like I’ll believe you. You haven’t spent the last few years hunting him down just to keep him locked up on your Star Destroyer like a pet,” Antilles spat.

Vader focused on his son’s negligible weight in his arms to keep from lashing out. He knew that if he harmed his son’s friend, Luke would find out somehow. That was the last thing he needed.

“Believe me or not, it makes no difference. He is mine, and he will be well treated.”

“I want proof.”

“What?” Did the Rebel have no fear? Or was his loyalty to Luke just so strong that it overrode any sense of self-preservation? That kind of loyalty could be useful. An idea started to form in the back of his mind.

“I won’t believe you unless I see it with my own eyes that you mean my commander no harm.”

“Are you offering to come with him?” Vader let a dangerous edge creep into his tone. It might also not be a bad idea to have a familiar face around when Luke woke up, though he felt the stirrings of a long-dead jealousy at the thought.

Yes, he would take Antilles with him too.

Antilles blanched and took a step back. Then his gaze flickered to Luke again. He groaned.

“I am so going to regret this,” he muttered. “Lead the way.”

#whumptober2019 #no.19 #darth vader #the ashes call my name #luke skywalker #this precious child #you're my dark star #wedge antilles #we could be heroes #brothers in wings #my fanfiction #my writing

[no6secretsanta]

On the morrow he will leave me

Hey gecko (@lostemotion)! I was your secret santa this year! I took your prompt to heart and came up with this fic. I hope you like it! Happy holidays! <3 - Ace (@hi-im-secretly-satan) Word count: 2161 Warnings: none Summary: Nezumi has a tendency of leaving Shion behind without saying where he’s going, or when (if) he’ll come back, leaving Shion to simply having to trust he will return. Nezumi’s wandering spirit as seen through Shion’s eyes. Title from The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe.

—

The first time Nezumi had left him, Shion was twelve years old.

The rat had crashed into his life, soaking wet, and filled a void Shion hadn’t even known existed. As soon as he woke up alone in his bed (suddenly way too big for just one person) and saw the two empty cups of hot cocoa on his desk and the open window (the only traces of Nezumi’s presence), the emptiness crashed over him like a wave and had left him incomplete, always yearning for that missing piece. It was almost like Nezumi had not only taken the checkered flannel and the first aid box, but also his innocence.

The months following their strange encounter had been hard. At night Rashi’s face flashed through his mind, with his cold smile that never reached his eyes. Asking questions like “why” and “where”. Why had he taken in VC103221? Where did VC103221 go? Buried deep under the covers, Shion asked himself the same questions. Why had he let that bleeding boy in? Stitched his wound, fed him his own food, clothed him in his own clothes? And where had Nezumi gone? Each time Shion relived his memories searching for answers, he only found more questions. If he could turn back the hands of time, return to his old room and watch the hurricane crashing down on the city, would he still open the window if he knew the price he would pay? Save Nezumi while knowing it would cost him his prestige and his comfort here in Kronos? No matter how many times Shion thought about it, turned it over, analysed every bit of data at hand, he always came to the same conclusion.

Yes, he would.

But after all the wondering and pondering, the question he found nagging at him the most was “Will I ever see him again?”

Oh, how Shion longed to unravel the mystery that had thrown his life upside down. He needed to see Nezumi again; gather more data than his memories contained. In those grey eyes raged a storm he wanted to lose himself in. He wondered what could have scarred Nezumi’s back at such a young age. Wondered where and how Nezumi had learned to effortlessly, coldly, render him motionless, ready to kill if needed. There was so much Nezumi hadn’t told him and Shion wanted nothing more than for Nezumi to take his hand and show him this new, mesmerizing world he had never known existed.

-

Meeting Nezumi again was everything and nothing like Shion had hoped. He had not expected Nezumi to come to his rescue, but then again he hadn’t expected to be labeled a criminal either. It surprised Shion how little he cared about having to flee No.6. As irrational as it was, he had a feeling that as long as Nezumi was by his side, he’d be able to survive anything. After four years of living with a memory, the real Nezumi was within his grasp and this time Shion would not let go so easily.

Nezumi was still the same contradictory enigma he had been when he was twelve. He told Shion not to be kind to strangers, yet he had given Shion’s flannel to one of the children living nearby. He told Shion to let go of his memories, yet clung to his own past. But the one thing Shion couldn’t wrap his head around was how Nezumi had kept an eye on him for four years, watching him from the shadows and keeping him out of trouble, yet now he seemed almost hostile. They got into fights and every night Nezumi left him. Nezumi left him just like he did all those years ago. Whenever Shion asked why, where to, or when he’d get back, he dodged the questions.

One night, a month or two after Shion had arrived in West Block, he was alone in the underground room again. Nezumi had run off somewhere without telling him where the day before, and hadn’t come back. The stew Shion had made earlier that evening was cooling down on the stove. He hadn’t wanted to have dinner alone, but it was getting late and his stomach growled. He had never known hunger back in No.6, had never known how hard it was to ignore, making it impossible to focus on other things. His clothes were baggier on him than he remembered them being. Another growl echoed through the vault and Hamlet chirped on his shoulder. Shion smiled and reached up to scratch its head.

“We can’t eat yet. Nezumi isn’t home,” he said with a sad smile. He put down his book, the enchantment of the “Lady of Shalott” broken by hunger and worries. He ran his fingers over the spine of the book and stared at a stain on the open page. Hesitantly, as if speaking the words out loud would make them come true, he asked, “Do you think he will come back?” The mouse chirped again, seemingly reprimanding him. Shion chuckled and shook his head, scolding himself for even daring to think Nezumi wouldn’t come back. This was his home, after all. “You’re right, of course he will.”

He loved his new life with Nezumi but he couldn’t deny it was lonely when Nezumi wasn’t here, even though he had the mice to keep him company. With a sigh, he closed his book and pushed himself off the floor. Right when he had turned the stove back on to heat up their dinner, the door opened and Nezumi stepped inside, a gust of wind accompanying him. It seemed to storm wherever he went.

Immediately all of Shion’s worries melted away, the tension flowed out of his body and he sent Nezumi a bright smile. “Welcome home.”

He had been foolish to doubt Nezumi. Of course he would always come back. No matter how many times Nezumi left him, he always came back. Even when Nezumi had collapsed on stage, when Shion feared his life had been taken by a parasite bee, Nezumi had opened his eyes and called out Shion’s name.

So surely Nezumi must come back to him now as well. That was the thought that grounded him as Shion stared at his hands, painted red with Nezumi’s blood. A sight he’d never expected to see since he had stitched up his shoulder. It was a silly thought, but after Shion had watched Nezumi survive so many perils that were sure to kill him, he had come to think it was impossible for Nezumi to die. He had forgotten Nezumi bled just like humans do. He had forgotten that Nezumi was human. Nezumi, who laughed, danced, fought, bled, was human.

And now here he was, lying on the floor of the Correctional Facility, his pale skin crying crimson, sluggishly gushing bloody tears, his breathing shortening and pulse slowly, slowly, slowing down. Dying like humans do.

A vague voice in the back of Shion’s head yelled at him to get up, drag him to safety, tend to his wound like you did all those years ago. Shion slowly tore his gaze away from his bloodied hands, stared at Nezumi’s face which was growing paler by the second.

Get up! the voice screamed. After you have saved each other so many times, do you really want to let him die now?

“He killed Safu….” Shion murmured.

You know that is not true. You have both killed people. You are both drenched in sin. Now get up and save Nezumi, otherwise he will never come back to you.

A soft whimper, impossibly loud in the cacophony of death and destruction around them, snapped Shion’s attention back to the bleeding body in his arms.

Right. He had to save Nezumi. He had to save Nezumi and get out of the Correctional Facility. Inukashi and Rikiga were waiting for them. His mother was waiting for them. And together they’d return to that room underground - to their home.

Shion hooked his arms under Nezumi’s armpits and started dragging him to the nearest room, wincing as he watched another wave of blood flow from Nezumi’s chest. He was going to save Nezumi, even if it would cost him his own life.

-

Even before he was fully awake his mind had registered every cell in his sore and battered body screaming in pain. But as he opened his eyes and recognised the storage room that also used to function as his bedroom, the memories of the past few days slowly washed over him and the pain turned into a pleasant ache. The injuries were almost a trophy, proof that he and Nezumi had destroyed the Correctional Facility, destroyed No. 6 and received a second chance from Elyurias.

Nezumi.

Shion looked over at the other side of the bed and found it empty. Although they had shared a bed in the West Block as well, he was no stranger to waking up alone, for various reasons. But today, waking up without Nezumi was a punch to the gut. After everything they had been through, the horrors they had witnessed and survived, he couldn’t bear being alone. He had to know if Nezumi was still alive.

A breeze caressed his cheek and he glanced at the window. Karan had opened it last night for some fresh air and they hadn’t closed it. Shion sat up, blankets pooling around his waist, and stared outside. Was this a repeat of four years ago? Had Nezumi really left him already? Again? Or had it all been an eerily realistic fever dream? He did not know which would be worse.

-

The relief he had felt when he had found Nezumi standing in the door opening, a cup of coffee in his hands and a gentle smile on his face, his hair swaying in the breeze and fondly greeting him with his usual “your majesty” was nothing compared to the feeling of rejection that shook him to his very core when Nezumi had told him he wanted to travel. The sparkle in Nezumi’s eyes when he spoke of discovering distant lands made Shion envious, wishing Nezumi would look upon him with the same wonder as he gazed at the landscapes.

But as much as the truth hurt, Shion knew deep in his heart that this was for the best. The idea of making a home here was paradise to Shion, but to Nezumi it would be a prison. He was a free spirit that should not be caged. Still, that did not stop him from pleading Nezumi to stay anyway. As they stood in the fields and Nezumi checked his provisions one final time, ready to leave on a long trip to unknown destinations, it was suddenly hard to breathe.

Before he could stop himself, he grabbed Nezumi’s hand and called out his name. “I’m begging you. Please don’t leave, Nezumi. A world without you means nothing to me. Nothing, Nezumi. There isn’t any meaning at all.“ The words tumbled over his lips in a desperate attempt to convince Nezumi to stay. He half expected Nezumi to scold him for saying weird things again, but then gentle fingers on his chin lifted his head and Nezumi’s face was suddenly a lot closer than it had been. He barely got to protest before Nezumi pressed his lips against his. A hand came up to cradle his jaw and Shion squeezed his eyes shut, not caring about the tears that spilled over his cheeks. As one who is shipwrecked clings to a piece of driftwood that once belonged to the ship that carried and guided him over the vast oceans in life, so Shion reached up and clung to Nezumi’s arm like it was the only thing capable of grounding him. Sorrow, yearning, anguish, love, and more feelings he could not even identify rushed through him and threatened to drown him.

When he finally came back up for air, Shion almost didn’t dare to ask for fear of his heart shattering. He wasn’t ready to say goodbye. He doubted he ever would be. But more than that, he could not bear the thought of never seeing Nezumi again. He did not know what he would do with himself if Nezumi truly never returned to him. He couldn’t-

“It was a promise,” Nezumi replied with a gentle smile. He carefully untangled himself from Shion and pocketed his hands. “Reunion will come, Shion.” Nezumi sent him a final, longing look and with that, he turned away.

As Shion watched him casually walking down the rocky path like he was simply going out for a stroll, he thought of the questions he had asked himself when he was thirteen, hiding under the covers, and the answers he had gotten during their winter together. He realised most questions still went unanswered, but that was all right. As long as one question would be answered, nothing else mattered.

Will I ever see you again?

#hi-im-secretly-satan #lostemotion #no6 #no.6 #no. 6 #no 6 #submission

[chilly-territory]

K Case Files of Blue 2, chapter 4 (part 1 out of 2)

Continuing with this, and the end is in sight! (one more part + epilogue is all that’s left)

Case Files of Blue 2 by Miyazawa Tatsuki

Chapter 4 (part 1/2) (volume 2, pages 197- 224) The Blues Rally

Dark clouds hang in the sky. The wind whistled. The door rattled noisily.

It was early morning, and Kamo Ryuuhou stood in the entryway to "Chuubairo". To make up at least a little for his stay, he decided to do a thorough cleanup of the kitchen. He'd finished sharpening knives and polished pots, then buying more of the condiments that were about to run out, doing grocery shopping and cleaning everything from drainage to ventilation fans - it was no exaggeration to say that the kitchen was licked squeaky clean.

His handpicked successor was scheduled to start tomorrow. It was a lady chef who Kamo had complete trust in to take good care of this eatery's future. She had studied under Kamo's father, which made her Kamo's fellow disciple. Having a frank and spirited personality, she was very kind and also a skilled chef at the same time. Kamo had specifically pulled 2 all-nighters to write down the recipes for her. If she had those, she could get to work without any delay tomorrow.

Kamo still stood in the doorway when a voice came.

"You're leaving?"

He turned to the source of the voice. In the darkness of the corridor there stood the young proprietress of this eatery. She wore a thin sleepwear that left her neck and both arms exposed, and their whiteness was starkly visible even without turning the lights on, as if the darkness was erased in those spots. Moist eyes and disheveled hair were strangely captivating. Kamo averted his eyes as if assaulted by the feelings of guilt.

"You're leaving, aren't you?" Having gotten no reply from Kamo, the proprietress repeated her inquiry.

But she had already understood. Kamo's white apron, his trademark as a chef, was gone, replaced by the blue uniform of the protector of order. Which could only mean that he'd been already done steeling his resolve.

Kamo's expression warped, as if in pain.

"To be honest, a part of me wished I could stay. But there are people out there who need me." "But so do I!" the woman suddenly cried out forcefully. Tears in her eyes, she implored, "I, too, need you!" She ran towards him with small steps and clang to his back. Pressing her cheek to his shoulder, she squeezed out in a whisper, "Can't it be me?"

Kamo shut his eyes, overcome with sadness.

"Sorry, but the cause..." He squeezed his fists tight. "I have a greater cause that I must protect."

He then bodily pulled away from the woman.

"A big storm is coming, so make sure to lock up the door. So long." He smiled. "Take care."

The woman broke down crying. Kamo purposefully pretended not to notice the hand she was reaching out towards him.

He opened the door, stepped over the threshold and closed the door behind him, letting that banging sound sever all the lingering attachments for him. The last sight his eyes caught was that of the woman crumbled down on the floor, weeping.

Kamo started running through the incessant rain.

†

As he changed trains, heading towards the Scepter 4 HQ, all kinds of musings ran through Kamo's head - thoughts on what happiness was, and what it was that he must do.

But it was undeniable that the sense of duty made his hear tremble with exaltation. He'd heard that several members of the special ops squad were put out of commission, including Awashima. Scepter 4 would be hard pressed to function without him, no doubt.

Getting off at the nearest station and not bothering about opening an umbrella, Kamo broke into a run. It would be faster this way. And he wanted to be back at Scepter 4 as fast as possible and to do everything in his power.

According to Hidaka, even the electrical system of the HQ had started acting up.

Resolved to see the building sinking in the dark, Kamo couldn't help doubting his eyes when he finally arrived to stand in front of the entrance gates.

Every window was lit up with light. What's more, lively talk filled the front yard. Three special ops vehicles were parked there with engines running.

"Hurry up with the trucks' check! Once the Captain gives the order, all the vehicles will be deployed!"

The one to motivate the mechanics with those words in a taunt tone was none other than Awashima Seri wearing a blue raincoat.

'Eh, huh?' Kamo then thought. 'Wasn't she supposed to be MIA?'

As he stood there dumbstruck, the person in question noticed him and called out to him with a smile.

"Oh, Kamo. You're back."

Although she wore no makeup and was getting beaten by the rain, it took nothing away from her beautiful looks. If anything, she looked even more elegant, standing there coldly amidst the raging bad weather.

"Hurry up and go check in with the Captain. He's inside." "Ah, yeah," Kamo managed listlessly as he passed through the entrance after being prompted. Once he did, he ran into Gotou on the other side.

"Oh, Kamo-san. Welcome back~" Gotou passed him with those carefree words and an accompanying smile.

Without registering it, Kamo followed him with his eyes.

"Oh, Kamo-san. Welcome back. Sorry, but please make way for the dolly!" Hidaka was pushing a dolly with a floodlight mounted on it. The way he said those words couldn't be anymore routine.

Kamo proceeded forward giddily.

On the way, he passed Doumyouji who energetically raced somewhere - Kamo wasn't sure where.

"Oh, good to have ya back! And see ya later!"

As Doumyouji raised a hand in greeting, Kamo found himself doing the same. Although the return gesture on his part lacked energy.

Walking along the hallway, Kamo found the door to the data processing room opened, and through it the form of Enomoto animatedly working his computer could be glimpsed. Kamo wanted to call out to him, but then thought better of it. Somehow, he got a feeling that it wasn't the right time to bother the bespectacled man.

There was also Fuse who was talking to someone through the transmitter.

When Kamo had finally reached the Captain's office, he encountered the duo of Akiyama and Benzai there.

"Oh." "Glad to have you back with us."

Akiyama was the same as always, while Benzai gave him a slight bow and a smile. But that was all there was to it. The two then walked away at a quick pace as they were exchanging opinions on some subject or other on the way. By no means was this reunion especially moving or emotional.

For a while, Kamo just stared at their retreating backs.

Indistinct feelings started bothering him. Somehow... he couldn't accept what was happening.

And then, at last, Kamo managed to define them with a description which sounded suspiciously like 'What the heck, everyone's going around their business like usual!'

No, it didn't mean it was a bad thing per se, but...

Knocking on the door to the Captain's office that was left open, he entered.

"Ohh, welcome back, Kamo-kun." Munakata raised his face from the tablet he was reading reports on and smiled at the new arrival. "How was your time off?"

Kamo clamped down on the words welling up inside him, then straightened his back properly and saluted to his superior.

"Kamo Ryuuhou, returning to the assigned unit!"

His expression was a bit like laughter through tears.

Munakata smiled gently and nodded.

†

About the time Kamo was knocking on the door of the Captain's office, Fushimi had finally made a short while in his busy work schedule to take a break. Although it was called a break, it didn't really amount to much more than sipping canned coffee in the shadow of a pillar in a corridor that didn't see much traffic and fiddling with his PDA.

As he was doing precisely that, a new message dropped to his work address' inbox.

With a sigh, Fushimi opened it. And then...

"Huh?"

Without his intention, his expression turned grim.

It was from someone Fushimi had least expected to be getting mail from.

'Hello, Fushimi. How are you? It's Totsuka.'

Totsuka Tatara, one of the leaders of the Red clan Homura. That was who the message was from.

Fushimi clicked his tongue and muttered in a tone that was in equal parts fed up and impressed, "...How the hell does that guy know my work address?"

It went without saying that Fushimi would sooner die than tell it to anyone from the place he was affiliated with in the past. But he had to admit it was just like Totsuka having a grasp on things like this despite being an absent-minded oddball about everything else.

When Fushimi looked through the message, he found it was a letter of thanks for letting Totsuka peruse Scepter 4's documents the other day.

'Please give my thanks to Munakata Reishi-san and Zenjou-san who treated me extremely kindly.'

"I respectfully refuse. I'm not your messenger boy," Fushimi muttered his thoughts aloud.

Clicking his tongue once again, he was about to delete the message altogether when he found a postscript at the end of it.

'By the way, I have a message from Yata.'

Since that was what it said, he looked through the rest of it just in case.

'"The guy we met was the bad sort. He tried to kill Mikoto-san, and it turned into a full scale battle. So a warning for you. A huge storm is coming to Japan. Be careful," is what he says.'

"A huge storm is coming, eh?" Fushimi raised his head and snorted. "Well, duh, I can see that, moron."

The windowpanes rattled, shaken by the heavy rain and gales outside. The sky peeking through looked completely covered with leaden clouds.

Still, along with Yata's words, it was Totsuka's last remark that got Fushimi bothered. It read as follows: 'That storm Yata mentioned might be related to your case.'

For a while, Fushimi was deep in thought.

Seriously, what the hell had happened in Las Vegas?

†

In the Captain's office that Kamo had already left, Munakata was reading through a multitude of reports at an astounding pace. He would read anything written at a speed unthinkable for ordinary human on a regular basis, but today he increased that already amazing reading speed even more. It took him literally only a second to look through a report, memorize it, parse it, make a connection with other reports and reach a conclusion.

In other words...

'Looks like everything is going just the way I predicted, eh?'

Even to Munakata it was amusing, and his lips curved up a little in a tiny smile.

The reports covered quite a few areas. There was a message from Scepter 4 operatives about the seizure of a vehicle that Kounomura Zen'ichi had allegedly used, Japan Coast Guard's data on comings and goings to and from the harbor, information on the production of a certain construction that Munakata had ordered, and also news from Japanese Meteorological Agency.

Among them, there was a message from the young and capable attorney that had assisted Scepter 4 in the matters of Akiyama's defense, lawsuits against them and the mass media countermeasures.

The gist of his message was basically this: 'The moment Akiyama-san was found not guilty was when the tides had completely changed.'

It looked like by leaving that matter entirely to him and his trusted team of lawyers everything would be settled with no further trouble.

The message also contained the following bit: 'A few words about Doumyouji-san that you had put in charge of these matters. At first I wasn't sure it was a good choice, but surprisingly, it appears he really is equipped with the aptitude required to handle these kinds of matters. His grasp on what is vital is excellent. Truth be told, there is no pressing need for us specialists to keep an eye on the practical side of things when we handle the details of the judicial process. So in these types of cases, it is necessary for the client to understand what is important and what is not. And that is where Doumyouji-san left nothing to be desired. I daresay that is not something many youths can do. Moreover, his ever sincere attitude of an innocent child when dealing with the media apparently made a very favorable impression on them and won him a lot of sympathy.'

In a sense, it was high praise.

Munakata let out a tiny sigh. Actually, among all the personnel assignments this time, this was the one appointment he felt a little insecure about.

"Oh well, looking at the results, everything ended well, I suppose. If possible, I'd like for Doumyouji-kun to broaden his knowledge in this field from now on." But then Munakata reconsidered. "Although he's sure to go off the rails before he can apply it." He snickered.

In that sense, Doumyouji, perhaps, wasn't so well-suited to that kind of job. In Scepter 4, there were people with all kinds of personalities and all kinds of abilities. And bringing them together and giving them a direction to move in was Munakata's job.

It was at that time that his PDA emitted a beep to signal the arrival of a message. Munakata had already guessed what it was. A glance at the display confirmed his guess.

'Analysis complete. The location of Kounomura Zen'ichi identified with 92.978% probability,' the message from Tokijikuin read.

Although he half-forced them into allowing him to use their super computer, they didn't let it impact their job, doing it perfectly.

Munakata smiled.

"It's time at last, Kounomura-san." It was a truly refined smile without a speck of fighting mood. "I'm looking forward to seeing your face."

And so, he started towards the door out of his office to give the entire Scepter 4 move-out orders.

†

About the time Munakata received the message from Tokijikuin, Kounomura was on the top floor of a high class hotel that was still under construction.

He had a wearable PDA on him in the shape of a visor, reading thoroughly every piece of intelligence that was being sent him.

His reading speed was every bit as astounding as Munakata Reishi's. Piece after piece, he memorized and analyzed all the information the volume of which would be way too much for a regular person to process, which allowed him to grasp the situation accurately. That had become something of a daily routine to him since he'd initiated the confrontation with Scepter 4.

Reports from the observers dedicatedly watching Scepter 4's HQ, transmissions from the local police radio he'd wiretapped, communication records of the port facilities, the trains service information - all that and more formed innumerable informational fragments of the bigger picture. When he pieced all of them together in his head, Kounomura felt a sense of unity with the world.

Once Munakata got hold of required information, from there on out his thinking processes would unfold in a comparatively logical fashion, but in Kounomura's case, his perception was more ambiguous and more intuitive. As such, he let himself steep in the informational flood absentmindedly until the complete picture showed through it.

And then he burst into laughter. "Munakata-kun really is something. I should've known." His voice was slightly higher pitched than usual.

"Did you figure something out, Zen'ichi?"

Nakamura Gouki and Marumoto Keiji who had joined them at some point watched Kounomura seated in an armchair. Gouki looked composed, as usual, but Marumoto was somewhat nervous.

"Yeah. They've laid almost my every trick bare. I assume all the members of the special ops squad are back by now, too. Oh, and Kamo-kun seems to have returned as well. That's impressive, really, because in his case, pure coincidence was responsible for the turn of events so convenient to us, so all I did was simply watch it unfold without doing much, and yet he's still back at the most crucial time for them, just like that. Ah, and Munakata-kun sure acts quickly, so very quickly. He's making his moves one after another as we speak!"

Kounomura positively looked to be overjoyed. It was hard to believe that this was the same man who only recently represented gloom and doom.

Gouki smiled lopsidedly. "Zen'ichi, taking delight in your opponents' powerups is a bad habit, you know."

Meanwhile, Marumoto's expression turned openly anxious. "So what does that mean for us?"

It was Gouki who answered his question in place of Kounomura who was being wrapped tighter and tighter in the net of information galore.

"Well, I guess it's just a matter of time now before this hideout is found out." "Eh?" "Don't worry. You know how fast Zen'ichi is when he runs away, and you think he didn't take any measures? He's got dozens of countermoves at the tips of his fingers at any time." "Ah, I see. Great, then."

Marumoto Keiji had barely had any time to feel relieved when Kounomura spoke up in a stiff voice. "No."

Kounomura was shaken - a state that even his long time friend Gouki had seen only rarely, while Marumoto saw it for the first time.

"Huh? Eh? Wait a second." Kounomura rose, reading through the information changing on his wearable PDA with an incredible speed. "That's weird, what the hell?" "What's wrong, Kounomura-san?"

Marumoto tried to press for an answer, but Gouki's hand stopped him, demanding he let Kounomura concentrate.

When Kounomura spoke up, his lips were pressed together tight. "It can't be. Ah, I see. That's how it is. I can't believe it." He gave a laugh. "Out of 12 shelters here in Japan, 11 have already been cordoned off by the police and Scepter 4." "Eh?" "What?"

Marumoto and Gouki were reasonably shocked.

"Ah, and they've found my remaining shelter just now. Also, out of 24 routes out of the country that I had prepared, 22 are no longer usable. Oh, I get it." A shiver ran through his body. "Munakata-kun went and used the Coin Toss theory on me. Plans I'm likely to devise, actions I'm likely to take - he's analyzed it all and is now shutting them out one by one."

Gouki was speechless, Marumoto was dumbfounded.

Kounomura was getting covered with cold sweat as he went on, "What a pickle. There's still a move left up my sleeve that hasn't been predicted yet and another one that's probably impossible to even predict, but this bad weather renders them both effectively unusable."

"How is it possible?" After a long sigh, Gouki rolled his shoulders and giggled. "Oh well. Zen'ichi. I can't believe there was someone else who could use moves even craftier than you." "You said it. Ah," Kounomura opened his mouth. "This is not good. I'd say everything points to them having already figured out our location by now. They're massing the troops in front of their HQ. The dispatch orders are about to be given." "Eh? Eh?" Marumoto flapped about in confusion unable to keep up with the sudden turn of events. "What will become of us?"

Gouki gave him a wry smile. "We'll be arrested, I guess. After all, they mean business." "Ehhh?" "It's a given," Gouki added maliciously, "after how we've messed with them. Better prepare yourself while you can. If you're lucky, they'll only sock you a couple of times."

Hearing that, Marumoto's face fell, on the verge of weeping.

Just then...

"Agh!" Kounomura suddenly tore off his wearable PDA. He stood there in dazed amazement - something that even Gouki saw for the first time.

Looking at Gouki and Marumoto with an expression that was hard to describe but that could, perhaps, be that of rapture or of shivers-inducing fear, he muttered just one word, "Unbelievable."

"What happened, Zen'ichi?" That was enough to make even the ever composed Gouki worry.

"Munakata-kun has completely ignored us in favor of deploying the troops he'd gathered for arresting us to assist in relief and rescue instead." "Eh?" voiced Gouki. "Huh?" uttered Marumoto.

Both of them had their eyes opened wide in disbelief.

Kounomura shook his head with nakedly heartfelt delight, "What a man! What a man with a cause Munakata Reishi is!"

And then he burst into a loud laughter seemingly coming from the very bottom of his heart.

Gouki and Marumoto could only watch him, speechless.

†

Munakata, wearing a cobalt blue raincoat under the incessant rain, stood on the roof of a truck with a voice amplifier in hand.

Before him, there lined up in neat rows the members of the special operations squad in the raincoats of the same color worn over the head.

Akiyama Himori, Benzai Yuujirou, Kamo Ryuuhou, Doumyouji Andy, Enomoto Tatsuya, Fuse Daiki, Gotou Ren, Hidaka Akira - with the exception of Fushimi who was on a separate mission they all had assembled there, none of them missing anymore.

Awashima Seri also stood there, by Munakata's side, facing them.

Even beaten by large droplets of the rain and harassed by the blasts of the ceaseless wind, they all were showing elation on their faces. Fighting spirit and determination burned in their eyes. They finally knew the whereabout of Kounomura Zen'ichi - the man who dared make sport of them. Once they had the orders from their superior, they were willing and ready to hunt him down like hounds and aprehend him. Doumyouji and Fuse were especially eager, for all intents and purposes looking like they'd take off running any moment now.

"Ehem. Gentlemen," Munakata began speaking so calmly that his manner might be more fittingly described as carefree. Waiting when the static noise died out, he continued, "We have finally pinned down the location of Kounomura-shi. As such, I intended to go catch him, but..." His tone was completely devoid of any urgency. "Let's put that on hold for now."

That declaration threw several members of the special ops squad quite literally off balance. They all were single-mindedly prepared to hunt, and being denied it robbed them of their bearings or left them struck dumb.

Munakata went on indifferently. "I saw the Meteorological Agency's data, you see. A big tempest that might even be called unprecedented is on the way to this city. A rainstorm with wind speeds of 40 meters is expected to rampage throughout the area, with thunderbolts and heavy rain paralyzing most urban functions. Needless to say," suddenly he looked very serious, "that will put quite a few people in danger."

The faces of the special ops squad members tightened in response.

Munakata continued in an intense tone. "I dispatched Fushimi-kun earlier, and he's already finished making necessary arrangements. So gentlemen, during the time this storm rages, I want each and every of you to cooperate with the Fire Defense and Police Agencies and local autonomous units and do what you must do as members of Scepter 4!" His features then softened. "That said, this sort of matter is outside of our area of expertise. That's why we must always keep in mind to be humble when requesting to let us help and to respect and listen to the opinion of the professionals in those areas. If we do that," he asserted in no uncertain terms, "our super power will become the shield that defends the innocent citizens, no doubt." With that, he smiled. "Compared to this duty, the matter of Kounomura-shi is but trifle. We can easily postpone it and work something out later, at any time."

Those words were bound to send a shiver running down the spines of those listening. Their king had just called the possessor of talents that could only be described as abnormal who gunned for his throne nothing more than 'trifle'. Each of the Scepter 4 troops felt a surge of strong emotion, moving their hearts and making them straighten up with pride.

What was the greater cause?

To this king, it wasn't simply a figure of speech, he held to it steadfastly as one would to a belief or conviction.

Nevertheless, Akiyama still found it necessary to ask something.

"It is a reasonable to fear that Kounomura would flee his hideout in the meantime. Is it okay with you, sir?"

He just wanted to confirm it for himself.

"Let me think. If some of us find themselves free after fulfilling their duty by assisting the government agencies in relief and rescue, let's arrest him while we're at it."

The instructions Munakata had issued concerning that matter were quite vague. But the special ops squad members answered him with a 'Yes, sir!' regardless.

Munakata smiled.

"Well then, gentlemen, let us move out. Only, this time there is no need for us to draw our swords." Raising his voice, he declared, "For our cause is pure!"

His catchword was suddenly answered by Akiyama. "Akiyama, dispatching!" Making motions as if he was drawing his sword, he took his leave.

Benzai followed suit with a chuckle. "Benzai, dispatching!"

Kamo smiled. "Kamo, dispatching!"

"Doumyouji, dispatching! Here I go!" Doumyouji shouted gleefully as he raced off.

Enomoto and Fuse exchanged a glance. "Enomoto, dispatching!" "Fuse, dispatching!"

With that, Enomoto headed towards the command vehicle to devote himself to performing the operator job, while Fuse, as a field agent, sped off in the opposite direction to be on the scene of the disaster.

Gotou and Hidaka repeated the same stately motion of drawing their sword in turn. "Gotou, dispatching!" "Hidaka, dispatching!" They, too, then went off.

Awashima was the last one to fluidly unsheathe her invisible sword. "Awashima, dispatching... Captain," she smiled charmingly, "off I go then, sir."

Munakata's lips curved up in an answering smile as he watched her go.

"Our cause may be pure, but the same could not be said about the sky," he pointed out. Luckily there was no one around anymore to hear him make that silly remark.

†

Majority of the general public closed their doors tightly, took cover under their futons and then dozed off while listening to the updates on weather and disaster reports on the TV news or the internet. With modern disaster prevention technology, impossible a few dozens years back, one's safety was more or less guaranteed unless one decided to venture outside. However, the residents of old wooden houses and those who had to go outside due to the nature of their work still had a very good reason to worry.

Also, in some areas power cables got severed, which caused blackouts, and even fires resulting from ensuing short-circuiting. So the fire and police stations were pressed to operate at full capacity even at times such as this. And in the thick of it, a group in blue uniforms could be found cooperating with the public agencies.

They helped local crews repair embankments in places where they were likely to burst, freed ambulances with emergency patients from mud traps and did everything they could to protect the city against the disaster, like silent shadows. The police, the fire deparment and other pertinent agencies were greatly helped by those wielders of supernatural powers beyond common sense.

As were ordinary people living in the city such as the lady owner of a small eatery who had a little son.

In all honesty, she didn't think any harm would come to them because of this storm. But misfortune had paid them a sudden visit. An election advertisement board got launched by a blast of the gale, smashing the windows of the second floor and letting in heavy rain and wind. The child had started to cry, and the woman, holding him in her arms, found herself at a loss. She couldn't think of anything one woman entirely on her own could do.

As she was puzzling, a dashing young man she knew very well clad in a blue uniform appeared. He and a few of his colleagues rushed to the house and quickly completed stop-gap repairs. It appeared the gales so mighty they could send even an adult flying if one was not careful and the torrential downpour that beat down anything in its path with violence had no effect on them.

"Are you okay?" The man she once idolized as 'onii-chan' worried about her. He wore a dignified face resolute in a way different from when he stood in the kitchen. "Thank you," she said. "I'm okay now." "I'm sorry," said the man apologetically. "But there are still other places I have to go to." "Then, go," she replied in a flash.

She hugged the baby closer to her chest. Protecting this child was her job, while this man had a different job he needed to do, she realized.

After a while of silence, the man said, "Thank you. See you again sometime." "Yeah. Take care," she replied with a smile.

And so, he threw himself into the raging storm once again in order to help more people.

Having watched him go, she shed a single tear and decided to get stronger.

Her face was that of a mother who had overcome a difficulty.

†

In the dead of night, in the lobby of a certain hotel still under construction, there stood Fushimi Saruhiko. The result of the analysis stated that this was where Kounomura Zen'ichi and several of his followers hid themselves. Fushimi had completed his duty for the time being and, thus, was free to go after Kounomura's group faster than anyone else in Scepter 4. To be precise, he had provided necessary relief and rescue assistance in the area he had been assigned to and urgently contacted the relevant authorities, and somehow or other he'd been done with that in about 30 minutes. He had a plan worked out.

'I alone will be more than enough.'

Now that Munakata Reishi had seen through his opponent's every possible trick and stratagem, the Kounomura Zen'ichi faction had become nothing more than a paper tiger. There were presumably three of them hiding in here: Kounomura Zen'ichi himself, Nakamura Gouki and Marumoto Keiji. Among them, only Nakamura Gouki, a strain with a power that gave him herculean strength, could be considered formidable, but by Fushimi's estimations, even he couldn't be much more than Fushimi's own abilities allowed him to handle.

Fushimi was advancing further into the lobby of the first floor.

The opening ceremony for this hotel had been pushed back a month, but the interior of the building was pretty much already complete. The lights on the ceiling were on, and movables like sofas and tables had already been brought in.

Sweeping his wet bangs that clung to his forehead back, Fushimi muttered, "I see, it makes sense."

This hotel was perfectly ready for living even at this stage. Despite the fact, its name had yet to be added to digital maps. Kounomura had probably been moving from one such place to another all this time. It was also safe to assume that he was involved with the construction company or the hotel's management in some way.

Just as Fushimi thought that...

"Oh, Fushimi-kun, that was quite fast," his superior appeared from a shadow of the hallway and addressed him.

Fushimi very nearly clicked his tongue at him but managed to suppress the urge just barely.

"You're here, too, Captain," he muttered vacantly.

It was probably just Munakata being Munakata. Having finished everything that his duty demanded him to do with that ever nonchalant air, he'd arrived here even faster than Fushimi himself. Those ridiculously high capabilities were what made him Fushimi's boss alright, but sometimes it was just so very annoying.

"Fushimi-kun," Munakata inquired, "how much time do you think you can spare for this?" "From half an hour to an hour, I estimate. Then I'll go back to my assigned area." "I see. It's about the same for me, too. The storm has yet to show any signs of passing, after all." Munakata then smiled. "Well then, let's go, shall we?" "..." Fushimi only nodded wordlessly.

"Captain! Please wait!"

It was then that the automatic doors to the lobby opened, letting in a sprinting Awashima. She was soaked to the bone and dripping water, and she also was breathing hard, but still she lifted her head almost immediately.

"I'm going, too. Please let me accompany you!"

She, too, made some time for this somehow or other.

For a while, Munakata gazed at her gently before finally saying, "Alright. Since there is not much time to spare, let's split the workload. Each of us will take care of one of the opponents. Is that alright with you?" "Yes, sir!" Awashima's reply was loud and clear. "...Roger." Fushimi quietly nodded his agreement as well.

And then, the trio split up, each heading to the elevator, the staircase or the emergency stairs respectively.

#k case files of blue #k project #project k #k translation

[lawfulpride]

Davos and the Doctor

Synopsis: After breaking out of prison with the assistance of Thor Odinson, Davos runs into a certain Time Lord. 

Davos played by @lawfulpride  The Thirteenth Doctor played by @mostincrediblechange

supremedumbass™Thursday at 7:00 PM

(I know legit nothing about Iron Fist except that Davos deserved it and the main character sux, so I will do my best.) "I don't think so!!" The Doctor skids 'round the corner with a mad laugh, chasing a creature that might have been a dog, if dogs had six eyes and were green. It was clear that she was enjoying the chase, and the creature was, too. "C'mere boy!" she called, waving a slimy tentacle-thing towards the- for lack of a better term- dog. "Got a nice yummy... uh... treat for you! Come one! We gotta get you back to the TARDIS before someone sees!" The creature let out a bark that sounded rather like a guinea pig squeak before bounding towards- and past- the Doctor, directly towards a man she had somehow overlooked before hidden in the shadows. "Hello! Don't mind us," she laughs nervously. "Had a bit of trouble with the leash. Acid spit and all. But he's harmless."

Hopeful Thursday at 7:10 PM

The man before whom the Doctor and her pet come  a clambering halt is the embodiment of humorless intensity.  He's dark, short, and slender, built like a rock, wearing too-large clothes that seem oddly counterfeit given his regal, rigid posture and immaculately groomed features.

"What is that abomination?" he demands, without preamble.

supremedumbass™Thursday at 7:17 PM

She scurries over to the creature as he begins to sniff at the stranger's shoes. The Doctor looks up at him with an awkward smile and wraps her arms around the thing before his slobber eats away at the fabric. "He's a Gorlok. Kind of cute once you get past the eyes. And the smell. Incredibly loyal, though. Fantastic trackers. This guy got stranded on Earth and I've been trying to get him back to his owner." She stands and sticks out her hand to shake. "I'm the Doctor. Know you didn't exactly mean to, but if you hadn't been here I'd probably have to chase him down another few blocks!"

HopefulThursday at 7:35 PM

Davos continues to glower at the strange female, expressionlessly; the only tell that he is still young, in his thirties at best, is the enormity of his brown, long-lashed eyes.

Those eyes dart to the smelly creature at his feet.  He considers kicking it, but is waylaid when the woman offers her hand in a peaceable gesture. "You hail from another dimension?"

Thankfully for the Doctor, Davos is no stranger to spatio-temporal anomalies. The only difference is, he sees them not as scientific, but  rather, mystical, and religious, phenomena.

"I am called Davos." But he doesn't shake her hand. He only stares at it with suspicion.

supremedumbass™Thursday at 7:40 PM

The Doctor grins at him and lowers her hand, looping a leash around the creature's neck. He sits obediently, wagging all three tails at once. "Another dimension? You could say that, I suppose. Definitely not from around here, but I get the sneaking suspicion neither are you. I'm from a different planet. A different time. I'm a traveler, really." She rocks on the balls of her feet with a smirk, watching him curiously. "And where do you hail from, Mr. Davos? You look a bit out of place."

HopefulThursday at 7:43 PM

"My home is gone. I don't know where.  I left it to clean up the mess of another.  And still ended up with nothing while he....."

This is all he says. He turns away and draws a deep breath to still himself.  He only ever raises his voice or his hand to a woman who is also trained in combat. " . . . . . I don't concede my secrets to strangers." He frankly wonders why he's already said so much to this one. "Especially nameless ones."

supremedumbass™Thursday at 7:47 PM

"Nameless? That's a bit rude," she pouted. "I'm the Doctor, that's my name." She frowns a little, sympathetic to someone who's lost their home. He seems to be struggling, and she can relate to that. Her voice softens a bit and she ducks her head to try to catch his eye. "I lost my home, too. Someone I cared about destroyed it. I know how it feels to be left alone, seemingly with nothing. Do you need help, Davos? That's kind of what I do. Help people, when I can."

HopefulThursday at 7:48 PM

"I AM the help. I am a weapon. I defend. I need nothing else."

" . . . . however.  Those who offer a hand in kindness are just.  Compassion is a liability to a weapon. But not to those it protects. It would be my honor to have you in the kingdom I seek to create, Doctor."

supremedumbass™Thursday at 7:52 PM

"Well..." She quirks a brow at him, almost amused. She's met stranger aliens, but he's human, as far as she can tell. And yet he's very odd. She kind of likes it. "You yourself said your home was gone. If you're trying to get it back... Even I need help sometimes, and I'm dead clever. Maybe it would help if you tell me about this kingdom? Hm? I'm mad curious, and well, once you get me curious I'm hard to get rid of."

HopefulThursday at 7:54 PM

" . . .walk with me." And he proceeds in the direction from which she came: just as curious, and just as eager to collect data on a potential adversary.  "I hail from K'unlun, an undying city whose outer gate is accessed in Tibet.  I was one of the warriors trained for life to guard that gate, at the mouth of a mountain pass.  It came down to me, and to my brother."

He pauses there, features visibly strained with a simmering anger. "And you? You are a healer?"

supremedumbass™Thursday at 8:13 PM

"Oh, Tibet! Loov Tibet! Best noodles I ever had. Never heard of K'unlun, though. But somehow I get the idea it's not exactly a tourist attraction, hm?" She grins up at him after her joke, but somehow doesn't expect it to land. The Doctor watches that anger bubble just below the surface. "Let me guess. Your brother was the one who's mess you came to clean up?" she asked sympathetically. "A healer? Yeah, I s'pose you could say that. Among other things. Healer, scientist, inventor, etcetera etcetera. How'd you end up here?"

HopefulYesterday at 12:45 PM

Best noodles.

Davos's whole face wrinkles. This woman reminds him of Claire Temple: the last healer whom he knew, a friend to his brother Danny, and to that whore from the Hand who turned Danny fully against him.   But despite her dubious allegiances, Claire had been just as kind and bright-souled.

She had even gotten him to consume a slice of pizza. It was chewy. But it wasn't quite so poisonous as he'd suspected. "Excessive chatter is a vexation to the spirit," he comments reluctantly. But he doesn't move away from her.

"You are skilled at deflecting questions," he further comments, making no note of her accurate assessment of his situation.

supremedumbass™Yesterday at 1:39 PM

"So are you," she grins at him. He's not much taller than her, but he is broad, and she feels rather small at his side. "Strong, silent type, I get it. Used to be the same myself, a few lifetimes back." The Doctor eyes him. Despite her cheerful demeanor, she can tell that Davos is deeply unhappy. More than that, he's angry, and angry, unhappy people can be dangerous if they're pushed the wrong direction. "You say you came here to clean up your brother's mess? Have you managed it? Or is it something I might be able to assist with? Believe it or not, I'm really very clever. I might be more help than you think."

HopefulYesterday at 3:35 PM

As he walks, with haste and drive, forgetting the purpose of walking with her--to collect intel--his lips loosen. "It's a nonissue. I took from him a power he was far too irresponsible to wield, but he stole it a second time, and gave it to his lover.  A woman who long  belonged to a terrorist organization called the Hand, an abominable body of deceivers who turned children into weapons in the name of 'cleansing' society. Those whom I serve are the true healers of this world and its cancers.  I have been deprived of my birthright at every turn, and I very much doubt one eccentric woman from another dimension could fix that."

She calls him strong and silent; it's not the first time he's been teased for his serious nature. It always slides off him like water droplets off oily feathers.   This time it spreads an odd warmth in the pit of him.

He stops and turns to face her; pleasure. Pleasure is dangerous. Pleasure is self-indulgence. Indulgence does not come into the equation of a warrior, or a weapon. "For all I know, you could be an operative of theirs, come to monitor me in my hour of liberation. Come to stop me, since I escaped prison."

He advances on her quickly then, with an expression of dangerous but carefully lidded rage.

supremedumbass™Yesterday at 4:23 PM

Funnily enough, she doesn't say it to tease him about his stoic nature. She finds it rather grounding. But The Doctor's brows furrow, a little line forming between them as he talks about this group called The Hand. People who turn children in to weapons. 'Cleansing' society. The idea makes her gut churn with disgust. "You'd be surprised what I'm capable of," she says rather darkly, her smile slipping from her face. Instantly, the Doctor knows whose side she's on as she contemplates some way to learn more about the Hand. She's too caught up in her own thoughts to notice the shift in his mood, and by the time she does, he's upon her. The Doctor is struck again with how much bigger he is, despite being barely an inch taller than she is. "Don't you think if I was an operative of this Hand group I'd have made some move to stop you?" she replied stiffly, her eyes narrowing at him. "Why would I offer to help you? I protect this planet from people and groups exactly like the one you're describing. Hurting kids? Turning them into weapons? No, I don't think so." She is all too familiar with children being used as pawns for the ambitions of people who are meant to be their protectors.

HopefulYesterday at 6:10 PM

He balks.  A storm is kicking up but he scarcely notices.

"I think that if you're saying THAT, it's more proof you're not Hand than anything else, because you've clearly got no idea how low they can stoop.  And how good they are at lying." He raises from his fighting crouch, a rather eloquent pose that twists his arms and wrists and renders one combative unit of his whole beautifully poised body. It begins to rain. They're both soaked in minutes. He doesn't even notice.  He doesn't even blink as the droplets roll off his close-shaven head and long eyelashes.

"What will you offer me, if I agree to go where you lodge?"

supremedumbass™Yesterday at 6:15 PM

Davos steps back and the Doctor straightens, her expression still a little sour. "I've known people like that my whole life, and believe me when I say that's a very long time. I'm not much for violence, but... I can make exceptions." She isn't overly concerned about the rain, but pulls up her hood, though it doesn't do much good in the torrential rain. "A bed to rest, for one. But I can help you find whoever it is you're looking for. I have a ship. I can travel anywhere, might be able to track down the Hand and help you stop them."

HopefulYesterday at 6:23 PM

" . . . . . " He's clearly weighing his options.  His attire is, literally, a paper-thin, too-big hoodie, and blue, sopping hospital scrub pants.  And no shoes. Normally, while abroad outside the sanctum of K'unlun, Davos wears sharp-tailored, austere black business suits.  And smells like very rare, very expensive incense.

To call him unusually unkempt, unusually desperate, in this moment, is an understatement. "They've been disbanded. Their leaders scattered.  Some dead.  I am a warrior without an honor code, or a people, to protect." He's trying to remain calm, but there are very protrusive veins in the center of his forehead and his neck. "I am directionless." He grinds his jaw. "I have nothing. Nothing but my principles. Principles everyone living but me has abandoned."

supremedumbass™Yesterday at 6:33 PM

The Doctor steps forward, almost timidly, as if he's a skiddish creature that might flee if she gets too close. "Then perhaps it's time to regroup. Time to take a little time to find yourself again." She knows only too well what it feels like to lose oneself. To feel alone in the universe. "I said my ship can travel anywhere, but it can also travel in time. You can recover without having to worry about taking too long." She offers him a small smile. "It's an open offer, one you don't have to accept. But I know what it's like to feel directionless."

HopefulYesterday at 6:42 PM

"I've had one purpose in life since birth."

Now the water's cascading off his shoulders and chin.

But he notices she's eve more soaked. "I'll stay for a night. One night.  If you would lend me clothes, I would be obliged."

supremedumbass™Yesterday at 6:46 PM

"I might even let you keep them, if you're nice," the Doctor teases, those hazel eyes glittering playfully. But she nods and begins walking again, this time around the corner and down a different alleyway. "One purpose since birth? To be a warrior? You said to be a weapon? Dunno about that, but a guardian and protector, I can understand."

HopefulYesterday at 6:46 PM

"...are they not the same thing?"

He's not being  sarcastic. It's a genuine question.  He follows her a little reluctantly.

supremedumbass™Yesterday at 6:49 PM

"The way I see it... A weapon is meant to hurt. There's no away around that. Even if it's hurting the bad guy it's still hurt. I think the universe has quite enough of that. But a guardian? A protector? That's someone made to love. To care for the thing he's protecting. I like to think I'm like that. Don't always do the best job, but this planet... Well, I help where I can."

HopefulYesterday at 6:53 PM

"This planet...I see." Davos doesn't comment upon the distinctions made, not at first.  But then, wetting his lips with his tongue, he turns to her.  Even his manner of movement is somehow uncompromisingly forthright.  "I was always taught compassion was a form of weakness. Because it is good to turn upon one's friends, but when you turn it upon your enemies, it allows them the upper hand.

"You would have me show weakness, and then, does that not compromise the integrity of my protection?"

He pauses mid-philosophy, however, to glance around. "I don't understand, where is your home?"

supremedumbass™Yesterday at 6:59 PM

The Doctor glances at him, a slightly amused smile on her lips. "There's the flaw in your logic, Davos. Compassion isn't weakness. It's strength. It takes incredible strength to show compassion to an enemy  someone you hate. Compassion has the power to change hearts and minds." She points to a blue police box at the end of the alleyway. "Right there. Can't believe you'd miss it, all lit up like a Christmas tree?" the Doctor teases as they approach. She opens the door and bows. "After you."

HopefulYesterday at 7:01 PM

"I CANNOT agree with that!" he snaps, raising his voice for the very first time since they've met.  It's sudden and fiery and it's gone just as fast. I cannot  contradict my dead mother, who could not tell me that she loved me. Who WOULD not. I still cannot turn against her, I STILL cannot. " . . . . I shouldn't have shouted, that. Was beneath my station. Forgive me." He glances at the police box. He  steps up to it. He walks around it.  He stares at her, mirthlessly, but the faintest wanness enters his tone when he speaks again. " . . . . It would be a rather snug fit." 

supremedumbass™Yesterday at 7:05 PM

The Doctor is surprised by his outburst, only because he's been so stiff and soft-spoken until now. She raises her hands in a gesture of peace. "There's nothing wrong with disagreeing with someone," she muses. "No need for apologies." But she knows there's so much more to it than she can possibly glean from their short conversation. "Why don't you step inside. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised how spacious things can be with good decorating."

HopefulYesterday at 7:07 PM

"....a throw pillow will not change the dimensions of...." He steps into the TARDIS.

He stares around. "......your blue box is very deceitful." 

"It is a warped dimension..a wormhole?" He turns to her, genuinely intrigued."It reminds me of home."[7:09 PM]K'unlun, accessed through a gateway, a kind of window into another dimension in the middle of a snowy mountain range. A similar trick of space and time.

".......except uglier. ...and what is that...smell."

supremedumbass™Yesterday at 7:11 PM

"No throw pillows," she replies, stepping in behind him. "But a little spacio-temporal displacement can work wonders." The Doctor grins and runs up to the console. "She's called the TARDIS. Bigger on the inside-- OI!" She folds her arms and looks quite offended. "Fine way to talk about the most powerful ship in the universe. One of a kind, she is. Show a little respect!"

HopefulYesterday at 7:22 PM

"The most what."  He steps toward the console, still dripping. "I am skeptical." But that very small modest smile hasn't left his face.

supremedumbass™Yesterday at 7:25 PM

"Oh-KAY, Mr. Doubting Davos." She grins at the perfect alliteration. "I'll prove it! Time and place. Or planet! Where would you like to go? Anywhen and anywhere."

HopefulYesterday at 7:29 PM

"That's not my name."  God, he's the most unintentionally comedic Straight Man ever to walk off paper.  "And I want to change clothes before you continue to show off your odorous homestead."

supremedumbass™Yesterday at 7:33 PM

The Doctor puts her hands on her hips and sighs. "Up the stairs, fifth door on the left. Should be plenty of stuff that will fit you." She turns to the console, trying to hide the fact that she's sniffing around. Does it really smell? All she smells are custard creams.

HopefulYesterday at 7:33 PM

Davos simply nods, sharp and precise. He ascends the stairs as if it's a holy mission from the gods.  He pivots at an exact 90 degree angle and finds the fifth door on the left. Inside is a massive wardrobe full of attire that would bleach the hair of the most stalwart warrior.  Why is there celery on that suitcoat? Why is that scarf covered in rainbows?  Why are there Converse in multiple colors? "This is absurd."

He wrinkles his nose in distaste. Nevertheless within ten minutes he settles on a combination of the most neutral colors he can find, which come from the Eleventh Doctor's wardrobe, minus, of course, that hideous bowtie. He returns to the Doctor's side with the same bemused expression. "Are you a shape-shifter?  You have clothes for at least twelve other beings up there."

What is she, the bloody Monkey King????

supremedumbass™Yesterday at 7:42 PM

"Time Lord," she replies conversationally. While he was gone, she did a quick sweep of the console room and chucked some stale snack wrappers in the bin. A quick filter of the oxygen in the room has the TARDIS smelling... well. Maybe not fresh, but certainly not like a Frito-Lays factory. "I can regenerate. Change my form when I'm seriously injured. Good job on the count though. Thirteen others. Not twelve." The Doctor finally looks up and smiles. He actually looks rather handsome in her old clothes. "You clean up well. Decided where you want to go? Still determined to impress you."

HopefulYesterday at 7:57 PM

"....So do you," he comments, wryly, of the clean-up statement. He angles his head back, sharp-cut chin at an angle, and lofts one eyebrow. "Stronghold of Souhei Monks, Kamakura-Era Japan."

supremedumbass™Yesterday at 7:59 PM

The Doctor lofts a brow at him. "That's strangely specific. Most people I ask usually ask to go see the moon landing or something." That said, she doesn't deny his request, but begins typing in coordinates, her tongue stuck between her teeth as she works. "What's in Japan?" she asks curiously as she hops around the controls.

HopefulYesterday at 8:03 PM

"The founders of one of the most influential Buddhist schools of warrior monks in all the world." He rests his hands behind his back, remaining on his feet despite his exhaustion.  He's still barefoot: it's a sign of respect within the household of one's host.

"If you wish to show me the moon landing, by all means, do so."

supremedumbass™Yesterday at 8:06 PM

"No, it's refreshing. I enjoy seeing new places! That's rather why I do this, after all." The Doctor flashes him a smile and sets the controls. "You might want to hang on to something. Ride gets a bit bumpy sometimes." The Doctor pulls the lever and the ship groans to life and they're off, hurtling through time and space!

#ic #mostincrediblechange #discord rp #your blue box is deceitful (The Doctor)

[tkmedia]

Ten things we learned from F1's 2021 British Grand Prix

Formula 1, the British Grand Prix and a sold out Silverstone – it had the feeling of familiarity after the unknown and empty grandstands since the COVID-19 pandemic took hold. But the 2021 British GP was anything but recognisable, starting on the Thursday with the first showing of a full-scale 2022 F1 car model and then a new weekend format which pivoted around the inaugural sprint qualifying race. It all resulted in a dramatic and controversial victory for Lewis Hamilton after his lap one collision with Max Verstappen which sent the F1 world championship leader into a 51G impact with the tyre barriers. Hamilton recovered from a 10-second time penalty for the incident to reel in shock leader Ferrari's Charles Leclerc and overtake him with just two laps to go – maximising his advantage with Verstappen out and cutting the deficit in the standings to eight points. While penalties and sportsmanship became the major post-race talking points, it created a race weekend jammed with action and memorable moments. Here are 10 things we learned from the 2021 British GP. 1. The first major clash of Hamilton vs Verstappen reveals true rivalry (By Alex Kalinauckas)

Lewis Hamilton congratulates Max Verstappen after the Red Bull driver's sprint race victory Photo by: Steve Etherington / Motorsport Images It's easy to see why the Lewis Hamilton/Max Verstappen collision at Copse, which put the Red Bull driver out in a scary, high-speed accident, is being described as 'inevitable' – because, really, it was. They have already clashed once in 2021 – at Imola. Then there was Verstappen's divebomb in Spain, plus the ultra-on-the-line close racing between them between Abbey and the approach to Copse in both Silverstone races. But the reason why the grand prix clash ended as it did is precisely because of the championship situation Hamilton faces, as well as the fierce nature of both driver's on-track attitude. Hamilton came into the British GP 33 points down on Verstappen. This isn't 2017-2021, when the Mercedes driver could afford to take a 'big picture' championship-points-tally-consideration view in 50-50 moves. He has more to lose now if something goes wrong, vital ground in a title battle where he has a slower package, so simply cannot afford to give an inch. And that's Verstappen's attitude overall – just look at his reaction to Hamilton getting alongside at Abbey and Brooklands on Sunday. In the crash, Hamilton deserved a penalty for causing the incident, but it was still a fine call. Don't expect this to be the last flashpoint of the 2021 title fight. 2. F1's penalty system needs to be explained better (By Jonathan Noble)

Lewis Hamilton had to sit stationary in his pitbox for 10s before his mechanics could service him Photo by: Steven Tee / Motorsport Images Red Bull's calls for Lewis Hamilton to be given a race ban for his part in the opening-lap crash with Max Verstappen were always going to fall on deaf ears. But you could fully understand its frustration that the 10-second penalty given to Lewis Hamilton for the clash ultimately cost the world champion nothing. Although it meant he had to fight a bit harder for the victory, he was still able to come home with the full 25 points. While that may seem unfair for Verstappen, who saw his title advantage slashed massively, F1 is quite right not to dish out penalties based on the consequences of offences. For doing it that way could open an even worse scenario where drivers get heavy sanctions for relatively minor rule breaches, but the book thrown at them when a tiny issue has big consequences. What perhaps is most lacking in F1 is actually a definition of driving rules and etiquette – so fans are better able to judge incidents based on the same criteria the stewards use. That would be hugely helpful in preventing the kind of polarised opinions that have engulfed social media in the last 24 hours. 3. A spirited sprint success, but the overall verdict remains to be decided (By James Newbold)

Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing RB16B, Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes W12, Valtteri Bottas, Mercedes W12, Charles Leclerc, Ferrari SF21, and the rest of the field at the start Photo by: Steven Tee / Motorsport Images Until the ill-fated clash of the titans at Copse, the weekend's biggest talking point had been F1's inaugural sprint race (let's call it what it was, shall we?) which generated mixed reviews. From "weird" according to Sebastian Vettel) to "I loved it" from Charles Leclerc, just about everybody had their opinion. Many welcomed the added excitement it brought to Fridays and the engineering challenge of getting the set-up nailed in FP1, while others questioned the relevance of FP2 when the cars were in parc ferme conditions which meant evaluating tyres was the only feasible action. The 17-lap distance allowed for variation in tyre strategies which was seized upon by Fernando Alonso, whose star turn on the soft tyres undoubtedly enlivened the proceedings as the race for the top four proved pretty static after the opening lap. F1 now faces a decision over whether to continue its experiment beyond the two further (as yet unconfirmed) sprint events planned for this season and, if so, whether to make further tweaks. Series bosses are encouraged by initial feedback, and have an unspecified "job list" to work through, but can at least be pleased that the format shake-up achieved what it set out to in building anticipation throughout the weekend. 4. Two-day race weekends look realistic option to ease pressure on growing F1 calendar (JNob)

Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes, waves to fans after securing pole Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images F1's first sprint race trial at the British Grand Prix can be viewed as an overall success. The boost in audience figures on Friday, plus increased interest for the Saturday 17-lap dash that provided a few spills and thrills, were exactly what F1 chiefs wanted. Sure there are some things that need improving – like the issue of Saturday's final free-practice being pretty much of no interest to fans on TV – but this is just a case of tidying up rather than starting from a clean sheet of paper. And, of course, the sooner the FIA goes back to awarding pole position in the history books to the fastest driver in Friday qualifying, rather than the winner of the sprint, the better things will be. But the success of the compressed format has also reopened the debate on whether F1 actually needs to stick at three-day weekends. Hamilton suggested a two-day schedule in the future would be the right way to go. It's something that F1 has baulked at in the past, and circuits would certainly not be happy at losing an extra day's ticket sales. But could it be something that proves preferable for some venues in exchange for holding one of F1's Grand Slam sprint weekends? 5. F1 at its best with packed crowds as Silverstone roars again (AK)

Fans cheer from the grandstands Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images Questions over the merits of letting a capacity crowd – that totalled 365,000 at Silverstone over the entire British GP weekend – gather during an ongoing pandemic should directed to the UK government, with the track itself understandably just trying to stay afloat in these awful times. But the fans in attendance were treated to an exceptional sporting event. Friday night qualifying produced two exceptional displays from British drivers in front their home fans, with the reaction to George Russell's Q3 lap the highlight for this writer given how the Williams racer was cheered from corner-to-corner. Then the sprint race delivered nicely in terms of an interesting race, even if it wasn't the all-out thriller some claimed. But it did set up a grand prix that fizzled spectacularly throughout – capped by the title rivals colliding and Leclerc nearly holding on for a famous against-the-odds victory. But there's an interesting footnote to Hamilton's victory. Motorsport.com was told there were plenty of new, younger fans seen at Silverstone – with an apparent increase in female spectators too. It will be interesting to see if this can be backed up in official data, but even anecdotally it suggests the 'Netflix effect', as well as Hamilton's laudable efforts to help diversify motorsport are having an impact. And what a race they were treated to, hopefully cementing lifelong motorsport fan status. 6. Leclerc demonstrates Ferrari's resurgence (By Jake Boxall-Legge)

Charles Leclerc, Ferrari SF21, Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes W12 Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images Leclerc was unbelievably close to a surprise victory at the British GP, but there wasn't quite enough in the tank to repel Hamilton's late assault for the lead. But Leclerc had been stellar, and his opportunistic move to clear Hamilton moments after the Verstappen incident rewarded him with the upper hand for the restart. His getaway from the pole spot and subsequent managing of the gap to Hamilton were incredibly well-judged and, despite facing engine cut-out issues while in the lead, Leclerc was able to weather the storm and find enough in reserve to keep Hamilton at bay. The seven-time champion's recovery post-penalty, however, was too much for Leclerc to resist and his slight wide moment at Copse was the only blot on the Monegasque's copybook. Meanwhile, Carlos Sainz Jr's recovery in the sprint and continued progress in the race also showed the pace of the Ferrari in the pack, although his ascent was halted by a slow pitstop. That dropped him behind Daniel Ricciardo, whose McLaren proved to be a tough cookie to overtake. Nonetheless, Ferrari has showed greatly improved form after a disastrous Paul Ricard race, and the upcoming Hungarian GP could be a race in which the Scuderia truly shines. 7. Perez suffers like those before him in Red Bull's second seat (By Haydn Cobb)

Sergio Perez, Red Bull Racing, and Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing, on the grid, ahead of the 2022 Formula 1 car unveiling Photo by: Charles Coates / Motorsport Images Sergio Perez appeared to have the Red Bull support role nailed after picking up the pieces to win in Baku and then claim a deserved podium at the next race at Paul Ricard. But after being in the wars in Austria against McLaren's Lando Norris and Leclerc, Perez's performance in the British GP had shades of the struggles Pierre Gasly and Alex Albon endured before the Mexican came to Red Bull's rescue. It must be said it is down to fine margins, but qualifying behind Leclerc on Friday night set the wheels in motion for Perez's downward spiral. Trapped in the midfield battle at the start of the feisty sprint race, he was caught out by dirty air and spun off, to be condemned to the back of the grid for the main event. Despite Red Bull F1 car tweaks made in a bid to aid his retaliation in the grand prix, but also meaning a pitlane start, Perez was making progress until he got stuck in DRS trains and then got impatient and collided with Kimi Raikkonen. A P10 finish was as good as it was going to get until Red Bull sacrificed that solitary point to pit Perez for softs to take the fastest lap point away from Hamilton – even though finishing outside of the top 10 meant he wouldn't earn the point himself. Perez has slipped back to fifth place in the standings and is set to play 'who can be the best support driver' against Valtteri Bottas for the rest of the year. 8. Old dog Alonso makes the most of new tricks (HC) Fernando Alonso, Alpine A521, Lando Norris, McLaren MCL35M, and Sergio Perez, Red Bull Racing RB16B Photo by: Charles Coates / Motorsport Images Alonso demonstrated he's lost none of his racecraft with his stunning start to the sprint. The Alpine driver's charge from 11th to fifth was aided by his soft tyre gamble, but the TV onboard footage was reminiscent of the old Alonso - carving through the pack and finding gaps few others can. As his softs faded and left him seventh for the start of the main event, the double world champion held his nerve against an early attack from Vettel, before his old rival spun off on his inside at Woodcote, and went on to take seventh to extend his points-scoring run to a fifth race. The British GP marks Alonso's last race before his turns 40 and after a steady start to his F1 comeback, slowed by his pre-season training accident and adapting to his Alpine surroundings, he feels fresher and ready – a warning that the old dog has learned new tricks. "After the accident at the beginning of the year, in the first couple of races, there was still a part of the stress of coming back to the sport. I was concerned about the jaw, about the shoulder as well that I had the small injury with," Alonso said after the British GP. "But now, I'm super fit and I am 200%. "Next week is another number. So we'll eat some cake. But apart from that, it's going to be a very normal weekend. I feel 25. So whatever number it says in the passport it's not what I feel." 9. Williams progress clear but Russell is making the difference (JNew)

George Russell, Williams, waves to fans from Parc Ferme after Qualifying Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images Hamilton's qualifying triumph on Friday stole the headlines, but one of the biggest cheers from the crowd was reserved for Russell's lap of honour in his one and only Q3 run. The Williams driver made the final segment of qualifying for the third race in a row with the eighth quickest time, raising questions over whether the FW43B should be considered a Q3 car henceforth. The team's head of vehicle performance Dave Robson reckoned it was "a little too early to say whether that's going to be something that's a regular occurrence", admitting he expected Williams would find it harder than in Austria but the "very calm conditions" on Friday evening played to the car's strengths. Despite the Hungaroring requiring a totally different set-up, Robson predicts "there's a good chance we'll be there or there abouts". But even if it's not, Russell can be counted on to make the difference. While his weekend went downhill after qualifying - a first-lap tangle in the sprint with Sainz resulted in a "harsh" three-place grid penalty for the grand prix that he couldn't recover from against cars that remain quicker in race-trim - Russell is in the form of his life right now. "I think there's an element for him of getting on that upward spiral," explained Robson. The question now is, how high can it go? 10. What the 2022 F1 show car hints at (JBL)

The 2022 Formula 1 car launch event on the Silverstone grid Photo by: Charles Coates / Motorsport Images Although F1's vision for 2022 has been long defined after the unveiling of the all-new regulations (initially planned for 2021) back in 2019, the championship's promoters unveiled a full-size model of its interpretation of next year's chargers. Of course, it came with all the bells and whistles expected for next year: the low-slung nose directly attached to the front wing, the simplified bodywork and focus on ground-effect aerodynamics all featured on the car wrapped in a distinctive holographic livery. That being said, there were a few small differences between the physical model and the render, particularly around the front end; the nose tip sat in the middle of the leading front wing element, rather than protruding beyond them, hinting at the variation the teams can employ. Although F1 elected to pick a representation of next year's rules largely based on aesthetics, it can only be expected that the teams will take a more pragmatic view of the rules and might not necessarily stick to the spirit of them. There's a greater focus on prescribed designs and single-spec components to cut costs and develop the aero effect that F1 has studied and earmarked as the way forward for closer on-track racing, but those effects will surely be a little diluted when it comes to the actual range of cars next year. Regardless, it's an exciting new direction for F1; although some have questioned the necessity of the new rules as 2021 continues to intrigue us all, the British GP still showed the difficulties of racing within the current level of dirty air. The new rules should reduce that problem, should everything go to plan. By Alex Kalinauckas, Jonathan Noble, James Newbold, Jake Boxall-Legge and Haydn Cobb Read the full article

[theresas-sound-world-blog]

Theresa’s Sound World Interview

Person: Rosie Varela

Bands: EEP/ The Rosie Varela Project

Genre/s: Dreampop/Shoegaze/Indie

In my interview, I talk to Rosie Varela of US Dreampop Shoegaze band EEP and The Rosie Varela Project about music, inspirations, her music projects, the modern music industry and...Star Trek! ⭐️

❓When did you first feel the impulse to create music and why?

🅰️I wrote my first song around 1975, when I was 8 years old. I was inspired after watching “My Fair Lady.” I was the youngest child of five and a latchkey kid, so I was alone after school every day. I turned to singing and writing little songs to amuse and comfort myself. I had a little tape recorder I used to record little tunes with my vocals or on my flute.

Picking up guitar at 30 was an epiphany - I suddenly had a way to really write fully formed songs. And once I started, it felt like a flood of songs came pouring out. It still feels that way.

❓Can you name the top ten inspirations for your music? It can be anything, bands, songs, albums, books, poems, art, films, people...

🅰️1. AM/FM radio and shows like American Bandstand, Soul Train, and The Midnight Special.

2. My older brothers’ huge record collection that covered jazz, blues, oldies, rock, and latin music.

3. When I was a kid, I was inspired by The Beatles, Steely Dan, ELO, Fleetwood Mac, Tower of Power, Tom Petty, Motown, and Blondie.

4. Movies that have a focus on music - Woodstock, Blues Brothers, A Hard Day’s Night.

5. My first concert - Carlos Santana at the Greek Theatre in Berkeley. A powerful and spiritual experience.

6. Raymond Carver’s short stories. Minimal and intense slices of life.

7. Movies that put characters in morally challenging situations like Pulp Fiction, The Shawshank Redemption, The Big Lebowski, and Goodfellas.

8. In my late teens and 20s, I was inspired by the recordings of bands and artists like REM, Bowie, Talking Heads, and Peter Gabriel.

9. The Verve awakened me to what I call Proto Shoegaze. The textures and layers of “A Storm In Heaven.” And first wave Shoegaze bands like Slowdive, MBV, Ride, Catherine Wheel, and Lush.

10. The art and lives of Frida Kahlo and Georgia O’Keefe. Their independent and unapologetic dedication to their art has inspired me to do the same.

❓You’re known for your band EEP and more recently, your solo material in the form of the Rosie Varela Project, but can you say what you were doing before musically?

🅰️I think I spent from age 18-51 in a bit of a haze - working, raising my son, writing music in my spare moments, playing in cover bands here and there, and trying to find my voice as a songwriter. So I played every night in my living room and wrote a lot of songs that didn’t sound like me. It seems like I only recently found my voice.

So I’m a very late bloomer!

❓ Can you tell me a bit about how EEP got together?

🅰️I had been helping some musicians in El Paso to record their music, and through that met Ross and Sebastian of Brainville Studio. Because we worked so well together, we formed an experimental synth-based project called Something Something Sound System.

One day I wrote a shoegaze song for my husband that just came out of nowhere (in Spanish to boot!) and I recorded the whole demo at home in 2 hours.

“Hogar” was the first song I had ever written in Spanish. It felt really easy, fluid, natural, and everything just clicked into place organically. My husband Justin really loved it and encouraged me to talk to Ross about recording it as a one-off single. Ross, Seb and I started writing more songs and eventually I asked Serge and Lawrence to join us. The combination of our influences and ages made for a really great band dynamic.

❓How different is it working on a solo project without your bandmates?

🅰️The RVP is basically me taking songs I’ve written that don’t make it into the EEP catalog, in varied genres, and having fun producing them through a gazey lens alongside some of my friends in music. The big difference is I am learning how to produce my own music for the first time. My goal is to release 4 singles this year while I work on my 2022 solo album and so far it’s going well!

❓Have you found that Lockdown/ The Pandemic has impacted on you positively or negatively in a creative sense? Why do think this is?

🅰️For me, the pandemic has affected me positively. It forced me to adapt, modify, and accept a whole new model in making music. Songwriting and remote recording collaborations have had to become a bigger priority than rehearsing and playing live shows. I think EEP and I have pivoted pretty well in that aspect.

❓ I sometimes feel that although financially a lot of bands are struggling owing to miserly streaming platform revenue and (at the moment) no tours, getting music to an audience is easier than it was say, in the 1990s. It seems that social media is key. Have you any tips for bands/artists starting out in the modern music industry ?

🅰️I think figuring out your musical WHY is super important at the start. And every band member’s answer to that will build the collective creative effort and also the band’s calling card, so to speak.

Decide on your short-term and long-term goals and figure what you need to achieve each one.

Assess how each band member can contribute to them and make sure everyone buys in on those goals. If not financially, then with their creativity and skills.

Don’t be in a hurry and don’t be desperate about your music. If it takes a year to save up the budget you need to record your album, save and focus on getting your music ready. Be patient and actually have a solid release plan. I see some bands who release music quickly and often without any marketing plan and it’s sad to see these releases come and go with very little coverage or sales.

Don’t expect to make any profit from your music. Breaking even financially is a great goal to shoot for instead.

It’s important for DIY bands to set realistic benchmarks of success and remain humble about them. The myth of an album “blowing up” to huge financial gain is just that. A myth. It is extremely rare. Instead, think about different kinds of specific goals - how many Bandcamp followers, how many pre-order sales, etc. Make those goals achievable.

Our goal for EEP was to simply have 30 fans who would buy our music and to know our fans by name and cultivate real friendships. I’m happy to say we surpassed that number by a bit.

Use your social platforms to engage, inform, and have fun. Ask for help if you need it from people who you feel have figured it out. We use our social platform to geek out about Shoegaze bands we love, share our stories, and share the behind the scenes of our making music. We love to showcase our peers, and ask our followers about what they like so that we get to know them better.

And always, support those sho support you whenever you can.

❓What are your plans from a musical point of view next? Have you any pipe-dreams for post-lockdown?

🅰️For The RVP, I want to challenge myself musically by interpreting non-Shoegaze songs I’ve written through a Dream Pop and Shoegaze lens. Because I have so many different kinds of songs, it will either be really good or incredibly bad!! I’m willing to take that risk.

For EEP, the pipe dream is to tour the US and the UK when things stabilize and travel is possible. For now, our short-term dream is just to be able to record and rehearse together.

Next, just for fun...

❓Who is your favourite Beatle and why? For example, I like Ringo Star the best, because of his laid back man-of-the-people attitude, his sense of humour and ability not to take himself seriously, namely voicing Thomas the Tank Engine. Musically, in terms of personality, or both, which member of the Fab Four do you sway to the most?

🅰️I think lyrically John Lennon is definitely my favorite. There is a spirit of rebellion, humor, and absurdity in how he played with words and song structure, especially towards the end.

As a person, I identify with George Harrison the most. His curiosity and reverence for Indian music, philosophy, and using music to process the larger questions of life was a refreshing contrast to his bandmates’ style.

❓ I know, like me, you’re a Star Trek fan, so I couldn’t resist this one; Spock or Data and why?

🅰️I identify so much with Data for his quest to understand the different aspects and fullness of being human. I think that has driven a lot of my past and present interactions and relationships. He’s probably the most noble of characters in The Next Generation in his unflinching willingness to sacrifice himself for the needs of the many⭐️

🎼Below are links to Rosie’s latest single, ‘Low’ in her incarnation as The Rosie Varela Project, plus links to two Theresa’s Sound World reviews of music by Rosie’s band, EEP from last year ⭐️

🎧Listen to the single ‘Low’ by The Rosie Varela project: https://thervp.bandcamp.com/track/low

📚🎧: Read my 2020 review of the single ‘Hogar’ by EEP, including listening platform links to the track: https://www.facebook.com/116279076583978/posts/180288703516348/?d=n

📚🎧Read my 2020 review of the album, ‘Death of a Very Good Machine’ by EEP including listening platform links to the album: https://www.facebook.com/116279076583978/posts/198924518319433/?d=n

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#MusicWriter #MusicBlog #TSW #MusicReviews #TheresasSoundWorld #MusicReviewer #Shoegaze #Dreampop #Indie #AlternativeMusic #Writer #EEP #AlternativeMusicBlog #UK #IndieBlogger #TheRosieVarelaProject #UnderGroundMusic

#alternative music #tsw #underground music #theresa’s sound world #music blogger #uk #music writer #music blog #shoegaze #Dreampop #indie #eep #the Rosie varela project #music interview

[joeybelle]

Starlight - Chapter 19

Relationship: Cassian Andor x Original Female Character

Rating: Mature

Tags: Pre-Rogue One, Romance, Hurt-Comfort, Canon-compliant Violence

When she woke up he was gone.

It’s not like she expected him to stay for breakfast, especially since he was supposed to leave on a mission that morning, but she thought he’d at least wake her up before he left. You know, tell her goodbye, give her a kiss, that sort of thing. They may not have been officially lovers, but they weren’t strangers either, so she kind of expected him not to act like one. Instead, as she sat on the edge of the bed, looking around, it seemed like he had never even been there. Like a ghost, passing through her life, leaving no physical trace behind.

Still, she couldn’t ask too much of him, she decided as she sighed and stumbled towards the bathroom, the lack of sleep making her head spin. He was a busy man after all. And seeing how the first time they had sex he left right after finishing, the fact that he stayed to cuddle could be considered progress. Baby steps, Cora, she reminded herself. Life is never as easy as you imagine it to be.

She quickly showered and threw on her uniform, not wasting too much time brooding over his absence (or rather doing it while she was getting ready). Seeing as she had slept through two alarms, she was already running late. She knew no one would yell at her for sleeping in, but she still wanted to be there on time, since there would be a lot of work with the supplies coming in.

Before she left, she noticed that Cassian had picked up the towel she had thrown on the floor the night before, folded it and placed it in the laundry basket. It made her smile. It was a simple gesture, maybe it was even out of reflex, something that he didn’t think through, but to her it was a sign that he didn’t rush out of there like he was afraid of getting caught. Maybe he even tried to wake her up. She doubted he would have succeeded if he’d tried, and somehow that thought lifted her spirits a little.

The hangar was already full of people when Cora got there. Most of the ships hadn’t been cleared for takeoff until that morning, so everyone seemed eager to leave the base now that the weather had gotten better. The constant buzzing of people and droids was back, the base feeling alive once again. All the damage done by the storm had been fixed so now its rage seemed a distant memory.

She couldn’t help but look around for Cassian’s ship, trying to get a glimpse of him before he left, but even though she spent a full minute scanning the area, there was no sign of him or his ship or the black droid that usually stuck out in the crowd like a sore thumb. She sighed and entered the med bay.

“You’re surprisingly late this morning,” Lewella’s said instead of a greeting. “Four minutes late, to be exact. How uncharacteristic of you. What happened?” she enquired, jokingly.

“I slept in,” Cora groaned, pouring herself a cup of coffee. “Did the shipment come in yet?”

“Not yet, but it’s imminent. How come you slept in?”

“I couldn’t wake up?” Cora raised an eyebrow at Lewella, who was smiling strangely at her. There was a devious look in her eyes.

“How so? You’re usually the first one to wake up,” she said in a seemingly indifferent tone, playing with some papers on the desk, but Cora could feel the underlying curiosity. Something was up. She could sense it.

“Ummm… I was tired. We’ve been up late last night, in case you don’t remember.” She was curious where this was going. It wasn’t like Lewella to question her motives for sleeping in, or for anything for that matter. Sure, she was usually pretty early at work, but it wasn’t the first time she had come in late after a long night. She had a feeling Lewella was onto something.

“So after the party you just went back to your room and went just to sleep?”

“Actually, no, I took a shower and then I went to sleep.”

“No nightly visitors, no nothing?” Lewella prodded, her voice sweet as honey.

“What? Where did that come from?” Cora asked, wide eyed. She was sure Cassian hadn’t said anything, he wasn’t the type to brag about his conquests. Also she was sure he had waited until he could come unseen, otherwise what was the point of leaving and then coming back? Unless he needed some time to convince himself to come. Either way, how did Lewella know?

She shrugged. “Well Melshi joked on the way up, and I don’t know…” she trailed off. “So, did anyone come back?”

“No!” Cora denied, but could feel her cheeks starting to burn. She didn’t really want to hide it, Lewella was her friend after all, but she wasn’t really used to sharing things like this. Her closest friends, with whom she might have shared such intimate details, were either dead or she hadn’t seen in years. “No one came back,” she insisted, hoping Lewella couldn’t sense the lie.

“You’re lying,” Lewella said, crossing her arms, looking at Cora with a naughty glint in her eyes. “I know you’re lying.”

“And how can you possibly know that?” Cora asked, a little irritated (and also a little scared) by the confidence her friend was showing.

“I know because you have a very visible hickey on your neck that wasn’t there last night,” she said, pointing a slender finger at her neck.

Cora froze, feeling like her blood had suddenly ran cold. Could it be possible that she had overlooked such a thing in her hurry to get to work on time? Checking for hickeys was something that really hadn’t crossed her mind. It was possible that he had left a mark, but somehow she hadn’t thought about it. She brought a hand up to her neck in an attempt to hide whatever was there, but her hand met the uniform’s fabric. Lewella’s booming laughter made her realize that she had fallen into her trap.

“I didn’t think you’d actually fall for it. You went white as a sheet, Cora,” she said, trying to calm her laughing fit. She wiped a few tears from the corner of her eyes. “Don’t you dare deny anything now.”

“Oh, shut up,” Cora mumbled, turning her back to Lewella, ashamed that the initial shock had made her forget that the uniform’s collar covered almost all the skin on her neck, so there was no way that a hickey could be visible.

“Nothing to be ashamed of, we all like to have a little fun from time to time,” she said, with a sweet, reassuring smile, but Cora was still eyeing her suspiciously. “So… who came back?”

“No one came back,” Cora insisted, but she kept her head down, hoping that if Lewella couldn’t see her blush, the lie would somehow be more believable.

“Was it Melshi?” she enquired.

“No! It wasn’t Melshi! There was no nightly visitor,” Cora vehemently denied, praying to seven gods that this questioning would stop.

“So it wasn’t Melshi,” Lewella said, her grin growing bigger. “Then it was Cassian.”

“It wasn’t Cassian either,” she denied again, but it was weaker and she could feel herself blushing harder. She tried making herself busy with something, trying to stay as far away from Lewella as possible, but her friend kept following her through the room.

“It was Cassian.”

“It wasn’t. It was no one.”

“Oh come on, please satisfy my curiosity just this time. I promise I’m gonna leave you alone if you do.” Lewella’s puppy eyes were really hard to resist, plus the possibility that the interrogation would be over was very enticing. Still, Cora was afraid that Lewella would make a big deal out of her confession and it would escalate and she still wasn’t sure how her relationship with Cassian could be defined. If she was still confused about it, it was probably too soon to share it with someone else.

“Another time, maybe,” Cora said, a pleading smile on her face, and she could see Lewella’s enthusiasm slowly dropping.

“Fine!” she exclaimed, throwing her hands up in defeat. “But I’ve already told you who I’m banging so…”

“A piece of information that I really didn’t need,” Cora sighed.

“You’re a bad friend,” Lewella concluded.

“Morning, Doctors! We have goodies,” one of the guys from Storage announced, entering the med bay with a large cart in tow.

“What did you say? You have cooties?” Lewella mocked, looking a bit annoyed that he had interrupted their chat and that she had to get to work instead of idling with a cup of coffee in her hand. Cora was thankful that, at least for now, the subject had been dropped.

Getting supplies was always a messy process, and it usually gathered all the medical personnel available. It was a job that in other med bays Cora had worked in was handled by a totally different part of staff, but here everyone had more responsibilities that their actual job entailed. And it usually wasn’t a bad thing, but with Alara and two other medics suffering from a quite severe case of the flu and another two getting ready to go on missions off world, it was pretty clear that most of it fell onto Cora’s and Lewella’s shoulders.

It was a pretty boring process, checking things on seemingly unending lists, stocking medical cabinets, making even more lists, and eventually getting annoyed that you still didn’t have everything you needed. Cora, who was usually pretty resilient and certainly very used to long, bureaucratic processes from her time in the Empire, was already getting a migraine by the time they had finished putting everything aside. It wasn’t her best day, it seemed. Lewella had given up a few times and spent more than twenty minutes of the toilet just contemplating the decisions that had brought her to this point.

Cora was still hanging in there, unwilling to give up just yet, a data-pad in hand, a frown and a stony expression on her face, when the pilots and sergeants started pouring in, asking for supplies to restock their medipacks before leaving on missions. Luckily, with most of them stuck on base for so long there were very few emergencies, so the med bay was otherwise pretty silent.

“Morning ladies!” Melshi announced his presence by yelling at the top of his lungs, the moment he entered the med bay.

Cora groaned loudly. She had just finished dealing with a bunch of pilots and was hoping to get five minutes of peace so she could sit down, rest her legs and chug another cup of coffee, trying to clear the fog the lack of sleep had left on her mind.

“It’s almost noon, Sergeant,” she said, sighing and taking the data pad out of his hands.

“It’s morning for some of us,” he grinned, following her to the storage area. “You could have used some more sleep, Doc, you look like crap.”

Cora frowned at the mean comment, but she had gotten used to his weird sense of humour and couldn’t get mad at him. “Has anyone ever hit you in the face with a data pad, Sergeant?” she threatened nonetheless.

“Twice, actually,” he said, still grinning.

“Wanna make that three?” Cora replied with a smirk.

“Actually, no, I wanna have my nose intact for my next mission, maybe I can you know… find some nice local girls willing to fall in love with a handsome freedom fighter. I need a good nose for that,” Melshi said, his grin somehow growing wider. Cora snorted and went back to counting bacta patches and shoving them into his supply bag. “And speaking of getting laid, did he come by your place last night?”

Cora felt the colour drain from her face for the second time that morning. Somehow, she had forgotten about the talk she had with Lewella and it didn’t cross her mind that Melshi would start it all over again, even though she should have expected it. She was even less ready to argue right now than she has been earlier, the busy morning having drained her of the little energy she had left.

“No, he did not,” she tried getting him to shut up before Lewella heard him. She had finished what she had been doing and was now coming to join them in the storage area.

“Really?” He seemed a little disappointed. “I tried giving him a hint, but who knows what gets through his thick skull. Are you sure you’re not lying to me, Cora?”

She sighed. “Please don’t start with this, I’ve just managed to get Lew to shut up,” she pleaded, hoping that Melshi would understand and have mercy on her.

“What?” he asked, throwing  Lewella a quick glance. “Does she also know that you’ve been banging Cassian?” he asked loud enough that at least three solar systems could hear him.

“I knew it!” Lewella exclaimed, suddenly tapping into that unending supply of energy. “I fucking knew it!”

“Well she didn’t know shit, until you told her just now!” Cora yelled exasperated, much too tired to deal with these idiots.

“Well, Doctor, I didn’t know for sure either until you just told me,” he said, a shit eating grin plastered on his face and Cora was sure that right then and there, she could kill him. Lewella was in the main area of the med bay doing a little victory dance, and Cora felt that her life had to come to an end.

“I’ll just kill myself,” she mumbled to herself, hiding her face in her palms. “I need a suicide pill.”

“You can talk to Cassian about that, but he’s already left,” Melshi said, taking the supply bag off the counter.

“Then shoot me please,” she begged, her voice a pathetic whine.

“No can do, the ammo is rationed.”

The sound of the automatic doors opening forced Cora to get out of her depressed state and go back to the med bay, followed closely by a grinning Melshi. Lewella had stopped dancing, but was still way too joyful. Fortunately, it was just Aidan that had come down to ask for some medication, until the infirmary upstairs would got their own supply shipment later that day. Unfortunately, Cora really didn't want to deal with him, so she passed him on to Lewella.

“Hey, where are you going?” she yelled after Cora.

“To drown myself in the toilet,” Cora groaned.

“What? What happened?” Aidan seemed a little confused by Cora’s gloomy demeanor.

“I sucked all her happiness away, Doctor Veltz,” Melshi said, in a very believable serious tone, that would have usually earned at least a snicker from Cora, but now she just wanted to strangle him. “Don’t die in there,” she heard him yell after her, but one the bathroom door closed, she found herself surrounded by silence. She could finally rest for a few moments.

When Lewella found her, a few minutes later, Cora was still in the bathroom, sitting on the toilet seat, on what Lewella liked to call ‘the throne of existential despair’. She wasn’t sure why she had isolated herself there, she just felt like she needed a few moments of peace and quiet.

“Hey,” Lewella said, leaning on the stall next to her. “I’m sorry if we upset you, we were just joking. Sometimes it can get out of hand without any of us realizing,” she said, sounding genuinely apologetic.

“It’s ok, I’m not upset,” Cora said, not really angry at any of them. “I just hope he won’t go around the base telling everyone. I don’t want people talking and making things up. You know how these things can get.” Somehow she had the feeling that Cassian would appreciate the rumours even less than she did.

“Who, Melshi?” she asked with a smirk in the corner of her mouth. “Don’t worry about him, he’ll never tell. He’ll tease you relentlessly, but he’d never betray your trust. If he did, he wouldn’t be our friend anymore.”

“You sure about that?” she asked in a little voice, feeling guilty for her mistrust.

“Very. He hasn’t even told me about it, and he knows I wouldn’t tell a soul, especially if it was something about you. I assume he’s known about you and Cassian for a while. So don’t worry, ok?”

“Ok,” Cora said, giving her a weak smile and wondering if the anxiety she was feeling was founded or it was just because she was tired.

“Come on, let’s send someone to get us some lunch and we’ll have a break, it’s been a long morning,” she said, urging Cora to get up. “And an even longer night for you,” she teased.

“Oh shut up,” Cora groaned, but she was smiling. “You said you’d shut up about it once you knew who it was.”

“Well, I said that when I was sure I wouldn’t find out, and now that I know, it doesn’t sound like a such a good deal.”

Cora snorted. “No turning back now.”

“You’re right. But if you ever feel like talking, about this or about anything else, I’m here for you,” she offered.

“I know, and thank you,” she said, smiling. “I’m just... a little confused right now.”

“Human interactions are always confusing. You’ll figure it out in time,” she said, patting Cora’s shoulder. Cora nodded and followed her friend out of the bathroom and back into the real world.

*

Samarkand was covered in darkness when he landed. Theoretically, no one could leave or enter the planet’s orbit now that the Empire had taken control of it, but Cassian had his ways. After all, he was the Alliance’s best spy, and for good reason.  

“You didn’t sleep last night,” K2 had scolded him as he steered the ship out of the Yavin IV hangar, early that morning.

The droid was right, he hadn’t slept. He had waited for Cora to fall asleep, and then silently left her room. He had a mission to get ready for. He didn’t have to be up so early, no one expected him to leave the base at the break of dawn, but he did it anyway. He had become restless once again, grounded for too long with his mind getting louder and louder.

Still he could have stayed a little longer. The fact that this thought had followed him as he went back to his room to shower and get ready, and it was still with him even as he scurried through the empty streets of Samarkand scared him. Usually, he couldn’t wait to get away from the person that had helped him take care of his physical needs, before they woke up and made things way more complicated than he was comfortable with; before shame took over him. And yet this time he had to force himself to leave her bed and get away.

Because if he didn’t, what then? He’d have to tell her goodbye, and tell her that he’d be going on a mission, and he didn’t know when he’ll come back, if ever. And if he did come back, what then? Go on dates, start a relationship? Start a family?

He never allowed himself to think about having a family, not even in his wildest dreams fuelled by cheap alcohol and despair. He’d always known he’d die young, in the middle of a war, whether it would be this one or the next, or the one after. He’d lost hope there would ever be peace, for him at least. There were people for whom the fight never ended. There were others, like Bail Organa who had a family, raised a daughter, but there were also the ones that have been continuously fighting ever since the Clone Wars. He was one of those. He wasn’t sure what he’d do in times of peace anyway, since the only things he was good at were fighting and killing and lying. What would he do then, a career as a hitman? He snickered.

But he did find himself thinking about Cora more than he liked to admit. She was something safe to think about when he refused to let his mind wander to really dark places. But she wasn’t just a distraction. He liked thinking about her. He liked her. And she liked him back. And that was scary. Because no matter how much he thought about it, this story couldn’t have a happy ending. He couldn’t have a happy ending. And she deserved better.

It was very hard sometimes to silence his mind when he was walking alone, in the darkness, with nothing to distract him. He had let K2-SO wait for daylight on the ship. It was much easier for him to cross the city when the other imperial droids were out in the light, instead of trying to sneak in the darkness. He was much too loud, Cassian always thought. However, the company would have done him good, help him focus on something else besides his thoughts. But he couldn’t risk K2’s safety just because he was scared of listening to his own mind. It was his fault the droid had been injured a while ago, and he couldn’t risk something like that happening again.

The Alliance’s hideout and main office on Samarkand was currently located in an abandoned bar, in the basement of an old apartment building that had been bombed recently during the conflict with the Imperials. The whole building was a little shabby and could cave in on them at any moment, but it was the best they could find on short notice. It had to be big enough to house all the new recruits, easy to defend and not very obvious. With the main entrance blocked by debris, the only way to enter the hideout was through another building and the emergency stairwell, which wasn’t visible from the street. This way, they could come and go as they pleased without the fear of being spotted by the patrolling stormtroopers.

“Welcome back, Captain,” he was greeted by one of the new recruits, a burly man with a mane of black hair on his head. He was seated at one of the tables, an empty bottle of cheap liquor in front of him.

“Glad to be back,” he replied, looking around. The whole place was eerily silent, with only a few people sitting at the tables, watching him intently. Some new faces, he noticed. “Where’s everyone else?” he asked, the feeling that something was wrong suddenly nagging him. He had been in contact with them a few hours before, right after leaving the Yavin IV base, but he didn’t contact them once he entered the orbit, so he wouldn’t risk giving his position away by using the short range communication system. It had been a mistake, he now noticed.

“I don’t know,” the man replied. “That sergeant of yours said it was an emergency. They took off and left us here to guard the place.”

Cassian frowned. There was something fishy going on. His men would never leave the base guarded by so few people and certainly not only by newcomers. His hand rushed towards the blaster but it ended up being too late. His vision went black before he could register what was happening.

When he woke up, the familiar dizziness of a stun gun making his head spin, he found himself on his knees, arms and legs bound together behind his back. He tried the handcuffs, but they proved to be pretty sturdy. He cursed himself for being captured so easily.

“Well, well,” said the burly man -- he called himself Tev, Cassian recalled -- coming into his field of vision. He was flipping Cassian’s vibrodagger, one of his concealed weapons, in a gloved hand. “When we sent the others into an ambush a few hours ago we didn’t hope to catch the recruiter himself. I guess this is our lucky day. Or you’re dumber than everyone thinks you are,” he laughed and a few snickers and cheers erupted in the dark room.  

Cassian looked around. From what he could see, there were five people in the room, besides Tev: four of them looked like locals and weren’t fighters, he could tell from the careless way they played with the blasters, but one of them stood out. He hadn’t noticed him when he entered the room, so he assumed he was hiding in the shadows. He was probably the one that had tased him. He looked like a bounty hunter, Cassian thought. He was a large man, dressed in a dark cloak, a steely expression on his face. He wasn’t playing with his weapons, but neither did he look ready to shoot, a modified E-11 blaster rifle hanging from his belt.

“So that’s what actually happened to them?” Cassian asked, checking his boot for his security kit. It wasn’t there, and neither were the other blades he had hidden in his clothes. The bounty hunter had thoroughly searched him, something he didn’t think the others would be capable of doing. “What do you have to gain from handing them over to the Empire?” He didn’t know if the Empire had ambushed them, but it was the safest bet.

“A comfortable life in the Empire. A well paying job in the military. And a few other little things that our friend here and his connections in the military were so kind to promise us.”

Cassian looked over to the bounty hunter. It wasn’t the first time the Empire had hired bounty hunters to do their dirty work. In this case it seemed to be pretty a pretty good idea: he knew better than some tight-arsed officer what to promise to these poor, miserable bastards for their cooperation. They were gullible and very easy to persuade into following you into battle if you promised them enough. He knew, after all he’d done the same thing. But then he went back to Yavin, the injury of his friend more important at that point than his mission. He had counted on the fact that everyone on this planet hated the Empire way too much to be tempted to join their ranks, but he had clearly been wrong. The less experienced recruiters that were left on the planet hadn’t seen the early signs of betrayal and had fallen into a trap. It was all his fault.

“And you really think they’ll keep their promises? Your friend’s a bounty hunter, the kind of scum that only cares about the money, and the Empire doesn’t give two shits on people like you,” Cassian said, defiantly grinning into the man’s face.

“Shut up!” Tev yelled, coming closer and slapping Cassian’s face with the back of his hand. The familiar taste of blood filled his mouth and his vision blurred a little, but his teeth were still in place. “You’ll see, now that we can hand you over to them too, they’ll give us much more than that! They may even give us a shiny medal for getting rid of you.”

“Why don’t we kill him then?” one of the others asked, the greedy look in his eyes sending a cold shiver down Cassian’s spine. How did people like these end up in the Rebellion HQ?

“They said they want him alive,” Tev explained, looking a little irritated by the question. “It’s their problem what they do with him, we’ll still get our reward.”

“They won’t give you shit,” Cassian insisted, looking as smug and defiant as he could from his kneeling position, earning another slap from the man.

Luck seemed to be on his side this time. The man was incredibly proud, something he had noticed ever since he had recruited him, and from his breath, the bottle of liquor didn’t drink itself. He had managed to easily get him angry and ranting. And angry meant stupid and not paying attention to what Cassian was doing. A lockpick very well hidden in the lining of his boot, that the idiots had overlooked, was all he needed to get his cuffs open, but he needed them to not pay attention to him. And Tev was doing a great job making a spectacle of himself, distracting even the bounty hunter long enough for Cassian to free himself. But he was still outnumbered and unarmed.

He knew he had to take out the bounty hunter first. That would probably be the trickiest part. The others didn’t seem to be able to shoot straight and hit something even if it stood two meters in front of them, but he didn’t know how skilled the stranger was. He seemed rather smug, keeping his weapon holstered, meaning he didn’t consider Cassian to be an immediate threat. So he had to take him out fast, while he was still relaxed.

The opportunity came when Tev approached Cassian once again, spitting some very nasty words in his face and poking his cheek with the vibrodagger. A sudden and well placed hit to his neck was all Cassian needed to break his windpipe and take the knife from his hand, as the former rebel clutched onto his neck. In a few seconds the blade was turned on and lodged into the bounty hunter’s gut, easily cutting through his flesh, severing his aorta. Blood was gushing everywhere, soaking their clothes. He tried to fight back, grabbing the blaster, but the only thing he could do was shoot Cassian in the thigh before he yanked the weapon from his dying hands.

With the blaster now in his possession, it was really easy to take the others out. He had been right, they didn’t really know how to use the blasters. They were probably just a bunch of cargo pilots working for the local mafia, just like Tev, looking for a better life. They may have been tough and resilient, but they weren’t fighters. He still had to shoot them all.

He took back his blaster, his security kit and some other possessions that were crucial for his survival. The rest, he would have to replace at base, when he got there. He quickly searched the bounty hunter for anything of importance, but found nothing except a comm that he might have used to communicate with the Stormtroopers, who were probably on their way already.

He hurried to the command room, a small chamber in which they had set out their equipment. It had been searched, but everything was operated in code so he doubted that they had found anything of value. Still, it couldn’t get into the hands of the Empire, since everything could be decoded with the right equipment and given enough time.

A rather cacophonous array of noises coming from the entrance let him know that the stormtroopers had arrived. A quick check on one of the surveillance monitors proved him right. He had intended to try and get hold of the others through the base’s short range com or find their location on the tracker, but it was too late now. There were too many stormtroopers to be able to take them all on his own, and they were approaching fast.

Ever since they set their headquarters in the old building, they knew that there was always a possibility that it would one day be taken over by the enemy, so they were prepared for this scenario. The whole building was rigged with explosives, making sure that all their equipment would be unusable.  

Cassian punched in the code that armed the self destruct system, leaving him only 5 minutes to leave the building, before it collapsed on top of him. But with his leg wounded and hurting like hell and with the stormtroopers blocking the main exit, he wasn’t sure he would make it. He wasn’t even sure he wanted to.

He knew this whole mess was his fault. He had overlooked some things, underestimated the enemy and put his own feelings above the mission. And now he just couldn’t see a way out. The headquarters was compromised, along with their weapons and supplies, their team was probably dead or captured, either way, there was no way he could save them. He’d have to live his whole life knowing that his stupidity had killed them. But he didn’t have to live...

They’d bury him a hero, he figured, even though they would know it was his fault. Still, no one would dare talk shit about him at his funeral. They only mentioned good things about you, like being dead suddenly made you a better person.

It would be a short ceremony, everyone way too busy to waste too much time on the dead. Cora would probably cry and so would Lewella. The others would be better at hiding their grief and would later hold a toast in their secret meeting place in his memory, bringing out the best alcohol they had. K2 would probably take it the worst. He’d be lost for a while, but he’d find a purpose eventually. Maybe he’d even make new friends. They’d all move on and his memory would fade. He wondered if Cora would remember him over the years, when she’d be old and surrounded by grandchildren. If she’d ever tell them the story of the rebel that had kidnapped her from the Empire…

“Ah, fuck it…” he mumbled and limped towards the emergency exit.

The emergency exit was a narrow shaft that had been once used for maintenance or supplies, Cassian didn’t know. They had installed a ladder, and made it as roomy as it could possibly get, but even without his wound it would still be pretty uncomfortable to go through. Cassian swore, but clenched his teeth and pushed on despite the pain. He wasn’t dying, not yet at least, so the pain shouldn’t be a hindrance. He could take it. He could make it out in time. The clock was ticking, though.

He was only a few meters away from the exit when the booming sound of the explosion filled the air. He hurried, crawling through the tight space as fast as he could, bruising his elbows and knees and scraping his hands. He was almost out the little opening in the exterior wall when the building started to collapse.

Unfortunately, he didn’t make it out on time.

Previous chapter

Masterlist

#cassian andor #cassian andor x original female character #cassian andor x ofc #rogue one #star wars #starlight

[perspectivepodcast]

[Transcript] Side A: Climate Change

This episode was inspired by a conversation with a dear friend, Ajla. Because sometimes the best thoughts are only found thanks to the help of someone who’ll have enough love to rummage through the garbage in your mind and believe they’ll find something meaningful much more than you ever will.

In 1973, Dr. William Rathje, archaeologist and professor of anthropology at the University of Arizona, instituted the Tucson Garbage Project, also referred to as the ‘garbology project’. This was an archaeological and sociological study, carried on in the city of Tucson, Arizona, with the aim of examining the contents of Tucson residents' waste to examine patterns of consumption.

The funny thing was that although many residents volunteered to contribute to the project by sharing their consumption habits, the study made clear that the information shared by the participants were oftentimes not consistent with the quantitative data analyzed from the waste bins. For example, when asked about the number of beers they usually drank, participants tended to self-report more restrained alcohol consumption habits than their actual behavior. That is, if they had declared they drank two beers per week, it wasn’t rare that ten beers were found in the garbage every week.

Is it possible that throwing our waste away can be more similar to hiding what we ourselves don’t want to see about ourselves?

When I first found out about this project, it reminded me of a passage of Don DeLillo’s novel White Noise.

‘No one was around. I walked across the kitchen, opened the compactor drawer and looked inside the trash bag. An oozing cube of semi-mingled cans, clothes hangers, animal bones and other refuse. The bottles were broken, the cartons flat. Product colors were undiminished in brightness and intensity. Fats, juices and heavy sludges seeped through layers of pressed vegetable matter. I felt like an archaeologist about to sift through a finding of tool fragments and assorted cave trash. It was about ten days since Denise had compacted the Dylar. That particular round of garbage had almost certainly been taken outside and collected by now. Even if it hadn’t, the tablets had surely been demolished by the compactor ram.

These facts were helpful in my efforts to believe that I was merely passing time, casually thumbing through the garbage.

I unfolded the bag cuffs, released the latch and lifted out the bag. The full stench hit me with shocking force. Was this ours? Did it belong to us? Had we created it? I took the bag out to the garage and emptied it. The compressed bulk sat there like an ironic modern sculpture, massive, squat, mocking. I jabbed at it with the butt end of a rake and then spread the material over the concrete floor. I picked through it item by item, mass by shapeless mass, wondering why I felt guilty, a violator of privacy, uncovering intimate and perhaps shameful secrets. It was hard not to be distracted by some of the things they’d chosen to submit to the Juggernaut appliance. But why did I feel like a household spy? Is garbage so private? Does it glow at the core with personal heat, with signs of one’s deepest nature, clues to secret yearnings, humiliating flaws? What habits, fetishes, addictions, inclinations? What solitary acts, behavioral ruts? I found crayon drawings of a figure with full breasts and male genitals. There was a long piece of twine that contained a series of knots and loops. It seemed at first a random construction. Looking more closely I thought I detected a complex relationship between the size of the loops, the degree of the knots (single or double) and the intervals between knots with loops and freestanding knots. Some kind of occult geometry or symbolic festoon of obsessions. I found a banana skin with a tampon inside. Was this the dark underside of consumer consciousness?’

Sometimes I wonder: we are a consumer society, therefore our social ambition is to produce only with the aim of consuming what we produce. Does this mean that one day, when our consumer society will thankfully be over and done with, there will be no remnant of our time, of our society, apart from the waste we left behind? Will we be the ones who created nothing but refuse, who couldn’t create anything for the sake of creating something that would outlive us, and maybe speak about us and what we wanted to be remembered for?

One of the reasons why garbology in general, and the Tucson Garbage Project specifically, are a major source of information on the nature and changing patterns of human society, is because for those populations that did not leave any buildings, or writing, or tombs, or trade goods, or pottery, refuse and trash are likely to be the only possible sources of information.

Is it possible that waste, our symbolic festoon of obsessions, be they more or less toxic, will be the only contribution, the only sign of our existence that we will leave for the future? Do we really care in the least about what we leave as a sign of our passage on this planet?

It’s tempting to believe that death could be something spectacular. Funeral pyres, ship burials, fireworks. But that’s rarely how it is. Most often, it’s just a slow, gradual, unpleasant and unremarkable gnawing of all that is life. An unobtrusive agony. A forgetting, piece after piece after piece. A consumption. (The irony.)

I went out the other day and it was mid-February, in the Northern hemisphere. It was almost 20°C. It was beautiful. It was disturbing.

In another passage of White Noise, after a deadly toxic gas had leaked over the town the main character lives in, the sunsets became unnaturally spectacular.

‘We stopped on the parkway overpass and got out to look at the sunset. Ever since the airborne toxic event, the sunsets had become almost unbearably beautiful. Not that there was a measurable connection. If the special character of Nyodene Derivative (added to the everyday drift of effluents, pollutants, contaminants and deliriants) had caused this aesthetic leap from already brilliant sunsets to broad towering ruddled visionary skyscapes, tinged with dread, no one had been able to prove it.’

Later in the novel, the main character describes how gathering on the overpass to watch these newly dramatic sunsets had become a sort of ritual for the people of the town.

‘We go to the overpass all the time. Babette, Wilder and I. We take a thermos of iced tea, park the car, watch the setting sun. Clouds are no deterrent. Clouds intensify the drama, trap and shape the light. Heavy overcasts have little effect. Light bursts through, tracers and smoky arcs. Overcasts enhance the mood. We find little to say to each other. More cars arrive, parking in a line that extends down to the residential zone. People walk up the incline and onto the overpass, carrying fruit and nuts, cool drinks, mainly the middle-aged, the elderly, some with webbed beach chairs which they set out on the sidewalk, but younger couples also, arm in arm at the rail, looking west. The sky takes on content, feeling, and exalted narrative life. The bands of color reach so high, seem at times to separate into their constituent parts. There are turreted skies, light storms, softly falling streamers. It is hard to know how we should feel about this. Some people are scared by the sunsets, some determined to be elated, but most of us don’t know how to feel, are ready to go either way. Rain is no deterrent. Rain brings on graded displays, wonderful running hues. More cars arrive, people come trudging up the incline. The spirit of these warm evenings is hard to describe. There is anticipation in the air but it is not the expectant midsummer hum of a shirtsleeve crowd, a sandlot game, with coherent precedents, a history of secure response. This waiting is introverted, uneven, almost backward and shy, tending toward silence. What else do we feel? Certainly there is awe, it is all awe, it transcends previous categories of awe, but we don’t know whether we are watching in wonder or dread, we don’t know what we are watching or what it means, we don’t know whether it is permanent, a level of experience to which we will gradually adjust, into which our uncertainty will eventually be absorbed, or just some atmospheric weirdness, soon to pass. The collapsible chairs are yanked open, the old people sit. What is there to say? The sunsets linger and so do we. The sky is under a spell, powerful and storied. Now and then a car actually crosses the overpass, moving slowly, deferentially. People keep coming up the incline, some in wheelchairs, twisted by disease, those who attend them bending low to push against the grade. I didn’t know how many handicapped and helpless people there were in town until the warm nights brought crowds to the overpass. Cars speed beneath us, coming from the west, from out of the towering light, and we watch them as if for a sign, as if they carry on their painted surfaces some residue of the sunset, a barely detectable luster or film of telltale dust. No one plays a radio or speaks in a voice that is much above a whisper. Something golden falls, a softness delivered to the air. There are people walking dogs, there are kids on bikes, a man with a camera and long lens, waiting for his moment. It is not until some time after dark has fallen, the insects screaming in the heat, that we slowly begin to disperse, shyly, politely, car after car, restored to our separate and defensible selves.’

Perhaps, when the archaeologists of the future will rummage in the garbage we will have left behind to give some sign of what it was to live the way we lived, what they’ll find is that we were just too overwhelmed to do or know or feel anything. Too lost to understand, or even just to listen.

A couple of years ago, I saw this work from the Japanese artist Shimabuku. The title was The Snow Monkeys of Texas, and this was the artist’s statement:

‘When I visited the monkey mountain in Kyoto in 1992, I heard an interesting story. In 1972, a group of Japanese snow monkeys were brought from the mountains of Kyoto to a Texas desert. The first year, their numbers reduced dramatically. They didn’t know how to live in the desert with cactus, cougars or rattlesnakes. But in the second year, their population grew. Do monkeys adapt to new environments faster than people do? I wanted to go and meet them someday. In 2016, I finally visited them in Texas. I saw that they looked a bit Americanized, somehow. They are a bit bigger, and started to eat cactus. Now they know how to deal with the cougars and rattlesnakes. They have a new language to alert each other. When I spent few days with them under the Texan sun, I decided to make a mountain with ice for them. I filled a car full of ice bags. And I wondered, do they remember snow mountains?’

The video installation showed this group of snow monkeys observing and smelling and touching and playing and sitting on the ice for the first time. I believe it is important to note that the snow monkeys had been sent to Texas in 1972 due to habitat loss around Kyoto, that is when the monkeys became pests to businesses and residents of Kyoto, perforating the barrier between wild and urban spaces.

‘They come one by one. Some monkeys wanted to keep the ice to themselves, then they got bored,’ Shimabuku observed of the 22-minute video. ‘Some shared. Some were bossy […] like people.’ The snow became a forbidden fruit with many monkeys grabbing a handful and running off. But most of them nervously nibbled nearby with a shifting gaze. ‘I didn’t expect them to eat it. [In Japan] they eat flowers, trees and insects. But it is new for them to eat rattlesnake and cactus.’ When asked why it was important to test if monkeys remembered their place of origin, Shimabuku laughed and said, ‘maybe it is not important. Memory is a bridge between animals and people. […] Memory can be at a cellular level. The monkeys looked at the ice and they grabbed it. Some hadn’t seen ice for generations, and still they reacted spontaneously,’ noted Shimabuku.

I wonder if we already are Shumabuku’s snow monkeys, struggling to remember how we were supposed to live after alienating ourselves from ourselves, not knowing what to do, what to know, what to feel in the face of our own nature, a nature we only reluctantly admit to belong to.

Perhaps, the answers already are in the festoon of obsessions we are so careful to hide away in the dumps. If we were brave enough, if we had love enough to go and rummage in the garbage of our civilization believing we could find something meaningful in there, something deserving to be saved, perhaps we could find one good thought to build a future on.

[mrcoreymonroe]

Flying Jump Seat in the Embraer E190-E2

One mean looking aircraft: the first E190-E2 sits at FLL

I have to admit that it is not always easy keeping up with all aspects of the airline business. I knew Embraer was in process of upgrading their E-Jet family (called E2, as it’s the second generation), but I wasn’t sure what that really meant (I am sure LED lighting might have been involved). So, when I received an invite to fly on down to Florida to meet some executives, learn about the program, and take a flight on their E190-E2, how could I refuse? (spoiler: I didn’t!)

It was a quick trip (what I like to call a “turn and burn”). I would hop on a plane (737) on Tuesday morning, head from one corner of the U.S. to the other (I like to call that a “diagcon”), get some sleep (I got about four hours), get up the next day to fly on the E-Jet, and then get on another diagcon to be home by 11pm on Wednesday. Hey, I have done worse, and this trip was more than worth it!

My Alaska E170 a while back

Before this trip, I had flown on an Air Canada E190 in first class, a Jetblue E190 in economy and most recently on an Alaska Airlines (Skywest) E175 in economy. Although my experience has been limited, I can say with no question I love the aircraft. Here you have a plane that takes roller bags, feels spacious, and has 2-2 seating. You know what 2-2 seating means? No middle seats! That should be their slogan “no middle seats here” — slap it on the side of the plane and they will sell.

The night before the flight, a few media and Embraer folks went out to dinner, which is pretty standard. This gives you a chance to get to know people, and maybe ask some more laid back questions that aren’t in a formal setting. In the middle of dinner I sort of stopped my conversation and asked “wait a second, can someone ride in the flight deck jump seat during takeoff?” And without taking a breath, continued with “If so, I call dibs.” The PR folks started smiling and said they were just waiting for someone to ask. Oh yea… I was for sure giddy.

After getting back to the hotel room pretty late that night, I got things prepped for the next day, and hung out on the balcony to watch some lightning storms go by in the distance. With the shark plane flight the next day, I was a little worried of bad weather and possible tornados (yea, yea tornados are over land, but I had to try to make a Sharknado joke somewhere in this story and this is the best I got).

What do you notice first? The model or the President of Embraer Aircraft?

The next morning, we all met in the lobby and headed over to the Embraer facility at FLL. We were greeted with a nice breakfast spread and told to pick our seats. Of course I chose the one in the center for the best viewing of the presentation. Or maybe it was because it was right in front of the large E190-E2 model. Let’s go with both.

We were first given a presentation by the President of Embraer Aircraft Holding, Inc. Gary Spulak. He went over how much of a presence his company has in the U.S. and their positive impact on the economy. He talked about their offices, part suppliers, facilities, partners, and investors. All good stuff. The one name he did not mention in his 30-minute presentation was Boeing, and that shocked me. If you missed it, Boeing and Embraer have said they might, maybe, plan to, but will not confirm a $4.8 billion relationship that would result in Boeing owning 80% of Embraer’s commercial division.

This is huge. So when he asked “does anyone have any questions,” my hand shot up like the kid in the class that knows all the answers (but I don’t know the answers, so that is why I am asking) and I pointed it out to him. I received a “no comment.” He followed it up by saying they have nothing more to say than what has already been released. I reached out to Boeing and got nothing. Sure, I get it, but bummer. So much to ask. So much curiosity. So guess I need to wait.

Our E2 on taxi at FLL – Photo: Mark Lawrence

Then we had Rodrigo Silva E Souza, the vice president of marketing at Embraer, who talked about the changes between the E1s (first generation E-Jets) and the new E2s. I feel that I knew the updates, but after the presentation I think I realized I didn’t fully know. It is still the E-Jet that you know and, maybe, love, but has some of the classical upgrades you have come to expect: improved avionics, updated bins, larger windows, updated engine, 4th-generation fly-by-wire, upgraded range, reduced cabin noise, and planned profitability for the airlines. Hence the “Profit Hunter” moniker seen on the nose of the aircraft.

They also tout a 10% lower fuel burn compared to the Airbus A220 (formally known as the Bombardier C-Series). I love these sorts of comparisons. Let’s take numbers for an aircraft barely on the market and compare it to another aircraft that is barely on the market. I don’t blame them, it is a constant game. During the presentation, the E-Jet family was compared to the Airbus A319, Boeing 737-700, MRJ, CRJ family, and of course the A220. I sort of got the “bring it on” impression. They also shared case studies on how airlines like Spirit and United could make use of the plane. I am guessing they didn’t just get that data for us. After our visit, the airplane is going to be doing a tour around the U.S. (first stop was Seattle, but no comment from Alaska on the future purchase of the airplane).

When the presentation part wrapped up, it was time to head outside into the humid heat of Florida. I live in Seattle for a reason — I don’t handle this sort of climate well. But I totally felt nothing the second I saw the aircraft with that beautiful shark nose. How can you not love this thing? Or fear it?

The very clean and pilot-friendly flight deck

We were running a bit behind schedule, so we loaded on up and I stayed close to the front waiting to get all strapped in. I have been so very lucky to sit in the jump seat two previous times, both in 737s (in a Boeing Business Jet and also in 737-500 that Gogo used to own). Not to mention I have flown right seat in many smaller aircraft throughout the years.

Once my seat was slid into place, I sat down and tried to figure out the seatbelt. It took a bit, but finally got it (five-point harness). I can say that the leg room for the E-Jet jump seat isn’t as spacious as the 737. Personally I could have had my knees in my face, and I wouldn’t have cared. As always in these situations, I didn’t ask questions and obviously didn’t touch anything. The pilots were going through all their checklists and I was just getting giddy.

I have to apologize (more like #sorrynotsorry), but I didn’t get video. With my other jump seat experience, I spent so much effort trying to get video, take photos on my phone, take photos on the camera, etc., that I didn’t get to truly enjoy the experience. I still took some photos, but it was nice to actually enjoy the moment!

When we go to the end of the taxiway and were waiting to be given the green light to line up on the runway, I noticed the pilot pulled back on something. On closer inspection, it was an e-brake and looked like one you would find in many cars. I had to think back and I did not remember any other aircraft having a brake quite like it (let me know in the comments if there are any).

Lift off!

Then it was time. Time for takeoff. There wasn’t much spooling. Just GO! You cannot beat it. Doesn’t matter how great a takeoff might feel in the back of the plane, it is a totally different experience up front. Not just the views out the front windscreen, but also watching the dance of the pilot’s hands and avionics as we get to altitude.

Up to this point the pilots had not said but maybe one or two words to me (they were busy doing their jobs). However, the captain hit the auto-pilot button, turned to me with a smile, and said we are set. Then I was able to start asking questions, like a kid flying for the first time. “What does that do? What does that light mean? Can you see planes on that screen?” I find that pilots really enjoy when people have a genuine interest in what they do.

I wanted to stay up there all flight, but figured I should probably be kind to my peers. So with some grace (i.e. I didn’t fall), I was able to get out of the jump seat and head to the back of the aircraft to spend the rest of my journey.

The cabin is like the old E-Jet went on a few dates on the Boeing Sky Interior and some of its positive attributes rubbed off. You have your larger overhead bins that will allow every passenger to bring on a roller bag. You have your LED lights that can change to different colors to give the sense of space or to throw a party mid-flight. It just has a positive energy and feels more spacious. By no means is it an insult to say that it is very similar to the Sky Interior — I think Boeing has done a great job with it and it makes a huge difference on the 737.

It was also quieter. Those Pratt and Whitney engines still had a nice purr that an AvGeek could enjoy, but are quieter to allow one to talk more easily in the cabin.

Unfortunately after looping down by Key West, the flight wrapped up in about an hour and we made our way back to FLL to land. I had lunch, I headed to the airport, and then back on another 737 home to Seattle.

Let’s remove the beaches, the jump seat, the good people. The bottom line, is this is a great plane to fly in. I have been on a few A220s, but not flown in one yet. I am impressed with the cabin for many of the same reasons I am impressed with the E2. I think it pretty cool that the A220 makes the middle seat a bit wider, but you know what’s better? Not having one.

Good bye sharkie airplane!

I feel the same way that I did when I last flew the E-Jet — I would rather fly it vs. the A320/B737 family. That 2-2 layout, the quick boarding, and the large windows are an attractive combination. Add on the extras of the E2 and you have a winner. I just look forward to seeing how a “potential relationship” between Boeing and Embraer might impact the future of the E-Jet. And of course, who doesn’t love a little AvGeek speculation on what they might call the E-Jet, if they decide to change the name. B212? B818? B616? E717?

Note: Embraer paid for my flights, all-too-short lodging, and food, although all these opinions (snarky or not) are mine. 

The post Flying Jump Seat in the Embraer E190-E2 appeared first on AirlineReporter.

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Danktain Amerimeme: 20 Hilarious Chris Evans Superhero Memes

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Danktain Amerimeme: 20 Hilarious Chris Evans Superhero Memes

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In 2011, the MCU released its fifth movie, Captain America: The First Avenger starring Chris Evans as the titular hero. Seven years have passed and it looks like we will be saying goodbye to Chris Evans, and by extension Steve Rogers, after the fourth Avengers movie which is slated for release in May 2019. Over the years, the fans have come to love both Evans and Captain America, so both will surely be dearly missed. The role of Captain America has pretty much defined Chris Evans’ career. While he wasn’t exactly a nobody before he joined the MCU, he wasn’t a huge star either. But after spending almost a decade in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, there’s no doubt that Chris Evans is now a universally recognized Hollywood A-list star.

However, the part of Captain America was not Chris Evans’ first superhero role. As you may or may not remember, Chris Evans also portrayed Johnny Storm, aka the Human Torch, in the Fantastic Four franchise. Naturally, since Evans played two superheroes, both of whom are characters from Marvel Comics, the internet felt the need to create heaps of memes about it. We did a little research and fund 20 hilarious Chris Evans superhero memes.

20. IDENTITY CRISIS

Captain America: The First Avenger was a movie about how a skinny kid from Brooklyn named Steve Rogers became the world’s first superhero. Due to numerous health issues, Steve Rogers was rejected from military service despite several attempts to enlist. Determined to serve, he volunteered for the top-secret Super Soldier program, which enhanced Steve to the peak of human perfection. Finally, Steve was given the green light to join the war, but as a mascot under the moniker Captain America. After single-handedly liberating captured Allied prisoners of war, Steve was given a combat role in the war. While on a mission to capture Armin Zola, Steve Rogers crashed into the Arctic and spent 70 years encased in ice until he was found by S.H.I.E.L.D. in the 21st century.

S.H.I.E.L.D. cleared Steve Rogers for duty, gave him a new suit and sent him off to fight an army of aliens with other superheroes. And why wouldn’t they? The Super Soldier serum granted Steve Rogers enhanced durability, enhanced stamina and regenerative healing factor, just to name a few, so what possible reason could S.H.I.E.L.D. have not to give Steve a clean bill of health. Well, perhaps they should have paid closer attention to his mental health. He seems to have forgotten who he is.

19. MISSING SINCE 2007

Captain America is the paragon of courage and righteousness. Steve Rogers has always been known for his noble and honest spirit, empathy and intolerance towards injustice. Steve is the example of the perfect hero whose morals are incorruptible and whose will is indomitable, which is why the other Avengers want to follow him. And Chris Evans portrays Steve Rogers perfectly. Not only does he look the part, Evans has the acting chops to effortlessly transform into this idealistic All-American Boy we know and love from the comics.

Evans’ role as Captain America in the MCU is in stark contrast with his role as the Human Torch in the Fantastic Four movies. The impulsive and immature Johnny Storm is far more self-centered. For Johnny, having superpowers and being a superhero is about having fun and stealing the spotlight every once in a while. Sure, he will help people and fight the bad guys, but he will also stick around to get recognition. Unlike Steve, Johnny was not a responsible team leader and would often disappear without a notice, leaving his team members to figure out where he disappeared this time. On one such occasion in 2007, Johnny disappeared and was never seen again. What could have possibly happened to him?

18. TRIGGERED

The year 2016 was the golden age for hero vs. hero movies. First, the DC Extended Universe made a movie in which Batman and Superman had a brief fight before realizing that both their mommies are named Martha and deciding to cease and desist. Then, the Marvel Cinematic Universe gave us a movie about an ideological conflict between Tony Stark and Steve Rogers, which led to a showdown between their respective teams of superheroes. The two heroes clashed over the issue of Sokovian Accords, however, countless memes that have plagued the internet over the last few years have made their argument about anything but that.

Is the dress white or blue? Is Holland the best Spider-Man or Maguire? Does the recording say Yanny or Laurel? And so on and so forth. Other times, the argument is about more personal issues, such as in this case. It’s no secret that the Human Torch didn’t look all that great in the Fantastic Four movie and Stark knows it. So, when Whiplash kind of set him on fire in Iron Man 2, Stark decided to poke some fun at his buddy Steve Rogers. Little did he know that his actions would be the cause of a war.

17. THOUGHT THEY LOOKED SIMILAR

One actor playing two different comic book characters is of course nothing new. Jon Favreau who plays Tony Stark’s chauffeur Happy Hogan previously portrayed Foggy Nelson in the 2003 Daredevil movie. Ryan Reynolds who’s currently playing the Merc with a Mouth, but he also made the horrible decision to do that terrible Green Lantern movie. And 2018 proved to be a monumental year for Josh Brolin who appeared as Thanos in Avengers: Infinity War and Cable in Deadpool 2. Josh Brolin’s Avengers: Infinity War co-star Chris Evans also portrayed two comic book characters in his career.

In 2005, Chris Evans starred in the Fantastic Four movie alongside Ioan Gruffudd, Jessica Alba, Michael Chiklis and Julian McMahnon, which received mostly negative reviews and a surprising sequel. So, in 2007, Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer was released to slightly better reviews but still nowhere near what is generally considered a positive reception. When the third movie was canceled, Chris Evans went on to play a different superhero — Captain America in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Now that the Fantastic Four are back in Marvel’s capable hands many are expecting the superhero group to appear in the MCU. But, we’re pretty sure the part of Human Torch will need to be re-cast.

16. FUNNY YOU SHOULD ASK

The big fight between Tony Stark and Steve Rogers in Captain America: Civil War did not come out of nowhere. Ever since their first encounter in Marvel’s The Avengers these two heroes haven’t exactly seen eye to eye. Their showdown in Captain America: Civil War is the culmination of a conflict that started years ago. In the fist Avengers film, Steve Rogers implied that apart from the suit of armor Tony Stark had nothing else going for him, but Tony had the perfect reply. Well, tables have turned and now it’s Tony asking the important question. Who is Steve Rogers without the shield?

Well, funny he should ask that because Steve Rogers too has the perfect reply ready to go. Clearly, Robert Downey Jr. hadn’t taken into account that Captain America is not the only superhero Chris Evans has portrayed. Before Evans became Steve Rogers, received the Super Soldier serum, picked up the shield and joined the Avengers, he hung out with a different group of superheroes. So, even if you were to take away the shield from Steve Rogers, he’d still be a hero. He wouldn’t be the Cap anymore, but thanks to Chris Evans he’d just go back to being the Human Torch.

15. SURPRISED?

The Matrix Morpheus meme is possibly one of the most widespread memes on the internet. According to the available data, the meme originated on Reddit back in 2012. The meme features a screen capture of the Matrix character Morpheus, played by Lawrence Fishburne, with the two-line caption. The caption starts with “What if I told you” and it is followed by a revelation that undercuts something that is pointless, trivial or common knowledge. Interestingly enough, the line “what if I told you” was not uttered in the movie, which could mean that this is yet another one of those weird cases of the Mandela effect.

But, if you remember seeing Chris Evans’s flaming figure soaring across the sky, there’s no reason to worry. That did in fact happen. Before he was cast as Captain America in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Chris Evans portrayed the Human Torch in the Fantastic Four franchise. Evans looked significantly different back then though. Besides being younger, he sported a buzzcut and wasn’t nearly as buff as he is now. But even then, Evans had all the makings of a hero. Unfortunately, the Fantastic Four movies didn’t quite work out as planned. Thankfully, the MCU managed to redeem Chris Evans.

14. DECISIONS, DECISIONS

Life is all about making decisions. Do you get Chinese or pizza for dinner? Do you stay at home and binge Jessica Jones or go out with friends? Do you go to college or get a job after high school? If you do go to college, what major do you choose? Do you spend your hard-earned money on comics, figurines and t-shirts or do you use it to buy stuff you need for the home? Decisions, decisions… At every step, we must make some kind of a decision that could possibly have lasting consequences. And since we are only human, after all, oftentimes we are indecisive. But don’t let that worry you too much. Chris Evans seems to be having the same problem with making decisions. Surely, having two superhero alter-egos can’t be easy and it has clearly taken a toll on Evans.

Pictured on the meme above, the pensive Evans seems to be contemplating whether he should flame on and take to the skies or jump into his Captain America persona and throw his shield. An important decision for sure, but we hope he makes up his mind fast because if the enemy is at the door either one of these guys would be pretty useful.

13. HOW TO MAKE IT AS A SUPERHERO

Making it big in any profession, including acting, is challenging, arduous, but rewarding work. Success doesn’t come overnight. Even the stars of the Marvel Cinematic Universe have experienced hardships in order to get to where they are now. Take Chris Evans for example. Nowadays, Chris Evans is one of the best-known actors the world and all thanks to his role in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The actor will soon be bidding his farewell, and as difficult as it is going to be to say goodbye to Captain America, it will be equally as difficult to say goodbye to the man who has dedicated almost a decade of his life to portraying this iconic comic book character.

Playing Captain America for nearly ten years has turned Chris Evans into one of Hollywood’s biggest stars. However, Evans wasn’t always such a huge star. Before the MCU got off the ground, Evans tried to make a name for himself by starring as a different superhero in Fox’s Fantastic Four movie. The MCU star portrayed the Human Torch in two Fantastic Four movies, that weren’t exactly of the best quality. Luckily, that didn’t stop Chris Evans from trying again when Marvel came knocking only four years after the release of the second Fantastic Four movie. He started from the bottom but look at him now.

12. TWO FOR THE PRICE OF ONE

Chris Evans is one of the not so few actors who have portrayed more than one comic book character in their career. Back in 2005, Evans appeared for the first time as Johnny Storm, aka the Human Torch, in Fantastic Four. Two years later, Chris Evans reprised his role in the sequel movie, Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer. The Fantastic Four franchise received mostly negative reviews from both the critics and the audience and the planned third movie was canceled. Four years after the release of Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, Chris Evans was back in the realm of comic book movies, this time as part of the growing Marvel Cinematic Universe.

In 2011, Marvel Studios released its fourth movie, Captain America: The First Avenger with Chris Evans as the eponymous hero. This time around, Evans indeed struck gold and became an integral part of the MCU. His role in the Marvel Cinematic Universe made him an A-lister and a household name. Chris Evans is now universally recognized as Captain America and most people have all but forgotten that he once played that flaming guy in Fantastic Four. Still, the fact remains that with this guy you get two superheroes for the price of one.

11. GOOD JOB BARRY

The CW’s Flash has this nasty habit of traveling back in time, interacting and messing with past events, screwing things up usually for the worse rather than for the better. Over the course of four years, we’ve witness Barry mess up pretty much everyone’s life, including his own. But what if all the time travel that Barry did actually led to something good for a change? Is it possible that somewhere out there positive outcomes of Barry’s meddling with time have occurred that we just don’t know about? Well, as it tuns out, not only is it possible, it has actually happened and in a big way.

As we all know, the Fantastic Four movies haven’t exactly been the best the superhero genre has to offer. The Tim Story franchise with Chris Evans as the Human Torch was ridiculed by fans on every occasion, until the reboot with Michael B. Jordan as the Human Torch came out and proved that it is possible to do far worse. Thankfully though, both of these amazing actors were saved by the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Chris Evans has been playing Captain America for years now and Michael B. Jordan’s Killmonger stands as one of the best villains in Marvel and superhero movies in general. And all of that happened thanks to Barry Allen.

10. HE’S A FRIEND FROM WORK

So, in the year of our lord 2017, Disney made a deal with 20th Century Fox to acquire the rights to Marvel characters including the X-Men and Fantastic Four. Naturally, none of these characters have appeared in the Marvel Cinematic Universe yet, but at least now there’s hope that at some point they will be introduced in a future movie or television series. Prior to the release of Avengers: Infinity War fan theories were suggesting that some of the X-Men or Fantastic Four characters might make an appearance in Infinity War. As we all know, that did not happen and we’ll have to wait a bit more for either of these two groups to join the MCU.

Of course, for either of these two groups to join the Marvel Cinematic Universe the roles would have to be re-cast. Obviously, the MCU can’t use the new Fantastic Four cast because Michael B. Jordan played both the Human Torch as well as the villain Killmonger in Black Panther. However, using the old cast wouldn’t work either. Chris Evans, also known as the actor who plays Captain America, played the Human Torch in the older Fantastic Four movies. So, if the Human Torch was to sweep in to save the day in Infinity War, it would have gotten a bit confusing.

9. HOW DEADPOOL SEES CAPTAIN AMERICA

Deadpool’s Wet on Wet teaser was quite possibly the most imaginative and hilarious piece of advertisement for Deadpool 2. It just doesn’t get any better than Ryan Reynolds dressed up as Deadpool, dressed up as Bob Ross, pretending to draw a breathtaking landscape while being high as a kite. If for some reason you haven’t seen this masterpiece of a teaser, that only shows footage form the movie for all of ten seconds, you better go fix that right now. We’ll wait.

Not surprisingly, the movie lived up to the hilarious marketing campaign, providing lots of laughs, fourth-wall-breaking jokes and oh so many Easter eggs. Deadpool even got the opportunity to showcase his artistic talents in the movie by drawing up a plan of attack with crayons, although it wasn’t such high-quality work as his work in Wet on Wet. The infamous teaser inspired the creation of tons of hilarious memes by internet’s most talented comedians. This particular meme shows us how Deadpool sees Captain America. Chris Evans may have stopped being the Human Torch over a decade ago, but Deadpool still sees him as Johnny Storm. Although we find Deadpool’s joke hilarious, we doubt Steve Rogers will feel the same.

8. HOW TO DEFEAT THANOS

Avengers: Infinity War came out and hit us like a ton of bricks. We knew Thanos was coming, we knew he was bringing his army, we knew he wouldn’t go down easy, we knew lives were gonna be lost, we knew all that and more, but we were not prepared for what came. Ten years of Marvel movies weren’t enough to prepare us for the emotional roller coaster that was Avengers: Infinity War. We kept expecting our heroes to find some way out, a way to defeat Thanos, to save the Earth — the Universe, and it almost happened, yet Thanos still won.

Despite the herculean efforts of Thor to forge a weapon that will be powerful enough to kill the titan; despite the fearlessness shown by the team that battled Thanos on Titan; despite the indomitable will of the team in Wakanda that faced off against the Black Order and Outriders, Earth’s Mightiest Heroes could not reign victorious over the Mad Titan. But, a number of heroes were absent from the fight, which has led to questions about whether they could have tipped the scales. And according to this meme, the hero that could have made the difference in the battle against Thanos is the Human Torch, but Chris Evans used the wrong powers.

7. I’M STILL HERE, GUYS

As the big finale of this version of the Marvel Cinematic Universe grew closer, fans went wild with their speculations about who will be left standing after the battle with Thanos. Actors like Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans and Chris Hemsworth have contracts that come to an end with the still untitled Avengers 4 movie and that has led fans to believe that Iron Man, Captain America and Thor won’t make it out alive. Chris Evans even announced that Avengers 4 will be his last appearance as the Star Spangled Man with a Plan in the MCU. Steve Rogers’ possible — or if you will, impending death has stirred a debate over who should take on the mantle of Captain America once Steve is dead.

The first obvious choice is, of course, Cap’s childhood best friend and ex-army buddy, James Buchanan “Bucky” Barnes, aka the Winter Soldier. The other option, is Steve Rogers’ new best buddy, Sam Wilson, aka Falcon. There are various theories about how each of these plotlines could come to pass, as well as tons of amazing fan art depicting either Bucky or Sam as Captain America. But, as fun as these theories are, and as jaw-dropping as the fan art is, it is important to remember that Steve Rogers is still alive.

6. COLLECT ALL SUPERPOWERS

At the moment, at least until May next year, Chris Evans is our Captain America. Evans has been playing Steve Rogers ever since Captain America: The First Avenger, which came out in 2011. But before he joined the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Chris Evans played a different Marvel superhero. In 2005, Evans appeared for the first time as Johnny Storm, aka the Human Torch, in Fantastic Four. Despite poor reviews, Fantastic Four received a surprising sequel movie in 2007. However, since the sequel didn’t do much better than the original, plans for the third movie were canceled. But what did Chris Evans do in the period between the moment Fantastic Four ended and his run in the Marvel Cinematic Universe began? Well, he was playing yet another superhero, what else.

In 2009, Chris Evans, Dakota Fanning, Camilla Belle and Djimon Hounsou starred in a sci-fi action thriller movie centered on a group of people born with superhuman abilities who come together in order to take down a government agency that aims to enhance their powers in hopes of creating an army of super soldiers. Push, as the movie was titled, was panned by the critics for being too convoluted. Evans played Nick Grant, a Mover, which translates to telekinetic powers.

5. OOPS!

Chris Evans has been playing Steve Rogers, aka Captain America, in the Marvel Cinematic Universe for seven years now. In 2011, Evans made his debut as the Star Spangled Man in Captain America: The First Avenger, the movie that gave us the origin story of Captain America. One year later, Steve Rogers returned in The Avengers to fend off an alien invasion. In 2014, Evans’ starred in his second solo MCU movie, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, which is where the scene you see above was taken from. Now, after having played Captain America in two movies, you’d think Chris Evans would be aware of the powers his character has.

However, it appears that Evans got his two superhero roles mixed up and thought he was still playing the Human Torch. Expecting to burst into flames and fly away, he jumped out of the elevator, only to realize midair that he got the wrong movie. Really, Chris? It’s been seven years since you last put on that horrible blue onesie and flamed on. How is it possible that you’re still hang up on that movie? Besides, it’s not like you downgraded with Captain America. On the contrary, your role in the MCU saved you from being forever remembered as the guy who played Human Torch.

4. THERE’S ALWAYS HOPE

The Marvel Cinematic Universe is the most profitable movie franchise ever. Four MCU movies are in the top ten highest grossing movies of all time, including Avengers: Infinity War, which is number four on the list and still making money. Actors’ careers have been saved and made by the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Robert Downey Jr. hit rock bottom after his affair with substance abuse and the MCU literally revived his career. Iron Man made him relevant again, made him an even greater star than he ever was before. Actors like Tom Holland and Elizabeth Olsen finally got their big break by starring in an MCU movie.

But most importantly, the good guys over at Marvel Studios saved the career of not one, but two Fantastic Four actors. Chris Evans, who plays Captain America, portrayed the Human Torch in the Tim Story Fantastic Four franchise. These movies weren’t exactly creme de la creme, but thankfully the MCU managed to redeem Evans. Years later, Michael B. Jordan played the Human Torch in the Fantastic Four reboot, which managed to be even worse than its predecessors. However, Jordan too was redeemed by the MCU when he was cast as Killmonger in Black Panther. Good job, Marvel.

3. SOMEWHERE MICHAEL B. JORDAN IS CRYING

For a long time, the Tim Story Fantastic Four movies stood as the paragon of bad comic book movie adaptations. Described as juvenile and simplistic with subpar acting, bland storytelling and poor attempts at wit, it seemed like the Fantastic Four movies couldn’t possibly get any worse. So, when a reboot was announced we were genuinely optimistic, cautious, but optimistic nonetheless. Given how bad the past two movies were, it was hard to imagine that anyone could make a reboot that would be able to reach new levels of awfulness. But, we underestimated 20th Century Fox, the director Josh Trank, as well as writers Jeremy Slater and Simon Kinberg.

With an approval rating of 9% on Rotten Tomatoes, the Fantastic Four reboot, starring awesome actors such as Michael B. Jordan, Kate Mara, Miles Teller and Jamie Bell, is one of the lowest rated superhero movies of all time. Not only did it “surpass” the previous two Fantastic Four films, the 2015 reboot beat some pretty tough competition — including Judge Dredd, Superman IV, and Batman & Robin. No wonder Chris Evans can’t stop smiling. Compared to the train wreck that was the 2015 Fantastic Four film, his Fantastic Four movies were underappreciated works of art. So, keep on smiling Chris.

2. IF AT FIRST YOU DON’T SUCCEED…

If you open Google and look up “actors who played multiple comic book characters” you will get a bunch of results and find out that there are more such actors than you may have initially thought. Some of these actors are extremely lucky and in both cases their movies are successful. For example, Josh Brolin who played Thanos in Avengers: Infinity War and Cable in Deadpool 2. Aaron Taylor-Johnson didn’t have the worst luck either — starring in Kick-Ass and appearing as Quicksilver in Avengers: Age of Ultron. On the other hand, not a single one of Ben Affleck’s superhero movies is widely considered a success.

But, between these two extremes, there are those actors who started off by doing a bad superhero movie and eventually got a role in a good superhero movie. Chris Evans started his superhero career by playing Johnny Storm, aka the Human Torch in the 2005 Fantastic Four film. Six years later, Evans was given the opportunity to redeem himself as Captain America in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Coincidentally, the MCU also saved the second actor who portray the Human Torch. Michael B. Jordan starred in the failed 2015 Fantastic Four reboot prior to being cast as Killmonger in Black Panther.

1. WRONG HERO

In 2005, the Fantastic Four came to the big screen in a movie directed by Tim Story. The film starred Ioan Gruffudd as Mr. Fantastic, Jessica Alba as the Invisible Woman, Chris Evans as the Human Torch, Michael Chiklis as the Thing and Julian McMahnon as Doctor Doom. Despite not getting rave reviews, a sequel was green-lit and two years later Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer was upon us. The cast reprised their roles, luckily, for the last time. The actors moved on to better things — Michael Chiklis appeared on shows like American Crime Story and Gotham, Ioan Gruffudd briefly starred on ABC’s excellent but short-run series Forever, Jessica Alba went to do rom-coms and Chris Evans became Captain America in the MCU.

Chris Evans has been playing Steve Rogers since Captain America: The First Avenger, which came out in 2011. So, four years after hanging up his blue spandex, Evans put on a different costume and once again became a superhero. However, this time he wasn’t a flaming human torch. Now, he was a super soldier with a vibranium shield. An adjustment for sure, and Chris Evans experienced some difficulties getting used to his new role, as the meme so aptly illustrates.

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