#Crab King strikes again

[theredrogue]

I got paid today <3

I hate you.

[isatswap]

(super in stars and time spoilers)

Redemption

TTOS version of the final King fight from ISAT

<BATTLE START!>

<the sound of being unfrozen>

(AH)

(you're not slowed down anymore)

(you can move again)

(the lady and)

(everyone?)

Isabeau: Okay! I woke Loop up!!!

Mirabelle: Awesome! Nice job, Isabeau!

Odile: Loop, are you okay?!

Bonnie: Eyes on the enemy, Dile! Loop should be alright now!

Isabeau: You don't need to fight anymore, Loop! We are here!!!

Loop: (what) "how are you here?"

(they came)

(for you?)

Mirabelle: Uh, we walked, silly.

Odile: ...We had a talk after.... yesterday. And then you went missing! So we decided to go find you.

Bonnie: We couldn't find you anywhere! No one in Dormont saw you leave either! So-- a strange person helped us!!! And--

Isabeau: Argh, it doesn't crabbing matter anymore! Isabeau: I'm still so mad at you, Loop!!! Isabeau: I still can't believe you said all those terrible things to us yesterday!!! And that you went to battle the Scary Lady all on your own!! Isabeau: But we will talk about it later!! isabeau: Right now I want to channel this anger into smashing her into pieces for freezing our crabbing country in time!!

Odile: Yeah, what Isabeau said. Get ready to get your crabbing butt kicked, Lady!

Bonnie: We will explain later, Loop. Right now you need to rest, while we defeat her!

(rest)

(don't say that word)

Scary Lady: ...... Scary Lady: Hahahahah..... so you had companions after all, Bright One.... Scary Lady: How lucky. Scary Lady: Quite a shame they couldn't be here to help you earlier. Scary Lady: I was right. You are but a fool for facing me by yourself.

(it was)

(you're a bad friend)

Mirabelle: Gal, shut up. Mirabelle: They might have made a mistake, but they are not foolish.

Bonnie: And they must be quite brave to venture here all by themselves to face you, you know.

(it's not bravery)

(you left them all behind)

(and bonnie said they all should leave you as well)

(but.... if they are here.... then....)

Bonnie: Hah. Bonnie: Even if Loop was foolish, the only thing we can do is follow and help them to the very end, because they are fighting you.

Odile: I will fight! Loop, I can finally protect you myself! Odile: And shut the CRAB up, Lady!! No one can insult Loop but me!

Scary Lady: Ha.....

(euphrasie looks at you)

(you are too scared to look away)

(no no no not again please)

Scary Lady: .......

(she starts..... crying?)

Scary Lady: No, no, no, why! Scary Lady: I can't do it again! Scary Lady: I can't inflict this much pain on someone from my own country! Scary Lady: Hahaha....but you can't spare me either.... Scary Lady: ......Isabeau....the Blessed One....

Isabeau: ....? W-what?

Scary Lady: You can't defeat me like this. Scary Lady: The Universe abides my will. Scary Lady: Your companion could wound me, but only because their Craft also draws from It.

Isabeau: .... Isabeau: So what?! Do you just expect us to give u--

Scary Lady: But.... Scary Lady: I can help you.

Isabeau: ?!? What--

Scary Lady: Isabeau. Heed my words. Scary Lady: You are strong. Scary Lady: You can reflect this attack.

Isabeau: ....

Scary Lady: If you believe in it enough, it will happen. Scary Lady: Please, trust me this once.

Isabeau: I-I don't--

Scary Lady: You can do it.

Isabeau: B-but--

Scary Lady: No 'but's. You can do it.

Isabeau: A-alright, I can do it!

Mirabelle: ...No idea what is going on right now, but I believe in you, Isa! You can do it!

Bonnie: Yeah!!! You can do it!!!

Odile: Haha, what they said.

(...)

(you don't have the energy to speak)

Scary Lady: Are you ready, Isabeau?

Isabeau: I am!!!

Scary Lady: ARE YOU?!?

Isabeau: YES!!!

<Scary Lady strikes the special attack pose>

Scary Lady: Then you can do it!!! Scary Lady: I BELIEVE IN YOU!!!

(euphrasie)

Mirabelle: Wuh-oh!!!

Bonnie: Isabeau, be careful!!!

(strikes)

<Isabeau strikes the special attack pose>

Isabeau: I don't care if you were trying to trick me or not, but--! Isabeau: WE WILL DEFEAT YOU!!! Isabeau: For the sake of this House, of Vaugarde, of my HOME!!! Isabeau: Change will begin again, free from your curse!! Isabeau: We will live again!! Isabeau: AND I TRULY BELIEVE IN IT!!!

Isabeau: TAKE THIS!!!

Scary Lady: Ah--!!

(a sound like a sword getting deflected)

(like hitting a metal ball with a bat)

(like breaking a mirror)

Scary Lady: Yes.....yes! Scary Lady: My attack.... got deflected....back....to me! Scary Lady: .......... Scary Lady: This attack.... is plenty powerful indeed.... Scary Lady: We will not see eachother again for a long time. Scary Lady: But the Curse will be gone without my support. Scary Lady: And..... I hope.... Scary Lady: You can... le ar n... to for g ive me......

Isabeau: ....

Mirabelle: ....

Bonnie: ....

Odile: ....

Isabeau: Did we..... Do it?

Mirabelle: Yes!! We did it!!

Bonnie: We did it!!!

Mirabelle: Crab yea!!!!

Odile: Haha, crab yeah indeed.

Mirabelle: BUT YOU.

(ah)

Isabeau: How could you say all these horrible things to us, Loop!!!

Odile: Wasn't cool. Not at all.

Mirabelle: Yeah, you were really a crab earlier.

Bonnie: But why did you go off on your own??? Bonnie: Going through the whole House alone... Bonnie: I hate to admit it, but.... she was right, that WAS foolish.

(but)

(they didn't)

(want you here)

(so you had to--)

Mirabelle: And why were you acting so weird? Mirabelle: It's not like you at all to be mean like this...

Odile: You didn't mean it, right?!?

(odile pauses, realising she is shouting)

Odile: ...Were you mad about something? Or something happened before you talked to us? Or you wouldn't-- Wouldn't do and say all that, right?

Isabeau: R-right, Loop?

Bonnie: Yeah, but what was it then, Loop?

Mirabelle: .... Mirabelle: Um... Loopie, hey, are you with us?

Odile: Are you listening, Loop???

Bonnie: Loop? Hey? Anyone there?

(you can't stand up)

(your legs)

Mirabelle: Loopie!!

Bonnie: Loop, are you alright??

Odile: Are you sick?

Isabeau: Let me help you up... huh?

(touch. cold)

Isabeau: Wow, I can feel heat even through your gloves! What's wrong?

Bonnie: ...They are burning up. Why?....

Odile: So I was right, they are sick!

Mirabelle: Loopie went up the whole House all on their own, right? Makes sense they would get a little woozy....

Isabeau: Yeah, we had a lot of trouble, even with Siffrin's help... Can't imagine how it would be if one of us did it alone.

(siffrin?)

( siffrin,)

Bonnie: Ah, right, that weirdo. I feel like you know them, somehow.

Odile: We met them earlier! Odile: We were looking for you so we could talk to you, but you were nowhere to be seen, and no one else in Dormon knew where you went either. Odile: So we went to the Favor Tree, and Mira asked it to help us find you, and then this little person descended from the crown??? Odile: We have never met them before, so it was really weird.

Bonnie: They helped us find you is what matters. I don't think we would make it to you if not for their help.

Mirabelle: They made us do a weird symbol so we could hear them while going up the House...

Odile: I've never heard of that technique before, it was really interesting!

Isabeau: But we started hearing them less and less as we went up... Can't hear them at all actually, now.

(siffrin)

(helped,)

Bonnie: But for you to go through the whole House alone, with no help or food or anything.... Bonnie: We barely saw any Sadnesses, but it was still hard, even for the four of us.

Isabeau: A-and the House was really weird too!

Odile: It was... odd. Your copies appearing and disappearing, rooms repeating and leading to strange places.....

Bonnie: It felt super off. Not very usual for a building. Bonnie: Even considering the Curse and the Scary Lady taking over.

Mirabelle: Felt like the world was ending, you know?

Isabeau: Haha, Mira.... Isabeau: Don't say that, please.

(it wasn't)

(just you?)

(what,)

Mirabelle: The House felt almost unsettling... It's better now, I guess, but then, why....

Bonnie: It doesn't matter, I think. Bonnie: The Head Housemaiden should be up ahead, yes? Maybe he can help Loop out with their... ailment....

Isabeau: Y-yes! We should get Loop to him! He probably knows what to do!

Mirabelle: And maybe he can explain what is happening around us, too. I know he has some extraordinary knowledge sometimes...

Isabeau: I'll go ahead and let him know!!!

Mirabelle: Let's go, Loopie...

<checking euphrasie>

(euphrasie)

Odile: Smaller....

Mirabelle: Smaller....

Bonnie: Sure is!

Odile: She got smaller... Why.

Mirabelle: Well, I think, since she was so powerful, she was filled with Craft, which allowed her to get bigger. Mirabelle: But now that she is.... out of commission... she doesn't control her Craft anymore, so she went back to her usual size.

Odile: Heh, like a balloon?

Bonnie: Like a balloon!

(hahaha)

(ow)

(ow, laughing, hurts,)

Mirabelle, Odile, Bonnie: ...

(...)

(you get a bit closer)

(she is breathing)

(good)

...

[aimlesspixel]

Isat Scintillation ch 10

This chapter was particularly satisfying and stressful to write. Hopefully I did it some justice. Spoilers for 2 hats general game content below the cut.

Bonnie stops for you all at the edge of town. The smell of salt water washes over you with the wind. It's nostalgic.

It's not too big a town but it's not that small either. The port at least shows plenty of use and the lights make it somewhat difficult to see the stars appear.

Odile - "You! gasp How do you even-" Bonnie - "Pure unbridled excitement." Odile - "I even gasp used slow craft on you. How?!?!" Bonnie striking a pose - "Nothing can stop me!" Isa - "M'dame that's hardly fair of you." Odile glares at Isa - "And who's fault was it that they managed to evade us?" Mira - "Well we made it at least, wait for us next time though Bonnie!" Bonnie - "But I did wait! And I can't wait anymore! Lets go Lets go Lets go!"

Bonnie begins jogging somewhere easily weaving through the area quickly picking back up the pace.

Odile - "Gems alive this child will end me if we don't wait a second." Mira - "I'm sure you're interested too though Madame! Come on!"

Bonnie eventually crashes through the door of a small house equidistant to the forest and waterfront. "NILLE! NILLE!!!!" You hear their shouts as you eventually catch up.

Bonnie has crashed directly into a lady and is crushing them with hugs. After a moment she snaps back to reality hugging Bonnie back and crying.

"I'm so glad you're safe! I'm so glad!" Her voice breaking, hugging visibly tighter.

Bonnie - "Nille! Nille!" Bonnies dam also bursts. "I worked so hard! I ran! Just like you told me to! It was so scary!" Nille - "You did so well! You were so brave!" Bonnie - "Everyone said you'd be moving again! I'm so glad they were right! I'm so glad…"

They relish in each others embrace giving ample time for the rest of the family arrive

You remember Mira and Isa talking about something like this before, back then Bonnie and Odile interrupted and broke their fantasy but… there's no way anyone could interrupt this here and now.

Nille eventually notices you all and moves to release Bonnie, a veritable feat as Bonnie resists for a substanital amount of time eventually leaning towards her face, whispering something, and relenting.

Bonnie still facing her sister - "Sorry for running again, Dile." Odile - "It's alright Boniface, I'd appreciate the concern earlier but I certainly can't blame you either." Nille - "Are you these the people who helped you Bonnie?" Bonnie - "Uh huh sniffle we all went to kick that crabbing kings butt!" Nille - "You went and kicked his butt huh?" Bonnie - "Yea!" Nille looks towards you all, exhaustion clear upon her face - "Thank you all. For saving them. For saving me." Siffrin - "We couldn't let our favorite preteen down." Bonnie - "Frin…" Nille - "You haven't eaten yet have you? I can see what I can make for everyone." Mira - "Oh you don't need to force yourself it's getting late and all-" Nille - "Please I insist I haven't had anything yet either so It won't be any trouble." Bonnie whips out their frying pan - "Yea! I'll help!" Isa - "It's settled then." Odile - "We'll help in the prep if you're still worried about it Mirabelle." Nille - "Oh crab, where are my manners I'm Petronille." Odile - "I'm Odile, that's Siffrin, Isabeau, and Mirabelle." Bonnie - "You stole my job Dile! I was supposed to introduce you all!" Odile - "Consider it payback for today's marathon."

[inkysandwich]

Aw, guys. This chapter made me super happy. Chapters with all four of them together are my favorites, but actually it's always the ones with Qiu, too.

I love this man.

He's more of an agent of chaos in this story than She Li is (was 🫤) Not because Q is unpredictable or poses an immediate threat, but because him being near generally indicates that someone else has plans. I mean... It's not totally unbelievable that He Cheng forgot to feed Q and he really is just swinging by the market on the way home to his now emptier, dogless home.

But is he?

I doubt it.

Though I do not doubt that he's using his current goose-wrangling babysitting gig to get in on that certified home cooked MGS action. Again.

Qiu is cheeky and bold and unyeildingly bulldozes his way into where he needs to be. Which is why he's the perfect bridge for HC to have between himself and the idiots. Do you think HC would have gotten the same reaction, stumbling into them and bribing himself a seat at the dinner table to keep an eye on them?

Q is crass--even his boss--and that makes him approachable. He's just a dude with a job he thought would be better (like MGS) that he got because he has a level of loyalty to a powerful man that he can't fully explain or probably even justify (like HT) and is now responsible for the safety of a flighty idiot that can't seem to stop getting kidnapped (like ZZX). But he's strong and capable and protects the people he needs to protect (like JY wants to be, HT too). Q can reach them in ways that HC's position would never allow.

He's there when they need more hands in a fight, when the kids are being scammed, when they can't build a fire, when they can't get to school on time, when JY needs to be un-kidnapped, when HT gets to say goodbye to his dog. He gets them ice cream (and king crab!) and guitars and firewood. He gives them rides on his motorcycle and lets them roughhouse but punishes them when they take it too far. He teaches them how to be stronger and when to show restraint and oh my god Qiu is the only suitable father figure in this whole damn story.

It's just a bonus that I'm never going to be sad looking at any part of him.

But his presence is a harbinger.

Of impending mafia send-offs? Of looming threats of rivals? Of teenaged hijinks or mindless street thugs? Of malicious neighbors with cat lasers toys?

We won't know until they strike. (Although, I have my assumptions)

I was going to talk more about the chapter, but this kinda became a Q appreciation post. I couldn't help it. And neither could I help the onslaught of senseless head cannon from taking over.

Because I really really want to see Mom's reaction to Q. He's a gruff muscles-definitely-for-more-than-show dude, but she lives with a prickly "delinquent" that towers over most people, so she knows how to read between the lines.

But--and I WILL die on this hill--she knows how to read between the lines.

Do I think we'll ever get the Momma confrontation I've asked for so badly for years now? Probably not outside of my drafts. But I don't care. She knows, and I know she knows, and you know I know she knows👃

Because in the same breath that I wish for her to react to the mafia presence, I also just... I want this single dad (yes, single. You're going to make him do all the childrearing, send him off to clean up the messes, AND STILL NOT FEED HIM?!) to be treated kindly by the mother of all mothers. I want them to commiserate on keeping track of these animals. I want him to reassure her that her son isn't going to be held back any more. I want her to make him soup that tastes so good he asks for some to go and she gives it to him under the condition that he comes by any time he wants a home cooked meal.

And HT dies a little inside. And so does MGS the first time "A-Qiu" takes her up on her offer...

I'll stop now before I make any grievous mistakes, but I'm sure you can imagine that my draft list of questionable prompts is growing 😈

[lunamokii]

my thoughts / strategies on how to defeat the triumvirate

alright so after watching the datamine clips on youtube on what the xtrawave with the three kings is gonna be like, here are some of my thoughts on what to do and how to attack each king

(this isn't gonna be too organized, this is just me throwing out ideas lol. and i got some of these ideas from the comments of the video as well)

here's the youtube link if anyone wants to see:

so based on my observations about the kings:

boris seems to be the easiest to take out (if prioritized first)

joe is the hardest to take out

joe can be used to damage cohozuna AND boris

jammyman7085 had the best order on how to kill each king (so all credit goes to them, i'm just relaying their comment on to here):

boris

weaken joe

cohozuna

finish joe

so, as of now, here are some strategies for dealing with this xtrawave:

(oh and in case anyone is like "what the hell are these names?? who is who??", boris is horrorboros and joe is megalodontia)

if you have the grizzco charger, focus on boris first and foremost since you have the longest ranged weapon. if possible, find high ground as soon as you can and destroy the bombs. grab eggs to help you take out the bombs whenever you run out of shots/ink. once boris is gone, joe is the next best target

the grizzco brella could also help with boris (if you're on high ground) but i think the brella should help clear out salmonids and bosses for eggs. from experience, i find that the brella is good against joe

the grizzco splatana should focus on cohozuna, since the charge slash does a lot of damage

the grizzco stringer is also good against cohozuna, as well as taking out salmonids and bosses

the grizzco slosher should focus on taking out bosses since it can them splat them pretty quickly. also doing damage to joe

the grizzco blaster and dualies should focus on clearing out salmonids and bosses

*update* the grizzco roller should focus on salmonids and bosses, but while rolling it can be useful for attacking cohozuna within short range (as long as you don't get splatted) and boris within long range (for its vertical attacks)

long ranged specials should focus on bosses and boris: killer wail, tri strike, crab, inkjet, booyah bomb (the best being crab and booyah bomb for boris)

short ranged specials should focus on taking out the salmonids, bosses, joe, and cohozuna: wave breaker, triple splashdown, kraken, reefslider

crab tank is, hands down, the best special to have in salmon run. out of all the specials, it does the most damage against all three kings. and since we're able to have two specials instead of one in this xtrawave, if you have a crab tank, i would use them on boris and joe

booyah bomb can also help out with the bosses and salmonids if things get too overwhelming

killer wail and triple ink strike can do damage against joe, but i would save one for distant bosses like flyfish and stingers

eggs should be prioritized on joe since it has the most health out of the three, at least until it's weak. jammyman7085 also suggested that we keep joe alive until boris and cohozuna are defeated

any time joe locks on to you, immediately go to cohozuna. joe can also deal a LOT of damage against boris while it's charging, so that could help with taking out boris too. but i would prioritize cohozuna first. however if your timing is right, you could probably damage cohozuna and boris with joe

again, some of these ideas came from jammyman7085 from the comments section of the video so all credit goes to them of course :)

i'll update more when big big run officially starts tomorrow! but if anyone has more tips or strategies that i could add, please feel free to tell me and i'll include them in this post!

[missallyblue]

I lied! The Battletech spam ain’t over. I added a light lance, so now we have...

Stalker, Marauder II, Atlas, Atlas again, Black Knight, Highlander (there can only be one), King Crab, Orion, Victor, Longbow, Warhammer, Zeus, Archer, Catapult, Phoenix Hawk, Crusader, Blackjack, Centurion, Hunchback, Wraith, Exterminator, Sentinel, Raven, Trebuchet (the superior siege weapon), Wasp, Enforcer, Blackjack (again), Jenner, Mercury, Locust, Panther, Wolfhound.

Or, in other words, a fuckload of mechs. Drop weight is just shy of 2000 tons. In terms of Alpha Strike point value? About 1k? A bit more?

[kingofthehunt]

I. INTRODUCTION -- out of the red, out of his head.

⟨ cillian murphy, he/him, 47 ⟩ as ⟨ elias corin king ⟩. often to be found ⟨ in his house, stuck like a damn hermit crab ⟩. Who's he loyal to? ⟨ the brotherhood ⟩? Careful, or you're gone in the glimpse of an eye.  as written and loved by – ⟨ river, they/them, utc, eating disorders ⟩

II. HEADCANONS -- blowing through the traffic lights.

Name: Elias Corin King Occupation: Composer/Hunter Age: 47 Sexuality: Pansexual Species: Hunter Clan/Pack/Coven?: The Brotherhood Hometown: Port Leiry Relationship Status: Single

III. BIOGRAPHY -- king's have honor, but all i have is rage.

For a detailed solo on Elias' childhood and youth, go here.

tw: child abuse indicated

He ignores her words out of habit. Her knuckles are bruised, and her face is buried deep in what she’s deemed magical waters, but Elias is sure that it’s just a muddy broth, and not much more. Breathing it in and out cannot feel good or ‘freeing’, as she claims it to feel - her fingers grip the bowl so hard, so shaky, that it looks like she’s just holding back her gagging reflex. His mother lifts her head, face dripping, hair dripping, lips slightly parted, and stares at him. He stares back, unsure what she expects him to do, so he waits for her to speak again. She doesn’t speak until he himself opens his mouth to do so, though, and then he just sits there, back pressed into the hard material of his chair, and waits the moment out. Then, his mother leaves. A few steps into his future, his mother isn’t present. She’s a relatively old addition to the collection of faces he’s keeping in his brain. More precisely, at fifteen, his shelves are so stuffed, that there’s barely one he can keep in mind. The most prominent one is his uncle - dark beard, dark eyes, and soul just as dark. Darker than the nights in the Port Liery's forests would ever dare to get, and when he years later learns that that’s just a fracture of darkness compared to what else is out there, he considers the city lost and gone. Elias' uncle raises him alone, and without the guarding hand of a second parental figure, he grows to be (or to act?) just as twisted as his uncle. He strikes with force, and with brutality, and as the clock strikes twelve on his 22nd birthday, he’s long gone into the forest to hunt. What he struggles with, as he’s (not so) far away from home (what even is that), is the quickening heartbeat in his chest, pushing him down, lower, to the ground. Then he’s panicking, shaking, in the middle of a training session, at night, when he’s alone. This one time, and never again. Fast forward, his touch is burning, his gaze is stinging, and his weapons lethal, just like his hands. Witches, he deems his personal enemy. His cover-up is easy; a composer, living in a large house on the borders of the town, piano sounds sometimes echoing out of it. While his mother believed in magic, Elias doesn't. Elias believes in consequences.

[solarsonicsoda]

Wrestlemania Main Event Reviews - Wrestlemania XI

Lawrence Taylor def. Bam Bam Bigelow with special guest referee Pat Patterson in 11:42

Bam Bam Bigelow looking menacing ahead of this one! Taylor’s out and has a cool light show on the mat with the number 56! I assume this was his American football number. The ring is surrounded by the likes of Kama Mustafa and King Kong Bundy as well as LT’s team of buddies. Do I spot Mongo??? Stare Off to start and Bigelow shoves Taylor. LT with the slap, brutal clothesline and a knee, then sends Bigelow over the top with another clothesline. Great start for him! LT dodges a corner splash, bulldog and some forearms. Big hip toss and Bigelow escapes to the outside. LT jumps out and the NFL and Million Dollar Corporation get in each other’s faces. Bigelow and LT head back inside and Bigelow gets the upper hand. Powerslam but falling headbutt dodged. Big strike and leaping strike that Bigelow reverses into the corner. LT kicks from the corner but Bigelow plants him again. LT at the feet of Bam Bam and his mercy. Boston crab locked in. LT claws for the rope, dragged back for a single leg, but gets to the rope. Bigelow stays in control, and the single leg boston crab spot happens again. LT eventually busts out a big teardrop suplex but Bigelow hits some dropping headbutts. Bam Bam Sault but he hurts his knee on the way down and is slow to cover. Kick out and LT pulls himself up. Sent into the ropes, but LT reverses with an awkward gutwrench suplex. Bigelow kicks out and then hits a big spinning kick. More headbutts and he wants to head up top but starts mouthing off with the NFL team. Hits a diving headbutt but LT kicks out. LT gets up and attacks in the corner. Big running forearms that look impactful and another off the middle rope for the 1-2-3! LT wins! LT is completely spent as his team lift him up as Ted DiBiase yells to Jim Ross up the ramp. 

Pros: LT was impressive for a non-wrestler, Bam Bam also had good action Cons: No real place as a Wrestlemania main event, Bam Bam looks kinda weak, low stakes

This match is an odd main event and has no real stakes but they did a good job and it certainly over delivered! LT gave it his all and Bam Bam led the match well. Actually ended up being an improvement on recent years! Good job to them! Still nothing wild as a straight-up match though.

2.5 STARS OUT OF 5

[dancingtothesurfacenoise]

TODAY IN HISTORY Today is June 21st, 172nd day of the year (173rd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. It is the first day of Summer and also the first day of National No Pants Week.

5400 BC - Prehistoric Druids create early pornography out of large stones on the Salisbury plains of England. Dance around dumpsters wearing no pants. They wish they had Ben New's new single "Summer" to dance to. (Without the music the culture failed.)

104 – Pliny the Younger is dismayed that his appointment as superintendent of the banks of the Tiber involves a lot of mud and not much handling of piles of coins.

325 – The original Nicene Crud is adopted at the First Council of Nicaean Gunk.

451 – Flavius Aetius' battles Attila the Hun in a steel cage match carried by Tiberius Network Television.

533 - Belisarius sails from Constantinople to vacation in Africa, via Greece and Sicily

524 - Godomar, King of the Burgundians, moves his throne to to his Mountain Chablis.

1138 - First Volvo dealership opened in Durham by Viking invaders.

1568 – The forces of Mary Queen of Scotch are defeated by Irish Whiskey freedom–fighters.

1914 - Mark Twain declares the Hokey Pokey to be what it is all about.

1915 - Supreme Court of the United States rules that Oklahoma cannot deny some of its citizens the right to vote. The Chief Justice then proceeds to insult Woodrow Wilson over his attempts to allow women to have a voice beyond choosing what's for dinner.

1940 - WWII: France surrenders to Germany

1941 - WWII: France surrenders to Germany again, for good measure.

1942 - WWII: France celebrates the anniversary of their surrender to Germany and the establishment of the Vichy government with parades, parties, and a third surrender to make sure the message was received.

1959 - A rare hurricane strikes Canada's Gulf of St. Lawrence, destroying vast sasquatch habitat and postponing the National Curling Championships.

1964 - The Beatles record " Sgt Pantsless".

1982 - John Hinckley is found not guilty by reason of batshit insanity for trying to kill President Reagan; Hinckley dedicates his win to Jesus.

1994 - Figures released by the University of Cambridge showed that 80% of those born under the star sign Cancer actually obtained cancer, whereas 112% were infested with crabs.

1995 - Figures released by Harvard University showed that 93% of Cambridge students were unable to properly add percentages.

1996 - Figures released by Cambridge say "Bite me, Harvard". Harvard declines comment.

1997 - Harvard purchases Cambridge and changes it to an automotive maintenance and bar tending school.

1998 - The Republican Party declares itself a terrorist organization, Democrats immediately cave to their wishes fearing a threat of a filibuster.

2002 - The WHO cures polio. They go on to do an encore with "Magic Bus" and "Pinball Wizard".

2006 - Stupidity collapsed to a singularity.

The universe is observed to be composed of a stupidity so dense that no intelligence can escape.

2006 - Scientists find that Pluto has two moons.

2007 - Scientists find that Pluto is not a planet.

2008 - Scientists find that Pluto never existed in the first place.

2009 - Pluto sues science for defamation of character.

2010 – Scientists release research confirming anchovies are more at home in tomato sauce than water.

2011 – Syria and Israel sign an accord to resolve the hostilities over who gets first dibs on Kojak re-runs.

2012 – Bono loses the thing he's looking for now.

2016- World ends not with a bang but with a whimper.

2017 - No one notices.

2024 - The world, now an undead zombie demands the 10 commandments be inscribed in a Comic Sans font on some concrete slabs and that every one must be beaned by the thing.ome concrete slabs and that every one must be beaned by the thing.

[zooterchet]

Famous Assassin Recipes

Tanacharison: The filterless cigarette, a Lucky Strike, enjoyed with a gin martini. Two shots of gin, fill with seltzer, and enjoy a Lucky Strike on a brass lighter, a zippo. For VC nai poon. That's the lady. He always knew where the next war would be.

John Wilkes Booth: Take the Snake, a prison rapist, and the Loser, a bisexual informant, and switch them, with a peanut butter sandwich, Skippy, no jelly, bleached bread, Wonderbread, in high sun, with a Marlboro Red at the same time; remark, "flavor country", to the Snake, your mind's eye of the Loser. The club goes all the way back home, and there's a witch trial, on slavery.

Albert Whisker: Use a three pointer, a 3.5 shot glass, the Cantonese shot, to take a half shotter of vodka, cheap stuff, and a half shotter of orange juice, expensive, campus variety, and hammer a shot, before you snort amphetamines. That's the stuff, to get you going, to understand Chinese history. It doesn't go away, unless you've seen Disturbed in concert. Back in that day, we called him Bojangles; or maybe Scott Joplin, or Sammy Davis Junior.

Lee Harvey Oswald: Get a Marlboro Red, some nitrate car battery stomped coca (cocaine powder on cut, "pure", a CIA blend, nitrate phosphate, for the erection, or the transgender juices, if you prefer the ladies, for the ladies), and take a Bazooka Joe pellet. Demonstrate the technique, to the target, "the head crab", someone stealing a drug dealer's job to lay you, as a Freemasonic Ring (Mister President), to dab the powder from the gum, on the cigarette, then smoke it backwards, on the filter (I'm just a paddy, a poor Irish sailor). They'll need crack rock to get out, but only if they trust Jack "Hardy" Ruby, Charlie Manson (old Mister Lincoln, "he stinks", then you're shut down, the entire campus; you wrote 'nigger' in the bathroom, Lincoln was a drug dealer this time, 'again').

Martin Luther King Jr.: Order a beef tarte, the cheeseburger empanada, from anything labeled 'King', and if they have the tres luches, you've alerted them that "James Earl Ray", is in the area. A personal delivery, will be made to a black Senator's house, to see if you've received a coin, from the Nordic Lodge, the rival to the Lounge, the old athlete's singing joint. If it's Joe Frazier's Lounge, you win; you've just caught the last show to Delaware, Joe Biden is President. Like the King family wanted, a French President, since 1935 (improved traffic resistance, the last place besides the bus they can't get you; the King family, is the cops, they run the restaurant).

Sirhan Sirhan: If you have a charcoal grill, strike up a conversation, with a man with your feet. If he's a propane man, that doesn't know how to cook, he'll have your exact stumble, having studied you, to build a healthy intestine. Your mother, will retain cooking recipes, for his family's secrets, on cartoon anti-Semitism, a fat man, for the proper distribution of diet on a budget; for all involved, including you, the stock of frozen foods non-necessary to eat, to get you "off the bucket", and into proper ordering, fifteen dollars on a two dollar "squib", the fees and tip, on a twenty dollar meal, with an extra meal left over, for a three day "spree".

George Jung: "Boston" George Jung, wants you to know, that it is inappropriate, to drink whiskey, without Worcestershire sauce, hiding the steak's sauce, with a Bloody Mary. To beat AA protocols, mix the Worcestershire, in your home "furnace", the cabinet, with Jim Beam, the preferred whiskey of the CIA range division, the overweight cop. If you know a cop, who has ever been overweight, and he doesn't know he's a cop, give him a flask of Jim Beam (not a "fifth", the jeopardy round, you've just qualified as airman, you get free LSD). He'll figure everything out. But he's watching you, very closely, because your girlfriend, likes them big; you're listening to Boston George.

OJ Simpson: The bowels can be purged, through a heart seizure, a rare term of logic, invented by Jake Charlebois, at Minnesota State University, on the professional college team. The posture as Hitler, as an American quarterback aside, a bowl of whole milk, a full box of Cheerios, and a Friendly's Sundae, in the tin (now a plastic or paper cup, since the advance by OJ), can be used; eating the entire box and all the milk, then the peanut butter Friendly's Sundae, to seize the heart clamps, before the pain and agony passes, and a Marlboro Red is enjoyed, OJ's choice to retire from football to get his Wheaties Box (the first of its kind). The bowel chlonic, will unblock the hemorrhages in the liver, unless you die; you were eating too much mayonnaise (you worked food services, and are in danger of colon surgery; sorry, kid, not for the big leagues, bagging groceries).

David Charlebois: A Chinese sausage, can be enjoyed on a George Foreman grill; normally lethal, "red sausage", unless on charcoal, an easy cause of trichinosis, unless rigid cooking times are observed; impossible for the mentally ill. The press grill, however, guarantees a succulent taste, and a slow purge of the insides, the sweatest black meat you can afford. Any sausage, is delicious on a Foreman, but not like red sausage, the Chinese sausage; a boneless spare rib, lethal to Jews out of paranoia, but just delicate enough to please a Hebrew man's stomach if char broiled in a press machine. Be aware, if your room mate has the Foreman, and won't eat it, he's a traitor. Take his story of his background, and recommend it to a writer claiming Lutheran, as marked '88', Millard Fillmore; a history teacher, in politics.

[sepublic]

When Eda/Luz is Threatened...

           Okay, I know @novelist-becca already went over this in the past, but screw it, I’m in the mood to gush about Eda and Luz, so;

           It’s worth noting that there’s a pretty clear difference between how Eda reacts towards someone who threatens her, VS someone who threatens Luz. Tibbles and Lilith serve as pretty good control groups, given how they’ve interacted with Eda and Luz separately on a different basis, and Eda’s reaction to them in each scenario clearly differs…

           In Tibbles’ case- There isn’t any retaliation to begin with, at first! Yeah Eda hates his guts, but as soon as she gets her elixir, she and King just ditch him to his fate. Eda doesn’t even know that the Mud & Sundry stand is about to collapse on Tibbles when she leaves, so from her perspective, HER issue with getting the elixir is well and done- And that’s it! No need for revenge, Eda has no pragmatic quarrel with Tibbles, and it’s very practical of her as a result.

           …But when Tibbles threatens Luz, King, Willow, and Gus? When he tried to KILL them outright, whereas the last time, he just dressed King up in cute clothes? THEN Eda retaliates violently… Tibbles’ scheme is already ruined and she could easily steal his snails for herself, the kids and King are safe, Eda herself had no participation in Tibbles’ scheme… But the kids were threatened, and Eda goes out of her way to dump a bunch of crab-apples upon Tibbles, setting him up to be eaten alive by his own animals- She’s trying to kill him here, and honestly, I can’t blame her.

           Eda’s lax attitude towards Tibbles is also prevalent early in Really Small Problems; He’s apparently been trying to send her death threats, and even if that wasn’t Tibbles�� Eda seems more concerned about Tibbles’ potential plot towards her, than actually getting back at him for past incidents. Even when she easily sees past Tibbles’ attempt to poison her, Eda just… Goes on with her day, doesn’t bother with Tibbles. She leaves him be, repeatedly spares him of her own volition- And so Tibbles pushes his luck when he targets Luz. THEN he only has himself to blame when Eda sets him up to die; If we never see Tibbles again after this, it’d be a safe assumption to say he actually gets killed off-screen because of Eda.

           All in all, Eda’s attitude towards Tibbles is incredibly lax- Yeah he’s a threat to her, yeah he’s annoying and despicable… But otherwise Eda only does what needs to be done, until Luz is threatened. This pairs well with her interactions with Lilith- Lilith is set to capture Eda… And obviously, Lilith doesn’t plan to actually kill Eda, Lilith thinks she’s helping Eda, and also they’re both sisters who –mostly- know one another… So yeah, that plays a role into Eda not feeling all too threatened nor preemptively defensive when Lilith is around. She lets Lilith into her space, doesn’t try to strike back in anticipation UNTIL Lilith messes up…

           And even then, Eda never actually aims to hurt Lilith! She goes out of her way to save her, and their duel in Covention was clearly treated as more of a fun spat than an actual attempt to hurt each other! Eda seemed to treat it that way at least, and when her curse is brought up, Lilith makes it clear again that, yes, she doesn’t actually mean to hurt Eda (even if she still does anyway by accident).

           But then Luz is captured, and… Well, Eda’s downright murderous attitude towards Lilith says more than enough. When she confronts her sister minutes before execution, Eda first mentions Lilith hurting LUZ above all-else, as if that’s more important to her than being cursed. And, I can see why- The curse happened years ago. Eda knows that Lilith has been trying to fix the curse, that much was made clear since Sense and Insensitivity at the latest. She obviously regrets what she did, and hey, it was only at EDA…

           But Luz didn’t deserve to be threatened. Luz didn’t deserve to almost die, whereas Lilith’s curse never physically harmed Eda, at least not in a direct sense. And it’s King vouching for Lilith by pointing out that she helped LUZ, that Eda then stops her attack- That, and to also not hurt King. Eda seems to care more about Lilith hurting her found family, and conversely, that means Eda is less than impressed by attempts to appease her; But attempts to make up by appeasing the ones she loves and helping them, THAT changes her tune!

           Which, one could perhaps get into speculation that maybe this relates to Eda perhaps not thinking very highly of herself… Or at the very least, she of course values her loved ones WAY more than she does herself, which doesn’t necessarily mean Eda has any low self-esteem! She definitely seems confident enough and it’s not exactly an illusion, but Eda’s own pride in herself could’ve partly stemmed as a survival tactic from the pain and ostracization of the curse by others, being persecuted by the Emperor’s Coven, etc. She does seem to genuinely believe what she says, Eda isn’t just saying it to fool herself- And while there are cracks in the façade here or there, they seem more standard insecurities, and not pointing to Eda making everything up.

           Really, you could go out and say that this evokes the attitude of Eda not really blaming people for being mad at her, even! She knows she’s mischievous and a troublemaker, a rascal who revels into it- She’s a pickpocket and well aware of it… Eda has a tendency to intentionally aggravate others, so she figures it’s not too personal if people hate her, because YEAH- If Eda met herself, she’d hate Eda too! It’s like Eda’s lowkey accepting and admitting her own flaws, or that in some scenarios, such as Tibbles in Hooty’s Moving Hassle- It isn’t meant to be anything personal besides individual gain and greed. It’s just someone trying to get by, even if it IS at the expense of someone else, but that’s about it. And even when Tibbles DOES try to get personal with Eda, again- She lets him be.

           Eda accepts that yeah, she IS a bit irritable and a mess, what about it? It is who she is, and HEY, she’s pretty empathetic, she can understand why people do things, she won’t hold a grudge… But when her own loved ones are threatened, that’s different, because they mean SO MUCH more to her! Not to mention Luz is a literal child and doesn’t deserve any attacks by whatever adult is targeting her… Eda’s willing to forgive and forget, but when it comes to Luz, hurting her apprentice/daughter is borderline unforgivable.

           Then we have people like Wrath; Eda seems like she could’ve initially humored his request to be his girlfriend for like, a day or two before she’d make it backfire on him… But then she notices Luz, who’s being physically harassed by Wrath, and she makes up her mind- If Luz has to put up with this danger and discomfort for even another second, and ploy or ruse to get by Wrath isn’t worth it! Eda will take him head-on, and even then… She makes it clear that her main concern is always Luz, she makes sure LUZ gets away from the Conformatorium, even at the risk of Eda’s self- It’s Luz who matters for Eda, it’s what happens to Luz that forms the basis of her priorities!

           We have Adegast, who Eda mostly knows as the creep who targeted Luz and held her hostage… And likewise, he had a LOT of those fake maps created, so who knows how many people he’d target, or already had? And how many of them are kids- These ‘Chosen One’ maps seem like they’d only work for the kind of young kid with that sort of imagination… So naturally, Eda doesn’t hesitate to kill Adegast by eating him alive, because hey, she can also get a snack out of it!

           There IS a bit of an exception in the Slitherbeast… However, the Slitherbeast isn’t some malicious adult- It’s literally just a wild animal, they don’t and usually can’t operate on our usual standards of morality. Not only that, but the Slitherbeast didn’t go out of its way to hurt Luz, it ony retaliated when she wounded it with a pretty huge fireball- And even then, it didn’t actually hurt Luz, it only succeeded in kidnapping Eda, Emira, and Edric. The Slitherbeast DOES at one point corner Luz later on, but she manages to fend for herself, and with everything mentioned above- And yeah, Eda isn’t going to hold any grudges against the wild animal that HAD been trying to mind its own business, when Luz had accidentally hurt it- And it’s not like it could’ve known that was an accident.

           So, Slitherbeast gets a pass. Then there’s Once Upon a Swap… Again, Lilith is a special case in that Eda knows she’s fundamentally a good person, they’re sisters and whatnot- And of course, Lilith doesn’t know she’s threatening Luz, she think she’s going after Eda, so Eda can’t blame her for intentionally trying to hurt Luz, that’s a pure accident that’s kind of Eda’s fault anyway. On the flipside, you have Boscha and her friends attacking King-in-Luz’s-body… And to be fair, it’s King- King can definitely get himself into deserved trouble. So they’re not REALLY retaliating against Luz for her own actions, it’s King for HIS own actions, even if they think it’s Luz… Plus, Boscha and her posse are literal kids.

           Aside from mixing everyone’s bodies up to provide cover for herself and the others, Eda doesn’t try to harm or retaliate! She doesn’t even try to get back at Roselle and Dottie, who tried to hold her prisoner! Again, Eda really is a forgive-and-forget kind of person, but when it comes to others… She can’t speak on their behalf, and she doesn’t ever want a kid like Luz to feel obligated to forgive an adult who hurt her. That’s not Luz’s responsibility, she shouldn’t have been hurt no matter what in the first place.

           Then we’ve got all those other episodes… Eda doesn’t know that Amity tried to get Luz dissected, and anyhow I doubt Amity actually intended for Luz to be hurt, just aiming for her to be pushed into a corner where she’s forced to out herself. Being a young kid like Luz, whom Eda knows is the child to Odalia and Alador, who likely stood out to her as a nasty bunch… And she can understand, even if it’s wrong- At least enough to not go out of her way to seek revenge on a literal child. This also applies to Covention, and Amity didn’t even try to hurt Luz, and as far as Eda knows, Luz agreed to that binding oath to not practice spells if she failed!

           Eda doesn’t know about the Demon Hunters who threatened Luz or the others… She DID meet them in Escape of the Palisman, but she doesn’t seem to recognize them, and clearly Luz and the others tried their best to cover up the incident. If Eda had recognized the Demon Hunters, I imagine she wouldn’t have just let things be, but who knows? She doesn’t hold anything against them, and in THAT case, they didn’t know Eda was a witch, they thought she was a wild animal out of control and a threat to others… Which she WAS (Eda even threatens Luz and King in that state), so Eda can’t blame them.

           Eda doesn’t know about what happened in Lost in Language… Mattholomule’s antics and that Detention Monster are already being resolved and anyhow aren’t life-threatening. Eda isn’t aware of what went on with the Bat Queen, but ultimately the Bat Queen turned around for Luz’s sake and only tried to chase off Luz for Owlbert’s sake, because Luz DID hurt Owlbert, so Eda can of course sympathize with that kind of protective nature- Plus Eda and the Bat Queen are on good terms and they love each others’ kids!

           Piniet… WELL, that’s an interesting conflict- If Luz and King hadn’t escaped, I also feel like Eda would’ve been VERY brutal with him, if aforementioned precedents set any example. She’d of course track down Piniet by learning about Ruler’s Reach, and Piniet would be in for a reckoning… Then we have The First Day, the Greater Basilisk is already incapacitated/dead by the time Eda arrives. Eda doesn’t know what goes on with Inner Willow, who only targets Amity from being literally set on fire… And while we don’t see Eda tackle Grom herself, she was obviously poised to beat it to kingdom come. And then there’s Boscha in Wing it like Witches, which Eda doesn’t know about, and also Boscha is a literal child.

           Repeating what is already well-established and obvious by this point- Eda seems to have an almost selfless double-standard… In that, she doesn’t really hold it against others who have a conflict with her, unless it’s a really personal betrayal like in Lilith’s case… But even then, Eda doesn’t go out of her way to kick an opponent when they’re down, or even hurt them, until Luz is threatened. And, I think that’s really sweet- Eda knows she’s flawed. Eda’s a full-grown adult, she’s definitely done things that would make people rightfully mad at her… But Luz?

          Even if she DID mess up, it’s definitely not out of malice, because that kid is trying her best- Plus she’s a KID, she doesn’t deserve to be hurt for that! Eda can understand if another kid doesn’t quite understand that, because children don’t think things through… But when an adult with power and age levies that over Luz the child? Eda doesn’t necessarily think of Luz as lesser or ‘weak’ for being a kid… More on that later… But while she wants Luz to be able to stand up for herself and be her own person, let her do things by her own request; As someone who was alone for so long, abandoned because of the curse and for being a criminal…

           Eda can’t bear to let Luz handle that burden on her own, even if she could- Because she’s a KID, she shouldn’t HAVE to do that in the first place! Eda’s not gonna fail Luz, not like how Gwendolyn seemed to fail her and Lilith… And, that plays into her kind of laughing off Luz’s attempt to take on Grom, when she first announces it! Eda doesn’t necessarily think of Luz as weak, and it’s clear that by the end of the day, she knows that as a kid, Luz shouldn’t be expected to handle that kind of terror… And this of course plays into how Eda has zero judgment when she reassures Luz and is ready to take on the responsibility of Grom, until Amity steps in. Coupled with giving the Witch’s Wool cloak to Luz (which Eda also had the concern that she herself wouldn’t need it soon enough), and Luz’s own accomplishments in the season finale… Managing to free Eda, fighting her way through the Conformatorium, instantly solo-ing Warden Wrath, and even damaging Belos?

           Coupled with how Eda has no issues with learning glyphs from Luz, because she believes and trusts in Luz’s guidance, knowledge, and skill as a witch- And I think it’s likely that Eda greatly respects Luz’s strength as a witch, if she hadn’t already… She was clever enough to figure out the glyphs, after all- And I think that REALLY began to change Eda’s perception of Luz’s potential, even beyond Luz rallying Tiny Nose and the others against Wrath, and having the maturity to dispel Adegast’s illusions! Luz wasn’t just strong in the emotional, spiritual sense- She has a real pragmatic cleverness, wit, adaptability, creativity, and now magical skill, that is worth recognizing and honing! And not just because she has no other choice, I think Eda genuinely trusts and respects Luz, to be willing to learn from her…

           …Even so- Eda’s totally going to freak out anyway if anyone keeps trying to threaten Luz, and dang it, she’ll do all she can to protect Luz, even if Luz is arguably more capable of defending herself now! Because she’s a kid, just because she can, doesn’t mean she should, Luz shouldn’t have to worry about that, screw anyone else who suggests otherwise!

[chaseatinydream]

pirate king (8) || atz

“Shit.”

It takes you a few seconds to register the words leaving Seonghwa’s mouth, but before you can even think about what you should do, the pair spring into action.

Yeosang downs his captain’s noodles in a single gulp, tosses the bowl aside and grabs you by the forearm, hauling you up the stairs the main deck, Seonghwa’s footsteps thundering behind you.

The god awful sound of the bell is still ringing in your ears, but it’s nothing compared to the chaos of the main deck. Pirates sprint back and forth, powder monkeys dashing to and fro carrying bags of gunpowder. You watch as the pirates at the gunwales move like the cogs of a well oiled machine, cleaning the long barrels of the cannons with a dry rammer, before charging them with bags of gunpowder. Other pirates start arming themselves with weapons and donning armour, putting out the torches on the main deck and plunging the entire ship into darkness.

But you already see it.

It must have slipped here, under the cover of night, a massive three masted frigate that almost towers above the Treasure. With snowy white sails and the royal emblem of the Crown, a single red rose, painted on its main sail, there is no doubt to you what this is.

A Royal Navy ship.

You turn to Seonghwa in horror, but you can barely make out his face in the pitch darkness, the only light coming from the half moon in the sky. Yeosang’s hand is still gripping yours tight, but otherwise from that, he is merely a dark shape silhouetted against the night.

Terror almost consumes you whole.

“Hyung, what do I-” You try to ask Yeosang, but the navigator shushes you urgently, pressing his lips against your ear. You can feel his heart pounding against your arm as he whispers to you in sharp, calm tone.

“Don’t make a sound. When it starts, I want you to run for the sickbay. San won’t be there, but don’t worry about him, he’s just getting to the wounded. Bolt the door and don’t open it till San comes back for you. If the enemy breaks down the door, don’t fight back. You don’t have the experience yet.”

You nod, your breaths coming out in near hysterical pants. The Royal Navy is here. They’re armed with cannons. They’re going to kill you, and probably destroy the whole ship too. They’ve already hit the ship. By now, water must be pouring into the bilge and in a matter of minutes the ship is going to sink-

Seonghwa envelops you in a tight hug.

“Don’t worry.” His voice is comforting, soft and gentle in contrast to the way your mind is screaming at you to escape somehow, to bolt before the Navy can fire the next cannon. You want to ask him how on earth he wants you to not worry, but then he strokes you on the head like he does after your cooking lessons for a job well done and the screaming in your mind fades to white noise. “We have Hongjoong’s blessing on our side. Trust us.”

You try to say something, but it comes out as a choked whimper. Your hands are trembling, but Yeosang squeezes them gently. You clear your throat and try again.

“What about the two of you?” You manage against the dry sobs. “What are you going to-”

“Fire!” Mingi’s voice rings out across the silence of the night.

This time, you almost forget to clap your hands over your ears again and all at once, a series of cracks threaten to split your eardrums and from the right the sound of wood splintering like twigs rings across the sea, acrid smoke filling your lungs. Coughing furiously, you barely hear Yeosang shouting for you to run over the screams of agony from the enemy ship which you realize is already a looming shape in front of you, his hand ripping apart from yours.

You try to reach for him, but he’s gone.

You’re completely alone.

“Starboard battery, fire!”

The entire ship rocks to one side as the iron projectiles smash into the side of the Treasure. There’s the sound of wood smashing, the cries of the wounded filling the air, and the smell of gunpowder forcing violent coughs from your lungs and your eyes to water. You stumble forward almost blindly with your hands in front of you, feeling the deck of the ship pitching and rolling violently beneath your feet as you rush to the sickbay.

You’re almost there when disaster strikes.

All of a sudden, the ship heels to the left and your fingers slip from the latch, you’re thrown violently across the deck only to smash into the barrels kept at the port side of the ship.

Something whistles above your head and by some form of sheer dumb luck you dive to the ground, rolling to the side as the barrels you have been crouching behind burst into splinters. Your hands instinctively fly up to protect your face, but the flying wood chips tear into the material of your shirt and graze your skin.

You can’t help yourself from looking back at the wreckage. There are two iron balls, connected by a thick chain lying amidst destroyed barrels and some shredded rope. Your heart pounds like you’ve just run thousands of miles. You can only gulp at what would have happened if you had been a fraction too slow.

“Hold tight, they’re about to hit us!” You hear Mingi scream over the chaos and you turn to stare at the rapidly approaching ship in horror. Then the quartermaster’s words finally register in your head and you’re diving for one of ropes of the mizzen mast’s rigging before you can even think about what you’re doing.

And not a second too late, because the moment your hands clamp around the rope in a vice grip, there is a grating sound of wood against wood that makes your very bones shudder, the entire ship groaning as the Royal Navy ship pulls up along the starboard. You’re thrown literally head over heels by the insane force, rolling over the ground of the main deck. For a moment, you’re straining against the rope as your fingers desperately try to hold on.

There’s screaming all around you, and then the ship tilts back the same way it came from, back towards the starboard, and you’re sent tumbling back across the deck once more like a limp rag doll. Every inch of your body shrieks in protest at the repeated battering and bruising, but then the rope lengthens and you find yourself very nearly thrown over the gunwales of the ship.

Then you scream. Very loudly. Because the upper half of your body is dangling over the bulwarks and your grip on the rope is slipping.

Beneath you is the inky black, bottomless expanse of the ocean. Once you fall in, it will consume you like it has so many others, slowly depriving you of the air you breathe until you finally give up, sinking to the bottom of the seabed where crabs climb over your dead and bloated corpse and pick at your lifeless eyes.

Then you see the crew of the Royal Navy ship on small skiffs and boats, armed to the teeth with muskets and sabers and grappling hooks.

One of them spots you and raises his gun.

Your heart drops in your chest as he prepares to fire.

Someone’s hand grabs you by the back of your collar and roughly yanks you back onto the deck as the wooden railing in front of you splinters from the musket ball, right where your head had been.

You turn to stare at your savior in wide eyed horror, your breaths coming out in ragged pants as you desperately try to recover from your near death experience. To your shock, it’s the younger battlemaster from earlier this day, Jongho, primed musket in hand. He gives you a questioning look and raises the firearm to point right in your face.

“Wait-” You panic but then he shoots to the left of your head, and you whip around to see a Navy officer who had been climbing over the bulwarks fall backwards with a bullet in his head. The maknae curses and draws his cutlass, shearing through the grappling hook and you hear the scream of another officer who had been climbing the rope as he plunges into the sea, never to be seen again.

“What are you doing here?” He snaps at you, as he primes his musket again, eyes locked on the enemy ship looming behind you. There’s another round of booming cannon fire and you almost shriek in alarm once more, getting ready to dive to the ground, but then you hear the screams of agony from the crew on the deck of the enemy ship.

“Grapeshot.” Jongho mutters under his breath as he holsters his musket in his belt, eyes scanning the complete mayhem around you. You don’t know what the word means. “Good job, Wooyoung-ssi.” Then he turns back to you, a hard glare on his face.

“Shouldn’t you be in the sickbay or something? How did you end up at the main mast?”

Main mast?

You glance around in shock. In the confusion and pandemonium, you’ve somehow ended up further from the sickbay than where you started. You open your mouth to reply, but your words are cut off by screaming from the stern area.

“They’ve boarded us!”

Jongho spits out another curse, grabbing a knife from his belt and sending it flying at an officer that had been aiming his rifle at you in one smooth motion. Your hands fly to your mouth and you watch with wide eyes as blood spurts from his neck, his knees buckling beneath him and his body falling to the ground with a soft thump.

You force the bile in your throat down at the sight.

The young battlemaster glances between you and the stern, where the fighting is taking place. More and more Navy soldiers have started to board and they’ve organised themselves into a wedge formation, defending the grappling hooks so more of their fellows can join them.

Grinding his teeth, he turns to the bow, only to watch the fabric of the top mainsail get shredded by a bar shot and the resulting splinters fly everywhere, showering the deck in a deadly hail. Nowhere is safe, especially not for a tiny slip of a thing like you.

Then he makes up his mind and shoves a musket into your hands. “Here.” Drawing the dagger that Yunho had given you that morning from your belt and thrusting it at you, he grabs you by the hand and yanks you forward by the wrist towards the stern. “Stay behind me and don’t get in the way.”

You open your mouth to question what exactly he intends for you to do with the musket, since you have no idea how to use it, but then the two of you are in the thick of fighting and you don’t have the brain capacity to form words anymore.

Jongho keeps one hand around your wrist as he pulls you forward through pandemonium of the main deck. Swords flash from every direction and the air is sour with smoke from the gunpowder. For a moment, you wonder if you’re going deaf from the repeated pounding of cannon shot.

Suddenly, a Navy soldier looms out of the darkness in front of you, blade drawn. You barely have time to scream and duck before Jongho jerks you to the side by the arm, his own cutlass curving down in a deadly arc, splitting the man from shoulder to hip. Your eyes and mouth close on reflex as still warm blood splatters across your face and front, but you have no time to panic as Jongho continues moving aft once more. The coppery tang of blood fills your mouth and you wipe the blood from your face, only to nearly gouge your own eyes out with the dagger you’re holding as the Treasure suddenly heels, the bow turning away from the enemy ship.

You spit the blood from your mouth.

“What’s going on-”

“Hongjoong-hyung’s trying to move away from the enemy ship so we can fire explosives instead of resorting to hand to hand combat.” Jongho grunts, flicking the blood from his sword. “I need to get you to the sickbay before I help the crew out, so get moving.”

The threatening tone in his voice kind of terrifies you.

The two of you continue your mad dash, ducking beneath swinging axes and gunfire. It reminds you of your run from the harbor, except this time the ground is rocking back and forth under your feet. And if you thought Jongho was talented, you had obviously never seen talent before, because the young battlemaster fights like an actual demon.

Somehow, with one arm on you, he still mows through the soldiers like a battering ram, scattering enemy left and right. His cutlass dances a deadly tango, flickering like a snake’s tongue, darting in and striking through his opponent’s guard. You’re left in awe of his skill, but he doesn’t really give you much time to appreciate it

.After what seems like an eternity later, you finally reach the stern. Huffing from the exertion, your fingers fumble with doorknob and to your immense relief, the door swings open. For a moment, you panic when you see that San isn’t there, but then the ship suddenly lurches to the side once more and you’re thrown against the door frame violently.

Your fingers slip over the trigger and the deafening sound of a musket shot echoes in your ears.

Your head whips backwards in horror, only to find the lead shot embedded in the chest of a Navy soldier who’d been engaged in a fight with Jongho. The man crumples to the ground, a pool of red spreading beneath his body, but then you see the blood seeping from Jongho’s shoulder where your bullet has grazed him.

The maknae turns to give you a deadly stare.

“I’m so sorry.” You gulp, honestly starting to fear for your life.

“You troublesome-” Jongho begins, but you never get to hear what he was saying as Mingi’s shout tears through the bedlam on board. “We’re pulling away! Clear the deck! Starboard battery, switch to explosives!”

When you glance back at the starboard, the Royal Navy ship has indeed gotten further, much to the relief sagging in your chest. Captain must have managed to outrun the enemy.

You see Yunho rally a team of pirates and they bear down on the soldiers in a pincer formation, forcing them overboard. Other officers, seeing their advantage rapidly being lost, throw themselves over the side rather than face the tall warrior in a berserker’s rage.

“Starboard battery, fire!”

The deck of the Royal Navy ship is bombarded with shot that burst into flames the moment they make contact with the wood. But a single cannon ball slams into the hull right above the waterline, punching a hole in the side of the ship.

Your mouth falls open. That’s where the storage hold of the ship is, where the stocks of gunpowder are kept.

Then the ship is engulfed in flame, a mass of burning wreckage in the distance as the Treasure pulls away, leaving the sinking ship and its dying crew in its wake.

[corpsentry]

ao3 mirror

fandom: age of calamity, botw rating: g starring: prince sidon and mipha note: spoilers for both games

"You know, Daruk’s my idol,” Yunobo says. He pumps his fists in the air like a kid at a fun fair in line for the big pirate ship ride. “They say he was the coolest Goron there ever was. Plus he had a beard. I think beards are awesome.”

“Great,” Sidon says. He stops peeling the mandarin in his hands for long enough to look up blankly at him. "Mipha was my sister."

the age of calamity, side b.

The thing about time travel is, even if someone stands in front of you and tells you point-blank that there’s a way to bring your dead sister back to life, you’re probably not going to believe them.

“I don’t believe you,” says Sidon.

“Okay,” Teba says patiently, fluffing his feathers with an absent glide of his wing. “Try harder.”

Sidon stares at him. He tries harder, though he’s not sure what that entails and so doesn’t end up really doing anything. “I don’t get you.”

“Which part don’t you get?”

“I get to see Mipha again?”

Teba’s eyebrow twitches. “Let me put this as simply as I can, Prince,” he says, a little too loudly. The soldier stationed at the bottom of the staircase turns to look at them. “We’re going to go back to the point a hundred years ago at which the four champions were killed in their divine beasts. We’re going to save them. We’re going to make sure they defeat Ganon before he can send Hyrule into ruin. And then we’re going to leave.”

By now, they’ve caught everyone’s attention. It’s been a long time since a hundred years ago, but here in Zora’s Domain it still feels like the events of last Tuesday, to be recounted over salt tea and fish skewers, to be mourned over an empty coffin. Everyone’s staring at the big white bird with the angry eyebrows, a little curious, a little apprehensive. For what he’s worth, Teba is indifferent. This much will not faze him.

Sidon twiddles his thumbs behind his back, where Teba cannot see them and the guards at the bottom of the staircase can point and laugh all they want. To be honest, he heard nothing. His heart stopped when he heard ‘killed in their divine beasts’, at which point a watery monster punched its way into his skull and crushed his brain. The monster is nothing concrete, nothing crystal-clear, just what little Link has told him, bits and pieces of a history he was prevented from taking part in. It’s been several months since the kid dragged his beaten-up body halfway across Hyrule and kicked Ganon’s ass, though they’re still feeling the after-effects of that particular calamity today. Mipha’s statue still looms over their heads, a reminder of what it means to die alone and far away from home.

“So,” Sidon starts, hearing his voice echoing in his ears like metal slicing through air. “What you’re saying is, I get to see Mipha again.”

Teba looks like he wants to grab one of the guards’ spears and stab Sidon in the face, but for what he’s worth, he reigns it in. “Yes.”

“Okay.” He grins. “I’m in.”

::

He tried to fight a lynel when he was fifteen. The domain had been overrun with monsters who had arrived for the pre-party to Ganon’s return, including an outstanding number of wizzrobes, several moblins, and a tall, intimidating figure which spat electricity from its pink-tongued mouth and whose name he couldn’t recall. While his father, the king, and his sister, the princess, breezed through the area like a lightning strike, reclaiming keeps and stabbing moblins with silver teeth so their generals could forge a path ahead, Sidon reveled in the wonder of being left unsupervised at four a.m. in the morning. And then heard the familiar, haunting roar of a lynel. And then decided to go and say hi.

It was a mistake, of course. The lynel was so tall he couldn’t make out the gear on its back. Its face was all squished up, like a birthday cake that had been stepped on, and its horns were too big for its thick, blocky nose. This was funny for all of five seconds. Then the lynel extracted a bow from that unknowable space behind it and aimed the sharp end of an arrow at his face, and it became a problem.

“H-h-h-hi,” said Sidon, holding up his Kid Spear, which was strictly for Kid Use Only, and had the offensive capabilities of a stick.

“RHOOARHGHHGHH,” said the lynel.

He jabbed the Kid Spear at the lynel’s leg. The lynel spat at him, though probably unintentionally, as it seemed preoccupied with the arrow it was trying to send into his face. It was stuck. The big scary lynel’s bow was stuck.

Emboldened by the stupid scary lynel’s broken bow, Sidon decided to try again. “Please go away, Mr. Lynel,” he said in his best and most charming Kid Prince voice, twirling his Kid Spear like a sweet jellyfish skewer.

“RHOAHOARHAGHOGHHHH,” said the lynel, who sounded significantly angrier than before.

“I understand,” Sidon said politely, and then closed his eyes and sent a prayer to the goddess Hylia (the way he had been taught to since he was old enough to speak, the way every child in Hyrule knew that there was a place for them to go to after they left this world behind). He braced for impact, which he hoped would be of the violent sort, earth-shattering and brisk enough to break his bones and leave nothing breathing in its wake. He was fifteen, not five. This was Ganon’s era. Every living creature in Hyrule knew this, the way their ancestors woke up and knew which direction the sun would rise from. Not if, but when. When the Calamity strikes. When your people die. When the knight emerges from the woods with the sacred sword in his hand, and saves you all.

But none came. When he opened his eyes, and he did so reluctantly, adrenalin coursing through his veins like thunder, the world was pitch black. In place of the cool blue moon was his sister, her ceremonial gear glittering darkly, the Lightscale Trident glowing like a star in her right hand.

“Holy shit,” whispered Sidon the kid. Mipha stabbed the lynel in the face.

She hugged him when it was all over and they had put the moblins and the wizzrobes and the electric moblin (so that’s what it was! Terrifying) back to sleep. Their father was upset, but he was frequently upset at Sidon and so it didn’t bother him as much as it could have. Sidon was not Mipha. It was all right if he got things wrong, as long as his sister never did. Coincidentally, the Hylian princess had been in the area at the time of the attack, accompanied by a knight with blue eyes and a Sheikah warrior who looked like she would throw a knife at a fish for sport. It was a good thing Mipha had been at home, and not visiting one of the other tribes or hunting for crabs near Lurelin. It was a good thing she had intervened when she had, lest the pre-party become the real thing.

“Thank you,” said the Hylian princess, trying her best to smooth her brow and failing. She looked anxious, though she had only come to pass on her father’s word, though the word that she had brought was victory.

Mipha smiled at her with a face full of sun. “It is my pleasure.”

::

He wishes the egg could talk. If the egg could talk then Teba would have less reason to talk, and if Teba talked less then Sidon would have less of a raging headache, which which would make him less of an asshole, which would make their discussions go much more smoothly than the janky, sputtering mess they’ve been all week.

“As I was saying,” says Teba, continuing whatever train of thought he picked up on their way up to Goron City and then dumped unceremoniously by the side of the road. As he does this, Death Mountain spits a chunk of lava out of its steaming gaping top, which lands a few inches shy of his breastplate. He hops backwards without missing a beat and begins fanning himself with one wing.

Riju stops fiddling with the diamond circlet in her hands for long enough to give him a look of inquiry. “As you were saying?”

“I can’t wait to see Daruk.” Yunobo scratches his arm. It makes a sound like two large boulders grinding together. Riju drops the circlet.

“You’re only going to see him for a short while,” Teba comments over the sound of the egg blowing its top at Riju and Sidon plugging his ears with his fingers. “No point getting all worked up about it.”

“You’re just as worked up yourself,” Riju counters. Patricia barks. Teba flinches.

This is true. There are two things Teba won’t shut up about. In ascending order of importance, they are 1) when they should depart for the alternate timeline in which they will prevent their respective ancestors from getting their spirits trapped in giant mechanical monsters for a hundred years, and 2) how incredible Revali is. Because Revali was the most powerful Rito warrior that ever walked the land (or flew over it, or blasted bomb arrows at it, whatever). Revali singlehandedly invented an entire style of aerial combat which involves launching yourself into the air with an updraft that defies the laws of the universe and then setting your surroundings on fire. Revali killed god.

Teba looks like he wants to go back to his wife and kid in Rito village. Good for him. Not all of them have bodies to put in coffins. “I just want to meet him once,” he says quietly.

Yunobo laughs, and it sounds like two extra large boulders grinding together. “Me too, brother.” He picks up the diamond circlet from the floor and puts it on his head like some kind of weird hat. “I’m going to tell Daruk how great he is. And then I’m going to go home.”

::

One time when they were much, much younger, before he woke up one morning and Mipha was three times his height, one of the guards brought back some durians. The durians were misshapen and spiky and smelled intimidating, though Sidon wouldn’t go as far as to say that the smell was unpleasant. The guard had obtained them from a merchant in the Faron region. He hadn’t meant to purchase them, but they were the last of her stock and she said she could only head home once she had sold everything. He empathized her.

At first they tried to open the durians with their hands, but this only produced several pricked fingers and left ominous and eerily substantial bloodstains everywhere, so someone brought out a spear, almost drove it through the table, and someone else brought out a carving knife. Halfway through the spectacle of watching one of the guards, who was thirty-seven and enjoyed collecting glowing stones as a hobby, attempt to de-spike an entire durian, the crowd parted abrutpyl.

“What are you all doing?” Mipha put her hand absently on Sidon’s head. He had been watching the ongoing debacle out of some kind of morbid curiosity, standing on tip-toes so he could peek over the top of the table, though now he had apparently been relegated to armrest.

“Trying to open this durian, your highness.”

Mipha laughed. His sister’s laugh was a delicate, heartrending affair, like trying to pull weeds from the bottom of a lake without breaking them at the stem. The weather at home was always more or less divine, but whenever Mipha laughed, Sidon swore it blasted a hole right through the clouds. If there were no clouds, then the hole appeared in the fabric of the sky instead. Mipha, at her brightest, was a walking catastrophe of sun.

Still chuckling a little, like she’d been made privy to a secret that none of them knew about, Mipha stepped up to the cutting board. “You have to do it like this,” she said cheerfully, digging her fingers into a seam in the durian’s shell like she’d been dealing with danger all her life.

Cue gasping. Cue the horrors of childbirth.

The durian was sweet. It was also a little goopy, but Sidon was no stranger to things which stuck to your fingers and refused to let go (he was one of those objects when it came to his sister, who he could rarely be found more than an arm’s length away from on any given day), so he felt for the little spiky fruit, and decided that he would make an effort to bring some back home when he went traveling himself in the future. While he examined the inside of the durian’s shell, which had been hollowed of fruit and had the texture of rough sandpaper, the guards crowded around Mipha and demanded that she share her secret to not getting stabbed to death by the fierce and terrifying durian. But either she didn’t know how to explain it to them, or they weren’t very good at listening, because she remained the only one capable of cracking open a durian with her bare hands for many, many years, up until she died while fighting a watery manifestation of Ganon inside the divine beast she had been told by the king of Hyrule to pilot to victory’s end. Then it was someone else’s turn to take over.

::

Painkillers for fish are a tricky affair. To begin with, charmingly little research has been conducted into the biology of the fish-person because the Zoras simply aren’t interested in how their bodies work, and while others have offered to do so in their place, among them several enthusiastic Sheikah researchers and one Hylian with a thing for huge glowing orbs, his people have never cared enough to give their consent. It’s a unique kind of apathy, one which stems from a place of privilege, or denial. They are, as a general statement of fact, very good at both.

“This will help.” Yunobo hands him a rock roast. Where did Yunobo get a rock roast from? Sidon frowns. They’re in the middle of the desert.

“Thanks,” Sidon says. Smiles. Kind of, like, holds the roast up to his mouth and gives it a sniff. It doesn’t smell half as good as durian. He puts it down.

It takes him several days to make sense of the convoluted sequence of events that Teba presented to him that day on the front door of the world he had rebuilt from scratch, surrounded by mystique and glamor and promising, in a breath of cold air, to bring his dead sister back to life. This makes it sound like he’s finished making sense of it all and will thus never be confused ever again, but if he’s to be entirely honest, he still doesn’t get it. He wants to. He’s scared to. He won’t look Teba in the eye.

“We should get going soon, don’t you think?” says Riju, who is twelve and somehow more put-together than all four of them combined. She pulls another book from the shelf and leaves it on the pile on the desk.

Yunobo shrugs loudly. “Doesn’t make a difference when we leave, does it? We could leave for Hyrule in twenty years, and we’d still end up at the same place.”

“But I want to save them,” Riju says earnestly. The pile behind her has been growing all afternoon, and will soon overtake her in height if she is not stopped. Mission preparation looks like archaeological excavation when you’re traveling backwards in time, and not forwards to some yet unknown destination. Ancient Sheikah records. Research journals. The writings of people who were obsessed with the events of a hundred years ago despite having no personal investment to speak of, and whose words carry with them a hint of reverence, even as they choreograph the funeral song of the old king. This is all that’s left of those ruins, aside from Link, who they’ve all quietly decided to keep uninformed of the current proceedings. Hyrule itself has been kept in the dark. No need for them to know about the maybes and the what-ifs and the could-have-beens. No need for more people to go crazy.

Sidon shuts the book in his hands with a thud. “But why?”

Riju’s eyes go wide. Drama queen. “Why what?”

Sidon opens his mouth, closes it, and opens it again. There’s a heat rash on the back of his neck which he can’t quite reach on his own. The elders had warned him about the desert, but the charm he received from Link has proven to be effective in all areas except for maintaining good skincare. He blinks dumbly at Riju, who has begun to flicker like the glassy surface of a pond. His eyes hurt.

“I mean, why do you.” His eyes hurt. His throat hurts. There’s something large and horrible stuck in his chest, and he can’t get it out. “Why do you want to save them?” There’s a durian in his rib cage. It must have lodged itself there when Teba glared at him like he was an idiot as he came face to face with the cruel reality of the universe, and it dawned on him like a dead body falling out of the sky that he would get to see Mipha one last time, and then he would have to come back. To a Hyrule without her. To the stupid stuck-up world that had to try again and again and again, coughing up blood and dragging itself through the dirt on bruised knees, before it could defeat the monster. “It’s not like they’ll come back to life,” he says, each word a silver knife in his mouth. “They’ll stay dead here. They’re already dead.”

Silence.

Riju has let everything go, including the diamond circlet, the topaz earrings, and three volumes sheathed in gold. Yunobo’s mouth is open so wide, you could stick your head inside and take a look around if you leaned in close enough. For the first time since he met him, Teba is at a loss for words. His chest rises and falls erratically, his hand on the bookshelf quivering, his eyebrows doing a little dance on his forehead. He’s sweating. Of course he is. They’re in the desert.

Riju, Hylia bless her soul, is the first to speak.

“It’s the spirit of things,” she says softly. She looks sadder than any twelve-year-old should ever have to look. But then and again, Sidon was barely old enough to hold a spear with both hands when his sister died and everything went to shit. Then and again, everything goes away eventually.

Sidon stares at her helplessly for a moment, gulping the humid air of the library like a fish out of water, then gives up and walks out of the room. He spends the rest of the afternoon blowing bubbles in the pool beside Kara Kara Bazaar while the other three continue their work, and then buys a durian from one of the vendors and hacks it open with his spear. You can’t crack open a durian with your bare hands, unless you’re Mipha, in which case you can do anything. It’s a good thing, then, that she’s gone.

::

When they were children and they got into trouble, his father would always scold Mipha far more harshly than Sidon. Mipha was the older sibling, after all. She should know better. This dynamic remained firmly established between them even as Mipha grew into her role as princess, future ruler, and eventually, champion. Of course, the reprimandings grew less stern, but Sidon had a penchant for winding up in places he wasn’t supposed to be in and Mipha had a penchant for being with him whenever this happened. He secretly resolved to pay her back when he got older and was finally able to stand up to his father, and therefore explain that most of the things they got into trouble for were his idea. He would be the one to weep at his father’s feet while his sister looked on with a horrified expression, and in that moment she would understand how much he loved her.

Then she died. You can’t tell the story of Mipha without this part. Mipha was a humble, kind girl, and then she died. Mipha could crack open a durian with her bare hands, and then she died. Mipha was the pride of their people, and then she died, and she died, and she died.

You can’t change the past with the wave of a hand. You’re not a bird. You’re not a fortune-teller. You’re a fish-person with an empty coffin for a sister, and in a few weeks’ time, you’re going to save her specter.

::

“...What if I brought her back with me?”

“Huh?”

“Hahajustkidding. No way I’d do that. Not a chance.”

“Um. Do you need painkillers?”

“Thanks, but they don’t work on me. I’m over a hundred years old, you see. Us Zoras, we’re different.”

::

The day before departure. They’re back at Zora’s domain. It’s raining. Teba is running through a checklist of items to bring with them which is so long, he has to hold it above his head to prevent it from touching the floor. Riju is feeding Patricia mandarin peels.

“You know, Sidon.”

Sidon looks up from his mandarin. “Mm?”

Yunobo grins at him. “Daruk’s my idol,” he says proudly. He pumps his fists in the air like a kid at a fun fair in line for the big pirate ship ride. “They say he was the coolest Goron there ever was. Plus he had a beard. I think beards are awesome.”

“Great,” says Sidon, as enthusiastically as he can, because he genuinely wants to be happy for Yunobo who is finally going to meet his idol and has clearly dreamed about this moment for some time. He wants to be happy for all of them. He fucking wants to. This is a rescue mission, not the imprisonment Princess Zelda walked into in Hyrule castle, not the hundred-year nap Link took on the Great Plateau. This is a happy ending, even if it’s not theirs.

Daruk the idol. Urbosa the warrior. Revali the bird. Sidon pictures them in his head, the way Link described them to him once, his voice carrying across the water like beams of light.

“Mipha was—”

He stops peeling the mandarin in his hands, his nails still embedded in the soft skin of it, the white-tinged flesh peeking out like a wound. Outside, the rain keeps falling. A river of tears from the sky.

Yunobo tilts his head to the side. “Mipha was?”

Mipha was the pride of their people. Mipha was the first person he wanted to live forever. Mipha was the only one he knew who could crack open a durian with her bare hands, like she was peeling open the heart of a monster, only to reveal that it had been something soft and scared all along. Mipha was a flesh-and-blood person. Mipha was the light of their world. Mipha is an empty coffin with a name inscribed on the lid, a house with the lights off, a memory drenched in ocean.

Yunobo prods his shoulder, though he barely feels a thing. “Mipha was?” he repeats kindly, herding him along to the end of the line, to the boat at the edge of the water.

Sidon puts the mandarin away. He stares long and hard at Yunobo, and hopes that his eyes will convey the wound his body no longer knows how to carry.

“Mipha was my sister.”

::

Let’s say you’ve been entrusted with the future of your kingdom. There’s a bad guy coming, and everyone’s scared to death, so you learn how to pilot this big robotic elephant which shoots turrets of water like a machine gun, and you get really good at it, and when the bad guy arrives on your new friend’s birthday suddenly you can’t do it anymore. You’re trapped inside the giant elephant. You’re bleeding out all over the floor. Your chest hurts like something awful, and your vision is beginning to blur. Sensing your despair, the monster closes in on you, wielding that big blue trident like fury. It holds the sky up over your head, and as it does so you close your eyes. You send a prayer to the goddess Hylia (the way you have been taught to since you were old enough to hold your little brother in your arms, the way every child in Hyrule knows that there is a place for them to go to after they leave this world behind). You brace for impact, which you hope will be the gentle sort, a slap to the wrist that’s conclusive enough to break your bones and leave nothing breathing in its wake. You’re twenty, not five. This is the end of all things as you know it. Every living creature in Hyrule knows this, the way their ancestors woke up one day and knew that this world would come to ruin. Not if, but when. When the Calamity strikes. When everyone you’ve ever loved dies. When you walk into the mouth of the elephant, and the elephant changes its mind, and decides to keep you in its belly forever.

None arrives. You open your eyes slowly, hesitantly, fear a living memory in your bones, but you are not faced with the stinging end of a trident. In its place is a boy almost three times your height, his eyes glittering darkly, the spear in his right hand shining like a star.

He is not your brother. But, Hylia bless you all, he is.

So what can you say, when the evil has been defeated and you are standing on the balcony of the castle, smiling up at him through tears while this big overgrown baby stares at you like you’re the answer to the universe, except:

We’ll definitely meet again, won’t we?

He flinches, but you don’t ask, and he doesn’t say why. He pulls you into an earth-shattering, bone-crushing hug. It’s a beautiful day to be alive, the sun shining like sin, Hyrule’s beaten but stubbornly breathing carcass laughing up at you from the fields below. He takes your hands in his. He’s shivering. He’s shaking from head to toe.

Of course, he says in the kindest, saddest voice you’ve ever heard, though he has only come to pass on someone else’s words, though the word he has brought is salvation. From now on, I’ll always be by your side.

: : : : :

You smile at him with a face full of stars.

[wishingforatypewriter]

A Love Like Closed Doors

Summary: Opal wishes her mother would take her more seriously (third chapter of The Successor)

When Opal was about eight years old, she had asked to be trained in the nonbending martial arts. She had no real interest in fighting—always having preferred more peaceful activities like her older brothers—but seeing as though she could not invent, paint, or metalbend, she figured that becoming a competent fighter would be her only chance at staying relevant.

Her mother had indulged the request, guiding her through stance training and having her practice simple katas. But after she had taken a bad fall during one session, resulting in a sprained wrist and bloody nose, the lessons stopped abruptly.

Opal had not been the sort of child taken to screaming tantrums, running away, or hunger strikes. Nonbenders learned to take up less space; she and Junior were always the best behaved of the siblings. But when her mother put an end to her training, she had raged. Hot tears rolled down her cheeks, and she stormed all the way to the tram station on the edge of the estate, mustering the courage to get on the rail and go somewhere, and ignoring the kind pleading of the guards who offered to bring her home. She missed lunch and dinner and would have stayed out all night, stewing in her frustration, had her father not come down to get her.

“She thinks I can’t do anything!” she had said as soon as her father sat down beside her on the cold metal bench.

He'd rested a comforting hand on her back. “Sweetheart, your mother thinks you are very capable—”

“Then why won’t she train me?” Opal had asked. “Wing and Wei and Kuvira have training accidents all the time. She throws rocks at them!”

Her father sighed, removing his glasses to clean them on the end of his tunic, the way he often did when considering a particularly challenging mathematical problem. “Opal, you are your mother’s entire word. If anything ever happened to you, I don’t think she’d survive it,” he told her. “I know she can be a bit overprotective sometimes, but she only worries because she loves you so much.”

Opal had taken her father’s word for it, grabbed his hand, and went back home to fall into her mother’s arms. After seeing the tortured look on her face, the concerned forehead creases that aged her by decades, she never mentioned the lessons again.

She hadn’t realized it then, but it was at that moment that she accepted a love like closed doors, a life filled with pressed flowers and pretty half-truths. Had she known it at the time, would she have fought harder?

It was nearly midnight, but the dome around the house was still down, even though all the others in the city had gone up at the usual time. Huan was out on the lawn with his easel, painting an abstract rendition of the night sky, and the twins had decided to hold a late-night power disc match. Opal wanted nothing more than to be jubilant like them and take this rare opportunity to stargaze without question, but she couldn’t help but consider how odd it was for the domes to be down this late—and on a Wednesday night, no less.

She had been on her way to ask one of the guards on duty—hoping they might mistake her for someone who should to know things—when she caught sight of her mother pacing up and down the foyer. She continued for a minute or so before a young guard approached her.

“Would you like for us to raise them, ma’am?” he asked.

“No, leave them down, Hong-Li,” her mother replied with an impatient edge to her voice. “She said she’d be back before tomorrow.”

Hong-Li—who only looked a year or so older than Opal herself—was visibly shaken by his boss' displeasure. “I...um, would you like for us to try radioing the captain? Maybe we could find out what’s keeping her.”

“They didn’t bring radios. It was too much of a risk.” Opal saw her mother start wringing her hands like she hadn’t since great-grandma Poppy’s health began to fail. She caught herself soon after and clasped her hands in front of her, but the pacing only resumed. “Just leave them down until she’s back or I say otherwise.”

“Yes, ma’am!” Hong-Li gave a short bow and then left to continue his rounds.

Once he was gone, her mother stopped in the middle of the foyer, looking unusually small in contrast with the long hallway and colored glass windows that extended from ceiling to floor. She pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes for a moment, and exhaled deeply.

“Opal, sweetie, I know you’re there.”

Opal started, suddenly feeling quite foolish for lurking in the stairwells. “Mom, are you alright?” she asked once she had made her way down the steps. “You seem stressed.”

“I’m fine.” She gave a fragmented smile that was meant to reassure her. “I’ve just been preoccupied with...making arrangements for the delegation from Omashu.”

Opal did all she could to keep the incredulity from showing on her face. She knew from experience that she would need to meet her mother where she was. “Maybe I can help you plan for it,” she said. “I’ll bring some tea up to your study and we can work out some of the details.”

“Thank you, sweetheart,” she said, clasping Opal's hands. “I’d like that.”

Fifteen minutes later, they were sipping chamomile tea on green couches and planning the menu for the king’s welcome feast.

“Maybe the elephant-koi on the first day,” Opal proposed. “And we can have the kitchen pair it with a papaya salad.”

“King Yudai always preferred lobster-crab,” her mother said offhandedly.

“Lobster-crab it is, then,” Opal said, making a note in the planner.

“And we’ll have to have a pork roast,” her mother added before taking a sip of her tea.

Opal tilted her head to the side, her eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Mom, you don’t eat pork,” she pointed out. In fact, the only people in the house who did were the twins, who only knew the taste of it because Grandma Toph had given them exposure just before she disappeared.

Her mom made a face and then gave a small shrug. “I don’t, but Yudai loves the stuff. He always wants it after he travels.”

“It sounds like you know the King of Omashu pretty well,” Opal said.

Her mother laughed a little. “Well, we were engaged once.”

Opal blinked a few times, searching her mom’s face for any signs of a joke. “You were what ?”

“Come on. I must have told you this story a million times.”

Opal’s lips flattened into a tight line. No, she probably told Kuvira, who she had actually brought with her on her last state visit to Omashu two years ago. But it would be unhelpful in the extreme to bring up the guard captain now. “It’s late,” she said, feigning a yawn. “Remind me?” It had never taken much to draw a story out of her mother.

“I met him while I was living with my grandparents,” she explained with a wistful sigh. Opal knew that both of Grandma Toph’s parents had passed away years ago. “My grandfather had business in Omashu, so they brought me to court, knowing that I’d probably skip town if they didn’t. While he made his contracts, my Grandma Poppy dressed me up in silk and gold and took me to the king’s earthbending tournament. Before the first round, King Yudai—well, he was Prince Yudai back then—stopped right in front of me and asked me for my favor.”

“Your what?” Opal asked, drawing more laughter from her mother.

“I had no clue either! Toph certainly didn’t raise us to be aware of the rules of noble courtship.” She shook her head. “He was asking for me to give him a token of mine—like a silk sash or a hairpin—to bring him luck in the tournament. I didn’t have anything like that, so I took my wrist guard and bent it into a bracelet with patterns of badgermoles and earth discs. Metalbending was rare in this region back then, so I suppose I left an impression." She nibbled the edge of her lip, remembering. "He won every match that day, but only because I wasn't competing.”

“And then he just proposed?” Opal asked, her eyebrows shooting up.

“After a few months of courtship,” she said. “We went on a few chaperoned excursions—some in Omashu, some in Gaoling. He even took me to Ember Island once.”

“But you’re not Queen of Omashu,” Opal pointed out, wondering whether her mother could be exaggerating. “What happened? Did you not love him?”

“I think I did at the time,” her mother said, staring out the window, up at the starlit sky. “But I was seventeen years old. I hadn’t lived yet, and I knew that if I married into royalty, I never would. So a few weeks before my eighteenth birthday, I ran away and joined a traveling circus.”

Opal just blinked slowly. “Unbelievable.”

A circus performer? An almost-queen? What else had her mother been before Zaofu?

She had been poised to ask one of about a million follow-up questions when Hong-Li came into the room, bowing to them both. “Ma’am, the captain and her team have returned.”

Her mother stood instantly, relief and anxiety dueling for control of her countenance. “Where—”

“Seeing that her team receives medical care, ma’am, and then on her way up to you.”

“Thank the spirits,” she said quietly. “Opal, would you mind if—”

“On my way out,” Opal said, knowing well what was coming next. Wherever Kuvira had been, whatever she had done, would be yet another closed door.

[m6trot]

ROTUMA

LEGENDS

I have considered it best to give these legends as near as possible in the same words as they were related to me; by changing the words much of the force, with which they were related, would be lost. At the end of each I have added such notes, as seemed to me to be necessary.

(a) Legend of Rahou.

Under Gofu, the king of Samoa, there was once a great chief, called Rahou, who only had one daughter. She married and bore a female child, called Maheva. Gofu about the same time likewise had a daughter, and, as Rahou was Gofu's head chief, the two children were brought up together. They were constant companions, and used to be always on the beach playing, their favourite amusement being fishing for penu. One day each caught one, but Maheva's was the finest. On the king's daughter demanding it, she refuses to give it up, and in return is taunted about one of her feet, which is deformed. Maheva begins to cry, and runs to Rahou, who inquires what is the matter. She tells him, and he is wild with anger. 0n the next day two girls come called Hauliparua, and Rahou tells them about the whole affair. In return they order him to make a basket that night, and promise to tell him on the following morning what he is to do. He is told to fill it with sand, and then to embark in his canoe. He does so, calls together all his hoag, and all get on board, carefully carrying the basket of sand. Two arumea, appear next in front of the canoe. "You will battle away on the sea as long as the arumea go over your head. As soon as they have gone far enough, they will sing to you, and you will drop the basket overboard." They then travel on for many days, with the birds in front. But at last the arumea sing, and Rahou throws the basket over the side. Rotuma then comes up with the canoe on top of it. Malaha first appeared, and then the rest, all covered with bushes and cocoanut trees.

One day Rahou thinks he will take a walk round the island, and place a taboo on the different cocoanut trees he may find; he does so, using green cocoanut leaves. On the same morning comes a man, Tokaniua, whom Honitemous, gets hold of; she tells him to follow Rahou and place a dry cocoanut leaf under each of Rahou's green leaves as a taboo. He follows Rahou accordingly right round the island, and back to Malaha, where Rahou has his, abode. They meet, and Rahou asks Tokaniua where he comes from. He replies that he is on his own land, and appeals to his taboos on the cocoanut trees. They are going to fight, when Honitemous calls Tokaniua, and advises him what to do. Tokaniua then proposes that they shall set each other different tasks, the one failing to do the other's to leave the island. Rahou runs and gets a leaf of the apaea, which he dips in the water and then on the sand, telling Tokaniua to count the grains sticking to it. This he does correctly, and tells Rahou in return to count the waves breaking in on the shore. Rahou counts and counts, but at last gets wild with anger, and calls his people together; they go to Ulhifou, where Rahou pulls up the tree Filmotu, which he carries with him to Mafiri. Here he drives in the tree, and begins to tear the island to pieces, the earth he throws out forming Hatana and Hoflewa Honitemous, seeing this, runs up, and, kissing his feet, begs him to spare the island. He pulls up the stick, and slings it away, making another small hole, Hifourua, where it alights. Rahou then takes all his people, and retires to Hatana; on his way he turns three of the men into stone--Moiokiura, Papanouroa, and Likliktoa--as they had succumbed to the inducements of the Honitemous.

In Hatana Rahou lives quietly for some time, making two kings there. Once, visiting Rotuma, he makes Souiftuga the king. While Rahou is still living in Hatana, a boar pig comes down to Malaha. The people there kill it, and eat the whole except the head, which they send to Rahou, who, in a rage at this mark of disrespect, slings it away, forming Hof Haveanlolo.

Next Souiftuga dies, and word is sent to Rahou, asking him where he is to be buried. He calls the sisters Hauliparua to his aid again, and they summon the arumea, and direct them to show the people the place.

The two birds go up over hill after hill, but still go on over the highest, finally stopping at Seselo, since when all the sou have been buried there.

Rahou finally lived to an old age in Hatana, where he put two stones, Famof and Timanuka, into which he turned two chiefs. To Rotuma he gave its constitution and laws, finally dying and being buried in Hatana, where his grave, club, and kava tanoa are still to be seen.

(1) This legend is known to nearly every one on the island. I have received it on five different occasions and endeavoured to strike a mean of the different accounts. There are many other legends attached to Rahou; one makes Gofu come over from Samoa and bring him back there, relating his great achievements after his return.

(2) A favourite amusement with the children. The animal (Remipes sp.?) lives in the sand between tide-marks, and resembles in appearance a large white wood-louse, with rather long legs. It is caught by tying the abdomen of a hermit crab to a bit of cocoanut fibre at the end of a stick. This is then allowed to wash in and out with the waves on the sandy beach. The animal, attracted by the smell, seizes it, and is quickly thrown over the shoulder on to the land above.

(3) A small bird about the size of a wren, black with red breast, a species of Myzomela.

(4) See the legend of Tokaniua. In narrating these legends no connection between them is ever indicated. Honitemous is, I think, a general name for all female wood and mountain spirits. This one is said to have come to the island, hidden in Rahou's canoe. The taboo is usually placed on cocoanut trees by tying round their base one or two half cocoanut leaves; which are supposed to represent the arms of the owner clasping the tree.

(5) A kind of arum with exceedingly large leaves, growing in the bush. .

(6) A place, called Ulhifou, is still known in Malaha. Mafiri is a small hill at the west end of the island. On its summit is a hole 80 feet deep, caused by the subsidence of the lava, which at one time must have welled out of the top; near its base is another smaller hole, called the Hifourua.

(7) Father Trouillet, of the Société de Marie, who has resided on Rotuma for twenty-eight years, states that Rahou was pulling the island down, so that it might not be seen a long distance away by future navigators in these seas; and that he took up his abode on Hatana so that he might watch for any canoes which might come and attack the island. One native stated that Uea was formed by a handful of sand, which Rahou found in the bottom of his canoe after he had thrown the basket overboard. Hof Haveanlolo is a shoal just awash between Hatana and Uea

(8) It is proper to send all strange animals, which may be killed or caught, to the chief. At a feast the chief's portion is the head of the pig. Certain rocks which stick prominently up are said to be the teeth of this boar, which fell out on the way to Hatana.

(9) A small hill in Noatau at the extreme east end of the island.

(10) There are three graves on Hatana supposed to be those of Rahou and his two kings. The former grave, has merely a circle of stones over it, with a hollowed stone in the centre, while the latter have slabs of rock. The first bowl of kava, made by any party visiting the island, is always poured out on Rahou's grave. The club is exactly similar to the war club described; it is said to have been twice removed, but on both occasions the boat or canoe, in getting out of the passage through the reef, capsized. Great care is also taken that any one who desires to ease himself should do it between tidemarks, and not in the bush.

(b) Legend of Tokaniua.

One day, "when there were no people in Rotuma," two women--Sientafitukrou and Sienjaralol--went to make mena (turmeric) at the well Tutuila. After they had rubbed up the mena, they mix four cocoanut shells full with water, and burying, them, leave them for the night. On the following day from these four shells is born a female child, called Sientakvou. The women then proceed to fill five more cocoanut shells with mena, and from these on the next morning is born a male child, called Tui Savarara. Sientakvou lived in Hotaharua, while Tui Savarara dwelt in Soukoaki. One day these two went to have a talk with one another, and stopped together, with the result that Sientakvou conceived. When they saw this, they were ashamed, since they were brother and sister, and so agreed to go and live in the bush. 0n their way to the bush Sientakvou told Tui Savarara not to look behind, for that, if he did so, the child would be born on the road. When they reached a spot called Kerekere, Tui Savarara looked round, and the child dropped out. Sientakvou then leaves the child to Tui Savarara, and goes into the bush, where she becomes a wild woman, under the name of Honitemous.

Tui Savarara wants to kill the child, but is afraid of the devil living in Sol Satarua, whom he sees looking at him. Meantime the child, who is called Tokaitoateniua, lay on a big stone, which ever since has had its menstrual periods, blood oozing up just in the same way as with a woman. Tui Savarara then lies down on the same stone and takes his kukaluga off. He puts the boy under his legs, and as far as possible makes himself appear like a woman. The devil sees, and thinks that he is a woman; he gets on top, and at once Tui Savarara opens his legs, and shows the child, which he says is the spirit's. The devil refuses to have the child, and Tui Savarara goes alone towards Oinafa, carrying the child and thinking how he may best get rid of it. He decides to throw it away, and hurls it first from Kerekere to Sol Saka, and then from Sol Saka to Iflala When Tui Savarara came up the third time, the boy, who was now called Tokaniua, tried to wrestle with him at a place called Hofpopo, but was again thrown, this time landing at Soukoaki, where Tui Savarara lived; in the fourth cast he is hurled to Niuafoou.

In Niuafoou the boy grows into a great fighting chief, but, when he gets old, returns to Rotuma to obtain a fighting man to help him. One day he is casting his net standing on a stone, Hofmea, when it opens under him and bears a child, called Pilhofu, who is all stone except his one eye and one of his big toes. Tokaniua then departs to Niuafoou with Pilhofu, whose invulnerability he proves with blows of his spear. He strikes him again and again, but at last, unluckily striking him in the eye, destroys it. Pilhofu then returned in disgust to Rotuma, whither he was shortly followed by Tokaniua.

(1) This legend is well known to all. The account given is compounded from an account, given me in English, by Susanna of Oinafa and an account furnished by four old men in conjunction.

(2) All the places mentioned in this legend lie in Oinafa. A large rough block of lava is pointed out at Kerekere, on the top of a ridge near Satarua, as the one with the periods, which several of the old people claim to have seen.

(3) This is the most northerly island of the Tongan group, and is about 470 miles from Rotuma.

(4) A small rock of volcanic stone 4-5 feet long on the reef opposite Savelei, in Itoteu.

(5) Pilhofu lies a stone in Soukata, in Oinafa; in shape is oval, about 9 feet long by 6 feet wide, and 3 1/2 feet high. It is of lava, and looks like a solid bubble on the top of the lava stream. A medium depression is pointed out as the mouth, while immediately above it another represents the median cyclopean eye; close by is the old fuag ri of Tokaniua, a house foundation about 13 feet high.

(c) Legend of Pilhofu and his son Tokaniua.

Pilhofu had one son, whose name was Tokaniua, and whom he left in Niuafoou when he first returned to Rotuma. After a time, Tokaniua, who had become a great warrior, came over to Rotuma to search for his father, from whom he wanted help; he journeyed in a large double canoe, and landed at Soukama, in front of which lies the canoe to the present day with the curse on it that, if any one break it, a big wave will come and sweep over all the land.

Landing, Tokaniua first meets a girl called Leanfuda, whom he asks if she has seen his father. She refers him to Rosso ti Tooi, who tells him that he must ask Fetutoumal, a man living at Tarasua. He accordingly goes to Tarasua, and, in reply to his inquiries, is told that his father is in Upsese, a stone in front of Teukoi Point, combing his hair; further he is directed that, if he desires to see his father, he must quietly roll this stone back. But, when near Upsese, Tokaniua has to walk across the sand, and making a noise, is heard by Pilhofu, who at once takes to flight. Tokaniua pursues, but Pilhofu dives through a rock, and Tokaniua in following has great difficulty in stretching himself out sufficiently to squeeze through. But Pilhofu has turned himself into a stone, with the exception of one of his big toes, which Tokaniua seizes, and a conversation results.

PILHOFU. "Who is that?"

TOKANIUA. "It is I. Turn round, as I want to talk to you."

P. "Why do you pursue me?"

T. "I have done something you must help me in. We have been playing at throwing spears at bananas in Niuafoou. I have hit nine, and must hit the tenth to win. You must help me."

(At the same time a waterspout comes, and drops both in Niuafoou.)

P. "Take me to where you have got to throw, and bury me there. Your opponents will throw first, but, as I am a stone, their spears will not stick in me or hurt me. When you throw, though, look at my left eye, which I will open, and there your spear will stick."

They throw, and Tokaniua's spear alone sticks. Tokaniua runs up, and seeing a drop of blood oozing out, throws a handful of sand on the eye, while all the people cry out, "Moriere, moriere". At the same moment a strong whirlwind came, and blew the sand into every one's eyes. It takes them, too, with some Niuafoou people, and throws them on Houa Island, off Oinafa. Here there is a small hole always filled with rainwater, and Pilhofu tells Fissioitu to go and fill his mouth with the water and blow it into his eye. Fissioitu goes to the pool, but finds that the whole surface has been covered with blood by the sister Hauliparua. He sucks this off though first, and filling his mouth with water, cures Pilhofu's eye with it.

Tokaniua then went to Teukoi, where on his death he turned into the atua of that village, who was called Fretuanak.

(1) This legend was related to me by Wafta, the chief of Juju, at a meeting of the chiefs. Manava, the chief of Itomotu, indicated shortly the last legend with this, relating them of father, son, and grandson. There is a patch of stones on the reef in front of Soukama, in Juju, which are said to be the remains of Tokaniua's canoe.

(2) This is the title of the minor chief of Tooi.

(3) The word here used is ahuhia. Small waterspouts are frequently to be seen off the breaking reef.

(4) The term "Moriere" is much the same as "Well done." It is a term of applause, and is in common use at feasts, if an especially fine pig or a large quantity of food is brought by any one hoag.

(5) The term here is mumuniha. It has a very similar meaning to ahuhia.

(6) It is interesting to note that, while the first legend of Tokaniua is well known by all at Oinafa, it is nearly unknown in Juju. With the second the cases are reversed. The name Tokaniua still persists in Oinafa, and is always called first for kava in the island.

(d) The formation of the isthmus, or Soktontonu

Once there walked through the sea to Rotuma from Tonga a great, mighty, and exceeding tall man, called Serimana; with him, floating on the spathe of the cocoanut flower, came his daughter Sulmata a girl of great beauty and spirit. For a long time they remained in Rotuma, and Sulmata married its great warrior Fouma who built a big fuag ri on Sol Sororoa, and took her to live there, while Serimana dwelt in Savaia.

After a long time, there came a whole fleet of canoes from Tonga looking for Serimana, with whom they took up their abode in Savaia. One evening the Tongans playing on the sand ran after some juli, and caught one, at which Serimana was frightened, thinking that they were getting too strong for him; accordingly he sends off for Fouma, who catches several very quickly. Next evening one of the Tongans threw up a canoe over Serimana's house, and caught it the other side as it fell. Fouma does the same, and Serimana is satisfied. On the next evening the Tongans put a big stone fence out from Savaia along by the beach with their left hands, and Fouma is conquered. The Tongans then talk of having a big fight with Fouma, and Selimana, who hears of it, urges them to try. Fouma meantime goes and makes an alliance with Onunfanua, another strong man and a left-handed one as well, who dwells in Solelli Onunfanua tells Fouma that, if he will send to him, he will come on the fifth day after the fight has begun, but Fouma says that he will fight alone until the tenth day. Returning, Fouma jumps over the strait, and hastens to Sol Sororoa.

A long time passes, as the Tongans are afraid, but one day, when Fouma is returning from fishing off Halafa, he sees smoke on Sol Sororoa, and his house on fire. He rushes up and finds all waiting for him with clubs and spears. They make a rush at him as he mounts the hill, but he fends them off with his net and gets above them. They take to flight, but Fouma, slinging his net over them, catches fifty, all of whom he smothers in the net. Going into his house, Fouma finds more than half his club burnt, but, in spite of this, rushes down to Maftau and fights the Tongans there for five days.

Meantime Onunfanua has been informed of the battle, and on the fifth day starts. On his way he hears two old men, Sokanava and Mofmoa, saying that it is a good thing to kill Fouma; he quietly puts his club over their heads, and they, noticing a cloud on the sun, look up. Onunfanua asks them about what they are talking, but they try to put him off; he tells them that he has heard all, but forgives them on their agreeing to fill up the strait during the night, so that he may cross on the following day. They do so in the given time, and, on taking leave, tell him that Fouma is nearly done, and that he will be beaten unless he cuts a hifo tree down with one stroke of his left hand. Coming up, Onunfanua fights for some time with the Tongans, but, getting pressed himself, thinks of the counsel he has received. Warding his enemies off with his right hand, with one blow of his left he cuts right through the tree. The splinters kill more than half the Tongans, so that the remainder fly to their canoes, and with all haste set sail.

Fouma, knowing that Serimana really put the Tongans on to him, tells his wife that he will kill her father. She goes down to Serimana and cries aloud, but being afraid of Fouma, will not tell him what is the matter. On the following day Fouma came down, and with one blow of his club cleft Serimana and his house in twain.

(1) This legend was related to me by Albert and Marafu separately. In the chart of Rotuma a well-defined isthmus is seen, dividing the island into a small western portion and a much larger eastern part. The breadth here is not 100 yards, and the whole is simply formed of beach sand. To the west the basalt of the hill of Kugoi shows undermining from wave action at some past time, showing that this isthmus did not always exist. There are, too, in the reefs on the west and south sides of the island here passages and deep holes, which, I think, indicate a former channel. There is a tradition of the isthmus, being built up about one hundred and twenty years ago by Tue, the chief of Itomotu, with large stone blocks and sand. About sixty years ago, too, it is remembered by some that the isthmus was again filled up by the women and children with baskets of sand. Albert informed me also that, when digging for the foundation of the church, a number of large blocks of lava were found. The derivation of the term Soktontonu is doubtless from soko, to join, and tonu, water.

(2) From sulu, the spathe of the cocoanut flower, and mata wet.

(3) Any tree, which grows up strong and straight, is called foumatou. The house site of Fouma is still pointed out on Sol Sororoa, in Itomotu. Savaia is that part of the shore flat, just east of Maftau.

(4) Juli, or sandpipers, are very common on the beach at low tide.

(5) There is now a stone wall at Savaia to keep off the inroads of the sea on the beach. It has been repaired three times in the last seventy years, but is how again nearly in ruins.

(6) A place on Sol Hof, in the Lopta division of Oinafa. It is curious how all strong men come from, and are supposed to live inland.

(7) The word used is kiri, a name applied to a casting net, a large one of which is 12 fathoms long by about 1 broad.

(8) There are many other legends of Fouma, and a few of Onunfanua, but most of these are mere tales, invented as they go on by the old men when sitting at a fefeag, or story-telling, in the evening.

(e) The origin of the "Moa"

ÑTo Noava was walking one day from Pepji to Matusa, when he was met by Karagfono, who was a spirit in the likeness of a man, born of a chief and the spirit of his dead koiluga (sweetheart), made of a drop of blood, without bones.

Walking together for some time, they reach Soukama, where To Nonva asks his companion to come into his house and have some kava. The women prepare everything, but only put a table in front of To Noava, seeing which Karagfono got up, and went out, returning after a few Minutes with a dry cocoanut, on which he proceeded to sit. On perceiving from this that his guest was a chief, To Noava told the women to get a table for him.

After the kava and food are finished, Karagfono invites To Noava in his turn to visit him, and takes him right along through Matusa to Luokoasta, where To Noava inquires as to their destination.

KARAGFONO. "I am going to take you to Limari."

TO NOAVA. "I am a living man, and how can you take me there alive?"

KARAGFONO. "I have power from the gods to take you. When I jump into the water, you have only to catch hold of the back of my kukaluga. Don't leave go till I tell you, or you will be drowned."

Karagfono then dives off with To Noava, and in a short time they reach Limari, where To Noava is much surprised to find dry land, with all sorts of fruits and food. But soon the other spirits smell out that Karagfono has a mortal with him, and inquire why he has brought a living man there. On this Karagfono takes To Noava and hides him on the beams of his house on a fatafata, but after a day and a half of this To Noava gets tired, and asks to be taken back to the earth. Karagfono agrees, and says, "I should like to make you a present before you go, as you were very kind to me on the earth. I am giving you a moa fa and a moa honi, called Sukivou. When these breed, you can have the young ones, but you must return the old birds to me."

T. "How can I possibly get back to bring them?"

K. "When the day comes to bring them, you will know it without being told, and you will find me waiting at the same place as we dived off."

Talking thus, Karagfono dismisses To Noava, who is carried out of the sea by Sukivou and landed at Luokoasta, whence he had dived down with Karagfono. Sukivou had ten chickens, from which all the fowls of Rotuma are descended.

(1) The fowl. I am indebted to Marafu and Wafta for this legend.

(2) Also called Sunioitu, but this is a general name for several kinds of atua.

(3) This is the same as asking a person to come in and have a meal. The kava is drunk first, and always followed by food.

(4) Indicates that Karagfono is a chief, and should have a table as well as To Noava.

(5) A point off Losa, literally asta, sun, and luoko, to dip.

(6) A bed of bamboos or sticks in the beams of the house, still common.

(7) Fa and honi, male and female, common affixes for gender.

(8) As they arise from the water, To Noava and Sukivou sing this song:--

"Moasite Karagfono,

Te moturere, ma Fakasifo

Itivikio, viki vikia, otaro lao.

Sukivou hogo oojao;

Itivikio, viki vikia, otaro lao."

Most of this is in a language now lost, but the following is as far as possible a literal translation:--

"Karagfono knows not where we go,

To the island above, and Fakasifo,

Crowing, crowing, as we pass along,

Sukivou waking up the sleepers,

Crowing crowing, as we pass along."

Moturere I have derived from otmotu, an island, and rere, above; it may however be the name of a place. Ojao is a word only used as applying to the biggest chiefs.

(f) The turtle of Sol Onau

On the top of Sol Onau is a flat platform of rock about 25 fathoms above the sea, and overhanging it somewhat; near it was formerly a large playhouse. One day two girls came out of the house on to this platform, which has since been called Lepiteala, to ease themselves.

When one was doing so over the cliff, several canoes came suddenly into sight from round the point, a big vouroa fishing. The people in the canoes see, and call out. The girl rises hurriedly in shame, but slips on the rock, and catching hold of the other to save herself, both fall into the sea below.

They are then changed into two turtle, the one white and the other red, and are called Eao. They still live in the deep crevices of the coral under the rock, and can be called up at any time by singing the following song.

"Eao manuse, ka Lepiteala

Ai, ma vehia ka foro ole tufe,

Havei, ma foiak ta ka fau paufu,

He ta jauaki, ma moiea. Pete."

There first appears usually in one big crevice the sasnini, swimming along, and later come the turtle, usually one at a time. They continue swimming about on the top of the water for a long time, unless any one calls out, "Fieu, (vouroa," when they immediately disappear.

(1) Sol Onah, the island off Juju. There is a legend, similar as to details, about two sharks off the island of Makila, in the Solomon group. Captain W. W. Wilson, harbourmaster of Levuka, informs me that there is also a turtle at Batiri, Koro, Fiji, called Tui Nai Kasi Kasi, and that he has twice seen it called up.

I took up Mou, the chief of Pepji, and five girls to sing the incantation. Going on in front, I examined the place, and saw a green turtle. When the girls were singing the incantation the second time, the sasnini, a long, narrow, lanceolate fish, which always precedes the turtle in these seas, came slowly along, but we saw nothing further. All the girls and Mou state that they have repeatedly seen the turtle, which is not unlikely, as the spot is a regular feeding-place for them.

(2) The name of the sieu-fishing, when many are partaking in it.

(3) The meaning, as far as I have, been able to get this song interpreted, is as follows:--"Come up, Eao, to Lepiteala, and finish the story for us, having been in the hot sun and tired in the season for the screw-pine, when it is in flower and fruitful. Pete."

The language is very antiquated. Lepiteala is from ala, to die; ka foro, to tell; tufe, people; fau paufu, the season of the paufu, a species of pandanus.

Each line runs in twelves. The time is similar to the Tau Toga but runs in a somewhat higher key.

(4) Fieu, the act of defaecation.

(g) The coming of the "Kava"

In Faguta there lived a Tongan, a very strong and brave warrior, called Kaikaiponi. His wife was of a Rotuman chief's family, and had three brothers, Muriak, Afiak, and Koufinua, who lived in Pepji. War was declared against them by Tukmasui, the chief of Malaha, but they utterly defeated him, owing to the great valour of Kaikaiponi and his experience in war. As a reward, the brothers desired to make him the sou, and, in fact, to re-create the office for him, because from the time of Souiftuga, appointed by Rahou, there had not been any fresh sou, appointed, this being long before the, Niuafoou people came to the island. To this, however, there was much opposition, so that they compromised the affair by making his wife the sou-honi.

When the souhoni was the ruler, kava first came to Rotuma floating down from Samoa, from a place called Hihifo. As it passed Noatau, it dropped two stones, the Hofrua, just outside the reef Round these rocks any crabs, prawns, or fish, that may be caught, are poisonous owing to the kava which has got into them. The root then drifted on past Oinafa to Fatu, where it touched the shore and left a tree, the oinipeji, which is of very hard wood, and grows nowhere else on the island. It then, finally, came on shore at the extreme west end of Lopta, from which place it proceeded for a walk along the road to Juju. But the kava, before reaching there, branched off and went round Sol Atja to a piece of land called Niuful, where it found a convenient hole, in which it planted itself and for a long time flourished.

But one day some dirt fell from a rat in the roof of Kaikaiponi's house on him, and he, recognising the smell, tells all the people of the great drink, and a great search is started. At last they found the root, half burnt by Waromago, who was cleaning the land in Niuful. A great feast is held, and the root is cut into pieces and distributed all over the island, so that all may taste. Among others, one piece is sent to Fissoiitu, who is living at the back of Sol Satarua; but he does not understand its use, and throws it away. It takes root, and grows well, and from this piece all the kava in the island has sprung.

By the souhoni after this, Kaikaiponi had one child, a son, who one day went to play in the bush, and found two girls, Opopu and Rara, who had come down from Lagi, and were amusing themselves on a swing. Although much annoyed at being seen on the earth, they put the boy, at his request, in the swing, but he fell out and broke his wrist. In pain at the accident, he calls out for some one to fill the cocoanut shells with water for him, and the girls, alarmed at his cries, promise to do so. They depart, but as soon as they are out of his sight proceed to ascend to Lagi again. The people, who are hurrying up on account of the cries, see them, but they are too high for them to do them any harm. The people watch them ascending, and see them, after making a hole in the sky, pass through, and at the same time a great shower of rain came down at the spot itself, which is called Vakoi, and not only filled the cocoanut shells, but cured the boy as well.

Shortly after this Kaikaiponi and the souhoni departed in a large double canoe for Tonga, and never returned, while Muriak became the sou, and when he died his brother Afiak.

(1) This legend was related to me by Wafta, the chief of Juju, at a council meeting in Malaha; he was assisted by Marafu and the chief of Malaha. I afterwards heard that there are several songs sung by the kava, but unfortunately too late to get them transcribed. In Fiji the kava or, as it is there called, yaqona, is said to have come from Tonga, but I could find no legend about it. On the Ra coast of Viti Levu the following story of its discovery in Tonga was told me :--

"A man was planting his yams one day, when he cut down a kava bush which was in the way. Presently he observed a rat, which began to gnaw the root, and fell down, apparently dead. He then, after watching it for some time, went to pick it up, but, to his surprise, it got up and began to run away. Accordingly he concluded that the root must be some good, and so chewed it, and made kava. He found it very pleasant, and so it spread."

(2) Muriak and Tukmasui are names still to be found on Rotuma. Kaiponi, I am informed, is by no means an uncommon name in Tonga.

(3) There actually are poisonous fish and crabs on these rocks; one crab, the fumapoitu, is very dangerous. The fish and crabs, too, of Luokoasta, off Losa, are also dangerous. It is a common idea in Rotuma that the earth round the roots of the kava, is poisonous.

(4) A place in the middle of Lopta. A large-leafed tree something like the hifo was pointed out to me as the oinipeji; I certainly cannot recollect having seen it elsewhere.

(5) This piece of land is still known by the same name. A deep hole is pointed out, where the kava first rooted itself, and from which it was removed.

(6) The Rotuman rat is Mus exulans (Peile).

(7) The sky, or heaven, the abode of good deities. If the girls could have been caught, their offspring would have been invincible, and would always have food ready at hand without doing any work. Among all Pacific Island people there is a general belief that the sky opens to allow the rain to fall. Certain andesite crystals, found on the top of the lava in Rotuma are called momonife, literally chips off a thunder-cloud.

(8) I think this legend points to a hereditary sou, who was not only the sou, but a king temporal as well.

(h) Rikolagi, or the house to heaven

When the people were building Rikolagi, a house to reach the sky, a man, Souragpol, started from Atmofu with a stone for its foundation from Tooi, his wife, Henlipehea, nearly falling to pieces at the time. He passes Teukoi point, and comes to Fahafa, where he meets a man, who asks him what he is carrying the stone for, and laughs at him so much that he throws it down, and there it lies to the present day. This man then proceeds to call out the people of Teukoi, and, with Souragpol and his people, they go to Noatau to fight, refusing any more to build Rikolagi. They are beaten, and take to flight, with Noatau in pursuit. Souragpol reaches Teukoi, but being hard pressed, takes up a stone to hide under, and himself turns into a stone, telling the people to call his child Fuoga.

One day, when Fuoga was nearly a man, the Teukoi people were carrying food to the sou in Noatau, but they left behind them Fuoga, who was asleep. Fuoga however awoke, and being hungry, makes after them, and catches them up between Pepji and Noatau. He has no food for the sou, and so pulls up a tree, off which he tears the branches, putting the stem over his shoulder. He forces the Teukoi people to give him all their food, which he eats; he then compels them to accompany him to Noatau. Here, reaching the sou's house, Fuoga brings on a fight, and kills the sou and all his strong men. He then proceeds to Rikolagi, where he has a great fight with the strong man of the island, who is putting the ridge on the house; at last he wins, killing his enemy with one blow of his club and destroying the house with a second blow. He then takes the name of Fouma, and makes a Soukama man the sou.

(1) This legend was related to me by Friday and Marafu. They say that the Fouma, referred to in it, has no connection with the Fouma mentioned in the legend of the Soktontonu.

(2) In Noatau is a mound of earth, 12-13 feet above the general level and 40-50 yards in diameter, which is pointed out as the foundation of Rikolagi. There is a fuag ri, house foundation, called Atmofu close to Matusa.

(3) This phrase is a literal translation of the Rotuman, and implies that the woman may at any moment bear a child.

(4) Close to Teukoi. The stone lies on the road, and weighs about half a ton.

(5) A large stone in Noatau, cracked in three places, is pointed out as this man.

Credit: J. S. Gardiner (1898)

[itsclydebitches]

Welcome back, everyone!

A quick note before we begin: after the previous recap a couple of lovely friends and anons explained to me some discrepancies in my work, mainly about how Fox's semblance functions and how much info we’ve gotten on that previously. They're worth a read if (like me) you haven't read After the Fall and would like a more accurate picture of this whole project. However, I have to admit that sadly past!me didn’t think through the usefulness of those posts and tag them appropriately... so they’re just somewhere in the mess that is the “rwby” and “mymetas” tags. Still, I wanted to acknowledge their existence, both for your potential use and as another disclaimer along the lines of, “I’m reading what amounts to a sequel and recapping as I go. Prepare for a bumpy ride.” 

We're on chapter five now (of twenty-two! Holy god I’m slow!!) and truth be told I actually enjoyed this opening. We're in Yatsuhashi's head this time around and he's likewise enjoying Vacuo's Meeting Spot, an "artificial oasis" that reminds him of his mother's healing gardens. I wonder what "healing" means in this particular context. A generalized benefit to your body, mind, and spirit in the form of meditation? Or a more literal, magic-based healing with its roots in aura use? In a world with RWBY's possibilities, a healing garden that someone like Ozpin might run—let's take time to settle ourselves and reflect—vs. one that someone like Jaune would create—let me use my semblance to literally heal your wounds—are rather different things. I'd be interested to know which category (or another) Yatsuhashi's mother falls under.

Regardless, it's a satisfyingly quiet scene. Yatsuhashi comments on both the beauty of the oasis as well as how that beauty, in turn, raises the desert in his eyes. Nothing like not having to deal with a hard landscape to make that landscape seem more bearable, alluring even, and this moment managed to capture that feeling rather well. The only downside is that, in a recurring theme, I once again got whiplash upon realizing that Yatsuhashi is not standing alone in the peace of the early morning, like the description had led me to believe. Apparently Velvet is there. As well as the whole freaking student body! Myers* has this strange habit of writing one kind of scene only to suddenly reveal that the scene is actually radically different from what his writing had encouraged you to imagine. Yatsuhashi is going on about healing, natural beauty, and the peace of an early morning. What's peaceful about dozens of students speculating beside him? Have you ever met a school of sleep deprived young adults dealing with a surprise announcement before breakfast? That’s as far from peaceful as humanly possible. 

Mood, kid. 

(*Also yes, we're working to write Myers' name correctly this chapter. If I'm going to drag his work so much the least I can do is not add an additional 'e' to his name lol.)

Along with the entirety of Shade Academy to break the peace, Yatsuhashi tells us about dromedons and mole crabs. The former, according to the wiki, is a "camel-like Grimm that can spit acidic venom" and also sports an armored hump. Fun! The latter, according to Yatsuhashi, is a "horrifying" creature that "slept just below the sand and could cut a person in two with their massive claws." And they're the normal, non-grimm animals! Screw Salem. Humanity needs huntsmen just to keep people safe from the everyday wildlife. Crabs cut people in two, Zwei is capable of being set on fire and launched at a mech... it's a miracle that anyone ever steps outside their home. 

I do write this with full knowledge that Australia exists, but still.

As Yatsuhashi moves away from thoughts of killer crabs, we begin what is easily the strangest bit of repetition this chapter. Yatsuhashi's shoulder is sore from having tried to break down the hideout door and I'm going, "Wait no, you used your sword” and frantically flipping back through my PDF. To Myers' credit, there is a detail that suggests Yatsuhashi uh... rammed the door? I think? Last chapter he "Stepped forward and Fox heard him grunt with exertion." That's the only thing I can think of that would explain his shoulder unexpectedly being sore hours later: if he'd charged it instead of doing something insane like, oh, I don't know, trying the doorknob first. Odd choice of continuity, but okay. What's super weird though is that Myers repeats the detail again:

Yatsuhashi crossed his arms, then grimaced as a fresh pain shot through his shoulder. Come on, Aura, he thought. Do your thing.

I'm sorry, how badly did you hurt your shoulder? Why does a supposedly intelligent student immediately resort to what is apparently somewhat serious self-harm when faced with a closed door? Why is Myers choosing this of all things to tell us about? Is this incredibly random shoulder injury going to hinder Yatsuhashi during the test? Spoilers: I don't think it does considering that I searched for "shoulder" in my PDF and there's just a lot of hands on shoulders coming up, but nothing that, at first glance, seems to make this kind of set up necessary. So I say again: weird.

Meanwhile, weirdness doesn’t even acknowledge the continued inconsistencies with aura. Jaune heals a cut on his cheek instantaneously, but hours later Yatsuhashi needs to gripe at his aura to hop-to already? So either Jaune’s aura is far more powerful than the average person’s (never established outside of Pyrrha’s “You have a lot of it” comment), or Yatsuhashi really hurt his shoulder that badly. Hard enough that with the rest of the night and early morning to heal him, his aura is still working overtime. 

Alrighty then. 

So the whole student body is just kind of hanging out, striking up casual conversations. Velvet asks how Yatsuhashi is doing and he says he's fine, "Thanks to you." Wait... what did Velvet do? I mean yeah, she was there last night and she's here now, but so is the rest of the team. I don't really recall her helping Yatsuhashi in any specific way. As is the norm now, I remain mildly, endlessly confused by this novel.

But we don’t have time to delve into the gratitude attached to events I’m not actually sure happened. There’s more chit chat going on as everyone tries to figure out why they've been summoned so early in the morning. "It's not always about us," Velvet says and I nod along in agreement even though I know, as a reader, that it's absolutely about them. "As I'm often reminding Coco."

Coco fires back with how it "could be about us," noting that it would be pretty coincidental if something else was going on right now, plus Rumpole may have realized they were out last night. (Remember, Yatsuhashi wasn't subtle about trying to break down that door). This is one of those moments where I agree wholeheartedly with Coco's logic, but kind of hate to encourage the 'It's all about us' attitude. Velvet might be smiling, but as previously established this is an ongoing theme within RWBY's characterization that it could really stand to do without.

Yatsuhashi then offers some "unsolicited advice" about how Rumpole could afford to slow down some and "let things come at their own pace," to which I respond, "Huh?" Where in the world did this come from? Previously the whole group—including Yatsuhashi, considering he didn't speak out against it—was concerned that Rumpole wasn't doing enough to track down the Crown. That is, do more, move faster, get it done already. You haven’t gotten it done? Okay, we’ll do it instead. Now he's providing this subtle criticism in response to a meeting, as if that's an inherently odd or bad thing for a headmistress to do. You want the woman to do extra work faster but slow down when it comes to her actual job? 

It reads to me like Myers is trying to put a lot of wise-sounding dialogue into Yatsuhashi's mouth—you know, the Asian character who keeps bringing up things like meditation and mindfulness—but hasn't bothered to think about whether that dialogue makes any sense. Of course, we then immediately backtrack to reveal that his comment was really about Coco not pushing the team too hard, but... that's not what he said? And Coco clearly didn't get the message. And the hidden meaning of the words didn't come across too well if your reader is squinting at what was said until the author has to straight up go, 'This is what Yatsuhashi actually meant.' Maybe just... have him say that? Give us some significant looks towards Coco, at the very least. Something to clue us in here that Yatsuhashi is (weirdly) blaming Rumpole for Coco's flaw.

Then he just ruins the whole scene further by mentally commenting that if all this extra work was hard on them, "what would it do to SSSN?" Ugh, look. I don't even like SSSN very much. I didn't shed a tear when they left the main series and would shrug if they ever came back, so you know the story is ragging on them too much when I'm standing up for the group at the bottom of my Character Adoration list. The duality of 'SSSN is so incompetent I don't even know how they're alive' and 'That, in comparison, makes us the best team ever' got old forty pages ago, yet I have the distinct feeling it won't be letting up any time soon.

Headmaster Theodore finally arrives to break up this thrilling conversation and the students erupt into thunderous applause. "It was what [he] expected. It was what he inspired whenever he appeared." That... is absolutely hilarious. This guy is so much of a showman, so insanely over the top, that he expects people to treat his everyday appearance as a spectacle worthy of praise and they agree. You know who he reminds me of?

The king himself, Alex Louis Armstrong. I'm digging this already. It's absurd and I will forever question RWBY's ability to balance comedy with its darker tones... but I'm counting this one as a win so far. There's got to be something to praise about this book.

Just as important, we get a description of Theodore's positively insane outfit. I immediately googled to see if someone had drawn him and the fandom did not disappoint. I'm not going to include the image here in case the artist, Edisu, doesn't want their work reposted like that, but I highly recommend you check out the link and get a visual.

The only thing left to say about this fashion monstrosity is that he has a "flowing gray-blue cape, the color of a stormy sky." I'll let our favorite textile engineer make my point for me:

Honestly, between Ruby's cape and Weiss' hair someone is going to end up in trouble one of these days.

In this world free of horrific cape tragedies, we've segued into a flashback which is, frankly, kind of boring compared to the others we’ve gotten. It's just the group meeting Theodore, information and characterization that could have easily been distributed to the audience in the present. It's starting to feel like the structure of including a flashback each chapter is hindering Myers somewhat, just because every chapter doesn’t necessarily need one, but that’s far from the biggest issue to tackle. 

We learn that Theodore (really Rumpole) did a bunch of research on all the students involved in the Vytal Festival and they're very pleased that Team CFVY has joined them now, despite the horrific circumstances. We again hear about how judgmental Coco can be, that her judgements are rarely wrong... but if they are wrong she's the last to admit it. So really that's less of a 'This character has good instincts about other people' and more 'This character is just, as said, judgmental and then stubborn about it when she’s wrong.' Theodore, however, seems like a cool dude:

“Ah, she speaks!” Theodore strode toward Velvet. His voice softened. “You didn’t fail, my dear. You fought. You stayed, far longer than anyone would have asked or expected of a student. And now you’re here. Do you want to be here? Will you fight for Shade the way you did for Beacon, Velvet Scarlatina?”

This is great. This is the kind of reassurance I would expect from a headmaster who, thus far, has received a fair amount of praise. Unlike his students, Theodore understands the risks Beacon students took and when it was time for them to make a life-saving retreat. He's inspiring while also being empathetic and honestly? That's the most I've had that 'You're a good person' sense from RWBY in a very long time.

Now watch Theodore turn out to be evil lol.

He cuts the tension of the serious conversation by proclaiming that if any of them doubt whether they should be here, they should take it up with him via a fight. Theodore announces this while striking a pose. I say again:

We then get some more reflection on how Theodore compares to Ozpin: 

Ozpin had believed in you before you did, almost like he knew your true potential, despite what your transcripts or fighting abilities looked like. Theodore believed you had potential, but you had to earn it and prove yourself to him first.

I agree with that and I'm pleased to see that this time the comparison didn't involve criticizing Ozpin in an effort to build Theodore up. It’s likewise a useful description and I think it provides us with at least one interpretation of why the RWBYJNR group has discarded Ozpin so thoroughly. The addition "despite what your transcripts or fighting abilities looked like" implies that Ozpin sees potential in everyone. It doesn't matter how presumably flawed you might be—in physical strength, like Jaune; in morals, like Lionheart— Ozpin will see the good in you and give that good a fighting chance. That's why he's the one tasked with doing something as crazy as uniting the whole world because he's the one person capable of seeing that potential in literally everyone. That much is true. But the flipside of this is that, unlike when in interacting with someone like Theodore, no one expects to have to work for Ozpin's faith, his praise... his trust. With Theodore you have to "earn" the respect he gives you right from the start. With Ozpin it's free! So surely that means such faith extends to every possible situation, right? 

Which is when you run into trouble. When the situation is no longer "I'll give you a chance in my school" but something much more serious like "I'm risking the whole world on your character." Ozpin is an optimist, but he's also cautious as hell (with good reason), so though he sees the potential in everyone he knows he can't let his own hope for humanity blind him to reality. That person might betray you. They might turn on you. They might give up and hurt you in the process... even if you want to believe that people are simply better than that. Wanting doesn’t make it so. 

If someone who had as little interaction with Ozpin as Team CFVY did nevertheless developed such a strong sense of, "Yeah, he believes in everyone!" then it seems likely that Team RWBY, already sporting a special connection with him, thought they were shoe-ins for every possible secret and task they might ask of him. Their time at Beacon was defined largely by both intentional favoritism and coincidences that could arguably be read as such. Ruby gets to go to Beacon two years early. She gets to be team leader. The sisters stay together despite teams supposedly being random. Team RWBY goes on missions not meant for first years. Team RWBY is given a nudge-nudge-wink-wink about The White Fang so that they can do what they’re able to help. Team RWBY was friends with Pyrrha, next in line for the Maiden powers. They got used to Ozpin simultaneously solving all the real problems that showed up and letting them play at being important, all while the rest of the school had to follow normal rules. They’re special. But then Beacon falls, the game is over, and they're blindsided by having to earn trust and privileges in the real world. Playing at huntresses in the safety of your headmaster’s school is over and Ruby in particular never got that there was a massive difference between that and a real war where the fate of the world hangs on your trustworthiness and ability to keep it together. It’s why she announces to the Argus guards that she is a huntress while attacking the people she’s meant to protect. 

Which would be a fantastic arc to give them if the show ever had someone sit the group down and tell them how childish and selfish they're being. Instead, they're still being handed that trust and privilege—you can go into Atlas despite stealing from the military, you get your licenses years early, you get to carry an incalculably valuable relic around—while likewise still getting mad that the adults around them don't give them more. This comparison here, though realistically just a throwaway passage in a novel rather iffily connected to its original series, starts to highlight the excellent situation RT set up... and then didn't do anything with.

But I've gone on about this long enough. There are just two other things I'd like to point out about this flashback. The first is that it may help us get a handle on Ozpin's age (if we're willing to accept these books as canon, despite their other inconsistencies). Earlier we're told that "Headmaster Theodore’s whole style should have been ridiculous for a man likely in his forties, maybe older" and here, in describing their different approaches, we get "Headmaster Ozpin, who had been younger but seemed much older." So that could potentially put Ozpin his his late 30s if he's noticeably younger than Theodore in his 40s. Or, in his 40s if the "maybe older" part is right and Theodore is in his 50s. I can’t imagine that Theodore is in his 60s. Not much to go on, admittedly, but I'll take whatever I can get. The interesting thing is that if Ozpin really is that young and Qrow is now (presumably) in his early 40s, wouldn't that have made them basically the same age during his Beacon days? Perhaps even giving us an Ozpin who was younger than his oldest students? I don't know. It's really less of a definitive piece of information and more messy speculation to add to the pile—which is par the course for RWBY nowadays. 

The second detail I wanted to point out was that despite all their supposed differences, Headmaster Theodore and Professor Rumpole have a very Ozpin-Glynda relationship going on. For all the cosmetic changes it boils down to the same dynamic. Both headmasters are powerful, quirky men who at first glance appear to be rather useless at their jobs, requiring the confident headmistress to swoop in and manage the daily running of a school. Those two do the heavy lifting while their bosses work wonders from behind the scenes (a la The Wizard). When I read Rumpole chastising Theodore for claiming he investigated the students, or when she reminds him that there isn't time to have an impromptu duel with his students, I couldn't help but think about Glynda reluctantly letting Ozpin invite Ruby to Beacon early, or cleaning up the cafeteria while he shrugs off the mess. To be clear, I don't necessarily mean this as a criticism, just an observation. In truth I'm not sure how I feel about it, but it adds to the overall sense that Shade is just Beacon with a slightly different coat of paint. As I've mentioned previously, for all the text's insistence that Shade isn't like the other schools, the story hasn't done a good job of demonstrating that cultural difference in any meaningful way and similarities like this only add to the feeling that this isn't really a unique Kingdom—or at least not one with a firm enough identity to be persuasively unique. Same rule breaking team sneaking out on their own mission. Same secondary team who’s talented, but not as special as the protagonists. Same strange man with his responsible woman running the school. The details differ, obviously, but the structure feels largely the same. 

As mentioned above, once the flashback ends Theodore tries to spar with one of the students but is quickly shut down by Rumpole because, you know, they have a meeting to hold. Apparently there have been complaints lately from the local security about Shade students interfering with official huntsmen business.

“I told you it was about us,” Coco muttered.

Coco, when you hear that people are pissed that you, an unlicensed student, are disrupting the careers of professionals every night the takeaway should not be, 'Aha! I knew it was all about me.'

Yatsuhashi at least provides a more nuanced perspective. "This wasn’t right, though. If they hadn’t interfered, those Huntsmen would have kidnapped an innocent person." He's right. They did help someone, but what they've failed to learn is that an individual good deed does not excuse the unlawful steps they took in getting there. If Team CFVY had just been out on the town and happened to spot some shady characters pulling shit, then put a stop to their kidnapping, that's fine. That's heroic. What is not heroic is them going out with the express purpose of fixing a situation that trained professionals told them they should not be trying to fix—key word being “trying,” given that they all understand Rumpole’s worry that they’ll make things worse. It was enough to send them back home last night... after Yatsuhashi failed to break into the hideout. The problem is not the "I helped someone who needed it" part but rather the "I'm arrogant enough to think that my presence is necessary" bit. 

If having students conducting investigations was wanted or necessary, it would be a part of the curriculum: acknowledged or otherwise. AKA yes, Ruby. It would be very helpful if you'd head on off to Mountain Glenn, under the observation of a seasoned huntsmen, and report back if there's any dubious activity going on over there. Ozpin said, 'Yes please' to the extra (highly controlled) help while these professionals are saying, 'No thanks.' The fact that Team CFVY acts is if they're justified in continuing this investigation—and worse, that the story keeps validating those feelings—undermines their otherwise heroic actions. RWBY really is a series that struggles with giving its protagonists compelling reasons for getting involved in the fight. ‘Because I want to help’ might be a noble motivation, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you should. The Mountain Glenn mission was like a chef allowing a talented, aspiring teen to help them with a dish, all of it done under their tutelage. Team CFVY’s investigation is like the teen sneaking into the kitchen after dark to doctor all the prep for the next day’s cooking under the assumption that they’ll make it even better. Hell, maybe they will! But that’s not the point. Your help was not invited — explicitly denied, actually —and there’s a very good chance you’ll mess something up.

So because this group of eight continually insists that they know best, the whole school is required to stay on campus after nightfall. Huzzah! 

It’s just too bad these consequences hurt others just as much as Team CFVY. The other students are pissed about this. I would be too! Team CFVY remains adamant though that they did the right thing, no guilt here, relying on the reader inaccurately comparing ‘saving lives’ with ‘losing free time off campus’ in order to come out on Team CFVY's side. They still fail to understand that helping people is not the reason they’re being punished. 

Theodore and Rumpole reiterate that they are working on a solution and that no one else should be getting involved. Team CVFY is no more persuaded by this speech than they were the previous ones. The announcement then segues into discussion of the former Haven students which produces... boos from the audience?? My god, what is wrong with this school? I mean I get it, school is brutal—both in real life and fiction—especially when the social dynamics of your school are written much more like a high school than a college, but usually if characters are going to drag new students it's in the semi-privacy of a bathroom or an empty hall. Groaning over the existence of war survivors in front of your headmaster is a level of confident cruelty I didn't expect.

Then again, RWBY is the show that gave us Cardin pulling on Velvet's ears in the middle of the cafeteria, so perhaps I shouldn't be surprised.

Theodore quickly bypasses the whole 'A decent number of my students hate these other students' issue and instead acknowledges that it is "difficult to adjust to a new school, an entirely new group of classmates, and most of all to life in Vacuo. Yet some of you have been separated from your original training teams.” Which is a nice way of saying that a good number of these teammates are dead. So what's the solution here?

Reinitiation Ceremony!

I'm sarcastic, but in all honesty I don't hate this idea. Far from it. Partly because I have a strong love of competitions in shonen-esque stories. Tests, trials, the obligatory tournament arc... they've always been some of my favorite parts of a series, largely because they allow the author to develop whacky and creative challenges that show off important characterization. See: Killua using a skateboard during the tunnel run before deciding that if Gon can manage running it, he can too; or Izuku using the mines and a piece of scrap to blast himself ahead of Bakugo and Todoroki. The structure of such tests forces characters to demonstrate creativity and critical thinking skills alongside strength, and that in turn reminds us of why they're our heroes. RWBY managed this a little bit with the Vytal Festival, but overall I don’t think the teams did anything particularly impressive to win. Team RWBY worked together, Nora hit people really hard with her hammer, Weiss' injury pissed off Yang enough to tap into more power... it was all stuff we had seen before and very little of it required planning or creativity. The Vytal Festival functioned more to set up the plot developments of Volume 3, which is fine, though for a while I had hoped that we would get a huntsmen license exam to do this sort of work... which obviously didn’t happen. Disappointing, but we’re at least getting something like that here. 

So I love the concept. I even love the general reasoning behind holding the ceremony at all. Anyone who had spent five minutes on this blog knows that I think the groups need to learn to play well with others. Yet I also can't deny that the team dynamics provide stability for these characters, even if they've come to rely on that stability to an unhealthy degree. We've got students whose teams were presented to them not just as a professional tool, but their primary support system. You live with these people, attend all the same classes, spend your free time together, and survive life-threatening situations on a fairly regular basis. It's work, family, and friendship all rolled into one, so if the headmaster suddenly says that you get a new team, that's a whole lot more devastating than just learning that you've got a new project group to deal with. It shouldn't have come to that—a school looking to teach a profession that requires working with a wide variety of individuals should never have told four students to rely one each other and each other alone—but now that we're here you can't just break them apart with no notice. Especially with a traumatic war going on. It's hard to come to a new school, meet new people, learn a new culture... so let me rip away the one piece of familiarity you have left.

Of course, I don't really think that the teams will be broken up irrevocably, if at all. Rather, I simply want to acknowledge that despite my appreciation for these kinds of stories and despite my desire that the teams get some distance... it shouldn't be done like this. Even more-so when it’s abundantly clear—to us if not the instructors—that this little stunt is causing their students to re-live a whole bucket load of trauma. Yatsuhashi thinks about how this feels like an “out of body experience” and “It reminded [him] uncomfortably of the evacuation of Beacon Academy… He felt his breath catch in his throat.” Coco’s order to stick together “[brought] him back to the moment,” re-emphasizing that he was lost in the past for a while there. He’s clearly struggling. 

Now, to be fair, this could all fall under the category of flawed characters. Meaning, anytime something awful happens in fiction we can interpret that as a skill on the part of the author: they wanted to write a scenario where the teachers are screwing up and unintentionally hurting their students. Or they know they’re hurting their students and consider that to be an acceptable sacrifice under the justification of ‘They have to get over Beacon at some point!’ There are lots of ways to paint this as Myers/RT writing complex, human characters who make ambiguous choices—a testament to their ability to write “realistically.” But to be frank I don’t really buy it. Simply because I’ve had a lot of experience now with how RWBY handles subjects like trauma and it’s only rarely been written respectfully and engagingly. I could be proven wrong as the novel continues, but it seems more likely that Myers wrote the instructors coming up with this test, wrote Yatsuhashi panicking over it, and intends to continually imply that these two things are separate plot points. Bringing both together in a narratively useful way would require acknowledging the instructors’ motivations—Why this test? Why now? Do they realize the harm they’re causing? If so, do they think it’s worth it?—and then coming to some sort of resolution, either via some recovery on CFVY’s part due to the instructors’ choices (this test did help us move past Beacon), or the instructors learning something about empathy and trauma via CFVY’s reaction (we never should have done this). I highly doubt we’ll get either.  

Thus, everyone is (justifiably) horrified. The teams are gone and either the shock of that made Team CFVY prioritize feelings of safety over strategy, or they're just not going to demonstrate any of the intelligence I look for in this kind of arc, because they immediately start obsessing over staying together. 

He needed to keep his team close to him. Especially Velvet. If they weren’t separated, they couldn’t be assigned to different teams.

Yatsuhashi, that is not at all what Rumpole told you:

“It’s already begun,” Rumpole said. “Everything you do from this moment forward will factor into your evaluations for new teams.”

Where in the world did you get the idea that you wouldn't be assigned a new team so long as you stuck with your old one? If I were one of the instructors here that choice would make me more likely to separate them. "Everything you do from this moment," Rumpole says, meaning that how they respond to this information is a part of the test. The team that panics and refuses to separate is the team that either can't function without one another, or at the very least believes that they can't. They're not willing to work with others and thus they're precisely the type that needs to learn this skillset. You're the ones they'll want to give new teammates to.

Of course, fate has different ideas about how things should go down. And by "fate" I mean "A completely ridiculous plot device." Team CFVY is separated because... the crowd is large I guess? It’s ridiculous. Four fighters already standing beside one another and who are now hyper-focused on staying together are not going to get swept away by a Shade size crowd who probably also want to stick with their own teammates. There are far better, far more convincing ways to keep them apart. Ozpin shot students one-by-one into the forest! Literally anything other than what we got, really.  

Still, that’s what we wound up with. Yatsuhashi and Coco both try to keep the team together only for the immense power of other people existing putting a stop to their plan. Alrighty then. Before they’re dramatically swept away on different ships, however, we do get two other noteworthy bits of information that I'd like to end on. The first is Rumpole’s announcement that “When you reach your destination, your goal will be to locate a gold figurine and bring it back to the school” to which Fox replies, “Great. Glad this is fair for everyone. Who can see.” And you know what? He's right. Maybe Fox and I will both be proven wrong (I feel like I'm writing that a lot this chapter...) but unless there's some miscommunication here or a surprise in store, a goal of "locat[ing] a gold figurine" is indeed a sight based challenge and, when placed in a test that is deliberately separating Fox from his team, puts him at a severe disadvantage.

The second is simply that the year levels of the students will not be a factor in the creation of new teams. “What year we are? Yatsu thought. This can’t be right. How could a first-year keep up with fourth-years?” to which I respond, "Um... that's the entire show?" The webseries RWBY is about how Team RWBY, starting out as first years, has surpassed everyone around them, to the point where they're now beating the best team in Atlas. Time-wise they're still second years—far as I can figure out, anyway—so if second years can beat elite military operations, a first year can stand toe-to-toe with second, third, and fourth years. More crucial to Yatsuhashi's thought process—because as an in-world character he doesn't necessarily know what Team RWBY has been up to post-Volume 3—he's still seen how well first years did at Beacon. Ruby was let in two years early. Pyrrha is such a phenomenally talented fighter her face is on their cereal boxes. A first year, Yang, went on to compete in the Vytal Tournament final (even if it was rigged. Yatsuhashi doesn't know that), and Team CFVY fought beside a number of first years at the Battle of Beacon. Now, you all know that I think education and experience are damn important. I'm not saying Yatsuhashi is flat-out wrong to question whether there would be any issues attached to slamming, say, a first year, two second years, and a fourth year into one team (especially when you consider practical questions like going to classes), but the general takeaway of "How could they keep up?" seems a tad strange. You know first years can keep up. You watched it happen, both in your former school's curriculum—first years get to go on an upper-level mission—and in real life battle. This knee-jerk response reads as even worse after five chapters of looking down on Team SSSN. Team CFVY really thinks highly of themselves, huh. 

Honestly, it feels like our authors didn't pay a whole lot of attention to the implications of the dialogue/thoughts they’re giving to the characters which is, again, par for the course at this point. Like the questions attached to the test, this feels less like giving Yatsuhashi a flaw (he, as an in-world character, hasn't bothered to think through whether his knee-jerk assumption about first years is supported by his experiences) and more like a flaw of the creators. That sounds like a legitimate concern—in the same way that Yatsuhashi's advice to Rumpole sounds generically wise—but poke at it a bit and you start finding a number of cracks. An author who is well aware of the world they've built and strives to adhere to it might have had Yatsuhashi acknowledge some of the amazing things he's seen first years do and still conclude that there are problems with this decision. That's legit. As it stands, Yatsuhashi just sounds ignorant and (again) overly confident, which I don't trust to be a moment of character insight as opposed to an authorial blip.

Which is about where we end. The team is split on different airships, no one is happy about it, and we're left with this somewhat unsettling image:

Headmaster Theodore was waving and whooping, like it was all some terrific game, while Professor Rumpole watched silently, her hair whipping around in the wind and an unsettling grin on her face.

This gives me some hope that the story will treat the problems attached to this test respectfully. The description of Theodore acting "like it was all some terrific game" is a mark against his character and Rumpole straight up has an "unsettling grin on her face." Is she one of the baddies? Potentially. Will I ever again get adult characters who aren't depicted as inept, traitorous, or just so flawed that they unwittingly cause great damage to their students? Probably not. These two desires remain constantly at war with one another. RWBY introduces issues that the story should tackle, but the only issues it acknowledges are those attached to the adults. So we have everyone doing a range of iffy things, but only the elders are likely to be punished or (better yet) learn something over the course of the tale. The double standard remains so strong across the franchise that at this point I just want to raise a THE ADULTS DID NOTHING WRONG banner and call it a day. Not because they're actually free of mistakes or even, at times, downright cruelty, but because if our protagonists constantly get that free pass I'm not sure why everyone else can't too.

Anyone for a spot of denial? 

But I've now written nearly twice as much as the actual chapter in question. It's time to stop! At this rate I’ll have written the equivalent of five Before the Dawns in my attempt to recap just one. #yikes

Until Chapter Six 💜