Danny has been declared the Ghost King at Fifteen.
He hasn't been told this yet, but his self-proclaimed closest ghost friends, Johnny 13, Ember, and Kitty, have volunteered to not only tell him, but be his bodyguards.
They do not, in fact, tell him.
They instead make it a game of "Get down, Mr. President!" and dogpile him from perceived threats. Threats like the toaster. Or Dash Baxter. Or Mr. Lancer. A stray cat that walked out of an alley. A fight with Skulker.
A bird.
The worst bit is, even the GIW and his parents have stopped attacking those specific ghosts, because it's far more interesting that beings that mimic human behavior have picked up a childs game to mimic.
So he'll be home, at the kitchen, and with an almighty cry of "GET DOWN MR. PRESIDENT" one of the three ghosts will launch themselves over him dramatically.
There is not escape.
The security system in his house has been programmed to ignore them.
His parents love the opportunity to talk to a ghost, and are starting to go back on their "all ghosts are evil" thing.
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Here's the thing that really broke me about the goyische left's response to the Hamas massacre: once again, the uncritical, antisemitic double standard for Israel and Jews versus literally anyone else has now expanded to assume that Jews do not deserve human rights or have lost them by virtue of being Israeli.
Let's say, for a moment, that you have been radicalized to really believe that the Hamas attack on civilians was a liberatory action, perhaps unfortunate that it targeted unarmed civilians, but what else were they supposed to do? Besides, Israel has visited similar and worse attacks on Palestine for years, so turnabout is fair play, especially in service of the struggle of liberation of a brutally oppressed group. [To be clear: I take issue with this and find it morally repugnant. But for the moment, let's accept arguendo this belief as a baseline.]
Do you really include rape, torture, killing children at all but especially in front of their parents, or killing parents in front of their children and taking hostages of the survivors, beheading infants, trapping and burning families hidden together alive, stripping and parading hostages naked through the street, mutilating and displaying the bodies of the dead proudly and celebrating their deaths, and doing all of this on a holy day where Jewish people the world over are supposed to be celebrating the end of the holiday season and the beginning of a new cycle of Torah learning. On a day that people will be resting, with their families, unarmed and in their holy spaces, and are explicitly commanded to be happy.
.......amongst the "unfortunate-but-necessary violent struggle?"
Like even if you believe in your heart of hearts that all Israelis should die or at least are acceptable casualties in the struggle, do you really believe that there is any excuse for the above atrocities? If you do, I need you to ask yourself some things:
Do you think there is any justification for the manner and cruelty of the deaths?
Do you really think that there is anything a person could do in order to deserve any of these actions as a sentence?
Was the cruel nature of this, designed to inflict the greatest amount of trauma on the survivors and the Jewish people at large, actually necessary to accomplishing the goal of liberation?
Would you accept any of these actions being done to any other group?
If you are a white American, do you think you personally deserve this yourself for everything the United States has done to the native population (never mind anyone else)?
Do you think that civilians can be held 100% accountable for their government's actions? Is that a standard you yourself would like to be judged by?
If context is important, how is the last 2000 years of brutal antisemitism from virtually every part of the world not also relevant context? How is the Holocaust not relevant? The Farhud?
Do you think refugees fleeing genocide should be able to live wherever they can and that other countries and peoples have a duty to step up and take them in? If so, would you call refugees of genocide colonists and settlers?
Do you think that children should have to answer for the crimes of adults? That it is ever okay to kill them in cold blood?
Do you think that non-combatant deaths should ever be celebrated?
Theoretically, if the only way Hamas could accomplish its goal (which we will assume arguendo is Palestinian liberation, despite the mounds of evidence against that) is to kill whatever Israelis they could get their hands on, don't you think that a valid liberation force would just kill people as efficiently as possible rather than take the time to brutalize and humiliate them first? Wouldn't that be the more morally understandable thing to do?
Do you think it's ever okay to mock or talk down to people grieving their dead, no matter who they were, especially if they were random citizens rather than, say, high-profile politicians?
These questions to me are unanswerable and the fact that they are even in question at all unjustifiable. The left has either actively participated in this or remained silent in the face of it. And too many friends who I thought were allies have failed to reach out to even ask if we're okay, let alone made even the weakest of condemnations of the brutality my people have experienced this week.
This tells me that you think my humanity, as a Jew, is conditional. That my right not to experience war crimes is up for debate.
How am I supposed to trust you ever again? Feel safe in your presence? Collaborate with you on other issues? Why should I?
For the people who are posting about the situation yet failed to condemn the torture and brutality against my people, please know that I will likely never fully believe you that you are for restorative justice, against the death penalty, against cruel and unusual punishment, against sexual violence, for children's rights and against the murder of children, against terrorism, against civilian casualties, for the rights and protection of refugees, for freedom of movement, support indigenous groups, and certainly certainly anyone claiming to be against antisemitism. There will forever and always be an asterisk next to your statements in favor of universal human rights which reads: *except Jews.
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Sooooo y’all see the latest @somerandomdudelmao comic update? Because once again it is living in my head, which means once again my brain has generated fic. This one’s ~1200 words and slightly less tragic, depending on whether or not you take dramatic irony into account.
~~~~~~~
It starts fairly innocuously.
One of the surviving technicians monitors a computer as it finally, finally boots up successfully, whooping when the Genius Tech loading screen pops up. He grins and pats the power cable. "Thanks, Raph!"
It catches on.
A water purifier, disconnected to save a struggling power supply, gets plugged back in. It chugs back to life, and the kids responsible for its upkeep cheer and high five. One of them waves at the ceiling, where a power conduit runs overhead. "Thanks, Mister Raph!"
And it spreads like wildfire.
Every time something works the way it's supposed to - every time a much-needed device pops back to life, or the emergency doors close correctly, or a dying lightbulb flickers on one more time - they thank Raph. In gleeful shouts and careful whispers, they show gratitude for the person who gave up his life - and his second chance at life, at that - to keep them safe. It makes the emergency base, ramshackle and barely held together as it is, feel a little more like a home. A little more alive.
It doesn't take long for a few unspoken rules to develop.
They never say it in front of the metal shell. It's one thing to say it to the walls, the cables, the electricity; it's something else to say it to a figure with a face, seated against the wall like a sentinel that will awaken and protect them when danger arises.
(Nevermind that they've been in danger, constant and unending, for decades, and that this sentinel is already protecting them in smaller, everyday ways.)
They learn very quickly never to say it in front of Raph's surviving family, either. Master Leonardo gets angry when he hears it. It's an anger born of grief and loss, painful but not dangerous to allies, but given how terrifying Master Leonardo can be on the battlefield or a bad day, nobody really wants that anger directed at them. Master Michaelangelo just stops when he hears it, lips curling up in an expression too devoid of life to truly be called a smile. It's almost worse to witness than Master Leonardo's anger. No, they learn to watch themselves in front of the family, carefully taking their gratitude towards a dead man elsewhere.
Until the day someone forgets and says it in front of Casey Junior.
The kid looks up at Roger with wide, almost hopeful eyes. "Why did you- is he here? Can you feel him?"
Roger stares back at him with equally wide eyes. He'd just been grateful the computer had booted correctly for his monitor shift, and he hadn't been looking, and now he has to try to explain this to a kid who's never known a life outside the apocalypse. Oh boy. "No, uh- I mean- I don't have magic like your dads do, Casey, I couldn't-" He sighs. "It's just...a thing people do, when things work. Before the Krang, we had all sorts of machines that made life easier, and...we'd talk to 'em. Thank 'em when they worked, yell or beg when they didn't...I remember threatening a fax machine once, not that that made any difference. I think that just...kinda carried over here." Wait. "Not that your uncle was a machine or anything-"
"His body was a machine," Casey says simply, with a pragmatism that Roger hadn't been expecting. Apocalypse-raised kid. Right. "That wasn't what made him Uncle Raph. He was- it's-" Casey falters, expression starting to crumble. Pragmatism be damned, the kid is still grieving-
Rem, just coming off her shift, steps in smoothly. It's not the first time she's saved Roger's ass, both on and off the battlefield, and it won't be the last. "We know," she says gently, putting an arm around Casey's shoulders. "What Roger means is that we're grateful he's keeping us going, and that people like to bond with machines even when they're too simple to bond back. We all used to name our cars - can you believe it?"
"I named mine Red Rider," Roger says wistfully. He still misses that car.
"And I used to sneak out of the Hidden City with my cloaking brooch and go joyriding outside of human cities," Rem says, a grin splitting her feline muzzle. "I named every car I stole Phantom, like I thought I was cool."
Casey smiles - small and watery, but there nonetheless - and Roger breathes a sigh of relief. "What else did you name?"
"I mean, it was mostly cars, but some people named their computers."
"I had a friend who named her phone and just kept adding numbers when she had to replace it. It was Duchess O'Brien the eighth last I'd heard."
"I know some Yokai named their weapons, but I never really kept track of those. It was more of a Battle Nexus fandom thing."
Another Yokai leans in - a four eyed lizard whose name Roger could never remember no matter how hard he tried - and Roger shuts up. She's in charge of security now, and honestly she intimidates him. She looks around - at him, at Rem, at Casey - and then intones seriously, "I once named a kitchen appliance Toasty McToastFace."
There's a beat of silence. Casey has a lopsided grin growing on his face, like he doesn't get the joke but he knows it is one, and that's enough to lift his mood.
And then Rem doubles over, cracking up, and Bob smiles carefully. "Really loved that toaster, huh?"
"It was my closest friend," the lizard Yokai replies, deadpan as hell, before leaving the conversation.
Casey turns that confused grin on Roger. "Was she serious?"
"Kid, I have no idea. Some people are just really into this kinda thing."
Rem finally straightens up, wiping a tear from her eye with a paw. "Ohhhh boy. Oh, I needed that." She turns her smile back on Casey. "Point being, naming something makes it a little more real, and makes you a little more likely to take care of it. The system here...already has a name. We're just saying thank you, you know?"
The grin on Casey's face settles down into consideration. "Yeah, I think I do. I- Thanks. I'm gonna-" He waves at the door to finish his sentence.
"Go for it, kid." Roger waves him off as he departs, then sighs once he's gone. "God, that kid is just hemmhorraging family, isn't he."
"We all are, Roger, it's the fucking apocalypse." Rem flicks an ear.
"Yeah, but still. It's rough." There's a second or two of silence. "Also, if he says it in front of Master Leonardo, I'm denying all knowledge of this conversation."
"Spirits, same."
Roger learns a few days later - from Rem, of course - that Casey has named his chainsaw hockey stick Killer, because it's what his mom used to call him. Well damn, if kids like him are gonna be the future, then maybe they have some hope after all. He raps on a wall lightly, just below where the power conduit is mounted. "I know you didn't have a lot of time with the kid, but you did a good job." He can't help but smile. "Thanks, Raph."
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