#for the convenience of any interlopers who might not be in the know

[diltonsstrangescience]

This is the worst security I’ve seen in my entire life.

[ddarker-dreams]

game over / scarlet ribbons bad ends.

note: since i structure scarlet ribbons like an otome, it makes sense to include what the bad end for the boys routes would be, no? i decided to only do giorno, bruno, fugo and mista for now, but i plan on adding narancia/abbacchio’s bad ends eventually !  warnings: fem reader, yandere themes, unhealthy relationships, implied depression (for giorno’s), not sfw implications, pregnancy mention, tampering with birth control (for bruno’s), violent thoughts, mentions of religion (for fugo’s), coercion and threats (for mista’s). 

>...would you like to try again from your last save? 

First Circle: Limbo. 

It isn’t your imagination, you decide. Nighttime is decidedly eerie. Your senses are dialed up to eleven, eyes constantly scanning your dilapidated surroundings for signs of danger. There’s nothing but headlights and street lamps and flickering convenience store signs. You take a deep breath, mentally going over your plan, as it was the only factor keeping you tethered to reality at this point. There’s a good chance it is. 

The taxi driver is supposed to pick you up at 11 PM sharp. He’s been bribed in advance and swore not to utter a word of it to anyone. You paid for your plane ticket in cash after checking over your shoulder nonstop to ensure you weren’t being trailed. This would work. It had to work — an opening in the chaos following Passione’s drastic shift in leadership.

Your grip on your suitcase tightens.

This isn’t how you wanted your time in Naples to draw to a close. Leaving without uttering a word of it to anyone, to save the last shreds of your heart that were left. Abbacchio, Narancia, and Bruno were gone. Fugo was too, in a different way, scuttering off to someplace out of reach in his shame. It was too raw being here, the pain near debilitating at times.

That’s why you have to go. Your friends who still draw breath might think less of you for it, but you’re past the point of caring.

Or so you thought.

An arm lazily slings itself around your shoulder and you feel a barrel press against your lower back.

“Hey there, pretty girl. Going somewhere?”

Your immediate instinct is to summon your Stand, fully prepared to pummel the interloper who encroached on your personal space. However, there’s something familiar about this person, familiar enough that you grind your reflexes to a screeching halt. Craning your neck to the side, you note the distinct pattern of Guido Mista’s hat. Your taut muscles relax at the familiar sight and he gives a lopsided grin.

“Christ, Mista, you scared the daylights out of me!”

The gunslinger hums. The lack of banter makes you gulp. It’d been days since you saw him last — not from a lack of trying on his part. He’d called almost nonstop, left more voicemails than you cared to count, and even stopped by your apartment to knock on the door. You’d turn the lights off to project the illusion that you weren’t home. Guilt weighed down on your soul like anchors, yet you couldn’t bring yourself to face him. Not when you were planning to leave everything behind.

Everything, including him.

“Mind explaining what this is about?”

You thought you’d feel better once he spoke up again, an idea that was dismissed as soon as it came. There’s no liveliness in his tone; the trademark zest that you had come to associate with him over the years is gone, replaced by a shallow husk. The night is tepid and still you shiver.

“I… was just thinking about taking a vacation,” you’re aware this in-the-moment lie is hardly convincing, and Mista probably knows it too.

“A vacation, huh,” he plays along for a second that seems to drag on forever, “A vacation that had you pack everything in your apartment up and buying a one-way plane ticket home?”

There aren’t any real arguments you can make, so you don’t bother trying. The two of you stand just like that, both trying to get a read on each other, not daring to move or utter a single syllable. Then, he sighs. You feel his warm breath fanning against the back of your neck. His grip on your relaxes, though he doesn’t move his arm, as if he thought you’d disappear in a puff of smoke if he did.

He pulls you into a one-sided embrace. “Don’t go. [First]. I can’t have you leaving me too.”

Not sure what else to do, you bring a shaky hand up to his toned arm, splaying your fingers across his skin. He’s trembling, you notice. 

“I have to. I can’t— can’t stand to be here anymore, not with them gone,” a lump in your throat forms. “I’m sorry.”

He chuckles, the sound weak and devoid of humor. “So that’s how it has to be, huh?”

The streetlamp overhead flickers.

“Well. I’m sorry too, girlie.”

Suddenly, you’re acutely aware of the gun barrel pressed against your back. You had almost forgotten about that in the midst of everything else. A click resonates behind you as he takes the safety off. Your blood runs cold and your eyes widen  — there’s no way he would…?

“This would look real bad to Giorno if I were to report it. Running off without a word to the states with all you know about Passione,” Mista nudges you with the barrel once. “You of all people should know the type of business we’re in. People have been killed for less.”

You bite your lower lip hard enough to draw blood. “Mista… are you actually... threatening me?”

“That’s a crude way of putting it, sure. I’d like to say I’m bringing you to your senses.”

Guido Mista, who would lend you his leftovers without complaint, marathon old movies so long as you were the one to suggest them, who let you use his shoulder as a pillow on long car rides back from jobs; that Guido Mista is holding a gun to you with the resolve to shoot. You want to write it off as a bluff. A nightmare, a prank in bad taste, anything but him being genuine.

Heartbreak comes in more forms than one, you suppose.

He does eventually stick his gun back into his boot, though his tight grip on you never falters.

“How ‘bout we head back now? We can put this all behind us. Things’ll go back to how they used to be.”

If only either of you believed that to be true.

Second Circle: Lust. 

Bruno noticed your ring finger had been bare as of late.

It wasn’t like you gave no explanation for the predicament. Tears that he longed to wipe away would gather in your pretty eyes, dripping down the expanse of your blotchy cheeks, as you sniffled and pleaded for him to see reason in a scenario that never called for it. He never understood that. He’s perfectly reasonable — it’s you who has been acting out. Not him, never him. But that’s okay, his love for you is unwavering.

And oh, does he love you. 

Yes, it stung, like drops of caustic acid dropped directly over his heart. Controlling, you would call him. Saying that he had no right to restrict your freedoms, that he was your fiancé now, not your Capo. It brought him no pleasure to enforce these rules on you. The world you lived in was a dangerous one, with gnashing teeth that’d sink and tear right through your flesh. A world where children were forced to join the mob to protect their fathers, where drugs flooded the streets and wreaked havoc in every life they touched, a world where mothers could choose to up and leave one day simply because they were bored.

Bruno opens the medicine cabinet in your shared bathroom and scans over the contents. He finds the box he was looking for, crinkled from frequent use, then sets out to work.

He could see it now, unfolding in his subconscious like a play with acts closely knitted together. The idyllic life that he sought and deserved. It would be on an evening much like this. He’d turn off his car, place the keys in his pocket, then begin the trek up the driveway to his slice of heaven. Work had drained him that day, as it always did. That mattered little when you greeted him at the door. A smile on your face, countenance softening upon your husband’s return. You’d rush to embrace him — apologizing for any flour on your apron that may have rubbed off onto his suit — a gripe he’d easily dismiss.

You would think to ask about his day, then change your mind upon noting his fatigue. Instead, you tell him about yours, mindful to keep your voice light so as not to worsen the pounding in his head. The latest book to have caught your interest, how your flowers were due to bloom any day now. He’d soak up your every word like a sponge. His home smelled of the bay’s salt water, your floral perfume, and the brick oven margherita pizza you had finished putting together right before he pulled in.

After dinner’s conclusion, he would secure two crystal wine glasses from the cupboard. While you patted down the dishes with a rag, he’d sneak up behind you, eliciting a gasp from your perfectly kissable lips.

“Dinner was delicious,” he’d whisper, then nibble the edge of your earlobe, his hands settling on your waist journeying further south, “Might I ask what you have planned for dessert?”

His goal to fluster you would prove successful. Chuckling at your endearing reaction, he’d then redirect his attention at the nerve clearing of your throat. 

“Actually… I don’t think I’ll be able to enjoy wine tonight, or for any time in the near future.”

His heart would pound and twist and leap in his chest. This is the moment he’d been waiting for. He’d know your admission before you speak it, having sensed it, as if your souls coalesced and temporarily became one. You're pregnant, you would tell him. The family life he always wanted but was robbed of is finally within reach. You were the key to unlocking this fairytale ending. In that instance, he’d become the happiest man on earth.

The mirage fades away.

He’s himself again, staring back at his reflection, having just finished his grim task. It wasn’t an easy decision. He flushes the tablets in his hand away, hoping some guilt might disappear alongside it. It’s not like he wanted to go behind your back. You were being unreasonable, presenting him with no other option then to become the bad guy. It’s for the sake of his future family, he reassured himself. Meddling with your birth control was the first step in his plan to keep you with him.

The box was returned to its regular spot, showing no signs of tampering. You’ll be none the wiser to his little parlor trick. Somewhere down the line, you had forgotten how much he’d been there for you, providing for you at every chance and asking for nothing in return. This is just the debt collector taking his due. This would be the chance for you to come and rely on him again.

Bruno noticed that your ring finger has been bare as of late, but it won’t be that way much longer.

Fourth Circle: Greed. 

Today, Giorno brought you a brand new pair of ballet slippers.

You could tell it was made from expensive material, boasting a price tag that’d likely have sent your eyes bulging from your head had you ever encountered it while browsing Naples’ many boutiques years ago. The magic slipper slides perfectly onto your feet by his prompting. Not too tight, not too loose. He compliments your handiwork as you crisscross the ribbons to hold it in place, pleased that you’re enjoying his gift. Your happiness is his happiness, he’d often tell you. 

“I have more surprises in store for you,” he informs. Giorno offers a hand to help you up, gentleman that he is, then leads you to a limousine waiting patiently for you both outside.

The chauffer never looks at you. You don’t think he has the courage to. 

On the car ride over, Giorno attempts to entertain conversation with you, to mixed success. Your mind is clearly somewhere else, so he eventually leaves you alone. The last pair of ballet slippers you wore were nowhere near as nice as these, you think. Hand-me-downs from your cousin who happened to dabble in the art then give up on it just as quickly. You treasured them though, kept up with their maintenance, while secretly envying your affluent classmates who were able to afford much prettier pointe shoes that must not have left calluses on their feet.

What would they think if they could see you now, tied down to the most powerful man in Italy? 

With the nature of his Stand taken into consideration, it might be more accurate to describe him as the most powerful man in the world itself. 

It’s sunset by the time you arrive at your apparent destination. You’re unable to gauge the exact location of just where this is, since by the time the bumpy country roads gave way to smooth, well-kept pavement, Giorno insisted on tying a blindfold around your eyes. He treats you with the utmost care. Apologizing for having to move your hair from its place to secure the ribbon, then smoothing it back out with all the tenderness Eros bestowed upon Psyche while he loved her into the night.

You hear the songs of new birds in the distance, far different from the cries you came to know at the secret Eden Giorno stashed you away in.

It’s a whirlwind after that. You’re swept away, Giorno serving as your guiding hand, assisting in navigation through the unknown territory. By the unnatural chill on your skin, you surmise you’re inside an air-conditioned building. The rest of your senses cannot assist in gauging more than that.

“And here we are,” Giorno removes your blindfold, the cloth fluttering to the ground, forgotten. “My gift for you.”

Teatro di San Carlo — the theater your younger self dreamed of one day performing in — stands before you in all its glory. Rich, velvet curtains hang from the many boxes dotting along the room, golden embellishments line the tall walls, whose ceiling boasts a fresco painting depicting men and angels floating in clouds.

Was this reality? You couldn’t be certain. 

The life you once lived felt so far away now, like you were gazing at it from underwater. What remains in your memory is little more than a shifting blur. Once, you were an aspiring ballet dancer, then a member of Passione, and after that… was Giorno. Your new past, present, and future. He took the reins to your life then never handed them back.

At some point, you register he’s left you on the stage. Not alone, oh no, never alone; the spotlight shining directly in your face does not blind you that much. Wherever you are, he never strays far.

It begins softly, as most things do. The thrum of violins. Then the wistful, yet foolishly hopeful oboe melody, its vibrato rending your heart in half. The Enchanted Lake suite from Swan Lake. Your body moves on its own accord, limbs shifting to match the rhythm, though they might not be as agile as they once were.

“You’ve always told me about your dreams, Giorno, so allow me to tell you mine.” You said those words to him once, then whispered the desires of your soul, hand-delivering them to the devil who disguised himself as a god. “I long to play Odette in the ballet Swan Lake in Italy’s most prestigious theater.”

You used to practice into the unholy hours of the night. Until your feet bled and your bones weighed down with fatigue. Even then, you continued your plight, continued to dedicate yourself to a dream whose fruition would become wholly dependent upon another.

You’re little more than a marionette whose strings are wound tightly around his finger.

If you close your eyes, pretend you’ve been transported elsewhere, to a universe that was kinder, you can imagine otherwise. To a timeline where after Giorno overtook Passione, he allowed you to pursue your career. It’s Friday night. There have been butterflies in your stomach all week leading up to the grand premiere. Your fellow castmates go through their various rituals to calm their nerves backstage. The curtains rise. You are happy, you are where you’re meant to be, you are free—  

The prerecorded song comes to its natural conclusion.

There’s no decrescendo from the orchestra winding down, nor thunderous applause that threatens to burst your eardrums. All there is, and ever will be, is Giorno. Seated in the front row, his attention settling nowhere else than upon your figure, illuminated on the stage. His legs crossed, lips forming a closed-mouth smile. Once he’s certain you’ve finished your performance, he claps, the lone sound reverberating throughout the desolate auditorium and your skull.

You performed on the stage you yearned for your entire life. However, you never could’ve imagined the audience would consisted of one man, and a litany of empty seats occupied solely by phantoms beside him.

Fifth Circle: Anger. 

The bells are especially loud today.

Fugo tugs at his collar for what must be the umpteenth time. He’s renting the suit, having not seen the point in putting out the ridiculous money necessary to own it himself, yet he’s starting to wonder if they got his order right. He didn’t cheap out enough to request polyester instead of wool. So why won’t his skin stop itching? It’s almost as if maggots had dug beneath his epidermis. Writhing, multiplying.

He bounces his foot up and down, earning dirty looks from the surrounding congregants in the process. Wooden pews are as uncomfortable as he remembered, if not more so. His parents never made him attend church often, as it’d detract from his time dedicated to studying. There were still appearances to be maintained, however. They’d attend mass at least twice a year, both times, coincidentally, ended up becoming his least favorite dates on the calendar. Pasqua and Natale meant sitting through hours of rites, dusty hymn books, organs that creaked, whined, and groaned. A priest prattling on and on about a book that hadn’t changed while the world around it did. Wine that always tasted too sour for his palate.

He hated it. He hated being here.

Why is he here again?

The miserable stillness is replaced by something infinitely worse.

Everyone rises to their feet. The organ plays a melody, the sound heavy, though the meaning behind it is light. Doors open — muted oohs and aahs following soon after — then a beautiful woman begins the trek down the aisle. She’s easily the prettiest woman in the room, Fugo thinks. It’s not even close. An angel incarnate, lovelier than anything da Vinci or Raphael could concoct. 

Still, that doesn’t answer the pressing question of why he is here. Why he is standing, either, as if his body had moved on his own accord to avoid public scrutiny. The bride gets closer and closer, gliding like a specter in the night. He’s seen her before, hasn’t he? He’s almost certain of it.

It isn’t until he makes eye contact with the bride that it hits him. Everything comes flooding back at once, a dam broke loose, water filling his lungs and choking him in the process.

That’s right — that’s you. You wearing an assembly of whites, meticulously tailored to your body, with lace finishings and a veil trailing behind you long enough to reach the door multiple meters away. It’s your wedding that he’s attending. Fugo had often entertained the thought of what your wedding might be like. The bouquet you’d pick, how you’d style your hair, those silly little ponderings that led nowhere yet were always his favorite fantasies. 

What he never thought, however, was that you’d be marrying someone else. Someone who isn’t him. Passione’s new Don, a beacon of hope, was to be your groom; whereas Fugo was smothered in unsightly darkness and discarded like a forgotten toy. 

Could this be his divine punishment for abandoning his team at San Giorgio Maggiore?

Purple Haze howls within him. A monster barely contained, its chains threatening to shatter at any second. He could, theoretically, unleash his Stand upon the blissfully ignorant congregation here to observe the Don of Passione’s big day. Leave a trail of rotting innards and vocal cords too frayed to scream in his wake. The scent of burning flesh mixed with dissolving bodily fluid would permeate the air, overtaking the sickeningly sweet incense and vases of flowers gifted by Giorno’s many allies that currently dominate his senses.

It’s possible that he’d be caught up in the diseases’ path of destruction, not that he’d mind at this point. Not when he’s living a life permanently separated from you. For a time, he was able to handle this, considering it his atonement for being a coward all those years prior. No longer can he think that way.

He’ll do it. He’ll really do it, Purple Haze could manifest right now, annihilate everyone, and then—

You smile at him.

Ah. His heart stops and so does his last-minute plan. Fingers twitch by his side, then ball together into tight fist, fingernails puncturing his skin. He might be subjugated to damnation, but that doesn’t mean you should be as well. The first love of his youth, the one he’s certain he’d adore until he was wrinkled and made immobile by time’s passage, if he were to ever live that long.

He remembers your blissful teenage years together. Your annoying habit of forgetting to take the dishes out once they were clean, how you sang songs to yourself after your radio broke and you couldn’t afford to get a new one, the way you’d barge into his room without knocking to ask the most inane questions. He’d always scoff at them, turning away so you wouldn't catch the telltale red hue on his cheeks for having earned your prized attention. 

Would today’s ceremony have been different if he’d entertained your silly whims back then? If he confessed his crush to you, took your first kiss for his own, ravished those lips he’d spend hours upon hours daydreaming about?

What a fool he was then. To be fair, he considers himself just as much as a fool now, if not more so.

A fool for thinking you’d ever walk down the aisle if someone like him stood waiting at the other end.

[jockvillagersonly]

3 and 17 for the "Fun meta asks for writers", if you like?

Hello my most lovely, treasured, precious anon. I love you. I love you for asking. Thank you. Let’s elope

(From this ask list)

I’ve technically already answered #3 (which is: are there any scenes you want to right but can’t be assed to do all the context?) HERE with a quick short bit of held-at-swordpoint Wu Xie, BUT what if I wrote EVEN MORE >:D

Ok so I have previously joked about doing a dumb fluffy professor AU, but I’m not sure I’ll ever actually write it? But I have this one scene in my head so I’ll use this as an excuse to write it out ;)

Su Wan wasn’t even sure why he had bothered to come to office hours.

Sure, yes, he was dangerously close to failing Professor Zhang’s class. And yes, they had a final coming up, and Su Wan had hoped a one-on-one setting would make it easier to wiggle some information (or, honestly, pity) from his impenetrable professor.

That plan was, to put it bluntly, crashing and burning harder than Li Cu playing Mario Kart. Su Wan glanced up at the clock. They were nearing 15 straight minutes of complete silence, and Professor Zhang hadn’t even blinked, hooded eyes focused on Su Wan like a particularly bored panther expecting more interesting prey.

(Su Wan was willing to admit that the only reason he hadn’t left yet was because he was, frankly, scared stiff with Professor Zhang’s attention on him. He refused to feel shame for what was a healthy dose of clearly appropriate fear.)

The door creaked open behind him, and Su Wan breathed out, shakily, vision going nearly blurry with relief. He shuffled a few loose documents (taken out more for show than anything concrete) into his bag and made to stand, ready to use the interloper’s entrance as a convenient excuse to flee.

But then he saw it.

Professor Zhang was...smiling?

Su Wan swore he heard something in his neck pop with how fast he whipped his head around, curiosity overriding his survival instinct as he sought out who, exactly, was capable of making the literal brick wall across from him look like that. Su Wan had never seen any part of Professor Zhang’s face show any emotion, and it was almost a sensory overload to take in his soft eyes and curved lips. Honestly, Su Wan was probably going to have nightmares about this expression. It was somehow so much scarier than the look Professor Zhang gave him when he passed back a particularly dismal essay score.

He wasn’t sure what he was expecting (A woman in an impeccably tailored suit and razor-sharp heels? A man in runway couture, cloaked in velvet and satin? Bigfoot, popping by for a hello?), but he knows that the person he sees is absolutely not it. Leaning halfway in the room, one hand wrapped around the door, is a man with fluffy, incorrigibly messy hair, bright eyes, and a tie that is so horrifically askew Su Wan nearly winces in sympathy.

The man at the door seemed to see something in their expressions that pleased him, because he smiled and laughed, his whole face beaming with it, and — oh. No wonder Professor Zhang looked the way he did. Su Wan was mostly (probably?) straight, and his stomach was flip-flopping so hard he could feel the reverberation behind his eyelids.

Which is of course when the intruder made to fully enter the room and tripped, sloshing coffee all over the floor and Professor Zhang’s bookshelf.

...so much for gentle smiles, Su Wan was about to become the accessory to a murder. He was going to have to find somewhere to hide the body, but he was pretty sure it wouldn’t fit in his backpack, so maybe he should text Hao-ge to see if he could borrow his car. Should he text in code? He should text in code.

Su Wan was already halfway to taking his phone out — except that Professor Zhang merely huffed, and rolled his eyes, and pulled a roll of paper towels that he clearly kept expressly for this purpose out from somewhere in his desk.

I don’t really have an ending or context for this, but the prompt said I didn’t have to! >:) anyway, this was fun to dash off! 😭 I haven’t written anything in awhile

———

And 17: Do you think readers perceive your work - or you - differently to you? What do you think would surprise your readers about your writing or your motivations?

Oh! This is interesting! It’s kind of hard to answer, because I don’t really know how people perceive me or my work?? Fun ask game: tell me an adjective or flowery figurative metaphor you would use to describe me and/or my writing 😂😂😂

In terms of perceiving me, I think (??) people on here see me as loud, and energetic, and maybe a bit flakey? Since I take a long time to respond to stuff? And I think that’s true 😭😭😂

In terms of my work or what would surprise people...hmmm. I wonder if people are surprised that I don’t write angst at all? Since I talk so much about Sha Hai and Mob Widow WX, people might expect that??? I could also see people being surprised that i write at all, since my first contributions to the fandom were all dmemebjs 😂 Ahahahah idk!!

[stitchandani]

Has Kai told his family how he feels about these "interlopers" returning and taking over his life or is he holding it all in? I'm assuming at some point he'll be stuck in a situation where he as to talk to Jumba, Pleakley and Stitch or maybe just to Stitch?

Gosh, your questions always seem to be so good Kai makes it very clear with his attitude and actions that he does not naturally like the alien half of his Ohana, but he doesn't quite get the nerve to tell any of them what he thinks except Ani. He knows he can tell Ani (angrily, sneeringly, demeaningly, not in a confidant kinda way) exactly how he feels about the aliens and she'll argue with him but she won't tattle to their parents. She's not like that. (much more under the cut, truncated for convenience to an audience who might not wanna read every detail)

He holds in his feelings of neglect (not that he has been neglected, but that everyone has always seemed to put so much importance on the aliens, even when they weren't around, and he felt like the attention he should have received got lost in the cracks) and his bitterness. He doesn't tell anyone that he thinks his family is basically made up of a bunch of really cool, legendary figures (because it is, I mean hello they saved the world and the island all through their lives). And he especially doesn't tell them that he wishes they weren't, because he thinks he's nothing special. He doesn't fit in; he's just a kid who can play the ukulele and that's it. He wishes his family had always just been Nani, David, Lilo (and I guess Ani by association). He says he just wants "normal", but what he really wants is to feel like he belongs with them, and he doesn't feel that way. But nah he for sure lets everyone know with his extreme grumpiness that his family is on his last lil nerve 98.9% of the time And yes! Kai is put in a lot of situations in which he has to address the aliens. It's not like he ignores them; they are his family, so he talks to them about as much as a little boy would, say, talk to his older sisters or uncles and aunts - he insults Pleakley constantly, and habitually tries to trip any of his three legs if they're in the hallway together, and plays pranks that throw Pleakley's latest Earth research into chaos. Stitch and Kai never get along. Ever. They have knock-down, drag-out fights if no adult is there to break them apart. Kai is insanely, unadulteratedly jealous of Stitch in every capacity. He looks for opportunities to verbally abuse Stitch, to make him look bad in front of people, and to argue with him. Jumba is probably the only alien Kai has the potential to actually like, the longer they all live together. In spite of himself, Kai is super interested in Jumba's inventions, because Kai is a creative type. He likes music and sand castles and watching nature documentaries to see how bugs survive. He loves figuring out the way things work. So he has a grudging respect for Jumba that he tries to hide, and a bad habit of messing with Jumba's stuff when people's backs are turned. Kai is a brat, and he's always angry, but he's not evil. He could tune into David's more mellow behavior and Nani's selflessness if he could get over his own hurt feelings, and that will eventually happen, but for now he's the series' biggest bully.

Thanks for asking! I have a lot of Kai thoughts I need to write down on here later

[hazem4y]

✰ 𝖳𝗂𝗇𝗍𝗂𝗇 ✰ | 𝗜𝘁𝗮𝗹𝗶𝗮𝗻 𝗦𝘂𝗺𝗺𝗲𝗿

𝗖 𝗛 𝗔 𝗣 𝗧 𝗘 𝗥 𝗢 𝗡 𝗘 - 𝖨𝗇 𝗐𝗁𝗂𝖼𝗁 𝗍𝗁𝖾 𝖻𝗈𝗒 𝗋𝖾𝗉𝗈𝗋𝗍𝖾𝗋 𝗋𝗈𝗉𝖾𝗌 𝗁𝗂𝗆𝗌𝖾𝗅𝖿 𝗂𝗇𝗍𝗈 𝗍𝗋𝗈𝗎𝖻𝗅𝖾.

Summary:  Delilah, a girl whom grew up around crime , has an unlikely run-through with the infamous Belgian reporter, Tintin. Being assigned to lead him astray from her bosses drug cartel, she ponders everything she's grown around; wondering if she can break free from her filthy past and her unsavoury 'habits.'

Featuring greasy, gelled-up mafia bosses and the small, quaint Italian coast/countryside, this book has everything a stereotypical Mafia book has, with some classic elements from Hérge's 'Tintin!'

Warnings: Mild drug references (Opiates,) Gun reference in like, one sentence. 

Taglist: @another-her​ @cc-bitz​ @ofmarlinspike​ @augustinremi @cheesecake-crisis (If you want out or in please let me know !!)

Wattpad link here!!

Please show your support by notes n’ reblogs !! I’m so sorry, I’m vv insecure about my writing and need re-assurance 24/7 :,)))

...

"Increased use of Opiates in Belgium concerns citizens!"

The recent spike of opium usage has concerned locals as the increase of drug usage had been theorised to link to the increase of crime. Authorities say it may be due to an unknown criminal organisation, which has thought to be terrorising citizens and forcing authorities to enforce curfew rules, which in turn has enraged regulars of Belgium night life, and caused major profit cuts to clubs, bars and other places frequented at night.

"These damn curfew rules are costing me euros, and making me lose valuable customers!" Says local bar-owner, Hugo.

Other night-life goers have commented on their evident dislike of the curfew, although many elderly citizens have been thankful for the new rules; as it ensures the 'safety of each and every citizen from this awful drug craze.' Quotes Police-man, Thompson. (Which is not to be confused with his relative, Thomson.)

So far, the said organisation leaders have not been caught, nor identified, and Police investigations have failed to gather a lead on the case. Reporter, Tintin, famous for finding Red Rackham's Treasure and busting Salaad's drug cartel, has made no comment on the current situation, and has yet to reach out for further investigation.

...

"An increase in Opiate usage linked to crime? What an Interesting coincidence, isn't it?" The White, wiry-haired mutt yapped in reply, as the Ginger-haired boy pondered the article; Hand on his chin, his eyebrows knitted together causing his forehead to crease,

The young reporter thought for awhile longer, until he made a connection to prior events, re-animating his frown in a cartoon-esque manner, "Why, It's- just like when we busted...Allan and his goons!"

A cup of bitter-sweet tea on a weekend shopping trip with the familiar chill of Brussels wind was quite a juxtaposition to the rush of travelling countries for the next story. Even though they satisfied the boys wanderlust, Tintin enjoyed the quiet interludes from his adventures. But, once more, it had to be interrupted by some interloper.

"I guess our little break will have to be cut short! So soon too..."

...

"It seems our little 'scheme' has made its way into the papers..." A tall, buff figure sitting at the head of the table declared. The scars on his face were highlighted under the fluorine lights as well as the unsightly manner his face was scrunched in; his expression emitting his enraged state.

"Do you realise what this means?" He paused, abruptly throwing himself off his chair, jabbing a calloused finger into the page, "This means that nosy reporter and his friends will interfere quite soon..."

'Find him, befriend him, kill him-Whatever you need to do! Just bring him to us, dead or alive...Then maybe, we could do something about your past.'

...

Delilah stretched her limbs, letting out a long-winded yawn as her gaze stayed fixed on the ginger-haired figure; his eyes fixed on the Sunday paper in his hands, "Nothin' so far..." She muttered, the tapping of her pencil on her note-pad filled with words acting like a white-noise along with the regular chatter that filled the room.

With no means of entertainment, (Although Delilah enjoyed people-watching, sometimes her patience ran thin.) she skimmed through her pages of notes, which recorded any important information.

"Alright boy, I think it's time we head to the market. Maybe we'll see the Thom(p)sons like last time!"

Welp, that was her cue.

Judging by the hefty crowd walking around the cobbled streets, it was the perfect time to make her escape. She threw on a well-loved hat and coat, and slung a leather messenger bag on her shoulder, before slipping away; her body clad in well-worn items, her beige-hued Trench-coat and a patterned Paperboy hat inconspicuous against the males pushing her against the flow of the crowd.

...

Every so often, every Sunday morning, the town square's grey-coloured cobble is filled up with the colourful hues of the shopkeep's canopy tents; the square being filled with various people, the familiar banter of negotiation, and smells of fresh produce and food. Somewhere in the throng of coats and hats, (that protected the wearers from the frigid weather.) the infamous reporter stood, examining a shopkeep's repertoire of Bric-a-Brac,

"The markets sure are busier than usual!" His voice raised slightly over the blaring chatter. 'Twas like nobody knew of personal space; Each man arm to arm, shunning the impatient who shoved the bodies aside. As boot-clad feet came in contact with the stone, the white canine beside Tintin let out a yelp; as a foot trampled on his stubby tail.

The perpetrators eyes were wide in offence, mouth open ready to sling curses at the sound, "W-why you bone-headed nimrod, watch where you're-"

With all the ruckus happening near-by, the quiff-haired boy turned around, expression melded into one of pleasant surprise, "Captain!"

The boy's voice seemed to catch the individuals attention, prompting them to turn around, "Aye-Tintin?! Pleasant surprise seeing you, lad! 'Specially here-I mean, I never see you doing any sort of leisure!"

"Actually..." He paused. Nothing good would come of a crowd like this, "I-just decided to enjoy such leisure time! By doing some...'Sunday shopping.'" He winked, his hand slipping out of his coat pocket to hand the captain a slightly crinkled and haphazardly torn article.

The captain let out a long 'Oh' as he shoved the paper back into his pocket, picking up their 'casual' conversation, "Well, I hope you find something interesting-There's a lot of ol' treasures 'round these parts y'know."

"I hope I do too! I wonder if we'll run into Thompson and Thomson..." A smug smirk crept on his face as they continued to converse in their 'secret language.' Time seemed to lose track of itself as the duo slung words towards each other-

Actually, is seemed as if the entire market halted action; Silence rolling across the crowd.

A shrill, blood-curdling scream. Hang on, A scream?

The extreme vocal strain seemed to trigger the crowd into a panic, the hushed chatter and shifting eyes of the crowd attempting to stay alert of danger.

The reporter attempted to stand on the tip of his toes to gain leverage over his height, but the crowd smothered any chance for a look of the conflict, "Do you have any clue what's going on? I can't see-"

He squinted as he leaned on the gentlemen next to him, earning some unsavoury looks, "Hang on I-Thundering Typhoons!"

As convenient as it was, the crowd sort of parted a second, it seems as if everyone wanted to watch the conflict; and nobody was going to help?

This time the dispute was clear to Tintin, causing great discomfort and anger to surge through his tiny frame.

The male, his appearance displaying outwardly his feelings of anger, began to dash towards the trouble, his person a blur "Take care of Snowy and watch for my whereabouts," He ceased for a second, chucking a handgun that was previously concealed in his pocket to Captain Haddock's general direction, "And take this-!"

...

Author's Section.

Hello !! Welcome to the First chapter of my story !! This took me awhile to write, as I was working out the best format so that your experience will flow well. I wanted the transitions from chapter and scene to be as smooth as a fountain pen on paper, so I hope you all enjoy.

As the synopsis says, this story will include elements from every stereotypical mafia movie, plus classic elements from Hèrge's ' Tintin.'

I'm not going to spill much but there will also might be a little bit of romantic elements. Nothing that distracts from the wonderful plot, of course, that would make me a terrible writer, but just some wholesome stuff. (We will not be sinning, because I am not defiling my childhood-)

Anyhow, I hope you stay with me and this series !! (And I hope I can finish it too...)

Be warned, quality goes down from here...I feel like I did terrible on the other chapters but that's just me...

I also might change the story name too, I’m taking recommendations as well! I don’t know what to name it...

Much love,

-Hayleigh

[tanadrin]

So all the terrible retcons and geographic inconsistency (Kul Tiras wtf) and the time travel and the bullshit with the night elves is bad (Illidan is the worst character ever, don't @ me), but the most frustrating part of WoW lore to me is its failure to explore certain complex emotional themes in a really satisfying way--like, the people who expound and expand on Warcraft lore are canny enough to notice that these emotional themes *exist*, but not clever enough to actually work with them or build them out, and so the whole thing collapses into rule-of-cool melodrama. There's nothing wrong with rule-of-cool melodrama; I love rule-of-cool melodrama. But Warcraft lore is *begging* to combine that rule of cool melodrama with some really rich and interesting emotions and character interpretations, it sets them up and is all ready to knock them down, and just... doesn't.

Take the conversation between Saurfang and Garrosh in the Borean Tundra, in WotLK, the one that ends with Saurfang saying "I don't eat pork." I think that's emblamatic of the big theme that unites the Horde, that makes it make sense as a faction. The Alliance, after all, started as a defensive association in the face of the Orc invasion; its renaissance after the creation of Durotar and the invasion of the Scourge is only natural. But what is the theme of the Horde? Is it honor? Strength? Sheer brutality? Well, none of those things. Orcs claim to value honor and strength; the Forsaken are certainly various shades of very dark gray at best, the Tauren and the Orcs *do* seem like natural allies of a sort, but all the races of the Horde have something even deeper in common: trauma. The Orcs are still (cf. Saurfang) dealing with the emotional turmoil of having been both forced and partially complicit in the atrocities of the First and Second War--after which their homeworld was destroyed, they were forced into concentration camps, and they had to rebuild their culture and their identity from the ground up. They have to find a new place in a new world, and there's this tension between the younger generation that doesn't have firsthand experience with any of this and just remembers that the Horde used to be a name that struck fear into the hearts of their enemies (Garrosh Hellscream, for instance) and the older generation that remembers how awful that time really was, and doesn't want to see the old ways revived because it might just destroy their people for good this time. Then there's the Darkspear Trolls and the Tauren, who were both driven out of their old homelands, and fell in with the Horde as natural allies with similar cultural points of reference; and the Blood Elves, whose suffering in the Third War was severe enough to radically alter their culture, coupled with being betrayed by their ruler who decided that joining the Burning Legion and abandoning them sounded like a better time than rebuilding Quel'Thalas.

And then there's the Forsaken. Oh, man, the Forsaken. The Forsaken and Sylvanas are some of my favorite characters in all of WoW, because sure, you could look at it and say, "okay, creepy undead who like green things that go plop and mad science = evil, bad guys." But you'd really be missing what makes the Forsaken interesting. They're not the Scourge--they explicitly broke away from the Scourge when Arthas left Lordaeron. They're not invaders, either. They're in fact mostly the human population of the destroyed kingdom of Lordaeron, the inheritors of that land, but who are treated by the Alliance as interlopers with no right to the very towns and villages they have *always* called home. They're treated as monsters by every living person who ever knew them, and they can't help but regard themselves that way, too. "What are we, if not slaves to this torment?" is one of the casual interaction lines you get when you click on Sylvanas: they do not *like* being dead. But Sylvanas is ruthless and cruel and after Arthas is killed, wins the Val'kyr over to her side so she can keep making more Forsaken. Why?

Simple. Let us imagine: you are an ordinary person, of no unusually great or poor moral virtue. You are hurt, badly. Grieviously. In a way you will never recover from. And everyone you love, all of your friends and your family, the whole society you come from, now sees you as an unredeemable monster that should, no, must be destroyed. How long must you be called a monster before you decide--fuck it, I *will* be the monster they call me. Because, at least that way, no one can ever hurt me again.

The overpowering motivation for the Forsaken is not power or bloodlust; it's not money, or forbidden knowledge. It's making sure no one in the whole world is ever able to make slaves of them again. To make sure they will not be hurt. And the biggest misstep the Alliance ever made was not reaching out to Sylvanas with overtures of friendship as soon as she established her kingdom--because like it or not, she has the support of the people of Lordaeron, and thus a damn good claim to her position. Maybe, if they had, they could have influenced the Forsaken, shown them that they had friends and didn't need to resort to amoral methods to defend themselves. But as it stands, they only have allies of convenience in the Horde (at least until Sylvanas becomes Warchief), and they know that no one in Azeroth is quite happy to see them continue to exist and be free. Everything else about the Forsaken--their use of dark magic, their development of a new, even more destructive plague, their recruiting former servants of the Lich King and raising new Forsaken from among the dead of the ongoing wars--makes perfect sense from the standpoint of a people that knows they are under threat from all sides, and will do anything to survive.

(The Draenei could have been something like this, too, FWIW. Like, a broken people, a people of exiles who are most comfortable in the shadows and with moral ambiguity. But then Metzen had to go make them Righteous Space Goats. I mean, come on. They're just boring now. They were never going to be Horde-aligned--there's too much history with the Orcs  there!--but having a group like that on the side of the Alliance, to help drive home the point that there is not a clear good guys/bad guys distinction here, would have been really nice.)

That actually makes them a pretty damn good fit for the Horde. Moreover, it creates an interesting point of tension with the Alliance, which is clearly *not* always the good guys. I mean, there's the matter of orc concentration camps, but also consider the refusal of leaders like Daelin Proudmoore to contemplate peace (and the subsequent, somewhat... forced turn of Jaina Proudmoore from dove to hawk) and the steadfast refusal of many on that side to deal fairly with the races of the Horde just because they appear monstrous. And arrogance, hoo boy. Dalaran, Gilneas, the Night Elves--huge swathes of the Alliance are characterized by being arrogant and not a little cruel.

And what of Sylvanas becoming Warchief? I don't know where the BFA lore is going (I'm not playing retail anyway), but right now it looks like they're setting up another Garrosh type situation, and preparing for Thrall to retake the Warchief-ship, but if they do that it would be a real pity. First of all, because, well, we saw that already in Mists of Pandaria! What, are we going to besiege Orgrimmar again? Second of all--Sylvanas and Garrosh are *very* different people. Garrosh was, well, Proud; hence the Sha of Pride. He wanted glory and power, he wanted war for war's sake, so he could live up to his father's reputation as a warrior. He was willing to sacrifice everything else that made the Horde the Horde for that. Sylvanas, though, has one overriding motivation: Keep Her People Safe. Punish the people who hurt her is a strong secondary motivation--but it's part of that first one, because if she can make her enemies' victories painful enough, she might discourage them from trying to press their advantage. And her people *trust* her on this: "Dark Lady watch over you," they say when you take your leave. She is not an autocrat--she is their beloved protector. So, she makes the ruins of Lordaeron uninhabitable. She annihilates Teldrassil. Does she spend very many Orc and Troll and Tauren lives doing so? Very well. They aren't *her* people.

I don't think this has to be a tragic flaw leading to her downfall. It sure doesn't make her a good leader for the rest of the Horde, though (even though, on an emotional and aesthetic level, I am 3000% here for Warchief Sylvanas, even more than Warchief Vol'jin, who also had a lot of the creepy threatening vibe that made him a much more interesting choice than either Thrall or Garrosh). But you could make it one, and you could do it very well--they've already mentioned in the tie-ins that Calia Menethil, Arthas's sister, teeeechnically has a claim to the throne of Lordaeron. And, even more interesting, is no longer quite among the living, even if the mechanism of that unlife is happy fun magic instead of evil death magic. Moreover, she has some sympathy for the Forsaken. You could have a squaring-off between them, and you could have a Queen Calia--maybe. If you could bridge that gap and make her understand that the Forsaken feel fundamentally apart from the other human kingdoms now, if she could come to understand just how much evil the Alliance has done to them, if she could really grok what it's like to be them. Then you could have a leader who understands their trauma--but also wants to heal it, rather than lash out at anyone and everyone that might conceivably be a threat. That, too, would be very interesting.

(There’s a reason that, while I loved the Alliance as a kid, I only play Horde toons as an adult. It’s not just that the Horde feel more interesting and vivid to me. It’s that the hypocrisy and the arrogance of the Alliance stands out in much greater relief now. The Horde aren’t good guys--nobody’s the good guys, here--but they don’t lie about their motivations, and they don’t act with cruelty and then play the victim in response. Jaina was an important exception, but they badly mishandled her character in the runup to MoP, which I find very hard to forgive.)

But knowing Blizz, even if they go vaguely that route, they won't stick the emotional landing. There is a very good, if very OTT and melodramatic (in the best possible way), series of fantasy novels or games lurking *behind*, or perhaps parallel, to Warcraft's lore. It is a shame that Blizzard has done so much to obscure it with obnoxious cruft, retcons and timeline compression, repetitive use of the same handful of characters, stupid-ass time-travel plots that create ten thousand plot holes and inconsistencies, shitty tie-in novels (cf. everything by Richard Knaak), and a total failure to make half the world's characters (i.e., everyone in the Alliance) at all interesting. I have a daydream of doing my own version of WoW lore and posting it somewhere like on AO3, but one of the things that makes WoW lore simultaneously so interesting and disappointing to me is that it's embedded in the explorable, realized space of video game worlds. Hard to reproduce that in print, I think. Might be worth it to try.

[littlereyofsunlight]

The Fire is So Delightful

Hi @geekynerddemon, I’m your @steggyfanevents secret santa! You chose modern AU from the options I gave you, so I wrote you some firefighter Steve Rogers and a self-rescuing Peggy Carter. There’s a cat in a tree, plus a bunch of the usual suspects from the MCU. Chapter 2 coming shortly!

Read on AO3

ch 1/2 Rating: Gen Relationships: Peggy Carter/Steve Rogers Characters: Peggy Carter, Steve Rogers, Natasha Romanov, Clint Barton, Bucky Barnes, Sam Wilson, Sif, Dum Dum Dugan Additional Tags: Firefighter AU, Modern Day AU, romcom, meet-cute, the gang’s all here Summary: Peggy rescues a cat from a tree. Steve doesn’t help.

“Will you look after Liho for me?” Natasha’s sudden request startled Peggy out of her contemplation of the drink in front of her. They were at their usual place, a dingy little bar down the block from work where the bartenders all knew them and they could hold a conversation without having to shout over music or dodge the advances of the neighborhood suits, who generally avoided the place owing to its distinctly aggressive lack of atmosphere.

“Sorry?”

Natasha kept her eyes on her own drink, fidgeting with the straw. Natasha, normally a beer drinker, or after especially difficult weeks just straight vodka, had ordered one of the bar’s ridiculous cocktails. It was tequila-based, neon orange, came in a Tiki cup and had what looked to Peggy like an entire mint plant sticking out the top. “I’m going out of town for the holiday and I need a cat-sitter.”

Peggy had worked with Natasha on the analyst team for six years now, but she’d only ever been invited to her home once, a few months ago. “I’d be happy to, I have no plans.” As a rule, she saved the trans-Atlantic flights for better weather. Her parents weren’t big on Christmas, anyways.

Natasha gave a quick little half smile, and Peggy noticed her shoulders drop a good inch. “Thank you.” She took a sip of her drink, holding the ostentatious garnish away from her face as she did so. “My, um, ex-girlfriend is also going to be home for the holiday, so I didn’t want to just do a short trip this year. I’ll get you a key next week.” Then she changed the subject back to work, and they strategized about their supervisor’s latest power play—and speculated how their beloved admin Darcy Lewis might undermine it—until much too late for a work night.

Two weeks later, Peggy set her bag down just inside the threshold of Natasha’s bright, clean two-story duplex. “Are you sure you want me to stay?”

Nat waved her hand. “It’s such a long drive between your neighborhood and mine. If you’d be more comfortable at home, of course, Liho will be fine.”

Peggy looked around the downstairs living area, flooded with early afternoon light. “I’m sure I’ll be perfectly comfortable here. I just know how very private you are.”

Nat gave her a shy smile. “I think we’re past all that, aren’t we?”

“I’m glad you feel that way.” Peggy smiled broadly back.

“Okay, bedroom is upstairs and there are fresh sheets and towels and everything. Help yourself to anything in the fridge or pantry, of course. I got some of those yogurts you always eat, plus this—” Nat thrust a nice bottle of red wine into Peggy’s hands, though Peggy wasn’t sure exactly where she’d been hiding it up until then “—Her food is on the counter, please just the listed amounts, because she is a terrible beggar and will try to weasel more food out of you.“

“Noted,” Peggy said.

“And her litter boxes are in the bathrooms, the litter is flushable.”

“Convenient.”

“Also, she sometimes tries to escape out the front door, so look out for that.”

“So to review, your cat is a cat who acts like a cat,” Peggy teased. “I have this handled, I promise. Liho and I will get some quality time on your couch with everyone’s favorite streaming network while you spend the holiday with your sexy ex. Now get out of here. Maria’s waiting for you, isn’t she?”

“Thank you, Peggy,” Natasha said, as she rolled her eyes but pulled her in for a quick hug nonetheless. “Liho’s hiding upstairs, but she’ll probably come down around dinnertime, so like, six, if she doesn’t get curious about you before then.”

“Is she very interested in people?” Peggy’s grandmother kept cats in her little London flat, and they were always all over the place regardless of who was visiting, though she supposed that could have been more out of necessity. The few times she and her brother Michael had tried to play hide-and-seek while visiting Nana had been very anticlimactic: there were only two good child-sized (or even cat-sized) hiding spots in the whole place.

Nat shook her head. “She and I get along because we’re very similar.”

“So if I lose her, I should just put out a saucer of vodka.”

“It might work,” Nat allowed. “Smart-ass.”

“Aren’t you leaving?”

“Yeah, yeah.” Nat looked up the stairs one more time. “Thanks again. Text me if you need anything.”

“We won’t.” Peggy raised her eyebrow. “Text me if you get some this weekend.”

Nat actually blushed at that, to Peggy’s surprise. “You’re sort of wearing on my gratitude, here,” she grumbled fondly. She picked up her bag and took her coat off the hook.

Peggy threw up her hands. “Yes, I’m trying to get you to leave already!”

Laughing over her shoulder, Nat finally opened the door. “See you in a week.”

“Drive safe!” Peggy called after her.

“Oh!” Nat called, stopping beside her car. “My neighbors are all pretty friendly, don’t be surprised if someone pops by.”

Before Peggy could formulate a response (How friendly? Which neighbors? Why aren’t any of them watching your cat?), Nat was in her car and on her way. “Thanks for that advice, I guess,” Peggy said to herself. She closed the door and looked around. At least this Christmas she’d be alone in a new location, she mused. She pulled out her phone and tapped out a quick message to her friend Angie back home, even though Peggy knew she’d be asleep already. She scrolled aimlessly through the apps on her phone, hovering over the ‘dating’ folder she’d shoved Hinge and Bumble and all the rest into after the last in a series of disastrous dates over the summer. Peggy hated to admit it, even to herself, but she was lonely.

True to Natasha’s word, a small, sleek black cat poked her head through the top two spindles of the stairs promptly at six pm and, upon seeing Peggy on the couch but not Natasha, she let out a series of squeaking chirps. Peggy put down the novel she’d borrowed from Nat’s bookshelf—Lauren Beukes’s Broken Monsters, and here Peggy had thought Nat to be more of a nonfiction reader—and got up to see what Liho’s dinner situation was.

Natasha very clearly cared a great deal for the skinny little cat who, according to Nat, had turned up on her doorstep one day and invited herself to stay forever. There was a stainless steel water dish that continuously burbled up a little fountain, and two shallow dishes, one for wet food and one for dry. On the counter above the cat’s dishes, Nat had thoughtfully set out Liho’s food, all fancy brand-name specialty stuff. Liho chirped at her a few more times while Peggy dumped a can of wet into the designated bowl, and she kept making adorable little nomming noises while she chowed down. Peggy stroked her hand down the cat’s back and Liho jumped and shot Peggy an affronted look before she went back to her food.

“No touchy while eating, got it.” Peggy left the cat to her meal and grabbed her phone to see what delivery options were available in Nat’s neighborhood. As she tried to decide between Mexican and an interesting Vietnamese-fusion place, the doorbell rang.

Peggy opened the door to a barefoot, confused-looking man wearing a t-shirt despite the frigid weather. He sketched a brief wave before launching into a query in sign language, but she couldn’t hope to follow. Peggy waved back and gave him a broad “huh” gesture. He nodded and reached up to turn on the hearing aids hidden under his hat.

“Is Nat home?” he asked.

“I’m sorry, she’s not in,” Peggy responded.

“I’m her neighbor, Clint,” he said, pointing his thumb at the other side of the duplex. “I was hoping she’d want to split a takeout order.”

“Oh!” Peggy said, realization dawning. “I’m Peggy, Nat’s friend from work. I’m watching her cat for the week. Did she tell you she was going back for the holiday?”

Clint watched her lips closely and nodded as she spoke. “Right, sorry, I forgot.” He scratched the back of his head under his knit cap and squinted at her. “Do you maybe want to go in on some takeout?”

A grin spread across her face and she opened the door wider. “What do you think of the Vietnamese place?”

Clint gave her both thumbs up. “The báhn bao are freaking amazing.”

When Nat texted later that evening to let Peggy know she’d arrived, Peggy and Clint snapped a quick photo for her with their very impressive spread of food and Liho just barely visible in the background, creeping on the interlopers in her home from the top of the stairs. Nat texted back a laughing with tears emoji and then when you go to bed tonight double check under the covers. she sometimes attacks feet if she’s not expecting them

Noted, Peggy replied. More normal cat behavior.

Nat sent back the eye-roll emoji.

Have you seen Maria yet? Peggy hoped she wasn’t being too nosy. She and Nat had been friendly for years but this new level, with in-home cat-sitting and ex-sex-discussing, was still pretty new for them.

In response, a photo appeared of Nat’s slim fingers around a half-drunk pint glass. she’s meeting me in 30 minutes, got here early for some liquid courage

Peggy sent her a string of crossed fingers and martini glasses, punctuated with a purple heart.

Nat sent back a purple heart and Peggy felt it in her chest, warm and liquid. She didn’t have many good friends, and all of them were back home in the UK. Nat, standoffish, prickly, elusive Nat, was turning out to be her first real friend in the States.

Just then, Liho jumped up into Peggy’s lap and butted her head against the hand holding her phone. Now she was ready for Peggy to pet her.

Clint was good company, and he turned out to unabashedly love Love Island, which Peggy watched to keep up with Angie’s opinions on the subject, so he and Peggy re-started the beginning of the third series together and talked about how Camilla was too good for the rest of the crowd.

While Peggy got ready for bed, she poked her head around the upstairs, looking for Liho as she brushed her teeth and slathered on moisturizer, dipping back into the bathroom to spit and then to dab on a spot treatment.

“Where are you hiding, miss?” She peeked behind the door of Nat’s second bedroom, set up as an office. She spun the desk chair around, but there was no cat curled in a ball in the seat. Peggy went into Nat’s bedroom and threw back the covers, but no luck. She called and called, but Liho didn’t poke her head out, didn’t answer with a chirp. Peggy searched the whole house twice, and then remembered what Nat had said about the front door. Had it been open too long when Clint left? Peggy had said goodnight and gone to put away her leftovers, she hadn’t watched to see if the cat stayed inside. She couldn’t remember seeing her after that.

Feeling out of sorts, Peggy grabbed her phone and Nat’s key, tossed a hoodie on over her sleeping shirt and shoved her feet into her sneakers. She opened the door and stepped onto the stoop, calling softly for Liho as she shut the door firmly behind her, in case the cat was still inside. “If you’re out here, darling, please come back inside.” Peggy shivered as a cold wind blew down the street, throwing the bare branches of the tree in Nat’s yard against each other. A full moon and a cloudless sky, plus the street lamps and the festive lights on many of the houses meant the street was fairly well-lit, even at this hour.

She turned on the flashlight on her phone and swept the light around the walkway, focusing on the spots in shadow. “Liho!” She stepped off the stoop and into the yard. Over the wind, Peggy heard it. An unmistakable chirp. She spun around, trying to see the cat. “Come here, kitty!” Against her better judgement, she made kissy noises and thanked the lord no one else seemed to be out at this hour. Another chirp, and this time Peggy realized where it was coming from. She aimed her light at the tree. Standing in a vee about halfway up the old oak was Liho, shivering in the wind.

“Oh, sweetheart,” Peggy said, “did you get yourself stuck up there?” Liho chirped back at her and stayed put.

Peggy eyed the tree trunk. She’d climbed more difficult ones, to be sure, but not since primary school. She tucked her phone and keys into her pocket and zipped her hoodie up to her chin. “I’m gonna get you down,” she told the cat. “Don’t worry,” she said, mostly to herself.

As Peggy climbed, Liho retreated further up into the branches. “That’s the wrong direction!” Peggy complained. But she could keep going, so she did. The street lamp provided decent illumination, and it was a dry, cold night, so the bark wasn’t slippery against her rubber-soled shoes.

A truck rumbled down the street and stopped at a nearby house and Peggy hoped the occupants wouldn’t notice her, climbing a tree at midnight in her pajamas.

“Uh, ma’am?” A voice called up from below.

“Bugger,” Peggy cursed. No such luck.

She didn’t dare look down, the branches were starting to get thin. Liho watched the man on the street with some interest, though, which might work in Peggy’s favor. “Ma’am I’m with the fire department. Is everything okay up there?”

Peggy had to laugh. “I’m fine, just retrieving a cat. But you seem to be short a hook and ladder, or even a siren. So try again, Mr. Fireman.”

She heard a sigh from down below, but Liho was cautiously creeping towards Peggy along one of the topmost branches. “That’s it, come here.” Peggy reached out her hand and Liho came closer. Peggy braced herself against the trunk of the tree, hugging it with her thighs, and then she grabbed the cat by the scruff of her neck. Liho let out an undignified squawk but didn’t fight her grip, allowing Peggy to drag her close to her chest and hold her there.

“Good job,” the man encouraged.

“No thanks to you,” Peggy muttered. She climbed down. Liho, to her credit, submitted to Peggy’s hold like a kitten in her mama’s jaws. Soon enough, they were both out of the tree.

The supposed firefighter stood several feet away on the sidewalk, watching. “All set?” he asked.

“We’re fine.” She finally got a good look at him then, and well, he did look the part. At least six feet tall, with broad shoulders, fair hair, and a clean-cut All-American sort of look, if the chiseled jawline throwing shadows under the streetlamps were anything to go by. He wasn’t in his gear, of course, just jeans and a short leather jacket. It was still a good look on him.

He looked back up the tree. “You, uh, you’re pretty good at that.” He looked back to her and gave her a small smile.

“It’s not my first tree.” She looked him up and down. “Are you really a firefighter?”

He hooked his thumb back at his truck. “Not on duty. I heard the call on my radio, and I was nearby.” Now Peggy could see the bar of lights on the top of his truck. “I’m guessing you didn’t call this in, though? You definitely had things under control.”

She smiled despite herself. “I did have it under control.”

He nodded. “Well, glad I could be of no help at all.”

“You certainly did get here quickly, so points for that, I suppose.” She shifted the cat against her and took a tentative step closer.

“I live in the neighborhood.” He took a step closer, too. Peggy could see the wry smile on his lush mouth now. “Steve Rogers,” he offered.

“Peggy Carter. I’m just cat-sitting for a friend.” She cut him a look under her lashes, having a bit of fun. “But I’m starting to see why my friend likes this location.” Steve open and shut his mouth a few times, and then his reply was cut off by the wail of a siren. They both turned to look as a fire truck careened down the street. Steve stepped into the center of the road to flag them down. As the siren got louder, Peggy felt Liho tense under her hands, her front claws digging into Peggy’s sweatshirt. She tried to hold her close, but the cat squirmed away and bounded right back up into the tree. “Oh, Bloody Nora!”

He came back to stand beside her, hands on his hips. “Did the cat just run back up the tree?”

Peggy sighed. “The cat just ran back up the tree.”

“Well,” Steve scratched at the back of his head as he looked up to where Liho had perched herself, “I have that ladder now.”

“Captain Rogers!” Someone called from over by the truck. “Fancy meeting you here.”

Steve checked his watch. “Lieutenant Barnes, somehow I made it here a full five minutes before you did.”

“Aw, Steve, it’s a cat in a tree.”

“I told him we should get our hustle on for any call in your neighborhood, Cap,” another firefighter piped up.

“You should hustle for any call anywhere, come on, team” Steve’s voice got more commanding as he spoke with the members of the crew.

“Is that the cat’s owner?” another crew member piped up, gesturing at Peggy as she climbed down from the truck.

“I’m caring for her, yes,” Peggy replied.

The woman looked up at the tree and back at Peggy. “Would she let someone hold her if we got the ladder up there?”

Peggy considered. “She’s not great with new people.”

The firefighter nodded and looked back at Steve. “Cat bag.”

“Cat bag,” Steve agreed. “Ms. Carter here already got her down once, so I don’t think this one’s a jumper.”

The rest of the crew all exchanged looks, disbelief clear on their faces despite the truck’s flashing lights throwing strange shadows over the group. “Uh, what?” The handsome one Steve had called Barnes broke the awkward silence.

“I got her down,” Peggy explained. “Then your siren scared her and she went right back up.”

Another firefighter—also a handsome man, Peggy noticed—looked slowly between Peggy and the tree. “So if you didn’t have any trouble getting up there, then why …?” He squinted back at Peggy.

“She didn’t call this in, it must have been a neighbor.” Steve clapped his hands together. “All right, it’s cold out and I’m sure that cat wants to be warm inside, just like the rest of us. Who’s going up?”

“Not it,” both Barnes and the other one said at the same time.

“Wilson,” Barnes whined, “I got the last one.”

“Allergies, man. You’d have to dose me with Benadryl if you want me within five feet of a cat.” Wilson shrugged. “Sif, can you take this one?’

The female firefighter—yet again a very attractive person, statuesque with dark hair and big, dark eyes, Peggy was starting to wonder if the entire engine company put out a calendar every year—already had a burlap sack, which Peggy assumed was the cat bag, in her hands, along with a length of nylon rope and carabiners. She rolled her eyes at the other two. “Well, it’s not like Cap’s going to send Dum Dum up after her, is it?”

As if on cue, a fourth fire fighter stuck his head out of the truck’s door. “Everything okay out here?”

“Thanks for the help, Dugan!” Steve shouted back.

“Oh! Cap! Didn’t realize you were here!”

Steve waved him off and turned back to Sif. “You don’t want the ladder?”

Sif looked at the tree. “Nah, it’ll go faster and scare the cat less if I climb up. What’s her name?” The last part she addressed to Peggy.

“Liho.”

Sif nodded, put on some thick work gloves she produced from a pocket, clipped the cat bag to her belt and up she went.

“You know,” Peggy said, standing next to Steve as they watched Sif’s ascent, “if you lot hadn’t showed up I’d already be back in the house with the cat I’ve been entrusted to look after.”

She could hear the smile in his voice as he replied. “But then you wouldn’t have met me or my motley crew, and wouldn’t that have been a shame.”

Peggy eyed him speculatively and took a breath. “Jury’s still out. Perhaps you could buy me coffee sometime, Captain, as an apology for keeping me up so late. Give me more time to decide.” She felt brazen, hitting on a man who was there to do his work, but he wasn’t her neighbor, after all. And she was intrigued by this man, his apparent kindness, how he showed up even when his shift was over, not to mention the easy way he had with the people under his command. Captain Steve Rogers was the sort of man she wanted to get to know better. And, not to put too fine a point on it ... he was sexy.

Half his mouth quirked up in a self-conscious smile and he rubbed at the back of his neck. “Coffee, huh?” He looked at her, his ridiculously long eyelashes casting shadows on his face in the strange light. “Could we make it dinner? Tomorrow?” He shoved his hands in his pockets and rocked on the balls of his feet. “With the upcoming holidays, I’m going to be working ten days straight. Better to get it out of the way.”

“Oh.” Peggy’s spirits fell.

“No!” Steve backtracked, eyes wide. “That came out all wrong. That was me trying not to uh, sound too eager? Also, I’m tired, and one of my firefighters is up a tree, and you are a very attractive woman and you just asked me out and my brain might be short-circuiting right now?”

Peggy had to laugh at that. “Okay, okay, stop digging.”

“You have to forgive Cap,” Wilson said from behind them. “We don’t let him out much.”

“This may in fact be the first non-work conversation he’s had with a woman,” Barnes chimed in. “Sorry it was so bad. He’s terrible at flirting.”

Steve took the good-natured teasing in stride. “Watch it, you two,” he warned them, but there was only wry warmth in his tone as he shook his head.

“I agree, it was very lacklustre flirting,” Peggy said. “You’ll need to step up your game for dinner tomorrow.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Steve replied, a broad smile on his face.

“Got her!” Sif called from above. “Coming down. Good job securing a date, Cap.”

Peggy had to agree with that, too.

[erintoknow]

this is nothing new

Spiraling - A Fallen Hero: Rebirth Fan-fiction

[Read here on AO3!]

Chapter: this is nothing new tw: death

[Same Old Blues]

You wake with a scream, tumbling off the couch, cracking your head against the edge of the coffee table with a ‘Thump!’ on your way down. Flashes of green before your eyes. Distantly aware of your heart pounding in your chest.

“Alex? Lord , Alex, are you okay?” The light flickers on as woman steps out of the bedroom, one hand shading her eyes as she winces against the light. Brushing back dirty blond hair, Chelsea tsks as she navigates the pile of clothes and library books that mark the corner of the apartment you’ve taken over.

Clutching your head, you pull yourself in. Try to make yourself as small as you can. Something… remembered something but what? It’s already gone. Doesn’t feel real, none of this does – already slipping out of your grasp, faster as you try to take hold. Why is Chelsea in Ortega’s apartment? Red and silver threads, something at your throat.

Hands find you and you strike out. Someone yells, “Ow!” the noise unheeded as panic renews; why did you do that? What are you thinking? You’re really in for it now – should know better. How many times do the same lessons need to be learned?

“Alex, Alex, it’s okay.” You tense, can feel the intention to touch incoming but it doesn’t – no hands come near you. “You’re safe. I promise you.” Notes of worry, directed towards – not you, can’t be you, has to be something else.

It’s a lie. One they love to tell. You’ll never be safe.

Have to… have to get out of here. Have to do something. Have to move. Get out. Escape. But there are hands, holding you down under white fluorescent lights, burning spots into your vision that cast of the crowd of onlookers in silhouette. Something is strapped over your head, while she looks down at you. Disappointment naked on her face, speaking with another woman’s voice. “Next time, I expect results forty-two.”

It’s the strobing flashes of red and blue that pull you out of it – a shot of adrenaline sets your hands shaking as you pull yourself out of the position you’d fallen into, laying half out of your bed.

You’re not back there , and you aren’t anywhere but here. Not Ortega’s, not Chelsea’s, not – not there. You’re in your own place. You have one of those now. An apartment. Remember?

Maybe not for long. Police lights? You clutch a hand to your aching head as you stretch out your awareness, take stock of the local minds, pick up the interlopers. Police. And… EMTs? Why? Dig deeper and your hands twist the bed sheet. Death. Someone’s dead. Footsteps in the hallway and nausea washes over you. It takes the sheer desperation of not wanting to spend a day cleaning out bedsheets, yet again , to tamper it down. Clothes stick to your skin in a cold sweat.

The apartment next door. On the left. Young man, lived with his girlfriend – her thoughts stand out, a barbed wire coil of grief. Was paying child support. Managed a convenience store. Didn’t smoke. Didn’t drink. Now he’s dead.

How? Why?

Try to press harder for the details only to immediately snap back. Shouldn’t have asked. Shouldn’t have wondered. You’ve never been good at learning that lesson, no matter how many times, you come to regret it.

Holding into the bedside table for balance, you push yourself up, vision briefly blacking out before filling back in as you stand. Give yourself a moment to adjust. To think.

The door. Check the door.

Navigating the gloom you step around the traps and check the door lock, the chain, bolt, and bar. Everything is in place. You’re still safe. Moving to the window you check that next. Shatter-resistant glass, threaded with a steel wire reinforcement. Not much for looking, but no one’s getting through it any time soon. Not without making a lot of noise.

You brush your mind against the police again. No thoughts to you. Or your apartment.

You’re not in any immediate danger.

Stomach prods you with pangs of pain. What time is it? Too early to be awake. It’s – it’s absurd, right? To think it’s your fault. His death. You weren’t even awake to do anything .

Wait–

Shit!

Jane! You were Jane and you were doing something – what? What were you doing?

“Are you sure you are alright to be out today, mon amie?” Dr. Mortum eyes Jane worriedly from the other end of the booth, fiddling with the glass of sherry in her hands. New glasses? The gold of her frames stands out against the dark tone of her skin.

“Doc, please.” Jane sighs, slumping back in her chair. No fancy looks today. Whatever is going on between Jane and Dr. Mortum now, that particular game is over. Your puppet, your mirror image, is wearing slacks and a cardigan. Plain and unfashionable. But you don’t need her to perform today. Not like that. Faded bruises still peeking out from under her shirt collar. Memory of stiffness. “It’s been weeks, I’ll be fine.”

“If you say so.” The good doctor takes a sip of her drink, one hand on the table between them. Her expression grows darker, and Jane leans in too. Nerves on edge. “So it looks like your employer made quite the splash.”

“All thanks to your hard work.”

Mortum’s expression only darkens. Her eyes darting towards the side, down at Jane’s wrist. Eyes tracing something. Jane shifts her hand away, under the table. “I suppose there is a truth to that.” She sighs, looks up again to catch Jane’s eyes. “Have you… thought any more, about what I said?”

Oh. This again. Dr. Mortum’s always been happy to just take the money without questions before. Where is this sudden attack of conscience coming from?

“I can handle myself.” Jane’s smile gains an edge. “As I’m sure you remember.”

Mortum’s smile is polite, but her eyes betray amusement. “In vivid technicolor, mon amie.”

“Hah.” Jane snickers, “Don’t be such a nerd.”

Mortum keeps smiling. “Ah, but you recognized the reference. So who is the bigger nerd here?”

“Smart-ass.”

Can’t remember past that. But you just woke up so… you fell asleep, clearly. Did you fall asleep as Jane? Biting your lip you force yourself to lay down in bed, sheets still hanging half off. Close your eyes. Have to make sure you didn’t do anything stupid.

Finding Jane is getting easier and easier these days. Like there’s a cord strung between you – follow the thread and you’ll find her at the end of it.

Sink in, and it’s always touch that comes first, after that everything else fills from the outside in. As if you’re water pouring into an empty vessel. Jane sits up, blinking with bleary eyes. Only the briefest sense of vertigo before her stomach settles.

The dull soreness of healing bruises floats into awareness. It’s dark, with warm fabric drawn over her lower body… She’s home at her apartment. Safe. Everything’s fine. You worried for nothing. Jane glances at the alarm clock. 4 AM. Now that the possibility of danger is brushed aside, you’re free to be frustrated at this whole situation.

Nothing for it now. You’re not going back to sleep if you can help it. Jane’s hand finds her cellphone, checking for any messages. Nothing new; just her last exchange with Ortega, asking about when they can meet up again.

Just thinking about it is enough to make Jane smile, a lightness in her chest, even as it leaves a bitter sting in your heart. Jane is dating Ortega. Not you. That’s the way things have to be. It’s for the best. For everyone.

Ortega…

She hasn’t even been released from the hospital yet and already she’s raring to get back into the thick of things. The fool idiot never knows when to slow down. Or when to quit. She’s taking the Ranger’s defeat at your debut more personally than you had anticipated.

Honestly, you went into that night fully expecting Ortega to kill you, instead she just… slowed you down at best. A wave breaking itself against a boulder, shattering to pieces. She’s losing her touch in her middle age. She’s only to get herself hurt even worse next time. Maybe you can get Jane to talk some sense into her? Just… at least slow down for a little bit? Take better care of herself.

Somehow has to do it.

It sure isn’t going to be you.

Can still see it in your head… standing in the floodlights, a bruised and bleeding Ortega laying prone below you…

Fuck.

fucking hell

piss

Jane staggers, fighting down the wave of revulsion, swallows the bile in the back of her throat. Shit. She’s usually better insulated from your attacks then that.

Well… don’t think you’re getting back to bed any time soon. If you’re going to be up this early you might as well do something productive with all that time.

“So now, I’m the one stuck sorting out this mess.” Spinning stories about how terrible your villain alter ego is as a boss has fast become your favorite way to bond with people as Jane. There’s something liberating in being able to just go to town on her and have people actually nod in agreement.

Jane sighs, staring down at the water bottle in her hand, sloshing the contents in a slow circle. “Honestly, it’s not my fault the last deal fell through like that.” She tugs at her jacket. Should enjoy the chill while you can. Once the sun’s up, the summer heat will be back in full force.

Jane’s companion, a latina woman who has clearly never skipped leg or arm day, takes a long drag from her cigarette, her back to Jane, against the tree. The two of them have stepped off the park path for privacy.

Honestly didn’t expect Rosie to answer Jane’s call. There’s been less and less time to be able to shoot the shit with her lately. A trend you expect to continue.

Even now Jane is technically doing business. Managing your villain career, building loyalty. But Rosie has been Jane’s oldest friend – or as close to it as she can have, and you’re finding it harder for Jane to let go of her than you’d expected.

“Sounds like a capital-class serving of BS to me, yeah.” Rosie stares off into the open field, chewing on thoughts your puppet isn’t privy to. “You tried looking into some of those old buildings up in the industrial park?”

Jane blinks, staring up at the tree branches above them both. “The… industrial park, huh. Hrm.”

“Yeah, like, I know you’re hoping to get somewhere more, like, central and shit, but there’s a lot of places that cleared out when the smog started getting bad. Bet you two-to-one you can find somewhere real cheap up that way.” She goes quiet then suddenly breaks into laughter. “And hey! That boss of yours is so paranoid anyway, right? Should be happy he gets somewhere no one in their right mind is going to go.”

Jane doesn’t respond right away. It could work. A cheaper asking price means more money free to invest back into gadgets, supplies, bribes. “Yeah, okay.” Jane “I’ll give it a look around. Thanks for the tip.”

Rosie winks, thumbs up. “Hey Janey, what are friends for?”

Jane finds herself returning the thumbs up. “Nothing legal, apparently.” That gets the barking laugh you were hoping for. Rosie slaps her leg. Jane clears her throat, gives Rosie a chance to compose herself. “Speaking of friends… You ready for another job yet?”

“You know me, I can always use more sin money.” She shuffles out another cigarette from her pack, eyes shifting between Jane and the lighter. “So… suppose I am. What'd ya got?”

Jane smiles. “I think you’ll find this one interesting.”

[donnerpartyofone]

[No matter how many times I try and fail, I still can't believe that the Android app is incapable of creating a plain text post of this length. Can any tech savvy people out there hazard a guess about what would make this so much harder than creating a post with a short caption and a bunch of photos and gifs AND a video in it? Obviously there's a lot I love about Tumblr or else I wouldn't suffer it, but the thing it really does better than anything else is to take functionality that you have taken for granted on practically every other platform in your life, and render it impossible.]

I finally started logging out of certain social apps, only to come back to them when I actually feel like it. They're distracting, of course, and I actually have shit to do, but they have also just started to feel like a lot of work. Recently I was at a party where I had some reason to pass my phone to a couple of people, who then expressed alarm at how many notifications I had--like, why wasn't I clearing them out? The reason is that I have to click on every one of them and look at whatever they're telling me about, to get them to ever go away; if I just click the Clear button, then each unread notification comes back, one after the other, after a couple minutes. I don't want to feel that plugged in all the time, it's bad enough when actual people want too much attention, let alone a bunch of apps that behave like the most insecure boyfriend you've ever had. (Yes, I know I can silence notifications, but sometimes I just want to be able to glance at them IN CASE they're important, before I dismiss them all without engaging with every single one) Even when I exercise my right to ignore everything, I still have that uncomfortable sensation that there's something I need to take care of later, if my phone is constantly trying to remind me of its existence. It's not just apps either, though, it's the constant feeling of being in a crowded room with everyone I even vaguely know, 24 hours a day. It's the chore of wondering what someone is saying to me, but not being ready to talk, and not wanting to be held responsible for the unforgivable sin of Leaving Them On Read. One of the advantages of the real world is that you can typically pick and choose when you see somebody and what you want to do together. Or in a world where phone calls were a thing, you could hang up at some point. (Not that I love phone calls either) Even the door to door salesmen of yesteryear had to rely on you to be in a place and physically pick up the receiver or open the door. With messaging apps though, everything basically gets sent right through, and people know from their own experience that you can see it and you're just ~choosing~ not to reply, and you know they know, as if you're in a horror movie, crouching behind your apartment door and holding your breath while an interloper knowingly presses their eyeball against the peephole. Privacy in the internet age is a hot topic, but on a day to day basis, I experience this less as a concern about my personal information, and more as a feeling of being overexposed socially. The knowledge that most people have a cell phone and internet access creates this unspoken pressure to always be available, to manage everyone's perception of how much you like them or something; after all, online communication is so *convenient* that if you don't reply to something right away, then there must be some emotional, personal reason for that, right? Besides the love of seclusion, which seems to be an increasingly mysterious concept for people. Even if you consent to a casual chat with somebody, there's all this anxiety about making sure the person knows you don't hate them if you happen to walk away from it--the other day I had a nice, brief, blithe exchange with a new acquaintance, only to get a long apology for why they had to leave our chat the next day. That wasn't a unique experience, which contributes to the feeling that the normal expectation is for any chat to be an endless hangout with no beginning or end, unless you awkwardly (and honestly, undesirably) formalize the conclusion of your availability. I have dear friends who make similar apologies when I haven't heard from them in a while, and I always wish I could take away the pressure that they feel to clarify how they spend their time--but they probably do this because a lot of other people DO expect them to explain why they're not communicating even though some app says they were Online In the Last 15 Minutes. It scares me a little when I see people announcing that they're taking a break from Facebook or whatever for some reasonably short amount of time, as if the current expectation is perpetual personal access, and just dipping out of a space that you don't even physically inhabit is somehow hurtful or inappropriate. People with healthier boundaries than I have might not experience this, but I don't like the sensation that I'm at a permanent 24 hour slumber party. Where the fuck did my solitude go? I think that's exactly what a lot of people DO like about the internet, that they basically never have to be alone and no thought has to go unshared. For me, though, one of the best parts of a slumber party is that at some point, you get to go home and sleep in your own bed again, by yourself.

[bonnie-barstow-of-flag]

The Not So Lonesome Knight Part 17:

Parts 1 X, 2 X , 3 X , 4 X, 5 X , 6 X , 7 X, 8 X, 9 X 10 X, 11 X , 12 X, 13 X ,14 X, 15 X  16 X 

The two FLAG agents aren’t given much of an opportunity to react. Michael finds himself making an agonizing split-second decision. Does he race across the room to retrieve his gun in the off-chance that he could neutralize a few of the uninvited interlopers or does he pull Bonnie as far from the looming danger as possible?

Adrenaline and instinct kick in simultaneously. His protective hands urge Bonnie out of bed and towards the bathroom. Internally, he prays that his body can fashion enough of a shield until he could barricade her behind the door. It is not a full-blown plan but it was the best he could formulate under the circumstances.

Bonnie blindly ambles in Michael’s wake, having been partially paralyzed by the cold terror swirling through her entire circulatory system. Her trembling fingers curl tightly around his hand as she cowers in his shadow. “Think these are the same guys who broke into our last room and then stole my clothes?”

“I don’t know, Bons, but I’m pretty sure we’re about to find out. I’m thinkin’ there is a very high likelihood these goons are one and the same.” Michael replies stiffly, through his tightly clenched teeth. An air of control attempts to filter through the panic in his azure orbs.

Reflecting on the earlier incident when she had been scared enough to look, Bonnie makes a terrible realization. “There is no back way out of this room. Is there?”

He could feel the heavy pang of his heart against the insides of his rib-cage. “No.” He grumbles, despising the very sound of his own reply. That was a problem Michael hoped he wouldn’t have to manufacture an answer for. However, now that Bonnie mentioned it, it sent his mind reeling. His lips purse firmly together. While he didn’t mind putting himself in precarious positions, he never wanted to do so with Bonnie. Tonight, it would seem that he’d have no choice. They were trapped! Offering Bonnie a shred of hope, Michael adds, “but we’re going to be fine. We have the upper hand. We have Kitt. Remember?”

How could she have ever forgotten about Kitt? There was hope after all!!!

While they move, Michael pulls the com-link close to his mouth. “Kitt? Where are ya, Buddy? We’re gonna need ya.” He beckons, the tension in his chord laying thicker than peanut butter. He continued edging himself in front of Bonnie as the Colombians close in upon them like a pack of ravenous wolves.

Instead of receiving the typical answer, the line of communication fizzles into an unexpected and eerie static. Not even the swishing of Kitt’s continual moving scanners offers a response.

Bonnie designed all of Kitt’s functions far better than airlines did black-boxes!! Kitt doesn’t just unexpectedly fail!!!

Before the horror could fully register a rough, heavily accented voice, barks for them to cease their retreat with the promise of firing upon them should they fail to comply.

Their movements towards the bathroom halts in response. Bonnie’s uncertain gaze flashes up to read Michael’s reaction to the threats.

Michael finds himself weighing the options. While conceding to the enemy was never a reasonable nor wonderful solution, he can’t risk further endangering Bonnie’s life or any of the other innocent motel patrons. They are heavily outnumbered two to eleven, outgunned, and surrounded. From his experience as a cop, Knight quickly assesses that any attempts to put up a fight would be futile and could potentially end in bloodshed. Especially, if he couldn’t rely on immediate assistance from Kitt. After a moment’s deliberation, Michael decides to make a proposition. “I’ll tell ya what. I’ll come with you willingly if ya promise to leave her behind and that you won’t harm her.”

Bemused, the hardened Colombian enforcer’s brow rose an inch. His harsh lips upturn just enough to emit a laugh before giving a gruff reply, “No.” Taking steps towards Michael and Bonnie he adds, “you see, we no negotiate with you. He wants you both, we give him you both.” The stony cold expression never wavered even as he snaps his fingers to command his host of foot-soldiers. Within seconds, Bonnie and Michael are surrounded by seven of the eleven men. That left four guards, two on each side of the door.

Obviously, making a deal with the goons wasn’t on the tables. Michael’s shoulders slump in defeat. Pulling his nose into a scrunch and delivering a snarl, Knight retorts, “just who is this leader anyways?” He pauses before sarcastically spitting, “the king of the Looney-bin?”

The head enforcer’s eyes narrow.

Michael’s wisecrack draws a brief hint of a smile to Bonnie’s face. If she wasn’t so scared, she might have allowed herself to laugh freely. Somehow she believed that any display of amusement would not be well-received. Especially, when she and Michael both have the barrels of high-powered guns nuzzled uncomfortably into their backs.

“Senior Orlando Calderone and his mistress send their greetings.” The enforcer’s gravelly voice finally conveys.

The two FLAG agents find their countenances exuding maximum confusion. The name revealed certainly didn’t ring a bell. Who was he? Who the hell was his mistress? What did they want? To the best of their combined knowledge, the Foundation never delved into the illicit activities of anyone owning that name. However, the mistress could be any woman at all, even Grace Stevens. In a way, it felt as though, they were still getting nowhere fast.

Although, the last name Calderone did give off a faint spark of recognition somewhere in the shadowy recesses of Michael Long’s mind. But the memories that belonged to Knight’s previous identity were buried, heavily dusted over and mangled in the cob-webs of time. He says nothing to that effect, worried that any minuscule sliver of remembrance might result in the placement of a bullet in his head or heart. Or worse, in Bonnie’s.

Bonnie, having found herself with a distinct distaste for the enigmas known as Calderone and his mistress, vehemently retorts, “yeah. Well, you can tell them just where to shove those greetings!”

Unaffected by the woman’s pointed words, the enforcer instructs his soldiers to do a pat-down on both the agents.

“I’ll save you the trouble, my guns over there,” Michael remarks. He just wants to get this over with as fast and painlessly as possible. One of the goons immediately confiscates the weapon. Much to Knight’s annoyance, hands still inspect every inch of him.

Bonnie lets out a low growl at the invasive manhandling as one goon took a little longer on her than he should have. Before she could insist that he take his hands off of her, Michael strenuously interjected on her behalf. “Come on, Man! You and I both know she hasn’t got a weapon under there. Leave her alone.” He shrugs off the hands that were on him and threatens to grab the no-good pervert with the intention of flinging him across the room. It is clear that the Colombian had provoked his ire.

“It’s okay, Michael. He’s done.” Bonnie shoots the Colombian foot-soldier a glance that practically dares him to defy her. There is something familiar about him. She has seen him before and somewhat recently too! But where? Her eyes squint as she attempts to recollect where. At the first convenience, she might ask Michael if he knows. That is, if they survived the miserable ordeal long enough. 

((this is the first time I’m publishing a chapter without the following being written already. But I figure I’ve made everyone wait long enough.))

[arcanalogue]

ON TYRANNY - An Unsolicited Tarot Tour, pt. III

I didn’t intend for these posts to be a catalog of how fast the world can change, but last week the UK officially left the European Union, and the GOP-led Senate voted to end the impeachment trial without calling a single witness, ending this week in acquittal.

From inside my home, you can’t tell the difference; walking around in my neighborhood, nothing seems to have changed. That’s the curious nature of trying to stay well-informed, isn’t it? All of the bad news has an atmospheric quality; we receive it digitally and then project it around ourselves like a vaporous envelope, the opacity of which we can adjust at will.

As I twiddle with the settings of my own envelope, I try to ask myself: am I remembering to rest and enjoy my time at home, or am I using the privacy as cover for tormenting myself? Am I a being a true neighbor and citizen as I scuttle about in the world, or am I merely perceiving others as obstacles, intruders, unwelcome distractions, and blocking them out? 

Am I embodying my fear? As I struggle to process and contain all the bad news, do I become the bad news? 

It often feels like I end up overcompensating in order to prove I’m not adversely affected. Sometimes that’s impossible, and the envelope around me is fully opaque. If I’m lucky I can ride my bike down to the river and sit for a while, dial it back, absorb a broader perspective.

If I’m lucky.

The book ON TYRANNY presents a series of tasks aimed at challenging our own perceptions while also tracking changes in the world around us. A historian, Timothy Snyder seems to appreciate the sort of mental hygiene that regular people must use to cope with the dread and futility that become our constant helpmeets as dangerous forces rise to power. We grow attached to their presence, and come to trust them more than the wild interlopers that sometimes come galloping through, such as, say, hope. Or bravery, which requires the possibility of great sacrifice. 

Dread and futility require nothing of us, except to observe, and to hurt. Oh that’s handy, I can do that! But these become such all-consuming preoccupations that we mistake them for activity. Sharing a news story is like bearing witness: I was here, I heard about it, I grieved, I passed it on. A complete cycle we can repeat until we’re limp with exhaustion.

Hope less comfortable, and harder to pass along. It requires one’s spirit to run counter to the movements of the tide. That’s why it’s so valuable, and why it’s a distinctly anti-fascist instinct. Hope represents everything about a human that simply can’t be predicted, or controlled.

Where do you go looking for it in your home, or in your neighborhood? That’s what drives me out into the world most days: I’m looking for hope. When I remember to look, I usually find it.

If I’m lucky.

Alright, enough of that. Having already combed for parallels between Snyder’s chapters and The Magician, The High Priestess, and The Empress, it’s time to soldier on and see if the next few cards offer anything illuminating. 

As I wrote before, The Empress and The Emperor represent the interior and exterior aspects of one body: their empire.

Snyder’s fourth chapter begins: 

“Life is political, not because the world cares about how you feel, but because the world reacts to what you do. The minor choices we make are themselves a kind of vote, making it more or less likely that free and fair elections will be held in the future. In the politics of the future, our words and gestures, or their absence, count very much.”

When you go out into the world, you may not be fully in charge of your surroundings, but that doesn’t mean you’re powerless to make important changes. You can use your presence and privilege to protect others. You can counter the hatred that arises spontaneously, or intercept the message. 

The nastiest people are often the most cowardly, counting on the elements of shock and surprise and a quick getaway. This is always the case when people shout or hurl things at me out of car windows. Slurs scrawled in graffiti are basically the same — it’s a low-risk gambit that hurts many. And when people encounter something unpleasant, they tend to just quicken their pace, pass on by. It’s not “their job” to deal with it.

I totally understand that well-meaning people don’t want to risk a confrontation, or compound a victim’s embarrassment by drawing attention to what happened. But I tell you, as someone who has been harassed and physically attacked in public: the message this ultimately sends to victims is that they’re truly on their own. 

You may not be the Emperor of our nation, but you can go about righting some of the smaller wrongs, helping people feel as though it matters to someone. 

Like when I noticed that someone else had painted over the “NO FAGS” graffiti which had recently appeared on a wall in my neighborhood, and my very first thought was: Well shit, why didn’t I do that?

I think I know why. I wanted to prove that it didn’t bother me. I wanted to assume it wasn’t aimed at me directly, that it was none of my business, and that it wasn’t so easy to trigger my outrage. And here’s a big one: I really, really wanted someone else to care enough to do it. It wasn’t “my job” to deal with it.

But what about the kids who walk past there to get home from school? I hadn’t thought of them. Should they have to grow up with the same fear that I did? Do I want the people who did this (or those who weren’t bothered by it) to imagine this sort of thing will be tolerated here? 

Let’s take responsibility for what others are subjected to in life’s “common areas,” including the internet. May we ride as The Emperor, acting swiftly and according to the most benefic principles.

Authority is tricky: it asserts that some protocols simply must be followed because we say so, that’s why. Within certain professional institutions, there are many things that “just aren’t done,” or are done “just so” — often for good reason. 

We run smack up against this kind of thinking when it’s time to make way for better systems. This is by design. It’s supposed to be hard to revise certain standards, they’re meant to evolve slowly, if at all, to preserve a sense of continuity throughout our progress. And yes, this has conveniently allowed certain privileged parties to leverage their position across generations, and profit from the results. But it also prevents any johnny-come-lately demagogue from overturning or erasing standards to suit their particular will. 

Or at least, it used to!

The widely-lamented demise of expertise has led to corners being cut left and right, and somewhere along the way the concept of authority itself seems to have been atomized. 

Snyder writes: 

“Professional ethics must guide us precisely when we are told that the situation is exceptional. Then there is no such thing as ‘just following orders.’ If members of the professions confuse their specific ethics with the emotions of the moment, however, they can find themselves saying and doing things that they might previously have considered unimaginable.” 

Many of us aren’t in professions where these decisions wield real power, but our decisions still affect others. And there are doctors, lawyers, teachers, business executives, and civil servants all across the country who are grappling with these distinctions as we speak, and we must perpetually remind them how much our collective fates depend on their adherence to professional ethics.

Everyone wants to cut the line. Everyone wants to be the exception to the rule. Everyone wants to just give up and take it easy. Writ large, this turns our entire civilization into a contest to see who can be the biggest cheater, who can cover up the grossest incompetence. And who does that sound like? 

It sounds like, for starters, a chiropractor in South Dakota who wants to decide which treatments medical doctors may offer to trans children. 

Did you know The High Priestess and The Hierophant are a partnered set, a duality, just like the Empress and Emperor? Writing about The Priestess and defending institutions, I invited you to “reflect on the mental architecture” that produced your own mind. 

This chapter asks you to examine how certain decisions end up contributing to others’ architecture, defining their experiences. You may be more powerful than you know! The Hierophant is part of a lineage of teachers and students, influencers and influenced, each of them just one link in the chain.

How many broken links does it take for our world to stop recognizing itself in recollections of the past? 

Of all the card/chapter pairings so far, this one admittedly seems like the biggest stretch...  and yet, if this isn’t a snapshot of the pro-leader paramilitary making nice with the official police/military, then what is?

Snyder writes about how paramilitary forces first challenge the police and military, then penetrate them, and finally transform them. There’s an undeniable courtship at work here, a sort of debauched mating ritual. 

FYI, this exact courtship was the subject of the recent Watchmen series on HBO — a truly excellent one-season arc that involved crisscrossing ties between military, police, and paramilitary factions, all tangled up in relationships between friends, lovers, and families. 

What Snyder warns about here is the recurring love affair between armed "freedom fighters” and those tasked with maintaining civil order. First they discover that they’re more alike than different... and then, eventually, there’s no telling the difference between them whatsoever.

Let’s keep these Lovers star-crossed, shall we?

This is Part III in a series of posts about Timothy Snyder’s ON TYRANNY, which can be purchased via your local bookstore, and also here.

[duhragonball]

[FIC] Luffa: The Legendary Super Saiyan (117/?)

Disclaimer: This story features characters and concepts based on Dragon Ball, which is a trademark of Bird Studio/Shueisha and Toei Animation.   This is an unauthorized work, and no profit is being made on this work by me. This story is copyright of me. Download if you like, but please don’t archive it without my permission. Don’t be shy.

Continuity Note: About 1000 years before the events of Dragon Ball Z.

Previous chapters conveniently available here.

[13 March, 233 Before Age.   Hexill VI.]

The Hexillians had turned down multiple invitations to join the Federation.    Lying just beyond the Federation border, their solar system was a valued trading partner.    There was a strong pro-Federation movement in the planet's political arena, but it was hamstrung by conflicting opinions over the details.    Even the most isolationist voices in the Hexillian government could not deny that their world was growing closer and closer to the Federation each day, and had prospered for it.  

But the fact remained that Hexill VI was not a Federation member, and so when the Saiyan invader appeared on their world, and began to attack it, they had no mutual defense pact to invoke, nor any reason to expect aid.   Instead, they relied upon their own military, and while much of their arsenal had been acquired from the Federation, they were unprepared for the power that the Saiyan possessed.  

"Know that you serve an abomination!" she would say whenever she would attack one of their cities.  "Know that Trismegistus is the true answer, the reagent that will change the universe!   Rejoice, for I bring you a gift!    He has sent his prophet into your wilderness, that you may turn away from the abomination, and be cleansed!"

Then the Hexillians would launch a counterattack, and she would always withdraw.    The civilian leaders took this as a hopeful sign.   If they could just corner the Saiyan "prophet", then they could surely defeat her.   Those who opposed Federation membership used this talking point to argue that they didn't need an alliance for protection.    Those who supported Federation membership claimed that victory would be much swifter with a starfleet backing them up.   In either case, they painted a very rosy picture for their constituents.    Lives had been lost and infrastructure had been destroyed, but the invasion would be repelled, and soon they could rebuild.   That was what the politicians said.

The military leaders had a less optimistic appraisal.    They believed the Saiyan woman was merely playing for time, and that she had the power to overwhelm their defenses if she chose to do so.    Their weapons were supposed to be strong enough to repel a typical Saiyan intruder, but there was nothing normal about her.   Sensor data indicated that she was much faster than she seemed to be letting on.    Her battlefield sermons bore little resemblance to the usual low-brow banter used by most Saiyan pirates.   And her burgundy costume   made it difficult to tell that she was a Saiyan at all.   If the woman had a tail, it was hidden beneath the chlamys gown handing from her shoulders.    Her black hair was dyed with streaks of crimson, and bound with an elaborate series of red bands.  

"The fated day approaches!" she cried as she attacked a hydroponics complex less than a hundred miles from a defense base.    "Your bellies will go empty, that you might fill your spirits with the truth!"

Much of the complex was staffed by robotic workers, but the Hexillian technicians who maintained them were forced to flee.    Most Saiyans were content to fire blasts of  ki energy at their targets, but this one was different.   She would light fires wherever she could, then destroy various installations that tied in with whatever "topic" she happened to be raving about.    In this case, she burned the crops, blasted large food processing units to pieces, and then targeted the Hexillian workers who had remained behind to see that the others evacuated safely.  

"Ah, so you volunteer for the culling!" she said as she plucked a Hexillian shift manager from the ground.   "Your blood will write the history of the future!"

"Lemme go!" the man pleaded.   "I gotta family!"   Specifically, he had a wife and two sons, with an egg that was due to hatch any day now.   He didn't honestly expect the Saiyan to care, but as he struggled in her grip, he didn't know what else to say, and in his panic, his loved ones were the first thing to come to mind.

"Excellent!" she replied.   "Blood is always more valuable when taken from one who would be mourned!"   With that, she flew to a spot on the facility that she had cleared of wreckage, and dumped him into a small group of other captives.    Surrounding them was a circular pattern drawn in the ground, adorned with mystic inscriptions she had learned from worlds no Hexillian had ever known.

"The thrice-blessed is merciful," the Saiyan  announced as she drew a short spear from behind her back.   "The price of his transformative power is great, but he will ask only a small toll from your world.   Know that your lives will be taken so that your people will be permitted to witness his glorious triumph!"

In her hand, the weapon extended, growing into a long lance which she then leveled at her captives like a rifle.  The blade at the tip began to glow with a blue light, her eyes closed, and she spoke in tongues as she hovered over them, preparing to slaughter them all.  

"Nice boots."

The prophetess had sensed a powerful ki nearby, but in the moment between sensing the power and opening her eyes to search for it, the source of the ki had already closed the distance between them.  

"Who dares--?" she asked, but then she saw the interloper's black shirt and yellow pants, and she recognized her immediately.   "Ah, the abomination herself.    My master said you would come, though he did not expect you quite so early.    I should have known that you would defy his holy timetable."  

"Not big on the color," Luffa said.    "Lot of people think red's a good look for Saiyans, since we get bloodied up so much, but they never think about how it'll look when it dries.    Besides, there's other colors of blood out there.   Green, purple.   You name it."

The prophet pointed her spear at Luffa, who was floating directly above the captive Hexillians.    "You speak in riddles, heretic!" she said.   "Be warned that your idle chatter will avail you nothing here, for I have seen the truth, and the truth has enslaved me completely."

"What riddles?" Luffa said.    "I said I like your boots.    Not sure I could wear that style, though.   I'm not big on heels myself.   They make me look taller, but I feel kind of awkward when I wear them.    But on other people, I think they look pretty cool.    You look like you could stab someone with one of those.     Are they comfortable?   They don't look it, but you seem pretty used to wearing them."  

"We are both heralds, you and I," the prophet said.    "You, the abomination Luffa, and I, his humble servant, the prophetess Aonorry.    Fate has ordained this meeting, to mark the advent of his temple upon this world--!"

"I'm not wild about the cut," Luffa said as she stared at Aonorry's legs and rubbed her chin.    "Thigh-highs?   I guess the material is flexible enough, but I'm more into below-the-knee.    Just my preference though.   Oh, wait, I just noticed they match your gloves.   Okay, well that adds up then.   Now I'm trying to picture shorter boots with shorter gloves."

"Enough!" Aonorry screamed.    "This is my moment!   The culmination of my sacred training, of my life!    I will not stand at the gates of death and be mocked in this way!"    

Suddenly a blast of energy fired from the point of the lance, bathing Luffa in its destructive radiance.   Below, the Hexillians cried out in horror at the apparent destruction of their rescuer.    When the light faded from Aonorry's attack, there was no trace of Luffa.

"I'll not be fooled by your trickery!" Aonorry said.   She quickly spun around, scanning the immediate area with all of her senses to locate her enemy.     "I lack the power to defeat you so easily.   But you betray yourself by hiding from me.   If your power were true, you would have nothing to fear from me, and no cause to... run?"

It was the sound that gave it away.    Aonorry could sense flashes of ki all around her, but none of them lasted long enough for her to get a fix on Luffa's location.   Then she realized that she was hearing buzzes in the air, the sound of her enemy zipping past her so quickly that her eyes couldn't follow the movements.    Aonorry had expected power, for this was the core feature of Luffa's reputation.    What she hadn't anticipated was the depth of skill that Luffa now displayed.    Her ki control was so great that she was using it for only brief instants, flinging herself back and forth at amazing speeds, just to keep Aonorry off-balance.

And then, just when she realized that this was meant to throw her off-balance, she felt Luffa's fingers wrapping around her ankle, and in the next moment she found herself slamming into the ground.    In spite of the pain, in spite of the blood Aonorry felt tricking from her nose and mouth, she tried to get up and recover.   Before she could even roll over, she felt a tremendous weight pressing against her back.    Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Luffa standing over her, using one foot to pin Aonorry to the ground.  At some point, Luffa had transformed into her Super Saiyan form.   Aonorry couldn't see it, pinned to the ground face-down as she was, but she could certainly feel the increased power.

"On second thought," Luffa said, "your boots kind of suck.   If they were black, or knee length, or if they came in flats, any one of those, then yeah, I could overlook the other two, but no.     Three strikes."

As she spoke, Luffa raised Aonorry's lance in her hand, and began to twirl it around like a baton.   "You came here alone, as far as I can tell," she said.   The intel I received shows you're the only Saiyan involved in every battle, and I can't sense any others coming out of hiding to save you.    But you must have picked this planet because you know I'd have to show up and deal with you personally.  The Federation starfleet can't come out this far unless the Hexillian government asks, but I can come and go as I please.   So you knew I'd be coming alone, and you knew you couldn't stop me by yourself.    So this is a trap, and you're just the bait, right?"

She applied more pressure to Aonorry's back, and Aonorry's shriek surprised even herself.      She hadn't expected anything quite like this.   It was supposed to be majestic.    The abomination was supposed to recoil in terror as Aonorry revealed the true nature of her lord.   Instead, she lay face down a puddle of dirt mixed with her own blood.    

"Or is it a diversion?" Luffa asked.    "You lured me all the way out here to keep me away from something else?     Normally, I'd read your mind to find out for myself, but I know you Jindan-users have psychic booby traps inside your heads."

She pointed the tip of Aonorry's weapon at the base of Aonorry's skull.   "You sure got quiet all of a sudden," Luffa said.    "You said you were a prophet, right?    Had plenty to say a minute ago.   Well, go on and preach. I'm listening."

"He... he's not coming," Aonorry said.   "He said he would save me if I faced you alone.    But you've already beaten me, and he... he isn't here."

"Who?" Luffa asked.  

"T-Trismegistus," Aonorry said, choking back tears.    "He anointed me as one of the Orichalcum Order.   He told me that I would overcome any adversity and prepare this planet for his arrival.     But you're killing me and he isn't here!"  

"Well, I haven't actually started killing you yet," Luffa said.  "Let's give him a few more minutes.   Maybe he overslept."

"He... he used me," Aonorry gasped.   "I did everything he said, and now he's abandoned me to die here!    After all those things he said to me in his bedroom.   Was that all it was to him?"

"Men, right?" Luffa asked, thought not as mockingly as before.    "I guess this guy isn't as 'thrice-blessed' as you thought, huh?"

"That bastard," Aonorry shouted.    "I literally worshiped him, cut off my own tail for him, and he won't even lift a finger for me!    How could I have been so stupid?"

"Hey, it's not too late to turn things around," Luffa said.   "Tell me what you know, and I'll see to it that he'll regret the day he ever met you."

Aonorry hesitated at this offer.    "What will become of me?" she asked.   "You won't simply let me go."

"Hell no," Luffa said.   "You killed a lot of people here, and you'll have to answer for that.    Legally, I'm not even supposed to be here, so helping you escape would just make a bad situation worse.   But, if you help us put these Jindan clowns out of business... well, maybe we can work something out."  

She pressed the tip of the spear against Aonorry's neck, but gently enough that it didn't break the skin.  "Or you can die here and now," Luffa added.   "Your call, but for what it's worth, I know what it's like to be betrayed.   If I were you, I'd want to do anything I could to make the bastard pay."

Aonorry balled her fists and pounded them into the dirt.    "You... you actually care, don't you?" she said.   "You came here to save these people.   He told me you were the devil, evil incarnate... and here you are, actually sympathizing with me."

"I get that a lot," Luffa said.   "People tell me I'm not so scary once they get to know me.   Like it's so hard to give a crap."  

"All right, then.   I'll tell you all that I know.    Just  give me your word that you'll destroy hi--... Destroy h--... hhurk!"

Luffa was about to ask her what was wrong, when suddenly Aonorry vomited blood onto the ground.   She began to convulse wildly, and Luffa stepped away from her.  

Aonorry rose to a kneeling position, then grabbed at her throat, as if trying to strangle herself.    Her eyes, once proud and righteous, now looked to Luffa with a silent plea for help.   The blood--or whatever it actually was--continued to stream from her mouth.  

Unsure how to deal with Aonorry, Luffa aimed her hand in the opposite direction and fired a ki blast, which cleared a path through the flames that surrounded them.     "All of you!" she called to the Hexillians.   "Get out of here now!   Your soldiers are heading this way.   Find them and get them to take you as far away as you can.   Go!"

Though confused, they did as she said, leaving Luffa alone to witness whatever was happening to Aonorry.    By now, Luffa was convinced that the red fluid flowing from the other Saiyan's mouth wasn't mere blood.   The sheer volume of it defied Saiyan anatomy.   Within minutes, the former "prophetess" was kneeling in a shallow pool nearly ten feet in diameter.    Luffa's first instinct was to kill her now and put an end to this, but she doubted that killing Aonorry would actually solve anything.   Still, with no other obvious course of action, she pointed her finger at Aonorry's head, and charged her ki just in case.    

Then the ground began to shake, and Luffa knew that the problem was bigger than Aonorry.   The "blood"-soaked soil began to expand and grow all around Aonorry, and Luffa could sense a presence within it.     In seconds, a large hill had formed before Luffa's eyes.   Soon after that, it grew into a mesa, and then it began to reshape itself, like wet clay being sculpted by giant, invisible hands.     At last, the two-hundred-foot-tall formation stood revealed as a humanoid figure.    Gleaming purple eyes opened on its head, and it stared down at Luffa as it continued to refine its shape.    Gradually, the face of the creature sharpened and resolved, until at last she could see the features of someone she recognized.    

"Rehval..." Luffa muttered.  

"Welcome, Luffa," said the rock-creature who wore Rehval's likeness.    "I understand you've been looking for me.     Was there something you wanted to say?"

*******

"Vengeance Cannon," Luffa replied, and she fired a thin beam of red light through the forehead of the creature.  

However, the Rehval-thing suffered no ill effects from this, aside from the four-inch-wide hole she had bored through it.  

"As passionate as ever, I see.    You truly are a magnificent woman.   It's a shame we couldn't come to terms--"

Luffa fired a much wider blast of energy, this time blasting the rock-creatures entire head and neck into pebbles.   It stumbled forward, and just as she flew to avoid it, the creature managed to stop itself from falling over.    Instead, it stepped back, straightened its posture, then slowly regrew its head.    

"I trust that you're beginning to understand why I arranged to speak to you this way,"  he said after his mouth had been restored.   "I would have preferred a face-to-face meeting, but you're much too volatile, and I'm too important to jeopardize my safety that way."

"You're late, aren't you?" Luffa scoffed.   "Your lapdog Aonorry had given up on you.   She was all set to betray you to me, and then suddenly you showed yourself.    It's enough to make a girl think you were afraid."

"Don't flatter yourself, Luffa," Rehval said.   "The fact is that I was counting on young Aonorry to have a crisis of faith.    As part of my flock, she devoted herself to me completely, allowing me to learn her every strength and weakness.   Hers was a brittle sort of belief.   I knew that if I disappointed her, even slightly, that she would turn against me in anger.  So I had her drink a potion that would use her disillusionment as a catalyst.   Once activated, she would infuse it into the soil, and bring about the form you see before you."

He reached for his shoulder, and gently picked up the prone form of Aonorry, who had been laying motionless upon him.  

"So that's it," Luffa said.    "You've decided that being a self-righteous king wasn't good enough, so now you've become some sort of sorcerer with his own cult.     Trismegistus, that's what they all call you now."  

"The thrice-blessed one," he explained.   "It was the title of a great alchemist from many thousands of years ago.    So great, in fact, that he was eventually defied by his people.   I chose to usurp his title, since I consider myself to be just as blessed as he was.    First: King of the Saiyans.   Second: Master of the Jindan Cult.  Third: Savior of the Galaxy."

"Now it all makes sense," Luffa said.   "You went into hiding after our last encounter, then you packed up your kingdom and left before I could find you.    You knew you'd lose support among your idiot subjects, so you whipped up this scam of yours and promised to make Saiyans stronger in exchange for their loyalty.    I had heard 'Trismegistus' sent his cult to invade 'Rehval's' kingdom, but I guess that was all just a ruse to cover your tracks."

"You don't sound very impressed with that," Rehval said.  

Luffa turned her head and spat on the ground.   "You really do have no pride at all do you?   A true Saiyan wouldn't resort to potions and magic to make themselves stronger!    It wasn't enough for you to pollute your own body with that sort of filth.   Now you've tricked others into making the same mistake!"  

"Tricked them?" Rehval asked with a laugh.   "They all came to me.    Many of them despised my rule, but they sought me out anyway, all because they craved greater power. "   He held up Aonorry in his palm.    "This one, for example.    She was like you, once.   She hated the monarchy that my grandfather started.   She wanted nothing to do with King Rehval.    Ah, but once she heard about the miracle of Jindan, and how its creator, Trismegistus, led an attack on King Rehval's stronghold, she became fascinated.    She did everything she could to find it.    I didn't make the trail easy to find, Luffa.   It was a test of determination.    But my beloved Aonorry passed."

"And what does she think now?" Luffa asked.    "Now that she knows she's bound herself to the same king she opposed?"

"Let's find out," Rehval suggested.    Without warning, he dropped his prophet, allowing her to fall hundreds of feet to the ground.    

"Bastard!" Luffa snarled as she flew up to catch her.     As she did, Rehval pointed his enormous earthen hand down at them and fired a beam of energy.    

"You're so predictable, Luffa," he said.    "For all your talk of warrior pride, you can be so soft that it's pitiful.   Was it really worth dying just now so that you could save an enemy?"

When the light from his attack faded, he saw  no trace of the Saiyan women.    Then he noticed something on his mountainous shoulder, and he looked over to find Luffa standing there, holding Aonorry's unconscious form in her arms.    Before he could react, Luffa opened her mouth and a stream of golden ki energy blasted him in the face.  

"Predict this!" she shouted when she was finished.    Then she stamped her foot down onto Rehval's rocky shoulder.   The force was so great that a crack formed, and slowly expanded.    As Luffa jumped away, Rehval's right arm began to break loose from his body, and then it fell off completely.  

*******

Luffa flew until she reached a lake, then hovered just inches above it.    Satisfied that Rehval wasn't chasing her, she dunked Aonorry's head into the water.    

"Wake up, idiot!" Luffa shouted.   "Your precious master finally showed up.   Any ideas on what his plan is?"

"Whuh-what?" Aonorry sputtered as the cold water brought her around.  "Trismegistus is here?"

"Yeah, well most people know him as 'King Rehval', though I've heard that's not his real name either," Luffa said.   She tossed Aonorry onto the lakeshore and waited for her to get her bearings.   "He's been playing you for a fool this whole time.   You and everyone else in the Jindan cult."  

"He really did come for me," Aonorry said, now holding her hands over her cheeks.     "And... after I was ready to betray him.    Oh... oh my..."

"He was counting on you to betray him," Luffa said.   "The bastard's been toying with you, and he lied to you the whole time!    Loyalty means nothing to him!"

Luffa had more unkind words to say about King Rehval, but before she could speak them, the ground began to shake beneath them, and then another column of earth and rock began to rise up and shape itself into a humanoid form.  

"Luffa, Luffa, Luffa," Rehval's voice boomed.   "When will you ever learn?"

Luffa left Aonorry where she was and charged her ki before leaping headlong into Rehval's stone belly.  She made a crater on the surface, and knocked him off balance.    Without pausing, she flew around him, peppering his body with golden energy blasts as she went.   To an outside observer, it might have looked like a man being pestered by some glowing yellow hummingbird.  

She blasted his face again, and when he tried to reshape it from the remaining rock, she kept blasting it.    At the same time, she focused on his legs, damaging them enough that he had trouble staying upright.    

"You can't defeat him!" Aonorry cried out.   The unfettered joy in her voice made Luffa sick, but she pressed on in spite of it.    He's become one with the very earth itself!   You would have to destroy the entire planet, and you still wouldn't win!"  

"She's right, you know," Rehval boasted.   "I'm not actually here, as I said before.   You need the atmosphere to breathe, but I don't.    And as long as the planet is in tact--"

Luffa finally put enough cracks in his body that it crumbled into pieces.   A short distance away, she could already hear another rock-body assembling itself.  

"He rises!" Aonorry wailed.   "His glory rises, now and forever!"

"As I was saying," Rehval said as his third body sprouted its new mouth.   "As long as the planet is in tact, I can fight you like this indefinitely."

"Gosh, I'd better surrender then," Luffa grumbled.    "Is that what you want me to say?"

"Actually, no," Rehval said.    He clenched his fists, and suddenly a ball of violet light appeared in front of his rocky chest.    Before Luffa could dodge, he unleashed its power in her direction, and she had to catch the front of the energy wave in her hands.    

"Our confrontation on Pflaume was an experiment, Luffa," Rehval explained while she struggled to hold back the blast.   "I thought that if I stranded you on an ice giant, you would be neutralized completely.   No air to breathe, no surface to stand upon, no ships to rescue you.     That last one was the flaw in my plan.   I was sure your wife would abandon you, but not so."

Luffa was pushed back by the energy beam until she felt her boots press into the ground.   This gave her something to brace against for support, but it also reminded her that she had very little margin for error.   She set her jaw and screwed her eyes shut as she summoned up more power to halt the beam's advance.

"I had to evacuate Planet Saiya," Rehval went on.   "I knew that if you escaped Pflaume, the planet would never survive your counterattack.   Fortunately, I had a redoubt prepared on a planet in a secret location, just in case of emergency.   And while I was there, it occurred to me how dependent I am on planets and atmospheres.   So are you, but you can just fly from place to place in your ship, like a mercenary.    Very romantic, but a king needs a kingdom, and a kingdom needs earth to stand upon."

Luffa finally mustered the strength to deflect the attack, and with a mighty yell, she flung it up into the sky, where it exploded harmlessly in the upper atmosphere.    But this left her wide open to a punch from the rock creature that spoke with Rehval's voice.    The impact cratered the ground, and the Rehval-monster ground his fist into the center, like a child killing a beetle.  

"A foundation, Luffa," he continued.    "Without a solid rock to build upon, the builder is helpless.   That was when I realized the error in my thinking.    On Pflaume, I left you to fall into sinking sand, when what I needed to be doing was securing myself upon a solid rock.   That realization led me to realize how much we owe the ground beneath us, and how powerful it truly is.    I knew that if I made that power my own,  I could defeat anyone, even the Legendary Super Saiyan."

Nearby, Aonorry was chanting some a prayer in support of Trismegistus.     The earthen creature smiled as it sensed a victory, and then a tremendous explosion went off at his fist.   The giant figure toppled backwards, and when Rehval looked at his arm, it was simply... gone.

Luffa emerged from the smoke of the blast, already preparing her next move.   "Rehval," she said.   "You talk too much."    

What followed was a rapid-fire barrage.   Dozens of golden blobs of energy launched out of Luffa's fingertips, and embedded themselves onto Rehval's avatar.   He expected them to explode on contact, but instead, she swung her left hand upward, and he found himself being dragged upwards.     The ki she had affixed to his body was pulling him into the air.

"I don't know how you pulled this off, Rehval," Luffa said, "but I'm curious to see what your limits are with this monster body you've got.    "Can you attack me with two of them at once?   Because so far I've only seen you make a new body after the old one gets wrecked."

"Your... nnf!   Your overconfidence is your weakness," Rehval said as he struggled against the force pulling him towards the sky.

"Look who's talking," Luffa replied.    "You sprang this trap and gloated about it the whole time you were fighting, and where's it gotten you?   You probably never even considered that I was studying your power the entire time, did you?"

He managed to spin around and point his remaining arm at Luffa, but she  squeezed her hand into a fist, and the energy blobs on that arm suddenly exploded, blasting it into dust.  

"What now?" she asked.    "You've got to make a new body now, since you can't do much with that one."

"You underestimate me... Luffa!" Rehval said.   His body began to shift and reshape itself, until it finally sprouted a new pair of arms.   But unlike before, this caused the main body to become smaller than it had been before.

Luffa responded by squeezing her fist again, and blasting off his legs.   The remainder of his body began to fall, but she caught it by enveloping the bulk of his form in a sheath of golden light.    

"I think I'm getting the idea," Luffa said.   "You can't absorb more mass unless you're in direct contact with the planet.    And cutting off an arm or a leg doesn't help you, because those pieces aren't 'alive' on their own, so much as they're controlled by the main body.   Or maybe just the head. "

"Well done, Luffa," Rehval said.   "You're as magnificent as ever, and just as dangerous.    I can still use you in my plans, but I can't afford to trust you, not after you spurned my offer before."  

"Trust?   Trust?!" Luffa shouted.   "You honorless jackal!  You don't even know the meaning of the word!   Using that idiot Aonorry as your pawn!   Sending this... this proxy to fight me in your place!   When I find you--the real you-- I'll--"

Her threat was suddenly cut off by Aonorry herself, who had managed to sneak up on Luffa while she was busy restraining Rehval in midair.   The point of her short spear nearly connected with Luffa's neck, but she sensed her approach just in the nick of time, and caught her in a choke hold.    

"Your 'master' is more desperate than I thought," Luffa snarled.    Without hesitation, she broke Aonorry's neck to prevent any further distractions.   But in the moment it took her to do this, Rehval built up his power again, and this time turned it in on himself.    Before Luffa could react, before Aonorry's corpse could even fall to the surface, his rock-body exploded in midair, and only moments later, a new rock-Rehval was rising up from the ground.    

"You killed my prophetess," Rehval said, sounding only mildly annoyed.   "I'll miss her."

"This game is getting tiresome, Rehval," Luffa said.   "I've already figured out how to defeat you, so unless this next body can do something new, there's really no point in going on."

"You may be powerful, Luffa," Rehval said, "but you still think like a low-level mercenary.    Do you think one battlefield means anything to me?   I'm not even here.   I could destroy this entire planet right now, and lose nothing.    But I won't do that, because I have loftier goals in mind.    I mean to change the universe, and that won't be achieved through mere destruction.   Hexill VI has a place in my kingdom, like all worlds."

Luffa dove down and attacked one of Rehval's legs.    As he swung his arms to catch her, she dodged and attacked those as well.    But since he was touching the ground, he was able to repair this damage easily.    

"Think about it, Luffa," he continued.    "If I can send my avatar here, across hundreds of light years, then I can do the same on any number of planets.    Without warning, a graven image of me rises up from the ground, powerful enough  to defeat almost anything, powerful enough to impose my will, or destroy the planet entirely.   And by the time you arrive in your ship to stop me, I'm already gone."

Luffa formed a razor-thin disc of ki and launched it at the neck of Rehval.   It only carved a small section away, but when she followed up with a Gallick Gun, this was enough to blast the head off of the body.   She then snared it in an energy sheath and pulled it up into the sky.    Below, the headless body didn't move.    Luffa fired another ki blast to destroy it, but never stopped her flight.    

"You think you can sever my connection to the planet with distance, is that it?" Rehval asked.    "Well, so what if you can?    I only chose Hexill VI to make a point, Luffa.   I wanted you to see exactly what I can do.    What I've become."  

"Tell me where you're hiding, Rehval," Luffa said.   "I'll only ask you once."

"And why should I tell you that?" Rehval asked.    

"Because I'm going to kill you either way," she said.   "Painfully, if I can.    You're going to die, but if you tell me where to find you, I can get it over with.    Save you some sleepless nights."

"That's very kind of you," Rehval said.   "But no.   Come and find me, if you can.  I'll be waiting.   And if you can't find me, don't worry.   You'll be hearing from me sooner than you think."

Luffa suddenly raised her arms, and with a loud grunt, she swung the net of energy around the head, flinging it up into space.    She watched it shrink into the distance, then flew back down to the ground to make certain Rehval had not rebuilt his avatar.   She only found the broken remains of the last body that she had decapitated.   She incinerated it with a  ki blast.    Satisfied that her business here was concluded, she flew back to inform the planet's leaders about what had happened.  

*******

An hour later, Luffa was sitting in the cockpit of the light cruiser she had borrowed from the Federation Starfleet to get here.    She had orbited the planet a few times, just in case there was any chance of Rehval somehow returning, but at last she decided it was safe to depart.    She would have to contact the Federation and alert them of the situation, but first she removed her boot and examined the injury on her left foot.   Dr. Topsas had treated the wound days ago, but it would take some time to heal properly, and she was doing it no favors by constantly heading out into battle.   Somewhat painfully, she applied an ointment he had given her.    It was supposed to help promote healing and prevent infection, but at times she thought it hurt worse than the attack that had made the wound in the first place.    

She was weary, not so much from her wounds or physical exhaustion, but from the lack of a decisive victory.   Up to now, this had been a war of attrition, and Luffa's hope was that if she steadily chipped away at the lackeys, it would force the leaders out of hiding.    But if Rehval could strike remotely, with no risk to his own person, then... what?

Luffa leaned back the pilot's chair as far as it would go and began rubbing her temples.    There was a solution to this puzzle--there always was-- but she was too frustrated to find it.    For now, the best she could do was to report in with her allies, set the ship to autopilot, and take a nap during the flight home.   With any luck, the next cultist attack would be on the opposite side of the Federation, giving her more time to rest--

Then she saw the red light blinking on the comm system, and she realized that someone was trying to contact her.   Some small part of her wanted to ignore the light, to pretend she hadn't seen it, but she cursed that part of herself and opened the channel just to spite her own weakness.    

There was no audio or video, just a text message that had been encrypted with a code used by the Saiyan Free Company, led by Princess Seltiss.   The girl had formed the company to fill the power vacuum left behind when her father had disappeared, and she had allied herself with the Federation because she saw Trismegistus and his cult as a threat to Saiyan-kind.   As Luffa entered her password to decrypt the code, she wondered how the princess would react to the news that Rehval and Trismegistus were the same man.    

Those thoughts vanished as Luffa read the message: "ALL AVAILABLE FORCES TO FEDENDER SYSTEM.   URGENT.    SURPRISE ATTACK.   ENEMY STRENGTH UNKNOWN.   UNIDENTIFIED ALIEN COMBATANTS LED BY A LARGE CREATURE MADE OF ROCK.   EOM."

The terse statement was like a punch to Luffa's gut.    She had just rescued the Fedender System before rushing off to help Hexill, and Fedender was already under attack again?     And Rehval... he had told Luffa that she would hear from him sooner than she expected.    

"Well, that's a first, you miserable bastard," Luffa seethed as she set course for Fedender.    "You actually told the truth for once."

NEXT: Doublethink

[statusquoergo]

would really like to hear your thoughts on pja/mike coming back cause honestly, i’m not sure how i feel about it. it will be nice to have him back that’s for sure but with the turns this show’s took i’m slightly worried what they are gonna do with it. somehow i just can’t bring myself to be excited anymore.

Hm…Well, let me start off by saying I think it’ll be nice to see Mike again. I’mnot saying the episode will do him right, but I think the moment that heappears, assuming they don’t completely fuck it up, will have that sweetnostalgia factor that comes with favorite characters who’ve gone their own wayreturning for a guest spot. Remember when Jessica came back for Mike’scharacter and fitness hearing? She hadn’t even been gone long, but it was so coolto see her show up! “Hey, I know that person!”

Ofcourse, Mike will most certainly play a bigger role in this coming episode thanJessica did in “Character and Fitness” (s06e16)…although I don’t think it’smuch of a reach to say that whatever this case is that requires Mike, a lawyerwho is based in Seattle, to trek all the way to New York, which is on literallythe opposite side of the country and has plenty of locally practicingattorneys, will be at best a flimsy pretense. But based on the fact that Season8 went out of its way to demonstrate how far apart Harvey and Mike have grownand how much Harvey has adopted Mike’s values and habits as a means of dealingwith his absence (e.g., Harvey taking on Mike’s former client Max as he triedto prove his best friend and business partner hadn’t betrayed him [s08e02],helping Anna the cleaning woman whose mother needed an operation she couldn’tafford [s08e03], calling Mike’s voicemail after the Pavonotti case[s08e13]), two possible outcomes occur to me:

One,those adaptations will be dialed back or ignored outright and Harvey will fightlike hell to win the case no matter what, regardless of the fact that Mike isback, because he hasn’t spent the past year or whatever trying and failing tofill the hole Mike’s absence has created in his heart, what the hell are youtalking about, get out of here with your “evidence-based reasoning.” Two factorswhich might come into play here are Harvey treating Mike as his equal as a signof respect (the student has become the master), and the erasure of Harvey’sMike-related grief by way of his new relationship with Donna.

Two,those adaptations will be magnified, and Harvey and Mike, having become muchmore similar in terms of their values systems than they were at the start ofthe show, will ultimately work toward the same end of finding justice for themore morally upstanding party, regardless of which of them is defending him (orher, or them, or it; I have no idea what kind of case this is going to be).Based on Korsh’scomment that “They are on opposite sides but it doesn’t gettoo testy for the first chunk of it, and then as it ratchets up, things get alittle bit more heated,” this seems unlikely, but I suppose one never does knowwith this show.

One small caveat to the above: in light of the events of the Season 8 finale,Harvey might start the case off as his old hard-hearted self, defending hisclient regardless of moral and ethical shortcomings, only for Donna to pop inat the last moment to remind him to “do the right thing.” Maybe with a fivecents extra side helping of Guilt, if Mike’s abrupt return has somehow put himon the defensive. I hope this doesn’t happen, I really do, but it did cross mymind, so I feel like I have to put it out there.

Now, as I mentioned, I have no idea what the nature of this case willbe, nor what this episode will be about in full, but if you’ll permit me onemore moment of idealism, Korshalso said of the story: “There is more than meets the eye going on.”While I don’t trust Korsh as far as I can throw him, this does make me wonderif Mike and/or Harvey is lying about or otherwise hiding something, becausethat has the potential to be a very interesting narrative.

I would argue, based on his depiction in the first half of Season 8,that Harvey was essentially in mourning after Mike’s departure, and I’m beinggenerous when I call their farewells at the end of Season 7 unsatisfying, so ifHarvey and Mike suddenly meet up again, especially if it’s a surprise(it won’t be, Korsh said that Mike knows Harvey is involved when he signs on,but imagine the possibilities), an erosion of trust between them could play outin quite a captivating way. The foundation is already there; Mike didn’t tellHarvey about moving his and Rachel’s wedding date until the last possiblemoment, nor did he tell him that they were moving to Seattle, and as far as weknow, he didn’t return Harvey’s phone call about the Pavonotti case. He’s goingabout it terribly, but Mike is “outgrowing” Harvey, whereas for Harvey, Mike’sdeparture is death by a thousand cuts, some of them self-inflicted. They’ve gota lot to talk about.

Yeah, let’s be real, if this even sort of happens, it’ll take at leasta three-episode arc to play out properly. Nice to think about, though.

Puttingaside my wild conjecture, from a business perspective, Mike’s return does kindof make sense. I mean narratively it’s almost guaranteed to be a disaster—Korshasserts that they tried “to put some fun scenes and some emotionalscenes with Mike and the old gang,” as if they can all get right back to theirold dynamics and everyone will conveniently forget that Mike left withoutwarning and kind of really fucked them over—but speaking logistically, it hasall the hallmarks of a ratings grab.

For one thing, the show’s ratings are tanking,down from an average of 4.28M viewers in Season 1 to 1.02M in Season 8. For another, Season 8 is spent laying the foundation for the exactopposite of this happening. Harvey is shown to be, as I said, in a form ofmourning; Donna spends the first four episodes reminding Harvey that Mike isgone and not coming back; Mike goes from as many as 10 mentions per episode (episode3) to as few as zero (episode 5, 7, 10, 12). Harvey has moved on (ostensibly), theshow has moved on, and suddenly he’s coming back for…reasons? In its advertising, USAis trying to maximize the momentum of this being Suits’ final season,and publicizing now that Mike is coming back in episode 5 means thatthey can tease it until then to keep people invested until at least theseason’s halfway point.

Actually, there’s one more thing I want to bring up, speaking of Mikein Season 8. The first four episodes focus emphatically on the fact that Mikeis gone and Harvey misses him (e.g., “Is there a chance that you’reoverreacting to Mike having just left?” [s08e01]; “You meant a lot to Mike,which means you mean a lot to me” [s08e02]; “I just thought, ‘What would Mikedo?’” [s08e03]; “Donna, I might be missing Mike, but I’m not Mike” [s08e04]). Episode5 is a Mike dead zone, episode 6 gives us “Everyone leaves: Mike, Rachel,Jessica, my sister-in-law,” and then a funny thing starts to happen: Mike stopsbeing a person people miss, and starts being a point of reference. Aside fromthe phone call at the end of episode 13, most mentions of Mike in the secondhalf of the season are either about Mike’s prison sentence, and how hard it wason Harvey, or Mike’s secret, and how difficult it made life for everyone else.(Point of order, that was at least as much Harvey’s secret as it was Mike’s.)

Thereason this makes me nervous for Mike’s return in s09e05 is that, while we theaudience became invested in Mike as a character during his tenure on the show, he’sonly going to be back for a single episode (as far as we know), and not onlythat but one in which “there is more than meets the eye going on.” If this showhas any tact left at all, the conflict will be a multifaceted one, but it wouldbe jarring, to say the least, to see much of the narrative from Mike’s perspective—he’sa guest star, after all, a mere interloper in someone else’s territory—which meanswe’re probably going to see the majority of the action play out from Harvey’spoint of view. My fear is thus that Mike will be little more than an object, aconvenient shiny thing to throw our way to keep us engaged; we’ll be investedin him because we used to be, because we remember him as he was, even though henow deserves more criticism for his actions (or lack thereof) than support forwhat he might be thinking.

Of course, this is pure speculation on mypart; who knows, maybe Mike will come back and tie up all the loose ends heleft behind and we’ll all have a great time! (Well, we can hope…)

[welcometothepenumbra]

JUNO STEEL AND THE TIME GONE BY (PART TWO)

SOUND: RAIN. TRAIN ARRIVES, CREAKS TO A STOP. DOOR CLANKS OPEN.

CONDUCTOR: Ah, good evening, Traveler. And welcome… to The Penumbra.

SOUND: DOOR CLANKS SHUT.

Take your seat, please, take your seat.

MUSIC: STARTS.

The junction lies ahead, so if you’ll allow me just a moment.

SOUND: TRAIN WHISTLE.

We are now passing through the Cerberus Province.

SOUND: TRAIN MOVING.

Our next stop?

SOUND: TRAIN BRAKES.

Juno Steel and the Time Gone By.

SOUND: DOOR CLANKS OPEN, RAIN.

ALL SOUNDS: FADE OUT.

***

SOUND: BROOM SWEEPING.

JUNO: So. What’s the plan, here?

BUDDY: Shh.

JUNO: I-I can’t believe this. Your entire deal goes to hell, it turns out the ghost of girlfriends past is running around a decade past her expiration date—

BUDDY: Shhh.

JUNO: —and she’s wearing a tag that could kill her any second and we’re just sitting here?

JACKET: I’m sure your screaming makes Buddy’s thinking much faster.

JUNO: Oh, hey, was that sarcasm? Maybe the big guy’s got enough brain for a sense of humor after all.

JACKET: I have always possessed a sense of humor, Juno. You are just not funny.

JUNO: Come over here and say that—

SOUND: GLASS SHATTERS.

Whoa!

BUDDY: I asked for quiet.

JACKET: I will clean this. Would you like another drink, Buddy?

BUDDY: No thank you, darling. You may take his away as well; I believe he’s had enough.

JUNO: Hey!

SOUND: SLIDE.

BUDDY: I should hope you’d know not to drink and drive, Juno, and yet, here you are, drinking like a fish and driving me up the wall. Why are you here?

SOUND: SWEEPING UP GLASS.

JUNO: What?

BUDDY: I asked why you’re here. Your work is finished; I’ve already told you that as soon as my friend and I sort out this mess, you’ll have your eye problem seen to, and you know very well that we can find you. So, Juno. Why are you here?

JUNO (NARRATOR): The one eye uncovered by Buddy’s flaming hair was burning holes into me. It was the look that fakers like me always dread: the one that said she expected me at my best and wasn’t gonna tolerate anything else.

Only real leaders have that glare. They enforce it in different ways: Valles Vicky would destroy you, Captain Hijikata would make you destroy yourself. Ramses O’Flaherty would make you feel like the whole world was counting on you, so you’d better be good. And Buddy Aurinko, I… still didn’t know what she would do.

MUSIC: STARTS.

I didn’t know if I’d survive finding out, either. My name’s Juno Steel. I’m a private eye, and if you want to give me a panic attack in four words, ‘why are you here?’ is a pretty good place to start.

BUDDY: Well, Juno? Why are you here.

JUNO: I-I-I don’t know.

BUDDY: Yes you do. Try again, please.

JUNO: What the hell else am I gonna do?

BUDDY: That’s closer, I think, but still not quite all of it.

JUNO: What are you, my therapist?

BUDDY: There aren’t enough creds in the galaxy, darling.

So?

JUNO: (INCOHERENT MUMBLING)

SOUND: COMMS BEEP.

BUDDY: We’ll continue this discussion later, then.

Throw me the comms, darling. Then you know what to do.

JACKET: Of course.

SOUND: COMMS BEEP.

BUDDY: Buddy Aurinko speaking. To whom shall I bill this pleasure?

RASBACH (FROM COMMS): It is Rasbach. Though, ‘pleasure’ no is my word, Miss Buddy. I call you with the top, top displeasure.

BUDDY: I can’t say I understand why. We have our money, you have your cure. Everything ended as we planned.

RASBACH (FROM COMMS): Insult!

BUDDY: There were hiccups, of course, but if you want to get technical, the interloping factor was one of yours – so if anyone should be angry here, I think it’s me.

RASBACH (FROM COMMS): I am stabbed! Stabbed!

BUDDY: By a woman wearing a debtor’s tag bearing your branding. Or did you think I wouldn’t notice?

RASBACH (FROM COMMS): Ah, haha, I see. I see, now. Is just so with our sale, yes – Miss Buddy, you make the showing of honesty to harvest sympathy, make you seem the one good, yes, and yet! You conceal the details top inconvenient.

BUDDY: Oh, do I? My, how thrilling! I must be concealing them from myself as well, because I have no idea what you mean.

MUSIC: CHANGES.

RASBACH (FROM COMMS): I heard you. Before I left, I heard you say my servant’s name. Vespa.

BUDDY: (AFTER A PAUSE) If you’re waiting for some big, explosive reaction, you’ll have to supply it yourself. I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.

RASBACH (FROM COMMS): Is shame. Top shame. Vespa, she is the servant excellent. Experience medical, competence high, no looks sick, even. She has the moods violent, the sights and hearings unreal, sometime she need the restraints, but—

BUDDY: Is there a point to this?

RASBACH (FROM COMMS): Ah… forgive me. I will be brief.

The sound of your voice when you say her name, “Vespa…” it gives me the thoughts. You say Vespa as I say the names of family in Balder, yes? I have thoughts that perhaps she is important to you in this way?

BUDDY: We all have thoughts, Raz, and hardly any of them are worth the brains they’re printed on.

RASBACH (FROM COMMS): Ah, it is possible I am wrong. Your culture on these planets Solar, I do not think I will ever understand. Well, in this case, if she no is matter to you, I will continue with the protocol typical.

BUDDY: And what might that be?

RASBACH (FROM COMMS): Our servant no work for free, eh? The radiation fatal goes through her veins, but with our blood filter, ah! We fill this with spawn bacterial of Curemother, and so we give Vespa life. But is no cure permanent, of course. Curemother is rare, expensive. That is why we have you procure it at price high, I remind you, Miss Buddy, top high. If a servant violate her contract, we no can afford this. So, click! Off with filter, and begin the burning. And Miss Vespa has the death top painful. A fate sad, yes, but the contract she signed is written in terms top clear.

MUSIC: ENDS.

Miss Buddy? Do we have the disconnection?

BUDDY: (CLEARS THROAT) Excuse me, Raz. I was just… taking notes.

Doesn’t that seem a bit harsh to you, darling? A stabbing or two may be unpleasant, but, our transaction ended as intended. A second chance—

RASBACH (FROM COMMS): The Board of Fresh Starts do no give the second chances. Vespa took our care medical, she signed our contract, and she must abide. And yet, I do see your point…

Ah! The hole in loop! You see it, Miss Buddy?

BUDDY: I’m concerned that I may.

RASBACH (FROM COMMS): Should I possess the contract Vespa, a termination must occur. But contracts… they can be bought and sold, yes?

BUDDY: You… want me to buy her?

RASBACH (FROM COMMS): Her contract, Miss Buddy. Hours ago you assisted those who buy and sell the contract. This is so different, really?

BUDDY: (AFTER A PAUSE) I suppose not. It takes… stomach, this line of work. I have to say I underestimated you, Razzy.

RASBACH (FROM COMMS): Most do.

Ah! But wait, I forgot the information vital! The cost!

BUDDY: How much does a human life go for these days, Rasbach?

RASBACH (FROM COMMS): Hmm… a situation top difficult… with I explain to the company… with I cancel my appointments… with we meet today, yes, must today, I have been in Cerberus too long already, must care for the health, is vital.

Ten million creds.

BUDDY: So exactly as much as you just paid for the Curemother.

RASBACH (FROM COMMS): Ahhh, so you are certain to have it! Top convenience.

BUDDY: If you’ll allow me to think like a business vampire such as yourself for a moment, Raz, I might point out that a single worker should not be worth the same as the system by which you control all of your workers.

RASBACH (FROM COMMS): Should not, is so. Unfair, is so. But the war… it taught me much, Miss Buddy. Is fair I no see the family? Is fair they should be sick, hungry? Is no fair. Is top no fair. And yet.

BUDDY: And yet.

RASBACH (FROM COMMS): I will see you in half-hour at my office.

You are pleasure with do business to, Miss Buddy. Goodbye.

BUDDY: Goodbye, Rasbach.

SOUND: COMMS BEEP.

BUDDY: (GRUNTS)

SOUND: THUD.

JUNO: Buddy—

BUDDY: Did you catch all of that, darling?

JACKET: I have recorded it, and I can confirm Rasbach’s location. The call was made from the Cerberus Board of Fresh Starts.

BUDDY: Wonderful. An honest slave trader. Simply wonderful.

JACKET: That ten million creds is every cent we have.

BUDDY: Yes, yes, of course it is.

JUNO: Every cent you have? You started this con with nothing?

BUDDY: When we started we had plenty. But heists cost money, as does reopening a bar five years dead.

JUNO: But—

BUDDY: Juno, I am going to be direct with you. I do not have time for whatever personal revelation is currently percolating in that prefrontal cortex of yours. This job has suddenly become important to me, very important. And I want your help on it because your instincts have proven sharp, but I do not have time for your soul-searching.

I have suddenly become a very poor woman. If you come with us, I cannot give you any payment other than what you've already earned. I can promise you that Rasbach is not going to make this as easy as he says, and Vespa…

If you want to keep that head on those pretty shoulders of yours, we’d best hope Vespa does not interfere.

JUNO: This is who we’re saving, and you’re that scared of her?

BUDDY: If she’s as sharp as she used to be, I am. Medicine was not Vespa’s only specialty. Razzy didn’t mention the other, which means either she’s out of practice or else… she’s been planning this escape for a long time.

If you agree to help, I’ll tell you as much as I can on the way. But I make no promises that I will be able to say everything.

Well?

JUNO: Ughhh, fine, I’m coming.

BUDDY: I hoped as much. Dearest one, start the car.

JACKET: Yes, Buddy.

***

MUSIC: STARTS.

SOUND: CARS PASSING.

BUDDY (NARRATOR): Twenty years ago, you could clear a room by saying the names “Buddy and Vespa.” Because in a lot of places, especially in the former Outer Rim before the war drained it of everything it had, those names meant something. They meant style, and flashy heists, and holdups at banks that boasted they could never be held up. Buddy and Vespa, Vespa and Buddy – my, we were a pair. Stars.

Until we fell. As stars so often do.

SOUND: RUNNING FOOTSTEPS, GUNFIRE.

VESPA: I’m tryin’ to hold them off Bud, but, out in the open like this, I’ve got noth— Ah!

BUDDY: Vespa?

VESPA: (GASPS)

BUDDY: Vespa darling, keep your balance, it’s only a few more steps and this is far too high to—

VESPA: Buddy… oh.

SOUND: THUD.

BUDDY: Vespa! No! (CALLING) Vespa!

BUDDY (NARRATOR): But then perhaps that’s a bit personal, darling; after all, we’ve only known each other a few hours.

JUNO: I think personal boundaries left the station when you got your goon to start spyin’ on me.

JACKET: I am my own goon.

JUNO: Oh, congratulations. Listen, if you’re gonna tell me this story, tell it right. You lived in the Cerberus Province long enough to build up a bar and a dedicated clientele, but you’re worried Vespa might’ve been down here for five years? You two must have called this place home way longer than that.

BUDDY (NARRATOR): Home is not always the place you live, Juno. Now hush, I’m telling a story.

We rarely slept in the Cerberus Province, if that’s what you’re asking. But this was always where we came back after a job to sell whatever we’d earned, and do whatever deals needed doing… and that meant, we only ever saw it once the danger had passed. We’d fly low over the volcanoes and see the lighthouse, twinkling in the distance… and that, darling, that was home. No matter how tired we were, no matter how late it was, Vespa and I would always watch through the window when the lighthouse went by.

That was our life for years. Then, there was a night, I remember, when the lighthouse was not lit when we returned, and Vespa… found that difficult.

VESPA: Something’s wrong. Bud, do you ever feel like… you ever feel like we’re just doomed?

BUDDY: In the sense of going to age and eventually die? Never.

VESPA: (SIGHS) I just feel like I can feel it. Something bad.

BUDDY: Feel you can feel! Well.

VESPA: Stop.

BUDDY: (AFTER A PAUSE) Oh come on, Vespa. You know I’m sorry. You just get so superstitious sometimes and I—

VESPA: I– I said stop!

I mean, we’d have signed up for it, right? A life like this, running from the cops, sprinting from adrenaline kick to kick, we– we’re gonna get caught! Separated, probably.

BUDDY: Vespa, that isn’t going to—

VESPA: If you’re so positive of that, you shouldn’t mind me talkin’ about it.

There.

BUDDY: There what, darling?

VESPA: If it goes wrong… no, when it goes wrong, we’ll meet there. The lighthouse. No matter what.

BUDDY: Vespa…

VESPA: I can just feel it. It’s coming soon, alright? I know it is. I know it.

Just agree. Please? If you’re so sure I’m wrong, what do you care?

BUDDY: Of course, darling.

I love you.

VESPA: And some days I even know it.

BUDDY: Every superstitious inch of you.

SOUND: THEY KISS.

BUDDY (NARRATOR): I don’t know how long it was – months or years – but everything ends eventually. It doesn’t matter how young and invincible you feel; everything ends, eventually.

Our last job was in the Outer Rim. On Balder. A bank job of a kind we’d done a thousand times before, but…

SOUND: RUNNING FOOTSTEPS, GUNFIRE.

VESPA: I’m tryin’ to hold them off Bud, but, out in the open like this, I’ve got noth— Ah! (GASPS)

BUDDY: Vespa?

BUDDY (NARRATOR, OVER THE LINES BELOW): We must have missed a guard. And then, as we were running across the bridge that linked the two bank towers, where our ship was going to pick us up…

BUDDY: Vespa darling, keep your balance, it’s only a few more steps and this is far too high to—

VESPA: Buddy… oh.

BUDDY: Vespa! No! (CALLING) Vespa!

JUNO: She fell off the bridge.

BUDDY (NARRATOR): She did.

JUNO: How tall was the tower?

BUDDY (NARRATOR): Two hundred and fifty stories. The capital of Balder is known for its highscrapers – the city high above and the city far below.

The next laser came for me.

SOUND: BLASTER SHOT. GASP.

And, unfortunately, I did not fall.

VOICES: Pastasi bin-bin das! Basqueesa Vespa? Ovelisan das mivi! Ove, ove!

BUDDY (NARRATOR): In the end I suppose it’s lucky that I wasn’t wearing a stunproof vest. I would most likely have jumped after her if I had.

JUNO: Two hundred and fifty stories…

BUDDY (NARRATOR): It is remarkable, yes. But she’s survived worse. She has… a talent for field medicine.

SOUND: CLICK.

But even so, five years of radiation…

SOUND: MORE CLICKS.

JACKET: We’ve arrived at the Board of Fresh Starts.

JUNO: Wait, hang on. I still have questions.

SOUND: CLICKS, FOOTSTEPS.

BUDDY: (SNAPS OUT OF NARRATOR MODE) And it seems you will continue to have them. Our welcome wagon is on its way.

JUNO: What—

SOUND: GUN COCKING.

MUSIC: ENDS.

Oh wow, that’s a gun in my ribs, that happened fast.

VOICE 10: Come wiz me, please.

BUDDY: And who are you, precisely?

JUNO: And the hell is that blaster for? I didn’t even do anything!

VOICE 10: Vas menta…? Vis… ehpeesu…

JUNO: What?

VOICE 10: Come wiz me, please.

BUDDY: Rasbach has sent us security we can’t negotiate with. I remember hardly any Balder at all.

JUNO: I speak the language his gun is talking just fine.

BUDDY: Then I’d recommend you listen to it, Juno.

SOUND: FOOTSTEPS.

JUNO (NARRATOR): The Board of Fresh Starts office didn’t look like anything special and that surprised me, at first. Then I remembered that the people in charge of this place almost never set foot here. They were probably all partying it up on some solid-gold space station with radiation shields to go around. Let the poor get sick. Let the workers burn. Standard business practice, really.

It was a short walk to Rasbach’s office. He was… a little too excited to see us. Even accounting for the bottle of contraband painkillers on his desk.

SOUND: DOOR OPENS.

MUSIC: STARTS.

RASBACH: Ah, our guests top desirable! Please, have the seat, have the seat.

Hasslanna mivi das muu.

BUDDY: A bit rude to leave us out of the conversation, don’t you think?

RASBACH: Ah, they no said it? Rudeness, rudeness. Ah, but, is rule top vital. Your… ehm, what is the word… mivi, eh, mivi, eh… Pow, pow! You see?

JUNO: You want us to give up our guns.

RASBACH: Is so, yes. Weapons, they cause the meeting previous end, eh, no good. We do without now.

BUDDY: If that’s the price.

Hand them over.

SOUND: RUSTLING, SEVERAL CLANGS, METAL CLATTERING.

RASBACH: My, ah, is look heavy.

SOUND: ONE LAST CLATTER.

Hah– eh… (CLEARS THROAT) Das mivi ehpeesu.

SOUND: FOOTSTEPS DEPARTING.

Ah, i-is rudeness. I told my servant to—

BUDDY: To leave, yes. Can we conduct business now?

RASBACH: We wait. We wait… and…

SOUND: DOOR CLOSES.

Now business may begin.

BUDDY: Alright. Just like our last sale: instant transference through our comms, verbal confirmation, fingerprint identification. Ten million creds from my account in exchange for the code to Vespa’s blood filtration bracelet.

RASBACH: Ah, yes, uh, the creds… But of course, if they no tell you they take the gun…

You look this, eh?

SOUND: GRUNT, CLUNK.

BUDDY: That’s the Curemother I sold you, yes.

RASBACH: Yes, yes. But the lock to this case, you see…

SOUND: CLICK, HUM.

Is broken. Is goods defective you give me.

BUDDY: It’s not broken. It’s unlocked. You’ve unlocked it. And the Curemother is fine; it’s still glowing, you—

RASBACH: Is require more payments.

SOUND: CLUNK. HUM STOPS.

Fixing lock, the tests verification on Curemother… this take money. Then the interest, the damages, the market shifting…

BUDDY: How much?

RASBACH: Should be… twenty million creds.

BUDDY: (AFTER A PAUSE) Well, then.

I think that’s the end of this meeting.

RASBACH: Eh? The end?

BUDDY: There’s no sense in doing business with someone who’s kidding you. Goodbye.

SOUND: FOOTSTEPS.

RASBACH: You will not leave! Here! Here, is her blood filter code on my comms now!

I will deactivate this. This Vespa, she will die!

SOUND: FOOTSTEPS STOP.

Ten million creds may come again, but… once dead, is no second chance. This we both know well, Miss Buddy. And if you no stop, Vespa will die.

BUDDY: Razzy. This money isn’t going to your company, is it?

RASBACH: (NERVOUS LAUGH) Wel– uh…

BUDDY: Well. You really do look out for your family, don’t you?

RASBACH: Is no the question, Miss Buddy. The question is: do you?

BUDDY: I don’t have twenty million creds.

RASBACH: Then… your ship. You no live in Cerberus Province, yes? Yet you conduct the theft Curemother. You have spaceship. The deed, you will transfer it to me, plus the code for briefcase.

This the cost final.

BUDDY: Sold.

RASBACH: Eh? R-really? You are certain?

BUDDY: I’m certain. Have you set up the sale or would you like me to do it?

RASBACH: You Solar peoples… I never understand.

JUNO: To be fair, I’m from here too and I don’t get it, either.

RASBACH: I will set up the sale, of course.

SOUND: BEEPS.

Read. Here.

BUDDY: Seems to be in order.

RASBACH: This I no will risk, Miss Buddy.

BUDDY: I can tell.

RASBACH: Now, for code words.

I, Rasbach the Eldest, Agent… uh, I consent to this transaction.

BUDDY: I consent to this transaction.

RASBACH: My thumb.

SOUND: BEEP.

And now… yours.

Miss Buddy, you are no hesitate?

BUDDY: Of course not. Just taking a moment to say farewell to my life savings.

JACKET: Buddy…

JUNO (NARRATOR): But it didn’t matter what the big guy said. Before he could stop her, or she could stop herself, she held out her thumb.

Aaaaaand that’s when all hell broke loose.

SOUND: ALARMS.

RASBACH: Basqueesy!

JUNO: The hell is that?

JACKET: Security alarm. Utgard-Lockhouse brand. There is an intruder on the premises.

RASBACH: No now, no now!

JUNO: What the hell is going on?

RASBACH: Quiet! You think you getting the better of me, Miss Buddy; but I am the one of top control!

SOUND: COMMS BEEP.

Das mivi! Ovelisan das mivi, das— (CHOKING)

SOUND: HEAVY BREATHING. CLUNK. THUD.

BUDDY: (PANTING) Well. That was… very satisfying.

JACKET: Would you like me to kill him?

BUDDY: No, no. I wouldn’t want to deny his children a father, and I wouldn’t want to deny myself the splitting headache he’s going to have when he wakes up.

JUNO: Wow, uh, Buddy, you timed this out really well. The alarm, the backup – for, a minute there I thought you really were gonna give away everything you own. That was a hell of a con.

BUDDY: I’d like to correct you on two fronts, Juno, but I’m afraid I’ll have to do it quickly, because we haven’t much time: first, my timing was off by around five seconds, because I really did give away everything I own. And second: this is what we in the business of crime would refer to not as a con, but a worst case scenario.

JUNO: Then… wait, what?

BUDDY: Darling, take the door. You are not to let her leave here. I’ve lost her once, I will not lose her again.

JACKET: Understood.

BUDDY: Juno, take the Curemother’s case and hide yourself and Rasbach. In a moment the lights are going to go out. You must be gone by then.

JUNO: This is… Vespa? Wh-why are you so afraid of her? What’s she gonna do?

BUDDY: Do you remember when I told you Vespa had two specializations? The second was assassinations.

JUNO: What!

BUDDY: We’re fresh out of time, darling. The case!

JUNO (NARRATOR): The lights flickered.

SOUND: BZZZT.

I grabbed the briefcase and grabbed Rasbach, and right as I slid under the desk, they went out for good.

SOUND: POWERING DOWN. SILENCE. DOOR CREAKS OPEN.

BUDDY: Vespa?

It’s me, Vespa. It’s Buddy. And it’s all going to be alright now.

Vespa?

You know what to do.

SOUND: FOOTSTEPS.

JACKET: (BIG GRUNT)

SOUND: RUSTLING.

She… is not here.

SOUND: BLADE UNSHEATHING. SWISH, WET THUMP.

JACKET: (PAINED GROAN)

SOUND: THUD.

BUDDY: Vespa! Stop it!

SOUND: FOOTSTEPS.

VESPA: You stop it. (GRUNTS)

SOUND: BLADE SCHING. RUSTLING.

BUDDY: Vespa! What are you—

VESPA: I said stop it! (GROWLS)

SOUND: RUSTLING. BLADE SCHING.

Your voice, your…! Aghhh! I stopped imagining you, I stopped!

BUDDY: Imagining… you mean—

SOUND: BLADE SCHING.

VESPA: Yahhhh!

BUDDY: Vespa! I am not a hallucination. It’s me, it’s Buddy, and you’re my—

VESPA: Don’t! (GROWLS)

SOUND: THUD.

BUDDY: Oof!

VESPA: (BIG GROWL)

(PANTING) I stopped hearing you. I finally got over you, finally. And now, today, the day I was going to be free… I was done with this. I was done.

BUDDY: (GASPING) Vespa…

VESPA: (GROWLS) You aren’t real! Get out of my head!

SOUND: GRUNTS, FOOTSTEPS, BLADE SCHINGS, RUSTLING.

VESPA: (BIG GROWL)

SOUND: THUD.

BUDDY: (GASPING, CHOKING)

VESPA: Stop it. Stop doing that!

BUDDY: (GASPING) Vespa…

VESPA: (GROWLS)

SOUND: RUBBER STRETCHING.

BUDDY: (CHOKING) V-ves– pa…

JUNO (NARRATOR): And in the dark, all I could do was listen to Buddy Aurinko die at the hands of the woman she loved. The last seconds of a tragedy repeated twice.

I felt like this had always been my problem and I was never going to escape it, just standing and watching while a life gets taken away.

TURBO (ECHOING): The good guys always win!

JUNO (NARRATOR): Nothing different. The same old mistakes. Always.

THEIA: Projection: if you do nothing. She will die.

Would you like me to activate. Nightvision mode?

JUNO (NARRATOR): And there it was. That voice inside my head, telling me that changing was pointless, telling me that you might as well be a puppet to whoever or whatever wants to control you because hell, at least a puppet doesn’t have to think. A puppet just listens to the strings, goes where the pulling takes it, so – just give up. Why not?

THEIA: The target. Is dying.

JUNO (NARRATOR): You can’t change the past.

You can’t even change the present, really, because all you’ve got is that little corner of this moment you happen to have your hands on.

But that corner? Your little part in this great big present? You can pull that any way you want, and maybe it won’t work, but… hell, if you’ve got it, why not pull?

So I ignored the Theia, and I opened up the Curemother, and its weird glowing light spilled out into the room.

SOUND: HISS.

VESPA: What the…

BUDDY: (CHOKING) Vespa… please… (BIG BREATH)

VESPA: Oh!

BUDDY: (GASPING)

VESPA: No! No, no, no, no, no! You’re… you’re gone.

BUDDY: (COUGHING) I was, Vespa. But I’m back.

VESPA: You were gone, gone…

BUDDY: I waited for you. I swear I did.

VESPA: At the lighthouse, for months… but you weren’t… you weren’t…

No… no, this is just what I want to hear. Damn it, V, pull yourself together! This is the day – you’re finally gonna escape and this is the day you crack? Damn it, damn it, damn it! They’re gonna get you, you idiot!

BUDDY: Vespa, I’m here! I’m real. And you’re safe, now. Those awful people don’t have your code anymore, and we have the Curemother. I’ll give you your contract. You’ll be safe.

VESPA: Safe? (BITTER LAUGH) Always gives itself away eventually. Damn radiation. Damn it, damn it!

BUDDY: Vespa…? I couldn’t lose you again.

SOUND: FOOTSTEPS.

VESPA: Just get the Curemother and go, V. Past’s gone. Dead are dead. No getting back fifteen years.

BUDDY: No. I suppose there isn’t, is there?

Juno, slide her the case. Be careful not to lock it.

JUNO: Buddy—

BUDDY: And if you say a second word about it you might not survive to your third.

JUNO: (GRUNTS)

SOUND: SLIDE.

VESPA: The Curemother.

SOUND: FOOTSTEPS.

BUDDY: (QUIETLY) Vespa…

(CALLING) Vespa… Vespa, if you can hear me in there… I just want you to know that I tried. I did. And I know that time’s passed us, darling, I know, but—

I would like to try this again. Even if those fifteen years are gone, even if we’re new people, you and I, or ghosts, or… I’d like to see how these new people get along. I… just want to try.

SOUND: RUSTLING, CLUNK.

JUNO: Lights out again. Buddy, you alright?

BUDDY: (CALLING) If you want to try with me, I’ll meet you at our spot. Tonight, at sunset. The place I should have met you years ago.

I’m so sorry we lost this time, Vespa; if I could have it back—

SOUND: BZZZT.

JUNO: The lights are back.

BUDDY: …And she’s gone.

SOUND: FOOTSTEPS.

Darling, are you alright?

SOUND: RUSTLING.

JACKET: I am fine. I have been lightly stabbed, but it is not concerning.

JUNO: Oh, is that all?

BUDDY: I think we really ought to leave, now.

JUNO: But… what about your money? A-and your ship?

BUDDY: They’re Rasbach’s, now. We’d need his consent to get them back, and… he’d certainly never give it.

JACKET: Would you like me to—

BUDDY: Kill him? Ha!

No. Killing one of the million middlemen with dreams above their paygrades won’t save a single soul in Cerberus. Let’s leave now. I think I owe you the rest of a story, Juno; and we have somewhere to be by sunset.

JUNO: The lighthouse?

BUDDY: The lighthouse.

***

MUSIC: STARTS.

BUDDY: I served eight years in the Balder Central Penitentiary after our heist fell apart, watching the faces of new inmates for her… but she never came. Then I was out. I got my hands on the money I’d saved for myself and bought a ticket back to the Cerberus Province, as promised. And I waited.

JACKET: For two years.

BUDDY: Well, so much for being allowed to keep one’s own secrets.

JACKET: He wouldn’t have believed you if you said it. Two years. And she went up that lighthouse every night for hours, waiting. Then I pulled her out. She was not well.

JUNO: You went up there every day? But that’s… aboveground. There’s no Dome.

JACKET: She was very sick.

JUNO: No… no, wait, hold on. Damn it, can you shut that stupid thing up?

SOUND: THUNK, CLANG. MUSIC CUTS OFF.

Two years? And that much time aboveground? You-you’d have gone nuts by now, right? You’dve lost your damn mind.

BUDDY: Everyone experiences the symptoms of radiation sickness in a slightly different order, darling. Over time one might develop hallucinations, paranoia, memory loss—

SOUND: ICE CUBES CLINKING.

—uncontrollable moods… or conditions a bit more visible.

JUNO (NARRATOR): Then Buddy Aurinko pulled back the hair covering the left side of her face, and I saw what conditions she meant.

From the cheek up, that side of her face looked like a dead body’s. Not just burned, like the woman in the street, or the people wearing those debtor’s tags – more than that. The skin was gaunt, shriveled, and gray. Pieces of it were missing. And in the middle of that ruin sat something like a camera lens, ringed in yellow – and when her other eye blinked, a mechanical shutter clicked across it, sideways.

BUDDY: Organ failure. Skin rot. Hair loss.

JUNO: Yeah, ok-okay, I get the idea.

BUDDY: Bone displacement. Food allergy – that’s all food, of course, not just the one kind.

JUNO: I said I get it!

BUDDY: (CHUCKLES) I was fortunate: the mental effects never had their way with me. And so I lived here for two years, running the lighthouse and getting criminals and Outer Rim refugees as drunk as they liked; and every single night, I would walk up the stairs of this lighthouse with dinner, and wait for my Vespa to come. I knew she wouldn’t. But what else was I going to do? Move on? (SAD LAUGH) Nobody ever moves on because they want to, darling. We move on because we’re forced to – and I only did because he forced me.

JACKET: She didn’t open at the correct time. I became concerned.

BUDDY: You took the door off its hinges.

JACKET: I was deeply concerned.

BUDDY: If he had any sense at all he would have let me die. But, instead, he took me in that car of his and drove me back from the underworld. Some top-notch medical care and a bargain-basement eye later, and I was alive. I felt sorry for myself for another five years; and when I was done with that, I called my old friend here, and offered him a job. I owed him, after all: he sold that car to pay for my eye.

JUNO: Even to afford a low-end eye, that… must’ve been a hell of a car.

JACKET: We will not discuss this.

BUDDY: And that brings us to today, darling. This is the first job of my second career – and I must say I can only hope it’s going to go in the reverse of the first. Start with tragedy, end with… comedy. Ha ha.

JUNO: So that’s how you’re hoping today goes? Comedy?

BUDDY: Given enough time and enough hurt you can laugh at anything, darling. But all things being equal I would rather have the laughter now than later.

JUNO: I just… have one last question.

BUDDY: I’ll trade you. If you answer a question of mine, I’ll answer one of yours.

JUNO: Mine’s really not that important, I’m just curious.

BUDDY: Oh, neither is mine.

JUNO: Fine, then. If—

BUDDY: I’ll ask first. Why?

JUNO: Uh– th– wha— (CLEARS THROAT) Wh-why what?

BUDDY: Why did you decide to stay and help me? You didn’t have to. We barely know each other. Yet today, a former lawman risked his life several times for a former criminal, and for all your whining you even did a good job at it, so. Why?

JUNO: Be-because…

For a few months now I’ve-I-I’ve felt… good. Not l– not, like, good-good, but— (STUTTERS, FRUSTRATED SIGH) Like maybe I was on the right track, I-I guess. An-and then, in that desert, looking back on those months and realizing, damn, I really didn’t help anyone, did I? Maybe I meant to, but— (SIGHS) I just wanted to see if I even could help you. Okay? ‘Cause I— (GROWLS)

BUDDY: Go on.

JUNO: I just wanted to… see if I could. Anymore. Help… people.

BUDDY: Well. That’s quite an answer, isn’t it?

JUNO (NARRATOR): She smiled at me then, like she’d known I’d find the answer all along. And that’s when I knew what kind of leader Buddy Aurinko was.

BUDDY: So? I believe you had a question.

JUNO: Oh. Yeah, it’s, uh… it’s gonna seem pretty dumb now.

BUDDY: I’m sure it won’t.

JUNO: Okay. Uh…

If you’re allergic to all food, what do you eat?

BUDDY: (AFTER A PAUSE) You’re right, darling. That was a dumb question.

JUNO: Yeah, I mean, I told you.

BUDDY: I think I like you, Juno. I think you’ve grown on me.

SOUND: ICE CUBES CLINKING. CLUNK.

I’m going to wait upstairs now. Help yourself to… whatever you’d like.

SOUND: FOOTSTEPS DEPARTING.

JUNO: Uhh…

JACKET: She means the top of the lighthouse.

JUNO: No, I get that, I mean… (QUIETLY) What does she eat?

JACKET: I think I will wait with her.

JUNO: Outside?

(CALLING) You and I both got stabbed today, you moron! You wanna get marinated in radiation on top of that? (GROWLS)

SOUND: FOOTSTEPS.

***

MUSIC: STARTS.

JACKET: The sun has begun to set.

JUNO: Yup.

JACKET: It is very beautiful.

JUNO: So are most things that want to kill you.

JACKET: This has not been my experience.

JUNO: (CALLING) Hey, Buddy? We almost done here? I can feel myself getting sicker.

BUDDY: (DISTANT) You’re free to leave anytime you like.

JUNO: It’s sundown. She’s not coming.

BUDDY: (DISTANT) Maybe you’re right.

JUNO: So, you gonna do anything about it?

Buddy?

JACKET: She is ignoring you.

JUNO: Shut up.

JACKET: Alright.

JUNO (NARRATOR): So we waited, and the sun kept setting.

Sunset was… really something, out here. The Domes have a blue tint – small enough that you stop seeing it, after a while, but – out here, unblocked and unblued, the sunset was wild. Alive. Like someone set fire to the sky.

And Buddy had been up here for two years, staring down that sunset. Killing herself, slowly, in the hopes that it’d bring her the only thing she’d ever really wanted.

JACKET: The sun is almost down.

You are shivering.

JUNO: Yeah, well.

JACKET: There are coats downstairs.

JUNO: (CALLING) This is pointless, Buddy! She didn’t even hear you!

God, you really have one of those music machine things up here too? Does anybody even go up here?

JACKET: Would you like me to turn it off?

JUNO: Didn’t say that.

JACKET: Hm.

JUNO (NARRATOR): So we waited, and the sun kept setting.

I-I mean, it was a pretty thought, wasn’t it? That the past could really leap back into your arms, have your love back… have your brother back.

But it was just a fantasy – and soon the sun had set, we were in the dark with nothing but soft-boiled brains to show for all our dreaming.

JACKET: The sun has set.

JUNO: I can see that, thanks.

(CALLING) Alright, Bud, show’s over, time to go home. You and I only got one eye apiece and neither one of us can afford to lose—

SOUND: LOUD POWERING UP. POP.

MUSIC: CHANGES.

JUNO (NARRATOR): The lighthouse lights came on, and… there they were. Buddy and Vespa. Vespa and Buddy.

Seeing ‘em together like this, I saw just a glimmer of who they used to be, and… there was something huge about ‘em. Something bigger than life, bigger than people, bigger than all the years they’d been apart.

Then the lights mellowed a little. And they were just two women who barely knew each other again, and the feet between them could’ve been miles.

BUDDY: Vespa… you’re really here.

VESPA: Buddy… it’s really you.

SOUND: RUNNING FOOTSTEPS. SOFT SIGHS.

BUDDY: Vespa, I’m not assuming… a kiss, it doesn’t have to mean anything, darling. We’re just going to try this, see if it works, and—

VESPA: Oh, save it, Bud.

SOUND: THEY KISS.

JACKET: Well. A happy ending.

JUNO: (SNIFFS) Yeah.

JACKET: I think it is time for us to leave, now. They have much to catch up on.

Are you crying, Juno?

JUNO: (SNIFFS) Shut up. You’re crying.

Let’s go. Whatever.

JACKET: Indeed. You are owed payment for your services. We’ll leave tonight.

JUNO: Sure. Tonight. Fine.

BUDDY & VESPA: (DISTANT, UNINTELLIGIBLE)

JUNO: Stupid music machine. Oughta be a law.

JACKET: Would you like me to turn it off before we leave?

JUNO: No, just… let it play.

Let it play.

BUDDY: (DISTANT) Darling. You wouldn’t be hungry, would you? I know a wonderful place around the corner…

(LAUGHS)

MUSIC: ENDS.

***

SOUND: TRAIN MOVING, MUSIC.

CONDUCTOR: If you’ve enjoyed this tale, please consider donating to The Penumbra on Patreon. Our artists work tirelessly to bring you these stories, and if you have the means, we hope you will support our efforts. Every dollar helps. You can find that page at patreon.com/thepenumbrapodcast. If you support us on Patreon at the $10 level or higher, you’ll receive access to commentary tracks like this one, from actors Sarah Gazdowicz, William Schuller, Chloe Cunha, and co-creator Kevin Vibert:

SOUND: TRAIN STOPS, DOOR SLIDES OPEN, RAIN.

WILLIAM: Sometimes you gotta take time out, and, figure out what the noun endings for basqueezy are.

KEVIN & SARAH: (LAUGH)

WILLIAM: And that-that’s just where you’re– where you’re at as a writer. (LAUGHS)

KEVIN: (LAUGHS) Um… yeah, I mean I know that, uh, from, from, the… from the writing perspective, uh, I really based a lot of their, like, mannerisms, a lot of the, uh, like, little side things, the patterns of their language, on a lot of my extended, uh, French family. Um, which is why you’ve got, which is why you’ve got Rasbach’s top everything…

SOUND: DOOR SLIDES SHUT.

CONDUCTOR: You can also support The Penumbra by liking us on Facebook, following us on Twitter @thepenumbrapod, following us on Tumblr @thepenumbrapodcast, telling your friends about us, telling your friends to tell their friends about us, and especially by rating and reviewing our podcast on iTunes. Every rating, comment, and kind word spreads our stories further and inspires us to keep creating more and better tales to come.

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This tale, Juno Steel and the Time Gone By, was told by the following people: Joshua Ilon as Juno Steel, Alexander Stravinski as the Man in the Brown Jacket, Sarah Gazdowicz as Buddy Aurinko, William Schuller as Rasbach, and Chloe Cunha as Vespa.

The Penumbra is created and produced by Sophie Kaner and Kevin Vibert. If you wish to know more about our ever-expanding, infinitely-creative team of artists, musicians, editors, designers, and managers, you can read about them in the show notes of this episode.

I’m afraid this is the end of the line for today, dear Traveler. We hope you will ride with The Penumbra again soon.

ALL SOUNDS: FADE OUT.

[legobiwan]

Could you continue your short piece where Obi-Wan punched his "dead" Master and went away to drink? I can just imagine the next confrontation between a drunk Obi-Wan and a guilty Qui-Gon!

This…uh…got a little out of control. Intro here, rest is under the cut! :)

———————————

It hadn’t been too difficult to find the place, despite the warnings of the grumpy Snivvian ticket taker at the turbolift station.

“Place doesn’t exist,” he had grumbled, not bothering to take his eyes from the holomagazine propped on his rather prodigious stomach, which hid all but a hint of leg attached to small boots propped on a nearby desk. “Went out of business year ago.” He punctuated the statement with a small sniffle, running a thick sleeve under his nose. The Snivvian glanced at the slimy residue on his clothing, eyeing it with a mix of trepidation and scholarly interest before wiping it on the edge of the table.

“Tissue?” Qui-gon offered, holding a spare rag in his outstretched hand. It had taken quite a while for his nose to stop bleeding, and he had stuffed some extra fabrics in his utility belt just in case it started up again.

Obi-wan, it seemed, had developed quite the right hook in his absence.

The Snivvian hadn’t been completely wrong, Qui-gon thought as he walked down the desolate side street. It certainly looked as if the place didn’t exist, being situated between a used speeder dealership and an out-of-business florist. Qui-gon paused in front of the large storefront window. Empty vases were still stacked in the display, a few dried corpses of flowers drooping from their empty mouths.

Qui-gon allowed himself a moment to wonder about the owners. Perhaps they had been the last of the native Coruscant businesses that were slowly being eaten up by off-planet interests, something he had noticed when he was alive...the first time. Most decorative floral arrangements came from imports, if he remembered correctly, as Coruscant itself boasted few native species, and even fewer that could be considered “aesthetic.” Access to off-world plants was difficult and expensive, and he imagined that was even more so now, due to the war. 

More likely they were smugglers operating a front for a more insidious business.

Qui-gon sighed at his own cynicism, letting the thought slip into the Force. He was eager to maintain some semblance of equilibrium, of balance, but a million questions whirled around his mind.

Just how long had this conflict been going on? How did it start? Who was the leader of this opposition and why?

And why were the Jedi at the center of it all, at the vanguard of the violence and suffering that had all but screamed at him through the Force when he had woken in that warehouse in The Works, heaving for air, dark cold penetrating his body?

Qui-gon paused in front of the unassuming door, reaching out with his senses. His nose tingled at the faint, sour aroma emanating from inside, highlighted by hints of cheap whiskey (although not so cheap as to strip the lining from one’s stomach) and off-brand t’bac (not quite counterfeit, but not exactly the real item, either).

It was perfect, really - a bar just mediocre enough to deter any upper-level politician while keeping away the party-goers and spice dealers of the lower levels. An ideal place to disappear and drown one’s sorrows, especially if that person was a Jedi.

Well done, Padawan.

The tension that had been wreaking havoc on Qui-gon’s body several hours earlier began again to creep up his spine, his neck tightening, shoulders hunching close to his ears. 

He could turn around and leave, wait for Obi-wan to drink whatever tumultuous emotions he was experiencing out of his system. And Qui-gon knew the next day, it would be as if nothing had happened. Obi-wan would be polite and deferential and never say a word about what had happened again. 

It would be the easier option. Obi-wan would be sent back to the front, Qui-gon kept at the Temple for questioning, and that would be the end of it.

Just like he and Dooku. A slow separation, until the man who had raised him was practically a stranger.

Qui-gon shook his head. No, he wouldn’t waste this, the chance the Force had given him to at least attempt to right whatever wrongs, whatever pain he had caused his former Padawan. 

And so with a deep breath, he threw a final prayer to the Force and pushed inside the bar. 

The space was somewhat larger than one might have guessed from seeing the outside. A smattering of tables and booths stood near the curved walls, which were adorned with the usual array of half-torn posters and advertisements. Lighting was at a premium, but Qui-gon recognized the faded glint of corroded metal - speeder parts repurposed as decor. 

How convenient.

Several patrons turned to stare at Qui-gon with deep suspicion. He swallowed over the growing lump in his throat, raising his palms in front of his body in the universal signal for peace. A Rodian in the corner narrowed his eyes and whispered to his hooded companion, who listened and then nodded. Apparently content that he was at least not a threat, the two went back to their drinks and conversation, ignoring the interloper. The others followed suit thereafter, the wary discontent rumbling through the Force now a muted disinterest.

One of the only beings to not stare at him was seated at the bar in the middle of the room, shrouded in a dirty, ragged brown cloak about his shoulders, red-brown hair shining under the one passable light in the entire bar.  He was the only human in the establishment and definitely the only other Jedi within a five-level radius.

Qui-gon quietly slid into the seat next to Obi-wan, stomach fluttering somewhere near his eyeballs.

Obi-wan was a void in the Force, so tight was the curtain he had pulled around his own presence. He said nothing as Qui-gon motioned to the bartender, indicating that he would have one of whatever Obi-wan was drinking. 

Qui-gon folded his hands together, placing them on the bar. He stared at the patterns of multi-colored stains on the counter, stealing glances to the side as he waited for his drink. Obi-wan sat, sipping the amber liquid from his own glass, staring at the walls, past the walls, possibly past the entire planet.

It was only when the Harch bartender returned with an entire bottle of what seemed to be knockoff Corellian whiskey that Obi-wan snapped out of his reverie, watching Qui-gon’s protestations with clinical detachment.

“I only wanted a glass,” Qui-gon said.

“You said you wanted what he’s having,” the bartender replied, pointing a clawed digit in Obi-wan’s direction. It was only then that Qui-gon noticed the bottle in front of Obi-wan, three-fourths empty. “And that’s what he’s been having,” he added, scuttling away with an annoyed click of his mandible.

Qui-gon regarded the bottle in equal parts trepidation and horror. Well, if I must, he relented, pouring a thumbful into a water-stained glass, downing the liquid in one go.

Fire erupted from his lungs and Qui-gon let out a strangled, pained sound as he let out a series of violent, deep hacks. His eyes watered and heat rose in his cheeks, turning his face bright red.

Dear Force, what *was* that stuff?

Obi-wan made no move to help, didn’t respond at all as Qui-gon fought to regain control over his body. It occurred to Qui-gon between gasps that this was already not going well.

He might not even want to see me again. Force, he might be a completely different man than the Padawan I raised. Certainly I misconstrued his taste in drinks, if this is any indication.

Obi-wan raised his eyebrows, as if he had heard the inner dialogue. In one swift movement, he drained the remainder of amber liquid in his glass, slamming the tumbler down on the counter with finality before turning to face Qui-gon.

“You.”

It was more an accusation than anything else, as if Qui-gon’s sudden reappearance in the realm of the living was an affront to all of Obi-wan’s sensibilities.

“Erm…” Qui-gon stuttered, all rehearsed apologies and speeches promptly forgotten under his former student’s withering glare.

Obi-wan pursed his lips and hummed before turning his attention to his empty glass, the bartender, and then the partially consumed bottle in succession. After allowing his gaze to linger, he seemed to come to a decision, taking the bottle by the neck.

Qui-gon frowned. “I don’t think that’s a very good idea,” he said, already cursing himself for his inability to keep his mouth shut.

He is an adult, not your student - if Obi-wan wants to drink himself into an early grave, let him, he thought, with no little degree of petulance. 

But Obi-wan only shot him an enigmatic smile, a bemused expression falling over his face.

“You’re right,” he said, reaching into his belt as he stood, legs shaky, bottle still in hand. Obi-wan took a handful of credits and threw them on the bar counter.

“You’re right,” he repeated, “it’s not a good idea. We should take this outside. People have an unfortunate tendency to…” Obi-wan swayed, chuckling to himself. “To be parted from their limbs in these situations.”

“The Council might throw me off if it happens again,” he added, now grinning madly as he made an uneven saunter out the door.

Qui-gon stared, open-mouthed after his former Padawan. But just as he made to follow, a scaly limb grabbed him by the shoulder.

One of six limbs.

“Haven’t seen him this bad since some business on Rattatak,” the bartender clicked, his jaw far too close to Qui-gon’s ear for comfort. “You know about any of that?”

Rattatak? What had Obi-wan been doing on that isolated, unforgiving crag?

“No,” he managed to respond. “I was…” Dead. “…on an extended mission. Very far away.”

Very extended, Qui-gon, you fool.

The Harch hammered at his shoulder twice, a gesture Qui-gon thought was supposed to be comforting.

“Well, I’m glad there’s someone looking out for him. First time I’ve seen him in here with a friend, you know? Gods knows he needs it, poor lad. War must be taking its toll mighty hard on him.”

Qui-gon grimaced. He doubted that he counted at all as “friend” right now, and the bartender’s observation only compounded his own worries. Qui-gon pulled at the collar of his tunics. It was becoming difficult to breathe in the hot and humid interior of the bar.

Possibly noticing his discomfort, the Harch gave him a final pat on the shoulder before scurrying back to his place behind the counter. Qui-gon stood motionless, uncertain of what exactly he should do, beyond emulating his student and grabbing the nearest bottle to hole up in a corner booth.

Nothing comes from indecision, Master Dooku would always say. Well, this would certainly lead to something - possibly a broken nose, Qui-gon rued as he marched out the door.

A slight breeze played on the Jedi’s face as he stepped outside, closing the door behind him. Qui-gon was grateful to be out of the bar, the cool night air already doing wonders for his tattered nerves. The corridor was no better lit than the bar itself, with most of the overhead lights out of commission, and the red emergency exit lights gave the area an eerie, portentous glow.

Where is he, Qui-gon thought, now more than a little annoyed. Obi-wan was obviously drunk, and who knows where he could have gone. Really, it was irresponsible for a Pad -

But he isn’t.

“Not for quite some time,” a familiar voice called from a dark corner.

Qui-gon stepped forward, tentative. A shadow fell over a series of posters on the wall of the former floral shop. Advertisements for certain corporeal services, shady loan agencies, invitations for modeling that were too good to be true. This wasn’t a seedy part of Coruscant, per se, but it certainly wasn’t the most reputable one, either, and Qui-gon wondered where Obi-wan picked up this particular penchant of hanging around dive bars and dark alleys.

Probably from me, he thought wryly.

“No, Obi-wan. You aren’t a Padawan anymore. Far from it, from what precious little I’ve gleaned about you in the past twenty-four hours.” And Qui-gon doesn’t mean to sound so acerbic, so bitter, but Obi-wan hasn’t exactly welcomed him with open arms, hasn’t shared a scintilla of goodwill, not even the shade of a smile at the fact that Qui-gon was alive.

No, Qui-gon got punched for his efforts.

“How nice of you to notice,” Obi-wan slurred, waving his arm in an exaggerated motion. “What gave it away? The beard? The chaos in the galaxy at large? My former student - oh,” Obi-wan fixed him with a vicious stare, his tone turning to absolute acid, “I mean to say your former Padawan, right? After all, that was the intention, was it not? Your old student, now with a student of his own?”

Obi-wan took a large swig from the bottle, lurching to the side.

“My, my how time flies when you’re dead.”

Qui-gon cringed. This was not what he envisioned, not at all how he had wanted this conversation to go, and now it was spiraling beyond his control, Obi-wan’s acrimony towards him teetering toward utter loathing - beyond what he could have possibly imagined. 

“Actually, Obi-wan, all I needed to do was read the date on the holopaper,” he replied, hoping his tone was even, that it betrayed none of his own growing feelings of discontent, that his placid demeanor would be an antidote to Obi-wan’s increasing and uncharacteristic bellicosity.

And it seemed to work - after a fashion. Obi-wan’s eyes widened - unfocused, his pupils far too dilated. And then he threw his head back and laughed, rough and wild, and Qui-gon watched in horror as Obi-wan brought the bottle to his lips again.

“So. I suppose you’ve caught up on the spiraling disasters of the galaxy, then?” The slurring was becoming more evident, Obi-wan’s normally refined, polite manner of speech devolving with each sentence.

“After a fashion.” Qui-gon forced his voice into a breezy easiness, as if they were discussing the weather. “There is war,” Qui-gon admitted, “There is suffering and destruction. The exact circumstances are still a mystery to me.”

To be honest, he hadn’t even needed to read the news to know that much. The discord in the Force - the way it wept, had contorted, had been torn, rent from the inside out - that had been all he needed, the way it had nearly bowled him over, so oppressive was the dark shadow when he came to in that dark and dusty warehouse.

“Well, let me fill in the gaps, then,” Obi-wan said, leaning his hip against a grimy cargo box. “A delightful turn of events you’ve missed here. Padawans trained to kill. Jedi Masters,” Obi-wan paused to point at himself in dramatic fashion before flipping a jaunty little salute in Qui-gon’s direction, “made Generals. The Council! Which now includes me, by the way - at the beck and call of every unsavory politician this side of Coruscant.”

Qui-gon’s chest tightened. He had feared something like this, but couldn’t imagine what had pushed Master Yoda over that cliff, what could possibly have caused the Council to go to such extraordinary lengths to placate certain factions of the Republic government. 

And Obi-wan, on the Council, for kriff’s sake! Qui-gon shook his head. He would have to meditate on that piece of information later.

Then there was Obi-wan himself, who looked tired, bordering on haggard. And while the shock of the day and excessive consumption of alcohol was no aid, Qui-gon could see the sheer fatigue etched in the creases in his Padawan’s brow, the premature crinkles near his eyes, the bitterness which crept into his voice, born of some deep metaphysical wound.

“Tell me, Qui-gon,” Obi-wan had perched himself on top of the cargo box, arms crossed, one hand holding his chin. It was such an Obi-wan posture, and it nearly sent Qui-gon to his knees. His Obi-wan, not the man who exuded such sadness, such naked hostility behind his powerful Jedi Master persona.

“Did you speak well of me?”

Qui-gon’s jaw nearly hit the ground, and he brought a hand to the back of his own neck to protect himself against the emotional whiplash this conversation was giving him.

At least we’re talking, Qui-gon thought, even if Obi-wan is three syncloths to the Tatooine sandstorm right now. Plus, he hasn’t tried to punch me. Yet.

“I always spoke well of you, Pad - Obi-wan,” Qui-gon replied, hedging his bets in a game where the rules were everchanging.

Obi-wan snorted in response, laughing at some inside joke with himself.

“Let me rephrase the question then. Did you speak highly of me to Dooku?”

Qui-gon grabbed the edge of a nearby wall to steady himself.

Dooku? What in nine Corellian hells does my former Master have to do with this all?

“I - I did. I mean, the last time we spoke - it was quite some time ago, Obi-wan, and we weren’t all that close. But yes, I did speak very highly of you. About your intellect, your political savvy, your acerbic wit, your dueling skills in the Ataru form - “

“Soresu,” Obi-wan interrupted, all humor drained from his voice. “Soresu form.”

Qui-gon quirked an eyebrow. Something else to be unpacked at a later time. “Yes, well, what I mean to say is that I had plenty to say about you. I was - and am - very proud of you, Obi-wan.”

Obi-wan stared in his direction, his expression gone suddenly blank.

Damn it, thought Qui-gon, this isn’t working. He took a large breath.

“And perhaps,” Qui-gon added quietly, “I would have done well to express that to you more often, it seems.”

An uncomfortable silence fell over the two men. Qui-gon willed himself to reign in his whirling emotions, his tense desire to have Obi-wan acknowledge him, to give some kind of validation that all their time together hadn’t been for naught, hadn’t culminated in…in this.

Obi-wan returned Qui-gon’s plaintive look and for a moment, Qui-gon could swear he saw Obi-wan’s eyes soften, could feel the ragged tension in the Force abate just a bit.

But it disappeared in an instant, the now-too-familiar hardness returning to Obi-wan’s eyes as he drained the rest of the bottle in his hand.

“That explains a few things about Dooku, I suppose,” he muttered darkly.

Cold disappointment flooded through Qui-gon. He hunched over, defeated, taking a seat on another pile of cargo boxes. This was it, then. Returned to life to face the rejection of the one man he was certain would be pleased to see him, the one person who Qui-gon knew he had failed, and needed to make it up to.

Qui-gon rubbed his face with his hand.

“I thought you’d be happy to see me,” he uttered miserably.

“Happy?” Obi-wan responded. The Force stirred, not unlike it had right before Obi-wan had launched his fist into Qui-gon’s face. 

“Bic ni skana’din,” Obi-wan hissed, gripping the empty bottle with whitening knuckles. 

“Damn it all!” he yelled a second later, chucking the bottle at the wall, where it broke into a thousand pieces. “Happy?!? Yes, of course I’m kriffing happy, Qui-gon!” Obi-wan exclaimed, the seal to his pent-up frustrations now broken. “I’m also confused, angry, and - I can say this since I’m kriffing drunk - terrified!”

“You waltz right back in here, like nothing ever happened! And now what? Will you take Anakin under your wing like you always intended? Fix all my teaching mistakes, which I assure you are plenty. Will you go and convince Dooku to return from his sojourn to the kriiffing Sith? Tell him, ‘I’m alive, it’s okay, the Jedi weren’t complicit in my murder, they didn’t ask you all most affected to keep your mouths shut and lie for years!’”

Qui-gon froze, something unnamable clawing up from his gut. The world tilted on its axis until it fell, all the way down and back again, until everything inverted and black was white, good was evil and nothing was what it seemed.

Dooku, a Sith?

Obi-wan made a frustrated gesture, his voice dropping to a jagged whisper, not content to leave Qui-gon be. “Maybe then he’ll stop harassing me to join him, will stop invoking your memory every time we meet, will stop playing mind games with me because there’s an awful part of me that knows he’s kriffing right.“

And the Force was stirring, uneven waves growing higher and higher as Obi-wan now came to face-to-face with Qui-gon, his gestures wild, voice growing steadily in volume.

“But why stop there, why not go and avenge your own death since I couldn’t. Go find the Sith - whose name is Darth Maul, by the way - who is very inconveniently still alive and has spent the last year haunting me, killing innocents in my name in some bizarre revenge scheme, gutting Satine in front of my very eyes ALL BECAUSE YOU COULDN’T WAIT TEN DAMN SECONDS IN A REACTOR SHAFT ON NABOO!”

Obi-wan grabbed Qui-gon’s tunics, pushing the man hard into the nearby wall. Qui-gon’s head made a sickening crack as a jolt of pain traveled down his spine. Qui-gon prepared himself for another fist to the face, and this time he couldn’t even blame Obi-wan. Oblivion would be kinder than this reality.

Obi-wan released him with a scowl, weaving under the influence of emotions and alcohol, fists clenched and the Force was a maelstrom and then -

Obi-wan collapsed onto his knees and vomited.

Qui-gon remained frozen, watching the sorry tableau play out in front of him. Strained retching alternated with half-broken sobs as Obi-wan’s body fought the effects of the alcohol, of his outburst. After one final heave, Obi-wan sighed, eyes rolling in the back of his head and he passed out on the ground.

The sound of Obi-wan’s body hitting the pavement broke the spell. Qui-gon rushed to his former Padawan’s side, gathering the man in his arms, muttering long-forgotten words of comfort, phrases that brought to mind the phantom of a twelve-year old boy with bright ginger hair. 

Qui-gon sat Obi-wan against the wall. Damp hair clung to the younger man’s forehead, and Qui-gon pushed it away, not caring about the vile mixture of sweat, vomit, and cheap alcohol that permeated his senses as he pulled the younger man closer.

In life - well, his previous stint at life - Qui-gon had been no healer, but now he placed a palm on Obi-wan’s head, using his still-paltry Force reserves to send a cool flow through his Padawan’s body. The effect was instantaneous - Obi-wan’s breathing evened, his pulse steadying, no longer erratic, skipping and hopping in frenzy. It would do nothing for the massive hangover the man would have tomorrow, but at least he could rest in some degree of comfort now.

The terrible deluge of accusations and confessions threatened to rise from Qui-gon’s gut, to reach out and rend him to pieces. Qui-gon took a shaky breath,  carefully swallowing each one. The taste was sour and unpleasant, like a terrible medicine. Qui-gon would not release these thoughts into the Force - no, not yet. Not before the wounds they both carried were drained, the infections treated, the connecting tissues grown anew.

He owed this much to Obi-wan. 

But for now, rest. He called Ahsoka on the communicator, informing her of their location and providing a delicate, mostly-truthful explanation of Obi-wan’s state. The young Togruta had a good head on her shoulders, and Qui-gon already sensed she would grow to be a fine Jedi Master, a testament to both Anakin and Obi-wan’s instruction. Even though Qui-gon had only known her for a few scant hours, he trusted her discretion in this situation.

Qui-gon sighed, a wave of fatigue crashing through his body as the adrenaline of the confrontation waned. He wrapped an arm around the crumpled form of his former Padawan, resting Obi-wan’s head on his own shoulder, threading his fingers through the man’s hair.

“I am so sorry, Obi-wan,” he whispered to the unconscious Jedi in his arms.

[teshknowledgenotes]

THE LESSONS OF HISTORY – WILL & ARIEL DURANT NOTES

THE LESSONS OF HISTORY – WILL & ARIEL DURANT NOTES WHY? Ray Dalio always recommends this book and I do enjoy reading about History a lot. NOTES 1) Hesitations To begin with, do we really know what the past was, what actually happened, or is history “a fable” not quite “agreed upon”? Our knowledge of any past event is always incomplete, probably inaccurate, beclouded by ambivalent evidence and biased historians, and distorted by our own patriotic or religious partisanship. “Most history is guessing, and the rest is prejudice” Even the historian who thinks to rise above partiality for his country, race, creed or class betrays his secret predilection in his choice of materials, and in the nuances of his adjectives. “The historian always oversimplifies and hastily selects a manageable minority of facts and faces out of a crowd of souls and events whose multitudinous complexity he can never quite embrace or comprehend.” Again, our conclusion from the past to the future are made more hazardous than ever by the acceleration of change.

Every year sometimes, in war, every month some new invention, method, or situation compels a fresh adjustment of behaviour and ideas. Furthermore, an element of chance, perhaps of freedom, seems to enter into the conduct of metals and men. We are no longer confident that atoms, much less organisms, will respond in the future as we think they have responded in the past.

Obviously historiography cannot be a science. It can only be an industry, an art, and a philosophy, an industry by ferreting out the facts, an art by establishing a meaningful order in the chaos of materials, a philosophy by seeking perspective and enlightenment. The present is the past rolled up for action, and the past is the present unrolled for understanding. In philosophy we try to see the part in the light of the whole, in “the philosophy of history” we try to see this moment in the light of the past. We know that in both cases this is a counsel of perfection, total perspective is an optical illusion. We do not know the whole of man’s history, there were probably many civilizations before the Sumerian or the Egyptian, we have just begun to dig! We must operate with partial knowledge and be provisionally content with probabilities in history, as in science and politics, relativity rules, and all formulas should be suspect. History smiles at all attempts to force its flow into theoretical patters or logical grooves, it plays havoc with our generalizations, breaks all our rules, history is baroque. Perhaps within these limits we can learn enough from history to bear reality patiently, and to respect one another’s delusions.

Since man is a moment in astronomic time, a transient guest of the earth, a spore of his species, a scion of his race, a composite of body, character, and mind, a member of a family and a community, a believer or doubter of a faith, a unit in an economy, perhaps a citizen in a state or a soldier in an army, we may ask under the corresponding heads – astronomy, geology, geography, biology, ethnology, psychology, morality, religion, economics, politics, and war. What history has to say about the nature, conduct and prospects of man. It is a precarious enterprise, and only a fool would try to compress a hundred centuries into a hundred pages of hazardous conclusions. We proceed.

2) History & The Earth Geography is the matrix of history, its nourishing mother and disciplining home. Its rivers, lakes, oases, and oceans draw settlers to their shores, for water is the life of organisms and towns, and offers inexpensive roads for transport and trade. Egypt was “the gift of the Nile”, and Mesopotamia built successive civilizations “between the rivers” and along their effluent canals. India was the daughter of the Indus, the Brahmaputra and the Ganges, China owed it’s life and sorrows to the great rivers that (like ourselves) often wandered from their proper beds and fertilized the neighbourhood with their overflow. Italy adorned the valleys of the Tiber, the Arno, and the Po. Austria grew along the Danube, Germany along the Elbe and the Rhine.

The development of the airplane will again alter the map of civilization. Trade routes will follow less and less the rivers and seas, men and goods will be flown more and more directly to their goal. Countries like England & France will lose the commercial advantage of abundant coast lines conveniently indented, countries like Russia, China, and Brazil which were hampered by the excess of their land mass over their coasts, will cancel part of that handicap by taking to the air. Coastal cities will derive less of their wealth from the clumsy business of transferring goods from ship to train or from train to ship. When sea power finally gives place to air power in transport and war, we shall have seen one of the basic revolutions in history.

The influence of geographic factors diminishes as technology grows. The character and contour of a terrain may offer opportunities for agriculture, mining, or trade but only the imagination and initiative of leaders, and the hardy industry of followers, can transform the possibilities into fact, and only a similar combination can make a culture take form over a thousand natural obstacles. Man, not the earth, makes civilization.

3) Biology & History History is a fragment of biology: the life of man is a portion of the vicissitudes of organisms on land and sea. Sometimes, wandering alone in the woods on a summer day, we hear or see the movement of a hundred species of flying, leaping, creeping, crawling, burrowing things. The startled animals scurry away at our coming, the birds scatter, the fish disperse in the brook. Suddenly  we perceive to what a perilous minority we belong on this impartial planet, and for a moment we feel, as these varied denizens clearly do, that we are passing interlopers in their natural habitat. Then all the chronicles and achievements of man fall humbly into the history and perspective of polymorphous life, all our economic competition, our strife for mates, our hunger and love and grief and war, are akin the the seeking, mating, striving and suffering that hide under these fallen trees or leaves, or in the waters, or on the boughs.

Therefore the laws of biology are the fundamental lessons of history. We are subject to the processes and trials of evolution, to the struggle for existence and the survival of the fittest to survive. If some of us seem to escape the strife or the trials it is because our group protects us, but that group itself must meet the tests of survival.

So the first biological lesson of history is that life is competition. Competition is not only the life of trade, it is the trade of life, peaceful when food abounds, violent when the mouths outrun the food. Animals eat on another without qualm, civilized men consume one another by due process of law. Co-operation is real, and increases with social development, but mostly because it is a tool and form of competition, we co-operate in our group, our family, our community, club, church, party, “race”, or nation, in order to strengthen our group in its competition with other groups. Competing groups have the qualities of competing individuals, acquisitiveness, pugnacity, partisanship, pride. Our states being ourselves multiplied, are what we are, they write our natures in bolder type, and do our good and evil on an elephantine scale. We are acquisitive, greedy, and pugnacious because our blood remembers millenniums through which our forebears had to chase and fight and kill in order to survive, and had to eat to their gastric capacity for fear they should not soon capture another feast. War is a nation’s way of eating. It promotes co-operation because it is the ultimate form of competition. Until our states become members of a large and effectively protective group they will continue to act like individuals and families in the hunting stage.

The second biological lesson of history is that life is selection. In the competition for food or mates or power some organisms succeed and some fail. In the struggle for existence some individuals are better equipped than others to meet the tests of survival.

The third biological lesson of history is that life must breed. Nature has no use for organisms, variations, or groups that cannot reproduce abundantly. She has a passion for quantity as prerequisite to the selection of quality, she likes large litters, and relishes the struggle that picks the surviving few, doubtless she looks on approvingly at the upstream race of a thousand sperms to fertilize on ovum. She is more interested in the species than in the individual, and makes little difference between civilization and barbarism. She does not care that a high birth rate has usually accompanied a culturally low civilization, and a low birth rate of civilization culturally high and Natures sees to it that a nation with a low birth rate shall be periodically chastened by some more virile and fertile group. Gaul survived against the Germans through the help of Roman legions in Caesar’s days, and through the help of British and American legions in our time. When Rome fell the Franks rushed in from Germany and made Gaul France, if England and America should fall, France, whose population remained almost stationary through the nineteenth century, might again be overrun.

There is a limit to the fertility of the soil, every advance in agricultural technology is sooner or later cancelled by the excess of births over deaths, and meanwhile medicine, sanitation, and charity nullify selection y keeping the unfit alive to multiply their like. To which hope replies: the advances of industry, urbanization, education, and standards of living, in countries that now endanger the world by their fertility, will probably have the same effect there , in reducing the birth rate, as they have had in Europe and North America. Until that equilibrium of production  and reproduction comes it will be a counsel of humanity to disseminate the knowledge and means of contraception. Ideally parentage should be a privilege of health, not a by-product of sexual agitation.

In the United States the lower birth rate of the Anglo-Saxons has lessened their economic and political power, and the higher birth rate of Roman Catholic families suggests that by the year 2000 the Roman Catholic Church will be the dominant force in national as well as in municipal or state governments.

4) Race & History

5) Character & History

Evolution in man during recorded time has been social rather than biological, it has proceeded not by heritable variations in the species but mostly by economic, political, intellectual and moral innovation transmitted to individuals and generations by imitation, custom or education. Custom and tradition within a group correspond to type and heredity in the species and to instincts in the individual, they are ready adjustments to typical and frequently repeated situations. New situations however do arise, requiring novel, unstereotyped responses, hence development in the higher organisms, requires a capacity for experiment and innovation, the social correlates of variation and mutation. Social evolution is an interplay of custom with organization.

Intellect is a vital force in history, but it can also be a dissolvent and destructive power. Out of every hundred new ideas ninety-nine or more will probably be inferior to the traditional responses which they propose to replace. No one man, however brilliant or well-informed, can come in one lifetime to such fullness of understanding as to safely judge and dismiss the customs or institutions of his society, for these are the wisdom of generations after centuries of experiment in the laboratory of history. A youth boiling with hormones will wonder why he should not give full freedom to his sexual desires, and if he is unchecked by custom, morals, or laws, he may ruin his life before he matures sufficiently to understand that sex is a river of fire that must be banked and cooled by a hundred restraints if it is not to consume in chaos both the individual and the group.

So the conservative who resists change is as valuable as the radical who proposes it, perhaps as much more valuable as roots are more vital than grafts. It is good that new ideas should be heard, for the sake of the few that can be used, but it is also good that new ideas should be compelled to go though the mill of objection, opposition, and contumely, this is the trial heat which innovations must survive before being allowed to enter the human race. It is good that the old should resist the young, and that the young should prod the old, out of this tension, as out of the strife of the sexes and the classes, comes a creative tensile strength, a stimulated development, a secret and basic unity and movement of the whole.

6) Morals & History

Morals are the rules by which a society exhorts (as laws are the rules by which it seeks to compel) its members and associations to behaviour consistent with its order, security and growth.

Moral codes differ because they adjust themselves to historical and environmental conditions. If we divide economic history in to three stages – hunting, agriculture, industry – we may expect that the moral code of one stage will be changed in the next. In the hunting stage a man had to be ready to chase and fight and kill. When he had caught his prey he ate to the cubic capacity of his stomach, being uncertain when he might eat again, insecurity is the mother of greed, as cruelty is the memory, if only in the blood, of a time when the test of survival (as now between states) was the ability to kill. Presumably the death rate in men so often risking their lives in the hunt, was higher than in women, some men had to take several women, and every man was expected to help women to frequent pregnancy. Pugnacity, brutality, greed, and sexual readiness were once a virtue, i.e. A quality making for the survival of the individual, the family, or the group. Man’s sins may be the relics of his rise rather than the stigmata of his fall.

History does not tell us just when men passed from hunting to agriculture, perhaps in the Neolithic Age, and through the discovery that grain could be sown to add to the spontaneous growth of wild wheat. We may reasonably assume that the new regime demanded new virtues, and changed some old virtues into vices. Industriousness became more vital than bravery, regularity and thrift more profitable than violence, peace more victorious than war. Children were economic assets, birth control was made immoral. On the farm the family was the unit of production under the discipline of the father and the seasons, and paternal authority had a firm economic base. Each normal son matured soon in mind and self-support, at fifteen he understood the physical tasks of life as well as he would understand them at forty, all that he needed was land, a plow, and a willing arm. So he married early, almost as soon as nature wished, he did not fret long under the restraints placed upon premarital relations by the new order of permanent settlements and homes. As for young women, chastity was indispensable, for its loss might bring unprotected motherhood. Monogamy was demanded by the approximate numerical equality of the sexes. For fifteen hundred years this agricultural moral code of continence, early marriage, divorceless monogamy, and the multiple maternity maintained itself in Christian Europe and it’s white colonies. It was a stern code, which produced some of the strongest characters in history.

Gradually then rapidly and ever more widely, the Industrial Revolution changed the economic form and moral superstructure of European and American life. Men, women, and children left home and family, authority and unity, to work as individuals, individually paid, in factories built to house no men but machines. Every decade the machines multiplied and became more complex, economic maturity (the capacity to support a family) came later, children no longer were economic assets, marriage was delayed, premarital continence became more difficult to maintain. The city offered every discouragement to marriage, but it provided every stimulus and facility for sex. Women were “emancipated” i.e, industrialized, and contraceptives enabled them to separate intercourse from pregnancy. The authority of father and mother lost its economic base through the growing individualism of industry. The rebellious youth was no longer constrained by the surveillance of the village, he could hid his sins in the protective anonymity of the city crowd. The progress of science raised the authority of the test tube over that of the crosier, the mechanization of economic production suggests mechanistic materialistic philosophies, education spread religious doubts, morality lost more and more of its supernatural supports. The old agricultural moral code began to die.

Perhaps discipline will be restored in our civilization through the military training required by the challenges of war. The freedom of the part varies with the security of the whole, individualism will diminish in America and England as geographical protection ceases. Sexual license may cure itself through its own excess, our unmoored children may live to see order and modesty become fashionable, clothing will be more stimulating then nudity. Meanwhile much of our moral freedom is good, it is pleasant to be relieved of theological terrors, to enjoy without qualm the pleasures that harm neither others nor ourselves, and to feel the tang of the open air upon our liberated flesh.

7) Religion & History

Even the skeptical historian develops a humble respect for religion, since he sees it functioning, and seemingly indispensable, in every land and age. To the unhappy, the suffering, the bereaved, the old, it has brought supernatural comforts valued by millions of souls as more precious than any natural aid. It has helped parents and teachers to discipline the young. It has conferred meaning and dignity upon the lowliest existence, and through its sacraments has made for stability by transforming human covenants into solemn relationships with God. It has kept the poor (said Napoleon) from murdering the rich.. For since the natural inequality of men dooms many of us to poverty or defeat, some supernatural hope may be the sole alternative to despair. Destroy that hope and class was intensified. Heaven and utopia are buckets in a well, when one goes down the other goes up, when religion declines Communism grows.

Religion does not seem at first to have had any connection with morals. Apparently (for we are merely guessing, or echoing Petronius, who echoed Lucretius) “it was fear that first made the gods” fear of hidden forces in the earth, rivers, oceans, trees, wins, and sky. Religion became the propitiatory worship of these forces through offerings, sacrifice, incantation, and prayer. Only when priests used these fears and rituals to support morality and law did religion become a force vital and rival to the state. It told the people that the local code of morals and laws had been dictated by the gods.  

Some recusants have doubted that religion ever promoted morality, since immorality has flourished even in ages of religious domination. Certainly sensuality, drunkenness, coarseness, greed, dishonesty, robbery, and violence existed in the Middle Ages, but probably the moral disorder born of half a millennium of barbarian invasion, war, economic devastation, and political disorganization would have been much worse without the moderating effect of the Christian ethic, priestly exhortations, saintly examples, and a calming, unifying ritual. The Roman Catholic Church laboured to reduce slavery, family feuds, and national strife, to extend the intervals of truce and peace, and to replace trial by combat or ordeal with the judgments of established courts. It softened the penalties exacted by Roman or barbarian law, and vastly expanded the scope and organization of charity.

Though the Church served the state, it claimed to stand above all states, as morality should stand above power. It taught en that patriotism unchecked by a higher loyalty can be a tool of greed and crime. Over all the competing governments of Christendom it promulgated one moral law. Claiming divine origin and spiritual hegemony, the Church offered itself as an international court to which all rulers were to be morally responsible. The Emperor Henry IV recognized this claim by submitting to Pope Gregory VII at Canossa and century later Innocent III raised the authority and prestige of the papacy to a height where it seemed that Gregory’s ideal of a moral superstate had come to fulfillment.

The majestic dream broke under the attacks of nationalism, skepticism and human frailty. The Church was manned with men, who often proved biased, venal or extortionate. France grew in welath and power, and made the papacy her political tool. Kings became strong enough to compel a pope to dissolve the Jesut order which had so devotedly supported the popes. The Church stooped to fraud, as with pious legends, bogus relics, and dubious miracles.

8) Economics & History

History according to Karl Marx is economics in action the contest, among individuals, groups, classes, and states, for food, fuel, materials, and economic power. Political forms, religious insitutions, cultural creations, are all rooted in economic power. Political forms, religious institutions, cultural creations, are all rooted in economic realities. So the Industrial Revolution brought with it democracy, feminism, birth control, socialism, the decline of religion, the loosening of morals, the liberation of literature from dependence upon aristocratic patronage, the replacement of romanticism by realism in fiction and the economic interpretation of history. The outstanding personalities in these movements were effects, not causes. Agamemnon, Achilles and Hector would never have been heard of had not the Greeks sought commercial control of the Dardanelles, economic ambition and the face of Helen "fairer than the evening air clad in the beauty of a thousand stars" launched a thousand ships in Ilium, those subtle Greeks knew how to cover naked economic truth with the fig leaf of a phrase.

At the other end of the scale history reports that "the men who can manage money manage all" So the bankers watching the trends in agriculture, industry, and trade, inviting and directing the flow of capital, putting our money doubly and trebly to work, controlling loans and interest and enterprise, running great risks to make great gains, rise to the top of the economic pyramid. From the Medici of Florence and the Fuggers of Augsburg to the Rothschilds of Paris and London and the Morgans of New York, bankers have sat in the councils of governments, financing wars and popes, and occasionally sparking a revolution. Perhaps is is one secret of their power that, having studied the fluctuations of prices, they know that history is inflationary, and that money is the last thing a wise man will hoard.

The concentration of wealth is natural and inevitable, and is periodically alleviated by violent or paceable partial redistribution. In the view all economic history is the slow heartbeat of the social organism, a vast systole and diastole of concentrating wealth and compulsive recirculation.

9) Socialism & History

The struggle of socialism against capitalism is part of the historic ryhthm in the concentration and dispersion of wealth. The capitalist, of couse, has fulfilled a creative function in history, he has gathered the savings of the people into productive captial by the promise of dividends or interest, he has financed the mechnization of industry and agriculture, and the reationalization of distribution and the result has been such a flow of goods from producer to consumer as history has never seen before. He has put the liberal gospel of liberty to his use by arguing that business men left relatively free from transportation tolls and legislative regulation can give the public a greater aubndance of food, homes, comfort and leisure that has ever come from industries managed by politicians, manned by governmental employees, and supposedly immune to the laws of supply and demand. In free enterprise the spur of competition and the zeal and the zest of owernship arouse the productiveness and inventiveness of men, nearly every economic ability sooner or later finds its niche and reward in the shuffle of talents and the natural selection of skills, and a basic democracy rules the process insofar as most of the articles to be produced and the services to be rendered are determined by public demand rather than by governmental decree. Meanwhile compeition compels the capitalist to exhaustive labor, and his products to ever rising excellence.

In Egypt under the Ptolemies the state owned the soil and managed agriculture: the peasent was told what land to till, what crops to grow, his harvest was measured and registered by government scribes, was threshed on royal threshing floors, and was conveyed by a living chain of fellaheen into the granaries of the king. The government owned the mines and appropriated the ore. It nationalized the production and sale of oil, salt, papyrus, and textiles. All commerce was controlled and regulated by the state, most retail trade was in the hands of state agents selling state produced goods. Banking was a government monopoly, but its operation might be delegated to private firms. Taxes were laid upon every person, industry, process, product, sale, and legal document. To keep track of taxable transactions and income, the government maintained a swarm of scribes and a complex system of personal and property registration. The revenue of this system made the Ptolemaic the richest state of the time. Great engineering enterprises were completed, agriculture was improved, and a large proportion of the profits went to developer and adorn the country to finance its cultural life.

China has had several attempts at state socialism. Szuma Ch'ien informs us that to prevent private individuals from "reserving to their sole use the riches of the mountains and the sea in order to gain a fortune, and from putting th lower classes into subjection to themselves." The Emporeror Wu Ti nationalized the resources of the soil, extended governmental direction over transport and trade, laid a tax upon incomes, and established public works, including canals that ound the rivers together and irrigated the fields. The state accumulated stockpiles of goods, sole these when prices were rising, bought more when prices were falling thus says Szuma Ch'ien, "the rich merchants and large shopkeepers would be prevented from making big profits, and prices would be regulated in the Empire." For a time we are told China prospered as never before. A combination of "acts of God" with human deviltry put an end to the experiement after the death of the Emperor. Floods alternated with droughts, created tragic shortages, and raised prices beyond control. Businessmen protested that taxes were making them support the lazy and the incompetent. Harrassed by the high cost of living, the poor joined the rich in clamoring for a return to the old ways, and some proposed that the inventor of the new system to be boiled alive. The reforms were one by one rescinded and were almost forgotten when they were revived by a Chinese philosopher king.

Wang Mang was an accomplished scholar a patro of literature, a millionaire who scattered his riches among his friends and the poor. Having seized the throne, he surrounded himself with men trained in letters, science and philosophy. He nationalized the land, divided it into equal tracts among the peasents, and put an end to slavery. Like Wu Ti, he tried to control prices by the accumulation or release of stockpiles. He made loans at low interest to private enterprise. The groups whose profits had been clipped by his legislation unite to plot his fall, they were helped by drought and flood and foreign invasion. The rich Liu family put itself at the head of a general rebellion, slew Wang Mang and repealed his legislation. Everything was as before.

A thousand years later Wang An-shih as premier undertook a pervasive governmental domination of the Chinese economy, "The state should take the entire management of commerce, industry, and agriculture into its own hands, with a view to succoring the working classes and preventing them from being ground into the dust by the rich" he said. He rescued the peasents from the money lenders by loans at low interest. He encouraged new settlers by advancing them seed and other aid, to be repaid out of hte later yield of their land. He organized great engineering works to control floods and check unemployment. Boards were appointed in every district to regulate wages and prices. Commerce was nationalized. Pensions were provided for the aged, the unemployed and the poor. Education and the examination system (by which admission to governmental office was determined) were reformed. "Pupils three away their textbooks of rhetoric and began to study primers of history, geography and political economy" says a Chinese Historian.

What undermined the experiement? First high taxes, laid upon all to finance a swelling band of governmental employees. Second, conscription of a male in every family to man the armies made necessary by barbarian invasions. Third corruption in the bureaucracy, China like other nations, was faced with a choice between private plunder and public graft. Conservatives led by Wang An-shih's brother argued that human corruptability and incompetence make governmental control of industry impractable, and that the best economy is a liaissez-faire system that relies on the natural impulses of men. The rich, stung by the high taxation of their fortunes and the monopoly of commerce by the government, poured out their resources in a campaign to discredit the new system, to obstruct its enforcement, and bring it to an end. This movement, well organized exerted constant pressure upon the Emperor. When another period of drought and flood was capped by the appearance of a terrifying comet, the Son of Heaven dismissed Wang An-shih, revoked his decrees and called the opposition to power.

10) Government & History 11) History & War 12) Growth & Decay 13) Is Progress Real?