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ccinagalaxyfaraway · 5 years ago

Note

Mayhaps... a senator au if you feel up to it? where plo koon is the senator for dorin, and the wolfpack is assigned as a guard for him for a negotiation mission or something of the like, whatever you want :)

“It would be most shameful if something were to happen to you during these negotiations, Senator,” says the Chancellor. “Especially since you’re overseeing them on our behalf. I won’t think of it. You must accept protection.”

Plo resists the urge to roll his eyes. He’s at home; his face is uncovered. But oh, he would love to. “Chancellor, I am fully capable of looking after my own safety. My staff -”

“Are unfamiliar with the territory. These are dangerous times, Senator Koon.”

“I am aware,” Plo says. If he had teeth, they would be grinding. May you trod on plastic children’s toys, he thinks sourly.

“It’s settled, then. I know just the men for the job. The 104th Wolfpack Battalion will join you for the duration.”

“The what -? An entire battalion is excessive! Absolutely not.” He is a very private person by nature; the thought of having so many people around devoted to knowing where he is and what he is doing at all times is intolerable. Not to mention the stares and whispers that tend to follow his people wherever they go; it’s not a secret that most of the galaxy considers them unattractive at best.

But the Chancellor has already signed off, his hologram winking out of existence. Plo starts a cycle of deep breathing. His sister the Sage swears it’s helpful. He thinks it’s banthashit.

---

Commander Wolffe, after whom the battalion is presumably named, is a stern approaching-middle-age man with a scar over the right side of his face. The cybernetic eye tracks Plo briefly before syncing with the Commander’s natural eye again; Plo pretends not to notice.

“Senator Koon,” says the Commander, saluting and staring over Plo’s shoulder instead of at his masked face. “We’re to be your protection detail while you mediate discussions.”

“Please call me Plo,” he says, offering a bow. “It will be a long week if we stand on formality the entire time. May I ask who else I have the honor of meeting?”

The Commander introduces his personal squad - now Plo’s constant companions - and Plo bows to each of them in turn. “I do apologize to be the cause of this diversion. Please do tell me if there’s anything I can do to make this assignment easier on you; I am accustomed to coming and going as I please, but I understand changes will have to be made. We can discuss the details in the office.”

He leads the way through the hallways. “You’ll have full access to the ship, barring personal quarters, and an emergency override to my quarters should the need arise. My staff have been instructed to provide you with anything you require; there should be ship layouts and a preliminary intelligence report on our destination and relevant factions waiting for you. You are, of course, welcome to use the ship systems. Accounts can be set up with no difficulty.”

“That is . . . very generous, sir,” says the Commander. “Thank you.”

Plo shrugs. “Everyone starts somewhere. Let us say I am reasonably well acquainted with being on the other side of this arrangement, and how obstructive a client may be.”

“You’re a soldier,” says the Commander with some surprise as they pause in front of Plo’s office while he keys in a code. Two of the men - Comet and Boost - take up positions at either side of the doorway.

“Something like that, once upon a time,” says Plo. He stands aside so Sinker can clear the space and pick his spot on the inside of the door before entering, Commander Wolffe trailing behind him. “Please, have a seat. Now, how may I help you with your arrangements?”

---

The clone troopers are less of an imposition than Plo had expected them to be; they’re generally willing to allow Plo to have his freedom, even if they accompany him everywhere but the fresher and to bed. By the time they arrive at neutral ground, the shifts have been worked out and aside from Commander Wolffe’s presence as his shadow, things are almost normal. And even that isn’t altogether unenjoyable; the Commander has a dry wit and a general lack of tolerance for nonsense that aligns well with Plo’s own sense of humor. It’s like having someone to give voice to all the things he wishes he could say himself but can’t due to his position.

It doesn’t hurt that the Commander has had zero discernible thoughts whatsoever about his appearance. The few times they’ve made skin-to-skin contact, the Commander has been carefully, deliberately blank; clearly he’s done his research. It makes for a more cordial relationship, not being bombarded with opinions on things he can do nothing about. Every morning, he waits for Plo at the door to his quarters and escorts him to breakfast before proceeding to the conference hall. A half day of discussions later, they go to lunch, which Plo picks his way through around his mask while the Commander watches, and then back to negotiating. Afterwards, he brings Plo back to his quarters with a reminder to call if he wants to go anywhere, declines to join Plo for any kind of refreshment, and disappears to wherever he goes when Plo isn’t in public.

Plo wonders if he ever eats. He has to; he’s not a droid. But unless he’s downing 4500 calories in one sitting after shift, he needs food during the day and he isn’t getting it. The rest of the men switch out at least; Wolffe is never out of reach. The most he’s ever managed to get the man to accept is a mug of unadulterated caf. It can’t be healthy. Not, of course, that it’s any of Plo’s business.

Still.

The end of the week comes sooner than Plo expects with everything running so smoothly; so of course, the Separatists choose to attack on the last day. The explosion throws the room into chaos, smoke and fire spreading from the blast. Wolffe pulls him into his chest, curling around him even as he draws his pistols, snapping orders at his men. Plo makes himself as small as possible, trying to keep out of the way.

After the first brief exchange with the droids, Wolffe shuffles them both towards Comet, who’s already radioed out for help in case the smoke wasn’t enough to tip someone off. “We were this close,” he complains, throwing a charge pack at Boost.

“I know,” Plo mumbles. “I’d so wanted to tell the Chancellor I-told-you-so.”

“That eager to be rid of us?” Wolffe asks, eyebrow raised.

“Not you in particular, Commander,” Plo says, though Wolffe’s grin says he’s only teasing. “Just perhaps the rest of your battalion. Which I maintain is overkill for one unimportant expansion region senator.”

“Bet you’re glad we’re around now, though,” says Comet, whose informality endeared him to Plo on day one.

“I can’t dispute that,” Plo says. He ducks as more blaster fire strikes their cover.

“We only have to make it -”

“ETA ten minutes,” Comet supplies.

“-until extraction,” says Wolffe. “Keep your head down and things will be fine.”

Plo nods and throws his arms around his head, wishing he’d brought a sound dampener.

“Be ready to move,” Wolffe orders. Boost lays down cover fire for them as they run for the door, Comet ahead and Sinker behind, and Wolffe at his side. They’ve almost made it out when a second blast throws them into a wall. Plo gasps weakly, rolling onto his side, the world spinning. Wolffe has already climbed to his feet and is fighting a droid, his movements wild and uncontrolled; blood trickles from the side of his head. He misses a blow, staggers, and the droid catches him by the neck, lifting him into the air. Wolffe chokes, scrabbling at the droid’s arm for leverage, kicking to no avail, dying.

That cannot be allowed to happen. Plo grasps around for a weapon. Anything. All there is is drywall and rubble. He focuses on a shard of stone. Reaches. The shard remains just out of reach. It can’t be. It won’t be. He clenches his jaw.

The shard launches into the air, rocketing past Wolffe and into the droid’s head. Wolffe drops to the ground and kicks it away as it begins sparking. He staggers over to Plo and drops to his knees beside him.

“What,” he gasps,” was that?”

“Learned it from my sister,” says Plo, right before he passes out.

---

By the time Plo recovers from his Force-exhaustion, cleanup is well underway and they are halfway back to Coruscant. When he steps out of his quarters, Wolffe is one of the men standing guard at the door. Wolffe salutes, and Plo dips his head. They walk to the mess in companionable silence Plo makes a cup of tea and a mug of caf and collects an assortment of fruit and pastry.

“Would you join me?” he asks, taking a seat in the booth. Wolffe studies him, a new curiosity in his eyes, and then acquiesces. He sits stiffly, picture perfect for an army etiquette guide.

“It’s been an eventful end to the week,” Plo says. “I’d wanted to thank you for your protection.”

“Just doing our job, Senator,” says Wolffe. He doesn’t sound, strictly speaking, as though that was the only thing he had been doing.

“Nevertheless, a job well done deserves recognition,” says Plo. He nudges the plate closer to Wolffe. “Please don’t feel like you have to stand on formality with me. You’ve seen how I am with my staff.”

Wolffe hesitates a moment and then caves, selecting a cluster of berries. Plo smiles. “I hope this diversion hasn’t cut into your original plans, Commander.”

“No. Just shifted back a week. If I may, sir, I had a question.” He studies Plo. “At the hall. You used the Force?”

“I did.”

“But you’re not a Jedi.”

“I am not.” He chuckles. “My family is frequently gifted with these abilities. Mine are not so prominent that my parents felt they could not handle me, and I was rather fascinated with systems as a child. When the Master Jedi asked if I wished to be trained, I declined in favor of continuing my studies at home. And so, here we are.” He spreads his hands.

“Here we are,” Wolffe echoes. “I should be thanking you for saving my life.”

“I could hardly do otherwise when I had the ability to help. And if I’m entirely honest, I’ve become rather fond of you in the last week,” Plo says. Wolffe’s eyes linger on him. He decides to take the chance. “Please feel free to refuse, but might I ask for the honor of your company at dinner?”

Wolffe’s lips twitch. “I am afraid I must decline, Senator,” he says. Plo lets out a self-depreciating puff. “However - I’m off-duty once I’ve reported in on Coruscant, and I have no plans other than to kill time with paperwork in an office. You might have better luck then.”

“I see,” says Plo. “Please do eat, Commander. I’m not at all collecting information on your preferences.”

Wolffe smiles and pops a berry into his mouth.

#plo koon #commander wolffe #plowolffe #swcw #promptfic #cocoeast

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psychopersonified · 5 years ago

Text

KIdnapped!Q - Part 2

Continued from Part 1 here.

---------

“The boyfriend don’t feed you??” she shakes her head and sends a glare at Bond’s direction indicating what she thinks about his efforts.

Q nearly spit takes his tea. He forces it down, choking in the process.

Bond clears his throat. “I think… you’ll find the boyfriend tries his best,” he grinds out, still looking straight ahead, his tone betraying more than a little indignation.

-----------

Notes: The event told roughly from Bond's POV especially the first half. Plus the aftermath. This is me trying to get into Bond's head. Also, let's all get on Bond's case shall we?

Towards the end, there is exposition of technical plot. I've tried to interject it with humour and also to use this opportunity for character development.

Some parts borrowed heavily from Spectre (movie) but does not take place in that universe.

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

Level 5 Lobbby, SIS (MI6) HQ

Kneeling beside Q in the Level 5 lobby of MI6 HQ, Bond vacillates between being livid at himself and overwrought with worry for Q. The young man is crumpled unconscious on the marble floor. He had seen it coming. Q was already too pale in the car, lips almost colourless. He had to call Q’s name twice before he responded to exit the vehicle.

He should have dealt with it in the parking garage, instead of turning Q into a spectacle here in the lobby. He recognised the symptoms of hyperventilation when he saw it. Bond was hoping to get Q to medical before helping him recover.

He checks Q’s pulse, rapid but weak. He’s breath is still shallow. If medical doesn’t get there in the next minute, he’s going to pick Q up and carry him there. A crowd is forming around them. Level 5 lobby is the main exchange lobby inside HQ - where the ‘public’ meets the ‘secret’. The floors above level 5 house the Executive and Operational branches. Level 5 and below that are the public facing areas - accounts, administrative, HR, logistics, cafeteria, etc. To get to the upper levels, they have to change to the restricted lift banks further to the rear of the building.

And now, it’s right in the middle of the workday morning. Curious staff from both upstairs and downstairs are standing around staring. Bond wants badly to tell them to -piss off-, but it would just make rumours spread faster.

Dr. Chen arrives just then with two of her aides, a crash cart and a gurney. Together they put Q onto the gurney, checking his vitals on the way to Medical.

“BP 87/60. Pulse 110. Oxygen saturation 92%. Glucose levels 61mg/dL,“ One of the medical aides report.

“He’s borderline hypoxic and in hypoglycaemic shock. Prepare glucagon shot, and glucose IV drip.” Dr Chen orders as they fit Q with an oxygen mask.

Knowing Q, he likely hadn’t taken breakfast yet that morning either. He was still asleep when Bond left for HQ. Add that to the fact that Q barely had dinner the night before; appetite suppressed by the cold he was having - he was running very low on reserves.

—

The treatment room doors close in his face. One of the senior nurses had brandished a folded stethoscope in his face like a weapon and told him to stay. That was Maria, a straight talking matronly nurse of Pilipino descent, the only nurse in medical that isn’t afraid of his 00-status despite being nearly a foot shorter than him. So he’s now left pacing the corridor outside.

—

Earlier that day

When his phone buzzed that morning with a security alert ::Lobby Alert:: , 007 was in a meeting in the operations centre with M, Tanner and 004 running through plans for the next mission in Libya. A local warlord was buying guns presumably to fight ISIS insurgents but intel has it that he’s gone from fighting them to suppling them - profits were better.

007 had excused himself to a corner to check the app that would give him access to the security cameras in Q’s building. The sight of the three men at the door with the battering ram had him on his feet in an instant - heart in his throat. The distress signal came through seconds later.

He was out of the conference room door in seconds and into the main operations area where the wall of monitors stood. R was there and had apparently received the same alert - the warning flashing red and urgent across one of the monitors.

“007, Sir!” R called out to him from across the room, “Q’s distress signal was just activated.” R looked to Bond like he might have an explanation.

M and the others in the conference room had followed him out when they noticed him leave abruptly.

“I just received the same alert. Security cameras show three men attempting to gain access.” Bond held up his phone to indicate how he knew.

Panic flickered across R’s face for a moment; but her training kicked in and she started calling out orders to the minions around her, “Executive Protocol Q! Attempted forced entry at Quartermaster’s residence in progress. I want CCTV feeds around his residence. Get the police on the line, how fast can they get a patrol unit there-...”

What happened next was a flurry of activity. Bond’s only deference to protocol was to turn to M and nod his leave before sprinting out. Tanner caught up with him at the lifts, a tablet in hand. He swiped his Chief of Staff card and tapped a short code that would give him (or more accurately M) preferential lift access in emergencies.

“M says to take his car. R can patch through the feeds and update us on the way.” Bond would normally object to having someone tag along with him, but in this instance a government vehicle with its blues-and-twos flashing would get them through traffic quicker.

By the time they got to the parking garage, they were joined by another team of agents. Tanner had the keys to M’s Jaguar and took position as driver, he signalled to one of the other agents jump into the front passenger seat - leaving 007 to stew in the back. The remaining agents followed in a separate vehicle.

“Tanner... a little more speed would be appreciated.”

“007, why don’t you pay attention to the tablet and help R out?” Tanner suggested politely.

007 flung the door open before the car even made a full stop. He engaged the second assailant just as Q made it across the Jag’s bonnet to the other side. Bond would later dispute the police report that indicated excessive force was used to subdue the assailant. A broken nose, partially crushed windpipe and dislocated knee was hardly excessive in his line of work.

��---

Present

Dr Chen emerges from the treatment room 15 minutes later.

“He’s fine. He’s fine.” Chen holds up her hands to placate Bond before he can do his double-0 looming. “Oxygen levels are back to normal and blood glucose readings are back up. He just needs rest and some food in him.”

Q comes fully around in half an hour. The glucose and oxygen supplement doing wonders. He’s sitting up on the recovery bed having tea and biscuits that Bond managed to retrieve from Q’s stash in Q-Branch.

Mallory and Eve are present as well, intercepting Q before Bond has had a chance to see him privately. Pleasantries done, M leaves the room and gestures for 007 to follow him out, leaving Eve to continue her conversation with Q.

—

Outside Recovery Room A

“007, It’s been a trying day. How are you?” M opens.

Bond makes a non-committal sound, “Sir. I know you didn’t want to see me to discuss my mental health.”

M sighs. Why must everything be so difficult with this one.

“Fine. I want to discuss Q’s protection detail for the next few weeks until we get this threat sorted. You are off the Tripoli mission next week, 004 will be taking lead,” M offers.

Bond would normally protest, but this time he makes no move. Internally he is relieved. This saves him from having to come up with an excuse for why he won’t be going.

“We’re going to have to move Q to a secure location. MI5 has safe houses and resources we can tap into— “ Mallory sees the snarl forming on 007’s lips and quickly adds, ”—but I have a feeling you are going to want to have a say in it.”

Bond backs down and considers a moment. “I still have my place. The floorplan is easy to secure. A few upgrades and it should be adequate.”

“And the rest of the detail?”

“I’ll… need two more officers. Better yet, field agents in line for the 00-program. Consider this their asset protection training.”

M nods in approval. But something is left unsaid. M decides that it is time to get it out of the agent.

“How long has it been going on?” Bond knows M is not talking about the protection detail anymore.

“Just over a year.” He says matter of fact looking at a point past M’s shoulder. Bond isn’t volunteering more information than that. M doesn’t look surprised. If anything, he looks thoughtful.

Both men are clearly uncomfortable with the personal segue of the conversation. A pause and they both look away and clear their throats at the same time.

M ends the discussion on something they are more accustomed to, “Well, I trust you have this area under control. Tomorrow morning, we’ll reconvene to discuss any information R and Forensics can recover.”

Bond nods. “Very well, sir.” The fact the M hasn’t removed him from the case is consent enough.

——

Inside Recovery Room A

“How are you?” Eve rubs his blanket covered shin.

“Aside from it being one of the worst days of my life? Alright all things considered.“

Eve reaches over to give him a tight hug, more for her own sake than Q’s, “You had everyone so worried!… Thank goodness for the pen.”

“Yes well… Bond’s penchant for pilfering Q-branch equipment finally came in handy.”

Eve ruffles his hair and presses a kiss to his cheek, “You did really well today. I’m so proud of you.”

Q shrugs, what can he say? He doesn’t feel particularly proud. More numb if anything now that’s it’s over. Eve seems to sense this and goes for humour instead, ”Did Tanner tell you? He put 007 in the backseat of the Jag on the way to you.”

“I did wonder about that…” He could imagine Bond’s ire at having to relinquish control and wait patiently. Eve and Q share a conspiratorial smile.

“The rumour mill is spinning in overdrive; thought you might to know. It was quite the spectacle this morning in the lobby.”

Q pinches the bridge of his nose; mortified. “Not my finest moment I’ll admit. I’ve single handedly destroyed what little street cred Q-Branch had left.”

“Oh Q... that’s not what people are talking about—,” at his blank look, she unlocks the phone in her hand and pulls up the internal messaging app. She scrolls to a video and selects it before showing it to him.

It was of Q crumpled dramatically on his side just in front of the lift banks. 007 is crouched over him, one of his hands cradling Q’s head. Tanner is standing nearby, phone to his ear. The video captures 007’s other hand coming up to touch the pulse point at Q’s neck. A few moments later the agent looks up, taking in the crowd, his eyes a blazing blue, expression tinged with fear. Dr. Chen arrives soon after, cutting off the view from that angle.

Oh… OH…- In his mind, Q had expected the incident to be far more comical. A tech boffin kissing the floor from panic induced hypoxia has the potential to be the stuff of comic legend; if schadenfreude was your cup of tea. But the video was far from amusing. Poignant would be a more accurate description. Bond will be a handful to deal with later.

At the sobering thought, Q changes the subject, “Did I make the tele?”

Eve grins and nods,”All morning… breaking news and all. It’s being spun as a possible terror attack, as shots were fired and we need to maintain your cover. Mallory negotiated a quid pro quo with MI5. They are getting credit for the quick response in apprehending the suspects in exchange for publicly copping to counter-terrorism failure.”

“There were quite a lot of shots exchanged. Was anyone hurt?” Q recalled the street was rather busy.

“Aside from the assailants, none seriously. Some civilian injuries, but all stable.” That assuages his guilt somewhat.

“Has anyone been to the flat?”

“Forensics is taking a look now.”

“Derek, the officer in the lobby? Is he—“

“He’s just out of surgery. Critical but stable.” This is why Q loves Eve, she knows everything.

“Don’t suppose anyone knows what happened to the cats?” Q is a little sheepish to be asking about his pets when human lives were threatened this morning.

“The cats are fine. Emily from forensics found them huddled in the laundry room. She’ll bring them back here at the end of her shift,” Eve reassures him, “But at the moment, your lion is loose and prowling the halls.”

Ah right, “Eve… does everyone know?”

Eve smiles at him, “Q... everyone’s known for months. Including Mallory.”

Just then the door opens and Bond reenters. Eve takes her leave. She pats Bond on his bicep on the way out and he acknowledges with a nod. When she’s cleared the doorway, he closes the door and locks it behind her. Finally. Some privacy.

Bond is silent intent when he comes to sit on the recovery bed facing Q. He removes the mug of tea from Q’s hands and sets it safely aside - gently demanding.

He leans in to wrap his arms tightly around Q, crushing Q against his chest. He runs his calloused hands over Q’s back, neck and into his hair - then buries his nose in that unruly mop of hair, breathing in deeply. When he’s a little calmer, a little more composed - he relaxes his hold to nuzzle Q around the temple before going in for a kiss, hands still stroking the sides of Q’s face and neck.

Q’s glasses are askew from all the petting. “Alright… I’m alright…. ,“ He soothes the agent, and has to take hold of Bond’s hands to quiet him. He knows Bond in this unsettled mood - a predator caught off guard, challenged… insecure. Bond would very well take things too far to reassure himself if Q lets him. And this isn’t an appropriate time or place.

“Are you still going to Tripoli on Monday?” Q tries to distract the clingy agent.

“No. M stood me down… I’ve been reassigned as your PPO,” Bond rumbles softly into his hair.

“Aren’t you a little overqualified to play bodyguard?” Q needles him.

“Hmm… you deserve the best,” he mumbles into the corner of Q’s mouth.

Q snorts at the backhanded compliment Bond’s paid himself.

Bond whispers, “I’ve been told I’m rather good at what I do.”

Bravado. Let him have it- Q thinks, “You’re incorrigible.”

“And you’re precious,” Bond had not intended that to be out loud, and is a little embarrassed even before Q calls him out on it.

“Gah! You’re incredibly mushy today,” Q pushes him away lightly, mock cringing.

Bond leans back, but his hands have escaped and have wandered around Q’s waist, thumbs caressing the ticklish flesh, “Considering the events of today, I think I’m entitled.” Bond leans back in for a kiss.

Pillow talk. They’re engaging in pillow talk in the middle of the day in Medical. -Surreal- Q thinks.

The door handle rattles. Bond squeezes his eyes shut and exhales in exasperation -Seriously, can everyone just piss off!

Undeterred by the universal sign for a request to privacy, the person the other side raps on the door.

Bond goes to unlock it. Q picks up his tea to hide his mirth.

The door opens to reveal Nurse Maria sporting a -very- disapproving scowl. She’s back to check in on Q’s condition. She keeps her eyes on Bond as she enters, keeping him at bay with her stare alone. Bond moves away to a decent distance and stands at parade rest, eyes straight ahead; the very picture of obedience.

She turns to Q and fusses over his vitals and starts removing the IV drip.

“Rest. No more dangerous stunts. Eat more... Too skinny. Tsk!” she makes a sound of disapproval.

“The boyfriend don’t feed you??” she shakes her head and sends a glare at Bond’s direction indicating what she thinks about his efforts.

Q nearly spit takes his tea. He forces it down, choking in the process.

Bond clears his throat. “I think… you’ll find the boyfriend tries his best,” he grinds out, still looking straight ahead, his tone betraying more than a little indignation.

“Hmph…” Maria huffs unimpressed, as she fluffs Q’s pillow.

Mercilessly she adds, “Maybe the boyfriend is too busy. Always travelling. You should tell him to slow down. Spend more time at home.”

All this she directs at Q but there is no mistaking who the words are actually for.

“I’ll umm… I’ll make sure to let him know.” Q tries to defuse the situation. If it comes down to an actual contest of words between those two, Q’s not sure Bond would win.

——

Quartermaster’s Residence

Late that afternoon, once forensics is done collecting evidence, Bond is back home - well technically Q’s place. He speaks to Emily, Head Forensics Tech onsite for an update.

“Place is untouched, only damage appears to be the door. Nothing appears to be out of place, but you’d be able to tell better than us. It doesn’t look like the assailants bothered to search for anything. Which confirms the suspicion that they were not after anything, but Q himself.”She informs him - which to Bond is the worst case scenario. Q has something they want, and if the failed attempt today does not dissuade them, then they will try again.

“We’ll have some technicians back onsite to secure the door at least temporarily and do a more thorough sweep… Right then, cats are in their carriers in the laundry room. Do you still want us to take them to HQ?”

“No, that’s fine. I’ll take it from here. Thank you Emily.” Emily pats him on the shoulder much like Eve did before leaving.

Bond has two other agents with him:

Agent Monica Chalmers, former Squadron leader in the Royal Air Force, calm, tough as nails with surprisingly good hand to hand combat skills for a pilot.

Agent Peter Coyle former Major in the Royal Marines, good all rounder but with a dormant sense of rebelliousness that Bond see lying just beneath the highly disciplined exterior.

Both are experienced field agents and nine months into the Double-0 program and top of their batch. He’d consulted 009 earlier for his recommendation and Bond remembered them from the selection weekend ten months ago when he assisted 009 in the testing process.*

Bond gets them to help pack a few bags for Q as well as collect any projects and papers he was working on - directing them where things are and pointing out the items he wants packed.

When they’re done and about to leave, Bond emerges form the laundry room with his own bag and a cat carrier, “I hope the both of you like cats.”

Chalmers is quick to indicate affirmative. Coyle hesitates a split second too long; 007 smells blood and smiles sharkily. “Well you do now,” and promptly hands over the carrier case to him.

-—-

Notting Hill, Chelsea

Then they swing by MI6 to pick up Q before heading to Bond’s place in Chelsea.

They have a polite dinner, all four of them standing around the kitchen bar, because Bond’s bachelor pad lacks any real furniture. Bond refuses to be embarrassed. The place smells musty from disuse, and the overhead lighting is harsh and unflattering. It’s in a very nice part of town, but the place is frankly depressing. Q’s only been here a handful of times. Barely furnished and incomplete, it represents Bond’s past - he still comes by time to time especially after missions where he’s had to do some morally questionable things. He comes here to shed the proverbial filth so to speak; before returning to his present, his life with Q. Psychological compartmentalisation in physical form.

Q had let the cats out to explore. Jellicles the younger tuxedo cat is curious, zooming about the place and chattering to himself. Q thinks his boldness is due to the place not smelling entirely alien. Bond had to pull the cat off the hanging kitchen lights at one point.

But Spot (after Data’s cat) the older orange moggie is having none of it. The big former street cat is attempting to climb Q’s jeans, wanting to be held and cuddled. Q finally gives up and picks up the cat and hitches it to his side like child - the large moggie is as heavy as one too. With the cat mollified, Q can finish his dinner.

After dinner, Q transfers the cat to Bond’s arms before excusing himself to shower and get ready for the night. Bond is in his usual white shirt open at the collar, gun holster still around his shoulders. The orange cat fidgets in his arms, head-butting him under the jaw. Jellicles who was lounging on the kitchen bar now feels left out and is reared up on his hind legs, front paws on Bond’s other shoulder, meowing incessantly. “Yess, alright…,” he sets down his fork in mild annoyance to pet the cat along his long sinuous spine and get him to sit back down.

Agents Chalmers and Coyle exchange a look. Here is the idolised spy, the revered Double-0 agent, the man himself in his private setting and nothing lives up to expectation. The cognitive dissonance throws them.

Bond ever the observant one catches their open stares, understanding immediately. His voice is low, tired even, heavy with the the years of service and untold horrors he’d witnessed and done, “They lie in the brochures. I hope neither of you are doing it for the lifestyle.” And that concludes Bond’s pearl of wisdom for the day.

When they’re done clearing up, Bond gives them their instructions.

“Familiarise yourselves with the floorplan, entry and exits. Let me know what improvements we need and an escape plan for contingencies.”

“In the evenings when I’m around, you won’t need to stay. Check in with the police guards outside and have them keep watch of the building. But I won’t be here all the time. At some point I -will- leave to go after whoever is behind this.”

“The both you will need to take turns sleeping on the couch. Or make alternative arrangements for him if the threat becomes untenable. We’ll discuss more tomorrow.“

With that, they’re dismissed.

——

That night, when the lights are out, and they’re both scrubbed clean of the days’ stress - Bond crawls into bed behind Q. Q can sense it in the cautiousness and light tremors in Bond’s movements, like he’s trying to keep it together.

Once his guard drops, James is near inconsolable. Wrapped possessively around Q, hands everywhere, legs tangled - his face is buried in the back of Q’s neck. The man is silent, except for the harsh and erratic breathing - and not the good kind either. The back collar of Q’s pyjamas is wet with tears.

Q does his best to soothe, petting and rubbing the muscled arms wrapped around him. He brings the man’s hands up to his face and kisses the cuts and bruises on his knuckles. “James, I’m alright…. I’m right here…” he whispers over and over.

He doesn’t try to stop the emotional breakdown, better to let him have it. Q feels a little guilty, he’s feeling somewhat detached from the days’ traumatic events. Maybe it’s because he got to panic while it was happening and it is now out of his system. He’s cool and calm now while James suffers the emotional fallout.

Q recalls the video that Eve presented to him earlier in the afternoon. The camera capturing with stunning clarity the raw emotion behind the agent’s blue eyes. If the agent knew about the video, he’d make the person who took it will disappear. Which reminds Q to make a mental note to nuke the video from the messaging platform in the morning.

James is past the tears now and demanding more. The soothing caresses turning to something more serious, more consuming. Q is more than happy to give. They comfort each other until they’re both exhausted enough to fall asleep.

---------

Saturday 10:00

SIS (MI6) Ops Centre Level 9 - Operations Room C.

R is providing sitrep. Images flash across the wall of screens to the front of the room.

“…—The ambulance was stolen from the Forest Hill Station south of London. Three assailants. Two in custody--” Their mugshots appear on screen:

Assailant 1 sports a bandaid under his chin. “…— is under medical observation for possible head trauma from hitting the cobblestone street—…”

Assailant 2 is much worse off, broken nose, a large hematoma under the right eye, and ugly bruising across the throat. “…— is also under medical observation for a partially crushed windpipe and dislocated knee.”

“Hospital will not release them for questioning until Sunday or Monday at the latest. Human rights and all. Third assailant was cornered by our agents, but opened fire into the crowd. Luckily there were no serious injuries. Agents stood down to avoid risk to civilian population and the assailant escaped on a stolen motorcycle.”

“Facial recognition places them as local members of a south London crime syndicate. Armed robbery, money laundering and the likes - serious crimes but nothing on the scale that would suggest going after a head of department in SIS.”

“Hired muscle. Nothing more. So that if the attempt fails or they get caught, it can’t be traced to whoever ordered it,” M concludes.

“Yes, sir. But they would have to know where to drop the asset off if it were successful though.” Agent Chalmers chimes in.

“Note the unusual timing; in the middle of a workday morning meant that they had to know that Q would be home at the time. That he was relatively unguarded—“ that Bond wasn’t home, was left unsaid. “—which means they were watching. Or told when to initiate the attempt.” Tanner added.

Q is only half paying attention to the discussion. Mark from IT-Branch came in earlier to hand him three new boxes of electronics - bless him. A new phone, laptop and hotspot router (because Bond’s place has no telephone or internet); unboxing them was like taking a hit for an addict in withdrawal. Q is preoccupied with setting them up and re-downloading data from the secure cloud services. He feels nearly like himself again. He had spent most of yesterday without them and he didn’t know what to do with himself.

“The place was untouched. The target was Q. What worries me is motive. Why would anyone take such a risk to provoke MI6 by abducting the Quartermaster knowing we would have the motivation and resources to go after them. Not unless the payoff is something that would massively change the way they forward their agenda. It has to be something they need him for. Something they can’t replicate, not even if they had the plans.” 007 concludes.

M who was rocking lightly in his chair whilst listening stops, leans forward and sighs. He looks over at Q, “What have you been working on?”

Mallory couldn’t keep track of all of it. Yes Q-Branch spent millions in R&D but they made the government (and by extension secured SIS funding) at least ten times what they spent. Declassified plans, schematics and programming codes sold at auction to private defence, Infosec and engineering companies for tens of millions.

The Q-Branch minions might be the butt of jokes at times in SIS, but their work not only kept operatives alive but helped keep the lights on in MI6. It is no wonder that MI5 wanted a slice of that pie. Sometimes M wondered why Q hasn’t left to go work in private. He’d asked him that once, and all he got in reply was something to the effect of ‘reigning in egomaniacal tendencies with public oversight and knowing which side you’re on’.

“Take your pick—” Q huffs in mild frustration, then realises who he was speaking to and adds,”—Sir.”

Q’s feeling tetchy this morning. Aside from tech withdrawal, his cold had gotten worse so his nose is completely stuffed. The general fatigue that accompanies a cold is exacerbated by his aching leg muscles from all that running the day before. Then he’d discovered he’d ripped a nail right off the finger bed in his haste to remove the hard drive so it stings when he types. He’s feeling a full on sulk coming. Bond already bore the brunt of his crabbiness this morning attempting to get him ready to come in to HQ.

“What about the project you’ve been working on with Mark? With the Shadow Network?” R said trying to be helpful.

“What about it? And please, I prefer Gemini Network - sounds less villainy.”

“I heard Mark say it could be a game changer, that it will give us the upper hand when it comes to controlling information.”

“Well in theory….” Q is being a little evasive.

Mallory looks over at Eve and tips his chin up at her. Eve knows at once to go and fetch Mark. They’ve learned over the years that when Q says something is ‘in theory’, it means he’s already gone ahead and built a proof a concept it or at the very least it tested the theory.

Mark enters the operations room like he’s been summoned to the headmasters office. “Sir? You asked to see me?”

“Tell us about the Gemini Network.” M dives right in without preamble.

“You mean the Shadow Network?” Mark looks for clarification.

“Why does everyone insist on calling it that?…” Q is slightly miffed.

Mark begins, “Well, the concept started years ago when we first used it to trap Silva in his earlier days. Quantum was trying to undermine your predecessor through Q-Branch, cascade of equipment failures leading to the death of a field agent. Basically we built a replica of Q-Branch systems and let Silva run his virus in it to learn what he was doing.”

“Since then we’ve evolved and developed the concept into a full shadow network that now protects MI6 systems. We created an AI shepherded by our cybersecurity team that patrols our systems; learning the normal functions - what’s secure, what’s not.” Mark pauses to check if everyone is still following.

“The idea is that when an anomaly in the system is detected, the AI isolates the suspicious node and shunts it into its shadow network. The shadow network presents itself as a legitimate fully functioning system and lets whatever suspicious activity continue unchallenged. But all the while it is watching and learning. It then flags the human team who can then decide if it is harmless or a legitimate threat. We can then use what it learns to patch the actual system. Think of it like an evolving immune system for cybersecurity. The more it learns the more robust it gets.”

Q then reasons, “The AI represents thousands of hours of machine training and learning, valuable in it of itself. But not impossible to recreate - though having MI6 as a training ground does make it harder for anyone to catchup to it.”

Bond notices Mark’s excited body language. The man is almost bouncing on his toes, “But… I’m guessing there is more to this…?”

Marks looks to Q and they have a non-verbal exchange. Those two are thick as thieves when it comes to programming, though Mark still refuses to transfer to Q-Branch for the sake of his sanity. Bond has met Mark numerous times, he likes the guy. Mark looks up to Q like an adoring little brother wanting someday to be just as good. Which means he’s an enabler who goes along with Q’s ideas without any sense of self preservation.

“Recently, Mark and I found a new application for it. We managed to package the AI into a worm that can be used to infiltrate a target network. It will still require us to inject it behind a firewall, either through hacking or physically. But once inside, it starts watching and learning - filtering traffic internally between nodes; as well as incoming and outgoing traffic outside of the network. It will sit dormant until activated…”

Eve’s eyes are wide, “Oh boys, what have you created?”

“…When activated, it will deploy the Shadow Network, into which we can shunt specific network traffic. A) The captured node still thinks its in the master system and functions normally. B) The AI then replaces the captured node with a mimic so to the master system, nothing is amiss.”

“The beauty of this is that it does not require us to crack security. When authentication is required, the AI simply returns the node back in to authenticate before shunting it back out. Do you see? We can compel any system to unlock its door by hiding behind the captured node.“ Mark points out looking like he’s about to explode with excitement.

Even Tanner is stunned now. R, who has heard it all before and told them repeatedly how dangerous of an idea this was - has her hands pressed together as if in prayer covering her mouth

“The node itself is tricked into thinking it is still interacting with the master system - which makes it voluntarily reveal information which we can collect or use as we see fit. Alternately we can seed it with misinformation to bring back to the master system.”

“Its the ultimate spy - Agent 1001.” Mark declares gleefully. His attempt at humour falls flat. If he‘d added Ta-Da! at the end of it, Bond was going to cuff him behind the head.

Mark pulls himself together and continues, “In practical terms it means we can change literally any information - while both sides remain unaware because there are now two truths depending on which network you are interacting with. ”

“But that’s just the start—.” Q takes over.

“There’s more?“ Mallory drawls out, feeling a migraine coming.

Q is apologetic, “What’s the most secure form of record keeping at the moment? …Blockchain. A set of records linked cryptographically together, with a distributed ledger that technically guarantees security. You can’t change any data in a block retroactively without changing all the subsequent blocks…. not unless you have consensus of at least 51% of all the nodes in the ledger.“

“Q… As riveting as this exposition is, get to the point.” Bond’s tone is a warning, his consonants sharper. Even he’s catching on to where this is leading and dreading it.

“Yes alright..” Q doesn’t get why everyone seems more upset than impressed.

”The point is, theoretically if we manage to get the worm into a peer-to-peer network and let spread throughout, we can apply the Shadow Network concept to launch a mass ‘eclipse attack’ on the distributed ledger. The nodes in the network must stay in constant contact to compare data for consensus. If the AI shunts off enough of the nodes into its Shadow Network and manage to trick 51% of the nodes into accepting our version of the chain before returning it, we change the ledger. Change the ledger and—“

“—You’ve hacked blockchain.“ Eve finishes for him, disbelieving.

“So are we talking about bitcoin?” Agent Coyle hazards a guess.

“Oh Agent Coyle… cryptocurrency is just the beginning. Just imagine any database that depends on blockchain for its immutability. Voting records? Supply chains? Financial records? Anti-counterfeit measures? The Shadow Network lets you - Change. Your. Digital. Reality.” Q finishes with a flourish; in purely intellectual terms, the concept is truly quite clever.

Tanner looks to Mallory alarmed,“Sir… 35 central banks are now experimenting with issuing digital state currencies on blockchain. At least 10 will be going ahead in this year and another 15 in the next 2 years.“

Silence. You could hear a pin drop.

Bond who has been standing off to the side of the monitors in his characteristic agent pose, legs apart one hand in his pocket; exhales loudly and points out ominously, “So whoever controls the AI, controls the Shadow Network and everything it can do - the Shadow Master. “

All heads in the room turn to Q….

“Yes, that would be one way of putting it. Personally, I prefer the term Shadow Architect,” Q chortles at the absurdity of the comic villain names.

But no one one else is laughing. And they’re all looking at him expectantly. Except Mark, he laughs at all of Q’s jokes.

-Christ-. Bond is torn between wanting to strangle the oblivious idiot himself and wanting to put the genius in a glass cage for his own safety.

A moment later, Q has a dawning realisation about what he’s managed to get himself into this time.

“It..Its just theoretical!” Denial.

“Technically this belongs to SIS…” Bargaining.

“We just thought it would be a helpful tool for our operatives to turn the odds in their favour!” Anger.

“What in the world possessed me to think…” Depression

“Owwh shit.” Acceptance.

Q stops his pacing in front of the monitor wall and collapses into a chair nearby. Elbows on his knees, head in his hands.

When he’s done cycling through emotions, M raises and eyebrow,“Well, I’m glad we’ve all come to the same conclusion,” M’s sarcasm flies over his head.

——

As a result of the meeting, Q & Mark are sent away to put their project into a secure vault in the servers - until M knows what to do with it. Q feels like they’ve just been sent to ‘time out’ - to think about what they’ve done.

Once he’s done that, he goes to Q-Branch to serve out his sentence.

Q-Branch is the only ‘secret’ arm in SIS that is located between the garage and basement bunkers. It’s more practical that way as larger projects (cars, boats, etc) would be a logistical pain to move if they were on the upper levels. Three whole floors make up Q’s lair that he shares with thirty or so minions.

It’s Saturday, so only a skeleton crew is present most of them are working in the floors below. None are in the office areas.

Bond is still in the meeting upstairs with M and the others. So Q makes himself tea and sticks his nose in the steam curling out of the mug to open his sinuses. He’s running through the theory he’s told the others in his head - trying to poke holes in it. But no, the simulation running on his computer is telling him how terrifyingly efficient the AI would be once activated.

The main doors to Q-Branch offices hiss open. Q doesn’t turn around, knowing who it is. Bond comes to sit a little noisily in a swivel chair next to him, facing the other way. He’s radiating ‘we need to talk’ vibes, but even then Bond usually just invades his space until Q speaks first.

“James, I’m sorry about being a tosser this morning. I shouldn’t have taken it out on you. The eggs were fine.” Q makes a peace offering. And since no one is around, he reaches out to trace a finger around Bond’s tie pin.

Bond doesn’t move away which means he’s forgiven. Thats the thing with Bond, he’s not really a man of many words when he’s not actively trying to charm a mark. So when he does want to talk, best pay attention.

“Whats the damage?” Q asks.

“Mark is going to need his own protection detail.”

“Oh, he’s going to love that….” Poor Mark is going to have to explain that to his Bumble dates.

“Well, it might teach him not to be such an enabler and grow a pair around you.”

“Hah! Tell it to his face.”

“I did. Now, stop making him do things that will get him in trouble. You don’t want that on your conscience.” Bond chastises. The poor guy is like Igor to Q’s Dr Frankenstein.

Suitably reproached, Q doesn’t have anything to say for himself. He continues playing with Bond’s tie.

“Mallory is thinking of forming an internal oversight committee to run risk analysis on Q-Branch projects. He doesn’t want to accidentally end up with a cyberworld equivalent of a Manhattan project in his lap.

“He’s afraid I’ll turn into Ozymandias…,” then remembering that Bond probably didn’t get the reference, ”Antagonist, very smart, tries to take over the world.” He supplies by way of explanation.

Bond laughs a little, “If you do turn villainous, does that make me your henchman?”

Q considers, “More arc nemesis I should think. Don’t pretend that M won’t send you to shot me if I do. And don’t pretend you won’t either.”

“Are you expecting me to refuse?”

“No Mr Bond, I expect you to come get me.”

---- To Be Continued ---

#00q #00q fanfiction #00q fic #kidnapped!q #james bond #q

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yuzusorbet · 6 years ago

Photo

Fantasy On Ice, Sendai, May 31 (Fri) to June 2 (Sun) 2019 ~my account~

[wrote it for myself, to remember all the little details]

When I heard that Sendai was one of the places for Fantasy On Ice 2019, I immediately knew I had to get tickets. I made my first trip to Sendai in April 2018 for Yuzuru Hanyu’s Olympic victory parade and I fell in love with Yuzu’s hometown. FaOI Sendai would be the perfect occasion to visit again! I quickly asked some friends for help and, miraculously, they managed to get tickets for all 3 shows from the official ticket draws. I’m eternally grateful! At that time, Yuzu’s participation was not yet announced but we knew he would be there. Even if he couldn’t do jumps yet, he would definitely make an appearance in his hometown. Weeks later, it was announced that he would be in the shows in all 4 locations. Fans were delirious with joy! Besides the thought of seeing him, it also meant he was recovering well!

This would be my 4th Yuzu-ice show. 2015 I went to FaOI Kobe; 2017 Niigata; 2018 Shizuoka. So glad Sendai is an FaOI location this year; it’s the first time!

I flew into Tokyo Haneda Airport and took the shinkansen to Sendai. My hotel is very near the main station. The show venue is Sekisui Heim Super Arena, in a small town called Rifu, north of Sendai, in Miyagi Prefecture. It is not easily accessible, so there were special shuttle buses to take us there from Sendai Station. We had to buy the bus tickets from a vending machine in 7-11 in advance. Cost for a 2-way ticket was 2500 yen, half-price for one-way.

Day 1, Friday (show time: 5pm)

At about 3pm, I followed signs that pointed to ‘FaOI shuttle bus’, which basically meant following the crowd. (The long queue was to the right of this photo.)

Boarding the bus in an orderly manner. Each bus moved off once it was full.

On the bus, I looked around me and wanted to laugh.... everyone’s phone screen or wallpaper was Yuzu’s face! hahaha...... it was surreal. xD

It was a long bus ride, about 45 minutes. We finally reached and I saw many stalls selling food outside the arena. But the sky was grey and rainy, and suddenly the drizzle became very heavy rain. I quickly lined up to go into the arena. Thank goodness I had my waterproof parka. Much better than an umbrella!

When I got to my seat, I had a nice surprise. The people sitting next to me were Taiwanese fans that I had met during Yuzu’s parade last year! So happy to see them again!

Besides the great company, my seat position was really good too. Right in the centre of one long side (East) and not far from the rink for an ‘A’ seat! (First row is Premium, then Arena, SS, S, A, B.)

While waiting for the show to start, we chatted and exchanged gifts. One of them gave me a little drawstring bag with a single feather embroidered on it. A simple design that is so beautiful, especially for us Yuzu-fans. I was so touched. I only had snacks from my country to offer. :P

Then the show started. When Yuzu came out for the opening, we all screamed!!!! He danced with so much energy and happiness pouring out of him and his jump was awesome! It was a 4T with a high kick, and then, as he danced in front of the whole group of skaters, he did a “I can’t hear you, c'mon” kind of gesture to the audience. (You can see it HERE.) OMG he was so cool!!! I don’t know how the people sitting on the short side, right in front of him, survived.

2nd part of the opening: Yuzu skated in with Jeff, Javi and Luca, and they were joined by 4 ladies. His pair dance with ice dancer Anna Cappellini was so cute! And he was so smooth and confident!

Individual performances: so many wonderful performances…. I will mention some of them at the end.

When singer ToshI came onto the stage, he said, “Sendai is figure skating and we have 2 Olympic gold medalists here… Arakawa Shizuka (loud cheers) and Hanyu Yuzuru!!!!!!” (loud screams) Then he did the Yuzu-call......

ToshI: YUZU!! (points mike to audience) Audience: YUZU!!! ToshI: YUZU!! Audience: YUZU!!! ToshI: YUZU!! Audience: YUZU!!! ToshI: But he’s not coming out yet. (hahaha…..) (Next was Stephane Lambiel.)

Yuzu’s performance was last, as usual. 'Masquerade’ was so passionate and intense that my heart was thumping like crazy and I had to scream at many parts (and I heard others’ screaming as well). The music plus ToshI’s singing was very loud and drowned out our screams, thank goodness. When Yuzu threw down his glove at the end, we all jumped to our feet and screamed and clapped. MASQUERADE WAS ELECTRIFYING!!! Video here.

Finale: Yuzu came out in the finale costume (black and white with frilly sleeves). So handsome! After the group number, he disappeared backstage while the others did their jump or spin battles. He appeared again wearing the FaOI tee, wiping his face with a towel and sipping from a water bottle. Then he went to stand next to Plushenko. He tried the quad lutz, popped first time, then 2nd time he stepped out a bit. When all the skaters started to go back in, one by one in a line, he did the 'high ten’ with each of them, some hugged him, he twirled Anna, and then Luca twirled him! haha…. that was so cute! Then as always, he stepped out of the rink, and from the side of the stage, he shouted “arigato gozaimashita!!!” He bowed, walked backwards while waving, and before he disappeared through the curtains, he blew us a kiss!! I think I died……

The show ended at about 8.30pm. Rainy, dark, and took forever to get onto one of the shuttle buses that took us back to Sendai Station. But head is totally filled with Yuzu and Masquerade, and heart is totally happy. :)

Day 2, Saturday (show time: 2pm)

On Day 2, I did not take the shuttle bus. My friend Ella came to watch the Saturday and Sunday shows. Her Japanese friend rented a car and drove us there. (5 of us in the car made the shared cost much cheaper than the shuttle bus ticket.)

It was a sunny day and I was very excited about the food (which I did not try on Day One due to rain). From afar, I saw the tentage.....

When I got there, the whole place was like a carnival! As I wandered around, someone suddenly tapped my arm. It was my fan-friend K-chan! How amazing that she spotted me among the crowds! The last time we met was one year ago at FaOI Shizuoka! So happy to see her, even if it’s only for a minute. xD

The stalls were awesome. I have never seen food at previous ice shows! The food sold here were specialties of Sendai and the regions nearby, and there were long queues at every stall. There was nama biru (draft beer), miso ramen, yakisoba, gyu-tan (grilled beef tongue), croquette with bits of gyu-tan inside, skewers of Yonezawa beef (famous beef from Yamagata), and zunda soft serve ice-cream (zunda = sweet edamame bean paste).

Above: my Zunda ice-cream.... so yummy.

Above: Gyutan. Below: Croquette and Yonezawa beef.

I wish I could eat everything! But I only had time to try these 4 things over Sat and Sunday. They tasted SO GOOD. (Thanks to Ella for her recommendations!) There were many benches near the stalls and people were sitting there enjoying the food under the blazing sun.

It felt like a festival to celebrate Yuzu being there. :)) Besides the official merchandise, there were also booths selling Sendai snacks in beautiful FaOI packaging and music boxes of Ballade No.1 and SEIMEI. There was even a photo booth with staff helping fans to take photos! xD

And when you got into the ice arena, every seat had a plastic bag with some promotional material and a pack of FaOI Sendai wet wipes! haha….. so you could wipe your sticky hands and mouth if you brought food in to eat!

Sendai, you really are the best! :D (So, I have 3 of these wet wipes from the 3 days but I can’t even bear to open one of them to use!)

For Day 2, I was on the other long side (West) and a bit off-centre nearer the short side. So I had a totally different angle of the show and my row was nearer the rink than yesterday -- fantastic! The person next to me was also Ella’s friend and she offered me some lovely sweets. Yuzu-fans are really sweet! :)

Opening: Yuzu fell on his opening 4T, so when he came out again with the other 3 guys (Jeff, Luca and Javi), he did a beautiful 4T before doing the usual steps with the others. Hahaha, I was laughing inside, that is so HIM!

In the middle of show: ToshI’s YUZU-call this time was even longer than Day 1! Felt like we were at a rock concert! He made each side of the rink call out “Yuzu!” 3 times, like a battle to see which side was louder. So it was one long side first, then the short side (in the video below, you can hear it’s a bit softer cos short side has less people), then the other long side. Toshl says in his blog that this is the “やりすぎ編😅 ”, meaning the “too much (or overdone) version”. Haha…. I like Toshl. (Didn’t know him before this.) We were all so high shouting “YUZU!!!” with all our lung power! xD Video of Day 2 Yuzu-call (ToshI’s blog)

Something comical: During the flying acrobatic skaters’ performance, I could see 4 or 5 men at one corner outside the rink pulling the rope to raise the skaters into the air. They were running to and fro holding the rope and they were so funny! End of performance, when the 2 skaters bowed, the men also bowed in their corner and waved as they marched off in a line! Haha........ (this could only be seen from seats on the West side.)

Intermission: In previous FaOI’s, during intermission, 2 of the skaters (but never Yuzu) came out in zambonis and shot little presents to the audience, like signed FaOI tees. So I waited a while but there was nothing happening... (same for all 3 days). So I went for a walk to stretch my legs. Went to put my fan letter into the gift box for Yuzu. It’s just a simple postcard from my country. :)

Last performance: Yuzu’s ‘Crystal Memories’ –- so beautiful I think I forgot to breathe. The Y-spiral was near my side of the rink. His right leg raised up high was slowly lowered in a beautiful line with his body and it was just so heavenly to watch from where I was. So many other exquisite moments...... words won’t do justice. Watching live, costumes always sparkle and glitter 100 times more than what we see on screen. Yuzu was so sparkly he looked like an angel of light, sent from heaven to bring beauty and love to our world. Video of 'Crystal Memories’

Finale: As the skaters skated around the rink waving, Yuzu skated slowly, looking up at the audience. I think he was trying to see as many fan-banners as he could. Like yesterday, he went backstage to change out of the finale costume and wore the FaOI tee to do the quad challenge. The 4Lutz today was a step-out/hand-down. The staff were putting some chairs onto the ice near the stage. When Yuzu realised it’s group photo time, he dashed backstage and came out very quickly in the black-and-white finale costume again, and he was grinning away. Haha, it was a really quick change! I wonder who the lucky person was, helping him backstage. xD

At the very end: He shouted 'arigato-gozaimashita!’ and we shouted back 'arigato-gozaimashita!’ Then, just before he disappeared into the curtains, he did the phantom 'take-off-the-mask’ gesture. And we SCREEEEEEEEAMED!!! xD

I floated on cloud nine to the car park..... Soon we were on our way back to Sendai Station area. In the car journeys to and fro, the music was excellent, thanks to a friend who has a Yuzu-playlist in her phone which she connected to the car stereo. All the music that he has skated to, from novice til now.... SP, FP, exhibitions..... ahhhh what great music..... it was really the GREATEST selection!

As we reached Sendai Station area, a funny thing happened. Our friend drove onto the wrong road and we found ourselves on a highway going off to a different area! She frantically looked for an exit but there were none. We just had to keep going on this highway, further and further away from Sendai Station! Then I saw a sign saying we’re heading for「泉中央」...... hey, isn’t that the area of Ice Rink Sendai? We’re heading for Yuzu’s home? Our friend kept apologising for going the wrong way but we told her IT’S OKAY!!!! We’re going to Yuzu’s home!!! Hahaha..... the wrong road suddenly felt so right! xD

The sun was setting..... We became quiet.... gazing at the golden colours of Yuzu’s hometown while his music serenaded our senses.

(Glad these photos I took with my iphone in a moving car turned out well.) After driving for some time, our friend found the way back towards Sendai Station. We were late in joining a group of fans for dinner but what a nice little detour we had! Very grateful to our Japanese friend who did all the hard work while we just soaked in the sights and sounds!

Day 3, Sunday (show time: 1pm)

For Day 3, I bought a one-way shuttle bus ticket as I would return by rental car. Like Day 2, I lined up for food before the show. The lines were very long and there were staff holding signs that said “end of line (food name)” for each stall so that people would know exactly where to queue. Moving slowly in line, I used the time to admire the Yuzu-world around me. Almost everyone was wearing or carrying things that showed their love, like Ciontu tees, Pooh keychains and Irene bags. I myself was wearing the Phiten mirror ball necklace. Some things were so beautiful and unique and I took photos. (edit: separate post made on this; link is below.)

After eating, I walked around and spotted Yuzu’s signature near the arena office! It was from year 2010! At that time, the wing in his signature was very distinct. So cute. :)

Close to 1pm, I went into the arena to look for my seat. I had an ’S’ ticket and I was excited about being much nearer the rink than the previous 2 days with 'A’ tickets. But when I got to my seat, I saw that I was only just in front of my row yesterday! Realised that my 'A’ seat yesterday was the FIRST row of all the 'A’ seats and my S seat today was the LAST row of all the S seats. Hahaha…….. I was a bit disappointed but then I was really lucky for the A seats! (Seat order: Premium, Arena, SS, S, A, B)

The good thing is, I was on the West side again and nearer the stage this time. I would be able to see Yuzu going in and out very clearly! And I had my concert binoculars! I bought it just the night before, from a budget shop near my hotel. Sometimes the shows provide rental of binoculars but this one didn’t. I usually use it for the finale, when the skaters are just having fun, so I can see Yuzu’s cute expressions. :)

I was also extra happy as I would be sitting next to Ella who came into the arena soon after me. 2 Japanese fans behind us heard us talking and knew we were not Japanese. They showed us a huge folder with many Yuzu clear files and pamphlets, and asked us if we already have them. We said no and they took out some to give to us! Omg..... what super nice fans!! They said they would be going for Kobe FaOI and Toyama FaOI as well! They were at Worlds in Saitama too! (Wow, I wish I could say the same!) How lucky we were to sit in front of them!

Opening: Wonderful like the other days and Yuzu did a beautiful 4T. After the group performance, as he walked towards the backstage curtains, he took off his outer mesh top and swung it around, just before he disappeared thru the curtains. Haha.... how cute can he be…… xD

Middle of show: ToshI said he talked too much yesterday so today he would say less. The audience protested a bit with an “Ehhhhhh??” But there was no Yuzu-call today. :(

During Masquerade, Yuzu fell on both his jumps. For us fans, it did not matter at all, but we knew he would feel terrible about it. I wondered if the temperature was affecting him as the venue was very warm. Day 1 was OK but it was warmer on Day 2, and on Day 3 I was actually sweating a bit in the middle of the show. And I wasn’t the only one feeling it cos I saw people fanning themselves. Literally a very hot FaOI.

Finale: After the group number, Yuzu disappeared backstage to change into the FaOI tee while the others did jump/spin battles. Came out with towel and water bottle. Wiped sweat, drank water. Then he did some stretching, and sat on steps at the side of the stage and massaged his legs for quite a long time. (So glad I was seated that side and I saw him so clearly.) I guessed he was getting ready for the quad lutz ….. because he fell on both his jumps during Masquerade, he really wanted to do a good jump for us. He tried 3 times - popped twice and fell on the last one. And decided it was enough. Thank God! I was getting worried because he had only just recovered. My heart was in pain watching him try so hard. Yuzu, we know you always want to give your best. But please take good care of yourself! (One week later, he did a beautiful 4Lz in Kobe Day 3! YES!!!!!!!!)

At the end, instead of the usual deep bow towards all the skaters and artists, he knelt down and bowed with his head on the ice.... orz. He looked so cute and funny doing that and we all laughed, but our hearts were aching cos we knew he was feeling truly apologetic and extremely ‘kuyashii’....

For the final skating around the rink to wave to the audience, he went to Plushenko and pushed him to the start of the line, then Plush and Yuzu 'circled around each other’ trying to make each other first in line, haha….. it was so sweet. Video (from Plushenko’s IG)

At the very end, at the side of the stage, he took the mike and said a few words. I cannot remember what he said except for this: - Actually this is not Sendai…. (it’s actually Rifu, just outside Sendai) - He wishes FaOI will come here again. (what else did he say…….. sigh, my head must have been too overwhelmed by this time.)

After shouting arigato-gozaimashita (without the mike), he walked backwards towards the curtained doorway, and just before he disappeared, he bowed deeply and said 'arigato-gozaimashita’ again (with the mike). My heart deeply and sincerely also says, “Yuzu, arigato-gozaimashita!” Thank you for everything you do!

At past FaOI’s, I always bought one tee and one towel. (I think they only had one design each.) This year, they had 2 designs each and it was so hard to choose and Yuzu wore both tees and I love both colours of the towel..... so I bought everything (goodbye my money). And the FaOI book of course; the cover and photos inside are so beautiful.

I felt this was the best FaOI I’ve ever attended. I will mention briefly some performances that I love a lot.

~Shizuka Arakawa: so beautiful and elegant; love her skating, esp her spiral and layback ina bauer. Love her costumes too. One was white and sparkly, the other had a Japanese style. Both performances were excellent. ~Nobunari Oda: Music from the movie 'Ghost' - his skating was so sad, I almost had tears. Then 'Mission Impossible' was so funny!!! Really love Nobu-kun! ~Stephane Lambiel: Love both numbers, especially the one with ToshI singing the sad and beautiful Japanese song 'I Love You'. ~’Akai Sweet Pea', sung by ToshI, skating by Johnny Weir. I love this song! Originally sung by Seiko Matsuda. ~'Monochrome' by Anna Cappellini and Luca Lanotte: So amazing!!! Everything looked like a black-and-white movie! The colour on their skin must have taken a lot of time and effort. Their performance was superb! ~Rika Kihira: So energetic and strong! Love the choreo. ~Satoko Miyahara: skated her new SP on Day 1 and her new FP on Day 2 and 3. I like both a lot! ~Javier Fernandez: the flamenco performance was so fun!

Plus all the other performances, I enjoyed them all! Thank you to all skaters and artists and staff!

On Sunday, once the show ended, Ella rushed out of the arena with her huge bag. There was a taxi waiting to take her to Sendai Airport to catch her flight home. I was a bit worried she would miss her flight but she made it, phew! And she saw some skaters at the airport! Jeff, Scott, Rika and Satoko! Wow, they are fast! :D

A big thank you to Ella and all the Yuzu-fans I met. I received so much love and so many gifts..... really grateful to all you wonderful people!

The little pouch with a feather was perfect for my new binoculars. Will be bringing them along for future events. :)

So many beautiful things and memories added to my treasure chest..... Dear Yuzu-kun and Yuzu-fans, til we meet again, take care and God bless!

(Next, I will write about the other places in Sendai that I visited on this trip.)

*All photos are taken by me. (some faces are blurred for people’s privacy.) *If my memory is not so accurate for some details of the show, my apologies. :)

Added later:

Part 2: Yuzu-world

Part 3: home rink and Olympic monuments

Part 4: Nanakita Park and schools

Part 5: An unexpected journey

Part 6: yuzu and zunda

Part 7: other Yuzu sightings

#fantasy on ice #FaOI Sendai #Yuzuru Hanyu #this is so late cos I was so busy #glad i finally finished it #faoi 2019

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loretranscripts · 6 years ago

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Lore Episode 6: Echoes (Transcript) - 18th May 2015

tw: mental illness, abuse, rape, death, mistreatment of mentally ill people, lobotomies, body horror, medical procedures, ableist language - generally, be very careful with this one

Disclaimer: This transcript is entirely non-profit and fan-made. All credit for this content goes to Aaron Mahnke, creator of Lore podcast. It is by a fan, for fans, and meant to make the content of the podcast more accessible to all. Also, there may be mistakes, despite rigorous re-reading on my part. Feel free to point them out, but please be nice!

The setting of a story is everything – it creates mood and atmosphere, it triggers memories, and helps our minds fill in the blanks, adding tension and suspense where there was only words and images. What would The Shining be like without the long hotel hallways of the Overlook, or The Legend of Hell House without the dusty bones of the old Belasco House, and how can anybody ever look at an old cabin in the woods without a chill running down their spine? Not me, that’s for sure. One of the most iconic and most visceral settings from any horror story, without a question, has always been the insane asylum. These days we refer to the institutions that treat mental disorders as psychiatric hospitals. They’re hard places to work – I know this first hand thanks to a colourful college internship that featured a double amputee who enjoyed streaking down the hallway on his knees. Mental health professionals do amazing work, but a lot more than just the name has changed than the name of these hospitals of the mind. In the late 1800s and through to the 1850s, asylums were a very different place. They were filled with sick people in need of help, but frequently they were only offered pain and suffering. When H. P. Lovecraft wrote The Thing on the Doorstep in 1933, he imagined a place that he called “Arkhum Sanitarium”. Arkhum is the seed, it’s the first of its kind; through it, Lovecraft brought the asylum into the horror genre, and others quickly caught on. The famous super-prison and mental hospital of the Batman universe, “Arkhum Asylum”, is a blatant and direct call-back to Lovecraft’s invention. Arkhum was a real place, though, known as the Danvers State Hospital. In fact, the remains of it stand just 8 miles from my front door, and even before construction began in 1874, the hospital’s story was already one of fear and suffering, a theme that continued unchecked well into the 20thcentury. I’m Aaron Mahnke, and the is Lore.

Before the days of institutional care for the mentally ill, the job was left largely to independent contractors – people who were hired by the state to look after others, but that was a system with far too many opportunities for failure. Patients were routinely placed in cages or stalls, and they were chained and beaten into submission. Violence, rape and death were everyday occurrences. Thankfully, people began to look for a better way, a more humane way of caring for these individuals, and those conversations led to the establishment of a new, state-of-the-art mental hospital. Plans started off on the wrong foot, though. The site that was chosen for the construction was the former homestead of John Hathorne, one of the nine magistrates who oversaw the witch trials of Salem in 1692. Hawthorne was known for his vicious, harsh attitude towards those who were accused of witchcraft, and he pushed hard for their execution. He was so well-known for his violent and hateful personality that his great-great-grandson, the author Nathaniel Hawthorne, changed the spelling of his last name, adding the “w”, to distance himself from that reputation. And it was there, on Hathorne Hill, that the foundations of the hospital were laid. The chances are pretty high that no one made the comparisons at the time, but hindsight is always 20/20, and looking back over the last century and a half, it’s clear that Hathorne’s legacy lived on atop that hill.

The Danvers State Hospital was actually intended to be a beacon of hope. There was a specific plan behind its design, one that was based on the work of Dr. Thomas Kirkbride. He designed the building with four radiating wings on each side of a central structure. His reason was simple: with more of the rooms exposed to sunlight and proper ventilation, more of the patients would experience recovery. All told, the hospital was designed to house 500 patients, covering a wide spectrum of mental illness, who were served by a team of roughly one dozen staff. When the doors finally opened in 1878, it was originally called the State Lunatic Hospital, and there was no other place like it in the country. It was set up to be a leader in the humane treatment of patients, and became the model for countless other facilities like it, and rightly so - this place was amazing. The ornate interiors, private rooms, sunny corridors, all connected to the central Kirkbride building. The patients were encouraged to exercise and participate in the community gardens outside. The small farm there even produced enough food for the hospital kitchen to feed the patients home-grown meals. Over time, though, the hospital expanded. There were separate Tuberculosis buildings, housing for staff, a machine shop, a medical building, and a pump house to pull water from the reservoir. All of these locations were connected underground by a network of dark, brick-lined tunnels, arranged in the shape of a wagon wheel to allow easy movement during the harsh New England winters. Bur the hospital campus wasn’t the only thing that was expanding.

As with all good things, the bright days of the Danvers State Hospital didn’t last long. More and more patients were admitted each year, and the staff continued to struggle with keeping up. In addition, decreased state funding prevented them from hiring more help. By the 1920s, the population had grown to almost 2000 patients, four times what the facility was designed to hold. One eyewitness reported that in November of 1945, the evening shift at the hospital consisted of nine people, and they were expected to care for the needs of nearly 2300 patients. You’ll have to pardon the expression, but things at the Danvers State Hospital had begun to get crazy. Patients were frequently sick and filthy. It was not uncommon for some to die unnoticed, only to be found days later. It was nearly impossible for the staff to manage so many patients, and so they turned to the acceptable tools of their time: straight jackets, solitary confinement, even restraints. However barbaric they may seem to us today, were mild compared to some of the other methods used by the staff. Patients were regularly subjected to hydrotherapy and electro-shock therapy, and yet it somehow still managed to get worse, and that’s where the lobotomy enters this story.

First pioneered by Dr. Walter Freeman in 1936, the lobotomy was a complicated procedure. The surgeon would literally cut the patient’s brain, severing the connection between the frontal lobes and the thalamus. The goal was to reduce symptoms and make patients more manageable. The results were mixed. Some patients died as a result of the procedure, while others would commit suicide later. Freeman, though, quickly grew tired of how long it took to complete the procedure. He heard of a doctor in Italy who had operated on his patients through their eye sockets. Working without drilling or cutting presented an opportunity that Freeman simply couldn’t pass up. He called his technique the “transorbital lobotomy”. It’s fairly easy to describe, but its not for the faint of heart. Freeman discovered that the only surgical tool he really needed was an ice-pick. According to his son, Franklin Freeman, in a PBS interview in 2008, those first ice-picks came right out of their kitchen icebox, and they worked like a charm. By inserting the ice-pick into the inner corner of a patient’s eye, Freeman could punch through the skull to reach the brain. Then he would essentially, um, stir the frontal lobe until it was no longer functional. Oh, and one more thing: he did all of this without anaesthetic.

And he got good at it, so good, in fact, that he took his show on the road. He literally toured the nation in a van that he called the “lobotomobile”, stopping at mental institutions, where he would educate and train the staff in his own technique. While he was there, he would perform as many lobotomies as they needed for the low, low cost of just $25 per patient. It sounds like Freeman was delivering the solution to a desperate industry, but that was pretty far from the truth. His patients often lost the ability to feed themselves or use the bathroom unassisted, and those skills would have to be retaught, if it was even possible. While many patients recovered, about 15% died from the procedure. Relapses were common, and sometimes the lobotomy would have to be reattempted. Once, in 1951, at Iowa’s Cherokee Mental Health Institute, Freeman stopped in the middle of a lobotomy, ice-pick clutched in his hand, so that he could pose for a photograph. The instrument penetrated a bit too far and the patient died. He never wore gloves or a mask, and he apparently had no limits. In fact, of the 3500 lobotomies that he performed in 23 states, 19 of those patients were minors - one of them, a four-year-old child. Ironically, some people still don’t believe in monsters.

The horror of institutional lobotomy ended in 1954 when a new drug was brought to the market. Thorazine was marketed as a chemical lobotomy, and the need for the surgical procedure dropped dramatically. But the nightmare never really stopped at Danvers State Hospital. During the 1980s, reports began to filter out about missing teenage patients. One account I managed to find said that upwards of 115 patients had disappeared in the space of about three months. The hospital never spoke about it publicly because their closure was already looming on the horizon. They knew that it was happening. When the staff was questioned they all pointed toward a new doctor on staff. In each case, they said these patients had been assigned to this new doctor upon admission, and then vanished. Scraps of paper were found in several of the patients’ rooms that mentioned a tall man in the woods. Some were drawings of the man, and some were simply too illegible to make out at all. As the pieces were slowly put together, it became clear that this doctor had been taking patients outside of the building, without permission, for unknown reasons. Eventually the police were called, and when they arrived to take the man into custody, they found that he, too, was gone, and his patients were never found.

But this was just one more tragedy in a long string of bad news that had wrapped itself around the Danvers State Hospital, beginning in the 1960s. Massive budget cuts, building closings and structural damage had all conspired to slowly push the doors closed. By 1985, nearly every building on campus was abandoned, and the Kirkbride administrative building itself even closed in 1989. The last remaining patients were moved to the medical building onsite, but were all eventually moved to other facilities with the help of the national guard and 80 ambulances. The hospital was officially abandoned in the summer of 1992, and stood vacant and derelict for nearly a decade. The rooms that once played host to mindless victims of Dr. Freeman and his ice-pick became the home of homeless squatters. They built their lives around the decaying medical equipment, the wheelchairs, the bedframes… It’s probably the healthiest inmate population the building had known for decades. In 2005, the property was bought by a developer, and much of the campus was demolished to make way for a sprawling apartment complex. But they left the front façade of the Kirkbride building, with its soaring Gothic towers and intricate brickwork. But the hospital, it didn’t go quietly. In April of 2007, four of the apartment buildings, as well as a handful of construction trailers, mysteriously burnt down. It was a fire so big that it was visible from Boston, 17 miles to the south. There was an investigation, but it turned up no evidence other than webcam footage from the construction site, which inexplicably cut out just before the fire began.

The image of an asylum will forever hold a place in our hearts as something to be feared and avoided. Whether new and sunny, or ancient and decaying, the asylum is a setting that causes people to back away, a ball of terror rising in their stomachs. But why? On a rational level, these were places of hope for many people. Still, the very concept of a residential hospital for the mentally ill, complete with 19th century décor and equipment, is the stuff of nightmares. Perhaps what we really fear is losing control over ourselves. Restraints, locked rooms, medication and irreversible medical procedures represent for many of us the opposite of freedom. We fear losing our dignity, losing our well-being, losing our very minds. Death, however, is chasing all of us. The curse of mortality is that we are already handing those things over, day by day, until the time when there’s nothing left to give. Perhaps the stereotypical asylum simply reminds us of the inevitable truth that is our own death.

The Danvers State Hospital is nearly gone today, but reminders still linger of its presence. Besides the brick façade of the Kirkbride building, one of the roads there is even called “Kirkbride Drive”. The reservoir that provided the facility with its water can be found behind the apartment buildings, and that vast network of ancient tunnels is still there as well, snaking its way beneath the modern structures, and the people who live inside them. One final reminder awaits people who come for a visit, though. The old asylum cemetery. Its where the staff buried patients who died and went unclaimed by family. There are no tall tombstones, though. Instead, each grave is marked by a small, square stone with a number engraved on it, and there are hundreds of them. Anyone looking for the cemetery will know that they’ve found it when they see a large boulder that marks the entrance. It was placed there in recent past to explain why all those small, square stones are there. But it’s the message engraved on it, and not the grave markers themselves, that communicates everything we need to know. It simply reads: “The echoes they left behind”.

Lore is a biweekly podcast and was produced by me, Aaron Mahnke. You can find out more about this episode, including the background music, at lorepodcast.com, and be sure to follow us on Twitter and Facebook at lorepodcast. Your ratings and reviews on ITunes make all the difference for this show, so please take a moment today to fill one out. You can find links to help you do that at lorepodcast.com/support. Oh, and if you enjoy scary stories, I happen to write them. You can find a full list of my supernatural thrillers, available in paperback and ebook formats, at aaronmahnke.com/novels. Thanks for listening.

Notes

1. I just wanted to note that the story of “the tall man in the woods” is in fact inaccurate, and based on an edit someone made to the Wikipedia page on Danvers State Hospital, which was based on a creepy pasta they had written. It was only up for a week, but that happened to be the week during which Aaron was researching.

#lore podcast #podcasts #aaron mahnke #danvers state hospital #asylum #asylum horror #h. p. lovecraft #lobotomy #icepick lobotomy #hauntings #transcripts #6

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invictus-rp · 4 years ago

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Team B Infiltration

Setting the Scene: Team A has already begun the front assault on the large stronghold, drawing a number of the Apokolips army's forces out to the main fight. As the halls empty, Black Canary's previous knowledge of the labyrinthine area will tell you that you need to get down to the subterranean levels. While many of the Apokolips army is distracted, this will not be an easy journey down. If you must fight, the goal is to dispatch quickly and quietly so as not to sound up an alarm and distract from the front assault. Dinah Lance

She breathed through her nose as she approached the lift. The others were doing their part and the distraction was all they needed to get inside. She probably thought there was people better for this job. Hell, she was surprised she was given leadership but she supposed she had to make it count for something.

“I know some of us haven’t worked together before.” She murmured. “But I need you all to keep this tight.” She pressed the button for the lift, hearing the battle start outside. “Our priority are the captives kept on the lower levels. Myself, Gambit and Spider-Boy will form a tight circle around Scarlet Witch when we have everyone.” Her eyes shot to Wanda. “You are the master key out of this place. We’ll cover your back.”

“And if that fails, well, someone will owe me a new jacket.” She mused as the lift arrived. “Come on in.”

𝐑𝐄𝐌𝐘 𝐋𝐄𝐁𝐄𝐀𝐔 With all Remy's years of experience at getting in and out of secure places, there was no way he would not have volunteered to help out this time. Not that he was not equally good at blowing things up and distracting, but he thought this was where he would be needed more.

"Ah, no worries on dat account, chere," he said to Dinah, "I'm good at adjustin' on de fly." That he was. Even if Remy had not worked with all of them before, he was mighty good at improvising. He only hoped the rest of them were as good on that count. But Dinah was right that getting everyone out of there depended on Wanda. "Uh, yeah, I don' t'ink any o' us wanna be stuck down dere, so I hope your hocus pocus is up t' snuff."

The elevator arrived and Remy stepped inside, adjusting his own coat a bit as he smirked at Dinah's remark. "Hope you got more faith in us dan dat, but I'll be sure t' steal--er--buy you a nice one if it comes t' dat." Wanda Maximoff Wanda nodded, listening to the instructions before letting her eyes slip closed for a moment so she could take stock. "I can do it," she promised. At least, she was decently sure she could do it. "But I have to stick mostly to my hex bolts otherwise. Any other overly taxing magic and my stores might get depleted. Without a means of channeling anything, I'd have to recover naturally." And she very much doubted they would have the time. Still, she gave a wry grin. "Good thing I'm learning to punch." Dinah, Peter, and Remy were all better martial fighters than she was, though. In this case, that was a good thing. Spider-Man Sneaking was what spiders did best, so Peter pounced at the opportunity to work a little more closely with the team - he loved street work, he really did, it was where he thrived, but he also needed to stretch his legs a little and do something that needed a little more finesse. He was glad to see Wanda in their group. The other two he hadn't the pleasure of working alongside until then, though knowing where their strengths were held Peter was hopeful that they'd make it out intact. Hopefully.

He stepped into the lift beside Remy and sucked on his teeth, the sound muffled just slightly by the mask covering his face. After Darkseid's initial touchdown to Earth, Peter's select few who know his true identity grew - strictly, really, to the Avengers and Fantastic Four. The latter were family, the former - coworkers, but people he trusted. The rest had to earn it.

"Don't worry, I think we've got you covered. We're your personal punching posse, after all," Peter returned to Wanda, a little proud of himself at that one. "Also, I know that some of the newspapers get it wrong, but it's actually Spider-Man. You know, like a boy, but grown up.. I haven't been Spider-Boy in like, ten years. It's, uh.. Sorry." His voice waned towards the end as he suddenly felt too anxious to hold the humored steadiness in his voice. Peter was smart enough to be at least a little scared of a lady who could definitely kick his ass. Dinah Lance She pressed the button and rolled her shoulders before she looked over to the Cajun mutant. “Don’t let my boyfriend here that.” She humoured when he mentioned buying her a new jacket. She wasn’t actually too concerned. Inside, it was more the fact she didn’t know these people well like her own. Even then, it took her time to trust Barbara and Helena. To trust the League. She liked the idea of a team but she had fought on the gritty streets. She knew what is was like from ground level that some didn’t get to see.

As Wanda mentioned about her training lessons, Dinah nodded. “Don’t forget to rotate your hips. It’s where the power comes from.” She reminded her as she pressed her back to the wall of the elevator and gestured to the others to do the same. “Most of the forces will be out there but that doesn’t mean this is unprotected.” She told them. The last thing they needed was to be fired at soon as the doors opened.

As Spider-Man began talking, Dinah let him finished and paused before she spoke. “You talk a lot.” She said as the elevator pinged. “Keep it together. Keep it tight.” She reminded them as the doors drew open.

Setting the scenet: As the elevator descends, Wanda senses the twinge of a number of threads. "We won't be alone once the door opens," she tells them. There are a few waiting Apokolips forces. Tread lightly, heroes.

𝐑𝐄𝐌𝐘 𝐋𝐄𝐁𝐄𝐀𝐔 As Spidey moved beside him, Remy chuckled at his insistence he was Spider-Man. "You sure 'bout dat? Don' you need t' be at least...dis tall t' be Spider-Man?" He held his hand up purposely a good ways above the web-slinger's head as he spoke. He had no idea how old the guy really was, but he could not resist the tease. "Hey, if you're legal t' drink or not don' matter. It only matters how good you gon' throw dose punches when de time comes."

Dinah's comeback made him grin. "Wouldn't be de first time I'd been told dat," he said, which was certainly true. But hopefully they would make it out with both themselves and Dinah's jacket intact, and thus render that problem moot. At her instigating, Remy pressed against the wall. He would not be surprised if there was a welcoming party waiting for them, which was why he reached into his pocket and pulled out his bo staff, promptly extending it.

Wanda's punching ability might not have been tested yet, but her ability to sense danger certainly was. "You got it, chere. Bring on de bad guys, hein?" And when the doors slid open, they certainly did--a bunch of them, heading for the elevator. Remy heard their footsteps, and waited with the others until they drew near enough. Then he finally leapt out, whirling his staff to knock out the nearest one. "Bonjour, mes amis! Hope you don' mind us droppin' in wit'out an invitation!" Wanda Maximoff Wanda was happy to help where she could, as it wasn't exactly her forte to throw herself into the fray. She tended to provide magic support from the back. However, it wasn't the same now that she didn't have unlimited access to her magic. But, like she had said, she had her hex bolts. Quickly, her eyes darted around the area before she stepped back to give Remy room to work. His words almost would have made her laugh if the situation weren't serious. Red power thrummed in her palms before she called out: "I count eight!" Setting the Scene: Blasts begin to fly from the eight guards in the area. The Apokolips army is extremely fast, their speed difficult to track. Hiding behind the martial fighters, Wanda's hex bolts provide support, taking down a few of the attackers from the back.

Dinah Lance Seeing the oncoming forces, Wanda and Remy helped thin out the approaching members. As they got close, that is when Dinah stepped in. She landed an uppercut that Ted would be proud of before performing a Krav Maga elbow strike to the face. The enemy stunned, she gripped the large arm, drawed herself close and manipulated his weight into a Judo throw to the ground, flowing into a high drop axe kick.

Like water, she flowed into combat easy as her clenched fist smashed into her next target before her leg launched into a low kick, causing it to hunch over. Rolling across their back, her arms linked theirs, manipulating their weight over herself to then collide with the floor, finishing it off with a direct blow of her forearm.

Standing up, Dinah braced herself. “Cover your ears!” She called out before, her face contorted. Her jaw clenched. Then she released that signature sound. The sonic waves made the walls vibrate as if a train was running right by then, the lights flickering and bursting as bodies went flying back.

𝐑𝐄𝐌𝐘 𝐋𝐄𝐁𝐄𝐀𝐔 As soon as Remy had jumped out of the elevator, he had been knocking back as many of the oncoming attackers as he could. Wanda's magical attacks helped immensely, as did Dinah's fighting skills. He definitely would not have wanted to end up on either of their bad sides. "Remind me not t' get either o' you mad anytime soon," he remarked, never able to refrain from quipping as he fought.

That became even more apparent as Dinah gave them a warning before unleashing her real weapon. Thankfully Wanda had put up some sort of magical barrier to protect them from the vocal equivalent of a grenade. "Eh? What was dat?" Remy said afterward, smirking at Dinah as he pretended to clean out his ear, "Not sure I caught what you said dere, but wow, dat's some voice you got, chere." It sure was, because it had taken out most of the attackers, and left the others seriously disoriented. Flipping his staff, he knocked out one of the few left standing. "Wish I could jus' scream at someone an' make 'em fall down!" Setting the Scene: The attackers have fallen. Down the hall is a thick door that will require either picking or a hacking job to open. Likely, this is where the prisoners are being stored.

Wanda Maximoff Grinning a little at Remy as he finished the last of their attackers off, she nodded about Dinah. "She's incredible, isn't she?" the witch praised. "But you're pretty good yourself." She let the field fall that she had put up to protect their ears, taking a slow breath as she felt her magic dwindle. She'd have enough. She had to. But Wanda hated these restrictions. It really took her out of the game.

"Can we get that door open?" Dinah Lance Despite her usual cockiness, she was never sure how to take compliments like this sometimes. These were people she deemed much more powerful than her, praising her. She was a fighter with a sonic bird call. These guys were on a whole other level. “A bird call.” She mused as Remy asked what the hell she just let out. “Yeah? Well, even Mariah Carey has days off.” Approaching the door, Dinah knocked it gently. “I can’t scream at this range. It could kill them. “ She looked at the others. “Don’t know if you have a hacking spell or something under your sleeve. Computes aren’t really my strong point.” 𝐑𝐄𝐌𝐘 𝐋𝐄𝐁𝐄𝐀𝐔 "Ah, I jus' seem t' end up in de wrong place at de righ' time," Remy said with a grin in response to Wanda's compliment. But he had a little difficulty wrapping his mind around Dinah's vocalization being a bird call. "Dat's some kinda bird you callin' den. Don' t'ink I wanna see it."

Now that the attackers were out of the way, he took a look at the door. It was a pretty tough one, and while Remy might not have been a hacker, he had bypassed plenty of security systems in his time. "Pardon cheres, but I t'ink I might be able t' handle dis." Smirking, he reached into his coat and withdrew a lockpick. "I might not be officially thievin' dese days, but I still never leave home wit'out one o' dese."

Kneeling down, he took a moment to study the lock before starting to work. It definitely was not easy; obviously these aliens were better at keeping their valuables secure than humans were. But there was not a lock made yet that could keep Remy LeBeau out, and in a little while, this one joined that list. Hearing a click, he smiled and said, "An' dere we go! See, a gentleman always opens de door for ladies...an' Spider-Boys," he added with a chuckle at Peter. Wanda Maximoff Watching Remy work, Wanda let her eyes closed, her mind reaching out to display the threads of reality around her. If she could find the threads connected to the people they were seeking, it'd be easier. They'd have a clearer trajectory. Her eyes glowed red as she focused. "Down. They're further down. But we're nearly there. There's... hm..." Her brow furrowed before she focused on the room again.

Remy had the door open and Wanda nodded to the long hallway. "We're lucky," she murmured. "We have a gentleman, a freedom fighter, and a witch. I only hope there won't be any more parademons waiting to see what we're made of." Spider-Man "There's.. What?" Peter trained the large white lens of his mask on Wanda, worried both for her and for their situation, though the click of the door unlocking stole his attention. He focused beyond it for a breath of a second before offering the group a shrug. "I don't sense anything on the other side, so we should be good to go," Peter remarked, ignoring Remy's comment but he found himself smirking at it despite himself. Dinah Lance She glanced between the all of them before shrugging to Remy. “Yeah, well, when it comes to the queen of Amazons and an alien god then, yeah, it’s a sonic bird call.” She mused. She didn’t compare herself to the likes of Clark or Diana because she would severely outmatched, even with her vocal power.

As the door opened, Dinah glanced to Wanda who seemed to be locating the group. “Then we head down.” She stated before frowning slightly. “Why did you hesitate?” She asked, the others having not mentioned it.

“Don’t forget. Keep it tight. One of us goes down the rest will fall.” Though Dinah had already planned that if it meant the mission would be complete then she would stay behind in the thick of things. 𝐑𝐄𝐌𝐘 𝐋𝐄𝐁𝐄𝐀𝐔 Proud of his opening the door, Remy smirked as they started to walk past it. But he agreed with Dinah; he had not liked the way Wanda had paused. He was not in tune to magical stuff, so if something was bothering her, it was probably not good. "You know somet'ing we don', chere? Should we be 'spectin' more o' a welcome wagon? Or somet'ing else?" He still had his staff in his hands, and plenty of cards in his pockets, though he was trying to avoid using them in such close quarters, especially once they found the people they were looking for. Wanda Maximoff She wasn't as accustomed to reading minds as a telepath, but she could do it if she focused. Trouble was, more focus meant more power used, and she was conserving. Still, she looked between the three others. "There are more Parademons, I believe. But something... else, too. Altered. Like their reality has been changed." It was cryptic. She gave an apologetic smile. "I can't investigate too much. I want to be able to do the teleport."

Setting the Scene: As they reach the bottom of the elevator shaft, the door opens to a large handful of parademons with their weapons. The presence that Wanda sensed is a pair of parademons in strange helmets. Wanda can't get a read on them, but she throws up a forcefield to guard her allies. Inside the room is a large caged off area full of prisoners. This is your objective, ladies and gentlemen. You've done it. Now you just have to make it out. The forcefield will hold, but the longer Wanda holds it, the more magic she saps. Act fast!

Spider-Man "Sounds like a party," Peter returned - altered Parademons? That really was the last thing they needed, but he felt confident in their group that they'd pull through. Still, Wanda was an integral part of them getting out in one piece, so he was pretty okay with relying on a bit of mystery. He had to rely on his 'feelings' one way or another; so instead of pushing, he waved away Wanda's worry with a slight wave. "Hey, no worries. We want you to be able to teleport, too," he finished with a sheepish laugh.

Though the sound was cut short when the elevator door revealed, indeed, a party of Parademons ready to turn them into swiss cheese. The two with those funky headsets were Peter's top priority, if only they'd caused quite the concern earlier. The instant that Wanda's shield went up, Peter already had his web spinners aimed at the pair - webbing was quick to shoot out and landed its mark. He kept the line tethered and pulled hard as he leapt forward into the fray. The goal was to drop the first two and bounce around the room to avoid random fire. Dinah Lance Her lips formed thin lines as Wanda described what she had sensed. Wanda was a finite resource at the moment which meant she could only be used sparingly. “We are all wearing costumes and doing something stupid. I think we can all handle this.” She mused though she was concerned in the back of her head.

As the gunfire began, she watched the bullets bounce off Wanda’s force field. “We’ve got to handle this fast. If Wanda runs out.” She didn’t need to add anything other than that. Stepping forward, she released her Canary Cry again, knocking several parademons back and keeping the pressure on them. “Remy, you’ve got nimble fingers.” She called out, her leg firing into a push kick as she was charged into a frontal assault. “Think you can get these cages open?” She asked as she threw an elbow back into another enemy.

𝐑𝐄𝐌𝐘 𝐋𝐄𝐁𝐄𝐀𝐔 Any magic stuff was out of Remy's realm, so he was not going to press Wanda for more. "You already doin' plenty, chere. I don' need t' know more more dan 'it's somet'ing weird'." A bunch of Parademons was plenty weird, so how much weirder could it get? Coming out of the elevator, they found more of them, though the ones in the helmets were certainly weirder. Clearly Remy should not have wondered about things getting weirder.

Wanda had put up a forcefield, which was good, and Spidey was shooting webbing at the helmeted Parademons, and Dinah was giving her "bird call" again. Remy was still reluctant to use his cards in such close quarters, so he was ready to start knocking Parademons with his staff until Dinah spoke. "Oh, I been told dat quite a lot, in more dan one situation," he said with a wink, "So yeah, I t'ink i can do dat."

Thus instead of readying his staff to hit the Parademons, he used it to vault over them, landing close to the cages. One of the nearest enemies figured out what he was trying to do, but a quick knock from Remy's staff took him out of the equation, and thankfully the others were occupied with trying to attack his comrades, so he turned his attention to the cages. "Jus' a moment, mes amis, an' we'll have you outta dere," he said to the people closest to the doors as he took out his lockpick again and went to work. After a moment, the lock clicked, so Remy opened the door and moved on to the next one, then the next one in quick succession. Now that the people were free, they just had to get them--and themselves--out of there. Setting the Scene: As Remy gets close to the people in the cages, they seem terrified. One of them whispers: "The helmets. The ones in the helmets can do things."

As if on cue, one of the helmeted enemies engaged with Dinah throws her back before raising their hand and beginning to murmur something. Around them, strange symbols begin to form, almost as if they are on fire. Single versions of the inscrutable glyphs fly toward Dinah. When they hit her, they seem to affect her mentally.

Wanda Maximoff

As the doors clicked open, Wanda let magic flow through her to appear in the midst of the frightened civilians. "You're safe now," she promised, trying to let her magic calm them. As the scarlet energy glowed in her eyes, however, several were afraid as they staggered toward Remy. "Is she like them?" they ask him.

Wanda was about to ask what they meant when her hazel eyes shot to Dinah as a new sort of power... not quite magic but not exactly mundane filled the room. "Peter!" she shouted. "Stop them!" There was something Wrong about it. Something thick and dominating. Dinah Lance Her fist collided with another monstrous jaw before she kicked them back, her leg firing like a loading gun. “We can’t keep this up.” It was like a small tickle in her brain to start with. Then it grew and grew and it was like she was drowning. Dinah froze as her breathing was hard, looking around her. “I…I can’t do this.” She whispered. “I’m not strong enough to save them. I can’t-“ A sob caught in her throat as she fell to her knees, being overwhelmed by the outside force.

𝐑𝐄𝐌𝐘 𝐋𝐄𝐁𝐄𝐀𝐔 He had expected the people in the cages to be nervous, worried, scared. Remy could only imagine what they had seen. Obviously they had seen something from the helmeted Parademons. "Quoi? What can dey do?" Weird magic shit, apparently, as one of them suddenly sent a bunch of blazing symbols to attack Dinah. "Merde. Why dese t'ings always have t' get weird?"

At least Wanda was nearby with her own, and reassuring, brand of weird. Some of the people were concerned about her, though, and Remy was quick to tell them she was good. "Non. Whatever dey are, she ain't dem. She got magic, yeah, but she's here t' help you. I promise."

Dinah definitely needed some help, but now with the people right there, Remy definitely did not want to throw any cards. And he did not fancy his chances fighting hand-to-hand with someone who could do magic. "Wanda! Can you do your t'ing an' get us all out? Or at least do somet'ing t' combat whatever dat shit is? 'Cause I can't exactly blow up somet'ing dat ain't really dere!" Spider-Man Things certainly took quite the sharp left turn in the wrong direction, something they all really should have anticipated a little better - okay, maybe there was really no way of knowing that the bad guy's had some crazy mind altering Parademons under their sleeve, but they'd all dealt with worse - right? With Black Canary faltering quickly and everyone else tied up, Peter steeled himself and set his aim on the helmet twins. Using the Parademon he'd just knocked out as a sort of diving board, he leapt through the air and careened himself into the first one. The idea was to at least break the mental connection it had on Black Canary; the taste of success only lasted for so long before his attention was on the second demon. He made short work of it with a wad of webbing to the face, incapacitating it momentarily - or for however long the webbing held.

Wanda Maximoff

Wanda used the moment that Spider-Man incapacitated Dinah’s attacker, her eyes glowing bright red as she let power flow around the people in the cage, around Remy, around Dinah and Peter. It was a lot of power, draining her resources down to the quick as they all moved. When the scarlet power cleared away, she went to her knees, exhaustion going through her. But they were done. They had made it. And the other teams were going to need communication soon.

#invevent #invictuslibertas #marvel rp #dc rp #mutant rp #dc rpg #marvel rpg

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sunflowerseedsandscience · 8 years ago

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Someday Your Child May Cry

12. Confrontation

Mulder blows straight past Dr. Parenti’s receptionist, with Scully doing her best to ignore the sharp pains in her gut and keep up. In his fury, he’s forgotten her still-healing injury, and from the look he’d had on his face when he’d gotten out of the car, he’s not likely to remember it anytime soon.

She’s never seen him this furious.

Inside Parenti’s office, Mulder doesn’t pause before grabbing the doctor, lifting him bodily from his desk chair, and slamming him against the wall. He brandishes the test results in the terrified man’s face.

“Who do you work for?” Mulder demands. “Whose orders were you following when you did this to my partner? To our child?”

“I’m not working for anyone!” Parenti gasps desperately. “This is my practice! I own it!”

“Then who paid you?” snarls Scully, stepping up to Mulder’s elbow. “How much money was your Hippocratic oath worth to you?”

“They never paid me anything, I swear!” Sweat rolls down Parentt’s face as he twists in Mulder’s grasp. “You have to understand, they threatened my family! They told me they’d kill my wife and kid if I didn’t do what they told me to!” Mulder releases Parenti abruptly, and he slides down the wall and crumples on the floor.

“What did they make you do?” Scully asks, stepping closer and looming over him.

“They… they sent someone to take the embryos after insemination, and then they brought them back the morning of the transfer.” He massages his neck where Mulder had grabbed him. “A different man, both times. I don’t know how they altered the embryos. Whatever they did to them, they didn’t do it here.” He looks up at Scully pleadingly. “They swore that nothing they did would hurt you, or the embryo. In fact, they said it might even help your chances of conception.” Parenti struggles slowly to his feet. “Please, you have to believe me, I never would have agreed to it if they hadn’t promised that it wouldn’t hurt you. I would have taken my family and gone to the police instead.” Mulder glares down at Parenti, his lip curling in disgust.

“I’d advise you to go ahead and do that now,” he says coldly. “I know these people. They don’t take failure lightly.” He turns and storms out of the office, and Scully, with one last contemptuous look at Parenti, starts to follow- until something occurs to her, and she turns back.

“My ova,” she says. “Whatever you have left. I want them back immediately.”

———————

Out in the car, they sit silently across from each other. Scully is looking down at the little red and white medical cooler in her lap with an unreadable expression, and Mulder wishes he had some clue about what she’s thinking.

“You okay?” he asks softly, and she nods, slowly, not looking at him.

“I’m just… wondering where we go from here,” she murmurs.

“Well… first, I think we should take your ova back to the cold storage facility where I kept them before,” he suggests. “And then… the rest is up to you, Scully. If you want to keep trying, then so do I.”

“I want to, Mulder,” she says, still not looking at him. He can tell by the way that she’s biting at her lip that she’s trying to hold back tears. “I just don’t know how to go about it.” Now she raises her eyes to his, and he can see that she’s terrified. “How did they find out?” she asks. “ I chose Parenti from a list in a medical journal. How could they have know who we’d go to for treatment? The only people who knew what we’re doing, besides Parenti and his staff, are the two of us and my mother.”

Mulder is actually on the verge of opening his mouth to add “And Diana,” but he stops himself just in time. Scully still doesn’t know about his thoughtless slip-up in June, and given her initial reaction to Diana, he can pretty much guess how Scully would feel about it. And besides, there’s no possible way Parenti could have found out from Diana. She’d been badly wounded by his admission, and unless her personality has changed drastically since their days together, she’s not the sort to vent about her hurts or humiliations to an outside source. She had always been more likely to bottle the hurt up inside, until finally, it would explode outward in the face of whoever had hurt her.

Anyway, who could Diana have told that could have made something like this happen?

“The insurance,” says Scully suddenly, and Mulder looks over at her. “Parenti’s office would have filed insurance claims. If the wrong person at the bureau saw them, and passed on the information….” Mulder nods slowly.

“You’re probably right,” he says. “If we’re going to continue, we’ll have to be more careful.”

“I don’t see how,” Scully sighs, leaning her head back against the headrest. “If the insurance claims are really how they found out, that means I’d have to pay for the next attempt out of my own pocket. I think I might have enough in savings for one more try, but that’s it.”

“Scully,” says Mulder quietly, “I have money.” She smiles sadly at him.

“Oh, Mulder,” she says, reaching out and taking his hand. “I can’t tell you how much it means to me that you would even offer, but I can’t ask that of you, not when I’m already asking so much.”

He lets it go, for now. But if this next attempt doesn’t work… well, he’s not taking no for an answer. He’d meant it when he had told her that he is willing to try as many times as she is, and he’s not above writing checks to whatever doctor they try next and forcing him to cash them before Scully finds out, if that’s what it takes to get her to accept his help.

“Whoever we pick next,” Mulder says, “we can’t use our real names. It would be far too easy for someone to access the records of every fertility clinic in D.C. and find us again. So… as much as I’m sure you don’t want anyone else to know about this, we’re going to need a little help.” It takes her only seconds to figure out what he means.

“You want to tell the Gunmen?” she asks, aghast. “You want to share all of this with Frohike? The king of inappropriate innuendo?”

“I think he’ll surprise you, Scully,” Mulder says. “He’ll have nothing but compassion for the entire situation, I promise you that. And if we’re using fake names, we’re going to need documents to back them up.”

“Fine,” Scully sighs. “We’ll go to the cold storage facility first, and then to the Gunmen’s.” Mulder nods and puts the car in gear.

Tonight, he decides, he’ll go back and visit the Gunmen again, alone. He’ll have them set up another bank account under whatever aliases that he and Scully choose, and he’ll have Frohike transfer all of the money Mulder’s father had left him into it.

Just in case.

#x-files fanfic #my fic #Someday Your Child May Cry

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z5146667-blog · 6 years ago

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Lectures 02 (& 01)

Interesting lecture today: learn’t about different ciphering methods that would help scope my ‘something awesome’. Time to do some research.

Last week catch up:

What is engineering? Engineering is not just a qualification or a discipline, but a way of thinking. Engineers ask questions, investigate, innovate and explore with an open mind. As an engineer it is our purpose to solve problems by considering more than just the obvious. It is a mentality that is displayed through everyday actions and interactions that leads to a more profound interpretation of the universe and how it works.

Case study: Halifax

The Halifax explosion was a maritime disaster in Canada from 1917 consisting of a collision between two vessels packed with high explosives. 2000 people were killed by the blast and 9000 others were injured. This relates to security as there was a single point of failure as there was only one person in control of the ship: the ship’s pilot. This was a weakness in the system as she was able to cause the collision without her decisions being evaluated.

NSA game I solved my first solo cryptogram!

Learn to count in binary, convert binary to decimal and visa versa I watched this video which taught me how to convert binary to decimal and nice versa, however this was something I had already learnt in 1511 and 1521, it was a great reminder and recap.

This week’s homework:

ANU hack - what WOULD you advise UNSW VC? “About 200,000 current and former students and staff have had their data accessed - including personal details, contact information, tax file numbers, bank account numbers, passport details and academic records.” - SMH As far as I could gather from the news articles published about the ANU hack, it seems like the breech was far reaching and gathered a lot of personal information and academic documents. What I would recommend to UNSW is that they analyse their data resources and identify what is the most important things to keep secure and focus on securing those.

Data Destruction can anyone find the video of what google does to retired drives? I couldn’t find what google does to destroy their data, however I discovered a machine that is designed to shred hard-drives to make it extremely difficult for someone to recover any data from the shredded parts: video.

TI / TII errors I found an article that documents the history behind the anti-vaccine movement. This represents a trade-off between natural and vaccine-assisted immune system growth. The article discusses how the two parties are either pro-vaccine or anti-vaccine, demonstrating a large public misconception that vaccines do not deliver the promises they claim. I did notice my personal (pro vaccine) bias coming out, however I tried to hold back and stay open minded so that my bias would not influence my opinions on the article. Self Interest & Abuse of power One thing about human behaviour that I cannot stand, is when the rule-setters make exclusions for themselves which doesn’t apply to the majority. An example of this goes back to my high school. If a student was caught with a phone in class, the phone was immediately confiscated and the student would not be allowed to have their phone until the end of the day. HOWEVER, both my mathematics teacher and English teacher used their phones in class, anything from replying to a text, rejecting a spam caller or even talking to their family members when they should have been teaching their students! IT DROVE ME INSANE; but that is a core fundamental human weakness - hypocrisy.

#lectures

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mhealthb007 · 5 years ago

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As a primary care physician at an academic community health care system in Massachusetts, I received a rapid introduction to telehealth this year. Within days after Massachusetts declared a state of emergency in response to the spread of COVID-19, almost all of our patient visits became telemedicine visits. Our staff reached out to patients to inform them of different ways they could get in touch with their doctor. Many would be able to gain access to health care through a health app connected to their healthcare web portal, or through a phone call or video call. The enormous potential of telehealth was apparent to me within weeks. Yet I also came to understand the need to overcome certain barriers to widespread telehealth access and provide additional support, as some of my stories below illustrate.

Chronic conditions and COVID-19: How did telemedicine help?

Healthcare providers like myself had to quickly adapt our clinical practice to use technology optimally. We found that a combination of phone calls and video calls allows us to continue to monitor people with chronic diseases, such as diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart and lung problems. Video proved particularly helpful in assessing who needed to be seen quickly for a health issue, while avoiding unnecessary exposure to COVID-19 in emergency rooms when possible.

Our organization developed an intensive community management strategy for COVID-19. For example, we were able to educate patients and their families on ways to avoid getting COVID-19, or spreading it. Additionally, we used telehealth to lessen the strain on emergency and hospital systems, conserve personal protective equipment (PPE), and reduce health care costs. By using phone and video triage, clinicians could identify people who were so ill they needed to be seen in clinics or at the hospital. Throughout recent months, telehealth platforms have helped our primary care providers and specialists communicate across various clinics, through virtual huddles and meetings.

Telemedicine can marginalize non-English speakers

Translation resources are key to inclusion for some patients, including a woman I’ll call Maria, who had recently moved from Brazil to just outside Boston with her husband, Jose, and two children.

“Muito obrigado!” she exclaimed several months into our telehealth visits. “I feel like a new woman now. My husband and I wish to express our gratitude to you.” The couple contacted our health care services due to a bad skin itch and a rash all over the body. Being non-English speakers, they were struggling to find a health care provider who could help. Fortunately, the combined assistance of our staff and our health interpreter services helped the couple gain access to the patient portal and video technology. Through teledermatology consults we were able to cure them of bacterial, fungal, and parasitic skin infections over a period of two months. Having the translation resources to overcome the language barrier was critical for the success of telemedicine in this case.

Internet and smartphones may be a barrier

In this age of ubiquitous smartphones and high-speed Internet, it is easy to lose sight of people who have no access to Internet connections or smartphones. Recently I treated Felix, a 77-year-old man who had previously been in prison for 40 years. Suffering from a number of ailments including hypertension, heart rhythm problems, cardiac disease, and chronic diarrhea, he only had a flip phone and had no access to the internet. We were able to connect him with a cardiologist, and a remote home rhythm monitor identified untreated abnormal heart rhythms, which we later addressed.

For the poor and disadvantaged, lack of access to digital devices and Internet are significant barriers to accessing telemedicine. It’s important for healthcare providers to be aware of the social determinants of health and to identify hurdles when screening patients. And if you’re a patient, you may need to ask staff or your doctor for help in navigating this changing digital healthcare world.

Lack of physical examination can impair accurate decision-making

Twenty-eight-year old Eric was struggling with ear discomfort that had become so severe that he was now in pain. During a video call, it wasn’t possible to determine if he had a blocked ear canal due to wax or an ear infection. Both conditions can present similarly, but are treated with very different approaches. In this instance, an in-person visit was essential. An ear exam showed impacted ear wax. Simple ear irrigation helped alleviate his symptoms, thereby avoiding unnecessary antibiotics.

A role in recovery — at least for those with access

Patricia, a 59-year-old woman, had suffered a stroke that affected her mobility and vision, and was recovering from recent brain surgery. After leaving the hospital, she lived alone with little family support. A friend who was also her health care proxy was present during the appointments, and helped her connect with her primary care team and specialists, using telemedicine through phone calls or video calls. The friend also helped advocate for her needs. Her anxiety and insomnia were treated with medication and therapy through telehealth consults. The care management team was able to connect her with alternate housing resources. Telehealth played an essential role in Patricia’s recovery.

Telemedicine is promising. However, it works best when primary care organizations and hospital systems address the gaps in access and service that inevitably arise.

Unsure about using telemedicine?

Here are some useful tips:

Create an email address if you do not have one already. This is the first step to help you communicate with your doctor.

Call your doctor’s office to understand better how telemedicine works at their clinic. Staff can usually take you through the steps of creating an account and logging into the patient portal or health app you’ll be using.

Familiarize yourself with the device you’ll be using (phone, tablet, or computer) before your appointment. Seek help from a family member or friend if you need additional support.

Ask questions and advocate for yourself. Telemedicine visits are new to a lot of people, and it is okay to not know everything.

The post Making telemedicine more inclusive appeared first on Harvard Health Blog.

from Harvard Health Blog https://ift.tt/3eXQEzX Original Content By : https://ift.tt/1UayBFY

#Health #Fitness #Healthy #Fit #Health and Fitness #Being Healthy #Health maintenance #fitness mainte

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jesseneufeld · 5 years ago

Text

Making telemedicine more inclusive

Chronic conditions and COVID-19: How did telemedicine help?

Telemedicine can marginalize non-English speakers

Translation resources are key to inclusion for some patients, including a woman I’ll call Maria, who had recently moved from Brazil to just outside Boston with her husband, Jose, and two children.

Internet and smartphones may be a barrier

Lack of physical examination can impair accurate decision-making

A role in recovery — at least for those with access

Telemedicine is promising. However, it works best when primary care organizations and hospital systems address the gaps in access and service that inevitably arise.

Unsure about using telemedicine?

Here are some useful tips:

Create an email address if you do not have one already. This is the first step to help you communicate with your doctor.

Familiarize yourself with the device you’ll be using (phone, tablet, or computer) before your appointment. Seek help from a family member or friend if you need additional support.

Ask questions and advocate for yourself. Telemedicine visits are new to a lot of people, and it is okay to not know everything.

The post Making telemedicine more inclusive appeared first on Harvard Health Blog.

Making telemedicine more inclusive published first on https://drugaddictionsrehab.tumblr.com/

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plush-draw15 · 5 years ago

Text

Making telemedicine more inclusive

Chronic conditions and COVID-19: How did telemedicine help?

Telemedicine can marginalize non-English speakers

Translation resources are key to inclusion for some patients, including a woman I’ll call Maria, who had recently moved from Brazil to just outside Boston with her husband, Jose, and two children.

Internet and smartphones may be a barrier

Lack of physical examination can impair accurate decision-making

A role in recovery — at least for those with access

Telemedicine is promising. However, it works best when primary care organizations and hospital systems address the gaps in access and service that inevitably arise.

Unsure about using telemedicine?

Here are some useful tips:

Create an email address if you do not have one already. This is the first step to help you communicate with your doctor.

Familiarize yourself with the device you’ll be using (phone, tablet, or computer) before your appointment. Seek help from a family member or friend if you need additional support.

Ask questions and advocate for yourself. Telemedicine visits are new to a lot of people, and it is okay to not know everything.

The post Making telemedicine more inclusive appeared first on Harvard Health Blog.

from https://ift.tt/3eXQEzX Check out Making telemedicine more inclusive

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godfreyymuwonge · 5 years ago

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Salon Owner Chelle Neff Talks Scaling, Sustainability and Success

At the start of 2020, Chelle Neff is wrapping up a decade of considerable success, growth and innovation. In addition to developing Urban Betty, a successful salon with two locations, Neff also created an app for stylists, produced a book about homes in Austin, Texas, and even reached the Inc. 5000 list twice!

You opened Urban Betty in 2005 and it’s been growing ever since. You also have an impressive array of side projects—from books and apps to philanthropic and environmental initiatives. What drives you? And what’s next?

I live and breathe to continuously grow, evolve and ensure the success of my salon company. While there have been a few times when I thought I’d have to close the doors of Urban Betty, I chose not to give up, to learn from my mistakes and to implement significant changes to save the business.

If I had to name one thing that drives me, in all honesty, I’d have to say it’s the feeling of self-worth. I have this secret battle with my ego and I’m not yet certain if that’s a good or bad thing? I know many entrepreneurs, including myself, have a hard time separating ourselves from our brand. When my brand is doing well, I feel great and want more!

What’s next? I am working on a customized organic Urban Betty product line. We have the perfect platform (along with e-commerce) to bring that to fruition. My husband and I are also pitching a second Weird Homes Tour book with all of the cities in it. We have five cities so far and are bringing in the Bay Area in 2020. Last but not least, I am scouting sites for a third Urban Betty location!

Urban Betty is a Green Circle Salon. Can you explain what that means?

Green Circle Salons provide the world’s first sustainable salon solution to recover and repurpose beauty waste. At our salon, we collect, recycle and repurpose all of our hair clippings, used foils, color-tubes, excess hair color, papers, plastics and glass. We have separate bins for each item, and we send them to Green Circle Salons every month. We charge a small (optional) Eco Fee of $2.50 per guest to cover the cost.

So far, Green Circle has diverted over six million pounds of waste from landfills and waterways. We are so excited to be a part of that revolution.

Chelle Neff, founder of Urban Betty, shares a tour of one of her salon locations in Austin, Texas.

Describe where the beauty industry as a whole is regarding sustainability and environmental concerns.

The beauty industry is stepping up to the plate where the environment and sustainability are concerned.

Estée Lauder is working closely with the global nonprofit organization Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil to ensure that their cultivation methods and sourcing have a minimal negative environmental impact, and L’Oréal has committed to being deforestation-free by 2020. We are a Redken-focused salon, which is owned by L’Oréal, which makes this so important to us.

I am seeing more and more of my staff asking questions and wanting to get involved with recycling and repurposing. When I first opened my salon 15 years ago, there wasn’t education or companies you could reach out to about sustainability.

Now we have lots of options and solutions for our industry. It’s exciting to see more and more salons sign up each year with companies that make it their mission to help our industry become more environmentally friendly.

How is technology changing the beauty industry?

Technology is improving our industry! We have so many amazing things that we can access just from the palm of our hands. Instagram has forever changed how guests can find stylists that appeal to them. Long gone are the days of asking your neighbor or someone in the grocery store.

Pinterest has forever changed our consultation game. We can make different boards that represent cuts, color, up-dos and makeup and show them to our guests, or have them make their own to show us. It’s an extremely beneficial tool, especially for a first-time guest.

Nothing will ever replace an in-person, customized consultation where a professional can feel your hair, assess the damage and recommend the correct products for you to use. There is a worry in our industry about customers seeking to buy on Amazon instead of the salon; however, if you have a powerful consultation and provide excellent customer experience, you shouldn’t have to worry about that. Our retail sales have only increased each year, so I know the power of an in-person experience versus an online one.

Tell us about your transition to a desk-less front desk.

I first learned about the desk-less front desk at a salon owner’s convention, and the idea clicked for me and made sense.

It was unfortunate because about a year earlier, I had invested US$10,000 on a new front desk for our flagship location, and so I wasn’t going to tear it down anytime soon. But, I knew I’d be opening a second location the following year, so I used this opportunity to build the desk-less front desk!

The idea is that guests don’t want the experience of a “fortress” separating them from your staff. Guests wish to have an open and intimate experience. It’s a simple concept inspired by the Apple Store. At our SoCo (second) location, we have a bar that is open on all sides with two computers. This model gives guests the ability to be more comfortable, engage, connect and ask questions with our front desk staff.

It is my goal to one day revamp the front desk at our original location to match this model, and I will forever utilize this concept at every future salon that we open.

You mention that this last year has been all about growth—74% growth in the last three years, according to Inc.com. Growth naturally comes with obstacles and opportunities. Can you share any specifics?

Yes, without the struggle, I feel there is no opportunity for growth. I learned the phrase “celebrate all mistakes” in 2019, and I have made that my motto! The most significant struggle I had at my salon company was learning how to create structure and systems that would, in turn, generate profit.

I started with a contractor-based model, and then slowly switched to a commission-based (employee) model. I kept trying to change things up thinking, “this will be the thing that will turn my P&L around and make a profit.”

After 11 years of being stuck in that hamster wheel, I decided to turn to professionals in my industry and ask for help, which, by the way, is extremely hard for me to do! I hired a consulting group called Summit that changed my life.

First, we restructured our pricing list based on the demographics in our surrounding area. We were charging prices that were way too low and giving package deals. We switched to an a-la-carte service menu to help alleviate those issues. These two things by themselves made a significant impact on our profit. We also created a career path for our service providers based on a six-tier level system. The first level starts at a 40 percent commission rate, which increases to 54 percent at level six, the highest-paid commission rate. Service providers are given direction through monthly one-on-ones and goal setting.

Within three months of implementing Summit’s methods, we had more money in our bank accounts than ever before. And two years later, I was able to retire from doing hair and focus solely on managing and scaling my company.

Was earning a spot on the Inc. 5000 a specific goal of yours? Will you be aiming for it again next year?

YES! To be named as an Inc. 5000 company two years in a row was a huge goal of mine. I feel it’s like winning the “Oscars of the business world.” I will always throw my hat in the ring for Inc. 5000 and strive to grow just for that honor. I would love to get it three times!

You joined the Austin chapter of the Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO) in January 2019. How has EO influenced your growth and your journey as an entrepreneur?

I can honestly say that EO has influenced me more on a personal/emotional level in my journey, thus far. We all know that when we grow emotionally, our business tends to follow.

My motivation when joining EO was to gain more of a support network of business owners around me. I could not have imagined that, despite how different our industries/businesses are, we all share a common vision and have similar questions.

I have met people who echo the same life questions in our Forum meetings that resonate with those of my very own, even ones I hadn’t fully become conscious of yet. I have learned that it’s okay to make mistakes and share them. It’s not embarrassing now; it’s empowering. Finally, feeling that as an entrepreneur has given me grace in places that I truly needed it in 2019 to grow and learn.

What has been your favorite EO event or benefit so far?

I got to meet Howard Schultz, former CEO of Starbucks, in person within three months of becoming an EO member! He spoke for our EO Austin chapter during SXSW, and I was one of five people chosen to meet with him for a small, private question-and-answer session. It was a powerful moment, and he gave some great advice to us that day.

Learn more about other EO members and what it’s like to join a global network of peers.

The post Salon Owner Chelle Neff Talks Scaling, Sustainability and Success appeared first on Octane Blog – The official blog of the Entrepreneurs' Organization.

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thomasscottedwards · 5 years ago

Text

Salon Owner Chelle Neff Talks Scaling, Sustainability and Success

Urban Betty is a Green Circle Salon. Can you explain what that means?

So far, Green Circle has diverted over six million pounds of waste from landfills and waterways. We are so excited to be a part of that revolution.

Chelle Neff, founder of Urban Betty, shares a tour of one of her salon locations in Austin, Texas.

Describe where the beauty industry as a whole is regarding sustainability and environmental concerns.

The beauty industry is stepping up to the plate where the environment and sustainability are concerned.

How is technology changing the beauty industry?

Tell us about your transition to a desk-less front desk.

I first learned about the desk-less front desk at a salon owner’s convention, and the idea clicked for me and made sense.

It is my goal to one day revamp the front desk at our original location to match this model, and I will forever utilize this concept at every future salon that we open.

Was earning a spot on the Inc. 5000 a specific goal of yours? Will you be aiming for it again next year?

You joined the Austin chapter of the Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO) in January 2019. How has EO influenced your growth and your journey as an entrepreneur?

I can honestly say that EO has influenced me more on a personal/emotional level in my journey, thus far. We all know that when we grow emotionally, our business tends to follow.

What has been your favorite EO event or benefit so far?

Learn more about other EO members and what it’s like to join a global network of peers.

The post Salon Owner Chelle Neff Talks Scaling, Sustainability and Success appeared first on Octane Blog – The official blog of the Entrepreneurs' Organization.

from Octane Blog – The official blog of the Entrepreneurs' Organization https://blog.eonetwork.org/2020/01/chelle-neff-success/ via IFTTT

#Octane Blog – The official blog of the Entrepreneurs' Organization

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topicprinter · 6 years ago

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In the interests of furthering this subs move from “clickbait get rich quick” posts to more substantive reviews of failures, I am submitting this doozy as the first in a series of my ‘Crazy Ideas’, companies I have started that never went anywhere but had an interesting ride.This is a bit long but it's fun and really far off from the normal “Sell a t-shirt/clean peoples things” posts we see so I’m hoping it's worth the read. It’s also true, even if it sounds insane.Did I mention that this is really really long? Get a coffee, don't complain, you were warned.This story kicks off in 2010/2011 or so. I was working full-time in a high-pressure consulting environment where I’d just taken the rap for a really high profile project that went south. They’d basically put me on ice for about 6 months in an attempt to get me a lower profile while the corporates looked for a scapegoat.With a ton of time on my hands, a steady paycheck still arriving, absolutely no new projects to work on, nowhere really to be and knowing that the end is nigh at some point, I needed to find the next thing. I had always maintained my side-business doing basic web backends using outsourced developers and because of that had a pretty deep roster of potential projects, so I dug into that and used this time to see if I could make something of it.One of my clients was an anti-piracy firm. Not anti-piracy in the BitTorrent sense but anti-piracy in the “We put strong Ukranian ex-special forces troops with neck tattoos on boats with guns” sense, mostly in the Indian Ocean. Knowing the sorts of problems they had, I reached out with some ideas for new cool projects that would make their lives better. Maybe connecting their GPS ping devices to a single map so they could have a global view of what everyone was doing, alerting tools, integrated CRM, stuff like that.The thing about companies in this anti-piracy space is that they are extremely dodgy. It is a grey-market at best, where one year the UN condemns you and the next year they release a policy paper saying that global commerce depends on mercenaries with guns on boats. One year a bank will take your wire transfer, the next year you are funneling money to Malta via someone’s ex-girlfriends account to try to bypass new quasi-regulations. Everyone is always threatening and backstabbing and stealing. Every contract is a 3rd of 4th level sub-contract from some other dodgy entity, usually based on who had access to legal and documented weapons at any given time (a complex topic). The stakes are high, the profit huge and the players scammy at best. The nature of the business means that people that start these companies are not… stable.This client was no exception, let's call the owner ‘Sal’. Sal spent years in Iraq as a private military contractor, providing security via some 3rd or 4th level sub-contracting company. He claimed to be an ex-army ranger but no one ever really saw evidence of that so there is a high probability that he was a southern boy that knew how to shoot and leveraged that into a high-revenue gig during the go-go days of PMC’s in the Middle East. I know he was there, he has pictures to prove it.Sal was unstable, at best. Super fun guy, really engaging, ride-or-die style, and constantly on the go, classic ADHD/BiPolar. He had a loose partnership with a few other players and together they had formed a security company where they could source Russian or Ukranian ex-army/special forces (White vs Asian is a huge thing in this space as Asian’s are seen as less reliable), provide weapons, provide GPS trackers, provide transport, a villa in Sri-Lanka and another in Dubai for off-operations waiting and staff to handle centralized comms. Through this, they had a nice little business that produced a ton of cash flow and subsidized a really nice lifestyle. Eventually, however, the natural instability of these things began to break the association apart and my call happened to come at that exact time.Sal was incredibly happy to chat with me and it pretty quickly became clear, he was ready to backstab these people. He had already collected the ‘loyalty’ of the team, had access to control of all key assets and was ready to make his move and start a new company but, due to his ADHD/BiPolar nature, was really not equipped to do the blocking and tackling it would require. Turns out, I am really good at that stuff and a partnership was formed. We quickly formed the new company by buying a shelf-company out of Cyprus (complete with a bank account), building a quick new website and presenting a business that was ready to go. Sal was able to contact existing clients and providers who, already being used to the constant shifting of names and companies in the space, seemed happy to use a new bank account for their transfers. Given the loose nature of all of this none of it is exactly illegal, but neither is it friendly..Things were immediately popping for the first month or two. Profits, in this case, were about $10k per run from Sri Lanka to the Red Sea, there was about 1-run a week and Sal was living it up in Dubai. I was getting my 10% and it was clear this had potential so we started investigating scale. Could we get our own insurance instead of sub-leasing someone else's? Could we source our own weapons with USA approval? These are the sort of things that turn a $1m/year business in this space to a $50m/year business because all of these are assets that can be sub-contracted at a huge mark-up. A low-cost weapon can be leased weekly for 2-3x its actual cost. Insurance can be haloed to sub-contractors who can’t get their own, etc etc. It's all about the provenance and regulatory approval which is required by shipping companies and they accept most things at face value.But, somewhere in month 3, it became clear that this house of cards was going to come crashing down. Sal just lacked the expertise, credibility, and stability to maintain. He’d go from working out 5 days a week and eating clean to flying to Ukraine for 3-5 day vodka benders where he was probably face down in a ditch by the end. It was clear, adult supervision was needed. Luckily, Sal’s girlfriend, ‘Sofia’, a stereotypical tall, blond Ukranian bombshell, had just the person in Odessa, Ukraine.Let's call him ‘Sergei’. Sergei was the owner of a successful shipping company and looking to diversify. He understood the market because he was hiring these firms and saw a great opportunity to not only diversify but also cut out the middle-man for his own shipping needs. Sergei and Sofia knew that Sal was the missing link in this plan and so a new company was drawn up, funded by Sergei, and we moved our ‘assets’, such as they were, over to it.Not sure if you have ever done business with mid-level Ukranian/Russian businessman in Odessa so a quick note: They are untrusting, conspiracy focused, and highly intelligent individuals that know how to leverage in equal parts money, relationships and the quiet threat of violence to achieve their goals. Lucky for us, Sergei was actually a good guy and really trying to make a go of scaling his business. One of his ships had been unknowingly caught up in some blockade running during one of the conflicts running around the Med in that time and it had hit his reputation a bit and he wanted to recover that.Pretty quickly it was clear though that Sergei and Sal were oil and water. Buttoned up Russian Businessman and insane bipolar American cowboy. In order to get this kicked off, it was critical for all of us to get together and for Sergei to understand that Sofia and I were behind Sal so it would be OK. So, like any sensible person, and against the wishes of my wife and our two young children, I took a week vacation from my day-job and hopped on a plane to Odessa for a week of meetings.Odessa is a trippy, interesting and dangerous city and my time there was no exception, lots of good stories from my week there. They put me up in a nice little apartment downtown and we had a driver. But let's be clear, this was not some UberBlack service, it was literally an old smoky Lada being driven by a guy who did not speak English, had tattoos all over his neck, and was still wearing his desert camo. This car would smoke on up to my apt and Sofia would grab me from the lobby where we would then careen through Odessa to the office, careful to not be followed. As I said, they were paranoid.The only thing that was accomplished that week was Sergei and Sal fighting endlessly. Lots of smoky meetings in restaurants filled with angry conversation. When I left, the only thing that really changed was that I was given an IT Support person to supplement my team and help manage the field teams with tech. This was important given the timezone shift everyone is operating on.Predictably, when I returned home, things went to hell within a month. Sergei realized that Sal was just unmanageable, Sal felt that Sergei was ripping him off and Sofia was just pissed, in that inimitable Russian-Woman way, that all the men couldn’t get their shit together. As the owner of the original shell company and all of our comms assets, I worked hard to keep it together but eventually, Sergei turned on everyone and had his local IT guy take control of all the assets via his administrative access to our Gmail domain. Game set and match he thought.Of course, it wasn’t. After 2 weeks of me working with Google to prove ownership and Sal pushing to move clients and assets back to the original shell company we regained control. I’ll never forget that final call from Google to move the domain back into our ownership, I was on a mountain bike ride and pulled over to take the call, approve it, and then resume my ride, knowing that the team on the water at that exact moment would now be communicating with Sal directly. At the time it felt very Neal Stephenson/Cryptonomican, and I was quite impressed with myself.Again, predictably, things just fell apart. Bills couldn’t be paid, villa’s were taken away, access to weapons was lost as Sal become increasingly unpredictable and Sofia left him which sent him into a 6+ week binge that left the entire system crippled.A year later I decommissioned that Cyprus company and put it all into my past. My final email to Sal on this :Heads up. Banks are closed and company will be dissolved with a month or two.It was an interesting ride. Good luck out there.Sergei is still doing great and the tech company idea he told me about over drinks and steak in Odessa eventually launched and is doing quite well. His shipping business continues to grow and, even though he devolved into implied threats of violence against me at the time, we are now connected on linked-in and exchange occasional pleasantries every few years via email.Sal ended up in a southern US state doing construction with some buddies until he could save up enough to move to Thailand where he bought a share in a strip club. Being unstable he quickly lost that, returned to the US, did some more construction, and then returned again to Thailand to buy a stake in a rental lodge. Recently that went belly-up as well and last I saw he is living on some beach with his Thai girlfriend. He seems happy but I imagine he will be back and contracting again to prepare for his next Thai adventure.I look back on it with fondness. It was a crazy amazing adventure that had the potential to pay-off and, while dangerous, was also invigorating, interesting and exposed me to so many things I’ve never seen. It is also a great conversation piece and I made some relationships that, while tentative, may someday be useful and/or fun. No regrets other than making my loving and supportive wife angry and worried and also the fact that I put myself into danger that they didn’t sign-up for. That was pretty stupid in hindsight, but we all get blinded by the chase sometimes.My day job? I was released about a month after I returned. Took a few months off and then started my only successful business with my now dedicated time.About me: Since I was in college, I’ve always started various businesses while working full-time and all of them except one failed (coincidentally, the one that I was committed to, go figure..). It has always been my dream to hit a home run in a strange business. My hit ratio is pretty bad but that's part of the journey, I just can’t help myself. It is fun to explore the past so I’ll probably write a few more of these for the downvotes.

#/r/entrepreneur #reddit

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