#(Cam used to date Vega and Rid had a day with him)

[catella-ars]

Pretty sure there was more art to this but uhhh here’s some contextless “Ridley and Cam discover they share an ex” and Keid and Zen wondering what their problem is idk

[madscientistjournal]

Fiction: Tempo Rubato

An essay by an unnamed musician, as provided by Jonathan Danz Art by Errow Collens

Tonight, backstage is too hot, too dark, too much like some high-ceilinged mausoleum straight out of one of those old Friday night TV horror shows. The strap of my dinged-up Telecaster bites into my shoulder. Tonight, like most nights in recent memory, this guitar is like my very own stone of Sisyphus. Truth be told, I don’t know if I can roll it up the mountain one more fucking time. I don’t know if I can go out on stage yet again and pretend I’m me.

Vegas–swarm cams, drinkbots, holo-betting, omni-feeds, every last bit of it–can go to hell. The guy on stage now, the Buddy Holly impersonator, even with his bitglam in effect, comes off more like an impersonator of a Buddy Holly impersonator. He’s opening with “Peggy Sue.” Poor bastard. There’s nowhere to go from there but downhill.

Everyone’s an entertainer these days, what with voice plugins, appearance modifiers, movement enhancer neuro-mods, and every other trick. There’s no work at the art anymore, just show up and let the tech do the work.

Me and my new band, we’re the only completely analog performers in Vegas. Re-Invaded And It Feels So Good, that’s our act. Real clever stuff. The crowds eat it up. It’s fresh, in a manner of speaking, especially after seeing a hundred enhanced shows in a hundred casinos. After a while, it all blurs together.

I know, I know, that’s what they said when we were all flooding into the U.S. during the British Invasion. I’m a connoisseur of irony. But when something stands out from the pop-star one-offs and Rat Pack 3.0 crooners, people take notice. People don’t know they’re craving something different until they get it.

These Vegas performers could stand a lesson in “less is more,” but instead they’re all in on everything. All that tech must seem like magic to these fools, but tech ain’t magic. Believe me, I know from magic. Not like this Buddy Holly guy.

Look, I liked Buddy Holly back in the day–we all did–but that sound aged about as well as a bottle of piss. When you hear it, you know exactly when it came out. It never evolved. Sometimes I wonder what would’ve happened if his plane hadn’t crashed.

Sometimes I wonder if Buddy wasn’t the lucky one.

~

It was the 1960s, and the Beatles exploded out of Liverpool with us right on their heels, and the British Invasion was on. The money began rolling in free and easy like juice through a Marshall stack. In a move that would become the hallmark of making it in rock and roll, I bought a posh estate in the English countryside.

That’s where we were between tours in ’70. One night, December 11–Christ, you’d think I’d forget after so long, but the memory is like tough old scar tissue that’ll never go away–anyway, we were in the studio, turning a three minute song into something epic. I dove into my solo, weaving amplified heat through drums and base and rhythm guitar, stitching it all together at first. Then I began teasing strands out into the dark corners of sound. My fingers slipped and slid high on the fretboard. My guitar wailed and moaned with an urgency I could feel. I raced out ahead of the rhythm, then eased back into the mix by turns. I scooped time from some measures and poured it into others. The world around me wobbled and shimmered.

By the time the cops barged in, I was fully lost in the solo. It was as if someone had accidentally stuck a needle in my artery and my life was spraying out everywhere. It wasn’t blood, though, dig? I swear it was life itself flowing from me, streaming into my mates. Everyone was higher than an old vicar’s waistband. The cops’ shouting tore it all down and the music collapsed. I was wasted, could barely stand.

The cops’ arrival probably saved me, but all they saw was some weed, some pills, and whatever, and that’s all they needed to know. They grabbed their headlines for busting some punk kids who’ve risen far too high, and I grabbed some jail time. Prison was no great shakes, but there was something about the monotony of the routine. It freed up time to think. And I had a lot to think about.

~

Vegas Buddy Holly slides smoothly into “Rollercoaster.” It’s a checklist for him: hit this note, do that hiccup thing, take three steps. Technically, it’s perfect, but there’s no love for the music, no heat. Choosing to impersonate Buddy Holly is purely mercenary. He’s found a niche and it pays. It’s calculated. And I’ve got to tell you, hearing exactly the same thing done exactly the same way night after night gets tiresome.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not the music itself; I feel like I could play forever. It’s everything else. Some might say the world has passed me by, but I’d argue it’s the people who flock to this place on the regular who are being passed by. Was a time when people would spend hours parsing song lyrics or album cover art. Now everything wheels by like startled birds, gone in an instant, replaced by the latest streaming shows or VR episode or vending machine stimdrugs. We’re so fixated on what’s coming next, we can’t enjoy whatever it is we’re consuming right then and there.

The marketers’ll tell you their latest con expands the mind and taps into unexplored landscapes of the imagination. Rubbish. It’s about making money. It’s always about making money. Just ask ol’ Buddy Holly on stage there.

The guys in my band are no different. Sure, they tolerate the analog sets, occasionally even enjoy themselves when they’re not thinking about it. But they’re just gigging with me to pay the bills while they seek online stardom. That’s where the real money is, even if the odds are so long they stretch well beyond the horizon. They just need one video to virus out, and they’ll have it made.

I hear you, telling me to fuck right the hell off. I made my money, so why shouldn’t they make theirs, right? I say, have at it. There’s no magic there. You want magic? Strip it all down, get rid of the enhancements. Focus on the music, the guitar strings beneath your fingers, the vibrations of your vocal cords, the buzz of a packed venue. If you let yourself fall deep enough, you’ll find the space between it all.

You’d think songs almost a hundred years old would lose their luster, but that ain’t so. There’s that quote about not being the same person who crossed the river the first time or some shit. There’s truth there. Songs are like rivers, always changing, waiting to show you something new, if you’re willing to look. That’s why I hang around, every single day and twice on Saturdays.

~

After the bust, I couldn’t stop thinking about what had happened at that rehearsal. I needed to know what that was. As a band, we were looking forward, working on new songs, planning new tours, finding new ways to spend our windfall. But as an individual, I’d decided to look backwards as well.

I searched for answers in the deep, slippery roots of music, looking for the faintest whiff of anything even remotely like what happened the night of the bust. Whenever we hit a new city, I scoured libraries and bookstores and pored over rare tomes, letters, and sheet music for something like magic.

Then I found tempo rubato.

Now, I know you’re thinking of that Styx song about the robot. That was Japanese. Tempo rubato is Italian, mate.

The definition of tempo rubato in music texts refers to, and I quote, “the slight speeding up and then slowing down of the tempo of a piece at the discretion of the soloist or the conductor to be more expressive.”

But here’s the thing, Tempo rubato isn’t just an Italian term on some sheet music like sotto voce or fortissimo or any of that lot. Now I had no idea if the concept originated in Italy or not, but the Italians nailed the naming of whatever this phenomenon is.

In Italian, tempo rubato means stolen time.

As a musical cue, that was all fine and well, but I was positive there was more to it than that. Slowing down, speeding up, everything I’d been doing that night, it was all there.

I began playing around on stage, messing around in subtle ways with what almost killed me the night of the bust, learning, refining. I did it carefully until I unpacked tempo rubato and put it to work for me. I pilfered small bits of time so as not to cause harm and, as much as we played, the stolen time accumulated like the juice on a mob loan.

~

We’re a long way from Vegas, now, aren’t we? What does this have fuckall to do with tech enhancements and swarm bots and flash androgynous technicians? Well, hang tight, bruv, I’m getting to that. Besides, Buddy Holly’s got one more song yet.

He launches into “That’ll Be the Day.” When he hits the chorus, like he does every night, I can’t help but think that maybe in some alternate universe I’m dead, and he’s here in Vegas in real life, the original watching some mercenary performer imitate me.

“That’ll be the day that I die,” Buddy sings. Well, the real Buddy Holly boarded a plane that flew him right into his grave at the tender age of 22. And, despite the booze, the drugs, and other depredations of the body, here I am still going strong well beyond my expiration date. Is it fair? That’s not for me to say, but I’m fully aware of the irony.

The ubiquitous “they” insist everything that’s old is new again and I’m inclined to agree. Maybe that’s true, but it’s a cycle, ain’t it, which bloody well means everything that’s new becomes old again as well.

I think about all those musicians who hung around too long. I’d need more fingers than I’ve got to count everyone who couldn’t let it go, guys who wished they headed out at the top of their game, leaving the fans wanting more.

But damn if every time I hit that first chord on stage, I’m not transported back to our first live gig in Coogan’s Pub in Dartford. Now there’s a magic all its own, you know? Throw in the fans and the applause, and small wonder musicians can’t let it go.

What I miss, though, what has me in this funk, is that I’ve got no one to share any of this with. Everyone’s gone. What’s the use of hanging around as long as I have if you can’t share the honest-to-god artistry?

There are days I’m aware the only person I’m really playing for is myself, searching the music for ghosts of the long-gone boys who crossed the Atlantic and got rich with me. There are days I wonder if stealing time during all those tours with them might have hastened their respective ends. Shit, we were all getting older. People just age differently, right?

I search through the music. Maybe some combination of sound will bring them back, but inevitably the ghosts are always just out of reach. I’ve seen musicians wind up searching elsewhere, the needle or the booze or something just as deadly even though we know whatever it is we need isn’t there at all. And sometimes you don’t even know you need anything at all until you’re shown otherwise.

~

Inside some nondescript sound studio in Memphis in the late ’20s, I was waiting to record an interview for some classic rock retrospective podcast. At least I think they were still calling what we did way back when “classic.” The host was explaining to an angsty lad on the sound crew what vibe he needed and who I was.

But damn if every time I hit that first chord on stage, I’m not transported back to our first live gig in Coogan’s Pub in Dartford.

“Seriously?” the angsty lad asked. “I thought that guy died years ago.” No embarrassment. No apology. Just a statement of fact with perhaps the smallest hint of a question or accusation in his tone. That’s when I realized I couldn’t keep on as myself forever. No matter how good I felt, no matter how I looked, someone would do the math and start asking questions I had no intention of answering.

And so I did the only thing that made sense: I disappeared to sort things out. For a few decades, I traveled to places where people had no idea who I was. For a while, it wasn’t so bad, the newness of it, you know. I tried out things I couldn’t do when we were touring, things like gardening and painting and woodworking, whatever struck my fancy.

Even as I did these things, in the need was always there, waiting. I told myself it was just the music I needed, just the feel of the guitar in my hands, the heat of the stage lights, the cheering crowds. I mean, the music was definitely part of it, but I missed what I was able to do with the music even more. I needed tempo rubato.

What better place to resurface than Vegas, the impersonator capital of the world? If I couldn’t be me, at least I could pretend to be me. I mean, I had me down pretty good.

~

Buddy Holly wraps up with a deep cut, one of his b-sides that has surprising layers. Something about this song appeals to Buddy. I can tell, because he loses himself in it. He’s so close to touching the music and doesn’t even know. The crowd applauds just enough to encourage Buddy Holly to do an encore.

Buddy Holly launches into a respectable version of “Not Fade Away.” Huh. Normally he trots out a tired medley of songs that roll into that other song that’s not by Buddy Holly but about Buddy Holly, when his plane crashed, and the music died, and all that. Tonight, Buddy Holly’s veering off script.

I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding.

One more song to figure out how I’m going to break it to the band. Since I returned to Vegas–what has it been, 30, 40 years?–I’ve asked myself why I keep going so many times it feels like a vocation unto itself. If there’s an answer to that question, I’ll be damned if I know what it is. Now’s as good a time as any to call it quits.

“Hey, Billy,” I say to my bassist.

He turns to me and raises his eyebrows in question.

Time to tell the crew tonight is the night I stop, but the words die in my throat just as Buddy Holly strums the last chord of his encore.

The applause for Buddy Holly packs more punch this time around, there’s real enthusiasm behind it. Buddy comes off stage. His bitglam distorts and winks off. Bruv looks tired, but he’s smiling.

We nod at each other.

That simple gesture is like a smack upside my head. It’s straight out of those days right before the British Invasion, back when we were just one of a hundred bands were trying to make it. Yeah, we hated each other, but there was some measure of respect for the fact we were all chasing the same thing. There’s a camaraderie that comes from mutual suffering.

Maybe I’ve been too hard on ol’ Buddy.

Then the host is announcing us to the crowd. Cheers and stomping feet shake the building. The crowd is as amped as I’ve ever heard it. That sound … that sweet, goddamned sound washes over us. The hair on my arms and the back of my neck stands at attention, expectant. My heart thrills and prances inside my chest. A smile spreads of its own accord across my face.

Billy smiles the same me. He’s feeling it too. “What were you going to say?”

My guitar feels lighter, and the only thing on my mind is strumming that first chord. “Forget it,” I say.

Billy’s no longer the fresh-faced kid I brought in to hold down the beat a few months ago, but that’s what the business does to a musician, isn’t it? The pull of the stage and the lights are like an old friend’s arm around my shoulder, warm and comforting.

A British Invasion musician learns the secret to rock on for evermore, but after outliving his mates and winding up as an impersonator of himself in Vegas, he wonders if it’s time to hang it up.

Jonathan Danz is a speculative fiction writer living in West Virginia with his wife, daughter, and cat, all of whom are artists in their own right. He attended Viable Paradise 21 and narrates for various science fiction, fantasy, and horror podcasts. He likes books, bikes, and beer.

Errow is a comic artist and illustrator with a predilection towards mashing the surreal with the familiar. They pay their time to developing worlds not quite like our own with their fiancee and pushing the queer agenda. They probably left a candle burning somewhere. More of their work can be found at errowcollins.wix.com/portfolio.

“Tempo Rubato” is © 2019 Jonathan Danz Art accompanying story is © 2019 Errow Collins

Fiction: Tempo Rubato was originally published on Mad Scientist Journal

[auburnfamilynews]

Big night game atmosphere coming for this one!

Our throwback 2010 series continues with Clemson week. Auburn escaped Starkville with a win, and while it was closer than we expected, it was still a cover. Now College Gameday comes to our citaaayy for a date with Cousin Clem.

Whew! That State game was tougher than most of us expected. Maybe Vegas knew something dropping the line to a point. I said “most of us” because Crow nailed the final score again! How is he doing this? He knows less about non-Auburn college football than any of us! Anyway, on to the picks

Auburn (-7.5) vs. Clemson

Little ol’ Dabo brings himself to Auburn. I’m sure he really wants this one. Well people in hell want ice water. We were brought a little closer to earth last week by MSU, but sometimes that’s just life on the road in the SEC: survive and advance. Kyle Parker does worry me a bit. I’m not sure we can bet on the kind of game that Nick Fairley had every week. I do like that we have a couple of extra days of rest though. I think this one is tight until the mid-4th quarter when Auburn slows things down and scores a clincher. Auburn 34, Clemson 24

Rest of the Staff

Jack

Well, we took a step back last week in Starkville. Maybe Cam Newton and the offense are going to have some of the same troubles against SEC defenses that they had last year. I’m worried that the passing game didn’t really seem to take off against MSU, and Clemson’s got a couple of really good defensive backs. Offensively, I’m not all that concerned with the purple Tigers. I don’t know if this Dabo Swinney guy is going to have the impact that they want, but I bet he’ll be excited to coach in this game since he’s a former Bama player. With Gameday here, the atmosphere is going to be crazy, but I think a nighttime Jordan-Hare gives Auburn the late edge and we get back on track offensively. Good Tigers pull away late. Auburn 31-20

Josh Black

I was extremely worried about this game after what we saw offensively in Starkville, but I’ve switched gears and am fired up after hearing how the pep rally that Coach Chizik and Trooper Taylor held got the campus fired up. I expect an atmosphere in Auburn that we’re unaccustomed to for a non-conference game. But if the rumors swirling about navy helmets holds true that’s where I’m going to really be devastated. Auburn’s uniforms should never change. I expect Cam to show out extremely well against Clemson as it’s abundantly clear we just played one of the best defenses we’ll see all year. Additionally, it’s going to be interesting to see how fast Kyle Parker gets rid of the ball this week after Nick Fairley wreaked havoc all over the field on a Thursday night in Starkville. This is a team that we should beat every single time we play them. For all that Clemson wants to pretend they are, they would drop 2-3 games a year in the SEC every year, even on their best years, should that ever occur. For an Alabama guy, Dabo has managed to do a serviceable job there, but I’d be curious how he would do at Alabama should Saban ever retire or possibly try and get the Texas job in 3 years because those people in Tuscaloosa will still eat him alive even if he wins 2 more titles between now and then. Bottom line, I think Dabo is as good as the assistants around him. But hey, same could be said for our head coach, Gene Chizik. We should win this game because we’re Auburn and they’re Clemson, and people need to start remembering that. Auburn 23 Clemson 17

Josh Dub

Super excited for today’s game against Clemson. I’ll be in attendance! Forecast says it’s gonna be blazing outside. WEAR NAVY, EVERYONE. Auburn is a 7.5 point favorite over the lesser Tigers, but I don’t think it’ll be that close. Auburn 42, Clemson 24

Will McLaughlin

[prediction not submitted]

Chief

[prediction not submitted]

Drew Mac

[prediction redacted due to potential conflict of interest]

Crow

[Crow was on the go this week, but he did submit a score] Auburn 27, Clemson 24

Ryan S Sterritt

[prediction not submitted]

from College and Magnolia - All Posts https://www.collegeandmagnolia.com/2020/9/19/21446815/throwback-week-3-picks-clemson

[writebethany]

I really like this General Danvers ficlets series. Is there any way maybe Maggie could be brought in? Somehow Vega gets caught up with the police perhaps? It doesn't have to be anything sexual but I think it would be nice to see her. And if it doesn't become something sexual maybe it could be a "if I wasn't with Astra I could see myself trying a relationship with this woman" or something.

Previous Parts

The summer between her freshman and sophomore year of college, Vega gets political. Really political. Attends every protest she can, petition signing, door knocking, flyer passing out type of political. It’s for a rather personal cause. A few months before a new alien race that’s unknown to everyone, even the aliens in M’gann’s bar showed up on Earth’s doorstep with a white flag and a proposal for trade. Their people lived off pollution quite literally, and even being as wasteful as possible, their population had reached a critical level. Earth had enough pollution to sustain them for a good long time. The citizens of Earth got a clean planet and the aliens got to keep on living. It was a win-win.

Except that humans saw aliens that weren’t so shiny as Superman or Supergirl and lost their damn minds. The US government had made moves to shoot the so called invaders out of the sky. Vega, being an alien herself had taken offense to this, of course, and had joined the peace movement as soon as she could.

That’s how she meets Maggie Sawyer, detective of the NCPD called into service because the protest on a summer day in the middle of June were too massive for the patrol officers to handle alone. She drew the short straw and she’s manning the booking desk when Vega’s brought in, red faced and clearly angry, but she’s not struggling or mouthing off like a lot of the protestors are. Maggie, who’s got a headache the size of Nebraska, appreciates it.

“What are the charges,” she asks the officer escorting her, a little bored even with the chaos and the headache factored in. She’s rather be out actually doing something.

“Assaulting a police officer.”

Maggie raises an eyebrow at that. It wasn’t an uncommon charge for protests, but this girl definitely didn’t look like she’d haul off and punch an officer. And from the look that crosses the girl’s face, just a microexpression really, not something easily faked, Maggie guesses there’s something more there. She’s detective. She might as well detect.

“Peterson!” Maggie calls back.

Peterson, a rookie who’s greener than grass shows up at her side.

“You’ve been shown how booking works?” Maggie asks. It’s simple work. Peterson isn’t the brightest, but he’s smart enough for this.

He nods.

“Good, you manage this, I’ve got something to look into.” She walks around the desk and takes the girl’s arm. “I’ve got this,” she says to the officer. 

He nods. “The officer report is already on file for you.” Then he walks back out into the fray.

Maggie leads the girl back to an interview room and unlocks the cuffs. “Sit. You need water? It’s hot out there?”

The girl nods and Maggie grabs a couple bottles before sitting down. “So, what happened?”

“I get a lawyer don’t I?” she asks.

“If you want one, but something tells me that the charges against you are bull.” She pulls up the report file and looks it over. It’s sparse, she figured since it was from the field, but something sticks out to her. There’s no video from a button cam, and all officers have one today of all days. The guy filing would have been asked to upload the relevant footage which would have taken a couple minutes at most even away from the precint. Maggie smells a rat stronger than she did before.

“They are, but I shouldn’t say anything until I have a lawyer, or at least my parents are here.”

Maggie nods. “Fair enough, better to be safe than sorry, I respect that. You still have your phone on you?”

The girl nods. 

“Go ahead then.”

She takes out her phone and dials. Someone picks up the other end almost immediately, but Maggie can’t hear what they’re saying. Whatever it is, the girl responds in a language that definitely isn’t from Earth. Well, she supposes that’s not surprising at a peace protest for aliens. She wonders if the Gythnaim knew they’d get into this much trouble approaching Earth. Maybe they did and they were truly that desperate. Maggie didn’t know.

The girl hangs up the phone and Maggie leans back in her chair. “So, what planet?” 

The girl blinks. “Excuse me?”

“Definitely not a terrestrial language. I’m with the science division normally so I deal with a lot of cases the public don’t particularly know about, crosses into aliens a fair bit. I’ve dated a few too. So. Planet?”

“I was born here,” the girl asserts adamantly. 

“But your parents?”

“My Mom was born here too.”

“But what about your Dad?”

The girl crosses her arms. “I don’t have one.”

“But you said parents so, another mom?” Maggie smiles softly at the thought. 

“Yes.”

“Huh, lesbian alien, with the LGBT community already so small it’s a miracle I don’t know them already, let alone an alien that hangs around. Thought I dated them all.”

The girl blinks again, this time more stunned than anything. “What?”

“Yeah, kid, lesbian police officer, who would have thought.” Maggie rolls her eyes. Stereotype got her everytime damn it.

“No, I was more talking about the dating all the LGBT aliens part of that.” The girl sat forward.

“Oh, yeah, what are your parents’ names I could tell you if I know them. Or dated them. Your name would also be nice. Caliing you kid doesn’t seem like the best.”

“Vega Danvers, my moms are Alex Danvers and Astra In-Ze,” Vega says.

Maggie whistles. She’s heard of the both of them, not from the community, but from her job working with science division. Alex and the DEO routinely steal cases away from them, though Maggie’s never had the pleasure. Astra is hard to miss too, considering she helps Supergirl more often than not. 

“Nope, never dated them, but I know of them.”

The girl perks up. “They’re both here.”

Well, that answers the question of whether Vega was an alien herself. The hearing couldn’t be anything but.

Maggie walks out of the room to find two women practically charging towards her. She knows angry mama bears when she sees them and just steps aside and lets them through, grabbing an extra chair from the empty desks and coming back into the room and shutting the door.

The woman with the white streak whips around to face her as the door shuts. “What are the charges.”

“Supposedly assaulting an officer, but.” Maggie shrugs.

“Supposedly?” The woman takes a step forward.

“That’s what I’m trying to get to the bottom of right now,” Maggie says calmly. “I’m Dectective Maggie Sawyer.” She steps out and offers a hand.

“General Astra In-Ze.” The handshake was a little tighter than comfortable, but Maggie didn’t let on.

The other woman steps forward. “Alex Danvers. I’ve heard your name before. Science division?”

Maggie nods. “I’ve heard of you too, but never had the pleasure of working with you.” She motions to the chairs. “But lets get this all sorted with your daughter before talking shop.”

Maggie takes her own seat and looks at Vega. “So, what happened?”

Vega looks at her mothers who nod before she starts to talk. “I was walking along the edge of the protest, handing out water bottles and checking to make sure everyone was ok. Everyone was starting to get restless and tired and the organizers were trying to keep everything under control. For the most part it was working, but some people were too fired up and did some dumb stuff and I saw a few guys getting arrested for disorderly conduct, nothing big though, but I went over to make sure everything was ok. There were a couple officers standing around the perimeter, just making sure no one interfered and I asked one what was happening. He told me the charges and I nodded and was about to move on when another officer came up behind me and said ‘But someone as sweet looking as you wouldn’t get arrested, would you honey.’” Vega’s eyes flared with contempt. “I turned and told him that I didn’t like being addressed like that and went to leave again but he grabbed my arm and told me I wasn’t allowed to leave until I was done talking to him. I turned to get help from the other officer but he had gotten involved with the arrests now and wasn’t watching, no one really was considering I wasn’t where the action was. I told him to let go of me and that if he wasn’t going to charge me with anything I was leaving.”

The table creaks under Astra’s fingers and Maggie wonders if they were going to have to get a new one after this interview. Wouldn’t be the first time.

“He let go and I turned around and then he grabbed my butt and I slapped his hand away. He called that assaulting an officer and then arrested me and here I am,” Vega finishes. Maggie swore there was a pink sheen over her iries. Well, that was definitely something to keep in mind, heat vision ran in the family. 

“Alright then, I’m going to go pull his camera uploads for the past few hours and I’ll set up your statement for you too. Do you want to press charges if the video comes back as useable?”

Vega nods. “He doesn’t need to be able to do this to anyone else.”

“Good, I’ll be back.”

Maggie gets everything in order. The idiot had caught everything that Vega had said had happened on his body cam. She damn well hoped that this idiot got fired. She knew of him and knew that he wasn’t good news. It would be a good thing for the force to get rid of him. 

A couple hours later Maggie shakes everyone’s hands again. “Sorry about all this, it shouldn’t happen, but.” She frowns.

“Not your fault,” Alex says as Astra and Vega nodded and walked out of the station. “There’s a few in every law enforcement operation. God knows we have our own. Thank you for not just booking her that would have not been a fun fight.”

“Something tells me, Danvers, you’re good in a fight.” Maggie smiles.

Alex shrugs. “Not as good as I used to be, but damn good still, Sawyer. You’ll find out if you’re ever on a case with me.”

“I think we’d make a good team. Very no nonsense.”

“Yup, sounds about right. I’ll buy you a few beers to thank you for all this, if you want.”

Maggie hasn’t been out with someone who understands just how crazy her job is in a while. She could use a friend like that honestly.

“Yeah, Danvers, you play pool?”

Alex smirks at that. “Oh, do I ever.”

“It’s on then. You have my number, whenever you’re free. Bring your wife if she can play pool and I’ll kick both of your asses.”

“Biting off more than you can chew, there aren’t you.”

“I know what I can handle.”

The next week Maggie gets assigned a case that Alex swoops in with her DEO tac gear and steals right out from under her. Maggie isn’t so pissed, especially when it means she gets to see a god awful amount of alien guns and gadgets that are straight out of a sci-fi movie. What must it be like to actually have resources? They close the case faster than she’s ever managed working for the force, and then come the beers and the pool. She kicks Alex’s ass, but doesn’t quite manage to beat Astra. Next case, though, she’ll beat Astra. Next case for sure.

Next part