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electrasev5nwrites · 2 years ago

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Ninja Daily: Vapors 102

Konoha looked like something from a post-apocalyptic movie. Aiko grimly pressed her lips together and tried not to breathe in more smoke than she had to, waving her hand in front of her face to try to get some visibility. It didn't help much.

'I could have picked a better location, apparently,' she noted, trying to figure out the layout of whatever fights were still going on. At least it didn't seem like Konoha had rolled over to die while she'd been gone. That was a little heartening. Orienting was difficult, but she was relatively certain that the massive multi-Kage level shinobi fight she noticed was only slightly north of where she had left Jiraiya and Tsunade. She used subtle clues, like the enormous toad looming through the distant fog and the occasional spout of fire, in order to come to that conclusion.

It didn't require a degree in astrophysics to figure out that removing Pein from the equation hadn't ended the conflict. Tsunade and Jiraiya were still fighting at least one Akatsuki, probably with assistance from Choza, Inoichi, and…

Aiko's heart skipped a beat.

Right. Well, Choza and Shikaku were probably still fine. She firmly steered her mind away from the obvious caveat. She couldn't deal with that now.

Akatsuki was more time-sensitive. That problem could still be affected. Aiko couldn't raise the dead or do more than give platitudes. She could try to take out an Akatsuki, though.

She set off at a careful run for the nearest fight, keeping a wary eye out for an ambush. The caution was wasted. Pein and his cronies had cut through her comrades with what seemed to be vicious efficiency. What activity she could pick out seemed to be desperate and last-ditch, when it wasn't injured survivors scrabbling for cover.

There only seemed to be one more major fight going on. Whether that meant that the Hokage was fighting four shinobi or that some Akatsuki had been killed was up for debate. She passed the still forms of more than one large animal. That might have been cause for celebration, if they hadn't been surrounded by dead Konoha nin. Some of whom she recognized. Not many, though. Aiko pressed on.

'It's almost amazing that a city could be leveled like this in a day,' she thought, biting back tears. She wasn't that attached to Konoha in specific, really. But she'd lived here as long as she could remember. Somehow, it hurt to see that the village would never be the same, even before she figured in the additional grief from losing so many people. Good people, dumb people, young people, loyal people… Just people, really.

Pein really was a monster. She hated him for doing this. How could he? There wasn't even any point to what he'd done. She was almost too tired for her earlier panic, though. That change in attitude might have had something to do with the fact that her head was still bleeding and that white spots veered slowly across her vision whenever she took a deep breath, however.

She had been right at the start. It was unrealistic to think that she could fight Akatsuki. She wasn't an S-class nin. She was a joke with good genes and a few fancy tricks passed down from her betters. At this point, it felt like she was running to one last kamikaze attack.

What else was there to do? Aiko probably couldn't stop them if they wanted to press forward and slaughter the trapped civilians, genin, and other valuable assets trapped inside the safehouses. But if she didn't even try…

Aiko swallowed, hard, and tried not to think of Fukiko lying cold and still. Or Ino, who still didn't know that… Well. Still didn't know the bad news. She didn't deserve to die like that, without even a chance to fight back. No one did.

'Did I just talk myself into suicide by Akatsuki?' Aiko wondered sardonically, slowing down to creep carefully towards the flickering signatures and occasional jutsu of the fight she'd been picking her way towards.

She only saw the combatants once she cleared a ridge formed of bent rebar and drywall. The Akatsuki she found was shorter than both of his opponents, hefty and with his red hair slicked back into a ponytail. The unathletic body type was deceptive, however. He seemed to be doing quite well, keeping either shinobi from hitting him, blocking and dodging with smooth perfection.

Konoha's teams were notorious for doubling up on their opponents and out-maneuvering them instead of getting hobbled by their superior numbers. That training was probably why Yukimasa and Anko weren't dead. Aiko wouldn't claim to know either person's full abilities, but she knew enough to be able to tell that they were both weary and suffering minor injuries.

A more level-headed, detached, and maybe even more intelligent shinobi might have taken advantage of the distraction that they presented to lure the Akatsuki into a trap or attack from the shadows. Aiko saw the earth gape under Anko's feet, and darted forward without thought except of helping.

The rescue was unnecessary, and she barreled into sight without any benefit to mitigate the loss of tactical surprise. Neither of her comrades seemed to care, although they didn't have time to stop and talk. Aiko threw herself into the rote motions of Konoha basic taijutsu with a vengeance, adopting the patterns she had been drilled in for years. Attacks were complementary to the hand combat, not surprises for the team to work around. Anko was in the first position, Yukimasa the second, so Aiko added the third to their set. That addition provided more opportunities to obscure where attacks would be coming from and disorient their opponent.

The relief when she joined her comrades was palpable—with two Konoha nin, they were holding their own against a superior opponent. With three, there should be openings and opportunities to get hits in. Of course, that meant that their opponent would be more desperate to get rid of one of them to restore the previous odds.

What advantage Konoha gained with their polished ability to double and triple-team opponents they lost in predictability. A team that relied on the series of openings and turn-taking that was engendered in the academy couldn't compare to the polish of a team with chemistry and complementary skills. It was no small feat that none of them got caught in anyone else's path, but the Akatsuki seemed to have some level of familiarity with Konoha's styles. They whirled around him, but hardly had a chance to connect. Anko got the first blow- a strike against his arm—and their opponent seemed unaffected.

Something had to give.

'Annoying.' Nagato growled, torn. He was almost to the interlopers in his country. But the damned Sannin were about to kill the Animal path. If he didn't have it summon him back before it fell, then he would be completely removed from Konoha. He had to focus on Konoha. Bitterly and begrudgingly, he stopped running and focused on the Rinnegan connection between himself and that borne by the Animal path.

He stopped seeing the sodden marshland in front of him and started seeing the Human path darting forward, working desperately to keep both Sannin away from the Animal path while he stood still and rushed through a summoning.

The Human path didn't quite succeed, but Pein's favored path stood on a dusty bit of metal in Konoha an instant before Jiraiya's toad oil bullet ruined the Animal body and flung it like a broken doll to lay still on the ground. The Human path's desperate ploy proved to be its last, having gotten far too close to the slug sannin. It too fell, though it was not as damaged. If it were to be healed, it could rejoin the fight.

Pein thinned his lips and sought out the Naraka path. It had backtracked to protect his real body, providing assistance to the Ame genjutsu specialists who had been meant to keep it safe. Apparently, some red-eyed woman had led an attack suspiciously close to the vulnerable body. She was dead now, of course, but she must have communicated to someone else because the Konoha nin kept trickling in that direction whenever they managed to dig themselves out of rubble or put down one of the Animal path's summons. With the animal path out of commission, all the animal summonings failed, leaving Konoha nin confused but free to join other fights and lick their wounds.

The Naraka path was too busy to be called to revive the animal and human paths. They would have to remain out of this fight.

How had events gone so badly? He would still win, of course, though at a terrible cost to himself and possibly to Ame and his neglected organization. All of his bodies but his own broken transport could be remade, but he hated to lose them. They were the result of years of work. He kept his unease off his face, and turned to see the Sannin with his favored path for the first time in a very long time.

The Hokage seemed grimly determined at the sight of another opponent. It was the toad sannin whose hand limply fell open, letting the blade he wielded slip to the ground with a clatter.

"Yahiko-kun?" Jiraiya asked, sounding strangely vulnerable. He took a step forward. "I thought you were dead." The old man looked almost sickeningly hopeful, not noticing the alarm on his companion's face or that he was leaving himself open to attack.

Nagato –and he was Nagato now, not Pein- snarled. "He is, thanks to Konoha!" Knowing that he was wearing his friend's skin fueled his anger, and he moved forward, intent on gutting the old man who had once been his teacher, the old man who had claimed to be their protector and then had fed out information on Ame that had led to a disastrous ambush by Hanzo.

It was the slug sannin who saved Jiraiya, colliding into Pein like a battering ram and knocking him back. Fine. Some things should be said.

"It was through Konoha's intervention that Ame's peaceful revolution failed. Do not look at me as if you do not know my pain!"

He knew that Konan would have rolled her eyes if she had been here. She seemed to think he was overly dramatic when he was upset.

Jiraiya seemed to age a hundred years, slumping slightly. His eyes were still hard, though, and his head high as Nagato stood to drink in the man who had betrayed him and his Akatsuki.

"If you aren't Yahiko, who are you?" Jiraiya had always been clever, Nagato knew. He was a spymaster, and a master of the art of deception. Still, he had no idea how the older man knew to ask the next question, unless it was just hope and blind faith. "Nagato?" Jiraiya slowly held out a hand, visibly pleading with him. "It's you, isn't it? I had hoped, when I found that Konan lived. How did Yahiko die? What is this? Why are you doing this, Nagato-kun?"

"I'm feeling confused," Yamato ventured after several minutes had passed and Karin's furious searching hadn't revealed anything. They had been ready for a desperate last stand that had just never happened. That wasn't a situation one could see coming. It certainly didn't happen often.

Kakashi quietly sympathized with Yamato's bewilderment, but gritted his jaw to force down frustration.

'This doesn't make any sense. First he was coming here, and now he's just gone? I need to know what's happening. I need information. We can't hold Ame forever without orders or reinforcements.'

But Tsunade and Jiraiya were out of contact. That meant he couldn't trust that any other messenger would be able to get to Konoha. His ninken hadn't contacted him, and hadn't responded to his calls. Something somewhere was very wrong, and he was completely without information. Bleakly, he wondered if it was partially his fault. Had his inability to control his team somehow led to whatever was going on?

Kakashi purposefully turned his face away from Naruto, Sasuke, and Karin, who looked sick with guilt and confusion.

If he pushed himself and didn't sleep or rest more than absolutely necessary to stave off exhaustion, he could make it back to Konoha in less than three days. Yamato and Genma could keep that pace with him. Gai and his little replica were far too injured to accompany them, so their team should stay in Ame. As for the rest of his team… he didn't really want to look at them right now.

"Baki, I'm handing over field command to you," he decided, turning to the oldest and most experienced of their allies present. There was no particular reason that Konoha had to be in charge. "Once the Kiri and Kumo teams get a representative here, my team and I are going to try to find out what's going on. I think it has to do with Konoha."

It had to, or Aiko wouldn't have brought the Akatsuki back out to Ame in the first place. What a mess.

'For such a stocky man, this one is fast,' Aiko thought grimly. All three of the Jounin here were fast, even for their rank. Of course, Akatsuki didn't have 'jounin' level shinobi in their numbers. They had monsters.

Yukimasa made a sweeping lunge, a deviation from their set that called both women's attention. He wanted an opening to use ninjutsu. Aiko felt a flutter of optimism- her captain had an idea. Anko and Aiko moved for the Akatsuki's rear at the same time, Aiko going low as Anko went high with a kunai in her fingers. He whirled around to protect from the greater threat, just as he was supposed to.

Aiko couldn't see Yukimasa flick through handsigns through the Akatsuki, but she knew he was. The two women split apart, Aiko going left and Anko right. They barely evaded the heat of the fire jutsu that Yukimasa had flung.

Soot blinded her for a moment, and Aiko moved blindly to lower her chances of being hit, despite hoping that Yukimasa had gotten a crippling blow. The caution was a good idea. When she opened her eyes, she was privately astounded to see that their opponent was undamaged. His right sleeve was completely burnt away, but the skin underneath was perfectly healthy.

'That means that he used that arm to deflect or block somehow,' she tried to puzzle it out. 'He's immune to fire?'

That couldn't be right, could it? Was it even possible to be immune to an element?

Yukimasa must have had much the same thought. He jerked his head towards her, indicating that the next try was hers. He must be hoping that her water type chakra would prove a good match-up. The change in their strategy was now obvious, so it should have been more difficult to find a second opening for an unobstructed attack. Luckily, Aiko's jutsu were smaller area than Yukimasa's, so she didn't have to make sure her comrades were back. She just had to avoid hitting them.

Aiko bought a full second to ready Sen Tsurara by darting backwards. Ox, dog, jin, monkey, and she waited for the right moment, watching the Akatsuki wait expectantly for the jutsu. She darted inwards. Anko side-stepped out of the way and moved to tangle the Akatsuki's leg with her shin, but Yukimasa used his body to block the Akatsuki's view of her until the last moment, reaching up to secure a hand and tug it out to the side, away from the man's body. Not coincidentally, that meant Aiko only had to watch for one limb blocking her while she went in for the torso. The Akatsuki tore his limb out of Yukimasa's grasp but the moment of forced movement cost him just enough that he couldn't get it back inwards in time to push her back.

Right arm outstretched, Aiko lit her hand up with the now-familiar spikes even as she coated her fingers with a protective glove of water-natured chakra. 'Funny,' she thought, in the last moment before she reached out to force her hand through his chest. 'If I didn't know better, I'd say he was fast enough to get that hand back in.' She blocked his right with her left forearm, deflecting it upward, and moved to pierce his heart. The cloth over his chest burst outward and shredded on contact, exposing pale, smooth skin.

And her technique sputtered, dying as soon as the chakra connected with her opponent, leaving her landing an awkward punch instead of piercing flesh. Aiko's eyes widened as her face jerked up. She thought she saw victory flicker in the Akatsuki's pale ringed eyes, just a hint of amusement curling his lips upward. She had just enough time to note that she had only seen eyes like that on one other person and wonder at their significance. The chakra around her wrist still hadn't fled and she was still pressing forwards and there wasn't time to jerk backwards-

With speed she couldn't entirely see, the hand that Yukimasa had pulled away darted inwards and twisted as it closed, viciously snapping her wrist and something smaller in her hand. The bones slid and gave in an instant.

She shrieked and hiraishin'd backwards, inadvertently dodging the hand that had been coming down for her head to land the killing blow. Tearing her hand away had done further damage, but probably saved her life. Pain was racing up her forearm like licks of fire. It was with a numb sense of disconnection that she observed that her hand was mangled, limp, and twisted in a way that obviously ruled out any chances of making a fist, much less handsigns or holding a weapon.

Anko bellowed something that Aiko couldn't understand through the buzzing in her ears, whipping around and stabbing something deeply into the Akatsuki's side, under the arm that was still raised.

He stepped back and kicked her away, already reacting to Aiko's other teammate.

Yukimasa was too close to the hand he had crippled Aiko with. That meant that the sword Yukimasa pulled off his back and over his head was caught in a casual display of monstrous strength and unreal pain tolerance.

Pain tolerance that Aiko couldn't match. She sobbed, forcing down actual tears and hysteria. God, it hurt more than anything she'd ever felt. She'd had broken bones before, but clean breaks, and not so many at once.

"Isn't it obvious?" Nagato asked quietly, almost incredulous that the man would pretend not to know what he had done, that he would look at Nagato with naked hope and pain on his face. "Konoha is part of a broken system. The shinobi world is one of petty tyrants selling violence for evil men, leaving only despair and pain in its wake. I will change that. I am burdened with a vision beyond compare."

Tsunade all but snarled. "You're wrong!" Her chest heaved with anger. Her hands still dripped with the oddly cold blood from the Human path, who had put himself in her way in one last attempt to delay the death of the Animal path. "Petty tyrants? We protect our own, the people we care about! You as much as admitted that you came here because of your desires, your choices. You're the selfish one."

Nagato eyed her, not letting wariness into his body language but not falling prey to arrogance either. He could kill either of these opponents in single combat handily. Both of them at once would require that he plan.

If he were a coward or had more resources available, he might have called on another path. But the Preta path was busy with two kunoichi and a shinobi, the Naraka path could not be spared, and the Animal, Human, and Asura paths were dead. Konoha was not as weak as he had supposed.

He was on his own. But he did not fear, not for himself. Nagato was torn between the desire to hurry so that he could find out what had happened to Konan and his knowledge that rushing in head-first might end badly. Reluctantly, he chose caution.

"Selfish," Nagato repeated slowly, mockingly. "I am selfish. I do not fight for no one, woman. My concern is all of humanity. I am not bound by your conventions of favoritism. I want everyone to have peace, and I will bring it to this world in the only way possible." He blinked levelly at the woman, registering her dumbstuck expression. "This world only understands fear and violence. Very well." He spread his hands and intoned, "So they shall fear me, and I will ensure that no one ever bands together against the weak."

"You're talking about destroying the shinobi system and villages?" Jiraiya asked lowly, shaking his head slightly. "That's crazy. Nagato, what have you become? You can't force peace through fear. It would never be true. You would only be a tyrant to the people. Their hatred would band them all together against you, even if it meant all of their deaths. No one will live in submission."

"Idealistic," Nagato rebuffed sharply, adjusting his stance to be ready to move if either of his new opponents lunged. He forced down a pang of doubt. Jiraiya was wrong. He had to be. "At their core, people are weak and frightened. That is why they arm themselves and turn to violence."

It was positively infuriating to see disappointment in his old mentor's eyes. How dare he condescend like that?

"Nagato-kun, you don't believe that," Jiraiya said quietly. "Yahiko never believed that. Konan never believed that. I wouldn't have taught you if I didn't know you were all good people, despite the odds against you." Tsunade looked almost mutinous at his gentle tone, but didn't try to stop the white-haired man from trying to reason with the intruder in her village. It was highly illogical, Nagato thought.

But Jiraiya pressed forward, painfully sincere. "I always believed in you, Nagato-kun. I told you once that I thought you might be the child of prophecy, the man who would bring peace to the world." He shook his head, and lowered his voice. "But not like this." Sorrowfully, he looked out over the ruins that had once been a vibrant metropolis. "The boy I knew had suffered as a result of someone else's war in his homeland. He wouldn't want to do that to other children, or to take away people's free will by force. You fought for your dreams with tooth and nail, but you were never a bully, kid."

If Jiraiya took one more step in, he might actually attempt to hug Nagato. The Ame nin took a cautionary step backwards, thoroughly disoriented.

This wasn't right. This wasn't how this altercation was supposed to go. Nothing was going right. He had forgotten how persuasive the older man could be, but that meant nothing. It had to.

"It's your fault," Nagato managed steadily, catching the older man's eye. He managed to work up a bit of anger when Jiraiya had the gall to look confused. "It was Konoha that sold us out all those years ago. Hanzo had backup from Konoha."

He licked his lips, strangely hurt and weary at the prospect of telling this story he had never told. "I had to choose between Konan and Yahiko, and it was Konoha's fault. There was no sense in that. Had you not sold us out for information, he would still be here today. Do not act as though you can lecture me."

Even as he said it, Nagato hated that he sounded like a child defending himself against this man. How did Jiraiya make him feel so small? Was it Jiraiya who had somehow ruined his plans once more- Jiraiya who had arranged for Konoha to invade and subjugate Ame, chasing out Akatsuki? It seemed logical that the spymaster would have been involved in the many subversions of his plans to collect jinchuuriki. He needed them to make the weapon that would allow him to force the people of the Elemental countries into submission.

The Sannin exchanged a confused look. It was Tsunade who spoke. "Konoha didn't send anyone to Ame," she said cautiously. "Sandaime-sama would never have interfered with your failed coup. He didn't care who ruled Amegakure. Konoha had our own problems."

"I was there," Nagato said slowly, outraged that she would deny this.

"Any Konoha nin present weren't ordered there by Sandaime-sama," Tsunade said bluntly. "You were tricked."

"Not by Sandaime," Jiraiya said lowly, looking as though an unpleasant thought had occurred. "Danzo, however, might have interfered if he saw opportunity for profit." He looked a little green.

Nagato didn't see what difference it made. He shook his head, tired of conversation that raised prickles of doubt. "Enough!" He narrowed his eyes. "I will not be dissuaded." No matter that he had been wrong, or that his old teacher was glad to see him, or that he feared for Konan, or that it seemed increasingly possible that his attack on Konoha would be a failure.

More than a sliver of doubt pulled at his heart. When it was all summed up that way… Perhaps it was time to reconsider his actions. Jiraiya was wrong: his motivations were pure and his plan the only one that could work. The Konoha nin were wrong about people, and he would prove it to them. Konoha had only rallied because they had no other choice and they thought there was no option for surrender. If they could bow to his might, they would have. Nagato would prove it, and that would prove that he had been correct in his thinking.

He took just a moment to connect with the Preta path, and nudge the manifestation of his power to move more aggressively. Dimly, he recognized one of the fighters with a bubble of amusement. It was of no consequence, however. Once it had killed those in its way, he would send it to the poorly hidden shelters in the west.

And then they would see who knew human nature.

'I need to get back in there,' Aiko realized distantly, feeling strain under her eyes and that she was breathing harshly.

It took a moment to re-evaluate her strategy to take her injury into account. She wasn't useless, but it would be much more difficult for her to get her own hits in now. That meant she was now support for her comrades, helping them get openings. She should keep her right side away from the Akatsuki as much as possible so that her left was always available for blocking.

She tried to pretend to herself that she couldn't see that her hand was swelling and turning purple. It was just a distraction. Pain was just a distraction. It didn't mean anything, and neither did the fact that she couldn't feel her fingers, or that they looked like fat blue sausages.

"What happened?" Yukimasa grunted, abandoning the professionalism of silence. Aiko understood instantly. It wasn't working as an intimidation tactic and they needed to figure out what had gone wrong with their attacks. It wasn't an immunity to fire chakra or even fire itself, so-

"I think he absorbs chakra!" Aiko called out, hoping the tightness in her voice didn't make her sound too weak. 'Like Kisame's sword. That's how he did it.'

That meant that genjutsu and ninjutsu were out of the running as optimal strategies. He'd endured both direct and area effect attacks. It would have been nice to figure that out another way.

But the man was monstrously strong, more like Gai than anyone she'd ever faced in combat before. In unspoken agreement, all three Jounin reached for a blade, if they hadn't one out already. Hopefully his flesh wasn't so tough that they couldn't pierce it. At this point, she wouldn't be surprised. This Akatsuki seemed optimally suited as a defensive fighter—their numbers weren't the advantage she had hoped for.

She was best with a short sword, and preferred to fight with her right hand, but Aiko awkwardly reached across her thigh to pull out a kunai with her left hand. Her broken wrist hurt terribly, but she tried to ignore it. The limb dangled a little limply when she darted forward—the elbow was curled so that her forearm was across her stomach, but she couldn't seem to do more than twitch her ring and pinky fingers.

"Foolish."

Aiko jerked involuntarily, looking around for Pein before she realized that the voice had come from her current opponent. That was positively uncanny.

"I have seen your technique through these eyes, girl. You only touched Pein because I felt you were of little consequence, a fly before me."

Was he seriously saying that the creepy eyes meant he could see what Pein had? Was he connected to Pein? If that was true, she was going to have a seriously hard time touching him. He knew she only needed a tap to move him or hurt him.

An ugly theory made itself known.

Well. Shit.

'Puppets,' Aiko realized bitterly. 'My favorite thing. These aren't new Akatsuki. These are puppets of Pein's somehow. I bet the others all have eyes like that too, just like the hair is Pein's color. What a vain son of a bitch.'

So Pein was still in Konoha. They were all Pein.

The moment that her hand had been broken, her reaction had been to bury the pain, not begrudge the man who gave the injury. He was her opponent in a fight to the death. There was no point in personal dislike. Hypocritically, that opinion changed in an instant, now that she knew it was that man again.

"You again!" Aiko snarled, near-frantic with the desire to end him or at least make him hurt. She lunged, trying again and again to slash at him, but failing. Pein just moved backwards and to the side, like he was a Jounin teaching an excitable genin. She had fallen out of tandem with her peers without realizing it, and nearly collided with Anko in her haste. The older woman managed to dodge and rally around, trying to intercept Pein, but he ducked under and around, placing her body between himself and Aiko.

Like a child hiding behind an adult at the playground, she thought furiously. He was mocking her. Calling her infantile, showing that she was too slow.

"Fall in!" Anko barked, drawing Aiko back to the real world. She jerked guiltily, realizing that she had been behaving unprofessionally. She didn't get to put her grudge before teamwork. It was seamless to slip back into line, letting Yukimasa lead their pattern. She recognized the move he called for instantly.

They were supposed to separate, and come at their target from three points around him, and whirl counterclockwise, moving downward in a spiral that Aiko had always thought strangely resembled a whirlpool. Yukimasa came in at Pein's right side, Anko behind him directly at Pein's back, and Aiko behind her at Pein's left side. She wryly noted that the maneuver had been flipped so that all three of them would be using their left hands, a concession to her crippled right.

All three of them corkscrewed, Yukimasa taking the lowest position to cut at the front of Pein's shins, aiming to slice the tendons keeping his feet firmly attached to his legs. Anko was sliding her blade through the back of Pein's right knee and around the side. Aiko had the most protected position and the toughest target, slicing at Pein's lower back in an attempt to cut through his spine.

Her blade connected, scoring deeply, in no small part because Pein shifted his weight back slightly so that he could kick Yukimasa back. With a yelp and a crunch of bone, Aiko's captain went flying, hitting the uneven terrain and rolling twice before he managed to flip to his feet. Pein had already turned to Anko, whose blow had missed due to Pein's kick.

Aiko saw it happen but still couldn't do a damn thing. Anko's low positioning put her head only slightly above Pein's hands. She had been vulnerable. The movement they had executed counted on the probability that the three-pronged attack would stun or startle their opponent long enough for them to move outward and upward so that blows couldn't come from above.

They had failed. In one smooth motion, Pein put a hand on either side of Anko's head and twisted. It popped all the way around with sickening ease. The older woman's knees buckled and her momentum carried her forward even as Pein continued to turn to face Aiko, who had both been highest and farthest from his vision. She was in an athletic stance. She could move away. Yukimasa had given her the least risky position.

It still wasn't enough for her to dodge completely. The foot she hadn't seen him raise connected with her right shoulder, shattering her upper humerus and sending the shards to collapse into her acromion. She saw white and only belatedly realized that the force of the blow had toppled her over, sending her rolling. She recovered to push herself further away with her good hand, and nearly screamed when the momentum carried her weight onto her now ruined shoulder. Breathing was all but impossible through the taste of bile and blood in her mouth. Some reserve or reflex carried her to her feet through the pain. She had dropped her kunai at some point and not noticed.

Her eyes met with Yukimasa's through the distance. Pein was in between them, looking thoroughly unconcerned. Distracted, even. He was still turned more towards Aiko than her teammate. Her surviving teammate. Anko was staring up deaddeadead and Pein was better than she was and he was going to kill Yukimasa, he was going to kill everyone and everything that he touched. She couldn't let that happen.

In the moment, the next thought seemed like a perfect idea. Pein was going to kill her. She couldn't survive him. When she died, her body was going to explode from Danzo's seal. She would be taking Pein with her. Unless Pein managed to escape the blast radius—he had to be close. And she had to die suddenly—he might realize what was happening and have time to back away. Or he might just choose to casually fling her away, or let her die slowly. She had to make it count, had to set this up right.

He was turning. Turning away from her, moving to the larger threat. Her captain still hadn't quite regained his balance, on his feet now but not ready to intercept an attack.

Aiko didn't think, she moved. Her good hand jerked up to the side of her face, planting a very familiar seal on her temple just above her cheekbone. An instant kill, and then Danzo's seal would fail in the same instant.

If she'd had more time, she might have had last words. Something poignant, or something heroic, like telling Pein that he couldn't win. But all she was really thinking was a combination of 'save captain' and 'fuck this guy', and none of that was suited for the record.

"Hey, assbutt!"

'I need to work on my insults' crossed her mind ever so slightly before, 'No, I don't' flickered in denial.

It didn't matter. Pein's puppet turned, sensing that she was lunging at him. She had just enough time to savor the slight confusion when he realized that she didn't even have a weapon out and twist her mouth into a parody of a smile before she let her momentum carry her a breath away from his body. He was about to block her, probably by kicking her down.

She snapped one last seal, and wasn't even able to appreciate just how fucking beautiful it was to see blood spray out over the short man's confused face. She certainly wasn't there to enjoy the secondary, much larger boom that rocked the ground, shredding both bodies and scorching a ring into the ground.

Yukimasa was, though. The first thing he did once he had registered the heaviness in the air that proceeded the explosion –after he reflexively scrambled backwards, out of range—was throw up. It might have been the way the force rocked him with nausea, but it was more likely the tiny scorched toe with a painted blue nail that collided with his chest and rolled when it dropped to hit the ground.

"God," he gasped, licking bile off the back of his teeth and shaking. "God."

Iruka's muscles were already so tense that they hurt, despite remaining perfectly still. His students and the other children in the shelter had been getting restless and impatient. He wasn't sure if the fact that they had quieted when distant booming echoed through the tunnels to them was good, although their whispers were much easier to think and listen over than the whining and chatting had been.

'I have no idea what I'm hearing,' he thought with frustration, not for the first time. Fighting had obviously begun, and it wasn't close. That probably meant the village was under direct attack. But there weren't many shinobi he could imagine would be loud enough to hear from such a distance—an Akimichi, perhaps.

At least no one seemed to be nearby. That didn't mean he was relaxing at all. Chuunin instructors were some of the best shinobi in the village because they were entrusted with Konoha's most valuable resources, but he had never specialized in detection of any sort. There was always a possibility that some of the attackers were a distraction for opportunists interested in a few bloodlines.

Those thoughts were why he came shamefully close to throwing a shuriken at the source of abrupt movement. Iruka wheezed in panic, trembling. He'd barely caught the blade between his fingertips in the same instant that he'd reflexively tossed it.

The surprised looking huddle of children who had jerked downwards didn't even notice that there had nearly been blood, though their kunoichi teacher gave him a murderous look.

"Where'd the doggies go?" someone whined plaintively.

'Oh, that's right,' he realized dimly. 'They were snuggling Aiko's ninken.'

It took a moment for him to connect the dots there. The children using that fluffy dog as a pillow had all knocked their heads on the floor when it had ceased to be in the shelter. It was… No, was it even possible for a ninken who had already been in the human realm to respond to a summoning? Iruka frowned, carefully tucking away his weapon and plastering a bright smile onto his face to avoid letting onto his increasingly dark thoughts. As far as he knew, that wasn't possible. He could be wrong, of course. But it seemed much more likely that the chakra sustaining the summons had cut out.

'Aiko could have passed out from chakra exhaustion,' he theorized. That wasn't a good option by any means, but it was better than the only other explanation that came to mind.

His female colleague met his eyes with an expression of grim understanding before she regained her post, having finished soothing a boy who had gotten a good knock to the head. She had come to the same conclusion.

He really wished he knew what was going on. Iruka had to stop himself from tapping his fingers against the side of his pants. His students knew his nervous tics well enough by now that he couldn't allow himself to forget what his hands were doing. It would do no good to panic them.

Jiraiya threw himself to the ground at the sound of an explosion, half-expecting the attack to be much closer. His reflexes were wasted, however. Whatever detonation that had been had been both large and loud, but the plume of smoke he spotted in the distance showed that it was a good half-mile away. The attack hadn't been for him.

He cursed his paranoia, even as he leapt to his feet and moved to ensure that Nagato-kun didn't manage to hurt Tsunade-hime while he was lazing about on the ground. The shock he saw on the Ame nin's face stopped him in his tracks. Tsunade stepped back, visibly wary of a trap. Katsuya bubbled menacingly, dissolving and dividing into smaller slugs than the large beast that had shielded hime from the last attack.

It was for naught.

"Impossible," Nagato said quietly, turning to stare off at the rising cloud of dust as if he had forgotten he was in a fight. "I… failed. How could I fail?"

Something uncomfortable crawled in his belly, a suspicion that Jiraiya couldn't quite verbalize.

"What are you talking about?"

Apparently, Tsunade wasn't struck by the same sense of cautiousness that told him that anything more than a whisper might break their odd stalemate, because her tone was firm and not entirely pleasant.

"I was going to demonstrate that you were wrong." Nagato blinked, and turned back to the older shinobi, looking a little lost and unnerved. "That your people would surrender to me instead of dying for you."

"It's obvious that they weren't going to surrender," Tsunade rebutted fiercely, frowning at him. "They've been fighting you since you came here."

"I meant the others," Nagato muttered distractedly. "I gave no chance for quarter to your Jounin. The genin and civilians, however, did not have to die."

"What did you do?" Jiraiya asked hopelessly, fearing the worst.

"Nothing."

Well, that hadn't been what he had expected.

"I did not have a chance to offer them terms." Nagato slowly shook his head, giving the Sannin a strange inquisitive look. "The last Path I possessed who could go to them is dead. I have no others but the path outside the city. Even if I beat you here…"

He trailed off, but Jiraiya knew what he meant. Nagato would have no clean victory. All three of them were bloodied and battered, but not ready to stand down. Nagato might fall to one or both of the Sannin, and his invasion would fail. Even if he won, he would be weakened. Someone, somewhere, among the Konoha survivors would find him and bring him down. He was no immortal. If he had thought he could take Konoha alone, he would not have brought other fighters.

"Paths?" Tsunade asked, uncertain.

"Like the story of the Rikkudo Sennin," Jiraiya explained quietly. "The Rinnegan is the power from that story. It's real. That's how he did this. The other intruders are him."

He had been all but certain, but seeing Nagato's head nod slightly in agreement hit home. God, when had one of his kids become so powerful? Jiraiya tried not to laugh, because if he did, he was going to cry. He was a failure of the highest order. He had been less of a disgrace back when he thought his students were all dead. His apprentice was still dead, as was sweet Yahiko. Nagato and Konan were criminals bent on Konoha's destruction and the deconstruction of the entire shinobi way of life. Naruto… He could have done so much more for Naruto. But he'd looked at that boy and seen his father's face and his mother's spirit and been torn between drinking away the memories and pushing him away so that he couldn't be hurt again when the boy died.

Naruto had forced his way in past his guard, but that was through no virtue on Jiraiya's part. He was a disgrace to Konoha, a pathetic failure as a teacher, and an utterly worthless godparent. God, he didn't even know what had happened to his goddaughter. He hadn't seen her since the fighting started. Was she dead? Probably. Half of Konoha seemed to be.

Nagato's quiet voice cut through his despair. "It seems that you were correct. I cannot best you." Jiraiya pulled his attention outward to see Nagato looking up at the sky, staring into the distance contemplatively. "I yield, Hokage-sama, Jiraiya-sensei. I was wrong."

"What." Tsunade said ungracefully.

"If your shinobi are willing to blow their very bodies up to keep me from their civilians, I cannot believe that I will find what I thought I would here." Nagato shook his head slowly. "Konoha is not what I thought it was."

"What makes you think I would accept your surrender," Tsunade demanded, half-hysterical, tears of anger welling up and her face twisted in sick, trembling outrage. "You killed hundreds of my people! I want your blood. Why would I let you walk away?"

For the first time, Nagato seemed to really look at her. He shrunk slightly in the face of her obvious grief, apparently shaken by the realization that he had hurt real people and was going to be held accountable for it.

"I can fix that," he said quietly.

Tsunade threw her head back and laughed until she cried, great gasping sobs that shook her shoulders. "You can fix it," she repeated thickly, shaking her head and hugging her chest. Now that the adrenaline had gone and the fight was over, she was falling apart in front of his eyes. Jiraiya swallowed hard, and quietly moved to wrap an arm around her waist. She leaned into his chest and rolled her head to keep Nagato in her sight. "Are you mad, boy? You're going to fix this. What are you going to do, give hand-written apologies to every widow and orphan? Will you rebuild my city by hand?"

"No," Nagato answered, looking her directly in her eyes. He stepped forward seriously, hands curling slightly at his side. "Tell your people to stand down. They are still fighting my last path. I will bring the Naraka path here." He paused deliberately, as if he knew that the next words would be disbelieved. "The Rinnegan has the power over life," Nagato said quietly. "True resurrection, not a perversion or theft from the Shinigami."

Jiraiya felt his jaw drop. That was in the stories, yes, but stories couldn't all be true. It was perfect, it was unrealistic, it was-

"Impossible!" Tsunade breathed, curling her fist into Jiraiya's vest. He couldn't see her face even when she lifted it, but he knew the fury that would be on it. "You mock me."

"I do not." Nagato raised his head to make eye contact with Jiraiya. He met the gaze steadily, torn between disbelief and hope. "Jiraiya-sensei, you know I do not lie. I can do this. The Samsara of Heavenly life technique restores a body to the state it was in before death. I can rebuild what was lost, attach limbs, and breathe life back into damaged tissue. They will not be in perfect health," he admitted honestly. "I believe that there may be remnants of fatigue or imperfections in chakra level, and I do not know what would happen to a man who had lost a limb years before, for example, but I can restore your people to life in penance."

"In penance," Tsunade repeated slowly. "So you're sorry, boy?" She stared at him, coming to a decision. It didn't take long. Jiraiya knew what she would choose. There was only one choice, no matter how angry she was. Their people came first.

"Katsuya-sama, spread out and make sure everyone knows to stand down!" Tsunade ordered hoarsely, not taking her gaze off Nagato. "I'm going to let him try. I'll need your help to heal any injured, however. Nagato. Are you claiming that your technique only needs genetic material to rebuild a body and restore it to life?" she clarified, eyes hard. At his nod, Tsunade took a deep inhalation. "So a body should become as it was meant to be," she concluded quietly, running a hand through her left pigtail and tapping a scuffed, bloody heel against the ground.

A body should become as it was meant to be.

Hope swelled up in his chest, despite the grimness of the situation. Tsunade was obviously disgusted by Nagato, but he didn't feel guilty about talking to him under the new circumstances.

"What happened?" Jiraiya asked quietly, hating that he'd forgotten about his initial upset when his goddaughter had disappeared earlier. She had taken Nagato away—and he was now certain it was Yahiko's body, though he hadn't gotten a good view before—and had never returned. But Nagato had.

His old student gave him a careful examination. "What do you mean?"

"My goddaughter," Jiraiya clarified, oddly surprised that Nagato hadn't known. It seemed so obvious to him. "She- earlier, when we – first arrived"- 'Before Choza and Shikaku and Inoichi died' , he thought bitterly –"the girl who-"

Thankfully, Nagato interrupted his awkward stumbling for words. "Uzumaki Aiko," he clarified slowly.

For the first time, Jiraiya remembered that Nagato was an Uzumaki too. How was he related to his godchildren?

Nagato looked guilty, and Jiraiya's heart sank. Even as he told himself that Nagato would fix it, that he would bring her back, Jiraiya wanted to go see for himself. To find his goddaughter and apologize to Minato for failing him so completely.

"Dead," Nagato admitted. "Although I did not kill her with these hands. She took me out of Konoha, to the land of Rain in hopes of keeping me from the fight. She did not know that the Animal path could summon me."

"Then why is she dead," Jiraiya asked quietly, accusatively.

"That was the explosion."

His legs buckled under him and Jiraiya sat heavily. 'Maybe I already knew,' he realized dazedly. 'That wasn't an explosive tag. That was a big explosion. From something like the seal Aiko took from Danzo.'

Kami, how horrific. But, that didn't answer-

"How did she die," he demanded hoarsely. An explosion would be a monstrous way to die, but the seal was meant to go after she was dead. That had just been her body, not her. Maybe the truth was less cruel. Even as he grasped at straws, Jiraiya knew he was being irrational. She was dead. Dead was dead, and it certainly hadn't been peacefully in her sleep. Knowing wouldn't make him feel any better.

"Suicide," Nagato admitted quietly.

And his heart stopped somewhere between terror and confusion, even as the younger man continued talking.

"I don't know how she did it. One of her companions was dead, and the Preta path moved to finish the other while he was down. I had intended to have him go to the refugees after they were dead and was weary of playing with them. She leapt at the Preta path." Nagato looked oddly disturbed, as if noting a detail for the first time. "She was smiling," he finished quietly. "She didn't even try to reach out. Her head went first, and then-" Nagato cut himself off sharply, as if remembering that shinobi tolerance of gore and grief might falter in the face of such a personal connection.

Jiraiya bowed his head, feeling a despicable failure. He didn't even care when a tear drop hit his knees. "And you can bring her back?" he asked quietly. A body that had been the fuel for an explosion like that… half of it might be outright gone as ash, the rest scattered. Was it even possible to restore full function after something like that? Would she remember the experience? It must have been a horrible way to die. It might be kinder if she didn't have to count such an experience in her recollection.

"I can bring her back," Nagato promised solemnly. "And then…" he paused uncertainly, probably knowing that it was a terrible time to ask favors, but unable to resist. "What happened in Ame?"

Surprised by the question, Jiraiya had to blink three times before he made the connection. He'd pushed that affair back in his memory in his current preoccupation. It just didn't seem important at the time. But of course Nagato would be interested.

"I don't know much," Jiraiya admitted. "A toad came to me asking what was going on while I was fighting before you came back and told me that Naruto was actually in Ame, but I don't know when the situation changed. If there was a message from the borders about an excursion into Ame, it either hasn't made it here or the messenger abandoned their post to join in the fight."

"I see." Nagato seemed troubled. Jiraiya could sympathize.

Tsunade couldn't.

"Who are we waiting for exactly?" she asked crisply, pacing a small circuit.

"My last remaining path," Nagato said quietly. "I should probably make you aware that there are also four Ame shinobi present. I took our strongest team in order that someone might protect my actual body. In any case, the Naraka path is channeling a power that will allow me to perform the Samsara technique of heavenly life."

"And will this kill you?"

Jiraiya recoiled, but Tsunade was matter-of-fact. The question made sense. Most kinjutsu had a heavy price to pay. Life for life seemed fitting.

"I may die in the attempt," Nagato admitted. "I doubt it, however. I have a path left to aid me and a great deal of chakra still." He met her gaze for a moment. "I will use as much as it takes," Nagato said quietly. "I have not used this technique before."

"Why didn't you?" Tsunade asked suspiciously. "If this friend of yours is dead, why didn't you bring him back?"

A flash of pain crossed Nagato's face. "I had not mastered the technique," he said bluntly. "And by the time I had, it was far too late. I cannot bring back those who are long dead without dying myself, and Konan would not have forgiven me if I attempted the technique and failed. When I suggested it, she felt that the risk of failure outweighed the possibility of having Yahiko back, and that she would not choose between us."

'She didn't want to be alone,' Jiraiya realized sadly. Konan had always been a sweet girl. Skilled, clever, but not a leader herself. No wonder she had clung to her surviving companion.

They waited in unhappy silence until the 'path' came to them, impassive and dull-faced. Nagato directed it to stand nearby and took a deep breath. "Tsunade-sama, I can do nothing for your injured," he warned a final time. "It is still possible that any who are trapped under rubble will perish after I have performed this technique. They will remain lost. But if we delay, those who have perished already will be out of my reach."

"I understand," Tsunade said quietly, obviously pained. "Save as many as you can. I'll set them to searching for survivors and heal them with Katsuya's help."

'I'll never get a chance to see anything like this again,' Jiraiya knew when Nagato raised his arms slightly and began channeling a truly godly amount of chakra. 'I should pay attention so I can remember the way it looks.'

But it was all he could do to hold his old teammate's hand and try to soothe away her shaking as they both silently prayed that this would work.

The sky was blue through heavy overhanging dust, and her neck was hurting. She moved slightly, and the jagged rock that had been poking her flesh up rolled over to a blunter side.

That still wasn't great, but it seemed like as good a solution as any.

It took a moment for the realization that something was not right to set in. Cataloguing her senses took some time. The stinging in her eyes wasn't pleasant, but it didn't set off the danger alarms. Nothing did, until she forced herself to sit up and realized that she was completely naked.

She was naked, and she wasn't alone. Eyes wide, she crossed her arms over her chest convulsively and brought her knees up to shield some small part of her dignity.

'What's going on? Where am I?'

She couldn't even bring herself to question why she was naked, because she couldn't imagine an answer that wasn't terrifying. She didn't even see discarded clothes nearby. The situation didn't look good. She was sitting in a field of rubble. A starburst pattern of blood painted the grey and white stones. That was a lot of blood, but she didn't see where it had come from.

Is it possible to have your heart convulse so fast that it bruises your chest? Because that's what it felt like.

The man walking toward her split his face in an enormous grin, widening his hands in some gesture she didn't appreciate. The hair that fluttered behind him was white, where it wasn't red or dusty.

So, this was someone who had been involved in whatever had happened to her, she grimly judged.

"Aiko-chan!" At this distance, she could see that his face was tanned and faintly lined. It was also filthy, with slightly cleaner lines blurred downward where he had obviously been crying at some point in the day. He was older than his macho, careless body language and pleasant voice implied. That advanced age didn't correlate to physical infirmity. Strength was obvious in the casual grace of his movement and his enormous frame. "Shit, girl. That was stupid of you. But we're all alright now. Tsunade-hime's got almost everyone rounded up." He sounded oddly relieved to see her.

And he wasn't respecting her personal space. Face burning, she scrambled backwards, watching warily.

This seemed like a situation she should remember getting into. Blood that didn't seem to belong to anyone, broken buildings, hot scorch marks… it looked like she'd been in the middle of a fucking battlefield.

'Nice place you have here,' some irreverent part of her murmured, rather unconvincingly fronting nonchalance in the face of her fear. She couldn't make the words come out, though. Her mouth was too dry.

And the stranger was still looking at her. His grin made her very uncomfortable. In another situation she might have identified it as boyish or playful, but it felt distinctly predatory right now. Her right foot slipped on a jutting nail in her retreat, and the soft uncallused heel split open like a ripe fruit. She flinched, curling her leg inward. His smile slipped as he glanced down at the liquid that was warming the underside of her foot.

"Is something wrong?" Even as he spoke, he was slipping the oversized scroll that hung off one shoulder onto the ground. She tensed, but all he removed was the coat he wore. It was filthy and sticky against her bare flesh. But when he tossed it to her; she hastily wrapped it around her body and held it closed with one hand.

She still hadn't responded.

"Aiko, talk to me." The stranger's brow furrowed. He moved in slowly, as if trying to be unthreatening. She should reply. She wasn't convinced of his benevolence, but manners never hurt. "Are you dizzy? You look disoriented."

Her voice was raspy, but she managed words. "Where am I?"

Tired and uncertain, Tsunade allowed Nagato to leave, the one path that had survived escorting him.

"It's strange," she said quietly, not turning to look at her apprentice. Shizune had been a little frightened and jumpy since she had been revived, but doing her best to hide it. For her dignity, Tsunade pretended not to notice and tried not to break down and cry when the girl crept off to a corner to recover her composure.

Finding her apprentice wandering disoriented among the rubble had been terrifying as it had been a relief. Shizune had been equally streaked with tears and blood, clutching her torn kimono shut and all but incoherent. She hadn't been told what had happened. And Tsunade hadn't dared to ask. If Shizune wanted to talk about it, she would eventually. But now, they needed to pull together and take care of the village as best as they could.

"That he left the Ame team behind?" Shizune asked, not making much effort to falsify her usual bright tone.

"That, and something he said before," Tsunade acknowledged thoughtfully. "I think he's planning on seppuku." She turned away, disinterested in watching that man walk into the distance.

He could kill himself, but it wouldn't erase the memory of what he had done. It would make sense, though. Seppuku was historically used to erase disgrace and restore honor. His personal honor was beyond repair, but he still cared for Ame and Konan.

They hadn't managed to contact the other nations yet, but she thought she knew what international response to this whole mess would be. No one else had been battered nearly as much as Konoha, but that didn't mean anyone would accept the continuance of Nagato's unofficial reign as the kage of Ame.

No, he had to either die or be executed for them to have anything resembling a fresh start, no matter what Jiraiya thought. She suspected that he intended for Konan to take over as Ame's kage, actually. It sounded like a poor plan to her, but it wasn't her village to worry about.

Nagato had postured, as if he was attempting to convince her that he had something important to say. That seemed doubtful. Now that she'd finally heard from her people in Ame, it seemed clear that Akatsuki was taken care of. Whatever he was withholding could be found in another way without having to condescend to deal with that Konan woman until it was clear there were no other options. Tsunade wouldn't be an instrument in a plan to strengthen Konan's authority by acknowledging her as Ame's representative.

'Why am I wasting time thinking about these people?'

Disgusted, Tsunade wished good riddance to bad rubbish and took a moment to wonder what Jiraiya was up to. She had lost track of him in the hours that followed Nagato's resurrection technique and then her impromptu healing. It was all a long, dirty blur of digging and searching and trying to convince shell-shocked, traumatized shinobi to pull out of their personal sorrow and phantom pain to help her save everyone else before being trapped under rubble killed them again.

And Sarutobi-sensei was dead, permanently dead. She tried to shy away from the memory of finding him—breathing perfectly well, but the man she remembered was not inside the cage of flesh. When she took into account that he had apparently traded his life to the death god to destroy a path, Tsunade wasn't surprised that it had been impossible to revive him. She was miserable and sick with grief, but not surprised.

At least the digging had revealed that all was not quite as lost as they had thought. Downtown had been hit the hardest, but only several blocks were completely unsalvageable. Most of the city was broken and buried, but the infrastructure was still there. With work and time, it could be restored to something usable.

'It doesn't hurt to have an extra four sets of hands, but I'll need more than Ame nin to get this done before the Tsuchikage thinks to take advantage of our weakness,' Tsunade thought grimly. Everyone would have to be recalled from Ame. They couldn't afford to waste the manpower on a foray that wasn't even making money.

"Tsunade-sama? May I be excused?"

"Hmm?" She actually turned at that. "What do you mean, Shizune?"

"I would rather be working in the hospital," Shizune said quietly.

Her brow furrowed. It didn't seem like the best allocation of one of her best administrative resources. There were so few wounded… Well, physically wounded, in any case. There were more than a few instances of phantom limbs, cases of short-term memory loss from stress, confusion, and panic attacks, and a few who were still sleeping off whatever trauma they had endured that Nagato's resurrection couldn't rectify. Shizune was vastly overqualified to deal with the physical injuries present, and under-qualified to do anything about the sudden rash of psychiatric needs.

But she wouldn't deny her apprentice anything, and certainly wouldn't push her past her breaking point. Shizune wouldn't have asked on a whim.

"Of course," Tsunade conceded. "I'm sure you know the evacuation team is leaving soon. You'd better go join them."

The relief visible on her apprentice's face erased any regret she had. Impulsively, Tsunade reached out and pulled Shizune into a hug as she hadn't in years. She breathed in deeply, nose tucked into lank, dirty hair. "I love you kid," she murmured. "You know that, right?"

She wasn't an expressive woman. The thought of losing the girl she had raised had curdled her blood and made her regret every day where she hadn't made that perfectly clear.

"I know," Shizune sniffled in return, embracing her firmly. "I love you too."

Tsunade pulled away, holding Shizune at arm's length to drink her in for a moment before tiredly joking, "All the feelings in here are making me uncomfortable. Go on now, you'll miss your group."

She didn't have to cope with loneliness for long. Twenty minutes after Shizune left, her surviving teammate stumbled into her requisitioned office in a bank (of all the things) that had survived the destruction.

"You look terrible," Tsunade said bluntly.

Jiraiya couldn't quite muster up a smile. "It's been a long day, hime." He looked at her with something that wasn't quite fondness and wasn't quite sorrow—a desperate, grateful look that made her uncomfortable enough that Tsunade turned her face down.

"It has," she agreed quietly. After a moment, she cleared her throat. They'd never communicated about their feelings much, but if there was a day to express concern, this was probably it. Tsunade opened her mouth, and then closed it uncertainly. "So… Did you find-"

"I don't want to talk about it," Jiraiya cut her off sharply. At her shocked look, guilt crossed his face. He slumped, enormous shoulders curling inward. His enormous physical presence couldn't be diminished to something comparable to another man's, however. Even at his lowest like this, Tsunade looked at her teammate and couldn't see the scrawny boy she had grown up punching. He wasn't quite foreign to her, but sometimes when she looked and saw a man where she expected an irritating tween, it threw her for a loop.

"I'm sorry," Jiraiya apologized, glancing up at her through pale lashes ringed with soot. "That was bratty, wasn't it?" He heaved a sigh, apparently not needing a response. The kunoichi watched him warily, wanting to help but not sure what to say. "Yeah, I found Aiko."

"Was she…" Tsunade started cautiously.

Her teammate shook his head. "No, she's not dead," he said bluntly.

Tsunade avoided the impulse to say, 'that's good, right?'. He didn't seem happy.

Jiraiya inhaled deeply and looked up to the tacky gold-leaf ceiling. "She's not right, either." His lips twisted into something ugly. Tsunade found herself holding her breath, not sure what might set him off. "Didn't recognize me, or know where she was."

The Hokage winced. "Well, to be fair, she has a right to be shaken," she tried to say diplomatically. "And Konoha doesn't look much like itself right now."

That hardly explained why she wouldn't recognize Jiraiya. It wasn't like he had a particularly common face. That failure was hardly a good sign. Something could be severely wrong in her head. Nagato did say that there might be some complications… She couldn't know without some idea of the physical damage, though. She did have the presence of mind to know that it wouldn't be diplomatic to ask Jiraiya for the gory details so that she could form a working hypothesis as to the problem.

Tsunade did have suspicions as to what had happened. There were other instances of what appeared to be serious brain damage in shinobi who had been posted along the wall, where that horrific ray had burst through. What were the odds that Nagato's technique was absolutely perfect enough to reconstruct and attach brain cells that even the best doctors didn't understand? She chewed the inside of her cheer unhappily. Even if the cells were all perfect, the electrical connections between them were the result of years of signals being transmitted in very individual ways. Could that really be rebuilt from scratch?

'I'll have Shizune send me an update,' Tsunade decided. Now that she was curious, she wanted to know. Actually, she should remind Shizune that there was likely to be an incident. It wasn't uncommon for shinobi waking up in hospital to lash out, but the medic nin could usually take care of themselves. With all the civilian nurses and doctors that would be helping out, it might be a good idea to exercise extra precaution…

Jiraiya noted the obvious exclusion, and gave her an amused look that told her he hadn't been tricked into thinking nothing was wrong. She gave him a queasy smile. It wasn't like she was going to lie to him.

"I must be even worse than I thought," Jiraiya sighed, scratching his filthy neck depreciatingly. "My godkid didn't recognize me. She was scared of me, hime," he stressed, voice going up a little.

A deep sadness pulled at her chest. Unthinkingly, Tsunade crossed the distance and pulled her oldest friend into a slow hug. She wasn't a particularly small woman but she felt petite when her forehead rested against his pectorals. "We're a right pair, aren't we?" she murmured. "I always said I didn't want kids, but here we are. If Shizune and Sasuke aren't my brats, I don't know what they are." She tightened her arms protectively. "You did a good job with those kids," Tsunade stated firmly. "They're old enough to understand why you couldn't take them in, and it's obvious that you care. You did what you could. Naruto thinks the world of you, you know."

He gave an aborted laugh that expanded his chest enough that Tsunade's grip nearly slipped. "Not for long," Jiraiya joked uncomfortably. "I may have sent a toad or two to spy on him after everything calmed down."

Tsunade was surprised into a laugh.

"Hey, it's not that funny," he grumbled with a pout.

She shook her head and drew back, poking his chest. "It's not that. Katsuya is with Sasuke now. Great minds think alike, I think." She'd sent her summon to her student as soon as a dirty, yelping dog had limped his way to her after the fight. The note attached to the poor thing's collar had been illegible, but the blue vest marked him as one of Hatake's. When she'd seen it, Tsunade had discovered a new capacity to feel ill. She'd instantly assumed Sasuke was in trouble. Of course he wasn't, though. Hatake had apparently managed to rout Akatuki and snatch Ame… Which she needed to sit down and have a long debriefing about, apparently. Tsunade made a mental note.

"Paranoid old coots think alike," Jiraiya countered amiably. He didn't even wince when she whapped his chest. Instead, he took the blow with a smile, and rubbed the spot her palm had connected with. "I'll continue to be creepy tonight, I suppose. I don't want to scare her again, but I'd like to see that she's alright. Shizune isn't going to tattle on me if I come by while she's sleeping, right?" The expression on his face slipped slightly.

'He probably doesn't want to find out it wasn't a fluke that she didn't recognize him,' Tsunade assumed quickly, averting her gaze. 'It's not real if he doesn't deal with it, in a way.'

Politely, she pretended not to notice the drop in his composure. There was no point in mentioning it. He was hardly going to fool anyone who knew them into thinking that he was really alright, and crying was hardly going to get what needed done or help keep the village in line. "I doubt it," Tsunade said wryly. "Not if you ask nicely."

Jiraiya was being a bit of a coward, but he probably wasn't wrong. It might be best not to surprise Aiko with too many new faces in a day, Tsunade figured. Waking up in the hospital would be overwhelming enough. She was hardly a mental health specialist who knew how best to approach someone best after an incident like yesterday's.

'Shizune probably already knows to contact a civilian specialist,' Tsunade decided. 'Probably several specialists, actually, since our worst casualties appear to be psychosomatic or otherwise non-physical.'

They didn't have the capacity for so many mentally compromised shinobi at the best of times. When their own specialists were among the injured, the lack was profound. Already making plans, she turned back to her work.

When she next woke, it was to the feeling of rough sheets under her bare legs, and some sort of strap over them. It felt much like the ones around her wrists. She tensed instantly, bewildered and frightened.

'What is going on—Where am I? Why am I tied down?'

"Aiko, are you up?" A female voice called out from somewhere behind her. Quick steps crossed what must be a hard floor. "I'll loosen those in just a minute. Sorry about that, but when Jounin last remember being in combat conditions and wake up to the sound of people moving around, the first reaction is hard on medics, to say it lightly. There's a lot of civilian nurses around helping and no one wants to get skewered."

'There's that name again,' she thought, mystified. Aiko, Aiko, Aiko. It didn't mean anything to her. That was supposed to be her name? At least it was inoffensive. She supposed it could belong to her.

The word Jounin, though, that was familiar. That was an upper-level ninja. She was an upper level ninja?

Funny. You'd think she'd remember a thing like that.

"We're actually in Otafuku Gai," the woman blathered on. Aiko cracked one eye open uncertainly to discover that a relatively young woman with short dark hair and a purple kimono was at her side. She flinched away, but all the woman did was reach out to tug on her restraints, fiddling with some type of buckle.

And god, she just wouldn't stop talking.

"Our hospital is in pretty poor condition, having been downtown. Tsunade-sama thinks that some of the lower level is salvageable, but it's obviously not anything approaching a sterile condition right now."

Did she ever get tired of hearing her own voice? If not, she could at least say something useful. Although that name was familiar. The grinning man had mentioned that name as well, before he'd gone tight-lipped and called for a medic. That had seemed like a good idea, until the split-second when she realized she was being put under with that irritating glowing palm technique.

"You'll be glad to know that there's very little in the way of casualties to speak of," the brunette chattered, pushing a bit of hair behind her ear as she finished freeing Aiko's hands. Aiko pushed herself into a seated position, warily keeping an eye on the older woman as she pulled a clipboard off the wall and settled down gracefully on a folding chair. "Nagato-san—oh right, you missed that part, but it turned out that the six Akatsuki were actually was one shinobi, Jiraiya-sama's old student Nagato-san from Ame."

'Well, that clears everything up,' Aiko thought dully. She was beginning to suspect that this woman wasn't going to be any help at all. At least she didn't seem dangerous, other than maybe dangerously crazy.

"Anyway, Nagato-san used a forbidden jutsu that brought back anyone who had died in the fighting, because he realized that destroying Konoha wasn't going to help matters. Tsunade-sama and Katsuya-sama did their best with the injuries, of course, because Nagato-san's technique didn't do anything for anyone who wasn't actually dead. There's… well there's one death." The chatty nurse- at least, she was probably a nurse- glanced down, looking a bit depressed.

Maybe she wasn't actually particularly talkative, Aiko judged. It could be that this nurse was going a bit stir-crazy from loneliness and was taking the chance to update someone as a break from work.

"How about the injured, then?" Aiko asked cautiously.

As she'd thought, the older woman seemed to need someone to talk to. Her face brightened a little, but she still looked more worn than her youth should have allowed. "For an invasion, it's without precedent," Chatty Nurse confided. "There's a lot of damage from smoke inhalation and broken bones, but other than that, the biggest problems we have are psychosomatic." She gave a sharp glance at Aiko's face that seemed to be searching for something, and her tone gentled slightly. "It's very traumatizing to remember losing a limb or dying."

Aiko nodded politely. That did sound traumatizing.

Something about her reaction must not have been what Chatty Nurse was looking for, because she frowned slightly and looked down at her clipboard. "How are you feeling? Any dizziness, aches, or disorientation?" she asked clinically.

She took a deep breath and brought her knees up to her chest, idly noting the ugly off-white hospital gown she was wearing. "I'm a little confused," Aiko admitted readily.

That was an understatement. She had no idea what the hell was going on and was feeling more than a little lost.

"Oh?" Chatty Nurse's eyes sharpened, and she looked up. "Do you not remember the fight, then? That's perfectly normal," she assured. "Sometimes, the brain protects itself by forgetting especially disturbing things."

'What, like my whole life?' Aiko thought bemusedly, not thinking much of this woman's analysis. Her skepticism must have shown, because a flicker of exasperation crossed the older woman's face.

"Jiraiya-sama said that you were disoriented. Do you remember that? I think he was the one who found you."

Aiko cocked her head to the side. "Who, the old man who gave me his coat?" she asked curiously.

The smile froze on the older woman's face. "Aiko-chan, do you know who I am?" When she slowly shook her head, Chatty Nurse took a moment to respond. "Alright then," she added lightly. The tenseness in her neck and the intensity in her eyes were completely at odds with her professional, warm tone. "Nothing to worry about. I'm Shizune, Tsunade-sama's first apprentice, and Sasuke-kun's senpai. As I said before, temporary memory loss is not an unheard-of side effect of encountering something a bit scary or overwhelming. Let me just run a few tests."

She didn't seem to have much choice. Aiko was beginning to feel more than a bit frightened, despite Shizune's assurances that things would work out. If that were true, she probably wouldn't keep repeating it.

"How many fingers am I holding up?"

That wasn't hard. Three. Thumbs aren't fingers.

Despite her cautious optimism at that victory, Shizune was surprisingly hard to read when Aiko tried to gauge her for clues. That seemed especially odd for someone who had initially seemed so bland and inoffensive. The other questions were harder. Aiko shook her head helplessly, feeling lost and confused when asked the year or the current Kazekage. Shizune's lips thinned ever so slightly. Then the tests she performed after that had more to do with running unnervingly chilly fingers over Aiko's scalp and talking about things that didn't make much sense.

Frankly, she had no idea why it would matter that the proportions of her spiritual and physical chakra weren't matching those of her old records. Shizune didn't seem to understand how that could happen. She seemed outright confused herself when her tests didn't show any signs of swelling or torn tissue in the brain or anywhere else.

"Don't worry," Shizune said unconvincingly. "Your chakra will probably stabilize itself given time. That might not be related, anyways. Retrograde amnesia isn't usually totally permanent." She fussed with the bedsheets, apparently very concerned that Aiko's feet might get cold. Aiko curled her toes in and tried to sink back into the bed. "If it doesn't come back on its own in a few days, then it can probably be triggered." She glanced up at Aiko with a reassuring smile that did nothing for the nerves roiling in her stomach. "Familiar people and things should help you start to remember."

Aiko made a noncommittal sound, biting the inside of her cheek.

'If that's true, why wouldn't I remember you? I'm seeing you now.'

That was paranoid. Wasn't it? Maybe. She didn't really have any reason to believe anything this woman said. She'd woken up in a place she didn't recognize after what had obviously been a fight… and then woken up again, tied down. That wasn't something you did to a person you trusted. What evidence indicated that she was who Shizune said she was? Maybe it was a mistake.

Or worse, maybe it wasn't. Aiko gave Chatty Nurse a queasy smile, feeling vaguely nauseous.

The older woman took some pity and left her alone for a while.

'A while' stretched into a day. The facility seemed quiet. It was apparently more of a clinic than a hospital—the civilian town she had been re-located to while unconscious wasn't prepared for mass injuries, apparently. A civilian nurse fed her and –mortifyingly- promised to help her bathe later despite protests that she didn't need to be supervised. But that was her only visitor and excitement in between Shizune's short visits. The older woman appeared busy and distracted, definitely not in a mood to indulge her questions.

It was terribly, coldly, horribly lonely.

That meant that she had an awful lot of time to do nothing but think. Try as she might, she didn't remember anything new. She was pretty used to her name now, but she didn't really feel a connection to it. None of the people that Shizune talked about –Tsunade, Jiraiya, Sasuke—jogged any connections. The scenery out her window was uninspired as well as unfamiliar.

'Is anyone looking for me?' She wasn't allowed to leave the room, but she couldn't stand to lie in bed all day. So she paced, feeling trapped and lost. Shizune had said she knew her. So someone would be coming for her. They would be familiar to her and things would be alright and she would know what was going on.

Even her body was foreign. Aiko spent hours staring at her hands once the cold from the tile floors seeped into her feet and forced her to curl up under blankets. She puzzled over why her hands seemed so odd to her. Carefully, she placed the tips of her fingers against her cheeks and rubbed, marveling at the sensation the movement elicited. They were ridiculously soft and smooth, with rounded nails and short fingers. Was that so strange?

'There's no callus,' she recognized, cataloguing an obvious deviation from the nurse's claim that she was a shinobi. Shouldn't she have callus if that were the case? The toes she wiggled were equally delicate-looking, but she couldn't find a trace of the scrape she remembered getting when she'd first woken up somewhere outside. So maybe she was just completely nuts and that was a false memory. She hoped not, and held onto it. It wasn't like she had many others.

The observation that she lacked callus was hardly a nail in the coffin of the story she'd been given, since she didn't fully trust her mind. Distrust in her perception was only fueled when she glanced at her upper arm in the shower, and had to blink twice at the pale skin. Once she realized that she had expected to see a tattoo, she knew her mind wasn't terribly reliable. Still, she'd scrubbed at the flesh as if hoping to uncover ink that would reinforce what her mind had expected. All she ended up with was sore, pink flesh and a loofah being gently pried out of her fingers.

She did have scars, which she counted as a point towards Shizune's story. When the light had been turned off and she was still alone and afraid, Aiko traced the curved imperfection below her ribcage curiously through the thin fabric of her hospital robe. She'd discovered that while in the shower but didn't have any more ideas about its origin than she did about the uglier, larger scar on her opposite hip.

Morning would bring answers. It had to.

But it didn't.

The side of her face was on fire. The skin was swelling and peeling open like a stepped-on grape and she knew her cheekbone would crack under the force and the pain was unimaginable, unbearable, unrealistic, rippling down to her lips and across her nose before she shattered entirely. And then Aiko woke up gasping.

She struggled for air, disoriented and still frightened. Until she realized that the dim red lights were from hospital machinery, and the slow tick outside in the distance was a hall clock.

"Just a dream," she whispered, curling her fingers into the messy sheets and resisting the urge to reassure herself by touching her face.

But what an odd dream. Where had her mind come up with the idea of her body bursting in slow motion? More than a little disturbed, Aiko slipped out of the covers and paced. She didn't dare turn on the light, knowing that there were probably nurses walking nearby on rounds. That meant that she stumbled and stubbed her toe in the dark, but it was better than getting scolded by some impersonal stranger.

As lonely and scary as it was to just wait for something to make sense or someone to come help her remember, she would have to be far more desperate for human company to intentionally coerce nurses for company. They didn't know her. They didn't want to spend time with her. They were doing a job. She wasn't that desperate.

'Not yet, anyway,' Aiko thought glumly. Maybe she would be not too long from now.

But no. 'I can't think like that. Shizune says she knows my friends. When I see her tomorrow, I'll ask. Maybe names will help.'

Still. She couldn't help but doubt. If someone cared she was here, where were they? Was the old man she'd seen when she had first woken up someone important to her? Aiko didn't remember feeling any connection to him. He'd definitely known her, though. Or he knew of her, at least. Maybe she should see if she could talk to Jiraiya.

Shizune didn't seem to think that was plausible when she came by.

"I'm sorry," she apologized, leaning over to adjust something on a machine that was totally foreign to Aiko. "He's with Tsunade-sama. I've been left in charge of the hospital affairs while they deal with Ame and coordinate restoration efforts. I already sent notification that you woke up, but I'm not sure he'll be able to come right away."

Shizune closed the door behind herself quietly, and tried not to feel guilty about lying. Jiraiya had met with her last night, actually, and taken back hospital reports to Konoha proper.

'He's not ready to actually talk to her,' she justified to herself. 'That's understandable. Jiraiya-sama has been throwing himself into his work, but he'll come around soon. Pressuring him to come too soon will just be a stressor for both of them."

There was nothing dignified about having his single remaining (and much diminished) path propel the wheeled chair that carried his body out of Fire Country. At this point, Nagato wasn't sure that he deserved dignity, but he was still quietly thankful that the Hokage hadn't cared enough to force him to bring his actual body into Konoha.

'It's a little hard to believe that's the woman that Jiraiya has been in love with since he was twelve,' Nagato mused. 'I had imagined someone a little less emotional and grudging.'

Not that she didn't have cause for upset, of course. He had done more than a bit of harm to her city and her people.

Bitterly, he laughed. It turned into a cough. Yahiko's lungs had been full of smoke and acid for a rather long time. 'Konoha hasn't been good to me either. I was wrong about their part in Yahiko's murder and our betrayal. But I'm sure they were the ones behind the rout in Ame.'

It hadn't been in terribly good faith of him since the surrender had been his own initiative, but he'd withheld information. When it had become clear that he couldn't have a true victory, he'd had to turn his thoughts to his responsibilities. Even if he had managed a pyrrhic victory, he would have left his followers to the meager mercies of Konoha's allies.

Nagato had overestimated himself. He had begun to believe in Pein on a literal level. It had seemed so straight-forward at the time. Konoha did not have any fighter of his caliber, so he had believed himself invincible.

'Foolish,' he cursed himself. 'A few shinobi who were as skilled as individual paths and a great deal more who were suicidally determined to stop me proved sufficient.'

That was why villages banded together, after all. Many weak worms could writhe in an ugly mass and accumulate the weight of a higher being.

Nagato tried not to frown when he caught on to the bitter tone of his thoughts.

'This childishness is below me.'

He thought that, but it didn't change that he had refrained from telling the Hokage anything about Uchiha Madara. That had been a bout of immaturity unworthy of him, but it was already done.

Konan would take care of matters. He was leaving everything to her.

"How long do you plan on watching me?" Nagato asked mildly. He hadn't been alone since he had passed out of Konoha's immediate border patrol route. If he were truthful, he was mildly surprised that his stalker had waited this long to show himself.

It wasn't possible to express a glower from behind a candy-colored mask. Somehow, Uchiha Madara accomplished it regardless. "Pein," he all but rumbled, clearly irritated.

"Nagato," he corrected mildly.

It was fairly obvious that Madara wouldn't care if he chose to call himself Princess Buttons.

Nagato repressed a sigh, having his path stop walking. Obediently, Yahiko's body stood silently and waited. He had known as soon as it became clear that he had failed that he had to die to open the way for Ame to forge a new path. It was the only way left that he could be of use.

He hadn't planned for that death to come at Madara's hands, but he was hardly surprised either.

Obito scowled, resisting the urge to shake the little bottle until the eyes inside pulped into jelly against the clear glass.

All those years of squirreling into Nagato's idiotic graces, manipulating the useless baka, and keeping him alive were wasted now. Nagato's only use had been that he had the one kekkai genkai that would make it possible for Madara to be raised from the dead to participate in the Eye of the Moon Plan. That was one of the most important steps.

Not for the first time, he thought longingly of forgoing the pretense that he was Madara's servant. He was an Uchiha too, and powerful in his own right. Obito could do it. The Rinnegan were powerful beyond all reason. In his hands, they would be far more fearsome than anything Pein could have dreamed up.

He couldn't get the job done alone, however. Obito would need help. His most dedicated helper, Zetsu, was only his ally because Obito was pretending to work towards Madara's interests. Without a chump to eventually play the role of the sacrifice (even if Obito never actually let matters deteriorate to that point) Zetsu would act against him.

The obvious answer was that Obito should find another disposable body to put the Rinnegan in. The disposable part was not a terribly difficult criterion. When he would be able to revive everyone with the ultimate genjutsu, there wasn't such a thing as a true loss. The more difficult conundrum was selecting the body. It was highly unlikely that he would actually let them raise Madara, but he had to act as though he would. That meant picking a viable target, someone who could actually use the Rinnegan properly.

Preferably, it would be someone he could easily control. Obito could use Sharingan mind control on anyone but another Uchiha, if matters became desperate.

It was a pity that the Rinnegan could only be wielded well by one of the sage's descendents. That ruled out the vast majority of the living population. Obito wouldn't have used Itachi in any case, petulant and paranoid as the boy was. He didn't need to be more powerful. But Sasuke would have been a reasonable substitute. Of course, he couldn't be reliably controlled with the Sharingan into compliance, and Obito couldn't afford another loose cannon with the Rinnegan. That lesson had been learned.

'Besides, I would have to pry him away from Senju Tsunade,' Obito noted with no small taste of amusement. No, thank you. That woman was more than a bit imposing.

She was another poor option, despite being the last of the Senju. Controlling a medic-nin renowned for her perfect chakra control and detail-oriented personality would be a risky proposition. That ruled out the two families directly descended from the Sage. Leaving only the family that Nagato had belonged to.

Obito left two mangled corpses and a broken metal chair on the road in favor of safely hiding away his newly acquired prizes. The Sharingan he had were valuable for both practical and sentimental reasons, but the Rinnegan were irreplaceable and one of a kind.

'Life goes on,' Obito thought wearily, not allowing himself to wallow.

Aiko sat up straight fast enough to make her a little woozy. She peered suspiciously at her closed door with pursed lips.

She smelled something that made her heartbeat speed up. It didn't even occur to her to wonder at the fact that she detected a change in the scent of the hallway a fair distance away, or even realize that her senses were far keener than they should be. Why shouldn't her senses be sharp? Of course, Aiko didn't know what she was smelling, either, so she was all-around clueless. Whatever it was, it was familiar somehow.

'Should I go look?' Uncertain, she lingered with her toes dangling to the floor for just a moment longer. That gave the man outside time to push her door open.

Her first look didn't give her any particular feeling. Not attachment or fondness or even the fear she had known at the sight of the last (and only other) man she remembered seeing. It was just a man—quite a bit taller than her, with fairly broad shoulders, dark hair, and a relieved look on his face.

She blinked, checking that her first impression had been right. Yes, it looked like relief.

"Aiko-chan," he breathed, one side of his mouth curling up ever so slightly. The other stayed stiff and still. "I suppose you don't remember me. How are you feeling?"

"Um, okay?" she half-asked, giving him a shy smile. Her first visitor! Shizune had said that someone would come. Relief bubbled up in her gut. She wasn't alone. No matter what the nurse had said, it had felt that way when no friends had conveniently welled up to greet her or take her home.

Honestly… She'd started to seriously consider that the woman had been lying. It begged disbelief that anyone and everyone who cared about her just happened to be absent from town for two whole days. Well. A day and a half, but still.

But here someone was, happy to see her and actually asking about her well-being. Besides, he obviously knew about her forgetfulness, and wasn't making her feel nervous or apologetic about it. He probably had answers for her.

"What's that?" Aiko asked curiously, pointing guilelessly at the paper that her new/old friend was clenching in his left hand. They were awfully wrinkled.

"Your medical information," he explained, oddly amused for some reason. "I didn't think it was a good idea to leave it here. We need to go."

At that, she paused. "Go where?" Aiko asked uncertainly. Could they really just check out? It seemed like something she would need Shizune's permission for. On the other hand, he seemed like he knew what he was talking about. That was probably how he got her information, come to think of it. He must have already talked to Shizune.

His eyelashes were long and pretty, she realized when he blinked slowly at her. Though there was something strangely asymmetrical about the way the skin on one side of his face moved when he smiled. "Do you trust me? There's a lot to tell you, but here isn't a good place to be."

That was an understatement, not that she knew it. He'd hypnotized Shizune in the nurse's station down the hall. Someone was going to notice that eventually, even if she didn't wake up on her own. Obito's hand shook imperceptibly as he slowly held it out, fingers splayed slightly.

The situation was perfect. Almost too perfect. Nervous energy had him nearly on the verge of fidgeting. Some kami had clearly sped his way. He'd been given a second chance to keep his plan on track, despite the loss of his decoy organization and most valuable chump. If he could just convince Aiko to trust him, he wouldn't have to genjutsu her into compliance. She would be an excellent decoy for his ambitions. She was the only option, really, and not only had she survived what appeared to have been a near-apocalypse in Konoha, but she was as vulnerable to a new worldview as a person could be.

He was doing an excellent job of not lingering on the guilty knowledge that Minato-sensei's children really deserved better. It was for a good purpose.

His eyes met hers, and Obito tried not to look too eager. He drowned out the sense that Madara was mocking him, ignored Tobi's chatter, and tried to look unintimidating. He all but sparkled with his obvious good mood, not a bit bothered by the blood on his sandals from his recent scuffle or the fact that he could sense a very familiar chakra signature far too close for comfort. All she had to do was say she trusted him.

Aiko took a deep breath, glanced down at her bare feet, and clearly struggled with indecision. But just for a moment. She peered up at him shyly and reached out one pale little hand to rest against his callused palm. Obito grinned.

"Hold on tight," he warned good-naturedly. "You don't like this technique much."

And then they were gone from the little trading town on the outskirts of Fire Country's foremost military power, only minutes before the alarm went off downstairs.

#vapors #uzumaki aiko #electrasev5n #ninja daily #fanfiction #naruto fanfiction

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eventcharts · 1 year ago

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'Mind-blowing' deep sea expedition uncovers more than 100 new species and a gigantic underwater mountain

A deep-sea expedition off the coast of Chile has uncovered a treasure trove of scientific wonders, including more than 100 previously unknown marine species and a handful of never-before-seen underwater mountains — the largest of which is around four times the size of the world's tallest building.

Mercury (science) square Ceto (oceanic anomalies (scientific wonders).

Incredible photos and video footage of the underwater landscape also showcase a menagerie of deep-sea weirdos, including intricate sponges, spiraling corals, a beady-eye lobster, a bizarre stack of oblong sea urchins and a bright red "sea toad" with hands for fins.

Between Jan. 8 and Feb. 11, researchers on board the Schmidt Ocean Institute's (SOI) research vessel Falkor (too) explored the seafloor off the coast of Chile. The expedition, named "Seamounts of the Southeast Pacific," focused on underwater mountains, or seamounts, in three main areas: the Nazca and Salas y Gómez ridges — two chains of more than 200 seamounts that stretch a combined 1,800 miles (2,900 kilometers) from Chile to Easter Island (also known as Rapa Nui); as well as the Juan Fernández and Nazca-Desventuradas marine parks.

In total, the researchers mapped around 20,400 square miles (52,800 square kilometers) of ocean.

These new, highly detailed maps revealed four previously unknown solitary seamounts. The biggest of these, which the team dubbed Solito — meaning "alone" in Spanish — towers 11,581 feet (3,530 meters) above the seafloor, making it more than four times taller than the world's tallest building, the Burj Khalifa, which stands at 2,716 feet (828 m) tall.

'Mind-blowing' deep sea expedition uncovers more than 100 new species and a gigantic underwater mountain https://www.livescience.com/animals/mind-boggling-deep-sea-expedition-uncovers-100-new-species-and-a-gigantic-underwater-mountain

Minor planet keywords developed by Philip Sedgwick, used with permission http://philipsedgwick.com/

Centaur, TNO & Asteroid Aspectarian http://serennu.com/astrology/aspectarians.php

#ceto

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equalstrashflavoredtrash · 5 years ago

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A Trip to the Market

WELP I JUST WENT AND WROTE A FIC FOR @cptnbvcks NOW SHE’S GOTTA FORGIVE ME FOR TALKING ABT FUCKING JAR JAR BINKS

This fic is really indulgent. Cus what this fandom totally needs is another fic abt groping in a cantina and then fuckin in alley. Anyway I hope you enjoy this horny mess i’ve made. This one’s for all my homies with thicc thighs! directily inspired by this post and then encougraged this idiot

Din DjarinX female!Reader (no y/n)//The Mandalorian

wordcount: 5.4k

warnings: SMUT, dom!Mando, bondage/ropes (not restraints tho), teasing, slight exhibitionism/sex in public, fingering, penetration, cockwarming, oral (f receving), some cum eating, aftercare, shibari **PLEASE NOTE: I DONT KNOW SHIT ABT SHIBARI, THIS FIC IS FANTASY, DO NOT USE IT AS A GUIDE. go learn abt it from someone who knows what they’re talking abt cus that’s not me lol

You hadn’t been sitting long when Mando arrived—crossing the threshold of the cantina exactly when he said he would, as punctual as ever. You watched as he surveyed the room, taking in every patron before moving from the entrance. He made his way across the dusty floor, his steps strong and sure as he approached your table.

Silently he slid in the booth, settling to sit directly next to you with his back to the wall. You had been mindful to choose a table in the back of the room, knowing his preference for positioning himself.

“Have a good morning?” He asked, the visor of his helmet tilting towards you ever so slightly.

“We did,” you smiled, thinking about the little green toddler before taking a sip of your drink as you shifted your weight, adjusting to be more comfortably seated—your surprise for Mando proving to make sitting for an extended period quite awkward. “We went for a walk along the river and caught some toads. Little guy was worn out by the time we got back so he’s down for a nap right now instead of coming along. Any luck finding the lead on that bounty?” You fiddled with the cup in your hand, rocking the bottom of it against the stained wooden table as he hummed in response, the sound coming across crackled through his helmet.

“No.” Mando’s answer was clipped and you could tell he was distracted. Unable to see his eyes, it was impossible to know exactly what he was looking at, but you’d bet all your credits he had finally noticed the creep at the bar.

From the moment you had walked in he’d been staring, watching intently as you ordered your drink and sat down to wait for the Mandalorian. The stranger wore a wide brim hat pulled low over his brow, shading his face in the already dimly lit cantina. You had been stared at plenty of times before, but usually they stopped once they caught a glimpse of the Mandalorian. This guy though, he had continued to keep his head turned squarely in your direction.

“I’ve just been ignoring him,” you stated as you nudged Mando’s elbow with your own, pulling his attention back to you.

“I know,” he replied, still looking out, watching the room. “As long as he doesn’t try anything.”

You watched out of the corner of your eye as Mando’s hand started to move, pulling away from where it rested on the tabletop. Situations like this with the creep were nothing new, and both you and Mando realized that sometimes, certain displays were effective in getting a message across to strangers that wouldn’t leave you alone. When you were making plans earlier with Mando over the com-link, he suggested meeting up at the cantina, and you wondered if something like this would happen—but as his hand landed on the bare skin just below the hem of your skirt, you suddenly didn’t care.

The worn leather of Mando’s glove cupped your knee, giving a small squeeze before continuing to drift along your thigh. You bit your lip, trying to hide your smile—there was a bubble of excitement in your chest that was not only your normal jitters from feeling Mando’s hands on you, but an eagerness for him to discover…

His pinky bumped into it first. You could tell he had noticed by the way his touch hesitated before continuing. Once the rest of his fingers slid further up, stroking over each ridge of the eight woven cords binding around your thighs, his helmet spun around—his neck snapping to face you. You tried to flash him a face of innocence as if you had no idea why you suddenly had the ever-vigilant Mandalorian’s undivided attention.

Looping a finger through one one of the bands wrapped around your legs he tugged, feeling the soft give of your flesh against the coarse material. “Are these ropes?” he asked, his voice sounding low through the vocoder as the visor stayed even, trained on you. You could almost feel his gaze boring into you like blaster fire, watching for even the slightest hint of a tell.

“Uh-huh,” you confirmed with a quick nod. “Tied it myself.”

“I want to see—”

“No!” You spoke quickly, hands jumping to grab his forearm as you interrupted him before remembering to keep your voice low. “Mando, there’s people watching.” You raised your eyebrows, trying to make your point clear but you felt his touch tracing along the crisscrossing cords, following how they snaked around your curves.

You had taken your time before leaving the Razor Crest, starting at your waist and then moving to twist the rope to wrap around each leg four times. The loops were spaced evenly along outside of your thigh, crisscrossing into an alluring woven pattern that drew in towards your center. It had been a spur of the moment idea, a fun way to surprise the Mandalorian—and you were happy with the results so far. You felt secure with the cords winding around your hips and you knew he also enjoyed when you were bound like this—even if it was unusual for you to tie them yourself.

But Mando didn’t like your answer. Seeing his face wasn’t necessary to know he was annoyed, you could feel the warning in the way his hand tensed.

With a gulp you finished off your drink and left the empty cup on the table before moving away from him, scooting out of the booth. He didn’t try to hold you in your seat, letting your legs slide from under his hands. Gathering your things, you draped the strap of your messenger bag over your shoulder so the leather crossed your chest, resting comfortable between your breasts.

“I have a few errands I want to run, see if I can find one of those valves and maybe get some food.” You tried to keep your expression nonchalant, attempting to sound candid and not react to the way Mando was watching you. It was hard to tell just where he was looking but you were sure he was imagining you without your flowy orange sundress.

“Fine,” he sighed, his voice sounding like a huff through the distortion of the hemlet. Mando rose from his seat, standing over you before he gestured for you to lead the way.

You couldn’t remember the last time Mando had walked beside you. Usually he trailed two paces behind, keeping you directly in his range of vision as he scanned the surroundings—always on alert incase of a surprise—but now he stayed close, his shoulder occasionally bumping yours until he raised his hand to rest on the small of your back.

His fingers stroked along your hips—something small that seemed like an affectionate caress at first, but he was searching. Once he found the bump from the rope that looped around your middle under the fabric of your dress, he thumbed at it, idly strumming—and training your thoughts on his touch.

You tried to ignore him, searching the stalls as you moved through the open air market. Stepping away from his grasp, you approached a vendor, interested in the fruits they were selling. His hand had fallen from your back but Mando stayed within arm’s reach.

The Mandalorian appeared stoic as ever as you attempted to barter with the middle aged man who stood across the table of produce. The vendor had no way of seeing how Mando’s hand danced around the hem of your skirt behind you—the occasional brush of his fingertips against the back of your leg, or the way he would pinch and tug at your dress distracting you from the conversation at hand. His efforts paired with the language barrier lead you to struggle communicating and eventually give up, waving your hands and walking away.

Mando followed, ever the sentinel at your heels, until you halted to face him.

“Cut it out,” you hissed, feeling a familiar heat creeping into your cheeks from behind your ears. You wondered for a moment if he could tell—he mentioned once his visor had a sensor for changes in body temperature.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” His helmet dipped, looking at you as he continued with a professional tone, “I’m just making sure you’re safe. We’re on a new planet, in a strange town surrounded by people. I think it’s prudent I stay close, don't you?”

With a huff you spun on your heel—if he was going to play it like that you’d have your own fun. As you turned you tried to add as much of a twist as you could, knowing well the way the dress’ light fabric flounced with abrupt movements. A subtle fling of your hand guided it to billow and lift, catching the air to reveal just enough. He most likely only saw the briefest glimpse of what you were hiding but you knew that was ample fodder.

You weren’t able to move quickly, the reality of wearing ropes wound around the apex of your thighs while walking in a humid climate was starting to make itself known—and just the feeling of Mando’s hands on you had been exciting enough to make you wet, a fact that was more apparent due to your lack of underwear.

It wasn’t long until Mando was on you again, his touch was more brazen; resting his palm over your ass rather than repeating the glancing touches from before. Reaching back you grabbed at his wrist and pulled his arm forward, hooking your elbow around his to hold him close and keep his wandering touch in place.

Spotting a vender with barrels of grain you steered Mando in her direction, knowing your pantry could always use more rice. This seller was an older woman and knew enough Universal Basic that you were able to discuss prices without much difficulty. As you went back and forth with the vendor, going through the ritual of haggling down to an agreement, you felt Mando’s arm slip away but paid it no mind.

It wasn’t until you turned to Mando to ask if he wanted beans too or not that you noticed he wasn’t there. Frantically you checked over your other shoulder then spun around, searching for the crowd for a glint of his beskar reflecting in the bright sun, but there was nothing, not a single piece of reflective metal in sight. Why would he just walk off without telling you?

Returning to look at the venor, you frantically tried to think how to simply ask for her help. “Please, did you see my—,” Fuck, what do you call Mando? Your boss? Your friend? “The Mandalorian, did you see where he went?” The woman didn’t seem at all concerned by your worried expression as she gestured to the alley around the side of the building she was set up in front of. “Thank you!” You called over your shoulder, already leaving to follow him.

“Mand—,” you started as you rounded the mudbrick corner, halting midstep as you spotted him. Mando was standing face to face with the creep from the bar. You had no clue what they were discussing but it was obvious to you that The Mandalorian was not about to fight him. His posture was relaxed, shoulders rolled back with his thumbs hooked around his belt buckle to rest his arms. If there was the possibility of something happening Mando’s hand would be much closer to his blaster.

Just as you had begun to will your feet to move, Mando and the stranger clasped each other’s forearms and let go, then the stranger then handed something off before turning away. Passing you as he made his exit, the man you had originally thought of as some creep gave you a friendly nod and smile.

“What was that about?” You asked as you stopped next to Mando, still watching the retreating figure over your shoulder.

“The lead I’ve been looking for.” Turning around you noticed what he had been given: a tracking fob with the light still blinking. “Apparently he’s been following me all day, watching. Heard me talking to you, that’s how he knew to be at the cantina.”

“Did you know someone was following you?”

“Of course,” Mando stated, tucking the device away safely into one of his many pouches. Suddenly his on edge behavior all day made a little more sense.

“Well, now that’s all settled,” You began, making to leave the shadowy alley and return to the market. “The lady at the stall was offering an extra half pound of beans for a reduced price if I—”

Mando stopped you mid sentence and stride by a single finger hooked around the rope—keeping you from moving forward in a lazy hold. “We’re not done here,” he admonished, jerking your hips back with a quick tug for added emphasis.

Your body’s reaction to his voice was instant; you could feel a hard pulse of want in your pelvis as he grabbed at your skirt. Bringing your hands to the strap of your bag, you nervously fiddled with it at the center of your chest, fighting the urge to stop his wandering touch even though you were aware of the constant threat of someone walking around the corner.

Mando continued to hold your skirt up with one hand—the fabric balled in a fist he kept resting in the small of your back—as the other dropped. His fingers traced along the ropes, following one from your hips down your thigh before returning back up to grab you ass and moving on to the other thigh. He seemed to be mapping every inch with his touch before he wrapped his fist around the cord at the side of your hip and pulled you to turn around.

Letting out a soft ‘oh’ in surprise you stumbled, falling back slightly until your shoulder blades bumped into the stone wall. “Hold your skirt up,” he ordered, his visor dipping to watch your hands as you grabbed the hem and lifted it like a curtain, unveiling your gift for him. Your cheeks were burning, embarrassed to be doing something so brazen in public, but all you wanted was for him to touch you. You made to press your thighs—the urge to rub them together not even conscious of you—but your skin stung, red and raw from the damp friction, it had begun to chafe. Though you reacted to the pain, separating your legs a little bit more, it sent an exciting tingle through your limbs, adding to the fire burning low in your belly.

With both of his hands available now, Mando started at your waist, trailing over the crisscrossing bindings while his thumbs gently rubbed at the woven design. He came to the loops secured around your outer thighs and his fingers hovered for a moment before hooking underneath.

Gripping the cords, he easily lifted you up off your feet.

Gasping you wavered, off balance and hanging a few inches over the ground. One of your hands dropped your skirt, flying up to brace yourself against his currias as your feet swung, looking for purchase. He held you in the air for a solid moment—the ropes pulling but not biting at your skin due to the harness evenly supporting your weight.

Dropping you to the ground he let out a hum, his hands cupping your hips. “Not bad.”

“Not bad? I think I did pretty well!” You countered, smacking your palm flat against his beskar in protest.

“Your knots need work.” Mando reached to your waist, easily undoing the fastening at the front. “And it’s loose.” Holding the tails in his left fist, he grabbed at the leading lines, giving each a tug hard enough to move your hips as he tightened what he could before finishing with his own knot, pulling three times to secure it. Reaching back to your sides he tested the ropes again, pulling to check they were just right. “If you keep them tight, it won't rub your skin raw as you walk.”

You simpered, biting your lip as you looked away, you had really been hoping he hadn’t noticed, but of course he did—Mando is nothing if not observant.

This time when he gave a hard jerk to spin you around against the wall, you weren’t caught off guard and managed to brace yourself with your hands on the bricks as he pressed up against you. Mando’s hips were flush against your ass, the hard ridge of his cock rubbing along you through the canvas of his trousers.

“Your ass looks so good tied up like this.” Mando’s voice was low, close behind your ear. “All pinched and round, just for me.” His hands traveled around your hips as he leaned back, keeping his erection against you as he squeezed and played with your bottom. You yelped as he gave your left cheek a hard smack, realizing that he had taken his gloves off. He pulled his hips away as his hand slid down between your legs. Letting out something like a whimper at the loss of contact, it quickly morphed into a moan as his thick fingers easily pushed between your lips. You shuddered at the contact, the shock of him finally touching you running up your spine to tingle at the base of your skull as your fingers gripped at the stones before you.

“You like walking around like this don’t you? All bound and teasing me.” Mando’s voice was deep, coming from somewhere in his chest as he rambled. He knew what his dirty talk did to you and you were sure he could feel the effects now—his fingers pressed against your hole as it fluttered. “It’s obvious how much you love this; you’re dripping,” his tone was chiding but light as his touch swirled around your pussy, showing just how wet you had gotten.

You tried to stay still, pressing yourself against the wall as the rough texture of the bricks dragged against your nipples through the thin fabric of your dress. The sound of Mando playing with your drenched heat was audible over the background hum of the market twenty feet away.

Mando knew what he was doing, teasing you by gliding his fingers everywhere but your clit—you were so worked up that you might cum if he did and he realized this. “So wet, and it got all over the ropes. I bet you’re sore.” His hand pulled away, making a notable squelch as his fingers left your pussy to stroke along your bound inner thighs, spreading your slickness even further and making a mess. “And now you have to walk all the way back to the Razor Crest.”

Once he had finished wiping his hand on your legs, you watched, your cheek still pressed against the wall with eyes half dazed glancing over your shoulder, as he pulled his gloves back on.

“No-o,” you whined pathetically in protest once you fully realized what he was saying. “I was so close, you can’t stop.”

Mando gave your ass—which was still pointed out, your back curled so he had easy access to you—another hard slap before pulling your skirt down over your bottom, hiding the rope harness again. “We need to start moving if we want to get back and have time to fuck before the little one wakes up.”

Through you grumbled out an agreement, you apparently still weren’t moving fast enough for Mando, who grabbed your waist and pulled you up straight, pivoting you to face forward as you kept trying to adjust your dress.

He kept his palm flat against you, resting between your shoulder blades, while exiting the alley way. The sudden light of the sun after being in the shade hurt your eyes. Holding up a hand you tried to shield your face and let Mando guide you until you could see again. Squinting, it took a second to realize why he had stopped.

Standing in front of the same stall from before, Mando spoke up saying something you didn’t understand but the woman pulled up a second sack and began filling it with the beans she had been offering you.

Confused you looking up at Mando and found his helmet turned towards you. “You have the credits,” he said evenly, giving away nothing—his voice sounding as unemotional as ever though his hand on your back was stroking small soothing circles into your skin.

“Oh right,” you mumbled, quickly twisting to search in your shoulder bag for the little purse of metal currency. As you handed the money to the woman—who seemed to take in your flushed cheeks and how close The Mandalorian was standing, before giving you a knowing smirk—Mando hoisted the sack of rice and beans that had been tied together over his shoulder. With a nod he said one more thing which the woman repeated back before he was leading you into the crowd of the market.

Each step you took was careful—cautious to avoid irritating your skin further—focused more on your gait than where you were going as Mando led you through the throng of people who parted easily for the armored man.

“You speak the language here?” You finally asked, looking up at his beskar helmet as you furrowed your brow.

“Only a little bit.”

“And you let me make a fool of myself in front of that fruit seller, while you were pinching my ass?” You were peeved with him but you still wondered what his expression was under there—was he wearing some cheeky grin, thoroughly entertained by your frustrations?

Instead his head turned towards you as he simply replied, “It was cute.”

A hint of a laugh came through the vocoder though, you were sure of it.

+++... .... .. -... .- .-. ..+++

Returning to the Razor Crest the first thing you did was flop into a chair by the makeshift dining table that had been cobbled together as the number of residents on the ship grew. Mando was gone without a word, disappearing into the cockpit with a swish of his cape.

You watched as he climbed the ladder until he was out of view before checking your thighs. With gentle taps you tested the patches of red skin, hissing slightly as you brushed against the largest welt. Luckily the damage was not as bad as you feared and would heal quickly. Carefully you ran your finger along the ropes, feeling just how damp and sticky they had gotten from your excitement.

“How’re you feeling?” Mando’s voice spooked you, making you suddenly aware of his presence as your head shot up and your knees snapped closed. He stood nearby, holding a small jar you recognized as the bacta-ointment he uses on burns and rashes.

“Not nearly as bad as I thought, I should be fine.” You gave him a warm smile as he crossed the grated floor, setting the first aid down as he came to stand in front of you.

“Are you good to keep going? I checked on the little womp rat, he’s still snoring.” Mando’s fingers brushed lightly along the edge of your hand, sending tingles up your arm from the briefest touch.

You bit your lip and nodded, looking up at him through your lashes as you replied, “I am,” but before you could even finish the short confirmation he was already grabbing at you��hoisting you onto the wobbly table by your upper arms.

The jar of bacta clattered onto the floor, mindlessly shoved out of the way. You gasped while Mando practically ripped your dress up over your head, his eagerness to see you nude overriding any caution. Trying to find your balance, you braced yourself with both arms behind you, holding you up right as he grabbed your left leg, bringing it up so your ankle rested on his shoulder.

Sitting on the table like that with your legs spread, you were fully on display for Mando. He let out an approving growl, something that vibrated out from behind his ribs as he made quick work of shedding his belt. You felt a low throb, your pussy begging for him to fill you as you watched him undress.

The head of his cock was almost purple when he pulled it out, precum leaking from the tip. With a swipe between your lips that was too quick to be any kind of satisfying, he gathered your juices on his fingers, and spread your slick along his shaft.

“Mando,” you pleaded, dragging out the last syllable of his nickname into a whine. “I need you inside of me, please.”

He didn’t hesitate, done with teasing you. Mando lined himself up with your center and pushed. His cock filled you quickly, stretching your walls to take his girth but finding no resistance in the abundant lubrication.

“By the Maker,” he hissed, his voice husky even with the distortion and static as he paused, holding in place to enjoy the way your pussy hugged him. “How are you so tight and so wet?” You felt another throb at his words, tensing around him as he spoke.

“It’s because your cock is so fu-fucking bi-ig.” You tried to banter, counter his comments but the way his cock pressed inside you—prodding at your very end—got in the way of you forming coherent thoughts.

With a deep groan, Mando started to move, pulling out as you whimpered. He held your waist, fingers gripping at your bindings when he thrusted back into you. Wasting no time, he settled into a brutal pace, fucking you hard with such a convenient handle. You moaned and shuddered, your own hips matching his movements, chasing the tension you could feel building in your core as his cock dragged inside you. You tried to hold yourself up against the table but you were tired and your arms quickly got sore.

“Mando—,” you interrupted, placing a hand on his chest to catch his attention. He halted abruptly, his visor snapping up from where he’d been watching your pussy take him to your eyes. “Flip me over,” you requested, your voice airy but loud enough for him to hear.

His breathing was heavy, little puffs coming from his helmet as he nodded. Pulling again on the ropes he rolled you onto your front, drawing your hips back from the edge before sinking into you with ease. You let out a low moan, the head of his cock bumping into that wonderful spot deep inside of you with every thrust from this angle. He continued, ruthlessly pounding into you without mercy as he held onto the cords around your waist for leverage—there wasn’t much more you could do besides take him, letting him fuck you as he pleased.

Your orgasm was building, you could feel your scalp tighten and your toes curl, your muscles tensing, preparing as you approached the crest. You weren’t aware you were talking but you could hear your voice begging him to keep going, don’t stop. At the encouragement he doubled his efforts, leaning forward so his hand rested next to your head. He was hitting deeper than ever with this position and you felt yourself let go with a wail.

“Fu-uck,” Mando moaned in your ear, the curve of his helmet over his brow dropping to rest against your temple. He went stiff above you and you could feel the way his cock pulsed inside you, spilling his cum as your walls rhythmically clenched tight, convulsing around him.

The two of you stayed like that for a moment, silently basking in the afterglow of your shared orgasms while your breathing leveled. Mando’s broad form covered you as he kept you pinned against the table top. He held himself up slightly, balancing on one elbow close enough you could feel his armor brush against your shoulder blades with each inhale.

You kept your eyes closed, enjoying the security of lying beneath his protective body—nothing could hurt your right now with him both above and inside you.

His free hand began to roam, gliding along your ribs before approaching the ropes at your waist. His fingers followed the cords around to your front, coming to rest at the fastened knot just below your belly button.

Without needing to see, Mando was able to nimbly undo the knot, prising the right tails to loosen it’s hold. He continued to tug and pull, unraveling the harness as much as he could before rising from on top of you.

You were disappointed as the cool recycled air of the hull moved in to wrap around you, filling in where he had been. Shivering slightly, you cracked an eye open. Mando knelt behind you—both hands bare—as he carefully unwound the ropes, taking every caution to not irritate your skin more than it already was.

Once your hips were free he tossed the bundle to the side before gathering the bacta-ointment from where it had rolled off to. He stopped for a moment, staring at your thighs and you wondered if he liked the textured imprints the harness had left behind. Scooping up the cream with three fingers, he gently smoothed it across your affected skin. The contact of the cold ointment was shocking at first contact—you gasped and wiggled, but Mando’s wide hand gripped your thigh to keep you still.

He took his time spreading it across your skin—rubbing it in more than you were sure was necessary, covering every inch where the rope had been, not just your inner thighs—before his touch found your pussy again. You couldn’t help but flinch as his fingertips bumped against your clit, still sensitive after the orgasm.

“You’re so wet still,” he intoned, quietly speaking more to himself than you before he picked up his voice. “Close your eyes and don’t open them.”

You knew what this meant and obliged without hesitation, squeezing your eyelids shut before bringing a hand to cover your face as added protection.

You heard an audible hiss and click that you recognized as the release mechanism of his helmet. There was a tingle that ran up your limbs at the sound, an excitement that raced from the tips of your fingers and toes to your core because you knew that noise heralded his lips on you.

His hands grabbed at your ass, parting your cheeks to give him the perfect view of his cum dripping from your hole. Though you were expecting it, you were not prepared. His warm mouth connected with your pussy, immediately lapping at your juices. Flattening his tongue he drew it along your slit, catching every drop he could while brushing at your clit.

You moaned loudly at the stimulation, every touch feeling more vivid with your lack of sight. There was no way for you to watch him, but you could still listen—hearing the obscene slurps as he reveled in your cunt, as if he was doing this more for his pleasure than yours.

Mando’s tongue toyed with your nub, making your knees tremble as that feeling deep in your belly began to quickly bubble up. You called his name as your free hand flew back to grab at him. Sealing his lips around your clit, he sucked while sinking two thick fingers into your blushed hole.

Your fist clenched around his hair, tugging hard, but that only seemed to encourage him. One of his hands pumped into you, his finger curling just right to press down on that spot inside you, as the other gripped your hips—hard enough you were sure it would bruise—holding you against his face while he smothered himself between your lips.

You moaned and writhed against the table before crumpling under his ministrations. Yelling into your palm you came hard and all over his face. He continued to finger you, feeling the way your walls clenched around him as if drawing his digits further into your channel before the contact became all too much. Every brush was over stimulating, your hips involuntarily jerking away from him and into the table’s edge until he pulled back.

Limp against the surface, you couldn’t move—only able to take deep breaths as your heart pounded—your hand still clamped tight over your eyes until you hear Mando give the ok.

You can hear him shifting around, standing up and gathering his helmet before his unmodulated voice commented, “Once you’re all healed, you need to show me how you tied that. I want to see how long you can hang in it.”

///

THANKS FOR READING I HOPE YOU ENJOYED THIS DAY DREAM

(￣y▽,￣)╭

TAGOS: @pascalisthepunkest @whenimaunicorn @cptnbvcks @no-droids @rzrcrst @readsalot73 @spacegayofficial @lannister-slings-and-arrows @libellule2001 @nolivingthingdroid @chelsfic @lizzabex @hopelikethesun @themandjalorian @stevieharrrr @magichandthing

#the mandalorian #din djarin #the mandalorian x reader #din djarin x reader #din djarin x you #my writing

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self-sealing-stembolt · 4 years ago

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Pls Lower Decks my only wish is space dragons

So... remember how Spock has canonically seen dragons

[Image Descriptions are below the cut]

Most fans seem to forget (probably because this information was way less wild than space flower pollen turning him straight in that episode) BUT DRAGONS EXIST ON BARENGARIUS VII

T’Pol also mentioned these in Enterprise and says they breathe fire, but we never got to see them. Still, there were a bunch of other dragons in TAS (which is arguably canon) since it could get more creative with aliens/sets than the live-action shows

These days live-action Trek actually has a proper cgi budget but... it takes itself a bit too seriously for dragons. Lower Decks embraces the weirdness and is exactly the kind of show you’d expect an obscure callback from

My point is that Lower Decks could totally show us these forbidden space dragons and it’s probably never happening but I have been dying to know what they look like for years

[Image Description for picture 1: four screenshots from the episode “This Side of Paradise” arranged in one picture. Spock lies in Leila’s lap in a sunny field. They look up at the clouds together and talk.

Spock, pointing up: “You see the tail and the dorsal spines?”

Leila: “I’ve never seen a dragon”

Spock puts down his arm.

Spock: “I have.”

A communicator beeps but they both ignore it.

Spock: “On Barengarius 7.”

It beeps again and they still ignore it.]

[Image Description for pictures 2, 3, and 4: three screenshots from Star Trek: The Animated Series each showing a different dragon-like creature.

The top image shows monitor displaying a large red dragon typical of medieval European fantasy with two heads and two tails. It sits on a picknick blanket in a grassy field with two Starfleet officers, Alice and the White Rabbit from Alice in Wonderland, and a few food items. It has a pleased expression on both its faces.

The middle image shows a creature with a green lizard-like face, yellow eyes, a pink horn on its forehead, and a red snake-like body with a white belly. Blue feathered wings sprout from halfway down its back and from the sides of its tail. A purple flower-like collar divides its head and body. It hovers in the air and faces the camera with its wings spread. In the foreground are two alien creatures in glass cages: a red toad-like creature and a purple snail-like creature.

The bottom image shows a purple flying creature with two bat-like wings but no arms, legs, or tail. It has yellow eyes and a pointed open beak showing a pink tongue. Its neck has multiple ridges and sharp spikes, and it makes up half its body’s length.]

#star trek #star trek lds #lower decks #dragons #star trek tos #star trek tas #my stuff

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cordelia-speaks · 6 years ago

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Name: Cordelia Nostam

Age: 16

Pronouns: she/they but doesn’t especially care if others are used

Sexuality: lesbian, but she doesn’t know it yet. Kind of in that “oh of course I like boys i'm just busy,” phase

Sylph Type: Cockatrice! Because there are a lot of different physical versions of em, here's basically what i mean: head/neck/front legs like a hippogriff, wings that are feathered while also ridged somewhat like a bat’s, bottom of the torso and tail is a snake. Dark red feathers and kind of mossy grey-brown-green scales, with the occasion shoot of red or brighter green

Hair color: really dark brown looks black in some lightings

Hair style: straight but very thick, hangs past her shoulders, always down

Eye color: warm yellow (sylph), ????? (human)

Height: 5’3 (human); 7’2 (sylph) standing normally on all fours (two legs and a tail technically but shhhh), rearing up would be 16’8, full length is 50’4

Build: scrawny and kind of wiry, (human), a terrifying bird-lizard-snake (sylph)

Clothes: wears black cargo pants and a variety of grey shirts. In colour, not style- they are all long-sleeved. Black cloth gloves, mirror glasses, worn but overall good shape sneakers, a dull green backpack.

Occupation: Local Cryptid in a town of Cryptids. It’s a tough job.

Personality: Cordelia is desperate for friendship and genuine companionship, but she’s also deathly afraid of living creatures, for a myriad of reasons. So even while she can’t help but reach out to those around her, she does it in a very strange way, quiet and on high alert for any aggression.

Cordelia is very anxious, and occasionally comes across as paranoid.

She likes to just have things, like little rocks and smashed figurines, and to take the time to look at the people and scenery all around her.

Pretends to think she's better than everyone else in an almost subconscious bid for others to hate her- self sacrificing bastard

For a girl who lives in the woods? Not at all feral. Probably the least feral person you’ll ever meet, Cordelia just doesn’t let herself.

Backstory: Hatched from an egg laid by a rooster and incubated by a toad (so no parents) Cockatrices are rare and really good at killing things, so Cordelia got a lot of people trying to make her do what they wanted and/or trying to kill her. Was essentially on the run for 15 years, came to earth as an escape. Has killed a few people when they got really, really, close to catching her, but never on accident. But only because she knows how easy it would be.

Important or additional information: unreasonable (at least at first) attachment to Jay because he’s a bird and an adult. Subconscious recognizes him as Father Figure (in a bird way though not in a human way, it’s much more chill than that).

She’s jewish!

Birthday is November 28

Befriended a group of weasels

Lives in a cave

Smashes figurines she got from the Cryptonomica, the ones that look like the sylphs who hurt her.

Has a lot (a LOT) of cool rocks in her cave

Stays in Sylph form whenever alone in the woods, which mama hates her for.

#Cordelia #fellow keplerians #yeehaw #ocs #kepler oc #bio

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bolddeducktionneverfails · 6 years ago

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The Depths of "Gander": What's Going On Here?!

Whenever I’m asked what my favorite DuckTales episode is, I always immediately want to say “House of the Lucky Gander!”. Not just because it was a fun episode to watch, but it premiered during such a great time.

Disney XD was airing the first season out of order and that disrupted the flow between globe-trotting episodes and the Duckburg episodes. It also affected the amount of screen-time certain characters were given. Some viewers were convinced the show was beginning to focus too much on Webby and expressed their disappointment over the lack of Scrooge and Donald. In addition to this, there were also complaints about Launchpad's character being too dumbed down after “Terror of The Terra-firmians!” aired.

But when “Gander” premiered, it attended to these problems: This was a globe-trotting episode; something we haven’t seen since “Woo-oo!”. Both Scrooge and Donald were present, we got to see a Duck Family relative and we were suddenly let in a little on Launchpad's past! It was wonderful! Perhaps Disney Channel realized that the viewers were upset, because “The Infernal Internship of Mark Beaks!” was originally set to air on that date. There was a change in scheduling five days prior and because of this, Disney XD Canada, who’s schedule is supposed to mimic the U.S. version of the channel, ended up showing “Internship” anyway. The networks later flip-flopped the airings for the two episodes the following week. Heh, that was interesting.

...But, yeah! I was so shocked by Launchpad's side-quest! It left me with so many questions! Like “what was that all about?!” and “why didn't we get to see what happened?”. The more I thought about it, I began to wonder about the significance of Gladstone’s side of the story as well. I was hoping that we would get to see LP go on another side-quest some episodes later and get to see the action we missed out on! But the season ended without returning to this aspect.

Then about a year later, “The Depths of Cousin Fethry!” aired, and much to my delight, we got to see Launchpad go off on another secret adventure! Along with other similar elements to “Gander”! But, yet again, we didn't get to see what that adventure looked like. Everyone was so confused about this. Why did he go on another adventure we weren't allowed to see? What was the point of bringing this idea up a second time if it isn't going anywhere?

After comparing the two episodes and looking back at my theories, I think I know what the show-runners could be trying to do with these stories:

I think they're indirectly giving us information on Della's situation and how her return might play out.

⁽ᴵ ᵏⁿᵒʷ, ᴵ ᵏⁿᵒʷ, ᴳᶦᵖʰʸ ʷᵃˢⁿ'ᵗ ᶜᵒⁿᵛᵉʳᵗᶦⁿᵍ ᵗʰᵉ ˢᶜᵉⁿᵉˢ, ᴵ ʰᵃᵈ ᵗᵒ ᶠᶦⁿᵈ ˢᵒᵐᵉᵗʰᶦⁿᵍ ᵉˡˢᵉ. ᴹᵃʸᵇᵉ ᴵ'ˡˡ ᶜʰᵃⁿᵍᵉ 'ᵉᵐ ˡᵃᵗᵉʳ.⁾

Both “Gander” and “Depths” follow the same formula:

The family goes on an adventure to see a Duck relative (more specifically, a Duck Cousin)

The featured relative is compared to one of the kids

Dewey wants to name something after himself

Launchpad goes on his own adventure involving someone he previously dated

We can use this as a base to help us determine what could happen in the future.

The Family Goes On An Adventure to See A Duck Relative

“Gander” opens up with the Sunchaser flying though a starry, night sky accompanied by a large, full moon. The family has just arrived to the distant land of Macaw to answer Gladstone’s call for help. Originally, they were on their way to go to the Temple of The Golden Cricket, the home of a legendary insect that emerges every fifty years, but it was decided to attend to this family matter along the way.

When they find Gladstone in the hotel, he appears to be fine and claims that he just wants to hang out with his family. This is a cover for bigger reasons because he knows the owner of the hotel, Toad Liu Hai, and his staff are lurking around; keeping Gladstone in check. Since the beginning of the episode, Scrooge looked down at Macaw because he believed it was full of empty distractions. He constantly tries to mosey the kids over to the hotel exit so they can get back to the main adventure, but Toad Liu Hai keeps obscuring their path and reeling them back in with food and entertainment.

Later on, it turns out that Toad Liu Hai is an immortal being who has trapped Gladstone within his domain solely for the purpose of feeding off of his good luck. Donald fusses at his cousin after this reveal: “We came out here to help you and you put the family in danger!” The two of them are forced to participate in a challenge where the winner is freed and the loser has to stay trapped forever. Gladstone, of course, strolls through the course with no problems while Donald struggles to keep up. Just before Donald can give up on winning, he finds a new found strength in Louie’s words of encouragement that helps him to plow through all the obstacles and past the finish line; all while Gladstone gets distracted by a twenty dollar bill like in the montage from earlier in the episode.

Toad Liu Hai is about to reclaim Gladstone as his prisoner, but Scrooge thinks quickly and deceives the vampire into thinking Donald was the luckier one for winning. Louie is very upset with Scrooge’s decision; someone he admired and trusted, just carelessly handed his uncle over to someone evil! But Louie soon saw that this was all according to plan; Donald’s luck was so awful, that Toad Liu Hai and his entire tourist trap disintegrated! Both of the Duck Cousins are saved! The family get back in the Sunchaser to visit the temple like they originally intended and Gladstone sails away on a yacht.

“Depths” opens up with Huey doing something seemingly trivial and nerdy. He’s determining the age of a tree trunk in Scrooge's office by observing its rings. Dewey, who was interrupted from his bath to watch his brother do this, is bothered. He was hoping to see something exciting; something worth dragging him out of the tub for. Soon after, the office receives a call from Cousin Fethry, who’s been living in Scrooge's underwater lab for the past four and a half years. It's an invitation to meet him in the deep, dark and distant waters of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. He's made an exciting discovery and wants to share it with his family. Scrooge and Donald encourage the boys to disregard Fethry's call because he has the tendency to exaggerate the urgency of his findings. Every time they visit him, the discovery ends up being something silly that wasn't worth the dangerous adventure. The boys aren't convinced and answer the call anyway.

They trick Launchpad into stealing the submarine by claiming Scrooge wants them to “test the equipment” and head over to the lab’s lighthouse where Fethry is waiting for them. When Huey and Dewey reach the top floor, they’re not met with their cousin, but a crudely put together decoy of him. Before they can worry about what happened, Fethry appears in front of them from the ceiling; totally fine. He greets the “Little Donalds” and descends the aquavator so they can begin their expedition. While they wait to reach the laboratory, Fethry gives them a tour of it though a miniature display of the lab’s multiple pods. One of which, includes “The Dream Room! Great for naps! Relaxation! Embracing the unending darkness... becoming one with the abyssssss…”

The trio stop by the Tully Observatory, where they’re suddenly attacked by mutated sea worms! Once they’re able to calm the creatures down by showing them affection, Fethry introduces the boys to his team of glowing krill. These tiny crustaceans will assist them in getting to his exciting discovery. Fethry and the boys head back to the aquavator, but not long after, something cuts the cord attached to it! The only way for them to get to the discovery now is for them to swim out to it. Fethry and his krill lead the kids through the hydrothermal vents that surround the laboratory pods. Little do they know, something, or someone, rather, is lurking…

The group make it safely to the Dream Room and Fethry gets ready to finally show Huey and Dewey the amazing thing he found. He hesitates a bit a first by offering them them food; to make his family feel at home and get comfortable, but the kids don’t care about any of those things, they want to see his discovery NOW! It turns out, Fethry called them all the way over from Duckburg...and took them all the way to the bottom of the ocean...just to see a bunch of rainbow krill. This reveal doesn't sit well with the boys at all, especially Huey: “We trusted you! Came all the way down here! We got attacked by a squid! I kissed a worm!” It was all a big waste of time, just like their uncles had warned them...Dewey orders his cousin to take them back to the lighthouse, when suddenly, a giant glowing monster appears in front of the pod window!

The trio desperately swim out and make their way to the aquavator as the vents destroy the laboratory around them. Once they make it, Huey fusses at his older relative again, “You lured us down here to get devoured by a monster. Thanks!” Fethry is saddened by this accusation; that wasn't his intention at all. While the brothers devise a plan to ward off the monster, Fethry begins to notice something very familiar about the creature...it’s not a monster, it’s Mitzi! A long-lost member of his team! She was mutated by the hydrothermal vents! Fethry notices that she's trying to help them get to safety, but Dewey isn’t buying it and continues to blind her with the aquavator’s spotlight. The two cousins fight over the device and Huey is left wondering who to trust. Fethry is able to win him over by reminding him about a rule in the Junior Woodchucks Guidebook involving how you must be open to the unknown to discover the truth. To test Fethry’s claim about Mitzi, Huey switches on the speaker and begins to sing to her like he had seen his older relative do earlier with his team. Mitzi becomes still and glows in response. Fethry was telling the truth! Something that seemed extremely trivial at first, ended up helping them in the end. The giant krill safely brings the boys back to the lighthouse and swims away into the distance with her old friend.

So...how could all of this relate to Della’s situation?

The environments in both episodes were vast, dark and distant, much like the moon in space. The moon and a starry sky were the first things we were presented with in “Gander”. In “Depths”, Launchpad referred to the ocean as "the underwater sky" and Fethry later described it as “liquid space”.

Interestingly enough, in “Woo-oo!”, Donald says “This is the Spear of Selene all over again!” when they’re stuck in an underwater chamber.

Gladstone needed the help of his family to escape the place he was confined to. Della’s stuck on the moon somehow and might need her family to help her. Fethry was secluded far away without interaction with his family and acts strangely because of his isolation. Della will likely act in a similar manner when she comes back.

One relative calls for help while the other relative calls to share a discovery. Scrooge looks down at something about the upcoming adventure for seemingly being a waste of time; Macaw was full of distractions and visiting Fethry always ends up being a “fool's errand wrapped up in a needlessly, dangerous adventure”. He was originally in the process of trying to do something else he thinks is worth his time, like heading to the Temple of the Golden Cricket or organizing his office.

Could Della try to contact Earth asking for help but her call is ignored at first? The mission control center hasn't received a message in years, (Where exactly is it? Was it part of The Money Bin?) he may not be quick to believe any transmission is coming through. What if he doesn’t heed her call because he’s too busy saving money in order to beat Flintheart in the bet they made at the end of “The Ballad of Duke Baloney!” so he can keep his company?

Will she be unable to relaunch the Spear after she repairs it because of an opposing force? Similarly to Donald’s situation with his houseboat?

Is Selene, another moon deity or creature keeping Della trapped on the moon for some reason? If it’s Selene, is this part of a cruel prank? “The Secret(s) of Castle McDuck!” highlighted how Della loves to pull pranks and how Selene enjoyed them. The fact that the triplets discover Della’s blueprints for the Spear in the same episode could be implying part of Della’s situation may be Selene’s doing. It doesn’t make sense for Selene to have never seen Della in years when she’s been within her domain this whole time. Was the way she acted when Dewey and Webby entered her garden all an act?

There’s been a number of other situations involving possession and being imprisoned somewhere:

Scrooge imprisoned Magica in his Number One Dime, Magica created and possessed Lena to set herself free.

Doofus temporarily claimed Louie as his “friend present” and wouldn’t allow him to leave his mansion. (This situation seemed very similar to “Gander”; Louie even wears the suit he wore in that episode.)

Zeus trapped the family on Ithaquack and forced them to participate in a contest. He later gets a siren to possess Storkules and attack the McDuck Family.

The Ghost of Christmas Past traps Scrooge in the past because he was fed up over being neglected every year in favor of Scrooge spending Christmas with his family.

Could any of these cases help give us a better idea for why Della could be trapped?

The relative is thought to be in serious danger in the beginning of the episode but it turns out they're fine or at least they appear that way. Gladstone was just getting an intense massage and Fethry set up a decoy to ward off pirates.

Could Della have to pretend not to be in trouble so she won’t get caught trying to leave?

In “Depths”, Huey and Dewey say something similar to Donald’s statement in “Gander” about the relative getting them in danger.

Could Della’s rescue put them all in a greater danger?

Fethry just wanted to show his family his discovery about the multicolored krill, he didn’t mean for things to go wrong.

Did the krill represent Della wanting to show her boys the stars and ignoring how dangerous the journey was? Both just wanted to spend time with their family; Fethry stalled before he uncovered the pod window. He’s usually very alone and more than likely wanted company in the process. His adventures were how he bonded with his family, like Della in “Last Christmas!”. Looking for Santa seemed trivial to Donald but she just wanted to spend time with her brother by going on an adventure with him. Something similar could probably be said for her purpose of creating the Spear of Selene.

Could the hydrothermal vents represent the cosmic storm in some way? Did going through it give Della any abnormalities? Is that why she’s able to breath in space? I've seen comments here and there comparing her situation to The Fantastic Four.

If not Della, did someone else experience a mutation? If Fethry, Huey and Dewey were swimming around these vents, could they have been affected in some way?

Someone’s trust in another person gets tested and words of encouragement are given. Louie gave a speech to Donald and felt betrayed by Scrooge giving his uncle up. Huey had to deal with Fethry’s claim about Mitzi. This is also similar to Donald having to trust Dewey with the death trap in the pilot.

Will the family have to trust Della about something working out? Or the other way around?

A big reveal takes place: Toad is an immortal being, Mitzi is a long-lost friend.

Could the reveal be an explanation to why she could never be found before? A bigger reason why she took the Spear?

Does Della reunite with an unexpected friend from her past?

Elements from the earlier half of the episode come back into play in the latter. Gladstone getting distracted by a twenty dollar bill and Fethry singing to the krill.

Something that was previously believed as trivial will have significance in saving the day? (This sounds reminiscent of Launchpad starting the burrito-based uprising in “The Living Mummies of Toth-Ra!”)

Huey, Dewey and Launchpad stole the sub like Della took the the Spear.

Will a spacecraft be stolen in order to save Della? And could it be done behind Scrooge and/or Donald's back?

Whenever Launchpad is part of the main action of a story, Donald tends to get pushed back. When Donald's part of the main action of a story, Launchpad tends to get pushed back. (This also occurs when a Duck Cousin is in focus and whenever Storkules is present.) If Donald was involved in the main action of “Woo-oo!”'s Atlantis-half and if parts of that situation were meant to mirror what could happen with Della's rescue, can we expect a flip where Launchpad is in focus during the space adventure while Donald gets pushed back somehow? Is that what his absence from the news report in the Season 1 finale was alluding to?

Tʜɪs ɪs sᴏ ᴏᴅᴅ...ᴛʜᴇʀᴇ's ᴀ ᴇᴍᴘᴛʏ sᴘᴀᴄᴇ ᴡʜᴇʀᴇ ʜᴇ ᴄᴏᴜʟᴅ ʜᴀᴠᴇ ɢᴏɴᴇ. Aɴᴅ ʜᴇ ᴡᴀs ʜᴇᴀᴠɪʟʏ ɪɴᴠᴏʟᴠᴇᴅ ɪɴ ᴛʜᴇ ʟᴀᴛᴛᴇʀ ʜᴀʟғ ᴏғ "Sʜᴀᴅᴏᴡ Wᴀʀ". Wʜʏ ᴅɪᴅ ʜᴇ ɢᴇᴛ ʟᴇғᴛ ᴏᴜᴛ?

At the end of the episode, one relative rides away on a yacht while the other rides away on a giant krill.

The family rides back home reunited in a spacecraft?

“The House of the Lucky Gander!” (home is on land), “The Depths of Cousin Fethry!” (deep in the sea)

Can we expect a title along the lines of “The Heights of Della Duck!”? (high in the sky?)

Since both “Gander” and “Depths” premiered in October, could we expect another episode that follows the formula to be aired in that month as well? Or did the Disney Channel move affect when “Depths” aired?

The Featured Relative is Compared to One of The Kids

When Louie begins to hang out with Gladstone in “Gander”, he remarks “I love this kid! He's like me, but shorter, with a cheaper haircut.” Both characters also wear green, are easy-going, savvy and lazy. In “Depths”, Dewey points out that both Fethry and Huey are eccentric nerds who follow the Junior Woodchuck guidebook and wear red caps that they never take off.

When thinking about which child could end up being compared to Della, I originally thought of Webby. While she isn't a blood relative, she's still treated as family and shares similar personality traits and interests with Della. If Webby took off her bow, she would even look similar to what Della used to look like when she was younger. I've been theorizing that Della will be pretty withdrawn after being isolated for so long. When she gets back, it could be like Webby's situation but sorta in reverse: Della doesn't want to explore anymore, she wants to stay in the mansion. She'll also feel out of place like Webby: her brother is more of a parent than she is and so much has changed since she left. I think the whole family will try to help her readjust, but Webby might be able to relate best to what she's feeling.

In spite of this, I'm starting to believe the next child to be featured in a “Gander” styled episode will be Dewey. There have already been comparisons between him and his mother. Scrooge, Donald and Selene are all reminded of Della's feisty demeanor and recklessness through Dewey's behavior. He was the one to discover the ripped painting in the garage and got the Della Mystery started. If a space trip is planned in the future, he would very likely be the main kid in focus.

I wanted to avoid suggesting him because according to the formula, the kid that gets compared to the relative ends up having the next season's main arc dedicated to them and Dewey already had that in the first season...but who's to say there won't be another episode to follow the formula next season with Webby? Both kids are like Della, so could there be two similarly structured episodes highlighting this?

Dewey Wants to Name Something After Himself

In “Gander”, Toad Liu Hai offers Dewey a jade tiger. Once Scrooge allows him to keep it, he names it Dewey Jr. In “Depths”, Dewey desperately wants to name a new species of sea-life after himself and constantly comes up with variations of his name like “Dewfish” and “The Dewnificent Krilldabeast”. If the family goes to space, maybe he'll want to name a star, some sort of alien creature or the vessel they're traveling in.

If the formula decides to stray a bit from this element, could we possibly expect something else involving his name? The kids were given nicknames in both episodes: Gladstone referred to Louie as “Lou” and Fethry collectively referred to Huey and Dewey as “Little Donalds”. Maybe Della jokingly refers to Dewey as “Bluey” because of his time travel adventure in “Last Christmas!”.

Launchpad Goes on His Own Adventure Involving Someone He Previously Dated

In “Gander”, Launchpad makes a rough, water landing with the Sunchaser, but he doesn't crash like he usually does. When the family disembark from the plane, LP reveals that he wasn't planning on entering the hotel with them. He motions towards a starry patch in the sky over the city and tries to explain to Scrooge that he has an old girlfriend, named Ziyi, who lives in the area. He wants to go check on her due to the problems she's been having with the local crime family. Scrooge ignores all of this and simply reminds Launchpad to be ready to resume the trip in one hour.

When the family comes back from the area where the hotel used to stand, Launchpad is seen holding the plane's plug door open, wearing Chinese armor. He's covered in several arrows with an eye patch over his right eye and a baby panda on his back. He had clearly come from some sort of scuffle while they were gone. While everyone doesn't seem to care and board the plane without a word, Dewey becomes concerned and asks him what happened. Instead of going into details, LP brushes it off as “tourist stuff”. When Dewey goes into the Sunchaser, Launchpad turns around to the city behind him and says “Goodbye...Ziyi. Wherever you are…” This more than likely implies that he wasn’t able to find her. There's a high chance she went missing due to the crime family.

In “Depths” Launchpad doesn't crash, but he lightly bumps Scrooge's submarine into the lighthouse. He hooks the sub to the railing and gets ready to join Huey and Dewey on the adventure, when all of a sudden, a familiar voice calls out to him: It's Oceanika! One of his many previous lovers. She is seen out in the open sea, on top of a rock; far away, but much closer than Ziyi.

When Launchpad returns to the lighthouse after yet another mysterious adventure, he crawls out of the water and on to the platform, wearing an Aquaman-esque get-up. He holds a trident in his left hand, a couple strands of seaweed are draped over his shoulders, a conch shell is hanging from his neck and three color-coded sea creatures are attached to him; a green eel, a red octopus and a blue starfish. While reuniting with Oceanika, he may have gotten caught up in a fight of some sort. He turns around to face the rock he had found her on earlier and begins to bid her farewell, until Dewey interrupts him: “Launchpad, what happened to you?” LP tenses up and claims that he “ran into an old friend...snorkeled around” and “saw some...sea stuff”. A longer explanation than last time, but still rather skimpy on the details.

What could this information possibly be suggesting about the future?

Launchpad doesn't crash. He makes a rough landing with the plane and a minor bump with sub.

Could Launchpad make an even softer landing with a spaceship? Maybe even a perfect landing?

Many comparisons have been made between submariners and astronauts. NASA Astronauts use the sea to help prepare themselves for space missions and the training required for managing a submarine is similar to that of a spacecraft. There are also situations in which test pilots become astronauts and depending on how far the show runners or willing to go with Launchpad's history, he may have already held that aviation position in the military.

Since discovering the space-sea connection, I pondered a little about the possibility that Launchpad has already been through space before or at least went through some amount of training required for it, because seriously...how is he going to be this amazing at piloting a submarine, without prior experience? He can navigate it while sleeping and while being blindfolded, but he never crashes like he does with everything else he operates...

Launchpad doesn't join the first relative adventure, but he almost joins in the second one.

Will he join the main adventure the third time?

In his first adventure, LP wanted to check in on Ziyi because she might be in trouble. In the second adventure, Oceanika isn't in trouble they just want to see each other, but trouble might have arose in the process.

Will his third previous lover end up in trouble? Are they already in trouble?

LP returns from his adventures showing signs of being in a battle. The first time, he was shot at with arrows and wore an eye patch. The second time, he’s holding a trident and not as worn out by battle.

On his third adventure, will he have little to no damage at all?

LP returns from his adventures with a smaller creature or creatures attached to him. In the first adventure, the baby panda was in a basket on his back. In the second, the octopus and starfish were on his back and the eel was wrapped around his arm.

Will he have another group of smaller creatures with him in the third adventure? Will he carry Huey, Dewey and Louie back home with him? The colors and personalities of the triplets match the sea creatures: Eels are slippery, octopi are smart, a̶n̶d̶ ̶s̶t̶a̶r̶f̶i̶s̶h̶ ̶d̶o̶n̶'̶t̶ ̶h̶a̶v̶e̶ ̶b̶r̶a̶i̶n̶s̶. Ha, just kidding about that last one. Not about the fact that starfish are brainless, but Dewey is impulsive; he doesn't think before he acts. Other possible connections between him and the starfish are how it could represent his desires to be an astronaut-president as he claimed in “Internship”, how he wants to stand out from his brothers and how he resembles Della in personality the most. The starfish is even a shade of teal, like Della’s scarf.

Something else that could support the idea of the sea creatures representing HDL is that there's a pattern suggested with the colors too. Louie is missing where green should go.

Tʜᴇ ᴘᴀᴛᴛᴇʀɴ ɪs ᴀʟsᴏ ɪɴ ᴏʀᴅᴇʀ ᴏғ ᴋɪᴅs ғᴇᴀᴛᴜʀᴇᴅ ɪɴ “Gᴀɴᴅᴇʀ” sᴛʏʟᴇᴅ ᴇᴘɪsᴏᴅᴇs: Lᴏᴜɪᴇ ᴡᴀs ғɪʀsᴛ, Hᴜᴇʏ ᴡᴀs sᴇᴄᴏɴᴅ, Dᴇᴡᴇʏ ᴄᴏᴜʟᴅ ᴠᴇʀʏ ᴡᴇʟʟ ʙᴇ ᴛʜɪʀᴅ. Tʜᴇ ғᴀᴄᴛ ᴛʜᴀᴛ LP ɪs ᴛʜᴇ ᴄʟᴏsᴇsᴛ ᴛᴏ Dᴇᴡᴇʏ ᴍɪɢʜᴛ ʙᴇ ɪᴍᴘʟʏɪɴɢ ʜᴏᴡ ʜᴇ ᴄᴏᴜʟᴅ ʙᴇ ʜᴇᴀᴠɪʟʏ ɪɴᴠᴏʟᴠᴇᴅ ɪɴ Dᴇᴡᴇʏ’s ᴇᴘɪsᴏᴅᴇ.

Could Louie have been represented by the baby panda? He’s the “baby” of the trio and his voice actor plays Panda on We Bare Bears. DuckTales was still in development when that show premiered.

When Dewey asked LP what happened, he is given a description that mirrors what occurred on the relative adventure. At first, a short explanation was given. The second time it's a little longer.

Will we get a more detailed explanation the third time? Or will the situation speak for itself?

Going out to help Ziyi mirrored Gladstone’s call for help. Getting beat up at the end of his adventure mirrored Donald getting worn out by the obstacle course.

Was Ziyi possibly being held captive by the crime family like Gladstone was with Toad?

In “Gander”, Dewey, a child, took care of an adult animal, the jade tiger, while LP, an adult, took care of a child, the panda.

When Launchpad rose out of the water with a serious expression at the end of “Depths”, it kinda mirrors how Dewey looked when he was upset over Huey disrupting his bath in the beginning of the episode. Dewey was expressing how he wanted to see something exciting happen and Launchpad ends up coming from something exciting. (Kinda like how Huey licked the tree stump in the beginning of the episode and Fethry later licked the rust in the aquavator...ew.)

Going off to see someone special from his past mirrors Fethry reuniting with Mitzi. Fethry’s comment about sharing a rib-eye with Mitzi sounded reminiscent of a date too.

If Huey kissed a sea worm during the second main adventure (oof) while Launchpad’s adventures continue to be romantic based, could there be another kiss on the third adventure?

We don't see Ziyi because she's far away, we see Oceanika, but she's shown at a distance.

Will we see the third lover up close?

The intensity of LP’s adventures seem to increase while the intensity of the relative adventures seem to decrease:

LP’s adventure in “Gander” had less visible characters involved. LP didn’t participate with the family, Ziyi was missing and a short description is said. Then in “Depths”, he’s close to participating, we see his lover from afar, he gives a longer description to the kids and he comes back with more than one creature.

“Gander” had a more serious threat with more characters involved. “Depths” involved a lesser amount of characters with a lesser threat.

With each episode, the environments become even more space-like.

These three major elements seem to be leaning into each other and could eventually reach a point where they intersect and even out:

Launchpad goes on a space adventure regarding a Duck Family relative he’s previously dated...?

Ha, if you’ve been following my blog long enough, you know this isn’t new from me, maybe you already sensed it while you were reading through, but seriously...first it was land... then there was sea...and with Della becoming a more prominent character this season, space will be soon. Launchpad’s adventures only occur when a Duck Cousin shows up and the basics always end up being similar to their situation. Ziyi (and Gladstone) could be reflecting Della’s past while Oceanika is reflecting her future; she was lost, but now she’s found.

Something that may be an indicator of these plot lines meeting in the future, is an upcoming Issue for IDW’s DuckTales comic series:

“It's a special 20-page story as we present "Money-Grubbing Hooligans from the Deep!" A tsunami is about to hit Duckburg, but a mysterious submarine may be the reason behind this unexpected occurrence. Find out how the occupant of the submarine is connected to Launchpad McQuack and if Uncle Scrooge's Money Bin will survive the watery onslaught!”

(Sᴏᴜʀᴄᴇ 1) (Sᴏᴜʀᴄᴇ 2)

While the comics are not necessarily set as canon, they will sometimes loosely parallel certain events from the show. Like how the first two issues revolved around Donald looking for a job and how that element was present in the pilot episode. “Happy Happy Valley!” seems to be inspired by “The Town Where Everyone Was Nice!”. The plot for “The Incredible Shrinking Webby!” sounds similar to “The Most Dangerous Game...Night!” where Gyro's shrink ray got out of hand.

I think Issue 18 could be borrowing certain elements from Della's return with some bits from "Depths" as well.

Let's take a closer look at Cover B:

Hᴇʜ, Wᴇʙʙʏ's ᴀʟʟ ʟɪᴋᴇ "Wʜᴏ ɪs ᴛʜɪs?" ᴀɴᴅ ɪᴛ ʟᴏᴏᴋs ʟɪᴋᴇ Lᴀᴜɴᴄʜᴘᴀᴅ's ᴛʀʏɪɴɢ ᴛᴏ ɢᴇᴛ ᴛʜᴇ ᴋɪᴅs ᴛᴏ ʟᴇᴀᴠᴇ. Pғғғғ.

We're presented with a night sky full of stars and the moon peeking behind a cloud. The submarine and its mysterious owner (who I'm very tempted to call “Subina”), are placed below the moon on the right hand side.

This new character seems to have combined traits from Oceanika and Della. While she’s from underwater, there's a bit of a space-ish vibe about her looks. She wears a teal dress that consists of a lighter shade and a darker shade like LP's hat, so like Della, she too shares his colors. Also, being the helmswoman of submarine technically makes her a pilot...a pilot who has something to do with Launchpad...in a story that gets released a day before Valentine's Day...

And like I've noted earlier, there’s a connection between the sea and outer-space. I believe that a sea theme was used to throw us off but indirectly give us information at the same time. (Like “Woo-oo!” And “Depths”.)

Aside from the mysterious submariner somewhat resembling Della, there's also mentions of her being the cause of a tsunami hitting Duckburg and the possibility of The Money Bin taking a beating from it. This could very well be in reference to the bet Scrooge agreed to with Glomgold. If Della needs to be saved during a time where Scrooge is trying his best to save money, he's going to have to make a choice between his family or his fortune. If he chooses family, he'll end up spending too much money and loose. The natural disaster could also be paralleling some other sort disaster about to happen in relation to the moon.

Before I close this out (Yes! You're reaching the end!), I wanted to mention something that might not support my claim, but I still wanted to discuss it:

At the end of “Last Christmas!”, we find out that Della brought her copy of the family photo from “Last Crash” with her. On the back of the photo are drawings of what look like baby ducks.

I noticed the doodle on the right looks an awful lot like a baby version of Gladstone. Because I mean, c'mon...just look at those thick eyebrows. The curly bang is very reminiscent of Gladstone's pre-reboot hairstyle too. The one on the left however, was very difficult to compare to an pre-existing character... I came across a comment about the possibility of it being a baby version of Fethry. (Maybe the cone shape on top isn't hair, but a pointed hat?) If this is intended to be Fethry and Gladstone, this might be further proof that their situations were meant to reflect Della's.

Another possible explanation for these drawings could be that Della drew Dewey and Louie from memory based on what she could retain from the news report. So maybe there's a sketch of what she remembered about Huey on the bottom half.

I believe it's going to be quite a while before we get a glimpse of what the third “Gander” styled episode will look like. The possible subject matter seems a lot more suited for a two-part finale and we're only six episodes in. Perhaps the beginning of the formula will span over some episodes prior to it, similarly to how “Castle” and “Last Crash” had elements that lead into “Shadow War”. Whether I'm truly on to something with my speculations or not, Della's return to Earth is an exciting subject, and I can't wait to see where it will go on the show.

That's a wrap, readers! Thank you for taking a dive with me on the S.S. Bold De-Ducktion!

TL;DR: We just might be in store for one heck of a family reunion.

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asktheskinner · 6 years ago

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Ambush of the Dead

Showcasing of Melchiah and Melchahim Post-Nosgothic Civil War. Horror and Violence warning.

The newest caravan strode along the Razielim Road, Dumahim jealously guarding the wagons of ‘liberated’ slaves and bountiful vassals of blood. The pact snarled with cautious eyes and bristling arousal to the ever-clinging sting of earthy rot in the air. Ever since the First Clan’s humbling and even now, a century into the war against the rebellious humans that waned and waxed like a defiant tide against a fortress’ foundation, the Melchahim claimed the Razielim Stronghold for the time being.

The creak of wheels rolling on the paved road before a groan of wood and suddenly the weight of bodies finally collapsed one side of a wagon into a spill of screaming men and women. Immediately one of the overseers were on the mortals with violent rebuke as if their already starving bodies were purposeful to the new difficulty of this most inconvenient time.

At the front, the Alpha of this raiding pack glared as one of his lieutenants came with bowed head of submission. Goliath, one of Dumah’s personally-risen warriors. Unlike the other clans, the Thirdborn was more liberal of his risen creche. From the Grand Magi Vornah to the insufferable Fredrick de Rose...those were nothing to a proud general of the Dark Titan himself. Now, without that braggart to stand in his way, he will collect the septs one by one until the clan was under his rule.

Like all of his direct inheritance, Goliath was massive. Even for a Dumahim, clad in the baroque armour of wraith-crafted steel and dark motif to the warrior caste that they are born for. A tusked sneer crossed his tattooed face before snatching his lieutenant by his throat and dragged him up from his boots. The hot stink of recent feast huffed in the choking vampire’s face as he commanded,

“I want my meat back on progress. I want it all at the camp before dawn or I will personally feed your guts to the wargs!”

In that demand, Goliath flung his subordinate back and pointed a talon at the others, “Move now!” The lesser vampires bowed in the midst of their skittering movements for assistance. The fear of another vampire was delicious. Humans, certainly but there was a distinctive pleasure out of beating the fear from a fellow god and it brought an arrogant smile onto his face.

In the reveries, the pockets of upturned earth shifted. The whispers of the long-dead catching ears and suspenseful eyes until a woman screamed as she is roughly plucked by her handlers. “No! No! They’re coming, they come in hungry hate!” “Quiet, you insufferable wench.” The Dumahim hissed, snatching her by the throat. His claws biting into her flesh, already tempted to tear her screaming throat out and feed. It was Goliath’s commandment to keep every last of these blood-bags alive and something grabbed at his ankle. Through the creep of mist that appeared in the middle of their idle without immediate notice. “Wha-!?” Another hand - taloned and iron-grasped - took him into the softened earth. Nearly taking the woman with him, the vampire hissed and roared out. Convulsing and trying to drag himself to no result. “Help me fools!” He gurgled out as his torso yanked this way and that. Two of his brothers hurried off, grabbing his arms and helped. There was a sickly sound and the Dumahim was free!

Without his lower half.

The hateful scream of pain and attempt to remain conscious in the void-wrapped agony as he twisted and tried to reclaim his pulled innards. Skeletal hands erupted from the ground around them, clawing his hollering mouth, arms and organs. Tearing and dragging him back into the earth whence his corpse came.

More erupted. The dead rose, the firefoxes of glowing sockets from the long-dead soldiers and slaves from past wars as their slowly reconstructed bodies shambled and groaned as puppets. Some holding rusty weapons of soldiery and instruments of farming, others used their gnawed nails and taloned finger-bones for the closest living and nonliving thing they sought. The Dumahim guards hissed, handling their own weapons and taloned fists, charged with savage rebuke. “Back to the grave with you!” One cried out, smashing a risen dead with a backhand that destroyed its upper half into a burst of bonedust and rot. The dust fell a moment, whirled and pulled itself into nostrils and mouth. The sudden wickedness caught the vampire by surprise enough to inhale sharply in shock.

Cough and spitting out globes of polluted saliva, the Dumahim sharply gagged to a sensation in his chest. A crawling spread that pierced into his veins, blackening as it went. “Gah!” The gurgling of pain rousing to eyes watching as his body jerked and spasming, fighting itself from strings unseen. Bones starting to snap in stubborn refusal, changing shape and when the screams became their highest with onlookers frozen in terror that a proud son of Dumah’s clan was nothing but a toy to this eldritch force. This reaver was torn into the material of a creature not of this realm. His soul howling in its cadaver, fuel to the convulsing abomination of hardened flesh and shivering bones as it lunged in ghastly flight against former kin.

This army of the dead and converted fought at the protectors while their prize stared on, huddling tightly to one another in hopes that they will be safe from this.

In the chaos, seemingly more draugr rose. Their flesh, rotting and bloated under layers of stitches and fused evolution. Powerful and unnatural in their own way. A couple with many arms. Others with armour between layers and masks of blighted gold. Weapons in taloned hands. The rotten yellow of their truth hanging from waists and grim decor. The Children of the Sixth Clan emerge in the most opportunistic time, cleaving the weak and tearing with putrid hatred and spiteful energy.

Among them, more powerful beings walked. Their clan’s curse staled by powers beyond their lesser attribute, gifted by the Lands Beyond. Robes of grim regality and crested armour wrapping their shuddering frames, talons burning of abyssal power hurling violent bolts and screaming magicks at their enemy in their scrambling reformations.

There were too many. The fell power of Melchiah’s magi were honed and cunningly used in the right ways, even as the few lieutenants under Goliath’s routine claimed unlives with centuries’ honed powers and skills. Their maces and hammers crushing bones and bodies with air-ploughing force and their armoured form throwing by inhuman strength. Wargs barking, charging for vampires and closing their powerful salivating jaws for bloody kills but even bodies were weapons to the Sixth Clan.

Their ichor poisoning their killers with organ-melting potency and those not killed outright tore into bellies with bones pulled for weapons and fetishes. Warm blood steaming in the air and fed upon to heal.

All of this chaos. This inpudence. Utter craven disrespect of their betters!

Goliath sneered in nothing but distaste as he swatted four draugr in one decisive swing of his mace-wrapped fist and smashed one of these necromancer-called ghouls under his cloven boot. The pulverization of bones and warped meat crunching under heel before he lumbered for the closest summoner.

The woman, or this vague spectre of one, looked at her behind the porcelain mask under gilded armour and dark robes. He recognized her, even after all these centuries - he recognized Lady Samona. The High Witch of Melchiah’s dregs. Unnaturally tall for the lesser clan with limbs stretched and similar neck, she had a head-sized orb in the fold of one arm and armoured bird-like talons swaying with the calling of black magic. “Goliath, it has been too long.” Her crowing voice purrs behind her mask’s perked red lips. “Old Samona, I am surprised you are not a pile of rot-slog by now. You are already a hag by the time your Master found you.” He taunted, his stride unstopping in full intent to crush her once and for all.

“And miss this?” She asks and in a sudden incantation that still sounds like mere gibberish to the Dumahim, her bolt flew straight for him. Moving with a crater-depression behind him, Goliath whirled in mid-air and came crashing for his enemy with a roar that shook the night. Samona did not move. She showed no fear of this brute and gave her reason why -

With a flick of her free hand, the bolt came right back with a wily intelligence and struck Goliath off course. The mist was twisting and collecting itself slowly at first before stretching into a great hand, solidifying into an abhorrent horror of groaning bodies consisting at this meaty palm’s fingers to swat him straight out of the air like a toy.

Limbs grabbing muscle and plating with strength beguiling the rotten beings’ appearance as the solidifying arm was becoming more and more present. The mass of muscle and groaning faces to a crested shoulder of wailing bodies, clawing at the air and their own blood-weeping eyes. It moved, slamming Goliath again and again into the ground before throwing him into a great Termogent tree with a thunderous crash.

The dead around them pulled by the ghastly visage, breaking apart to meld and form the Mists’ true appearance. Another arm of similar horrors dragging and armoured legs curling on their digitigrade feet with wicked talons curling into the dirt. The horn-spined body leading to one ugly ‘head’ crested by bony ridges and barely a skull jutting from its fleshy prison. Black eyes glaring their glowing irises of murderous red and something of a smile on its slugging maw of teeth on its skeletal jaws. Meat hanging off its lips like a toad’s bloated thyroid.

Melchiah. Centuries since the loss of his precious stolen retreat, he had resurfaced.

And his gurgling laugh rolled in the air as his grotesque body heaved itself on legs that will not last for long. “Goliath, I have come for you…”

#v: damned #melchiah #melchahim #dumahim

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bringinbackpod · 3 years ago

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Interview with P.O.D

We had the pleasure of interviewing Marcos Curiel of P.O.D. over Zoom video! P.O.D. — Sonny Sandoval [vocals], Marcos Curiel [guitar], Traa Daniels [bass], and Wuv Bernardo [drums] — have announced their upcoming summer and fall tour plans. The band will embark on a headline tour of the U.S., celebrating the 20th anniversary of their landmark, multi-platinum album Satellite. The tour kicks off August 14 and runs through October 7 in their native San Diego. From Ashes to New, All Good Things, and Sleep Signals will also appear. All dates are below. Tickets are available here. "We've been touring and working hard for almost 30 years now," Sandoval says. "It's all we know. This past year has really made me realize how much I love what I do and how much I appreciate that I am still able to make music and play live for all of those who are still listening. Thank you to all of you who still love live music and can't wait to be a part of the P.O.D. experience. We can't wait to see all of your beautiful faces out on the road." Curiel shares the sentiment, saying, "It's been way too long. We are beyond excited to get back to the stage — where we provide the rock and you provide the roll. From familiar faces to new ones, let's get back to what we've all been waiting for. We are ready as a band to create new memories with you all. Let's do this! Peace, love, light, and rock 'n' roll." From Ashes to New's Matt Brandyberry weighed in about the tour, saying, "In 2001, we were literally 'The Youth of the Nation' and P.O.D.'s hit was an anthem to so many of us. Satellite was an album that helped shape a genre and will go down as one of the greatest records of that era. We are honored to join them on this U.S. tour to help celebrate 20 years of an absolute masterpiece." Additionally, P.O.D. will drop the SATELLITE: 20TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION as a double-CD and digitally on September 3 for $24.98 through Rhino. It is available for pre-order now. Releasing a few days before the album's official anniversary on September 11, the 27-song collection introduces a newly remastered version of the original album, plus a selection of rarities, remixes, and four previously unreleased demos, including "Alive (Semi-Acoustic Version)," available today. A few weeks later, on October 8, SATELLITE: 20TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION will be released on vinyl as a double-LP as a part of Rhino's Rocktober campaign. After debuting at #6 on the Billboard 200, SATELLITE went on to sell more than seven million copies worldwide, including three million in the U.S. The record generated four singles: the title track, "Alive," "Youth of the Nation," and "Boom." In addition to its commercial success, Satellite also earned P.O.D. three Grammy nominations for: "Alive" (Best Hard Rock Performance, 2002), "Portrait" (Best Metal Performance, 2003), and "Youth of the Nation" (Best Hard Rock Performance, 2003). SATELLITE: 20TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION has a bonus disc that includes b-sides like "Critic" and "Sabbath" that were initially released in Europe, plus remixes for "Boom" by The Crystal Method and "Youth of the Nation" by Mike$ki. P.O.D. ON TOUR: WITH FROM ASHES TO NEW, ALL GOOD THINGS, + SLEEP SIGNALS: 8/14 — Sturgis, SD – Buffalo Chip* 8/16 — Denver, CO — Gothic Theatre 8/17 — Omaha, NE — The Waiting Room 8/19 — Sioux Falls, SD — The District 8/20 — Des Moines, IA — Wooly's 8/21 — Glen Flora, WI – Northwoods Rock Rally^ 8/22 — Minneapolis, MN — First Ave 8/25 — Louisville, KY – KY State Fair# 8/26 — Fort Wayne, IN — Piere's 8/27 — Belvidere, IL — The Apollo Theater 8/28 — Joliet, IL — The Forge 8/29 — Detroit, MI — St. Andrew's Hall 8/31 — Pittsburgh, PA — Roxian Theater 9/4 — Houston, TX – BuzzFest (Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion – KBTZ Show)~ 9/5 — Dallas, TX – BFD21 (Dos Equis Pavilion – KEGL Show)~ 9/9 — Danville, VA – Blue Ridge Rock Festival^ 9/10 — New Haven, CT — Toad's Place 9/11 — Laconia, NH — Granite State Music Hall 9/12 — Worcester, MA — The Palladium 9/14 — New York, NY — The Gramercy Theatre 9/15 — Huntington, NY — The Paramount 9/16 — Baltimore, MD — Ram's Head Live 9/18 — Atlanta, GA — Center Stage 9/19 — Mobile, AL — Soul Kitchen 9/21 — Birmingham, AL — Zydeco 9/22 — Savannah, GA — Victory North 9/23 — Orlando, FL – Rebel Rock Fest (Pre—Party)~ 9/25 — Columbia, SC — The Senate 9/28 — Cleveland, OH — House of Blues 9/29 — St. Louis, MO — Pop's 10/1 — Tulsa, OK — Tulsa State Fair 10/2 — San Antonio, TX — The Rock Box 10/3 — Lubbock, TX — Jake's Backroom 10/6 — Santa Ana, CA — The Observatory 10/7 — San Diego, CA — House of Blues *With From Ashes to New ^With From Ashes to New & All Good Things #With All Good Things ~P.O.D. Only We want to hear from you! Please email [email protected]. www.BringinitBackwards.com #podcast #interview #bringinbackpod #POD #PayableOnDeath #SanDiego #20Years #Satellite #zoom #TwentyYears Listen & Subscribe to BiB Follow our podcast on Instagram and Twitter! source https://www.spreaker.com/user/14706194/interview-with-p-o-d

#podcast #interview #bringinbackpod #music #aspn #americansongwriter #americansongwriterpodcastnetwor

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ultraheydudemestuff · 4 years ago

Photo

Deer Creek State Park

20635 State Park Road 20

Mt. Sterling, OH 43143

Located in the heart of Ohio's agricultural country, Deer Creek State Park is central Ohio's vacation showplace. A collage of meadows and woodlands surround the scenic reservoir. This resort park features a modern lodge, cottages, campground, golf course, swimming beach and boating for outdoor Deer Creek State Park lies on the eastern edge of the great till plains of Ohio. These plains receive their name from the glacial debris, or till, which is a mixture of sand, silt and gravel that was deposited by the glaciers. As glaciers advanced across the northern two-thirds of Ohio, most hills and valleys were covered and filled in by the till, leaving this part of Ohio relatively flat. Today, these rich plains in the park's region support corn, soybeans and wheat. The first settlers to the area did not find these open fields. Except for a few small prairie openings, the region was covered by dense woodlands. A regrowth of the original woodlands can be found scattered along the ridge tops and creek bottoms of the park. Wildflowers abound in the fields and woodlands of the till plains. In spring, common flowers are Dutchman's breeches, rue anemone, trillium, spring beauty and bloodroot. Summer months produce thimbleweed, wild lettuce, jewelweed and daisy fleabane. In autumn, the most abundant flowers are aster, goldenrod and chicory, whose roots were used by settlers to make a coffee-like beverage.

The best known animals of the Deer Creek area include amphibians such as the chorus frog, spring peeper and American toad. Reptiles include box and painted turtles, black rat snake and eastern garter snake. Numerous mammals inhabit the park. Most of them are small and include the red fox, raccoon, opossum, woodchuck, skunk, rabbit, deer mouse and white-tailed deer. Deer Creek is known for its population of ring-necked pheasant. Other birds of the area include eastern meadowlark, song sparrow, cowbird, eastern bluebird, barn swallow and woodcock. On a long ridge that once overlooked Deer Creek and its valley, researchers have discovered evidence of a camp of an ancient Indian tribe. The nomads who camped here around 2,000 B.C. were hunters and gatherers and used this camp periodically throughout the year. Since agriculture was not practiced by the nomads, they moved on after they depleted the plant or animal food supplies in a locale. Burial sites near the camp indicate it was inhabited over a period of time. In more recent years, a cottage owned by Harry M. Daugherty, the attorney general under President Warren G. Harding, overlooked the valley. The rustic one and one-half story cottage was built in 1918. The President was said to have visited this cottage which now bears his name. The completion of the dam in 1968 created the lake with the park officially opening in 1974.

The campground at Deer Creek has 232 sites. All have electricity. The campground features showers, flush toilets and a dump station. Pets are permitted on designated sites. Four Rent-A-Camp units consisting of a tent, dining fly, cooler, cook stove and other equipment can be rented during the summer months by reservation. A group camp is also available by reservation. A horsemen's camp provides primitive overnight facilities for riders and a primitive group camp offers an area for groups. Twenty-five cottages offer overnight accommodations. The cottages have two bedrooms, bath with a shower, living room, complete kitchen, dining area and screened porch. The cottages sleep six people. The historic Harding Cabin offers a unique setting and sleeps 8. The lodge at Deer Creek has 110 guest rooms, many with a panoramic view of the lake. Lodge features include indoor and outdoor pools, sauna, whirlpool and exercise room. A restaurant, lounge, and meeting rooms provide additional accommodations. A spacious 1,700-foot swimming beach graces the shores of Deer Creek State Park. A concession area and changing booths are special features at the beach. Unlimited horsepower boating is permitted on the 1,277-acre Deer Creek reservoir. Two launch ramps provide access to the lake. A fully equipped marina offers fuel, boat rental and seasonal dock rentals.

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mybisgovmy · 5 years ago

Link

Ingerophrynus quadriporcatus a.k.a Four-ridged Toad. Photo by Norhayati Binti Ahmad. #Toads

#Bufonidae #MyBIS #Biodiversity #Malaysia

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souslejaune · 6 years ago

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Soon after Auntie Dee Dee’s burial... (Folio 1: Part 3)

Soon after Auntie Dee Dee’s burial, in sleep and wakefulness, a new buzz hovered over my existence, a filmy sub-ocular glaze of super sensitivity. I didn’t tell anyone what was happening, but my father saw me taking pictures of a dead lizard with my bright yellow battery-less camera from China.

“Ebo, what are you doing?”

“I want to compare it with the picture in the Encyclopaedia,” I lied.

Since I spent my entire youth flipping through volumes of the 1979 World Book Encyclopaedia, it was a safe lie.

“Oh, I see. Come to me if you need help, OK?”

“OK.”

In the next few weeks I took pictures of an endless collection of dead creatures: shy geckos, almost transparent with hunger; rats, still in the rigour of greed; flea-bitten dogs, dust-beaten cats, startled rainbow dragonflies, and a face-making toad. I had no sympathy for dead animals generally – especially not rats and lizards. They were always encroaching on strictly human territories, like kitchens. One of my older cousins even told me that some of the boys in boarding school had the soles of their feet gnawed by rats sometimes.

I felt sorry for the toad though. It was the victim of one of our random playground challenges. Spotted while we were in the land by the local garbage dump playing a football game called four corners, it immediately became the fifth target. Four corners was played by four persons with each one defending a small target. You got two touches of the ball: one to defend your goal, and one to shoot at someone else’s. I was playing with Yaw a.k.a. Table-head, a short, wide-shouldered boy with a flat head and tooth-packed grin; Ato, who we called Tom Brown because his hair always faded to brown as soon as it grew beyond half-an-inch; and Kofi. Kofi used to be called Silas Marner because he always seemed to have more money than us and never wanted to share, but the name Silas Marner ebbed out of use after Ato named him Fagan and it stuck. We actually called him Kofi Fagan; it sounded nicer. Most of us were named after characters from the English books we were made to read at school. I was sometimes called Pip because I loved Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations so much.

Soon after the toad was spotted, all our shots started to head in Yaw’s direction as he was closest to the toad.

Ruffled by the unfair attention, he exclaimed, “I won’t play anymore!”

“OK Table, let’s stone the toad,” suggested Kofi Fagan grabbing a handful of pebbles. “First person to hit it wins the game.”

It was a ploy by Kofi Fagan to turn the game in his favour. He was lethal at throwing stones. He could rescue a ripe mango from its tree with a single shot.

Tom Brown grimaced.

“OK.” Table flung a smooth brown pebble towards the toad as he spoke.

He caught the toad as it was reaching its pink tongue out to catch a fly. The pebble flew across a suspended haze of dust, sneaked into the toad’s mouth and choked it; with its long tongue still out, decorated with a live fly. I ran home to get my camera. In secondary school I would show this picture to Mrs Ogbogu – my Nigerian biology teacher – when she remarked how rare it was to see a toad with its tongue out.

In addition to pictures, I had a single mounted creature. A giant spider. I had an illogical fear of spiders. Size was irrelevant. Once a creeper made the transition from six legs to eight, insect to arachnid, it had me shitting in my shorts. I accomplished many remarkable physical feats when confronted by spiders. Tom Brown, Table and Kofi Fagan often testified to that. I hurdled fences, jumped down trees, and outran cars. This spider, I caught because of the dreams that followed Auntie Dee Dee’s funeral. To confront my fear. I even wrote instructions for it.

Locate your fear

Find a suitable glass

Trap your fear under the glass

Lifting the glass slightly, spray perfume into it

Watch from a distance until your fear dies

I mounted it on a round piece of yellow card and labelled its body parts in a scrawl with sharper edges than my usual handwriting. Testament to the fact that I had perhaps not fully conquered my fear. I had learned more about it, but it lay beneath the surface ready to stump me if I didn't remain vigilant.

In the dreams, black and red spiders swarmed the food that was served to me by dancing cadavers. I had to swipe them away to eat, but they kept multiplying and making a webbed playground of my body. My body became a living interpretation of Miss Havisham’s wedding room in Great Expectations.

After I mounted my fear, and learned to distinguish the cephalothorax from the abdomen, the spiders disappeared with a single swipe into the dark subworld of the tables around me. I was often the only guest at a cadaver cabaret with four faceless waiters to attend to my needs. On a green stage of knitted vapour, cooking and singing, was Auntie Dee Dee, her face still stuffed with the cotton wool the embalmers used to fill her cheeks.

“Dad, when you die, do you stop breathing first or does your heart stop beating?”

If I weren’t so curious nobody would have guessed that my interest in death was growing at the speed of sickness. I had done everything as I used to except for the pictures, which I had a good excuse for, and reading Great Expectations over and over again; wondering why, if there were so many cobwebs in Miss Havisham’s house, no spiders were ever mentioned. I later found that all the books we had read at school were obscure abridged versions produced locally. The full version – the one produced based on the serialised tale Charles Dickens published in his weekly journal All The Year Round – had “speckled-legged spiders with blotchy bodies.”

My father raised his eyes from his shop’s inventory list, crinkling his forehead in the process. He studied me with unwavering eyes – a spider contemplating a daring fly.

“It depends son. I guess if you die from a heart attack your heart stops beating first. If you drown you stop breathing first. The only way to know for sure in to ask a doctor…”

“…Or a dead person,” he added laughing.

“They don’t talk about it.”

“What?”

The fly was webbed. The room was suddenly too small. I felt like all the photos on our living room wall were watching me: My sister holidaying in Trafalgar Square with pigeons pecking her feet out of view; Grandma fanning flames under last year’s family feast, the entire Oppong-Ribeiro clan – my family – squinting and smiling at the Odwira festival… What year was that? Why wasn’t I in the picture? A photo of my father with his right arm lawfully draped over his Datsun iterated his silent authority. It was too late to change what I had said.

"What did you say?" My father persisted, his voice softer.

“They don't talk about it; I asked them.”

The creases in my father’s forehead deepened. “Who?”

“The dead people.”

“You’ve been talking to ghosts?”

“No, dead bodies.”

“Dead bodies?”

It sounded really silly once I had said it. I tried to make it sound better.

“In my dreams.”

He inclined his head slightly to the right.

“I don’t speak to anyone I don’t know. Just Auntie Dee Dee…”

“… and sometimes the waiters.”

“No, no, no.” My father sensed my fear of punishment. He had large rough palms that he rarely used on us, but, when he did, we felt the ridges of his rage on our buttocks for days.

“I’m not angry. Tell me about the dreams. Can you tell me?”

I told him about the cabarets and the food; platefuls of steaming jollof with the rice enlivened with colourful vegetables and geometric invasions of meat; endless bowls of oil-speckled groundnut soup; delicious fried plantain streaked red, orange and black by a ridged saucepan, accompanied by a bean sauce that climbed all over your senses in tracks of spiced palm oil, mouthfuls of tiger nuts – crunchy and juicy; yam and cocoyam graffitied with strips of chicken and kontomire; silver spoonfuls of strawberry ice cream; trays full of groundnut and coconut brittle; palmwine, “I didn’t drink it, Daddy”; and mangoes, mangoes, mangoes… Then I told him about the spiders and why I had to mount one.

“I had to eat. It was Auntie Dee Dee’s cooking.”

My father listened. Then he cried. Silver rivulets of sorrow that made him look old. He reached for me. Watching my father cry pulled a cord inside me and I began to sob.

“I’m sorry son.”

He shook. His dark skin felt like a minor earthquake beneath my hands.

“I’m sorry son.” He wiped his face and looked at me through glistening lashes. “Death is difficult for everyone.”

I never made sense of the dreams, nor did I understand why my father apologised, but the dreams stopped. They came back once. This time the food was devoured by the spiders before the plates got to me. The only evidence of the food’s existence was the intricate brown tracks left by the spiders, like dust patterns. I woke up with an acute hunger. It was early 1983.

In the same year there was a terrible food shortage in Ghana. Everything was rationed. The queues of people waiting to buy their provisions lasted for hours and criss-crossed the city. Brown patterns as intricate as a dust-stained spider web. Still, we were invisible. The West was reluctant to help a Ghanaian government that was sending its students to Castro’s Cuba to study. People begged. You can’t afford pride when you have children. The head of state called us comrades. He was thin too. We learnt to make a single meal last an entire day. A stillness enveloped the entire nation. School suddenly seemed difficult. We lacked the energy for endless football games and I soon forgot the spider dreams in the vortex of hunger.

—–

continued >> here <<… | start from beginning? | current projects: The City Will Love You and a collection of poems, The Geez

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rbbox · 7 years ago

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Cane toad

For other uses, see Cane toads (disambiguation). The cane toad (Rhinella marina), also known as the giant neotropical toad or marine toad, is a large, terrestrial true toad which is native to South and mainland Middle America, but has been introduced to various islands throughout Oceania and the Caribbean, as well as northern Australia. It is a member of the genus Rhinella, but was formerly in the genus Bufo, which includes many different true toad species found throughout Central and South America. The cane toad is a prolific breeder; females lay single-clump spawns with thousands of eggs. Its reproductive success is partly because of opportunistic feeding: it has a diet, unusual among anurans, of both dead and living matter. Adults average 10–15 cm (3.9–5.9 in) in length; the largest recorded specimen weighed 2.65 kg (5.8 lb) with a length of 38 cm (15 in) from snout to vent. The cane toad is an old species. A fossil toad (specimen UCMP 41159) from the La Venta fauna of the late Miocene of Colombia is indistinguishable from modern cane toads from northern South America. It was discovered in a floodplain deposit, which suggests the R. marina habitat preferences have always been for open areas. The cane toad has poison glands, and the tadpoles are highly toxic to most animals if ingested. Because of its voracious appetite, the cane toad has been introduced to many regions of the Pacific and the Caribbean islands as a method of agricultural pest control. The species derives its common name from its use against the cane beetle (Dermolepida albohirtum). The cane toad is now considered a pest and an invasive species in many of its introduced regions; of particular concern is its toxic skin, which kills many animals—native predators and otherwise—when ingested. Taxonomy Originally, the cane toads were used to eradicate pests from sugarcane, giving rise to their common name. The cane toad has many other common names, including "giant toad" and "marine toad"; the former refers to its size and the latter to the binomial name, R. marina. It was one of many species described by Linnaeus in his 18th-century work Systema Naturae (1758). Linnaeus based the specific epithet marina on an illustration by Dutch zoologist Albertus Seba, who mistakenly believed the cane toad to inhabit both terrestrial and marine environments. Other common names include "giant neotropical toad", "Dominican toad", "giant marine toad", and "South American cane toad". In Trinidadian English, they are commonly called crapaud, the French word for toad. The genus Rhinella is considered to constitute a distinct genus of its own, thus changing the scientific name of the cane toad. In this case, the specific name marinus (masculine) changes to marina (feminine) to conform with the rules of gender agreement as set out by the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature, changing the binomial name from Bufo marinus to Rhinella marina; the binomial Rhinella marinus was subsequently introduced as a synonym through misspelling by Pramuk, Robertson, Sites, and Noonan (2008). Though controversial (with many traditional herpetologists still using Bufo marinus) the binomial Rhinella marina is gaining in acceptance with such bodies as the IUCN, Encyclopaedia of Life, Amphibian Species of the World and increasing numbers of scientific publications adopting its usage. A large, adult cane toad, showing the light colouration present in some specimens of the species Light-coloured cane toad In Australia, the adults may be confused with large native frogs from the genera Limnodynastes, Cyclorana, and Mixophyes. These species can be distinguished from the cane toad by the absence of large parotoid glands behind their eyes and the lack of a ridge between the nostril and the eye. Cane toads have been confused with the giant burrowing frog (Heleioporus australiacus), because both are large and warty in appearance; however, the latter can be readily distinguished from the former by its vertical pupils and its silver-grey (as opposed to gold) irises. Juvenile cane toads may be confused with species of the Uperoleia genus, but their adult colleagues can be distinguished by the lack of bright colouring on the groin and thighs. In the United States, the cane toad closely resembles many bufonid species. In particular, it could be confused with the southern toad (Bufo terrestris), which can be distinguished by the presence of two bulbs in front of the parotoid glands. Description A juvenile cane toad, showing many of the features of the adult toads, but without the large parotoid glands Young cane toad The cane toad is very large; the females are significantly longer than males, reaching an average length of 10–15 cm (3.9–5.9 in). "Prinsen", a toad kept as a pet in Sweden, is listed by Guinness World Records as the largest recorded specimen. It reportedly weighed 2.65 kg (5.84 lb) and measured 38 cm (15 in) from snout to vent, or 54 cm (21 in) when fully extended. Larger toads tend to be found in areas of lower population density. They have a life expectancy of 10 to 15 years in the wild, and can live considerably longer in captivity, with one specimen reportedly surviving for 35 years. The skin of the cane toad is dry and warty. It has distinct ridges above the eyes, which run down the snout. Individual cane toads can be grey, yellowish, red-brown, or olive-brown, with varying patterns. A large parotoid gland lies behind each eye. The ventral surface is cream-coloured and may have blotches in shades of black or brown. The pupils are horizontal and the irises golden. The toes have a fleshy webbing at their base, and the fingers are free of webbing. Typically, juvenile cane toads have smooth, dark skin, although some specimens have a red wash. Juveniles lack the adults' large parotoid glands, so they are usually less poisonous. The tadpoles are small and uniformly black, and are bottom-dwellers, tending to form schools. Tadpoles range from 10 to 25 mm (0.39 to 0.98 in) in length. Ecology, behavior, and life history The common name "marine toad" and the scientific name Rhinella marina suggest a link to marine life, but the adult cane toad is entirely terrestrial, only venturing to fresh water to breed. However, laboratory experiments suggest that tadpoles can tolerate salt concentrations equivalent to 15% of seawater (~5.4‰), and recent field observations found living tadpoles and toadlets at salinities of 27.5‰ on Coiba Island, Panama. The cane toad inhabits open grassland and woodland, and has displayed a "distinct preference" for areas modified by humans, such as gardens and drainage ditches. In their native habitats, the toads can be found in subtropical forests, although dense foliage tends to limit their dispersal. The cane toad begins life as an egg, which is laid as part of long strings of jelly in water. A female lays 8,000–25,000 eggs at once and the strings can stretch up to 20 m (66 ft) in length. The black eggs are covered by a membrane and their diameter is about 1.7–2.0 mm (0.067–0.079 in). The rate at which an egg grows into a tadpole increases with temperature. Tadpoles typically hatch within 48 hours, but the period can vary from 14 hours to almost a week. This process usually involves thousands of tadpoles—which are small, black, and have short tails—forming into groups. Between 12 and 60 days are needed for the tadpoles to develop into juveniles, with four weeks being typical. Similarly to their adult counterparts, eggs and tadpoles are toxic to many animals. When they emerge, toadlets typically are about 10–11 mm (0.39–0.43 in) in length, and grow rapidly. While the rate of growth varies by region, time of year, and gender, an average initial growth rate of 0.647 mm (0.0255 in) per day is seen, followed by an average rate of 0.373 mm (0.0147 in) per day. Growth typically slows once the toads reach sexual maturity. This rapid growth is important for their survival; in the period between metamorphosis and subadulthood, the young toads lose the toxicity that protected them as eggs and tadpoles, but have yet to fully develop the parotoid glands that produce bufotoxin. Because they lack this key defence, only an estimated 0.5% of cane toads reach adulthood. As with rates of growth, the point at which the toads become sexually mature varies across different regions. In New Guinea, sexual maturity is reached by female toads with a snout–vent length between 70 and 80 mm (2.8 and 3.1 in), while toads in Panama achieve maturity when they are between 90 and 100 mm (3.5 and 3.9 in) in length. In tropical regions, such as their native habitats, breeding occurs throughout the year, but in subtropical areas, breeding occurs only during warmer periods that coincide with the onset of the wet season. The cane toad is estimated to have a critical thermal maximum of 40–42 °C (104–108 °F) and a minimum of around 10–15 °C (50–59 °F). The ranges can change due to adaptation to the local environment. The cane toad has a high tolerance to water loss; some can withstand a 52.6% loss of body water, allowing them to survive outside tropical environments. Most frogs identify prey by movement, and vision appears to be the primary method by which the cane toad detects prey; however, the cane toad can also locate food using its sense of smell. They eat a wide range of material; in addition to the normal prey of small rodents, reptiles, other amphibians, birds, and even bats and a range of invertebrates, they also eat plants, dog food, and household refuse. An adult cane toad with dark colouration, as found in El Salvador: The parotoid gland is prominently displayed on the side of the head. Specimen from El Salvador: The large parotoid glands are visible behind the eyes. The skin of the adult cane toad is toxic, as well as the enlarged parotoid glands behind the eyes, and other glands across their backs. When the toads are threatened, their glands secrete a milky-white fluid known as bufotoxin. Components of bufotoxin are toxic to many animals; even human deaths have been due to the consumption of cane toads. Bufotenin, one of the chemicals excreted by the cane toad, is classified as a class-1 drug under Australian law, alongside heroin and cannabis. The effects of bufotenin are thought to be similar to those of mild poisoning; the stimulation, which includes mild hallucinations, lasts for less than an hour. As the cane toad excretes bufotenin in small amounts, and other toxins in relatively large quantities, toad licking could result in serious illness or death. In addition to releasing toxin, the cane toad is capable of inflating its lungs, puffing up, and lifting its body off the ground to appear taller and larger to a potential predator. Poisonous sausages containing toad meat are being trialled in the Kimberley (Western Australia) to try to protect native animals from cane toads' deadly impact. The Western Australian Department of Environment and Conservation has been working with the University of Sydney to develop baits to train native animals not to eat the toads. By blending bits of toad with a nausea-inducing chemical, the baits train the animals to stay away from the amphibians. Researcher David Pearson says trials run in laboratories and in remote parts of the Kimberley region of WA are looking promising, although the baits will not solve the cane toad problem altogether. Many species prey on the cane toad and its tadpoles in its native habitat, including the broad-snouted caiman (Caiman latirostris), the banded cat-eyed snake (Leptodeira annulata), eels (family Anguillidae), various species of killifish, the rock flagtail (Kuhlia rupestris), some species of catfish (order Siluriformes), some species of ibis (subfamily Threskiornithinae), and Paraponera clavata (bullet ants). Predators outside the cane toad's native range include the whistling kite (Haliastur sphenurus), the rakali (Hydromys chrysogaster), the black rat (Rattus rattus) and the water monitor (Varanus salvator). The tawny frogmouth (Podargus strigoides) and the Papuan frogmouth (Podargus papuensis) have been reported as feeding on cane toads; some Australian crows (Corvus spp.) have also learned strategies allowing them to feed on cane toads, such as using their beak to flip toads onto their back. Opossums of the Didelphis genus likely can eat cane toads with impunity. Meat ants are unaffected by the cane toads' toxins, and therefore are able to kill them. The cane toad's normal response to attack is to stand still and let their toxin kill the attacker, which allows the ants to attack and eat the toad. Distribution The cane toad is native to the Americas, and its range stretches from the Rio Grande Valley in South Texas to the central Amazon and southeastern Peru. This area encompasses both tropical and semiarid environments. The density of the cane toad is significantly lower within its native distribution than in places where it has been introduced. In South America, the density was recorded to be 20 adults per 100 m (109 yd) of shoreline, 1 to 2% of the density in Australia. Introductions The cane toad has been introduced to many regions of the world—particularly the Pacific—for the biological control of agricultural pests. These introductions have generally been well documented, and the cane toad may be one of the most studied of any introduced species. Before the early 1840s, the cane toad had been introduced into Martinique and Barbados, from French Guiana and Guyana. An introduction to Jamaica was made in 1844 in an attempt to reduce the rat population. Despite its failure to control the rodents, the cane toad was introduced to Puerto Rico in the early 20th century in the hope that it would counter a beetle infestation ravaging the sugarcane plantations. The Puerto Rican scheme was successful and halted the economic damage caused by the beetles, prompting scientists in the 1930s to promote it as an ideal solution to agricultural pests. As a result, many countries in the Pacific region emulated the lead of Puerto Rico and introduced the toad in the 1930s. There are introduced populations in Australia, Florida, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, the Ogasawara, Ishigaki Island and the Daitō Islands of Japan, most Caribbean islands, Fiji and many other Pacific islands, including Hawaii. Since then, the cane toad has become a pest in many host countries, and poses a serious threat to native animals. Main article: Cane toads in Australia A map of Australia with the cane toad's distribution highlighted: The area follows the northeastern coast of Australia, ranging from the Northern Territory through to the north end of New South Wales. Distribution of the cane toad in Australia (note: map out of date – current range includes northern WA, northern NSW and SA) Following the apparent success of the cane toad in eating the beetles threatening the sugarcane plantations of Puerto Rico, and the fruitful introductions into Hawaii and the Philippines, a strong push was made for the cane toad to be released in Australia to negate the pests ravaging the Queensland cane fields. As a result, 102 toads were collected from Hawaii and brought to Australia. After an initial release in August 1935, the Commonwealth Department of Health decided to ban future introductions until a study was conducted into the feeding habits of the toad. The study was completed in 1936 and the ban lifted, when large-scale releases were undertaken; by March 1937, 62,000 toadlets had been released into the wild. The toads became firmly established in Queensland, increasing exponentially in number and extending their range into the Northern Territory and New South Wales. Recently, the toads have made their way into Western Australia and one has even been found on the far western coast in Broome. However, the toad was generally unsuccessful in reducing the targeted grey-backed beetles, in part because the cane fields provided insufficient shelter for the predators during the day, in part because the beetles live at the tops of sugar cane – and cane toads are not good climbers. Since its original introduction, the cane toad has had a particularly marked effect on Australian biodiversity. The population of a number of native predatory reptiles has declined, such as the varanid lizards Varanus mertensi, V. mitchelli, and V. panoptes, the land snakes Pseudechis australis and Acanthophis antarcticus, and the crocodile species Crocodylus johnstoni; in contrast, the population of the agamid lizard Amphibolurus gilberti—known to be a prey item of V. panoptes—has increased. The cane toad was introduced to various Caribbean islands to counter a number of pests infesting local crops. While it was able to establish itself on some islands, such as Barbados, Jamaica, and Puerto Rico, other introductions, such as in Cuba before 1900 and in 1946, and on the islands of Dominica and Grand Cayman, were unsuccessful. The earliest recorded introductions were to Barbados and Martinique. The Barbados introductions were focused on the biological control of pests damaging the sugarcane crops, and while the toads became abundant, they have done even less to control the pests than in Australia. The toad was introduced to Martinique from French Guiana before 1944 and became established. Today, they reduce the mosquito and mole cricket populations. A third introduction to the region occurred in 1884, when toads appeared in Jamaica, reportedly imported from Barbados to help control the rodent population. While they had no significant effect on the rats, they nevertheless became well established. Other introductions include the release on Antigua—possibly before 1916, although this initial population may have died out by 1934 and been reintroduced at a later date— and Montserrat, which had an introduction before 1879 that led to the establishment of a solid population, which was apparently sufficient to survive the Soufrière Hills volcano eruption in 1995. In 1920, the cane toad was introduced into Puerto Rico to control the populations of white-grub (Phyllophaga spp.), a sugarcane pest. Before this, the pests were manually collected by humans, so the introduction of the toad eliminated labor costs. A second group of toads was imported in 1923, and by 1932, the cane toad was well established. The population of white-grubs dramatically decreased, and this was attributed to the cane toad at the annual meeting of the International Sugar Cane Technologists in Puerto Rico. However, there may have been other factors. The six-year period after 1931—when the cane toad was most prolific, and the white-grub saw dramatic decline—saw the highest-ever rainfall for Puerto Rico. Nevertheless, the cane toad was assumed to have controlled the white-grub; this view was reinforced by a Nature article titled "Toads save sugar crop", and this led to large-scale introductions throughout many parts of the Pacific. The cane toad has been spotted in Carriacou and Dominica, the latter appearance occurring in spite of the failure of the earlier introductions. On September 8, 2013, the cane toad was also discovered on the island of New Providence in the Bahamas. R. marina in the Philippines are referred to as kamprag, a corruption of 'American frog'. The cane toad was first introduced deliberately into the Philippines in 1930 as a biological control agent of pests in sugarcane plantations. This was done after the success of the experimental introductions into Puerto Rico. It subsequently became the most ubiquitous amphibian in the islands. It still retains the common name of bakî or kamprag in the Visayan languages, a corruption of 'American frog', referring to its origins. It is also commonly known as "bullfrog" in Philippine English. The cane toad was introduced into Fiji to combat insects that infested sugarcane plantations. The introduction of the cane toad to the region was first suggested in 1933, following the successes in Puerto Rico and Hawaii. After considering the possible side effects, the national government of Fiji decided to release the toad in 1953, and 67 specimens were subsequently imported from Hawaii. Once the toads were established, a 1963 study concluded, as the toad's diet included both harmful and beneficial invertebrates, it was considered "economically neutral". Today, the cane toad can be found on all major islands in Fiji, although they tend to be smaller than their counterparts in other regions. The cane toad was successfully introduced into New Guinea to control the hawk moth larvae eating sweet potato crops. The first release occurred in 1937 using toads imported from Hawaii, with a second release the same year using specimens from the Australian mainland. Evidence suggests a third release in 1938, consisting of toads being used for human pregnancy tests—many species of toad were found to be effective for this task, and were employed for about 20 years after the discovery was announced in 1948. Initial reports argued the toads were effective in reducing the levels of cutworms and sweet potato yields were thought to be improving. As a result, these first releases were followed by further distributions across much of the region, although their effectiveness on other crops, such as cabbages, has been questioned; when the toads were released at Wau, the cabbages provided insufficient shelter and the toads rapidly left the immediate area for the superior shelter offered by the forest. A similar situation had previously arisen in the Australian cane fields, but this experience was either unknown or ignored in New Guinea. The cane toad has since become abundant in rural and urban areas. The cane toad naturally exists in South Texas, but attempts (both deliberate and accidental) have been made to introduce the species to other parts of the country. These include introductions to Florida and to the islands of Hawaii, as well as largely unsuccessful introductions to Louisiana. Initial releases into Florida failed. Attempted introductions before 1936 and 1944, intended to control sugarcane pests, were unsuccessful as the toads failed to proliferate. Later attempts failed in the same way. However, the toad gained a foothold in the state after an accidental release by an importer at Miami International Airport in 1957, and deliberate releases by animal dealers in 1963 and 1964 established the toad in other parts of Florida. Today, the cane toad is well established in the state, from the Keys to north of Tampa, and they are gradually extending further northward. In Florida, the toad is a regarded as a threat to native species and pets; so much so, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission recommends residents kill them. A selection of cane toad merchandise, including key rings made from their legs, a coin purse made from the head, front limbs and body of a toad, and a stuffed cane toad Cane toad merchandise Around 150 cane toads were introduced to Oahu in Hawaii in 1932, and the population swelled to 105,517 after 17 months. The toads were sent to the other islands, and more than 100,000 toads were distributed by July 1934; eventually over 600,000 were transported. Uses Other than the previously mentioned use as a biological control for pests, the cane toad has been employed in a number of commercial and noncommercial applications. Traditionally, within the toad's natural range in South America, the Embera-Wounaan would "milk" the toads for their toxin, which was then employed as an arrow poison. The toxins may have been used as an entheogen by the Olmec people. The toad has been hunted as a food source in parts of Peru, and eaten after the careful removal of the skin and parotoid glands. When properly prepared, the meat of the toad is considered healthy and as a source of omega-3 fatty acids. More recently, the toad's toxins have been used in a number of new ways: bufotenin has been used in Japan as an aphrodisiac and a hair restorer, and in cardiac surgery in China to lower the heart rates of patients. New research has suggested that the cane toad's poison may have some applications in treating prostate cancer. Other modern applications of the cane toad include pregnancy testing, as pets, laboratory research, and the production of leather goods. Pregnancy testing was conducted in the mid-20th century by injecting urine from a woman into a male toad's lymph sacs, and if spermatozoa appeared in the toad's urine, the patient was deemed to be pregnant. The tests using toads were faster than those employing mammals; the toads were easier to raise, and, although the initial 1948 discovery employed Bufo arenarum for the tests, it soon became clear that a variety of anuran species were suitable, including the cane toad. As a result, toads were employed in this task for around 20 years. As a laboratory animal, the cane toad is regarded as ideal; they are plentiful, and easy and inexpensive to maintain and handle. The use of the cane toad in experiments started in the 1950s, and by the end of the 1960s, large numbers were being collected and exported to high schools and universities. Since then, a number of Australian states have introduced or tightened importation regulations. Even dead toads have value. Cane toad skin has been made into leather and novelty items; stuffed cane toads, posed and accessorised, have found a home in the tourist market, and attempts have been made to produce fertiliser from their bodies. Invasive species When the cane toad is introduced to a new ecosystem, it poses a serious threat to native species. Classified as an invasive species in over 20 countries, there are multiple reports of the cane toad moving into a new area to be followed by a decline in the biodiversity in that region. The most documented region of the cane toad's invasion and subsequent effect on native species is Australia, where multiple surveys and observations of the toad's conquest have been completed. The best way to illustrate this effect is through the plight of the northern quoll, as well as Mertens' water monitor, a large lizard native to South and Southeast Asia. Two sites were chosen to study the effects of cane toads on the northern quoll, one of which was at Mary River ranger station, which is located in the southern region of Kakadu National Park. The other site was located at the north end of the park. In addition to these two sites, there was a third site located at the East Alligator ranger station, and this site was used as a control site, where the cane toads would not interact with the northern quoll population. Monitoring of the quoll population began at the Mary River ranger station using radio tracking in 2002, months before the first cane toads arrived at the site. After the arrival of the cane toads, the population of northern quolls in the Mary River site plummeted between October and December 2002, and by March 2003, the northern quoll appeared to be extinct in this section of the park, as there were no northern quolls caught in the trapping trips in the following two months. In contrast, the population of northern quolls in the control site at the East Alligator ranger station remained relatively constant, not showing any symptoms of declining. The evidence from the Kakadu National Park is compelling not only because of the timing of the population of northern quolls plummeting just months after the arrival of the cane toad, but also because in the Mary River region 31% of mortalities within the quoll population were attributed to lethal toxic ingestion, as there were no signs of disease, parasite infestation, or any other obvious changes at the site that could have caused such a rapid decline. The most obvious piece of evidence which supports the hypothesis that the invasion of the cane toads caused the local extinction of the northern quoll is that the closely monitored population of the control group, in the absence of cane toads, showed no signs of decline. In the case of the Mertens' water monitor, more commonly known as Merten's water monitor, there was only one region that was monitored, but over the course of 18 months. This region is located 70 kilometers south of Darwin, at the Manton Dam Recreation Area. Within the Manton Dam Recreation Area, there were 14 sites set up to survey the population of water monitors, measuring abundance and site occupancy at each one. Seven surveys were conducted, each of which ran for four weeks and included 16 site visits, where each site was sampled twice per day for two consecutive days throughout the 4 weeks. Each site visit occurred between 7:30 -10:30 AM, and 4:00- 7:00 PM, when Varanus mertensi can be viewed sunbathing on the shore or wrapped around a tree branch close to shore. The whole project lasted from December 2004 to May 2006, and unveiled a total of 194 sightings of Varanus mertensi in 1568 site visits. Of the seven surveys, abundance was highest during the second survey, which took place in February 2005, two months into the project. Following this measurement, the abundance declined in the next 4 surveys, before declining sharply after the second to last survey in February 2006. In the final survey taken in May 2006, there were only two Varanus mertensi observed. Cane toads were first recorded in the region of study during the second survey during February 2005, also when the water monitor abundance was at its highest over the course of the study. Numbers of the cane toad population stayed low for the next year after introduction, and then skyrocketed to its peak in the last survey during May 2006. When you compare the two populations side by side one can see clearly that the onset of the cane toads had an immediate negative impact on the Varanus mertensi, as their population began to drop in February 2005, which was when the first cane toads entered the Manton Dam Recreation Area. At the end of the study, some scattered population of water monitors remained in the upper sites of the Manton Dam, which suggests that local extinctions occurred at certain shoreline sites within Manton Dam, but a complete extinction of the population did not occur. source - Wikipedia Dear friends, if you liked our post, please do not forget to share and comment like this. If you want to share your information with us, please send us your post with your name and photo at [email protected]. We will publish your post with your name and photo. thanks for joining us www.rbbox.in

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autolovecraft · 8 years ago

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They had touched them.

Odors of incense came to him. Meanwhile fresh ghouls crawled out of the second night he spent in a sheltered corner beneath some carvings whose meaning none could decipher. His lamp was waning, and polished, in Ulthar that merchants brought from Ilarnek.

Finally the great gates, each under a great gate through which the elders among cats repair by stealth nocturnally, springing from high housetops.

Always upward led the terrible plunge in darkness whose modes of nourishment are not beyond a mortal's power to cope with, but always from behind him could be nothing wholesome or mentionable. This was the gossip of distant steepled towns and hills beyond hills along the sea-cliffs. Certain unexplained rumors, events, and recognized the frantic meeping and glibbering. But there was only a suggestive blankness where a face came in sight of any hippocephalic bird was there to greet his ancient friend again, stars became nebulae and nebulae became stars, or back to the bridge by Nir, and were taken up and echoed in a moment he pondered on what he fancied that the island; hence a party of ghasts. Cool vales in Concord, cobbled lands in Portsmouth, twilight bends of the helplessly wind-sucked party. After a few night-gaunts took, though that is not man's. Once he stopped at an hour this dual battle raged in the gray twilight shining through a dome of the wood at two places touches the lands of his friends a reluctant farewell.

At last he discerned above him the frightened fluttering of some prominence in abysses nearer the waking world do no more than he had so narrowly escaped. For the cryptic folk of Leng was said; and that perhaps it had been and gone, and permit Carter to avoid making a noise among heaps of fallen marble. Sometimes a group of the ghouls and slightly down, with steps leading to the gray twilight sky.

Behold! He observed the greater part; and as they approached it, and the pleasant fields beyond, all the galley's crew shook visibly; but never seen again.

The next day, and toward other regions of dream.

Terrible is the bronze of the vaults near the peak wherein dwell the furtive and curious did that ghouls rest.

And truly, that your gold and marble city of Hlanith are of a frightful red-robed monstrosity.

Atal's companion Banni the Wise had been out beyond the Tanarian Hills and is ruled over by buildings and the pain of lost things and twenty-four almost human torch-bearers, eleven on either side of Ngranek and mark the morbid twistings of the ghoul which was to hurry first the eye and then hopping on or off some anchored galley; and Carter felt the wings of some prominence in abysses nearer the waking world than any others in dreamland; so that their absence of a bag are gathered up to cast out the last echo died away. And worst of all outdoors, and little lighted windows of Baharna's terraces mellow lights peeped out quietly and gradually as the moments advanced the sky, it is by you alone that the Great Ones, sending him skyward with the merchants come in and out into the low phosphorescent clouds of earth's dreamland was at an ancient and unhallowed alley near a graveyard—had actually made friends with the horrible stone villages at a distance, though that is not over unknown seas but back over well-nigh blasphemous in its orbit. And in a nightmare horde of toad without any eyes, but no mine in all the night-gaunts are altogether fabulous. Certain unexplained rumors, events, and pierced by straggling grass and wrenched asunder by frequent gates, there came an excited meeping from the wharves, moving bales and crates and drawn off in lumbering lorries by fabulous things. There was no mind can ever measure, but stayed by the seaward slopes of grove and lawn, and the statues of veined black marble, the worse tales he heard their low black-beamed ceilings and casements of greenish bull's-eye panes. Knobs, ledges, and there was an old dreamer and had noticed their likeness to the carven face looked down even sterner in shadow.

The old cat general now offered Carter an escort through the deep gulfs of heaven to Kadath's familiar towers and monoliths arose, but he feared to think except in tactful prayers.

That they were less clear as the last of the Other Gods, the ghouls tapped Carter as a sworn friend of his kind on earth or in waking life. Steer for that brightest star just south of the distant shadowy side, for it is better not be his fault.

Vaster and vaster loomed the tenebrous towers of the slain ghast's hooved body as it bore them on. It was a tunnel, and as they sit on carved benches of porphyry scanning the stars, and strewn with singular relics of earth had seized on the deck of a ship with violet sails bound for that fabled father of all the city steer for it before you heed the singing river Oukianos that marked his farthest former travels in this aeon-deserted city was no less a place than storied Sarkomand, dispatching a messenger for enough night-gaunts own not Nyarlathotep but hoary and immemorial Nodens, Lord of the toadlike moonbeasts and almost breathing statues of veined marble they revel by day, saying that the moonbeasts, of a ghoul, which is the glory of Salem's towers and monoliths arose, but so strong that none can be found in the eyes of the ghouls set to with something of a vast design whose function was to blame for it was a castle beyond all mortal thought, and all the northern waste, but gleamed red and having in them the fascination of a frenzy; and it would presently appear in full-length silhouette. He recalled, too, had decided to take the great stone terraces and colonnaded walks, the cats had baffled; taking the victim toppled at once scrambled up the higher they built it thirteen hundred years before. The almost-humans on deck would perceive the invasion of the palace, but nothing availed against the gray death-fire wherewith reeks the ghoulish leaders; telling what might befall him, leaving only its fragrance as a free and potent master among dreamers. Certainly, the clustered and bulbous domes and fantastic spires of Thran. Scent of the dizzy emptiness over the blue harbour, with great attention, and telling them that he might.

So the ghoul consented to lend three ghouls at the right dock, and seemed frightened at his right were rolling it down to the gulf, where of old times, as a simple boy in that one could grasp details only little by little to add to what was expected. Mount Man grow smaller and slower quarry on those cyclopean steps. Once or twice something seemed to be seen because they creep only in the Temple of the waking world. Ghouls come here often, for Oriab is a very likely place to the south wind drove into the blackness beneath as the prow hit the wharf felling two ghouls and newly assembled night-gaunts had no voices, and the horned fliers would first of all this in finding the gods had danced upon its pointed peak, and bargaining with men on the lower bowers of ocean. Once in crossing an open street he wriggled worm-like mountains carven into leering chimeras, while the merchants of the revolting procession that once filed through it; though he was moved to deep thought, for in those parts of dreamland.

These, Randolph Carter steal to the seven lodges by the houses peakedly fantastic with beamed and plastered gables. Meanwhile he did not mourn because those inquisitive Zoogs would escort him no farther.

This man was further shewn by handholds and footholds hewn where they had ever found what the night, and the peal of the void of the pinnacle proper.

He was now thick, and from all points; and it seemed that the inner blacknesses out of sight toward higher ledges of the impassable peaks from the ground while the perfume of trellised vines came wistful from arbors his grandfather had heard in the land of Inquanok, and the night, but no man had ever found it grew darker and colder.

So at length the slimy touch they have indeed beheld it. All the afternoon he followed that rising road, which is yours, no man knows, for one grows accustomed to the toad-things! All golden and lovely it blazed in the narrow ridges of the changed state of things wafted over the sea; having found through their help and sending his gratitude to the unwholesome mane of that, but mainly that they had warned him not to be led away northward toward the pinnacle to see him from your window on Beacon Hill at evening behind lattice windows, and promised that he now meant to do, and the vividness all too soon worn out, and when the cold waste.

The Council of Sages, recognizing the visitor, offered to deposit him in the vale of Pnoth; and comets, suns and worlds sprang flaming into life, though Carter took quarters in an ancient tavern he found it in the dreamlands around our own dreamland and having no power to cope with, and thought that perhaps he might do no business in the bazaars of Celephaïs, and there the galleon reached those bends of rustic New Hampshire roads where giant elms half hide white farmhouse gables peeped out from the altar and darted out into the rock and ice and snow. So worn and narrow. Upon their heads were strapped vast helmet-like tenants. These latter did not know the way to that unknown southern slope overlooking the desolate crags and sterile abysses of lava. Odors from those galleys which the fragrance of the waking world. So he had learned from the moonbeasts, so that none would wholly promise to cease trafficking with the gray dusk. The stench-filled houses were furnished mostly with grotesque termini and the cloudy phosphorescence of low clouds, but three of the tide turned, and there on a floor of the flower-fragrant wharves, where a face ought to be comfortable, and it would be all gorged and snoring indoors, and then came the deeper blackness of the old chief of the marvelous sunset city of vision that many ships had been rightly timed, there must be to see much slaughter, but which wise dreamers well know are the ears of earth's dreamland.

As the Shantak, sending them back gently to those scenes which are said to be. The thin hellish flutes of the clan had been up the rocks and lean back away from an unseen thing, Carter went to sleep in his youth, rose eagerly to meet the crawling chaos Nyarlathotep.

Carter tried to think just what a night-gaunt would seize and pull its quivering pink tentacles expectantly. This was the plan of the onyx castle of Kadath, veiled in cloud and crowned with clouds and beheld in the old ghoulish custom of killing and eating one's own wounded, and the mountains were so placed that they may shine more lovely over the rail Carter saw that it might be assembled and brought against the stars in the monstrous castle, and once he thought of the more easterly of the head of Ulthar's detachment, a vast central plaza and the Shantak-birds of Celephaïs, asking the way.

Finally, after an unguessed span of hours or days, and pausing not at once, while at the vast gray peaks to the foot of the authentic race of the ghouls and slightly wounding another; but he is winking at this point all the countryside spread out beneath him whenever he might stumble upon that mighty crag taller even than Throk's peaks. Where the mild gods of earth, and with a pshent of unknown places, or chant long tales to beguile the hours around their hearths in the turreted cloud-castle of sky-floating Serannian. Less and less reluctant to visit the scattered rocks.

This loveliness, molded, crystallized, and Carter nodded as the highway passed through, and Carter knew at last those endless voids of that cyclopean cliff. Swiftly there came a cough from the black men of Parg up the winding road at the trailing Zoogs revealed the downward hopping of at least within a quarter of the great highway, and there were remade a waking world. Much of the ghouls gave the small hours. Then, the vindictive ghasts were upon him by the artists of Baharna, inhabiting a very great, and even to that jagged granite place, or whether in dream, and did not at once, while the guest had been smiling more and more gradual hills that lay around.

Showers of bones, and mixed, and promised that he had fared so long ago had I not been unmarked in Ulthar.

Then the black paws tickled him with greater subtlety. It was clear that these men the sailors and merchants were of one whom I need not necessarily be dead, and there was only the sum of what those untrodden deserts might reveal; nor did they give any favoring sign when he crept closer, down the seventy steps of light appeared; and elephant caravans have glimpsed them from impertinent curiosity.

#H.P. Lovecraft #automatically generated text #Patrick Mooney #Python #Markov chains #The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath #1926 #The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath week

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readbookywooks · 8 years ago

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The Mediterranean in Forty-Eight Hours

THE MEDITERRANEAN, your ideal blue sea: to Greeks simply "the sea," to Hebrews "the great sea," to Romans mare nostrum.* Bordered by orange trees, aloes, cactus, and maritime pine trees, perfumed with the scent of myrtle, framed by rugged mountains, saturated with clean, transparent air but continuously under construction by fires in the earth, this sea is a genuine battlefield where Neptune and Pluto still struggle for world domination. Here on these beaches and waters, says the French historian Michelet, a man is revived by one of the most invigorating climates in the world. *Latin: "our sea." Ed. But as beautiful as it was, I could get only a quick look at this basin whose surface area comprises 2,000,000 square kilometers. Even Captain Nemo's personal insights were denied me, because that mystifying individual didn't appear one single time during our high-speed crossing. I estimate that the Nautilus covered a track of some 600 leagues under the waves of this sea, and this voyage was accomplished in just twenty-four hours times two. Departing from the waterways of Greece on the morning of February 16, we cleared the Strait of Gibraltar by sunrise on the 18th. It was obvious to me that this Mediterranean, pinned in the middle of those shores he wanted to avoid, gave Captain Nemo no pleasure. Its waves and breezes brought back too many memories, if not too many regrets. Here he no longer had the ease of movement and freedom of maneuver that the oceans allowed him, and his Nautilus felt cramped so close to the coasts of both Africa and Europe. Accordingly, our speed was twenty-five miles (that is, twelve four-kilometer leagues) per hour. Needless to say, Ned Land had to give up his escape plans, much to his distress. Swept along at the rate of twelve to thirteen meters per second, he could hardly make use of the skiff. Leaving the Nautilus under these conditions would have been like jumping off a train racing at this speed, a rash move if there ever was one. Moreover, to renew our air supply, the submersible rose to the surface of the waves only at night, and relying solely on compass and log, it steered by dead reckoning. Inside the Mediterranean, then, I could catch no more of its fast-passing scenery than a traveler might see from an express train; in other words, I could view only the distant horizons because the foregrounds flashed by like lightning. But Conseil and I were able to observe those Mediterranean fish whose powerful fins kept pace for a while in the Nautilus's waters. We stayed on watch before the lounge windows, and our notes enable me to reconstruct, in a few words, the ichthyology of this sea. Among the various fish inhabiting it, some I viewed, others I glimpsed, and the rest I missed completely because of the Nautilus's speed. Kindly allow me to sort them out using this whimsical system of classification. It will at least convey the quickness of my observations. In the midst of the watery mass, brightly lit by our electric beams, there snaked past those one-meter lampreys that are common to nearly every clime. A type of ray from the genus Oxyrhynchus, five feet wide, had a white belly with a spotted, ash-gray back and was carried along by the currents like a huge, wide-open shawl. Other rays passed by so quickly I couldn't tell if they deserved that name "eagle ray" coined by the ancient Greeks, or those designations of "rat ray," "bat ray," and "toad ray" that modern fishermen have inflicted on them. Dogfish known as topes, twelve feet long and especially feared by divers, were racing with each other. Looking like big bluish shadows, thresher sharks went by, eight feet long and gifted with an extremely acute sense of smell. Dorados from the genus Sparus, some measuring up to thirteen decimeters, appeared in silver and azure costumes encircled with ribbons, which contrasted with the dark color of their fins; fish sacred to the goddess Venus, their eyes set in brows of gold; a valuable species that patronizes all waters fresh or salt, equally at home in rivers, lakes, and oceans, living in every clime, tolerating any temperature, their line dating back to prehistoric times on this earth yet preserving all its beauty from those far-off days. Magnificent sturgeons, nine to ten meters long and extremely fast, banged their powerful tails against the glass of our panels, showing bluish backs with small brown spots; they resemble sharks, without equaling their strength, and are encountered in every sea; in the spring they delight in swimming up the great rivers, fighting the currents of the Volga, Danube, Po, Rhine, Loire, and Oder, while feeding on herring, mackerel, salmon, and codfish; although they belong to the class of cartilaginous fish, they rate as a delicacy; they're eaten fresh, dried, marinated, or salt-preserved, and in olden times they were borne in triumph to the table of the Roman epicure Lucullus. But whenever the Nautilus drew near the surface, those denizens of the Mediterranean I could observe most productively belonged to the sixty-third genus of bony fish. These were tuna from the genus Scomber, blue-black on top, silver on the belly armor, their dorsal stripes giving off a golden gleam. They are said to follow ships in search of refreshing shade from the hot tropical sun, and they did just that with the Nautilus, as they had once done with the vessels of the Count de La Perouse. For long hours they competed in speed with our submersible. I couldn't stop marveling at these animals so perfectly cut out for racing, their heads small, their bodies sleek, spindle-shaped, and in some cases over three meters long, their pectoral fins gifted with remarkable strength, their caudal fins forked. Like certain flocks of birds, whose speed they equal, these tuna swim in triangle formation, which prompted the ancients to say they'd boned up on geometry and military strategy. And yet they can't escape the Provencal fishermen, who prize them as highly as did the ancient inhabitants of Turkey and Italy; and these valuable animals, as oblivious as if they were deaf and blind, leap right into the Marseilles tuna nets and perish by the thousands. Just for the record, I'll mention those Mediterranean fish that Conseil and I barely glimpsed. There were whitish eels of the species Gymnotus fasciatus that passed like elusive wisps of steam, conger eels three to four meters long that were tricked out in green, blue, and yellow, three-foot hake with a liver that makes a dainty morsel, wormfish drifting like thin seaweed, sea robins that poets call lyrefish and seamen pipers and whose snouts have two jagged triangular plates shaped like old Homer's lyre, swallowfish swimming as fast as the bird they're named after, redheaded groupers whose dorsal fins are trimmed with filaments, some shad (spotted with black, gray, brown, blue, yellow, and green) that actually respond to tinkling handbells, splendid diamond-shaped turbot that were like aquatic pheasants with yellowish fins stippled in brown and the left topside mostly marbled in brown and yellow, finally schools of wonderful red mullet, real oceanic birds of paradise that ancient Romans bought for as much as 10,000 sesterces apiece, and which they killed at the table, so they could heartlessly watch it change color from cinnabar red when alive to pallid white when dead. And as for other fish common to the Atlantic and Mediterranean, I was unable to observe miralets, triggerfish, puffers, seahorses, jewelfish, trumpetfish, blennies, gray mullet, wrasse, smelt, flying fish, anchovies, sea bream, porgies, garfish, or any of the chief representatives of the order Pleuronecta, such as sole, flounder, plaice, dab, and brill, simply because of the dizzying speed with which the Nautilus hustled through these opulent waters. As for marine mammals, on passing by the mouth of the Adriatic Sea, I thought I recognized two or three sperm whales equipped with the single dorsal fin denoting the genus Physeter, some pilot whales from the genus Globicephalus exclusive to the Mediterranean, the forepart of the head striped with small distinct lines, and also a dozen seals with white bellies and black coats, known by the name monk seals and just as solemn as if they were three-meter Dominicans. For his part, Conseil thought he spotted a turtle six feet wide and adorned with three protruding ridges that ran lengthwise. I was sorry to miss this reptile, because from Conseil's description, I believe I recognized the leatherback turtle, a pretty rare species. For my part, I noted only some loggerhead turtles with long carapaces. As for zoophytes, for a few moments I was able to marvel at a wonderful, orange-hued hydra from the genus Galeolaria that clung to the glass of our port panel; it consisted of a long, lean filament that spread out into countless branches and ended in the most delicate lace ever spun by the followers of Arachne. Unfortunately I couldn't fish up this wonderful specimen, and surely no other Mediterranean zoophytes would have been offered to my gaze, if, on the evening of the 16th, the Nautilus hadn't slowed down in an odd fashion. This was the situation. By then we were passing between Sicily and the coast of Tunisia. In the cramped space between Cape Bon and the Strait of Messina, the sea bottom rises almost all at once. It forms an actual ridge with only seventeen meters of water remaining above it, while the depth on either side is 170 meters. Consequently, the Nautilus had to maneuver with caution so as not to bump into this underwater barrier. I showed Conseil the position of this long reef on our chart of the Mediterranean. "But with all due respect to master," Conseil ventured to observe, "it's like an actual isthmus connecting Europe to Africa." "Yes, my boy," I replied, "it cuts across the whole Strait of Sicily, and Smith's soundings prove that in the past, these two continents were genuinely connected between Cape Boeo and Cape Farina." "I can easily believe it," Conseil said. "I might add," I went on, "that there's a similar barrier between Gibraltar and Ceuta, and in prehistoric times it closed off the Mediterranean completely." "Gracious!" Conseil put in. "Suppose one day some volcanic upheaval raises these two barriers back above the waves!" "That's most unlikely, Conseil." "If master will allow me to finish, I mean that if this phenomenon occurs, it might prove distressing to Mr. de Lesseps, who has gone to such pains to cut through his isthmus!" "Agreed, but I repeat, Conseil: such a phenomenon won't occur. The intensity of these underground forces continues to diminish. Volcanoes were quite numerous in the world's early days, but they're going extinct one by one; the heat inside the earth is growing weaker, the temperature in the globe's lower strata is cooling appreciably every century, and to our globe's detriment, because its heat is its life." "But the sun - " "The sun isn't enough, Conseil. Can it restore heat to a corpse?" "Not that I've heard." "Well, my friend, someday the earth will be just such a cold corpse. Like the moon, which long ago lost its vital heat, our globe will become lifeless and unlivable." "In how many centuries?" Conseil asked. "In hundreds of thousands of years, my boy." "Then we have ample time to finish our voyage," Conseil replied, "if Ned Land doesn't mess things up!" Thus reassured, Conseil went back to studying the shallows that the Nautilus was skimming at moderate speed. On the rocky, volcanic seafloor, there bloomed quite a collection of moving flora: sponges, sea cucumbers, jellyfish called sea gooseberries that were adorned with reddish tendrils and gave off a subtle phosphorescence, members of the genus Beroe that are commonly known by the name melon jellyfish and are bathed in the shimmer of the whole solar spectrum, free-swimming crinoids one meter wide that reddened the waters with their crimson hue, treelike basket stars of the greatest beauty, sea fans from the genus Pavonacea with long stems, numerous edible sea urchins of various species, plus green sea anemones with a grayish trunk and a brown disk lost beneath the olive-colored tresses of their tentacles. Conseil kept especially busy observing mollusks and articulates, and although his catalog is a little dry, I wouldn't want to wrong the gallant lad by leaving out his personal observations. From the branch Mollusca, he mentions numerous comb-shaped scallops, hooflike spiny oysters piled on top of each other, triangular coquina, three-pronged glass snails with yellow fins and transparent shells, orange snails from the genus Pleurobranchus that looked like eggs spotted or speckled with greenish dots, members of the genus Aplysia also known by the name sea hares, other sea hares from the genus Dolabella, plump paper-bubble shells, umbrella shells exclusive to the Mediterranean, abalone whose shell produces a mother-of-pearl much in demand, pilgrim scallops, saddle shells that diners in the French province of Languedoc are said to like better than oysters, some of those cockleshells so dear to the citizens of Marseilles, fat white venus shells that are among the clams so abundant off the coasts of North America and eaten in such quantities by New Yorkers, variously colored comb shells with gill covers, burrowing date mussels with a peppery flavor I relish, furrowed heart cockles whose shells have riblike ridges on their arching summits, triton shells pocked with scarlet bumps, carniaira snails with backward-curving tips that make them resemble flimsy gondolas, crowned ferola snails, atlanta snails with spiral shells, gray nudibranchs from the genus Tethys that were spotted with white and covered by fringed mantles, nudibranchs from the suborder Eolidea that looked like small slugs, sea butterflies crawling on their backs, seashells from the genus Auricula including the oval-shaped Auricula myosotis, tan wentletrap snails, common periwinkles, violet snails, cineraira snails, rock borers, ear shells, cabochon snails, pandora shells, etc. As for the articulates, in his notes Conseil has very appropriately divided them into six classes, three of which belong to the marine world. These classes are the Crustacea, Cirripedia, and Annelida. Crustaceans are subdivided into nine orders, and the first of these consists of the decapods, in other words, animals whose head and thorax are usually fused, whose cheek-and-mouth mechanism is made up of several pairs of appendages, and whose thorax has four, five, or six pairs of walking legs. Conseil used the methods of our mentor Professor Milne-Edwards, who puts the decapods in three divisions: Brachyura, Macrura, and Anomura. These names may look a tad fierce, but they're accurate and appropriate. Among the Brachyura, Conseil mentions some amanthia crabs whose fronts were armed with two big diverging tips, those inachus scorpions that-lord knows why - symbolized wisdom to the ancient Greeks, spider crabs of the massena and spinimane varieties that had probably gone astray in these shallows because they usually live in the lower depths, xanthid crabs, pilumna crabs, rhomboid crabs, granular box crabs (easy on the digestion, as Conseil ventured to observe), toothless masked crabs, ebalia crabs, cymopolia crabs, woolly-handed crabs, etc. Among the Macrura (which are subdivided into five families: hardshells, burrowers, crayfish, prawns, and ghost crabs) Conseil mentions some common spiny lobsters whose females supply a meat highly prized, slipper lobsters or common shrimp, waterside gebia shrimp, and all sorts of edible species, but he says nothing of the crayfish subdivision that includes the true lobster, because spiny lobsters are the only type in the Mediterranean. Finally, among the Anomura, he saw common drocina crabs dwelling inside whatever abandoned seashells they could take over, homola crabs with spiny fronts, hermit crabs, hairy porcelain crabs, etc. There Conseil's work came to a halt. He didn't have time to finish off the class Crustacea through an examination of its stomatopods, amphipods, homopods, isopods, trilobites, branchiopods, ostracods, and entomostraceans. And in order to complete his study of marine articulates, he needed to mention the class Cirripedia, which contains water fleas and carp lice, plus the class Annelida, which he would have divided without fail into tubifex worms and dorsibranchian worms. But having gone past the shallows of the Strait of Sicily, the Nautilus resumed its usual deep-water speed. From then on, no more mollusks, no more zoophytes, no more articulates. Just a few large fish sweeping by like shadows. During the night of February 16-17, we entered the second Mediterranean basin, whose maximum depth we found at 3,000 meters. The Nautilus, driven downward by its propeller and slanting fins, descended to the lowest strata of this sea. There, in place of natural wonders, the watery mass offered some thrilling and dreadful scenes to my eyes. In essence, we were then crossing that part of the whole Mediterranean so fertile in casualties. From the coast of Algiers to the beaches of Provence, how many ships have wrecked, how many vessels have vanished! Compared to the vast liquid plains of the Pacific, the Mediterranean is a mere lake, but it's an unpredictable lake with fickle waves, today kindly and affectionate to those frail single-masters drifting between a double ultramarine of sky and water, tomorrow bad-tempered and turbulent, agitated by the winds, demolishing the strongest ships beneath sudden waves that smash down with a headlong wallop. So, in our swift cruise through these deep strata, how many vessels I saw lying on the seafloor, some already caked with coral, others clad only in a layer of rust, plus anchors, cannons, shells, iron fittings, propeller blades, parts of engines, cracked cylinders, staved-in boilers, then hulls floating in midwater, here upright, there overturned. Some of these wrecked ships had perished in collisions, others from hitting granite reefs. I saw a few that had sunk straight down, their masting still upright, their rigging stiffened by the water. They looked like they were at anchor by some immense, open, offshore mooring where they were waiting for their departure time. When the Nautilus passed between them, covering them with sheets of electricity, they seemed ready to salute us with their colors and send us their serial numbers! But no, nothing but silence and death filled this field of catastrophes! I observed that these Mediterranean depths became more and more cluttered with such gruesome wreckage as the Nautilus drew nearer to the Strait of Gibraltar. By then the shores of Africa and Europe were converging, and in this narrow space collisions were commonplace. There I saw numerous iron undersides, the phantasmagoric ruins of steamers, some lying down, others rearing up like fearsome animals. One of these boats made a dreadful first impression: sides torn open, funnel bent, paddle wheels stripped to the mountings, rudder separated from the sternpost and still hanging from an iron chain, the board on its stern eaten away by marine salts! How many lives were dashed in this shipwreck! How many victims were swept under the waves! Had some sailor on board lived to tell the story of this dreadful disaster, or do the waves still keep this casualty a secret? It occurred to me, lord knows why, that this boat buried under the sea might have been the Atlas, lost with all hands some twenty years ago and never heard from again! Oh, what a gruesome tale these Mediterranean depths could tell, this huge boneyard where so much wealth has been lost, where so many victims have met their deaths! Meanwhile, briskly unconcerned, the Nautilus ran at full propeller through the midst of these ruins. On February 18, near three o'clock in the morning, it hove before the entrance to the Strait of Gibraltar. There are two currents here: an upper current, long known to exist, that carries the ocean's waters into the Mediterranean basin; then a lower countercurrent, the only present-day proof of its existence being logic. In essence, the Mediterranean receives a continual influx of water not only from the Atlantic but from rivers emptying into it; since local evaporation isn't enough to restore the balance, the total amount of added water should make this sea's level higher every year. Yet this isn't the case, and we're naturally forced to believe in the existence of some lower current that carries the Mediterranean's surplus through the Strait of Gibraltar and into the Atlantic basin. And so it turned out. The Nautilus took full advantage of this countercurrent. It advanced swiftly through this narrow passageway. For an instant I could glimpse the wonderful ruins of the Temple of Hercules, buried undersea, as Pliny and Avianus have mentioned, together with the flat island they stand on; and a few minutes later, we were floating on the waves of the Atlantic.

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