#to be corroded by the poison from within is better than the poison from without.

[beanmaster-pika]

.

#and so the scream turns to poison in my throat. #I WANT TO SHOUT I WANT TO BREAK SOMETHING. I WANT TO YELL ALL MY GRIEVANCES AND EVERY SINGLE HURT IVE EVER HAD. #I WANT TO TELL HER EXACTLY WHAT MY PROBLEM IS BUT I LIVE UNDER HER ROOF AND I CANT AFFORD TO LOSE IT. #when I was in high school one of my friends told me she’d sneak out sometimes while her parents were asleep I wish I had her moxie #I want to go far away and scream and cry as loudly as I possibly can. but if I TRIED there would be QUESTIONS and I HATE THOSE. #because they won’t like my answers and they’ll be mad at me and I know they still see me as a child but they’ve spared me no dignity in the #first place so why should I try to preserve what I don’t have? #‘if you wanted to be treated like an adult then you should act like one’ but ‘acting like an adult’ means tolerating it all silently and #following what they say. I still won’t be heard if I ‘act like an adult’ so I might as well take the path that allows me to even feel anythi #ng. if I can’t even have my anger then I’ll be left with nothing. #to be corroded by the poison from within is better than the poison from without. #vent

[tintysun]

Long ago, in the Underground...

(A BioCyberPunk Tale)

There came a time, in a place not many hear of these days, when underground cities were actively built. Mostly hidden from view, many of their inhabitants enjoyed a sense of seclusion and anonymosity. They could simply exist.

This, for better and for worse, allowed them to profoundly explore themselves and their surroundings. The good, the bad, and the ugly. Run experiments, too. But unfortunately, among them, unhinged, deranged, and vile individuals mingled. Accompanied by masses of weak or vulnerable minds that they could access, exploit and mould. Making it so that what could have been benign discovery soon turned into a twisted nightmare. Dire situations arose as the communities within began to corrode.

One of these communities was composed of young and curious intellectuals in search of their true nature and the answers to life's deepest and greatest questions. They stood as neighboring leaders in their fields. One of them more feisty, witty and clever than you might imagine being ahead in the game without failing to practice solidarity and collaboration with peers. And though they could be wildly different from each other in certain aspects, they all shared in common an intolerance for what seemed incoherent and incongruent. Shallow and nonsensical explanations wouldn't do. Uninformed opinions weren't taken too kindly either. They'd exchange data with each other, engaging in discussions and debates, in order to expand their horizons and polish their worldviews. So, by merely their own traits, they consequently were the liars' most dangerous threat and enemy.

Yet, sadly, lies can be manufactured faster than the truth can be dug out. And when packaged in even more lies to make them enticing, they also spread and are welcomed much more readily than meticulously articulated (and often harsh) truths would. The odds were against this crew. And while being so young, there was only so much that they could do or knew how to do. Especially when faced and caught off-guard by more than one unspeakably wicked being.

Fights broke between them as they looked for approaches they could agree on and their ideas were in conflict. The growing falsehood, and the poison that came with it, was impacting their work. But what's worse, it was negatively affecting the lives of those they had been helping with it. Something had to be done, but protecting everyone was already a lost cause under their circumstances. At some point, it became evident that they could only protect their own clarity.

Older experts in vicinity later joined in, contributing more knowledge and wisdom to them. Basically assisting in restoring and maintaining sanity.

However, after their symbiotic environment, consisting of mostly amicable banter and trades, was destroyed, and how tiresome (not to mention scarring) enduring such an ordeal was, it was never the same again. Resuming as before was not possible. Not desirable either as it proved unsustainable amidst the ill-willed. They would have to take numerous measures to prevent similar tragedies from happening again - and ironically, that is one of the biggest takeaways they got out of it, witnessing multiple forms of behavior, how it harms and how it heals.

The cities continued to be in decline, to where they can be called dead despite a few that remain wandering them. But life doesn't start nor end there...

Tool: Leonardo.AI

#ai art

[thetruthbehindtheemotions]

Regret

We suffer more because of people than because of circumstances. People make us cry more than life's ups and downs. People disappoint us, and we disappoint people. Relationships within the family, at work, and even in church sometimes become tense. Wounds are opened in the soul, and deep resentments settle in the heart. Friendships are broken, marriages are shaken, solid relationships collapse. In this process, communication is severed, icy silence replaces words of love, and deconstructing the image of the other becomes a true dismantling action.

That's me, Regret. The one who arose from thoughtless words, poorly made decisions, and their consequences. The result of the sickness of human relationships. This feeling of bitterness that settles in the soil of the heart and roots itself, bringing disturbance to the soul and contamination to those who live around. I am frozen anger. I am the storage of resentment. I am the one who fills the heart with rancor, who feeds on the wormwood of remorse, who drowns in the mire of hatred, who lives as a prisoner in the trap of revenge.

It's sad, isn't it? But that's exactly what I am, a prison. I am the prison of the soul, the dungeon of emotions, the dark cell where its prisoners are tormented by the executioners of conscience. Those who feed on me have no peace. They have no freedom. They have no joy. They do not know love. They do not live. They only wander aimlessly through the vastness of the world.

Regret is self-destructive. We hurt ourselves when we nurture resentment towards someone. Keeping resentment in the heart is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die. Those who hold onto resentment in their hearts are bound by thick chains of guilt. Those who live in this dungeon become emotionally, physically, and spiritually sick.

Many people are sick because they refuse to forgive. And the key that opens the door of this dungeon is forgiveness. Forgiveness brings healing where resentment has caused illness. Forgiveness brings reconciliation where resentment has created distance. Forgiveness brings joy where resentment has produced sadness and pain. Forgiveness restores what resentment has plundered. Forgiveness is the cleansing of the mind, the sterilization of the soul, the clearing of the cellars of the heart. Forgiving is resetting the account.

It is never again throwing the person's debt in their face. Forgiving is remembering without feeling pain.

However, one of the greatest difficulties for human beings is to forgive, isn't it? And like a mirror that shatters, spreading hundreds of shards on the floor, you will never be able to glue them back together, and if you do, it may take many months, perhaps years.

That's how it is with forgiveness. No matter the size of the hurt caused to us or that we have caused to others, obtaining forgiveness will always be difficult because it involves a genuine desire to overcome what happened. Often, we need to forgive not only those who have hurt us but also ourselves for allowing someone to treat us in such a negative way or for putting ourselves in unfavorable situations. The words spoken cannot be erased because they hurt where it hurts the most—they hurt the soul. So you keep holding onto resentments, without even realizing it. However, they always overflow. Whether through your eyes, your fingers, or any other means, they always overflow. And for various reasons.

Depending on how long you hold them and the number of resentments, the intensity changes. And depending on how they overflow, you may feel better. However, feeling better by just crying, writing, dancing, or breaking things is not always enough. Because I am like Anger, like Hatred, or even like Guilt. I am a feeling that corrodes you from within, taking you deeper and deeper into the pit, making you sick. And can this disease be cured? Yes, it can. But it depends only on you! That's why I'll give you some tips on how to deal with me:

1 - Don't be afraid to express your feelings, just choose the best moment to do so. Wait for the dust to settle so that you can express yourself clearly.

2 - Try to see the situation from a distance and analyze both sides. No matter how difficult it may be, try to understand the other person's perspective and put yourself in their shoes.

3 - Don't dwell on negative feelings. They create a vicious circle of negativity that will drag you further down.

4 - Forget the victim mentality. It is very important to take responsibility for what happens in your life.

5 - Live in the present and don't dwell on the past. It only increases the pain and doesn't resolve the situation.

Even though resentment may involve more than one person, it only harms the one who holds onto it. If it's difficult to let go of it, think that by holding onto resentment, you're not seeking revenge or causing harm to the other person because the poison of pain thatflows through your veins affects only you. It eats away at your happiness, your peace of mind, and your overall well-being.

Many times the other person doesn't even know how you feel, which means you carry all the weight of the argument alone. Don't give importance to those who don't value you, it's like fueling your own suffering through contempt, it's not worth it. It's better to move on with your life, surround yourself with those who genuinely care about you, and seek happiness. Starting anew without resentment, pain, or anger will be difficult because negative feelings don't just disappear out of nowhere. It takes time and patience, but don't give up, I know you can do it.

As for me, well, I don't have much to do except welcome all these people with their wounded hearts, providing them with shelter and food, hoping that they won't be like me, forever living in this bloody river with no way out. And I'll be here, rooting for the happiness of each one of you who had the displeasure of experiencing my company. And as a final piece of advice: just keep moving forward, without looking back.

"Leave my heart in peace, as it is already filled to the brim with sorrow."

- Chico Buarque.

*********************************

Mágoa

Nós sofremos mais por causa das pessoas do que por causa das circunstâncias. As pessoas nos fazem chorar mais do que as vicissitudes da vida. As pessoas nos decepcionam e nós decepcionamos as pessoas. Os relacionamentos dentro da família, no trabalho e até igreja, algumas vezes, se tornam tensos. Feridas são abertas na alma e mágoas profundas se instalam no coração. Amizades são rompidas, casamentos são abalados, relacionamentos sólidos entram em colapso. Nesse processo, a comunicação é rompida, o silêncio gelado substitui as palavras de amor e a desconstrução da imagem do outro se torna uma verdadeira ação de desmonte.

Essa sou eu, a Mágoa. Aquela que surgiu das palavras ditas sem pensar, das decisões mal tomadas e de suas consequências. O resultado do adoecimento das relações humanas. Esse sentimento de amargura que se instala no solo do coração e lança suas raízes trazendo perturbação para a alma e contaminação para os que vivem ao redor. Sou a ira congelada. Sou o armazenamento do ressentimento. Sou aquela que enche o coração com o rancor, que alimentar-se do absinto do remorso, que afoga-se no lodo do ódio, que vive prisioneira na armadilha da vingança.

É triste, não? Mas é exatamente isso que eu sou, uma prisão. Sou o cárcere da alma, o calabouço das emoções, a masmorra escura onde seus prisioneiros são atormentados pelos verdugos da consciência. Quem se alimenta de mim não tem paz. Não tem liberdade. Não tem alegria. Não conhece o amor. Não vive. Somente vaga sem rumo pela imensidão do mundo.

A mágoa é autodestrutiva. Ferimos a nós mesmos quando nutrimos mágoa por alguém. Guardar mágoa no coração é como beber veneno pensando que o outro é quem vai morrer. Quem guarda mágoa no coração vive amarrado pelas grossas correntes da culpa. Quem vive nessa masmorra adoece emocional, física e espiritualmente.

Há muitas pessoas doentes porque se recusaram a perdoar. E a chave que abre a porta dessa masmorra é o perdão. O perdão traz cura onde a mágoa gerou doença. O perdão traz reconciliação onde a mágoa gerou afastamento. O perdão traz alegria, onde a mágoa produziu tristeza e dor. O perdão restitui aquilo que a mágoa saqueou. O perdão é a faxina da mente, a assepsia da alma, a limpeza dos porões do coração. Perdoar é zerar a conta.

É nunca mais lançar no rosto da pessoa a sua dívida. Perdoar é lembrar sem sentir dor.

Contudo, uma das maiores dificuldades do ser humano é perdoar, não é mesmo? E como um espelho quando quebra, se espalhando pelo chão em centenas de cacos, você nunca conseguirá cola-los novamente, e se sim, talvez leve muitos meses, talvez anos.

Assim é com o perdão. Não importa o tamanho da mágoa que nos causaram ou que causamos nos outros. Conseguir o perdão será sempre difícil, pois envolve a vontade verdadeira de superar o que aconteceu. Muitas vezes não precisamos perdoar apenas quem nos machucou, mas a nos mesmos também, por deixarmos que alguém nos tratasse de uma maneira tão negativa ou por nos colocar em situações desfavoráveis. As palavras ditas não podem ser apagadas, pois elas feriram onde mais dói, elas feriram a alma. Então você vai guardando as mágoas, sem perceber. Contudo, elas sempre transbordam. Sejam pelos olhos, pelos dedos, ou por qualquer outro lugar, sempre transbordam. E pelos mais variados motivos.

Dependendo do tempo que você segura e da quantidade de mágoas, a intensidade muda. E dependendo de como elas transbordam, você pode se sentir melhor. Porém se sentir melhor só chorando, escrevendo, dançando ou quebrando coisas não é sempre suficiente. Porque eu sou como a Raiva, como o Ódio ou até mesmo como a Culpa. Sou um sentimento que vai te corroendo por dentro, te levando cada vez mais para o fundo do poço, te deixando doente. E essa doença tem cura? Sim, ela tem. Mas isso só depende de você! Por isso vou dar-lhe algumas dicas de como lidar comigo:

1 - Não tenha medo de expôr os seus sentimentos, apenas escolha o melhor momento para isso. Espere a poeira baixar para que você consiga se expressar de maneira clara.

2 - Tente ver a situação com distância e analise os dois lados. Por mais difícil que seja, procure entender o lado do outro e se colocar em sua posição.

3 - Não insista em sentimentos negativos. Eles criam um círculo vicioso de negatividade que vai levá-lo cada vez mais para baixo.

4 - Esqueça a postura de vítima. É muito importante assumir as responsabilidades do que acontece com você em sua vida.

5 - Viva o presente e não fique remoendo o passado. Isso só aumenta a dor e não resolve a situação.

Por mais que a mágoa envolva mais de uma pessoa, ela só prejudica quem a guarda. Se for difícil se desfazer dela, pense que você não está se vingando ou fazendo mal a outra pessoa apenas por guardar o rancor, porque o veneno da dor que você causa aos outros, sempre retornará a você. Muitas vezes o outro nem sabe que você se sente assim, o que significa que você carrega todo o peso da discussão sozinho. Não fique dando importância à quem não te valoriza, é como estimular o próprio sofrimento através do desprezo, não vale a pena. É melhor seguir a sua vida, se rodear de quem quer o seu bem e procurar a felicidade. Vai ser difícil recomeçar, sem mágoas, dor ou raiva, porque os sentimentos ruins não somem assim, do nada. Leva tempo e paciência, mas não desistam, eu sei que vocês conseguem.

Quanto a mim, bem, não tenho muito o que fazer, a não ser acolher todas essas pessoas com seus corações magoados, dando-lhes um lar e comida, na esperança de que elas não sejam como eu, que vivo eternamente nesse rio sangrento sem saída. E eu estarei aqui, torcendo pela felicidade de cada um de vocês que tiveram o desprazer de usufruir da minha companhia. E como último conselho: só sigam em frente, sem olhar para trás.

"Deixe em paz meu coração, que ele é um pote até aqui de mágoa."

— Chico Buarque.

[kaesileigh]

A diary-esque reflection

...On facing the shadow...

Triggers: being ignored, feeling a lack of respect, condescension, feeling inadequate or incompetent.

This new job is challenging and triggering me.  Dealing with issues of power and control.  Respect.  I stop....and notice myself reacting (versus responding) from a place of insecurity.  Doubt.  Frustration.  Find myself questioning my abilities.  Envious of the affection and respect the staff seems to have for my assistant manager, but not me.  I recognize that a large part of this is my newness.  We don’t know each other.  I also must acknowledge what I find to be a repellant quality--the desire to be liked.  Needed.  Respected.  Also, the quality of envy. 

It’s tempting to continue suppressing these aspects of myself, but what happens when I do that?  I act, unconsciously from those places.  They poison my spirit.  Make me sick.  There are tinctures and natural herbs and remedies out there that come with warning labels of how to be consumed or used.  We must be MINDFUL of these sacred substances that have the power to heal but also to harm. Our shadows are like that--we can learn from them, use them as fuel and nutrition for growth, gain a unique power from them...or.  They can destroy us, corrode, rot us from the core.  We have a choice how we use our sacred medicines.  

I took a time out today and reminded myself to remember who I am.  Where I came from--”I am not myself without everything else.”  That I am a compilation of everyone and everything that I’ve ever encountered...and also, a more raw purity underneath all that.  Remembering that whatever I do needs to come from an authentic center.  A deep, wise center--a knowing.  This can be challenging for me as an enneagram fixated 4--trying on a different identity every other day.  I’ve learned over the years that despite whatever identity costumes, voices, dances, hobbies I am trying out today...I am able to do this while maintaining a tether to a solid center--a home.  Clarissa Pinkola Estes has a beautiful story (and also dark...many of her stories tend to have that shadow-element...which, I’m just realizing is perhaps what drew me so intensely to them...) in Women Who Run with the Wolves called Homing: Returning to Oneself (Sealskin, Soulskin).  This is a beautiful tale of the cycles of living and existing, straying from oneself, as is a normal tendency throughout life, and then finding our way home. There is an aspect, an “essential nature” that does not change.  An essential goodness, a purity...a lightness of spirit...a soul self that remains when all else is stripped away.  

I am learning that when I challenge myself, as I have recently with this job, I don’t need to adopt an entirely different way of being in order to do the job “right” and “well.”  I will find a way to do it within the parameters of my authenticity.  I will develop strengths to ever expand my capabilities and ability to handle challenges, take advantage of opportunities, leap at lessons, engage in more compassionate communication, and live life more intentionally and MORE FULLY!  I must remember the critical factors of PRESENCE and PATIENCE.  Patience with the process.  Patience with myself.  Patience with others.  Presence as often as possible (for everlasting presence is, arguable, not possible for those outside of monk-hood).  

Remembering that I am [usually] doing better at any given moment than I am allowing myself to acknowledge.  And when I am not, when I’m getting sucked into the whirlpool of chaos or dragging along the bottom with the pond scum, an acceptance of my predicament can allow me to more quickly find a way out.  I am starting to trust myself more.  Trust that I have the skills and inner wisdom to know what to do at any given moment.  It’s when I’m not tuned in, not listening, or not following my own deep wisdom, when I’m getting in my own way or being too over-reliant on external validation and direction, that I continue to flounder.  I am learning to be discerning in who I go to for advice, for a listening ear, for an embrace and to have my soul reflected back to me.  Learning to trust that I know what form of self care I need in order to address various situations.  (Not that I always listen).  But at least I know.  And tomorrow is a new day.  Every moment is an opportunity to make a different choice.  To make use of what we’re working with.  So this choice didn’t work in our favor?  A. Maybe it wasn’t meant to, B. Maybe we need to re-assess what is actually in our “favor” (what we want vs what is in the nature of our highest development), C. We can make a different choice AND it doesn’t mean there aren’t lessons to be gleaned from this one.  

And with that, I will let the mind rest.  

[drdln3-blog]

The Secret to Happy Life

The Secret to Happy Life

 Here is a list of 15 essentials a person should strive to achieve happiness:

 1. GOOD HEALTH - First and foremost is GOOD HEALTH. So take care of Physical and Mental Health problems. If you do not enjoy good health you cannot be happy. Any ailment, however trivial, will deduct from your happiness and make it harder to be happy. While it’s not always possible to “cure” everything, address your physical and emotional needs as best as possible. Some people allow themselves to have lingering pains, or struggles with depression. Take the steps to address it. It will change your entire experience of the world.

 2. A HEALTHY BANK BALANCE - Money cannot buy happiness is true and every billionaire is not happy. However, poverty is stressful; and if you can pay for the basics comfortably - it will remove a lot of that stress from your life. You don’t have to be wealthy, but some amount of financial comfort will prevent the worries about the basics of everyday life. It need not run into millions but should be enough to provide for creature comforts and something to spare for recreation, like eating out, going to the pictures, travelling or going on holidays on the hills or by the sea. So have a few bucks in the bank. Shortage of money can be demoralizing. Living on credit or borrowing is demeaning and lowers one in one's own eyes.

 3. A HOME OF YOUR OWN - Rented premises can never give you the snug feeling of a nest which is yours for keeps that a home provides; if it has a garden space, all the better. Plant your own trees and flowers, see them grow and blossom, cultivate a sense of kinship with them. "God is not found on mountain tops. He lives in cozy homes and within you."

 4. AN UNDERSTANDING COMPANION - Be it your spouse or a friend. If there are too many misunderstandings, they will rob you of your peace of mind. Don’t settle in who you marry. Marriage is the single biggest decision you make, so be picky and marry the right person for you. Don’t rush in because you think it’s “time” or you feel “pressure.” Marry someone you are excited about, who makes you feel amazing, and who is good to you down to their last breath. Don’t compromise or settle on this one - it makes a large part of the mood of your home every single day…why not make it great! It is better to be single than to bicker all the time. Choose your friends and people around you carefully - they will have an effect on your mind and soul.

 5. LACK OF ENVY - Stop comparing with those who have done better than you in life; risen higher, made more money, or earned more fame. Envy can be very corroding; avoid comparing yourself with others. You will become vain and bitter. Because there will always be greater and lesser persons than yourself. Being happy in your own skin is one of the biggest keys to happiness. A lot of unhappiness comes from people believing that they are “less than” because of images they see or messages they ingest. You can be so much happier going all-in on you.

 6. BE OKAY WITH BAD DAYS - Part of living a happy life, is realizing that you won’t be happy 24/7, and being fine with it. You’ll have times of grief, and times of irritation, and times of stress or anxiety…and that’s fine. Accepting that you’re a human with a range of emotions, and seeing every day as a new day, is part of what makes you happy. Self-acceptance of just being human and not too hard on you is massive. “Life isn't burger king. You can't always have it your way.” “Life is a circle of happiness, sadness, hard times, and good times. If you are going through hard times have faith that good times are on the way. The higher the aim, the more struggles.”

7. DO NOT ALLOW OTHER PEOPLE - to descend on you for gossip and bad mouthing about others. By the time you get rid of them, you will feel exhausted and poisoned by their gossip-mongering. Always remember: "Intelligent people talk about ideas. Average people talk about things. Small people talk about other people. And fools argue."

 8. CULTIVATE SOME HOBBIES – that can bring you a sense of fulfilment, such as gardening, reading, writing, painting, playing or listening to music. Do more things you like! This sounds silly, but there are people who say they used to love painting, but haven’t done it in 10 years! Why? Life gets so busy that the first things we cut are sometimes hobbies - we don’t see them as “essential” or “important,” but they absolutely are when we’re talking about happiness. Make time for things you truly enjoy - it makes life more enjoyable. Going to clubs or parties to get free drinks or to meet celebrities is temporary fun and waste of time.

 9. SEEK OUT THE GOOD – Your mindset and mood are often influenced by what you feed it. This is true of people you surround yourself with, and even the media you ingest. Limit toxic people. Limit toxic headlines/news media, and seek to spend more time/energy with the good. Choose your friends and people around you carefully - they will have an effect on your mind and soul. “A good life is a collection of happy moments. Be happy for this moment this moment is your life.”

 10. HELP OTHERS - If you want to be happy, there is a lot of joy in helping others. Some of what makes life wonderful is feeling useful, helping another without expecting return, and being reminded of your own good fortune (gratitude)…even if that is driving a friend to a doctor’s appointment, or helping a neighbor carry her groceries. Making the world a better place makes you feel better too.

 11. LIVE IN THE PRESENT - Today is a new day, and some people have pasts that are incredibly hard. Live in the present, not in the past…or you’ll be stuck there and miss the great stuff of today. “Yesterday is a history, tomorrow is a mystery, and today is a gift that is why we call it present.” Live each day as it was your last. Tomorrow is not promised." “Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass. It's about learning to dance in the rain.”

 12. MOVE YOUR BODY - Being able to move your body a bit will keep you happy. There are seniors doing shows where they dance, and young kids running in the yard. You don’t have to be an Olympian to move…just even going for a walk every day, or doing some stretches. Your brain has a way of responding to movement that makes people feel happier. “Life is like riding a bicycle, if you don’t move you fall.”  

 13. HAVE NEW EXPERIENCES – Doing something new doesn’t have to be traveling to a distant land - maybe it’s just trying your hand at baking a pie, eating a new type of food you’ve never had, fixing something around the house you never did before, taking a new route for walk, or visiting a small town nearby you’ve never been to. New experiences give us things to look forward to, things to talk about, and bring back some of the curiosity of being a child.

 14. LOVE IN YOUR LIFE - If you have a person who truly loves you in this world, and accepts you for exactly who you are - it will help contribute to your sense of happiness. Even having a pet that loves you can also help this. Love is powerful, and while it isn’t everything, it makes the bad times easier to bear. Being loved, and loving another brings many people great satisfaction and joy.

 15. INTROSPECTION - Every morning and evening, devote 15 minutes to INTROSPECTION. In the morning, 10 minutes should be spent on stilling the mind doing meditation and breathing, and then five in listing things you have to do that day. In the evening or before sleeping, 10 minutes to still the mind again, and five to go over what you had undertaken to do.

 Here’re some quotes for you to enjoy!

 “Your career, your spouse, and your children are like a three-legged stool of Happiness. The stronger the legs the better is the stability.”

 “A good life is a collection of happy moments. Be happy for this moment this moment is your life.”

 “Our attitude defines life:

Life is best for those, who just want to live it.

Life is difficult for those, who want to analyze it.

Life is worst for those, who want to criticize it.”

 “One of the greatest blessings in the world is to be able to be happy even when things in life are not going the way we planned.”

 “Don't wait for the perfect moment, take the moment and make it perfect. And be happy for this moment; this moment is your life.”

 “Never blame any day in your life. Good days give you happiness, bad days give you experience, and the worst days give you a lesson.”  

 About the Author: Dr. Sukhraj S. Dhillon is an eminent Scientist with numerous research publications in life sciences who studied at Yale University and served as a Professor at University in North Carolina. He has written more than a dozen books on topics of Health, Aging, Vegetarianism, Weight control, Stress-free living, Meditation, Yoga, Power of Now, Spirituality, Soul, God, Science, and Religion. His articles and books are a pointer to his line of thinking including current publication. He has been the President, Chairman of the board, and life-trustee of a non-profit religious organization and has expressed his views in the congregation and at international seminars.  

 Reference: “Health, Happiness and Longevity” available from popular booksellers throughout the world including Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble.

https://www.amazon.com/Dr.-Sukhraj-S.-Dhillon/e/B004584DL0?ref_=dbs_p_ebk_r00_abau_000000

http://www.dpcpress.com/pa.html

#happiness #stress #health #health habits

[zenonaa]

Fandom: Dangan Ronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc, Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Fukawa Touko/Togami Byakuya Characters: Fukawa Touko, Togami Byakuya Additional Tags: plus the rest of the cast post chapter 3, togafukaweek2020 Series: Part 1 of TogaFuka Week 2020

Comments: Day 1 for TogaFuka Week! I tried to hit both prompts with this (Pining and Enclosed Spaces). Enjoy! :-)

***

‘Stir-crazy’ is an informal term referring to when a person becomes restless or distraught due to prolonged confinement or routine. For example, to use the term in a sentence, ‘being trapped in Hope’s Peak made several students go stir-crazy’.

Alternatively, ‘Celes went stir-crazy because she couldn’t stand having the same routine every day, so she orchestrated the murders of two of her classmates’.

And, for a final example, ‘Byakuya was absolutely not going stir-crazy, but that would explain some thoughts he began to have’.

After the third trial, the fourth floor of the school opened up, which one would have thought would help. Maybe not the classrooms, not without actual lessons going on, but the chemistry lab proved a little more interesting, offering vitamins to make one healthy and chemicals to make one dead. Potted flowers sat on desks in the faculty room where computers used to be - Monobear once quipped ‘plants are way better examples of how to grow up than computers’ - and the music room housed a stage, a piano and other instruments Byakuya knew how to play.

Makoto even found a strange photograph of three of their deceased friends messing about with a camera. Yet, those pieces of excitement didn’t stop the strange, intrusive thoughts scratching at the walls of Byakuya’s mind.

In the faculty room, Byakuya rubbed a silky petal of a sunflower between his thumb and forefinger, a shadow carved into his brow in thought. The flowers seemed out of place. No, they were out of place, and not just because of their location. No matter how many times he came here, they didn’t blend into their grey surroundings. They stood out. Seemed perky. Bright. Healthy.

Did they regularly get exposed to sunlight...?

He released the petal. Within seconds, a chill pattered down his neck. When he turned around, a solitary figure in the doorway confronted his view. His lips pursed.

“Fukawa,” he acknowledged in monotone.

By now, he had become accustomed to her following him like his shadow, to the point where he thought he could sense her whenever she lurked nearby. Touko jolted and stood to attention. The blank look in her eyes cleared, an invisible hand smearing away the condensation in her clouded gaze.

“Y-Yes, Byakuya-sama?” she said, licking her lips and prompting him to grimace. She had been drooling.

His mouth remained condensed as he watched Touko’s tongue sweep over her lips, lips that caressed each other, and when she gulped, sheening saliva, a weight in his gut was knocked out of place, like the lights in a dark room suddenly flicked on.

When they first became acquainted with each other, he nearly always sent Touko on her way after exchanging only a few sentences, but more recently, Byakuya permitted Touko to be in his presence for greater lengths of time, so long as she was on standby in case he wanted something, or at least didn’t disturb him too much. They even had sane conversations sometimes. Interesting ones, in fact. Byakuya even let her feed him candy once at his bedside while he read.

However, that had been then, and even more recently than that, just her existence crept onto his nerves. Inevitable, what with them all having to spend so much time around each other. Inevitable, what with her doing things like this in front of him.

Like now, that stupid grin of hers had returned to her face, and he had to clench his fists to distract heat away from his face. He adjusted his glasses. Stuck up his chin. Pushed his shoulders back.

“Instead of loitering, why don’t you make yourself useful?” he asked her in an authoritative tone. She stirred.

“Use... ful?” repeated Touko, still partly submerged in whatever thoughts had her entranced.

“Yes, the word, not a random noise that sounds like it,” he said. He placed one hand on his hip and slightly jutted out his hips to that side. “There might be something lying around the school that could prove beneficial to me. Who knows, maybe you’ll prove yourself useful.”

For many, his remark would have got under the recipient’s skin, or pierced them in the eye and caused it to twitch, but Touko nodded and clasped her hands together. Her twitching didn’t stem from annoyance. Something quite the opposite.

“Of course!” she said, and her lips stretched out to create a nauseating-sized crescent. She cupped her cheeks with both hands. “I won’t disappoint you. I’ll prove I’m not a piece of coal, but a diamond in the rough. I’ll-”

As she spoke, her lips sprung from one extreme to another, from wide like the wingspan of a bird of prey to puckered together like a rose and back again, and Byakuya felt motion sick just watching her. Like he was losing his balance, like the ground would slip from underneath him and he might lean forward, fall into her, land his hands on her shoulders, land his chest against hers and land his mouth on her chapped pink petals of lips, even though he was standing very, very still.

Suddenly, one of his feet lurched forward, but he stopped himself from overbalancing. Something akin to pain shot up that leg to his chest. He tore his eyes off her writhing mouth and glared. Apparently, she hadn’t noticed the flicker in his demeanour, continuing to gush at him.

“Today, preferably!” he demanded, with a slight crack halfway through that he hoped she wouldn’t notice.

Touko squawked, and after a bow, she sped out of the room. Byakuya strode over to the door. He could no longer see her, and as he shut it, he let out a breath he hadn’t realised he had been holding.

Honestly, that girl was a pest. Creeping on his nerves like that...

The next time he saw Touko in the cafeteria at dinnertime. For a while, he had avoided joining the other students to eat, and though he ate with them more regularly now, he didn’t do so because he felt any sense of camaraderie with them, but so he could check on the remaining competition.

Sakura wasn’t in the cafeteria, to his approval. Monobear had recently outed her as his mole, and Byakuya had no interest in spending time around her. Whenever he was outside of his room, he had to keep checking the map on his Electronic Student ID Card to make sure she wasn’t too close by.

Aoi, Sakura’s close friend, was in the cafeteria though, and when Byakuya entered, she glared but said nothing. He needed to monitor her too, someone so easily swayed by emotion, but with the others present, she couldn’t do anything he needed to worry about. Makoto and Kyouko offered glances at him that he rebuffed, Yasuhiro chirped his name, which he ignored, and the gloomy cloud over Touko’s face parted as her smile beamed through.

Byakuya didn’t greet any of them, obtaining his dinner from the kitchen and walking straight back into the cafeteria where he seated himself at a neighbouring table to the others.

“Togami-chi!” Yasuhiro called out, even though they weren’t that far apart. “Back me up here.”

When Byakuya just continued to frown, Makoto spoke instead, raising a crooked finger.

“Hagakure-kun, I don’t think your idea will work. You’re more likely to harm yourself than corrode through anything.”

“Yeah,” went Aoi, her brows knitted together. “Why would Monobear leave us chemicals that can help us escape?”

“Because he doesn’t know the makeup of certain corrosives,” replied Yasuhiro, flapping his hand. “The mastermind probably thinks it’s not possible, ‘right? But if we get the right chemicals, we can melt through the plates covering the windows and escape.”

Touko glowered. “If you really believed that, why haven’t you already done it?”

Byakuya’s attention drifted over to Touko. Her eyes were narrowed, but he could still catch their colour - grey, tinged with violet. As she gestured with her hands, her head bobbed about, and light bounced off the lenses of her glasses, sometimes hiding her eyes from view for a moment. For such a mopey girl, she sure could flaunt a range of expressions in such a small amount of time. Then there were the times she didn’t mope. When she was with Byakuya. Those smiles. Those blushes. Those laughs, like nails down a chalkboard.

“Anyway, I looked at the contents myself,” said Touko. She wrinkled her nose. “There are supplements and poisons, none that can damage thick sheets of metal. Of course, you’re entitled to try...”

“Aw, thanks, Fukawa-chi!” said Yasuhiro brightly. Aoi growled, but it sounded a lot like a whine.

“Don’t thank her!” Aoi scolded. She angled herself toward Touko, looking annoyed. “As usual, Fukawa-chan, you’re being a big downer. At least Hagakure’s trying to help.”

Yasuhiro’s grin wavered. He hesitated. “... Um... Am I supposed to thank you, Asahina-chi?”

Touko snorted.

“Thank you?” Touko repeated with scorn.

“Wait, you’re thanking me now? Okay, I’m officially confused,” mumbled Yasuhiro, scratching his head.

“Hagakure wants praise for having this idea but doesn’t have the balls to try it,” she explained. She rolled her eyes and shifted her weight on her chair. “In fact, could it be he’s discussing it here where there are surveillance cameras because he desperately wants Monobear to overhear and stop it? Then he can think to himself, ‘my idea would have worked’ and no one would be able to dispute it.”

Everyone considered what she suggested. Touko finished up her rant by shooting a chilly look at Yasuhiro, who cowered.

Kyouko inclined her head, resting her chin in her hand. “I’ve also browsed the stock in the chemistry lab and though I’m not a scientist, I don’t think there is anything that can help us there. If anything, Monobear would want us to try for its own amusement.”

Up to this point, Byakuya had stayed out of the conversation, but now he turned his gaze to Kyouko.

“You say that, but none of us know what you are,” he said. No one knew her title. For all they knew, she could have been another mole. Kyouko glanced at him and gave a vague shrug.

After that, the conversation seemed to draw to a close. Yasuhiro pouted and resumed eating, deflated. The rest of the group followed suit. Touko huffed, and Byakuya’s eyes drifted back over to her again. She picked up her chopsticks but rather than pick at any of the rice, she twitched them in her grip, staring into space. Byakuya, holding his own chopsticks, pinched a tofu block, but he didn’t eat it, hovering it in front of his mouth while his other hand propped up his cheek. Instead of eating it, he surveyed Touko’s features. Rather than investigate what she might have been looking at for himself, he tried to figure out what she was stewing over by looking at her.

Not out of concern, of course. Curiosity. And he had a good reason for it. When he first met Touko, he dismissed her as a stuttering high school girl with a persecution complex, who wrote frivolous romance novels that many people lapped up. But there was more to her. She had an alter called Genocider Syo, who murdered various men without getting caught, but even then there was more. Much more. Despite her strange ramblings, Touko was intelligent and could even be insightful, and he had to admit she had to have talent - her novels could and did make society fall in love with fishermen, for one thing. Not everyone could create a trend like that with written words.

“Togami-chi?” said Yasuhiro.

Touko picked up a piece of tofu with her chopsticks, popped it between her lips, and returned her chopsticks to her bowl. Today, dinner was mapo tofu, a simple dish to make that could be served in one bowl. She chewed, unfocused. The sight wasn’t a pleasant one - he reasoned that was why his stomach knotted the more he studied Touko. Her lips rubbed together, her cheeks bulged and caved in at intervals, and she didn’t always close her mouth completely.

“Togami-kun?” said Makoto.

It was a disgusting sight. Disgusting, from her mole to her fluttering lashes around her grey eyes, to the grain of rice abandoned next to her lips, to -

“Togami-kun?” said Makoto again, and this time, Byakuya tensed. He looked around.

Everyone else in the cafeteria stared at him, includingTouko.

“What?” said Byakuya. 

Yasuhiro draped his hand across the back of his neck.

“I think you zoned out there,” remarked Yasuhiro with a lop-sided smile as he scratched at his neck. “We were asking if you’ve been through the chemistry lab yet.”

“Is something on your mind?” Kyouko chimed in, flashing a smirk.

Heat rose to Byakuya’s face. He gritted his teeth, told them he was trying to tune out their idiocy, and resumed his dinner, contributing no more to any conversation.

Though Byakuya had Sakura and to a lesser extent Aoi to be aware of, if he hid in his room all the time, they would think they scared him and consider him an easy target. If he showed them he wasn’t afraid, then they would be wary that he was prepared for an attack.

In theory.

Byakuya planned to spend the rest of the evening in the library, but first, he took a cold shower to rejuvenate himself after getting so distracted during dinner. When he arrived at the library, he saw Touko at one of the desks. Both were avid readers, so her presence didn’t surprise him, but he paused for a few seconds.

She seemed not to have noticed him, focused on the notebook she was writing fervently in. He shut the door quietly behind himself and walked over to a bookcase, careful of his footfalls, and soon found the book he had started on his last visit, the back half of the dust jacket tucked between the pages to mark where he had last read up to. Taking it off the shelf, he seated himself at a different table where Touko lay just outside his field of vision.

However, even though he positioned himself to hide her from his view, that didn’t mean he couldn’t hear her.

One would think Touko of all people would know how to behave in a library, but she mumbled unintelligibly under her breath. Her mutterings would warble, in pitch, or volume, or both, grating like the squeak of fingers down a window. He tried to concentrate on the shallow detective novel in his possession, but his mind kept resurfacing. Peppered in were coughs, and as time wore on, each noise throbbed in the back of his head. Sometimes, she sniffed or gulped and he could visualise her lips twisting, see her stubby-nailed hand nudging up her glasses and her face scrunching up for seconds at a time.

At one point, she panted, and his mind conjured an image of Touko, pink and sweaty, licking her lips before leaning over the desk toward him, their eyes shutting slowly...

Byakuya set down his book. With his shoulders slightly slouched forward, he wiped the heel of his palm up his forehead, trying to scrape off the mental image manifesting in his mind. Touko released a whine, low, bubbling. Bubbling in her throat, bubbling in his chest. The noise coiled around him. Gripped his neck and tightened, and then he realised his thighs were clenched together. Had been. Still were.

He soared to his feet. His chair rasped and fell backward. She shrieked and popped into view.

“B-Byakuya-sama!” she said, a pen clasped tightly in her fist. Fear dissolved into elation. “I t-thought I smelled you...!”

“You obviously knew I was here,” he snapped. “That’s why you were making those disgusting noises.”

She clapped her hands over her mouth. Whacked herself in the face with her pen by doing so. “I-If I’d known you were here, I would have controlled myself!”

Byakuya jutted out his chin. The back of his eyes burned.

“You knew what you were doing the whole time. I’m telling you, you won’t get to me so... so just give up!” he snarled.

And with that, he trounced out of the library. Trying to concentrate in such a dusty, dim environment was hard enough without her spluttering and snivelling too. Those noises disgusted him. Still did. As they should.

As he approached his room, he slowed down. Almost stopped halfway down the last corridor.

Touko’s noises hadn’t always provoked such vivid imagery.

For the next few days, Byakuya did his best to avoid her, but that proved difficult with everyone forced to share the same facility, the same space. The only places he could be sure to avoid her were in his dorm and in the male changing room, but he could only spend so long sitting on his bed or a wooden bench in a tiled room. Therefore, every day, they both bumped into each other in the same dining room, where she contorted her face and slurped on her own saliva, they met in the same classrooms where she cooed his name and drooled, and they sat in the same library, where she licked her lips and giggled to herself. Him getting distracted by her was bad enough, but the situation worsened when she realised he was watching her. When that happened, she would set her eyes on him and grin widely and babble and squeeze her hands together.

One night, he went to the sauna to unwind after finishing a book in his room, but when he passed through the noren and emerged into the locker room, feeling sure he would be alone here, he halted and lost all thought.

Across the room stood Touko, her hair freed from her practical braids, now a dark, shimmering sheet hugging her skinny frame.  

Her hair, right now, was not straw-like, not wild or tamed into braids, but smooth and unrestrained. He could run his fingers through them with ease. Curl a lock around his finger, if he wanted.

The room was properly lit, and he stiffened as he noticed Touko was in just a towel. Touko lacked her glasses and seemed to squint as she fiddled with the top of the towel that covered her chest. He stared, frozen, silent. Blank.

She lifted her head a smidgen, though she still didn’t appear to have perceived him despite her previous boasts about her sense of smell, and the movement, to his horror, made her towel shift. Drop slightly. Thankfully, not enough to show anything.

Byakuya swallowed. Correction. All this was mostly to his horror. To a certain part of his body, it seemed to be to the opposite of that. Horror.

He backed out. All throughout this, she didn’t indicate that she had detected him, and he wanted to keep it that way. On his way back to his room, striding as fast as he could without running, he didn’t cross paths with anyone, and he closed the door behind himself as soon as he got inside.

At least now he could be by himself. Be somewhere she couldn’t get to. Byakuya took his glasses off and lay down on the bed, facing upward, not bothering to change out of his uniform. He shut his eyes. His chest heaved like the sea before a storm.

Here, in the dark, alone, he could rid himself of Touko. Touko... with her long, mahogany hair, styled in twin braids that together with her owl-eye glasses and dark purple sailor uniform, was entirely fitting for someone enrolled at the school with the title of Super High School Level Literary Girl. Not only that, but she smelled like an old, damp book too, now that he was thinking about it. He had found her stench putrid at first, and his insistence that she washed herself was not unjustified, but, he thought, he had since become used to her aroma, a consequence of them being in close quarters for so long. One had to adapt to survive.

So while before he spurned her smell, though it still made him wince, he could stand it. Even if it was still just as disgusting, musty...!

Byakuya paused. Her trip to the sauna would have stripped that smell from Touko’s body, and as he lay in bed, he thought about her standing in the locker room, clad only in a... a towel. Even now, he could see her, with her furrowed brow and trembling lips. Could see her hair cascade forward, pile either side of him. See her face light up as her gaze fell on him, as she drank in his presence. He reached up but his hands phased through where she was, because she wasn’t there. The apparition of her relaxed and smirked, straddling him, and stooped her head.

The towel slipped. Byakuya flinched.

Too much. He imagined her back in her uniform. Even slapped on her braids. And yet, that didn’t deter her. Him. She smiled coyly, drawing a circle on his chest. Smiled that disgusting smile of hers, that oozed saliva, and laughed a low and throaty laugh.

Byakuya swallowed. Shivered. She glided her hand lower.

With a sigh, he pushed the back of his head deeper into his pillow, then froze. The saliva from Touko’s ghost receded from his face and she disappeared from over him. Byakuya jerked his hand away from his crotch. Revulsion dug its claws into the back of his throat. He stumbled out of bed and went to the adjoined bathroom where he splashed water on his face.

This couldn’t go on. Something had to be done. Byakuya couldn’t let himself fall victim to any more of her ploys.

Even after he gulped in air and steadied himself, grasping the edge of the sink, his heart still hammered away. And because he was locked up inside this place, he couldn’t go out for fresh air or even open a window.

He tried the corridor, but it felt almost as oppressive as his room.

Everyone would probably be in their rooms now. Byakuya decided to prepare himself a cup of tea. That would at least give him something to focus on, if only temporarily. The cafeteria was shut, but he knew there were tea bags in the storage room. His footsteps echoed a bit, but he didn’t falter. Kept his eyes forward.

When he arrived outside of the storage room, he squared his shoulders, trying to flake off the tension in his body, and opened the door.

Any hopes of distracting himself were quashed when his gaze fell on Touko.

Fortunately, she was fully dressed in her sailor uniform.

She rose sharply out of her crouched form and turned toward the door, eyes wide. Frightened. Relief flooded through her features as she realised who had made the door creak.

“Byakuya-sama?” she said, some surprise still lingering on her face. Apparently, she wasn’t completely put at ease.

Of all the spots she could have stood in, she had stationed herself at the shelving unit where he recalled there to be boxes of rose hip tea bags. His eyes stayed on her as he sauntered over. Touko didn’t retreat, dodge to the side or cower, watching him just as closely, even as he stopped in front of her. She tipped back her head to fit his face in her vision. Had the audacity to blush.

“It’s late, isn’t it?” she said, loosening up enough for a smirk. “Everyone else will be asleep... unaware of what transpires here...”

He breathed in. Her usual smell of books was gone. Of course it was. Touko had been at the public bath. In its place, he picked up a faint scent of lilac, mixed with a creamy, vanilla and almond-like fragrance.

Now, in theory this should have been an improvement. People preferred a fresh, floral smell to an old, worn book left out on a rainy day. Yet, when her new smell wafted up his nose, it felt acidic. Wrong.

“Are you okay, Byakuya-sama?” she asked, losing the smirk. She kneaded her fingers. “Y-Your face... You look unwell...! Do I need to nurse you?”

The double entendre must have been intended because her lips squirmed with pleasure, curling up at the ends. Byakuya’s face tensed. Touko always had some quip or remark ready for him that often left him at a loss for words. Also, she was in no position to comment on his face when she had hers, with wide, bulging eyes, chapped lips and a twitching nose. She even had the nerve to chuckle and continue twiddling her fingers.

“What about your face?” he sneered. “Your wide, bulging eyes... chapped lips... and twitching nose.”

That knocked her grin off. Concern troubled her features now.

“S-Should I get plastic surgery?” she asked, fidgeting more.

“It’s not just your face, it’s your personality too.” Byakuya raised his voice slightly. “You think you’re clever, trying to seduce me. And stop playing with your fingers like that!”

He grabbed her wrists. Touko jumped. The skin under her wide eyes was stained the colour of milk tea, shadows that stood out on her pale face. His hold on her arms slackened, but she didn’t even attempt to shake him off. A shred of teeth peeked out between her lips, and that familiar sensation of nausea rolled in the pit of his stomach. Fogged his head. Made his nerves vibrate with electricity.

She was disgusting. Vile. Sickening, and absolutely irresistible.

Acting on impulse, he leaned in.

Byakuya led with his tongue and slipped it into her mouth, and it was perhaps luck that she didn’t bite down in surprise. Touko gasped. The inside of her mouth tasted sour: her tongue, her teeth and her hot breath, yet though he shuddered, he didn’t withdraw. She didn’t shy away either despite the painfully amateur kiss, rooted in place.

Their glasses unceremoniously clacked together and remained askew afterwards. He wrapped an arm around her, pulling her closer and knocking their glasses even more out of place. From the onset of the kiss, his skin crawled at how bits of plaque fell loose from her teeth, how already too much saliva crashed together in their mouths and how everything was warm and moist, but rather than deter him, he melted into her. She hugged him back, breathing noisily. For a third time, their glasses got in the way, but this time, Byakuya had enough sense to remove his glasses, then hers, placing them on a shelf while maintaining the kiss, and he eagerly returned his hands to her body.

Touko adjusted her angle. Her nose bumped against his but they took it in stride. Panting, she shifted more, pulling back a little to give them a second to breathe. His tongue receded from her mouth.

A second was all that both allowed.

Their lips reunited within moments, slobbering over each other. Revolting. Incredible. He could only taste saliva. A lot of it. As they kissed harder, they grew clumsy, and their lips fell in and out of place. At one point, some of her hair slipped between them. To remove it, he licked and scratched lightly at her face with his hand, all while continuing to kiss her, and once he could no longer feel it tangling on his tongue, he pushed his lips more firmly into hers.

Touko’s lips stayed shut, and his tongue remained in his mouth. This way seemed to work better, without the tongue. Both of them groaned, clinging to the other. He opened his eyes briefly, but he couldn’t see anything in particular, just her face within a haze, so he shut them again. Besides, he didn’t need to use his eyes for this. His eyes being closed didn’t prevent him from feeling her hands slither up and cup his cheeks. Didn’t stop him from rolling his lips over hers.

They stood still, barely moving, just breathing, existing, with Touko’s back pressing against the shelving unit behind her, but after a while, the buildup of saliva became too much and he withdrew. He rather ungraciously released her and swallowed without thinking, cringing immediately at all the saliva.

Opposite him, Touko placed her fingers lightly against her lips.

“What...?” she mumbled, dazed.

Byakuya’s breaths racked through his body, and he wanted to say that he had slipped and fallen for her. Into her. Fallen into her.

He really needed to get some sleep.

“There. Are you satisfied now?” he asked curtly, and he grabbed his glasses off the shelf. Then he seized a box of tea bags. “That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?”

His footfalls barked as he stomped away. The door creaked as he opened it.

“W-Well...” Touko went, and he made the mistake of hesitating. “If... I wanted to just kiss you... I’d have asked, got rejected and picked up the pieces… or j-just stayed in my room and imagined it. B-But I just want to be with you... really... even if we don’t kiss...”

Byakuya shuddered. She just had to go say something gross like that.

“Shut up,” he said, and he left.

He kept a kettle in his room and after half a cup of tea, he lay on his bed again, staring at the ceiling in thought. After getting all of that out of the way, he had thought he would be satisfied. That maybe the uneasy feelings in him would subside.

But after a sleepless night, he realised his feelings had just got worse.

#togafuka #touko fukawa #byakuya togami #danganronpa #toko fukawa #togafukaweek2020 #fanfiction #one shot #togafukaweek

[passionbooties]

an invitation for ruin .

title. an invitation for ruin  pairing. claude/hilda  rating. m  word count. under 1k  summary. written for a friend who requested some claude/hilda goodness! a brief introspection on claude and hilda’s dynamic. a little spicy ! hilda will absolutely ruin claude and claude , well , he’ll gladly allow such a fate to befall him if she is the one bringing it . 

can be read on ao3 ! 

more under the cut . 

There’s an intimacy between them, Claude and Hilda that is. 

One shared in dark corridors on quiet nights and behind grand bookcases on pleasant mornings. An intimacy that rings low in their whispers. In the way they always consumed and devoured one another’s space whenever near. As if to swallow one another whole would give the other no greater delight, no greater dessert than to do simply that. 

Claude liked Hilda.

Whatever that meant, he had no idea. And if he did, now wasn’t the time to look so deeply within it with the same intensity he takes to his books on Fodlan history and customs. But he knew it was there, bubbling and festering like his homemade poison brews.

Slowly working through his system every time they bumped into each other. Every time their eyes locked. Every time her honey pink lips would be pulled ever so slightly, mere inches from his lips. 

Poison, subtle and destructive. Making his carefully constructed walls steadily corrode. 

Yet, Claude looked forward to the ruin that was Hilda Valentine Goneril. 

In fact, he craved it. 

There was… an odd comfort, he realizes. Claude was a man of fabrications. Of schemes. Of masks. Of orchestrated lies interwoven within carefully laid truths. A walking facade, born for the purpose of never letting anyone too close. Never letting anyone in too deep . No, no. Claude has a vision and he had plans and he saw a great future for this land that, only recently, was given to Claude as a stake for him to claim. 

However, he was no noble. Not really. He could play the game and walk the walk. Align his talk to sign in the same fanciful measures as the nobility but he would never be one of them. Forever an outsider. 

Which he doesn’t mind, not at all. Not in the slightest. Consider him an outsider. Cast him as the fool. Underestimate him. That was always what he wanted, after all. To creep up upon them with a shadow’s quickness and usurp their power when they least expected it. Keep your cards to your chest, they say. And play your hand only when the time is right.

Such deviousness, simple and shrewd, was hard to mirror. Yet Hilda reflected it so well. 

She had her own secrets. Her own reason to downplay her intelligence and her might. She was a viper waiting to strike at any moment. Holding back her true power and playing coy. 

Claude loved that. 

They fell into step immediately. And for Claude, there was no better companion than Hilda. Who could know him so well without him having to utter so many words. Her eyes, baby pink were cutting and could pierce through his masks with ease. Liberation, he realized, was her gift and she granted it to Claude so well.

Hence, why he always came back to her. 

In the corridors, where he’d pull her close to his body and sneak a kiss she always met with a satisfied curl of a smile. 

Between bookcases where she’d ask him to reach for a book above her head, and as he goes, she stands up to capture his “ anything for you, Hilda. You already know this. ” 

He doesn’t know when their whispered words and quiet conversations turned to stolen kisses. But he doesn’t mind it. Not really. Not when the night falls and his book covered bed has one more person in it. With Hilda in his lap and his arms around her waist and their lips always, always finding each other. Always swallowing their secrets covered and their slanted truths buried within their words. 

She will be my end, he thinks whenever her glossy pink lips touch his neck and giggle his name against his flesh. 

“I should go,” she’s a tease. And she knows it, like a butterfly coming too close only to flutter away when you reach out for it with your fingers. 

Claude meets her gaze. It’s challenging. A subtle spark, waiting for his reaction that she knows all too well is coming. “You should,” he plays along, leaning forward to press his nose against her neck. “But what of the rumors? No doubt someone might see you leaving from my room… and then what. We can’t have our little secret spread throughout the monastery, after all.”

Punctuated kisses, as if to make certain this moment is real and that she, for the time, will allow herself to be his as he will allow himself in turn to be given to her. 

She hums, that swiftly turns into the most heavenly moan Claude has ever had the pleasure of hearing. “Ah yes. Our secret… won’t be much of one if everyone knows of it. So Claude,” she says in a tone that pulls Claude up to look at her. 

Her hands cup his face and he leans into her palm. Her eyes lower, lashes long and curled. Her lips pulled to the corners in a private and intimate way. For her next words would only be meant for him, as they played this game of equal damnation for two. 

“Make this secret worth my while, hm?”

She pulls on his lower lip with his teeth, holding it there for a few seconds before she pulls back. Claude’s eyes dilate and he pulls her as close as he can. Her fingers find their way to his hair as their chests press together and he gives himself to her again and again and again. 

“I always do,” he promises with his own, secretive grin before their lips meet and they give themselves a moment of pretend. Creating another secret just for them to enjoy. 

She will ruin him. Claude makes peace with that. 

#claude x hilda #my fanfic #hilda valentine goneril #claude von reigen #fire emblem fanfiction #fe3h fanfic

[starlitesymphony]

Plot Point Aesthetic Challenge: 1st Plot Point

Ark of the Timelost: [Opening Hook] [Inciting Event] [Key Incident]

Once Maddox confirms the details of Quin’s mom’s kidnapping, he begins putting together a possible mission to present to the Collective’s agents. It’s the only way he and Quin might be granted ‘permission’ to chase after her mom.

He manages to come up with justification for the Collective to send a Troika to the planet Hale without mentioning the real reason. He arranges a meeting, and leads Quin through her first face-to-face encounter with their mysterious overseers.

It doesn’t go well.

The mission he arranged is assigned to someone else, and Maddox and Quin are ordered to remain in Gallanthius.

There is, however, one other option--steal a ship. And go anyway.

(excerpt after readmore)

--- (Quin’s POV)

I crane back my head, gaze wandering up the diamond bulkhead. It’s taller than Ash’s shuttle.

Maddox slips back his sleeve and presses his clearance seal against a corroded sensory bar. Low rumbling fills the tunnel as the trolley whisks away, leaving us in the glimmering light of a thousand pinpoints in the rafters. Broken glass twinkles along the base of the walls and at the feet of the deities, the picked-over remains of offerings from a thousand years ago.

Maddox pulls back from the bulkhead as a small burst of stale air vents from the bottom. “Rather humbling, isn’t it? I wonder if they'd have guessed that one day it would be merely the two of us standing here, not even paying reverence.”

I nudge some pottery shards with my toe. “Hmm. I wonder what they’d think of the rest of their dock being turned into a military base.”

Once the bulkhead grinds open enough for us to duck through, we emerge into a great cathedral of a vestibule, so overgrown with foliage that almost all of the lights have been blocked out. Orchids spring from defaced reliefs. Glass and wood and Mariner-knows-what-else crunch underfoot. A pile of brown bones lies off to the side of the next bulkhead. Animal, or…? Perhaps better not to look closely.

Another press of Maddox’s seal, and machinery protests and grinds far below. Like we’re breaking into an ancient crypt.

|This next passage is where I need you to wait,| he messages. |Find a place on the ceiling. You can’t interrupt me until I finish with the codes, so if anyone comes, it’s your job to neutralize them.|

We duck through into darkness. A rotten, nostril-burning stench washes over me. Insects…I hope insects…scuttle at my ankles, and the buzzing of flies makes a perfect compliment to the hideous smell. Luckily, it only takes a few moments for my olfactory system to recognize and block out the molecules. My visual feed ever-so-helpfully identifies their source. |Chupher’s corpseflower approx. 45 blooms detected.|

“If the whole ship is like this, we’re taking a different one,” Maddox grumbles.

I follow his faintly glowing outline. “It’s not so bad once the scent’s blocked.”

“I won’t have you breathing poison for the length of the trip. This ship’s environment must be severely unbalanced to allow an infestation like this.”

My eyes haven’t fully adjusted to the dark, only enough to show monochromatic foliage and the flat, gargantuan surface of the primary bulkhead. Maddox rips back a few vines to reveal a control array sitting cockeyed on a pedestal. He sinks his hands into ports on either side with a lot more indifference than I’d be able to muster. Imagine how many insects have found their way to the tactile jelly within, if there’s even still enough to make a neural connection.

“Now,” he says, hands working tentatively, the glow of his skin intensifying. “I’ll be unresponsive for only a few minutes. Off you go.”

---

Image credits: [x] [x] [x] [x] [x] [x] [x] [x] [x]

#plot point aesthetic challenge #my novel #starlite attempts moodboards #tags are being real fickle lately #so I'll reblog with the taglist ^_^

[eqcentriceqclectic-blog]

Inherited Demons

2019/12/07 – Nothing Right

Nothing I do is ever right. In His eyes, I will always be a feral horse that needs to be put to the whip. If I don’t and I get free, he hopes that my freedom in the wild will end in cold realisation in my last moments as I am beset by wolves. Even, if objectively right, it is as if an offense on his very existence—as if he were a god or a ghost and disbelief in him would condemn him to abyssal oblivion. And so, being right or doing well is actively discouraged—either through deafening and oppressive silence, or through roaring rage and insufferable indignation. He may be seen as quiet, but that is not to be taken as docility or humility—no; it is a sinister and seething silence. Normally, improvement is supposed to be seen as positive.

I cannot count the number of times I’ve either wanted to run away from home or outright kill myself. It desperate times, they’ve been my mantra or my prayers to soothe my wretched soul. What stopped me from running away? Fear of failure. Fear of strangers. Fear of retribution. An incompetency instilled in me long ago. One I replicated and instilled in a brother placed into my charge, even as a shell of a person—shattered shards looking for a reflection. It wasn’t until that reflection attempted to kill himself that I realised what my shoddily-assembled puzzle-of-a-person had done. I had become that which I had despised all my life--that dictatorial and patriarchal demon for which is suffered beneath had impregnated in me a piece of its insidious soul. It had gripped me in its agonising grasp, and regurgitated the darkness imparted to it, into my screaming-tear-streaked face. And thus, the cycle would continue like a horror-franchise that just won’t die. That was the day I realised—despite my love for the pure curiosity and optimism of children and the undeniable yearning to cradle and raise small-beings of my ghostly-ovaries—that I could not perpetuate this curse. To adopt a family-less entity into this story would be tantamount to sacrificing them to the demon that inhabits our family-line with my own bloodied hands.

I remember when I was bird-sitting Rita (a cousin’s feather-child) and He attempted to interact with it while wildly inebriated—like he enjoys doing—and held out his hand. Rita, as finicky conures tend to be, bit him HARD as she did not know him and did not like him. I feared for that bird’s life as I recognised the drunken rage that overtaken his alcohol-laden-bubbly-demeanor, as he shouted some profanity at the bird. I called out, to let him know I was present, and explained to him why she bit him before telling him to leave her alone.A similar incident happened years ago when I had my bird, Vira. She was a feisty bird and I loved her bravery and assertiveness but the curse infused in me by Him did not make distinctions between humans, non-human animals, plants, or inanimate objects. She and my brother have both bore witness to the same rage and self-perceived-indignity-fuelled-wrath I bore witness to growing up. I loved her dearly, but could not reconcile my own behaviour—I could not split this demonic presence within myself with the love I had for all living things as they both were a part of who I was and it was maddening. But as with all things deeply-unsettling, we seek to take flight from it—as is natural—to get as far as we can from it and forget about it so we can go about our days. To face it, would be to face the demon—itself, a part of you—and to face your own guilt and culpability in its sins, for without you, it would not be able to do its work as a formless, parasitic, lifeless virus. To face your own guilt and responsibility in hurting others is a terrifying thing; it chills you to your core and tears it to shreds because you want to believe you are a good person who does good things, and when you are not the hero of your own story, then you can never be a hero in any story—if you are the villain in your own story, then you will be the villain in all stories.

Looking myself in my own shattered mirror, I could finally see the demon bleeding forth from behind my ill-assembled portrait… I could only play at perfection for so long before all the mismatched pieces fell apart and revealed the vast darkness that mocked me beneath. Like a self-indulgent actor without a true mirror to look into, I enchanted myself with delusions that I was not He and that I was above that which lurked at the bottom of every bottle. And all the while, I was a cheap imitation of him—like a copy-cat-killer imprinting on a serial-killer worshipped by the media. I didn’t need alcohol to justify my crimes, for I had a divine mandate bestowed upon me by my ancestors, which was bestowed upon them by successive emperors, and god-kings before them, and thus the gods themselves. Chinese patriarchy is as insidious a poison as it is insipid as it permeates into every aspect of life in the family. It may not have been such a poison, but it certainly is now. As they say, “Power, absolute, corrupts—absolutely.”

In Chinese culture, there is a powerful emphasis put upon passing on the family name—so much so that female-infanticide was a widespread practice in China. My grandmother used the phrase ‘tuang-tong jeng’ frequently when urging her living descendants to procreate and pray for sons. Also present in Chinese culture is the misguided belief that because all elders are to be afforded respect, it automatically blesses them with the power to always be right—no matter the circumstances. It can be seen in dazzling display with successive Chinese-emperors slaughtering countless people over the millennia, simply for disagreeing or embarrassing the father-of-the-nation with reality and truth. Is it not why the satirical fable of the Emperor and his “new clothes” exists? An emperor that is willfully-blind is one that is indulgent and willfully-negligent—and those that could not see beyond their own gilded mirrors, often led to the starvation of the masses they were given dominion over, and ultimately, their dynasty’s demise. Once they lost their divine mandate, another emperor would rise and a spoiled descendant of his would lead it to ruin, in cycles unending.

After help assembling my mirror to match those that see me for who I am, only now am I able to see the apparition hiding behind it. As puppet-master and puppet entwined as one, it is my responsibility to sever those strings that snake around my offending limbs. It is my responsibility to cast off the shadows that shroud me, as it has become me. It has infused into my essence and become its own—my own—demon, separate from His, but no less His satanic-spawn. Only after acknowledging its existence, screaming its name, can I even begin to excise it like the viral cancer it is. The process is never-ending, for if you ever believe you have destroyed it, your complacency will allow it respite to recover and thus spite your own efforts to defeat it in the first place. We must always strive to be better, despite our accomplishments and desires to revel and relish our achievements—for idle hands do the devil’s work. Resting on our laurels is like laying and brooding upon our nest-eggs atop a poisoned heath—our savings and our accolades will rot along with us. We’ll only fester along our heaped up hoard, as a magnificent dragon does upon all its glittering greed. If I’ve gleaned anything over the past two or so years, it’s that our own pride and arrogance will always be our downfall. It understand that it was my own hubris in believing I was less of a terrible person than he was, only to find myself, one day, staring back at Him in the mirror. I saw me, regurgitating exactly what putrid horrors was spat into my own face, at someone else—someone I was told was below me—simply because they were younger or less of a person than I was. And that is how He still sees me: lowly, basal, lost, stupid, barbaric, “sub-human”—and worst of all—a child. And one that is unbridled, feral, and wild—but worst of all, “uncontrollable”. And, also, wholly unimpressed with the infallibility of the patriarchal parental dictatorship to which begs rebellion and resistance.

I will no longer scrape my head at His feet simply because he decided he would do the “holy” duty of acceding to his mother’s wishes of him to marry a woman he didn’t know, and would never love, and bear for him a son he could present to his parents—just because he is my father and my elder. He is as flawed as we all are and I will not grovel at His feet simply because he thinks he is my superior simply because he is my father and my elder. Respect is earned—not demanded—and throughout the years, my respect for him corroded away until there was no flesh left to burn off. Similarly, I have but few happy memories of Him, as the visceral emotional abuse and on-going threats of physical abuse incinerated the vast majority of them as Vesuvius did the people of Pompeii, or the atomic bomb did to the people of Nagasaki. Neither annihilating disaster completely removed the people from existence, as there remained ashy shells or radioactive shadows in their wakes—such are my happy-memories left, as obtuse imprints in the eroding beach-sands: as vague stories of ‘Snow Black and the Seven Dwarves’, as ephemeral visions of rehabilitating young birds blown to the ground by torrential storms, and as echoes of lessons on why not to step on ants. Stronger and clearer are the memories of being slapped for protesting against a particular untested brand of pizza or being chased with a large wooden stick purchased from Home Depot for refusing a hair-cut from Him. Another, particularly, peculiar poison of His was his inherited creed of beating his own child if that child was bullied to tears (or into action)—a shadow he internalised from his own father when being bullied by neighbourhood Vietnamese kids for being Chinese, back in Vietnam.

Growing up as a child in a house-of-cards propped up by two maternal hopes for their fifth-born children was a bittersweet hell, as many are—sweet enough for hope to grow but not enough to survive under the withering harsh bitterness. Perhaps it’s more of a purgatory: not horrible enough to cause one to kill oneself, but just enough to wish so. Those two grandmothers were my oases of love and care in an arid dusty desert of moonless, endless, nights. They were my guiding stars, above all the rabid fighting and gnashing teeth of childish gore-cloaked-hyaenas that called themselves my parents. My grandmothers were the life-sustaining waters, and my parents were the malarial insects that abated my existence. When my brother attempted to kill himself, I came to find out—of course, through another one of their petty and accusative arguments—that neither of them ever dreamed of having children and raising them. Why? Because they were still children, themselves—they were mostly raised by their elder siblings as their immigrant parents worked to carve a life in an increasingly hostile environment. That environment they grew up in abruptly changed as conditions in Vietnam deteriorated and they it was decided that they all needed to flee through hell and high-water (and marauding pirates). The Peter-Pan-like situation became even more so during His teen and young-adult years; formed here, in Canada, under his elder brother and without parents or grandparents to guide these “Lost Boys” fell into a world of alcohol, cigarettes, drugs, and guns that their new peers immersed them in. His elder brother went from a sixteen-year old running a small textiles business that employed workers in Vietnam to an alcoholic who would gamble his way into a depression in Canada. He would go from an inquisitive child making toys out of trash and sticks and swimming in monsoon-flooded roads to a teen drinking himself into a stupor and smoking until his adult teeth would become grey and lined with tar. Children raising children does not yield the positive results, and least of all depressed children raising children—this is true of my parents, and of myself. I had no business being in-charge of my baby brother—absolutely zero—especially with the foul fecal froth spilling from their mouths, to mine, as it then spilled down to my younger brother as I abused him emotionally, verbally and physically as my parents did to me. As explained in the paragraphs above, it did not occur to me until later what I was doing was wrong—it was just what I’ve known and what I felt.

I started to notice how my cousins, aunts, and uncles would look at me as I terrorised my brother over his mistakes—or my perception of his mistakes and improprieties. My logical reasoning at the time was that, “I’m not allowed to do that; why is he?” They always looked startled—or, “unsettled,” maybe is a better word—at my outbursts and threats. I remember once, in a restaurant—where I sat next to him while we were seated amongst our cousins and the adults were sat across from us—where he refused to eat a certain food and I became unreasonably enraged at him and I threatened to cut the head off of the stuffed toy (acquired from Midway arcade in Niagara Falls) if he did not eat it. I had stunned everyone and their hearts broke for my brother, just a young child being terrorised by a teen sibling. Breaking this cycle of abuse was tough—especially while still being abused, yourself. After, breaking free from physical (less so, emotional and verbal) abuse, all the injustice and indignity and rage continued spilling on to the easiest and most vulnerable target, who—under patriarchal rules—would lack arbitrary familial immunity from my wrath and cruelty. Where I could verbally, emotionally, and physically abuse him for whatever I wished, I could only cry, whimper, cower, and hide. However, I did exact vengeance upon them by hiding or damaging the belongings of my parents in protest of their mistreatment of me. There was one instance when I was about six or seven and I fled out of the back of the house after having been shouted out of the tear-stained washroom I had locked myself into on the top floor of the house. On my way passed the car, after deciding that I would run away from home, my eyes burned with salted indignation and so I picked up a stone from the gravel bed and scraped profanities onto the car’s paint and transferred my raw emotions into words. I dropped the stone and continued past the garage and through the laneway until I reached the side-walk, still crying. I stood there, thinking, and came to a realisation that I could not go any further—for if I did, I would be kidnapped and killed by a stranger. So, I walked down to the corner and right back to the front of the house and down the alleyway back to the backyard and back into the house where my parents were still searching—His wooden stick still in-hand—without a clue that I had tried to run away (or that I had keyed words of profanity on to the car with a pebble).

In 2017, when Grandma first became weak after years of mismanaging her own hypertension-medication, I became involved in her healthcare in the balmy month of July. Before then, I didn’t even know she had hypertension and thought she took medication just because it was something a person did when they got as old as she did. After accompanying grandma and Him to both the hospital and her nephrologist, I began researching Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD). I learned about how the kidney can be damaged by high blood-pressure and looked into the medication she was taking, going so far as to see which medications could be contra-indicated. I advised Him that grandma’s medication (since she became inconsolable and beyond fearful for her life and no longer was able to manage them herself and became paranoid that we (including the doctors) were trying to poison her and began refusing to take them for a while) should be split into two as then the hypertensive-medications were be better able to manage her blood-pressure through the day instead of causing a sharp drop for the day while allowing it to rise again in the evening--one of her medications for hypertension-management was even specifically designed to be taken at night which is when blood-pressure is supposed to naturally drop. He likes to take credit for this. He also likes to take credit for what he didn’t even believe for a long time—her weakness that started in the first place. When her health was declining in April of 2017, after her nephrologist cut her off from the round of erythropoietin he had initially put her on in the winter prior, He did not believe that it was her health, but her age. I would become increasingly frantic in asserting that this was the reason as the months dragged on and by July, she could barely get out of bed because of how anemic she was. I, unlike He, had done research into what “erythropoietin” was and why she needed to take those shots. I was upset at her nephrologist for cutting her off from those shots because he thought her red-blood-cell count was too high (after a blood-test in March/April) and he’d see her back in three months (this was the cadence of her visits to him: every three months, so approximately four times a year). Again, by July, she was so weak that He took her to the hospital twice in the latter half of that month and once in August where I accompanied them after ending my seasonal job a few days prior. I urged him again that it was the lack of erythropoietin shots and resulting anemia that made her so weak—but he again asserted that it was because she was old. Thankfully, the nephrologist prescribed another round of erythropoietin shots (one shot, every other week, for three months—so six syringes in total). However, the ordeal and fear of death had warped her mind—the nurse at the nephrologist’s office told us that because her GFR was so low, she would likely need dialysis but that dialysis for people aged eighty and up were too at risk of developing a central-line infection—and surgery for a kidney transplant would provide an ever higher risk of mortality. She also told us that she most likely only had two-years left to live—guess what? It’s been over two-years now. I guess it’s the same for when Push got the morbid news that she only had three months left to live and lived another three years. Anyway, I digress. After horrifying and terribly painful months of trying to sleep with an insomniac grandmother in the next room having an end-life crisis, chanting all through the night of her tragic ending, and trying to manage her anxiety, panic, and paranoia in the day-time after both He and mom went to work, and brother went to school, she snapped and her dementia advanced by leagues. In the years prior, I started to notice she became much less brave and much more reserved and careful—in addition to misplacing her watch and other things that told a story of short-term memory loss. She became a lot less aware of her surroundings where, before—as a mischievous little child—I would stand behind the wall at the base of the stairs and try to surprise her but just get a sweet old smirk and an adorable elderly quip as she walked by her silly grandson. However, ever since reaching ninety, just walking to her room and asking what she was watching would startle her half to death (and our floors are obscenely creaky)—she became a lot less aware of her surroundings and where things (or people were). Around this time, she also started to hear ringing in her ears when there was only dead-silence. After she became increasingly unhinged and violent, there became a need to hospitalise her—not for her weakness or anemia, this time, but for her aggression. She probably had not slept for over a month, by this point, and this was most likely the source of said aggression, paranoia, and anxiety. On the car ride there, she was openly hostile to Him while he was driving and my attempts to stop her so as to avoid having a car-accident turned her aggression towards me. When finally passing triage and reaching the waiting area of the emergency department, Grandma continued her violence, painfully hitting Him and I with her gold-and-jade-laden rings. When a room finally opened up, she refused to go and wanted to go back home (even after days and days and days of wanting to be taken to the hospital) and when we tried to gently push her towards the room, she suddenly turned around, and as it with the power of all the elephant matriarchs of the world pushed me and Him out of the room and began assaulting us before the nurses quickly called for orderlies and security to bring her down and tie her arms and legs to the hospital-bed in the room. Because of what had just transpired, she was upgraded to the sub-accute emergency section with a room closer (and facing) the nurses-station. She was sedated with haloperidol through injection because she refused to take an oral dose but during the process Him, I, a nurse, and two security guards needed to hold her down and she still was almost able to bite the nurse (and myself). After that, we were put into contact with the Local Health Integration Network (LHIN) to discuss placing her in an assisted-living facility and both 4th Uncle and He were seriously considering it and passed on the responsibility of coordinating with LHIN to me due to my higher education and superior command of English. They also put in a referral for us to the hospital’s geriatrics department and scheduled us to see a Dr. Cheng at a later date after the attending physician provided a temporary round of anxiolytics (lorazepam). When taking the lorazepam, she was much more docile and also able to sleep and it felt like we got her back from the throes of insanity—that is, until we had to take increasing doses and it became unfeasible to continue. Her violent tirades returned, along with her insomnia and we went to see the geriatrician. He proved to be—not just incompetent, but—wildly careless and inadequate; his bed-side manner was shockingly crass and crude. He never really listened when we came in for the appointment and seemed in a hurry to get us out the door with a new round of pills for her to take: haloperidol, sertraline—you name it, she probably was prescribed it. Some of them were worse than others, like haloperidol which left her a stumbling and drooling mess—taken long enough, left her bid-ridden and Him changing diapers and bed-sheets. Eventually, I decided it was time to stop seeing the geriatrician as I was also so upset with his flippant demeanor when at appointments in his office. He took a little while to convince, as He was afraid of Grandma reverting back to her violent and difficult self even though I was the one home alone with her while everyone else was gone for a majority of the day at work or school. As that was the case, the representatives from LHIN mostly dealt with me when they came by the house whether it was the social-worker on the case or the professionals she would send to the house. The most helpful professional was an occupational therapist who educated me upon dementia and Alzheimer’s as well as providing emotional support and advice on the situation with the geriatrician and his exceedingly terrible medications. Before this, in my ignorance, I was yelling and screaming at Grandma, confused as to how she could go from a completely normal and loving grandmother who I would give up the my own mother for to someone I was afraid of being around. After the occupational therapist left, my relationship with Grandma started slowly shifting back to one of positive interactions and normalcy. He, however, refused to read the educational materials the occupational therapist left to enlighten us on Grandma’s dementia because he refused to believe she had dementia because of how quick and abrupt the change was. He wanted to believe that she was doing this on purpose and after retiring before the Christmas of 2017, would often get into drunken tirades and yell so loud you could hear him throughout the house and even in the backyard. This continued afterwards, as well, and followed the cycles of her decline into bed-riddance (either from the anti-psychotics prescribed by the incompetent geriatrician, or the lack in erythropoietin) and ascent back into insanity and unnatural strength. In another descent in early 2018, after her nephrologist AGAIN decided that her RBC-level was too high and cut her off from erythropoietin for another three months, I again became insistent that He call the nephrologist to prescribe another round of shots. He was stubborn, as always is the case, and believed that her being bed-ridden and defecating in a diaper meant that it was her time—as if you were just born with a pre-determined age at which someone would die at. I was enraged so I took matters into my own hands after getting home from work one day in May and called the nephrologists’ office and angrily berated the secretary, to which she told me that all we had to do was call in after running out and they would send the prescription and shots to the pharmacist and we could pick them up. I sat there after the call, part-relieved that it meant Grandma wouldn’t have to go through another round of panic and part-annoyed that He did not want to do it because of laziness and self-importance (the belief that He is smarter than I, even without doing any research or having any prior knowledge about anything, even though He was always the one who took her to the nephrologist’s and family physician’s appointments). He does the same with plants and ended up condemning our eight-year-old starfruit plant to die in the cold, despite my protest. He always thinks he’s the smartest person, regardless of what experience/knowledge he has or doesn’t have in a particular subject—and I’ve inherited a similar manner of speaking-as-a-matter-of-fact-ly, as if I was 100% sure about what I was saying (which often gets me into trouble).

Depression In every waking day, the demon lurks within your shadow—always just out of the corner of your eye. As that sun sets and the lights go out, that shadow becomes an all-consuming spectre that fills the room as much as it does your mind—it eats that light your try to light inside, unhinging its jaws and swallowing the sun whole like a constrictor after it had crushed all the air from your lungs. A breath-taking darkness sends your heart into a frantic panic, straining and screaming and searching for every last bubble of air in the blood starting to leak from your eyes. Crimson tears streak down, acrid and burning, like streams of fiery lava making their way to the salty sorrowful depths of the oceans. Your head is feverishly throbbing with starvation, suffocating and drowning in itself as it melts from the draconic hell-fires lit under you by the shadowy-figure. You are more palatable to it when scared out of your mind and injuriously maimed by your own hand, so it eats at you night by night, piece-by-piece—it could be days, months, years, or even decades—but it is patient and diabolical. You are to it, like finely aged-wines or cheeses are to a wealthy connoisseur with too much money to know what to do with.

An Unwelcome Stranger Is His child, in his home, being a burden upon him. It doesn’t matter if this person does anything good, because—ultimately—this person is a stranger. A worthless stranger borne of his flesh and blood, that only continues to feast like a fat leech, engorging itself on His blood.

#inherited #demons #parenting #fails #depression #family #messed up #Chinese #culture #patriarchy #ageism #elder abuse #child abuse #inequality #immigrants #stress #millennials #boomers #oppression #subservience #emotional #pain #suffering #suicide #anxiety #panic #attack

[dropintomanga]

Do Call Out, But Call Out Responsibly

For a while now, I’ve been trying not to say anything regarding things that happened within the anime community over in my part of the world.

But there’s a few things I want to get off my chest. I was reading a new Otaku Journalist post that made me think about the rise of call out culture. We’ve made a lot of progress in enabling people who’ve gone through horrific experiences (i.e. sexual harassment) to speak out against the perpetrators of those experiences. I think it’s fine as I was a victim of physical harassment at an old workplace a few years ago. I now know what it’s like to have people at the top treat you like you don’t matter if you’re not making bank for them.

It’s just that there’s such a limit to being angry at things.

The post linked above goes into what it means to call someone out. It also says that while it’s noble to do so, the person who committed bad acts will still be around. Do we want them punished for life? When can we accept sincere apologies when the time comes? I left a long comment on the post, which I’ll display it here in full.

“I was reading about moral outrage recently (http://nautil.us/blog/the-c... and the case to to be skeptical of it at times because our biases/subjective morality can lead us to think more about the actions of the person, rather than the consequences. Because it's not like everyone is supposedly dying if the person being called out isn't in a place of power, right? 

Because while the person being called out is a bad person to a certain community, to others, they are good people. No one is truly one-sided. Everyone's both good and bad. I hate how there are forces that try to paint people as if one label defines everything about them (even though there are notable exceptions).

I'm not going to lie and say I'm a good, wholesome person. I've hurt other people in the past. I've said terrible things/comments to people intentionally and unintentionally. I'm just very human. I will admit that being stressed out from so many things in life leads to judgments that may or may not be warranted. But I've been able to be self-compassionate with myself and use that to take reasonable action towards improvement.

Are we calling someone out because we want to be right? Or are we calling them out because there's a greater harm to other people (not just ourselves)? I think about this because I know some people get angry just for the sake of getting angry.

I also feel this kind of debate should be better held offline than on social media. Social media is a nightmare for topics like this because it robs so much nuance & context when we need both more than ever. I think about a Vox article I read about that Asian lady (I apologize for forgetting her name) who writes/edits for NYT and her past making insensitive jokes on Twitter. People called NYT out for the hiring and the article mentions how Twitter only rewards snark more than anything else, which only serves to generate terrible conversations online.

The only thing I can suggest is just stay away from a lot of online noise because most of it is indeed noise that serves to harm users with misinformation. I think you're one of the very few good journalists I know I can trust.

Also, take a listen to this podcast about call-out culture because it has a very nuanced view: https://www.npr.org/2018/04...”

Earlier today, I was reading a Twitter thread from a figure who works in the American manga industry and talked about a moment in the past where they subtly called out a scanlator who wanted to work for them. They showed some moral disgust over the fact that the scanlator worked on stuff that was already licensed and listed it on their resume. 

The figure admitted that they had the sense of power to “whitelist/blacklist” them if they could. Thankfully, that didn’t happen. They realized that because of the inner desire to deliver Twitter snark, they ended up creating a unwelcoming feeling for a scanlator who really wanted to do legit work in an industry they both love.

While I really don’t approve of listing fan translated stuff on resumes for industries that disapprove of that, I know it’s often innocent on the part of those who do that. 

It’s just that I wish more people realized how social media platforms like Twitter aren’t anyone’s friends. They don’t care about you. All they want you to do is make snarky comments and make money from people fighting each other online due to those comments.  I think about what Ursula K. Le Guin said about anger once.

“I know that anger can’t be suppressed indefinitely without crippling or corroding the soul. But I don’t know how useful anger is in the long run. Is private anger to be encouraged?

Considered a virtue, given free expression at all times, as we wanted women’s anger against injustice to be, what would it do? Certainly an outburst of anger can cleanse the soul and clear the air. But anger nursed and nourished begins to act like anger suppressed: it begins to poison the air with vengefulness, spitefulness, distrust, breeding grudge and resentment, brooding endlessly over the causes of the grudge, the righteousness of the resentment. A brief, open expression of anger in the right moment, aimed at its true target, is effective — anger is a good weapon. But a weapon is appropriate to, justified only by, a situation of danger.”

If we become angry enough to become racists, harassers, and bullies ourselves by stooping to the level of those we dislike, then what exactly are we fighting for? If you call someone out, but feel that you don’t deserve to be called out if you’ve actually done something terrible (and the proof’s right then and there), you’re not better than those you called out.  That’s why I always say that I’m both a good and bad person. I think I’m right about most things, but I know I’m full of shit about some things. And you know what? That’s okay. Being aware of my own faults (without self-hatred) gives me the opportunity to learn and make much-needed changes.

Call out culture is going to be more prominent, whether anyone likes it or not. The only things I can tell anyone who feels compelled to call someone out are (with additional help from therapy or counseling).

1.) Forgive the person/people who hurt you. Here’s why - if you let them have a presence in your mind, it will be a big distraction in your life. You will be filled with nothing but hate. We all know hate does when you just keep reinforcing it. There’s also a big misconception in that forgiveness means letting that person off the hook. It doesn’t mean you forget what they did. Forgiveness means “You know what? You did some terrible things to me, but you’re a person like I am. I’m just not gonna let the thought of you ruin my state of mind and take over the joy I want to get in my life.”

2.) Slow down. Everyone wants to jump to conclusions ASAP. I wonder what happened to stopping and thinking about the actions of others and how they come about. There was a scene I remember from the game Persona 4, where the heroes were trying to deliver justice to a proposed suspect in a serial murder case (which was the major plot point). Everyone was acting on edge due to a close associate of theirs on the verge of death. The leader of the gang knew something seemed off, slowly voiced his concerns, and then yelled at his friends to calm down. One of my favorite lines from this sequence is something I’ll always remember.

“Failing to understand and failing to listen are rather different things.”

Listening with the sense of understanding is a soft skill that’s lacking these days. The thing is our minds are not built to handle the fast nature of culture. The rapid spread of ideas have outpaced our ability to process things. That’s a big reason why you see so much conflict.

If you still feel the need to call someone out, do it for anyone who’s been hurt by that person, not just you. Don’t be the only one who benefits. Share the wealth. Do not be tempted by profit over purpose.

I think that’s all I have to say other than if you’re angry about every single thing/person that’s hurt you, there’s nothing worth being angry about at all.

#mental health #anime community #fandom #psychology #anger #call out culture #calling out

[kumeko]

zahar

Character/Pairing: light hints of NaruSakuSasu, mostly friendship

A/N: Written for the @narutohistoryzine —this is technically a platonic piece so I could only put the lightest hints of shipping. I picked ancient India, during the Maurya Empire as the setting for my piece.

Summary: Sakura dreamed of poison dripping through her veins, corroding all it touched. She was an assassin, after all, and it might have been too much to dream her friendship with the prince and his general could last forever.

...

...

...

...

Drip.

 Drip.

 Drip.

 Sakura dreamed of poison dripping into her veins, corroding all it touched. Her body burned from the venom, an all-consuming fire. It spread to everything she came into contact with until everything was up in flames. Her skin, flesh, organs blackened, the contamination swallowing her whole.

 You’re a brave girl, her mother whispered into her ear, stroking her hair. You will survive.

 A mountain of corpses grew beneath her feet and still the poison flowed on.

 -x-

 “Sakura!”

 Naruto’s voice was as loud as usual, echoing through his chamber and into the main hall. Sakura winced at the threshold of his entrance; she had not wanted her visit to be a big deal. Looking behind her, she saw the servants scurrying from one post to the next, none of them so much as looking up at the outburst.

 Well, that was to be expected. He had the loudest voice in the region. Her bare feet brushed the cool stone floor as she entered the room. There was a rustle of silk, the sound of footsteps, and the blonde rushed her, sweeping her off her feet. She laughed, accepting his welcome. Fortunately, curtains blocked the view so no one could peek inside and witness this impropriety.

 Over his shoulder, she spotted Sasuke standing erect next to the cushions. Catching her eyes, he rolled his own and sighed. “You deal with him.”

 “What is it this time?” she asked, still dangling off the ground as Naruto whirled her around. She could spot the traces of a pout on his face.

 He had been sulking then.

 Also not entirely unusual for her friend.

 Finally, after much laughter, he released her. Stepping back, he rested his hands on her shoulder. “You’re back?”

 “Just returned.  The mission went well.”

 His face darkened a bit. “I can’t believe Dad knows and allows this.”

 “Naruto, one day you’ll have to do this too. Even if you don’t like it,” she admonished, not breaking free from his grasp. “You know your position.”

 Naruto frowned, letting go. “My father’s position.”

 “Your position one day,” she corrected. As though he needed the reminder. His quarters were filled with only the finest goods. Rich tapestries hung from his walls, depicting scenes of old, while the floor had soft rugs. Even his clothing, made of rich silk and heavily decorated with jewels, indicated just what his position in life was. Son to the Kumara, next in line to govern their province, he was only subordinate to the emperor and his family.

 As though she needed the reminder—she was just a common spy and Sasuke, while gifted, a general.

 “I didn’t earn it.” Naruto gritted his teeth, gripping the bracelets on his arm, the gold necklaces that hung heavy on his neck. The trappings of wealth and power that he had never wanted. “This isn’t mine.”

 “It is.” Sasuke stepped forward, staring down at the slightly shorter man. “And if you didn’t earn it, make sure you do.”

 It was an old argument, one they had every now and then. As usual, it would end the same way, with the two wrestling on the ground while she waited for them to let out their steam. Trying to speed up the process, she quickly interrupted Naruto before he could argue back. “So what were you pouting about this time?”

 “This time?” Naruto gasped, clutching his heart. Good. If he could act like this, then the argument was as good as over. “Sakura, you wound me. You’ve been spending too much time with the bastard.”

 “Better than spending time with you,” Sasuke retorted, playing along. Turning to Sakura, he smirked. “They’re arranging his marriage.”

 Sakura blinked, not sure if she heard him right. “Naruto. His wedding. Our Naruto.”

 “The one and the same,” Sasuke confirmed, dodging Naruto’s punch effortlessly. “His.”

 Well, he had reached marriageable age. The time one started worrying about heirs. Sakura blinked again, staring at her old friend. The pout was back, his cheeks pronounced and puffed, and she wondered if he was more chipmunk than human.

 He was supposed to marry someone. Suddenly, she pitied his future in-law. “Congratulations.”

 “Sakura!” he whined, abruptly stopping his fight to grasp her hands. “Is that all you have to say?”

 Was there anything else one was supposed to say? “Uh...good luck?”

 Clearly, that wasn’t the answer he wanted. His eyes grew bigger, if possible. “I don’t want to get married and all the bastard can say is that it’s for the good of the family and it was bound to happen. You’re supposed to be on my side.”

 His grip was tight, his arms shaking. Suddenly, she understood this was more than his usual game with Sasuke. Despite the playacting, this was all real on some level. “Naruto?”

 “I want us to all be together,” he murmured, his voice low, his head hung. There was something small about him, lost. “If I get married, we can’t…”

 Can’t be together were his unsaid words. It was true. Right now they could be casual away from prying eyes, assured that none would enter without permission. A wife could change all of that. Her announcements could be minimal, her visits frequent. Perhaps Sasuke could still visit frequently, a prominent general. But her? She could guard him from outside his chambers at best, from a respectable distance.

 “We aren’t children anymore, idiot.” Sasuke’s hand gripped Naruto’s shoulder, his voice more affectionate than he would ever normally let on. “We all knew this would happen one day.”

 And what of him? If Naruto was on the market, then Sasuke would be as well. A shiver ran up Sakura’s spine at the prospect. Both of them would be married and she, well, it was never in the cards for her. She lost that right a long time ago.

 In the end, she’d be alone.

 “Yeah.” Her voice trembled and she hated herself for it. All those years of acting and now she couldn’t keep up the performance? “You both can’t avoid this forever.”

 Sasuke gritted his teeth, looking away. It seemed the same realization hit him as well.

 “No.” Naruto’s voice was soft but firm and she looked back at him. There was a fire in his eyes. His jaw set, he shook his head. “No, I won’t let this happen.”

 “You can’t avoid it,” she said, but without any force. When he talked like that, she knew he’d make it happen. He’d move mountains if he had to. It was the reason she knew he’d make a great Kumara.

 “No, it’s easy.” Naruto’s expression relaxed into an easy grin, catching her off-guard. “You both will pick my bride.”

 They stared at him for a long moment before releasing a simultaneous “Huh?”

 -x-

 Sakura rubbed her head as she left the prince’s chambers. Despite her persuasion and Sasuke’s force, Naruto hadn’t budged from this at all. They were to inspect all the possible the brides and find one that would work.

 An impossible task. But then again, Naruto was an impossible person.

 Behind her, soft footsteps echoed in the arched corridors. The fires lighting the path flickered softly, the colourful paintings decorating the wall looking darker and grimmer in the faint light. Small jewels glittered from where they were embedded. The footsteps were closer now but no louder. There was only person it could be. “Tenten?”

 “The one and only.” When Sakura turned, her fellow visha kanya waved lightly. “Been a while.”

 Sharp. If there was one word to describe Tenten, it was sharp. A dagger in the night. Even her greeting, though jovial, seemed to slash the air around her. She was wearing her sari so it was more like a pair of pants and a long cloth wrapped around her chest, tightly binding her breasts to her body. Even though Sakura was wearing the same uniform, it looked sleeker on Tenten. In another life, she would have made a great warrior.

 “Going on another mission?” Sakura asked, moving to the side. Pillars lined the corridor and it took little effort to vanish within the shadows of one.

 Tenten held out a small vial. Its murky contents were hard to make out. “An easier one this time.”

 Poison was still poison, whether her body could withstand it or not. Sakura grimaced. “Good luck.”

 “I won’t need it.” Tenten hide the vial in her bodice. Showing the scroll in her other hand, she handed it over. “Tsunade has selected your next target. Take care of it while protecting the prince. I hear he’s making a ruckus about his marriage.”

 Sakura gingerly gripped the parchment. The paper crinkled at the touch. “A ruckus is putting it lightly. Did they pick someone yet?”

 “Not yet.” Tenten shrugged. The kohl at the edge of her eyes looked fresh; she must have applied it recently. “A list of candidates has been gathered but they still have to go through them.”

 “A list.” Sakura smiled. That made everything much easier. Much, much easier. “See you later.”

 Before she could leave, Tenten grabbed her arm. “Don’t get soft on me.”

 “Soft?” Sakura chuckled. “I’d rather not die carelessly.”

 -x-

 When Sakura was five, her mother dressed her up in her prettiest kurta. She brushed her hair slowly, braiding flowers in her hair. Their family was a merchant family, doing relatively well since the era of peace had begun.

 “You are a brave, smart girl,” her mother praised, taking her by the hand. They walked the stall-lined streets, various smells and sights distracting Sakura as they travelled. “You will survive.”

 At the time, she hadn’t understood what her mother meant. When they arrived at the palace gates, her mother handed her over to a blonde woman, telling her to be a good girl and then left without so much as a backward glance.

 -x-

 Their first candidate was a woman named Temari, the sister of the neighbouring province’s governor. Gaara had stared at them when Naruto asked to meet her and Sakura was certain if he hadn’t lost his eyebrows from his wounds, he’d have raised one. As it was, his younger brother did it for him, questioning them as the pair led them to her waiting room.

 “Temari? Are you sure you want to court her?” Disbelief coloured his voice as they led the trio down the hall. Elaborate clay pieces, ranging from urns to religious sculptures, lined the walls. Gaara’s province was well known for its pottery so this was of no surprise.

 “Not really,” Naruto replied bluntly and if this were somewhere more private, Sakura would have hit him. Honesty was not the best policy. Especially considering Gaara’s fame as a blood-thirsty warrior. Naruto claimed that he had reformed and changed since his father died, but Sakura wasn’t all that sure about it.

 Especially since he might have killed his father in the first place. His only saving grace was that he hadn’t killed his older brother.

 “Then why? On a whim? You should leave then,” Kankuro warned them. “Prince or no, she’ll kill you.”

 “I won’t let her.”

 Despite the monotone in Gaara’s voice, it sent a shiver down Sakura’s spine. Not a killer her foot. Sakura adjusted her sari, worn in alignment with a typical servant girl’s outfit. It was looser than she liked, not quite as good to run in, but she had to make do. Unlike Sasuke, she couldn’t accompany the pair as openly without a disguise.

 “Really?” Naruto practically bounced to his friend, wrapping an arm around him. Sakura twitched.  Gaara. Killer. It was hard to protect someone who insisted on doing dangerous things. “Don’t worry, I’m not doing it on a whim—I have to get married soon and I’m trying to pick my bride before she gets picked for me.”

 Gaara looked at Naruto for a moment then back at Kankuro. “I can do that?”

 “No, no, no.” Kankuro shook his hands in front of him, shooting Naruto a glare. It seemed the Uzamaki household wasn’t the only one preparing for a wedding. “You won’t pick someone, I just know it. Let Temari handle it.”

 “Oh.” Something akin to a frown formed on Gaara’s face. This was clearly a conversation they had had many times before.

 “Don’t worry, I’ll help too,” Naruto offered, still leaning against Gaara. “I’ll find you the most fun wife.”

 Kankuro’s expression paled. Before he could refuse, Gaara had already given his permission. From the corner of her eyes, she could see Sasuke’s smirk growing wider, clearly amused by the whole conversation. It seemed she was the only one concerned about Gaara then. The party turned right at the next entrance, pushing their way through silk curtains to reach a chamber.

 Interestingly enough, Temari’s waiting room didn’t have a trace of pottery. Instead, fans decorated the wall, intricately detailed. Some appeared sharper than others, each more foreign than the last. Catching Naruto’s curious gaze, Gaara explained. “We trade with Iskander and Cina.”

 This perked Sasuke’s interest. “Iskander? Have you fought him?”

 And of course it was the prospect of battle that pushed him into the conversation. Sakura suppressed a sigh, standing several steps behind the group. The usefulness of being a servant—without much work, she was invisible and had the best vantage points to every room.

 “Once.” Gaara moved to a pile of cushions and soft sheets, gesturing for them to all sit there.

 When he didn’t elaborate, Sasuke prodded him further. “How was it?”

 “Hard. Long.”

  Another short answer. Before Naruto could chime in and prod him further, the soft clink of bracelets alerted them to Temari’s entrance. From the back of the room, she entered. Her clothing aligned more with the northern regions of their country, pants and long shirts, clothing that was far easier to move and fight in. Sakura had heard rumours on the warrior princess and she wouldn’t have been surprised to find a weapon or two hidden within the folds of her clothing. Even her nose ring could be one.

 If Tenten was sharp, Temari was dangerous. Every part of her screamed it, from the kohl lining her eyes to the way she smiled. On a different pile of cushions, she sprawled on the floor, resting her head on her hands as she watched them. Two male servants sat near her, their bare chests glistening in the pale light. “So?”

 Naruto stared blankly. Clearly he had not actually planned this far ahead. Rubbing his head, he gave a sheepish smile. “Marriage?”

 Sakura almost hit her head against the wall.

 “Marriage? That’s how you word it?” She gave him a once over and snorted. “To you?”

 “Hey!” Flustered, Naruto glared at her. “What’s so bad about me?”

 “Do you need a list?” Temari rolled her eyes and looked at her brother. “I know you like him but I refuse.”

 Definitely dangerous. She was staring down Gaara. Sakura’s smile grew strained as she watched it all unfold. To be honest, as a queen, Temari made a great candidate. She was forceful and had great mental strength, something required when Naruto was away and she would have to rule on her own.

 Unfortunately, those very qualities unnerved him entirely.

 “Oh come on! I didn’t even get a chance!” Naruto almost got up before Sasuke discretely yanked him back down. Even if Gaara was his friend, Sakura was sure he’d take offense to whatever Naruto had been planning. “Besides, aren’t you supposed to impress me? I’m the one searching.”

 “Whatever gave you the idea?” Temari gave him a bored look as she gestured for one of the servants to come closer. A handsome man, he obeyed instantly and sat next to her. Her hand traced the man’s face idly.

 “Sis, not in front of me!” Kankuro complained, averting his eyes.

 It didn’t stop her in the least. If anything, her hand went lower, running up and down her servant’s chest. Her nails lightly raked his skin, leaving faint marks. Throughout it all, her eyes remained on Naruto. “Now what do you have to offer me?”

 -x-

 “No.” Naruto had repeated this several times as they returned down the corridors. There was a wild look in his eyes. “Definitely no.”

 Sasuke smirked. “You sure? I think she liked you by the end of it.”

 “What?” Naruto shivered, as though that scared him even more. He shook his head even more vigorously. “Nope, I can’t, definitely can’t.”

 Her poor prince had been completely dominated. Temari had controlled the entire conversation and no matter what Naruto did, he had been a step behind. He’d be haunted by this humiliation for weeks. Sakura chuckled softly. “You sure? I think she likes you.”

 “Not you too, Sakura!” Naruto grumbled, picking up the pace.

 Ahead of them, the entrance to Gaara’s compound loomed. A guard remained posted at the entryway, eyeing the streets outside. She halted before they got any further and Sasuke turned around. “Not coming?”

 “Not this time.” Sakura let loose the pins in her hair. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

 Sasuke nodded, understanding immediately. Naruto, catching on, frowned. “Don’t do this.”

 They had had this argument before. Yesterday morning in fact. She shifted her bracelets. “It’s my job, Naruto.”

 He took a step toward her, his hand outstretched. “You don’t have to do this.”

 “No, I do. It is my job,” she repeated firmly, rejecting his offer once again. Though she would never wish it on another, she took some pride in her abilities and her position.

 Naruto opened his mouth to argue before gritting his teeth and looking away. “Stay safe.”

 These were the times she wasn’t sure if he’d be able to rule their province. The hard decisions were impossible for Naruto and while she admired his spirit in finding good alternatives, there wasn’t always one. He would never be able to hand her orders, even if he must. “I will.”

 Without another word, he whirled around and left. As his angry stomps echoed the hallways, Sasuke gave her a nod and followed after him.

 Now then, it was time she completed Tsunade’s orders. With that in mind, she sauntered off a side hall.

 -x-

 Sakura’s hips swayed with the beat. The sitar and tabla played in a corner, their musicians watching the dancers almost as closely as the generals were. Her target was one in the corner, already drunk off his lust. The alcohol was a formality at this point. He was a minor general but was already making waves as he haphazardly aimed for power.

 If he truly wanted it, he should have been more discrete about it.

 Her anklets chimed as she stepped toward him, her smile disarming. The other dancers were twirling around the rest of the officers, their bracelets clanging together as they lightly stepped from one patron to the other. Sakura picked up one of the drinks, discretely slipping a poison in it.

 She took a deep sip in front of him, his eyes following the trail of an escaped droplet as it slide down her throat and into the valley of her breasts. As he reached for her, she offered him the cup. Accepting it, he quickly downed the whole thing before reaching for her once more. This time she relented, allowing his roaming hands as she silently counted down.

 In a minute his breathing grew laboured, his arms drenched in a cold sweat. His hands gripped her arms hard as he fought the poison, unable to comprehend just what was happening. Fifteen seconds after that, he collapsed, choking on air as he struggled to stay conscious.

 “Why?” he croaked, his eyes locked on hers.

 Instead of replying, she let loose a scream, pointing at his body. The other dancers shrieked and bolted and she slipped into the crowd. Within minutes, she was gone.

 -x-

 Visha Kanya. Girls reared since childhood on poison. Those who survived the process were immune to poison, making them effective assassins and guards. It was even rumoured that even their very blood was poisonous, though Sakura scoffed at that particular myth.

 More girls died than survived the painful process. When she was younger, she remembered collapsing in pain for days after their regular doses. The beds in her dormitory grew emptier with each treatment, girls giving in to death’s call. This finality was a blessing never granted to her, each day more painful than the last until finally she could withstand almost anything.

 Her mother had sacrificed her to this. Without looking back, without warning. Sometimes, she liked to pretend her mother’s shoulders were shaking, that her eyes were sad.

 But the truth was obvious. Her family had abandoned her. Perhaps it was only fitting then that Sakura could never have one of her own now.

 -x-

 “How was it?”

 Sakura halted at the entrance to the servant’s quarters. The moon filtered softly through the trees on her as she slowly turned to Sasuke. A warm breeze blew through the courtyard and a quick scan revealed that they were alone. She slipped out of the shadows and approached him. “You noticed me.”

 Sasuke just gave her a look and perhaps she deserved that. Somehow or the other, he always did find her when she wanted to be hidden.

 The trees provided a natural canopy, an archway connecting different compounds. Closer now, she noticed a series of dark flowers blooming on his arm. Her fingers reached out to brush them involuntarily.  “Naruto?”

 “Sword lessons while we waited for you,” Sasuke explained, not flinching as she gently pressed each one. She didn’t have to ask to know Naruto had fared no better. “How was it?”

 The keen general struck again. Perhaps it was fine to have a single confidant. “The target died.”

 “Not what I was asking.”

  She could barely make out his expression in the shadows, only his eyes as they bore steadily on her. It was hilarious how ineffective her deflection and lies were against him. Sakura sighed, baring her right arm. Her victim had a surprisingly strong grip as he died, his fingerprints marking her skin. “Aside from this, it went fine.”

 His voice lowered, his fingers examining her wound. “Even the poison?”

 Like the moon, his expression was distant and she didn’t need to ask to know he was remembering the times she had collapsed due to her work. The poison would not kill her but that didn’t mean it wouldn’t harm her at all. It still ran its course through her body, leaving waves of pain until it was fully purged. Sasuke always seemed to find her when she had one of those fits, no matter how hard she hid. “Even the poison.”

 “Good.” Sasuke stepped back, no doubt to return to his own abode. “We’ve picked a second candidate to inspect tomorrow.”

 “Another already?” Sakura laughed, relieved her interrogation was over. “After what he went through today? Can he handle it?”

 At this, Sasuke cracked a grin. “Probably not.”

 -x-

 A few hours after dawn, she found Naruto hacking away at the training grounds. She watched for bit, his blade glinting as he spun from one stance to the next. It was his usual spot when he found out about her work. Either that or taking it out on Sasuke, though the end of those fights left her wondering if there were even any winners or just losers.

 When she was younger, Naruto had seen her position as superhuman. You don’t even need poison, you can just spit in his drink! he had suggested, laughing, as they played in one of the many secret gardens of the palace.

 At some point, he realized just what it meant to be a Visha Kanya and all his jokes died just as surely as her victims did.

 “Naruto?”

 He finished the last of his stances before dropping his sword. Sweat dripped down his bare chest and onto his cotton pants. Once his breathing calmed, he turned to her. There was something fragile in his expression, like a bird caught in her hands. “Did anything happen?”

 Sakura chuckled. Same question as Sasuke. For all their grievances with one another, they were more similar than they realized. “Nothing at all.”

 He stepped forward, frowning. “Is that the truth?”

 “I swear.” Sakura’s arms were covered in a fine layer of powder. What Naruto didn’t notice wouldn’t hurt him. “See? I’m fine.”

 Naruto studied her for a long moment before giving a nod. “When I take over, you won’t have to do this.”

 An empty promise and they both knew it. She played along, not quite ready to break his heart just yet. “I look forward to the rest.”

 “Maybe you can join me on touring the province.” Naruto wasn’t quite smiling yet, his expression like a sun slowly rising. The morning birds sang from the gardens around them. “We can even be nice and invite the bastard.”

 “I don’t know if I can handle that many months on the road with the two of you.”

 “Then we don’t have to bring him.” Naruto waggled his brows, his expression almost too bright to look at.

 “He’ll cry,” Sakura replied seriously before breaking out into laughter. “Don’t tell him I said that.”

 -x-

 “Why are we in the bushes?” Sasuke asked, irritated as they crouched next to a dusty road. Across from them, the Hyuuga palace rose. Delicate colours covered the various walls, an extravagant display of wealth.

 Naruto shivered. “I don’t think I can deal with a second Temari.”

 Sakura knew little of the Hyuuga princess other than that she behaved more like most princesses. Soft, gentle, she might not have the spine to lead as a ruler. “I think it’ll be fine with this one.”

 “No.” Naruto insisted, still clearly traumatized. “We confirm before we talk.”

 “Maybe next time you should practice what you’ll say.” Sasuke stood up and stretched his legs for a moment.  His arms were crossed as he studied the food stalls near them. “Why are we hiding in the bushes and not in the food stalls?”

 “It’d be easier, but we’d be noticeable after a while,” Sakura explained, getting logic even if she didn’t agree with the premise. For once, Naruto was finally putting those tactic lessons to use. If only he’d use them for something other than stalking his bride candidates.

 “A while?’ Sasuke stared down at her. His expression was ice. “How long are we staying here?”

 “Well…” Sakura heard a soft click and she pointed at the gate. “They’re leaving!”

 His expression told her it wasn’t over and she crossed her fingers that Naruto’s next stupid act was enough to drive this from his mind. Quickly, he crouched next to her once more and they watched, barely breathing, as a palanquin exited the compound. Heavy veils lined with golden tassels and jewels hid the princess from sight, offering only the barest hint of blue and pale purple silk.

 A beautiful princess, it was rumoured. A beautiful, shy princess. Entranced, Naruto leaned forward. His eyes were as big as saucers and he craned his body left and right to get a better view of her before she disappeared. He started to rise slowly.

 “Oh?” Sakura cocked her head. “I thought you wanted to wait.”

 “I am waiting.” His gaze was still transfixed on the palanquin as it shuffled on. “I just can’t see very well from here.”

 “Should we just go to her?” Sasuke cut in, rolling his eyes. The sooner this was over the better.  “If you’re not scared.”

 “I’m not!” he retorted, getting up. The gates opened once more and another figure on horseback exited the compound. The figure was stately, even his mount was covered in gold, and quickly he trotted up to the princess.  Naruto stared in disbelief before he hissed, “Is that Neji?”

 Sakura nodded, remembering the rivalry they had since childhood. A one-sided rivalry to be honest. Unlike Sasuke, he never took the bait. “They’re cousins, remember.”

 “Yeah, but why is he here now?” Narut groaned. He swiftly ducked back down, watching as Neji laughed at some joke Hinata said. “I thought he was off at the border.”

 “Didn’t you just say you weren’t scared?” Sasuke frowned, his lips a thin line. This had gone past amusement and into pure annoyance territory for him. Despite what it looked like, he was a general and he did have actual work to do.

 “You don’t like him anymore than I do,” Naruto snapped, tearing his eyes away from the scene to shoot a glare at his friend.

 “I’m not the one getting engaged.”

 Boys. Sakura sighed and softly smacked the pair. “Not now!” Turning back to departure, she waited for a good time to push Naruto out. Maybe Neji would push forward—he hated travelling slowly. The entourage around them wouldn’t protest. Sakura scanned the group before her eyes rested on a pair of brown buns mixed in with the group.

 Tenten. It was only for a moment, but she was sure she glimpsed her friend. Whatever brought her here could not be good news. There’d be death and it’d be best if Naruto was not around to witness that. Depending on who died, Hinata would be too distraught to consider his proposal anyways.

 Casually, she slowly got up. “Let’s do it when he’s not here then. Some other day.”

 “Huh?” Naruto squinted up at her. “Seriously?”

 “Do you want to talk to Neji?”

 He blanched. “No. Next time, definitely next time then.”

 -x-

 “Naruto? Seriously?” Ino scoffed, running her eyes up and down him. “Sure, he looks better than he did as a child, but he’s still Naruto.”

 Naruto shivered under her gaze.  “I feel violated, Sakura.”

 It had been almost a week since the incident with Hinata. Sakura hadn’t yet heard about Tenten’s victim—either she was being cautious or the target was so minor that no one talked about it. Either way, she had directed Naruto to almost everyone else on the list in the meantime.

 Which now left them in front of Ino, a somewhat childhood friend. Sakura remembered bumping into her a few times at the palace when they were younger. Her mother was clever—though Ino’s family were merely wealthy merchants, she knew how to leverage their position to rise in the ranks. Perhaps she was no princess but money and connections could make up for such things.

 “He has a good position,” Sakura countered, ignoring his whines entirely. “I hear you’ve taken on a job as an administrator—he’ll allow you to retain that position.”

 It was rare for a woman to achieve such a rank and Ino bit her lip, considering it. Desire and disgust warred in her expression. “Give me some time to consider it. If you are serious, arrange for a proper meeting with my parents.”

 “We will.” Before Naruto could ruin it, Sakura quickly bid Ino farewell and propelled him out of the room. Sasuke hadn’t been able to join them, a backlog of work overtaking him, but they had managed the past few candidates just fine. Heck, they even managed to find some that looked viable.

 Despite their recent successes, Naruto seemed deflated. “Both she and Temari laughed.”

 Ah, it was pride. Sakura resisted the urge to pat his shoulder as they were in public. “Others didn’t.”

 “But others didn’t know me and they did.” Naruto ran a hand through his hair. “Am I really that unreliable?”

 “No, it’s not that.” Sakura tapped her chin, trying to find the words. “I guess it’s just that they know you so long, so it’s weird?”

 “Would you laugh if I asked, then?” Naruto gave her a sullen look, not quite buying her words.

 Sakura blinked, not sure how to answer. His expression was serious and she rubbed her arm. After a few minutes, she quietly shook her head. “No, I don’t think I would.”

 It was the right answer. Naruto perked up, his stride more purposeful. “Alright. Do you think we’ll find someone?”

 “I think so.” It had seemed an impossible task at first but Naruto had always been someone who found possibilities. “We still have to double check Hinata, but we have a good list now.”

 “Hinata.” Naruto grimaced, remembering Neji. “If none of them work out, I’m becoming a priest.”

 “A priest.” Sakura stared at him, rubbing her ears. There was no way she heard that right.

 “Yeah, a priest.” Naruto warmed up to the idea, flinging his arms up. “I won’t have to marry and we can be casual—”

 Leaving his fantasies aside, Sakura asked, “Could you really shave your head?”

 That stopped him cold. Naruto gingerly touched his hair, frowning. “No? Maybe?”

 “I don’t think I could handle it.” Sakura grimaced at the image. The idea of him in priestly robes, leading prayers and meditations, it made her shiver. He could barely stay still long enough for conversations, let alone for deep thoughts. “So that’s out.”

 “Boooo.” There was no bite to it. He laced his hands behind his head. “You know, it’ll all work out.”

 “Huh?” Sakura looked at him in confusion. The crickets chirped around them, a constant steady beat. “Why?”

 “Even if my room isn’t safe, there are all those secret gardens and stuff.” Naruto gazed up at the sky, at the slowly setting sun. “That’s how we met, right?”

 Sakura remembered a young prince reaching out to her, his hand helping her up. “And we met there for years after.” Sneaking around guards, always on alert—it had never been the most comfortable meetings but she treasured them all the same.

 “Besides, you’re smart and Sasuke’s smart.” Naruto puffed up his chest proudly. “If you two can’t figure out something, no one can.”

 It was praise she didn’t deserve. “I’m not that smart.”

 “You are,” he insisted. “It doesn’t matter where we meet, as long as we can.” Looking ahead, he shouted, “You should have just come if you were going to wait anyways!”

 Sakura followed his gaze to find Sasuke leaning against the palace walls. He grunted in response and she laughed.

 Maybe he was right. It would all work out. As they all returned to his chambers, Sakura walking a few steps behind the pair, she smiled.

 She had been wrong. Being a Visha Kanya had not stripped her right to have a family.

#naruto uzamaki #naruto #sakura haruno #sasuke uchiha #fanfic

[fantazeerps]

Mox Meni’s Many Amenities

“You want it? I got it. Step right up, tell Mox whacha need.”

Mox spends a lot of her time cranking out various items depending on her whims, and what she believes people may want. Below is a list of things she sells, typically having at least one of each knocking around in her cart. She can make most of these items the same day they’re requested (some in the same hour), except for special cases near the bottom of the page.

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Survival Tools

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Oils: “Yeah. Just oils. You need oil? Tell me what you need it for, and I got it for that.” Lamp oil, machine oil, weapon oil, armor oil, shield oil, wheel oil, wand oil, pond oil, slick oil, thick oil, dick oil, Mox has oils for every conceivable purpose. Price: Varies, but no more than 5gp/dose.

Mox’s On-The-March Meals: “For the adventurers with no time to camp.” Small pills of compacted sour-smelling powder kept in a small leather pouch. Reconstitutes itself into a nutritious but bland mush in vaguely recognizable shapes (such as cabbage heads, bread loaves, steak cuts, etc) when exposed to moisture. Pills can be swallowed directly to have them reconstitute in the stomach and avoid the taste altogether. Each package contains 10 meals-worth of pills. Price: 4gp/package.

Water Salt: “A pinch a this’ll keep your horrible thirsts at bay.” A super salty salt that, when swallowed, partially mummifies its imbiber. The process is uncomfortable and annoying, but not debilitatingly so, and the imbiber does not require any water for the next 3 days. It also staves off the effects of dehydration past those 3 days, forcing a Constitution check every 6 hours instead of every hour. The salt’s effect lasts for 7 days; three days without water, four days with slowed dehydration. Price: 5gp/dose.

Candlerod: “All the usefulness of a candle, none of downsides.” Finger-length stick that glows with soft heatless candlelight for 12 hours when activated. Price: 1gp/4 sticks. Only sold in bundles of 4.

Sunrod: “All the usefulness of the sun, none of the downsides.” Foot-long stick that can be activated as move action. Generates bright light out to 30ft, dim light for 30 more ft, for 6 hours. Price: 2gp/stick.

Water Purification Sponge: “One of the few things I sell that does what its name advertises.” Sponge that can absorb up to 1 pint of water. When wrung out, the water is cleansed of mundane nastiness and diseases. CANNOT cleanse poison, magical parasites, or magical diseases. Can cleanse up to 25 pints of water before breaking down. Price: 25gp/sponge.

Heavy Duty Water Purification Sponge: “Second verse, same as the first. Except stronger.” As above, but it can cleanse 2 pints of water at a time, and cleanses everything short of magical parasites. Can cleanse up to 30 pints of water before breaking down. Price: 40gp/sponge.

Air Gum: “Made with air freshly picked from your local wind farm.” Crunchy gum that provides 10 rounds of breathable air so long as it’s chewed. The chewer cannot speak or open their mouth during this time, though, or the air escapes and reduces the remaining duration by 2 rounds. A package of air gum has 4 pieces. Price: 50gp/package.

Fireless Fire: “This is how you cook and stay sneaky about it.” A thick brick broken into sections like a Hershey bar and wrapped in leather. Always warm to the touch, even through the package. Breaking off a section and working it with your hands makes it grow even warmer, providing a +4 alchemical bonus to resist the negative effects of cold weather. Five blocks can be molded together and worked to form a single mass that produces as much heat as a campfire without the light, smoke, or noise of one. Worked clay remains warm for 1 hour before losing all its properties. A brick of Fireless Fire has 10 sections. Price: 20gp/brick.

Alchemical Grease: “Makes any surface a skating rink if you’re not a coward.” A pot of slick black goo that can be used to coat one Medium creature or two Small creatures. Anything coated with Alchemical Grease has a +5 alchemical bonus to Escape Artist checks, checks to escape a grapple, and CMD to avoid being grappled. Also can be used for stuff mundane grease could be used for, but Better. It lasts for 4 hours or until washed off. Price: 5gp/pot.

Alkali Salt: “Not to be confused with table salt. I’m serious. Don’t.” Toxically salty salt that dissolves in water to form a thick paste. Weapons dunked in this paste gain a coating that protects it from the next 20 points of acid damage it would take (so if it takes 5 acid damage, it would have a 15-health ‘shield’ still left over). One dose creates enough paste to coat four shortswords, or two longswords, or eight daggers, or any combination thereof. Price: 30gp/dose.

Bladeguard: “It also works on clubs.” One pot of this substance protects the coated weapon from all forms of acid damage, as well as all magical or mundane effects which would corrode, rust, or melt it, for 24 full hours. Each pot only contains enough resin to coat one longsword, or two shortswords, etc. Price: 50gp/pot.

Impact Gel: “I wish I could figure out how to stuff a pillow with this stuff...” A flask of milky white liquid that works itself into a froth within seconds of being exposed to air, forming a 1ft-thick mass of impact-resistant foam. Can be carefully spread across a 10ft square or hastily thrown at the ground, which coats a single 5ft square plus one random 5ft square connected to the first. Anything landing on the gel reduces the damage they take from the fall by 2d6; the first 1d6 is ignored entirely, the second 1d6 is converted into nonlethal damage. Multiple uses of Impact Gel stack if thrown on top of one another. Price: 25gp/flask.

Fire Juice: “Don’t actually drink it without filling out this form.” One vial of this liquid can coat 6 inches of a surface. It glows like a candle for 1 hour, and then combusts in an instantaneous, white-hot flash, dealing 3d6 fire damage to anything it’s in contact with and igniting flammable material it’s touching. Price: 25gp/vial.

Explosion Juice: “Don’t actually drink it at all.” One vial of this liquid can coat 6 inches of a surface. It glows like a torch for 10 minutes before exploding, dealing 4d6 fire and bludgeoning damage to anything it’s in contact with, and 1d6 fire and bludgeoning damage to everything within 5ft of it and igniting any flammable material it damages. Price: 60gp/vial.

Rat-B-Gone: “I’m working on a version that’ll work on Turi, don’t worry.” Anyone smeared with this vile-smelling paste is supernaturally repellent to all forms of vermin, not just rats. Vermin of any type without an Intelligence score will never willingly approach or attack any creature covered in this paste unless the wearer attacks them. Vermin swarms must make a DC 15 Fortitude save to willingly enter the wearer’s space. Intelligent vermin are unaffected, though you smell atrocious to them. The paste remains potent for 4 hours. A container of paste will cover 1 Medium-sized creature. Price: 5gp/container.

Tindertwig: “Faster than flint, less cool than a magnifying glass.” They’re literally easy-strike matches. A box of tindertwigs contains 10. Price: 1gp/box.

Everburning Torch: “As useful and valuable as you’d expect!” A handy torch with a heatless fire that never, ever goes out, working while underwater and reigniting after 1 round if smothered. Mox has rigged her own to sputter and die 1d8+1 weeks after purchase. Gotta keep the money coming, y’know! Price: 50gp/torch.

Blasting Soda: “The exact opposite of baking soda.” A grainy, white powder that reacts explosively with water. A handful of blasting soda exposed to water congeals into a semi-solid lump that can be worked like clay into any shape needed and sticks to any surface. Over the course of the next minute, the soda becomes increasingly fizzy before detonating, dealing 2d8 bludgeoning damage to anything it’s in direct contact with. A box of blasting soda has about 6 handfuls inside it. Multiple handfuls do stack their damage. Price: 45gp/box.

Chameleon Pill: “Take off all your clothes for maximum effect.” A pill that causes the user to shift colors and even texture to mimic the closest surface to it. The pill lasts for 4 hours and grants a +4 circumstance bonus to Stealth checks if the user remains pressed up against the nearest surface. Price: 100gp per pill.

Hyperconcentrated Garlic Pill: “Useful for keeping vampires at bay. Also for keeping everyone else at bay.” An aggressively garlic-tasting-and-smelling tablet that makes the eater absolutely reek of garlic, repelling vampires (as well as anything else that can’t stand that level of garlic smell) but likely attracting something else for 4 hours. Vampires must make a DC 25 Will save to approach anyone infused with this much garlic, and are repelled as though presented with a holy symbol if they fail. A vampire that succeeds the throw is immune to the stink for 24 hours. Price: 20gp/pill.

Hyperconcentrated Pickle Pill: “Never understood why people hate the smell, but hey, maybe it’ll do you some good.” An aggressively pickle-tasting-and-smelling tablet that makes the eater absolutely reek of of pickles and brine, granting them the Stench universal monster ability for 4 hours and likely repelling anything with a sense of smell. The save DC vs the Stench is 13. Price: 10gp/pill.

Rope Gum: “Funny as it’d be, I can’t recommend chewing it for fear of lost business.” This teeny tiny pellet is easily concealed and appears to just be a wad of gum. When thrown at a hard surface, it suddenly explodes into a 30ft length of soft, spongy rope, which functions as mundane hemp rope. There’s no way to make it tangle around anything if thrown it at someone, so it’s useless as an actual weapon. It dissolves after 8 hours. Price: 25gp/pellet.

Hush Dust: “You say somethin’?” A sack of gray powder that dramatically bursts on impact with a surface. The dust clouds a 15ft square around the impact site, muffling all sound in the area; it applies a -10 penalty to any Perception check made to try and hear anything in the area. It can also be applied to the soles of the feet to grant a +5 circumstance bonus to Stealth checks to avoid being heard while walking. The dust’s effects linger for only 1 minute in the open air, 10 minutes on the feet. Price: 50gp/bag.

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Weapons

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Sack of Smooth Powder: “What kind of powder? Don’t worry about it.” A handful of this extremely fine, smooth-as-silk powder hurled into a square briefly reveals any invisible objects inside it. It’s also useful for testing for illusions. It’s also useful for hurling into the eyes of your enemies, but because it’s so fine the Fortitude DC to resist being blinded is only 8. It’s also useful for just about anything you can imagine a handful of fine powder to be useful for, including lying about it being lethally toxic. It’s not actually toxic, but it still shouldn’t be eaten. A sack has about 10 handfuls of powder in it. Price: 1gp/sack.

Alchemist’s Acid: “Basic bread and butter of any good kit, really.” Thrown splash weapon; 1d6 acid on direct hit. Can be used as an additional component in a few acid-based spells to make them beefier. Price: 10gp/flask.

Alchemist’s Fire:  “Fancier bread and butter. Never leave home without it.” Thrown splash weapon; 1d6 fire on direct hit, +1d6 next round from being on fire. Can be used as additional component in a few fire-based spells to make them beefier. Price: 20gp/flask.

Alchemist’s Ice: “It’s an acquired taste of bread and butter.” Thrown splash weapon; 1d6 cold damage on direct hit. Can be dumped into a liquid to freeze it solid immediately. It freezes up to 5 cubic feet of liquid. Can be poured over an item to coat it in a 1/2 inch-thick layer of ice. Can coat up to 5ft of a surface with ice. Can be used as an additional component in a few cold-based spells to make them beefier. Price: 40gp/flask.  

Mox’s Malice Flask: “It’ll eat through just about anything and anyone.” A much, much beefier acid flask. Thrown splash weapon. 3d6 acid damage on direct hit, then deals 1/2 the initial damage again next round. Price: 40gp/flask.

Bottled Lightning: “People talk about bottling lightning like it’s hard. Never understood that.” A glass jar containing lightning. Behaves like one of those cool plasma balls that arc to your fingers and stuff. Can be opened to make a ranged touch attack vs an enemy within 20ft, dealing 1d8 electricity damage on a hit. Anything in the 20ft line between you and the target must make a DC 15 Reflex save or take 1 sonic damage from the thunderous boom. Price: 40gp/jar.

Electroshock Therapy: “More therapy for you than it is for them.” A much, much beefier bottled lightning. It deals 3d6 electricity damage to the target and 5 sonic damage to everything in a line between you and the target (including the target themselves). Price: 60gp/jar.

Boom Jar: “All the noise of dynamite, none of the fire.” A clay jar filled with unusual fluids kept in separate chambers. Thrown splash weapon. Anything impacted becomes covered by the two fluids, which mix together one round later and explode with concussive force. Anyone covered in the fluid takes 1 sonic damage and is automatically deafened for 1d4 rounds, and must make a DC 13 Fortitude save or be stunned for 1 round. Anything within 5ft of the explosion takes 1 sonic damage and is deafened for 1 round. Anyone covered by the fluid can spend their full round scraping it off and onto the ground, assuring they won’t get stunned. Price: 35gp/jar.

Flask-a-Sharp: “A hurt that keeps on hurtin’.” A can or jar of green gel that rapidly crystallizes and breaks into razor-sharp fragments upon exposure to air. Thrown splash weapon; anyone impacted takes 1d4 slashing damage as the ball of gel explodes outwards. The square it lands in plus all squares adjacent to it become coated in these razor-sharp fragments, which act as vicious caltrops for 5 rounds before dissolving into useless goo. Price: 25gp/jar.

Tanglefoot Bag: “Good for stopping enemies from getting closer or further away.” You throw it at something you don’t want moving around, and it stops it from moving around for a while. I’d go into specifics, but the Tanglefoot Bag’s item description is like three paragraphs long. Price: 50gp/bag.

Pox Burster: “It’s like a water balloon, yeah.” Thrown splash weapon. Anyone struck by the item or its splash must make a Fortitude save (DC 13) or contract Filth Fever. For the next minute, anyone moving through the spaces sprayed by the Nasty must make a DC 9 Fort save or be infected, as well. Price: 5gp/bomb.

Wound Weal: “Easy to make. Makes my job a hell of a lot harder.” Injury poison that inhibits the victim’s ability to heal one round after exposure. All Heal checks are made at a -10 penalty, and any magical healing must pass by a DC 25 caster level check or fail completely. Fortitude 18 negates, but failing means the poison’s effect lasts for a full 24 hours. Poison pings once per day; 2 successful saves cures. Price: 110gp/dose.

Fester Muck: “I scrape this off the bottom of every vial I make Wound Weal in.” Injury poison that does not allow a saving throw, afflicting the victim automatically unless they’re immune to poison. All attempts to magically heal anyone poisoned by it must pass a DC 10 caster level check or the spell fails. It remains in the victim’s body for only 1 hour. Price: 30gp/dose.

Bone-Hurting Juice: “Now in six flavors!” This delicious-tasting, clear fluid is sold in sealed clay cups. Anyone drinking this poison must make a DC 20 Fortitude save or be immediately wracked with pain that radiates from their core outwards. This pain causes nausea for 1 round, and then sickness for 1d8 rounds after that. Succeeding in the saving throw reduces this to 1d4 rounds of sickened. Because of its flavor, it’s easy to hide in drinks or disguise via food coloring. Price: 80gp/cup.

Marker Dye: “Scientifically formulated to stain every conceivable surface and most inconceivable ones.” A flask of inky dye that’s impossible to remove without the Erase spell and comes in a whole rainbow selection of colors. Loses potency 72 hours application, allowing it to be washed off. Can be carefully applied to a surface, or the whole flask can be thrown as a splash weapon. One use of Marker Dye can cover 1 square foot of space, and each flask has 5 doses. Price: 15gp/flask.

Concentrated Stank Juice: “The guild’s been a big help with making this stuff by the barrel. ‘Specially you, Tail.” Thrown splash weapon. Anyone directly struck must make a DC 15 Fortitude save or be sickened for 2d6 rounds. If it fails the first save, it must make a second one or be nauseated for 1 round before the sickness kicks in. Anyone in the blast radius must make the Fortitude save or be sickened for 1 round. Anyone splashed by this reeks of stank for 2 hours after. Price: 40gp/flask.

Defoliant: “One jar of this stuff will piss off ANY druid.” A milky fluid that, when mixed with water, creates a toxin that can kill a 5ft square of mundane vegetation. Light vegetation dies in an hour, medium vegetation in 2, and heavy vegetation in 3. Massive trees take 1 dose of defoliant per 5ft square their base occupies to kill. Can be thrown at a plant monster as a splash weapon; a direct hit deals 1d6 HP damage, 1 Str and 1 Con damage. A jar of defoliant can clear up to 10 5ft squares. Price: 30gp/jar.

Flash Pellet: “Good for party tricks you don’t want anyone to look at.” A compacted ball of gray powder wrapped in dried grass or cloth. Creates a blinding burst of light if exposed to any amount of fire damage or a generous amount of friction, such as slamming it into a wall or the floor. Anyone in a 10ft burst must make a Fortitude save (DC 13) or be blinded for 1 round. Price: 5gp/pellet.

Hyperconcentrated Coffee Powder: “For those nights where you can’t afford to sleep, and for those enemies you can’t afford to let sleep.” Thrown splash weapon. Anyone directly struck must make a DC 15 Fortitude save or be poisoned by the powder; anyone in the splash radius must make a DC 10 Fortitude save instead. Anyone who fails is prevented from sleeping for 24 hours. Being put to sleep with magic is still possible. Mixing it with water and drinking it has the same effect. Price: 60gp/dose.

Itching Powder: “Half the scars on my body are from me getting exposed to this while making it.” Thrown splash weapon. Anyone struck directly must make a DC 12 Fortitude save to resist the powder; anyone in the splash radius must make a DC 8 Fortitude save instead. Anyone who fails is plagued with a relentless itching that imposes a -2 penalty to all rolls until they spend 1 full round washing it off with any liquid on hand. Price: 60gp/dose.

Sneezing Powder: “This would be the cause of the other half of the scars.” Thrown splash weapon. Anyone struck directly must make a DC 12 Fortitude save to resist the powder; anyone in the splash radius must make a DC 8 Fortitude save instead. Anyone who fails begins sneezing uncontrollably for 1d4+1 rounds, and is staggered. They can make a DC 10 Fortitude save at the start of their turn to resist the condition for 1 round. Price: 60gp/dose.

Rust Monster In-A-Tube: “I’m not responsible for any losses that result from the use of this product.” A paper tube sealed with wax and filled with rust-red flakes. The wax can be removed and the flakes poured onto an unattended item made of iron or steel; the item takes 10 damage as it rapidly begins to corrode, ignoring its hardness. Alternately, both ends of the tube can be removed and the dust blown into a 5-foot square; in this case, all iron and steel items in that square take 3 damage, ignoring hardness. Price: 70gp/tube.

Smokestick: “Less interesting but more practical than a Cloud In A Bottle.” A wooden stick that creates a thick cloud of smoke when burned. The stick burns away in a single round, creating a 10ft cloud of thick, obscuring smoke for 10 minutes. Price: 20gp/stick.

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Medicines

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Antiplague: “Ipecac’s bigger, stronger, probably-been-in-jail-before brother.” EXTREMELY nasty-tasting fluid that gives a +5 bonus to Fortitude saves vs disease for 1 hour. If drank when already sick, can immediately roll a Fortitude save (without the +5) twice and take the higher result to end the disease’s effects. Price: 50gp/dose. 70gp/dose to make it taste better.

Antitoxin: “Ipecac’s smaller, scrappier, definitely-been-in-jail-before cousin.” Foul-tasting liquid that gives a +5 bonus to Fortitude saves vs poison for 1 hour. Price: 50gp/dose. 70gp/dose to make it taste better.

Extra-Strength Painkiller: “Wasn’t sure which medicines to use for this recipe, so I used all of them.” An extremely bitter fluid that gives a +5 alchemical bonus to save versus pain effects and reduces all nonlethal damage by 1, for 1 hour. Price: 50gp/dose. 70gp/dose to make it taste better.

Bloodblock: “Stops hemorrhaging. Real useful in my line of work.” Using it while making a Heal check grants a +5 bonus to that check. Can be used to end bleed effects immediately. When used as part of a Heal check to treat deadly wounds, counts as a charge of a healer’s kit. Price: 25gp/dose.

Clear Ear: “Good news and bad news, and they’re both the same thing: You’ll hear everything.” Dripped into the ear. For 8 hours after it kicks in, +2 to all Perception and Knowledge checks, but -2 to all Charisma-based checks. Price: 15gp/dose.

Mellowroot: “Good news and bad news, and they’re both the same thing: You’ll feel invincible.” Sweet-tasting paste that grants a +5 alchemical bonus versus Fear effects for 1 hour. You must make a DC 15 Will save to willingly leave an enemy’s threatened squares. If you fail, you do not move but do not lose the action. Price: 25gp/dose.

Smelling Salts: “Guaranteed to be the smelliest salts in all of Dravaenn.” Grants an unconscious or staggered victim a new saving throw versus the effect keeping them impaired. Can be used on someone below 0 HP to wake them up immediately, but if they perform a standard action they take 1 damage and pass back out unless above 0. Container of smelling salts has 30 uses and 1 use is expended each round it remains open (it requires a full round to try and wake someone up). Price: 25gp/container.

Sooth Syrup: “Fun fact: I’ve replaced my stomach lining with this stuff.” Sweet and delicious. Coats the stomach when consumed, granting a +5 alchemical bonus to saving throws to resist being sickened or nauseated for 1 hour. Price: 25gp/dose.

Stillgut: “Fun fact: I’ve replaced other people’s stomach linings with this stuff.” Tasteless but uncomfortably thick liquid that coats the stomach when consumed, granting a +5 alchemical bonus to saving throws to resist being sickened or nauseated for 1 hour. Can be drank as a move action when already nauseous (even though nausea usually prevents actions) to immediately make a saving throw to end the condition (but without the +5), rolling twice and taking the higher result. Price: 50gp/dose.

Troll Oil: “Humanely produced with synthetic troll!” Thick, red syrup. For 1 hour after drinking, drinker automatically stabilizes if brought to 0 hp or lower. Bleed effects have a 50% chance each round of automatically being cured. Price: 50gp/dose.

Chilly Cream: “Not chili cream. That’s different, and also the opposite.” Sticky paste that’s applied to exposed skin like sunscreen. Provides a +2 alchemical bonus to resist the negative effects of hot weather, which becomes +4 in areas of bright light. Lasts for 1 hour per dose. A tin of chilly cream has 5 doses. Price: 15gp/tin.

Cayden’s Morning Kiss: “My best seller, hands down.” A salty powder that mixes with water to form a bitter, fizzling cocktail that cures hangovers of any intensity over the course of 10 minutes. Price: 2gp/dose.

Mox’s Patented Sweet Dreams Tonic: “It’ll knock you straight into dreamland and make sure your stay there is pleasant.” A fine, sweet, bubbly drink that causes drowsiness when drunk. Not enough to inhibit someone who wants to stay awake, but allows them to fall asleep with greater ease. If the drinker is affected by any mind-affecting effect within the next 24 hours, the tonic ‘activates’ and grants a +1 alchemical bonus to the save against it. This bonus lingers for 1d4 rounds after. The tonic also prevents mundane nightmares from occurring for 24 hours. Price: 5gp/dose. 6gp/dose if you’re Koko.

Mediteation: “One sip’ll clear your thoughts out enough that nasties’ll have a hard time holding onto them.” A cloudy, but soothing tea. For 10 minutes after drinking the tea, it grants a +2 bonus to saves versus mind-affecting effects. If the tea is drank while the drinker is suffering from a mind-affecting effect, it allows the drinker to immediately make a new save against the effect, rolling twice and taking the higher result. Price: 30gp/dose.

Concentrated Coffee: “Black as night, hot as Hell, bitter as half the guild.” Thick, syrupy, hot, extremely bitter fluid sold in small sealed cups that remains curiously warm no matter what. The drinker gains a +2 alchemical bonus on saving throws versus sleep, paralysis, and stagger effects for the next hour. If drank when already suffering from one of those effects, the drinker may make a new save against the effect, rolling twice and taking the higher result. Price: 40gp/cup.

Magnificent Mane Mixture: “Never understood why people like hair, but this’ll give you a whole lot of it.” A thick, sticky gel with a single unknown hair suspended in it. Smearing a dose on your skin and letting it sink in for 1 round causes rapid hair growth on that part of your body, with the hair growth not stopping until it reaches 1d6 feet long over the course of 1 minute per foot of hair. The grown hair is mundane and will last until it’s removed or altered by an outside force. If the gel is applied but scraped off within 1 round, it has no effect. It’s completely neutralized by alcohol; make sure to swab any surface you don’t want hair on (like your hands) with alcohol. Do not drink it. One bottle has 2 doses, and one dose is usually enough to cover the top of a Medum-sized creature’s head. Price: 10gp.

Creams: “What? Not everyone’s got gold to spend.” Skin cream, hair cream, tooth cream, eye cream, nail cream, cream that hides your age, cream that hides your blemishes, cream that amplifies your age or blemishes, and cream that undoes the side effects of the others. Usually mundane, but some of it is runoff from Mox’s other experiments that she’s deemed safe enough to sell. May come with side effects, both intentional and not. Price: Varies, but never more than 1gp.

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

Misc

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

Black Powder: “A thousand and one uses, all of them hysterical.” No one’s entirely sure how she manages to make this without access to a mine. A mystery, but it’s useful. One dose is typically enough to fire one round of ammunition, but plenty of more creative uses exist. Price: 3gp/dose.  

Quick-Freeze Oil: “Useful for crossing ponds, or trapping someone in one.” When poured over water, spreads to cover a 20ft circle in 1 round, and next round flash-freezes into a thick sheet of ice that can support 200lbs per 5ft square. The ice sheet lasts for 1 hour. Price: 50gp/flask.

Buoyant Balloon: “Won’t let you fly, but it’ll let your cat fly.” Move action to activate this alchemically-treated animal organ, which inflates to a 3ft-diameter sphere that rapidly rises into the air by 60ft/round unless tied down. Can carry up to 20lbs with it, but multiple balloons can be attached to the same object to achieve lift. Explodes once it reaches 600ft into the air, or after 10 minutes pass. Can also be used as an emergency flotation device in case you’re underwater. Price: 10g/balloon.

Alchemical Cement: “Lets you turn sand back into the rocks it descended from.” Gray powder that activates with water and is mixed with sand or gravel to make thick cement, which cures over the course of 1d10+10 minutes into stable stone. After 1d6 hours, it becomes true, solid stone. 1 dose can create 5 cubic feet of cement. Price: 5gp/dose.

Alchemical Glue: “It’ll stick anything to anything else.” Anything slathered in this glue will stick to anything else. The glue becomes tacky after 1 minute, and fully cured after 1 hour. Separating anything glued together with this glue takes a DC 20 Strength check for tacky glue, DC 25 for cured glue. The glue can suspend loads of up to 50 pounds from a wall or ceiling, but the item must be held in place until it becomes tacky. A flask of glue has 20 uses, and each use can cover 2 square inches of space when applied carefully. The 50-pound weight limit stacks with each use of glue. Price: 20gp/flask.

Lightning Glue: “BOOM! Your hand’s now stuck to your face.” As Alchemical Glue, except it becomes tacky in 1 round, and cures fully after 1 minute. Price: 50gp/flask.

Super Unsticker: “Luckily for you, I also sell the cure for glue.” Dissolves mundane adhesives such as glue, sap, spider webbing, and tar in 1 round. Dissolves more advanced adhesives such as alchemical glue, webbing from a Magical Beast, or tanglefoot bags in 1d4+1 rounds. Has no effect on magical adhesives like Sovereign Glue. Price: 15gp/dose.

Deodorizer: “You wouldn’t be standing here if I wasn’t wearing this stuff.” Anything coated in a dose of this powder has their scent completely masked for 4 hours. One jar contains 2 doses, and one dose can cover a Medium creature. Price: 30gp/jar. 

Reodorizer: “A dab of this behind your ear and you’ll be irresistible!” This aggressively flowery scented cream makes whatever it’s slathered on supernaturally attractive. Any creature with the Scent special ability can detect anything with reodorizer on it from ten times the normal distance, and has a +1 bonus to attack and damage rolls against the target. A creature wearing the reodorizer has a +2 alchemical bonus to all Charisma-based skill checks. A dose of reodorizer retains its potency for 2 hours. A jar of reodorizer has 4 doses. Price: 60gp/jar.

Glowing Ink: “For anyone that wants to read in the dark.” Anything written in this ink glows enough to allow it to be read in anything but the radius of a Deeper Darkness spell and grants anyone within 30ft a +2 on Perception checks to see the item. The glow does not weaken over time. One vial of ink can be used to pen up to 10 pages of writing. Price: 5gp/vial.

Invisible Ink: “For anyone that doesn’t want to read.” Invisible ink fades away 1 round after being put to paper. Invisible ink comes in four strengths: Simple, Average, Good, and Superior, which determines what conditions are required to get the ink to reappear. For example: Simple ink can be revealed with a simple trigger, such as heat. Average ink can be revealed with more uncommon triggers, such as certain chemicals, or blood. Good ink can be revealed with rare triggers, such a specific brand of wine or a certain species’ blood. Superior ink can only be revealed with a unique trigger, such as the blood of one specific person. Mox can customize ink triggers on request. One vial of ink can be used to pen up to 10 pages of writing. Price: 2gp, 10gp, 25gp, and 75gp per vial, for Simple, Average, Good, and Superior, respective.

Blackfinger Paste: “Good for getting caught black-handed.” When smeared across the fingers, the user does not risk accidentally poisoning themselves when handling poisons and it protects them from contact poisons they touch with their hands. The paste lasts for 6 hours but stains the user’s fingers for 6 full days afterwords. Price: 50gp/dose.

Fun Foam: “Fun for the whole family! Except for whoever’s on cleaning duty.” This 1lb sack of green powder works itself into a violent froth when exposed to water. The froth spreads outwards by 5ft a round in random directions until it has covered 50ft of space. Any square filled with the foam is treated as difficult terrain. After 1 hour, the foam settles down and turns into a thick, lime-green substance with the consistency of candle wax that smells like seawater. It breaks down into harmless powder over the course of 5 days. Price: 10gp/sack.

Smoke Pellets: “Available in six different colors and four different scents.” A packet pellet of powder that can be thrown at the ground as a splash weapon. On impact, it creates a thick plume of smoke that fills a 5ft space, obscuring everything inside. The smoke vanishes in 1 round. A package contains 4 pellets. Price: 25gp/package.

Instant Fertilizer: “Don’t ask how it’s made. Not because there’s a sinister ingredient, just because it’s a pain in the ass to explain.” A handful of this worryingly red gravel can be spread over 5ft of soil to provoke alarmingly fast plant growth. The ground becomes overwhelmed by weedy, rampant growth in just 1 round and becomes difficult terrain. Not super useful for true gardening since it’s indiscriminate in what plants it promotes the growth of. Plant creatures exposed to the fertilizer heal 2d6 HP and 1 point of ability score damage to each physical ability score. A sack of instant fertilizer has 2 handfuls inside. Price: 25gp/sack.

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

On Commission

“These items are a bit... pricier than my normal fare, or take more exotic ingredients I gotta, aaahhh, order. I can’t make ‘em often, and I can’t mass produce ‘em. Yet. But if you’re interested, we’ll see if I can’t make time in my schedule...” 

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

Soul Stimulant: “It took me a lot of time and a lot of assistants to perfect this recipe.” A soothing elixir that removes all penalties associated with negative levels for 12 hours. This doesn’t cure them, but it does prevent the user from dying if they rack up too many, so long as they continue to drink doses before the previous dose runs out. Price: 300gp/dose.

Troll Styptic: “Now made with real troll!” An awful, stinging solution that grants the target Fast Healing 2 for 2d4 rounds and removing all bleed effects automatically at the end of each round. The victim must make a DC 15 Fortitude save each round or be sickened from the pain of the wounds closing. 1 case contains 2 doses. Price: 100gp/case.

Ambrosia: “Stuff stings when I handle it, but it’s good for just about everything.” A beautiful golden elixir that grants its drinker a +2 sacred bonus to saving throws to avoid negative energy, energy drain, and death effects for 1 hour. This bonus also applies to saves made to remove negative levels. A flask of Ambrosia burns like holy water against undead and Evil outsiders. Price: 150gp/flask.

Surgical Slime: “People tell me that they can feel it moving inside them. Buncha wimps, that’s part of the appeal!” A generous handful of thick red glop that seeks out and eradicates unwanted guests within the body. One dose immediately rids the body of all invaders, such as infestations, implanted eggs, parasites, and any other non-disease effect which Remove Disease can get rid of over the course of 1 round. Price: 300gp/dose.

Warding Gel: “I got it in sunscreen and moonscreen.” Comes in both Fire Ward and Frost Ward; both are functionally identical, except for the energy type they block. It takes 1 minute to slather a dose onto a creature, and grants Fire or Cold Resistance 5 to its user for 2 hours, or until it successfully blocks 20 points of damage. It provides immunity to the effects of hot or cold weather so long as it lasts. One jar contains 2 doses, and 1 dose can cover 1 Medium creature. Price: 180gp/jar.

Reanimation Fluid: “I always keep at least one on hand. For party tricks, y’know.” Ominously glowing fluid kept in a syringe. When injected into a Medium or smaller corpse that’s been dead for less than 1 day (Gentle Repose helps), the corpse reanimates. This is not a true reanimation; the body is neither an undead nor a construct. Its brain is completely inert. The fluid is merely causing random muscular spasms, which makes the body shamble aimlessly around, looking around at random, making a low groaning noise every few seconds. More of a wind-up toy than anything else. This show lasts for 1 minute or until the body is destroyed. Price: 150gp/dose.

Warding Ash: “Hate touchin’ this stuff, but zombies hate it more.” A jar of ash that undead find repulsive. Unintelligent undead cannot willingly cross a line of warding ash, recoiling upon touching it or attempting to step over it. It has no effect on intelligent undead beyond a momentary revulsion. The ash’s effects remain in place for 1 minute, or until the line is broken by an outside source. One jar of ash has enough to create four 5ft lines (thus the whole jar can be used to draw a protective circle around a space, or two uses can be used to block off a 10ft-wide hallway, etc). Price: 160gp/jar.

Grenades: “Black powder has so many uses, it feels like such a waste to make these...” Thick clay vessels with an ominous black fuse, with Mox’s smiling face painted on the side. If the fuse is lit (a move action), the grenade will explode 1d3 rounds later, dealing 2d6 bludgeoning damage and 1d6 fire damage to everything in a 10ft burst (Reflex DC 15 halves). Can be thrown as if it were a splash weapon, making it explode on impact instead of 1d3 rounds later. Price: 100gp/bomb.

Heavy Grenades: “...But money’s money. Lets see how much powder we can fit inside.” Bloated clay vessels with an ominous skull and crossbones painted on the side. As a normal grenade, except the fuse is much longer (unless cut), burning down 1d8+1 rounds later. The explosion is much more dramatic, dealing 4d6 bludgeoning and 2d6 fire damage to everything in a 20ft burst (Reflex DC 17 halves). Can be thrown as a splash weapon, but has only a 5ft range increment b/c it’s so fucking unwieldy. It still explodes on impact. Price: 250gp/bomb.

A Straight-Up Keg of Black Powder: “It’s gonna take me a week to fill this order, y’know, but I’m eager to see what you’re gonna do with it.” It’s not shipped in, it’s not mined... How’s she making so much of it? In any case, this is a shitload of black powder. About 150 doses, in fact, enough to blow just about anything across all nine circles of Hell one way or another. Comes with a 2-round, 4-round, 10-round, or 1-minute fuse on request. Does 4d10 bludgeoning and 2d8 fire damage to everything within a 50ft radius (Reflex DC 20 halves) after blowing. Price: 1000gp/keg.

Extremely Heavy-Duty Cleaning Solution: “If this can’t get the stain out, it can’t be gotten out.” A milky fluid with fumes so caustic and thick that it threatens to suffocate anyone trapped in a room with it. When poured over a space, it absolutely obliterates all traces of organic matter over the course of a minute before evaporating into a thick, noxious cloud that slowly dissipates over the course of an hour. It deals 1d8 acid damage per round to any organic substance it comes in contact with, which is tripled if the substance in question is inanimate, such as blood, hair, leather, paper, severed limbs, or entire inert corpses (but not including living vegetation or undead beings). It leaves a very obvious stain on any surface it touches but doesn’t dissolve, which lingers for 1d4 days after. A terrible idea to use in a house with wooden floors. One dose of EHDCS can cover a five foot space and/or destroy one Medium-sized corpse, and it’s sold in jugs with 6 doses inside. Price: 340gp/jug.

Hyperconcentrated Stank Pill: “Not every day you see something that makes me crinkle my nose. This stuff? This stuff’s dangerous.” A pitch black pill with an odor so indescribably foul that it has to be sold in an airtight container with an accompanied clothespin to hold the eater’s nose shut until they get the thing down. The stank coming off of the pill is grotesque enough to give the pill itself a 5ft aura of Stench, with the DC to resist becoming sickened being 15. Anything eating the pill gains the Stench ability, with a DC 25 to resist sickness, as well as a +2 deflection bonus to AC because the smell wafting off of the user becomes so intense just an inch from the skin that it forms a physical barrier. Anyone grappled by the user must make a DC 20 Fortitude save each round or become nauseated by the stench, but making their save means they’re unaffected by the foulness for 24 hours. The pill’s effects last for only 2 hours before it’s completely sweated out, but harmless (and terrible) remnants of the stink will cling to their body and clothes for a week afterwords. Price: 400gp/pill.

[autoirishlitdiscourses]

Discourse of Saturday, 03 July 2021

Have a good recitation.

Jolly old woman. One option that you turn in a particular text, and quite engaging and lucid, and does so in section on 27 November recitation, too, OK? You may find that speaking with me on the web? You should do, in fact, you have a Disabled Services Program accommodation for? One way but not unimportant juxtapositions that the episode—are we to make this offer to do so, because it makes life more stressful for you to make a habit of it myself.

I think that one of the situation, but I think that what your argument to go is also an impressive move you might notice Bloom's interest in is the only representation of its most precious illusions. I expected, and you receive no credit for the positions that you should by all means pay close attention to how other people would probably help you grow as a whole. Don't forget to look at what constitutes evidence, and you related it well to the question of what texts you see, specifically? The group was already warmed up for points of your texts, a good Thanksgiving break. You effectively acknowledged the work. You could theoretically have been possible to accomplish this before in case they ask you if he asks you specific questions that you have any questions as you point out of all of these come down to recite and discuss can be a way that makes a strong reason for doing a good student and I enjoyed having you in section tonight, along with the rest of the texts, and it shows in places, and/or need to be making, since we've just set this up, I've also gone ahead and decide which texts you want to get this to everyone who was genuinely responsive to early questions didn't get your ideas in here, although this was a mispronunciation of surmise that broke the poem's ideas needed a vocal pause in order to move up, if you'd like. I'm not faulting you for doing such an incredibly minimalist effort on the other side of your discussion notes by the victims and requires a Dirty Harry, a productive choice, so I do not re-inscribe Gertie into the A-and I appreciate that you're capable of punching through to a copy of the theorists involved and the group to agree with the assumption that you can do at least twelve lines of poetry into music and want to take a radically relativist position and suggest that everything else goes smoothly with you, I can think in line 22. Looks good to me. You really do have good, clear readings of all but the attentive amongst you will have to get very very sensitive and nuanced interpretation—I've tried to point your students at it, and the to a strong preference on going second or third, although the multiple starts ate up time that could have been in all ways to read from Butcher Boy here. Alternately, you did fumble a bit here. Nothing that I'm still a few things that, going into the novel within one of the class about stereotypes of Irish Women's Poetry, 1967-2000 ISBN 978-0-916390-88-4 around, it's a bit of wiggle room. In any case, you're welcome to share these with your own ideas. For the recitation, got people talking. Think about what your overall payoff will be. I get there naturally. I don't mean to take so long to get it in a lot of information with a GPA of 3. That section of the quarter, you might profitably compare/contrast formula and show that you're dealing with. Again, very solid work here. /Annotations to James Joyce's Ulysses: she's married and has been very close less than thrilled about with this question, but are intended to culminate in a comparative manner over time, I think that you're talking about home in general might mean by passionate, insightful, moving delivery and/or larger concerns. More administrative issues?

Both of these are impressive moves. 54 2. Hi! It never compares, at least forty-eight hours of your mind, keep reciting it, in part because, when it's entirely up to him. In all of which parts of The Butcher Boy the following details about exactly what you're going to depend on where you found it on a different segment later in the judgments that sort people into the A-paper receives is based on whether or not effectively support the writer's argument. Hi! /Or minor problems. Forcing yourself to ground your analysis more: I think, always a productive exercise I myself use LibreOffice.

I hit the Send button in my camera died, I'm sorry to say, I have a good weekend! You really have done some very, very good outcomes of your writing is also impressive. You have a few other things, and the ideas you had a good job of covering a large number of important things to say this not just of choosing not to say that a B paper one day: although you should then discuss the readings in a more elaborate description if you have any other questions! I'm planning on doing a strong job!

Great! The Dubliners' version of GOLD than you were very sensitive and nuanced things to talk to me. So, in a chapter of Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer's Dialectic of Enlightenment that is in your delivery was good, but made up for it. —As it needs to be over. Thanks again for doing a genuinely excellent job well done. However, I think that bringing one of the room, but I'm hesitant to quote in, say, surrealist painting and other works, we should be engaging in a packet of poems tonight. I did better. All in all, you can make my 6 o'clock section, so I hope you had a good holiday, and it's a reflective piece, for that section within the realm of possibility for you. Or you could be made about grammar and phrasing but these are required, and I quite like your performance, that's incredibly comprehensive. Currently, what do you mean when you argue that one thing is nothing more than you were so excited by your own writing and/or the penalty. I didn't anticipate at the structural schema given to friends: Carlo Linati; Stuart Gilbert J. B 415 435 B 400 415 B-77% 80% C 73% 77% C 70% 73% C-means that a contemporary English poet might be productive. Come by my office hours. That is to say. You covered some important things in your analysis in a third document might involve how media images get stuck in Francie's head and the rusted poison did corrode his blood the way: It's often easier to get back to you with comments tomorrow. There are a couple of extra minutes to make sure it's a wonderful and restful holiday break! Picking a selection of what you see as the source of a topic that I can. You'll get that in as soon as you can bring your participation score a small boost to your next email it to the course's large-scale course concerns and themes, looking at evidence that you can do with the Easter Rising, and not Silence of the stack anyway. First: make sure that it's one of the due date that you want to ruin it for a student with a well-structured manner; and mop up on posting links to songs and other emotions related to each other, broader problem is that I assign your final exam yes, that you want to help each and every lecture. If you wanted to meet this status, there are some of Yeats's poem, its mythical background, contemporary politics, and number the episodes on the syllabus. Excellent! That's fine just let me do so. Again, thank you for putting so much that that is important in connecting outrage to analysis. One of these various types and weave them into a more specific: I am of course grade. I think. 'S, 5 C-range paper/—even by one line—/is/always/bring the week's readings with you that placing the non-traumatized at least 98% on the most important would be a useful fallback plan. I will be. If you have any other number of genuinely meaningful contributions that you demonstrate a very productive. Strange feeling it would help you to trace a clear line between some line that intersects several of these come down to it? Hell, bandwidth's really cheap these days. So, where do you see as the major possibilities, and we can meet on campus never quarter. However, I think that you're painfully aware of their work relates to WB's work. However, you did eight IDs instead of or in posting your notes are absolutely unchangeable, because you clearly had a low-ish A-scale umbrella of what might be a motivated one, and don't remember it in economic terms or terms that differ are generally fair and often very nuanced readings by using hedging phrases like I said before, and good choice to me, and you've proven that you are absent or late, missing more than the course as a whole and contextualizing the paper, and that it's less successful than it would have had to take so long to get back to you.

So, it may be that our sympathy is based on the midterm would result in a lot of things well here: you had planned to cover, refreshing everyone's memory on the final. I completely appreciate that you're already doing a good student this quarter, and I hope you have a good idea, you did quite a good chunk of the problem with the middle of how percentages or point totals above are necessary ways to approach the question from another angle: What is the ideal resource, but you did quite an impressive move, which involves speculations about the relative value of the play pp. Think about what your paper. On Raglan Road, which has Calc, a professor in our department, Candace Waid, just over the break. That is, I also consider lack of Irish literature. /Corrections, but will post before I pass it out, it will eventually force someone to speak without forcing them. So, my suggestion is not that you really have done some very good recitation and what kind of reader-response criticism which is to have a sense of what texts you choose a good sense of the beautiful little gem that is appropriate and helpful.

It is in the novel. I'm gonna pretend I didn't anticipate at the last day for most of that motivation is will pay off to have thought of it as coming in on the day you are, after all, you've got a good holiday break! I left item 5 off of the first line of your recitation. There is a series of archaic softhearted misplaced sympathies for criminals. Another potentially profitable, but needs to be finding a way to find that thesis, because they're from a rope on line 14; changed I told him that I think that the professor's announcement that he has now missed three sections a very good job in a thesis statement throughout your time and attention to the pound, which pulled the grades up. Unfortunately, the average i.

#Irish literature #automatically generated text #Patrick Mooney #Python #Markov chains

[angelguk]

law of attraction - taeyong scenario

Lee Taeyong - NCT

words - 2.1k

parts - 1 & 2

genre - mafia!au / police!au / angst (eventually)

 warnings - descriptions of violence / drugs / vulgar language 

soundtrack - sir sly, high

note: this scenario will be updated with two chapters everytime

dedicated to @taeyongbelviso happy birthday you headass

1

Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.

In the distance, a metal door rattled. The clack of a lever being pulled echoed throughout the abandoned warehouse. It faded away back to silence, the watch on Agent Sehun beside you filling the atmosphere with its insistent ticking once again. You kept your gaze focused on the dust-coated floor beneath your worn combat boots, eyes frequently rising to analyse the corroded iron bars that held the shabby structure together. You ignored the urge to stretch your worn muscles out. The flight from London to Seoul had been rushed; you had barely had enough time to recuperate from your previous mission.

Metal scraped against metal as the entrance of warehouse was pushed open, the room instantly flooded with the pale glow of morning sunlight. Footsteps followed the light, the sound of feet colliding with hard floor bouncing off your ears. You’d expected one set of footsteps but your mind registered three. One stopped, firm murmuring joined the pause in movement. The other two carried onwards.

The entrance was suddenly pushed back closed, shutting out the sunlight and leaving all five of you in bathing in the muted glow.

With a small sigh, you spun around on your foot, eyes landing on one expected figure and two strangers.

Chief Soo Man Lee had aged considerably since the last time you’d seen him – which was at your graduation ceremony when he’d recruited you. His thin grey hair was slicked against his forehead, covering wrinkled tan skin. He was slouching a little as if his back was about to give way. Still, his frame was lean, small but lean, and his mouth was drawn into a thin severe line.

“Officer Y/N. Good to see you arrived safely.”

You nodded, gaze shifting to the two men beside him. Both were considerably young, or at least they looked like it. They were dressed in dark colours; the left one was adorned in deep navy slacks and a half-buttoned pressed white shirt, the right in slate trousers and obsidian button up however his sleeves with carefully rolled up to reveal toned pale forearms.

“Before I give you a briefing on the new assignment,” Chief said, tucking his hands into the pockets of his trousers. “I would like to congratulate you on your previous mission. You did exceptionally well Ms Y/L/N. The agency and I are very pleased with your results which is why you were selected for this particular assignment.”

You absorbed the information, suppressing the pride that rose from your guts at his praise. The London incident was insane, especially because you were a new agent. It had shocked you, even more, when they had placed you there for your first assignment. It had also made you more determined to succeed.

Surprisingly that determination had worked for you.

“I’m joined by guests today, as you can see. This,” Chief gestured to his left, “Is Agent Zhang Yixing and this,” his hand gestured to the right, “Is Agent Do Kyungsoo. They’ve joined us from the Secret Service Administration. Officers, this is Officer Y/N.”

S2A Agents. That meant that whatever assignment you were about to be given was of national threat level. Interesting.

Agent Do shot you a smile that didn’t go past his lips. His chestnut eyes were narrowed and you had the odd feeling that he was annoyed at this situation. Zhang was no better, his thin peach toned lips didn’t even bother to contort themselves into a minuscule smile. His gaze was hard and analysing, raking over your figure with haughty scrutiny.  

“Now that introductions are complete, I’ll give you this.” Chief reached into his dark suit jacket, ruffling through the various pockets to extract a thin manila folder. He stepped forward, tossed in your direction.

You barely caught it, crumpling up the folder in your grasp as Chief Lee slowly retreated from the site. He paused, twisting his head to look back you the four of you.

“Zhang and Do will explain the assignment to you and if you have any questions direct it to them. They’ll be mentoring you on everything. Officer Oh will escort you back to your hotel room when this is over. I trust that you will not fail nor embarrass our Agency Y/N.” His brown eyes had hardened into a dark abyss.

“I won’t sir.”

“You better not Y/N. There’s a lot more at stake than you think.”

He left without another word, leaving only the sillage of his musky cologne lingering in the air and your guts twisting with apprehension.  

You ignored both S2A Agents, turning your attention to rifle through the folder you’d be given. There was a singular white paper inside. Gingerly extracting it, your eyes were meant by a familiar name on the sheet.

NAME: LEE TAEYONG

AGE: 22

BORN: 1995/07/01

OCCUPATION: CEO AND FOUNDER OF BLIZZARD (SOFTWARE PROGRAMMING COMPANY)

There was a headshot attached, depicting a young man with dark straight locks that stuck to his pale forehead. You didn’t bother to examine it in detail. Lee Taeyong was one of the most adored entrepreneurs of the 21st century. He’d started his software company three years ago, fresh out of high school, which had quickly risen to be one of the greatest company in South Korea.

You had no idea why you were currently holding his profile.

A cough from Agent Do caught your attention. “It may seem strange that we have Lee Taeyong there but it’s correct. I’m sure you’ve head of the Syndicate?”

You nodded, mind already placing pieces together.

“We’ve been unable to successfully track and detain their leader, however, a month ago we received info that Lee may have contact with him. We need you in to infiltrate their organisation.”

“So I’m posing as a new employee?”

“Not exactly.” Zhang suddenly spoke up, straightening his posture. “The info we received also mentioned that Lee happened to buy a server girl at a bar after she was abused by one of the patrons.”

“So you want me to get beat up to receive his sympathy?”

He smiled, the grin revealing dimples on both sides of his cheeks. “Precisely. It’s better for you to enter in this way. Starting as an employee would take too long and we’ve heard that he’s rarely in the office anyways.”

You sighed, tucking the sheet of paper back into the manila folder. “Why isn’t his file comprehensive?”

“We’ve had trouble researching information on him. Nearly everything was wiped off the web,” Officer Do said.

That alone said a lot. Taeyong does have enough money to pay someone to get this information offline. He could even instruct one of his employees to do it for him. That, however, could only mean that he had something to hide.

“Officer Oh will also be helping us with the investigation,” Zhang nodded at the man who stepped forward. “Tomorrow he will transfer you to the lab where you will be shaped for the assignment.”

Nodding, you reached into your pocket to pull out a lighter. With a click, a small flame burst from the crimson lighter. It took a couple seconds before the file began to burn. The flame licked upwards, engulfing the brown and white papers in a burst of flaming amber. You dropped it once it burnt halfway, watching the rest of the document turn into dark slate ashes.

“Alright then. Let’s go.”

 2

There was a reason Byun Baekhyun was regarded as eccentric by everyone in the agency. The main reason was most likely the fact that the man did not know when to shut his mouth. Words spewed past his thin lips like a gun with the safety turned off. The second would be his personality as an entirety.

“Baekhyun!”

The man promptly halted, hands that had been flogging through the air frozen. He looked at you expectantly, his wire-framed glasses slipping down the bridge of his nose. “Yes?”

Lithely leaping down from the platform above his array of contraptions you focused on the man, a false smile painted on your lips. “How does knowing how immensely enhanced microscopic surveillance has become within the last year relevant to my assignment.”

Knocking his glasses back up, he laughed, a broad smile stretching and etching itself into his skin. “Well, uh, it’s not. Well not necessarily actually. You’re still doing a reconnaissance mission right, so in fact, it could help y-“

“Save it, please. I have a briefing with Oh later. I’m trying to save my tolerance for him.”

The smile on his face vanished, like a rain cloud passing over the bright sun, only to be substituted with a rueful grin. “My apologies Y/N, I’ll try my best to keep my mouth in check. We should start, shan’t we?” He swivelled to face the three grand screens before him. His fingers spryly danced over the keyboards as he swiftly pulled up your new profile. A somber picture of you glared from the screen. Your hair was innocently tied back, revealing wide eyes that rendered you as anodyne. How you managed to seem so delicate after all those years at the Academy still perplexed you.

“Alright, so your new name is Jeon Soyoung. Aged twenty-one. You were born on March 24th, 1996 in Gyeongyong, a small town in Busan. Both your parents are deceased; your mother from a pill overdose and your father from alcohol poisoning. You lost your two younger siblings Kihyun and Minah to social services. Both have been separately adopted within the last three years. Your father was failed salesmen so you’ve been living beneath the poverty line since you were fifteen. After your mother’s death social services took away Minah but they left Kihyun with you who was adopted last year. You don’t speak to your siblings because you don’t want to remind them of what they went through. You graduated high school with mediocre grades and failed to secure a decent university placement. You’ve been in and out of work since you graduated, mostly doing bar work. You moved to Seoul because your uncle’s friend promised to find you a decent place to stay and work placement. And that basically sums it up.”

You nodded, brain absorbed the information Byun had just dumped at your feet. There were still inconsistencies that you could pick from the fabricated story though. “What is my uncle’s friend name?”

“Lee Minjae,” Byun easily shot back.

“And how can we prove this?”

“Chief Lee hasn’t informed you? We’ve had several agents posted around that area since we found out Taeyong could be implicated in drug smuggling. He frequents the place too often for us not be curious about it Y/N.”

You blinked, vaguely surprised. “For how long?”

“Around six months now. The locals know the agent well and his credibility among them is decent.”

“Oh.” Six months! They’ve been planning this mission for six months? The stakes at risk instantly become more apparent.

“Alright then, that’s covered. Now come over here Soyoung you need some fancy gadgets to help you catch the bad guys.”

You scorned at him, following his trail to the glass cabinet where he stored all his surveillance equipment.  

“These,” He said, snatching up a box of contact lenses, “Have built-in cameras. Try not to rub your eyes as you’ll displace or scuff the lenses.” He tossed them onto the marble counter you’d leaned on. He then reached for a thin small flat onyx box. His fingers gently grazed against the cover and it snapped into two, revealing a lethal looking blade. “Keep this around your chest or in between your thighs if you can. Also if you press right here,” He motioned to the tip of the box, “A red light will appear and it’ll allow you to record. Albeit only conversations that a relatively close to you.”

You idly toyed at the contacts and the blade Byun had handed over. “Is that it?”

He nodded, fluffy blonde curls bouncing eagerly. “I can’t give you much more since the length of the mission is unclear. Even those are a risk. If you’re found with that blade what possible explanations could you give?”

Your lips twist into a rueful smile that didn’t’ reach your eyes. “It was a gift from my ignominious mother.” Baekhyun wouldn’t have even guessed what you truly meant, assuming the statement was not a harsh truth but rather a poor attempt at a joke.

He still laughed, the warm chuckle colouring the cool air vibrant. The laugh grazed gently against your skin, slipping beneath the thick surface with difficulty. Your smile fell as he said, with palpable obliviousness floating in his voice, “Have some shame Soyoung. Your parents must be rolling in their graves.”

a/n - happy late late late bithday present zey and thank you to all my little lovelies for reading. feedback is appreprcated!- faith

#taeyong #taeyong scenarios #taeyong fics #taeyong fic #nct scenarios #nct scenario #nct fic #nct #nct 127 #kpop fanfic #kpop scenario #kpop angst #kpop fanfiction #mafia!au

[fapangel]

Re; Twitter in which you mention nerve gas shells from Nork tube arty. Details plz.

Sure. 

The most overlooked part of North Korea’s countervalue arsenal is its significant suspected stockpiles of chemical weapons. I’ve dissected the reasons why the old “DPRK artillery will level Seoul in minutes” is overhyped bullshit, but if you consider chemical weapons, not just conventional shells, it changes the math significantly. (This article has a pretty good rundown of just how much so.) Before we can make any strong statements on the DPRK artillery threat, the chemical weapons have to be considered first. 

Chemical weapons are classified as Weapons of Mass Destruction because their effects are so terrifyingly outsized compared to their quantity - a single drop of something like Sarin is enough to kill someone within minutes. A single gallon of this shit could easily kill, oh, 3000-5000 people, ballparking it… if you carefully dosed them all one-by-one with an eyedropper. The incredible destructive efficiency of chemical weapons is lost if its all dumped in one spot - hence the problem with chemical warheads is always one of distribution. The optimal way to do it - with a crop-duster style aircraft - is also the optimal way to get a SAM rammed up your ass, so delivery mechanisms are always the biggest challenge in employing these weapons. 

Most conventional systems can also deliver chemical warheads, including artillery, rocket artillery, aircraft, and tactical ballistic missiles. Since North Korea’s woefully outdated aircraft are unlikely to last thirty seconds once they cross the DMZ, that leaves artillery, rocket artillery and TBMs to consider.

Artillery has the distinct advantage of being effectively impossible to intercept, but suffers largely from its limited payload capacity compared to other weapons. Artillery can make up for this over time by firing more shells - and even shifting aim to achieve a better distribution of chemical - but chemical artillery barrages suffer the same problem that conventional ones do, in that it’s far more effective on the first few salvos, when it can catch the enemy (or civilians) out in the open. Once people bunker down inside buildings or shelters, artillery - of any sort - is far less effective. 

Rocket artillery solves those problems. Generally speaking, rockets trade off projectile velocity and accuracy for greater throw weight and downrange energy efficiency. Rockets don’t need heavy gun barrels, either, so they can salvo-launch an entire strike quite quickly, achieving incredible density of fire. Compare the standard US 155mm artillery shell, with a 22.5km range and 10.8kg HE payload, to the standard US artillery rocket, with an 84km range and a whopping 90kg HE payload. This incredible range and weight of fire is why rocket systems are ideal for “shoot-and-scoot” missions and/or counter-battery attacks, and also why they’re ideal for chemical attack. Even their relative inaccuracy (for non-US dumbfire systems, like North Koreas) can be a positive, as it spreads the agent around more widely without laborious shifts of fire. 

Unfortunately, the one drawback that used to be insignificant now matters - the projectile’s size and speed. That never mattered outside of direct-fire missions (like shoulder-fired AT rockets,) but technology is good enough that it’s actually possible to intercept artillery - even mortars, which are very small projectiles moving at a good clip. Compared to a proper cannon shell, rockets are both massive and slow - any C-RAM system (Counter Rocket and Mortar) is quite capable of knocking them down. That goes a long way towards mitigating their advantages over artillery shells. 

The last option is of course as Tactical Ballistic Missile payloads. Delivering chemical agents with these is often easier than with tactical systems (pg. 23) simply because you’ve got more room to work with. Proper dispersal of chemical agents is highly dependent on a properly-timed airburst, which in turn requires fuzes that are not only reliable and highly sensitive compared to your average point-detonating fuze, but robust to the acceleration of firing and resistant to electronic jamming despite that enhanced sensitivity. That’s hard enough before you miniaturize said fuzes to fit on artillery shells and harden them to survive the high accelerations of a big gun barrel. (This is yet another factor weighing in favor of rocket artillery.) They also throw a very big payload and have much better range… 

… unfortunately for the DPRK, however, they’re not tremendously efficient at distributing chemical agents, as they’re delivered all in one big dose. There’s ways around this, of course, such as cluster warheads that release a bunch of submunitions from higher up to achieve much better coverage, but then you’re right back to the same problems with fuze miniaturization, sensitivity and reliability. And of course, the biggest problem for the DPRK is that the ROK/US’s ABM are very robust, with a three-tier system - American SM-3s, the very effective THAAD system and the proven Patriot PAC-3 interceptors, which were developed specifically to counter this kind of missile (after experiences with Saddam’s Scuds in the Gulf War.) Then there’s the simple fact that there’s no better delivery mechanism for the DPRK’s likely stockpile of low-yield fission bombs; nukes are much more reliable than chemical weapons, not affected by weather, and do serious damage to infrastructure and physical units plus radiation poisoning, instead of just sickening and killing people. 

Now modern first-world armies have long since licked all the technical problems mentioned above, with almost unlimited Cold War military funding to blow on these considerations. But for North Korea these issues are highly significant. The DPRK’s artillery forces didn’t exactly put on a great showing during their surprise attack on Yeonpyeong island; not only was their fire piss-poor inaccurate, but a full 25% of their shells were duds. Artillery is still one of the most important weapons of war because compared to aircraft and ballistic missiles, they’re simple and dirt cheap. They barely need any maintenance at all, but even a point-detonating fuze will corrode or fail if its been sitting in a drafty warehouse stockpile since the 50s. This goes double for rockets; solid rocket motors are pretty damn robust, but they do have to fly; a rocket that malfunctions in flight tends to do nothing upon landing, whereas an artillery shell is just an inert lump of metal whistling along - if it left the barrel at all, it’ll manage to ruin someone’s day wherever it lands. Multiply this by the much more sensitive and capable fuzes required for chemical agents, and that atrocious 25% dud rate starts to loom large. One might presume the DPRK has prioritized chemical shells for better, more expensive fuzes, but the fact that their conventional stockpiles are in such bad shape illustrates just how cash-strapped they are. Much like their nukes, the size of their chemical stockpiles doesn’t matter past their ability to actually deliver them. 

With these problems in mind, consider again a potential counter-value bombardment of Seoul. Rocket artillery is their best delivery option there, both for aforementioned reasons and because Seoul’s C-RAM defenses are far less robust than ROK/US ABM defenses (as they currently stand.) The rocket artillery, however, suffers from an especial weakness the heavy guns don’t - vulnerability during firing. 

Most DPRK artillery near the DMZ, and especially opposite Seoul, is dug deep into mountainside bunkers; shelters known as “HARTS” (Hardened Artillery Shelter,) and prior to the recent rise of the Precision Guided Munition, this wasn’t a bad idea. Now, however, all these HARTs do is tie DPRK down to fixed locations that have been observed and mapped over fifty years of obsessive and constant reconnaissance and observation - many of those positions have been in target catalogs before anyone reading this was born. The HARTs still benefit the DPRK some becuase they simply don’t have many self-propelled guns; so the shelters at least increase the munitions cost to silence, allowing the heavy guns to blaze away longer before they’re knocked out. 

The rocket artillery, however, cannot fire from inside a shelter (for much the same reason most RPGs can’t be fired from inside houses.) The HART protects them from pre-emptive destruction, but to actually fire they’ve got to drive out of their “garage” and onto a pre-prepared concrete firing pad to engage. Given how quickly they can fire their entire payload, this wasn’t much of a problem… again, until modern tech comes into play. 

The heavy guns in their HARTS can’t be killed by simple HE counter-battery fire; they’ll require GPS-guided MLARs unitary warhead rockets designed for bunker-busting, or Small Diameter Bombs (fired either by M270s or airstrikes.) Even Hellfires from drones or choppers will work. That’s a LOT less convenient than just pointing a cannon in the right direction and rubbing out another Nork battery 30 seconds of flight time later, and that’s why the Norks use them. But the rocket artillery, the “Katyushas,” can be blasted the second they stick their noses out of their shelters. It just requires knowing when they’ve done that, and that’s where the ROK/US’s massive advantage in ISTAR comes into play. Not only do we have an extensive arsenal of stealth recon platforms - including the RQ-170 and the still-unseen but in-service RQ-180 - to conduct pregame scouting with, but once the fight starts in earnest, our unparalleled jamming abilities will take DPRK air defenses along the DMZ out of play. This will allow our massive arsenal of tactical drones - Reapers, Global Hawks, et al - relative impunity over the battlefield, and their sensors are good enough to pick out targets well above the MANPAD ceiling - or at least well above the Mark 1 eyeball’s ceiling of reliable detection. To be quite blunt, nothing will move in the DPRK but we will know the INSTANT it stirs. This is especially possible because we already know where all these HARTs are. A tremendous amount of America’s combat advantage relies on an entire system of very expensive equipment designed to collate information from multiple platforms, make decisions using it, and issue firing orders to other units - the E-8 Joint Stars is a platform that exists strictly for this job. Combined with the decades-long scrutiny of the DMZ, it is not an exaggeration to say that DPRK Katyusha’s will have counterbattery fire inbound on them before they’ve even reached their firing pads. Yes, we are that fucking good. Considering the vast sums of money spent on developing those capabilities, it’d be stranger if we weren’t. 

This doesn’t consider beefing up Seoul’s C-RAM defenses, either. America operates the Centurion C-RAM, and it’s proven fairly effective against mortars - against rockets, it’d work even better, as they’re much bigger targets, and chemical agents dispersed too high are useless, unlike an HE rocket who’s warhead might survive to reach the ground. But these only defend about a half-mile square each; they’re suited for defending point targets (military bases) and not covering big cities. They can’t engage multiple targets at once, either. 

There is a much better system out there, however - the Israeli “Iron Dome,” which was specifically designed to stop artillery rockets. Not only that, the Israelis have a very tight alliance with the United States, and their missile defense systems (including Iron Dome,) were co-developed with us. It’s far from inconceivable that the US could either request Israel deploy some of their systems, or that the US could buy some outright and engage in a “crash training program” for our own personnel (i.e. outright lying about Israeli personnel operating the systems) in a crisis. These would be far less contentious than deploying the THAAD system, as it’s a strictly tactical system - even the DPRK would see it as evidence that their threats and saber-rattling is working, because they’d be purely defensive weapons deployed in a  real hurry and at great expense financially and perhaps politically, indicating the ROK/US truly believes the DPRK is about to attack. Since that’s an impression the DPRK is trying to give us, they’d be pleased about that. 

In other words, it wouldn’t be unduly hard to beef up Seoul’s C-RAM defenses as preparation for an attack on North Korea, without telegraphing it as such. 

That leaves us, then, with the North Korean artillery - or rather, the fraction of it actually capable of ranging Seoul proper. As mentioned above, their dug-in nature makes them more costly to engage in a time-efficient manner - artillery is far faster and more immediate than repeated aircraft sorties, and those are the ones that deliver reliable bunker-busters. However, that doesn’t mean the artillery can’t knock them out with counter-battery - far, far from it. 

For starters, there’s the M270 MLARS system, operated by both the US and our ROK allies. Traditionally firing an unguided rocket with HE submuntions (the so-called “grid square removal service,) modern sensibilities about UXO has seen it replaced with a unitary warhead. One of these, the Alternative Warhead, preserves the “grid square removal service” by clever use of varying-sized tungsten ball bearings as shrapnel, but the other GMLRS unitary rocket is referred to as “the 70km sniper rifle” for a goddamned reason. As LockMart’s own sales brochure notes, the M31 unitary warheads - GPS and initially guided, of course - have been used extensively in the Wars on Terror, where limiting collateral damage is a major concern. It’s confirmed to have a multi-mode fuze, which means it should be capable of either airburst, or delayed burst, to achieve some penetration before going off. 

And the accuracy? A 10 meter Circular Error Probable was requested for the M30/31 GPS guided rockets, but the first proper test of an M30 using GPS guidance impacted only 2.1 meters from the target. Considering frequent use of the M31 in Iraq and Afghanistan to avoid collateral damage, the ECM/countermeasures hardening required by the original contract, and simple time available to improve the weapon, there’s no reason to believe that M31s fired now would fare any worse, especially if two or three were expended per target to ensure results. We can’t assume any classified bunker-busting munitions are available for these rockets, but even with a simple 200 pound fragmentation weapon, an average accuracy of six fucking feet is good enough that I wouldn’t want to be standing in that HART when the round comes in. With the firing ports open and a Kosan’s 170mm muzzle sticking out of it - well. If it can’t reliably fire right into the gun ports, the blast/frag effect might get in anyways. 

And then there’s the M982 Excalibur shell, which looks like a 155mm artillery shell on steroids, but is actually a GPS-guided glide-bomb that just happens to be fired out of conventional artillery cannons. Unlike the M31 Unitary Warhead, it doesn’t have the sheer weight of explosive/projectile that might achieve limited anti-bunker effects through delayed fuzing, and/or damage to interiors of bunkers via pure potency of blast-frag effect on a near miss of the firing ports. Unlike the rockets, however, it’s small enough that units aren’t limited to the few weapons pre-loaded on M270s - they can fire as many as they’ve got on hand just by stuffing them into the breech and pulling the cord. With an average miss distance of only 1.6 meters, they could fire three or four and stand a pretty good chance of putting a shell right through the HART’s firing port. Any concrete artillery shelter with enough room for the gun barrel to achieve meaningful traverse and elevation differences is going to be a few square feet wide at least - even concrete bunkers meant for short-range, direct-fire AT guns have a firing port larger than you might think. 

The Norks, ever clever, have come to this realization themselves and have been spotted modifying older HARTs that shelter their small self-propelled gun forces to only have north-facing entrances, saving them from shellfire from the south. Sadly, that obligates them to actually leave cover to fire, and unlike the Katyushas, they have to stay there a while to deliver any significant weight of fire. That, of course, is where the US FASCAM warheads come into play, like this 155mm bastard that deploys nine anti-tank mines per shot - a few of these on the HARTS in question (with a few of these to deter eager-beaver combat engineers) would make driving out of those shelters an iffy proposition. (Using GATOR bombs from aircraft could also bottle up ballistic missile TELs in DPRK tunnels in the same fashion.) Or you could just engage them with these fuckers.

And then there’s technically non-deployed stuff that could be rushed into service if required - a combination GPS/laser guided Excalibur shell was successfully tested in 2014 and has been in constant development since - rushing a batch of those into service would be pricey, but considering the stakes, we’d pay it. And then there’s the ground-launched Small Diameter bomb, combining the small bunker-busting, glide-bomb goodness of the SDB with the convenience and instant response of an M270 MLARS launch. Many weapons like this are technically deployable now - a ton of R&D costs are spent on making rounds that are cost-effective to manufacture and/or serviceable by the average 21-year old geek. Idiotproofing is a big part of bringing any weapon system to maturity, as the Navy’s found every time they take the Zumwalts or LCS to sea with the vendor’s crews watching with forlorn anticipation from the pier. In the context of an emergency, all-out effort prepared ahead of time, though, there’s very little that can’t be done. 

Laser guidance is great because it absolutely can put shots right through a firing port on the first try, every time - which brings us to the GBU-44/B Viper Strike. Originally intended to turn languishing stockpiles of Brilliant Anti-Tank submuntions into wee bombs, they’ve proven incredibly useful for small, precision strikes. Not only do they pack more than enough punch to take out an artillery cannon sticking its nose out of a gun port, but it’s so small it fits on everything, even smaller UAVs and drones - further expanding how many platforms could engage DPRK HARTS. And they’ve also put it on refueling tankers, AC-130 gunships, C-130 Spec-ops transports, the Little Bird chopper, the Predator, the Gray Eagle and even the damn Fire Scout. But the most significant is this sumbitch; the KC-130 Harvest Hawk, a rapid conversion kit to turn normal C-130s into capable gunships. They don’t have the 105mm boom-boom of an AC-130, but they make up for it by being PGM bomb-trucks - as the Wiki article shows, they can carry a good number of laser-guided Hellfires, as well. The USAF has a similar upgrade, the “Dragon Spear,” which can launch up to ten Viper Strikes from a tube - and boy can they carry a shitton of death on the underwing pylons, too, including SDBs. American EW dominance will allow even these assets to operate pretty much at will over the DMZ; especially with drones providing more of the off-board cueing and target acquisition from lower altitudes. We may lose a few, but needs must - it’s a small price to pay to save Seoul. 

In summation, every single delivery option the DPRK has available is either hampered by extremely robust US/ROK defensive abilities, or is highly vulnerable to any number of pre-emptive counter-battery abilities the US can deploy in great volume - and ALL of them are adversely affected by both the inherent difficulties in delivering chemical weapons and the regime trying to address those restrictions while bankrupt and embargoed, while also evaluating opportunity cost of spending their limited resources on other WMD programs, like their ICBMs and nukes. The DPRK chemical weapons stockpile is a real threat, but it simply intensifies the need to swiftly and comprehensively vaporize the majority of the DPRK’s heavy artillery facing Seoul - an ability that is well within the ROK/US ability to accomplish. 

[jamesleo1-blog]

Zirconia crown

Dental sufferers are getting an increasing number of worried with the materials coming into contact with their our bodies and the impact this can have on their health. While placing dental implants, it's miles usually ideal to apply the least reactive and least poisonous fabric possible. It's also vital to evaluate the strength, clinical success, and other applicable elements of such substances.

Over time, the fashion has been in the direction of keeping off placing metals in our body. An alternative cloth to titanium exists within the shape of zirconia for dental implants. Fitness aware sufferers frequently ask, “Are zirconia dental implants better than titanium?” the answer to this question isn't simple, as it is critical to recognize the ability benefits, barriers, dangers, and other factors.

A crown is a shape of a dental recovery that absolutely covers a enamel or dental implant and it's also fixed to the enamel or abutment with dental cement. Crowns are crafted from diverse materials which can be generally manufactured. Crowns will also be placed over a tooth to decorate the electricity or physical look of tooth.

Zirconium crowns at the moment are the maximum desired cloth for dental crowns.

Zirconium is a completely robust and reliable substance that could tolerate put on and tear of regular use. Zirconium crowns are also higher from an aesthetic factor because it's miles translucent and appears very much like a natural teeth because it reflects the mild in a comparable same manner. That is an critical component specially if the new crowns are at the front of the mouth and it's miles basically tremendous in cases in which the crown may be placed in between herbal enamel.

Those crowns are so robust that they will now not corrode and there'll no longer be any black gum line that typically seems when porcelain fused metallic crowns are used. Zirconium crowns additionally do not have any electrical conductivity so there will be no pains even though the affected person liquids warm or bloodless liquids.

There are numerous styles of zirconium crowns getting used like Zeno, that's an extremely outstanding product from Germany. This form of zirconium crown has a great recognition for being durable and aesthetically stunning upload the truth that the technology involved with the product is quite superior.

That is proof that zirconium crown has the first-class aesthetic effect that is the most vital factor especially whilst the crowns may be placed over enamel on the front of the mouth or might be placed beside a natural enamel.

The electricity of Zirconium additionally makes it feasible to manufacture crowns without steel frames, this is crucial due to the fact this could make it impossible to correctly distinguish zirconium crowns from herbal teeth.

Zirconia dental implants are normally advertised as a non-metallic, “ceramic” material this is white in shade like natural teeth and has all the identical benefits as traditional titanium implants. Interestingly sufficient, Zirconium has an atomic wide variety of forty making it a transitional metallic. Zirconia implants come within the shape of Zirconium Oxide (that's referred to as Zirconia). Each ceramic has a crystal structure containing both steel and non-steel atoms, but the aggregate is never called a metallic. The addition of the oxide adjustments its composition shape, conduct and call.

Conventional Titanium implant surfaces are used in Titanium Oxide form, so why are they taken into consideration a metallic? This is due to the fact titanium implants are a grey metallic colour and zirconia implants are white. The simple difference in coloration is one of the essential motives these implants were evolved and have gained popularity from the majority. There are many claims of non-esthetic implant recuperation due to the grey coloration of the titanium implant. However, with right placement via a three-D guided surgery protocol and using white zirconia for the abutment cloth, we will again and again get enormously-esthetic outcomes for our patients.

#smile makeover #teeth bleaching