#Deemed Exports

[if-loki-was-a-fox]

cat!jmart :3

...these two are from a horror podcast. in canon

...continues drawing them as cute cats on pastel and rainbow backgrounds anyways

(cropped pfp-adjacent versions made for my own amusement lol)

[godhandler]

Kill The Damned Phone - Choso Kamo

[wc: 1500+]

[ tw: Choso Kamo x Reader, smut, fluff, established relationship, interrupted sex, blowjob, throat-fucking, prone bone, slight bondage, Choso being an absolute darling ]

“Nghh, Choso, right- fuck- right there!” You breathe out as Choso’s tongue runs over the shell over your ear. His chest to your back, your face buried into a pile of pillows, his entire right arm pulling your hips into him as he ruts into you prone bone. “Mhmm” he smiles, “you like it, baby?”

“I like you ∼” How cute. you can feel his lips stretching into a smile against your neck. He gives your wet pussy a slower, deeper grind to show his appreciation, pulling a sweet moan out of you. 

A slow Sunday morning with nothing much to do. Choso had woken up much before you, as usual, and by the time you had washed up and dressed, he was done making breakfast. Tamagoyaki rolls, natto rice balls, leftover pizza and two bottles of yakult each. Choso, your sweet man, read you the news headlines he deemed important as you washed the dishes– “A tunnel collapsed in Sendai” “Putin might be gay” “India is stopping rice exports”. He’d given you a spank on the ass as punishment for wiping your hands dry on his sweatpants. That ended up with him pounding you into the blankets, your hands pinned over your head with his left wrist. Ah, to be young and in love. 

“You just like me? I thought it was love” He teases. “It’s so sad, my baby doesn’t love me!” 

Your giggles are broken by a gasp as he bites into your neck. What a pretty collection of hickies. “Yeah, this is what you get. There’s no love for grown men who bite.”

“Aww” He pouts so cutely that you have to risk spraining your neck to give him a kiss. He adjusts himself further up your body - fuck, that felt good, he’s so deep in me now, shit- to make it easier for you to reach his lips. He deserves all the kisses, that sweetheart. You peck his nose too, for good measure.

“Babe,” He asks. “Should I use Flowing Red Scale? Or would it be too much for you?”

Before you open your mouth to reply, his phone’s ringing. He sighs into the nape of your neck before dislodging himself and reaching for it, taking the charging cable off it before he holds it up to his ear. “Hello? Yuuji?” 

From where you lie on the bed, it is a weird mixture of hot and hilarious. Choso’s hair is a mess, his lips puffy from your bites (he tells you to stop biting his lips but you vehemently refuse). His neck, chest, abs and arms have not been spared from your teeth either, all littered with little hickies. He’s squatting on the bed, silently trying to make sure his still-hard cock doesn’t drip your wetness on the bed sheet, while he holds his entire arm up, elbow lifted, to keep the phone to his ear, like a middle-aged dad. “Little brother, is that you?”

“Onii-san!” It’s not on speaker phone but you can hear the kid loud and clear through the phone. “I’ll make it quick: how do you do a Supernova?”

“Oh, good, good! You’re practising the harder skills now!” Choso momentarily forgot the cock-wet-not-touch-bed-sheet thing in his excitement. You just smile, letting him figure it out himself. “It’s hard to explain it over the phone, but it’s like this. Now pay attention: You let yourself feel every drop of your blood, okay? In every cell, then it goes fwoop–” He balled his free hand into a fist, “and then you wait till it’s time, and then you let it go.” He mimicked an explosion with his hand. “But when you let it go, make sure it all goes at once.”  

“Ehhhh?” You can vividly imagine Yuuji’s grimace on the other side of the phone. You couldn’t keep your laugh in. For Choso, Blood Manipulation came as naturally as breathing, he didn’t consciously take note of every step. It was a bit hard for him to explain things; just as hard as it was for Yuuji to understand his explanation. “Oh– Is y/n-san there with you?”

“Yeah, say hi-” “G’morning, y/n-san!”

“Hello, is this my favourite little prodigy?” You did baby Yuuji a bit, taking on the role of an older sister that he never had. “What’re you practising?”

“I’ve already gotten Piercing Blood down actually,” he says. “Supernova’s next, but I don’t get anything Onii-san said. Do you wanna come down to practice later?” You mull it over. Yuuji’s punches hit hard (even when he was holding back)  and you didn’t really want to experience that again, but having done martial arts for far longer than him, you could teach him new techniques. You suppose it’s a sacrifice you’re willing to make.

“Aw, sure. 6 evening?”

“6 evening. See you then, y/n-san!” Click. 

“He didn’t even say goodbye to me.” Choso huffs. “He likes you too much.”

You laugh, both at his words and the sorrow in his eyes when he realised that he’s stained the bed sheet. “He’s at that age where family is embarrassing, especially his doting onii-san. He’ll grow up, don't worry.” You rise to push a kiss at the crown of Choso’s head. “I hate training with him really, he hits so hard. I don’t know anyone with that kind of raw strength!”

“Really?” Choso has you under him in a flash. “You don’t know anyone?” He wrenches your legs apart and pins them under his knees. “Struggle then, let me show you.” 

You grin. This will be fun.

You let a minute pass to trick him into thinking you’re not doing anything. A bird sings out the window, you both turn to look, and -you’re gone. Slipped out from under him and jumped off the bed and out the bedroom door. “Oh, you little!” You hear him laughing as he scampers off the bed, running after you. This was so fun, you can’t stop giggling, even though, as you register now, it is a bit weird running with Choso’s pre running down your thighs.

Oh well, it is what it is.

He corners you at the living room table, trying to catch you while you jump over the table and leap onto the sofas. 

I’ve got you now, birdie. 

He knows there’s nowhere for you to go, you know you’re not going anywhere. You’ve got your arms ready to strike if he comes any closer, but he doesn’t stop walking to you. This is fine, you can take him hand-to-hand. Uppercut, a left jab, left hook to the jaw, straight punch to the liver- he dodges it all. You’re about to go for his solar plexus, as - “Blood Manipulation: Crimson Binding”

“That’s so fucking cheating!” You yell out at the unfairness of the universe. Your hands are tied behind your back, so you immediately resort to kicking Choso, so he just binds your legs too. “That’s unfair, baby!”

“I like it though.” He giggles, “I never said cursed techniques are out of play.” The bindings on your legs are getting heavier, making you drop to your knees. “Ooh” Chose is way too happy with this, watching your boobs bounce as you fall. “I really like it.” 

You look up as he walks close, his cock, growing again at the sight of you like that, gingerly touches your lips. “Make me happy, yeah, love?”

You smile up at him, giving him a little kiss at his leaking tip. “Go ahead, baby.” you tell him. 

He leans down to kiss you so deeply, spitting into your mouth to make sure it’s wet enough. Then he straightens up, wiping his cock over your lips and cheek, making a mess of your face. He’s just got his fingers into your hair, thrusting his huge cock full into your throat in one go as you choke back gag after gag, groaning at the feel of your throat constricting around his cock, his perfect little fleshlight, your nose in his happy trail and balls against your spit-slick chin. He’s just started leaning over you, shoving your mouth down his cock as you run your tongue over his shaft, going rougher as the sight of your lust-drunk eyes drives him wild. He’s literally just getting started– when his phone rings again. 

He sighs sooo deep, dropping his face into his palms, that you begin to laugh with your mouth still full of cock. He carefully takes himself out again, flings you over his shoulder and carries you back to the bedroom like that, where his phone’s not done ringing. 

“Onii-san!” It’s Yuuji again. You’ve been dropped on the bed. Since the bedsheet is already ruined, you wipe your face clean with it, your hands still being tied. “Oni-san, I got it! Supernova done!”

“Good work, Yuuji! I knew you could do it!” Choso musters up all his love for his younger brother, not letting a single trace of annoyance pass into his voice. The genuine love and care Choso has for loved-ones, it warms your heart.

“Y/n-san, can you hear me too?”

Choso looks over at you before realising that your voice would probably betray a hint of being roughly throat-fucked. “Aah, she’s in the washroom, I’ll tell her when she comes back, okay? You keep practising though!”

“Oh, okay. I’ll just tell her myself at 6 then.”

“All right. I was thinking, little brother, Supernova’s a difficult move, I’ll get you dinner today as a gift. Yeah?” 

“Oh yeah!! You're a great big brother.” You can see Choso’s heart melt. “Bye-byee!”

“Bye!” Click.

“Should we take him out to Ono Jiro? He’d like the experience.” you think out loud. Choso suddenly realises that he forgot about the Crimson Binding, freeing you with a sheepish apology. 

“I’m so proud of him, you know.” says Choso, burying his face into your tits as you both laze on the bed. “Even though he keeps preventing us from giving him any nephews or nieces.”

You both laugh. “We’ve got nothing to do all day and it's still just morning. We’ve just got to keep at it”. You pet his hair poking out from between your tits. Choso’s starting to suck a hickey into the thin skin of your sternum, and edging a hand to grab your left boob. His other hand’s already massaging the fat of your ass. 

“We’ll keep at it, then” Choso grins.

Bonus: Choso looks up books and videos about 'how to teach' so that he can help Yuuji learn <3

img credits: here. it's not the artist (i think) but i couldn't find any further sources. If anyone does know the artist, please let me know.

[prettiestboytoy2]

I am so sick to my stomach with constant barge of morons and finance journalist trying to convince me just how much "behind" Europe is. "Lack of innovation!" they scream. What innovation?

Illegal hotels, illegal taxi, taxi for my food, everthing as an subscription/service, fake-internet-scam money and algorytm made exclusively with stolen intellectual property for explicit purpose of creating as much unemployment as physically possible. I am missing out so much!

Literally not an single day passes when i don't see "Economist" or "Bloomberg" tell me that my continent is dying because of heresy of workers rights, customer rights and privacy laws. Any country that has an audacity of not openly prostituting itself to corporations is deemed as "stagnant", "bureaucratic" or "slow to adapt".

Why does America has borderline religious desire to export one of the worst takes on business ethics and work-life balance ever created, to every corner of somewhat-developed world?.

[zvaigzdelasas]

There is an overwhelming case for the UK to intervene to stop a US oil tanker carrying 300,000 barrels of jet fuel for use by Israel in Gaza from docking in Gibraltar, according to a letter from a cross-party group of MPs addressed to David Lammy, the UK foreign secretary.

Protests in Spain led by trade unionists and political activists have already resulted in the owners of the Overseas Santorini abandoning plans to dock in the Spanish port of Algeciras. According to Marine Traffic, the ship is now destined to reach Gibraltar at 3pm UK time on Tuesday.

The Gibraltar government, however, insisted it had received no formal request to dock.[...]

Campaigners said the Overseas Santorini was carrying military-grade JP-8 fuel, delivered as part of a contract with the US government, that powers F-16 fighter jets. According to a UN investigation, it was probably an F-16, which are built using UK parts, that bombed British doctors from Medical Aid for Palestinians at a compound in Gaza in January.

The MPs, including members of the Scottish Nationalists, Labour and Green parties, have urged the government to “prohibit and prevent Gibraltar being used as a haven for the transport of military fuel used in Israel’s assault on Gaza”.

The letter said: “The jet fuel will be unloaded and used to fuel the Israeli air force’s F16 and F35 that drop bombs on the people of Gaza. The 300,000 barrels of fuel are sufficient for around 12,000 F-16 refuellings.”

It added: “The case to prevent Gibraltar’s facilities from being complicit in Israel’s breaches of international law are overwhelming. Tens of thousands of Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s assault.””[...]

In May, the Spanish foreign minister, José Manuel Albares, said Spain will not authorise ships carrying weapons for Israel to call at its ports after the country refused to let a ship call at the south-eastern port of Cartagena.[...]

The campaigners said the oil is being shipped by the Valero company from Corpus Christi, Texas and is aimed to reach the port of Ashkelon in Israel. For years, these regular shipments have stopped at Algeciras and Limassol, Cyprus.

On Monday, the business secretary, Jonathan Reynolds, announced he was making a free trade agreement with Israel one of his priorities in securing trade deals. But ministers are expected shortly to announce limited restrictions on arms export licences to Israel if the arms are deemed capable of being used in Israeli offensives in Gaza.

29 Jul 24

[probablyasocialecologist]

All media outlets in Israel, along with publishers and authors, must submit stories related to foreign affairs and security to the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) chief military censor before publication. No other Western country has such a system. It’s an archaic regulation that began soon after Israel was born. The censor has the power to entirely block the story or partially redact it. What’s deemed valid is highly questionable, since the priorities of the national security establishment will be very different to what’s required for a healthy, democratic state. This contradiction was clear when Israel’s chief censor, Ariella Ben Avraham, left her position in 2020 and took a job with the country’s leading cyber-surveillance company, NSO Group.

Antony Loewenstein, The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World

[whalesforhands]

god! gojo

warnings: minors pls dni, smut in some parts, fem! reader, inspired by the anime ‘Is it wrong to pick up girls in a dungeon?’

thank you for 1k! and here is the option that won the poll, i hope you all enjoy.

In a world where gods live among humans, they form guilds (Familias) and are able to grant ‘followers’ blessings (Falna), enabling them to gain powers beyond the average human’s capability. Each Familia is always led by a god who commands, helps their members grow stronger to build up their guilds.

With that said, being part of the Gojo Familia is extremely tough. Tough in the sense that… Nobody else wants to be part of the Familia known to have such an annoying God.

Gojo Satoru, a god born in the new age; he who precedes over Infinity, the one with the Six Eyes, the revered one throughout the Heavens and the Earth; The Honoured One. His power is absolute, his orders undisputed; yet, when he descended to the human world to live among these beings that he was meant to love—

He found it hard to do that. A little too hard… Especially for a god known to excel at anything he tried his hand at.

His riches from the heavens don’t translate to anything down here, his power restricted to only his innate abilities. Nobody wanted to revere a haughty god with no love for his subordinates despite the power that be boasted, a god that was too arrogant to accept any of his ‘beloved’ humans into his yet-to-be-set up Familia.

Even the fanatics that revered him were looked down on in disgust, the god turning his back on them and shunning what he deemed ‘repulsive, manic love’.

So he’s left without a penny to his name, shunned by the people and only the clothes on his back and his unfaltering will. He lived out his days lazing about the home of a minor deity named Masamichi Yaga, playing around within the trading Familia that specialized in the export of toys.

“Satoru.” Yaga is usually quite lenient with the younger god, usually allowed the deity to frolick around his cottage and mess with the multitude of unfinished stuffed toys within the home.

But even he knows that he was merely wasting his time here.

“You’re wasting your time here.” A click of his tongue as he gently pats down the ears of the fluffy plushie. “Find a purpose.”

“Tch! Yaga, y’er so stingy…!”

A glare from behind those telltale darkened shades shuts him up.

Yet, Gojo Satoru found no purpose. No meaning, no depth to these lowly humans. He considered them below him, considered them a nuisance. He only came down for one reason, he refuses to return until he’s learned exactly what was likable about those damned humans.

Until… He found you.

Fatally wounded and barely even able to maintain your consciousness, your breaths were unsteady and shallow, a slight breeze probably capable of killing you right then and there as you laid uselessly against the dingy brick wall.

Maybe it’s just a representation of how you’ve lived even until now.

“I guess—“ You smile, despite it all, clutching the bleeding wound in one hand and sighing. Your expression is soft, sad. A meaning to it that he never would’ve thought humans could possess even if he tried to imagine it. “I messed up… Haha…”

It’s pitiful to look down at.

“That’s it? Ya ain’t even gonna try to fight it?” He crouches down, legs bent and a hand on his cheek when he stares at you head on.

It hits a nerve, if you’re being honest. You’re trying to say your last words to probably the last being you’ll probably see in this lifetime.

“Would there be—“ A grunt of pain as your eyes squeeze shut, your sweat starting to sting against the open wound as you take a breath in. “A meaning to that?”

Huh? What? That’s not the answer he expected.

“Ya don’t value your own life, human?”

Don’t you? You’ve tried all this while. You’ve tried, you really did. Maybe it could be enough now.

“I-I think it’s enough that,” You think your vision is starting to blur as you try to smile. “That… I won’t die alone.” For a god who was known to lack love; he was certainly the kindest you have met, to be able to have the honour to know.

“Thank you.”

You heard that he was terrifying, that he would glare down at lesser beings with scorn and nauseating ego— And yet, here he was.

Looking you right in the eye in your final moments as he scrunches his nose, simply just watching as you try to fight the fading consciousness enough to hear the last bits of this life.

You can see him ponder, something unreadable flashing through those gleaming blue that practically glittered with the universe’s stars that begged you to count every single last one of them as you finally decide to give yourself peace, to let yourself—

“Tell you what,” A sparkle of blue and a flutter of icy white as the wind starts to pick up, a breeze so nostalgic that it makes your heart clamor and your hands tighten. It felt like a caress of summer against your cold face, an off feeling of wanting to look at the blue sky once more despite your wish to disappear.

“I’ll give ya a once in a lifetime chance.” The wind felt like it was chasing after you, stroking your cheek with the softness akin to dried-out clouds and sunlight that kissed you so softly.

Maybe you didn’t truly want to go.

“Join my Familia.”

——

“Satoru-sama, please wake up.” You’re trying to shake him awake, trapped in his embrace as he snores into your chest, his toned arm wrapped tightly around your midsection as you only hear a whine in return.

“Noooo…! You can’t go to the dungeons…” A spot of drool lolls onto your skin, his words muffled from pressing his face against your upper body, where he had ridden the fabric up to ensure that he had direct access to the softness of your body.

“S’ dangerous…”

You sigh.

“But Satoru-sama,” You start stroking his hair as you hear another whine, taking it as an opportunity to poke at one of his cheeks. “If we don’t go, we can’t pay rent here.”

Silence, followed by the feel of his fingers sneaking up your sides to grope at you. For someone who was meant to be a revered god, he certainly acts like a spoiled child in the mornings.

“Hmph… Make someone else go so you can stay here with me…”

“There are no other members in your Familia, Satoru-sama.”

Two months. That’s how long you’ve been bound to your Gojo Satoru, the glyph on your back evidence of his mark as you smile down at the half-awake deity.

Well, it’s not like you mind.

“Only ten minutes more, okay?”

Gojo Satoru was a selfish god. He indulged in whatever he felt like, acted upon every whim he had and never hesitated to say what was on his mind.

Yet, he was benevolent. Only to you, that is.

“Huh? Don’t ya want a reward for all the work you’ve done?” A raised brow as he stuffs another spoonful of stew into your mouth,

“I don’t think,” You chew, swallowing the creamy soup down before speaking once more, your hand reaching up in attempt to wipe at the remnant of liquid at the corner of your lip. “I have anything I particularly want, Satoru-sama.”

“Ahhh- You humans are so picky.” He’s back to poking at your stuffed cheek, making it a point to prod at your skin and trying to get a rise out of you as you succumb to his whims.

“Satoru-sama, being with you is enough payment for me.”

“Haaah… Can’t even decide anything for yourself can ya—“

He stops all of a sudden, your words striking a chord within him as he suddenly perks up, his chair screeching back from his sudden movement.

“Hoho. I think I got something you’d like.”

It started small. Hugs goodbye whenever you had to go pick up more ingredients for dinner, contrived pecks to your hand whenever you reached out towards him— Until physical contact became the norm in the humble little Familia that you both created.

You feel lucky that he indulges you so much.

“Say,” His cheek rests upon your head as he takes another inhale of your scent, his nose brushing against the sensitive nape of your neck from behind as you attempt to make dinner. “You love me, don’t you?”

“Of course, Satoru-sama.” A pat to the arm wrapped tight around your waist as the potato peeler sits still on the countertop. “I love you.”

It’s not just for show. Of course you love him. More than you could ever love anything else. Your god, your saviour, the only person who believed in you when you had given up on yourself.

You’d never pick anyone, anything over him. Even if he was stubborn, haughty, egotistic, provocative and possibly even exasperating at times; he was kind. He cared, he loved, he worried, he was simply him.

Your beloved Satoru. God or not, there was no other being like him.

There’s silence, the sound of his heart beat against your ear from his sheer height and tight hold. You feel his hand slowly trail over the skin of your midriff, making its way downwards to fiddle with the hem of the largely oversized tunic of clothing you donned as his eyes close.

“Would you be willing to do anything I say?”

You should hesitate when it comes to these types of questions. Should prepare to think it over if it were anybody but the one who granted you more than a Falna. He granted you a home, a place where you belonged.

He gave you peace. So there wasn’t any reason for you to deny him.

“Anything for you, Satoru-sama.”

Yet, even when he was inbetween your thighs, your legs carelessly thrown over his shoulders as your hands so thoughtlessly gripping at the bedsheets in fear of doing harm to your God— You could feel that he just wasn’t there with you.

“Saa— Sator-ru-sama… Hah…” Your trembling thighs squeeze harder around his head, hands practically losing their colour from how hard you had to grip on just to gain back enough to even speak.

“Shh…” He’s finally pulled his insistent tongue off of your clit, licking his lips of the essence dripping from his mouth as he smirks up at you, before he let his tongue lick up the length of your thigh.

“Ya feel good, don’t you? Just sit pretty and let me eat your sweet cunt out.”

And when you both were so intimately connected, his fingers so lovingly entwined with your own, your lips sharing; indulging in the taste of each other, experiencing the same blinding pleasure as he allows your head to tilt back, his chuckle and a kiss to your cheek as your eyes are blanked out—

He just seemed so far away.

Don’t get yourself wrong, don’t let yourself be tricked. There was adoration in his every caress, every brush of his lips against your skin and every tender, sweetened coo that slipped out of his mouth and into your ears.

“See? Told ya you can give me one more.”

“Hmm? Can’t hear you at all, honey~ Don’t babble your words.”

“My adorable little follower…” He pauses to press another chaste, sweaty kiss to your lips as your ankles press against his lower back, your arms wrapped tight around his neck as your eyes seep more tears from this overwhelming pleasure.

It felt hot, scalding even— Was celestial being semen meant to feel like this inside of you?

“Sa-Sator-Satoru…!”

“Oho— Hngh…” You can feel his cock spasm inside of you, twitching against that little, specific spot as your vision practically dot with searing white. “Forgetting— Your honourifics, huh?”

“But don’t— Hah— worry,” His playful fingers pinch at your nipples, head leaning down to kiss at the bitten, marred skin once more before those beautiful blue eyes peek up at you. “I’ll forgive my cute little devotee for anything…”

You think you’ve finally regained conscious when you awaken on top of a sturdy chest, your god’s hand tenderly stroking the back of your head, both of your legs tangled together as the sheets of your shared bed swirl with the fragrance of freshly aired out, perfectly dried and washed sheets.

You could ask how he managed to change them, how he managed to wash the both of you of sweat, how he managed to make the pot boil with the savoury scent of stew at the fireplace—

Yet, the first question that pervades you was none of that.

“Satoru-sama.” You can feel the way your naked chest was pressed against his, those blue eyes closed, hidden behind white-lashed eyelids as he continued to pet your head as one arm was settled behind him to act as a pillow.

“What were you thinking about?”

You know he knows exactly what you’re speaking of.

“Nothing much, sweetheart.” A playful pinch of your cheek as you feel the beginnings of a pout start to show on your face. “But starting to get curious about me, huh?”

“I— Wish to know, Satoru-sama.” You watch as one iridescent iris peeks out slightly from behind a closed eye, that mischievous smirk on his pretty face so infuriatingly cute.

“Do you now?”

“Please don’t tease me too much, Satoru-sama…”

A loud laugh that allowed your hands to feel how his chest vibrated beneath you, let your eyes watch how his face curved into that rich smile and gorgeous carelessness that you wanted to admire for hours on end.

Yet, you can’t help but sense the bitter, sour sweetness in his voice.

“A long time ago,” He pauses to brush a strand of hair out of your eyes as his own eyelids start to blink open. “I had a best friend.”

You hear him take in a breath, eyes shifting up towards the ceiling before they flickered back down to your curious gaze. “He was my one and only.”

You stay silent at that revelation.

“He loved you humans, you know?” You’re shifting your naked self up, adjusting the blanket that covered the both of you as his hand pulls your head forwards so that it was resting upon his chest. “It was weird to hear him talk about you all so much.”

You can see how lovingly your Satoru-sama spoke of him, how his tone dropped to such an earnest, yearning want. It felt like flowers that were fluttering in the summer wind, scattered and quiet; but so gentle and frail.

It makes you afraid of what you were about to ask.

“What happened to the both of you, Satoru-sama?”

It’s tense. Your body, pressed so vulnerably against his with your head against his chest… Could pick up on the way his heart rate picking up.

“I killed him with my own two hands.”

masterlist

[mariacallous]

MYKOLAIV, UKRAINE—Kateryna Nahorna is getting ready to find trouble.

Part of an all-female team of dog handlers, the 22-year-old is training Ukraine’s technical survey dogs—Belgian Malinois that have learned to sniff out explosives.

The job is huge. Ukraine is now estimated to be the most heavily mined country on Earth. Deminers must survey every area that saw sustained fighting for unexploded mines, missiles, artillery shells, bombs, and a host of other ordnance—almost 25 percent of the country, according to government estimates.

The dogs can cover 1,500 square meters a day. In contrast, human deminers cover 10 square meters a day on average—by quickly narrowing down the areas that manual deminers will need to tackle, the dogs save valuable time.

“This job allows me to be a warrior for my country … but without having to kill anyone,” said Nahorna. “Our men protect us at war, and we do this to protect them at home.”

A highly practical reason drove the women’s recruitment. The specialized dog training was done in Cambodia, by the nonprofit Apopo, and military-aged men are currently not allowed to leave Ukraine.

War has shaken up gender dynamics in the Ukrainian economy, with women taking up jobs traditionally held by men, such as driving trucks or welding. Now, as mobilization ramps up once more, women are becoming increasingly important in roles that are critical for national security.

In Mykolaiv, in the industrial east, Nahorna and her dogs will soon take on one of the biggest targets of Russia’s military strategy when they start to demine the country’s energy infrastructure. Here, women have been stepping in to work in large numbers in steel mills, factories, and railways serving the front line.

It’s a big shift for Ukraine. Before the war, only 48 percent of women over age 15 took part in the workforce — one of the lowest rates in Europe. War has made collecting data on the gender composition of the workforce impossible, but today, 50,000 women serve in the Ukrainian army, compared to 30,000 before the war.

The catalyst came in 2017, years before the current war began. As conflict escalated with Russia in Crimea, the Ukrainian government overturned a Soviet-era law that had previously banned women from 450 occupations.

But obstacles still remain; for example, women are not allowed jobs the government deems too physically demanding. These barriers continue to be chipped away—most recently, women have been cleared to work in underground mines, something they were prevented from doing before.

Viktoriia Avramchuk never thought she would follow her father and husband into the coal mines for DTEK, Ukraine’s largest private energy company.

Her lifelong fear of elevators was a big factor—but there was also the fact that it was illegal for women to work underground.

Her previous job working as a nanny in a local kindergarten disappeared overnight when schools were forced to close at the beginning of the war. After a year of being unemployed, she found that she had few other options.

“I would never have taken the job if I could have afforded not to,” Avramchuk said from her home in Pokrovsk. “But I also wanted to do something to help secure victory, and this was needed.”

The demining work that Nahorna does is urgent in part because more than 55 percent of the country is farmed.

Often called “the breadbasket of Europe,” Ukraine is one of the world’s top exporters of grain. The U.K.-based Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, which has been advising the Ukrainian government on demining technology, estimates that landmines have resulted in annual GDP losses of $11 billion.

“Farmers feel the pressure to plow, which is dangerous,” said Jon Cunliffe, the Ukraine country director of Mines Advisory Group (MAG), a British nonprofit. “So we need to do as much surveying as possible to reduce the size of the possible contamination.”

The dogs can quickly clear an area of heavy vegetation, which greatly speeds up the process of releasing noncontaminated lands back to farmers. If the area is found to be unsafe, human deminers step in to clear the field manually.

“I’m not brave enough to be on the front line,” 29-year-old Iryna Manzevyta said as she slowly and diligently hovered a metal detector over a patch of farmland. “But I had to do something to help, and this seemed like a good alternative to make a difference.”

Groups like MAG are increasingly targeting women. With skilled male deminers regularly being picked up by military recruiters, recruiting women reduces the chances that expensive and time-consuming training will be invested in people who could be drafted to the front line at a moment’s notice. The demining work is expected to take decades, and women, unlike men, cannot be conscripted in Ukraine.

This urgency to recruit women is accelerating a gender shift already underway in the demining sector. Organizations like MAG have looked to recruit women as a way to empower them in local communities. Demining was once a heavily male-dominated sector, but women now make up 30 percent of workers in Vietnam and Colombia, around 40 percent in Cambodia, and more than 50 percent in Myanmar.

In Ukraine, the idea is to make demining an enterprise with “very little expat footprint,” and Cunliffe said that will only be possible by recruiting more women.

“We should not be here in 10 years. Not like in Iraq or South Sudan, where we have been for 30 years, or Vietnam, or Laos,” Cunliffe said. “It’s common sense that we bring in as many women as we can to do that. In five to 10 years, a lot of these women are going to end up being technical field managers, the jobs that are currently being done by old former British military guys, and it will change the face of demining worldwide because they can take those skills across the world.”

Manzevyta is one of the many women whose new job has turned her family dynamics on their head. She has handed over her previous life, running a small online beauty retail site, to her husband, who—though he gripes—stays at home while she is out demining.

“Life is completely different now,” she said, giggling. “I had to teach him how to use the washing machine, which settings to use, everything around the house because I’m mostly absent now.”

More seriously, Manzevyta said that the war has likely changed many women’s career trajectories.

“I can’t imagine people who have done work like this going back and working as florists once the war is over,” she laughed.

[thecosmicpool]

gotta start somewhere; why not in NORTHREACH?

ahhh northreach..let's start with you, eh?

this is where the majority of my worldbuilding has happened so far, i'll admit. i'm being kinda silly and going through each cultural region one by one, moving on to the next region whenever I deem whatever i'm working on "good enough."

left image: location map, triangles are small hamlets, x's are larger towns or even cities. basically the major settlements for each region. the big green expanse in the middle is actually a huge forest called the Jackdaw Wilds, i just forgot to put any indication that there were trees there lol....

right image: cultural map, each color is ROUGHLY where that culture tends to be the majority (at least with locals)

Northreach has the most variable temperatures in Yuwen, as it contains the tallest mountain in the Spinal Column (otherwise known as "the Spine," a mountain range which travels all the way along Yuwen's eastern side) Great Father Mtn in the Altain region, as well as the largest forest (Jackdaw Wilds), and Oxcairn Mtn in Terria, a (currently) dormant volcano.

Northreach functions on a bartering system economically, and exports a great deal of natural materials to other territories in Yuwen. it's capital city is Wildhaven-on-the-Lake, which is (as you can guess) located in that central lake at the bottom of the territory!!!

anyway that's all i can think of to dump about northreach atm. do you have any questions? let me know and i'll do my best to answer them!

[jamtlandsarkiv]

This is kind of DenSu related, I guess. What are your thoughts on the Scandinavian trio during the Kalmar Union? I have my own thoughts, but would love to hear yours.

June 6th, 2024 was the 501st anniversary of Sweden leaving the Kalmar Union!

The Kalmar Union era was a fascinating and widely misunderstood period that strongly affected the region. I wrote a list of common misconceptions, a summary of the period plus a thought experiment about how it might have affected Mathias and Björn under the cut!

It really topples my chimney to see people use the Kalmar Union period to justify why DenSu would have an unhealthy relationship. Here is a quick summary of the most common misconceptions in the fandom about the union:

Sweden was forced into the union. No, the union was a voluntary agreement proposed by Denmark to combat a powerful union of German states that would threaten the Nordic states' dominance in the Baltic Sea region.

The union was a period of severe oppression for Swedes. No, the first 50 years of the union were peaceful and the union achieved its goal of creating a unified Nordic region. The conflicts began later in the union's lifespan as the Danish authorities attempted to centralize power under the Danish crown and attempted to introduce laws that the Swedes deemed unfavorable.

The Stockholm Bloodbath was a civilian massacre. No, it was a mass execution of politically influential anti-union aristocrats as punishment for coordinating armed rebellions against the Danish king.

I'll be honest: the way I write Mathias, Björn, their backgrounds and their roles in society, they would have no interactions with each other that were motivated by the union. The idea is that in my Nationverse, all immortals live as unassuming citizens. They could take on political roles, but they'll have to work hard to climb the ladder like anyone else, and they can't hold on to power forever (as they would have to "die"). Björn in particular lives in northern Sweden, very far away from the conflicts that arose as a consequence of the union.

The Kalmar Union was a mutual agreement proposed by Queen Margareta of Denmark and agreed upon by various leaders of Sweden. The union was established in 1397. The goal of the union was to combat the increasingly powerful Hansen union between the German states. The two member states agreed to collaborate economically, establish a common foreign policy and provide military support to each other. Danish King Erik was crowned as the king of the union.

Because Denmark was the most populous member of the union then and the union's leadership was overwhelmingly Danish, the Swedes grew increasingly dissatisfied at the union. They believed that its terms transferred power to Denmark and were unfairly disadvantageous to Sweden. The first protest of the union, the Engelbrekt Rebellion of 1434, was in response to a tax hike across the union to fund Denmark's war against German state Holstein. Swedes were already unhappy at being drafted into Denmark's faraway war, which came with the additional disadvantage that Sweden, as a member state in their union, wasn't able to export to an important trade partner. This pattern of events (Denmark doing something that didn't benefit Sweden, Swedes protesting against it) continued over the next century and built a strong anti-union political current.

The Stockholm Bloodbath was the tipping point of the anti-union movement. Swedes, thoroughly exhausted of the union by the 1500s, protested the crowning of Danish King Kristian II as the King of Sweden. Several influential aristocrats associated with the pro-independence Sture Party coordinated civilian rebellions against Kristian II, but were unsuccessful in overthrowing him. The Danish and Swedish authorities came to an agreement that Kristian II would be crowned King of Sweden, while the Sture Party associates would be granted amnesty. Kristian II invited these aristocrats to his coronation in Stockholm under the guise of a peaceful meeting, only to carry out his true plan to walk back on the agreement and execute them for treason. Unsurprisingly, this only strengthened the anti-union sentiment and Sweden, led by Gustav Vasa, exited the union in 1523. (The remainder of the Party also opposed Vasa and were executed by him several years later.)

Now you all know why I always roll my eyes at the notion that Björn would have been executed at the Stockholm Bloodbath. It explicitly suggests that he was a prominent political figure with anti-union sympathies who had a hand in orchestrating a rebellion against the King of the Kalmar Union. I really do not like writing these fictional characters as having significant influence in a universe that's about experiencing real history. The way I write the characters is that they live as regular citizens unnoticed by humans, while their interpersonal relations with other immortals are partially based on historical events. The character's home region factors strongly into their life story and relationships as well, which is why my Northern Swedish Björn has a much less violent rivalry with Mathias than a Southern Björn would.

The relationship between Mathias and Southern Björn during this period could be represented as them agreeing to work together against a common threat, but their differences eventually tore them apart and made them enemies. They wouldn't be enemies or have a one-sided relationship in the present day. Björn could possibly have participated in some of the many anti-union rebellions that were carried out by armed civilians, although it's unlikely that he would have come face-to-face with Mathias in combat unless Mathias was serving in the Danish Army. Denmark did not have independent civilian combatants.

Many other inhumane attacks against civilians occurred during this period that could justify a more hateful relation between these two, but I do not treat these characters as representatives of their states, leaders, governments, monarchies, authorities and so on. Their beliefs and life stories are a combination of the culture of the people they represent and their unique experiences. Their lives aren't reenactments of their authorities' every decision.

[bean-bean2000]

The Maid - Part 12

Pairing: Loki x reader

Warnings: Angst, mentions of violence, depression, mentions of suicide, despair, feeling trapped. Mentions of abuse and rape.

Please read at your own risk. Your own media consumption is not my responsibility. Please read and review the warnings before proceeding.

Sorry for the wait, I had writer's block and wasn't feeling very inspired but I think the story is coming along how I want it to now!

Thank you and enjoy!

Part 11

Series masterlist Main Masterlist

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

He slams the door to his chambers closed and stalks towards two royal guards.

"Nobody enters besides her and myself, for all rooms during her duty hours. No harm is to come to her or I will see to it myself!" Loki barks his orders as he rushes past them towards his library. The two guards scurry quickly to the doors and immediately stand watch as the king disappears around the corner. They give each other a confused look, baffled by the kings sudden emotional outburst in relation to a maid, but they shrug it off as a potential lover's quarrel.

Loki rushes into the royal library and scours for any book he can find on purple auras. He went through countless books, spending hours at the desk flipping through page after page, with no luck.

Frustrated he slams the book closed.

"Don't take your frustration out on the book, dear. It did not wrong you." the Allmother says as she slowly walks up to meet Loki at the table.

"Not now mother." Loki snips at her as he presses the palms of his hands to his eyes to ease the growing headache.

"What ails you so, my son?" she asks as she places her hand gently over his, moving his hands from his face so he can look at her.

"Dark purple auras. Do you know of any book or research I can find on it?" he asks with a deep sigh.

"Dark purple auras? My, I haven't spoken of this since you were a boy. You already know, I doubt I have to repeat myself." she states.

"Yes, mother, I remember. Surely you know more than what you told me when I was a boy. Is there truly no other research out there?" he groans in annoyance as he huffs and crosses his arms on his chest.

"It's the maid, isn't it?" she asks him with her brows raised and slight smile tugging at her lips.

"I haven't seen you act like this since you last had an interest in a woman as deeply as you do her. For you to spend hours researching this must be related to her, hm?" she questions him.

Loki sighs deeply.

"There's something odd, mother. She is not Asgardian."

"And? Many immigrants come to and fro Asgard." Allmother states.

"No. It's not that. I read her mind. I know Mother, I shouldn't have but I had to. Her father, well adoptive father, found her as a babe, in between the realms as he was travelling to import and export items."

"How is that possible?" Allmother asks.

"I know, mother. I asked myself the same question but she is not lying. I would know."

"This has never been heard of. Surely if such a thing were to happen we would have gotten word of it!" Frigga exclaims.

"No, Mother. Nobody claimed her. All the realms who knew of her existence deemed her to be a curse. They wanted her gone. When her adoptive parents decided to keep her, everyone swore silence to prevent being cursed by the girl. When her mother passed, her father kicked her out, blaming her and her curse. He passed soon after. She has been alone for years now. I see a purple aura surrounding her, mother. I do not know who she is but she is powerful." Loki rants to his mother with a pep in his step as his passion grows on the subject, yearning for his mother's approval and opinion.

"We need to speak to your father about this."

"No! Please, Mother. Let me try to figure this out on my own. If it gets out of hand, I will request you and father's help." Loki pleads.

"Very well. As soon as it becomes an issue, I will intervene. Here, these are all of the scripts and books we have accumulated over centuries on purple auras. They're kept in the secret vault. Bring them back to me when you are done."

Three books and a few scriptures appear on the table between them.

"Yes, Mother." Loki says and she walks out of the library, slowing shutting the door closed behind her.

As soon as she's gone, he sits at the table and begins reading the books on by one.

The first sighting of the aura dates back centuries. There was a rise in sightings following the first Great War, one which took the most deaths recorded in Asgardian history.

Only the most skillful in magic were able to detect this aura. For years, the most powerful healers were unable to cure them and extract their true aura. Those effected were mainly soldiers who fought in the battle, who suffered greatly, who everything they knew and loved. This aura worked as shield around their heart, protecting them from the trauma and horrific memories, as a result, they also lost their sense of emotion.

Cases have been reported where neighbours claimed that they were once a vibrant, enthousiastic and lively people who now walked the grounds as if their souls were in a trance, trapped, lost and confused.

Only one case was reported where the dark purple aura was reversed. A mother, who sacrificed herself for her nephew, her only living relative when Frost Giants attacked Asgard. Her love for the boy pushed through the trance and made her jump in front of him, taking the blow from the giant, striking her to the ground. As she lay there, her nephew crying and holding her head, pleading her to stay alive, she professed her unconditional love for him. In her last moments, her aura turned light blue, and she smiled, tears falling down her face as she felt again before falling limp in his arms.

Though it was brief, it was still observed by many and recorded thoroughly, albeit being the one and only to ever be seen again.

Others who suffered with the dark purple aura either lived the rest of their days in that emotionless trance, fulfilling their days with meaningless tasks, or they simply stop living all together and pass away in their sleep.

The strongest soldiers who possessed magic were the most unpredictable. Some cases have been recorded of soldiers burning down entire forests, simply from a nightmare or flashback. Others have flooded entire cities while they cried at night. Their deep onset of emotions were being expressed through their magic, coming through erratically and dangerously.

As a result, it was decided by the Allfather that they must be laid to rest, to stop any further suffering to themselves and others.

A warning to any who may cross the path of a powerful soul possessing magic with a dark purple aura: Do not engage. Kill on sight. There is no hope. They only bring destruction in their path.

....

Loki flips through the remaining pages of the book only to find them blank. That was the last entry. The other scripts were detailed maps of the recorded sightings.

He closes the book with a loud thump and sits back in his chair, breathing out a long frustrated sigh. The last words replaying in his mind:

Do not engage. Kill on sight. There is no hope. They only bring destruction in their path.

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

Once you finish your work, you open the door and notice a pair of guards following you but shrug it off as you arrive to the king's office. The guards stop and stand guard by the door.

You look back at them and shake your head, heading to your room at the back.

Once you sit on your cot you begin to decompress and meditate to ground yourself. You close your eyes and listen to the sound of your breathing and the birds chirping outside, remembering the days events. You breathe in and out deeply before your mind wanders back to an old memory, one you haven't thought of in a long time. The most heartbreaking betrayal you have ever had. It left you broken for years. The feelings begin bubbling deep inside you as anger replaces the guilt and sorrow.

I gave him everything and he tore my heart and shattered it into pieces. He gained my trust just to drug me, sell me, and throw me away like a piece of meat.

Your mind is racing as the angers builds inside you, replaying the exchange with Loki over and over again. Your anger is rising with each second until you feel a pair of hands on your shoulders. You eyes bolt open as you stare into green ones in front of you.

Loki jumps back in shock as he looks into red eyes , flames burning in the irises.

You look around and notice your room is scorched. Everything around you is burnt to a crisp, but you are unharmed.

"Hey hey it's okay." Loki tries to soothe you.

You turn to his voice and your anger flares again when you remember he read your mind without your consent.

He sees your anger build as the heat in the room begins to rise astronomically. Loki teleports to you and puts two fingers on your temples, pulling you to sleep.

As you fall limp in his arms, the temperature in the room drops.

He looks around the remnants of the room then back to your sleeping form in his arms in disbelief, his mind flashing the warning from the books behind his eyes.

Do not engage. Kill on sight. There is no hope. They only bring destruction in their path.

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

Tag list:

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[molsno]

the fact that the us government keeps trying to implement more sanctions on china is baffling. china is the second largest economy on earth by a wide margin and the largest exporter of manufactured goods. many of the goods that people in the usa are able to buy for low prices are made in china. not only is it next to impossible to meaningfully sanction china in a way that significantly negatively affects their economy, attempting to do so anyway is essentially shooting yourself in the face because the usamerican economy depends so heavily on the chinese economy. but they're going to continue to do it anyway, because the usa is a declining empire that will desperately enact whatever violent shows of power it deems necessary in order to secure its existence for a few more pathetic years. I can only hope that these measures hasten its own downfall

[mygstrefund]

Explore the concept of deemed exports and their differentiation from regular exports. Learn about the conditions to qualify as deemed export

[mochifiction]

Am I back with more Transformers Bloodborne designs? Yes! I would also like to say that, in terms of the structure of Cybertron in this continuity, I have made some adjustments that are different from the posts I’ve previously made. However, I think that they were done in the continuity’s best interests! So, please meet Elita One: The Prime Minister of Carcer! Elita is not of noble blood. Rather, she was an attendant for the previous Prime Minister’s conjunx endura. She learned early on that, if she was not part of the upper class, most importantly if they did not see her as worthy of their time, she and others like her were no better than cogs in a machine. So, she remained calculating, playing her part. However, she was quick to learn in her work that the Prime Minister had exported Carcer’s resources without any intent of advocating for aid on behalf of Carcer to the Cybertronian Senate. Elita understood that things could stand as they were no longer, instead working on unifying Carcer’s people in secret. She used her privilege and knowledge to provide aid, setting up hidden libraries of literature and energon. She taught what she learned in a world they deemed so impossible to engage with. The people loved her, stood by her, and had great faith in her. Elita was a vessel for the people, determined to bring justice and independence to Carcer as their own intergalactic state. Revolution didn’t come overnight. It took quite some time, but by the power of the people, Elita took the role of Prime Minister and made it very clear upon her first appearance to the Senate that she did not yield to any banner, flag, government, or man unless they were of Carcer. She surprised senators with how she saw through false promises. She even called out the abuse some senators inflicted on their own attendants. It was through this she developed friendships with Soundwave, the attendant of Senator Ratbat with supposed “magical” properties. Her open criticism of the Senate also earned her a deep kinship with Senator Shockwave, who invited her to his charity galas and discourse meetings with those under his reign. He was a genuine man, a GOOD man. Elita saw early on they had the same interests, and they corresponded frequently, even if she was not on Cybertron. It was through him she met the darling scholar Orion Pax, Iacon’s best student. It was the two of them that sparked the embers of reform and resistance when Shockwave was murdered. She refused to let the Senate forget it. Senator Shockwave was their last thought before the end.

[weyrwolfen]

Caveat Emptor: Chapter 3 - Suppressio Veri

Rating: T

Characters: Gen, Commanders Fox, Thorn, Thire, and Stone, Quinlan Vos, Coruscant Guard

Warnings: canon-typical violence; references to self-harm and suicidal thoughts, injuries, loss of autonomy

Previous chapters can be found here on Tumblr or here on Ao3

Fingers bit into CC-1010’s face, pulling him forward painfully to look directly into cruel, yellow eyes.

“Nala Se’s reports never mentioned anything about the implant degrading over time,” said a man’s voice, cold and dangerous, terrifyingly familiar.

The grip on CC-1010’s face tightened, fingers squeezing skin and muscle painfully against underlying bone. He did not move, did not protest, even though inside some part of him was screaming to fight, to run. To do anything instead of just stand there.

“What a pity,” the voice said, and the hand abruptly released CC-1010, then returned in a mocking parody of a fond pat on his cheek. “You’ve been my favorite tool, but don’t worry. When you’re all used up, I have three more just like you.”

“One of those had better be for me,” Fox said when he walked out of the shared commanders’ quarters, bucket tucked neatly under one arm, to find Thire waiting in ambush in the hallway with two thermal canteens in hand.

Thire snorted loudly enough for his external mics to engage, but he also, demonstrating commendable survival instincts, immediately held out one of the canteens and said, “They both are, I’ve already been awake for six hours.”

Perhaps there’d been a reason why Fox had promoted Thire after all. Even if he was often a complete pain in the shebs.

The barrack’s caf had a burnt, metallic aftertaste, but it was strong enough to wake the dead, which was exactly what Fox needed at that moment. He hadn’t slept particularly well, not that he ever did these days, and his oddly vivid nightmares had left him feeling particularly unsettled and distracted. Once he was awake and alert enough to get picky about his morning stimulants, he could always steal some better osik from one of the Senate breakrooms.

Once they reached the lifts, Fox was feeling mostly human enough to ask, “Sitrep?”

“The CSF is in a snit,” Thire said, pressing the button to call one of the lifts. “Apparently the Jedi confiscated several cultural artifacts from the Chancellor’s private rooms under SB 1468-28.”

The kriff? SB 1468-28 had to do with regulating imports and exports in Republic space. It had thousands of sections and subsections, covering everything from negotiating tariff rates to pages and pages of non-sentient species deemed too endangered to be legally traded. Not that Fox imagined that the Jedi would be risking setting off major political waves by publicly seizing something like a smuggled kanthra skin rug from the Chancellor of the Republic.

Former Chancellor of the Republic?

Kriff, it was going to be another karking long-shebs day with an unending chain of more of the same on the horizon. The caffeine couldn’t hit Fox’s system fast enough.

The lift finally arrived, and when Fox and Thire stepped inside, Thire hit the button for the hanger floor instead of the one which would have taken them to their offices. Straight back into the belly of the beast then.

“The CSF has determined that at some point after you left the Chancellor’s office, the door to his emergency turbolift was opened twice,” Thire said once the lift rattled to life.

Well, that explained why nobody had tried to arrest Fox yet. “Any leads on who?”

“No,” Thire answered, a little too quickly. Fox kept his suspicions to himself, but something cold coiled in the pit of his stomach. “It’s not even clear which side the door was accessed both times. Someone wiped the system with one of the Chancellor’s personal codes.”

Okay. That was slightly more unexpected. Fox had his own security access codes. He didn’t know the Chancellor’s, so CC-1010 shouldn’t either. Right?

Stop. Suspicions weren’t facts. He could suspect all he wanted; he didn’t know anything.

“The CSF is working the angle that the Chancellor himself opened the door, even though nobody has a working theory as to why,” Thire continued. “The Guard has been tasked with excluding other points of ingress from consideration.”

Of course. Of course, the CSF would try to ice the Guard out of the real investigation. Shabuire.

Except Thire knew the risks of this investigation getting out of the Guard’s hands as well as Fox did, but he wasn’t acting particularly concerned about being dismissed from the primary crime scene. And that had some significant implications.

Stop it. Stop speculating. Stop working the karking case.

Fox was compromised. His officers would tell him whatever was safe for him to know. He had to trust them on this, because there weren’t any guarantees that CC-1010 wouldn’t report everything that was done and said here back to kriff even knew who.

So Fox kept his questions behind his teeth and tried, with very limited success, to put them out of his mind as well.

The lift doors opened out onto the Guard’s hanger bay. Fox managed to not wince, but only just. There was something about the lighting in the space that always exacerbated his headaches. The pain tabs he’d downed before kitting up for the day weren’t quite doing their jobs, but Scav was firmly against upping the dose or changing the type of medication until it became absolutely unavoidable. Something about not wanting the Marshall Commander of the Guard to be wandering around the Senate, armed to the teeth while also tripping balls.

As if all of them didn’t already occasionally do their rounds, so strung out on stims that every light had rainbow-edged trails in their vision. It came with the long hours and the strill osik requests Senators often kicked their way, on top of their usual duties.

Thire passed by the larger gunships and troop transports, instead aiming for the smaller, two-man speeders. Picking the nearest one, he took the driver’s seat and fired up its engines, leaving Fox as the ride along. Probably wise.

“Where are we headed?” Fox finally asked, when the awkward silence in the speeder became unbearable. That at least seemed like a safe question to ask, seeing as he was about to find out anyway.

Thire’s bucket was unreadable, visor forward as he weaved through traffic, but he tapped his index finger against the steering yoke in obvious thought before saying, “We’re meeting up with Hound’s team. He thinks they’ve found something in the Chancellor’s emergency evacuation hanger.”

Okay.

Fox really wanted to ask for further information.

He did not.

He did, however, finish his first canteen of caf and start in on his second while Thire went through the extra security protocols of requesting and receiving permission to pass through the energy-shields that kept the general public well away from the Senate Dome’s extensive substructure. What little sense of humor the Senate Guards had previously exhibited had seemingly shriveled up and died in the midst of the current crisis. Thire had to repeat both of their designation numbers three times and submit their clearance codes twice before being granted entry.

The access portals were wide, dimly lit, and eerily empty. There should have been at least a few maintenance droids and work crews down here, monitoring the building’s infrastructure and performing minor repairs. The only sentients Fox saw as Thire guided their speeder through the twisting series of tunnels were his own men, patrolling the area on speeder bikes in teams of three. The Senate Guard must have shut everyone else out, including the small army of maintenance and support staff that kept the lights on and the water running for the entire Dome, because Fox sure as kriff hadn’t made that call.

That was going to cause problems down the line, from compromised utilities to Senators who could and would take any inconvenience as a personal slight.

Thire rounded a final corner and slowed to a hovering stop where a full squad of Coruscant Guards had set up a watch along one stretch of walkway lining the massive panels that made up the tunnels’ heavily-armored walls. A security request popped up on the speeder’s main terminal, and Thire entered his own codes in response.

The Guardsmen shifted to either side of one of the heavy wall panels, making room for one huge plate to rotate up towards the ceiling on artfully concealed magnetic hinges, revealing a set of heavy blast doors.

Once the doors lensed open, one of the troopers, Facet from the trooper’s unusually ornate rerebraces, waved them forward.

Thire guided the speeder through a series of similar blast doors, waiting in each of the connected room for the previous set to close and the next to open. They were kill boxes with concealed defenses mounted in the walls around them, but their exact specifications had been above even Fox’s high clearance level. Being at the mercy of an unknown, deadly automated system made the hair down the back of his neck prickle in instinctive unease.

And yet, he still somehow knew that the fourth room would be the last in the series.

Bright lights glinted off ornamental metals and red-paneled walls. The architecture of the hanger broadly matched the public-facing portions of the Chancellor’s office, all curving walls and gently ramping, carpeted walkways. It was large too, excessively so, given it only held a trio of sleek, custom speeders.

Fox screwed the cap back onto his second, half-empty canteen of caf and set it in the speeder’s center console. Then he fished his helmet out of the floorboards and pulled it on while Thire maneuvered the speeder over to a corner of the space where two guard transports were already docked.

The magnetics inside Fox’s helmet hissed as they engaged, and his HUD flickered to life. His light settings were lower than standard, his one sop to the headache which was still lingering behind his eyes. Once his HUD finished scrolling through its own internal system checks, he sent out a ping using his command overrides and received back answering data from the armor of any trooper in the immediate area.

Fox’s system picked up Facet and his men on guard outside the hanger’s concealed entrance and a few other scattered troopers patrolling the tunnels above and below his current position. Most of the signals came from Hound and his team, as expected.

Hound had brought two full squads to perform this investigation. Fox pulled up a three-dimensional rendering of the space and nodded slightly to himself in approval. The room’s exits, including all air-intake and ventilation shafts, were adequately covered, and the remaining troopers were canvassing the space in orderly, meticulous detail. Hound’s systems reported the presence of three massifs as well, but Fox only spotted two of them. Perhaps the other was with the four troopers who were beyond the hanger’s ornate double doors, no doubt checking out the emergency turbolift from this end of the system.

Hound himself was waiting next to his team’s transports, Grizzer alert and watchful at his side.

Thire made for the ARF trooper’s position and settled the speeder down with practiced ease. The doors of the passenger compartment swung upwards like especially ungainly avian wings.

When Fox stepped out of the vehicle, Grizzer barked a rumbling, chuffing sort of sound the massifs were trained to make whenever they spotted a target. Hound shared a brief look with Thire, obvious and weighted even through their visors, and then palmed a treat out of one of the pouches on his belt. He handed it to the massif, whose entire hindquarters wagged excitedly at the reward.

Fox certainly had some thoughts on that, but again, he kept them to himself.

“Sirs,” Hound said, giving Grizzer the hand signal to sit, which she did with an open-mouthed, razor-toothed grin. The ARF then snapped off a sharp salute, which Fox immediately waved away.

“You wanted to show me something?” he asked, trying to get this farce moving along.

“This way,” Hound said without any further preamble.

While one of the speeders berthed in the hanger was emblazoned with the Republic cog and the other ornate signs and trappings of office, the other two were aggressively plain. They both looked expensive, and a particularly knowledgeable observer would notice the armored panels and shield generators artfully worked into their designs. But neither would be immediately pegged as belonging to any specific one of the millions of wealthy sentients who were on planet at any given time. A few troopers were clustered around the speeder with the badges of office emblazoned on its side panels, scanning the interiors and taking holoimages. Hound guided them towards the second speeder, a dark gray model whose doors and trunk were already open.

Fox’s footsteps faltered, a wave of dread and expectation washing over him. Expectation of what, he couldn’t have said. The open trunk turned out to be completely empty.

“This speeder has been washed down with enzymatic cleaners and then an aggressive sanitizing agent very recently,” Hound said, gesturing vaguely towards the entire vehicle. “The navigation record and access logs were wiped with the same code used on the Chancellor’s turbolift.”

“Have you alerted the CSF?” Fox asked, looking down into the empty trunk. He kept expecting to see… something. He wasn’t sure what.

“Not yet, sir,” Hound said, and Fox looked up at the awkward hesitation in the ARF’s voice. “We were waiting for you to sign off on it.”

They should have notified the senior CSF agent assigned to the case immediately upon finding something this suspicious. The explanation for that breach of protocol occurred to Fox abruptly, and it was both unwelcome and nauseating.

His men were covering for him.

If I’m here when the CSF agents arrive, my biomarkers will be recorded for exclusion from any subsequent evidence logging.

Fox took one deep, steadying breath, forcing himself to remain outwardly calm even as his stomach churned.

“Comm them,” he said, and his voice sounded far steadier than he felt.

Hound nodded, glanced at Thire again, and then stepped back, fingers tapping over the controls on his vambrace.

On any other investigation, Fox would have taken a walk around the hanger, checking in with the rest of his troopers and taking their reports. This time, though, he couldn’t. He didn’t want to know what they were finding, or worse, what they’d been working to actively destroy. He didn’t know anything. He couldn’t. He suspected, but that was different.

He knew. He’d been here before, many times.

Not trusting himself to look anywhere else, Fox turned his attention back down to the speeder’s empty trunk. The bare, overlarge space was strange, in comparison to all of the other civilian speeders he’d ever seen. Even their own transports had some kind of traction matting in the back, hard to clean, but good for keeping equipment from sliding around in transit.

…Really, it seemed designed for easy cleanup: smooth surfaces and curved edges, with no corners or textures where a drop of blood or a stray hair could hide.

That was why CC-1010 had been ordered to use this speeder, instead of the less customized model. The first time he’d been activated, his orders had been very specific. Which speeder he should use, which tunnels to avoid, where to dispose of the bodies, and how to clean up his tracks, both literal and digital. And then to forget until he was activated once again. The memories resurfaced for his second mission, and his third, and after a while the specifics just became part of his standard operating procedure, only noteworthy if some facet of them needed to be altered.

CC-1010 had always followed his orders to the letter. Even when those orders didn’t make any sense. Even when they stood in direct opposition to the public statements made by his Master. Even when they directly violated Republic laws governing the ethical treatment of enemy combatants and civilian noncombatants.

Even when CC-1010 was entirely certain that what his Master had said was not what he had intended.

Good soldiers followed orders, and CC-1010 was an excellent soldier.

All of his trainers had said so. He’d been the best, especially in his close quarters combat and stealth modules. And hadn’t his Master deserved the best?

He had. He had deserved someone like CC-1010, who would carry out his words to the letter, meticulously destroy any evidence, and then forget the details.

He had deserved CC-1010…

“Fox?”

…His mission was complete though. He had followed his SOP and reported back to his office. He had set the memory aside, until the next time.

Except now he was remembering, and no one had activated him.

He should remember that, shouldn’t he? He always had before…

“Fox?” Thire asked again, sounding concerned.

…That was CC-4477. His concern was noted, but not necessary. CC-1010 had completed his mission. This was just an aberration. All he needed to do now was forget…

“CC-1010?” Thire asked carefully. Except that was wrong too, wasn’t it? They never used their designation numbers amongst themselves. Only when…

…Forget…

“CC-1010, what do you require to complete your mission?” Thire asked, following the prescribed script. Only someone very close to him would have noticed the tension humming under his voice.

Fox heard it. Fox held onto it.

…Forg–

Fox sucked in a gasping lungful of air. Memories trickled through his grasp, falling away like grains of sand, but some of them stuck this time.

A few, and none he ever wanted.

He’d killed people. He was pretty certain he’d killed a lot of people, civilians, and he couldn’t even remember any names, or faces, or why.

Karking Sith-damned hells, his head hurt.

Fox bent double, struggling to remove his helmet. He needed to breathe. He couldn’t…

“Kriff, no,” Thire said, catching him before Fox could fully collapse onto the floor. “We can’t do this here,” he whispered desperately. “Just breathe slowly, in through your nose and out through your mouth. Can you do that with me?”

Fox wasn’t about to risk nodding, but he could follow orders. He was good at that, right?

The strangled noise he made could have been described as a laugh, but it had only the most passing familiarity with anything resembling humor.

“Fox, I’m serious. The CSF shabuire are going to be here any second. I need you to get your osik together and breathe with me.”

Fox shut his eyes and breathed.

“I need to get to Scav,” he finally said, when he was able to straighten back up without feeling like his entire head was going to crack open and leak his brains out all over the hanger bay floor.

His nose wasn’t bleeding. That was surprising.

“You need to stand your shebs right here until the CSF agents sign you out,” Thire said, getting one hand up under Fox’s elbow to take up at least some of his weight. Thire gestured to someone off to the left, Fox didn’t think it was wise to turn his head at that moment to see who.

Hound came into his direct line of sight. “They’re taking the lift down,” he said grimly. “There’s a general coming with them.”

“Who?” Thire asked, before Fox could swallow down the taste of bile enough to do the same.

“They didn’t say.”

“Fox, are you going to be able to do this?” Thire asked, quiet enough to not carry beyond the three of them.

“Not like I have much of a choice,” Fox said, pulling himself out of Thire’s grip. His vision blurred for a moment, but it was worth it to get his helmet back on. The tinted visor and plastoid plate made it so much easier to hide any number of sins.

Thire gave him a dubious look, which Fox did not dignify with a response.

There was a trick to marching that made it possible to walk in a straight line with minimal jostling. Kriffing convenient piece of intel to have, if you were overly tired, or drunk, or strung out on stims, or about to have to report to a kriffing Jedi while your brains felt like they were being rendered down into nutripaste. You just had to look straight ahead, keep your knees a little bent, and roll your weight from your heel, along the outer edge of your foot, to the ball. Easy. They’d done it enough on Kamino, exhausted, beat to osik by one trainer or another, and running on nothing but a heady blend of pride and fear.

Fox made it into formation just in time to see the doors swing open. He didn’t stumble once. He didn’t even puke into his shiny, new filters. Mags would be so pleased.

The CSF agents were dressed out in full protective gear this time, white coveralls with full facemasks and hoods, like they were expecting some kind of hazmat exposure. Fox couldn’t see their faces, but he’d spent essentially his entire life reading the body language of armored sentients. Every single one of them looked tense, and a few were angry.

The General wasn’t wearing a single piece of protective clothing, just a set of dark, sleeveless robes and knee-high boots. No foot coverings, no mask, no gloves, and if his expression and bearing were to be believed, no cares in the galaxy.

Kriff, it was the same Jedi from before, the one who’d brought the clearance flimsiwork to General Windu. Fox had asked Thorn to sic some of their slicers on the man, but all they’d been able to glean from the Temple’s public-facing servers was a name: Quinlan Vos.

Great. Just great. Because dealing with a General and a Jedi wasn’t enough, without adding ‘probable covert ops agent’ into the mix.

Fox breathed and did not allow his knees to buckle.

The General spotted them immediately, and made his way down the tastefully lit, carpeted stairs with a bounce in his step. “Commanders,” he said with a grin that struck Fox at utterly false.

Fox saluted. Given the creak of armor he heard behind him, Thire and Hound had done the same. “General Vos,” he said, and his voice didn’t falter in the slightest.

Vos waved one hand casually, dismissing the salute. “I’m not a general,” he said airily. “Never was assigned a battalion, something about not being able to keep my own life in order, much less the lives of several thousand troopers.” Aching, dizzy, and nauseous, and Fox still picked up on the fact that almost everything the man had just said was a flagrant lie. “You can call me Quinlan.”

Like hells.

“General Vos–” Fox tried again, but was immediately interrupted.

“How about just Vos?” the Jedi said, extending a bare hand in a common natborn greeting.

It would be rude to not take it – Fox had learned that within hours of arriving on Coruscant – but something still made him hesitate.

Kriff his head hurt.

“Master Vos,” Fox compromised, taking the man’s hand and not his wrist, like he might have with one of his brothers.

Something in the Jedi’s expression flickered, dimming the welcoming grin he’d been wearing like a mask.

“Are you hurt?” he asked, grip tightening momentarily around Fox’s gauntlet.

Because of course, a Jedi would sense something wrong with him. Of kriffing course.

Well, he couldn’t exactly say that he was perfectly fine. That would draw even more suspicion. “A training accident,” Fox said blandly, matching the Jedi lie for smoothly delivered lie. “Nothing a rest shift won’t cure.”

Vos’s eyes narrowed speculatively, and he said, “Uh huh,” in a very dubious tone of voice. “Well, I was told you fine gentlemen found something interesting. Care to fill me in?”

Fox gestured smoothly to his left, managing not to jostle himself too much, and said, “My sergeant and his men made the discovery, so please allow me to defer to him, for this briefing.”

“Defer away,” Vos said, dialing back up the charm. “What name would you prefer I call you, trooper?”

“Hound, sir,” the ARF trooper finally replied very stiffly.

“Hound, right.” The Jedi then hunkered down and extended a hand again, this time to Grizzer. “And who’s this sweet girl?”

Karking hells, like that wasn’t the fastest way to get Hound to warm up to him. This Vos kriffer was slick, and Fox was not happy about that kind of expert manipulation being directed towards his men.

“She bites,” Fox said in warning.

“No, she doesn’t,” Hound immediately corrected, sounding offended. “Not unless I ask her to.”

Kriffing Sith-damned hells, Hound. Fox wanted to grab the sergeant by the spaulders and shake him.

Instead, he let Thire steer him away from the conversation.

“Hound has this,” Thire said quietly, over a private comm line.

“He’d better,” Fox grumbled.

He was cleared rapidly, by the CSF agent who had been tasked with collecting prints and biological samples from all of the troopers present in the hanger. All of his data were already on file, from his previous visit to the Chancellor’s office. Thire managed to find an out of the way corner to sit and recover, while the rest of their men were cleared.

He was almost back down to baseline when General Vos managed to find him.

“Sit,” the Jedi said, when Fox started to rise to salute. “You look like shit.”

“I assure you, I am more than capable of performing my duty,” Fox said, every instinct screaming to conceal the extent of his debilitation.

“Sit anyway, this won’t take more than a second,” the Jedi said, dropping down casually on the padded bench next to Fox. “I’m just curious about something.”

“I will endeavor to assist you in any way I can,” Fox lied again, casually enough to sound earnest.

The General arched one eyebrow, but did not comment about whatever suspicions he had. Instead he leaned back and rested his hands on his thighs. They were gloved again, but not with the blue, sterile ones the CSF agents had been handing out. They were black leather, and Fox abruptly remembered the incident in the Chancellor’s office with the mystery item concealed in the desk.

Something about needing bare hands, to make his Force osik work correctly.

Fox went suddenly cold with fear.

“As I said, I haven’t ever been assigned a battalion,” Vos finally said as if nothing were amiss. “So I don’t have much experience working with clones. So, I don’t know if this question might be…,” he paused, obviously considering his next words carefully. “Culturally sensitive,” he finally said.

Fox’s heart was pounding in his chest, but the pain in his head had settled back down to a dull roar. Manageable enough that he could keep his full wits about him at least. “It is our duty and our honor to serve the Republic and the Jedi,” Fox said, reciting the correct response with an ease borne of long practice. “I would be happy to answer any question you have, even those of a personal nature.”

Something about his reply made the General pause, and Fox couldn’t help but curse to himself in the safety of his own head. This was exactly the kind of scrutiny he’d been trying to avoid with General Windu. Would he be able to feel it if the Jedi started digging around in his mind?

Would Fox know it was happening at all?

“Alright,” Vos finally said with a slow nod. “With the customizations, I would assume that your armor is important to all of you. Personally.”

“Yes, sir,” Fox replied, because it was hardly something that could be easily denied, but he also didn’t elaborate on the subject. That would be too dangerous. While the Guard personalized their gear less than some of the other battalions, they all still added flourishes here and there. Little reminders that they were still people, still individuals, beneath the strict protocols and the rigid formality the Senate demanded of its possessions.

But instead of hammering at this minimal departure from regulations as other natborns had done before him, General Vos just asked, “Would a clone trooper ever loan someone else his set of armor?”

That caught Fox a little flat footed. Yes, a clone might gift a single piece of plate, and no, Fox was not about to explain the cultural traditions regarding such an exchange. But an entire set of armor? That was easy enough to answer. “No,” he said firmly.

Whatever reply Vos had been expecting, that obviously hadn’t been it. “No?” he repeated, but it must not have been a serious question, because he didn’t wait for a response before saying, “Interesting.”

Thire, appeared around the landing gear of the Guard transport, slowing awkwardly when he spotted exactly who was speaking with Fox.

“Commander,” Vos said, turning to address Thire with another warm, fake smile. “What can we do for you?”

Thire stiffened, but his voice was smooth and professional when he answered, “The CSF has taken down everyone’s biometrics. They are asking us to clear out of the hanger.”

“Typical,” General Vos said with enough honest sarcasm that Fox had to choke back a sardonic snort of agreement. The Jedi rose to his feet and dusted his hands absently on his thighs. “Commanders, it’s been a pleasure,” he finally said, smiling at them both in turn. “I look forward to working with you in the future.”

Like hells.

The machine hummed loudly, and lights flashed on the other side of Fox’s closed eyelids. Pumped full of Scav’s latest cocktail of meds, neither the sound nor the lights were actively painful. But being inside of a medical scanner always made Fox feel uncomfortable. Trapped. It was easier to just close his eyes and try to not think about it.

Finally, the machine whirred to a stop, and the thinly padded gurney Fox was lying on slid out of the scanner.

He opened his eyes to find Scav scowling down at him.

“Something’s definitely wrong,” his CMO said, sounding personally offended by the whole situation.

“Anything more specific than that?” Fox asked dryly. It wasn’t like Scav to be this vague about medical diagnoses.

“No, our scanners are too osik’la to get an accurate reading on whatever’s going on in there,” Scav said, taking hold of Fox’s opposing arm and helping him sit up.

‘In your kriffed up, defective brain,’ Scav meant, even if he didn’t say it out loud.

Maybe they should have sent him back to Kamino, to let the longnecks pick him apart.

Maybe he should have eaten a blaster bolt and saved his brothers all of this trouble.

Except…

I have three more just like you.

It hadn’t been a dream, just like whatever had happened in the Chancellor’s hanger hadn’t been a hallucination.

And Scav hadn’t even batted an eye when Fox had laid out all of his suspicions in the medic’s small office.

“I’m working on it,” Scav finally said.

Fox eyed his armor, which was stacked against the far wall of the exam room. He had osik he needed to be doing. The Senate was in an uproar. Mas Amedda might hold to the exact same political beliefs as Chancellor Palpatine, but he had far less charm and far fewer allies who owed him personal favors. Apparently he’d said the wrong thing to the wrong mid-Rim Senator during the morning’s open floor debate on an upcoming resource allocation bill, and suddenly everyone was remembering that none of them had actually voted for him to fill the political position he currently held.

The fighting hadn’t even slowed down when the acting Chancellor attempted to call for a brief recess for midmeal. Last Fox heard, aides had started bringing catered meals right out to the Senate pods so their delegates could keep screaming at one another, which was putting a massive strain on the security checkpoints that were trying to scan every box for explosives and toxins.

Stone was keeping a lid on things, but he needed all of the support he could get. Assuming Fox could keep his osik together long enough to actually be of some use.

“Scav?” Fox said as he slid off of the gurney. When his CMO looked up from his ‘pad to glare at him, Fox went ahead and tempted the gods, little and great, by saying, “Work faster.”

AN: If anyone else wants me to tag them as this gets updated, please just let me know. @tazmbc1

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Slave Labour and Wage Labour—How Much of a Difference is There?

I will start by taking about the civil war. In the south, the primary mode of labour was known as slavery. In this mode you are the property of a slaveholder. You are provided with just enough to not die in exchange that you work on and to the extent you are told, at the threat of physical violence in the case of disobedience.

In the north, where slavery was less common, but still very present, the primary method was that of wage labour. This is the primary mode of work located in the US today. You work on typically a factory of some kind in exchange for a pittance. Nowadays, this is at least guaranteed to be a real currency. If you were disobedient, you would be fired. If you were not able to secure another employer as they are known, you would be unable to continue living.

Let us now compare these two modes:

- Your labour is not yours; you do not reap what you so

- Malcompliance will result in physical suffering following an action taken by the one who owns your work.

- In exchange for your work, you are given just enough to live.

- You are a resource to be extracted.

So what are the differences?

- An employed person can take their labour anywhere (this is often not an option for other reasons)

- An employed person costs nothing to replace. (The slaver has the bare minimum incentive to keep their human property alive.)

- Employable people are made to fight eachother for work.

When the slaves were freed by the end of the civil war, their material standing did not fundamentally change. What changed, at least at this point, was still nominal. However, with these freed people now in the same labour pool as the rest, charletons could now claim there was a plot to take white jobs, and thus divide the working class.

In addition to the fact that this societal arrangement of work is not unsimilar to that of slave labour if not in legal semantics, is that the old approach to slavery is still ongoing. A close examination reveals that the law still allows enslavement for those deemed criminals. Not suppose the legal system were used against a particular race, one historically enslaved, and now you are getting the picture.

Additionally, we should not ignore all the slaves and pittance labour that goes on in countries that export to the US. Where do you suppose your clothes come from?

What is ultimately pointed out here is that

Slavery never went away, it simply changed form.