#for example he uses the same line about five easy pieces and six more days on the road

[kissinginkitchens]

You Bring Me Home — Chapter One: Flightless Bird, American Mouth

a/n: I've been working on this story for mooonths now and I'm so excited to finally share it with the world! It's heavily inspired by Harry's Behind the Album mini doc, except I changed the setting to Hawai'i because I've personally spent some time there and as they say, write what you know! YBMH takes place in the period between One Direction's hiatus and Harry's first album/tour, but with that being said, this is entirely a work of fiction and some events don't follow the true timeline. Thank you so much for taking the time to read my little story, I hope you love it as much as I do! It will be updated every Friday at 5 PM PST. My inbox is open, so feel free to talk to me once you've finished reading! I'd love to hear from you :) Much love, Mel <3

Pairing: Hawai'i!Harry x Original Character

Warnings: swearing

Word Count: 5.5k

May, 2016

Harry watches LAX get smaller through the airplane window and visualizes all of his worries stuck at the terminal gate, their magnitude also diminishing as he takes flight. He sinks lower in his seat and skims through playlists on his phone when a nagging feeling at the back of his mind pulls his attention away from the screen. Looking up from the song choices, he spots a cell phone quickly lowered from his line of vision and a girl with flushed cheeks who quickly averts her gaze. Harry shoots a tight-lipped smile in her direction and goes back to his phone with a sigh. The days when he could roam the streets freely without fear of recognition—or worse, harassment—feel like an entirely different lifetime. He sometimes imagines that he’ll wake up back in his childhood bed as if the past five years had all been a dream, but he never does. In fact, his privacy and anonymity seem to dwindle with each minute of radio play that One Direction receives. It’s a bittersweet pill to swallow, but one he hopes will go down easier with some time in the Hawaiian sun.

His close friend and new manager, Jeff Azoff, had suggested the vacation as soon as the band privately agreed to take a hiatus.

“You’ll go home for a few weeks,” his voice had crackled through the speakers of Harry’s phone. “Visit your mom and Gem, lay low for a while until the smoke blows over,”

Harry mulled it over in his mind, eyes flickering over the rolling landscape outside of the tour bus window.

“Then what?”

“Then you go for a little vacation. The label offered to cover a house in Hawaii so you can start working on the album,”

“Alone?”

Jeff chuckled lightly on the other end before responding. “I mean, if that’s what you want,”

“No,” Harry corrected. “You and Tom should come. Mitch and Bhasker, too,”

“The dream team,”

“And there’ll be a studio there?”

“Yes,” Jeff started, almost hesitant. “But I don’t want you to think about that too much,”

“But you said the label—"

“I also said vacation. Look, Rob said ‘it will all happen in due time,' did he not?”

Harry twisted the rose ring around his finger, tracing over the silver petals and thinking back to his conversation with the CEO of Sony Music, Rob Stringer. Upon the proposal of his debut solo album, Rob had told him that the most important ingredient for a successful debut would be patience. The singer had agreed in the moment, but every day not spent in the studio felt like a test he hadn’t studied hard enough for.

“Yeah.”

“So you take the free vacation,” Jeff suggested. “You go out, live, get some writing material. Maybe mess around with some tunes. And then we come back to L.A. and get to work. But until then, I just want you to focus on taking it easy.”

So take it easy he had. Or at least he had tried to when he was back home in England. Harry quickly grew restless after what felt like the millionth awkward conversation with past friends and acquaintances, all of which eventually led to the topic of One Direction and it’s unexpected hiatus. After one month at home, his mind and journal were full of ideas for songs, things that he wanted to say before he lost his nerve. One night as he tossed and turned in bed, he shot Jeff a text, just two words that would kick off a three month getaway to the Big Island of Hawai'i:

I’m ready.

********

“Sounds great, I'll go put in your order.” Alani offers sweetly, trying not to overdo it with the customer service voice. After waiting on the family at her designated table, she heads back to the kitchen and finds her younger sister, Pua, crouched in the corner taking what appears to be a serious phone call.

“I don’t know, I just saw it!” Her sister cries in a hushed tone. “Where do you think he’s going?”

“Is everything okay?” Alani cuts in with concern.

Pua whispers into the speaker before bringing the phone to her shoulder.

“Harry Styles was just spotted on a plane this morning,”

“Who?”

“The guy from One Direction,” her sister explains with a hint of irritation in her voice. “The band who sings that song you secretly like, ‘Fireproof,'”

Alani vaguely recalls the melody, but she waits expectantly for Pua to elaborate. “And this is news because…”

“Because the band just broke up, so where could he possibly be going?”

"The unemployment office?”

Pua rolls her eyes and returns to her phone call while Alani envelops her in a tight hug.

“I’m just kidding!” Alani apologizes, squeezing tighter despite her sister’s attempts to break free. “I’m sure he’ll be living off of royalty checks until he’s, like, eighty,”

“Get off me, freak!” Pua cries out, finally breaking the embrace.

Alani clutches her chest and pulls out an invisible knife. “Ouch. I’m telling Harry you said that,”

“This is exactly why I don’t tell you things.” the younger sister huffs, storming out of the kitchen through the employee entrance where Alani’s best friend, Maleah, has just arrived.

“Looks like someone forgot to eat their Cheerios today,” she remarks, tying her curls into a high ponytail.

Alani shrugs and leans against the counter. “She’s going through something. Just discovered that boys in pop bands are, in fact, just regular boys.”

“Poor thing,” Maleah frowns. “We all have to learn eventually.”

********

The sky is a blend of cotton candy pink and burnt orange when Alani returns home from the café with a strawberry smoothie in tow. She empties the mailbox and sorts through the various bills and advertisements, but her stomach drops when she sees a familiar return address label. After a quick greeting to her excited dog who waits at the door, Alani bolts up the stairs and quietly shuts the bedroom door behind her. Breathe, she reminds herself before tearing into the envelope and discarding it onto the wooden floor.

Dear Ms. Hale,

We are very grateful to have received your submission to Rolling Stone magazine. However, we regret to inform you—

She doesn’t read the rest, slumping to the floor in defeat. The sixth rejection letter from Rolling Stone lies crumpled at Alani’s feet and she kicks it across the room with a frustrated grunt. She had worked for over two months perfecting her analysis of Joni Mitchell’s Big Yellow Taxi and its allusions to the environmental impact of urban development in Hawaii. As part of her initial research, Alani had even traveled to both the Royal Hawaiian hotel in Honolulu, which is the famous Pink Hotel mentioned in the song, and Foster Botanical Garden that Mitchell referred to as “the tree museum.” She was certain that her effort and persistence would result in at least a consideration. The second third time's the charm! Maleah had joked watching Alani submit the piece. Six articles in the span of two years, each one facing the same rejection despite the increased effort Alani had put in over time. The fact that the rejection letter hadn’t changed over the course of the two years brings an incredulous smile to her face, and her stomach turns when she considers that the editors probably hadn’t even read her work, anyway. All that effort, she thinks to herself, all that time, for nothing.

“It will take time,” her favorite professor, Dr. Hudson, had reassured her three months after the Joni Mitchell article was submitted. “Every great writer faced countless rejection until that one piece. Yours will come. Keep your eyes open and your pen ready.”

Alani sighs and lifts herself off the floor, choosing to crawl into her unmade bed instead of slumping onto the hardwood. She hears a soft scratching at the door before her King Charles Spaniel, Freddie, pads into the room.

“Come here, bubs,” Alani whispers. He obeys and burrows into the duvet, giving her temple a gentle lick before nuzzling into the nape of her neck.

“You still love me, right?” she asks, voice cracking. “Even if I’m a failure?”

Freddie sniffs her ear in response.

********

“Right,” Harry says, his tongue peeking from the corner of his mouth as he reads the map. “No, left, sorry,”

“Do you actually know how to read a map?” Jeff teases, correcting the turn.

Harry pouts in response, his brows furrowing. “In my defense, we’re literally in the middle of fucking nowhere,”

“There are worse places to be,” Mitch pipes up from the back seat. “England, for example, where they say things like ‘litchrally’,”

“Very well said, Mitchell,” Jeff Bhasker adds with a fake British accent of his own.

Harry turns to his friends in the back seat with a finger pointed like an agitated mother. “If you lot don’t shut up, I’m gonna lead us to a volcano and push you in,”

“Where are we even going? I forgot,” Tom complains.

“To get food,” his manager responds from the driver’s seat. “I think,”

“Why can’t we just stop there?” Mitch asks pointing to a café pulling up on their right.

Jeff merges into the turning lane quickly without a second thought. “Good enough for me, I’m starving.”

“Sorry, H.” Mitch pats his friend on the shoulder.

Harry scoffs. “You’re the one who wanted poke.”

The Aloha Nui Loa Café is much more spacious than the exterior suggests, yet it still feels cozy. The walls are painted sage green and adorned with various local art pieces, as described by the plaques that accompany them. A skylight fills the center of the room with plenty of warm lighting, leaving the space along the walls in a bit more shade for an intimate feel. In one corner, a hanging disco ball leaves freckles of sparkling light along the walls where the sunlight hits, making the whole image very idyllic in Harry’s mind. As if he couldn’t enjoy the setting more, he hears the beginning of an Otis Redding song that he’s had stuck in his head drift through the restaurant speakers.

“Welcome in!” a voice calls, which pulls him from his survey of the room. His head whips to the source—a girl around his age with wavy, dark hair and honey skin. “For here or to go?”

Harry takes a hesitant step up to the counter. “For here,”

She smiles warmly and pulls some menus from under the counter. “How many in your party?”

“Five.”

“Great, follow me.”

Harry and his friends follow the waitress to the corner of the room under the disco ball and take their seats at the round table.

“My name is Alani,” she introduces herself, setting the menus down. “I’ll be serving you today. Can I get you started with some drinks?”

Harry continues scanning the restaurant while his group orders. His eyes land on the shirt that Alani is wearing, a white tee with the words “Enjoy Health, Eat Your Honey” in blue lettering that surrounds a picture of a cartoon bee.

“Harry,” Jeff says gently, catching his drifting attention.

The singer turns to his manager, who nods to Alani waiting with a pen pressed to her notepad. Harry feels a rush of embarrassment creep across his cheeks and he clears his throat to cover it.

“Just water,” he says, eyes glued to the menu. “Thanks.”

“You got it.” Alani nods, flashing a toothy grin at the rest of the group before turning back to the kitchen. Harry. Her mind repeats, finding a hint of familiarity, though she doesn’t know why.

When Alani arrives at the drink station, she finds her sister staring at her, mouth agape, while Maleah unsuccessfully conceals her laughter.

“What?” she questions, checking herself for any embarrassing stains or smells.

“You were—and he—” Pua stammers. “He was—and then he—”

“That’s Harry Styles,” Maleah translates, her voice hushed as she peers over her friend's shoulder.

Alani turns to steal a glance at the table she just seated, but Pua and Maleah latch onto her and shake their heads frantically.

“Don’t look!” her sister hisses.

Alani smirks, amused at their reactions. “No shit. That’s One Direction?”

Maleah snorts, clasping a hand over her mouth as Pua huffs. “No, dumbass! It’s just Harry. I don’t know who the other guys are,”

“But the blonde guy? That’s not—?”

“No!” Pua and Maleah giggle in unison.

“Okay, geez,” Alani relents. She manages to steal a quick glance at the table over her shoulder, immediately searching for Harry. Her eyes scan over the long, curly hair kept out of his face by a pair of white sunglasses that she had seen on Kurt Cobain once. All of his features are sharp and striking, from his pointed nose and defined jawline to the bright blue eyes. Or maybe they were grey? Alani wonders, trying to remember the exact shade. He doesn’t look anything like the fresh-faced teeny bopper she’d had in mind, the one from a music video her sister had shown her a long time ago. She would have never guessed that the What Makes You Beautiful singer had so much dark ink trailing down his bicep and forearm, though her knowledge of One Direction was very limited.

“What did he order?” Pua questions, her eyes wide.

Alani quickly snaps back to reality and resumes filling the drinks. “A water,”

“Oh my god,” Maleah swoons. “I’m never drinking anything else ever again,”

“I didn’t even know you liked him,” Alani teases with an eyebrow raised.

Maleah sneaks another peek at the table and catches her lower lip between her teeth. “I mean, I didn’t really think so either but look at him. What a fucking dream,”

Harry was objectively handsome, this Alani could admit, but she personally didn’t see the appeal and had a strong feeling that he was just like every other male celebrity. The fact that he hadn’t even bothered to make eye contact with her only served as further proof of what she knew to be true.

“Okay, well, your dreamboat is waiting for his water. So excuse me,” Alani winks, making her way back to the table.

The singer spots Alani returning out of the corner of his eye and the sight of her causes a strange flutter in the pit of his stomach that makes him want to duck for cover. Instead, he pulls his phone from his back pocket and pretends to be occupied with something on the screen.

“Okay,” she greets, setting the drink tray down. “I have a Blue Hawaii, a Mango Mama, two Loco Cocos, and a water,”

The group graciously accepts their drinks with a chorus of “thank you," but the only one under Alani’s scrutiny is Harry. He still doesn’t meet her almond eyes, and though she figured he wouldn’t, she can’t help the inkling of disappointment that washes over her. After taking their meal orders, Alani heads back to the kitchen, checking on her other customers along the way. Harry’s eyes follow her and he observes the way customers light up at her presence, indulging her conversation with laughter. He watches as she lingers by the jukebox in one corner of the room, a detail he had missed in his initial scan, and waits anxiously to see what song she chooses. Baby I’m-a Want You begins softly and Harry feels the corner of his lip curl ever so slightly. Good choice, he thinks.

********

“He’s still here,” Pua muses, peering through the tiny window in the kitchen door. It had been nearly two hours and the five men were still seated around their table cracking jokes and doing a lot of talking with their hands.

Alani doesn’t look up from her bowl of sliced kiwis, offering a hum in response. “And what do you want me to do about that?”

“Nothing,” Pua shoots back. “Don’t bother him,”

“What kind of girls do you think he’s into?” Maleah asks, attempting to peek through the window.

Alani shrugs, bored of the conversation and of thinking about Harry. “I don’t know, but I’ll bet he’s a real sucker for the ones who stalk him while he’s eating,”

“How does he make eating a salad look hot?”

“Can we talk about something else now?” Alani whines, poking holes in a lone kiwi with her fork.

Pua tosses a wet dish rag in her sister’s direction and cheers when it lands in her face. “Go see if he wants more water, he looks thirsty.”

“I already refilled it,” Alani defends. “Twenty minutes ago. I’ve refilled it a hundred times, I’m surprised he hasn’t peed his pants.”

I’m gonna piss myself. Harry thinks, his right leg bouncing to distract himself. He really wasn’t all that thirsty, but he couldn’t stop himself from finishing each glass of water that Alani placed in front of him. He really wasn’t all that thirsty, but he couldn’t stop himself from finishing each glass of water that Alani placed in front of him. Like clockwork, she would return to fill his glass almost as soon as the last drop had been drained, and so what began as a little experiment slowly turned into a bladder hazard. But if the trend was to be trusted, she would be back any minute and he wasn’t going to miss it; afterall, there were only so many ways to casually linger in a small café without making it weird. Unable to bear it any longer, he heads to the restroom and hopes that Alani doesn’t clear their table before he has a chance to see her again.

Harry pads down the back hallway with his eyes cast down at the floor, which proves to be a mistake when he walks directly into another person.

“Sorry!” they both apologize quickly, Harry’s palm taking purchase on the other person’s upper arm.

“I wasn’t paying attention,” he offers, finally meeting the dark, mocha eyes already looking back at him.

Alani presses her lips into a tight smile. “Me either,”

Harry’s heartbeat picks up when he realizes it’s her, and he isn’t aware of how close they’re standing until he detects the faint scent of kiwi on her breath. He takes a step back and rakes a hand through his hair.

“So I guess I’ll just—”

“Yeah, sure.”

Green. Alani notes to herself. His eyes are green.

********

Shortly after Harry returned from the restroom, him and his friends settled their bill and headed out. Alani cleared their table and her eyes nearly fell out of her head when she saw the hefty tip left behind. The word mahalo was also left behind on the receipt, underlined twice, and she wondered if it was his handwriting.

Later that night, she settled into bed with her laptop and hesitantly typed his name into Google. As she expected, countless articles about the split of One Direction emerged, most of them speculating what was next for each member. To her surprise, however, Harry’s name seemed to be mentioned more than his fellow bandmates as various sources labeled him “the next Justin Timberlake” and rising star of the group. Upon further investigation, she learned that the demand for information about the elusive Harry Styles was high, especially concerning any possible solo music. No news had yet been confirmed by Styles himself, nor anyone claiming to represent him, but she still wondered if his presence in Hawaii had anything to do with a possible solo project. Almost as soon as she thought it, Alani dismissed the theory in favor of the idea that he was most likely just taking a vacation. And from the buzz that she saw surrounding the news about One Direction, she couldn’t blame him.

The more Alani read, the more she wanted to know, and something deep down told her that his was a story worth telling. Of course, the only problem was that she had hardly talked to him, and there were only so many things she could say about the fifteen glasses of water he downed. There was no way of knowing if she would ever see him again, either, or if he was merely stopping in Hilo on his way to another island or somewhere else entirely. Alani sighed, thinking back to her most recent rejection from Rolling Stone. She knew that there was no possible way she would ever see or talk to Harry ever again, and even if she did, why would he bare his entire soul to a stranger? Still, she let her mind wander through the possibility.

Dear Ms. Hale, the letter would read, we are very grateful to have received your submission to Rolling Stone magazine and are pleased to inform you that your piece on Harry Styles will be featured in next month’s issue. Additionally, we would be honored to have you on staff, effective immediately.

It was far-fetched, Alani knew this, but she dozed off that night with endless ideas swimming in her head.

********

By the third day after his visit, the only trace of Harry is in Alani’s search history. She would have completely forgotten about him if it weren’t for her sister’s constant reminiscing and multiple attempts to rename the house salad to the “Harry Special.” As a result, a part of Alani’s thoughts periodically linger back to that day and the subsequent hours spent on Google that she’d rationalized as research instead of stalking. Somehow the knowledge that she’ll never see him again only adds fuel to the questions still burning in her mind, but a customer clearing their throat while she sorts menus below the hostess podium interrupts her thoughts.

“Welcome in!” She calls, standing. “What can I—”

She stops in her tracks, unable to believe her eyes. Harry blinks and waits for her to continue.

“What can I get started for you?” Alani tries again, hoping that he hadn’t noticed her shock. Luckily for her, Harry had been too focused on choosing his next words to register her mistake.

“What’s in the Honu smoothie?” he asks, mentally kicking himself for asking such a stupid question when the menu just inches above her head clearly spells it out.

Alani hums, thinking back to the times she had made the smoothie herself. “Kiwis, spinach, mango, avocado, and a hint of lime,”

“I’ll take one of those,” Harry says, reaching for his wallet.

Alani punches in the order with trembling fingers and nods. “For here or to go?”

“To go,”

Disappointment fills her chest. Sure, she hadn’t planned on seeing him ever again, but the fact that she did felt like a sign. If she wanted to take the chance, she’d have to do it fast.

“Anything else?” she asks, weighing her options while he skims the menu.

“No thanks.”

Alani makes the smoothie quickly, head spinning. She had spent most of the night after their initial meeting planning out exactly the type of questions she hoped to ask him and what kind of article she would write. She was used to writing about what she knew—artists and music she’d admired for years— but she figured that starting fresh with someone she hardly knew would be a good challenge. Not to mention that it seemed like just the thing Rolling Stone would jump for. Alani finally works up the courage as she finishes his smoothie, but when she returns to hand it to him and hopefully strike up a conversation, his ear is pressed to his cell phone. She holds out the drink and he graciously accepts, giving her a small nod as a “thank you” and rushing out of the restaurant.

Two days later he returns and is seated at the counter, typing away on his phone. Alani feels both a rush of optimism and annoyance at the universe for dangling his presence so unexpectedly. She starts heading over to him, but Maleah cuts in.

“Trade me?” she proposes, eyes wide.

Alani blinks. “Oh, I would but I—”

“Please,” her best friend pouts. “I’m leaving to see my grandparents in stupid California for two months. Who knows when I’ll get the chance to see him again?”

Alani sighs, but gives in, reluctantly exchanging Harry for the family of four seated by the window. A strange feeling settles into the pit of his stomach when he sees that she heads in the opposite direction after a hushed conversation with another waitress. He doesn’t know why she traded him for a different customer, but he takes the hint.

A week goes by without another sighting of Harry and Alani has permanently taken on the role of greeting hostess in hopes of seeing him again. Her heartbeat temporarily speeds up when she sees a long haired customer approach the door, but her spirits quickly fall when the face doesn’t match his.

Another week brings another disappointing realization that Harry might be gone for good. One rainy morning when the restaurant is quiet and only two customers huddle together in a booth near the back, Alani hunches over the hostess podium and doodles on a stray receipt— a sunflower, a crescent moon, and two hearts. The bell above the door jingles but she doesn’t look up, too absorbed in her scribbles.

“Do you serve coffee?”

The familiar accented voice stops Alani’s pen dead in its tracks. She lifts her eyes first to confirm, and then straightens up when she sees that her ears haven’t deceived her.

“Yes,” she swallows.

“Great. I’ll take it to go,”

She slightly deflates, but Harry thinks he’s reading too much into it.

“Actually,” he corrects anyway, just in case he isn’t. “I think I’ll stay for a while,”

Alani flashes a warm smile and nods in the direction of the counter. “Right this way,”

Harry sheds his windbreaker onto the back of the seat, revealing a black and white Rolling Stones t-shirt that makes Alani’s blood pressure rise. A sign, she thinks.

“What do you want in your coffee?” she questions carefully.

“Nothing,” he responds, shaking out his damp hair gently. “Or actually, uh, butter...if you have some,”

Alani blinks, not sure if she’d heard correctly or if there had been some transatlantic miscommunication.

“Butter?”

“Yeah,”

“Like the—”

“Spread, yeah,” Harry confirms. “It’s weird, I know,”

She lets out a light-hearted laugh and nods. “It’s a...unique request,”

“I thought the same thing at first,” Harry confides. “It’s not bad, actually. But maybe I’ve just been in L.A. for too long.”

“I’ll take your word for it.”

She offers a polite smile and heads to the kitchen where the cook and two other waiters talk amongst each other. Alani is grateful that the restaurant is slow this morning because she knows that it means minimal interruptions to her time with Harry. To ensure this, though, she asks one of the other waiters to cover the podium and returns to Harry with his coffee.

“One butter coffee, free of judgement,” the waitress announces, setting it down.

Harry grins softly, stirring the drink with the spoon Alani provided. “You can judge, it’s alright,”

“I just wanna know why,”

The coffee had been part of a fad diet while on tour in order to boost Harry’s energy on stage and stay trim for the hundreds of photo-ops he would be a part of. He doesn’t know how to communicate all of this to Alani, however, not sure how much she knows about that part of him, so he shrugs and tells a simplified version of the truth.

“I read about this trend a while back, it's called bulletproof coffee. Supposed to get your energy up and I needed it for my job,”

“Which is…” Alani trails off, downplaying the knowledge that she had acquired from Google.

“I make music,” is all Harry says and he takes a sip of the drink to avoid elaborating.

“Anything I would have heard?”

He swallows hard and listens to the faint rumbling of thunder outside before replying. “Possibly,”

“Try me,” Alani challenges.

He narrows his eyes and takes another sip of coffee. “Why don’t you tell me something about yourself first?”

“What do you wanna know?”

Everything, Harry responds internally, though he reigns it in. “How you got into waitressing,”

Alani sighs, resting her elbows on the counter across from him. “There’s not much to tell, it’s a family business. What I really wanna do is write,”

“Music?”

“Articles. I’m studying Journalism at UH,”

Harry hums in response, filing the detail away in the back of his mind. “Sounds interesting. You ever publish anything?”

“Not yet,” Alani shakes her head gently, toying with the sleeves of her green University of Hawaii crewneck. “Hopefully soon, though,”

Harry racks his brain for something else to say, but before he can, Alani speaks up again.

“Is it my turn to ask something now?”

He offers a curt nod and stirs his coffee.

“What kind of music do you write?”

Harry chooses to be vague again. “Different stuff. Pop, usually. Been messing with some classic rock, though,”

“Explains the shirt,”

He peers down at the design on his tee and agrees. “Yeah, I guess so,”

“Do you like it?” Alani asks, her eyes begging to make contact with his again. “Writing music, I mean,”

“Yeah,” Harry confirms, tapping his spoon against the rim of the mug. “I really do,”

Alani’s heart pounds. This is her chance, a moment to finally secure her breakthrough piece. She doesn’t know how to approach it, so she opts to dive right in without looking back. The worst he can say is no.

“Can I ask you something else?”

“That’s cheating,” Harry teases lightly. “It's my turn,”

She pouts playfully, but obliges. “Fire away,”

Harry doesn’t know which question to ask first, but when he glances down at the crescent moon inked on her wrist, he decides to start there.

“What’s with the moon tattoo?”

Alani isn’t sure what she expected him to ask and wonders what purpose such a detail could possibly serve him, but she answers anyway.

“Oh, well,” she begins, tracing her index finger over the outline. “It’s kinda the meaning of my full name. It’s Mahealani, Hawaiian for ‘heavenly moon,'”

Fitting, Harry comments to himself. Every detail he learns about her makes him want to learn that much more, from her favorite foods to the last thing she thinks about before falling asleep. Studying her expectant eyes, he suddenly remembers that it’s his turn to respond.

“That’s cool,” is all he says.

Alani doesn’t know what to make of the faraway look in his eye, but she decides to pose her most burning question while he appears to be in good spirits.

“I know this is gonna sound totally out of the blue,” she starts, working past the lump in her throat. “But when you mentioned how you write music, I was just reminded of this assignment I’m working on in my class,”

Harry waits for her to continue, nursing his now lukewarm coffee.

“I’m supposed to write a piece about someone who I don’t know that well,” she continues. “You know, to practice our interviewing skills. And, well, I was just kind of wondering if you might be interested in helping me out—being the subject, I mean,”

Alani had every intention of telling Harry the truth, about how she really planned to submit the article to Rolling Stone in hopes of securing an internship before her college graduation next Spring. But as she started speaking, she quickly realized how it would come off: a complete stranger asking for personal information to submit to a well-known publication. She knew that there was a chance he would shut down and never return, so she lowered the stakes and hoped that this route would be less risky. Was it ethical? Alani hadn’t decided yet, but she would work out the details later. After six failed articles and two years of rejection, she saw a ray of hope and wasn’t going to let it slip away.

Harry ponders her offer for a moment, which confirms that she had recognized him. Normally he would be off-put by such a request, and to a certain extent he is, but there is something sincere in her voice that he trusts deep down. Before he agrees, however, he decides to fish around a bit to test her reaction.

“You know who I am,” he says gently. “Don’t you?”

Alani’s heart drops into the pit of her stomach, not sure what to say next. She hopes with every fiber of her being that she hasn’t upset him, or worse, ruined her chances, so she decides to offer some truth to throw him off her scent.

“My sister recognized you,” she explains. “That day you came in with your friends. I thought they were your bandmates at first,”

This lets Harry know that she isn’t a total stalker, which is comforting, but he wouldn’t have been minded if she were a fan simply engaging in conversation.

“Oh,” he laughs weakly.

“I totally understand if you say no,” Alani offers quickly, trying to smooth things over. “I just thought it was worth a shot. And that it might be more interesting than interviewing our produce guy,”

Harry decides to give her one last scan for any sign of insincerity. He’d always felt that his gut instinct was strong and it hadn’t led him astray thus far.

“An interview?” he clarifies.

“Just one,” Alani promises. “An hour, tops. And you can proofread all of it once I’ve finished, too.”

Harry waits a beat, already knowing his reply, but he wants to see how she will react to his silence. She doesn’t budge, almond eyes set and determined.

“Okay.”

next chapter

[jodfics]

Two Men and a Baby

Something silly.

Sam blew a sigh out from his mouth and looked at the man sat opposite him, "This is a mess, you know that, right?" Then, not waiting for a reply, he leaned over the small car seat they had strapped to the side of the carrier plane and frowned when the baby's eyes locked onto his. "Why you gotta look into my soul like that - check out Bucky, girls love ken dolls."

"How am I a ken doll?" Bucky's eyebrows furrowed even further, but he reached out to check the straps over the baby's chest for the nth time in the half an hour they'd been in the air. "If it's because of my arm - it's vibranium, not plastic."

"It's vibranium, blah blah'" Sam mimicked him childishly and sat on the left side of the car seat, "I can't believe this, man. I sent you in to disarm the bad guys, and you come out with a baby!"

Bucky scoffed and shook his head, "C'mon!" He nodded toward the baby, "You sayin' I shoulda left her there? All alone?"

"No, I am not saying that! I am saying, though, that you shouldn't have told the powers that be that we were gonna look after her for the next few days until they can find her parents - there's literally a service for that shit, Buck!"

The baby let out a whine at the same time Bucky sent a glare Sam's way, "Don't swear in fronta the baby... and don't call me 'Buck'. Stop being an asshole - you have nephews. A baby is a piece a cake."

Sam pressed his fingers to his temples and rubbed, Bucky was a constant headache at the best of times, but today he wanted to 'Sparta kick' him off the plane. "I'm not an ass, and for your information - ass is a bad word, don't swear in front of the baby." He waited for an argument, and when none came, Sam continued, "I didn't raise the boys, Sarah did all that, I just got to hold them and hand them back when they got damp. We should have agreed to take the baby to child services, and they would have found her parents - you," he pointed at the other, "You had to mouth off and tell them that we were taking her until further notice."

A squeal came from the tiny human and the start of what was likely going to be wailing; Bucky wasted no time in unstrapping her and holding her to him. She was around six months old with curly hair and a polka-dot dress - small enough to be utterly helpless but big enough that Bucky wasn't too worried about feeding her. Sam watched his 'not' co-worker make a fuss of her, asking her what was wrong in a quiet murmur and feigning shock when she squealed in reply. "Really? Oh, Doll, you are having a bad day, huh?"

"I didn't know you had a babysitting module installed - is that included in the Winter Soldier brainwashing, or is it an add on?" He couldn't help but find the interaction kind of sweet. Same knew how good Bucky was with kids, whether it was his nephews or the neighbour's kids or the kids back in Wakanda; Bucky was a soft touch when it came to them. "Why were you so adamant we take her?"

Bucky's nose scrunched a little when the baby reached out and pat his cheek before going for his nose; he was grateful she was more interested in him than crying. "I don't want her getting lost in child services, they're stretched thin since all the missing parents, and kids suddenly showed up after five years and the guys we saved her from obviously planned to ransom her or worse. So her parents will look for her, and when they do, we can hand her back nice and easy, no lost babies or weird foster parents."

"Dude... you're calling the pot black."

"I'm not a weird foster parent." His tone was even, and Sam blinked at how oblivious the other was. "Here, take her a second." Bucky handed her over, and Sam settled her on his lap whilst he watched him head toward his mission bag. "You got any food in your bag?"

"Not unless babies drink protein shakes," Sam looked down at her and made a curious expression, "Do you want muscles on your muscles? Yeah? You do...? Damn, you're gonna show Bucky up with your miniguns - pow, pow!" He shook her little arms gently and pretended to feel for biceps, "Oh, I think I found a muscle!" She giggled at Sam as he proceeded to poke and tickle her in search of a sixpack; out of the corner of his eye, he saw Bucky glared and snorted, "Uh oh, I think the bionic moron is jealous!"

"No, I'm not!" Came a reply too quick; even Bucky winced at it and cleared his throat to appear calmer, "Put her back in the car seat before you drop her."

"Ooooh, he's so jealous!" Sam pointed at the other, and her eyes followed his direction, but she was too young to understand that Bucky was pouting at them. "Give him the soul stare, Sweetie, see if you can beat him at his own game."

--

Bucky had moved to Delacroix a few weeks after taking out the flag smashers, and to his surprise, Sam had offered to let him move into a little place he had been checking out. It was a nice place with plenty of space for them to train or have the kids run around in - Sam liked that it had a good road into town and his sister's place. Bucky liked the trees that provided them cover and the view of the dock at sunset. There had been negotiations about the living spaces for both of them. Mostly it boiled down to Sam keeping his baseball trophies and wings out of the shared living area and Bucky agreeing not to turn it into a vintage bar or hide knives in all the crevices he could find.

Sam stood at the kitchen counter, baby on his hip, and checked how his homemade applesauce was doing. It had been his turn to check on her when she cried in the night and to take the 'morning shift' - not that he minded as he rocked her slightly and sang for her. He called for the volume to go up and brought the wooden spoon to his mouth like a microphone, "You ready, Sweetie? Nah, you're not ready for this - here we go! Yeah..." The man nodded his head and joined in on the following line of the song, "'And baby, I can't hold it much longer - It's getting stronger and stronger! When I get that feeling, I want -"

"I want an age-appropriate song!" Bucky interrupted and turned the station over.

"Oh no." Sam pointed the spoon at him, his brown eyes wide in outrage, "You did not just turn off Marvin Gaye." The baby pat his chin, and Sam smiled down at her softly to show he wasn't mad at her, "Don't you worry, I'm gonna wait for your naptime before I kick Uncle Bucky into next, next century." He looked back at the brunette who was slumped at the kitchen table and barely awake, "Why do you hate Marvin so much? Hmm? What did he do to you?"

Bucky sat up and tipped his head back to roll his eyes at the ceiling fan, "I don't -" he looked at Sam, "I don't hate Marvin Gaye. I just don't think that song is appropriate for a little girl, ya know?"

"Mm-hmm... But giving her a little whisky is alright?"

"It wasn't even a thimble full! My Pa used to sneak me more than that to help me sleep when I was a baby."

Sam turned off the cooker and put the pan aside to cool, "I'm pretty sure cocaine and cigarettes were on prescription back then. Besides, she's not yours for another couple of hours."

"I'm not gonna give her cocaine, Sam!" Bucky snapped, and then he lowered his tone, "Gotta start her on the small stuff and work up to cocaine."

"I am applying for full custody, Buck! You can pay child support all you want, but I'm not giving you visitation rights!"

"What," A woman's voice cut in, "Did I just step into."

"Sarah, hi!" The brunette's previous grumpy face brightened in a smile as he gave Sam's Sister a wave and ignored the other man glaring at him. He made to stand up, to be polite, but Sarah motioned for him to stay where he was - her smile matching Bucky's.

Sam adjusted the baby on his hip, "As much as I loathe watching you two make eyes at each other... Bucky, don't you have something else to stare at?"

"I got the best view right here - how's your morning, Sarah."

Watching his sister grin like an idiot and knowing her cheeks were red hot, Sam cleared his throat loudly, "You're setting a bad example for the baby. So what do we owe the pleasure, Sarah?" The girl in his arms made grabby hand at the woman, and Sam passed her over.

"Hey, Honey, are your Dads fighting again?" She was ignored in favour of her necklace, and after making sure it wasn't going to hurt the Baby, Sarah let her play. "The engine in the pickup is playing up, I need to head into town, but I don't trust the darn thing not to break down on me."

Before Bucky could even stand up to offer, Sam rushed in with, "I'll take you. I'm not leaving you two together without a chaperone."

"I can take a look at the engine later for you?" He may have been beaten to offering a lift, but Bucky knew more than one way to impress a woman. "Besides..." his blue eyes landed on the baby as she babbled and played with the necklace, "I need something to do after we drop her off with her parents later."

"Did they pass all your security checks?" Sarah asked, only half-serious as she had made fun of them the day before for insisting the people claiming to be the baby's parents were checked by every security firm they could name. "That's a shame... a baby really suits you, Bucky."

He parted his lips to reply, his ears turning a little red as he tried not to blush; whatever he was going to say was prevented by Sam nearly choking on air and sputtering that they had to go, "There's no such thing as on time, Sarah! Bucky, don't give the baby anything illegal!" He took the baby from his sister and deposited her in Bucky's lap before ushering the woman through the door.

"Bye, Sarah."

"Bye, Bucky~."

[blubberquark]

E-Sports

Occasionally, you can read about a game adding or already having “e-sports features“ like tournaments or spectator mode, or about trying to “bootstrap an e-sports scene“ by hosting a tournament with a five- or low-six-figure dollar amount prize pool.

This is not how it works. You can’t turn any game into an e-sport by paying people to play it, or by adding features that enable players to run their own tournaments. E-sports are computer games as competitive spectator sports.

For this to work, you need:

Full-time competitive players

A large audience of passive viewers

A media industry/tournament circuit with sponsors, commentators, broadcasting channels, hosting and monetising professional matches

You cannot have #3 without the first two. You cannot have full-time professional players without #2 and #3. It all feeds into the other pieces.

Maybe, if you cannot afford to have a tournament circuit and full-time pro gamers, you can instead have something similar on a smaller scale:

A high-level hobbyist competitive scene

A small, but committed crowd of enthusiasts keeping the game alive

Enough interest for the enthusiasts to fund an annual tournament

The small-scale model seems to be how speed running and the fighting game community operate. The large-scale model is how StarCraft used to work, and how League of Legends, CS:GO and Overwatch work today.

Professional Competitive High-Level Play

E-sports depends on world-class players who can make a living playing your game at a world-class level. They are called “professional gamers”. They train for the game as their day job, probably with some cardio, gymnastics, and hand-eye coordination exercise mixed in. They have sponsors and trainers, which I will cover more in depth in point #3. For there to even be world-class players, the game has to reward high skill.

A competitive scene needs a a balanced, but competitive game. A competitive game with has skill measurement and a high skill ceiling.

E-sports pro gamers are playing the same game as regular players, but they are very good at it, so good that they dominate matches against average players, and even matches against good players. That’s what makes them world-class. If you could spectate just any game on the ladder, the e-sports scene would nor be special. If the outcomes of a match are heavily influenced by randomness, there can’t be a big difference between world-class players and people who just picked up the game. If the game provides high skill measurement at low levels, but runs into ceiling effects at high levels, for example if pro players frequently play a perfect game of computer golf, or a perfect game of computer bowling, there is no skill measurement at high levels, and high-level matches become boring.

An e-sports scene can only exist when the game is balanced for high-level play and has a long skill chain. I the game is discovered to have boring solutions, it must be patched.

How can you determine who is a “world-class“ player after the game launches? How can you be sure the pro-gamers are really world-class if they only play against other pro gamers? How do players ascend from competitive hobbyist to pro? An e-sports game needs a lively hobbyist competitive scene. Good matchmaking and a public ladder allow professional players to practice against random high-level players, hobbyist players to measure their skill against pro players, and everybody everywhere to know where the metagame is at. After all, what good is skill measurement if you never measure yourself?

An e-sports game needs a ranked ladder and good matchmaking.

The pro gamers will probably spend a significant amount of time each week training, sparring against team mates, practising specific moves, techniques, or strategies. This requires custom matches (ranked ladder matches are still good for raising team brand recognition on twitch though, in addition to getting a feel for the metagame). I heard that during the heyday of StarCraft II, some teams spent hours practising defence against cheese like 6-pool Zerg rush, a bunker rush, or a Zealot/Stalker all-in.

Of course, if you practice defence against bunker rushes for days only for bunkers to be nerfed on the day of a tournament, it’s all moot.

There must be a way for competitive players to practice in custom games against colleagues. Patches affecting balance or tournament play must be small and announced well in advance.

The Passive Watching Experience

The audience cares about the game, knows what’s going on and who is winning, and loosely follows the metagame and the goings-on in the e-sports scene, but not necessarily all the beef and player transfers.

The simplest, but not easiest, way to a large audience for an e-sport is to have a large player base. People who occasionally play the game at a hobbyist level are already familiar with the mechanics, and a little emotionally invested in the outcome of games. Even in some real-life spectator sports (like football), you expect almost all people in your audience to have played the game at some point in the past.

A large hobbyist player base also feeds into the smaller pool of more competitive players, and thus ultimately into the pro gamer scene.

All this is presupposing that the e-sport still resembles the game as most players know it. If the high-level matches look completely different from hobbyist ones, if different skills are important, and if it is difficult to know for a hobbyist player what is going on and who is winning, it is much more difficult to parley a hobbyist player base into an e-sports audience. In some Nintendo party games, like Mario Kart and Smash Bros, (but not Mario Party, which is only casual and does not have a competitive scene) most players are playing only very casually against friends, and in others, most players are only playing in single-player mode. They don’t care about winning or getting good at the game, so they are less likely to care about e-sports.

For a large player base, the game has to be easy to pick up, easy to understand, and still fun and competitive at the entry level. Being easy to pick up and understand also makes e-sports games easier to watch and understand passively.

Having multiple games modes can be a nice compromise, allowing casual players to play in a low-skill game mode while competitive players have a higher skill ceiling. This works best if the cards, units, weapons, or whatever your game has, and all mechanics and physics still follow the same rules, and only a few elements are swapped out. Playing with the same rules but different starting configuration and goal state is better than playing “easy mode” with a completely different balance. Casual observers can follow and appreciate e-sports matches if they know what’s going on. By changing the win condition, starting state, and introducing a couple of new mechanics, new game modes can mostly maintain the game mechanics while shifting the dynamics of a match. Keeping the dynamics but making the moment-to-moment gameplay less predictable for the casual observer is much more confusing.

For the viewers who are not playing the game at all, e-sports broadcasters must explain what’s going on, who is winning, and what the current metagame is.

In some games, the metagame is more important than in others. Card games like Hearthstone are difficult to understand for viewers who are not up-to-date on the metagame, even though the mechanics are easily explained, and the card-specific rules are written on the cards. Without knowledge about the current metagame (which decks are dominating the ladder, whether aggro, control, or combo decks rule, what kinds of tech cards/adjustments players can add to react to small shifts in the metagame) it is nearly impossible to make sense of what is happening. That is true even when the viewers see all the cards and know both decks in advance. Specifically, it is difficult to understand why a player is playing fast or slow, greedy or safe, defensive or aggressive, and also who is winning. The same goes for Magic - The Gathering. It’s nigh impossible to understand how a matchup between two decks works without knowing what other cards could be in there, but aren’t. This can ruin the experience for people who know the rules but play the game only very casually.

Other games may have clearer indicators of who is winning and what is going on, but even fighting games with health bars, RTS games with supply counters, and MOBA games with lanes whose battle lines you can see on the minimap won’t let you tell who is winning based on one factor alone. Such a game would be boring! In every competitive game, there should be a way to sacrifice hit points for better positioning (e.g. in Smash Bros or Virtua Fighter), or to fall back on a lane in exchange for gold, so there is never a “simple” metric to see who is winning. If there were such a metric, the first player who gains a small advantage by that metric would just snowball out of control and dominate the match.

In any case, passive spectators benefit from additional visual feedback, because while the players know which buttons were pressed, the audience does not. Passive watchers have much less information than active players. In the first-person view, it can be enough to just indicate whether something failed or succeeded, hit or missed. A fighting game player knows which button he pressed, and his opponent knows whether he blocked correctly or not. Nonetheless, the game should also communicate visually which type of action the players chose for the benefit of the audience.

Visual spectacle and clear legibility are sometimes at odds with each other, but visual spectacle can make watching a game more “fun“.

Having too clear an indication of who is winning can be a detriment, too. It’s good to have clear visual feedback, but not to have limited gameplay options. If the future trajectory of a match is set in stone as soon as one player establishes a clear lead, the game is no longer fun to watch from that point onwards. In games with perfect information, or with enough information, the losing player might simply resign instead of drawing out the match to its bitter conclusion, but in some games with fog of war, one player might be oblivious of his disadvantage, or he might go on and on looking for “outs“ while the audience already knows how everything will eventually play out.

This is just one way in which games can be boring to watch at higher levels of skill, even if the audience understands what is going on. There needs to be a certain flow of action, to keep viewers engaged and entertained. The game should get going without a long set-up phase, and should wind down without a drawn-out endgame. To keep viewers involved at all times, decisions throughout every phase of the match should influence the outcome.

Comebacks, reversals, pivoting to different strategies, risky plays with big pay-offs are all ways to introduce drama into the watching experience.

Fighting games are harder to read for the audience moment-to-moment, the matches are shorter, they can end abruptly, and they are difficult to get into. All this means they don’t make for as fun a watching experience compared to MOBAs, RTS games, or objective-based modes in first-person shooters.

Digression: Let’s Play and Variety Streaming

E-sports is not the only way to broadcast games for entertainment. Your YouTubers and variety streamers can make a living on games, but they don’t have to be world-class. People don’t watch them because they are good at the game, or sometimes not at all because of the game, but because of the streamer’s personality, the community, and the funny commentary. Playing the right game is a way for small twitch streamers to gain new viewers, but it’s not what keeps people around. Some streamers mainly stream the same single-player game every time, and are so good at it they have a streak of hundreds of games in hard mode. Even they retain their viewers because of their personality, not because they are the best at the game.

Of course, a variety streamer or Youtuber can also play competitive games like Chess, PUBG, or Rainbow Six: Siege. It’s played a different format though: Viewers see what the streamer sees, and a face-cam, and if the streamer is eliminated from a round of PUBG or Fall Guys, the streamer often does not spectate the rest of the round for the viewers find out who wins.

YouTubers of average gaming skill can even play tournaments of casual but competitive (in the sense that you play against each other) games against other YouTubers, or organise tournaments in more casual goofy games like Ultimate Chicken Horse, Duck Game, Mount Your Friends, Golf with Friends, or Rock of Ages and still draw in viewers. This is a common method of cross-promotion.

Variety streamers also play party games like Quiplash, Cards Against Humanity, or Mario Party as a backdrop for conversation with other streamers.

They sometimes play competitive games in a team with other streamers, but the necessity of coordinating within the squad in League of Legends, PUBG or CS:GO means more airtime will be dedicated to the actual game, and banter will suddenly have to make way for tactics.

Events and Broadcasting

E-sports events have legitimacy, teams, sponsors, brand recognition that draws an audience, and commentators.

E-sports broadcasters usually call the commentators their “talent“, not the players. The players or “athletes“ come and go, and they get sponsor money from elsewhere, but the commentators and moderators are hired by the broadcaster/event organiser. The commentators are usually both entertaining personalities and knowledgeable about the game. They fill dead air with background info about he players and their recent matches, explain what’s going on, crack jokes, or just do play-by-play commentary. Viewers are often more attached to commentators than to players. There are usually two commentators and a dedicated off-screen observer controlling the spectator camera, in addition to a referee spectating the game, and the players. Additional moderators and interviewers may be on the stage during an e-sports event. Sometimes experts (retired pro gamers) are brought in to analyse a replay in the pause between matches, like in real sports.

While variety streamers play both the role of “entertainer“ and player, this is split up between players and the commentators/moderators, so players can focus on winning and commentators can focus on filling dead air.

By “legitimacy” I mean this: Players in tournaments are supposed to the best of the best, and the organiser’s brand guarantees that viewers won’t see any old boring game, but a pro game with high stakes. If there is a random member of the public in the pool, you know he played his way through some preliminary rounds. I could host a LAN party, throw a Kernel Panic tournament, and declare the winner the 2021 world champion, but I would not have any legitimacy in the eyes of the player base. Large prize pools, a structured and well-regulated tournament, big-name players, and a blessing from the developers can bestow legitimacy.

Getting players, sponsors, broadcasters and an audience into a room takes a lot of money. E-sports sponsors are usually manufacturers or brands of higher-priced gaming hardware, like Alienware, Razer and ASUS ROG, or snack foods and energy drinks. The products are either used by the pro gamers, thematically connected to the game in some way, or used by the audience. Snack foods go well with watching e-sports, but less well with playing. You wouldn’t want to eat a packet of crisps and move your hands back and forth between the crisps and the keyboard and mouse...

With so much money invested and riding on the success of e-sports events, there is a lot of incentive to diversify and look for the next big thing, but also

Takeaway

When you read news about a developer or publisher “establishing a game as an e-sport“, it often means throwing money at a tournament and getting sponsors on board.

When you read about a developer “adding e-sports features“, it often means a ladder, tournaments, or spectator mode.

Of all the prerequisites established above, the most important to establish a game as an e-sport are:

balance

skill measurement/high skill ceiling

easy to learn

interesting to watch

fun to watch

A game like Fall Guys is popular and “fun to watch“, but not particularly interesting, the drama only works if you follow a single player all the way to the last round, not if you watch the action from high up. Fall Guys has a lot of randomness and a low skill ceiling.

Amazon once even hosted a casual game tournament in which variety streamers played mobile games against each other. The goal of that event was to sell their Fire (Android) tablets. This did not kick-start a competitive mobile gaming scene.

There were rumours of EA trying to “establish“ Star Wars: Battlefront II as an e-sport, by funding a large tournament, but the game was neither interesting nor fun to watch.

It is a fool’s errand to “add e-sports“ to a game, instead of trying to make a good game first, or at least one that is fun to watch.

[marshmallowprotection]

Calluna

Pairing: Saeran Choi/Reader

Fairytale AU.

Description:

The Prince has been bound to the castle walls, and he’s never been able to leave from it. The only place that he has to escape to are the books that he reads and the garden that he’s allowed to venture into every evening. But, what happens when he encounters someone that has eyes that know a world unlike his own?

Inspired by a drawing by @sensetenou​

Chapter Index

Chapter One: Tumblr | AO3 Chapter Two: Tumblr | AO3 Chapter Three: Tumblr | AO3 Chapter Four: Tumblr | AO3 Chapter Five: Tumblr | AO3 Chapter Six: Tumblr | AO3 Chapter Seven: Tumblr | AO3 Chapter Eight: Tumblr | AO3 Chapter Nine: Tumblr | AO3 Chapter Ten: Tumblr | AO3 Chapter Eleven: Tumblr | AO3 Chapter Twelve: Tumblr | AO3 Chapter Thirteen: Here! | AO3

Chapter Thirteen

Saeran stared at the scene below as the guards took away people one by one. The castle grounds had become more of scenery that looked like it was on the brink of war rather than a kingdom that’d been in peace for such a long time. Trampled were the roses and flowers that had once called the castle their home and in their place was devastation and destruction. 

It was a small price to pay for revenge and righting what had been wronged, or rather, who had been wronged. 

He knew nothing but anger and frustration. The second that this crown had been placed on his head, he knew that he had to get back at Red Hood and anyone that had worked with them. It was the sole thought in his mind. He couldn’t think of anything else and when he did, he was dragged back to his anger and plans. 

He watched until Rika’s hand rested against his shoulder and pulled him back inside of the castle walls so they could discuss plans. She had been hard at work with her master detective that had found out the identity of Red Hood. He was a man with brown hair that had somewhat faded with time and golden eyes. 

Something about him felt familiar to Saeran but he didn’t know why that was. It was like a memory that he couldn’t touch. But, the queen trusted him and she was the only person in his life that had not ever lied to him for a moment. So, he trusted that she knew who was working with and this was for the best. They were working together to round up who remained of the villains and thieves. 

“My king,” she said, once he took his spot at the table. “It’s hard to say who hasn’t been deceived by that villain, Red Hood. The limits of their powers seem to know no bounds, even within our castle walls. It seems like they’ve received more than we can count. It seems that the only ones that we may trust are in this very room.” 

He rested his hand against his open palm. 

It made sense to him. 

Deception was one of the more advanced forms of magic. It was one thing to be a liar and it was another thing to be a skilled liar. One could hold all the cards in their hands if they know just how to enchant people to get them to do as they wanted.

It would make sense for someone to place a curse on people to assume that their lies were true. It was no wonder why people assumed that Red Hood was still a wicked man in his growing years. 

You were the worst kind of liar and he never saw it coming. It was bad enough he was already cursed to be trapped in this castle forever but to pour salt in his wounds and laugh?

Now, that was what a villain would do just to hurt him for added measure. It wasn’t right and just thinking about it burned him to his core. The idea of you was the only target that he could focus on. His hands curled into fists in his lap as he glowered at the map on the table in front of you. 

He just needed to find all the pieces of the puzzle so that he could punish you in front of all of them for good. 

That’s what he needed to do, he knew that for sure. He needed to see it through to the end but his veins were itching for a better kind of punishment that he was still considering since he had spoken with you a few hours prior, it hadn’t come to him yet. 

Saeran couldn’t make up his mind on what he wanted. There were so many useful punishments in his mind but he kept thinking of better ones before he settled on a single thought. Annoying, but such is the life of someone in power of a kingdom. 

“That being said,” Rika drew him from his thoughts. “While we know that we can only trust each other, we need to destroy whatever hope the criminals have in Red Hood. That is why you must get rid of them as soon as possible. Within the next day or so, my king. We need to set an example so they will have nowhere to run and full knowledge of what awaits anyone that dares to break the law set by the crown.”

“No,” Saeran pressed his hands against the table in a firm slam. He didn’t understand why she was trying to rush him to punish you. He was the king now, and she was supposed to listen to him and his word was meant to be law. She was only meant to advise and do whatever he asked of her hand. He knew that she had a point. 

But it was his choice to do whatever he pleased with you. 

“No?” Rika repeated, her eyes on him as she watched him stare at her with a clouded look in his mint eyes. “I’m afraid I don’t understand. Are you saying that you’ve decided that they shouldn’t receive the highest punishment for their crimes? What would you do instead? Keep them around because you hold a fondness for a liar that tricked you?” 

He clenched his jaw. Saeran could feel his teeth grinding against each other but he didn’t care. 

He didn’t care about you. He didn’t. This wasn’t about him holding some fondness for you, because he didn’t hold anything for you but hatred and anger. He wanted you to know what it felt like to have salt in your wounds. It was only fair but he knew one thing, death wouldn’t be enough to show you what it felt like. 

What it felt like to be humiliated in front of the world. 

Everyone had seen how pitiful and easy it was to trick Ray, and someone had to pay for breaking his heart into a million pieces. The person that had looked into his eyes and made him think that he knew what it felt like to be free only to shatter that freedom away like a bit of glass. He should have known better but there was no changing it. 

Freedom was dead and gone, wasn’t it? 

Saeran paused, his eyes resting on the window just beyond his reach. The magic that sparkled and caught his eyes. He could see the walls of the castle in the distance. The ones that were enchanted to keep him inside of the walls. His price of life was to know what it felt like to see the world pass him by while everyone else got to live their dreams to the fullest on the outside. 

He was punished by jealousy. 

His curse was to know what he could never have as he watched it. 

Isn’t that true? 

He knew what he wanted to do with you now. 

“I’ve decided that death is too light of a punishment for Red Hood,” he said, flatly. “Death means that the darkness takes them away and that’s frankly too kind of a hardened punishment. Why should they get eternal rest instead of wallowing, knowing what they’ve done and that they will never taste what it feels like to rest?” 

Rika doesn’t say anything, nor does her companion. 

Nobody could argue with the king, not even people that once bore the crown. It was about the respect and transition of power in the line of succession. His word was law. Everyone understood that and it didn’t matter what anyone thought about it. 

Saeran would get what he wanted, and that was that. Saeran has made his point known. He rises from the table and spares a look between the two of them, “Now, I’ve made my point clear on what I wish to do. I ask that the two of you keep working to find every member that you can find and bring them here. I promise that I’m going to make an example of their precious leader, but they need to be alive for me to humiliate them and destroy the hopes of every fucking criminal in this country.” 

The former queen didn’t voice her approval or disapproval, but Saeran knew that she wasn’t very happy about his choice. If she had faith in her son, then she would trust him to see this through as he wanted to. “Of course,” she said, simply. “If that is what you wish, my king. We will continue to see this thought to the end.” 

Saeran left the room without another word. The door to the room closed with a hard slam as he returned to his chambers to tend to other matters that he had one his hands. Rika blew out a sigh, shaking her head at his tantrum. She wasn’t happy with this. 

The crown was supposed to make him listen to whatever she wanted of him. 

The anger charm that she had placed on him was seemingly stronger on him than she intended, but no matter, she thought. She knew what she had to do to make the magic control him in the right way, it was just the fickle nature of magic to bite back in the wrong way if you didn’t have the right amount of power for a specific spell. 

It wouldn’t be much longer until she had what she wanted in her hands. She turned her attention back to the true Red Hood, who seemed amused by all of this more than anything. She wasn’t surprised by that either, this man was known for thriving on chaos and control. He liked being able to do whatever he wanted. 

Power corrupts, but only those that don’t know how to handle what they were handed. 

 “I suppose you find his tantrums adorable,” Rika said, turning her eyes onto the table as she looked over the marks that they had knocked down. “Magic can be a powerful force when imbued with the right charm but when the wrong amount of power is placed into the object, it can warp someone in an unintended way.” 

“I find it amusing, yes,” Red Hood responded. His arms were crossed over his chest. “I knew that the legends were interesting but to see its power in person is much more intriguing than I thought it would be. When that fool Zen brought me the stones, he had no idea just how much power these items held within them.” 

“Yes, but they’re useless without the right item to embed in them,” Rika said. “The crown was forged with the same elements as the stones. That’s why it only works for the wearer. Traditionally, the power is only sprinkled in small doses to the ruler over their life but we’ve given him such a large dosage of my magic. That explains those dark fits of childish desire.” 

Red Hood merely chuckled. They both knew what that was about. “Forgive me for my curiosity, but may I ask why you aren’t donning the crown yourself?” 

That brought a smile to Rika’s face. She merely cocked her head with a curious look in her eyes, “Why, aren’t you an insightful one? You know better than anyone how important it is to have a puppet take your place at the last second to ensure that you’re holding all the cards in your hands. We both know well to mind our reputations. I must commend you, though, the Sparrow made the perfect person to tip him over the edge.” 

“They’ve always been too naive for their own good,” he chuckled. “It’s what they earned after trying to fight against monsters bigger than them. I frankly don’t care what happens to them. I’m interested to see what your king does to them if he’s not going to kill them so quickly. The power that you hold in your hands is deviously delicious, my queen.” 

Rika’s hand traced a location on the map from the castle as she looked through the layout of the land to see if she could locate the spot she was searching for. She closed her eyes and let magic rush through her fingers to reveal hidden spaces on the map. Underneath an unlabeled mountain range was a small building hidden away. 

She began to laugh as if delighted by what she had seen. “I only aim to gain more magic to ensure that the stones never run out, dear Red Hood,” her finger tapped against the paper. “Look here, deep in the mountains is the home of the coven that is training my next well of power that we need to cement our win before the battle starts. I need you to bring this letter to my crow the second he returns from the Han kingdom.”

He took the note from the queen’s hands and nodded. “Absolutely,” he said, simply. “I get the full picture. Consider it taken care of. I can’t wait for you to show me what your darkness looks like.” 

Rika couldn’t wait for herself. Her goals were finally coming together. “Hahaha… don’t worry, they’ll all know soon enough what it feels like to know true suffering and misery. I have a point to prove and I won’t stop until I’ve brought him to his knees.” 

[mariephillipswriter]

Square Eyes

Do they still say that if you watch too much television you'll get square eyes? Or is that an expression that went out of fashion when kids started spending all their time in front of the internet? Putting aside the obvious riposte (televisions aren't square, they're rectangular) I can report that I have been doing extensive research in this area and have come to the scientific conclusion: no, you won't. I have been watching so much television. SO MUCH TELEVISION. I never believed that I could watch such an immense quantity of television. On the whole I don't watch it during the day except for sometimes when I am having my breakfast and also when having my lunch, but in the evenings, when I have finished pretending to work, I might start watching television at about 6pm, or 5pm, or 4pm on a bad day, and keep going until, say, 11pm or midnight. HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE. HOW CAN A PERSON LIVE THIS WAY. Well it's easy enough, it turns out, if you're under lockdown in London in December and it's dark from 4pm and raining most of the time and you have the emotional resources of a gnat and reading is too demanding and talking on the phone is too exhausting and the light in the living room is not good enough for doing a puzzle in evening hours and you quit social media a month or so ago because it was driving you out of your mind with anxiety. I don't watch six or seven or eight hours of television every night. Don't be ridiculous. Some nights I only watch about three hours of television because I have a Zoom call or I'm cooking dinner or I've got stuck into a good cryptic crossword, maybe the Saturday Times Jumbo one because the Guardian ones are too gimmicky, or at last I've found a book gripping yet easy enough that I can't put it down (thank you Robert Galbraith, thank you Marian Keyes), but I would say that three hours is the minimum and my god that is a LOT. EVERY DAY. THREE HOURS. MINIMUM. But you don't need to me to explain that to you because you are all watching three four five six seven hours of television every day and when you are not watching television you are phoning your friends and first of all talking about the specific way that your own personal lockdown is terrible but then eventually saying 'what are you watching on television' because what else is there even to talk about? At the start of lockdown there was quite a small pool of television that everyone was watching (that thing about the Tiger King, which I didn't watch because by the time I got back from my early lockdown in Costa Rica you'd all seen it, and Normal People which I didn't watch because I was too embarassed to sit through all the sex scenes with my flatmates, and I May Destroy You, which I didn't watch because about five minutes of it was enough to send me into a massive panic spiral, but I hear was very good), but once we had all (other than me) got through that and Covid dragged on for months, our conversations began taking on the tenor of Vikings crowding around one another as a boat returns from a foray, WHAT IS OUT THERE, WHAT DID YOU FIND OUT THERE, IS THERE SOMETHING OUT THERE THAT I MIGHT DESIRE? And the Viking says yes, there is this thing called Schitts Creek but you really have to push on through the first season because I promise you it gets better and better and you will start to love that obnoxious family. And then we all watched Schitts Creek. (Including me, it's wonderful, you have to push on through the first series you will start to love that obnoxious family, Dan Levy is a divinity in human form and if you want more of him you could do worse than checking out the lesbian Christmas-themed romcom Happiest Season, which you can rent from Amazon Prime.) And now we are beyond even that and all our lives resonate with the screeching sound of a televisual barrel being scraped and now this is when things get really interesting (or put another way, VERY VERY BORING) because everyone has fractured and we are all watching different kinds of random stuff found in the dusty corners and unloved algorithms of our streaming services. There's the friend who has got into watching obscure French crime series on Netflix (The Chalet! La Mante!) and the friend who is watching every episode of Poirot on Britbox (thirteen series, 70 episodes) (though that pales in comparison with the friend who did a total rewatch of Friends from beginning to end (236 episodes) and finished it ages ago and is starving for more) and the friend who calls me up seemingly every week with a new old show nobody else has ever heard of (such as the early 1990s Nigel Havers and Warren Clarke comedy spy drama Sleepers, which he is watching old-school-style on DVD, and which apparently is like The Americans only with Nigel Havers and funny, and also, you should watch The Americans.) When I look back on the amount of television I have watched this year it defies comprehension. There were the things I would have watched anyway like the whole of Strictly Come Dancing and His Dark Materials, and the things that took me by surprise, like the stealthily hilarious Danny Dyer gameshow The Wall that was on straight after Strictly and drove me into a total obsession with the way that Danny Dyer says "Drop 'Em" (he's talking about the balls that are dropped down the wall, it's hard to explain, you can find it on iPlayer, but meanwhile if you only click on one link in this whole newsletter PLEASE click on that one), there were the things that were created especially to get me through lockdown (the wonderful David Tennant and Michael Sheen Zoom comedy Staged, which is not only extremely funny but allows you to see inside David Tennant's house which I'm not sure I am technically allowed to watch because of the restraining order? Anyway, new series coming on Monday, fellow DT fans) and the familiar things I watched to soothe me when it all got too much (Doctor Who, starting before Tennant even gets in on the action, right at the begining of the New Who seasons with Christopher Eccleston, because armchair space travel is the only kind of travel we are going to be getting for a while) and the exciting things I watched when I could no longer bear the tedious repetition of every identical day (Line of Duty, in which the famous-for-the-far-inferior Bodyguard writer Jed Mercurio delivers ludicrously compelling twisty-turny stories about police corruption that cannot be predicted for even a nanosecond) and the things that I watched just because I loved them (Fosse/Verdon, the Bob Fosse and Gwen Verdon bio-series starring the breathtakingly charismatic Sam Rockwell and Michelle Williams, which is one of the best-made pieces of television I've ever seen, Love Life, the Anna Kendrick romantic comedy series which was surprisingly touching and truthful about the relationships that make up a life and which didn't make me want to open a vein as a single person the way that many looking-for-love shows do, and Better Things, a sort-of-comedy sort-of-drama written, directed by and starring Pamela Adlon, which began as a collaboration with Louis CK and initially reflected the sensibility of his show Louie, but became far more experimental and interesting once, after CK's disgrace, Adlon took over completely - the fourth series is maybe the closest thing I've seen on TV to a representation of the rhythms of real life, with long scenes of Adlon just cooking a meal on her own, or contemplating the rain, of having arguments with her children that explode from nowhere and end just as suddenly with tears or laughter or nothing at all.) And this entire paragraph is just things that I have watched on the BBC. Not even everything that I have watched on the BBC. The BBC is INCREDIBLE and my license fee has been serious value for money, before you even count all that time spent watching the news [Munch Scream emoji]. But overall, it doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of television that I have watched this year. Though while we're here, have you noticed that sometimes it's more relaxing to watch something bad than something good? Have you noticed that a vapid, cliched show like Virgin River (heartbroken city nurse with a secret moves to small town and falls in love with battle-wounded bartender with a secret), a show that makes This Is Us look like Succession, has the same effect on your brain that taking off your work shoes and putting on your slippers has for your feet? You can rest now, it says, there is nothing more for you to do. Have you noticed how easy it is to chug down, say, four episodes in a row of Designated Survivor - a show designed by a committee charged with taking elements of The West Wing, Homeland and 24, and making something similar but, crucially, much more ridiculous - without your mind even noticing that anything has happened at all? And if you're really ready for something utterly idiotic, might I suggest The Bold Type, in which three twentysomething girls in bonkers designer outfits "work" at an aspirationally "feminist" glossy magazine, and by "work" I mean constantly leave the office in the middle of the day to take care of personal business, and by "feminist" I mean "empowering women by for example having them post selfies of themselves looking perfect but without makeup on social media", a feminism so very feminist that they called the magazine's parent company Steinem in the first series and then had to change it to Safford, I can only presume because Gloria Steinem threatened to sue them. A couple of episodes of that is the televisual equivalent of having a nice relaxing full frontal lobotomy. Don't get me wrong: I love these shows. I owe them more gratitude than I can say. I would be unable to survive without them. I've managed to watch five hours of television just since starting this post24 hours ago (three episodes of Doctor Who, half a really cheap and very bad Sky Arts documentary about the musical Hamilton, and a travelogue in which Torvill and Dean go in search of a frozen lake in Alaska on which to dance Bolero but can't find one for almost the entire show because of global warming, which made me simultaneously and conflictingly want to give up air travel, fly to Alaska immediately, become obsessed with Torvill and Dean AND wonder how they managed to skate together all these decades without killing each other especially Torvill but also especially Dean). Five hours of TV, sounds like a lot, but with eight hours of sleep, that still left me eleven hours to fill in this boring boring boring boring BORING BORING BORING boring boring BORING boring BORING BORING lockdown. I think I am being incredibly restrained, all things considered. Now if you'll excuse me, I have some time to kill, having finished writing this post, and with at least five hours to fill before bed. I wonder what's on TV?

***

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[distressindisguise]

My Quick (not really) Editing Process

I’m calling this “quick” based on the kind of editing I’m doing. Since I publish chapters as I go, and write as I go, this editing technique isn’t as in depth as it would be for someone writing a novel or a short story. I’m not dealing with plot holes, outlining, themes, or character motives and such. This editing is more surface level and deals with grammar/style choices within a single chapter or contained piece of work. That being said, this might not work for everyone.

My process is around 10 steps. So yeah not quick at all, but I swear by it.

Step One: Grammar/Spelling

Obviously. Can’t do anything if you can’t read it. It’s the most meticulous part of editing in my opinion, but clearly important. Going into how I edit grammar could be a whole different post, so I’m not going to go into it. Grammar for me includes some light phrasing as well.

Step Two: Grammar/Spelling in a different font, platform, or view

This is going to sound so weird but it works. I’m telling you, if you think you found all of those mistakes in step one you didn’t. That’s because you’ve probably read it so many times, and your eyes have adjusted so much to the document, that you won’t be able to pick out common slip ups. Switching the font helps. Since I write on my phone I usually just take my work and copy it into my notes app. Times New Roman to Helvetica isn’t necessarily a drastic shift, but it does the job.

Step Three: Info Dumps/Time Skips

I’m really guilty of this. Especially on my first draft it’s sort of like “here’s all the information right here” and it’s not done gracefully at all. Good thing about info dumps is that they’re really easy to spot. My particular style of writing isn’t really heavy on narration, so for me it’s really obvious where info dumps are because it’s just huge chunks in the middle of the page. Find these and find ways to weave the information through naturally. It could be in between dialogue or over a period of time. Before that though, figure out if the information is even necessary.

Time skips are fun. I use them way too much. I love using *** in the middle of a page. It’s a habit I’ve picked up from fanfiction, and instead of learning how to develop transitions smoothly I’ve used it as a cop out. Try not to rely on them so much. Sometimes a descent transition between the time skip can just be a matter of filling in what happened with certain words. Something like “the sun fell and the sky turned black” instead of *scene finishes* [time skip] *new scene begins*.

Step Four: Repetition/word choice

Repeating words, repeating actions, repeating themes (in a bad way). Scope out all of this. How many times did your character smile before doing something else? Change it up. Did your character just say something in dialogue that was already said in narration? Change it up. How many times did you use the same word for “walked.” Change it up. This kind of goes hand in hand with word choice, but on a basic level. I don’t like seeing the same word repeated in my sentences back to back. I will come up for another name for a common word just to avoid having the word repeat back to back. My most recent example of this is when I ended a sentence with “record player” and started the sentence right after that with “the music machine.” This could just be an extreme pet peeve of mine? But I think it’s a good habit. I’m not telling you to describe a car as a “4 passenger automobile,” but if you can pull something off with eloquence, do it.

After you get the basics out of the way, play around with word choice. Is there something that can be described better? Is there a stronger word you can use to get your message across? Can you say the same message in fewer words? This is more about style.

Step Five: Details!!

As a writer, I don’t focus on details within my setting enough. As a reader, I quite honestly skip over all of that. I like to get to the point. I’ve never really cared much for beautiful prose that describes the skyline for a whole page. That’s just how I read, therefore I skip over details in my setting a lot. There should be a balance between the two. A lot of my editing means going back and filling in setting details, establishing those five senses in the beginning and drawing attention to them when relevant again.

Step Six: Structure/Phrasing

I mentioned doing a little bit of editing with phrasing during the grammar section. This is more in depth. This section is very objective and stylistic. Here is where I mess around with sentences. I butcher them, elongate them, and make them look pretty. “He grabbed the ticket and put it down,” turns into, “With a sigh, he snatched up the ticket and tossed it onto the table as if it were meaningless.” I look at my neighboring sentences and how they’re structured, then try to add variation. Instead of “he [verb], he [verb], he [verb],” it becomes “he [verb], with [emotion] he [verb], while [past participle] he [verb].” It’s simple things like this that add elevation.

Besides sentence structure, I look at how the chapter is structured. Would something here make sense somewhere else? How can I make these sections flow better? Is this part really needed at all?

Step Seven: Keep Things in Canon

Make sure you characters keep in character, and keep your details consistent. If there was a dog in chapter three, don’t act like it doesn’t exist in chapter seven. This sounds pretty self explanatory but I’m so guilty of just dropping random characters or adding new details to the plot when it’s convenient to me. This is something that could be easily be avoided while editing a story in general, but since I publish as I go, I’m prone to stupid mistakes like this.

Step Eight: Take a break and come back

Generally, I don’t even start editing until I’ve taken at least a day away from it after writing. After I finish doing all of these other steps, I take at least another day or two away from it. Then I edit again. Yes, I really go through these steps AGAIN. And I STILL find things I want to correct. Even after I publish it, thinking it’s sound, I still see mistakes I didn’t manage to pick up on through this entire process. I’m convinced that’s just how it goes.

Bottom line, good self-editing comes from really knowing your strengths and weaknesses. My process is more fine tuned because I know what needs to be improved on, and I know what doesn’t need much work.

Feel free to give this a try! A lot of effort should go into making sure your piece is the best it can be.

(It would be ironic if this had typos in it.)

[duhragonball]

Dragon Ball Z 280

World is fuck, so I’m gonna write about DBZ for a while until the Benadryl kicks in.

Last time, Goku fought Majin Buu, but he wasn’t doing so great, so he upped the ante by going Super Saiyan 3.   

This is where I regret falling behind on the manga way back in the Red Ribbon Army Saga, because the Buu arc is where the anime and the manga really start to get off-track from each other.   I mean, the same plot points are followed, but in the manga, Goku fights Buu as a Super Saiyan 3 the whole time, while in the anime, he starts at SSJ2 and ramps up to SSJ3... twice.    So it’s kind of hard to match up exactly which parts of the anime version are direct adaptations of the manga.   They’re probably all there, but I’d really need to do a side-by-side comparison.    A project for another time.

This has gotta be one of the best damn episodes of the whole shebang.   Goku and Kid Buu are just whalin’ on each other, and this isn’t even the climax of this arc.  

Starting out, Goku deals some pretty heavy damage to Buu, and he has some difficulty reassembling himself.  But that’s about all Goku ever does to the kid.   I mean, if Perfect Cell took a hit like that, he’d just be dead, or so badly wounded that it would take barely any follow-through to finish the job.  But with Majin Buu these kinds of enormous blasts are just chip damage at best. 

Something else I want to do one of these days is go back and try to figure out when they screwed up Dende’s Buu-Saga character model.   I think most of Dragon Ball Super depicts him as a child, as if he never aged after the Cell Games, but I think that only happened because they were screwing him up as far back as 1995.  

Here’s the thing, though: Why was Dende so short in the Cell Games?  He had aged four years from however old he was in the Namek Saga.    Piccolo Junior was fully grown by age three.   Maybe this is the Namekian life cycle.    You grow into an adult when you’re three, then you turn into a kid again, then you grow into an adolescent about 11 years after that, and then you just sort of switch back and forth for a while.   It’s a good thing Piccolo’s off-screen for most of his life.

Yamcha and Krillin are watching this from the Grand Kai Planet, courtesy of King Kai’s telepathic vision.   Why isn’t anyone else grabbing a Kai by the back?  

And they’re even screening this fight in Hell, which seems kind of strange to me.   Abandon all hope, ye who enter here, but we’ve got pay-per-view in the commons.

Hey look it’s Cell!   And Dr. Gero.  You think they talk much at all?   Think about how much it must suck for them.   Gero was maybe the only other person Cell ever respected, because he trusted Gero’s grand design for him as the perfect being.    And Gero must have viewed Cell as his ultimate hope for avenging the Red Ribbon Army.  And then they bump into each other in hell, which proves that they’re both failures.  All Cell really accomplished was to kill Goku, and now he’s not even dead anymore.  I have to figure Cell/Gero interactions in Hell are pretty uncomfortable.  At the same time, who else are they going to hang out with?

Why are all these guys still in their bodies?   Everything that happened to Vegeta in this arc implies that letting Vegeta have his body after death is a big deviation from the norm.   Episode 195 introduced the idea of DBZ’s hell being like this big Arkham Asylum for all the bad guys.   I guess technically all those episodes with the dead Ginyus in the Frieza Saga did the same thing, but you could argue that they hadn’t been dead long enough to lose their bodies.   Here, now, we’re looking at characters that have been dead for over seven years.   I think the premise in Resurrection F was that the damned get to keep their bodies while they suffer, until they finally learn to let go of their past lives and move on.  And I can see why Frieza’s such a bitter fuck that he’d still be holding on for over a decade, but what’s Recoome holding out for?   Just get reincarnated as a cockroach or something and get it over with.

Also, why is Gero a cyborg in this scene?  

And why isn’t Frieza a cyborg?   I mean, he wasn’t a cyborg in Episode 195 either, but that seemed to suggest Gero would be fully human in hell, and he isn’t.    And if Gero does get to keep being a cyborg, then why couldn’t he keep his hat?  

Anyway, Goz and Mez recognize Goku as the guy who messed with them way back in the Saiyans Saga.    Hey, why aren’t Raditz and Nappa in this scene?  I watched an AMV where they edited Bardock into this, which seems like a good idea.   Did they just not go to hell?    I find that a little hard to believe.

Anyway, all the bad guys are salty as fuck to see Goku alive and fighting, and Frieza’s actively rooting against him.  He’s just jealous because Buu’s doing better against Goku that he ever could.

Meanwhile, over on the classy side of the villain crowd, Cell wonders who Goku’s opponent is, since he’s clearly impressed to see anyone give Goku a tougher battle than himself. 

Then Babidi shows up and announces to everyone he used to be tight with Majin Buu.  Actually, he claims Buu was his servant, and that he taught him how to fight, which... yeah.   I guess he did help Buu practice punching people’s faces off.  

This whole moment feels a bit contrived.    Babidi’s been down here for a couple of days already.    I don’t know how long they’ve been watching this fight.  I would imagine the oni switched it on somewhere when Vegito was on deck, so it kind of feels like Babidi was sort of hiding around back, waiting for someone to ask about Buu, so he could jump out and go “Oh, funny you should ask about that!   I was Majin Buu’s master for like six hours, nbd.”    I almost wonder if he paid Cell five bucks just to set this up.   Cell demanded payment in singles, because he wanted to spend it on the vending machine.   He’s a sucker, though, because hell may have a big screen TV, but the bill changer on their vending machine hasn’t worked in 10 million years.

Anyway, everyone’s impressed, probably just because Babidi has the inside track on Buu more than anything.    You gotta figure most of these guys have heard it all before, and at least Babidi has a newer story to tell.   Everyone’s probably sick of hearing how Frieza ate that crab while he killed Vegeta.

But then Babidi wanders off, and in private he cusses out Buu for, you know, killing him, and he roots for Goku to win.   Wait, is Bibidi in hell too?   You’d think they could catch up on old times.

Meanwhile... well, this shot had pink and yellow energy trails moving across the planet, and it looks pretty cool, but this screenshot doesn’t quite do it justice.   

Kibitoshin is worried about their planet, but the Elder Kai insists that it’ll take more than this to wreck it.   I want a woman who believes in me the way the Elder Kai believes in the sturdiness of the Supreme Kai Planet.    That sounds kind of masochistic when I put it that way.    Moving on.

Writing about all those other villains, it starts to come into focus how little I have to say about Majin Buu.    I dig the guy, though.   Critics complain that he doesn’t have much on personality or motivation, and they’re not wrong, but I think that’s part of the point with him.    Godzilla doesn’t give touching speeches in his movies, but he remains a popular character because of the sheer spectacle of him.   He’s a force of nature, a symbol of immense power that the human characters can barely comprehend. 

In Buu’s case, he’s just this stubborn, impossible obstacle to peace in the universe.   So much has gone wrong, and we could wish it all back the way it was, if only someone could beat this pink little turd.  He’s got some personality, but his main purpose in this story is to just be there for the other characters to interact as they deal with the problem.

For example, while all this action is going on, Mr. Satan is basically helpless, but he reassures Bee that he’ll protect him, even though Satan thinks this whole adventure is a dream.   This says a lot about Mr. Satan.    Yeah, Bee had a big part in reforming the Fat Majin Buu, but he means a lot to Mr. Satan as well.   It’s easy to write off Satan as a coward and a fraud, but even when he’s retreating into denial, he still wants to be a hero, even when the rest of the world is dead, even when his only audience is a little puppy.   And you could have a moment like this with Mr. Satan regardless of the villain, but I think it stands out better when the bad guy is Kid Buu, who doesn’t get in the way with any big speeches or characterization moments of his own.

Back to the fight, Buu gets the drop on Goku, so he decides that this is no time to hold back...

So he drops a Super Saiyan 3 Kamehameha on the little creep.  Yeah!

It blows Buu to pieces, but then the pieces just turn into mini-Buus and they all shoot back.

Goku tries to power up for another round, but suddenly he runs out of gas and collapses.

So Vegeta rushes to his side and offers to switch in.   Yeah, this whole part is filler.   In the manga, Vegeta only gets one turn, and this ain’t it.   

However, I think some of Vegeta’s lines during this scene are lifted from the part of the manga where he fights Kid Buu later.    So it’s a little weird here.  I’m curious how Dragon Ball Kai handled these episodes, because when they started that project it seemed like their goal was to edit out most of the filler from the original DBZ anime, but in some cases that just isn’t practical.   Like Pizza and her entourage in the Cell Games.   They weren’t in the manga, but they appear in almost every Mr. Satan scene that was in the manga, so Kai had to leave them in, because the alternative was to painstakingly edit them out of every shot.  Here, you may not even have that option.    You could edit Goku vs. Kid Buu down to just one uninterrupted string of action where he’s fighting at Super Saiyan 3.   Cut out this intermission with Vegeta, cut out the opening bit where Goku fights at SSJ2, but I don’t know if the fight choreography would still make sense.    

Everyone watching is horrified that Vegeta can’t even land a blow, and Buu starts openly mocking his lackluster performance.   What I don’t understand is why Vegeta would even try to fight Majin Buu in his base form.   I mean, the real reason is probably because this fight is filler, and Toei didn’t want it to detract from when he actually fights Buu in the next episode.    But it makes Vegeta look kind of stupid.   He knows better, and we know that he knows better.

So Buu quickly overwhelms him, and he’s all set to fire a ki blast to finish off.   Why doesn’t Vegeta just transform to escape it?  

But then Goku jumps in and ruins Buu’s shot.  He’s still in base form too, but I sort of buy this, because he snuck up on Buu.   Even so, this sort of fast-and-loose attitude with power levels is exactly the sort of nonsense Toei did all through Dragon Ball GT, and one of several reasons why GT sucks.     It’s not as bad in filler scenes like this one, interspersed among stories based on the manga, but once there was no manga to work from, they just decided there were no rules, and Base Form Goku was almost interchangeable with Super Saiyan 4 Goku.   They just used whichever character design they preferred that day.

Vegeta’s astonished, because he thought Goku was down for the count, but he’s already back up and demanding to tag back in.    

But Goku ain’t done yet.  This is probably the other reason Toei had Vegeta fight in base form here, so it would make it look cooler when Goku defiantly powers up to continue his effort.   And yeah, it works.    I really do love this scene, but it’s a pretty egregious example of filler scenes messing with the flow of the story.

Goku ramps up to Super Saiyan 2, then back to 3, and we pick up where we left off.   And that’s awesome, but the main idea of this fight is that Goku’s having a hard time fighting at this level.   To have him drop out of SSJ3 early, then immediately get back up and resume SSJ3 like it’s no big deal... well, that undermines that premise.    I guess you can make an argument that it supports the premise, because having Goku power down twice in this fight only emphasizes how volatile SSJ3 really is, but... I dunno.  

Anyway, Goku goes back to fighting Buu, and you know, that may be the real reason Toei did that whole bit with Vegeta tagging in.    The alternative is to just have SSJ3 Goku fight Buu for two and a half episodes straight, and that would get dull, no matter how well they animated it.   You can have spectators observe the battle, and that’s a great way to break up the action, but a moment where Goku rescues Vegeta adds some drama.    The manga didn’t do this, but it didn’t need to, because this fight was much shorter in print.   

I guess that’s the main defense of filler.  Sometimes, it’s not about padding the anime, or working the studio’s “agenda” into the story, or anything sinister like that.  Sometimes it’s just a matter of pacing.  

Anyway, in either version, Vegeta watches Goku fighting, and quickly recognizes that Goku is the only one who can fight Majin Buu now.   At Vegeta’s level, he’d only get himself killed. 

Then he has this whole flashback of his relationship with Goku up to this point, and unlike most flashbacks in this series, this one features all new art, which is pretty awesome.  Honestly, they could have used old footage from the Saiyans Saga, but they had already done that recently during the Babidi Saga, so maybe Toei figured they couldn’t do that trick again so soon.   Or maybe they knew DBZ wes winding down, so they wanted to do something special while they still could.

Not surprisingly, Vegeta’s main recollection of his first fight with Goku are the parts where Goku beat the shit out of him while using Kaio-ken times three.  That fight had a lot more to it than that, and it’s easy to forget that Vegeta dominated most of the battle, mainly because Vegeta himself doesn’t see it that way.   

Then we get this part where Vegeta has kittens over Goku beating Recoome, and he begins to suspect that Goku is the Legendary Super Saiyan.    Would have been awesome to see another shot of Luffa the Golden Ape from episode 66, but I guess that wouldn’t make a ton of sense in this context, especially now that we know what Super Saiyans actually look like.

For instance...

Vegeta considers that Goku’s secret might be that he’s motivated by a need to protect his loved ones, but even if that’s true, Vegeta has his own loved ones now, so they’d be even if that were all it was.    I love how surly he looks here.   “Dammit, I can’t believe I care about these stupid people!   Now I gotta blow myself up if things get out of hand.”

Also, Vegeta’s observation ties in well with that filler scene from a moment ago.    Goku was exhausted, but as soon as he saw Vegeta in danger, he pulled himself together and found the strength to defend him.    Goku cares as much about Vegeta as the others.

But the real difference, Vegeta observes, is that he always fought for the fun of it, and for the satisfaction of killing his enemies.  Goku, on the other hand, fights primarily to improve himself.  That’s why he keeps pushing himself harder, and why he keeps seeing results.  It’s not about winning, it’s about not losing.    This seems to be a trend with Goku, where he usually says things like “I won’t lose” or “I ain’t lost yet,” instead of “I’m going to win.”    Vegeta’s classic mistake is to assume that he’s already going to win, and then he crumbles when things start to go wrong.

And critically, this is why Goku doesn’t kill people if he can avoid it.   Well, he killed a lot of Red Ribbon guys, but most of them were cowards and no real match for him.   King Piccolo pushed him too far.   After that, Goku’s been pretty light on killing enemies, and that’s probably because he reached a point where he became so strong that it got harder to find worthy adversaries.   Vegeta would kill his enemies just to watch them die, but in doing so, he denied himself the opportunity to face them in rematches.   This was something I read in a Superman comic once, where Superman overpowers an evil-universe version of himself, and he makes the point that his doppleganger kills all his enemies, so he only ever has to fight them once, where Superman has to stay sharp, because he has to mess with those guys over and over again.  Same deal.

And you’d think Goku might have killed Vegeta after he surpassed him, like when he became a Super Saiyan, or when Vegeta went Majin, and no one would have blamed him for putting the bastard down.  But Goku never did.   Not because Vegeta was no longer a threat, but because he knew Vegeta could still catch up to him some day and challenge him again.   Goku believes in Vegeta, even when Vegeta doesn’t believe in himself.

It’s like Goku knew Vegeta woud start to turn into a good guy.   See, this is where I take issue with criticism of the dub, way back in Episode 36, when Goku asked Krillin to spare Vegeta’s life.  The subs focus on Goku’s desire to beat Vegeta on his own, while the dub spends more time on Goku’s hope that Vegeta might see the light if they show him a little mercy.   And you can argue that the dub is cramming their own take into the script, except their take doesn’t exist in a vacuum.   Funimation’s take in Episode 36 is Vegeta’s take in Episode 280.   Call it foreshadowing, or call it putting the cart before the horse, but the line itself isn’t out of bounds, because Goku did hope that Vegeta would learn the value of mercy, and and Vegeta knows it. 

Again, let me pause to note that this big epiphany by Vegeta is much more effective when the bad guy is as flat as Kid Buu.   We’re not missing anything during this fight because they’ve just been hitting each other, and Buu bites Goku for like half a second while Vegeta reflects.

The main point of Vegeta’s monologue here is that he’s always struggled with the idea of Goku as the antithesis of what he thinks Saiyans ought to be.   And yet nothing succeeds like success.    Goku’s stronger right now than any Saiyan in the last thousand years.  Hell, right now, Goku’s the only Saiyan alive.    Vegeta’s dead, and so are all the others.  If his kindness is such a noose around his neck, why is he still breathing?    Why is he the only Saiyan who figured out how to turn Super Saiyan 3?   Why is he the only one who could bite Majin Buu on the head and get away with it?   Because Goku’s metal as fuck, that’s why.  Because kindness isn’t a weakness at all.   It never was.  If anything, it’s the lack of kindness that got all the other Saiyans killed.  

And maybe Vegeta has to think about that a while longer, but he knows this much, Goku’s better than he is.    He’s the best.

But he’s still not beating Buu anytime soon.  

There’s a cool spot here where Goku hits him and his upper body stretchs out from the impact, and he waves hello to Mr. Satan before snapping back.

And by “waving hello” , I mean “fires more of this pink crap out of his hands.”

And this right here is the last shot of Cell, I think?  There’s some more Frieza coming up, but I’m not sure if we see all the villains again or not.   

Babidi’s watching from way back there, because he’s shy.  I think Cell would hang out with Babidi.   He’s pretty sociable, right?

Anyway, this fight rules, not just because of all the great action and fluid animation, but because of all the cool stuff going on around it.    Everyone’s learning an important lesson about friendship today, thanks to Goku punching the crap out of this pink thing.  That... sounds vaguely dirty.    Let’s move on.

Oh, well, the episode’s over.    That’s kind of awkward.   Uh.   Goodbye!

[cozcat]

His Dark Materials at the National Theatre

There’s no publicly available video* of the National Theatre production of His Dark Materials, but the script is pretty easy to find, as Nick Hern Books released it.

They condensed the three books into one two-part play - the same style as Cursed Child. Two plays, so four acts, with regular intervals and a prolonged break between the second and third acts.

Under the cut, I’ve got some general information about the show, and a list of notes about changes, as well as anything I’ve found interesting as I’ve been reading. At some point, I may do a full summary of what actually happens in the script, rather than contrasting it with the books.

If you have any questions about the script, I’m happy to answer!

* Unless you go to the NT archive in London, and you can watch it there, but as it’s an archive copy, it’s apparently pretty mediocre quality, so more of a reference for the staging than an actual viewing experience. And you can’t watch it unless you’re in the actual building.

For general staging and information:

The National Theatre has a drum revolve, and most shows use it when staged there. As His Dark Materials was specifically written for that theatre, the revolve is used very liberally throughout, and an example of its use can be seen here

A handful of photos can be found here, and lower quality ones can be found from a bit of a hunt online.

Lists of both casts can be found here.

National Theatre Archive pages for part 1 and part 2

Act One

Opens with Lyra and Will as adults on the bench in Oxford - their conversations don’t line up, but work in tandem, and Mrs Lonsdale appears towards the end to indicate they’re going back in time as a flashback - Will disappears, and Lyra is twelve again

Roger and Lyra only meet for the first time before the Retiring Room, and Roger goes with her, though he’s just a tagalong - Lyra still does everything of importance

Jopari is alive, and brought up by Asriel in the meeting - there’s no head

Billy's dæmon is Ratter and he takes the Tony role of being the severed child

Mrs Coulter openly wants Lyra working for the General Oblation Board, and wants to tell her about it after the cocktail party

"Lyra the liar!” is said by both Pan and Roger at different points

Lyra is picked up by the Gyptians who are already en route north - they go straight to Trollesund, and Ma Costa doesn’t appear at all

Lyra: "Haven't you got any self respect?" Iorek: "None."

Farder Coram and Serafina Pekkala are "long lost friend[s] of my [his] youth-time days", and they communicate sometimes still

Lyra sees Billy post-intercision in a Tartar camp and is kidnapped from there - rather than seeking him out

Lyra is grabbed to be intercised when she frees the severed dæmons, and the intercision begins because they want to shock Lyra into submission before Mrs Coulter arrives - she arrives just before the intercision

They make the human-dæmon bond visible in the intercision machine - presumably so that the audience knows what happens when we see it severed later

Mrs Coulter gets the Parent Reveal, and she claims that it was distress because of everything that happened before and during the trial that meant she couldn't look after Lyra, and that's when Lyra was taken away to Jordan

Serafina's first appearance is at the end of act one, when she rescues Lyra and Roger to take them to Svalbard

Mrs Coulter and the monkey have a wound in the same place from the spy fly

Act one ends with Mrs Coulter reaching and yelling for "Lyra!"

Act Two

also opens on the bench in Oxford, with Will recounting how he wound up in Ci’gazze, but goes back to Lyra and co in the balloon

Jopari gave the amber spyglass to Serafina, and she shows it to Lee - and shows him Dust

there is a bear in the script called “Stupid Bear”, and he keeps calling the Chief Bear “Sarge”

another bear is Disgruntled Bear, and he complains that Mrs Coulter is “making us cook our food”, and they all miss raw walrus

there isn’t a delay on Iorek arriving at Svalbard - he turns up with Roger not long after Lyra

Asriel: “I refuse to be preached at by a sanctimonious ten-year-old.” Lyra: “I’m twelve! I’m twelve!” Asriel: “Well, you would know.”

the witch is interrogated at Bolvangar - where Mrs Coulter is also told that the General Oblation Board has been closed down, its records expunged, and her Geneva bank account has been terminated

Mrs Coulter also tells Lord Asriel that she wants to stay in their world to find and protect Lyra from the Church

we see Asriel holding Salcilia - as though daemons don’t vanish when their humans die (which may just be so that they don’t have to make a daemon vanish onstage)

Lyra and Pan take Asriel’s explanation of “heads in one world, tails in another” to mean that Roger might be alive in another world, and that’s why they leave

Lyra’s secret name (ie Eve) is a Big Deal - with Mrs Coulter, the Church, and the witches

Ruta Skadi is intent on war, but she’s also intent on killing Jopari, taking that particular role from Juta Kamainen - however, there are multiple witches named in the script, none of whom have a name from the books, and none of whom are named onstage

Lyra on her parents: “Wasn’t it awful when they kissed like that?”

Lyra lists off friends they’ve made (”Iorek... Serafina... Mr Scoresby...”) and Pan matches with their daemons (”...Kaisa... Hester...”)

“Boys can’t cook.” “Well, this boy’s had to.” “In my world, servants do the cooking.” “In my world, the Coke is brown.” Lyra and Will get right to snarking at each other, and Ci’gazze Coke is green.

Lyra and Will exchange the alethiometer and the green writing case as a show of trust

Lord Boreal shows up to Will in the library while he is looking for papers on his father, gives him a cutting about the window his father left through, and steals the alethiometer while Will is distracted

Boreal steals the alethiometer because he assumes it’s the case with the letters in it

Part 1 ends with Will getting the knife, then a montage - the witches see the angels, Asriel appears in his fortress, Mrs Coulter is looking for Lyra, Will calls for his father, and Brother Jasper gives the President a piece of paper with “Lyra Belacqua’s secret name”

Act Three

Opens with a montage - Lyra and Pan running; the gap between the worlds, Asriel trying to convince Marisa to go with him, then Lyra holding Roger as he dies; Serafina addressing the witches; Lyra meeting Will; Mrs Coulter talking to the President; Will talking about his father to Lyra; Jopari and Lee Scoresby; the knife fight; Serafina and Ruta; the President summoning the Council after finding out Lyra’s secret name

in the next scene, it’s various clerics talking about Lyra being Eve as well as Asriel’s plans

Boreal: “I’ve asked my manservant to make up the guest room for you.” Mrs Coulter: “The guest room? Well, we mustn’t upset him. I must remember to rumple the sheets in the morning. You really are the most delightfully old-fashioned host.” MARISA

Boreal cultivates orchids

Marzipan becomes blackberries, told with Serafina and Farder Coram - and their son is born nine months later, after the blackberry incident, and dies soon after

Chevalier Tialys and Lady Salmakia are married in this - they’re introduced with her as his spouse

Mrs Coulter brings Giacomo Paradisi to the Spectres and has them eat his soul - Boreal is terrified; the children pickpocket Giacomo and tell Mrs Coulter where Lyra and Will went

Ruta Skadi says “I’ve seen those eyes before” about Will and it carries an awkward weight when she was in love with Jopari and is intent on killing him

Mrs Coulter uses the Spectres to kill Boreal, rather than poisoning him

we actually see the Spectres attack the witches, rather than just hearing about it - and Mrs Coulter tries to be nice to Lyra shortly before the murdering

Ruta Skadi calls for Yambe-Akka to take her before she kills herself - which is odd, as the witch that Serafina kills calls specifically for Serafina to kill her

a mid-act flash of Oxford - Lyra afraid she’d never wake up from the world of the dead, and Will remembering finding out that taking this journey was his mantle

Lord Asriel: “Her mother? Stuck in a cave? I don’t believe it. This is a woman who has her hair done twice a week at six in the morning.” I’m just going to question how Asriel knows this, assuming it isn’t decade-old knowledge.

Stelmaria: “You’d have killed her yourself, at Svalbard.” Lord Asriel: “No, I would not! I thought I’d have to kill her, for the sake of my experiment. When the boy walked in, I was vastly relieved and I let her go.”

Asriel decides to care about Lyra because he realises that’s where his enemy is focusing

Asriel appears in the fight at the cave, and there’s a brief and angry family reunion

Will shatters the knife because Lord Asriel tells him to think of his father - but in the cover of the fighting, pulls Lyra away

Act three ends with Lord Asriel yelling “Lyra! Lyra!”

Act Four

Opens in Asriel’s fortress, with him getting information from Tialys and Salmakia

Marisa and Asriel have a (very angry) conversation about how they’ve both grown to care for Lyra - Marisa, because Lyra somehow changed her; Asriel, because he’s finally clocked that she’s important and in danger (and is trying to manipulate Marisa because he wants the knife)

Rather than talking, the monkey makes stabbing gestures in the air to indicate the knife

it turns out Asriel did actually take Lyra away because “You were raving mad! You’d have throttled her in her cradle!”

Mrs Coulter: “Then you ignored her, you neglected her, year after yearm she had no decent company, no education...” they’re really just sat here going, “no, you’re the shittier parent!” and arguing for five full pages

The actor playing Pantalaimon appears as Lyra’s Death. That’s an actual, heartbreaking stage direction.

Tialys and Salmakia don’t go to the world of the dead - they report back to Asriel that Lyra and Will escaped

Brother Jasper: “Father President, let me speak. I have sinned. I had evil thoughts.” President: “You are not the first young man to have been corrupted by Mrs Coulter. Make up for it on the battlefield.”

Lyra and Will help the Authority to die, and he smiles the whole time

Mrs Coulter and Lord Asriel see Brother Jasper about to kill Lyra, and throw themselves onto him to drag him into the Abyss - somehow, it takes two people to do that, rather than just kicking him, but anyway, this is what happens when we cut out Metatron

Pan and Kirjava both appear as cats, but they’ve both settled, and there’s nothing indicating he changes into a pine marten over the course of the conversation

“On Midsummer night at midnight... and talk til dawn, just like now, as though we were together again. Because we will be.”

The final line is Lyra saying “The republic of heaven”, after which two clocks are heard striking. Lyra picks up Pan, and she and Will pass each other, and walk out of sight.

So the changes are pretty inevitable when they’re trying to condense 1000 pages into five hours. As with reading any script, it feels ridiculously fast paced - but when a brawl between bears is reduced to a few lines of sparse stage directions, of course it feels fast.

One change that I actually quite like is the exchange of the letters and the alethiometer. It makes it a bit more believable - there’s no need for Lyra to not recognise Boreal, and the slimy bastard is obviously going to be able to distract Will with information about his father, given that’s what Will is in the library searching for. Parts of The Subtle Knife honestly make Lyra out to be a bit of an idiot - making it a case of Will being forcibly distracted makes it a lot more understandable than “Lyra gets in a car with a stranger”. And it makes his determination to get the alethiometer back while he’s still bleeding all over the place make a bit more sense. But the initial exchange of letters and alethiometer is honestly quite sweet, and it’s something I’d actually really like to see in the series, if I’m honest.

As much as I hate Mary and the Mulefa being cut, I get it. That’d be a fucker to put onstage - and there’s already a ridiculous amount going on, so they do need to streamline somewhere. I know that it’s missing, but it doesn’t feel like it’s missing, as so much is going on anyway.

The removal of Metatron has me livid. I know that they needed to streamline, but they could have pushed Brother Jasper into the abyss, it wasn’t a two person effort. Come on. Come on.

The characterisation of Marisa is interesting, too - they start hammering in her switch to being uncharacteristically maternal fairly early, and the fact that they change it so that Lyra was pretty much stolen from her makes it somewhat believable that she’d make that switch so easily. It’s obviously something that has been changed so that it seems like a natural character progression, but it’s really damn weird.

But to summarise - a few good changes, a few that I don’t like but which I understand, and a few that I neither like nor understand. And that’s always going to happen with adaptations. If I do a full summary, I’ll link it here... providing I remember. And again, if you’re curious about anything from the script, I’m happy to answer, and if it’s something else about the play, I’m happy to try to find out.

[365daysofsasuhina]

[ 365 Days of SasuHina || Day Ninety-Nine: A Promise ] [ Uchiha Fugaku, Hyūga Hiashi, Uchiha Itachi, Uchiha Sasuke, Uchiha Shisui, Hyūga Hinata, Hyūga Neji, Hyūga Hanabi ] [ SasuHina, blood, gore ] [ Verse: Then It All Went Wrong ] [ AO3 Link ]

“We share the same roots, you and I. Generations ago, your people and mine were brothers. Does that mean nothing now?”

“Our bloodlines are tied, true...but it was your ancestor that tried to tear this village apart, Fugaku. Not mine.”

The dark-eyed patriarch sighs, mouth set in a firm line. “And even now, generations later, we suffer prejudice and suspicion! Madara’s folly was his own. There was a reason none of us followed him into the dark.”

“And what of the Kyūbi?”

“That was not our doing.”

“Easy enough to claim.”

“I swear on the lives of my sons: my kinsmen and I had nothing to do with that attack. If it was an Uchiha...it was a traitor, just like Madara. Why would we attack the village we live in?”

“And yet now you ask me for backing in a civil war…?”

“Because I have no choice!” Fugaku’s voice rings out in the quiet. “...my people...have lived in the shadows of Madara’s mistakes for far too long. It began with Tobirama’s hatred of us, and has continued down the Senju-biased line. I had hope with Minato in power, but…” His head bows, pain evident on his face. “...that hope is gone, now. I refuse to let my people continue to suffer under the thumb of this village. If they will not hear us...then we will try other methods. I refuse to lie silent in the face of my people’s oppression. We helped found this village…! We keep it safe! And how are we thanked? With glowers and whispers, pushed to the outskirts of our home. I don’t want my sons growing up in an era of persecution for crimes they weren’t even yet born to be blamed for.”

His gaze narrows. “...and there must always be a scapegoat, Hiashi. If the village rids itself of us...you can’t know what will happen next. It’s clear the village fears our power. And it’s more than evident that your line and mine are arguably the strongest within Konoha. They may find flaw in you, next. And what will happen then to your daughters? Will you see them treated like my sons…?”

Hiashi’s brow hardens.

“...this village owes us its ear. And they have refused us. If they are afraid of our might...perhaps we should show them why they feel that fear. Stand with us, my brother. Help me correct this injustice. Lend the might of the Hyūga to the Uchiha. If we stand together, they will not be able to refuse us.”

Silence falls, interrupted only as Hiashi sighs deeply. Arms crossed, his head bows, eyes closed as he thinks. “...do you seek a bloody coup to seize power?”

“No. Only our rights.”

“The rest of the village will not see it that way. They will see you as Madara’s second coming: someone seeking to rule over them by force.”

“If worse comes to worse, we will leave.”

Pale eyes actually widen. “...you would abandon Konoha…?”

“It has already abandoned us. If we cannot have our freedom here...we will seek it elsewhere.”

“You would turn your backs on your allies?”

“No. I, at least, would not raise my weapons against Konoha...not unless they struck first.” Fugaku’s expression turns raw, uncensored. “...I am tired, Hiashi. Day in and day out, I listen to the cries of my people as we’re spurned. And then I approach the council with a new compromise. I’ve lost count of the times they’ve turned me away. I can’t bring myself to keep failing my clan. They deserve their freedom. If we cannot have it here - if they will not listen, even with force - then I will leave. Or I will die trying.”

“And go where…?”

“...I don’t know. North, maybe - to the mountains along the border. Anywhere Konoha will think us too far to chase.” A hand drags down the Uchiha’s face. “...but I would not expect you to follow. I just need an ally as I challenge the council. Perhaps, if I no longer stand alone...they would listen. If not...I will do what I must.”

“You realize my standing with you may damn us as well?”

“...would you want to stay within a village that would do so?”

Hiashi heaves a curt breath. “...you’re not making this easy, Fugaku. Five generations of my people have lived within Konoha’s walls. And yours! The alliance of the clans of Hi no Kuni set an example for the other lands. It brought about the hidden villages!”

“And what of it? Three wars we’ve had since then, in those five generations. The lands are still divided. We still fight as we did in the era of the warring clans. The pieces are simply bigger, now. Thousands of lives lost. And you know well that this village is not perfect. It holds its shadows. And it abuses its own people based on nothing but rumors and hearsay of an era long past! My people have striven to find our place here...but they will not let us have it.”

“Then you will take it by force?”

“...I fear if I don’t...they will instead use force against us. I am trying to be preemptive, Hiashi. I will not be caught off-guard, my throat slit in the night by someone I once called brother.”

The Hyūga’s expression goes grim at the image. “...very well. I will stand with you. But we must be cautious...and be ready for anything. I will not let my children take a fall for something they are too young to comprehend.” His chin ducks, staring at Fugaku. “...you must promise me they will not be harmed.”

“There is no one I will fight harder for than the children. They are our futures. I will begin to make arrangements: a failsafe to entrust to Itachi. He can take them somewhere where they’ll be safe.”

“Where?”

“...I’ll figure something out. You have my word, Hiashi. They will be safe.”

“Sasuke, come - this way!”

“Nīsan, where are we -?”

The brothers flinch as an explosion sounds one street over. Itachi bends his form over Sasuke, shielding him from a cloud of debris.

“Come on you two - we gotta move!” Shisui shouts, standing at the mouth of the alley.

“Sasuke, no time for questions - tōsan told me -”

“Now, Itachi!”

Gritting his teeth, the elder brother simply throws Sasuke atop his back. “Hold on!”

Burying his face in Itachi’s shoulder, Sasuke can’t help a whimper, eyes pinching shut.

This never should have happened…! Their home...their compound...is now a warzone. Hyūga and Uchiha alike do their best to defend against the onslaught of other Konoha nin.

But the trio of boys sneak around the rear as Fugaku instructed.

“How much farther?”

“Just a few blocks - we’re supposed to meet with -”

“There you are!”

Turning, they all stiffen as the sight of Fugaku. Blood runs down from a temple, and a hand is severed, stump charred by katon to cauterize it. “...ojisan,” Shisui murmurs, shocked at the sight.

“The Hyūga trio are waiting by the Naka - you’ll follow it...out of the village.” From his leg pack, Fugaku draws a scroll. “Take this...it’s a map. Follow the path marked on it, but stay off the roads. Whatever you do...you must stay safe…”

“Tōsan!” Sasuke cries, reaching for his father as Shisui takes the scroll.

Fugaku steps back, expression clear the act takes all his strength to refuse his son. “...you must promise me...you will live.”

Tears pour down Sasuke’s face, and even Itachi’s eyes glisten with unshed droplets. “...w-we will,” the elder brother replies. “...tōsan, I…”

“Don’t. All is forgiven, my son. Our future...rests with you. Do not let the Uchiha flame die. Nor the Hyūga. Promise me…!”

“...yes, sir.”

“Now go...go!”

For a long moment, the three linger, Sasuke trying one last time to reach Fugaku. But the patriarch turns away, determination in his eyes.

If nothing else...he has to give them time.

It’s all he can do, now.

Moving to the back of the compound where the Naka flows through, the three Uchiha boys make their way atop the water, chakra keeping them afloat. “They’ll be at the north end,” Shisui murmurs, tantō drawn and Sharingan blazing. “From there, we keep going. We’ll have to find someplace to make camp, but we have to get some miles in first.”

Face drawn, Itachi merely nods, hold tight on his brother.

Sasuke’s silent.

Eventually, they find three figures along the west bank. A boy, no more than eight; a girl Sasuke’s age; and in her arms, refusing attempts to quiet her, a two-year-old toddler girl cries.

“Neji, Hinata, Hanabi?” Itachi asks, to which the elder two nod.

“Come with us - we’re getting out of here,” Shisui murmurs. “Here, give me the kid.”

Hinata hands over her little sister, watching as Shisui uses a spare sash to tie her to his front. “W-where are we going?”

“North,” Itachi responds, tone short. “But all that matters now is that we run. Don’t stop. Don’t look back. No matter how tired you get...we can’t rest until we know they’re far behind us.”

She nods alongside Neji, letting Shisui pack her atop his back...and the six of them flee into the night.

     An upload in the middle of the day? What sorcery is this? :O      ANYWAY. Whokay, I SERIOUSLY like this idea, and I think at some point I DEFINITELY want to make a full fic out of it. I've seen ideas of the Hyūga also taking the fall with the Uchiha before, and it's a concept I've always wanted to toy around with. And today I got my chance! I like the idea of the few "main" Hyūga and Uchiha kids being left behind when the alliance goes south. And it might give me a chance to introduce a few of my own concepts in a way that makes them less...intrusive, lol      For now though, with all the other projects I have going (including this one), I doubt I'll have time to really flesh this out for...a good long while. But it's one I definitely want to give more depth to in the future. Along with like ten other things I've come up with during this challenge, haha!      But, either way: thanks for reading!

[chiseler]

WHERE CONSPIRACY THEORIES COME FROM

A little over a decade back now, author David Ritchie wrote a sadly unpublished book in which he attempted to trace the origins of several popular technology-based conspiracy theories—among them the Philadelphia Experiment, the Montauk Children, and the underground lizard people . Much to his surprise, Ritchie was eventually able to track the beginnings of most of these conspiracies to science fiction films and television shows from the ’50s and ’60s (quite a few of them seemed to originate with Star Trek). Whether the people who began spreading old Star Trek storylines as contemporary conspiracies as some kind of prank or simply because they’re susceptible and had forgotten they’d seen Captain Kirk fighting that Lizard Man is unclear. Check out for instance what happens end when the BBC mockumentary Alternative Three was aired several days after its originally-planned April 1st, 1977 broadcast. It was an enlightening book, and one that’s come to mind a few times in recent days, and the more I think about it, the more I’m starting to wonder if perhaps there’s not still another twist or two that might be added to his conclusions. A couple years ago a new theory was forwarded regarding the Roswell incident and Area 51. Instead of a spaceship or weather balloon, a respectable journalist argued in a new book, the thing that crashed in Roswell in 1947 was actually an advanced Soviet aircraft, designed by escaped Nazi engineers and manned by deformed dwarves. Stalin’s idea was to trigger a nationwide panic by making Americans believe we were being invaded by Martians. There was apparently convincing documentation to support this.  I found it a charming, delightful, and strangely plausible theory, and so of course immediately began spreading it around.

Then last week I was watching an old BBC miniseries I hadn’t seen in a couple years. 

Back in 1958, British screenwriter Nigel Neale wrote the third of his “Quatermass” series, Quatermass and the Pit (it would be remade about a decade later and released to American theaters as Five Million Years to Earth). Without going into all the details, the story involves what appears to be an alien spacecraft (complete with occupants) uncovered at a construction site in central London. While rocket scientist Prof. Quatermass is convinced the saucer is authentically extraterrestrial in origin, military and police officials insist it was merely a hoax launched by the Nazis near the end of the war in hopes of, yes, triggering a panic across England. After seeing that again and thinking back to that new Roswell theory, I couldn’t help but believe it was another example to support Ritchie’s claim. This respected journalist had seen either the miniseries or the film at some point, and morphed it into her Roswell idea (neglecting the fact that in the film it really does turn out to be a flying saucer).

A few days after watching the film, I found myself watching the pilot episode of The Lone Gunmen—an X-Files spinoff concerning three crusading investigative journalists and  techno-geeks out to expose corporate and government graft, corruption, and evil-doing.

Well, in the show’s pilot they uncover a government plot to slam an airliner into the World Trade Center and blame a Middle Eastern terrorist group, thus triggering a war  in order to increase military funding.

Now, no big deal, right? Two-thirds of the world believes 9/11 was an inside job. The only tricky thing here is that this particular show aired six months before the attacks. There’s a little thing to make a man say “hmmm...”

But again after seeing that I thought back to Ritchie’s book. The conspiracy nuts who kicked into high gear within hours after the towers came down would have been The Lone Gunmen’s core audience—and having just seen the show a few months earlier of course it would come back to mind immediately. It didn’t take much work—it was a pre-packaged conspiracy theory all ready to post. (Unless of course someone in the Bush administration saw that episode too and got ideas.)

So at this point everything fit. Whether they were disseminated by wild-eyed conspiracy nuts or grabbed by sinister intelligence officials who decided to make them a reality, conspiracies surrounding actual events were still originating in pop cultural sources. But that WTC episode still nagged at me a bit. There were other things going on in the show, but as far as the plot itself was concerned, it was just too spot-on. It was a little unnerving. Maybe there was another layer to Ritchie’s thesis that needed to be considered. Maybe it wasn’t just a matter of some geeks seeing an episode of Star Trek and running with it, or of this journalist seeing a Quatermass movie and consciously or unconsciously deciding to move it from London to New Mexico. What if the screenwriters knew something? What if Nigel Neale had some shadowy insider connections and really did know what happened at Roswell a decade earlier? He couldn’t come right out and say it—that would be crazy, and in 1958 it might well have gotten him killed. So what does he do? He disguises it as an entertaining science fiction program, inserting the true story as a red herring.

And what if these journalists and conspiracists who come along later aren’t merely cribbing the plots from old TV shows, but uncovering the same facts the screenwriters knew all those years before them, when the screenwriters opted to turn them into entertainment instead of boring investigative pieces? Screenwriting pays better than journalism after all, and maybe they were hoping someone would read between the lines.

My problem with conspiracy theories has always been the human factor. People are dumb, and people are blabbermouths. Someone’s going to talk, unless they’re publicly discredited, locked away, or eliminated first. Maybe highly fictionalized screenplays are a way to get things off your conscience without getting yourself killed for it.

If that’s the case, then of course we need to ask what the screenwriters of The Lone Gunmen knew, and how. (If of course they’re still alive).

This is when things only begin to get tricky. If my guess here is correct, then we need to go back to every fictional conspiracy film ever made, no matter how insane or ridiculous, and ask what buried truths about actual historic events the screenwriters (with their dark and arcane knowledge) were trying to reveal to us in some lightly camouflaged fashion? What about all those episodes of Kolchak, or The Prisoner, and what about the other Quatermass shows and movies? Ian Fleming had the background and the access—so are there really James Bonds out there saving us all at the last minute from assorted criminal masterminds and mad scientists armed with death rays and the like? And my god, what about Get Smart?

But to stop there would be making it too easy on ourselves. There are another ten layers or more to go, as history is a constantly shifting  conglomeration of the things we call truths and realities and the stories we tell about them, and the lies we tell to hide those stories, and the stories we tell to hide the lies we used to hide the original stories, which no one remembers anyway.  The little shards we get handed every once in awhile, these little bits of truth about the world ar merely playthings, used to keep us giggling and preoccupied while still more levels of subterfuge are built on top of all those other lies and stories, which we’ll never penetrate anyway. But they’re still fun to think about while we’re playing with those little toys.

by Jim Knipfel

[impunitybook-blog]

Preview of “Impunity” by E. Rohan

Chapter 1: Six Feet Under, One Hundred Feet Above

 Erik

 The alarms blared every morning at six a.m. Slowly, with the broken shuffle acquired by all of those who are oppressed, everyone in the Phantom District would make their way to the breakfast tables, where many of us had little more than tasteless “sludge” that the Presidency assured us was filled with all the essential nutrients needed to get us through the work day. On the morning of September 5th, 2104, I pulled a candy bar from the locked wooden chest beneath my bed and tiptoed over to my little sister’s room. She was still fast asleep, her raven hair masking her entire face. I sat on the edge of her bed and gently shook her awake, a smile creeping onto my face.

“Ari,” I whispered. “Ariadne, wake up.”

She groaned and raked her hair out of her face as her eyes struggled to focus on me. “Erik? The alarm already go off?” She yanked her thin blanket over her head to block out the growing sunlight leaking in from her window.

“Yeah, it did. And, since it’s your first day, I brought you something special to get you through it.” She slowly brought the blanket back down just enough to uncover her eyes. I grinned and held out the candy bar, which had been crudely re-wrapped in cheap paper. Still, it was considered a treasure here. No one here could afford any sweets, and even if they could, they would never find any in the Phantom District. The Presidency made sure that us laborers never knew any pleasure; if we knew what we were missing out on, then we just might get enough willpower to fight for it.

Ari shot up from her bed and threw her arms around me, giggling uncontrollably. She pulled back and planted a big kiss on my cheek. “You’re the best big brother, I swear it.” She slowly unwrapped the candy bar, as if it would crumble after one wrong move, and carefully broke off a small piece. Her eyes darted to me, searching for some form of permission, and, when I laughed in response, she placed the piece in her mouth. A slow grin spread across her face that evolved into excited laughter before she sprung up from her bed and began dancing around her room.

Like all little twelve year-olds should.

I tried to give Ari all that I could since I knew that Mom and Dad worked themselves to death just to keep the two of us alive. It was too late for my childhood to be salvaged, but I wouldn’t let Ari turn into one of those broken workers, the ones that stumbled down the streets every morning to one of the countless factories to earn the family’s pitiful rations until the day the Government decided she was useless and shut her down. I couldn’t let her become one of their drones.

           I wouldn’t tell her how I got the candy bar, mostly because I didn’t want her to know that I traded my old radio for it. I knew that was a total rip-off, but the guy knew I was a sucker for my sister and would pay whatever he demanded. I led her to her closet and helped her pick out her clothes for her first day of Conditioning – a Government-mandated program for the labor class meant to educate (brainwash) our population on the proper procedures and conduct (how to keep your mouth shut and do what you’re told) in the workplace and, overall, in the Labor District.

           The Phantom District isn’t really the proper name. It was originally called the Labor District, but, after seeing how thin and gaunt we had all become from endless working and malnutrition, the Golden District had taken to calling us “phantoms,” and the name stuck. I guess they weren’t totally off; after about ten, twenty years of this routine, most people lost the will to live. But, suicide isn’t as easy as it used to be.

           I walked Ari to the Conditioning Center after choking down another bowlful of the nutrient sludge that Mom and Dad had left out for us; they always left for work right when the alarm sounded. Once we were a block away from home, I knelt down and told Ari to climb onto my back; outside of here, it wasn’t safe. Fights constantly broke out, and anyone and everyone could get dragged in at any time. When my dad was a kid, street fights were rare where he grew up, and, if you lost, you probably died soon after. But here and now, if you were the loser, you were left to bleed out for hours until a Sentinel found you. They would either rip you open and switch you off, or they would crudely seal you back up and send you on your way.

           It was often the former.

           I prayed to whatever god would listen that Ari wouldn’t have to see any fights today. For a while, all seemed quiet and peaceful, and I dared to hope we would get through unscathed. But, when we had gone about three blocks, Old Sam jumped out from one of the alleyways and seized the front of my jacket, making Ari scream. I gasped and held Ari’s legs as tight as I could to keep her from falling. This wasn’t the first time that Old Sam had accosted me on the way to the Conditioning Center, but his eyes seemed even darker than before, and the cords in his neck jutted out like cables. He started yanking me back and forth, whispering frantically.

           “C’mon, man, just do me a solid.” He nervously licked his lips and panted in my face. His breath reeked of charcoal, like everything else here. “You gotta help me out. No one else will. Here, I’ll even get you started.” He pulled a small, rusted blade out of his pocket and put it into my hand. “Right here.” He drew a vertical line from the bottom of his sternum to his bellybutton. “It’s real quick. Just cut and reach straight in. Don’t stop until you feel the switch. You can’t miss it. Just make it quick. You gotta help me. No one else will.”

           We’d been going through this routine the past few years, and, each day, Sam grew more desperate. I peeled his hands from my jacket as calmly as possible and put the blade back into his hand. “I can’t help you, Sam. I’m sorry. I’ve gotta take Ari to the Conditioning Center.”

           He started to scream, tears pouring down his face. Spit flew from his mouth onto my face, and I felt Ari turn away. “It’ll be quick! I promise! Just slice and switch. It’s real easy! I did it for a buddy of mine during the war! Just slice and switch! Slice and switch, dammit!”

           I turned my head back towards Ari, who had buried her face between my shoulder blades. I told her to cover her ears until I told her to stop. I pulled away from Sam again and kept walking without looking back at him as he kept screaming “slice and switch!” When there was no more sign of Sam, I nudged Ari, who responded by removing her hands from her ears. She didn’t say anything, only wrapped her arms tightly around my neck and buried her face in my hair.

           “I’m sorry you had to see that,” I said softly. She shook her head and said nothing. I cut through the middle of the road and picked up the pace until I could see the chain link fence of the Conditioning Center. Finally, Ari asked, “Why do they call him ‘Old Sam?’ He doesn’t look that old.”

           “He’s had the OS in him since 2030.”

           “Is that when they first started the program?”

           “Yeah, he was one of the first ones they did it to.”

           “Just like Dad?”

           “Yeah, just like Dad.”

           Our father had been a teenager when the technology had first been announced. Of course, a group of scientists had been trying to conquer death for years, but this was the first time they actually had something to show for it. The Government approved human trial runs, and they proved successful. Combining man with machinery allowed them to prevent decay and to keep cell reproduction optimized; in simple terms, it prevented aging, prevented death.

           As the technology was tweaked and improved, it made even injuries and illnesses a worry of the past, and immortality was finally in our hands. Once Newman entered her third term as president, she became an example for the country by getting the technology surgically installed herself, and she vowed to lead the nation into a period of prosperity. And, just like that, she sealed her position as our leader for eternity, and she earned the title of “The Presidency.” With a wicked smile, she swayed Congress (it still existed in those days) to pass the act to require the installation of this technology – the OS-R15 – in all people between the ages of eighteen and twenty-four, and our father was one of them.

           He didn’t meet our mother until 2080, when she was eighteen and underwent the surgery as well. They married a few years later (though, by that time, marriage was more of a pat on the back than a traditional celebration), and, in 2087, during one of the procreation periods, they had me. I had been one of the first test-tube babies, as they realized that the technology’s pre-installed settings couldn’t handle the instability of pregnancy at that time. Improvements weren’t made until five years later, when Ari was born.

           “Do you remember being in a tube?” Ari asked, tugging on my hair to get my attention. I laughed and shook my head.

           “No. I was the same as you. Just different containers.”

           “Oh. Why was I born and you weren’t?”

           “A bunch of the people in the Golden District were complaining that they were being robbed of “the miracle of childbirth,” so, to shut them up, the Presidency ordered the scientists to make adjustments to their liking.” I took a right and walked across the street, kicking trash out of my way as I went. “They used some of us to test it out, and Mom wanted to be able to give birth to you. You were one of the first successes.”

           I felt her smile into my hair. “How did Mom get pregnant anyhow?”

           I started laughing uncontrollably. Whether I told her or not, Conditioning would fill her in by next week. In the Phantom District, any sex during a non-procreation period was punishable by death. Of course, that didn’t stop many of the teens from partaking. Everything I knew about sex was from Cal, who didn’t give a damn who knew he was having sex; as far as he was concerned, life without it wasn’t worth living. I finally told Ari, “She took a special medicine. Sort of like the seeds you plant in a garden.”

           “Where did she get the seeds from?”

           I couldn’t control my grin. “Dad.”

           The Conditioning Center was now within view, and I felt Ari’s grip grow tighter with every step I took. Conditioning was nothing to look forward to; it was glorified brainwashing that programmed us to be nothing more than less than content factory workers. There was a reason we were the Labor District: we did all of the work, and the Commerce District – well, no one called it that; we nicknamed it “The Golden District,” just as they had nicknamed us – reaped all of the benefits. Our sole purpose of existence was to get our hands dirty and make sure the wheels kept turning.

           Sure, there were other professions we would occasionally get recruited for, but none of them were pleasant to discuss, so I’ll keep my mouth shut for now. I could only cross my fingers and hope that, with Ari’s intellect, she could perhaps be recruited to do work for the science division, possibly help program the IntelliChips (anyone in the Golden District who couldn’t be bothered to crack a book could, for a hefty price, just plug their knowledge right in; this, of course, came with flaws, as the intelligence was very one-dimensional and pre-programmed, but this did not harm sales in the slightest).

           I knew what I was destined for: as soon as I turned eighteen, I would get the OS-R15 installed, and then I would be sent off to work on the oil rig. Boys who were seen as dispensable were condemned to the rigs. The OS-R15 was, of course, the very key to our world’s limited success.

           It was our pocketful of immortality.

           It all went back to the stem cell research. A major breakthrough by a college graduate led to the development in this technology: a small, time-release pump that released stem cells into our system. It was programmed to match the speed of biological decay; the faster our cells died, the more it pumped out. This prevented a slow in the cell regeneration, the very slow that led to us growing older, approaching death. This was our philosopher’s stone.

           To us, it wasn’t salvation; it was a sentence. It condemned us to decades upon decades of endless labor and abuse, and, when the day came for our shut-down notice, we would be hauled from our homes and off to the Graveyard. When taken there, we would labor for a while, cleaning up bodies and recycling OS-R15s from the corpses, and then it would be our turn. We would be switched off then shot on sight. Our OS-R15s would be pillaged from our bodies, and then we would be burned. There would be no funerals, no remembrances, only fire.

           Wasn’t that simply Hell?

           At least I wouldn’t ever have to see that day; most of us on the oil rigs died out there, accidental deaths, bodies lost in that cesspool of an ocean. A large part of me was okay with that. It meant that I would never have to see the day my parents got their notices, or the day Ari got hers. And they would never have to see mine.

           Two more months. Then the OS-R15. Then the rig. It was all laid out before me.

           But, in the meantime, I kept my grip tight around my little sister’s legs as I carried her to the Conditioning Center and hoped that her brains took her farther than I could ever go. Far away from here, where we all begged for a swift death. Immortality hadn’t made us eternal gods; it had made us the walking dead.

           We reached the gates of the Conditioning Center, where a line formed behind the scanner sat at the front of the entrance. We would hold out our arms, where the ID would be scanned to permit us, and then Ari and I would part ways for the day. I whispered reassuring thoughts into her ear, about how she could make friends during her Nutrition Hour, and she nodded absently in response. She had seen the life this place turned out; she had little faith.

           She had yet to crack a smile until two large, strong arms swooped her off the ground and cradled her to a familiar chest. She grinned up at my best friend, Cal, who playfully swung her to and fro and kissed the top of her head. He set her back down on the ground and smiled warmly at her.

           “How’s my best girl doing?” he asked. He was always the charmer, the Adonis of this hellhole, but he never spoke as sweetly to any girl as he did to my little sister. Being an only child had made him a softie, and there was no one in the world who had him wrapped around their finger like Ari did. She was, quite positively, his favorite person in the world.

           She beamed up at him and held his hand in her left and held mine in her right. “I’m doing pretty good. I’ve got the best-looking boys in the Nation on each side.”

           Cal smirked at me and ran his hand through his golden hair. “Well, you do have the best-looking guy on your left, I can give you that, but I don’t know about this scruffy-lookin’ one. Reminds me of a stray.” He ruffled my hair, messing it up even more.

           I attempted to flatten it, in vain. “Not everyone has the stamina to maintain such a flawless image as you,” I said. Cal preened as he jerked his head towards the tall, dark-haired girl in front of us.

           “Guess who I got a date with?” he said.

           “No one as beautiful as me,” a voice quipped behind us. We turned just in time to see Lorelai throw her arm around Cal’s neck and plant a kiss on his cheek, bold as ever. Now that was a gorgeous, dark-haired girl. Porcelain skin and shockingly blue eyes. Enough to knock anyone off their feet. Cal ducked his head, and I swore that I saw him blush. He playfully shrugged her off.

           “That’s a given, Lor, but I was talkin’ about,” he jerked his head towards the girl again. Lorelai looked over at her and then rolled her eyes.

           “You really are an idiot.”

           “What? What do you mean?”

           Gwen walked up at that moment and punched Cal in the arm. “Because, idiot, that’s Leila’s sister.”

           Cal’s face fell. “You’re joking. Please tell me you’re joking.”

           Gwen looked over at me. “How? How do you deal with him?”

           I shrugged. “I don’t have a whole lot of options around here.”

           Cal turned to Lorelai. “Is that seriously Leila’s sister?”

           Lorelai was already ignoring him. “Hey, Gwen, I heard someone had a late night last night.”

           Gwen scowled. “Well, sounds like someone is full of shit.”

           I leaned in. “Wait, what? Again?”

           “Again?” Lorelai exclaimed. Gwen shot me a dirty look.

           “You’re dead, Brady.”

           “How long has this been going on?” Lorelai asked.

           “Erik, is she seriously Leila’s sister?”

           “Do you mean like first date? Or first kiss?” I asked. “If we’re talking date, then six months. If we’re talking kiss, then it’s been over a y–”

           “Will someone tell me if she’s Leila’s sister?” Cal shouted. People in front and behind us quieted down and stared at Cal. The dark-haired girl turned around and looked at him, eyebrows raised. Cal waved nervously, and she flipped him the bird and turned back around.

           “So much for your date,” Gwen laughed.

           “It’s okay. Gwen’s going on enough dates for everyone,” I joked.

           “Would you shut up?”

           Cal smiled at her and said, “So, when’s the wedding? Has Jacob set a date? Where’s my invitation?”

           “It’s up you’re a–”

           I managed to cover Ari’s ears just in time.

           “Then he’ll have quite a time finding it,” Lorelai laughed.

           “Why, why…” Cal was searching for words and finding none. The line continued to move towards the scanner, but we didn’t really notice. “Why does this always turn on me?”

           “Because it’s easy,” Lorelai said. She was making Ari’s hair into a French braid, as Lorelai often had her hair. Ari was beaming at the prospect of being modeled into a mini-Lorelai.

           “Much like Cal,” I added. I cupped my hands and aimed my shout at a girl in front of us. “Right, Elise?”

           She whipped around, blank, blue eyes staring into us. Always the deer in headlights. “Huh?”

           Lorelai had to smother a snicker. It was no secret that Elise wouldn’t be working in any labs anytime soon. Cal had gone on a date with her two weeks prior and said they ought to do it again sometime. Empty words. I smiled sweetly at Elise. “Oh, Cal was just saying he’s really looking forward to your next date.”

           A slow, bright smile spread across Elise’s face as her eyes shifted to Cal. “Really? Well, I’m free tonight!”

           “What a coincidence! So is Cal!” Lorelai said.

           Cal’s mouth dropped open as I pushed him towards Elise. He frantically whispered, “Don’t make me talk to her. Please. I don’t have brain cells to spare.”

           Once within a three-foot radius, Cal was in Elise’s grasp. He mouthed, “I have no friends” as she wrapped her hands around his arm and began excitedly planning their date. He occasionally shot glares back at us, and we snickered at his misery. Gwen whispered in my ear, “If he’d man up and ask Lor out, he wouldn’t be ridiculed so much.”

           “He’s not asking Lor out until he is disinfected and exorcised,” I said. Gwen laughed. She started peering through the sea of people, eyes hopeful as they darted from smudged face to smudged face. She turned back to the front, defeated.

           “Who you lookin’ for?” Lorelai teased.

           “No one.”

           “Really? Because I could have sworn I saw a cute guy standing just over there.” Lorelai pointed three people behind her where, sure enough, Jacob was standing, also peering through the crowd behind him. A smile briefly flashed across Gwen’s face before she recomposed herself and acted uninterested.

           “Big whoop. He made it another day in this hellhole. He’s as accomplished as half the six year-olds around here.”

           “He’s your six year-old,” I said.

           “Oh, oh no,” Lor said, shaking her head. “Don’t say that. Ever.”

           “Yeah, that was a mistake.”

           We weren’t given any time to continue tormenting Gwen; the scanner was right in front of us, its menacing glare reflected onto our skin by the unrelenting sunlight. I motioned for Ari to watch as I rolled up my sleeve and placed my ID – the number tattooed onto my arm at birth – under the scanner. It beeped its approval and blinked a command for me to move forward.

           I looked back over my shoulder at Ari, now at the scanner. She looked at me, then copied my earlier movements, rolling up her sleeve and showing her ID to the scanner. It beeped once more and had her move forward. I leaned over and kissed her on the temple before saying, “All right, we’re going to have to split up here; younger kids go left, fifteen and up go right. I’ll see you at Nutrition.”

           Ari squeezed my hand tight before nodding and following her peers. Cal came up right behind me in time to blow Ari a kiss. She giggled and waved back at him before disappearing around the corner. Gwen, Cal, Lor, and I moved down the hall together, dragging our feet a bit to extend our time together.

           “I’m beginning to think that little girl is the only one you’ll ever be loyal to,” Lor said. Cal grinned at her and flung his arm around her shoulders, pulling her into him.

           “Well, if you’d go on a date with me, I could prove you wrong.”

           “I’ll go on a date with you the day that Gwen admits she’s seeing Jacob.”

           Cal flashed a hopeful look at Gwen, who snorted in response. “Please, I’m not seeing Jacob.”

           Lorelai smiled sweetly at Cal and patted him on the cheek. “Better luck next time.”

           The girls split from us a minute later; Lorelai and Gwen went into the room for those with a bit more potential – people who would be overseeing operations rather than getting their hands quite so dirty – while Cal and I went into the hopeless room – the one for those destined for the sketchy jobs that led to shortened lifespans.

           Not that I’m complaining.

           Conditioning wasn’t like traditional schools; there was no instructor and there were no desks. Each room was lined with row after row of metal chairs with a semicircle connected from the headrest, settling right in front of our eyes. Cal and I found chairs next to each other and sat down. The moderator came by and checked our settings as we hooked ourselves up. Gloves on, earbuds in, and settings calibrated by the moderator; we were ready to go.

           Conditioning for the first few years covered basic subject education, just as traditional schools had. There were actual desks and discussions involved. In the Golden District, that education continued and expanded into more complex subjects, but in the Phantom District, it was all channeled towards labor and factory work. Those who did well in the first few years ended up where Gwen and Lor were: among the intelligent that might actually be able to do the dirty management work that the big business heads in the Golden District didn’t want to deal with. Some even went on to do some research with the scientists and engineers in the Golden District. But, the last time that happened was over six years ago.

           Those who didn’t do so well ended up where Cal and I were, which had us running simulations to familiarize ourselves with the workplace and the different hazards around. It took a while to train laborers, so they tried to prepare us as much as possible. Cal and I spent hours on the virtual reality machines, running around the oil rig and trying not to get ourselves into a nasty accident. The ocean was beyond polluted and foul, and years of dumping our waste into it had begun to have an effect on the ocean life. Falling in the water was a death sentence.

           The virtual reality went by quickly, though, and the much-anticipated Nutrition Hour was soon upon us. We met up with Ari in the courtyard and sat with her while we ate. Ari already loved Conditioning, being surrounded by kids her age and finally getting to learn at least a little something; since books were banned around here, she was constantly looking towards her imagination to entertain her, but with the little knowledge she had access to, she often found herself drawing a blank, endlessly stumped. We spent the hour laughing and joking around, even catcalling at Gwen as she shyly made her way towards Jacob, who stood grinning and waiting for her.

           Maybe our world wasn’t perfect. Maybe it was downright horrifying. But, if I’d known how good I’d had it then, I don’t know if I could have ever imagined giving it up.

           I wasn’t ready for it to be taken from me.

Rose

 “Vince just made a deal with Adam, the one down on Fifth,” Jane announced to everyone at the table. She radiated pride as she touched her husband’s arm and raved on his accomplishments of the week. Everyone ate up their affection for each other. They had the fairytale ending, love found in a twisted, modern matchmaking system. The way they gazed at each other, eyes round with adoration and glistening with that eternal youth that their body lapped up so eagerly from the gadget wired into their spines. It was beautiful to watch.

           And completely and utterly fictitious.

           I was the only one Jane had confided in. The sisterly bond we shared was, perhaps, the only thing in her life that wasn’t a façade. She hated her husband with every fiber of her being, just as he hated her, which he’d made clear with every lash of his hand across her face and every flick of the wrist that sent a glass of bourbon sailing towards her head. These outbursts of his had become more and more frequent in recent weeks as the stress level of his job skyrocketed. And the kids that Jane insisted on – but, according to an impartial judge, may very well be the results of marital rape on his end – were constant nuisances, and why couldn’t she have been of better breeding, that stupid, useless –

           “Rose, aren’t you going to congratulate Vincent on his success?” Mother said. Her elbow was wedged sharply between my ribs, daring me to provide any other response other than what was textbook. I put on my sweetest smile and, through gritted teeth, congratulated my brother-in-law on his fabulous accomplishment. He dipped his head in acceptance, his eyes as careful as ever. Oh, he suspected my knowledge. Perhaps he didn’t know for certain the extent of it, but he was fairly positive that I knew something.

           “So, Rose, have you any intentions of furthering your studies?” Vince asked. He was trying to build tension. Yes, quite a touchy subject.

           “Well, I had wanted–”

           “We thought,” Mother said, hand touching Father’s shoulder, “that her focus be better trained on the upcoming Selection Week and the proper role of a wife rather than wasting her energy in time-consuming fields.”

           Thought so. I stabbed my fork into my meat and kept my mouth shut.

           “That’s the wiser decision,” Vince said. He took a long drink from his wine glass before furthering his point. “I mean, women are hardly ever happy or fulfilled in those fields as they are when caring for their own children or tending to the home. Janie can tell you just how happy the home life has made her.” He wrapped his thin fingers around her delicate ones and squeezed – too tight, it seemed – and Jane smiled weakly. Her eyes darted to mine as she nodded shortly. No way; get out while you still can.

           “See? What a loving brother, looking out for your best interests,” Mother crooned. If Vince had been born to her instead of me, she’d have likely been much happier.

           Then again, that’d be a hell of a marriage, even for this twisted city.

           I shrugged. “Seems a bit outdated to me. Tracked backwards quite a–”

           “Rose!” Mother pulled me to the side and whispered, “Mind your opinion. It’s rude.”

           Ah, yes. Disagreement is conflict. Conflict is unharmonious.

           And harmony is our goal.

           I was thinking more along the lines of–

           “So! Richard, tell me about the oil business. Productive as ever?” Vince kept the conversation rolling. He was satisfied with my silencing. He had caused me to bow my head for the evening.

           Two out of two, Vince. Got both sisters tonight.

             I retired to my room early. I really didn’t want to sit through the after-dinner drinks. The inane blabber about the oil business and the engineering of OS-R15s was the last thing I wanted consuming my evening. I closed the door to my room and punched in the lock. A satisfying sher-klunk followed. I exhaled. Finally alone.

           I stripped off my clothes and threw on the slightly comfortable nightgown I’d gotten on my birthday last year. It was probably one of the only comfortable things my parents allowed me to own. I threw open the balcony windows – the only things in the house that I loved – and felt the breeze blow through the gown’s soft fabric. I stepped out, feeling the cold stone beneath my feet and allowing my eyes to flutter shut. The view I imagined was much better than what was before me: tall, unfeeling buildings gleaming with far too many lights and making far too much noise. In my mind’s eye, I was looking at a sparkling ocean, clean and clear as it had been long before I was born. I could smell fresh air, untainted by smog. There were boats – actual boats, not the industrial cruisers they sent out to the rigs – floating across the water, bobbing up and down peacefully. I smiled.

           But then my eyes opened.

           Nothing had changed. I was still in the Commerce District, “The Golden District,” as the Phantoms loved to call it. We all had it so easy over here. I scoffed. Yes, the Labor District was horribly abused, but at least it was recognizably evil, something that the Government somewhat attempted to cover up. What we had here in the GD wasn’t recognizable; it was regulated. It was accepted.

           I looked over my shoulder at the calendar displayed on my wall. The new week, starting tomorrow, was highlighted in blue, with bold text reading, “selection week” scrolling across the screen. My stomach clenched, and my brain flew into overdrive; illness suspended the Selection Week, didn’t it? For a maximum of two days, yes, it did. Two days wasn’t enough. If anything, it would make the entire ordeal ten times worse. The anticipation might just kill me.

           Might just…

           I glanced over the railing of the balcony. Ten stories up. Was that enough? With our medicine, it was incredible what we could be brought back from. Then again, that was with the OS-R15 keeping us alive, and I was sixteen – sans OS-R15. It was true that kids in the Golden District could get the device early, but it may screw with growth rates and all that, so, it was still the norm to get it at the age of eighteen or so. So, I was still about as mortal as it got. Ten stories…

           Seemed like enough.

           I placed my feet at the bottom of the railing and wrapped my hands around the top, bracing myself as I leaned as far over the edge as I could. My heart ricocheted off my ribs. It didn’t want any part in this; it wanted to bail on me before I took it down with me. Nope, gotta squish it all if I’m going to get my free pass on Selection Week.

           So close now. My palms were sweaty.

           Just a little farther.

           “Rosie?”

           My door creaked open, and I flew back from the railing and onto solid ground. My legs were still weak from the nerves, so I collapsed and fell on my butt on the balcony. Groaning, I turned to see Jane peeking around my door. She held her key to my door in her hand and had a tentative smile on her face. It quickly changed to amusement.

           “What are you doing, Goose?”

           I smiled innocently. “I was seeing what it would be like to fly.”

           The smile faded from her face. “Not even wings will get you out of here, Goosey.”

           Jane closed the door quietly behind her and moved over to my bed. I sat beside her as she wrapped her arm around me and pulled me into her. My sister had the porcelain complexion my parents craved, the beautiful, straight auburn hair that made her so mesmerizing, and the gentle beauty that made her so desirable to every controlling man in this damned district. Vincent, in particular. And then there was me: the pasty, ginger mistake.

           “How’re you doing, Jane?”

           She tilted her head to rest on the top of mine. “Same as ever.”

           “How’s Tommy? And Mary?”

           I felt her smile into my hair, the wavy, red mess that it was. “Mary’s the sweetest baby there ever was. She’s so happy all the time. And Tommy… he’s just like you. He’s always cracking me up. I try to– to keep him away from Vince…”

           I squeezed her hand. “I know.”

           Jane let out a long sigh and sat with me in silence for a few minutes. Then, “Are you ready for tomorrow?”

           “How can anyone be ready for that?”

           “You can’t be,” Jane said. “But you have to be.”

           I nodded and let out a shuddering breath. Don’t cry, don’t cry…

           “Hey, Jane?”

           “Hm?”

           “Do you… do you think they’re right? Do we really have it so much better over here? Are we the monsters?”

           “I… I don’t know,” she said. She began stroking my hair, trying to provide whatever comfort she could. “I don’t really think what you have determines your monstrosity. I think it’s what you do with it.”

           “I was afraid you’d say that.” I squeezed her tight just as I heard the familiar, heavy footsteps of Vince. The door opened sharply just as I pulled away, and Vince ducked his head in, his teeth bared.

           Or was it a smile? I couldn’t tell.

           “Jane, darling, it’s time to go home. Tommy and Mary need putting to bed.” The words came out sweet, but I could hear the venom inside. Jane rose, obedient, and flashed a small smile down at me. She dared to squeeze my hand just before she exited out the doors. Vince threw one last sneer at me. “Enjoy tomorrow, Freckles. Maybe someone will throw you a bone; some people are into…well, that.” He crudely gestured to all of me with the hand holding his bottle. That damn gin bottle.

           “Well, you got a match after your…oh, fourth time through or so, so I know there’s hope for me,” I shot back.

           Vince scowled. “Well, look at the bright side: it’ll be the most action you’ll have ever gotten. Caresses don’t need to be loving to get you off.” He took his hand off the door and skulked after Jane. “Isn’t that right, love?”

           The door fell shut.

           I fell back onto my mattress, a shudder shaking through my body. God forbid… if someone as gorgeous and gentle as Jane got that scumbag, then what the hell was I in for? Life here wasn’t perfect; in fact, it was far from it. But, tomorrow, I would be walking into the unknown, very likely walking straight into a life of misery, a life of abuse, far from this balcony, my only refuge. I wasn’t ready for it.

           I wasn’t ready for it to be taken from me.

  Not too far away… just two miles from where Rose sat in her room and one mile from where Erik sat in his…

 Marcus – Commerce District

 “‘M fuck’n’ bored, man,” Jayce said, flicking his cigarette ash into John’s hair. John jumped to his feet and frantically patted at his hair, because heaven forbid that his carefully constructed look was harmed in the slightest. Han rolled his eyes, puffed out a ring of smoke, and watched it expand and dissipate into thin air. He couldn’t deny it; he’d been bored, too.

           “‘Ey, I’ve got an idea,” Ian purred. He smirked and jerked his head towards the south, where the border of the Labor District was. He tossed his cigarette off the side of the roof and teasingly tilted his head, his teeth bared. Man, he was scary when he got like this. “Let’s go pound a Phantom.”

           “Too easy,” John said. “They barely hold themselves together. It’d be like beating down paper n’ twigs.” Ian took a swing at John, just barely cuffing his ear. John whined and rubbed the injury as he shot a glare over at Ian. No remorse.

           “It’s not easy if we grab a group of ‘em. They try to scatter and duck out. Rule is: not one gets away. Deal?”

           John sighed but grudgingly agreed, not wanting another boxing. We all put our smokes out and climbed down from our perch. It was easy, slipping past the Sentinels. If they saw your clothes weren’t falling apart, they knew you were from the Golden District; they knew what we were doing and would look the other way.

           Ian could sniff them out. Always could. When that bloodlust lit up his eyes, there was no stopping him until it was sated. He ducked around the corner of a crumbling building and into an alley, where five, scrappy Phantoms sat in a circle, playing cards. Han whistled a tune as we approached them, grinning ear to ear. They looked up at us, eyes wide. Five of them, five of us. Ian sauntered forward, stepping on the scattered cards, and looked down at the dealer. Probably about twelve or so. No more than a kid.

           That didn’t matter. Ian grabbed him by the arm and twisted until he heard that sickening snap. A grin flashed across his face just as the child howled.

           And then everyone went in.

           John always had his bat on him, so he dove in right after Ian, swinging with that expert arm of his, and connected straight on with another kid’s skull. It sounded like a home run, the crack rang through the entire stadium, and John took his sweet time, because no team comes back from a hit like that. He flicked the blood off of his bat and wound up again, this time hitting the kid in the side, probably obliterating his ribs.

           Jayce always approached the good ol’ fashioned way: bare hands. He hit his victim again and again in the face, turning his face first red, then purple, then, slowly, a bluish white. I couldn’t even tell what was what on the mess of a head anymore; it had all run together in some mushy lump. Jayce told him to beg; man, he got off on that. The kid tried to speak as much as he could, but nothing but a hollow noise came out, sorta sounded like a cow. Jayce ripped one of his fingers backwards and asked him to speak up. The broken digit hung pathetically as the kid cried again. Not good enough. Another punishment. Kid only had so many attempts, so many fingers.

           Han was the surgeon; he liked discovering their anatomy. He flicked out his blade and carefully cut open his squirming, screaming specimen. He shushed them softly and went to work, cutting and snipping through various tissues. But a surgeon was not all he was. I had to turn away as I heard the familiar sounds of his first course, and the scream that joined it in a twisted duet. Ian, whose victim was holding together flaps of his skin onto his face, turned back to me, expecting some sort of participation. He pointed to my target, who was scrambling away from our hall of horrors. I nodded at Ian and booked it after the kid, deep into the darkness of the Phantom District.

           When we were out of sight, I upped my speed, just on the boy’s tail. I swooped down and scooped him up. He screamed frantically as I threw him over my shoulder and kept running, far, far away from that massacre. When I felt we were safe, I set him down and knelt down to his eye-level. Tears streaked through his dirt-coated face, vomit stuck to the corners of his mouth, and his hiccupping sobs echoed against the building walls.

           “Run,” I said. “Run, and don’t look back. Go home, or find somewhere to hide. And don’t come out at night again. Go!”

           The kid didn’t have time to nod. He blinked, a sign of thanks, and spun around, high-tailing it to the shack he called home. Now it was my turn, my turn to cry, my turn to vomit. Somewhere in the distance, I could hear Ian calling me.

           “Marcus! You need a hand? Mine was weak! He already cried unkle! He’s all dried up! Yo! Marcus!”

           Ian skidded around the corner, John’s bat swung lazily over his shoulder. He was wearing his war paint: the splattered blood of his victim. He was grinning from ear-to-ear as he loped up to me and shoved me lightly on the shoulder.

           “Aw, skittish prey. It’s all right. He probably woulda lasted two seconds anyway.”

           Ian turned on his heel and led me back over the border, where the others were waiting. They entertained themselves on the way back by calling me every variation of “pussy” in the book. I shrugged it off. I was used to it. All I wanted was to get home, to get out of these clothes and forget everything I had seen.

           And prepare for the Selection tomorrow.

--- 

I hope you enjoyed this selection and it helped you decide whether you wanted to get the novel for yourself. I had a great time writing this story, and I hope you all enjoy it as well.

- Em