#mission: incendiary

[dylanaz]

Me: I hate cliche.

Fanfiction plot: They have a mission. A deadly mission that takes a place on a land where there is no one to trust and no one to depend on except each other to survive. Putting aside their differences and everything that has happened in the past, they have no choice but to collaborate.

Me:

#Zutara #Only them on a mission is my favorite trope #Stormbenders #Rescue Me #incendiary #Mending Wounds

[heritageposts]

The Grayzone has obtained slides from a confidential Israel lobby presentation based on data from Republican pollster Frank Luntz. They contain talking points for politicians and public figures seeking to justify Israel’s assault on the Gaza Strip. Two prominent pro-Israel lobby groups are holding private briefings in New York City to coach elected officials and well-known figures on how to influence public opinion in favor of the Israeli military’s rampage in Gaza, The Grayzone can reveal. These PR sessions, convened by the UJA-Federation and Jewish Community Relations Council, rely on data collected by Frank Luntz, a veteran Republican pollster and pundit. [...] The Luntz-tested presentations on the war in Gaza urge politicians to avoid trumpeting America’s supposedly shared democratic values with Israel, and focus instead on deploying “The Language of War with Hamas.” According to this framing, they must deploy incendiary language painting Hamas as a “brutal and savage…organization of hate” which has “raped women,” while insisting Israel is engaged in “a war for humanity.” [...] Luntz’s Gaza war presentation puts his poll-tested tactics back in the Israel lobby’s hands, urging pro-Israel public figures to stay on the attack with incendiary language and shocking allegations against their enemies. In one focus group, Luntz asked participants to state which alleged act by Hamas on October 7 “bothers you more.” After being presented with a laundry list of alleged atrocities, a majority declared that they were most upset by the claim that Hamas “raped civilians” – 19 percent more than those who expressed outrage that Hamas supposedly “exterminated civilians.” Data like this apparently influenced the Israeli government to launch an obsessive but still unsuccessful campaign to prove that Hamas carried out sexual assault on a systematic basis on October 7. Initiated at Israel’s United Nations mission in December 2023 with speeches by neoliberal tech oligarch Sheryl Sandberg and former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, a recipient of hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations and speaking fees from Israel lobby organizations, Tel Aviv’s propaganda blitz has yet to produce a single self-identified victim of sexual assault by Hamas. A March 5 report by UN Special Representative on Sexual Violence Pramila Patten did not contain one direct testimony of sexual assault on October 7. What’s more, Patten’s team said they found “no digital evidence specifically depicting acts of sexual violence.”

They also advice to use different language for Democrat and Republican voters, which inadvertently provides one of the most succinct explanation of the difference between the two genocidal parties that I've ever come across:

To make their arguments stick, Luntz recommends pro-Israel forces avoid the exterminationist language favored by Israeli officials who have called, for example, to “erase” the population of Gaza, and to instead advocate for “an efficient, effective approach” to eliminating Hamas. At the same time, veteran pollster acknowledges that Republican voters prefer phrases which imply maximalist violence, like “eradicate” and “obliterate,” while sanitized terms like “neutralize” appeal more to Democrats. Republican presidential candidates Nikki Haley and Donald Trump have showcased similar focus-grouped rhetoric with their calls to “finish them” and “finish the problem” in Gaza.

One of the slides, illustrating what language to use:

There are several more slides in the article. I recommend reading the whole thing, start to finish. One more thing I'd like to highlight though:

Luntz acknowledges Israel’s mounting PR problems in a slide identifying the most powerful tactics employed by Palestine solidarity activists. “Israelis attacking Israel is the second most potent weapon against Israel,” the visual display reads beside a photo of a protest by Jewish Voices for Peace, a US-based Jewish organization dedicated to ending Israel’s occupation of Palestine. “The most potent” tactic in mobilizing opposition to Israel’s assault on Gaza, according to Luntz, “is the visual destruction of Gaza and the human toll.” The slide inadvertently acknowledges the cruelty of Israel’s bombardment of Gaza, displaying a bombed out apartment building with clearly anguished women and children fleeing in the foreground. But Luntz assures his audience, “It ‘looks like a genocide’ even though the damage has nothing to do with the definition.” According to this logic, the American public can become more tolerant of copiously documented crimes against humanity if they are simply told not to believe their lying eyes.

. . . full article on GZ (6 Mar 2024)

#free palestine #palestine #israel #gaza #hasbara

[zandiiangelspit]

Mauga x Sombra headcanons~ ♡

'Mess with the best and die like the rest.' 'Who's ready to have some fun?'

Just some personal random headcanons I have about them together - not in any particular timeline order~

Sombra regularly scans Mauga for any issues or irregularities in his cybernetics - mainly his synthetic hearts, to make sure they’re all working properly with his body. She’s no medic but would know exactly who and where to go if she needed him fixed up. 

Looking into his history and files, she doesn’t trust or believe the people who initially patched him up and “upgraded” him did so with the best tech or best intentions - she has contacts that could easily give him better upgrades like she had done herself. 

She admits (aka got caught) scanning Mauga before and explains why she was doing it, to which he initially gets defensive and told her not to do it again. She agreed, but proceeded to do it again anyway.

He quickly works out she does still do it, but silently understands and appreciates why she does. Of course it makes him concerned, with his new lease on life and wanting to feel more alive, he fears one day she may find a fault. But nothing he can’t buy or steal, right? 

Their relationship starts as rivals, and develops into a fiery slow burn. Eventually, they become “I’d ride or die for you.” They’re an inseparable chaotic power couple. 

Mauga is very affectionate and his love language is touch. 

Sombra’s love language is acts of service and words of affirmation. 

Mauga has little to no patience with anyone or anything, apart from when Sombra is hacking. He learns quickly (and painfully) on missions she is not to be rushed, and until she gives the signal, he lets her do her thing. 

It takes a long time for Sombra to open up, finding it hard to convey and show her emotions. She keeps her heart hidden and it takes a while for Mauga to fully earn her trust and break through her walls. 

Deep into their relationship, they both become very affectionate and needy - sickingly so. PDA, not an issue, pillow talk and pet names, always. Flirting and innuendos, constantly. 

They both learn and understand each others language. Both are quick at learning and picking up languages, Mauga less fluent in speaking, but understands and translates. 

Sombra understands his insecurities and temper, letting him express and blow off steam rather than try to contain or repress them. She encourages him to express his emotions rather than convert them or contain them. Something she struggles to do herself. It’s easier to give advice than take it. 

Both having short tempers leads to misunderstandings and arguments early in their relationship, finding it hard to find their common ground, finding it easier to wind each other up more than back off or give each other space. 

Sure, they like to play fight and tease each other, rivalry on missions and healthy banter, but it wasn’t found without fiery clashes. Both have a strong “winning” attitude and don’t back down from a fight. 

Are they flirting or fighting? Who knows? Could be either? Could be both? 

They often go out to blow off steam, smashing up omnic scrapyards and causing chaos, hacking factories and banks, running off energy until they finally feel able to express emotions without explosive tempers. 

EMP + Cage Fight = enemy teams worst nightmare. 

They shower each other in gifts - stolen or otherwise - new tech? Jewellery? Stronger incendiary weapons? Favourite takeout? Highly classified intelligence from extremely wealthy aristocrats? Anything you want baby~ 

Mauga is extremely possessive and loves to make a show of it. Everyone would know who Sombra was with. 

He wouldn’t be jealous or insecure about her wandering astray, (have you seen him?) he would admire and be amused by others trying their luck. He’d even encourage them, knowing her head would not be turned. She’d pity them, and make them believe they could, but all her flirting and interest would be indirectly aimed at Mauga~

Both use their charm and charisma to their advantage, working together to flirt, manipulate and scheme their way around people, getting what they want. Team work makes the dream work~ 

♡

#writing #overwatch #overwatch 2 #aesthetic #Sombra #Mauga #Mauga x Sombra #maugaloa malosi #olivia colomar #ow #ow 2 #Overwatch mauga #overwatch sombra #headcanons #overwatch headcanons #aesthetic board

[spockvarietyhour]

Mass extinction is just the starting point for Fallout, which was developed for TV by Westworld creators (and husband and wife) Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy. After the incendiary mushroom clouds, the story flashes forward 219 years. How did humanity fair over those blighted two centuries? Lucy, one of the lead characters (played by Yellowjackets star Ella Purnell), has no clue. She has lived her entire life inside a subterranean vault, where every need and want has been satisfied while generations and generations await the day when it is safe to surface. When a crisis forces Lucy to venture above on a rescue mission, she finds that the planet above remains a hellscape crawling with giant insects, voracious mutant animal “abominations,” and a human population of sunbaked miscreants who make the manners, morals, and hygiene of the gunslinging Old West look like Downton Abbey. “The games are about the culture of division and haves and have-nots that, unfortunately, have only gotten more and more acute in this country and around the world over the last decades,” Nolan tells Vanity Fair for this exclusive first look. Lucy is nice, but Lucy is naive. In the Fallout universe, the human beings fortunate enough to ride out the apocalypse in underground communities only had that option available to them because they had money. Forcing doe-eyed Lucy out into this sadistic, Darwinian remnant of civilization opens the door for Fallout to engage in some social satire as well as action and adventure. Like HBO’s hit The Last of Us, which was also adapted from a blockbuster video game, the end of the world offers a rich opportunity to comment on the real one.

#Fallout #Fallout TV #Fallout TV Series #Fallout Prime #1) KMAC in that Fallout Jumpsuit. Yes. #2) that assault rifle is HYUGE #AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH #I'm fine #AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

[genshingorlsrevengeance]

3 random gfl girls + sopmod reaction to a S/O with deadly taste for arson both inside and outside of battle. (And is mostly likely hiding warcrime Worthy fire based weaponry)

(GFL) M4A1, ST AR-15, M4 SOPMOD II, and M16A1 reacting to their S/O setting everything on fire

As fun as flamethrower spam is, would it even effect androids and combat droids that much besides burning their clothes? Like, good job you made them look less cute and more like the terminator.

M4 watches as her S/O ignites the entire field in front of them into flames.

While it was good that their enemies would be kept back, she wasn't entirely confident that it'd hold Sangvis T-Dolls back for long.

(M4A1) "While the support is appreciated, try to restrain from causing collateral."

Off the battlefield, it is a completely different story when it comes to S/O's pyromania.

She often comes into the training range with everything on fire, leading M4 to scold her S/O harshly.

Yet whenever it came to the base parties and things needed to get flashy, S/O is the first one she goes to.

(S/O) "Fire time?"

With a tired smile, she chuckles.

(M4A1) "Yes, S/O. Fire time."

Right before S/O is ready to pull the trigger on their flamethrower, STAR hits them on the head with her fist.

(ST AR-15) "What the hell do you think you're doing?! Now's not the time to set the entire place on fire!"

There was a time and place for using incendiary ammo. That did not mean anytime was a good time for using flames. Especially in an environment full of flammable material, including S/O themselves.

T-Dolls were less effected by flames, humans were definitely affected more.

Off the battlefield, STAR just glares at them anytime they think of setting something on fire, even if it was small.

Though she isn't entirely heartless, at least letting them light a candle for a dinner date. But that was the only exception.

(ST AR-15) "It's like dealing with a second SOPMOD..."

(SOPMOD) "HAHAHA! YEAAAH!"

SOPMOD laughs maniacally along with S/O as their enemies are quickly swallowed by the searing heat.

She does nothing but encourage the indiscriminate use of flames, much to the dismay of the AR-Team.

Both her and S/O are quickly disciplined by M4A1 and the Commander for causing so much damage. While effective, it had to be reigned in.

On base, it was even more of a nightmare somehow. Due to SOPMOD encouraging 'fun' activities with her endless energy, they constantly like to set things ranging from training targets and junk equipment on fire.

She also desperately wants a turn using S/O's flamethrower.

(SOPMOD) "Can I use it next mission, pleaaaase?!"

(M16A1) "Hey, got a light?"

M1 takes a quick swig of her Jack Daniel's before pouring it on a rag, stuffing it into the top and letting the nozzle of S/O's flamethrower light her drink.

She quickly tosses it at a group of enemy T-Dolls approaching, and watched their circuits fry before S/O rushed in and took them out, M1 giving them covering fire.

(M16A1) "Hell yeah, that's what I'm talking about!"

With M1, S/O is not reprimanded for using their flamethrower as much due to her quick thinking able to utilize their love for flames tactically.

Off base, she and S/O are constantly scolded by M4A1, for her drinking habits and their pyromania respectively.

M1 doesn't tell them to set things on fire, nor does she do anything to stop them.

(M16A1) "I mean hey, we all got our bad habits right?"

#girls' frontline imagines #girls' frontline headcanons #girls' frontline x reader #m4a1 x reader #st ar 15 x reader #m4 sopmod ii x reader #m16a1 x reader #m4a1 gfl #m4 sopmod ii gfl #st ar 15 gfl #m16a1 gfl

[50cal-fullauto-astarion]

↮ for the sake of having you near [one]

[ part one ] [ part two ] [ part three ]

captain john price x f!veteran!reader (no use of 'y/n') 5.3k words

cw: descriptions of gun violence & gunshot injuries, reader is an amputee & the same age as price, foul language, mentions of terminal cancer, extremely divorced-but-still-in-love behavior from two people that consider one another soulmates(some of these aren't out-and-out cw's, but points that deserve noting) ↮ Twenty years you had known John, and for seventeen of them you were married. After a career-ruining injury in the field, you were forced out of the service, and the marriage did not survive your survival. But: when John goes on leave, he always finds his way home to you. (and a quick shout-out to @alittleposhtoad who's listened to me hoot and holler for days on end about price and the type of man he is, yelling back and forth like banshees circling something beloved lol. thank you posh!)

When John returns from deployment or mission, the world sharpens. Your senses focus. Your blood courses stronger, smoother through your veins. Without even seeing him, you are transmogrified–made stronger, prouder, incendiary–as if proximity to the reckoning that is legend-walking Captain Price makes you whole. 

You roll your eyes. The grandiosity is a bit embarrassing, but he always brought that out in you. Always made you feel like a little girl making doe eyes at the crucified son of god during Christmas service. You’re switching laundry, it’s pissing down rain, and he’s surely parked the Jeep Cherokee he’s had since 2007 right in the center of the driveway, simply to be irritating.

There are keys in the door, and his voice calls out your name the moment he’s stepped through the threshold.

Your hands pause pulling the laundry basket onto your hip before you call back. Despite your chiding, you sensed him before he even made himself known. 

The bitter divorcée says, That’s because you were married to him seventeen years.

The girl that still loves her dearest, oldest friend swats at that thought, a cat soaked in hackles-raising indignation. Shut up, shut up, even the rain falls straighter when he’s home.

“In the back, John.” You force projection into your voice, tranquility, and go to meet him in the foyer. “Shit, would you look at you,” you hum, trying not to stay too terribly amused at the drowned-rat look of your ex-husband. “Long walk from the car to the door?”

He’s a bit blue in the lip, and soaked to the bone under his skullcap and fleece-lined leather bomber. From ten paces, you can tell his fingers are numb plucking at the strings of his boots. But he gives you that raggedy, affable tramp grin of his from under the chops, and raises his brows. Always able to turn on the charm of a boy. 

“Box tortoise in the road,” he chuckles, though it’s marrow-aching with exhaustion. “Had to jump out and help the poor bastard before he got washed out into the creek.”

“Jesus wept, so you were playing around on the bridge.” Admonishment doesn’t live in that statement, only comprehension. Of course, he’d stopped to save a damned tortoise. John loves underdogs. 

You were one of them. You are one of them. 

He looks up and catches your eye, and you’re plagued by the uncanny feeling he’d read your mind and heard that thought. 

You’re too well-trained to show discomfort. Not in the face of him—the man once so inextricably interwoven with you that your hand on his chest was his hand, that his eyes closed as you fell asleep. 

Your prosthetic leg drags a bit as you shift, and you are forced to remember why that no longer holds water. 

“Get your arse in the bath, and I’ll throw something together for you to eat,” you tell him, easy as. If he looks away as your eyes brush across the bruises below his sockets, you do not mention it. It’s something that sits in the soul of him, a stone round the neck, and not so easily fixed with simple respite. “Good deal?”

He drops his elbows on his knees, huffing, shaking his smirking head. Just a small break, a fond one. “Yeah, Prem. Sounds like a good deal.” He looks up at you from the corner of his eye, crow’s feet less delicate in his skin than they had been last you’d seen him, looking like the life you’d missed out on.

+

You were once a woman called Premonition, and it was a moniker that carried and levied a heavy weight. Lieutenant Price was another name you had shed, six years ago, when there was not a dark, disgusting corner of the globe you wouldn’t follow your husband without hesitation. 

You had found each other practically baby-faced, possibly stupid (who at that age does not fall under the phrase young, dumb, and full of cum), when youth allowed wild optimism to think the world could easily be saved once and for all. Reality was quick to beat that notion from both your hides, but never the goal. It absolutely wasn’t harmed by the fact that the two of you had found anchorage in one another—married after only three incredibly brief weeks.

God, your parents and his father had been so upset. Furious. In retrospect, it made sense. But, at the time, weathering the two years it took for them to warm to the sudden marriage was reinforcing—the two of you against the world now a mentality made law, and both were hungry for the conflict it brought. Then two years melted into five, ten, seventeen, and when the end came, your parents mourned.

John lumbers up the stairs–after passing the duffel bag to you when you stick your hand out expectantly–and his steps are heavy, but the stairs are solid. Together, you’d bought this former rectory as a foreclosure. The walls and ceiling were falling in, the wooden floors bloated and warped. Nature creeping in through the cracks. And then, together, you’d rebuilt it, when there was less demand and obligation tied to your combined time.

There was not a stick of timber from the subfloor to the exposed rafters that had not been put there by John’s hands. A carpenter by passion, he’d spent precious months tearing apart and replacing the skeleton of your home, giving it a chance to live another two hundred years. You’d learned to hang drywall, to mud the joints. To replace plumbing, and put down flooring and tile. Little by little, the nigh-on-dead house of worship had risen from its own ashes, and it had come to reflect its owners.

As the divorce finalized, John had intended to find himself a flat–in London, not Somerset–and the clawing-desperate love you still held for him demanded you speak out. 

When you’re home between missions, just come back to the fucking house. You’re a grown man, you ought not be living in a grubby little bachelor’s flat. The indignity of it–absolutely not.

Once you’ve left his duffel in the laundry room, you move to the kitchen pantry. John Price is a man that is not difficult to please. Had you not intimately known the corners of his mind, the utter vastness of that untamed wilderness, you might even venture to call him a simple man. He is anything but, but his pleasures sometimes are.

It became ritual in those early years (when you were both poor as church mice and your salaries poured twin into the rectory) to come off deployments and welcome one another home with soup. Tomato soup, sharp cheddar melted into it, alongside toasties with swiss cheese crisped on the outer side of one slice of bread.

Greasy, heavy, hearty, and warm. Cheap, most importantly back in the early days, and reliable—you remember piling up on the full-sized mattress that sat directly on the floor of the would-be master suite, back in the day, dunking halves of your sandwiches in the same repurposed margarine tub of soup, laughing and talking and leaving behind foreign lands.

The first time he made it for you after the initial separation, you were able to hold it together long enough to eat and thank him and smile, but nearly immediately afterward, you locked yourself in your walk-in closet and cried on the floor for thirty scorching minutes.

In the present, he trots down the stairs in a henley and flannel pajamas, chest hair peeking from his collar. He looks fresh, but exhausted. “I was hoping that was what you were making,” he groans, entering the kitchen, coming around your side to look over your shoulder. “You put–?”

“Cheddar, hot sauce, worcestershire, and garlic in it?” you finish for him, looking at him from under your brow, moving to the next pan over the flipped the toasties. “Aye, John.”

He spreads his hands in mock surrender, a smile pulling at his mouth. He always asks, and you never forget. It’s the way it’s always been–minus his hand not being  on your hip, and his lips not pressing into your shoulder.  

Your stomach clenches, but you don’t let it show. He’d been very careful to stop doing that. It had been his second nature, to touch you whenever he could. It had once been yours, as well. It was hard for both of you to carve it out of your joint muscle memory. The procedure always felt botched, and every time your hands twitched toward one another, you knew it was not going to ever fully heal.

There are just some infections you learn to live around. The pair of you were more one person than you ever were two. 

On opposite sides of the kitchen table–a beautiful piece John had crafted from the rectory’s old, stately doors–you ate in relative silence, the sound system murmuring along with old American country-western songs in the background, rain slapping against the windows bricks of your home. This is where work talk would’ve happened, once upon a time.

Now, silence festers in the grave of it. It’s hard to help yourself through it. 

All it took was one bad call—a microsecond-long error in an AQ safehouse in Beirut—and the complete totality of your life evaporated before your eyes. A scared kid, a human-trafficked baby turned child soldier, with a shotgun in his arms, hiding behind a door. 

It is still bizarre to you, the way your eyes widened, your hand reached for your radio. How your legs were knocked out from under you, and you were deafened. You looked toward the kid–he’d dropped the shotgun, but he still glared–and stupidly, you told him you were here to help, but you just couldn’t stand up. Like one of your knees was gone, because it was.

One of your sergeants shot the kid in the eye. His head slammed back into the wall before his chin met his chest. You were furious and confused and cold. 

“How’re the boys?” you ask, blinking past the medevac, the lost weeks on life support after the difficult amputation, the first time you saw John, so starved of sleep his eyes had turned black. 

John stops eating now, pushing his spoon around his soup, served now in separate bowls that look like plates that look like bowls. “Fine,” is all he can tell you. His shoulders go tight, and a flintiness briefly flashes in his eyes, before it melts into nonexistence. 

The most you could get out of him anymore was to ask if his boys were okay. He’d give a gruff, reluctant yeah, and offer no more than that. You dread the day that question is met with silence. 

“How’s Simon?” you push, suddenly sharp in the mouth, wanting to draw a drop of blood, to needle him until the pain sends fireworks through his pain receptors. Nothing can get to him like name-dropping his first lost boy.

Christ took on apostles the way John takes on war-makers.Even yourself, a Mary Magdalene now stricken from the record without remorse to sate the demands of the beast’s nature. Endless is his grace, his ability to build trust, and his dogmatic perseverance. 

But, in his line of work, that begs the question: if the apostles were meant to serve Christ and spread his word, and a war-maker is willing to fight, kill, and die for Captain John Price, does that–in this hypothetical, mirror-flipped simile–mean that where Christ died to wipe the slate clean, John must live on long past his followers?

You’ve never liked the roads that question leads your mind down. The answers are unkind, but not unlikely.

He drops his spoon with a clatter against his bowl, giving you a hard look, a rictus smile sitting under subzero eyes. It’s a warning. It’s the Captain, teeth bared. The Lieutenant rises in you, the one person unafraid enough to grab his collar and heel him, and you lean forward, meeting his look.

Locked in a stalemate, neither of you budge. He had to stop talking shop after your discharge. It was the nature of the beast. 

You knew it, he knew you knew it. The fucking world was at stake, and no matter how intimately you were acquainted with Captain Price’s history being the lover to shadows, secrecy, and sacrifice–no matter how much blood, sweat, and tears you poured into his neverending crusade–you were removed from the life. It was no longer yours to know. Big red classified stamps across his brain. 

Duty before death, death before dishonor.

Your dinner ends in tense silence and skyrocketed blood pressure, your eyes strangers to one another. Alone and Forsaken by old Hank curls through your kitchen. 

An act of contrition, John takes your dishes to the sink and washes them before stepping out on the covered patio to light a cigar. You check his laundry, and start the walk to lock up and turn the lights down.

Alone and forsaken by fate and by man. Oh Lord, if you hear me, please hold to my hand.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” you snap under your breath, punching the sound system off, before blacking the kitchen lights. For a moment, you stand in darkness, your heart pounding, anger coursing through your veins. Then you go to your bed, leaving John a silhouette and an ember, watching a dark storm from across the garden.

+

The guest bedroom Price has not quite come to call his own, lacking the nerve and comfort to do so, was originally meant to be a child’s. 

The rectory was full of empty rooms and outbuildings, and it turned into a game trying to figure out what to do with them. Those were good times–keeping you tangled up with him in bed, leaving love bites across your shoulders and breasts, throwing proposals back and forth. Some practical, some ridiculous.

Some kind of study–a cigar room (“If you think I’m going to smoke indoors after all the sheetrock work you did.”). Home gym–stripper pole gymnasium (“I can see you up there already, John, putting on shows for me.”). 

It had come down to a simple matter of maths. “Three rooms,” you’d started, sucking and kissing hickeys into the skin above his collarbones, “three kids.”

“Three? Sounds like a lot.”

“Three’s a lucky number. Holy, even. Whole world is built around three’s.”

“Death’s come in three’s. Doesn’t sound all that lucky.”

“That’s only because sex and death sell, media doesn’t cover good things happening. They come in three’s, too.”

He’d bowed his head, sliding back into your sopping wet cunt, and found your mouth. “Three rooms, three kids. Alright. Glad we got that sorted,” he’d purred, basking in your knowing look and pleasured sounds.

You had a way of feeling the future before it happened, but somehow the wreckage of what was to come between the two of you had missed you completely. John thought it was some sort of glitch in the matrix. Maybe you weren’t supposed to lose your leg, get knocked out of the service and the only life either of you’d ever known.

Then again, maybe you were supposed to die in Beirut, and he’s lucky he has you at all, no matter the size of the bitter gulf between you. 

He tosses and turns in what had ended up a guest bedroom, since there were no Price children running around, requiring housing. Insomnia eats at him with a particular frenzy, a measure sharper than it does normally. It didn’t do him any favors to imagine the little furniture he’d wanted to build for this room, or to turn around the imagining of you playing with a fat infant on a soft-colored rug in this room in his mind.

There was a plan, once. Beat endlessly and ferociously against a faceless onslaught of evil—let the people who walk among the light lie ignorant as your united work bloodied the unknown dark—until your bodies could no longer keep up, old and fat and slow. 

At that point retirement was to go into effect, followed by a moneyed slide through Europe, and Asia, and wherever else caught your fancies. Then the purchase of a small place in the countryside—hell, maybe something little and manageable on the Isle of Wight—where, together, you’d warmly and laughingly succumb to alcoholism. See if cirrhosis, alcohol poisoning, or lung cancer got which one of you first. 

But time kept advancing, never heeding those little, pastoral plans. You lost everything, assimilation to civilian life abrasive and painful. John was pulled into the dark, lived under and in it and through it. Made deals with plenty of different devils.

There was suffering and silence. 

The marriage was a casualty. The kill was confirmed between your dour lawyers in a dull office, while he was out of country. And that was it. Seventeen years, close the tab. 

He pushes himself out of bed, intent on moving, doing something. Maybe fetching a drink, maybe go out to your sculpting shed, see if the Glock 19 hidden under the desk is still in shape. It will be—but he wants something easy to fuss over.

An easy thing to fuss over is not what he gets when he sees blue light from under the crack of the master suite’s door. Telly’s on. He can clearly hear Anne Robinson presenting The Weakest Link, and his shoulders unlock. Didn’t know you still slapped that on when you couldn’t sleep. It used to be a game, prattling out the answers while the contestants flubbed about. 

He heads downstairs to fetch two heavy-bottomed tumblers, glugging two fingers of scotch each–Glenmorangie. Decent sipping scotch, room temp, but a bit too sweet for his taste. 

Upstairs, he raps on the door with two knuckles, and waits until you call on him. He’d always knocked, but nowadays, there are more upsetting states to find you in than indecent. “Hey,” he starts, gesturing with the glasses he holds in the fingers of one hand. “Saw light under your door, couldn’t sleep either. Fancy a nightcap?”

Christ, though, but aren’t you as stunning as the day he met you. Maybe even more. Age had allowed you to grow into your bone structure–put an elegance in your features, a wisdom in your eyes. Your beauty had only settled into you more deeply, or his foolish heart had only grown to embrace and envelope the vines his love for you had wound about his heart.

“Yeah, alright,” you mutter, voice crackly with exhaustion, beckoning him over with an ambivalent motion of the hand. He rounds to your side of the bed–the side you’d slept on from the very first night you’d snuck into his barracks room and shimmied under his blankets, a thief in the night with a wicked grin–and holds out a glass, never letting his eyes stray to your prosthetic and glove propped against the far side of your nightstand. 

After a sip, you look up, brows raised in question, and he shrugs, “The Nectar d’Or called out to me.”

“I’m sure.” It’s skeptical, but a smile pulls at your mouth. It must’ve pleased you, because you roll onto your hip, and turn the blankets on his side of the king sized mattress. “Sleepover?”

“Mindreader,” he hums, obliging as casually as he can. He knows you will not touch in the night, and that a barricade of pillows will be erected betwixt your bodies like sandbags on the beach at Normandy, but to even hear your breathing as he closes his eyes is a gift.

“So I’ve been accused,” you laugh, a little warmer, eyes lidded comfortably, watching him sink down against the unbearably welcoming, cool mattress. Premonition. Future feeler. Hell of a woman. In a world numbering eight billion lives, he’d never come into contact with another such as you.

He settles back against the down pillows, grunting at his stiff back, but settles, training his eyes on the screen and the overdone BBC production. Anne poses the question, formatted on the bottom of the screen, “What war-time song by Vera Lynn included the words 'Don't know where, don't know when…?’”

“It’s obvious: ‘We’ll Meet Again,’” you sigh into your glass, the same moment John rolls his eyes and says, “‘We’ll Meet Again,’ even an idiot would know that.”

And if his eyes stray toward yours–and if your eyes catch his from the corner–neither of you remark upon it. Though you do remark upon the poor contestant answering, “‘We’ll Come Again!’” with all the audacious certainty of a homegrown fool.

“Oh, shut the fuck up.” – “So proud, and what the fuck for?” your voices blend together. 

+

September, 2005. Between John, you, and the rectory, there is no money. Not when the roof desperately needs replacing, not when there is a hole in the master ensuite’s floor that goes straight down into the dining room. John has a mind for making the most of money—your mom would call him a cook: a man that turns shit into food like miracles of fish and bread, versus a wizard, who is an idiot that turns food into shit before it even hits your lips. 

His dad was a carpenter, as well, and framing was his trade. He made very little, but tried very hard for John. So he could live a happy life, become an upstanding man. 

(He misses the old bastard. He’d thought the world of you. And, fuck. John’s throat cinches tight every time he thinks about you demanding Price the elder move into the rectory two years ago, after the cancer diagnosis. You’d taken care of him, seen him off quietly and comfortably. John wouldn’t’ve gotten to see him nearly as much as he did through the process, were it not for your perfunctory decision that his father not die in a care home.)

(Abso-fucking-lutely not. John, I want Terry here. Have you ever been in one of the homes? They all look like ghosts, just sitting in the halls, having fuck all done for them. I can have a room ready for him in a day.)

(I promise, honey, I know you’re trying. Let me help.)

(The pet name was a rare slip for you, but he was drunk and near to sobbing, broken with weakness and helpless mourning.)

At twenty-five, dead-broke, married four years, and almost two years past selection, he takes you shopping at Tesco. Meeting you at the back of the red Honda CRX your parents had handed down to you years ago, his big hand finds yours like music box notes—perfectly played and memorized for as long as the mechanism still turns. He starts dropping ingredients for your mental list. 

“Angel hair pasta, olive oil—we have garlic at the house, right? Parmesan—“

He snaps his hand back the moment you snap yours, and you both blink. 

It’s not September, 2005. It’s not a crisp afternoon, it’s right off a downpour. He’s not twenty-five, he’s forty-two, and so are you. The CRX is long gone to the scrap yard, in its place is the Cherokee, well loved, well maintained. 

Swears to Christ that you must be made of Agent Orange, because his fingertips suffer a fire that doesn’t burn from brushing yours. Had it always felt that way to touch you? He’s unsure. There was always something–always fire–but. He thinks of liquor and tolerance levels; thresholds lower after periods of abstinence, causing the latent reunion to make the impact that much more profound.

You both stuff your hands in your pockets. You retake your composure quickly, glancing over your shoulder at the signage on the front of the building. “Ah, hell, then. I didn’t want to go to Waitrose, anyway,” you say with a smirk, shaking the eerie spirit-walk of arrival here by rut-worn memory, absolving John’s empty head. “What else did we need?”

“Crushed red pepper, but I think there’re three or four unopened ones in the pantry,” he snorts, sliding into his unflappable default by force. 

Pasta aglio e olio. Dinner for povos wanting to feel fancy. A staple meal, in those early days, easy to return to. Comforting.

He doesn’t dare allow his hands out of his pockets until he is pushing a trolley, dutifully following you down the aisles. Incredible, how easy it is to fall into well-worn patterns. He wonders, usually when he least wants to, if the two of you are doing yourselves disservices by remaining so close to one another. If certain behaviors have only had a tourniquet put around them, but were never cut off completely the way they should’ve been.

Should one of you move on? You certainly could. At any time you wanted to, really. You’ve always been stunning, whip-smart, and ready-loaded with any number of retorts, quips, and sarcastic commentaries up your sleeve. There is not a single room you step into where you can’t strike up a conversation and leave with a new lifelong ally in your back pocket. The world is your oyster, you’d have your pick of pearls. 

But, for him?  There’s a bruise-soft spot in himself that knows you were his one-and-done. He will never have another love, great or small. 

Beyond that, there lies no rest for the wicked, and John’s hands are tied with very wicked work.

Small bead of resentment that he hates and tries to kill wells up in him at that, following you through produce. He says, “Should get tea while we’re here, it’s low at the house,” but he fights against thinking of weight and loss. Fights against thinking of anger, mourning, instability.

“Ah, shit, ta,” you say, pointing his way in acknowledgement and thanks. If he can crush it—while he carries on chatting, watching you grab things, wanting to pull you in and kiss the pit of your elbow like he used to as you squint a what the fuck look at the price of plums—he will rend into harmless powder the thought that if you had just cleared the room, if you had not always breached first, then life would’ve been completely different. 

He wouldn’t have lost his partner, his other half, the load bearing wall that kept the world and all of its horrendous, heavy sin from crushing down—he wouldn’t find himself so stupidly angry over things no one could control or explain, because you would still be there, the two of you pulling apart and gutting the time bombs threatening the world before they blew and gorged on innocent blood—he wouldn’t—

All at once, he snaps out of it, cold with guilt on the back of his neck like illness. But he says without missing a beat, “No, I don’t think anything will make progress come the next referendum. It’ll probably be more faffin’ about, watching the PM wank off on BBC.”

Your shoulders tense, nodding. He catches you looking at him from the corner of your eye, and he wonders, brief and tight, if you’d read his intrusive, untrue thoughts. If you did or did not, you say, “Honestly, that’s probably it. We’ll end up paying for more parties, meanwhile the NHS is having the piss taken.”

“That’s for fuckin’ certain,” he grunts in agreement. He’s scraped hollow, now that the nonsense has passed. Stone solid, no one on the outside would know. Feels like rot that those ideas would even dare crawl into the far sides of his mind. He doesn’t truly think them. He feels guilt, not bitterness. Sorrow, untouched by rage. All of it he keeps to himself. 

There’s a bit of an unheated, bantering tiff on the quality of Tesco’s fresh pasta—whether or not it’s just pure shit or if it falls into the shadow of public health hazard—and things continue smoothly. John can’t help stealing glances at you, tucking them away like snapshots. 

The dancer’s shape of your hips in movement as you effortlessly find your footing, eyes locked on your target. Your deliriously capable and steady hands, mid-reach. The moon-slivers of your teeth beneath your lips as you speak softly, just for him. You treat him like you’re the only two in the audience, and the world was a show made for whispered commentary between you two. 

You always had. John relishes the fact that, even now, still, he is the only other soul in your opera box. 

Unfortunately, there’ve been groundlings that attempt looks. 

John isn’t enraptured in the label of canned haggis he’s stumbled across, discarded in the produce stand holding grapes, but he’s clicked-in and curious if it was just…brought in from the outside and abandoned? And, shit, these ingredients. Carboxymethylcellulose sounds like readymade cancer, even if it’s just a preservative. Tocopherols sound like doing whippets off a can of hairspray. 

Sounds like something Johnny would try once, honestly, if only to see if he could light his belches on fire. Tactical. Something to think about. 

“Thanks much, but I’m set, I do believe,” you say, sort of lightly, like you’re not paying attention on purpose, and it registers in John’s hindbrain. An old scratch, deep-set. 

A different voice, young and plucky, “Well, if you change your mind, I know it can be kind of tricky. They’re a strange fruit, yeah?”

“Billie Holiday fan, then? Wouldn’t expect it from a kid your age.” Your tone is dubious. For good reason, ‘Strange Fruit’ is hardly the song one should choose to, what? Reference for feeling up produce? John rolls his eyes, turning the canned haggis over looking for an expiry date.

“Hah, maybe not, but I’m hardly a kid, swear it. My mum even lets me out past eleven,” the kid jokes, and there it is. The tone–flirtation, a leaning-in–puts John into an old gear, forcing the can back in the grapes, back straightening, turning on his hip to next turn on his heel, with a raised-brow expression worn on his face that is friendly and questioning, but the query posed is do you really want to be fucking hitting on my wife.

The moment he catches sight of you and your closed off body language, holding an avocado, as a skinny, little twenty-something boy in a grocer’s apron flirts with you, he’s washed over in cold. It ripples straight down his back, sourly bunching his skin. He has to push out a breath to get relief from it. 

“Good for you. Hopefully that means you’re doin’ your own laundry and paying your bills, too, then?” you ask, a pointed and unsaid challenge to back down. Uninterested. 

You’re not his wife. He can’t put on that friendly-not-friendly smile and come to stand next to you, watch the advances wither and die in the face of him as you keep a keen smirk under wraps. 

You return to him though, sans avocados, and search his face. “Alright, John?” you ask, stepping close to his end of the trolley. Over your shoulder, the kid sees John, his eyes widening, and he snaps his eyes to the farthest wall, scurrying back into the produce stockroom.

“Found a can of haggis in the grapes,” he half-lies, “gave me the creeps.”

Your face scrunches, but he can tell you don’t buy it completely. “Fuckin’ disgustin’, did someone bring it in from outside? Do you think they just left it there?”

That, however, is enough to get him to snort. Figures. He doesn’t know if it was the twenty years together, or maybe something frillier–more leaning in to the idea of higher power that he doesn’t believe in or a thread of fate he’s spent his life fighting against–but John can’t be convinced that the two of you were anything but soulmates. Too closely woven-together in thought and action to be anything but split from the same original body you were both denied.

He shrugs. “Who the fuck knows. Can’t tell what the freaks out there are thinking, what their awful little plans are.”

You laugh, raising a brow with a smile pulling at your mouth, and he thinks with a measure of soft sorrow, yeah, soulmates, I reckon.

#john price #captain price #captain john price #captain price x reader #call of duty #call of duty mw2 #cod mw2 #mw2 #my work #im trying to format my posts so they look prettier like yeah bud put a lil more effort in #also reader is 40 im just saying that here straight up she is the same age as price #and they are still massively in love like beanie babies that are soaking wet bc they got left in the driveway during a rain storm

[snicketstrange]

Behind the Periscope: The True Story of Captain Widdershins

Many people don't like Captain Widdershins, but he is actually humanity's greatest hero. Moreover, he possesses the best skill in hiding truths: he can tell half-truths and mix them with lies. I would say he is on the same level as Quigley, or even higher, in deceiving people.

He created an entire character to distract those around him. We see this in a comparison between his young version in ATWQ and his adult version in TGG. Let's analyze his adult version in TGG and see how he is an impressive agent of VFD.I find this book very interesting. I'm not following the reread, but I remember some important points in my theory. Firstly, Captain W. is certainly a big liar.

He is looking for the SB in the ocean because he received information that the SB had been thrown out of the HQ window. Certainly this information must have been received through the telegram equipment that is hypothetically broken. But it was working all the time. Surely after Klaus calculated where the SB was, Captain W sent the information to the mysterious woman or her supporters. He must have sent this information while the children were sleeping.

Thanks to that, the woman got to GG and grabbed SB. She must have arrived at the submarine with the SB in hand. And Captain W decided to abandon the submarine so urgently because the woman said something like: "I can't breathe." He must have taken the SB with him. That's why he needed to send the SB to Hotel D via the crows. The reason SB needed to go to Hotel D was because SB contained a lot of confidential information, much of that information was being cataloged in the real Hotel D.Another key thing is the backstory of the W family that mixes with the Anwistle family and Olaf's actions. It has been explained several times that the word "schism" refers to different events in the recent history of VFD.

We had the Great Schism, which the Man with a Beard and the Woman without a Beard participated in, about 40 years before the main events. As they said, it was at this event that the serpents took the willing side of the schism. Olaf, evidently still quite young, took the willing side of the schism as well, and was trained along with Lemony by VFD. Another important schism was the Anwistle Schism. It is this schism that the W family was unsure whether to participate or not.

Captain W's wife evidently sided with the schism that wanted to use the deadly MM fungus against the enemies that already existed (the incendiary side) while Captain W himself was unsure whether he would support his wife or not. That's certainly what led to the end of their marriage, and the lame excuse about Fiona's mother's death. Fiona herself was still a baby. Around this time, Olaf and Fernald teamed up to put an end to the threat of the deadly MM fungus. This development of events made Fernald very confused about VFD's morals and Olaf's morals.

According to Fernald and Lemony's words about him disagreeing with some of Captain W's attitudes, and Olaf's words about the W family never deciding which side to support in the schism, and the fact that Olaf and Fiona were close when she was still a baby, leads me to believe that Captain W was actually the great hero of humanity. An unrecognized hero, but a hero nonetheless.

The deadly MM fungus needed to be destroyed. That is a fact that, at least I, recognize. But only people who supported Anwistle's schism could approach where the fungus was being cultivated. This is evident by the fact that Kit Snicket tried to convince Anwistle through a letter, instead of solving the problem herself.Captain W had to pretend to be a supporter of Anwistle's schism and infiltrate the sect. In order to help him complete this mission, Captain W managed to marry Fiona and Fernald's mother, one of Anwistle's main persons of interest due to her research work. Additionally, Kit Snicket achieved an engineering feat: building a submarine that required a very small crew to operate, as it did not use human propulsion.Thus, Captain W became a person of interest for Anwistle's plan since his submarine could be used in all the necessary logistics. But at some point, Captain W was responsible for bringing a person from VFD with a bad reputation and experience in causing fires to Anwistle's facilities: Olaf.

Unable to explain his true intentions to Fernald, Captain W posed as a supporter of Anwistle's ideas in Fernald's eyes. And for that reason, Fernald allied with Olaf and helped in the destruction of AA and the deadly MM fungus, without knowing that this was exactly what Captain W had in mind.It was a complicated situation. Anyway, Fernald could not conceive the idea that Captain W would remain a member of VFD even knowing that VFD was responsible for cultivating the deadly MM fungus, without making the proper separation between the wheat and the chaff of VFD. That's why he joins Olaf, who from his point of view was a dissident member of VFD and one of the responsible for saving humanity.

Another important detail is how Captain W manages to pretend that he is completely unaware of JS. At no point did he show any lack of knowledge about the fact that he was actually working with JS, and instead he simply changed the subject and stated that Jacques Snicket was dead. But evidently, Captain W was working with JS. After all, JS knew that the children were arriving in a submarine. This information must have come from the submarine itself and reached JS, and this could only be possible through W's communication with JS or a supporter of JS. This leads us to believe that JS, the recipient of the message in the refrigerator in TSS, was expected at the VFD HQ. He would receive the SB. And he must indeed have received it. After all, the person who really took on the role of Jacques Snicket must have been his brother Lemony Snicket, who is also disguised as a taxi driver, and received the SB just as he had wanted to from the beginning. (In TPP). In other words, Captain W saved humanity again: he prevented the SB from falling into the wrong hands.

#asoue #asoue theory #lemony snicket #asoue theories #Captain Widdershins #a series of unfortunate events #Quigley Quagmire #hotel denouement #queequeg #fernald widdershins #Fernald

[theculturedmarxist]

Conversations about white supremacy in America today typically center on right-wing media and incendiary politicians who blast out racist dog whistles.

But hate doesn’t need demagogues to get mainstreamed; it has also found an outlet at elite universities.

On June 29, Stanford University hosted a delegation from the Azov Brigade, a neo-Nazi formation in the Ukrainian National Guard. The panel, during which Azov’s neo-Nazi insignia was projected onto the wall, was attended by noted political scientist Francis Fukuyama, who posed for a photograph with the delegation.

This event — and the disturbing lack of reaction from Jewish organizations — showcases the limits of America’s commitment to combating white supremacy.

Call it the Ukraine exception.

Before Russia’s 2022 invasion, nearly every Western institution raised alarms about Azov. Putin’s brazen attack on Ukraine led to a much deserved outpouring of support for the country. Unfortunately, it also led to suppression of those who criticize the dark side of Kyiv: its reliance on far-right military elements, the most prominent example of which is Azov.

Even amid today’s surge of antisemitism globally, Azov has become the Teflon Neo-Nazis: freedom fighters who can do no wrong, celebrated across America, including at prestigious institutions like Stanford.

All too often, this adulation of a neo-Nazi formation has been met with silence by the Jewish community.

From neo-Nazis to heroes 

Azov began in 2014 as a paramilitary battalion formed out of a neo-Nazi street gang; it helped Kyiv fight back against Russian-backed rebels in eastern Ukraine. Azov eventually grew into a brigade in Ukraine’s National Guard. In addition to committing war crimes, the unit is notorious for its recruitment of radicals from around the world, including America.

Azov’s radicalism has been tracked by the Simon Wiesenthal Center and the Anti-Defamation League, banned as a hate group by Facebook and blocked from receiving weapons by Congress.

But then, Russian president Vladimir Putin used Azov as “justification” for his invasion. Moscow needed to sell the war to the public — it exploited Azov’s existence by falsely painting Ukraine as teeming with fascists and Russia’s invasion as a “denazification” mission.

The reaction of the West played in Azov’s favor. The existence of white supremacists certainly doesn’t give Putin the right to invade Ukraine. The Kremlin’s premise of “denazification” also rings hollow, considering there are plenty of neo-Nazis fighting for Moscow.

But for Azov, Moscow’s obsession has been a ticket to the limelight. Buoyed by the notion that If Putin hates them, they must be the good guys, brigade members have been welcomed to Congress and lauded on television.

In addition to an Azov veteran, the Stanford appearance featured Kateryna Prokopenko, whose husband Denys was the brigade’s commander through the spring of 2022.

Denys Prokopenko has been photographed with his platoon’s informal insignia of a bearded Totenkopf, a type of skull-and-crossbones used by the SS. He was also featured on the cover of Azov’s unofficial magazine, which uses the Sonnenrad neo-Nazi rune favored by white terrorists like the perpetrator of last year’s massacre in Buffalo, New York.

Third Reich insignia on an elite campus

Last week’s event wasn’t Azov’s first Stanford tour – a delegation was also welcomed there last fall. Ironically, one of Stanford’s own institutes published a report chronicling Azov’s white supremacy mere months before the brigade’s visit.

When asked about Azov’s return to campus, a university spokesperson told me via email on June 27 that the event was co-sponsored by the Ukrainian Student Association at Stanford at the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures. “The university does not take positions on outside speakers that groups within our community want to hear from,” they added.

But Azov’s visit concerns an issue Stanford has taken a position on: Nazi symbolism.

The flyer advertising the Azov event contains the brigade’s official insignia, which is the wolfsangel, yet another hate symbol used by both the Third Reich and today’s neo-Nazis.

This isn’t the first Stanford incident involving Nazi imagery. However, the lack of response on Azov stands in sharp contrast to Stanford’s actions in previous cases. 

n 2019, Stanford was embroiled in controversy after left-wing cartoonist Eli Valley was invited to speak on campus. Valley, whose artwork features grotesque satire using Nazi imagery, was met with protests. Indeed, it led to university officials issuing a lengthy statement condemning antisemitism.

This March, the school addressed the discovery of swastikas in a dormitory by stating, “Stanford wholeheartedly rejects antisemitism, racism, hatred, and associated symbols, which are reprehensible and will not be tolerated.”

When more antisemitic attacks followed in April, Stanford’s president said: “I want to make it very clear that we will not tolerate antisemitism and the symbols of antisemitism here on campus. It is something we need to eradicate.”

Yet despite these declarations of commitment to combating antisemitism, Stanford has not responded to repeated inquiries about the university’s position regarding the Azov event displaying the wolfsangel.

We seem endlessly surprised at politicians like Donald Trump who refuse to accept responsibility for actions that enable bigotry. It shouldn’t be surprising, considering demagogues don’t bother with responsibility; that’s what makes them demagogues. 

But what about a pillar of education and enlightenment like a prestigious university? What’s Stanford’s excuse? 

Calling out neo-Nazism: Void where prohibited

Our tolerance of Azov seems even more alarming when we consider reactions to neo-Nazism that don’t involve the brigade.

In 2018, Rep. Matt Gaetz was caught inviting a Holocaust denier to the State of the Union. Gaetz’s decision to platform hate on Capitol Hill was condemned by colleagues and the ADL.

But there have been no denunciations of numerous lawmakers who welcomed Azov fighters to Washington. This includes Rep. Marcy Kaptur, who was photographed with an Azov veteran whose Twitter contained pictures of him wearing a shirt with 1488 (neo-Nazi code) and “likes” of a Hitler photo and “Death to Kikes” graffiti. 

Indeed, Azov delegations to Washington proudly advertise their meetings on the Hill. 

Or see how Jewish media and the State Department took the trouble to condemn musician Roger Waters for wearing a fascist uniform during concerts (this is part of Waters’ performance of The Wall, a satire of fascism).

The very same day, The New York Times exposed the prevalence of Nazi symbols in Ukraine’s armed forces, which receive billions in American weapons. You’d imagine this news would be at least as concerning as a musician’s costume. Yet neither the State Department nor Jewish watchdogs reacted to it (and neither the State Department or the ADL have responded to my requests for comment).

The American Jewish community must condemn neo-Nazism without exception, not just when geopolitically convenient. They can start by calling on institutions like Stanford to stop platforming Azov.

#neo nazis #azov battalion #ukraine conflict #eli valley

[xenodile]

Figured out a high difficulty load out for bug missions that's been working.

Breaker Incendiary, Flamethrower, Shield Generator Pack, Impact Grenades

110mm missile pods, orbital rail cannon

Flamer works well on all bugs, and Shield Gen gives the touch of extra survival to effectively use it. Switch to Breaker to clean up spitters/hunters when flamer is low/allies are too close. Missile pods and Rail Cannon for chargers/titans you need dead fast, flamethrower can slow cook em if you have breathing room. Grenades good for clearing trash in a pinch, or killing spewers.

Build works very well with light armor for running diversion so your allies can do objectives without constant breaches on them.

#Helldivers 2

[usafphantom2]

7th April 1945. During a mission against the Me262 airfield at Parchim, B-17G ‘Happy Warrior’ of the 835th BS, 486th BG was hit by incendiaries released from the lead aircraft. Two engines were set alight, causing the crew to bale out, six of whom survived. Four more men were killed, two after landing.

Of those who lost their lives, copilot Doug Spath broke his neck on landing, while radio operator Bob Frauenholtz’s parachute failed to open. Gunner Frank Pikula and navigator George Lyford are believed to have been killed by German civilians after landing, a not uncommon occurrence at this stage of the war. Lyford’s remains were never found after the war. Some of the surviving crew members are said to have been saved from a similar fate by the protection of a Luftwaffe sergeant as they were transported to a POW camp.

📷 American Air Museum FRE 8508, 8510

@JamieMctrusty via X

[knockoffmordred]

Just finished GA-EX-8, thankfully my roster has improved so I was able to no thoughts head empty my way through it.

I know there have been scenes where Mon3tr is fighting, from Walk in the Dust to Under Tides. Call me stupid, but it took me seeing the big guy burning while S3 is on to realize how fucking horrifying it would be to be one of the poor bastards that has to face Mon3tr.

Like imagine, you're just a grunt, maybe a mercenary. Your unit's orders are to kill this green haired feline, called Kal'tsit. Seems harmless, especially with the amount of manpower and firepower your boss/client has brought along for this assignment.

You've set up on a elevated position, binoculars and comms unit at the ready, crossbow not that far from you. Your job is to spot her and to start the ambush...with a massive IED.

Again, you found the amount of firepower brought along this mission very weird. Yes, during the briefing it was said that there were reports of her having a bodyguard, apparently this bodyguard was deadly, but surely not deadly enough to start planning like you were going to hit a Blacksteel convoy. What's one guard to all this firepower?

As you were thinking about this, you see movement in the distance, you look through your binoculars. You see the target and report it immediately. Your commander tells everyone to get ready, and in that one short statement, you hear the anxiety in his voice, for some reason it infects you, your gut is telling you now to run. You try, unsuccessfully, to push down your own anxiety as she approaches the ambush point. The target appears to be your complete opposite right now, confident, guarded but relaxed, her gaze constantly scanning her surroundings.

Wait, she stopped moving. You report this quickly before looking through your binoculars again. You freeze.

She's stopped scanning as well. She's only looking at one spot.

Yours.

You panic and reach for the detonator. As you wrap your hands around the clacker, one thought crosses your mind.

"Where's the bodyguard?"

You dismiss it the moment you heard the clacker's clicks.

The next thing you hear is a deafening explosion, going through even your ear protection, making your ears ring. As you look at the massive cloud of dust, you start looking at the carnage. Debris is still raining down, seems like there's a massive crater where that IED was, and...

How is she still alive?

This question is immediately answered by seeing that...thing behind her? Or is it in front of her? Surrounding her?

It looks like a collection of crystals floating, forming a beast-like form, it looked like it was shielding her. That thing doesn't even look like it was damaged by the blast, that thing took a hit that would have brought down anything short of landships.

The blood in your body froze when you hear it make noise. A roar unlike anything a normal animal can make. The next thing you heard was everyone else opening fire.

Not only did the firepower make sense now, but it also looks like it's not enough firepower. Explosives did nothing to that monster's body, ballistae bolts are deflected, everything else did even less to it. The same cannot be said for the soldiers close enough to it. They were shredded by that thing's claws.

The screams and that thing's roar will haunt you forever. You did your best to hide at your spot, hoping beyond hope that they forget that you were here. Some fool decided to sacrifice himself by carrying incendiaries up to it and detonating all of it at the same time, it did nothing. It became quiet, nothing but the crackle of flames left. You dared to take a peek.

It was monstrous, demonic. A creature made out of crystal, surrounded by flame, eyes bright green like its master's but glowing, predatory, cold, focused. Focused on you. Surrounding it were flames, likely from the incendiaries but might as well be a manifestation of its hatred, or its evil.

#arknights #this was just supposed to be an “imagine this” kind of thing but I went overboard with the writing #fucking writing ghosts possessing my hands

[the-scribe-and-other-scribbles]

code names and call signs | chapter 1. incidental introductions | hangman x reader

jake "hangman" seresin x reader

word count: 4.9K warnings: violence, blood, injury to reader, injury to others, strong language, hangman tries and fails to flirt

cn&cs!masterlist | AO3

(If you follow me for my hetalia fanfic on my other blog and you're seeing this, I swear to god, 'It Will Come Back' chapter 11 is on its way, mind ur business.)

chapter 1. incidental introductions ----------- Incidental: something that happens as a minor part or result of something else: something that is incidental — usually plural

When you get to San Diego in the morning, you don't waste any time. With your mission files and a perfectly plain-looking sedan given to you by your team, you take to one of your favourite pastimes, people watching. 

Most of your subjects head right for their quarters on base. You watch for Lieutenant Reuben Fitch, a.k.a  Payback, who arrives at his quarters with his WSO, Lieutenant Mickey "Fanboy” Garcia. They chat for a bit inside before heading out to grab some stuff. You decide not to follow them on their grocery run. Next to arrive is Lieutenant Natasha Trace, otherwise known as Phoenix, who quickly meets up with Fanboy and Payback. 

Most of the other recruits named in your mission files aren’t due to arrive for another couple of hours, so you take to keeping tabs on the ones that have as the head off base. After checking in with command, Phoenix, Fanboy, and Payback head towards the Hard Deck, a common watering hole frequented by navy officers, says the brief about the bar included in your notes. 

You follow the trio a respectable two cars behind, and your subjects have no idea they’ve caught a tail. However, the unmarked car tailing you isn’t so lucky. As you turn away down a road, abandoning the three people you’ve been following, you look into your rear view mirror to watch the grey SUV take its 3rd turn after you. You shake your head. 

“And here, I expected better,” you sigh. 

You recognize the men following you as low-level baddies from your last assignment. You’re surprised they were so determined that they followed you back state-side but knew they wouldn’t take long to lose. 

Tightening your grip on the steering wheel, you step on the gas, your new friends following after you. You take sharp, sudden turns, doubling back on yourself, and driving through parking garages. You thank your past self for studying a map of the area on your flight over here because your pursuers can’t seem to keep up. Soon enough, you’ve lost them entirely, turning down a narrow alley on the opposite end of the beach, far from the bar you’re headed to. 

You take an alcohol wipe from your bag and wipe your fingerprints from the controls, steering wheel and other touch points. You ditch the clothes that you’re wearing, throwing them into the back of the car and changing into different ones. 

Then, you grab a bottle of lighter fluid and spray it all over the inside of the car, then take a cigarette from your shirt pocket and light it. Placing the cigarette so it hangs off the side of an ashtray, overtop the lighter fluid, you make a timed incendiary device. When the cigarette burns down, it will tonight the lighter fluid under it, setting the car on fire. 

Rudimentary, but great for lighting a car on fire and giving yourself an alibi.  

You exit the car, slamming the door and locking it but leaving the windows open a crack so the fire doesn’t suffocate before it had the chance to spread to the rest of the car.

You text a number on your phone. 

SMS: RIDE COMPROMISED. NEED ANOTHER.

 The sun beats down on you as you walk down the alleyway and out onto the sidewalk. You keep your head down and walk towards the beach. You plan to walk along the water towards The Hard Deck, hoping that you’ll avoid being spotted by your tail. You reach the sands of the beach and reach down to pull off your sandals before walking down the beach. The sand is soft under your feet, and the salty breeze rustles your hair and clothes. The sun is starting to set over the pacific and it's peaceful. 

When you arrive at The Hard Deck, you see another face from your files. Captain Pete “Maverick” Mitchel is standing on the beach, peering in through a window. You approach behind him, and he doesn’t notice you. Maverick is watching Rooster on the piano with a look that is obviously nostalgia mixed with sadness. 

A footnote in your file on the two men said that Maverick was the one that pulled his navy application. It seems they still haven’t smoothed that over. 

“Excuse me,” you say softly to him, pulling Maverick out of his thoughts. He mutters an apology, not really noticing you, and walks away. You slip inside the door and are faced with a rowdy establishment. Rooster continues playing his heart out on the piano, he and the rest of the bar shouting the words to “Great Balls of Fire” with no clue as to the moment that’s taking place outside. The patrons are dancing, some tipsier than others, and the floor vibrates under your feet. 

Everyone assumes that CIA officers are elaborate, suave, and charming when undercover, like James Bond, but really, picking a cover is influenced by what the agent needs out of it. Sometimes, a flashy memorable character is perfect for infiltration and distraction. But right now, you need to be forgettable. 

Your clothes make you look like any tourist. You’re wearing light wash denim and a muted linen shirt. A basic black purse hangs off your shoulder, filled with just enough pocket trash to make it seem like a real person used it. In reality, every card, id, or receipt in it is fake.  The only proof that you exist is the fact that you’re standing there. 

You walk up to the bar, shooting a timid smile to the bartender. She comes over and introduces herself, even though it’s not necessary. You already know who she is. In return, you offer her one of your many fake first names. 

“And what can I get you?” 

“Just a vodka soda.” 

It’s not your favourite drink but you can’t stand the taste of beer and you didn’t come here for drinks. Penny nods and steps away to make your drink, and you scan the bar. All of the TopGun pilots selected for the mission are here. Most are gathered around Rooster at the piano, singing along with him. Some are still left behind at the pool table. As your eyes pass over them, you notice that one pilot, who you recognize from the blond hair and broad shoulders to be Lieutenant Jake Seresin, is staring at you. You don’t let your eyes meet him, hoping that he’ll ignore you, and turn back around.

Penny sets down your drink, throwing another subtle nod at Penny before you head to a table tucked away in the corner, empty and with a perfect view of the whole bar. No one should bother you there. You weave through the crowd and pull yourself onto the stool. You continue to watch the pilots make their way through the bar. You take note of how they interact together between pretending to scroll on your phone. 

You watch Hangman and his friend, Lieutenant Javy "Coyote" Machado talking closely together. They smirk, and look from each other to you and then back, before talking more. Then, Hangman slaps his friend on the shoulder and starts walking. 

“Shit.” 

So much for going unnoticed by anyone. It seems that Hangman’s ability to pick out women in a crowded bar outperforms your stealth. 

Men.

He walks over to you, with that stupid smirk stretched across his stupidly attractive face and you grit your teeth, still pretending to be lost in your phone. You hear his footsteps on the wood floors and the pressure of his presence entering your space.

“Hey.”

“No,” you say, looking up. Hangman is staring down at you. His eyes are a shade of light green and they are filled with smug charm.

“I haven’t even said anything yet.”

“That’s because there isn’t anything you could say that I haven’t heard before.”

He still looms over you, his fingers softly tapping on the table in front of you. “Are you a mind reader?”

You scoff. “I might as well be.”

He raises an eyebrow so you indulge him. 

“First you were going to introduce yourself, say that you’re a soldier in the military and that you saw me from across the room, thought I was beautiful and wanted to say hello. Then you’d offer to buy me a drink, try to flirt with me, I’d politely say I wasn’t interested, you would keep trying, and we’d go around in circles until the bartender kicks us out.” 

Hangman smiles even wider, laughing. “Well, you’re wrong about one thing.” 

“And what’s that?”

“I’m not a soldier in the military, I’m a pilot in the navy.” 

You knew that, but you just roll your eyes and let him think that you and a team of CIA operatives haven’t been monitoring every move these guys have been making since they were put on the list to be brought here. 

Hangman continues talking. “What would’ve happened after?” 

“Hmm?” 

“What would’ve happened after Penny kicked us out of the bar?” He leans closer, his eyes darkening ever so slightly. 

Now it was your turn to laugh. “No.”

He raises an eyebrow. “No?”

“You’re not actually interested.” 

“You’re so sure?”

“I am, because I know guys like you. I’m new. I’m a shiny mystery on legs that you can chase. The only reason you are over here is because your friend at the back-“ you give a wave to Coyote who’s doing a terrible job of acting like he hasn’t been watching the two of you like a hawk. “-has bet that you couldn’t be able to get me into your bed. But the fact of the matter is, you couldn’t handle me,” you finish, taking a long sip of your vodka soda. 

Hangman smiles, his eyes flickering down your face and then back up. “The least you could do is tell me your name,” he says softly. 

You lean in so close that he can feel your heat. “Not tonight, blondie.” 

You lean back into your chair, taking another sweep of the bar, and freeze when you see who’s walked through the front door.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

Hangman is confused at your sudden change in demeanour. 

“What? What’s going on.”

The three men that were following you earlier in the day were back. As you try to see if you can hide somewhere, you make eye contact with the three men from across the bar. They’ve spotted you, so there's nothing you can do.  “It seems that you’re not the only man that’s come to bother me tonight.”

You look around at what you have at your immediate disposal. You’re right by the jukebox, Rooster’s just finished his impromptu performance. Perfect. 

“If you’ll excuse me Lieutenant Seresin, I need to take care of this.” You give him a wink and push yourself off your chair. 

“Wait a minute, I didn’t tell you my-“

You reach down and plug the machine back in and slide in a quarter. You punch in a number as your new friends make their way through the crowd. The familiar first bars of an AC/DC song play and you crank the volume all the way up. 

The music blares through the small bar, startling everyone but you. The blood roars in your ears like an angry crown during a cage fight, your heart pounds like the stomping of feet on a stadium floor. This is it for you. You were made for this. 

“Let’s do this,” you mutter to yourself. “Remember your training. Be fluid, be fluid.” 

You walk through the crowd, meeting your adversary head-on.

“Hey buddy, how’s it going.” You smile, and before he can get over his confusion as to why you’ve decided not to run out the back, it’s too late. Grabbing the beer bottle out of some poor cadet’s hand, you swing hard and smash it over his head. The force of the blow throws him into the bar and then crashing onto the floor. 

The second guy doesn’t stand much of a chance either. He pulls out a serrated hunting knife and points it at you. You roll your eyes. 

“Why don’t you put that away before you hurt yourself.”

He yells as takes a couple of stabs at you. You dodge the first and block the second but can’t stop his head from smashing into you. His forehead connects to your nose with a sicking crack and you stumble and shake the stars from your vision. You throw a punch in the side of his head and send a swift kick to his knee, causing him to cry out. 

“Fuck you,” He growls before lunging at you, trying to stab you again. You grab a wood bar stool to your left and raise it. The blade plunges through the seat and gets stuck in it.

“Fuck me?” You say, before spinning around and slamming the stool into his body, breaking the chair apart and sending him flying. “Fuck you!” You spit out, warm blood dripping down your face. 

A sudden force makes impact with your body. You yell out and are shoved into the pool table, tumbling over it and knocking someone over. 

“Sorry,” you grit out to Payback, pushing yourself off of him.

“Do you need help?” Asks one of the other pilots. They look shocked.

“No thanks, I’m just finishing up.” You say before you jump back over the pool table.

The last man left standing laughs and you sneer. 

“Alright sweetheart, let’s see what you're made of,” He taunts you.

You smirk. “Believe me Handsome, you won’t make it that long.”

You reach back to the pool table behind you and grab the cue ball from its place on the green velvet and catch the eyes of a shocked-looking man with glasses. Bob.

“I need to borrow this,” you say, smiling. Bob nods, more out of fear than an understanding of what you're saying. Probably because, with all the blood that must be covering your teeth, your smile looks like something out of a horror movie. 

Then, as quick as lightning, you hurl the cue ball at your opponent. The heavy white ball collides with his face with a loud ‘crack!’ and he falls back unconscious.

The other two men are still unconscious on the ground as well, which means that you get just a second to process everything. The bar is silent. Someone, Rooster actually, turns down the volume on the Jukebox so that the ending guitar of ‘Back in Black’ continues at an appropriate volume. You hear the soft clink of glasses and your own breath in the air. Everyone in the bar is either looking at you or the massive damages you’ve caused. 

“Well, shit,” you whisper between breaths before you shrug and start walking back to the table you were at. Hangman is still standing where you left him, his mouth hanging open in excited surprise. 

“Who are-“

“Don’t bother asking,” you say, reaching for the drink you left at the table. “Because I won’t tell you the truth.”

You lift the glass to your lips while making eye contact with him. You gulp down the cocktail, the taste of vodka mixing with the taste of the blood that’s dripped onto your lips. You grimace, half from the burn in your throat and from your nose bridge where you were head-butted. You set the glass down on a coaster and nod to Hangman. Then, without a word, you grab your purse and turn away.

You weave through the chaos that your fight left behind and step up to the bar. The brunette bartender, Penny, doesn’t look happy. She looks quite horrified, her mouth is wide open in shock and she looks at you. 

You try to give her a smile, which from the view of her and all the onlookers doesn't look too friendly. You can feel the blood gushing from your nose and dripping from your chin onto the bar. 

Yeah, you don't think your bloody smile will smooth this over. You reach into your bag for your wallet and place a large wad of cash onto the bar.

“For my tab, and everyone’s next round.” 

Penny is shocked, mouth still open as she takes the money, nodding slightly. As you turn to leave, you say, “And some people will come around tomorrow morning to repair the damages I’ve caused, don't worry about paying them. You have a nice night, ma’am.”

You reach the door and the bartender seems to come out of her shock. The sound of Penny ringing her bell and the erupting cheers of drunk soldiers follows you as you close the door behind you. 

You smile and shake your head, gently wiping at the blood that covers your lower face. You slide your shoes off your feet and begin your walk back down the beach towards where you're staying. You turn back towards the Hard Deck, and from the window, illuminated by the inside lights, you see Lieutenant Seresin, with his stupidly handsome smirk, watching you retreat down the beach. 

You give him a mock salute, which he laughs at, and then you turn around to pull out your burner phone. 

“Hey, Vinny! Yea it's me. I’m gonna need a clean-up crew right away... Yea, some friends will be waiting for you here.... And when you fix up The Hard Deck tomorrow, I want you to bug it.”

You hang up and continue your trek down the beach, holding your shoes in one hand and humming a sweet jazz melody as the taste of your own blood lingers on your tongue. 

--- The apartment the CIA gave you is nestled above a shop downtown and your bed has a great view of the sun rising. That night, you sleep well, the fight at the bar working out any stress you were holding in. The next morning, you start your day the way you always love to. You get yourself ready, putting on cloths, makeup and tucking your gun into the back of your waist band, before walking into town. 

You find a mom-and-pop diner with a cheap breakfast and take a seat in one of the dated booths at the back of the restaurant. The diner is perfectly quiet. An older lady comes to take your order and pour you a cup of coffee. 

“Someone had a rough night.” The waitress says. You laugh. While you’ve certainly looked worse, even the poultice your mom had shown you how to make and an ice pack couldn’t keep away all of the bruising. A dark purple bruise covers the bridge of your nose, and the ones under your shirt are pretty uncomfortable. 

“You should’ve seen the other guys.”

You order your food and wait, sipping your coffee and looking out the window.  Your phone buzzes on the table and a text message appears. 

VINNY: AT THE HARD DECK FOR THOSE REPAIRS. NEW CAR IS ON ITS WAY. GOV. ISSUE.

VINNY: THAT MEANS DON’T FUCK THIS ONE UP. SEE YOU SOON.

You smile and shake your head as the waitress sets down a plate of French toast and fruit. You eat your breakfast alone and watch the cars go by. When you finish, you wait for a minute to drink the last mouthful of coffee before looking out the window again. 

True to Vinny’s word, a government issue, all-black SUV pulls up in front of the diner. You stand and walk to the counter to pay your bill, wishing your waitress a nice day and leaving a generous tip, before stepping out the door and walking towards the car. You open the back door and are greeted with a familiar face. 

“Ma’am.” You smile. 

Alexandra Cross, your unit chief and longtime friend, gives you a nod and a slight smile. “Agent (L/N).” You slide into the car, smoothing the fabric of your black slacks and silk shirt as you settle into the leather seat. “I trust you found your way back stateside with little issue.” She says.

“For the most part. There was a small hiccup.”

Alexandra is an older Hispanic woman, in her late 40s with medium brown skin and salt and pepper hair. She nods at you, with a knowing glint in her brown eyes. “Mhm, yes. I heard. We have those men in custody right now, heading back to a holding centre. And the bar?” 

“While I didn’t plan on making such a memorable scene, it did allow us access to the building. After Vinny is finished this morning, we’ll be monitoring all chatter taking place inside the establishment.” 

She nods and shares a smug smile, fiddling with the gold band on her left finger. “I do love that man,” she says. 

Your driver comes to a stop at the entrance to the Airbase, where he’s greeted by armed guards. 

“Roll down the back windows please, sir.”

The blacked-out windows come down and you and Alexandra looks out to the soldier. You hand her your credentials. She leans forward, the silver streaks in her dark curly hair catching the sunlight, and hands him the clearance cards. He brings it to the computer and when he scans it, his eyebrows raise in surprise.

“My apologies for the wait ma’am. You’re free to go.” 

 He nods at the two of you before your driver rolls back up the window and drives through the gate. Alexandra turns back to you. 

“When we arrive, we’ll meet with Vice Admiral Simpson and his men. We’ll go over everyone's roles in the mission, and protocol on base. The rest of our team arrived this morning and are waiting for us. I’ve been told specifically that we aren’t authorized to conduct any surveillance of inside the walls of the base.”

“Vincent will be disappointed.” 

“He’ll live with it. We need to be on our best behaviour for this one.”

“You expect there to be difficulties?”

Alex signs. “Our unit is known for being a tad unpredictable and Admiral Simpson is known to be a hard ass, so even though we are both vital to the success of the others’ missions, I’d rather we kept the peace between our organizations.”

“This might be difficult, Alex. Servicemen are often overly cocky, especially pilots.” 

Alex smiles at you over the rim of her shades and says, “Well then I trust you to be your charming self.”

The car rolls to the front of the Air Base and comes to a stop. Alex leans back towards her driver. “Wish us luck, Rick,” she says and the two of you step out of the car. 

The California sun beats down onto you, heating the top of your head and making you squint through your shades. On the pavement stand Hondo and Warlock, who great you and your supervisor. 

“It’s a pleasure,” you say, stepping forward to shake their hands

“We can finish our introductions with the Admiral. the rest of your team is inside.” They say. 

You are led inside, through a hall filled with pictures of TOPGUN alumni. From around the corner, someone appears and walks beside you, then another. 

It’s Nichole Woods and Teresa, your technical engineer and analyst, respectively. 

“Thank god you’re here,” Terri says. 

“How was your flight in, ladies?” 

“A nightmare, you know I hate packing,” Terri says. “TSA is always a nightmare.” 

“You could always pack lighter. You should have seen the shit she brought. ” Nicky says. 

“Everything I brought is vital to my performance on this team! Don’t talk about my babies like that.” 

You turn down another hallway, and stop as a man dressed in a Navy uniform joins you. 

“Admiral Simpson, these are the CIA operatives that we're assigned to.”

Before Cheif Cross can be introduced, she steps forward. 

“Alexandra Cross, with National Clandestine Services. It's a pleasure, sir. I’ve heard much about you and TOPGUN.” She reaches over the desk and they shake hands. 

“There’s another Cross on your team swell. Any relation?” Cyclone looks at your boss with a look the both of you recognize. He already knows the answer to this. 

“You’re referring to our lead technical engineer, Vincent Cross, who is also my husband.” 

“I see,” he says, without much emotion. Alex wasn’t wrong, this guy feels like a stick in the mud. 

 He begins walking with, you talking as you go. “We’re setting you up in one of the classrooms next to the one our pilots will be in. I’ve been told that your analysts have brought a lot of their gear.”

The admiral turns and opens up the doors to show a large room, with rows of chairs and a large screen at the front. 

“I hope this will do.”

Terri looks around the room, checking the outlets on the side of the screen before nodding to Alex. “We’ve made do with much less, Admiral. This will be fine.”

“ Good. Your team comes highly recommended so I’ll be interested to watch your people work .”

“Thank you, sir.” 

“For the rest of us,” you say. “We’d like to know if theirs a shooting range on the base, and a place for us to conduct weapons tests.” 

“I beg your pardon, agent.” 

“Our engineers have experimental equipment that we often test run, and some of these things shouldn’t be tested inside. Is there an area outside that would be suitable for them to use?”

“Near our outdoor gun range would probably be best. I’ll have someone bring you there.”

The door to the classroom opens again and in steps a middle-aged, handsome man who you know to be Pete “Maverick” Mitchel.

“Good morning, sir.” 

“Good morning. Everyone, this is Captain Pete Mitchel…”

“The man who will be instructing the recruits on the mission,” you finish. You introduce yourself to the man and shake hands. “We’ve heard a lot about you, Captain”

“And I’ve heard a lot of you,” Maverick says. “Was it your team that discovered the base?”

“No. An asset in the UN found it and sent it to us to take care of, then we were told to bring the navy on board.” Alex says. “While your priority for this mission is to destroy the enrichment plant, our team is more interested in the Airbase that defends it. We hoped that our analysts would be able to access the base remotely and that we would be able to shut off the SAM Systems before your people begin the assault but there’s a problem” 

Maverick and the rest of the officers find seats as you gesture for Teresa to continue. 

“Normally, servers are connected to the internet when they run complicated software. A server will use the internet to share information across multiple locations and those internet access points allow us to hack a network remotely. However, because of the secret nature of this base and plant, its creators chose not to do this.”

“To hide the plant from prying eyes, they’ve put themselves back into the dark ages. Everything runs offline. The server, computers, surveillance, even the SAMS that defend the valley, are on their closed off, completely isolated network.”

“Meaning any access to those servers and their data needs to happen on location.” Maverick finishes. “Jesus Christ.” 

“Which is why we’re here,” Alex says.

You speak up. “Before your strike team is deployed, I will travel undercover and break into the airbase, retrieve any relevant info from their servers, and then escape the area on foot before the missile strike destroys the airbase.”

“With no backup.” 

“I won’t need it.” 

“If you’re delayed in the slightest, you would be on the ground while an airstrike is taking place up the mountain and tomahawk misses rain down on you.” Cyclone points out. 

“Then it’s good that I’m fast on my feet, sir.” You smirk. 

Alex continues for you. “We’d like to request that this portion of the assignment's details are kept from the recruits. At least until we’ve decided that they need to know them.” 

“Then what should they be told?”

“All they’ll need to know is that we are CIA analysts, here to provide accurate intelligence for the coming assignment.”

“They might believe that story ma’am, but they won’t believe that that one,” Maverick points to you. “Is an analyst. The pilots are still talking about the three men she nearly killed in town last night.”

You chuckle. 

“Whether they believe us or not, that’s the story they will be told.” Chief Cross finishes. “Will that be all gentlemen? Because my team would like time to get set up before we greet the recruits.”

Admiral Simpson nods. “I believe that’s all ma’am. He steps forward and shakes her hand. “I look forward to working with you.” 

“You as well, sir.”

“Captain Mitchel,” you nod. “I look forward to seeing you fly. I’ve heard lots about you.”

“You can just call me Maverick, and I’ve heard quite a few stories about you too.”

You smile. “I hope you haven’t heard too much, ‘cause then I might not be doing my job right.”

You watch as Cyclone, Hondo, Warlock, and Maverick leave, the door clicking as it shuts behind them. 

Alex turns back to you all, the smile dropping from her face. “Alright, let's get to work.” 

Nick is up immediately and out the door. “I’m gonna go get my stuff!” She calls behind her, making Terri chuckle.

“I’m gonna go help her.”

“Before you do,” Alex says. “What’s the status of our asset?’

“They went radio silent, ma’am. I can’t get a hold of them.” She says. 

“Then our job for today, along with appearing at the pilots’ briefing, will be to get that handled.” 

“Speak and it shall be done.” 

-----------------

author's notes

alright! here it is! If you've made it this far, thank you for reading. I'm really excited for this fanfic.

First off, because I'm writing about the CIA it's important to know that the info about them isn't accurate. One major inaccuracy is that CIA "Agents" aren't a thing. They are called Operatives or Officers, and an "Agent" or "Asset" is a foreign citizen that supplies info to the CIA, like an FBI informant! However I've chosen to ignore that and just refer to the reader and her team as both 'agents' and 'operatives' because I think it sounds better. Another thing to know is that the National Clandestine Services is a Branch of the CIA that does the spy stuff. Just thought that was cool.

Sorry for the inacuracies, but I'm sure no CIA "Operatives" will care that I'm spreading lies, It probably helps them.

So far, this story will have 9 chapters. I don't know how often I'll update, as I'm not a very fast writer. I plan to add this Story to AO3 and when I do, I'll put this link at the top of the chapter!

Thanks for reading, if you have any questions, I'd love to answer them, just message me.

Scribe <3

Tag List: @srry-itshockeyszn, @saramaple

#hangman x reader #jake seresin x reader #jake hangman seresin x reader #top gun maverick fic #top gun maverick x reader #code names and call signs #the scribe writes! #top gun fic #top gun x reader #cn&cs!fic

[pinturas-sgm-aviacion]

1945 02 Final assault - Stan Stokes

B-29 Superfortress 42-24625 from 498th BG, 875th Bomb Squadron Nose Art 'Lady Mary Anna'

The largest and most powerful bomber of WW II, the Boeing B-29 Super Fortress, played a major role in bringing about the defeat of Japan. In addition to accelerating Japans surrender following the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with atomic bombs, thousands of B-29 crews flew tens of thousands of bombing missions against Japan from bases in China, India, and later in the War from recaptured islands in the Pacific. B-29s entered service in 1943 following a lengthy, problem-filled, development process of three years in response to the governments request for a long range strategic bomber. Only Boeing and Douglas (the B-32 Dominator) responded to the governments requests, and the B-32 had even greater development problems than the B-29. Powered by four giant Wright R-3350-23 radial engines generating a total horsepower of 8,924, the Super Fortresses typically carried crews of ten. They were capable of a top speed of 357-MPH, and at slower cruising speeds had a range of more than 3,200 miles. The B-29 was a large aircraft for its time with a wingspan in excess of 140 feet and a length of just under 100 feet. The Super Forts also had pressurized forward and aft hulls, which made the long distance missions a bit more comfortable for the flight crews. B-29s typically carried defensive armament which included ten machine guns and a single tail-mounted canon. Because of the pressurized hull, the guns were operated by remote control. The first operational B-29 wing was the 58th which flew out of the China-Burma-India theater. On March 9, 1945 General Curtis LeMay ordered an unusual low altitude attack on Tokyo by hundreds of B-29s carrying incendiary bombs. Five such low level missions were scheduled over a ten-day period, and the combined destruction of these missions exceeded that of either of the atomic bomb missions. B-29s were also effectively used to mine Japanese ports and shipping lanes. The Kawasaki Ki-45 Toryu heavy fighter, which is depicted attacking the B-29 in Stan Stokes painting, entered production in 1941 following a lengthy four year development. About 1,700 of these aircraft, code named Nick by the allies, were produced. The Ki-45 never proved effective as a long range daylight interceptor. It was, however, used effectively in ground attack and night fighter roles. It was one of only a few Japanese aircraft that had some success against the onslaught of B-29s because it was able to attain the high altitudes necessary to intercept the high-flying Super Fortresses.

#stan stokes

[flatstarcarcosa]

[gun slide noise]

ME!AU RAPID FIRE:

*abarahm resident over powered biotic. vanguard. heavy reliance on barrier+charge plus has done some incredibly illegal mods to his service shotgun. concussion rounds+experimental incendiary that blows you open and burns you out from the inside. you're better off getting slammed. the van brunts are also like, the closest thing to royalty the alliance has which means he's even more arrogant and egoistical than regular canon because he has never, at any point, had to deal with the fallout of anything he's ever done.

*i cannot stress to you enough this man's response to ichabod saying "abraham we can't do that, it's a war crime" is "only if there's batarians left alive to tell anyone". he doesn't even have a good reason to dislike batarians outside of alliance propaganda and like. blatant racism, if i'm honest. man is not remotely empathetic enough to actually CARE what any of them have done he just Craves Violence.

*and speaking of, ichabod. infiltrator, squishy as fuck counterpart for abe's tank but it's fine because he's in, done with the mission, and out before anyone knows. (if he's....yknow. not with abraham. that is.) he's also, for some reason, basically the only person that can stand to be around abraham for any length of time, likely because they ended up in basic together and just kinda clicked despite differing personalities.

cutting bc there's a lot, rapid fire or not-

*one of the things i put a lot of effort into back when this was a thing i did on the RP blog was making abraham and shepard's stories mirror each other, if not entirely, in a lot of ways. abraham was the original poster boy, and he was actually the first line draft pick for human spectre.

*it doesn't come to pass when a mission goes tits up, and he nearly dies. family name and money catches the attention of cerberus, who slide in with promises they can fix him, like, totally, we prommy. he does get fixed, he gets top of the line cybernetic implants and in the end it's nothing some PT can't fix.

*except oops! mommy and daddy van brunt stupidly trusted the known terrorist organization because they were more interested in making sure The Family Legacy went the way it was supposed to! and now their already OP son is infested with fucking reaper tech no one knows about!

*the injuries abe sustains when he almost dies includes a TBI. the TBI has the fun little side effect of actually interfering with the indoctrination from the reaper tech. lots of notes in abe's recovery with him commenting about buzzing/humming noises no one else seems to hear and "i swear to god my teeth itch".

*abe's first mission once cleared for duty ALSO goes tits up because harbinger tries to awaken what's supposed to be the best little sleeper agent Its ever Had only to find out the fucking sleeper agent is defective. it begins an ongoing battle where harbinger is constantly trying to outright control abraham entirely, but it doesn't always work.

*he officially gets listed as MIA--POSSIBLY AWOL

*ichabod and abraham's plots revolve around everyone lamenting that the alliance golden boy just cracked under the pressure and couldn't cut it, with ichabod sincerely believing that's not the whole story. "abraham is an arrogant ass, he's not an unhinged coward" is repeated quite a lot.

*abe and harbinger's back and forth for control means sometimes he loses. sometimes harbinger is able to make the indoctrination work and operate him like a fucking meat puppet from dark space, and that fun little TBI that causes the back and forth also means he's completely aware the whole time it's happening.

*eventually he notices a pattern in that getting his shit rocked (ie more brain trauma) tends to shake harbinger loose, which results in one encounter with ichabod and abe where he tells ichabod 'the next time you find me trying to kill you, aim for my head'

*basically a lot of it is the concept of like. Worst Guy You've Ever Known Finally Faces Consequences except. it's also one of those stories where at a certain point you're no longer thrilled by these turn of events, you're kind of uncomfortable. it seems less like comeuppance and more like watching someone slowly get fed into a meat grinder for no reason.

*which. remember the early concepts for saren and tim where the reaper tech was slowly eroding any organic parts of them? yeah. yeah he's not having a good time.

*abe also ends up targeting cerberus when he's controlling his own mind, particularly when he finds out they were only able to save shepard because of what they did to him. feels a lot like being the test run.

*which leads me back to shepard and abe having mirroring stories. in the end the reaper war ends and they're both dead, but only one of them is remembered.

*abe's death takes place during me3. i never got as far as plotting the details but it was always meant to be a last ditch "fuck you/ i'm not what you made me" type thing. there's also a smidge of suicide by sacrifice to it, because again, he was already dying because of the reaper tech and just. was so goddamn tired. it's shades of vega as well in like, what he does is very big and very good and saves a lot of lives (ichabod's included) but it's. just that shepard was already elsewhere, doing bigger things.

*after ichabod gets cleared after abe dies, he basically gets a "tyfys here's your next posting" and asks what about abraham which is met with "what about him?"

*ichabod then starts demanding abe's status get changed from MIA--POSSIBLY AWOL to killed in the line of duty along with a posthumous commendation of valor. i'm thinking he gets a call from hackett about joining the crucible project and agrees, but on one condition, mostly because the idea of ichabod yelling hackett down is kinda BDE if i'm honest.

*also of importance: abraham being a whole ass home of sexual whose also big brained enough to be like "actually asari aren't women so yes i can fuck them despite being gay"

*and finally if he ever found out aria t'loak fucked mordin and not him he'd blow up afterlife and everyone in it

#txt.txt #abraham #anyway rice is delicious btw if u even care

[papirouge]

I don't know this person you're talking about. But when I say "childlike", I am not referring to ped*philia or anything s*xual. "Childlike" refers to innocence and purity, obedience, a sense of wonder, avoiding cynicism. It's saddening that you would even associate it with degenerate practices

You know what's funny with people like you? It's that you NEVER feel entitled to hound men about becoming more of a uwu childlike innocent smol bean uwu like you do with women

As far as I know, when Jesus said to be like the children who ran to him, he wasn't surrounded by women (only), right? So why you do we never see you bothering Christian men (saying much more incendiary & disgusting things that I ever did) about being more uwu innocent and demure uwu ?

Why are you assuming (Christian) women should be those mono dimensional being that would spend all day daydreaming in a childlike wonder? Newsflash: 1) women are a multitude 2)we live in a society™️. IDK about you, but I don't feel like a smol helpless fragile woman uwu whenever I manage my company, have to do taxes or budgeting. Women have dimensions that go beyond being a wallflower waiting to be picked. Women are as much entitled to be angry at wickedness and vocal about it as men do.

God gave us a brain and when he told us to be "harmless like a dove and wise like a serpent" this was also about us. God Himself acknowledges the ambivalence of His children, but *you* can't ? God didn't make Eve a flying vagina who's only purpose was to be impregnated by Adam. She had a role, a mission (protect the Garden of Eden), a sense of self and even assertiveness (which unfortunately got used for a wrong cause).

And don't gaslight me saying that women should be "CHILD like" has nothing to do with pedophilia. When Jesus used children to make his point, it was about the fact that those children instinctively & without judgement went to him as they recognized him as their lord, not to be romantically picked by a man.

If you truly believed in what you're saying, you would pick a simpleton just with enough money to provide for your wifey lifestyle.  But you won't because you KNOW it takes brain & emotional maturity to be an actual functioning husband. So why wouldn't it be the case for women? NOTHING in gender roles points towards the wife being less responsible or (emotionally) mature than her husband. Because you internalized the pedophile narrative that grown women are supposed to relate to children (characterized by emotional immaturity and helplessness) for all their life to be deemed desirable/wifeable. The person I referred in my previous post was exactly like that. People like you entertaining this agenda especially (especially under filmsy churchy excuses) are the exact reason we are so quick to clock that out. Because we are soooo tired of this unbiblical fetishy bs.

Don't lecture me about being "masculine" when your whole behavior and mindset is the one of the typical lecherous churchy scrote

#answered #Christian