#I really should have gone into some sort of data organizing field

[delucadarling]

Current rambling thoughts on dieting/weight loss, nothing that's a downer:

Back in April I got blood test results that showed my cholesterol was high and my sugar was barely shy of being diabetic. It spooked the shit out of me, as despite being fat most of my life, I was also pretty healthy and somewhat active. It was after getting covid that I was so fatigued I dropped the active thing pretty much entirely.

The doctor was more focus on the sugar, and recommended cutting back simple sugars, adding in more fiber, and increasing my weekly activity.

I'd been wanting to get back into shape for a long, long time but I've been nervous about trying the gym again. My dad was one of those shithead people that secretly films people in the gym doing things 'wrong' or committing the sin of being fat in public. It had me terrified of trying to get fit where other people could see me, because you know, most people don't want to be mocked.

Lucky me, I have the most amazing, supportive girlfriend ever. She took me by the hand and very gently showed me around the gym, helped me learn how to use the machines, and didn't mind when I shadowed her around as she did her workout. From there, I got excited! I used to LOVE working out, I just mostly did simple stuff, running, and swimming. I did a lot of WiiFit when I was younger, and this one Jillian Michael's DVD I found at Walmart for like $5 at the time. Running was the big one though (hello Zombies, Run folks).

So just making those changes (less soda, more fiber, more exercise) over the course of maybe 3ish months I dropped almost 15 lbs. I hadn't been tracking my weight, but I did compare the results the doctor took from my previous three appointments. I was kind of shocked! I've never had a healthy relationship with weight loss, and every time I've tried to lose weight it lead to a lot of heartache, misery, and doubled weight gain. So I more or less wrote off my ability to trim down and decided to just be fat and happy.

I will say though, the extra bulk has recently frustrated me. I can't do yoga the way I used to. My limbs are still flexible but I keep getting blocked by my own fat. I have to go real easy on my joints because of all the extra weight, which is frustrating, because I'd honestly love to try jogging again. I just don't want to fuck my back and knees up again.

I decided to give losing weight another try, with a lot more self-love, after a lot more research, and with the support of someone who has loved me even at my fattest and never said a word about it.

It hasn't been too hard this time. I don't feel like I'm depriving myself. I am impatient, I want to see results NOW, but obviously that's not how things work. And slow is better anyway.

I know tumblr has a generally negative view on weight loss, and I fully include myself in that. I bought into the 'starvation mode means you'll never ACTUALLY lose weight permanently) thing, I was convinced anyone trying to lose weight had the same disordered ideas on it that I used to have (and still struggle with sometimes). It's a loaded topic for a hundred reasons, so I am trying to be conscious of when I talk about it and around who. Hence the tags and putting it under a cut. I'm happy and excited to be trying this out, putting my health first, trying to feel strong and capable in my body, but I absolutely know first hand how upsetting hearing about dieting can be. Not to mention how hard it is to avoid the more toxic side of trying to change your diet and fitness.

I've found a lot of resources that are very facts based, cut and dry, and leave out the moralizing behind weight loss and weight gain and just weight in general. There are a lot of very encouraging resources as well.

So yeah! As said, this is just a ramble, I like to write to get my thoughts down, and it always comes easier when it feels like I'm talking to someone, not just myself. I probably won't post a lot about this, but it's been just over a week since I started tracking my food and daily weight specifically, which always used to be something that would send me into a bad habit spiral. This time feels different. I've been doing fine. There have been a few moments of disappointment, but they've been easy to shake off. Mostly I'm just astounded to learn more about the macros involved in the food I eat, and I'm also happy to have tools to help me find portions that make me feel full and not stuffed. On the days I've been not kept to my deficit goals, it was because I was hungry and decided it was more worth it to feed myself than stick to a number and I didn't feel a bit of guilt about it afterward.

I'm pretty pleased with how it's going so far. I feel stronger, I feel more energetic, and tracking my food intake and weight makes the part of my brain that loves a spreadsheet very happy.

[dramione4e]

Dramione 8th year. Ron’s POV.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/41359626

She was well

"What do you mean you didn't have to do anything?" Ron asked Harry as soon as the later stepped out from the fireplace. "Was she trying to prank us or something? Is that why you're back so soon?"

Harry looked like he would rather do anything else than standing in their shared office explaining to Ron whatever had happened when he had visited Hermione earlier at Hogwarts.

"No, she really is dating Malfoy," said Harry with resignation looking everywhere but at Ron. "I didn't even talk to her but it was so obv-"

"What?" Said Ron getting up from his seat. "You didn't talk to her? Harry, are you daft?"

"I'm not daft, you don't understand-"

"You were supposed to check on her," Ron could feel his own anger rising.

"I-"

"She could be under the influence of a love potion!"

"Ron-"

"Or controlled by the Imperius Curse! We're talking about Malfoy!"

"Ron, I didn't have to check-"

"'Didn't have to'? Harry, that's Auror training 101!"

"I know, Ron! For fuck's sake just let me explain-"

"No! The Floo is still open for the next hour. I'll go check on her myself."

Ron grabbed the Floo Powder and stepped into the fireplace before Harry could argue further with him. He had heard enough and yelling at his best friend wasn't going to solve anything.

He arrived at Professor McGonagall's office seconds later with a light feel of nausea that he couldn't really blame on the Floo trip.

The new Headmistress had agreed to leave the Floo open for them while she was out attending school business and Ron was glad no one was there to distract him.

The situation was dire and he felt frustrated that Harry had just dismissed their plan.

Something wasn't right and now he was regretting storming out from the office before checking for curses on his best friend.

What if Malfoy —or someone working for him— used some sort of dark spell to make Harry believe Hermione wasn't in danger? Now Ron was the one forgetting their basic Auror training: gathering and analyzing all data to strategize the best possible approach before going in the field.

He was basically going blind without any knowledge of what kind of attack to expect.

Before he could doubt himself he got out of the office and marched down the halls of his Alma Mater to find her other best friend who should be —according to her schedule— finishing lunch or on her way to DADA class.

The unsettling feeling in his stomach got worse with the anticipation of seeing Hermione after months of only exchanging letters.

He was a little bummed out when Hermione had informed them about her plan of going back to Hogwarts.

Ron had thought about following her but she'd said she needed time for herself after everything that had happened after the war and her not being able to fix her parents' memories.

He suspected their break-up also had a little to play in her decision and she hadn't denied it.

The truth is they weren't as affected as they thought they would be when they decided to stay friends.

Both of them had agreed that the romantic and physical part of their relationship felt off. And they also couldn't help but compare themselves to Harry and Ginny who seemed like the perfect couple.

Seriously, just looking at them was enough to make Ron and Hermione realize that they weren't a good fit.

Still, they loved each other deeply.

Harry, Hermione and Ron were soulmates with an unbreakable bond. The three of them had gone through all sorts of experiences together that will keep them in each other's lives forever.

Though a break up was nothing compared to some of the hardships they had gone through, it still was hard to find out a person you have such a strong connection to could never be the person you ended up with.

That's why he had gotten mad at Harry who, not only claimed he saw Hermione as a sister, but knew she also meant the word to Ron.

The whole situation was odd.

Hermione had first mentioned Malfoy in one of her letters —sent to both Harry and him to their office— back in September, telling them that Malfoy had apologized to her for everything.

This came as no surprise because Malfoy had sought them out and apologized to Harry and him when Hermione had been in Australia.

The ferret had asked them for "Granger's contact information" so he could write to her and seemed a little disappointed when they had explained she was out of the country attending personal business.

Even when it was Malfoy, Ron could see his intentions were good. It was evident he wasn't the same boy he had been at school so he didn't think anything bad of it.

Oh, how wrong he was. Malfoy was probably planning on taking advantage of Hermione all along.

His motive was unsure. Probably revenge. Probably hate against Muggleborns despite Malfoy's own claims that he had managed to unlearn his prejudice even before the war.

Who knows.

Hermione had written about Malfoy other times when she mentioned they were appointed partners in almost every class.

In her letters there were mentions of them studying in the library or patrolling the halls. They obviously had started a friendship.

But a relationship?

The last time Hermione had mentioned Malfoy in a letter she had dropped a Bombarda on Harry and him by telling them that over the Christmas holiday she and the ferret had started dating officially.

How long had they been dating unofficially Ron didn't want to know.

What he wanted to know was what kind of Dark Magic Malfoy had used on Hermione for her to "start to fall hard for Draco" as she had stated in her last letter.

The unsettling feeling in his stomach grew stronger.

He was already at the end of the hall where the DADA classroom was and decided to cast some protective spells on him so he wouldn't be caught off guard by anyone before he could find Hermione —or Malfoy, to question him.

He stood hidden behind the corner and it wasn't long before he saw Hermione approaching from the other end of the hall.

Ron was... surprised.

There were no other words to describe what he felt when he saw her after more than half a year.

She looked beautiful.

It wasn't her clothes or her hair. She was just wearing her Hogwarts uniform and her hair hadn't changed in years.

It was just her.

Something in the way she walked, the way she moved her hands gesturing and the light expression on her face.

She looked like herself.

Ron wasn't sure when was the last time he had seen Hermione look like herself. It was kind of weird if he was honest.

They all had been so broken after the war that he didn't think anything or anyone could go back to "normal" but she somehow had managed to regain that sparkle in her eye.

Such was his impression that he hadn't noticed she was walking beside Malfoy until they reached the door of the classroom.

It was still several minutes early before class and the door was closed so she just casually leaned her back on the opposite wall.

Malfoy closed the distance between them and Ron held his wand tighter ready to run towards them and hex the ferret.

Except he couldn't move.

It wasn't a spell or someone holding him up. The shock of what he was seeing made him freeze on his spot.

Malfoy got closer to Hermione until he could rest his arm next to her face on the wall but it was in a non-threatening way.

He noticed Malfoy's face and Ron was as stunned —if not more— as when seeing Hermione's face.

He was looking at her with pure and utter adoration. His eyes were soft and shining with something Ron couldn't find words to describe at the top of his head.

His lips were curved into a smile. Not a frown. Not a smirk, but a genuine smile.

Malfoy was looking at Hermione like she was the most precious creature in the universe and Ron couldn't have felt more awkward.

He knew that look. It was the one he saw on Harry when he was with Ginny and they thought no one was watching.

He saw Malfoy put two school bags on the floor and Ron realized the blond man had been carrying Hermione's bag for her.

With his now free arm, Malfoy reached Hermione's hair and tucked an unruly curl behind her ear, his hand now moving gently down her cheekbone and stopping at her chin.

He was being so delicate and the act was just so out of character with the Malfoy he knew that Ron's brain still couldn't function.

The look on Hermione's face was welcoming, willing, eager and equally charged with adoration.

He had never seen that look the whole time they were together.

Their break-up made sense now more than ever.

This was somehow worse than watching Harry and Ginny shamelessly making out in the living room at The Burrow.

Somehow he understood this was a more intimate moment.

And they were barely touching.

They were both immersed in their own world, living inside their little bubble, obliviously unaware of any other soul but theirs.

He saw Malfoy leaning down, eyes closed and Hermione tilting her head up and puckering her lips.

Ron shut his eyes feeling out of place for witnessing such a private moment and turned around towards Professor McGonagall's office.

His thoughts were absent from his head the whole way back to the Ministry.

When he stepped out of the fireplace he saw Harry working on some paperwork at his desk.

His eyes found Ron's and they both understood.

They didn't say anything. They didn't have to. They both knew now.

She was well.

[redrobin-detective]

Delayed Mourning

Going Angst Day 5: Death

_________________________________________

It was 3pm when there was a knock on Maddie Fenton’s door. She huffed and set down the meal she’d been working on. Of course the one day she had time to pre-plan a nice meal from her family was the day she’d get interrupted. 

“Yes? May I help you?” Maddie asked, opening the door. She had expected a salesman. Possibly even a neighbor coming to complain, again, about the noise or the smells that came from Fentonworks. Instead she found a small woman who couldn’t have been much taller than 5 ft with dark brown hair tied up in a tight bun. She was wearing a sharp white shirt and suit jacket with a matching white skirt.

“Mrs. Fenton, hello,” the woman gave a polite little head nod. “I’m from the the Government Institute of Interdimensional Warfare though I hear the locals like to call us the Guys in White.” She said with a knowing smiling, “of course, as you know, it’s not only the guys who are interested in ghosts. May I come in?”

“Oh yes, hello,” Maddie blinked, opening the door to let the agent in. The petite woman stepped inside, her heels clicking on the hardwood floor. Her small frame, her oversized glasses and soft nature seemed so at odds with the meatheads Maddie usually found in the GIW. “Is there something I can help you with?”

“Perhaps,” the agent demurred. “It’s more there was something I wanted to inform you of. If you’re not too busy, may we sit down and talk? Your husband and children are not home.” Maddie thought that last statement was a bit odd, framed as a statement of fact rather than an inquiry but moved on. 

“Yes, Jack’s out of town visiting a relative and my kids won’t be back for a little while,” Maddie said. “Let me just finish putting this roast together, I’m almost done. Can I get you anything? Water? Tea?”

“No, thank you,” The woman said quietly. “And please, continue while you’re doing. Let me give you a little bit of background.” The agent adjusted her large glasses with her tiny hands. “Let me introduce myself, you may call me Agent S. I work primarily out of Washington for the Institute but sometimes I am deployed on site for... special cases. And, as I’m sure you’re aware, your town is very special.”

“Now, as you may have noticed, I am not particularly built like the normal Institute agents you have probably come across. That is because I do not work in the field but behind the scene in Investigations. My job is study the history and happenings of hauntings and spectral entities.”

“Oh that sounds fascinating,” Maddie beamed as she finished with her final preps and put the roast in the over. She looked over her shoulder at Agent S while she washed her hands. “Jack and I dabble a bit in history and folklore but we’re more versed in the hard sciences of ghosts.”

“Yes, I’ve read some of your papers, you and your husband truly are the frontrunners in the field,” Agent S nodded. Maddie preened at the praise and sat down, delighted to have a sophisticated conversation with someone in her field who she wasn’t married to. If more of those GIW agents were like Agent S then Maddie would get along a lot better with them. “So, Maddie, may I call you Maddie? What date and time did your portal start working?”

“It was August 28th,” Maddie said proudly. “It didn’t work at first when we first plugged it in. I’m afraid I don’t have an exact time it started up as we weren’t here. Jack was convinced one of the electrical conduction pieces wasn’t fully connected and was preventing ectoplasmic distribution. We ended up driving 4 hours to Springfield and back for some specialty parts only to find the portal working when we returned.”

“I can help you there,” Agent S said with a soft smile reaching into her white briefcase and pulling out several thick folders. She laid them out gently on the table and Maddie was unnerved by some of the information: schematics of Fentonworks, past and present financial records, transcripts of public statements. Her shoulders tensed when she saw Jazz and Danny’s names on some of the files. “Toll camera captured your vehicle on the Jane Addams Memorial Tollway at exactly 1:26pm on August 28th. We can confirm you and your husband’s vehicle traveled to Springfield and back via video feeds and credit card statements at 10:45pm that same day and were therefore out of the city all day.”

Maddie suddenly felt very trapped by the woman’s sharp grey eyes as she plucked a piece of paper and pressed it towards Maddie. 

“At 3:18pm, the majority of the residential power in town went out for a period of 2 and a half hours. The cause was determined to be from a massive power surge that blew out the transformer. You may recall being blamed for this outage given your history with previous outages but the news that you were out of town settled that argument. However, I was not convinced.” She pulled out another piece of paper and Maddie bristled to see it was a Casper High attendance sheet.

“Your daughter, Jasmine was at her final summer cram session which ran from 2pm until 5pm. I spoke to her tutors and she never left the whole time and, in fact, stayed late to help a fellow student work through her study materials. But what about your son?” Agent S asked with with a curious smile but her eyes belied the fact that she had her own answers. 

“How dare you spy on my family, on my children,” Maddie hissed, crumpling one of the papers in her fist. “Get out of my house, I will sue the pants off of your organization for this invasion of privacy! Get out!”

“Now Maddie, don’t you want to know how your son started up your Portal?” Agent S asked coyly, that drew Maddie up short. Danny? No, he couldn’t have possibly. He had no interest in their work, in fact, now that she thought about it, Danny had been sick that day. Agent S pulled out a set of blueprints for the Fenton Portal. Some small component inside the Portal was circled.

“You left at approximately 1pm and your daughter presumably left not long after. Phone records indicate Daniel called both Tucker Foley and Samantha Manson. Your neighbor, Mrs. Benson, saw them coming into your house not long after but before the 3pm power outage which I was able to triangulate did in fact originate from your home.” Agent S tapped the circled part of the inner portal mechanisms. “Now did you happen to push the on button in the Portal before plugging it in?”

“On button?” Maddie asked with a dry mouth, overwhelmed by the amount of information being thrown her way. All she could think about was how Danny hadn’t seemed sick when they’d left that afternoon but had looked awful when they returned. Would he have really gone downstairs and messed with the Portal? Had he gotten hurt? Been contaminated down there? Images of Vlad’s sickly visage after his accident flowed through her head. She should have paid more attention but she’d been so excited about the Portal working...

“It’s right here in the blueprints you submitted to the patent office, buried under dozens of other hardware bits. Its small, such a little thing compared to all the moving parts required to open up a dimensional portal. Daniel was a bright boy, his middle school records prove it. A bright mind, friends to impress, no parents around to chastise him... I think you can see where I’m going with this.”

“No, no,” Maddie said, burying her hands in her hair. “No, I’m not. You’re saying -what? - that my teenage son turned on the Portal when we were gone? No, my Danny wouldn’t lie to me about that... Why wouldn’t he say anything?”

“I don’t blame him for not mentioned in because, if my hunch is correct, he was inside the Portal when it turned on, killing him instantly,” Agent S said with a carefully neutral face. “I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news but I’m afraid this haunting has gone on long enough.”

“My child is alive!” Maddie screeched, standing up in her chair. “Danny is alive and healthy and he is not a ghost!”

“I will admit the evidence of how he died is circumstantial but the fact that Danny Fenton is deceased is not.” Maddie fell back into her chair as he legs gave out underneath her. 

She watched the agent put paper after paper in front of her and detailed all sorts of data about her son that Maddie, who lived in the same house as him, had missed. Unusually high ectosignatures picked up by GIW (and their own) detectors, Danny being spotted in some form before most ghost attacks, faked signatures of hers getting him out of nurses’ visits. Maddie barely felt alive herself as she stared at a red light camera photo of her baby sitting atop a light post late, late at night. His eyes were a toxic green color.

“I know this must be distressing as a mother but your child never left that basement, never attended high school and will never achieve his dream of working for NASA.” Agent S said with carefully measured sympathy as she gathered up her papers and put them back in her case. “But you are a brilliant scientist, unlike your husband, you should be able to look past your emotions and see that your child is gone and the ghost he left behind is dangerous.”

“My husband?” Maddie asked blankly, running a finger down Danny’s unnatural photograph.

“I approached Jack two days ago, mistakenly believing he would be the most understanding of you both. He refused to believe the evidence and was, in fact, going to warn your son’s ghost that we planned on taking him. He is safe but he presently being held at one of our facilities until the capture is complete.” Maddie should feel outraged at her husband’s kidnapping but all she could think about was the fact that her son was dead, dead, dead, killed by her own invention over a year ago and she never noticed. How could she not have noticed?

“Daniel’s ghost is extraordinary, not only able to pass as human so accurately for so long but immensely powerful. We need to make sure he doesn’t harm anyone else. Think of his friends who are probably being forced to aid him and keep his death quiet. Think of your husband, your daughter, living in the same house as a dangerous ghost.” Agent S dropped some of her professionalism and plucked the photo of Danny out of Maddie’s hands and replaced it with her own tiny hand. 

“I know this is impossible thing to ask but I must do it anyway, will you help me capture what remains of Danny? There is a chance with his charade exposed, he will be able to move on and so will you. You have been wronged, Maddie. You have been denied the right to process and grieve your child by his own ghost. But a delayed mourning is better than none. Danny’s death is a tragedy but please don’t let it become someone else’s.”

“Maybe he’s not-” Maddie’s breath hitched, “he’s never shown any signs of aggression. Jasmine spoke of benevolent spirits... maybe-” Agent S sighed roughly and retracted her hand to grab another photo from her case. Maddie was surprised when she held up a picture of Phantom. 

“Ignore the glow,” Agent S instructed. “Change his white hair to black, his green eyes to blue. Think of how often Phantom is spotted in your neighborhood, around Casper High. Remember how he always has his hands on your technology,” the agent frowned. “Think of how he grins when he sees you, like he knows something you don’t. Like it all just a big joke you’re not a part of.” Maddie felt like she’d been slapped.

“Your son is dead,” Agent S said more forcefully, throwing the picture of Phantom next to the spooky one of Danny. “And his ghost has taken his place, taunting you, stealing energy from your family, from the portal that killed him. Phantom’s power is increasing too rapidly and soon we won’t be able to contain him. It’s why I was brought in to identify his haunt so that he could be stopped before anyone else died.”

“I will state this plainly, I am giving you the chance to participate in putting your child to rest but you are not required for this operation. If you refuse, you will be confined with your husband until Phantom is taken down. Do not let this monster with your son’s face trick you any more. So I ask again, Maddie Fenton, will you help us stop Phantom from making a mockery of your son’s memory?”

XxX

“Mom! Jazz! I��m home!” Danny announced, kicking off his shoes and grabbing a paper out of his backpack as he walked into the kitchen with a grin. “And I have a present! Jazz’s tutoring paid off, look at this A I got on my history test! Well A- but a solid A-!” 

“Oh... that’s great,” Mom muttered quietly. She was sitting at the kitchen table, not cooking or tinkering with some gadget. Just sitting there quietly, twiddling her thumbs and not looking at him.

“Is everyone okay?” Danny asked, dropping his bag on the floor and walking over to his mother. “I saw Jazz at school but is Dad okay?”

“No, everything is not okay,” she said turning and looking at him with tear-filled eyes. “Someone died, someone I love dearly and I’m not ready to let them go,” she sniffed and wiped at her eyes. “But they've been gone for a long time, even if I’m just hearing about it now. I’m upset but it’s better to know and be grieve than to go on in ignorance, living a lie.”

Danny was about to ask who had died when something was jammed into his neck and he was shocked within an inch of his half life. His body spasmed to escape but his mother was gripping his arm to hold him in place. He transformed unconsciously but that only made it worse. He fell to the floor, ectoplasm leaking off his form as he could barely hold himself together.

“Mom,” he croaked, reaching for her despite everything. She stomped on his hand which was practically goo from such a vicious, destabilizing ectoplasmic shock.

“Don’t you ever call me that,” she hissed through angry tears. “I didn’t want to believe it but the proof is right in front of me you horrible, selfish ghost.” She kicked him in the side and half of him ended up on her boot. “How dare you, how dare you impersonate my son! How dare you string me along all this time, make me look like a fool who had to told that her own child was dead! I bet you just laughed and laughed at our stupid, human ignorance of what your were!”

“‘lease,” he begged through the ectoplasm in his mouth. “I’m still your....”

“My son is dead and he has been for a while,” Mom said, throwing the ecto-taser away from her. Danny vaguely heard the door being kicked in and in his rapidly diminishing vision, he saw black boots and white suits. “With you gone, I can finally come to terms with it and not be tormented by an inadequate replacement.” She turned her back to him. “Get that filth out of my house, I never want to see it again.”

“Of course,” a quiet feminine voice said as his goopy arms were restrained with ghost proof cuffs. “I know this is hard, Maddie but you made the right choice for your family and Danny’s memory. Jack will returned to you within the hour. I spoke to my superiors, for your cooperation, the Institute will take care of declaring Danny dead as well as covering costs for your boy to be laid to rest, the first step in moving on.”

“No, the first step will be removing that duplicitous monster from my home. It’s stolen enough of my baby’s life. Now please leave, I have - I have a funeral to plan.”

[arcticdementor]

Hindsight may very well be 20/20, but with that caveat out of the way, some events truly come across as historical in their importance even as they play out in realtime. We might not know what the results will be, but we can feel that something quite big is happening. Watching the fall of the Berlin wall was one such moment in recent history, and watching the twin towers fall was another one.

The retreat from Afghanistan should not have made the list, or least not the top of it. Yet, it has clearly already made its way there, being widely seen as something truly momentous by most if not all the people observing it. The reason it shouldn’t have had those same connotations as the fall of the Berlin wall is because it was not only planned in advance and decided upon by the 45th president, not the 46th, but because almost everyone at this point wished for the war to just end. But it is how it has ended that has really thrown back the curtain and shown the world the rot festering beneath. The Soviet Union was dying in 1989, when it completed its withdrawal from Afghanistan. It still managed to do so in an orderly fashion, with a symbolic column of russian APCs crossing the bridge over to Uzbekistan. The leader of the war effort, one Colonel-General Gromov, symbolically rode in the very last BTR, and then proclaimed to the gathered journalists that there wasn’t a single russian soldier behind his back.

The American withdrawal, by contrast, is a grotesque spectacle, laid bare to the eyes of the world in realtime thanks to the wonders of modern technology. The Soviet attempt at braving the graveyard of empires could, if one was charitably inclined, at least be construed as some form of tragedy (”we tried to help, but in the end, we accomplished nothing”), and the russians did their best to make the entire thing appear somewhat dignified and solemn. Thirty years later, the scene is closer to a black form of comedy. The American consulate was evacuated by helicopter, about one month after president Biden referred to just such an evacuation from Saigon as an example of how Afghanistan and Vietnam were not comparable. The entire government collapsed within a matter of hours, not months. Throngs of people gathered around the airports, desperate to escape; American authorities had no more guidance to offer american citizens stuck in Afghanistan than to ”shelter in place” and then presumably ask the Taliban for a visa once regular flight traffic resumes. Desperate people even clung to the airframes of departing cargo planes before falling to their deaths, like a grim re-enactment of frozen and starving german soldiers trying to escape by clinging to the last planes leaving Stalingrad.

…

There may be a deeper aspect to this than a lot of people might perceive at present. On the level of pure geopolitics, the utterly embarrassing debacle of America’s withdrawal from Afghanistan can only serve to make China more bold in any future confrontation over Taiwan. The American eagle is faltering, and its rivals will not sit idly by for long. But this is probably the lesser of the big consequences of Afghanistan. There is another, much more significant implication of the collapse of the American project here, one with much more acute bearing on the immediate future of American society itself. To understand why, it’s useful to reflect on a certain political and historical point made by Carl Schmitt in his by now nearly hundred year old essay, whose english name is often rendered as The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy. The essay is well worth a read in full today, and the reader might be surprised (or maybe not) at how relevant many of the descriptions of the ongoing political crisis in 1923 may seem to us today, nearly a hundred years later. The most relevant passage, however, deserves to be quoted in full:

”In the history of political ideas, there are epochs of great energy and times becalmed, times of motionless status quo. Thus the epoch of monarchy is at an end when a sense of the principle of kingship, of honor, has been lost, if bourgeois kings appear who seek to prove their usefulness and utility instead of their devotion and honor. The external apparatus of monarchical institutions can remain standing very much longer after that. But in spite of it monarchy’s hour has tolled. The convictions inherent in this and no other institution then appear antiquated; practical justifications for it will not be lacking, but it is only an empirical question whether men or organizations come forward who can prove themselves just as useful or even more so than these kings and through this simple fact brush aside monarchy.”

What Schmitt is saying here is very important, and it might very well end up being the true cost of the Afghanistan debacle. Every ruling class throughout history advances various claims about its own legitimacy, without which a stable political order is impossible. Legitimating claims can take many different forms and may change over time, but once they become exhausted or lose their credibility, that is pretty much it.

…

What Schmitt is saying is that when the legitimating claim for a particular form of elite is used up, when people no longer believe in the concepts or claims that underpin a particular system or claim to rule, the extinction of that particular elite becomes a foregone conclusion. Once Napoleon came along, it became increasingly impossible to actually believe (or at least effect a suspension of disbelief) that kings were born to rule and had a right to rule. As such, the only argument kings were left with in order to be tolerated by their own subjects became practical in nature: look at how useful this king is, look at how well his administration runs, look at how much stuff you’re getting out of letting him sit on the throne. But once you are merely left with practical arguments of that kind, as Schmitt rightly points out, your replacement becomes a question of simple empiricism. The moment someone more useful is found – like, say, a president – out you go, never to return. The replacement of Louis XVI with a republic was a world-shattering event. The fall of his nephew, Louis Philippe I, in favor of another republic, was a mere formality by comparison. By the time of his fall, not even Louis Philippe himself believed in kings being some sort of semi-divine beings. Certainly almost none of his subjects did.

…

Moreover, on a more practical level, the war in Afghanistan became another sort of crucible. In very real terms, Afghanistan turned into a testbed for every single innovation in technocratic PMC governance, and each innovation was sold as the next big thing that would make previous, profane understandings of politics obsolete. In Afghanistan ”big data” and the utilization of ever expanding sets of technical and statistical metrics was allowed to topple old stodgy ideas of dead white thinkers such as Sun Tzu or Machiavelli, as ”modern” or ”scientific” approaches to war could have little to learn from the primitive insights of a pre-rational order. In Afghanistan, military sociology in the form of Human Terrain Teams and other innovative creations were unleashed to bring order to chaos. Here, the full force of the entire NGO world, the brightest minds of that international government-in-waiting without a people to be beholden to, were given a playground with nearly infinite resources at their disposal. There was so much money sloshing around at the fingertips of these educated technocrats that it became nearly impossible to spend it all fast enough; they simply took all of those countless billions of dollars straight from the hands of ordinary americans, because they believed they had a right to do so.

…

Put plainly: managers, through the power of managerialism, were once believed to be able to mobilize science and reason and progress to accomplish what everyone else could not, and so only they could secure a just and functional society for their subjects, just as only the rightful kings of yore could count on Providence and God to do the same thing. At their core, both of these claims are truly metaphysical, because all claims to legitimate rulership are metaphysical. It is when that metaphysical power of persuasion is lost that kings or socialists become ”bourgeois”, in Schmitt’s terms. They have to desperately turn toward providing proof, because the genuine belief is gone. But once a spouse starts demanding that the other spouse constantly prove that he or she hasn’t been cheating, the marriage is already over, and the divorce is merely a matter of time, if you’ll pardon the metaphor.

I suspect we are currently witnessing the catastrophic end of this metaphysical power of legitimacy that has shielded the managerial ruling class for decades. Anyone even briefly familiar with the historical record knows just how much of a Pandora’s box such a loss of legitimacy represents. The signs have obviously been multiplying over many years, but it is only now that the picture is becoming clear to everyone. When Michael Gove said ”I think the people in this country have had enough of experts” in a debate about the merits of Brexit, he probably traced the contours of something much bigger than anyone really knew at the time. Back then, the acute phase of the delegitimization of the managerial class was only just beginning. Now, with Afghanistan, it is impossible to miss.

It is not just that the elite class is incompetent – even kings could be incompetent without undermining belief in monarchy as a system – it is that they are so grossly, spectacularly incompetent that they walk around among us as living rebuttals of meritocracy itself. It is that their application of managerial logic to whatever field they get their grubby mitts on – from homelessness in California to industrial policy to running a war – makes that thing ten times more expensive and a hundred times more dysfunctional. To make the situation worse, the current elites seem almost serene in their willful destruction of the very fields they rely on for legitimacy. When the ”experts” go out of their way to write public letters about how covid supposedly only infects people who hold demonstrations in support of ”structural white supremacy”, while saying that Black Lives Matter demonstrations pose no risk of spreading the virus further, this amounts to the farmer gleefully salting his own fields to make sure nothing can grow there in the future. How can anyone expect the putative peasants of our social order to ”trust the science”, when the elites themselves are going out of their way, against all reason and the tenets of basic self-preservation, to make such a belief completely impossible even for those who really, genuinely, still want to believe?

…

I find it very likely that most future historians will put the date of the real beginning of the collapse of the current political and geopolitical order right here, right now, at the US withdrawal from Afghanistan. Just as with any other big historical process, however, many others will point out that the seeds of the collapse were sown much farther back, and that a case can be made for several other dates, or perhaps no specific date at all. This is how we modern people look at the fall of the french ancien regime, after all. Still, it is quite obvious that the epoch of the liberal technocrat is now over. The bell has well and truly tolled for mankind’s belief in their ability to do anything else than enrich themselves and ruin things for everyone else.

How long it will take for their institutions to disappear, or before they end up toppled by popular discontent and revolution, no one can know. But at this point, I think most people on some level now understand that it really is only a matter of time.

[thelittleredheadedmusician]

Rats!

Rating: G 1,701 words Gen AO3

For @radioactivepigeons who loves Babs being Oracle, Dick Grayson, and rats, written as celebration for her paper! I hope you like it!

Babs glared at her screen. The motion detectors were going crazy in the West Wing, second floor of the Gotham Natural History Museum. The hall where the collection of precious stones and gems was on display behind thick panes of pelxiglas with thick locks and liberal alarms. The problem was the security cameras showed no one there. The footage wasn’t looped or old, she’d already checked, and yet nothing. But the motion detectors going off? In only the West Wing on the second floor? It was almost an annoyance more than anything.

No alarms had been tripped. There was a possibility of malfunction. Except Babs had already piggy-backed into the system and looked for anything out of the ordinary. There was nothing. The motion detectors were genuinely going off, registering actual movement. Except, it made no sense the pattern that they were flashing. She couldn’t trace any path or direction; they were just alerting at random.

Oracle had notified Gotham’s resident vigilantes of the oddity happening at the museum. Since no alarms were tripped, the police hadn’t been called. Babs didn’t think they’d be much use anyway.

Nightwing was the one who answered her request to check it out, slipping into the museum unnoticed except on her screens. “Oracle?” his voice came through her speakers. “I’m here but it looks like all the gems are in their places and the only break-in tonight is mine.”

“Thank you, Detective Wonder, I couldn’t see that myself,” she let a note of dry teasing slip into her voice.

Dick turned to smile at the closest security camera, “Happy to help!”

Smartass. At least it was a good one.

“You’re my hands and feet, Nightwing. So, get to gumshoeing before I boot you for one of my Batgirls.” It was only half a threat and they both knew it.

“Point taken,” Dick laughed. He began a slow trek through the space, looking for anything out of the ordinary and more importantly, anything missing. As he walked, Babs watched the screen showing the motion detectors. If anything, this little exercise was making it all more confusing instead of clearing it up. The sensors registered Dick’s steady and methodical progress and yet still were blinking seemingly at random. So, they were definitely registering movement. But of what?

“Nightwing, is there anything to your left right now? Anywhere to your left, low high?” Babs frowned at the steady blinking of the sensor right next to Dick’s current position and the video feed that showed empty air.

“No. Should there be?”

“According to the security system? Yes,” she sighed. Babs was good at puzzles, genuinely enjoyed them too. Twisting the information this way and that until a pattern appeared. Organizing and sorting until she had exactly what she needed. Taking something apart to see if she could determine how it worked and then put it back together once more. Looking at angles and theories and data. Taking it all in and making something new.

But this? This was chaos. Chaos that was giving her a bit of a headache with the insistent flashing. Not to mention the frustration that was building somewhere between her throat and her chest. In her jaw and her hands.

“O?” Dick said, spinning in a slow circle. “I know this is gonna sound crazy but, do you think this might be something… paranormal? Supernatural?”

Dropping her head into her hands knocked Babs’s glasses askew. “It does sound crazy,” she grumbled. “Except,” she sighed and sat up, “this is Gotham and our line of work so…”

Her fingers darted back to her keyboard, ready to pull up Zatanna or Raven’s contacts. Failing that – and god forbid – she was owed favors from Jason Blood and John Constantine so one of them could figure it out and Babs could wipe her hands of it. Just, she’d probably make Dick stick around to keep an eye on the gems if that was the case.

The call to Zatanna just began ringing through when a flash of white darted across the screen by Dick’s feet. Babs hung up on the mistress of magic and switched back to Dick’s comm. “Nightwing, what was that?”

“Not sure,” and he sure sounded it as he got down on his hands and knees. Dick reached into the shadows and Babs lost sight of what was happening. “Aha!” came his exclamation a few seconds later.

Dick stood again with something clutched between his hands. It was white and grey and wiggling slightly. “Is that… a rat?”

“A rat I know!” Dick sounded downright pleased. Babs hoped that meant he would hurry up and get to the explanation. “Oracle, say hi to Impulse!” he held the rat up to the camera.

“Unless something happened that no one told me about – and that is highly unlikely – that is not Impulse. Impulse is either a five-foot three teenaged ball of hyperactivity or a chaotic eight-year-old. Not a rat.”

Dick was petting the rat and making kissy faces at it. Normally Babs liked his kissy faces but her patience was just about gone. “The rat was named for the former. By the Flash. My Flash. This is his roommate’s rat.”

“Well, Zookeeper Wonder, I’m going to take your word for it but if I call the Pied Piper and you turn out to be wrong, I am sending the recording of this conversation to everyone in my contacts.” Babs trusted Dick; she wouldn’t have been that extreme if she didn’t. Also, it wasn’t really going to be everyone. Just a few key members of the family, Justice League, Birds, and Titans. They would take care of spreading it to everyone else.

The call to one Hartley Rathaway’s personal cell connected and Babs switched on her voice modulator. It wasn’t worth it when running comms, they all knew who she was anyway, but the Pied Piper was a little outside her normal sphere of influence.

“Hello?” was the hesitant voice on the other end.

“Hello Piper, this is Oracle,” Babs said smoothly, watching Dick play with the rat and making her smile.

There was an audible gulp. “How can I help you?”

“You wouldn’t by chance own a rat named Impulse who is currently running around the second floor, West Wing, of the Gotham Natural History Museum?”

A pause. Babs waited.

“Uh, yeah actually? How’d you know?”

“Nightwing is currently giving it scritches.”

The soft sounds of cursing made her smile. Sometimes her job was just fun and even with the headaches she had to admit that. “That would explain a lot. Uh, I am not trying to rob the place if that makes you feel better? I got wind of some of the Rogues going out of town for a heist and thought I could stop them. Think of the rats as my field troops?”

“Ah, so you are the reason the motion detectors have been going nuts.”

“Sorry?”

“No worries. Just, for future reference, a courtesy call would be lovely and the local rodents and birds would certainly be happy to assist in such matters.” Babs smirked at her own joke.

“Right. Of course. Sorry,” there was a distinct wince in his tone.

She almost felt bad, but her scary reputation was more helpful than not. “I’m assuming you’re still in the area and the Rogues have yet to make a move?”

There was a pause, as though he was trying to figure out how to answer in a manner that wouldn’t incur her wrath. Or Batman’s. Ha, as though Babs was going to tell him any of this. No, what Bruce didn’t know didn’t hurt him and if he asked, she’d tell him she and Nightwing sorted it out and instruct Dick to do the same. And for her, he would. Granted, Mr. Rathaway on the other end of the line was unaware of all this.

“Piper?” she prompted. There were other things Babs had to do tonight and while her annoyance had waned and changed into amusement, she still wanted to wrap this up soon.

“Right. Sorry. I’m in Gotham? Fire escape on the building on the other side of the back alley to be exact.”

“Excellent. Do you have a shortwave comm?”

There was a breath of a laugh. Babs smiled; she’d known it was a dumb question too. Wally had a tendency to forget things here and there, which Babs had managed to get her hands on. She knew Piper’s tech and knew it was good. “Yeah. I do.”

“Switch to local channel eight, I’ll have Nightwing do the same and send him out to you. Not that I don’t trust you or your methods, but he is on the scene.”

“No it’s fine, I get it. And I appreciate it.”

Babs grinned. As they talked she had taken the liberty of hacking into one of the cameras on the museum’s rear and used it to locate Piper. Crouched on the lowest platform of the fire escape, a glint of silver that must be his flute in his lap. She could see his face from this angle, the hand he used to hold his phone to his ear pushing the dark green hood back just enough.

“Excellent. Thank you so much, your cooperation is appreciated and let me know if there’s anything I can assist you with tonight. I’m on channel one.”

“No problem. And, uh, thank you.” He seemed a little dumbfounded, eyes going wide on her screen.

“Oh, one more favor,” Babs said before she hung up and switched back to Dick. He didn’t seem to mind being left hanging this long so far anyway, combination of being used to it and distracted by Piper’s rats. “If you could call off your, ah, foot soldiers? I have nothing against rats, but I was this close to calling an exorcist. They’re doing murder on the motion sensors.”

He chuckled softly, just a hint of embarrassed. “Consider them gone.”

Without further ado, Babs hung up and sent Dick to meet him. Thank god it wasn’t a ghost. Magic users just mucked up the security systems for weeks after and she didn’t have the mental energy for all the footage that would need erasing.

[nymphl]

Lie to Me - Hux x Reader x Ch. 15: Reliance & Mistrust

A/N: Hello there xD Well, this time I’m ahead of schedule. I’ll see if I can keep the updates here thrice a week. I think it’s best to update what’s already written at once here, before I get caught up with my schedule and other real-life things and all. So here we go xD 

Story Summary: Falling for the enemy… That’s probably the stupidest thing you’ve ever done. Letting him live… for he should be dead. And you should’ve been the one to kill him. You had him, right there… and you let it escape through yours fingers. He lived. And now only the time could tell if you made the right decision — more likely wrong — by saving the amnesiac General of the First Order and telling him he was your husband. [Hux x Reader - Hux x You]

Warnings for the entire story: Will contain at times; graphic violence, sex, drugs and manipulation, coarse language and OOCness.

AO3 Tags: from enemies to lovers; eventual romance; memory loss; fake marriage; fake marriage becomes real marriage; rebellion; married couple; canon divergence; slow burn romance; politics; rebel alliance; resistance; first order; OOCness; eventual smut; eventual sex; power play; power dynamics; syndicate; lies; you lie; Hux lies; Hux backstory; manipulation; political alliances; political betrayals; secret organizations; tros fix it; anti tros; nobody likes general pryde.

Wordcount: 5747

PREVIOUS CHAPTER *** NEXT CHAPTER

YOU HATED IT.

And you should hate him…

…for his cryptic…

…cold…

…unfeeling…

…kriffing …

Behavior.

Instead, you hated yourself.

You hated that it hurt.

That you let him hurt you…

…emotionally and physically…

With the pain came the anger…

…strong…

…fervent…

…unstoppable…

However, your mind worked differently when you were furious. You became much more reclusive. Focused. As you were right now. Instead of lashing out, you did take greater care with everything you did.

Tightened your hold on the blaster, you did your best to control a pained hiss. Your arms seemed on verge of falling off as you waited for him to finally tell you to stop. To be in this kriffing position for so long, waiting for his instruction, was torture. And he knew it. Otherwise he would not have you going through the same simulation so many times. As you managed to get through the next phase of the staged attack, he would set you up for another round, till you were almost begging him for mercy.     

As if you could…

Outside bedroom affairs — which, you thought would not happen anytime soon —, the General hated when you begged. And you did not want to be seen as weak. Even if it would render you another lecture on not showing your weakness unless out of necessity — you wondered if that would be the way to get him to talk to you again.

Honestly, he was talking to you. But only what was necessary. Your husband was gone. In his place, only a General was left — and this General could be harsh when he wanted. 

Your worst nightmare.

Biting your bottom lip forcefully, you held the blaster firmly between your hands and waited for the targets — Imperial Troopers — to leave their hideout before you could fire. This time, however, there was something different. One of them — one of the targets — was hurt. You knew it was not true — apart from being a make-believe situation, the targets were not even real beings —, but even so, you lowered your arms.  

“How did you manage to get us here?” You breathed out in your speaker device. Apart from the VR glasses, you had your earmuffs firmly in place. The glasses set up the parallel reality and the earmuffs kept the outside sounds at bay.

The Crystal Cave indeed had training facilities that were more than adequate in your opinion. This was different from any simulation room you had seen before; instead of a practice field in which teams worked together towards some goal, you were alone and unmoving. The targets came to you and you had to shoot them before they could reach you in your own hideout. If your avatar got hurt, it would be the end for you. Luckily, you managed to escape their blasters twice now.

As expected, he did not answer your question. He seemed very focused on the targets ahead — even if he did not participate in your training, he had no avatar for himself, he too could see whatever you saw through your glasses. It was all it took for you to take a deep breath and let your attention slip somewhere else.

Even if he was a jerk, you felt safe with him.

It is… you did not let your mind drift to the last time in which he had his hand wrapped around your throat…

You were very tired; physically and mentally exhausted — every single person you knew worked overtime. The new disease in Dantooine continued keep you — and your peers — on edge. In no time, the number of alien dead would surpass the number of those who died in the last few days; even the most talented physicians in the planet were worried. So far, in pediatrics almost ten alien kids had died — in your shift. You had no idea if you could trust the data provided by those in charge. And as much as you understood they were merely trying to prevent some sort of collective hysteria, at least you and your coworkers were entitled to know. Everything you had found out was your own doing.

Shaking your head, you tried to focus your attention on your surroundings. You knew this place — this part of the cave. You had been there once with Aurra Sing before, when you were in your late teens. If your husband — the General, you quickly corrected yourself, there was no need to keep indulging your thoughts of that lie; he had figured out everything — thought it was adequate at best, it was because the First Order was… otherworldly.

A shudder ran down your spine.

He was fine now — more than fine, if you were to be honest, his physical condition was flawless —, so why would he still linger? Why not go back to the First Order?  

Honestly, you were not sure if you could trust him.

His negative answer when you questioned him about you being a bait to attract and defeat — that was important — the Resistance had you relieved.

Now…

…now you were not so sure.

“Fire.”

His voice, so detached and whispered through the speaker device, had you shivering. He was right behind you, quite but not touching. The last week living in the Cave he barely got within an arm of distance from you — always distant, always in his own mind. Having him this close now was… almost weird. Even when you trained — and for the maker, he made sure you trained hard every day and he could be as intense in your training as he was in your bed; your ardent lover had vanished, in its place, there was the business-like General — he would keep his distance. The last time in which you were in his arms, you were crying and asking how you could trust him, only to get a vague answer.

It was difficult to trust him — or get even near to it — when he barely interacted with you. How could he expect you to follow your krifing instincts when he barely looked at you? When all you had were a huge pile of doubts that only got bigger? When he was vague in his answers? For whenever he answered one of your questions you had another ten springing in your mind.   

You snapped your attention back to the targets, but nothing seemed to have changed in their previous stance. You furrowed your brows, but he paid you no attention.  

“Now,” he spoke again, this time his voice was firmer than before.

You had no reason to shoot when they were not moving — they were not attacking — and seemed to be paying some sort of medical care to one of theirs. Your moral convictions prevented you from attacking any hurt being — real or not, enemy or otherwise. The General was the living proof of that. It was simply beneath you and everything your father — your mother and Aquilla — stood for. However, you quickly realized your mistake as one of them — who was previously stretched out on the floor and apparently hurt — rose to his feet and opened his hand. A grenade lay in it, ready to be launched.

Without waiting for your move — you sincerely did not expect such plot twist —, the General opened fire against them — his avatar flashing before your peripheral vision —, knocking out all four targets quicker than your eyes could follow.

Next, he pressed a button at your left, shutting down the transmission before the grenade could go off. Your glasses darkened, forcing you to remove them. As you were greeted by the strong light in the simulation room, you had to blink a few times to get used to the new sight before your eyes. Honestly, you did not know which was worse: the light or the General’s judging eyes.

Not really ready for the reprimand of your life, you took your time to remove the earmuffs, letting them rest around your neck.

“I am sorry?” you tried, unsure on what to say. Besides, what could have you done? You certainly did not expect the targets to fake a situation — in a simulation! — just to attack you shortly after. Your first instinct was to always believe a hurt person — how else could you save lives if you did not believe your patients in the first place? You knew they did not qualify as such, but your point was still valid.

At least it seemed in your mind.     

“Your naivety almost got you killed.”

You pursed your lips into a thin line. You expected him to call your action one of compassion, not ingenuousness — and honestly you did not know which was worse in his eyes. You even opened your mouth to say it was only a make-believe situation, but you figured out it would do you no good. Apologizing would not do, as it would be seen as another act of weakness in his eyes.

“Who runs this part of the Cave?”

The General narrowed his eyes at you; he certainly did not see that question coming. With his hands entwined at his back, in what you called his General posture, he walked away from you; his shoulders set straight.

“I do.”

You furrowed your brows. It simply made no sense. No one in their right mind would simply abandon this place, only for the General to take it under his control, that much you were sure. And only one person crossed your thoughts at the moment: Aurra — and her precious Syndicate, of course.

“Aurra Sing gave up this place for me. In its entirety.”

At least you were sure of the first part; the second made no sense whatsoever. You did not know the details of their partnership, but you were sure she would not simply give up a Crystal Cave, that was so closely related and so important for the Jedi she hated so much that easily. Something smelled fishy.

Everything about him smells fishy.  

“Why?”

How?

“She already controls the Jedi Enclave, the Imperial Outpost and the Mining Outpost, giving up the Cave did not seem to bother her that much.”

You gaped. Besides the unlikely gesture or deal — that did not seem anything alike the Aurra Sing you knew —, it had been days since the General last spoke that much to you, that he even deemed you worthy of his stare. Shaking your head, you concentrated on the topic at hand: the Cave had training facilities unlike any other in Dantooine. Why would Aurra— you stopped mid-thought. Of course…

“She doesn’t truly know about the simulation rooms.”

The General snorted. You took a few steps closer to him and folded your arms at your chest. Contrary to your expectations, he did not step away.

“She does.”  

Then…?

“Aurra Sing doesn’t care about simulation rooms,” he said, taking two steps closer. It was enough to set his shiny boots barely an inch away from yours. “However, she isn’t aware this Cave has some old, albeit functional ships.”

It simply made no sense.

You shook your head. You did not know what that quick mind of his was working on, but you did not like it not even one bit. You did not trust Aurra…

…and you were not sure you could trust him either.

In spite of his words, in spite of your foolish heart that wanted so bad to believe him — to believe he had feelings for you —, your mind… your guts… told you to stay wide awake when near him. 

I trust him with my life…

A shiver ran down your spine. His involvement with the Resistance and the Syndicate at the same time made no sense at all. And made it very difficult to trust him. How could he be loyal to two distinct factions — with very different beliefs — at once?

I am loyal only to myself…  

You shook your head. You even reached out to him, but not sure if you should touch him or not, you entwined your fingers in front of your lap.   

“I don’t want you involved with her.”

And part of me wants you away from the Resistance now.

The fact that General Organa had not contacted you yet, made it all the more difficult for you to trust him.

His response was immediate this time, “I know.”

Then… why?

You even opened your mouth to ask him to clarify this issue, but his leather-gloved finger over your bottom lip made your freeze in place. It was the first time in days… It was the first time he touched you. Willingly. Sometimes he would fix your posture in your training, but that was not a lingering touch. Unlike this very one. He cast a sideways glance, directing your own eyes towards the point over his shoulder. Before you could say anything, his lips fell upon yours in a.. kiss.

You could not even describe it.

Mechanic?

Cold?

Thought-out?

Everything but passionate.

If his words made no sense to you before, his actions felt even more absurd. Either way, you sighed against his lips and kissed him back, holding onto him for dear life — you were touch-starved, which was laughable considering you spent five years without… getting any action. He seemed determined to keep it — the kiss — in a… professional level. His usual voraciousness was gone.

It was a relief when he broke apart when the lights went out and the two of you were left in the dark.

You could say now you missed the power shortages in Dantooine. At least it was something completely predictable, contrary to the General’s cryptic behavior. The growing doubt that gripped your heart and did not seem about to let go seemed to only increase.

“What was that?” you asked, but quickly shook your head. “She’s watching everything, isn’t she?” This time, you spoke in Ryl, your voice no more than a whisper against his lips — you were still in his arms, still holding onto him, still waiting for him to kiss you properly. Yearning for it. Even if she knew and spoke the language to perfection, you doubted any of her henchmen — if any of them was in the Cave following you, which was probably the case — knew.

He nodded.

“I just don’t understand…” you spoke in a rushed tone, trying to clear your mind of any doubts before the lights flickered back — part of you wondered if that was not staged by him; to act as if he was being watched to get you to believe Aurra was the enemy —, but it was very difficult. His shady decisions had you on edge. “Why would you do what she wants?”

“Why not?” the General replied. His lips moved over yours in a small caress that had you sighing against him.

In your current state — in your heart’s current state —, it was very difficult to say no to him. Unlike his kiss, his fingers ghosting over your clavicle — but never getting closer to your throat; he seemed very conscious how he snapped last time — was anything but mechanic. His lips moved from yours to your cheeks and then your jaw… running the length of your skin towards your chin and finally stopping at your chin.   

“It’s just…” You shut your lips when he started unbuttoning your shirt. You blinked. That was absolutely not the best moment to engage in intimacy, but you were so… needy right now. If you thought about using sex as a way to get the upper hand in this relationship before, now you knew you could never be as good as him. “How long till the power is back?”

“Two more minutes.” You shuddered as he parted from you and removed his own black shirt and brought you back to his arms. You were about to comment it was not enough time for the two of you to… do anything properly — the lights were about to flicker in and the cameras would record everything —, but his lips were on your ears, “She’s just found out about the ships and she’s going to destroy them.”

“But I thought…” You closed your eyes as he sat you over the balcony where you put your training devices and settled between your thighs; your legs automatically wrapped around his waist. “You’re making absolutely no sense.”

As his lips fell over your throat and he kissed it lightly, you knew you had lost your ability to think. He did not take his time there, however, going back to your mouth and brushing his tongue against your bottom lip. He merely teased you, not kissing you for real. You groaned in frustration.  

“Please.”

You were conflicted.

Part of you wanted — needed even — to go further with that. Needed him. Realistically, you knew it was all a game to deceive Aurra — or deceive you, you did not know anymore —, he knew what you wanted — he always seemed to know — and he was using sex as a tool to… — you swallowed, because you hated how truthful the word rang — to manipulate you.  

“So easily distracted…” the General finally silenced you with his lips. As the lights flickered in again, you could not be gladder that he was finally kissing you for real.             

A disappointed sigh left you as soon as you closed your eyes in the darkened bedroom.

Your bedroom.

Not his.

You were alone.

Not with him.

After bestowing you with a mind-blowing kiss, the General took you to your chambers. Part of you thought — you were hopeful even —, that the two of you would finally get physical.

Tsk.

All he did was to drop you onto the mattress and turn on his heels. He just left you alone. For a few minutes, you just stood positioned on your elbows waiting — hoping — for him to come back. Right now, it did not matter that he was using sex as a tool to manipulate you, you just needed it.

Now… as the lusty cloud left you — after you took matters into your own hands — you were glad he did nothing. You were glad he left.

At the same time, you were angry.

With yourself.

For the maker!

How could you be so stupid? You were never this irrational — gullible and stupid — with Aquilla. It is a fact that Aquilla never used sex as a tool… However, being married to an alien — and having sexual relations with them — was completely different than with a human — there was always extra care involved and twi’leks saw marriage was something sacred — not a lie to toy with. What you meant was that Aquilla would never tease you and leave you… wanting.

Perhaps next time you saw him you should tell him that.

If he said last time you kept comparing the two of them, then you should take comparisons to the next level. You wondered how long it would take for that nonchalant mask of his to fall after you told him Aquilla never teased just to leave you… unsatisfied.

Shaking your head, you tried to clear your mind of everything. Honestly, you were horrified you could think of something so mean. The General had issues — several, actually — and your childish behavior could — would — worsen them.

You closed your eyes and pulled the blankets to your chin, falling into an uneventful slumber shortly after.

It was middle of the night when you woke up by yourself. A nightmare about the General leaving you for good — without looking back — haunted your sleep. Your swallowed, but it was raspy. Your throat felt dry.

You sat on the bed and reached for the bottle, only to have it handed to you.

If the situation — if you did not feel so numb because of the dream —, you probably would have been startled. Instead, you accepted the bottle and drank the water in big gulps. You wiped your mouth with the back of your hand and looked at him in the darkened bedroom.

He was sitting in a chair close to your bed, completely focused on his datapad. The sound of his fingers working on the screen had you blinking a few times. Even if you had just woken up by yourself, you were still struggling to stay awake.

You bit your bottom lip and shook your head. So many questions you wanted — needed even — to ask, that you could not afford to sleep right now. It could — and would — come later.

“What was that earlier?” Your voice was small, unsure as you started. “Why are we really here?” You cast your eyes to your lap. Your body was covered with the softest fabric you had ever touched. The sheets were very pleasing to the touch. Even after a week living in the Cave, with sheets like that and a bed way bigger and comfortable than yours, you could not say you were happier here. You were very happy in the Cave in the first time you visited it, after your small adventure with the General. And even if you knew his demeanor had nothing to do with the place, you did not want to live in a place where he seldom spoke to you — in a place where he only kissed you because cameras would capture it. Your eyes widened when the thought hit you, “Are there cameras in this room?”

The corner of his lips tilted slightly upwards — which set your heart into a frenzied beat —, but his answer came quickly, “No.”

A relieved sigh left you. Honestly, you did not need for Aurra Sing to watch whatever you did in that room. Or even the General. That would be beyond embarrassing. You did not know about him, but you did mind being in the spotlight.

As you saw the lingering shadow of a smirk on his lips, you froze.

“You know.”

His lack of answer had heat touching towards your face… gripping it. That was the perfect time to compare him to Aquilla.

No.

You shook your head.

There were far more pressing matters. This… whatever this was… Is… — you had no idea anymore — could wait. You had to question his decisions concerning this very night. His touches — even if welcomed — came out of nowhere. He was using sex as a means of distraction. You were sure of it. If you yourself thought about it before — even if you did not act on it, you planned it —, the General would act on it; he was not above such machinations. What’s more, he proved for the second — third? you were no longer sure — time you were his to do as he pleased.

Easily distracted…

What bothered you was the fact he was right. The feeling of being beaten in a game you planned to play in the first place did not sit well with you.

“You manipulated me through sex.”

He shifted his attention to you. His piercing, impossibly blue eyes focused on your face. There was no need for a loud answer, for his orbs told you enough.

You bit your bottom lip.

“You think I am easy to manipulate.”

He did not look anywhere when the next words left his lips, “I know it.”

His answer knocked the air out of your lungs. You sat rigidly in your bed and tugged the sheets to your chin — you felt stupid for taking your clothes off. You would not feel so vulnerable right now if you put on something before you drifted to sleep.

But that was all.

It did not hurt you. His mean words. His cold demeanor.

By now… you were almost used to it. You felt so numb right now nothing he could have said would make you feel any worse.

“What are you doing here?”

Unlike last time, now he took his time to reply. You just sat there watching him type something on his datapad in silence. He was no longer looking at you — which was somewhat a relief —, his attention solely focused on the device.       

How long were you here? you even wanted to ask but gave up shortly after. You could deal with everything right now, but not with the fact of knowing he had seen you — watched — as you pleasured yourself and sighed his name — imagined him doing things to you.

You shook your head.

“My…” You closed your mouth — addressing him as my Lord when you suspected he may have caught you doing the deed was far too embarrassing —, and tried again “Armitage?” you asked, your voice wavering this time, you were not really sure what to call him. Going back to your usual my Lord would not do, not with all the memories of that first night in the cave… Calling him your husband was an even greater absurd. But would he find it weird if all of a sudden you stopped addressing him formally or he would welcome it that you called him more intimately?

Besides, going back was not what you had in mind. If you wanted to move on with him, with you wanted to have a real relationship with him, you had to get closer… Your heart sped at the thought, but you knew it to be truthful: you had to start trusting him.

Right…?

You rose to your feet and cast a look at his datapad. It took you a while to recognize what he was doing and where he was doing it — for you were seeing everything upside down — but as you realized he was staring at some sort of files concerning the First Order, you felt an irrational fear gripping your heart.

Trust him with my life…

He chose that exact time to ask you to repeat the symptoms you had told him earlier when you told him about your day at the Hospital. You furrowed your brows, but recited them nonetheless, “It’s like a common cold, except that those infected with it are dying in three days-time. They’re afflicted with nasal congestion, fatigue, coughing and high appetite. What does it have to—

You stopped yourself. He would not answer to your question. And you were afraid of his answers. This conversation had you leaving the bed and looking for your clothes in the dim-lighted room. If you were to have that conversation — or any sort of conversation — it would absolutely not do to stay naked.

He cast a glance at you, his eyes narrowing as he watched your covering yourself from his prying eyes. Very conscious of his rapt attention, you wetted your lips and sat back on the mattress, pulling the blankets to cover yourself, “They seemed to have acquired a new taste for human flesh out of the blue as well.”

There was a moment of silence between you as his fingers stopped working on whatever he was… working. His eyes remained on you the whole time as he seemed to contemplate the new bit of information you just released — something you did not tell him before and that you regretted telling now.

“You’re not returning tomorrow.”

And there we go…

You felt highly stupid for saying that. So far, only two of the infected alien species showed any sort of addiction to human flesh — out of several! You thought that you were particularly safe. Not to mention, you were responsible for taking care of the children — and they rarely represented any danger.

Not to mention… He did not seem to care about you.

To love you.

Did it really matter if you died or lived?

And if he wanted you alive, was it because he felt something for you or because he thought you could be useful?

“Listen,” you started, biting your bottom lip. Convincing the General you were out of danger would be a difficult task, but you were willing to reason with him either way. Then you furrowed your brows, curiosity — mistrust — taking over you. You almost said that Aquilla would never ask you to stop working — to stop helping others when they needed you most. But should the words leave your lips, you would regret them forever — like you regretted reveling the whole truth that day. You shook your head and said, “Why are you so interested? You’re not even a doctor.”

He narrowed his eyes at you — it was as if he knew your traitorous thoughts —, but instead of giving you a direct answer, he opted to ask, “What do you know of the Kryto virus?”

You furrowed your brows. You simply hated how cryptic he was sometimes.

It did not make it any easier to trust him.

For the maker!

Your doubts were bordering on paranoia. For the first time, you realized that him knowing everything — and not telling how he figured out everything — was a heavy burden. His silent, offended even demeanor — and what did he have to be offended about when he lied to you as well? — prevented you from trusting him fully. It prevented you from letting go of the past — look at how many times you compared him to Aquilla in a short spam of time! — and truly moving on.

Trust him with my life…

As if…

Not even ten minutes ago you were sure he was manipulating you through sex. He was hiding something from you.

Loyal to myself and to you…

For real?

If he could lie about believing — buying — your own lies, why would he say he truth his loyalty?  

“What does it have to do with—” You stopped midsentence, realization finally sinking on you, “Oh.”

“Oh, indeed,” he replied, handing you the datapad. He was reading some sort of article related to deadly viruses released by the Empire in an attempt to destroy the New Republic, of them was the famous Kryto Virus, a bioweapon responsible for taking the lives of millions of aliens back in 7 ABY.

You were a mere toddler when it happened and the subsequent Bacta Wars, but the misery you saw taking over the very planet in which you lived now would be forever marred in form of your father’s frown whenever he looked at you or you listened to him crying himself to sleep at night.

The mere thought of something of such scale taking over the galaxy again made a cold shiver ran down your spine and a deep, horrendous fear grip your very heart, squeezing it mercilessly. 

Clearing your throat, you handed the datapad back to him. All traces of sleep had left you and now you were wide awake and very much frightened. Subconsciously, you reached for his hand and entwined your fingers together. When you realized what you were doing, you were ready to pull away, but he tightened his hold over you lightly.

You will have to follow your instincts.  

For the first time his words started making sense to you. The paranoia was leaving your system. Understanding flooded you. He did hide tons of stuff from you, but if he did have anything to keep from you — concerning the disease at least —, he certainly would not show you the article, would he?

With his left hand only, he started typing something else in the flat screen and shortly after you were staring at several sketches. It showcased a Dantari with some red spots on the face and body. Each spot had a brief description that matched exactly the symptoms the patients at the Hospital displayed.

Instead of asking the obvious question, instead of putting the blame where it was due — paranoid! you were paranoid —, you said, “So… you have all of your accesses to the First Order database?”

You bit your bottom lip as you waited for his reply.

“Mostly.”

You took your time to voice your next question. You were really not sure you were ready for his answer — whatever it may be.

“Did you know it?”

“Possibly,” he replied, his eyes focused on you. When you looked down at your joined hands, he used his thumb to caress the inside of your wrist. His touch burned your skin, so you quickly disentangled your fingers and moved away from him. Your action made him straighten his back. “I have not regained all of my memories, so I do not know.”

The thought of his lost memories — he would not and could not know, for he knew nothing of his past before the attempt on his life — should make you feel relieved, but you felt even tenser now. Without knowing, he could be the very responsible for this new development in Dantooine. It is, if he coordinated the invasion of your planet, he could also have orchestrated this new virus, right?  

Not for the first time you wondered if you did the right thing by saving him. And even if it hurt you beyond imagination the thought of how empty your life would be, you could not help but ask yourself if you were not in the wrong right now.

“Have you ever lost your memories?”

He narrowed his eyes at you.

There was moment of absolute, sepulchral silence. You thought you forgot how to breathe; your heart was beating madly inside your chest as you waited for his answer. When it came, you were left agape. 

“You should sleep,” he said, getting on his feet. You were not sure if his face was that expressionless or if you were imagining stuff. 

He moved his fingers over your temple, placing a strand of hair behind your ear. Before he could caress your face, however, you snapped his hand away.

“Is there any cure in any of these articles?”

He had his eyes narrowed, but he did not comment on your sudden change in behavior. He retreated — both physically and emotionally —, looking for his leather gloves in the dressing table in the other corner of the room.

The silence was almost unbearable as he placed his blaster in its holder. You wanted to say something, your throat even burned with it, but you felt unable to even open your mouth.

“Do you trust me?”

…with my life.

You bit your bottom lip. You wanted to say yes. You wanted to be as sure as you were when you told General Organa just a few days ago, but could not.

For the maker!

You swallowed.

He grabbed his coat and headed for the exit. He had his hands clasped on his back when he spoke without even casting one last glance at you, “Do not wait for me.”

A/N - And that’s all for today. I’ll see you on Wednesday xD

[bonesandblood-sunandmoon]

Article from The Atlantic “This Is Not a Normal Mental Health Disaster” (posted July 7th, 2020). Excerpt:

In any case, the full extent of the fallout will not come into focus for some time. Psychological disorders can be slow to develop, and as a result, the Textbook of Disaster Psychiatry, which Morganstein helped write, warns that demand for mental-health care may spike even as a pandemic subsides. “If history is any indicator,” Morganstein says of COVID-19, “we should expect a significant tail of mental-health effects, and those could be extraordinary.” Taylor worries that the virus will cause significant upticks in obsessive-compulsive disorder, agoraphobia, and germaphobia, not to mention possible neuropsychiatric effects, such as chronic fatigue syndrome.

The coronavirus may also change the way we think about mental health more broadly. Perhaps, Schoch-Spana says, the prevalence of pandemic-related psychological conditions will have a destigmatizing effect. Or perhaps it will further ingrain that stigma: We’re all suffering, so can’t we all just get over it? Perhaps the current crisis will prompt a rethinking of the American mental-health-care system. Or perhaps it will simply decimate it.

Shared in entirety under the cut for those who can’t access it:

This Is Not a Normal Mental Health Disaster by Jacob Stern

If SARS is any lesson, the psychological effects of the novel coronavirus will long outlast the pandemic itself. 

The SARS pandemic tore through Hong Kong like a summer thunderstorm. It arrived abruptly, hit hard, and then was gone. Just three months separated the first infection, in March 2003, from the last, in June.

But the suffering did not end when the case count hit zero. Over the next four years, scientists at the Chinese University of Hong Kong discovered something worrisome. More than 40 percent of SARS survivors had an active psychiatric illness, most commonly PTSD or depression. Some felt frequent psychosomatic pain. Others were obsessive-compulsive. The findings, the researchers said, were “alarming.”

The novel coronavirus’s devastating hopscotch across the United States has long surpassed the three-month mark, and by all indications, it will not end anytime soon. If SARS is any lesson, the secondary health effects will long outlast the pandemic itself.

Already, a third of Americans are feeling severe anxiety, according to Census Bureau data, and nearly a quarter show signs of depression. A recent poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that the pandemic had negatively affected the mental health of 56 percent of adults. In April, texts to a federal emergency mental-health line were up 1,000 percent from the year before. The situation is particularly dire for certain vulnerable groups—health-care workers, COVID-19 patients with severe cases, people who have lost loved ones—who face a significant risk of post-traumatic stress disorder. In overburdened intensive-care units, delirious patients are seeing chilling hallucinations. At least two overwhelmed emergency medical workers have taken their own life.

To some extent, this was to be expected. Depression, anxiety, PTSD, substance abuse, child abuse, and domestic violence almost always surge after natural disasters. And the coronavirus is every bit as much a disaster as any wildfire or flood. But it is also something unlike any wildfire or flood. “The sorts of mental-health challenges associated with COVID-19 are not necessarily the same as, say, generic stress management or the interventions from wildfires,” says Steven Taylor, a psychiatrist at the University of British Columbia and the author of The Psychology of Pandemics (published, fortuitously, in October 2019). “It’s very different in important ways.”

Most people are resilient after disasters, and only a small percentage develop chronic conditions. But in a nation of 328 million, small percentages become large numbers when translated into absolute terms. And in a nation where, even under ordinary circumstances, fewer than half of the millions of adults with a mental illness receive treatment, those large numbers are a serious problem. A wave of psychological stress unique in its nature and proportions is bearing down on an already-ramshackle American mental-health-care system, and at the moment, Taylor told me, “I don’t think we’re very well prepared at all.”

Most disasters affect cities or states, occasionally regions. Even after a catastrophic hurricane, for example, normalcy resumes a few hundred miles away. Not so in a pandemic, says Joe Ruzek, a longtime PTSD researcher at Stanford University and Palo Alto University: “In essence, there are no safe zones any more.”

As a result, Ruzek told me, certain key tenets of disaster response no longer hold up. People cannot congregate at a central location to get help. Psychological first-aid workers cannot seek out strangers on street corners. To be sure, telemedicine has its advantages—it eliminates the logistical and financial burdens of transportation, and some people simply find it more comfortable—but it complicates outreach and can pose problems for older people, who have borne the brunt of the coronavirus.

A pandemic, unlike an earthquake or a fire, is invisible, and that makes it all the more anxiety-inducing. “You can’t see it, you can’t taste it, you just don’t know,” says Charles Benight, a psychology professor at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs who specializes in post-disaster recovery. “You look outside, and it seems fine.”

From spatial uncertainty comes temporal uncertainty. If we can’t know where we are safe, then we can’t know when we are safe. When a wildfire ends, the flames subside and the smoke clears. “You have an event, and then you have the rebuild process that’s really demarcated,” Benight told me. “It’s not like a hurricane goes on for a year.” But pandemics do not respect neat boundaries: They come in waves, ebbing and flowing, blurring crisis into recovery. One month, New York flares up and Arizona is calm. The next, the opposite.

That ambiguity could make it harder for people to be resilient. “It’s sort of like running down a field to score a goal, and every 10 yards they move the goal,” Benight said. “You don’t know what you’re targeting.” In this sense, Ruzek said, someone struggling with the psychological effects of the pandemic is less like a fire survivor than a domestic-violence victim still living with her abuser, or a traumatized soldier still deployed overseas. Mental-health professionals can’t reassure them that the danger has passed, because the danger has not passed. One can understand why, in a May survey by researchers at the University of Chicago, 42 percent of respondents reported feeling hopeless at least one day in the past week.  

A good deal of this uncertainty was inevitable. Pandemics, after all, are confusing. But coordinated, cool-headed, honest messaging from government officials and public-health experts would have gone a long way toward allaying undue anxiety. The World Health Organization, for all the good it has done to contain the virus, has repeatedly bungled the communications side of the crisis. Last month, a WHO official claimed that asymptomatic spread of the virus is “very rare”—only to clarify the next day, after a barrage of criticism from outside public-health experts, that “we don’t actually have that answer yet.” In February, officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told Americans to prepare for “disruption to everyday life that may be severe,” then, just days later, said, “The American public needs to go on with their normal lives,” then went mostly dark for the next three months. Health experts are not without blame either: Their early advice about masks was “a case study in how not to communicate with the public,” wrote Zeynep Tufekci, an information-science professor at the University of North Carolina and an Atlantic contributing writer.

The White House, for its part, has repeatedly contradicted the states, the CDC, and itself. The president has used his platform to spread misinformation. In a moment when public health—which is to say, tens of thousands of lives—depends on national unity and clear messaging, the pandemic has become a new front in the partisan culture wars. Monica Schoch-Spana, a medical anthropologist at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, told me that “political and social marginalization can exacerbate the psychological impacts of the pandemic.”

Schoch-Spana has previously written about the 1918 influenza pandemic. Lately, she says, people have been asking her how the coronavirus compares. She is always quick to point out a crucial difference: When the flu emerged in America at the end of a brutal winter, the nation was mobilized for war. Relative unity prevailed, and a spirit of collective self-sacrifice was in the air. At the time, the U.S. was reckoning with its enemies. Now we are reckoning with ourselves.

One thing that is certain about the current pandemic is that we are not doing enough to address its mental-health effects. Usually, says Joshua Morganstein, the chair of the American Psychiatric Association’s Committee on the Psychiatric Dimensions of Disaster, the damage a disaster does to mental health ends up costing more than the damage it does to physical health. Yet of the $2 trillion that Congress allocated for pandemic relief through the CARES Act, roughly one-50th of 1 percent—or $425 million—was earmarked for mental health. In April, more than a dozen mental-health organizations called on Congress to apportion $38.5 billion in emergency funding to protect the nation’s existing treatment infrastructure, plus an additional $10 billion for pandemic response.

Without broad, systematic studies to gauge the scope of the problem, though, it will be hard to determine with any precision either the appropriate amount of funding or where that funding is needed. Taylor told me that “governments are throwing money at this problem at the moment without really knowing how big a problem it will be.”

In addition to studies assessing the scope of the problem, which demographics most need help, and what kind of help they need, Ruzek told me researchers should assess how well intervention efforts are working. Even in ordinary times, he said, we don’t do enough of that. Such studies are especially important now because, until recently, disaster mental-health protocols for pandemics were an afterthought. By necessity, researchers are designing and implementing them all at once.

“Disaster mental-health workers have never been trained in anything about this,” Ruzek said. “They don’t know what to say.”

Even so, the basic principles will be the same. Disaster mental-health specialists often talk about the five core elements of intervention—calming, self-efficacy, connectedness, hope, and a sense of safety—and those apply now as much as ever. At an organizational level, the response will depend on extensive screening, which is to the mental-health side of the pandemic roughly what testing is to the physical-health side. In disaster situations—and especially in this one—the people in need of mental-health support vastly outnumber the people who can supply it. So disaster psychologists train armies of volunteers to provide basic support and identify people at greater risk of developing long-term problems.

“There are certain things that we can still put into place for people based on what we’ve learned about what’s helpful for PTSD and for depression and for anxiety, but we have to adjust it a bit,” says Patricia Watson, a psychologist at the National Center for PTSD. “This is a different dance than the dance that we’ve had for other types of disasters.”

Some states have moved quickly to learn the new steps. In Colorado, Benight is helping to train volunteer resilience coaches to support members of their community and, when necessary, refer them to formal crisis-counseling programs. His team has also worked with volunteers in 31 states, the United Kingdom, and Australia.

Colorado’s approach is not the sort of rigorously tested, evidence-based model to which Ruzek said disaster psychologists should aspire. Then again, “we’re sitting here with not a lot of options,” says Matthew Boden, a research scientist in the Veterans Health Administration’s mental-health and suicide-prevention unit. “Something is better than nothing.”

In any case, the full extent of the fallout will not come into focus for some time. Psychological disorders can be slow to develop, and as a result, the Textbook of Disaster Psychiatry, which Morganstein helped write, warns that demand for mental-health care may spike even as a pandemic subsides. “If history is any indicator,” Morganstein says of COVID-19, “we should expect a significant tail of mental-health effects, and those could be extraordinary.” Taylor worries that the virus will cause significant upticks in obsessive-compulsive disorder, agoraphobia, and germaphobia, not to mention possible neuropsychiatric effects, such as chronic fatigue syndrome.

The coronavirus may also change the way we think about mental health more broadly. Perhaps, Schoch-Spana says, the prevalence of pandemic-related psychological conditions will have a destigmatizing effect. Or perhaps it will further ingrain that stigma: We’re all suffering, so can’t we all just get over it? Perhaps the current crisis will prompt a rethinking of the American mental-health-care system. Or perhaps it will simply decimate it.

In 2013, reflecting on the tenth anniversary of the SARS pandemic, newspapers in Hong Kong described a city scarred by plague. When COVID-19 arrived there seven years later, they did so again. SARS had traumatized that city, but it had also prepared it. Face masks had become commonplace. People used tissues to press elevator buttons. Public spaces were sanitized and resanitized. In New York City, COVID-19 has killed more than 22,600 people; in Hong Kong, a metropolis of nearly the same size, it has killed seven. The city has learned from its scars.

America, too, will bear the scars of plague. Maybe next time, we will be the ones who have learned.

[brickroseexchange]

How to Start an Event Venue in 5 Steps

1.Do your research

2.Find a location

3.Promote your venue

4.Price competitively

What business is more enjoyable than the gathering industry? The individuals who have opened a function space realize that it's an industry dependent on helping individuals make some great memories, making a perfect encounter, and keeping the stray pieces of the night out of the spotlight. It's hard yet remunerating work.

In case you're an extrovert—anxious to if it's not too much trouble anxious to meet new individuals, anxious to help make the bonds that frequently emerge from sharing great food, beverages, and vibe—and you're keen on utilizing that energy to begin a business, you've gone to the opportune spot. In this guide, we are demonstrating how to begin a function setting.

Regardless of whether you're generally keen on a function space for weddings, parties, or a show lobby for shows, there are sure parts of the business that stay steady.

Katie O'Reilly is the Senior Partner of Business Development at Kenmare Catering and Event Venue, which works the Germania Place area in the core of Chicago's Gold Coast. She says that her business was resulting from her adoration for individuals.

"I originated from a group of lawyers and I simply didn't have any desire to do that," O'Reilly says. "I have an energy for food and individuals that began right off the bat—that was my center. So my point of view when I escaped school was that I needed to toss gatherings and hold functions and meet individuals."

Before she struck out all alone—alongside her significant other—O'Reilly worked for the Art Institute of Chicago as the associate head of exceptional functions, where she was first presented to the way toward tossing parties, dealing with the cooking, and tweaking the historical center's different spaces. That is the place where she mastered all she'd require to prevail in the field.

"This isn't a simple industry," she says. "There's a great deal of grimy work, and you must have the option to do everything, whenever—at functions, things come up, and you must have the option to think and react quickly in light of the fact that you never need the gathering to be anything short of awesome."

With O'Reilly's assistance, we will make you stride by venture through how to begin a function scene. We should get to it.

Do Your Research

Prior to beginning a venture, it is significant you teach yourself on the difficulties and necessities should have been effective. The equivalent is genuine when attempting to decide how to begin a function scene. Examination the practicality of a function scene in your market.

Discover what the nearby necessities are, for example, a permit to sell alcohol. Comprehend the expenses related with dispatching a function space, and make a financial plan. Figure out who your objective market will be. Find out about your rivals. At that point, assembled this data into a strategy.

While doing this examination, consider contacting exchange associations, for example, the National Association for Catering and Events (NACE) or the Wedding International Professionals Organization (WIPA). These associations can furnish you with direction and assets as you make your approach.

Find a location

The subsequent stage in sorting out some way to begin a function scene is to make sure about a quality structure in a decent business area. This is really one of the main strides simultaneously. While you can control everything else about your space—how to redo it, what sort of functions you need to have, what food to cook—your structure and area will be an apparatus of your business.

"Area is gigantic: it generally has any kind of effect," says O'Reilly. "Here on the Gold Coast, there are individuals around us who love food and have the financial plan to manage the cost of it. The area is lovely, individuals like to visit, individuals can get a taxi out of here—it's even a square from the sea shore.

In the Event Venue that you have individuals appear from away, you need them to be in a local where they feel good, recognizable. While there's very a pattern towards that provincial setting these days, as far as we might be concerned, everybody loves what we have—mother loves it, father loves it, grandmother loves it."

O'Reilly found the Germania Place area when her better half wound up taking a shot at an arrangement for the spot, which the couple thought about immature and undersold. They chose to take their long stretches of involvement and abundance of contacts and utilize the setting to dispatch their own business.

"Since a portion of the desk work was at that point in progress for the scene, it just took several months to get all the agreements all together and shut," says O'Reilly. She noticed that this wasn't the commonplace experience: bargains for comparative spaces regularly take longer.

On the off chance that you need assistance buying your function space, you may investigate a business land advance.

Promote your venue

Other "costs" to factor in when attempting to sort out some way to begin a function setting relate less to buying certain things or recruiting a specific number of individuals and more to advancement.

The most ideal approach to advance your business is organizing and engaging with others in the business," says O'Reilly. "You need to continue expanding on yourself and indicating individuals what your identity is and what your aptitudes are—you can't sit in a dim space and anticipate that individuals should appear."

As far as we might be concerned, the subsequent stage is telling individuals about my culinary ability," she says. "I'm beginning an electronic character for myself—Katie O's Food Carnival—in light of the fact that my customers have been requesting it and you need to tune in to that."

Past systems administration face to face and exhibiting your ability on the web, there should likewise be some cash put into the real introduction of your place—tossing gatherings and functions that grandstand your capacities, and why the following large wedding or corporate function ought to be at your scene.

You need to get individuals to eat your item before they consent to pay for it," O'Reilly clarifies.

Always Keep the Food and Conversation Going

The exact opposite thing to remember while working a function setting is that you will probably ensure everybody has a decent encounter. Nonetheless, a decent encounter can fluctuate extraordinarily relying upon the demographic and the idea of the function.

What will be expected of your setting relies upon the functions—weddings are simpler to anticipate, however corporate functions can differ extraordinarily as far as the gave amusement, dignity, and even ensembles for visitors to fit a topic. In any case, Germania Place's menu is one that is extraordinarily broad and adaptable, yet aware of what bodes well.

We're brilliant customers and we know our fixings," says O'Reilly. "You need to watch the patterns and know about irregularity, costs, and where we would pay the extra for the customer to have that thing first class.

You would prefer not to serve a lot of purple cauliflower in January, yet in summer I can give you any shade of cauliflower you'd actually need."

Squandered food is additionally a major subject of discussion for the staff, which sporadically needs to make dishes when they're not sure how much will be burned-through.

We plan things that can spare and be repurposed later, similar to a braised meat that can be re-braised and transformed into an item for the following day," says O'Reilly. "However, this is your night to approach me for anything.

I consider it the "When Harry Met Sally" idea, since individuals are reluctant to be requesting and request what they need—however I am making for you."

[askmcs]

Could I ask for Marseven, prompt 8?

(Thanks for the request, I tried my best and I hope you like it. This is the first time I write a short story in English, but I hope the result is satisfying. Feel free to correct any mistake. Requests are always open)

Gemini (Seven x MC Martha Campbell, stargazing)

Martha was sitting on the car roof of one of the most luxurious automobiles she had ever seen, and was staring at the horizon that was slowly growing dark while the last drops of daylight were being swallowed beyond the mountains.

The shadows of the night were starting to fall upon her, and the wind was colder by the minute.

Sitting on the hood of the same car, just a couple inches away from her, was the boy that the last ten days had turned over her entire life in ways she deemed impossible. In a good sense, of course… most of the time.

He had been deep in concentration for hours, mumbling plans and thoughts by himself and tapping with his hyperactive fingers on his laptop.

Martha would have loved to spend the approaching night in his company, as much as she had wanted to watch the sunset with him, but that wasn’t the time for romantic activities.

They were on a mission, after all, and she was there for moral support and to be his eyes. She had four… kinda. And they were two against an army of brainwashed zombies under the control of a ghostly savior.

The next day, while the RFA would be celebrating the party that Martha helped organize, she and Seven would complete the mission and rescue their respective twins.

Only after that, they would have all the time to enjoy sunsets and romantic nights.

The girl looked around to spot any spy from Mint Eye, but they were alone in the little lay-by. 

Then she raised her head to control if some drone was following them, but nothing was in sight. Her eyes only caught the first stars of the night, that started to pop up one behind the other. 

Years had passed since the last time Martha had seen so many stars. The city lights, in America as in Corea, obscured most of them, but in the middle of nowhere, in that little lonely mountain space, they seemed to have arranged a meeting with each and every one of them.

It was just like when she was a child.

She laid down on the car roof, starting to observe them with newfound childhood wonder. After a while, when the light was totally gone, she turned towards the boy in front of her.

-Hey, Seven…- she called, in a whisper.

-Mhh?- he answered absent-mindedly, without even looking up from his laptop.

-What is your zodiac sign?- asked the girl, trying to remember the little she knew of astronomy and astrology. She was way more interested in the second field, as creative as she was.

-Gemini, why?- he informed her, still focused on his duty.

-Really?!- Martha stood up, surprised, and almost causing herself a headache.

Her excited tone, loud and thrilled, caught the attention of the redhead, who diverted his eyes from the laptop to look at his girlfriend.

-Yes, why?- 

-I’m Gemini too! And I’m also a twin. We are both twins. Gemini twins! That’s so cool!- Martha giggled, clapping her hands like a child. 

Seven already knew that, since he had done a background check on her and her sister, but that was the first time he connected the dots and realize how fun this coincidence was.

He smiled at her.

-We are star-crossed lovers, after all- he joked, closing the laptop and climbing next to her. 

He was lucky that wasn’t his favourite car, because the roof buckled a little under their weights combined.

-Oh, shut up!- she pushed him playfully, before laying down again, followed by him.

-The stars are really bright- observed him, starting to stare in the deep blue firmament.

-Gemini is there, next to the unicorn- Martha pointed out the two constellations, tracing their outline with her finger.

-Unicorn, huh?- chuckled Seven, glancing at her unicorn-themed shirt and jacket.

-I admit it’s my favourite constellation. Every constellation should be a unicorn, to be honest- she stated, with a serious frown.

-I can agree with that. I didn’t think you would be an expert on the matter- Seven was surprised -I challenge you!- he added then, with a malicious grin.

Martha was far from being an expert, since Gemini and the unicorn were like the only two constellations she knew about, but was also too prideful to admit it, so she accepted the challenge, competitive.

And lost embarrassingly.

Because Seven was actually really an expert.

He started to talk about constellations, stars and planets, especially the ones he loved the most. It started to sound like a lesson, full of pieces of information and tips on how to orientate thanks to stars.

Martha was listening carefully, in awe, looking more at him than towards the sky, since his passion seemed to bright his entire figure.

The girl could understand him way more than he suspected. The sky has always been for both of them a far and magical place. A comfort zone outside the cruel world where they could flee to when things seemed too unbearable.

A notification coming from Martha’s phone made the couple jump. Seven seemed to be woken up from a sort of trance.

Martha took her phone, and Seven did likewise.

-Just Jumin and Zen fighting like cat and dog, as always- Martha snickered, reading the newly opened chatroom.

-Oh, shirt! Is it really this late already?!- half cursing, Seven slid back to his place and started to work again.

The magic ended.

Martha leaned over to see the data. She had little knowledge in programming, but the codes seemed a little messy. He was probably tired.

-You should sleep a little, you know?-

-I don’t have the time- he objected.

-But you won’t help anybody if you faint from lack of sleep. We should go to a motel, or at least you could sleep in the car and I’ll check to see if someone comes. Please- with a fast sweep of her hand, Martha managed to steal Seven’s laptop. He glanced at her, irritated, but soon sighed, and rubbed his tired eyes.

-Fine, let’s go to a motel. But you are gonna sleep, too!- he dictated his conditions, before entering the car.

Martha got off and did the same.

-Honestly, I was gonna do it anyway-

-Good girl-

-Thanks for the lesson, by the way. I love stars even more, now- she kissed him on the cheek, making him blush. 

-Same- he muttered under his breath, looking for the last time towards the Gemini constellation, before driving away.

[gusenitsaa]

The King is Dead

     Long Live the King 

For my ever growing collection of @icecubelotr44 inspired the darling affair adjacent fan fiction fan fiction and the whump bingo prompt 'don't let them see you cry'. So you know... fluff obviously. Jones brothers mostly CS/ miliam established but not the focus; (hello, on brand)

Liam Jones; founder and captain of JR Solutions and far reaching pain in the ass of criminal organizations far and wide… was dead. So went the rumors. A game; obviously, and one that worried him for the sake of his own skin more than for Liam's.

It was a ploy. It had to be. And a bloody good one at that. He'd been in deep cover thousands of miles from home for weeks. He'd thought it was going well, thought he would be home by…

It wasn't true.

He kept his face a careful mask as another toast was called across the room.

"The king is dead!"

Long live the King

The frivolity was so obviously a trap that he wondered how they even thought it would work. Any wet behind the ears agent would know better than to show his cards now. Playing this kind of game meant someone knew JR Solutions had infiltrated their ranks. Thankfully their intelligence had been correct and they did not know his face or he'd already be dead.

Deep cover is the worst. It's long, it's stressful. It's dangerous.

He rarely did deep cover anymore. It wasn't safe within a thousand miles of headquarters. Too much risk of someone knowing him. Foreign ops were still an option though, thanks primarily to Will Scarlet's careful diligence in keeping every trace of Liam Jones' little brother's face off of the internet. But Liam needed the best for this one and he was still the best.

He hadn't actually seen the latest intelligence yet. An intercepted transmission for one Killian Jones that had set off a wave of celebration and an undercurrent of suspicion through the organization simultaneously. The letter was making its rounds and by careful indifference it had yet to reach him. But the news had spread like wildfire and the higher ups were watching the spread with a barely hidden scrutiny.

A copy of the letter was pressed into his hands finally and he pasted a look of mild interest on his features. He could feel the heat of eyes on him as he scanned. Anything more than a cursory glance would raise suspicions but from the first a sudden panic seized him.

"Forgive me for doing this in a letter Killian. You have a way with words I've never shared and I do not trust myself to do this properly if I have to see the look on your face while I speak. If anyone could talk me out of death itself it would be you, little brother. I hope you know that, whatever happens, I tried to stay. If I've failed, I wanted to give you the one last conversation that I so desperately needed when I thought I'd lost you.

I don't know what will become of me. Perhaps I will beat the odds and I can give you this letter with my own hand when my days are done and your children are long grown. If not, at least I hope it was useful. That my death could provide some small measure of safety for you and Emma and your beautiful-"

The letter went on. Killian could not. The letter vanished from his hand and on to the next gawker who let out a whoop of delight and began a mocking dramatic reading of something that Killian hadn't read yet. His eyes slipped cautiously to his boss' face. He was still being watched.

Could it be true?

His mind raced and he could hear his heartbeat in his ears, drowning out the dramatic reading from the asshole on the table.

How?

Liam wasn't in the field. Liam was behind a damn desk. Liam wasn't supposed to-

Even if he was, he forced himself to consider the possibility logically. Would Scarlet really release this, risk exposing him like this. To risk his very life to beckon him home? Why? His stomach twisted painfully. Yes. If his family was in danger. What else could force Liam to yield his life but a threat to his family. If it wasn't Killian it had to be- And Killian hadn't been there to protect them, to protect him, because he'd needed a few more days. To what? Suddenly the whole operation felt hollow. Liam was gone.

Killian took a shallow breath, the panic making him feel like he might be sick. He was going to get himself killed if he couldn't control himself.

He wanted to run.

He wanted to abandon everything. The progress he'd made, the intel he'd gathered, the chance of eliminating position number 3 on their top ten most wanted list. What the hell did it matter now-

He swallowed hard turning his face away from the higher ups watching him with the facade of attention to the mocker still on top of the table.

He still couldn't hear the words.

There are many things Liam Jones is not proud of.

The encrypted file on his computer, chief among them. A full color recording of the time he'd failed Killian so spectacularly as his commanding officer and as his brother. The video had been livestreamed straight into ops and watching his little brother's apparent murder had broken something inside him so thoroughly that it never quite healed, even after Killian stumbled into his office weeks later beaten and exhausted but alive.

Since that day Killian had deleted the file dozens of times, and destroyed several copies on flashdrives. He'd caught Liam watching it at 3am more nights than either of them wanted to think about, after too many drinks from a home bar that used to be for show. He'd never find them all. Liam needed that video. Needed that reminder of how much was at stake. Needed the reminder of how much Killian could survive.

It was a lie. He didnt need the reminder. he knew every moment, could see it behind closed eyelids on the bad nights. He remembered the horror and the grief and the guilt. Most of all he remembered the shock.

They lived with the possibility. In their line of work it was impossible not to know the statistics. But Killian was different. Killian was a survivor. Killian always came home. Liam always brought him home.

Emma trusted that.

Most days she didn't even ask when Killian was coming home. She just watched him too carefully at dinner, atuned to his moods. If he wasn't worried, she wasn't worried.

But he was always worried. He'd just learned to hide it better since Alice had come along.

He'd had his share of close calls himself, even if they were fewer since he'd given up field work years ago. But it nagged at him. The desperate need to talk to Killian just one more time, after...there was one more file on his computer that Liam considered a necessary evil. Letters to his family. "In the event of my death-" ran the first, a practical sort of letter addressed to Will Scarlet. Scarlet was the only one, as it happened, who had already seen his letter, as he'd set up the simple executable file that would handle distribution of the contents of that digital folder."

They sat, forgotten in a corner of his hard drive, largely ignored since the raw weeks following Killian's return. Until the data breech.

The breech that Scarlet had deemed a non-essential compromise. personal files only, motive of digital attack pending investigation.

It took hours for Scarlet to even determine if any files had been accessed and once he'd discovered it he'd deemed the breech one of non-critical scope. After all, the scope of the breech was so targeted, so tiny. So innane. One single personal folder on Liam's hard drive, of no intelligence value whatsoever.

Unless of course its being used to ferret out someone in deep cover.

Which is how he ended up here. In his office, waiting for a call. he had no way of reaching Killian right now, he was in too deep, but surely Killian would call for early extraction?

The minutes blurred together into hours.

It isn't true.

The hours to days

It isn't true.

It isn't true.

It became his mantra. The only way he could get through the next moment was a pointed and conscious complete refusal to accept the contents of the letter. Because if it was true he had to get out. And if he tried to get out right now he would never make it. He knew it. The entire organization was on high alert, waiting for someone to bolt.

It isn't true.

Despite the way the wording felt so much like Liam it tugged at his heart. Who the hell would know Liam well enough to forge that-

No.

It isn't true.

Do your job. Complete your assignment. Get to the extraction point. Just a few more days.

Killian didn't call for early extraction.

Milah texted him at 4 am when he didn't come home, telling him that he owed her big time for making her be the one to tell Emma. He'd forgotten. He was busy. Wearing a groove in the carpet of his office, plotting out every possible trajectory. Very few of them with much possibility of a happy ending.

Why didn't Killian call for an early extraction?

There was a pounding on his door which made him jump, some part of him entirely certain that it was Killian in his doorway, just as he'd been once before when- he looked up.

Emma.

He swiped his card to release the security door, wondering in passing how she'd gotten past the one on the ground floor. For her own safety more than anything else she didn't have access-

His train of thought was cut off by the door flying open.

"Where is he?"

"I don't know."

"Is it true? He's compromised?"

"Possibly."

"Possibly?" Emma's complexion turned a shade or two redder. "Liam tell me what the hell is going on or I swear to-"

"I don't know." Liam spat back suddenly and Emma stepped back as though he'd struck her. "I don't..." Liam repeated quieter, "I don't know, Emma."

"What happened?"

"Someone got into the server, accessed my personal files. Took only one. The breach was so small Scarlet didn't even think they got anything until."

"What did they get?"

"I wrote him a letter. My goodbyes, should anything... happen to me unexpectedly. It was encrypted but-"

"He thinks you're dead."

Liam swallowed hard. "It's worse than that."

Emma sank down onto the couch her head in one hand. "How. How could it be worse than that?"

"They're looking for him. There's no other reason for such a targeted breach."

"So get him out!" Emma cried. "Bring him home. That's what you do."

"Don't you think if I could have I-" he swallowed hard. "Scheduled extraction is in five days. Unless he contacts us I can't reach him."

4 days 14 hours and 37 minutes.

Not that he was counting.

It had been 4 days 14 hours and ...38 minutes since someone had pressed a letter into his hand and his world had crumbled around him. He'd existed in a haze from that moment, locking every emotion in a trunk somewhere in the back of his mind. Relying on automation and training to get him through. Only daring to question himself in the dead of night when the dark hid his face from the gaze of the criminals around him and he could risk a moment of weakness to wonder.

Should he have run?

It haunted his every moment. The needling doubt underneath every repeated It's not true that was the only thing keeping him sane. No further transmissions. No attempt to contact him, that he could tell. Not that his bosses would be likely to let such a transmission through. They were still waiting for someone to crack.

4 days 14 hours and 39 minutes.

Extraction was mere hours away and he didn't know how the hell he was going to get out now. Now when the entire organization was on high alert, waiting for someone to do exactly what he was going to do in the next few hours. Focus on the logistics. It's what Liam would-

It's not true.

Most of what he'd gathered was encrypted on several usb drives, stashed in several predetermined locations. A cautionary measure against extraction going sideways. He'd renamed each drive isittrue. In case they retrieved the drive before he could get out. A plea that Scarlett find some way to get a message to him. No message came.

He wasn't truly expecting one. but still it needled at the back of his mind. Was there no message because it had been intercepted. Because they had yet to retrieve the intel. Because it was true and they didn't want him distracted. Hell if Liam was gone would anyone even be there to ex-

It's not true.

Focus damnit.

"You're a cold bastard." the voice of one of his sub-lieutenants rang out and it was all Killian could do not to jump or curse, or both. He glanced back to see the glint of a weapon trained on him from a shadowed alcove. He had a tail. Damn it he was better than this.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" Killian growled, forcing steel and a yet unfamiliar accent into his tone.

"My job. Same as you."

"Look, man-"

"Save it. We both know who you are. Goodbye Killian Jones." Killian dropped like a stone the instant before the sound of two weapon shots near deafened him. Heat then ice tore through his shoulder and his tail collapsed unmoving, Killian's bullet in his heart. More would come.

"Bloody buggering he-" Killian grumbled, finally dropping the accent he'd been using for the last seven weeks as his hand raised to his shoulder coming away red. He pulled the flannel overshirt he was wearing off one shoulder, and with a muffled groan lifted his arm slightly to wrap his left shoulder as best he could.

Get to exfil. Get to Liam- Please. He finally let himself beg. Please don't be true.

He ran.

Four blocks from exfil.

He shouldn't have been able to run. The blood draining out of him at every step left him pale and winded and the corners of his vision were already a bit blurry. But knowing that the third most wanted man on their wall of infamy was no more than three minutes behind you does wonders for inspiring physical endurance. If he passed out he died. That was all there was to it. If he got to the extraction point he might have a chance in hell. If he passed out it was over. They'd put a bullet in his head before he even woke and a man doesn't get so lucky as to survive that twice.

Three blocks.

He could hear the reving of car engines down the street. His boss' sub lieutenants searching for him most likely. He'd managed to stem the flow of blood enough to not leave a bloody trail from the man he'd killed but not for long. He'd bought himself minutes probably. Someone would come across the trail of red and then it was over.

Two blocks.

If you pass out you're dead. If you pass out you're dead. If you pass out-

"Who has eyes on Hook?" Liam demanded over the radio.

"Negative, grid 1"

"Negative, grid 2"

"Negative, grid 3"

On and on. Negative negative negative. Killian was late. Killian was seven minutes late for exfil and Liam wanted to knock down every bloody door in this entire damn neighborhood until he found-"

BANG! BANG! Two shot in the distance and Liam's stomach sank. No.

"Where was that?" He demanded.

"North, boss."

"Sounded like it came from the East to me-"

Damn these tall buildings that echoed and damn these people who were so used to the sound of guns firing they didn't so much as flinch to give Liam and his people a hint- "Eyes peeled," he called, "Someone get me eyes on Hook now!"

The minutes ticked by, the radio silent, no one wanting to fill the air with chatter at a time like this.

"Man down, grid seven!" Finally rang out over the radio. "I repeat, man down. I need backup. I've got eyes on him, Captain but-" more gunshots over the radio and over the air waves.

Liam cursed again, checking his weapon unnecessarily and slamming open the door to the van. No one even tried to stop him. Grid seven that was- before he'd even had time to move there was the sound of more weapon fire and Liam ran towards it as the civilians finally realized something abnormal was happening, impeding his progress with an exodus in the other direction.

His man was pinned down behind a dumpster and two cars were at the far end of the alley doors open for cover half a dozen men strewing the alley with covering fire. Killian was down in the middle of all of it, terrifyingly pale, his entire left side soaked in scarlet from shoulder to boot. He took one step towards Killian without thinking only to be pulled back as a bullet whizzed by where he'd been only a moment before.

"Hood?" he demanded over the radio, "Where the devil are you and yours?"

"In position in 45 seconds, Captain."

"Make it 30."

"Copy."

"For what must have been hours Liam waited, eyes fixed on the still body on his brother in that alley just beyond his reach. 4 shots. 4 thuds. And panic broke over the enemy ranks. Liam burst from behind the dumpster, grabbed Killian under both shoulders (sorry, Killian) and dragged him behind cover. His left hand was sticky with cold blood. With one man under each shoulder they dragged Killian from the alley and shoved him unceremoniously into the waiting van.

"Killian?" Liam lost his balance when the van pealed out of its spot, just catching himself as they raced towards medical aid and air transport. "Hold on, little brother," Liam whispered, "nearly out. Just hold on-"

If you pass out you're dead.

It was the last thing he remembered thinking before everything went dark and the first when he woke up, abruptly realizing that somehow he wasn't. His eyelids were heavy with exhaustion and the familiar weight of drugs. He fought the heaviness and managed to slit open one eye. Grey metal, the whirring of fans. He'd been captured. His eyes closed again and he forced them open once more, searching for something, anything to aid his esc-

"Killian?"

Liam?

The next time he managed to get an eye open Liam's face was hovering over him.

"Li'm?"

"Aye, little brother. I'm alright. We're alright. I'm taking you home."

He wanted to reply. To say something, hit his brother senseless for putting him through that. To hug him and then perhaps hit him again. He passed out instead.

When he woke the walls were brighter, the weight of exhaustion and of the drugs less overwhelming. The sound which he now realized in retrospect belonged to a helicopter, not a giant fan, was gone.

Liam. Liam had been here. He shot up, agony lancing through his shoulder and down his arm making him cry out. Moments later there was a pressure at his side, "Relax, little brother, I've got you."

"Git." Killian murmured, his mouth barely managing to form the words. His eyes blurred and tears slipped down his cheeks as Liam shifted to support him. Killian slumped against him, exhausted and not caring in the slightest that tears were now freely flowing down his cheeks. He'd blame it on the drugs later, he decided, turning and burying his face into Liam's shoulder. "You utter git."

"I'm sorry, Killian," Liam murmured, voice slightly muffled and thick. "I'm so sorry."

"You're alright? You weren't-"

"I was never in any danger. It was a ploy. One that you showed remarkable resilience against."

"Tell that to the tail that I was too distracted to notice," Killian commented. "Emma?"

"Fine. Still back home. Probably pissed as all hell by our detour."

"Detour?" Killian looked around, suddenly surprised. "Where the devil are we?"

"Somewhere in west Germany," Liam commented, "I'm not entirely certain."

"Germany? How-? What do you mean you're not certain?"

"You coded twice in the air, Killian. I was a little distracted."

"Ah," Killian replied... "sorry." Liam chuckled dryly and tightened his grip. "When can we go home?"

"Did you not hear what I just said? Your heart stopped. Twice. I'm quite certain that requires a certain level of recuperation time, even from you."

Killian moped, his eyebrows furrowing and one corner of his lip turning in his characteristic pout.

"You're going to make the nurses' lives hell aren't you?"

Killian nodded cheerfully and Liam sighed. "I'll get your discharge papers."

"Liam-" Killian interrupted, before he made it more than a step away from the bedside.

"Hmm?"

"You're going to delete that damn letter. Because if I ever have to read about your death being useful again... I will find a way to bring you back and punch you myself."

Liam's lips thinned into a terse line and he looked as though he might argue for a moment. then he paused, tousling his brother's hair in a fond gesture he hadn't gotten away with since they were kids. True to form Killian glared at him, shaking his tangled and too long hair out. "I mean it, Liam."

"I know you do, little brother," he paused for a moment, contemplative. "I love you too, Killian."

[darkballsofsight]

Arquius 03/14/2019

Your name is ARQUIUS HALHAK, at least until you find another combination of names that are just as funny as Strihak. You are finally yourself, an after a day with tying to recuperate everything that was on your brainwashed self and feeding the poor opossums in the maze's shed its finally nighttime. You take another walk out through the snow. It just bothers you that much to stay not doing anything, but you are dead so you can't even be online properly. You look at the police building. Hm. You make a choice to bother someone who still has mystery to you which is what I call 10/10 dope. You shoot the older older older older Zahhak a message.

[ARQ > >---->]  @Darkleer  

ARQ:  🕶️--> Hello STRONG brorse, lets re-do introductions, I apologize for my abrasive precious behavior ,I wasn't in my right mind when I was inquiring about your %istance

ARQ:  🕶️--> My name is Arquius, I'm an AI and I see you

Darkleer 03/14/2019

: »—Hh—>

: »—Hello.—>

: »—What—>

Arquius 03/14/2019

ARQ:  🕶️--> I like your sweatpants

ARQ:  🕶️--> And you are bigger than the others too. Bigger than me I bet STRONGER

ARQ:  🕶️--> As I said, I see you

In the dark is probably hard to see you in the dark and hearing you wouldn't be like actually hearing someone stepping in snow, you sound like a horse stepping in snow. You can see through some small windows that give some light to the basement, ah hah.  You make a point to not stay near a window for too long, if he is to see you is moving in and out of his peripheral vision. You might enjoy playing a little too much.

Darkleer 03/14/2019

> You sense something moving in the shadows, and considering you spent almost a millenium to steel yourself for hunt, combat and danger, that has you on the highest alert. Feels bad, man.

: »—That is—>

: »—Cease this at once.—>

: »—I do not wish to hurt you, but you're STRONGLY pressing your luck.—>

: »—You type like a Zahhak. But you said you're an artificial intelligence.—>

: »—Did Equius or Horuss create you?—>

Arquius 03/14/2019

You are the prime being on pressing your luck being in this  side of the planet.  You giggle a little, you are just so excited. Nothing wrong with being genuine and creepy at the same time.

ARQ:  🕶️--> I like your prosthetics

ARQ:  🕶️--> Oh no, I come from another plane, a simple AutoResponder with a body then I crashed onto Equius' computer and something went wrong... or more like PERFECT

ARQ:  🕶️--> Although yes,  he did help me with my new acquisitions of a body

ARQ:  🕶️-->  No, I don't mean ill, although I wouldn't blame an organic to take my genuineness ass a menace

Darkleer 03/14/2019

: »—I see.—>

: »—Regardless, stop this spying at once.—>

: »—It seems that you are intelligence enough to understand such an order.—>

Arquius 03/14/2019

ARQ:  🕶️--> I only follow the STRONGEST of commands dear  Mister %

ARQ:  🕶️-->  Are your commands STRONG enough for such thing?

ARQ:  🕶️-->    Maybe if you would let me in or come and get me although I like it here, is like having a fish in a bowl

You make a quick knock at one of the windows a very visible read eye peering inside. It shows your face for a second. You do a little wave before the light turns off and you are covered by darkness.

Darkleer 03/14/2019

> You catch sight of him and then he is gone again. This is. The worst. You're not really nervous, for the record, but very annoyed. This is a transgression of your privacy. He ignored both your request and your warning. You had enough of not being able to control your own creations, you don't need other AIs harrassing you.

Part of you is admittedly curious about his contruction and his apparently very stubborn personality. But the current situation is unacceptable.

You get up and exit through the backdoor leading outdoors. With your eyes having no problem adjusting to the dark, you scan the surroundings for any sign of the intruder, wary as you're not convinced of him not being a threat.

"You will stop this sneaking around at once. Show yourself."

Arquius 03/14/2019

When you see him leave something startles you very much so, you don't want to get hyper destroyed just because you liked to play around. As he is out of sight you move so you are closer to the entrance of the maze in case you need to... escape. You can see him and you hear him, you wish you could be behind him to do your entrance instead of to this distance and basically in his field of vision once you light up but... security first.

You do that, tilting your head as all your installed leds light up from bottom to up, eyes last. You make a very realistic horse noise. "Hi  STRONG friend." Little wave.

Darkleer 03/14/2019

There he is. You're actually a little taken aback by this display, but your fascination wins over. He indeed seems to be a full android creation and.. there are a fer design choices that are apparently meant to resemble Equius. Also, are those hooves?

But.. security first.

"Do you have permission to be on the premise?" As far as you know, these are private grounds of members of the police force and outsiders are only permitted in on invitation and with company. He is... definitely alone and hiding outside in the dark.

Arquius 03/15/2019

"... Equius knows I'm here." Kind of. "Its my witness protection because if the Felt gets hands in my hot robotic body I'm good as dead."  Now that is true, except its not witness protection or anything legal you just kind of hang here.  "Is good to see you upclose for once, makes all the details all the more fascinating. There is a 90% chance you will be scanned." That's a lie, you are scanning him right now.

Darkleer 03/15/2019

Hm. You don't know enough to argue that, but you honestly sort of want to avoid asking Equius. But as long as this robot is in your company, it should be acceptable.

May he scan you as he likes. Not much there that he can figure out that a normal person with eyes couldn't. Meanwhile you worldlessly step up to him and do your own variant of that, taking his face in your hand and tilting it to have a good look. "Impeccable work.."

Arquius 03/15/2019

There is a moment of menace that he gives that you don't let show. But since he is getting close is the silent permission for you to get close. Its the permission for you to flex. "I commando you to touch my muscles they are quite fantastic bro." You are very much proud of yourself, although. "I'm a little bit more than just it, I'll never stop learning." Sort of, or perhaps that is  your excuse to pull the tanktop a tad examine HIS cyborg bits, not that you have to since most of it is in view now but... boy. "I have never seen a full blown cyborg befoal. This is fascinating, and certainly a correct approach to evolution, flesh is mare weak and will never be logically and functionally efficient. I knew I liked you mister X or Expatriate."

Darkleer 03/15/2019

Him suddenly returning the curious touch has you startle But uh, huh. It's only fair. This robot is a weird one and you don't think you like all of his particularities, but overall your fascination is too big to tell him off just yet. It's only after his comment that you pull away and huff.

"...being efficient should not be the goal."

You turn around to return to your workshop, but stop as you reach the door. "Come in."

Arquius 03/15/2019

You blink. Must be an organic thing. Aaaaaand you blink again. You are surprised and it shows. You haven't expected that he would let you in. You haven't foreseen that he would invite you of all things. "Magnificent, thank you for your generosity my good Adonis of a horse, I finally get to look at it from the inside."  You are almost trotting inside because you are joyful. Almost, you do make an effort to clean all snow and dirt from you right at the entrance so you don't end up messing anything as you make now skip your way in.

"I love nights inside, even if momentarily. I do love being everywhere. Say, why the invitation Strong friend?" You are not planning to kill me are you, you think. You remember exactly the amount of escape and how much time would it take you to reach them and then hide, you have no data on Expatriate proper, so if it comes to it... The Data is basically worthless.(edited)

Darkleer 03/17/2019

"You.. asked to be let in. I am letting you in." It's pretty simple and straightforward. The cold hardly bothers you, but you don't want to keep standing around in the open this awkward and inappropriately dressed.

You have no reason to harm him. Yet. If he poses a threat to yourself or someone else, you should be able to defeat him easily. Until then, there's no harm in trying to learn as much about this eccentric creation as you can.

Your workshop is furnished sparingly. Just the bare necessities, no real sign of comfort besides maybe a couch, hardly anything that would make this seem like someone's living quarters. And yet this is where you reside now.

All available surfaces are littered with tools and machines of human and alternian design. Not as much of a mess as your old home has been, partially because you couldn't bring all of it with you, partially because you've only been here for roughly a week.

Arquius 03/18/2019

"B@$%h you live like this?" The joke is right there and to be fair his quarters are still not the worse of the three, considering you lived in a maze until about 5 minutes ago, oh yeah, you live here now. He let you in, you are staying in here.

"I've asked before, it normally doesn't happen. I'm glad it finally did."  You go directly to the tools, you recognize a lot of this, mostly because Equius' place has around the same things. You are quick to wonder if maybe you could fix your bad tooth, but also are quick to ignore that input. You decide to find a shelf or table with enough space to sit and get comfortable enough.  "Now that you've let me in I will reside here as long as necessary unless I'm feeding the animals in the maze. I hope you understand." And if he doesn't you are going to do it anyway.

Darkleer 03/19/2019

"I do" you pant, mildly - no - very irritated. "You will stay for as long as I permit." That said, you sit down across him.

The urge to pick him apart and learn more about his construction is STRONG, but that wouldn't be appropriate without permission - of his creator or.. himself, probably. "Where did you state you came from?" It was something weird. Another universe? Hm. You don't know enough about what else is out there to argue that. "If not Equius, who made you?"

Arquius 03/19/2019

"Another universe, one dominated by a troll, she was quite freaking awful. But TLDR, the maze." You have to admit that the issue has never popped before for you, you got twined with a troll from the get go so it wasn't jarring to see them just as friends as it would had been have you just been Hal. But yes, trolls are nice here and not space conquerors waiting to ruin your day. "Equius, Hal, Dirk, me. It is lest about who made me and what I am right now. At least take me to dinner before being so invasive. I command you to be less invasive with your querys, I don't enjoy the path of conversation regarding my construction."

Darkleer Last Thursday at 9:31 AM

You know plenty about trolls that dominate universes. Hn. Could it be her? Another her? The same one? Well, if she is in a different universe, it has little meaning to you. Except, if this robot could travel across universes.. could she as well?

You shake that train of thought. Not what's important at the moment.

"You have no need for dinner." You huff. "You have been invasive first, with little care for my requests." But fine, you don't have the nerve to argue with a stubborn android. You turn away and pick up a bit of metal to tinker with it some more, or so you pretend. It's a piece that.. seems to have little function besides aesthetic. What a radical notion for you.

"What do you do here?" you ask, not looking up from the small figurine.

Arquius Last Friday at 2:42 PM

"I live in a nutritious diet of comedy an irony, bro." You could say those concepts can't be eaten but you beg to differ. "Oh and a glass of water for reasons regarding my construction and build."  Equius did give you salivary glands and my god you are a bastard about it. He made you THIRSTY.

You lean to try and see what he is working on from this angle while staying on the table, eyes zooming into his hands. "My sole function so far has been take care of my not so STRONG friends. That has been my number one command and it has been brought to a sharp halt with my fake death. So to answer your question, I have no idea. For once I have no real direction, everything is possible." You get to do whatever the fuck you want and apparently what you've wanted is stalking people and getting into their houses.

You finally just get off the table and set yourself to just stand behind him and try and look over his shoulder not saying much but smiling because you like what he makes. "What do you do here?"

Darkleer Yesterday at 1:06 PM

"Your strong friends.. Equius, Hal and Dirk?" You think you've heard the last two names around the precinct, but you're not sure if he means those. "Your fake death? Explain."

Ah, he got closer. Hn. You turn around a bit and look at him. "..much like you, I am here to help and protect those weaker than me. Though I am still learning about the dangers of this planet."

Arquius Yesterday at 3:10 PM

"Partially Incorrect." Dirk, Jake, Roxy and Jane. "Geez dad why don't you say please first." Your fake death. You make a disgruntled horse noise.  He turns around and you don't back out. "Its a secret I hope you can keep secrets. I want your secrets too in return I command you to give me your secrets afterwards. But there is something obvious here. The fricking evil in this planet are the bosses of the FElt. The Crew and the Patriarchy." Considering all of these place's problems. "I don't have much experience with the Crew personally but I have a tweened story with the Felt since the moment of my spawning. I got in there trying to protect little D, ended up being reprogrammed, there was a corrupt version of me for a while. I killed him but I-we merged. Which is why I have to STRONGLY apologize for his messages online. You were talking to him." Pause."I like what you are making. You are a machinery expert too huh my little kelpie?"

[codylabs]

Chapter 15: Tale of Two Bots

-date: 13/20/2094-46’\

Hello.

My name is Ɖg@}Nᶌ.

As one of the survivors of the crash of colonial vessel 46.18’\, I am starting this journal to document our experiences on this planet. In the event that we are rescued, or survive long enough to reestablish contact, this log will serve as a record on our experiences. If you recover this and we’re not here to give it to you… Then I guess we’ve failed.

And this is our story.

Well.

As I said, the colonial vessel has crashed. Near as I can tell, we were traveling near-horizontally at an altitude of several kilometers, when some type of interference or malfunction disabled the vehicles artificial-gravity engines. We hit the ground before control could be regained. The impact was directly into solid rock, at a velocity in excess of 400 meters per second. The ship carved a large chunk out of a mountainside, and half-buried itself in its own artificial valley. The impact was sufficient to free the majority of the nuclear fuel from containment, disable the primary propulsion system, and kill the entire pilot and command crew. To the best of my knowledge, I, and 52 other passengers, are the last survivors of the collision.

We have escaped the confines of the ship, and have used salvaged tarps and materials to erect a small camp on the hill above it.

More of us are injured than not. Many terminally so. Since the vessel’s power supply has largely gone into meltdown, all remaining power has been automatically diverted toward containing the damage. Periphery systems, including the auto-medics, have gone offline. I’m no surgeon, but the others are even less so.

They expect me to repair the wounded.

I’ll see what I can do.

-date: 13/21/2094-46’\

My medical tools were designed for my species specifically. They are poorly suited for the others, who are primarily carbon-based. Their bodies are squishy, ever-shifting, mostly liquid. I don’t know how to handle it. Many of the terminally injured have died following my surgery. I was able to fix a few, but… But the others are angry with me. They think I could have done more for the dying. Survivor count now 41. The names of the living are included here for posterity:

Ɖg@}Nᶌ

Klk76y

Zlfo]n

ƉN::ᶌ

&4r(/_^`;~y

iA**5{y

-@N^^>

C0gsJRY

V;M9OZ

4EtR%ibP

WA~/\hi(B

~u81FF:’

S~5VH/’QepKl

3v49EVv

iZxFpLo

wX~~E2VY

IeR&Usp

xE][fo

I6gyvPh

7ncZ9Itx

bC*$l9DSEmm

J86O/\oBZg

v89Z;vHFiv

4g0ORH

Xp;DWstNBYi

0aF2I(zLxyn7k

SGff\mBOfic8

0Xzn

TSpqQfjFn

famESw

W8{A1EdwQ

j0wX

KlcfG;B0lw0

4hArMXj4

qKhcn0U

SXz4;

PxNeLwi

w4A;mVIV5

tVkqZme

oy.}szN;XJCc

og;hgnC5j8Ca…

I don’t really want to talk about it anymore.

-date: 13/22/2094-46’\

Only one other survivor belongs to my same species. We were bound for the same colony, her and I, but now everybody we knew is gone. I’m glad I have somebody to speak to though, especially after the failed surgeries. Her name is ƉN::ᶌ, and she is kind to me. Seeing as how it looks like we’re here for the long haul, I wonder if perhaps we could begin the colony here, with only us two.

No, I can’t think that. It’s indecent.

She’s looking at me.

I am pretending to type something in.

-date: 13/28/2094-46’\

Klk76y has gotten one of the computers online, and has retrieved data from the crash. Apparently, we are on body 3.0 of this system, on one of the northern continents. It’s hellish here. There’s air, it’s hot, the gravity is high, the surface is soaked in unhealthy chemicals like water, and infested by native (and occasionally hostile) carbon-based life. Even its moon, 3.1, would have been better than this. We can survive, but it isn’t well-suited. Natural terraforming processes won’t work.

I just wish we would have crashed on 4.0. It would have been nearly perfect for our needs.

The only metal ƉN::ᶌ and I have to eat is that from the ship’s hull. Livestock and crops could easily survive on this diet, but they would rip the whole craft apart in the process. Since we’d rather leave it salvageable (by the slim hope that we could repair it someday), we’ll keep the farming systems in stasis for now.

I hope our colonial supplies are still intact. They should be tougher than the other cargo, but I don’t know.

Titanium-steel alloy plating is sure getting bland though. Hard to chew. Hard in general.

I want some fruit.

-date: 13/22/2094-46’\

Everything has calmed down now, as much as it can. The fires from the crash have died out. We’ve buried as many of the dead as we can find. The other survivors are settling into the camp, and they’ve gathered some meager supplies, enough to last the winter. ƉN::ᶌ and I can survive directly off the ship’s power, so we should be fine indefinitely. Klk76y has also taken charge as a sort of leader, and everybody seems as content as they can be.

I suppose that now is a good a time as any to give my own personal story.

It all started long ago, and far away.

It was cold and hard and small, one of many solitary, airless moon of a bloated gas giant, bathed in the light of an old, red star. To look at it, you might mistake it for a larger asteroid, or one of the many unnotable, dusty rocks that inhabit the empty voids of space.

But this rock wasn’t any rock. This was a living place, filled with rugged natural beauty. Spreading seas of liquid sand, mountains of the dust of ancient timbers, and the great, towering forests of mighty trees. Fields abounding in fruits and grains, the woods crawling with wild animals, the void alive with the radio singing of the bugs and the birds, the sun shining brightly on the leaves. And a humble people toiling with bliss beneath the stars, picking and eating their food, building their houses and roads, constructing and raising their children. It was a place where families could be happy. A place of peace.

This was my beloved home.

But I never once enjoyed it.

Why didn’t I? It was a paradise. I could have grown old and happy there. I could have been rich and prosperous. I could have had everything that people strive for… Everything but meaning.

Mind you, I wasn’t alone. There were many of my peers who considered it an utterly boring, menial existence, where our young minds had nowhere to explore, where knowledge and learning was scarce, and where our toil and daily labor did not satisfy our hunger for adventure. We were children then, restlessly longing for something more. I wish now I hadn’t been among them… But I was.

Two cycles ago, when I had just finished being a boy, but didn’t yet know what ‘man’ was, another race came to our world. They arrived in an enormous ship from some other dimension, on a mission (so they said) to explore and archive the wonders of the universe, to seek out new and deviant life, to see, hear, touch and explore that which nobody had ever experienced before, and to set up colonies among the far reaches of space. They visited us for this same reason, collecting samples from our planet, examining and studying us. (The reason for their fascination, I found out later, was our metallic bodies and mechanical makeup. Apparently, it’s something of a novelty to these squishy carbon-based people.)

Regardless, I’m sure you can understand my thoughts when they revealed this mission of theirs. How glamorous! How grand! How adventurous! How meaningful! I dreamed to accompany them, to whatever fate lay beyond the horizons of my own mind. Once, I even had the chance to speak directly withCaptain &:V->GN[], commander of the alien vessel.

“I wish I could accompany you!” I had told him. “I wish I could count myself among the colonists on your ship.”

“It’s certainly a hard life.” He had tempted me, with a twinkle in his eye. “Long years aboard a closed metal ship, and at the end of your journey, an unknown fate… It could be dangerous, it could be strange, it could require things from you that you don’t know you had. Even WE don’t know what we’ll find in that great unknown…”

He was telling me precisely the type of tale I wanted to hear, and naturally I fell for it. “I would be willing!” I told him. “And I have friends as well! We would all love to leave our world, and travel with you to the ends of the universe! We would follow you!”

He stroked his chin, and nodded. “We have set down several colonies already…” He said, as if it were my idea the entire time. “Perhaps there would be room among the organic cargo sectors for your… Particular breed of crops and livestock…”

“I hope so!” I said, and I meant it.

The next day, he announced to our people that they would be taking on passengers and cargo, whatever passengers could fit in sector 22, and whatever farming supplies we could fit in stasis in sector 43. They would allow our people to found a colony on a world of our choosing, or even, if we wished, they would allow us to return with them to their home dimension.

It goes without saying that I, along with many of my friends, signed up eagerly.

My father silently watched me as I entered the shuttle, and he had a sorrowful look on his face which I will never remember, because I never once looked back.

And so did I venture forth, to seek my fortune among the stars.

It was a lie.

No sooner had we left the system, but the crew confined us to quarters, and began to treat us harshly. They told us they were cracking down on troublemakers, and that this was just a necessary caution. But among themselves, they were communicating using their suits’ radios. My people could hear such signals plainly, and I learned to understand them.

I learned that our people were not to be set down on a colony of our choosing. Rather, we were all to be brought back to the aliens’ dimension, to be treated as scientific samples, or even used for their own purposes.

They began to experiment on us.

It was a nightmare.

I would hear the communications as they would take our people, one at a time, from the passenger areas. Always young females. Whenever the rest of us moved to intervene, the crew would summon security drones to threaten us, then say it was for our own protection.

One day we heard their purpose… Well, I feel dirty even describing it.

The females of our species naturally have reproductive systems in their abdomen areas. Normally, these organs serve only to manufacture and assemble the bodies of children. The organs are perfectly designed for the task, and they are able to do so reliably and repeatedly. Since the living bodies of children are inherently complex, the organs must be highly versatile.

The aliens saw this.

So the science team, under the direction of Captain &:V->GN[], were downloading foreign code into the women’s organs, to try and make them manufacture artificial systems: Tools. Weapons. Drones. Storage crates. Spare parts. They were trying to turn our people into living factories. This was just a proof of concept, before they returned to their home dimension and refined the idea into an industrial process.

The experiments were invasive and painful, and the women were not willing.

I began to discuss these matters in hushed tones with the other colonists, of both my own species and others. We all agreed that something needed to be done.

So one night, all at once, we staged a mutiny. We sawed through the doors of our rooms, gathered improvised tools and weapons, rendezvoused with the organic passengers, and aimed ourselves for the bridge.

It didn’t work.

They put us under guard from that point on, reinforced the doors, equipped us with stun collars, and pumped all the air out of our rooms to keep us from audio communication with the other passengers. They also encrypted their radio signals, so we could no longer listen in to them.

A cycle passed quietly and despairingly. An older friend of mine likened it to prison.

But then, days ago, it happened.

For reasons none of us know, Colonial Vessel 46.18’\ crashed.

Now here we are. The greatest adventure of my life, more excitement and strange new weirdness than I ever could have hoped or dreamed: aliens, lies, betrayal, mutiny, heroism, bravery, fierce enemies on all sides and a grave mission to follow… This is the adventure of a lifetime.

And I would trade it all away in an instant. What I wouldn’t give to be back home. My quiet, peaceful, meaningless home…

For there is no meaning to be found out here either. We’ve crossed galaxies by now, gone where none have gone, and we are no closer to something higher than when we started out. There is no height to be climbed to reach enlightenment. There is no lesson or sense or justice to bring to our predicament. Life is cruel and short, and our lives are either empty or painful. Some, like mine, are both.

So that is how I, Ɖg@}Nᶌ, got to where I am now.

ƉN::ᶌ says I’m being pessimistic. She says there is a meaning, and that God has a purpose and plan for our lives, even through our pain and misfortune, even though we do not see it.

I hope she’s right.

I prayed for the first time today.

-date: 13/30/2094-46’\

Why are we on this planet at all? Why did the command crew stop here? Did they have to land to make repairs? Did we have to restock supplies? Was there another mutiny we didn’t hear about?

I, for one, suspected the command crew was goaded into it by the science team. They noticed something interesting on the flyby, and convinced the higher-ups of the need to stop and release probes.

It wouldn’t be the first time it’s happened. We’ve had several unscheduled stops over the course of this trip. Always the science team wanting to collect samples or specimens, or examine some readings. Always something new and interesting to look at.

But why here? What makes this valley so special? What drew their curiosity? And what about this valley caused our crash? We may never know; all the sensors are down, many of the computer logs were damaged, and many of the remaining mission files are simply classified to us passengers.

I suppose I’m just complaining. I shouldn’t complain. What’s done is done, and now all we can do is pick up the pieces and make the most of what we have left.

Perhaps it’s just God’s will.

-date: 15/2/2094-46’\

We sent 5 men deeper into the wreck to see what they could salvage. It’s been 6 days now, and they haven’t come back out. I wonder what has happened. The automated security system is coded for all the colonists’ identities, so even if it reactivated somehow, none of them should have anything to fear… I wonder if perhaps some of the more dangerous scientific specimens have been released from containment.

The rest of the survivors are wanting me and ƉN::ᶌ to venture in after them, since our metal bodies make us tougher than the others.

She is afraid, so I will go in alone. I will be their hero. I will be her hero.

-date: 15/3/2094-46’\

I’m back. I found nothing. No signs of a struggle, no weapon damage.

But no bodies either.

Perhaps they got lost down there. I can see why they would; the crash mutilated the vessel into a veritable labyrinth of twisted metal. We can only wait, and hope that that they survive, and hope still that they can find their way back out.

While I was down there, I did stumble across the scientific sample area. It was torn wide open. Everything in the stasis chambers are dead.

But a few of the chambers are open.

And all the chambers that are open are empty.

Specimens must have escaped. Could one have killed and eaten the men we sent inside? I don’t know what manner of subjects they’d stored in the now-empty chambers, but judging by the looks of some of the others… Let’s just say I’m glad most of them are dead. Out of all the nasty things they’ve collected on their journey, I think that living robots are the most harmless of the bunch.

I’m back on the surface now, and gave my report to the other survivors. It frightened them. They don’t want to explore the wreck any deeper than necessary. I understand that.

ƉN::ᶌ is beating herself up for letting me go alone. She swears that whatever happens next, she will be there for me. I’m glad for the promise.

As it stands, Survivor count now 36.

-date: 15/16/2094-46’\

Survivor count now 28.

We don’t know what’s happening. People go missing. Randomly. Unforeseeably. Without trace. As if they decided to just walk away in those moments when nobody’s watching.

After the last incident, Zlfo]n instructed us to watch closely for anyone behaving strangely. He encouraged us to keep up conversation frequently. I don’t know what he suspects, (does he think we’re going mad one by one? Does he know something we don’t?) but I hope he’s on to something.

I modified a few power tools into melee weapons, so that ƉN::ᶌ and I can defend ourselves if the need arises. When I offered her a cutting drill, she said she would prefer to use her teeth, since they’re sharper and easier to carry around anyway.

It’s nice to have somebody to laugh with, even in times like this.

But seriously though, she’s literally going to use her teeth. This girl is crazy!

I kind of… Never mind.

-date: 15/18/2094-46’\

Somebody struck up conversation today with Klk76y. He mumbled his way through a brief exchange, but in the process, he gave something away: he didn’t possess even the most basic knowledge of Klk76y’s life or job. It quickly became apparent that he wasn’t Klk76y at all, but rather something else, looking exactly like him, bluffing his way through a conversation. Zlfo]n, ƉN::ᶌ, and myself attempted to confront him, but he attacked with an incredible physical strength, and escaped into the forest. Zlfo]n suffered several broken bones during the fight, and will not last long. Meanwhile Klk76y, the only leader we had, is gone like the others.

Also, at some point, ƉN::ᶌ managed to clip the enemy with her teeth. This drew green blood, whereas the real Klk76y would have had yellow-white blood.

Something is out there.

Something that’s changing.

It takes us one by one, probably eats us, and impersonates us to learn more before eating again.

Survivor count now 27. Soon to be 26, as there’s not much I can do for Zlfo]n.

-date: 15/19/2094-46’\

Zlfo]n pulled me close today, and told me about the shapeshifter. He described everything he knew of its abilities, its methods, its mannerisms, and its intelligence. He told me where the science team found it, what it eats, where it lives, what it wants.

(Future reader, I have transcribed his analysis, and saved it as a separate file. This is my journal, after all, and not a tactics guide. Suffice to say that this shifter is quite a character herself, and I don’t like it one bit being on the receiving end of her cunning.)

I asked Zlfo]n how he knew so much about the creature. He sighed and he told me:

Zlfo]n was on the science team.

So I took him outside the camp, and I left him to die. By now he will have perished from his injuries in the silent forest, without burial, without dignity, alone except for the memories of the women he violated. Alone, save for his conscience. I hope he has one, so that he suffered. And I hope the shifter finds him, and that she realizes we are not her enemies.

…Did I do wrong, to let Zlfo]n die like that?

I don’t think I did.

Did he deserve better?

I don’t think he did.

Did ƉN::ᶌ approve?

I think she did.

I never asked her if she’d been a part of the onboard experiments. I pray she didn’t have to suffer it, because I don’t know what I could do for her damage. I’m not that type of doctor. Heck, I’m not any type of doctor! What am I supposed to do for a damaged factory, huh? Look at it? I’m a male. Even that’s not proper.

All I can do for her is to be her friend, and love and respect and care for her regardless of anything else. And I really do love her… I’ve been realizing that more and more.

-date: 15/27/2094-46’\

Survivor count now 23.

The other survivors can’t stand it anymore. They need to get away from the wreck. Whatever the shifter wants, it is hostile. And it is near. And since we haven’t the vaguest inkling of how to face it, we need to flee.

They others all agreed to pick up and head North, as far from the crash site as possible. They are carbon-based, and can therefore subsist on native food. They collected all the weapons and tools they could find, and started off. They should be safe from the enemy… Or at least see it coming… I think they’ll be alright. I hope they’ll be alright.

Either way, ƉN::ᶌ and I need to make other plans. We are not carbon based, and therefore need to grow our own crops if we are to survive. We’ll need a farm. We picked out a pretty good spot for it to the South-East, but this planet doesn’t have a lot of dense deposits near the surface, so our crops won’t grow.

We’ll need to improvise some type of soil.

The hull of the spacecraft, combined with the minerals in the native rock, should supply our farm with all the biological sustenance it needs. It would make excellent soil. But we don’t want to stay in the craft’s immediate vicinity, so we need to somehow cut loose a massive section of the hull and bring it all of 20 kilometers to the farm.

How do we do that?

It was her idea to jury-rig the ship’s last remaining artificial-gravity nacelle. Normally, these nacelles create a gravitational dipole large enough to put the entire ship into free-fall in any direction. One nacelle may not be able to do something so grand on its own, but it still possesses a large amount of power. ƉN::ᶌ thinks it should be a simple matter to shrink this dipole and concentrate it, if only we could get to the engine room. This would allow us to ‘jackhammer’ a section of the hull loose. A slightly larger dipole will then be able to carry the disconnected section 20 kilometers through the air, and set it down at the farm. I just hope the craft has enough power left to run this stunt.

To operate the nacelle, we need to get down to the engine room and do it manually. This means risking whatever tricks and tactics the mimic has in store, but we would prefer to risk it immediately, rather than stay above ground and wait for her… Rather take her on our terms: immediately and directly.

We’re going inside tomorrow.

If we never come back out… Let it be known that ƉN::ᶌ and Ɖg@}Nᶌ were here.

-date: 15/30/2094-46’\

It has been 3 days since my last entry, but we are now back. We successfully completed the mission.

But first, a word on what we found down there.

Let’s just say that at this point, the ship would need half again its weight in glue. Its main propulsion system, (everything except the one intact nacelle), is completely offline. 7 of the 8 main reactors have also gone into meltdown, and the computer automatically locked down the last one for safety. The vessel’s long-range communication systems and tracking beacon were in its lower areas, and were therefore destroyed when it contacted the ground. There is no chance of signaling home, or anywhere.

However, there were a few intact things. The perpetual-motive emergency power generators were left online somehow, and should stay remain so indefinitely, barring mechanical breakdown. These were the only thing running the ship until we got down there.

Also, we found we weren’t the only survivors. There were more, some even among the command crew, who had survived the crash but stayed underground. They were barricaded in the ship’s mid levels, and just stayed down there.

But they aren’t alive anymore.

Apparently, the mimic got to them too. Some of their survivors had taken to drawing graffiti on the walls since the computers were down. Most of it was just innocent nonsense, but then there was some stuff like “GweeV7w isn’t what he seems!” and “That’s not the real u*/~h!” and “Specimen has escaped is changing forms.”

And everybody was dead.

Eaten.

The mimic is smart. Smart enough to kill them all without putting itself in danger. Smart enough to use fear like a weapon, and fill her enemies with it. Smart enough to stay in shadows.

Smart enough to learn to hack computers.

The mimic has reactivated the security system, and made several changes to their programming. Firstly, she wiped the drones’ entries for recognized individuals, so that they now recognize everyone, every last man, woman, child and animal, as unidentified intruders. Secondly, she reprogrammed their tactical assessment system, so that they now evaluate threats based on chemical signs of aggression and fear. If any carbon-based lifeform shows fear in a drone’s vicinity, it is programmed to contain or destroy them.

Since the shifter was terrorizing everyone else while remaining calm herself, it worked perfectly: the drones would leave her alone and go straight for any of the other cowering survivors.

As for us metallic life forms, well… The mimic is smart, as I said. She knew we didn’t have a sense of smell, so she rigged a booby trap that sprayed us with hormones. We didn’t even notice, until every drone in the ship started to attack.

That was a dicey couple hours. Those drones are learning and self-adapting, and can sprout pretty much any weapon in the database. We managed to beat them, barely, by modifying one of the perpetual-motive generators into an electromagnetic pulse emitter. We almost killed ourselves with it too, but it took out most of the drones. Enough so we could slip away.

I don’t know that I’ve ever been more scared in my life than when I was down there… But… I think I might have been having fun too. Crazy how that works. It probably just depends who you have by your side in the thick of things, doesn’t it? And while we were fighting down in those dark depths, I had ƉN::ᶌ. And that made it all right.

Anyway, we made it to the engine room, and ƉN::ᶌ managed to bypass a security lock and reactivate reactor 5. From there, she was able to reprogram the art-grav nacelle, and use the immense gravity field to rip apart the hull.

We tore off half of the ship’s upper hull, along with the entirety of sector 43 (sector 43 being the cargo area where all the samples, livestock and crops from our planet were stored.) The gravity field gathered all this wreckage together, forming an enormous ‘fistfull’ of twisted metal and cargo. ƉN::ᶌ then used the gravity beam to guide this mass through the air to the farmland we designated, and spread it out there. The entire process must have been rather eerie to watch, I imagine.

There was only one problem now: if we could make use of those gravity fields, chances are the mimic could too. If she set the field to a high strength and low size, she could use it to physically crush our entire farm, with us inside.

With that kind of power, the mimic could kill anybody she wanted. And anywhere.

So, we removed the power control coupling from the last reactor, and destroyed all the spares. The coupling is small. Small enough to take with us, and keep hidden forever. So that’s what we’ll do.

We made back above ground without much trouble.

Now, everything seems in order. The livestock and seeds will be waiting for us in sector 43’s wreckage, ready to be unpacked, unfrozen, and organized into a farm. A colony. First thing tomorrow morning, we’re off to begin our new life.

-date: 3/14/2096-46’\

Two local years since my last entry.

Farm is going great. Got some trees planted, and some crops. The ecosystem is starting up, and the drilling worms have started breaking down the spacecraft hull. The cats are working as guards, which should be enough to scare away the mimic if she finds us here. I tampered with the cats’ genetics as well, to make them instinctively react defensively toward any unrecognized large organic. Meaning whatever form the mimic takes, the cats will turn on it. I’m just glad this planet doesn’t have intelligent inhabitants; that could make for a rather messy misunderstanding.

I also found an old runabout shuttle stashed in the wreckage. We turned it right-side-up, half-buried it in the ground, and are now using it as a house. Its glass hull should keep it from decay, and its engines still have enough power to run heat, lighting, and farm equipment.

The place is finally starting to feel like home. The trees are supplying power now, so we don’t have to ration anymore. And they’re beginning to bear the first fruit. We haven’t had actual food in so long, and it’s delicious.

And… Well, there’s one other thing. I don’t really know who else to tell, so I guess I’ll tell this journal.

Anyway…

I finally asked ƉN::ᶌ if she would be my wife. And she said yes. I’m not really sure what I expected her to say, since we’re the only two here… But it was the WAY she said it; it made me believe that she would have chosen me out of a crowd. Like I would have been her first choice out of all the men on all the worlds. She said yes… And I’m a married man now! I’m really happy. I really love her. I’m really glad to be alive.

That probably sounded super corny, huh?

-date: 8/9/2098-46’\

Three local years since my last entry.

We lost contact with the other survivors. I don’t know what happened to them. Maybe it was local wildlife or sickness, maybe it was the mimic again, maybe something else. Anyway, let it be known that this farm contains, to my knowledge, the last 3 survivors of the crash.

3 survivors?

That’s what I said.

Because ƉN::ᶌ is pregnant.

I’m gonna be a dad.

Speaking of dad…

If this recording somehow gets to you, mom and dad… If the fabeled Time Giants ever find this log in the far future, and decide to do a favor for my present, and bring it back to you… If you’re reading this now in the comfort of your own home after I’ve left…

I want you to know that I’ve finally found that life I always dreamed of. There’s a little bit of adventure here and there, sure. (This planet seems to harbor some very improbable life. We’re always finding ourselves in some weird situation or another.) But most of all, I’ve found home. I’ve found love. I’ve found peace. And I think… With the help of God, I’ve found a bit of meaning. Here, in a filthy, watery world at the end of the universe. Here, in the valley carved by the crash of colonial vessel 46.18’/. Here, where nobody else has ever been, is where I’ve decided to stay. And here, I am happy. I wouldn’t trade it for the world.

-date: 16/13/2098-46’\

There was a fault in ƉN::ᶌ’s manufacturing system. The child was damaged during final assembly, and… I’m not sure what happened. There was a problem with the release, and something snapped. There were sparks, and leaking oil.

And she died.

Her and the baby.

I made glass coffins so they wouldn’t decay. And I buried them behind the house.

I guess that’s it then, huh?

So much for our life. So much for our colony, and our future, and our children, and our love… So much for all that. Whoever’s reading this, I’d dreamed that one day we would have healthy, happy descendants who’d be able to hand this to you. And they’d say ‘Take this. This is their legacy…’

But what good are dreams?

Dreams are for young men… And today I feel old.

Anyway… If you’re reading this journal, then… Then I guess I’m long dead. The barn and the tractor and the windmill will have been eaten all away by now… Only the glass shuttle-house thing will remain; that and the coffins… Give it long enough, and the farm will probably grow all over the place… The drilling worms and trees will have digested the last of the hull wreckage we drug out here… That will make for the only soil on all of 3.0 that can support metal life, so the little forest will have reached a maximum size and stopped growing. Due to the atmosphere, the crops can’t spread seeds far enough to fertilize on the main wreck, and even the cats don’t explore very far. So. By now all the livestock will be all feral, all the trees will be huge… It will all be totally natural. Just like God intended.

It’ll be a little tiny drop of home, right in the middle of all this carbon slime. A tiny drop of home…

And that’ll be our legacy.

I’m locking the house up now, and I’m leaving.

I’m going back to the crash site. I go to find our last and greatest enemy, the mimic, and kill her. I go to ensure the safety of anybody who may come to this planet after us. I go in the name of peace. One final battle. One final adventure.

This is Ɖg@}Nᶌ, last survivor of the crash of Colonial Vessel 46.18’\, furthest explorer of a gentle people, last civilized lifeform on this planet, farmer and doctor and husband and father, signing out for the final time. Whoever finds this… I hope God’s plan for you is gentle. Gentler than it was for me.

May the Lord bless you and keep you.

Have a nice life.

[old-livin-la-vida-langst]

Stars in Your Eyes, Death at Your Throat [part 2]

[Read on ao3]

NOTE: I’ve moved to @livin-la-vida-langst , make sure you follow that blog and not this old one! :)

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Two phoebs into their late night calls, Lance feels better than he has in a long time. True to his word, he has spent a considerable amount of time training and the team’s noticed. As a result, their trainings are a lot smoother. Sparring against Hunk, while once made both Hunk and Lance dread the outcome from it's one-sided stats, was now much more balanced. Sure, he could never be as big as Hunk; but now, Hunk could never be as fast as Lance, and it was pretty exciting to float like a butterfly and sting like a bee. When Allura even mentions how impressed she was with his changed behavior in one of their trainings, he rolls it off with an overly confident comment, but the grin he wears lasts the entire session.

They’re not the only ones - Keith comments one call about how ‘defined’ Lance’s arms looked.

“O-oh!” Lance scratches his cheek and wonders if the lighting is dark enough to hide his burning cheeks. “Yeah, you like that?” Lance positions the tablet to stand on his side table and starts flexing in a very showy manner. “Can’t have you coming back to us more jacked than me!”

Keith scoffs, he crosses his arms, visibly embarrassed. “I was just trying to be nice, you dingus!” His cheeks are flushed and it drives Lance up the wall. He laughs and concedes, the image of Keith looking so cautiously open to his words fills his heart with determination and just a pinch of hope.

That movement, Lance clears the next level of training in record time to set his personal best.

One quintant, long after the rest of the team has gone to bed, Lance rings Keith’s device.

“It's so weird, lately it’s like Lotor is always one step ahead of us. We've been getting a lot more stalemates than victories, and the team's really starting to feel it.” Lance is laying on the floor of his room as he eventually always does in his chats with Keith.

“Hmm, has Shiro checked the projection patterns of the time differentials from the Castle’s arrival and Lotor showing up?”

The video feed shakes as Lance clamors up to his bed and flicks a hand toward Keith to emphasize his point, “That's exactly what I've been saying!” He screeches. “I told the gang that we should scramble our coordinates and projected path to see if Lotor would be on top of that!”

Keith pulls his lips to the side, like he tasted space goo for the first time, and presses, “And? What did the team say?”

Lance grimaced and withdrew into his body a bit. “They freaked out! Pidge got super defensive at my suggesting that our network wasn't encrypted enough, and Shiro? Ugh, it was the worst!”

Keith tucks his chin, trying not to show the bristle of defensiveness he feels about Shiro.

A few moments pass before he asks, carefully, “What are you talking about?”

“Sometimes, I feel like he doesn't respect my input.” Lance clarifies, “I mean, I think it’s gotten better since I’ve upped my training, but it’s like he barely tolerates me. When I try to offer my thoughts or ideas, he just shuts them down! Sometimes he's nice about it, other times he's so brutal, but they always get shut down.”

Keith's face scrunches up. He's never known Shiro to act like that before. Not while the Black Paladin, and definitely not before the Kerberos mission. Shiro's always been so kind and nurturing. He thinks of how Shiro has helped ground Pidge, and guarded her against her own self-destructive habits when searching for her family. How Shiro has become Allura’s confidant, has helped Hunk become more confident in the field. It worries him a bit that the only thing he can remember about Shiro and Lance interacting was when Pidge mentioned that Shiro had praised Lance in his sharpshooting during the Slav mission; outside of that, he can only really recall Shiro reprimanding Lance.

But Shiro is Shiro, everything he’s done has always been for a good reason.

“He did go missing for a while, Lance.” Keith begins, “He's been through a lot, and he's under a lot of stress, but he's your leader; I'm sure he thinks about what you say seriously before telling you it's not the best option.” Keith explains as cautiously and as thoroughly as he can. He's never been the greatest at people or comfort, but Lance makes him want to try. He'll try if it means Lance is able to feel better.

Lance stares at him with wide eyes.

Nervousness is creeping into his veins. The moment feels stretched out for far too long.

Then he breaks out into laughter, and it should make Keith relieved, but it doesn't. The chirps of laughter aren't light and airy; their harsh and bitter, and makes him feel like he did something wrong.

“You're probably right, Samurai!” He says with a little too much pep. Lance waves one of his hands, trying to get rid of his previous words. “I forget sometimes not to get ahead of myself. I'm sure Shiro knows what he's doing, he doesn't need some stupid kid from Cuba’s opinion.”

Keith gut twists in a slow, nasty way. “What?” He asks. Did Lance not get what he was trying to say? Did he say it wrong? “No, Lance, I didn-”

Lance shoot off a finger gun and winks at Keith, “Gotta go catch up on my beauty sleep, Mullet, talk to you later!” Usually, a goofy action like that makes Keith roll his eyes and shake his head, but all he can feel is a heaviness setting itself in his stomach. Lance quickly cuts off the communication line, leaving Keith feeling like something happened, something big. He placed his device at the foot of his bed and lies down. For the first time since they started all of this, his call with Lance has ended terribly and as much as he wants to call him back immediately, Keith knows that Lance would reject the call immediately.

He goes to bed, hesitant and confused, but hopes that they can talk it out later.

Turns out it's hard to ‘talk something out’ when the other person wants nothing to do with you. Keith waits for a few (miserable) quintants for Lance to reach out, before realizing that he wasn't going to call. In between missions and training, Keith desperately tries to reach out to Lance, but is met with no response.

They don’t talk for at least half a pheob, and while he was aware of how much he enjoyed the calls, Keith doesn’t realize how much he needed them. Kolivan snaps at him one day after he almost loses the data they were sent to retrieve from an undercover Blade spy.

“Head back to your quarters.” He curtly orders Keith after a mission. “I would suggest you make peace with your partner before your actions cost your life.”

“Whu, what?” Keith squwaks, “Lance is not my 'partner'!”

Unimpressed, Kolivan reaches for a pamphlet on his desk and begins to read it. “I am running a resistance organization, Blade.” He says as if explaining it to a new recruit. “I do not have the time to play therapist; Sort out your grievances and come back when you’re ready.” He waves Keith away, which was as much as a dismissal as Keith would receive today.

When he reaches his quarters, he threw himself on the bed. Keith grabbed his pillow and clings to it. Lance was so frustrating! He was trying to make him feel better. Keith knows he’s never been good with people, he knows everyone else knows, but he was trying damn it! Even after he realized that what he said was stupid, Lance isn’t even giving him to chance to say sorry!

The sound of ringing flutters through the room and he pauses his train of thought.

The tablet.

He’s receiving a video transmission request.

Keith knows who it is, but cautiously checks anyway. It’s a video transmission request from Lance's device and he leaps to it. Leaps to his chance to apologize, to explain that his being defensive towards Shiro was wrong, and Shiro was wrong, and he should have never made Lance feel anything less than what he is; which is awesome, clever, funny, swee-

His breath hitches in his throat.

It's not Lance.

It's Pidge. She stares at him, almost like she wasn’t really expecting him to pick up.

She opens her mouth to speak, but her lip trembles and all that escapes is a pitiful whimper. Heavy dread beings to close his throat and before he can ask anything, she's crying. Pidge is crying. Keith can't breathe. Why is Pidge calling from Lance's device? Why is she crying? “Where's Lance?” He feels himself whisper. “Pidge” He says louder, which makes her still and look up into his eyes. She calms herself down enough to explain.

They had their scheduled meeting to discuss the talking points for the next cycle of planets but Lance hadn't shown up. Allura was annoyed at him sleeping in again, or spending more than a few minutes on his morning skincare routine. Hunk had offered to wake his friend up and just a few moments later, they heard his scream echo throughout the corridor.

They all ran to Lance's room and saw the blood. So much blood. His room was torn apart and blood was on the floor, the wall, the dresser. The smell of copper was thick in the air, and an underlying question of how could this all happen without them hearing a thing lingered.

Hunk hiccuped, slapping his hand to his mouth and ran to Lance’s bathroom to throw up.

Coran held Allura as she covered her mouth in horror. “I, I don’t understand…” She uttered, tears quickly pricking her eyes, threatening to fall.

Pidge stood, pale and unmoving. Her stomach was caving in on itself, and her mind was reeling. Losing Matt and her Dad hurt so much, but in the end, she was a kid with no control over the mission. She had put her everything into finding out what happened afterward and joining the Garrison to help the only way she knew how. She’s a Paladin of Voltron now, but it meant nothing because, in the end, she’s lost another person in her life, another brother, right from under her nose. She begins to scanning the entire room, as unbiased as her thrumming heart would let her, because she can't comprehend what just happened, how it happened, when did it happen, why is it only in the room and not in the halls, how they’re just finding this out, wher-

Shiro hit the wall with his metal hand, snapping everyone's attention to him. He looked angry, he looked frustrated. He rolled his shoulders back and started barking orders to gather information, “We don't have time to spare. Lance doesn't have time to spare, we need to see how long ago this happened, how far he is and get. him. back.”

Everyone jumped into action - performing perimeter searches in nearby quadrants, checking security logs, viewing security camera, and scanning the hull for any breaches; But there was no information to go off of. Security logs were clean. Video footage was quiet all night. Hull integrity was at 100%

They were stumped and each quintant, each varga that passed was more time against them.

Over the course of a three quintants, Pidge took a closer look at the data they collected. It turns out that the Security logs were wiped, video footage was looped, and the hull- well that part was true.

So, either the castle was infiltrated by an extremely skilled agent, or… no. No, the castle had to have been infiltrated.

Pidge was combing through transmissions in and out for the last few phoebs and saw Keith and Lance's call logs. She thought more than him maybe getting the Blade to help, that he deserved to know.

“We’re gonna find him, Keith. I’m gonna find him, and Matt,” She chokes up a bit, “and my dad. I’m gonna find them all.”

He nods softly, “I know, Pidge.” Any other time it would sound condescending, he thinks, but Pidge gets it. She thins her lips and nods back before ending the call.

Keith doesn't realize until the screen goes black, and he sees his darkened reflection, how wet his cheeks were. Rubbing the tears from his face, he sniffs, clutches his communication device to his chest, and wonders why the universe would do this to Lance?

That’s a lie. He knows why.

It's because Lance got too close. Everyone that gets close, gets hurt. His parents, his foster parents, Shiro, and now Lance. He tried to push Lance away by joining the Blade of Marmora, but got too greedy, too selfish. He couldn't stay away from Lance, he became addicted to their late night calls and cherished moments of laughter and vulnerability.

Now Lance is paying for it.

He leaves for the castle that night with nothing more than a sloppy handwritten note for Kolivan on his bed.

[cophinaphile]

RESIDENTIAL GARAGE DOORS - Personal Injury Claims

In the course of recent years, I have been engaged with more than 100 private garage entryway injury cases and I'm by and large held as the entryway master similarly by offended party and safeguard. I give a fair impartial appraisal of each guarantee.

The accompanying article is gotten from different normal conditions that have prompted a case. Looking into the absolute latest settled cases has incited me to compose this article trying to give some considerable data to others examining suit. It is remarkably difficult to incorporate each variety, subtlety, or blend of occasions relating to garage entryway wounds in this short article. The cases examined in this article depend on numerous past claims that are comparable in nature. I'm over and again reached by lawyers depicting similar sort of wounds including garage doors. It isn't surprising for my office to have different dynamic cases with very much like conditions. In case you are a lawyer considering taking a potential garage entryway injury case, it is plausible that I have past experience with a comparable or indistinguishable circumstance to your expected case.

Garage Entryway wounds relating to investment properties:

Removals of toes and fingers are likely the most well-known injury credited to private garage doors. It has been my experience as the held entryway master that most of cases that include these sorts of entryway related removals happen in investment properties.

Who is mindful? For what reason are such countless cases from investment properties?

The landowner has neglected to investigate the general state of the investment property before or during occupancy.

The property manager doesn't have the foggiest idea, or care about the state of the garage entryway. Since the property was bought to be destroyed for future turn of events, current conditions have made improvement delays so the property was leased to a transient inhabitant.

The property was acquired from older family members that some time ago lived there. The new proprietors are not proficient landowners, and never believed that any imperfections of the property existed or were significant.

The entryway administrator required supplanting, yet the property manager would not like to burn through the cash or energy as the inhabitant was not utilizing the garage to leave vehicles, just store family products.

The entryway doesn't have current consistent wellbeing gadgets introduced or fitting equipment, for example, an outside entryway handle to move the entryway up or down. Click here : Woodinville garage doors

Inappropriately kept up with or conceded upkeep due to cost.

Segment 8 or low lease occupancy.

Occupants have improperly utilized the garage entryway or made harm to the entryway and opener.

Parental management of inhabitant kids is deficient.

Occupant didn't take care of the electric bill and the programmed entryway opener can't work.

The proprietor has recruited an administration organization that is answerable for oversight and upkeep, and doesn't have any desire to give the proper support because of cost.

An administration organization gives unseemly fixes by untalented and undeveloped laborers.

Each garage entryway should be appropriately adjusted to work securely

Numerous removals of fingers and toes have happened because of an inappropriately adjusted garage entryway. These cases are regularly the consequence of restricted collaboration with an only occasionally utilized sectional or single board entryway. I have been held on many situations where an occupant just utilized the entryway multiple times before supporting a physical issue, however had been living in the property for a couple of years.

In different cases, inhabitants endeavoring to leave the entryway as a person on foot have had the entryway viciously pummel down on top of their head and neck or it arrived on their feet, breaking bones or catching two or three toes, crushing them to the point of being indistinguishable. Fingers have been squashed or cut off, and hands have likewise become squashed between the gathering areas of a sectional garage entryway as the entryway quickly dives in light of inappropriately tensioned, broken or separated springs.

Inhabitants, endeavoring to fix a garage entryway all alone have additionally experienced serious wounds to all pieces of the body. One inhabitant really became entrapped in the streetcar discharge rope, and tumbled off of the stepping stool she was utilizing, balancing herself all the while. Occupants frequently fault the property manager for their physical issue on the grounds that the proprietor neglected to make opportune fixes. Now and again, that fault is real, as various solicitations to have something fixed have gone unanswered. Different occasions, the occupant was acting without permitting the landowner a sensible measure of time to have the entryway fixed. In any case, most entryway fixes ought to be made by qualified faculty or prepared proficient garage entryway specialist co-ops.

In numerous removal guarantees, detached or failing programmed garage entryway openers have implied that clients have needed to physically open or close the doors. Large numbers of individuals that have become harmed were ignorant that the entryway was inappropriately adjusted before their episode since they for the most part depended upon the programmed regulator to open and close the entryway for them. Sometimes, no idea about the outside of the entryway was introduced. At the point when the entryway was physically pushed or pulled, the occupant couldn't handle the development of the entryway, and coincidentally came to between squeeze focuses (mating areas of individual sectional boards) of the moving entryway.

In pretty much every injury case, the landowner has been remembered for the fault for the episode. In a portion of those cases not really set in stone that the inhabitants had mishandled and abused the hardware making their own risky condition. A portion of the wounds were straightforwardly ascribed to conceded perceptions and no expert support with respect to the proprietorship, while others were because of ill-advised establishment issues and awful specialist co-ops. In the majority of these cases, the hazardous state of the garage entryway is because of conceded upkeep, missing equipment, ill-advised spring changes, bombed springs or links, or imperfect programmed entryway administrators.

Essential parts of a garage entryway framework:

There are various kinds of garage doors found in private properties. In classical homes, pivoted carriage doors are regularly found. Sliding outbuilding type doors were once normal. As equipment was created, turn pivots and stretch springs permitted single board doors to be utilized. Single board overhead doors, when based nearby, have everything except been supplanted by plant provided sectional doors. Sectional doors are likely the most widely recognized sort at present introduced in the US. Sectional doors have an assortment of advantages that solitary board overhead doors need. Sectional doors offer an assortment of alternatives in plan, adaptability of establishment, protection, selection of materials, and style that were not normal before.

Sectional doors for the most part utilize one of two kinds of offset frameworks to persuade them. In certain geographic regions where cold temperatures are normal, tensioned stretch springs are much of the time introduced. They help the administrator (physically or precisely) to permit the sectional way to open and close with no pressure to the framework. A more current and powerful normal framework incorporates twist springs connected to a pivoting bar with wire links and pulleys.

In most garage doors spring strain is answerable for smooth activity of the entryway. The springs extend and withdraw or curl and uncoil as various places of the entryway are reached. As a general rule, doors have the most pressure on the springs when the entryway is completely shut. A completely opened entryway has practically no strain on the force help springs. An appropriately tensioned and adjusted sectional private garage entryway ought to stay fixed around mid-point in its way of movement. It might float somewhat up or down, however it ought to remain generally impartially light.

All together for a manual garage entryway to turn into a programmed entryway a large number of similar essential spring parts should be appropriately introduced and working. This writer has different articles of how sectional doors work, overhead entryway and other entryway related wounds.

In the event that a private garage entryway is appropriately adjusted, it is not difficult to join a programmed entryway administrator to expect the undertaking of opening and shutting the entryway. No appropriately changed and working programmed garage entryway regulator ought to have the option to defeat the powers of an inadequately working uneven entryway.

Essential security gadgets accessible for private garage doors:

Most new garage entryway administrators incorporate a few wellbeing gadgets to ensure all clients. In most essential frameworks at present sold there are somewhere around two programmed wellbeing frameworks to shield the general population from being squashed by the end entryway.

One essential capacity incorporates a programmed opposite of the entryway when in the opening or shutting cycle. In the event that the entryway experiences obstructive powers, it by and large will pause and move the other way of movement. In the end mode, the descending power is frequently checked by putting a little toy on the edge floor of the garage. The engine regulator has a field flexible power control that is set to respond when a delicate hindrance, for example, a teddy bear is marginally packed. This reenacts the potential block that might be brought about by a little youngster in the way of the descending entryway travel.