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supernaturallyobsessedchic · 4 years ago

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7 Days to Die - Part 7

Survive

Pairing: Jensen x Reader, Danneel x Reader (Jenneel)

Warnings: Angst, fluff, implied smut, body parts exploded mentioned (SPN level gore, I don’t go into grave detail), scary situations.

Word Count: 1,752

Summary: After finding their way home, now it’s all a matter of survival. And the reader is going to teach what it really means to survive to the surrounding camps when the horde of all hordes makes its way to their camp.

a/n: This is the final part of this series, hope you guys enjoyed, happy halloween!

Main Masterlist

7 Days to Die Masterlist

Mobile Masterlist

It was for once, a normal day. The family heading to the Mass Hall to grab some Breakfast, the kids in school and preschool for the Twins. The couple having a day in.

Y/N finally woke up, having slept through the morning getting much needed rest. She walked out of the bedroom, in a shirt and underwear. Seeing her favorite people outside, enjoying the day. She heads back to the room to grab her some pants to put on, to look decent when she headed outside to join them.

“There’s our girl.” Jensen says, as she exited the cabin and walks over to them. Taking a spot in between them.

“Sleep well?” Danneel asked, hugging Y/N’s waist. Y/N wrapping around Danneel letting her sink into her side. She hums.

“Sure did.” She says with a content smile.

“When do you go on duty?” Y/N asks Jensen.

“Here in a few, just wanted to enjoy my time with my girls.” He says. Wrapping an arm around Y/N’s shoulders, bringing her to his side.

“Boss!” they heard.

“No Benny, too soon.” Jensen whined.

“Raiders, closing in.” He says. Jensen didn’t hesitate, he jumped to action.

“Baby, get the kids.” Jensen says.

“Jay Bird, Ro, Zep!” Danneel called out getting up.

“What do you want me to do?” Y/N asked.

“Follow Dee, they’re heading to a safe house we have, wait for us there.” Jensen ordered. Y/N nods.

“Baby come on.” Danneel pleads grabbing Y/N’s hand. Y/N follows.

They heard the battle breaking out, some shots getting too close to home.

“God please be okay.” Danneel prays.

“Hey, look at this!” a raspy voice was heard on the other side.

Silent, quiet, hushed gasps were strangled as the people of the camp tried to keep their cool.

Y/N shoved the group back as far back as the building would allow, the building is roughly that of a small warehouse, but no upper or lower levels. And the main entrance was being messed with as the raiders attempted to enter the safe house.

Y/N readied herself for anything. For what she’s been through, she’s not ready for a group of raiders to take this away from her.

The door burst open, she lunged forward, tackling the male raider to the ground, taking his pistol from his holster. Roundhouse kicking the nearby female raider before she could take a shot at Y/N, earning a grunt and yell from the raider.

Y/N rises, gun in hand and ready to shoot. Gunning down the two raiders, looting their bodies for weapons she could use and hurries back to the safe house, shutting the door as best as she could.

She stays by the door, gun ready to shoot any raider who enters.

“Look boss.” She heard Benny on the other side.

“Who did this?” Jensen asked.

Y/N opens the door to them. “I did it.” Y/N says. “They got in, and I fought them.” She says. As she did she turns on the safety on the gun stuffing it in her waistband at her back.

Jensen, a look of worry and concern flashed across his face as he brought her in a hug.

“At least you’re okay that’s all that matters.” He said, as he pulled out. Then looks to the scared women and children. “It’s safe to come back.” He says. And leads the rest of the camp back.

“They just keep growing, the walkers outnumber the humans ten to one.” Osric says. Osric is best known for his role as Kevin Tran in Supernatural. Most of camp calls him Kevin or Kev.

“If there were a way to unite these camps I’m sure we could stand a chance.” Y/N says.

“Yeah, they’re more focused on themselves only. And even if they did band together, they’ll want something in return.” Jensen says.

“Then have a trade system. Open up trading, we need to start rebuilding, not continue to isolate ourselves from humanity.” Y/N says.

“I’m sorry babe, it’s not happening.” Jensen argues.

Y/N pouts, but also has that face she makes when she’s thinking hard and long. She walks back to the cabin while thinking.

A thought blipped in her mind. She’ll go herself.

What he won’t know won’t hurt him. She thought.

She packed up some clothes, even a white sheet.

She was always good at weaseling her way out of things. She was quite the escape artist. She wasn’t worried or scared for what she was about to do.

She trekked to the nearby camp that had a scrimmage that took Jensen out for a week.

She approached cautiously, wearing the white sheet as a cape holding the corners in her hands as she held her hands up defensively.

The camp leader coming out. Revealing to be Mark Sheppard.

“So this is where you’ve been.” She says.

“Aye, what do you want.” He says harshly.

“Unite with us, a massive horde is making its way up here. Us alone can’t seem to do it, but if we unite as one, we could win.” She says.

“Yeah, and what are the chances of being stabbed in the back?” He asked.

“Mark, we have to rebuild as a community sooner or later, the kids need that. A stable community where they can feel safe, and not worry about a shootout again. You have to put in an effort. And not be scared all the time.” She argues, almost as if she were fed up with the stupid shit going on between the two camps. Between multiple camps across Vancouver.

Mark pauses, thinking for a moment.

“And if you don’t side with us, if no one sides with us, you don’t even have a chance against this horde alone.” She adds.

“Okay, we’ll set up some forces. The horde will not get close.” He says.

“Thank you. We’ll work on a trading system that can benefit everyone.” She says.

“Yeah, same here. Like you said, we could become a community.” He says. She nods.

“See you later then.” She says, turning away to leave with a wave.

“See you darlin’.” He says waving her off.

She visited more and more camps in the surrounding area, giving them a same argument. And they all agreed. The next generations to come need a stable community to grow and feel safe. And all agree to come to an agreement, and work towards a working trading system.

Word of the unity spread like wildfire. And when she returned back to camp, she noticed new faces coming and going. Including Mark.

She saw Jensen in the crowd, and he didn’t look too happy, and motioned her to follow him into the security cabin. He shut the door behind them as they entered. Letting her in first.

“At least I united them.” She says.

“I’ll give you that, but what’s to say they won’t stab us in the back?” he says. “How long will they keep up the good neighbors card?” he asks.

“Jensen, you can’t live in constant fear. ‘sides, you have to try before you can make that judgement.” Y/N argues.

“I don’t like it.” he says.

“Then try to survive the horde.” She argues.

His face softens.

“We have the numbers now. And other camps are getting the picture, uniting as one gets you places. Rather than being the lone wolf and looking out for yourself.” She says. “Besides, being united in one big community can be looking out for yourself. It’s having people you trust watch your back.” She adds.

His gaze on her holds until he looks away, trying to think. He lets out a sigh. He knows deep down she’s right.

“I mean, it’s how I let you and Jared in. I didn’t know you and you trusted me.” She says.

He nods. Casting his gaze down.

She walks over to him, a hand cupping his cheek. He leans in her touch. “I was just trying to increase our chances.” She says. “I didn’t mean to go behind your back and do this.” She says.

He shakes his head. His hand comes up to hers that cupped his cheek. Brushing his thumb along the top of her hand. “I’m just worried is all. It’s great they want to help us.” He says.

“Now, let’s prepare for a horde.” She says.

A day had passed.

“Horde!” a shout could be heard.

Up in the high tower, Jensen and Y/N looked through binoculars to find a horde of zombies stumbling through the forest.

“Let’s hope this works.” Y/N says.

“Yeah.” Jensen says.

An explosion erupts, sending walkers flying, some body parts flying in the distance could be seen through the eyeglasses.

“The camp up there laid out land mines!” Y/N shouts.

“Awesome!” Jensen cheers.

And the fight was an easy one. Many camps did just that, laid out traps, explosives and land mines to shrink the number of zombies that were trudging through the forest.

Not long after sundown there were no zombies standing.

Camps in the distance cheered before Jensen’s camp broke out in the same rejoice in celebration.

Most camps didn’t have to sweat it, some shots rang out, but most explosives and traps did the trick.

“We did it!” Y/N shouted. Jensen hugged Y/N tightly as they rejoiced. “Humanity won!” she cheers.

Jensen bends down to kiss her passionately on her lips. She quickly returned the kiss. They pulled away to find Danneel.

She danced and cheered with their kids; happy they won the fight.

Danneel ran to her husband first, giving him a kiss, then moved to Y/N kissing her. “We did it.” she says.

“I know, this is the first step.” Y/N says.

“This calls for a celebration.” Jensen says, grabbing his lady’s by the waist.

Months had passed, zombies have dwindled to nothing. Humans slowly began to rebuild and live in peace and harmony.

Vancouver became a small settlement, surrounded by other small settlements in the ragged Canadian terrain.

Jensen’s camp has grown over the months. And his family was about to grow, when he sees his girls walking the campgrounds, showing their pregnant bellies. He smiles, excited to see his newborn babies.

It wasn’t until months ago they found a pharmacy with still good pregnancy tests, Y/N and Danneel had to take them after days of feeling sick in the mornings. After being pregnant twice, Danneel knew. But this was Y/N’s first. She didn’t know what it was at first. She didn’t think she was pregnant until she saw the test reveal as much.

Now both women are excited to start this new chapter in their lives. Even if it’s in an Apocalypse World, they were excited, nonetheless.

Hope you guys enjoyed! Please give feedback however you can, like, reblog or send an ask letting me know how you liked it. Your favorite parts. Etc. Happy Halloween, stay home, stay safe. :)

Jensen Tags:

@luci-in-trenchcoats, @supernatural-jackles, @becs-bunker, @mlovesstories, @winchesters-favorite-girl, @moonlight-on-her-skin, @backseat-of-deans-67chevy, @salt-n-burn-em-all

Copying and reposting someone else’s content is plagiarism and illegal. This work is property of supernaturallyobsessedchic. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. These works contain material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of these works may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author / publisher. An electronic reference link to the original posted work may be provided for purposes of promotion or assistance of publication by the readers discretion, if proper credits are given to the author in the re-post. 10/31/2020

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pettyelves · 4 years ago

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lachesism I

Compounding pressure, stacking situations which teetered on the edge of a tumble and threatened to break apart Eilithe at every turn. Weeks continued to pass into months and she was no closer to accomplishing anything.

Shadeala was still alive. Shae and Aydri were still dying. Azura and Nyllaen’s grove withered by the hour. Her Aunt still suffered in the Maw. Kurel grew further away from her each day, until it felt like strangers brushing fingers in the night time.

She focused on the former three in burst-- digestible pieces, where she could swallow a few more bites of shit fed to her. And on the night she decided to make a jump, she’d been fed the whole shit pie.

Weeks before, Azura had called to Eilithe and it was that night she discovered that what was draining Nyllaen’s grove was most certainly the unnamed cult headed by a Shal’Theran apostate, Is’Stallae. And years before that, they’d collected a tablet from said cult and hidden it away in a place potent with Light.

And for years it had sat. Safely. Until Eilithe had decided it was worth the risk to take it out and read it. If there was even a chance something in its dark magic could tell them how to undo it all--she deemed it worth it. Only to essentially send a beacon to Is’Stallae.

“Thank you, little witch,” she cooed in a voice too familiar. “We have been searching long for this.”

And so, Eilithe had handed it to the cult. A means to bring raise their Champion, and ultimately their Death god into this realm to do gods knows what to it. Sitting there with the tablet in pieces, its magic freed. Eilithe felt something..cracking, and like all of her meltdowns-- she went to have it in private.

When she was a little girl, she’d often spend her free time watching Feril as he sketched. His wife, Is’Stallae herself, would braid her hair and read her poetry. And so it was only fitting that Feril came to her then, as she sat sobbing into her knees. “I really fucked it up this time, Feril. I told them I would help them save his grove. I told them I could read the tablet without danger. And.. she is going to ascend to fuck knows what. Our kids..those effigies. She got to them so fucking easily.." She inhaled through cries,"Why is it-- that I cannot seem to win against a single force that opposes me. Shaedala's still alive. Is'stallae. Still alive." This is not your fault. It wasn’t enough-- or perhaps she didn’t believe it. "This is not your fault. Thy have had nearly a thousand years to plan this. I have no answers. What I do know though, is that you and those your surround yourself with are survivors. Not ones to give up. Nor to lose hope. You have beaten both of these forces before. You will do so again." Afterwards, he once more lapsed into silence, letting her take any time she needed.

"I'm tired of just fucking surviving, Feril.” And that was the size of it. The utter exhaustion she felt which only came from thousands of years of merely treading water. “I'm so fucking tired of happiness and peace being a fleeting fucking moment. Any time it gets close, either I spit on it or someone else does."

"The world has always known turmoil. You are so close. Nothing but these final death rattle of forces that have tried and failed again and again. Can you see that light? Shining at the end of the tunnel?"

No. No, she could not see it because she had been running away from it. Shortly before her death, her a had told her simply, “You have all the tools you could ever need, you must be unafraid to use them.”

It was time to take her place then.

"I want to call the Shan. I want to mobilize the Shal'Thera,” she started with-- but there was much more. “ Do you believe..that I could unite the Shal'Thera again. As Shan'di." As her Aunt had intended.

“I do,” was all she needed to hear from Feril’s lips.

Just as the hours ticked over into evening, the magi joined forces to open two large portals, one after the other. For anyone nearby to witness, two large parties of mostly Kaldorei shimmered through the portals.

At the front of one party, an elder Druid with dark hair and silvery eyes. He bore a striking resemblance to Shaedoril Seawalker. He was accompanied by a man with similar features, though his hair was an aqua color. The were accompanied by roughly ten others. Most of them druids, though there were a few mages, and hunters within the ranks. Two of the elves in the first crowd held banners, a stark white flag with a black circle and two arrows pointing straight up.

The second group was led by a tall woman in white. Her hair, brows, eyelashes-- even her gown were all in the most bright shade of white. She nearly glowed. Accompanying her, was an even taller woman-- whom some might recognize as Yria. Her hair and eyelashes were all the same as her sister's, though she dressed more in furs than pretty gowns. While the first group had a mix of races, this one seemed exclusively to bring more Kaldorei to Dead Sun. They were overwhelmingly priests of one kind or the other. Two of those Kaldorei carried banners like the first. Stark white flags with a circle, the difference being that these flags bore the silhouette of a leaf instead of the upward facing arrows.

Assembled to greet them were two more parties, those chosen to receive the other two families of the Shal’Thera. The first was led by Reveria, dressed in a rich black gown with stark white bear furs draped over her shoulders in contrast. Beside her was Azura, those in their party mostly elves with a variety of other races mixed in. They looked to be the roguish types, with a few hunters, sailors, and druids mixed in. The Shan'Min's own ship captain, Jin'sarr - a tall kaldorei with dark hair wielded their banner, white with only a dark black circle.

Along side them, awaiting the arrival of the other two families stood Thaereus Stormwalker, dressed in deep sea blue dress leathers with a cloak of white hanging from his left shoulder. His emerald hair flowed in the wind, tied into a ponytail. Beside him stood Shaedoril, dressed in similar dress leathers though his cloak hung from the right shoulder. While mostly elves, there were humans, orcs, and even trolls among their number. Most were clearly sailors, though some were discernible as priests or roguish outrunners. A mage, here and there as well. Their standard of white bore the black circle, with three white wavy lines within. Meanwhile, Eilithe-- Fadrina's polar opposite cared very little for this welcoming ritual. Inside of the Reach, she was dressed in her formal gold and black dress, slouched back into her chair as though it was a throne. When the parties entered the Speaker Court-- she wasted no time, rising from her chair to get started.

"Thank you all for coming," Eilithe said, pulling her hands behind her back. Her golden paulder glimmered in the evening light that seeped in through the open arches behind her.

"Now more than ever-- we require a united front. Direction. A Shan'di," Eilithe said, getting straight to the point. "I stake claim to the title, formally. I will lead this family with as much ferocity as my Aunt and Grandmother did. Do I have a second?" She searched, Ur'Sen and Thaereus particularly.

There was no hesitation in Thaereus, who rose a confident hand. "I second her claim. The Tel'nar have had the chance to witness Eilithe's leadership first hand, through struggles that saw her save many innocents. Her First priority is always those lives and it would be with honor that I followed her."

Not long after Thaereus spoke up, did Reveria predictably raise her hand. "The Thal'Ana support Eilithe Duskbringer's claim as well. For many years she led us with unwavering and unflinching resolve. Capable of making the difficult choices any leader has to. It would be our honor as well, to follow her as Shan'Di."

Ur'sen was quiet at first-- the same way he had been after Elsennia had died. He looked across the way at Shaedoril for a long time before he seemed to get the will to take action. "The Quel'later support Eilithe An'diel's claim," he said, dipping his head to Eilithe. A quiet came-- as the fourth vote was awaited. A vote which had to be unanimous. "You did not deserve to be Shan'min, and you do not deserve the seat of the Shan'di," Fadrina said, in calm and collected tone. "It was under your direction, that we nearly lost our foothold in Stormwind. It was under your direction, that the Thal'ana nearly turned apostate. It was under your direction that Shan'di Stormsinger died. How many more people will die? The Shal'Thera was never meant to be a monarchy, Shan'an Seawalker..Keeper Duskbringer.. I should think you would remember that." Her eyes never left Eilithe's, "Your only claim is your blood, and blood should not be the only decider here. I reject Shan'min Duskbringer's claim." It was only then, that Idorin showed himself. The woman’s own lifemate. He stepped forward and looked Fadrina in the eyes. "You are blind with jealousy and hunger for power. It pains me, to see you have fallen so far. I do not speak for the Alor'Anir but I hear Eilithe's claim and support it."

Chaos erupted but Eilithe waited until the exact height of it to interrupted. “I challenge Fadrina Whitemoon to Tal'ashar. If I win, I take the seat of the Shan'di. And if I lose, I will remove myself entire from the Shal'thera. For good."

The two exchanged a stare-- Fadrina’s nearly white eyes more sharp than the dull ones Eilithe maintained. Fadrina could not refuse her. Eilithe spoke first "Tomorrow. The Shans deserve a night of rest." Eilithe stretched her neck from side to side, "We will fight at dusk." Fadrina’s gazed turned to a sneer, "So be it."

@ferilclawmane@kurel-andiel @theshalthera @azuraduskwalker @revthepunchbear

#the shalthera #part 1

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thetv-junkie · 5 years ago

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Keeping Track of Fanfics (99 % Offline) and How to Organise Them Neatly

Without a doubt, fanfiction has become an undeniably popular phenomenon in modern pop-culture. Every day thousands of avid writers provide us with their entertaining adventures, allowing us to interact with like-minded fans and friends and secretly indulge in collective swooning. ヽ( ⌒o⌒)人(⌒-⌒ )ﾉ

But then again, the sheer abundance of stories makes it hard to not be confused at times. Have I read that fic before? Did I like it??? Had there been an update that I might have missed? Where the heck did I stop reading? Damn, that story has been deleted; I wished I had saved it! ( ಥ ʖ̯ ಥ)

Especially in devastating times as this, with the corona virus running rampant on the whole globe, forcing millions of people into quarantine at home, the fear of the internet collapsing is palpable everywhere. In China, readers didn't/still do have no access to archiveofourown.com anymore. (o_O) !

But fear not, here's a great solution for the problem. – The FREE offline programme "Calibre". Some of you might have heard of it already and shy away from its usage as it seems confusing and cumbersome at first glance. (•ิ_•ิ) ?

In this tutorial, however, I will show you that, once you've gotten through the necessary set-up (which I will guide you through step-by-step) it will be well worth the effort and you're going to love “Calibre” forever for saving your fanfiction treasures and allows you your daily fix of smutty goodness, even if being online is no longer an option. (๑˃ᴗ˂)

So, here we go:

First, you need to download "Calibre" (either the regular or portable version):

https://calibre-ebook.com/download

and install it.

ヘ(￣ω￣ヘ)

Follow the instruction and select your device (output format is usually .epub but than can be changed to pretty much every other common format.) and click on “Finish”. If you’re not sure which device you use (or use more than one), simply stick to “Generic”.

An interface will appear:

You need to click on the three dots on the right (see arrow). An additional row of plugins will open which holds the button “Preferences”. Click that.

Scroll down to “Advanced” and select “Plugins”, “Get New Plugins”.

In the list of new plugins chose “FanFicFare” and install it (Ignore the warning.). As for the toolbars - best go with the pre-sets.

You can pick as many plugins as you like; “EpubMerge”, “Find Duplicates” and “EpubSplit” are useful additions, but see for yourself. Whenever “Calibre” asks you to close and re-open the program, do so (might happen a couple of times).

Next, go back to “Preferences” (remember the three dots on the right of the toolbar), find “Toolbars and Menus” and choose the main toolbar.

You can now pick the buttons you want to show up in your main toolbar, then click “Apply”. My toolbar looks something like this:

If you can't see all of your plugins, click on the three dots on the right, just as before. An additional row of plugins appears underneath.

Now we’re going to add the columns that are individually important to you and which will give you the information you need in order to pick the right book for your reading session.

Go to “Preferences”, “Add your columns”.

First tick and un-tick the pre-set columns that you want to keep or get rid of.

__φ(。。)

Then, click the green “+”-button on the right. An new window pops up that allows you to create new categories. Here's an example:

In my case I've picked a column that can be answered with a yes/no, but of course you also could opt for a text version instead (which is helpful when you want to sort stuff by pairing). Just make sure the lookup name is written in small letters (otherwise you'll get an error message) while for the column name you can write whatever you wish. When you're done, click "Apply".

Repeat the process as often as desired, here's my columns to give you some ideas:

(like 008, so I can give individual IDs to my books which makes finding them easier.)

Title

(No big brainer here – once you download a fanfic, this will be filled in automatically.)

Read?

(Again, pretty self-explanatory, easy to answer with the yes/no option)

Rating

(Now that is probably the most important column since it gives me an idea whether that fic is worth a re-read, or not. You can chose the ★★★★★-rating system in your personalised columns)

Time

(This column is only necessary if you know if you're a fast reader or not. We only need this column if you intend to add “Pages” as well:)

Pages

(That feature comes in handy when you're reading on another device like your mobile phone or tablet. Some devices show either the number of pages or the estimated reading time. In case it shows only the number of pages (just for example's sake, let's pretend you need one minute for reading one page which leaves you with e. g. 900 pages. Go to this site to break it down to hours and minutes:

https://www.unitjuggler.com/convert-time-from-min-to-h.html

900 minutes/pages leaves you with a total of roughly 15hr of reading time. You might want to note that down in your Calibre columns in order to have a vague idea if you're in for a lazy half-an-hour-read or better get settled for a marathon.)

Pairing?

(Does what it says on the tin – If you have more than one fav pairing in the same fandom it is useful to be able to sort by pairing for easy selection when you're in the mood for certain protagonists without wanting to scroll through your library forever. Btw, I recommend to use different libraries for each fandom. (Click the arrow on the right of the button "Calibre Library", "Switch/Create Library" and follow the instructions)

NSFW?

(Personally, a really important column for me. 'nough said. (^_<)〜☆ )

Okay, so now that we got the most important stuff done, let's finally download a fanfic!!! Leave Calibre as it is, open the internet and go to your site and fic of choice. Select the according url in your browser, copy it, switch back to Calibre.

Click on the arrow button on the right side of your plug in fanficfare, "Download from URL", the download url is automatically added, then press OK.

Now one of these two things can happen:

If you're lucky, on your bottom right corner, there's a pop up, letting you know that your FanficFare download is complete. All you have to do is press "Yes" and ét voila – you've imported your first fanfic!

All you need to do now is to double click on the title and start reading (I recommend to use E-book viewer). Enjoy !

However, if you're not lucky, you might get messages like how the sites want you to enter your username and password or that it's adult content blah blah blah, yadda, yadda, yadda. Having to fill in the information for every single fanfic is annoying, time-consuming and, most of all, incredibly annoying!

凸(￣ヘ￣)

Hence, here's the work-around:

Click on the arrow right to your plugin "FanFicFare" in the tool bar, find “Configure FanfFicFare”.

Go to the tab that says "personal.ini", then "edit personal.ini" Scroll down in the small pop-up until you can see this pre-set:

Edit in all the sites you're usually browsing for fanfiction. Always make sure that the letters of the sitename are blue, not red. If you want to make sure you aren't bothered with any verification pop-ups and such, double-check to work all of these in:

[Your fanfiction page like hp.adultfanfiction.org]

#username:YourPenname

#password:YourPassword

## default is false

#collect_series: true

#is_adult:true

#fail_on_password: false

That should do the trick and you can now easily keep track and enjoy your fics!

☆*:.｡.o(≧▽≦)o.｡.:*☆

Bonus:

When you're done reading you might want to fill in some information for later use.

For that, fill your columns on the main screen by simply double-clicking on each category. So far, so good. But we need more metadata.

Choose a fic so it’s highlighted in blue. Then go to "Edit Metadata" in the main tool bar.

A window opens:

Some information will be pre-filled but you can always edit them. Also, I highly recommend you to change the tags to your liking, same as you can add a book cover of your choice via the browse function.

On a final note: When you're following a fic that is still in-progress, you can simply click the button "FanFicFare" (NOT the arrow next to it!) to update it.

♡( ◡‿◡ ) ENJOY YOUR READ!

#Fanfiction #Calibre #Corona

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segadores-y-soldados · 6 years ago

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Those Who Rise Up

Part 2 of “Retribution and Reapercussions”: exploring the consequences of “Retribution” on the characters of Overwatch. The timeframe for this covers the end of the debriefings from the Venice Mission (“Retribution”) to the beginning of Null Sector’s uprising (“Uprising”), approximately a one-year span.

This part will cover the rise of Akande Ogundimu, both as the third Doomfist (“The Successor”) and as a new Talon leader; the creation of Widowmaker; and the hypothesis that the first Slipstream flight was sabotaged.

A follow-up to “Long Reasons Not to Trust Moira in Retribution”, “A Clash of Kings,” the post about the declassified Blackwatch memorandum on Venice, a post about Overwatch and Blackwatch investigating their own organization, “The Immortal Soldier?”, and other essays. The ones linked above are the most important at the moment.

Additional essays and posts related to this topic: “Tal Pai, Tal Filho”, a write-up on the new Lúcio story and interactions between Lúcio, Symmetra, and Doomfist; a reply to an ask about if the attack on Antonio was planned or not; “An Eye for An Eye”, hypotheses on the new Soldier: 76-Moira interaction and if Soldier is “in” on Reaper’s plan.

Warning: Like “Retribution and Reapercussions”, this essay will be long. As always, a “Read more” link/cut will be provided, but tumblr mobile is a buggy app, and you may encounter problems with opening this or other links on the app.

McCree: Our target was dead, so I guess he got what was coming to him. But still…it didn’t seem right. But that wasn’t the end of our problems: for the first time, people knew we were out there. New faces stepped up to fill the void in Talon. And I can’t help but wonder…if that’s where it all started to go wrong.

Even though Blackwatch was suspended in the wake of the compromised Venice mission, relatively little changed “internally” within Overwatch. We don’t fully know Moira’s status as a known Talon agent, but as described in Part 1, it is possible that Gabriel Reyes managed to secure her cooperation and her silence by permitting her to continue her experiments on him. He likely also convinced her that he was either “going rogue” and leaving Overwatch, or convinced her that she could “recruit him” if more pressures caused “visible” schisms between him and Jack Morrison.

We also don’t fully know if Moira was or is aware of this, but it is likely that Gabriel started this “masquerade” to begin a reverse-infiltration of Talon. Gabriel, and later his persona of Reaper, represent the spirit of retribution, and he was willing to bend or break “the rules” that Overwatch (and even Blackwatch) was forced to play by in order to do “the real work of keeping the world safe” (Gabriel’s own words). It is not known if Jack was in on this plan, or if the plan “evolved” over time. At the moment, in the immedate aftermath of the mission, it is possible that “Gabriel’s plan” was only in its beginning stages.

Externally, the public reeled from the revelation of Blackwatch’s existence.

However, while we don’t know the all of the details, the “Uprising” comic shows us that, even a year after the events of “Retribution” -

Overwatch and select, trusted members of Blackwatch continued to work as they normally did. This implies that Blackwatch’s suspension was essentially...just a masquerade of its own.

So, despite what seemed to have been implied by McCree’s ending narration of “Retribution,” Overwatch itself did not fall, did not struggle.

Arguably, it didn’t even really crack.

In Part 1, I posited the idea that Gabriel and Jack possibly welcomed the Blackwatch suspension, as an immediate and “official” way for them, Ana, and Gérard to begin cracking down on “compromised” Blackwatch and Overwatch agents. The suspension would have allowed them adequate cover to investigate their own organization and divisions, and clear individual agents or groups as trustworthy, in order to isolate the effects of Talon’s spreading infiltration.

In fact, the suspension and internal investigation don’t stop Overwatch from continuing its missions or external investigations. By the time of Null Sector’s uprising in London a year later, Overwatch has several on-going investigations or “active situations” it is monitoring:

(A lot more under the cut.)

This map is taken directly from the screen in Jack’s office in the “Uprising” comic. Though incredibly small, we actually roughly know the majority of the location of the dots. From right to left, they are:

Tokyo, Japan: likely the investigation of the Shimada criminal empire, as Genji is still present in Overwatch.

Cairo and/or Giza, Egypt: no mission is known, but an Overwatch official was killed there shortly before the comic takes place. It is also the present-day home of the Anubis AI.

An unknown location in Switzerland: possibly Overwatch’s internal investigation of itself, or an investigation into the UN’s Geneva base.

Either Oyo, Nigeria or Numbani: an investigation into the new “Doomfist”, Akande Ogundimu, and his “mercenary” troops

London, UK: this is Null Sector’s uprising

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: with the new revelation about Lúcio’s father working for Vishkar, this investigation becomes tantalizing to hypothesize about

Dorado, Mexico: though we don’t know what Overwatch was investigating specifically, the location is home to Los Muertos, the gang affiliated with Sombra (who was a new Talon agent at the time) and possibly the site of LumériCo’s then-new developments

Pacific Northwest, United States and/or Canada: unknown entirely, aside from being where Fareeha Amari’s biological father, Sam, is from.

Several of these locations can be double-checked against the map from the Soldier: 76 Origin video.

One obvious and major diffierence between the maps is...well...

Paris, France.

Which is almost certainly tied to:

Odette, Odile skin description: For much of her life, Amélie Lacroix was better known as an accomplished ballet dancer in Paris.

Overwatch went through several major decisions in the immediate aftermath of the Venice mission, likely in rapid-fire succession. Arguably, due to the speed and efficiency of the decisions (the debriefings, Gabriel working with Moira, the suspension), Overwatch was able to pretty quickly recover and return to relative equilibrium, with surprisingly few side-effects internally.

In fact, it was arguably Talon which went through much bigger and more significant changes after the Venice mission. The effects of Antonio’s death rippled throughout the paramilitary organization’s core, likely setting off a number of events in the days to months that followed.

The most important and - quite frankly - “world-changing” of these consequences would absolutely be:

The True Successor: Akande overthrows Akinjide

We know from the Blackwatch memorandum and an interaction in “Retribution” that the “Doomfist” associated with Antonio was actually the second one:

Akinjide Adeyemi, also known as “The Scourge”.

McCree: Did Antonio have any associates? Gabriel: There’s the one who will probably take over for him - Vialli. Don’t know too much about him. Then Doomfist in Numbani, and an Omnic, who runs a casino in Monaco - uh, Maximilien or something.

While we don’t know for certain if Talon was organized the exact same way then (8-9 years ago) as it is during the events of the “Masquerade” comic, it seems fairly reasonable to conclude that the major aspects of leadership were roughly the same: a council made up of select leaders, each of whom runs a major faction or component of the organization, and who form “alliances” to achieve their objectives.

At the time of “Retribution,” Blackwatch did not fully know: 1) the exact nature of these relationships and connections between Talon “leaders” and 2) the extent of them. In fact, the whole point of the Venice mission was to grab Antonio and get information from him, to help Blackwatch conduct a more thorough investigation and coordinate covert operations against Talon.

This is significant for two main reasons:

The first is that - as part of the “Gabriel is infiltrating Talon” theory - Gabriel Reyes does not actually know all of the Talon leaders at the time of “Masquerade”. In fact, it is very likely that the crux of his infiltration plan is to find all the major Talon leaders and...well, enact retribution upon them (hence the references to Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death”).

“Retribution” rather subtly slips in an important clue: Gabriel Reyes did not know exactly who “Vialli” was at the time of the Venice mission. He knew him by name, and knew that he was associated with Antonio, but he could not actually recognize him in person.

And roughly nine years later, “Reaper” still cannot recognize Vialli in-person.

Getting access to the secretive Talon council is vital for Gabriel’s infiltration, or everything he’s done between “Retribution” and “Masquerade” will have been a hugely wasted and incredibly costly effort - he’s arguably “lost” everything in exchange for this “retribution infiltration” mission against Talon.

However, unlike “Retribution-era” Gabriel and Blackwatch, “we the audience” have additional sources of information at our disposal: we know who Vialli is, we know his relationship with Antonio (who was his “predecessor”), we know his relationship with Akande (though there are a number of interesting plot twists there), and we know what he eventually becomes after Overwatch falls (the main “leader”/commander of Talon).

We also know the rough structure of Talon’s council and its overall hierarchy: Talon should be viewed as a sort of network of alliances between powerful, cunning, and extreme individuals who manage either actual mercenary or paramilitary troops (such as Antonio?):

Or who control access to resources or funding (such as Maximilien):

Or who possess the abilities or technical knowledge to apply certain extreme technologies, enhancements, or augmentations to Talon assets (such as Moira).

From what we know from Akande’s Hero Profile, Akinjide Adeyemi was a member of Talon who actually led and organized mercenary and paramilitary units:

We don’t know when exactly Akinjide recruited Akande, or what he said to encourage Akande to join him. Akande did not “start” in Talon, but instead was brought on as a mercenary (much like another Talon character, hmmm). Implied in the wording is that Akinjide wanted to see what Akande’s enhanced capabilities were actually “worth” before he brought him to Talon, and therefore made him do a lot of “mercenary grunt work” before he started introducing Akande to his Talon forces or - more importantly - his Talon associates, notably Maximilien.

However, even though it isn’t directly stated in Akande’s Hero Profile or in the “Masquerade” comic (likely because the latter occurs much later in the story), it’s important to realize that what Akinjide said may have mattered significantly less to Akande than who Akinjide was.

Or at least...who he represented.

There are a number of “Doomfists” in the history of the Overwatch universe, so it’s sort of a title that’s been carried by different characters. The original “Doomfist” was a really good guy - one of the heroes of the Omnic Crisis...

(Source: Michael Chu)

Ages and ages ago - before any real aspects of “Doomfist” had been fully revealed - I wrote one of my first “big essay” posts discussing his then-immenient release. It was titled “Doomfist: Lineage and Legacy” and essentially, it analyzed the names of the three main “Doomfists” (and originally postulated the possible existence of a fourth). What was most important about the essay was that: it established that there was a mythological/historical inspiration for the “lineage” of Doomfists (which is similar to how many Overwatch characters have mythological inspirations), that there was a certain amount of “regality” and “kingship” among the three (maybe four) Doomfists (which was shortly confirmed by the literary references in the “Masquerade” comic), and that the usage of the Gauntlets was being transformed from a tool for justice into a weapon of war.

Not all of it was correct: obviously, the idea of a “fourth” Doomfist was wrong (at least...for now, lol). But what was correct was the concept of “rightful inheritance” and “legacy”, along with a twisting transformation of both ideas from one of heroism to one of “war”.

To begin with, the first Doomfist was a man named Adhabu Ngumi.

It means “Doom Fist” in Swahili.

However, it is not so much his direct name meaning that is the significant part, but the fact that it is Swahili, which is found in the region of the African Great Lakes (for example, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Tanzania, etc). This is notably east of Nigeria.

Adhabu is also dressed in an extremely militarized manner - he is wearing body armor, what appears to be a biotic field (compare to the yellow one on the Strike-Commander Morrison skin), and a military beret. He is framed with a rising sun, showing him as a heroic, bold figure.

This, coupled with his title “The Savior,” implies that he was a military figure in Africa - arguably Eastern Africa.

However, given the backstory of the OR-14s, we know there was an Omnium in Nigeria:

“Originally put into service before the Omnic Crisis, the OR14 “Idina” line of security robots was built in Nigeria’s massive manufacturing omnium. After the war, they were taken out of production, along with many of the other models used during the crisis. Twenty years later, Numbani revived and recommissioned the OR14 program to protect the city from external threats. These new OR15s were deployed for a short time before they were destroyed in an attack by Doomfist.”

Which means that it’s very, very likely Adhabu was the man who led African military forces to triumph over the Nigerian Omnium.

It may be possible that Numbani itself was built in Adhabu’s honor.

Although Adhabu is Swahili, he seems to bear some references to the Oduduwa mythology of the Yoruba people (whom the Scourge and Akande are a part of): he “hails from the east,” and appears to be “a bringer of light.” Oduduwa is considered the ancestor of all Yoruba kings.

Many of his details referencing Oduduwa is important: regality and kingship are deliberate and intentional choices in Akande’s design.

“We really wanted to give [Akande] colors that made him feel very powerful like red, gold - and really adorn him with that regal presence.” - Arnold Tsang, Doomfist Hero Preview video

Moreover, the concept of “kingly inheritance” and “kingly successorship” is integral into the entire “Doomfist” title and lineage: Adhabu set the precedent, both in presence and in story. He came from the east, represented by his Swahili origins and the sun, and helped save Nigeria and other parts of West Africa from the Nigerian Omnium. He is a noble, heroic figure, a modern-day king-commander (not unlike a few other characters in Overwatch, mainly Gabriel Reyes, Jack Morrison, Fareeha Amari, and Hanzo Shimada), and he represented how a human with added augmentation (his Gauntlet) could become powerful - more powerful than literal machines. The people of Numbani still hold him in high regard, bestowing the title of “The Savior” upon him.

This goes further than just Adhabu:

Because even though his “title” is “The Scourge,” Akinjide Adeyemi has all the hallmarks of “a king”.

(Again, wrote this before Doomfist/Akande was released.)

Much like how Akinjide eventually took Akande under his wing, it is very plausible that Adhabu taught or possibly even raised Akinjide. The meaning of Akinjide’s full name - “the strong one who is worthy of the crown has returned” - certainly bestows a weighty and powerful “right” of successorship upon him. Like names like “Gabriel Reyes” or “Moira O’Deorain”, “Akinjide Adeyemi” is a name that gives us the sense that he was supposed to be a heroic and just figure - a true inheritor of Adhabu’s title, Gauntlet, and legacy. That he should have been another “Savior” to Numbani and Nigeria.

Instead...he became a “scourge” upon the city and the region.

Akinjide took his version of the Gauntlet (or perhaps even Adhabu’s own Gauntlet) and recrafted it: he made it bigger, more aggressive, more powerful, and more weaponized. He took what was originally a symbol of hope, power, and honor, and transformed it into one of destruction and despair. Whatever ties he had to Adhabu were severed when he began to abuse this power and “worthiness” for ill.

A young Akande grew up through all of this - the Omnic Crisis, Adhabu saving Nigeria, the construction of Numbani, the growth and flourishing of the city and region. He watched his family’s prosthetic company change the lives of those injured during the Crisis, making them stronger, better, more powerful. He witnessed how a single man, a single commander - Adhabu Ngumi - could change the course of history of parts of the world with a single, powerful tool.

What Akande witnessed was that war - perhaps the greatest war in Overwatch’s fictional history - did not weaken humanity.

War had made everything around him grow. Thrive. Flourish. And improve.

Numbani and Nigeria rose from the ashes of the Omnic Crisis with a burgeoning economy and rapid advancements in technology. It was a vision of the future, a vision of what humanity - coupled with new technology, new ideas, and new power - could create.

And Akande himself had gotten stronger because of the Crisis.

Though perhaps...at the time, he did not think so:

Here, we have a collision.

Akinjide - a man who should’ve had the world in the palm of his hand - running mercenary groups, raiding off the edges of Numbani’s wealth and advancements, coming in contact with Akande - a man who should’ve inherited the wealth, technology, the power, and the prestige of his family - completely discontent with his life...

Discontent with his destiny.

Two inheritors of two similar yet different legacies, both of whom had lost them for different reasons - Akinjide for reasons unknown, but for methods we know about (he abused his power), and Akande for the reasons above, who lost all interest in simply “running a company,” even if the company was prestigous and doing remarkable work.

So perhaps, it was not specifically Akinjide who Akande was interested in working with, but rather, the “legacy” he was carrying:

His Gauntlet

His title of “Doomfist”

And eventually - his “army”.

We know from Akande’s Hero Profile that he excelled in his new line of work, first as a mercenary, then as a “rising” Talon leader. He worked his way up the ranks, proving himself as a capable, calm, tactical commander, and others in Talon...took notice of his “greater potential”.

We are bedeviled by the mysteries of creation. Science can reveal the truths that lie behind these many questions. What we learn can unlock the true potential of humanity.

- Moira (source)

We don’t know when or how Akande and Moira met, but it is clear that - at their cores - they share a similar vision, though the means and methods they use to achieve those are different. Akande focuses on conflict as a way of driving technological advancement, while Moira is more interested in the research aspect of progress. However, both individuals are extremely loose in their ethics, and capable of switching to alternate methods when necessary to achieve their goals.

Symmetra: Doomfist, you are mistaken - only with order can humanity evolve! Doomfist: Order…chaos… means to an end.

---

Moira: Well, that was certainly a decisive solution to the Antonio problem. McCree: It’s not how we do things! Moira: Well, it seems we’ve had a change in methodology. McCree, muttering: …A little too much change.

Both Akande and Moira found pre-Retribution Talon suitable to their then-purposes: Akande, listless in the direction his life had been taking, found a place where his “true potential” as a visionary king-commander could thrive, while Moira, who had lost her life’s research after Overwatch had shut down her original lab, found an organization whose lack of ethics (and seemingly endless supply of human test subjects) suited her own amoral experiments.

There was, however, a problem.

...Or rather, two problems.

The first and most important, of course, was Overwatch: Overwatch was a militarized organization with the authority and actual power (e.g. resources, agents, teams, divisions, and motivations) to enforce peacekeeping and other regulations. While Numbani had grown from the ashes of the Crisis, so too had Overwatch, expanding from a team of five known individuals into an international, UN-chartered organization that helped build global peace and stability. And despite what Akande and Moira claim, Overwatch did support scientific, economic, and social advancement, such as helping fund the development of different research divisions or different projects (see: Mercy, Winston, Mei, and Torbjörn as examples).

However, while Overwatch was not perfect about stopping global or international crime, it made a concerted effort to do so: disbanding arms-trafficking groups like the Deadlock Gang or focusing missions against criminal networks like the Shimada clan.

In fact, it is loosely implied that Talon was formed specifically to counter and undermine Overwatch: a conglomeration of “well-funding criminals” who wanted to see the peacekeeping organization destabilized so they could run their “profitable” crimes, from operating mercenary groups to arms-dealing to laundering money through casinos (currently only implied). A hint at this comes from Genji in Retribution:

Genji: Talon once tried to recruit my father. Gabriel: He didn’t take them up on their offer? Genji: He did not find them to his liking. Their aims did not…coincide with his own.

(Source)

And we know that even though Hanzo has left the clan in the present-day, Akande and Widowmaker very actively try to recruit him into Talon, bluntly saying that they could help him restore the Shimada clan to its former glory at the head of a criminal empire. Talon - then and now - makes a concentrated effort to recruit people who are powerful in the...unethical side of the story.

However, we now run into “Retribution-era” Akande’s and Moira’s second problem:

The Talon leadership at the time of Retribution was...“narrow-minded” in its focus, purpose, and methods.

Adeyemi was a useful asset to Talon, but the organization saw far greater potential in Ogundimu, with his intelligence and his ability to inspire as a commander. While Adeyemi was content to profit from raids on Numbani, Ogundimu had a grander vision.

(Source)

Petty “raids” on wealthy cities, disjointed and unorganized attacks on Overwatch facilities -

Attacks that didn’t even work in killing or harming their intended targets:

After all, the explosion on the temporary Blackwatch base in Rome was meant to kill Gérard Lacroix, but not only did it fail to do that, Gérard was set to make a full recovery. Instead, approximately fourteen Blackwatch members - possibly even just support staff or third-party contractors - were killed. While those numbers were still emotionally upsetting for Gabriel and Jack, they did not actually impact Overwatch’s or Blackwatch’s ability to function.

We can conclude that with individuals like Antonio and Akinjide in charge of Talon, these semi-randomized attacks on Overwatch had been going on for awhile, maybe a few months to a year, and that they were largely unsuccessful in harming the overal integrity of the peacekeeping organzation (but they were successful at emotional “wear-and-tear” on Overwatch’s leaders).

Antonio’s lines in “Retribution” show us this sort of “narrow-minded” focus:

Antonio: …Good evening, Commander Reyes. Ha, how will this look on the news? Overwatch unlawfully abducting a respected businessman? Even if you take me now, my friends would have me released within the week. All these…theatrics have been a waste of our time.

All that Antonio is focused on is “appearances” - the news coverage of his arrest, his public “respected businessman” stature, how he derides the back-and-forth exchanges between Overwatch/Blackwatch and Talon as simple “theatrics” (“theatrics” which resulted in deaths that impacted Gabriel). His message to Gabriel is surprisingly simple: Talon and Blackwatch can keep playing these “theatrics” of not-really-harming each other, or Gabriel and his team can turn around, walk away from the situation, back off of the investigation of Talon, and turn a blind eye to Talon’s future crimes.

No talk of “visionary futures.” No talk of “true potentials.” No talk of dedication to research, experiments seeking the truth. No talk of ideologies of how war reshapes humanity, how conflict is the “crucible through which we evolve”.

Just “business” and “theatrics.”

So like -

Is it really that surprising that she’s happy to see Antonio die?

As I wrote in this answer, I don’t think Moira particularly expected Antonio to die. I think she expected to put Gabriel - one of her current “research interests” - into an extremely tough “experiment” against her other “research interests” (the Talon paramilitary agents), and see who came out on top. If it was Gabriel, well, she knew he was bound to her by her research, and if it was the Talon army, then great, her new experiments were a success.

However, instead, she was excited to see an unexpected “result” of her experiment:

Gabriel’s intense and sudden “change of plans,” which result in Antonio’s death.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it as many times as I need to: Moira’s sense of “loyalty” obviously runs by a different “ethical code” than most people. Her loyalty is to her research first, and those who support it second. If Antonio was as “narrow-minded” as Akinjide or (for example) Winston or Mercy, of course she’d be pretty happy to see him removed from Talon, just as she would be happy to undermine Overwatch. Her “loyalty” is not about who is giving her a paycheck or protection, but who best aligns with her vision of free and “unrestricted” research.

In his own way, Antonio and the “old” Talon leadership hindered Moira almost as much as Overwatch did.

We don’t exactly know who or what compelled Moira to join Blackwatch when Gabriel recruited her. We know from Michael’s implications and her paper on curing degenerative diseases that it’s pretty plausible Gabriel recruited Moira mainly to solve his SEP side-effects, but we don’t know if that alone was enough to catch Moira’s interest.

However, considering the wording on her Hero Profile (which implies she was already a Talon agent in Blackwatch), her obvious hatred for Overwatch, the themes of “parallel retributions gone wrong” (e.g. Gabriel’s retribution vs. Moira’s retribution), and her obvious amorality in using, leaking, and “repurposing” Gabriel’s biodata, I don’t think it’s very surprising that someone probably encouraged her to accept Gabriel’s request and enter Blackwatch as a Talon spy.

“We stand on the brink of a breakthrough in human evolution. I have dedicated my life to unraveling its secrets. I take risks that others would consider to be ‘unwise,’ for I do not share their caution. Overwatch held back the pace of scientific discovery for decades. They believed my methods were too radical… too controversial…

“And they tried…to silence me.

“…But there were others in the shadows, searching for ways to circumvent their rules. Freed from my shackles, the pace of our research hastened - together, we delved deeper into those areas forbidden by law, by morality…and by fear. “New patrons emerged who possessed an appetite for my discoveries. And with this knowledge…what new world could we build?”

- Moira Origin story (source)

Someone encouraged Moira. Though her Origin video wants you to think it was Gabriel, we know from the “Retribution” comic that his priorities were on protecting Jack and Overwatch. In that case, the part about “others in the shadows, searching for ways to circumvent [Overwatch’s] rules” almost certainly implies Talon as a whole.

But the line “Together, we delved deeper into those areas forbidden by law, by morality...and by fear” is stronger, but in different ways.

If Moira is talking about Talon, then she appears to be describing both her experimental work on the Talon paramilitary agents, and - most likely - her work as a “spy” in Blackwatch. Talon has no problem breaking “law and morality,” but “fear” is an interesting one, because the sentence structure makes it sound like Moira is talking about her own fear.

As if someone had to help her get past her fear of being an untrained, noncombatant spy entering Blackwatch, a division specializing in covert operations.

Adeyemi was a useful asset to Talon, but the organization saw far greater potential in Ogundimu, with his intelligence and his ability to inspire as a commander.

We know one member of Retribution-era Talon who had the ability to inspire others to be “courageous.”

I don’t know if Moira joined Blackwatch under Akande’s orders or interests. I don’t know if she saw him as a “king-commander” or if she saw him as an associate, or even as a friend. However, 8-9 years later, Moira has answered Akande’s “call to war” seemingly without hesitation:

In the present day, we know that other characters like Maximilien and Sanjay are also apparently loyal to Akande, along with a few others that we haven’t seen. “Reaper” appears to be acting as an “inspired” henchman to Akande, though we know he helped Sombra sabotage the Volskaya mission, and he might have deliberately thrown the “stop Recall” and “reclaim the Gauntlet” missions as well.

At the very least, at the time of Retribution, Moira and Akande’s intra-Talon interests aligned:

They would see Overwatch brought down.

And if “sacrifices” within Talon had to be made in the name of science and progress, then so be it.

This is Akande’s moment.

When we look at it from his perspective, we see a long sequence of events that have finally “aligned”:

Akinjide, who initially appeared promising to Akande as the “successor” to Adhabu, has proven to be a disappointment, ideologically and motivationally weak compared to Akande’s own “grander vision.”

Moira, who has slipped into Blackwatch as a Talon spy, has found a number of abilities to experiment with, and has possibly found a critical weakness to one of the founding members of Overwatch.

Against all odds, that exact member of Overwatch - Gabriel Reyes - has actually killed Antonio, who was a “weak willed” and “narrow-minded” leader of Talon, and one of Akinjide’s allies.

And - perhaps what is truly shocking (or motivating) to Akande - is that Antonio’s new experimental army and paramilitary units have been decimated by Gabriel, two additional Blackwatch agents, and Moira, who was more or less there to keep herself alive.

If there is ever a time to remake and reforge Talon, it is now.

After all, only through conflict do we evolve.

And Akande is going to fulfill his “true potential.”

Akande is a male Yoruba name meaning "firstborn." Ogun is a Yoruba god of war and metalwork, and dimu is Yoruba for "grasping." Akande Ogundimu can therefore be roughly translated as, "heir to the god who grasps iron and war.”

And he is going to remake and reforge the Doomfist legacy, from a “savior” to a “scourge” to a true “success(or)”.

Humanity has always been tested. Conflict and war is the crucible through which we evolve. Every battle makes us stronger. Those who fall will be forgotten. Those who rise up - their names will be remembered forever. (source)

History is written by the victors... Ha. You know my name. (source)

By killing and overthrowing Akinjide, Akande would embody - in name, in title, in inheritance, in legacy, in motivation, in literal “armaments” - his ideology of conflict making people (and organizations) stronger.

As the new Doomfist, Ogundimu rose high in Talon and helped to orchestrate a conflict that the organization hoped would someday engulf the world.

With Akinjide and Antonio gone, a new set of alliances is made among the remaining members of the Talon council. Incredibly, Maximilien - the casino-owning French Omnic - survives the coup (we’ll get a little more into him later), no doubt using his political savvy and money to persuade the new “successors” to Akinjide and Antonio (Akande and Vialli respectively) to keep him around. It is not known if Moira is able to contact her allies in Talon, but she is obviously intelligent enough and clever enough to survive whatever situation she is in.

Secured in his new position on the Talon council, Akande sets out to make his “grander vision” a reality. He is not going to make the same mistakes as Akinjide and Antonio. His “grander vision” is noble, honorable, powerful. It will require the abilities and inspirations of a king-commander, the genius of brilliant but troubled scientists, and the craftsmanship of engineers and architechs (lol).

Akande is going to use all the resources at his disposal to make more tactical, precision strikes against Overwatch.

You don’t break a dam by chipping away at the top, and you don’t weaken an organization by killing random agents.

You break a dam by destroying the foundation -

And you weaken an organization by taking down important targets.

Swan song: the death of Gérard Lacroix and the creation of Widowmaker

Moira: How are you feeling, Lacroix? Widowmaker: I don't feel. That's the point, isn't it?

Gabriel Reyes had shown that he was “too hard to kill” in a direct confrontation, and if he had formed some sort of negotiations with Moira, he may have been “safe” from further Talon attacks. Similarly, Jesse McCree and Genji Shimada had also proven themselves pretty difficult to kill in Venice, and with Gabriel vouching for their loyalty, they may have been extra “guarded” by Overwatch.

Furthermore, the Blackwatch suspension would’ve made it impossible for Moira or any other Talon double-agents to make any aggressive moves against the organization (if they were even allowed in the Overwatch facilities).

Inside Overwatch’s “castles,” the core members of Overwatch and Blackwatch were relatively safe from direct Talon attacks or from Talon infiltrators leaking information (at the moment). Business resumed some degree of normalcy.

After Gabriel Reyes, Jesse McCree, and Genji Shimada, Gérard Lacroix was arguably the most important member of Blackwatch (that we know of). He was the principle investigator in the anti-Talon operations, and he was also a crucial witness in Gabriel’s debriefing:

However, inside Overwatch facilities, Gérard would have been secure, surrounded by allies and medics who could help him. Because of Gabriel’s debriefing, Gérard would also have been aware of Moira’s role as a Talon infiltrator, and like Jesse and Genji, would’ve kept his guard up around her.

He might also have been the first person to start identifying other Talon infiltrators (if there were some).

Removing him would’ve become the top spot on Talon’s priority list.

With Akande now leading Talon, it was time to try a different set of tactics. Aggressive but semi-randomized attacks had failed to take down the most important Blackwatch and Overwatch leaders and agents. Even direct ambushes had proven dicey, as Talon had lost one of their own major leaders in their last attempt at that.

However, there was one avenue that had proven to be effective.

Extremely effective:

“Hope” had been Overwatch’s greatest strength for nearly 25 years -

And much like how Moira had found “hope” to be Gabriel’s weakness -

All the virtues that had helped make Overwatch strong would be its undoing.

Love, courage, loyalty, determination, and hope -

Moira had proven with her “experiment” that these things could be used to put Overwatch and Blackwatch agents in critical situations, where their guards were lowered and their judgments weakened.

Other methods had failed, but with a new “visionary” at the helm of Talon, perhaps they could try her “new methodology.”

It is believed that in her former life, Widowmaker was married to Gérard Lacroix, an Overwatch agent spearheading operations against the Talon terrorist organization. After several unsuccessful attempts to eliminate Gérard, Talon decided to change its focus to his wife, Amélie.

We don’t know where, when, or how exactly Amélie’s kidnapping occurred, but based on her Odette and Odile skin descriptions:

For much of her life, Amélie Lacroix was better known as an accomplished ballet dancer in Paris.

She was probably kidnapped in Paris.

We don’t know how long she was missing, or where she was found again, but we can surmise or hypothesize about a few things:

Talon operatives kidnapped her and subjected her to an intense program of neural reconditioning. They broke her will, suppressed her personality, and reprogrammed her as a sleeper agent. She was eventually found by Overwatch agents, apparently none the worse for wear, and returned to her normal life.

Now, we don’t exactly know if Moira was involved in her reconditioning. Personally, I believe that if Moira did get involved, it occurred at a later phase, when Amélie’s physiology changed. It would be extremely strange for a geneticist to be involved in brainwashing, though considering Blizzard doesn’t have the best track record for “accurate” science fiction, I wouldn’t be surprised if they somehow threw that in there.

However, we do know that Talon - especially Akande’s new Talon - was full of extreme, powerful individuals, many of whom shared the same intense ideology and principles of “conflict/stress/experimentation makes us stronger”, “we are part of a grander vision/truer potential/greater order”, and “the ends justifies the methods”. In fact, Widowmaker’s “reconditioning” has a very strong parallel in another character:

Now, let me make this very clear: I do not think Satya Vaswani has been deliberately brainwashed like Amélie Lacroix. I do think Vishkar has been such a massive and looming part of Satya’s life for so long that it has an incredibly strong grip on her views and mindset.

We also know that Vishkar demands an extreme amount of loyalty, dedication, and ruthlessness from its employees. This point had long been implied by Satya’s dialogue and her behavior, but it was more overtly confirmed by a new interaction:

Lúcio: Vishkar’s using you - just like they used my father! …You just wait - you’ll see. Symmetra: Your father was a Vishkar employee. He understood our company’s vision…a shame he never educated you.

We don’t know when exactly Sanjay Korpal joined Talon: he appears to be relatively young, but so do Moira and Akande, who are both in their 40′s, and they were part of Talon before the events of the Venice mission. An intriguing “hint” that Sanjay might have also been part of Talon during Retribution comes from the Blackwatch Venice memorandum:

On the “Organization Profile”, the list of known members of Talon is different than the list of Antonio’s known associates.

Notably, Akinjide Adeyemi was not listed as a member, but was later identified by Blackwatch as a Talon associate (when they monitor his fight with Akande):

Both of the [redacted] names are relatively short - approximately the same length as “Maximilien”. “Sanjay Korpal” could fit in one of them. The only other member of Talon at the time (though we do not know if Blackwatch was aware of her) was Olivia Colomar, better known as “Sombra”.

Also the fact that the Talon Assassin appears to use hard light and sonic technology for her blades and her increased speed:

While I would not be surprised for Blizzard to released a new character who is directly responsible for Amélie’s brainwashing, I would also be unsurprised if the role is pinned on Sanjay and/or Moira.

After all, Moira is already responsible for parts of another character’s “condition”:

Moira: How are you feeling, Commander? Gabriel: Fine, no ill effects so far. Moira: Let me know if that changes.

Which is suspiciously parallel to:

Moira: How are you feeling, Lacroix? Widowmaker: I don’t feel - that’s the point, isn’t it?

In fact, Widowmaker’s story has a number of intriguing plot elements that pointedly mirror Reaper’s.

The first is that both appear to have been - or currently be - double-agents or sleeper agents. Amélie was made into a sleeper agent on behalf of Talon, killing her husband Gérard and then returning to Talon for further conditioning and training. Gabriel, on the other hand, appears to currently be infiltrating Talon as a double-agent, notably after having a “falling out” with his “partner”, Jack Morrison.

The second is that they both claim - admittedly for different reasons - to not feel any emotion in regards to their actions, but both of these are lies.

This is an outright lie by Reaper. Even if he is genuinely angry with Jack, Reaper refused to kill Ana Amari when he had a chance because he got emotional.

Meanwhile, in the above interaction with Moira, Widowmaker claims to feel nothing, but during the events of “Reflections”, she visits Gérard’s grave and brings a rose:

(Amusingly, she also claims she cannot feel “the cold” in Volskaya, but wears a coat here.)

Widowmaker also retains Gérard’s picture in her mansion.

Which - while we haven’t seen this in the present day - has a side-eyeing parallel to Gabriel’s situation room during the “Retribution” comic:

Lastly, both of them have had major emotional virtues undermined as their points of weakness by Talon:

Gabriel had his trust and hope betrayed.

Amélie’s love and loyalty were taken from her:

Two weeks later she killed Gérard in his sleep.

Personally, I’m not a fan of the “Gabriel is brainwashed” theory because I think it removes a lot of his in-universe agency and decision-making power from him (which, admittedly, I don’t love that aspect of Widowmaker either), but I do think there are strong parallels and connections to be made between Widowmaker and “Reaper”. As I said earlier, it appears that Moira may be holding onto Gabriel’s “cure” or blackmailing him about his “secrets” to have him work as a mercenary for Talon (though obviously this could be perceived differently to one or both of them - hell, it may even be a relatively “mutual” agreement between them by the time of Recall). In both situations, Talon seems to have a “grip” on an emotional or meaningful aspect of both Widowmaker’s and Reaper’s personal lives and motivations, and Talon appears to have targeted a “virtuous emotion” (love, hope, trust, etc) and transformed it into a weakness or even a weapon -

An opening to kill Gérard, or an opening to bring down Overwatch.

I also personally think that, given that this was his reaction to Gérard getting hurt:

Gabriel almost certainly escalated his “plans” for Talon upon Gérard’s death.

Again, I don’t know if Jack, Ana, Reinhardt, Torbjörn, or McCree were aware of Gabriel’s plans. Based on Ana’s reaction in the “Old Soldiers” comic, and her’s and the other characters’ interactions with “Reaper” in the game (though not necessarily canon, Reinhardt and McCree’s reactions certainly feel like they would be genuinely angry to find out that Gabriel had “switched sides” for Talon), I would say that many of the characters closest to Gabriel were unaware of his “change in methodology.”

And that, if there was any one character who knew about Gabriel “intensifying” his mission against Talon -

It would be Jack.

As I wrote in “An Eye for An Eye,” it’s hard to tell what exactly Soldier: 76 is aware of in terms of Reaper’s “masquerade” inside Talon. I think it’s pretty safe to conclude that he knows what Moira did during Retribution (or at least was convinced of it during Gabriel’s debriefing), but how aware he is of “what Reyes had been planning” is more vague and open to wider interpretations.

However, unlike Ana and McCree, who have much stronger reactions to Reaper in-game, Soldier: 76′s interactions with him are...surprisingly calm, almost joking at times. It’s not unlike how Reaper and Sombra talk to each other, actually (which is an important point, given that Reaper and Sombra are allies in this “masquerade” in Talon).

It’s also difficult to say where Widowmaker falls in Reaper’s “plans”. According to Michael Chu, “Reaper” had no involvement in Widowmaker’s conditioning:

And based on Gabriel’s close friendship with Gérard, I cannot see him as willingly authorizing or approving of Amélie’s reconditioning or Gérard’s assassination.

A popular fan theory - which works in tandem with the “Gabriel is infiltrating Talon to bring it down” theory - is that Gabriel is attempting to save Amélie (or whatever remains of her) from Talon. It is a theory I am personally a fan of, but I recognize that, aside from the above parallels, there isn’t a lot of direct evidence for it (as opposed to the other elements of the theory, e.g. Sombra is working with Reaper). Reaper makes little to no effort to protect or help Widowmaker, even undermining a major assassination mission for her, so while I like the idea, currently, it doesn’t really have much to support it.

And speaking of “pure speculation theories”...

Time keeps on slippin’: was the disappearance of the Slipstream an accident or sabotage?

Pharah: Helix should keep the peace in Vishkar developments! Symmetra: We does not need an army to keep the peace. We prefer our own methods...

Lena Oxton (call sign: "Tracer") was the youngest person ever inducted into Overwatch's experimental flight program. Known for her fearless piloting skills, she was handpicked to test the prototype of a teleporting fighter, the Slipstream. But during its first flight, the aircraft's teleportation matrix malfunctioned, and it disappeared. Lena was presumed dead.

She reappeared months later, but her ordeal had greatly changed her: her molecules had been desynchronized from the flow of time. Suffering from "chronal disassociation," she was a living ghost, disappearing for hours and days at a time. Even for the brief moments she was present, she was unable to maintain physical form.

(source)

Overwatch was looking for a hotshot pilot to test their next-generation teleporting fighter, The Slipstream. Enter Lena Oxton - call sign: “Tracer”! Haha, that’s me! It was the sort of opportunity I had dreamed of my whole life. But on my first flight, the teleportation matrix malfunctioned, and I disappeared! I was missing for months! And no one knew where - or when - I had gone.

By the time Overwatch found me, I was little more than a ghost...

(source)

It seems innocent enough.

After all, pretty much every story involving a teleportation device, or a time machine, or some sort of “time-and-or-space” controlling element involves a plot point of someone or something getting “lost” in time and/or space, right? It’s a common enough trope that no one bats an eye over it. “Of course the Slipstream was going to fail - you don’t mess around with teleportation, something always goes wrong.”

Right?

But like I said earlier -

We have concrete evidence of a major company with ties to Talon that specializes in teleportation that will literally go to extremes to undermine any “competition”:

Yes, “A Better World” takes place approximately a few months to about a year before the events of “Recall.” However, I personally have been skeptical of Tracer’s profile and Lena’s Origin story narrative since I first read and watched them. Remember: both of these have “a perspective”. The former is meant to be vague or just...“thin” enough to cover the surface, while the latter is told from Lena’s own perspective.

She was young at the time - only 18 - and brand new to Overwatch. We know she admired Overwatch, and dreamed of joining their ranks “[her] whole life.”

But at the time, Tracer probably didn’t know what was happening in the upper levels of Overwatch: that Overwatch and Blackwatch were starting to unravel, holes being poked through their defenses, critical individuals being blackmailed, threatened, hurt, or even assassinated.

Just like McCree in Retribution -

It is not that Tracer’s narrative of the Slipstream flight is untrustworthy -

It is just extremely limited.

If, after the fall and disbandment of Overwatch, Vishkar is willing to blow up a rival construction company in order to secure a building contract in a new location -

What would Vishkar (read: Sanjay) have done to prevent Overwatch from developing a teleporting, rapid-flight fighter jet from being successful?

For the last year and a half, I thought of the possibility of Vishkar sabotaging the Slipstream test flight as little more than an interesting hypothesis, a funny little “red conspiracy string” idea that had some distant and “barely there” connections. Interesting, intriguing, but unlikely. Tracer’s “story” hadn’t been looked at since Uprising last year, and even then, the details of her Slipstream flight were just taken for granted - background elements to the “current plot” of Null Sector and Tracer’s first mission.

But then came this:

Which showed how easy it was for a trusted third-party to enter “secure” Blackwatch bases.

And then during the Retribution mission -

She shows up.

And much, much more recently, we have new interactions indicating that Vishkar had access to “hyper-speed-inducing, light-and-sound-based” technology, possibly even at the time of Retribution:

Mercy: Lúcio, I never realized your father was the one who made Vishkar’s sonic technology! Lúcio: The core tech was his life’s work, owned and patented by Vishkar…but it’s mine now.

— Lúcio: Vishkar’s using you - just like they used my father! …You just wait - you’ll see. Symmetra: Your father was a Vishkar employee. He understood our company’s vision…a shame he never educated you.

Lúcio, who has an intimate and personal history with the sonic technology, fully believes that Vishkar has either “wrongfully” claimed the rights to his father’s work, or is likely misusing it. His Hero Profile implies the latter:

Lúcio wouldn’t stand for it. He stole Vishkar sonic technology that had been used to suppress the people, and he converted it into a tool to rally them to action.

We don’t know what Lúcio’s father intended to use the sonic technology for (but given that there’s the possibility Lúcio is a synesthete, it might have originally been meant to help him manage his sensory perceptions), but if Lúcio’s father was anything like Symmetra in the present-day, then he was probably unware of how Vishkar was misusing it.

We know that by the time of “Uprising”, Overwatch is investigating an “active threat” in Rio de Janeiro:

It is possible (again, not saying how likely this hypothesis is, just that it is possible) that Overwatch tracked down the technology that made the Talon Assassins and traced it to an engineer/architech in Rio - but that he himself was likely not directly involved in the creation of the Assassins.

And from Talon and/or Vishkar’s side of it, there is an additional...complication.

If it is true that the Assassin is using prototype hard light and/or sonic technology, she represents Talon/Vishkar’s attempts to create a some sort of “hyper-fast, speed-boosted” warrior, an agent capable of appearing, killing, and then disappearing.

But again - consider her screams. Her disjointed movement. How seemingly every “Assassin” in the Retribution mission dies to Blackwatch.

If the Assassins are “Vishkar experiments” -

Then they are failures.

Vishkar, and Talon, likely give up on the Assassin tech, as it looks to be a combination of too dangerous and too ineffective to utilize in a serious manner. It’s not that I personally think characters like Moira or Sanjay are worried about safety, but when “high cost” experiments/assets like the Assassins and Snipers keep dying, it might be worthwhile to set those “projects” aside and come back to them later (like...maybe when you don’t have the “pressure” of Overwatch and Blackwatch breathing down your neck). And if Overwatch has its “eyes” on the architech who developed the technology, it might not be a bad idea to “lay low” while Akande puts other plans into action (like, say, reconditioning the wife of the anti-Talon investigator to kill him?).

That said, if or when Vishkar and/or Talon discover that Overwatch is making a teleporting, rapid-flight fighter jet, how would they have reacted to that?

Imagine if Overwatch and/or an unsuspended Blackwatch could literally appear over known Talon hideouts, infiltrate them, either kill Talon’s paramilitary troops or take information and technology, and then leave in the blink of an eye?

Well...let’s just say that “Retribution” probably could’ve ended in a very different way if the Slipstream had been available at the time.

Hell, even Null Sector’s uprising probably would’ve been much easier to deal with if Overwatch had not needed to worry about those “anti-air defense systems” by simply materializing fighter jets out of a timestream.

Point is, a teleporting fighter jet could’ve revitalized Overwatch’s “aging” military technology, pushing it ahead of Talon, Vishkar, and possibly other “competing” groups like Helix and reestablishing Overwatch’s peacekeeping efforts in Talon-stronghold or “anti-Overwatch” regions.

And if Vishkar and/or Talon did sabotage the Slipstream, their efforts appear to have paid off - the Slipstream is never mentioned again, as the project was likely dropped from Overwatch’s development docket for being too dangerous and too unstable.

But what no one expected was a different success.

Winston, who was probably well-known within Overwatch but kept a lower profile in the public, develops his first big, internal “claim to fame” moment when he creates the chronal accelerator and saves Tracer from her disassociation condition.

And this is why Tracer and Winston are the two biggest “mascot” characters for Overwatch:

“Hope” does not die.

No matter how it gets undermined or betrayed -

No matter what horrific losses and heartbreak it faces -

No matter how frequently it gets hurt or lost -

Hope and heroes always rise.

All the virtues that made Overwatch “weak” to Talon’s infiltrations, “weak” to disruption, “weak” to sabotage -

Are the same virtues that will help it return in the future.

But at the time of Lena’s accident, Talon doesn’t know this.

With Akande commanding the new Talon leadership, Talon deals what they believe are decisive blows to Overwatch’s power: Gérard Lacroix is dead and unable to “track” Talon’s movements. The Slipstream project is abandoned, and Talon thinks their ability to start more intense, “global-scale” conflicts has reached a new high.

As the new Doomfist, Ogundimu rose high in Talon and helped to orchestrate a conflict that the organization hoped would someday engulf the world.

Doomfist, on King’s Row:

Omnics will not be kept down forever. The ashes of the Crisis still smolder. This city is a powder keg that could ignite the world. And Talon is the flame.

Akande would embody uprisings.

And his new version of Talon would help others do the same.

Jack: This is Morrison. London has been attacked! King’s Row has fallen. We’re on the brink of open war. Ana: Hundreds are dead, and thousands injured! Jack: Team, it’s up to you.

In the next part, analyzing the implications that Talon fueled the Null Sector uprising in King’s Row, and how they plan to do it again, starting with Mondatta’s death.

And in a rather retributive turn of events, Akande gets arrested:

Probably because someone wanted to see him fall.

“Many were happy to see you go away.”

109 notes · View notes

natsuhikoshidou · 6 years ago

Text

Life Cheating Game - Chapter 2: At Optimum Temperature(Part 2)

Chapter 2: Part 1 | Chapter 3: Part 1

DATING... START!!!

I felt like Sora was about to say something in the school infirmary, there was that.

But, the days leading up to Sunday felt dreadfully long, the cause probably was simply something like enjoying the date with Sora.

'Is it ok if our meeting place is Hachiougi Station?'

"Yeah. What time?"

'9 am would be good. If it's too early the shops won’t be open, if we're late we can't enjoy our time.’

"Ok. Hachiougi station, 9 o'clock then."

The night before. Sora and I were deciding on the meeting place and time over the phone.

'This is a long-awaited date. Don't be late, Natsuhiko.'

"I know."

'Ok then. Well, see you tomorrow. Goodnight'

"Yeah, goodnight."

For several seconds, after being flooded by the reverberation of Sora's voice, I ended the call.

After that, I turned over the card on my desk.

‘Tomorrow, the lunch in the appropriate restaurant will taste bad, and the mood will worsen. For safety, go to a family restaurant.’

(* A family restaurant is a common type of restaurant in Japan which tends to serve a large variety of food, especially Western food. The name ‘family restaurant’ comes from the focus on family dining, so that children can always find something they like. Denny’s is a considered a family restaurant)

For some reason, this seemed like date advice.

However, it helped. I investigated the location of a family restaurant on my mobile phone, made a memo of it and put it in my bag for tomorrow.

Coincidentally I checked the contents of my bag.

"...Ok. The preparations are complete, as they say."

The clothes I'm wearing tomorrow are already prepared. When I confirmed them too I slipped into my futon.

That night, for a reason different to when before I had the card, I really couldn't fall asleep.

◊

I looked at the clock while I fidgeted.

The time is 8:50am. A little earlier than the time we had promised.

It's Sunday. I'm at Hachiougi Station. Looking around the outside of the bus rotary, there’s a plaza, there were street performers there too. There seemed to be lots of people meeting up apart from me.

Previously, the concourse inside the station was a popular meeting spot for people, a short while ago there was an explosion, so recently most people that use this station plaza instead.

Before Sora arrives, I lightly check my clothes. My clothes, which I planned to be as stylish as I could in my own way, probably ended up leaving the impression that I tried too hard. Aware of Akito’s clothes that I saw before, my coat with the strange design is the same as the one he wore.

"These ear cuffs are probably showing off too much…”

Also wearing some other rings and necklaces and stuff, though I tried to imitate what I saw Akito wearing, I confess, they’re actually all things I bought from a 100 yen store. Because what Akito wore has definitely got to be from a brand, it makes a considerable difference.

I raised my head and looked around the square. Sora still wasn't there.

I looked at the clock once more. The minute hand moved very slowly.

".....Hey, wait"

Why am I fidgeting like this? Sora calling it a date was just like a joke, today I was simply just going into town with my childhood friend.

Trying to persuade myself that, I couldn't stop my lips from smiling.

While breathing deeply over and over again, five minutes of waiting

"Morning, Natsuhiko"

"Aah, Sora. Morni...ng?"

When I tried to return the greeting to Sora, who had finally arrived, I froze up.

On her white blouse lined with lace on the sleeves and collar, she wore a pale pink cardigan, below that, she wore a slightly wide flared mini skirt, her long thin legs that extended from its hem were also covered with white lace stockings.

Her pale coloured clothes perfectly matched her beautiful black hair, the charm of the girl Sora Fushimi, was fully active.

"You're pretty early. I tried to hurry, did I keep you waiting?"

Sora smiling bashfully, to me, she looked like she was glittering.

It seems like she put on light makeup, I was captivated by her glossy pink lips.

"........."

"Hmm? What's wrong? You look like you've seen a ghost"

"Eh? A, eh?"

Speaking to Sora, with upturned eyes, I finally returned back to earth.

My heart, which felt like it stopped for a moment, strung with a furious heartbeat like a backlash.

"U, um. Sora's , uh, you’re wearing, unusual clothes..."

Full of agitation, my head and tongue weren’t working well, and I ended up blurting out something weird.

What's more, I said ‘unusual clothes’. I wanted to say something nicer. They suit you very well, they look really cute, I could...no...it's useless....

"Ooh, that. I only really wear skirts and stuff with our uniform. This frilly stuff is too unlike me I guess… It’s weird, isn’t it?”

While she looked down at her own clothes, Sora spun around once on the spot.

When she did, her already short skirt fluttered, my heart beat so furiously I was worried it could break out of my ribs and fly out.

"I-It's not that. They’re not weird. Not at all"

"Hm. You think? Saying that makes me feel happy."

"Y,yeah. They’re… far from strange...uh… they really, suit, you."

Building up the courage, I added with a very thin voice.

"R, right. They suit me. Right..."

Sora muttered while letting her gaze swim away.

Her cheeks looked kind of red, probably because of her makeup.

".........."

For a short while, a moment of silence flowed by.

I couldn't say anything in this tension, Sora also looked down in silence.

"…A, Aaah. This, uhh.. I actually, got some advice from Momiji."

Before long, after it seemed like she did vocal exercises, Sora spoke and raised her head.

"About this long awaited date, I dressed up a little for it."

"R-Right. But why Momiji?"

"I only have a few friends who are girls of the same age, you probably know that. But those girls don't know what your taste is."

"My taste?"

"The date you and I are going on together. Or should I say I chose these clothes with something apart from your tastes in mind? They're completely in reference to Momiji's advice"

My heart which began to calm down, pounded strongly again. If there was any more of a burden on it my heart might start to break.

But the word 'date' is merely an "outing" today with my fellow childhood friend, I thought.

However, Sora’s even wearing a skirt that she doesn't usually wear, even said she’s dressing fashionably from taking advice from a pre-schooler. Also, meeting my tastes, she said.

With these, it seems like, this really is a date.

Honestly, like date between a girl and boy that like each other, doesn’t it---.

"Well then, we should head off soon."

As she said that Sora walked off towards the station.

The stupid me followed after her, confused, and she said,

"Oh. I forgot to say something."

While her black hair fluttered, she turned around.

"I think your clothes suit you too. Yes. I'm falling in love again."

With a smile more dazzling than the sun, she said.

Me too, but I didn't say that, maybe out of cowardice.

◊

Leaving from Hachiougi to the city center took roughly an hour.

When reached the terminal that boasts of the world's highest number of users, the time was around 10am.

"...Well, where should we go?"

Sora said with a large voice, after we descended the platform crowded with people.

"I really haven't thought about it."

"Well then. I received a lecture from Momiji about the usual, general standard for dates. According to that, it seems like the routine is window shopping, isn’t it."

"Yeah, I've heard that before."

Though I don't definitely know what kind of shopping to do.

"Ok. First, we could try and browse some of the clothing stores in the station."

"Ok but... which one?"

"What do you mean, which one?"

"In this station? There's a lot of stations."

There are several similarly named stations and stores, and also down the maze-like subterranean tunnels, there are connecting tunnels underneath the buildings. If those are included in the definition of the station, then an unbelievable amount of buildings could be called stations.

To tell the truth, I've come to the city centre several times, but Sora and I haven't hung out in the outskirts of the station too much. Mostly, we use it to transfer transportation and pass through it.

Just to be sure, on the internet yesterday, I went to investigate places to hang out and the location of the family restaurant written on the card, I didn't think of window shopping.

"Hmm...In that case, let's just go wherever."

"Not like we have a choice."

As we agreed on that, we went towards the east ticket gates and left towards the train station.

"They literally only have clothing stores..."

When we saw the information board, it looked like most of the stores were fashion related shops.

"But it looks like upstairs is pretty much restaurants."

"It's too early for lunch though. We could try and look around a little, couldn’t we."

Inside the building, though it was Sunday, it was teeming with visitors.

Moreover, they were mostly young girls, the shops were also full of brands for girls. I would never come in here if I wasn’t with Sora, I thought.

".........."

And there was silence.

The visitors apart from us were chatting and having fun while looking at clothes, I didn't know anything about women's fashion, Sora was probably the same. Staying together, we had nothing to talk about while we looked at the clothes.

Unable to bear the atmosphere of simply staring at the mannequins in silence, I spoke.

"H, hey, Sora. Are there any clothes that catch your attention?."

"No."

"You don't have to declare it like that-"

"I can't help it, ok? Nothing really interests me. I usually only wear the clothes my mom buys me, and the clothes I'm wearing now are all things Momiji chose. To me, I don’t have a clue if something’s good or bad.”

Sora made a face like a scholar challenging a theory from a difficult-to-understand philosophy when she saw a shirt with an illustration from an anime printed on it.

"It looks like you put on makeup today, did you?"

"I let my mom do it. She taught me how to fix it when it gets ruined, but who knows if I can actually do it.”

She returned the shirt to the rack while scowling, Sora unintentionally forced a smile at me.

It wasn’t womanly, however, above anything it was Sora-ly.

"Fuu... It's no use. Let's go to another shop."

Like an anguished researcher at a stalemate, Sora shook her head.

"If we walk a little there’s a big bookstore, let's go there."

Sora nodded strongly at my proposal, we left the flashy fashion building.

Leaving the station crowded by a huge amount of people, the large bookstore we finally arrived at after a few minutes of walking had much less people than the train station as you’d expect, there was an extensive range of customers of all ages and genders.

"...Ah, this book."

The paperback book lined up on the storefront came to view, my feet stopped.

"This is the book Momiji asked for the other day."

"Oh ho. Let’s see.”

Sora took the single copy on the flat display, and flipped through the pages.

The pile of books decorated and written with pop art saying "A Long Awaited Paperback Publishment", was considerably big. In the bookstore near Hachiougi station there was a corner where new books were placed, surprisingly it was treated differently than there.

"Hmm. It's a mystery novel after all. It seems pretty interesting."

"Sora, you read mystery novels, don’t you?"

"I don't fuss over genre. ...Though, novels that tend to catch my interest are usually mystery or sci-fi. It seems Momiji is completely devoted to mystery novels."

Sora said while returning the book to the pile.

"If it interests you will you buy it?"

"No, it's fine. I can borrow it from Momiji now."

Entering the store, a corner for much-discussed work was prepared near the entrance. The lined up books were mostly manuals, I saw lots of books written about hygiene and diet.

"There’s so many diet books. Sora, are you interesting in dieti-"

"No."

"Right.”

At a glance, she didn't look like she needed to diet, now she wasn't in a state of paying attention to her body weight and figure.

"But this one's interesting."

While she said that the book in Sora's hands was... A book on breast enlargements.

Just now, without thinking, reflexively, my eyes went towards Sora's chest, who was standing next to me.

"As you can see, it's hopeless."

"Sure. ...Wait, ah, no, it's not!"

Sora expressed a wry smile to me, who hid my nodding in a panic.

"Don't worry. It's the truth. It's really not that complex."

"R, right. But, well, why is that interesting to you?"

"There isn’t really a reason “why”… Natsuhiko, do you like large chested girls?"

While tilting her head and staring at me, for a moment, I lost my voice.

"...Do you not?"

"Ah, no... it's, not that. I mean, I haven't really thought about whether I like large chested girls in the first place..."

"Is that right? So you don't mind if it’s a cliff face like this?"

Sora spoke while brushing down her own chest.

"A, a cliff face. I don't care. Being large chested..."

I stressed at being unable to read the intention of Sora’s statement, I tried to say my true feelings.

Though my male classmates always get excited over things like "Someone in the other class has huge boobs", I didn't participate in that, I wasn’t aware until just now that comparing Sora’s chest to the average, hers was smaller.

"Right... ok. Right right."

While expressing a relieved smile for some reason, Sora returned the breast enlargement book to the shelf. I became increasingly confused about the state of that girl.

Sora is different than usual today. She seems like she’s behaving like my girlfriend, not my childhood friend, or maybe that’s just my hubris…

"It seems like the second story is the paperback floor. …Ok, I should try and buy some sort of souvenir for Momiji, shouldn’t I."

Following Sora, who’s suddenly in a good mood, we went up to the second floor.

From the new work corner, prepared on the place that stood out most on the floor, a single copy of a mystery novel which seemed to meet Momiji's preferences was chosen, and bought.

After that, we went around the shop while chatting.

"Look at the price of this book, Natsuhiko"

Sora took the A6 book in her hand, and said with a serious expression.

"630 yen, do you think that’s a normal price?" (*~ $5.60)

"It is, right? But in the station we stopped by earlier, one shirt was being sold at 6,000 yen. Can you believe that? Isn't that 10 times this book?" (~ $53.45)

"Hmm, I don't know about the market for girl's clothes though..."

"Oh my god, looking at this, you get a sense of how people's values are different. For me, I would rather choose to buy 10 books so I don’t end up in a situation where that’s all I have to wear, but there are people that would choose to buy a 6,000 yen shirt like it’s normal in this world…”

With that immense culture shock, Sora groaned with a glum face, uuhm.

Looking around one more time, when we left the shop, it was getting close to midday.

"It’s already this late... should we eat lunch soon?"

"No, before that, let’s go over there."

Where Sora was pointing, there was a brand new building with white outer walls.

Things that looked like posters stuck in picture frames were lined up in a row on the wall.

"Is that a movie theatre?"

"Mhm. A movie is said to be a routine for dates. ....That’s the advice I got from Momiji."

"Haah..."

Momiji again. If she tells Sora weird things that's fine, but....

First of all, we went into the movie theatre.

The expansive lobby was filled with a diversity of people, groups of students, groups of old people, and huge amounts of families. Lining up in the queue to the ticket desk, we looked up at the screen showing the performance timetable.

"What should we watch?"

"To be honest, I've already decided."

As she said that, the title Sora brought up was a long-run screening of a western film.

It's a work that's brought up on the internet and television a lot, so I already knew most of the contents. Because of that, I asked Sora.

"Are you really sure? Is this your type?"

"Uh huh. Momiji recommended it. Because we're on a date you should watch this one, she said."

The seating arrangement was almost a full house.

Since the time of release approximately half a year ago has passed, the film has been hugely popular.

Soon the film started, it was a love story with a touch of comedy.

While it had moderate comedy, in the carefully created work where the man and women earnestly fell in love, I was gradually sucked into the story.

And then, the film came to a touching end. It was such I good work I thought I should have watched it earlier. I agreed with its high popularity.

".....?"

When the credits began flowing, something soft and warm touched my hand.

Sitting next to me, Sora put her hand on top of mine.

In a moment, my heart thumped, and I looked at Sora's face. Though it was in the darkness, I knew she was smiling while looking at my face.

Thump, thump... my heart rang out. It wasn't a violent throbbing.

I couldn't think.

I simply gazed at Sora like I was entranced, and entwined my fingers, with her fingers.

As soon as I did, heartache overflowed.

--- More. I still want more.

I want to connect even deeper, I squeezed Sora's hand.

Sora's hand squeezed me back too.

The joy of recieving that gentleness made me want to cry.

Soon the credits finished while our fingers and gazes were intertwined.

--- I just can't take my fingers or my eyes away.

That's what I thought.

But reality is cruel.

When the movie was over the audience had to leave outside

In the hustle and bustle of visitors leaving their seats, Sora and I came to our senses.

We untied our intertwined gazes, which had both become red.

Our entangled hands also had to unwrap with hesitancy.

That being the case, gradually I regained my composure, living in the space to look back on me from earlier, in the short space while we left the movie theatre, I couldn't properly look at Sora's face.

--- Why did I do something so embarrassing!

That was by mere chance, that’s the only thing I could think. I was swallowed up in the atmosphere of the movie. That act was clearly too much for the childhood friend territory.

But... I thought.

Sora accepted it. The act stepped over the childhood friend distance, she allowed it.

While I thought about the meaning of that in my still feverish head, I glanced over at Sora and...

".....!?"

Sure enough our eyes met, I looked away with a bounce, and hung my head.

"W...Well then! Would you look at the time! If it isn't time for lunch!"

Like she was trying to hide something, Sora spoke in a large voice.

"Are you pretty hungry now, Natsuhiko?"

"Y, yeah."

Sora returned to her usual tone and volume, I replied to her in a small voice. Though I still couldn't look at Sora, I knew that on her body her ears were still pretty red.

"Seems like there's a lot of restaurants around here, we should go to the most fitting one."

"Ah, wait a second."

Sora, who proposed while walking, stopped.

"Should we have lunch at a family restaurant?"

"Family restaurant?"

"It's difficult going into a shop you don't know, because, well... they might have crappy stuff."

Sora put her finger on her chin, and after thinking for a short while she nodded, "You have a point"

"So let's look for a nearby family restaurant"

"That's fine. I already investigated."

"...You already prepared. Did you plan on going to a family restaurant from the very beginning?"

Not really, as i answered, I pulled out the memo with the location of the family restaurant written on it from my bag.

This is to avoid the misfortune the card showed me last night. Today too, no more misfortune will happen. I didn't seem to show the relief on my face.

"Now you mention it, did you understand that from that card?"

"...Eh!?"

I almost dropped the memo.

"Before, the card wrote for you to be careful of the rain that afternoon. Or was it just a prank by Momiji?"

"A,aah....yeah… I… I wonder if it was a prank? Uh.....still, that.....I guess I really don't know.......well......Ah, right! I didn't really worry about it in the end!"

That was too shaky, if I say so myself.

"Huum...Well, I'm not sure if that's right"

Apart from that, Sora didn't ask any more. Even though she probably had doubt.

But when I thought about it, I realised there was no need to hide it. I felt I wanted to hear Sora's opinion on future prediction and Maki-chan appearing in my weird dream.

Well, let's just keep hiding it for today.

The family restaurant written on the memo was full at almost 2pm, but after waiting 5 minutes some seats emptied and we were able to get a late lunch.

We talked while eating lunch, the strange mood after we left the movie theatre had disappeared, I realized at last Sora and I had returned to being childhood friends as usual. Mutually, we seemed to absolutely not touch on the incident that happened in the movie theatre.

"What should we do after this? It’ll start getting dark soon."

We finished lunch and left the family restaurant, the time was around 3pm.

"Lastly, there's a place I kind of want to go to. Is that ok?"

I nodded at Sora's proposal. She was making a strangely serious expression.

We returned to the station and got on the electric train. The route was in the direction of Hachiougi.

Sora wasn't very talkative on the train, when I asked her where we were going, she answered ambiguously and vaguely.

"We get off here."

This was Kitahiragawa station, the 3rd stop after Hachiougi station.

Above the station, there was an unbroken view of Kitahiragawa's townscape of resident housing.

Getting off on the platfrom, Sora pointed at a speck in the town that started to become dyed by the sunset.

"It's been a while, I want to ride that."

Beyond what her thin fingers pointed at, darkened in the backlight, there was a large Ferris wheel.

◊

Kitahiragawa Children's Amusement Park.

A little amount of courage was needed to call this an 'amusement park' when it was a small-scale establishment.

There were merry-go-rounds and spinning teacups, they had the standard selection of play equipment, it small enough for any child, the proportioned site area was small.

However, when I was in elementary school it was a sufficiently fun place, I often burdened my parents with asking and begging them to go. Sora and her parents, and the grandparents I'm now living with have come here too.

For me, this is a place with incredibly important memories.

The inside is special, it's become a landmark for Kitahiragawa city because of its inappropriately big Ferris wheel.

"This somehow feels incredibly narrow. I guess that means we’ve grown."

Getting in the carriage fading with color, Sora and I sat facing eachother.

“The scenery’s changed too.”

I glanced outside the plastic window full of scratches.

In particular the station's surroundings were developing into a bedroom town, compared to my vague memories as a child, the number of large apartments behind me had increased.

"It's been around 7 years. It's strange that we and the town haven't changed a lot. This Ferris wheel seems like is starting to wear out though."

Rust began to fall off the window frame that Sora's finger's disciplined.

Though I know this carriage was once painted with images of rainbows and their seven colours, now the colours had faded and I was unable to distinguish between bitter orange and amber yellow.

Without replying, I felt the time pass by.

"Do you remember?"

A look dwelled in Sora's eyes like a child who thought of an amusing prank.

"The first time we rode this Ferris wheel, you got scared of heights and cried."

"Guh.... D,did that really happen?"

I averted my gaze to hide my embarrassment, but I vividly remember it.

It's a story from when I was in kindergarten. Sora and I and also my mother rode it together, even though I said I wanted to ride it, once it rotated halfway, I cried to my mother asking if we could get off quickly.

"Natsuhiko, back then you were so cute. Are you ok around high places now?"

Sora said grinning with a malicious smile, to say something back, I remembered when we were younger, and searched for something I remembered to counter-attack.

"S,Sora, you cried too. When we went in the haunted house."

"Mu..... I was just scared of unexplained phenomenon"

Sora puffed and turned her face away, but she couldn't hide the redness of her ears.

"Anyway, that was back when I was a kid.”

"I was just a kid back then."

Our faces became serious as we quarreled, and then we blurted something out at the same time.

Our bright laughing voices were trapped inside the narrow carriage.

"We both were kids, weren’t we. There were lot's of things we were scared of."

"Of course. Even still, it's rare that I cry..."

Sora wiped away the tears that had collected in her eyes from laughing too hard.

"You're crying right now."

"This doesn't count. The tears haven't come out so it's not crying."

Fuu, she said with a bold smile, Sora's gaze went outside the window.

"...Isn't it hard?"

That was a question aimed at me, I knew because her voice was gentle.

"I don't know."

While I answered honestly, I gazed at the scenery outside the window too.

"I guess I feel something. I feel bitterness in my chest."

In this ferris wheel, there was a place where Sora and my memories were cut off. It was kind of embarrassing, but it's hidden in my heart, that memory.

It was a similar memory of me and my parents in there.

"My dad let me ride on his shoulders."

What I saw that time was the same scenery I saw in the amusement park at a higher place.

"When I was lost, my mom called out for me."

The joy I felt at that time, the warmth of my mother who held me.

Though I remembered all of it, in these 7 years, I had come to confine those memories.

Today they were released, I felt something.

"I'm a little lonely....I think. But it feels different than bitterness. ...Yeah, after all, I really don't know."

"...I see."

Sora looked at me and smiled.

I looked at her and smiled too. Though I don't know if I smiled successfully.

I didn't feel lonely before I remembered my parents, but that’s because my world is so peaceful now. My quietly calm days with the future predicting ability bestowed upon me have given me the chance to smile.

Maki-chan's figure floated through my mind. Maybe Maki-chan isn't a resident of the dream world, but she is a God instead, she is the one that also gave me that card.

No, I don't care if it's Maki-chan or anyone else.

I feel grateful for whoever gave me that card.

The carriage we were in was close to reaching the highest point on the Ferris wheel.

"...Natsuhiko"

Sora met eyes with me, she expressed a serious facial expression, she spoke.

"I love you."

Not saying anything, at first I didn't understand the meaning.

Therefore, as if almost reflexively,

"Yeah."

I said, with a nod.

My head was in an inactive state, but it started to move,

"Is this how you respond to a so-called confession."

Sora said while smiling bitterly, and after that

Confession. I remembered the meaning of those words, I remembered the meaning of that act, I,

"~~~~~~~~!?"

I held my mouth. It wasn’t that riding the Ferris wheel was making me nauseous, what it actually was, was that being full of surprise made me emit a strange noise.

The palm that held my mouth was hot, the part of my face that was being touched was hot.

My whole body was hot like it was on fire, in my boiling head, surprise and questions jumped around like a pachinko ball.

"Co, coco, confe..... confe,ssion?"

"Right. Confession. Because I love you."

She declared it again, I thought my heart would stop.

After all, I couldn't bear it. In this surprise and this tension, and also, this joy.

"Let me spell it out for you."

Sora's face seemed to change into the same red as the colour of my face.

"I'm not saying I just love you as a childhood friend, y'know? It's not that I love you like family either. I love you, Natsuhiko Shidou, as a boy."

Again. She said 'love' again. There was a glimmering deep in her eyes.

I took the hand covering my mouth out of the way. It seems I hadn't been breathing for a little while.

Taking a deep breath, I looked at Sora's serious expression, she spoke.

"Natsuhiko.... well, I, I... I want you to be my boyfriend."

Her expression was inarticulate, it was un-Sora-esque.

Sora made both hands into fists and placed them on her lap, and waited intently for my words.

If I express my true feelings, I'll immediately want to run away.

Crowded with this feeling of tension, being soaked under this pressure made me want to jump out of the carriage... That's what I thought.

But I can't do that.

In Sora's eyes, packed full of thought, she reassured me that “You don’t have to answer.”

-If I said I didn't notice Sora's good will, it would be a lie.

The person who came to support me when I sunk down after losing my parents was without a doubt Sora. Without being comforted or encouraged, Sora simply stayed by me in silence. After I was taken in by my grandparents, when she found the spare time to she would meet up with me.

I don't know how much she's helped me with those things.

I was under the impression that Sora's dedication to supporting me was simply out of kindness, she surely must have felt betrayal.

-But what about your own feelings.

With Sora near me right now, the tranquility, warmth, and happiness I feel are all on the foundation of feelings of gratitude.

-No, they're not.

But before Sora was together with me and healed the wounds from losing my parents, I loved her. Because she was a special existence to me, when I thought I could lose everything again, I found out my reason for living.

And then today, I didn't realise.

When she turned up to our meeting place dressed the best she could.

When she murmured and worried about whether I liked large chested girls.

When she seemed to kindly wrap my hand up and squeeze back.

It was for me. I didn't notice it was for that.

-I love Sora.

For a long time, and right now too,

".....Sora"

She raised her face and immediately met my eyes.

"I love you too, Sora."

Slowly, politely, I put all of my feelings into words.

I wonder if they reached. Sora sighed deeply and held her chest.

After that, she spoke.

"Will you be my boyfriend?"

"Will you be my girlfriend?"

We asked, mutually. Mutually, we laughed. While tears began to fill up my eyes.

That smile is the answer to the question.

In this moment, surely, Sora and my relationship went from childhood friends to partners.

"You're crying again, Sora."

"I am crying. I don't know why, but that was really tense. While you say that, Natsuhiko, you're crying too."

"I’m not crying. I just have tears in my eyes."

"Kuh, you're mean."

While we both wiped what collected in the corners of our eyes, we laughed together.

It looked like nothing had changed, between us two. But obviously something had changed.

Sora's smile that I saw looked completely different than when we were childhood friends before.

"Natsuhiko. Can I sit next to you?"

Sora stood up without getting an answer, while taking care not to make the carriage shake, she sat down in the empty seat.

Then whether I liked it or not she quickly took my hand in silence, and entwined our fingers like we did in the movie theatre.

When she did that, I became dizzy from my heart beating-

"Wai, So, Sora?"

"Humph. For some reason, when we do this, it feels really nice."

Sora lay her head on my shoulder, and leaned into me. The distance between us had disappeared.

"Isn't this the way partners treat one another?"

when she said that, Sora demonstrated to the window behind us with her empty hand. Through the window, in a lower carriage, I saw a man and woman snuggling together closely. They had a really similar form to us right now.

"It pains me, but I felt like I had to use a reference."

"S, saying that is....a little embarrassing...."

"It's fine, right? I was kind of hesitant. We've become partners. So we can flirt all we like."

"Yeah...that seems right, but I could be mistaken..."

But the warmth Sora's body is giving off is certainly pleasant, I don't want to separate.

In our space, the evening sun thrust through the scratched window.

"To tell the truth, my clothes today have been kind of chilly. I thought it was necessary to endure it for the style Momiji suggested... But, doing this is making me warm."

It wasn't just the body warmth mutually given off, but surely I feel like this is warmth overflowing from inside my heart, Sora probably felt so too.

"Did we come to the amusement park so you could confess?"

"Kind of. In the first place, the date itself was so I could confess."

"Right. .....It was kind of unexpected."

"What was?"

"I thought you weren't interested in something like confessing. That or love."

"I'm not interested. I'm not now. I just, really....for some reason, if I asked if I should confess, it would be like asking for permission."

Sora spoke like she was carefully choosing her words.

"Permission? What do you mean?"

"It's simple. Permission to satisfy my desire. My desire for wanting you."

Sora, who raised her head looked at me, and expressed a smile as she spoke fascinatedly.

"Impulse. I'm a person at the limits of my patience. I can't bear wanting you."

"What do you mean, 'want'?"

"To be together with you. I want to touch your skin. I want to.... connect with you. I want to feel the existence known as Natushiko Shidou's whole body, I want to try and keep it to myself. When we moved up to high school and seemed to share more time together, that desire grew bigger in one go."

A person whose words are too direct. I felt the core of my head become numb.

It's because of what Sora said.

"But, that desire collided with you, and I didn't want to be stubborn. I didn't want to see you troubled. That’s why I confessed. So that you would accept my desire."

I know the name of that desire.

The desire is called 'affection'. It's absolutely inside of me too.

"Do you think I'm shameful? If you think so there's nothing I can do though."

"Me too."

Sora spoke with a heartfelt expression, she stopped to look at me.

Up until now, it's only her who has been expressing her love, because I'm too pathetic.

"I also want you, Sora. I always want to be together with you. I'm not sure if I can be patient, just like you....."

"In that case.... is it ok, if I want you, Natsuhiko?"

"Yeah. If it's ok for me to want you too, Sora."

"Yeah. Of course"

She smiled while her beautiful eyes dampened, Sora leaned into me again.

"I'm happy.... Happiness. This is happiness."

She murmured as if she was reflecting, I nodded too.

Happiness, my peaceful life I completely lost 7 years ago.

Now it was so close, it had always been next to me.

Soon, the carriage we rode approached the ground.

The door opened, this happy moment seemed to end, the clerk in charged watched us.

"What a rude guy. He could have shut up and let us go around one more time."

"It can't be helped. Let’s come here again sometime."

"Yeah. Next time, let's get a ticket to go around twice in advance."

We stuck together as long as we could, and got off the carriage.

While holding hands. While cuddling close. While there was zero distance between us.

We're not just childhood friends anymore. This is the distance of partners.

After we left the memorable amusement park, we went on our way home.

We coincided with the home-time rush, Kitaharagawa station platform was overflowing with people.

Since the high speed train that stops at Hachiougi in one stop was probably full, we waited on the platform for the next train, to take the slow train home.

As we did,

"....Ah"

Pushed in the crowd of people, it looked like Sora was about to slip off the platform.

In a hurry, I pulled our entangled hands.

The train passed by immediately behind Sora, who I managed to pull into me to protect her.

"Sora, are you ok?"

"Yeah, Thank you. I'm fine."

My heart rang out like an alarm bell.

"Really... I'm glad I was holding your hand."

"Yeah. Really."

What if I wasn't holding her hand. If we were still childhood friends, that would be dangerous.

We gripped each other's hands even more strongly.

Interlude: Our Retribution Policy

"What a nice sight."

He said while watching the TV.

Transmitted on the screen was news reporting on a fire breaking out in the city.

In one room of the burning apartment complex, they discovered the burnt corpse of an unemployed man.

That man was the offender of a series of arson incidents that disturbed society.

Then, about a week ago, the man that he demanded I “bestow a reward” upon.

"An arsonist burning to death in a fire. There's nothing more appropriate than this."

Without any especially deep emotion, he was uninterested.

The incident which should have happened naturally, happened naturally. He probably recognised that.

I stood in the corner of the living room, and simply listened to his voice.

In order to grant his wish, I became his tool.

The one who establishes the target of retaliation, is him. The one who performs it, is me.

I say ‘perform’, but it isn’t necessary for me to do it first-hand. By manipulating the probability that fills this world, I am able to bestow a reward in the form of misfortunate accidents and events even to far, far away targets of retribution.

From the moment I decided to grant his wish, I began to understand that it was unnecessary for me to think about what kind of reward would be appropriate. An existence like me, a thing that grants peoples wishes, accommodates the wishes that I should grant.

He understood my power, but he was, nonetheless, cautious.

He first chose offenders of villainous incidents occurring in Japan as targets of retribution. That was probably in order try out my power.

For example, if it’s a case where the police cannot identify the suspect, if I learn the appearance and name of the offender, their whereabouts and the events in their past. Performing retribution, confirming what to establish retribution on, it’s not difficult.

The appropriate reward, for the whole world.

Unlike the creator, I am imperfect, and am not able to change the world one by one.

Nevertheless, if we do something like this we’ll get closer the world I wish for little by little, he said.

"After tomorrow, include the people close to me as retribution targets."

People close to him. Such as relatives and family?

"Not my family. They're too close. We'll go outside, give the people walking around their appropriate rewards.”

Are you planned to ascertain the efficiency of my abilities?

"Yes. ...Besides, when we go outside, wear this. That weird appearance stands out too much. Then I won't mind walking with you."

He held out the paper bag placed on the table to me.

I took it and looked inside, the uniform for girls for the school he attended was inside.

"I put a hair tie in there too. Tie up that pointlessly long hair."

He spoke tiresomely, and returned to his room.

He's a strange man, I thought again.

This isn't the first time he's given me things.

The first thing he gave me, was a place to stay. One room in the apartment his parents seemed to have bought him as a gift, in there he allocated one room to me. Originally, there were many rooms as he was living away from home, it seemed to be left over.

Now in the room that was once vacant, a simple bed and dressing table had been placed, the closet really wasn't needed when he lived alone, it was stored full of clothes for girls.

I've met many humans until now, but I haven't once been treated like this.

I'm worshipped like a God, though I'm creepy like a monster, to him it's like I'm just a person, and he treats me like I'm just a girl. Though he avoids obviously behaving like he looks down on me, he is exceedingly polite towards me.

I felt like something else was strange.

That is his personality.

I've seen him when he talks to friends over the phone. His tone and expression then truly look like a different person. He's bright, friendly, exchanging things like jokes when he talks, it doesn't bare the slightest resemblance from the usual him that I know.

Perhaps he suffers from a split personality disorder?

"That's stupid. I'm just acting."

I asked, and didn't feel any friendliness in the slightest, a cold voice answered.

"When I’m talking to inferior people, it’s better to get on their good sides rather than make enemies. I’m putting on a personality that they prefer. It’s a little freebie for them.”

It looked like very jokey personality.

"Hmph. Usually it’s pretty jokey, but deep down it’s more serious, it makes sure people won’t tell lies. That personality’s the most popular. I can’t joke around too much, but I also can’t be too serious. But no matter what, it always holds the position of being inferior to others.”

Do people prefer others who are inferior to them?

"Naturally. People suffer from inferiority complexes. They can’t hold the feeling that people better than them enjoy being around them. Having no self-confidence is encouraging to them, because it makes them suffer.”

But, the feeling of honour exists in humans too. Would you not call honour the feeling of when people better than yourself enjoy being around you?

"What a sweet thought. Humans envy things. While you call it honour, on the flip side, jealousy lurks. Besides, since I’m the only person who realises that, that’s the biggest trouble.”

Although he asserted that, I didn't see that there was any portion of the popular student that was inferior.

I didn’t think anybody would pretend to be inferior just so they could have people that enjoy being around them.

"I don’t actually have to be inferior at everything. Inferior people don’t try and see the true nature of things, they live in a fantasy. Even interpersonal relationships are complemented with fantasies. Muttering some complaints instead of greeting them, that alone makes people relieved. Those guys are probably imperfect the same way that I am, they see the version of me that they create in their head, not the real me, and that makes them feel better.”

He spoke just like he could read other people's minds.

"Of course you think I can read them. What the masses are thinking is easier to read than children's literature, it's easy to understand. Well, to me it is."

Then why would you keep company with such inferior people?

"Well, I hate losing. It doesn’t matter how trivial it is, I always want to continue on as the winner. My abilities aren't enough, the quality and number of my friends, the value of my surroundings, and also, how many people would die for me are. I want to continue to win at all those things.”

In order to do that, you dominate in understanding people's minds?

"I enjoy winning. At least, more than losing."

Was wishing for retribution so you could win?

"I'm talking about the person sitting at the winning position. Giving people rewards, judging sin, they're both the job of a superior person. Rating everyone's actions and thoughts and bestowing an appropriate price on those... don’t you think that's the appropriate privilege for the person who sits at the top?"

I didn't answer his question.

To him it also probably wasn't necessary that I replied.

Me, who was not a person, had to admire his way of thinking, I didn’t think to criticise him.

I simply became a tool to him, who wished strongly, just to accomplish my goal.

I am a thing that grants people's wishes.

A thing, simply just for that.

Chapter 3 --->

#ikasama life game #life cheating game #kemu voxx #kemu #pandora voxx #イカサマライフゲイム #our retribution policy #ぼくらの報復政策

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danielphowley · 7 years ago

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Razer's Project Linda concept fuses a smartphone with a laptop

yahoo

Gaming hardware maker Razer is known for rolling into CES every year and blowing the doors off the place with off-the-wall concepts. Last year it took the show by surprise by unveiling a three-screen laptop codenamed Project Valerie, and this year it’s doing the same with its smartphone-laptop hybrid codenamed Project Linda.

I got to check out Project Linda during a press event and while it’s not going to outpace a three-screen laptop for most over-the-top product, it’s certainly far likelier to result in an actual product.

Smartphone, meet laptop

Project Linda uses Razer’s own Android-powered Razor Phone and merges it with the shell of one of its Stealth laptops. Of course, Razer isn’t the first company that’s tried to merge a smartphone and computer into a single device. Smartphone makers have been developing laptop-style docks for their handsets for some time. But they’ve always failed to take off, as there was never a real reason to use a keyboard with your smartphone.

More recently, Samsung introduced its Dex adapter that turns your smartphone into a desktop computer. And while it works well in a pinch, it’s not going to give you the kind of power you need if you’re doing resource intensive work like photo or video editing, or managing large chunks of data.

Project Linda, though, isn’t meant to replace a laptop. Instead it’s meant to give you the option to play Android-based games with a keyboard and larger screen. Razer said it can also prove useful if you’re typing a particularly long email, or editing a document and need the screen real estate only a laptop can offer.

Gaming

The main draw of Project Linda, though, is to improve Android gaming. I played “Vainglory,” a multiplayer online battle arena-style game and it ran just as smooth on Linda’s screen as it did on the Razer Phone’s. I didn’t notice any issues with lag or slow down and the keyboard shortcuts worked just as they should.

I’m not a huge Android gamer, so Project Linda isn’t geared toward someone like me, but there are plenty of gamers out there that do most of their gaming on their Android phones. And a large number of them live in China.

Project Linda’s brains are all located in the Razer Phone. The laptop portion is a relatively dumb device.

One of the biggest games in the world is Tencent’s “Honor of Kings.” It boasts roughly 200 million players and was designed specifically for mobile users. Razer knows that the Chinese gaming market is huge and that mobile gamers occasionally want to play on larger screens, which is where Linda comes in.

How it works

Docking the Razer Phone with Project Linda is incredibly easy. You simply drop the handset into the slot where the Linda’s touchpad would be, and press the mechanical docking button on the keyboard. A USB C connector then slides into the phone’s port, and that’s that. Project Linda immediately begins displaying content from the Razer Phone on it’s screen.

Razer says the Razer Phone’s touchscreen can act as a secondary display for Project Linda.

Linda’s brains are all located in the Razer Phone, making the laptop portion a relatively dumb device. Of course, it also holds a large battery to charge the Phone when it begins to lose power.

Razer says you’ll be able to use the Razer Phone as either a touchpad for Project Linda, or a second screen for the computer, so you could be editing a photo and on Linda’s touchscreen and then select a second shot from your image library using the Razer Phone’s screen. Pretty slick.

When can you get it?

Since this is just a concept, Project Linda is nowhere close to becoming a real product. Everything Razer showed us was simply what they think they could one day produce. But for now there’s no talk of pricing, availability or any other relevant information. So for now, we’ll just have to wait and see if Razer can pull the trigger on this concept and make it a reality.

More from Dan:

Google is determined to crush Amazon’s Alexa in 2018

The Blade Shadow could turn your phone into a Windows 10 gaming beast

The best streaming devices you can buy

There are reasons to be skeptical about Magic Leap’s long-awaited AR headset

Samsung’s Windows-powered VR headset is a winner

The best tech gifts under $100

Email Daniel Howley at [email protected]; follow him on Twitter at @DanielHowley.

#gaming #Razer Phone #_revsp:yahoofinance.com #Razer #brian grazer #_uuid:d05055c8-91eb-3d10-9a2d-b893b3f6159a #ces #_lmsid:a077000000BAh3wAAD #Razer Project Linda #ces 2018 #games #_author:Daniel Howley #gaming laptops

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puurcreative · 4 years ago

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Which social media platform is for you?

As the world stands today, social media is an inexpensive way to keep in touch with your audience. If you've had a look around you can see that there are a great number of different social applications and networks (if you want the very long list of social media sites have a look on this Wikipedia page. This is useful as it has numbers of registered users on each platform and Alexa page rankings included!). These all have different audiences and fulfil a different 'need' for their audience and for the people posting. Here’s our short list of the top 3 types of social media including an example of what platform this could be: Social networks - people and businesses, connecting with people (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter...) Media sharing networks - for sharing images, audios and videos (instagram, YouTube. Tiktok...) Discussion forums - for people and brands to share views and news (Reddit, Quora...) We have accounts on most of the above (and more), but obviously to publish content on all these would be a full time challenge. It may seem overkill, but being up to date on these networks and sharing your knowledge, helps to build social currency. Social Currency is all about reputation (much the same as brand is) it's a measure of your influence on both social networks and offline, and the degree to which your output is then shared by your target audience and others.

Let's look at a few platforms then...

So, let's skip through each of these platforms one by one, giving a very brief flavour of what each network is about, who the audience is and what sort of messages work well on each. One thing to bare in mind across all platforms though is to remember that 'social media' is very much social. Don't spend all your time talking about yourself and your business. If possible we always recommend the 80:20 rule: 80% posts related to your business area (even vaguely), but not directly promoting it20% can be promoting your business more specifically, but still make it 'more conversational' LinkedIn - In the past company pages within LinkedIn used to be viewed primarily as HR landing pages for people looking for jobs. LinkedIn as a whole used to be where professionals could find their next role - through making relevant connections. A lot has changed, and although this is still how some people use it (though better than before) the network is also becoming a great place to help drive business from. It's also becoming a platform to educate your audience of your products and services and in turn, raise brand awareness.

This is very much a professional to professional network, with men slightly more likely to be LinkedIn users than women (57% of LinkedIn users are male*). Here is where a specialist business of service can get technical with your chosen audience, you can talk shop or post articles direct from your website without any changes. Facebook – On the face of it, it is great way for people to keep in touch with family and friends. It is social media for everyday use. In terms of a business, it can be great for building brand awareness, after all Facebook is one of the largest social media platforms in the world. Remember to post links that interest people though - a post about an accountancy firm will stand out between two pictures of kittens acting cute! - not in a good way. Facebook can drive traffic to your website through posting links and by targeted ads. Ads (which cost money) can get your brand in front of a very specific audience – target specific demographics, based on location, age, gender and interests. To gain traction with your audience, it is best to post fun items in amongst your more business focussed elements.

Twitter – is a platform that provides access to millions of users (330 million monthly active users*) all over the world. It tends to be more popular with 'educated' individuals. I was once explained that Twitter was like walking into a noisy pub and being able to listen in on each of the conversations (at the time, in 140 characters). The challenge with Twitter is that it is very much a global platform. Your followers could be all over the world, very few of them (if you're a local business) could be your target audience. Through using hashtags you can help the transition from global to local. Though it is very much dependant on your audience using them too. If you market to these people appropriately, then you stand to gain a great amount of exposure. Using a post scheduling platform may help make using Twitter more manageable as the more you post the more audience you gain. Remember - liking, mentioning and commenting on other peoples tweets is a simple way to connect with other users.

Instagram - is a key platform for younger audiences (67% of people ages 18-29 use Instagram*) and is consistently adding new functionality for business users. It’s an extremely visual platform, in fact it's pretty much all about imagery. As it has become more and more ubiquitous, every small business should consider using it. You should share images of your products in a setting that would be more reflective of your audience. Short videos are ideal of your products in use. Give people a taste of your world, but as well as this, reflect their world. Consider using Instagram Stories, where you can post recorded videos, still photos, live videos etc. As with most platforms liking, mentioning and commenting is a simple way to connect with other users. Also the use of hashtags is again a great way to help your target audience to find content. YouTube - Since its launch in 2005, YouTube has become the goto platform for video content (YouTube has 2 billion monthly active users*). Nearly 500 hours of video are uploaded every minute! A key thing to think about is your audiences age? (71% of people aged between 26-35 use it*).

If you're going to create content, try and think about what are the sorts of YouTube videos you watch, why do you watch them, what makes them keep you engaged to the end? Remember though, a regular YouTube viewer only spending on average, 11 minutes and 43 seconds per day* on the platform, so it's best to keep content on the short side. As well as the usual likes, links and commenting, think about creating playlists - organise (yours or others) content through a list (perfect for retail or services). Another way to help grow your channel is to share videos regularly on your other media. TikTok - this is a relative new kid on the block. Launched in China in 2016 is is now one of the fasted growing social platforms in the world. With an audience now of more than 800,000,000 active users (yes, that is 800 Million) TikTok's mission is “to capture and present the world’s creativity, knowledge, and precious life moments, directly from the mobile phone. TikTok enables everyone to be a creator, and encourages users to share their passion and creative expression through their videos.” Bascally, TikTok is about making and viewing video content. Creativity and individuality are key. Videos can be uploaded or created from within the app, with users also having the option to live stream. From within the app users can add visual filters, time effects, transitions, stickers, emojis, and much more.

The target audience really is the under 30's (Roughly 50% of TikTok’s global audience is under the age of 34 with 26% between 18 and 24). Marketing was slow to jump on the TikTok band wagon, but now brands like Nike, Pepsi, Lush (already having 117k followers) and Skittles have open accounts. It has even got to a point where online giants: Buzzfeed are recruiting youngsters to cover the US elections on TikTok! The good news is that if you're going to create content, there most definitely an audience, though it may be in India (which accounts for 43% of new TikTok users) or China (in 2019 80% of the time spent on the platform was from Chinese users). However this is a platform with is still growing, get in there early and you could reap the rewards. As with other social media, make sure your content is fun or if your brand can stand it - outrageous. Take full advantage of the in built advertising possibilities: Infeed native content (like in snapchat), Hashtag challenges (takes some of the stress out of building a hashtag following), Brand takeovers (take over the TikTok for the day) or Branded lenses (like the 2d and 3D lenses within Snapchat). Reddit - First off, Reddit dislikes marketers. That said, if you can find a way to market to the mainly male audience it can reap rewards. There are only two reasons someone goes to Reddit: to get information or to have fun. And they go there in their droves. Reddit has 85 Million global monthly users, with 64% of them under the age of 30. One thing that will help is to chose a 'subreddit' that links to what you do and get to know the users there. Ask a question, be helpful or just make people laugh, but become part of that community. The more you get to know them and the more they get to know you the better relationships you’ll build and the more attention your business will receive. It's a tough audience, but could be great in the long run.

Quora - is basically a site where people ask and answer questions. These questions could be anything, from the serious: What is the impact of logo design on brand recognition?, to the abstract: What does the Coke logo mean?. Everything has to be one of the two. With more than 300 million unique visitors every month, Quora is a weighty platform. In some ways the same as Reddit, Quora relies on an upvoting system. The more people that upvote your answer, the more exposure your answer gets. The great thing about Quora is that every answer is searchable through Google, allowing your answers to link back to your website. The thought leadership opportunities in this platform are immense.

What next?

Well, the above are only a few of the platforms out there. Really which ones you go for is up to you. Have a look around each platform, see if there are other companies that are like yours visible, see if the tope of people that you see as your audience are visibly engaging on the platform. See the sort of content that's being produced. This will help you come up with content of your own. Make it as original as possible and make sure it 'feels' like your brand. Remember though, companies may have a whole team behind their posts - so don't be too hard on yourself. Think of your audience, make a plan, and where possible stick to it - plans are always meant to be broken though - so be flexible and think on your feet! And if that's not possible - give us a call :) Puur doesn’t just deliver award winning design solutions, we give advice to ensure that design, advertising and marketing are part of a successful business strategy. Our decades of experience of being both the designer and the client give us a unique perspective on the world of design. We know that the work we do is a tool to bring a reaction, our work really does need to answers a need. Give us a call today to chat over how we can help.

*Facts and figures courtesy of The 2020 social media demographics guide Take a look at our blog on Bloglovin Images from LinkedIn Sales Navigator and Harry Cunningham on Unsplash Read the full article

#marketing #socialmedia

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pieridesofbillions · 7 years ago

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More Rip, Less Legend - Aruba-con and why we can’t all get along.

Rip, oh, Rip - just when I think you’ve learned your lesson about working with others, you get more douche-like and do things like form a Time Bureau and cut out the Legends completely. The Legends who have saved the world from evil dictators, your former bosses and people who use ancient Christian artifacts to change the entire makeup of the reality as we know it, with your consent at breaking the one rule about time. Ironically, you don’t remember your time as a fondant chef, because it was where you were the most useful, or at least, you don’t remember that actual two seconds, you were a proper Legend because you learned how to work with your damn team and realized you were not the greatest Time Agent on the face of the planet.

But of course, it’s a new season and we need a new “Rip’s being the stupidest stupid head ever with his dumb secrets,” plot because God knows, you haven’t learned that sharing is caring and the Legends will have to save your ass eventually anyway. Even if he has a plan in play, it isn’t working because he’s keeping it secret.

The problem with Rip Hunter is twofold – number 1 - He does not know how to work with people or be a part of a team. 2- He needs power or he is an unhappy, desperate, sad puppy. I choose to look at problem two first, because we have the Time Bureau – he’s working with a team of people there, right?

To give you a little bit of my process here, the first step in examining a character for me is stripping them down to their core. I get inside their head and take away all the layers that they have built up over the years (that I know about anyway) and find what they are inside of all of that. For instance – Sara Lance - despite what she’s suffered, despite all the blood of people that she’s killed, despite all the rage at the people who have killed her, despite the responsibility of being captain of the Waverider, at her core- she is the embodiment of joy. She delights in a good fight, in a good joke, a good game of cards, a nice beer, a romp in the sheets. Even in the sadness of the memories of her sister, she tries to find the joy in everything no matter what situation she’s in.

Rip, on the other hand, was almost impossible to figure out until I compared his behavior to Ray in Season 1. Ray assumed he knew what was best in any given situation, always needed to be listened to and validated, didn’t understand any point of view or lifestyle but his own as the “right” one and deemed himself right in any given situation and his wrongness had to be slowly explained to him or he didn’t understand. In fact, behaviorally, the only difference between the two is that Rip was more jaded, more experienced, more ruthless, and more morally neutral. While at his core, Ray wasn’t privilege (at his core, he is a tinkerer- someone who cannot stop messing with things no matter how much they need to be left alone), he was the perfect example of privilege. So why was it so hard for me to identify the same things in Rip? Ray’s privilege (while also being white and male) came almost completely from money (knowledge as well, but in season one it was also proven Ray was brain smart and street dumb, while Leonard was both brain and street smart, but still not inherently privileged, hence me taking it off the table.)

The problem was my brain was temporally locked, for lack of a better word. Rip’s core is power, but it’s extremely hard to recognize because that kind of power almost always exclusively comes from money, but a time traveler has no need of money, because it is so very temporary. Grab a penny from the 1800’s, jump to the twenty-first century and you’ve just made yourself a rich man. We hardly ever see that kind of completely and utter disregard and/or use of others in people who are essential broke, but because he travels through time, he has more power than we will ever know. That’s why some of Rip’s best, kindest moments come from when he’s feeling powerless, because he can finally see past himself and what he thinks and can finally empathize with others and use all of the other layers that he’s learned and knows to truly help.

But making a powerful person feel powerless eventually has its repercussions. After erasing his own memory, being mind-jacked by the Legion of Doom, protected by Gideon, returned to his own ship where he found Sara had finally made the Legends work (as much as the Legends will ever be functional), then trapped for God knows how long making fondant cakes in a tiny baby Waverider and being partially erased by time, he’s more powerless than he’s been since losing his wife and child due to the organization he had dedicated his life to. So Rip did what Rip always does when he’s pressed against a wall – he takes control of everything in front of him despite the fact that it is inherently uncontrollable – in this case, Time. When his wife and child died, he tried controlling the uncontrollable with the Legends in the first place, despite being time manipulated, despite being defeated time and time again when he tried to save them by himself, he decided to draft the moteliest crew of people who clearly have issues with authority. Then, he lied to them, had no problem using their guilt and camaraderie with Carter to keep them around, but was surprised when they didn’t bow to his every whim and demand and bonded with each other over hating him. And they still became a team, somehow, despite the odds.

So, then he had to do the stupid thing of stranding his team in various points of time to hide a secret, powerful artifact , kept its origins secret again and instead of asking for help, he left the Legends to backtrack his steps, which inevitably left them three steps behind, and eventually, in a situation where they had to break the most cardinal rule of time and obviously, if the Legends had to break the most cardinal rule of time travel to save the world, no matter what happened as consequences, something must be done. By him, obviously, because none of that was his fault in the first place (the fondant loving chef of the tiny Waverider was a time remnant that disappeared completely erasing his memory of contributing to this plan and before that), of course, he was busy stranding his team and then he had to kill George Washington.

Which is how we wound up back at problem number one – Rip doesn’t know how to work with people or be a part of a team. I present as evidence exhibit A – the Time Bureau. Again, I was unbelievably confused at how Rip Hunter – who has not only traveled with the Legends, but has been saved by them innumerable times created an agency that uses them as a guide of what not to do when confronted by time aberrations. I can understand why he wanted to create the antithesis of the Time Masters and from what we’ve seen so far that is very much what he did– living inside of time, centered in 2017 (and supposedly beyond), adhering to a more modern, office like look, being connected personally and training to work together, using mobile devices instead of ships when captains had been travelling as their own law, using centralized agency with checks and balance and different levels of power, one that doesn’t disguise itself according to the time period, but with technology. All of this is inherently opposite the entire look and feel of the Time Masters, which is entirely appropriate and at first glance, very impressive.

What I find incredibly appalling, however, is how he used the Legends as not only example of what not to do, but how everything they did was wrong, which yes, breaking time bad, but here’s the problem one in action. All the people he recruited believed him. Why would someone supposedly effective as Rip work with the Legends so long if they were such awful, bumbling idiots? Why did he entrust his ship to them and hide in the past? Because instead of recruiting those effective in their own fields (but unknown) as he did with the Legends, he chose people that could be molded to be similar to him. Structured, rule following, type A personalities, people who follow plans and protocol to the letter and are endlessly trained in every possible scenario that could possibly happen, instead of the kind of people who would break down his logic or empathize with the conditions the Legends were under. He’s equipped them with devices that used surprise and disorientation as their primary method to fix their aberrations and voila, problem solved - incredibly effective Time Bureau. But despite how quickly they’ve cleaned up the huge mess of Time that the Legends made, they’ve only existed approximately five years, less if you count making protocol, staffing and training. Essentially, everyone is basically a baby agent just getting their feet wet.

All that training was useless after one call about Julius Caesar from a Legend. Based on the wonderful stories Rip has been instilling in his trainees, they barely believe in a possible aberration and outright dismiss the evidence because they didn’t actually look at their surroundings and notice a huge toga party or bother talking to Mick. Then when the Legends return Caesar, albeit roughly, when they go to “fix” the Legends’ horrible mistake, they are baited into a trap that is used as a basic shoplifting lure at box stores.

Instead of recruiting people of many different styles and methods to work with, Rip has created a Time Bureau of tiny little Rips. He could have built a new more functional version of the Legends, finding people who had their skills without as many of their hang-ups or he could have used the Legends as teachers after he fixed time. He didn’t even let Gideon have a say in how the new teams were formed which says a lot about how much control he wanted. Gideon is a mostly impartial party who has just as much if not more knowledge about time travel and yet, he shut down her mind and used her body as a training simulator. (Let’s not forget, Gideon was the only thing that kept Rip sane inside his own mind at one point.) No, Rip Hunter has just trained a lot of people to follow his lead and act just as he would in the field. He’s made mini drones. That may be effective against your average aberration, but they don’t know how to improvise. He’s built them up with a great success rate but he hasn’t shown them the truth of time travel – things go wrong. Things always go wrong. The field isn’t like a simulation and when you’re in the middle of a situation, protocol doesn’t always work. Mistakes get made and you have to make tough decisions very fast. The only mini-drone exceptions we’ve seen to this are extremely anti-Legends and the individual thought they have had is “Don’t use Legends.” (Wonder where they got that idea from?)

The Legends aren’t perfect, but they are effective because they’ve learned that each of them brings something different to the team and all of those things should be valued. While Rip values the Legends as an asset, he hasn’t learned how to value them as people– he’s taken everything they’ve done for him, Time and each other and made a mockery of it because one, it gives him power and two - it restores his faith in himself and in his righteousness. In his mind, the problem for Rip was never him, it was them. He still hasn’t learned that they have things teach him. He didn’t try to find his place on the team where he belonged amongst all these different personalities with all of their weaknesses and all of their strengths. While he was extremely grateful for what they did for him, he still hasn’t come to understand how they did it. To this day, they still mystify him because he hasn’t truly seen them as equals, and sometimes, as betters. They look at failure and learn, while he looks at failure and becomes defeated. He gives commands instead of asking questions. He orders instead of requests. He talks at people instead of listening to people and he blames others instead of taking responsibility. He had a chance to use the opportunity he had once given them to change his destiny when Sara invited him to stay on the team. But he made a decision when he took that time ship and left his former team behind, he chose to be a great Time Agent instead of becoming an incredible Legend.

#Legends of Tomorrow #season three spoiler #I thought a thing #Meta

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shannrussell-blog1 · 5 years ago

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Regardless of your level of fitness, there are some essential items you should always carry when hiking for your safety and health. Only last summer, I passed a couple going for a day-long hike carrying nothing but their car keys and a 500mL water bottle! In this post, I’ll discuss how to choose a suitable day pack for a hike and what I consider to be the essential things to pack for a day hike.

Tips for choosing a day pack:

The choice of day pack will depend on how often you intend to use it and how much you want to carry. Some things to consider when choosing a day pack are listed below.

Use a bag with a waist and/or chest strap

Over-the-shoulder bags are generally not good for your neck and back.You want a good backpack with two adjustable arm straps with padding on the shoulders. A waist and/or chest strap will help distribute the pack’s weight evenly across your back.

Carry less than a fifth of your weight on your back

Day packs are designed to be light weight. A normal bag might seem light when you start walking, but after even half a day walking in the heat it will feel like a tonne.

Adults should aim to carry less than a fifth of their weight and Australian chiropractors generally recommend children should be carrying less than a tenth of their weight.

When you consider that water will weigh roughly a kilogram per litre, you can see the weight quickly stacks up so it is important that the pack itself is as light as possible.

Ensure that your bag has room for everything

Day packs come with a range of features, such as built in emergency whistles, bungee straps for holding water bottles and small compartments for storing keys and wallets. Consider what you are going to carry and how you are going to carry your water so you know what features you want.

Choose a bag that has good ventilation

If you are walking in the heat or over long distances, a breathable air mesh fabric on the back is useful to help with ventilation and reduce sweating.

Find a bag that matches your height and build for comfort

Make sure you try your pack before you buy it. You want a day pack that matches your height and build. A comfortable pack is a hiker’s best friend and once you find the right pack you may find like me you use it for everything.

It’s important to pack carefully before going on a day hike. Photo: Black Wolf

The 10 essentials you should always carry on a day hike:

What you carry in your day pack obviously depends on the weather, terrain, time of year and a number of other factors. However, whether I’m going for a two-hour walk or a day-long hike, I consider the following items the essentials you should always carry with you on a day hike.

1. Have at least 3 litres of water with you for the hike

This one is kind of obvious, but many people underestimate how much water to carry. Keeping hydrated while hiking possibly requires its own post, but as a general rule I’d carry three litres for a day hike as a bare minimum.

This will depend on the weather, altitude, your personal health, how much you’re carrying, how strenuously you are hiking and so forth. Either way carrying too much is better than too little. Water is generally going to be the heaviest thing in your day pack so consider how you are going to carry it.

While your typical plastic water bottle is cheap, they don’t retain their temperature well and so by the end of the day you can be drinking warm water that tastes of plastic.

There are water bottles that are BPA free such as the Platypus bottles which are a good option for day hikes as they can be rolled up when emptied to get rid of the bulk.

If you carry your water in bottles it is better to split your water up into say 4 bottles so you can distribute the weight in your pack more evenly or use water bladders which will do the same.

2. Keep a First-Aid Kit with you at all times

Even if you are going for a short walk, there is always a small possibility you could break a limb, cut yourself or get bitten by insects or snakes, so you need to be prepared for the worst. Most first-aid kits are compact and contain all the essential items you’ll need.

If you are building a kit from scratch I recommend taking:

Pressure immobilisation bandages

Regular roller bandages

Gauze or cotton pads for wounds

Triangular bandage for breaks

Bandaids for blisters

Ointment for insect bites

Antiseptic cream

3. Carry sunscreen with you and reapply regularly

If you are hiking for a day, you will need to reapply your sunscreen. Sweat can also cause your sunscreen to rub off quicker than normal, so remember to take it with you.

4. Keep insect repellent in your bag just in case

Even if there are no signs of insects before you start your hike, the bush can be unpredictable or your hike can take longer than you anticipate and you can get caught out during dusk when all the beasties come out to nibble at your skin.

When the mozzies come out or you come across a swarm of sand flies you’ll be grateful for taking this with you.

5. Pack a torch in case you get lost or delayed back to camp

Even on day hikes, a torch is important in case you are delayed or misjudge how long it will take to get back to camp and end up walking at night.

I use a lightweight headlamp so I don’t need to carry it and it takes little room in my pack, but any lightweight torch will do.

6. Take plenty of food to replenish the energy you burn when hiking

You will burn a lot of calories when hiking so take more for lunch than you normally eat as well as snacks that are rich in protein and carbohydrates.

Also carry appropriate food. If it is hot, don’t take meat or dairy foods that are likely to spoil. Even for a short walk, it is a good suggestion to carry extra food in case of emergency or delays in your hike.

A protein rich food that won’t go off is good to keep in your pack for emergencies such a cereal bar or dried fruit and nut mix.

7. Keep a pair of spare socks with you

I always take a spare change of socks on a day hike in case my feet get wet or sweaty. A change of socks can improve your mood dramatically when hiking as well as prevent blisters.

8. Pack a charged mobile phone, satellite phone or a UHF Radio for emergencies

If an accident does occur, especially something as serious as a snakebite, you need some form of communication.

Mobile reception can be unpredictable in the bush especially walking through rocky valleys or in remote locations, so I check my phone every so often and take note of where the last place I had reception was. If an emergency happens then someone can go to that point and call for help.

9. Bring a good pair of sunglasses

The weather can be unpredictable, it might start out overcast when you begin your hike but end up sunny, so if you aren’t wearing your sunnies then put them in your day pack just in case you need them.

10. Pack rain gear/warm clothing for unexpected weather changes

It is a good idea to carry a lightweight compact rain jacket, as it can be sunny one minute, and bucketing down with rain the next.

In addition, you might want to carry warm clothing in case you get caught out after dark. In remote locations or where tracks aren’t well marked, you may also want to take navigation tools such as map, compass or GPS.

Emergency blankets, warm clothing and multi-tools are also useful for safety purposes. If you are going on an overnight hike then there are even more things you will need and other things to consider when choosing a pack.

How do you plan for a day hike? Let us know in the comments below.

The post How to Pack for a Day Hike appeared first on Snowys Blog.

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tallia671gaming-blog · 5 years ago

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freevbucks96172-blog · 6 years ago

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stevenirwo2691-blog · 6 years ago

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This tendency has to end. That performed in CS:GO because it would really put together the hitboxes larger, in Fortnite, running on the new game engine, that simply smushes the character model down. Any perceived effect they have next to the ability to show is a placebo. The creator could look at respect in Fortnite's footsteps and increase new, limited-time game form to sport with the BR formula, or perhaps map-changing parts that maintain game environment light. Or Respawn could understand PUBG then count new, smaller plans with different server measurements to socialize things up.

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harley623gaming-blog · 6 years ago

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Way the stats for Fortnite battle royale, complete with global leaderboards for single, duo and squad gamemodes. Hacking Fortntie for Free Dollars” or Open V Bucks”? When it comes to hacking fortnite in order to get unlimited v dollars or skins the only way is to look for some hacking tool available online and that's what the majority from the participants figure out. If there is anything that could guide them increasing v bucks or skins in fortnite no matter they remain android users or iOS even though they participate in fortnite by any other gaming platform all they need is released v bucks that's a money in the game in which you can spend for multiple purposes but you should spend real money if you need v bucks as the game developers will not let any one to have free v bucks as they won't make anything it is the fund of profits and when that stretches to hacking fortnite it is apparent to their own systems are too tough to protect and cutting go to their servers while they are providing millions of users. So there is no opening for hacking fortnite game.

Hackers then create purchases for, for example, Fortnite Rescue the Planets priciest release in $149.99. Sometimes, the version data will be done widely for anyone to monitor in next get systems in. When they receive the regulations, they follow out of the description and offer them on an online industry for a pair bucks, usually, with cryptocurrency. This is done through a proxy program, which explains the European (or, in some cases, Chinese or Portuguese) purchase descriptions.

Each PUBG game involves 100 online players dropping against a hefty island, searching for guns and shield, go or driving vehicles to stay inside playable group” in the chart, with struggle each other to be the last person having. What caused PUBG unique through other battle royale activities became the level of its place (eight kilometers with nine kilometers), the realism regarding their weapons and combat (shooting across distances involves significant bullet cut out, for example), the special, war-torn aesthetic regarding the setting, also the roughly efficient speed regarding their gameplay. When Fortnite Battle Royale launched with September 2017, it featured numerous gameplay details forward to players of PUBG.

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Doing this will not do a better player or support expand your developed. Into Fortnite that really makes player hitboxes smaller. In CS:GO the hitboxes of the player model were extended because the player models were essentially modified, which made increase the hitboxes. In Fortnite, it compresses the hitboxes, making them much more hard to hit. Expanding the determination is solely a gesture.

Fortnite Battle Royale is support online and it is bigger, better and more impulsive now. Battle Royale is currently open in full 4K resolution if you have the Xbox One X. The update patch is also available for PlayStation 4 and MACHINE. There is a new impulsive grenade that makes things all the more appealing and unknown. Fortnite Battle Royale still say a few days within their Free 100 players PVP mode till the 20th of February. If you own jumped onto the movement bus, explored the large map, produced some abilities and begun with particular damage, and then people should do and so now. You can download the game for your Windows desktop or laptop, Mac OS, Xbox One before PlayStation 4.

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Fortnite Battle Royale offers a number of different progression systems to give you something to work toward when you play the game and it can be a little intimidating to figure out what all this process. The Open Hand is a tiered logic that unlocks some cool freebies, like account icons and emotes every after in awhile as you complete certain concern. The Disagreement Pass is a quality version that unlocks rewards more often, including more cosmetic rewards with practice boosters that will help you rank up other quickly. Approach on the Battle Pass costs 950 V-Bucks which is $9.50 and ends throughout the season.

You can find great deals with Christmas Fortnite online with many of the same keep people would visit in role for celebration Fortnite. You can burn the credit card if you are not careful, so use the same charge people would if you live Fortnite in the stores. Everything you can find for many is free or decrease shipping, depending how much people invest, and closer Fortnite that can carry a half an hour rather than a few days. You can usually find work right until Christmas with fast shipping that will make last minute gifts where you need them being on time.

You don't need to be a creative wizkid to get the most from Creative way, as there are always other people's maps offered to help participate in. Alongside the various rifts to drain islands, there are some featured islands of people in the community. They're hand-picked by Epic, so you can be positively the standard is superb. If the some in offer never consider the dream, you can check out our top Fortnite Creative codes list so you can select another map to try out. Fortnite went way beyond just becoming a controversy royale game.

Combine that with the fact that the scenery on the place is proceeding to change with every term and you have a winning recipe, one rooted in spirit gameplay aspects but always put another quirks and bonuses. Whether this a winter scope, a ridable golf cart, before flip a swamp in a desert, the never-ending new adding to Fortnite put this far higher than the curve with regular, consistent updates. Produce a lineup combined with perform in squads to see new tactics and thrills, like building walls around downed enemies or allies to stop further through contact them.

There are two exceptions here: MACHINE and Android. Both of these systems use the Epic launcher with persons about these systems make purchases immediately by Epic. Within that project, you're about out of luck when it comes to a "here's a gift license for V-bucks" sort of thing. Your best bet is to just use a regular old Visa fortnite v-bucks gift certificate. If you're giftee compete with Android, do not give them a Google Play gift cards, because Fortnite does not run through Google Play.

Each vision in Fortnite Hack starts with a generated map taken by the crew members. Before the start of war, the persons explore a considerable area also make their defense. Before the enemies appear, players have to focus bats and gather useful construction plans. Co-operation requires from the consumers to right assign their duties. Particular characters can develop the skills with time, as well as gain completely new ones. A significant element of gameplay is the possibility to set up quarters, which are later increased with more sites, for instance the arsenal, a charge center or a hospital wing.

Fortnite: Save the World is designed as player-versus-environment sport, with four players cooperating towards a collective objective with various missions. The game is set after a fluke storm appears across Earth, causing 98% with the populace to vanish, and the survivors to be beaten in zombie-like "cases". The participants tolerate the function of commanders of habitat base shelters, collecting resources, saving survivors, and defending gear that help either collect data about the storm or even near rebel the hurricane. From missions, persons are honored a number of in-game items, that include hero characters, tool and con charts, and survivors, that can be turned up because of gained experience to enhance their features.

No doubt other sport group are enjoying Fortnite's success very strongly and many are already talking about following model that Fortnite and parallel activities are setting. Virtual goods or even Inside App Purchases” make gaming companies a LOT of money. If you don't pay for the game, you can be quite sure there are even prompts to get bonuses and accessories within the game.

April Fools' is coming with Fortnite: Battle Royale as well as, you know, the rest of the world. Last year the game allowed us some fairly underwhelming convert to impulse grenades and dance bombs for this high festival of pranking, but the game was in a very unique set at that point. April Fools' is always a popular moment in the film game industry eager to hit some thought with a few odd, from place field change.

Actually, you should be on the alert at all times. This is not a competition to the faint-hearted. The most crucial Fortnite Battle Royale tips exist near never relax, and always think there is another player just round the area, waiting to tempt you to a sophisticated dinner time with their pump-action shotgun. If you hear a weak sound, wait. Then wait again. As soon as you get complacent, you will be shot silent and bumped time for the vestibule screen, all concern with frustration.

I am Happy to help familiarize the newest online hack software for Fortnite Mobile Hack V-Bucks up for. A person may grow V Bucks Hack Problem in Fortnite Cell phone during a couple of seconds. We notice this working exploit after this many testing with combinations. Today this hack is 100% great to chop the V Bucks Hack Problem in Fortnite and presented an Anti-Ban article by developing Proxy setup.

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If you've spent any time on facebook, you know that a bot-infested problem with a habit of upending world series for lack of a comma or rather. It's no another in the relatively consequence-free globe of competition: right now Fortnite: Battle Royale threads are swamped with bots advertising means of getting free V-Bucks, the playoffs premium currency that can be used to obtain skins and other cosmetics. It's gotten bad enough that Epic recently had to put out a warning over Twitter: if a person is saying to you to go to a website and get into the password to get free V-Bucks, they're lying and its a sting.

Known as LTMs for rapid, they can be everything through two players of 50 players each duking this prevented, a sort that drives Fortnite into a deathmatch with unlimited respawns, or great similar wilder like the one that only went players Jetpacks and shotguns. Fortnite will have something for everyone. Despite being around for a limited time”, most LTMs have become recognized by return, you simply should prove back repeatedly to establish if there's a new kind to you may enjoy much more than the usual offerings.

Are you looking for the Fortnite locations of your best experts like Ninja , Myth , shroud , summit1g , or HighDistortion ? We've find you coverered. With the sport getting more and more popular we decided to expand the Fortnite settings activists and build a list of the best gear you can get. Check out your number about how to tune the ingame Fortnite settings and so which you can show like the pros and get those sweet ‘victory royale' messages. With this you can make your Fortnite sensitivity, solution, or mouse dpi fit the play style perfectly. Read on become a nice baseline of exactly what the pros value for their Fortnite sites and gear so to next time when you join the Fray Bus you know you will be the last one last. Alternatively you can and check out our Fortnite settings point where we have analyze the data from the list floor below.

When experiencing any of the team-oriented game show modes, cooperative gameplay (teamwork) and statement with team members become vital. The Register of Couples and Squads Plans will shortly remain the essential reference for gamers going through the Couples or Squads game show methods (or the other team-oriented game show modes added to Fortnite: Battle Royale on a temporary basis).

You might have seen many websites program on search engines promising to give you free v challenges for fortnite. The subject here is, do they control? That can be solved by going on to these sites with score the evaluations and treatment. In reality, it is nearly impossible to do this. But, the customers have advised us which most of these websites will not job as they barely promote surveys or individual verification. This means which you will never find a chance to achieve the promised fortnite v bucks if you value the generators.

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