#its got vailed threats

[azrielsdove]

Forbidden Love: Lucien x IC!Member Reader

Warnings: Angst

***

You couldn’t help the way your eyes drank in the fire-haired male currently speaking to your High Lord. You sensed the animosity radiating off of Azriel and Cassian from next to you, their annoyance with the Spring Court ever present. You knew that it was wrong, that it would never work. You didn’t want to imagine the way your friends would react if they discovered your little crush on the emissary.

Lucien’s eyes drifted over to you, cold and hard. “Any new plans to attack the members of my court, assassin?” You rolled your eyes at his question, spinning the dagger you held between your fingers.

“As we have reminded you and your High Lord several times, those fae were traitors and not to be trusted. They were not true members of your court.” He scoffed at your answer, shaking his head.

“Why should we ever believe you? All these meetings consist of are you all acting holier than thou, speaking as if we should automatically trust you.” He sneered in your direction, his hatred for you and your court palpable.

“Please, spare us the melodramatics. Not only did I do my job, I kept your court and its members safe from further harm.” You smiled sweetly at him. “A thank you would be nice.”

You could almost feel the fire that radiated in his eyes before he turned back to Rhysand. “Tamlin has requested a personal meeting after Calanmai, to discuss ongoing efforts of rehabilitation at the Spring Court. Can we fit into your insufferably busy schedule?” Annoyance was dripping from his voice, as it usually got by the end of these meetings.

“I suppose I can squeeze you in. I’ll send a message with available days and times at my convenience.” Rhysand gave a smile that showed all his teeth, a deadly threat thinly vailed as a friendly gesture. Lucien gave an equally fake smile back before turning and leaving the room. Azriel and Cassian immediately flanked to Rhys’ side, prepared to fly back to Velaris and debrief. You headed towards the door Lucien had left from, tasked with making sure he didn’t try snooping around the Hewn City. You spotted a flash of red hair turning a corner and started after him.

The corridor you entered was empty, your senses immediately on high alert. Where had he gone? You scanned the alcoves as you passed, one dagger held ready in your hand. You were halfway down the hall when an arm wrapped tight around your waist,

pulling you back into the dark alcove you had just passed. You twisted in the hold until your blade was

pressed tight against your assailants neck, a strand of red hair brushing against your hand.

“Quick little thing, aren’t you?” He hummed, looking down at you with his arm still wrapped around you. You sneered up at him, pressing the blade a little harder on his neck. He chuckled against the dagger, his free hand coming up and tugging your hand away. You sheathed the weapon, placing your hands on his chest with a small smile. Lucien tucked a strand of hair behind your ear, hand cupping your face. “I’ve missed you.”

You pushed up onto your toes, lips brushing gently against his. “I bet i’ve missed you more,” you teased, blood heating at the wicked grin on his face.

“Is that so?” His hand moved to the back of your neck, angling you up to him, lips pressing hard to yours. You sighed into the kiss, the familiar warmth spreading through your body at his touch. The love and joy you felt with Lucien was unlike anything you had ever known. Your fingers dug into his shirt, clutching onto him as if he was your lifeline. His hand flattened against your back, pushing you tighter into him. You gave a small moan as Lucien’s lips moved to your neck, kissing and biting the soft skin.

This was what life should be.

The thought sent a bitter chill down your spine, body tensing in Lucien’s hold. A change he noticed instantly, pulling away to look into your eyes. “What is it, my love?” You felt the tears coming, the overwhelming emotion that attacked when you were most vulnerable.

“I wish we didn’t have to hide like this.” Your voice was small, Lucien sighing at the conversation you’ve had countless times.

“You know I would tell them all in a heartbeat,” he said, looking over you carefully. “My position in the Spring Court means nothing to me, if it came to that. The only thing that matters is you.” Your throat tightened at his words, the love that he held for you.

“I know, Lu.” You bit your lip, thinking. “Rhysand would never forgive me.” Your eyes fell from his in shame, focusing on your hands that still rested on Lucien’s chest. He gave another deep sigh, his hands coming up to cover yours.

“Do they not wish you to be happy?” His question was quiet, cautious. You peeked up at him from under your eyelashes, shaking your head.

“They would never accept my happiness lies with you. I’d be sent away, marked a traitor to the Night Court.” Lucien tucked one hand back under your chin, pulling your face up towards his.

“Then they don’t deserve you here. We could go somewhere else, live with each other. I’d go to the ends of this world to see you happy and at peace.” Your heart squeezed at his words as you pushed up to kiss him again. Lucien, the king of your heart.

Maybe it was time to talk with Rhysand and your friends.

***

You and Lucien stayed in that alcove for as long as you could dare, kissing and touching and whispering sweet nothings. Every goodbye got harder, an inevitable end to your little peaceful bubble. You brushed away the fallen tears as you watched Lucien head out, preparing to winnow back to the Spring Court.

You hated these moments.

You composed yourself before going back to Velaris, putting your cool and calm persona back on. A fact that bothered you, that you now felt to hide your true self from your friends. From your family.

You had been in the Night Court for a hundred years, the feared assassin that Rhysand set on his enemies. You had created a name for yourself, deadly and dangerous. You never cared about the fear you instilled in others, not until you met Lucien.

The first time he had come to your court, you instantly felt drawn to him. It had knocked the air out of your lungs, the deep connection you felt to this unknown male. By the flash of shock in his eyes you realized he had felt it too. After that meeting you had cornered him in the hall, demanding to know what magic he had used on you.

It was only minutes after that he had you pressed up against the wall, his lips doing sinful things to yours.

You knew, in your heart, that he was your mate. He knew it too. The bond you couldn’t accept, not yet. Not when you lived in two rival courts, only seeing each other when meetings were called by either High Lord.

You took a deep breath before pushing the doors open to the townhouse, a smug smile on your face. Rhysand turned towards you, raising his glass of whiskey in greeting. “Get that Spring Court scum out of my town?” He teased, a flare of anger igniting in your chest. You pushed it down, laughing instead.

“Don’t I always?” You cooed, heading towards the ever-stocked liquor cart. You grabbed whatever was hardest, only caring about easing the pain in your heart. How long could you keep this up? You loved your family, you loved the Night Court, but you knew you would never be complete without Lucien at your side. You kept your breathing calm as you poured your drink, acting as if nothing were wrong.

“I wish they’d send someone else. How did he even manage to become the Spring Court emissary? He was not born there.” Cassian was musing, his dislike for Lucien strong. He didn’t like any of the Vanserra brothers, regardless of the fact that Lucien himself didn’t care for them either. “I wonder what kind of pity story he told Tamlin to rise up in that Court. I’d wager that he is only there at the order of Beron, probably with some plan to take the High Lord title for himself.” He shook his head and took a deep drink from his glass. “We shouldn’t let him keep coming here, Rhys. Who knows what he’s really doing?”

Your hand tightened around your own glass, raising it to your lips to try to hide the rage coursing through you. It was always like this after the meetings. They would talk about how horrible Lucien is, theorize about his life. You often kept quiet, throwing in the odd comment to not seem suspicious. It felt like a stab in your gut to hear your family speak so terribly about the male you loved.

“Now, Cass, he has never given us a reason not to trust him. Any of the deals we have made he has held true to.” Rhys swirled the liquid in his glass as he spoke, a smirk on his face. “I would rather never have to see that garish face again, though. He carries himself as if he is so much better than everyone, and for what? Being the disgraced son of the Autumn Court, forced to run to his little friend for safety? Pathetic, if you ask me.” You shot back more of your drink, vision turning red. As if you are any different, you thought, immediately checking that your mental shields remained up.

“I think you give him too much credit, Cass. I’ve sent my shadows after Lucien several times and they never have anything interesting to report. He’s just a sad, lonely male.” Azriel shrugged, as if it should be obvious that Lucien had nothing going for him.

You poured more alcohol into your rapidly emptying glass. It got harder and harder to listen to them as your love for Lucien grew. “What do you think, our deadly assassin? You always follow him out, has he ever tried to speak with you? Glean any extra information about our home?” Rhys asked, cocking his head as he did.

You swallowed the drink you had just taken, forcing a cold smile onto your face. “I think Azriel is right. He never says anything, never strays from leaving. He comes to do what was instructed and then he goes. Everything he does is at the hands of another.” You felt sick to speak about him so, but you were too scared of the repercussions the truth would bring. Perhaps that made you a coward, someone undeserving of Lucien. Soon. I’ll tell them soon, you told yourself, shooting back another drink.

***

This had to be a nightmare.

You stared blankly at Rhys, unable to keep your usual calm demeanor. The look of concern on his face told you that you were blowing your cover, that he was going to know something was amiss now.

You couldn’t get yourself to breathe.

“I can select someone else, if this is an issue? My apologies, I didn’t think this would be the most difficult task i’d ask of you.” You wanted to laugh at his joke, to shake your head and smile and go along with his plan. He was right, out of all the things you had done as the Night Court Assassin, this was far from the worst. You simply had to pretend to be betrothed to Azriel.

At the next meeting.

With the Spring Court.

In front of Lucien.

As if the pain of being separate from him wasn’t enough, you would parade around in front of his eyes with a male who wasn’t him. The thought sent a stab into your already injured heart, a reminder of how pathetic you were for not just telling Rhys.

You blinked, clearing your throat. “No, uh, I can do that. Sorry, it just took me by surprise.” You knew it was a weak response, and by the narrowing of Rhys’ eyes he knew it too.

“I don’t trust that Lucien has been coming completely innocently. I have seen the way he looks at you during our meetings when he thinks no one will notice. I am worried he has been sent to try to trick you into a courtship, some sort of sick pairing between the Night and Spring courts.” His scoff of disgust sent another pang through your heart. “By alluding to your engagement to Azriel, we can observe their reaction. See if they slip up with any emotion, anything that proves my theory.” A smirk appeared on his lips. “Besides, what better pairing than my feared Assassin and Spymaster?”

You forced yourself to laugh, nodding along to his plan. “A deadly pair.”

***

You slid your hands down the front of the elegant dress you wore, looking over yourself in the mirror. You looked beautiful, a deadly angel donned all in a blue so deep it was nearly black. Your hair had been twisted up, exposing the expensive earrings and necklace you wore. The gems on them direct matches to Azriel’s siphons, a silent claim that you were his.

As if the giant diamond on your finger didn’t make that clear enough.

You knew it wasn’t real, that it was all a facade. You truly did love Azriel, just not like this. Somehow even pretending to be with another male made you nauseous, uncomfortable in your own skin. You couldn’t help but worry about how Lucien was going to feel when he saw you. Would he understand none of it was real? Or would he fall for the trap Rhys had laid?

“You look lovely.” You turned to the low voice coming from your doorway, a small smile plastered onto your face. Azriel knew something about this plan upset you, cornering you about it earlier that week. You had insisted it was nothing to do with him, that there was no real issue. You faked “confidence issues”, worry that you wouldn’t be able to pull it off. You felt like he hadn’t believed you, but he did not argue further.

“As do you,” you complimented back, the words truthful. Your friend looked as handsome as ever, dressed in his finest to escort you to the meeting.

As his betrothed.

You walked over to him, placing your arm delicately in the crook of his elbow. “Let’s go raise some Hel.”

***

He believed it.

Lucien’s eyes were full of pain and betrayal as he took you in at the side of the Shadowsinger. He stared far too long at the ring on your finger, far too obvious to everyone else. Rhysand smirked from beside you, confident that his plan had succeeded.

You wanted to scream.

Azriel’s arm wrapped around your waist, holding you protectively. Typically you would feel safe in his hold, but every touch from him felt like razors across your skin. Especially with the way Lucien looked at you.

There was anger there. He truly believed you had tossed him aside for Azriel. You felt sick again, swaying slightly in his grasp. Azriel’s arm tightened around you, concern on his face as he looked down. “You okay?” He murmured, not wanting to draw any extra attention to you. You nodded, looking away from him. You didn’t trust your voice.

“Allow me to extend my congratulations to you and yours, Rhysand.” Tamlin spoke smoothly, a genuine smile on his face. You realized that he didn’t know about you and Lucien. You couldn’t help but to glance over at him, your heart aching at the empty expression on his face. You wanted to scream. This plan was ridiculous.

“Thank you, Tamlin.” Azriel spoke politely, his body against yours all of a sudden too hot. Every instinct told you to run to Lucien, that it shouldn’t be Azriel you are stood next to.

“I must say, Tamlin, that you may be more clever than I gave you credit for,” Rhysand began, inspecting his nails as if this was a mindless discussion. No. No. No.

Stop this.

You need to STOP THIS.

Your mind was screaming at you, but your body was frozen in place. Horror coursed through your veins, disgust in yourself twinning with it. Why hadn’t you spoken up sooner? You looked to Tamlin, his brows furrowed as he listened to Rhysand.

“An alliance between our courts would be something extremely beneficial to you, wouldn’t it? So beneficial, in fact, that you would resort to such lowly measures to try to secure it.” Rhysand glanced up at Tamlin then, lips pursing as he took in the genuine confusion on his face. Rhysands eyes narrowed, looking between Lucien and Tamlin. “Or did you not know? What your emissary has been doing here?” Tamlin now turned to Lucien, eyes wide.

“What are you talking about?” Lucien spat out, his typical cool demeanor gone. Rhysand smiled gleefully, gesturing over to you.

Say something. You need to say something.

“Your little game you’ve been playing with my assassin. Trying to win her heart, her hand in marriage.” He laughed. “It’s too bad our Shadowsinger here got her first, isn’t it?”

Coward. Coward. COWARD.

SPEAK UP.

Lucien turned slowly to you, eyes rimmed in red. “Is this true?” His voice was quiet, broken. Your hands shook as you took him in, the heartbreak so strong you could almost taste it.

“I-I,” you stuttered out, looking to Rhysand in a panic. How could he do this to you?

How could you LET him do this to you?

You shot away from Azriel, sucking in deep breaths of air. You turned wildly to Lucien, tears streaming down your face. “No.”

Rhysand gave a cruel laugh, drawing your attention back to him. “Whatever do you mean?” He asked, venmo dripping from his words. You wanted to cower at his anger, to back away and continue on with the plan.

But you had remained quiet long enough.

You shook your head, voice growing stronger. “No.” You looked back to Lucien, every inch of you hoping you could fix this. “I do love Lucien, Rhys. But it is not how you think.” You took a step closer to him, a pathetic relief soaking through you when he didn’t back away. “I have loved him from the moment we met. I have loved him secret, hiding this part of myself from you all.” You took another step. “I wait, heart aching with the pain of being apart from him, for these stupid meetings. I stay awake at night and watch the stars, imagining him doing the same.” More tears fell, matching ones trailing down Lucien’s face as you took another step towards him. “I live for hidden moments in dark corridors, for whispers of love only when no one else can hear them. And i’m tired.” Your voice cracked as you took the final step, bringing you right in front of Lucien.

“I’m so tired,” you whispered, slowly holding your hand out to him. You needed his strength, his warmth. He glanced between your hand and face, expression unreadable.

And then he took a step back.

The air disappeared from your lungs, your knees shaking as they struggled to support you.

No. No. No.

You had to fix this. You looked towards Rhys, Azriel, and Cassian. They wore similar expressions of shock and…pity. Pity.

You fell to your knees. “He’s my mate,” you choked out, the already silent room going even quieter. As if time itself stood still at your proclamation.

“Lucien is my mate,” you said again, anger with yourself charging through you. “He is my mate and I never told anyone. I allowed us to suffer in silence, too scared to tell you the truth. I thought you’d dismiss me from Court, from your life if you found out, Rhys.” More tears fell as you watched the flicker of pain go across your High Lords face.

“No, I would never-“ He started, moving towards you.

“Wouldn’t you?” Rhys stopped as you cut him off, gazing down upon your tear stained face. “Look what we are doing right now, Rhysand. The mere thought of Lucien being interested sent you to create a whole plan to catch him.” You looked down in shame. “And I let you do it.”

You felt like you may die right there. You had waited too long to say anything, you had allowed Lucien to be humiliated in front of his High Lord and yours. You had hidden your heart too deep, too afraid of what would happen if your friends found out about Lucien. All for you to lose him in the end.

A hand appeared in front of your blurred vision.

A familiar, welcoming hand.

You looked up to see Lucien’s face, a small smile on his as he helped you up. You stood in front of him, unsure what to say.

“You want this?” He asked quietly, tucking his hand under your chin. You swallowed, nodding.

“I only want you. Now, and forever.” It was true. You realized now how silly you had been, how you never should have feared losing your friends and court. All that mattered was Lucien. The male created just for you.

“My mate,” he whispered, before pulling you in and pressing his lips to yours. The kiss was full of fire and love, the now acknowledged mating bond singing. You melted into him, holding him as tight as you could. The rest of the room disappeared, leaving only you and Lucien. You felt as if you were glowing, wrapped up in the love he exuded.

You pulled away only when your lungs cried for air, smiling up at Lucien. He was yours. It didn’t matter what anyone else thought.

You turned to Rhys, grasping Lucien’s hand tight within yours. “If you wish me to go, then I will. But I will not sit and suffer and lie in fear any longer. I love you, all of you.” You looked at Lucien next to you. “My heart and soul belong with Lucien. I hope that you can accept that.”

Rhys rushed over to you, grabbing your hands into his. “How could you ever think that? I made this plan thinking he was trying to use you. If I had known, I would never-“ his voice cracked as he looked at Lucien. “I hope you can accept my sincerest apologies. I would never do anything to compromise her happiness.” You felt new tears slide down your cheeks, both relieved and embarrassed. You should have trusted Rhys, not hidden away in fear. You squeezed his hands, bringing his attention back to you.

“I should’ve told you a long time ago. I’m sorry.” He shook his head, pulling you in for a hug.

“No, i’m sorry. I never should have created an environment where you didn’t feel safe telling me this.” His eyes were shiny as he moved away, releasing you back to Lucien. “Whatever you want, I will grant. If you wish to live here I will accept you with open arms.” Tamlin stepped up next to him, nodding in agreement.

“My Court will always be open to you as well. I can’t imagine anyone who deserves this joy more than Lucien.” He gave him a broad smile, happy for his closest friend. Lucien nodded once in thanks, an arm wrapping securely around your waist. His fingers traced the diamond ring on your hand, slipping it off easily.

“I think we should replace this, don’t you?”

***

Some Time Later

You were admiring the elegant gold ring on your finger, watching the way the suns rays bounced off the firey ruby in the center of it. No matter how much time had passed you couldn’t help but be stunned by the beauty of the thing. The balcony door opened behind you, arms wrapping around your waist. A pair of lips met your neck, kissing you as you hummed softly.

“Early morning?” Lucien asked, teeth grazing your skin. You leaned harder back into him, welcoming his touch.

“Mmm. Rhys wanted to go over my upcoming assignments. He’s…worried about me completing them.” One of Lucien’s hands slid down over the slight curve of your stomach, the beginning signs of the life growing inside you.

“He’s not underestimating my wife, is he?” Lucien asked with a playful bite to your neck.

You laughed, shaking your head. “I told him it was fine, and if I felt I could not complete a task I would tell him so. He still didn’t seem convinced, if i’m being honest.”

“Hm. Perhaps i’ll have to talk to him.” Lucien turned you in his arms, pressing a searing kiss to your lips. “Let him know how perfectly capable you are.” You smiled up at him, kissing him again. Lucien tugged you close, opening your mouth with his. Ever since he found out you were carrying his baby, he hadn’t been able to keep his hands off of you.

Not that you were complaining.

***

[usafphantom2]

How An A-10 Pilot Guided His Wingman to Safety in a Hypoxia Crisis

Lt. Col. Mitchell recalls a life-or-death moment in the sky, helping his wingman fight hypoxia during a mission aboard the A-10 Warthog.

David Cenciotti

A-10 Hypoxia

U.S. Air Force Reserve Citizen Airman Lt. Col. Timothy “Scream” Mitchell, an A-10 instructor pilot and flight commander with the 47th Fighter Squadron, places his hand on the iconic nose of an A-10C Thunderbolt II at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Ariz., Aug. 22, 2024. (U.S. Air Force photo by Tech. Sgt. Tyler J. Bolken)

With the plan to fully retire the type by 2029, the U.S. Air Force will decommission 42 A-10C Thunderbolt II aircraft this year, with the remaining 260 expected to be phased out in the next 5 years.

As the legendary “Warthog” approaches the twilight of its storied service, one figure stands out as a living embodiment of the grit, tenacity, and unwavering dedication that define the aircraft’s tight-knit community. That figure is U.S. Air Force Reserve Citizen Airman Lt. Col. Timothy “Scream” Mitchell.

With nearly two decades of flying the A-10, Mitchell was recently recognized with a prestigious safety award, not only for his actions during a perilous night flight but for a career that epitomizes the spirit of the A-10 and the individuals who support and operate this combat-proven aircraft.

In March this year, Mitchell found himself in a situation that tested the full breadth of his experience. Alongside Capt. Dylan “Mac” Vail, an active-duty pilot from the 357th Fighter Squadron who was being trained to become an IP (instructor pilot), Mitchell embarked on what was intended to be a routine 2-ship training flight.

U.S. Air Force Reserve Citizen Airman Lt. Col. Timothy “Scream” Mitchell, an A-10 instructor pilot and flight commander with the 47th Fighter Squadron, stands in front of the first A-10C Thunderbolt II he flew, tail number 9154, on the flight line at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Ariz., Aug. 22, 2024. Mitchell has flown the A-10, often referred to as the Warthog, for nearly two decades, exemplifying the dedication and expertise that define the A-10 community. (U.S. Air Force photo by Tech. Sgt. Tyler J. Bolken)

As an instructor pilot and flight commander for the 47th Fighter Squadron, Mitchell is no stranger to demanding situations. However, on this night, what began as a standard night sortie, would quickly transform rom routine to critical. In fact, Vail began showing the early signs of hypoxia, a dangerous condition caused by a lack of oxygen that can impair cognitive functions and motor skills.

A subtle threat

Hypoxia can be difficult to identify, especially for pilots, because its onset is often gradual and its symptoms can be subtle or easily mistaken for fatigue or stress. Symptoms like dizziness, confusion, lightheadedness, euphoria, and impaired judgment often develop slowly, which can make it challenging for pilots to recognize what is happening before it becomes severe, and increasingly difficult for a pilot to maintain control of their aircraft.

In the cockpit, Vail was struggling. His brain, starved of oxygen, couldn’t process the situation clearly. As the effects of hypoxia worsened, the situation became dire. But Mitchell’s calm and decisive leadership shone through. Years of experience kicked in, allowing him to quickly assess the situation and provide clear, concise instructions over the radio to guide Vail back to safety.

It was a night that could have ended tragically had it not been for Mitchell’s steady hand.

“I could barely think straight,” Vail recalls, his voice heavy with the memory of that critical night. A Houston native and a graduate of the Air Force Academy, Vail was in a dangerous spiral, both mentally and physically. “Mitchell was there every step of the way, simplifying everything, telling me exactly what I needed to do. It was his voice and experience that got me back on the ground safely.”

For Vail, Mitchell’s actions went beyond the role of an experienced pilot, they embodied a deeper philosophy, one ingrained in the A-10 community itself. This is a community where the mission is paramount, but equally important is the unwavering commitment to the safety and well-being of those involved.

“People always get lost and enamored about the aircraft,” Mitchell explained. A native of Lockney, Texas, and a graduate of Texas A&M, Mitchell is quick to shift the spotlight away from himself and the aircraft, instead highlighting the broader community that supports the A-10. “But the number one thing is the community that is dedicated to it.”

For Mitchell, the A-10 is not just a machine. It’s a symbol of camaraderie, a tool to defend and protect, and a centerpiece of a community bound by shared purpose and dedication. Standing next to the very first A-10 he flew, tail number 9154, Mitchell reflected on his long journey with the aircraft. His humor remained intact despite the passage of time and the wear of years spent in service.

“I’m old,” he said with a chuckle, recalling his search for some of the A-10s he had flown over the years. “I was trying to look for a couple of tails that I had my name on in the past, and I think they’re gone either to Moody AFB or the Boneyard, so here’s what it is.”

Mitchell’s reflections extend beyond the aircraft’s flight numbers and history. He shared a little-known piece of A-10 heritage, the unique artwork that adorns each of the 47th Pursuit Squadron’s aircraft. Dating back to World War II, these aircraft are emblazoned with characters from the “Dogpatch” cartoon series by Andy Capp, a tradition that the squadron continues to honor.

“The 47th Pursuit Squadron paid Andy Capp $1 for the copyright usage of his characters to put on all the airframes,” Mitchell shared, highlighting the deep historical roots that tie the squadron to the past. “Each airplane has its own character from the original Little Abner cartoons.”

U.S. Air Force Reserve Citizen Airman Lt. Col. Timothy “Scream” Mitchell, an A-10 instructor pilot and flight commander with the 47th Fighter Squadron, looks on as he stands next to an A-10C Thunderbolt II at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Ariz., Aug. 22, 2024. (U.S. Air Force photo by Tech. Sgt. Tyler J. Bolken)

This rich tradition, combined with a sense of pride and duty, has been a cornerstone of Mitchell’s career since he first began flying the A-10 in January 2005. From those early days as a young lieutenant in the 47th Fighter Squadron to his current role as a seasoned commander and mentor, Mitchell’s journey has been defined by his commitment to not only the aircraft but also the people who operate and maintain it.

“Creating new fighter pilots and passing on the lessons learned—that’s our job,” Mitchell said, emphasizing the importance of mentorship within the A-10 community. “We are providers of fixing problems for people in a dynamic situation, and we’re very good at it.”

Col. Aaron “Nacho” Weedman, commander of the 924th Fighter Group, also expressed pride in Mitchell’s efforts. He highlighted the significance of Mitchell’s actions during that night flight and the profound impact of his leadership on the A-10 community.

“His actions while instructing a student during a sortie in which the student experienced a serious physiological incident saved the life of another pilot,” Weedman said. For Weedman, Mitchell’s recent safety award is not just a personal achievement but a reflection of the ethos that has guided the A-10 community for decades.

The citation for the award specifically notes Mitchell’s quick thinking during the March 2024 incident, as well as his broader contributions to the safety and training of A-10 pilots. But as Weedman pointed out, the recognition also speaks to the experience and maturity that AFRC Instructor pilot cadre like Mitchell bring to the mission of the A-10 Formal Training Unit.

“His actions that evening highlight the importance of experience and maturity that AFRC Instructor pilot cadre add to the mission of the A-10 FTU,” Weedman emphasized. “This experience is leveraged to strengthen the total force, producing combat-ready wingmen for the A-10 community.”

More than just an aircraft

For pilots like Mitchell and Vail, the A-10 is far more than just an aircraft. It symbolizes something much greater, a legacy of camaraderie, dedication to mission, and the enduring reputation of those who have flown it and those who have been saved by it.

Vail, now a certified instructor pilot himself, is keenly aware of the legacy he is inheriting. It is a legacy shaped by the seasoned pilots who came before him—pilots like Mitchell, who ensured the lessons of the past continue to guide the future.

“I love the A-10. I love the mission,” Vail shared. “But what makes it special is the people, the community of pilots who have dedicated themselves to this aircraft and what it stands for.”

As the A-10 gradually phases out of U.S. military service (with a potential future in a foreign air arm), its heritage will not fade away with its airframes. Instead, it will live on in the stories and experiences of those who flew it, those who maintained it, and those whose lives were saved by it. And in the center of that story will always be the men and women like Lt. Col. Timothy “Scream” Mitchell, whose actions ensured that every pilot returned home safely.

A U.S. Air Force A-10C Thunderbolt II assigned to the 47th Fighter Squadron, Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Arizona, flies over Range 2 during Haboob Havoc 2024, April 24, 2024, at Barry M. Goldwater Range, Arizona. (U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Noah D. Coger)

About David Cenciotti

David Cenciotti is a journalist based in Rome, Italy. He is the Founder and Editor of “The Aviationist”, one of the world’s most famous and read military aviation blogs. Since 1996, he has written for major worldwide magazines, including Air Forces Monthly, Combat Aircraft, and many others, covering aviation, defense, war, industry, intelligence, crime and cyberwar. He has reported from the U.S., Europe, Australia and Syria, and flown several combat planes with different air forces. He is a former 2nd Lt. of the Italian Air Force, a private pilot and a graduate in Computer Engineering. He has written five books and contributed to many more ones.

@TheAviationist.com

[spareisms]

@princewished hey remember when u said to continue our modern thread ?? big mistake

By 1:00, Anna was starting to sober up.

Maybe not sober up, but she definitely wasn't as drunk as she'd been before. The songs started to make more sense, stopped blurring into one another between trips to the bar with Ariel and trips to the dance floor with Jasmine.

Between drunken adventures, her steps became stronger, her mind focused on Aladdin and their fight. Curling fingers and twisting words swam in her mind, and she chased it down with vodka and redbull. She remembered the pain he'd caused her through his lie. His lie, there wasn't a way around it. He'd snuck into her socialite club, with it's fancy titles and monuments and trust funds. The art gallery full of the elite, of riches, of checks to be signed and lineages to be upheld. Anna and Elsa were representing their parents' buisness, the stocks and companies imposing and overwhelming. At least, that's how Anna felt about it. Elsa was really the one with the answers. But, Anna knew her role, her part to play. And, while she didn't want to be the head of the company by any means, she also didn't want any harm to come to her parents' legacies.

She wouldn't let anything happen to her family, whatever was left of it.

So, with enough people like Hans Westerguard or Dukes Weasleton to worry about, she had more on her plate than she could handle. Even before Aladdin had entered the gallery, th when it came to Aladdin's betrayal.

His lie.

But....even if it was a lie -- wasn't it only because he'd wanted to impress her? To show her he was serious? About them? He'd gone through all that trouble, all that confusion and deceit -- could it all have been for some kind of noble reason? Could it all have been for her?

Anna wasn't sure of anything anymore.

In fact, by 1:30, she realized just how little she understood anything at all.

She'd lost Ariel and Jasmine. Somewhere between the bathroom, the smoking sections, the various bars in the club -- her friends must have found some other guys to hang out with or something, god knows they were beautiful enough. But her thoughts weren't quite connecting to each other. She felt like she was stumbling around the dance floor instead of shimmying -- before she knew it she was off the floor completely.

Outside....outside please.

Some fresh air, away from the loud music and sweaty bodies she didn't know and drinks she couldn't finish (where did she put her last drink? where did she get this one?)

The cold air outside the club washed over her in breezy waves, ruffling her hair around her shoulders and the dress around her knees. It felt really quite nice to be outside and even started digging around in her purse for her phone to tell the girls she'd be out here for a while. After a few moments trying to find the damn thing, though, she gave up, head pounding again. What was she looking for, again?

She walked along the side of SYNDROME'S, the warehouse's brick exterior extended beyond. Leaving behind the crowded front street and beckoning to the darkened alleyways and the side streets, it seemed another world away.

Her fingers scaled the brick wall, she even hummed a little bit. What was she humming? Not sure. Why was she so mad at Aladdin, anyway? She couldn't deny that she missed him, even as mad as she was at him for what he did. For what a fool he made out of her. But, he also had a lop-sided grin. And that ruffled hair that she so loved to touch. And his eyes -- ok, maybe she was allowing herself to miss some parts of him. But that didn't mean she forgave him. It didn't mean she wanted to ever talk to him again. It certainly didn't mean that. As she walked, she got a text, and from the ringtone she knew exactly who'd sent it.

"Speak of the devil," she mumbled, a smile creeping onto her lips. Then, her hand was in her purse, fingers reaching around her unlocking phone. Her feet had just crossed into shadows. Her stride swallowed in black.

"And we appear."

The voices that answered made her freeze in the darkness.

Anna had to muster up a lot of focus before she could muster up anything resembling focus. She had to make sure she'd even heard them correctly. Men. Two of them at least, talking at once. She felt her feet twist around almost on their own, and her head was dangerously close to swimming. Fuck, was all she could think. "Hello?" Was all she could call out. "Hello," answered the considerably much bigger forms from the blackness. Anna's hand tightened around her phone. She wished she could pull it out, but she didn't want it to even be noticed -- it could get slapped away. She wasn't sure that line of thinking made sense, but for now it was all she had. She hoped it was unlocking. She prayed her random thumbing on the screen would be enough to dial someone. Anyone. Even Aladdin, whose ringtone had just gone off moments ago, had just restarted her thumping heart.

She knew she was in deep trouble. Because it was with a sickening feeling that twisted her stomach and chilled her spine, that Anna realized she recognized the voices. The identical voices.

"What do you want?" She asked, her voice quite a bit stronger than she thought it would be. Considering how much she was shaking. Could they tell, in the dark? "Or should I ask, what does Westerguard want?" "Now, see -- I told you she'd ruin all the fun, didn't I?" In two steps that seemed to take no time at all, the Stabbington brother with an eyepatch (a literal eyepatch, who was this guy?) was directly in front of Anna. The limiting darkness was less effective when someone was this close. Anna instinctively backed herself up into the wall, startled and scurrying like a frightened rabbit. She was frightened -- she was very frightened.

She knew exactly what Hans was capable of. And sending others in to do his dirty work for him well -- it was just like Hans. Anna's blood was ice.

"He said you'd talk a lot," Brutus went on, his breath warm on Anna's face. "Luckily, you won't have much to say in a bit. I even say you're already feeling a bit less chatty, right?" His tone made Anna hesitate. How did he know her tongue suddenly felt heavy and square? That her brain was layered in a thick fog? Her fingers felt like lead and tingled at the same time. Her eyes had trouble focusing.... Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh no. Ohhno...

Her absolute stupidity rolled over her in waves, much like the heavy blanket of whatever it was she'd taken. Whatever it was they'd given her. "But don't worry, we'll do all the talking anyway." There were hands on her, keeping her upright and against the wall. Her head was lolling, Marcus snapped it back, her bangs and the top of her head balled up in his giant fists.

"We're going to make this fast --" "Title of your sex tape--" Anna wasn't sure what made her say it aloud- probably because she didn't realize she'd said it at all until she was slapped very hard across the face. She also heard quiet laughter, but the fingers wrapped around her arms and ribs were quite a bit stronger from then on. She knew it would bruise.

"Shut the fuck up, bitch, and listen. We have a message for you." Oh goodie, thought Anna, though she stiffened. "Westerguard knows you're up to something. You and your precious sister have those investments hidden from the public, but we're not fooled. The merger with Southern Isles Trading will continue as scheduled."

There was a pause. Good luck with that, was what she wanted to say, but the words couldn't sort themselves out.

"So -- you think... I --" she couldn't get the words right. Her voice was trembling, her last understandable words (though hilarious) completely useless. She kicked out in frustration, finding one of their knees and landing a blow, hard. Her reward for bravery was her head getting slammed in the wall. Anna saw stars and cried out, a bit more of her resolve escaping.

All this was about money? About the companies? Her disdain for her family businesses, though profitable, though useful and charitable and valuable to her, though she cherished it -- she couldn't help but hate it all the same. Hate the kind of person Hans was. Power-hungry, a monster.

"And, Westerguard wanted us to remind you of something... else," Brutus went on. To Anna's horror, he was able to hold his one arm across her entire torso, his brother holding her hips and head. But with his other hand, Brutus withdrew a long knife from his pocket. Anna felt the cold blade before she really registered what it was, what it could do.

He dragged it up her thighs, across her stomach, held it against her throat. He pressed it down, the blade lay flat against her skin. Anna couldn't breathe. She was trembling now, she whimpered. She couldn't help it. "Don't forget," Marcus murmured in her ear. Her heart was beating so loudly she was amazed she heard him at all. "Your.....arrangement still stands." He cut into her cheek. She screamed, but no sound came out. ----------

It had started to rain. She wasn't really sure when she noticed the rain, or for how long it had been raining. Anna wasn't sure where to go, or what to do, really, but she didn't want to get rain on.

The Stabbingtons had left 20 minutes later. Or, at least, her phone said it was 20 minutes later, since Aladdin had first texted her. Her phone had managed to call him, but she couldn't read what anything said. She could barely keep her eyes open, and her head hadn't stopped spinning like a top. She was glad her dress was red. Even though it was ruined, surely, at least nobody would see all the blood. Just the cuts on her face. And arm. And her knee was pretty banged up, too. But the stuff on her back, from the wall? Maybe that would go mostly unnoticed?

Not that there was anyone around to see her, anyway.

The rain started to pick up, but Anna didn't know where to go. Not back inside the club -- that was too much attention. She didn't know where to walk to -- in her state, she'd probably end up on the highway. And the ground wasn't so bad. She was underneath a lamppost now, after continuing down the alleyway, this time towards FRONT STREET. Nothing felt like it was working right -- how had she even ended up outside? She wanted to cry. This night had been a total disaster from the very start, her own stupidity not included. The terror from the encounter with Hans' bodyguards was rippling through her. She stumbled frequently and had to catch herself on the wall a few times. Your arrangement. Your arrangement. Your arrangement. Your arrangement still stands. Anna leaned back against the side of the alley, lampost's ugly yellow light shining just enough for her to see what a mess she was. She pulled her knees up and rested her burning cheek between her knees, cradling it in her hands. She was shaking heavily now, from the cold, from the blood, from the knife, from the information, from the overwhelming pain. She was trapped. It was useless. She was useless. The lampost flickered twice and went out.

The night swallowed her whole.

[whumpookies]

Merlin one shot, bit of humour can be found here

"No boat huh?"  Matthew muttered, scratching his head in slight confusion 

It was one thousand years later, and what would have been water was now fields, yet the Isle of the Blessed still sat on a hill in all its glory- the same hill that Talia and Matt stood facing. 

"No boat. That’s global warming for you," Talia shrugged easily as she placed down her longbow, making Matthew roll his eyes 

"So, what are we doing here?" Matthew asked as he sat on the hill looking down to the isle.

"Remember the last time we were here?" She asked, joining him sitting on the hill, their knees touching as they leaned back.

"Screaming vale, Doracha, cranky old woman, scarification of a soul to close the vail, Lancelot being an idiot, you warning the old hag..sure hard to forget, really. Why?" Matthew grinned cheekily. 

"Well, time for..revenge," she smirked. 

Matthew blinked..and blinked. "We're what?"

"Going to get revenge, well we ain't but..you’ll see," she half shrugged, laying back into the grass enjoying the rays from the warm sun.

"How? Or should I say why?" Matthew asked, looking over to her.

"Because I promised Lancelot I wouldn't get revenge...back then...didn't say anything about helping get revenge." Her eyes closed, unable to see the disbelieving look Matthew gave her. "You know he's gonna have kittens knowing what we're doing." She shrugged again, standing brushing the grass off her shoulders, Matthew following her actions. 

"That's why we'll tell him after we deal with the old crone," she grinned before grabbing Matthew's collar, dragging him down the hill towards the island.

"Just how are we doing this?" Matthew muttered climbing down the embankment.

"With a dragon." She answered, following him down the silence followed as Matthew stared at his best friend in shock. "A...dragon?"

"Yes, Merlin let me...borrow Kilgharrah"

"Borrow?" His eyebrows rose skywards, scepticism gracing his features. 

"Okay, not borrow...more like the dragon has it in for the hag, so we made a deal." Talia rolled her eyes before continuing along the field as Matthew huffed, "I don't want to know do I?"

"Nope." She answered, snickering. They carried on towards the Isle of the Blessed with a sense of mischief in their hearts.

"Just how did you get our swords and the longbow past the airport checkpoint?"

"You're really asking that now, Matt?"

"I'm curious, it’s not like you can say 'Hey officer, don't worry, just going to get revenge on Cailleach the old hag, then call a dragon, watch him eat her. Just ignore the swords, oh please don't check the blade, it's sharp. Oh look there goes your finger, don't matter if you hurry, it can be sewn on again!" Matthew counted off on his fingers, sarcasm dripping off his words.

"You finished?" She asked, rolling her eyes, once again asking herself why to the heavens. Surely deities were listening.

"Oh no, I've just started!" she sighed before clambering up the steps of the dry dock. "I actually said we're part of a cosplay team…"

"You what?!" 

"Now I bet you wished you never asked!" She cackled, walking down the dock, leaving a groaning Matthew. 

"You have no idea," he sighed.

It was as if time had stopped. The walls were damp, cobwebs spread in abundance, corridors dark until they spotted the light at the end of the tunnel leading to the altar. "How are we getting the old crone to come here? Not like we're sacrificing anyone...why are you looking at me like that?" Talia grinned at a very worried looking Matthew. "Don't worry, no scarification needed. Luckily Merlin knows a few tricks nowadays."

"Yeah, well he could at least get a haircut and a shave!"

"I think he's got the wizard look right down" she glanced over at him. 

"I still think Tolkien met him."

"What, to get the whole Gandalf look down?" She asked slightly confused

"Hell yes! Come on, both Merlin and Tolkien's characters have the beard and long hair… plus look what happened when you asked him to dress up at Samhain!" Matthew grinned, shaking his head. 

"Yeah..that was interesting," she agreed, her forehead creasing slightly.

"Tal, he declared Gandalf as a half-baked wannabe with a guilt complex the size of Albion."

"Point taken," she chuckled, shaking her head.

"Then Lancelot laughed that much he nearly passed out."

"Wait till this year at Halloween you'll love it…"

"If you say Merlin and Lancelot as themselves, I'm so going to be there to watch," Matthew said. 

"Nah, I gave up on that, thinking Harry Potter and Dumbledore." 

The laughter echoed down the empty passageway as they broke into the altar area; it was still large and lush with green grass swaying with the wind.

"You know Talia if this place wasn't linked to the old religion it would be perfect"

"I've nothing against the old religion, just the old hag with a god complex."

"Well let's do this, it's gonna be a long drive back."

Walking around the altar, Talia's hand running along the cool stone as Matthew stood leaning against the wall watching her. 

"How are we doing this?" He asked. 

"Easily, Cailleach is listening to the old hag and is too nosy not to! You ain't getting a sacrifice to some old hag. So come on let's have this out!" She yelled the last part, her voice echoing around the walls as she jumped up on the altar, sitting on the edge. 

"Are we really pissing her off?" Matthew asked.

"I don't get pissed off," the voice croaked behind him. 

"Bloody hell, you old cron don't do that!" Screeched Matthew in a high pitch voice that would make an opera singer jealous as Talia doubled over laughing. Cailleach stood behind the young man all in her dark glory. 

"What do you want, guardian?" She said.

"Oh come on, Cailleach. No hello? It's been, what, one thousand five hundred years, give or take a year...or ten," Talia shrugged, grinning ear to ear as she crossed her legs on the altar."The last I saw of you guardian...you threatened me, and I don't take well to threats," Cailleach accused, her eyes squinting at her.

"I don't take well to you trying to kill Arthur, Merlin or Lancelot," Talia shrugged easily, surprised  by her anger

"It is not killing.."

"Really? A sacrifice to close the veil isn't killing?. Don’t you have enough souls in the underworld?"

"Not yet," she grinned, looking to Matthew 

"Dream on hag, we're taken," Matthew muttered, walking over to Talia by the alter, sword in hand. 

"So it seems that you are, child." Cailleach mourned at the loss of another soul joining her.

"See, I promised someone I wouldn't get revenge on someone else." Talia brought the conversation back on track. "Lancelot." 

"Yes Cailleach, Lancelot, but I spent the day with a very large green-scaled dragon and it seems he still holds a grudge," she smirked, evilly sitting forward. 

"Oh look, Talia, I think it just dawned on her?!" Matthew laughed as Cailleach searched the skies above her as the wind picked up.

"So it seems Matt. Heads up hag, we've got a visitor!" Jumping down, Talia grabbed Matthew, dragging her friend towards the wall as wings came into view. 

"Done my part. Good luck Cailleach," Talia yelled over Kilgharrah's arrival.

"Amazing how hard it is to get a dragon to meet the gatekeeper," Talia muttered as she pulled Matthew into the gatehouse. 

"We are not gonna watch?" Matthew asked.

"Have you ever seen a gatekeeper and dragon go at it?"

"Well...no."

"Me neither, but Kilgharrah said to stay out of the…" A crash and crackle of magic hitting something stopped them.

Both looked to the door. 

"I think I get why now." Said Matthew worriedly looking over at her before a crash followed as rocks flew past the doorway. 

"Oh, that's one pissed off dragon." 

Talia nodded, sitting on an abandoned table. "Wouldn't you be? That old hag nearly killed Merlin, tried to stop the path of Arthur."

"Let's not forget the whole vail crap." 

Sparks struck the door frame as Matthew jumped back. "Oh, the whole Veil needs a blood sacrifice and all that crap. She has real issues with wanting blood." 

Fire bombarded the area passing the door; the heat could be felt with ease. 

"Damn, should have bought marshmallows," Said Matthew bemoaning the loss of a good crispy marshmallow.

"Next time."

"I'm bringing the sausages as well then!" She shook her head as Matthew watched the show as close to the door as possible.

"Well, the old hag needs a peg knocking out of her." 

"Duck!" Matt yelled, boards, bursting, showering bits of wood in all directions.

Talia ran to the door shouting around it. "Kilgharrah get a move on you overgrown lizard! That almost killed us!" 

Matt stood brushing debris off his coat moving away. 

"Bit close," he sighed. 

"Just a bit." 

With the table upturned, they sat behind it, flashes of lightning and flames, crashes and bashes, debris flew past the door frame or closer allowing them to duck, roars covered ears and magic was yelled as it all continued...

"How long?" Talia groaned heavily.

"Three hours and five minutes, in other words, five minutes from the last time you asked." 

"Damn"

"Tal, tell them to quit," Matt moaned whilst cleaning his nails with his sword.

"And get my head blown off?"

"Come on, it's getting late, Merlin can only keep him busy so long!"

"Your point?"

"I'm bored, hungry and they’re being.." he pointed to the door as a lightning bolt struck close by, "...idiots, and they’re going to get us killed!"

Sighing heavily Talia stood, brushing herself off and stormed to the door. "If I die, I'm haunting you!" She muttered before diving out the door quickly as a whip.

Matthew listened intently to the point of straining his ears above the yells of casting, roars and the odd flame until…."THAT WAS MY CLAW!" A deep booming voice Kilgharrah echoed.

"Well if you weren't such an arse, I wouldn't have to stab it, you stubborn bloody dragon! And don't you start either you old hag!"

Matthew snickered, leaning against the wall, shaking his head as laughter rippled through him, whilst trying to listen as Talia continued to rant.

"...yes, I know! Get over yourself, Cailleach or I'll run you through old woman…."

Matthew shook his head, wiping the tears away "...oh trust me, I go to that underworld and I'll haunt you so much that you'll be begging to kick me out.."

He had to agree, she probably would. Talia could be annoying as hell, that was for sure.

"..Yea you're pissed at each other, I get that but come on! When Arthur gets released from Avalon you both need him, so give it a bloody rest! Don't start, you overgrown chicken...and don't you start you wrinkled old pug!"

The second bout of hysterical laughter struck the young man bracing himself against the wall, only Talia would insult a dragon and the gatekeeper of the underworld.

"...Right, that's it!!! I'm calling a truce till next Samhain. You, Kilgharrah, home till Merlin wants you, and Cailleach back till the underworld…no, not Halloween, that my bloody time you get Samhain the eve of Halloween!"

Attempting to catch his breath, Matthew began gathering his and Talia's things.

"Yes, I promise I'll call upon you next bloody Samhain...just...behave till then!"

Matthew cleared the doorway as Kilgharrah flew off, no sign of Cailleach could be seen.

"Finished venting?"

"They are like bloody kids I tell you! I ain't cleaning this mess!" She vented, walking over to her friend gathering her stuff from him. 

"meh, we’ll just call Merlin on the way back; he can clean it up," Matthew reassured as the two made their way back out of the old palace.

"Next year we'll bring Lancelot and Merlin. It'll be fun," Talie said. 

"Only if we bring camp stuff and food," he replied. 

"Deal"

"Cool. Hey, can we stop by McDonald's on the way back? I'm starving," Matthew asked as Talia rolled her eyes. 

"Sure, Merlin wants a happy meal anyway"

[shatteredminds]

[Javid] Look, like I said before she was basically left to her own devices from a rather formidable young age. She rembers very little of what Mammon taught her other then some manners and not to harm those she loves.

[Javid] She knows more then killing, if that's all she knew then her feral self would have tryed to kill you along with Vipin when you got in the way. But she tryed to move you with shadow magic didn't she? Feral Azura tryed to move you so she didn't hurt you, she showed concern when you cut your wrist, protected you from me with one of her wings as she fed.

[Javid] She is much different from Ragnar, she doesn't start unnecessary wars. She's always avoided doing so even as a child, the only times she has killed people on her own accord were to protect those she cares for. I know for a fact that she showed guilt for harming Caspain, though she won't be aware of Vipin.

[Javid] The reason Ragnar wanted that planet around longer was because he wants to get technology from it, technology in which even for us was possible to advanced or dangerous for this universe. So she opted to destroy it for that reason and to make sure that nothing that could danger this universe could spawn from its destruction.

[Javid] I also know for a fact that the reason she took so long killing everyone on that planet was to make sure she got everyone. So that no man, women, or child would would have to suffer before it was destroyed. I've seen her kill and she always goes for the swiftest death so that they don't bleed out and suffer.

Javid sighed on the other end of the phone as he pinched the bridge of his nose, this is the man who his little sister marked by instinct.

[Javid] Whenever a planet from another universe or realm clips into the Vail she has more interest in exploring and learning about the stuff on them then wiping them out. There's only been a few planets in a realm that she's accidentally wiped out via some fuckup and one realm she's completely obliterated because everything she encountered there was a potential threat to the realms and planets in this one here.

As Javid was talking to Kefla, Azura lingered in the sky a bit longer. Though she wasn't looking at the planet any longer, she was only watching to make sure that the energy hit its target. She clutched her head as the negative thoughts started to flood her mind, she didn't like then one bit and she wanted them to be quiet once more. Leaning back she forced her draconic form disappear so she would fall, to make her brain focus on something else.

No matter how much her instincts screamed at her to go back into her draconic form she ignored it. She plummeted to the ground, quickly gaining speed do to the altitude she was at. She made her body phase through the ground a mere inch before she hit it. She would re-emerge in the clearing from the shadows near Kefla, her step make no noise as she approaches and wraps her arms around him and gently hugging him from behind. Face smushed into his back as she sighs.

[Javid] Fuck... none of understand her in the slightest honestly. She never talks to any of us and even Caspian has a hard time trying to figure her out. None of us here have ever seen her without her guard down except Mammon, but that was when she was a child. From the bits I've gathered she was a very gentle and affectionate kid, loved head pats and cuddles along with being held.

The device seemed to function in a way so that no one but the one holding it could hear as Azura didn't react at all to what her brother was saying, nor was Javid aware that she was near Kefla again anyways as a women's voice could be heard on the other end outright telling him that he needs to rest.

So, it was true, the woman he had met in the bar was another killer. But not just any kind of killer, a killer without faith or law. She did everything she was told, and he found that pathetic. She didn’t even have a single sorrow for decimating an entire race, and showed no hesitation in destroying their planet. He didn’t even look at what she did after she decided to destroy their planet. He wanted to believe that he was wrong, but it was clear that he had the wrong idea about her.

The first thing he did was pressing the gemstone tied to his belt and get his phone out. He didn’t have any reason to be here anymore. He pressed the button that would call his spaceship, but with the lack of network. There was no response from the app, therefore, no sign of his spaceship coming to his location.

He sighed in annoyance as he put back the phone where she took it. He was beginning to grow really annoyed with this place in general. Just as he was about to blast off toward his spaceship to leave.

That strange device placed on the rock began to make sounds as someone was sending messages, messages he figured were for his ears. 

“I’m not concerned about what happens to her, I’m not interested in a mindless brute who knows nothing else than killing,” he said. “I was just a foolish man who refused to believe what they were saying.”

[misssophiachase]

Klaroline superhero prompt for you! Caroline works in an office w/ Klaus & basically everyone knows he's a superhero but he thinks he's so secretive no one has figured it out. So basically Stefan covers for him during meetings, Caroline covers his calls, Katherine keeps Elijah from asking too many questions about paperwork. And Bonnie refills his first aid kit all the time. Their whole cover is blown when Kol gifts him a new costume to fight battles in during the secret santa gift exchange. Thx❤

HAPPY EARLY BIRTHDAY JEN (my almost birthday twin). I wanted to get this done before I went away. Thanks for the prompt, I love me a bit of superhero Klaus : ) Hope you like it. I also hope you have a wonderful day next Thursday (with lots of cake and have some of that amazing Texan BBQ for me while you’re at it). 

Wind Beneath My Wings

December 23….

Last night had been particularly rough, Klaus was lucky to make it home in one piece. Who knew a crazed idiot with bleached, blonde hair and a maniacal laugh riding a lawn mower (of all modes of transport) could do such damage? He was starting to wonder where these new and decidedly eccentric breed of villains were coming from. 

After an extended shower to ease the bruised muscles, Klaus dressed in his usual suit and tie combination to head into work. Klaus was joint CEO of Mikaelson Construction with his older brother and their company had basically built half of Manhattan. He’d started out from practically nothing but now he was a billionaire. Not too bad for a young kid from one of London’s poorest suburbs. 

It was after he’d acquired his first 50 million that Klaus began to get bored, he always did love a challenge and work was no longer providing that spark. His siblings as usual had offered their opinions. 

Elijah suggested playing the stock market, Kol suggested a friend with benefits (or multiple) and, although she was in London, Rebekah went with Pilates. She insisted it was good for core strength and channeling the desire to want to punch Kol in the face. As much as he wanted to hit his younger brother at times, he wanted a different kind of thrill. Something worthwhile that would help people at the same time.

Fast forward nine months and Klaus was trawling the streets for bad guys. He’d seen a news report on CNN about crime levels increasing at an alarming level in New York but the cities police force didn’t have the manpower or resources to combat the threat. 

Klaus considered himself an extremely fit person. He’d trained in three different martial arts (basically from boredom) and regularly took part in marathons and triathlons. All he needed was a suit to keep his identity secret. Unfortunately his face was recognisable in business and social circles so it took a bit of work on the sewing machine (yes he had mastered that skill too, not that he broadcast it). 

“Where is that paperwork from the Ferguson deal?” Was the first order Elijah barked at him when he walked through the glass doors.  Klaus figured once he got laid on a regular basis the stress would abate with his uptight, elder brother. Obviously not. 

“I put that on your desk, don’t you remember?” Katherine interrupted, her brown eyes flickering over his toned body. 

“I don’t recall,” he stuttered, his gaze now firmly focused on the fitted, black dress that hugged every one of her curves. 

“How about I jog your memory in your office?” She purred, it didn’t take long for his brother and their public relations manager to disappear. The King of decorum, Elijah was fastidious about professionalism but when Katherine Pierce had come on board he was unable to resist. For the record Klaus and pretty much everyone else were happy for the distraction. 

Klaus discreetly hobbled his way towards the supply closet, realising that the hastily applied bandage on his leg was peeling off. He’d sometimes wondered just how the first aid kit seemed to be fully stocked all the time but he wasn’t about to complain. 

As he turned the corner, he noticed Bonnie rummaging around. Klaus knew he had to play it cool though so as not to arouse any suspicion. “Morning, Bonnie.”

“Hi, Klaus,” she smiled, closing the cupboard door quickly. “Beautiful day, isn’t it?”

“Yes it is,” Klaus lied, realising that in his extreme pain he’d barely even looked up at the sky on his way into the office. 

Bonnie was in human resources and Kol had taken an immediate liking to her. The feeling wasn’t mutual at first (hardly surprising when it came to his younger brother) but in some magical turn of events he’d managed to convince her he was worthy. They’d been married on Long Island six moths earlier. 

“I should really get back to work but is there something you needed?”

“No it’s fine,” he murmured. “I just got a cut on my finger that’s all.”

“You’ve got to watch that paper, it’s dangerous,” she grinned, moving past so he could access the first aid kit. She’d obviously been taking sarcasm lessons from Kol. Klaus consulted his watch, hoping that his day would start moving a little faster given the excruciating pain he felt. 

“Finally,” Caroline drawled as he approached her desk. “Given your quick exit last night I assumed you’d be in on time. Don’t worry I’ve got the phones covered, as usual.” 

She looked stunning, her blonde waves cascading down her back, that cobalt figure hugging dress only accentuating those brilliant eyes even more. Even after all this time, she still had the power to stop him dead in his tracks. 

He’d finally mustered up the courage and invited her to the Mayoral Ball the previous evening not expecting his night job to interfere with his plans. He’d mumbled some feeble excuse and rushed off. If Klaus was being honest he was torn for the first time between his conflicting lives. He’d never felt anything like he did for Caroline. Yes, he was her boss but he couldn’t deny just how much she lifted his spirits even if they were arguing or exchanging witty banter which was common place. 

“I’m sorry about last night, you have no idea, love.”

“It’s okay, I understand,” she smiled, almost knowingly. Klaus wasn’t sure what she was alluding to but he figured it couldn’t be his double life given he’d kept it so quiet all this time. “Unfortunately, I am the bearer of bad news though.”

“Oh really?” Klaus dealt with some pretty tough things in his life so figured he could handle just about anything. 

“Kol’s in your office.” Maybe not. He rolled his eyes at Caroline by way of response and walked into his office, making sure Caroline couldn’t make out his lingering limp. 

“Well, don’t you look like crap,” he teased from the other side of the desk as Klaus finally sat down. 

“Good morning to you too,” he scowled. 

“It must have been a big night judging by that injury,” Kol quipped, looking towards his leg. “I never took Caroline for the aggressive type.”

“It wasn’t Caroline,” he shot back through pursed lips. “I fell down some stairs at my apartment, if you must know.”

“I’m almost disappointed,” he joked. “You realise we’ve all been waiting for you and Goldilocks to finally get together, right?”

“I’d really prefer that you and everyone else keep out of my private life.”

“What private life?” 

“Someone thinks they’re a comedian,” Klaus growled. 

“When Elijah is getting more action than you there needs to be an intervention,” he chuckled. “You wanted something to do, how about Caroline?”

“I will hit you, I swear,” he threatened. No one spoke about his beloved Caroline like that and got away with it. 

“I didn’t mean it that way,” he drawled. “But it’s nice to see you’re showing some actual feelings towards the girl. Its only been like over a year.”

“Did you have a point in coming here? You know possibly work related because we’re in the office.”

“Just wanting to say how much I’m looking forward to the Secret Santa exchange this year,” Kol smirked before strolling from the room. Obviously he was going to be the lucky recipient of his brother’s attempt at humour. He couldn’t wait.

Klaus had completely forgotten about it, although it wasn’t entirely unexpected given his busy schedule. He was about to press the intercom and speak to Caroline before she breezed into the room like she knew he needed her.

“I figured you might need some caffeine after dealing with Kol,” she smiled placing it on the table. 

“That or possibly a whiskey,” he grinned. Whatever mood he was in, Caroline always had the ability to make him smile. “Now, about this S…”

“Your gift is on my desk,” she interrupted. “Katherine will adore the Channel No 5, trust me.” Just when he thought she couldn’t be any more amazing she had to go and do that. And it wasn’t because she was his Executive Assistant either. 

“I’d really like to make it up to you,” he murmured, standing up and coming around to the front of the desk, unknowingly hobbling a little as he did. She gazed at him curiously, a slight smile tugging at her pink lips. 

“What did you have in mind, Mikaelson?”

“You, me and my chalet in Vail,” he suggested, trying to block out visions of them naked and lying in front of a roaring fire together, so as not to encourage his arousal any further. 

“How about we get you cleaned up first,” she suggested, surprising him and grabbing a nearby tissue and placing it on his face tenderly. “Don’t want you bleeding all over the carpet.”

“I must have..” he replied feebly.

“Cut yourself shaving?” She finished his sentence, which was something she had a tendency to do. She was so close he could have kissed her but thought better of it given all his injuries. 

“Something like that,” he uttered. When he’d started this whole superhero journey he’d actually enjoyed keeping it a secret until Caroline. There were so many times he wanted to tell her but he’d faltered worried about what she might think of his chosen lifestyle.

“I think you’re okay now,” she whispered, removing the tissue and placing a chaste kiss on his cheek. Klaus didn’t think he’d ever felt anything so devastatingly innocent in his whole life. “Secret Santa exchange is in three hours.” 

Before he could react to the kiss or respond to her comment she was gone, leaving a trail of floral perfume in her wake. The one thing he knew was that, superhero or not, Klaus was in love with Caroline Forbes and had every intention of proving that to her. 

“Thanks, Caroline,” Katherine said, sending Klaus an amused look three hours later. 

“Last time I checked, that was my present,” he scoffed.

“Which I’m sure you went to the store and bought personally,” she shot back. Caroline gave him a look to say he was on his own.  

“Whatever,” he grumbled. 

“Looks like someone needs a little pick-me-up,” Kol sing-singed placing a box on his lap ceremoniously. Klaus had been dreading this moment for the few hours. “Merry Christmas.” As Klaus undid the ribbon and opened the lid slowly, all he could think about was how un-merry it all felt.

What  he wasn’t expecting was to find a superman costume housed inside the box. Klaus figured the burning, hot sensation crossing his face wasn’t a coincidence. “Uh, very funny, Kol,” Klaus managed to bite out, albeit with difficulty.

“Seriously, Kol?” Bonnie gasped, looking at the contents. “You idiot, what were you thinking?”

“Obviously someone’s trying to be a smartass, know-it-all,” Katherine chided. 

“I thought it was time we tell Niklaus that we know about his poorly-kept secret identity,” he boasted. “Plus, I really wanted to mess with Elijah.” By the look of bewilderment on his eldest brother’s face his surprise gift had the desired effect. 

“We’re a little too old for dress-ups, Kol,” Elijah scoffed. 

“I don’t know, maybe ask Niklaus about that,” Kol teased. Now all eyes were on Klaus and he wasn’t quite sure what to do or say. He noticed Caroline had been decidedly quiet and wasn’t sure whether that was a good or bad sign. 

“You knew all this time,” he hissed, standing up defiantly, even if his muscles were screaming in pain. “You all knew?” Suddenly everything came back in flashes. Bonnie frequenting the always fully stocked first aid cupboard, Katherine distracting Elijah and Caroline…His eyes met her blue ones willing her to answer. 

“You’re not the best liar, Nik,” Kol admitted. “I just thought it was time we all stopped pretending that you weren’t doing something completely unexpected like fighting crime in your spare time.” 

“What he means to say, but is expressing it badly, is that we want to be able to assist, without all the false pretence. When we realised about your double life a while back we decided to help you out a bit. You know lighten your load,” Bonnie offered, meekly. 

“I’m not the most selfless person,” Katherine began and by the knowing looks around the room no one was going to rebut that statement. “But given your celebrity status I figured I could least lend a hand.”

“What the hell is going on here?” Elijah insisted. 

“Klaus is the Original,” Caroline finally spoke, although her voice was muffled and her eyes downcast. They all knew, even her. Suddenly he felt so stupid. 

“You know Elijah…”

“I know who that is Kol,” he growled. “But how?”

Klaus wasn’t in the mood to talk about this right now surrounded by people who’d deceived him. 

“I can’t believe you all lied to me,” he hissed. He made a move for the door before she spoke again, her voice making him freeze. 

“What? Like you lied to all of us?” She baulked. “Look, we knew you wanted to keep this a secret so we went along with it. But we don’t like seeing you hurt all the time and not being able to admit we know why.”

He turned to face Caroline his gaze trained on her beautiful features and thought back to earlier that morning and the way she’d tended to his bleeding cut without a word. Maybe their silence on the matter was killing them just as much as it was him. 

“I’m still confused,” Elijah interrupted.  

“It’s okay baby, I’ll explain it to you.” Katherine cooed, pulling him up from the lounge and leaving the room, the rest of them in tow sensing he needed a minute to cool down. 

“Why didn’t you say anything?” He mumbled, finally finding his voice. 

“Because you didn’t,” she murmured, moving closer and cupping his cheek, stroking her thumb over the spot she’d tended to earlier. 

“I’m sorry, I didn’t say anything, but you have to believe me, I wanted to every single day,” he conceded. “I just wasn’t sure how you’d feel about my choice in extracurricular activities.”

“You thought I’d be scared.” Her blue eyes were now boring into his and Klaus was finding it increasingly difficult to breath. 

“No, I thought you’d only want me for my superhero status,” he teased, earning a slap on the cheek for his efforts. “Hey!”

“You deserved it.”

“I was trying to lighten the mood,” he reasoned, pulling her into his arms and running his hands through her golden waves. “But just so you know I have no intention of ever leaving you, sweetheart, because I love you so there’s no reason to be frightened.”

“Can I have that in writing?” She grinned, her palms lying flat on his toned chest, causing a certain area to tingle in response. 

“How about we come to another type of agreement in Vail?” 

“You’re really going to take some time off from superhero duty?” 

“For you I would do anything,” he growled, greedily capturing her lips and losing himself in the gentle massage of her mouth against his. It was something he’d wanted for so long but had never really dreamed possible.

After a few minutes, she pulled away unexpectedly, Klaus feeling a little rejected. She looked at him sternly and Klaus knew she was about to give him an order.

“As much as I love this and can’t wait for our snowy get away, with your superhero suit of course, you need to go out there and apologise to everyone.”

“But…” he replied petulantly, still feeling somewhat deceived. 

“But nothing, they have been your support system all this time even if you had no idea…” Before he could argue she read his mind as usual. “And that includes Kol.”

“Fine,” he conceded, pretending to be upset but his stupidly goofy grin no doubt giving him away. “You know you’re pretty good at giving orders, any chance you want to don a cape and join me?”

“Just wait until you get me into bed Mikaelson. All of my superpowers will be revealed.” She purred, leaning in and nipping his lips briefly before sauntering away, her hips wiggling seductively as she did. 

Maybe this superhero gig did have its perks after all.  

You can read on FF HERE

[adamwatchesmovies]

The Mummy (2017)

If anyone was going to find something to like about Universal’s first entry in its Dark Universe, it was me. I grew up with the Universal Monsters, and am a big fan of the Brendan Fraser/Rachel Weisz reboot. But 2017′s The Mummy is awful. It makes so many mistakes that future pictures will have to work very hard to build a franchise.

Tomb pilferer Nick Morton (Tom Cruise) and his partner Chris Vail (Jake Johnson) accidentally revive the mummified princess Ahmanet (Sophia Boutella) from the dead. In order to stop her from unleashing a demon to which she sold her soul, Nick and Chris team up with archaeologist Jenny Halsey (Annabelle Wallis) and Prodigium, an organization that specializes in monsters.

The moments that are supposed to be frightening aren’t and not only because of its dedication to cheap jump scares. The Mummy then tries to balance the mood by making you laugh but is never funny. The writing is horrible through and through. Ahmanet needs a specific dagger to complete her ritual. Why hasn’t it been destroyed if it's so dangerous? Probably to give our villainess a chance. When she pulls idiotic moves like dismissing her undead soldiers and divulging her entire plan out loud, the poor lady establishes herself as a threat only because she possesses supernatural powers. Then, it gets little details plainly wrong. Anyone who does a basic Wikipedia search could tell you that Set is NOT the God of Death!

The characters’ actions do not follow each other logically, the tone is confused, and while the titular Mummy has a somewhat unique look, overall, the picture is very generic. The one positive aspect is Tom Cruise and some choice action scenes. Clearly, the man is committed to the spectacular stunts. Too bad they're for this film.

I want this Dark Universe to be good so here's some free advice. First of all, Prodigium, the S.H.I.E.L.D. clone you’ve got here, is no good. it shouldn’t include dozens of nameless members with high-tech equipment, it should be secretive, small and underfunded. Perhaps then I’d buy them employing the red-flag-raising Dr. Jekyll (Rusell Crowe). Next, please refrain yourself from destroying the world with special effects. I don’t know how the Bride of Frankenstein is going to threaten the world, and I don’t want her to. Unless you’re re-making Frankenstein Conquers the World, in which a giant, irradiated Frankenstein Monster fights a dinosaur (which would actually be cool, make it a shared universe shared universe by including Godzilla!), take cues from The Conjuring and its sequels, not The Avengers.

I wanted The Mummy to be good so badly, but it isn’t. Even with its hints of more to come (keep your eyes open for cameos), it seems hardly worth seeing, even for hardcore fans. (3D Theatrical version on the big screen, June 17, 2017)

[rurifangirl]

Ahdhakkwe here I am redoing the Erica and Kuro's relationship thing <3

So first of all, at first they weren't on good terms. In fact, Kuro didn't trust her indimidating and even threatening aurea, even when she casually came for a tarot reading.

Although, it's fair to say that Erica didn't contain herself with subdole threats after finding out more than a blood vail in the same room, already figuring out that something Is wrong. Kuro managed to get her away eventually, but still having to go hunting right after.

And yup, you guessed It, after Kuro got in his other form, they again meet under unfortunate circumstances. I'll go brief on this since It deserves its own post so wgejwkjeje but longstory short, Kuro helps her out of conviniance, and after that they both act as if nothing happened. The problem here Is that, they both have extremely worrying and important information about the other, so they cannot speak of what happened with ease.

At first, Erica's furious of having let her guard down, fully sure that everything won't be ever the same from that time on. Knowing that she can't turn back, Erica stars to visit more their place, still making sure he's not up to something horryfing after what she's seen. But, what Kuro doesn't notice Is that Erica's masks slowly starts to crumble.

Everything she's bottled up gets on surface, confessing more of her more personal life, since she figured out she couldn't go lower than that. At first, Kuro doesn't change attitude at all, thinking it's all a way for Erica to get her sympathy, but after they realize her words are genuine and tries to be kind to him, things take another turn.

In fact, after much consideration, Kuro does get an attachment to Erica, going as far to confess about his dream of becoming human. From that, the relationship goes further and, even attempting to help the other reach their goals, though It'll take much more time.

And for Kuro to learn how to take an hug

I think that's It for an alright understanding of these twovehdkjshdhdjsd im not goin in details cus sleepy

I. Wneeed wKuro asksss

[itsfinancethings]

Black-clad security forces armed with riot shields advance on a mass of peaceful demonstrators. Rubber bullets and gas canisters fly. The embattled head of state, flanked by his top prosecutor and general, emerges from his estate to stake a claim for order. The scene looked like something out of a banana republic, but it unfolded in Washington’s Lafayette Square on June 1. And soon after, an obscure nonprofit got a call from a state attorney general’s office, asking the perennial questions of the Donald Trump era: Can he do that? How can we stop that from happening here?

These are questions the nonprofit Protect Democracy was founded to answer. When the call came in (from a state the group declines to name), its lawyers got to work on an analysis of the Insurrection Act of 1807, aiming to equip local leaders to fight back if the Administration seeks to send in the military over their objections, as President Trump has threatened to do. And they began rounding up bipartisan signatories for a statement on behalf of Department of Justice veterans decrying Attorney General Bill Barr’s conduct.

Since the beginning of the Trump presidency, Protect Democracy has cast itself in the role its name suggests: defender of America’s system of government against the threat of authoritarianism. Started by two former Obama White House lawyers who were concerned that the new President would undermine the rule of law, the group has filed lawsuits to block Trump’s retaliation against critics and to curtail his use of emergency powers. It has organized groups of civil servants to speak out against what they say is Trump’s politicization of law enforcement. And it has built bipartisan congressional support to rein in presidential powers.

Protect Democracy has notched some big wins. The group’s lawsuits invalidated Trump’s emergency declaration for the southern border and blocked the Administration from making it harder for low-income green-card holders to become citizens. They successfully argued in New York federal court that the President’s retaliation against media outlets may violate the Constitution, and helped ensure that a defamation lawsuit brought by a former mistress could proceed in state court. Their advocacy has gotten states to reform election procedures and Congress to act to limit Executive power.

It’s an impressive record for a three-year-old startup. “They are innovative, imaginative, energetic and extremely effective,” says Benjamin Wittes, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and editor in chief of Lawfare, whose work with the group led to the release of the Watergate prosecutors’ road map that had been sealed for more than 40 years.

The June 1 spectacle at Lafayette Square seems to have brought some reticent figures closer to Protect Democracy’s view of things. Former President George W. Bush and former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis were among those who spoke out in favor of the protesters. “When you see military helicopters above the streets of D.C., using tactics from war zones, using tear gas on peaceful protesters exercising their First Amendment rights,” says Ian Bassin, co-founder and executive director of Protect Democracy, “these things so match what people imagine when they think of the toppling of democracies that it struck a chord.”

From the beginning, however, Protect Democracy has argued the onset of authoritarianism in America would come not with a flash-bang grenade but with the whimper of institutions gradually succumbing to the erosion of long-standing norms. Ideas that seemed far-fetched three years ago have become routine: a President who declares himself immune to congressional or judicial oversight; whose Attorney General seeks to exempt the President’s friends from responsibility while prosecuting his political enemies; whose lawyers argue in open court that he could, in fact, shoot someone on Fifth Avenue without consequence. The events of recent days appear to validate the group’s concerns, with Trump’s former National Security Adviser accusing him of corrupting the electoral process and the Administration firing a U.S. prosecutor whose office was investigating the President’s close associates. Trump continues to sow doubt about the integrity of the upcoming election, recently declaring on Twitter that it would be “the most RIGGED Election in our nations history.”

As the election nears, Protect Democracy is focused on securing the Nov. 3 contests against foreign and domestic meddling. The group, which is officially nonpartisan, is funded by foundations and individual donors, including the LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman and Boston-based investor Seth Klarman, who before Trump was the GOP’s largest donor in New England. Protect Democracy is lobbying and advising states on election procedure with an eye to ensuring a legitimate result. Yet the group is also looking beyond Trump, seeing him as a symptom of a system whose weakened defenses leave it open to abuse, and figuring out what can be done to strengthen American democracy in the future, regardless of who is in the White House next year.

Evan Vucci—APTrump tours a section of the border wall in Otay Mesa, Calif., on Sept. 18, 2019

If you believed your government was slouching toward dictatorship, what would you do about it? The answer, to judge from Protect Democracy’s routine, can seem mundane. On a recent Monday, 55 people are assembled as squares on a screen in a Google Meet video chat. Long before COVID-19 turned nearly all white collar workers into video-chat adepts, Protect Democracy was a work-from-anywhere organization, its 66 employees scattered from coast to coast. (Bassin is based in the Bay Area, co-founder Justin Florence in Boston; the group maintains a lease on a WeWork space in D.C.)

But the topics on such calls reach to the highest levels of government. “I’m working on a letter calling on the Justice Department inspector general to open an investigation into Barr’s involvement in Lafayette Square,” Justin Vail, a lawyer for Protect Democracy, tells the team. Vail, a former Obama White House and Democratic Senate aide, tells the group he’s assembled more than a thousand signatories, former federal prosecutors from Republican and Democratic Administrations.

These sorts of current and former government insiders are disdained by the President and his allies as “the deep state”–petty bureaucrats dedicated to undermining Trump’s necessary disruption of the status quo. But a competent, nonpolitical civil service is an important component of democracy. In America, officials from the President to the lowest-ranking soldier swear an oath pledging loyalty not to any ruler, Administration or party, but to the Constitution itself.

For many civil servants, that nonpartisanship has traditionally extended from one Administration to the next, and even past their time in government. “It’s hard to overstate how unusual–basically unprecedented–it is to have former career officials speaking out in this way,” says Ben Berwick, who spent six years in the DOJ’s Civil Division during the Obama Administration. He left a few months after Trump took office, and became one of Protect Democracy’s earliest hires. The group has now massed hundreds of DOJ alums on a series of letters like the one Vail is preparing. Among the most high-profile was one stating that any ordinary American who committed the acts described in Robert Mueller’s Russia report would have been prosecuted for obstruction of justice, and another deploring Barr’s extraordinary move to request a lighter sentence for former Trump campaign aide Roger Stone.

The group says such letters have brought concrete changes. “We have seen [current Justice officials] resign, withdraw from cases, object and file internal complaints” as a result, Vail says. “It’s a reminder that people on the outside support them having the courage to stand up and continue to work with integrity.” As the group was preparing its 2,500-signatory letter on the Stone case, Barr publicly distanced himself from the President–a sign, the group says, that he was feeling pressure in his ranks. The department subsequently backtracked on its sentencing recommendation. On June 23, a former prosecutor testified to Congress that Stone’s softened sentence had been the result of “heavy pressure from the highest levels of the Department of Justice to cut Stone a break” because of “his relationship to the President.”

Protect Democracy’s founders, Bassin and Florence, both served in the White House counsel’s office during the Obama Administration. By the time Trump took office, both had left government and moved on to other things–Bassin to international antipoverty work, Florence to a comfortable gig at a top law firm. But as the new President’s actions set off alarm bells, the two began corresponding. They realized that there was no single organization doing what they were talking about: safeguarding basic principles, like checks and balances, and the idea that no one is above the law, against a perceived threat to democracy itself.

Bassin and Florence began consulting scholars who study authoritarianism abroad, hoping on some level that experts would say they were out of their minds. But the scholars shared the same worries. “The scary thing was that no one rolled their eyes; nobody said, ‘Oh, come on, really, you’re being hysterical,'” Bassin says.

Experts pointed to places like Poland and Turkey, where authoritarian leaders won elections and turned their countries into what scholars of the region describe as “Potemkin democracies” by curtailing civil rights and undermining popular control of the government. “Democracies today die in a much more subtle fashion than they used to,” says Harvard political scientist Steven Levitsky, co-author of the book How Democracies Die. “It’s pretty rare to see the generals all at once seize power, dissolve the constitution, and imprison dissidents and the press. Instead you see elected leaders gradually–imperceptibly to many citizens–transform the machinery of government to protect their friends and harass and punish their enemies.”

Bassin recalls one early, telling example. Under Obama, one of his jobs had been to advise Executive Branch officials on how to follow rules set out in thick binders and handed down from Administration to Administration starting with President Eisenhower’s in the 1950s. Many weren’t laws so much as norms and codes intended to embody the spirit of public service. Among the precepts, for example, is a 14-page memo dating to the Carter Administration that lays out specific rules for when and how White House officials could contact the Justice Department, to avoid the perception of politics influencing law enforcement. In February 2017, then White House chief of staff Reince Priebus contacted the FBI to ask the agency to publicly refute a New York Times report about contacts between Trump associates and Russian agents, and the White House openly acknowledged he had made the contact. It was already clear back then–before Trump fired FBI Director James Comey, before Mueller began his investigation, before Ukraine and impeachment and everything else–that the new Administration was not interested in the binders and memos, the rules and norms, that had prevailed for generations.

Bassin and Florence wanted their organization to be bipartisan. “It really is something that Republicans and Democrats, all people of good faith, should be able to agree on, that the President is not a monarch who is above accountability of any kind,” says Jamila Benkato, who joined the group after clerking for a federal judge in California. But most of the group’s early hires were liberals. Even Trump-skeptical conservatives wanted to give the new President a chance to grow into the job. And the group has struggled to establish a public identity that transcends its liberal roots.

Yet the mission has attracted some Republicans. Protect Democracy’s employees include a former GOP presidential campaign operative and consultant for the Koch brothers’ political outfit; a former clerk to the conservative federal judge Edith Brown Clement; and a former GOP Senate staffer and writer for the conservative Weekly Standard. In March, the group assembled 37 former Republican members of Congress and Administration officials to file a friend-of-the-court brief in Trump v. Vance, arguing that the President’s accountants must comply with a subpoena for documents related to his hush-money payments to alleged mistresses.

“From a conservative standpoint, it’s clear to me that the President is offending the rule of law generally and the Constitution specifically,” says Stuart Gerson, who headed the DOJ’s Civil Division under President George H.W. Bush. Gerson worked with Protect Democracy on its successful lawsuit in a conservative court in Texas, which thwarted Trump’s attempt to build his border wall without permission or funding from Congress. “I’m an apostle of the unitary executive–I argued all the war-powers cases in the Bush Administration,” Gerson says of the idea that the Constitution gives the President expansive powers over the workings of the Executive Branch. “But that [doctrine] puts the President in charge of the Executive Branch, not the other two.”

Doug Mills—The New York Times/ReduxProtect Democracy has organized former Justice Department officials to speak out against Barr, left, and President Trump

Sometime in the coming weeks, the Supreme Court is set to rule on Trump v. Vance and two related cases having to do with the validity of subpoenas into the President’s private conduct. The cases will test the idea that no one is above the law, by resolving whether a President can be investigated and held accountable for any activities, even those that precede or have nothing to do with the office. Protect Democracy’s advocates say the cases are part of a broader set of questions about presidential power, which they have been fighting to constrain.

One of Trump’s first moves as President was the creation of an election-integrity commission, which sought to examine allegations of voting abuse, like his baseless claim that the 2016 election was tainted by millions of illegal votes. Working with other advocacy groups, Protect Democracy sued based on a technicality–the Administration’s failure to follow the Paperwork Reduction Act, which mandates the procedures for establishing such commissions–and informed states they were not required to provide the Administration with the voter data it sought. The commission, Protect Democracy argued, represented not a good-faith effort to secure the vote but an attempt to sow doubt based on a nonexistent problem. Within a few months, the commission was shuttered.

Later that year, when Trump pardoned Joe Arpaio, the former Maricopa County, Arizona, sheriff convicted of contempt of court for racially profiling Latinos, Protect Democracy filed a brief arguing the pardon was unconstitutional. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit agreed to appoint a private attorney to argue the matter. And when the Administration released a report claiming that immigrants were responsible for most acts of terrorism–information Trump cited in his 2017 address to Congress–the group sued based on an obscure statute, the Information Quality Act, that’s typically used by Big Business to dispute environmental regulations. It was a legally creative approach to a vexing question: If the government decides to simply make up statistics, does the public have any recourse? While that litigation is still pending, the Justice Department admitted in court that the terrorism report was inaccurate.

When the former Apprentice contestant Summer Zervos sued Trump for defamation in 2017 after he called her a liar for accusing him of sexual assault, Protect Democracy filed the only outside brief, arguing the President was not immune from civil lawsuits. It was a little-noticed case, but one the group thought could establish a dangerous precedent. In ruling Zervos’ suit could go forward, the court drew extensively on Protect Democracy’s arguments. It is the first time a court has ruled the President is subject to civil lawsuits in state court.

In October 2018, Protect Democracy filed another lawsuit on behalf of PEN America, a journalists’ organization, arguing that Trump was violating the First Amendment by revoking press credentials to punish journalists and threatening media businesses’ bottom lines: stalling the proposed merger of CNN’s parent company, raising postal rates on Amazon (whose founder, Jeff Bezos, owns the Washington Post) and threatening to revoke broadcast licenses. In March, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York ruled the suit could go forward.

  Over the course of this presidency, Protect Democracy has broadened its purview, on the theory that threats to American democracy do not begin or end with Trump, and that many of the weaknesses he is exploiting predate him. Presidents of both parties have steadily expanded executive power, while Congress has willingly ceded more and more of its constitutional authorities. Protect Democracy has worked with both parties in Congress to reclaim some power from the Executive Branch, teaming up with GOP Senator Mike Lee on a bill putting new limitations on presidential emergency powers. The legislation advanced out of committee on a bipartisan 11-2 vote. Protect Democracy is also collaborating with advocates who have been working for years to reassert congressional authority over war powers; the group filed lawsuits to force the Administration to release the memos justifying its military strikes on Syrian chemical-weapons sites and the Iranian general Qasem Soleimani.

In 2018, Protect Democracy broke away from its federal work and intervened in recounts under way in two states, Georgia and Florida, where candidates were overseeing elections in which they were also competing. In Georgia, their lawsuit helped prompt gubernatorial candidate Brian Kemp to resign as secretary of state. Since then, the group has sought to find and fix weaknesses in voting systems, lobbying and advocating for new voting machines in South Carolina and Pennsylvania. It has also tackled voter suppression, using an old statute aimed at the Ku Klux Klan to stop a Trump ally from harassing Latino voters in Virginia and working with a North Carolina group, Forward Justice, to bring a lawsuit that would force the state to re-enfranchise felons.

More than a year ago, Protect Democracy formed a bipartisan election task force to examine such threats and recommend responses. Ironically, one of the crises they originally decided not to plan for was a potential pandemic. Now, as COVID-19 has thrown states’ election plans into doubt, the group has made a set of recommendations for moving forward with mail balloting and other changes.

For now, Protect Democracy says it wants to ensure that the November election is free and fair, producing a result that can be widely accepted as legitimate regardless of who wins. Whenever Trump leaves office, the group envisions a brief window for Congress to pass reforms, similar to the burst of legislation that followed President Nixon’s resignation. The organization has been gearing up for this with a “100 days agenda” of recommendations for the next President, including changes to election systems, prohibitions on election interference and campaign-finance reform.

In a democracy, the people are the ultimate check on power. Protect Democracy’s central argument is that institutions don’t protect themselves; people have to be activated to use the tools the system provides. In a timely metaphor, the group’s leaders compare authoritarianism to a virus sweeping the globe: first you treat the patient by activating the body’s immune system to fight off the illness; over time, you formulate a vaccine to provide immunity in the future.

“When Ian and I first started talking about this, we thought it would be an organization that lasted however long Trump was in office, then folded up shop,” says Florence, the group’s co-founder and legal director. “What we’ve learned is that we’re seeing a moment that requires a generation-long response. Ultimately, we’ve got to rebuild our institutions to make our system more resistant to a future authoritarian-minded leader.”

With reporting by Leslie Dickstein and Josh Rosenberg

[poop4u]

Raising a Dog in the Country

#Poop4U

The post Raising a Dog in the Country by Nikki Moustaki appeared first on Dogster. Copying over entire articles infringes on copyright laws. You may not be aware of it, but all of these articles were assigned, contracted and paid for, so they aren't considered public domain. However, we appreciate that you like the article and would love it if you continued sharing just the first paragraph of an article, then linking out to the rest of the piece on Dogster.com.

Rural dog training

Rural dogs have more freedom than city dogs, but that comes with its own set of training challenges, all of them for the safety of the dog and the people and other critters he encounters.

Photography ©KariHoglund | Getty Images

“I had to teach Sofi not to kill our chickens,” says Berta Bader, a full-time student from Boise, Idaho, of her 11-year-old Miniature Poodle. “I supervised Sofi with the chickens and distracted her when she looked at them. Next step was a lot of praise every time she ignored the chickens. Now chicken killing is not her main focus.”

Lisa G. Shaffer, PhD, from Spokane, Washington, has trained her four dogs — two Dachshunds and two Saint Bernards — to stop on command.

“We don’t want our wiener dogs in with our miniature horses,” Lisa says. “The horses don’t like the small dogs, and we worry that they’ll get stepped on. If we say stop, they stop and wait for us to pick them up, or it gets their attention and we can call them back.”

Shannon Bridwell of Greer, South Carolina, lives with two Greyhounds and five Ibizan Hounds. “A lot of rural dogs have issues with barking, reactivity and other behavioral concerns associated with a lack of socialization, training, and mental and physical stimulation,” she says. “A lot of rural owners do not take their dogs out as often as city people do.”

Sharma Sonntag of Lander, Wyoming, who lives with three Rat Terriers, says that rural dogs need to be trained not to chase wildlife and that they should be “snake trained” as well.

Emily Hurt of Sherman, Texas, who lives with seven Border Collies, says that the biggest training must-have for a rural dog is good check-in  behavior. “I know when I’m out on the property I can count on my dogs to check in with me periodically just to be sure they know where I am. This is reinforced from the time that they’re very young, and it’s something I make sure to continuously reinforce and strengthen as the dogs go through different stages of maturity.”

Photography ©eAlisa | Getty Images ©ktmoffitt | Getty Images

Country dog health

Rural dogs need flea and tick control, heartworm prevention, the leptospirosis vaccine and intestinal parasite control, says Lisa Whitney, DVM, from St. Johnsbury, Vermont.

Emily also says that the biggest health must is staying up to date on preventives. “All of my Border Collies naturally seem to avoid or ignore snakes, but my Jack Russell was a master snake hunter back in the day,” she says. “I gave her the rattlesnake vaccine a few times. I didn’t want to be in a bad spot and have her completely unprotected.”

Wendy also believes in preventive care due to the country dogs’ love of nature’s snacks. “Deer poop looks like doggo kibble, turkey poop looks like ice cream, and dead mice and rodents are part of life in the country,” she says. “They’re all delicious to dogs. Got to keep them on the worm preventives.”

Other animals pose a big hazard to the country dog, from snakes to predators, from rabid animals to those who seem like not much of a threat, like deer.

“Petey once thought a deer reclining under an oak tree was our late Greyhound, Magic,” says Wendy of her Chihuahua. “When he went to say hi, the deer hoofed him! He had a huge gash across his torso. Thankfully it didn’t need stitches, but he learned his lesson — and I did, too!”

Linda Chekanow of Sparta, North Carolina, has also had an unexpected experience with a dog and a deer. “Waffles, my Chihuahua mix, fell in love with a doe who kept coming into the fenced acre where we have our fruit trees and chickens,” Linda says. “They ran along the fence together, like playing. After several days the deer turned up in our garden one evening at dusk. Before I could stop him, Waffles went running full speed to her, barking all the way. She eyeballed him, and when he got close enough, she raised one hoof and kicked him. He came yipping back to the door with poop hanging out of his butt! It sounds funny now, but at the time I was scared he might have been hurt. Luckily nothing was broken but his heart.”

Susan Daffron of Sandpoint, Idaho, says that her dogs are never left unsupervised and that they are always on leash, confined in a fenced area or inside the house. “One of our neighbors had their dog stomped on by a moose, which broke the dog’s back. Other dogs in the area have been shot by property owners because the dog was messing with their livestock, such as eating chickens.”

Weather can also pose a health danger. Make sure that your dog stays hydrated in hot weather, especially if he has a thick coat.

“Frostbite can be a hazard, and poor visibility during snowstorms can cause disorientation,” says Kelly Leathers from Vail, Colorado, who lives with Lily, a 10-year-old Newfoundland/Golden Retriever mix. “If you live in a mountainous region, avalanches can be a serious risk. This year there was an avalanche almost every day. Many dog parents choose to put a beacon on their canine companions.”

Even plants in the environment can cause a dog pain and illness. When Sharma worked as a veterinary technician, a young Springer Spaniel, Yukon, was brought into the clinic with thousands of foxtails embedded in his body. The owners wanted the dog euthanized.

“He had them in his ear, his legs, belly, neck, pretty much everywhere,” Sharma says. “I adopted him and then spent nine months removing foxtails and getting him well. Yukon went on to be a therapy dog.”

Challenges and advantages

“We run into a major issue with off-leash, unsocialized dogs,” Shannon says. “There’s a mentality in the country that dogs can just run loose. We can’t even take walks on our road because there are so many loose dogs. I also feel that many rural dogs do not get the same level of socialization and intentional exercise because owners rely on big yards and don’t take the dogs out very often.”

Lisa says that her Dachshund, Trixie, is an excellent mouser, and that if they don’t watch her, the dog will tear up the garden. “She has destroyed a lawn mower trying to get to a mouse nest, torn up sprinklers trying to get to mice, has dug under the deck — basically she’s always in search of mice,” Lisa says.

Rural dogs also find strange things because many are allowed to roam and explore their land.

“My Collie, Emma, brought home an empty tortoise shell,” says Terry Albert, who lives in Poway, California, with four dogs. “Another time she brought home the head of a steer my neighbor had butchered. He had thrown the head into the nearby brush.”

Life as a country dog also has many advantages, and there are advantages for dog lovers as well. Most rural areas allow people to keep many more dogs than they could in a city or the suburbs.

Country Pup Hazards

Embrace Pet Insurance’s data shows that their top five claims for rural dogs are:

✯  Cranial cruciate ligament tear

✯  Allergy

✯  Seizure

✯  Lymphoma

✯  UTI

Embrace concludes that perhaps dogs who have property or larger yards aren’t always leash walked and have access to unrestricted running (leading to cruciate ligament tears), versus city dogs, which tend to be leash-trained.

Other hazards facing rural dogs include:

✯  Ticks and other biting bugs

✯  Skunk (getting sprayed isn’t fatal, but it’s inconvenient)

✯  Porcupine

✯  Venomous snakes

✯  Foxtail grass

✯  Poisonous plants

✯  Predators + other critters: Mountain lions (also known as cougars, bobcats, coyotes, bears, wild boars, deer, moose, elk, hawks, eagles, owls and raccoons

✯  Rabid animals

✯  Cars zipping down country roads

✯  Unfriendly people and dogs

The post Raising a Dog in the Country by Nikki Moustaki appeared first on Dogster. Copying over entire articles infringes on copyright laws. You may not be aware of it, but all of these articles were assigned, contracted and paid for, so they aren't considered public domain. However, we appreciate that you like the article and would love it if you continued sharing just the first paragraph of an article, then linking out to the rest of the piece on Dogster.com.

Poop4U Blog via www.Poop4U.com Nikki Moustaki, Khareem Sudlow

[rose-demica]

Convincing Clint Barton

Hey, this is from the Avengers Fanfiction I started writing in 2013- and still haven’t finished. But I’ve decided to share one shots, and my favourite chapters and things. It’s also shared on A03 here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20243221 if that’s your prefered reading platform

This is from when my main female OC recruits Clint Barton into Sheild, and begins what will become the best years of his life. 

Clint x OFC. Brief mentions of the Black Widow. 

It was small at first, a glimpse of gold in his crosshairs. He saw it every time he took a shot after he went rogue, occasionally when he worked for the military. It became almost like a beacon of hope. He started to look for it. 

Golden eyes haunted him at night, awake he'd call it an angel, his nightmares would call it a demon. 

He started imagining its face, how it would look, only two things ever stayed the same, she was a female, with beautiful bright gold eyes.

He was surprised the first day he truly saw her, long brunette locks with golden highlights rolled in loose ringlets down her back. Light olive-toned skin, suited her perfectly, in his opinion. Hourglass figure barely hidden beneath the figure-hugging clothes she wore. He could tell she was highly muscled and well trained, she had an aura of confidence about her, but she was far too aware. If it were an ordinary mission, she'd be a threat he never saw coming, but this wasn't an ordinary mission, and he always saw better from a distance. He let loose his arrow, hitting his target through the eye and eliciting high pitched screams from his targets female companions. He would never forget the moment she looked at him, raised an eyebrow and mouthed 'that the best you got?' He laughed, taking it as a challenge, to impress the young woman who always seemed to be there.

He also remembered the one time she wasn't. The day he was forced to take a mission he didn't want. The day his target was her. A picture was handed to him, he pretended to study the photo, convincing his employer he didn't know her, before turning the job down. She meant too much to him, a symbol he couldn't end without turning to a place he couldn't ever return from. His employer quickly 'persuaded' him otherwise.

He couldn't track her, no one could. Eyewitnesses would place her at any three random points at one time. So Hawkeye did what he did best, he took another job, and waited for her. Sure enough, she showed up, she always did. Nothing if not predictable. 

"So, is the hit for Tierré, Vaile, or myself?" Clint jumped as she plopped herself down on the roof next to him, barely flinching as he recovered, grabbing a knife and pressing it against her jugular vein. No one ever managed to get the drop on him, not since the circus. No one until her.

"Who?" He asked, dropping his arm and watching as she took a bite out of the apple she was holding.

"The hit. Surely you've realised by now. I'm an identical triplet. Rare, but we exist. You've seen my sisters, got them to fill in a few times. When I was otherwise occupied." She shrugged, taking another bite. Wordlessly he handed her a photo from his back pocket, the figure in the photo looked exactly like her, but they both knew it wasn't. Before taking a moment to memorize the sound of her voice. It was light and musical, almost what he would call bell-like, it fitted in perfectly with the angel he believed her to be.

"Vaile, of course, I should have known. I'll tell her to fake her death and go underground. Can I borrow one of these?" She didn't even wait for a reply, plucking an arrow from his quiver as she stood. Handing him the photo back with a smirk.

"Wait-" He called after her as she started to walk away, he had far too many questions and no answers.

"This isn't the last you'll see of me Archer. I promise you that much." She threw her apple up, and without even looking he fired his bow, knowing he would hit his target. By the time it hit the ground, she was long gone.

A few days later a body appeared in the city, his arrow through her heart. He received payment for both jobs, congratulated for all his hard work. It was the last time he saw her for a few months.

"Thanks." One word made him jump, having enough control to refrain from shooting as he glanced over his shoulder. She was spinning his arrow in hand, before gently easing it back into his full quiver, and sitting beside him. Offering an apple as she took a bite of her own. Hesitantly he accepted, putting his bow down to cradle it. Apples were a rare treat at the circus, and even now he could afford them he was still reluctant to get them often.

"The only problem is, now you're on our radar. I'd recommend laying low, find something less... obvious. I like you, and I'd hate to be sent after you with a kill order." Her voice softened, and something in him begged him to believe her.

"Our?" He couldn't help but ask, wanting to know more about the beautiful woman who wasn't afraid of him.

"I work for the government, well, the government likes to think we work for them. It's a bit more complicated than that. I would explain, but then I'd have to kill you, and I already said I rather like you." She smiled at him, "Oops, there goes my mark. Later Hawk." She bit into the apple, winking at him, before using both hands to vault herself off the roof. He followed her with his gaze, only to see her vanish. The half-eaten apple left in front of his targets window. When he left, there was an arrow through the heart of both.

After that, she became as rare and elusive as his favourite treat. Often the only sign of her was an apple left at his perch, or on the window of his targets house, reminding him. After that, he never felt alone again.

He was startled awake one night, pulling out the gun from under his pillow, pointing it at the silhouette figure. He recognized her golden eyes as she turned to face him.

"Why didn't you do as I asked?" She whispered sadly. If he didn't know better he would say she sounded betrayed.

"The kill order came through this morning. You better run Barton." She continued, realising he wasn't going to say a word, running her hand through her hair as she went to leave. His bed right beside the door, and as she walked past, he reached out and grabbed her. With a gentle tug she was in his lap, and without waiting for her permission, he kissed her. A hand on her back holding her to him. Her hands tangled in his hair as she kissed him back.

They knew one would end up killing the other eventually, but for now, it was just them, no bounty on his head, and she was a regular person, and dammit, they liked each other.

She was gone by morning, he woke alone. With an apple sitting on the bedside table. He took a moment to shower, before packing his bag, and never looking back.

He knew the moment she was close, an apple always appeared at his safe house, he would always be gone within minutes. He almost wondered if she enjoyed the little game.

The next time she caught up with him was different. He awoke in the middle of the night to a loud crunch shooting up, the weapon from under the pillow, in hand, only to recognize the figure lazing on his couch, signature apple in hand.

"You coming to bed or what?" He muttered, dropping his arm and flopping back onto the bed.

"They've pulled the junior agents off your case, and the senior ones that followed. They've given you to Vaile." She spoke, standing and discarding the half-eaten apple. 

"So if you have an ace up your sleeve, now's the time to use it." She crossed to the bed, straddling and pinning him with ease. 

"What if you're my ace?" He whispered, freeing his hands and resting them on her hips. 

"Then you best hope I've got a few more tricks to spare." She smirked at him, knowing he'd be able to see despite the poor lighting. He chuckled, before pulling her body down to his.

"Oh I'm sure you do." He whispered against her skin.

He awoke again with her curled into his side, golden eyes simply watching him.

"You stayed." He murmured sleepily, blue eyes resting on her before they shut again.

"You had a death grip around my waist every time I even thought about moving. Decided it would be easier to stay." She replied softly, attempting to sit up, the arm he had around her tightened involuntarily. As if proving her point.

"Relax Barton. I'm just going to go make breakfast." She whispered, pressing her lips to his temple. He raised an eyebrow, forcing his eyes open to see the blunt honesty on her face.

"Sounds good." He forced himself to let her go. Watching as she picked up his discarded shirt, sliding into it, fingers doing it up with the same ease she had undone it with hours earlier, sashaying towards the motels kitchenette. Teasing him as he watched every movement she made, pulling a bag of food out of the fridge he hadn't realised was there. He watched her as she cooked, humming to herself softly. He recognized the tune, it was a lullaby his mother used to sing to him at night.

"How do you know that song?" He demanded quietly, and she froze, thinking quickly, wondering what to tell him, how he would react. He noticed the emotions she allowed to cross her features, regretting his question, but refusing to back down and take it back. She owed him a few answers.

"My sisters and I, we have abilities beyond that of a normal person. My hearing is abnormal, Tierré demanded tests, figured out no matter how far away Vaile and I got from each other. I could always hear her." She eventually started speaking, reluctantly telling him the truth. 

"When I was younger, there was a woman, I don't know whom, but she would sing it, every night at 1700. Then, one night it just stopped, and I haven't heard it since. Scoured the globe too." She frowned, serving up two plates and carrying them back towards the bed.

"It was my mom. Always said it was a song made just for me." Clint whispered, pulling her down to his side. It was only thanks to years of training that she was able to stop food from spilling everywhere.

"I can't remember the words." She admitted softly, handing him a plate as well as a knife and fork, before settling herself down properly, watching as he looked at the meal before him untrustingly.

"It won't kill you. We both know I've had more than enough chances, and poison is not my style." He watched her as she took a few bites, making sure nothing happened to her, before tucking in himself. 

"Thanks." He offered, as she took his finished plate and headed back to the kitchen dumping them both in the sink. As he watched she started cleaning, tiding up from breakfast, and throwing away his leftovers from the day before.

He was tempted to abandon the bed and go to her side when she abandoned the sink entirely, chewing her lower lip nervously. Not realising how it affected him, he was half out of bed when things changed.

"What do you mean Vaile got injured? She's supposed to be hunting Barton!" She touched her ear as she spoke, startling him slightly. A slight pause before she spoke again.

"You can't put me on this case." She didn't stop the emotion that bleed into her tone. Practically begging the person she was talking to.

"No! You don't understand! I can't do this! It will not end well, not for anyone." A slight pause, waiting for the response. 

"Yes Sir." She pulled her finger from her ear, glancing at him. He carefully tightened his grip on the weapon he had pulled out from under his pillow. Concerned it was her that would be after him, this wasn't the way he'd pictured his death.

"You go underground, you hear? No arrows, normal civilian life. Once I leave you're my target. I'll have no choice. Find yourself a new ace." She pointed at him, watching him closely, waiting for his reaction, crossing the room she straddled his lap. He tugged her closer, his lips claiming hers almost violently. They had precious few hours left together, and they would make the most of it.

This time, he took her advice to heart. Teaming up with another rogue assassin, he abandoned his signature bow. Kept under the radar as much as he could while still earning a living. His new partner didn't understand why they ran every time he saw an apple on the ledge of their targets house. Couldn't comprehend exactly whom was after them. All Clint could remember was the way her highly muscular body felt under his hands, the ease she pinned him with even as he fought her hold. He knew the threat that was after him.

It took two years, he believed she dragged her heels refused to look for him, until she appeared. He had dropped off his new perch, landing in the alleyway in a crouch. She was leaning against one of the walls, tossing an apple up and down.

"Hey." He forced himself to greet, reaching for his weapon, and ignoring primal instincts that him that screamed to pin her to the wall and claim her as his.

"Just Hey?" She turned those stunning golden eyes on him, and he couldn't stop himself. He was at her side in three long strides. Hands on her hips, body crushing hers as his lips claimed hers desperately. He heard her quiet moan as she kissed him back, arms wrapping around him tightly. She missed him too, not that she'd say it.

All too soon she shoved him away violently, trying to catch her breath as he did the same. He watched her closely, noting the various cuts that lined her body, torn clothing where clearly there had been more. She was resting most her weight on her left leg, wincing as she stepped closer.

"Ran into your new pet assassin at the safe house, figured I'd wait for you there. Don't worry, she's still alive, just unconscious." She shrugged tossing him the apple in her hand.

"Never believed the rumours that the famous Black Widow and Hawkeye had teamed up." A casual remark as he took a bite.

"If you're going to kill me, please stop stalling." He cut her off, talking around his mouthful. He wouldn't kill her, and they both knew it, she had ensured that much when she became his symbol of hope and light.

"I figured you needed an ace." She pulled two thick envelopes out of her pockets, looking at them carefully, weighing up her options before she explained its contents.

"These are two brand new identities, one for the Widow, one for yourself. They come on the condition that you both never kill again. You just live out your life normally. There is a house in your name, a considerable fund to keep you going." She held out the envelopes towards him, but he just crossed his arms defiantly.

"We both know that a deck has more than one ace." He pointed out, she had more cards up his sleeve and he knew it. She wasn't the type to go in without several backup plans. He wasn't the type to jump headfirst into things.

"My mission is to kill you, but I think that would be such a waste of talent." A smirk tugged at the corner of her lips, but she smothered it quickly. He raised one eyebrow, letting her know that he'd noticed, appreciating the compliment while he had the chance.

"Could you? Kill me." She looked away from him, gazing at the cobblestone street below her feet, and he had his answer. 

"No, you know I can't. But if I don't have you by tomorrow, they're pulling me off the case. You'll be the first mission I ever fail." She raised her eyes back to his. "I have one other option, I could take you in. You could become one of us." She laid what appeared to be her final card. He knew then she was serious, that she had done everything in her power to save him. She was grasping at straws and he knew it. They couldn't run forever.

"Us?" He questioned, wondering if she would finally tell him exactly whom she worked for. Give him slightly more of a fighting chance should he decide to accept her first officer.

"Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division."  She answered, watching his look of confusion. He'd never even heard a whisper of them before. "We're working on the name. Essentially we're an organisation designed to protect the world from things it's not ready to know yet. You'd be a Field Agent of course, but there are technical analysts, weapons engineers, Pilots, Doctors, Medical and otherwise. All sorts." A shrug, as though she wasn't letting go of one of the best-kept secrets in the world.

"I'm a killer. I can't do anything else, I can't help save the world." He turned down both options with a sentence.

"How many innocent lives would I save if I killed you now?" She asked, keeping her tone soft and light, but he felt the chill down his spine anyway, the words forcing the hair on the back of his neck stand to attention. "Give me the answer I want, and I'll go, figure out a way to distract the top dogs. You'll be free." Clint didn't answer her. 

"Or come with me, kill one to save hundreds. It's much more rewarding." Silently he thought it over in his head, tossing up his options. "Please. Just don't make me kill you." Tears filled her golden eyes and he caved. He crossed to her side tugging her into his arms, simply holding her tightly.

"I'll come with you." He whispered into her hair. "It can't be too bad, the staff are pretty sexy." She laughed against his chest, leaning into him heavily, taking the weight off her injured leg.

"About that, my adoptive father is the Director, so this, whatever we are, Stays behind closed doors. I might not kill you, but they would." He chuckled, agreeing silently.

"Dad? I found him. Totally by accident. I'm bringing him in. We'll meet at the extraction point at dawn. Oh, and bring medical. I think I broke my leg again." He barely realised she raised her hand to her ear, speaking to an unknown third party. 

"You found the Hawk? Did he hurt you?" A male voice responded instantly. Clint wondered if he was supposed to overhear the reply.

"No, he didn't, bodyguard threw me off a roof, screwed up the landing. The Hawk did exactly what I said he would. I told father not to put me on this case, that I couldn't kill him. He can deal with the backlash. See you tomorrow dad." She terminated the transmission before the older man could reply.

"What did you want to do with your last night of freedom?" She asked quietly, her voice muffled by his chest as she buried her face.

"I can think of a few things." He chuckled, before lifting her bridal style, careful not to jostle her right leg too much, trying to ignore the hiss of pain that alerted him to his failure.

"But first, let's see to that leg." He started walking, forcing his gait to be smooth and gentle. She wrapped her arms around his neck, nuzzling her face into the small space she'd created. Clint couldn't help but smile, she trusted him.

He took them back to the safe house, looking at the semi-conscious form of the Black Widow on the floor, the mess surrounding her. Green eyes flicked up towards him, and she scrambled backwards realising who he was holding.

"Not much further." He whispered to the woman in his arms, walking through the mess and laying her down on the bed he'd claimed as his own.

"You still got that vodka?" She winced at the movement, trying not to show how much it hurt her. While proving she'd seen his few belongings.

"Nat." He glanced over his shoulder at the redhead, asking her to grab it for him.

"Relax Widow, you're not my target." A dark chuckle that quickly turned into a cry of pain.

"Didn't stop you." The woman he'd called 'Nat' spat back. 

"It did. You would be dead if you were her target. Now get the damn drink so I can set these bones!" Clint growled, stopping the argument before it could spiral any further out of control. Shocked, she did as she was asked, pulling a bottle of vodka out of the cupboard and cautiously walking near. Clint took the bottle, ripping out the top, and passing it to her.

"Not the medical care you're used to." He started to apologise, but she cut him off.

"I've had worse on less." Golden eyes flicked to the Black Widow. "Go, you have until dawn before my people arrive." Natalia had already started moving before she finished speaking. "And Widow? As far as I'm concerned, this never happened. I have no clue what you look like. Don't give me a reason to change it." The deadly assassin nodded once, pausing in the doorway to glance back at the man she'd been working with.

"I promised I'd join her side. I'm tired of all of this Nat. Not to mention it's better than a bullet." He pleaded with her to understand, that he wasn't picking one woman over the other, yet all he got was a nod as she vanished out the door. He wondered briefly if he’d ever see her again, but something told him that he would. 

As dawn reached up to caress the sky, the two assassins woke tangled up with each other. In silence, she cooked breakfast, as he packed all he owned into a single duffle bag. He felt his eyes on her as he tore apart the roof, and brought down the bag containing his bow, quiver, and arrows. Gently putting it aside to accept the plate of food offered to him. 

“Last meal as a free man Barton. Then you’re officially government property.” She teased, he paused for a second, before frowning, he had finally got his freedom, from his father, the circus, any person who thought they could command him. He was giving it all up. “Hey, hey.” Suddenly she was kneeling in front of him, her hand on his cheek, piercing golden eyes meeting his.

“Deep breath and I’ll explain what’s going to happen.” He gasped for air, taking a moment to calm himself. “I brought you in, so they’ll make you my responsibility. You’ll have to talk to some psychiatrists, they’ll want to be sure that they can trust you before they arm you. They know what you can do, but they’ll put you through a bunch of tests anyway. You have to repeat all of them any time you get back from a mission, just because they like keeping an eye on us field agents.” Golden eyes rolled as she spoke, making him laugh. Clearly, she was not a fan of the procedure.

“Then I presume you’ll be confined to base for a bit, full access to training rooms, but no active missions. Then you’ll be assigned a handler, and you’ll be back in the field. I’ll make sure you can retire whenever you want, full benefits. They’ll probably argue for a minimum amount of time served first.” It sounded like she only knew half of what was going to happen when he surrendered himself. 

“Presume? Probably?” She looked away for a second, before looking back.

“To be honest, no one’s ever recruited their mark before. They’re kinda making this up as they go along. I can hear what Papa and the council are arguing about, so I have half their plan.” She moved her hand to run through his hair. “No matter what, I will fight for you okay? I’m bringing you in, you’re my responsibility, and they can rip that from my cold dead hands.” She smirked, giving him some semblance of confidence.

“And it’ll be over my father’s, and sisters dead bodies that they do that. You’ll be just fine Clint, I promise you. I’m your ace remember?” She dropped her hands to his and squeezed them gently. 

“You’re my angel.” Clint lifted a hand to his lips and kissed it. 

“I don’t know if I’d go that far. Eat up Archer boy, we’re already late for our ride. Dad’s getting antsy.” She moved up to give him a long kiss. Clint watched as she turned, a finger to her ear so she could speak to someone else. 

He finished eating, before shouldering his duffle bags, and taking her hand in his. Allowing her to lead him into a whole new way of life. 

And he didn’t even know her name.

[insert-witty-comment]

[Season 1 #spoilers ahead]​When searching for Will at the beginning of Season 1, we see the search party find torn fabric from Eleven’s (Ele’s) hospital gown on the drain pipe near the lab and distortion on the video footage of the security camera leading us to believe that the government edited/faked the security tape and Ele escaped the facility through the pipe. THIS IS NEARLY IMPOSSIBLE.Let me explain why and why it is important.I discovered this a few months ago I was making a fan edit in which I compiled all of the facility footage of Eleven’s flashbacks into a single video. At the time of “the incident” in which Ele escaped, Ele was locked securely in the hibernation tank which was mechanically locked from the outside.Now, I can’t say with 100% certainty that she didn’t use her telekinetic powers to open the tank and escape on foot, but considering the scene, this is very unlikely. Here is why:​Given the chaos of the rupture and the release of the Demogorgon, security would have definitely made securing “The Asset” a number one priority if she had been running around. The reason we don’t see this is that since Ele is presumed to be still in the tank (which is locked with the window covered), security presumed that Ele was still safely inside the tank and staying there was the best place for her, making other tasks a priority, such as securing higher ranking government officials who were present on the lower catwalk. They most likely didn’t even realize she was missing until after the Demogorgon had left the room when they when to rescue her from the tank.The nature of the rift shows us what happened. In all other instances of crossing the vail into the upside-down, travel occurs by opening a portal in a wall, tree, or some other vertical object, leaving very little notice in the physical world unless you are taking notice and it heals itself almost immediately.​However, when the rift is opened, it splits from the middle of the rift out across the surfaces of the room. This is because unlike a normal opening of the vail, Ele this time instead teleported. Being suspended in mid-air (or water) in the center of the room and being panicked by the Demogorgon, she acted unintentionally with her only thought of going to a safe space, using a power she not only didn’t know she had but also had no way to control.You might now think this is where she escaped the facility, but no. Because if she did, she wouldn’t be wearing the hospital gown, but the submersion suit. The only “safe place” she knows is her room (the larger cell). On the bottom shelves of her room we see what looks like some towels and are probably extra clothes as well, or new clothes laid out on the bed for when she comes back from the tank.She most likely teleported back to her room, dried and changed herself. Then realizing she could teleport, tried to do it again and failed from exhaustion. She was however, likely to open up a normal portal in the vail and traveled through that, escaping to Mirkwood Forest.​Now, I imagine it is mostly believed that the Demogorgon traveled through the rift into the lab, but I think this is also incorrect. In the footage of "the incident", we can hear the Demogorgon in the room and see people scrambling about before the rift opens up and the cracks form in the wall. I think that Ele accidentally teleported the Demogorgon into the lab when she teleported out.The Demogorgon confused at suddenly being in an alien world went nuts, attacking everything in sight. The Demogorgon being intelligent and finally realizing what was going on, began to hunt Eleven, knowing that she was a threat. Eventually he tracked down the trail of Eleven, discovering the tears in the vail Ele created, and using those to track her and escape the facility.Here is why it is important!Ele, now in Mirkwood and being chased by the Demogorgon, rips her gown and creates several other portals in trees and eventually in Wills house. The Demogorgon cannot create its own portals in the vail, it can only use the one’s created by Eleven.Will, traveling home from DnD, thinks the Demogorgon is chasing him, but it’s not! It’s chasing Eleven! But will doesn’t know this. When he thinks that he running away from the Demogorgon, he is actually moving in parallel to the Demogorgon/Ele chase through Mirkwood, as they pop in and out from the upside-down.Eventually Will catches up to the chase, getting in between Ele and the Demogorgon in the shed. The Demogorgon, being newly familiar with humans, sees Will, thinking “Small One”, and grabs Will mistaking him for Eleven, (or Will ran through a tear in the vail himself trying to escape the Demogorgon). Thinking it succeeded in it's chase, the Demogorgon returns to the upside-down and gives up his pursuit of Ele.​So, when Ele later tells Mike that it is her fault that Will was in the upside down, she doesn’t mean that it is because she opened up the rip between worlds, but more literally because she led the Demogorgon to Will and allowed him to be captured, facilitating her own escape. This is why she is so extremely racked with guilt.As she continues her independent adventures outside the facility with the gang, she increases her human empathy as well as the strength of her powers. It is with this emotional connection that she is finally able to successfully use her teleportation powers again (on purpose this time) to teleport the Demogorgon back to the upside-down. She doesn’t kill the Demogorgon, but asserts her dominance over it, which is why that particular instance of the Demogorgon no longer tried to cross over into the normal world again.This also makes Hawkins Middle School a secondary hotspot of cross-world activity, thus attracting the Shadow Monster/Mind Flayer, which seems to have a psychic connection with the Demogorgons, or Demogorgi if you prefer.​So what do you think? Do I got something here? Has this come up before? Let me know in the comments! Thanks! via /r/StrangerThings

[lynda-in-muenchen]

Hallo zusammen!

I’m getting settled after Patrick’s and my bike tour (from Münich to Venice), so I thought I’d post a few photos from our trip.

Here we are getting started on our journey with an airy bridge over the Isar River in Münich. There was a heat wave when we started, and EVERYONE in the city was down at the river trying to stay cool, some by (ahem) eschewing any sort of bathing costume.... Those little blobs on the gridwire are locks; the Pont Neuf tradition seems to have spread from Paris.

The Münich-to-Venice bike route is mostly reclaimed train railbeds, and so you spend a lot of time riding either gently uphill or downhill through forests. 

That forest picture is a bit misleading, though; it was NOT cool. It was probably 88F with about 75% humidity as all of Europe was in a heat wave. We stopped as often as we could for shade, cold radlers (beer/lemonade mixes) and eisschokolade, pictured here with its very happy consumer.

So, you can imagine how happy we were to arrive at our first night’s destination: Tegernsee, a beautiful town and lake about 40 miles south of Münich. We jumped in the lake about 5 minutes after pulling up on our bike. This was the view from our room at the Seehotel Luitpold, a nice lakeside establishment with good food (especially the in-season pfefferlingen mushrooms and saibling [lake trout]) and friendly staff. No air conditioning--very few hotels in the mountains have it--but we were up on the top floor and caught a nice breeze off the lake. Also highly recommended: the Tegernseer Bräustüberl, which had the best pretzels we’ve had and good Augustiner beer.

I don’t pretend to have a deep understanding of Bayerischer culture, but it’s clear they’re extraordinarily proud of their heritage, as evidenced by this guy, who is rocking lederhosen on an average Thursday, keeps his centuries-old landhaus immaculate down to its overflowing windowboxes, and maintains not only a giant Bayerischer maypole out front, but also this antique wayfarer’s drinking fountain with St. Christopher on top (patron saint of travelers). Everyone we met in Bayern was really friendly.

I wish we had gotten a picture of the Bayerischer in his full beard and feathered cap who was diligently emptying into his little cart the trash in the bins along the trail along the Weißach river. The trail is lovingly maintained by locals and features frequent benches and picnic tables like these, which are designed (we think) to be usable in the winter by Nordic skiiers as well as by bikers and hikers in the summers.

Border control between Germany and Austria on the bike route.... I can attest it’s a lot more intense on the train coming back through. Even though they’re very polite, Austrian police are still intimidating with their dour expressions and dark uniforms with the double-headed Austrian eagle screaming from the shoulder.

I spent a lot of time in hedges on the trailside trying to find ripe raspberries and blackberries. These were some of the better ones, just outside Achenkirch.

Tirol (the Alps between Germany and Italy, roughly) comes across to the outsider as devoutly Catholic. Everywhere along our route--which followed train routes, which in turn followed ancient trading routes for salt and other commodities--there were beautifully maintained shrines to saints, apostles, and the Holy Family. A few were as large as this one at Achenkirch, but most were much smaller, some the size of mailboxes, and no two were exactly alike.

Achensee is a stunning lake. We took advantage of a nice tailwind here and watched kitesurfers plying their craft out on the water.

Our second night was in Stans in Austria, at the foot of the famous Wolfsklamm (Wolf’s gorge). Catwalks thread past a series of waterfalls, pale and milky with glacial runoff, to the ethereal Georgenberg monastery high on a cliff above the gorge.

It was still REALLY hot. So, after a ridiculously steep climb out of Innsbruck to the town of Vills, I was pretty excited to see another Tirolean water fountain.

Though I initially questioned our sanity in riding Brenner Pass from Innsbruck instead of taking the train for that leg, it ended up being one of my favorite days of the tour because as we contoured (ever upward) along the Alpine foothills of the Ellbögen, we got to see a real slice of Tirolean life--shops with goatskins and horns spilling out the front door, farmhouses perched on impossible slopes, young people bolting out of cars reverberating with techno to buy cigarettes at corner stores, silver-haired ladies in crown braids hanging laundry, and farmers raking grass for bailing. You would not believe how steep this slope was that this farmer drove his bailer down (that’s his wife in the background raking the grass into neat rows for the bailer). We wondered why they were working so frantically to get the hay baled...and hey, wasn’t it getting a bit darker overhead?....

This photo is from a day later, basically the next time we could get the camera out again as a series of epic thunderstorms washed away the heatwave across the Alps. We weren’t ever in danger, but boy were we wet.... We wouldn’t appreciate the full impact of the storms until a few days later. In the meantime, we crossed from Austria into Italy, whizzed by a goatherd sheltering from the rain in an old train platform with his goats, warmed up very gratefully in the sauna at the fabulous Steindl Boutique Hotel in Sterzing/Vipiteno, had a great dinner at Vincenz, saw folks dressed in traditional trachten for the Firefighter festivals in several villages, ate our first pizza of the trip (but by no means our last) in Franzensfeste/Fortezza, and caught this picture of Ehrenburg Castle coming out of the stormclouds.

We spent two nights in Bruneck/Brunico, a Southern Tyrolean town that is the jumping-off point for a lot of adventure sports. It’s also the location of two sites of the Messner Mountain Museum, Ripa in Castle Bruneck, which has the theme of People, and Corones (above), which has the theme of Walls. We rode the tram to the top of the Cronplatz to visit Corones and were blown away by our first views of the Dolomites. We loved Bruneck and would definitely come back for mountain biking, climbing, and eating/drinking at Rienzbräu and Gänseliesl. Südtirol is in Italy but is nearly 70% German-speaking; that gives you a hint that things have been...tense in times past. From what I could pick up, the Italians think the Tiroleans are get more resources than they deserve to help preserve their culture, and the Tiroleans are resentful of Italian incursion into their ancestral “heimat.” But both groups seem to agree that pizza is awesome.

It was a bit of a detour from our route to Cortina d’Ampezzo, but I had to see this Venetian Sawmill in Oberolang designed by Leonardo da Vinci. There were once 60 of these water-powered sawmills in the Olang valley, and this one was still running in the 1950s. It’s recently been restored using the original joinery and techniques.

Wow, fabulous, right? We were getting ready to head down that valley from Toblach, conquer our last pass and coast down to Cortina, when....

Washout! Several, actually, the result of landslides from the torrential rains a few days before. A chic engineer in yellow chiffon and pearls shouted over the bullodozers pushing cow-sized rocks off the road behind her to suggest we try the “little path” on the other side of Toblach lake. And so Patrick was able to realize his dream of mountain-biking on a tandem. Fortunately, it only lasted for a few miles before we were able to rejoin our regularly scheduled path and reward ourselves with blueberries and cream at the top of the pass at Cimabanche. I should mention here that a tandem bicycle is a great personality test. We ran into (not literally) many people who had never seen one before. First, their jaws would hang open, and then one of two things would happen: (a) their whole face would light up like a kid’s, or (b) they would look apprehensive, as if they weren’t entirely sure a tandem bicycle didn’t pose some kind of existential threat. You can tell a lot about how people see the world from a spontaneous response like that.

This is Cortina d’Ampezzo, the Aspen (or Vail, if you prefer) of the Italian Alps. It’s something else. I did not know, for instance, that they made lederhosen in Daisy-Duke-length, nor that sleek young mothers would sport them without a whiff of irony while pushing strollers past the windows of Céline and Louis Vuitton boutique. But I learn something new every day. It was impossible to be grouchy about any of it; everyone was so beautiful and so happy. I would dare you not to smile at the children that ran in semi-feral packs around the piazza every evening while their parents sipped aperol spritzes. Next time, though, we’d skip the circus for some smaller villages down the path like San Vito or Valles di Cadore.

I want to live in this house. Can you see the dog begging for breakfast on the front stoop? I mean, come on, now.

I would also live here, in Asolo. Backing up a bit: We coasted down from Cortina to Conegliano and had an unforgettable dinner at A Casa de Giorgio, thanks to a recommendation from our concierge at the outstanding (I’m not kidding) Best Western Canon d’Oro. Conegliano is the epicenter of the prosecco-making region, and they’re dedicated: you know that when a bottle of prosecco shows up next to the coffee and juice in your breakfast buffet. This is where we learned about our favorite Bike Touring Energy Supplement (aside from a pretzel and a radler): prosecco and potato chips. They just bring the chips to you if you order a prosecco. Best thing ever. At Osteria Ultima Spiaggia in Nervesa della Battaglia, we got two glasses of great prosecco, a bowl of potato chips, and four little bruschette for 5€; the cheapest heaven imaginable on a muggy morning. But on to Asolo: It sits on the last of a little sawtoothed series of hills called the Colli Asolani. It has not one but two castles, one of them belonging to the Cyprian queen Caterina Cornaro, (who is giving a LOT of side-eye in her portrait by Titian on this Wikipedia page, but you’ll see when you read the page that she had ample reasons). Robert Browning bought a villa in Asolo on the Via Canova the year Elizabeth Barrett Browning died. It’s been turned into a hotel, so you, too, can console yourself gazing out from the garden at the Villa degli Armeni with its neoclassical frame of Italian cypress and its undulating foothills dotted with grazing sheep.

I fell in love with the work of the modernist architect Carlo Scarpa on this trip. Patrick discovered that we were going to be close to his most famous work, the Tomba Brion, and so that’s why we detoured from the Münich-to-Venice path to visit Asolo and the tomb (where these pics were taken). We also bumped into several of his works in Venice, where he grew up. I highly recommend checking out this NYTimes piece on him.

We made it! After 10 days (8 riding days) we rolled into Venice on a sticky Saturday afternoon. We’d been amply warned to stay away from the city in August--that’s when it’s both hottest and most crowded with tourists. But we managed to have a great time, thanks mostly to staying out of the way in an Airbnb in Santa Croce (with air conditioning!) and avoiding the most touristy stuff. A highlight was a baccaro (stand-up appetizer-and-drinks bar) crawl in Castello including cichetti at Baccarando della Calle d’Ourso and gelato at Uso; another was amazing seafood and gypsy jazz at Il Paradiso Perduto in Cannaregio. I love Venice. It stubbornly frustrates any attempt to understand it as a whole, and since that’s exactly the problem I’m working on with climate-change images right now (which picture climate as a whole but disable local people and governments from taking effective action), I found this visit very intellectually stimulating--particularly just having seen Scarpa’s work, which similarly resists comprehension and encourages dwelling. It’s no accident he grew up in Venice.

The Biennale was in town, and we saw some amazing exhibitions by Tehching Hsieh and Stephen Chambers. We also saw the one above, The Wreck of the Unbelievable by Damien Hirst, and it was a split decision. It’s monumental, spanning two of François Pinault’s villas, and it took 10 years to make, so that’s a lot of hype right there. Patrick hated it, finding it pretentious and derivative. Since it’s satirical, I gave it a little more credit for launching a critique of class and consumerism in the art-collection world. But we both felt like this lady in the picture, who’s thinking, “How did they get a three-storey headless faux-bronze demon in here, and what am I supposed to get out of it?”

OK, last one. We finished our trip in Verona because of complicated train shenanigans. This is the Giardino Giusti, which was on every Grand Tour checklist from the 17th to the 19th centuries: English diarist John Evelyn loved the parterres, and Goethe had a favorite cypress. The monstrous face in the belvedere, on which we’re standing, used to belch fire and smoke “to the amazement and dismay of visitors.” It was scorching in Verona, so we didn’t spend too much time exploring, and we skipped all the Romeo & Juliet stuff, but we did picnic by the Roman arena, which was built in AD 30 and could seat all 40,000 citizens.

I promise I’ll post some actual pictures of Münich next time :)

[moviefixes]

The Mummy Review & Fix

Let me rant at you for a couple of minutes.

I went to see The Mummy last night.  I’d been warned that it was a horror film as opposed to the 1999 adventure film.  But, hey, I like horror.

Warning: Tom Cruise is just bizarre looking. There’s a scene where he’s PG-13 naked in the morgue, and it looks like his head has been poorly photoshopped onto the body of a bodice-ripper cover model.

One thing the movie (almost) got right: Set is the evil god instead of Anubis (if you want a decent portrayal of Anubis look to Mr. Jacquel from American Gods). However, Set is not the god of death--he’s the god of disorder, violence, the red desert.  

That out of the way, let’s talk what sucked and how I’d re-write it. So many spoilers under the cut.

Our “hero” (Tom Cruise’s character) is Nick Morton.  He’s supposed to be advanced recon for the US Army in Iraq, but he’s mainly a thief who spends his time in the desert looking for ancient artifacts to loot instead of insurgents.  His military commander, Greenway, thinks he’s a thieving ass.  He’s not wrong.  The only one who Nick seems give a shit about (besides himself) is his partner-in-crime, Chris Vail.

(The movie can’t seem to make up its mind if Vail is a corporal or a sergeant, so I’m going to refer to him as “Vail”, especially since I didn’t know he had a first name until I looked on IMDB.)  

Their opening scene where they fail to sneak into a ruined village filled with insurgents to grab some gold is one of the best parts of the movie.  They bicker like an old married couple as they get shot at and have a building blasted out from under them.  Vail calls in an airstrike against Nick’s wishes...which reveals a giant pit with a creepy ass Egyptian statue.

At this point, Greenway shows up to chew them out for their many transgressions.  He also brings Jenny Halsey, a beautiful blonde archaeologist with whom Nick had a one-night stand in Baghdad.  She’s not ashamed that she had a hook up, but she loathes him since he stole a map from her that led him here in search of treasure.  Greenway orders Nick and Vail into the hole with her.  Instead of finding a tomb full of artifacts to outfit the occupant in the afterlife, the tomb is designed to contain an evil spirit for eternity.  There’s a LOT of mercury, which Wikipedia is telling me wasn’t uncommon in Egyptian tombs, though maybe not in these quantities.  Because Nick is a dick, he shoots one of the ropes keeping the sarcophagus suspended in the pool of mercury, causing it to be lifted out. To quote Ardeth Bey: “You have started a chain reaction that could bring about the next apocalypse!”  Because the sarcophagus contains Ahmanet, a New Kingdom Egyptian princess who was mummified and buried alive after going on a murder spree and then trying to bring Set into the mortal world in the body of her “Chosen”.  Nick then becomes her new Chosen.

Like The Mummy (1999) and The Mummy Returns, there are multiple swarms of creepy crawlies.  At one point, Nick is completely overwhelmed by rats.  Unfortunately, they do not eat him.  When they are still in the tomb, there’s a swarm of giant spiders.  I was practically bouncing in my seat going “please be camel spiders...please be camel spiders”.  And they were!  However, one bites Vail and injects him with venom that allows Ahmanet to take control of him. *rolls eyes* Camel spiders do not have venom.

They take the  sarcophagus and flee ahead of a giant sandstorm on what I’m pretty sure is a C-130 (my heavy-lift aircraft obsession, let me show you it).  Ahmanet crashes it over England because Crusaders brought her evil knife back with them to the UK and hid it.  Ok, Mummy, you do you.  In the crashing, Nick manages to save Jenny by getting her into what turns out to be the only parachute and shoving her out the giant hole in the side of the plane.  

He dies, Ahmanet resurrects him, and we have the naked scene in the morgue, which we could have all done without.  

One of the great strengths of the 1999 Mummy was Rick and Evie’s romance. It is one of the few OTPs I have because it is that good.  And it makes sense.  Yes, they don’t get off to a great start (see: the prison scene), but you watch them first realize “oh, shit, he’s hot” / “wow, I don’t think I’m going to trade her for a camel after all”.  

They have several conversations over the course of the film where they get to know each other: on the boat where’s he’s cleaning his weapons, in Hamunaptra where she gives her famous drunken “I am a librarian!” speech.  This isn’t love at first sight; this is love that grows.  And when we see them 10 years later in The Mummy Returns and they are still fucking in love, it makes sense because the kind of relationship they developed in the first movie is sustainable.  It's not stress-fueled passion.

In contrast, Nick and Jenny start out antagonistically--he stole from her--and their bickering never seems to come across as flirting. She’s constantly, rightfully, calling him out as a garbage human being until suddenly, she’s not.   When she tries to convince Nick that he’s a good man based on the evidence of giving her the last parachute, he straight up tells her that he thought there was another one.  And maybe it was supposed to be him trying to protect his fragile feelings...

...but the way Cruise says it makes me think he’s sincere.

It turns out that Jenny works for a secret organization, the Prodigium, whose mission is to stamp out supernatural threats.  It’s headed by Dr. Jekyll. (I did not realize that this film is the start of a grim!dark League of Extraordinary Gentlemen series), who wants to stop Ahmanet’s plan to release Set by killing the Chosen One, i.e. Nick.  There is talk of dissection. Because Jenny is not an awful human being, this bothers her, and she sets about trying to rescue Nick from her Prodigium buddies.

This is where we get the Easter egg that confirms that, unfortunately, this is supposed to be a sequel to the 1999 Mummy when Jenny uses the gold Book of Amun-Ra to smack Malik around during her rescue attempt.

And somewhere in here, Nick and Jenny decide that they are in love and spend the rest of the movie running from one danger to another, screaming each others' names. At the very end, Nick risks destroying the world to stab himself in the chest to possibly be able to resurrect Jenny.  Because this movie doesn't even attempt to do its homework, the romance is nonsensical.  

Normally, I would recommend dropping the romance altogether.  It worked well for the first Avengers movie ("There's no time for romance. We've got shit to avenge!") and Power Rangers, but Nick needs something to make him give a shit about anything other than himself.  I mean, at the beginning of the movie, he's running around Iraq stealing stuff.  He's not motivated by patriotism or wanting to protect innocent people from insurgents.  The movie doesn't even show him saving a kid or petting a dog as a trite way to reveal that, hey, maybe he's a good man under that greed.  Instead, we get nothing to make us think he's a person who would sacrifice himself to save the world.  He can't even quite pull off “BECAUSE I'M ONE OF THE IDIOTS WHO LIVES IN IT!” since what Ahmanet is initially offering is wealth and sex, two things he's shown serious interest in.  Being possessed by Set, yes, is a turn-off, but I think he'd be more likely to try and save his skin by fleeing from her and the Prodigium than stay and fight.

In fact, the only thing he is shown to care about other than treasure and himself, is Vail.  Their banter is the only that comes close to the banter in the 1999 Mummy and The Mummy Returns.  On the plane, when Vail is possessed by Ahmanet and starts stabbing people, Nick steps in between him and the soldiers and grabs a soldier's sidearm right out of his hands to hold them off.  When Nick shoots Vail the first time, it doesn't look like he actually intended to pull the trigger.  Instead of holding the gun in front of him, he has it up by his ear and sort of sideways.  When Vail keeps advancing, Nick is still trying to get him to stand down.  He doesn't look any more in control with the second shot, and "the third one was unnecessary. You freaked me out; I panicked".  The movie ends with Nick abandoning Jenny in the tunnels and then going to resurrect Vail and ride off into the desert with him, seeking adventure.

So I propose, what if the archeologist who comes to the tomb is a goofy little dude who is bitten by the camel spider (grrrr) and is possessed and starts stabbing people on the plane and then dies?  What if it's Vail who manages to get hold of the parachute and put it on before realizing there's not another one?  And he and Nick are screaming at each other--Vail isn't going to go until Nick finds a way out and Nick isn't going to let them both die, so he pulls the ripcord on the parachute and Vail gets sucked out and survives.

Then Jenny shows up in the morgue as a secretive agent of an unknown, possibly government group (the Prodigium), but before she can whisk him away to Jekyll's secret lair under the Natural History Museum (formerly the British Museum...hi, Return of the Mummy reference), Vail sneaks Nick out to the pub.  Nick is hallucinating rat swarms and Ahmanet, and Vail drags him into the bathroom, and they're yelling at each other about mercury poisoning and Jenny's hot but can they trust her?  At some point, a group of women try to come in, and they realize they're in the ladies' room.

(Jenny in the secret agent role would probably result in her being recast or Annabelle Wallis having to dye her hair brown because Hollywood is weird like that.)

When Ahmanet lures Nick to the church where evil knife was hidden by the Crusaders, Vail follows. "What the hell are we doing, man?"  Jenny reappears when they flip the ambulance as the leader of the Prodigium crew who capture Ahmanet.  Nick and Vail have the conversation about the last parachute, but when Nick says he thought there was another one, Vail just snorts.  "You just keep telling yourself that, Morton."

Vail is 110% against Jekyll's plan to summon Set and then kill him when the god is in Nick's body.  When Nick accidentally frees Mr. Hyde and the Prodigium security guards drag Vail out of the room, he runs around and ends up fighting Malik and throwing himself against the Hyde-proof glass.  The two men make a break for it while Ahmanet escapes.  Jenny leads them into the subway tunnels, trying to herd Nick towards Ahmanet and the completed dagger in order to enact Jekyll's plan.  They all get separated, Ahmanet drowns Vail, and, after attempting CPR, Nick brings forth Set to try and save Vail, yadda, yadda, yadda.

The movie ends with Jekyll and Jenny discussing what Nick's fate will be now that he's fused with Set, and then Nick and Vail ride off into the desert.  Exactly like the film as it stands.

Ta-da!  Follows the same plot of the movie, but with motivations that make sense!

The only thing I added was a disposable archaeologist in the first act.