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nazyalenskyism · 4 years ago

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Take My Hand, Wreck My Plans

Summary: A Zoyalai fic based on the prompt: “Some angst and comfort. Some reunion after a very, very long time.” send me a promt and i’ll write you a blurb

“Do you see her?” Genya called out, scanning the waves of people disembarking the ships on her tiptoes. It had been months since Zoya had been stationed in the Wandering Isle, a position she had specifically asked him for before the war had ended as they walked through the streets of Ketterdam. Despite Genya’s insistence that Zoya not leave, the two of them had known that it was a necessity. They were too close to crossing a line that they couldn’t afford to, and they had silently agreed that distance was the only way to remedy the problem. Nikolai had known that leading the country into a peaceful era was going to be taxing, but he hadn’t imagined how difficult it was going to be without Zoya at his side. He had come to rely on her, not only for matters of the state, but for matters of the mind too, and ever since she’d left all those months ago, he’d only felt the discontent in his heart grow. He thought he could temper his want for Zoya if she wasn’t constantly at his side, but he’d come to learn that there was a reason for the famous saying, ‘absence makes the heart grow fonder’, being so popular. Nikolai could hear his general’s voice in his ear, could picture the roll of her eyes at the confession, how she would threaten to call Tolya into the room so that the two could lament over forlorn poetry while she got drunk with Tamar, Genya and Nadia. Saints, he missed her.

“It’s dropped anchor late,” Nikolai called back, slipping his timepiece back into his pocket, brushing his fingers against the cool velvet ribbon before turning to Genya. “And besides, it’ll take them a bit to disembark and--”

“Nikolai,” Genya gasped in response to a sudden commotion at the gangplank. Nikolai’s head snapped up spotting the daub of blue silk descending down the plank, supported on either side by First Army soldiers. Zoya. “Move,” Genya yelled, elbowing her way through the crowd, Nikolai hot on her heels. If the sickly pallor of her face and droopy lids of her eyes weren’t alarming enough, the way that she crumpled into his arms was and matted blood in her hair were.

“Commander Nazyalensky? Zoya?” A low, unintelligible groan sounded from her lips and Nikolai’s heart dropped. What had happened to her? At Genya’s command, he laid Zoya out on the ground, letting Tamar assess her condition. Tamar’s hands hovered over Zoya’s form, and after a long moment, the Heartrender spoke. “She should be fine, but we need to get her back to the Dacha, we need more healers.”

Genya grasped at Tamar as Nikolai carefully lifted his general into his arms, “is it that bad?” “She’s lost a lot of blood, it’s a messy and difficult process that I don’t want to try in the back of the carriage. She should be okay.”

“She has to be fine. I can’t lose her too.” Tamar squeezed the other girl’s shoulder at the words before hopping into the driver’s seat with Tolya, briefing him on the situation while the others settled into the coach. “Come on, Nazyalensky. Hold on a little while longer,” Nikolai whispered as they tore down the road, Zoya’s unconscious form limp in his arms, Genya’s shaking fingers curled into the blue silk of her kefta, as if she could force Zoya to stay with them.

The next few hours were a blur in his mind. As soon as the carriage stopped, the Tolya offered to take Zoya in his arms but Nikolai refused to leave, carrying her to his chambers. For once his head was clear of anything but the situation at hand. They’d lost so much, they couldn’t afford to lose Zoya. He couldn’t bear to lose Zoya. He stood by the window as the healers got to work on his general, applying their training in the small science to replenish her blood and heal her wounds. Nikolai knew that the Corporalki were more than capable, but he knew as well as anyone the potential for things to go wrong, no matter how good the odds were.

Nikolai was brought a basin of water to wash off with, a stack of urgent letters, and the reports from the crew of the ship and their account of the events that had left Zoya in this state. Once he’d read the reports, he sent the letters away, nothing was more urgent than this. After what seemed like an eternity, Tolya sent the healers away, stating that he and Tamar could finish the job themselves, but he knew the reason they did this. It was because Zoya would’ve hated to appear vulnerable before this many people, she would probably admonish them all after she woke up for having the audacity to view her in her injured state, despite being her closest friends. It was when they were alone, Genya in one corner of the room, Nikolai in the other, with the twins standing over Zoya when the silence was broken once more. “You’re not allowed to let her leave again.” He scrubbed a hand over his face before turning to Genya, “even if I tried, do you think she would listen? Zoya Nazyalensky takes orders from no one, we all know that.” “Don’t let her look for reasons to leave. Give her a reason to stay. ” Before Nikolai could fully process the meaning behind her words, a low groan caught their attention. “Nikolai?” I’m here, he wanted to say, but for the first time in his life, apprehension held him back. “Where’s Nikolai,” she mumbled again, writhing enough to disrupt the twins’ work. He was at her side in an instant, sinking onto the mattress and taking her reaching hand in his. “I’m here,” he whispered, brushing her hair back from face, watching the crease in her brow ease as she unconsciously leaned into his touch. Her movements stopped, her body relaxing back into sleep, and Nikolai felt his heart tighten at the way she curled into him. He felt stares from their friends, but no one said anything aside from Zoya’s occasional calls from him whenever he stepped back to let the twins continue their work. Every time she called, he was there, brushing back her hair, holding her hand between his, murmuring words of encouragement he knew she wouldn’t hear or remember. Around twilight, Nikolai realized that his friends had left them, the quiet of the room felt suffocating now that they were alone. It felt wrong that she was the one injured and asleep while he watched over her, for months their positions had been reversed, and while he hadn’t missed being chained to his bed every night he had missed the time it had given him with her. She had been the first thing he saw in the morning, the last thing he saw at night for months, and he hadn’t realized just how much he missed what that particular practice of theirs had given him. He slowly pulled his hand from hers, easing into a chair at her bedside. “I’m sorry I let you go,” he whispered, closing his eyes for a moment before he heard her voice.

“Nikolai?” “I’m here,” he replied, helping her into a sitting position, and filling up a glass of water for her before settling down himself. “You’re really here?” “I know it’s hard to believe, as handsome as I am, I’m not a dream.” He smiled at her irritated exhale, “long time no see, Nazyalensky. You’re looking as darling as ever.”

“You look worse. Much worse than I remember.”

“I know I must be devilishly handsome in your fantasies, but a day spent tirelessly at your bedside may have me looking a little worse for wear, I’ll admit.” “Where are we?” Her dark lashes fluttered against her golden cheeks, voice hoarse but the colour seemed to have returned to her face.

“Udova. The twins said that you needed more Corporalki to help stabilize you. You lost a lot of blood.”

“This is your ancestral estate?”

“Given how my father is Fjerdan, I don’t think it’s technically mine.”

“You used to come here as a child?” faint amusement lit her eyes, “baby Nikolai reigning terror on everyone, or holed away in the library, reading books until you couldn’t see straight?” “Both.”

“Of course, I would expect nothing less.” A lingering silence followed her words, neither sure of exactly how to proceed. “How are you feel--”

“You look tired,” her hand reached out, and before he could react, she was cupping his face softly, thumb gently stroking along his cheek. “Have you been sleeping?” “Yes.”

Her stern gaze met his eyes, “your lies don’t work on me.”

“First you’re immune to my charm, and now my lies. Keep this up and you’ll put me out of business, Nazyalensky.”

Zoya’s hand dropped suddenly, her whole body recoiling at his words, leaving him to shudder from the absence of her warmth. Was she so horrified at the mere idea of being charmed by him? Nikolai sank back into his chair, unsure of how to proceed. Zoya sat staring down stubbornly at her intertwined fingers, and he couldn’t take it anymore, he needed answers. “What happened out there? You almost died Zoya.”

“I was protecting the crew.”

“You were unnecessarily throwing yourself in harm's way and you know it. I got the report from the Captain, he said that they would’ve made it safely to port without your heroics.”

“I had no choice! It was either me or them.” Nikolai laughed humorlessly, running a frustrated hand through his hair, an action he had repeated countless times today. “That’s not true and you know it. Four years as Commander of the Second Army, of working with me and you couldn’t come up with an alternative? Do you get joy out of nearly getting yourself killed?”

“No,” she hissed. “You would’ve done the exact same thing without a moment of hesitation, don’t act like you wouldn't have.”

“It doesn’t matter what I would’ve done. What matters is that you shouldn't have done it in the first place.”

“I’m a single soldier, I’m expendable. The intel we gathered, my unit, the crew, they weren’t. It was an easy choice, one I’d make again.”

“For Saints sake, you’re not expendable Zoya!” he burst out. Why was she so convinced that she was?

“I was there to lead them--to protect them. If you’re worried about being down a general, you know there are more than capable replacements for me, Nikolai. ”

“You’re not replaceable! I don’t need anyone else. I need you, Zoya!” The words were breathless, and once they were out he couldn’t reel them back in.

His words hung in the air before she began to nod slowly, as if she had been expecting the outburst, “as your general.” It wasn’t a question, but it was.

“Yes, but it’s more than that.” Why was he having such difficulty saying it? How did he explain the all encompassing nature of his feelings to Zoya? Brave and beautiful Zoya, with her eyes hesitantly, maybe even hopefully trained on him? Nikolai wanted to take her into his arms and explain that ever since they’d been dragged into the Fold by Saints, he had felt a connection to her, that he could taste the ice wine they shared on quiet nights, smell her signature scent of wildflowers on the wind wherever she was near. He wanted to tell her that he felt a connection between them, as palpable as a golden thread binding them together, and wondered if she felt it too. Nikolai desired to tell her that at her departure, he had felt like the thread had been pulled and pulled until he couldn’t breathe, only for it to suddenly snap back like an elastic at the news of her return, an overwhelming sensation of longing overtaking his senses. He wanted to tell her that when he first saw her today, it had felt like someone had pierced his chest with a lance, an agony rivaling only what he’d felt when being impaled by the thornwood that day in the Fold, the same day he’d felt his fate be irreversibly bound to hers. He wanted so much, he couldn’t stop himself from leaning forward in his chair, uttering words he could never take back.

“I want you. I want you all the time, Zoya.”

“You want me, but will you have me? Are you not bound to your duty as king to choose the best person for your country?” To anyone else her face would appear impassive but he knew the way her eyes widened slightly, the way her lips parted, when she was holding her breath, afraid to hope that something was true. She wanted it to be true.

“If my country and I are one and the same,” he began, taking her hand in his, “then I shall only give it what it most deserves, and hope I am worthy of it too.”

“Can you let yourself do that?” “A king can do as he pleases, can’t he?” She turned away at those words, and Nikolai reached out, cupping her face and bringing her gaze back to him. “I’m sorry I made you feel like you couldn’t stay. I thought we both knew what was right at the time, and it’s clear that we were both wrong.” “Go on,” she whispered, her shining eyes locked on his. “I don’t want you to leave again. I want you here, by my side, for as long as time will let me, if that’s what you want.” “What are you proposing?” Her hand slid up to his and she leaned further into his touch. “A coquettish courtship, a exuberant engagement, a whirlwind wedding and when all that’s said and done,” he angled his head towards hers, “hopefully many, many years of peaceful and quiet companionship.” “Sounds perfect,” Zoya breathed, her gaze trained on his lips, “except for one thing.” Nikolai pulled back, afraid that he’d alarmed her, “what?” She wrapped her arm around the back of his neck, pulling him down towards her, “you expect me to believe that a single moment with you will be quiet.” “I can think of several ways you can shut me up if I ever get to be too much. I think you’ll find that I am easily--” Zoya crashed her lips against his, and despite the harsh words she always seemed to have readily on hand, he felt her smile against him. For once in his life, Nikolai let himself relax, knowing that the rest of the world would still be there when they were ready to face it, together.

#zoyalai #zoyalai fic #row fic #zoya nazyalensky #nikolai lantsov #my writings

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albion-93 · 5 years ago

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Midwinter Solstice Eve

Seasons greetings to one and all! I hope everyone is enjoying themselves and celebrating the holidays as best they can with friends and family.

Just a heads up: this is a long RWBY fanfic, taking place in the same AU as my first fanfic RWBY: Family Lost and Found.

For the RWBY fans who made my time here really swell this year and also enjoyed my past writings, @littlemisssquiggles, @miki-13 , @maripr , @blackhakumen @davidellisartworkstuff , @accel-dragons @jade-rosepine and @che1sea-xiao-long this is for you. Hope you’re having a lovely holiday, and I hope you enjoy.

Act 1

Midwinter Solstice Eve had brought an unprecedented level of calm to the island province of Patch, even with the increasing threat of Grimm attacks. The coastal port towns were bathed in warm golden and crimson lights, security was at an all year-high and people went about their ways doing their best to keep merry. Airships and boats to the other kingdoms were preparing to leave. At first, the setting sun pierced the clouds and shafts of bright orange light cut across the frosty blue snow-laden fields and forests. But over time, these clouds grew thicker and snow fell faster and heavier than before, and the last of the daytime light was dying out.

In a secluded forested part of Patch, a two story log cabin stood resolute against the thickening blizzard, and cosy golden light gleamed invitingly within. The home of Taiyang Xiao-Long was a model of Midwinter Solstice preparations. In the kitchen was filled with the tantalising scent of slow-roasting game birds, and Tai went up and down the kitchen with his recipe book while his assistants, Nora Valkyrie, Lie Ren and Oscar Pine went about their culinary tasks.

“Alright girls and boys,” called out Tai as he removed a tray of roast potatoes from the oven, “let’s move this feast to the final phase! Nora, stop eating those potatoes and put them in the oven!”

��But they’re so tasty – oh, fine!”

“Ren, how are those vegetables coming?”

“Almost ready, Mr Xiao-Long!”

“Also maybe put a little more icing on the chocolate yule log, you know how my girls love their sweets.”

“I thought you wanted Ruby to eat less sweet stuff?” he asked incredulously, “I mean pudding, mince pies, and yule log?”

“True, true; but since it’s that time of year again we only get to go this big once. Just wait, between Ruby and Nora there’ll be hardly any desserts left!” he chuckled with a pat on the farm boy’s back and went into the lounge to check on how his daughters and their partners were doing.

It was a much more pleasant sight; the lounge was filled with soft carpets with the walls and mantelpieces decked with crimson, pine-green and gold trimmings. True to form, Ruby Rose and Weiss Schnee were partnered off on the decorations, while Blake Belladonna and Yang Xiao-Long moved in and out of the house doing different jobs in conversation. Chairs were pulled in and a portable Atlesian fire-place where the TV used to be was just starting to burn; ‘an old present from James’ as Tai said. Taking a short break from cooking, Oscar picked up a nearby guitar and strummed it a few times before settling on a soft melody, glancing towards . In the corner stood the decorated festive pine tree, with Ruby happily humming as she placed hand-carved and painted robins on what free branches still remained, thinking fondly about her mother. Weiss levitated a wreath of red and white roses onto the pine tree’s highest branches with Myrtenaster’s Gravity Dust function, smiling as she floated the wreath up and down. Blake came in and gave an amused smile at the sight.

“No offence, but that doesn’t look like the most efficient use of your limited Dust reserves. Couldn’t you just get the ladder?” suggested Blake.

“You’re right I could, but I never get to do any of this festive stuff, so I’m taking every chance.”

“You really are Defiance aren’t you,” chuckled Blake, more to herself than Weiss, who merely stared back quizzically at her as she went out again.

“Actually, I haven’t felt this relaxed – this happy even, in a long time.”

“Oh, it’s great isn’t it? I can’t wait to see your face when you open my present!” said Ruby excitedly, bobbing side to side, making Weiss giggle.

“Well you’ll just have to be a little patient,” she said with an air of playful parental authority, and she smiled softly at distant memories, “I remember when I was little my Mom would say that to get me to wait because I always wanted Midwinter Solstice to come a day early. I used to get so excited… but that really didn’t last long. Before I left for Beacon they had become so suffocating dry, formal and by the end so cold and resentful that I almost forgot just how sweet they could be.”

Weiss looked down sadly, and Ruby lifted her chin up encouragingly.

“Dad and I have tomorrow all planned out: snowball fights, games, movies, and karaoke!”

“Wonderful!” said Weiss with a bigger smile, which faltered as she saw Nora, Ren and Oscar talking worriedly among each other. She pointed this out to Ruby just as Yang and Blake came back in, and the two teams convened.

“Something wrong, guys?” asked Yang.

“This snowstorm is looking worse by the minute,” said Nora looking worried, “and we’re just hoping that Jaune and Pyrrha’s boat made it out in time.”

“They said their ship was leaving before the storm hit, but we haven’t heard from them in a while,” said Ren holding up his scroll.

“I’ve seen blizzards like this before back on the farm, and they’re worse than hazardous to travel in,” said Oscar as he stared out the window.

“Also, this little guy’s feeling homesick,” added Nora, wrapping her arms tightly around Oscar.

“Nora! I said it’s not a big deal!” he said quickly, but too late as a light chorus of endearment broke out among RWBY, turning the lad bright red as Nora grinned and Ren sighed.

“I mean, she isn’t wrong,” admitted Oscar, “I just had a rush of memories of watching the snow from the farmhouse bedroom and keeping warm by the fireplace with my aunt and uncle. Sometimes the extended family came over! It’s my first Midwinter away from them...”

“Awww, don’t worry, Oscar, you’ll feel right at home here,” said Ruby, smiling and placing an arm around Oscar’s shoulders, causing the boy to smile nervously and attempt to hide his blushing. “Dad always makes the best Winter Solstice dinner.”

“Actually, from the looks of things we might have a little too much food on our hands,” said Yang, “Guess we know what we’re having for lunch tomorrow!”

Suddenly, Ruby’s scroll starting buzzing. She answered and put it on speaker.

“RUBY!” yelled Jaune’s voice; he sounded panicked and hoarse, “Please get down here with Bumblebee fast! It’s me and Pyrrha, we’re stranded and the ice is breaking!”

Act 2

Within minutes, the four girls strapped on their Huntress gear and wrapped up warm for the mission. Based on Jaune’s description, the river was less than ten miles away winding between two hills. Yang fixed a snowplow on Bumblebee’s front wheel and revved the bike up for heavy duty action while Ruby fixed a trailer to the back. They gathered torches and ropes and packed them in the trailer. Before RWBY could set out, they heard a shrill voice load and clear.

“That’s half our team out there! We’re coming too!” declared Nora.

There was no arguing with her on that matter; time and the elements were both against them. With Yang driving, Ruby on the scroll to keep Jaune calm and determine where he was

“Wait, I want to help!” Oscar called out, covered head to toe in warm clothing, as the bike sped down the road until it vanished behind the snow drifts.

“Oh, no you don’t!” Tai yelled, grabbing Oscar’s arm, “Those kids are tough and capable, and you’re not at their level yet, Oscar. If you run out there you’ll get lost and freeze and I’m not losing anyone on Midwinter Solstice!”

“Tai, this snow’s getting much worse, they won’t be able to see where they’re going!” said Oscar, undeterred by Tai’s warning, “We’ve got to give them their best chance to get back.”

With the headlights at full beam, Yang drove as fast as she could through the forest towards the river, bobbing and weaving without dislodging the trailer behind her. Ten miles of straight road would have been nothing to Bumblebee but the combination of weather and treacherous downhill terrain slowed their progress. Even with the warm clothing and aura, they couldn’t stay out for long. As the trees gave way, they saw the river winding through the two hills and plowed through the heavy drifts to the riverbank. Everyone disembarked from the trailer and searched the area, calling out Jaune and Pyrrha’s names.

“There they are!” called out Blake, pointing towards a faint and distant flashing light several hundred yards away on the river’s ice covered surface. She could make out two distant figures, one stretching out and waving the other collapsed

“Guys, I think Pyrrha’s down!” added Blake, her ears folded down in dread.

“Then let’s go!” yelled Nora as she began to charge, only to be stopped by Ren, pointing out the fickle character of the frozen surface.

“I can use my semblance to get to them faster!” said Ruby with determination, “Nora, can you give me a boost?”

“CAN I?!” she bellowed with renewed vigour.

“Alright, then I’ll follow behind. I can get some distance with my glyphs,” said Weiss.

“I’ll tie the ropes together, Blake can you help me?” said Ren, Blake nodded.

“I’ll keep Bee warm for when we need to get out of here,” said Yang, revving the engine.

With the intensifying blizzard obscuring their vision of Jaune’s scroll light, they put the plan into motion. Blake and Ren had finished tying the ropes together, and passed them over to Weiss.

“Hurry, I think the ice is beginning to crack,” warned Blake, Weiss nodded.

She cast her glyphs across the river and began to run with all speed across her conjured bridge. Ruby stood perched like a bird of prey atop Magnhild, and Nora sent Ruby soaring through the air with a mighty swing in mid-semblance. She careened through the frozen night air, keeping altitude with Crescent Rose, a cascade of red against the black sky and pallid snow. Ruby used her semblance one more time as she spun towards Jaune and Pyrrha and skidded across the ice, clamping down with a swing of her scythe. Weiss wasn’t far behind.

Both of them looked pale and exhausted, Pyrrha was barely conscious but Jaune managed to pull a smile as the two friends embraced with one arm still around Pyrrha. She looked further ahead and gasped at the broken ice just a few yards ahead.

“Oh am I glad to see you!” cried Jaune frantically, “She fell through the ice! I’ve been trying to keep her warm! Help me carry her!”

Ruby nodded and raised Pyrrha up; she was murmuring deliriously and barely able to stand but still managed with the last vestiges of her aura to keep going. They started making good progress towards the shore. Suddenly the ominous sound of cracking ice came beneath them.

“Grab on!” yelled Weiss, tossing them the rope and casting a glyph beneath their feet as the ice ceased to support their weight. Back on shore, the combined strength of Nora, Ren, Blake and Yang tugged them back to shore. When they touched solid ground, the two reunited teams broke into a tight and tearful group hug, Pyrrha especially with light sobs of relief and gratitude.

“Hey guys, plenty of time for this back at Dad’s house,” said Yang, starting to shiver herself.

“I can’t tell where we are! This blizzard’s getting impossible to move through!” said Blake, barely able to make out the road with the snow obscuring the way and filling Bee’s tracks.

“We just keep going uphill,” said Yang stubbornly, “there barely any roads through here. And Bee’s using up too much juice to keep warm.”

They had been gone five minutes up the road towards Tai’s lodge. Nora and Ren kept close to Jaune and Pyrrha, and Weiss had conjured a small flame to keep them going. After another five minutes of more empty woodland and a winding trail, Yang slowed down and stopped to look around, the others stared around looking for any sign of habitation, like distant lights or smoke.

“Shit… none of this looks familiar,” she said angrily, “Where the hell are we?!”

“Maybe we should double back,” suggested Blake.

“We could get even more lost,” said Weiss, now starting to get nervous.

“Wait, I’ve got Dad’s signal, he must have followed us. I’m calling him!” said Ruby, opening up her scroll and tapping Tai’s number. She didn’t have long to wait.

“Ruby, finally! I’ve been trying to reach you!” said Tai over the wire, “I followed your trail halfway down the southern road but can’t find you guys anywhere!”

“We got lost! Are you out there by yourself?”

“Yes, Oscar’s back at the house. Listen to me; look out for the red signal flare. Find that and you’ll find the road. I’m launching in three, two-”

“Look, there it is!” cried Nora, pointing towards a bright red flash, barely covered by the falling snow and thick snow-laden branches.

“Yeah, I see it too! It’s not that far!” said Ruby excitedly.

“What? Ruby, I haven’t fired mine yet! Are you sure you see a flare?” said Tai incredulously, “I’m firing mine now; keep an eye out for it!”

Seconds later, another much further and fainter red light appeared, coming from back the way they came. The group looked amongst each other, now uncertain what to make of this. Then another flare rose up from beyond the tree line, same as where the first flare came from.

“Ruby, I see it too, you’re a lot further out than I thought,” said Tai, something in his voice sounded different, “change of plan, follow that flare, it’s closer to the lodge.”

Wasting no more time, Yang revved up Bumblebee and made a break for the source of the flare. Bee started to sputter, and fear began to grip the teams at the prospect of walking blind and losing precious time. The light from the flare went out. But before long, the trees became less dense and the familiar warm lights of Tai’s house came into view. Yang laughed and whooped and punched the air as she revved towards the lodge.

They spotted a lone figure glad in green standing in the snow covered field and waving his arms, and a few of the group peered out to see as they got closer.

“OSCAR!” yelled an ecstatic Nora, and with her arm outstretched grabbed him right off his feet and into the trailer locked in a tight tackle hug. He was shivering and had snowflakes tousled in his hair, signs that he had been outside for a while.

“Guys, we all gotta get inside,” reminded Blake, pointing to Jaune and Pyrrha lying prone, everyone nodded in agreement as they convened inside Tai’s house.

Act 3

Yang had her scroll out to inform Tai that they all made it back. The Atlesian fireplace was burning low with fresh fuel, another one of Oscar’s preparations before he went outside. Weiss went back and forth from the kitchen and came back with mugs of tea and hot chocolate for everyone, and knelt before the closely huddled Jaune and Pyrrha, both of whom were too tired to talk and looked close to drifting off.

“There, there,” cooed Weiss softly to both of them, stroking their foreheads gently, “just take it easy; you both had a tough time of it. But you’re safe now.”

Ruby brought down a high pile of blankets, jumpers and sweaters for Jaune and Pyrrha to put on, one red and one yellow, while Oscar brought extra cushions and draped them both in a thick blanket and sat down beside them.

“I’m so glad you’re both safe, I was scared we were gonna lose you out there,” he said gently.

After every means to be comfortable was taken, the fatigued RWBY and JNPPR sat huddled close around the fireplace in silence for the next several minutes, taking in the welcome warmth and looking amongst one another with in subdued, harmonious relief.

“That was way too close,” said Weiss at last, hugging her knees.

“No argument from me,” stuttered Jaune, as Pyrrha held him tightly.

The door opened again, it was Tai.

“Hey kids,” said Tai discreetly, with Ruby and Yang running up to hug him followed by all the other team members. He went down to green Jaune and Pyrrha, but Oscar guiltily hung back. He turned to face everyone, “Seriously, well done everyone. I’ve seen some daring feats in heavy snow at night, but you just raised the bar. So, you want to tell me what happened out there?”

While Ruby and Yang took turns recounting what happened, Tai listened intently and nodded proudly at each of them, and team spirit was on the rise.

“It sounds like you guys were just legendary out there!” said Oscar at last, looking around excitedly and gesturing to each of them in turn, “I mean, Ruby soaring through the blizzard Weiss with her glyphs, Nora with her hammer, and the rope plan. You guys must have been legendary!”

“You should have seen Yang’s driving, she was on fire!” said Nora with a little bounce.

“Why thank you, Nora! Bumblebee’s gonna need a lot of work after that,” commented Yang, scratching the back of her head sheepishly.

“Well, any vehicle is only ever as good as its driver,” said Blake with a smile, “and that placed us in excellent hands.”

Yang grinned and thanked her partner, and the two leaned in closely.

“Oh, and I switched the oven and cooker off before I went out, to not spoil the food,” said Oscar shyly to Tai, “I put them back on and reset the timers when we returned.”

“Smart move; the meal was saved just in time, despite the danger you put yourself in,” said Tai with his arms folded, he seemed to be making a concerted effort not to be cross.

“Dad, please don’t go there,” said Ruby reproachfully.

“Sir, if it weren’t for Oscar’s timely signal flare, we would probably be dead,” said Jaune with a little more strength in his voice.

“We put everyone in danger,” said Pyrrha at last, her eyes misty and cast down.

“Pyrrha, honey, please don’t-”

“It’s true… I wanted Jaune to meet my family for Midwinter Solstice. I wanted to make it this grand, almost fanciful meet-up. After the ship left without us, we argued a lot along the way, I insisted we try to get there no matter wat. We should not have tried to make the journey back to Argus with the blizzard closing in…”

“Pyr, I’m just as much to blame for this, if not more, I said we could make it to Tai’s lodge before the bad weather hit. We got turned around and stranded on that river, and then you fell in the ice!” Jaune cried out racked with guilt and anger, Pyrrha placed her hand on his shoulder.

“You wouldn’t leave me,” she said reassuringly, “I knew I had a chance with you.”

“You two wanted to spend Christmas with family, I think we all understand that,” said Ren.

“I think anyone who has a family they would brave a blizzard to be with is a special kind of lucky,” said Nora, “I know I would”

“We kind of did,” added Ren. Smiles started to bloom among the group.

“You both need to stop blaming yourselves for what nearly happened,” said Oscar earnestly, “You’re right, mistakes were made and it was way too close. But through it all, I’m just happy to have both of you here and alive with us under this roof, brought together in spite of peril and strife. In the end, Midwinter Solstice is all about that.”

“That reminds me about that song you played for me a few nights ago, could you play it again for us?” asked Ruby.

Oscar’s eyes went wide, but with a deep breath he asked if everyone else wanted to hear. With everyone giving consent, Oscar picked up the guitar and sang softly to the low fire crackling.

“When the silence wakes you, when your nights are long,

When the world forsakes you, please be strong.

Nothing hurts you forever, it will fade away,

And the sky will be blue again, one day.

No matter how cold the winter, no matter how deep the snow,

We will be warm again and the grass will grow.

No matter where life may take us, no matter how hard they try,

They will not break us, you and I.

When it’s dark inside you, when your flame is low,

I will be beside you, you will know.

Let it fall all around you, let the cold winds cry,

Let the old winds of yesterday blow by.

No matter how cold the winter, no matter how deep the snow,

We will be warm again and the grass will grow.

No matter where life may take us, no matter how hard they try,

They will not break us, you and I.”

Oscar blushed as applause broke out among the group, and some cheering from Yang and Tai.

“Well sung, little dude, well sung,” said Jaune.

“At Beacon you were all there when I needed help, especially you Pyrrha, and honestly this is just a small way of saying thank you,” said Oscar, still red in cheeks.

“Oh, Oscar, bless you,” said Pyrrha softly, eyes glistening. She held her arm out invitingly, Oscar budged closer and she pulled him into gentle, caressing hug.

“Thank you for being there when we needed you,” she murmured, gently swaying him side by side, enveloping her arms and blanket around him until he was effectively cocooned within. She held his face close and leaned and kissed his cheek causing the boy to open his eyes wide in shock.

“Are there no limits to your adorableness?” cooed Jaune as he embraced both of them within his blanket and ruffled Oscar’s hair.

“Mm-mm” shaking her head and giggled, still cuddling Oscar.

Nora and Ren piled in on either side of the three-way hug. In the middle of them, a series of small squeaks came from Pyrrha, grinning whilst tears down her cheeks. Team RWBY looked on, a mixture of awe and “aww” shared between them.

“I think I’ll skip the dessert, because that was the sweetest thing I’ve ever feasted my eyes on!” Yang whispered to Blake.

Ruby felt Weiss’s hand on her shoulder.

“Hey Ruby, despite the near-death experience out in the wilderness, I just want to say thank you for inviting me over for Midwinter Solstice; being here with everyone is so much better than being back at Atlas.”

“Don’t mention it, Weiss. It certainly crazy how close that was, but it worked out in the end! Just promise me one thing for the holiday.”

“Name it!”

“Don’t think about Atlas or anyone there who makes you unhappy and unfestive; I forbid it!”

“I don’t think ‘unfestive’ is a real word, but deal!” she said happily, drawing her in for a hug.

Tai came back in to announce that the game birds were cooked and there is definitely enough for the two new guests. Blake and Yang went in first, while JNPPR went in as one leaning in among each other. Ruby winked to Weiss and both reached out to pull Oscar in, and he gave a little yelp when both girls pulled him into their embrace. Ruby glanced up, something small and green was floating above them.

“Wait, I don’t remember ever hanging up mistletoe…” said Ruby nervously.

“Oscar, was this your doing?” said Weiss, raising her eyebrow.

“How could it be my doing?”

They paused and followed the line of string hanging the infamous little festive plant and gave out one big, shared yell; “NORA!”

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

Note: I really did want to write a new poem/song for this story rather than recycle an old one, but it still felt fitting both to the story and for the season.

Thank you, everyone.

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nrsranger · 3 years ago

Text

4.2

Coordinates F-16

NSR Ranger

Main Hanger

09:45 hrs

Taus Maic call sign Tripper and Duc Melbun temporary callsign 9 walked through the hanger doors. As the expanse of engineers fiddling with energy coils, power converter and weapons systems trying to improve efficiency the hanger deck crew were rushing around refueling and recharging and mix of X-Wings, A-Wings and B-Wings, for Duc Melbun his was his first on a real MC-80 Star Cruiser and his head swam with questions and adrenalinn and what he is able to see. As he took in the large room he had to grab onto the wall for stability he was in shock.

Ever since he was a little kid it has always been his dream to be right where he was now, he studied every battle from the Bacta War, the Clone Wars and the Galactic Civil War, his original plan was to be an A-wing pilot but he kept crashing into things when he was at his secondary school’s simulator, which earned him a spot off the school’s recommendation list and and comfortable seat into the History program. He stole out of History class every chance he could to run more simms, but the teacher in charge of the flight program refused him every chance he got to retake the recommendation test. Then his worst nightmare came true, and he got a pilot's spot on the NRS Ranger.

He began to think of the events that directly lead him to this hanger, before the Hosnian Cataclysm he lived in a medium sized city on the third planet of the Hosnian system, the History program received a grant from the Galactic Historic Core to tour old Clone War battle sites, they were at their final destination and were touring Ryloth when they first heard the news, the teachers and shuttle driver dismissed it as all to common pranks from edgy youths. When they jumped into the Hosnian system nothing remained, it was there when everyone learned that it was no prank. The shuttle briefly poked through the wreckage before they came across Raysho station, a dozen or so civilian transports were already docked and survivors were attempting to find family and friends. When they finally disembarked the port was crowded by too many adults, just not enough parents and there were too many kids walking out not enough children. When it was all sorted, only three kids out of the 100 kid program had at least one parent. Even though the late hour Duc could not sleep so we followed the line, the other older kids and most adults were taken into the recruitment center. When the officer asked if he had any flight experience, he admitted the little training he had, next thing he knew he was on the NRS Ranger as an over romanticized X-Wing pilot. For the last month his squadmates took turns teaching him and his fellow refugee turn pilot Mally Vos how to fly and adjust to Navy life. Today’s lesson was a tour of the ship, followed by simulations, simulations and more simulations.

“Ok, History nerd, riddle me this, how many launch bays does an MC-80 have?” Taus asked

“The Home one type MC-80 had 4 hangers” Duc said still in awe

“Ok, so how many launch bays does the Ranger have?” Taus asked next

“If I am not mistaken this is a Home one type so four?” Duc said confused why this is a question, if the answer was too obvious.

“Wrong, the Ranger has two, it originally had four, but the two rear launch bays were turned into makeshift multi-purpose rooms to quote” Taus said putting up air quote “expand the MC-80’s mission profile beyond that of a warship, unquote” Taus finished and lowered his hands

“Next question, how many fighter squadrons does the Big R carry?” Taus asked

“Currently 3, The Firebirds” Duc squinted his eyes trying to remember the other squadrons names “The…….Blue Birds and Theeee Night owls”

“Correcet, ok nerd, next question, how many fighter squadrons, Could the NSR Ranger carry?”

“Uh, I don’t know?” Duc said puzzled, he never read anything in the manuels that gave a answers to that question

“Marcus” Taus shouted, catching the attention of a Grand who was directing a technician driving a hoverlift, that was lifting the back half of a Y-Wing toward the Hanger one

“What do you need, Tripper?” he asked disenganging himself from his work.

“This is our Deck Chief Marcus Canton but you will always call him chief, and he can tell the damage from a ship just by looking at it. Chief the question I have is, how many squads could we fit in the Ranger?” Taus asked again

“You see the Ranger originally had four launch bays to forward one on each side and two rear one on each side connected by a single hanger, as you are standing in here, since the Military disarmament act limited the amount of fighters a ship could carry, the brass ordered that the rear launched bays be turned into multi-purpose storage rooms there are a lot of useless thing in there and that ticks me off but we are scheduled to undergo a refit to clear them out and unseal the doors we are also reported to get three more squads, but to answer your question, currently three, until we under the refit, and get those doors open” he said pointed to the two large doors that lead to the rear launch bay,”then six, but I am willing to wager, that we could probably fit 10 in an emergency but that would fill up the hanger with no room and each launch bay with no room to spare, there were many times during the rebellion when that happened, and the problem they faced was that they had to launch what was in the launch bay before they could bring out what was in the hanger, even if it was a bay full of unarmed U-Wings” the Grand Deck Chief finished “anymore questions?”

“No, I don’t have any” Taus said “Do you,” he asked looking at his junior who was still in awe and look around at all the busy hustle and bustle

“hm? What no, not yet I think I’m good” Duc said

“Ok, why don’t you look around for a bit, get familiar with a crew working on an X-wing, because if you are ever in a pinch we fill in for them, or if you have to make emergency repairs it might be helpful to know a thing or two, but just stay out of the way” Taus said

“Ok, yes sir” Duc said. He walked through and past the noses and laser cannons of X-wings until he found a crew working on one.

“Oh he’s a good kid” Taus said

“Eh, he’s alright, just make sure he doesn’t return any of my letterbirds damaged” The deck chief said then added, “so why do you like doing this, most squadron X.O hate the new guys”

“Yeah, sometimes it's a chore, but everyone comes from a different background and they all bring a new skill or piece of knowledge to the table and who knows maybe it will be useful later on” Taus said “it also helps with patience, especially when the deck crew needed to fix an X-wing but forgot to add the fuel injector” Taus said this and threw a glance at Chief Canton

“It was only one time, and you have enough life support to survive for…” Canton started to defend

“18 hours” Taus finished.

Chief Canton, did not have time for a snarky reply as the red alert clackson began to blare, and the signal box on the wall flashed the tradinatl red color.

“Red alert, set combat conditions throughout the ship” A voice from the ship's intercom system rang out.

Chief’s voice then rang out in alarm “CLEAR THE DECK of Any and Everything that is flammable, or explosive, lets go, lets go, if were hit by anything stronger than a stund blast this thing will go like a coaxisum on a train.”

The hanger exploded into dozens of technicians grabbing fuel canisters and star ship blaster power packs and dashing for a storage locker.

“Hey new guy,” a technician shouted at Duc who was still confused as to what he should be doing, “grab the other end of this' ' indicating a proton torpedo about to be loaded in an X-wing. Duc dashed over to the technician and lifted one end of the torpedo and they began to speed walk over to an ammunition locker. Taus and the Chief stood on large boxes and directed the traffic. Taus paused and looked through the starboard launch bay, the only two things in the launch bay was the back half of a Y-wing that was half gutted by shrapnel that was about to be ejected into space and the standard fighter recovery tug. He then looked outside of the ship, his eyes adjusted for the blue tint of the launch bay shield and saw two Corellian Corvettes and a Nebulon-B frigate open fire with their stark red point defence cannons. If Taus was upside down, it would look like red rain falling upon his enemies. He kept looking at the trajectory of the point defence cannons as the laser bolts slowly climbed higher and higher, when he guess, whatever they were firing at was right on top of the Ranger, a silence fell over the hanger as each pilot, technician and engineer, held his breath Taus noticed that he was not the only person look out side.

He flinched as five noiseless First Order TIE Bombers pasted over the Ranger

“Are we hit?” a crewmate asked

“No, we would have felt it if we got hit,” Chief Canton said.

A collective sigh fell over the hanger as the five bombers slowly shunk as they were chased off by soundless blaster bolts. Just as the five bombers reached the outer ring of Corvettes a CR-90 scored a hit against one. Black smoak and gas leaked from one of the bombers. Then with four flickers of pseudo motion four of the five bombers disappeared. The fifth bomber did not jump.

“Their hyperdrive has been damaged, they're not going nowhere” Chief Canton observed.

“Ummm, we have a problem.” Duc said pointing. The damaged TIE Bomber made a 180 degree turn and began to head back toward the Ranger.

“Aw Crift!” Chief Canton shouted. He looked out and saw the Bomber drawing a bead on the Ranger, “He;s coming right for the Hanger!, CLEAR THE DECK!!!!!!” Canton shouted.

The gathered technicians scrambled dashing to the nearest door.

“Chief!I have an idea!” Taus shouted toward the Deck Chief as he ran toward the back half of the Y-Wing. In an instant Canton knew and understood what Taus was getting at.

“Jackson, Daniels! Grab that power pack and bring it here” Canton shouted running toward the damaged Y-Wing in the launch bay.

Two technicians who stood their ground, waiting for Canton to leave. Jackson and Daniels did not want to leave until they knew for a fact that the hanger was lost when Canton gave up the hanger so would they. Today their determination paid off as they ran toward a Star Fighter power pack and lifted toward the crippled Y-Wing turret.

Taus jumped in the Ball Turret, while Canton, Jackson and Daniel wired the power pack to the turret. After thirty seconds Taus lights on the dashboard lit up and he gave thumbs up. Canton activated the hover lift and lifted the Y-Wing off the ground and swinged it out of the hanger bay.

Taus in the turret slowly rotated in a circle, when acclimated to the off sensation of having ones surrounds slowly orbit around him, he targeted the doomed TIE bomber coming in for a suicede run on the Ranger’s Hanger. He rotated his cannon and lined up his shot just as he heard the Y-Wing gunners talk about so often in bars and social gatherings. He took a quick breath and let loose with the cannon. The TIE bomber was only 100 meters away from the Ranger when their port side wing and accompanying engine unit. With the starboard engine the only propulsion, the TIE bomber began into a hard port side spiral. Ten seconds later the Bomber exploded. The only damage Taus saw was a CR-90 gently rocked as the bomber exploded a few hundred yards from its port side.

Taus breathed a sigh of relief. No one was hurt and no one died.

“Who’s in that thing just shot down that bomber?” Alek Mauz voice crackled over the comm, not recognizing the turret portion of the Y-wing

“Uh-ah, this is Bomber Slayer One?” Taus said hesitantly

“Tripper?” Alek asked, puzzled.

“What’s up CAG?” Taus asked the same way heroes attempt to deflect the attention from themselves by saying, something like ‘oh anyone would have done that’

“When you get back, report to the Senior Staff Conference Room” Alek ordered

“Yes Sir,” Taus said then under his breath “either I’m getting fired or promoted, both are equally terrifying.”

“Hey Chief, can I come home now?” Taus said reengaging the comm

“Yeah sure thing, let’s see if I can fire up the old tug” Chief Canton said referring to the Fighter Recovery Craft or (FRC) “ETA, 20 minutes”

“Please hurry, I only have 15 minutes of Life Support left”

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starlightomatic · 8 years ago

Note

Give us your thoughts on Luna Lovegood aaaand...Newt please! ^_^

When Newt hears about the Hippogriff, he rushes to Hogwarts immediately to speak with Dumbledore. Tina reminds him that he isn’t as young as he once was, and that he shouldn’t exert himself, but he won’t hear it. He boards the train, joints creaking as he settles into place, and opens the Prophet. Of course the front page article is about Black, the escaped convict. As an escaped convict himself, he can’t help but wonder… but no, that was because of Grindelwald, this man almost certainly is actually a criminal.

He disembarks at Hogsmeade station and boards a carriage up to the grounds. Even after all these years, his heart leaps at the first sight of the school, but… what is he doing here? He is an old man; he does not belong here. There is no way he can save this Hippogriff. Just like he couldn’t save Amina. Couldn’t save Credence, couldn’t save anybody –

No. He recognizes this. Dementors.

Heart pounding, he reaches for his wand –

He can’t protect anyone, nearly got Tina killed, abandoned Pickett –

No. He closes his eyes, envisions Tina as she looked all those years ago, radiant in sparkling white, eyes twinkling and hair dark under a filmy veil as light as air. He imagines her smiling up at him –

“EXPECTO PATRONUM!”

The Thunderbird leaps from his wand, ethereal in the dim afternoon light (the sun sets so early now), and circles the carriage, scattering the shadows he had not seen closing in.

He sits back, breathing hard. Tina is right – he is not a young man anymore, and this has taken more out of him than it would have done in times past.

Suddenly the carriage stutters to a halt. What now? He looks out into the gathering dark and sees a tall figure in a pointed hat – and opens the door.

“Who are you? You have breached the defenses of Hogwarts! Show yourself!”

“Minerva, it’s just me. Newt.”

“Oh.” She breathes out a relieved sigh. “Newton. You always have had a way of making an entrance.” She smiles at him. “Well, go on. Professor Dumbledore is expecting you. I trust you remember where his office is.”

“Of course.” He gives her a crooked smile. “I’m sorry if I gave you a fright, Minerva.” She shakes her head and walks away.

The carriage trundles on and deposits Newt at the great front doors of the school. He looks up, taking in their elaborate carvings – wings and claws and swords and wands, wizards and flying beasts, battles and quidditch matches – and of course, in each corner, rampant, each House’s mascot. He smiles at the badger on the lower right before entering through a sally port beside it.

Once inside, he traverses the familiar corridors, smiling as black-clad students rush by. He doesn’t see Rolf (the youngest of his grandchildren and the only one still at school), but perhaps he will have time to visit the seventh-year after his talk with Dumbledore.

Lost in thought, he doesn’t see the slightly rumpled man clad in patched brown robes until they’ve collided. Inkwells, quills, parchment, and books tumble to the floor.

“So sorry,” he says as he and the man wave their wands, and the ink flies back into newly reconstituted inkwells and the lot of it neatly settles back into the man’s arms. He glances into the man’s face and his breath catches. Scars, sallow skin – just this morning he noted, with a glance at his calendar, that it is nearly the full moon – this can mean only one thing. He is surprised, momentarily, but of course Dumbledore, who has always stood up for the underdog, would offer this man a job. It was probably the only one he was able to get, because –

– because of him. Because of the Werewolf Register. Because somehow, even at the age of 50, he was still young enough and naive enough to underestimate human cruelty. He should have known the Register, intended as a way to keep track of werewolves so as to better help them, would be used as an instrument of discrimination and harm. He has been trying for decades to abolish it, but to no avail.

“I’m sorry,” he says again, softly this time. The man looks at him quizzically for a moment, seems about to say something, and then hurries on.

Bereft, he continues along the corridor. Perhaps the Dementors have returned, he muses, as he reflects bitterly on all the pain he has caused while trying ineffectually to do good.

“Excuse me, sir, is that a Bowtruckle?”

He turns. The creature before him is small and luminescent, with blue eyes as large as a mooncalf's and ethereal like a fairy. She can’t be more than twelve.

He can’t help but smile, and gently removes the small green creature from his lapel. “That it is. Would you like to hold him?”

The girl’s eyes widen even further and she nods enthusiastically. He gently places Cork into her outstretched hands and her face breaks into a grin. As the Bowtruckle moves over the back of her hand, she expertly moves her other one up for him to step onto. “He says his name’s Cork. How lovely!”

Newt’s eyes widen. How – ?

“By the way, I haven’t introduced myself. I’m Luna Lovegood, from Ottery St. Catchpole. We grow dirigible plums there, did you know? Oh. Some people call me Loony.” She extends a very small hand, still balancing Cork on her other one.

He remembers the names he used to be called and feels a pang of sympathy for this small blonde creature. He reaches out and shakes her hand. “Newt Scamander. I’m pleased to meet you.”

Her mouth falls open and her face lights up. “Newt Scamander! But you’re – you wrote Fantastic Beasts! Did you really travel all those places?” She’s bouncing up and down now, and before he can answer, she continues – “it must have been lovely finding all those beasts! Did you discover any new ones? I don’t suppose you spotted a Crumple-Horned Snorkack? My father says they’ve never been found – but one day I’ll find it! I’m going to travel the world just as you have!”

“Really?” asks Newt, excited over her enthusiasm. “You’d like to become a magizoologist?”

“I’d love to! Oh, it would be grand!”

“Well, Miss Lovegood,” his face breaking into a smile again. “I’ve got an appointment with Professor Dumbledore, so unfortunately I’ve got to go. But if you’d like to write to me, you are quite welcome to do so.”

“I’d love to!”

He takes out a scrap of parchment and writes:

Newt Scamander12 The MoorPuddletown, Dorchester

And hands it to her. She grins, thanks him, gently hands Cork over, and flounces away.

Two weeks later, he receives a letter from Luna Lovegood, Ravenclaw Tower, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. She talks of nargles and of classes and of the spells she’s mastered, but little hints let him know that she’s lonely; the other children find her strange. His heart goes out to her; he knows what that’s like. He recounts to her his travels, and tells her of his life with Tina; how fierce she is, yet how kind; how she named a Kneazle Mauler. Luna muses, once, that she hopes she finds someone so lovely one day; Newt assures her that she will.

When Luna mentions, in passing, having lost her mother three years previously, Newt is heartbroken – he had no idea. He asks Tina, who lost her own parents as a child, to write to her, and of course she does.

He is overjoyed when Luna tells him, in June, that Buckbeak is free, but heartbroken again when he learns what has happened to the young man with the spilled inkwells. He resolves to write to him, as well – hoping his owl will find the man with no address, merely “Remus John Lupin.” It does.

When Luna writes excitedly of having friends, he is worried at first, particularly when he reads in her letters her adoration for a vivacious redhead – he remembers how love and affection can blind a person to manipulation when one is otherwise so alone. But it quickly becomes clear that the redhead (Charlie Weasley’s little sister, it turns out) is nothing but kind to Luna, and the same is true for the boy who might nearly be a squib but whose talent with magical plants is just beginning to shine, and for the hapless trio who always seem to end up in the middle of everything, reminding him of his trip to New York all those years ago.

In her fourth year, she hints at secret yet exciting proceedings, and he does not pry, but he marvels as he senses her gentle fragility turning to gentle strength. In June, when he hears of Luna’s exploits in the Department of Mysteries, Tina is beside herself – “They could have gotten killed! Yes, Newt, of course I remember I was an Auror, but they’re only children!” – but Newt’s heart swells with pride.

Luna’s fifth year begins less eventfully, but Newt smiles at the thought of her commentating a Quidditch match, and is excited to hear that she met an actual vampire – and at a party, no less! Hogwarts is certainly still as strange and wonderful as he remembers.

It’s only a few months later when his heart breaks as he learns that Hogwarts will never be the same again – nothing will be, really, without Albus Dumbledore. His words so many years ago were a lie – he knew exactly why Dumbledore had stood up for him, why he’d stood up for so many others. Dumbledore saw his students for who they were, each and every one of them. Dumbledore cared.

“You care, too, Newt,” Tina says softly. “I believe in many ways you carry on his legacy.” But he dissolves in her arms because he has lived for one hundred years in a world that contained Albus Dumbledore, and now it does not, and he cannot imagine it.

The next year, Hogwarts is taken over. Letters don’t always get through, but when they do, they are full only of chipper pleasantries, upbeat updates on food and quills and other unimportant things. But through them runs a thrum of danger, and – resistance. He is sure of it. He is proven right when word leaks out, through the grapevine, of graffiti on the walls of Hogwarts – Dumbledore’s Army, Still Recruiting.

At Christmas the letters stop, and he is gripped with a terror he has not known since the days of Grindelwald’s ascent to power. Charlie Weasley visits him; his sister had sent him to tell Newt what has happened (it is too dangerous to send a letter – it could be intercepted). He tells himself that worrying means you suffer twice, but the terror, a ball of tension in the pit of his stomach, is always there – but so is Tina, arms ready to close around him when the terror spills over and he cries into her shoulder.

In June, the world bursts open again – Luna is alive! She is free! As he reads her letter, though, his happiness mixes with horror and anger as she relates all that has befallen her. His eyes close and he’s back on the subway tracks, lightning cracking like a whip from Grindelwald’s wand and coursing through him, searing –

“Newt. Look at me.” Tina is crouching in front of him, pressing a piece of ice into his hand. “Newt, you’re here, on The Moor. In Puddletown. In Dorchester. It’s nineteen-ninety-eight. Grindelwald is dead. He was found at Nurmengard last fall; you remember.”

“Yes,” he says shakily, clutching the ice in one hand and Tina’s fingers in the other. “Yes.”

“Newt,” says Tina. “She’ll be okay. She has you.”

(When he find out that she also has the magipsychiatrists of St. Mungos, he suggests to Tina that they seek out such help as well. “What does it matter now?” Tina says wearily. “It matters,” he says.)

It’s only a few weeks later when another letter arrives from Luna – jubilant, this time – the Dark Lord has been defeated! Hogwarts is in shambles but it has prevailed. She speaks of the sacrifices made by all the students and professors who lost their lives that night (tragically, the young werewolf and his wife are among them), but there is a hint of a different kind of sorrow in her letter, and he cannot figure out the cause.

Until two weeks later, when Charlie’s sister’s face is splashed across the front of the gossip section of the Prophet above the byline of (who else?) Rita Skeeter and below the headline “The Boy Who Loved,” and he understands.

It is then that he tells her about Leta. She is only the fourth person – after his brother, his wife, and his sister-in-law (whom he had not exactly told, but no matter) – to know the whole story. He knows that it is different – her Ginny (no, not hers) isn’t a taker – but he wants her to know that he understands how she is hurting.

The next year, he watches through letters as Hogwarts repairs itself, and moves on. How the students, finally, recognize the harm caused by enmity with Slytherin, and attempt to heal an ancient rift (perhaps, if they had done so a century earlier, things would not have played out as they did with Leta – but no, then he would not have his Tina, and that is unthinkable).

He smiles along with her as she teases him about N.E.W.T. classes and N.E.W.T. exams, and he makes the trek back to Hogwarts for her graduation. And then she is off – exploring the world, as she had told him she would so many years ago. He consoles her as she finally accepts, after years of searching, that Crumple-Horned Snorkacks may not be real after all. He admits, but only to himself, that he had started to hope they were as well.

It is Passover, and he is sitting next to his sister-in-law on the back porch of her house the day after the first Seder meal, watching the kids fly around the yard laughing. He watches Rolf trying to teach the youngest Scamanders and Kowalskis Quidditch. Rolf is a young man now; as old as Newt was when he took that fateful trip to New York, Newt realizes.

He feels Queenie gently riffling through his memories, glancing over lines on parchment and flashes of white-blonde hair and dirigible plum earrings.

“Newt,” she says softly. “I rather think she’d get along with Rolf, don’t you?”

His eyes widen. Of course. How has he never seen it before? They have the same quiet strength, the same love of the absurd, the same disregard for the norms of society and of course, the same love of magical creatures. They’ve both spent the better part of the past several years traveling the world in search of fantastic beasts – they’d make excellent traveling companions!

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Queenie roll her eyes. He raises his eyebrows. She just smiles and shakes her head.

He introduces them, and as predicted, Luna and Rolf not only quickly agree to travel together, but become fast friends. Newt is shocked when, one day, as the pair are having tea with him on a rare break from their adventures, they lean toward each other and kiss.

“But I thought you liked girls!” He exclaims, and Tina dissolves into a fit of stifled laughter.

“I like everyone,” says Luna simply, and smiles beatifically.

It is three years later (but somehow, it feels so much shorter), when Newt finds himself sitting in the afternoon sunlight, Tina by his side (her hands folded in her lap and somehow still breathtaking at the age of 109), looking up at the couple standing in the dappled sunlight filtering through the leaves twined into the posts of their wedding canopy. His grandson, grown into a handsome and capable young man, and Luna, as ethereal as she was at age twelve but now carrying herself with the maturity of someone who has seen all the horrors the world has to offer and has decided still to view the world with wonder, stand face to face, gently clasping one another’s hands and exuding quiet strength.

He takes Tina’s hand as he lets the vows and blessings enter his head as murmurs, remembering his wedding to Tina all those years ago and marveling at all that has happened since. When Rolf stomps on the glass goblet beneath his foot with youthful determination, and as the guests around him cheer as the goblet shatters, Newt’s heart swells so much that he feels like it might burst.

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ellenembee · 8 years ago

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The Revelation of All Things - 34. In which love is a balm and anger is an analgesic

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Josie had secured them passage on a boat that left from Jader, the port city on the border of Orlais and Ferelden, and they rode hard out of Skyhold to ensure they made it on time. The pace left little room for talking, but she wouldn't have wanted to speak anyway. The last few days had been too special, too unbelievable to be able to engage in idle talk just yet.

As she gazed unseeing at the blur of rocks, hills and trees around her, Evana faded into herself to sort through the strange aches and flutters that had plagued her since that day on the battlements. Her tender feelings had flourished under Cullen's gentle care, roots digging in deeper, tighter, woven into intricate, irreversible patterns through her heart. But the way her heart now yearned for him, the way every step away from him pulled at the fragile roots, testing strength as only time and distance could... Would she break under these new and uncomfortable feelings? Would the separation wither the ties between them? Would he change his mind with so much time to rethink their impractical relationship?

A tiny gasp escaped her lips at the sharp, visceral ache that pulsed through her at the thought, an ache unlike anything she'd felt before. She then sighed as one truth became crystal clear. This is going to be a long trip.

They made camp late that night and set off early the next morning to catch their boat. Josephine's connection had offered them passage all the way across the Waking Sea and up the river through the Heartlands to a small port town on western side of Lake Celestine, which meant they'd only have a few days of traveling by horse after disembarking. When Leliana had sent word to Captain Rylen to expect them, Rylen had responded that they had yet to hear from the Champion or Warden Stroud. Evana intoned a prayer as she rode that they were both OK.

Although the prayer was directed to the Creators, she couldn't help the small part of her that wondered if she should also address it to the Maker and his prophet, Andraste. She was supposed to be Andraste's Herald after all, and Cullen's song the other night had moved her in a way she hadn't expected - in a way the songs about the Elvhen lore and Creators never had.

She felt a tinge of shame for even thinking in such a way. But what if Andraste had really guided her through the Fade and given her a mark to fight Corypheus? She still had no memory of what had happened to her in the Fade, but the more regions they stabilized and the more they emerged victorious, the more it felt as though a guiding force had truly taken interest in their mission. The existence of one god did not preclude others, after all.

She pushed the thoughts aside. Her faith in the Elvhen gods had always been more academic than spiritual, but she wasn't ready to jump into another religion quite yet... if ever.

They reached Jader with a couple hours to spare, so they made their arrangements and stopped in for a late afternoon meal at a nearby restaurant. As she absently listened to the idle banter of her companions, she picked at her food. She should be hungry, but the food held no appeal. Halfway through the meal, Dorian's voice finally cut through the haze of her thoughts.

"... I know. But she's clearly not listening to anything we're saying. It's no fun to tease someone who isn't even paying attention to you."

Evana looked up to see her companions staring at her with equally amused and concerned expressions on their faces. "Hmmmm...?"

"There you are. I thought I might have to do some sort of interpretive dance to get your attention. We are supposed to be dancing our way through Thedas, after all," Dorian quipped. After a pause during which she merely rolled her eyes at him, he continued. "So, can I guess what - or rather who - you're thinking of? Perhaps the person I saw kissing you so passionately in the courtyard yesterday morning?"

Varric laughed. "And it's about damn time, too. I thought Curly was never going to make a move."

Evana blushed hotly and looked back down at her food without responding. She wouldn't take the bait. Perhaps she'd be able to joke about it later, but right now, it was too precious a thing to sully with Dorian and Varric's teasing. Bull's voice cut in, much softer and laced with concern.

"I was merely saying that you really should eat, boss. We won't have another meal like this for... well... weeks."

They all gave her their most serious looks. The irony of her three most sarcastic, smart-ass companions being serious for this long was not lost on her. She had to laugh, or she would cry.

"Creators, I'm not made of glass! I'll be fine... and yes, I'll eat, Bull. I was just... distracted."

To prove her point, she began eating in earnest. She made sure to finish the plate for good measure. As they boarded the ship, Evana tried engage more with her companions, but she found herself drifting into her own thoughts in spite of her best intentions. She wasn't used to having friends who worried about her, asked about her day and expected her to participate in conversations. In her clan, she'd focused on her work and learning from Vash'an and Deshanna. Her peers had all had families of their own, so...

All excuses. You were diffident to your clan and your peers. You had no confidence in yourself. How could they?

During childhood, she'd always felt out of place, but she'd also been less shy, more willing to take chances. However, her odd relationship with her mother, working so hard with Vash'an and then being apprenticed to the Keeper had led her to be more withdrawn. Her relationship with Hanir, even before their bonding, had introduced feelings of inadequacy, and she'd folded into herself even more. Then, after the attack, she'd poured all her energy into learning to protect the clan - to do what she'd hadn't been able to do for them before. She worked hard to become the best at offensive magic she could be. She would not let them down again.

But the clan had taken her dedication as disinterest, her lack of confidence and withdrawn nature as superiority. Deshanna had understood and done her best to pave the way, but Evana knew. Clan Lavellan didn't miss her, didn't wish or hope for her return. If she were honest with herself, she was still working on coming to terms with that realization, but her growing friendships and... other relationships at the Inquisition stood in stark contrast with the years of ambivalence from her clan.

Perhaps that was why she felt such kindredship with Cullen. They had both made mistakes in their past, neglected their own lives to try to make things right. Now they both had great purpose as well as great people surrounding them. It seemed like a chance for redemption that neither of them thought they deserved but both had grabbed onto like an anchor in a storm.

With these thoughts swirling in her head, she took up a spot that would give her the best view of the Frostbacks for as long as the late evening sun would allow. Ironically, an experience that started with imprisonment had made her realize exactly what she'd been missing in her clan. Perhaps she felt homesick now because, for the first time, these people felt like a true home. And she shouldn't let her reticent nature keep her isolated from them.

As if they could understand her thoughts, she turned around to find Dorian, Varric and Bull standing just behind her. She smiled at them.

"So, Varric, tell me more about this game you've been talking about... Wicked Grace was the name, I believe?"

The ship docked in a port outside the small town of Velun four days later. Evana had ended up sleeping for most of the trip, the rocking of the boat mimicking the rocking of the aravels of her childhood. She would try to stay awake for longer than a few hours, but the rocking of the boat just put her right back to sleep. She hadn't felt so refreshed in ages. After gathering their waiting supplies, they headed in the direction of the forward camp. They pushed on until dusk, and she took the first watch as they set up camp. She was still wide awake, but the others collapsed as soon as they hit their bedrolls.

Alone once more with her thoughts, she found herself humming Cullen's chant to herself. She couldn't remember the words, but the gorgeous melody echoed in her thoughts along with the golden visage of her Commander.

She'd come to think of Cullen's faith as just another facet of the man, and she could see that he truly did his best to serve his Maker and Andraste. He failed at times, that much he'd told her, and she'd heard echoes of rumors, the vague whispers of other mages in the dark corners of the keep, of the things in his past he had yet to share with her. Although she'd never pressure him to speak with her about it, the fact that he had yet to open up presented an obstacle she knew they'd need to overcome. Additionally, they'd simply agreed to be open to one another's opinion on mage oversight, but they'd not truly reached an understanding. And yet she thought of all she'd learned about him in the last several months, and she couldn't help feeling that they'd come to an understanding eventually.

It was still hard to believe that he truly cared for her, but all the times he'd gone out of his way to please her or make her feel more comfortable went far beyond cursory concern. Even in Haven, before he'd let himself truly show how much he cared, she'd felt and seen his kindness. Just the fact that he'd taken time out of his day to walk and talk meant the world to her. She already missed him terribly, and it made her feel a bit like a love-sick fool.

Too bad I don't care at all.

She woke Varric at midnight for his watch and lay down to sleep. She felt like she'd only closed her eyes for a moment when a hand shook her awake.

"Come on, sleepy head, time to get up and go kill things," Dorian cooed in her ear. "It's your favorite thing, I know."

She grimaced as her body protested from sleeping on the hard ground. It was amazing how quickly a person could get used to a shemlen bed. As they rode further west, the heat and sun intensified. By the time the sun set, they were all exhausted once again. After another night on the ground, they rode into the forward camp as the late morning sun beat down upon the rows of tents and supplies marked for the Inquisition's extended stay in the Approach. Scout Harding greeted them with a wry smile.

"Inquisitor, welcome to the Western Approach. We've sighted Warden activity to the southwest, but no one's been close enough to figure out what they're doing. Between the sandstorms and the vicious wildlife, we haven't made it far out here. One of my men got too close to a poison hot spring and gave me a slightly delirious report of a high dragon flying overhead."

"A dragon!? Yeeeeessss!!"

Evana shot Bull a death look, and he shrugged. Harding paused and shot an amused look between the two of them before continuing in a faux chipper tone.

"In short, this just might be the worst place in the entire world."

Evana gave her a sympathetic look. "I assume you've got your orders to head to the oasis next?"

"Yes, your worship. I will be heading out there soon. And Captain Rylen and his company are out fighting off a group of varghest from our water supply."

"Please tell the Captain when he returns that we're going to find the Grey Wardens. I hope we can end this quickly."

"Be sure to let us know if you think you need back up. Good luck, and be careful, Inquisitor."

Evana saluted Harding and pulled out a map of the area. She found her direction, and they set off. They had to fight through a couple of rifts and multiple attacks from wildlife and Venatori before they finally approached the Grey Warden ruin several hours later. To her great relief, she saw Hawke and Stroud crouching outside the tower's entrance. The lines in Stroud's face pulled deep as he turned his agitated gaze on her.

"I'm glad you made it, Inquisitor. I'm afraid they've already started the ritual."

The green light emanating from the tower told her all she needed to know about the situation. A cold stab of fear shot through her, but she looked at the group of warriors gathered around her and shoved the fear away. Whatever lay within those walls, they would defeat it, as they had done countless times before.

As they approached, they could see a Grey Warden walking away with a rage demon following closely behind. He joined a line of other Wardens bound to various other demons standing eerily still on the tower platform. A dark-haired man in Tevinter-style dress looked up from his Warden thralls and called out to them.

"Inquisitor! What an unexpected pleasure." The man bowed, a twisted smile splitting his face. "Lord Livius Erimond of Vyrantium at your service."

"You are no Warden!" Stroud shouted at him across the platform.

Erimond's eyes narrowed as he looked to Stroud. "But you are. The one Clarel let slip. And you found the Inquisitor and came to stop me. Shall we see how that goes?"

Evana's blood boiled. Corypheus sure knew how to pick the most arrogant, self-important asses for his dirty work. At least if they're assholes, I don't feel as bad about setting them on fire. She pointed to the dead Warden on the ground before Erimond.

"Looks like you've already done some of my work for me."

"What? Him? We simply needed his blood. Oh... were you hoping to garner sympathy? Maybe make the Wardens feel a bit of remorse? Wardens! Hands up!"

The Wardens lining the path to where Erimond stood mechanically lifted their hands like puppets on a string.

"Hands down!"

The Wardens lowered their hands. Evana's heart plummeted to her stomach as she took in the vacant eyes staring out into nothingness. Beside her, Stroud positively radiated anger. She wondered sadly whether he knew any of the enslaved Wardens.

"Corypheus has taken their minds," Stroud choked out.

Erimond shook his head, a sick smile still twisting his lips. "They did this to themselves. You see, the Calling has the Wardens terrified. They looked everywhere for help."

"Even Tevinter," Stroud growled.

Evana could tell Stroud wouldn't last much longer with the talking portion of this interaction. She needed more information, though. What was the plan? Why do this? Luckily, she didn't even have to ask as Erimond provided the information freely. How accommodating of him.

"Yes, and since it was my master who put the calling into their little heads, we - the Venatori - were prepared. I went to Clarel full of sympathy, and together, we came up with a plan... raise a demon army, march into the Deep Roads, and kill the Old Gods before they wake."

Evana rolled her eyes. "Ah, I was wondering when the demon army would show up."

Erimond looked a little nervous for a moment. "You... knew about it, did you? Well, then, here you are. Sadly for the Wardens, the binding ritual I taught their mages has a side effect. They're now my master's slaves. This was a test. Once the rest of the Wardens complete the ritual, the army will conquer Thedas."

Blood magic at its worst. Leliana's words in the dark future at Redcliffe rang in her ears. And mages always wonder why people fear them... no one should have this power. Evana felt the rage inside her grow at the thought. This was why people feared them - feared her. Weak-willed fools who would try to control others with their magic. How many mages' lives had been ruined by the actions of those few who gave them all a bad name? Those who misused their power for their own personal glory or even in misguided attempts to do good?

"Thank you. That's all I needed to know," she spat out at him.

Erimond sneered and lifted his hand. It glowed red as he extended it toward her with a vicious snarl.

"Oh, please."

Suddenly, a stab of pain pierced her hand and shot up her arm. She stumbled, fell to her knees and bent over, clutching her hand to her chest in agony. But she refused to give him the satisfaction of hearing her cry out. She was too angry for that.

"The Elder One showed me how to deal with you in the event you were foolish enough to interfere again," Erimond continued, oblivious to Evana's rising temper. "That mark you bear? The anchor that lets you pass safely through the Veil? You stole that from my master. He's been forced to seek other ways to access the Fade."

Arrogant fool! Evana took several deep breaths to push back the pain, and while Erimond babbled on about his power, Evana focused as Solas had taught her. The anger became a tool, feeding her destructive force, and she stood up slowly, with purpose, raising her hand.

"When I bring him your head," Erimond finished, "his gratitude will be-"

Erimond suddenly cried out in pain as Evana used her anchor to overpower and subdue him. He flew backward a few paces and the rift the Warden had opened to summon the rage demon closed with a vicious snap. Erimond got up slowly, terror dawning on his face. In the next moment, he turned tail and ran, shouting over his shoulder.

"Kill them!"

Chaos broke loose around her as the enslaved Wardens and their demons attacked. At least all of Stroud's pent up frustration could now be put into action. A deep sadness on his behalf mixed with her fury as she worked through her forms, fighting against the men and women who once stood as heroes of Thedas. She knew the Calling had them all frightened, but this? Surely they could see they were being manipulated!?

Evana took a hard hit to her right side, forcing her to focus more fully on the battle. She called down barriers for her team as often as she could, but she mainly focused on icing out the rage demon to keep her companions from getting burned. The other mage Wardens were not difficult to kill, and finally, with one final freeze and a jolt of electricity, the rage demon exploded into a thousand pieces before her. As horrible as she felt cutting down the enslaved Wardens, the demise of that rage demon felt good.

Her blood hummed with left over adrenaline as they regrouped. She passed out a few healing potions for Varric and Hawke, who'd taken the brunt of a demon attack before she'd been able to get a barrier up for them. Dorian had been able to keep himself protected, and Iron Bull just shrugged off the damage. Hawke guzzled the potion and then shook her head.

"They refused to listen to reason."

Stroud sighed. "You were correct. Through their ritual, the mages are slaves to Corypheus."

"And the Warden warriors? What of them?" Hawke asked.

Stroud wouldn't look at Hawke, and the other mage seemed to understand. She closed her eyes and shook her head again.

"Of course, sacrificed in the ritual. What a waste."

Evana's ire was still up. She tried to be sympathetic, but surrounded by so much blood and chaos, she began to understand why Cullen might have difficulty feeling sorry for a person like Samson.

"Human sacrifice, demon summoning..." She shook her head in disgust. "Who looks at this and thinks it's a good idea?"

Hawke answered simply with, "The fearful and the foolish."

Tension arced through the air as Stroud responded. "The Wardens were wrong, Hawke, but they had their reasons."

Hawke leaned back and crossed her arms in front of her. If looks could maim, Hawke's eyes would be considered deadly weapons.

"Yes. All blood mages do. Everyone has a story they tell themselves to justify bad decisions... and it never matters. In the end, you are always alone with your actions."

Hawke's words pierced her anger, and all former sympathy for the Wardens flooded back to her. Evana's response was quiet but firm.

"Perhaps you're right, but a person who makes a bad decision may also still be redeemed."

Hawke looked at her curiously, but merely tilted her head in acknowledgement.

Evana's statement seemed to ease the tension, and Stroud finally spoke again.

"I believe I know where the Wardens are, Your Worship. Erimond fled in that direction." Stroud raised his hand and pointed south. "There's an abandoned Warden fortress that way - Adamant."

She nodded. "Good thinking."

"Stroud and I will scout out Adamant and confirm that the other Wardens are there," Hawke offered. "We'll meet you back at Skyhold."

Hawke took Varric aside, their heads bent together in whispered communion, and then she left with Stroud to scout the fortress. As Evana looked over her companions, her mind, still roiling from the adrenaline, swirled in several directions at once. Finally, Dorian pulled her from her thoughts.

"Uh, not to rush you, my dear, but we are standing among a bunch of dead Wardens and demons. Could we move on soon? I'm worried I'll get blood on my shoes."

Evana looked down at the other mage's blood-soaked armor and boots, then looked back up at him with a raised eyebrow, her lips quirking in a disbelieving smirk. "Blood on the shoes, eh? Little bit late for that." Then, turning to the others, she huffed out a long sigh. "Well, it's still light, and I'm worked up from that fight. I know it's hotter than dragon's fire out here, but... should we look for a few more rifts before heading back to camp?"

"Bianca's all in," Varric affirmed.

"Yeah, I'm up for it, Boss."

She looked at Dorian, who sighed dramatically. "Only you would ask me to trudge around in soiled armor and blazing heat to kill even more demons. Shall we practice our dancing in the sulfur pits, too?" Evana's mouth twitched with a barely suppressed smile, and Dorian's shoulders sagged in defeat. "Oh, I suppose since we're here and my boots are already ruined, we might as well."

She gave him a lopsided grin and headed off in the direction of the next rift on her map.

#dragon age #evana lavellan #dorian pavus #the iron bull #Varric Tethras #dragon age fanfiction #dragon age inquisition #da:i #DA: Inquisition #friends who play wicked grace together stay together #inner circle as surrogate family #dorian and evana brotp #the iron bull as a mother hen #grey wardens #here lies the abyss #evana doesn't have time for this shit #but evana wants to help #troat

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internetbasic9 · 6 years ago

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Nature A forgotten soldier on a forgotten front

Nature A forgotten soldier on a forgotten front Nature A forgotten soldier on a forgotten front https://ift.tt/2DDsexJ

Nature

Sgt Sandes, an infantry soldier in the Serbian Army, lay semi-conscious on the snowy hillside after taking the full blast of a Bulgarian grenade, and would later recall being wrapped up and bundled away like a rabbit in a poacher’s sack. “I could see nothing,” the trooper wrote. “It was exactly as though I had gone suddenly blind; but I felt the tail of an overcoat sweep across my face. Instinctively I clutched it with my left hand, and must have held on for two or three yards before I fainted. “The Serbs have a theory that you must not give water to a wounded man because they say it chills him, so they poured fully half a bottle of brandy down my throat and put a cigarette in my mouth. “I caught the little sergeant who had helped carry me watching me with his eyes full of tears. I assured him that it took a lot to kill me, and that I should be back again in about ten days”. It was November 1916. Sandes was among tens of thousands of Serbian troops fighting, from their base in northern Greece, to try to re-enter their own country, which had been occupied by Bulgarian forces a year earlier. It took Sandes not ten days but six months to recover sufficiently to rejoin the ranks and to return to the front line. By the end of the war, Sandes would be awarded Serbia’s highest military honour, the Order of the Karadjordje Star. Sandes is a celebrated national hero in Serbia to this day. That’s all the more remarkable for two reasons. First, Sandes was not Serbian but British – born and raised in Yorkshire.

And second, Private Sandes’s first name was Flora. She was the only British woman to serve in uniform, in combat, as an enlisted soldier in World War One.

A foreign field

The British Cemetery at Karasouli is about an hour’s drive north of Greece’s second city, Thessaloniki. A century ago it served as a clearing station for wounded men evacuated from the fighting. Eventually it would hold the remains of more than 1,300 British men. The Commonwealth War Graves Commission maintains 24 cemeteries in Greece, and more still across the border in Macedonia. The largest of these holds thousands of dead. The smallest has just a single grave, that of the poet Rupert Brooke, who yearned to fight but who died from disease before reaching Gallipoli, and who is buried on the Greek island of Skyros. Compared with the vast and magnificent World War One cemeteries of Flanders and northern France, there is something understated, even apologetic, about the Commonwealth war graves of northern Greece. There are no shining white upright Portland stone grave markers here. Instead, little concrete blocks ten inches high, known as Macedonian pedestals, mark each grave.

Salonica

British soldiers in Salonica, 1915

British troops began arriving in northern Greece in 1915, to support a larger French force. They came by sea. Salonica, now Thessaloniki, the port city where they disembarked, had been part of the Ottoman Empire until 1911, when it was taken by the Greeks. From a distance, the allied servicemen were charmed by its exotic eastern character. It is “a lovely place” one soldier wrote, “a fairy city with white minarets and red roofs”. But once they were ashore the charm wore off. Salonica was a disease-ridden swamp in summer – insanitary, poor and swarming with mosquitoes. Before long the servicemen were reporting bodies of men and of horses washed up on the shore – casualties of an increasingly successful German U-boat campaign against allied shipping. But the risk of death in combat was outweighed by something far more deadly – the awful conditions. Go to the cemetery at Lembet Road in Thessaloniki and you will find the graves of 1,600 British servicemen, most of whom never saw a round fired, but who were killed far from the front line by malaria or dysentery or typhus. More than 600,000 allied servicemen came to the Macedonia front between 1915 and 1918 – French, British, Italian, Greek, and Russian. Their job was to help the Serbs in the war against Austria. But by the time the first troops landed at Salonica they had been overtaken by events. The Serbs were already suffering a catastrophic defeat. Serbia and Bulgaria had been allies in the Balkan wars of 1911 and 1912, fighting to end centuries of Ottoman rule in south-eastern Europe. But as the Ottoman Empire receded, Serbs and Bulgarians turned on each other. Serbia had ended the Balkan war of 1913 in possession of the land which corresponds roughly to the modern-day independent state of Macedonia. The Serbs called it South Serbia, refusing to recognise a distinct Macedonian identity. But to the Bulgarians it was Western Bulgaria, and the Macedonian “language” was not a separate tongue at all but simply “Bulgarian written on a Serbian typewriter”.

The outbreak of war between Serbia and Austria in 1914 – the opening of World War One – was to give the Bulgarians the perfect opportunity. The war had begun when a young Serb, Gavrilo Princip, had assassinated the heir to the Austrian throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, in Sarajevo in June 1914. Princip, at 20, was too young to be sentenced to death for his crime and so lived long enough to see the unintended consequences of what he had done. The population of the Austro-Hungarian Empire was twelve times that of Serbia, a kingdom of just four and a half million people. Even so, the Serbs managed to push back Austria’s first attempt at invasion in the summer of 1914 – the first Allied victory over the Central Powers of World War One. The Austrians invaded again, and occupied Belgrade in December 1914. The Serbs fought back and recaptured the city. By the end of the year, the Serbs had lost an estimated 170,000 men. That winter, a typhus epidemic swept through the civilian population, killing hundreds of thousands more. The Serbian government declared that its war aim was now not only the liberation of Serbia itself, but the liberation, from Austria, of all the Slavic speaking territories of the empire, including Bosnia, Croatia and Slovenia. There was further disaster for Serbia in 1915. Bulgaria entered the war in September and invaded in October, just days after Austria and Germany launched new offensives into Serbia. The Serbian army collapsed and began a long, defeated trek across the mountains of Albania in the brutal cold of a Balkan winter. Thousands died of hunger, cold and disease. By February 1916, the last of the survivors had reached the Adriatic coast and were evacuated by allied ships and put ashore, finally, at Salonica to rejoin the allies.

Flora Sandes

The Mausoleum

Of all the allied burial sites in Thessaloniki the one that receives by far the highest number of visitors today is the Serbian one. It is a vast and cavernous mausoleum that contains the remains of more than 7,000 Serbian soldiers. Many of them were survivors of the long and deadly winter trek across the Albanian mountains. The burial site was founded by a Serb veteran called Savo Mihailovic, who was put in charge of collecting the bodies – many of them his friends and comrades – and burying them together on the site of a former field hospital. He never left the memorial, guarding it until his death in 1928. He was replaced by his son, Djure Mihailovic, who guarded the site until his death in 1961. He and his father are both buried in the cemetery. The keeper of the site now is Djordje Mihailovic, Djure’s son and Savo’s grandson. The Greek authorities have banned further burials in the cemetery but an exception has been made for Djordje, who will one day be the last Serb to be interred there. Djordje’s presence is a living link with the Serbian experience of World War One. The cavernous interior of the mausoleum he guards is a shrine to the Serb martial tradition. It connects Serbia’s wars against the Ottoman Empire in the 19th Century to both world wars and the wars that Serbs waged during the break-up of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. Many of today’s visitors are veterans of those later wars. The kinship they feel with the men of 1914-18 is immediate and powerful. Then the goal was to drive the Bulgarians out. But the Bulgarians could not have asked for a geography better suited to a defending army. Head north from Thessaloniki and the parched low-lying plains give way to a very different landscape. What separates Greece from its northern neighbours is a chain of mountains, running east to west, that rises steeply and suddenly. It is a forbidding sight. Even in summer the slopes appear black and impenetrable. And it was on these mountaintops that Bulgarian forces dug in. There they would sit, for the rest of the war, ready to swat away successive attempts by the British and French to dislodge them. The allied armies gathering on the plains below were spread out like a map beneath their feet. (Below: Bulgarian officers on a mountainside in 1917)

Aftermath

The men of the British Salonica Campaign went home to a nation that knew little about what they had done. The disastrous battles they had fought and the long and arduous months they had spent on the barren plains and mountain sides of northern Greece scarcely featured in the national narratives and quickly slipped from collective memory. There were no victories to celebrate and it was hard to see what their presence in the Balkans had achieved. In the vast literature of World War One studies, there is almost nothing on this forgotten theatre. The outstanding account is by Alan Wakefield and Simon Moody, in Under the Devil’s Eye. It is a story of failed and – for the most part futile – offensives. “That evening I sat, clad in an old civvy suit, in my mother’s flat in St John’s Wood,” one survivor wrote of the day he was demobbed. “A strange feeling of loneliness came over me. No longer was the Army there to take care of me; I faced, on my own, a new and strange world.”

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Nature A forgotten soldier on a forgotten front, in 2018-09-29 00:41:56

#Nature of Business in the Current Market

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amazingviralinfo · 7 years ago

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Let’s start with the fundamental paradox: Our personal technology in the 21st centuryour laptops and smartphones, our browsers and appsdoes everything it can to keep us out of crowds.

.riots_left_rail { border-bottom: 5px solid #333; border-top: 5px solid #333; font-size: 1.2em; }

#Riot

Hyper-Networked Protests, Revolts, and Riots: A Timeline

Why pack into Target when Amazon can speed the essentials of life to your door? Why approach strangers at parties or bars when dating sites like OkCupid (to say nothing of hookup apps like Grindr) can more efficiently shuttle potential mates into your bed? Why sit in a cinema when you can stream? Why cram into arena seats when you can pay per view? We declare the obsolescence of “bricks and mortar,” but let’s be honest: What we usually want to avoid is the flesh and blood, the unpleasant waits and stares and sweat entailed in vying against other bodies in the same place, at the same time, in pursuit of the same resources.

And yet: On those rare occasions when we want to form a crowd, our tech can work a strange, dark magic. Consider this anonymous note, passed around among young residents of greater London on a Sunday in early August:

Everyone in edmonton enfield woodgreen everywhere in north link up at enfield town station 4 o clock sharp!!!!

Bring some bags, the note went on; bring cars and vans, and also hammers. Make sure no snitch boys get dis, it implored. Link up and cause havic, just rob everything. Police can’t stop it. This note, and variants on it, circulated on August 7, the day after a riot had broken out in the London district of Tottenham, protesting the police killing of a 29-year-old man in a botched arrest. So the recipients of this missive, many of them at least, were already primed for violence.

It helped, too, that the medium was BlackBerry Messenger, a private system in which “broadcasting” messagessending them to one’s entire address bookcan be done for free, with a single command. Unlike in the US, where BlackBerrys are seen as strictly a white-collar accessory, teens and twentysomethings in the UK have embraced the platform wholeheartedly, with 37 percent of 16- to 24-year-olds using the devices nationwide; the percentage is probably much higher in urban areas like London. From early on in the rioting, BBM messages were pinging around among the participants and their friends, who were using the service for everything from sharing photos to coordinating locations. Contemplating the corporate-grade security and mass communication of the platform, Mike Butcher, a prominent British blogger who serves as a digital adviser to the London mayor, wryly remarked that BBM had become the “thug’s Gutenberg press.”

Nick de Bois, one of Enfield’s representatives in Parliament, was whiling away that Sunday afternoon at the horse races in Windsor, where a friend’s wife was celebrating her 40th birthday. It was a fine day of racing, to boot: In the third, Toffee Tart bested Marygold by just half a length, paying off at 7:2. “Unusually for me, I hadn’t looked at my handheld in two hours,” de Bois says. But when he did look, he saw something disturbing. Gossip was swirling about more riots that night, with Enfield named as a likely target. De Bois decided he had better cut his race day short. “I never even had a chance to recover my losses,” he deadpans.

By five in the afternoon, he was on the streets of Enfield Town, along with a handful of police. Was there a riot? Nonot really, not yet. But there was a gathering crowd, a mixed-race group of mostly young men, just milling around in small bunches. Some were conducting what de Bois describes as “reckys”reconnaissance missionsaround the town center. “They were just having a good look!” he says.

Then, at around 6 pm, as if at some unvoiced command, the street exploded. The crowd hit a Pearsons department store, a Starbucks, an HMV. Police were able to move in and contain the violenceor so they thoughtto a small part of the town’s shopping district. “Of course, there were side roads,” de Bois says. “But broadly speaking, the looting had been contained. Calm had been restored.” It was a loose version of what the British call kettling, an anti-riot tactic where police keep a disorderly crowd penned in, often for hours, to avoid their causing any more trouble.

Only then, though, did the situation in Enfield get truly surreal. De Bois was standing outside the sealed-off zone, behind one line of police, in an open area that led to the train station. As he watched in amazement, more and more peoplesome disembarking trains at the station, some stepping out of carscontinued to pour into the plaza. Riot police were convoying in, too, but their numbers couldn’t possibly keep up. And even if they did, it was impossible to definitively separate the would-be rioters from the bystanders.

Right behind a line of armor-clad police who had successfully contained a riot, this new crowd of hundreds was gearing up to touch off a second riot. As 7 pm approached, face coverings went up, and a small group walked past de Bois with a crowbar. Gangs began to break windows throughout the plazaone local jewelry store lost nearly $65,000 in stock. Police would descend on a group, but then the crowd would disperse, only to reconstitute itself someplace else a few minutes later. Part of the issue was a peculiarity of British policing: Largely because most cops lack guns, they can’t easily carry out mass arrests, even in emergencies. Instead, each arrestee is physically accompanied by individual officers for booking. With their numbers already stretched thin, the police could not take looters off the streets without further depleting their own ranks.

But there was also something strange about the character of this riot, and these rioterssomething that seemed to make the violence unstoppable. At base, it was their confidence: their surety that, as they streamed out of their cars and trains, or as they milled around in small groups, or even after they were dispersed by police, they would always find one another in sufficient numbers. As de Bois wandered through the crowd, he buttonholed one of the young men, asked him who they all were and why they were there. “Don’t worry,” said the looter to the MP, in a tone of gruff reassurance. “We’ll be out of here soon.”

Occupy protesters at the Port of Oakland on November 2, 2011. Getty Images

The year 2011 brought waves of crowd unrest on a worldwide scale unseen for more than three decades. From January’s revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia through a summer of sit-ins and demonstrations in Europe, India, and Israel to the Occupy Wall Street movement in the fall, the past year saw a new generation of activists rediscoverand subtly reinvent, through social mediathe massive street action as a means of political expression.

But on both sides of the Atlantic, there was a rash of more mysterious, more malicious-seeming crowds in which technology appeared to play a central role. Riots over four days in Britain spread across the country and caused millions of dollars in property damage. US cities struggled with their own disorder: In Kansas City, Missouri, gunfire injured three after hundreds of high school students descended on an open-air shopping mall, while Philadelphia imposed a curfew to fight a long string of surprise gatherings by teens. At least five cities saw an innovative form of robbery, where a large group of kids would simultaneously run into a store, take items off the shelves, and run out again. To be sure, technology wasn’t at the root of all the crowd mayhem: For example, an investigation of a group robbery in Germantown, Maryland, determined that the thieves had hatched their plan on a bus, not online. But with most of these events, there was some sort of electronic trail (Facebook, Twitter, texts, BBM) that showed how they coalesced.

Groping for what to call these events, the media christened them “flash mobs”lumped them in, that is, with the fad in which large crowds carry out a public performance and then post the results on YouTube. So at around the same time that Fox was running a lighthearted flash-mob reality show called Mobbed, and Friends With Benefits, the high-grossing rom-com starring Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis, featured a flash-mob dance in Times Square, pundits and public officials suddenly began railing against flash mobs as a threat to public order. The convenience store knock-overs became “flash mob robberies,” or even “flash robs.” “The evolution of flash mobs from pranks to crime and revolution,” declared one of my local papers, the San Francisco Examiner, after the hacktivist group Anonymous had helped to create subway shutdowns.

Here is where the story got a bit uncomfortable for me personally. The Examiner‘s flash-mob timeline, which ended in a terrifying stew of rioting and revolution, literally began with my name. Back in 2003, as a sort of social experiment, I sent an email to friends and asked them to forward it along, looking to gather “inexplicable mobs” of people around New York. Then, over the span of just a couple of months, I watched in amazement as my prank turned into a worldwide fad. I should add that the first flash mobs weren’t like either the Friends With Benefits kind or the burn-and-loot kindor, maybe I should say, they were a little like both. Like the happy mobs, they were good-natured spectacles, and they often involved the crowd performing some benign group action: bowing before a robotic dinosaur, making birdcalls in Central Park. Like the violent mobs, though, they were highly spontaneous; the crowd was told where they were going and what they would do there only minutes beforehand. And the goal of the get-togethers was not to entertain but, if I may borrow a phrase, to “link up and cause havic.”

I even called my events “mobs,” as a wink to the scary connotations of a large group gathered for no good reason. But I didn’t come up with the name flash mobthat honor belongs to Sean Savage, a UC Berkeley grad student who was blogging about my events and the copycats as they happened. He added the word “flash” as an analogy to a flash flood, evoking the way that these crowds (which in the original version arrived all at once and were gone in 10 minutes or less) rushed in and out like water from a sudden storm. Savage and I never met while the original mobs were still going on, but today we work just a block away from each other in San Franciscome at Wired, him at Frog Design, where he’s an interaction designerso we now can get together and commiserate about what’s become of our mutual creation. It had been bad enough to see the term get appropriated by Oprah to describe a ridiculous public dance party featuring the Black Eyed Peas. Now the media was stretching the term to include just about any sort of group crime. “It means everything and nothing now,” Savage says morosely.

One reason the term “flash mob” stuck back in 2003 was its resonance, among some sci-fi fans who read Savage’s blog, with a 1973 short story by Larry Niven called “Flash Crowd.” Niven’s tale revolved around the effects of cheap teleportation technology, depicting a future California where “displacement booths” line the street like telephone booths. The story is set in motion when its protagonist, a TV journalist, inadvertently touches off a riot with one of his news reports. Thanks to teleportation, the rioting burns out of control for days, as thrill-seekers use the booths to beam in from all around to watch and loot. Reading “Flash Crowd” back in 2003, I hadn’t seen much connection to my own mobs, which I intended as a joke about the slavishness of fads. I laughed off anyone who worried about these mobs getting violent. In 2011, though, it does feel like Niven got something chillingly correct. He seems especially prescient in the way he describes the interplay of curiosity, large numbers, and low-level criminality that causes his fictional riots to grow. “How many people would be dumb enough to come watch a riot?” the narrator asks. “But that little percentage, they all came at once, from all over the United States and some other places, too. And the more there were, the bigger the crowd got, the louder it gotthe better it looked to the looters … And the looters came from everywhere, too.”

That last line passed for science fiction in 1973. The not-infrequent riots that wracked American cities in the 1960s tended to be strikingly localized, with rioters taking out their aggression on the immediate neighborhood in which they lived. By contrast, Nick de Bois says that of the 165 or so people arrested so far for the looting in Enfield Town, only around 60 percent hailed from the local borough, which includes not just greater Enfield but a few surrounding towns. The other 40 percent commuted in from elsewhere, including locales as far afield as Essex and Twickenham, each a good hour’s drive away. Instead of teleportation booths replacing telephone boothshow quaint!it turned out that those phones merely had to shrink down enough to fit into our pockets.

Riot crackdown in Enfield Town, UK on August 7, 2011. AP

In trying to understand how and why crowds go wrong, you can have no better guide than Clifford Stott, senior lecturer in social psychology at the University of Liverpool. Stott has risked his life researching his subject. Specifically, he has spent most of his careermore than 20 years so farconducting a firsthand study of violence among soccer fans. On one particularly dicey trip to Marseilles in 1998, Stott and a small crowd of Englishmen ran away from a cloud of tear gas only to find themselves facing a gang of 50 French toughs, some of them wielding bottles and driftwood. “If you are on your own,” a philosophical fellow Brit remarked to Stott at that moment, “you’re going to get fucked.” This, in a sense, is the fundamental wisdom at the heart of Stott’s workthough he does couch it in somewhat more respectable language.

To Stott, members of a crowd are never really “on their own.” Based on a set of ideas that he and other social psychologists call ESIM (Elaborated Social Identity Model), Stott believes crowds form what are essentially shared identities, which evolve as the situation changes. We might see a crowd doing something that appears to us to be just mindless violence, but to those in the throng, the actions make perfect sense. With this notion, Stott and his colleagues are trying to rebut an influential line of thinking on crowd violence that stretches from Gustave Le Bon, whose 1895 treatise, The Crowd, launched the field of crowd psychology, up to Philip Zimbardo, the psychologist behind the infamous Stanford Prison Experiment of 1971. To explain group disorder, Zimbardo and other mid-20th-century psychologists blamed a process they called deindividuation, by which a crowd frees its members to carry out their baser impulses. Through anonymity, in Zimbardo’s view, the strictures of society were lifted from crowds, pushing them toward a state of anarchy and thereby toward senseless violence.

By contrast, Stott sees crowds as the opposite of ruleless, and crowd violence as the opposite of senseless: What seems like anarchic behavior is in fact governed by a shared self-conception and thus a shared set of grievances. Stott’s response to the riots has been unpopular with many of his countrymen. Unlike Zimbardo, who would respondand indeed has responded over the yearsto incidents of group misbehavior by speaking darkly of moral breakdown, Stott brings the focus back to the long history of societal slights, usually by police, that primed so many young people to riot in the first place.

Meeting Stott in person, one can see how he’s been able to blend in with soccer fans over the years. He’s a stocky guy, with a likably craggy face and a nose that looks suspiciously like it’s been broken a few times. When asked why the recent riots happened, his answers always come back to poor policingparticularly in Tottenham, where questions over the death of a young man went unaddressed by police for days and where the subsequent protest was met with arbitrary violence. Stott singles out one moment when police seemed to handle a young woman roughly and an image of that mistreatment was tweeted (and BBMed) throughout London’s black community and beyond. It was around then that the identity of the crowd shifted, decisively, to outright combat against the police.

Stott boils down the violent potential of a crowd to two basic factors. The first is what he and other social psychologists call legitimacythe extent to which the crowd feels that the police and the whole social order still deserve to be obeyed. In combustible situations, the shared identity of a crowd is really about legitimacy, since individuals usually start out with different attitudes toward the police but then are steered toward greater unanimity by what they see and hear. Paul Torrens, a University of Maryland professor who builds 3-D computer models of riots and other crowd events, imbues each agent in his simulations with an initial Legitimacy score on a scale from 0 (total disrespect for police authority) to 1 (absolute deference). Then he allows the agents to influence one another. It’s a crude model, but it’s useful in seeing the importance of a crowd’s initial perception of legitimacy. A crowd where every member has a low L will be predisposed to rebel from the outset; a more varied crowd, by contrast, will take significantly longer to turn ugly, if it ever does.

It’s easy to see how technology can significantly change this starting position. When that tweet or text or BBM blast goes out declaring, as the Enfield message did, that “police can’t stop it,” the eventual crowd will be preselected for a very low L indeed. As Stott puts it, flash-mob-style gatherings are special because they “create the identity of a crowd prior to the event itself,” thereby front-loading what he calls the “complex process of norm construction,” which usually takes a substantial amount of time. He hastens to add that crowd identity can be pre-formed through other means, too, and that such gatherings also have to draw from a huge group of willing (and determined) participants. But the technology allows a group of like-minded people to gather with unprecedented speed and scale. “You’ve only got to write one message,” Stott says, “and it can reach 50, or 500, or even 5,000 people with the touch of a button.” If only a tiny fraction of this quickly multiplying audience gets the message and already has prepared itself for disorder, then disorder is what they are likely to create.

Standoff in San Franciscos subway system on August 15, 2011. Corbis

The second factor in crowd violence, in Stott’s view, is simply what he calls power: the perception within a crowd that it has the ability to do what it wants, to take to the streets without fear of punishment. This, in turn, is largely a function of sheer sizeand just as with legitimacy, small gradations can make an enormous difference. We often think about flash mobs and other Internet-gathered crowds as just another type of viral phenomenon, the equivalent of a video that gets a million views instead of a thousand. But in the physical world, the distance separating the typical from the transformational is radically smaller than in the realm of bits. Merely doubling the expected size of a crowd can create a truly combustible situation.

It was this problem of sheer volume, in retrospect, that tripped up Ryan Raddonaka Kaskade, a Santa Monica, California, electronic dance artistin his ill-fated PR stunt last July. The plan was simple enough: To celebrate the release of Electric Daisy Carnival Experience, a documentary about the electronic dance music scene that prominently featured him, Raddon would put on a short show outside the premiere, at the iconic Grauman’s Chinese Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard. He got a permit from the fire department to shut down one lane of traffic. The idea was that the crowd would assemble on the sidewalk; he would cruise in, playing music on the back of a truck, and stop right in front, blocking that one agreed-upon lane. Really, it was a very elegant plan, and at 1:36 pm, he sent out the fateful tweet:

Today@6pm in Hollywood @Mann’s Chinese Theatre. ME+BIG SPEAKERS+ MUSIC=BLOCK PARTY!!! RT!

As Raddon was to discover, though, the math of physical space is unforgiving. The stretch of sidewalk directly in front of the theater is around 130 feet wide by 12 feet deep, while the outer courtyard offers a second viewing area of perhaps twice that size. Since even a dense crowd accommodates only around one person per 4.5 square feet, this would imply a maximum audience of about a thousand. By the time Raddon’s truck arrived, though, the crowd had swelled to roughly 5,000, stretching both ways down the block and thickly obstructing all six lanes of traffic. Police and news helicopters rotored overhead; fistfights began to break out. There was nowhere for Raddon’s truck to pull in, so the police directed him around the corner.

Then they tried to disperse the crowd, sending a line of riot cops down Hollywood Boulevard. They barked an order to leave the street, even though the sidewalks could not fit another person, let alone another thousand. Some fans responded by throwing bottles at the police, who in turn shot beanbag cannons into the crowd. Pandemonium ensued, with Raddon’s fans surging onto the tops of police cars and resisting arrest. Around the corner on Orange Drive, a cruiser was set ablaze. The dismal drift of the event is well captured in Raddon’s Twitter stream, which started out so cocksure just before his arrival but which escalated, over the course of 90 minutes, into an agitated blizzard of all-caps:

6:58 pm

Everybody CHILL OUT!!! The cops are freaking out. BE SAFE AND LET’S HAVE SOME FUN!

7:18 pm

EVERYONE CHILL NOW!!! The block party has officially been shut down! BUT THIS IS TOO CRAZY AND WE NEED TO BE SAFE!

7:31 pm

EVERYONE NEEDS TO GO HOME NOW! I DON’T WANT THIS TO REFLECT BADLY ON EDM OR WHAT WE ARE ABOUT. BE RESPECTFUL AND CHILL OUT!!!

When I meet Raddon a few months laterat the studio suite in Santa Monica that he shares, a bit incongruously, with the R&B legend Booker T. Joneshe’s still puzzling over why so many people came. At first blush, this sounds like false modesty: A week before we meet, a fan poll cosponsored by DJ Times magazine named him “America’s Best DJ,” a serious honor in the electronic dance scene. But as Raddon points out, he doesn’t even have a major-label record deal, and with 138,000 followers, he certainly doesn’t rank very high among musicians on Twitter: Lady Gaga now has more than 16 million, a minor big-label star like Jason Mraz boasts more than 2 million, and indie heavies like the Decemberists top 200,000, easy. It’s hard to believe that even Mraz, or “Weird Al” Yankovic (2.2 million), could draw out 5,000 people on just four hours’ notice.

Really, Raddon was right: On their face, at least, the numbers don’t add up. It’s not as if his appeal is somehow regional to Southern California; the electronic dance music fan base is truly worldwide. So even a generous estimate of around 10 percent local would put barely more than 13,500 of his Twitter followers within driving distance of the show. How did he get nearly half that many people to drop what they were doing and almost immediately schlep out to Hollywood Boulevard? And how did that crowd, of all crowdsa fan base known for its gratuitous hug-giving and cuddle-puddlingescalate into a full-blown riot?

To the first question, at least, Raddon has come up with a preliminary answer, and it’s a smart one, because it gets at the changing nature of the subculture he inhabits. It has become a clich these days to talk about “engagement” in social media, about the magical way that some users and institutions online are able to punch above their weight, as it were, in the devotion of their relatively small groups of followers. But among dance music fans, super-engagement is a real and rational phenomenon, because social media serves not just as a diversion or a supplemental source of information but as the entire lifeline of their scene. Even the largest house acts have tended not to be on major labels. Raddon himself is signed to a small New York-based outfit called Ultra Records, which sells all its music online; it’s vanishingly rare for an Ultra artist to hit the Billboard Hot 100, but the label’s YouTube channel is the fifth-most-viewed music channel of all time and the 11th-most-viewed channel of any type. Unless you’re extremely diligent about following Raddon or his label or other big acts on social media, you might never hear about even the major shows in your area.

“Electronic dance music is still something that you have to find,” Raddon says. “It’s not on the radio, it’s not on TV. These people really had to search me out.” And the sense of shared community this engenders cannot be overstated. Ten years ago, the dance music scene was finely sliced into such an interminable array of genre divisions that it became a joke: aquatic techno-funk, down-tempo future jazz, goa-trance, hard chill ambient, techxotica, and so on. In the past decade or so, though, despite all the ways that the Internet encourages music to nichify, the rise of social media has actually pushed electronic dance music in the opposite direction. Witnessing its sheer numbers, sensing its collective power, the dance scene has reunified, becoming more of a mass phenomenonan undifferentiated subculture of millions. It turns out that the thrill of collective identity, a moblike feeling of shared enormity, is far more exciting to fans than were their endless dives down rabbit holes of sonic purism.

Can you see how this starts to hint at an answer to the second question? The one about why a raver crowd became a riot? Think of it this way: To show up at Kaskade’s block partyand to hang around even after, or especially after, the police have come to send you homeis a decision that’s about far more than taste in music. It’s about being part of a group that has long felt invisible (no radio, no TV) despite the existence of enormous numbers. One might call this the emergence of mega-undergrounds, groups of people for whom the rise of Facebook and Twitter has laid bare the disconnect between their real scale and the puny extent to which the dominant culture recognizes them. For these groups, suddenly coalescing into a crowd feels like stepping out from the shadows, like forcing society to respect the numbers that they now know themselves to command.

Every disorderly flash mob that I’ve mentioned in this story has been, at root, a mega-underground phenomenon. In many cases, this brings us back around to the uncomfortable subject of race. In the US, the biggest and most important of the urban flash mobs that politicians have railed against (and that right-wingers now fret about as representing the specter of black insurrection) weren’t gathered by calls to violence, as in London. Instead, they were essentially about African-American teenagers showing their numbers, about kids taking overfor a brief window of timesome highly visible public spaces where they normally feel less than welcome. In Kansas City, a police investigation found that the mobs in April 2010 were gathered via Facebook, bringing between 700 and 900 kids to the aptly named Country Club Plaza, lined with plush stores. The Philadelphia mobs that same spring were touched off by a popular dance crew called Team Nike, who tweeted about the public performances they were giving; as in LA, though, these tweets got widely forwarded with an eye toward creating impromptu street parties on South Street and at the Gallery mall. Elijah Anderson, a Yale sociologist and Philly native who studies poor urban communities, has coined the term “cosmopolitan canopy” to describe these kinds of spaces. They’re the places where people of different races and class backgrounds come together, which makes them the closest thing we have today to a commons; for teens, especially poorer teens, the cosmopolitan canopy represents society and authority in the way that a statehouse or bank headquarters ought to but doesn’t.

And it’s not too far a stretch to extend this same idea into the realm of protests. This is, at root, the way that Occupy Wall Street defied expectations to become a genuine political force. The media harped on how these protests grew through Twitter, but it was really the movement’s Tumblrwearethe99percent.tumblr.comthat made it work. Those photos of struggling Americans essentially virtualized the occupation; the street protesters were merely the visible symbol of the giant, subterranean mob of Americans struggling to get by. What’s really revolutionary about all these gatheringswhat remains both dangerous and magnificent about themis the way they represent a disconnected group getting connected, a mega-underground casting off its invisibility to embody itself, formidably, in physical space.

None of this can entirely explain Enfield, though. What remains shocking about that riot is the way it evolved in the moment, forming and reforming, eluding attempts to contain it. I keep coming back to one particular video from that night, a 50-second clip that captures the moment when G. Mantella, a mom-and-pop jewelry store, got hit for $65,000 in merchandise. Seriously, go watch the video right now, if you’re near a browser: It’s at wrdm.ag/riotvideo. The camera moves at walking pace toward the store, through a large but loose milling crowd. Who is a spectator? Who is a looter? Everyone looks simultaneously like neither and both. There’s a remarkable moment at 0:30 where a guy in a hoodie walks by, clutching a smartphone to his chest, looking cannily over his shoulder. He’s clearly taken on the group identity, but his peculiar expression betrays something strange about the nature and extent of his affiliation. The device in his hands connects him but it also frees him, allowing him to stay in and out of the mob at the same time.

The camera approaches the jewelry store just as three police vans come screaming up, and the looters stream out of the store at top speed. It’s the only point in the video that you see a real, thick, densely packed crowd, and that’s at the moment right before it gets dispersed. What isn’t clear from the videowhat I didn’t realize until I took the train up to Enfield Town and made my own walk from the station to the squarewas just how open this whole space is, how far back the buildings sit from the relatively wide streets. In LA, it had taken the confidence of a thickly gathered mob of ravers to confront the police. Here in Enfield, you had a few hundred people ranging around, gathering to loot, dispersing, and then reconvening soon thereafter to strike again. This was the pattern in Brixton, too, in South London, where rioters looted and burned a shopping district, scattered, and then reemerged a half-mile away to hit an electronics superstore. As Nick de Bois says, “It was organized, but it was dynamic.”

Really, what the video reveals is an extra dimension to the phenomenon of “power,” which turns out to be about more than sheer numbers. In the pre-cell-phone eraas Cliff Stott observed in Marseillesoverall numbers didn’t matter one bit if you could not keep physically connected. In Among the Thugs, Bill Buford’s first-person account of soccer hooliganism, he describes the remarkable discipline that even these drunken, anarchic yobs had to maintain to carry out violence against opposing fans: “Everyone is jogging in formation, tightly compressed, silent.” Step out of the phalanx to grab a pint or take a piss and you might never find your fellows again; in the meantime, the opposing mob might find you alone. Today, by contrast, a crowd’s power is amplified by the fact that its members can never really get separated. A crowd that’s always connected can never really be dispersed. It’s always still out there.

Among the more idealistic people who organize protests, not riots, there are dreams of creating special tools that can guide crowds in the moment, making them even more effective at thwarting or eluding police. At the London Hackspace, a maker workshop in the city’s Hackney borough, I met up with Sam Carlisle, codeveloper of an app called Sukey. Initially concocted to aid a series of student actions last winterprotesting an enormous hike in university fees that was being pushed through by the new Conservative-led governmentSukey has the very specific goal of frustrating that police tactic of kettling, which can imprison activists on the street for hours. To combat this maneuver, Sukey polls protesters in real time to identify exit points to public spaces that are blocked by police. Carlisle and his fellow developers are talking with protest groups about how to expand the app’s reach, creating dedicated apps for multiple smartphone platforms, in multiple languages, for use all around the world.

It’s a great idea in principle. But it seems hard to believe that any dedicated app for crowd communication could possibly be more effective than BBM was in London. In a protest crowd of any significant size, there will be a huge contingent that steps out at the spur of the moment, with no thought of downloading a special app or even bookmarking a URL. When disorder strikes or danger looms, they will fall back on the social ties they have already established, the tools they already possess, the patterns they already follow.

Among tech journalists, BlackBerry is considered to be “old-fashioned, lame, commoditized technology,” as Mike Butcher, the blogger and digital adviser in London puts it. But BBM is private, decentralized, blindingly fast, andmost importantubiquitous. My colleague Robert Capps has called this phenomenon the Good Enough Revolution (issue 17.09), though I doubt he imagined that last word would ever assume, as it did in the streets of London, such an uncomfortably literal connotation. For tech to become effective as a tool for civic disorder, it first had to insinuate itself into people’s daily lives. Now that it has, there can be no getting rid of it. The agent provocateur lives inside our pockets and purses and cannot be uninstalled.

By the end of “Flash Crowd,” Niven’s fictional journalist, the guy accused of setting off the giant riot in the first place, has dreamed up a system to stop the violence from recurring. It involves the police both curtailing the teleportation technology and commandeering it. Cops, in his scheme, would get to ban all arrivals near the site of unrest, switching the booths so that they only senddirectly to the inside of a police station or mass jail.

In the aftermath of the UK riots, the proposals floating around Parliament sounded every bit as intrusive, if not more so. Representatives of Facebook and Twitter were called in to discuss emergency plans to throttle their services. Research in Motion, the maker of BlackBerry, has promised (or so it has been reported) that it would halt BBM if riots happened again. But for the same basic reason that the technologies have proved instrumental in crowd disordersthe ubiquity of their use, among not just young people but all classes and professionsone has to doubt whether governments and tech companies will really have the stomach to carry out these draconian countermeasures. Vital emergency personnel routinely rely on BBM and other smartphone services, so an outright shutdown might easily sacrifice more lives than it saves.

So what’s a police force to do? In late September, the Dallas Police Department played host to a conference called SMILE (Social Media, the Internet, and Law Enforcement), and this question was very much in the air. Mike Parker, a captain at the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, said that his force monitors social media and looks to disrupt problems before they start. He used an example of an entertainerhe wouldn’t specify the namewho tweeted to his half-million followers that he would be making a guerrilla appearance at a local electronics store. Once the police were tipped off to this, they helped to make a clever intervention: By the time the celebrity showed up, store employees had set up a folding table near the front for him, and two cops hung around to watch. “You can imagine how happy he wasn’t, when he showed up,” Parker says with barely restrained glee. “His whole plan was to create a spontaneous, ‘cool’ event, and instead it ended up looking organized.”

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But to stay abreast of such would-be mobs, police would need to monitor social media with a level of intelligenceattuned to popularity, cognizant of slang, filtering for locationthat right now is beyond the reach of even sophisticated tech startups, let alone cash-strapped police departments. The pitfalls of this task were apparent when David Gerulski, from a firm called DigitalStakeout, took the podium to give a demo. With his service, he promised the assembled officers, they could stop tinkering with social media and “go back to kicking down doors and sticking guns in people’s faces!” On the big screen, he projected a map from his software’s filtering system showing recent and potentially dangerous tweets from Dallas. He drilled down on one tweet in particular, from a user named Evy: suck a dick and die! Jk. (:

“Who’s she talking to? What’s she talking about?” he asked in a portentous tone. “It wasn’t that long ago that Representative Giffords got shot in Arizona. So, with an angry post like this, you want to find out, is this serious?”

“It says JK,” someone called out from the audience. “As in: ‘just kidding.’ ”

“Ah,” Gerulski replied. “I didn’t know the JK.”

The most sensible way of looking at this problem is to ask how policing strategies that succeed in the offline world might be extended onto social media. The key to “community policing” has always been that police can gain trust over time but thenwhen tensions run highcan also quickly demonstrate a presence, making it clear that the law is watching. At the SMILE conference, Scott Mills, an officer from Toronto who works with teens (his Twitter handle, @GraffitiBMXCop, gives a sense of his particular cred), puts this very principle into practice, integrating location-based social media with “walking the beat.” When Mills is called to a crime scene, he checks into Foursquareand he knows so many kids, he says, that they come find him.

Beyond smarter policing, though, there is only so much that government can do. We probably need to accept, as a simple fact of life in the digital age, that the freedom of assembly will necessarily imply the freedom of an enormous group of peoplesometimes people who don’t always behave themselvesto assemble with little or no warning. It’s worth mentioning that in “Flash Crowd,” the journalist never gets around to pitching the authorities on his plan to stop the riots. In the story’s very last lines, an anchorman at his network tells him about a new flash crowd that’s just cropped up. This one is nearly as large, but it’s merely there to witness the red tide at Hermosa Beach, which a celebrity had praised on TV. “It’s a happy riot,” his colleague says, a bit perplexed. “There’s just a bitch of a lot of people.” The journalist takes the assignment, grabs a camera, steps into the booth, and disappears.

Senior editor Bill Wasik (@billwasik) is the author of And Then There’s This: How Stories Live and Die in Viral Culture.

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apexart-journal · 8 years ago

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Mimi Lipson in Montevideo, Day 6

Today is a “free day” for me--nothing on the schedule other than a skype check-in with the home office. I’m going to catch up on Thursday and Friday’s activities, and then go do all those off-the-record things. You know--visit a whorehouse, traffic in human remains...

Thursday began at dawn, with the first genuinely non-touristic activity I’ve been assigned so far.

I was invited to sit in on a philosophical anthropology class at Universidad Catolica del Uruguay, which is a private Jesuit school.

The class was at 8 a.m., which stressed me out, but I got there on the bus in a few minutes, no problem. It’s not far from the stadium, and I could have walked. I try to walk to things that are walkable. I did get to see a bit of the neighborhood north of the stadium. By contrast, I see that Pocitos--where I am--is kind of special. Fewer trees here, fewer businesses.

Montevideans seem to be crazy about ice cream, by the way. I see people walking around with ice cream cones everywhere, despite being bundled up against the 65-degree weather.

Che and Lenin. I’m hearing a little more about what the Uruguayan type of socialism means for the lived experience. More on that later.

So, the morning started in a classroom. I find myself very at home in this setting. I’ve spend a lot of my life in school, after all.

The class, which was taught by Male Reyes--a friend and colleague of Javier’s--is conducted in English, because it’s for business students. It surprised me that there would be a philosophical anthropology class for business students. I imagined they would treat it as a “gut course” or at least just not be very engaged, but that was not the case. Male conducted the class pretty much entirely as a discussion. I didn’t learn what the assigned reading had been, actually. She began the class by writing on the white board:

“Can human beings be considered as machines?”

and under that:

“The Blue Whale Game”

Everyone but me had heard of the Blue Whale Game. If you don’t know: the “game” is a series of 50 tasks. Players are recruited through a facebook group, which started in Russia, and it is aimed at tweens and young teens--mostly age 10-16. The tasks are assigned by a “guide” and must be documented. They begin with things like getting up at 4 a.m. and watching a certain horror movie. One task is to carve a blue whale in your arm. The tasks get creepier as you go along. You watch a video of someone committing suicide. The 50th task is to kill yourself. The players know this is how the game ends, and if you try to leave the game, your family is threatened. Dystopic, right? Supposedly, hundreds of kids have committed suicide in this way, and it has spread from Russia to Ukraine, the Baltics, and as far as Brazil and Uruguay.

So that is the Blue Whale Game, and Male used it to frame the question of whether humans can be considered as machines. It was a way of talking about free will, of course, but the discussion was far-ranging, and the kids were really responding with their guts--not regurgitating something they read but expressing and then questioning own their gut feelings. Someone brought up Hamlet, someone else mentioned Dr. Kevorkian. It felt like a very interesting dinner party conversation. I can’t overstate how impressed I was by Male and her students. Business students!

I was pretty jazzed by the end of the class. Male invited me to visit again, and I think I will, though 8 a.m. comes pretty early. I would have liked to sit with her and have a cup of coffee, but she had to rush off to meet a client. She is also a psychologist.

Took a bus to Ciudad Vieja for the next stop, which was the Carnival Museum.

I was trying to get a picture of that guy’s hat, which said “Brooklyn Nets.” The guy sitting on the raised platform is the ticket man. I have a card preloaded with 50 rides. You can either pay the guy or scan your card on the yellow box and get a ticket. I was getting error messages pretty consistently, and the guy would aways ask, “Una hora o dos?” So now I tell them “Una hora” before scanning, and sometimes I still get an error message and have to try several times. It’s a little mysterious, but I always get a ticket one way or another.

The Carnival Museum is on the waterfront, across from the port. Maybe because it’s where cruise ships disembark, this also turns out to be where Montevideo’s gringo gulch is located. It was the only place I’ve been where I saw waiters hanging around outside cafes greeting passers-by in English. Also the only crosswalk I’ve seen so far.

They don’t seem to have much tourist infrastructure here. When I’ve asked people why, I’ve been told that the tourists bypass Uruguay for Argentina and Brazil. The smallness of Uruguay is a common theme. People refer to the country’s size with a kind of gentle shrug, but there are a lot of implications to being in the shadow of two giants.

I was supposed to get a museum pass at the Carnival Museum, which I would be using for several other museums, but they didn’t sell them there. They directed me to the Museum of Indigenous and Pre-Columbian Art (on display, among other objets, was this nifty little pre-Columbian pipe organ.

I waited around there, but when the party responsible for selling passes showed up she told me there were no more and she didn’t know when there would be any more. As it happened, the admission to the Carnival Museum was only 100 pesos, or about $3.50.

Traditionally (not sure if it’s still the case), “tablados”--elaborate life-sized papier-mâché dioramas--were a feature of Uruguayan carnival. They had some funny little models recreated from photographs.

I love the papier-mâché. But okay, I already said I don’t care much about soccer, and now I will confess that I’m a little worse than indifferent to the idea of Carnival. I know that sounds bad, but street festivals and exuberant cultural gatherings are just not my thing. I’ll go to a demonstration, but I don’t go for the body painting/sign-whimsy/revelry aspects. Furthermore, I have a kind of allergy to Official Culture--street culture that is repackaged for tourism. The museum was kind of a blessing for me, because I could inspect the costumes on my own terms.

Those are Cabezones, for obvious reasons.

There was an exhibit of costumes by two designers: Ivan Arroqui and Mariela Gotuzzo.

Carnival lasts for 40 days here and features costumed street performances called murgas--musicals, essentially, with drum/guitar bands and musical numbers and speeches on satirical political themes, performed by the members of clubs, who used to also make the costumes, though they no longer do. Traditionally, the club members are working class men. The description reminded me a little of the mummers in Philadelphia, except that they are full-blown productions. Murgas are unique to Uruguay, or that’s the impression I got.

Some of the murga costumes there were loud, flashy kitchen-sink affairs, but some, like Blue Circles (above), were really stylish and graphically interesting. Many were made with salvaged materials, like bottle caps and such. Are these condoms?

Medical waste!

Seeing this work, I thought: this is my jam. I want to work on costumes, not wear them or fight the crowds to look at them. There was an exhibit about a program where women prisoners make costumes, like this Carmen Miranda number, and I thought that was cool. Humane. I can understand the value of making things as a way of hanging onto yourself in a bad situation. I’ve often done that myself.

The evening program involved another cultural touchstone: a tango concert at Mercado Agricola de Montevideo (MAM), which is an old farmer’s market that has been restored to be something like the Farmer’s Market on Fairfax in Los Angeles, if you’ve ever been there: fruit stands, meat markets, shops, food court.

I was picked up by Florencia, another friend of Javier’s. I could tell right away that Florencia was a good person by the way she let people cross at intersections. She does film transcriptions for the hearing and seeing impaired, and like virtually everyone I’ve met so far, she was born and raised here. We picked up her nephew, Martin--a 17-year-old high school student who wanted a chance to practice his English.

It was so great to hang out with Martin and Florencia. I got to ask them a lot of questions about living here and growing up here. Martin is concentrating in engineering at school but he told me (unless I misunderstood) that all high school students are required to take a socioeconomics course. He’d written a term paper on immigration. I was surprised to hear that there aren’t many people coming here from Central America; most of the migrants these days are from Venezuela. Martin was the one who told me that a lot of people live in Parque Batlle. He said there is a big homeless population and students at his school bring meals around to people sometimes rather than having them come to soup kitchens. He said it was better that way: that you got to know people a little when you went to where they were. Which sounds very true.

I asked about their government. The parliament has been in the control of Frente Amplio, a leftist coalition, since 2005 when Tabaré Vázquez was elected. I don’t really want to bore you with a run-down except to say that they seemed pretty sure the right-wing party would win the next election. Florencia didn’t seem all that bothered by it. She said F.A. was too entrenched, etc., and wasn’t dealing with the country’s problems--the most urgent, she said, being the educational system.

Here’s what I learned about how education works: the public university is free, and admission is open. If you graduate and get a job in the field for which you were educated, you pay a tax--for life. If you don’t graduate or don’t get such a job, no tax. Florencia and Martin say that people can’t flunk out. They say there is a problem of people staying in school for the student discounts and never graduating and being a burden on the system. It’s a little much for me to digest. I tend to think, fine! Let people be students forever, and education SHOULD be free. I didn’t get the sense that they were worried about freeloading, though. I think the issue was that people weren’t contributing, and that society needs all hands.

Another thing we talked about was healthcare, and here is an area where the size of the country is a real problem. There are many types of specialty medicine for which care is practically speaking unavailable here and one must go to Argentina. But socio (their universal health insurance) won’t reimburse those expenses.

Okay, so during this conversation we arrived at MAM for the tango concert.

The building is beautiful. Looks like they put on a whole new roof pretty recently.

I took this picture because Florencia told me it was a “famous meat company.” Beef is the big big commodity here.

The tango singer we were there to see was Valeria Lima, who was performing with a band in the food court. We got there kind of late, and the only table was at the back. This was a close as I got.

Very dramatic, just like you’d think. The crowd was mostly older people. When Florencia left the table to buy some pizza (another Uruguayan obsession--there’s a pizza parlor on practically every corner, and Italian is the majority ethnicity, as I have been reminded many times), Martin confessed that he doesn’t really like tango. He said there were some groups that play a contemporary, electronic form of tango, and he likes that better.

Coca Cola is also ubiquitous.

The pizza, by the way, was awful. Sorry, Montevideo, but that’s worse than school cafeteria pizza! But it was sort of beside the point, as was the tango concert. It was all about Martin and Florencia for me.

I need a break. I’ll do a roundup of Friday later.

#Mimi Lipson #Outbound to Montevideo

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