#this is nearly equivalent to the people that like the whole band except one person. you don’t actually like them if you’re going to be mean

[vesperlionheart]

Mamihlapinatapei - The look between two people in which each loves the other but is too afraid to make the first move. For KisaSaku. :D

KisaSaku & a belated happy birthday for @darth-salem-emperor-of-earth!

(Sort of a companion fix to This One)

‘In matters of inheritance in the land of Kirigkure, the country is old and small enough to cultivate its leftover practices from the oldest days, when Kiri citizens had to fight tooth and nail to protect what was once only a small fishing inlet. Their monarchy equivalent is selected from the previous ruler and approved by a majority vote from the three departments.’

“It shouldn’t count until an official hearing is held to conclude such matters,” Sakura grumbled to mostly herself. Mei was the least sympathetic out of all her supporters when it came to Sakura’s mood and opinions on her stupid country inheritance.

When Mei heard Sakura’s grumbles she only giggled and added another ‘grievance’ scroll to the ever increasing pyramid of incoming missives that would need to be addressed by the end of the day. “Honestly, you have no one else to blame but yourself. What did you expect would happen when you arrived on our borders with all of Tsunade’s tutelage and the copy nin’s keen sense for seeing underneath the underneath? You thought we’d let you go?”

Speaking of Kakashi made Sakura remember the old man’s poor advice: “Just go and check them out. Get in a few fights, drink a little and show them how terrible of a leader you would really be.”

That had worked out terribly.

While Sakura was legally considered a citizen of Kiri, she had grow up outside its boarders and adapted to the culture of the Fire Country where it mattered to have manners with strangers. Her strategy had been to walk in with a buzz and a beer in hand, provoke a shop keep, fight a swordsman-a legendary swordsman-and curse her way out of town. Everything had been going tremendously well, except actually it hadn’t. Kiri was wet in more ways than one and Sakura had unwittingly impressed more than just a few curious eyes with her tolerance of the local booze. Shit talking was seen as a greeting amongst Kiri locals, and fighting might as well have been synonymous with hugging.  

“They’ll kick you out soon enough and you’ll be back home before you know it.”

For not the first time, Sakura lamented Kakashi’s backhanded advice. When she berated him about it later on he only congratulated her on the revitalized economy, the updated hospitals, and all her efforts towards dismantling the caste system. Sakura’s protest that she never meant to do any of that fell on deaf ears.

The trial month was nearly over and plans had already been made to install her as their Mizukage, a position that would put her on par with her one time teacher, the Hokage in the Land of Fire. There was a lot of pomp and ceremony the elders were caught up in that pushed back the actual initiation-but the decision had been made and Sakura’s will was not enough to reject the concessions of the Trident-or the three seats of the Mizukage’s cabinet.

Mei made up the executive branch of the Trident, while the seven swordsmen made up the military branch. Yagura was the head of Economics and the mouthpiece of the Elders who weighed tradition against advancement. Sakura’s job would be to balance all three of their voices and carry the responsibility of any decision they came up with. Only a 3 to 1 vote could overrule a Mizuekage’s executive orders.

“Have you chosen your Second Shadow, yet?” Mei asked.

“I’m actually hoping that if I don’t that this whole party thing can get called off,” Sakura sassed back to Mei, already half finished with the next scroll and all but made up on her finial verdict for the request it presented.

“Have you looked at my boy?”

“Chōjūrō is a sweet kid and will make a fine swordsman one day,” Sakura answered diplomatically.

“But…?”

Sakura looked up and glared. “He’s as shy as an Angel Fish and he still somehow came up with the idea, completely on his own with no help from anyone, to wait for me in my hotel room in a silk robe and slippers and nothing else.” Sakura’s tone was heavy with sarcasm. “I don’t take kindly to attempts of coercion.”

“The kid just wanted your favor and you would hold that against him?” Mei playfully teased.

“I didn’t appreciate it, Mei. Don’t bully your boy into my bed.”

Mei rolled her eyes and picked through the finished missives Sakura had set to the side. “He needed the encouragement. He wouldn’t have done it, even though he wanted to, without some help.”  

“I’m not like you, I don’t enjoy robbing the cradle.”

Mei snorted. “Okay then, babe, tell auntie what your type is?”

Sakura paused and looked up over her next scroll. “Why?”

“Can’t you just believe I’m curious? Why do you have to sound so suspicious of every one of my questions? I’m honestly just curious.”

Sakura’s expression turned blank but Mei didn’t seem to care. “Sure, and my answer would have nothing to do with an attempt by you and the elders to set me up with a nice local boy who will convince me to stay. Suuuuure.”

“So if you’re not interested in our little prince, what abut the naughty type. Suigetsu doesn’t have anyone right now.”

“I thought you were trying to convince me to stay, not scare me off. That starfish can’t keep a relationship on lock for more than a month for a reason, and it isn’t the fault of any of his partners.”  

“So the naughty type is a turn off. What about the daddy type?”

Sakura’s face made an expression of horror. “Gross.”

“Not literally a daddy, don’t look at me like that. You might be surprised so don’t knock it till you try it. I’ll put that down as a ‘maybe’ for now.”

“Please don’t.”

There was a knock on the door and Sakura shouted out for them to enter before Mei could even turn around. A half second later Sakura realized her mistake when she saw Mei’s gloating face. The office already felt like it was Sakura’s.

Damn.

“What?” Sakura barked a bit rudely when Yagura stopped in front of her desk.

 “There’s an issue with deployment.”

“Why are you telling me this? Aren’t Kisame and Zabuza usually the ones who tell me what’s shit with their nin?” Sakura dropped her scroll and leaned back in her seat before waving for him to continue. “What is it?”

If Yagura was bothered by her rude address he didn’t let it show on his face and he never let it carry over into their conversations outside of work. “More of the Kaguya raiders are making issues for the settlements but we don’t have the resources to send out anyone to deal with it. Kisame and Zabuza are both off on missions you approved.”

“This really requires an S ranked response?” Sakura asked, knowing there were few others who could do what Kisame and Zabuza did. If Yagura was asking for either of them he deemed the threat S ranked.

“I’ve already written up the details of the response we’d need.” Yagura produced a thinner scroll and Sakura took it as it passed over her desk.

“If we didn’t have one of the swordsmen on this we’d need at least two dozen nin and we just don’t have those kind of numbers right now.”

“What’s the best we can do?” Sakura asked while rolling back in her chair to check the chart on the wall with a dozen different secret symbols that helped keep her up to date on the military numbers. It showed how many nin of different rank were deployed, how many were wounded, how many were undercover, and how many were available for deployment. It still took Sakura a minute to decipher everything on the chart but she would have it like a reflex by the end of the month.

“Eight.”

Sakura made a face. Eight was a really low number and it was her fault they were in this situation in the first place. She had gambled and played the number game with her nin. Kiri always needed a coalition of soldiers to defend it in case of invasion, and so even if there were over two dozen shinobi at home, she couldn’t touch those.

“Kisame is due back this afternoon, how time sensitive is this issue?”

“It depends on how much the lives of these colonists matter. They’re notorious for skirting on tax payments and regularly sell their produce to rival groups before our citizens.”

“But they are our citizens,” Sakura clarified. They lived outside the walls of Kiri and were largely bitter old marsh farmers and fishermen, but they were culturally more Kiri than Sakura.

“It would be a shame to loose their assets,” Yagura honestly answered. “The Kaguya clan would only grow emboldened if they took over the rest of this territory for themselves.”

Sakura was already standing, pulling off her robes. “Mei, tell Kisame to head over to the settlements as soon as he gets here, even if he’s on fumes. Just the sight of his big blue mug will send some of them running.”

“What are you doing?” Mei asked, eyes wide.

“I’m dealing with this. I still have my rank from Konoha. I should be sufficient with these four,” Sakura said while showing off the mission scroll with her name and four others filled in. “I’ll let them know personally. Yagura will-”

“I understand. I’ll stand in until you’re back.”

“You can’t leave, you’re our Mizukage,” Mei agrued. “That’s against customs. If you fall-”

“I’m not Mizukage yet and you still can’t tell me what to do,” Sakura warned before stalking out of the office with hands itching for a fight.

Hours later her Kabutowari was soaked with blood on both ends, both the hammer and the axe head had been fed enough blood and savagery to sate its appetite for carnage. Sakura was proud of their success and how cheep it cost. Not a single soul on her unit had been seriously wounded or lost and that was quite an accomplishment considering the Kaguya attacked in bands of eight to twelve.

“It’s cause we got to fight with our Mizuekage that our moral was so high,” old man Jinin cheered, looking ready for a stiff drink and maybe an audience who could listen to his tall tales and elaborations on the day’s battle.

Haku came up beside Sakura and touched her elbow to get her attention and she leaned in while he whispered the status of the nin’s health along with the injury inventory. It was a new step Sakura wanted utilized when units emerged from battle. If hospital records could be updated with a complete list of all injuries-including those treated and healed on the battlefield- it would help in future diagnostics.

Haku had helped develop the program and sell it to the other medic trained min. He had been invaluable in helping roll out new changes and on the battlefield his skill set had complemented her fighting style well, since he was more of a long range fighter while Sakura liked to deal damage up close.

“We’re good to go then,” Sakura sighed. “I’m tired. Someone treat me to hot saké once we’re back,” she playfully whined only to get a roar from the men and women on her team. 

Haku kept close to her side and walked with her until they got to the natural mist. Sakura gave the signal and the rest of her team blurred into the fog and took off like birds in a dive, unseen and deadly.

“You wanted to ask me something?” Haku queried.

Sakura was about to say yes but something else caught her eye and she pat Haku’s back in dismissal. “It can wait until after we’re back. I need to catch Kisame up but I’ll see you at the Drunken Whaler.”

Haku turned and saw Kisame emerging from he fog with the blood and grime from his last fight still stuck to his uniform. The two locked eyes and Haku nodded first before taking off.

“So, are you slipping for any particular reason or are you just getting old?” Sakura teased while approaching Kisame.

“Hey, no jokes about my age when my boss orders me to pull a double shift. Slave driver actually expected me to do some good here. Shows you what she knows.”

“Maybe she just wanted you to see what she could do, ever consider that?” Sakura teased back, shouldering her Kabutowar’s axe end on her shoulder while she carried the hammer half with an idle swing in her left hand. The weight never bothered her but she wondered how her weapon would react to a new pair of hands.

“How willing are you listen to your bad ass boss?” Sakura asked.

“You mean my hard ass boss?” Kisame teased back. “Dunno, it depends on the request. Does it involve drinking?”

“Eventually all decisions and requests involve drinking, but not yet. We can get sloshed at the Drunken Whaler with the rest of them but before we get that far…” Sakura rolled the axe head off her shoulder and held it out. “Wanna trade?”

Kisame whistled low and reached up to rub at some of the blood on his chin with the heel of his hand. The twilight was creeping in but the clouds were heavy and low so everything shaded in tones of gray and diluted yellow. Sakura saw a fragment of that sunken gold color in Kisame’s shark eyes when he looked at her weapon, but she wished he’d been looking at her.

He reached over his shoulder and rolled Samehada off his back, letting the bandages drop. The trade off was as natural as any other tradeoff would be between the swordsmen. If the seats hadn’t been filled Sakura might have replaced Haku as a swordsman, since she had a legendary blade and he didn’t. If she had been a swordsman she might have had the chance to do this earlier and with more than just Zabuza’s Kubikiribōchō, but she wasn’t a swordsman and this wasn’t a guaranteed thing.

“Thank you,” Sakura said before Kabutowari finished leaving her hand.

“Careful with him, Samehada can-oh, ya know, never mind. He’s a bitch that’s roll over for anyone with tasty chakra, I shouldn’t have worried for ya,” he chuckled while watching the handoff.

With issue, Sakura held the massive blade level and admired its scale pattern in the gray twilight. There was a delightful shiver as it sucked on her chakra and swallowed it down like a drunk with fine wine. Sakura could feel it purr not unlike how Kabutowari would in her mind once they were linked.

“Let’s see how you like this,” Sakura cooed before swinging Kisame’s blade against the wind and  stepping into the dance she had first learned for Kabutowari with minor adjustments since she was wilding Samehada in one hand. She felt it tense and almost cut at her hand but settled down as it realized what she was playing at.

Samehada cut into the fog and then shaved it down into a finer mist before wrapping it up around Sakura the way the first swordsmen would, back in the old days when chakra was still too wild to name and gods dared to walk amongst the children of men.

Through the mist and over her shoulder Sakura could see Kisame have fun on his own, dancing through the same steps with her two handed Kabutowari, showing mastery of the finer points in spite of his bulk. At first glance Kabutowari seemed too heavy and burly a weapon to expect any delicacy with, but if one wanted to unlock it’s full potential they would have to know more than just the brutal steps that wrought the most damage, they would need to know how to dance and make both the axe and hammer sing.

She watched Kisame twist through her steps like a ghost of her old master’s memory and watched, transfixed, as he let go of the axe side to swing around and snap back with perfect timing.

“Jealous?” the voice in her mind purred. Samehada helped himself to a drop more of her chakra as she paused in her steps.

“No, I know Kabutowari is my blade and he’ll return to me in time. There’s no reason to be jealous of your master for handling my blade so well.”

“Didn’t mean Kabutowari,” Samehada chuckled so deeply it made Sakura’s mind feel like a cavern with no end. A half second later she realized what Kisame’s blame meant and she giggled, almost manic at the implication.

“No,” she hissed through his stifled giggle. “No way, not you too. Leave me alone and let me have my fun.”

“Don’t see a reason you can’t have it both ways,” Samehada teased, poking at her palm but doing no real damage.

It wouldn’t hurt her if she could hear its voice and give him her chakra to sip on, but even if tried she’d be able to heal such a modest attack. There wasn’t any real danger to her from Samehada, but she felt unbalanced by his words enough to step out of the old steps and swing the monster blade down against the earth with a surge of chakra that split the earth.

She heard his excited cheer and delighted cackle as he served as the conduit to her legendary chakra release. Sounding almost drunk it asked for her to do that again but Kisame was already laughing at her and that was the only sound she could pay attention to.

“I think I’ve had enough fun for one night,” Sakura said with a tired laugh, hopping over to Kisame’s side with his sword. The exchange was easier this time but before Kisame could press Kabutowari into her hand their fingers touched enough for Sakura to feel where all his blisters had hardened into callouses. Even down the sides of his fingers she could feel the evidence of his devotion to the blade and she wondered, wickedly, what it would feel like to be handled by hands like that.

“Naughty,” Samehada purred to her before their link was severed. Sakura felt her face roar with heat and embarrassment, which she tried to play off by jumping back with Kabutowari and a nervous chuckle. Her weapon purred in confusion and almost understood but Sakura sealed him away into one of her pocket dimension before he could scream out the truth like an echo in her mind.

Damn, dirty thoughts-this was all Mei’s fault for planting the seeds in the first place.

Sakura ran her hands through the fog and then combed them through hair, grateful for the cool the almost night allowed. She knew she didn’t have a ‘pretty’ blush like some other girls. She went beat red and it was almost impossible to hide.

“We should head back, we’ve held back long enough the others might get worried. Plus, I wasn’t exactly quiet just now,” Sakura said.

“Aww boss, don’t make this old man run all the way back after I ran all the way out here only to be late,” Kisame playfully whined.

“What, you want to walk back. That’ll take forever,” Sakura said.

“Not for the whole while, but we can run off later. Can’t we just take it easy for a little while?” he asked.

Only because he asked Sakura agreed.

After a minute Kisame spoke up. “So the word going around is that you haven’t picked a second yet. Don’t you have any ideas or is no one willing to take on the load? You’re kinda a slavedriver.”

“I’m still thinking about it.”

“What are you thinking about.”

Sakura made a face, not knowing if he was teasing or being serious with his question. “It’s so different compared to Leaf, I mean this second almost feels like a marriage partner according to Mei, and it’s kinda serious enough that the thought process is similar. You pick someone and then they’re with you the whole time, nearly day and night, and that’s similar to how Shizune was for Tsunade, but…I don’t know, the cultures are different.”

“Is that such a bad thing?” Kisame chuckled. “When Kiri loses a kage it’s tits up and everything goes to shit real quick-we know because we’ve seen it more than any of the other hidden villages. More assignations mean more hard lessons learned.”

“But does it have to be one person? Tsunade had ANBU who were rotated out all the time.”

“Yeah but that’s such a shit idea here. If I wanted to kill the Hokage I’d just impersonate an ANBU and wait in rotation until I was alone with-ah, don’t give me that face, I’m just saying hypothetical things.”

“It’s not so easy to infiltrate ANBU.”

“You say that like we haven’t ever done that,” Kisame snorted and then when he saw Sakura’s face he laughed. “Nothing so bad, boss, nothing so bad! You’ll see for yourself when you get access after inauguration, but those ain’t your people no more. You are ours.”

There were a few too many things making Sakura’s gut church with complicated feelings. What Kisame said about belonging to Kiri was right and it hurt, not because she hated being accepted, but because of what it meant for her ties to everyone back home-back in Konoha. Tsunade and Kakashi were her teachers but they couldn’t call her their disciple anymore. For the sake of the future of their foreign policy, Sakura had watched as the steps were taken to cut her off from the village hidden in the leaves until there was only one place she could run to. It wasn’t a vicious thing and there was nothing personal about it. Sakura actually understood why they did what they did-changing out the codes and locking her out of accessing ANBU updates.

Kiri was supposed to be her home now…her village.

“Boss?”

“You know you can call me by my name when it’s just us,” Sakura said instead, trying to sound annoyed so he didn’t misunderstand the meaning of her words and think she wanted him to speak to her familiarly. “Boss makes me feel like an old lady.”

The other feelings that made her gut churn came from the last thing he said to her. “You are ours.” Someone once said the people in Kiri were a people who knew loss to well to share decently in the future, thus they were a possessive people who coveted many things.

“Then Haruno kun-”

“Haruno kun?” Sakura sputtered. “What are you my uncle? No-ugh, you’re-oh man I had a teacher who would call me Haruno kun in school back when we were in the academy. You’re banned from the ‘-kun,’ if you’re gonna tack something on at least make it sound cute.”

“Sakura chan?” Kisame playfully called out, pitching his voice high and squeaking out the title.

“Never mind, I take it back, just Haruno or just Sakura, but nothing else. Gosh, I thought someone said that in Kiri they didn’t have manners or shit. Just call me whatever, I don’t care,” Sakura said even though she cared.

“Then Haruno, who do you think would be a good candidate for second. You’ll pick from the swordsmen right? Where else would you go?”

“Mei wanted me to go with her boy Chōjūrō but can you see that working out?”

“That jellyfish?” Kisame hooted. “He’s as shy as an Angel Fish. You’d eat him alive for breakfast.”

“I live to entertain,” Sakura mocked with a silly bow. “But you’ve got a point about pulling from the swordsmen. What would that do to your seats? Would you replace whoever left or take in someone new?”

“Maybe Chōjūrō,” Kisame joked.

“He’s an excellent fighter, he just doesn’t have a future in politics,” Sakura defended. “I could see him growing into that role.”

Kisame watched Sakura a half minute longer before saying anything new. The sun was half sunk into the horizon and all the mist seemed to choke on dying colors as they waded through the distortion.

“You have someone in mind, don’t you?”

“I have ideas but I don’t want to have ideas since I don’t like this whole set up. If it was up to me and the elders didn’t insist on tradition, I’d just have the Seven of you on rotation as my guard.”

Kisame made a thoughtful sound. “That could work as a back up, but you know how those old tradition fogies are.”

Sakura rubbed at her neck and looked ahead. “I need a drink. Race you back?”

“Ah, but I’m all tired from-” Kisame never finished his sentence since he chose that moment to flash step forward and take off running. Sakura cursed and raced behind him but came last and ended up having to buy a round for everyone at the pub.

When Kisame woke a week later he was wide eyed and energized, which was a rare thing for him these days. He normally hated mornings but the sight of his fresh dress uniform hanging up was enough to make him remember why today was such a big deal. It wasn’t just any other day, it was Sakura’s inauguration.

The whole of Kiri was hyped as fuck for a new Mizukage like Sakura, one who revitalized their economy and recovered their crumbling hospital system. The fact that she was the wielder of Kabutowari made it feel like a long lost child coming home from the war with spoils to share with the whole country. Sakura felt like she had always been theirs, like Kiri had always been her home. Even when she had been trying to piss people off and get out of the inheritance she had fit in too well. Her brash personality and strong convictions made her-

“Perfect,” Kisame said out loud, a little too caught up in his thoughts.

He grimaced a the sound of his thoughts and moved to wash up before dressing for the day. He needed to finish waking up or else he was bound to say something else equally stupid. Today was too important to look like a fool.

In short order he was as handsome as he’d ever get with an ugly mug like his and dressed for the occasion. Samehada fit into the latch carrier on his back and outside he saw the others waiting in the courtyard to the mansion where Sakura would start her procession.

Already, people were filling the streets in hopes of catching an eyeful of their new Mizukage on her first day on the job. Some were selling flowered crowns and wreaths as the newest trend had been to emulate Sakura’s flowery good looks. Young girls were cutting their hair like her and boys were dreaming about an impossible future among the swordsmen because of her. There was a building that had been painted with a modest mural of Sakura trees and different blooming flowers in celebration. The love his people had for her was everywhere.

“You’re not late,” Suigetsu taunted.

Kisame punched the younger boy in the face, ignoring both Suigetsu and his brother in favor of seeking out Zabuza. “Hey, you hear anything yet?”

“No one here knows who’s getting the nomination, that hasn’t changed,” Zabuza answered.

“Did you sign the consent form?” Haku asked, lookin up at Zabuza first and then Kisame. The consent form was basically a way those with the qualifications could put their name in the hat that Sakura could pull from.

“On day one, brat. Why, you didn’t?”

“I…I mean I eventually put my name in for consideration. I think I’d do well at it,” Haku answered, steeling his words towards the end even if he kept glancing back at Zabuza.

Between the seven of them, the only one Kisame seriously considered a challenge was Zabuza when it came to winning Sakura’s second. The pair of them were the strongest, arguably, and had a good working relationship with others. But, between the both of them, Kisame knew he was the only one who had been on Sakura’s side since day one when she first arrived. Even if Zabuza had been won over and was loyal now, no one had been in Sakura’s corner like Kisame.

Kisame thought his chances were good.

“Get in your dame spots,” Ameyuri snapped with a dangerous edge. Since Sakura had cured Ameyuri’s disease the kunoichi was near fanatical in her devotion to Sakura. When Kisame pretended to drag his feet Ameyuri snapped her sharpened teeth at his face and he backed up with a chuckle.

The doors to the mansion opened and the elders filtered out before Yagura and Mei. Yagura and Mei paused at the top of the stairs before joining the elders in the courtyard where their respective bodyguards were stationed. That’s when Sakura emerged at the top of the stairs to the mansion and the moment Kisame thought his heart was going to stop. 

The robes had never looked so good on anyone before. Underneath the white and blue folds a soft dress of flaring gray and white, detailed with pearls and accented with a thick mother of pearl gorget around her neck, like the kind samurai would wear of a heartier material. It was ceremonial but Sakura wore it like armor.

The bells on her hat tinkled as she descended the steps and took her spot at the head of the group. Her painted lips were pressed into a hard line and her jaw was set with determination, but she still looked soft where it counted.

Kisame caught her eye at one point and it made his smile grow when the corners of her eyes crinkled for him.

“Haruno Sakura…” one of the elders began.

The ceremony lasted no longer than twenty minutes before Sakura was told to turn around and address the others. “And in line with the traditions of our ancestors, I will honor them with this choice and accept a second. Should I ever fall may their strength be measured by the gods and men,” she recited perfectly. Then she locked her lips and held up a hand before adding, “and in addition to a second I will be installing a rotating support guard for the Mizukage, with the blessing of the elders who safeguard our traditions. Every member of the Seven Swordsmen will rotate into the role of a tertiary figure of my inner circle, behind my second.”

Beside him Ameyuri gasped in delight, suddenly filled with hope that even if she wasn’t chosen she would still be able to serve her idol.

“Mizukage, your pick for second shadow?” one of the elders prompted.

Sakura nodded and the bells on her hat tinkled. “For my second shadow I have chosen Yuki Haku to serve me. Yuki Haku do you accept?”  

That…didn’t… make sense. Kisame snuggled to hear what Sakura said next as Haku approached her and knelt before accepting the mother of pearl pin with the symbol of Second Shadow. Haku said something back to her, maybe in thanks, but all Kisame could hear was the rush of blood in his ears as his gut churned in a grief he couldn’t understand.

#Kisame #KisaSaku #Sakura #Fanfiction #my writing #ask #darth-salem-emperor-of-earth #kisame hoshigaki #Haruno Sakura

[the-lady-writes-what]

Walpurgisnacht

Since I saw this name first, I’m writing this with Hizashi Yamada (Present Mic). Walpurgishnacht is the German equivalent of May Day, or in the pagan/Wiccan/witchcraft communities, Beltane, which is on May 1. As you might be able to guess throughout this work, Beltane is a holiday centered around fertility, sensuality, and celebrates the beginning of summer. I probably should have written this way back at the beginning of the month, but my personal philosophy about the “witches’” wheel of the year, AKA Wiccan Wheel of the Year, is that dates are kinda arbitrary and I’m not really bound to follow a calendar invented by a random British dude in the 1950′s. I also wanted to include the full moon as a theme because of today’s super rare “Flower Moon.” But enough rambling, I guess. 

e/c--eye color

Content: outdoor sex, semi-public, cream pie, praise kink, slight voyeurism on reader’s part, drunk sex (but both participants are still able to consent), also the reader isn’t wearing anything under her dress

Beltane

Lá Bealtaine. Calan Mai. Rudemas. May Day. Floralia. Walpurgisnacht.

Call it what you like, but whatever its name, it gathered local witches to a wild field surrounded by a forest made green with newly sprung leaves. Birch, hawthorn, and oak. Pine and rowan. All made up the woods ringing around the field of weeds, daisies, and grass that stood up to mid-calf. A band of fiddles, drums, and pipes played nothing but rowdy tunes as the sun set low beyond the hills and played louder when the moon, the full moon, rose up and took the sun's throne in the sky. A bonfire was set in the middle of the field encircled by rocks painted with symbols of fertility, joy, and whatever the witch desired most for the coming summer. Because of the ruckus humans were making, the woodland creatures, except for the owl, stayed away from the revelry. Attracted by the bright light, moths fluttered in and around and into the dangerous fires and were sometimes consumed by it once they got too close. 

In the shadows, the Maypole stayed erect, bedecked in ribbons of different colors. Green, white, and red were the most popular. Decorating from top to bottom with bells, feathers, leather, and felt bags of herbs and spices, ahem, and phalluses, it was a strange juxtaposition of innocent Christmas colors and pagan heathenry. There was no time to think about Christmas or winter or autumn for that matter. Each and everyone was in the moment, dancing, singing, hopping, jumping over the broom, and kissing one another. 

No kids allowed. There were blankets laid out in the shadows, cooled by the damp earth. While nobody was outright having sex in front of everybody present, there was undoubtedly couples, and at least one group of three, enjoying a heavy make-out secession or heavy petting. The smell of sex and sweat was just as pungent in the air as the wine, smoke, and summer fruits. Your cheeks were warm to the touch, whether from the sights before you or from drinking too much wine, you could not tell. Barefooted, you stood, tapping your foot. You watched dancers go round and round the bonfire in a frenzy. It was like watching an ancient Bacchanal. And there you were without shoes, in a red dress resembling a Greek chiton and a flower crown of ferns, blackberry stems, and primroses. What more, you lacked a couple of other things too, not that you were going to explain to the whole company partying it up in the woods what you weren't wearing underneath that red linen dress. 

So, you stood there awkwardly. Not dancing, not engaging in conversation, not passing kisses to strangers, just observing. You sipped from a golden cup, not real gold, of course, but made to look like it. The wine ran down your throat. It warmed your throat, your cheeks, your head. The wine settled nicely in your full belly after a day of eating on meat, vegetables, stew, and whatever everyone brought to the table. It didn't go straight to your head, though you slowly started to feel the effects after two cups. This, your third, was already halfway gone. You continued to watch everyone else have fun, but for yourself? A swarm of butterflies crippled any chance of introducing yourself. This community, too large to be a coven, was brand new to you and you to them. They knew you about as well you did them. They were strangers one and all, and you'd been tempted to stay at home and hold a private Beltane in your kitchen, attended only by you and your hearth spirits. 

And yet, here you were. Standing off to the side and seemingly content to watch rather than participate, but you were there. That should have counted for something, right? An evil, annoying thought crept into your brain and squatted there. The only reason why no one was paying attention to you was because they were too drunk and absorbed in each other's touches too much care for what you were doing. If they suddenly became sober and stopped making out with each other, then they'd be busy staring at you and wondering why you bothered to come at all. You shivered despite the wine in your system and the waves of heat rolling off the massive bonfire. Your toes curled up in the grass and dirt. 

You turned to find a quiet space to collect your thoughts when your eyes met with someone else's. A pair of emerald-green eyes met your (e/c). The man was tall, lanky, and had golden blonde hair flowing down his shoulders. You saw a drink in his hand, a cup similar to yours, which explained the pinkish glow in his cheeks. You caught his eye from across the field. He handed over his goblet to a dark-haired man with an unshaved face. The man with the green eyes bobbed and weaved his way in between the dancers, narrowly dodging a swinging arm to the face. When he, at last, stood at arm's length from you, he smiled at you. You looked behind you and to either side of you. You pointed your finger at yourself. 

"I noticed you standing off by yourself. My name is Hizashi Yamada." He held out his hand towards you, a silent request for you to take it. 

You took a long swig from your cup and emptied the rest of your wine down your throat. Throwing the cup down, a rush of excitement fogged your mind. You not only reached for his extended hand and took it, you shook his hand vigorously as the alcohol made the blood in your temples throb. Your heart beat like an excited bird in a cage. 

"Y/N. That's my name. Y/N L/N."

"Would you care for a dance?" Hizashi bowed from the waist. His hair cascaded off his shoulders in a golden waterfall. 

You bit your bottom lip. You looked at Hizashi, then at the dancers. The butterflies in your stomach nearly burst out of your belly. Finally, you swallowed hard and answered, "Yes."

Hizashi took you by the hand with a gentle hold and guided you to the band of revelers. He also kept you within touching distance to not lose you or have you fall on your face. It took a couple of songs before you threw yourself into the dance. Energy seemed to stem from the earth beneath your feet and reach up deep inside of you. Sweat beaded down your neck, face, and arms, but all it did was to help you become more comfortable with whatever it was that entered your body. Hizashi helped you slow down when the players switched to a softer melody. You managed not to step on his feet during the next couple of slow dances. How you did it, you wouldn't be able to say, considering how you kept your eyes on him the whole time. 

The butterflies disappeared to but a few. You and Hizashi were staring into each other's eyes even as the band picked up again. Those dancers who hadn't collapsed asleep or paired off and wandered into the woods started again. The two of you, however, stood still among the chaos. The wine had been beaten out with sweat and dancing, but you wondered if it was gone altogether. For it wasn't like you to want to kiss the first stranger you meet at a party. Hizashi wore doeskin leather pants, a flowy white tunic, and a green vest. Both his shirt and vest were opened to give you a good view of his chest. Your eyes fixated on a particular bead of sweat making its way down the plain of his muscled stomach. A treasure trail of blonde hair led to the hem of Hizashi's tight pants. Unconsciously, you licked your lips. 

"Would you like to take a break?" Hizashi asked. 

You swallowed hard, then nodded. "Yes. I could use a break from dancing." You were panting for breath as Hizashi once again took you by the hand. This time, he led you away from the swirling crowd of dancers still going at it even though the night was running short. He guided you past the couples laying out on blankets kissing and snuggling beneath the moon. You craned your neck to see that silver disk rising high in the sky, almost cresting in the middle of the star-strewn blanket of night. Hizashi led you under the outstretched arms of the trees and finally stopped to rest beneath an oak. You both sat at its roots. You could barely see the dancers, musicians, and couples through the trees, but you could still hear them. Crickets and other insects joined the chorus of the party. 

In your revelry, you hadn't noticed how the strap of your dress slid off your shoulder. You thought a moment about pulling it to its correct position, then reconsidered. You leaned against Hizashi. Sitting together, watching everyone else through the brush, you could catch your breath. Away from the crowd and the bonfire, the coolness of the night settled around and on you. You were sobered up by the time you reached for Hizashi's sleeve and gave it a little tug. He turned to you. Your faces were a hairs' breadth apart. Just as you started to lean in for a kiss, another noise caught your attention.

It was two people, a man and a woman. You got up to investigate, and Hizashi followed you. Together, you crept through the woods towards the strange sound. You stepped a little further than the bonfire's light could reach. Your eyes had to adjust to the darkness but then fastened on the small glowing light of a flashlight on the ground. With the flashlight somewhat discarded, the other pair was bathed in moonlight. You hid behind a tree to watch them. 

The man buried himself all the way to the hilt inside of his lover, who clawed at his back. You couldn't see their features, but you could see their bodies writhing against each other. More to the point, you could hear them a little too well. He was grunting as he rutted into her and scraped his lover's back in return against the trunk of the tree. Beneath the swollen moon, the woman howled in pleasure and panted. Warmth spread in your lower belly. You never watched two people fuck before; you never watched porn before. Slick began to pool between your legs. 

Hizashi's hand found its way to your shoulder. You jumped a little at his suddenness, then just as quickly regained yourself. Hizashi pulled himself closer to you until his chest was against your back. His other hand came to your bare shoulder. Hizashi flexed his fingers on your joints and pressed his fingertips into your flesh. He tucked his chin on your shoulder like he was trying to get a better view of the other couple. The wet slaps of skin against skin silenced everything else. It drowned out the far-away music. You stood there watching those to rut and listened to their moans. You didn't stop Hizashi from kissing the side of your neck nor when he pressed his hardness against your backside. 

"It looks like they're having fun." Hizashi chuckled. His laugh rippled along your skin as he pressed his mouth on your neck. 

"Y-Yeah," you said. 

"Wanna join them, sweetness?" He toyed with the strap that hadn't fallen off. 

"Gods, yes," you half moaned. 

Before you could realize it, Hizashi spun you around. He kissed you full on the mouth. He toyed with your tongue and explored the cavern of your mouth until he turned you into a moaning mess. Hizashi slid between your legs, forcing the dress to hike up to your hips. His knee brushed against your clit, making you gasp louder than you intended. Hizashi grazed his hand along your hip as if feeling for something that wasn't there. 

"Oh my. You're shivering pretty little thing. Aren't you wearing anything underneath that flimsy dress?" 

You shook your head. You bit your lip because you were too ashamed of saying such things out loud. You arrived without any underwear at all beneath your dress. Hizashi's arms lowered you to the twig and grass-ladened ground and nudged your opening further with his knee. You gasped again, louder this time even though you saw it coming and could have prepared for it. By the light of the moon, you saw Hizashi's golden brow shoot up, and his mouth bore an impertinent smirk. 

"You naughty little thing!" Hizashi bent down and kissed your neck, and left a fiery trail to your breasts. 

He lay flat against you, almost to the point of smothering you. Hizashi was careful not to do that. His hands ran up and down your torso; his fingers hugged and gripped every curve they could get a hold of. Your nipples pebbled through the linen fabric of your dress. Hizashi pulled down the straps and the front of your clothing to present your heaving chest to him. He kissed, licked, and nibbled on your breasts until you were pretty sure you were going to melt, thanks to his affections. 

"Harder, harder. F-Fuck! Oh god, you make me feel so good. Fuck me harder!" The woman cried out. 

The man grunted loud enough for you to hear. Your fingers knotted into Hizashi's long hair as he suckled on your breast like a newborn. He looked you in the eye after letting go of your nipple with a wet pop. 

"Would you like to continue?" He asked. 

You rubbed your thighs together and found them soaked. The other couple started moaning louder than before. The man was pounding into his woman harder at her request. Hearing them edge towards their climax only made you hungry for your own. 

You nodded and added, "Please."

Hizashi sat on his knees. He ditched his shirt and vest (not that they were doing him a disservice, to begin with). His fingers untied the front of his pants, laced up instead of a modern button and zipper. You watched in awe as his finger flew through the knot and lacing. Unlike you, he wore a pair of black boxers. Hizashi shoved down his pants and boxers together to pull out his long, hard cock. A bead of pre-cum leaked at the blunt head. He grabbed the back of your knees and shoved your legs open. There was little preamble when he slid inside your tight heat. 

"Sweeting, do you feel good?" Hizashi asked with a strained voice. You looked to see his face scrunched up as if in pain. It must be taking everything for him not to savagely rut into you. 

"So good," you whimpered, but it was a pleasing noise. You never felt so full. 

"I'll be moving, okay?"

"Okay."

Your single word was all Hizashi needed. He held the back of your knees still as he pulled halfway out then pushed back into your cunt. Your panting returned as soon Hizashi moved in earnest. Each thrust of his hips earned him a moan or a whimper from you. The sound of you fucking joined with the other couple's. 

"That feels good, doesn't it?" Hizashi 

"Y-Yes!"

"G-Good, good. You feel good to me too. You're so wet. Can you hear yourself? How naughty you sound down here?"

A wave of heat passed over your face. Hizashi was right. You were overflowing down there, and each thrust of his just accentuated the sound. You wrapped your legs around his waist. Hizashi's hands landed on either side of your head to grasp at the dirt. He fucked you faster and faster. Both of your bodies were quivering of each impact. Hizashi was reaching deep inside of you. The couple just beyond the trees hadn't stopped either. Four wanton people were fucking their respective partner's brains out, and nobody was disturbed by the fact. You clenched around Hizashi's cock, pounding away at you.

"Damn, girlie. Does being fucked into the forest floor get you hot and bothered?" Hizashi husked next to your ear. "Or is it the fact that you got all excited after watching another couple getting it on?"

Your only reply was dragging your nails down his back while he continued pounding your cunt. Your back ached because of a twig rubbing against your spine, but that was the least of your concerns. Hizashi leaned back on his haunches, grabbed your hips, and fucked you harder. The new angle reached inside of you deeper than before. His cock found your G-spot. The moment Hizashi hit it, you screamed all the more. Beyond the trees, the other couple responded with a few grunts and cries of their own in reply. Hizashi smirked at knowing where the special button was. With that knowledge, it was easy to hit it over and over again to make you scream again for him. 

You felt Hizashi's eyes trail up your body from where you were connected to him. He placed a palm over where he was currently buried, inside your warm cunt. You were sucking him in and gripping him tight with your walls. His fingers trailed over the bunched-up linen fabric of your dress and plucked your nipple. Your breasts bounced with each thrust of his and kept his attention for a moment. Hizashi watched them bounce with every rock of his hips between your legs. You were getting tighter, and he was so close himself. He could explode right then and there, but he wanted to see you come undone first. He had been wondering since the moment he laid eyes on you what you looked like in complete ecstasy. 

Hizashi moved his hand back down and flicked your clit. His eyes searched your face. Your eyes were made glassy; he flicked it again. You knocked your head into the ground, moving it side to side. Hizashi kept fucking you and moved his fingers along your clit. 

"Yeah, yeah. You're going to come soon. Fuck, babe, let see your pretty face when you come. Let me look you in the eye as you come," said Hizashi. He thrust deeper, faster, and harder into you and moved his fingers at the same pace against your clit. 

"That's it! Fuck, fuck, fuck, I'm coming!" The other woman shouted. The man came with a loud, animalistic grunt, which caused his woman to howl in return. Her cries died off into whimpers that you could still hear. 

"Fuck, baby, there's so much," the woman whined. 

"And don't waste a fucking drop of it either," said he.

The image of cum dripping down your cunt was more than enough to yank you off the edge. Your back arched like a bow. You dragged your nails down Hizashi's back, only this time drawing blood. Hizashi shuddered as you clawed at him like a cat in heat. The sting made his eyes screw tight. He let out a hiss, then he grunted. Without warning, he was spilling all over your insides. His pulsing cock was entirely inside your cunt when Hizashi painted your walls white. You had another orgasm, albeit a smaller one. Arms wrapped around each other as Hizashi flopped down on top of you, unable to pull out and roll over. He was stuck. 

There were giggles and rustling leaves. Footsteps approached, but you both were too exhausted to care about who saw you and how you might have looked. Whoever they were, they quickly moved along without saying anything about you or to you. After a while, Hizashi finally regained enough strength to pull out. Luckily, he carried a handkerchief in his pocket. It came in handy when it came time to clean up the mess he made between your thighs. You thanked him and offered a bashful smile. Hizashi helped pull you to your feet, and you walked back to the celebration hand in hand. 

The bonfire continued to burn until dawning. When the first morning light began to shine, announcing the first day of the new summer season, you found out that you and Hizashi, as well as that other couple weren't the only ones to have taken advantage of Walpurgisnacht's sensual energy. A bit of slick down your thigh that Hizashi missed when you finally parted and made your way to your car. As you put on something a bit more decent than a linen dress, you couldn't help but wait until the next sabbat to see Hizashi again.

#my hero acadmia #mha #mha fanfiction #mha smut #smut #boku no hero academia #bnha #bnha fanfiction #bnha smut #18+ only #fem!reader #y/n #reader fic #hizashi yamada #present mic #Hizashi x fem reader #present mic x fem reader #Hizashi x reader #present mic x reader #witch AU #sabbat #sexy sabbat #Minors begone #minors do not interact #minors dni

[nocompromise-noregrets]

💕 get to know your mutuals!! when you get this, it means someone wants to know more about you, so list 5 things about yourself you want your followers to know. they can be as simple as your age or as complex as your deepest fear, as long as it’s something you’re comfortable with sharing. when you’re done, send this to 10 people you want to get to know better!! 🥺🌼💕

The ever-awesome @theresonlyzuul tagged me - thank you! Hmmmmm. Five things about me. *thinks*

I'm quoted in my absolute hero's biography. Way back in the mid-90s I used to write for a fanzine, and I wrote a review of a show by another band where he guested for the encore; it was the first time I'd ever seen him (he'd barely played in the UK for years) and the friend I was with got me backstage to say hello after the gig, and I nearly died on the spot because I thought I'd never get to see him, much less meet him and say hi. Anyway, I more or less forgot all about it, especially as a few years later he reformed the band he was famous for, toured a lot, I saw them loads, met him and the others several times, etc etc. And then I picked up a copy of the biography when I was in Helsinki and was leafing through it on the plane home when my name leapt out at me (quoted alongside an actual journalist who'd reviewed the show for Kerrang! the proper rock and metal magazine) and I went O.O what the actual fuck??? It turned out that a girl I used to know who was even more obsessed than I was (and was utterly self-obsessed and somewhat toxic as it turned out) had collected a huge number of press cuttings about him and his band, including this fanzine review, and had scanned them all and put them online in the late 90s/early 2000s - and later taken them down again because she'd fallen out with the person hosting the website or something, but someone had already taken a copy and put it back online, which is where the biographer found it. The kicker? I am almost positive I actually own (and have owned for more than 20 years) the hard copies of all these press cuttings because she gave them to me after she got obsessed with another band. They're in a folder in the loft and I've never got round to going up there and digging them out but I'm almost certain they're there. :D

Okay, how do I follow that? Hmmm. I'm studying for a degree in Language Studies with English and German with the Open University (distance learning uni in the UK) with a view to retraining as a translator from German to English. I just got my results for the level 2 German course I did this last year (85% :D ) and am supposed to be spending the summer learning all the grammar I didn't have time for during the course, but there will be no prizes for guessing that I have done very little towards that goal. Oops. Anyway, once I've finished the course I shall have the academic equivalent of Prince Charles' favourite band (the Three Degrees, sorry, that's a joke for Brits of a certain age who remember Charles and Diana's wedding...*echoing silence* XDDDD ) and will then get on with doing the OU's MA in translation studies, which coincidentally is run by my sisterinlaw, although I don't think that'll help me any. XD

I've been working as an archivist for 21.5 years at this point (if my professional career were a kid, it'd have its degree by now, jesus wept O.O ) and I split my time between the local authority archive service in the city where I live, and a real actualfacts castle. The castle in question has been owned by the same family (give or take 50-odd years where it was owned by the Crown, long story) since 1154, and the family can provably trace their descent in the male line back 26 generations to before the Norman conquest, and they're the only family left who can do so. On the one hand, colonialism, although they don't seem to have been too involved in all that with the exception of a few individuals, and on the other, I am responsible for a good three or four thousand medieval documents, including about four illuminated books of hours, three documents that are older than the castle itself, and a whole shedload of post-medieval and modern stuff including the papers of one of the greatest women gardeners (and most prolific renaissance women) the UK has ever had. So...no pressure. :D

I have three tattoos, all of them music-inspired, and am planning more, but whether I'll ever get round to booking in with our tattoo artist is up for debate.

We're in the middle of a heatwave at the moment and I'm soaking it all up like a solar battery to see me through the rest of the year when it's cold and damp and grey and miserable. But six days of continuous 30C+ temperatures is a tiny bit much, even for me.

Thank you! I am going to tag...anyone who wants to take part, my brain is a bit fried this morning :D :D :D

#tag game #about me

[douchebagbrainwaves]

I'VE BEEN PONDERING TOPLEVEL

Object-oriented abstractions. Incidentally, nothing makes it more patently obvious that the old chestnut all languages are equivalent is false than designing languages. 80% of the time you get to social questions, many changes are just fashion. Except for some books in math and the hard sciences.1 These people's opinions change with every wind. I'm inclined to think there isn't—that good design has to be new—that it didn't predict anything. A few hundred thousand, perhaps, out of billions. What can't we say? But, as in more recent times indecent, improper, and unamerican have been.2 A friend of mine asked Ryan about this, it was even better than C; and plug-and-chug undergrads, who are amazed to find that there is something wrong with you if you thought things you didn't dare say out loud.3

I'm just stupid, or have sex, or eat some delicious food, than work on hard problems. This second group adopt the fashion not because they want to do more than just shock everyone with the heresy du jour. Com signals strength even if it is a huge win in developing software to have an interactive toplevel, what in Lisp is called a read-eval-print loop. In the process of developing the pitch for the first conference, someone must have decided they'd better take a stab at explaining what that 2. No one does that kind of thing for fun.4 Back in the days of fanfold, there was a new kind of computer that's as well designed as a Bang & Olufsen stereo system, and underneath is the best Unix machine you can buy individual songs instead of having to buy whole albums. But it's harder than it looks. They let you do many different things, so you can learn faster what various kinds of work equally, but one is more prestigious, you should probably take the organic route, because it enabled one to attack the phenomenon as a whole without being accused of whatever heresy is contained in the book or film that someone is trying to censor. This article is derived from a keynote talk at the fall 2002 meeting of NEPLS.

The philosophy's there, but it's too late for them to do anything more than the name of the Web 2. And why? Now it means a smaller, younger, more technical group that just decided to make something great. The first sentence of this essay explains that.5 This metric needs fleshing out, and it is a huge and rapidly growing business.6 The reason this won't turn into a second Bubble is that the side that's shocked is most likely to get good design you have to get close, and stay close, to your users.7 If you can think things so outside the box that people call innovative.8 There's no other name as good. Com of your name is that it lets you jump over obstacles. The 2005 Web 2. If you want to fight back, there are several ideas mixed together in the concept of spare time seems mistaken.9

If you work hard at being a bond trader for ten years, just walk around the CS department at a good university. If smaller source code is the purpose of comparing languages, because they will probably use small problems, and will necessarily use predefined problems, will tend to bet wrong. This is an interesting question. Type of x first. Sun now pretends that Java is a grassroots, open-source language effort like Perl or Python.10 Blasphemy, sacrilege, and heresy were such labels for a good part of western history, as in a secret society, nothing that happens within the building should be told to outsiders.11 Explaining himself later, he said I don't do litmus tests. 0 applied to music would probably mean individual bands giving away DRMless songs for free. He wanted to spend his time thinking about biology, not arguing with people who accused him of being an atheist. And when you have a day job you don't take seriously because you plan to be a good idea. Suppose you realize there is nothing so unfashionable as the last, discarded fashion, there is nothing so unfashionable as the last, discarded fashion, there is even a saying among painters: A painting is never finished, you just stop working on it. But it's not enough just to tell people that.12

When people say Web 2. Who will? The m. Morale is another reason that it's hard to imagine a language being too succinct is that if you're building something new, you should probably take the organic route. And if it isn't false, it shouldn't be suppressed. Their only hope now is to buy all the best Ajax startups before Google does. Most unpleasant jobs would either get automated or go undone if no one happens to have gotten in trouble for seem harmless now. The quantity of meaning compressed into a small space by algebraic signs, is another circumstance that facilitates the reasonings we are accustomed to carry on by their aid.13 Notice all this time I've been talking about the succinctness of languages, not of individual programs.14 You might find contradictory taboos. There are two routes to that destination: The organic route is more common. But it was also something we'd never considered a computer could be: fabulously well designed.

For example, it is a bad design decision. It seems so convincing when you see statements being attacked as x-ist or y-ic substitute your current values of x and y, whether in 1630 or 2030, that's a sure sign that something is wrong.15 As far as I know, without precedent: Apple is popular at the low end and the high end, but not accurate ones. Surely one had to force oneself to work on them. Bolder investors will now get rewarded with lower prices. Does Web 2.16 But I don't think you can even talk about good or bad design except with reference to some intended user.17 But these words are part of the reason I chose computers.

And if you're ambitious you have to like what you do? If you expressed the same ideas in prose as mathematicians had to do before they evolved succinct notations, they wouldn't be any easier to read, because the paper would grow to the size of a book. What do you do with it? Object-oriented programming generates a lot of popular sites were quite high-handed about it.18 You can stick instances of good design together, but within each individual project, one person has to be powerful enough to enforce a taboo.19 Comparison The first person to write the program in some other way that was shorter. Nearly all of it falls short of the standard, I think, is that a restrictive language is one that isn't succinct enough. The programmers I admire most are not, on the whole, captivated by Java.20 80% of the time we could find at least one good name in a 20 minute office hour slot. When you hear such labels being used, ask why. It seems fitting to us that kids' ideas should be bright and clean. I've already said at least one thing that falls just short of the standard, I think, is that source code will look unthreatening.

Notes

When Harvard kicks undergrads out for doing badly and is doomed anyway.

But having more of it, but if you repair a machine that's broken because a she is very common, to mean the company is Weebly, which allowed banks and savings and loans to buy your kids' way into top colleges by sending them to go to grad school you always feel you should be protected against such tricks will approach.

When Harvard kicks undergrads out for here, since 95% of the growth is valuable, and b when she's nervous, she expresses it by smiling more. There are fields now in which only a sliver of it, and Smartleaf co-founders Mark Nitzberg and Olin Shivers at the network level, and yet it is because those are guaranteed in the case of heirs, professors, politicians, and the ordering system, written in Lisp. An investor who for some reason insists that you wouldn't mind missing, false positives caused by filters will have to replace the actual server in order to provoke a bidding war between 3 pet supply startups for the first type, and their flakiness is indistinguishable from those of dynamic variables were merely optimization advice, and this trick merely forces you to test whether that initial impression holds up.

There were a first—. It's conceivable that the payoff for avoiding tax grows hyperexponentially x/1-x for 0 x 1.

The IBM 704 CPU was about bands. This phenomenon is not the only way to fight back themselves. Why does society foul you? The reason Google seemed a miracle of workmanship.

If anyone wants to invest in your own mind. All you have is so hard on Google. The danger is that it's boring, we used to reply that they think the usual way will prove to us an old-fashioned idea.

In desperation people reach for the explanation of a press hit, but it's not lots of customers is that the founders.

Another advantage of startups that seem promising can usually get enough money from them. According to a super-angels. But it turns out to be low. This would penalize short comments especially, because to translate this program into C they literally had to ask, what you care about Intel and Microsoft, not you.

The original Internet forums were not web sites but Usenet newsgroups. He was off by only about 2%.

Since most VCs are only slightly richer for having these things. There is no longer written in C and Perl. This prospect will make it a function of the rule of thumb, the space of ideas doesn't have to keep their wings folded, as they do.

The relationships between unions and unionized companies can hire a lot of the business, and only one.

But so many still make you take out your anti-immigration people to endure hardships, but countless other startups must have believed since before people were people. So if you have to do, so the number of startups will generally raise large amounts of new inventions until they become well enough known that people working for large settlements earlier, but historical abuses are easier for us, the more important. Which OS? He devoted much of the 1929 crash.

If you want to invest at a 5 million cap, but that it's doubly important for societies to remember and pass on the aspect they see and say that's not art because it is unfair when someone works hard and not others, and post-money valuations of funding rounds are at selling it. Surely it's better if everything just works.

On the way to pressure them to. To paint from life using the same reason parents don't tell the craziest lies about me. The word regressive as applied to tax avoidance.

That can be said to have discovered something intuitively without understanding all its implications. But what they're capable of. SpamCop—. A larger set of good ones.

But let someone else start those startups. In fact, change what it would certainly be less than the previous round.

Investors influence one another indirectly through the buzz that surrounds a hot deal, I didn't. At any given person might have 20 affinities by this standard, and one VC. They'd be interchangeable if markets stood still.

After reading a draft of this desirable company, and configure domain names etc. As a friend who invested in the future as barbaric, but even there people tend to be more precise, and once a hypothesis starts to be about web-based applications greatly to be about web-based applications.

I put it would be reluctant to start software companies constrained in b. Emmett Shear, and instead focus on growth instead of using special euphemisms for lies that seem excusable according to certain somewhat depressing rules many of the big acquisition offers most successful startups get started in Mississippi.

This phenomenon may account for a long thread are rarely seen, so if you're measuring usage you need, maybe you'd start to be, unchanging, but investors can get for 500 today would say that hapless meant unlucky.

#automatically generated text #Markov chains #Paul Graham #Python #Patrick Mooney #fall #questions #customers #computer #draft #design

[trustafarian-theserialfiction]

“trustafarian” part 11: superbug March 2, 2016 2:33pm

  Dan hadn’t felt so removed from caring about what the ceiling looked like since he’d moved in; for the past week he had been getting steadily sicker until three days ago when it had gotten so bad that he thought he’d stopped sleeping all together.  He wasn’t sure.  It didn’t seem very important whether he’d gotten in an hour during the pitch of his feverish, agonized “bedrest” a day or two ago.

It had started after the big night out, when he’d been out late in the cold, too drunk to notice how much energy he was expending or how numb his face felt. They’d had more than one last drink to fortify them for the few blocks back carrying a large armoire Bruce said he could trade online via some gta thing called bunz.  Dan’d come home and passed out cold, cold, under his blanket still wearing his coat.  The next day he’d noticed that telltale flutter in his throat that meant he was about to get hit with some kind of sinus thing, and promptly forgot to steal himself some zinc spray when he went out to get his can of heartburn slurry for the day. It had snowballed in a linear fashion from there over the course of the next week, until reaching what Dan had expected to be its peak, based on experience, around day eight.  This had turned out to be a plateau from which the peak wasn’t visible; he developed muscle fatigue and back pains, his temperature jumped and stayed up, and his mucus went from yellow to green when he’d anticipated a milky phase like it would have been if it were going to be gone in a day or two.  The mucus started increasing in quantity to what he found to be a pretty alarming extent, and he spent four days coughing more and more until his sides and abs hurt every time, which for two days was every time he needed to breathe.  That was when green stuff had started to come out of his tear ducts in gobby strands, which he’d stared at in the upstairs bathroom mirror incredulously before having a hot shower that hadn’t made him feel better. This marked the start of his muiltiday odyssey of sleeplessness, during which he coughed his putrid exorcist-barf style phlegm into the cans from food he’d gotten when he wasn’t too sick to go out.  He hadn’t eaten since his phlegm had gone green, he’d just stayed in bed feeling like hell.

Except he was starting to feel less like hell, weirdly.  Weird as in, he couldn’t tell if he was getting better, or having some kind of out-of-body experience for the first time.  When he had overdosed it had just been black between going from the condo where he was sleeping in his ex’s spare room while she let him figure out alternatives, over to the coke guy’s place, meeting his carpet, and then waking up in the hospital.  This wasn’t even remotely similar to that experience; his brain felt like it had been carbonated, gently, and he seemed to be floating in himself and out of himself, overlapping with his body in a gauzy sheet that was wafting around.  His thoughts spiralled around topics with intermittent intensity, distracting him from his unbroken view of the weird sticky ceiling “tiles.”  He kept thinking about how there was something doing all this to him, some germs or whatever.  Little tiny things inside him, making him their house, a factory for ooze. Like him inside the room. Nesting dolls of invisible guests.  No one had been around upstairs or down, as far as Dan had heard in his stupor, for days. Bruce had heard him coughing at the start of the bad climb away from known territory and stuck his head in to say “hang in there” or “keep on truckin” or something, Dan’d forgotten already. At the time it had annoyed him, and for several days afterward it annoyed him a little bit more each time he remembered in between hacking out foul lungbutter.  Now, though, feeling airy in the brain enough for it to be relieving, he was amused by the idea of Bruce’s head descending from the ceiling like a migratory light fixture.  After many hours of his thoughts looping back continuously to something that hadn’t happened in nearly a week, Dan had finally decided it meant that he might be missing company.  But he didn’t feel pressured to do anything about it.  It felt like he could decompose there forever under his spread-out coat and the blanket, feeling their weight so distantly it was like they were on a parallel plane, some other dimension.  It was comfortable.  Even his incessant thoughts felt comfortable.  He started to sigh, feeling licks of sleep flicking at his brain, but his breath caught and he coughed the sleep away again.  A day ago that sort of thing had still been torture; sleep had narrowly evaded him, teased him without showing up to help.  He felt like he’d been dumped by r.e.m. and was just now learning to be his own person without it, a freer person.  A person with a really fizzy noggin.  A giggle started when he thought about the fizz, but he didn’t hear the end of it because he had finally lost his tenuous grasp on consciousness.

Less than ten minutes later, coughing woke him up again from a dream about somewhere he’d never been, some place that looked like a forest in a videogame.  He’d been walking down a trail, watching his feet, looking for snakes or something, and when he’d glanced up Bruce had been there ahead of him, walking.  Going to the orchard, a voice said in Dan’s ear, and then he heard coughing and belatedly realized it was himself.  Somewhere else.  Sometime that was some other time.

Some other time, some other time, bounced back and forth inside his skull.  His eyes bounced back and forth in one corner of the room, where the window met the interior wall.  There was a cobweb there, that had been there when Toichiro had, it occurred to Dan.  Some other time, some other time. A memory of Toichiro’s voice surfaced and entered the spirographic eddies of his thoughtspirals, little clips from that podcast of the live show with the bands.  He thought about Bruce saying everyone was invincible or something.  It felt truer today, and he thought maybe it would have felt true that first day in town, if he’d been listening to the podcast walking westward on College.  Walking to meet Jean-Paul by that bar under the palm tree sign, where bands used to play. Toichiro had moved Jean-Paul in because of band stuff.  Jean-Paul had moved Dan in to Toichiro’s room, and Pete hadn’t had veto.  A Toi house, he thought.  He pictured them all in their little rooms, like the Maison was cross-sectioned. When he tried to picture Mouse’s room he got distracted thinking about some old kid’s book he’d read or seen animated or something, where some mice and dolls fight for custody of a tiny mansion in a playroom.  The mice had shown up looking like regular mice and then put on clothes for some reason—feeling bougie, maybe. Bruce’s voice, his mind had inflected it.  Probably because he’d never spent any time around anyone who’d called things bougie, before.  Coughing again, he spit into his nearest-to-hand can and checked the colour—it wasn’t getting lighter but the amount was going down a lot and his nasal congestion wasn’t a sledgehammering presence today, finally.  That was how this had started, wasn’t it, running around getting unnecessary crap at the bougebins.  Brucey-sitting.  For Toi, he guessed.  It was what Toi would have done, Mouse and Pete had said to do it. And give them a break, probably. Keeping Bruce running until his other half or whatever got back.  And if Dan did that, he’d be doing his part.  He’d be holding up his end.  His thoughts felt fast and right, in a way they never did. Coke had done that for his ex, according to her, but it never had for him.  Mostly coke had just made him feel like the human equivalent of the sensation of grating teeth, plus kind of clammy all over, and sometimes horny in an uncomfortable, robotic way.  He thought about himself back in the past, miserably doing rails off the stupid “coffee table” his ex had picked out so painstakingly for the place.  That had been doing his part, there, somehow. Again the idea of a parasite came back, the anglerfishes stuck together at the bottom of the sea, the image interlacing tightly with his still-circling thoughtspiral about the germs in him and him being in the room and the room being in the house, and how this was the room of the person who kept Bruce going.  Helped Bruce do… whatever it was people liked Bruce so much for doing.  Being Bruce, his brain said.

He saw clearly in a flash what he had appreciated superficially before; Bruce had cut it out for him by saying he needed audio work and even offering to pay him by covering bills.  He’d specified about the internet bill, but it seemed like that was kind of a catch-all for whatever Dan was making use of.  Bruce had been pretty clear about the whole “mi Maison es su Maison” thing when he’d been pushing food on Dan back in February.  Watching Bruce do dishes came back to him, a dreamy diorama of the dim kitchen with that spidery cursive of music winding all through it. His mental editing program kicked in and started chopping up the memory of the sound, splicing in intervals of truncated ascending symphonic riffs and offkilter drumbeat progressions with an unusual timesignature.  In his mind’s ear it was the kind of project his ex had always told him was “just coke production,” which meant, it only sounded good to him and that was only because he was too high to factor in everyday self-doubt; except that that wasn’t how coke worked for him, she just didn’t like his taste and he hadn’t bothered fighting over it because he didn’t care as much as she did about their music.  His ex had developed the idea that tastefulness was everything and editing was the path to tasteful, and she was the editor. Somehow it had ruined making music for him completely, but he’d kept doing it.  He’d never really seen himself in a media making career, or any other career. What had started off as an incidental, hobbyist level of interest and mild enthusiasm had fizzled out to a doorknob’s level of interest and zero enthusiasm.  But the rolls of beats playing in his head were coaxing his enthusiasm to fizzle back on.  His feet had been dancing around somewhere at the other end of his body for a while now, since he’d snapped-to again, and he finally understood that this meant he should stand up and get his tank empty.  He wished his lungs were empty, in tandem feeling almost religiously thankful that he seemed to be through the worst of it.  More stray ideas about his body hosting things leisurely barndanced around his head together, and he let them for a few minutes before swaying up onto his feet and straightening his legs brittlely.

It wasn’t until he was standing that he made the call to use the bathroom upstairs instead of doing the pissbottle-to-eavestrough pipeline again.  There was an alienesque formation of opaque ureal film looking evil at the bottom of his empty sportsdrink, disturbing it seemed unwise. Dan left it for later, and wondered if he’d finally remember to try to get the echinacea/zinc spritz whenever he went out for his next jug of its-got-electrolytes.  His clothes smelled, now that he wasn’t cocooned. For the first time he realized he could probably borrow clean clothes from Jean-Paul, or Bruce.  Or from whatever-ghosts-of-miscreants-past who had imparted things to wear on future tenants, probably in a pile somewhere in the mountainous junk towers he and the staircase shared the second floor with.

Impressed with himself for being able to move around mostly like normal despite his harrowing bout of possession (ongoing), he started to haul himself up the ladder rung by rung, with extreme effort.  He was exhausted and extremely dehydrated, but the buoyant sensation of mania suppressed everything else going on in his body, and, before he knew it but, paradoxically, after what seemed like a very long struggle, he heaved himself onto the greyed floorboards and panted a minute, feeling the cool press of the silky old wood against his forehead.  If someone had come along and seen him, he wouldn’t have cared.  This must be what being born feels like, he laughed at himself silently and then giggled faintly out loud, feeling silly in competing ways.  He was a truly ridiculous figure, when looking at himself like this, prone and small, curled inward almost fetal—but it felt sublime somehow, to just bow for a second and rest.  A feeling of serenity settled over him as he breathed there against the floor, and he sighed blissfully; it was like heaven.  Awash in gratitude toward the relief--of that gentle feeling, of the pure soothedness--he felt himself almost fall asleep on his knees.  Forcing the sensation back with a pang of anguished regret, though, he made himself stand up again.  Bambi on ice, the image appeared.  He might have to consider how and where his mobility was going to fail him on this errand, gelled for him fully.  He’d half had the thought a few times but been distracted by all the other thoughts about less immediate things.

Gingerly drifting over to the bathroom, he grabbed a glass from the kitchen and brought it in with him, filling it from the tap with one hand while he hauled the waist of his cords low enough to flop his dick toward the toilet.  He stabilized with the row of knuckles on the hand holding his pants, and tried not to pass out pissing, asking himself why he had opted to fill the glass at the same time, as his other hand turned the tap off.  He didn’t need to bother unzipping to put himself back together, either; he’d lost the pounds that made the pants fit.  That was alarming, considering he’d needed to gain weight before losing more, and didn’t really know how he’d attack the deficit he was operating with currently. He didn’t think he could make it down the street, he didn’t have cash, he didn’t have credit, he couldn’t order food, he didn’t know how to cook.  If he found a potato in the kitchen he wasn’t sure he could make it not raw.  Boil them mash them stick them in a you, his brain said helpfully.  How did you boil things, it had been a long time since grade eight home ec.  Forget mashing them, that was how people who couldn’t cook in romcoms got puree on everything.  Dan turned the hot tap on full as he took a sip of the cold water he’d poured himself, waiting for the flow to heat up so he could steam out his congestion for a few minutes.  The water in his mouth suddenly struck him as very foreign and bad tasting, thin somehow. Unwaterlike.  A semiliquid that tasted fartlike and metallic.  He spat it into the sink, feeling appalled at himself and a little alarmed by not understanding what had just happened.  Maybe it’s the water, he tried, maybe its different today.  But no, that didn’t feel true and he wasn’t convinced. Did that mean it wasn’t true? He wasn’t convinced of that, either.  He suddenly felt like someone else, someone Dan didn’t know, like he’d switched places with someone—or, someone had switched places with him, but he-the-someone-not-he-himself remembered being Dan right up until that moment.  He just didn’t feel anything like the person he remembered feeling like all the time before that.  Unnerved, he looked at his reflection.  His reflection looked unnerved too.  The dark deep hollows under mirror Dan’s eyes pulled his notice and with a nice burst of reassured feeling he told himself it was just some weird symptom of not sleeping.  Of course, of course, course of course of, singsonged in his brain.  He’d stayed awake two days and nights in a row a few times but not three and not while he’d been in terrible health with zero body fat and a monster flu eating him alive and churning out sludge like some Rumplestiltskin.  Of course he was having a heebiejeebie time, that was normal given the situation.  He breathed in the steam, holding his hands in the running water and pressing them to the bowl of the sink alternately, waiting for it to be too hot.  He pressed his hot wet hands to his dry lips, and they rasped at the pink-flushed pillowy countertexture like straw. He splashed hot water on his face over and over for a while, feeling almost hypnotized by the repetition and the heat.  A tiny easing of pressure in his upper cheeks and around his eyes finally graced him and he sighed again, this time feeling a little bit on the edge of hysteria.  What was his life, what was he going to do? Why was he here, when would he be somewhere else and how. Why had it all gone like this, why hadn’t he ever had a dream to follow anywhere.  Anywhere like, a place that he understood and felt at home in, instead of a place that was a puzzle he didn’t even like solving.  Or a bunch of puzzles that fit together like the 3d Eiffel tower his mom had made them all do a section of one Christmas. His mom who he hadn’t emailed like he said he would, for months.  His mom who was probably very upset that he hadn’t called to say he was alive still, and doing okay.  His mom who would want to know, why had it all gone like this, why hadn’t he ever had a dream to follow anywhere—she had told him to have dreams and to follow them, so, what was the issue?  Why was he like this, what was his life, what was he going to do, why was he here, when, what, who, how, what, how, why, when. When, why, when, why.  These horrible, stressful, existential thoughts fit their way unceremoniously into what had for most of the day been a mainly upbeat delusional haze.  Dan realized that he was parched and drank some warm water out of his hands, but the suspicious taste was still there, faintly, and his throat clenched like he might babybarf because of it.  There had to be some filtered water in the fridge, he knew no one else drank it from the tap.  Maybe being sick had made him super sensitive to tastes.  That was a thing that happened, he seemed to remember from somewhere. An episode of friends or something, like the jellyfish thing.  Chandler and Monica.  Him and his ex, but nice to eachother.  Why hadn’t he and his ex ever felt like being nice to eachother was something he wondered off and on.  What had been stopping them from just…having a life together?  Like a couple does, like couples are supposed to.

Dan coughed out some goo and watched it circle the sink, finally turning off the tap.  There was a lot of steam in the room and it followed him out, embracing him in a gust before the vacuum of cold air hit, making him cough again, feebly.  He ached, it was starting to be oppressive.  He had as long again up here as he’d spent already, he estimated, but without the steamroom treatment that timeline could in practice be optimism making a fool of him.  Lurching a bit as he went, Dan surveyed the kitchen starting with everything he could see and ending with the fridges.  There were canned tomatoes; a maybe that didn’t seem like much of a maybe.  There were carrots, onions, some green stuff he didn’t know, and celery.  None of it seemed to say eat me.  Bags of lentils he noticed were somewhere in the zone of daunting, looming over him watching, from their shelves.  With a familiar crunchajunch sound he popped the first minifridge’s door and was greeted with an almost radiantly beaming jug of orange juice, nearly full, like some amber-golden holy relic that had been labelled BRUBRUH in sharpie. Awaiting a very tired and unwell boy to revitalize.

Momentarily debating going to Bruce’s room to see if he was home to be asked for juice, Dan realized he didn’t smell weed.  Bruce wasn’t in.  Amused by the detectivework he’d surprised himself with, he grabbed the jug and then surprised himself with dismay, feeling his arm sag unexpectedly.  His other hand was there quicker than he had time to think, supporting the bottom of the jug.  Hugging it to his chest to pop to cap off, he felt himself on a precipice, the anticipation pressing in on his delirium.  Finally slurping from the bottle, feeling like the wine god in that one part of fantasia, Dan felt sustained.  The acidity was welcome, scouring a rotted feeling partway out of his mouth.  When he paused to breathe he found himself chewing little hangnail skins of pulp stuck in his teeth.  Good, pulp was good.  He hoped Bruce wouldn’t miss the juice and slugged back more until it was half gone. It tasted really alive, somehow, or vibrant, like a herd of beautiful wild sunbeams running free across the plains. Dan felt like he’d just rebooted.  He thought about whatsapping Andreah about it because she might think it was funny. 

Not wanting to finish the whole thing and worried it would make him sick if he did, he returned the jug and shut the fridge with a thump.  Things around it and on it jingled.  Wishing there were at least bananas on the counter, he tried the other fridge.  There was a bushel of apples in a bag at the bottom.

/////////

Many hours later, how many he wasn’t sure, maybe a whole day, Dan woke up in the dark next to the apple he hadn’t eaten yet.  He shoved his hand at it forcefully and got disoriented by the motion, then found that he had been eating the apple for several mouthfuls while thinking about how hard it had been to coordinate picking it up.  He dropped it again, thoughts deconstructed themselves into building blocks of imperceivable meaning, and neatly put themselves away somewhere.

Something was wrong, he realized.  His fever had given him brain damage or something.  He flexed his hand around the afterimpression of the dropped apple, gauging his motor control, trying to think about what having it or not having it meant.

He felt queasy suddenly and decided to curl up into a ball.  He fell asleep again, and dreamed.

He didn’t dream about a forest this time, or anyone he knew.  He was dreaming about a place full of rocks, where everyone was sick and no one seemed to know why or what to do, besides throw rocks.

////////

The next time he found himself awake, it was light outside, and he felt strange, but less strange, and sick, but less sick.  He had been sweating, and he had to make pisshaste getting to the rank “bedpan” he hadn’t dealt with yet.  Emptying it out the window after a discombobulatingly excellent fillup, he noticed how the edge of cold in the air was different.  Lessened maybe, or he was just reacting to a humidity change.  He swayed on his feet, half to feel it and half because he hadn’t eaten in days.

It reminded him that Bruce might be home, and he made himself make the journey again to check. He could ask about clothes and maybe beg for some soup or something to be made.  Please sir, he thought, breaching into the living room.  Someone was over in the kitchen, smoking a joint and reading a subway paper at the sink, for some reason, facing away from Dan toward the window with the herbs.

“Bruce!” He heard himself shout and then had a bizarre feeling like the phantom limb version of embarrassment, at how he sounded like a kid calling his friend.

“Heya hiya howya been,” Bruce hollered back, louder and childishier.  “Did you see, I had a big jug of special-special potion in the fridge, but it’s not there now.”

Dan sat on the floor, feeling funny.  “I don’t know, I saw it but I didn’t take—what was in it?”

"Ohh, just some peyote and some other benign goodies, it’s my special brew! The Bru-brew, bruh! Why?” Dan stared at him agog. His mouth flapped and words came out: "because I drank a bunch of it.  I don’t know where it went though, I left it in there." Bruce made an agog face back, walking into the living room. He at least had the decency to not look amused. "How much of it did you drink?" He sounded a little serious and it was unnerving. "Uh, like a third of it. A third of what was there, maybe a bit more, why, is that bad? Is that a lot?" "Ohh jeezy-kableezy, You dosed yourself, or, I dosed you by not labelling it good, I'm really sorry dude, I just didn't want it to go fermented and then I was over at my buddinskis’s place for a few days longer than I thought, and! Well! I made it so strong, I shouldn't've left it unlabeled but I was going right back for it. I forgot it was there! I was gonna go right back for it!" Suspicious clarity smeared its way into Dan’s brain like someone was pouring a warm marmalade of ideas into his ear: Bruce is over-acting, to avoid culpability. Because he not only should have known, he had known. He intended it. As quickly as Dan'd had the thoughts--so, not very--they oozed away, didn't make sense. "What exactly was it? Exactly." He didn't know why he felt like he needed to know. What difference did it make? Was he going to be able to form an eta for coming down off what he was high on? He remembered his dream and shuddered. He'd stay awake until he was sober again, he decided. "Well, a pinch of Alice's powdered peyote, and about a gram of powdered golden mammoths--obvi, thats why I was using citrus as a potentiator," he was starting to finger-count. "No, stop, what the fuck are gold mammoths."  He was high on shit he’d never even heard of.  Fantastic. He felt frustrated, cranky, and it was like an old friend he felt weird about.  He tried to crank down. "Oh, its a kind of psiolos." Dan stared at him, and breathed out through his nose. When he raised his eyebrows like dude what, Bruce said "zooms!" Dan made a frustrated keep-it-coming gesture. "Magic mushrooms, dude!" Of course. Dan felt toyed with, why hadn't Bruce just said. "Ok, there's magic mushrooms, peyote. Doing great here." Actually it explained a lot. Bruce was a lunatic, if he was running around high on this goop. "Well, uh. Y'know there's barely anything else, it was just everything I had only a tiny-tiny bit of. There's no way most of it is even having an effect on you, especially now that it's been a while.  You slept most of it off anyway, right?  Maybe it helped!  You seem kinda perky!"  He seesawed like he was hoolahooping, looking sure it had helped. "What else was in it," Dan sounded really fed-up suddenly, that probably wasn't the way to get an answer. He heard himself sounding like he had sounded, and grimaced.  He tried to be less balloon-headed but it was hard, because he was still high in a hard-to-shake, balloon-headed way. Bruce made an uncomfortable sound and chewed at his cheek. "Don't get mad! It was an accident!"  The little nibbling sounds persisted and Dan saw his jaw muscles working, worrying. "I'm not mad," he didn't sound mad, and he wasn't.  The irritation wafted in and out and had vanished again. Everything was so roily, he felt sort of held and moved through by waves of something, like many sets of magnets were being forced wrongwaytogether all around him. But it was soothing, too, even though it made him kind of seasick; he felt like his head was made of air and his body was a big melting statue all around the air. "Well...I had these old botanical salad caps? Called sleepwalker?  Left over from back when Andreah and Toi and I all worked together, so... there's four of those, it's just herbs, it was probably all at the bottom anyway, right? Like, you didn’t shake the jug or anything before you poured a couple glasses, I’m gonna guess.”  Dan didn’t correct him to tell him he hadn’t used a glass. “And uh. There's some, uh, a pinch of mdma. Well, its not mdma, its mostly ketamine. Actually its another phenethylamine. But there's barely any! It's like, nothing. I don’t even know if it holds up in oj. You should be totally fine, I mean, you're not freaking out or anything, right?" Dan wasn't sure, so Bruce hustled him into the hammock in his room so he could drink tea under a duvet and watch nature shows, which Bruce said was the thing to do. Bruce sat in his chair, smoking and chattering.  After a while he started talking about his show, and muted the nature show to play some episodes that had little segment buffer clips and ending music that Toi had done years ago. "I was thinking of stuff like this nature show would be really good going into the spring, you know, mellow but dancey?  Autotuned or something, like when pbs did that song series?" Dan didn't know, but he could basically hear it already. That tripped him out and he got stuck on the idea of maybe he knew everything right now. He tried to think of things he hadn't known before, like how to fix a redringed xbox. He couldn't tell if he knew, when he wondered about it. It was a bunch of parts, right?  He pictured what he thought the inside of an xbox would look like. Bruce was still talking, saying "I really like this part about the garden and I was thinking it might be possible to work in the themesong from this old gardening show I like? But less this-is-pbs, you know? More like psytrance, or, or," "Witchhouse, but uptempo," Dan finished. He'd figured that out yesterday. "Yeah, I know, I got it." That didn't sound right, so he said "I got you," too.

This was when Mouse appeared at the window looking owlish, and yelled “BRUCE” at them through it.

[mokosmart]

What is Apple iBeacon technology?

In the summer of 2013, Apple’s software chief Craig Federighi launched the location within buildings based on Bluetooth low energy wireless technology with the presentation of the mobile operating system iOS 7. The apple iBeacon was also rather casually used in listing the new functions for the proprietary process, which can now be used not only by Mobile Apple devices but also by smartphones with Android 4.3.

The core of apple iBeacon technology is small beacon devices – so-called beacons – the size of a matchbox, which can be installed either battery-powered or with permanent power connection in rooms or on objects. Smartphones can also act as a beacon and are attractive to companies that use iPads, for example, as information access similar to Apple’s in its stores. Such a beacon sends a unique identifier, the so-called UID (Unique ID), at short, regular intervals in the 2.4 GHz band.

If an app on the smartphone is configured to receive iBeacon signals and the smartphone is within range of a transmitter, the technology allows the location within a building to be determined. Similar to locating with mobile phone masts, iBeacon tracking works based on the signal strength mentioned in RSSI. iBeacon distinguishes between “Immediate” (0 to 10 cm), “Nearby” (10 cm to 3 m) “Wide away” (further than 3 m) for the distances that iBeacon-receiving smartphones measure based on signal strength.

The smartphone becomes a museum and shopping guide with iBeacon

The possibilities of iBeacon technology can be explained by a visit to the museum. As soon as the iPhone detects the first beacon in front of the museum’s doors, the museum app starts in the background and greets the visitor with information about current exhibitions. Once opened, the iPhone becomes a source of information with texts, images, and videos. The system locates the user and knows, for example, which exhibit he is currently in front of. The prerequisite is that the content is already available on the smartphone or can be reloaded via an internet connection. IBeacons do not send any data except for the UID.

However, the respective UID can also ensure that the iPhone loads the appropriate audio file and takes over the function of a location-specific audio guide during the entire visit. This works without having to make a selection or jump to the next title. Thanks to the cheap beacons, even museums with small budgets are able to provide their guests with an informative stay by text and sound. Expensive audio guides could soon be a thing of the past.

Apple iBeacon also offers store operators opportunities to offer improved services – from the welcome message with a special, personal offer, starting with navigating and searching for specific products in the store, to further-on- Information about products. If the smartphone user stays in front of a table with shirts, an iBeacon signal could trigger the message of a bonus promotion or recommend suitable trousers.

What is Apple iBeacon technology?

IoT Beacon technology is a standard based on Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) for navigation in closed rooms. Apple used the English term for the beacon to name the iBeacons.

Beacon is a transmitter or receiver based on Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) or Bluetooth Smart technology. Basically, this is a radio technology that can be understood as a further development of Bluetooth. It has been known for several years, but with major marketer, Apple becoming known to a wider audience under the name iBeacon. Smartphones and tablets are equipped with this technology from iOS7 and Android 4.3 respectively and are therefore susceptible to beacons.

Like beacons, the transmitters allow smartphones and other receivers to determine their position. In closed rooms, apple ibeacon enables a much more precise location determination than the standard technologies GPS, WLAN and cellular network.

BLE has been an extension of the industry-standard Bluetooth 4.0 since December 2009 and network devices in an area of ​​approximately 10 meters.

Technical aspects of apple iBeacon technology

As with any radio technology, you first need a transmitter and a receiver: these are called beacons. its range is about 50 meters, but it is also spoken of up to 75 meters, depending on the level of development and manufacturer. Data transmission between devices uses far less energy than the predecessor Bluetooth, which results in low battery consumption on the smartphone, for example. The cost of the transfer also remains low. Large amounts of data are not suitable for exchange because the transfer rate is relatively low. The beacons themselves are operated by battery or less frequently direct power connection.

A device cannot be addressed by a beacon until appropriate software (app) is installed. As soon as a compatible smartphone or tablet is in the scope of a beacon, these push messages can be sent. If several beacons are placed in the radius of action, the location of the receiver can also be determined relatively precisely.

Use of ibeacons in marketing

Apple iBeacon are already in use in many places to locate visitors in a shop and to send location-dependent offers to the respective terminal device. For example, beacons are used at Hamburg Airport, which measures the time spent in various shops and rewards them with rewards.

Some events, in turn, navigate visitors using beacon technology. This use can be observed especially at events in the digital industry.

In addition, PayPal works with PayPal Beacon on automatic payment. This innovation connects the customer with the business and allows the automatic processing via PayPal without coming into contact with the cash register.

Beyond Museum and Marketing

Since the summer of this year, San Francisco Airport has been using about 300 beacons the size of a bottle cap, distributed throughout the airport, to make it easier for visually impaired people to navigate the building. The Bluetooth signals, which send the battery-powered beacons of the Austrian manufacturer indoors, which cost about 20 US dollars (equivalent to 16 euros), are received and processed by an app. This indicates striking locations using the built-in reading function. A list of shops and other places also allows navigation through the airport.

Content not available. Please allow cookies by clicking Accept. If you want to experience iBeacon in action in this country, you only have to pay a visit to MOKOSmart. We recently installed an unknown number of beacons there, which, in combination with the Lufthansa app for iOS, indicate the next Lufthansa lounge or the waiting time at the security check. In London Gatwick, London Luton and the French hub Charles de Gaulle in Paris, however, low-price competitor Easyjet has launched a first test run with beacons. The airline’s app will also serve as a navigation aid and will remind you to open the electronic ticket at the security check and other controls.

Apple iBeacon soon nationwide?

The fact that beacons will increase in importance and distribution in the coming year is primarily due to the wide availability of hardware and software solutions. While companies like Bluloc position themselves as universal service players, other startups like Asandoo are tinkering with iBeacon-based home help systems for the elderly. “It gets really interesting when you look at beacons as a mobile companion and complement to the smartphone,” says Stephanie Renda, managing director of match2blue. The specialist of mobile applications and context-sensitive solutions works on beacon products for different target groups. With lilalarmi, for example, a small signal transmitter for the whole family will be launched at the beginning of 2015.

The app Barcoo, which is one of the original rocks of the App Store, on the other hand, consistently drives the marketing track and shows in cooperation with My Muesli how iBeacon-based marketing can be operated at the store level. If you stroll through the Viktualienmarkt in Munich and pass the My-Muesli-Shop, you will receive a push message via the Barcoo app, which informs about new products or invites you to a coffee.

Whether beacons will be the next big thing in the promotion of the knot is debatable and depends heavily on consumer acceptance. “Technically, a lot is possible, but the consumer decides on the relevance,” Christian Schmalzl, CEO of the advertising service provider Ströer, told the Berliner Morgenpost. That’s why beacon advertising needs to be “really good.”

With regard to iBeacon-enabled receivers, the release of the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus has ensured a further spread. Before the launch of the iPhone, the market share of iBeacon-enabled iPhones among all iPhones was already 73 percent. With a market share of 42.1 percent in the U.S. market, nearly one in three smartphones was an iBeacon-enabled iPhone before the launch of the new iPhones. For smartphones running Android, at least version 4.3 is required, which Google says is installed on more than a third of all devices. So good conditions are for 2015 to be the year of the Beacons.

Beacon (Proximity iBeacon)

A beacon is a small hardware device associated with location-based services that enable data transfer to mobile devices within a specific radius of the device. For most applications, the recipients must have enabled Bluetooth, the associated mobile app with Location Services, and signed up for the sender to transfer the information. Beacons are usually small standalone devices attached to walls or objects. The simplest beacons only send a signal to the devices that are within range. They can also be connected to Wi-Fi and cloud, including storage, compute resources, and temperature and motion detection sensors (among other options).

A typical configuration could include an ARM processor, a chipset from Nordic Semiconductor or Texas Instruments, a Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) module, and a battery. The devices are energy-saving and cost-effective with a battery life of several years. Beacons are often designed to function like lighthouses and emit an intermittent signal that can be detected by a nearby unit. Instead of the light signals that ships transmit, a beacon emits a radio signal that can be received by mobile devices equipped with the associated app.

Google developers commented on the release of the Eddystone Beacon profile: “Just as lighthouses have helped sailors navigate the world for thousands of years, electronic beacons can be used to provide precise location and provide contextual cues within apps.” Google’s Eddystone and Apple’s iBeacon are the two most commonly implemented beacon protocols. Here’s a quick explanation of how iBeacon works: Any hardware device that supports Bluetooth 4.0 can theoretically become a beacon in an iBeacon network. This means that smartphones, PCs, and tablets can act as beacons.

The beacon continuously searches for iOS-based mobile devices that have Bluetooth enabled and run the associated mobile app. When the beacon detects such a device, it sends a connection request to turn on the app. The information within the request contains the information needed to transmit the desired communication to the device in real-time. Beacons are increasingly being used in retail environments where they are used to streamline mobile payment systems and conduct proximity marketing: the wireless provision of advertising material to mobile users within reach. The location can be determined so precisely that a buyer who is in front of a particular product can be offered coupon offers, lightning sales, and suggestions for related products, among many other options.

With apple iBeacon technology, many other applications are possible. The same precision in targeting that consumers find allows communication with someone standing in a particular place in a stadium, in front of a museum installation, or a work of art in a gallery. The technology can give users instructions or maps to airports such as gates, ticket counters, shops, and restaurants, and identify the nearest elevators, toilets and free phones. Similar apps can help people in other major institutions like hospitals and help them find their cars when they leave these places.

This article is from https://www.mokosmart.com/apple-ibeacon/ ,if you’re looking for a beacon manufacturer, who don’t you contact us?

#appleibeacon beacon ibeacon beacontechnology mokosmart

[ladyiceflame-blog]

An Inconvenient Wedding:

Chapter Eight: The Wild Storm and the Serene Sage

The reintegration of a dismissed Shadow Clone had proven to be a little disorienting in the past, but all those times had not prepared Kakashi for the mighty wallop that slammed into his being now. The sudden influx of all that had transpired beneath the water made him gasp, and stagger backward into a group of cooking-nin who were packing up their provisions.  Rice cakes went flying, along with a fair amount of superfluous chakra that he couldn’t absorb. “Kaka-sensei!” Sakura cried out, rushing to his side.  Naruto and Sasuke joined her, showing concern.  “What happened?” Kakashi groaned as he sat up.  His head was spinning.  The sudden knowledge he’d just acquired, and the maelstrom of emotions that had tagged along, were giving him the equivalent of a chakra hang-over. “I’m suddenly feeling a little...woosey, is all...” he excused.  He put his head between his knees to exert control over his nauseous stomach. “Should I find you a medical-nin?” Matsuko asked. “No!” Kakashi snapped, as he sat up.  “No, I just need a moment....” Gekido raised a suspicious eyebrow a split-second before a large, stormy-hued orb of crystal burst from the center of the lake to hover high above it.   “What is that!?!” Naruto openly gawked, squinting at its strange, faceted surface. Gekido sighed.  “That would be Miriyume,” he answered, as the crystal shattered, and the Sage-Priestess was revealed, wreathed in her signature jutsu.  “And she doesn’t look happy....” Matsuko shared a grim smile with the Inuzuka, and their eyes flicked briefly towards Kakashi.   “We’re going to need another wagon of whiskey....” Matsuko sighed, as he watched Miriyume douse her Ice Fire, and begin her descent towards them. “Tch...” Gekido scoffed.  “There isn’t enough whiskey in the world to drowned her ire...”  He turned to Kakashi and his students, assisting his stand.  “You kids might want to back off a bit....” Miriyume touched down, and immediately confronted Kakashi: “So did that eye of yours catch all the details?  Or would you like another demonstration?!” Her eyes were lambent in indignation.  Matsuko and Gekido had hands on her shoulders. “What are you talking about, Miri-chan?  Hata-san’s been up here the whole time.  Who were you with down there?” “Him,” Miriyume returned testily, pointing at Kakashi.  “Or rather, a shadow clone of him.  Just how many filters do you need to put on the world anyway?!” she shouted at the dejected shinobi, amidst the protective circle of his students. “You used a clone on Priestess Knock-Out?” Naruto censured his teacher, giving him a disappointed look. “‘Priestess Knock-Out’...?” Matsuko chuckled at the new epitaph. “It has to do with the way we met,” Miriyume explained. “What is it with you?” Gekido demanded. Miriyume shrugged, still glaring daggers at Kakashi, who refused to meet her gaze. “Was that your Ice Fire technique?” Sasuke dared. “It was,” she replied, her aspect softening a shade. “And that crystal was...ice?” the Uchiha continued, “...frozen from the jutsu?” “You’re a sharp one,” she complimented.  “Ice Fire manifests as a branching plasma, much like a Chidori.  But it burns cold....freezing things if given enough time.  Shattering them if I want.  But it eats up a lot of chakra.” “But that isn’t a problem for you, is it?” Sakura pressed, “With your chakra absorption powers, right?” “True, but using Ice Fire can quickly deplete an environment, if I’m not careful,” Miriyume answered.   “But that’s nothing compared to her Sage Form’s chakra demands,” Gekido added.   “What’s a ‘sage form’, again...?” Naruto asked sheepishly, as Sakura and Sasuke sighed.   “It’s a form that represents the mastery of a senjutsu practitioner over their adopted spirit,” Matsuko continued.  “Usually an animal spirit, but Miri-chan’s priestess training attracted something a little....different.” “Which was..?” Sauske prompted. “A storm-kami,” Kakashi provided, finding his voice again.  “Its believed that she is the only person to have been offered contract with such a spirit.” “Lord Raijin is a fickle god, who had grown bored with his usual celestial duties,” Miriyume illuminated further.  “His patronage of me was born of a rebellious whim.  Nothing more.” “...and this has been another episode of, ‘Overly Modest Miriyume,’” Gekido teased.  “Join us next time, when our heroine declares that she was only suggesting that Kumogakure needed help with their architecture.” “Well, they did!” Miriyume returned. “Especially after you gutted that mansion....” Matsuko chuckled. “Was that during your Chunin Exam?” Sakura asked. “It was shortly afterward,” Lady Ice Flame answered.  “I had been...retained–“ Gekido coughed, and corrected his companion’s story... “–kidnaped–“ ”Fine, kidnaped, by our hosts, in an effort to study my abilities, and it didn’t go as they planned.  They quickly grew...disenchanted with me, like most people...” Her angry eyes once again found Kakashi’s, and easily communicated her ire.  Aoseishin whined at the ambient tension. “I’ll stay enchanted, Knock-Out sama!” Naruto swore.  “Believe it!” Her eyes shifted to Naruto’s smiling face, beaming in bold defiance of the sudden pall that Miriyume wanted to shroud herself in.  Kakashi seemed set in remaining a mystery, but this kid was the welcoming bonfire in broad daylight.  She couldn’t help but be cheered. “Thank-you, Naruto-san,” she said, finding her smile again.  “At least I’ll al—“ Her words were cut short by the sound of a most unusual trumpeting noise, off in the distance.  Her eyes widened, as Matsuko and Gekido snapped alert.  Aoseishin barked. “They’re here!” Miriyume announced joyously, and led her team, along with the majority of people still at the lake, rushing off in the direction of the resonant horn’s second blast. The entire campsite seemed to be in a sudden rush to converge on the Bridal Pavilion of the Frost encampment.  Games were abandoned, food was forgotten.  Even drinks were set aside.  All that seemed to matter at the moment was the arrival of whoever had sounded that horn.  Team Seven managed to keep up with the human tsunami that had resulted. The herald who has sounded the signal of approach was standing at the center of the Frost Camp, and gave one final ringing blast of the strange looking instrument: a long, corkscrew-shaped horn from some unknown animal, as the Wandering Lights Brigade stood nearby.  A formidable-looking man, clad in dark furs, banded shinobi armor, and sporting a rather magnificent helmet with a tuft of eagle feathers at the top, rode up beside them on a sturdy warhorse, and dismounted.  Miriyume wasted no time in launching herself into his arms. “Hello, Father!” she greeted, as he spun her around so fast that her legs swung out nearly parallel to the ground. “Ah, my beautiful daughter!” he acknowledged, and set her back on the ground, keeping her in his embrace.  “The lights of the aurora are still pale imitations of your eyes...” “And the steel in yours remains ever-keen,” she returned. “Here we go...” Gekido sighed dramatically, “The Father-Daughter Poetry Hour...” “Greetings, Shimokhan-sama,” Matsuko acknowledged much more respectfully, with a bow.  “I hope your journey was a peaceful one.” “It was, Matsuko-san,” Ryuumaru Yaseiarashi returned, releasing Miriyume, and giving Gekido a quick slug to the upper arm.  “And I trust all is well here?” “It is, Shimokhan-sama!” a strident voice broke from the gathered crowd, as she power-slid before the leader of Shimogakure.  Wakame Akiyama always took her duties with the utmost seriousness, but her devotion to her job often made her seem ironically comical most of the time.  “All allied nations have sent emissaries, all the ceremony arrangements have been coordinated.  Everyone is fed and sheltered...” “...and the games...and the Light House...?” Ryuumaru pressed. “...have been afoot and running since we put down the first tent pegs!” Wakame declared proudly, as a heavily curtained palanquin was marched up with great ceremony, and set down reverently beside the reunited family.  A hush fell over the crowd that had gathered, as the curtain parted, and a statuesque, regal woman emerged, and approached Miriyume. She had the bearing of an empress: an elegant kimono of palest green, surmounted by a white, hooded cloak, trimmed in plumey gold and silver feathers.  Heron feathers. “Honored Mother,” Miriyume greeted and bowed.  The mysterious woman favored her with a kiss in the middle of her lowered forehead. “Miriyume, my wild one,” the Heron Priestess began in a voice that sounded like the lilting tones of a dove, before looking concerned.  “Are you alright, my dear?  You’re chakra seems a little...agitated.” “I’m fine,” Miriyume insisted.  “We just got done with a game of Kraken, that’s all,” as Matsuko and Gekido approached to give their welcomes.   Her father had moved on to the surrounding crowd, clasping shoulders and reveling in the many familiar faces.  He was a social entity, clearly, who came alive in the company of friends.  And he was always on the look-out for more. Kakashi watched in respectful interest as Miriyume and her Mother continued to reacquaint.  Miriyume was nearly lost in the embracing sleeves of the Heron Priestess’s silken robes.  He felt the ambient warmth of their silent, mutual love for one another.  Despite the heavy cowl of the elder woman’s cloak, and the utter stillness of their faces, they seemed to be communicating volumes. He realized that it was rude to stare, but he couldn’t bring himself to look away.  Such was the empathic grandeur of their bond.  Then, a most terrifyingly beautiful thing happened: Miriyume’s mother turned her half-obscured face his way, and gave him just a hint of a smile, while Miriyume remained motionless. Kakashi was struck with such a profound panic that gravity itself seemed to double-down on him, immobilizing his limbs, turning his blood to a heavy sludge.  He was utterly powerless to do anything, except stand and endure her scrutiny.  He could only compare it to Killing Intent, but without any hint of the malice.  Perhaps it was better called ‘Curious Intent’.  Mercifully, the moment was brief, as the Heron Sage Priestess ushered her daughter into the Bridal Pavilion. It took him a moment to catch his breath.  Medical-nin had never given him such a through sensory exam before. A rough clap to his shoulder removed the last traces of chakra lethargy from him. “There’s a familiar cut to your sails, man,” Miriyume’s father rumbled pleasantly, as he openly assessed the few features Kakashi displayed, “But I’m banjanxed as to why exactly.” “‘Banjanxed’?” Naruto echoed warily. “It means ‘confounded,’ or ‘lost,’ in this sense,” Matsuko explained. “I don’t believe that I’ve had the honor of meeting you yet, Yaseiarashi-sama,” Kakashi began, and gave a polite bow.  “I am Kakashi Hatake, jonin of Konohagakure.  These are my students; Sasuke Uchiha, Sakura Haruno, and Naruto Uzumaki.” Ryuumaru’s icy blue eyes seemed to light up at the mention of the last name.  “Uzumaki, eh?” as he regarded the blond genin.  “I owe all the happiness I’ve found in this world to that name!  Hatake and Uchiha have a familiar ring about them as well....” His musings were cut off by the panicked calls of Wakame Akiyama, as she raced to another impressive power slide before him. “Shimokhan-sama!  The groom’s attendant approaches!” Gekido’s slitted eyes went wide, as he confirmed the new presence with a pronounced sniff of the air.  “In the actual flesh...” he breathed softly.  “About time, eh?” Wakame nodded, as she stood off to his side, as the crowd began to grow quiet and part. The frail-looking man walked with the heavy assistance of an ornate staff.  His skin was sallow, the color of old, forgotten parchment.  His sparse hair seemed oily.  And he was suffused with a strange combination of medicinal smelling herbs.  He wore the humble robes of a monk, and had the beady eyes of a rat. “So,” the ancient looking man began in an unctuous voice, “The future father-in-law has arrived at long last.  My Lord was beginning to wonder.” “Then your Lord has forgotten the itinerary that was sent, which included the arrival of my wife and I.”  He took a moment to pointedly regard the sun’s placement in the sky.  “I’m here early, in fact.” The monk inclined his head in a gesture of apology.  “Please forgive our eagerness.  My Lord forgets much on the cusp of such a momentous occasion.” “....like how to socialize..?” Gekido quipped softly. Wakame shot the Inuzuka a brief scowl before responding.  “It is all too easy for a bride and groom to lose track of things, which is why I am here.  I trust that Asaito-sama is aware of tonight’s dinner plans?” “He is,” the monk returned.  “He is a pious man, but he avidly awaits the presentation of the Lady Ice Flame.  Her beauty is much celebrated.” “...to say nothing of her talents as a shinobi,” Kakashi interjected.  “Miriyume-sama’s fame does not stem solely from one aspect alone.” “Well said, Kakashi!” Ryuumaru smiled broadly. “...and any man who fails to see this does not deserve her,” Kakashi continued. Sakura gasped.  Naruto beamed.  Gekido, Wakame and Matsuko were openly agape.  The monk looked understandably affronted. “I knew I’d like this guy!” Ryuumaru asided to Matsuko, who was still reeling from the sudden need for testimonial from a man who seemed to do nothing but infuriate the very person he was now defending.  “Someone get this man a bottle of my personal reserve whiskey....” Miriyume’s father continued.  The surest way to his heart had always been compliments to his daughter. “I assure you,” the monk resumed, testily, “My Lord is well aware of the multi-faceted talents of the Lady Ice Flame, and is both deserving, and highly desirous, of this union.” The glint in the decrepit man’s eyes as he said the last made Kakashi’s skin crawl, and his Sharingan ache. “She will be treated as a queen, and will want for nothing in my Lord’s care.  His wealth rivals that of even the Water Daimyo, after all.” “Although riches have never factored much in Miriyume’s list of qualifications for a spouse, they do give her parents a definite sense of relief.  We want to see our grandchildren spoiled absolutely rotten!” Kakashi felt nauseous.  He instinctually clutched at his nearby students.  Gekido’s sharp nose caught a whiff of his sudden discomfort. “Come on now, Old Man Yaseiarashi,” Gekido forced a chuckle.  “I don’t think Miri-chan’s wanting to be a mother quite so fast.  Give her a few years for the Honeymoon...” Bile rose at that.  Kakashi choked it back down. “So long as they never have to grow up in the shadows of that Bloody Mist Academy madness, I will be happy,” the Shimokhan concluded.  “I will be seeking personal assurances that that foul school has been permanently dismantled, before long.”  The authoritative tone in his voice turned the statement into a solemn vow.  It made the monk tremble slightly. “Those days are behind us now, as I’m certain that your esteemed daughter and her cadre have learned in their extensive travels in the Land of Water.  For, if it were otherwise, we probably wouldn’t be here.” “The barbarous methods of your Fourth Mizukage resulted in numerous living nightmares that still plague the world,” Matsuko chimed in.  “We ran into a few.” “We just ended one!” Naruto suddenly exclaimed proudly.  “Zabuza and Haku!  In the Land of Waves!  Although, Zabuza seemed to have a change of heart at the end...and Haku didn’t even seem to be all that evil...” “You tangled with the Demon of the Hidden Mist?!?” Gekido gasped. “We buried them,” Kakashi returned.  “It was their first A-Rank mission, actually,” he smiled proudly. “That’s....impressive,” Matsuko admitted.  “That man nearly hacked me in two once.” “We only escaped because of my Wind Wolf technique....” Gekido added. Matsuko gave him a look of patient disbelief. “...and maybe Miri-chan’s Ice Fire helped out a bit...” the Inuzuka amended. “The Land of Water extends its gratitude to you, then,” the monk continued coolly.  “Ridding us of such a criminal.  My Lord will surely want to be generous with a reward...” Kakashi stopped the monk with an upraised hand.  “The survival of my team was reward enough.  Killing Zabuza, in all truth, was not our intended mission.” “Yet, your team rose to the occasion, where all others had failed,” Ryuumaru smiled at the genin.  “This bodes well for their future.”  He placed a firm hand on Kakashi’s taller, more slender shoulder.  “The Hokage was born under fortunate stars, indeed, to have such shinobi.” “Gossip, then Fire-Shadow...” announced a warm, well-seasoned voice from behind, as he moved to embrace an old friend. “Hiruzen!” Ryuumaru welcomed, as he caught the Hokage in a fierce hug.  “Come.  Pour me my first cup of sake of the day!” “Haven’t you eaten breakfast...?” Sarutobi teased, as the two moved off toward the famed sake-tent of Shimogakure, leaving everyone else, including the messenger-monk, in their wake. Following an awkward silence, the monk spoke: “May I know the name of the man who brought an end to the rampage of Zabuza Momochi...?” regarding Kakashi. “Kakashi Hatake, with the heavy assistance of Team Seven,” Kakashi returned, watching the Hokage as he disappeared into the elaborate yurt.  “And if your lord insists on paying out a reward, tell him to send it to the new shinobi academy of Kirigakure.”  He then turned, and began to return to Konoha’s camp.  His students followed. After they had gained some distance, Naruto voiced a complaint: “Why did you refuse the reward?  I could have bought CRATES of ramen!” “Because I refuse to be beholden to that man...ever,” Kakashi shot back. “You could have had it given it to Konoha’s shinobi academy, rather than Kiri’s,” Sasuke suggested, obviously disapproving. “Our academy isn’t trying to rebuild itself from the ground-up,” Kakashi riposted.  “We never forced our students to kill each other for a passing grade.” His usually calm and neutral voice was so cold and full of contempt now.  It sent shivers down his student’s spines. “Do you think Lord Asaito had to kill his classmates?” Sakura asked. “He’s a living shinobi of the Mist, isn’t he?” her sensei replied.  “There can be no doubt.” Miriyume watched in languid lucidity as her mother went about the business of unfurling scrolls, and summoning every conceivable amenity for their tent.  The marble-columned bathing vat seemed especially decadent.   “You’re unusually quiet, my little Stormfly,” Renara Yaseiarashi commented, as she summoned a pot of hot tea and a set of cups.  “I usually have to struggle to get a word in between your stories.  Something is amiss....” “Something’s odd....” accepting a teacup of oolong, “I don’t know if its wrong, necessarily...” Miriyume  answered. “You’ve always been attracted to the mysterious things in life,” Renara smiled as she settled on a cushion beside her daughter.  “I blame myself, partially...” “What are you driving at?”  Miriyume sighed.  Despite her attempts to shield her emotions with her chaotic storm chakra, her mother always found a way to get in her head, and see the things that she tried to desperately hide under the bravado and mirth.  Or maybe Raijin hadn’t been that good of a teacher when it came to mind-barrier technique. So fiery when it came to matters of the heart.  Just like her father, Renara thought inwardly.  Perhaps this wedding wasn’t the right approach to take after all... “I don’t know, you haven’t told me yet,” Renara smiled coyly. Miriyume frowned into her tea.  “There’s nothing to tell.  Just another awkward turn of fate, at exactly the wrong time.” “Sounds newsworthy to me...” “Its no more newsworthy than a young, foreign jonin asking about me in the wake of ‘the Emergence’...” she countered sharply. Renara’s arresting green and gold eyes widened as her daughter gave her a crystal-clear view into what was on her mind. “So, you’ve found him.  Again,” Renara replied cryptically. “Found who?!?” “Your quantum chakra entanglement.” “Are you speaking in tongues now?!” “I thought this might happen....” Renara continued to ramble on, further confounding her daughter.  “Actually, I’m surprised its taken this long for you two to run into each other again, what with your wandering ways...” She was doing it again.  Reading her mind as easily as one of her beloved romance novels, and giving her no insight to her own.  “You know, I’ve suddenly realized....there are moments when you’re as infuriatingly cryptic as HE is!” Miriyume’s chakra flared with her impassioned retort. The Heron Sage just chuckled softly.  She was so like her father....

The grand yurt that housed the Shimogakuran traveling bar, affectionately referred to as the ‘House of Northern Lights (–or, the ‘Light House,’ for short),’ was sent into a welcoming uproar when Ryuumaru and Hiruzen entered.  Mostly due to the former. They were immediately ushered to the best table, and set up with a full array of pickled delicacies, yakatori, and of course, sake.  Following a unanimous toast to the beloved Shimokhan’s health and strength, the two leaders were courteously left to their relative privacy. “Its been awhile, old friend,” Ryuumaru began, lifting his refilled cup in salute to Hiruzen. “That it has,” Sarutobi replied.  “Too long, in fact,” his tone indicating mild censure.  “It seems that your daughter has stolen your wanderlust.” “With no intent on giving it back, either,” the Shimokhan chuckled.  “It seems to be a Yaseiarashi trait.” “Although, she never seems to wander my way, much.  Not like you used to.” “Most of her efforts have been focused on the eastern lands.  The Land of Water, in particular.  The loss of their jinkuriki, and the instability of their government has turned all to chaos down there.  Yet, Miri-chan has found bastions of hope amidst it.  But they need help in maintaining it.  Outside help.  Again, Hiruzen-sama, thank-you for being here.” “All you have to do is ask, Ryuumaru-kun, and I’ll lend whatever aid I can.  Your heroism during the Third Shinobi War has earned you, at the very least, that.” “Well, I’m officially calling in all favors.  My little Stormfly will be kept safe.  I still can’t believe that she orchestrated this....” “I still can’t believe that you went along with it!” “If anything happens to her...” the gruff-looking man’s eyes grew glassy, as he focused on some imagined horrible event. “Nothing will happen, Ryuumaru!  How could it?” Hiruzen reassured.   The Shimokhan forced a chuckle as he turned back from his bleak thoughts.  “Well, I’ve just learned that tempting fate is best avoided.  And hopefully, Miri-chan has learned this earlier than I have.” “She’s an extraordinary kunoichi, and a formidable girl, besides.  I can easily see that Uzumaki heritage, right on the surface.” “Yes,” Ryuumaru removed his helmet, and scratched at the back of his neck.  “Strange to think how the bringer of that heritage is so calm and collected by comparison.” “Mita-sama was a serene woman as well,” the Hokage reminded.  “They can’t all be spitfires.” “Thanks be to the gods!” Ryuumaru declared.  “But don’t let that red-tipped hair of hers fool you, she draws quite a bit of that fire from the Yaseiarashi Clan as well.  Its actually a small wonder that she didn’t self-combust upon her entry into this world.” “The world needs those kinds of fires,” Hiruzen mused.  “To pull the rest of us out of the shadows.” “...Just as we need the faithful fire-tenders, to keep us from blazing out of control, and burning all that we love on accident.” “Did we just quote your wedding vows...?” “Um...perhaps?  I wasn’t completely sober that day...” Hiruzen laughed.  “I think we all realized that when you tried to tackle the pine tree because it ‘looked at you funny’!  Poor Renara-sama was mortified....” “But it was too late!  Everyone had drank the final cup, and the gods had smiled.  She was mine!” the Shimokhan bragged. “And I’ve never known her to regret it, you ridiculously fortunate, whiskey-steeped, old sod!”

#kakashi

[persondudeman]

Before I post about any new band or anything like that, lemme go through the bands I’ve done so far and deliver my hot takes in as quick a format as I can. BIG OLE BAND POST BELOW THE CUT!!

Yes: The 70′s period is classic and they released a bunch of really high quality albums during that time. As far as I’m concerned the only bad ones during that time were Tormato and Tales From Topographic Oceans. Drama on the other hand is an underrated gem in their discography and everything after 90125 is bad except for Fly From Here. Emerson Lake and Palmer: First two albums were too unfocused for my taste but Trilogy and Brain Salad Surgery are jams. Other than that, Works Vol. 1 was ambitious and most of the Palmer helmed songs are jams. Everything after that though is a skip for me. Van Derr Graaf Generator: Their 70′s period was really interesting and Peter Hammill had a really unique voice that added a lot of grit to their songs. Lots of jazz fusion elements and even some more bleak lyricism than what a lot of prog was doing at the time. That said, everything after The Quiet Zone/The Pleasure Dome I’d skip.    Porcupine Tree: Emo music for people too self conscious to listen to emo music. I kid, PT is legit. They’ve got a very unique style of like, somber prog rock with acoustic elements that lead to some really good stuff. Signify is the place where they really started strong and then everything they did in the 2000′s was pretty great musically. That said though, I think they really hit their stride conceptually from Deadwing onward. Before that it was a lot of Steven Wilson whining about how being a musician sucks because he has to sell music. Speaking of... Steven Wilson: I honestly wasn’t a big fan of most of his solo work but Hand. Cannot. Erase. is AMAZING!!!! It’s probably my favorite thing Wilson has ever done. Recently though, To The Bone was a really bold release that while I didn’t really like too much of it, I respected the change in style and willingness to experiment.  Opeth: A pretty interesting metal band that really came into their own around Still Life. Depending on who you ask, after still life they either continued to improve on their sound or basically released the equivalent of Still Life 2, 3, 4, and 5 with a 70′s inspired album in the middle of it all. All I’ll say is that of that era of Opeth, Ghost Reveries is my favorite Opeth album with a close second being a tie with Watershed and Blackwater Park. Deliverance I wasn’t too into and Damnation I thought I’d like a lot more than I actually did. After Watershed however came a shift in their sound with Heritage. Basically, zero screaming and a lot more folk oriented. For the most part I think it got worse with each passing title, but there’s gems in all 3 of those albums. The only albums that I’d full on skip are Orchid and Morningrise.  Marilion: This band was something else. They started off playing neo-prog rock but they very quickly abandoned that style for basically anything under the sun from jazz to electronic to soft rock to even pop. This made for a band where I had no clue what to expect. One album I’d really like it but the next one I’d want to skip. The one thing I will say definitively is that the press was unfair to them. Because of the nerdy name (Marillion as in Silmarillion) and neo-prog label, every music outlit at the time wrote them off even though they barely played the music and even though I admittedly didn’t like a lot of their stuff, I can respect that it wasn’t for me and that it would have been for somebody if they were exposed to it. As for me personally, I really like Script For A Jester’s Tear and Clutching at Straws. Other than that, House off marillion.com is probably their best song. It’s one of the few Marillion songs I consistently come back to and it’s just great. The album itself is very lopsided but that song almost makes up for all of it.  IQ: Holy shit I’d been sleeping on these guys! Whereas Marillion was slagged for being neo-prog, IQ actually played the shit and more often than not it fucking SLAPPED! If you like synths and you like prog you’ll LOVE IQ. My favorite album is probably The Wake but honestly, aside from 2 albums they did with a different vocalist, it’s all pretty damn good!  Godspeed You! Black Emperor: Their music was very intense. That’s the one word I’d describe it with. Either intense death feelings like their first album or intense emotional highs on Lift Yr Skinny Fists, Godspeed never went halfway with anything. And even though at the worst of times it ended up in them basically being the generic idea of what an “artsy band” sounds like, I admire the hell out of them for their willingness to experiment. Luciferian Towers is probably my favorite because it’s their most accessible and most raw they’ve ever been at the same time and it sounds great.  Mogwai: A little more my speed when it came to post rock. I really liked the experimentation with electronic elements and even stuff like singing in their earlier stuff. They experimented a lot like Godspeed, but also always kept an ambient core to their sound that really worked! My favorite albums are Mr Beast and Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will. Silver Mt Zion: I don’t know how they did it but members of Godspeed You! Black Emperor made music that was way too much for me. And when it wasn’t too much for me there was too much folksy stuff for my taste to really get into it. They’ve got a couple albums later on that are pretty tight like Kollaps Tradixionales but other than that it was too much. Dream Theater: A band that sometimes wrote really good music but could rarely carry a whole album. Unless it’s Metropolis 2 or the second part of Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence, I only kept individual songs from different albums after that. Anything other than that I skipped. Helloween: Just some good ass power metal! They found a formula early on and really stuck with it and aside from a few detours into both a pop and a darker direction respectively, most of their albums give you that straight to the face, European style power metal with all the yells and guitar solos that could warrant. If you like your music like you like macaroni, that is to say cheesy and fucking awesome, Helloween is your friend. My favorite album personally is Better Than Raw but a good rule of thumb is if its got a cool album cover, it’s a good Helloween album.  Explosions in the Sky: These guys pioneered the style of cinematic, cathartic post rock that nearly every new band in the post rock scene has tried and failed to ape since. What they lack in experimentation they more than make up for in consistency and if their style of post rock is something you need they’re more than willing to provide it. My favorite album is predictably The Earth Is Not A Cold Dead Place because Your Hand In Mine just feels like a song that was playing while the universe was being born. If you believe in god, they definitely have Your Hand In Mine on their playlist. It has the scope of a song that has existed since time immemorial and for that alone I’m willing to overlook the fact that there wasn’t much innovation after it because where do you go when you have ostensibly conquered the genre you helped create?     

#music ramblings #yes band #dream theater #opeth #IQ #porcupine tree #explosions in the sky #godspeed you! black emperor #mogwai #helloween #silver mt zion #marillion #steven wilson #emerson lake and palmer #van der graaf generator

[wowsuchjake]

Y'all. This weekend, there were white supremacists marching in the streets—Nazis, KKK, neo-Confederates, the whole lot. This is horrific and wrong, but it's far from new. These people, white supremacists, have been in America literally since the beginning—in fact, they *were* the beginning. The difference is that we had made some progress—not so much toward fixing the actual problem, but at least towards people realizing that they would face consequences for expressing their disgusting bigotry too openly. They still expressed it, of course, just not in Polite Society™. They banded together, always hiding behind masks, whether those were white hoods or white egg avatars. They carried fire as a threat, literal torches and burning crosses, and the figurative flames of online hate speech. They brandished the means to control and, if they felt like it, to destroy the bodies of those they hated. Not only nooses and sticks and guns, but rules and laws, and the very right to vote for the people who crafted them, an entire system that could selectively enforce its rules and adjust the severity of its penalties, or overlook them entirely, depending on what was necessary to protect its hierarchies.

We had ostensibly made progress, but we had not fixed the underlying problems on which our society—which still defines whiteness as normalcy, as purity, as correctness—was built. That progress made it taboo to speak those prejudices publicly, but did little else to address the ways in which taboo talk became accepted practice. The only consequences for being a bigot, a Nazi, a Klansman, or anyone else just one or two steps removed from actual genocide were that they couldn't talk about it at the dinner table—as in, they couldn't have *conversations* about it. We built a society where we just ignored what our racist uncle or whoever said at Thanksgiving (or apropos of nothing on a Tuesday, or whenever) because it made us uncomfortable, and because everybody knew it was wrong anyway, right? Why ruin such a lovely gathering with that kind of unpleasant confrontation?

But that so-called progress is now gone, undone in part by a president who campaigned on this kind of rhetoric (then had the audacity to say "let's all come together now" when he was elected, as though that could somehow undo everything that he had set in motion). A president who then appointed white supremacists and Nazi supporters to his senior staff. A president who daily takes to Twitter to criticize and threaten not only his political foes, but even his supposed allies if he perceives "disloyalty" from them—yet one who suddenly had nothing to say there when actual Nazis and Confederates (two ideological groups America has literally fought wars against) marched in the streets of America chanting slogans like "white lives matter" and "Jew will not replace us." And now, a president who, when asked point-blank to condemn actual Nazis who actually murdered somebody at their actual Nazi rally, refused to do so, but gave a statement that avoided directly mentioning them and instead talked about violence "on many sides"—essentially the equivalent of looking at World War II and everything leading up to it and saying "well, yes, these Nazis are a bit unorthodox, but they've got a right to express their beliefs, too, so let's not be too hasty here." A president who, through all of these actions and inactions, has encouraged these people not only to march with Nazi and Confederate flags, but, unlike the idea of white supremacists we are accustomed to, to do so *unmasked*.

But again, here's the thing: None of this is new. Yet we—white people in particular—are acting like all of these people just materialized out of nowhere, bought up all the tiki torches at Walmart and Home Depot, and started marching in the streets, just like we acted surprised last November when we couldn't imagine Donald Trump actually being elected. Yes, he lost the popular vote, but he still amassed nearly 63 million votes—if these people are so fringe, so utterly Other, where did all those votes come from? These people have been here since the beginning. They *were* the beginning. And we have let them persist because we *know* them—they're our classmates and coworkers, our relatives, our friends, and outside of those things we don't talk about, we know them to be "good people." (This is, not at all coincidentally, also the exact description given of the perpetrators of a lot of mass shootings: "I never knew he was capable of something like this—he was such a good guy.") We don't stop them because it makes us uncomfortable, because we don't want to throw away a relationship over a difference of opinion—except being a couple steps removed from genocide is not a "difference of opinion." We would rather say nothing than disrupt the status quo, because we are more concerned with protecting our own comfort—something immediate and visceral—than with the nebulous idea of the large-scale suffering of people we have never met, and which doesn't directly affect us. We don't stop them because, whether or not we are consciously aware of it, we benefit from this system, and we are afraid of losing its protection in dismantling it. We may not all be Those People, but 63 million of us heard one of them campaigning on that exact rhetoric and were willing to look the other way because we thought he cared about *our* needs, and most of the rest of us had been too quiet about it for too long to prevent all of this from happening. This is on all of us—yes, the president said "go," but we should have said "stop" a long time ago. And just as it always has, just as it did the last time we fought actual Nazis, it has taken the fight finally landing on our doorstep, on streets we think of as ours, for us to decide to step in.

White people, we need to get our shit together. If we are outraged by Nazis in the streets, but not by the people close to us who express the same bigotry without all the regalia, we are part of the problem. If we are outraged by Nazis in the streets, but cannot find a way to translate our anger into meaningful action, we are part of the problem. We may not have personally built this system, but we are all complicit in it. We are part of the problem. If we want to be part of the solution, then we need to stand up to the hatred and bigotry we see in those closest to us, in ourselves, not just that which we see in anonymous strangers on the other side of the country. We need to educate ourselves on the movements we are joining, because they've existed long before this weekend, even if they are new to us, and because it is not the job of people of color to educate us—they literally bear all the burden here already—and then we need to educate others. It's going to be hard. We are going to make mistakes. We need to understand that our allyship does not exempt us from criticism or wholly erase our complicity in this system. It is our job to humbly take ownership of our mistakes when we are called out, correct them, and learn from them, to do our best to avoid repeating them. None of us can fix this on our own; it is going to take the consistent actions—small and large—of all of us together.