#and yet they still too young according to the tory's to do other stuff

[thetimelordbatgirl]

Okayyyyy so wait: The tory's are on about making it mandatory for 18 year old's to join the military for a year (or do a month of unpaid work disguised as community service). And yet, they still think people can't be allowed to make decisions about their own body/gender until they 25 (and potentially older since terf's always move the goal post)??? They really said: "too young to know anything about yourself and your gender and body, but old enough to be forced to go fight and potentially die-"

[lo-55]

Shattered Chains of Fate Ch.11

Silver and Steel 

Ichigo holds his sword firmly, his eyes narrowed at the man in front of him. They’d separated. Ukitake stays behind, but Ichigo has no doubt that he’s just as powerful as the man in front of him.

 Ichigo knows good and well that he can’t beat the both of them, but that won’t stop him from trying. Rukia still stands behind him, uncertain.

 “I can see you’re determined,” hatman says. He changes his stance. “It’s unfortunate, but today my zanpakuto is feeling playful. She’s a bit picky, you understand, but you’ve gotten her interest.”

 “Lucky me,” Ichigo says dryly.

 That get’s the man to laugh.

 “I’m Shunsui Kyoraku, the captain of squad eight, and you won’t find me so easy to pin as these young bucks here.”

 “...are you aware that that sounds suspiciously like an innuendo,” Ichigo narrows his eyes at the man, Kyoraku, who looks startled but laughs a moment later.

 “We’re going to have fun with you,” he predicts. There’s an undercurrent in his easy voice, something that is not quite malice but still not nice. Ichigo cocks his head.

 “We’ll see.”

 Kyoraku crosses his swords at the blade and changes his stance. The world seems to shift, just enough to set Ichigo’s teeth on edge. It’s a familiar sensation, one he’s missed in the past few months. He knows, as soon as this Katen Kyokotsu is released, what has been done.

 They’re in a reality marble, or something akin to it.

 Ichigo narrows his eyes. This is a man strong enough to warp reality itself to his whims.

 “You have to know you can’t win,” Ukitake actually sounds gentle. “If you give up now, you and your friends won’t be hurt.”

 “Until you execute us, you mean,” Ichigo shoots him a dark glare. He has the decency to wince.

 Ichigo looks to the other man. Kyoraku, captain of the eighth. He’s a whole different kind of monster to Kenpachi. Not a claw in the throat but the shadows that lurked just out of reach.

 “So. Shall we begin?”

 “I suppose. However, I should explain now what it means for my Zanpakutou to want to play with you,” Kyoraku’s smile turns just a little bit sharper. “Katen Kyokotsu makes childrens games real.”

 “... you’ve got to be fucking with me,” Ichigo can feel a twitch develop over his eye brow.

 “Excuse me?” Kyoraku asks, cocking his head just so.

 “No, no. See, I met a little girl who makes nursery rhymes real, and now you’re going to make a kids game real. That just. Yeah. That’s my life. Why the fuck not.” Ichigo shakes his head. “What game are we playing?”

 Kyoraku looks intrigued by his admittance, but tells him all the same.

 “Have you ever played Kagome Kagome?”

 Ichigo was exasperated. “Which of us is the demon?”

 Kyoraku started walking, clock wise, leaving a trail of copies behind him while shadows slithered up and locked around Ichigo’s eyes. He stiffened, but he knew how powers like these worked. Kyoraku was just as bound by the rules as he was.

 The question was, now, what happened if he guess wrong? What damage would it do?

 Kyoraku’s voice echoed around him. It circled him on all sides, front and back, left and right.

     Kagome kagome  

     Kago no naka no tori wa  

     Itsu itsu deyaru  

     Yoake no ban ni  

     Tsuru to kame ga subetta.  

     Ushiro no shoumen daare  

     Kagome kagome, The bird is in the cage,  

 Ichigo tilts his head. The voice will be no help. This game is hardly fair.

     When, oh when will it come out  

     In the night of dawn  

 On top of that, all of the space around them now feels distinctly like Kyoraku. The laugh on the wind, the shadow at his back, the scent of sake and, now, some type of bun. He can’t feel where Kyoraku is, and the song is coming to a close.

     The crane and turtle slipped  

     Who is behind you now?  

 Ichigo swallows thickly. His instincts hum under his skin. He’s always trusted them. They’ve guided and protected him well for years.

 And, according to the prickling along his arms, the greatest source of danger is to his right.

 “A shadow,” Ichigo says with sudden certainty. “It’s one of the copies of you.”

 He swings to the right, fast and hard, and feels flesh cave to the bite of Zangetsu.

 It’s the last good blow he makes in the fight.

 *

 “So. What do you think is wrong with him?”

 “Karin!” Yuzu frowns minutely at her sister from where she stands before the stove, a ladle in one hand. Sauce bubbles cheerfully in the pot in front of her,

 “What? We both know there’s something weird about Ichigo. There’s been something weird about him since he got home. And now he’s even weirder. Does he really think we believe he’s our brother?”

 “Karin!”

 “What?” Karin is unrepentant. They both know. Ever since Ichigo came back he’s been weird. He’s up at all hours, he barely sleeps and he’s skittish as all hell. Karin has started walking louder to make sure he jumps less when she shows up in the room. Even their dad has started acting different and distant from Ichigo. On top of all that, Ichigo is more physically affectionate that she’s ever seen him in their lives.

 “I’m pretty sure that the guy upstairs now isn’t even Ichigo. He’s a clone or something.”

 “That’s a horrible thing to say!”

 “But’s it’s true!” Karin insists. Yuzu falters, the irritated furrow in her brow easing. The spatula in her hand is brandished like a weapon until she sets it on the spoon holder beside the stove.

 “But he looks just like Ichigo…”

 “The one that came back from his trip is definitely Ichigo.” Traumatized, and Karin isn't’ an expert but is he supposed to be so traumatized from an explosion? Did he hit his head? Was it worse than he said? That sounds like Ichigo. “But the one we have now is definitely not our brother.”

 “Karin… How is that possible?”

 “Ghosts are possible,” Karin reminds her, ignoring the fact that Yuzu can’t see them. Still, Yuzu believes in them, more than Karin herself does. If she doesn’t acknowledge that they’re there they won’t bother her like they do her brother.

 Yuzu bites her lip.

 “Still… What do we say?”

 “I wasn’t gonna say anything yet,” Karin admits. It’s too soon, and there’s too much weird stuff going on right now. She doesn’t trust that they’ll get the truth if they go after it without more facts to shuffle through whatever crap the adults try to feed them. They’re young, but they aren’t stupid, and Karin knows that they’re going to have to pull answers out like they pull teeth.

 “Good,” Yuzu says with finality. Quieter, with a glance at the ceiling, she adds, “That Ichigo, even if he isn’t our Ichigo, he seems… lonely, Karin.”

 Karin knows the look in her sisters eye. The one she gets with stray cats and the cast off friends that Ichigo brings home sometimes. It’s the look that lead to the entire year they’d spent devoted to guarding a single caterpillar in a jar until it was a butterfly. Yuzu is not the temperamental one, she isn’t the scraper, but there’s not doubt in Karin’s mind that she’s the real power in the household. When Yuzu puts her foot down that’s all there is to it.

 “Then we just make him our,” she says with a roll of her shoulders. Simple as that.”

 “Yeah!” Yuzu grins. “Oh! Did I tell you my doll is haunted?”

 “... huh?”  

 * *

 Shunsui Kyoraku is a dutiful man.

 He does what is required of him, to serve his home and protect his friends. He always has, since he’d first felt the weight of the heavy black kosado on his shoulders. He is the second son of nobility, he was born to know duty . Even if he prefers to be lackadaisy, even if he bends the rules until they’re twisted knots, and lets events take their course, he will follow the orders Yamamoto gives directly.

 He and Juushiro were some of his first students, and they are the only ones left from their class for a reason. He is perhaps one of only five who remain to remember the wolf that Yamamoto truly is, for all he falls to heel at the call of the Central 46 now under the guise of a loyal dog.

 He has seen the fight it had been for Yamamoto to establish the shinigami in the first days of their existence, when the foundations of the world had been shaky and the throne had been empty. He had been there for the first quincy war, one thousand years ago, and then again for the second only two hundred prior.

 That one had hardly been a war. It had been a slaughter, and he had raised his sword to it just as he had been told.

 Now a child stands before him, desperate to save a girl who he can’t have known longer than a summer. She is one of Juushiro’s, one of his favorites in fact. He knows he’s been grooming her to be his next lieutenant for the last forty years, since even before Kaien’s death.

 (Privately he thinks it should be the two of them trying to protect her, but they have seen Yamamoto incinerate men, they have witnessed his      bankai    first hand. If he presses the issue, what chance do they have? They have gone to the Central 46 as captains and nobles and been turned away both times, in spite of the ancient laws.)

     This child,     Shunsui thinks while he bleeds from his shoulder down to his sternum,      is frightening.  

 He is young. He is human, he cannot be more than two decades old. But it is his eyes that are the most unnerving.

 They are not the eyes of someone who knows defeat. They are the eyes of someone who knows that defeat means death. The eyes of someone who has not been beaten by the merits of his simple being alive right now. The fact that he stands before him, with Shunsui’s blood on his sword, is a testament to that fact.

 It’s been a long time since someone had done so well in one of his games. They’re never in anyone else's favor, but now Kyokotsu laughs somewhere in the back of his mind, his swords thrum in his hands.

 Truthfully, Shunsui would rather not kill this child. He would rather not kill any of the children in front of him.

 He knows Juushiro feels the same way. Killing Rukia would be like killing a part of him, too.

 They’ve both sent petitions to the Central 46. Both as captains and as noblemen, but none have been answered. It’s a violation of their own laws, but then the Ryoka had come and their investigation had been cut short.

 According to Nanao, little Hitsugaya has taken over for them.

 Kyokotsu switches games, and Shunsui sinks into the shadows.

 The boy is good, for all he is young. He’s been well trained, he thinks on his feet. He fights like there’s something missing.

 And that red ribbon on Rukia’s wrist. Her new clothes. It’s interesting.

 Shunsui has never seen anything like it. It’s almost like a pseudo bankai, forcibly unlocked by the child in front of him.

 Yes, frightening is really the right word for it.

 The games change. Ichigo catches on quickly to each one, to the rules and the ways they are both bound by them.

 He’s also accumulating more injuries. Cuts on his arms, his back, his chest. Kyokotsu is fond of the boy. It’s rather unfortunate, really.

 Shunsui feels bad when he goes in for a hard attack, an emotion he ruthlessly crushes down. He can’t afford to be worried about an opponent in a battle.

 Ichigo barely moves back. He’s not fast enough to completely dodge the blade the cuts into his shoulder, just shy of his throat.

 Rukia screams, so does the boy from the forth and kid that looks like a shinigami but probably isn’t.

 Blood erupts from the split in his skin, a deadly strike if a slow one. It won’t be a quick death. It might not be a death at all if he can, say, get seen by the fourth division member that’s not twenty feet away in the next ten minutes.

 Shunsui is broken out of that idea when white overtakes red and it is no long blood that splatters out of the child's body, but a paste that looks awfully familiar.

     What in the hell?    

 A half an answer comes a minute later, when a hand grasps Katen by the blade and yanks Shunsui forwards so Ichigo can try to cleave him in half.

 Shunsui blocks with Kyokotsu. The boys reitsu has changed. It was once light and brilliant, a small sun in his young chest. Now it lashes out darkly, black and tinged with red. The eye that turns upon him doesn’t match the other.

 One brown. One yellow, rimmed first in black and then in white.

 A hollow eye.

 It’s only the fact that rules of their current game mean that Shunsui can’t be cut anywhere where his clothes aren’t white, and the fact that his haori and kimono are already off to the side that save him from the brutal counter slash. The boy is fast, his movements vicious and harsh.

 Shunsui separates from the attack. He can feel the wind and the faint crackle of lightning that gives away the presence of the oncoming storm that is Shihoin Yoruichi.

 She crashes into the platform and knocks Ichigo unconscious with something that looks suspiciously like a very large baseball bat.

 She stands before them, two of the old guard, surrounded by children. She cannot take them all, and Ichigo’s reiatsu is still dark and dank, an ocean of shadows that even Shunsui is weary to tread into.

 Kyokotsu laughs softly. She wants to play with this boy. Katen inches forwards, her true nature flickering at the edge of his soul. Pure and holy, she wants to split the boy’s darkness with light.

 Shunsui cannot allow it. He smothers her in the darkness of Kyokotsu and bids her sink further into his soul, a burden he still bears with grace and secrecy.

 “The lost lady of the Shihoin,” Shunsui greets with a smile. “To what do we owe the pleasure of your return?”

 Yoruichi doesn’t answer immediately, and her playful smile is tight around the edges. Shunsui remembers when she and her brother were still just children at their fathers knee. Yukihira hadn’t even been going grey in the temples when he’d died. It seems all Shihoin lived short, fast lives. They are quick shadows that burn away in the light. Disowned or not Yoruichi is now one of the oldest Shihoin on record.

 “You certainly did a number on the boy,” she says instead of answering. Kisuke is involved with this, somehow, the mask is proof enough. Just what do they want with Rukia?

 This changes things.

 The banishment of half the upper echelons of the gotei 13 had never sat right with Shunsui. It was too much too fast, and Kisuke had never struck him as the type. Not to say Kisuke was a good man, but he certainly was not a good enough liar to fool someone like Shunsui for so long, or Shinji for that matter.

 If there weren’t strict orders against it, he might have hunted them down in the living world and demanded answers himself. But Yamamoto had made it clear. No one was to launch any further investigations into the hollowfication incident.

 (Now he wonders again ; why?)

 “He did trounce little Bakuya over there pretty badly,” Shunsui points out.

 “So he did. I’ll be taking him now,” she warns. Her body tenses, ready to flee. Shunsui steps forwards and swings lazily at her head.

 He slices through open air and a few stray purple strands of hair.

 She’s slower now than she was before, he notes, but still fast enough to flee his field of influence before he can cut her down.

 Now all that’s left to do is see to the wounded, figure out what to do with their little turncoats, figure out what’s possessed their central government, find out why a child has been hollowfied, unlock the strange mysteries of Rukia’s new powers, and possibly get drunk.

 Easy breezy.

 An explosion sounds from where Yoruichi has run off to, and Shunsui figures his plans may have to change.

 * * *

 Kon paces the basement of Ichigo’s strange house in his borrowed body, wearing a trail in the cement floor.

 He’s surrounded on all sides by the strange things that Ichigo keeps in here, the magical artifacts and tools that he’s accumulated.

 Amongst all of them is the plain brown box that Kon had found on a table upstairs.

 The weirdo from the dreams,      Merlin    , swears he gave it to Ichigo. Kon would normally call Bullshit but honestly? It’s Ichigo.

 There’s just something about that kid that makes him feel like anything is possible. Even gifts from dream men who smell like too many flowers and don’t give straight answers.

 Kon arranges the thick crystals on the markings carved carefully into the floor. He’d tried to make it look exactly like the picture in the book, but he wasn’t an artist. It didn’t matter. Ichigo’s body seemed to know what they were doing without him having to tell it. He could feel a strange power thrumming through his borrowed skin.

 It sunk in from the world around him, filling up the empty spaces in the bone marrow, in the muscles, in the very pores of his body.

 This vessel knows what to do, even if Kon doesn’t.

 He sets one of the other items in the middle of the circle. There’s six crystals that shine incandescently on each corner of the design.

     “Use the stones first,”     Merlin had said, his lilac eyes curved with some hidden joke, “      You’ll need Ichigo to use the last bit.”  

 The last bit being a scrap of cloth that he’d left in the box. It was same shade as his hair, and tattered at the ends. Kon left it where it was and set in the center of the circle two more stones. One was a red crystal. The other was dull grey, and shaped like the head of a small serpent.

 Everytime he touches them Kon feels his fingertips tingle with      something    .

 Kon picks up a paring knife.

 On Ichigo’s palm is a long scar, one that’s been opened over and over again. Now, Kon presses the blade to the same thin white line until it splits neatly under the sharp edge.

 Red wells up. He barely feels it. Ichigo’s pain tolerance is insane.

 He holds his fist out over the circle and let’s Ichigo’s body do as it apparently knows to. Blood drips into the careful lines he’s made and it spreads with a vermillion glow that crackles faintly.

 “Let Silver and Steel be the Essence…”

 * * * *

 “Again,” Ichigo touches his forehead. It throbs horribly. “Why the      hell    does this keep happening to me?”

 His groan of pain is met with silence. He can touch his forehead so he’s not tied up. And he can feel pain so presumably he’s not dead. That’s good. If he dies he can’t keep his promises.

 On the other hand, if he was dead he probably wouldn’t feel like he was chewed up and spit out again.

 When he finally peels his eyes open, he finds himself in the ‘inside’ again. Vertical buildings, and pieces of himself in the form of places he’s gone. The water at the street is a bit deeper.

 Ichigo rubs his head and squints around him.

 “Zangetsu?” he calls, looking around. The old man is nowhere to be seen. There’s something familiar about this entire situation. He can taste chalk and blood. His chest aches. What the hell is going on here?

 “Zangetsu!” he yells louder. No response.

 Fine then. Maybe if he focused on his zanpakuto? Zangetsu was the manifestation of it right? Or something.

 Ichigo closed his eyes and reached out, taking a deep breath.

 He focused on the feeling of his sword in his hand. The cool metal until sturdy wrappings. The wicked blade. The weight of the weapon. The comfort of Zangetsu against his back.

 He closed his hands around something and opened his eyes.

 And nearly had a heart attack.

 “What the fuck!?”

 Standing in front of him, no holding his hand, was      him    . If he’d been sent through a bottle of bleach. His eyes, the other him’s eyes (fuck this was confusing) were bright, luminescent gold. Where there should be white was instead black. When the other him grinned his teeth weren’t as sharp as Ichigo felt they should be.

 “Hey there, Partner.”

 Ichigo extracted his hand warily. “Who the fuck are you?” He asked bluntly.

 A flicker in the corner of his eyes came from the side. His head snapped to the side to see Zangetsu, the old man.

 “Zangetsu.”

 Ichigo looked back at the other him. The one who spoke. His head throbbed. His chest ached.

 “Huh?”

 “Ichigo.”

 “Yes, yes. Ichigo, Zangetsu, whatever,” he waved his hands impatiently. “What the ever loving fuck is going on here? Why am I here? I was just fighting and- Did I get stabbed?” Ichigo patted down his chest. There was no blood, and it didn’t hurt.

 The other him scoffed. “Damn you’re dumb. Yeah ya got stabbed!”

 “Don’t be rude,” Ichigo said absently. He lifted his shirt. There wasn’t even a scar on his chest. Just the same red circle that had rested on his chest since he’d been speared through. It felt like an eternity ago. The longer the wars went on the harder it was to keep track of everything and everyone. Sometimes he felt like he mixed up the order of operations. Did he go to London first? Or Oceanus? Fuck.

 “      I’m     rude!”

 Ichigo has to jump to avoid being stabbed by the sword Zangetsu. Now wielded by the other him, and also reversed in color.  

 “You’re the one that made us wait that long before you heard us, asshole!”

 “Huh?!” Ichigo ducked and dodged each slash. Finally, Zangetsu (the man) blocked Zangetsu (the sword (except they were technically both swords (and this was making Ichigo’s head ache))) to stop the fight.

 “Ichigo,” Zangetsu intoned. “You were being beaten. Badly. We cannot allow this to continue.”

 “Okay,” Ichigo says slowly. “So you suck me out of consciousness and throw me here while everyone else is back there? What about Rukia and Hanataro and Ganju!”

 “What about them?” the Other Him. White Ichigo maybe? Shirogo? Espejo? Nieve? Speaks up. He leans on his sword, looping his arm casually over the bite under the curve of the blade. “Why do you think we give a shit about your friends?”

 Ichigo scowls. “If I go down we all do.”

 “Exactly,” says Zangetsu. “We all die if you do. If you lose. We cannot lose, it cannot be an option. So you must become stronger. You can hear my voice now. You can wield my blade. But there is power inside of you that you do not know. Prepare yourself, Ichigo. We will make you stronger now.”

 “To gain that strength, you must fight. Take your sword back from yourself.”

 “Huh?!”

 He only has a second to duck a sword strike at his head. Neive (he’s going with that for now. Snow) comes at him with a wild grin and vicious intent. A berserker who swings Zangetsu by the ribbon like a demented yo yo.

 There’s something weird going on here. Ichigo knows it. He knows there’s something not right about this. The whole thing feels too familiar.

 He doesn’t have time to contemplate it before he comes back at Neive with the best counters he can manage whilst unarmed.

 Zangetsu is calm and methodical. Ichigo can see in him the commander, the strategist and the pragmatist that he has had to be when war clawed at his throat and shadowed his footsteps.

 Neive is wild and vicious. Ichigo sees in him the desperate strength he’s drawn out at the last seconds, the hail mary victories that he's ripped from the claws of defeat time and time again.  

 The careful planning of Zangetsu, the intricate steps of a dance of strategy, falls away in the face of Neive’s brute forced, deadly strikes. He aims to win, even if he has to cut himself-who-is-Ichigo down to do it. Ichigo’s blood sings with it.

 Even though he steps away from death, even though if he’s just a hair too slow he’ll lose his head, Ichigo has to stop himself from tipping his head back and laughing. Fighting like this, he feels almost free.

 Almost.

 He steps in close, suddenly, regardless of the fact that Zangetsu-the-sword cuts into his shoulder from the sharp curved heel. Blood dots the blue beneath their feet and Ichigo catch’s Neive’s arm between his hands. With a vicious twist that threatens to break his arm he’s forced to let lose the sword. The ribbon keeps it stuck to his wrist, and Ichigo twists his body until he’s back to front to Neive. He grabs the swords hand and swings it around until it’s a hair breadth away from both of their throats.

 “What the fuck?” Neive asks, too loud in his ear.

 Ichigo shoots him a crooked smile. “You only said I had to take it back.”

 Neive stares at him, the angle awkward and painful to his neck. Finally, his doppleganger relaxes and legs the ribbon slip free. He steps back, letting Ichigo hold the sword on his own.

 “Well I’ll be damned. Not bad, boss.”

 “Why are you so surprised,” Ichigo hoists the blade onto his bleeding shoulder. “Aren’t we all part of the same person? Me?”

 “So we are,” something in Zangetsu’s voice doesn’t sound entirely pleased about that. “You’ve done well.”

 “Yeah. Thanks,” Ichigo scowls at him. “There’s something wrong with the both of you, I want you to know.”

 “By your own logic, there’s something wrong with you too,” Neive pointed out, far too cheerfully.

 “Uh huh.” Ichigo rolls his eyes. “How was that supposed to make me stronger? It was a fight, I’ve been a million of them. “

 Maybe more than that.

 Zangetsu doesn’t answer right away.

 Ichigo sits on the sideways building and motions the other him to do the same. Neive drops to his side, both of them criss cross and the blade long enough it covered both of their laps.  

 “Well?” he presses.

 Zangetsu is not quite stoic enough for Ichigo to miss the way his mouth turns down and his shoulders draw together. He’s bracing himself for something.

 “We are both… facets, of your power Ichigo. I needed to introduce you to him as well.”

 “A simple hand shake wouldn’t do?” Ichigo scowled at him.

 “We did shake hands,” Neive points out cheerfully.

 “Not the point. Why the song and dance? Or are you all the drama in my soul too?”

 Neive crows with laughter and slaps Ichigo hard on the back. Ichigo rocks with the force, hissing. His shoulder burns.

 Zangetsu comes to crouch before him. He lays his hand on top of Ichigo’s shoulder and the pain eases minutely. The blood stops staining his shirt.

 “What…?”

 “I can stop your bleeding,” Zangetsu explains.

 Ichigo nods, slowly. He remembers, faintly, injuries that weren’t as bad as they should have been, blood stains that were too small. Roman had commented on it once or twice.

 “You’ve done it before, haven’t you?”

 “Yes.”

 Ichigo looks between the two of them. Their words ring through his head.

 “How long have you been with me?”

 Neive grins. Zangetsu looks at him solemnly.

 “      Always    , Ichigo.”

 * * * * *  

  It’s over.

 It’s over and they’ve won. The price was high (it’s higher every time and Ichigo dreads the day that one of them does not return to Chaldeas) but they snatched victory away with bloody hands and desperation.

 They’ve won. Nero is not there to celebrate their victory. Karna has faded away. Arjuna had never really been one of them but Ichigo knows they owe him. Billy the Kid. Geronimo. Scathach herself. All gone.

 And how many yet to go, before this bloody conflict is ended? This is one war won, and three yet to go. They’ve come more than halfway, but done so by the skin of their teeth.

 What else can they do?

 Run?

 Hide?

 Chaldeas is the only safe place and even that can’t last forever. Even if it could, Ichigo would never stand by, safe within the walls.

 Ichigo looks down at the cracked tile of the Whitehouse and finds the tips of his shoes glittering. The war is over. It’s time to go.

 “Ichigo?”

 He looks to Kyo. His impassiveness is finally gone. His expression is open and horrified.

 “It’s time for us to leave,” Ichigo says solemnly.      It’s time for you to forget    .

 “No!” Kyo lunges for him, grabbing his hand, and for the first time Ichigo can see it clearly. His brown eyes, wide and open, his hand grasping desperately at Ichigo’s sleeve. One feeling sings through the touch.

 Loneliness.

 The lion that stalks in Kyo(in      Sousuke)    ’s shadow. The yawning the maw of solitude.

 He’d broken past it, Ichigo realizes. Had dragged him off of that isolated pillar that Sousuke stood so precariously upon and brought him to stand on solid ground surrounded by heroes and rebels, emperors and goddesses. And Ichigo, just a human.

 His throat tightens. What kind of place is seireitei that someone like Sousuke is so utterly alone?

 “I don’t have a choice,” he says. He’s gone up to his knees and the light is rushing swiftly to his midsection. Eating him up. He can feel the familiar pull of ray shifting.

 “Find me!” Sousuke grips his hand all the tighter. “Promise me. Find me in the future! Make me remember!”

 Ichigo feels his hand start to dissolve in his grasp and does his best to hold on for a few seconds longer

 “I’ll find you.” He vows

 Light glitters, air rushes, and the last thing he sees is the crushing sorrow on Kyos face.

 (Ichigo will not break his promise)

 * * * * * *

[daisy-rivers]

Peggy saves the baby! No, not THAT baby, the other one!

Who else has the Hamilton phone app so you can play Hamilton trivia, take #Hamcam pix and read all the news on the tour schedules and stuff? I do, and it’s mostly fun, but yesterday the “news story” was about my girl Peggy, and they got it WRONG, and I can’t find any way to comment/correct on the app, so I  am venting here.

As you may know, on August 7, 1781, a gang of Tory ruffians broke into the Schuyler home in Albany. Angelica and Eliza, who were both pregnant at the time, happened to be staying there. Peggy was 23, not yet married, and there would have been 5 younger siblings, all under age 15. Just in case you didn’t know, Angelica was the oldest of fifteen children, but, the 18th century being what it was, seven of those children died in infancy. Oh, and that line about “My father has no son, so ...” Yeah, it’s a lie, but the part about “my only job is to marry rich” isn’t.

But I’m digressing here, no surprise if you know me. Anyway, the evil Tories broke in, and the family -- parents Philip and Catherine, pregnant ladies Angelica and Eliza, badass Peggy and 4 of the younger siblings -- all fled upstairs, where Philip fired his pistol out the window to signal for help while the Tories ransacked the house.

They suddenly realized, though, that in the rush to get upstairs, they had -- whoops! -- left the youngest Schuyler kid, Catherine, in her cradle in the living room. Makes you wonder how these people won the Revolution, doesn’t it?

According to Chernow, what with sobbing women and frightened toddlers clinging to him, Colonel Schuyler was “impeded” from going downstairs to rescue his infant daughter, at which point Peggy said something along the lines of, “Fuck this shit, I’ll go get her myself.” (feel free to translate into whatever 18th-century version you choose) She ran downstairs and grabbed little Catherine and was, of course, immediately confronted by the leader of the gang, who seems to have mistaken her for a servant -- probably figuring that any delicately-raised young lady would be too terrified to face the possible danger of assault from twenty or so armed men. He said, “Wench, wench! Where is your master?” Peggy responded, “Gone to alarm the town!” although I’m pretty sure she actually wanted to say, “Who you calling wench, asshole?”

Apparently the fear of Philip’s possible return with the cavalry scared the Tories enough that they left. There are marks on the staircase that are said to be from a tomahawk that one of them threw at Peggy as she dashed back upstairs with the baby, but that can’t be confirmed.

Anyway, that’s what really happened.

On the app, though, it says that the baby Peggy rescued was her niece, not her youngest sister. It says that it was baby Catherine, the daughter of her sister Catherine, who was named Catherine after her mother (y’know, 18th century). However, the sad truth is that with Peggy being 23 years older than her youngest sister, little sister Catherine didn’t even get married until 2 years after Peggy died, and as far as I can find out, she never had a daughter. Obviously, I hate that there is incorrect information about my beloved Peggy on the app, but there doesn’t seem to be any way to fix it, so just spread the word.

When I first read Chernow’s book in the summer of 2016, this anecdote -- because that’s all it is, really, a couple of pages in an eight-hundred page book -- really impressed me, and so I wrote a story about it, moving it to the 21st century, but still starting at the point where Peggy’s family is in danger and she has to save her baby sister. I kept some historical facts and almost all of the people, but changed other things. In my story, Peggy is only 16 years older than her little sister, and not so many people die young, but I did my best to portray Peggy as the daring and courageous young woman that she seemed to be back in 1781.

If you want to read what I wrote about her, the story is Provoke Outrage, and it’s here.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/8291179/chapters/18992695

[dragonasheswrites-blog]

The Heaven We Didn’t Choose, Chapter 7: In Which Skeletons are Explained

...From a scientific and magical point of view, of course.

First: Chapter 1: In Which a Child Makes a Friend

Previous: Chapter 6: In Which Everybody Threatens Sans

Next: Chapter 8: In Which The Internet is Invoked

Click here for the story overview.

By the time Sans tracked down Attie (who had somehow crawled into the dryer and was rocking herself back and forth) it was after 1:00.

This was a problem, he realized as he consulted the schedule Undyne had pinned to a cupboard with a paring knife.  Lunch was supposed to end at 1:00, and he had no idea what to even start cooking.

“Can I have a hot dog?”  Attie asked.  “You make hot dogs, right?”

“Uh...sure, but…”

“Okay!  Where are they?”

“I don’t think I…” He checked the fridge, just in case.  The shelves, to his surprise, had actual groceries on them.  Huh.  Someone must’ve stocked up.  Half of this stuff he didn’t even recognize.  Weird.

To his everlasting shock, one drawer held a six-pack of ‘dogs.  On the package was a pink sticky note covered with Boss’s handwriting:

YOU CAN HAVE HOT DOGS FOR NO MORE THAN ONE MEAL PER DAY, SANS. BUNS ARE IN THE CUPBOARD. ~THE G&T PAPYRUS

Ooooookay.

Sure enough, a quick survey of the cupboards (also stocked with more food than Sans was used to seeing) turned up a package of buns - the good kind, not the cheap tasteless things he threw on the ‘dogs at his stand.

Cooking them properly was...more work than he really wanted.  He didn’t have a rolling warmer in the apartment, and he didn’t want to wait for the ‘dogs to slow cook anyways.  He slipped both ‘dogs into their buns and stuck them in the microwave for half a minute.

Amazingly, the ‘dogs didn’t explode (unlike most things he microwaved).  He sent out a tentative thread of magic to feel for temperature, not trusting his bones to give him an accurate read.  It felt...less than boiling hot, but beyond that he wasn’t sure.

“Uh, here, kid.  Bone appetite, heh.  Careful; not sure if it’s hot.”

“Okay!”  Attie grabbed the ‘dog with both hands, took a big bite, and winced.  “Iff a liffle hoff,” she said, mouth full.  She swallowed anyways, so he wasn’t too worried.

“Hey, kid; if that’s too hot for ya, wanna see somethin’ cool?”

“Sure,” she said, before taking another huge bite.

Sans opened his mouth, tilted his head back, and shoved the entire hot dog, bun and all, into his mouth.  He felt his magic protesting - he wasn’t really made to do this - but he ignored the discomfort and resisted the urge to cough.

Attie was staring at him with huge eyes, a half-chewed bite of hot dog visible in her mouth.  He waited a moment for his magic to dissolve the ‘dog enough to talk, then laughed at her.  “What, you can’t do that?”

“No,” she said around her masticated food.  She closed her mouth, realizing her error, then chewed and swallowed with a thoughtful look on her face.

Sans knew that look.

The girl held the remaining half of her ‘dog out to him.  “Teach me,” she demanded.

“Yeah, no, kid.”

“Why not?”

“Humans aren’t built like us.  You’ll choke yourself, then Undyne’ll kill me, then Boss’ll kill me, then your mom and her mom’ll kill me.  I’ll be super dead.”

“You’re silly, Mr. Sans.”

“Yep.  That’s me, regular comedian.”

“Teach me!”

"No, kid!”

“Please?”

“No!”

“Pretty please with a cherry on top?”  She blinked rapidly, her lower lip extended.

“What, is that supposed to make me more willing to teach you how to suffocate on ‘dogs?   Hell no, kid!  And stop making that face; the lip shit is super creepy!”

“Awww,” Attie muttered, dejected, to her ‘dog.

“Tell ya what.  You finish your ‘dog, and when it’s science time I’ll tell you all about how a skeleton can eat a whole ‘dog at once.  Okay?”

“Okaaaaay.”  She finished her meal in the largest bites possible, sending herself into more than one coughing fit.

Science wasn’t next on the list, though.  Next was something called Grammar, which Attie tried her best to wiggle out of.  She wouldn’t capitulate until Sans reminded her that she couldn’t see her mom until her schoolwork was done.

Schoolwork went by very quickly after that.

He wasn’t sure how much of it was actually correct - according to the note Undyne had left, the worksheets would be delivered to Tori for grading - but he was impressed by her speed.

True to his word, he spent the entire 45-minute “Science” time slot sitting at the dining room table explaining what he knew about a skeleton’s magical digestive system.  He even let Attie drop things into his mouth - jelly beans, mostly, after they found some in the cupboard and he accidentally revealed that he’d never eaten them before - so she could see that they vanished instead of dropping out the bottom of his skull.

“You don’t look like a real skeleton,” Attie said, peering intently at the juncture where his skull met his spine.  “You’re shaped really different.”

“I promise you, I am 100% a real skeleton.  I just don’t look like a human skeleton.”  And if he had a buck for every time he’d had to explain that to a human he’d have a whole herd.

“That’s what I meant, sorry.”  She narrowed her eyes, then leaned over and slapped both hands to Sans’s cheeks.

He flinched, hard, but the impact - despite its force - did no actual damage.  He stifled the urge to slap her hands away.  “What’chu up to, huh?”

“Your face feels funny.”  She tapped her fingertips against his cheekbones.  “You feel kinda soft.”

He growled.  He wasn’t used to being touched, and having someone - even someone so small - put her hands on his face was really uncomfortable.  “You can stop that now, kid.  Don’t make me remove you.”

She paused, then looked him in the eye sockets.  She must have been able to read some part of his expression because she snatched her hands away and sat back into her chair.  “Sorry, Mr. Sans.”

“‘Tsokay.  Just...don’t do that again, yeah?  You wouldn’t want me to put my hands all over your face, would’ja?  No?  Then don’t do it to other people.”

“But you’re so cool!"

He coughed.  “That’s no excuse, kid.  You gotta ask before you do that to someone.”

“Why?”

“It’s...polite?”

She tilted her head to the side.  “But you don’t care about being polite.  You’re a asshole.”

“Just...it’s...yer mom’d kill me if I taught you bad habits, okay?  And it makes people uncomfortable, and I know you’re too young to really understand yourself in relation to others but you don’t do things like that, okay?  You’ll learn as you get older.”

“Okay.”

“And it’s kinda rude to call people assholes.  Just...while we’re on the topic.”

She giggled.  “Okay.  But you still are one.”

“You got that right.”

Silence.

He rubbed the back of his vertebrae.  “Ooookay, then.  Uh, what’s left on the list?”

Attie ran into the kitchen and consulted the note.  “Art!” she called back.

“Huh?  Art?  What kind of pansy school bullshit is that?”

The girl stomped back into the dining room.  “My favorite."

“...Oh.”  He pondered this.  “So...what do you do for ‘art?’  I don’t know a damn thing, but isn’t art pictures and stuff?”  Hadn’t Boss called his spaghetti ‘art’ at some point?  Did that count?

“I mean...I guess I can color,” she said.  “I have my coloring pencils in my bag!”

“Okay, but...aaaand she’s gone.”  Sans pondered chasing after the kid, but decided it would be too much effort.  He was tired.  Between keeping up with Attie and texting Frisk periodically throughout the day, he really just wanted a nap.

She returned a few minutes later with a box of pencils and a pad of paper.  She didn’t say anything or ask questions - a miracle, given how the rest of her schoolwork had gone - but instead hummed to herself as she emptied the box of pencils across the table and began to draw.

The scratching of the paper and the off-key humming was...strangely calming, actually…

“Mr. Sans!”

“Hrk-wha?”  He sat up quickly and looked around.  When had he put his head on the table?

Attie was leaning towards him.  Her pencils were packed up and sitting neatly atop a small pile of loose papers.  “You were asleep,” she said.

“Oh.  Uh, sorry, kid.”

“‘Tsokay.  Mommy takes naps sometimes too.  I don’t usually take naps anymore ‘cause I’m a big girl now, but Mommy says that sometimes grown-ups work too hard and have to take naps.”

“Yeah, sometimes.”  He was feeling pretty groggy.

“Also, your phone was ringing.”

“Shit!”  He dug around in his pocket until he found the offending hunk of metal.

“Bad word!”  Attie howled.

Frisky Dreamer 3:25 PM Sans, you’re late for your check-in.  Just because I’m drugged into unconsciousness does not excuse you not sending an update and stuff. I am so high right now Ignore that last one

Frisky Dreamer 4:03 PM Sans, I haven’t heard from you in two horse. Hours.

Frisky Dreamer 4:22 PM SNAS, ANSER UR DAM PHONE!

“Uh, kid?  Don’t you have a phone too?”

“No...oh!  Wait!”  She pushed herself back from the table and tottered off down the hallway.  Sans sighed and tapped out a message.

You 4:26 PM Were doing art Kid really drew me into it

The response was immediate.

Frisky Dreamer 4:26 PM You fell asleep again, didn’t you.

You 4:27 PM Hey do u wanna have us come visit u or not

Frisky Dreamer 4:27 PM Whatever.

He grinned.  Apparently, that worked on both mother and daughter.  Speaking of which… “Kid?  You find that phone?  We need to head out if we’re gonna go see your mom.”

“I found it!”  She returned with the phone in all its pink and blue glory.  “I have a message from Mommy, see?”

There was, indeed, a message from Frisk asking (in a much nicer tone) how her day was going.

“Hey, what’s that less-than-three thing mean?”

“Oh.  It’s a soul!  See?”  She held the phone on its side.

“That’s...weird.  And isn’t that upside down?”  Sans flipped the phone on its other side.

“But I’m a human!  Our souls go the other way.”

“Oh.  Right.  Anyways, are you ready to go see yer mom?  I’d better let her see for herself that you’re in one piece.  I don’t think she believes that I haven’t eaten you yet.”

Attie giggled, but awkwardly bundled into her coat and shoes anyways.  She seemed to be struggling with her shoelaces.  It was funny to watch.

“You, uh, got that, kid?”

“Maybe.  These aren’t my favorite shoes.  My favorite shoes are pink and they have flowers on them and they light up when I walk, which is why they’re my favorite.  Those ones have velcro on them so I don’t have to tie them, but these ones just have shoelaces.”

Sans nodded noncommittally.  He briefly considered helping her but…

...Nah.

She eventually knotted them into submission and tucked the ends of the laces inside the top of her shoes.  Shrugging, she grabbed the stack of papers and tucked them under her arm.  “Okay!  I’m ready!”

“Uh...what’s with that stuff, kid?  I thought that was your art.”

“It is!  I drew pictures for Mommy.  I’m gonna show her and see if she can hang them up in her hospital room.  She usually hangs them up on the ‘frigerator, but there isn’t a ‘frigerator in her room I don’t think.”

“Fair enough.  Okay, you ready?”

“Yep!”

He put both hands on her shoulders.  “One, two,” and... teleport.

Attie grabbed onto his arms for support when they reappeared in a protected nook across the street from Ebott Medical Pavilion.  “Oh!  That time it wasn’t so bad!”

“Yeah.  You should get used to it soon enough.”

“That’s pretty cool!  Can you teach me how to do that...that…”

“‘Ts called ‘teleporting,’ kid.  Disappearing and reappearing in a different place, kinda like the world’s best shortcut.  It’s a bit more complicated than that, but...it can get pretty sciencey.  And no, I’m pretty sure I can’t teach you how to do that, either.”

She pouted all the way up to her mom’s room.

He opened the door first, not wanting to interrupt anything, but Frisk was awake.  And waiting, of course.  “Sans,” she said in a tone that brooked no argument, “Why don’t you come on in.”

He came right the heck on in, one hand guiding Attie in front of him.  “Say ‘hi’ to yer mom, kid.”

The girl paused for a moment, staring at her mother.  Frisk did look pretty bad still.  Sans hoped Attie wasn’t going to scream or cry or cause a fit; he knew he’d be blamed if she did.

“Hi,” she said in a very quiet voice.

Frisk smiled.  It was the same smile she’d worn earlier when he sent her the picture of Attie and Undyne, and he fought the urge to look away.  “Hey, baby girl.  Won’t you come up and give me a hug?”

“I-I don’t wanna hurt you when you’re sick.”

“I’ll be okay.  Just make it a gentle hug.  No jumping.”

The little girl tiptoed up to the bed, leaned up, and gently put her arms around her mother.  They both sighed at the same time.

“Now what did you bring me?  Oh-Sans, chair.”  She gestured towards the aforementioned furniture, which had been moved against a wall.

Sans sat.

“I brought you pictures!”  Attie said.  She laid out each page individually on the bed, covering the blanket almost entirely.  “This is the room where I slept last night.  See?  It’s full of skeleton stuff!  It belongs to a guy called Mr. Boss, but Undie said that wasn’t his real name.”

“It isn’t,” Frisk said.  “His real name is Papyrus.  But go ahead.”

“Oh, right.  This is Mr. Pa-py-rus’s room.  He let me sleep on his bed, ‘cause he said Mr. Sans’s room was pretty messy.  It is, y’know.”

“Oh?  When were you in Sans’s room?”

“I hid in there before lunch.  Mr. Boss - I mean, Mr. Pa-py-rus - came in and was beating up Mr. Sans because of paperwork.  Then Mr. Pa-pyrus tried to fight me until Mr. Sans finished the paperwork.”  She held up another picture.  From his vantage point, Sans could barely see three blobby figures: two black and red, one blue and pink and black.  “See?  Mr. Pa-pyrus is trying to fight me ‘cause I told him not to beat up Mr. Sans.  Mr. Sans finished the paperwork before he stopped talking.  He talked a whole lot, more than Granny Ree does sometimes.”

“Papyrus...tried to fight you.”

“Yeah.  I was kinda mad that Mr. Sans did paperwork instead of saving me, but it’s all better now.”

“What?”

“He said ‘I’m sorry, kid’ and I said ‘I forgive you.’  And he said that he would’ve stopped Mr. Papyrus if he’d really started fighting, so it’s okay.”

Frisk pulled her daughter in for another hug.  Over the child’s head, she gave Sans a long, intense look.  He squirmed in his chair a little.

“Fine.  I guess...it’s okay, if you aren’t hurt.  I’ll have to have a long talk with Undyne about this, though; I don’t want you in a house where someone’s going to attack you at random.”

“It wasn’t an ‘at random!’  He tried to fight me because I told him not to beat up Mr. Sans.  Remember?  I told you.”

“That’s right.  Hey, Attie, could you do something for me?”

“Yyyep!”

“Can you get me a drink of water?  There’s a water fountain at the end of the hallway, out and to your left.  Here’s my cup.  Go out, fill the cup with water, and come right back so you can show me the rest of the pictures.  Don’t spill.”

“Okay, Mommy!”  She wiggled off the bed, careful not to wrinkle any of her drawings, and left the two adults alone.

Sans glanced at the side table.  “You already have a cup of water,” he muttered.

“That’s not the point.  You know that.”

He did.  “Look.  You know that the best way to get Boss to stand down is to give him what he wants.  He wanted paperwork; I finished the damn paperwork.  It’s not my fault Undyne changed her schedule without telling me.”

“If you hadn’t fallen asleep in here earlier, you wouldn’t have had to rush.”

“Yeah, well, I wasn’t exactly running on a whole lotta sleep.  You know, after carting you and Attie all over town last night.”

Frisk’s hand clenched the blanket over her knee, then relaxed.  “I...that isn’t what I wanted to talk with you about.  Sans...does that happen on a regular basis?”

“The naps?  Well sure.  I’m-”

“Not the naps.  Don’t play dumb.  You know what I’m asking about.”

The look on her face said that she was not in the mood to be messed with; she wanted answers, and she knew he could give them.  Strange, that this human was the only one to realize that his stupidity was an act.  “...Yeah, I know.  And…”

What could he say?

“Sans?”

“Yeah.  Just...I don’t know how to answer that.  Boss...he gets aggressive when he’s angry, you know?  And I’m one of the things that makes him angry the most.  It’s my fault, really.  You get it, right?”  He winked.

Frisk’s expression didn’t change.

“A-anyways, I’ll watch the kid closer.  She can...I dunno, hide out in my room when he’s around.  I’ll clean up and everything.  That way she won’t have to see it.”

“That doesn’t answer my question.  I didn’t ask why it happened, or whose fault it was, or how you plan to cover it up.  I asked how often it happens."

“...Not as much as you’re thinking, but more than you’d like.”

“How typically vague.  Are we talking once a day?  A week?  A month?”

“Couple times a week?  I dunno.  I’ve never charted it out.”

“Alright.  Alright."  Frisk took a deep breath.  “That stops now.  Whatever you and your brother do when there aren’t kids in the house, that’s your...ah...business-”

“Hey!”

“-but I won’t have the pair of you scarring my daughter.  Both of you will be on your best behavior, alright?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“Mommy!”  Attie shuffled in with a glass full of water, her tongue peeking out from between her lips and a look of concentration on her face.  “I...almost...have...the...water...OOPS!”

She tripped over her own feet and the water spilled.

“Attie!”  Frisk was halfway out of bed before she was stopped short by the plastic tubes the doctors had stabbed into her arms.

It didn’t matter much; Attie was floating gently in mid-air, faintly glowing.  “Blue!” she cooed.

“Sans,” her mother said, “Put her down.  Gently.”

He did.

No one spoke for a long moment.

“I’ll excuse it just this once, because it looked like you were keeping Attie from getting hurt.  But if you ever - ever - use blue magic on my daughter again, I will hunt you down.  Is that clear?”

“Yeah, Boss.”

Frisk slammed her hand onto the bedside table, causing both Attie and Sans to jump.  “I am NOT your BOSS, Sans!”

“Yeah, uh, sure.”

A nurse popped her head into the doorway.  “Everything alright in here, sweetie?”

“Yes,” Frisk said.  “We’re fine.  Sorry to disturb you.”

“Oh, it’s no trouble.  Anytime a loved one is sick tempers run high, y’know?  Y’all just take a deep breath; no worries.  Oh, and visiting time is almost up, unless your honey there wants to stay the night.”  The nurse wiggled her eyebrows.

It took Sans a beat to realize that the nurse meant him, not Attie, and he wanted to crawl into his own hood in embarrassment.  “Nah, gotta get this kid into bed.  Early mornin’ and all that.”

“Alright, then, sweet thang.  Y’all take it easy and let me know if you need anything.”  She closed the door gently behind her.

Sans carefully avoided looking at the humans.

“Alright, Attie; time for you to go now.  Come give Mommy a kiss and head home with Sans, alright?”

There was a shuffle as Attie did as requested.  “Can I come see you tomorrow?  I didn’t get to show you the rest of the pictures.”

“Maybe.  Mommy’s pretty tired.  If everything goes well, then yeah.”

“Okay.  G’night!  Don’t let the bedbugs bite!”

“You too, Attie.”

“I won’t.  I bet the bedbugs are scared of Mr. Papyrus.”

“I’m sure they are.”

A small hand in his interrupted Sans’s studied ignorance of the proceedings.  He glanced down to find Attie grinning up at him.  “Ready to go, kid?”

“Yup!”

“‘Kay, then.”  He gently started to tug her out of the room.

She resisted.  “Wait!  You didn’t say goodbye to Mommy!”

“Uh...bye, kiddo.”

“Her name isn’t kiddo, Mr. Sans.”

“Bye...Frisk?”

The woman on the bed breathed deeply, but didn’t look at him.  “Text me when you get home.  You owe me a few check-ins.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

They left.

[captainignatiuspigheart]

Wow, the last couple of weeks alternating surging heat and grim weather has thorough melted every bit of my desire to do anything, including remembering the time before the heat haze. Still – we shall prevail! It was a quietish couple of weeks in any case, though did have a couple of cool things in it. Not least that I’ve been able to live outside in my gazebo office, and keep a close eye on our ridiculous cats and their shade seeking antics. We were all sad when the thunder and hailstorms drove us inside… Taking keen note of the foul weather I finally picked up some serious LEGO storage towers and did some reorganising. They don’t take up less space, which is unfortunate, but I can access key bricks sets much more easily!

Big fella in a hedge

Little lady in her rooftop fort

Last week turned out to be a mini podcast week, so I’ve spent more time talking than usual (taking up precious drinking time, alas). More We Are What We Overcoming, which has become a cornerstone of my fortnightly routine, and really does help me think about how I feel and how I’m behaving in this quarantini time. That’s not the same as actually changing my behaviour, but being aware that I’m doing little but drinking and sighing at the sun is a start… My other half and I were also interviewed for the Knot Ready podcast: a look at marriage from a modern, feminist perspective, since we’re nearly twenty-two years into a non-marriage we have some insight into why folks may not get married, or at least, possibly, why we haven’t. It was a lot of fun to chat about how we got together (half a lifetime ago!) and other stuff. I’ll definitely remember to share when our episode is out, but you should subscribe to the podcast anyway because Lucy is pretty ace and it’s a genuinely interesting subject.

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I am KNOT READY 💍😘 . I am ready to tie the knot! I am lucky enough to have found an amazing person who makes my life better and who I want to commit to fully 💕 . So when I say I'm freaked out by marriage – it's not a commitment thing! . I'm freaked out that this institution, this human invention, controlled by religion and the state and shaped through time by patriarchal narratives, has become synonymous with romantic love, and not just culturally but for me personally! Something has got it into my head that our relationship is incomplete without marriage, despite suspecting on an intellectual level that nothing much will change afterwards. . Why am I spending a silly amount of money on one day? Why did it make me sad to not be engaged to my person? Why is marriage so important to me? . Freaky questions! For some answers, turn to Knot Ready 💍😘 Episode one comes out this Friday! Link in bio to subscribe or learn more 💖

A post shared by Knot Ready (@knotreadypodcast) on Jun 23, 2020 at 12:13am PDT

We’ve also seen a few more genuine humans in the meatspace, a thing which makes me feel ever so odd. I suspect that I have been at home for too long… But we had a lovely slow wander around the University Park lake and a bit of the radically altered campus up the back of the Portland Building. Lots of baby birds, and our friends’ new baby of their own.

Building: LEGO Hidden Side’s Newbury Haunted High School #70425

OK, so I built this ages ago, but it’s really pretty. Thing is, in its standard configuration it sprawls a little wide, and is distressingly not quite a modular building. So I fixed it! My goal was for it to fit in with the other modular buildings, but of course it’s four studs wider than a baseplate, so something had to go. In my first attempt I tried to compact the bay windows but made a horrible mess, so dismantled the whole thing and rebuilt it using the instructions and deviating where necessary. Where necessary was a bit of a pain – to keep the play functions I needed to keep the bay windows and the full width of the clock tower. My only viable option was removing the four silver unicorn spires with their supporting arches, and that hasn’t really hurt the build much. I’m not super-happy that the decorative ground floor arches are now somewhat obscured, but I’m chuffed with the overall result. That it gave me a chance to go nuts on a swirly tiling pattern in coral pink was a massive bonus. I’ve kept all the play features, but lost some of the details inside. I may remove all the worn detailing too and just have a lovely school in between the detective’s office and the bank. As was noted in the Brickgeekz Facebook group, its colours do rather resemble the now-exceedingly rare Town Hall which I could never quite afford. Win!

Four studs too wide…

It fits!

Beautiful flooring

Play features intact

Watching: Space Force

This is certainly quite fun. A show about Trump’s cretinous “space force” which supposedly satirises the idea, but instead gets caught up doing a sort-of sincere NASA knock-off to get Americans back on the Moon. It doesn’t seem to be sure what it’s taking the mickey out of, leaving the comedy unfocused and swaying madly in each episode. The characters are pretty stock fodder: uptight air force general played by Steve Carell, who looks rather lost, desperate to make it funny by crashing in and out of character while relying heavily on clearing his throat to cover all forms of emotion; very smart scientist guy who isn’t that great with people in the remarkable form of John Malkovich, who shows off his comedy chops nicely (largely by staying in character); total arsehole PR guy Ben Schwartz, who is utterly hateable (in a good way) but of course redeems himself, sort of; space force pilot/astronaut Tawny Newsome, desperate to get on the moon and be somebody; the air force general’s neglected daughter who just wants to have some fun / get any attention at all from her dad. The supporting cast do a great job too, but the tone constantly swinging from idiots messing up the mission to “hurray USA” sentiment leaves them all out in the cold. It’s just odd. I did enjoy the show, and it certainly has some splendid moments, mostly as they get towards the moon landing itself, but I’m not going to be racing back for season two. The Chinese are the main rivals in this new space race, and it’s a bit… broad… for 2020.

Doing: We Are What We Overcome

The next of our “lockdown specials”, lovingly recorded by Zoom and broadcast live in Facebook. Didn’t quite work last week, for no clear reason, so we popped it up on Tuesday instead. We talked about the thorny subject of change, which we seem to have to deal with all the damned time! It’s an interesting issue, covering not just what change is and how it feels, but how we learn (or don’t learn) to deal with it. All terribly pertinent and that. We came back yesterday Monday 19th to discuss how we feel about the easing of lockdown (or whatever the fuck this shower of wank called a Tory government are doing): check that one our here: Facebook Live.

Kickstarter Reward: Munchkin Bricks 2

With all the global lunacy I’d quite forgotten these were on the way! The last-but-one project of Guy Himber, aka CrazyBricks. These are pretty silly accessories and things to accompany the equally silly Munchkin card/boardgame. I just thought they were really cute, god knows what I’m going to do with them. Particular favourites for me are the chibi cthulus (some may become gifts for others…) and the splendid octobricks!

Swag

Swagger

You should definitely check out his current project, which is already very well funded and heading for far-reaching stretch goals: Dino Dudes! Yep, it’s just what it sounds like. Go get em! Nicely covered here by the excellent Beyond the Brick channel:

Reading: Provenance by Ann Leckie

My first Leckie, having not yet gotten around to reading the acclaimed Ancillary Justice series, though this one is set in the same universe. It’s perfectly fine small-scope space opera, focusing on a young woman’s attempts to secure her future (by being named as heir to a senior politician – her adopted mother in a society with interesting communal creche arrangements) by breaking a thief out of prison and lording her victory over her brother. The thief has apparently nicked some precious vestiges, Leckie’s intriguing concept of highly-prized mementoes of the past, which might be anything from an actual artifact, eg a bell used in the first summoning of parliament, to a signed bus ticket on a special day. The Hwaean people are obsessed with the things, and it would be a terrible shame if they turned out to be fake… There’s lots of running around with aliens and robots and occasional murder of diplomats and so on, all risking the failure of a super-important peace accord between humans and some potentially terrifying aliens. Provenance is neatly written, though it loses something in having the plot summary on the back cover take only the first chapter or so to resolve, leaving me unsure where it was going after the exciting sounding heist was dealt with so quickly. It never quite recovered for me, which definitely confirms that I should not read the back cover of books I’m about to read. The author’s interest in diversity and multiple genders, modes of address and interesting social set ups are fun and satisfying to read about, so I suspect I’ll enjoy getting properly into the Ancillary Justice vibe; I just shouldn’t have started here.

More LEGO. SCUM: A Star Wars Story

I’ve now built the main cast of our Star Wars RPG! Clockwise from top-left: my Tusken raider with savaged translator droid strapped to my back, Jon’s Twi’lek bounty hunter, Ben’s Nautolan hacker, Diarmuid’s hapless and much abused Imperial officer, Joe’s GH7 medical droid (a real delight to assemble) his Mandalorian bodyguard (played by Charlie). It’s fun! Now I wanna build some of our missions…

Watching: Agents of SHIELD season 4

I’m sure you’re growing weary of this, but Agents of SHIELD is a goddamned delight. Best show on TV? Maybe. (Warning: many spoilers ahead.) This was the last of the seasons that I’d seen before, so was by far the most familiar. And yet, in the style of all their seasons, a MILLION things happen, overwhelming any sense I had of how long any of the events took. To give you some idea of just how wild this season is, we go from introducing Ghost Rider, in a surprisingly coherent way, to another Avengers nightmare of AI coming to life and taking over various characters with robot duplicates (in this case, Ada, built by splendid returning cast member John Hannah), followed by an incredible immersion of the main cast in a vast virtual reality “The Framework” (built by Ada, John Hannah, and Fitz) a terrifying alternate reality where Hydra has won and rules the world, busily oppressing and annihilating inhumans so that Ada can build herself a real body. Jesus Christ, it’s a lot. Add to that a new director of SHIELD, the ongoing friction between SHIELD and the inhumans vs the rest of the world, plus god knows what else that I’ve forgotten, and I’m happily mindblown. Of course, it’s also the doomed FitzSimmons romance show too, as those two get yet another absolute kicking when we see that Fitz is the chief Hydra scientist, experimenting and murdering all sorts of folk, like Simmons… How will they put themselves back together? Who the hell knows because at the end of this season most of the team is abducted and wake up in SPACE! In truth I’m already a good way into season 5 and I could not be happier.

Doing: MissImp’s virtual improv comedy drop-in

I’ll admit, I’m as behind on these as I am on everything else… First up, The Tiny Glass Person with Feña Ortalli:

Followed by the marvellous David Escobedo in Discovering Your Dynamics:

Last Week: LEGO, Knot Ready, Space Force, Provenance, MissImp, CrazyBricks, Agents of SHIELD, We Are What We Overcome… many things! I’ve gotta get back to doing this weekly… TV, books, much LEGO, some improv and podcasts. https://wp.me/pbprdx-8Gx Wow, the last couple of weeks alternating surging heat and grim weather has thorough melted every bit of my desire to do…

[euroman1945-blog]

The Daily Tulip

The Daily Tulip – News From Around The World

Sunday 30th September 2018

The Final Publication

Good Morning Gentle Reader….  Today will be the final publication of The Daily Tulip. Ever since I started writing the Tulip, I have had problems with Facebook, who seem to consider this newsletter about what is/was happening around the world to be Spam, and as a result, every five days or so I get restricted and cannot share the news with other groups and pages that I am a member of.

This restricting and blocking has coincided with Facebook asking me to “Boost” the publication by paying money to do so, I reject their offer, and low and behold, I am restricted and or blocked from sharing. I have always thought “Sharing” was a fundamental and core part of Facebook’s philosophy, but, it seems “Sharing”  is only possible if you pay for it.

So this month I have decided to stop writing on Facebook and seek another medium to express my thoughts on.

Thank You for all your kinds words and comments, it has been a lot of fun, unfortunately the Facebook problems have outweighed the good times..

As this is the last issue of The Daily Tulip, I thought that we could look back at some of the news events over the years that have put a smile on our collective faces….

FRIDAY 25TH SEPTEMBER 2015…. Well what do a Pigs Head, David Cameron and Oxford have in common I ask you Gentle Reader??? Well it seems that during the 1980’s when David Cameron (Call me Dave) the former PM of the United Kingdom attended Oxford from what I have been able to glean from news sites all over the world is that at Oxford two life styles existed, the ones that wore “Donkey” jackets and supported the miners and a group that wanted to relive Brideshead.. they of course were the “Filthy Rich” but to quote “Dave” ‘The atmosphere among those of us who wanted to live the Brideshead life was really quite pleasant. There were cocktail parties in the Master’s [head of college] Garden . . . and we could all play at being Sebastian Flyte.’…. But it seems Cameron went a great deal further. He also got involved in the notorious Oxford dining society, the Piers Gaveston, named after the lover of Edward II, which specializes in bizarre rituals and sexual excess….. A distinguished Oxford contemporary claims Cameron once took part in an outrageous initiation ceremony at a Piers Gaveston event, involving a dead pig. His extraordinary suggestion is that the future PM inserted a private part of his anatomy into the animal’s mouth… (Maybe that’s where the expression “Dick Head” came from??)… The late Count Gottfried von Bismarck, an Oxford contemporary of Cameron’s, reportedly threw dinner parties featuring the heads of pigs. (He later became notorious after Olivia Channon, daughter of a Tory minister, died of a heroin overdose in his Christ Church bedroom.)…Meanwhile, Cameron had joined yet another dubious society — the notorious Bullingdon Club — a riotous drinking club for a highly select band of the super-rich…..  The bespoke uniform, of navy tailcoats, mustard-coloured waistcoats and sky-blue bow ties, could run to thousands of pounds, putting membership beyond the reach of ordinary students….So I ask how much significance should be attached to Cameron’s decision to join the Bullingdon Club?... One Tory colleague thinks that the answer is ‘considerable’. The MP concerned was once asked to join the club himself, but attended just one gathering before walking out in disgust…. ‘What it basically involved was getting drunk and standing on restaurant tables, shouting about “f***ing plebs”,’ he says. ‘It was all about despising poor people.’ … I don’t think that attitude has left our former PM he still looks down on the “Huddled Mass” and truthfully doesn’t give a Dam about the average person.. he’s a sort of Margret Thatcher in men’s clothes… he makes Jeremy Corbyn look normal….  

WEDNESDAY 18TH MAY 2016…It looks like Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway has taken a bit to the tune of $1B in Apple, so It’s no longer forbidden fruit. Famously averse to tech stocks, Warren Buffett has gambled big on the Cupertino-based computing giant — news that saw the iPhone maker’s shares jump 3.5 percent to $93.65 yesterday. Long a fan of predictable, slow-earning stocks, Buffet’s investment, some analysts say, reflects that Apple is no longer a tech-only firm attracting growth and high-risk investors. And with Buffet also reportedly backing a bid to buy Yahoo, it looks like the legendary value investor has finally gotten online.. Buffett must have seen the "Core" value of Apple.....avoided the "Serpent" and taken a bite...

SUNDAY 5TH APRIL 2015…. Staying in the Garden of Eden, and why not I ask myself, It isn’t brain surgery, but still … Massachusetts General Hospital surgeons, who completed the nation’s first genitourinary reconstructive transplant last week, aren’t feeling cocky but are “cautiously optimistic” about the outcome. Patient Thomas Manning, 64, who lost his penis to cancer in 2012, reported little pain and hoped his success would encourage other men stigmatized by similar amputations. The organ, from a deceased donor, could take months to become as functional as the world’s first successfully transplanted penis, which helped father a child after being attached in South Africa in 2014.

SUNDAY 20TH NOVEMBER 2016…. “This is Nut’s”….. An English train company announced possible delays after an escaped pet squirrel became trapped on one of its trains. Southeastern railway provided an update via its Twitter account, warning of potential delays from Orpington Kent on Tuesday. "Trains from Orpington may be delayed due to a pet squirrel being stuck behind a grill on a train," the railway said. The railway explained the squirrel had gotten trapped in a vent underneath the seat as the owners attempted to coax it out. The squirrel's owners refused to leave the train until they had their pet, forcing the operators to divert the train back to Victoria to avoid further delays, according to ITV. Ultimately the owners were able to safely lure the squirrel out of the grill and the train continued on its way.

TUESDAY 12TH FEBRUARY 2013…. And finally, An alarming report released Monday by the National Audubon Society revealed that, during their lifetimes, nearly four of every five female birds will be sexually harassed by complete strangers lewdly exposing their colorful plumage. “We knew that male birds sitting on branches in groups and making obscene calls to passing females was a nearly ubiquitous phenomenon, but the frequency with which unsuspecting avians of egg-producing age are subjected to lurid flourishes of multicolor tail feathers is really quite shocking,” said Katie Ulster, an ornithologist at Columbia University who headed up the survey, which also found that 48 percent of female birds exposed to such unsolicited displays of plumage had barely reached sexual maturity. “Unfortunately, incidences of a young sage grouse or a bird-of-paradise being followed back to her nest, hearing a sudden whistle, and then turning around only to see an array of garish plumes flapping wildly right in her face are all too common.” The report also published the disturbing findings that, after enduring such behavior, many female birds will often mate with their abusers for life

Well Gentle Reader I hope you enjoyed our look back at the news from around the world this, morning… …

Our Tulips today are is called a Tulipa "Kandy Cane" and it's an historically old genius of Tulip dating back to 1785 and has not been modified since then, unlike Mr. Thomas Manning.....

A Sincere Thank You for your company and Thank You for your likes and comments over the years. I will miss the interaction with You, the reader, and before tears start to fall, as is my custom, I will go and get myself another mug of "Colombian" Coffee and wish you a safe Sunday 30th September 2018 from my home on the southern coast of Spain, where the blue waters of the Alboran Sea washes the coast of Africa and Europe and the smell of the night blooming Jasmine and Honeysuckle fills the air…and a crazy old guy and his dog called Bella go out for a walk at 4:00 am…on the streets of Estepona…

All good stuff....But remember it’s a dangerous world we live in

Be safe out there…

Robert McAngus #Spain #Tulips #Bella #Coffee #Final_Issue