#had to fight for my life against that one direction-reversing bomb train

[skyward-floored]

hehehe finally got all the snow rabbits in st

[maddiwrites]

Secrets of the Shore (Chapter 22)

Pairing: JJ x OC

Summary: This is just my rewrite of the show Outer Banks with my own twist by adding another main character which also happens to be John B’s twin sister.

Note: Happy Sunday (: Only two more chapters left and I’m sad about it.

Word Count: 6.8k

Chapter 21 Masterlist

My friends drag each other to Heyward's shed where he stores all his useless junk he'll probably never touch again. I always said Pope's dad was a borderline hoarder. But the clutter does nothing to distract me from what's happening to my brother.

I pace back and forth with my hands interlocked on the top of my head. As I move back and forth, my friends keep their eyes trained on me as if I might sprint back to the airstrip.

No one says anything. The four of us are try to defuse the ticking time bomb thats about to blow in all of our heads without actually losing our minds.

I freeze when I hear the familiar hum of a plane fly overhead. I feel my throat tighten and my face heat with frustration. And just like that, Ward Cameron wins again.

"There goes the gold," Pope says and throws his hat across the room.

"Shit!" JJ kicks the closest thing to him which happens to be a three legged wooden table.

"Fuck!" Pope picks up a metal trash bin and throws it across the room, just like his hat.

"Pope!" Kie yells.

"God damn it!" He continues to throw anything he can find. His bomb exploded and he's destroying anything in his path. "Shit! Fuck!" He finds a wooden baseball bat in the heap of the clutter and hits whatever he can find. Glass tables, wooden chairs, more trash bins. I'm almost mesmerized by his movements because I have never seen this side of Pope before. "Shit! Damn it!"

"Pope!" Kie's trying to clam him down while JJ and I just watch with open mouths and raised brows. However, Pope just ignores her and continues to yell and break shit. "Pope!" I can imagine the release Pope must be feeling from this. All my life, I've never seen him act like this. He's usually so composed, always the one to keep us from doing shit like this. I don't know how to react now that roles are reversed. "Pope!"

Pope eventually falls with exhaustion against the arm of a musty green couch and pants to catch his breath.

"Yeah, dude," JJ says slowly. He puts his hand on Pope's shoulder and squeezes. "I was wondering when this was gonna happen. Here you go, chief." JJ holds out his dab pen for Pope to take. Pope looks at it and for the first time, he actually considers it. "A little weed never hurt no one."

"JJ," Kie says, disapproving.

"Relax, Kie."

"You know he doesn't smoke."

Pope ignores both of them and takes the pen from JJ and inhales a large hit. As if this kid couldn't shock me more today.

"Well, maybe not until today."

"Pope."

"Yeah, what is that gonna help?" Pope says. "I lost my scholarship. Walked out in the middle of the interview. Every -" Pope inhales sharply and shakes his head. "It's gone. It's not gonna happen."

"You did that for us?" Kie asks.

"No, not for us. For nothing."

I never thought of silence as being physically heavy, but right now, I feel like I'm being weighed down by a thick fog that I can't swim out of. Pope's right. Despite everything we did right this summer to get something we all deserve, we ended up with nothing except for more problems.

"I'm here for you, Pope," JJ says. "Welcome to my world, okay?"

Kie looks at me for some kind of assistance, but I have nothing to offer. She sighs and looks back at the boys. "JJ -"

"What, Kie? He's right. It doesn't matter anymore."

"You don't have to do that," Kie tells Pope and motions to the weed.

"What do you care?" Pope snaps.

Before this can get any worse, I turn at the sound of footsteps approaching us. My jaw physically hits the ground, at least that's what it feels like, when I see John B.

His eyes are facing forward and his clothes are covered in blood. He looks like he's in some kind of state of shock and I am terrified to find out why.

But my sisterly instincts kick in first. I'm running to him before the others even see him and my hands are pulling his shirt up to make sure the blood isn't his. John B reacts as if I'm not even there and stares ahead.

"John B what happened?" My voice shakes as my eyes scan his body. There's not a even a scratch on him, but I almost wish there was. Because this means the blood belongs to someone else, and I don't want to think that my brother is the reason for it.

"Dude! Dude, you good?" JJ runs up behind me and looks over John B's body with big eyes.

"Oh, my God! John B!"

"Is this yours?"

"Whose blood is that?"

I cup John B's face in my hands and make him look at me. When his eyes finally find mine, I ask, "What happened?"

Before he can answer, cop cars with their sirens on pass us on the road behind us. John B grabs me by the arm and shoves us all back into the shed and we duck behind a wooden slack.

"Shit," Pope curses as his chest moves up and down heavily.

When the coast is clear, John B tells us what happened. Sheriff Peterkin showed up. At first Ward thought she was going to arrest John B for breaking into the airstrip and almost causing a catastrophic accident, but she was there to arrest Ward. Of course Ward wasn't going to go down without a fight and before Peterkin could react, she was shot in the chest. By none other than Rafe Cameron.

"Rafe shot Sheriff Peterkin?" I ask in disbelief.

I always thought Rafe was a lot of things, but I never had cop killer written down on my list. However, I do know that Rafe is the kind of kid who would do absolutely anything to impress his dad. He's been fighting for his attention since he was a tween. Maybe in his own sick way, he thought killing Peterkin was saving his dad.

John B nods. He tells us Peterkin told him to run. And as much as he didn't want to, he was better off with us than dead. Sarah even told him to go as she protected him with her own body while he ran away. Rafe tried to shoot him too but couldn't get his aim down as he sprinted through the woods to get to us.

"What?" I feel my blood turn ice cold when I think about Rafe trying to kill my brother. The one family member I have left. "Why would Rafe want to kill you too?"

John B shrugs. "Because I saw the whole thing."

"So did his sister," I say. "Do you think Sarah is okay?"

"Rafe wouldn't hurt her."

I scoff. "Yeah right."

Now I know that Rafe is pretty much capable of anything worthy to an eternity in hell.  I don't think anyone is safe in his company. Not even Sarah. Maybe Ward.

"Kie, can you give me a ride somewhere?" John B asks.

We sneak through the back roads to get to Kie's house. When we get in her car, John B directs her to the police station. By the time we get there, the sun is completely set, blanketing the town in an eery indigo color.

Everything seems so silent to me now. The hum of Kie's radio, the shuffling of leaves brushing against each other, the bickering between my friends and brother. There's a ringing in my ear that won't go away until my hands are wrapped around Rafe's neck.

I feel like my brain as been replaced by a dark cloud. No ideas, no thoughts, no plans can make me feel any better or lighter. It's like an invisible hand has reached down my throat and twisted my heart right out of my chest.

Peterkin was the one and only person that actually helped John B and I. She kept DCS off our backs for as long as she could, she never rubbed it mine or John B's face that the whole island thought we were delusional when we said our dad was coming back, and she was even going to arrest Ward Cameron for my father's murder.

She didn't deserve to die. Although I wasn't the one who pulled the trigger, I can't help but think that her death is somehow my fault. It was my family she was protecting. She was doing her job, but she could have easily written my dad's death off as an accident like every other cop on this island.

"John B, what are we doing at the police station?" JJ asks when Kie parks the car right outside of the front entrance.

"Somebody's gotta tell them what happened." John B's voice is filled with sadness and guilt. I wish I could pull all this weight off his shoulders and add it to mine. He use to be so optimistic - always the one to cheer me up. Now that it's the other way around, I'm dumbfounded on what to do.

Pope takes another hit of JJ's juul and ends up coughing most of the hit up.

"Oh," JJ says from his seat behind Pope and pats his shoulder twice. "Easy there, chief. Damn."

I ignore the fact that Pope sounds like he's hacking up a lung and turn to look at my brother.

"Are you sure?" I ask him.

"All right. I'm just gonna be real with you right now," JJ says to my brother. "You might end up in the lion's den, but you don't go there on purpose. It's fundamental. Just like my old man always told me, you should never ever trust cops, no matter what the circumstance is."

I scoff at the idea of taking advice from JJ's dad.

"Your old man's an abusive liar," Kie says, looking through the rearview mirror with a scowl on her face.

"I agree with JJ," Pope says. "Fuck the police."

Kie turns to look at him. "You going dark side now?"

"When's the last time the police helped us?" Pope says.

"Peterkin looked out for me, all right?" John B says loud enough to grab everyone's attention. "Tried to, at least." He looks at me. "They need to know."

John B steps out of the car with his head hanging low on his shoulders. I bite down on my bottom lip, contemplating what our next move should be. All I know is that I can't let him do this by himself.

"Wait, John B!" I jump out of the car and follow him to the front door. "You're not going to do this alone."

I wait for John B to argue with me but he doesn't. Instead, he nods his head and leads me into the police station, a place I've been in a couple times by force. Never by choice.

There's a woman at the front desk who looks exhausted and busy. I can hear the mumbling of her radio on her desk and the static after each statement. I'm pretty sure I hear Peterkin's name but I don't know if it's my own head repeating her name over and over again.

"Um...excuse me, ma'am," John B says.

The woman barely looks up from her desk and writes something down on her pad of paper in front of her. "This is not a good time, kid." Had she just taken the time to look up, she would see the guy standing in front of her is covered in blood. Maybe then, she would be more worried. Instead, she focuses on her radio. "Adam, advise if you need air tran."

I open my mouth to give this woman a piece of my mind, but John B cuts me off. His voice soft and broken. "I know who shot the Sheriff."

I force myself to look up at him. He looks like he's trying his best to keep himself composed when all I know he wants to do is collapse on the nearest chair and just...breathe.

The woman freezes and finally takes in John B's appearance. She studies the stain on his shirt and the sweat on his skin, the hollowness behind his eyes and his shaky hands.

"You stay put," She says as she backs away. "I'll get a deputy."

I look around the station and feel an uneasy swirling motion in my stomach. It's unsettling. Like JJ's words are getting in my head. Maybe coming to the cops wasn't such a good idea.

My head snaps towards the radio when it statics to life again. "Central, three Vick. We have a suspect in our 31. John Routledge."

My blood runs cold and my eyes flash up to meet John B's. He's staring down at the radio like it's an actual person and he's frozen in shock.

Another woman's voice comes up on the radio. "Copy that. All units, be on the lookout for John B Routledge."

"Sixteen year old white male. Six foot. Last seen wearing board shorts, a 'Bad Brains' T shirt, and a faded red hoodie."

"Copy that."

My hands grab John B's to drag him out of here. My head scrambles to come up with our best plan, but I know staying here isn't it. Ward somehow managed to spin this around on my brother. I shouldn't be shocked, but I keep managing to be knocked out with more surprises right when I think things couldn't get any worse.

Just as I'm about to pull John B out of there, two cops come out from the back and stare at the two of us with big eyes. A man and woman dressed in their faded brown deputy uniforms. My eyes trail down to their hands that are both steady on the gun in their holster, ready to aim if they need to.

"Just...breathe. All right?" The woman cops holds out her hand as if to tell John B to stay calm.

The other officer nods. "John B. Do what she says."

"Look, I didn't...I didn't do it, okay?" John B tries to explain but his voice his shaky and lacks any sort of confidence.

"Dont...move."

"Go..." My voice is barely a hushed whisper but my tug on his arm is strong. "Go, go, go. Run!"

John B and I sprint out of the station before any officers can guard the door. I can barely hear them yelling after us through the drumming in my ears.

"Kie! Start the car!" John B yells as we basically body slam ourselves into her car. "Start the car, Kie!"

I basically rip the back door open and stumble into JJ's lap after tripping on my own feet. Everyone's yelling. The people in the car. The people running out of the police station.

"What? John B!" Kie yells as her hands shake. She tries putting the keys back into the ignition but her hands are trembling too much.

"The cops!"

"Shit!" JJ curses and looks over my shoulder at the cops who are sprinting towards us.

"Go!" John B yells at her. She turns the key but of course the car decides not to start. "Kie, drive! Go!"

"Go Kie!" Now I'm yelling at her.

"Stop the car!" One of the cops yell with her gun raised at the back window.

"I'm going! I'm sorry!" Kie says as anxiety cripples through her.

"Right now!" The woman cop from inside approaches the car. She tries to open it but the door is locked.

"What did you do?" Kie yells at us.

Kie moves the vehicle slowly out of the parking lot, but the woman is relentless. She runs with us side by side and hooks her fingers around the door handle.

"Open it!" JJ yells at John B.

John B opens the door to knock the cop off the car. The tactic works and she rolls on the ground. Only now we'll probably be written up for assault too.

I fall back into my seat and pant for breath. My head falls back against the cushioned seat and my eyes close. Okay, okay, think, Marleigh. Think.

Ward killed my dad. Ward stole my gold. Rafe killed Peterkin. And somehow, my brother is the one being framed for murder. Make it all make sense.

I hate them. The Camerons. Kooks. All entitled, greedy sons of bitches who don't know how to handle rejection or the word 'no.' They think all their meals should be served on a silver platter and kids like us are born for the sole purpose to serve them. They deserve to rot. They deserve to feel all the pain we do.

And yet, they don't. And they never will because that's the life we live. A life where people like Ward and Rafe Cameron can get a way with murder because no one would blink twice at their lame excuse of a story.

A lie.

It all boils down to money. Money we almost had right in our pockets. But now it's gone as is pretty much everything else in my life. My house. My dad. Maybe now my brother.

JJ laces his fingers with mine and gives my hand a gentle squeeze. I keep my eyes closed but let my head fall on his shoulder. I focus on his touch. How his thumb delicately rubs against my skin in a light up and down motion. How his lips are able to make my heart flutter when they kiss the top of my head. How his soft whispers, telling me everything is going to be okay, are sweet enough to make me melt into a buttery mess.

Maybe not everything's gone. I still have JJ. The constant in my life. The one who can always make me feel better even in the shittiest of situations. My sun on my darkest nights. My sight into the future when I can't even think of tomorrow.

I don't let JJ go. Even when Kie parks the car back at Heyward's shed under an open roof. We have literally nowhere else to go. The cops will undoubtedly check all of our homes, including Kie's. The Chateau is definitely surrounded by cops, waiting for John B and I to make the dumb move of going back there. And Tannyhill isn't an option anymore.

The sun is already poking out behind the trees as morning approaches. My body aches from sleeping in this cramped car, but I try to ignore the pain and focus on the fact that we're all still together. For now.

The five of us sit in silence. Some of us try to wrap our heads around what just happened and try to come up with another plan. The rest of us, like me, are so tired, they can't even remember what their middle name is.

The only noise in the car comes from Kie's radio. "...should be functional within twenty four hours." Meanwhile, another cop car with loud sirens pass us on the road without sparing this car a second glance. "And still, no arrest in the shooting death of Sheriff Susan Peterkin. The state police have issued a statement regarding a local person of interest, a juvenile from -"

Kie switches the radio off and glances back at John B and I. My brother has his seat reclined all the way back and is staring up the at the ceiling of the car. JJ has moved so his back is against the car door with one leg bent at the back of the seat and the other one on the floor. I sit between his legs and play with the necklace he gave me a couple days ago. Crazy enough, it feels like years since he gifted me this.

"Let's game this out," JJ is the first to speak. He looks at Kie and Pope in the front seat. "Maybe you guys can help, being the smart ones and all, but..." He sighs. "...who are the cops going to believe? Ward Cameron or us? So the accuser is a big shot developer, kind of lord of the island, got the governor on speed dial kind of person, and the accused...is John B, who is...pretty much a homeless sixteen year old boy at the moment."

"Thanks." John B deadpans.

"Okay, man. Yucatan, all right? I'm saying that's the only option." John B gives him a look to stop talking but of course JJ doesn't take the hint. "What other options do you have?"

"Enough with the Mexico bullshit," Kie says.

"Sarah will bail me out," John B says a lot more confidently than I feel about the situation.

"She did witness the whole thing," Kie says.

"Thank you."

"You really think she's going to pick you over her own family?" I can't help the attitude that drips off my tongue with each word. Sarah's a nice girl and I really liked her. But Rafe and Ward are her family. "No offense, but you've really only known each other for a few weeks."

"Not happening, bro. Okay?" JJ says, agreeing with me. "We gotta get you off the island."

"The ferry," Pope speaks up for the first time all morning. "It's the only way."

"Exit stage left while you still can. Before the entire island is on lockdown."

"Guys, just get down," Kie slumps further into her seat as another round of sirens pass us.

"Sarah's not a Pogue, John B," Pope says. He has a point. Sarah hasn't been friends with all of us for that long. I almost wouldn't even blame her if she took her family's side.

"Yeah. You can't stay here, man," JJ says, tightening his hold on me.

Another moment of silence passes through us and I wonder if JJ's right. Adrenaline on the island is at an all time high. No cop, no lawyer, no person is going to believe John B over Ward. Not without evidence. We need time to clear John B's name. So maybe getting him off the island would be best. Even if it's just temporary.

~ ~ ~

When Kie parks in front of the ferry, Pope hops out to buy the tickets and Kie moves to the passenger seat. I offered to go with him but JJ told me that was a bad idea because I would get recognized as John B's sister.

So here I am, useless and laying down as flat as I can next to John B to avoid being seen through the windows.

I look at John B. His eyes are closed and his chest moves heavily up and down. His fingers flex and clench into fists every couple of seconds. I wonder if his fractured hand is starting to hurt him.

"The first thing we're doing when we get off this stupid island is buying you a new outfit," I say. I cringe in disgust when I look at Peterkin's blood stain on his clothes. Another reminder that she's dead.

I look up to the front seat window when Pope comes back to the car. He's mumbling to himself and I think he has something in his hand.

"Okay. All right, no."

"Pope, can you act normal?" Kie says through clenched teeth and unlocks the door for Pope to get in.

"Okay, um...okay, so, bad news. The ferry's closed, and there is this."

Kie takes a piece of paper from his hand and looks at it. Her eyes close for half a second and she shakes her head. "Shit."

"What is that? What is this?" John B asks.

JJ snags the paper out of Kie's hand and looks at it. "Well, John B, uh...this is a good framer of you." He turns the paper over and shows my brother and I a picture of John B on a 'WANTED' sign with a cash reward of $25,000.

"Okay, so the whole island's looking for John B right now," Pope says.

"That's a lot of money," I can't help but laugh. "Gotta say, John B. Didn't think you would be worth that much. Hell, maybe I'll turn you in."

"Congratulations John B, you're famous," JJ says.

John B slaps the outside of my thigh with the back of his hand. I scoff and slap him back, which causes a strings of slaps and hits, though mostly playful, and some a little harder.

"Stop. Guys, stop!" Kie says loudly. JJ pulls my hands away from my brother and folds them in my lap. He gives me a warning look, like a teacher would their student, and it makes me want to laugh about how bizarre this whole thing is. "We got to get to the HMS. We need small, no running lights -"

"It's at the Chateau, Kie," John B says.

"And I wonder if the cops got the entire place taken out," JJ says sarcastically. "Let me think. Oh, yeah. No. they definitely have that place locked down."

"Let me think. Just give me a second," John B says frustratingly.

"JJ," Pope says.

"What?" He looks up.

"Does your dad still have the boat? The cigarette boat, the Phantom. The one he used to race."

I look up at JJ, but I can't read his emotions. He keeps his face unfazed. "Maybe."

"You could get right up the coast, no problem. Okay, look - "

"It won't be easy, Pope."

"The surf's running from three to four."

"I don't know where the keys are."

"Well, find them."

"I'm thinking," JJ snaps.

"Why is nobody moving forward?" Pope yells at the car in front of us and bangs the palm of his hand on the steering wheel.

I rub my fingers in a circular motion on my temples and close my eyes again. Words are being spat at about a million miles per hour. It's hard to keep up and my blood vessels twist with anxiety.

"Can you relax?" Kie hisses. "JJ, how much weed did you give him?"

"Guys," John B says. "Your car's on the poster."

Pope ignores everyone and hits his fist against the horn of the car. "Can we move it?"

"Pope!"

I'm going to puke.

"Come on!"

"Don't honk the horn!" Kie says, hitting Pope's arms away from the wheel.

"It's that guy. Right there!" I hear a voice outside our window say. The voice sounds young. Kid-like.

"Shit," John B tries pushing himself further into his seat. I didn't even realize he sat up in the first place.

"We got a snitch. Pope, turn the car on," JJ says, sitting up in his seat and leaning forward to hit Pope on the shoulder.

"We get $25,000 if we find him!" The kid says.

"Hey! He's right there!" Another voice. Manly. Great, we're drawing a crowd.

"Hey! We gotta go!" Kie yells.

"Pope, go!" I yell.

"Turn the car on!" JJ yells.

We're all yelling and I think my eardrums might burst.

"I found him first!" The kid says to the man.

"Hell you did, you little bastard!"

"Pope, turn the frickin' car on!" JJ yells.

The crowd starts growing around the car. John B turns into my side and pulls his hood up over his head.

"I am trying!" Pope yells back at us.

"Turn the car on!"

"Go, go, go!"

Pope jerks the car forward and hits the car in front of us. I jolt forward in the middle seat and stop myself from going through the windshield by pressing my two arms on the front two seats.

I hear the crowd gasp and move backwards to avoid the nutso in the front seat. Now that I think about it, who let Pope drive in the first place?

"Pope! Jeez!" JJ curses.

"Dude, back up!" Kie yells.

Pope puts the car in reverse and steps on the gas, but hits another car in the process.

"Hey!"

"The other way!"

JJ pats Pope's shoulder again. "It's okay! Pope, just go!"

Pope hits the corner of Kie's front bumper against the car in front of us again but continues to step on the gas until we're completely out of our spot.

"What are you doing?" Kie yells at him.

"We'll bump out!"

"Watch out!" I yell when I spot a couple of people crossing the street before Pope can kill them.

"Whoa! Whoa! Watch out!" Pope yells and swings his hands in front of him to motion for the people to jump out of the way. "Watch out!" My back hits the back of my seat, hard. Pope has the audacity to laugh. Head back and all. "Oh my god."

"Pope!" Kie yells. "What the fuck?"

"I'm living my best life right now," Pope says through laughter.

Kie slumps in her seat. "My mom's gonna kill me."

"I should be the last to say this, but you are not okay to drive," JJ says. I turn to glare at him and he puts his hands up in the air to surrender. He looks back out to the road and yells, "Stop!"

Pope stomps on the brakes and sends us skidding to a stop. JJ's arm whips out to the right to stop me from flying forward.

We're gonna die.

Pope looks over his shoulder at my brother. "John B, get out."

"What?" I glare.

"He's right," JJ says and my head snaps to him. He ignores me. "We'll draw the cops, you run."

"Shit," John B curses and unbuckles himself.

"I'll get the rig, and I'll meet you in the dump tomorrow, okay? Three o'clock, okay?"

"Wait, I'm coming with you," I say, but John B shakes his head.

"No. You stay here. Stay with them."

"I'm not leaving you!" I fight back and look at him like he has two heads. He must think I'm crazy if he thinks I'm going to let him run away by himself.

"JJ -" John B looks at him.

"On it. Go!" JJ's hands wrap around my waist, forcing me to stay in the car. I try prying his fingers off of me, but he's a lot stronger than I am. John B starts running off. "Three tomorrow at the dump!" When John B disappears behind the tree, JJ finally lets me go. I turn around and shove him back by his chest and slide over to the seat that John B was just in. JJ sighs and looks forward again. "Come on, go, go, go!"

Pope steps on the gas again and veers forward.

I look out the window and ignore the queasiness that has fully taken over my stomach. I know John B and JJ were right to keep me in the car. I would only slow John B down and get myself in trouble and therefore, be completely useless in helping my brother. But I can't shake the feeling that I'm abandoning him.

~ ~ ~

Pope, for some reason, is still driving. I don't know where he's going but it seems like we're on our way to Figure Eight. Pope turns on the radio, blasting one of North Carolina's hip hop stations.

JJ leans forward in the middle seat and pushes his head between Kie and Pope. He's managing to laugh like we're on some joy ride on Memorial Day weekend. "Pope, you clocked that car, man. Like that was so bad!" JJ shakes his head. "I'm just glad I'm not driving now."

" Pull over." Kie tells Pope. "JJ, it's not funny. He shouldn't be driving."

JJ grimaces. "Mama's mad."

Pope pulls the car over and switches seats with Kie. A delirious grin stays on the high boy's lips as he settles in the passenger seat.

"What are you -"

"Where are we going?" I ask Kie as she makes a familiar right turn.

"The last place they're gonna look." Kie says.

~ ~ ~

By the time Kie pulls up to Tannyhill, the sun has disappeared into the horizon and the pit of my stomach is the size of a category five hurricane. I can't remember the last time I ate or drank anything and the pounding in my head feels like a hundred bullets are penetrating my skull.

Kie's brilliant idea is to somehow get to Sarah and convince her to go to the police to confess what actually happened.

"Perfectly focused," Pope says to himself, which makes me glare at him. Pope is anything but focused.

"You sure this is a good idea?" JJ says.

"She's the only one who can clear John B," Kie says.

"Last place they'll look because of how stupid it is."

Kie ignores JJ and gets out of the car with Pope following right behind her. When I open the door, JJ pulls me back and closes the door again.

I look at him. My first reaction is to be concerned. Something in JJ's expression makes me fold. For a second I forget the mess we're in and I get lost in his blue eyes. It's just me and JJ and the world outside of this car no longer exists.

His warm hand wraps around my smaller one and he pulls me closer into him. His other hand cups my face, right underneath my jaw. My face feels like it's physically sparkling with the touch of his breath and forget butterflies - there is a zoo in the pit of my stomach. I glide into JJ like magnet.

His lips press into mine and I cave in. I pull him close enough to where I'm straddling him. Time stops as does my breathing. My fingers run through his blonde hair, tugging on the ends. He stifles back a moan and my face flushes pink.

I pull back for breath and rest my forehead against his. I don't know how many more times we're going to get to do that. And it hurts me thinking it might come to an end.

"I'm sorry," I say.

JJ ignores me. "When we get to Yucatan, we're getting a bungalow. We're going to live in bathing suits and get drunk off of pina coladas every day. Skinny dipping is going to be our main source of exercise - well, other than the hot dangerous sex we're gonna have every night. I'm never going to leave your side and I'm going to keep you safe until the day we die. In a few years, we'll get married. You're gonna wear that dress you wore to Midsummers and we're gonna have beautiful beach babies who will go on to win surfing championships by the time they're ten because they're going to be prodigies. Our prodigies. And John B is going to be there with us. Because he's not going to jail for a crime he didn't commit. Okay?"

I don't even realize tears are streaming down my face until he's wiping his thumb against my wet cheek.

"Promise?" My voice cracks and I really wish it didn't. But that's the life I want. That's the life I need. I don't care if it's in Yucatan or in the middle of a deserted island. I just need my boys, Kie, and Pope.

JJ kisses my left cheek. Then my right and my nose. "I promise."

"I love you, J."

"And I love you. Everything is going to be okay. I'm going to make sure you're okay."

"Okay."

"Okay?"

"Okay."

JJ laughs. "Okay."

As much as I don't want to leave him, as much as I'd rather stay here with JJ and forget about all our problems, I know I can't. Because Kie is probably freaking out, waiting for me. Because John B is on the run somewhere and I need to do something, anything to help him.

"I should probably..."

JJ rolls his eyes playfully. "Yeah I know. Be quick. Okay?"

I nod and jump out of the car before my head or my heart can make me do otherwise. I push my legs, that feel like rubber, over the stone wall that lines the Cameron's property.

I stop in my tracks when I hear Pope and Kie in some kind of intense conversation...well as intense as Pope can handle right now. I think he's still super high.

"Pope! Pope! Pope! Sh!" Kie says in a hushed tone.

"Hey, I'm trying to tell you, I love you."

Oh shit. I look at the stone wall I just jumped over and consider jumping back over it to avoid eavesdropping on this conversation.

"First of all, I need you to be quiet," Kie says.

"Okay, yeah. Quiet, I mean -"

"No. Stop talking, like, now." Kie says. This time, Pope doesn't speak. "Second of all...thank you for saying that."

I can't help but physically cringe at that statement. Because I know what's coming next.

"Okay," Pope chuckles.

"Now, that's very sweet, but it's - look it's not gonna happen."

"Okay, well, why not?"

This is like a car wreck you can't look away from. I had a feeling Pope was in love with Kie for years now. But he never acted on it. Didn't even flirt with her the way JJ did before we were together. A part of me always hoped he did. Because I wanted to see how Kie would react. I think the two of them would be really cute together. Kie could teach Pope to take more risks and Pope could give her a beautiful life that didn't require her working for her parents forever. They compliment each other. Always have.

"Because Pogues can't mack on other Pogues."

Pope scoffs. "That rule doesn't make sense, and nobody follows it. I mean look at JJ and Marleigh -"

"Look, I - I want something different."

"Okay, I-"

"I - I wanna go to Antartica, and I wanna ride camels..."

"I want to do those things with you."

"No. Pope, it's not gonna work."

"I want to be that person!"

"No. It's not gonna happen," Kie shakes her head. God, this is brutal. I can't wait to tell JJ. "Do you understand what I'm saying? Like..." Kie sighs. "Look, I know that that's really hard to hear right now, but we don't have time for this, and this is a really bad place to do it." She pauses and Pope doesn't respond. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah..." He says, but his voice has completely changed. It's dark and cold and doesn't match my Pope's personality.

"Are you ready for the plan, or..."

"Yeah."

"Okay..." Kie says and this is when I decide to make my entrance. I can't help with the situation at hand but at least I can cause a distraction.

So I cough. "Sorry for the hold up. JJ and I were just fighting over who has to be look out. So..." I force myself to look between Pope and Kie as if I didn't just witness their whole conversation. I try not to focus on the tear streak down Pope's cheek and look at Kie. "Ready?"

Kie nods and leads us towards the Cameron's. A house I almost called my home.

Kie is in charge of getting to Sarah Cameron by her bedroom window while I stay with Pope and create a distraction. We decided it was best if one of us stayed with Pope so I offered myself, considering what I just watched.

Pope still seems to be upset. He's not exactly being quiet trying to stay hidden like we should be.

"Gotta stick to the plan," Pope mumbles to himself and plays with the grill. I find the closest pillow on their patio set and place it on top of it. "I like camels. I like Antartica."

"Pope..." I say softly. The last thing I want is to piss him off more but he's making me nervous.

He ignores me. "What's wrong with that plan?" He bends down and picks up a rubber duck in a paramedic costume and looks at it thoughtfully. "Same." I don't know exactly what that means but he throws the duck into the grill and finds the lighter fluid. When he saturates the pillow...and duck, he turns the grill on. The fluid quickly ignites and flames shoot out from the grill. Pope's head is close enough to the fire that his hat catches on fire. "Shit!"

"Holy shit," I throw my arm at his head and knock the hat off of him. I stomp on it until the flame dies under my sneakers and pull him behind the closest tree that can hide us both.

Less than a minute later, I hear two pairs of footsteps come out. I recognize Ward's voice as he curses at the destructed grill until he stops and mutters the name "Sarah" under his breath and makes a beeline back in side.

Taglist: @notyourcupofteax @acvross-the-universe @jjmaybankzz @moniamaybank @realistic-breadstick @urbinoutfiters @jeeperky @brebear121 @x-lulu @freddymaybank @jjpouggues @lemur46 @is-it-really-a-secret @kkmikayla @folkloverr @alexa-playafricabytoto @jjxrudy @migilini @stellarskys @rochyu @itsagurl @dazzlingnights 

[multiverseforger]

History

Are you watching from your pit in Hell, father? Do you understand now? That it was always my destiny... never yours. The Red Skull's failure will be his daughter's triumph... and I will reshape this world.SIN

 

Early Life

Sinthea "Sin" Shmidt is the daughter of the Red Skull. Seeking a male heir, the Red Skull fathered a daughter with a washerwoman. The woman died in childbirth, and the Red Skull almost killed the child, angry that it was a girl and not the boy he expected. One of his followers, Susan Scarbo, convinced him not to, telling him she would raise the girl herself as her nanny. The Skull agreed and left the girl (now named Sinthea) to be raised by Scarbo, who indoctrinated her with the Skull's views as she grew up. The Skull returned when Sinthea was a child and put her in a special machine that accelerated her aging process until she was an adult and gave her superhuman powers.[7]

Mother Superior

Afterwards, as Mother Superior, Sinthea became the leader of a group called the Sisters of Sin; young orphan girls who were accelerated into adulthood and given powers by the Red Skull after being indoctrinated by Sinthea. The Sisters of Sin would have many run-ins with the Red Skull's nemesis Captain America before being de-aged when they entered a chamber designed to reverse the Skull's aging process to assault Captain America - who had suffered through the Skull's process and had become elderly - while he was using it to return himself to normal, and they were reverted to children at the same time Captain America was restored (she would later claim she was de-aged to the wrong age - but whether this is true, and in which direction, is unclear).[8]

Sister Sin

Later, Scarbo (now calling herself Mother Night), reformed the Sisters of Sin and became their new leader, while the de-aged Sinthea took the name Sister Sin.[9]

Sin

Sinthea was later captured by S.H.I.E.L.D. and taken to their re-education facility, where they attempted to reprogram her to be a "normal" American girl and gave her false memories to that effect. Later, the Red Skull was assassinated by the Winter Soldier under the orders of Aleksander Lukin, and one of the Skull's henchmen, Crossbones, broke into the facility and kidnapped Sinthea. Crossbones tortured Sinthea to break S.H.I.E.L.D's conditioning. After he succeeded, she entered into a relationship with him, and - with Sinthea now calling herself simply Sin - the two went on a killing spree. They later reunited with the Skull, now living inside the mind of General Lukin.[10]

As the first part of the Skull's Master Plan, Sin disguised herself as a nurse after the Civil War while Crossbones sniped Captain America at the courthouse, even though it meant obeying her father and abandoning Crossbones to his fate. Sin then revealed to Sharon Carter that she was the one who had killed Cap.[11]

While the Red Skull had control over Steve Rogers' body, Sin fought alongside Crossbones against the Avengers' forces. After Steve Rogers eventually regained control of his body, Sin was knocked unconscious. After the battle, and due to a subsequent explosion, Sin's face was left severely disfigured and scarred, leaving her a "red skull" appearance. Upon hearing the news, Norman Osborn quipped, 'Like father like daughter'.[12]

Sin was institutionalized at the Kurtzburg Institute for the Criminally Insane People. During a breakout/riot, she was approached by Helmut Zemo, who asks her to tell him how to kill Bucky Barnes. More recently, Sin was liberated from the asylum by Master Man who has proclaimed both his allegiance and affection to Sinthea as the new Red Skull: the heir to her (believed deceased) father's legacy. [4]

Fear Itself

After taking the Black Widow and Sam Wilson hostage, Sin sent one of her henchmen to disrupt the trial of Captain America and sent a demand: Bucky Barnes. After escaping with help from the manipulative Doctor Faustus, James confronted Sin and Master Man and brashly attempted to foil her escape. After the escape, Sin allied herself once more with Baron Zemo to retrieve the Book of the Skull, with which she would discover the whereabouts of a hammer her father summoned way back in 1942. After successfully retrieving the book and explaining its origins to Zemo, Sin betrayed him and went on her own to retrieve the hammer for herself.[13]

Sinthea as Skadi.Sin and her henchmen went to the stronghold of the Thule Society housing the hammer, invaded it and killed everyone who crossed her path. After finding the hammer and being deemed worthy by it, Sin, now as Skadi, went to set her new master, the Serpent, free.[6] At her father's order, Skadi led an assault on Washington D.C.,[14] during which, she almost killed Bucky Barnes.[15] Skadi soon reached New York, where she faced off against Steve Rogers, who had returned as Captain America.[16] There, she summoned the Serpent. When the Avengers tried to take him down, he broke Rogers' shield and knocked out the team.[17] By her father's side, Skadi and the other Worthy went to the fallen Asgard, in Broxton, Oklahoma, where they battled the Avengers once more. Sin was taken down by Rogers, who was wielding the mystic Mjolnir. After the Serpent was killed by Thor, Sin's hammer was taken from her by Odin, as well as the hammers of the other Worthy.[18]

Search for Power

Suddenly, Sin woke up in a hideout where strange people said they freed her from custody and they would help to find her hammer again.[18]

All-New Captain America

While on a mission to neutralize a new Hydra base in Ecuador, the new Captain America Sam Wilson was teleported along with his comrade, Nomad, from there to Helmut Zemo's palace in Bagalia through the Infinite Elevator. There, several super-agents of the new Hydra were expecting Cap and Nomad, with Sin being one of them.[19]

After Zemo killed Ian, Sam, with an undercover Misty Knight, that helped him before in a fight against Crossbones,[20] went to the Hydra's castle, only to be welcomed by Sin herself. There, the Red Skull's daughter faced Wilson while enjoying a reconstitution of the World War II through holographic technology. Sin started to mock Sam, saying that if it wasn't for her father, Sam wouldn't have become a hero, but only a low-level gangster by the name of "Snap Wilson". Sam, offended by her words, tried to attack her, only to discover that the Sisters of Sin were holding the members of his family, such as his sister and his niece, to ransom. If Sam attacked Sinthea, she'd order to her sisters to kill his family instantly. Sin made Sam give his shield and his wings to her, then ordered him to commit suicide by jumping off a cliff.

Soon after, she started a video conference with Crossbones, Baron Zemo and Taskmaster, saying that the plan to defame Wilson was successful and, after saying that she was better than her father, that she was the real and only Red Skull, she activated Zemo's plan: to spread worldwide the toxic blood of an Inhuman named Lucas, capable of sterilizing human beings, by launching a bomb into Earth's atmosphere. Zemo's plan was to create a new perfect world ruled by Hydra, as its agents would be the only fertile humans after the great leveling, thanks to the Inhuman boy's blood. It was then that Sin was attacked by Sam, who was rescued by his pet Redwing. Sin seemingly met her fate when the bomb containing Lucas' blood was destroyed by Cap.[21]

Return

Allying herself with the telepathic clone of her late father, Sin proposed him to create a new Hydra and use its agents to create deadly machines and infiltrate spy agencies, much to his dismay. Suddenly, a child appeared in front of them, and used her powers to fix Sin's face, returning it to how it was before the explosion that disfigured it. The girl then proceeded to explain she was made of a shard of a Cosmic Cube that once belonged to the Red Skull. Taking advantage of the situation, the Red Skull devised a new plan for his new Hydra.[22]

Sin helped her father retrieve a black box, as well as all his gold, from his safe in a bank in Bagalia, being nearly caught by the Avengers Unity Squad in the process if not by the Red Skull, who used his telepathic abilities to disguise himself as Gambit, and to cloak Sin and the contents of the safe from them.[23]

Sin and the Red Skull hid out in a secret underground room in the Avengers Mansion, which was no longer used by the Avengers and had been converted into a tourist attraction. The pair was nearly discovered by Quicksilver and Deadpool of the Avengers Unity Division, but the Red Skull used his telepathy to convince the heroes that the room was empty.[24]

Sin later took her father to Pleasant Hill, a prison disguised as a small town where the realities of the criminals would be rewritten to turn them into powerless and common people, during Zemo's insurrection in order to the Red Skull to use Kobik to rewrite Steve Rogers' past, turning him into a loyal agent of Hydra at his service.[25][22]

Powers and Abilities

Power Grid [28]Intelligence 2Strength*6  2Speed* 3 2Durability*6  2Energy Projection*5  1Fighting Skills4 * Higher ratings with Hammer of Skadi.

Powers

As Mother Superior, Sin possessed a range of superhuman powers including telepathy, telekinesis, teleportation and intangibility. After she was de-aged, she apparently lost these powers completely - unlike the other "Sisters of Sin", whose powers were diminished but not eliminated upon de-aging. The reason for this discrepancy is currently unclear.[1][26]

With the Hammer of Skadi, Sin has the powers associated with wielding an enchanted Asgardian weapon.[1][26]

Abilities

Being trained by her father, she is an expert hand to hand combatant and martial artist. She is also highly proficient in firearms and explosives. As the Red Skull's child, Sin also has a high level of intellect.[1][26]

Strength level

Normal human female[1][26]

Weaknesses

Same as that of a normal human female[1][26

[nigeiadigitalmarketingcompany]

The World’s Biggest Lawsuit: Juliana v. United States

Digital Elixir The World’s Biggest Lawsuit: Juliana v. United States

Juliana v. United States is a big and complicated case that has now advanced through two administrations. The original complaint was filed in September 2015; Judge Ann Aiken of Oregon district court rejected the government’s motion to dismiss the case in November 2016. At right is a timeline of the docket from E&E News which I am not going to go through, although it does show the twists and turns the plaintiffs have had to go through.

(I don’t know why the docket has Coffin in April 2016, and not Aiken in September 2016, but it’s complicated…. )

So Juliana v. United States is a lawsuit that’s being sponsored and facilitated by Our Children’s Trust, which is a nonprofit organization in Eugene, Oregon, that’s been working on atmospheric climate litigation to try to deal with the climate crisis for a while. So our lawsuit was filed in August of 2015, with 21 plaintiffs from all over the country that each have their own complaint, as part of a large declaration that gives a standing to sue the U.S. Federal Government. And basically, we’re asserting that the U.S. Federal Government has known since 1960 that climate change could be potentially disastrous. We have proof from administrations going back all the way to the Johnson administration, saying that they knew climate change could be an issue and they knew that fossil fuel infrastructure was causing it. And the U.S Federal Government still chose to take direct action to continue to perpetuate the fossil fuel industry and the U.S. fossil fuel economy that we have.

And we’re asserting that by taking that direct action, they’ve disproportionately put the rights of young people at risk, and the rights of life liberty and property as promised to us in the Constitution. And so, what we’re looking for our in our case is for the court system to mandate that the legislative system and the executive system have to work together in order to come up with a plan that would draw down carbon emissions to a point that’s sustainable for human life, and do what we can to bring the global temperature down to at least one and a half degrees Celsius.

(So they have demands. That’s good!) We are now awaiting the results of the final item on the docket, the oral arguments held before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on June 4 (video). Grist describes the situation as of July 22:

Right now, we’re waiting for a decision from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on whether the case can move forward to the district court, effectively restoring the case to where it was before the Trump administration’s latest appeal knocked it off course. That appeal was just one of the many roadblocks the case has faced since it began in 2015 — the first, an attempt by the Obama administration to toss it out completely. In the ensuing years, the case has bounced between the Oregon District Court, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, and the Supreme Court, where the Trump administration has filed multiple motions and petitions to delay and stop it.

It’s looking pretty good for the kids right now — courts typically allow reasonable cases to go to trial, so parties can present their full slate of legal claims, according to University of Oregon environmental law professor Mary Wood. But it’s unclear when we’ll get that decision. It’s been over a month since the hearing in Portland, and there’s really no upper limit on how long it could take, although the court is likely to take the particular urgency of the case into account.

In this post, I won’t go through all the aspects of Juliana in detail. Instead, I’ll look at climate change litigation internationally, which shows the powerful effect for good that success in Juliana could have. Then I’ll turn to two issues in Juliana: The standing of the plaintiffs, and the public trust doctrine, one of the claims for relief presented in the original brief. Before concluding, I’ll turn to one of the litigators on the topic of what the Federal government knew and when they knew it (spoiler: Everything, since forever).

Status of Climate Litigation Internationally

Global trends in climate change litigation: 2019 snapshot

The Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment tracks climate change litigation, and divides the cases into two buckets. From Joana Setzer and Rebecca Byrnes, “Global trends in climate change litigation: 2019 snapshot“:

Climate change litigation cases can be divided into two broad categories:

Strategic cases, with a visionary approach, that aim to influence public and private climate accountability. These cases tend to be high-profile, as parties seek to leverage the litigation to instigate broader policy debates and change.

Routine cases, less visible cases, dealing with, for example, planning applications or allocation of emissions allowances under schemes like the EU emissions trading system. These cases expose courts to climate change arguments where, until recently, the argument would not have been framed in those terms. Routine cases might also have some impact on the behaviour and decisions of governments or private parties, even if this is incidental to their main purpose.

Clearly, Juliana is strategic; I’m really including that passage to underline that routine cases like suits against pipelines, oil or gas terminals, “train bombs,” etc. play an important role, especially in “keeping it in the ground. Grantham also looked at the outcomes of climate lawsuits worldwide between 1990 and 2016, summarizing the results in the following chart:

(“Hindering” means that efforts to halt climate change are hindered; “Enhanced,” the reverse.) So you can see that the United States is, by global standards, exceptionally poor at “enhancing” the climate. Juliana, by mandating “that the legislative system and the executive system have to work together in order to come up with a plan that would draw down carbon emissions to a point that’s sustainable for human life” would reverse that unfortunate trend.

Juliana: Standing

When my friends and I were fighting the landfill, standing was an enormous problem; as it turned out, only “abutters” with property in contact with the landfill had standing. (That is, absurdly, I could not sue because, when the landfill liner failed, as landfill liners inevitably do, my watershed would be poisoned.) The plaintiffs in Juliana, however, seem to have achieved it. From The New Yorker, in “The Right to a Stable Climate Is the Constitutional Question of the Twenty-first Century“:

Judge Aiken had found that the plaintiffs had standing to sue because they had demonstrated three things: that they had suffered particular, concrete injuries; that the cause of their injuries was “fairly traceable” to the government’s actions; and that the courts had the ability, at least partially, to remedy these injuries. On the first two parts of standing, the government’s case is weakening by the minute, owing especially to the growing body of attribution science—studies published in peer-reviewed journals that directly link extreme weather events, such as huge hurricanes and raging wildfires, to climate change. “Evidence to meet the standing burden has gotten much stronger,” Ann Carlson, an environmental-law professor at U.C.L.A., told me.

However, in another part of the forest, in a parallel case, another judge disagrees. Forbes, “Children’s Crusade For Judicially Managed Climate Regulation Stalls In Federal Court“:

In Clean Air Council, an activist group and two unnamed minor children claim that actions and inactions by the federal government have deprived them of their Fifth Amendment right to a stable climate. They also argue that the government failed to uphold its common-law public-trust duty to protect the atmosphere and other resources from climate change. These allegations and novel legal theories mirror those advanced successfully in Juliana v. United States, in which a U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon judge denied the Obama Administration’s motion to dismiss.

Before evaluating the substantive issues, however, Judge Diamond held that neither the activist group nor the children had Article III standing to sue. The standing doctrine, he rightly explained, is an essential check that prevents “‘the judicial process from being used to usurp the powers of the political branches.’”

Judge Diamond then examined the individual children’s standing arguments, finding that their alleged physical harms (but not their anxiety over climate change) were “concrete” and “particularized.” Those harms were not, however, “actual or imminent” as required under the law. Their alleged harm, the court explained, is predicated on a “contingent chain of events” that render the children’s claims “at best, a less than certain prediction.”

Not even playing a lawyer on TV, I can’t speak to the merits of these positions. However, my feeling is that standing is often a very useful escape hatch for a court that does not want to rule on a difficult or challenging case.

Juliana: Public Trust Doctrine

Violation of the public trust doctrine is the fourth claim for relief in the plaintiff’s original brief. That claim reads in relevant part:

Plaintiffs are beneficiaries of rights under the public trust doctrine, rights that are secured by the Ninth Amendment and embodied in the reserved powers doctrines of the Tenth Amendment and the Vesting, Nobility, and Posterity Clauses of the Constitution. These rights protect the rights of present and future generations to those essential natural resources that are of public concern to the citizens of our nation. These vital natural resources include at least the air (atmosphere), water, seas, the shores of the sea, and wildlife. The overarching public trust resource is our country’s life-sustaining climate system, which encompasses our atmosphere,waters, oceans, and biosphere. Defendants must take affirmative steps to protect those trust resources.

309. As sovereign trustees, Defendants have a duty to refrain from “substantial impairment” of these essential natural resources. The affirmative aggregate acts of Defendants in the areas of fossil fuel production and consumption have unconstitutionally caused, and continue to cause, substantial impairment to the essential public trust resources. Defendants have failed in their duty of care to safeguard the interests of Plaintiffs as the present and future beneficiaries of the public trust. Such abdication of duty abrogates the ability of succeeding members of the Executive Branch and Congress to provide for the survival and welfare of our citizens and to promote the endurance of our nation.

310. As sovereign trustees, the affirmative aggregate acts of Defendants are unconstitutional and in contravention of their duty to hold the atmosphere and other public trust resources in trust. Instead, Defendants have alienated substantial portions of the atmosphere in favor of the interests of private parties so that these private parties can treat our nation’s atmosphere as a dump for their carbon emissions.

(The Posterity Clause of the Constitution is in the Preamble: “to ourselves and our Posterity.”) That’s the stuff to give the troops! Here is a lawyerly disquistion on the public trust doctrine from the American Bar Association, “Climate Change Litigation: A Way Forward“, with citations and everything:

Public trust arguments are based on a long-established doctrine from Roman times carried forward in common law jurisprudence for generations. The doctrine asserts that natural resources are the birthright of the public and the government is responsible for preserving the resources for this and future generations in the same way a trustee must preserve a trust. See Brief of Amicus Curiae Law Professors in Support of Plaintiffs-Appellees’ Answering Brief at 5, Juliana v. United States, No. 18-36082 (9th Cir. Mar. 1, 2019). Cases relating to public resources such as water, public access, and fisheries and wildlife have successfully employed this principle. See Richard M. Frank, Symposium, The Public Trust Doctrine: Assessing Its Recent Past & Charting Its Future, 45 U.C. Davis L. Rev. 665, 671–80 (2012). Federal and state courts have granted public trust claims. See id. at 673. Using the same reasoning, atmospheric trust litigation claims the government has a duty as trustee to protect the atmosphere, air, and a livable climate. Individuals like the Juliana plaintiffs use public trust theory litigation to argue that the government has a duty to act in the public interest by protecting the trust corpus and fulfilling the government’s role as trustee.

(The whole article is worth a read, and has more on standing and “suspect classes.”) Here is the government’s response:

The district court should have dismissed Plaintiffs’ public trust claim for three independent reasons. First, any public trust doctrine is a creature of state law only, and it applies narrowly to only particular types of state-owned property not at issue here. Consequently, there is no basis for Plaintiffs’ public trust claim against the federal government under federal law. Second, even if the doctrine had a federal basis, it has been displaced by statute, primarily the Clean Air Act. Finally, even if any such doctrine had not been displaced, the “climate system” or atmosphere is not within any conceivable federal public trust.

I must say that the public trust doctrine seems so clearly right to me that the government’s response reminds me of Monty Python’s The Argument Clinic: “No, it isn’t.”

What Did They Know and When Did They Know It?

CBS reporter Steve Croft, in “The climate change lawsuit that could stop the U.S. government from supporting fossil fuels,” interviews Julia Olson, an Oregon lawyer, and the executive director of the NGO, Our Children’s Trust, which initiated Juliana:

“[Olson] began constructing the case eight years ago out of this spartan space now dominated by this paper diorama that winds its way through the office.”

OLSON : So this is a timeline that we put together… [D]uring President Johnson’s administration, they issued a report in 1965 that talked about climate change being a catastrophic threat. Every president knew that burning fossil fuels was causing climate change.

Fifty years of evidence has been amassed by Olson and her team, 36,000 pages in all, to be used in court.

OLSON: Our government, at the highest levels, knew and was briefed on it regularly by the national security community, by the scientific community. They have known for a very long time that it was a big threat.

KROFT: Has the government disputed that government officials have known about this for more than 50 years and been told and warned about it for 50 years?

OLSON: No. They admit that the government has known for over 50 years that burning fossil fuels would cause climate change. And they don’t dispute that we are in a danger zone on climate change. And they don’t dispute that climate change is a national security threat and a threat to our economy and a threat to people’s lives and safety. They do not dispute any of those facts of the case.Steve Kroft: So you’ve got them with their own words.

OLSON: We have them with their own words. It’s really the clearest, most compelling evidence I’ve ever had in any case I’ve litigated in over 20 years.

30,000 pages. It looks like there’s a reason Juliana has survived as long as it has.

Conclusion

If we have any lawyers, and especially any climate change lawyers, in the house, I’d very much like to hear of any corrections or additions!

NOTES

[1] From the National Geographic:

When young people in the Netherlands sued their government for inaction on climate change, they unexpectedly won. In a decision noted for its bluntness, the court ordered the government to curb carbon emissions 25 percent by next year.

Another ground-breaking success emerged last year in Colombia, where 25 young people won their lawsuit against the government for failing to protect the Colombian Amazon rainforest. The court concluded that deforestation violated the rights of both the youths and the rainforest and ordered the government to reduce it to net zero by 2020.

And a seven-year-old girl in Pakistan gained the right to proceed with her climate change lawsuit on its merits—establishing, in a first for Pakistan, the rights of a minor to sue in court.

The Dutch case has became the model for similarly fashioned lawsuits in Belgium, Ireland, and Canada, and it has inspired other climate cases in countries as far flung as Uganda, New Zealand, Australia, and Norway. The Colombia case has had a similar impact. When the youths there won their case, Boyd says, “Let me tell you, there were lawyers in 100 other countries saying: how can we emulate that decision? We’ve never had such a globally connected system.”

[2] Distressingly, Barrett also says:

And I think with the climate crisis, what’s particularly like damning about it all, is that people of color, black people, have always been stewards of the earth, they’ve always been stewards of nature and have always taken care of the earth and what we have around us. And so, the fact that these systems, these white supremacist systems, have turned the earth against us is really what motivates me to keep doing the work and keep tapping into my ancestry and keep thinking about who I am and why I’m doing this.

A moment’s thought will show that if China is part of the climate change problem, then white supremacy is not the controlling factor.

The World’s Biggest Lawsuit: Juliana v. United States

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[thebibliomancer]

100 Days of Comics! 040/100: Alpha Flight #110 (1992)

Alpha Flight! That’s what today’s rummage brings us! Canada’s premier and possibly only superhero team! Wolverine’s original team! Vaguely good guys in the weird hellscape that is Marvel’s Canada. Why is Marvel Canada so evil? Probably Canada raised creators like John Byrne having a goof.

Anyway, this issue of Alpha Flight is also an Infinity War tie-in. Oy.

So Infinity War is when Adam Warlock’s evil side, expelled when Adam Warlock became a god at the end of Infinity Gauntlet by seizing the Infinity Gauntlet and decided he’d be a pure logical god by expelling his good and evil sides, steals a bunch of Cosmic Cubes from various universes and sets off on a long, complicated and sorta impenetrable plan to get his hands on the Infinity Gauntlet right when Eternity reverses the Living Tribunal’s decision that the Infinity Gems would lose their powers if all brought together. And also he made a bunch of doppelgangers of Marvel superheroes and while some were creative, mostly they had sharp teeth. The only doppelganger worth a shit apparently was Spider-Man’s who survived beyond the event.

Oy. Comics.

This particular issue also demonstrates the worst way to write tie-ins to events. And Infinity War had A LOT of tie-ins.

Was this necessary context? Ehhhhhh, ish.

We start off with some narration about the Ska’r. Apparently an off-shoot of humanity that fed off base emotions. The Ska’ar and their city was cast out from reality. Where they wait for release.

That established, we join Talisman of Alpha Flight as she waffles on buying some tacky tiny skeleton earrings. She also bemoans that all she wants to be is normal but because of her father Shaman, she can never be.

Ever since she reached into her father’s medicine pouch and withdrew the Circlet of Enchanting, her life has pretty messed up. Her mind is full of terrible images of a locked door and an ocean of bones behind it (probably the city of the Ska’r?).

Oh, and then she’s attacked by the new Omega Flight. Omega Flight is like the Masters of Evil or Sinister Six or Frightful Four. A group of villains assembled with a major hate on for a specific hero team. Obviously, in this case, Alpha Flight.

Meanwhile, at Four Freedoms Plaza, a bunch of heroes have gathered for Infinity War. Reed Richards (secretly his doppelganger) is going to explain the event to them once Spider-Man and some other stragglers show up. Secretly, he’s going to try to blow them up.

Several of Alpha Flight are there but I can only really identify Guardian and Sasquatch.

Back at the mall, Omega Flight. There’s Miss Mass, Sinew, Strongarm, Bile, Tech-Noir, and... Brain Drain! Oh hi, Brain Drain! You’ll be cooler once you join Squirrel Girl.

For whatever reason, this version of Omega Flight has been organized by the Master of the World (I mostly know him for getting super killed by Carol Danvers so she could steal his shit to use against Kang). And it seems they’re targeting Talisman to try to unleash the Ska’r.

Talisman magically costumes up and tries to blow Omega Flight away but Miss Mass has the power of being too big to be blown away and she THRAK!s Talisman across the head.

Tech-Noir tells Brain Drain to “tear them screaming from her skull!”

Meanwhile, Gamma Flight (Manikin and Witchfire). They are Alpha Flight’s reserve team. They used to be Beta Flight but they got demoted because Windshear saw them run away from Dream Demons. So against Manikin’s better judgement, the Gammas are out beating up muggers. Its ‘training.’

Witchfire gets distracted with how unfair their demotion was that her concentration slips and one of the street punks whacks her across the head. So we get to see Manikin’s power. Apparently he can summon different versions of himself from across history because collective consciousness? So caveman Apeman, goo pile Proto, and refugee from Zombies Ate My Neighbors Highbrow.

Back at Four Freedoms Plaza, guy with maple leaf on his chest is BORED.

Even though off-screen the events of Infinity War meant that a gamma bomb blew off the top floors of Four Freedoms Plaza, Reed Richards and Iron Man turned out to be doppelgangers, and Thanos made an appearance and now everybody thinks he’s behind it just because of a long history of being behind this kind of thing.

Problem with tie-ins. Telling a story around a story being told elsewhere so we go from Alpha Flight members waiting to hear whats going on to Alpha Flight members reacting to what’s going on with several exciting things happening in the Infinity War book. This is less than an ideal way to do a tie-in.

The idea should be to tell a side of the story you can’t get in the main book. But this is just going ‘you really should be reading Infinity War.’ And because of the way the Infinity War plot was structured, this is just Alpha Flight members sitting around with a bunch of other heroes not doing anything.

Alpha Flight member Puck even complains about just sitting around. Sure there’s things of cosmic import going on but if they’re just going to be sitting around anyway, Alpha Flight would be better off home saving Canada.

Something Alpha Flightish and Infinity Warry finally happens when Cyclops announces they’re putting together an expeditionary force to send after Thanos and that Wolverine, Sasquatch and red-head with goggles are going to be on it. Shaman is going to be aiding the other mystics.

Meanwhile, Toronto: some goblin-looking person called Goblyn senses something dark this way comes. And then some jerk with a white streak through his red hair starts setting the town on fire.

And what I’m pretty sure is Gamma Flight gets ready to confront him.

Nearby, Alpha Flighter Windshear arrives at the mall to find Talisman being taken away ranting that “THEY’RE OUT!” So I guess the jerk Gamma Flight is getting ready to confront is one of the Ska’r. We never did see what they looked like in that opening bit.

Geez, this issue is kind of a mess and the blame falls at least on trying to tie it into Infinity War. The stuff with the Ska’r and Talisman and with Omega Flight and with Gamma Flight seems to be the ongoing stuff that they were doing regardless of Infinity War. But the Infinity War tie-in stuff wasted a lot of space doing nothing but establishing nothing was happened, a lot was happening in another book, nothing was happening, and that Alpha Flight would be on the expeditionary force that the heroes were putting together.

The issue needed some re-balancing. Use only the stuff post-explosion and make it more about the Alpha Flighters reacting to being put on the expeditionary force, to be transported across the universe to fight a guy that once killed half of everyone everywhere.

Make the issue about the hole Alpha Flight left in Canada by sitting around in conference all issue. Have Gamma Flight have to pick up the slack while still not getting the respect. Have one wryly comment that it must be nice to be respected as the top squad while getting to sit on your butt all day and then humorously cut to the gamma bomb at Four Freedom Plaza blowing up.

If this is an Infinity Wars tie-in, have Gamma Flight fight doppelgangers of Alpha Flight maybe.

Bottom line, this issue is pulled in too many directions. It introduced a new version of Omega Flight and this was such a big deal that they got to vandalize the cover by drawing Omega over the Alpha Flight logo but we don’t really get much of them.

I’m just talking out my ass though. I don’t know enough about Alpha Flight or the issues surrounding this issue. And this is not a great first exposure to the team.

[hundredyearavatar]

General Iroh is incompetent: Defending against Kuvira

This is the in-depth analysis of General Iroh's defensive positions. Throughout the post I'll be asking the question "what would Azulon do?" which will serve to relate Iroh's tactics to what I think Azulon's would have been. The purpose of this post is to berate Iroh, but also to understand my view of the Hundred Year War.

Scouting Zhu Li told everyone that the attack is coming in two weeks, and apparently the General didn't feel it imperative to verify this information. Zhu Li was a scientist and couldn't have known the details about the attack plans, yet the General treated "two weeks" like the gospel. It seems the only confirmational source of information he had was an outpost not even a day out from the city.

Azulon would have sent forth all manner of probes into the Earth Empire territory to find out what Kuvira's plan were. How many tanks, how many infantry, how many airships. Are they all approaching from a single direction, or has Kuvira directed garrisons from around the Earth Empire to converge on Republic City from multiple vectors? Azulon wouldn't have waited for Kuvira to arrive, he would have pushed his scouts as far into the Earth Empire as possible to see the enemy as soon as possible. Even if the intel contained highly detailed plans, it's still prudent to verify this physically.

Tight Formations I've previously written about how during the Hundred Year War the tight formation was abandoned for more fluid and mobile layouts. Tight formation sucks for two reasons. The first is that it weakens attack ability of your troops. Those benders are so bunched together that they can't flap their arms, let alone use their bending against an enemy. The second is that it enhances the effects of the enemies attacks. Bending, particularly earthbending, is an area of effect weapon. I've written about short wall tactics, and the effect of this mobility denial is increased if the troops are massed. The fact that Kuvira was known to have a super weapon cannon type thing means that Iroh should have recognised the ability of the weapon to wipe out his concentrated "defenses" in one blow.

Azulon would have a far lower concentration of troops across a very large area to ensure that they can all dish out their bending. This is the sort of thing that Azulon would have learnt while fighting for his father. At the beginning of the war Sozin used the tight formation, but as the war progressed he released the reigns more and more, allowing his generals to use whatever tactics they pleased. This phase of experimentation would teach Azulon the benefits of mobility and fluid formations.

Bending type separation It's really odd that the troops are deployed in formations of over two hundred of their own bending type. It might look neat, but this organisation severely hinders the effectiveness of the force. If Iroh's army were to engage in combat, the firebender and waterbenders have no means of countering whatever earthbender attacks that come their way. It requires great skill for benders of different types to be able to work in tandem with each other, but surely this isn't beyond the capabilities of a professional army.

This means that I have to answer the question "Did earthbenders and waterbenders fight in the Fire Nation Army?" At this current time, my position is that this was the case. I think that seeing earthbenders, and particularly waterbenders, fighting alongside firebenders would be relatively rare. But I do think there's interesting discussion to be had on these specialised units which is enough for another post.

Lack of non-benders It's never expressly stated, but it appears that the United Forces are composed entirely out of benders. I've written about Azulon's innovation of mixed bender and non-bender combat before and I think that this still applies in the era of Korra. In short, non-benders are better at killing so you want to dilute your benders with non-benders to create an efficient army.

But there is room for salvation. For whatever reason, the United Forces is quite small. Even Kuvira's army is pretty weak considering her control of the vast tracts of land in what was previously the Earth Kingdom. An explanation might be found in a post-war treaty that severely limited the size of standing armies. Azulon's main concern was army size, but if this has been arbitrarily limited then it might make sense for entire armies to be composed of benders once more.

Barbed wire The barbed wire is pathetic and also hilarious. It just doesn't make any sense at any level. What we have is three lines of "concertina wire", because barbed wire is arranged into the loops. These lengths of concertina wires are held up by "Czech hedgehog" obstacles. Not only is it only three lines, it doesn't even reach the edge of the mountain side. It doesn't make sense as to why Iroh would place all of his troops directly behind his own wire. It's true that his job was to "defend" Republic City, but this wasn't going to be some long and drawn out conflict. Both Iroh and Kuvira had limited forces, so Iroh's goal would be more accurately described as to "repel" Kuvira. And then there's the hedgehogs, which are the big spiky looking things. Using hedgehogs isn't a bad idea at all, considering it was known that Kuvira had sizable tank capacity. Unfortunately, they were going to be absolutely useless because Iroh only had thirty six of them. Tools like barbed wire and hedgehogs require a certain degree of area saturation to be effective and Iroh wasn't a tenth of the way there. All in all, there is nothing right about Iroh's use of these obstacles.

But of course, this doesn't matter because obstacles are obsolete in the world of Avatar anyway. Unless the barbed wire/hedgehog is made out of pure platinum, the wire itself can be metalbent into irrelevancy. Even if the barbed wire was platinum, then the ground upon which it sits could be earthbent. These obstacles that sit on the ground are easily removable and are therefore not obstacles. I've thought a lot about the Earth Kingdom defending against the Fire Nation, but I haven't thought a whole lot about the reverse. While the Hundred Year War was defined by the Fire Nation's slow yet unstoppable progress, surely the Earth Kingdom launched counteroffensives which drove the Fire Nation back in some areas. Add that to the future post list.

Anti-air and Anti-tank It was known that Kuvira's forces consisted of large numbers of tanks and airships, yet Iroh's preparations features no response to this threat. Considering that Iroh's defenses aren't really defenses anyway, this isn't surprising. It's not as if Iroh deployed something that's useless -- it appears he had nothing to deploy at all. I'm hoping that there wasn't a staging area filled with cannons somewhere closer to the city. In that week of preparations Iroh yielded zero anti-vehicle stuff.

Azulon was a resourceful man, and would have recognised that the ships in the harbour were merely sitting idle. In this time of great need, he'd strip the ships of all armament and use them as ground defense weapons.

Defensive fortifications Given how weak Iroh's "defenses" are, I wouldn't be surprised if, in those three hours of warning he had, he personally gave each soldier a short length of wire and then asked them to tie them all together to make the barbed wire. The General had supposedly been working on his defenses for a week, but we see nothing of this. In a single day, a thousand trained earthbenders should be able to construct a gigantic network of defenses. It might not be pretty, it might not withstand heavy bombardment, but it will be strong defensive position. Even in three hours, a thousand earthbenders could easily have created anti-tank fortifications and ditches. But all Iroh has to show for it is some concertina and a few dozen tents.

A thousand earthbenders with even a day of full work could create a gigantic, although rudimentary, defense network.

The Headquarters In some ways, we should appreciate how close the General is to the "front line". He's right there, within the possible blast effect of the spirit weapon. He'll nobly share the fate of his soldiers. But that isn't his job as general. Considering that telephones exist now, he should probably be with Reiko. A General is under no obligation to risk their own life in the line of fire -- their obligation is to minimise that risk for their own soldiers.

This difference in doctrine also existed between Sozin and Azulon. Sozin placed his emphasis on fighting alongside the soldiers because he believed that to be a demonstration of his own power. Azulon placed his emphasis on command structures and organisation. It's true that Azulon sometimes took part in a cheeky fight or two, but in general Azulon wanted his army to function with maximum effectiveness.

Defensive posture The General, in all of his brilliance, adopted a defensive posture equivalent to standing with your arms crossed and feet together. Why are the troops and barbed wire stacked like some sort of sandwich? The General has placed his troops at the point where the valley widens, which doesn't make sense at all. Let's say the barbed wire was somehow an impassable obstacle. His position invites Kuvira's tanks to crash into the flanks of his formation, while the centre remains helpless as they're bombed by the airships. Perhaps in terms of raw manpower the two antagonists are matched, but Kuvira has the clear advantage with the airships and tanks.

Waterbenders The waterbenders have no water. I repeat, the waterbenders have no water.

Thanks, Iroh. On the other hand, Azulon would have gone into overkill. In that preparatory week, he'd have the earthbenders building an artificial lake. He'd have wells built, he'd build a new river, he'd ensure that the waterbenders have a virtually endless source of that glorious H2O.

Overall strategy What the hell was the General's plan? Why did he allow Kuvira's army to march right up to them -- a move which gave Kuvira the short distance needed for maximum effectiveness of her superior tanks and mesh? Perhaps an explanation can be found in Reiko's intent to attempt an order to turn around; but you don't allow an overwhelmingly superior force to march up to the gates before asking them to turn around. You engage the enemy when they are weakest and you are strongest. The General had limited resources, it's true, but his strategy was a failure from the moment he decided to set up defenses right at the gates to Republic City. Iroh's mish mash of benders and barbed wire had no objective, there didn't seem to be any plan.

What would have been Azulon's strategy? I think the first thing he would have recognised was the importance of the mountains. This is where Azulon would have placed the majority of his defenses, but all of this would be concealed. Heavy and perhaps even theatrical fortifications would have been built further way from the city but still between the mountains. Someone like Azulon would understand Kuvira's character and foresee her arrogant demonstration of power.

With these things in mind, Azulon's strategy would be to exploit Kuvira's arrogance. She clearly thinks that the mega mech is the be all and end all of her army. She's neglected her forces in favour of her new toy. Azulon would strike these vulnerable units in a surprise flank attack with maximum intensity. If he has airships then he's dropping bombs too. What's most important is that Azulon leaves their rear unharrassed. This is the classic tactic of allowing your enemy an easy withdrawal route. Azulon's goal wouldn't be to destroy the ground forces; the goal is to separate them from the mega mech and then take down the mega mech.

Iroh's Redemption I've been trashing Iroh a lot, so I thought it'd only be fair if I provide possible explanations for what we see that don't rely on Iroh being incompetent. And that's reliant on Mako:

This doesn't make sense… There aren't any train tracks this way. How are they transporting that super weapon of hers?

This is what he says when the gang hears Kuvira's army while riding an air bison. As we've already discussed, there's no excuse for being surprised at Kuvira's actions. But if we ignore the fact of a lack of intelligence, Iroh's meager defenses might not be a surprise after all. Mako's reference to "this way" might suggest that everyone was assuming a different attack route; one that utilised some train tracks. Perhaps Iroh's week was spent building a glorious impenetrable defense along this approach route. But then he gets the call that Kuvira's stomping down an unexpected path and it takes two and half hours for him to relocate everyone. So perhaps Iroh had less than half an hour to actually organise a defense at that location. Who am I kidding, someone fire this guy.

[son-tatso]

// oldest (noob) daft of Tatso, as Gosan (son of Future Gohan/Videl) as my first DBZ OC from 12 years ago at least lmao, this was for a web based DBZ RPG where you gain PL for sending ‘training’ in the chat room every half-one hour, and by RPing in the chat room too haha

email sent on: Mon 5/5/2008 11:02pm // Australian Eastern Time

Picture: http://tn3-2.deviantart.com/fs6/300W/i/2005/047/b/8/Gohan_by_Psicopatico.jpg

Name: Gosan Race: Half Saiya-jin Gender: Male Age: 18, July 10 Birthplace: West City, Earth Eyes: Black Hair: Black hair that is spiked up and outward, one bang hangs down over forehead.

Alignment: Pure Good

Appearance: Gosan is a spitting image of his father, Gohan when fighting Super Buu. However he does have some minor differences, having a scar on his cheek like Yamcha had, his pointy hair spreading out a little like Goku’s yet to a lesser degree, and there not one but a bang of hair falling to his forehead. Despite all this, he wears the traditional turtle style fighting outfit, an orange gi with navy blue undershirt, fighting boots, wristbands and belt. The back of the gi carries the ‘son’ symbol, his family name that he carries with pride.

Ki Color: White

Ki Description: A transparent yet white crackling flame with jagged edges, spreading the shadows form attire and muscles to be more defined and visible than without it.

Personality: Gosan seems to see and try to exploit any light towards any tainted people that he meets; pure evil is an exception to this obviously. He is a proud Saiyan that enjoys training and fighting like his full blooded counterparts, though would not kill unless his opponent was pure evil and was a big threat. Among strangers, he presents himself to be a polite individual. He puts himself above others, willing to risk his life for them without hesitation as long as it does some good.

History: Gosan is the son of Gohan and Videl in an alternate future timeline, one ravaged by the infamous Androids 17 & 18 who were created by Dr. Gero who had a grudge against Gohan's father Goku. The twin androids eventually killed off all resistance until the genius scientist and friends of Goku's, Bulma created the time machine. Gosan by then had grown into a young teenager and took it upon himself to travel to the past to retrieve the emergency stop device for the androids in the past, come back and then using it on the androids of his timeline before destroying them for good. As a reward he has been granted free use of the time machine in which he has used to save many worlds and make many friends along the way. Several years passed before a new threat arrived, the monster known as Majin Buu created by the evil wizard Bibidi and resurrected by his son Babidi. Gosan was granted the unlocking of his true potential in order to destroy the demon, in which he did with flying colours. However this came at a terrible price as the wizard Babidi put a curse on him that did the reverse of unlocking potential. This weakened Gosan to such a risky state that he had to flee via his time machine, into this timeline where his story continues …

Friends:  None Rivals: None Clan: None

Discipline: Kame-Sennin Ryu: A balanced martial arts style passed down by Master Roshi which excels in physical combat by the application of strength and speed for offence and defence. Ki is often used to boost the martial artist’s attributes and to form attacks as well as strategically using techniques to give them an advantage in battle.

Occupation: Super Hero

Zenie: 0 Items: None

Power Level: 1,000 Defense: 100 Combat: 100 Strength: 100 Speed: 100 Intelligence: 100

Experience Points: 0

Custom Attacks:

Splitting Sphere Shot: With the left hand gripping the right wrist, ki is transferred into the right hand to form a hovering white ki orb the size of tennis ball. This ball’s movements can be easily directed by Gosan’s arms so its best used as a long distance or an attack used when hidden, since it allows for minimal leg movement in order to keep concentration. The ball is extremely hot and razor sharp in its making, being best used to shave at the opponent from the side from than directly. When the ball hits a solid object, instead of exploding like regular bombs, they split into two. This can be done many times, however the power of each ball is also divided with each split. Whenever Gosan wishes, the balls may explode before vanishing for good.

Comet Eruption: Gosan raises his arms into the air with his palms faced up and spread; he shoots off a large beam of white energy into the sky and sees to it that it disappears from the opponent’s site. With energy up into the air, this does not allow him to use any ki attack but he could still use hand to hand combat to a lesser degree. A waving down of his arm will direct the now large blob of ki shooting to the ground, the speed that it rushes in making look like a comet. Now this comet of energy doesn’t necessarily have to go right to the opponent, it can alternatively burrow underneath the ground around the opponent instead and will shoot up at the opponent from below. Though with this manoeuvre, Gosan can’t move at all whist his mind his concentrated fully on the silent movement of the ki underneath.