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calumrose · 4 years ago

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Trigger [Police/Gang! AU] Chapter 8 || C.H

A//N: It’s been a while since I’ve updated this fic... Sorry about that. I’ve missed writing Eloise and Calum so I’m hoping I’ll have chapter 9 finished soon (yeah, I’m still working on that...) But anyway, enjoy!

Word Count: 10.6k

Summary: Eloise Gray and Calum Hood, not two people you would ever think to put together. What started as a ploy for power turned into a romance, resulting in the realisation that loving your enemy may not be such a bad thing after all.

Previous Chapters: Prologue / Chapter 1 / Chapter 2 / Chapter 3 / Chapter 4 / Chapter 5 / Chapter 6 / Chapter 7

7 Days Left

The doorbell was a sound that Eloise had been dreading all day. She knew what was coming, what she would have to endure, and she knew she was going to hate every second of it.

Calum left her sitting in the living room, venturing towards the front door to welcome the familiar body into his home. He grasped onto the handle of the door, twisting the knob before pulling, the lock in the door clicking and releasing the door from the frame’s clutches.

“Hey Nik,” He smiled briefly, a heavy breath exhaling through his nose as he opened the door wider, allowing for Nikki to slide through and into his home, “Thanks for coming,”

“You’re my partner, Calum,” Nikki clicked her tongue, “It’s partly my job to come running when you call,”

As much as there was some truth in her response, Calum also knew that she cared. She never hesitated to tell him how crazy she thought he was when she first discovered his plan, practically yelling the words at him down the phone, but as soon as he said he needed her help, she came. She always did when he needed her.

“Does anyone know where you were heading?” Calum questioned, glancing out of the small window in his door, as if to try and spot any suspicious people who may have been attempting to listen in. A bit dramatic, Calum.

“Charlie thinks I’m meeting with a CI,” She reached into her pocket, pulling out the small recording device he had requested, the wires wrapped around it securely, and placing it into his open palm, “Told him I had a guy over in Whitestone who had some information for me, so he isn’t expecting me back anytime soon,” Nikki pulled off her jacket, crossing her arms pleasantly in front of her as she rested her jacket folded over them, keeping it securely against her chest as her and Calum stood by the door, “And before you ask, I left my phone at the station, so Will can’t tap into it or anything,”

“You’re always one step ahead,” Calum bounced his eyebrows, chuckling fondly at her answer to the unasked question.

“One of us has to be,” Nikki shrugged in response.

Nikki was one of the few cops Calum felt like he could trust. He knew that to execute he and Eloise’s plan he was going to need some help. He couldn’t go into the shipment yard alone, but he also knew he couldn’t trust the majority of the officers in his precinct to follow through with his plan. He recruited Nikki, knowing that he could trust her even though she wasn’t one hundred percent on board.

“So, where is she then?” Nikki let out an almost hesitated sigh, pursing her lips. With a single nod, Calum led her through his home, directing his partner into the sitting room, eyes instantly finding Eloise sat on the couch, arms crossed along her chest with her knees crossed over one another, scowl on her face as she looked at the other woman in Calum’s life.

Calum swore he could feel the tension grow when Eloise’s eyes met Nikki’s, a subtle quiet sigh leaving through his nose. He knew Eloise wasn’t fond about other cops knowing about them, knowing about their plan, but she knew that Calum couldn’t do it alone, that he needed some backup when it came to that night at the boat yard, and as much as it irritated her and worried her that she was putting her life in their hands, she knew she had to trust Calum. That’s all she had been doing this entire time, so what was a bit more.

“Eloise, this is my partner Nikki Reid,” Calum introduced the two females, glancing between them, “Nikki, this is Eloise,”

“I know who she is,” Nikki stated, unimpressed with how normal Calum was trying to make this introduction. She was here for him, not her. She had made that very clear to Calum over the phone, her tone in that moment only solidifying that.

“You and every other cop in this fucking city,” Eloise’s dark eyes rolled to the back of her head, her back slouching against the back of the couch, not appreciating Nikki’s spitting statement. She was perfectly aware that many people knew who she was, especially the NYPD. If she were anyone else, Eloise would be questioning as to why Nikki had this instant distaste towards her, but Eloise wasn’t blind, knowing that Nikki, much like every other cop, had been conditioned to preserve the course of justice in their city, which translated into stopping the likes of her and the group she ran with.

Nikki rolled her lips into her mouth, seeming as if she was thinking about her next words, knowing she had to keep her personal feelings in regard to this whole set up quiet, reminding herself that she was doing this for Calum, knowing he had become so invested in a situation that was completely out of his depth that she couldn’t let him drown, she had to help him.

“Calum’s told me everything,” Nikki began, dropping the coat in her hands so it rested over the back of the armchair to her left, “He told me about what you were instructed to do, and what’re you’re now planning to do, and I just want to say that I think you’re both completely out of your mi- “

“Why are we even trusting her again?” Eloise spat towards Calum, clearly irritated by Nikki’s attempt to express an opinion, “What’s stopping her from taking everything we say here straight back to the station and exploiting the whole thing?”

Calum moved over so he was crouched down in front of Eloise, Nikki’s eyes watching the whole action unfold, he placed a warm hand on her knee, squeezing it reassuringly as he gave her a comforting smile, “Because she’s a good cop, El. She’s my partner and I trust her, and you need to too,” His voice was soft, brown eyes meeting her own as he added, “At least do it for me, just this once,”

Eloise’s tongue pushed against her bottom teeth, rolling her lips into her mouth barely, as she glanced down at Calum’s hand resting comfortably against her knee. His touch was always warm, always comforting, it spoke a million words more than anyone ever could, and she basked in the effects it had on her. “Fine,”

“What I was going to say before,” Nikki let out a sigh, moving so she could take a seat on the armchair, leaning forward so her elbows rested limply on her denim covered legs, “Was that I think you’re both out of your minds, no doubt about that, but at the same time I can appreciate that you’re trying to do right by the city this time,” Calum shifted his weight, moving so he could take a seat on the couch next to Eloise, his arm subtly going behind her so the palm of his hand rested on the small of her back with an almost feather-like touch. “Calum’s clearly seen something in you that we’ve been blinded to all these years, and he’s always had good instincts, so I’m willing to help if you’ll let me,”

Eloise watched her eyes as Nikki spoke, noting her body language, how her eyes fell to Calum as she spoke, a warm smile on her face before her eyes met Eloise’s one more. Calum’s thumb gently rubbed against her back, silently comforting her as Nikki attempted to shoot her a smile, a half smile at that.

It was a start.

“I suppose I can resist the urge to shoot you if you’ll do the same,” Eloise pursed her lips with a raise of her eyebrows, evident sarcasm, and humour in her tone. It was a questionable attempt at humour, but that was Eloise.

Although it seemed that Nikki noted the attempt, embracing it with a small laugh, sounding only slightly uncomfortable as she responded with a small nod of her head, “You’ve got yourself a deal,”

Calum silently thanked the gods above for smoothening the tension, even if just a little. It wasn’t the most ideal situation for any of them to be sat in, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t try to make it work. They had to use each other to their advantage, use the positions they were in as a positive in order to get the outcome they equally wanted.

Nikki had warned him about how far he was pushing things, having asked her to keep things quiet from their Lieutenant, as well as the rest of the NYPD until he decided who else he would be taking along with him on the night. She had asked him what was so special about the girl who he was risking his career for, about what made her so different compared to every other young criminal in the city.

And the answer he gave was a silent one, one of uncertainty yet also one that held a knowing answer. He knew exactly what separated her from every other misled individual in the city, but he just didn’t know how to voice it.

“So, how much do we know about the shipment so far?” Nikki asked, eyes looking over to Eloise.

Eloise sat forward on the couch, perching herself on the edge, “Not much at the moment,” She admitted, a small defeated sigh escaping her lips, “Jay’s been keeping the details pretty quiet so far, some decisions still have to be made,” Calum’s arm moved around her back, palm resting comfortably on her waist, his forearm warmly against the space of her lower back. Eloise couldn’t help but spot Nikki’s eyes drifting to where Calum’s hand could be spotted on her waist, seeing the beginning of what she believed to be a small smile twitching at her lips at the sight. “All I’ve got is a date and location of where the shipment will be arriving, but an exact time or anything like that I’m in the dark,”

“Any idea of when you might know more?”

“Jay’s called a meeting tomorrow night with all of us,” Eloise nodded, “He’s asked for everyone to be there, so most likely this will be him wanting to dictate the plan, probably gonna decide who he wants on the deal,” The thought of the shipment made her stomach twist, realising how close it was compared to when this started. She had gone from having weeks to work out what she needed to do, to having a mere few days until everything that she had been plotting would be put into action. She couldn’t play deaf any longer to the time as it ticked on, as the day her greatest act of betrayal would strike and change her life forever. It would be the making point of her life, or it would be the very thing that broke her completely.

“Who does he want on the deal?” Nikki repeated her words, “Wait, so do you guys have a plan for if he doesn’t take you- “

“He will,” Eloise hadn’t noticed Calum spoke with her simultaneously in her response, her eyes looking to her right, watching as the man nodded at Nikki, an amused smile creeping to the corners of her lips before she had a chance to fight it. She pushed it back, clearing her throat quietly before continuing on her own, “I’ll be there indefinitely, as will Scott, Taylor, and Han. He’ll take a few others and keep the rest as backup,”

Nikki continued to ask numerous questions, trying to pry as much information out of Eloise as possible, but unfortunately for everyone in that room, Eloise only knew so much. Jay hadn’t been that open with sharing details on the shipment, not even with Han, which she discovered when she ran into him the morning after she had been with Scott.

She was leaving her apartment to catch the train to Queens when Han appeared in her hallway, stopping her in her tracks and asking for an update on their situation with the police. He seemed off that day; very paranoid and jumpy, very unlike him. She didn’t pry, knowing he was still a little shaken from the night at Mooney’s. When she asked about the deal and if Jay had said anything more on the matter, she noticed how Han just shrugged and brushed it off, seeming as in the dark as she did with the details. According to Han, Jay had been almost silent, only sharing snippets of information on the plan if he needed to, otherwise keeping it to himself with a vice-like lock on his tongue.

It wasn’t like Jay to keep Han in the dark, almost unheard of. It was always the two of them. Always. But it seemed as if Jay had cast Han out since that night from the way Han had described Jay’s attitude, as if he were doing this alone. That only worried Eloise; a plan without Han’s input was sure as hell to go wrong.

“I take it you’re gonna wear the wire I brought to the meeting tomorrow?” Nikki queried, eyebrows raised, head nodding towards the small black recording device that Calum had placed on the coffee table. Eyebrows furrowed, creasing her forehead, Eloise’s eyes shot to Calum, clearly unaware of this plan.

“You’ve got to be fucking with me, right?” Eloise asked, any ounce of amusement she previously had gone, “I walk in there with a wire on me – I’m as good as dead!” Eloise wasn’t stupid, she knew if any of the gang even got a whiff of a wire then she was done for; she wouldn’t see the outside of the hideout. She couldn’t even be sure anyone would stop Jay from putting a bullet through her, the line of friendship she previously had with the others becoming so blurred and almost non-existent.

She noticed how even Calum seemed a bit taken aback by Nikki’s question, it coming as a surprise to him as his brows matched her dark ones; furrowed but confused.

“If you’re not going to wear the wire, how are we to know what your boss decides?” Nikki gave a limp shrug of her shoulders, response exasperated as she looked to almost to be a tinge frustrated with the lack of physical evidence Calum and Eloise had gathered; it all being words and statements from the anonymous tip offs and small details that Calum had subtly slipped into conversation when informing his partner. “If we’re taking them down at the end of this, we need more than a few notes and claims of what they’ve been up to,” Nikki ran a hand over her face, “And if we’re supposedly helping you get out of there, we won’t be able to use any of the evidence against them in the case, any link to you will become null and void as you’ll become a candle in the wind, practically unheard of,”

Eloise eyes shot back to the raven-haired woman opposite her, blinking a few times before her statement seemed to click, “Wait, so you’re in on all of it? Not just trapping the guys but also- “

Nikki’s face seemed to soften, shoulders slumping, realising that Calum maybe hadn’t told Eloise everything, having left out a few details, “Calum wants to help you get out of New York, not just the Gypsy Kings – swears on his life that you deserve this chance, so I’m willing to bend a few rules of my own if he is,” Nikki let out a soft sigh, leaning back in the chair as she rested her right ankle on her left knee, “Which is why we can’t afford any slip ups, we need to know exactly what’s being said so we can be prepared for what’s coming,”

Maybe this Nikki chick wasn’t as bad as Eloise figured. She was willing to look the other way simply because Calum asked her to, something that she had been doing all her life; doing what she was told simply because she was asked. She placed her life in the hands of other people almost every day, having some form of faith in them that they would catch her if she were to fall. But never once, had she seen it first-hand as a witness. She looked at Calum and Nikki, and saw nothing but almost trust in one another, seeing how without question she would help him even though she didn’t agree with what he was doing, looking past that to help someone who she trusted was doing what he believed to be right. It warmed her; seeing how two people could be so trusting about something so outrageous.

“Whatever happens tomorrow night, we’ll know exactly what gets said,” Calum spoke out, “Wire or no wire, she’ll come back and tell us what she finds out, just like she has since the very beginning, Nik,” His voice was full of conviction, assuring his partner that what he knew was true. Eloise watched him as he spoke, her heart clenching pleasantly as he spoke of her, but what he said next ignited butterflies in her stomach, the simple statement causing a smile that she couldn’t prevent. “We trust Eloise and she trusts us, that’s how this works.”

Calum was right. The entire transaction between them was based on trust. Trust had been what kept them glued together since they first met, even though they never truly knew it. There had been something between them that couldn’t be ignored; a warmth they both felt and a natural calming nature around one another that was never fully understood until they decided to give in.

“But what about on the night when the shipment comes in?” Nikki sighed, rolling her lips into her mouth, noticing the glances that Eloise and Calum were sharing. As much as she didn’t approve of Calum’s infatuation with Eloise, nor did she like the idea of her partner endangering his livelihood for the girl in question, but she couldn’t deny the smallest ounce of a smile that curled at the corners of her lips at the sight of her friend happy.

For as long as she had known Calum, from being in the Academy together, and being partners since their first shift together, she had never seen him smile like he did when he was with Eloise. He always claimed to not have time for a relationship, using the job as an excuse, but she knew it was something he wanted. And now he had it, but the chances of that being taken away from him out balanced the chances. “It’s going to get out of hand too quickly, so it isn’t like we’ll be able to catch up afterwards and take details. We need to know then and there exactly what’s happening, so we can come in and extract you before it’s too late,”

“Nikki has a point, El,” Calum looked towards the brunette next to him, eyes quickly looking at the recording wire on the table before his eyes met her brown ones, “Like we said before, you’ll need to wear the wire on the night, it isn’t like one of us can sneak in undercover and stand next to you the whole time,” He looked to be hating the whole idea now, the fact that it was happening in a matter of days making him realise just how little time they had left, “It’s small enough that no one will even know it’s there. We’ll fit it under your shirt so it’s completely out of view, all you need to do is carry on like you’re expected to and then as soon as you say the codeword we’ll be coming in, as soon as you catch sight of us you run,”

“This is crazy,” Eloise laughed drily, her hands coming up to cover her face as she threw her head back to blindly face the ceiling, “This isn’t going to work… What was I thinking? I’m done for, I’m dead the minut- “

“Hey, hey, hey,” Calum whispered, his arm coming around from behind her back to gently try to pry her small hands from her face, wrapping his fingers around her wrist with a delicate grip, as if she would break otherwise, as he attempted to remove them, “El, it’s going to be fine, alright? We’ll have the whole place covered, you’re gonna make it out, I promise- “

“Don’t you dare promise me that,” She spoke coldly, eyes focused on the ceiling as Calum held onto her wrists limply, “You can’t predict what’s gonna happen, Cal. I know those guys better than you ever will, and as soon as they catch a glimpse of me running, I’m gonna get a bullet in the back,”

It was becoming a bit much for Eloise at this point. It was getting scary; it was getting too real.

“Look at me,” Calum’s voice coaxed her, the soft whisper barely audible. Eloise refused to let her eyes leave the ceiling, not wanting to look into the eyes of the man who had become her favourite person as of late.

In such a short span of time, Eloise couldn’t imagine a life without Calum in it. Feeling as though she had always had him around. Any moment where she wasn’t with him, she noticed she was missing him, craving some form of contact with him. He was intoxicating and she couldn’t get enough. It was the collection of late nights spent together, the laughs they shared when they were overtired, but most of all, it was way he looked at her that caused her heart to feel as though it was trying to pry its way out of her chest at the mere thought of what would be taking place in a week’s time.

His eyes told a million stories, and she had only discovered a selected few. She got lost in them every night, just as he got lost in her. Eloise was selfish in a way when it came to Calum, fighting with herself countless times over the past few days, wanting to forget about the deal and just run away with Calum, to live as just the two of them with no responsibilities and no acknowledgement of what they’d be leaving behind. But she knew she couldn’t do that. Every single ounce of good in her body – although she never believed there to be much – prevented her from doing just that, knowing she had to do what she had agreed.

It felt as though Nikki wasn’t even in the room when she allowed for their eyes to meet, everything else around the two becoming invisible as all they saw was each other. His large hands rested on the sides of her neck, thumbs coming up and rubbing smooth lines along the apples of her cheeks as he gave her one of his signature smiles, a smile that she knew she wanted to cherish for as long as time would let her.

“We’re gonna get you out,” His voice was smooth as silk, so quiet, “I’ve said it since the start, and I’ll say it again. You’re gonna make it out - you’re gonna get out of New York, and you’re gonna start again. Once you’re settled, I’ll come visit, yeah? I’ll come and see the swanky new apartment that you’ll get yourself, you’ll tell me all about the new job that you’re gonna get, and you can tell me every single detail about your new life,”

Eloise felt tears brimming at his words, the thought of being able to do all that seeming too good to be true. She knew it was exactly that. She hated how hopeful he sounded talking like that, as though he was certain that it was going to be her future. She could barely decipher the difference between her dreams and her reality anymore, and that was all because of him. He made everything feel like a fairy tale, made everything feel like it was impossible, so different to her reality.

Her watering eyes only sparked his own, the chocolate orbs turning glossy as they stared into the scared ones of Eloise. What they had truly was something special, something neither one believed possible, something neither one of them wanted to end. The thought of this final week being their last few days to spend together before everything changed hurt them, it pained them to think of it like a countdown, but that’s what it would turn into; a simple ticking clock that would count down the days, to the hours, to the very last minute before she would need to leave.

“Sound good?” He pressed his forehead against hers, smiling although he wanted nothing more than to cry at the sight of her feeling anything other than happiness. God, she broke him in a way he would never fully understand. He silently begged for her to nod, speak, to touch him. He just wanted a single form of confirmation from her, anything would suffice.

Eloise swallowed the rock of a lump that had lodged in her throat, giving a small gentle nod of her head as she looked at him, taking a shaky breath as she rolled her chapped lips into her mouth. She couldn’t help but to subtly lean into his touch, the warmth of his hands comforting her as she let out a shaky, “Yeah,”

Calum slowly leaned back, allowing for his hands to drop from Eloise’s neck as he smiled at her, eyes looking across the room to find the ones of his friend, noting the fond smile she gave him, a gentle nod of her head that spoke a thousand words more than he could have ever needed to hear.

“They uh,” Eloise cleared her throat, her hand coming up to wipe at her eyes as she composed herself, bringing her focus back to the task at hand, “They’ll be asking me about where you guys are gonna be on the night, I was supposed to leave dead ends for you to follow so by the time you learnt about the shipment, it would be too late,” Eloise reached forward for the recording wire, twisting it in her palm as she looked at it, silently figuring out how it worked, “But fake tip offs will only get me so far, it wouldn’t be believed to give them enough time to get in and get out before someone reported it,”

“You don’t need to worry about that,” Calum chuckled lightly, glancing over at Nikki who reached forward to hand Eloise a folded piece of paper she had pulled out of her jacket, “We’ve got that covered,”

Eloise looked at Nikki, brows dropped in question, hand reaching out and taking the folded piece of card from her. The image that welcomed itself to her when she unfolded the sheet was one that caused her eyes to widen a little, the bold poster having the answer to her question.

“Okay, but how’s a football match going to help us?” Eloise lifted the poster, turning it in her hand as if to show Nikki the bright blue background.

“It’s a charity match,” Calum began, “It’s an annual thing held every year in light of raising money for Gracie Square hospital, which is very close to the Police Commissioner’s heart. But the date is wrong, on that poster is shows the date being next Saturday night, the same night as the shipment, when it actually isn’t happening for a few weeks,” Calum pointed to the brightly coloured text at the bottom of the poster, smirking at his awful attempt at photoshop, “So, you can use this alongside a fake tip off, assuring that 90% of the NYPD will be too busy running around a field to know what’s going on,”

“And you think this is gonna work?” Eloise’s tongue poked the inside of her cheek, an unsure sigh leaving her as she stared down at the poster. Would they really fall for something like that?

“Only one way to find out,” Nikki threw Eloise a shrug, reaching behind her to grab her jacket, removing her ankle from her knee before standing to her feet. She slid her jacket on with ease, looking down at the couple who sat on the couch, a gentle smile on her face as the sound of her boots clicked against Calum’s wooden floor as she made her way around the chair and picked up her purse. “I’ll leave that with you guys, but I need to head back to the station. Believe it or not but some of us still have real police work to do,” She shot a playful glare at Calum, “Not all of us have a million vacation days to use up,”

“I’ll walk you out,” Calum chuckled at Nikki’s remark, leaving a rather unsure Eloise by herself on the couch, poster in hand as she read the same words over and over again in her head.

Were they crazy for thinking this could work? Maybe.

Calum joined Nikki outside, closing the door behind him quietly as if not to disturb the silence. Nikki took a few steps before turning to face Calum, stopping just before the descending steps of his porch, tilting her head, and giving him a knowing smirk. “What have you gotten yourself into, Hood?” She couldn’t stop the dry laugh, her arms crossing across her chest as she leaned back, the large pillar behind her preventing her from stumbling, “You’re really gonna let her leave New York?”

Calum’s brows furrowed, almost unsure of how to take her question. Was she insinuating he backtracked? Insinuating that he betrayed her? “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?” His tone was bitter, as if he had just sucked a ripe lemon.

“You love her and you’re really just going to let her leave?” Nikki crossed a leg in front of the other as she stood in place, keeping her voice down to prevent any lingering ears from overhearing them, “Or is that why you’re letting her go?”

Calum froze on the spot, his arms limp by his side as he registered Nikki’s accusation. One word had such an impact, delivering an almighty punch to his gut that left him winded. Such a powerful word; so small yet so big.

He knew that he loved being around Eloise, loved every moment he spent with her, but he had never truly thought about loving her. Calum believed he would eventually feel that way for her in due time, knowing he was head over heels for the girl who sat in his home, but was it possible to feel it as quickly as he was accused of. Was it love when he didn’t even admit it to himself first? When it took for a third party to point it out as if it was as obvious as a stain on a white shirt?

All the feelings she had made him feel over the past few weeks seemed to hit him like a truck, feeling like he was being thrown around like a ragdoll in the clutches of something he couldn’t escape. It was a scary feeling, usually compared to the likes of being on a rollercoaster you couldn’t get off, but to Calum it felt like so much more. It felt like he wasn’t in control, as if he couldn’t stop himself, couldn’t stop the way his heart skipped a beat when he thought of her smile, or the way he involuntarily smiled at the thought of her laugh. He felt as though he were simply a character, a creation of someone else who made his decisions for him, when in reality, everything he felt was caused by a pretty brunette by the name of Eloise. And yet somehow, for a man who felt as though the feelings were out of his control, he knew they were real. Every single one of them.

Did she even love him? Could she even love him? They had something, he knew they did, but was she willing to let herself succumb to the possibility of being in love when they were so close to a potential life-changing altercation? Was he willing to allow himself to embrace the true feelings, to share the word that he was yet to say to the girl who he knew had his heart in her hands?

“It’s clear as day, Cal,” Nikki’s voice caught his attention, bringing him back from the whirlwind of thoughts in his head and the pounding in his chest, “And if I can see it then so can everyone else, and I can see she feels the same,”

“But- “

“It’s in the small details, Calum,” Nikki stood upright, pulling her purse further up her arm, “The way you look at her, there’s a clear line between caring for someone and loving someone,” She smiled at the final words, “And you, Calum Hood, are loving her,”

With that final statement, Nikki turned to take her leave, walking down Calum’s driveway towards her parked car, sending a friendly wave through the windscreen before she started her engine and made her way back to the precinct, leaving Calum stood on his porch with her words circling around his head.

Calum loved Eloise. Deep down, he knew he did, but he was afraid to admit it, to himself, but also to her. She had asked him on that day if they were just setting themselves up for heartbreak, if he were prepared to risk everything he had for a total stranger? Calum recalled his response, ‘I’m willing if you are’, knowing he was wrong. He wasn’t willing. He was certain. Calum knew he would risk everything for her, that he was doing exactly that, and would do it a hundred times over for her again if she asked.

Now all he had to do was tell her that.

*****

6 Days Left

The smell of the hideout was one she never got used to. It was a strange mixture of cigarettes, dirt, and men. It wasn’t a pleasant smell, not like the one that engulfed her when she was with Calum. She could faintly smell cigarettes on him, knowing he snuck out for a cigarette when she was at his place, but never questioned it, it somehow didn't bother her unlike it did when others smoked. Maybe it was because he never did it around her; he always excused himself without her even having to ask. He was kind like that, seeming to do everything with nothing but consideration in mind for her.

If only everyone could be like that.

The sound of a door opening caught everyone’s attention, the collection of bodies that sat around the table all turned in unison, eyes falling on the open doorway and the body that entered. Eloise’s eyes followed the messy head of hair that floated through the room, watching as Scott met her eyes momentarily before tearing them away and continuing to make his way through the crowded room, taking a seat at the opposite end of the table. He was avoiding her, this only confirming what Eloise already knew from the lack of communication they had prior.

Eloise felt as though everyone’s eyes had turned to her even though they were anywhere but, unable to deny the uncomfortable bubble in her stomach that embedded itself as she watched Scott pick at his hands, becoming ignorant to everything else around him. The seat next to her remained empty, everyone around them assumed that Scott would sit there once Eloise had taken her place, knowing that they sat together every time, that they were a team.

But they couldn’t have felt any further from the word. The distance between them was evident; loud and clear as if someone were ringing a bell in the room, announcing it to anyone who would listen. Things with Scott just seemed to have gotten worse since that night he visited her apartment, the effort he made to answer his phone remaining virtually non-existent. It was almost as if he didn’t have one, as if she had been sending numerous texts to a blank number. Eloise was puzzled in regards to the sudden distance, it seemed to have begun back when everything started out, as if the day that Jay gave her an ultimatum was the day that Scott had begun his descent in associating with her, taking a further step back with each day that passed.

The difference in his physical appearance was one that not many would consider to be a change, but to Eloise it was like a reincarnation. From where she sat, she could make out his sunken eyes, the bags beneath them evident and dark, as if he hadn’t slept in days, the bruise that discoloured his jaw caught her attention, her brows furrowing as she thought of where it could have come from. Scott wasn’t a fighter unless provoked, or at least she thought he wasn’t. He wasn’t the same man she once called her best friend; he was an entirely different person.

Her eyes fell to her left, watching as Gabriel settled himself in the chair beside her, the blond jutting his chin over to Scott before catching her eyes, “What’s his problem?”

She wished she knew. If anyone were to ask her what was wrong with Scott a month ago, she would know within a heartbeat. But now… Now she had no idea. “Beats me,” She gave a limp shrug, sighing as she crossed her legs over one another while they continued to wait.

Jay was late. As usual.

Eloise’s eyes glance around the room, familiar faces surrounding her – faces she had grown up around as well as a few new ones she had come to know over the years. Many of them her own age, a few older, a few even younger than her, and guilt bubbled in the shallow pit of her stomach at the thought of cursing those who were only doing what they knew to the life behind bars that they would most likely live out if the whole deal fell through like it was supposed to.

The door practically flew off its hinges when Jay entered, barging through the doorway with heavy footsteps, a smug grin plastered across his face. A burner phone was clutched in his hand as he took his position at the head of the table, eyes cascading over the collection of bodies who hung on his every word and awaited the news he had gathered them to hear.

“Just came off the phone with Anton, and the deal’s still on,” Every word Jay spoke was like a needle pricking Eloise’s skin, the pompous attitude he oozed where he thought he was invincible made her skin crawl, “He’s bringin’ along a few of his boys, and according to him the shipment should be coming in at midnight,”

Brown eyes drifted to the side, catching the way Scott sat with his arms crossed along his chest, Eloise’s stomach sinking at the expression on his face, it was almost as if Scott was excited for this.

If only they knew what was being planned…

Jay continued on, spewing instruction after instruction of what he expected of his team on the night. Loaded guns, no distractions, blah blah blah… Eloise had to fight back the eyeroll her body wanted to give at Jay’s words; the same words he spoke before every bust or deal they walked into. But it was what he said next that caused Eloise to second guess the action her body naturally wanted to act on.

“And Scott’s gonna be upfront with me on this one,” He moved to stand behind Scott, hands resting on his shoulders, “It’s about time he had his chance to show everyone what he’s really made of, so I’ve decided he’s gonna ride up front with me on this bust,”

Eloise could have sworn someone was strangling her, the sudden lack of air to her lungs was painful as she heard Jay’s words. Scott was going to be his frontman… She drinks in the sight before her, eyes darting between the two, catching the almost-proud smile Jay was shining towards Scott, as if he were a child who had just taken his first steps.

“Scotty here has been working his ass off lately, bringin’ in some extra cash like I asked unlike the rest of you,” Jay spat the last part, his eyes narrowing as the vivid orbs burned holes into the skin of the scattered bodies, “Who here heard about the booze buy over in Staten Island a few nights ago?”

Glances were shared around the room, varied confused expressions and utters of ‘what buy?’ circled around before the sound of a fist slamming down onto the table brought the confused eyes back to the man of the hour, the anger radiating like steam from his body. Everyone was used to how quickly his mood would change, it very much acting like someone flicked a switch in the control room that was his brain, hardly anyone flinching at the sudden outburst from Jay.

“Exactly,” Jay seethed through gritted teeth, slowly lifting his clenched fist before resting it back on Scott’s tense shoulder, “But Scott here found out about it through the grapevine, decided to conduct a lil’ bit of business of his own out there, took the buyers from right under the Wolves’ noses,” Jay’s tone oozed with excitement as he talked about Scott’s endeavour, god it was almost as if it turned him on. Okay, gross.

Eloise’s eyes fell to Scott, disappointment clouding over her face as she shook her head barely, the movement hardly even acknowledged by her neck as she held back the sigh that sat heavy in her chest. How could he have been so stupid, she thought to herself. Staten Island wasn’t their area, they didn’t even venture into Staten Island regardless of business or not, silently agreeing to keep out of that area of New York for their own good.

The White Wolves weren’t the kind of gang that let things slide easily, and they weren’t too fond of others walking around their territory even if no harm was intended. Everyone knew that. But now, Scott had really rattled the cage; stealing business from another gang in their own part of the city was practically asking for trouble. It just enlarged the painted targets on their backs that were laid on them that night at Mooney’s, another rule being broken, and she knew that this time there was no question that this would entice a war.

How could she have let him be so stupid?

Eloise blamed herself. She always had done when it came to Scott, mainly because this time she wouldn’t be able to get him out of the trouble he had brought onto himself. All those years where she would talk his way out of whatever he had landed himself in had become for nothing, the end result of this oncoming altercation would be the breaking point, the only time when Eloise wouldn’t be able to save him.

This wasn’t Scott’s style though… Yeah, he had a big mouth and talked his way into trouble, but he was never usually stupid enough to go and break the rules that they had lived by for years.

That was unless someone was convincing him otherwise…

Why didn’t she see it sooner; the distance, the ignoring of phone calls, lack of communication, cold shoulders, silent treatment, everything that had been building up for the past few weeks all made sense so suddenly, it was because of him. Jay had been working his way in since the day the plan was created, immediately creating a divide between Scott and Eloise. He was removing Eloise from the picture so he could get his claws into Scott, to move him away from the sensibility of Eloise’s motives and plant the blond in his very own twisted ones.

For years she had been a witness to the ways of Jay Snow; his manipulation of those below him in order to give him what he wants. He had always treated those below him as if they were prodigies, a personal project for him to use in order to build a powerful following that he could lead into power and would help him to control New York. And that’s exactly what he was turning Scott into.

God, she felt like such an idiot… How didn’t she see this sooner? She had been so blinded with Calum and focusing on overthrowing the gang that she hadn’t seen what had been happening while she was gone. She had lost her best friend, and there was no way in getting him back.

Eloise’s eyes met with Han’s from the doorway to her left, eyes peering over the heads of the others who had gathered while the tall man shot her a warning look as if to tell her to calm down. Eloise rolled her lips into her mouth almost painfully as she tried to release her shaky breath as quietly as possible, calming herself as she listened to the remainder of the spiteful speech Jay was throwing around the room.

There was a small part of her that had silently prayed that she would get Scott out, that she would be able to confess the ploy to him and convince him to run with her, to give them both a chance at a new life. But it was too late now… There was no way she would be able to pull him out of this. He was in too deep. He was at rock bottom with the worst of them.

Her mind felt like it spaced out, a million thoughts racing through the space at a million miles an hour, everything else around seeming so distant. This included the repeated question that sounded like a mere muffle in her ears until a nudge to her arm brought her back into the reality that she wished she weren’t a part of.

“Were you listenin’?” Jay asked rhetorically, brows raised, and chin tilted down as he stared at Eloise’s slouched figure from across the table. God, he infuriated her, talked down to her like a child, always had done. For years she brushed it off, it being her normal, but lately it burned her skin uncomfortably with every word.

She licked the top row of her teeth, tongue sliding along the front as she threw a haphazard shrug towards Jay, sitting slightly more upright as she rested an elbow on the dark table in front of her.

“Any word on the cop situation for the night?” Taylor’s voice piped up from behind Eloise, the sound of the new yet familiar tone was pleasant to Eloise momentarily before her brain kicked in, reminding her to fall back into the false confidence of playing along with the original plan. “Since she seems to be in a world of her own, has our dear little Eloise pulled her head out of the clouds for longer than five minutes and got the job done?”

Eloise had to fight the roll of her eyes yet again, turning her head briefly to look at Taylor, whose eyes were firmly planted on her, the cold blue orbs meeting her brown ones as she spoke, an intimidation game subtly taking place between the two young members. “You’re so lucky that I don’t put a bullet in you,” She pursed her lips, irritated, and fed up with the snarky comments like those which had been thrown around.

“Well, have you done it or not?”

“As far as they know, the shipment has been pushed back until late next week,” Eloise crossed her left knee over her right as she prodded the table with her finger, sighing as she looked down at the table briefly, “Told ‘em that the dock was confirmed to be the one down by St George in Staten Island, and I even got a dodgy text to look as though one of Corp had sent it,”

“Fuckin’ mugs,” Jay scoffed, smirking as he made his way back to the head of the table, perching himself on the edge so he was half-sitting on the brim as he watched Eloise with intent, waiting for her continue, clearly expecting more to follow.

“As for keeping ‘em busy on the night, they’ll be too caught up over in Eisenhower,” Eloise explained, “I set up a tip off on a supposed drug deal going on down there on Saturday and they’re crawling all over it,” She chuckled a little, almost scoffing as she looked to Jay, watching as he quite literally drank in every lie that left her lips, “So most of their night shift is gonna be working overtime on that case if what I’ve heard is right. But I’ve also found out that there’s a charity football game being held over in Belmont Park,” She reached into her jacket pocket, pulling out the folded poster that Nikki had given her, unfolding it before laying it out on the wooden table before sliding it over to Jay’s line of sight.

His green eyes scanned the poster, large hand reaching out and pulling it towards him, the paper sliding along the table like a snake slithering along the grass. Eloise watched as his eyes read over the words spread across the page, eyes pausing on the date, watching as they noted the small print at the bottom.

Let’s hope that was enough.

“The Commissioner organises it every year, requests all officers who are off-duty to come and participate,” Her voice continued, brown eyes watching as Jay’s green never tore from the poster in his eye line, “It’s gonna be over-crowded, apparently every cop in the city will be there as well as their families and friends. So, if they get called in about the shipment, it’ll give us more than enough time to clear out and move before they get even remotely near to the boat yard,”

“And your cop friend told you all this?” Taylor’s voice quizzed, “Where’s he gonna be on the night?”

Eloise’s eyes casted over to the side, the peering eyes of Taylor burning into the corner of her brown orbs as she refused to give him her full attention. “Calum’s playing at the game,” She answered nonchalantly.

“So, he’s gonna be busy?”

The effort she made not to roll her eyes at Jay’s idiotic query was painful, the gentle sting behind her eyes evident as she fought the primal urge in retaliation to stupidity. For a man who claimed to be so street-smart he sometimes lacked the basic common knowledge of words.

“He’s the captain of one of the teams so I think that says it all,” The scoff fell from her lips like an instinct, her free hand coming up and running through her hair as a few gentle chuckles were shared around the room at her remark.

“So, you think we’re good on the cop front?” Jay’s eyebrows raised in question, hands resting against the edge of the table as he leaned forward, as if to try and apply pressure to Eloise, as if to try and scare her by his physically higher position over her.

“Don’t see why not,” She shrugged, blinking blankly at Jay, “Patrols are gonna have their hands full over in Eisenhower, meanwhile the rest are going to be attending an overpacked football game where no one will be able to move their cars due to arrogance of the many football-maniacs that will also be attending,”

She laughed almost silently at the final part, remembering a story that Calum had shared of the last football game he attended, telling her of the time when he came out of the stadium with his dad only to have to wait for almost an hour to move his car because people had abandoned their vehicles left, right, and centre. The thought of him never had never left her throughout the entire meeting, the familiar warm face constantly playing on her mind as she sat and wondered what would happen to him if this went wrong. It didn’t just affect her, it impacted him in a way she couldn’t even begin to realise.

“Just think; by this time Saturday night we’ll be rollin’ in more money than we know what to do with,” Jay grinned, hands clasping together as he brought himself to his feet, palms sliding against one another greedily.

It always came back to money. Everything came back to the fucking money. But to Jay, this was the start of what he believed to be his climb to the top, his rise to power.

But all Eloise could think about was the desire to counteract his statement, to wipe the smug look off of his face and destroy every ounce of disgusting hope he had for what he wanted to achieve. She wanted to watch him crumble as she told him about how all he was going to become after Saturday night was another criminal who would spend the rest of his days behind bars, locked away from socialisation as the society he had transformed would dissipate into thin air.

It was a brief moment of want, the urge to watch Jay break surging through her, before she had to remind herself to wait. She knew she had to wait for her chance, to wait until the right moment on the night where she would be able to watch with front row seats as everything Jay worked to completely eradicate before his very eyes.

Eloise’s ears became deaf to Jay’s words, the speech of how they were going to take their stand in the food chain that was the gang society within the city, this being their opportunity to climb up the ladder and make their success known. God, he talked so much shit. Her eyes fell to her boots beneath the table, eyes depicting the scuffs along the toes and sides while also noting the growing tear in the stitching where the sole connected with the toe of her boot. A new pair of boots were another thing that she had placed on the backburner, figuring it could be ignored until her boots quite literally fell off of her feet.

Her eyes subtly ventured across the room, head staying in place, watching how numerous members hung on Jay’s every word, many of them only doing so because they knew no better. Her lifestyle was so alike to others in this room, yet she couldn’t handle it anymore. She had lived this way for longer than a great deal of the men in the room, so why couldn’t she handle what she used to be so accustomed to?

Since she met Calum, so many things seemed to fall into place, they seemed to make sense. It was as if every time he touched her, he fixed a broken piece of her, allowing her to see past the blindness and lies she had been fed, to see the truthful answers to so many questions she had over the years. It allowed her to learn so much truth within so many lies. She pieced together why her mother fought so hard to keep her away from this life, why her mother was so willing to tarnish her own love with the man she married to protect her daughter. She pieced together why Ruby left one day and never came back, why Han had turned so cold towards the idea of love, playing it like a game. Every woman who was more than a toy to one of the Gypsy Kings had been the single thing that tried to create a divide between the lifestyle they led and the life they tried to create with those they loved, each one only ending with the same conclusion: to be a distant memory.

She felt her world freeze momentarily as her chocolate eyes met with the familiar golden ones of Scott. God, her heart hurt when she looked at him. He looked so lost, so hurt, so different, and yet the only thing she could focus on was how he looked at her. He didn’t look at her like he normally did, he looked to be hurt yes, but it was as if he was hurt by her, as if he felt nothing but disappointment as he searched for the familiar spark that he had grown up with. They both searched for the same thing in each other, the familiar warmth that settled in their stomachs knowing they were there for each other. But this time, there was nothing. There was no buzz, no fond smile, no friendship. And that hurt.

Eloise felt her heart crack at the way he watched her. He looked as if she was the one who had given him the bruise on his jaw, as if she were the one who had forced his hand to go into Staten Island and do what he did.

It was when his eyes broke with hers that she felt as though she saw the change in Scott solidify, as if before it was only a temporary covering that would fade, but now it was him. It was as if everything they had gone through meant nothing, as if he were more than was willing to forget it all and succumb to the hypnotic words of their rotten leader and toss her aside. But wasn’t that, in a way, what she was doing; throwing away everything they had to trap the Gypsy Kings and sell them out, ultimately betraying everyone she was supposed to look at as family? Maybe so, but she tried so hard to convince herself that this was different.

She practically jumped when she felt the tight weight fall on her shoulders, turning her head and finding Jay stood over her from behind, hands clamped around her shoulders as he squeezed, a proud laugh erupting from his chest. She wanted to shrink at his words, hearing how he praised her for her work, the weight of his hands matching the weight of her heart when she heard his next remark.

“You’re a real Gypsy King now,” Jay’s snake-like tongue suffocated the air as the words echoed throughout the room, as if he were announcing it, “Thomas’d be proud, a true Gypsy legacy carrying through the generations,”

Eloise pursed her lips, masking her grimace with a slight smirk, eyes falling to her lap as her hands fidgeted inside her pockets, fingers gripping onto her phone as she tried to focus on anything other than the words that Jay spoke. The mention of his name falling from his cold lips felt wrong, it felt dirty to hear a man with so much innocent blood on his hands speak of someone so close to her. She knew her father was no saint, but he was nothing like Jay, not even close.

He’d be proud…

No, he wouldn’t. Eloise wanted to be sick at the thought of someone being proud of her for doing what she had done in the past, for committing the wrongful acts she had participated in over the years because she knew no better. She had no guide throughout her teenage years, not a real one, since her dad died. She was a sheep for long enough, following what her friends did and craved for the ability to fit in somewhere and to belong. Eloise knew he wouldn’t be proud of who she was, but she did have a glimmer of hope that he would be proud of who she was becoming, even temporarily, as she tried to correct the wrong that she had done.

By the time Jay had finished up with the praising and going over small details in regard to the night, everyone took their leave, abandoning the hideout and disappearing into the night to return home or wherever it was that they went, Eloise was left alone at the table, her fingers twisting and turning her phone in her hands as she sat in her chair, unable to make herself move as she sat in the peaceful silence. The light above her had an orange tinge, the overcast adding a gentle glow to her skin as she thought to herself. No one had even said goodbye to her as they left, well no one except from Gabriel, a gentle pat on her shoulder being the silent goodbye he usually offered before he returned home to his small apartment in the east of Brooklyn.

Six days was all she had left. Well, six days and a few hours if she wanted to be precise… Such a small amount of time before her life would change forever. She only had to hold on just a little bit longer before she got to watch as everything Jay wanted would be taken from him, to be able to know that she had prevented any further destruction to be caused by him, but at the same time the small wait was also for what would possibly be when her own destruction would take full effect.

The threat Jay made at the very beginning played on her mind; simply threatening her to end up like her parents, but now it felt more real than ever that the – what was believed to be empty – threat would be a likely conclusion. She had no one to blame but herself, digging a hole so deep that no one could possibly help her get out of it.

It was times like these, when her mind was at its worst as it dug endless holes and created unanswerable questions that would puzzle her to no end, that she wished she had her mother with her. Eloise missed her dearly, but rarely wished wholeheartedly to have her around, not wanting to pain her heart any more than she already had. She missed the advice her mother used to give her, never really identifying it as advice instead mere suggestions. Eloise would run to her mother every time she had a question when she was a kid, or if she had an ultimatum to make, knowing her mother would always give her an answer she unknowingly wanted to hear.

Like when she was nine and couldn’t decide if she wanted to study butterflies or ladybugs for her personal project for school, or when she was ten and was left heartbroken because she didn’t get asked to go to the Christmas dance unlike most of the other girls in her class, thinking that her life was practically over. Very dramatic, Eloise.

Her mother would sit her down and explain to her that she was going to need to make a decision that made her happy, explaining that there would be many occasions throughout her life where Eloise would need to decide what was best for her, to strictly think of herself and put her own happiness before others. But Natalia always reminded her that there was a time and place to be selfish, always trying to teach her daughter how to be kind but also to be strong. Every pep talk she gave ended with the same somewhat finishing line, unintentionally sticking in her mind even when she didn’t really want it to.

She would always say that Eloise had a choice in everything she did, in every decision and every outcome; to decide if she was going to accept what happened and move on or if she was going to change it for the better.

God, if only she were still here, Eloise wished. What she would give to get some advice on what she should do, on where she should go from there. What she would give to have a hug right then; a warm motherly hug, something she hadn’t felt since she was eleven.

What that girl would give just to feel that comfort once more.

---

If you make it this far, thank you! I’d really appreciate any thoughts/feedback if you have any! Thank you!

Tag List: @steviemae @elsysoza @treatallwithkindness @oopsiedoopsie23 @loveroflrh @another-lonely-heart @zhangyixingxing1

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vapormaison · 5 years ago

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2019 Best Vinyl Pressing 1/4: 魂のための歌 by 憂鬱

Preface: Throughout the month of December, Vapor Maison will be nominating “BEST OF” albums of 2019. Slots will remain open for this month’s releases. Categories include Best Vaporwave Release, Best Future Funk Release, Best Re-Release (V & FF), and Best City Pop Re-Release, among others. This is one nominee for best Vinyl Press.

Author’s Note: For the writer’s ease of writing and readers ease of reading, I’ll be using the transliteration of 憂鬱:Yūutsu, and the translation of “Soul’s Song” in lieu of “魂のための歌”. I’ll maintain the Japanese track listings for easy reference. Apologies to Purity, a maiden as tedious as she is cruel.

Are the merits of a vaporwave album on vinyl even worth reviewing?

Obviously, you’re reading a vaporwave vinyl review — creating a sort of circuit — so in the strictest sense of the word, yes, — but naturally, a follow up question must be asked by any smart music consumer. If so much of vaporwave, and by extension future funk, is centered around digital manipulation of either computer programs (vocaloid, electronic loops, midis, drum kits, etc), and pre-existing digital rips of j-pop (by definition most of future funk) — what’s the point of a vinyl press? Pressing mp3s onto vinyl is pointless — as no amount of “warmth” from a vinyl-based Hi-Fi system will ever make up for a low-quality source. What’s more, the indie releases of these tracks can make it hard to justify an expensive vinyl mastering session. In my most unfortunate purchases, I’ve had MP3s outperform certain 45s.

But sometimes, you can get just the right format, just the right mix and master, and it just makes your hifi set sing. You, as a Vaporwave/Future Funk/Chillwave/etc. enthusiast, can certainly approach the sonic repro quality of lore — that Platonic form of an “audiophile’s album”. How can I prove this? Look no further than Soul’s Song by Yuutsu. Point blank, full stop. This is the one of the rare vapor records for a true audiophile. In this next section, I’ll be giving my thoughts on the album’s tracklist. In Part 2, you can join me for a trip into Hi-Fi World for a discussion of Vapor-Vinyl’s legitimacy.

PART 1: THE MUSIC

小さい鳥 opens the album with a moody, synthetic mandolin-like twang and elegiac Vocaloid vacillations extended in a sort of melancholic embrace that brings you — willing or otherwise, into the arms of this project. The arrangement of the loops are of particular note here, with the layering of additional sonic flutters that culminate in an anti-climactic crescendo that leaves you as sad and disappointed as the album no doubt wants you to feel.

それは愛を返さありません ends up being the most “atmospheric” of all the tracks, a listening experience I’d describe as a fitting background track for a KEY visual novel — eerie, haunting monosyllabic Vocaloid chants of comprising the long, long hooks. While running at 5:24, it definitely feels longer — perhaps created by a symphonic discord between vocals and music at intermittent portions of the piece. I’d characterize this piece as the most experimental of the album, deftly playing with my expectations more than any of the others.

闇 is incredible — and without a doubt the highlight of the tape. Because it departs from the simple string looping and gives us something more — something resembling a tragic and contemplative harmony, however discordant, and one that builds into lyrically what I consider to be a genuine contemplation of spirituality and the other world — a natural place, topically, for an album titled “Soul’s Song”. A sort of hollow computerized synth also left me considering — was this song about the soul of the Vocaloid program itself?

The digitized horns, eerie synths, and what I could best classify as the crackling of amplifiers introduce the thirty-eight second interlude of 変更 and serve as the riser to the climactic shift of the EP beginning in おやすみ. This four-minute piece deftly blends electric and analog strings and brings the vocaloid program to its emotional and sonic heights, really making the high-end pop in a for a surprisingly refreshing experience.

We conclude the album with a hybrid piece ネコチャン which captures the electric energy of おやすみ, the distorted samples of 変更 and adds a fleeting feeling of warmth with that familiar sound of tennis shoes on a waxed gym floor, evoking nostalgia that never was of doldrum days in a Japanese high school. The album fades out, with our familiar vocaloid’s calling out of Neko-chan, melting away like memories.

PART 2: THE VINYL LISTENING EXPERIENCE

When re-starting this review blog in earnest over the past month or so, I made a point to get my best gear serviced. I couldn’t claim to be fulfilling my broadened duties without having a fully-serviced, properly functioning kit. One of the more essential and dreaded refurbishments was getting my KEFs over to the local stereo shop wizard for a re-foam. I’d be without my workhorses for a week: an audiophile Alexander without his binaural Bucephalus. In the meanwhile, my backup speakers — a pair of Cambridge Audio SX-50 bookshelf speakers that I use as computer monitors, stepped up to the plate as pinch hitter.

I provide this anecdote for a reason: the very afternoon I dropped my KEF’s off at the shop is also the afternoon I received my copy of Soul’s Song by Yūutsu.

Admittedly, I can’t say I was particularly hyped for this release, or very eager tor receive it in the post. The previous evening I had been sleeplessly experimenting on a DJ set of city pop for the journal’s launch party at my alma mater. I was decidedly on an upbeat, caffeine-fueled kick of positive thoughts and big dick energy. Success had triggered the dopamine receptors, and the idea of sitting down for a serious listening session of an album that many BandCamp users had dubbed as “peak sadwave” seemed like an unnecessary vibe check.

But— being a self-appointed music blogger— a craft which I imagine has real pretensions about it somewhere, I buckled —a serious listening session was attempted.

And I was utterly blown away.

***

A final word on gear. The Cambridge SX-50s — and Cambridge Audio in general— do have a bit of a cult-following among guitar enthusiasts in various audiophile spheres. I also am familiar with a listening bar in Nagoya (where I studied abroad for a semester) that uses top-shelf Cambridge Hi-Fi gear solely for Vocaloid listening sessions!

Suffice to say, I was not actively thinking about either of those two facts when I first let the needle drop, but when the twangy synthetic guitar loop and the eerie vocalic chants of それは愛を返さありません began, a sudden wave of melancholy set in and brought my mind back to a lonely winter spent in that basement bar after breaking up with my girlfriend. And to the Cambridges. At that time, I became intimately familiar with how an upbeat, poppy — sometimes even jazzy track— accompanied with Vocaloid vocals could really make those speakers sing. And it was happening right now, as I was cuddled by the warmth pouring from those drivers in spite of the cold sadness of the arrangement. That dichotomy was on full display as “Ya-aa-mi” invocations of 闇 reached its penultimate hook.

In may respects, these Cambridges were and still are petty. I had previous experience with them butchering a poor quality vinyl of the Luxury Elite/Saint Pepsi Late Night Delight EP two years ago. My KEF’s usually take it upon themselves to run cover for a bad release. Cambridge-chan couldn’t be bothered. On a bad day, with a bad play, they’ll seem like the most clinical JBL studio monitor — but here they were, absolutely singing. This album was making them slap — metaphorically. And that’s when I realized what a magical press this was.

Five days later, the KEFs were securely hooked up to my amp again. The first vinyl to be put through the paces was, of course, Soul’s Song. Again I was impressed. The exquisite layering of this album can’t be expressed enough — and while the SX-50s brought out the synthetic string and vocals to the fore, my 104s filled in the rest of the sonic picture. I felt as if I was being re-acquainted with a piece of sculpture upon viewing it from a different angle, or witnessing a church’s mosaic in person after seeing a small reproduction in a well-printed textbook. This is a pressing far and above the previous standards I’ve set for vaporwave.

***

As any Vapor Vinyl review would be incomplete without a brief take on the overallＡｅｓｔｈｅｔｉｃ of the release, so I’ll just start by saying that I really enjoy the three-tone front end. The lavender, beige and white undeniably make this a very “Aloe” release, who tend to make things easy on my very nearsighted eyes by never making the cover too busy. This is perhaps with the notable exception of VR 97’s recent cassette release — not a trend, I hope!

I do have to admit I’m getting a bit tired of pink vinyls, though — and Soul’s Song unfortunately now joins a very crowded pack. I suppose if you were being pedantic, you could compare the “pinkness” of the album vis a vis the 2nd pressing of Macros 82-99’s Sailorwave (fuller, more saturated), or even the “bubblegum” first pressing of Vektroid’s Floral Shoppe (just naming two iconic releases) — but I think this release would have been fine (and moved units) as, say, a picture disc — making use of the powerful, emotive cover art to its fullest extent. In short, it takes something unique and then commodifies it to the point of exhaustion. While I suppose this criticism could be leveled at all of the genres I cover— I think generally speaking Vaporwave and Future Funk (to a lesser extent) treads this line of “capitalist critique” and “modified consumption” rather adeptly.

The main thrust in the previous paragraph, I should qualify, is not a specific criticism of Aloe City Records, however — I think they’ve done a fine job generally. If I could make a list of three releases that justify a special edition vinyl — this is certainly one.

For audiophile vaporwave/chill-wave fans, I’d encourage you to snap it up while you can. You can even buy it ethically — it’s still in stock on Aloe City’s band-camp page. It’s in my mind — without doubt — one of the best presses of the year.

#vaporwave #bestof2019

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completeandrandomshit · 5 years ago

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Linda Ronstadt Has Found Another Voice

The singer on living with Parkinson’s, the perils of stardom, and mourning what the border has become.

It’s been ten years since Linda Ronstadt, once the most highly paid woman in rock and roll, sang her last concert. In 2013, the world found out why: Parkinson’s disease had rendered her unable to sing, ending a musical career that had left an indelible mark on the classic-rock era and earned her ten Grammy Awards. Ronstadt’s earth-shaking voice and spunky stage presence jolted her to fame in the late sixties, and her renditions of “Different Drum” (with her early group, the Stone Poneys), “You’re No Good” (from her breakthrough album, “Heart Like a Wheel”), “Blue Bayou,” and “Desperado” helped define the California folk-rock sound. Along the way, two of her backup musicians left to form the Eagles.

But Ronstadt, now seventy-three, didn’t rest on her greatest hits, experimenting instead with a dizzying range of genres. In the eighties, she starred in Gilbert and Sullivan’s “The Pirates of Penzance” on Broadway, recorded a standards album with the veteran arranger Nelson Riddle, and released “Canciones de Mi Padre,” a collection of traditional Mexican songs, which became the best-selling non-English-language album in American history. The record also returned Ronstadt to her roots. Her grandfather was a Mexican bandleader, and her father had serenaded her mother with Mexican folk songs in a beautiful baritone. She grew up in Tucson, Arizona, close to the border—a place that has since become a political flashpoint.

A new documentary, “Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice,” directed by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman and opening September 6th, looks back on Ronstadt’s adventurous career. She spoke with The New Yorker twice by phone from her home in San Francisco. Our conversations have been edited and condensed.

What is your day-to-day life like these days?

Well, I lie down a lot, because I’m disabled. I do a lot of reading, but I’m starting to have trouble with my eyes, so that’s kind of a problem. It’s called getting old.

What are you reading right now?

I’m reading Thomas Mann, “The Magic Mountain.” I somehow got to be this age without having read Thomas Mann, and I’m trying to make up for it. I read “Buddenbrooks,” and I fell in love with his writing. His books are nice and long, so it takes a couple of days to get through them.

Who do you spend most of your time with?

My son lives here. My daughter comes over. I have really nice friends; they come over and hang out with me. It’s hard for me to get out. It’s hard for me to sit in a restaurant or sit up in a chair. It’s hard for me to stand around, so if there’s a situation where I’m liable to be caught in a doorway talking to somebody for five minutes, I tend to avoid that.

What kind of music do you listen to?

I love opera. It’s so terrible—I listen to it on YouTube. I’m an audiophile, but I’ve just gotten used to the convenience of being able to hear twenty-nine different performances of one role. I listen to other music, too. I found this Korean band that I thought was sort of interesting on Tiny Desk concerts, the NPR series. They get musicians to come in and play live in a really tiny little space behind a desk. It’s no show biz, just music. They have great stuff. They had Randy Newman. Natalia Lafourcade, who’s a Mexican artist that I love particularly. Whatever’s new. The Korean band I saw was called SsingSsing.

Is it like K-pop?

No, it’s based on Korean traditional singing. It was kind of like David Bowie bass and drums, and then this really wild South Korean traditional singing. It’s polytonal. It’s a different skill than we use, with more notes in it. And a lot of gender-crossing. It looked like I was seeing the future.

When you sing in your mind, what do you hear?

I can hear the song. I can hear what I would be doing with it. I can hear the accompaniment. Sometimes I don’t remember the words, so I have to look them up. It’s not usually my songs I’m singing. I don’t listen to my own stuff very much.

I listen to Mexican radio—the local Banda station out of San Jose. I mostly listen to NPR. I don’t listen to mainstream radio anymore. I don’t know the acts and I don’t know the music. It doesn’t interest me, particularly. There are some good modern people. I like Sia. She’s a very original singer.

How do you cope with the frustration of not being able to do everything you want to do?

I’ve just accepted it. There’s absolutely nothing I can do. I have a form of Parkinsonism that doesn’t respond to standard Parkinson’s meds, so there’s no treatment for what I have. It’s called P.S.P.—Progressive Supranuclear Palsy. I just have to stay home a lot. The main attraction in San Francisco is the opera and the symphony, and I make an effort and go out, but I can only do it a few times a year. It makes me sick that I’m ever not in my seat when Michael Tilson Thomas raises his baton, because he’s such a good conductor, and I miss hearing orchestral music. My friends come over and play music, and that’s where I like it best, anyway: in the living room.

As you tell it, the first symptoms you noticed before you knew you had Parkinson’s were in your singing voice.

Yeah. I’d start to do something and it would start to take the note and then it would stop. What you can’t do with Parkinsonism is repetitive motions, and singing is a repetitive motion.

You broke onto the scene with such a powerhouse voice. What did it feel like, singing with that voice?

Well, I was trying to figure out how to sing! And trying to be heard over the electric instruments. I had no idea that I sang as loud as I did. I always thought I wasn’t singing loud enough, because in the early days there were no monitors. You couldn’t hear yourself.

In the documentary, you talk about growing up in Tucson, Arizona, and how culturally rich that was. How do the current politics around the border resonate with you?

They’re devastating. I feel filled with impotent rage. I grew up in the Sonoran Desert, and the Sonoran Desert is on both sides of the border. There’s a fence that runs through it now, but it’s still the same culture. The same food, the same clothes, the same traditional life of ranching and farming. I go down there a lot, and it’s so hard to get back across the border. It’s ridiculous. It used to be that you could go across the border and have lunch and visit friends and shop in the little shops there. There was a beautiful department store in the fifties and sixties. My parents had friends on both sides of the border. They were friends with the ranchers, and we went to all their parties and their baptisms and their weddings and their balls.

And now that’s gone. The stores are wiped out because they don’t get any trade from the United States anymore. There’s concertina wire on the Mexican side that the Americans put up. Animals are getting trapped in there. Children are getting cut on it. It’s completely unnecessary. In the meantime, you see people serenely skateboarding and girls with their rollerskates, kids playing in the park. And you think, We’re afraid of this? They’re just regular kids!

I spent time out in the desert when I was still healthy, working with a group of Samaritans who go to find people that are lost. You run into the Minute Men or the Border Patrol every five seconds. The border is fully militarized. You meet some guy stumbling through the desert trying to cross, and he’s dehydrated, his feet are full of thorns, cactus, then you see this Minute Man sitting with his cooler, with all of his water and food and beer, and his automatic weapon sitting on his lap, wearing full camouflage. It’s so cruel. People are coming to work. They’re coming to have a better life. You have to be pretty desperate to want to cross that desert.

You were talking about this back in 2013, when your memoir came out, before it became such a national wedge issue. Were people not paying enough attention before?

Well, they didn’t live close to the border. They’d just go back to chewing their cud about it. It wasn’t their problem. I lived at the border then. I lived in Tucson for ten years. I saw what was going on. Putting children in jail—that’s not new. That was going on in the Bush Administration. Barack Obama tried to get immigration reform and Congress wouldn’t allow it. So people have been caught in this web of suffering, dying in the desert. They’re incredibly brave and resourceful, the people who make it. A C.E.O. of a big company once told me—when I said, “What do you look for in hiring practices?”—she said, “I look for someone who’s dealt with a lot of adversity, because they usually make a good business person.” And I thought, You should hire every immigrant who comes across the border.

Why did you decide to move to San Francisco from Tucson?

My children were coming home repeating homophobic remarks they heard at school. And they’d also heard other things, like, “If you don’t go to church, you’re going to go to Hell.” I thought, You know, I don’t need that. So I moved back to San Francisco. I wanted them to have a sense of what a community was like where you could walk to school, walk to the market. More of an urban-village experience. In Tucson, I was driving in the car for forty-five minutes to get them to school and then forty-five minutes to get them back, in a hot car. I didn’t want that life for them.

I can tell that you have a real sense of mourning over what the border used to be.

People don’t realize that there’s Mexican, there’s American, and then there’s Mexican-American. They’re three different cultures, and they all influence eachother. And they all influence our culture profoundly. The cowboy suit that Roy Rogers would wear, with the yoke shirt and the pearl buttons and the bell-bottom frontier pants and the cowboy hat—those are all Mexican. We imported it. We eat burritos and tacos, and our music is influenced a lot by Mexican music. It goes back and forth across the border all the time.

How did growing up in that hybrid Mexican-American culture shape you as a musician?

I listened to a lot of Mexican music on the radio, and my dad had a really great collection of traditional Mexican music. It made it hard for me when I went to sing American pop music, because rock and roll is based on black church rhythms, and I wasn’t exposed to that as a kid. I could only sing what I’d heard. What I’d heard was Mexican music, Billie Holiday, and my brother singing boy soprano.

So what drew you to folk rock in the sixties?

I loved popular folk music like Peter, Paul and Mary. I loved the real traditional stuff, like the Carter family. I loved Bob Dylan. And I tried to copy what I could. When I heard the Byrds doing folk rock, I thought that was what I wanted to do.

How did your recording of “Different Drum” with the Stone Poneys in 1967 come about?

It was a song I found on a Greenbriar Boys record, and I thought it was a strong piece of material. I just liked the song. We worked it up as a kind of shuffle—it wasn’t very good with the guys playing guitar and mandolin. But the record company recognized that the song was strong, too, so they had me come back and record it with their musicians and their arrangement. And I was pretty shocked. I didn’t know how to sing it with that arrangement. But it turned out to be a hit.

Do you remember hearing it on the radio for the first time?

Yeah. We were on our way to a meeting at Capitol Records, in an old Dodge or something, and I was jammed in the back with our guitars. Then the engine froze, and the car made this horrible metal-on-metal shriek. We had to push it to the nearest gas station, half a block away. The man was looking at the car saying it’ll never run again, and we were saying, “What will we ever do in Los Angeles with no car?” And from the radio playing in the back of the garage we could hear the opening of “Different Drum.” We heard which radio station it was on, KRLA, so I knew it was a hit, if they played it on the L.A. stations.

What are your memories of the Troubadour, in West Hollywood?

That’s where you went to hang out. We would go to hear the local act that was playing, or there’d be someone like Hoyt Axton or Oscar Brown, Jr., or Odetta. Nobody was anything particular at the time. We were all aspiring musicians. The Dillards were there. The Byrds hung out there. And then it started to be people like Joni Mitchell, James Taylor. Carole King would play there. When Joni Mitchell played, she played two weeks. I think I saw every single night.

In your book, you talk about being with Janis Joplin there and trying to figure out what to wear onstage.

Oh, I never could figure out what to wear. I grew up wearing Levi’s and a T-shirt or a sweater and cowboy boots or sneakers. And that’s what I left home with, and that’s what I wound up with. In the summer we’d cut the legs off the Levi’s and they were Levi’s shorts. When I got my Cub Scout outfit, that was a real change for me.

You say that you and Janis Joplin couldn’t figure out how to fit in—you didn’t know whether to be earth mothers or whatever.

We didn’t know whether we were supposed to cook and sew and embroider. Roles were being redefined. There were a lot of earth-mama hippie girls who knew how to do that stuff.

There’s a clip in the documentary of you being interviewed in 1977, and you talk about how rock-and-roll stars become alienated and are surrounded by managers who are willing to indulge them, and that’s how people wind up with drug problems.

They got involved with drugs because they felt isolated. Stardom is isolating. There are a whole bunch of people that you’re hanging out with who are trying to become musicians. And some were chosen and some were not, and it becomes a difficult relationship with the people who weren’t chosen. Sometimes they’re resentful, sometimes you feel uncomfortable. It’s like Emmylou Harris has in a song: “Pieces of the sky were falling in your neighbor’s yard but not on you.” The adulation made people feel disconnected. I also think that some people’s brain chemistry is more vulnerable to addiction. I was lucky. Mine was not.

David Geffen says that you had an issue with diet pills.

I had no issue with that. I just took them when I needed them. I didn’t like it. If I ate, I’d have to take a diet pill. It wasn’t something I did for pleasure.

There’s been a lot of looking back this year at the summer of 1969, with these big anniversaries of the moon landing and Woodstock and the Manson murders. What do you remember about that summer?

When Woodstock happened, I was in New York. I remember getting all the reports from people like Henry Diltz and Crosby, Stills & Nash. They’d come back with stories of everybody being in the mud. It sounded like a good thing to have survived, but I’m glad I didn’t go up there. Overflowing toilets and no food is not my idea of a fun time. I was playing some club—probably the Bitter End.

When the Manson family came through, they managed to murder my next-door neighbor, Gary Hinman. I was lucky I wasn’t home that night—they may have come for me. We knew those girls, Linda Kasabian and maybe Leslie Van Houten, too. I lived in Topanga Canyon at the time, and they would hitchhike, and they would talk about this guy Charlie at the Spahn Ranch. But I didn’t know him personally. We knew it was kind of a bad scene. But, when we found out how bad of a scene it was, we were horrified.

People must have been really scared before they were captured.

Oh, everybody was freaked out. We weren’t sure at the time whether the Gary Hinman murder was connected to the other murders, but we found out soon enough.

The music of that era was so intertwined with politics. How do you feel that compares with popular music these days? Is music addressing political upheaval?

Oh, I think so. Especially hip-hop. But I wish there was a little bit more political activism. I’m waiting for the Reichstag to burn down, you know? Because I was interested in the Weimar Republic, I’ve always been aware that culture can be overwhelmed and subverted in a very short time. All of German intellectual history—Goethe and Beethoven—was subverted by the Nazis. It happened in a thirty-year span and brought German culture to its knees. And it’s happening here. There’s a real conspiracy of international fascism that wants to defeat democracy. They want all the power for themselves, and I think that suits Donald Trump right now. He’d like to be a dictator.

In going through your history, I’ve noticed you’ve been selectively outspoken. There’s an interview from 1983 where a talk-show host in Australia asks you about deciding to perform in South Africa under apartheid, and you give this speech about how if you didn’t play anywhere with racism you wouldn’t be able to play in the American South or Boston. You also take shots at Ronald Reagan and Rupert Murdoch. As a popular performer, was there a cost to speaking out?

I never talked onstage for about fifteen years. But there were certain causes that we as a musical community united against, and one of them was nuclear power. We did a lot of No Nukes concerts—James Taylor, me, Jackson Browne, Bonnie Raitt—and if it was a particular cause that I was in favor of. I did what I could to help, but I don’t think my focus was particularly political. If somebody asked, I was perfectly happy to give my opinion.

I also found a clip from 1995 where you confronted Robin Quivers, Howard Stern’s co-host, on the “Tonight Show” about her association with Stern. Do you remember what upset you so much?

Well, first of all, I never heard Howard Stern on the radio. I had no idea who he was. I didn’t have a television. I didn’t know who Robin Quivers was. But it had just been on the news that day, what he had said about—oh, the girl singer.

Selena? He said “Spanish people have the worst taste in music” and played her music with gunshots in the background.

Selena, yeah. And it just offended me. As a Mexican-American, it just offended me that he would say such a horrible thing about someone’s dead daughter. I didn’t realize that Howard Stern made a career out of making unfortunate remarks about other people. And I didn’t know what Robin Quivers was like. I didn’t know anything about it. I just went, “Hey, that really offended me.” It made me angry. I didn’t realize what kind of a hornets’ nest I’d stepped into.

Did you get any reaction from him after that?

Oh, yeah. He said horrible things about me.

Going back to your performing career, in the documentary, your former manager Peter Asher says that you would see people whispering at your concerts and imagine that they were saying, “She’s the worst singer I’ve ever heard.” Were you really that insecure?

I just didn’t feel like I could quite sing well enough. It was best when I forgot about everything and just thought about the music, but it took me a long time to get there. I didn’t want to see people that I knew in the audience. I didn’t like to see the audience, actually. I couldn’t understand why they’d come. It’s a different relationship than singers like Taylor Swift have. I think it’s a little bit healthier that they embrace their audience and sort of feel like everybody’s on the same team. We were encouraged in the sixties to think of us and them. The hippies started that whole tribal thing, and it was the straights against the hippies. It was unhealthy.

How did you overcome your self-doubt?

I’d just say, “Breathe and sing.” As long as I pulled my focus back to the music, I was fine.

Your relationship with Jerry Brown is covered in the documentary and in your book, but not your relationships with some other prominent people, like Jim Carrey and George Lucas. Is there a reason for that?

I was writing about the music. They didn’t have anything to do with my musical process.

What did Jerry Brown contribute to your musical process?

Well, he was there when Joe Papp [the founder of the Public Theatre and Shakespeare in the Park] called saying that they wanted me for “H.M.S. Pinafore.”. But Jerry [gave me the message] wrong—it was actually “The Pirates of Penzance,” which I didn’t know.

Do you keep in touch with him?

Yeah. We’re friends. We’ve always been friends. He came over last Christmas.

What do you talk about?

Water in California. He said when he retires he wants to study trees and California Indians. I gave him my tree book, “The Hidden Life of Trees.” There’s a new history of water use in California that’s fantastic. It’s called “The Dreamt Land.” It’s like John McPhee-level writing. It’s really worth it for the writing alone.

The press always made such a big deal about the fact that you never got married.

I didn’t need to get married. I’m not sure that anybody needs to get married. If they do, I’m on their side. But I never needed to get married. I had my own life.

I have to admit, I was born in the eighties and I discovered you through “The Muppet Show.” What can you tell me about working with Kermit?

I had a crush on Kermit, so it was a problem because of Miss Piggy. He was her property. But we had a really good time on that show. There’s something extraordinarily creative about puppeteers. They’re fascinating, because when they do all their acting, they can’t let it go through their own body. I think they’re just loaded with talent. I loved watching them. It was a very coöperative experience. They let me help them with the story and the songs.

What was your contribution to the story?

This crush that I had on Kermit, they developed into a little storyline where Miss Piggy and I have a confrontation.

She seems like a very formidable rival.

She was. She was nasty! She locked Kermit in a trunk.

Because you’re a singer but not a songwriter, so much of your artistic expression comes through your choice of material. How did you choose songs for “Heart Like a Wheel,” including the title song by Anna and Kate McGarrigle?

I was just ambushed by that song. I was riding with Jerry Jeff Walker in a cab, and he said, “I was at the Philadelphia Folk Festival and I heard these two girls singing—they were sisters. They sang a really good song. You should hear it.” He sang me the first verse—“Some say the heart is just like a wheel / When you bend it, you can’t mend it / But my love for you is like a sinking ship / And my heart is on that ship out in mid-ocean”—and I just thought they were the most beautiful lyrics I’d ever heard. I said, “You have to send me that song.” And I get this tape in the mail, reel to reel, with just piano and a cello and the two girls singing their beautiful harmonies. The manager I had at the time said it was too corny. Somebody said it would never be a hit. And I don’t think it was ever a radio single, but it was a huge song for me. I sang it all the way through my career.

Were you surprised by the songs from that album that became hits?

I was surprised anything of mine was successful, because it always seemed so hodge-podge. I just tried different songs that didn’t necessarily have anything to do with each other, but which expressed a real urgent feeling that I just had to express. “You’re No Good” was an afterthought. We needed to have an uptempo song to close the show with, and that was a song I knew from the radio.

What were the biggest challenges in becoming a public figure?

Not having the ability to observe other people, because people are observing you. I had to keep my head down all the time. It was kind of excruciating. I still feel that way. I don’t like to be on the spot. Also, relationships were hard, because I was always on the bus.

In an interview from 1977, you said, “I think men have generally treated me badly, and the idea of a war between the sexes is very real in our culture. In the media, women are built up with sex as a weapon and men are threatened by it as much as they are drawn to it, and they retaliate as hard as they can.” Do you remember what you were talking about?

No, I don’t! I have to say that when I look at my whole career, over all, what counted the most was whether you showed up and played the music. I saw it happen with Emmylou, and I saw it happen with Joni Mitchell. Joni Mitchell was threatening to everybody. She could play better. She could sing better. She looked better. She could just do it all. But it’s true, there was a certain amount of chauvinism.There weren’t a lot of girls in the business who were doing what I was doing, so my friendship with Emmylou Harris became so important.

Did you find that there were things that were harder for you as a woman than for your male contemporaries?

Well, I had to do makeup and hair. That’s a lot, because that’s two hours of the day that you could spend reading a book or learning a language or practicing guitar. Guys just shower and put on any old clothes. And then there were high heels. I have extra ankle bones in each foot, and high heels were agonizing. I used to wear them onstage, kick them off, hide my feet behind the monitors, and find my shoes again before I had to leave the stage.

At the height of your rock-and-roll fame, you decided to do Gilbert and Sullivan. What drew you to that?

My sister, when she was eleven and I was six, I guess, sang “H.M.S. Pinafore” in her junior high school. My mother had a book of Gilbert and Sullivan operettas on piano, and somehow I learned the songs. I heard my sister practicing them. So, when I heard of “The Pirates of Penzance,” I knew what Gilbert and Sullivan was.

Was part of you tired of being a rock star?

Part of me was very tired of it. I was singing loud in halls that didn’t sound like they were built for music. I liked the idea of a proscenium stage. I think a proscenium has a lot to do with focussing your attention. A theatre is a machine built to focus your attention and allow you to dream. You’re hypnotized, in a way, and the person onstage is your champion, is telling your story. You find emotions you didn’t realize you had.

Throughout the eighties, you experimented wildly with genre, everything from Puccini to the Great American Songbook to Mexican canciones. I’m sure your record label was surprised when you said, “I want to make an album of Mexican folk music.”

Well, before that, I wanted to do American standard songs, and they said, “No, it won’t work.” In fact, Joe Smith [the chairman of Elektra/Asylum Records] even came to my house to beg me not to do it. He said, “You’re throwing your career away.” I’d been away so long working on Broadway.

Were you worried that your fans wouldn’t go along with the standards, either?

I didn’t worry about it until after we made the record [“What’s New”] and we were opening at Radio City Music Hall. And I realized, all of a sudden, people might not show up. They really might hate it. I was ordering matzo-ball soup from the Carnegie Deli next door, and it gave me the shakes so bad that I could barely stand when I got onstage. I was holding hands with Nelson Riddle in the wings—he was nervous, too. He said, “Don’t let me down, baby.” I said, “I’ll do my best.” He was the best of those arrangers—worked with Rosemary Clooney and Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald. He wrote beautiful charts for me. I was really lucky to have him. I went back to my apartment that night and just smiled, because we had gotten away with an evening of American standard songs.

When I see something now like Lady Gaga recording a standards album with Tony Bennett, it seems like she owes you a debt.

Well, she owes me nothing. She’s got enough talent to make it on her own. But, up until then, attempts by female pop artists to go back and do standards had not been successful. And Joan Baez had tried to record in Spanish, and that didn’t work. It depends on what the audience is expecting of you. When I did Mexican songs, I brought in a whole new audience. I played the same venues, but it was grandmothers and grandchildren. People brought their kids. And the standards audience was older—they were in their fifties and sixties, which seemed impossibly old to me at the time.

Is it true that you recorded “Canciones de Mi Padre” at George Lucas’s recording studio, Skywalker Sound?

The second album, “Mas Canciones.” I chose it because they have a big scoring stage. It has good acoustics that you can tune with the wooden panels on the side. There was a lot of room ambience. Mariachi’s a folk orchestra, and it was a good orchestra sound. It’s hard to find.

You also collaborated with Emmylou Harris and Dolly Parton. Do you keep in touch with them?

Emmy comes out to Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, which is a bluegrass festival here in San Francisco, so I see her about once a year. She comes over to my house. We used to sing together. Now she brings her laundry and we talk. When you’re on the road, you always have extra laundry.

Have you kept up with Dolly?

Emmy and I presented her an award recently, and I hadn’t seen her in a while. I don’t think she realized I’m as disabled as I am. She threw her arms around me, and I kept saying, “Dolly, watch out! You’re going to knock me down!” She thought I was kidding. I nearly fell down. I grabbed onto the podium that her award was on and knocked it to the ground. It was made out of glass and it broke. “Congratulations, here’s your award—smash! You get to take the pieces home.”

If you could wave a magic wand and record one more album, what would be on it?

It would be an eclectic mix. There’s a song called “I Still Have That Other Girl,” written by Elvis Costello and Burt Bacharach, that I always wanted to record. And there’s a Mexican song called “Paloma Negra” I always wanted to record. I’d record all those songs that I didn’t get around to.

THANKS TO MIHCAEL SCHULMAN AND NEWYORKER.COM FOR THE ARTICLE.

#linda ronstadt #michael schulman #the new yorker #the new yorker magazine #real music #classic rock #newyorker.com

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placegrenette · 2 years ago

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Every Ninety One Song Reviewed: “Señorita,” 2020

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"Señorita," from 91 (EP, 2020) Music credits: Batyrkhan Malikov (Alem), Daniyar Kulumshin (Bala), Dulat Mukhametkaliev (ZaQ) Lyrics credits: Dulat Mukhametkaliev (ZaQ) Music video director: Kusanysh "Kuka" Beisekbov

MI CASA SU CASA CON PASTA PASA

Oh, "Señorita." I will never say to you, "You had one job." You had eighteen jobs, at a minimum, and it is not your fault that you don't quite get any of them done.

We'll probably never know exactly what happened in the summer of 2020, but my guess is that "Señorita" did not exist at the beginning of August. If you read the interview Ninety One gave to JoongAng Daily that summer, ZaQ was hyping another song entirely. The whole "and we're going to make a song whose chorus consists solely of Kazakh/Spanish punning!" possibility never comes up.

Then AZ decided to leave, and the remaining four had to come up with something quickly. "Señorita" is big and sprawling, with a chanting chorale in the background and a long dramatic video to match, because it has to convince everyone, in a hurry, that Ninety One can take up an equal amount of space after having lost arguably their most theatrical and attention-getting member. And it's also a song about seduction: “Let me kiss your hand / for you to feel my lips,” et cetera. And it's a song built around Kazakh/Spanish punning: ZaQ's opening “Mi casa, su casa” is the only actual Spanish in the entire song. And and it's a party jam. And and and it's a vehicle for Kuka to put together some long epic story about Bala as part of a time-traveling supernatural passionate tragedy. Kuka is part of a comedy/hip-hop/political commentary collective called Irina Kairatovna, and we'll get to meet some of his coworkers in a little bit, but for now he's flying solo, and all the extra dramatic weight heaped on the shoulders of "Señorita" is to his credit, or blame.

The result is a song that never... quite... works. Ace is doing his best to sell the chorus, but that thumping percussion is undercutting him, and it really doesn't help that it sounds like he's trying to sell QUE PASA TOCA TOCAAAAAA. ZaQ and Alem share the best section in the middle, the former bouncing his voice around and the latter muttering, but then it cuts to Bala inexplicably backed by a roomful of people and the song just starts sloshing around in its own debris. Even the dance version is simultaneously doing too much and too little: there's lots of twerking (by the female backup dancers, not Ninety One themselves) and Alem has the opportunity to sashay around being adorably suave, but Ace and Bala are stuck just standing in the back for a good portion of midsong.

We do have at least one very fun live on record, though, from a 2021 online concert for Samsung Kazakhstan (at 46:30 in if the link doesn't take you there directly). No backup dancers, no big set, not a lot of dancing, just Ninety One chilling and enjoying the song. I think "Señorita" works better in retrospect, now that OT4 is a proven concept and one song doesn't have to carry so much weight.

How’s the Hair/Styling? Everyone looks pretty good, when you can see them (those torches do not provide nearly as much illumination as Kuka seems to think they do). Bala’s got the star turn, but apparently a lot of makeup came with it; ZaQ’s finally gotten rid of the dreads, but is now a little too short; Alem comes off best. How Is the OT4 Version Different? From here on out, N/A. Should You Start Here? Nah; “Señorita“ is too unwieldy a reminder of the post-AZ transition to represent OT4′s work very well.

#ninety one #every ninety one song reviewed #come find me eaglez #music from kazakhstan

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gyanpedia1234 · 6 years ago

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quell-tea-salon · 7 years ago

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SolidS QUELL Party (SQP) event report~! (Warning: I ramble. A lot.)

The concert was over a month ago and unfortunately I have a memory on par with a goldfish, but it was one of the best experience I’ve had in Japan so far and I’ll try to recall as much as I can ;;;

The event took place on July 16th at the Kokugikan in Ryogoku. I was blessed enough to win tickets for the afternoon session, and arrived early to queue so I could enter the hall without standing in the sun for too long. There was a booth outside selling official concert merchandise like character goods and light sticks; I didn’t buy any, but there were loads of people near the booth who had laid out their purchased merchandise for trading (since most of the character goods are blind boxes). I should’ve brought along my SolidS merch to give away, since I’m really only into QUELL. (OOT: QUELL and SolidS are usually grouped together in blind box merch. I love everyone in QUELL so my chances of getting something I like is preeeeeeeetty high, but for some reason I keep getting Shiki?! So if anyone wants Shiki merch, let me know. I have... lots.)

There was probably life-sized standees of the characters somewhere in the lobby but I couldn’t find them ;; I went to look for my seat which was on the 1st floor and quickly realised that half of my view of the stage was blocked by the speakers...grr. Couldn’t complain too much though, since I was lucky just to be there. The photos above were taken while waiting for the rest of the crowd to take their seats. In the meantime, SolidS and QUELL PV’s were played on the projection screen. Every time SolidS appeared on screen, the audience screamed lol. There was some noise for QUELL too, but definitely not as loud... I was quietly cheering for my sons in my heart ;w; Started chatting with the girl sitting next to me and found out that she was a SolidS fan (of course), and that her favourite was Dai-chan (good taste). I really wanted to give her my SolidS merch.......

About 15 minutes before the show started, the two Lizz squirrel mascots (purple for SolidS, blue for Quell) emerged on stage, dressed in sumo gear (in reference to the venue, which is usually a sumo wrestling ground), to say hi to the arena audience. They were so big and round... ;w; I was super jealous of people who had tickets for arena seats, they got to be so close to the stage!!

The lights dimmed and SolidS appeared on stage as the audience went crazy. They opened the set list with KARA DA KARA, followed by Quell’s HIKARI. My heart was about to beat out of my chest, I was just so happy to be able to see my Quell sons in the flesh ;_______; I don’t know if my seat position in relation to the speakers had anything to do with this, but I couldn’t really hear the vocals well ;_; The music was too loud and vocals sounded muffled.... Nevertheless, getting to hear the groups sing live was a magical experience.

Next, everyone came back out onto the stage for introductions and opening talk (while admiring the 360 degrees seating). I only realised this after the concert, but they were all dressed in the same clothes as the characters in the official concert art! SolidS all slick and deadly in urban monochrome outfits, and Quell looking all breezy and relaxed in loose charcoal and blue. The twins of course were wearing matching clothes, down to the accessories....... ugh... angels..... Nogami even had Ichiru’s hairstyle T_T

The Lizz squirrels popped up on stage occasionally and the cast members gave them lots of love; Takeuchi kept hugging the Quell Lizz and squeezing his tail lol (he really loves cute animals). Nishiyama and the twins took turns holding his hands or gently guiding him around the stage (family aura!!). SolidS......... grabbed their Lizz by the crotch....

Moving on to the solo performances. Shiki took the lead with Tide, followed by Tsubasa with Canaria. I wasn’t familiar with any of the songs, but i could tell that the audience loved them. I don’t particularly appreciate Eguchi and Saito’s singing styles, but they had a lot of energy and really knew how to work the crowd.

After that, it was QUELL’s turn. First to perform was of course Shu, with End of Night. Takeuchi was completely at home on stage, strutting around and engaging the audience. I was surprised that he had backup dancers and i don’t know if he was meant to know the choreograph, but he danced along with ease and at other times swayed his hips in a way that made my inner mom voice want to yell at him to behave lol (I can’t help it, he’s so young). In recordings, Shu’s vocals are bold and precise; during the concert, Takeuchi was singing as himself - messing around with the melody, using short, breathy notes, and just having lots of fun. It sounded very different from the recorded version of End of Night, but it was a great performance regardless.

Issei took to the stage to sing Hoshizora (starry sky) as the audience changed their light sticks to blue. IMO Shugo gave the most solid performance of the show. Issei’s voice was clear and powerful, but sweet and delicate at all the right moments. And he thanked us for showing him a beautiful starry sky with our light sticks T_T At this point the CD actually hadn’t been released yet so all we had was the demo. The full song was incredible. FYI, Shugo played the guitar for Hoshizora; I would’ve died if he had actually played the guitar at the concert too...

After the song, the rest of Quell joined Issei on stage. Ichiru ran STRAIGHT at Issei and gave him a tackle hug T___T I can’t deal with these two...

The next segment was SoriRaji (SolidS radio) and QueRaji (QUELL radio). Again, my memory is pretty fuzzy, but I’ve tried to jot down as much as I can remember.

Eichi was probably nervous and kept messing up his lines. The twins cheered him on together with “Eichi, faito!” godddddddd so cute ><

Question for Shu: When did you realise that the twins had opened up (to you/Quell)?

Shu: I took a nap on the sofa one day, and when I woke up I found the twins asleep next to me

Ichiru: WAAAAAAAAAAAAA DON’T SAY ANY MORE

Issei: You looked so comfortable sleeping there, we couldn't help joining in...

Ichiru: Though it was creepy waking up to find Eichi STARING at us

Eichi: I was so jealous!!! I wanted to join in but there wasn't enough space on the sofa ;_;

There was a question directed at Shu, I don't quite remember what it was but it had something to do with Shu's schedule being busier than the others and whether it was hard for them to spend time together.

Eichi: Shu's usually the first one awake and out at work before the rest of us are even out of bed.

Twins: We should try to get up earlier sometimes and have breakfast together!

Shu: *Weeps into hands* My children are precious... (#Mychildrenareprecious became the official twitter hashtag for SQP lmao)

Question for the twins: What kind of cakes do you like?

Issei: I like mille crepe and cream puffs

Ichiru: I like cream puffs too! And mont blanc, and chocolate cake, and strawberry short cake! Anything with whole strawberries on top!

Mom, dad & audience: Aww...

Ichiru: W-what?! I just like desserts with lots of cream, what's wrong with that?!!!

Shu: That's cute ^^ I don't eat a lot of sweets but if I had to pick one, it'd be rare cheese cake

Eichi: Ti. Ra. Mi. Su <3

Question for the twins: Issei, as the older sibling, have you ever wanted Ichiru to call you "oniichan?"

Issei: I’ve never really thought about it before and I don’t think that it’s necessary, but now that it’s been mentioned I kinda want to hear it...

Ichiru: .....Hear what

Issei: You calling me oniichan

Shu: I’m filming this :)

Ichiru was reluctant ofc, but after some prodding from mom and dad (and the audience)...

Ichiru: (smol voice) .....Oniichan

Shu, Eichi, Issei: *FIST PUMP*

Audience: *DEAD*

Question for everyone: If QUELL was to go on holiday together, where would you go?

Ichiru: Okinawa!! I reaaaaaaaally wanna go to Okinawa!!!

Shu: *fond dad face* Let’s go ^^

Ugh they were 1000000% Happy Family, it was the CUTEST thing to watch.... I was trying not to die from how cute the twins were and it was reassuring to see Shu also trying his best not to burst into tears whenever the twins did or said something cute (which was ALL THE TIME).

I don't remember much from SoliRaji (SolidS radio), but #PHO~! became the other designated SQP tag because Shiki kept yelling that word LOL. It started with Shiki answering a question about his favourite south east asian food or something, and his reply was Vietnamese pho ("PHOOOO~!!"). That became a running gag throughout the rest of the concert wwwww Dai answered Thai green curry :3c

And oh, in response to a question about who had the biggest hands in SolidS, all 4 pressed their hands together to compare sizes (Tsubasa and Dai even snuck in a lovers grip). Cue lots of dying screams from the audience, haha. In the end, Shiki was the largest, followed by Rikka, Dai, and Tsubasa (obviously based on the seiyuus hands, though I was surprised that Hanae’s hands were bigger than Umehara’s).

In a nutshell, Eguchi and Umehara were wrecking havoc by running their mouths, so Saito had his hands full running damage control... as usual ww

After a short break the show continued with the solo songs, starting with Rikka’s Good Night My Darling. I always enjoy hearing Hanae sing live, he has such a pretty voice! Next was Dai’s Jinsei Hard Mode. Umehara’s singing improves every time I hear it... and obviously we all know he’s ikemen, but in person he’s even more gorgeous, goddamn.

Ichiru’s Akaku Somaru Sora (red sky) was as energetic and straightforward as in the CD! Tbh i think singing as Ichiru stifles Nogami’s skills (apparent when you hear Nogami singing in his own voice, and yes, that’s Shugo next to him) but he’s great to watch live and i LOVE that he waves enthusiastically at the crowd as Ichiru!!

When it was Eichi’s turn to sing his solo, Niji (Rainbow), we were all super excited because the song’s demo isn’t even out yet, and here we got to listen to it live, in full!! It was a fun, summery pop tune, befitting its title, and the whole time Eichi was hopping around and waving at the audience with a huge smile. He really was emitting rainbows and flowers T___T Nishiyama’s not the strongest singer in QUELL, but he definitely embodies Eichi’s cheerfulness.

SolidS returned to the stage to perform Tokyo LOVE Junky, followed by Quell with Aoi Mizu. I had mixed feelings when I first listened to Aoi Mizu since it felt completely out of place on a Quell album, but i figured they probably needed at least one upbeat concert-friendly song, and sure enough it seems like Aoi Mizu was written for this purpose. It’s definitely a lot easier to shake your light stick in time with the song compared to Hikari, or even Believer ^q^

We were asked to participate in a recording for the Tsukipro anime that’s airing in October. They wanted us to yell out the characters’ names or scream “kya~!” to use during actual concert footage in the anime!!! They were only recording for SolidS in the afternoon which meant that Quell’s would get done during the night show... I wanted to be there for Quell too >< Anyway, SolidS took turns going up on stage and used hand signals to indicate when we should start/stop yelling. Each recording lasted 30 seconds iirc? The audience was happy to comply haha, we went WILD. Shiki went first, then Tsubasa. When it was Rikka’s turn, Hanae wanted some variation lol he asked us to whisper when he put his hand down, and tune up the volume as he raised his hand. It was a lot of fun, I was laughing half the time because he was contorting his body (bending over backwards etc) while moving his arm, just being a clown really. We did our best to match his hand movements and got praised for it at the end :3 Lastly, Umehara got up for Dai and his first words were “Don’t call me Dai-chan” JKSDGJLHGDFLJ CUTE he used the same system as Hanae and ofc most of us screamed “DAI-CHAAAAAAAAAAAAANNN” ^q^

The show came to a close with the obligatory event ending song Sexy☆Sense. Obviously performed by SolidS as it’s their song, but Quell stuck around to join in. There was a lot of activity on stage but I mostly kept my eyes on the twins ;w; I have to admit that SolidS’ music is not really my taste, but Sexy☆Sense is super catchy and it’s hard not to sing along. A supercharged ending to an amaaaazing concert!!!

I’ve pre-ordered the SQP DVD so that I can watch what happens in the night session >< Can’t wait!! To those of you who managed to survive my TL;DR, thank you for your patience!

#QUELL #SolidS #tsukipro #SQP #takeuchi shunsuke #nishiyama koutarou #nakamura shugo #nogami sho #eguchi takuya #hanae natsuki #saito souma #umehara yuichiro #event report

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siva3155 · 5 years ago

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300+ TOP DBMS Objective Questions and Answers

Database Management System Multiple Choice Questions :-

1) ------- responsible for authorizing access to the database, for co-ordinating and monitoring its use, acquiring software, and hardware resources, controlling its use and monitoring efficiency of operations. A. Authorization Manager B. Storage Manager C. File Manager D. Transcation Manager E. Buffer Manager 2) ------- is a property that describes various characteristics of an entity A. ER Diagram B. Column C. Relationship D. Attribute 3) -------- level describes what data is stored in the database and the relationships among the data A. Physical Level B. Logical Level C. Conceptual Level D. None of the above 4) ---------- denote derived attributes. A. Double ellipse B. Dashed ellipse C. Squared ellipse D. Ellipse with attribute name underlined 5) A --------- is an association between entities A. Relation B. One to One C. Generalization D. Specialization 6) ------------- stores metadata about the structure of the data base A. Physical data base B. Query Analyzer C. Data Dictionary D. Data Catalog 7) ------------is a collection of operations that perform s single logical function in a database application A. Transaction B. Concurrent operation C. Atomocity D. Durability 8) The problem that is compounded when constraints involve several data items from different files are Called -------- A. Transaction Control Management Problem B. Security Problem C. Integrity Problem D. Durability Problem 9) Ensuring atomicity is the responsibility of the ------------component A. File Manager B. Buffer Manager C. DBA D. Transation Manager 10) -----manages the allocation of the space on the disk storage and the data base structure used to represent information stored on disk A. Disk Manager B. File Manager C. Buffer Manager D. Memory Manager E. None of the above

DBMS MCQs 11) is the minimal super key A. Primary Key B. Candidate Key C. Surrogate Key D. Unique Key E. Alternate Key 12) -engine executes low level instructions generated by the DML compilier A. DDL Analyzer B. Query Interpreter C. Database Engine D. None of the above 13) ------------responsible to define the content, the structure, the constraints, and functions or transactions against the database A. Transcation Manager B. Query Analyzer C. DBA D. All the above E. None of the above 14) In ER model -------------denote derived attributes A. Double ellipse B. Diamond C. Reactangle D. None of the above 15) Foreign Key can be null A. TRUE B. FALSE 16) All primary keys should be super keys. A. TRUE B. FALSE 17) In Relational database Data is stored as record types and the relationship is represented by set types A. True B. False 18) In Hierarchical database to get to a low-level table, you start at the root and work your way down the tree until you reach your target data. A. True B. False 19) Using relational model we design conceptual database design A. True B. False 20) Conceptual data model is the source of information for logical design phase A. True B. False 21) Logical database design describes describes base relations, file organizations, and indexes that are used to achieve efficient access to data. A. True B. False 22) Conceptual data modeling uses a high level data modeling concept of E-R Models A. True B. False 23) Tables are required to have at least one column A. True B. False 24) Logical data independence. Refers to the separation of the external views from the conceptual view A. True B. False 25) Duplication of data is the disadvantage of DBMS A. True B. False 26) Candidate key can have a null value A. True B. False 27) Each program maintains its own set of data. So users of one program may be unaware of potentially useful data held by other programs this leads toDuplication of data A. True B. False 28) A traditional database stores just data – with no procedures A. True B. False 29) Simple Attribute composed of multiple components, each with an independent existence. A. True B. False 30) Cardinality specifies how many instances of an entity relate to one instance of another entity. A. True B. False 31. The ascending order of a data hirerchy is: a. bit-byte-record-field-file-database b. byte-bit-field-record-file-database c. bit-byte-field-record-file-database d. bit-byte-file-record-field-database 32. Which of the following is true of a network structure? a. t is a physical representation of the data b. It allows a many-to-many relationship c. It is conceptually simple d. It will be dominant data base of the future 33. Which of the following is a problem of file management system? a. difficult to update b. lack of data independence c. data redundancy d. program dependence e. all of above 34. One data dictionery software package is called a. DB/DC dictionary b. TOTAL c. ACCESS d. Datapac e. Data Manager 35. The function of a database is … a. to check all input data b. to check all spelling c. to collect and organize input data d. to output data 36. What is the language used by most of the DBMSs for helping their users to access data? a. High level language b. SQL c. Query Language d. 4GL 37. The model for a record management system might be a. handwritten list b. a Rolodex card file c. a business form d. all of above 38. Primitive operations common to all record management system include a. print b. sort c. look-up d. all of above 39. In a large DBMS a. each user can “see” only a small part of the entire database b. each subschema contains every field in the logical schema c. each user can access every subschema 40. Information can be transferred between the DBMS and a a. spreadsheet program b. word processor program c. graphics program d. all of the above Ques 1: Which of the following fields in a student file can be used as a primary key? a. class b. Social Security Number c. GPA d. Major Question 2: Which of the following is not an advantage of the database approach a. Elimination of data redundancy b. Ability of associate deleted data c. increased security d. program/data independence e. all of the above Question 3: Which of the following contains a complete record of all activity that affected the contents of a database during a certain period of time? a. report writer b. query language c. data manipulation language d. transaction log e. none of the above Question 4: In the DBMS approach, application programs perform the a. storage function b. processing functions c. access control d. all of the above e. none of the above Question 5: A set of programs that handle a firm’s database responsibilities is called a. database management system (DBMS) b. database processing system (DBPS) c. data management system (DMS) d. all of above Question 6: Which is the make given to the database management system which is able to handle full text data, image data, audio and video? a. full media b. graphics media c. multimedia d. hypertext Question 7: A record management system a. can handle many files of information at a time b. can be used to extract information stored in a computer file c. always uses a list as its model d. both a and b Question 8: A command that lets you change one or more fields in a record is a. insert b. modify c. lookup d. none of above Question 9: A transparent DBMS a. can not hide sensitive information from users b. keeps its logical structure hidden from users c. keeps its physical structure hidden from users d. both b and c Question 10: A file produced by a spreadsheet a. is generally stored on disk in an ASCII text fromat b. can be used as is by the DBMS c. both a and b d. none of the above Answers: 1.b 2.e 3.d 4.b 5.d 6.c 7.b 8.b 9.c 10.a Ques 1: Which of the following is not true of the traditional approach to information processing a. there is common sharing of data among the various applications b. it is file oriented c. programs are dependent on the file d. it is inflexible e. all of the above are true Question 2: Which of the following hardware component is the most important to the operation of database management system? a. high resolution video display b. printer c. high speed, large capacity disk d. plotter e. mouse Question 3: Generalized database management system do not retrieve data to meet routine request a. true b. false Question 4: Batch processing is appropriate if a. large computer system is available b. only a small computer system is avilbale c. only a few transactions are involved d. all of the above e. none of the above Question 5: Large collection of files are called a. fields b. records c. database d. sectors Question 6: Which of the following is not a relational database? a. dBase IV b. 4th Dimension c. FoxPro d. Reflex Question 7: In order to use a record management system a. you need to understand the low level details of how information is stored b. you need to understand the model the record management system uses c. bother a and b d. none of the above Question 8: Sort/Report generators a. are faster than index/report generators b. require more disk space than indexed/report generators c. do not need to sort before generating report d. both a and b Question 9: If a piece of data is stored in two places in the database, then a. storage space is wasted b. changing the data in one spot will cause data inconsistency c. in can be more easily accessed d. both and b Question 10: An audit trail a. is used to make backup copies b. is the recorded history of operations performed on a file c. can be used to restore lost information d. none of the aobve Answers: 1.a 2.c 3. b 4.e 5.c 6.d 7.b 8.b 9.d 10.b Ques 1: The relational database environment has all of the following components except a. users b. separate files c. database d. query languages e. database Question 2: Database management systems are intended to a. eliminate data redundancy b. establish relationship among records in different files c. manage file access d. maintain data integrity e. all of the above Question 3: One approach to standardization storing of data? a. MIS b. structured programming c. CODASYL specification d. none of the above Question 4: The language used application programs to request data from the DBMS is referred to as the a. DML b. DDL c. query language d. any of the above e. none of the above Question 5: The highest level in the hierarchy of data organization is called a. data bank b. data base c. data file d. data record Question 6: Choose the RDBMS which supports full fledged client server application development a. dBase V b. Oracle 7.1 c. FoxPro 2.1 d. Ingress Question 7: Report generators are used to a. store data input by a user b. retrieve information from files c. answer queries d. both b and c Question 8: A form defined a. where data is placed on the screen b. the width of each field c. both a and b d. none of the above Question 9: A top-to-bottom relationship among the items in a database is established by a a. hierarchical schema b. network schema c. relational schema d. all of the above Question 10: The management information system (MIS) structure with one main computer system is called a a. hierarchical MIS structure b. distributed MIS structure c. centralized MIS structure d. decentralized MIS structure Answers: 1.b 2.e 3.c 4.a 5.b 6. b 7.d 8.a 9.a 10.c DATABASE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM Questions and Answers pdf Download Read the full article

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pogueman · 7 years ago

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Yamaha's new piano teaches you to play along with your favorite bands

yahoo

Yamaha’s Clavinova CSP-150 is a wildly ambitious, crazy fun digital piano. It’s a handsome-looking upright with a realistic keyboard feel, great sound, and many talents.

But its most eye-popping feature is new to humankind: It can analyze any song in an iPad’s iTunes library and automatically generate a written piano part or chord chart for it. At that point, that you can play along with the song, as though you’re sitting in with the band.

The iPad connects to the piano to display the sheet music for any song.

As a bonus, a column of tiny LED lights “falls down” toward each key, Guitar-Hero style, giving you advance warning of which keys to strike and when. That’s for people who aren’t great at reading sheet music.

youtube

The company’s goal was to make practicing more fun—and boy howdy, does this piano succeed at that.

On the other hand, there are flaws. And when it comes to the automatic piano-part sheet-music thing, serious flaws. That feature breaks down frustratingly if the song you’ve chosen has key changes, time-signature changes, a cappella sections (singing without instruments), percussive breaks, or any other musical event that’s even mildly unusual.

In other words, you can jam away with flawless sheet music as you accompany your MP3 files of “Hey Jude,” “Rocket Man,” and “Mr. Blue Sky.” But the sheet music produced by the piano is a dissonant, clashing mess with, for example, “Here Comes the Sun” or “Take Me To the Church.”

“Bohemian Rhapsody?” Don’t even think about it.

What you get without an iPad

If you don’t connect an iPad, the Clavinova CSP is an excellent but limited home piano. It comes with a bench, music stand, keyboard lid, three pedals, and even a little hook for headphones.

The Yamaha Clavinova CSP looks and sounds like a nice upright piano.

Along its edge and back, you’ll find two headphone jacks, a line/mic input (for a guitar or microphone, for example), an audio input for a music source like your phone (to use the piano as a speaker), an audio output jack (for external speakers), MIDI connectors (for controlling the keyboard from a computer), and an Aux Pedal jack (for connecting foot controllers).

This input box is under the left edge of the keyboard.

Yamaha’s list price for this thing is as high as $6,000, but piano list prices are a total fiction. Actual piano stores—which won’t have the piano in stock for a few more weeks—are offering it at around $3,500. Models with nicer cabinet wood and bigger speakers jack up the street price as high as $5,300.

Here’s what you can do without the iPad:

Play. Without the iPad, you have a choice of 10 keyboard sounds: pianos, harpsichord, organ, vibraphone.

Have a backup band. A truly great-sounding backup band—in your choice of 10 styles (country, blues, jazz, etc.)—analyzes the notes you’re playing and auto-generates an accompaniment. For example, if your fingers are on the notes for a C minor 7 chord, the virtual bass and guitar players play a C minor 7. It sounds fantastic.

Play along. Without the iPad, you can get a whiff of the cool self-teaching features, thanks to the 10 built-in songs: “Let It Go” (from “Frozen”), “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,” “Für Elise,” and so on. Those Guitar Hero lights come on to assist.

Metronome. You can speed the clicking up or slow it down, or set it by tapping the tempo you want it to mimic.

Reverb. You can dial up three reverb (echo) effects, and adjust their intensity.

Transpose and tune. As with any digital piano, you can shift the entire keyboard into a different key. Or tune this piano as you might a violin, to fit in with other instruments.

Microphone. There’s a mike input, for your singalong pleasure.

Headphones. The piano sounds amazing with headphones on—much more realistic and gorgeous than through its built-in speakers, although without as much volume. Note: These are quarter-inch phono plugs. So if your headphones or earbuds have a standard miniplug, you’ll have to buy an adapter.

Unfortunately, the piano has only a single button, called Function. Controlling all of the features listed above requires holding down Function while you press one of the piano’s 88 unlabeled keys. So if you do intend to use these features, expect to run back and forth a lot to the manual.

Even so, this is all pretty cool stuff. But paying $3,500 for this piano and then not connecting an iPad is like buying a Maserati to use only for its air conditioning.

What you get with an iPad

The real magic begins when you connect an iPad, using its normal charging cable, to the piano’s USB jack. (In the spring of 2018, Yahama says, you’ll be able to connect an Android tablet.)

Once you download the Yamaha Smart Pianist app, all kinds of new possibilities emerge.

Split the keyboard so that that, for example, the upper keys play piano, and the lower ones play bass. Or layer the keyboard, so that the upper keys play piano and strings.

Record yourself. There’s a 16-track recorder, 700 instrument sounds, and 29 drum kits. You can save the resulting masterpiece as an audio file to flash drive or your iPad.

Piano exercises. The built-in songbook includes 300 play-along exercises from classical piano-lesson books like Czerny and Hanon.

Nothing like some classical exercises for dexterity!

Auto backup singers. In addition to that slick backup-band feature (the app unlocks many more styles, tempos, and features), the Clavinova can also multiply your voice, adding three “backup singers.” They all sound like you, but they sing the other notes of the chord you’re playing.

Change the key or tempo of anything. This kind of blew me away: You can slow down any song—even pop songs in your iPad library—for ease of analysis and learning. This may be the best learning tool ever in the history of humanity. Learn it slow, gradually pick up speed. Or change its key, for ease in singing along.

youtube

Auto sheet music

OK, now the big-ticket item: Instant sheet music for anything in your song library.

Once you’ve called up the written piano part, you can dive into the software and adjust the part’s difficulty. A handy graphic shows you the kind of rhythm patterns you can expect at each level:

For each song, you can specify how complex the piano part should be.

As you now know, this feature works very well on simple songs, and pretty badly when there’s musical complexity.

But let’s give this thing some credit: Having software analyze a recording of a band—multiple instruments mixed together—to deduce what notes are being played is an unbelievably difficult task. It’s like asking a computer to write out all the different conversations it’s hearing at a cocktail party.

In other words, you can forgive Yamaha’s software for botching the transcription of complex songs. Weirdly, though, it also frequently mis-hears chords in much simpler, straight-ahead songs—directing you to play a D minor chord in “Piano Man,” for example, when it’s quite obviously a D major chord. The result: Clash city.

There are also occasional bizzarities in note spelling. I mean, G-flat here? Really? We non-computer beings would call that an F-sharp:

The auto-generated piano parts contain some weird glitches.

OK, expectations lowered? Good. Because even with its glitches, when you add to this feature the ability to slow down the music, to simplify the piano part, to watch those LED Guitar-Hero lights, and to wear headphones, you’ve got yourself an insane piano-learning environment. You are playing keyboards for any band you choose.

It’s incredibly enjoyable—and that, of course, is Yamaha’s ulterior motive; if you’re having fun, you’ll play more. If you play more, you get better. Period.

The end of piano teachers?

When I unboxed the Clavinova on Facebook Live a couple of weeks ago, one of our viewers commented, “Good-bye, piano teachers!”

And it’s true that you can become a better amateur piano player by spending time with this thing, just by playing song after song and following the little blinking lights. You’ll wind up noodling more convincingly on pianos you find at friends’ houses or bars, for example.

Without a teacher, though, you won’t become a good piano player. The digital piano makes no attempt to teach you fingering, technique, pedaling, or expression. It has no ability to monitor your progress and assign you sequentially more challenging pieces. It can’t explain to you about how sheet music works.

And, most concerning of all, it can’t critique itself. It can’t say, “Oh wow, your iPad is showing the totally wrong chord here! Every time you come to this part, make that an F-sharp.” You may very well wind up practicing songs wrong.

Yamaha’s stance is that this piano really shines as a companion to a human teacher. That’d be the ultimate. On that, I have to agree.

The coda

Almost everyone who tries out the Clavinova CSP has a strong reaction.

Rank beginners get excited by those little LEDs, which demystify playing the piano if you don’t read music. Amateur players are absolutely blown away by this piano; they see immediately how delicious it can be to play along with bands they love, on tunes they know, without ever paying a dime for sheet music.

Especially when you crank the volume and fill the house. You feel like a superstar.

On the other hand, there may be a class of musician who’s disgusted by the whole thing. They may see the LEDs as a crutch, or bemoan the piano’s emphasis on pop music, or object that the computer-generated piano parts are simplistic sometimes to the point of nonsense. And these are all reasonable points.

But that’s like saying that we shouldn’t have calculators, because doing math by hand built character. Or we shouldn’t send texts, because we’re losing the art of handwritten letters. I mean, that’s true— but the history of technology is about making our lives easier, and progress never goes backwards.

Love it or hate it, the Yamaha Clavinova CSP fits right in. It uses some astounding technology to make learning the piano easier and much, much more fun.

More from David Pogue:

What I learned from my first total solar eclipse

Samsung’s Bixby voice assistant is ambitious, powerful, and half-baked

Is through-the-air charging a hoax?

Electrify your existing bike in 2 minutes with these ingenious wheels

Marty Cooper, inventor of the cellphone: The next step is implantables

The David Pogue Review: Windows 10 Creators Update

Now I get it: Bitcoin

David Pogue’s search for the world’s best air-travel app

The little-known iPhone feature that lets blind people see with their fingers

David Pogue, tech columnist for Yahoo Finance, welcomes nontoxic comments in the comments section below. On the web, he’s davidpogue.com. On Twitter, he’s @pogue. On email, he’s [email protected]. You can read all his articles here, or you can sign up to get his columns by email.

#tech #Pogue #David Pogue #_lmsid:a077000000BAh3wAAD #_revsp:yahoofinance.com #_uuid:df411c15-42ff-3f99-a432-98fd0def523b #_author:David Pogue

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sf-reynacruz-blog · 7 years ago

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“I'm usually attracted to the dark souls. They fascinate me.”

Nevada Police Department

Name: Reyna Robin Cruz

Known Alias(es): Rey, Robbie, Selina Roca, Desiree Calvillo (Suspected to have more unknown aliases - Noted by Officer Stanley Evans NYPD)

Date of Birth: May 26th, 1991

Age: 26

Sex: Female

Race: Hispanic

Height: 5’9

Weight: 135lbs

Eyes: Hazel

Hair: black

Distinctive markings (Include tattoos/Piercings at time of arrest): Multiple tattoos; Medusa head on back, quote above. Multiple small tattoos on arms and torso. Small finger tattoos. Rose between breasts. Piercings; Various. Scar running along the right side of neck, from just behind the ear to collar bone.

Arresting county: Clark County (Las Vegas, Nevada)

Date of arrest: February 3rd, 2017

Personal Items (found on suspect at the time of arrest): butterfly knife (Checked into evidence due to specks of blood found on weapon), Ring shaped like a rose (discovered to be a spiked weapon beneath the detachable rose decoration), Snake wrap bracelet, crystal necklace, body chain, various body jewelry. (Noted that one human finger was found on suspect. Witnesses questioned, no one claims to have seen who the finger belonged to or how it came to be on suspect Cruz, Reyna. Finger has been sent to lab for testing. Results TBD - Officer Dale Phillips)

Arresting offense/Charges: Bar brawl / Assault with intent to do great bodily harm

Arrest Report: Officers Dale Phillips and Eric Jones were first on the scene after a call from dispatch the 911 call was placed at 1:36 am from inside of the men's room at Hogs & Heifers located 201 N 3rd St., Las Vegas, NV 89101.

Caller made claims of an erratic brother and sister duo harassing a regular. Officer Phillips and Officer Jones called for backup on arrival due to the “Pandemonium” that had broken out in the bar. Officers Richards, Blake, Lopez, and Ramirez were dispatched to the scene. Upon arrival the officers were faced with the task of breaking up the fights that had broken out inside of the bar. Officers Phillips and Jones were the first to get into the building. Officer Jones reported hearing screams of agony coming from the men's bathroom where the emergency call had been placed. The source of the scream is unknown. Suspects discovered to be Rush “Tre” Cruz and Reyna “Rey” Cruz wanted in connection to the Border Massacre on November 14th, 2016. Suspect Cruz, Reyna was compliant with arrest refused to speak English or explain about the human finger found on her during the pat down. Suspect spoke with officer Ramirez claiming: “Bueno, definitivamente no es mi dedo.”

Suspect is to be held for interrogation purposes for both the incident reported above and for suspected involvement in the Border Massacre of November 14th, 2016. Interrogation is scheduled for February 4th. Detectives Alonzo Chávez and Ricardo Moralez assigned to the case will be administering the interrogation.

Prior arrest record:

June 14th, 2014 - Detained in Houston, Texas (Harrison County) 911 call reported a brutal fight outside of the Lone Star Saloon. Suspect surrendered herself after officers arrived on the scene. The other suspect involved in the fight was found unconscious and had to be rushed to the emergency room. Suspect Cruz was Charged with Aggravated assault (3rd offense.) Sentenced: 1 year ( time served 3 months) released on good behavior. ( Due to suspects continuous unwarranted early releases, cartel involvement is suspected. Nothing confirmed.- Officer Williams of Harrison County PD)

October 31st, 2011 - Detained in Los Angeles, California (Los Angeles County) Suspect was found to be disturbing the peace after starting what was referred to as the “Wagon Wheel parking lot brawl”. Cruz evaded arrest by climbing on to the roof of police cruiser #023. Suspect proceeded to jump off from cruiser attacking Officer Trina Pierson. Charged with Aggravated assault (2nd offense.) Sentenced: 6 months (Time served 27 days) released early due to Officer Trina Pierson’s refusal to appear in court.

May 27th, 2009 - Detained in Hyattsville, Maryland (PG County) Suspect was taken into custody after a call to dispatch reporting a suspicious character roaming the 100 block of Claymore Avenue. Responding officers found suspect covered in blood. None of which was her own, when questioned suspect merely smiled repeating the words “Esa fue la mejor fiesta de cumpleaños” suspect was placed in drunk tank expected to be questioned and released the following morning. Upon waking Cruz, she became hostile attacking Officer Clayton Ford. Officer Ford received multiple deep scratches upon his face and neck before suspect was restrained. Charged with Aggravated assault (First offense) . Sentenced: 3 months (time served 14 days). Suspect was released due to Officer Ford’s decision to drop charges.

If being held for prior offense(s):

County of Offense: San Diego County (Otay Mesa Border Crossing)

Date of Offense: November 14th, 2016

Age at time of offense: 25

Offense Charges: No official charges (Suspect wanted for Questioning)

#interrogation coming in pt 2 #tw: lil bitch is a psycho

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iammharsh · 6 years ago

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Download Huawei HiSuite (PC Suite) for Windows & Mac

Huawei HiSuite latest version for Windows & Mac

Download Huawei HiSuite : Huawei Hisuite is an all-in-one utility tool which is developed and maintained by Huawei. You might be a Windows users or a Mac user, Huawei got you covered. Using HiSuite you can perform tasks like backup, system restore, update your system, stock recovery and also you can organize your data. Follow this guide to download Huawei HiSuite on your PC or Mac. Huawei is one of the finest smartphone company. When it comes to after-market services, Huawei is the best. This application service is one of the best examples to prove that Huawei cares for its customers. Well, which is the last PC suite service you remember using. Who cares the users much to create PC Suites? Well, if you ask me though, Nokia PC Suite is the last PC Suite service I remember using around six years back. PC Suite applications or the services come quite handy in situations. But most of the manufacturers say,” Gone are the days for PC suites. This is the age for cloud services.” Yes, I do accept the fact that cloud services are great. But, they come with their own set of pros and cons. The major issue comes with bandwidth and user spaces. This is the part where PC Suite shines. Taking the story back to Huawei, the company was not considered as a brand back then, but now, it crossed the likes of Apple and Samsung in terms of sales. The Huawei HiSuite comes to the show with numerous features. Let us discuss the features in detail in the next part of the post. HiSuite by Huawei Android Smart Device Manager permits you to effortlessly manage your contacts, messages, pictures, videos, apps, and furthermore from your computer. You can simply view, install and uninstall apps with one-click app updates. You can also take screenshots on your device straight from your computer.

HiSuite For Windows & Mac

Huawei HiSuite for Windows/Mac

Multimedia management Organize everything Synchronization Backup the data Restore the data File transfers. Now that we understood what the HiSuite can do, let us quickly jump into the elaborated features of the Huawei HiSuite service. Multimedia Management

Huawei Pc Suite For Windows & Mac Using this multimedia management tool in the Huawei HiSuite, you can easily play your audio files or video files without even importing them to the PC. So, you can connect the device and play your recorded videos or audio files on your PC. You can also transfer them vice-versa. Using the HiSuite you can also view your contact list and directly message them from your PC. You can add, remove or edit the contacts in real time. Organize everything

Huawei PC Suit For Windows & Mac In your Android device, your downloaded images and videos and other files are stored in diverse locations. The storage of the film hinges on the app they were downloaded from. Bringing together all of this from the trifling screen of your phone can be cumbrous. But when you start organizing the whole thing on the bigger screen of your PC get the job done quicker and much easier. Basically, the old-gen PC Suites are developed for this reason and later they started to get advanced options. Synchronization Synchronization is shortly called as sync. Yes, the very same sync option you know, which is available on your smartphones. Have you ever thought what happens if you sync files on your phone? Well, it’s obvious. Once it gets synced you can access those files on any platform. Thanks to the Cloud storage. Cloud storage come way handy, well, not every time you’ll carry your Windows or Mac PC around to backup to PC. But there are many chances for the files to get drowned from Cloud storages. That is the part where Huawei HiSuite comes to the play. You can sync files and get them back whenever you need. Backup and Restore the data

Huawei Pc Suite For Windows & Mac It is the simple feature as we would expect. But little things get huge ones with time. You can backup from your phone and transfer in real time. This comes really handy at the times when your data is ruined in factory reset or even while unlocking the bootloader. You can restore the data which is backed up whenever is required. File Transfers

Huawei HiSuite For File Transfer Drag and Drop. This is the best way to explain the file transfer. You can simply transfer the multimedia files like photos, videos and other Android device supported format files with ease. This is all about File Transfers.

Download Huawei HiSuite

HUAWEI HISUITE (WINDOWS) Huawei HiSuite For MAC

Installation Huawei PcSuit in Windows and Mac

Now that we are done with the explanation and introduction part, let us simply go through the installation process. For those who already know the basic installation process of Windows and Mac, it gets easy. If not follow the steps below. Find the downloaded file.

HiSuite For Windows Once you find the file named ‘Huawei HiSuite’, right click on it and extract the file. To extract the file you’ll need WinRAR or 7-Zip.

HiSuite For Windows Now open the extracted folder. Now run the Huawei_HiSuite.exe file by double-clicking it.

HiSuite For Windows Once the application is opened, you will get a pop-up prompt. Click on ‘Yes’ to proceed. It doesn’t harm your PC or smartphone. You can now click on ‘Next’. Select your desired language and your country, then hit ‘Next’ again. It will choose the installation location automatically. If you would like to change the installation location, you can definitely do that. This is the final step of the installation process. Click on ‘Install’ to install the Huawei HiSuite. In flashes, you will be alerted with Installation Complete. Now Click on Finish. Also Read: How to Unlock Bootloader on Any Huawei Device Download Android Multi tools latest Version Download Mi Account Unlock tool Download Samsung Odin Tool That is it. Now that you have successfully installed the HiSuite, it’s time for me to bid you adieu. Before you leave, show us some love by sharing this post with your friends or family. Comment down if you have any doubts or queries on the same. Stay tuned for more posts like this. Till then, stay techy! Read the full article

#Downloadhisuite #DownloadHuaweiHisuite #huawei #huaweihisuite

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stuckinthekookiejar · 8 years ago

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Distractions pt 9

Pt. 1 || Pt. 2 || Pt. 3 || Pt. 4 || Pt. 5 || Pt. 6 || Pt. 7 || Pt. 8 || Pt. 9 || Pt. 10 || Pt. 11 || Pt. 12 || Pt. 13 || Pt. 14

Yoongi x Reader (ft. Jimin)

Genre: Angst/Fluff

Word Count: 2465

“Hyung?” Jimin whispered as he peeped his head from behind the bedroom door. It wasn’t surprising to see a blanket burrito stuffed with only the most premium of geniuses: Min Yoongi. All that was needed was a side of guac.

“Hyung, are you awake?” With every step Jimin took, the ground beneath him creaked just slightly. From within the encased ball of cloth annoyed groans could be heard,

“Does it look like I’m awake?” A small tuft of black fluffy hair and the tired, irritated face of its owner could be seen from a teensiest of holes that breached his fortress.

“Jin-hyung made some food...want some?”

“No, Jimin. All I want is to sleep.”

“But hyung, you haven’t eaten a proper meal for days. You won’t get better anytime soon at this rate.”

“Jimin, I can handle myself.”

“I’m sure you can handle yourself, but,” Jimin hushed his voice mindful of anyone in the other room who could possibly hear them, “...but what about 2S and their title song?”

Yoongi had been thinking about that too. It’s been nearly a week and he hasn’t shown up to Music Box at all due to his condition. He felt especially bad for Sol Mi since he had promised to help her with the cover, “I know, I know...trust me, I want to get back to work as soon as I can. I just have to get over...this illness."

“Okay, I’ll let you go back to sleep. But you better go eat something or else Hoseokie-hyung or Jin-hyung’s gonna pull you out of bed and force feed you.”

“Yes, ‘mom’.” Once again Yoongi retreated back into his comfy ball and groaned. He didn’t know that joining Bangtan would mean gaining three more mothers.

The duffle bag slung over Jimin’s shoulder rattled as he planted his feet left and right on his way to Music Box’s dance studio. The glass doors slid open and just as he entered, four girls were coming his way. He used to greet them shyly complete with an obligatory slight bow of the head, but now as he got to know you and them over the past few days he could confidently smile brightly in their direction.

“Hey, guys!”

“Jimin-oppa!” Hwa Joo smiled, skipped over to him and jokingly wrapped herself around one of his arms. She was only stuck to him for a few moments before Joo Yeon came over and pulled her off by the back of her collar,

“Yah, Hwa Joo-ah. You may be the maknae, but you don’t have to act cute all the time. Plus what’s with the whole ‘oppa’ nonsesnse? You two are the same age.”

Hwa Joo pouted, “Nuh-uuuuuh. Oppa’s a WHOLE month older than me. You’re just jealous that I get to call him oppa.”

“Excuse me? Jealous? Huh, yeah right I’m totally...”

“Are we getting ramyun or not, you guys?” Sol Mi trudged past the maknae and the eldest with a sullen face. They all paused and stared at Sol Mi’s hunched back as she exited the building without even acknowledging Jimin.

“Is Sol Mi-noona okay?” Jimin asked with concern laced on the expression of his face.

Sun Hee sighed, “She’s just a bit upset. Since you’re helping out Y/N-ah, you probably know that the cover project is due in two days. Yoongi was supposed to help Mimi, but he got sick so...yeah. How is he, by the way? It’s been few days and we’re all pretty worried.”

“Hyung’s getting better. He just has to ‘get over this illness’ as he likes to put it. But he feels bad not being able to come in and work on the song with you guys.”

Hwa Joo stepped up and waved her hands in front of herself, “Oh no, please tell him to not feel bad. Everyone gets sick, plus we’ve been using the time to work on other stuff so it isn’t like he’s halting the production of the entire mini album.”

“Thanks, Hwa Joo. He’ll feel better knowing that he isn’t causing you guys too much trouble.”

“This is the last dance practice you’re having with unnie, right?”

“Yeah, it is. But I’m thinking about coming in for the filming of the video tomorrow.”

Once again the maknae came to his side and tugged at his sleeve, “So this means we won’t be able to see you anymore...” Her face brightened up as soon as an idea popped into her head, “Wait! I know! We heard from Y/N-unnie that you helped writing the song...why don’t you come with Yoongi-oppa and help us with the recording too?”

“I don’t know...”

“That doesn’t sound like a bad idea, to be honest,” Jimin looked at Sun Hee a little surprised. As the leader of 2S, he respected her opinions when it came to the group, “You even recorded the vocals for the demo that Yoongi presented us. When he comes back the first thing we’re planning on getting recorded is the bridge with Y/N-ah. There’s a pretty high note during that section, and Y/N can get a little...less confident when it comes to those notes. I’m sure having you there and giving us some tips would help us out a lot.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah. Plus we should give credit where credit is due. Yoongi’s helping us since he made the song, but you also took part in creating it so it only makes sense for you have the opportunity to help with recording as well. Baek PD shouldn’t have a problem with you coming in. The more the merrier.”

“Alright, I’ll have to talk to Yoongi-hyung about it first. I’d better get going, Y/N-noona’s probably waiting.”

“Nooooo. Don’t leave yet!” Hwa Joo, who had been attached to Jimin’s sleeve for the entire time, snuggled her cheek against his bicep. Jimin just stood there all awkward and red in the face,

“Yah, you’re making him uncomfortable....sorry Jimin. We’ll get going now, see you later.” Joo Yeon dragged Hwa Joo away and Sun Hee let out a heavy sigh before leaving with the other two girls.

Music was already playing by the time Jimin came in. He dumped his stuff in the usual corner. The song had quickly finished its course and you walked over to him and grabbed your towel from your pile of belongings to wipe away the sweat that was already streaming down your face,

“What took you so long?”

“Sorry, noona. I ran into the others in the hall.”

“Oh, no need to apologize. I just got worried that you got lost or something.” You lightly punched him on the shoulder as you teased, “Anyway, I think I got the routine down. Let’s just run through it a couple of times.”

Jimin nodded and you went to the music player to start up the song again. Over and over and over, the two of you went across the floor dancing the routine until every little bit was perfected. Three hours into practice, your backup dancers arrived and Jimin sat to the side watching you dance with them.

He loved watching you dance. Every move, every turn, every expression on your face just screamed determination and perfection. In a way, you two shared that. You both worked hard and trained until you could no longer stand because you both strived for nothing but perfection. That’s what being in this industry does to people: pressure you to produce only the best.

But when he looked at you, he also saw something else. He saw the practical, humble person that you truly were. Sure, you strived for perfection, but you were also laid back, down to earth, in touch with your own abilities. You knew that there was a limit to what you could do and that was something Jimin believed he lacked. He admired you for embracing the fact that you had flaws and knowing those flaws and not caring about them preventing you from achieving pure perfection. Maybe that’s why he was so attracted to you.

As the song came to a close he stood up and clapped with a ginormous smile plastered across his face. The other dancers said bye as they each left and eventually it was only the two of you in the room again.

“Wow, noona. That was incredible! Sometimes I wonder why you even needed my help in the first place. You really got the routine down to perfection.”

“Oh, shut up, Jimin. I couldn’t have done it without you.” Jimin blushed and you pretended not to see as you turned your attention to packing your things. After all, you didn’t want him to notice the strain in your expression. Ever since Jimin told you about Yoongi, you hurled yourself into work to get him out of your mind. Thinking about him and worrying about him pained you so much. You couldn’t help Yoongi like you used to, so you thought that instead of thinking about him, you should put your mind onto something else, like work.

“Hey, noona. Since it’s the last day of practice, why don’t we go celebrate?”

“Celebrate?”

“Yeah. Grab some dinner somewhere, maybe get a few drinks....I don’t know...if you don’t wanna then..”

“Why are you always so shy when you ask, Jimin? It’s not like I’m gonna decline. Of course, I’d love to hang out with you.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. The girls are great and all, but they aren’t into the stuff that I’m into like you are. It’s refreshing to spend time with a person who just...gets me.”

“O-Okay....let’s go then?”

“Yeah, let’s go before the drunkards get too drunk. I don’t want to watch some old farts brawling in the middle of the bar.”

It was too late. The old farts were already having a small fist fight on the pool tables, so you and Jimin opted to buy some convenience store canned beer and snacks to go drink next to the Han River. Luckily for you two, there wasn’t a large crowd out and it seemed like no one recognized you guys. You silently thanked both BigHit and Music Box for deciding not to dye your heads a very noticeable color.

You opened your beer and clinked cans with Jimin before taking a huge gulp, “Ahhhh. This is so nice.”

“Yeah, it really is.”

The cool night air and the bright lights of Seoul shimmering across the reflection of the water was one of your favorite sights to see in all of Korea.

“You know, Jimin, I’m really gonna miss our dance practices. We’ve known each other for a little less than a week now, but it feels like I’ve known you for years.”

“I could say the same thing about you, noona. You know, we could just hang out like this...we don’t have to have an excuse just to come out and have a drink together all the time.”

“That’s true, but I mean do you really have any time? Because being an internationally known star doesn’t really scream ‘I have a lot of free time’. Don’t you guys work like 14 hours a day or something?”

“Eh, I can get away with a few hours here and there. The company doesn’t breath down our necks like they used to, so we have more liberty. The only problem is getting recognized by people, so that’s why we’re always cooped up in the company or at our dorms.”

“Oh, that makes sense. Everyone wants to get an eyeful of Mr. International Playboy Park Jimin-ssi, right?”

Jimin laughed, “Actually, Jungkook’s the real international playboy.”

“No way, isn’t he like...kinda shy?”

“Jungkook? Shy? That’s all for show. You should really see what he’s like. One time I happened to stumble across...”

“Shush, I don’t need to hear the rest of that story.”

“Why?”

“Because!”

Laughter filled the air as you and Jimin continued to share drinks and bond over personal stories and common interests. You got to know his that he was a cat person over a dog person (although he did say that puppies always stole the competition) as well as his constant battles with insecurity. He learned about your interests in cooking and your past struggles with onstage anxiety. It was like you two opened your books for each other to read. But of course, you would always keep one chapter of your life a secret. That chapter’s name was Yoongi.

By the time your ex’s name popped into your head again, you and Jimin had finished all six cans of beer. You could hold your alcohol well, so three cans wouldn’t have such a drastic effect on you as it did to some other people. However, it would be a lie to say that you weren’t even the slightest bit tipsy.

“Jimin-ah...” His name rolled so easily off your tongue now, “Jimin-ah...I need some advice...it’s for a friend...”

Jimin was sitting hunched over on the steps his cheeks were flushed with a rosy pink hue, “Sure, advice is nice...hehe...that rhymed...”

“So...I have a friend...and she has another friend and they, uh...they were close. One day something happened and...now they’re not so close. But they met again much, much later...and it’s awkward and they don’t know how to act...but then her friend got hurt and she wants to help him...she doesn’t know what to do.”

“Does this friend of yours care for him?” You wondered when you started to lean your head on Jimin’s shoulder, but you weren’t sober enough to care,

“I mean...I guess...I don’t know...” Jimin tilted his head towards you placing his cheek on the top of your head and closed his eyes basking in the moment,

“If your friend cares then she should help him.”

“Even if they don’t know where they stand in their relationship? Even when it’s all awkward and weird?”

“If you truly care for a person, then the situation shouldn't matter...kinda like now.”

“Now?” With your head against him and his head on yours, you could feel his breath shaking.

“I shouldn’t be out here...drinking with you...in public where anyone can see us, especially with the kind of jobs that we have. But here I am with you. I’m here because I want to celebrate your success with you.....and because I...”

Quickly, you shifted in your place next to Jimin and wiggled his head off of yours. Soon you were on your feet rubbing your face with your hands.

“Um, I’m going to buy us some water. We should sober up a bit before going home, don’t you think?”

He nodded, his eyelids still half closed due to his drunken state.

Gif not mine, creds to the owner

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tatooine92 · 8 years ago

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MEA: From the Ground Up - Part 4

Fandom: Mass Effect Andromeda Pairing: Amanda Ryder x Reyes Vidal Rating: T Previous Parts: 1: https://tatooine92.tumblr.com/post/159231311635/mea-from-the-ground-up-part-1 2: https://tatooine92.tumblr.com/post/159234117740/mea-from-the-ground-up-part-2 3: https://tatooine92.tumblr.com/post/159424302975/mea-from-the-ground-up-part-3 Spoilers?: Depends on your definition of spoiler. It’s set post-game. Summary: After having a bad day fighting leftover kett, Mandy has to stay bedridden. Of course, this gives her a great chance to catch up on emails...

Mandy woke safe and warm in the Tempest's medbay, awakened by the soft chirping of medical equipment and the sharp bluish light in the room. Dr. T'Perro stood nearby, reviewing Mandy's charts.

"My professional recommendation is that we buy you a padded suit," Lexi said without looking up.

"I've gotta find me a new doctor," Mandy snorted. "Maybe one who opens with 'Why hello, Pathfinder, I'm glad you're alive because I worked really hard to keep you that way.'"

"If you don't like my bedside manner, stop ending up in my medbay," Lexi retorted, her lips curving in a smirk. "Nevertheless, I'm glad you're awake."

She came over to check Mandy's vitals, shining her penlight into Mandy's eyes to check her pupils. Mandy groaned as green spots danced across her vision where the light had been.

"How long was I out?" she asked.

"Two days. Long enough to start your recovery. You're not mission-ready for a while, though."

Mandy tried to sit up, but Lexi pressed her shoulder back into the bed.

"I have to get back out there," Mandy insisted. "There's an entire kett stronghold--"

"Good morning, Pathfinder," SAM interrupted. "Regarding the stronghold, in your absence, Lieutenant Harper and Jaal have contacted the Collective's forces for backup."

"They what?!"

Mandy swung her legs over the side of the bed and sat up. Pain lanced down her side and her head spun, but she was still upright before Lexi could stop her.

"Get them in here. We are not taking help from... from him."

"Amanda, please," Lexi said. "You're not ready for this level of excitement. And you are definitely not ready to be back out in the field, so you really need all the help--"

"Not from--" Mandy forced herself to take deep breaths and lower her voice. "Not from Reyes. I--I don't think I can see him ever again, Lexi."

"I understand. Believe me, I do. But you need to remember he was there to face the Archon's forces because he was only told you needed his help. Consider that."

Mandy was silent as Lexi checked her over for any injuries sustained or worsened during her sudden movement. Mandy exhaled, her shoulders shuddering. She slowly lay back down on the medbay bed as Lexi adjusted it to be more upright. This was stupid, Mandy thought. She needed to be out there, doing her goddamn job, not lounging around in medbay because she was too stupid to stay in cover and, you know, not die. She had come to hate feeling useless, and being taken out by one Ascendant after she had fought the Archon's entire army embarrassed her as much as it rendered her useless.

Cora and Jaal arrived momentarily. Cora had her serious, furrowed-brow leadership face on; Mandy wasn't sure what Jaal's expression was, but it seemed apologetic.

"Pathfinder," Cora said, "we can explain."

"Please and thanks," Mandy snarked.

"Ultimately it was Jaal's idea--hell, Jaal, you're an adult. You tell her."

"I observed you have had some... difficulties with your bondmate," Jaal replied, "which Vetra confirmed when I asked. So, I wanted to give you an opportunity to work out your differences."

"First off, he is not my bondmate; second, calling him to save my ass is not how you get us to kiss and make up!" Mandy sighed, massaging her forehead. "Jaal, in case you haven't noticed, I'm not angara. I don't just... deal with things out in the open."

"Respectfully, Ryder, you should."

"I'm gonna agree with him on this one," Cora added. "You're wound up over Reyes. The whole crew feels it, so it's affecting us too. We can't be at our best if you aren't."

"...so you called him in to help take out the kett because you want me less stressed? You know you could have called the Resistance for backup and just set me and Reyes up on a blind date or something."

"I am a firm believer in efficiency," Jaal said. There was mischief in his smile.

"You guys are the worst," Mandy sighed. She shook her head. "Fine, okay. When is his team inbound?"

"They got to Prodromos yesterday," Cora said. "We're meeting them in half an hour to go for round two with the kett."

"I should be there," Mandy grumbled. She saw Cora about to protest and held up a hand. "I know, I can't be, but I should be. You're my team. That colony is basically my baby. I should be there."

"We will win in your name," Jaal promised with a firm nod. "As long as you promise to settle your differences with him."

"...I promise we'll come to an understanding. But I can't promise he won't get punched. Or shot."

"Just don't mess up the ship," Cora said, "or Kallo and Gil will both kill you."

"Point taken. Shoot the boyfriend outside."

"Have you considered talking?" Jaal said before Cora guided him back out of the medbay to prep for their mission.

Mandy sighed deeply as her friends left. Lexi crossed the medbay to her side again, laying a hand on her shoulder.

"I have a few files on conflict resolution," she said gently. "Should I forward them to you?"

"No, it's okay. Jaal's right--I need to deal with it. This whole thing has taken up rent-free residency in my brain, and that's not healthy for me or the team."

"Have I ever told you how proud I am of your blossoming self-awareness?"

"Aww. Thanks, Mom."

Lexi snorted softly and left Mandy alone to rest up while she tended to her other duties and paperwork. Mandy leaned back against the bed again, lifting her omni-tool. As soon as it lit up, she saw a plethora of new email notifications--all from Reyes. Oh, hell.

"Fine, fine, let's see what you have to say this time," she sighed, opening the oldest one.

My dear Amanda,

They tell me you have gone off to do wonderful Pathfinder-y things, but I wanted to tell you, the sunset on Meridian was magnificent tonight. You missed it. The next time you're here, perhaps we could watch one together.

Yours, Reyes

Good and short, Mandy thought. Still... sweet.

She archived the message and went to the next.

Amanda, my darling,

When was the last time you had a delicious homemade meal? Now that things are beginning to settle, at least here, I would like very much to woo you with my cooking. Well, woo you with someone else's cooking. I am definitely going to pay someone. I think if you ate my cooking, you would abandon our shaky little relationship altogether. I would not make a good house-husband. But for you, I would try.

Yours, Reyes

Well, shit. Mandy couldn’t tell if he was just too smooth or if... She read the email again. Why would he send that if he didn’t mean it?

"Hey, Lexi?" she called.

"Yes?"

"...Reyes has been sending me love letters."

Lexi lifted her head from her work. "Oh?"

"Yeah. The scary part is... I think he means it."

"Why does that frighten you?" Lexi turned fully toward Mandy, her chin cupped lightly in her palm. Mandy swallowed hard. Great, okay, therapeutic let’s-talk-it-out time.

"Because..." For you, I would try. "Because I'm used to being angry about people leaving me. Dad was always distant, and I was angry at him for that. Then he died and I was furious again. I think I spent my whole life wanting to be loved, and now..."

"Now that someone's trying, you push them away?"

Mandy nodded, tears burning her eyes. She didn’t expect the sudden surge of emotion that tightened her throat.

"I think so," she choked. "Have I always done this? To everyone?"

"You've never been anything but the sweetest friend to me and the others," Lexi soothed, crossing to her side and bringing tissues with her. "Perhaps Reyes is just the first one to breach your shields. It can be terrifying to be so open with someone."

"How can he feel that way about me when he doesn't really know me?" Mandy dabbed her eyes with the tissues, but that didn't stop the tears. "Why would he ever..."

"Perhaps that's something you should ask him." Lexi glanced at Mandy's omni-tool and saw the remaining notifications. "Or perhaps he has written it out for you. If you want to reach an understanding, then hearing all he has to say might be a good start."

Lexi rubbed Mandy's shoulder before slipping out both to take a coffee break and to give Mandy some time to read her emails alone. Mandy kept dabbing at her eyes, but the tears kept rolling. What if he meant it? Meant all of it? Oh God. What if he loved her? What if she still wanted him to, wanted to feel his arms around her, pulling her close to sway to the gentle serenading of a Milky Way piano? She opened the next email, tissue clenched in her hand and finger shaking.

The next email was an audio recording rather than a message. Confused, she hit play.

"Amanda! Darling! Light of my life!" Reyes' voice crooned. "I have written you a song! Or rather, I am writing you a song. Right now. I was beginning to regret bringing my guitar to Andromeda with me, but not anymore. Here, I've written most of the words. I will send you a translation later."

Mandy giggled weakly and wiped away the tears as the recorded Reyes strummed a guitar, practicing a few chords. Then he began a soft melody, Spanish in influence and rather well played. Mandy's heart couldn't help a little flutter. Damn her weakness for men with musical gifts. He wasn't a concert guitarist, but he clearly knew his way around the frets.

Reyes was a much better player than songwriter, though. It wasn't that he had a bad singing voice--it was just ordinary, a plain baritone--it was that he was clearly making up the lyrics as he went. And also Mandy didn't speak a lick of Spanish. She got a couple words, mi amor and, unless she was mistaken, gracias, but other than that, she was clueless. He would sing about half a line, pause, strum thoughtfully, and then continue.

"Ah, dammit," he paused abruptly. "That won't rhyme at all."

He picked up with another rhyme, but there was an audible grimace, as if he had chosen a poor word in pursuit of a complete rhyme. Mandy giggled again, suppressing a loud laugh and trying not to wrench her healing ribs. Yeah, the melody was definitely better than the actual song. He clearly hadn't written a thing down beforehand, especially when he tweaked the wrong string and hit a sour note. The recording sighed deeply.

"Perhaps I will not send you a translation after all," his voice said. "I need to revise this. But I wanted to share. After all, I am told that all the best women cause men to break into song. I could not ask for a more wonderful muse, even if I am a terrible musician and a worse lover. I will try. Just for you."

Mandy smiled faintly as she archived the recording. It was a sweet gesture, that was for sure. And she could safely say that no one had ever tried to serenade her before. She had the strangest feeling that if he were here, she’d ask him to keep working on that song just so she could sit and listen to him, to be content with the knowledge that he was right there, leaned back in a chair, singing to her. Her chest warmed with the thought that someone thought her worth a song.

She checked her notifications--one last message, dated two days ago. She drew as deep a breath as she could manage and opened it.

Mi estrella,

I have sent you lighthearted emails to buy myself time to think this one through. You know by now that I am terrible with deep feelings, or at least with expressing them. If I were not, I would have written you back all those weeks ago.

If I have not said it already, I'm sorry. Actually, I will say it again and again until you're sick of hearing it and you finally tell me to shut up. I was so frightened to let you into my life that I shut you out entirely.

Have I said all this already? Never mind. It's worth repeating.

I saw your feelings for me, and I ran the opposite direction because you saw me without all my code names and schemes and I was terrified. Never mind that I looked at you and it was like truly waking up in this galaxy, not just being thawed. Do you remember the smell of the air after it would rain on Earth? How it was hard to take a deep breath because it smelled so strange, but it was so fresh and pure and wonderful that you couldn't help it? That was how I fell in love with you.

I love you, Amanda Ryder. When I think of you, I see you smiling at me with the Kadara sunset making your hair glow like amber. I think of your arms around me, and I cling to whatever made you default to kissing me as a distraction. I think of the scent of your skin and the taste of your lips, of the way you would consume my entire world just by walking into Tartarus.

If I have lost all that because of my own fear and carelessness with your heart, then I beg your mercy. If I cannot have you, at least let me have your forgiveness. Stay my execution, because losing you would be death enough.

I am not used to pouring myself out like this. If you could see me, you would know I am shaking just typing the words. But your team called me to say you were badly injured today. I am more afraid of losing you to death than I am of breaking down my own barriers to give you everything I have.

I have had my failures and shortcomings. I am not as good a man as I should be, but I am better than I was. I know this isn't enough to heal the rift between us, but perhaps it is a good footbridge.

You have consumed me, body and soul.

Yes, I have watched a romance vid. Or two. Please do not let it get around.

Yours, utterly and completely, Reyes

All hope of stifling her tears to protect her ribs evaporated as the tears from earlier rushed back. Mandy sobbed, not quite with abandon but nowhere near as careful as her previous giggles. Oh my God. He loves me. He loves me, he loves me. Of course, he could still have been lying. But it would take a mountebank even more devious than Reyes to go to all this trouble of convincing someone of his love, only to rip it away again. This was more of the same delicate vulnerability that he had shown that night on the docks.

I wanted to be someone.

You're someone to me.

He had been. Maybe he could be again. There were a lot of maybes, and there was a lot of hurt, but he was right. This was a footbridge.

"SAM," Mandy wept softly. "Call Lexi back. I may need her to fix me up again. And... and call Reyes. Tell him I want to see him when he gets back."

"At once. Should I tell him anything else?"

Mandy drew a shuddering breath as she archived the message.

"Tell him he's a crappy singer."

#steph writes #fanfic #mass effect andromeda #me:a #amanda ryder #reyes vidal #f!ryder x reyes

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alaurin101 · 8 years ago

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Doing What Must Be Done

So my muse paid me a visit and I feel the need to share the resulting story. I’ll admit this sucker has been in my unfinished fics folder for more than 2 years!! So have some desert fun with trooper Tia on Tatooine! The following takes place immediately after A Necessary Risk and contains spoilers for Trooper Tatooine.....as well as some innuendo and risque conversation!

Doing What Must Be Done

The robed figure eyed the two soldiers for a moment, then ducked into a nearby alley as a crowd began to gather. Several cheers were going up for the Republic Spec Forces squad who’d just saved several lives by diffusing a massive threat, a second wave of tampered droids that was set off to destroy what was left of the complex the first wave hit. A cunningly cruel tactic that her ‘superior’ had developed…..blow a civilian complex and wait for first responders to show up before setting off a second blast. Only the explosives were hidden inside common protocol droids, this time at least. She knew for a fact that the stuff her former squad mate had developed for the Imperials could be put into just about any droid or vehicle. So many emotions washed over her, anger at Fuse for going along with the Havoc traitors in the first place, disgust at Gorik that he cared so little for innocent lives, fear that she wouldn’t be able to find a way to stop further attacks, but the prominent one was relief. Relief that she was no longer alone. Relief that she had some heavy duty backup. Relief that she could now begin to put her plan into motion.

Banking on Fuse still attempting to make contact with the mayor, Tia decided to leave Anchorhead without making contact herself since her main reason for doing so was to find out when Havoc arrived on planet. With that already established, she decided not to risk being spotted and snuck out of the city. Besides, Tia could easily use one of the comlinks she’d pilfered off of a couple pirates who’d made the fatal mistake of thinking she was an easy target to contact Aric Jorgan herself. That would be a last resort though, since any voice contact could be heard and possibly recorded over his armor cam. Very few people knew Tia hadn’t really defected with the other Havoc traitors, and for the security of the mission as well as her own safety, it was best kept that way. It was a big enough risk for her to send him messages via stolen datapads that she destroyed after the fact, but an actual call was pushing it. However, the first step of her plan required Havoc to make an appearance. As soon as she got far enough, Tia pulled her rented speeder over and contacted Colonal Gorik with the latest news.

“Sir, I made it to Anchorhead,” she told her ‘superior’ when his image appeared on her comlink, “but bad news on that front, Havoc Squad is here and they stopped the second wave.”

“Blast,” the commander swore, “Why is Republic Spec Forces on Tatooine?”

“Can’t say sir, thought it best I get outta there before I was spotted.”

“Understood Sergeant,” Gorik sighed, his frustration written all over his face. “I can’t risk them tracing those droids back to the source. Are you still in the area?”

“I’m just a few kliks outside of Anchorhead, sir.”

“Good, I want you to go to the Geonosian bunker nearby and make sure they’re ready in case of an attack. I’m sure it’ll be fine, but there’s always a risk with outsourcing labor like this. Credits have a way of making people talk.”

“That’s true, sir,” Tia agreed, “But Geonosians aren’t ones to make friendly chit chat with other species.”

“You have a fair point,” Gorik conceded, “but it still doesn’t hurt to make sure defenses are fortified in the factory just in case. In the meantime, I need to figure out what to do about Havoc Squad. Report back to me after you’ve seen to the factory’s security, Sergeant.”

“Understood, sir,” Tia saluted, “I’ll head there immediately.”

Tia heard her datapad chime and saw that the Commander had sent the coordinates for the Geonosian factory. She quickly programmed them into the speeder’s navigator then put her datapad back into her pack along with her com. Thrilled that Gorik was playing right into her plan, a broad grin spread across her features as she started the speeder back up, Oh I’ll get that bunker ready alright. A few minutes later, she was racing over the sandy desert back to Dreviad, hoping that droid had kept its promise to watch over her broken speeder.

It didn’t take long before the Geonosian complex was in sight. Tia parked the speeder near a large cluster of rocks, grabbed the large backpack she’d packed several kilos of detonite bombs in, then walked the rest of the way to the building. She found the Geonosians inside and quickly filled them in on the recent developments. Kyvax, the one in charge, asked if they needed to halt production. Tia insisted the chances of Spec Forces finding them were remote and assured Kyvax she was there to keep the factory secure at all costs. The tall insectoid looked doubtful, but granted her request when she asked for access to the upper level in order to make preparations just in case Havoc did show up. Tia instructed them all to keep working as normal while she handled the potential threat. The Geonosians complied, figuring the Cathar soldier would be at risk more than they were, and went back to work building the bombs, allowing Tia to work without interruption.

She casually walked around the main part of the factory, pausing from time to time to slip a hand into her pack and place a bomb along the way in key, hidden areas while she pretended to study the room. The small devices blended in with the equipment easily and wouldn’t be spotted unless there was an inspection, which wasn’t likely to happen before she blew the place. Then she slipped into the back room, which served as the storage area and planted several of the devices inside some of the crates, then took the rest upstairs to plant the rest of her stash, wanting to make sure all the computer terminals in the offices were obliterated. No way was she going to risk Fuse’s designs falling into any more hands. For a brief moment, Tia felt a flicker of remorse for the Geonosians, but the she reminded herself that they were fully aware of what they were making and how it was being used. They didn’t care about the innocent lives that were lost, a few were even amused by that latest attack on Anchorhead and even suggested they look at expanding their territory if the Imperials decided to test the droids on the nearby Republic outpost.

“They’re just as bad as Needles and his sick experiments,” Tia muttered, biting her lip as she focused on her task. But who made you judge, jury, and executioner? She paused for a brief second when that guilty thought popped into her head and wondered once again if she was becoming a monster. Suddenly Tia wished she had someone to talk to, someone to tell her what to do, but just as with Taris, she was on her own. Swallowing hard to clear the lump forming in her throat, the young soldier set aside her emotions so she could do what had to be done.

Tia gave a sigh of relief as she placed the last one, then sat at one of the terminals and pulled a small remote out of her pack. She turned the device on, smiling when she saw all twelve lights come on…..her little toys were armed and ready to make some noise at the press of a button, which she would do as soon as Havoc was present. All that was left was to contact Aric so he could make that happen……because if the factory were to blow up all the sudden for no apparent reason, her superiors would wonder why. However, if Havoc were around, the Imperials would assume the squad took the factory out. She’d simply tell Aric to contact her when Havoc reached the outskirts of the Geonosian complex, then wait downstairs and pretend to be keeping an eye out for hostiles. As soon as Tia got his call, she’d slip out of the factory and blow the place sky high as soon as she was at a safe distance. Thrilled her plan was going to go off without a hitch, Tia dug out one of the stolen comlinks and put in the number Kat had given her while they were on Nar Shaddaa. She was about to hit the call button when she happened to glance out the office window and much to her surprise, she spotted Havoc approaching.

“Kark me, she hissed as she stuffed the comlink back into the near empty pack and readied the remote, “they got here quicker than I expected……Fuse must’ve contacted them and spilled the beans!”

Not wanting Havoc to get inside the blast radius, Tia jammed her helmet on, activated her shield, and bolted down the stairs. Dammit, this isn’t going to be fun, she cringed inwardly, ignoring the chittering of the Geonosian workers she pushed past as she made her way through the factory. Please Gods, let me survive this, she prayed as she sprinted through the doorway, hitting the switch on the remote as she did.

~*~*~*~

“According to Fuse, that’s the factory,” the tawny Cathar pointed at the bunker nearest to the towering cliffs.

“I don’t see any guards at the doors, but there are several small patrols. What’s our approach, sir?” The blonde human asked, lowering her microbinoculars.

“If Fuse is right, then they don’t have any actual Imperial backup,” Aric replied, “Just their own people and while they can be tough and good with tech, they aren’t nearly as organized in a fight. Forex could easily distract the patrols long enough for you and I to enter the complex and raze the place.”

“I am eager to do my part in eradicating this threat to innocent civilians everywhere and to crush those Imperial loving insects, sir!”

“Easy Forex,” Aric shook his head, “We’re not here to stamp out a species, just to take out that facto-“

“Imperial soldier!” Elara called out, spotting a lone figure clad in Imperial armor running out the front door, “Fuse was mis-“

Elara’s statement was interrupted by a ground shaking explosion that was enough to knock them both over. They both covered their heads as the factory they’d been headed towards was a towering inferno. Unsure of what caused the factory to blow or if there was more to come, a shaken Aric got to his feet and staggered towards Elara. He cringed at the carnage all around, certain that none of the patrols had survived.

“What the hell?” Aric swore as he helped his medic up, the blast still ringing in his ears.

“Look, sir,” she pointed, shock making her face even paler.

Aric gaze travelled to where Elara was pointing and spotted a figure staggering out of the fireball that used to be the Geonosian factory a moment ago. Elara was certain it was the same Imperial soldier she’d spotted bolting out the building seconds before the blast and said as much. They saw soldier pulled off her helmet when she cleared the flames, tossing the smoking thing aside then frantically tried to peel off her melting armor. Both Aric and Elara immediately recognized the silvery Cathar and rushed over to help.

“Are you frakking crazy?!” Aric barked as he began ripping off Tia’s melted plating, wincing at how hot the metal felt through his gloves. “Forex, keep an eye out…….for anyone.”

“As always, it’s such a pleasure to see you, Captain,” Tia retorted, tears forming both from the sting of the smoke and the pain she could feel from the overheated under armor she was trying to unzip, “Good to see you are still your pleasant self……I was worried you’d might’ve figured out how not to be an jerk after our little chat on Nar Shaddaa. Gods be damned, this karking zipper’s melted!”

“You’ll have to excuse me for not being prepared to see you racing out of an exploding building!” Aric’s hands were shaking as he dug out a knife and began cutting at the very hot, thick material, “I swear both you and your littermate need to read up on how to properly handle explosives.”

“Stars, stop griping at me and get this kriffin’ thing off!” Tia yowled, feeling the mesh weave starting to singe through her fur in a couple of places.

“Serves you right,” Aric snapped as he continued working at getting the silvery minx free from her underarmor, “and it wouldn’t kill you to use the words ‘please’ and ‘sir’ you know. You might be behind enemy lines, but I’m still your superior.”

As soon as he’d cut enough of the material, Aric jerked it the rest of the way open and discovered yet another thing that would likely be invading his dreams. His hands shook as he finished helping her out of the hot mesh, itching to tear those purple satin and lace scraps off of her as well. Tia groaned in relief as she shimmied the rest of the way out of it, kicking the ruined mesh aside as she dashed the tears from her eyes. When she turned to face him, a glint caught his eye and he spotted a small, violet gem dangling from a small silver hoop that pierced her navel and he felt his body tighten further. Needing to get control of himself, Aric took a step back before he did something really stupid.

Tia saw his heated gaze and gave a sultry laugh, “I take it you like the view…….sir.”

“You scared us, Sergeant,” Elara intervened before things got ugly and before Tia could taunt Aric any further, she guided the younger Cathar over to where she and Aric had parked their speeders. She unhooked her medikit from her speeder and began tending to the numerous cuts and burns Tia sustained, pausing when she caught mischief twinkling on those lavender eyes which were currently following their brooding CO who was pacing nearby. She lowered her voice as she continued to apply kolto to one of the more raw spots, “I seem to recall you making a promise to Val back on Nar Shaddaa that you were going to try to be nicer to Captain Jorgan.”

“No, I merely promised that I wouldn’t do any more physical damage,” she smirked, knowing his sharp hearing was catching every word of their conversation, then winked at a scowling Aric who’d stopped pacing at her comment and was currently glaring at her with those arms crossed, “I never said I’d stop teasing him…….and he was the one who started it this time.”

“Well, it isn’t nice to come on to a guy like that when you don’t really mean it,” Elara chided, “While I can understand somewhat why you are angry, I think you’ve had more than enough payback for Ord Mantell.”

“I can’t help it if I’m the flirty type,” Tia shrugged, willing to bet the other woman didn’t know everything, “and who says I don’t mean it……”

“Do you?” Elara asked pointedly, a blonde brow arching as she looked up at Tia.

“That’s for me to know and Captain Crankypants to wonder…..” Tia taunted as the subject of their conversation had enough and strode towards them.

“So, is there any particular reason you felt the need to blow a building before you were a safe distance from it?” Aric asked in that highly grating, acerbic tone of his and Tia itched to slap that smug look off his face.

“I wasn’t counting on you guys getting here so fast,” she admitted grudgingly as she checked her bracelet over, glad to see it was undamaged. She let out a sigh, feeling a little guilty for lashing out, “I’d actually planned to be a bit further away when I set it off.”

“You knew we were on planet?” Elara’s green eyes narrowed at her.

“I found out when I arrived in Anchorhead a couple hours ago,” Tia nodded, “I was there when the second wave of droids went off and saw you guys had diverted them.”

“Where were you?” Aric asked, certain he’d have spotted her in any crowd.

“I was standing near the ruins of that apartment complex, but I ducked into the alley before you got too close.” Tia’s lavender eyes met Aric’s as she continued, “I was in disguise but didn’t want to chance being detected.”

“Probably for the best,” Aric nodded, understanding what she was leaving unsaid. Elara had been unconscious the last time they’d met face to face, and he certainly hadn’t felt the need to share the details of that explosive exchange for several reasons. Including the fact he’d come dangerously close to crossing boundaries that he had no right to, but Gods help him, he was finding it a lot harder to resist. Even though nothing happened, other than her emotional tirade and him consoling her, he’d know her scent anywhere. “So why were you in Anchorhead in the first place?”

“Officially, I was there to oversee the field test for Colonel Gorik,” Tia replied, gritting her teeth as Elara began to clean out a raw spot on her shoulder.

“And unofficially?” Aric prodded.

“I was going to pay a visit to Mayor Klerren. I figured he would at least know if Republic Spec Forces was in his city. I came across a couple comlinks that were no longer needed by their owners…..”

“Do I even want to know?”

“Probably not,” Tia grinned. “I was going to give one to the mayor and keep the other for the sole purpose of one call to let me know when Havoc Squad arrived on Tattooine. After I saw you for myself, I didn’t need to visit the mayor after all so I snuck out while the crowd was cheering your heroics.”

“Miss me that much, did you?” Aric taunted, a wicked gleam in his bright green eyes as they met hers again. He chuckled when she scowled, glad to be giving her a taste of her own medicine for once.

“About as much as the flu,” she shot back, hating the fact that she did in fact miss him a little. “I needed you guys for my plan. As soon as I arrived on this dustbowl, I’ve been trying to figure out how I was going to deal with Gorik, Fuse, and those damned bomb designs. I haven’t quite worked everything out, but I knew that factory had to go and sooner rather than later. So before I set out this morning, I packed a few little bombs to take with me.”

“A few?! That factory is a crater!”

“Okay, more like a dozen,” she looked sheepish, “Detonite.”

“Kark, you really are crazy!”

“It’s not like I had a lot of choices and I’m not exactly an explosives expert,” Tia defended herself. “So after I left Anchorhead, I contacted Gorik and let him know you’d arrived….”

“What?!” Aric bellowed, running his hands over his head as he stared at the younger Cathar.

“Why would you do that?!” Elara frowned.

“Oh please,” Tia rolled her eyes at them both, “No need to get your panties in a bunch. It was only a matter of time before word spread that the infamous Havoc Squad saved Anchorhead. Besides, I knew if Gorik felt the teensiest threat to his precious factory, he’d send someone to help defend it. I was his best choice since I was conveniently close by. So he sent me the coordinates and I headed over here. The Geonosians were expecting me and I was able to arrange my little surprise while they thought I was beefing up security and preping an ambush……just in case. But…..”

Aric sighed, “But you needed Havoc here so Gorik would assume we destroyed the factory.”

“Indeed,” Tia confirmed, “You know you’re actually smarter than I took you for. Okay, okay, I’ll stop teasing…….so Kat gave me your contact info and I was just about to call you, however, I saw you guys approaching and blew it before you got too close. Luckily I had a pretty good shield generator on me but I think I’m gonna need a new one…..and some clothes.”

“What’d you expect after blowing a building while you were still in it?! You could’ve been killed!” Aric growled, feeling certain areas of his body tense again at the reminder of just how little she had on, not to mention that navel ring. It would be unprofessional to mate with your subordinate…….or choke the life out of her…….especially out in the open.....or in front of witnesses.

“Awwww, Captain, I’m so touched by your concern,” Tia purred, sauntering over to him as Elara started digging into the pack on Aric’s speeder, “but hey, at least my bra and panties are still intact……or were you hoping I’d need to take them off too?”

“Here, Sergeant,” Elara called out, biting back a smile, and tossed a large t-shirt to her before pulling her datapad out of her backpack.

“Oh, this is way too big to be yours, Sergeant Dorne,” Tia smiled as she pulled it on, “So it must belong to our grumpy Captain……it’s been awhile since I’ve had to cover my body with a man’s shirt…..and never in the desert.” She fixed Aric with a suggestive look, “Just think, sir, you’ve given me a whole new experience……too bad we’re not alone, I’m sure you could’ve given me a much better reason to be wearing your shirt.”

Tia gave a sultry laugh at the low growl that came from his throat, but Elara piped up before her CO blew a gasket, “Loose clothing is best right now, at least until that kolto has time to dry a little. So while we’re waiting for that, maybe you could brief us on what else you know or have planned.”

“As much fun as teasing old cranky pants here is, you make a good point and I do have news,” Tia sighed, closing her eyes for a moment as she rubbed her temples in an effort to ease the growing tension the day’s events were building in her. Taking a deep breath, Tia went on to explain about Gorik’s plans for Fuse’s designs, Fuse growing a conscious and refusing to work on them after finding out the Imperial officer was testing them on civilians, then Gorik throwing Fuse in the brig as a result. She explained that Tavus found out and sent her in to deal with the situation. She admitted to being aware that Fuse was trying to contact the mayor and planned to let that continue since it was the best way to give them information and bide her time so she could ensure those bomb designs never leave the planet without blowing her cover. Then she looked them both square in the eye and told them she was certain Fuse wanted out.

“If he wants a shot at atoning, then I suppose it won’t hurt to let him continue as is,” Aric spoke up after pondering that for a moment, “but are you sure he can be trusted?”

“Honestly, I don’t think he really wanted to defect in the first place,” Tia told them, “In those few days that we were all together on the Justice, he always seemed a little subdued, even a little hesitant. At first, I just attributed it to his personality……he’s not exactly the talkative type, but after arriving on Tatooine, I think he just went along with the others and now that he’s seen what the Imperials are capable of……”

“He wants no part of it,” Elara finished, “I know that feeling.”

“Exactly,” Tia nodded, “I’ll keep an eye on him and I certainly don’t plan to let him know my real role in all this, but I do think this is the best way for us to take down operations here and get Fuse into Republic custody.”

“Then that’s what we’ll do,” Aric decided, “When we get back to Anchorhead, I’ll let Mayor Klerren know Fuse’s intel was sound and that we took care of the factory. Fuse seemed to be comfortable talking with the mayor so that’s probably our best way to keep in contact.”

“And I’ll work on an extraction plan and getting those designs out of Imperial hands,” Tia suggested, “Speaking of getting back, I should do so as well before they start to wonder where I am.”

“What are you going to do about clothing?” Elara frowned, “Because you really can’t wear that back to your base.”

“I snatched some stuff on my way to Anchorhead so I could pass for a local or Force user,” Tia answered, “It’s with my speeder a little ways away from here……no shirt though, just pants, boots, and a robe.”

“Do I even want to know where you got that stuff from?”

“Again……probably not,” Tia grinned at the pained expression on Aric’s face. “But Elara’s right, your shirt has the Republic Military logo on it so I shouldn’t even wear it under the robe......I don’t trust Gorik and the feeling is mutual. He’s probably going through my stuff whenever I’m not around to see if he can get any dirt on Tavus and this shirt would raise questions I don’t want to answer if it’s found.”

“Do you have anything else?”

“I was just wearing my tank top that I had on under my cortosis, but that’s toast.”

“I have a spare in my pack but it has the same logo as Captain Jorgan’s shirt. However, the Republic outpost is nearby and I saw a couple clothing stands there,” Elara mused, “If you don’t mind waiting with Sergeant Vleska, sir, I can go get her something more appropriate to wear. Sergeant, you look like you’re similar size as I am so it shouldn’t take me more than ten minutes…..fifteen at the most.”

“Thanks,” Tia smiled.

“Don’t mention it,” Elara waved as she climbed on her speeder, “Just be nice to our CO.”

“Fine,” Tia groaned, winking at the medic, “I’ll try my very best.”

Elara took off a moment later and Aric checked in with Forex, ordering the droid to keep scanning the perimeter and to let him know if anyone approached. Then he sat on a small boulder next to the remaining speeder, glancing over at the temptress wearing his shirt as he recalled the last time they were alone together and that brief exchange of messages they had shortly after, cryptic to anyone else, but full of teasing innuendo on both their parts. He’d honestly never felt so confused or uncertain in all his years, but knew there was little he could or should do about it at this point. He lowered his gaze, frowning when he saw a patch of angry red skin through the silvery fur just above her knee.

“You okay?” Aric broke the tense silence.

“I’ve had worse,” Tia sighed.

“You look tired,” Aric pointed out, having noticed the dark circles under her eyes.

“Been a long couple of days to be honest,” she murmured, the adrenaline that had been pumping through her ever since she’d spotted Havoc approaching the complex was waning and she was starting to feel exhausted. She stared for a moment at the flames still consuming the factory, “I could’ve warned them as I ran for the door…….some might’ve made it out alive,” she brushed at her cheek when an errant tear ran down, “But I didn’t. They’re all dead because I pressed a button without giving them a chance.” She turned to look him right in the eye, “What kind of person does that make me, Aric?”

“What do you think would’ve happened if you hadn’t blown the factory?” Aric asked softly, even more worried about the mental toll this was taking on her. Knowing he needed to at least try to ease the guilt he easily saw written all over that lovely face, he went on, “If we hadn’t shown up, they would’ve continued making more bombs. More innocent civilians would’ve been injured or killed.”

“Who am I to decide what lives have value?”

“All life has value,” he sighed, “But those Geonosians were no innocent civilians. Would you be this upset if you were part of a strike team that slagged an Imperial Military base?”

“Those weren’t soldiers caught in the blast though,” she pointed out.

“No, but they were willingly working with Imperial soldiers to attack civilians,” Aric countered, knowing he had to keep her focus on the logical part. “What if you had warned them? Do you really think they would’ve simply surrendered to us and gone quietly into custody?”

“No,” Tia admitted, “They would’ve fought back.”

“And would be just as dead as they are now,” Aric finished. “We were going to assault the factory before you blew it…..again, do you think the Geonosians would’ve surrendered without a fight?”

“No,” Tia murmured, still feeling bad about what she’d ultimately done, but realizing that the outcome would’ve been about the same if she hadn’t. “I just…..I don’t want to become some cold hearted monster that doesn’t give a squat about people’s lives.”

“Would you be this upset if you were in danger of that?”

“No, I suppose not,” she smiled weakly. “You’re not just making this all up so I’ll feel better, are you?”

“Given our brief history together, has there ever been anything about me that would make you think I’m the coddling type?!”

“Definitely not,” Tia snorted, her smile broadening. “But I do appreciate your honesty and insight…..maybe I’ll be able to sleep tonight after all.”

“Come back to Anchorhead with us,” he offered, desperately hoping she’d take him up on it for her own sake, “You know where Gorik’s base is so we can just assault it head on…….”

“With what?” Tia shook her head, “Just you, Elara, and Forex? If I go with you, my cover is blown and Tavus will compensate for that. We’d be hard pressed to find him, Wraith, or Gearbox after that and I have no idea what they’re doing.”

“Fuse might be able to help and we can put word out that he died in the attack.”

“It’s not that simple,” Tia countered, “First off, I doubt Fuse knows much more than I do. We weren’t exactly holding group meetings after Tavus sent us all off. They all had their separate missions, but no one knew the details of the others’. I was sent off with Needles and neither of us had any idea what Fuse, Gearbox, or Wraith were up to. Secondly, it’s going to take a lot more than a three man squad to assault Gorik’s bunker…..even with Forex’s firepower. Thirdly, there’s too much risk of the bomb designs getting away or Fuse not making it out of there alive.”

“I won’t be too upset if he doesn’t,” Aric growled as he stood and began to pace, “He’s the one who chose to turn traitor and serve the Imperials. You saw the damage in Anchorhead…….that apartment complex was a direct result of his work for Gorik! The Geonosians may have built the droids, but he’s the one who designed them!”

“Believe me, I’m definitely pissed about that and he has a lot to answer for if he does make it back into Republic custody,” Tia insisted, “but the target wasn’t his choice and he stopped working on the designs as soon as he discovered the truth about what Gorik was doing with them.”

“What did he think they’d be used for?!”

“That’s the thing, he probably wasn’t at first,” Tia agreed, then went on, “Fuse trusts Tavus, they all do…...and Tavus assigned him to assist Colonel Gorik. But I truly feel with everything in my being that Fuse deeply regrets what he’s done and wants to atone. If Gorik finds out Fuse is contacting Mayor Klerren, he’ll face a firing squad as fast as one can be assembled. He at least deserves the chance for the risk he’s taking.”

“How much of this is because you slept with him?” Aric accused, regretting the words the moment they left his mouth.

A sly smile curved her lips as those lavender eyes met his head on, “You’re jealous. That’s why you’re getting so angry.”

“I am not jealous,” he lied, crossing his arms as he glared at her, “Just concerned that you’re letting your feelings cloud your judgment.”

“You are a horrible liar, Aric Jorgan,” Tia shot back as she stood, getting annoyed by his accusations. “But rest assured, I am far from compromised. I was three days into my mating cycle and Fuse was nothing more than a way to scratch the proverbial itch. It really wasn’t that great to be honest…..I mean he satisfied my needs so I can’t complain, but he wasn’t who I was wanting at the time……so anyways, the point is moot. We had sex, that’s it. There was no emotion involved to cloud my better judgment.”

“Oh really?” Aric raised a brow, his mouth twitching in a smirk as he saw the silvery minx start to fidget with her bracelet. “So Tiannya Vleska, who were you wanting at the time?”

“Why do you want to know?” she tossed back, a wicked gleam in her eye as her voice lowered to a purr. “Are you wishing it was you? I gave you a chance back on Ord if you recall that last day……”

Aric had no trouble recollecting neither that particular moment nor how difficult it had been to resist her, but the sound of an approaching speeder spared him from having to utter a response that he was certain she’d see for the lie it would be. Judging from the husky laughter that came from her, she knew damn well she’d won that round. However, after seeing how torn up she’d been a few minutes ago, Aric couldn’t begrudge her the victory. If all their verbal sparring and innuendo helped her overcome the bitterness of her current predicament, it was well worth any slights he might feel…..or any cold showers he’d end up having to take.

A few minutes later, Elara parked her speeder and was handing Tia a simple white cotton t-shirt while Aric went to fetch her speeder. She thanked the other woman, then spotting Aric driving her speeder back, she slowly, tantalizingly removed his t-shirt, knowing full well he was watching. She stood in her bra and panties for a moment while Elara checked over the kolto strips and bandages, then carefully pulled the new one on with the medic’s help, trying to keep the bandages from shifting and not to wince when the tighter garment rubbed a couple of the raw spots.

“Hey Captain,” she winked, her lips curving in a seductive little smile, as she tossed his shirt to him, “Just think, if you wear that without washing it, it’ll be kinda like my naked body touching yours….”

Aric gave her a feral grin before he could help himself, then tried to cover it up by scowling at her before stuffing the shirt into his pack, “Just try to keep out of trouble, Sergeant.”

“I saw that…..and don’t worry about me,” she replied, a dark look coming over her face, “I have a few more scores to settle and I’ll do whatever I must to ensure I succeed.”

#alaurin fanfic #OC Tiannya Vleska #Aric Jorgan #Elara Dorne #M1-4X #swtor #trooper #the muse is back #Vleska Legacy

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