#people whose work environment was in a natural disaster last month?

[jonathanbyersphd]

there's something very gross to me about large swaths of this fandom practically demanding the post production team go faster just so they can possibly get their endgame ship sooner. Especially because it's just going to be binged the moment it drops and then y'all will move onto something else in the endless pursuit of "content".

[fluffyblaire]

why can’t Hawks refuse?

‼️MANGA SPOILERS‼️

Tootooroo~ 🎺Buckle up, folks, it’s time for a Hawks character analysis! 

Today, we’re going to talk about what kind of person Keigo is, how Keigo reconciles with Hawks, how much of the HPSC is inside of Hawks and how all of that comes together to answer the question: “why can’t Hawks refuse?”

Section I: Keigo

Looking at Keigo as a grown up, it can be hard to tell which of his actions are natural to him and which ones are a result of the HPSC’s upbringing. However, there is one place where we can see what kind of person Keigo is at the very core, before the HPSC or any other major societal institution touched him. 

Exhibit A: “Top heroes have stories about them from their school days. Most of their stories have one thing in common: their bodies moved before they had a chance to think.” —All Might

When Keigo was a kid, he saved this entire family. This is his origin story, the story “from [his] school days” if he had gone to school, the story where “[his] body moved before [he] had a chance to think.” As a child, he saved a family from a disaster, and that should tell you a lot more about his character other than just that he was a very physically capable boy.

Keigo has the heart of a true hero, and he had it long before hero society’s influence reached him. He didn’t need the society around him to tell him to be selfless. He didn’t need the media broadcasting heroics every day to tell him helping people is good. He just does. He lived in the slums and if anything, his environment and thief relative would have taught him the opposite: be selfish, that’s how you survive. But he’s not like that. He gives and gives and doesn’t even stick around for recognition. 

This is who Takami Keigo is and while he will lose and gain layers of personality after the Commission recruits him, the core motivations, values, and emotions that compelled him to save this family do not change.

Section II: Hawks

After the HPSC recruits Keigo, Keigo’s heroic heart begins to blend with the tools and habits the HPSC gives him. Keigo, combined with the Commission’s training, becomes Hawks.

Now, what did the HPSC do to Keigo? I don’t think they physically or emotionally abused him for years—at least not in the conventional sense. If that were the case, I believe we would have gotten the details by now. I do think that Keigo must have suffered and that he was taken advantage of by the adults around him in a very strategic and unethical way. Let’s look at all the things I can dissect about Keigo’s upbringing by the Commission.

Exhibit B: “My back just ain’t broad enough to put the people at ease.” —Hawks

The first thing to note is that baby Keigo had big dreams when he was first recruited.

He wanted to be a shiny hero the likes of Endeavor but when we meet Hawks, one of the first major character depth details we find out about him is that he thinks his own back isn’t enough.

Sometime between when he agreed to the HPSC’s training and when he became the No.2 hero, something in Keigo died. A dream died, and he has accepted that he cannot be like his childhood hero. Comparing himself to Endeavor, Hawks thinks himself inferior in more ways than just power stats.

Keigo knows there is a disconnect between what he wanted to be and what he actually became, but he also knows his role well and still tries his best with it even though it isn’t the one he thought he had been promised when the HPSC recruited him. He is unsatisfied but he still does his best. Why? Because after all these years, the kid who flew straight into an automobile disaster to save an entire family is still there underneath the Commission’s manufactured hero. 

He still wants to protect people who can’t protect themselves; his dissatisfaction with how he achieves that didn’t dampen that spirit. This is why he works his ass off but still seems discontent with himself. His role may not be his ideal one but through it, he can protect people, and that’s enough for him to keep doing his best.

Exhibit C: “A special program... to become a special hero.” —Unknown

The second thing to bring up is that if the Commission did not make Hawks like his role model, what did they make him? 

Keigo just wanted to be a flashy hero that saves people from bad guys. A very simple, honest type of hero. The Commission did give him the skills for that, but they also gave him skills that a simple, honest hero should never need: espionage, acting, lying, manipulation, and who knows what else.

Hawks’ hero education was not the same education the UA kids are getting. In this panel, Hawks narrates as if his “negotiation skills” were a convenient coincidence, but come on. What straight forward, honest hero (like All Might, Endeavor, Miruko—you get the type) would need social manipulation skills? The HPSC knew what they were doing when they selected Hawks’ curriculum, and the material came in handy at last when they assigned him this mission that a simple, honest hero should never have to take on. The HPSC never intended to turn Hawks into a simple, honest hero; they wanted to turn him into a hyper-competent soldier to whom they can assign the hardest, dirtiest work that no ordinary hero would be willing to do. 

Judging by the way he joked about the HPSC’s “proposal,” I am led to believe that Hawks is used to his own feelings and concerns not mattering. People, especially children, do not naturally accept that their wants don’t matter, so what does this tell you about how Hawks was raised?

Exhibit D: My Hero Academia ED7

The third thing I need to talk about is this photo. I think one look at this photo of Keigo from ED7 should tell you something was off with his childhood even after he was taken in by the Commission.

Out of all the photos Bones could have shown of baby Keigo, they chose a photo of him in a hospital gown, blindfolded, surrounded by nameless, faceless men in suits with a chain-linked fence in the background of a cold metal training facility. If you look too quickly, you’d think his hands were tied in front of him because of the way his posture and pose is drawn.

This photo choice alone is enough to submit to me that something unethical was going on when the Commission picked Keigo up, and Horikoshi and the producers of the anime want us to read it as unethical. We are meant to read Hawks as a victim here, but we are given no indication in the story that Hawks thinks of himself as a victim. Once again, I am led to believe that he is accustomed to his own feelings not mattering in the grand scheme of things. He has no expectations of being treated more considerately, so he does not view himself as a victim of anything.

Exhibit E: Lonely Birdie

The fourth thing I want to bring up is Hawks’ lack of human connections. The Commission talked as if he had a family when they picked him up, but there’s no mention of that family when we see Hawks as a pro. He leaves his sidekicks behind. He has a professional, frosty relationship with the HPSC, the people who raised him from childhood. He has no one who is a friend close enough that the question of his civilian name would have even come up. The colleague he trusted most with info on his PLF infiltration was Endeavor who he’d only know in person for a few months.

Hawks can be very likable; his approval rating is high and the common folk love him. He is also very perceptive of and constantly thinking of others. And yet he has no close human connections, and the only explanation I can think of for this is that he distances himself from others either consciously or subconsciously.

This tells me either Keigo had no chances/time to seek out human connections on his own as he grew up or he was discouraged from forming those connections altogether. In either case, I doubt he was shown much affection during his training. He was not treated as if a child adopted into a family; he was treated as a new recruit to be guided and whipped into shape. A lack of human relationships while growing up likely led to his lack of relationships as an adult.

Exhibit F: Guilty Birdie

The fifth thing to note is that Hawks blames himself for anything that is not swift, decisive success. He always moves like he’s running out of time and thinks like he must do everything on his own. 

This mindset is very self-destructive and the consistency with which he repeatedly monologues lines like “think of the citizens/think of Japan/if only you did X” tells me this mindset was something that was drilled into him from the outside. These don’t sound like things you would monologue to yourself to psych yourself up. These sound like things a trainer or coach would tell you repeatedly in order to guilt you into working harder. 

Section III: Why Can’t Hawks Refuse?

Accepting that his own feelings don’t matter, distancing himself from others, using guilt to push himself, etc.—I think these are small habits the HPSC strategically instilled in Hawks through his environment as they raised him. The HPSC had an agenda while raising Hawks, but it’s nothing as dramatic as brainwashing. Instead, the Commission focused on building small and seemingly harmless habits like the ones I’ve noted. These habits can be positive if applied correctly but instead, over the years, they’ve subtly broken down Hawks’ sense of self-love and made him a slave to his own heroic heart.

His own feelings don’t matter when it comes to fulfilling his role, so Hawks will never refuse a mission just because he doesn’t like it. He habitually guilts himself with a reminder of who he is doing everything for—the people—so he’ll always work hard and fast. He distances himself from others, so no one will ever get close enough to him to teach him his human value and change his habits. Take these tendencies and make them second nature to a man whose heart is far too giving, and it’s not hard to see how the Commission trapped Hawks without having to actually trap him.

I don’t think the HPSC is doing anything dark like threatening/blackmailing Hawks. They don’t need to. Hawks can’t refuse their request because, deep down, he is simply too kind. If he is given a chance to save people, he won’t let himself abandon the opportunity. If he can take the burden of a dirty job off of someone else’s shoulders, he will. 

Keigo wasn’t a good hero candidate just because of his Quirk. His nature is too kind, especially to those he doesn’t know, and the Commission saw it from the beginning and took advantage of it. They don’t have to brainwash or leash him. All they had to do was teach him some self-destructive but seemingly heroic habits and those along with Keigo’s innate selflessness are more than enough to keep him focused on his role and unable to flat-out say no to the Commission.

Exhibit G: The Diamond

Lastly, let’s talk about how the diamond on Hawks’ hero costume matches the diamond on the HPSC building. It’s subtle, but I think it means something. It’s subtle just as the HPSC’s influence on Hawks is subtle in the form of small personal habits. The habits the HPSC strategically fostered in Hawks won’t disappear just because he has his own agency now and can carry his career alone. The diamond on Hawks’ chest is like a brand. Once property of the HPSC, always property of the HPSC even in the smallest ways.

In conclusion: If the HPSC wanted to indoctrinate Hawks, they could’ve easily done it, and the Hawks we know today who is skeptical of the HPSC and who observed that a villain could be a good person would not exist. Instead, the Commission knew they could make him independent (therefore, low maintenance) and easy to order around when needed if they went the subtler route: shaping not his values, moral code, or motivations but his internal habits. It’s sneaky, it’s shady, it’s unethical, but it’s kind of brilliant. 

[chaoswillfallrpg]

LAUREL LINWOOD is TWENTY-EIGHT YEARS OLD and an ESCORT at FAIR FARIBAULT’S in KNOCKTURN ALLEY and a BARMAID at THE FOUNTAIN OF FAIR FORTUNE in HORIZONT ALLEY. She looks remarkably like SAMARA WEAVING and considers herself aligned with THE ORDER OF THE PHOENIX. She is currently TAKEN.

→ OVERVIEW:

tw: death

The coolest girl in any room, Laurel Linwood is a living legend. A beautiful blonde who doesn’t take life too seriously, Laurel’s motto in life is to have fun and look good doing it. Born in Barnet, Laurel was raised by her mother CHRISSIE LINWOOD and grandmother AILEEN, in a weird and wonderful boarding house. The middle of the Linwood sisters, Laurel was the tear away child never without a comment, sassy joke or a cheeky grin on her face. Outcasts in their local community due to their bohemian lifestyle, Chrissie was a former actress who had never quite made into anything most people had seen and made her living running a business without a man. The odd comments and stares their family received didn’t bother the Linwood women. Laurel loved Linwood Lodge and wouldn’t have changed her upbringing for all the money or normality in the world. Their house had a carousel of people who came and went as they pleased. Circus performers who did tricks in the garden, magicians who pulled flags from their arms, aspiring rockstars who wrote them songs and strum their guitars all called Linwood Lodge home for a time. The girls were encouraged to keep away from the guests as not to bother them, but Laurel never paid much attention to things that prevented her from having fun. Most guests were always happy to tell the girls how they had washed up at the boarding house and Laurel can recall very few who stayed in their rooms. It was the strange environment of Linwood Lodge that had attracted Laurel’s father to stay the first time he met her mother, whisking her away to a life as an actress amongst a circle of select viewership. 

Laurel’s mother never used his name and her grandmother simply referred to him as ‘that man’ or ‘the mistake’ which left a lot to the imagination and allowed Laurel and MAREN to fill in the gaps. Their made-up narratives about their father were amusing but her curiosity in him didn’t really spark until strange things began happening to her. When Laurel was around seven her mother was called into her primary school with complaints. Children who bullied her would be pelted by floating chalkboard rubbers or their lunchboxes would empty themselves into the bin like magic. Teachers accused her of picking up strange tricks from the characters they hosted at the boarding house, which her mother seemed happy to agree to even though they both knew that wasn’t what was happening. Her mother didn’t seem shocked when her teachers told her what had happened, taking Laurel home and giving her a lecture on exercising control. Confused her mind began to wander, wondering if she was a strange creature like the ones she’d read about in books and watched on tv and if somewhere amongst all of this her father lied at the centre. When Laurel neared her eleventh birthday, Adairia sat her down and revealed to her the true nature of her gifts. The Linwood girls were witches, whose magic had reappeared in their bloodline with their birth. The revelation cast doubt on her theories about her special dad but otherwise filled her with excitement. Over the next few weeks Laurel waited patiently for her letter from Hogwarts, intercepting it in the garden when it arrived away from the prying eyes of her younger sister.

Sorted into Gryffindor, Laurel quickly made a name for herself as a large personality, dressed in fitted denim and a stack of records under her arm. Whilst people in her year like PATRICIA RAKEPICK became famous for pulling pranks, Laurel was known for her parties. A Beater for the Quidditch team with her best friend TRYSTAN WARRINGTON, Laurel loved cranking the music up loud on her record player after a Gryffindor win and seeing how many people she could cram into the common room without PROFESSOR MINERVA MCGONAGALL finding out and having a set of kittens. It was at one of these social soirées she got to know someone who would become a firm fixture in her life. NATAN DIGGORY was from a famous wizarding family and a chaser for the Hufflepuff team Laurel believed was incredibly full of himself. Natan’s belief he was the coolest guy in school began harmless teasing between the pair and set the foundations for a very close relationship the two would come to share. Equally as confident as Laurel, the pair spent their days laughing in the corridor and cracking jokes on the field with Trystan, forming an unreliable trio that was instantly recognisable to anyone in their year. Laurel loved her boys more than anything. Natan was her soulmate, her partner in crime and resident ball of fun, whilst Trystan always had her back and was ready to fight the good fight with anyone who got in their way. The trio were unapologetically themselves and whilst that made them friends in the form of ARTHUR WEASLEY and JENNIFER VANE who loved their carefree attitude, it also made them enemies. 

ANYA ROOKWOOD, quickly became Laurel’s nemesis. A prim princess with a chip on her shoulder because she was a Half-Blood, Laurel assumed the reason Anya hated her so much because she wore her Muggle-Born colours on her sleeve with pride. When Maren joined Hogwarts a few years later it became clear she was heading for a similar route through school both Laurel and Adaria had. A beautiful singer and a kind soul, Maren quickly attracted bullying from a number of Pure-Blood students including VIOLET BULSTRODE and twins VICTOR and ELENAOR YAXLEY. Although the students were three years her junior, Laurel had no problem hexing them, berating them and receiving a number of detentions because of it with her fellow social justice bestie CONSTANCE SONG. Their work at Hogwarts defending the downtrodden sparked a dream in Laurel to become an auror, quickly enrolling in the progs,me after after graduation before being forced to pull out as disaster struck their family. Chrissie was dying. She had kept it to herself, calling her girls to her bedside in her last few weeks of life before she passed away. Laurel in particular was annoyed with her mother. Not only had she kept her illness to herself, Chrissie and their grandma had kept a mountain of debts they couldn’t pay to themselves leaving Laurel and Adairia lost on how to fix the problem. Whilst Laurel stayed at home to care for their grandmother and run Linwood Lodge, Adaria took off to find work that might help cover the debt, sending money whenever she could before returning fully a year later richer than Laurel could have imagined. 

Laurel was stunned. At first she was suspicious of her sister until Adaria admitted to escorting in the city, a reasonable explanation in Laurel’s eyes for how she had made that much money. Selling up Linwood Lodge, the sister’s paid off their mother’s debt and put a downpayment on The Fountain of Fair Fortune pub in Horizont Alley. Laurel still had her own dreams but The Fair Fortune was her fun. When Maren left school The Fountain of Fair Fortune became a true family business and with a little refurbishing, Maren’s talent for singing and Laurel’s for organising specialist nights the pub and boarding house became one of the busiest spots in town to get away and have fun. It quickly became apparent to Laurel that although it was a popular spot for fun, it also proved great for secret meetings. Around the time MARY MACDONALD began working at The Fair Fortune that Laurel noticed something was up. During her shift she would notice the sorcerer take the occasional shady break with Maren, huddled in a corner with SIRIUS BLACK, JAMES POTTER and MARLENE MCKINNON as they all spoke too loudly and took turns looking at Laurel and Adaira before shushing one another. A month in, Laurel grew tired of the secrecy and cornered Maren and Mary demanding answers. With all the rising deaths and disappearances happening in the city Laurel wasn’t surprised there was something going on behind the scenes to try and stop it, but what she was met with she couldn’t have conceived in her wildest dreams. 

An underground group run by their old headmaster ALBUS DUMBLEDORE was so wild it could be true and after chatting about it with Adairia, the two demanded Mary and Maren take them to ALASTOR MOODY. Offering up the room above their pub as the headquarters the sisters joined the ranks of The Order. Though other members of the group have more training than she does, Laurel is always the first to stick her hand up and offer to undergo dangerous tasks in the hopes it will provide the team with information. Recently, Laurel has found her working as an escort for Fair Faribaults escort agency attempting to gain information from the people working there and the owners GEORGINE FARIBAULT and her sister’s friend RICHARD ELLINGTON to find out if the evil underground group is making a play to seduce the creature community. As a ¼ veela on her mother’s side, thanks to information she recently learned from her older sister, Laurel is the perfect candidate to pull in clients has been working covertly to become their top earner in the hopes of joining their inner circle. Though he was just a job at first, Natan’s brother AMOS DIGGORY has become somewhat of a regular for her. Although Amos started out as just a job for Laurel the more she gets to know him the fonder she grows of him. Only her sisters know how long she has harboured feelings for Amos’ younger brother Natan but after his engagement to GIVA PATIL was announced Amos has been the perfect secret distraction and perhaps an antidote for her heartbreak.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

Blood Status → Half-Blood Muggle-Born/¼ Veela

Pronouns → She/Her

Identification → Cis Female

Sexuality  → Up to Roleplayer

Relationship Status → Single

Previous Education →  Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry (Gryffindor)

Societies → Sorcerers for Equality 

Family → Adaria Linwood (sister), Maren Linwood (sister), Victor Yaxley (unknown half-brother/adversary), Eleanor Yaxley (unknown half-sister/adversary), Corban Yaxley (unknown uncle)

Connections  → Constance Song (best friend/colleague), Natan Diggory (best friend/object of affection), Trystan Warrington (best friend), Arthur Weasley (close friend), Florence Jones (close friend), Jennifer Vane (close friend), Mafalda Hopkirk (close friend), Daisy Hookum (close friend), Claudette Delacour (close friend), Laurent Dane (close friend/colleague), Olivia Hailsham (close friend/colleague), Patricia Rakepick (friend), Mary MacDonald (friend/colleague), Amos Diggory (client/potential love interest), Georgine Faribault (boss/target), Richard Ellington (boss/target), Giva Patil (rival), Anya Rookwood (adversary), Violet Bulstrode (adversary)

Future Information → N/A

LAUREL LINWOOD IS A LEVEL 7 WITCH/VEELA.

[ill-will-editions]

WHAT THE VIRUS SAID

First published in Lundimatin, March 16, 2020

Translated by Robert Hurley

“I’ve come to shut down the machine whose emergency brake you couldn’t find.”

You’d do well, dear humans, to stop your ridiculous calls for war. Lower the vengeful looks you’re aiming at me. Extinguish the halo of terror in which you’ve enveloped my name. Since the bacterial genesis of the world, we viruses are the true continuum of life on Earth. Without us, you would never have seen the light of day, any more than the first cell would have come to exist.

We are your ancestors, just like the rocks and the seaweed, and much more than the apes. We are wherever you are and also where you aren’t. Too bad for you if you only see in the universe what is to your liking! But above all, quit saying that it is I who am killing you. You will not die from my action upon your tissues but from the lack of care of your fellow humans. If you had not been just as rapacious amongst yourselves as you were with all that lives on this planet, you would still have enough beds, nurses, and respirators to survive the damage I do in your lungs. If you didn’t pack your old people into nursing homes and your able-bodied into concrete hutches, you wouldn’t be in this predicament. If you hadn’t changed the whole expanse of the world, or worlds rather, that just yesterday were still luxuriant, chaotic, infinitely inhabited, into a vast desert for the monoculture of the Same and the More, I wouldn’t have been able to launch myself into the global conquest of your throats. If nearly all of you had not become, over the last century, redundant copies of a single, untenable form of life, you would not be preparing to die like flies abandoned in the water of your sugary civilization. If you had not made your environments so empty, so transparent, so abstract, you can be sure that I wouldn’t be moving at the speed of an aircraft. I only come to carry out the punishment that you have long pronounced against yourselves. Forgive me, but it’s you, after all, who invented the name “Anthropocene”. You have awarded yourselves the whole honor of the disaster; now that it is unfolding, it’s too late to decline it. The most honest among you know this very well: I have no other accomplice than your social organization, your folly of the “grand scale” and its economy, your fanatical belief in systems. Only systems are “vulnerable”. Everything else lives and dies. There’s no “vulnerability” except for what aims at control, at its extension and its improvement. Look at me closely: I am just the flip side of the prevailing Death.

So stop blaming me, accusing me, stalking me. Working yourselves into an anti-viral paralysis. All of that is childish. Let me propose a different perspective: there is an intelligence that is immanent to life. One doesn’t need to be a subject to make use of a memory and a strategy. One doesn’t have to be a sovereign to decide. Bacteria and viruses can also call the shots. See me, therefore, as your savior instead of your gravedigger. You’re free not to believe me, but I have come to shut down the machine whose emergency brake you couldn’t find. I have come in order to suspend the operation that held you hostage. I have come in order to demonstrate the aberration that “normality” constitutes. “Delegating to others our nutrition, our protection, our ability to care for our way of life was a madness”…“There is no budgetary limit, health has no price” : see how I redirect the language and spirit of your governing authorities! See how I bring them down for you to their real standing as miserable racketeers, and arrogant to boot! See how they suddenly denounce themselves not just as being superfluous, but as being harmful! For them you’re nothing but supports for the reproduction of their system – that is, less than slaves. Even the plankton are treated better than you.

But don’t waste your time reproaching them, pointing out their deficiencies. Accusing them of negligence is still to give them more credit than they deserve. Ask yourselves rather how you could find it so comfortable to let yourselves be governed. Praising the merits of the Chinese option compared to the British option, of the imperial-legist solution as against the Darwinist-liberal method is to understand nothing about the one or the other, the horror of one and the horror of the other. Since Quesnay, the “liberals” have always looked with envy at the Chinese empire ; and they still do. They are Siamese twins. The fact that one of them confines you in its interest and the other in the interest of “society” always amounts to suppressing the only non-nihilist conduct : taking care of oneself, of those one loves and of what one loves in those one doesn’t know. Don’t let those who’ve led you to the abyss claim to be saving you from it: they will prepare for you a more perfect hell, an even deeper grave. Someday when they’ll able, they’ll send the army to patrol the afterlife.

You ought to thank me, rather. Without me, for how much longer would those unquestionable things that are suddenly suspended have gone on being presented as necessary? Globalization, competitive exams, air traffic, budgetary limits, elections, sports spectacles, Disneyland, fitness gyms, most businesses, the National Assembly, school barracking, mass gatherings, most office jobs, all that automatic sociability that is nothing but the reverse of the anxious solitude of the metropolitan monads : all of that was rendered unnecessary, once the state of necessity asserted its presence. Thank me for the truth test of the coming weeks; you’re finally going to inhabit your own life, without the thousand escapes that, good year bad year, hold the untenable together. Without your realizing it, you had never taken up residence in your own existence. You were there among your boxes, and you didn’t know it. Now you will live with your kindreds. You will be at home. You will cease to be in transit towards death. Perhaps you will hate your husband. Maybe your children won’t be able to stand you. Maybe you will feel like blowing up the décor of your everyday life. The truth is that you were no longer in the world, in those metropolises of separation. Your world was no longer livable in any of its guises unless you were constantly fleeing. One had to make do with movement and distractions in the face of the hideousness that had taken hold. And the spectral that reigned between beings. Everything had become so efficient that nothing made any sense any longer. Thank me for all that, and welcome back to earth!

Thanks to me, for an indefinite time you will no longer work, your kids won’t go to school, and yet it will be the opposite of a vacation. Vacations are that space that must be filled up at all costs while waiting for the obligatory return to work. But now what is opening up in front of you, thanks to me, is not a delimited space but a gaping emptiness. I render you idle. There’s no guarantee that yesterday’s non-world will reappear. All of that profitable absurdity may cease. Not being paid oneself, what would be more natural than to stop paying one’s rent? Why would a person unable to work go on depositing their mortgage payments at the bank? Isn’t it suicidal, when you come down to it, to live where you can’t even cultivate a garden? Someone who doesn’t have any money left doesn’t stop eating as a consequence, and who has the iron has the bread. Thank me: I place you in front of the bifurcation that was tacitly structuring your existences: the economy or life. It’s your move, your turn to play. The stakes are historical. Either the governing authorities impose their state of exception on you, or you invent your own. Either you go with the truths that are coming to light, or you put your head on the chopping block. Either you use the time I’m giving you to envision the world of the aftermath in light of what you’ve learned from the collapse that’s underway, or the latter will go extreme. The disaster ends when the economy ends. The economy is the devastation. That was a theory before last month. Now it is a fact. No one can fail to sense what it will take in the way of police, propaganda, surveillance, logistics, and remote working to keep that fact under control.

As you deal with me, don’t succumb to panic or denial. Don’t give in to the biopolitical hysterias. The coming weeks will be terrible, oppressive, cruel. The gates of death will be wide open. I am the most devastating production of the devastation of production. I come to reduce the nihilists to nothingness. The injustice of this world will never be more outrageous. It’s a civilization, not you, that I come to bury. Those who desire to live will have to construct new habits, ones that are suitable for them. Avoiding me will be the occasion for this reinvention, this new art of distances. The art of greeting one another, which some were short-sighted enough to see as the very form of the institution, will soon not obey any etiquette. It will sign beings. Don’t do it “for the others”, for “the population” or for “society”, do it for your people. Take care of your friends and those you love. Rethink along with them, decisively, what a just form of life would be. Organize clusters of right living, expand them, and I won’t be able to do anything against you. I am calling for a massive return, not of discipline, but of attention. Not for the end of insouciance, but the end of all carelessness. What other way remained for me to remind you that salvation is in each gesture? That everything is in the tiniest thing.

I’ve had to face the facts: humanity only asks itself the questions it can no longer keep from asking.

[chickensarentcheap]

Best Part of Me -Chapter 55

Warnings: none

Tagging: @c-a-v-a-l-r-y​, @innerpaperexpertcloud​, @alievans007​, @ocfairygodmother​

They arrive in Mumbai at three thirty in the morning. Checking into a hotel just on the outskirts of the city; a simple and unassuming place owned by an ‘informant’ of Anil’s. An inside man with access to both Mahajan and the higher ups temporarily in charge of running his business and carrying out his dirty work. While their true identities are known only to the owner and a handful of his most trusted staff, they register under the fake names given to them prior to boarding the plane. There is to be no trail leading back to them and who they really are; using cash only for all purchases, given different cell phones with unlisted and untraceable numbers to communicate amongst each other with, signing the passenger manifesto before the flight with entirely different monikers. Assured that everything during their stay will be kept low key to avoid any suspicion from ‘the wrong crowd’; two guards in casual clothing assigned to the lobby, monitoring everyone that comes through the front doors. Granted use of the establishment’s personal conference room for all planning and strategic meetings, and for Yaz to set up his command post.

Anil’s money and influence are quite prominent; his dealings and interactions with those he comes across are always friendly, but remaining professional. He’s well liked. Respected. And perhaps more than a little feared. A man that presents himself as calm and level headed but whose tone and facial expressions never leave a doubt that he’s not to be crossed. There’s an edge to him; a grittiness just under the businessman in designer clothes and linen suits and silk ties that suggests a tough and checkered past. Tyler has done his research; digging up some of the truth behind Anil’s departure from Special Forces. It isn't as cut and dry as he led them to believe; it isn’t just vengeance for his brother that saw him and the military parting ways.  Multiple complaints of ‘excessive force’ against apprehended criminals -most drug and human traffickers- leading to an honorary discharge and no access to a pension. He knows there’s more to it than that; through his own experience with the SASR  and the tales of others who’d served in various branches of the military world wide. Most war machines and police forces turns a blind eye to roughening up -and even killing- more hardcore offenders like child molesters, traffickers, and terrorists. But the further he dug into Anil’s past, the most questions he walked away with. His search for the full story only led to heavily guarded military pages that even all the tricks Yaz had taught him over the years couldn’t get past.

He doubts it’s anything serious or scandalous. His money on involvement in missions kept under the radar and out of public knowledge; most likely involving top officials in the Indian government. He’s worked a handful of those jobs himself; everything kept on the down low, his true name and identity kept a secret; nothing more than a ghost or an urban legend behind a high profile assassination.

The room is far more spacious and inviting than the bland and sparsely furnished front lobby. Two queen sized beds and a large walk in closet, burgundy walls adorned with paintings encased in thick, highly polished gold frames, natural wood furniture and a small table with two chairs nestled in the corner by the balcony doors. It’s twelve stories up and he pauses momentarily to look out at the city in the distance; brightly lit skyscrapers and the glow of random lights in apartment buildings, the flashing red of stop signs.  The last time he’d ventured to Mumbai, Millie had been just turned two and a half months old and they were a week and a half away from finding out they were having another baby; staying in Mahajan’s cold and pretentious mansion, discussing how they couldn’t -in good conscience- leave Ovi behind.  They couldn’t -and wouldn’t- allow him to be raised in such a sterile and unloving environment; no one to protect him from his father’s enemies, never feeling the touch of someone who truly cared for him. It was inhumane; expecting any human to live like that, never mind a scared and impressionable kid.

They hadn’t even had a home themselves.  A situation beyond their control making it impossible to return to that small, two bedroom apartment just outside of Sydney.  But they’d made the best of it, taking Ovi with them when they’d headed for Colorado with nothing more than the clothes on their backs and whatever money was in their bank account.  

For now, this is home; no telling just how long he’ll actually be there. All that really matters is that there’s a bed to sleep in and hot, running water, and a toilet that actually works. The rest is just window decoration; needless trimmings and frills that he’ll either never touch or even acknowledge. Living on the job is the best way to do things; no true comforts, nothing to distract you from the seriousness of the mission. And he thinks of Dhaka and how well things had done there, until they didn’t. That squalid hotel room with its dirty walls and cold water and view of the crowded and chaotic street. As desolate and dreary as it had been, for five days it seemed like a paradise. The outside world -and the job at hand- ceasing to exist the moment they locked themselves inside. It seems like forever ago. He’d been a different person then. So had she. Both fractured and damaged, bonding over their empty and meaningless lives.

He’s unsure if his exhaustion is mental or physical. Or if it’s perhaps a mix of both. But the five hours of restless and pain filled sleep he’d managed during the flight has done little to ease the head to toe weariness. Feeling as if his body is running on autopilot as he completes even the simplest of tasks; locking the door, toeing off his boots, placing his own stash of weapons and ammo and other tactical gear in the closet and securing them with a heavy chain and padlock. He feels  numb. Empty. As if the emotional well has been bled dry and there’s just nothing left to give. The Tyler that existed before he stepped onto the plant almost gone; replaced by a darker, more savage and vengeful version. His finger longing for a trigger to pull; that long simmering rage finally reaching its boiling point. It's all he DOES feel now; the desperate seeking of revenge and carrying it out through whatever means necessary.  Pushed to a near breaking point and determined into something useful; the feel of blood on his hands and the terrified, haunted look on another’s face as he stands over them and watches them die.

It should bother him. Wanting to kill. Enjoying the thought of it and knowing he’ll get satisfaction out of doing it. He’s never felt that before; a want and a need to take a life. Before killing had always been a means to an end; a way of securing his own survival. Now it’s a longing. A way of proving two things. That he’s more capable of chaos and violence than Mahajan ever expected, and that even a reformed and changed man will go to any length to protect what’s his.  

It’s justified. The things he needs to do. And it will be easy. He won’t have a guilty conscience. He’ll experience no shame. No regret. No remorse. He’ll feel nothing but relief and satisfaction. And IF he manages to survive, he’ll go on with his life; not once thinking back to things he’d been forced to do in Mumbai.

He checks the time on his phone before tossing it onto the nightstand between the beds. With the four and a half hour time difference between India and Australia, it’s peak insanity time for getting the kids ready and out the door in time for the school bus.  And just like that the feeling of emptiness...and nothingness...briefly lifts; a sudden tightening in his chest and throat and the bitter sting of tears. Actually missing -despite often grumbling about it- that morning routine; the race to get lunch pail paced and stuffed into backpacks, the madness that ensures when three kids all attempt to find missing shoes in the disaster that is the hall closet, often finishing Millie’s hair while standing in the driveway while the boys sit on the curb and watch YouTube videos on his phone. Those moments that most people would take for granted yet he always feels so lucky to even be experiencing. Almost seven years ago he’d been on the brink of death; only to be snatched back and given a second chance. To do something good with his life; one again be a husband and a father but this time get it right.  Experience the ‘boring’ and the ‘mundane’ instead of nothing but danger and self sacrifice. Instead of taking jobs and checking into cheap, shitty hotels, spending his night on the couch with his wife; suffering through her love of reality television while they eat ice cream straight out of the carton.

THAT was supposed to be his life. It’s what they had planned on when they decided to uproot the kids and move back to Australia. Be just another ordinary family; just a mom and ad raising five kids and enjoying their own slice of paradise after years of stress and worry and fear brought on by the job. And he thought he’d be happy with that LIKE that. But the past always finds a way to sneak up on you; reminds you why you’d ever got into it in the first place and convinces you that you aren’t complete without it. The adrenaline, the fast pace, the unpredictability. He’d somehow let himself fall prey to all of that. Once again going back on every goddamn promised he’d made; ruining every good intention he’d started out with.

If one thing has accompanied him to Mumbai, it’s the guilt. It’s deep and it’s painful and it makes him feel physically ill. That he would ever willingly get back into the game when he has so much to lose. The job is draining. Soul crushing. An unfair existence to spouses and children.  Yet he’d brought them into it. He’d gotten close enough to someone to trust them -with his life- and had fallen in love with them and had desperately hung on to her when everything should have been telling him to push her away.  And then he’d brought kids into it. Innocent little beings that are totally dependent on him for their survival and who would be the ones to suffer if anything happens to happen.

It WAS selfish; his reasonings behind not forcing her out of his life and back to Colorado. IT was the first time since Austin...since he’d made the terrible decision he had...that he felt alive again. That he actually allowed himself to feel. Finding someone that was equally as broken and damaged; connecting with them through their experiences with the job and their tortured pasts and horrendous life choices. He hadn’t wanted to lose that. He hadn’t wanted to lose HER. Even though it should have been painfully clear that her life would have turned out so much better without him in it.

He forces those thoughts out of his mind. Concentrating instead on the pain inhabiting his body and the need for a hot shower. Maybe even something to eat. It’s been close to twenty hours since he last ate, and he can feel the pang of hunger that accompanies the guilt and regret and gnaws at his stomach.  And he strips off his clothes as he heads for the bathroom. Letting them fall where they may, planning to gather them later; wincing at the agony that accompanies even the simple task of removing his shirt.

Like the sleeping quarters, the bathroom is spacious; clean and modern with its subway tiles and infinity tub and a glass enclosed shower. And the water is hot...almost punishing...when he stands underneath it; pressure pounding and stinging. A form of self flagellation; punishing himself for both the selfish choice he’d made almost seven years ago and for feeling that way in the first place. Eyes closed, chin dropped to his chest and his palms flat against the tiles. Losing the battle against the threatening tears; allowing them to trickle freely down his cheeks and the sides of his nose, the droplets mixing with the soapy water that gathers at his first before swirling down the drain. It’s the first and only time he’ll let this happen; the open expression of emotion, the loss of control.  It can’t happen again. Not on this job. He can’t allow it to. Not when there’s so much to lose.

His body is still damp damp and a towel is wrapped tightly around his waist when the confusion first hits. Distinctly remembering where he’d dropped each item of clothing on his journey to the bathroom; shirt having been the last item abandoned, left just on the threshold.  Yet it’s no longer there. The door is cracked open to allow some of the steam to escape, and he can hear the sound of the tv -a laugh track for some shitty sitcom- drifting through the suite.  He knows for a fact that he didn’t turn it on. And that he’d shut the bathroom door long before stepping into the shower. It isn’t a threat; no one is going to break into his room and gather up his dirty clothes and watch some television before attempting to kill him. Yet he still moves cautiously towards the door; years of being in a job where you have to expect the unexpected.  Bare feet quiet against the tiles and then the dark, plush carpet. A scowl spreading across his face when he rounds the corner of the wall that separates the sleeping area from the bathroom and finds Koen sprawled out in the middle of the spare bed; clad in just a pair of boxers, hands behind his head as he watches tv.

“Just what in the fuck are you doing?” Tyler asks.

Koen nods towards the television as a form of response.

“Why are you doing it here and not in your own room?”

“Figured you wouldn’t mind having a roomie.”

“Actually, I do mind. So…”

“I picked up after your lazy ass. Were you born in a barn? Or are you just too used to someone picking up after you?”

“Why are you here? And how the hell did you get in here?”

“Front desk gave me the spare key card. Everyone is bunkin’ together; I thought why not the two of us?”

“Have you ever thought I like being alone?”

“You spent way too many years being alone and miserable,” Koen reasons. “Now I know I ain’t as pretty as who you’re used to sharing a room with, but…” he looks up at Tyler limps past him. “...well holy shit…” he drawls, and issues a low whistle. “...I think I’m questioning my sexuality.”

Tyler doesn’t respond; dropping down onto the edge of the bed closest to the window and digging through the old army rucksack for a pair of sweats.

“I could tell you had a pretty good rig under all those clothes, but I didn’t think you looked like THAT. Now I see why she doesn’t leave you. Or is the real reason she doesn’t under the towel?”

Tyler smirks, then shoves his legs into the sweats, towel still around his waist when he stands and pulls them on the rest of the way.

“Don’t be shy on my account. Be proud of what the good Lord gave you. Must be something extra special if your ugly mug manages to keep such a good woman around. Ain’t you ever worried about breaking a tiny little thing like her in half?”

“Fuck off,” Tyler grumbles, then yanks the damp towel from around his waist and tosses it at his friend.

“Humble, are we? I already know what it looks like, remember? How many times did we have to piss standing next to each other when we were in Kandahar?   I’d be lying if I said I wasn't a bit jealous. Still don’t understand how you don’t hurt her, though.”

“I’m not discussing my sex life with you.”

“Never shied away from it before. Used to tell Rata and I all about your lady ‘friends’ stashed all over the world.”

“Yeah? Well I’m not that guy anymore, am I. And this isn’t just some piece of ass. This is my wife. So if you don’t mind…”

“Easy, tiger, easy. I know how defensive you get when it comes to her. And I don’t blame you; I don’t hold the overprotectiveness thing against you. I mean she’s cute, she’s tiny, you’ve almost lost her a couple times already…”

“Thanks for reminding me for that,” Tyler snarls, snagging his phone off the nightstand. “As if I haven’t been thinking about that every second of every fucking day since this Mahajan shit started.”

“...but she’s a grown woman with children and she knows how to take care of herself.” Koen finishes. “Ever think of easing up on her a bit?”

“You ever think of fucking off?”

“All I'm saying is that you don’t need to worry about her so much. She’s more than capable of handling things; taking care of herself and those littles.”

“Not against someone like Mahajan she’s not. And why are you even here? I don’t need company.”

“Hell you don’t. You gonna call home? She’s probably worried about you.”

“Get off my ass and go back to your own room.”

Koen ignores him. “You know this place has twenty four hour room service? We’re a far cry from eating army rations, ain’t we? I took the liberty of ordering both of us a little something. They didn’t have vegemite for your steak,though. What kind of savage bastard does that to a steak?”

“The kind of savage bastard that might kill in your sleep if you don’t fuck off and leave him alone.”

“Nope. Can’t do it. You’re stuck with me. No getting rid of me. Unless you DO kill me.”

“Don’t tempt me.”

“Call home. I know you’re missing her. It’s  okay to admit that; that you need to hear her voice. You’re a lucky bastard that you have a voice to call and help ground you. Don’t take shit like that for granted. Treat her right. ‘Cause there’s probably a lot of guys willing to take your place on her dance card.”

“How about you leave giving relationship advice to someone who is actually in a relationship?” Tyler retorts.

Koen smirks, then gives him the finger before he slides open the balcony door and steps outside.

****

“Job Tyler” is quick to assess his surroundings; considering what could go wrong and how he’d carry it off if he was the one targeting someone. If Mahajan’s people have been tipped off that he’s in Mumbai and they’re either keeping an eye on him or have been sent to take him out, the only way they could achieve it is from the apartment building to the right. It’s nothing but one story single family homes and empty lots in the other directions, and with  his room being on the twelfth floor, there is no possible way even the best of snipers could manage a decent shot from that angle and distance. So instead of standing at the railing and possibly giving someone a chance at him, he stays behind the cement partition that separates his balcony from the one belonging to the room next door.

What a fucking way to live.

It’s nine in the morning in Australia; the kids will have already arrived at school leaving her with just Declan and Addie. It’s easier this way; not calling when the three oldest are around. It will only make things harder on them. And him.

She answers on the third thing; both dogs barking in the background, along with the faint sound of waves.

“Hey,” Esme greets, and her surprisingly cheerful voice brings a smile to his face. “I was wondering if you’d fallen asleep on me,”

“I wanted to wait until the kids were at school. Didn’t want to make things harder on them. They’re okay?”

“Better than they usually are when you leave. Millie and TJ are all about going on a trip and seeing where Ovi came from. Tanner…well you know Tanner...he’s so intuitive and so sensitive and he’s become so close to you since New Zealand. He’s having a hard time. But I knew he would. He’s so much like you. More than anyone...even you...realizes. He feels so deeply and so powerfully.”

“He’ll be alright.” Tyler assures her. “He’s got a pretty amazing mom loving on him.”

“I don't know how amazing she is. She puts herself at mediocre.”

“Well tell her she’s delusional and she’s a fucking rock star and her husband worships the ground she walks on.”

“Her husband sounds like a very smart man.”

He grins. “He has his moments. You okay? What’re you doing?”

“Declan and I are down at the water with Saju and Mac. Kyle’s in the house with Addie. I’m okay, I guess. I’ve been better. I feel...I don’t know...like I’m in some kind of daze or a fog. Like I’m just going through the motions. Know what I mean?”

“Yeah, I know exactly what you mean. But are you? Okay?”

“Not really,” she admits. “It’s real now. Not something we just talk about or plan. It’s so real and I’m worried and I’m scared and I’m trying so hard not to be. And I miss you. Already.”

“I miss you, too. So much.”

“You usually wait a couple days before admitting it,” Esme teases, and he can’t help but smile.

“Well I’ve gotten used to being around you all the time. Six months of just being about you and my kids. Hits a little deeper now. A little harder. Being away from home.”

“I’d gotten used to you being around all the time, too. I know sometimes I bitched about it, but I really DID like it; having you here THAT much. And I like my brother, don’t get me wrong, and he’s a huge help, but he’s not you. It was weird waking up and you not being there. I’ve been spoiled, I guess. I took it...you…for granted. I hate myself for that.”

“Don’t, baby. Don’t ever feel like that. We’ve both done it. Not just you.”

“I did wake up to four little ones in the bed, though. I don’t know how they take up so much damn room. And Declan is freaking tall and so heavy!”

“Kid’s a tank. Gonna be six seven and weight three pounds and be solid as fuck.”

“Even with the red hair, he looks more like you every day. You have some seriously strong genes, Tyler Rake. Are you okay?”

“I’m okay.”

“Are you really okay? Or…?”

“I’m okay now,” he says. “Now that I’m talking to you.  I needed to hear your voice.”

“And you say you’re not sappy,” Esme chides. “There’s a lot of people here. That Anil has sent. It’s making me even MORE nervous. And they’re not subtle. They're armed. Heavily. And they’re not making an attempt to hide it.”

“How many?”

“A dozen so far. There’s two of them watching Declan and I right now. We DON’T need this. This isn’t helping.”

“Better to be safe than sorry,” Tyler reasons.

“Our kids aren’t stupid. They notice everything. And they’re going to notice them and they’re going to start asking questions and they’re going to get scared. Can’t you get them to scale it back? Just a little? I don’t want the kids stressed out. I’m stressed out enough for all of us.”

“I’ll talk to Anil,” he says. “See if he’ll tone things down.”

“The kids do not need to know what’s going on. You know what Millie gets like when she thinks too much about you going after bad guys. She gets anxious and panics and then we’ll have a six year old that will start sucking her thumb and wetting the bed again.”

“I’ll talk to him. You’re right; there’s no need for all of that.”

“Do you think something’s happened?” she asks. “That maybe the threats have gotten worse? Or maybe Mahajan’s people are on the move?”

“What I think is that you need to NOT think so much. I’ll take care of it. And you guys are leaving tomorrow, so…”

“I wish you could be there,” she sighs. “When we arrive.”

“So do I, baby. Nothing I wouldn’t give to be there. But…”

“I know. I know it’s not safe. It’s just me being selfish and wanting to see you. It must be really late. Or really early.”

“Almost five.”

“You should rest. You sound tired.”

“I am,” Tyler admits. “I’m going to have something to eat and then try and sleep. There’s nothing to do until early afternoon. Just a team meeting to go over shit. I’ll call later. After dinner, your time. So I can talk to the kids.”

“Okay. Take care of yourself, please.  You NEED to.”

“I know. I’ll talk to you later. Give Declan and the baby a hug and a kiss from me. Tell them I love them.”

“I will. We love you. Your little peanut misses you most of all, I think. She wouldn’t settle for her feed this morning until I wrapped her in one of your t-shirts from the dirty laundry basket.”

Tears prick his eyes, but he manages to hold them back. “Why would you do that to my little peanut?” he teases. “Traumatize her like that? That thing probably stinks.”

“It smells like you. And that’s the best smell in the world. I miss you. So much. And I can’t wait to see you. I hope it’s sooner rather than later."

“I hope so, too. I miss you. I love you.”

“I love you too, Tyler. Take that with you, okay? Wherever you go, whatever you get mixed up in.”

“I will,” he promises. “Talk later.”

“Be safe. Please. Be smart. You’ve got this. I know you do. You’re strong and you’re tough and nothing Mahajan throws at you is too much.”

“You’re good for my ego, you know that?”

“I’m in your corner. No matter what. We’ll talk soon,”

“We will,” he confirms, then waits for her to disconnect the call before hanging up himself.

****

“Well?” Koen asks when he steps back into the room. “Everything good on the home front’?”

“Best it can be, I guess.”

“Felt good, didn't it? Being able to talk to her. Hearing her voice like that?”

Tyler smirks, dropping his cell onto the bedside table.  “When the fuck did you get so sappy?”

“There was a time where I did love all my ex wives, you know. When I liked hearing their voices. Now all I feel is a cold chill if I hear even the slightest peep from those three hens. Nice seeing you this way. All head over heels, a fool in love for someone. Considering I know what you were like when you were with Sarah. Back when you THOUGHT you were in love.”

“Do we have to talk about her? Nothing good ever comes from talking about her.” He stretches out in the middle of the bed, pillows behind his back as he leans against the headboard. “When is the food showing up? I’m fucking starvin’.”

“Soon. And all I’m saying is that there’s a huge difference between the guy you were with Sarah and the guy you are with Esme. Back then, you thought you were in love. Now you really are. It’s written all over your damn face. Every time you look at her, it’s right there. How you feel. And you can’t tell me you don’t see the difference. FEEL the difference. Between the two.”

“Of course I do. It’s night and day.”

“You two are still so loved up on each other. I know I complain that it’s nauseating and annoying, but it’s actually really nice. Seeing you like that. Loving someone; them loving you. You deserved it. Finding that. Finding HER. It’s changed you. SHE’S changed you.”

“For good or…?”

“Of course for good, don’t be a dumb ass. She’s the best damn thing that’s ever happened to you.  Her and those kids. She made you a daddy again. You ask me, she deserves you worshipping the ground she walks on. And you’re a good daddy. A damn good one.”

“I’m just doing whatever I can do to make up for the shitty I mess I made the first time around.”

Koen frowns. “Don’t do that, mate. Don’t compare those kids to what you lost. They’re not a replacement for Austin. Don’t talk like they are. And don’t treat them like they are. They deserve better than that. You did a crappy thing; we all do crappy things. But that’s a long time ago and you’re a different man now and them kids aren’t holding the past against you. You’re doing that all on your own. You have this uncanny ability to fuck your life up without even trying. Those kids don’t care who you were back then. Just who you are now.”

Tyler sighs. “You talk a lot of shit, you know that?”

“I’m talking the truth.  You just hate hearing it for some reason. You hate when other peoples’ narratives don’t match your own. When they don’t see you as the shitty human you see yourself as. Knock that shit off. You’re better than you think.”

“Maybe,” Tyler agrees. “Maybe I am. But sometimes I wonder if I did the right thing. If I should have forced her to leave; when I woke up after Dhaka. If I should have found a way to get her to take off.”

Koen scowls. “You’re taking shit and you know it.”

“I was selfish. I wanted her to stay. I liked the way she made me feel. Not just the sex part of things. I mean everything. I liked having her around. I liked hearing her voice and seeing her smile. I liked how she looked at me. She didn’t look at me with pity or disgust. She looked at me like I was worth something. Like I wasn’t just a big fucking mess.”

“She saw the potential.” Koen reasons. “We all saw it. Just took her to get out of you.”

“But I kept her there for me. I didn’t think about what it would do to her; being mixed up with someone like me. And I should have. I should realized I’d only make her life a big fucking mess.”

“If she wanted to leave, she would have. You didn’t force her to stay.”

“I didn’t make her leave, either. And I should have. Especially after she found out about the baby.”

Koen’s eyes narrow. “What the fuck you going on about?”

“She would have been better going back to the States and having the baby on her own and  never bothering with me again.”

“That’s horseshit and you know it! You really think you could have lived like that? Knowing you had a kid out there? Yet never knowing if it was a boy or a girl or even their name or what they looked like? You wouldn’t have been able to live like that; knowing you had blood out there So quit talking crazy. Look at that little girl. Think about her. How much she loves her daddy.”

“I’m a selfish fuck,” Tyler insists. “For getting married. Having kids. Dragging them all into this.”

“You didn’t drag anyone into anything,” Koen argues.  “Esme stayed. She chose to be with you. And no matter what you could have said or done to push her away, it wouldn’t have worked. Her mind was made up. She wanted to be with you. For some fucking reason,”

“She deserves better than this. So do those kids.”

“Those kids wouldn’t even exist without you! They’re just as much yours as they are hers. You know what they deserve? They deserve to be on this earth.  They have a mom and a dad that love them. That take damn good care of them. You know what’s selfish?  You thinking FOR them. You’re their daddy. And you sit here talking about them like they’re mistakes?”

“I never said that.”

“You might as fucking well! You deserve a normal life. A wife and kids. People that love you no matter how big of a mess you think you are! And you know what? Fuck you for questioning that. Questioning their existence!”

“I never…”

“You’re the luckiest fucker I know,” Koen continues his rant. “I’ve seen you at your lowest. I’ve seen you in the gutter, practically. And this beautiful, selfless woman comes along and gives everything of herself to you. Gave up her old life to have a new one with you. And that’s how you think of her? Just to hell with the last seven years? To hell with five kids? All you think is ‘I should have pushed her away’? That’s what she gets after everything she’s done for you? Fuck you, mate. Guys would kill for what you have. Stop looking at what’s wrong and look at what’s right! You have a great life. That you deserve. So get your head out of your ass and appreciate it before someone comes along and does it for you. Yeah, you're a selfish prick, alright. Not even thinking about what pushing her away would have done to her and the baby she had in her belly. How none of those kids would even exist. THAT makes you a selfish prick.”

Silence descends on the room; Koen’s harsh words and accusations hanging heavily in the air. He’s right, of course. Even if Tyler hates to admit it, even to himself. Had he pushed her away, he would have spent the rest of his life drinking himself stupid and dwelling on what could have been and thoughts of what his kid turned out to be; what they looked like or what their name was. Did Esme give them his last name or did she just go with her? Was she with anyone? Did she ever think about him and those five days in Dhaka or did she hate him enough to never think of it...or him...again?

How would her life have turned out? Who would she have  ended  up with? Would she have been happy? Or would part of her always be back in Australia? His child serving as a bond that would always keep them connected. Millie would exist,but none of the others would. No TJ with his fiery temper but a propensity to love with his entire heart and soul. No Tanner with his dad’s old haircut and his huge emotions and his sensitive, old soul. No Declan with his red hair and his strong, solid build, so affectionate and loving. No Addie; impossibly tiny with a headful of dark hair and those enormous dark eyes. And that’s a reality he’d never want to face; a life without any of his kids.

“You love her, yeah?” Koen speaks up.

“Of course I do. With everything I am. Everything I have. What..?”

“You love her and that’s enough for her. And she loves you. Or she wouldn’t have stuck around after Dhaka or after any of the shitty times. She’s given herself willingly to you. Given you five kids and a damn good life. Don’t ever talk about her or those kids like that again, or  I WILL beat you ass. Understand me?”

Tyler nods.

“No that we’ve got all that worked out,” Koen sighs. “Food’s gonna be here soon. You gonna eat?”

“I could definitely eat.”

“Gotta take care of yourself. You’re no good to anyone if you don’t. What do you wanna watch?” He gestures towards the tv with the remote. “Probably got some good adult channels on here.”

Tyler smirks. “I am not watching pron with you in the room.”

“I ain’t gonna like while you’re jerking off if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“You’ve got issues, mate. Why are you so obsessed with my dick?”

“Gotta be a reason she sticks around, I figure. I’m just trying to piece together what it is. Something’s keeping her happy. Unless…” Koen’s eyes narrow. “...you’re a giver and not a taker, aren’t ya. You’re going above and beyond down yonder to get your woman happy.”

“I already told you; I’m not talking about my sex life with you.”

“That’s it, isn’t it. You’re spoiling her THAT way.”

“My wife has no complaints. I’ll leave it at that.”

“Atta boy! You’ve your priorities straight! You must be something right; she sticks around.”

“Have you ever thought maybe she just loves me? That’s all it is?”

“No doubt in my mind she does. But I’m proud of you; doing what it takes to make her happy. She reciprocating or..”

“Mate, we are not having this conversation.”

“Just give me a sign that she is. Some kind of hint. Give me a thumbs up if she’s doing her bit, too.”

Tyler smirks, then gives two thumbs up.

“You fucking bastard!” Koen snarls. “I don’t know whether to be jealous or you or hate you right now. Maybe a bit of both. No wonder you always got that goofy grin on your face whenever you’re around her. You’re getting yourself some. On a regular basis.”

“Probably get more in one week than you get in six months.”

“Now THAT’S harsh.”

Another silence descends on the room. This time far more comfortable. And Tyler lays his head back against the pillow behind him and closes his eyes. He feels better now. Slightly, at least. Koen’s tough love and hearing his wife’s voice and picturing her down at the water-with the sun capturing the natural red highlights in her dark tresses and that little burn she always gets on her nose and under her eyes- doing wonders to alleviate the guilt and regret. Loosening some of that tightness around his heart.

“You’ve got a good thing,” Koen says. “A good life. Don’t fuck it up.”

“I won’t,” Tyler vows.

But the confidence is lacking. It isn’t himself he doesn’t trust. He has the skills and the strength to complete the tasks at hand; his instincts and abilities strong. HE isn’t the problem. It’s everything...everyone...else around him. There’s no control over the situation . He’s at the mercy of his environment; unfamiliar surroundings working as a weakness. His kryptonite.

Mahajan holds all the cards. And it’s time to take them away.

[dimancheetoile]

of stardust and galaxies

Written for @shikasaku-week Hanami 2020 Day 2 Prompt 1: of stardust and galaxies

Read on AO3

I had an absolute blast writing this, you have no idea. This story is set before another that will also be posted for ShikaSaku Week.

Yes I did re-use the parents I invented for Sakura in Withered Flowers but they're really not important enough in this story to warrant me spending time researching names for them.

Please tell me what you thought about this one, I'm truly interested given how much I like it!

•

The war went on for much longer than anyone could have ever anticipated. The losses were massive, in scale of destruction and in numbers. After a particularly violent attack from Madara, Konoha was simply razed off the map. Entirely and thoroughly destroyed, until not even the foundations of the buildings remained.

The scope of the fire jutsu Madara used went far deeper than simply destroying the entire history of their village and every single memory kept in those narrow streets and green parks. His black fire, raging and wild, scorched the earth deep into its own core. They tried to rebuild, for a while. Tenzō's mokuton had been vital to the reconstruction effort, but it quickly became apparent that it wasn't worth the chakra exhaustion. Nothing would grow on the cracked earth left behind by Madara's madness.

Driven out of their own homeland by starvation, Konoha's remaining population began its exodus.

Having lost most of the people who used to lead Konoha no Sato, and a good chunk of the people who would have been considered successors to those leaders, the citizens were aimless for days as they regrouped and gathered the very few items they had remade for their new homes that they were going to abandon one more time.

In the end, things settled in the way things always settle after a disaster. Desperation and urgency bred to create exceptional circumstances and someone who wanted nothing to do with power ended up with way too much of it on their hands for their taste.

Haruno Sakura was born to civilian parents in the Farmers' Guild, who only had one expectation for their daughter, which was to marry a nice civilian who owned a reasonable business or worked a reasonable job and live a reasonable life together until they died at a reasonable age only a reasonable amount of years apart.

Unfortunately for Haruno Hashiru and Uzumaki Noroshi, they would both lose their life in a raid of their small property in the farm lands around the village. Having no living relatives and her inheritance barely paying for the funeral arrangements and handling of their property, Sakura was put in the orphanage, and that was that.

Sakura grew up in one of the worst orphanages of the Five Nations, surrounded by children who suffer just as must as you and whose bitterness and malice is proportionate to how poorly they're, in turn, treated by the people supposed to care for them. You don't grow up in that kind of environment and have huge expectations for your life.

Had Sakura not met a clan heiress and her clan heirs friends when she was at a turning point in her life, she would have remained a low-life, desperate kid who would have grown up on the streets of a village that never had the emotional capacity to care for its civilian population, given that it was born out of the desperate attempt at peace of two historically warring clans that treated its own, very rare civilians like cannon fodder.

She would have grown up starved and angry, desperate to put food in her plate day by day. She would have begun selling her body at the age of twelve, to the highest bidder willing to pay for her virginity, and the money from that sale only would have put food on the table for three months, in the underground squat where she would have lived with a few other street urchins, leftovers from a government feasting on its weakest population.

(in another life, she would have kept her eyes shut, round, childish face crushed against the pillow and thankful that she didn't have to look into the beady eyes of the man paying for the last shreds of her hopeful innocence, his white mane moving in rhythm to the thrusting of his hips. She would have thrown a shaking hand forward when he was done, feeling cold and clammy inside, numbly wondering that he kinda looked like a frog, from this angle, then closed her fist around the money before leaving in a rush. In another life, the man would have pulled his loose pants back up under his yukata, feeling good about himself because he just gave a girl enough money to feed herself for a few months. In another life, it never would have crossed his mind that he could have simply given her the money and offered her a shoulder to cry on)

(in another life... right?)

She would have eventually joined a gang, on her knees as often as she would slit throats in back alleys, and a few days before her seventeenth birthday, she would have bled out in the backroom of an unregistered club, throat torn open by a masked figure in a grey uniform the gang members knew too well. As her life would have slowly poured out of her, she would have looked at the back of the ANBU that just killed her and was giving a highfive to the one standing closest, and she would have died with a smile on her lips because the figure smelled like the ramen from Ichiraku that she had never gotten to taste, too expensive for her and her crew.

But Sakura met three clan heirs and after living for ten years in the orphanage, she had been taken in by the Akimichi Clan, when the three friends had taken one look at her shared bunk, on the third day of knowing each others, and had unanimously decided that this would not do and their new friend needed a better place to live.

(Ino had stomped her feet and Shikamaru had pleaded and Chōji had cried a little and eventually, Chōza had caved in and took in the girl. None of the three sets of parents had told their children that their actions didn't solve the problem. None of the three sets of parents asked their heirs why they didn't insist on bringing back every single child from the orphanage, or asked them what they thought would happen to the other children who hadn't made friends with clan heirs. None of them asked anything, because as kind as they are with their own children, willing to give in to their whim of playing heroes for an orphan, they ultimately don't care enough to change a system that benefits them first)

Sakura grows up learning two very important lessons: no one cares about the civilians, and she'll never be in control of her own destiny.

So she's not surprised a single bit when, as the last surviving member of the inner circle around the executive powers of Konoha, she's eventually pushed to the top under the guise of “honoring the deceased” and “giving her the position she deserves for her heroic actions in the war” and named Nanadaime Hokage.

That night, as the slow caravan of Konoha survivors comes to a stop for supper and rest, Sakura crawls into her tent and cries herself to sleep.

A few days later, they finally reach Kiri and Sakura negotiates asylum with the Mizukage. In those few days, she's named herself a cabinet made of the last remaining experts amongst Konoha's sparse population. There aren't enough people in that cabinet for her liking but she can't afford to be picky, so she brings all three of them into the negotiations and they come out with the least worst deal they can hope for, one that is still considerably better than anything they would have managed before the days of the Alliance and better than anything Sakura could have come up with on her own.

The Konoha survivors are put in the deserted district where people who died in the Mist coup used to live in. It's a bit cramped, but they can't afford to complain, so they adapt. At least they have a roof over their head and enough food to feed everyone. Kiri was just as affected by the war as the other nations, though the village itself didn't suffer much in its infrastructure. But they're lacking the numbers lost on the battlefield, and that's where the Fire citizens come in.

People just fill in the gaps left by the war, integrating seamlessly into Wave's economy. They're not naturalized, keeping their Fire citizenship and Sakura remaining their leader. The way it works is that the workers build a wall to close the district off, with a big gate that remains, more often than not, open. Sakura lives in an old administration building, having transformed the top floor offices into a few bedrooms, a kitchen, and a bathroom, two empty rooms waiting to be converted to a kotatsu room and a shrine.

On the ground floor, she has meeting with her advisors, she does hearing for her people and she forges the basis of what promises to be the Fire-Mist treaty, a cooperation and integration policy that would make Konoha's survivors into what amounts to a foster village of Kiri. If this thing comes to pass, they would essentially be a separate state-entity, with its own laws and government, but with privileged relations with Kiri in terms of right of passage, trade, taxes, imports and exports, as well as an equal share of the land.

An equally beneficial treaty, then, but a text of law that still takes a long time to redact and hammer into shape to be certain that no one is getting screwed over by poor wording. The main thing that her village-within-a-village brings to the table is the proposition of an Academy of Medicine and a House of Health.

In short, Sakura would open what amounts to a carbon-copy of Konoha's Academy, training kids to become genin. From that point on, the children would get two options: either continue on the path of becoming a shinobi of Kirigakure, or join the Academy of Medicine and train as a medic-nin. All children of the village would go through the first part of the training, not only Konoha kids, and would receive complimentary medic training so that every genin, even if they don't go on to become medic-nin, have a solid understanding of chakra control and healing, in hopes of reducing field-losses.

The House of Health would be civilian medics, in every specialty, all in one place for convenience. Classes would be provided for Kiri citizens to learn first-aid or more in-depth knowledge. It would double as relief for the overcrowded Kiri hospital, taking in all non-threatening cases so that the hospital could focus entirely on its surgery division and two research labs, as well as the paediatric wing.

The House of Health would have a sub-division for monitoring pregnancies and offering a more casual environment for labour, with a few empty houses around the House, fully furnished and waiting for the soon-to-be parents. They would spend the entirety of the labour in the comfort of the provided home, going at their own pace and being on their own or with their family. And if anything goes wrong, there would be an entire House of professionals right next to the houses to give a hand when needed.

Those propositions are basically what sold the treaty to the Mizukage, despite a few clauses that she was a bit iffy on, but agreed to in the end because the prospect of a fully-functional, advanced medical system and healthcare administration, alongside trained professionals under the tutelage of the greatest medic in the world is one of those things you don't say no to, under any circumstances.

So the treaty is signed, the old Kiri Academy building is remodelled to host the new courses and the House of Health is built right next to the Konoha district. Happy endings, right?

It's another morning, another day of working a job she frankly wants no part in and that she only performs to the best of her abilities because she's aware of the weight of the enormous responsibility placed on her shoulders. You know. A typical morning.

There is a rasp on the door, barely a knock before the bamboo panel slides open. It's not meant for privacy anyway, simply there to protect the inside of the house against Kiri's weather. Sakura looks up from her paperwork, vaguely surprised to see Shikamaru standing there. Vaguely, because he's still her Councillor and they have a lot of private meetings without the rest of her advisors, and because she's way too exhausted to question anything more deeply than with mild curiosity and vague surprise.

“Hey, Shikamaru. What's the new disaster?”

Half-fallen over her desk, legs starting to sore from the extended kneeling, it takes her a moment to realize he's not moving, and he's not answering. She looks up, frowning, but what she sees on his face is enough to have her up and right in his space, taking one of his hands.

With Ino and Chōji, Shikamaru is amongst the three people she's known the longest in her life. Only her parents beat that record, and they're dead, so the three clan heirs are probably the people she knows the best as well. Living with Chōji might have made her slightly more attuned to his emotions, but the difference is inconsequential. So she knows for certain that something is wrong.

“Shikamaru?”

His lips are pressed into a thin line, his eyebrows furrowed. He's not looking her in the eye, instead looking down at their feet, still quiet. She dares a hand forward, brushing against the side of his arm before retracting, a small comfort for both of them, she hopes.

“I need your help,” he finally says through gritted teeth. With that, it seems like all the tension is drained from his body, and he looks more defeated than anything.

“You have it, always,” she answers, trying for a soothing voice but knowing her own anxiety at this weird situation is slipping through the cracks. Shikamaru has always been the stable one, the rock, and she knows, as sure as the sun rise and sets, that if he crumbles, he'll be taking her, and the entirety of Konoha with him.

He scoffs at her answer. “I never wanted you to know this. This is mine and I don't want you to know.”

She flinches a little, surprising herself by how much that hurts. For one second, Shikamaru catches it, and guilt joins the frustration and anxious expression on his face.

“I'm guessing you don't have a choice,” she says softly.

“I really, really don't.” He sighs, a sad, depressing little noise that Sakura feels all the way inside her bones. “I need you to- I need a surgery.”

Sakura's eyebrows rise in disbelief. “You... need me to operate on you? Why? What's going on? You know I can't just perform surgery on you based on your words, I need to do, at the very least, a physical exams, and maybe a few scans depending on where the problem lies.”

Shikamaru's smile is feral, self-deprecating, and she hates it so much. “Oh, trust me, you won't need to do scans.”

Sakura sighs, leaning against the way with a leg propped up.

“Would you consent to a physical exam right now? We can go to the House.”

Shikamaru shakes his head. “I don't want anyone to know there's something wrong with me. You don't need an exam room to see the problem anyway.”

She bites her lip in consideration, then nods seemingly to herself. “Alright, follow me then. We'll go to my place.”

The tension seems to bleed out of Shikamaru's shoulder and he accepts easily. Sakura leads them out of her office and into the corridor that leads to a staircase. After climbing it, Sakura slides the door panel open and walks into the part of the building that serves as her home.

Shikamaru follows her without a word until they reach one of her unoccupied bedrooms. Or that's what it used to be anyway. Shikamaru raises an eyebrow, looking at her questioningly. She gives him an awkward smile, gesturing at the miniaturized operation room and the drawers upon drawers of medical equipment.

“Look, you have no idea how many people just barge in through my window after a mission, Mist and Fire alike, just because they don't feel safe going to the hospital. Post-mission paranoia is real enough that I'm willing to indulge them, and I refuse to let a disaster happen at the hospital just because I want my beauty sleep.”

He nods, the reasoning sensible enough. It's not like she needs the four bedrooms anyway, given that she lives alone.

(silently, he wonders about that, why she's never dating, why she's never showing signs of being interested by anyone. He wonders how anyone can work as much as she does and not want to come home to someone who wants to take care of you. Dating, post-war, is awkward. No one wants to actively seek out partners, because everyone is just a little too depressed to be able to make the efforts required to have a healthy, communicative relationship. But on the other hand, a good bunch of them are getting desperate. He can't really talk, he's single too, but at least he's dated before, civilians and shinobi alike, and he knows how important it can be not to be alone)

(she's always been alone)

“Well, we're alone and I've got everything I need. Do you want to tell me what's going on, now?”

The knot is back in his stomach, and Sakura looks like she knows exactly how little he wants to talk about this. Not that any of her patients is ever easy, unless they're civilians, but she doesn't tell him that, because she wants him to trust her sometimes this year and not worsen the situation.

Eventually, Shikamaru sighs, and begins to unhook the clasps of his flack jacket. Sakura nods, satisfied, and brings the tray with her basic equipment closer. She already has her stethoscope around her neck and the monitor for his blood pressure, when he takes his shirt off, and really, she has to put down everything now, doesn't she, because it's obvious what's going on.

Shikamaru self-consciously crosses his arms in front of his chest, but it's not enough to cover the two scars running across his upper torso.

She sighs, dropping the monitor back on the tray, and looks at him, head slightly tilted.

“Does anyone else know?” she asks, more to get him to talk than because she needs to know. She has to get him to relax, to trust her with this.

“My parents, obviously. Ino's and Chōji's parents too. And the surgeon who did this, he was one of the first to openly do those surgeries, so my parents brought me all the way to Kumo to see him. He's- like me.”

“Thank you for sharing this with me, Shikamaru. It does me great honor to know you find me worthy of who you are.”

“I- Sakura, I need to know if... will you see me differently now?”

She's never seen him like this, so uncertain, so out of place. He's so confident and calm, such a driving force for their people. She hates to see him like this. Sakura offers her hand, in the space between them, and Shikamaru uncrosses his arms to take it without even pausing. She smiles softly, touched.

“Do you see me differently for my own scars, Shika?” With her free hand, she bunches her shirt up to show her midsection and the seven, thumb-long scars scattered on her skin. “Sasori skewered me like dango on a stick. His spikes were thorough and touched all of my lower organs. I have a fake portion of small intestine and I'll never be able to have a child. Do you see me differently, knowing my scars?” she asks again.

He's looking at her with wide eyes and a deep, bleak sorrow that they all learned from the war, when grief and tears could put you in danger and you needed to get over things quickly on the outside, only to break down on the inside later.

“I'm sorry,” he says quietly.

She shrugs. “I'm not. I killed an akatsuki member, someone who would have kept hurting people again and again, and both Gaara and Kankuro survived because I was a part of this mission. I won't ever regret losing a few pieces of meat if someone's life is on the line.”

She squeezes his hand, a small smile on her face.

“So, about that surgery. Were you asking about a cosmetic procedure, to make all the scarring disappear? Or were you thinking about bottom surgery?”

Shikamaru frowns, and she can see the cool, confident guy coming back little by little, putting a happy smile on her face. “I didn't know you could do something for the scarring. In that case, both I suppose.”

“Why come now? Why not before the war, or right after? Did something change?” She hates to ask personal questions when he already seems so uneasy, but she can't agree to anything without all the facts.

“Before the war, the surgeon we went to used to send me parcels with shots and creams. He stopped, I don't know if it's because of shortage, or not knowing where to send it, or-” Or maybe he's dead, she thinks but doesn't say. “I ran out of shots two months ago and I was fine for a while, but I- it came back,” he says awkwardly, a plea in his eyes for her to understand without him having to say it. She nods quickly, refusing to let him worry. “I can't live like this. I'm miserable, Sakura.”

To hear those words, from the kind of man Shikamaru is, is heartbreaking. He deserves nothing less than happiness and fulfillment, after everything he went through being the youngest chūnin, then the youngest jōnin, then a War Councillor. Someone as calm and reliable and smart as Shikamaru shouldn't be miserable. Not on my watch. Maybe being Hokage will finally do her some good, if it means she gets to help him feel good again.

Sakura nods, weighting her words carefully before speaking. “Well, the scarring I can take care of right now, it's quick and painless. However, for your surgery, I need to know what result you want. Size, shape, do you want to be able to have biological children, all of that.”

He doesn't try to hide his relief when she doesn't push or try to have him talk more about his mental health. Not that I won't later, she thinks, but she can cut him so slack right now, given hos vulnerable he must feel.

Shikamaru is silent for a long time, eyes downward on his hand in hers, looking deep in thought. She wraps her other hand around his, pressing gently to show her support.

“I have a feeling you're exponentially more competent than the man I saw when I was younger. He only had one option for me, and a pretty scary one. But I'd like to reduce the scarring now, yes. I haven't taken my shirt off in public my entire life.”

Sakura smirks, dirty and unashamed. “Oh trust me, it was for the best. You have no idea the talk I've heard in the onsen about the comparison some of the kunoichi and jōnin make. I think a good portion of them is keeping a tally and you staying as cool as a cucumber whenever they try to get in your pants is making you the grand prize of their little competition.”

He grins, a small blush on his face that Sakura doesn't comment on. “I'm not Sasuke or Naruto, I don't have an urge to flash everyone when I'm fighting bad guys.”

Sakura bursts out laughing, the joke so unexpected it releases all the tension she hadn't noticed was left in the room. It's the first time she laughed thinking about them ever since the war, and being suddenly the last living member of a cursed team. Feeling almost giddy with being able to laugh again, she raises their joined hands and kisses his knuckles. He looks at her with wide eyes, his blush even more noticeable now.

“Right, options,” she says, wiping a tear. “Lay down for me, will you? I'll start working while I explain.”

He obeys, laying down on the examination table while her hands light up in green. She gets closer, bending slightly over him to have better access, then her palms slowly swipe over his chest, her chakra coaxing his cells into duplicating faster and cloning the genetic makeup of the older, original cells around the scars. Slowly, the two raises lines begin to smooth and loose their color.

“So there's an invasive procedure, and even more invasive procedure.” Shikamaru snorts in nervous laughter and she gives him a wry smile. “The first one involves using the unneeded tissue from what's already there and constructing a penis using what your body knows to be his. With implants, you'll get testicles, and connecting nerves will give you sensation. You will be able to get a full erection, but because I'm only using pre-existing tissues, your result will remain small compared to the average.”

She can see that he's listening intensely, but his blush has crept onto his neck despite her using very clinical language. She finds it absolutely adorable but she doesn't fancy being choked to death by her own shadow so she doesn't mention it. She doesn't say it either, but she's so proud of him it warms her up from the inside.

“The more invasive surgery starts with me collecting sample from you to be grown in lab so I can get enough skin and nerves and muscle made of your genetic makeup to basically construct a penis of the size and shape of your choice. Once attached, just like the other option, it'll be fully functional, sensitive and responsive. Now in both cases, you'll have a choice between implants to give your testicles the appropriate shape, or they can also be grown in lab and I can use your eggs to synthesize sperm glands and make you fertile.”

Sakura leans back, her hands loosing their green tint. Shikamaru sits up, staring down at his chest with wide eyes, tracing with his fingers the smooth skin where his scars used to be and where nothing is left now but an absolutely normal chest.

“Now bear in mind that I've only theoretically managed a successful transplant to make someone fertile, but I was doing the opposite procedure on a woman. When you break it down, it's exactly the same process and I've synthesized it all before, but I've never done it on a man, simply because I was never asked to. I'm certain I can pull it off, but you know, warnings and all thaaa-wow!”

Sakura can't stop the shriek of surprise when Shikamaru draws her in for the strongest hug of her life. She flails for a moment before she manages to wrap her pinned arms around his waist, his own circling her shoulder and crushing her against his bare chest. Shikamaru hides his face in her neck, and she stops the words that were about to leave her mouth when she feels the first tear drop into her neck and roll down her chest.

He's crying silently, face scrunched up enough that she can feel it against her skin. She caresses his back, drawing patterns over his warm skin, and she hums gently, rocking them together to the rhythm of a song she can barely remember.

“Thank you,” he manages, his lips moving against the fragile skin of her neck.

“Always, Shikamaru. I promise.”

She doesn't move any more than her rocking his large, warm body, waiting for the storm to pass, for the clouds to part enough that they can see the stars. Finally, he releases her, rubbing harshly on his skin until she gives him a tissue. His eyes are red and puffy and his cheeks rubbed raw, but he's he most beautiful thing she's ever seen.

“I'll take the second option,” he finally says, clearing his throat when his voice cracks. “Including the fertility package. Do you do a price for family?” The joke is weak but he's trying and she's so proud she might just choke on it so she laughs and she draws him into a side hug, his head resting on her shoulder.

“Put some clothes on, exhibitionist. Let's get out of here and we'll talk more about this later, yeah?”

He nods silently and complies, following her out of the house and into the streets of Kiri. Time passed quickly and it's already well into the night. Without saying a word, Shikamaru takes her hand and laces their fingers together. She gives him a smile, shaking with excitement and giddy with the novelty of simply walking hand in hand with someone. The people of the Konoha District give them long looks, but their eyes are kind and their smiles wide, happy to see their leader finally take something for herself.

Kiri's night sky is beautiful, so different from the one in Konoha, often hidden in clouds. Here, they can see every single star winking at them from their shimmering clusters, count the constellations drawing patterns into the darkness of the void, watch galaxies form and die as they live day by day in their new normal.

“Hey, Sakura?”

She hums in response, looking away from the beautiful canvas of the sky. He's looking at her like she's personally responsible for every star shining above them, and her heart picks up.

“Can I take you out to dinner?”

She breathes in the joy, grins wide. “Of course you can.”

He blushes again, and it's her new favorite thing, she could watch him for hours. She's so happy and humbled that he trusted her with himself like that.

“On one condition, though.”

He does his best to hide his nervousness when he answers, “What is it?”

“Money upfront for the surgery, Nara. I want a kiss before the fourth date.”

He giggles, high and pretty, and even he seems surprised by it. “You've got yourself a deal, Hokage-sama.”

[polarishq]

Meet AMARYLLIS “Mary” NJOO. They are FIFTY-THREE years old and hail from SAN FRANCISCO, CA. Mary embodies the constellation, SAGITTA. They use she/her pronouns. Their faceclaim is BRIANNE TJU.

Sagitta  reminds me of hands covered in thorn scratches, strawberry milkshakes at 2am, flowers blooming through sidewalk cracks, messy buns secured with a dozen bobby pins, rose colored blush paired with heavy mascara, sunflowers in a glass acting as a makeshift vase, racing heart rates, a face too much like her mother’s, dirt caked underneath fingernails, childhood nostalgia, and the chirping of birds after a storm. .

BIOGRAPHY

Mary has spent her entire life knowing she was never meant to be born. The Njoo family come from a long line of magic user, highly respected within their own social circles and spread to all four corners of the globe, so when Lillian Njoo became pregnant at the young age (by human and witch standards) of 19, it was a massive scandal. It was made worse given the fact that it had been through a one night stand with a man whose name and face she didn’t care to memorize. But the Njoo family was also based deep in traditional views, especially given the time period of the late 60s. Lillian was given no choice but to have the child, but it was clear early on that she never had much affection for her daughter. Instead, Amaryllis was shuttled around from one relative to another every few months. While most of the Njoo family valued strength and offensive magic, everyone soon realized that Amaryllis was inclined otherwise. Rather than being fascinated by the prickly thorns and poison leaves most of their family specialized in, she could often be found picking flowers to braid into her dolls’ hair. She was a gentle child, and in their family, that was seen as undesirable. They did their part in housing her here and there when need be, but in terms of actually bonding with her, that was not an option to them.

Amaryllis didn’t have a stable home environment until just after her fifth birthday, when she was taken in by her uncle Perry — technically her great-uncle, but semantics. Perry himself was always seen as something of an outside within his family, both for his demeanor and the fact that rather than an earth element, his magic was water based. He specialized in healing, giving him a strong sense of empathy as well, so when a young Amaryllis was thrust on his doorstep without a second though from any other relatives, taking her in was a no-brainer. The first thing he did was give her the nickname Mary, because what the fuck kind of child wants to introduce herself as Amaryllis. The second thing he did was plant a flower bed in the backyard, after he learned how much she loved to watch things grow. At first it was weird for Mary, to have someone willing to give as much love as she did. It was easy for her to adjust in that sort of environment, and even easier for her to thrive and grow. Perry learned as much as he could about plants and earth magic to teach his niece, and finally, Mary had someone who actually felt like family.

For their part, most of the Njoo family brushed Perry and Mary off. Out of sight, out of mind, right? Lillian would call every few months to make sure her kid wasn’t dead, but that was about the extent of her role. It wasn’t until Mary was around 16 in human years that her mark finally appeared. She only told her uncle about it in her excitement, not even thinking about telling the rest of their family until a few months later at their annual Christmas gathering. It was really the only time of the year where they all got together, and Mary and Perry went just for the sake of appearances. Mary began speaking to Lilian just to swap niceties, and casually mentioned her constellation mark had appeared. Then, Lillian lost her shit. She was furious that she had not been informed of this, and what resulted was a heated argument between Perry and virtually every other member of the Njoo family. His screams that she had no claim to anything regarding Mary fell on death ears, and soon enough, he was dragging Mary out of the banquet hall in order to keep her safe. It wouldn’t last though.

Within a week, Lilian came to their home along with two other head members of their family, stating that Perry had done his work as caretaker but it was now time for Mary to begin training with a competent instructor. Not wanting to start another screaming match, Mary went into her mother’s care. What followed was seven years of anger and resentment that made the initial argument look like child’s play. When Mary agreed to go with her mother, she assumed she would be able to return to Perry as soon as they realized that Mary wasn’t going to be a fighter like the rest of them. No matter her powers, Mary was kind and gentle by nature and that was that. Instead of conceding defeat, Lillian took it as an act of defiance that they could get rid of with the right force. And, with the years of abandonment and the feeling of being ripped out of her home finally pushing her over the edge, Mary fought back. While she could never find it in her to strike her mother when she struck her, Mary did actively engage in intense verbal fights that often left her voice scratchy and the ground shaking from the Njoo women’s combined strength. It was miserable for both of them, and finally after seven years, Mary took the first opportunity she had and ran home.

Her and her uncle both cried when she returned, and she apologized again and again for ever going with them in the first place. Perry, in all his kindness, assured her there was no need to apologize. They spent days, weeks, months even, waiting for members of their family to show up and drag her away, punish her for leaving, but no such occurrence ever came. What did come was a note, three months later, written in Lillian’s handwriting to say that neither her daughter nor Perry were members of the Njoo family anymore. It was meant to be painful, but Mary and Perry celebrated instead. They had both suffered at their family’s hands, but now they were truly free to live their own lives. Although well into his third hundred year, Perry took the disinheritance as his chance to finally be his authentic self, and within the next decade, Mary was the only Njoo invited to the wedding between her uncle Perry and her now-uncle Thad. And Mary, still kind and optimistic in spite of her mother’s best attempts, has never been happier.

For decades, Mary was content to learn magic from her uncles. They were the only ones she really trusted; the idea of “training” makes her physically nauseous thanks to Lillian. Mary associates the entire concept with hurt and anger rather than something that could be constructive. Perry and Thad, a fire user, were happy to do what they could, but as time went on, they had to admit to themselves that Mary’s earth magic needed a special education that they could not give. When they first brought up the idea of Polaris to Mary, she outright refused. She knew of the school — it was the alma mater  for most of the Njoo family living in America. This was the place that had taught her uncles, but also her mother. Her grandparents. Everyone who had so coldly turned their back to her and hurt her. She didn’t want it. It took Perry and Thad finally being upfront with her to make her realize that even if she didn’t want it, she needed it. So, after their insistence and fear of upsetting them further, Mary finally agreed.

She’s been at Polaris for a few years now but despite that, she’s still not sure if it’s where she’s meant to be. She purposefully avoids anything related to combative or offensive magic, even though her inclinations align with that sort of training. She’d much rather spend her time in one of the school greenhouses, or tending to the flowerbeds she keeps right outside her dormitory window. There is still a lot of anger within her left from her mother, and it can result in Mary assuming the defensive even when its not called for. And despite the resentment she feels towards Lillian, Mary also has a lot of abandonment problems that she is not yet willing to face. That’s her little secret though. Bigger than that is her determination to spread love and positivity, to the point of sometimes coming off as disillusioned from the realities of the world. She’s not, though. Mary is very well aware of what people are capable of; she just chooses to focus on the reverse.

INCLINATION

Sagitta, the arrow, often sponsors people who are in need of direction and focus  in their lives. Its a bit ironic, considering the destructive abilities it possesses. Those with the powers of Sagitta are capable of tectonic plate manipulation and, with the proper training, can create mountains or strengthen the foundation of continents. Sagitta is also volatile, though. Without the right level of control, their powers can overwhelm them. This may lead to catastrophic disasters, including earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, or tsunamis. These are, of course, worse case scenarios, but it does mandate that witches and wizards in control of Sagitta need to be on their guard always.

CONNECTIONS

Filling the role of Julian Moore’s calm companion.

Garden Club: Mary really, really fucking likes flowers. These folks also really, really fucking like flowers. Or vegetable gardens. Or shrubbery. OR anything really, the gardening club is here for all your plant-based needs. Their a group of students that help tend to the greenhouses on campus in addition to beautifying the already stunning grounds.

Polar Opposite Besties: Ms. Njoo here loves pretty much everything. This character hates a lot of things, but somehow Mary was persistent enough to win them over and now happily calls them her best friend. They have definitely received a BFF necklace from her on at least one occasion. Think of them as the ultimate Hufflepuff/Slytherin dynamic.

Family Member (fc should be either part Indonesian or part Chinese): Another member of the Njoo family currently at Polaris, probably some sort of cousin or what-have-you. Unlike Mary they would have been raised from birth within the family and brought up under the same rigorous training and ideas of superiority. They would also most likely be completely separated from Mary after she was essentially disowned. Whether or not you want them to share the family’s mindset, or if you want them to be more in-line with Mary and their uncle, is up to you!

Penned by Jeanne ★

[csnews]

There’s An Environmental Disaster Unfolding In The Gulf of Mexico

Rocky Kistner - July 11, 2019

As fishermen deep in the Louisiana bayou, Kindra Arnesen and her family have faced their share of life-altering challenges in recent years.

First came Hurricane Katrina, the 2005 monster storm that devastated her small fishing community in Plaquemines Parish before roaring up the Gulf Coast, killing more than 1,800 people and destroying $125 billion in property. Five years later, BP’s Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded 40 miles offshore, spewing nearly 200 million gallons of crude. The fisheries have not fully recovered more than nine years later, nor has her family.

But this year may be worse. A historic slow-moving flood of polluted Mississippi River water loaded with chemicals, pesticides and human waste from 31 states and two Canadian provinces is draining straight into the marshes and bayous of the Gulf of Mexico — the nurseries of Arnesen’s fishing grounds — upsetting the delicate balance of salinity and destroying the fragile ecosystem in the process. As the Gulf waters warm this summer, algae feed on the freshwater brew, smothering oxygen-starved marine life.

And as of Wednesday, an advancing storm looks likely to turn into a tropical storm or hurricane by the weekend, with the potential to bring torrential downpours and more freshwater flooding.

Fishermen and state government officials agree this long, hot summer may go down in history as one of the most destructive years for Gulf fisheries. The torrent of river water pushing into Gulf estuaries is decimating crab, oyster and shrimp populations. The brown shrimp catch this spring in Louisiana and Mississippi is already down by an estimated 80%, and oysters are completely wiped out in some of the most productive fishing grounds in the country, according to state and industry officials. The polluted freshwater has also triggered algae blooms, which have led to beach closures across Mississippi.

“The Army Corps of Engineers says we had the most rainfall in 124 years,” said Joe Spraggins, executive director of the Mississippi Department of Marine Resources. “Shrimpers and crabbers are struggling. Oystermen are almost nonexistent. … It’s not going to get better soon.”

“I’ve had grown men call me on the phone and cry,” said Arnesen, who serves on the board of the Louisiana Shrimp Association and works on state coastal management issues. “This feels like the height of the BP oil spill.”

Mississippi and Louisiana have already started the process of requesting federal disaster assistance for damaged fisheries. But it will likely be a long while before any money reaches the fishermen whose nets are coming up empty. To officially apply for disaster relief, Louisiana state officials say they need more data, which will take months to compile.

“We are seeing impacts across the coast in all sectors of the fishing communities,” said Patrick Banks, assistant secretary for the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries. “We will continue to collect data to support a disaster declaration.”

It’s not just fisheries that are suffering. Dolphins have been dying in huge numbers across the region — nearly 300 this year already, which is three times the number in a normal year, according to federal and state officials. Fishermen report finding dead dolphins floating in water near shore or beached in the marshes, covered in painful skin lesions that scientists have linked to freshwater exposure. One fisherman reported finding a mother dolphin pushing her dead baby along in the water.

“Their skin looks like a Brillo pad,” said Louisiana charter boat captain George Ricks, who heads the Save Louisiana Coalition, a coastal management advocacy organization.

Ricks and many other fishermen blame the unprecedented deluge of freshwater pouring into the Gulf. The Bonnet Carre, a huge spillway that protects New Orleans, has already opened an unprecedented two times this year to divert surging Mississippi River water and is currently pouring more than 100,000 cubic feet per second into Lake Pontchartrain. Being able to close the spillway again depends on rainfall upriver.

The Army Corps of Engineers operates the spillway and says it has no choice but to keep it open to protect property upstream. The Corps argues that some of this flooding can be beneficial to the ecosystem. “The introduction of fresh water during leakage events simulates the natural cycle of overbank flooding and provides numerous ecosystem benefits to the aquatic and terrestrial resources in the spillway,” the agency notes on its website.

But some marine biologists say the flood of freshwater can be catastrophic for species such as bottlenose dolphins, which are very territorial and are reluctant to leave their spawning grounds even when salinity levels become toxic. Endangered species like Kemp’s ridley turtles are also threatened by river water exposure, since they depend on rich Gulf marshlands to grow and develop.

“We are experiencing a Cat 5 aquatic hurricane,” said Dr. Moby Solangi, director of the Institute for Marine Mammal Studies in Mississippi. Dolphins are particularly vulnerable to incursions of river water, he said. “Every time they open the Bonnet Carre spillway, we see a spike in deaths.”

Solangi’s team recently found a stranded dolphin on a Gulfport beach, breathing slowly and covered in freshwater lesions. It died a short time later.

“Dolphins are like the black box found on airplanes,” Solangi said. “They tell you what’s happening in the environment. When dolphins are doing well, the environment is doing well.”

By all accounts, the Gulf marine environment is not well. Scientists predict the annual dead zone — a giant blob of polluted, deoxygenated water linked to algae blooms — will grow to the size of Massachusetts and suffocate even more marine life later in the Gulf this summer.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration declared the bottlenose dolphin deaths an “Unusual Mortality Event” in February, and its investigation is ongoing. Officials say higher-than-normal dolphin strandings spiked in May, when there were 88 discovered along the Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama coasts. That’s nearly eight times the average monthly number of dolphin mortalities during the BP spill from 2010 to 2014.

Total dolphin strandings have not reached the levels seen at the height of the BP spill, and there were fewer in June. Dr. Teri Rowles, NOAA’s marine mammal health and stranding program coordinator, said that researchers know freshwater exposure could be contributing to the health concerns, but that it’s too early in their investigation to pinpoint an exact cause.

“We do see dolphins with freshwater lesions, but not all the animals have skin lesions,” said Rowles.

Some dolphin populations have yet to recover from the BP oil spill, Rowles said, mainly due to reproductive problems. NOAA reports dolphins in heavily oiled areas are still suffering from chronic health problems and higher rates of failed pregnancies and mortalities.

But many fishermen who have worked in these areas for generations suspect something else is threatening their future: politics. As part of a plan to save Louisiana’s rapidly sinking coastline, state agencies want to pump in more sediment-heavy river water to help rebuild the disappearing land. Fishermen question the efficacy of freshwater diversions and worry about the dangers to fisheries and marine life posed by these projects. They question why NOAA would grant waivers to Louisiana last year to bypass the Marine Mammal Protection Act and allow the freshwater diversion construction to proceed.

Meanwhile, fishermen know a changing climate is not working in their favor. Scientists say the Mississippi River is expected to continue to flood in future years as the atmosphere heats up and produces stronger storms and more rainfall. Barry, the storm heading for the coast right now, is the latest to threaten the Gulf ecosystem, but certainly not the last.

All of this worries Acy Cooper, a fourth-generation fisherman and president of the Louisiana Shrimp Association who is leading a delegation of fishermen to Washington this month to plead their case for disaster assistance. He blames the Army Corps for not adequately managing the river and controlling and dredging the river passes that empty into the Gulf, making the effects of freshwater worse.

But his biggest worry is for his family and future generations. He comes from a long line of fishing families who have prospered and persevered in one of the most bountiful fisheries in the world, and he doesn’t want to be the last.

“My sons can’t make enough to feed their families,” he said. “What’s going to happen to them?”

Arnesen worries about this as well.

“If we keep operating like this, we’re going to kill the estuaries and the oceans, yet they still dismiss us,” she said. “Our fish feed America. That should matter to everyone.”

[sciencespies]

Shakespearean Stabbings, How to Feed a Dictator and Other New Books to Read

https://sciencespies.com/nature/shakespearean-stabbings-how-to-feed-a-dictator-and-other-new-books-to-read/

Shakespearean Stabbings, How to Feed a Dictator and Other New Books to Read

An estimated 74 heroes, villains and sidekicks featured in William Shakespeare’s writings meet unsavory onstage ends. Thirty of these men and women succumb to stabbing, according to a 2015 analysis by the Telegraph, while five die by beheading, four by poison, and three by both stabbing and poison. At the more unconventional end of the spectrum, causes of death range from grief to insomnia, indigestion, smothering, shame and being baked into a pie.

Kathryn Harkup’s Death By Shakespeare: Snakebites, Stabbings and Broken Hearts adopts a scientific approach to the Bard’s many methods of killing off characters. As the chemist-by-training writes in the book’s prologue, Shakespeare may not have understood the science behind the process of dying, but as a someone who lived at a time when death—in the form of public executions, pestilence, accidents and widespread violence—was an accepted aspect of everyday life, he certainly knew “what it looked, sounded and smelled like.”

The latest installment in our “Books of the Week” series, which launched in late March to support authors whose works have been overshadowed amid the COVID-19 pandemic, details the science behind Shakespeare, the golden age of aviation, women doctors of World War I, the meals enjoyed by five modern dictators and the history of the controversial Shroud of Turin.

Representing the fields of history, science, arts and culture, innovation, and travel, selections represent texts that piqued our curiosity with their new approaches to oft-discussed topics, elevation of overlooked stories and artful prose. We’ve linked to Amazon for your convenience, but be sure to check with your local bookstore to see if it supports social distancing-appropriate delivery or pickup measures, too.

Death By Shakespeare: Snakebites, Stabbings and Broken Hearts by Kathryn Harkup

The author of A Is for Arsenic and Making the Monster: The Science Behind Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein continues her macabre cultural musings with an immensely readable roundup of Shakespearean death. Looking beyond the literary implications of characters’ untimely passing, she explores the forces that shaped the Bard’s world and, subsequently, his writing.

Sixteenth-century London was a hotbed of disease, unsanitary living conditions, violence, political unrest and impoverishment. People of the period witnessed death firsthand, providing palliative care in sick friends’ and family members’ last moments, attending strangers’ public executions, or falling prey to misfortune themselves. Writes Harkup, “With limited effective medical treatments available, the grim reality of death, from even the most trivial of illnesses and infections, was well known, up close and in detail.” It is perhaps unsurprising, then, that all of Shakespeare’s plays reference disease in some capacity.

After establishing this sociopolitical context, Harkup delves into chapter-by-chapter analysis of specific characters’ causes of death, including infirmity, murder, war, plague, poison, emotion and bear attack. The author’s scholarly expertise (she completed two doctorate degrees in chemistry before shifting focus to science communication) is apparent in these chapters, which are peppered with rather clinical descriptions: In a section on King Lear, for instance, she mentions—and outlines in great detail—the “clear post-mortem differences between strangulation, suffocation and hanging.”

Death By Shakespeare is centrally concerned with how its eponymous subject’s environment influenced the fictional worlds he created. Combining historical events, scientific knowledge and theatrical carnage, the work is at its best when determining the accuracy of various killing methods: In other words, Harkup asks, how exactly did Juliet appear dead for 72 hours, and is death by snakebite as peaceful as Cleopatra claimed?

Empires of the Sky: Zeppelins, Airplanes, and Two Men’s Epic Duel to Rule the World by Alexander Rose

Today, most people’s knowledge of the zeppelin is limited to the 1937 Hindenburg disaster. But as historian Alexander Rose writes in Empires of the Sky, the German airship—invented by Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin at the turn of the 20th century—was once the world’s premiere form of air travel, easily outpacing its contemporary, the airplane.

The airship and airplane’s fight for dominance peaked in the 1920s and ’30s, when Zeppelin’s handpicked successor, Hugo Eckener, faced off with both the Wright Brothers and Pan American Airlines executive Juan Trippe. Per the book’s description, “At a time when America’s airplanes—rickety deathtraps held together by glue, screws, and luck—could barely make it from New York to Washington, Eckener’s airships serenely traversed oceans without a single crash, fatality, or injury.”

Though the zeppelin held the advantage in terms of safety, passenger satisfaction and reliability over long distances, the airplane enjoyed the benefit of sheer quantity, with the United States producing 3,010 civilian aircraft in 1936 alone. The Hindenburg, a state-of-the-art vessel poised to shift the debate in airships’ favor, ironically proved to be its downfall.

Detailing the aftermath of an October 9, 1936, meeting between American and German aviation executives, Rose writes, “Trippe … suspects the deal is done: America will soon be in the airship business and Zeppelin will duel with Pan American for mastery of the coming air empire.” Eckener, meanwhile, flew home on the Hindenburg in triumph, never guessing that his airship had “exactly seven months left to live.”

No Man’s Land: The Trailblazing Women Who Ran Britain’s Most Extraordinary Military Hospital During World War I by Wendy Moore

At the turn of the 20th century, the few female doctors active in Great Britain were largely limited to treating women and children. But when war broke out in 1914, surgeon Louisa Garrett Anderson and anesthesiologist Flora Murray flouted this convention, establishing a military hospital of their own in Paris and paving the way for other women doctors to similarly start treating male patients.

Housed in a repurposed hotel and funded by donations from friends, family and fellow suffragists, the pair’s hospital soon drew the attention of the British War Office, which asked Anderson and Murray to run a military hospital in London. As author Wendy Moore points out, this venue “was, and would remain, the only military hospital under the auspices of the British Army to be staffed solely by women doctors and run entirely by women.”

Tens of thousands of patients arrived at the hospital over the next four-and-a-half years, according to Kirkus’ review of No Man’s Land. Staff performed more than 7,000 surgeries, treating previously unseen ailments including the aftereffects of chlorine gas attacks and injuries inflicted by artillery and high-explosive shells. Though initially met with distaste by men who dismissed a hospital run by “mere women,” Anderson and Murray’s steadfast commitment to care managed to convince even their critics of women’s value as physicians.

In 1918, the flu pandemic arrived in London, overwhelming the pair’s Endell Street Military Hospital just as the war reached its final stages. Writes Moore, “Now that they found themselves fighting an invisible enemy, to no apparent purpose, they had reached the breaking point.”

The pandemic eventually passed, and as life returned to a semblance of normality, women doctors were once again relegated to the sidelines. Still, Sarah Lyall points out in the New York Times’ review of the book, the “tide had started to turn” in these medical professionals’ favor—in no small part due to the perseverance of Anderson and Murray.

How to Feed a Dictator: Saddam Hussein, Idi Amin, Enver Hoxha, Fidel Castro, and Pol Pot Through the Eyes of Their Cooks by Witold Szablowski

The favorite meals of five 20th-century dictators are more mundane than one might think. As Rose Prince writes in the Spectator’s review of Polish journalist Witold Szablowski’s How to Feed a Dictator, Saddam Hussein’s cuisine of choice was lentil soup and grilled fish. Idi Amin opted for steak-and-kidney pie complemented by a dessert of chocolate pudding, while Fidel Castro enjoyed “a simple dish of chicken and mango.” And though popular lore suggests Pol Pot dined on the hearts of cobras, the Cambodian dictator’s chef revealed that he actually preferred chicken and fish.

According to Szablowski, How to Feed a Dictator strives to present “a panorama of big social and political problems seen through the kitchen door.” But tracking down the personal chefs who kept these despots—Hussein, Amin, Castro, Pot and former Albanian prime minister Enver Hoxha—well-fed proved to be an understandably difficult task. Not only did Szablowski have to find men and women who didn’t particularly want to be found, but he also had to earn their trust and convince them to discuss traumatic chapters in their lives. Speaking with Publishers Weekly’s Louisa Ermelino, Szablowski notes that Amin’s, Hoxha’s and Hussein’s chefs were simply culinary professionals; Castro’s and Pot’s, on the other hand, started off as partisans.

Ultimately, the author tells NPR’s Lulu Garcia-Navarro, “Sometimes they are very easy to like, but sometimes they are very easy to hate. Like, they are not easy characters, because it wasn’t an easy job.”

The Holy Shroud: A Brilliant Hoax in the Time of the Black Death by Gary Vikan

Gary Vikan has spent some 35 years tracking down evidence refuting the Shroud of Turin’s authenticity. In The Holy Shroud, Vikan—former director of Baltimore’s Walters Art Museum and a respected art historian—outlines his findings, arguing that the controversial burial cloth belonged not to Jesus, but to a medieval artist employed by French monarch John II at the height of the Black Death.

“I knew right away that the Holy Shroud was the fake, for the simple reason that it does not fit into the chronology of Christian relics or iconography, and because it appears for the first time in the historical record in 14th century France,” wrote Vikan in a blog post earlier this year. “ … [W]ith the help of a brilliant scientist, I am [now] able to answer the questions of when, why, by whom, and how the Shroud was made.”

Per the book’s description, John II gifted the “photograph-like body print” to his friend Geoffroi de Charny shortly before the latter’s death at the Battle of Poitiers in 1356. Originally meant as an “innocuous devotional image” for the knight’s newly-built church, the cloth was soon reinvented as one of Christianity’s most significant relics.

“Miracles were faked,” says Vikan, “and money was made.”

#Nature

[thedailyscourge]

Day Seven

(of the 4th month of the year Twenty-hundred and Twenty)

An entry from the journal of a squire of Brookland:

Within an hour of starting my shift on the Tiny Human Ward, now filled with regular sized humans afflicted with the Scourge, one of our patients began dying.

But that wasn’t the worst of it.

I can honestly say the degree to which this pandemic is a disaster was lost on me as it is to everyone who has not had the kind of intimate encounter with the unique forms of suffering it produces as I did today.

I was deployed to this ward in a kind of vague capacity to fill in gaps of coverage in some non-specific and sometimes very specific ways.  One thing I knew I was sent here to do was to go into room after room of patients afflicted with the Scourge and assess their health.  And, late in the morning, that is exactly what happened.  After my team had spent several hours getting to know the needs of each patient by looking at their lab results and getting reports from other professionals, and then “table rounding” or “round tabling” depending on what type of knights you picture us as, we had talked enough. It was time to confront the invisible enemy directly and at the same time witness the most tangible form it can materialize as: a fellow human being, laying in front of you, struggling to breathe.  I have seen people who were short of breath before, people with various forms of oxygen masks, intubated, on ventilators of all kinds, gasping for breath.  It’s jarring.  But to someone like me who’s seen a great deal more disease and death than most people my age, the striking thing was not the nature of any given case, it was the sheer number of them.  In nearly every single room I went into today, there was a person fighting for their life, drowning above water.  An entire ward full of them and beyond that, an intensive care unit with more.  I was prepared for and acquainted with the severity, but not the volume.

We had maybe two in their 50s, one in the 30s, and one in the 20s but, as a whole, these patients were almost exclusively in their 60s, 70s, and 80s. It was as if science, public health, and medicine advanced inch by inch to the point that we had prolonged the average life expectancy in a remarkable demonstration of our dominance over nature, only to be humbled by the tiniest microorganism arriving and taking all that life away in a matter of days.

It’s difficult to describe how even the thought of an invisible enemy this small and contagious will strain your psyche when you are literally surrounded by it. There is a psychological absurdity to the dozens of small actions and choices you must make throughout your day that is akin to a French mime whose world is not made up but rather unseen by everyone but her. The mental acrobatics you have to engage in to create any sense of control at all in this environment are olympic in their complexity and duration.  At some point, even the most intelligent professionals are so burnt out by this underlying stress that they subconsciously surrender and unwittingly allow the enemy to gain a disturbing amount of ground, transforming our very workplace into a hazard itself.

When I say the ward I walked into and worked in all day was a nightmare of infection control, I mean that at times it felt like the work of germ theorists in the 1800s was just a niche genre of academia like scarf rock or Icelandic death metal, not a foundation for one of the most respected professions on earth.  Face shields, contaminated from countless close interactions with the Scourge and never disinfected (because of a shortage of supplies to do so) were strewn about haphazardly in the cramped workroom where squires and knights spend hours formulating plans and touching surfaces that allow us to create life-saving orders.  All the while we are contaminating and cross contaminating our belongings, our armor, ourselves.  It was clear that many members of the team, who had been denied adequate equipment to protect themselves for weeks and who had struggled minute by minute to maintain a sense of hygienic integrity had resigned to this relative squalor out of sheer exhaustion.

There were many other little lapses in infection control practices I noticed throughout the day, probably because my line of work has conditioned me to be very sensitive to these kinds of details.  But in nearly all of them, just as evident was the lack of resources and enormity of stress on those involved that really was to blame.

What may have been the worst of all of it was an egregious offense to our values and what we hold as sacred. The last rights of the dying, not of religion, but of being and feeling loved by a family member or friend while you pass, are stripped from those who have succumb to the Scourge.  A wife, a cousin, a sister, all denied the tangible validity of their relationship with a dying man, a quiet, tragic opera playing out through telephone lines, in lonely hospital beds, in a room of my ward this morning and across the world again and again for months on end.  The necessary preservation of the species has cost us possibly the greatest token of our humanity.

As I shifted my responsibilities midday to take care of another elderly man in the intensive care unit, filling one of the many gaps in our staffing, I was conscripted into the cast of another tragedy of unique cruelty.  

A woman, a middle-aged nurse who had been working as recently as 2 weeks ago treating some of the sickest tiny humans there are, had been struck down by the Scourge and was now lying in the very same room as the young lives she had helped take care of and, what’s worse, her friends and former coworkers were now the ones charged with treating her disease.  And she was deteriorating. Quickly.

This woman ended up needing to be intubated, a tube placed down her throat, and connected to a ventilator.  I found out about her position as part of the team who were now taking care of her when I asked why she was being moved to another intensive care unit after the intubation.  The head of the unit told me it was for emotional reasons.  I was confused until she explained that she did not want her and her coworkers to potentially experience the trauma of doing chest compressions on their friend as she coded, veering toward death.

At the end of the day, the chaplains were called in to hold a session for us to decompress and process what had just happened.  Although it halted productivity in the midst of a crisis, evident by the way it ended with several of us peeling off to assess a patient in distress, I found the group experience profoundly important, if not for it’s actual therapeutic effect then for the statement even holding such a session made in the middle of what is, for all intents and purposes, a disaster on every level of society.

And there, as some of the staff openly broke down crying, myself sniffling through a respirator during a teary eyed prayer, and others admitted the horrifying feeling of vulnerability in the microscopic game of Russian roulette that we are all playing on the frontlines, I realized today we weren’t losing our humanity.  We were finding its depths.  

The tolls:

The City of New Pork (of which the town of Brookland belongs):

76,876 afflicted

4,009 dead

The Divided Realms of Amen!-ia:

397,391 afflicted

12,000 dead

We await the miracle prophesied by the Emperor to come in the 4th month.  

[tyrantisterror]

Anecdotes from Neosaur Park: Regina’s Family

Another one of these?  Another one of these.  I guess it’s now a thing since I named it.  It’s significantly longer than the last one, so I’m putting a cut here to save people’s dashboards.

I said Tyrannosaurus wasn’t the most dangerous animal in the park.  That doesn’t mean she never caused trouble.

Back when this whole thing started out - when it was just an experiment, before we made it a zoo - we bent over backwards trying to account for every possible problem we might face.  And yes, it was because of that damn movie.  So many people thought this was doomed to fail from the outset, all because some hundred year old piece of media made such a large and lasting impression on the populace.

The One Specimen rule was particularly well enforced.  Despite all the strides paleontology has made, we still can’t learn most of a creature’s behaviors and biological needs until after they’re created.  To keep things from getting out of hand, we would only clone one specimen of a given species, spend at least five years to study its biology, and then and ONLY then would we think about creating more.  We thought we were being smart, and in some ways we were - there were some early hiccups in the project that definitely would have been worse if we had made more clones at the time.  On the other hand, there were some problems we faced later that could have been avoided if we had thought of these animals as social creatures from the outset.

Of course, we couldn’t have known this at the time.  We were working with what science could tell us.  The average dinosaur’s brain is more like a crocodile’s than a bird’s.  Therefore it was a safe assumption that most dinosaurs would be fine as solitary animals - that whatever social instincts they had would be rudimentary, and that they could easily adjust to life without company.  This felt like a particularly safe assumption in the case of the Tyrannosaurus.

I mean, what’s the pop culture image of the creature tell you?  The Tyrant Lizard King.  King.  Tyrant.  A king is the sole ruler of a land,  A tyrant even moreso.  We have always considered Tyrannosaurus to be a loner, a solitary hunter.  I mean, the creature was so goddamned huge - it would take miles upon miles of territory to sustain a beast that size!  Sure, there were herds of similarly sized Triceratopses - herds that numbered in the thousands, mind you - and hadrosaurs and other prey animals, but still, this is a seven ton carnivore we’re talking about!

Now, you have to understand that none of our creatures are 100% authentic.  Dinosaurs lived in a vastly different environment than our current world, even in the wake of the 21st century’s climate change disaster.  It was a lot hotter, and there was a lot more oxygen.  Disease back then and disease today had millions of years worth of evolutionary differences.  The technology that allowed us to recreate these animals is the same technology that allowed us to restore biodiversity during the climate change disaster - to properly bring these creatures back, we had to alter them in a few key ways so they could adapt to this climate.  It’s why we call it Neosaur Park, rather than Dinosaur Park.  They’re not quite the beasts their ancestors were.

But, as far as I’ve been told - I’m not a genetic engineer, mind you - we did not intentionally set out to modify their behaviors, and especially not their intelligence.  All we changed was some of their biochemistry, adapting them to a cooler, less oxygen-rich earth.  Maybe that had a ripple effect we haven’t realized yet - maybe their hormones are off, who knows.  This is still a developing science - we’ve only been at it a few decades, there’s a lot of new ground still to break.

We didn’t choose Tyrannosaurus as our first specimen out of popularity, as some have claimed.  We chose it because the DNA samples were plentiful.  Tyrannosaurus has a remarkable presence in the fossil record, and as a result we have a wide variety of T.rex genes to choose from.  Since our Neosaur would be genetically altered, we had to give it a new scientific name: Tyrannosaurus regina.  And, being sentimental, that’s what we named the first successful hatchling: Regina.

Everyone was as nervous as they were excited when she was born.  This was one of the most terrifying predators ever to walk the earth, a creature with enough bite force to rend steel, the end product of an evolutionary arms race that produced some of the most heavily armored herbivores of all time just to counter it.  It was the villain of hundreds of stories, the ultimate predator.

And she was as timid as a creature could get.

Regina was a fretful baby.  The smallest things could spook her - she once jumped a full foot into the air at the sound of a snapping twig.  More than anything, though, she was afraid of being alone.  While she had one preferred handler - the one whose face she saw first after hatching - she was fine so long as at least one of us was within sight at all times.  If she lost sight of us, though, she’d begin calling out with this strange, gurgling, peeping sound.  You couldn’t leave her for even a few seconds without her panicking, and for the first few years we literally had her under a twenty four hour watch.

Eventually she grew out of that, exploring her paddock as a gangly adolescent.  But she didn’t become as independent as we expected.  Again, we were thinking this would be like a crocodile - that once she started out on her own, she’d lose the bond she had with her “parents” and begin treating us more coldly, if not outright viewing us as prey.  Instead, she would routinely interact with us - greeting us with a hissing bellow, following us around for a bit, even leading keepers to her food trough and, upon seeing us stand there looking at it, taking a few slow, deliberate bites as if to show us that the meat was edible.  It had us all puzzled - this wasn’t the Tyrant Lizard we were expecting.

It was when she hit her late teens that the puzzle became a problem.  Tyrannosaurs take roughly twenty years to reach their full size, but like a lot of birds and reptiles, they’re sexually mature a bit earlier than that.  At sixteen, Regina began to do something new.  She’d walk around the edges of her paddock, sniff the air, look around, and then release this horrible bellow - some deep, booming hiss from the bottom of her gut.  It was so loud and such a low pitch that it actually made the leaves of the trees shake.  And she would do it for hours, traveling round and round the perimeter of her paddock while making this bone rattling noise.  We had been open to the public for about four years at this point, and Regina was already a bit of a celebrity - everyone wanted to see the Tyrannosaurus, even if she was far from the hyper-vicious predator they expected.

This behavior went on for three months, and then she went back to normal.  Till the next year, when she came back with a vengeance.  The searching was more frantic.  Regina was too big to run at this point - when she was younger and smaller, her legs were proportionally longer, and she could get one hell of a sprint.  At seventeen she was far bulkier, and the best she could do was a sort of power walk.  If that gives you a sort of comic mental image, well, you’re about on the mark - a frantic Tyrannosaurus power-walking as fast as she can does look pretty silly, at least until she heads for the paddock gate.

We weren’t dumb.  Every inch of her paddock’s perimeter was surrounded by insurmountable natural barriers - steep pits filled with sharp rocks that stretched down eighty feet deep and were sixty feet wide.  Most of the entrances to the paddock that crossed these pits were human sized.  There was only one gate she could fit through, and that was only by necessity - there had been occasions where we needed to transport her to a sterile environment for medical assistance.  This gate was thick, heavy steel, and a guard was always posted to it.  By this point, we had doubted we needed one there - in seventeen years, Regina had never once tried to escape.  As far as we could tell, she liked it here.

This would be the exception.  Now a five ton carnivore, Regina trotted up the gate and released that bone-chilling howl.  Her mammoth head peer over the walls.  Her nostrils flared as she smelled the air.  She released the bellow again, then watched.  The gate guard was spooked, but this had happened the year before, too.  Eventually Regina would move on to another part of the fence.

But she didn’t.  She looked at the gate, snorted, stepped back, and rammed it with her head.  The big carnivore reeled back, howled for a bit in pain, and then looked at her handiwork.  The thick, heavy steel had dented.  She snorted and rammed it again.  The guard started radioing for help, but he was too late.  With a third strike the gate gave way, and Regina was loose in the park.

The crowd panicked as they saw her stalking freely among them.  Many thought that the inevitable had come to pass - that our experiment had finally gotten out of hand, and our man-made monsters were finally biting the hand that resurrected them.  Most news outlets certainly painted this as such, and the bad publicity alone almost shut us down.

But, as I told you, Regina wasn’t a man-eater.  She really wasn’t much of a predator at all.  Whatever chase instinct she might have had was thoroughly smothered by her pampered upbringing.  Regina ignored the patrons running from her, ignored the paddocks containing other prehistoric fauna - many of whom were her ancestor’s natural prey items, I might add - and instead kept issuing that deep, unsettling bellow while slowly wandering the park grounds.

Though the death toll was nonexistent and the property damage minimal, we still had a hell of a time figuring out how to get her back.  A couple of solutions were offered - she was still traumatized from her brush with the struthiomimids a couple years back, so we could always try to scare her off by playing a recording of their shrieks.  That seemed unnecessarily cruel, though.  Tranquilizing her was on the table, but at her current size that could take a long while, especially given how thick her skin was getting.

One person saved the day: Regina’s preferred handler.  Even after all these years, there was still a bond between those two.  In a ballsy move, she called out to the tyrannosaur and slowly led her back to the paddock.  All in all, it was the best possible end we could hope for, given this was one of our nightmare scenarios.

We eventually realized that Regina’s bellow was a mating call, and that her panic had stemmed from the fact that there were no other Tyrannosaurs in the area, and hadn’t been since, well, since long before she was born.  We assumed she would be fine with that, but apparently not.

Luckily, we had long since prepared genomes for the next few Tyrannosaurs - again, we had an abundant supply to choose from, and the, well, let’s say “quirky” nature of Regina made our genetic engineers decide the try different profiles.  We still thought she might be “off” - an anomaly, far too friendly to be the real thing, perhaps even a little “slow.”  At the time we also thought that twenty years was the maximum Tyrannosaurus lifespan, so it was likely we would have to replace her soon anyway.  Two different gene profiles were selected, and the next generation was born a bit earlier than planned.

We waited a few weeks before introducing the babies to Regina.  Again, we didn’t know much about how Tyrannosaurs interact with their young.  It was assumed that, like their close relatives, they would take care of their offspring, but these young Tyrannosaurs weren’t ACTUALLY hers.  For all we knew, she might try to eat them.  To be safe, we took them in a jeep, along with a good handful of keepers armed with tranq rifles.

Regina came to us within seconds.  I think she could smell them before she could see them, as the big gal immediately headed for the jeep.  She didn’t bully her way through, though, stopping about a yard off to give a loud bellow.  When we felt confident the Tyrannosaur wasn’t going to get uncharacteristically violent, her preferred handler made the official introduction by carrying the male hatchling out of the jeep.  Regina’s eyes went wide, and soon the baby made the same gurgling, peeping noise that she had made seventeen years ago.

The bond was immediate, and it was all we could have hoped for.  Regina doted on the hatchlings, nuzzling them with her snout and watching over their every move.  When they cried out for food, she led them to her trough.  And when we tried to take them back, she followed us, soon developing the desperate panic we had seen before.  We ended up leaving the hatchlings with her, and they’ve been with her since.

By my count, the young ones should be about thirteen now.  Regina’s ten years older than we thought she’d live, and doesn’t show signs of slowing down - every year she puts on a few more pounds and grows another inch or so in length and height, and we’re beginning to think that Tyrannosaur lifespans may be akin to their crocodillian relatives.  As for whether her behavior is natural or a result of her strange upbringing, well, we can’t quite say.  The young tyrannosaurs both have their own personalities in contrast with their adoptive mother.  The male, who we ended up calling Machiavelli, is a bit of a shit starter, to be truthful.  He likes to start fights with his sister, though they’ve never gotten very serious - play fighting, as far as we can tell.  He also chases the zookeepers from time to time, though he’s never actually tried to catch one of us, and Regina generally gives him a gruff talking to for it.   The female is a bit colder - she doesn’t antagonize, but she can get oddly territorial, and is prone to sullen moods where she strikes off on her own, only to rejoin the other two a few hours later.  

Both of the young ones seem a great deal bolder than their mother - perhaps because they grew up knowing the giants they would one day be, rather than thinking that a bunch of hairless apes were their parents.  They’re still pretty easy to manage, but who knows.  Maybe a few generations down the line we’ll actually get that Tyrant Lizard we’re all expecting.  For now, though, we’re content with Regina and her kids.

[afrolesbikita]

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In March 2019, a massive chemical fire broke out after a leak at a chemical tank farm in Deer Park spread to almost a dozen other tanks.

A plume of smoke soon loomed over the Houston skyline and lingered there for three days. Residents of Deer Park were forced to shelter in place due to air pollution hazards, the Houston Ship Channel closed for three days, and millions of gallons of hazardous waste spilled on the ground and leaked into the water.

That chemical fire at Intercontinental Terminals Company’s facility also rekindled a debate at the Legislature about the state’s rapidly growing petrochemical industry, much of it in communities along the Texas Gulf Coast. Thousands of such tanks, typically made of steel plates, are in the Houston area alone, and state lawmakers had already become concerned after at least 15 tanks holding crude oil, gasoline and other hydrocarbons ruptured or malfunctioned during Hurricane Harvey in 2017.

Yet the 2019 legislative session ended without new regulations.

Two years later, the Legislature is nearing approval of Senate Bill 900 authored by state Sen. Carol Alvarado, D-Houston, which will create new standards on the type of tanks that put so many people in her district at risk two years ago. It passed the Senate late last month and late Sunday night it received preliminary approval by the House.

“I’m very proud of this bill,” Alvarado said. She said it took a long time to negotiate the bill with industry groups, but high-profile incidents like the ITC fire in her district forced the conversation.

“They knew I was going to be calling,” she said. “There were too many of these things that had occurred.”

Several bills were filed by Democrats this session to create new rules on the petrochemical industry. Few state rules apply to the tanks, and none require construction standards that ensure tanks can withstand powerful hurricanes or major flooding.

Alvarado spent years negotiating with industry groups to draft safety standards that would address the most pressing concerns while also not going too far to be unpalatable to the powerful oil and gas industry, whose opposition would be deadly in the Republican-dominated Texas Legislature. Before it heads to Gov. Greg Abbott’s desk, the House still needs to grant final approval, usually a formality. The Senate would then need to accept a minor changes made by the House or ask for a conference committee to settle the slight differences between the versions of the bill that passed each chamber.

Texas has a long list of rules on the books for chemical storage tanks, including requiring specific construction standards and plans to prevent spills, but they only apply to below-ground tanks and are aimed at preventing contamination of underground aquifers. Above-ground storage tanks are exempt.

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality can fine companies for discharges or spills that harm the environment, but the agency previously told the Tribune that its rules do not require any spill preparation or prevention measures. The tanks containing toxic and flammable chemicals are often, but not required to be, constructed to standards determined by the American Petroleum Institute, a powerful oil and gas industry group.

During a September work session, TCEQ Executive Director Toby Baker told TCEQ commissioners that he was frustrated with the agency’s limited authority to regulate chemical plants before disasters occur.

Senate Bill 900, if signed by the governor, would require the TCEQ to establish new performance standards for large above ground storage tanks (called “vessels” in the bill) aimed at protecting ground and surface water in the event of an accident or natural disaster. For example, the tanks will be required to have remote shut off valves, overflow protection and anti-fire technology. “Had these things been in place, that could have prevented the ITC fire,” Alvarado said.

The agency must establish the rules by September 2023.

The Sierra Club wanted the regulations to go further. In an April legislative committee hearing, Cyrus Reed, representing the Lone Star Chapter of the Sierra Club, said the rules should also include tanks that are smaller in size, require more frequent inspections and take effect earlier than 2023.

“If I thought we could go farther, I would have,” Alvarado said in response to the criticisms during the April hearing. The legislation also allows companies to seek exceptions from the rules if they can prove to regulators that their tanks are at a low risk of flooding, hurricanes, fires and explosions.

Jennifer Coffee, general counsel for the Texas Pipeline Association, said during the hearing that the group, which represents intrastate pipelines, spent “countless hours” working with the Texas Chemical Council and the Texas Oil and Gas Association, two other powerful oil and gas interest groups, to help Alvarado craft a bill that would include the safety features that she considered essential.

The negotiations between all the groups didn’t come easy, Coffee said

“What might be good for the chemical industry might not be good for petroleum,” she said.

Regulating the tanks gained traction among lawmakers after high-profile chemical accidents provoked outrage from residents and regulators. John Beard, who leads the Port Arthur Community Action Network and worked in the chemical industry for years, told lawmakers in April that the rules “are about protecting lives.”

After a string of chemical fires in Texas in 2019, Alvarado said she found much broader support from Republicans — in particular from the now Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan, whose constituents were evacuated the day before Thanksgiving in 2019 when several explosions rocked a TPC Group plant in Port Neches. That explosion and incidents also forced industry groups to come to the table to negotiate, Alvarado said.

“When you have incidents like this happening, we have a duty to respond and to change that, and that’s what we did,” Alvarado said.

This article was published on this site.

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[orbemnews]

Biden Inherits a Vaccine Provide Unlikely to Develop Earlier than April Because the Biden administration takes energy with a pledge to tame probably the most dire public well being disaster in a century, one pillar of its technique is to considerably improve the availability of Covid-19 vaccines. However federal well being officers and company executives agree that will probably be unattainable to extend the speedy provide of vaccines earlier than April due to lack of producing capability. The administration ought to first focus, specialists say, on fixing the hodgepodge of state and native vaccination facilities that has proved incapable of managing even the present move of vaccines. President Biden’s purpose of 1 million pictures a day for the following 100 days, they are saying, is just too low and can arguably depart tens of thousands and thousands of doses unused. Knowledge collected by the Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention means that the nation has already reached that milestone tempo. About 1.1 million individuals obtained pictures final Friday, after a median of 911,000 individuals a day obtained them on the earlier two days. That was true regardless that C.D.C. information signifies that states and localities are administering as few as 46 % of the doses that the federal authorities is delivery to them. An environment friendly vaccination routine may ship thousands and thousands extra pictures. “I really like that he set a purpose, however 1,000,000 doses a day?” stated Dr. Paul A. Offit, the director of the Vaccine Training Middle at Youngsters’s Hospital of Philadelphia and a member of a federal vaccine advisory board. “I believe we will do higher,” he stated. “We’re going to should if we actually need to get on high of this virus by, say, summer time.” The tempo of vaccination is essential not simply to curbing illness and dying but in addition to heading off the impression of extra infectious types of the virus. The C.D.C. has warned that one variant, which is considered 50 % extra contagious, would possibly develop into the dominant supply of an infection in the US by March. Though public well being specialists are optimistic that the present vaccines might be efficient towards that variant, often known as B.1.1.7, it could drive up the an infection charge if sufficient individuals stay unvaccinated. The present vaccination effort, which has little central course, has sown confusion and frustration. Some localities are complaining they’re operating out of doses whereas others have unused vials sitting on cabinets. Mr. Biden is asking Congress for $20 billion to vastly increase vaccination facilities to incorporate stadiums, pharmacies, medical doctors’ places of work and cellular clinics. He additionally needs to rent 100,000 well being care employees and to make use of federal catastrophe reduction funds to reimburse states and native governments for vaccination prices. Dr. Mark B. McClellan, the director of Duke College’s well being coverage heart, stated these strikes ought to assist clear the bottlenecks and “push the quantity past 1,000,000 doses a day and doubtless considerably past.” The nation’s vaccine provide within the first three months of the yr is anticipated to considerably exceed what is required to satisfy the administration’s purpose. Based on a senior administration official, Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna have been ramping up and are actually on monitor to ship as much as 18 million doses per week. Collectively, they’ve pledged to ship 200 million doses by the tip of March. A 3rd vaccine maker, Johnson & Johnson, may also come by with extra doses. If all of that offer have been used, the nation may common properly over two million pictures a day. Requested Thursday afternoon by a reporter if a million pictures a day was sufficient, Mr. Biden stated: “Once I introduced it, you all stated it’s not doable. Come on, give me a break, man. It’s begin.” Covid-19 Vaccines › Solutions to Your Vaccine Questions If I reside within the U.S., when can I get the vaccine? Whereas the precise order of vaccine recipients could fluctuate by state, most will probably put medical employees and residents of long-term care services first. If you wish to perceive how this determination is getting made, this text will assist. When can I return to regular life after being vaccinated? Life will return to regular solely when society as a complete positive factors sufficient safety towards the coronavirus. As soon as nations authorize a vaccine, they’ll solely be capable of vaccinate just a few % of their residents at most within the first couple months. The unvaccinated majority will nonetheless stay susceptible to getting contaminated. A rising variety of coronavirus vaccines are exhibiting strong safety towards changing into sick. However it’s additionally doable for individuals to unfold the virus with out even figuring out they’re contaminated as a result of they expertise solely gentle signs or none in any respect. Scientists don’t but know if the vaccines additionally block the transmission of the coronavirus. So in the intervening time, even vaccinated individuals might want to put on masks, keep away from indoor crowds, and so forth. As soon as sufficient individuals get vaccinated, it’s going to develop into very troublesome for the coronavirus to seek out susceptible individuals to contaminate. Relying on how rapidly we as a society obtain that purpose, life would possibly begin approaching one thing like regular by the autumn 2021. If I’ve been vaccinated, do I nonetheless have to put on a masks? Sure, however not eternally. The 2 vaccines that may probably get licensed this month clearly defend individuals from getting sick with Covid-19. However the medical trials that delivered these outcomes weren’t designed to find out whether or not vaccinated individuals may nonetheless unfold the coronavirus with out creating signs. That is still a risk. We all know that people who find themselves naturally contaminated by the coronavirus can unfold it whereas they’re not experiencing any cough or different signs. Researchers might be intensely learning this query because the vaccines roll out. Within the meantime, even vaccinated individuals might want to consider themselves as doable spreaders. Will it damage? What are the unwanted side effects? The Pfizer and BioNTech vaccine is delivered as a shot within the arm, like different typical vaccines. The injection received’t be any completely different from ones you’ve gotten earlier than. Tens of hundreds of individuals have already obtained the vaccines, and none of them have reported any severe well being issues. However a few of them have felt short-lived discomfort, together with aches and flu-like signs that sometimes final a day. It’s doable that folks could have to plan to take a day without work work or faculty after the second shot. Whereas these experiences aren’t nice, they’re signal: they’re the results of your individual immune system encountering the vaccine and mounting a potent response that may present long-lasting immunity. Will mRNA vaccines change my genes? No. The vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer use a genetic molecule to prime the immune system. That molecule, often known as mRNA, is ultimately destroyed by the physique. The mRNA is packaged in an oily bubble that may fuse to a cell, permitting the molecule to slide in. The cell makes use of the mRNA to make proteins from the coronavirus, which might stimulate the immune system. At any second, every of our cells could comprise a whole lot of hundreds of mRNA molecules, which they produce with a view to make proteins of their very own. As soon as these proteins are made, our cells then shred the mRNA with particular enzymes. The mRNA molecules our cells make can solely survive a matter of minutes. The mRNA in vaccines is engineered to face up to the cell’s enzymes a bit longer, in order that the cells could make further virus proteins and immediate a stronger immune response. However the mRNA can solely final for just a few days at most earlier than they’re destroyed. The administration is promising to buy much more vaccine doses as they develop into accessible from the vaccine makers, and to make use of the Protection Manufacturing Act to spur manufacturing. However federal well being officers and company executives stated these have been longer-term targets as a result of the availability for the primary three months of the yr was primarily fastened. The Trump administration invoked the Protection Manufacturing Act to pressure suppliers to prioritize orders from Pfizer, Moderna and different vaccine makers whose merchandise are nonetheless in growth. Well being officers stated it was unclear how the brand new administration may use the legislation past that to spice up manufacturing. One senior federal well being official concerned within the authorities’s vaccine efforts stated that Operation Warp Pace, the Trump administration’s crash growth program, had checked out all accessible manufacturing capability domestically and globally and that there was little area left to barter at this level. The official stated that if there had been extra doses accessible to the federal government within the first quarter, they’d have been bought. Specialists typically agree that the federal authorities must be locking in purchases of as many doses as doable as a result of nobody is aware of but how lengthy the vaccines will defend towards the coronavirus, whether or not booster pictures might be required and what threats mutations of the virus may pose. From April and thereafter, the availability outlook brightens. Pfizer and Moderna have every dedicated to produce one other 100 million doses by the tip of July, and the businesses would possibly be capable of present much more. Every week in the past, Pfizer and BioNTech, its German associate, elevated their world manufacturing goal to 2 billion doses for the yr from 1.3 billion doses. Pfizer has delayed deliveries to European nations whereas it retools its Belgium manufacturing unit to increase manufacturing. However on the agency’s manufacturing unit in Kalamazoo, Mich., which provides doses for Individuals, manufacturing has quickened because the federal authorities ordered suppliers to prioritize Pfizer’s wants. The surprising discovery that environment friendly syringes may extract a sixth dose from its vials additionally upped Pfizer’s estimates. Moderna has additionally raised its manufacturing targets for the yr to 600 million doses, up from 500 million. Johnson & Johnson is anticipated to announce outcomes from its vaccine trial inside days. If that vaccine proves efficient, it may drastically velocity up the tempo of vaccinations as a result of not like Moderna’s and Pfizer-BioNTech’s vaccines, it requires just one dose. The corporate may apply for emergency use authorization from the Meals and Drug Administration as quickly as the tip of the month. Whereas its manufacturing has lagged, Johnson & Johnson is making an attempt to catch as much as the targets detailed within the federal contract it signed final yr. The agency is now anticipated to ship anyplace from a number of million to 12 million doses by the tip of February, and 10 million to twenty million extra doses on the finish of March or the primary week in April, in response to a number of individuals acquainted with the agency’s manufacturing output. The primary batch could be produced at its Dutch manufacturing unit, and later batches at a manufacturing unit in Baltimore operated by its manufacturing associate, Emergent BioSolutions. However to ship the second batch that rapidly, federal regulators could should comply with delay sure manufacturing evaluations of the vaccine from the Baltimore plant, in response to individuals acquainted with the scenario. These discussions are actually underway. Johnson & Johnson can be in preliminary talks with Merck, a significant American pharmaceutical firm, about utilizing its manufacturing traces, one among a number of concepts that federal well being officers mentioned with the Biden transition group. Federal officers are enthusiastic about boosting the nation’s vaccine-making energy long-term, and Merck’s services could also be among the many few with remaining manufacturing functionality. However Dr. McClellan, who sits on Johnson & Johnson’s board of administrators, stated it could take months to adapt Merck’s manufacturing unit to supply Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine. A senior administration official predicted that it may take till the tip of the yr. Different vaccine makers might also come by by midyear. Novavax has labored to iron out what have been just lately dire manufacturing issues that delayed its medical trials. Moncef Slaoui, the scientific head of the federal vaccine growth program within the Trump administration, stated in a latest interview that Novavax may apply for emergency use authorization in late April. The federal government has already ordered 110 million doses of the Novavax vaccine, to be delivered by the tip of June, and Novavax has stated it believes it could meet that focus on. Mr. Biden has surrounded himself with new well being officers assigned to getting vaccines from factories to recipients, together with Dr. Bechara Choucair, the previous Chicago well being commissioner who’s the White Home’s vaccinations coordinator, and Tim Manning, a former high official on the Federal Emergency Administration Company who’s now the availability coordinator. Dr. David Kessler, the previous F.D.A. commissioner, will assist lead the federal authorities’s vaccine growth program on the Division of Well being and Human Companies, with particular consideration to manufacturing. After each the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines proved to be extremely efficient in medical trials late final yr, the Trump administration thought-about whether or not to rethink its technique of backing six completely different vaccine makers and as an alternative throw all of its weight behind the confirmed producers. One senior administration official described “numerous hours of debate” over the difficulty. In the long run, officers determined it was essential to maintain aiming for a broad portfolio of vaccines, partly as a result of nobody has discovered which vaccines would possibly work finest for youngsters or be only towards rising variants. They advisable that the Biden administration do the identical. Katie Thomas and Donald G. McNeil Jr. contributed reporting. Supply hyperlink #April #Biden #grow #Inherits #Supply #Vaccine

[sciencespies]

Australians warned worst bushfires may be yet to come

https://sciencespies.com/environment/australians-warned-worst-bushfires-may-be-yet-to-come/

Australians warned worst bushfires may be yet to come

Many residents in eastern Australia are returning to their scorched communities to assess the extent of the fire damage

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Sydney is facing a “catastrophic” fire threat, authorities said on Sunday, as firefighters in eastern Australia raced to prepare for worsening conditions after ferocious bushfires devastated communities.

Fires have killed three people and razed more than 150 homes since Friday, but cooler weather overnight provided a welcome reprieve for firefighters and residents.

Authorities were assessing the damage on Sunday, with more than 100 fires still burning across New South Wales and Queensland, including several blazes that remained out of control.

Wider swathes of the states—including greater Sydney—are now bracing for perilous fire conditions predicted for the coming days, as is Western Australia state.

It is the first time Sydney has been warned of a “catastrophic” fire danger, the highest possible level, since the grading system was introduced in 2009.

Massive fires tore through several towns on Friday and Saturday.

The mayor of Glen Innes, where two people died, said residents were traumatised and still coming to terms with their losses.

“The fire was as high as 20 foot (six metres) and raging with 80 kilometres-an-hour (50 miles-an-hour) winds,” Carol Sparks told national broadcaster ABC.

Five people reported missing have been found, but the unpredictable nature of the disaster means officials have not ruled out the possibility that others could still be missing, NSW Rural Fire Service spokesman Greg Allan told AFP.

In Old Bar, hectares of bushland had turned charcoal and small pockets of flames continued to smoulder

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In Old Bar, which was spared the worst when the wind changed direction, hectares of bushland had turned charcoal and small pockets of flames continued to smoulder.

Peter McKellar, 75, was clearing debris from his property as his neighbour’s home sat in ruins.

“The firies (firefighters) saved ours,” he told AFP. “They are doing a wonderful job. They’re angels.”

High temperatures, low humidity and strong winds forecast from the middle of the week are predicted to fuel blazes that authorities have warned they will be unable to contain ahead of time.

“We are ramping up for probably another 50 trucks full of crews to be deployed into New South Wales on Monday night ahead of conditions on Tuesday,” NSW Rural Fire Service Commissioner Shan Fitzsimmons told reporters in Taree, one of the worst-hit areas.

“We have seen the gravity of the situation unfold… What we can expect is those sorts of conditions to prevail across a much broader geographic area as we head into Tuesday.”

Some fires have burned as high as 20 foot (six metres)

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‘Primed to burn’

In Queensland, where a state of emergency has been declared, more than 1,200 firefighters were battling over 50 active fires on Sunday.

“Queensland does not usually have a fire season like we’ve experienced this year and last year,” Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk told reporters.

With thousands of people forced to flee from their homes, Australia’s government was offering immediate emergency assistance payments of up to Aus$1,000 (US$685) to those affected and extended financial support for anyone unable to work as a result.

Many residents are now returning to their scorched communities to assess the extent of the fire-inflicted damage, amid warnings it could take months for them to rebuild their lives.

Emotions were running high at an evacuation centre in Taree, with one man breaking down in tears as he was embraced by Prime Minister Scott Morrison.

Firefighters in eastern Australia are racing to prepare for worsening conditions after bushfires devastated communities

More

More than 100 fires were still burning across New South Wales and Queensland on Sunday, including dozens of blazes that remained out of control

More

“People are under a lot of pressure,” Morrison told reporters. “The level of optimism, despite the circumstances, is quite inspiring.”

Morrison, whose government has downplayed the threat of climate change, was also heckled about the issue at a fire command centre in nearby Wauchope.

“Climate change is real, can’t you see,” the Australian newspaper reported a man as yelling before he was escorted out of the building.

Bushfires are common in Australia but the country has experienced a dramatic start to what scientists predict will be a tough fire season—with climate change and weather cycles contributing to the dangerous combination of strong winds, high temperatures and dry conditions.

The current disaster has not wreaked the human devastation of Australia’s worst recent bushfires, the Black Saturday fires that killed 173 people in Victoria state in 2009, with some experts attributing that to better early warning systems.

But Ross Bradstock, from the Centre for Environmental Management of Bushfires at the University of Wollongong, described the situation as “unprecedented” for the affected regions, which have rarely—if ever—experienced such severe fires.

“Sadly, given the weather forecast for the coming week, the crisis may worsen and extend southward into landscapes primed to burn via extreme dryness,” he said.

Explore further

Australia bushfires leave three dead, at least 150 homes lost

© 2019 AFP

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This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only.

#Environment

[the-foxwolf]

Places to Go and Stories to Tell: The Wild West, Oceania, Feudal Japan, and Vikings

The Foxwolf is back! As an avid Vorthos and a natural storyteller, I’m excited to once again share my talents with you all. 

This article lists four places I think the Magic Story could go and the type of story I’d like to see in each of those worlds. This exercise would be a little dry if I just listed things out. I figured it would be more fun, and expressive, to give you all a short glimpse of what a story there might look like. This article is a little different than the kind I normally do. But I’m fairly confident that if you sit down to read it, you’ll find you enjoy it. Let me know what you think! And enjoy!

It’s good to be back. Writing. Sharing my love for story telling again. 

Gather `Round Everyone! It’s Story Telling Time!

(Omniscience: Magic 2013) (Art by Jason Chan)

Format

     As you read through you’ll see the header for a section with a setting and some defining characteristics of that setting. I’ll then move into describing what that world might look like, the characters it might have, the environment and conflicts within the world, and the potential storyline I could easily see happening in said environment. It’s an easy, fun read, that provides you my thoughts on what I see coming in Magic’s future.

Wild West: Spellslingers and Railroads

      Sheriff Chandra steps out of the saloon, appreciating how the rising sun paints the sky into a canvassed pastel orange. Chandra breathes in the dry desert air of this dusty Frontier town. She lets it out slowly, eyes closed, hands on her hips, the warmth of the sun caressing her face, and takes in the world around her with all her senses. The Frontier air is charged with sensations and emotions. She can taste the unbridled hope and opportunity the Frontier has to offer; her skin shivers at the feeling of the electric static of the thrill of discovery all around her; the lizards scuttle across the floorboards beneath her boots and the jackalopes scurry into the brush at the sound of her clinking spurs; the sweat of the hard working people doing their best every day to thrive in this harsh world; all these things flood her senses and for a brief moment, she is lost in the romanticism of it all.       But that moment quickly fades. She knows that the Frontier isn’t the romantic dream the East makes it out to be. The rolling tumbleweeds who witnessed the bloody fate of the evicted natives whose promises of peace were betrayed by greed, protest by clumsily beating around the town- uselessly silent. Eagles and vultures circling above the town screech, echoing the pain the land itself feels with each new drill the Aether Barons order constructed. The Rail Monger’s train tracks are greased with the sweat of the imported indentured goblins and the tears of the settlers who are extorted into poverty by the extreme shipping costs.      Chandra takes off her hat and presses it gently against her chest in a moment of respectful silence. She puts it back and taps the badge, the sigil of the Gatewatch, on her cowhide jacket twice, reminding herself of the oath she made just a few years ago:

“Every world has its tyrants, following their own desires with no concern for the people they step on. They’re no different from the Eldrazi....If it means that people can live in freedom, yeah, I’ll keep watch...” 

(Oath of Chandra: Oath of the Gatewatch) (Art by Wesley Burt)

     She whistles for Ashaya, the Sun Stallion and watches as a beam of sunlight materializes into the majestic, noble, horse Nissa had taught her to summon. Chandra mounts Ashaya and checks her Spell-Slinger Gauntlets. With a flex of her hand, a small mote of concentrated Red Mana puffs into existence at her fingertips and proceeds to start circling her extended index finger. This tiny mote of energy could burn through bone like a hot knife cuts through butter. With another flex of her hand, she extinguishes the mote.       Satisfied her equipment is in order, she taps on Ashaya’s neck, motioning him towards the plateau to the West, near where the Sun Foot Tribe was last seen. “My mom always believed that I could be a leader. I’m starting to believe she’s right. Let’s go make my mother proud, Ashaya.”

Oceania: Islands and Atlantis

     The salty sting of the sea air carried upon the cool breeze tickles Nissa’s nose as she sits quietly just within reach of the lapping ocean waves. In the distance she can hear the rhythmic drums and the upbeat flutes of the islanders as they celebrate their annual Fire God festival. The scent of roasted swine rises from the thin grey cooking fires at the center of the nearby village. Above, a sea gull screeches and below, the ocean once again rolls in around Nissa, playfully embracing her as she meditates. Searching the soul of the world, she senses the snuffing out of another island-searing lava scorching it down to the sands, leaving only obsidian behind. The second island, this week. The fifth this month.      Jace finalizes his inspection of the ship the islanders so happily helped him build. Though they have never built anything quite like it, Jace was able to telepathically share the shipbuilding skills and knowledge he learned on Ixalan. They have enough supplies to last them well over a month. He glances at Nissa and decides not to disturb her. Instead, he heads into his cabin and once again presses his palms against the table, already starting to wear in those places by the constant pressure and practice, and gazes upon the chart before him. Though it had required a lot of sailing in ships he was far less familiar piloting, he and Nissa had managed to visit enough islands for Jace to glean a fairly accurate map from the collected thoughts of the most experienced sailors of each village. But now they were ready. At every stop, Nissa spent most of her time meditating, searching the sea floor, communing with the world’s soul, seeking for the sunken city of Atlantis. Between all her hard work and all of Jace’s research, they are close to finding its exact position.   

(Island: Magic 2010) (Art by Fred Fields)

   But their time is running short. Volcanoes, both underwater and those above, that have been silent and slumbering for millennia are awakening with a tremendous violence. Entire islands have been washed away. Others have been buried beneath molten rock. If the stories sung in the songs of the Slumbering Fire God are true, then the only way to stop these devastating disasters is to find Atlantis and search the secrets therein for a way to calm the unruly world.      Of all the worlds Jace had ever learned about, of all the worlds Nissa had ever touched, this one was the most innocent. Yes, every village has its quarrels and grudges and power struggles. And on the rare occasion neighboring islands might even go to war against one another. But compared to many of the worlds the Gatewatch had operated in... well...saving this one had a personal stake for them.      Jace looks up toward the far end of the island and sees a boat, similar to his own, approaching. Finjamin! The merfolk biomancer who had gone to Ravnica to implore the Gatewatch for their help had gathered the bravest souls from the archipelago. Not one of them could possibly have been older than two dozen years. Yet they dared to brave the seas in search of the sunken city, from whence no explorer had ever returned from whence they had sought to find.      Nissa smiles, sensing the ship approaching before she sees it. She stands and dusts the sand from her skirt, saying, “See what we are here for, Jace. For the life of every plane, and every life it nurtures.”      The telepath nods and takes a moment to look beyond the mission, to see the world they were here to help save. He smiles. “For the people.” He says to himself, leaning on the rails. “Let‘s go find Atlantis, Nissa. Let’s save the world.”

Feudal Japan: Ninjas and Samurais 

     Liliana walks upon the wooden floor of her courtyard, along the coy ponds, and amidst the blooming Cherry Blossoms. The running water between the several ponds babbles a soft melody in the background. She reaches up and plucks a flower from a branch. The necromancer smells it and allows herself to smile for just a moment...before slowly proceeding to tear it apart, one petal at a time until at last she crumbles the remains in her black, silken, gloved hands, and scatters the remains in the gentle breeze. A soft, warm, orange from the setting sun colors the sky and graces her face as she heads back into her palace. The smell of incense greets her as she slides open the doors and walks in. Running her hand along the wooden walls, her mauve silken kimono’s skirts brushing gently against the floor, she heads to the shogun’s war room. She slides open the door and sees Gideon raptly paying attention to a demon masked messenger proclaiming nonsense about ‘the glory of Shogun Lix’ and ‘total surrender or total destruction’. Nothing important. Liliana watches Gideon miraculously keep a stoic face of seriousness throughout the entire speech. Gideon looks good with his long hair in a pony tail. But the hunk of meat is still the same man he’s always been. Stoic. Righteous. Selfless. Unyieldingly boring. But at the very least, pretty to look at. When the messenger concludes, Gideon politely dismisses him with the promise of a safe passage out of his realm.      Gideon turns to face her once they’re alone and says, “Have your ninjas found the Blade of Kings?”

(Tatsumasa, the Dragon’s Fang: Champions of Kamigawa)  (Art by Martina Pilcerova)      “They have. Shogun Fa has been hiding it this entire time. How much trouble we could have saved had we just gone and wiped them out earlier like I suggested.”      “You know that was never an option. The only reason we’ve fought the other Shoguns is because-”      Yeah, yeah. ‘It was an absolute necessity with no other possible solution‘.“ She quoted. “I’ve heard your speech. But you have yet to understand that when Ob Nixilis is the enemy, there are no neutral parties, soldier boy. In some form or other, everything that doesn’t directly stand against him is his pawn.“      Gideon furrows his brow but doesn’t disagree. Instead he turns around and leans on the table with his elbow. “This is the closest we’ve ever come to stopping him, Liliana. We’re so close. By all accounts, Ob Nixilis should have defeated us by now. He surpasses my tactical talents by miles. But with you reanimating every samurai that our forces lose or kill we’ve managed to keep the scales balanced. For now, at least..”      “Don‘t feel bad, Gid-boy. He‘s called you his arch-nemesis. Surely that counts for something.”      He scoffs but his mood lightens. “Has Narset discovered what the Blade of Kings is yet?”      “She mentioned something about it being able to sever mana lines and eradiate magic and other weapon-of-ultimate-power type of things. So serious that one... I don’t like her.”      “Narset is normally a very serious woman. And you know why she’s here. Jace can’t be everywhere at once and you chose to come here rather than to join him on Oceania. But that’s neither here nor there. Focus, Liliana. We can’t let a weapon so powerful fall into the wrong hands.“      “That happy little world was just a little too sunny for me... And personally, Gideon, I could care less if we, or anyone else really, get our hands on that weapon or not. I just want the satisfaction of having taken it from under Ob Nixilis’ pointy demonic nose.“

Nordic: Barbarians, Vikings, and the Norse Gods 

     Up in Valhalla the gods are faced with, for the first time, the fear of mortality. Ragnarok is coming. All the omens and portends prophesized by the oracles ages ago have begun to manifest. The Great Chill has lasted for nearly two years now. The Hell Hound raids have drastically increased in number and ferocity. The mountains rumble and groan and quake. Astrid of the Grey-Claw clan, daughter of the chieftain, humbled herself and came to Ravnica to plead for the Gatewatch’s help. Ajani sees in her what he saw in Elspeth. A warrior looking for a home to feel safe at. Young. Beautiful. But above all fierce and brave. He happily swore his service.       Ajani, Astrid, and her Relentless Crew board their longboats, sailing to the North, into the ever colder waters of the Poles. Even though the Great Chill has buried much of this world in snow, Ajani can see that this world was once beautiful. Yet the gods offer no help to save it. Instead, they bicker amongst themselves as they decide whether to fight against destiny or stand out of the way and hope that Ragnarok, whatever it may be, spares them. The gods are always useless.       In the few times they stop to rest, Ajani listens to The Relentless Crew sing songs of the world before it was covered in snow. They drink heavily, and they dance merrily, and they laugh heartily. Astrid enjoys the merry making as much as her loyal crew do. Seeing the vibrant life in their eyes, Ajani knows he can’t let this world down. He won’t watch another life as full and as rich as Astrid’s meet Elspeth’s fate. Ajani’s heart couldn’t take it.      They sing of their homeland: Beloved tundras, irritating rams, babbling creeks, tranquil lakes, lush green lands, glory, and joy, and love. The world is cold, but the love the people have for it make it warm. Whatever Ragnarok is, it’ll face the best this world has to offer. 

(Mountain: Khans of Tarkir Variant 2) (Art by Titus Lunter)

     Stirring beneath the mountains of the North are horrors that worship and praise the coming of the apocalypse. Ragnarok, Phyrexia’s greatest Dragon Engine, is almost done repairing itself. It was created to destroy Urza Planeswalker-- and it nearly succeeded had the planeswalker named Serra not intervened. When repairs finish, Ragnarok will destroy this icy world on which it was trapped for so long and then it will go find whatever remains of Phyrexia. With its Planar Matrix, it will warp itself between through the Blind Eternities until it finds whatever remains of its masters. Once reunited, Ragnarok will deliver the Glory of Phyrexia across the multiverse, unimpeded! RISE RAGNAROK! RISE!

Conclusion

That’s all I‘ve got for today, folk! Thanks for reading. I hope you enjoyed it. Let me know what you think about this type of article. Don’t worry. My informative articles, opinion pieces, and essays will remain as they are. I just want to get a feel for how much my audience has patience for this type of stuff.

For more from me, at Story Telling Time, hit that “Follow“ button. If you enjoyed what you read, spread the world and hit that “Reblog“ button. Once again, thanks for reading. See ya next time!

[newstfionline]

What Are Active-Shooter Drills Doing to Kids?

By James Hamblin, The Atlantic, Feb. 28, 2018

There’s always at least one kid in tears, as they huddle under their desks in the dark. Still Beth Manias, an early-elementary literacy teacher outside of Seattle, tries to act upbeat and relaxed.

“I have them whisper about their favorite candy, dinner, books, movies--whatever, as a distraction,” Manias told me. She tells the kids they’re practicing to stay safe in case there’s ever a bear on campus. Though, she admits, “They always see through this. The older they get, the more savvy they become, probably because they are exposed to more of the news.”

At schools across the country, more children are taking part in mandatory “active-shooter drills.” Forgoing any pretense of a bear, sometimes a faculty member plays the role of a shooter, jiggling doorknobs as children practice keeping perfectly silent. Many parents, teachers, and students say that the experience is somewhere between upsetting and traumatizing.

Which may be worthwhile, if it were clear that the drills saved lives.

Active-shooter drills came into existence after the Columbine massacre in 1999. What is known of their long-term psychological effects comes from the reports of people now in early adulthood.

Ryan Marino, an emergency-medicine physician at the University of Pittsburgh, recalled that his school had adopted the drills during that period, after a student was found to have a “death list” and access to guns. He told me the drills didn’t seem real until he was 12, and a fellow student coughed during one of the drills. “The teacher told us that if this had been real, we would all be dead.”

“That single experience shaped my childhood,” Marino said. “Having to practice and prepare for a peer coming to my school and shooting at me and my friends was something that really changed the overall atmosphere. Looking back, it was a major shift in how the world felt.”

In the two weeks since the shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida, new and renewed calls for such drills raise the question of whether they do any good--and if they might be doing harm.

The day after the event, Susan Hennessey, the executive editor of Lawfare, tweeted: “Feeling mildly nauseous reading a note from my kid’s preschool about implementing active-shooter drills.”

Brian Leff, a writer in Los Angeles, told me his fifth-grade daughter’s principal just announced the school is contemplating a surprise lockdown drill. “Now my daughter can’t stop thinking about when it’s going to happen and how she’ll know if it’s ‘real’ or not.”

The writer Allison Gibson says that at her 4-year-old son’s preschool, they’re called “self-control drills,” because the goal is to get the students very quiet. “The first time he mentioned it, when he was 2, I had to piece together what he was referring to, and it nearly broke me.”

Of course, general lockdown and disaster drills have a long history; a generation of Americans came of age hiding under desks from nuclear bombs. While the idea of such a maneuver protecting a person from a bomb blast or nuclear fallout became fodder for jokes, the drills themselves had insidious effects on kids’ senses of safety. Some teachers reported that students’ artwork changed to feature mushroom clouds and sometimes the child’s own death, bringing a pervasive sense of danger into the places where kids most need to feel safe.

Despite some similarities to natural-disaster and Cold War drills, active-shooter drills also mean exposing kids to the idea that at any point, someone they know may try to kill them.

“It’s good to do emergency drills, but active shooters are not a drill anyone should have to do,” says Meredith Corley, who taught math in Colorado in the aftermath of Columbine. “It re-traumatizes kids who have experienced violence. Getting the kids settled back into the work of learning after lockdown drills is a nightmare. That mind-set has no place in a learning environment.”

“I was slightly too young for bomb drills, but in greater Kansas City, tornado drills were de rigueur,” says Lily Alice, a Midwesterner born in 1965. “We did have tornados now and then. The difference, of course, is that no one stockpiles them to use against other people, and weather forecasts mitigated some fear.”

Even President Trump, who has expressed support for arming teachers, has warned against active-shooter drills. During a White House meeting last week, he said, “If I’m a child and I’m 10 years old, and they say we’re going to have an active-shooter drill, I say, ‘What’s that?’ ‘Well, people may come in and shoot you’--I think that’s a very negative thing ... to be honest. I don’t like it.”

Studies of whether active-shooter drills actually prevent harm are all but impossible. Case studies are difficult to parse. In Parkland, for example, the site of the recent shooting, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, had an active-shooter drill just last month. The shooter had been through such drills. Purposely countering them may have been a reason that, as he was beginning his rampage, the shooter pulled a fire alarm.

In any case, preparedness drills always change the baseline level of risk that people perceive. This heightening can manifest as stress and anxiety, not to mention changing the way kids understand how people treat one another--to even consider violence an option, not in some abstract way.

Colleen Derkatch, an associate professor at Ryerson University in Toronto, studies how we assess risk when it comes to our health. “The more prepared we are, the more heightened our sense of risk,” she told me. “And one potential effect we haven’t considered is how these kinds of preparedness activities affect kids psychologically, and could increase a sense of feeling at risk. They really expand the ways in which we feel increasingly under siege.”

Preparedness activities, that is, are never neutral. Derkatch’s work relates this concept to the anxiety wrought by a culture of “wellness” products, which are ostensibly meant to keep us healthy, but also enhance our awareness of health risks. “They give us a sense that we’re all constantly on the edge of illness,” Derkatch told me. “Preparedness can be a good thing, but it has very real costs and consequences. For children whose personalities are just forming--who are figuring out what kind of world they live in--if this is the input they get, I think it will have a significant impact down the road.”

Derkatch has an 11-year-old daughter who is in the sixth grade. In her school, they’ve done lockdown drills, but the drills are the sort that are generalizable to any emergency. The teachers are very clear that it’s just a drill, and they lock the doors, and kids stay in their seats. There’s no hiding or barricading, as many schools in the United States now require.

If you were to move to the United States, I asked Derkatch, would you want your daughter going through these sorts of drills?

“No,” she said. “But I wouldn’t move to the United States. And guns are the reason why. Guns and health care.”

“Kids perceive the world generally as a bit of a dangerous place now because of how they tend to be closely supervised at almost all times,” said Derkatch. “If you look at the proposals in the United States, it sounds like they’re trying to make schools an awful lot like prisons, with monitored perimeters and armed guards and possibly armed teachers. You could extrapolate from the experiences of kids living in potentially violent situations, where you never know what’s going to happen. That does have a profound impact on kids.”

“I will never be able to explain it well, but losing a feeling of safety as a child, especially at school, is a major thing,” said Marino, the emergency physician who was terrified to cough. “Anyone who has not gone through school with active-shooter drills can never understand what it feels like.”