#professional fighter -> has a gun pulled on him during a fight

[umathurwin]

i love how outer banks introduced a baby villain who’s handsome, charming, talented, secretly sensitive and kind, and rich and thought “fuck he’s too likeable. nerf him again”

[waveypedia]

and i’ll shine for everyone who’s with me

[MAJOR SPOILERS FOR THE PHANTOM AND THE SORCERESS]

ao3

In her time adventuring with Webby and the McDuck clan, Lena has learned that there are three stages to the day of the adventure. The before, the during, and the after.

This falls solely into the after category. The adrenaline wears off, and Lena slides into one of the tall-backed chairs at Scrooge’s dining table. Mrs. Beakley carries out platters of fluffy pancakes, and Donald follows with mugs full of steaming hot chocolate. The go-to post-adventure meal.

The atmosphere is comfortingly familiar. Lena’s done this dance many times before, but it never gets old. The sense of safety she feels, crowded around the table with some of her favorite people in the world (when Ty and Indy come to pick her and Violet up, and invariably spend an hour schmoozing with the adults, it will be everyone) was rare before she was freed from Magica and almost nonexistent before she met Webby. Now, it’s almost second nature.

That’s what recovery feels like, she muses. That feels good to think.

The table is quiet, with Dewey, Webby, Della, and Scrooge trading stories and hyping up their favorite moment of the adventure. The rest of them chime in occasionally, too tired to fully get into the swing of things. As usual, Dewey dozes off quickly, leaning his head on his hand and his eyes drooping shut. The rest of the kiddos follow soon, but they’re not quite asleep yet.

“Hey Lena,” Della muses. Lena blinks. “What’s with the new outfit? It looks nice.”

“It looks like something outta Fenton’s animes,” Louie mutters. Huey elbows him in the ribs.

Lena shrugs it off. He’s not wrong, anyway. “It came on when I figured out how to control my innate magic. I don’t really know how it works, or why it looks like that.” 

“It’s neat,” Dewey says. “You picked the best color.”

Lena snorts. “I didn’t really pick it. But thanks.”

She stretches out her hands in front of her and examines them. Blue really isn’t all that bad of a color. It’s definitely better than purple. 

It’s growing on her.

“Well, I think you look really pretty!” Webby says, and Lena chuckles softly. “Not that you weren’t pretty before.”

Huey whips out his Junior Woodchuck Guidebook, always at the ready. “Can you change back?”

“I hypothesize that, since Lena’s magic is enhanced by our friendship magic, it was triggered to protect us,” Violet states. “She should go back to normal soon.”

Lena flexes her fingers. “I wish I knew how.”

“You’ll get it,” Violet says. Her voice seems monotone to those who don’t know her well, but Lena can tell she’s trying to be gentle and reassuring. “You figured out how to control your magic, didn’t you? It makes sense that you will overcome this next block.”

“Lena can do anything!” Webby cheers, punching a fist in the air, and Lena smiles.

--

Lena’s magical form (which the boys have taken to calling a magical girl anime transformation, much to Lena’s dismay) does in fact go away after a little while. It grows on her, but oh is she happy to see her normal clothes again. 

For a couple weeks, it’s almost as if her battle with the Phantom Blot never happened. Lena continues her online schooling, helps Violet with her Junior Woodchuck-ing in the form of snarky quips, works on her portfolio, and continues struggling with her piano scales. Sure, the Sabrewings’ stress level goes down fifty percent with the lack of unwanted magical shenanigans, but Ty and Indy already give her so many daily hugs, it’s hard to tell. Lena knows they love her unconditionally, but it still feels nice to make them feel a little better.

The first major change occurs on a pretty inconspicuous day, but not an inconspicuous event.

Huey finally convinced Violet to come on a Junior Woodchuck camping trip with him, so she’s out in the forest outside of Duckburg for the weekend. Lena, who misses her sister more than she’ll admit out loud, and knowing Webby is missing her brother, suggested a day out.

“It’s been a while since we’ve hung out, just you and me, Pink,” Lena quips, softly punching Webby’s shoulder. Webby beams wider than should be possible and punches her back. Lena grins through the pain, because it’s worth it to see Webby happy.

It was supposed to be ice cream. It was just supposed to be ice cream.

But of course, with Webby, as with the rest of the McDuck clan, that’s never the case.

Lena and Webby are sitting on the patio outside their ice cream parlor, licking cones of strawberry and vanilla-chocolate swirl respectively. They’ve pulled out the Brittania and Anglebeth personas again, and are having fun giving each other ridiculous requests in British accents. Webby’s teaching Della how to make a friendship bracelet for Penumbra, and since Webby and Della get along like a house on fire, she has quite the tale to tell. Webby is about halfway through her story, ice cream forgotten in favor of an overly dramatic retelling of her Sunday afternoon, when it strikes.

There’s a crash inside the ice cream shop, setting both Lena and Webby’s adventure-honed nerves on edge. With a quick glance exchanged, they grab their things and hurry inside the shop.

The Beagle Boys are swarming the shop, cackling as they chase after customers. Bigtime Beagle is heckling with the cashier to get some money while Burger Beagle requests a three-scoop waffle cone.

Falcon Graves, the kids’ least favorite professional corporate saboteur, strides in after them, wrinkling his nose at the chaos. He joins Bigtime at the counter, making sharp, quick demands to the cashier. 

The remaining Beagle Boys spread out along the edges of the shop, hemming the customers in. Lena spots one of the Tumblebum’s hands inch toward the glint of a crowbar concealed in their pocket, and throws her ice cream away entirely. Webby whips out her grappling hook.

Graves pulls out a gun the same time as the Tumblebum unleashes their crowbar, and Lena and Webby leap into action.

Lena’s not a fighter the same way Webby is. She wasn’t subjected to a strict spy training regime from childhood (although Magica’s was close), and she doesn’t go on weekly adventures that require her to battle foes. She did live on the streets for fifteen years, and she’s spent enough time around Donald, Webby, and Beakley to know how to hold her own in a physical fight. And hold her own she does. Lena and Webby take out the Beagle Boys on the side, and help some of the civilians escape.

But those are only the henchmen.

Graves and Bigtime, apparently not content with just snatching the contents of the cash register, turn their anger on Lena and Webby while Burger follows the terrified cashier with his ice cream. Webby cracks her knuckles, and aims her grappling hook directly behind Graves, using the momentum to kick him in the face. He grabs her by the ankle and slams her violently to the ground. There’s a sickening crack that grabs Lena’s attention, even though she’s preoccupied with Bigtime.

Lena freezes, terror rushing through her veins.

“Webby!!!!”

Graves is laughing, that monster, but Lena doesn’t even register it. It’s like static, muffled. For a moment, Lena is not there. Lena is in her own little bubble, not processing anything, even as Bigtime’s fist rises towards her face. Lena’s brain goes Webby hurt protect and all hell breaks loose.

Blue magic flares around her, knocking Graves and Bigtime back into the wall. The counter where they made impact wobbles and crashes to the floor, spilling ice cream everywhere. The ceiling fans rattle, and the lights flicker. Lena doesn’t notice. 

The shop is silent. Graves and Bigtime do not rise. The cashier, trembling, peeks out from behind the door to the backroom. Burger is nowhere to be seen - he probably fled.

None of that registers to Lena. She has only one thought: Webby.

Lena gasps and takes off like a shot to her friend, kneeling beside her. “Pink. Pink! You okay?”

Webby opens her eyes, blinking. She looks tired, but not seriously hurt. “Yeah- yeah. That- that was pretty awesome, Lena!”

Lena helps Webby to her feet, blinking around at the damage. Bigtime is out cold, ice cream pooling around his feet, and Graves is groaning and rubbing his head. Neither of them have gotten up. 

Lena looks down at her hands. They’re blue-gloved again, and she can feel her longer hair flop against her head. 

“So the magic form is back,” Lena muses, half annoyed. “Great.”

Webby knocks her shoulder against Lena’s arm, since she’s too short to bump against Lena’s shoulder. “Hey, I think it looks awesome! You totally kicked butt there! You were just like a real superhero!”

Lena smiles, only slightly. “Thanks, Webs.”

A police siren wails, shocking both of them out of their moment. Officer Cabrera and her squad burst into the ice cream parlor, guns out. They arrest Graves and Bigtime, and someone takes the cashier to get a shock blanket. Some of the civilians are around to give witness testimony as well.

And of course, Lena and Webby themselves.

Officer Cabrera sits them down at one of the tables to interview them. Lena feels awkward, still in her blue magic anime getup, but she doesn’t know how to switch back. Officer Cabrera doesn’t comment, only getting the girls’ testimony.

One of the other witnesses is a mom with two little kids (poor kids, only wanted a midday treat and got caught up in an armed robbery) and run by their table. One of the kids, a little pig about four or five, turns wide, shining eyes towards Lena.

“Are you a superhero?” the kid asks. 

Lena blinks, her mouth forming a perfect O. 

She’s about to say no, to shut this kid down, but something clicks inside her head. 

“Yeah,” she says, slowly, hesitantly. “I’m… I’m a superhero.”

The kid’s face lights up and his grin splits his face in two. “Cool!! Mommy! Mommy, did you hear that?! I met a real superhero!!”

The pig smiles tiredly at her child, clutching him to her chest. “Pretty cool, isn’t it?” She eyes Lena, somehow seeing right through her. She smiles approvingly, and Lena can’t help but feel like she’s passed a test somehow. “Congratulations on a successful debut.”

Lena nods stiffly, forcing a smile. “Um. Thanks.”

The family continues on, and Lena blinks and she tries to process what just happened. Webby pokes her in the side, grinning like a maniac. “Superhero, huh?”

“Uh- um.” Lena smooths down her already impeccable suit. “I…”

“Vigilantism is illegal,” Officer Cabrera interrupts sharply and loudly, catching the attention of one of her colleagues. Lena gulps. She hopes she didn’t just accidentally get herself in trouble for a crime she didn’t commit.

But then again… she did sort of act as a superhero, didn’t she? Even if it wasn’t intentional.

“But,” Officer Cabrera raises one finger, her voice significantly lower and her eyes twinkling. “I happen to know from a very good source that even with Darkwing Duck and his apprentices, Gizmoduck is feeling a bit overworked… as a mother, I wouldn’t object to another hero on the scene.”

Officer Cabrera winks and gathers up her things, leaving Lena and Webby at the table.

Lena blinks, baffled. “Did… did that just happen?”

Webby laughs. “I can’t believe you’re a superhero now!” 

“Not so loud!” Lena hisses, glancing furitively around the ice cream parlor. “Apparently I could get arrested for it.”

“I don’t think Officer Cabrera would let that happen,” Webby says. She springs to her feet, brushing off her injuries, and tugs on Lena’s arm. “C’mon! You should go talk to Huey. He knows everything there is to know about Gizmoduck.”

“You should go get your injuries checked out,” Lena protests, but Webby brushes her off.  “Really, Webby.”

Lena pauses, thinking. “You can’t start training as my partner if you’re injured, can you?”

Webby stops dead in her tracks and slowly turns around, eyes glinting. “Do you mean it?”

“With all my blue magicky heart, Pink,” Lena swears, before she’s crushed in one of Webby’s signature hugs.

“What if we go to one of the doctors at the Bin?” Webby asked, her eyes lighting up with a scheme Lena can’t figure out. She just nods, mentally preparing herself for whatever wholesome scheme Webby has up her sleeve.

One harrowing Launchpad-driven ride later, Webby drags Lena down to the second-to-lowest level, where she insists the doctor check her over in the lab, much to the doctor’s chagrin. And Gyro’s, when he discovers, but for all his snark and moping, he can’t say no to Webby. No one can, Lena muses. 

Webby taps away at her phone, and, in suspiciously just the amount of time it takes for a Launchpad-timed ride from the mansion to the bin, Huey and Boyd arrive as well, which only serves to further Gyro’s indignation. 

“So!” Fenton pops up next to the table Webby is sitting on. Lena hovers anxiously nearby as the doctor checks Webby over. “What brings you here? I hope you’re staying out of trouble…”

“Pfft,” Lena snorts. “Trouble finds us.”

Webby beams with pride. “It was amazing! There was a robbery at the ice cream parlor, and Lena stopped it with her magic! She was like a real superhero!”

Huey lets out a soft gasp, and Fenton’s eyes light up with understanding. “A superhero, eh?”

“Oh boy,” Lena mutters.

Gyro pokes his head out of his workspace. “I know what you’re thinking, Cabrera. Put that thought back. You already have two apprentices.”

“Two…” Lena blinks, confused, then glances at Huey and Boyd’s barely concealed grins, and a spare of the Gizmoduck armor in the corner. “Oh. Oh!”

“Only if you want to,” Webby chirps, beaming. “But I think you’d be a good superhero.”

“We don’t have a superhero who uses magic,” Huey says. “It could give us a leg up over the criminals.”

“I…” Lena pauses, thinking. “I never expected this.”

“You don’t have to do it,” Fenton says softly. “You don’t have to immediately commit either. It’s a big decision.”

“I think i’ll do that,” Lena says. She’s still a bit baffled by the day’s events.

“You need to,” Gyro adds. “Being a superhero isn’t just a flashy title. It’s actual work.”

“That’s right, Dr. Gearloose!” Boyd chirps, and Gyro smiles softly.

Boyd turns to her. “I don’t believe we’ve met. I’m Boyd, a definitely real boy!”

Lena takes his hand gingerly. “Mmm, Lena.”

“Nice to meet you, Lena!” Boyd says, and Lena smiles ever so slightly.

--

“First day on the job,” Fenton beams proudly, patting Lena on the shoulder. It’s a paternal gesture, and it’s awkward, but Lena appreciates the gesture. She’s a little nervous, but she doesn’t want to show it.

“We’re just doing a patrol,” Huey tells her again, gliding along in his Gizmobuddy suit. “It’s most likely that nothing will happen, but it’s a good chance for you to get a layout of the city from above.”

“I know,” Lena sighs back, trying not to sound too annoyed. “You told me when Dad and Pops dropped me off at the mansion. And on the limo ride to the Money Bin. And while you were getting suited up. And-”

“Okay, okay, I think he gets the point,” Fenton interjects, chuckling softly.

They fall into silence after that. Lena hesitantly shoots a jet of her magic to propel her from one roof to the next. Against the muted greys of the night, it’s so bright it nearly hurts her eyes.

“Your magic isn’t very conspicuous,” Huey notes. “Is there a way we can mask it for stealth missions?”

“Once I master activating and deactivating it, I can use my normal outfit,” Lena sighs. “Whenever that is.”

“Oh, you’ll get it. All it takes is practice!” Boyd chirps, and Lena shoots him a smile.

“To form an educated hypothesis, I would need to know more about the inner workings of your magic,” Fenton muses. “Where did it come from?”

Lena rubs the edge of her sleeve. “Um… my evil shadow aunt. And Webby.”

Fenton looks up, interested, and waits for her to continue.

Lena sighs, half for the drama of it all. “Magica created me when she lost her duel with Scrooge for revenge, yadda yadda yadda, she sent me back to the Shadow Realm but Webby absorbed some of my innate magic in her friendship bracelet and she and Violet brought me back, and now I don’t need Magica’s amulet to control my powers. Except now she has it, which is a problem.”

“So we should be on the lookout for her,” Fenton muses. “I’ll tell Dra- Darkwing.”

“Nice save,” Huey whispers. Lena fights the urge to facepalm. 

“That… sounds really similar,” Boyd says softly, half to himself. Lena startles.

“Huh?” I… I don’t know if there’s anyone in a situation like mine.

“Well… Dr. Gearloose created me, but he was still an intern under Dr. Akita, who turned me into an attack drone to destroy Tokyolk. But Huey helped me find my true programming, and Dr. Gearloose believed in me so I could find myself again!”

“I… huh,” Lena says, stunned. “I really didn’t think there was anyone like me, but I guess I was wrong.”

She blinks at Boyd, thinking. “I guess that makes me… a definitely real girl.”

Boyd’s smile is wide enough to split his entire face in two. Lena takes a mental snapshot of that image and tucks it somewhere close to her heart. She doesn’t see it, but Huey and Fenton are brimming with pride and exchange grins as well.

--

They don’t find anything on that patrol. A part of Lena is disappointed at the lack of danger, but she’s honestly fine with it. The Lena from a couple years ago would have been mad, but Lena’s mellowed out with love and stability.

It’s not a bad thing.

She continues her weekly patrols with Huey, Boyd, and Fenton, and sometimes Darkwing Duck, although he likes to stay in St. Canard more than Duckburg. Launchpad comes with him. Once the famed Duck Avenger joined them as well, though he was as mysterious as the legends say, and didn’t stay long, citing an Evorian sighting across town. Whatever that was.

This new routine is… nice. It’s a good way for Lena to practice and control her new powers without disturbing her family or breaking any sentimental heirlooms. Boyd has wormed his way into her heart, that little weasel, and Fenton is growing on her too. And of course Huey’s like another brother to her. She’s not sure how she gained four brothers with the inclusion of Boyd Lena’s not complaining.

But of course, all good things must come to an end.

This one comes on a sunny September day. A little too bright for Lena’s tastes, but it masks her bright magic well, and she rather likes not being stared at while she tries to jump between buildings. 

“Lena!” Huey hisses in her ear. Gyro, despite his expressive distaste at heroism, had caved and built them all communication devices. Of course, this was only after Fenton said he would.

“What is it?” Lena hisses back, instantly on alert. Suddenly, one of Gizmoduck’s trademark pies slices through the air. Lena sighs and lifts herself in the air with her magic, preparing to fly over.

“We’re being attacked! Over by the-”

“The market on 32nd street?” Lena interrupts.

“How’d you know?” Huey questions over the comms.

“The pies make for a pretty good homing beacon,” Lena deadpans. Huey hums in response, like he’s actually considering it. 

Lena takes a deep breath, summons her magic, and flies over. She tries to not attract too much attention to herself, but there are still a few people who turn and stare, gawking at the girl flying through the air, surrounded in a blue glow. But they turned away after a minute. It’s Duckburg, after all - weirder stuff happens every day.

(Besides, the superhero cults on duckblr had already recognized her, dubbing her the “Spellcaster”. Webby wants a cooler, more splashy name, but it works for Lena. Splashy and bright has never really been her style, even as the Spellcaster.)

Lena soars over the last row of buildings and glides to a slightly undignified landing beside Huey. Tires squeal as the villain of the week blows Gizmoduck back in line with them, and the three superheroes take a minute to breathe and reassess the situation.

“This might be a bit much,” Fenton hisses out of the corner of his mouth. “It’s okay if you want to to take a rain check on your first fight. Especially since Wingy’s not here.”

Lena rolls her eyes and cracks her knuckles. “I’ll be fine.”

“So!” The villain booms, snatching the heroes’ attention away from each other and back to her. “I see a new challenger has arrived. Care to dance?”

Lena squints at the villain. She glides seamlessly across the street, hovering about three feet above the ground. Her long cloak flutters behind her in a manufactured breeze, and so do her fashionably long sleeves. 

“She has some sort of control over the winds,” Huey muses.  

“If it’s rooted in robotics or technology, I can’t see it,” Fenton says.

The villain clasps her hands together, playing at humility. “Why, it’s just so nice of you to grace me with your presence! I simply can’t believe I have the honor of meeting Gizmoduck and Gizmobuddy! And the Spellcaster! Is that what you’re called, dear?”

Lena shrugs. “Works for me.”

“It’s nice to finally see you in person, dear,” the villain purrs. “Although, there’s just one thing that puzzles me… Why would Magica de Spell’s shadow, created for the sole purpose of doing her evil bidding, be fighting with the heroes? You don’t seem very heroic.”

She smirks at the shock on the three heroes’ faces. “I do my research, hon. You’ve caused quite the buzz around this city, didn’t you know? It’s not every day a pretty new hero pops up in Duckburg.”

Shock and fury flares in Lena’s stomach, and she clenches her fists. Blue magic flares around them, flickering like a fire, before solidifying as Lena’s frustration and idnignation grows and settles like a pit in her stomach.

“Hey! Knock it off!” Huey snaps. “That’s petty and rude.”

“Le-” Fenton coughs and clears his throat at Huey’s pointed glare. “The Spellcaster is her own person, acting of her own volition. I can attest to her good intentions.”

Fenton and Huey are quick to jump to her defense, and Lena appreciates that. But this is her fight now.

Lena takes a deep breath and steps forward, holding out a hand to stop Huey and Fenton. They mutter in protest, trying in vain to stop her from doing something stupid.

Lena allows herself to smirk, ever so slightly. It’s only stupid if you get caught.

“I am the Spellcaster,” she announces. “I am not defined by the people that wanted to shape me. I shape myself. I do what I want to do, not what anyone else wants me to.”

Lena reaches out for more magic, feeling it tug at her gut. There’s a subtle push and pull, like the harmony of the tide, and then blue light surrounds her flippers. She turns her face to the sky, and rises, not looking down. Never looking down.

(She makes sure to fly just a little bit higher than the wind villain. She’s still petty.)

“My magic is mine to use, and I’m choosing to use it to protect people,” Lena snaps. “People like you. People like her.”

The villain blinks. She clearly wasn’t expecting that.

Lena smirks and takes the moment of surprise to blast the villain in the face with a satisfying bolt of magic.

Huey and Fenton take the hint and leap into battle, and it’s over quickly. They’re all a little mad and vindictive. Lena gets a special sense of satisfaction when she summons a magic casing around her fist and knocks the villain out cold onto the concrete. She stands up, dusting off her hands.

“I already notified M- the police,” Fenton informs her. “They’ll be here any minute. How are you feeling?”

Lena tucks her shaking hands behind her back. Fenton raises an eyebrow behind the visor. “Fine.”

“That was… a lot,” Huey says eloquently, tucking his cellphone into a metal pocket of his suit. “Even for a normal villain fight. You had to deal with that on your first run. It’s okay to not be okay, Lena.”

“It hasn’t really set in, honestly,” Lena says, biting her lip. She’s not used to being this open about her feelings, but it feels wrong to hide behind her easy defense of prickly teenager. “But kicking her butt felt nice.”

Huey laughs and holds up his hand for a high five, which Lena gladly takes. “It sure did!”

“Wingy can probably give you some tips on dealing with a personal villain later, too,” Fenton says. “But for now, let’s get back to the Bin. I’ll expect Scrooge will want to hear about this, and Gyro and I can work on some kind of tech that can combat her wind powers.”

Lena bites her lip. “Does Scrooge really have to know about this? It might cement his idea that magic is bad, and that this is a bad idea.”

“Uncle Scrooge isn’t stupid,” Huey says bluntly. “He’ll know this wasn’t your fault. And if not, I’ll make sure of it.”

“That’s not what I’m worried about,” Lena replies. “Uncle Scrooge has it in his head that I’m the exception to his ‘magic is evil’ rule. I just… magic can be good, too, and I wish he could see that.”

Fenton pats her on the shoulder, albeit a bit awkwardly. “He will one day.”

“We’ve made a lot of progress in the past few months!” Huey adds. Lena can’t disagree.

The police cars pull up just about then. Lena spots Officer Cabrera exit the nearest one, and she gives Lena a nod of approval.

“Ready to go?” Fenton asks, and they rise into the air and begin their flight towards the Money Bin.

“Hey Fenton?” Huey asks.

Fenton smiles bemusedly. “Yes, you and Boyd can help Gyro and I with the counter to the villain’s wind powers.”

Huey’s eyes light up at that, and Lena chuckles fondly. It doesn’t settle her nerves.

They arrive at the Money Bin and meet up with the Bin’s doctor for a quick checkup, and then the rest of Team Science and Scrooge himself. Boyd arrives shortly after, and starts chattering endlessly with Huey while Team Science and Scrooge review footage of the fight from the Gizmosuit’s internal camera. They all cringe when the villain mentions Magica, and Gyro gives her a pat that is somehow more awkward than Fenton’s.

Science nerds, Lena snorts internally.

“Are you… okay, lass?” Scrooge questions, adjusting his spectacles. “She didn’t pull her punches.”

“Yeah.” Lena gives Scrooge a small, shaky smile. “I’m okay.”

He folds her into a hug, and she buries her face in his coat. It’s still awkward, but it feels nice. She appreciates the sentiment.

They talk strategy for a bit and break off after that. Team Science brainstorms ideas for a defense strategy, and Scrooge returns to his work. Lena calls her parents, shying away from their incessant worry, and waits for Ty and Indy to pick her up.

She’d help Team Science, but she was never good with calculations and robotics, so Lena sits on the steps on the outskirts of the lab. She fiddles with her phone, but can’t focus enough to do much of anything.

After the fourth round of cycling through her regular social media apps and not opening anything, Lena startles at the sound of soft, clinking footsteps. Boyd sits down next to her, almost hesitant.

“Hey,” Lena greets, clicking off her phone. She almost slides it into her pocket, but it’s comforting to have something to hold. Without it, her hands would flutter and hover, awkward and nervous. “What’s up?”

“I… I liked. What you said.” Boyd says, haltingly. Lena’s worry pricks. It’s not like him. “To the villain, I mean. About being your own person and choosing how you use your powers. It really resonated with me.“

“Oh. Um, thanks.” Lena replies. “It wasn’t really a grand, scripted gesture. I was just saying what I felt.”

Boyd smiles at her. “That makes it more meaningful, I think.”

Lena smiles back, for real this time. “Thanks.”

They sit in silence for a little bit, until the Sabrewings come to pick Lena up. Violet, Huey, and Boyd chat for a minute, exchanging theories and information, and Ty and Indy exchange pleasantries with the adults. 

Lena sits by herself and thinks. She glances down at her hand and summons a small ball of magic. Blue, not purple. As far from Magica as she could get.

She glances up at Boyd, chattering excitedly with Huey and Violet. He didn’t have an outfit change, but from his demeanor and personality alone, Lena physically cannot picture him wrecking a city the way he did.

Ty, Indy, and Violet say their goodbyes and come to get Lena. Ty and Indy tug her into hugs.

Violet says nothing, but as they walk out, she subtly reaches down and clasps one of Lena’s hands in hers. The friendship bracelets Webby made for them brush together, and Lena spots a stray spark of brilliant blue flash between them. Lena clutches Violet’s hand a little tighter.

This is where her magic comes from. Not Magica, not any dark, evil force, but friendship and goodness. People who genuinely care about her, not people that want to use her to further their own agenda.

And it’s Lena’s choice to decide what she wants to use it for. It’s all Lena in control, not Magica, not anyone else.

This is what recovery looks like. This is what happiness looks like.

Lena brushes a little closer to Violet and lets their bracelets light up, illuminating their path into the night.

~

bruh i was gonna finish this on monday and it was going to be way shorter but rip to that i guess lolololol

this definitely ended up diving into more au territory than i meant it to but i really like how it turned out!! i’m so proud of lena and her growth. she deserves all the love in the world.

originally the mom that lena met in the ice cream parlor was supposed to be the villain, but when i was writing the fight scene i figured it didn’t really fit. i think it’s nicer that lena has regular people on her side anyway.

accidental superhero canon compliant lena au ftw!! i definitely want to do more with this au. i think it fits lena’s growth and arc really well and it’s an amazing juxtaposition to what she used to do under magica. i definitely want to write at least a companion piece in the future that’s more focused on the au rather than lena’s growth after this episode. like partner!webby? it’ll probably get into that, too. superhero webby is my jam!

i also love lena and boyd’s dynamic so so much. they are 100% siblings in my mind and i can and will write them resonating with each other at every opportunity.

title is a lyric from helicopter by clc! i almost used a different lyric but it didn’t fit as well, so maybe i’ll use that one for the companion fic

def want to talk about and flesh out this au a little more, so hmu if you’re curious about it!! asks about any of my aus or fics make my day tbh

[itsclydebitches]

RWBY Recaps: “Gravity”

Good lord, folks. Buckle your seat-belts because we’ve got a lot to get through this episode. I think this is my longest recap to date, so settle in.

Episode Eleven’s “Gravity” starts out simple enough, focusing on the two fights we’d set up during “Out in the Open.” First up, Ironwood vs. Watts. Overall this fight does a really excellent job of showcasing their different fighting styles. Right from the start Watts is pointing his gun forward to take a clear shot at Ironwood, whereas Ironwood points his backwards to use as a surge of momentum.

He’s going to do this frequently throughout the battle, constantly using his gun to maneuver in the air, slow falls, regain his balance, and change directions, a much more complicated series of choices than the one-off shots we see Ruby use with her sniper rifle. This is partly because Ironwood seems to have a much larger supply of bullets---some sort of energy/dust ammo---than Watts does. His steampunk-esque gun holds only nineteen bullets, requiring him to keep track throughout the fight. Which is always a fun trope but sorry, Watts, you can’t compare to the king.

Thus, with limited weaponry available to him, Watts is forced to get creative with the arena itself. We see him manipulating gravity, shooting up columns of water and fire, and making use of his own pathways between platforms, all in an effort to throw Ironwood off and catch up unawares. However, Ironwood is, frankly, the much better fighter. He was right last week to assume he could handle Watts even though he sent three off to tackle Tyrian. He’s able to recover much more quickly and learns from any mistakes, as evidenced by his ability to hit Watts dead on while in the air the second time he takes out the gravity. When they come together in hand-to-hand Ironwood easily dominates, no doubt thanks not just to his military training and huntsmen lifestyle, but also in large part to his prosthetics which I would assume grant him more speed and power. Throughout the course of the fight we see Watts consistently take more damage to his aura and he’s unable to sense when Ironwood is sneaking up on him. After that little maneuver, Watts (presumably) grows reckless and lets off his last three or four shots in a random barrage. All of them miss.

This emphasis on emotion continues when they land back onto the main stage with Watts shouting, “You never appreciated my genius, James! You just stood atop it and called yourself a giant.” Oh, did Ironwood actually do something horrendous in the past? Is there something juicy that would explain---though not excuse---Watts’ turn towards villainy? Nah. He quickly follows that up with, “You chose that fat imbecile over me!” referring to Pietro. So... nice one, Watts. Crazy arrogance, willful ignorance of Pietro’s own, clear genius (anyone who can create Penny is no slouch), as well as a bit of fat-shamming on top of it all. No sympathy from me.

This moment emphasizes how unhinged Watts is becoming though as the fight turns against him. Even when he manages to setup a head shot Ironwood reveals, “You’re smart, but you’re not the only one who can count,” referencing that Watt’s emotions got the better of him, leading to him wasting his last bullet before it could be of real use.

...except not. I’ve got to admit, I was very pleased when all of this---or at least this particular moment---was merely a plan to get Ironwood to let his guard down. Watts is way too smart a character to be done in by the “You got too emotional and that made you sloppy” trope. So kudos there (even if it remains to be seen whether that Pietro comment was really his motivation, or just another part of the plan). Instead, he uses Ironwood’s confidence in his victory to trap him with the rings that control the arena, essentially pinning Ironwood’s non-prosthetic arm through the energy shields he’s been using. We can immediately see that the parts that have touched Ironwood already have horribly burned the skin.

And that ends up being Watt’s downfall. Not stupidity on his own part, but his lack of understanding of Ironwood himself. He assumes that this truly is a trap for him, rather than another sacrifice. After all, what fool would ruin their one remaining arm to stop him? Watts himself wouldn’t. Don’t pull, he cautions Ironwood, not “unless you’re hoping to add more metal to that body of yours.” Watts goes so far as to turn his back on Ironwood who then makes the sacrifice we all knew he would. One burned, useless arm later and he’s free.

I would like everyone to keep this moment in mind. Namely the utter devastation of it. I’d go so far as to say it’s as bad at Yang losing her arm in Volume 3. Despite seeing it bandaged later, Watts at least thinks it will be a complete loss if Ironwood sacrifices it. He’ll need to “add more metal,” AKA replace his arm, so though he obviously still has it in the following scenes, we don’t know if it will ever be functional again. Just as important, Ironwood had to choose to do that to himself. That wasn’t a horrific, but ultimately clean cut done in a moment of surprise. That was a conscious decision, a slow pull through all that pain, and then having to finish your fight immediately afterward. It’s a very different kind of psychological trauma, no better or worse than having someone take your arm from you by force. Throughout this volume I’ve seen a lot of fans being critical not only of Ironwood’s main decisions, but just his overall attitude as well. Too strict, too stern, doesn’t smile enough, yells sometimes, etc. basically associating someone who isn’t all sunshine and smiles with someone who is “bad.” Ignoring for the moment that we can say the same thing about many of our group---notably Yang---I have little doubt that I’ll see similar posts after this episode. Writings in the vein of, “Ironwood is unhinged! I can’t believe he yelled and hit his desk like that!” So everyone just keep this moment in mind and ask yourself how calm you’d be if you’d sacrificed your arm like that all of half an hour ago. And then found Salem’s calling card on your desk. And then came to the realization that the allies you trusted have been lying to you from the start. And then Salem herself appears to mock you. And then your city is about to be overrun. Basic summary of the rest of the episode: holy shit. So yeah. If Yang is allowed to be angry and upset after losing her arm, or just angry in general like she is in the later half of “Gravity,” I think we owe it to Ironwood to let him be angry too. I have a lot of feelings about the utter insanity he’s been forced through with little to no support and if he wants to take all that out by hitting his desk once, by god I’d say that’s a good coping strategy given the circumstances. Both the writing and the fans tend to erase trauma once you’ve passed age 25. The girls have every right to be upset, to break, to not trust people because they’ve been through a few months of hardship, but Ozpin isn’t allowed the same after a couple thousand years of that. We’re going to see the same hypocrisy later in this episode---the group can be upset about lies but Ironwood is not---and I’m hoping (against hope) that the fandom doesn’t make that worse by sweeping this injury under the rug. It’s horrific and absolutely has a bearing on his inability to keep his cool with the group immediately afterwards. We’ve long passed Ironwood owing them endless reassurances and calm responses. 

Anyway, Ironwood still manages to finish the fight because his remaining arm is his robotic one, giving him the strength to easily drag and raise Watts into the air one-handed. He dangles him over the edge of the arena, announcing that he will “sacrifice whatever it takes to stop [Salem].” A clear bit of foreshadowing for his decision at the end of the episode. Watts responds that he hopes he does.

We then move to the Tyrian fight which, on the whole, I don’t think was done quite as well. Granted, there are a lot of enjoyable and badass moments. I like that Clover’s first act is to announce that Tyrian is under arrest, maintaining the law that Atlas (and Ironwood) works to uphold. It doesn’t matter that Tyrian is a crazy serial killer in league with an immortal sorceress hell-bent on destroying the world. Even crazy serial killers have rights and are given the option of surrendering, even when everyone present knows there’s exactly zero chance of that happening. It’s the principal of the thing and the ability to say, “We gave him a chance.” In a world overrun with inequality, this is a small but important attempt to level the field. If you do something wrong you face legal action and those rights are announced to you. Same for Tyrian. Same for Team RWBY. But we’ll get to that.

For now, we see Qrow attack first and like back in Volume Four he and Tyrian are pretty evenly matched. The tide doesn’t turn until Robyn and Clover come into play. Throughout this exchange we see a lot of cool combos among the three of them. Tyrian will block an incoming arrow with his tail only for Clover to snag it with his hook. Robyn can get another arrow to perfectly bounce off the walls and then Qrow’s scythe, hitting Tyrian dead on. Clover can dive between Tyrian’s legs, giving Qrow the opening he needs to attack. It is, as said, pretty badass... almost a little too badass. Personally, I would have appreciated them messing up once or twice. They’re all professionals, yes, but Qrow and Clover have only had one fight together. Robyn, meanwhile, wasn’t even allied with them until an hour ago. This is a situation where skills shouldn’t really trump, “We’re three very distinct people who don’t know each other’s fighting styles well, trying to attack one guy in very close quarters.” There should have been some screw-ups. Especially when we take semblances into account. What, are we supposed to assume here that Clover’s semblance just conveniently overrides Qrow’s? That no mistakes---let alone anything bad---will happen in this fight despite the fact that it’s an extreme parallel to Volume Four? That whole battle emphasized, “Don’t come closer!” because when people fight near Qrow bad shit happens. Now, he fights with two other people in a narrow alleyway and there’s not a single repercussion. Based on their travels looking for the geist, I don’t buy that Qrow’s semblance is just conveniently inactive while near Clover. Even if I did... that’s not a very good writing decision. To me, it’s just more evidence that Rooster Teeth doesn’t understand its own rules/doesn’t know what to do with an ability like Qrow’s. It causes problems only when they explicitly want it to. Then, miraculously, it’s no longer in effect.

Still, we’ll acknowledge that RWBY had a lot else it wanted to accomplish in this episode, so the need to power through this fight is somewhat justified. I personally would have had the entirety of this episode be the two battles---I was shocked when both ended just eight minutes in---but I’m obviously not the one writing the show. Thus, instead of an episode devoted to both the action and the emotion of confronting our two main villains this volume, Tyrian loses his cool after getting punched in the gut, manages to catch Robyn’s arrow in his teeth... 

But it’s a bomb. 

Down he goes. Fight’s done.

Which leads us into the second half of the episode. I want to preface this with a short acknowledgment before we go any further.

Did these last ten minutes give me what I’ve been looking for since the beginning of Volume Six? No. It’s easy to assume it did because all the pieces are there. Ironwood is finally angry about the secret keeping. The Ace Ops are criticizing the group left and right. Surely this is the “The group is capable of making mistakes and they should be called out for it!” that I wanted, right? Not really. For the simple reason that there is a massive difference between:

A story that acknowledges mistakes as mistakes. The characters either grow from this lesson or dig in their heels and are painted as being in the wrong for that decision.

and

A story that takes what the audience (me) perceives as mistakes and frames them as justified choices. The characters do not grow because they’re 100% sure they’re in the right and those who would criticize them are painted as in the wrong. 

“Gravity” is so far into that second option I don’t think the series can come back from it. Does the group face criticism? Yes, but every single time the writing insists that it’s undeserved criticism. It paints the group as the underdogs facing unfair odds, rather than equals---with all the responsibility that comes with that---facing criticism that they need to own up to. Absolutely nothing in this second half implies that the group is going to learn from their mistakes because they, and the writing, still insists that they weren’t mistakes. Which is precisely what we’ve gotten before. Cordovin might criticism them, but Cordovin is in the wrong. Winter might criticism them, but Winter is in the wrong. Every time a character goes, “Hey, you shouldn’t have done this” the group responds with, “Yes we should have!” and the story backs them up. Yes, you should have attacked Argus. Yes, you should have stolen an airship. Yes, you should have lied to Ironwood and spilled the secret to Robyn. Yes, yes, yes. That’s the takeaway every single time. The group is never in the wrong. Others just think they are and those others are painted as cruel, militaristic, unhinged characters.

It’s not at all what I was looking for. Just more of the same.

So that’s the preface. In terms of what we actually get, Ironwood returns to his office with his arm bandaged and in a sling, carrying Watts’ bag, only to drop it when he sees the queen piece on his desk. He calls Winter asking, “Was anyone caught entering the school grounds while I was away?” and when she says no Ironwood has her race off to the Winter Maiden, unknowingly leading Cinder there in the process. “Now show me where you’ve been hiding her.”

We then cut to the group where the trouble begins. They’re not just curious about why Ironwood is recalling them with Mantle still in need of evacuation, they’re actively questioning it. This is the attitude I simply don’t understand. The group acts as if Ironwood is deliberately screwing everyone over when they know better. This is no longer the beginning of the volume where they thought he was some horrific dictator hell bent on destroying his own Kingdom. This is just an hour or so after, “We should tell Ironwood!” and the happy-go-lucky ‘We trust him now’ moment. Even less time after Ruby stared up at him in awe with, “He’s doing it.” They had reason to trust him before they even made it to Atlas. They were given even more reasons in the form of Ironwood sharing his secrets, early licenses, and being allowed to work on the tower. They then still waited until Ironwood was doing everything they wanted before giving him some of that trust back... but the moment he stops doing precisely what they want---we want to keep evacuating Mantle---he’s deemed suspicious again. 

I mean seriously, is the group that dense? Are they incapable of thinking to themselves, “Wow, something must have happened if Ironwood is recalling us before evacuations are complete,” which is precisely the case. The scene tries to frame it as “Group Good” and “Ace Ops Blinding Obeying Orders Bad” but that aspect doesn’t even come into play. There’s nothing blind about it. It simply takes two seconds of critical thinking skills to realize that something really awful must have happened back at the Academy that trumps what you’re doing in Mantle. This is what I mean by the writing being biased. Before we even reach the fight in Ironwood’s office it’s trying to paint him as potentially cruel, potentially suspicious, potentially abandoning his people, look how worried our heroes are about this secret decision he’s made... when all that requires ignoring some really basic deduction in order to reach those assumptions. Remember that intelligence is a plot device in RWBY. If they want Ironwood forced to spill his secrets, he’ll randomly start talking about them in front of his enemies. If they want Ironwood painted as the villain, the group will randomly be incapable of realizing that maybe, just maybe, something went wrong on the home front and you’re needed there.

Things just get so much worse from then on. The group splits with JNR going off to find Oscar and, admittedly, I was shocked we got that at all. I mean yeah, it’s setup for the final reveal at the end of the episode, but the fact that anyone remembered Oscar was missing---let alone happily went off to find him---was still a surprise. So only Team RWBY heads back to Ironwood’s office where they find him (rightfully) panicking over the queen on his desk. Weiss tries to baby him, acting like he’s freaking out over nothing, when all these characters should recall precisely what Ironwood himself points out: the last time we saw this symbol it was a message that Beacon had fallen. He’s not paranoid here. He’s entirely justified in his panic. Ironwood likewise points out that they may have been duped into bringing thousands of people into Atlas as easy targets and Vine agrees, setting up that the Ace Ops are on Team Ironwood throughout the course of this conversation. Not out of blind loyalty, but because he’s right. That is a concern. That may be the plan. We do need to try and do something about that. Team RWBY, however, isn’t convinced.

That is, until Ruby realizes that the chess piece is made of black glass. Which means Cinder left it. Normally I’d congratulate her on that deduction---it is the one smart move we see Ruby pull this whole episode---but I just hate what follows. Namely that Ruby and Ruby alone controls her team’s opinions on a situation. Again. We saw it back in the snow, then again when Blake announced in the elevator that they’d do whatever she wanted. Team RWBY is the one who blindly follows their leader, not the Ace Ops, the only exception being Blake and Yang going rogue in regards to Robyn, but we see that hive-mind mindset here again. Ironwood brings up a good point? Nothing. Ace Ops support that point with more logic? Nothing. Ruby supports it? Oh, suddenly Weiss and Blake are taking this seriously. Suddenly Yang is fired up and ready to do whatever is necessary. Ruby controls the room. It’s only when she’s on board that her teammates decide this is worth getting riled up about.

Which, as I’ve said before, is a horrible way to write a diverse group. Especially when the writing is trying to paint the Ace Ops as mindless soldiers. For all their claims that they just have to follow orders, they’re the only ones parsing through this situation and coming to their own conclusions. It’s just that their conclusions do end up aligning with Ironwood’s which is the “bad” take in this scene. Team RWBY, however, waits until their leader makes a decision and then simply rides her cloak tails. The day that Blake, Yang, or Weiss legitimately disagree with Ruby---not a token “Are you sure we should keep secrets from Ironwood? We’re not actually challenging this. Just checking in”---is the day the writing will disagree with her. AKA, no time soon.

Blake tries to give some bland reassurance about them all being with Ironwood to which he responds, “Are you with me? How did Robyn know about the global communications tower?” Thank you! Thank you for giving us Ironwood’s characterization back and acknowledging that he has no reason to buy their generic ‘Got your back’ statements when everything they’ve done this volume has proven otherwise. They don’t support Ironwood, only themselves and their own teams. The minute he does something they don’t like he’s chucked under the bus. Too bad the writing doesn’t acknowledge any of this and instead continually paints the group as being justified in their decisions. It’s that hypocrisy again. When the group yells at Ozpin for keeping secrets we’re supposed to be on their side. When the Ace Ops yell at the group for keeping secrets we’re... still supposed to be on their side.

Weiss tries to diffuse the situation with “None of this matters right now!” which is real rich when they were just complaining about Ironwood not telling them why they were called back. They get to worry over that, but Ironwood isn’t allowed to worry about them outright betraying him? “Loyalty always matters!” he shouts back and he’s right. Why should Ironwood trust them to have his back in this crucial moment when they’ve never had it before? I’m already seeing more of this hypocrisy among the fandom. When Ozpin kept secrets and told lies the group was given a whole volume to be pissed about that and fans still, to this very day, insist that it hasn’t been enough time for them to get over it, to regain even a portion of that trust. But now that Ironwood has been lied to and betrayed in the same manner? People are annoyed that he’s not just shrugging it off. How dare you not get over in thirty seconds what our heroes got weeks to work through. His inability to just suck it up, as it were, is used to make him seem irrational here. I don’t see anyone, characters or fans alike, acknowledging that his anger is as righteous as the group’s was out in the snow. That there is the disconnect.

Of course, something has to break the tension. Drawn by all the fury and fear, a grimm pops out of Watts’ bag. A fail-safe for if he was defeated and captured. Salem immediately takes control of the grimm and kills it, using its form to appear before them. She reveals that it doesn’t matter that her men were captured. They were just there to “set the stage,” which they’ve done. Still doesn’t explain the random Penny side plot to my mind (seriously, why did the story bother to resurrect her when she has done nothing plot-wise or emotionally?), but whatever. Much more importantly, the stage is set for Salem herself. She’s approaching with the grimm army we saw her amassing which is... iffy.

First off, why? Why after a thousand years has she suddenly changed her MO from keeping to the sidelines to a full-on attack? Again, what’s the catalyst for that massive change? We don’t know. Meanwhile, from a writing perspective, I’m hesitant about having our Big Bad thrown into the mix before the finale. We know there are plenty of volumes left in this series, which automatically undermines any battle they might have with Salem. Will they win?? Of course not! Because RWBY isn’t over yet. Granted, this could all just be a ruse of some sort. Maybe Salem just wants them to think she’s approaching with an army, which would be much more up her alley in terms of long-distance manipulation. But if not... seriously, what’s the point of that?

Here’s hoping it’s a bluff.

Speaking of manipulation, we get a fantastically creepy moment where Salem tells Ironwood to “simply accept the futility of your situation” while smiling like a kind mother. That’s the Salem who is truly dangerous. Ironwood reaffirms that he won’t give up the relics and Ruby pips up with, “We don’t have to kill you to stop you.”

Hey wait. I’m gonna give you all another graphic.

This is Ozpin’s stance! This is his plan! His version of hope! We spent all of Volume Six having the cast beat on him for, “Omg Salem is immortal?!” and with the exception of Nora’s comment, no discussion of this in Volume Seven... but now suddenly Ruby is making this announcement? The group came to this revelation sometime off screen which we a) don’t get to see and b) once again created no scenario in the form of, “Wow! Ozpin was right all along! Maybe we should go talk to him...”

I’m just... wow. The number of times the writing takes what the group and the adults do, the exact same perspectives and decisions, and twists it so that the group comes out looking like heroes and the adults look like misguided, unhinged fools who need to be put in their place... I’m really over it at this point. And by extension the group themselves. Their characterizations have been so badly mangled at this point I legitimately don’t like them as people. I don’t care if they say they want to protect Mantle, or if they say they’ll support Ironwood, or if they say they’re unsure about their choices. All their actions claim otherwise.

Rather than grappling with the huge revelation that the group is apparently no longer obsessed with Salem’s immortality (or rather that Ruby isn’t. The rest of the group doesn’t actually matter. As established, they sync up with her beliefs the second she announces them), we return to Summer Rose. Salem goes, “Your mother said those words to me” and Ruby... loses it? What? I would have been 100% on board with this if we’d gotten it last Volume because then we saw Ruby losing her cool periodically. The smashed alcohol bottles. Chucking her scroll. Screaming at Qrow. That was all building to something. But then we had a year and roughly twelve episodes of normality. Ruby jumps into her fight with Cordovin and has been fine ever since. Hell, she’s been bubbly and confident, goofing off with Penny in one episode, then giving strong orders to her team in another. The one time we see her falter was in her conversation with Qrow and he reassured her completely that she was both doing the right thing and in no way comparable to Ozpin. Now, suddenly, one line from Salem and Ruby collapses? Full on incapacitated? I could buy the crying while still standing strong, I could buy a collapse if we’d kept her characterization going from Volume Six, but this kind of reaction in this context just felt so extreme. Doesn’t help that I really wasn’t sold on the voice acting here. Those cries sound less like devastated sobs and more like weird hiccups. Not to rag on Lindsay. On the whole I think she does a really excellent job as Ruby, it’s just this particular moment didn’t read right to me. I didn’t feel Ruby’s supposed grief here.

So that was... a lot for one line from Salem in a volume of otherwise confident and cool-headed Ruby. We also don’t see it amounting to anything, as per usual with RWBY’s writing. Ruby isn’t out of commission for the rest of the conversation or anything. She pops right back up after a second in Yang’s lap, just as confident and go-getting as before. There was no lead up to this and there are no consequences for the breakdown. Rooster Teeth honestly seems to think they can just chuck random things into the story---Ruby needs to show emotion at some point!---and then just leave it at that, entirely disconnected from everything else around it. Would we have known that Ruby just had her first breakdown of the series a minute later while once again betraying Ironwood? Nope.

Finally, this scene shows us again that the Argus battle was a bunch of nonsense. Ruby’s eyes nearly activate when she’s grieving for her mother, imagining---or perhaps seeing via Salem?---a sad Summer, not a smiling one. Just like her eyes activated while seeing Pyrrha die. Just like they activated when Blake was nearly killed by the Apathy. They activate now while thinking about her mother’s death. The montage of happy moments in lieu of the sad ones not working last volume was entirely out of place.

Salem finally leaves. Now everyone is panicking about this army. Elm points out that they’ll know if anything approaches. Vine checks and realizes that Watts took out their perimeter. Either that or Salem has already destroyed everyone and everything out there. It’s impossible to know. During all this Blake asks if the Amity tower is actually finished and we get more nonsense about how Ironwood is evil for telling a lie, but the group is always justified in telling theirs. The writing really tried to compare Ironwood telling Mantle---who I guarantee 100% does not care about whether a communications tower is finished while they’re getting attacked by grimm---a lie to lure out one of their biggest threats to Blake and Yang going behind Ironwood’s back to tell a potentially non-trustworthy outlaw about said tower, risking that the information would fall into the wrong hands and doom the project before it could be completed either way. Those are not in any way comparable situations, yet the writing really has Weiss going, “General Ironwood?” in a ‘How could you betray us like that?’ tone while Yang continues to look pissed.

And as if they didn’t know! How is this a personal betrayal? They were all helping to build that tower. Surely they’d know it it was that close to being done. Again, critical thinking skills, people. Anyone with two brain cells and their insider information should have looked at Ironwood’s announcement and gone, “Oh, that must be a bluff. Just a few days ago we were arguing about whether to continue taking resources from Mantle. No way is Amity ready. He’s going after Watts. Who is indeed the much bigger threat. Considering that he has control over the entirety of our technology and there’s literally no downside to telling Mantle about a finished tower when they’re getting devoured by grimm.” This is another, “But lying is wrong!” in the face of “But lying kept us alive...?” 

Does everyone get what I’m saying here? How RWBY takes these situations and tries to paint them in an absolutely ridiculous light, expecting the audience to blindly accept this perspective despite everything else they’ve seen for themselves? Like, two episodes ago? I swear I’ve never encountered writing that treats its audience this badly. Scene after scene relies heavily on the viewer having no ability to think for themselves. Just accept that Ironwood is a horrible person for lying about the tower even though there are no repercussions for that and we JUST watched him defeating Watts as a result. Like, five minutes ago. That just happened. In this episode. 

Ironwood then drops the bomb that Winter has gone off to claim the Maiden power. Interesting development. I wonder what that means exactly. Is she just going to lock herself away until the Maiden dies naturally? Do they have her on some sort of life support and is there an agreement to pull the plug if necessary? Are they going to use a machine similar to the one Pyrrha was in and try to force the change early? Or is this just a misleading comment and Winter is merely off to protect the Maiden, no intention of taking the power now? Who knows. We’ll have to wait until next episode to find out.

Ironwood likewise announces that the staff and the lamp need to be locked away now that they’re compromised, even though they’ve been compromised since they first saw Tyrian in Mantle. Insert another [this scenario is so stupid and contrived] explanation here. It’s made worse by Ruby’s childish “You said we could keep it.” Excuse me? What, did you think the lamp was your personal property now forever and always? Is Ruby really sitting there arguing that something Ironwood told her weeks ago trumps the obvious logic of putting the relic where it’s somewhere safe? That’s the characterization we’re going for, a leader who cares more about, ‘But you said we could have it!’ over the fate of the world? What even is this? The fact that Ironwood has to explain to them that the situation has changed just reinforces the group’s overall attitude. That is, one of arrogance and importance. They literally need to be told why putting the relic in a nearly impenetrable vault is better than letting them have it just because they want it. Plus, you know, they lied about the lamp from the start. So there’s that too.

Finally, Ironwood reveals that Amity was originally a plan of Ozpin’s but he didn’t push it far enough. Instead, he intends to use the staff to lift all of Atlas instead, hopefully taking two relics and a Maiden far out of Salem’s reach. Ruby wants to use the tower for its designed purpose instead, which is only a valid option in her mind because the writing was stupid last week. If there had actually been any logic there---if people had been allowed to react naturally and in a variety of ways to the Salem announcement, rather than a super convenient “Yeah! Let’s all work together!” across an entire, panicking city---she wouldn’t be quite so eager to tell the whole world. But we all know at this point that logic bends to the protagonists’ whims, so Ruby wants that same perfect ending across all of Remnant. She stands her ground, as does her team. Obviously.

Meanwhile, the Ace Ops aren’t just following Ironwood’s orders like the writing wants us to think via Harriet’s earlier comment. Rather, they’re each thinking through the situation for themselves and making very good points. If Salem has taken out our perimeter than we know our tech and people don’t stand a chance against this army. We just finished up the fight in Mantle and none of us are in a position to start another. Notably, Harriet brings this up, the one whose aura took a massive hit while nearly getting crushed underfoot. Vine points out that sometimes you have to lose a battle to win the war, but Team RWBY, to be blunt, simply doesn’t care.

I’ll be blunt myself here too: I don’t have an easy solution to this particular scenario. I don’t know what the “right” or the “wrong” choice is. Weighing starting a fight with VERY high stakes you’ll lose against abandoning the people of Mantle is just a straight up horrific decision. Like so much of what Ozpin faced, there is no clear-cut, good answer here. Do you stand by the people and risk the world, or work to save the world and doom the people? I don’t know and I do commend Rooster Teeth for writing a difficult choice... just not in giving each side the weight it deserves. Because as said, we’re meant to root for Team RWBY, always. Theirs is presented as the “right” choice every time, despite the fact that, as established, this is far from a black and white decision.

What frustrates me the most is when faced with all of these logical and very important considerations (we might not have backup, we’re in no position to fight, if Salem gets the relics and another Maiden the world is screwed) the group won’t even acknowledge these things. They’re so set in their own perspective they won’t even give these HUGE concerns the time of day. Rather, Yang shoots back, “You can’t just back down from a fight!”

That’s it. That’s the group’s problem in a single line.

This is what got Pyrrha killed.

It’s something the group should remember. She also insisted on fighting when she should have retreated and, since this was back during the days when characters actually faced consequences for their actions, it cost Pyrrha her life. Granted, going after Cinder was a truly useless endeavor. Pyrrha achieved nothing with her sacrifice. Here, Team RWBY hopes to save the people of Mantle, adding a clear justification for their insistence on fighting... but this is nevertheless indicative of that larger “punch it until it stops moving” mindset. It’s not that they decide to fight instead of retreating that’s the problem, it’s that to their mind fighting is the only option. Ever. This is what led to them attacking Cordovin and destroying Argus’ mech, drawing a massive grimm in the process. When faced with the option of backing down, Team RWBY doesn’t consider that an option at all. Which is heroic when up against an actual enemy, far less so when you’re facing an ally and the choice to fight has serious repercussions attached to it. Hell, the group doesn’t even consider compromises. They could have easily acknowledged that collecting the relics, the Maiden, and getting the staff to work on Atlas will take time. You do that while we focus on evacuating the rest of Mantle to the city. But no, even the concept of a compromise simply isn’t possible. You just always fight. Straight up. Anyone who suggests anything less isn’t a true huntsmen. “We’re loyal to the people!” Ruby shouts, as if “the people” doesn’t also include the rest of the world that Ironwood is trying to save and that they’re endangering by keeping the relics and Maiden within Salem’s reach. 

That is one messed up perspective to tout in a story infused with the complex and the morally gray.

The real kicker though? Ruby’s ‘My way or the highway’ attitude obliterates a solution that fell straight into her lap. Jaune calls and says straight out that they have another situation. If Ruby had listened to her teammate for just three seconds they all would have learned about Oscar, thereby undermining Ironwood’s plan. He can’t keep the lamp safe if he doesn’t know where it is. You look for it while, again, we evacuate Mantle. Then we take everything out of Salem’s reach. Win-win. Instead, Ruby blasts her way through the situation. Literally, dodging Ironwood and hiding behind his desk shouting a highly bias version of his plan in the hopes of getting everyone on her side. And it works. 

Because those like Clover don’t get to hear any of that context. Like how the perimeter is gone, there’s an army potentially coming, no one is in a position to fight, we’ve already lost a relic... they just here a Ruby’s version of events that paints Ironwood as the callous man Robyn thought he was---oh my god he’s abandoning Mantle for no good reason!---and people will react accordingly. Ruby likewise doesn’t care that shouting such information over all channels does things like, say, clue Tyrian into their plan. She just wants to do things her way, right now. Pausing to think (because thinking isn’t fighting) simply doesn’t happen.

I used to adore Ruby as a hero. Someone who was intrinsically good, hopeful, and wickedly clever in her ability to come out on top. Now she’s stubborn, arrogant, at times cruel, and charges in headfirst like her sister, refusing to consider any perspective other than her own. And her team endlessly supports that. The writing endlessly supports that. This isn’t our hero working through her flaws, but rather a flawed character that the writing refuses to acknowledge is flawed. When Ruby flies behind Ironwood’s desk the music rises triumphantly, just like it did when she attacked Cordovin’s mech. When Ironwood announces that they’re under arrest, Ruby spits back, “We won’t just let you take us” and we’re supposed to cheer.

Which brings us back to the question of whether the group really faced consequences here. Let me give you all a random, non-RWBY example of two scenes. Scenario One:

Parent: You punched her?

Teen: She insulted me!

Parent: I understand that, but that doesn’t mean you were justified in attacking her.

Teen: Oh, I was.

Parent: Maybe you were, maybe you weren’t, but you can’t solve all your problems that way.

Teen: I... I know that, okay. Back off. I just get so angry...

Parent: I know. We’re going to work on that. You’re grounded this weekend. We can discuss this more then.

Teen: [sighs] Fine.

vs. Scenario Two:

Parent: You punched her?

Teen: She insulted me!

Parent: I understand that, but that doesn’t mean you were justified in attacking her.

Teen: Oh, I was.

Parent: Maybe you were, maybe you weren’t, but you can’t solve all your problems that way.

Teen: Screw you! It worked didn’t it? I think a good punch goes a long way.

Parent: That’s not... okay look. You’re grounded this weekend so---

Teen: Like hell I am. [Proceeds to run off]

Teen: [Later to friend] ---and then she tried to ground me? Can you believe that?

Friend: Holy shit what an asshole.

If we put aside my own iffy dialogue for the moment, Scenario One acknowledges the complexity of the situation while likewise pointing out that the teen didn’t handle herself well. RWBY has achieved that here: the ethics of this scenario are acknowledged as complicated, but the group did things they shouldn’t have, as evidence by Ironwood’s anger and the Ace Ops’ criticism. However, Scenario One goes on to let the teen acknowledge that mistake, thereby validating it in the first place. A consequence is set, grounding, and they accept that, thereby further validating that their behavior needs work. They accept the consequence because both they and the writing acknowledge that the consequence is deserved. It takes what was previously two subjective stances---they say I’m wrong, I say I’m right---and encourages the audience to find the middle ground. Neither was totally wrong or right. The teen might be justified in some respects, but still made mistakes in others. She needs to improve. 

RWBY, however, steers firmly into Scenario Two wherein the teen (Team RWBY) insists points blank that they never made mistakes in the first place, thereby encouraging the audience to question whether Ironwood and the Ace Ops (the parent) is right to be calling them out at all. We see no humility or guilt, only confidence. Ruby shouting “No!” at Cordovin when she’s told to surrender. Yang keeping silent after admitting that she and Blake told Robyn, not bothering to apologize or admit that this might have been a breech of trust. They challenge the validity of the claim that mistakes were made and by virtue of being protagonists encourage the audience to challenge it too. Finally, we see them reject the consequence because they will not admit that it’s deserved. The teen will not accept a grounding. Ruby: “We won’t just let you take us.” We’re then told by others that this rejection was warranted. The friend reinforces the view that the teen was right to run because that punishment is undeserved. The message is, “You never did anything wrong in the first place.” The plot of RWBY likewise reinforces the view that resisting Cordovin’s arrest was right by having her randomly let the group go. The consequence is replaced with a reward and, presumably, we’ll have a similar situation wherein the group either defeats the Ace Ops or is released by them. The consequences never take hold because the writing doesn’t think there should be consequences in the first place. Team RWBY isn’t going to be arrested here. They’re certainly not acknowledging that on some level they deserve to be. We didn’t see that humility while they were cuffed on the airship---that most basic acknowledgement of, “Did we make some mistakes? Could we have done something better? Is Ironwood right to be this mad?”---and there’s none of it now here, either. The tone is pure, “How dare you try and arrest us? We’re the good guys here!” 

This remains as pro-protagonist as it has been the last two volumes. There are no consequences, only another hurdle for the group to overcome, painted as heroes for doing so. It’s Team RWBY vs. The Ace Ops and there’s no confusion about who we’re supposed to be rooting for. The Ace Ops because the group should rightly be stopped from hindering Ironwood’s attempts to keep the relics and a Maiden out of Salem’s hands, for their own lies and secret keeping that endangered them all this volume? Nope. It’s Team RWBY as the presumed heroes, facing off against soldiers who (supposedly) prioritize orders over what’s “right.” 

And yeah, Oscar is gone. There are a number of dismantled robots and blaster fire in the room where Neo presumably took him. So unless they do a flashback we don’t get to see if/how Ozpin reacted to this initial attack. I hope they do provide a flashback because otherwise that’s another crucial scene of Oscar’s that happened off screen...

Can’t wait to see what else we’ll end up with next week! Until then, 💜

[otpnessmess]

Of Casual Encounters And Late Nights Pt.2

Here it is! I don't know if it's as long as you wanted but it's almost double the first chapter. I hope you like it!

First Next Ao3

-

A week went by where Jason managed to avoid meeting Ladybug again while investigating, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t heard of her. Akuma attacks were as frequent as ever and gave him an opportunity to learn more about the terrors that had been plaguing Paris for years now apparently. He sent all new info on it to his family,  who couldn’t believe none of it had reached them up until that point. Bruce was feeling particularly flabbergasted among them.

“You mean to tell me there’s been a terrorist in Paris for years, one that’s been destroying the city twice a week, and we knew absolutely nothing about it?” He seemed to be going through the seven stages of grief before excusing himself to call Diana.

Meanwhile, Jason’s brothers piled up in front of the computer screen wanting to hear more about the heroes and their work. Tim was looking up information on the internet while Dick asked questions nonstop about their powers, and their suits, and if he had had the chance to talk to them yet. 

“They sometimes stay back after the attacks, but their powers have some kind of time limit so those are rare occasions, or so I’ve heard. They’re all proficient fighters and each have their own set of powers and weapon. Ladybug’s powers are the most impressive by far” 

The mention of her name threw him right back into the memory of the night they first met. Despite resenting not being given an opening to talk to her more then, Jason had to admit leaving had been the right choice. He wanted to stay in the shadows as long as possible, and dealing with the police on his second night in the city wouldn’t have made that easy for him. Adding to that, even though he was quite stubborn and didn’t want to accept it, he felt curious about the spotted heroine. She was sassy and clever and, if the two battles she had this week were anything to go by, her abilities to strategize rivaled Tim’s.

He came back to the present with a jolt when Dick whined about him not paying attention, eliciting a snort from both him and Damian, who also looked at the eldest with a sneer. “You’re 29 Grayson, no one that age should be making those types of noises.” Jason would rather die than saying it out loud, but sometimes he did miss the dumbasses that were his brothers. 

“You know, I don’t think we would have believed this was real even if someone had told us about it. I found a... Ladyblog? It has videos of almost every attack from the last 4 years as far as I can see, and these look every bit as outlandish as I expected them to. There’s this one where apparently the whole city was flooded.” Tim pulled up the video in the peripheral monitors for the others to see and, lo and behold, there was the video from the day Ondine had drowned Paris. Faint screams could be heard in the background as the person recording managed to get to the roof of a building just in time to see the people still left on the street be swiped by the giant wave. From then on it was all silent. “This is horrible, so many people must have died during this. How did they manage to recover? I’m sure the news of Paris underwater should’ve popped up SOMEWHERE.”

“They didn’t because it didn’t last more than an afternoon.” Jason ran a hand through his hair impatiently. The whole week he had been aching to go out as Red Hood but couldn’t risk meeting Ladybug and it was making him jittery. “That’s what Ladybug’s power is. She just….reverts everything. I haven’t been able to find out how yet, but I’ve been told it must be magic or some shit.”

“Reverts everything? Just like that? Like….turning back time?” Dick looked confused trying to come up with a rational explanation

“I don’t think so. Everyone except the victims remember everything that happened. It’s more of a cure, if you will. She fixes everything, makes a new Eiffel Tower appear, brings the dead back to life, you know, no big deal.” Jason couldn’t help but chuckle at their faces. “I know, if anyone tried to tell me this before I saw it myself I wouldn’t have believed it either.”

A moment of silence on his brothers’ end was interrupted by the return of Bruce. “Diana is positively furious right now. Apparently someone received a message from these heroes years ago and thought it was a joke, so they dismissed it. Diana asked to see the message and just unleashed hell on the poor guy after watching it. It seems her mother was a former Ladybug and she grew up knowing about the magic of the ‘Miraculous’” He said the word in a way that made his sons think he was as confused as they were “The League is planning to make a trip to Paris as soon as possible to assess the situation.”

Now that brought a frown to Jason’s face. “I know I’m usually the reckless one here, but listen to me for a moment. You’re just planning on barging in here, with an angry Wonder Woman, and a probably scared shitless League, to battle a guy who makes you his minion if you show the tiniest hint of a negative emotion? Imagine if Diana got akumatized. You must really want the apocalypse to start huh?” 

He scanned their faces and wasn’t surprised to see skepticism and some smirks too. This was so not typical of him. Jason was a shoot first, ask second kinda guy, and he used to enjoy killing a little too much for it to be healthy. But he remembered what Ladybug had told him about resorting to the least amount of violence possible, and he was honestly worried about what could happen if three dozen superheroes just showed up one day to a fight. “Listen, as far as I can see, Ladybug and her team have things covered here. Give me some time to gather more information and maybe I can find a way for her and Red Hood to have a meeting. I’ll ask her if she still wants our help. But until then, you should refrain from bringing anyone here. Unless you want panic to run rampant among the citizens because the whole Justice League came.”

Snickers could be heard coming from Tim and Dick. Even Damian was trying not to show his amusement at the situation. “Who would’ve thought Todd actually had a brain. We should go if only to check whether he’s been replaced by a clone or something”

“Oh fuck off Demon Spawn, I can be smart too if I want to."

Their father seemed to be mulling over his words before sighing and nodding. “Alright. I think we can go along with what you said for now, but I want you to keep us updated regularly, and to inform us if something out of the ordinary happens. If you need us there, we’ll be on alert. And I expect that meeting with Ladybug to happen sooner rather than later. Also don’t forget why you’re originally there, we have to gather more information on what the Penguin is planning."

“You got it Brucie.” He made fingers guns at the screen with a click of his tongue. “Expect it to be at least a week until I have some big news for you, but I’ll try to make it happen as quickly as possible. And worry not about my mission, I’m almost done with it. Now my dear family, if you’ll excuse me, it’s already 2am and I would like to pretend to be a tourist at least for a day tomorrow. I’ll let you know if something comes up.”

He quickly ended the call and face planted on his bed. This was going to be a long mission. One week in and he was already exhausted. He wasn’t lying when he said he was close to finishing the mission he was originally sent to Paris for, though.  He had infiltrated the goons quickly and efficiently, and managed to hear about a drug shipment due to arrive in a couple weeks together with a human one. As soon as he got the information as to where he’d call his family and they could resolve the problem easily. For now though, he couldn’t help but want to keep them away a bit longer. Be it because, even though he loved his brothers (not that he’d ever tell them), he wanted some time alone, or be it because he wanted more time to try and figure out Ladybug, he still wasn’t completely sure.

If you asked him, he would deny it to his dying breath that he was interested in the heroine, but something about her made him want to get closer and know more about her. In spite of the great amount of knowledge the public had on her, she was surrounded by an aura of mystery and something else that Jason couldn’t pinpoint, which had him turning in his sleep ever since that encounter in the alley. It also didn’t help that she seemed to be around the same age as him, her suit doing her great favours in all her red and black. Alright. Maybe he thought she was a bit attractive. Very attractive? 

“No. Nope. Not going there.” He got up and decided to ignore that part of his brain as of now. For no particular reason whatsoever. It was only normal to want to know more about the person protecting the city. Call it a professional interest, thank you very much.

The dark haired man decided to take advantage of having an expensive suite for once and took a long bath while doing some more research on Paris. He was indeed planning to walk around the city the next day after all. When he was done, Jason headed to the bed and fell asleep promptly. Dreams full of back alleys and superheroes. 

-

As luck would have it, it didn’t take long for the both of them to meet yet again. Only maybe not in the way the Gotham vigilante would have hoped for. Set on at least enjoying this pseudo-vacation he was gifted, Jason left his hotel the next morning to visit the most popular places in the city. The Louvre, the Eiffel Tower, the Arc of Triumph and the Champs Élysées were the places he had chosen to visit during the morning and early afternoon, but, even though his main goal was to distract himself from the tasks at hand, he couldn’t will away the questions roaming around his head. 

How was he going to contact Ladybug? He wanted to do it as Red Hood, but he didn’t want the heroine of Paris to distrust him since he was pretty sure his reputation would precede him. He was known for being the most ruthless of the batfam, the only thing keeping him from killing criminals once he was done with them was Batman’s No killing under any kind of circumstances rule (which if you asked him was a special kind of bullshit, some of them did deserve to rot in hell in his opinion), and he wasn’t sure if Ladybug would be as willing to hear him out as she may one of his brothers or father. However, his only other option would be to approach her as Jason Todd, one of Bruce Wayne’s adopted sons. He didn’t even know whether Ladybug would care about his family name. This wasn’t his city. And on the off chance that she might have recognized him… He was still a mere civilian. One that had, on top of that, to explain his connection to the Gotham vigilantes without giving away any of their identities. Jason knew his hands were tied. Red Hood had to be the one to try and get the attention of the spotted hero. Knowing there was no other option didn't make him happy about it though. 

Once he was done with this line of thinking his brain decided to go back to the Penguin. He was trying to instill one of the worst types of businesses in Paris and he couldn’t wait to put a stop to it. As much as he knew drug trafficking to be terrible, he was of the opinion that people who engaged in (as well as profited off of) human trafficking should have a special circle of hell destined for them. Preferably in the very depths of it.

Jason was very much aware that, for as long as he remained in this city, negative emotions had to be controlled and dissipated as quickly as possible to avoid an akumatization. Especially those of someone with the skills and knowledge he had. He had a lot of the latter in strange topics, most of which he acquired growing up during his training. And albeit he wasn’t sure whether it would actually be useful to Hawkmoth or not, he would rather not put it to the test. All of this, however, was sent to the back burner for a second as Jason's thoughts strayed towards what he would like to do to the Gotham villain when he captured him. 

Being so busy imagining the 30 different methods of torture he would like to inflict upon the Penguin had made him completely disregarded his surroundings, however. Coming back to his senses, his brain pointed out they were standing at the door of what seemed like a very nice patisserie, just in time for his stomach to growl, his lunch seemingly having been digested some time ago.

‘Maybe something sweet is exactly what I need right now’

-

Some days had passed since Marinette met Jason,  and though he was still burning in the back of her mind, she had way too many things to worry about during the day to remember him often. At night, however, the questions she had originally asked herself the first night continued to plague her, and since Tikki told her not to worry about it too much, the designer saw wise to keep her train of thought to herself. She wasn’t even sure why her brain seemed so fixed on this stranger she had only met once. Sure, he was involved in a fight, and seemed to be a foreigner, but it wasn’t that uncommon for petty altercations to break out around the city while she patrolled. Also this was Paris, for Kwamis’ sake. One of the biggest tourist capitals of the world. There was no reason why this Jason guy should’ve stuck to her mind as he did. Yet here she was. In the middle of her afternoon shift at the bakery. Still thinking about him.

A chime coming from the door brought her out of her stupor. But as she looked up, ready to greet the new customer, she suddenly froze, and her brain could only supply her with the word green. 

Green eyes she had only got a quick glance into a week ago were now in front of her and the color was even more intense as they reflected the sunlight rays that entered through the bakery’s windows.

-

There you have it peeps and pals! I'll try to update sometime again this week in between Daminette December.

Tag list:

@18-fandoms-unite-08 @bamagirl513 @j-a-n-e--d-o-e @dawnwave16

[jacewilliams1]

My first combat mission in an F-4 Phantom

My first combat mission in the F-4E Phantom took place in late summer of 1972. It was a few months before the 366th Tactical Fighter Wing “The Gunfighters” deactivated at Takhli Royal Thai Air Base, Thailand, and my squadron moved a few hundred miles up the road to Udorn Royal Thai Air Base. This was my third combat tour, but my first tour in a fighter. I am not a war lover, but it was worth the long wait, a tour that most pilots can only dream about. Every mission was different, whether day or night, in clear or marginal weather; a different county—North Vietnam, Laos or South Vietnam—a different type mission, and a different type of ordnance.

I had paid my dues for this tour by staying in Strategic Air Command (SAC) during the mid-60s, instead of going with the airlines. It was an important personal gamble that paid off after the SAC tours in bombers and tankers and two combat tours in other aircraft, including one as an airborne battle staff officer in a EC-130. I finally got into a Phantom, the world’s greatest fighter aircraft and the aircraft that I flew in some of the best combat missions of the entire war in Southeast Asia.

The “frag,” or fragmentary order of the war plan, the legal instrument that authorized the use of deadly force and those to be killed, called for a low risk, almost introductory supply road cut mission. The target was located on a road in a low threat area of southern Laos. My Phantom (68-326) was loaded with twelve 500-pound Mark 82 “slicks” fused for road cuts. What a magnificent warhorse that aircraft still is. I believe that the F4-E and later model Phantoms with new engines and new electronics would still be one of the best all-around air weapons systems ever made by man. And to this day I have never met or known of a fighter pilot who has done all the things the Phantom is capable of doing. And I suspect that even today our pilots are never asked to reach that goal.

The F-4E was—and still is—an impressive machine.

The Wing policy was that the squadron operations officer (OPS) had to fly back seat with all the new pilots on their first combat mission. And as his luck would have it, my first mission was diverted by “Hillsboro Orbit” (the airborne EC-130 command post) just after we crossed the Mekong river into Laos. We turned port to the northeast, toward Mugia Pass, and crossed the mountains into Vietnam. Our new mission was a close air support for a hot troops-in-contact (TIC) mission in the city of Hue near the demilitarized zone (DMZ), where our troops were engaged in heavy street fighting. This was to have been a first mission milk run, a routine road cut in southern Laos to prove to the squadron OPS officer that I could hit the ground with my bombs and find my way home. But this mission became something much more vital.

It was his luck of the draw to be with me, the new guy on a TIC for his first combat mission, flying the back seat with a pilot who had never seen combat, had never “seen the elephant.” We met only a week ago and now we were circling the center of Hue with a part of his future riding on where my bombs fell.

There are no really worthwhile personal rewards for killing an unseen enemy in this kind of a war. The very best that can be said is that it is a job that has to be done; hopefully it will be done professionally, with the appropriate level of human detachment. But it was fair in a way. Ho Chi Minh started the shooting, the killing. If you shot at them, they could—and did—shoot back. On the other hand, there is a terrible price to pay for killing the innocent, especially the good guys, with friendly fire.

There is an everlasting mental baggage if you kill your own troops with your friendly fire. Would it be my bombs that would kill the friendlies in the middle of Hue? If it happened, it would be clearly be my fault and my bombs because there was little a back-seater could do but hold on and hope. Killing the innocent and the friendlies would have affected him and me the rest of our lives. We shared a once-in-a-lifetime that day, a bond, an experience that only deadly combat can fuse. I think back now as I write that for some reason there were no thoughts on my part at that time about killing the innocent or our own troops with my bombs. I found the truths about war over time, later in the missions ahead of me, but not then. That was not on my mind for a second—my only concern was to find the target and do my best to hit it.

We both listened carefully to the excited and concerned voices of the Marines and their forward air controllers pinned down on the ground in the city as they tried to talk me to the right building. The target was a small building in the middle of a city of small buildings. We both knew that the target was impossible to identify from the air by the descriptions given from ground level—most of the buildings had the same colors and the same roofs and they all looked alike. I don’t remember one word from the back seat as we circled and looked. Most of the fine details of the mission are long forgotten. I do remember how hard and seriously I looked for that one building they wanted me to hit.

I circled a few times, trying as hard as I could to understand their descriptions of the target—to identify that one building. Hitting the wrong building would mean killing the innocent, or worse, killing those Marines who were fighting for the innocent. I knew that asking them to smoke their positions would give their location away, but I had to do it. It was a matter-of-fact request that they understood and immediately responded to. Their white signal smoke filtered up from the alleys and streets near their general positions. But now at least I could select the best run-in heading to reduce the danger of long or short bombs. Their “smoke” drifted up from the streets and rooftops forming an irregular semicircle that helped me make the final and fateful decision. It also helped me judge the wind.

I finally selected the one building that I thought housed the heavy machine gun and mortar position that had them pinned down. I described the building and a small rice paddy nearby and they said I had the right target. Then I was faced with the next challenge: to hit that building. Why did I decide on the steepest dive angle, and why did I select all twelve bombs to release on one pass, using the tightest bomb release interval possible on the weapons select panel? Was it an unconscious hedge? If I missed the target, there would be nothing left of the innocent or the friendlies to bury or to ship home in body bags. I do not know what made me make a small last second maneuver, “jinking” the bombsight pipper rapidly toward the small rice paddy about one hundred feet at the 4 o’clock position from the building. Some of it was a correction for a wind shear that was making the pipper drift.

It seems strange that I can still remember the shimmer off the brown water in that rice paddy as I dragged the pipper toward it. It seems now after some thought that it was all an almost subconscious act. The thought occurred to me after that mission, and many others, that I was not really trained or prepared properly for what I was doing on that day. Who would be held responsible besides me for killing with friendly fire? I clearly remember holding the dive run longer than necessary. I also remember holding down on the red round pickle button long after all the bombs were gone, until my right thumb hurt so bad, the pain told me to release. I remember the rapid succession of little thumps while in the steep dive. The thumps caused by the bomb release ejector racks firing almost instantaneously, releasing all twelve bombs.

It was bombs away in a tight pattern, like a swarm of black hornets heading at a steep angle downward toward the middle of the city. I recall the wonderful feeling of release and the sensation of man-and-aircraft-as-one, after the jink, into a graceful pull off the bomb run into a beautiful arching cloverleaf maneuver. A maneuver in full afterburner that had me for a moment looking straight up into a cool blue sky with small, bright, puffy white clouds. The Phantom and I were indeed one at that moment in time, one of my unforgettable moments: a feeling pilots know of and can fully enjoy.

Then back to business, a hard G pull back to inverted flight to look over my left shoulder so I could see where the bombs hit. I paid no attention to the rapid loss of airspeed as I pulled up into an almost vertical recovery maneuver over the city. I had never seen that many bombs go off before. But it was too late; all I could see was a huge, growing cloud of dirty brown and black smoke, dust, dirt, parts, and pieces rapidly tumbling and flying in all directions, billowing up from where all twelve bombs hit.

Hue was the site of fierce fighting, both on the ground and in the air.

It is an everlasting image, three tons of bombs slamming into the city at over 500 knots. Bombs fused to go off deep in the ground exploded together, throwing tons of dirt—and thousands and thousands of pieces of debris—into the sky, then raining down everywhere. What was once a building and the enemy was all part of a giant, ugly, brown billowing cloud. Many of the pieces were already hitting the nearby rice paddy, making splashes like hail from a great Midwest thunderstorm. The debris rained down on the city and splashed down in that pond of shiny brown water that was just a moment ago in the middle of my gun sight. I recovered from the inverted position without a thought or concern about the nose high altitude and low airspeed. We circled and there was a long uncomfortable silence on the radio.

It was as if all of us, those on the ground and in the air, all held our breath at the same time—an eerie silence. The giant dirt cloud finally settled and the verdict came in with a rebirth of the radios. The forward air controllers and radio operators talked to each other and to me with excited voices. All in a glorious confirmation, each voice confirming to me and to each other that they were still there, still alive. As faith and luck and maybe some skill would have it, all twelve bombs, the first I ever dropped in combat, were right on target.

Only now does it occur to me that maybe a part of the excitement I heard in their voices was a relief. We all survived, and they would not be sent home in body bags or with missing body parts. My OPS officer and I would not have to live with the nightmares of killing the friendly. In retrospect I think it was fate, somehow confidence, good luck, and a big relief. That long ago mission eventually faded into all the others. Some of the others were just as exciting, but none as rewarding. Mostly there was the haunting reminder, during the early missions, that I really was not trained or prepared for what I was doing and there would be no time or person to train me in the middle of combat.

There is no substitute for being the best, and the cheerleader stuff we were exposed to was just that—cheerleader stuff—which is OK for football but no substitute for substance and performance. Some of our pilots are the best. And many more can be the best, but only if demanded to be by our leadership. And that is where the fault lays, dear Brutus. For all of us to be the best we can be, our leaders must lead by example.

This story is dedicated to all those who wanted to be the best, but of whom it was never required.

The post My first combat mission in an F-4 Phantom appeared first on Air Facts Journal.

from Engineering Blog https://airfactsjournal.com/2021/04/my-first-combat-mission-in-an-f-4-phantom/#utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=my-first-combat-mission-in-an-f-4-phantom

[blackkudos]

Daniel “Chappie” James

Daniel "Chappie" James Jr. (February 11, 1920 – February 25, 1978) was a fighter pilot in the U.S. Air Force, who in 1975 became the first African American to reach the rank of four-star general. He is the third person of Sub-Saharan origin to become highest-ranking officer in the Western world after Thomas-Alexandre Dumas (1793) and Toussaint Louverture (1797).

World War II

James graduated from the Tuskegee University in 1942 where he received a Bachelor of Science degree in physical education. He continued civilian pilot training under the government-sponsored Civilian Pilot Training Program. He remained at Tuskegee as a civilian instructor pilot in the Army Air Corps later that July. Throughout the remainder of the war James trained pilots for the all-black 99th Pursuit Squadron. He did not see combat himself until the Korean War.

Korean War

In September 1949, James went to the Philippines as flight leader for the 12th Fighter-Bomber Squadron, 18th Fighter Wing at Clark Field. In July 1950 he left for Korea, where he flew 101 combat missions in P-51 Mustang and F-80 aircraft.

James returned to the United States, and in July 1951 went to Otis Air Force Base, Massachusetts as an all-weather jet fighter pilot with the 58th Fighter-Interceptor Squadron, later becoming operations officer. In April 1953 he became commander of the 437th Fighter-Interceptor Squadron, and assumed command of the 60th Fighter-Interceptor Squadron in August 1955. While stationed at Otis, he received the Massachusetts Junior Chamber of Commerce 1954 award of "Young Man of the Year" for his outstanding community relations efforts. On August 15, 1954 he appeared as a contestant on the game show What's My Line? He graduated from the Air Command and Staff College in June 1957.

James next was assigned to Headquarters U.S. Air Force as a staff officer in the Air Defense Division of the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations. In July 1960 he was transferred to RAF Bentwaters in England, where he served successively as assistant director of operations and then director of operations, 81st Tactical Fighter Wing; commander, 92nd Tactical Fighter Squadron; and deputy commander for operations for the 81st Wing. In September 1964 James was transferred to Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Arizona, where he was director of operations training and later deputy commander for operations for the 4453rd Combat Crew Training Wing.

Vietnam War

James went to Ubon Royal Thai Air Force Base, Thailand, in December 1966, as deputy commander for operations, 8th TFW. In June 1967, under Colonel Robin Olds, he was named wing vice commander when Col. Vermont Garrison completed his tour. Both in their mid-40s, they formed a legendary team nicknamed "Blackman and Robin." James flew 78 combat missions into North Vietnam, many in the Hanoi/Haiphong area, and led a flight in the "Operation Bolo" MiG sweep in which seven Communist MiG-21s were destroyed, the highest total kill of any mission during the Vietnam War.

He was named vice commander of the 33rd TFW at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, in December 1967. While stationed at Eglin, the Florida State Jaycees named James as Florida's "Outstanding American of the Year" for 1969, and he received the Jaycee Distinguished Service Award. He was transferred to Wheelus Air Base in the Libyan Arab Republic in August 1969 as Commander of the 7272nd Fighter Training Wing.

James became Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense (Public Affairs) in March 1970 and was designated principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense (Public Affairs) in April 1973. On September 1, 1974, he assumed duty as vice commander of the Military Airlift Command (MAC), headquartered at Scott Air Force Base, Illinois.

James was promoted to four-star grade and assigned as commander in chief of NORAD/ADCOM at Peterson Air Force Base, Colorado, on September 1, 1975. In these dual capacities he had operational command of all United States and Canadian strategic aerospace defense forces. On December 6, 1977, he assumed duty as special assistant to the Chief of Staff, U.S. Air Force.

General James was widely known for his speeches on Americanism and patriotism, for which he was editorialized in numerous national and international publications.

When asked his views on the growing Civil Rights Movement after having to make an emergency landing in North Vietnam, he answered, "Look, friend, I'm really not interested in all of that, really. See I consider myself damned lucky to have been able to land my airplane at this emergency strip in one piece." Being asked about militants like H. Rap Brown and Stokely Carmichael, who implied that blacks ought to fight at home rather than in Vietnam, also angered James, with him stating "...the lawlessness, rioting, men like Stokely Carmichael acting as if they speak for the Negro people. They aren't, and set civil rights back 100 years!" James even removed his Black Panther emblem from his helmet since it had become associated with a movement he no longer identified with. Excerpts from some of the speeches have been read into the Congressional Record.

The statements by James in which he repudiated the most militant point of view endeared him to concerned whites, including President Johnson, who invited him to a White House reception. Immediately after the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and as riots erupted in several areas across the country, James addressed a gathering of Air Force Association officers at which he declared that in spite of events and the resistance to progress, 'I'm not disgusted-I'm a citizen of the United States of America and I'm no second-class citizen either and no man here is, unless he thinks like one and reasons like one and performs like one. This is my country and I believe in her and I to her welfare whenever and however I can. If she has any ills, I'll stand by her until in God's given time, through her wisdom and her consideration for the welfare of the entire nation, she will put them right."

He was awarded the George Washington Freedom Foundation Medal in both 1967 and 1968. He received the Arnold Air Society Eugene M. Zuckert Award in 1970 for outstanding contributions to Air Force professionalism. His citation read "... fighter pilot with a magnificent record, public speaker, and eloquent spokesman for the American Dream we so rarely achieve."

Libya

One of Chappie James's most dangerous moments came when he was assigned to command Wheelus Air Base in Libya. in 1969 Colonel Muammar Gaddafi overran the gates at Wheelus Air Base and had an Old West style standoff with James. With both men packing pistols on their hips James told Gaddafi, "Move your hand away from that gun!" Gaddafi complied and pulled back. Afterwards, the United States was unable to reach an agreement with Gaddafi and agreed to vacate Wheelus. During the final negotiations, a team of Libyan officers brought along a soldier with a submachine gun into James's living room. James asserted himself and the soldier vanished. Chappie then soon left Libya.

Retirement and death

General James died of a heart attack on February 25, 1978, just two weeks after his 58th birthday and three weeks following his retirement from the Air Force.

Honors and awards

General James' military awards include the following –

Air Force Command Pilot wings

Office of the Secretary of Defense Identification Badge

Defense Distinguished Service Medal

Air Force Distinguished Service Medal

Legion of Merit with one oak leaf cluster

Distinguished Flying Cross with two oak leaf clusters

Meritorious Service Medal

Air Medal with 13 oak leaf clusters

Army Commendation Medal

Presidential Unit Citation with three oak leaf clusters

Air Force Outstanding Unit Award with three oak leaf clusters

Combat Readiness Medal

Army Good Conduct Medal

American Defense Service Medal

American Campaign Medal

World War II Victory Medal

Army of Occupation Medal

National Defense Service Medal with star

Korean Service Medal with four campaign stars

Vietnam Service Medal with seven campaign stars

Air Force Longevity Service Ribbon with seven oak leaf clusters

Armed Forces Reserve Medal

Air Force Marksmanship Ribbon

Republic of Korea Presidential Unit Citation

United Nations Service Medal

Republic of Vietnam Campaign Medal

The civilian awards that General James received included the following:

Builders of a Greater Arizona Award (1969); Phoenix Urban League Man of the Year Award, Distinguished Service Achievement Award from Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity (1970); American Legion National Commander's Public Relations Award, Veteran of Foreign Wars Commander in Chief's Gold Medal Award and Citation (1971); Capital Press Club, Washington, D.C., Salute to Black Pioneers Award (1975); and, all in 1976, the Air Force Association Jimmy Doolittle Chapter Man of the Year Award, Florida Association of Broadcasters' Gold Medal Award, American Veterans of World War II Silver Helmet Award, United Service Organization Liberty Bell Award, Blackbook Minority Business and Reference Guidance Par Excellence Award, American Academy of Achievement Golden Plate Award, United Negro College Fund's Distinguished Service Award, Horatio Alger Award, VFW Americanism Medal, Bishop Wright Air Industry Award, and the Kitty Hawk Award (Military).

He was awarded honorary doctor of laws degrees from the University of West Florida in 1971; the University of Akron in 1973; Virginia State College in 1974; Delaware State College in 1975; and St. Louis University in 1976. He was named honorary national commander of the Arnold Air Society in 1971.

Legacy

General James met his wife Dorothy while he was at Tuskegee Institute and they were married on the campus on November 3,1942. They had two sons and one daughter. His wife Dorothy died on May 2, 2000, and is buried with him in Arlington National Cemetery. General James's son, Lieutenant General Daniel James III, also served in the United States Air Force as a fighter pilot and in the Texas Air National Guard. He served from 1995 to 2002 as the Adjutant General of the Texas National Guard (the first African American to hold the post), and as Director of the Air National Guard from 2002 to 2006. In the summer of 2006, he retired from the Air Force at the rank of Lieutenant General after 38 years of total commissioned service, on active duty and as an Air Guardsman.

A Lockheed P-80 Shooting Star is on display at Otis Air National Guard Base (former Otis AFB) in Massachusetts with General James' name written under the cockpit.

The James Sports Center at Scott AFB, Illinois, is named after General James and there is plaque that was dedicated on February 12, 1979.

Wikipedia

[adambstingus]

6 Actors Who Tried To Teach Lessons (And Madness Ensued)

A celebrity public service announcement seems like a fine idea in theory. People love having a popular, attractive person tell them what to do — that’s how God-Emperors are made. So how can you screw that up? Well, let us count the ways …

6

Mario Tells Kids That They’ll Suffer Hell On Earth

“Captain” Lou Albano had the honor of being both a professional wrestler and Mario on The Super Mario Bros. Super Show, which to children is about as impressive as being a crimefighting dog who can magically summon ice cream. So it’s not surprising that Albano was seen as a great choice for an anti-drug PSA aimed at kids. It is surprising that they filmed the whole shebang in a closet while Albano looked like he was wasted on a whatever he was telling kids to stay away from.

Albano crams a lot of words into 19 seconds, and while it’s mostly standard PSA stuff (“Don’t be afraid to say no,” “People who want you to take drugs aren’t really your friends,” “You’ll probably stop giving a crap about what Mario says when you go to college and some cutie invites you to smoke weed with them,” etc.), there’s a last-second twist. Albano warns that if you do drugs, “you’ll go to hell before you die,” while fading into a corner of a screen and whispering the word “please” in a way that would really mess with your head if you were tripping.

Always remember, kids: According to a professional athlete who played a hero whose power comes from magical mushrooms, drugs have no benefit whatsoever and will send you to a nightmarish plane of brimstone and fire.

5

The Cast Of The Wire Wants You To Wear A Condom

Teenagers, generally speaking, are the demographic that most need education on sexual safety, both because they’re lacking in life experience and because they’re getting laid way more often than we are. So if you had to make a hip safe sex PSA in the mid-2000s, what celebrities would you work with? The stars of a teen drama? Maybe the cast of a reality show? How about the heroes of their dad’s favorite gritty police drama, The Wire?

Luckily, a whole chunk of The Wire‘s cast is here to prestige people into practicing safe sex. Unfortunately, this PSA is less of a coherent call to action than a laudanum-induced fever dream. There are no statistics or stern lectures — merely the dying hallucinations of a ’80s music video director made surreality.

Monique Richert/YouTube “Why, I’m practicing safe sex right now!”

The whole thing comes across like aliens have kidnapped humans and are trying to make a soothing simulated reality for them based only on the trivia that we like sex, award-winning television, and outdated music. Clarke Peters looks like he’s about to teach us either Tae Bo or how to use your orgasm to ascend to a higher plane of existence.

4

Here’s Jackie Chan Hanging Out With A Giant Condom

“You all know me as an action hero,” is how Jackie Chan walks into this PSA. But he wants to introduce us to another action hero: Mr. Condom, who sounds like the stuffed bear of a Victorian British child — something to keep in mind the next time you use one.

Mr. Condom and Jackie clearly have a strong and respectful master-student relationship, and Chan explains how this strong warrior prevents STDs. Meanwhile, an energetic Mr. Condom shows off his fighting moves. Because if there’s one thing you want a good condom to be, it’s flexible enough to move around wildly on its own.

Mr. Condom then launches himself into the air, spins around, and stretches himself out, in case you’ve ever wondered what it looks like when a condom has its own orgasm, before reminding us to use him when you have sex. Chan then wraps up the PSA by telling us that while he can fight visible enemies, even he needs Mr. Condom’s help in keeping HIV at bay, which can definitely be a risk when you cheat on your wife. Then Jackie and Mr. Condom embrace, and Jackie definitely doesn’t die a little inside before they punch the camera.

3

Don’t Drive Angry, Or Evander Holyfield Will Beat You To Death

If you make the wrong decision while driving, you can end a person’s life. Someone’s loved one could be snuffed out in an instant due to your carelessness. But apparently some people require a more “What’s in it for me?” incentive than that, so Evander Holyfield made a PSA about how he’ll beat the shit out of aggressive drivers.

Scene: A car pulls into traffic and cuts off another driver, who then angrily honks and forces the car over. The man gets out of his truck and reveals himself to be a redneck stereotype whose string of profanity makes it clear that he intends to beat the fuck stuffing out of his new nemesis. But then, surprise twist! The man he wants to murder is Evander Holyfield! Now who’s about to die?

The moral clearly ought to be “Avoid road rage. You never know who you might run into. But counterpoint: If you can clearly see it’s some soccer mom or a grandpa, feel free to go full King Immortan Joe on their asses.” If the only way you can think of to appeal to violent maniacs is to remind them they’ll sometimes cross paths with a professional fighter, you haven’t made a PSA against road rage, but one in favor of keeping a gun in the glove compartment.

2

Mel Gibson Doesn’t Want The Feds To Take Away Our Vitamins

Holy shit, check out this thrilling Mel Gibson movie set in the grim future of 1993!

Whose fancy house is being raided? A corrupt politician? An unscrupulous CEO?

No, they’re arresting Mel Gibson. And while it was prescient for Gibson to portray himself as being in trouble with the law, here he’s being hauled in for the simple dystopian crime of owning vitamins. “Guys, guys! It’s only vitamins!” he protests. But what he doesn’t know is that the government wants to make vitamins illegal. This video is here to warn good American citizens that their supplements are under attack. Now, you probably don’t know anyone who has been dogpiled by a SWAT team for cracking open a bottle of Flintstone’s, but in the chilling, stupid reality of Mel Gibson’s world, the answer is “It’s already happening.”

As shown in this obviously based-on-real-events footage, the fascist pig cops are unimpressed when Gibson explains to them he was only taking Vitamin C, “like in oranges.” He’ll have plenty of time to adjust his mindset during his four-month stay at a Dietary Supplement Reeducation Camp. But that future doesn’t have to be ours, the cards say, if we just call our senators.

If you’re wondering what the hell is going on, this “PSA” was funded by the Nutritional Health Alliance, a lobby group formed by the supplement industry to prevent the government from looking into what a huge scam supplements are.

Specifically, in early ’90s, the FDA wanted to crack down on supplements that made completely unsubstantiated health claims on their packaging and in ads, because if there’s one thing the Man loves to do, it’s pushing around honest, hard-working Americans by forcing them to stop buying dangerous products that hospitalize tens of thousands and might accidentally kill people. It’s unclear if Gibson actually believed in the supplement industry or was letting them supplement his income, but luckily, Gibbers was unable to terrify Americans with his vision of a vitamin-hating police state. The FDA’s new regulations went through, and Gibson found himself on the wrong side of history — a position he’s since become intimately familiar with.

1

Kid Rock And Sean Penn For Generic Unity Between Americans

It’s no secret that America is a politically divided country. And who better to bridge that bitter gap than Kid Rock and Sean Penn, two of the most beloved and kind artists in the world. Between Kid’s political savvy and Penn’s famous calmness, only these two could ever unite Americans across the political spectrum — mostly by making all of them ask “Wait … what the fuck?”

This nearly 11-minute (no, seriously) public service Sundance entry is called “Americans,” and it features one of America’s favorite (alleged) spousal abusers sitting down with one of America’s least-favorite aural abusers for a conversation that absolutely no one asked for.

We open with Penn sitting at a bar and ordering vodka, even though he already looks and sounds completely shitfaced.

Mitt Romney (this was made in 2012) is giving a speech on TV. Penn asks for the channel to be changed, but the justifiably scared female bartender ignores him, just in time for Romney to introduce his special musical guest. It’s Kid Rock, and for a moment, we are all Sean Penn:

Then, gasp! Old Man Rock appears in the bar! How Penn failed to notice a six-foot-tall overall-wearing Americana scarecrow right next to him is left unexplained.

But Mr. Rock, who also seems drunk, plops himself down next to Penn and starts complaining about “Obummer’s” tax policies, like a totally relatable middle American. The two start sniping at each other like YouTube commenters — Penn quotes Goebbels, while Kid Rock says “Fuckin’ suck it, commie.” They both take turns delivering incoherent tirades, although Penn seems to be winning the debate. After all, it’s hard to take Kid Rock seriously when he’s dressed like he’s on his way to play the Country Bear Jamboree.

They nearly come to blows, in a fight we could only hope they somehow both lose, until a random sassy bar patron tells them to shut up and appreciate everything America has to offer. Her passionate speech about what American citizenship means to her is somewhat undercut by the fact that she finishes by calling them “fucking pussies,” but never mind that –there’s some breaking news on the bar TV that inexplicably isn’t just on ESPN. 26 marines have been killed in Afghanistan! Cue sad music and Kid Rock failing to act!

Thankfully, those soldiers didn’t die in vain. Rock and Penn are inspired by their sacrifice to toast “to freedom” and apologize to each other — while babbling over everyone else’s respectful moment of silence. Naturally, the next step is a wacky montage! The first thing Kid Rock does is sell his car and buy a Prius, as any relatable conservative American who wants to learn more about his liberal friends could totally afford to do at the drop of a hideous hat.

Next, we get a shot of an environmental protest, Kid Rock urinating in the background, and Penn catching his urine in a bucket because … Kid Rock’s dehydrated lizard juice still counts as potable water? No time to reflect, because it’s time for Penn to trade places! Kid Rock teaches him to drink a beer instead of a girly cocktail! As the day is winding down, Penn takes Rock to a gay wedding, which, according to this movie, involves one of the men wearing a wedding dress! Are we seeing this wedding through Rock’s Republican eyes?

They then buy each other T-shirts and exchange them on the beach! Kid Rock and Sean Penn are totally about to fuck! After the pair leaves the beach to go bone down, the message of this inspirational tale appears onscreen for the benefit of the slower viewers: We’re all Americans, whether we love PETA, own guns, or are a sassy black woman. Those are the only three kinds of Americans. You too can put aside your cavalcade of liberal and conservative stereotypes and stop yelling crude insults at each other long enough to bond over some dead marines and go car shopping. Because in the end, aren’t we all just South Park jokes without the irony? Fuck yeah, Sean Penn and Kid Rock. Fuck yeah.

Mark is on Twitter and has a book.

Also check out The 6 Most Counterproductive PSAs of All Time and 7 Safety PSAs (That Were Clearly Made By Serial Killers).

Subscribe to our YouTube channel, and check out 6 PSAs Way More F#!@ed Up Than Any Drug Addict, and other videos you won’t see on the site!

Follow us on Facebook, and we’ll follow you everywhere.

If we’ve ever made you laugh or think, we now have a way where you can thank and support us!

Make a contribution

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/6-actors-who-tried-to-teach-lessons-and-madness-ensued/ from All of Beer https://allofbeercom.tumblr.com/post/182980603822

[samanthasroberts]

6 Actors Who Tried To Teach Lessons (And Madness Ensued)

A celebrity public service announcement seems like a fine idea in theory. People love having a popular, attractive person tell them what to do — that’s how God-Emperors are made. So how can you screw that up? Well, let us count the ways …

6

Mario Tells Kids That They’ll Suffer Hell On Earth

“Captain” Lou Albano had the honor of being both a professional wrestler and Mario on The Super Mario Bros. Super Show, which to children is about as impressive as being a crimefighting dog who can magically summon ice cream. So it’s not surprising that Albano was seen as a great choice for an anti-drug PSA aimed at kids. It is surprising that they filmed the whole shebang in a closet while Albano looked like he was wasted on a whatever he was telling kids to stay away from.

Albano crams a lot of words into 19 seconds, and while it’s mostly standard PSA stuff (“Don’t be afraid to say no,” “People who want you to take drugs aren’t really your friends,” “You’ll probably stop giving a crap about what Mario says when you go to college and some cutie invites you to smoke weed with them,” etc.), there’s a last-second twist. Albano warns that if you do drugs, “you’ll go to hell before you die,” while fading into a corner of a screen and whispering the word “please” in a way that would really mess with your head if you were tripping.

Always remember, kids: According to a professional athlete who played a hero whose power comes from magical mushrooms, drugs have no benefit whatsoever and will send you to a nightmarish plane of brimstone and fire.

5

The Cast Of The Wire Wants You To Wear A Condom

Teenagers, generally speaking, are the demographic that most need education on sexual safety, both because they’re lacking in life experience and because they’re getting laid way more often than we are. So if you had to make a hip safe sex PSA in the mid-2000s, what celebrities would you work with? The stars of a teen drama? Maybe the cast of a reality show? How about the heroes of their dad’s favorite gritty police drama, The Wire?

Luckily, a whole chunk of The Wire‘s cast is here to prestige people into practicing safe sex. Unfortunately, this PSA is less of a coherent call to action than a laudanum-induced fever dream. There are no statistics or stern lectures — merely the dying hallucinations of a ’80s music video director made surreality.

Monique Richert/YouTube “Why, I’m practicing safe sex right now!”

The whole thing comes across like aliens have kidnapped humans and are trying to make a soothing simulated reality for them based only on the trivia that we like sex, award-winning television, and outdated music. Clarke Peters looks like he’s about to teach us either Tae Bo or how to use your orgasm to ascend to a higher plane of existence.

4

Here’s Jackie Chan Hanging Out With A Giant Condom

“You all know me as an action hero,” is how Jackie Chan walks into this PSA. But he wants to introduce us to another action hero: Mr. Condom, who sounds like the stuffed bear of a Victorian British child — something to keep in mind the next time you use one.

Mr. Condom and Jackie clearly have a strong and respectful master-student relationship, and Chan explains how this strong warrior prevents STDs. Meanwhile, an energetic Mr. Condom shows off his fighting moves. Because if there’s one thing you want a good condom to be, it’s flexible enough to move around wildly on its own.

Mr. Condom then launches himself into the air, spins around, and stretches himself out, in case you’ve ever wondered what it looks like when a condom has its own orgasm, before reminding us to use him when you have sex. Chan then wraps up the PSA by telling us that while he can fight visible enemies, even he needs Mr. Condom’s help in keeping HIV at bay, which can definitely be a risk when you cheat on your wife. Then Jackie and Mr. Condom embrace, and Jackie definitely doesn’t die a little inside before they punch the camera.

3

Don’t Drive Angry, Or Evander Holyfield Will Beat You To Death

If you make the wrong decision while driving, you can end a person’s life. Someone’s loved one could be snuffed out in an instant due to your carelessness. But apparently some people require a more “What’s in it for me?” incentive than that, so Evander Holyfield made a PSA about how he’ll beat the shit out of aggressive drivers.

Scene: A car pulls into traffic and cuts off another driver, who then angrily honks and forces the car over. The man gets out of his truck and reveals himself to be a redneck stereotype whose string of profanity makes it clear that he intends to beat the fuck stuffing out of his new nemesis. But then, surprise twist! The man he wants to murder is Evander Holyfield! Now who’s about to die?

The moral clearly ought to be “Avoid road rage. You never know who you might run into. But counterpoint: If you can clearly see it’s some soccer mom or a grandpa, feel free to go full King Immortan Joe on their asses.” If the only way you can think of to appeal to violent maniacs is to remind them they’ll sometimes cross paths with a professional fighter, you haven’t made a PSA against road rage, but one in favor of keeping a gun in the glove compartment.

2

Mel Gibson Doesn’t Want The Feds To Take Away Our Vitamins

Holy shit, check out this thrilling Mel Gibson movie set in the grim future of 1993!

Whose fancy house is being raided? A corrupt politician? An unscrupulous CEO?

No, they’re arresting Mel Gibson. And while it was prescient for Gibson to portray himself as being in trouble with the law, here he’s being hauled in for the simple dystopian crime of owning vitamins. “Guys, guys! It’s only vitamins!” he protests. But what he doesn’t know is that the government wants to make vitamins illegal. This video is here to warn good American citizens that their supplements are under attack. Now, you probably don’t know anyone who has been dogpiled by a SWAT team for cracking open a bottle of Flintstone’s, but in the chilling, stupid reality of Mel Gibson’s world, the answer is “It’s already happening.”

As shown in this obviously based-on-real-events footage, the fascist pig cops are unimpressed when Gibson explains to them he was only taking Vitamin C, “like in oranges.” He’ll have plenty of time to adjust his mindset during his four-month stay at a Dietary Supplement Reeducation Camp. But that future doesn’t have to be ours, the cards say, if we just call our senators.

If you’re wondering what the hell is going on, this “PSA” was funded by the Nutritional Health Alliance, a lobby group formed by the supplement industry to prevent the government from looking into what a huge scam supplements are.

Specifically, in early ’90s, the FDA wanted to crack down on supplements that made completely unsubstantiated health claims on their packaging and in ads, because if there’s one thing the Man loves to do, it’s pushing around honest, hard-working Americans by forcing them to stop buying dangerous products that hospitalize tens of thousands and might accidentally kill people. It’s unclear if Gibson actually believed in the supplement industry or was letting them supplement his income, but luckily, Gibbers was unable to terrify Americans with his vision of a vitamin-hating police state. The FDA’s new regulations went through, and Gibson found himself on the wrong side of history — a position he’s since become intimately familiar with.

1

Kid Rock And Sean Penn For Generic Unity Between Americans

It’s no secret that America is a politically divided country. And who better to bridge that bitter gap than Kid Rock and Sean Penn, two of the most beloved and kind artists in the world. Between Kid’s political savvy and Penn’s famous calmness, only these two could ever unite Americans across the political spectrum — mostly by making all of them ask “Wait … what the fuck?”

This nearly 11-minute (no, seriously) public service Sundance entry is called “Americans,” and it features one of America’s favorite (alleged) spousal abusers sitting down with one of America’s least-favorite aural abusers for a conversation that absolutely no one asked for.

We open with Penn sitting at a bar and ordering vodka, even though he already looks and sounds completely shitfaced.

Mitt Romney (this was made in 2012) is giving a speech on TV. Penn asks for the channel to be changed, but the justifiably scared female bartender ignores him, just in time for Romney to introduce his special musical guest. It’s Kid Rock, and for a moment, we are all Sean Penn:

Then, gasp! Old Man Rock appears in the bar! How Penn failed to notice a six-foot-tall overall-wearing Americana scarecrow right next to him is left unexplained.

But Mr. Rock, who also seems drunk, plops himself down next to Penn and starts complaining about “Obummer’s” tax policies, like a totally relatable middle American. The two start sniping at each other like YouTube commenters — Penn quotes Goebbels, while Kid Rock says “Fuckin’ suck it, commie.” They both take turns delivering incoherent tirades, although Penn seems to be winning the debate. After all, it’s hard to take Kid Rock seriously when he’s dressed like he’s on his way to play the Country Bear Jamboree.

They nearly come to blows, in a fight we could only hope they somehow both lose, until a random sassy bar patron tells them to shut up and appreciate everything America has to offer. Her passionate speech about what American citizenship means to her is somewhat undercut by the fact that she finishes by calling them “fucking pussies,” but never mind that –there’s some breaking news on the bar TV that inexplicably isn’t just on ESPN. 26 marines have been killed in Afghanistan! Cue sad music and Kid Rock failing to act!

Thankfully, those soldiers didn’t die in vain. Rock and Penn are inspired by their sacrifice to toast “to freedom” and apologize to each other — while babbling over everyone else’s respectful moment of silence. Naturally, the next step is a wacky montage! The first thing Kid Rock does is sell his car and buy a Prius, as any relatable conservative American who wants to learn more about his liberal friends could totally afford to do at the drop of a hideous hat.

Next, we get a shot of an environmental protest, Kid Rock urinating in the background, and Penn catching his urine in a bucket because … Kid Rock’s dehydrated lizard juice still counts as potable water? No time to reflect, because it’s time for Penn to trade places! Kid Rock teaches him to drink a beer instead of a girly cocktail! As the day is winding down, Penn takes Rock to a gay wedding, which, according to this movie, involves one of the men wearing a wedding dress! Are we seeing this wedding through Rock’s Republican eyes?

They then buy each other T-shirts and exchange them on the beach! Kid Rock and Sean Penn are totally about to fuck! After the pair leaves the beach to go bone down, the message of this inspirational tale appears onscreen for the benefit of the slower viewers: We’re all Americans, whether we love PETA, own guns, or are a sassy black woman. Those are the only three kinds of Americans. You too can put aside your cavalcade of liberal and conservative stereotypes and stop yelling crude insults at each other long enough to bond over some dead marines and go car shopping. Because in the end, aren’t we all just South Park jokes without the irony? Fuck yeah, Sean Penn and Kid Rock. Fuck yeah.

Mark is on Twitter and has a book.

Also check out The 6 Most Counterproductive PSAs of All Time and 7 Safety PSAs (That Were Clearly Made By Serial Killers).

Subscribe to our YouTube channel, and check out 6 PSAs Way More F#!@ed Up Than Any Drug Addict, and other videos you won’t see on the site!

Follow us on Facebook, and we’ll follow you everywhere.

If we’ve ever made you laugh or think, we now have a way where you can thank and support us!

Make a contribution

Source: http://allofbeer.com/6-actors-who-tried-to-teach-lessons-and-madness-ensued/

from All of Beer https://allofbeer.wordpress.com/2019/02/22/6-actors-who-tried-to-teach-lessons-and-madness-ensued/

[allofbeercom]

6 Actors Who Tried To Teach Lessons (And Madness Ensued)

A celebrity public service announcement seems like a fine idea in theory. People love having a popular, attractive person tell them what to do — that’s how God-Emperors are made. So how can you screw that up? Well, let us count the ways …

6

Mario Tells Kids That They’ll Suffer Hell On Earth

“Captain” Lou Albano had the honor of being both a professional wrestler and Mario on The Super Mario Bros. Super Show, which to children is about as impressive as being a crimefighting dog who can magically summon ice cream. So it’s not surprising that Albano was seen as a great choice for an anti-drug PSA aimed at kids. It is surprising that they filmed the whole shebang in a closet while Albano looked like he was wasted on a whatever he was telling kids to stay away from.

Albano crams a lot of words into 19 seconds, and while it’s mostly standard PSA stuff (“Don’t be afraid to say no,” “People who want you to take drugs aren’t really your friends,” “You’ll probably stop giving a crap about what Mario says when you go to college and some cutie invites you to smoke weed with them,” etc.), there’s a last-second twist. Albano warns that if you do drugs, “you’ll go to hell before you die,” while fading into a corner of a screen and whispering the word “please” in a way that would really mess with your head if you were tripping.

Always remember, kids: According to a professional athlete who played a hero whose power comes from magical mushrooms, drugs have no benefit whatsoever and will send you to a nightmarish plane of brimstone and fire.

5

The Cast Of The Wire Wants You To Wear A Condom

Teenagers, generally speaking, are the demographic that most need education on sexual safety, both because they’re lacking in life experience and because they’re getting laid way more often than we are. So if you had to make a hip safe sex PSA in the mid-2000s, what celebrities would you work with? The stars of a teen drama? Maybe the cast of a reality show? How about the heroes of their dad’s favorite gritty police drama, The Wire?

Luckily, a whole chunk of The Wire‘s cast is here to prestige people into practicing safe sex. Unfortunately, this PSA is less of a coherent call to action than a laudanum-induced fever dream. There are no statistics or stern lectures — merely the dying hallucinations of a ’80s music video director made surreality.

Monique Richert/YouTube “Why, I’m practicing safe sex right now!”

The whole thing comes across like aliens have kidnapped humans and are trying to make a soothing simulated reality for them based only on the trivia that we like sex, award-winning television, and outdated music. Clarke Peters looks like he’s about to teach us either Tae Bo or how to use your orgasm to ascend to a higher plane of existence.

4

Here’s Jackie Chan Hanging Out With A Giant Condom

“You all know me as an action hero,” is how Jackie Chan walks into this PSA. But he wants to introduce us to another action hero: Mr. Condom, who sounds like the stuffed bear of a Victorian British child — something to keep in mind the next time you use one.

Mr. Condom and Jackie clearly have a strong and respectful master-student relationship, and Chan explains how this strong warrior prevents STDs. Meanwhile, an energetic Mr. Condom shows off his fighting moves. Because if there’s one thing you want a good condom to be, it’s flexible enough to move around wildly on its own.

Mr. Condom then launches himself into the air, spins around, and stretches himself out, in case you’ve ever wondered what it looks like when a condom has its own orgasm, before reminding us to use him when you have sex. Chan then wraps up the PSA by telling us that while he can fight visible enemies, even he needs Mr. Condom’s help in keeping HIV at bay, which can definitely be a risk when you cheat on your wife. Then Jackie and Mr. Condom embrace, and Jackie definitely doesn’t die a little inside before they punch the camera.

3

Don’t Drive Angry, Or Evander Holyfield Will Beat You To Death

If you make the wrong decision while driving, you can end a person’s life. Someone’s loved one could be snuffed out in an instant due to your carelessness. But apparently some people require a more “What’s in it for me?” incentive than that, so Evander Holyfield made a PSA about how he’ll beat the shit out of aggressive drivers.

Scene: A car pulls into traffic and cuts off another driver, who then angrily honks and forces the car over. The man gets out of his truck and reveals himself to be a redneck stereotype whose string of profanity makes it clear that he intends to beat the fuck stuffing out of his new nemesis. But then, surprise twist! The man he wants to murder is Evander Holyfield! Now who’s about to die?

The moral clearly ought to be “Avoid road rage. You never know who you might run into. But counterpoint: If you can clearly see it’s some soccer mom or a grandpa, feel free to go full King Immortan Joe on their asses.” If the only way you can think of to appeal to violent maniacs is to remind them they’ll sometimes cross paths with a professional fighter, you haven’t made a PSA against road rage, but one in favor of keeping a gun in the glove compartment.

2

Mel Gibson Doesn’t Want The Feds To Take Away Our Vitamins

Holy shit, check out this thrilling Mel Gibson movie set in the grim future of 1993!

Whose fancy house is being raided? A corrupt politician? An unscrupulous CEO?

No, they’re arresting Mel Gibson. And while it was prescient for Gibson to portray himself as being in trouble with the law, here he’s being hauled in for the simple dystopian crime of owning vitamins. “Guys, guys! It’s only vitamins!” he protests. But what he doesn’t know is that the government wants to make vitamins illegal. This video is here to warn good American citizens that their supplements are under attack. Now, you probably don’t know anyone who has been dogpiled by a SWAT team for cracking open a bottle of Flintstone’s, but in the chilling, stupid reality of Mel Gibson’s world, the answer is “It’s already happening.”

As shown in this obviously based-on-real-events footage, the fascist pig cops are unimpressed when Gibson explains to them he was only taking Vitamin C, “like in oranges.” He’ll have plenty of time to adjust his mindset during his four-month stay at a Dietary Supplement Reeducation Camp. But that future doesn’t have to be ours, the cards say, if we just call our senators.

If you’re wondering what the hell is going on, this “PSA” was funded by the Nutritional Health Alliance, a lobby group formed by the supplement industry to prevent the government from looking into what a huge scam supplements are.

Specifically, in early ’90s, the FDA wanted to crack down on supplements that made completely unsubstantiated health claims on their packaging and in ads, because if there’s one thing the Man loves to do, it’s pushing around honest, hard-working Americans by forcing them to stop buying dangerous products that hospitalize tens of thousands and might accidentally kill people. It’s unclear if Gibson actually believed in the supplement industry or was letting them supplement his income, but luckily, Gibbers was unable to terrify Americans with his vision of a vitamin-hating police state. The FDA’s new regulations went through, and Gibson found himself on the wrong side of history — a position he’s since become intimately familiar with.

1

Kid Rock And Sean Penn For Generic Unity Between Americans

It’s no secret that America is a politically divided country. And who better to bridge that bitter gap than Kid Rock and Sean Penn, two of the most beloved and kind artists in the world. Between Kid’s political savvy and Penn’s famous calmness, only these two could ever unite Americans across the political spectrum — mostly by making all of them ask “Wait … what the fuck?”

This nearly 11-minute (no, seriously) public service Sundance entry is called “Americans,” and it features one of America’s favorite (alleged) spousal abusers sitting down with one of America’s least-favorite aural abusers for a conversation that absolutely no one asked for.

We open with Penn sitting at a bar and ordering vodka, even though he already looks and sounds completely shitfaced.

Mitt Romney (this was made in 2012) is giving a speech on TV. Penn asks for the channel to be changed, but the justifiably scared female bartender ignores him, just in time for Romney to introduce his special musical guest. It’s Kid Rock, and for a moment, we are all Sean Penn:

Then, gasp! Old Man Rock appears in the bar! How Penn failed to notice a six-foot-tall overall-wearing Americana scarecrow right next to him is left unexplained.

But Mr. Rock, who also seems drunk, plops himself down next to Penn and starts complaining about “Obummer’s” tax policies, like a totally relatable middle American. The two start sniping at each other like YouTube commenters — Penn quotes Goebbels, while Kid Rock says “Fuckin’ suck it, commie.” They both take turns delivering incoherent tirades, although Penn seems to be winning the debate. After all, it’s hard to take Kid Rock seriously when he’s dressed like he’s on his way to play the Country Bear Jamboree.

They nearly come to blows, in a fight we could only hope they somehow both lose, until a random sassy bar patron tells them to shut up and appreciate everything America has to offer. Her passionate speech about what American citizenship means to her is somewhat undercut by the fact that she finishes by calling them “fucking pussies,” but never mind that –there’s some breaking news on the bar TV that inexplicably isn’t just on ESPN. 26 marines have been killed in Afghanistan! Cue sad music and Kid Rock failing to act!

Thankfully, those soldiers didn’t die in vain. Rock and Penn are inspired by their sacrifice to toast “to freedom” and apologize to each other — while babbling over everyone else’s respectful moment of silence. Naturally, the next step is a wacky montage! The first thing Kid Rock does is sell his car and buy a Prius, as any relatable conservative American who wants to learn more about his liberal friends could totally afford to do at the drop of a hideous hat.

Next, we get a shot of an environmental protest, Kid Rock urinating in the background, and Penn catching his urine in a bucket because … Kid Rock’s dehydrated lizard juice still counts as potable water? No time to reflect, because it’s time for Penn to trade places! Kid Rock teaches him to drink a beer instead of a girly cocktail! As the day is winding down, Penn takes Rock to a gay wedding, which, according to this movie, involves one of the men wearing a wedding dress! Are we seeing this wedding through Rock’s Republican eyes?

They then buy each other T-shirts and exchange them on the beach! Kid Rock and Sean Penn are totally about to fuck! After the pair leaves the beach to go bone down, the message of this inspirational tale appears onscreen for the benefit of the slower viewers: We’re all Americans, whether we love PETA, own guns, or are a sassy black woman. Those are the only three kinds of Americans. You too can put aside your cavalcade of liberal and conservative stereotypes and stop yelling crude insults at each other long enough to bond over some dead marines and go car shopping. Because in the end, aren’t we all just South Park jokes without the irony? Fuck yeah, Sean Penn and Kid Rock. Fuck yeah.

Mark is on Twitter and has a book.

Also check out The 6 Most Counterproductive PSAs of All Time and 7 Safety PSAs (That Were Clearly Made By Serial Killers).

Subscribe to our YouTube channel, and check out 6 PSAs Way More F#!@ed Up Than Any Drug Addict, and other videos you won’t see on the site!

Follow us on Facebook, and we’ll follow you everywhere.

If we’ve ever made you laugh or think, we now have a way where you can thank and support us!

Make a contribution

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/6-actors-who-tried-to-teach-lessons-and-madness-ensued/

[junker-town]

From Baghdad to Iwo Jima, an anthem for the dead

Two Marines — one a veteran of Iraq and the other a survivor of Iwo Jima — remember the fallen and weigh the meaning of a national anthem.

Abner Greenberg doesn’t look like someone who was shot in the head on Iwo Jima.

At 93, he’s stockier and more solid than any nonagenarian I’ve met. The skin on his forehead and cheeks is smooth and has a healthy glow, and despite being mostly bald, his head bears no evidence of the Japanese bullet that went through the left side of it, leaving him unconscious for weeks and confused for months, unable to access his own speech.

When I shake his broad, meaty hand, I cannot tell that he hasn’t had feeling in his right arm for the last 73 years. He cannot button a shirt; his wife, Marilyn, helps him get dressed every day. “That’s the fun with us,” he says with a grin.

His aphasia is another result of the bullet that entered his head, but I don’t recognize that he’s using almost exclusively pronouns instead of proper names until he points it out himself. He is lively and sharp, easily the envy of men two decades younger.

Iwo Jima is familiar to most Americans thanks to a John Wayne movie and the famous photo of the flag-raising on Mount Suribachi, which is immortalized at the Marine Corps War Memorial in Arlington, Va. It was a battle so fierce and horrifying it shocked even the battled-tested veterans of a country in its fourth year of world war.

Of the 82 Medals of Honor awarded to Marines during the entirety of World War II, 27 of them were for actions on Iwo Jima; of those, more than half were awarded posthumously. The island was death itself.

Imagine eight square miles where 29,000 lives ended in just 36 days.

Imagine: Somewhere in the vast Pacific Ocean is eight square miles of volcanic ash where nearly 29,000 lives ended in just 36 days. Greenberg was one of nearly 20,000 more who suffered a casualty but survived. Iwo was his fourth amphibious landing in 13 months, and he’s still shaken by the horror unleashed on the first day when 2,400 Americans were killed or injured. Two of them were the best friends he’d ever known. “We hung around together, y’know? We just … talked. ‘We’re gonna survive this thing,’ et cetera, et cetera.

“Well, we got off of the beach, and we had a spot … I got down with these two other guys, and all of a sudden it started lighting up. It got into the late afternoon and evening, and mortars were hitting us.”

This is how combat stories are told, by the way. Hours of terror and stress that shatter lives get compressed to a sentence in the service of a more interesting narrative.

“We got hit by mortars, all three of us. And, uh—” His voice wavers. “I got to Barney. Barney Aloysius Cochrane, who was my best friend, my leader, everything that I needed to get through what I went through … and I just couldn’t leave him for that moment. He was dead. I was shaking all over, and I was crying. And frozen, absolutely frozen.

“And then I realized that someone was moaning, and it was Schultz. George Andrew Schultz.” He pauses. A long pause. “I couldn’t get the corpsman, but I knew he was like 100 yards from me. I patched him up the best I could, hoping that in the morning I could get him [out] alive, because he was breathing. And I did all I could to hold him. And this corpsman got to me when it was still early [in the morning], and they pulled him down to the beach. I thought he made it.”

Abner and I served in wars that began 62 years apart, but we share this: You don’t say your friend’s full name if he made it out alive.

Getty Images

Marines in Kuwait prepare for war

‘I’m confident that this will be over soon.’

I met Brian Michael McPhillips at the end of our time at The Basic School in Quantico, Va. TBS is a six-month course that teaches Marine lieutenants the bare bones of leading an infantry platoon, even though most will go on to become specialists in other fields: aviation, artillery, logistics, supply, and so on. For our class of 240 students, there were three openings for tank officers. McP and I got two of them.

He was forthright and exacting, a New Englander with dark hair and icy blue eyes that hid nothing. He could bludgeon you with honesty or sarcasm, and like many Massachusetts natives, he had just enough charm to mitigate his asshole streak.

In the winter of 2001, we reported to Fort Knox together and joined a class of Army lieutenants, most of whom were reservists or National Guardsmen. Brian made no effort to hide his disgust for what he deemed their lack of knowledge, professionalism, and physical fitness. I tended to agree, but I at least tried to be nice to our colleagues.

McP had no time for niceties. He cared about training for war and keeping his Marines alive in battle; making friends wasn’t on his to-do list. Besides, he had me.

We were assigned to tank battalions on opposite sides of the country but ended up in the same desert for war. McP arrived in Kuwait a couple of weeks after I did, and his unit camped several kilometers away from ours. Still, he hitched a ride over one day and sought me out, no easy feat in a camp of four thousand Marines. I was out training with my platoon when he came by, so I didn’t see him that day. I never saw him again.

The war was mostly boring, except when it was terrifying. I’ve started forgetting even the memorable parts; I only recently recalled killing two Iraqi fighters with a coaxial machine gun — their bodies flung into the air like they’d stepped on cartoon springs — when I revisited an old diary. But the map is imprinted in my brain; the names of the cities and towns shine like beacons through the fog, checkpoints that put the war in order: Basrah. Nasiriyah. Diwaniyah. Numaniyah. Aziziyah.

Aziziyah is about 40 miles southeast of Baghdad’s outskirts, on the banks of a bulbous C-curve of the sidewinding Tigris. I didn’t fight there, but Brian did. My guess is the ambush came from the palm grove; it’s where most ambushes originated that spring, because they offered cover and restricted the movement of tracked vehicles. He was on top of a Humvee leading the scout platoon, returning fire with a .50-cal machine gun when he was shot in the head. I’ve heard rumors that the last thing he said was “I FUCKING LOVE THIS SHIT!” I’ve believed it for so long that it may as well be true.

Baghdad fell a few days later. I learned about his death 10 days after that. When my friend Charlie told me the news, I was standing in a garbage dump outside Baghdad; we’d left the city because tanks presented an “aggressive posture” that ran counter to the new mission of nation-building. We were going home.

When I boarded the Navy ship that would bring me back to the States, I checked my email for the first time in five months. On Jan. 31, 2003, McP had sent a characteristically terse note.

Friends and Family,

We are leaving for Kuwait this evening. Thanks again for all the support. I’m confident that this will be over soon. God bless.

Brian

The subject line was one word: goodbye.

Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images

‘At what point do we do something about it?’

On the internet, I have watched a war of words, waged mostly among people who haven't fought for their country. One side, pained by a protest occurring during the national anthem, will say that our troops fight for the flag. The other side, typically, will point out that servicemen and women swear an oath to defend not the flag, but the Constitution.

I grew up on Air Force bases, and wherever we lived, the theater played “The Star-Spangled Banner” before every movie. My father, a pilot who served 22 years, had a habit of haranguing teens and young airmen for wearing hats or talking during the anthem. It became a running bit for our family: We’d identify disrespectful culprits in the crowd and watch my father’s blood boil until he marched over to correct them.

Later, as a student in ROTC, I spent three years on the color guard, skipping tailgates to present the colors at windswept Big Ten football games, where my drunken classmates watched from the stands.

I still stand at attention for the anthem, from the first bars until the final note ends. I don’t think I can be any other way. Like a Catholic making the sign of the cross, I stand for the anthem. It’s a rite tied to my identity, ingrained by family and belief.

Photo by Thearon W. Henderson/Getty Images

When Colin Kaepernick first sat during the anthem — before he consulted with the former Green Beret Nate Boyer and began kneeling — I took offense. How could I not? Kaepernick rejected a ritual that was part of my identity as an American. But it was also his First Amendment right to protest peacefully. I swore an oath to defend the Constitution, not my feelings.

As Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie advised in Americanah:

Hear what is being said. And remember that it’s not about you. American Blacks are not telling you that you are to blame. They are just telling you what it is. If you don’t understand, ask questions. [...] Sometimes people just want to feel heard. Here’s to possibilities of friendship and connection and understanding.

I had to say it to myself: It’s not about me. It’s not about the troops. It’s about Kaepernick’s experience as a black man in America. And he started the protest because he saw black men dying preventable deaths. “I remember thinking our posture was like a flag flown at half-mast to mark a tragedy,” wrote teammate Eric Reid in The New York Times.

If you read or listen to what black Americans have to say about police violence, chances are good that at some point you will see the names of the dead repeated. Philando Castile. Michael Brown. Tamir Rice. Terence Crutcher. Freddie Gray. “I couldn’t see another ‘hashtag Sandra Bland,’ ‘hashtag Tamir Rice,’ ‘hashtag Walter Scott,’ ‘hashtag Eric Garner,’” Kaepernick said to reporters in 2016. “The list goes on and on and on. At what point do we do something about it?”

Saying their names is the vigil the living keep.

I’ve only recently realized that veterans do the same thing. More than 70 years after his best friends died on Iwo Jima, Greenberg still says their names whenever he can: Barney Aloysius Cochrane. George Andrew Schultz.

And Brian McPhillips. He’s as dead as Barney and George, as dead as Tamir and Terence. The circumstances of their deaths were different, but details matter little to the dead. Their lives ended in their youth, and they stay that age while the survivors grow middle-aged and old, the memories fading but not the names of the dead they loved.

Saying their names is the vigil the living keep, a flame tended so the light they brought to the world isn’t extinguished entirely.

“Life is ... it’s people,” Abner tells me. “It’s touching people.” It’s the end of our conversation, and we’ve been talking about war and the anthem and Black Lives Matter.

“We’re doing it to us. What they’re doing to our people — how do we allow it?” I’m not sure who he means by they. The aphasia that robs him of specificity makes it unclear if he’s talking about his war or my war or police violence. Maybe it’s everything.

“I recognized, I’m a culprit. Which I didn’t recognize before. ‘We gotta win this war. The Nazis are there, we gotta win this war.’ But it became beyond that.

“It wasn’t winning this war — it’s never having any wars.”

[redscrud-blog]

The rabbit gets a little bill

It was a bright and clear night. The moon shone across the sea, paving a path to the port. On top of one of the many, now abandoned, warehouses stood a female figure. Her getup, consisting of a red tank-top, blue shorts, yellow running shoes and a tightly strapped green backpack, would suggest to any onlooker that she might just be a regular late night jogger with a strange preference for places to take a break. The only elements that broke that façade were the wraps covering her arms, small blades reflecting the moonlight in between the fabric, and a rabbit mask covering her head. Crouching down on the edge of a roof, she waited for a rendezvous of local small time criminals. She had been tracking them down for the past week until she could pin something on them. Tonight they would receive some sort of a weapon shipment from a far off eastern country and she was ready to stop them in their tracks.

Around two forty-five a black van drove to warehouse 35. Four men exited the vehicle and entered the building. The girl stood up, took a running start towards the neighboring warehouse, jumping from the edge of the roof. She landed safely on the other side, rolling at the first point of impact, and peeked down from one side. Among the many broken windows, there was one without any glass. She suspended herself from the roof just above it and let herself fall, latching onto the sill below. She pulled herself up and peeked inside.

There was a walkway. Rusty old chains hung from the ceiling, from the days when the warehouse saw greater use. At the bottom stood the four men from earlier with three new ones, most likely the dealers. The girl cautiously dropped onto the walkway and dashed towards a nearby ladder. Being careful not to make any sounds, she climbed down. Unfortunately, as she was about half way down, she felt the creaking. It had been many years since the ladder had seen use and under the weight of the crime-fighter, it broke off. She launched herself off the reeling contraption at the last second. Landing with a roll, she immediately sprung back on

her feet and assumed a battle stance. Behind her the ladder crashed and with it - half the walkway. The criminals stared on, baffled, not yet sure how to react.

“This is a vigilante arrest. I suggest you surrender now and turn yourself in peacefully, or else I will use force.”

One of the seven men took out a knife and lunged at her. She clenched her fists and jabbed him in the jaw, knocking him out as soon as he’d come. There was a moment of silence. She jolted towards the group.

The first one came at her with a haymaker from her left. She easily blocked him and returned an uppercut. The second one was running close behind and met a similar fate. One tried to grab a pipe from the ground and was kicked in the face. Two others reached into their jackets, but didn’t go unnoticed. The heroine shook her hands, razor blades falling from within the wrap, dangling off her fingers on thin, barely visible strings. She swung her hand towards the closer assailant, cutting him across the face. The second one was quicker. She flung her other hand, a blade intercepting the line between her and the gun. The gun fired. The bullet split in half. She jumped forward, passing effortlessly between the two pieces, and punched the gunman in the jaw. He fell on the ground. The three remaining criminals seemed like they’d frozen in shock. She just stared at them. In a brief second, they turned around and ran. She waved her hand and as they ran, their belts flew open, sliced in half, causing their owners to stumble over

their own dropping pants. The crime-fighter put her hands on her hips, reassuring herself of a job well done.

“Bravo!”

There was a slow clap. She turned towards one of the windows, ready to fight. A figure slowly glided though it, descending towards her. As the heroine saw the blue, one-piece suit, adorned with silver stripes and stars, she lowered her guard, assuming a more passive-aggressive stance.

“Solaris.”, she spoke up. “What are you doing here?”

A smile appeared beneath Solaris’s golden helmet.

“I was in the neighborhood and saw you sulking on a rooftop. I was about to call for you, when you jumped to this warehouse, flew through the window and stopped an arms deal.”

Solaris scanned the bodies on the floor.

“You did a really nice job, Hopper. Your entrance could have used a little bit of work, but you managed to salvage it. You said your lines, they responded with hostility and you took them out using non-lethal methods. To be sincere, I am impressed. However…”

Solaris scratched his chin.

“…I am pretty sure this isn’t your jurisdiction.”

Hopper crossed her arms.

“If I am correct, your territory ends at warehouse 34. This is 35. I am afraid you’ll have to be fined.”

Underneath her mask, Hopper scoffed.

“That’s bullshit.”

Solaris didn’t pay her any mind. He took out a pen and paper and started filling it out.

“I’ve been staking these guys out for the past 2 weeks. The meeting was supposed to take place in 34. What was I supposed to do?”

Solaris finished writing and handed her the paper.

“You could have called the police, another organization or someone who has jurisdiction here.”

Hopper stared him down. Solaris, with a smirk on his face, waved the paper. She violently grabbed it from his hand.

“Bureaucrat.” She murmured in a low tone.

“Now, now, bunny, professional obligations aside, I am a fan of yours. You have a grungier vibe than most others. Really works in your favour. However, if you want to get into an organization, you really should start working with the system better. This is, after all, your third fine for the month. That’s a very bad track record. Lowers your chances of joining an organization, you know.”

Hopper didn’t answer him. Solaris shrugged and slowly began ascending.

“In any case, I do hope to see you again soon. Maybe we could work on the same side next time. Ta-ta!”

He flew away through the window. Hopper looked at the fine. One hundred dollars. Must be paid in the town bureau for vigilante justice. She crumpled the piece of paper and put it in her pocket. She looked around. All the criminals seemed in

place. She took her cellphone out of the bag, selected her vigilante app and clicked the button. The police should be there in ten minutes to clean the place up. Hopper stretched a bit, looked around for a window and threw her blades towards a walkway, the strings tightening around the ramp. She pulled hard, trying to get herself up there, but a piece of it broke off and fell down. Hopper sighed. She untied her strings and exited through the main door.

#

Hopper sat on a bench in the Bureau for Vigilante Justice. A small, one story building, a quarter of a block wide, that used to be a post office before it shut down. On the inside, there were hallways after hallways stretching towards infinity, more than one thousand reported floors. Information signs hung on every wall and column, so as not to get lost. There had been reports of people making a wrong turn and disappearing for months on end. When the bureau was first being established, an architect by the name of Mark Dutch, a homo superioris with the uncanny ability to manipulate dimensions, was called in to shape the insides of the building. Mr. Dutch claimed the bureau as his masterpiece. No more than two months after its completion, Mark Dutch disappeared without a trace. Some say he got lost in his briefcase one afternoon and never found the right way home.

The interior of the building was old. There were renovations, but they didn’t hide the fact that it was built

around the beginning of the twentieth century. The main colour scheme was beige and brown. Granite floor tiles, with some unsightly cracks here and there. A few pillars, originally straight, now bent in such ways, they couldn’t be considered pillars anymore. On one of the walls there was bas-relief, once depicting a carrier dove, now – a figure of Lady Justice. Some of her fingers were missing and she sported a few cracks here and there, but still inspiring. The place was close to what you could see in modern day ex-soviet art-deco inspired interior design.

One of the many other things that had been weighed down by the passage of time were the seats. Hopper was unlucky enough to end up on a decrepit bench. The wood was soggy and very prone to cracks. She couldn’t sit comfortably under constant threat of splinters. She would’ve just stood up, but there was a high chance of the staff asking her to sit back down, since she would clog the work flow.

For the past 30 minutes she had been stuck between a giant human rat and a man well above his forties dressed as a clown. Probably because of the circumstances, it felt a lot longer. She considered that unnatural. One of her powers was time perception. She could perceive time as fast or as slow as she wanted. That was how she accomplished most of her acrobatic feats. Of course, this power came with a drawback. The more she slowed down time, the more painful everything became. Jumping, moving, even breathing. And if she sustained any

damage before using her ability, it would get amplified, so she mainly slowed it to a point where one second could be felt as three. It was bearable and it gave her a slight advantage during fights. The opposite worked for speeding time up. Pain was barely felt, but there was always a chance that she could speed up her perception too much and die of starvation and dehydration. But in small doses, it was therapeutic and avoided boredom. That is why this place felt so unnatural. She couldn’t manipulate her sense of time. She figured it was probably a byproduct of the warped dimensions of the building, but she liked to believe it was specifically designed to annoy her.

“Number 2631.” A voice called out from one of the hallways.

Hopper got up and walked in a straight line until she reached the registers. An elderly woman from behind a glass wall turned towards her with an apathetic look on her face.

“Please step forward.”

Hopper took a few steps and got her documents ready.

“Vigilante ID.”

Hopper handed her a small, white card. The woman adjusted her horned glasses.

“Your ID hasn’t expired yet, but you should check up on it soon.”

Hopper didn’t answer. The woman returned her card, and took a pen and a blue sheet of paper.

“Name?”

“Alison Holler.”

“Alias?”

“Hopper.”

“Vigilante occupation?”

“Solo vigilante.”

“Civilian occupation?”

“None.”

“Area of occupation?”

“Zone D, subdivision 20-24.”

“Small timer?”

Hopper didn’t answer. She adjusted her documents.

“Please sign the bottom line.”

The woman pushed the paper through the hole with a pen. Hopper signed.

“Please provide all reports of fought crime from the begging of the month.”

Hopper slid her reports. They contained information such as date, time, area, criminal information, reasons for suspicion, additional assistance and other details.

“Please wait a moment to scan and fax these.”

The woman made a few clicks on her computer, stood up with the documents in hand, and shuffled over to her scanner. She stacked the papers in a pile and took out the first one, sliding it into the outdated machine. A slow moving light emerged from under the press. The woman was actually a widely

known homo superioris amongst the vigilantes. Her power was to generate magnetic fields around her that could impede digital devices. She could supposedly manipulate the intensity and area of the field, but even at minimum output, it was always active. Some believed that was a reason why most of the work was done as slow, besides the outdated technology in use. Most questioned the reasoning of hiring a person who’s very being impeded their job. Humanitarians would answer that everyone deserves job and her inherent inadequacy shouldn’t be an issue. Hopper would answer that she was there to spite her.

Thirty minutes of scanning and faxing later, the woman took her seat and turned towards a spiritually exhausted Hopper.

“Do you have floppy disk copies of your reports?”

“Yes.”

Hopper pushed a bag of floppies through the whole. The woman took the bag and placed it beside her. She opened a safe, counted through four hundred dollars, placed them in an envelope and handed them. Hopper took the envelope and stuck it in the inner pocket of her jacket. Before she turned to walk away, she spoke up again.

“Where should I go to pay fines?”

The woman slowly lifted her gaze. She took her pen and a sticky note. She scribbled something down and passed it through the hole. Hopper took the note. It was a well detailed and intricate map from here to where she needed to go,

complete with instructions. The bureaucrat’s second power was to fit extremely detailed information into a minimum amount of space.

 The payment took about two minutes as a whole, which was surprising in itself considering the giant centipede which stood behind the desk. It couldn’t really talk and made a gurgling sound whenever it spoke, but it could understand Hopper and it gave her a cue card whenever it said something.

Hopper walked out of the building, wasting the better part of her day. Outside it started pouring. She sighed, opened up her backpack and took out a raincoat. She strode through the puddles. It was an awful day. Giving a quarter of your earnings because of a mistake was quite the sting to the ego. Especially painful was the fact that this was her first real hit. A serious crime. The only thing she had encountered before were petty thefts and an illegal vigilante, or rogue. There wasn’t really a fight. He complied and followed her to the police station. He was sentenced to a few months of community service, because of his clean record. It was sad really.  The closest thing to a rogue she has come to was a man trying to do something good, but not having the papers for it. In reality rogues weren’t really uncommon, but they were still uncommon enough. Most knew how to hide their tracks or joined organizations. You wouldn’t

really find a rogue soloing like you would a vigilante. Although even solo vigilantes were becoming a rare breed.

Hopper was actually trying to get into a vigilante organization, The Justice Brigade. A low tier group, that didn’t offer all that much, but it did offer a fixed salary and someone to do all the paperwork, which was good enough for her. She did try applying for it, but was turned down three times. They deemed her too inexperienced. And now with the fines, chances were looking even slimmer.

It was strange really. When she first started, she had high hopes. She envisioned herself busting down crime rings, being adored by the public and becoming a member of the high tier groups. Now, the only thing on her mind was how to get through the month and how to dry her shoes before her night patrol.  

“Excuse me, ma’am. Could I ask you a quick question?”

The voice came from behind her. Could someone be asking a woman for directions in the middle of a downpour? Hopper turned, fists raised. After seeing who it was, she lowered them, maintaining a frown.

“What do you want Solaris?”

Solaris pretended to blush.

“Oh, I’m flattered that you know me ma’am. I wanted to ask you, if you are interested in a business proposition on top of that building?”

Solaris pointed towards a nearby building, four stories high. Hopper crossed her hands.

“Can’t you ask me now?”

“No, ma’am”. Solaris shook his head. “Utmost secrecy must be kept.”

Hopper looked around. They were the only ones on the street. She pinched the bridge of her nose, gently massaging it.

“Is this really necessary?”

Solaris smirked.  

“Of course, ma’am.”

Hopper groaned and Solaris, pleased with himself, flew towards the rooftop. The girl went towards the alleyway of the building and took her rabbit mask out of her bag. It was a difficult job, but she put the mask on without lowering the hood of her raincoat. After cracking her knuckles and doing a bit of stretches she jumped and grabbed on to the wall by the bricks. Unfortunately, it was too slippery and she fell on her back side. She got up and jumped onto the fire-escape.

At the top Solaris was waiting for her, smug as ever.

“Was there any reason not to do this on the street?”

“You know the rules. What if someone had seen us and deduced our identities?”

“I walked out of the bureau without a mask on, I think we would have been fine.”

“Hmm…we can discuss your bad work ethics later,” Solaris answered, with a joking tone. “I have a job to do.”

“There was no one down there…” Hopper scoffed under her nose, but the young man didn’t pay her any attention.

“Now, Hopper, what do you know of the Gun Kata Death Cult?”

“Umm…they were small time criminals, right? Mixing kung fu and gunplay?”

“Correct. A small, criminal organization, mostly composited by homo superioris who have the potential of learning such a martial art. Very good.”

If she were anyone else, she would have thought that the last remark was meant to mock her. But she knew better and assumed the entire conversation had that goal.

“Now, last night, after our little meeting in the warehouse, I went on my nightly patrol. All was fine, until I heard gunfire coming from an abandoned building. When I got there, I found ten cult members dead. They were all sliced up and there was no sign of the killer.”

Hopper didn’t visibly react to the news, but the idea of ten gunwielding black belts being slaughtered without a trace spooked her a bit.

“As you’d guess, I went out searching for clues. I couldn’t find anything, except for witness. A young girl, around six years old. Do you know what she told me?”

Hopper remained silent. She didn’t like where this was going.

“She told me that she saw a bunny running on the rooftops with knives on ropes.”

There was a moment of silence.

“Come again?”

“A bunny with knives on ropes.”

Hopper didn’t know how to react. She was stunned.

“A-are you saying that I killed them?”

Solaris let out a chuckle, followed by a hearty laugh

“Oh, dear, no. You wouldn’t hurt a fly. Sure you have a few smudges on your record, but nothing that would make me think you were the culprit.”

“Then what?”

Solaris smiled.

“Don’t you see? You have a nemesis!”

“A nemesis?”

“That’s right!”

The man was visibly more excited than his companion. Even more so than would be considered normal.

“To be completely frank here, I am a bit jealous. You’ve barely been a year on the job and here you are. Copy cat rogues running around, inspired by your image. I know it’s not professional of me, but I must congratulate you. No matter how macabre the occasion is.”

Hopper didn’t really feel like being congratulated. Although the information was shocking and the story

surrounding it was morbid, she didn’t really feel anything special about it. Mostly because it was coming from him.

“So? What am I to do?”

Solaris’ cheerful expression was replaced with one of confusion.

“Why, you are supposed to catch your nemesis, of course.”

“It doesn’t really seem like an option. The rogue is in your territory.”

The man grabbed his chin.

“True…but I could sign you up as an assistant on the case. On paper, I’ll be leading the pursuit, but the word on the street would be that you caught the rogue on your own. After the job is done, I’ll even give you my part of the commission.”

“I don’t buy it. Why should I do this? Considering last night…”

“Now, now” Solaris raised a finger. “Last night you were in breach of the law. It was my duty to do what I did. Now, I’m offering you a chance. If a vigilante doesn’t catch their own nemesis, it’s looked down upon by the community. It could give you points next time you apply for the justice brigade”

Hopper looked at her feet. She did need the money. And more experience to put on her resume. Not to mention the rep. She looked at Solaris.

“You promise you won’t pull any stunts like you did last night?”

Solaris shook his head.

“No. As I said, I was only doing my job. You can’t fault me for your mistakes, can you?”

Hopper sighed. If she didn’t know any better, she’d say he was acting stupid. She knew better and she would say that he was trying to spite her.

It was around midnight. Hopper was crouching on the side of a building, surveilling the neighboring one – a decrepit, uninhabitable, five story building, paint torn off, revealing the brickwork. According to Solaris, the guns from the deal Hopper had stopped the other day were going to go to the cult. They would gather here to discuss where to buy their next shipment, so there was a chance the killer might strike again. When she asked him how he knew, he replied that he asked for the police report on the thugs. One of them squealed and shared everything he knew, including the most recent gathering site of the cult. That made Hopper feel very unprofessional. The only reason she knew of the deal was because the overheard two of the criminals talking about it in broad daylight. She wasn’t really a detective. She just wanted to do the right thing. At least, that’s what she used to want. Nowadays all she wanted was to pay her rent without much fuss. She admitted to herself that she might be way over her head. Gangs, murders. When she shared her concerns with Solaris before splitting up, he just said that she’d do fine.

#

Hopper had to wait about half an hour before a van stopped in front of the building. Three men exited the van and went inside. Her grip tightened. She would wait it out. If she heard something she would jump through one of the windows and subdue the killer. Solaris told her that he would fly by every ten minutes or so during his patrol to see if she needed any help. Everything was going to be alright. If she became part of The Justice Brigade, this would be standard procedure.

By now the men should have been on the top floor. So far nothing unusual. Then she heard gunshots. About four. And then there was silence. So quick? These were supposed to be marksmen. Hopper stood up, ran back and jumped through a window, glass flying in her wake.

She was greeted by a horrid scene. Two of the gang members lied on the ground in pools of blood, covered in lacerations. Hopper froze up. She looked around. At the other side of the room stood a figure, looking back at her. The figure was female. She held the last gang member by the collar of his shirt, other hand raised, holding a straight razor, which in turn was connected to a chain. She wore scruffy, oversized clothes, a rabbit’s head hastily drawn on her shirt with acrylic, her face was hidden behind a brown, cardboard mask, crudely cut to resemble a rabbit. Half of the left ear was snipped off. In place of a right eye, there was a big, blue X and for the left – a red swirl. A cartoonish snout grinned beneath them in red. The features were drawn on with crayons.

Her hair, a dark shade of yellow, was unkempt and glistened in the pale light from outside. Her knuckles were visibly deformed and her arms were covered in cuts and scars up to her elbows. Although the killer  was a fair distance away from Hopper, she could swear that she smelled vinegar from her direction.

Hopper tried to regain her senses. It didn’t help that the rogue didn’t move the entire time. She just stared at the heroine.

“This is a vigilante arrest. I suggest you surrender now and…” Hopper was cut short when the killer sliced the throat of the last cultist. She threw the body on the ground and started walking towards Hopper.

It happened so suddenly. The crime-fighter didn’t know how to react. It was her first time seeing something so gruesome.

By the time Hopper came to her senses, the rogue was right in front of her. She assumed a fighting stance, but the killer just walked by her, towards the window. The heroine turned. Her nemesis was about to run away. Without even considering the thought of a fight. She didn’t want to admit it, but it made her angry. She threw her hand towards her new nemesis, the blades wrapping themselves around one of her arms. Hopper pulled on the strings, trying to take down her target, but she barely flinched. Instead, her nemesis wrapped the strings even tighter and flung her across the room.

When Hopper hit the floor, she felt a sharp pain. Her shoulder was dislocated. Before she could lift her head, her foe was already in front of her. She kicked her in the face, breaking her nose. The heroine slammed into the wall. Her opponent picked her up by the collar, staring into her for a second, after which she threw her through a nearby window.

With risk of going into shock, Hopper slowed down time, not seeing another alternative. The still falling shards of glass above her almost froze completely. With that, the pain in her shoulder and nose intensified. Hopper scanned the area above her, noticing a curtain rail on the inside of the window. She sped up time, throwing the blades towards it. The strings wrapped themselves around the rail and her body hit the side of the building. Hopper looked up. On the window stood her opponent. She flicked her razor and cut through one of the strings. Hopper’s eyes widened. If she used her power again, there was a high chance of her blacking out. The second and third strings were cut at once. She was about to cut the final string, when she stopped at the last second, flicked the razor closed and disappeared inside.

The heroine took a deep breath. She was about to start planning how to get down, when she noticed that she was slowly descending. Her nemesis had barely sliced the final string, leaving it to break on its own. There wasn’t much time to act. Hopper summoned all her strength and lunged herself up the string, desperately attempting to climb with her one

functioning arm. With every try, the string thinned out more and more. On the fourth lunge, the string broke, but she caught the window frame. She pulled herself up. The room was empty, save for the two bodies.

Hopper got up, her left arm hanging lifelessly. She grabbed it and walked towards a wall. Only partially aware of how to proceed, she closed her eyes, took a deep breath and slammed her shoulder in the wall. It popped into place, signaled by her scream. She fell on the ground, breathing heavily. The heroine took off and opened her backpack, taking out a bottle of water, a few rolls of string and a small box of razor blades. She lifted up the edge of her mask to drink, then tied a new batch of blades to her fingers.

She was getting ready to leave when six men, all dressed in black, broke through the door. Too exhausted to speak, she raised a hand towards them, in a plea for them to wait. They wouldn’t have it.

“We are the Gun Kata Death Cult elite strike squad! For sins against our clan we sentence you to death!”

In a heartbeat, they were all armed with two pistols each. Hopper forgot to breathe.  She spread the blades in front of her and slowed down time. They fired. The hail of bullets was intercepted by the flurry of razors. After every shot, the cultist changed the angle of fire. What Hopper couldn’t slice, she dodged, albeit by a hair. After the first round ended, she

fell to her knees. In a split second they had already reloaded and took aim.

“Admirable resilience, but this is the end.”

The girl closed her eyes and hoped for a miracle. Just then, through a window from behind the heroine, a blinding light appeared. The next thing she knew, all six of the cultists were on the floor, shielding their eyes. Hopper turned around. By the window hovered Solaris, arms crossed.

“Tisk, tisk, tisk.”

He was looking at Hopper, typical smirk on his face. She had the feeling he was trying to spite her.

#

Somehow, it didn’t surprise Hopper that Solaris had an office. It was modern, yet typical. The midday sun barely shone through the half-closed blinds. The grey walls, which were most likely originally painted white, did not have any decorations, except for a clock above Solaris and a motivational poster with a kitten hanging from a rope and the words “hang in there” written beneath. Hopper sat on a rather uncomfortable chair in front of a desk. Sheets of paper were neatly stacked in columns, resting in one corner, with three pens arranged just under them. Right next to the outdated monitor was a bowl of candy, most likely to make Solaris seem more approachable. By the look of it, the candy was some knock-off cough drop brand, half melted in the packets. Solaris sat in a presidential chair, elbows on the desk, the

tips of his fingers touching, waiting for his computer to boot. The faint ambience of the computer fan filled the room, the clock giving it rhythm. Both vigilantes stared at each other. Hopper gripped her seat with discomfort, the chair squeaking a bit.

From time to time Solaris would tap his fingers. He was unphased by the silence or the tension it brought. He would shift his eyes towards the monitor every now and then, checking if the computer hadn’t frozen up. Hopper couldn’t take it. She closed her eyes and sped up time, enough so when she resumed as normal, the computer had just loaded. Solaris was aware of what his colleague had done, finding it completely distasteful and a tad bit insulting. Still, he was not one to judge. He turned towards the monitor, opening the rogue database files. He put his hands on the keyboard.

“Rogue’s alias?”

“Excuse me?”

Hopper wiped a string of drool hanging from the edge of her mouth. A side effect of speeding up time was entering docile, almost vegetable-like state.

Solaris calmly repeated:

“The rogue’s alias.”

“Oh...um, she didn’t have one.”

Solaris stared at the screen. He started typing.

“Doppelganger. Works just as well. Real name…blank. Appearance?”

“She was a bit taller than me, but hunched over. Deformed knuckles. Cuts on the arms. Red shirt, black pants. Rabbit mask. Oily, blonde hair…”

Solaris stopped typing. He shifted his eyes towards the heroine.

“You said she wore a mask.”

“Oh, it was a cardboard cutout”

“Ah! Alright”

Solaris continued typing.

“Any powers?”

“Strength and probably super speed. Those were all I saw.”

“Alright. Weapons?”

“She had a straight razor on a chain.”

Solaris giggled underneath his nose. Hopper didn’t find it funny. He turned to his colleague. He continued typing for about a minute more and turned.

“I’ll finish up the work later. Now, how do we stop this…“

He looked at the screen.

“…Doppelganger?”

Hopper shrank in her seat, away from his enthusiasm. How would they stop her? How would she stop her? Hopper spoke up.

“How did she…how did she decide to take up my image?”

Solaris scratched the back of his neck.

“Who’s to say? You aren’t a popular vigilante. She probably saw you one night at the edge of my territory.”

“What about the Gun Kata grudge?”

“Either something personal or a warped sense of justice. It’s not my job to know. My job is to fill in paperwork and

capture criminals. So? How are we going to capture this criminal?”

Both vigilantes trailed deep in thought. If she had super speed, she would need to stay on the ground to use it. Hopper figured it was a good start for a plan.

“By…keeping her off the ground?”

Solaris scratched his chin. Hopper continued.

“If we…I keep her somehow off the ground, she wouldn’t be able to use her powers all that much.”

“Yes…I see your point. How do you plan on doing that?”

“Maybe…find out where she would strike next, booby trap the area, use sneak attacks and…”

Solaris raised his hand.

“I like your enthusiasm, I really do, but how would you find that out?”

“She has a thing for the Gun Kata Death Cult. So maybe we can do it like night?”

“I’m afraid we can’t. The boys you helped me catch last night. They all talked. Gave away everything – leaders, hideouts, subordinates. The Cult is dead. Congratulations on the bust by the way. More points for your resume for the Justice Brigade.”

Hopper sighed. The good news didn’t do much to lift her spirits.

“So…there aren’t any active members or gathering sights?”

“I’m afraid not…sorry.”

“Does she know?”

A smirk started sneak it’s way on Solaris’ face. He turned towards his computer and started typing away.

“The Cult was going to hold a meeting in a week. The entire gang was going to be there. Do you think our girl would have gone?”

“For sure.”

“Right. So the meeting was going to be held in the industrial area, near the harbor. The abandoned factory.”

Solaris stretched out on his chair.

“Well. That just about does it. Go home, fill in your reports, make a plan and catch yourself a nemesis!”

He was about to get up, when Hopper interrupted him.

“Wait!”

He turned, startled.

“Do you think…do you think I am ready for this?”

He didn’t give it a moment’s thought.

“Sure you are.”

“I’m serious. Last night….last night was a disaster. I’m not sure if I’m up for the task.”

He sat back down.

“No one is really forcing you. You can just quit the job and I’ll have to catch the killer. Of course that would be a red mark for you, but I’m sure you could manage”

The heroine slumped on her chair.

“I haven’t faced such a serious threat before. I know the right thing to do is face her. That’s what heroes are supposed to do, but…”

Solaris cut her off.

“Listen. Hopper. I know you are scared, but you have to understand. We don’t do this because it’s the right thing. We do it because it’s our job.”

Solaris stood up and went for the door.

“You are still young, you’ll grow out of your idealism soon.”

Hopper took a deep breath. She didn’t know why she thought Solaris was going to reassure her. He was probably trying to spite her again. She took a piece of candy from the bowl, unwrapping it and unsticking it as much as she could from the melted syrup. Finally she gave up and put the candy in her mouth, intending to spit out the wrapper parts later.

#

    The meeting of the cult was supposed to take place at midnight. Hopper was crouching on the roof of building nearest to the factory, surveilling all possible entry points – the employee entry, the main gate for shipments, and most of the windows. The shipment gate, wasn’t a good entry point by any means and she stood on the only side where entering through the windows was a viable option. For the past week she had tried to think of a plan to contain her nemesis. All the windows were lined with her strings, creating a net for

Doppelganger if she tried going through them, and the door was booby trapped – when it was opened, a lead pipe, around shin-high, would spring out from the side, contusing her foe, after which a net would shoot out, capturing her. In retrospect, the plans seemed kind of silly and Doppelganger had proven herself capable of cutting through Hopper’s strings, but Hopper was sure that by the time her nemesis could react, she would jump in and incapacitate her. She had come five hours earlier to install her traps, and make sure that the Doppelganger wasn’t around, and sat on the building for the other three. She just hoped everything would go quickly and without any hindrances.

Hopper waited silently, reviewing all possibilities in her head, the hairs of her neck quickly turned around, instinctively activating her powers in the process, slowing down time. In front of her stood Doppelganger, unmoving and staring at Hopper. She held two straight razors, four more on the ground beside her, their chains leading from the handles to her back. Two ropes adorned each shoulder, a new addition to her look, apparently emerging from the same bag. Hopper assumed a fighting stance, but Doppelganger didn’t react. She probably wouldn’t attack unprovoked, so the heroine decided to reason with her, not lowering her stance.

“Listen! The Gun Kata Death Cult has been dissolved! There is no reason to fight! Please, turn yourself in peacefully and we can avoid any violence.”

Hopper hoped that would work, more for herself than for her foe. But Doppelganger didn’t react in any way. That unnerved her. It wasn’t normal. Then again, lately nothing was. Hopper decided to close the distance between them.

“Do you understand me? Should I take your lack of reaction as understanding?”

There was no response. Doppelganger adjusted her grip on the razors. Hopper prepared for an attack. None came. She came even closer.

“Lay down your weapons and I can turn you in. None resistance will be a benefit to you in the long run.”

Again, no response. She was either trying to bait Hopper in, or she was still processing this. Hopper believed the latter. The heroine, not letting her guard down, slowly reached towards the side of her backpack. She undid a pocket and produced a pair of handcuffs from it.

“I am going to put these on you. Do you understand?”

There was no response. Hopper moved in even closer. She was face to face with the killer. Hopper slowly moved the cuff towards Doppelganger’s arm. She didn’t break eye contact. The second the metal touched Doppelganger’s skin, she reacted. Before Hopper could do anything about it, her foe had slashed her across the face. Hopper jumped back. There was no real damage, apart from a tear in the mask. As soon as she had landed, her nemesis was already in front of her. A flurry of punches assaulted the heroine, not giving her any time to

react. Even with her power, Doppelganger moved too quickly for her to defend herself.

After a power punch to her face, Doppelganger had broken through Hopper’s guard, delivering a kick to her chest. It was powerful enough to throw Hopper off the roof. Before she even realized what had happened, she felt a cold, tightening sensation around her wrist and her trajectory had changed. The nemesis had caught her with her chains and reeled her back in, with the intent of continuing her barrage. Hopper boosted her power. Her movement gradually slowed down, with the pain in her chest and face increasing. Just before it became too much to bear, Hopper assessed the situation as much as she could, and adjusted herself accordingly. She sped up time and landed a double kick to her foe’s chest, pushing herself back and weakening the grip on the chains enough for her to escape.

The moment she landed, she turned around and dashed towards the factory. She felt a razor slightly scraping her calf.  She unleashed her blades and upon impact with the window and sliced through the wire trap. Unfortunately, she overshot the walkway. She slowed down time and spun around, throwing her blades at the chain and hook dangling from the ceiling. The strings wrapped themselves tightly around the hook and she swung herself onto one of the many machines that were either too outdated or unmovable to be sold when the factory closed down. She jumped off the machine and landed safely on the ground.

The factory had been used to produce train cars back in the day. This room in particular was the assembly line. Rusted sheets were stacked around the room, with a few half completed cars positioned in front of the main gate. Hopper heard a sound behind her and didn’t have much time to react. She boosted her power. Her perception of time became even slower, so much so that even turning her had seemed like a ten minute task.

    The pain from her chest was rapidly spreading across her body. She knew that she couldn’t last long like this, but she didn’t have much of a choice. When she turned around she saw Doppelganger running towards her, at almost a normal walking speed. There was not much else to do and she decided to enact her final plan. She ducked and extended one of her legs out, slowly turning. Apparently, Doppelganger didn’t have any different form of perception than an average person would, so she didn’t see Hopper’s plan in motion. Just before both of their legs collided Hopper sped up time beyond her normal perception for just a second. There was no pain from the impact. She immediately slowed down time and turned towards her opponent’s flying body, wrapping her legs with her strings and trying to spin her around. Doppelganger sliced the strings off and before she could change her flight path, hit the wall headfirst. She dropped to the ground with a thud. There was no movement.

Hopper clasped her mouth. The thought of her killing someone had never occurred to her. And now here it was. She started breathing heavily. This wasn’t her fault. It was an accident. It was her nemesis’ fault. She wasn’t to blame. She kept repeating these words to herself over and over.

A whistle of surprise filled the room. Solaris flew in through one of the broken windows, holding a small grocery bag.

“Wow, bunny. Didn’t know you had it in you.”

“Solaris! It’s not what you think! She did it to herself! She cut my strings and she flew off and it wasn’t my fault and and…”

Her voice started to break as she rambled on. Solaris didn’t pay her any attention. She walked towards the body of Doppelganger and put his finger on her neck.

“She’s alive.”

A wave of relief engulfed Hopper’s body. She fell on her knees.

“Congratulations! You caught your nemesis!”

Hopper chuckled under her breath.

“Yeah…I guess I did.”

“This calls for a celebration!”

Solaris took out a box of chocolates from the bag.

Hopper looked at him, smiling beneath her mask.

“Wait. You knew I was going to capture her, didn’t you?”

Solaris shrugged. He took out his phone, clicking the vigilante app.

“As I said, I am a fan.  And I was quite certain of your abilities. Tripping her was a bit unsporting, but I suppose all is fair.”

Hopper collapsed on the ground, arms stretched apart.

“I really did it, didn’t I? I’m gonna be in the justice brigade…”

Solaris popped a chocolate in his mouth.

“Now, now, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. You earned points to get into the brigade. There’s still more to do.”

“Yeah…”

It didn’t bother her. There was nothing stopping her now. She was at the top of the world.

“Oh, before I forget.”

Solaris took out a stack of papers from the grocery bag and handed them to Hopper.

“What’s this?”

“Documentation. Papers allowing you to work in my territory, papers dismissing you from my territory, my reports of the crimes, an agreement, signed by a notary, allowing you to give in these documents on my behalf and receive my payment for it. You just need to fill some information of your person on the places I left blank and you should fill out your paperwork.”

He popped another chocolate in his mouth.

“You know, if I didn’t know you any better, I’d say you were trying to spite me.”

He scoffed. She laughed and extended her hands towards the box of chocolates.

#

“Please step forward.”

Hopper did as she was told.

“Are you Alison Holler, alias Hopper, solo vigilante with an area of occupation Zone D, subdivision 20-24?”

“I am.”

“Are you aware that you have been operating with an expired vigilante license, effectively deeming you a rogue and therefore a criminal?”

“I was informed this afternoon by the clerks at the bureau.”

The judge looked at her. At least she thought he was looking at her, considering where his glasses pointed towards. Besides his wig, his entire face was covered in darkness, more liquid like than visual.

“You were handing over the files on a case you worked on, is that correct?”

“It is.”

“The clerks informed you of the situation and when you left the building you were confronted by the police?”

“I was.”

“Miss Holler, operating as a rogue is a serious offense, which demands severe punishment.”

The judge adjusted his glasses. Hopper swallowed.

“However, a certain vigilante did vouch for you and managed to convince me that extreme measures needn’t be taken.”

The judge lifted up a sheet of paper.

“On the other hand, you have received four fines this month alone. From what I can see, you have difficulties understanding the system, and you have been having them ever since you began your job. Some action must be taken, Miss Holler. I sentence you to two months of prison and twenty thousand hours of community service. ”

“But I…”

The judge slammed his gavel. An officer grabbed her by the wrist and escorted her out.

#

She sat in her prison cell – a small space with one bed and a toilet. On the walls were etched the days former prisoners had spent here. Solaris promised to visit her tomorrow. She took a deep breath, and barely stopped herself from coughing. There was mold growing in the corners. She closed her eyes and sped up time.

[clubofinfo]

Expert: In the United States today, the Declaration of Independence hangs on schoolroom walls, but foreign policy follows Machiavelli. — Howard Zinn, 1922-2010 When the US, UK and their fellow destroyers of nations embarked in October last year on erasing Iraq’s ancient Mosul in order to save it, did they reflect on the enormity of the cost to humanity and history of their actions now and that of their genocidal, illegal invasion and fourteen year occupation – and counting? (Not forgetting the bombing of the country from 1991-2003.) There was a quasi pull-out in 2009, but a reported 16,000 mercenaries remained in the US Embassy compound. Mosul, situated on the Tigris River, was first mentioned in name by the Greek writer Xenophon in 401 BC, although the area was inhabited from probably the 25th century BC. As Fallujah, near destroyed by the US in 2004 was known as City of Mosques, Mosul has been known as City of Churches. The population however, has been richly diverse: Arabs, Assyrians, Armenians, Turkmens, Kurds, Yazidis, Shabakis, Mandeans, Kawliya, Circassians. Sunni Islam has been the largest religion, but Salafism, Christianity, Shia Islam, Sufism, Yezidism, Shabakism, Yarsan and Mandeanism all coexisted in and around this ancient, hauntingly beautiful city. Mosul, as so much of Iraq, has suffered unimaginably under ISIS – but it is hard to spot the difference from how Iraq suffered under the US and UK (and are again.) The US bombed the city during the 2003 invasion, murdered Saddam Hussein’s two sons and fifteen year old grandson there in July 2003 – no Judge or jury, just US/ISIS style summary executions – as across the nation. Robert Fisk wrote of US atrocities in Iraq as related to him by an American veteran. There is a US Army “Warrior creed” which: … allows no end to any conflict (but) total destruction of the ‘enemy.’ It allows no defeat… and does not allow one ever to stop fighting (lending itself to the idea of the ‘long war.’) It says nothing about following orders, it says nothing about obeying laws or showing restraint. It says nothing about dishonourable actions… Fisk writes (September, 2006): “From Abu Ghraib to Guantanamo to Bagram, to the battlefields of Iraq and to the ‘black’ prisons of the CIA, humiliation and beatings, rape, anal rape and murder have now become so commonplace that each new outrage is creeping into the inside pages of our newspapers.” Note “inside pages”, as so “commonplace.” “Looser Rules of Engagement” In April this year, it was revealed that the US Air Force on a bomb-fest over Mosul – and indeed wider Iraq and Syria – were operating under “looser rules of engagement.” Moreover: Lt Gen McFarland, now orders air strikes that are expected to kill up to ten civilians without prior approval from U.S. Central Command … And this is “liberation” from ISIS? (Emphasis added.) Presumably the family of eight reported killed by a US bomb in late October, including three children, one just two years old, were one of the General’s “expected” kills. Air strikes in Iraq and Syria have:   … destroyed 6,000 buildings with over 40,000 bombs and missiles have inevitably killed much higher numbers of civilians. Apocalyptic horror. Of course, US and UK presence in air and on the ground in Syria are entirely illegal. So the people of Mosul and Syria’s cities, towns and villages are hostage to ISIS/Daesh and other head chopping factions fighting with US weaponry. US forces on the ground are “advising” the Iraqi army – which has absorbed militias every bit as terrorizing as ISIS. US forces themselves have, of course, a gruesome history of terror and gathering body parts as “souvenirs.” In World War 11 it was skulls, ears, teeth; in Vietnam penises. In Afghanistan it was fingers “and other body parts”, and in Iraq it was reportedly fingers, with dead bodies being tied to US tanks in Fallujah and as Ross Caputi wrote:1: Some of my closest friends mutilated dead bodies, looted from the pockets of dead resistance fighters, destroyed homes, and killed civilians. Destruction – a “Partial” List And ponder further on the US “liberation” of Mosul. As Nicholas J. Davis has written earlier this year, Award-winning Iraqi environmental scientist, Mosul-born Souad Al-Azzawi2  compiled a partial list of air strikes on the city: * Many government buildings have been destroyed. U.S. officials told USA Today, attacks are often conducted at night to minimize civilian casualties, but security guards and civilians in neighboring buildings have of course been killed. * Telephone exchanges have been systematically bombed and destroyed. * Two large dairies were bombed, killing about one hundred civilians and wounding two more. * Multiple daytime air strikes on Mosul University on March 19th and 20th killed ninety two civilians and wounded one hundred and thirty five, mostly faculty, staff, families and students. Targets included the main administration building, classroom buildings, a women’s dormitory and a faculty apartment building. (Note: Mosul University was one of the largest educational and research centres in the Middle East. Near unbelievably, the murderous ISIS primitives are thought to have destroyed over 8,000 books and 100,000 manuscripts – but the US destroyed near the entire faculty.) * 50 civilians were killed and 100 wounded by air strikes on two apartment buildings, Al Hadbaa and Al Khadraa. * A mother and four children were killed in an air strike on a house in the Hay al Dhubat district of East Mosul on April 20th, next door to a house used by Islamic State that was undamaged. * Twenty two civilians were killed in air strikes on houses in front of Mosul Medical College. * Twenty civilians were killed and seventy wounded by air strikes on the Sunni Waqif building and nearby houses and shops. * U.S. air strikes on April 24th damaged the Rashidiya water treatment plant in West Mosul and the Yarmouk power station in East Mosul. * Banks and a bottling plant were bombed, more dead and maimed. * An air strike on a fuel depot in an industrial area ignited an inferno with 150 casualties on 18th April. * Bombs have damaged a food warehouse, power stations and sub-stations in West Mosul, and flour mills, a pharmaceutical factory, auto repair shops and other workshops across Mosul. More US destruction and arguably war crimes are listed here. General Mattis’s “Annihilation Tactics” To further assess what a US “freed” Mosul might look like, here is a brief summary of what Fallujah’s 2004 “freedom” cost: The 1st Marine Division fired a total of 5,685 high-explosive 155mm artillery rounds during the battle. The 3rd Marine Air Wing (aviation assets only) expended 318 ‘precision’ bombs, 391 rockets and missiles, and 93,000 machine gun and cannon rounds. When the Iraqi army re-took the remains of the city from ISIS/ISIL, as ever advised by the US, The Telegraph headline said it all: “Fallujah in ruins after Iraqi forces retake ‘90%’ of the city from ISIL. On Sunday 28th May US Secretary of Defence James Mattis stated that the U.S. military is to use “annihilation tactics” to defeat ISIS fighters in Mosul telling CBS’s “Face the Nation” that “civilian casualties are a fact of life in this sort of situation.” Mattis knows a bit about “annihilation tactics”.  He headed Camp Pendleton’s Ist Marine Division in Iraq which were integral to the massacres in Fallujah in April and November 2004. Speaking to a group of soldiers about how to behave in Iraq during a 2003 speech he ordered: Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet. Fallujah’s mass graves are silent witness to the diligent obedience to Mattis’s orders. “Actually, it’s a lot of fun to fight … It’s fun to shoot some people. I’ll be right upfront with you …”, he told a conference in San Diego, in 2005. When the US is not shooting and bombing Mosul’s families in the cursed name of liberation, it is displacing them. Figures to 19th May show in excess of 526,000 men, women and children fleeing their homes and all they own. In the month to 2nd December 2016 over one thousand civilians were killed. On May 26th one hundred and five civilians were killed. On 30th May in the Az Zanjili district of the city, at least two hundred people were reportedly killed in a bombing lasting several hours and dozens of homes “completely flattened.” (Al Araby, 30th May.) The figures in human cost, hour by hour, day after day, would surely fill volumes. On 27th May the US had dropped leaflets telling people to leave the Old City, Mosul’s ancient heart, a city referred to as Al Fayha (the Paradise) and the “Pearl of the North.” US forces, however, care as little as ISIS for life, limb or the Middle East’s haunting Pearls and Paradises. Mosul Will Be “Destroyed Hoshyar Zebari, Iraq’s former Deputy Prime Minister, Finance Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs, has stated that Mosul, formerly home to two million souls, will be completely “destroyed” and “uninhabitable” by the time the terrorists have been driven out.3 Another ancient jewel destroyed in the name of “freedom.”. Behind the figures are people living the unimaginable. As this was being finished, a message came from a Mosul-born friend, who writes: The American Coalition are lying … Civilians in Mosul are getting killed by the bombing and Iraqi and coalition ground missiles. They keep bombing each area for one or two weeks killing hundred of civilians and when the area is empty from any snipers … Two of my mother’s cousins houses in Thawrah area were bombed three days ago. Fourteen family members died. Four women, eight children the oldest is ten, and two men. People reclaimed seven bodies and other seven still under rubble. They couldn’t save any survivor under the rubble because the bombings are still going on intensively on the area. Those are my relatives and I know very well that they have nothing to do with IS. This is the New US/(Prime Minister) Abadi strategy … In Hay al Refaiae, last week my other cousins moved into five houses with their families with also an eighty seven year old old mother to avoid the American Coalition bombing.  All five houses were destroyed – with the whole surrounding area. Three of them were injured. “Why Do I Get So Angry?” Another letter was sent to a friend by his father, also used with permission and gratitude: People ask me: Why do I get so angry? Below is a scene today from Mosul, my home town. It is a scene repeated a thousand times over, all around Mosul. Yesterday the U.S. Air Force undertook 158 bombing missions over the city of Mosul. Every bridge across the Tigris in Mosul is now destroyed, the Sugar Factory has been bombed, a 5-Story medical centre has been demolished, the entire airport has become rubble, much of the city’s infra structure including water and electricity have ceased to function, the University of Mosul buildings have been levelled, thousands of homes have been rendered unlivable, and of course no one is counting the civilian dead and the refugees. And all for what? To destroy the Islamic State? Is this the same so-called Islamic State whose factions have been supported, financed, and trained by the CIA over the past five years in order to bring about regime change in Syria? Since 2003, the United States has bombed Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Somalia, Sudan, Afghanistan … and presently it has its eye focused on Iran. And yet, we have the gall and temerity to talk about the savagery and barbarism of the Mongolian hordes of eight centuries ago. I really do wonder why people keep asking me: Why do I get so angry? Thinking the Unthinkable In the title I query the outcome of this criminal decimation and cite Hiroshima. Parts of Iraq already have higher cancer and birth defect statistics than Hiroshima and Nagasaki, linked to the depleted uranium weapons used by the US and UK from 1991 to now. Donald Trump has demonstrated his casual fecklessness with weapons of mass destruction by dropping the largest “conventional” weapon ever used on Afghanistan and fifty nine radioactive and chemically toxic Tomahawk Cruise missiles on Syria, neither country had been proved of doing anything but simply existing. On the Presidential campaign trail, Mark Halperin of Bloomberg asked  Donald Trump, whether he would use nuclear weapons against ISIS. “Well, I’m never going to rule anything out”, replied Trump. When pushed by Chris Matthews of MSNBC on this issue, Trump said: “Somebody hits us within ISIS – you wouldn’t fight back with a nuke?” Iraq is near destroyed on the Blair and Bush lies that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. Trump does and it seems, is prepared to think the unthinkable. Will the UN, the relevant world bodies, the “international community” wake up, before it is too late, before a swathe of Iraq and Syria’s people are vapourised, with twenty seven centuries of history? * Guardian, 13th March 2012 * Ph.D., Colorado School of Mines * Independent, 15 February 2017. http://clubof.info/