#the perils of new office supplies i guess

[ask-eric-the-disposable-demon]

I think a bunny just got eaten by a beanbag chair...

[downwiththeficness]

In the Bond-Chapter 23 (Final Chapter)

Summary: Lilah often wished she’d never said yes to working with the Gecko brothers—usually while dodging gunfire. At no time was she regretting that decision more than when she’s hanging upside down from the ceiling, staring down a group of hungry culebras and one (1) extremely powerful sun god.

Word Count: ~7,950

Warnings: Violence, blood, the use of explosives, a bad movie reference, death (kind of)

A/N: This is an AU of my Story In the Blood, which can be read here. Basically, this fic explores what would have happened if Lilah had met up with Geckos before she met Brasa.

Taglist: @symbiont13  

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They were once again sitting around the conference table looking at a map. In this instance, the squabbling had, thankfully, been kept at a minimum. With a common enemy between them, all the anger and mistrust of each other had been redirected outwardly. There was no sense in fighting with one another when a greater peril threatened them all.

Lilah had marked several points all along an open space in the desert—possible hideouts Benny had used in the past. Javier was currently working with a small, trusted crew to root out where he might be through other means. While waiting for new information, they developed about five plans, all centered around obliterating the ever loving hell out of him.

She’d given up on steering the plan into less violent territory, settling for making things as quick and as efficient as possible. Lilah wanted no more incidents of near-death for the people in this room, herself included. If that meant others had to die, then so be it.

Seth leaned back in his chair, “We won’t be able to get any further on this until we know where he’s holed up. I say we get some food.”

They’d been at it for hours, and though Lilah wasn’t particularly hungry, she was glad for the prospect of a break.

“Pizza?” Seth asked, turning to the only other person in the room not on a liquid diet.

Lilah shrugged, “Long as its not from that place across from the grocery.”

“Oh, come on,” Seth groused, “Its not that bad.”

“The health inspection code is a ‘C’,” she countered, “They found rats.”

“Not in the pizza.”

She leveled a stern look at him, “They found them in the fryers.”

Seth rolled his eyes, but relented, “Alright. I’ll pick another place.”

Lilah leaned on her elbows with an indulgent expression as Seth took out a phone and pulled up the website to order. The phone wavering in her vision, the reminder of how she’d been captured, made her flinch. She covered it by running her hand over the map, but not before Brasa felt it.

Sitting to her right, he had been texting frequently with Javier, relaying the updates as he got them. Sensing her unease, his thumbs paused over the screen as he mentally reached out to her.

Lilah rolled her shoulders, taking the comfort he offered. She had a mission to accomplish. She could cry about being kidnapped later. Belatedly, Lilah realized that the ‘deal with later’ pile was pretty damn big and she would definitely have to take some time to actually deal with it.

Richie, who had been checking in on Kate, tossed his phone onto the table, “Much as I hate to ask, I haven’t eaten since yesterday.”

Brasa gave a curt nod, “I’ll have something brought to us.”

“Its appreciated,” Richie replied in a rare instance of sincere, professional gratitude.

She took in Richie’s appearance. He looked...tired. As a man of nearly unbounded energy, to see the glint in his eye diminished was unsettling.

“I’m sorry about Jackknife’s,” she said, catching his attention.

He lifted a shoulder in affected nonchalance, “Its good. We’ll rebuild.”

That boded well. Lilah half expected to hear that he was moving on to another high risk, high yield project. That he was sticking with the place hinted at Kate’s grounding presence.

“Did the bar top survive?”

Richie smiled, “Yeah. Its a bit singed.”

“That’ll just give it character.”

“Fair point,” he conceded, pushing his glasses further up his nose, “We got interviews with contractors in a few weeks.”

She made a soft sound of praise, “Look at you, doing interviews, being official.”

His eyes dropped, demure, “We figured we should actually follow the policies you wrote.”

“That’s probably a good idea.”

Richie’s attention was momentarily taken by a staff asking him about his blood type preferences, and Lilah found herself staring at the map. The ground cover was too wide, she didn’t have enough supplies. There were too many unknowns for her to be comfortable with moving forward. It frustrated her to no end that she couldn’t just make a decision and be done with it—execute.

The door to the conference room opened and Javier strolled in. Dressed in all white, a gleaming silver cane tapping along beside him, he was smiling wide. Cat and canary.

“I have brought some guests.”

Two staff were each dragging along a single, fighting person. Lilah didn’t recognize them, but she caught their fangs flashing as they grunted in pain. Clothing bloodstained and ripped, they looked like they’d been in a serious fight—which she guessed they had.

Brasa stood, gloved hand sliding along the wood of the table as he circled it, “Do they have the information we need.”

Javier’s smile held, “I believe they do.”

“Good. Bring them to my office.”

“As you wish.”

Brasa watched them go, then turned to the group, “I will need to question them. You may remain here for the time being. Rest. Eat. I will return when I have Benny’s location.”

Lilah cut in, “I’m going with you.”

He fixed her with a hard look, “This is not an easy thing to do. I will very likely need to hurt them.”

She blinked, “I’m sorry, who in this room just got kidnapped? I think I’m owed a little time to take out some aggression.”

From his perch on the tabletop, Richie drawled, “She’s got a point.”

Brasa glared at Richie, earning himself an amused laugh. Then, he gave a single, curt nod, and reached out for her. Lilah took his hand and followed him out of the conference room and to his public office. The two chairs that normally sat in front of his desk had been pulled out so that they faced the walkway dissecting the room. In each sat a battered culebra—one with his head hanging down, the other glaring defiantly at no one in particular.

Lilah let Brasa lead her to them. His step slowed several paces away and he squeezed her hand before letting go. Lilah stopped where he left her, folding her hands in front of her body as she took in the scene.

Javier was standing off to the side, the staff having left prior to their arrival. His expression was relaxed, but she sensed a hardness underneath it. They’d done this before. Possibly hundreds of times over their unimaginably long lives. She drew in a breath to steady herself.

Brasa pushed his hands into his pockets as he regarded them, “What are your names?”

“Up yours,” came from the glaring one.

Without hesitation, and seemingly without thought, Brasa kicked out. His foot landed on the knee of ‘up yours’, the bone crunching audibly. Lilah felt her hands clench at the sound, but she managed to keep the wince from her face. ‘Up yours’ screamed in pain, his chin tilted up to the ceiling. He let out another, softer sound, then visibly calmed himself. He’d been prepped for this.

Stepping forward, Lilah edged around Brasa, one hand brushing his arm. She leaned down and caught the eye of ‘up yours’, “This will go much easier for you if you answer our questions.”

His glare returned, more fierce than before, “We’re prepared to die for this.”

Lilah nodded, two fingers touching his temple, “We’ll grant you that. Death is much better than what he,” she jerked her head towards Brasa, “is going to do to you if you refuse to cooperate.”

“Luis,” came a small voice to her right.

Lilah glanced over at him, “Luis. Is that you?”

He nodded.

“And this one?”

A hesitation, then, “Rafe.”

“Rafe,” Lilah echoed, turning her attention forward once again. “Where is Benny?”

Rafe pulled away from her touch, “Nowhere. Everywhere.”

She very nearly rolled her eyes. They knew that Benny had created a kind of weird mystique around himself and his mission. They also knew that he had cast them as the villains in the story. The technique made a lot of sense—it was still annoying as fuck.

A scoff from Brasa, followed by, “Spare us your delusions.”

Lilah straightened to standing, “Benny failed you over and over. Why continue to protect him?”

Luis cast her a look that was edging on pathetic, “He saved us.”

“From what?”

“From you,” Rafe answered, something more than derision in his voice. Hatred, perhaps.

Brasa moved. Slow. Relaxed. “Why would you need to be saved from us?”

Another answer from Rafe, “You are Xibalban. We know what you do to our kind.”

There it was. They’d been told enough to keep them scared—little truths that were coated in a thin, thin lie. Easy to swallow. Easy to accept. Easy to break.

“It is true that my people once committed inconceivable atrocities against yours,” Brasa allowed with a congenial dip of his head, “But that is not what I intend, nor is it what I will allow. Not any longer.”

Rafe sneered, “Liar.”

“Sometimes,” Brasa admitted, “When the moment calls for it. But, this is not that moment. I am not lying.”

Luis spoke, his lips trembling, “We don’t know that. You’ve been hunting us down. Killing us.”

Again, Brasa acknowledged the truth for what it was, “Only those who put us all at risk.”

Lilah could see how this was going to play out, could already hear the back and forth that would take time that they just didn’t have. Benny could strike again at any time, possibly with more firepower. Every second they spent debating right and wrong, good and bad, was a second that could cost the life of someone she cared about. Lilah made a decision.

Reaching into the pocket of Brasa’s slacks, she pulled out his knife, flipping the blade open. With deliberate slowness, she showed each of them the weapon. Then, she started talking.

“I’m going to give you an opportunity. The offer is time limited, and it will be given to only one of you.  Tell us where Benny is, and you live. First come, first serve.”

The room was quiet, save for the near constant snarls coming from Rafe. Lilah waited. Knife in hand, she simply let the quiet hold, let the uncomfortable stillness of silence make them squirm. If they knew Benny’s whereabouts, they’d tell her, and soon.

Luis broke first, “He’s in the tunnels, about ten miles north of where he...found you.”

The last two words were halting, as if he knew he shouldn’t say it, but couldn’t quite help himself. Next to her, Brasa growled low and long. She could feel the heat of his anger build both physically and within the confines of the bond.

“We have a winner,” she rasped, affected by how viscerally Brasa was emoting. Knowing that the longer they sat there, the risk of blood spilling would rise exponentially, Lilah turned from Brasa, “Javier, if you would, take Luis to be questioned further.”

“As you wish, Lady Lilah.”

Brasa held up a hand, “I want details, Javier. I want to know what Benny is planning.”

With a flourish, Javier hauled Luis up, tossing him towards the door, “I will take care of this.”

Luis landed hard on his knees, grunting in pain. But, he got up and let Javier lead him, limping, out of the room. The door closed with a kind of hard finality that eased Lilah’s anxiety. She felt Brasa’s confidence in Javier’s ability to get more of what they needed from Luis.

That left Rafe.

Lilah’s fingers gripped the knife, her jaw set, “Were you there when Benny took me?”

She didn’t recognize him, but she’d been hit pretty hard and had been too preoccupied with playing possum to memorize the faces of the people hauling her away. Beside her, Brasa removed his gloves.

Rafe shook his head.

“You’re sure?”

Another shake.

“I believe you.”

He visibly relaxed.

“But,” she continued, “I did say the offer would only be given to one of you.”

Rafe, knowing that she wasn’t going to relent, let out a sound of rage, rising unsteadily from the chair, hands outstretched towards her. He was stopped by Brasa’s hand around his throat. There was an almost too soft to hear pop as his larynx was crushed, the sound of his anger cut off with a wheeze.

Lilah closed the knife and slipped it back into Brasa’s pocket. Then, deliberately, she took a step back and crossed her arms. She’d said that she wanted vengeance, but exacting it with her own hands felt somehow unnecessary. All the fire that had been there five minutes before dissipated, leaving her feeling deflated.

Brasa had no such issues. His fingers curled deeper into Rafe’s throat, pushing beneath his skin. Blood welled up, dripping down the back of his hand to the floor. Lilah didn’t have to look at his eyes to know that they were red with rage, the glow of his power burning ever brighter beneath his skin. Flame burst from Rafe’s eyes, smoke wafting from his pores. He seared from the inside out, his body cracking into dust from the top down.

Brasa’s arm dropped, and he wiped the dust from his hands, his attention on the pile at his feet, “I should get a broom.”

Lilah looked at the spread of particles, trying hard not to think about the fact that it had once been a person, “We might have more important things to do right now.”

His brows quirked, “You might be right.”

***

Lilah stood at her station, well away from where the action would go down. The night was deep and dark, the new moon casting no light to guide their way. She looked over her equipment, one hand brushing over the black metal box sitting innocently to her right. Her laptop was gently whirring, all comms connected. At her thigh, her pistol rested in its holster, her knife strapped to her arm. Lilah hoped she wouldn’t have to use them.

According to Javier, Luis had talked freely, answered question after question. All of this was relayed to Lilah in detail until she felt like she had a good grasp on Benny’s plan. Brasa had sent Javier to set up the final blow, refusing to allow Lilah to do it, herself, as was her preference. She was too tired to argue, never having fully rested since the bomb had gone off two days before.

It was hard to think about it, the breakneck pace she’d been going at over that time. Lilah couldn’t even nail down if she’d slept properly, couldn’t remember eating or showering. And so, when Brasa had firmly pulled her into their room, she hadn’t resisted.

Assured that her friends were being taken care of, she’d let Brasa strip her down and run her a bath, let him wash her with soothing motions, until the water cooled And then, they’d tumbled naked into bed, the full darkness of the room letting her fall into a deep sleep.

She wished that she could say that she felt fully rested. While Lilah had slept for a long time, she had awoken groggy. Her body ached with something that wasn’t quite injury. She sleep walked through getting ready for the day, reluctantly eating a meal next to Seth, who sat drinking coffee while he cleaned his gun.

It wasn’t until she began to set up for the job that Lilah’s brain kicked in. This was it. They could be done with this awful mess today. If they succeeded, Lilah vowed to herself that she was going to do something fun—maybe rob a museum.

As she was contemplating this, heat built at her back. She looked up to find Brasa and Javier standing not far away. Brasa was wearing the familiar uniform of leather, sunglasses perched on his nose. Next to him, Javier was very much out of uniform. Instead of a sharply tailored suit, her wore thick canvas pants and a long sleeved shirt. He’d forgone his usual cane, a literal sword strapped to his hip.

“Are we set up?” She asked Javier.

With a deferential nod, he answered, “We are.”

“And you made sure to ground the connection—its just that it could go early if you—.”

Brasa laid a gentle hand on her shoulder, “He was very thorough. This will work.”

Lilah’s jaw shut with an audible click. She pursed her lips, the effort to hold back further questions not inconsequential. She busied her hands and her mind with activating the comms.

“McNamara online,” she said evenly.

It took a few seconds to get a response, but eventually she heard the click of the mic turning on.

“Richie Gecko online.”

“Oh, shut up,” Seth groused, “We’re in place.”

“You’re the one who said we should take this seriously.”

“Yeah, but this isn’t the fucking movies.”

Lilah rolled her eyes, “Alright. Hang tight while we get a lock on him.”

Tapping her mouse pad, Lilah opened the tracking app, “You think he’ll go for it?”

Javier shifted on his feet, “I believe he will. He’s already proven that he’ll sacrifice anyone and anything to protect his own skin.”

She stared at the little dots on the screen, “And Luis?”

“Running back to daddy,” he intoned, derision tainting his voice.

“You’re sure.”

He sighed, “I’ve done this a thousand times over. I know fear. I made him very, very scared before I let him go.”

The intensity with which he spoke, the unsaid threat in his tone, was enough to make Lilah drop the subject. She turned her attention to the screen, taking note of her location and the pair of dots indicating Seth and Richie. At the bottom left corner was a renegade dot that was steadily moving towards them. She watched it shift across the screen, pixels lighting up along the path.

It stopped at a fair distance from where the other two were congregated. Lilah held her breath as she waited for it to either stay where it was or start moving again. It stayed.

“He’s back,” Lilah murmured.

A flash of headlights appeared, lighting her station. She turned around in her seat, squinting at the car coming towards them.

“Is that one of ours?”

Brasa touched her shoulder, “It is. I should have warned you. Richie insisted.”

The car pulled up, dust swirling around the tires as it came to a stop. The engine and lights cut off, the driver’s side door opened. A dark head popped up, hair pulled into a high pony tail. Kate was dressed for practicality—jeans, t shirt, jacket, boots, gun. She closed the door, and walked confidently towards them.

Lilah waved at her, “Welcome to the party.”

She smiled wryly, “Richie said I couldn’t go with him, so I thought I would go with you.”

To be honest, Lilah was grateful for the extra support. It was often the case that she was alone, running the logistics, while others were executing her plan. Today, when the stakes were high, she found that she didn’t like the thought of being by herself.

Brasa took her hand, saying lowly, “Keep the bond open.”

She nodded, “Absolutely.”

“Good,” he leaned down and kissed her temple.

With a nod to Kate, Brasa turned from them. Javier stood a moment longer, his eyes absorbing Kate in detail. Then, he stepped back and followed his lord into the darkness.

Kate sighed with an odd kind of relief, “Well, what’s the plan?”

Lilah lifted a brow, “Richie didn’t tell you?”

“He said that he would be, quote, ‘fucking shit up’, but that’s as far as I got.”

That made sense. As if he’d gotten a power up in a video game, Richie had gotten some of his energy back as they neared the start of the job. As he’d loaded up the car, he’d been fairly vibrating with energy, a wide smile wrapped around a cigarette. Seth, on the other hand, had been stone cold sober—both literally and figuratively. The seriousness of his expression, the cant of his shoulders, told her that he was determined to get this done.

“Okay,” Lilah said, sliding into her chair, “This is Seth and Richie. And this,” she pointed to the errant dot, “is Luis. We’re fairly certain that he is heading back to Benny to tell him that we know his plan.”

Kate peered at the screen, “What was his plan?”

“To nuke the entire cave system, causing a sinkhole that spans across our entire territory.”

Eyes narrowing, Kate said, “That doesn’t make sense.”

Lilah cut her a glance, “What about it doesn’t make sense?”

“Benny’s schtick is all about how Brasa is destroying their way of life, right? What does taking down the cave system do.”

Lilah hesitated, her mind running through it, “I...think its because Brasa said they built it.”

“They did what?”

Hand waving to the land in front of them, “They built it—the Xibalbans. Its this huge maze of tunnels that are carved deep into the rock. I’ve only seen some of it, but its huge and complex and had to have taken forever to accomplish.” She paused, eyes scanning the middle distance, “I think that he made the caves a physical representation of their rule.  I mean, right?”

Kate cocked her head to the side, “That could be right. Benny could also be batshit crazy.”

“Fair point.”

“Well, we can pretty much guarantee that he’s going to change his plan, knowing that we know.”

Lilah shook her head, “If you’re right and he is batshit, then we don’t know that. Crazy isn’t always predictable.”

“That is a fair point.”

“Which,” Lilah added, tapping out a few commands, “means that we need to get a little more inside information.”

She cued up the sound, activating the comm Javier had placed carefully into Luis’ pocket on the way out. For a few minutes, she had to screw around with the settings, trying to get the best sound quality.

We should keep to the plan—Benny. Make their land unlivable, give them no place to retreat. Then, we pick them off like the parasites they are.

What about the Xibalban? Came a voice she didn’t recognize.

They’ll protect their bondmate first. When they realize the danger, they’ll come running.

Lilah reflexively looked around, trying to discern if they were going to be attacked from the deep black of the landscape around them.

“Could they know where we are?”

“No,” Lilah answered, feeling her shoulders drop, “No, they couldn’t.”

“Then…?” Kate prompted, her head shaking from side to side in confusion. “Oh no… get your phone.’

“What? Why?”

“They’re gonna finish off the bars,” Kate’s voice cracked, “We have to get the staff out of there.”

With a long line of curses falling from her lips, Lilah sent off a barrage of texts to the floor manager, telling them to get themselves and everyone else out of the building. As she did that, the conversation coming from the ear piece continued.

We should cut and run—Naya.

We run now, and we’ll keep running. We have to hit them where it will hurt.

Didn’t we already do that? Benny, you burned down his lair, you bombed both their bars—every time you try to hit them, they just keep...coming for us.

That was not untrue, and Lilah hated that she agreed with Naya. Her mouth turned down as she listened, half her attention on the phone in her hands as she waited for confirmation that the staff had been taken to safety.

They aren’t invincible, Naya.

Neither are you. A sigh. Maybe we should leave. Maybe we should just leave them here and go find a place for ourselves.

And let them win? There was that voice she didn’t recognize.

If we don’t fight now, we’re gonna end up like Luis, over there.

A heavy silence landed in the middle of the conversation, and Lilah could only guess that Luis had been killed after he’d told Benny that he’d talked.

We just found each other, Benny. I don’t want to lose you so soon.

You won’t. We’ll handle this, and then we can start our lives together.

The sincerity of his tone, the way Lilah could hear every emotion steeping into his words...It helped her to understand how so many people could believe him when he told them that they could succeed.

Brasa’s voice sounded from over the bond, We’re in the caves. Where should we go?

Lilah relayed Benny’s location, telling him to be careful. She avoided details about the secondary plan, about how Benny had wanted to distract him. It wasn’t necessary. She’d taken care of it, and would fill him in later.

“They’re headed for Benny. If he wiggles out of it again, Seth and Richie will herd him to the back up plan.”

“What is the back up plan?”

“We got incoming!”

Lilah tapped the keyboard, “Seth, what’s going on?”

“Got a group of ‘em heading towards us. Richie and I will take care of it.”

“Yeah, nothing we can’t handle.”

Lilah nodded, even though they couldn’t see her, “Be safe. Don’t do anything stupid. If it gets too hairy, cut and run.”

There was a pause, then, from Seth, “Duly noted, boss.”

Unable to listen to the gunfire she knew was coming, Lilah cut the line. Next to her, Kate checked her phone, tapping on the screen a few times.

“What’s left of Jackknife’s is empty. The staff have gone to ground.”

“Good, good.”

Lilah’s phone had been silent, no response from the manager. She hoped that meant they were taking care of business and hadn’t been killed in the second wave. Her stomach rolled with regret that she hadn’t thought he’d attack there again, that she may have inadvertently put both her staff and the remaining injured culebras in danger.

We knew you’d be here—Benny.

Apparently, Brasa and Javier had arrived. She found herself leaning into the computer as she listened.

This needs to stop, Brasa’s voice was deceptively soft. She could feel how he was going to stop things, how much it took to say what came next, The two of you can go. We just want him.

Not a chance.

I can’t leave him.

This was said simultaneously, but Lilah could pick apart the variation in tone. The unknown man spitting the words out, Naya’s voice soft and weak and desperate. She resisted feeling sorry for either of them.

We will take him by force, Javier pronounced, and she could hear some rustling, then, We don’t want you, but we will go through you.

More rustling, I’m not afraid to die. And, if I get to take you out with me, that’s a bonus.

And then there was a bang that preceded the comm cutting off entirely. Lilah stared at the screen, one finger tapping on the keyboard to try to bring the sound back. No use. It was fried. Closing her eyes, Lilah reached across the bond to find that Brasa far away, further than he’d been since the beginning of all this.

She couldn’t tell if he was hurt, or if he was putting distance between them so that he could concentrate on doing what needed to be done, so that he could shield her from it.

“How fast is your car?”

Kate smiled, “Pretty damn.”

“Let’s go.”

It wasn’t until they were speeding away that Kate actually asked where they were going, “I’m literally hauling ass through the dark, here.”

Lilah pulled up her phone, opening the tracking app for the comms. She had the last location of Brasa, the little dot shining from somewhere below the ground. And then there were the two dots signifying the brothers. They were a little further South than they had been, but they were moving.

She opened the line, “Guys, you there?”

A click, “Yeah, we’re here. Kind of busy, though.”

Then, Seth cut in, “These fuckers just keep coming.”

Lilah swallowed down her rising nerves, “We’ve lost contact with Brasa and Javier. We’re gonna check it out.”

A few shots fired, the sound of it making Lilah wince. Seth’s voice followed, rough with exertion, “That’s a bad idea. He can handle himself.”

“I think,” Lilah croaked, “I think they had the same idea we did.”

There were more shots, intermittently cut through with unintelligible yelling. Lilah tried not to think about what was going on, knowing that her mind was far more creative than was typical of reality. Instead, she focused on directing Kate while she waited for a response that she might not get.

“Ah, fuck!”

“What happened?”

“Got clipped in the side,” Seth ground out, “Its not deep. I’m good.”

He wasn’t talking to her. She could tell. He was reassuring his brother.

“Quit getting hit,” Richie demanded, “We got people to kill.”

“Yes, Richie, that’s so helpful.”

Knowing that she wasn’t going to get them to focus, and the attempt might result in another injury, Lilah turned down the volume and pointed to the left of the car, “That’s about where they were.”

Kate pulled to a stop, shutting the car off, “What do you want to do?”

“I want to find him, and I want to ring his neck for leaving me in the dark.”

“Alright.”

Pull her gun from its holster, Lilah exited the car, using the headlights to peer around, “I don’t see anything.”

Kate had followed her example, a nine millimeter pointed towards the ground in front of her, “I don’t either.”

“They must still be in the caves, or—,” Lilah cut herself off as she spotted a plume of dust settling not too far away.

Kate followed her gaze, her mouth thin as she concentrated, “You think…?”

“Yeah,” Lilah breathed, “We need to be careful. The ground looks unstable.”

And indeed it did. Fissures cut through the rock below, the surface shattered in some places. Lilah eased forward, stepping back quickly when her foot sunk deep.

“Okay, what do we do?” Kate asked, taking a few steps back her eyes flicking back and forth.

“I don’t know.”

In the distance, something blew up. Another. And another. The sound came from all around them. Lilah could feel vibrations in her feet, in her chest, her hair standing on end.

“The fuck?”

Kate grabbed her arm, “The plan—they planned to blow the caves.”

Lilah stared at her, her mind slowly working to put the pieces together.

“He wasn’t going to hit the bars,” Kate said, her eyes shining with intensity, “He was going to bring us here. He knew you’d feel the hit to Brasa, knew you’d come here.”

Lilah looked down. Another bomb went off. There was no telling how many more there were, or when the ground beneath them would crumble. Angry and afraid, she reached out, slamming through the bond as it stretched thin.

I’m here. I’m fine. Javier is fine. We are near your post.

As relieved as she was to hear it, she cut through his reassurances, I already came to you. I followed the comm. Kate and I are standing on the caves.

She sensed his fear, sensed that he’d turned and was running back towards her, I’m coming.

No, no, that’s what he wants. You need to head towards Seth and Richie. They’re the next stop. Kate and I will get out of this.

Kate was already moving to the car, ushering Lilah along. Inside, she slammed the transmission into drive and they hauled ass away.

“We need to get to Seth and Richie,” Lilah said, pulling out her phone.

As she expected, their dots were moving towards the rendezvous points. Unexpectedly, the comm they’d planted on Luis was also moving. It had reconnected to the tracking system, and was flying in a twisting pattern towards the Geckos.

Lilah glared at it, flinching as a bomb went off a little too close for comfort. Kate was driving fast, the car eating up road as the engine roared. If it had been anyone else at the wheel, Lilah might have worried for her safety. As it was, Kate was a notoriously skilled getaway driver, having honed the talent over many jobs.  

She hesitated, her finger hovering over the connection button on the app. Her hunch could be wrong.

Mouth curling, Lilah connected to the comm, “You still alive?”

There was rustling along the line, a bit of feedback, then, “I am alive and well.”

“Wish I could say that I’m glad to hear it, Benny.”

He chuckled, the sound coming out forced, “Good thing I don’t give a fuck about your happiness.”

“I’ve noticed.”

“I’m guessing that you can see where I’m heading.”

“I can.”

“Good,” he bit out, “Then you’ll know when I’ve taken care of your friends.”

“You’re not going to make it that far, Benny.”

“We’ll see.”

The comm disconnected from his side. Lilah sighed and shut down the app. She pushed her phone into the pocket of her sweatshirt and fiddled with the edge of one of her sleeves.

“We almost there?”

Lilah nodded. Whatever she might have answered was cut off as a bomb went off too close to the car, the ground exploding outwards. Rocks shattered the windows on the driver’s side, the car swerving as Kate tried to keep control. A second bomb went off a moment later, the back side of the car lifting about ten feet. As it slammed back down, Lilah could hear the axle crack, knew instinctively that they had to get out, and fast.

“Out! Out!” Lilah cried as she threw off her seat belt.

Disoriented, Lilah stumbled as she got out of the car, looking over the body to see Kate slamming the door closed and rounding the hood.

“You alright?”

Lilah nodded, “I’m good. The car’s fucked, though.”

As if on cue, a bomb went off maybe a hundred yards away, and the ground shifted. Lilah felt it in a way that she couldn’t describe, an intangible feeling that scared her more than she’d ever been scared before. In between one second and the next, the ground sunk down, caving in on itself. The hole grew bigger, yawning ever wider as it worked to swallow them whole.

“Run!”

Lilah had never, never made her feet move so fast. The air whipped at her as each step slammed into the ground. The roaring in her ears was only tempered by the sound of her own breathing. A glance over her shoulder saw the car rear up before falling down into the depths, cutting off the light. Gritting her teeth, she dug into her pocket, her stride slowing as she keyed up the flashlight on her phone.

The path before them was illuminated, much good that it did them. On either side of them, the ground trembled. They weren’t going fast enough. They were going to fall.

Brasa…

He heard her, but his answer was overpowered by the way the ground fell out from under her. Lilah’s arm was caught by Kate, who dragged her to the side.

“Over there, the rock formation. That’s the safest bet.”

Not in a place to argue, Lilah followed Kate’s lead, pushing through the burn and strain of her muscles. As they neared, a tiny flicker of hope swelled, urging her to just keep moving. Lilah obeyed the feeling, arms pumping, breath punching in and out.

Another huge chunk of ground swelled up and dropped, the rumbling sound of crunching rock following. She veered, moving with Kate towards the only goal in sight.

Scrambling up, Lilah climbed as quickly as she could, digging her feet into the stone and scraping her palms. Behind her, in front of her, to her left and right, the earth roiled. She could hear more of the cave system crumble in on itself, taking whoever might be inside with it.

Near the top, with Kate huffing at her side, Lilah turned and watched the disaster unfold. It was a sight she would never forget. The whole world, as far as she could see it, rocked up and down, sinking and rising, turning over almost completely.

“He meant for us to be in that,” Kate said, the barest tremble in her voice.

“He did.”

“Fuck this guy.”

“Yeah,” Lilah said, when she could find her voice again. “Fuck this guy.”

Kate closed her eyes, and Lilah didn’t even have to guess at what she was doing. She drew in a breath to follow suit.

I’m okay. We got out.

Let me through.

Have you found Seth and Richie?

Let me through.

Tell me. Did you find them.

I...did.

And?

Seth’s hurt. We can’t stop the bleeding.

Horrified, Lilah opened her eyes, catching a similar expression on Kate’s face. She made a decision.

“Tell Richie to let you through.”

Not waiting for an answer, Lilah reached out to the bond, got a good grip, and pulled. The world tipped over, and Lilah landed hard on her knee, dry heaving.

“You could have just asked,” Brasa griped from not far away. Then, “Are you alright?”

She nodded, swallowing.  As she looked up, Lilah caught Kate landing next to Richie, who was already bending down to help her up. Next to Richie was an ashen Seth. He was leaning against their car, blood soaking clean through almost the entirely of the front of his button down. His suit jacket was crumbled a few feet away, along with his gun holsters. He looked like he was going to try to stand, took a single step, and crumpled down in a heap.

“You look like shit.”

Seth started to laugh, the sound cut off by a groan of pain, “Fuck you, too.”

Ambling over to him, Lilah sat on her heels, “We need to get you to a hospital.”

He shook his head, “I’m good here. Could use a drink, though.”

“Don’t need to thin your blood any more than it already is,” Lilah shot back, “You’re hurt. This isn’t just a flesh wound.”

“Benny got in a good shot, I’ll give him that.”

Lips sneering, Lilah said, “We’ll get him back for this. We still have an ace up our sleeve.”

Seth sucked his teeth, blood coating the enamel, “You need to be getting to that ace.”

“Not until I know you’re going to make it.”

He was already shaking his head, “This isn’t something you come back from.”

Seth lifted the hand that had been staunching the blood, a spurt shooting out with every beat of his heart until he covered it again.

Lilah to a moment to think, “You can. You can come back from this. Richie can help you.”

She knew the moment that he understood what she was saying. She also knew that he was going to refuse.

“I’m not having this asshole,” he pointed to his brother, “Hold it over me for eternity, thank you very much. I’ve had enough of that already.”

“Are you seriously arguing about this while you’re dying?”

Seth glared at her, though the effect was somewhat diminished by the fact that he was struggling to focus.

Lilah laid a hand over his, worried by the cool skin beneath her fingers, “Then, let me do it.” Surprised by her own words, she glanced up at Brasa, “I can do it, right?”

His mouth parted, closed, parted again, and then he nodded, “Yes. Your blood is my blood, and blood is the conduit.”

Turning her attention back to Seth, Lilah lifted her brows in question, “It’ll be better if its me, right?”

He was quiet for a long time, so long that Lilah began to feel the hope that had sparked while the earth trembled beneath her feet begin to fade. And then he nodded.

Hand digging into her sweatshirt, Lilah pulled out her knife. She rolled it into her other hand. And then, before she could question it, she dug the blade in. Carefully, Lilah dripped the steady stream into Seth’s mouth.

He took a deep gulp, then tried to pull away. Lilah cradled the back of his head, holding him to the wound, her eyes lifting once more to her bondmate.

“How much?”

Brasa’s eyes were fixed where Seth’s mouth met her skin, “A bit more.”

Lilah held her position for a minute or two more, focused enough on her task that she didn’t hear the conversation going on around her. Then, when she thought it might be enough, she pulled away. Seth, already weak, couldn’t keep his head up. His eyes were rolled back, forehead clammy.

“How long does it take?”

This time, Richie answered, “It depends, but not long. I’ll stay with him. You guys go after Benny.”

Kate moved to stand next to Richie, “I’ll stay with him, too. He’ll need someone here who won’t rib him for ‘coming to the dark side’.”

The last little bit of that sentence was said with heavy sarcasm and a pair of finger quotes.

Lilah sheathed her knife and stood, “You’ll let me know that he’s okay.”

With half a smile, Richie tapped the ear piece, “I’ll give you live updates.”

“Thanks.”

Brasa moved to her side, holding up the little metal box from her station, “I thought you might need this.”

Lilah took it gratefully, “I do. Thank you.” She rose up on her tip toes and kissed him lightly, “Let’s go kill this shithead.”

After settling Seth as comfortably as possible, Lilah took the keys to the car from Seth’s coat and hopped into the driver’s side. Brasa’s body dropped into the passenger’s side, Javier nimbly climbing into the back.

She rolled down the window, pointing at Richie, “Real time updates.”

He gave her a little salute and shooed her away, his focus turning to his brother.

It surprised Lilah how quickly they arrived at the rendezvous point, though it was nowhere near where they’d found Seth and Richie. Over the horizon, the sky was beginning to grow pink with the rising of the sun. She pulled to a stop a good distance away from where she knew Benny would be.

If all had gone to plan, they would have all been sitting here, watching this. Lilah comforted herself with the knowledge that they were at least unhurt, mostly. Seth would get better, would be healed before she got back.

Opening the door, Lilah got out, closing it behind her, the black box tucked beneath her arm. She didn’t bother looking for Brasa and Javier to follow, already moving around the huge boulder she’d parked behind. Pulling out her phone, she checked the dot representing Benny. He was right where she wanted him to be.

Below, the rock face sheered off, giving her the best view of the helipad just across a flowing river. Lilah breathed in the cool morning air, wind blowing gently.

Brasa leaned against the rock to her right, glasses reflecting the world below, “I can do it, if you want.”

Lilah looked at him.

“You don’t have to do it, if you don’t want to.”

She caught the glimmer of Javier as he stood at a respectable distance, felt the subtle change in light as the sun continued to rise. The night seemed far away already. The anxiety. The fear. The relief. It all felt as if it were a dream. And yet, here she stood, at the precipice of committing the final act in their plan. She felt no hesitation. She felt no fear. Lilah wasn’t quite sure she could feel much of anything.

“I got it,” she said finally.

And she did—have it.

Looking down, Lilah opened the box, her thumb flicking each of the toggles upwards until red turned green. In the distance, she heard the blades of the helicopter begin the turn. She looked down. Two figures ran for the craft.

“Is that him?” She asked Brasa, knowing that his eyes were infinitely better than hers.

He craned his neck, looking down his nose, “Yes.”

Without thinking, she tapped the comm, “You still alive?”

From across the distance, Benny laughed, “I am. Tell me, is Seth?”

She sneered, “He is.”

“Shame,” Benny replied, unrepentant. Then, with a light, conversational tone, “Hey, McNamara, looks like we’ll be seeing each other again sometimes.”

They wouldn’t.

“Hey, Benny,” she shot back, “looks like you’re on the wrong side of the river.”

Lilah waited a moment more, watching as the two figures climbed inside.

She pressed the button.

The explosion was small—or, perhaps it was only small because she’d seen so many up close not an hour before. From around the helipad, the explosives went off. In a succession of fifteen or so, they obliterated the ground beneath, until it began to crumble in on itself. And then, just for good measure, the helicopter, itself, detonated. Lilah watched until the whole thing fell into the hole the first blast had created, then closed the box and looked to Brasa.

“I want to go home.”

And that’s what they did. They found Seth, Richie, and Kate where they’d left them. Stuffing everyone into the car, they went back to the bar. Lilah was not ashamed to be relieved that the place was still standing. In their absence, the elevator had been fixed. It opened to workers still making repairs, a fine smattering of dust on every surface.

Tired, and half awake, the group filed into the conference room. Seth was laid out on the tabletop. As was his way, Javier was already arranging for food, liquor, and blood to be brought to them. As Lilah moved to sit, Brasa pulled her away from the chair she’d pulled out. With quiet care, he gathered her into his lap, holding her around the waist.

She wasn’t surprised to see Richie doing the same with Kate, though he was watching his brother very closely.

“When will he wake up?” she asked.

“Any minute,” Richie answered, his voice even and sure.

“How do you know?”

“Because Javier is bringing a bottle of shitty bourbon and you know he can’t resist.”

She laughed, some of the feeling coming back to her. Resting against Brasa, she watched as Seth laid on the table, unmoving.  He’d been asleep for so long that she was doubting her decision. Sensing her unease, Brasa ran a hand up her back. Up and down. Calming.

Her shoulders didn’t move from where she’d had them bunched up by her ears until Seth drew that first, ragged breath. The relief coursed through her, tears dotting her cheeks. Sniffing, she wiped them away, resting an elbow on the table as leaned forward.

Richie eased Kate to the side, rising. He took a few steps around the table, lifting a hip and sitting not far from Seth’s head.

“Welcome back, brother.”

“Fuck. You.”

Richie laughed, “Glad to see you’re going to still be cranky when you wake up.”

“I died, you asshole.”

“I know. I was there.”

Seth tried to sit up, dropping heavily back down, “Fuck.”

The door to the conference room swung open, Javier pulling a cart in behind him.

Richie smiled, “Breakfast is here.” Then, softer, “You need to feed, Seth.”

Lilah though he would fight, thought he would grumble and pout until the hunger took over. And yet, when Richie held the bag out to him, Seth took it. With ease that could only come from watching someone do it over and over, he tore into the plastic, and drank it down.

Standing hesitantly, Lilah crossed into his field of vision. He drew back from the bag, breathing hard, game face on.

“Hey.”

He swallowed hard, “Hey.”

“You feel ok?”

One shoulder lifted, “For having nearly died, I feel pretty good.”

“Cool.” Then, “You want to steal a Renoir with me later?”

[microcos-pod]

Micro-Cosmos S1E7 Transcript: Miraculously Misplaced

(“Hello world. This is Chronicling Log One, of Doctor Felix Augustine Couvillion.” CONTENT WARNINGS: yelling, peril, brief claustrophobia, mentions of unreality, paranoia, and the fear of going insane.  Transcript begins below break.)

[THEME MUSIC PLAYS]

ANNOUNCER Futuristic Trail Mix Productions presents Micro-Cosmos: A Science Fiction Podcast.

[THEME MUSIC FADES OUT]

*** [sfx: external storm ambiance echoing through the cave, button press]

FELIX Um... hello world. This...This is Chronicling Log One, of Doctor Felix Augustine Couvillion. I am the science officer on duty with Omnitarian Establishment Crew, erm... zero three... no, we're um...

Zero-one-three-seven-F. Yes. It says so right here.

You'll have to forgive me. Ordinarily, when I make these recordings, they're for my own notes, or for my scientific peers. I am not used to simply... documenting the goings-on, especially... my goings-on... when confined to a cave.

According to Athena, this is for a chronicling protocol called a Code Drag. It refers to, if memory serves, a distress situation without a contingency that, at present, makes mission objectives impossible to complete. That is to say, we have been "dragged" off course. There is no contingency plan for a cinderburst. Cal says they're too rare to even warrant such a thing, nor is there enough research to determine how one could occur here. If these storms supposed to be characteristic of desert terrain, however, I would say Ophiuchus is hardly a suitable candidate. Not that I can research such a claim when I have no signal to reach any external databases that could be of help. No, that would be too easy.

Instead of that, what I do is I sit inside of a cave, talking to myself, and try to avoid going... slightly mad. If I wasn't there already, of course. I wonder how Athena manages it.

For the sake of my friend, however, I am sucking it up and beginning with these entries. I've been procrastinating for long enough, so, I will see to it that I make this log faithful to its purpose, and as honest as I can manage. I'll start with a caution, though. This cave is dull, even considering what you would expect from a cave, namely: not much. For that reason, I'm afraid I cannot guarantee you anything riveting, my dear listener. Consider yourself to be warned.

So, I hear you ask me: What have I, Doctor Felix Couvillion, been up to, now that myself and my friends have spent about... oh, a day and a half inside a damp, cavernous lair of darkness? You ask me, 'Felix, what are the Tales from the Tunnels? The Stories from the Stones? The Accounts of'... a, a, um... a cave. The cave, which I'm sure I will have memorised every vein of by the time daylight decides to reappear.

In short, I've been working. Making note of the vegetation in here, and how it might help us. I've found a new variant of fruit-bearing vine, actually. Edible. Similar to a terran gooseberry. It will make for a decent snack, once my trail mix finally runs out. A sad day, that will be. Somehow I don't find this discovery as exciting as I should. The Commander, she tries hard to keep our morale afloat, but... you know. It hasn't been long, and somehow, I already feel as though we are... contained. Stuck in some version of a time capsule, and... preserved until the next moment we are meant for is to resume.

[Felix sighs.]

FELIX (CONT'D) There's no wildlife in here, as of yet. No water either. That makes sense, on paper. The fact of the matter is that carbon-based animal life needs water. Including us. In a worst case scenario, our current water supply wouldn't last us. So, I either solve this problem, or we all slowly die of dehydration, sucking the juice out of vine berries as a last ditch attempt to survive. Yeesh. Not a pretty picture, hm?

Which is why I will make my third trek to scout a potable water source this afternoon. If I'm able to find room in my busy schedule Oh! In between my rounds, though, I have found something to pass the time-He stops again. This is... what a chronicling log is for, yes? Cataloguing however our time is spent inside an unavoidable disaster?

Sure it is. Anyways. I have... wait for it... I have rediscovered my love for card tricks! And I can still manage to do them, too. It's like it never left me, in a way. Like riding a bike for the mind. Or, as Morgan once put it, riding a bike for nerds. Here, I'll show you. ...You can’t see me. Dammit. Well, let's try it like this, then. Were you here, dear listener, you would shuffle the deck. You would pick a card, only in your mind. And then, you'd give the deck back to me, and after a series of convoluted detours through what seems like a magical process, the card would end up in your pocket, a place it certainly shouldn't be. Ta da! Okay, okay, a magician shouldn't reveal his tricks, I know. But I can't contain myself, so I'll give you a tidbit. I forced a card on you, at the start. You thought it was your choice. It wasn't. It was, likely, the Ace of Dishes. Good card. I'm fond of it. It's an interesting thing, that trick. According to the logical part of your brain, the card should be in the deck, with the rest of its friends. It’s family, if you will. Your eyes told you it should be there, and so of course, you're expecting it to be there. Or were you? That card, from the second you or I chose it, when you saw it, and we convinced each other that it was special, or different, the, hm... well, the zeitgeist of the situation told you that by the end of the trick... that card wasn't going to be in it's rightful place. It wasn't going to be like all the others. It was going to be... miraculously misplaced. In reality, the misdirection relies on both expectations. It needs the voice of reason, and the voice of the little child inside your brain that really really really wants magic to be real, just so it can stir a whit of joy. In my experience, though, most things in life that are misplaced from where they belong, it's... not a good situation. Take our example. One looks down at the flowers for a moment, giving the storm just enough time to sneak up and tap him on the shoulder, and... Abracadabra. Misdirected... misplaced from mission objectives. This kind of thing... does not bring much joy, does it? That's my insight, anyways. And that's about as much as I can fill a Chronicling Log with, for now. I'm going to check up with the others. Um, Doctor Felix Augustine Couvillion, ending Log One.

[sfx: button click]

***

ATHENA ... That's a dog?

MILES Yeah. It's supposed to be! Like... bark?

ALEX Sorry, I... honestly thought it was supposed to be a sock puppet.

MILES Sock puppets don't have ears!

ATHENA ...An ear?

ALEX That's an ear?

ATHENA I mean I figured it was an animal of some kind, but-

MILES I never claimed to be good at shadow puppets, okay?

C41 Clearly.

MILES Cal, you don't have tangible hands, you don't get an opinion.

C41 At least I know that dogs aren't that long.

[sfx: approaching footsteps]

ALEX Yeah, actually, kinda... looks like that little cat thing that bit Felix.

FELIX It was a spray, not a bite. That makes it sound a lot more gross, actually.

[Alex claps her hands.]

ALEX Nice to see the party's finally here!

FELIX Hm? "Party"? That's new.

ALEX Did you bring the deck of cards?

FELIX Of course.

ALEX Then you're the party.

[Felix laughs.]

ALEX (CONT'D) Where've you been?

FELIX Recording my first chronicling log. I figured an update on my perspective was in order.

ATHENA Oh, good, thank you. How'd it go?

FELIX Um... well, I think. A bit meandering, maybe. Not anything special.

ATHENA Honestly, however they end up going is fine. It's just a matter of getting an account from everyone of how they're doing and what's going on. That's all I really have to do, most of the time. You'd be surprised how useful a ramble is when you have it on file. What did you meander about?

FELIX Oh just... you know. Something that I've been brushing up on. Here, I'll show you, actually.

MILES Sure, just share your talents with the class I guess.

C41 This should be interesting.

[sfx: unboxing and shuffling playing cards]

MILES What is this?

FELIX It's a card trick.

MILES A card trick...

FELIX Correct. Can I have a volunteer?

[Athena, Alex and C41 respond positively.]

FELIX (CONT'D) Miles, thank you, so kind of you to volunteer.

MILES My hand was not up.

FELIX Here, shuffle these.

MILES Ugh. Fine.

[sfx: cards shuffling]

FELIX No, don't give them to me! That's against the rules.

MILES Oookay. I'll keep em.

FELIX You're thinking of a particular one, I can tell.

MILES Uh... sure. Six of stars?

FELIX No, no, that's not it. Come on, this one only works if we convince each other that it's going to work. It was a low card, something... special.

MILES Low, and... special? Like an Ace?

FELIX It was an Ace?

MILES Yeah. Yeah, an Ace.

FELIX But not the Ace of Stars? We've got Planets, Comets, Dishes and Stars, but... How about you pick two of those, Officer Abbott?

MILES Dishes and Stars.

FELIX We'll keep the Dishes and the Stars then, and get rid of the other two. But it wasn't Stars, so the Ace of Dishes, then?

MILES Yeah.

FELIX The Ace of Dishes was the first card that came to mind, you're sure?

MILES Yeah.

FELIX Perfect. Athena, could you pick a number for me? It could be anywhere between, er... one to ten.

ATHENA Seven.

FELIX Seven. Very well. Miles, can I have the deck back?

MILES Oh, that's allowed now?

FELIX Of course, don't be silly. Now, I'm going to pull seven cards off the top of this deck that Miles shuffled and, well... we'll see what happens.

[sfx: cards being drawn from the deck]

FELIX (CONT'D) One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven.

Oh... dear, that's not it.

MILES Jack of Comets. Figured it wouldn't-

FELIX Indeed. Wait, Miles, what's that?

MILES What's what?

FELIX In your shirt pocket.

[sfx: an emphatic rustling and card flip.

FELIX This?

MILES The... Ace... of Dishes. Wait.

[Athena applauds.]

[Alex laughs.]

ALEX Hey now, how the hell did you do that?

FELIX Ah, ah. Magicians. Secrets. You know the rules.

ALEX I bet Cal knows.

C41 I have... an idea or two, but I'm not exactly sure, really. Nice job.

FELIX Thank you.

MILES I don't know how you did that. I am going to find out how you did that.

[sfx: lots of movement]

[Indistuguishable frenzied comments from the crew.]

***

[sfx: echoing footsteps, very distant external storm ambiance.]

[sfx: button click.]

FELIX Doctor Felix Augustine Couvillion. Recording Chronicling Log... Two, I suppose. Though it hasn't been long.

I had to escape from Miles's endless, somewhat terrifying questions. I fear those will be a common occurrence from this point on.

Anywho. I am currently... well, I don't know exactly where I am. My analog compass says I am southeast of our campsite, which is just outside the entrance to the tunnel system. But, I'm not so sure. You would think this little gadget would be unaffected by the storm, but the cinderbust seems to be acting on all of our other equipment as if it were somehow a geomagnetic storm. This, of course, may mean it is confusing the compass needle as well. 

So I'm not sure I can trust in that bearing. What I do know is, I took a left. So at least I have that to go on.

I did promise the Commander that I wouldn't stray too far from the camp when I'm alone. But I'm not alone. I'm on the hunt for a source of water, and I'm taking you, whoever will listen to this, with me for the journey. So technically, I'm keeping my promise, while getting results. Hopefully. Hopefully getting results. It isn't like I have any real reason to be concerned about my safety. Like I had mentioned, there have been no encounters with wildlife as of yet. Then again, I've been wrong before. It would be just my luck to end up being wrong again. But, I survived Mercutio, ergo, I could likely survive anything. The little devil.

[sfx: flashlight clicks on]

FELIX (CONT'D) Let there be light.

Ah. It appears we've reached a choice to make. Hm. Left... or... right. I'd rather not go in a circle. Right it is.

Left, then right. Left, then right. Left then... right. Okay.

So, anyways. I hadn't had any previous luck taking a right initially, where I first chose to go left. My left. Not... upon return- never mind. I know what I mean. I hadn't gone too far that way, in any case. 

Only today did I figure out the loophole in my promise, and... in terms of balancing my very busy schedule, I figure that it's best not to spend all my time fretting over dehydration. Going prematurely mad is not in my plans.

There are some interesting mineral formations on the ceiling. It may be worth taking a sample to submit on my way back. They're a sort of bluish-white, and they seem to form in hexagonal clusters, about three to four centimetres in length. Quite pretty. Pretty enough to understand the appeal of geology, if only for a moment. No offence to geologists, of course.

No luminescence is visible from the formations. My torch is the only current source of light. I suppose luminescence would have been too much to hope for. It is... rather dark, this way. Miles wouldn't like it. I don't think Miles likes many things, come to think of it. There's a grumpy individual if you ever did see one. But, a decent traveling companion when the mood strikes them-

[sfx: walking stops]

FELIX (CONT'D) Dead end. Hm. I'll make a mental note.

[sfx: footsteps resume]

FELIX (CONT'D) That's annoying. Back the way we came, then.

It might have done me good to bring Cal along. Most of their functions may be, er, rusty, at present, but they still have the sensors for these sort of things. Or perhaps I should have brought the Commander. Navigations, and all. Eh. I'm still not too far. And I have you, don't I, my trusty comms friend?

Even if you're not one for conversation. The brooding type. Strong and silent. I can work with that. And I can be fairly sure that I'm-

[sfx: footsteps stop suddenly]

FELIX (CONT'D) What?

[A long silence.]

[Felix swallows and chuckles nervously.]

FELIX (CONT'D) Well. I... must not have been paying attention as well as I'd thought.

I've just... I've just come up against another dead end. Where I thought... no, where the entrance to this passage should be. Where... where it just... was.

It can't have just... filled behind me. I would have heard the crash.

Right?

Same tunnel. Same... crystals. Perhaps a bit more on the indigo side that I had originally noticed. No more, or, um, less lacking luminescence.

Alright, er... Perhaps I took a turn and passed it. I'll retrace... my steps. What you're looking for is always in the last place you check, right?

[sfx: footsteps]

[Felix breathes shakily.]

[sfx: sound of distant running water fades in]

FELIX (CONT'D) Do you... do you hear that? That sounds like...

[sfx: the water sound recedes, replaced by storm ambiance]

FELIX (CONT'D) Sounds like... wishful thinking.

No, I could've sworn. I could have sworn. I'm not mad. I'm not.

FELIX (CONT'D) Don't you look at me like that. You're a bundle of wires and metal. You're not capable of going mad, only getting broken.

I... I wonder which is worse.

[sfx: a draft blowing in from the right side]

FELIX (CONT'D) Well. I... hadn't noticed that before. There's an offshoot path here, in between... I suppose in between dead ends. It must... it would have to lead deeper into the cave. I can't... This doesn't make any sense.

[Felix struggles to look inside the narrow path.]

FELIX (CONT'D) I can't make out anything inside. Very dark, but... But there's a draft. Meaning... it must lead outside. No daylight, however.

Well, of course there's no daylight, Felix. Remember why you're here in the first place.

[sfx: the draft stops unnaturally abruptly]

FELIX (CONT'D) Well, that doesn't make any sense, now does it?

The wind from the passage seems to have... turned off. Just... just like that.

I should just go back the way I came. Yes. That's what I should do.

[sfx: the sound of running water resumes]

FELIX (CONT'D) Wait... is... am I hearing that right...?

Not right now, thank you. I could do without the difficult decision.

Fine. Fine! Fine then, I'll just...

[He struggles further to get inside the path, with a few laboured mutterings.]

[Felix pants.]

[sfx: water droplets hitting the ground.]

FELIX (CONT'D) Yahtzee.

[sfx; unscrewing a thermos, letting water drip inside]

FELIX (CONT'D) I'll have to ensure this is potable, first. Or if I can make it potable. I'm sure it will be fine... Either way this is a good sign for our continued survival.

[sfx: extremely loud shifting of rock]

FELIX (CONT'D) What in the... What was that?

I've got enough of this to test but... The only problem is, I don't know that I could find it again. I... almost certainly don't know where I am.

[sfx: another creaking shift of rock]

[Felix gasps and exclaims.]

FELIX (CONT'D) What... I'm sorry, I just... felt a shift there, it startled me.

There's obviously an explanation for this but... I don't think I'm in any state to continue this trip. I need... I need to get back to camp.

[sfx: footsteps resume]

FELIX (CONT'D) Next time, if I ever come back this way, I'm bringing someone with me.

[sfx: running water fades out]

FELIX (CONT'D) Wait, uh... where... but I had just looked through...

I can't see that passage anymore. Where I got the water. Can you?

Of course you can't. I'm talking to myself. I bet no one will ever even listen to these. It isn't as if you care. You let this happen in the first place, sent us somewhere new without contingencies, and I'll bet you still don't feel responsible.

It's there. You can't see it from this angle, but it's there, you just can't see it in the dark.

[sfx: extremely loud stone creaking and moving]

FELIX (CONT'D) I need to go. I need to... I need to leave.

[sfx: running footsteps]

[Felix pants.]

[sfx: footsteps slow and stop]

FELIX (CONT'D) Left or... right? I swear, this doesn't... what was that goddamn sound?!

No. No, you shouldn't hear this. Am I transmitting, or... is this a recording-

[sfx: comms click]

***

[sfx: comms click]

ATHENA -were just looking for you.

FELIX I know, I know, I lost track of time-

ATHENA Alex was worried sick, we thought we heard you yell-

FELIX Well, that's very kind of her, but I-

ATHENA Felix... are you okay? Did something-

FELIX I'm fine.

ATHENA Okay.

Next time, maybe, take one of us with you. Or at least tell us when you'll be back.

FELIX Sure, sure. In any case, it was a success.

[sfx: unscrewing a thermos]

FELIX (CONT'D) Water. Fresh. Hopefully potable.

ATHENA That's great! That's a relief. Okay. Where did you find it?

FELIX Oh. Heh. Funny you should ask, actually.

ATHENA Oh?

FELIX Yes, I... see I was fine, but along the way I got a little... lost, it wasn't anything to be concerned about, but... I may have a little trouble finding it again.

ATHENA Oh.

FELIX Ah, but, don't worry.

I kept the recorder running.

ATHENA Uh... well, that's good. It definitely makes my job a lot easier.

FELIX Well, yes, and I... wasn't alone.

ATHENA Right.

FELIX And! And, perhaps if I give this a listen, it would help me figure where I got turned around. Nothing a second journey won't fix.

ATHENA Not alone this time.

FELIX Not alone the first time because I personified my comms but... yes I see your point.

ATHENA Well, let's give it a listen, then.

FELIX Okay. Okay, okay, okay.

[sfx: button pressing]

FELIX (CONT'D) It should be my most recent... input, let's see here. Ah. There.

[sfx: button press]

RECORDING FELIX Doctor Felix Augustine Couvillion. Recording Chronicling Log... Two, I suppose. Though it hasn't been long.

[sfx: a sudden click, lasting static]

ATHENA Um, Felix?

FELIX ...Yes?

ATHENA Was that the end of the recording?

FELIX No. Definitely not.

ATHENA Then why... did you stop talking?

FELIX I didn't stop talking, I kept it running the whole time, I only turned it off just before I saw you!

ATHENA Something must have happened, then. Can I see it?

FELIX Sure, sure.

ATHENA It doesn't look like a corrupted file, in fact, everything seems to be working fine. Out here, at least.

Maybe the storm messed with your comms too, somehow. Or maybe... maybe there's some good conductors in the stone too, deeper in the cave, that could have thrown off your signal, or...

FELIX Or it could have been my own fault.

ATHENA It happens to the best of us, Felix.

FELIX Well, finding that source again just got infinitely harder, didn't it?

ATHENA Maybe? I don't know. Either way, we have time before that search becomes urgent, and, at least we know it exists. Hopefully we never really have to worry about it at all.

FELIX That doesn't make it any less frustrating, though, does it?

ATHENA Well, technology is wonderful, when it works. I appreciate the fact that you were recording anything for me at all, I know that code protocol can be a pain.

FELIX Well, strange as it sounds, I'm glad these protocols exist. It makes it seem like an effort is being made to keep things sorted, I suppose.

ATHENA Keeping our ducks in a row?

FELIX Precisely.

ATHENA Well, I can only hope. I've never had to run a crew-wide chronicling operation before outside of a drill. I was hoping I would never have to.

FELIX One narrator of this comedy of errors should have been enough?

ATHENA Precisely.

Anyways, do you want to head back to camp now? Everyone will want to know you're alright.

FELIX They were really worried?

ATHENA Of course they were. Alex wants her ducks in a row, too. An odd one out wouldn't be good for us.

FELIX Like an Ace of Dishes.

ATHENA Only, we were pretty sure you weren't in Miles's pocket.

[Both laugh.]

ATHENA (CONT'D) Here.

[sfx: footsteps]

ATHENA (CONT'D) This way.

***

FELIX Chronicling Log of Doctor Felix Augustine Couvillion, third part.

It's past evening now, into the night. I think the others have gone to bed. Yet, it appears that I can't sleep. Something about today unnerved me. There is no explanation for my confusion, except my own anxieties, my paranoia, what have you. I know that.

I know that in the same way I know that the walls of a cave don't move around you. Not unless you are very patient, dead, or mad.

In my case, the jury is still out on the latter.

A planet isn't conscious, it isn't sentient, it shouldn't know who I am.

And yet, there's nothing left of that recording to even tell you what I mean. All that's left is how I remember it, and that perturbs me.

Here's the thing: I can tell myself that I lost my way in a dead end simply because I am afraid of what happens when I turn my back. But if I deem that fear a sound rationalization... then I may have something to evaluate. A time of soul-searching, hopefully. In the company of a snack.

ALEX Yikes. Deep. Make sure you have your coffee first.

FELIX Commander! Where did- I'm sorry, I thought you were asleep with the others, did I wake you-

[Alex laughs quietly.]

ALEX Shh, shhh! Athena and Miles are still asleep, I was just... I was... never mind.

[sfx: Alex sits down.]

ALEX (CONT'D) You recording?

FELIX Er, yes. As redundant as it may seem. 

ALEX Redundant?

FELIX Yes. Just between you and me, boss? I doubt anyone will ever listen to these.

ALEX You really think so?

FELIX The good folks back at headquarters tend to overindulge on bureaucracy. Efficiency is prioritised to the detriment of efficiency.

Perhaps the duty will be passed on to an Artificial Intelligence like our friend. I suppose that works just as well.

ALEX There's the silver lining I was waiting for.

FELIX Oh, don't rely on me for that.

ALEX Why not? It's worked so far.

Case and point: that card trick was probably the silver lining of my day. And I still have no idea how you did it.

FELIX Really?

ALEX Really. No clue. Unless Miles was in on it, but I seriously doubt that.

FELIX I can show you.

ALEX Yeah?

[sfx: rustling through a bag, cards rustling, flipping and shuffling]

FELIX Certainly.

Now, the first thing is, Miles didn't pick the Ace of Dishes. I did. And then I convinced them that they did. And convincing Miles Abbott of something is probably the hardest part of any trick, so if you can manage that... this next part is quite easy.

ALEX The next part is the actual trick, you mean.

FELIX The convincing is the trick. If you can't even convince yourself that you can do it, make a card do something miraculous, how are you going to convince the people watching?

ALEX Good point. Teach me.

FELIX Very well. So it looks like this, when we actually do it. Pulling it out of a pocket.

[sfx: card flick]

FELIX (CONT’D) But really, we're just folding the card behind quickly as you flick it off the bottom of the pack, like that, and then... you cup it into your palm when you reach out. It never leaves your hand.

[sfx: the same card flick, but slower]

[sfx: a card sliding]

ALEX Oh. Ohhhhh, okay! Gimme one.

[Felix laughs.]

[sfx: passing Alex a card.]

FELIX Give it a try.

ALEX Okay... so... take it from the bottom of the... deck, and then-

[sfx: a similar card flick, a similar card slide]

ALEX (CONT’D) Like that?

FELIX Yes. Exactly.

ALEX Alright. Alright, okay. So... from here...

[sfx: a quick card flick, a quick card slide]

ALEX Like that?

FELIX Ha! You picked that up quickly, sir.

[sfx: repeated flick and slide of the card performed by Alex]

ALEX I can do more than play Go Fish, Couvillion.

FELIX That's for certain. It's double trouble for the rest of the crew, in any case. Two magicians are better than one, you know.

[sfx: card sounds stop]

ALEX Oh, man. Miles is going to hate this.

***

ANNOUNCER Micro-Cosmos: A Science Fiction Podcast.

This episode, Miraculously Misplaced, was written by Lauren Tucker, edited by Luka Miller, and directed by Jesse Smith and Lauren Tucker. It starred Jesse Smith as the voice of Athena Romero, Jackson Rossman as the voice of Miles Abbott, Luka Miller as the voice of Alex de la Cruz, Kaleb Piper as the voice of Felix Couvillion, and Pippa van Beek-Paterson as the voice of Cal. Original music by Julia Barnes, and sound editing by Tobias Friedman. Be sure to stay tuned to our feed for upcoming episodes from the new backpacking intergalactic adventure from Futuristic Trail Mix Productions. Enjoying the show, and want to give us a boost? You can support us by rating and reviewing us on iTunes, or wherever you get your podcasts, or telling a friend about us. To follow the show and find transcripts, you can find us on Twitter, Tumblr, and Instagram as @MicroCosPod. Questions, comments, and concerns can be emailed to us via futuretrailmixpros@gmail.com. Thank you for listening. ***

[justhereforseverus]

A rose by any other name would smell as sweet

Chapter 9: The quality of mercy is not strained.

Summary:

After catching up with Remus, you find your classroom destroyed and your heart broken. Yet, an owl in the middle of the night brings a message of kindness and an unexpected solution to your sleeping problems.

Notes:

Ok, that took a while. Probably a ton of tense mistakes in here. Apologies in advance.

The slow burn is slowly burning faster and I hope you'll like it! Thank you so much for reading! <3

Chapter Text

A couple of days later, Remus had returned to Hogwarts. As the weather was gorgeous, we decided to take a walk in the forbidden forest during our break. You could feel it was getting colder and winter would soon be in full swing but our cloaks kept us warm enough.

“I tell you” – said Remus. “The hidden wizard restaurant on top of the Eiffel Tower is marvellous. The wine and food were superb! That was worth going to this waste-of-time conference. I swear, I almost RAN out the door when Professor Whitaker was done with his hopefully final seemingly endless monologue praising himself. He consistently had to give a 10 minutes ‘not a question but more of a comment’ monologue after every. single. presentation! Some people need to learn to keep it short and simple. Especially when I have a train to catch.”

“Ah yes.” – I commented “Some things never change. When I’m in a conference or a seminar I’m sitting around thinking of the shortest, most effective and relevant thing to say while others just… talk… without any consideration or thought. It’s a skill though.”

Remus watched some squirrels running up a tree and said: “Yes, I guess but you can do that without being an asshole. Anyway, enough of me gossiping about the so-called elite of the teaching wizard society. How have you been? I heard you’ve been filling my seat next to you with someone else.”

“Oh, and who might’ve told you that, I wonder” – I teased. “Well, to make it short. Severus could easily be a first-class actor and we both spent one inspiring evening talking about books. All very innocent and uneventful. And you know you’ll always be my favourite person to sit next to.”

“Seems like someone did at least an average job entertaining you. Just talked about books, eh? Did he scold you on your miserable book taste.”

“What?! I have an excellent taste! Don’t you dare!”

“You don’t like Brecht though. Or any of my cheesy horror story magazines.”

“I can appreciate someone’s impact on the arts without personally liking him. Brecht’s a dick that’s a fact! And I’ve never said I don’t like your magazines. I just find them too predictable.”

“Ok, ok! Did he scold you though?”

“Of course not! He was rather charming.”

“That’s a word I’d never use describing Professor Severus Snape but you do you.”

“There’s a slight problem though.”

“Oh, what would that be?”

“Remus, you’ve know him longer than I do. Do you know if he..”

“I’ve known him for over 10 years, but if you’re asking me if he has some ulterior motives being friendly to you or if he actually has or had something like a love life in the past– I’m afraid I can’t give you a satisfying answer.”

“…I’m very transparent, am I?”

“Yes, you are. Frankly, I think Severus, too.”

“What do you mean?”

“Anyone can see that there is something different in his behaviour. He never has been that friendly and caring with a new colleague before. I mean he and Minerva get along well in a competitive and respectful way. He and Sprout talk almost daily but it’s more business than anything else. He respects her knowledge and needs her supplies. Dumbledore often invites him for tea into his office. Apart from that, I’ve never seen him interact with someone on that close basis. He was very attached to a friend of mine during our school years but that didn’t end well and we’ve never talked much about her past together with him. Either way…. I don’t know what to tell you apart from it’s unusual. You should still be cautious though but it seems you two would get along very well IF that’s something he… does.”

I did return to my classroom deep in thoughts. Should I go further? Or maybe that’s not on his mind at all and I over interpreted it. I don’t know…

However, when I turned towards the hallway to my classroom door, all of these thoughts vanished form my mind. The door was unhinged and splintered wood lay all around the floor. It seemed it was forced open with an explosion. After I stepped inside, I saw that my books had been ripped apart and the pages were plastered all over the floor, walls, and the roof. My desk was placed upside down and all the costumes burned to ashes. Over the windows the following words had been written with red paint: “Whore”. In addition, there were enchanted paper planes flying around the room with the same message inscribed on them. I was shocked and paralysed for some minutes. Gaining my strength back, I ran to Dumbledore’s office to get help.

Shortly after, the heads of the houses, Remus, and Dumbledore stood in the room to get an overview of the damage. Remus and Severus tried to find out more about the culprits and the way the security spells have been broken. Dumbledore assured me he won’t tolerate this on his school grounds and will start an investigation immediately. He gave instructions to Pomfrey, Minerva, Severus and Flitwick to inform their houses and communicate that this is not acceptable and that there will be severe punishments. However, he also said that if someone voluntarily comes forward, this will be considered on milder terms. After gaining all the information one could from the crime scene, Remus and I stayed in the classroom to deal with the mess. I’ve stayed quiet during all this. Remus could see I was in peril and hugged me tight after we’ve cleaned everything up.

When I returned to my quarters all the pain I’ve swallowed during the day came pouring over me. I cried on my bed and felt utterly helpless. I’ve expected the backslash. I knew the pure-blood wizards would hold onto the connection that people who act are frivolous liars. That this kind of time-wasting entertainment shouldn’t exist and not taught at a school. But to see the safety of my students compromised.. I wasn’t prepared for this at all and I blamed myself for this.

Sleep was impossible despite my exhaustion. I’ve run out of Severus sleeping potions and didn’t want to use ask for more. In addition, it was raining heavily outside and thus my calming night-walk would’ve been too wet and unhealthy. What to do…

Suddenly I heard a noise on my balcony. A black owl tapped with her beak on the glass door. I let her in and she shook herself to dry, making her surroundings, including me, a bit damp. I gave her some food near the fireplace and took the letter attached to her feet. I read:

“Dear [y/n],

I hope my owl finds you well and it won’t be lost in the rain. 

I can imagine that it might be difficult for you to sleep tonight. I’ve prepared more of the sleeping potion for you. If you need some simply come to my office and knock.

Be assured my house will pay the price if the culprit is one of them.

Yours Sincerely,

Severus Snape”

I made my way to the dungeon immediately. I knew my eyes were puffy and red and I certainly didn’t look very well but I didn’t care. I wanted to talk to him. I just wanted to see him.

While I went downstairs, I heard thunder rattling outside. The rain had transformed into a storm. The thunder made the walls shook and I hurried downstairs.

I knocked and the door opened automatically by magic by recognising me. I stepped inside the office but couldn’t see anyone at first. I looked around and saw that one of the walls was open and through that Severus stepped towards me. His cloak and jacket were missing. He only wore the white shirt and black pants he usually wore underneath his three layers of clothing. Another thing was different this time: he had tied up his long black hair. I certainly wasn’t expecting such a relaxed and casual look. You could see his skinny but muscular chest under the shirt. He seemed to wear a necklace with a pendant on but I couldn’t make out what it was. To be honest, he looked very dashing like that. “Wow.”- I exclaimed before I could stop my brain. “I mean.. hi Severus. That’s not one of your usual looks but I have to say I rather like it.”

“This is not a look. It’s almost midnight and the only person I was expecting was you as Filch has to annoy Flitwick tonight. Contrary to popular belief, it’s not very comfortable sitting in my quarters in my full cloak. I reckoned that would be acceptable with you, taking into account our close acquaintance.

“Oh no, I’m glad you feel comfortable with me. I hope I’m not interrupting one of your free nights then.”

“I rarely have ‘free’ nights. There are other duties to follow. Yet, I invited you and opened the door so obviously no – you’re not interrupting. Apart from that, I have to tell you that you look dreadful. I assume you didn’t catch a wink so you can certainly use a refill of my potion.”

As always the gentleman… “Thank you, Severus.”

“You’re welcome. Come in.”

His quarters were similar to mine, as there were bookshelves on most of the walls and a fireplace. Yet, it was much darker due to the nature of the dungeons. He had a dark-green velvet couch and an old but cosy velvet reading-chair near the fire. A small shelf was on the wall over his desk containing various bottles of potions. I could see another door that presumingly lead to his bedroom. It was quiet spacious. On one side were enchanted windows that showed the outside of the garden upstairs. You could see the thunderstorm raging but it felt so safe and warm down here.

He pointed towards the couch and I took my place while he got some tea. He put it on the antique living room table in front of us and then sat opposite me, handing me the familiar bottle with his sleeping potion.

“Thank you. It’s so warm and cosy here, that’s such a strong contrast to the rest of the dungeons.”

“The Slytherin common room is similar. So far no student had reason to complain. It’s just the classroom and the hallways that are so cold and sinister. We might look unpleasant from the outside but we do care about a certain kind of luxury and comfort in our house.”

“Yes, of course.” I nodded and sipped on my tea.

“So, should we talk about what happened today or would you rather not? I’m not a healer and I personally don’t see the point in rambling to other people. Yet, I know it helps others. In any case, I’m listening.”

“There is not much to talk about though. For wizards, theatre is a gateway to prostitution because people pretend they're someone else. In addition, they kiss and hug on stage and do other ‘shocking’ displays so what good can it be, right? God-forbid it actually teaches anyone to not be a dick in real life. It’s fine.” –I said angrily and sarcasticly, convincing no one with the last statement. “I’m just worried about my students. They shouldn’t be confronted with it so early on..”

Severus replied: “They will be fine. Either they’ll continue and stand up for what they’ve learned or they quit. I can assure you, my colleagues made clear to their houses what their position is. The students can decide for themselves.”

“Maybe, but at this point it feels like their life and reputation is in danger.”

“Then Dumbledore, Remus and I will make sure they are safe and supported.”

It felt nice to hear that though it didn’t help much with my fear. “I appreciate it. I really do.”

Severus sighed and looked me straight in the eyes: “Yet, you are here and have doubts. Your eyes are red and puffy from crying, your hair unkempt and your clothes damp. You can’t sleep, you’re shaking and you are scared. Why are you scared? You knew it would be difficult but you also know you have support. Why would you let some stupid minor thing like this get into your head so easily?”

“You’re right… I know.”

“Then act like it.” - he said sternly.

I nodded and looked to the floor. I knew he was right. Yet, I was shaking. To hear him say those words was being confronted with the truth of my fear, worries and insecurities. Tears filled my eyes and I had to control myself. I didn’t want to end up crying on his couch so I looked down and pretended to be suddenly very interested in my tea.

I heard a deep sigh next to me, followed by a clinking sound of a tea cup put on the table. I didn’t want to look up, I didn’t want him to see me like that. He probably despises my weakness in this situation. One thing happens and I break down. For how many years, am I doing this? Why does it still bother me?

I expected him to leave the room or order me to go out but he did none of these things. Instead, I felt his hand touching mine and holding it tightly. He didn’t say anything. His hand was warm and his fingers softly intertwined mine. We just sat there for a while, holding hands in silence. I calmed down and instead of crying my heart was beating faster of joy. I was blushing but I didn’t care. That act was so kind, so soft, so warm, so comforting. After a while, I felt peaceful and my tiredness came over me. Bravely, I put my head on his shoulder to close my eyes for a bit. I could hear him sigh and moving slightly, contemplating what to do. Slowly, he let go of my hand and put his arm around me instead. He pulled me closer and I put my arm around his waist and my head on his chest. I smelt his perfume and heard his heartbeat. I could feel his muscles underneath the shirt. I felt like sitting in a cloud of warmth, peace and safety. With this, I quickly drifted into sleep. And all that without the help of a potion.

[emeraldspiral]

How would you have written this trilogy differently? Because I know yours would be better than how it ended up.

Honestly, TROS would’ve been fine with a little more breathing room instead of jumping from scene to scene at a breakneck pace and the removal of pointless twists that don’t add anything like Hux being a spy or Rey Palpatine, or Finn having something to say to Rey that never gets said, or Poe having a shady past that doesn’t affect anything in the present. It was badly cobbled together, but the basic outline of the quest that drives most of the story is fine. Well, except for the fact that Kylo already knows the way to Palpatine and Rey knows he knows and wants her there but still goes out of her way to get the MacGuffin to lead her there without his help. Like, what difference does it make if she goes with him or not? Even if they have different plans for what happens there, why do they need to travel separately? That wasn’t a problem for Luke when Vader brought him to the Emperor to be turned or when Kylo brought Rey to Snoke to usurp him. She could just be like, “Thanks for the ride bae, but I’m still not ruling the galaxy with you”.

So I guess what I’d do instead of revealing Palpatine in the opening text crawl is I’d have Rey and Kylo racing against each other to get the MacGuffins that will lead them to Palpatine for the majority of the film.

I’d start with Kylo and the FO on some random planet fighting what are revealed to be Sith cultists, whom Kylo wants the galaxy rid of as much as the Jedi. Kylo learns from them that Palps may still be alive, but can only find a cryptic hint that will lead him to him.

The information leaks to the Resistance and begins Rey’s quest to try and beat Kylo to the MacGuffin dagger. Lando and Jannah appear at the same time in the desert and Jannah introduces herself to Finn as a fellow ex-stormtrooper turned Resistance fighter. Midway through the movie they get to talking and realize they were taken from the same planet, the same town, and the same parents. They’re siblings. Twins even.

There is no snake healing scene because the point of that was to show that Rey had that ability before she used it on Ben to foreshadow his use of it on her. In my script, it ends with Rey healing Kylo after witnessing him do it, in keeping with the tradition of her leaning new abilities from him.

Instead of the pointless fake-out Chewie death in the desert Kylo just reveals that he’s the one who leaked the intel about Palp’s return and tries to convince Rey to team up with him to track him down. Rey says “no”, so Kylo takes the dagger for himself. Rey doesn’t want Kylo to have the dagger so he can track Palpatine down, so she goes alone to retrieve it while the others wipe 3P0′s memory so he can transcribe it when Rey brings it back.

Instead of revealing that Palps is her grandfather, Kylo reveals that Rey accidentally killed her parents by pulling their ship out of the sky when they tried to leave.

Kylo has already transcribed the dagger, so he knows the next MacGuffin is on the Death Star and the Falcon’s speed only gives her a little headstart. Hence Rey’s urgency to get in and get the MacGuffin before he does.

Rey sees a vision of her Dark self, Kylo takes the MacGuffin for himself without destroying it, but still insisting that they go together. They fight, Rey falls and gets injured and Kylo heals her. Leia doesn’t interfere. They talk for a bit and Kylo tries to convince Rey that regardless of whether she wants to rule the galaxy together or not they both want Palpatine dead because he’s a bad dude and a danger to everyone so they really should be working together.

Not wanting to have to kill Kylo should he become Palpatine’s puppet or the new Emperor, and afraid she’ll turn to the Dark Side if she tries to confront Palpatine herself without Ben, Rey decides to run away to Ahch-To and exile herself, leaving the MacGuffin with Ben to do whatever he wants with it.

But Kylo ends up not leaving with his MacGuffin until after Luke convinces Rey to take off in his X-Wing with the other MacGuffin because he’s busy having an existential crisis with his dad.

Once that’s over, he calls an Uber to pick him up and orders the FO to go ahead of him to battle Palps alongside the Resistance. But Hux has other plans. While Kylo sees Palpatine and his forces as too dangerous and evil to exist, Hux sees an opportunity to increase the FO’s military might and meets with Palps to form an alliance. Hux’s mutiny divides the FO and those loyal to Kylo are betrayed and killed by their own fellow soldiers and officers who proceed to trade in their old arsenal for Palpatine’s, while a handful of survivors join the Resistance as ordered by Kylo. Both sides are distrustful of one another, but Finn and Jannah convince the Resistance and the Kylo-loyal stormtroopers and officers to unite against a common enemy.

Rey arrives thinking Ben is in need of rescue, but Palps is actually using visions of Ben in mortal or spiritual peril to lure Rey into a trap.

Instead of trying to convince Rey to kill him so he can posses her, Palps just drains her. He doesn’t need Kylo to be present for that. Instead of Kylo’s arrival being the thing that allows Palps to rejuvenate himself, it multiplies Rey’s strength, allowing her to break free of Palps’s soul-sucking.

Rey and Kylo duke it out with him and the KoR.

Kylo puts himself between Palps and Rey to save her, then deals the final blow by stabbing Palps through the back, impaling himself in the process. Rey uses the force to heal Kylo. Palpatine’s forces along with Hux and his allegiant FO traitors go down. Everyone cheers. Rey and Kylo stumble out of the cave together and everyone quiets down to hear what their orders are now that Palpatine is out of the way. Kylo says it’s time to talk peace.

Cut to a ceremony celebrating the signing of a peace treaty. Leia is alive and well, smiling from the crowd like she was at the end of TFA. The treaty will see the FO reorganized into a democracy with Kylo set to step down from his role as Supreme Leader upon the election of a new Galactic President. In the mean time, there are reparations to be made to make up for all the damage done by Snoke and Palpatine. Rey and Kylo volunteer for a mission together to deliver supplies to Jakku to make it less of a shithole. They fly away in the Falcon into a binary sunrise and kiss. Roll credits.

[reyloforcebalance]

Bonded Chapter 38: Exposed

The newest chapter to my Reylo fanfic (rated T). If you want to check out the previous chapters, here’s the link to AO3!

“Hey, Finn!” Poe calls absently. “You done yet?”

“Give me a minute!”

Poe doesn’t look up, eyes fixed on his datapad. He’s standing in the center of the training room, surrounded by shipping crates. Normally, it’s all open space, just a blue matted floor, but now it’s covered in a miscellany of equipment scattered in piles.

Poe reviews the figures on his pad— 36 headsets, 90 commlinks, 40 transceivers, 13 subspace radios, 140 packs of bacta bandages, 6 lightpads, 18 field cauterizers…

His eyes start to glaze over. He tries to concentrate, but the figures seem to run together. He sighs, his lids drooping.

So tedious. He’s not cut out for this.  

Yet he feels like it’s half his life now, managing things. This whole base is like one big list he has to wrangle. Every day, he wakes up and oversees it all, the instructors, the recruits, the weapons, the equipment, the training ops…

Not that he’s complaining. It means a lot that Leia trusts him with this kind of responsibility. When she put him in charge of the training base, she told he’d be holding the heart of the organization in his hands. Everyone who joins the Resistance starts right here, under his guidance. It’s the greatest privilege, to mold a new generation of heroes, teach them courage, strength, compassion.

It’s just… every now and then he misses spending most of his time in a cockpit.

Suddenly, BB8 pops out from behind a stack of crates, chirping.  

Poe snaps up.

“No, don’t worry about that.” He lowers his pad. “We just need the numbers right now.”

The droid beeps once, rolling to meet him.

“Alright, buddy.” Poe lifts his pad. “Tell me what you got.”

BB8 launches into a string of beeps, and Poe follows along, nodding.

“Uh huh.” He enters a note. “What about the class fives?”

The droid beeps matter-of-factly.

“Alright…” Poe enters more notes. “And the med droids?”

BB8 answers, bobbing back and forth.

“And how many need some work?”  

The droid chirps.

“Really?” Poe balks. “None of them?”

BB8 beeps a confirmation.

“Man…” Poe smiles at his pad. “We’re gettin’ the good stuff now.”

“You’re telling me…” Finn walks up, stepping around a pile of headsets. “Someone sent us five bacta tanks, all new.”

“Yeah?” Poe grins at him. “What else?”

“Uh…” Finn lifts his datapad. “We’ve got 6 nanocams, 17 autodocs, 90 field kits, over 800 ration packs, 300 K-18 bars, and…” He squints. “30 bottles of firewater.”

“What?” Poe knits his eyebrows. “Who sent us that?”

Finn tsks, glancing at his pad.

“Someone named… Grekh Vizago?” He looks up. “From Canto Bight?”

“No one I know.” Poe shrugs.

“Well, the shipment was addressed to Daja but…” Finn narrows his eyes. “I’m just gonna consider it a gift to the Resistance.”

“I think that’s best.” Poe’s lips twist wryly. “The last thing that girl needs is 30 bottles of firewater all to herself.”

BB8 rolls its head back, beeping a suggestion.  

“Good call, buddy.” Poe smiles at the droid. “Finn, go ahead and mark the firewater under med supplies. We can use it as a painkiller if we get desperate, which…” He tilts his head. “We probably will at some point.”

“Not any time soon. I mean, look at this…” Finn gestures around. “We’ve gotten more donations in the past week than in the last six months. Who knows when I’ll get this training room back.”

“Yeah, well…” Poe raises his eyebrows. “Our storerooms are full of drugs and spice at the moment, thanks to Rey.”

“Can’t be too put out, though.” Finn winks. “Considering she’s the reason we’ve got all this.”

“It’s unbelievable, isn’t it?” Poe leans in. “We’re literally turning people away right now. Thanks to that holo, people want join us just to get close to the Chainbreaker.”

“How many times have you watched it?”

“Oh…” Poe looks at his datapad. “Once or twice.”

BB8 chirps, bumping into Poe’s boot.

“Yeah, ok.” His eyes flit up. “I might have watched it a couple more times than that.”

“I’ve watched it twenty times at least,” Finn admits freely. “Never get tired of it, Rey walking between the waters, holding them up just like…” He extends his arms on either side.

“Yeah, it’s something else.” Poe smiles to himself. “We couldn’t have made a better recruitment propo if we tried.”

“Have you talked to her since she got back?”

“Barely.” He grunts. “How about you?”

“Same.” Finn nods. “Every time I see her, she’s mobbed. Even Rose hardly gets a second alone with her.”

“The perils of fame…” Poe tsks, walking to a stack of crates.  

BB8 follows at his heels.

“So…” Finn comes up behind him. “Did you know she’d been doing this? Sneaking out slaves during these invasions?”

“Nope.” Poe sets his pad down. “She played that one close to the chest. But you gotta wonder how she knew where to go.”

“No shit.” Finn widens his eyes. “I’ve told the General a thousand times. It’s impossible to get a spy in the First Order.”

“Yeah, well...” Poe turns, smirking. “Rey has a way of making the impossible possible.”

“True.” Finn tilts his head. “But I’m telling you, the First Order keeps stuff like that buried. Only the highest-ranked officers knew where we were going when we got deployed.”

“Maybe she did one of her, you know…” Poe lifts a hand, waving it mysteriously.

“Maybe.” Finn crosses his arms. “We’ll have to ask her.”

“If we ever get the chance.” Poe grunts. “We’ll be lucky if we get five minutes with her before she’s on another rescue.” He turns, reaching for his pad. “We’re just like everyone else now, guessing at the truth.”

“I wouldn’t call what’s going on out there guessing.” Finn snorts. “More like crazy speculation. You wouldn’t believe the rumors I heard when I was in town yesterday.”

“Oh yeah?” Poe enters a note on his pad. “Like what?”

“Like the one about Rey and Kylo Ren.”

“Huh?” Poe looks back.

“Yeah, some people think he’s her contact on the inside.”

“What?” Poe whips around. “But that makes no sense. Why would Kylo Ren share top secret intel with the Resistance?”

“Beats me.” Finn shrugs. “But it’s out there. Some of the slaves claim he was there when it happened, even say he and Rey seemed to know each other, acted like…” He purses his lips. “They were, uh… together.”

“Together?”

“Yeah, together, you know? Like a couple.”

Poe widens his eyes. For a second, he just stares.

Then, he bursts out laughing, dropping his datapad on BB8.

The droid squeals, rolling back.

“Oh, buddy, I’m sorry!” He crouches. “I didn’t ding you, did I?”

The droid beeps woefully.

“Well, I don’t see anything.” He strokes BB8’s head, inspecting it.

The droid lets out a low whine.  

“I think you’re gonna be ok.” Poe pats its round body. “Besides, it’s his fault.” He nods to Finn, grabbing his pad.

“Hey.” Finn raises his hands defensively. “I just told you what I heard.”

“If I didn’t think this galaxy was nuts before…” Poe mutters, rising. “It kills me what people will believe.” He turns, tossing his pad on the crates. “But it’s just talk. At the end of the day, there’s only one thing we know for sure, one thing that matters.”

“Oh yeah?” Finn tilts his chin up. “What’s that?”

Poe turns, a sly smile on his lips. He leans in, eyes fixed on Finn.

“Our girl’s a bad-ass.”

Read the rest on Ao3. 

[iffeelscouldkill]

Good For Morale

After three and a half weeks of working on this fic and countless distractions, revisions and moments where I had to bribe myself into working on it, it’s finally finished! Here is my longest TSCOSI fic to date, and it’s all about Sana Tripathi. I love that woman.

Of course because I’m me, there’s bonus Arkady/Violet and a bit of Brian/Krejjh, but mostly it’s wall-to-wall Sana Feels and my attempts to get inside her head, understand her character and play out her relationship with Campbell. I really dig their flirty chemistry, and I’m excited to see what their relationship becomes in the podcast :D

This is set post-episode 9, and contains my very vague and bad guesses about things that could happen in episode 10. I look forward to finding out how wrong I am!

Summary: After a daring escape from the IGR, the crew of the Rumor is en route to Telemachus. Sana is preoccupied over an impending reconciliation with Campbell, trying to navigate their suddenly strained relationship, and understand her own feelings towards her old friend.

It would help if she could stop walking in on her crewmates making use of the hammock in the mess hall.

Read on AO3

It wasn’t uncommon on the Rumor to run into Brian and Krejjh being cuddly and sickeningly cute in any given part of the ship.

They spent most of their time either up in the cockpit or in their shared room, but Sana had stumbled across them in the kitchen, the engine room, the medical closet – even her own room during one infamous incident where Brian and Krejjh’s bunk was being fumigated for asteroid ticks. (Brian had apologised profusely for that one).

It wasn’t that they were into public displays of affection so much as they just couldn’t seem to help themselves, thought Sana wryly. And now they were occupying the makeshift hammock she’d constructed out of safety harnesses and string in the middle of the mess hall.

Good for morale, indeed. It wasn’t like she’d ever walked on them doing anything more than PG-rated (not like that time with Arkady’s one-night-stand on Telemachus - god, they were drunk that night), it was just – a little distracting sometimes. Especially at 6 o’clock in the morning, ship’s time, when she’d rather been hoping to eat her breakfast in peace. Sana stood there for a moment, holding her steaming bowl of congee (real congee, not the stuff from the depths of the store cupboard that Arkady sometimes tried to pass off as congee), and settled on a cheerful, “Morning, guys.” One of Krejjh’s pairs of eyes flicked towards her, and they nudged Brian to get his attention. Brian broke away from Krejjh and looked up at Sana, smiling. “Oh, hey, Captain. Didn’t expect to see you up so early.”

“I could say the same about you both,” Sana pointed out. Brian gave his signature loose shrug and a genial smile. “Krejjh’s shift just ended and I was nappin’ in the cockpit, so we both decided to come down here for a change of scene.” “This hammock really does hold weight a lot better than I would’ve expected, all things considered,” Krejjh added brightly. “The more you know!” “That is good to know,” Sana agreed dryly. “Anyway – we’ll leave to your breakfast,” Brian said, hopping up and holding out his hand to Krejjh to help them up. “Aww, but I was comfortable.” Pouting, Krejjh allowed themself to be hauled out of the hammock, keeping their hand intertwined with Brian’s as the two of them left the mess. “See you later, Cap’n!” As the door slid shut behind them, Sana looked thoughtfully at the hammock. After a moment’s indecision, she smiled to herself and sat down, then swivelled to the side and attempted to swing her legs up into the hammock. It was at that moment that the (very hot!) bowl of congee she’d balanced on her lap slid perilously and threatened to spill all over her legs – reminding Sana why she’d stopped using the hammock in the first place.

The second time it happened was only a week later. This time, it was Sana who’d been needing a change of scene. She’d been more or less cooped up in her room since they’d returned from the supply run on Thalassa. Her isolation wasn’t deliberate; she’d just been trying to prepare herself for– well. Anyway, she’d gone down to the kitchen and raided what was left of those “strange flavor” Chinese snacks Violet had bought to see what they tasted like (the rest of the crew hated them, but Sana kind of liked them) and wandered into the mess to find– It was Violet and Arkady this time, Arkady lying in the hammock with Violet propping herself up on her hands above her. She was giggling, and Arkady was looking up at her with an expression that Sana had never seen on her best friend’s face before. It was fierce, loving, and protective all at once; there was a sort of longing there, but also a having, and a wonder at the place she’d found herself, all at the same time. Sana thought that it must be what coming home looked like. The sight caused an unexpected stab of loneliness to run through her. She was beyond thrilled for her best friend, really – it was about damn time that Arkady had got her ass in gear and acted on her very obvious feelings for their resident Science Officer. The entire crew had cheered when Violet grabbed Arkady and kissed her during the Rumor’s break-neck escape from New Jupiter and the IGR. Sana was pretty sure she’d cheered loudest of all. But… It was one thing to see (and hear) Brian and Krejjh acting coupley around the ship and know that she could still knock on Arkady’s door in the dead of night sometimes and complain about the futility of romantic relationships, or get a little drunk and confess to her best friend that she was afraid of being alone, and have the two of them make a pact that they would always be there for each other. It was another thing to be reminded that she was the only one on the ship that hadn’t found someone. She began backing out of the room, but Violet must have caught the movement on the periphery of her vision. She looked up, and blushed bright red as she realised that they had an audience. “Oh! S-Sana, hi!” Arkady twisted around underneath Violet and attempted a wave, completely unselfconscious. “Hey, Captain. Look, we’re using the hammock! I can feel my morale improving already.” “Right,” said Sana distantly. She knew she sounded strained, but couldn’t quite figure out how to make her voice… not be. “That’s good. Don’t let me interrupt.” She turned and left the mess hall.

Arkady watched Sana leave, then turned to frown at Violet. “What was that about?” Violet sat back on her heels, looking concerned. “Sana has been really withdrawn lately. I feel like I’ve hardly seen her since we left Thalassa. Has she spoken to you?” Arkady shrugged as best she could in her horizontal position. “Not really.” She mentally reviewed the last several days – and then remembered the cargo that they’d picked up on Nereid.

“Oh, right. We’re due to call on Campbell in Telemachus, and it’s gonna be the first time that Sana has seen him since we skipped out on our stop to go rescue you, and then, y’know... accused him of double-crossing us. I guarantee she’s stressing about it.” “Crap,” said Violet, and Arkady fought off a smile at Violet’s mild curse words. Then again, she’d also heard her curse fluently and extremely impressively in Mandarin when Arkady came in bleeding from a gunshot wound to the side, so she supposed it was all relative. “But surely he gets it, I mean – our lives were under threat. There was no possible way to know who was after us. And Sana was just trying to protect her crew.” “Yeah, but you know Sana,” Arkady said wryly. “She takes this stuff to heart. And she and Campbell, well… they go pretty far back.” Violet nodded, biting her lip. Her mouth was red and tempting, and Arkady would have loved to wrap the intimate moment back around them and carry on, but she couldn’t leave Sana to get lost in her own head and overblown sense of responsibility. “I should go after her,” she said regretfully. “Not to ditch ya right in the middle, but...” “No, it’s fine, this is important. You should go and talk to Sana,” said Violet. She leaned down to press a quick kiss to Arkady’s mouth. “I’m not going anywhere.”

How the hell did I get so lucky? Arkady wondered, staring up at Violet. It was only when Violet asked, “What?”, her cheeks growing pink again, that she realised she’d been gazing in silence for about a minute with a dopey smile growing on her face.

“Nothing,” said Arkady hastily, scrambling out from under Violet and hopping to her feet. “Wish me luck – I’m about to go and talk about feelings.”

“You’ll live,” Violet told her drily.

Sana had only been sitting down on her bunk for a few moments when her door slid open to admit Arkady. She looked up in surprise.

“Arkady,” she said, frowning slightly. “Look, you didn’t need to come after me, Violet-”

“Is this about Campbell?” Arkady asked, wasting no time in getting to the point.

“Is what about Campbell?” Sana asked. She knew better than to play dumb with her best friend, but to have answered Arkady’s question with anything else felt like too much of an admission. That she was more preoccupied than she’d been letting on.

“You barely leaving your room, acting closed off, freaking out when you walked in on Violet and me just now. Given that you’ve walked in on me in way more compromising positions-” Arkady smirked at the memory, “I figured something else was bothering you. And we’re due to land on Telemachus in just a few days.”

Sana sighed. “Yeah, it’s been on my mind.”

“Look,” said Arkady, sitting down next to Sana. “You were doing what you thought was best for your crew. We had no other suspects! We sure as hell weren’t going to jump to ‘invisible robots in the air’ as the obvious source of our leak. Sometimes you just have to make a call – Campbell of all people should understand that. If he doesn’t, fuck ‘im. We can find other contacts.”

“I know,” said Sana. “I’m not second-guessing my decision; I know it was the right one. But Campbell isn’t just another customer. I want to fix things with him. I’m just not sure how.”

“He agreed to take our cargo from Nereid, though, right? Was he hostile when you spoke to him?”

“Not exactly.” Sana thought back to the short conversation that she’d had with Campbell not long after their flight from the IGR.

“Computer. Outside call. Sana Tripathi to Ignatius Campbell.”

“Attempting connection!” chirped ELLA, and this time, Sana just about suppressed her flinch at hearing Emily Craddock’s voice coming out of her computer. It was going to take her a little while to stop associating it with everything that had happened.

“Sana.” Campbell picked up immediately. Sana had timed the call for late evening on Telemachus, when she’d known Campbell would be available, but she was still gratified and a little relieved. “What’s happening? I heard about what happened on New Jupiter. Are you safe? Is your crew safe?”

“We’re all fine, Campbell,” Sana replied. She tried to keep the weariness from her voice, but didn’t think she’d succeeded. After a moment, she admitted, “Just tired.”

“I’m… glad to hear that,” said Campbell slowly, and there it was – the awkwardness she’d expected. Sana held back a sigh, and tried to think of what else to say. Campbell beat her to it.

“You know, you could have called. If you’d needed… anything. A hiding place. Somewhere to rest. Supplies. I… I know I said that there wasn’t much point in us talking – I said that in the heat of the moment. But you should know that you can always call.”

“I do know,” Sana told him. She might have felt uneasy about having accused Campbell of double-crossing them, but she still knew that if they’d needed a friend, or someplace to lie low, Campbell would have come through for them. “It’s not that I didn’t trust you, Campbell – but it wasn’t safe. We were on the run, and the last thing I wanted was to lead the IGR to your door.”

“Oh,” said Campbell, in a tone that Sana couldn’t identify. “I see.”

“It wasn’t that I didn’t trust you,” Sana emphasised again, because she felt that it was worth repeating. “I knew… I know that you didn’t sell us out to the IGR.”

Campbell was silent for a little while, and Sana wished that she could see his expression. Most state-of-the-art intergalactic comm systems had holotech that would allow you to view the person on the other end, but nothing about the Rumor was state-of-the-art. It hadn’t seemed like a function worth splurging on, especially as they preferred for many of their contacts not to be able to identify them.

“Okay,” Campbell said eventually. “I appreciate that. Did you manage to find the source of your leak?”

“Yeah. Yeah, it was… unexpected,” said Sana. “It’s kind of a long story to explain over a call, but… I could tell it to you in person.”

There was another pause. “Are you guys near Telemachus?”

“We’re actually just about to call in on a contact in Nereid,” said Sana. “They’ve got some cargo that I think you might be interested in.”

“Oh,” said Campbell again, a flat note in his voice. “So, this is a business call.”

“I was hoping it could be a catch-up between old friends,” Sana said cautiously.

Campbell said nothing, and Sana began to wonder if their relationship really was beyond repair. It hurt that something like this could have come between them; when you were a group of smugglers on the wrong side of the law, true friends were few and far between, but she’d never hesitated to count Campbell as one of them. He was allowed to call her Sana; most of their contacts would have been swiftly excommunicated if they’d tried. (She still called him Campbell, despite his insistences, but that was one of those friendly-banter parts of their relationship that she’d always enjoyed, and she thought he did too).

She’d met his family, and the nephews he adored; he’d met her crew. But maybe none of that mattered as much as she’d thought.

She resisted the urge to prompt Campbell or check whether the connection was still active. Finally, Campbell said, “Nereid isn’t exactly in the neighbourhood. You’d have a pretty long trek to get out here.”

Sana stiffened. “If you’d rather we didn’t make the trip-”

“No, no, that’s not what I meant,” Campbell cut in quickly. “But you’d be going pretty far out of your way just to call in on little ol’ me. What’s the cargo?”

“Four cases of Nereien chocolates,” said Sana. “I got them at a pretty good rate.”

“Those are my favourites,” Campbell said, and she could hear the surprise in his voice. “They’re rare, too.”

“Call it a peace offering,” Sana replied.

“You don’t need to make peace with me, Sana,” said Campbell. “You never did.”

This time, it was Sana’s turn to say nothing. After a few moments, Campbell said, “Call me when you’re on the approach, and I’ll come meet you at the landing site.”

“I…” Sana had been about to say, ‘I’ll look forward to it,’ but she wasn’t sure how it would be received. She settled for, “Thank you, Campbell. I’ll be in touch. Sana Tripathy out.”

“It was hard for me to get a read on him,” Sana told Arkady. “There were a lot of awkward silences, and… I couldn’t tell what he was thinking. He told me before that he wasn’t angry at me, and I believe him, but he seemed… disappointed, maybe? Or, not disappointed, but… like he was waiting for the other shoe to drop. I guess I can’t blame him.”

Arkady’s mouth twisted, but she said, “Honestly, I think you’re over-thinking this, Sana. If he says he’s not angry, and he’s still willing to trade with us, then what’s the issue? Things are bound to be kind of awkward, but that doesn’t mean there’s anything else going on here. You guys can clear the air in person once we land on Telemachus.”

Sana sighed. “Yeah, I know. It’s just-” She hesitated, and then forged ahead with the other thing that had been bothering her. “Remember how you said that Campbell seemed friendlier than usual, when we called him to ask for new IDs? Almost like he was… hitting on me?”

“Yeah,” said Arkady with a smirk. It faded as she put two and two together. “It seemed suspicious, combined with the fact that we didn’t know who our leak was – evidence pointed to Campbell being the source. But if he wasn’t, then…”

“Then I guess he was just… hitting on me?” Sana said uncertainly. “And I don’t really know what to make of that. You’ve always teased me about how friendly we are, about how one day I’ll ‘ride off into the sunset to grow tomatoes with Campbell’-”

“Okay, I said that one time,” said Arkady. “But in general – yeah. You guys are close. Closer than the rest of us. I’m friendly with him, and he and Krejjh have that weird spicy-food rapport, but that’s all through you. You guys are the ones who have the… connection. Let’s face it, we wouldn’t have gotten half the discounts that we did over the years if it wasn’t for you.”

“So… What do you think I should do about it?”

Arkady laughed. “The hell if I know! Shit, Sana, you remember who you’re talking to, right? Arkady ‘one night and run’ Patel? I have no idea how Violet and I are even still together.”

Sana laughed as well, and felt the knot that had settled in her chest after she’d walked in on Arkady and Violet finally begin to ease. She’s still your best friend, she thought. She’s still Arkady. She hasn’t left you.

“Don’t do yourself down,” she told Arkady. “You and Violet are great together. I know you guys will make it work.”

“I appreciate the vote of confidence,” said Arkady drily, and Sana knew that this was her way of deflecting the conversation away from a route she wasn’t yet ready to go down. “But, back to you and Campbell.”

Sana sighed. “It’s probably a moot point, anyway. Even if he was, well, flirting with me… I’ve probably messed it all up. Nothing kills a potential romance like accusing the other person of collaborating with the IGR.”

“So, uh,” Arkady shifted uncomfortably, which Sana knew was a sign of her gearing herself up to tackle Feelings. “Is this a potential… romance? Or… was it?”

“Maybe?” Sana admitted, shrugging. She could feel herself blushing slightly. “I mean, it’s Campbell. You joking about us settling down always seemed like… a joke. But he’s – funny, and sweet, and the world’s most devoted uncle. And he’s never let us down. I didn’t think he’d sold us out because I didn’t trust him, I thought it because I know what horrors the IGR is capable of.”

“I thought it because human beings are assholes,” muttered Arkady. Sana raised an eyebrow at her. “Okay, not the point, I know. Look-” She shifted uncomfortably again, like she was sitting on hot nails, with a pained grimace to match. “If things go… well… with Campbell, and he doesn’t hate you – which I bet you now that he won’t, because it’s you – then you can decide what to do from there. Maybe try just… asking him out to dinner?”

“Ah, romantic tandem eating,” Sana joked. “What could go wrong?”

“Hey, at least Campbell’s not a Dwarnian,” said Arkady in amusement. “He’s not gonna go inviting the rest of the crew.”

“God, it’s a miracle those two ever got it together,” Sana said fondly, enjoying the temporary change of subject. “You might think you’re bad at giving love advice, but I guarantee that you’re better at it than Krejjh.”

She expected Arkady to laugh, but instead she looked thoughtful. “I think you’d be surprised, actually,” she said, but refused to elaborate, no matter how much Sana needled her.

True to his word, Campbell was there waiting for them when the Rumor touched down on Telemachus. Sana’s conversation with him on the approach had been brief, but friendly, which gave her hope. Now that she was listening for it, she thought that he sounded warmer when talking to her, compared to the way that he addressed the rest of the crew. But maybe she was reading too much into things.

He was standing a safe distance away from the landing point, one hand in his pocket. As the hatch popped open and began to lower, he raised one hand in a cheerful wave, grinning broadly.

“Well, he doesn’t look mad,” Arkady muttered to Sana. “Unless he’s planning to kill us with kindness. Also, is it just me, or is he kinda dressed up?”

Sana had been thinking the same. Campbell was wearing what looked like a black leather jacket, and a pair of dark jeans that appeared brand new – a far cry from his usual worn overcoat and patched cargo pants. He was wearing the same heavy, steel-toed work boots as ever, but she could have sworn that he’d cleaned them up a bit.

They weren’t the only ones who’d noticed. “Campbell’s looking sharp,” Brian commented cheerfully from behind her. Sana glanced over her shoulder to find him smiling expectantly at her.

“Uh, yeah, I guess he is,” she said. Krejjh looked between the two of them, obviously trying to grasp the unspoken subtext of their exchange. As Sana descended the ramp, she heard them whisper with a characteristic lack of subtlety,

“Oh! Is this a human courtship ritual?”

“Maybe, dude,” said Brian, and Sana fought off the urge to cover her face with her hand. Instead, she called out, “Hey, Campbell.”

“Sana,” he said as she came closer, and there was definitely a warmth in his voice and in his eyes that hadn’t always been there. “It’s good to see you. How was your trip? Did you have any problems at the checkpoint?”

Sana shook her head. “The credentials that you sent ahead for us worked like a charm, thanks. We probably shouldn’t hang about here for too long, but as of right now, the IGR isn’t actively on our tail.”

“Well, thank heaven for small mercies, then,” said Campbell drily. “Follow me, and we’ll get- uh, is the rest of the crew staying on the ship?”

Sana looked behind her and saw that the rest of the crew was still clustered at the top of the ramp, watching them. Krejjh was grinning madly.

“Oh, for the love of God,” Sana muttered. Obviously, someone had come up with the bright idea to give them some ‘alone time’, and they were all being fantastically unsubtle about it. “No, they’re coming,” she told Campbell, shooting Arkady a look that said Get over here, or else.

Arkady sauntered down the ramp, closely followed by Violet and Krejjh, with Brian bringing up the rear, his arms piled high with the boxes of chocolates that they’d picked up on Nereid. “Hey, Campbell. How’s it been going?”

“Pretty uneventful, apart from aiding and abetting the odd fugitive here and there,” Campbell said with a wry smile. “How about you?”

“The same. Totally uneventful,” Arkady deadpanned.

“This trip is the most exciting thing that’s happened to us all year,” Brian put in, brightly.

“Well, I can’t tell you how honoured I am,” joked Campbell, as Krejjh snickered. Campbell’s gaze landed on Violet. “And you must be the new recruit.”

“Violet Liu. It’s nice to finally meet you, Mr. Campbell,” said Violet politely, shaking Campbell’s hand.

“Likewise. I’d tell you to call me Ignatius, but even Sana refuses to, and I’ve known her for six years,” said Campbell ruefully. “Still, just ‘Campbell’ is fine. Anyway, as you said, Sana, we should probably keep moving – if you’ll all follow me, I’m parked nearby. It’s a five-seater, so we might have to get creative with the seating arrangements.”

“I can sit on Krejjh’s lap,” Brian offered, and Sana thought she caught a brief look of disappointment on Arkady’s face. She smirked.

Everything seemed completely normal between the six of them that evening, from the ride in Campbell’s car to going out for dinner and drinks. Campbell had a knack for picking the most unlikely hole-in-the-wall eateries that looked terrible but served almost unfairly delicious food, a different one each time.

Sana mostly sat back and observed as the others chattered and dug in, watching Campbell’s eyes crinkle as he drew Violet into conversation, watching as he pulled a bottle of hot sauce out almost unseen and passed it to Krejjh, who crowed and immediately began to empty it over everything. She watched Arkady teasing Brian over his bizarre food combinations, goading him into trying a strange-looking tropical fish that sat in the middle of the table.

At one point, she caught Krejjh looking at her enquiringly with one of their pairs of eyes, the other pair fixed on Violet as she attempted to – slightly tipsily – explain some complex biological concept. She smiled to let them know that she was fine, and quickly reapplied herself to her food.

She had a tendency to forget how astute Krejjh really was, and how much they tended to play up the ‘dumb alien who doesn’t understand human social conventions’ for effect. Maybe Arkady was onto something.

The truth was, she was enjoying just seeing her crew get the chance to take a breather. They hadn’t really stopped since their flight from the IGR, not daring to stay put for long on any one planet or moon – even once they were fairly sure that the Regime had given up pursuing them, too busy trying to contain the unfolding situation on New Jupiter.

They’d never been able to feel safe anywhere. Until now.

Thinking this, she looked up at Campbell, only to find him already watching her with a smile on his face.

When it came time to buy the next round of drinks, Sana volunteered, making her way to the bar and attempting to get the bartender’s attention. After she’d finally succeeded in making their order, she leaned on the bar – and jumped as Campbell came up next to her.

“Sorry, didn’t mean to catch you off-guard,” he said apologetically. “I called your name, but the patrons of this place’re… not the quietest.”

Sana laughed a little. “It’s fine. Guess I’m still a little on edge.”

She smiled up at him, and there was a pause. Again.

“I, uh, I thought you might want a hand carrying those drinks,” Campbell said.

“Oh, yeah, sure,” said Sana. The bartender was beginning to line the drinks up on the bar for her, still filling the enormously tall glass belonging to Krejjh, because Dwarnians processed human alcohol in very different ways (and quantities). If Sana wanted to speak to Campbell in private, now was the time.

“Listen, I-” she began at the same time as Campbell said, “I was wondering-”

“Oh, uh, you go first.”

“No, please.”

Okay then. Sana gathered her courage – ridiculous, that this should feel more intimidating than facing down the Fowleys - and asked, “Will you go to dinner with me tomorrow night?”

Campbell looked momentarily surprised, then chuckled. “And here I was about to ask you how long you’re planning to dock on Telemachus, as a roundabout way of working up to the same question,” he said. “Yes. I’d love to have dinner with you, Sana.”

Sana let Campbell be the one to choose the restaurant, conceding to his more up-to-date knowledge of Telemachus and his excellent taste in eateries. The following night, sat across from Campbell in a cozy little restaurant with her mouth full of the best beef rendang she’d ever eaten, she knew she’d made the right choice.

“Campbell, this is incredible,” she enthused, not even caring that her mouth was full. Campbell laughed, digging into his own bakmi goreng.

“How do you always know such good places to eat?” Sana demanded. Campbell shrugged.

“I didn’t get where I am without knowing how to make connections, and you’d be amazed at how much more open people are to doing business after a plate of really good food,” he said. “But I’m also not gonna pay through the nose for them to get blinded on moonshine and puke it all up later that night.” Sana almost choked on her mouthful as she started to laugh. “So, I look for establishments that don’t charge too much. And mind their own business.”

“So, you’re picking up the tab for tonight, then?” Sana asked playfully.

“I figured we could haggle,” Campbell replied, deadpan, and Sana laughed again.

She’d been worried about a dinner with just the two of them becoming stilted and formal, but so far it had been anything but. Determined to avoid the clichéd “outfit crisis”, she had dressed more or less the same as she did on the ship, minus her trusty wide, yellow tool belt with its hundreds of pockets, and a few engine oil stains. She missed its reassuring weight around her hips, though she was wearing a wide black belt to make up for it, with a vest and her signature knee-high boots (or as Arkady called them, her “space pirate boots”) over a loose green blouse and neopolyfibre jeans.

Arkady had performed an exaggerated double-take when she saw Sana. “Wow, Sana, I don’t think I’ve ever seen you without a wrench in your pocket before,” she said with mock surprise.

“That’s not true,” said Sana lightly. “Remember when we infiltrated that ball held by Commander Grandwin on Qilin?”

“No,” said Arkady deliberately. “I don’t remember. I’ve repressed it. That corset was hideous.”

“You looked good in it.”

“I couldn’t move in it! And I had nowhere to put my weapons. I had to strap a gun to my garter.”

Violet, who had been listening in on their conversation while brewing a pot of coffee, suddenly looked very interested. “Sorry, you strapped a gun to your what?” she asked in amusement.

“Uhhh…” Arkady froze, torn between playing to her girlfriend’s clear interest and denying any recollection of the incident in question. Sana winked at Violet.

“Tell you what, after we set off from Telemachus I’ll find us a nice formal ball to go to, and Kady can give you a real-life demonstration.”

“You’re dead to me,” Arkady hissed at her. Sana waved cheerfully at her and left the kitchen.

When Campbell had seen her, the first thing he’d said was, “Is it clichéd if I say you look nice?”

Sana grinned. “A little, but sometimes clichés are good.”

She’d been expecting at least a few minutes of awkward small talk at first, but no sooner had they sat down at their rickety little table than Campbell said,

“So, you’ve met my buddy Red Gregor – was he favouring his left leg, by any chance, when you saw him?”

“Uhh…” Sana tried to cast her mind back. Most of what had happened on Elion was a blur of her breaking the speed limit while Arkady tried to coach Violet through the Carmen Gambit, but she remembered Red Gregor after a bit: a thin-faced man who looked to be half-Chinese, half-Latino, and spoke with a strong Irish twang. He had, in fact, walked with a slight limp.

“Sure, I think he said it was prosthetic?”

“It is,” Campbell confirmed. “But what’s really funny is how he got it…”

After Elion, though, it didn’t take them long to get onto the topic of the “leak” aboard the Rumor. Campbell said, “Listen, I swear I’m not bringing this up because I’m angry with you, because I’m not-”

Sana tensed, and put down her fork. “Honestly, Campbell, you have every right to be,” she said. “I… I should have trusted you more. It wasn’t that I didn’t – it was that I was afraid of what the IGR might do to get their way. If it hadn’t been for my crew, I could’ve-”

Campbell held up a hand and shook his head. “If I didn’t know by now that you’d do anything to protect your crew, I’d be a damn fool,” he said. “I got that. And maybe if I’d been more level-headed… I could’ve helped you guys in some way. I know; you said it wasn’t safe. But I’ve had some time to think about this, and it bothered me, thinking that maybe I could have done more.

“What you said, about the people I care about – my nephews – and what I’d be willing to do to protect them… You were right. I really don’t like to think about what I’d be willing to do.” Campbell’s voice wavered slightly, and he cleared his throat. “But I also know that they’re not the only ones I’d… do almost anything to keep safe.”

Sana looked at him uncertainly. Campbell shook his head.

“That came out – that wasn’t what I meant to say. Look, I know I sounded angry on our call, and I know you’ve convinced yourself it’s because you all ‘screwed me over’ and did me out of what I was owed, and that I’m somehow keeping score.” Campbell said all this not angrily, but with a quiet intensity that nevertheless made Sana a little nervous.

“But that’s not it. If I was angry, it was because this is what the IGR always does – it sows fear, paranoia, and distrust. Even among people like us. And I was angry because… because you were light years away from me, in some kind of trouble, and there wasn’t a damn thing that I could do to help you.”

But I also know that they’re not the only ones I’d… do almost anything to keep safe. Campbell’s words suddenly made sense to Sana, and her mouth opened in surprise. Before she could say anything, Campbell said,

“I know you don’t think of yourself as someone who needs help or protection. And I’d never try to force it on you, but... You should know that it’s not always about favours and deals, owing someone or being owed. Sometimes, it’s just about people caring about you.”

Sana’s throat closed up, and she looked down at her mostly-finished bowl of food. The truth was that he was right; before a few weeks ago, she would have baulked at the idea of needing protection from anyone. She let Arkady watch her back, but that was different. She looked out for Arkady as much as Arkady looked out for her, even if Arkady didn’t realise it. Not all kinds of protection involved putting yourself between someone else and a bullet.

She’d always prided herself on being tough and self-sufficient. She’d built her reputation up from nothing; she had to be. She hated to be in anyone’s debt, because in her experience, you never knew when and how they might choose to collect. As a woman – above all, a brown woman – trying to make her way in a cutthroat world, she had to be that much more invincible.

But she thought about the way that Arkady had shoved her shoulder into Sana’s on the Gay Louisa to get her out of range of one of the security bots. She thought of the way, on New Jupiter, that Violet’s mouth had pressed into a line and she’d pressed Sana down into a chair with surprising strength and held her there while she treated her injury. She thought about seeing Brian wielding a gun for the first time, his face intent, and of Krejjh gunning the ship into overdrive to get all of them to safety.

Maybe she was learning that it was okay to let her friends look after her too.

“I’ve overstepped – I’m sorry,” said Campbell in a rush, and Sana looked up at him, coming back to herself. “I shouldn’t have-”

“No, you haven’t overstepped,” said Sana quietly, and he stopped. “I… think you’re right. And…” Campbell waited as she gathered her thoughts.

“And I think I understand what you were trying to tell me before,” she finished. “About not keeping score. It’s hard for me to make an exception to those rules, but… I can try.” She gave Campbell a half-smile. “I’m not used to being on the receiving end. Of having other people try to protect me. But maybe I’m beginning to get that it’s a two-way street.”

“I’m more than willing to help show you,” said Campbell, with such quiet sincerity that Sana felt herself blushing.

“Thanks.”

Sensing the need to lighten the tone a little, Campbell said jokingly, “Of course, don’t think this gets ya out of bartering the next time you have cargo to offload.”

“Why would I miss out on the chance to take advantage of your atrocious negotiating skills?” Sana returned easily. Campbell snorted in spite of himself, and then pretended to clutch at his chest as if mortally wounded.

“You’ve cut me to the quick, Captain Tripathi.”

“You were right about something else, too,” Sana said, remembering. “Not that any of us would have guessed, in a million years…”

At Campbell’s look of confusion, she explained: “On our call, you said – something like, ‘You’re flying through space. We’re light years apart, and we’re talking. Someone from three hundred years ago wouldn’t be able to comprehend it.’ You were talking about other possible explanations for our leak, and as it turned out, that was it. That was the explanation.”

Campbell raised an eyebrow. “I’m going to need something much stronger for this story, aren’t I?” he asked, gesturing to his glass of wine.

“Significantly,” Sana agreed.

They got through several glasses of a strong local spirit (it had nothing on engine-room moonshine, but was strong enough for Sana to feel its effects) as Sana told the whole story: about the swarm, Emily and Alvy’s discoveries, Thasia and the Other Violet, the way they’d pieced everything together, Violet’s Plan B, and their final confrontation and flight from the IGR. She spoke in low tones, their conversation easily drowned out by the loud chatter of the other patrons.

Campbell listened spellbound, occasionally swearing quietly (or not-so-quietly) in response to a development in the tale. He had always been a good audience – normally she and Arkady would take it in turns to tell stories about their exploits, Arkady mostly contributing sarcastic commentary at first until the moonshine loosened her up enough that she would take over narrating, Krejjh chiming in at appropriate – or inappropriate – moments with an exclamation or an oddly specific detail.

It felt strange to be telling it on her own, but enjoyable, too. When she described Violet grabbing Arkady and kissing her as they fled New Jupiter, Campbell stared at her in disbelief for several seconds and then wheezed with laughter.

“So Arkady finally found someone who can give as good as she gets?” he asked, shaking his head. “I thought I sensed… something last night, but I wasn’t sure if I was reading too much into things.”

“It can be hard to tell, with Arkady,” Sana agreed. “But honestly, I think the less she talks about it, the more it… matters.”

Eventually, the conversation reached a natural lull, and Sana realised it was almost midnight: they’d been out for almost four hours.

“Campbell…” she began, and then stopped.

“I know, it’s late,” said Campbell, recognising the double-tap on her comm that told her the time. “I guess we should call it a night.”

“Would you like to come back to the ship?” Sana asked him, feeling almost shy. It wasn’t uncommon for Campbell to walk with them back to the Rumor after a night of drinking, usually helping Brian to support Krejjh’s weight while they sang Dwarnian battle hymns with the words in the wrong order. (Or so Brian told her, anyway). But this was a little different. “Or, if you’d rather head home, we can-”

“I don’t have anywhere to be,” said Campbell with a smile. “Lead the way.”

Neither of them said anything much as they walked back to where the Rumor was docked, ducking down various side streets and doubling back on themselves just in case they were being tailed. Sana didn’t sense any immediate danger, but it would just be sloppy not to. She kept her hand within easy reach of the micro-blaster tucked just inside her vest.

The ship was dark when they approached, but Sana doubted that any of the crew was asleep just yet. She used her radio key to unlock the door, and the ramp quietly lowered down to the ground.

The lights on the Rumor were motion-activated, and Sana had always liked the way they gradually turned on when she came back to the ship at night, like they were welcoming her back. In the days when she’d been a crew of one, it had been a comfort.

Sana expected they’d find the crew gathered together in the mess hall, but as she and Campbell walked through the ship’s corridors, there was no sign of anyone. Sana was slightly suspicious – it wasn’t like any of them to go to bed this early. Surely none of them could have known that she’d bring Campbell back to the ship?

“So… When do you think was the last time you actually came on board?” she asked Campbell, to break the silence.

Campbell hummed thoughtfully. “It’s been a good three years. I see you’ve made some upgrades here and there.”

“Yeah, and we even got a new coffee maker, finally,” Sana said drily.

“Oh God, I remember that ancient old thing you used to have. Didn’t Arkady salvage it from a skip on Astraeus?”

“Something like that.” They paused outside the kitchen. “Would you… like a cup?” Sana asked.

Campbell raised one eyebrow and gave her a roguish smile. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say that was an invitation, Captain,” he said.

“Let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves, Campbell,” Sana said, turning away so that Campbell wouldn’t see her blush, and leading the way into the kitchen.

“Call me Ignatius,” Campbell said, unexpectedly.

Sana paused in the middle of stretching up to reach the only two (thankfully) clean cups left in the cupboard. It seemed like a small thing, but names carried a lot of meaning, a lot of weight. She’d thought long and hard about the name Sana Tripathi when she’d chosen it, after the uprising. It had represented a new start, new possibilities.

She knew that Campbell, like everyone else in their line of work, had other names that he often went by. But he’d only ever been Campbell to her.

“All right… Ignatius,” she said, trying it out. Campbell smiled at her, warm and fond.

They carried their cups of coffee into the mess hall, and Campbell raised his eyes as he caught sight of the hammock strung up on one side of the room.

“That’s also new. Are those… safety harnesses?”

“Admittedly, not my finest piece of engineering,” Sana admitted. “It was meant to be for morale.”

“Does anyone actually use it?”

Sana felt her face warm again as she considered how best to answer that question. “From time to time.”

“Can I try it out?” Campbell asked playfully.

“Sure, it should hold your weight.”

Campbell set his coffee cup down on the ground by the hammock and cautiously sat down on it, and when it didn’t give way under his weight, swung his legs up and lay down fully.

“This is actually pretty comfortable,” he said in a tone of slight surprise. “The holes are a little unnerving, but it’s a solid hammock.”

“Thanks. I really should take it apart and put the safety harnesses back, but I think the crew like it.”

“I would say ‘Who needs safety harnesses?’, but I know how Krejjh flies,” joked Campbell. “Can it hold two people?”

“If I didn’t know any better, I’d say that was an invitation,” said Sana. She smirked at Campbell, and then added, “Ignatius.”

Campbell’s eyes darkened, and he sat up and reached out a hand. Sana took it, and allowed Campbell to pull her down until – with a little manoeuvring – she was lying next to him on the hammock.

Their bodies were pressed flush against each other, and Sana was sure that Campbell could feel her heart pounding against his chest. Campbell reached up and gently smoothed a piece of stray hair away from her face.

“Is this okay?” he asked in a low rumble. “Are we moving too fast?”

“This is just fine,” Sana replied, and kissed him.

Campbell’s hand came up to gently cup the back of her head as he kissed her back, sending an almost electric thrill through her. Sana extricated her hand from between them and laid it against Campbell’s cheek, kissing him more intently now, inhaling faint notes of aftershave and cologne.

By the time they broke apart, the hammock was swaying gently. Sana smiled at Campbell, feeling a little punch drunk.

“This honestly feels like it’s been… a long time coming,” she said.

“I think it has,” Campbell agreed. “Do you, uh… Should we relocate to somewhere less public?” At such close quarters, Sana could see him blushing slightly.

She thought about it, and the not insignificant chance that one of the crew – who most definitely were not asleep – could walk in on them at any moment.

“Let’s stay here for a little while longer,” she said. “I think it’s only fair that I get to have a turn.”

[aion-rsa]

I Think You Should Leave Season 2: Ranking Every Sketch

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How on Earth did we survive two years without new episodes of Netflix’s brilliant sketch comedy series I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson? The first batch of six episodes premiered on April 23 of 2019 and proved instantly iconic. 

Contained within the season’s roughly two-dozen sketches was absolutely hilarious and essential comedy that provided ample memetic kindling for the internet’s conversational fire. For the focused enough mind, it’s entirely possible to communicate with one’s friends exclusively in I Think You Should Leave memes. Lord knows, I’ve tried it.

Thankfully, ITYSL season 2 has finally arrived on Netflix after its COVID-19 delay. It features 28 sketches that range from “pretty funny” to “I can’t stop laughing. Oh God, I can’t stop laughing. It hurts, surely this is the end. Surely, I will die.”

Check out our rankings below and then begin yelling at our chances like Spectrum is dropping your network.

28. Credit Card Roulette

If nothing else, Tim Robinson and I Think You Should Leave co-creator Zach Kanin are incredible comedy scouts. Through two seasons, the show’s sketches have been a who’s who of up-and-coming comedic talent, like the wonderful John Early who is featured in this sketch. Unfortunately Early is not served well by the material here, which doesn’t rise to the same ludicrous heights as season 2’s other sketches. The best moment is Early’s immediate resolve that he’s not paying the bill, but the sketch doesn’t go too far after that. 

27. Dave’s Poop Double

The sketch that serves as the cold open of season 2’s final episode doesn’t get things off to the best start. The concept of Tim’s “Luka” hiring a guy who looks just like his coworker Dave to take monster shits every time he gets up is certainly fun but missing an important layer of added absurdity. Luka is probably the best name for any of Robinson’s random characters yet though.

26. Little Buff Boys Pt. 2

Season 2 features many more callbacks to previous sketches than the first season did. This followup to Little Buff Boys is the worst of the bunch but still quite funny. Perhaps the only thing more absurd than a Little Buff Boys competition is someone being proud of running “one of” the biggest LBB competitions in the Greater Cincinnati area. This sketch also passes up an easy Cincinnati Chili joke in favor of creating the truly vile “cherry chuck salad.”

25. Detective Crashmore Trailer

This trailer for action thriller Detective Crashmore is funny enough on its own but doesn’t reach another comedic level until the AOL Blast interview two sketches later. Still, I unironically want to see an action film with a lead character whose main quip is “Eat fucking bullets, you fuckers. You fucking suck. You fucking SUCK!”

24. I Should Have Got That

I Think You Should Leave deserves a big spread in AARP magazine. No other sketch show revels in the talents of older comedians quite like this one. After 81-year-old comedian Ruben Rabasa stole the show in season 1, season 2 ups the ante with many more sketches letting old folks shine. It’s Bob McDuff Wilson’s turn this time around and his child-like obsession with his student’s burger kills right up until the shockingly dark kicker.

23. Office Surfing

“I almost killed myself, Jullliieeeeee” is one of the best line-reads of the season. The sketch it’s built around isn’t too remarkable but man, does Robinson knock that one out of the park. 

22. “No, I Don’t Know How to Drive”

This is a quickie but a goodie. Robinson’s characters break down in tears quite often this season and this is one of the better occasions. How far have Tim’s characters come – from reveling in the existence of four-wheeled motorcycles to looking at the inside of a car and weeping “I don’t know what any of this shit is and I’m fucking scared.”

21. The Capital Room

Speaking of top tier comedic talent, thank God Patti Harrison stopped by another season of I Think You Should Leave. This time around, we get two heaping doses of Patti. This one, the first of the two, is the inferior but still quite great. In the span of roughly 30 seconds, Harrison unveils the saga of a woman who A. Got sewn into the pants of the Thanksgiving Day parade Charlie Brown float, B. Hates all bald boys, C. Sued the city and won a fortune, D. Is now helplessly addicted to wine, and E. Is tragically self-aware that her money will run out soon.

20. But It’s Lunch

Just like last year’s opening sketch, “But It’s Lunch” (this is probably a good time to mention, that I’m naming all of these things myself. You could very easily call this the Hotdog sketch but that would confuse it with last year’s hotdog sketch) sets the perfect opening mood. The sight gag of Robinson’s Pat trying to stealthily eat a hotdog is wonderful, and the fact that things so quickly escalate to hotdog surgery and puke is just sublime. 

19. Carber Hotdog Vacuum

The follow-up to “But It’s Lunch” occurs a full two episodes later and proves to be a hell of a pay-off. Robinson’s unnamed character (who is obviously Pat) very quickly reveals that there is one very specific reason he made this hotdog vacuum invention and you’ll never guess what it was. We all make mistakes. We shouldn’t be fired for them.

18. Insider Trading Trial (Stupid Hat)

This sketch somewhat mimics the experience of trying to explain what I Think You Should Leave is like to someone who has never seen it. “So, this guy took too small a slice of toilet paper…” or “…and then he has to have to have sex with his mother-in-law.” “Insider Trading” rotely describes the bizarre behaviors of one of Robinson’s deeply strange characters, Brian, as it’s being read into the court record. Brian and his stupid fedora with the safari flaps is in attendance to provide a visual aid. As are some hilarious flashbacks in which Brian attempts to roll the hat down his arm like Fred Astaire and instead encounters only wheelchair grease. 

17. The Ice Cream Store is Closed Today

Before he was a criminal lawyer, Bob Odenkirk was one of the most legendary sketch writers of all time. It’s only fitting that he stop by ITYSL season 2 to provide his comedic blessing. Odenkirk is great from the get-go but this one doesn’t really get rolling until the end when Robinson finds himself truly immersed in the fictional life of this sad old man. “His wife’s sick but she’s gonna get better” is a shockingly emotional moment amid pure farce.

16. Barbie and the Blues Brothers

This is the sketch that climbed the most in my rankings upon a second viewing. What first seemed to be a waste of Conner O’Malley’s manic comedic energy became a semi-classic once I submitted to its strange vibes. I don’t even know what to call this one but Robinson’s character refusing to stop dancing as Barbie the dog melts down is hilarious. O’Malley is better served by last season’s “honk if you’re horny” sketch, still he gets some bangers in this time around like “She thinks he’s a whole new guy because of the glasses and the hat” and “it’s her house, she’s doing what’s right!” Robinson once again closes this nonsense out with some well-earned tears. “It’s just me, Barbie. I’m not the Blues Brothers.”

15. Jaime Taco (I Love My Wife)

“Jamie Taco” is a prime example of just how rapidly (and how well) I Think You Should Leave is able to veer into pure nonsensical genius. At the top, this sketch comes perilously close to making an actual statement about how men are too quick to pretend like their wives are horrible nags. This sketch, however, has its sights set on something much dumber…and therefore better. Our hero (played hilariously by Richard Jewell’s Paul Walter Hauser) loves his wife because she helped him through his darkest moment, which just so happens to be when snotty young actor Jamie Taco refused to let him say his Henchman lines in a play.

14. Comos Restaurant 

All hail the return of the great Tim Heidecker! Heidecker, of Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! fame, is one of the few comedians with a strange enough sensibility to be reasonably seen as an I Think You Should Leave forerunner. His season 1 turn as a walnut-obsessed jazz douche is a classic and this one reaches similar heights. This time, Heidecker’s character, Gary, and his lovely date, Janeane (Tracey Birdsall), have good reason to be annoyed by their date night at the sci-fi cosmos restaurant being interrupted by some hacky jokes. Of course, they use this opportunity to reveal that Jeannine’s mom used to drink puke for the Davy and Rascal radio show to pay for school supplies. It’s oddly refreshing to have a Heidecker character given a game partner and Gary and Janeane make one great team.

13. Detective Crashmore Interivew

While the Detective Crashmore trailer is the setup, this interview with AOL Blast is the punchline. Detective Crashmore is played by Santa Claus, because why not? Actor Biff Wiff’s gruff, nasally Midwestern timber is the perfect accent to accompany this lunacy. This is a Santa who in one breath demands to be taken seriously as an actor (Billy Bob Thornton-style) and in the next admits to seeing everyone in the world’s dick.

12. Sloppy Steaks (I Used to Be a Piece of Shit)

From here on out, it’s nothing but absolute homeruns. “Sloppy Steaks” could very well have been number one on this list and few would have batted an eye. The setup here is amazing as it gives Tim Robinson a reason to essentially have beef with a baby. The baby cries because he knows Robinson used to be a piece of shit. But don’t babies understand that people can change? That’s funny enough to begin with, but the real gut-busting moment here is the reveal of what “being a piece of shit” really means. In this case it means slicking one’s hair back and dousing the steaks at Truffoni’s with water to make sloppy steaks.

11. Johnny Carson Impersonator

Just a quick rundown for those who are confused…

Johnny Carson = Can Hit. George Kennedy = Can’t Hit. George Bush = Can’t Hit. 

10. Driving School (Her Job is Tables)

This is the rare I Think You Should Leave sketch that actually provides an answer to all the lunacy. As Robinson’s character’s Driver’s Ed class watches Patti Harrison’s actress in some dated videos, they can’t help but wonder what she does for a living. “Tables,” Robinson answers over and over again. This would be funny enough on its own but the reveal that Harrison provides tables to Monster Cons is a rare and valuable moment of “Ohhhhh that’s why” for this show. Equally as valuable is Harrison, who really sells that those tables are her lifeblood.

9. Claire’s Ear-Piercings

One has to wonder how much time goes into choosing the perfect “order” for the sketches in I Think You Should Leave. Two seasons in a row now, the show has selected pitch perfect opening and closing sketches. This closing number is oddly melancholic as the Claire’s orientation video for girls who want to get their ears pierced somehow gives way to one 58-year-old man named Ron Tussbler’s existential dread. If we really get to see the “highlights” after we die, forcibly fake laughing every ten minutes to make the voyeuristic experience all the richer sounds like a good strategy and not sad at all. Hang in there, Ron.

8. Little Buff Boys Competition

What. A. Crop. It was a virtual certainty that ITYSL season 2 would feature a spiritual successor to the classic “Baby of the Year” sketch in season 1. Thank God “Little Buff Boys” is up to the challenge of replicating that magic. This one has all the right elements to be another hit: Sam Richardson (in a wig this time, no less), a grand pageant hall, and some precocious youths. Troll Boy also joins the canon of young ITYSL characters who everybody instinctively hates alongside Bart Harley Jarvis.

7. Tammy Craps

There’s something weirdly nefarious about this commercial for a poisonous doll that doesn’t have farts in her head anymore. It’s a criticism of late stage capitalism crossed with the cursed nature of the Annabelle movies…while not being like either of those things at all. In reality, this is just another absurdist concept sprung from the terrifying inner depths of the writing staff’s mind. It also happens to be a particularly great one. The girl weighing her clothes down with rocks so she can hit the magical 60-pound threshold to safely play with Tammy Craps is one of the best gags of the season.

6. Karl Havoc

“Little Buff Boys Competition” and another upcoming sketch are likely to produce the lion’s share of memes and quotes from this season of ITYSL. But the one quote that’s stuck in my mind most aggressively comes from this hilarious episode 1 clip. The sight of Robinson’s Carmine Laguzio posing as the dead-faced freakshow Karl Havoc and muttering “I don’t want to be around anymore” is quite simply one of the funniest things I’ve ever witnessed. This is a marvelous, unnerving, utterly hilarious sketch. That there are somehow five better sketches speaks to how strong this season is. 

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5. Dan Flashes Pt. 1 (Office)

I Think You Should Leave is now two for two in introducing the most cutting edge items in men’s fashion. Season 1 featured the arrival of the highly practical TC Tugger shirt. Now season 2 ups the ante with the stylish Dan Flashes. This sketch succeeds because it takes a simple question “Why is Mike laying down during a business meeting?” and divines the most outlandish answer possible. Mike isn’t eating because he’s spending all his money on Dan Flashes shirts. 

4. Dan Flashes Pt. 2 (Hotel Menu)

It’s one thing to introduce a hilarious concept, it’s another thing entirely to put it into practice. This second entry into the Dan Flashes canon is amazing. Back in part 1, it seemed as though the intricate patterns on the Dan Flashes shirts have a hypnotic effect on men who look exactly like Tim Robinson. Seeing the reality of that – pasty men battling one another to get their credit cards to the cashier before the other – is truly hilarious stuff.

3. Coffin Flop

This is the second sketch of the entire season…the second! And holy shit, does it set a strong precedent for what’s to come. This impassioned message from the Corncob TV CEO for Spectrum to save his network and its precisely one television program is a masterclass in shock humor. Watching body after body busting out of shit wood somehow never loses its grim luster. Somehow, in a sketch that features dozens of naked corpses flopping to the ground unexpectedly, it’s Robinson’s monologue that hits the hardest. “This world is so fucked up. And people are mad at me because I showed a bunch of naked dead bodies with their spread blue butts flying out of boxes? Really?”

2. Calico Cut Pants

Every episode of I Think You Should Leave season 2 features five sketches save for episode 4 which has only three. And that’s because episode 4 is dominated by a near 10-minute epic called “Calico Cut Pants.” In many ways, Calico Cut Pants is the platonic ideal of an ITYSL sketch. It takes place in a nightmarish world where every bizarre action only leads to an even more bizarre reaction. Nothing ever cools down. There is always something stranger on the horizon.

In this instance, Mike O’Brien (longtime SNL writer and the creator of the terminally underrated comedy A.P. Bio) plays an office drone who enters into a living hell merely because his co-worker helps him out of a mildly annoying social jam. Robinson’s character introduces him to a website that advertises pants with piss stains on them. That’s all well and good but once you know about Calicocutpants.com you Always. Have. To. Give. It’s like PBS, but more demonic. This remarkable sketch includes everything that’s great about this show, right down to characters with inexplicable idiosyncrasies like Tim Robinson’s adamance that doors must always be held open for him.

1. Ghost Tour

The funniest moment in ITYSL season 2 (and maybe the funniest moment in the history of the world) occurs in this sketch. Tim Robinson’s character has been admonished for his potty mouth during a ghost tour over and over again. The tour guide even said he’s ruining his job. But this poor man sincerely cannot understand why he’s in trouble. This is a tour for adults and he’s following the rules by using adult language. Like any good Robinson character, he truly believes that he’s the sane one and it’s the rest of the world that’s taking crazy pills.

So in his darkest moment, the man musters up his strength through tears and delivers the following query:

“Not trying to be funny. Not trying to get a laugh. I don’t want anybody to have the worst day at their job. But. Do any of these….fuckers….ever blast out of the wall and have, like a huge cum shot?”

Cue: riotous, damn near apocalyptic laughter. What a treasure and blessing this whole show is.

I Think You Should Leave season 2 is available to stream on Netflix now.

The post I Think You Should Leave Season 2: Ranking Every Sketch appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3yCWxMF

[stone-man-warrior]

Jumpin‘ Jack Flash

Lyrics

I was born in a cross-fire hurricane And I howled at my ma in the driving rain But it's all right now, in fact, it's a gas But it's all right. I'm Jumpin' Jack Flash It's a gas! Gas! Gas

I was raised by a toothless, bearded hag I was schooled with a strap right across my back But it's all right now, in fact, it's a gas But it's all right, I'm Jumpin' Jack Flash It's a gas! Gas! Gas

I was drowned, I was washed up and left for dead I fell down to my feet and I saw they bled I frowned at the crumbs of a crust of bread Yeah, yeah, yeah

I was crowned with a spike right thru my head But it's all right now, in fact, it's a gas But it's all right, I'm Jumpin' Jack Flash It's a gas! Gas! Gas

Jumping Jack Flash, it's a gas Jumping Jack Flash, it's a gas Jumping Jack Flash, it's a gas Jumping Jack Flash, it's a gas Jumping Jack Flash

Source: Musixmatch

Songwriters: Mick Jagger / Keith Richards

Jumpin' Jack Flash lyrics © Mirage Music Int. Ltd. C/o Essex Music Int. L

Released: : 24 May 1968 (UK); 1 June 1968

The lyrics for Jumpin’ Jack Flash are in the Thunerbird’s Terror in New York City Episode 4.

Air date: October 21, 1965

Previous episode: Perils of Penelope

Next episode: The Edge of Impact

=======================================================

I just now watched the Terror in New York City. It’s 3:48 pm. 12-20-2020.

=======================================================

So far, my assessment includes:

Friendly Fire, but intentional when considering the bigger picture.

The Thunderbird’s episodes are not character specific, Good Guy and Bad Guy roles are are all inclusive, they seem to swap places, in more ways than one. It’s the story and it’s symbolism that is important, not any particular hero, villain. or groups of hero’s or villains. The characters are like unisex for social order, one size fit’s all in effort to express terror plans covertly on TV in 1960′s.

There is a “inside job” sort of vibe portrayed in the story, but is super complicated to follow or explain. I need to watch some parts again, then come back to say more. Meanwhile, the WTC similarities are obvious, other parts are not so obvious, so, do some research about that one Micheal Jackson record album that is said to show New York skyline with some buildings absent from view. I can‘t find the one I am thinking of right now with Google Search. Is from late 1970′s I think... been too long since I’ve seen the album art so, do your own research.

Think about this title too, from The Offspring: Conspiracy of One:

“I’ll be back...”

“Come with me if you want to live”

=====================================================

December 20, 2020: 4:21 pm:

=====================================================

I don’t know where to start to say WTF is going on in Terror in New York City.

Small, big thing:

Some cops on stakeout emergency command post say that one-half hour is a long time when waiting for some people who on the way to help {Back-Up}.

Then...

Some people who had Empire State Building come crashing down on their head ( “I was crowned with a spike right thru my head” from Rolling Stones music ) say that two hours is only a short time as the water is rising, air is on short supply.

Some perspective and contextual importance is highlighted in the episode that way.

Then, we have take Fractal Russian Hoax Viewer to reality in the 1970′s in Southern California, over here:

C & R Clothiers advertisement, was on TV every commercial break in So Cal 1971ish and onward for a long time. Other variations of that can be found in other cities is my guess.

“See & Aarggghhh!” ... Pirates say “Aarrgghh”, so “Holy See & Pirates who say R, Clothiers”

Later, 1990′s, “Treason“ is adopted as suitable terror comm, terror pirates are “Trees”. They go to “Burlington Coat Factory” for covering Burl.

===============================================

The hours are very small here. The clothes are generic, timeless fashion, works as good right now, is it did back then, 1970′s. Is textiles, from a con with a pointy hat.

“what a difference a day makes” is one revolution.

Some important things to know, the terms I use to explain may not all be approved terror terms, but these are some basic ideas about time, revolution, and why I am spending so much effort to say stuff about those cops, and those other guys that got hit in the head with “ton of bricks” sort of idea.

Pirates say “Aarrgghh”

R. Revolution = R Evolution = Aargghh Evolution = Pirate Evolution

Seconds (tiny revolution) Minutes (small size revolution) Hours (Medium size revolution)

Days (Regular, normal and customary Revolution; Crusade work: “Terror is a 9 - 5 Job” Dolly Parton: Bring Hand Trucks to the Ports, for cleavage, parting of the red see ... ... ... ... ...)

Weeks are quarters Months (bleed)

Years (Anal Revolution; Celebration; Yule Tide; High Tide; The Christening of new acquisitions; Zero - One; 01... perpetuation ... ... ... ...)

Century (The Big Picture of Revolution)

Milena (The goal, the whole Chihuahua of revolution, the whole Enchilada)

(There is volumes of study material just with timing components of Russian Hoax Mother)

==

“Why is the clothing store important?”

Because Brains said he studied Manhattan, where there is sub-terrainian water passage ways. (people, are water).

So, there is “Underground Railroad”, similar to the kind that black slaves are said to have used when escaping captivity in early USA, goes from southern parts of USA, to Canada for “Underground Railroad of black USA slaves seeking help along the way”

Turn that idea around the other way, from Canada, to USA, people from Cat in the Hat Vatican Command HQ sent through systems of helpful people (Church underground system of rivers, undetected for 100 years and the Empire State Building and the Bank next door was built on top of invisible Hokus Pokus “River of Deceit” [Mad Season, featuring Lane Staley on vocals, from Seattle]  ) so that they can take their positions, assume some ID, get established, and go the CR Clothiers (is French name) for some nice clothes to add to the War Robe (wardrobe) at the church, so they can “Snatch the pebble from my hand... Time for you to go.... Grasshopper”, and enter into USA society, is the plan. Some of that is contained in Terror in New York Thunderbird’s Episode 4.

The details are important... there would be lots more of Russian Hoax Fractal parenthesis and pull quotes information if I did a more complete job of explaining the episode. See that Russian Hoax Fractal can take you to Mad Season in Seattle if you follow that path in the fractal of lies. The Big Fog Horn in the Sky will sort of push you over there if you let it take you, and want to go have a look, where you would eventually encounter Boeing and a International Market Place at a pier where all kinds of crazyness would kill you if go there to that pier marketplace, and you would find there are two baseball stadiums next to one another where the Marlins play ball, unless the stadiums fell over since last time I checked.

(personal experience at the international market place, is famous for a place where they throw fish to people who go there to by fish:

My family went to Seattle. At the marketplace is a Bourbon Street sort of French Quarters Mardi Gras sort of arrangement of restaurants and gift shops. We check-in for a table at the restaurant, then wait outside for one to become available. My son was looking at something that was at the waiting area, when someone from a balcony above, lowered a rope with a hook on it, and hoisted my son up into the balcony.

I had to go in there like Arnold Schwarzenegger to find my son. I did that, we skipped the restaurant, then went to the pier, where there are all kinds of vendors with booths, three stories tall, long as the pier is, all with Swap-Meet style shopping. I was standing there with my daughter looking at some Fish Kite’s they have for sale there.... then, she is gone... “now you see her, now you don’t see her”.

I see someone running away, already way down the pier and my daughter was yelling for help. So, I chase over that way, eventually retrieve my daughter on the upper level, after going up a switch-back arrangement of ramps to the upper level of shopping area.

All of that happened on the same visit to Seattle when we took a visitor tour at Boeing airplane factory... where armed men with machine guns took over, and shot all of the office workers dead, against a wall, while we were there for visitor tour that they offer there. I was able to get the keys from a dead office worker, my son and I went and found the car, stole it, got my family out of their, took the stolen car to Seattle Police station, told them what happened, and the police gave me and my family a ride “back to the hotel”. It was 1998-ish.

================

more later...

===============

5:58 pm:

now back to the Thunderbird’s episode:

Real quick:

The beginning shows that US navy has similar kinds of high-tech craft as does International Rescue. There is some confusion, orders to shoot, orders then not to shoot. The Thunderbird 2 with Virgil is on fire, almost loses control, Scott is worried about about the navy might track the Thunderbird’s back to Volcano Island... it’s bad.... Virgil flies home, takes a shower.

Thunderbird 2 is broken, Virgil is broken.

There is talk about rebuilding Thunderbird 2. It will take “Two-Weeks”.

The parts, they explain, need to all be obtained from a variety of different manufacture, so that no one will know where Thunderbird’s Volcano Island HQ is at. Very important that everyone is supposed to know that International Rescue is there to save the day, but no one is supposed to know where to find them.

=

There is a lot happening just with that.

Terror rules: For a contract between people, no matter what the contract is for, or what it’s about, everything shall take “Two-Weeks”, it’s in the Contract, no matter what it is, it will be “Two-Weeks”.

So, that is what is happening there, someone hurts Virgil, the plans include that there are services expressed in the form of “Contract Work” to retaliate against those who hurt the “Virgil’s” from the Church, is part of the master plan being developed there in these Thunderbird episodes.

That navy craft is high tech, that means they are an extension of International Rescue, part of the “Conspiracy of One” idea I pointed at above.

Sometimes I say: “USA, The nation that kills itself”

Inside job, terror operatives from Christian Church at White House and US Congress, all look innocent, they say the Muslims are the terrorists, send US Military over there to Muslim HQ everywhere, the military is killed and replaced with Canadian Christian terror warriors after real US military is ambushed on the boat ride to Muslim Terror in the Middle East. Canadians come back to the base later, look the same as the US Military, ambush the base.... or variations of that.

All of that is said in the episode symbolically if you follow the dots forward from it just a little ways. That high tech navy boat says a lot just by being there.

Order parts from variety of manufacturers: I’ll just point out modern day HUAWEI. That is Hong-Kong HUAWEI, makers of Chinese Knock-Off electronics, is British, not Chinese.

Let’s say you are terrorist who picked up a stolen Stingray Surveillance Unit at the Swap Meet. You take that to some terrorist friends in Hollywood, they show it to British Command, who sends it to Hong-Kong, where some Knock-Off Engineers work for the British, they figure out how the thing works, they source some parts from a variety of different manufacturers, the parts are sent back to Hollywood, where HUAWEI HQ is at, the Amp-Guru arranges that the parts are sent to places where he can go collect all of the different parts for making Hong-Kong Knock-Off Stingray Surveillance Units... the Amp-Guru puts High-Fidelity inside, extra features, Dolby 5.1 Surround sort of tech, the kind that can hone in on other real name brand Stingray units, all is disguised with 8-Track Tape Player Car Stereo sort of vibe, in 2020.

That is why that part is important. Then, take the Way-Back Machine over to 1969 Raytheon, makers of SONAR Fish Finders that were sold to boat owner fishermen back then, add Stingray explanation from above, make experiments, wait for Ronald Reagan, then, Make Raytheon part of the defense Contractors Club... lot’s of contracts, takes about Two-Weeks for everything after that, no matter what it is, it will be Two-Weeks, and Raytheon has all of the parts to fulfill the contracts from the High Country in Hollywood Callerado, comes with a script after that. The stuff that could be built after that is beyond what I know, but there are some Amp Guru’s, top notch, best there are globally at the “Arm Wrestling Capital of the World” in Petaluma California at Mesa Engineering, who will know all about what can be made with electronics pieces parts from various manufactures. (lt’s possible that Mesa Engineering is not really there, could be bait location, use caution. John Petrucci from “Lamb of God” uses Mesa amplifiers, so, Hokus Pokus is suspected there. He uses a Mark-V Boogie, dangerous symbolism with that.

Petrucci: Happy Song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBXH99t9UYE

=

Virgil flies home, to take a shower. Takes two-weeks to recover.

He gets hijacked, winds up at High School Locker Room Showers... Takes Two-Weeks to recover.

The Virgil Shower scene w/Two-Weeks Pieces Parts Manufacture, is a two-way communication in the episode. It says that there are provisions in the master terror plan to protect all of the Virgil’s from the Church, also, at the same time, it says that other, non-conforming Virgil’s will be taken out of service.

==

Let’s fast forward to the end:

The Thunderbird 4 Submarine is there, to collect some SAG Reporter Victims. It’s in the Underground Railroad where the people are water.

The rescue is kinda iffy there.... not sure what happened. The sub was covered up with rocks, dirt, could call it “High Gain Channel“ on the Pope’s Flying V guitar rig for playing through stacks of Marshall’s ( see explanation about two cops on emergency stake-out who think half-hour is a long time to wait for some Back-Up ) maybe when the amp needs bias adjustment at Mesa Amp Guru. A test could have happened inside the submarine when SAG Reporters got on board... maybe there was some smoke, the amp could have suffered damage, need to replace the transformer, so, power goes out after the high gain circuit collapsed right there, causing a outage of information, similar to that other outage that happened when the earth caved in at the SAG Reporter Empire State Building Relocation Ceremony... news report... there was outage there too, and those guys will do almost anything to get a story, so, all kinds of different sort smoke at the Amp Guru is what looks like happened, was a test, COVID test, they failed. Then, on stage, here comes one of the reporters who was inside of the submarine at the time when the High Gain Channel blew up.

Is it the same guy?

Is it replacement SAG Reporter?

Did Father have to use Two-Weeks to source parts from various suppliers?

I don‘t know, I do know that the rising water means that there are a lot of incoming underground railroad terror soldiers available right there to choose from for replacing parts on high amp channel when the circuit blows in new york relocation of Empire State Building ceremony happens and the power tubes need to change, requires bias adjustment at the Pope’s Amp Guru... and there was smoke.

They won‘t let me use the “Post Video Button” to show you this video by The Vapors called “I Think I’m Turning Japanese”.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ecek8UDqh8

==

Besides those things, the Thunderbird’s episode includes two big ass buildings that fell down.

It was a inside job, from below.

===

Jumpin‘ Jack Flash Parts:

At the beginning, see the “Cross-Fire Hurricane)

Imagine how Virgil “howled‘ at ma in the driving rain”

Go to the end of episode 1 to see “I was schooled with a strap right across my back”

“I was drowned, I was washed up and left for dead” is what happened to SAG Reporters in the underground river.

At the end, see the “Two Bit Bearded Hag” (two-pence, it’s the Queen Puppet)

“I fell down to my feet and I saw they bled” is Father sitting at his desk looking down when he is asked if he wants some coffee, says “no”, says he’s going to the landing area.

“I frowned at the crumbs of a crust of bread”, there is a piece of toast, big one, left side of Father’s desk.

“I was crowned with a spike right thru my head “ happens when Empire State Building crashes on top of SAG Reporter’s heads. Or, maybe is what happened at the Pope’s Amp Guru Submarine Ride High Gain Bias Adjustment w/Smoke when the circuit blew, video feed ended.

“But it’s all right now, in fact it’s a gas.” ~Rolling Stones

=

Gordon drives the Thunderbird 4 Submarine.

Jumpin’ Jack Flash is Flash Gordon.

Mick Jagger is in the submarine, at the Amp Guru HQ.

It’s a Pyramid. If you see a pyramid, that is Vatican Choir Pope’s Amp Guru, keeps the Flying V tuned up there, does bias adjustment with magic wand that smokes. There a lots of famous people at Amp Guru HQ.

=========

Go back over to Thunderbird’s Episode 1 “Trapped in the Sky”:

Some speculation:

The begging is some weird scary Hokus Pokus going on that never gets explained. I say all of that is “Wizard of Oz”, is the “Man behind the Curtain, pay no attention to the guy in the dress with the pointy hat at the Vatican, or, to any of his friends in Hollywood or those British Invasion Rock Stars we sent over there, ‘The Droids you are looking for are not here’” sort of message.

Further speculation is that particular guy who is portraying the bad guy in episode one, is also that guy who used the Pope’s Pointy Hat to get onto that SST with the bomb strapped on to it in the landing gear... I know it’s not the same guy, all is symbolic, so, it’s the same guy.

That guy who goes flying tethered to the Pope’s Pointy Hat is entertaining, I could watch that part again, and again.

He is Tony Iommi. Is Pope’s Lead Guitar Apprentice. Black Sabbath.

That, supports the Wizard of Oz idea. Ozzy is a prisoner at that time, I think he always has been a slave to the music industry, is different than others in many ways, and, in the end, they took away his “Prince of Darkness” title, and gave it to Ronnie James Dio (Mike Bloomberg) sort of when he left the band in 1990′s I think it was... they tossed that Sharon at him, SDA terror spy Ozzy Monitor, and then, to top that off, they gave him a TV show, with cameras everywhere he went, all day, all night, at his house, for punishment.

Anyway, I have other more personal information too, about why Tony’s fingers were cut off, it’s not like he says. Tony, is one of the very best of all Guitar players ever, so, it’s a love-hate thing because of that, personally speaking.

So, Pope’s apprentice Lead Axman is there, playing role of Hokus Pokus bad guy, and is flying around with the Pope’s Pointy Hat for protection, and aerodynamic considerations. He can get into anything, then, get out safely, is also part of the speculation.

(advanced learning will lead to famous Rock Stars who parachute in for special attack, super dangerous knowledge there)

At the end of episode one is where Father says: “I think we’re in business”... it’s show business, is and is terror business all at the same time, while also is a school on TV for teaching terror.

Tony still had the tips of his fingers at the time Thunderbird’s were aired. those came off in the early 1970′s.

That Chinaman character, Tin-Tin Kyrano is confusing to follow in the stories told. Sometimes Tin-Tin is that woman who assists Father, and sometimes it’s Kyrano the Chinaman.

One-Hour Martinizing at the Chinese Laundry Dry Cleaners terror communication seems to be developing in these early Thunderbird’s episodes.

Also is more to think about contained in even older episodes, the black & white ones, which are the ones from my memory, these color ones were too creepy to me at the time they came on TV, and, I only recall that the color ones were reruns by the time I saw them back in the day. I see now that they are very important components to what is happening now, in 2020, they are connected distantly to Twitter and Google, I can see that, am looking for solid connection from Thunderbird’s 1965 and onward episodes to Google products of today, something more than the seemingly coincidental referencing to the old episodes in the recent news stories. Besides that, there are so many real-life associations happening in public places to the old episodes that I am convinced those associated things I am seeing are not coincidental, but are part of the plans that these old episodes demonstrate when looked at with Secret Decoder Ring from old box of Cracker Jack’s mentality, w/Way-Back Machine attachment for seeing Time Warp, and Russian Mother Hoax Viewer for seeing truth where the lies are thick.

I don’t think I have seen all of the episodes, and certainly not in modern times, except for a few random episodes, so, there is a lot yet to learn from them.

One Hour Martinizing... Tin-Tin is the same as Kyrano, but that is not shown in the stories... maybe I am confused about who is Tin-Tin, and who is Kyrano, have to have a closer look, turn it  around backwards and upside down to see what gender it is, play the turn-a-round, it’s a twelve bar blues number at the Chinese Laundry turned One Hour Martinizing at Volcano Island International Rescue HQ.

“Why are there inclusions of ideas such as Amp Guru and One Hour Matinizing at the Chinese Laundry in the real life terrorism?”

It seems to be a system of Check-and-Balance sort of ongoing COVID Testing where people are subject to scrutiny, and reprimand. Have a look at Ozzy Osbourne’s personnel surgery record, some is available online to see what kinds of services are provided at Amp Guru, who directs traffic with some Rayon Suits to the Martinizer every Two-Weeks when clean up on the aisle is deemed necessary.

I am being throttled. “Post Video Button“ won‘t work when I start to explain how the real terrorism is done: Black Sabbath: War Pigs. Lyric video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rG0Ws3YfONY

=======================================

I think it may have been Ozzy Osbourne who sent that Ford GT 40 that never made it hear, complete with trailer to haul it with. It wound up at 507 Jackpine, Harold & Joan Phillips, a long time ago. Arnold Schwarzenegger was killed as a result, in defense at the AM/PM when he said some fool sold him the car for $50k and his terror thugs attacked me there. Sparacino’s of 545 Jackpine had the car that day... I think it’s stored in a barn somewhere nearby. or, in Jay Leno’s garage. Ford GT 40′s are high profile, but only 3 feet 4 inches tall. Perfect for the Pope’s elevator terror.

That means Ozzy was also fooled again, same as me, and millions of other people.

He has a very narrow doorway that leads into his studio, it turns out that the terror bastards are skinny.

I don‘t know who sent the car, I only know it was supposed to come to my house, on the heals of Royal British, Russian Lies.

====================================

11:50 pm:

Local update:

Walk to the mailbox an hour ago, was quiet and largely uneventful, there was no mail in the mailbox either.

Aside from some distantly faint moaning sort of sounds, there was a sizable yard waist fire burning along the fence line, near the Monroe’s pond, there will be reports that it’s my fire, left unattended.

Two chairs are there near the waist fire by the Monroe pond, they are turned such that the face the burn area, with the chair backs facing my driveway. The yard waist is burn is in a unusual place for Monroe’s, at a spot where some firewood has been laying in a wooded thicket sort of spot, and some of their Blue-tooth speakers are hidden in there. All of that bush and speaker hiding area looks gone, all cleared away as far as I could see in the dark by fire light. The speakers they use and are hidden all over the place are not used for playing music, but rather for playing other sounds to fool me or other fools, for attacking aid and cover it provides. Sounds of pre-recorded conversations are typically played there, makes me hesitate on a walk, sounds like a bunch of people are there, when it’s just some hidden speakers. Someone controls a panning devises to make the conversation move to other speakers, sounds as if a group of people are walking from one place to another, but there is no one there, instead, when they sound as if they are along the driveway, they are actually running through the creek to my house to come inside and wait for me to return from the walk to the mailbox, to attack inside my house. Happens often.

Many ways the hidden speakers are used. The one in that spot where the yard waist is burning sometimes just plays the sound of a couping dove all day long, or the sound of large toad croaking for a while. If I go to take a closer look at the fence line to see what kind of animal is making the sounds that are played. the Monroe sound engineer shuts it off, or pans the sounds to other speakers they have in other parts of the yard.

Sometimes I can hear the sound of my own voice coming from those speakers made possible by the Monroe’s have a receiver that picks up the sounds made when I speak because of that transmitter microphone that was implanted into my jaw at a dental visit in 2011. They can make recordings, use editing software to make special conversation recordings that are made from me talking to myself or to my cat. They can also do live broadcast through those speakers with transfer of the signal to the speakers, to fool others, make others believe I am at the Monroe’s, even though I have never been over there since the time they moved in. All of that foolery is made possible and perpetuated because the federal agents insist on trusting the local authorities, who direct the federal agents to the Monroe’s regularly, where there are spring loaded wire snares, and swords that cut them into two pieces with motion sensor technology, despite that all of that information is available here to read, learn, is repeated over and over again... the fools don‘t learn, the terror is advanced endlessly due to misplaced trust, and incompetence.

The fire swelled up a bit as I went down the driveway, it looked strange to see such a glow from a place where yard waist fire has not been done before. It looked like car headlights illuminating the trees for a minute, so I hesitated there, saw it was a yard waist fire, and went to the mailbox, saw that the chairs were arranged there, than came home....

The terror train rolled through along the Russell road train tracks as I was writing this part about the speakers. The terror train is still roling, so, I know there is no help anywhere around here, otherwise, there would be no train once it’s found what the train is for.

12:16 am: 12-21-2020.

=================

12:52 am: 12-21-2020:

Typical scenario when federal invigilators come to see why I write the things I do, to get some help:

They go to local Josephine County Officials, or, go to State Capital, talk to Kate Brown, who is forever trying to kill me, who sends the federal investigators to local State Police HQ on 7th street, who, they are told, are monitoring any number of different Russian Hoax lies that are told about me.

They talk to State Police.

Tanya Henderson, Oregon State Police Royal Canadian Mounted Police is advised of the presence of federal investigators.

She stays out of view, but someplace at terror neighbor where she can see what is going on at Jackpine.

Tanya has “Second Prettiest Girl” status. There are no “First Prettiest Girls”, those are the rules. So, she looks a lot like Blake Lively, a little older though.

So, Tanya Henderson gets Janice Freeberg to dress up in State Police Uniform... Jay-Bob Freeberg is terror airforce general, is not second prettiest girl status, is very manly looking bow-legged woman, looks more cop-like, almost exactly like Mary Grace Canfield from Green Acres fame.

Jay-Bob plays role of Tanya Henderson, State Police Officer, talks to Federal agents sent by Kate Brown to investigate terrorism, Jay-Bob gets live coaching from Tanya, who is nearby, with handy blue-tooth communication.

The Jay-Bob and other State Police (all are involved with this) don‘t know about any terrorism, however, have been monitoring for consistent reports of stolen vehicles, big rigs, rape. theft, burglary, and failure to appear in court, all is backed with fake court records made by Christopher Mecca who lives at the Grants Pass Community Church in the pastors residence there, is local attorney for local terrorists.

Some background information is shared with federal officers, who are shown some video tapes featuring nora Myers of 560 Jackpine, is can be seen wearing a wig, and a green coat like the one I use... Myers portrays me on fake surveillance video creeping around somewhere, maybe stole something on the fake tape.

Federal Officers go to 376 Chartrand for local stake out place, home of State Police Royal Canadian Mounted Oregon Officer Chartrand, to watch, and to listen to what they are told is surveillance Parabolic Microphone Unit... (is the microphone transmitter implant in my jaw that was put there by the same terror cell that is jacking around the federal agents.)

Those guys listen to me have a coughing fit every morning because I smoke too many cigarettes for forty years, and, they listen as I talk to my cat all day. :”Kitty kitty, come here kitty cat, come sit with me”.

So, for three days that is happening, then, Jay Bob’s freind shows up, it’s the real Tanya Henderson, second prettiest girl... is introduced to federal officers who have been hearing me cough, and say “kitty, kitty, kitty” all day, for three days, are tired, they see no problems, Tanya starts to work her magic, and one by one, the agents all are shown that Tanya (who says she is Jay-Bob) has a tattoo on her ankle that says “Jesse” in invisible ink on her ankle.

One by one, Jay-Bob and nora Myers cart the bodies away, they make Hollywood style professional make-up rubber masks from impressions taken from the dead or dying federal investigators, and a attack crew is sent back to their HQ while wearing masks that look exactly like the agents that were sent here by Kate Brown and are wearing their clothes when they go do the attack at the HQ to take that over completely, The mask disguise only needs to work for a short time, at the time of the attack at Federal investigator HQ.

Professional actors are sent from SAG HQ to play role of the ones killed there, until all are killed and replaced. After that, I don‘t know exactly what happens.

Tanya goes back to terror patrol here at home, and Jay-Bob goes back to doing important global terror airforce duties until the next federal agents come, then, start over, repeat what already works good.

There are other ways. If the investigators are women, they have Officer Jeff Prouix, a handsome devil. for the reverse play.

Meanwhile, Kate Brown is still in charge of the killing machine, guided by commanders in Hollywood, as she diverts as much money as is possible towards terror advance goals.

They use me for bait while I tell the truth and try to get some help to come to Oregon.

1:37 am.

[ericvick]

Joe Biden didn’t get a ‘blue wave’ but here are 5 ways he can advance his tax agenda

That pledge was premised on a “blue wave” where Democrats kept the House of Representatives and established a newfound majority in the Senate, which would go along with tax hikes.

One week after Election Day, Biden is the projected winner in the presidential race. Yet Republican Senators fill 50 Senate seats and Democrats have 48 (including two independents who caucus with them). A Jan. 5 runoff elections for Georgia’s two spots.

Democrats will keep control of the House of Representatives, albeit in a smaller margin after GOP candidates flipped several seats.

So what does this political churn mean for families thinking about their tax bill in a Biden era?

Not as much as a clear Democrat sweep, some observers say, but still possibly plenty — like more audits for the rich, Internal Revenue Service rule changes and some legislative deals relating to retirement savings and families with kids.

“ ‘Sure, Biden might not get his laundry list of tax legislative priorities. But there is so much he can do just with staffing change at the IRS and Treasury, and regulations that move the ball forward on his agenda.’ ”

— Caroline Bruckner, tax professor at American University’s Kogod School of Business

“Sure, Biden might not get his laundry list of tax legislative priorities,” said Caroline Bruckner, a tax professor at American University’s Kogod School of Business. “But there is so much he can do just with staffing change at the IRS and Treasury, and regulations that move the ball forward on his agenda.”

Others doubt Biden would rip up the rules, or they say he would do so at his peril.

But Jason Cain, chief wealth strategist with Boston Private, a private bank with almost $15 billion in assets under management, isn’t playing a guessing game.

The man with most of his clientele worth north of $50 million spent the fall and summer talking people “off the edge of the proverbial cliff.” At this point, “I think everybody’s taken a deep breath.”

But Cain expects more audits for top earners. “My advice to clients is, in that type of environment, we sure as heck better not be pressed up at the line between black and white.”

See also: Opinion: Will Biden’s 401(k) plan help you or hurt you?

This means portfolios and tax planning built on “established positions supported by regulations, IRS procedure or case interpretation,” Cain said. “I don’t want my clients to be establishing precedent one way or another.”

Here are five ways Biden can still attempt to bring in more tax dollars from businesses and the well-off, while using the tax code to help those farther down the income ladder, with their benefits and pitfalls.

Expanding tax credits for companies, individuals and 401(k) contributions

“I think there are some very real opportunities,” said Mark Everson, a former IRS Commissioner who led the agency from 2003 to 2007, during George W. Bush’s administration. The coronavirus pandemic has underscored the importance of a domestic supply chain, said Everson, now vice chairman of alliantgroup, a tax consulting firm.

That means both sides of the aisle will weigh how they can expand company tax credits on research and development, as well as added incentives for manufacturing on American soil, he said.

Bipartisan deals might also come on expanded tax credits for families juggling work and kids, he said. That includes provisions like the Child Tax Credit, currently paying up to $2,000 per qualifying child, and the Child and Dependent Care Credit, now offering up to $3,000 in care expenses for kids and dependent adults or $6,000 for two or more qualifying dependents.

“ New tax laws could pertain to families juggling work and kids, and retirement savings. ”

“Things that promote work will be seen as worth considering,” Everson said.

The same goes for long-term financial planning. “There’s a lot of interest in both parties to do something to encourage people to save more for retirement,” said Howard Gleckman, a senior fellow in the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center.

There are already two bills with sponsors on both sides of the aisle. The “Securing a Strong Retirement Act” would, among other things, push the required minimum distribution to age 75. The “Retirement Security and Savings Act” would do the same in its list of provisions.

Then there’s Biden’s call for a 26% refundable tax credit kicking in for each dollar contributed to an IRA or 401(k).

Between all that, it’s possible Biden and lawmakers can find some common ground, he said. “Best case, some modest changes in 2021. Worst case is nothing, but I think that’s unlikely.”

Redefining who’s eligible for a tax break for low-income families

After Congress passes tax legislation and the president signs it into law, it falls on the Treasury Department and the IRS to develop the regulations that flesh out these laws.

That’s another place where the Biden administration could tinker — for better or worse depending on the perspective.

“ ‘There could be greater efforts at settling some the longstanding questions on the definition of a child for [Earned Income Tax Credit] purposes. There is room for substantial progress.’ ”

— Pete Sepp, president of the National Taxpayers Union

There could be greater efforts to settle some the longstanding questions on the definition of a child for Earned Income Tax Credit purposes. “There is room for substantial progress,” said Pete Sepp, president of the National Taxpayers Union, a conservative-leaning non-partisan think tank.

The credit for low- and moderate-income working families has been hailed as a powerful anti-poverty measure, but Sepp said there are unclear definitions on who can claim a child and get the credit. That results in too many audits, Sepp said, gumming up the payments for too many people in bad need of money.

That’s a place where some added direction could do some good, he thinks. There are places the Biden administration should leave alone, Sepp thinks.

The Trump administration’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 lowered the corporate income-tax rate and temporarily decreased most income tax brackets. It also established tax laws surrounding the money U.S. multinational companies made on intangible assets held abroad, like patents and copyrights. The Treasury Department spent three years after that crafting rules on the tax’s specifics, according to Sepp.

“ ‘It’s important to retain the independence of the IRS. For that reason I think the administration will tread carefully. I don’t think there will be a lot of regulatory changes.’ ”

— Mark W. Everson, vice chairman of alliantgroup and a former IRS Commissioner

Biden wants to raise the corporate rate from 21% to 28%, but if he can’t do that, Sepp said his Treasury Department could theoretically rip up the rules on multinationals and go tougher.

But that would be ill-advised, he said. In the face of uncertain tax rules, companies might hoard cash they’d otherwise use on new hires. “Wherever the tip of the spear is aimed, the wound spreads to many more taxpayers,” he said.

Everson stressed the IRS is a non-partisan agency following the laws as written. “It’s important to retain the independence of the IRS. For that reason I think the administration will tread carefully. I don’t think there will be a lot of regulatory changes.”

Making taxes simpler for gig workers

Some regulations are ripe for change and can make a real difference for gig workers, said Bruckner.

For example, the Treasury Department has a rule saying platform companies that connect consumers seeking a service and sellers offering their service (like a car trip) have to provide the seller with tax paperwork on earnings. But Bruckner says the Treasury Department insists on a rule saying the companies only have to pass along the tax documentation for payment that exceeds $20,000 and 200 transactions.

“ ‘It’s a really complicated issue, but it boils down to: The IRS can fix this. It doesn’t need an act of Congress.’ ”

— Caroline Bruckner, tax professor at American University’s Kogod School of Business

That leaves a lot of workers in the dark on their tax obligations, Bruckner said, opening them up to audits and not giving the feds an accurate read on what the gig worker is paying into incomes taxes — and Social Security taxes, a number that, years later, will be used to determine the size of the worker’s Social Security checks.

“It’s a really complicated issue, but it boils down to: The IRS can fix this. It doesn’t need an act of Congress” to address a problem that’s “to the detriment of millions and millions of workers,” she said.

A Government Accountability Office (GAO) report dug into the issue earlier this year, and recommended a change in the rule at issue. IRS officials said they had to address “other priorities,” like rules and guidance on the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, according to the GAO report.

Adding staff to an IRS that’s ‘limping’

Another way Biden can fit the tax code with his campaign visions: Helping the IRS itself, an agency that acknowledges it’s been losing staff over the years. The IRS had 78,004 workers in fiscal year 2019, which includes almost 1,600 more full-time workers than the year before, but that’s still “well below” staff levels in decades past, the IRS noted.

“You can pass all the policies you want. If the IRS can’t administer them, then you’ve just undermined your policy,” said Nina Olson, the former National Taxpayer Advocate within the IRS.

“ ‘If there’s one thing the CARES act has shown, it’s that the IRS is central to any economic recovery. Period. And we better make sure it can operate.’ ”

— Nina Olson, former National Taxpayer Advocate within the IRS

The IRS distributed more than 160 million stimulus checks after March’s $2.2 stimulus bill. “If there’s one thing the CARES act has shown, it’s that the IRS is central to any economic recovery. Period. And we better make sure it can operate,” said Olson, the executive director and founder of the Center for Taxpayer Rights, a non-profit organization promoting due process for taxpayers.

The IRS didn’t respond to a request for comment, but Olson said the agency is “limping” on matters like customer support and IT systems.

She said the tax-collecting agency needs a budget that slowly but surely increase over the years — and a breather after a 35-day government shutdown from 2018 to 2019 disrupted operations, and then the coronavirus’s complications this year.

Read:The IRS says it still hasn’t opened more than 2 million returns this tax season

In July, lawmakers in the House earmarked $12.1 billion for the IRS in fiscal year 2021, up from $11.5 billion a year earlier. The Senate’s Appropriations Committee has put aside $11.5 billion. The chambers will have to hash out the differences.

IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig at a House Committee on Oversight and Reform hearing in October.

Toni L. Sandys-Pool/Getty Images

Some observers told MarketWatch they wouldn’t be surprised if the Biden administration wanted to stick with Charles Rettig, the IRS commissioner and a Republican who started in 2018 after a legal career defending individuals and businesses with tax disputes.

“If Biden wants more money for the IRS, better to have a Republican commissioner ask for it than a Democratic IRS commissioner ask for it,” said Gleckman.

Conducting more audits on wealthy taxpayers

More audits for the rich are likely a way the new administration will try to bring in more money, observers told MarketWatch. The government could have an extra $535 billion if audit rates return to their 2010 point and honed in on society’s 1%, according to one estimate.

See also: Trump has faced a decade-long tax audit — here’s how long IRS audits usually take and which taxpayers are most likely to get audited

Over the summer, the IRS announced plans to audit more wealthy taxpayers. But people like Olson and Everson say any future staff build-ups aren’t just a matter of more funding. It takes time and training, they said.

Someone auditing EITC claims might need to have the social skills to talk with taxpayers and understand family dynamics, said Olson. But someone scrutinizing the super-rich’s returns might have to know about forensic accounting and tax laws — and accounting firms will pay a lot to hire these types of people.

One thing Biden “can do is start talking about public-service jobs, and have it look valuable that you do a stint in IRS for a time. Yes, you take a hit on salary, you have but benefit of a government job,” Olson said.

It is wise for affluent households to keep thinking about additional tax planning in the years ahead, Cain said. Who knows what tax laws could come after the 2022 midterm elections, the 2024 presidential race and the 2025 expiration of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, he added.

[canaryatlaw]

Alright, so today was pretty good, fun Memorial Day. Slept in of course, woke up sometime around noon and just laid in bed being lazy for a while before getting up and getting some breakfast. Around 2 or so my roommates two friends showed up, and we hung out for a while, they played guitar hero, before we grabbed our grilling supplies and headed outside. We don't exactly have a patio, it's more like a decently sized concrete rectangle behind our apartment building, which is kind of sad because like, all the houses around us have these awesome decks behind them, but hey, we'll take it. My roommate bought this dinky little grill for like $20 at target or Walmart, and by the time we even get the charcoal in it a bolt had like flown off the handle and two of the leg pads were off, lol, but hey, non-essential parts. The grill just fit 7 burgers, 6 in a ring on the outside and 1 in the middle, and like, I'm talking JUST fit lol. There wasn't one square inch left unused on this grill. They decided to just cook all the meat and divide shit later, I know literally nothing about grilling anything (I'm like watching them with the lighter fluid and in the back of my mind thinking about the jimmy johns commercial with lighter fluid and thinking "that was a gas grill, not a charcoal grill, right?") so I'm just going with it. So we sit and grill, when the burgers are done we do some brats and hot dogs, and we just chilled out next to it. Somewhere along the line I felt the sun on my back and knew if I didn't do something I would get a sunburn, so I ran back upstairs and got the little stick of sunscreen I keep in my purse (year round, cuz you never know) and tried to get it to cover all the space on my back not covered by clothing, lol. The tank top I was wearing actually had a high back so there wasn't that much space left over, and I did a pretty good job covering it, I only ended up with one tiny spot of sunburn on my neck. I still haven't switched my clothing over to summer clothes since its been so cold, something I'll have to figure out when I pack to leave on Friday and spend the next two weeks in New York. But today was obviously going to be in the 70s and we were gonna be outside for a decent amount of time, so I put on the like, one tank top I had in my drawer and grabbed a single pair of shorts from my giant suitcase I use for clothes storage (lol I have too much clothing) and wore those. I guess we'll see how the rest of the week goes in terms of weather and whether (lol) I'll fully switch over. I should technically have time after work, maybe Wednesday when I don't have PT, since prison break having its finale should really be the last of my tv shows still airing (I guess you could count the Handmaid's tale but I'm not like dying to watch those episodes ASAP) but I tend to be emotionally drained after work and don't want to do that kind of stuff, which is why the laundry I did last weekend still isn't put away and there's an ever growing pile of dirty clothes on my floor (sigh). But, anyway. Once all the meat was cooked we decided to eat inside, so we closed the grill to try and put out the rest of the fire (again, no idea how grilling works). So we go back inside and I get a hamburger (or I guess cheeseburger, we only had shredded cheese so the cheese was kind of weak but it still existed) and a hot dog since we have so many of both, I ended up taking like two bites of the burger before deciding it just wasn't doing it for me, but the hot dog was pretty good (I've traditionally been a hot dog person, though I do like burgers). We continued to hang out for a bit longer and I ended up making funfetti cupcakes using the cake mix I keep on hand for baking purposes and the hacks I know to make cake mix cakes taste better (because I'm a pro like that). They turned out pretty good and were quick enough, so now we have cupcakes as well. The boys hung out for a little while longer before heading out, my roommate going with when of them (being that she seems to spend most of her time at his apartment anyway) so I had the place to myself and decided it was time for more Young Justice, and ended up finishing the second season and consequently the show for the time being at least, until season 3 comes out some time next year. I definitely enjoyed it, and now I want to watch the other justice league animated shows that exist lol because I love my superheroes. I liked the plot, though I found it kind of amusing that they were handling this giant threat to earth when most of the Justice league's major players were totally off earth and indisposed, like did they have any contact with them during that time?? Their whole trial, or the small pieces we saw of it, was rather amusing for me to watch (especially their apparent having no idea what the concept of mind control is and their non-existent appeals process) from a legal perspective, lol. I liked the whole blue beetle storyline, I pretty much only know him from the like, single smallville episode he was in and that's not much so it was cool to see his character more. For most of the season I wasn't buying that they'd kill off one of their main characters, at least as far as the "deaths" they faked, but in the finale I did remember hearing that they had killed off (spoiler obviously) Wally West and his death felt much more legit all around, although probably sadder being that they were kind of teasing Artemis' life being in peril all season only for him to get killed instead. Aqualad going undercover was all sorts of awesome, as was their showdown battle at the summit between the light and the reach, where aqualad supposedly "dies" and then hologram him outs everything the light has been doing to betray the light (and vice versa to some extent) and Vandal Savage is like I HAVE NEVER BEEN BETRAYED THIS BADLY IN 50,000 YEARS OF LIVING because that was just amazing (and of course he comes back to life like two seconds later). So I basically just all around approved of the show and thoroughly enjoyed it. I guess it's back to The Keepers for now, though I may find something else to intersperse it with. It's a good show, it's just both heavy and dry which doesn't make it the best for always binging, but one of my podcasts is talking about it in next week's episode so I do want to finish it. And yeah, that was basically the rest of my night as I was also only my computer doing my normal computer stuff and reading fanfic which I'm still not at all caught up on. Oh, I should tell you I did get my LARC grade back, though I'm in no hurry to announce it because I was pretty thoroughly pissed off about it. I mean, it very clearly could've been worse, a B is not the end of the world, it just felt very frustrating in this particular circumstance given how much work I put into that class and how much it felt like our professor was not at all invested in the class and it was very much an afterthought to her actual law firm job, and like I got better grades in LARC last year with a(n objectively) better and harder professor, and a B ties con law from my first semester as the worst grade I've gotten in law school, so I'm not happy that now there will be two of them on my transcript (and 1 B+, but that's different). I know I'm probably overreacting to something that really doesn't matter that much at all, it just irks me and it makes me mad that it'll definitely make my GPA drop (though I'm not sure by how much) and probably make my ranking drop, even if only by 5% or so, putting me back in the top 15%. I was just so happy to be in the top 10% that dropping back to where I was after first year feels very frustrating. It's my second worse semester grade wise, just barely beating out my first semester (3 A-'s and a B versus 1 A, 2 A-'s, and a B) which is annoying in terms of progress (considering last semester I got 3 A's and 1 A-) but I guess it's bound to vary depending on what classes you take and how challenging they are. Like I said, I'm probably overreacting to what really doesn't mean much at all, I'd just hate to think a prospective employer would see that and think my legal writing skills are subpar because of it when I've been proven in actual real courtroom experience to have solid legal writing skills, which I of course worked very hard to get. Idk, it's just frustrating. I'm not sure what my GPA for the semester would be, probably somewhere around a 3.55 (given that my first semester GPA was a 3.5) which shouldn't bring down my overall GPA of 3.7 too much, maybe just to 3.67 or something, which hopefully won't kill my ranking all that much, but I was right on the border of 10% as is and the qualifying GPA normally goes up every semester so I kind of doubt I would hit it again. *sigh* idk, we'll see, speculating about it probably doesn't do any good, and I've clearly ranted about it for long enough here when that's not going to solve anything. It is what it is, and I'll deal. Worse things have happened to me grade wise (like the nightmare that was junior year of college). But yeah, that was pretty much my day. Now I just have 4 days (or 3 3/4, since I'll probably leave a little early on Friday to get to the airport in time) of work to get through until I have 2 weeks off in NY with my family and friends. I'm aware of my previous musings on here of how I romanticize going home to be better than it is in reality, but I'm still looking forward to it as some time off being that I pretty much jumped right into work this summer and I'm definitely feeling the lack of break. I'm hoping that will help with my overall feeling towards work, cuz it's not all that great right now, which doesn't bode well for my future in this business, especially if I end up wanting to work for this office and will undoubtedly be keeping a similar 9-5 5 days a week schedule year round. I guess at some point I'll have to get over it. This is long and it's late, I should go to bed now, so I guess that's what I'll do now. Goodnight peeps. Hope you had a good Memorial Day.

[etraytin]

New Fic

Sooo... turns out I have not been quite as productive as I planned in the wake of the 100-Day Fic-a-Day. This homeschooling thing is absolutely kicking my ass, and it’s a lot harder to write when I’m not sending the kiddo off on the bus every day. Woof. Not to mention that the problem with writing three continuing AUs is that I have kind of lost touch and fallen into my own brain on some things. To correct this imbalance, I’ve been going back and watching many, many episodes (not exactly a chore!) to see if I can firm up the world a bit more in my head. Today’s story comes from that, a plot bunny that hit me over the head when I watched Lord John Marbury and saw Josh trying to convince Donna to caddy for him. Enjoy! 

“Golf sits in the beautiful junction between perfection and frustration.” -Colleen Ferrary Bader

It was a beautiful day outside. Donna tipped her head back and closed her eyes to let the sun pour down on her skin, imagining she could feel her pores soaking up Vitamin D despite the scrupulous coating of sunscreen she’d applied. A few fat clouds scudded across the blue sky, chased by the same breeze that lifted the ends of her hair and played gently with her clothes. She took a deep breath and smiled. It was so good to get outdoors every once in awhile.

“Donna!”

She kept her eyes closed and took another deep breath. It was so peaceful out here, the carefully manicured grass crisp and soft under her feet, the sound of birds-

“DONNA!”

Opening her eyes, she turned to glare at Josh. “What?” she demanded. “Can’t you see I was having a moment?”

Josh puffed up to her, looking sweaty and out of sorts. “You’re supposed to be my caddy!” he reminded her, his voice perilously close to a whine.

“Yes,” she agreed complacently. “That’s why I’m out here with you on one of my rare and precious days off work, instead of out apartment hunting like I should be.”

“So you agree that you’re caddying for me today,” he pressed suspiciously.

“Uh-huh,” she nodded.

“Then why,” he demanded, “in the name of all that’s holy, am I carrying the bag?” He gave her a glare that was more piteous than menacing, still trying to balance the bag on his shoulder.

“Because it’s heavy!” she reminded him. “And you wouldn’t get a golf cart.”

“Real golfers don’t use golf carts!” Josh scoffed, dropping the bag so he could gesture with both hands. “You don’t get to know a golf course if you don’t walk it with your own feet.”

“Real golfers don’t have a handicap of 26 either, yet here we are,” Donna shot back, raising both her eyebrows at him.

“Hey!” he yelped. “You’re not supposed to be looking at the score cards!” She gave him an unrepentant shrug and kept walking, swinging her arms loosely. “And stop walking, we’ve got to wait up for the others.”

Donna looked over her shoulder. “I thought they were behind us and just walking slower.”

“Senator Richards sent his assistant back to get a golf cart,” Josh muttered. “He’s got a bunion or something. They’re gonna catch up.”

“Wait, so they’re going to have a golf cart and we aren’t?” Donna demanded. “That’s not fair.”

“Actually I was thinking that I should ride with the Senators in the cart, and all the caddies can walk behind. That way we can talk without being interrupted.” He was grinning now, full dimples.

Donna was less amused. “Oh sure, I’m certain that the Senators will be very impressed with your manliness as you make your twenty-six year old female assistant walk behind the cart with your golf clubs. I think you should walk with the clubs and I should ride in the cart, to prove your virility. Besides, they like me better.”

“Virility?” Josh squawked, the pitch of his voice rising sharply. Donna smirked at him. “Nobody, and I mean nobody, Donnatella Moss, has any cause to be questioning my virility! Just ask-” He cut himself off abruptly as both of them considered how well that sort of inquiry would go over with Mandy Hampton. “No,” he decided. “But you can take it as settled fact.”

“If you say so,” Donna replied, tongue firmly in her cheek. “But you know how easily rumors get started. Better not to chance it. Anyway, I think we’re almost to the sixth hole.”

He sighed, hefting the bag again. “All I know is that we’d better get a deal on Appropriations after all this, because I’m not going to be able to walk for the next two days. I don’t even like golf, and we’re only six holes in, and I’ve got the world’s worst caddy here.”

She pouted at him. “That’s not a very nice thing to say. I could be out apartment hunting.”

“Yeah, and you’d be approximately as much use to me there as you are right now,” he pointed out as they arrived at the sixth tee. “Do you even know what a caddy is supposed to be doing?”

“Of course I do, I looked it up,” Donna informed him. “I offer you moral support and make insightful commentary about the course and the game, and keep an independent record of the score.”

“And?” Josh prompted, giving the bag of clubs a little shake.

“And carry supplies,” she finished brightly, producing a golf ball and tee from her pocket. She handed them to him. “There you go. And I think there’s a water feature on this hole. You should probably stay away from it.”

“Thank you, Jack Nicklaus.” Josh muttered. Whatever else he might have wanted to say was curtailed when the golf cart carrying the two senators and their two aides arrived on the tee. If Josh’d had his druthers, they’d have spent most of their time sitting in the cart and hashing out the appropriations package, but the legislators obviously had other priorities. Unfortunately, those priorities required Josh to hit the ball a few times.

Ten minutes later, Josh and Donna stood together on the edge of a shallow pond, looking down into the clear water. “You know,” Donna began, “I clearly remember telling you-”

“Don’t even start with me, I mean it,” he warned, pulling on his hair as he stared at the wavy form of his ball, just out of reach without wading.

She reached out and smoothed his hair down, almost without thinking about it, then handed him another ball. “Just look at it this way, you’ll get an even bigger head start next time you play, right?”

Josh’s bad mood was not improved any by the fact that when he finally did hop on the cart to have words with the senators, Donna immediately made the best of her walking tour by introducing herself to one of the aides, who had also been dragooned into caddying. He was probably about Donna’s age, tall and with a full head of hair, and with the sort of muscular build that suggested he could walk the course easily while carrying both a bag of clubs and Donna. Just the sort of gomer who could be relied upon to turn Donna’s head. By the tenth hole, the two were chatting like old friends, comparing favorite music and restaurants, and being more than a little distracting while Josh was trying to golf. Nobody else seemed to mind, but the legislators were probably just hard of hearing. And maybe senile as well.

When several of Josh’s pointed glares failed to stop the whispered flirtation, he resorted to more drastic measures. This involved putting Donna on the golf cart and trotting along behind it himself while still trying to carry on bits and pieces of a conversation. That worked for about two holes, during which time Donna got to see several dozen grandchild pictures instead of the muscled arms of Gomer-boy. She also somehow managed to sweet-talk Richards into reconsidering two points of the HHS budget, a surprising added bonus that Josh knew he was going to be hearing about for weeks at the office. She might have gotten even more, but Josh could barely catch his breath to play by the time they reached the thirteenth green. He really needed to start jogging again.

“I think you should let me hit the ball,” Donna murmured as she chased Josh into the rough once again, following another misdirected drive. “I think I could do it. I’ve been watching you and I have a system.”

He glared at her. “You haven’t been watching anything but Senator Patterson’s aide for the past five holes,” he muttered back. “I think while you’ve been enjoying Tee-time for the Lovelorn, you’ve forgotten what a caddy does again.”

Again with the pouting. Sometimes when Donna stuck her lower lip out like that, he wanted to… nope. He was very, very busy golfing right now, and he was completely unmoved by any pouting. “Come on, Josh, this is boring!” she insisted. “There’s eighteen holes and you’ve massacred twelve and a half of them already. Would it really make things any worse to let me have a turn?”

“Donna, Donna, Donna,” he began, giving the ball a mighty whack that turned up a hockey-puck-sized divot, but at least put the ball close to the green, “golf is a game where the strategy extends far beyond the score. Would the senators be in such an expansive mood right now if they weren’t cleaning my clock at this completely meaningless excuse for a sport?”

“Ah, so you’re being this terrible on purpose,” Donna guessed, nodding wisely. “That’s a relief. But I still think you should let me take a shot,” she reiterated as he lined up another swing. “Gabe’s promised to help me correct my stance.” Josh whiffed entirely, mostly because he’d whipped his head up to glare at her.

Donna grinned at him and sauntered away, satisfied with a job well done. Josh was getting frustrated with the game and starting to forget what he was out here to do. Now that he was recentered on the task at hand, he ought to do just fine with talking the senators around, even if his score was terrible. Getting him to make that face was just an extra added bonus. Gabe was nice, but he was only twenty-four and very, very green. If he survived another five years in Washington, he might be worth looking at, but Donna was interested in more mature, savvier men, men who already knew exactly where they were going. Like… nope. Like any number of mature, savvy nameless men who were surely out there, just waiting to be discovered. She picked up the clubs and began dragging them along towards the green after Josh.

Josh was especially obnoxious to her for the next three holes, which Donna thought was quite unfair since she’d only been trying to help him out. He wouldn’t even help her load the clubs onto the cart, leaving her with no choice but to flutter her eyes at Gabe until he picked them up for her. “I should just strap the clubs to your back,” Josh muttered to her as they reached the seventeenth tee. “Maybe it would slow you down a little from the pursuit of douchebag politicos.”

Donna gave him a smack on the arm, maybe just a little harder than she’d intended. “Be nice,” she hissed. Nobody was quite close enough to hear them, but it was still a stupid thing to say. “And try not to whiff again, it’s embarrassing.”

“It’s the club that’s the problem!” Josh insisted as they walked up to the teeing box. He handed it over to her, head-first. “It’s got grass and stuff on it. You’re the caddy, polish me up.”

“What, right out here in public?” she asked innocently, taking the club by the handle. While he sputtered and stared, she gave the driver a quick swipe with the towel and scraped a little dirt out with a spare tee. “There you go, all better.” Josh completely whiffed another shot.

Even if Josh’s golf game was well beyond saving, his other skills were still in good shape, especially the one for turning around reluctant senators on important bills. By the eighteenth hole, Josh had his victory in the bag, and was calling Sam to tell him how things needed to be lined up with the legislative liaison’s office. He still wasn’t finished by the time the senators took their first drives, and just waved Donna off when she tried to coax him towards the box.

“Why don’t you take the shot for him?” Senator Patterson joked. “I’m sure you could only be an improvement.” By this point the game had long since denigrated into a contest between the senators anyway.

Needing no further encouragement, Donna pulled the driver from Josh’s bag and teed up. It had been quite awhile since she’d last played, but some things you didn’t really forget. With a satisfying thock sound, she sent the ball flying down the fairway. A helpful breeze caught it in the air, nudging it past the dogleg and making her look pretty impressive when the ball landed neatly on the edge of the putting green.

Josh, who’d turned around at the noise, stared at her as though she’d suddenly grown another head. “How did you do that?” he demanded, ignoring both Sam’s confusion on the phone and the laughter of the senators.

There was no way on earth that Donna would admit she’d been on the golf team for three years in high school to avoid gym class, or that this was a one-in-a-thousand lucky shot she’d be hard-pressed to ever replicate. Instead, she tossed her hair and grinned at him. “I told you to let me have a turn,” she reminded him. “I have a system.” Pushing the golf bag into his hands, she bounded off down the fairway after her ball. She knew he’d be right behind her.

(This fic is also posted at Archive of Our Own, same author name, with the title “Beautiful Junction.”)

[easilymakermoney]

Prime Ideas For Crowdfunding Due Diligence – An Interview With CrowdStreet

This publish comprises affiliate hyperlinks.

Actual Property Crowdfunding has made entry to personal actual property offers a lot simpler. The issue is that with this ease, traders typically lower corners on due diligence. In an important market, this would possibly work out, nevertheless, in a tricky market this lack of due diligence may end in some critical points.

I consider that deep due diligence is completely vital for each deal irrespective of which platform you discover them on. Sure, these platforms have already executed their very own vetting, however as an investor, it is best to do your individual as properly.

So, simply how do you carry out this due diligence by yourself? Properly it takes information and expertise, each of which take time to accumulate. For that motive, I can’t discuss sufficient about the way to vet offers and sponsors on this web site.

I additionally like to speak to the professionals infrequently to see what ideas they may have to supply since they’re seeing tons of of offers come throughout their desks each month and solely enable a small proportion onto their platforms.

On this case, I requested Ian Formigle, the Vice President of Investments at CrowdStreet, to supply up his ideas on the present market, due diligence, and purple flags. He oversees the corporate’s on-line business actual property funding market with nearly 20 years of expertise in actual property, personal fairness, startups, and choices buying and selling. Get pleasure from!

Inform us just a little about your self.

Ian Formigle, VP of Investments

I’ve been concerned in the true property trade for nearly 20 years. Like many traders, I acquired my begin shopping for, promoting, renting, and promoting single-family houses. After a number of years in that area, I moved into multifamily investments and syndicated offers in Alabama, Texas, Oklahoma, and Kentucky.

In 2010, I had the chance to transition into business actual property personal fairness and have become a senior acquisitions officer with a gaggle that has acquired upwards of $5 billion of workplace, retail, and industrial property with a spotlight within the western United States.

I got here to CrowdStreet in 2014, because the #2 worker, particularly due to my work in CRE (Industrial Actual Property) personal fairness and have been overseeing the Market ever since.

There was a variety of discuss not too long ago about the true property cycle reaching its finish. Does that imply there aren’t any good offers on the market?

After all not! That’s analogous to saying that because the inventory market has had a tremendous run, there are not any shares price shopping for.

Nonetheless, a comparatively mature actual property cycle does imply that good offers could be tougher to establish. The CRE market remains to be so inefficient in some ways, and which means there are all the time good offers, truthful offers, and dangerous offers on the market.

Consumers of excellent offers can leverage these market inefficiencies to their benefit, transacting with a extremely motivated vendor or an undercapitalized vendor, as an example. 

What do you utilize as main standards to determine which sponsors/operators to accomplice with?

These are only a few of an important issues we take a look at when deciding which operators to deliver to the Market:

Stage of expertise: We search to work with skilled operators. Lately, the vast majority of operators we accomplice with have acquired over $1 billion of business actual property. Specialization: Not solely should the operators be skilled, however they have to additionally reveal a excessive diploma of acumen within the asset class–multifamily, hospitality, industrial, and so forth.– they’re proposing for our consideration. We need to know they’ve expertise delivering on this particular property kind. Professionalism: We pay shut consideration to the standard of the operator’s paperwork, the accurateness of their fashions, and the experience of their authorized counsel. Operators who come to the Market should reveal a excessive diploma of professionalism as a result of they are going to be interacting instantly with our investor base. Alignment with our Market Construction: Operators we work with have embraced our on-line mannequin for elevating capital and managing traders. We would like everybody to be totally purchased into the entire course of. Different operators, who could also be in any other case improbable firms, however look to a platform like CrowdStreet as they might another capital markets answer, will not be a very good match for our Market. CrowdStreet Market traders will not be a commodity–they’re high quality people and the fitting operators perceive they’ve a possibility to forge long-standing relationships.

What does it imply to be conservative in your underwriting?

Each professional forma, which basically means the mannequin for a deal of which one of many main outputs are focused returns, relies upon upon dozens of key assumptions to derive anticipated returns. Conservatism in underwriting typically boils all the way down to setting these assumptions at real looking and achievable ranges moderately than aggressive and speculative ranges.

Take an workplace constructing for instance. Conservative lease-up assumptions imply assuming that new leases for the primary yr are at charges which might be at or under essentially the most not too long ago executed leases. Conservative additionally means assuming that no new leasing happens for 6-12 months. On the flip aspect, assuming that vacancies will likely be leased up in underneath six months, and at charges which have by no means been achieved on the topic property, could also be potential but it surely’s definitely aggressive.

What are the highest Three-5 ideas that you simply give traders after they’re making an attempt to do their due diligence on a deal?

Primary, all of it begins with the Sponsor. Expertise counts so much in CRE and you may’t underestimate the worth of working with teams with a variety of expertise and know-how underneath their belt. As well as, essentially the most skilled teams, significantly these with robust long-term monitor information, search to zealously defend these monitor information.

Buyers also needs to search for offers the place the sponsor is a specialist within the proposed asset. It’s inconceivable for a sponsor to be nice at every little thing, which is why it is not uncommon to see them specialize, typically in each area and asset class. They know the nuances, can keep away from frequent pitfalls, and are higher geared up to unravel the issues are that inherent to that area or asset class.

One thing else to contemplate is foundation. The adage of “you generate income on the purchase, you notice it on the sale” typically interprets to getting good foundation –in essence, you might be getting the chance to purchase the asset at a reduction relative to the competitors.

And final however not least, debt. Debt is usually utilized to boost returns to fairness, in addition to lower the overall quantity of fairness required to shut a transaction. Sometimes talking, the extra debt, the upper the returns to fairness holders. The flip aspect of that is that the extra debt you utilize, the extra threat of loss you place on the fairness.  

Consider two properties, one which has 80% leverage and one with 60% leverage. If each properties have been to fall in worth by 10%, the fairness holders within the first property have suffered a 50% loss since they’re stacked up within the ultimate 20% of the capital stack. The fairness holders within the second property, in distinction, have solely incurred a 25% loss. Leverage actually issues with regards to draw back publicity.

What are a number of the main purple flags to look out for?

There are quite a few purple flags that may disqualify an operator or a deal.

Listed below are only a few:

Unprofessionalism: There’s no simpler approach for us to say no an operator than receiving paperwork and fashions which might be riddled with errors. If an operator can’t even accurately articulate the deal, how will they execute their marketing strategy? Overly aggressive assumptions: A professional forma, at its core, is a single finest guess as to how the proposed property will carry out over the holding interval. Due to this fact, the important thing in any professional forma is to set the bar at a degree the place the chances look favorable that the operator will beat its professional forma. When the chances look extra probably that the operator will fail to attain its professional forma, it’s time to regulate assumptions or stroll away. Inexperience: There’s nothing extra perilous for a deal than an operator who merely doesn’t know what they don’t know. For that reason, we glance to keep away from any situation the place the operator is inexperienced within the asset kind and/or its related marketing strategy. We take the method of “let the operator make its errors elsewhere after which come to us as soon as they’ve discovered their onerous classes”.

What are the most important ways in which CrowdStreet tries to mitigate threat, significantly on this a part of the true property cycle?

Once more, the listing is lengthy however simply to begin:

We’re all the time seeking to accomplice with repeat sponsors. They know our course of, we think about theirs, and traders prefer to see the identical names popping up. We’ve a choice in the direction of offers that supply extra cash circulate and focus much less on the fairness a number of on the sale. Having a greater understanding of the sponsor’s monetary power. We’ve a choice for longer-term debt wherever the marketing strategy helps it. Concerning asset courses, we now have set a better bar for resort properties and have prioritized workforce multifamily, self-storage, senior housing, medical workplace, and cell residence parks–all of that are recession resistant. We take into accounts geographies with stronger and extra resilient economies, i.e. people who export an abundance of products and companies in industries which might be robust, and are experiencing job and inhabitants development charges that exceed the nationwide common.

Last Ideas

Whereas there’s a lot to know concerning the technicalities of syndicated offers, what’s necessary to recollect is that professionalism, course of, and competence go a great distance. At all times hold your self forward of the curve by understanding precisely the way you match into a possible partnership whereas avoiding the purple flags.

Thanks once more to Ian Formigle for giving us some perception into what he thinks about day by day at work. What was a very good takeaway for you from the interview? Discover Passive Earnings Docs on Fb to proceed the dialogue. 

from Easily Maker Money https://easilymakermoney.com/2019/04/13/prime-ideas-for-crowdfunding-due-diligence-an-interview-with-crowdstreet/

[rebeccahpedersen]

Are There Any ‘Positive’ Headlines Coming For Real Estate?

TorontoRealtyBlog

There was a time, about four years ago, when the news really, really depressed me.

And I’m not talking about the cat stuck in the tree, the old lady that fell down while crossing the street, or the boy who was bullied at school.  I’m talking about the non-sad news, which I found sad.

World news, local news; political news, socio-economic news.

I was one of those people who felt that the world was going crazy around him, and that he was one of the only sane ones left.  Every headline, every article, every person profiled, and every editorial – they all made me frustrated to no end.

So I took the logical next step: I deleted all news apps on my phone, and stopped reading the newspaper.

That lasted for about eight months.

And then, once I had added back my news apps, I added even more.

I’m not a “news junkie,” but I try to read as much as I can about what’s going on in the city, province, country, and on the planet, no matter where the news is published.

I’ll read the Toronto Star just as much as the Toronto Sun, because I want to know what the kumbaya-singing, hippie, utopians are saying, in addition to the illiterate, uneducated, fans of tabloid journalism.  Fair is fair, after all.

I started reading Fox News in addition to CNN for the exact same reason.

I don’t ever want to feel as though I’m getting one viewpoint on an issue, and I enjoy seeing a contrarian viewpoint, even if I don’t agree with it.

I mean, I have to draw the line somewhere though.  I wouldn’t read Breitbart.  Or Now Magazine.

The one trend I have noticed with respect to every single news outlet over the past few years, however, is that there are lines being blurred between editorial/opinion pieces, and that of general news “reporting.”  For example, I write a blog, and it’s my voice, and my opinion.  That’s obvious.  But in classic news-writing, we’re starting to see a lot more slant, and less objective, nonpartisan reporting.

I’ve also noticed, and this is nothing new, that news is really geared toward what is more likely to be read.  What’s hot?  What’s a good angle?  What’s more likely to make somebody click?

I’ve always felt that fear sells, and while some people shy away from things that make them uneasy, I do think that in a news cycle, negativity sells.

Over the past week, every single article I’ve read about real estate or the general economy has been negative.

Now, you’re free to tell me, “David, that’s because the real estate market is going to implode, and the economy is awful,” but I’m not convinced that both are true.

I also hold a belief, and call me naive, that Toronto requires its own news cycle, and that any news about Canada, generally-speaking, may not be directly applicable to our city.

Let me go through a few essential reads for the past week, all of which made huge headlines, but many of which I felt were over-hyped.

–

“More People Are Going Broke In Canada As Interest Rates Rise”

Let’s start with the most devastating headline first, shall we?

Going broke is about as bad as it gets, outside of illness, death, et al.

The sub-heading does make sense though, as it reads: “It’s a worrying sign for an economy that has relied so heavily on consumer-spending and the housing market to drive growth.”

Absolutely!  I don’t disagree!

But here’s where things go off the rails, and once again, you’ll hear me shout, “Read the article and not just the headline!”

The article states:

An increasing number of Canadians can’t meet their financial obligations, another sign rising borrowing costs are taking a toll on household balance sheets.

The number of consumers seeking debt relief jumped 5.1 per cent to 11,320 in November from a year earlier, the Ottawa-based Office of the Superintendent of Bankruptcy reported on Jan. 4

Yikes, right?

An increase of 5.1%?

Yeah, for one month.  Maybe hand-selected, maybe not.

But then further down at the bottom of the article is this:

Hoyes, Michalos & Associates Inc. estimates consumer filings in Ontario rose 1 per cent in 2018, after declining for eight straight years

Aaaaah, I see, I see, said the blind man!

So by “Canadians are going broke,” you mean that debt-seekers rose 5.1% Canada-wide in November, but in the province of Ontario, insolvency filings rose 1% in the entire year of 2018, after declining…………for eight straight years.

And it’s also worth noting that there’s virtually zero mention of causation via interest rate hikes, as the title of the article might suggest.

–

“A Quarter Of Canadians With Home Equity Lines Of Credit Are Paying Only The Interest On Their Loans: Survey”

I was hooked immediately with this line:

Over the past 15 years, home equity lines of credit have been the largest contributor to Canadian non-mortgage household debt.

I thought, “Fantastic!  That’s great news!”

Then I realized that the article was painting this as a negative rather than a positive.

I’m not suggesting that debt is a good thing, nor am I suggesting that people should take on debt to buy luxury cars they can’t afford, and designer-purses that they don’t need.

But I am suggesting that home equity lines of credit offer far lower interest rates than many, many other forms of readily-available consumer credit, and I’d much rather see somebody take equity out of their home at 5% than borrow from a VISA at 29%.

Am I wrong here, folks?

In 2018, I started the year by writing about financial illiteracy and the perils of predatory lenders like Money Mart and Cash Money.  Now I’m seeing an article saying that HELOC’s are the most common form of non-mortgage debt, and I can’t help but feel like this article provides a misleading conclusion.

FYI, here are the stats provided at the bottom of the column:

27% of HELOCS users reported paying only the interest portion most months

49% of HELOC users in the sample used them to pay for renovations, which was the primary use of the instrument, while 22% used them for debt consolidation

13% said they regularly use HELOCS to meet payments on other debt, while 16% said they did this “sometimes”

49% of HELOC holders said their limits were over $75,000

–

“Housing Affordability To Worsen In 2019 Even As Market Cools, Says RBC”

The headline doesn’t really match up with the introduction here.

We read, “….even as market cools” in the headline.

And yet the introduction says, “Even as house prices dip or rise only modestly…”

So I guess “rising only modestly” is now the same thing as “cooling?”  Maybe.  Maybe that’s fair, on a relative basis.

But the bigger issue that I have with this article is the fact that it ignores everything we discuss on this blog on a regular basis.

Blog reader Kramer once posted a comment that stuck in my head about this obsession we have with comparing the median household income to real estate prices.  Is that an appropriate metric anymore?

And as the article continues:

In the country’s biggest market — Toronto — the cost of owning a home will take up 79 per cent of the median household income of $71,631 by the fourth quarter of this year, up from nearly 76 per cent in 2018.

This ignores two major facts:

1) Not everybody who works or plays in Toronto owns in Toronto. 2) Some people choose to, or have to, rent.

This article seems to assume that everybody owns, and everybody owns in Toronto.

As we have discussed at length on TRB, there is no place on the planet where home ownership is at 100%.  So perhaps the assumption that median household income should relate to home ownership rates is flawed, since (egad!) people who make more money are more likely to own homes.

Then comes this nugget:

In 2019, 18 months into the central’s bank’s hiking cycle, the average household will pay about $1,000 more to service principal and interest obligations.  “That would represent a 7.6 per cent jump from 2018 — a tough pill to swallow for many.”

Completely offset by this:

RBC forecasts that the average disposable income per household before debt-service payments will grow by $2,300 this year. That means after Canadians service their debt, the average household will end up with $1,300 more in 2019.

–

“Canadian House Prices To Drop As ‘Huge’ Wave Of New Homes Arrives: Report”

Here again is where I differentiate between “Canada” and “Toronto.”

This “analysis” begins with a breakdown of the unsold inventory in Vancouver, and provides this exceptional piece of cutting-edge insight, never available anywhere else throughout the history of modern economic thought:

“As has been typical of historic real estate cycles around the world, new supply will reach the market just as demand is falling.”

Well, no kidding.

But I can’t seem to put two and two together here.

After we read that Canada is about to be “flooded” with a “huge amount” of new homes, we aren’t given any information about Canada.

We are given this quote by an economist I have never heard of: “Canada has been undergoing a construction boom.”

Okay, great.  Thanks.

Sooooo……….where are the stats to back this up?

This is the only thing we are given that contains an actual number:

If the percentage of unsold new homes in Vancouver remains what it is, the number of unsold houses on the market will double in the metro area over the next two years as 40,000 new homes come on the market

Okay, so Canada is about to be “flooded” with a “huge amount” of new homes, because of a “construction boom,” and the numbers used to back this claim up are unsold units in Vancouver?

What the actual eff.

Then this:

The situation isn’t quite so dire in Toronto — yet. Just one per cent of new homes in the area sits unsold, compared to 7 per cent in Vancouver. But Brown expects Toronto to follow in Vancouver’s footsteps this year.

Oh, I see, so Vancouver’s ‘problem’ is approximately 700% of Toronto’s in this one particular statistic, but yet the expert “expects” Toronto to follow.

Got it.

And this, again, is based on, what, exactly?

That’s rhetorical, because the article then abruptly shifts focus to somebody who suggests that a housing shortage exists.

So in the end, this is the worst headline-to-reality ratio of them all.

This headline says that “Canadian House Prices To Drop,” but offers no evidence as to why.

This headline says a “Huge Wave” of new homes is arriving, but has ZERO MENTION of new homes; only unsold inventory in Vancouver, and the line, “Canada has been undergoing a construction boom” from some random economist?

How goddam irresponsible is this headline?

I’m sorry, you can tell me that I’m a real estate agent who makes his living selling homes, and that I’m biased, and that I’m a snake-oil salesman, and that I’m a perennial bull, but tell me I’m not wrong about that headline.  Tell me that it’s not exceptionally misleading and contains nothing to back it up?

What bothers me about this, as I have mentioned before ad nauseam, is that most people (to their own detriment) don’t read the body of newspaper articles; they only read headlines.  Because to read the body of a newspaper article would take time away from looking at photos of your friends’ lunches on Instagram, comparisons of portraits from 2008 to 2018, and clicking ‘like’ on a photo of an egg.

God damn, I’m turning into an old man.

And fast…

–

Here are some other choice reads from the past week, in case anybody is stuck on the TTC right now and have run out of Insta-Stories…

  “Many Young Professionals Leaving Vancouver Over High Cost Of Housing”

“Trudeau Says Housing Reforms Means Fewer Overextended Canadians”

“AirBnB Draining 6,500 Homes From Toronto Housing Market, Group Says In New Report”

“Policy Decisions, Interest Rates Slowed The Real Estate Market, And They’re Needed For A Rebound”

    The post Are There Any ‘Positive’ Headlines Coming For Real Estate? appeared first on Toronto Realty Blog.

Originated from http://bit.ly/2FCURdN

[coin-river-blog]

Finance

In a chilling but sadly all-too-familiar sequence of events, UK banks have been targeting cryptocurrency owners. Individuals who have cashed out large amounts of cryptocurrency – legitimately – have had their assets frozen and accounts locked without warning, fueled by fears of money laundering and a general distrust of bitcoin. One victim even claims to have had their house raided and computer equipment seized in a follow-up operation by UK police.

Also read: Altcoin Purge Begins: Okex Delists 28 Token Pairs

The Legacy Banking War on Cryptocurrency Ramps Up

Legacy banks have a history of freezing crypto-related accounts

Traditional finance and cryptocurrency have been uneasy bedfellows ever since the start, but it didn’t have to be this way. While some jurisdictions have belatedly welcomed cryptocurrency with open arms – think Gibraltar, Malta, and Liechtenstein, where Binance has just opened a fiat-crypto exchange – the majority have taken an antagonistic stance. The UK is a prime example; unless you’re a bigshot like Coinbase, which recently secured a deal with Barclays, don’t count on retaining access to a bank account if you dabble in crypto. On P2P site Localbitcoins.com, UK traders exchange large amounts of BTC every day, requesting, in most instances, that the bank pay-in reference is something benign and unrelated to crypto. To do otherwise is to play a dangerous game.

This week, one British cryptocurrency figure discovered, to his peril, the speed and severity of the crackdown that’s initiated once a UK bank deems an individual to be persona non grata. The man, who we’ll refer to as John, has been involved in cryptocurrency for many years, actively mining it, occasionally trading it, and operating as a senior figure in the project team for a top 100 cryptocurrency. He has no criminal convictions, and has always accorded to UK laws concerning financial regulations and taxation. He told news.Bitcoin.com:

I had my bank account frozen and my funds taken hostage by Clydesdale Bank without any warning or explanation…I was eventually told by the branch manager that it no longer wanted to do business with “these type of people” [i.e cryptocurrency users]

Locked Out Without Warning

Clydesdale Bank cares a lot if you own cryptocurrency

John explains: “I tried to log in to my Clydesdale Bank current account (the one that I’ve had since childhood) late on Tuesday evening only to be presented with a message saying “Sorry, we’re no longer able to assist you online”. I then tried the app which said “Your account is locked, please call”. I called the help center only to be told that the guy on the other end of the phone also couldn’t access my account nor confirm whether or not my (six-figure GBP) balance was safe. I was told that he was completely unable to help and that I would need to call HQ in the morning.”

He continues: “I called HQ this morning and was put on hold for 20 minutes. When the guy came back, he told me that there was a letter in the post to me and that he couldn’t say anything more about what was happening or whether or not my balance was safe. So I requested to be put through to the most senior person available, who then told me that my account had been locked down but he was unable to tell me why, nor who put the lock on my account. He refused to even tell me which department placed the block. He told me that my only option was to go into my local branch and request a manual withdrawal of funds. However he explained that such a withdrawal would need to be approved by the bank and therefore I wasn’t guaranteed to get access to my cash.”

“My local countryside branch were as clueless as you’d expect. I sat watching the assistant phone head office to try to get to the bottom of WTF was happening. HQ refused to tell her while I was present so they instead went cloak and dagger by sending an email which she had to leave the room to go and check out. After another 20 minutes and a couple of phone calls that I could hear her make from the room next door, she finally reappeared with another guy who turned out to be the branch manager.”

“These Types of People”

John explains: “The branch manager sat down and explained that the bank had reviewed the transactions coming in and out of my account and decided that it no longer wanted to do business with “these type of people”. I immediately requested full withdrawal of my not insignificant balance to which he replied that he would need to seek approval for that to happen.”

John’s experience is by no means an isolated case. In Britain, as in many other countries, cryptocurrency users are having something they’ve always known reaffirmed: you can’t trust banks with your money. Previous character, credit rating, and occupation are all worthless should a legacy financial institution take a disapproving view of your involvement in cryptocurrency. A few days prior to John being locked out by a bank he’d been with for over 20 years, another British citizen was enduring an even more harrowing encounter.

“Got raided yesterday at 6:30am for cashing out 500,000 in Bitcoin back in December 2017, arrested for money laundering and possession of criminal property in the UK,” he told fellow members of the /biz/ messageboard. When pressed for details he elaborated:

My Bitcoins that were cashed out were legit bought back in 2012/13 and they have seized some of my crypto too, seized my PC, all my USB and hard drives and raided my whole house and took me to the police station, got given a solicitor and interviewed, they asked where I found out about Bitcoin and said 4chan and a poker site.

Raided by the Police for Cashing Out

The anonymous /biz/ poster continued: “I was released [from police custody] same day at like 4pm, solicitor said shit went well and was released not on bail but was “under investigation” i.e we have fuck all on you but lol we’re holding your shit anyway. they searched my house and I believe they thought I was a drug dealer and were kind of disappointed they didn’t find anything like that so I am guessing they jumped to conclusions, it’s my bank who started this shit by freezing it.”

News.Bitcoin.com cannot verify this story, but the level of detail supplied, accompanied by a picture purportedly showing the search warrant the police presented, suggests that it is authentic. The man’s problems began when he tried to cash out from crypto, which caused Natwest bank to freeze his account. John, on the other hand, explained to news.Bitcoin.com that he had recently sold various material assets to fund a new business venture that required access to fiat. In other words, John hadn’t suddenly cashed out a large sum of cryptocurrency that might have triggered the incident. The mere possession of a reasonable sum of fiat currency, coupled with a history for selling smaller amounts of crypto, was enough.

The warrant allegedly used to search the UK man’s house and seize his computer equipment

The /biz/ poster claims to have cashed out a significant amount of bitcoin in late 2017 partly to pay taxes, which he duly did with £110,00 of the money. This didn’t prevent him from falling under suspicion however. He asserts that the police “literally kidnapped me and stole my money on the basis of “we don’t know if you’ve committed a crime to obtain this money but lol we’re seizing your assets and raided your house.””

Funds Are Safu

John’s incident ended better than he at one point expected, with Clydesdale Bank eventually transferring his money to a new bank the man had hastily joined. He concludes: “I now have all of my funds in another account which I won’t name to prevent a repeat of this ridiculous discrimination. Being treated like a criminal (without proof nor cause) by an organisation that I’ve been loyal to for over 20 years has seriously pissed me off.”

The /biz/ messageboard user explains how the police raid went down

There may come a day when cryptocurrency users are treated with dignity and respect by legacy financial institutions. By the time that day arrives, however, the crypto economy may have evolved to the stage where bitcoiners may no longer need the banks that shunned them.

Do you think banks unfairly target cryptocurrency users, or are they simply doing their job? Let us know in the comments section below.

Images courtesy of Shutterstock, and /biz/.

Need to calculate your bitcoin holdings? Check our tools section.

[marklipinski]

 If you missed our last Facebook LIVE live video, here it is!  Please feel free to leave a question or comment.  All are answered.  xoxom

Here are the links to the subjects we spoke about in this episode:

Not Kid(ney)-ing Around

As my search for a life-saving kidney continues, I find that I am now .2 points from having to start dialysis.  In my research, I have most likely decided on hooking myself up, through the stomach, each day and trying to maintain some kind of life from home.  Those who have been in end stage kidney failure tell me that I may actually feel better than I have been (and it’s been pretty grim on some days) and a friend who shall remain nameless [Marie Bostwick] pointed out that I am the biggest homebody in the universe . . . and it’s not like I ever go anywhere anyway. LOL

So I’m still on steroids so sporting a coffin neck is one thing, but now my chipmunk cheeks eclipse my coffin neck!  Shroud cheeks?    So, while I may look like this:

I feel like this:

MR. ELECTRIC CONTINUES ON HIS BOOK TOUR

Mr. Electric’s book, Who Broke the Vase? finally launched and is available in bookstores (local and big box, like Barnes and Noble, etc.)  and other booksellers (even Wal-Mart, etc) around the country!  If you would like an autographed copy of his book (personalized to you or yours) order yours here:  http://bit.ly/2nI6Rj6

       Who Broke the Vase? Quilt

The Who Broke the Vase? quilt is finally finished and beautifully quilted by my buddy Janice Jamison. The kit will be available for pre-orders by the end of this week (I’m just waiting for a final [brand new] back ordered fabric to be shipped)!  I’ll post here and on Facebook as soon as the quilt is listed in the Pickle Road Studios online store.  Because I’m not a brick and mortar shop, I’m  limiting the number of kit sales, so first come first served.

Up next, patterns for lots of different Who Broke the Vase? projects . . .

and

Mr. Electric;s newest book (published in October 2017), Who Am I?

LEARNING

Book Binding

I took a bookbinding class with Linda Lum DeBono  at the Printmaking Center of NJ located in Branchburg, New Joisey.

  At the Printmaking Center of New Jersey with quilter/author/fabric designer, Linda Lum DeBono.

The printmaking design and class studio…

Bookbinding II class at the Printmaking Center of New Jersey

Samples of the books I produced in the class…

Our teacher, Dave DiMarchi of 9 in Hand Press.

Linda Lum DeBono binding her book

L

Printmaking

Quilters Jill Edwards, Brad Pitt, and Meg Cox in the Printmaking on Fabric class at the New Hope- Solebury Community School in wonderful New Hope, Pennsyltucky.   This class is also taught by 9 in Hand Press owner, Dave DiMarchi.

The New Hope Solebury High School where our classes take place.

Some of the supplies we use in class

Take Our Poll

Our first attempt at printing on paper

My Ugly Angel experiment on paper and baby wipes…

My planned layout of cardboard cutouts that I was to print onto fabric

I dropped the damned apple onto the orange, then the time for clean up began.  Still not finished, but you get the drift.

Jill Edwards and Meg Cox giving their projects the side-eye.

MONDO BAG

Cover of the Quiltsmart Mondo Bag pattern!

A sample of the Mondo Bag I bogarted from Liza Lucy’s studio…

An inside view (it’s super roomy)

Here, Quiltsmart owner, Maddie (whom I love love love), gives a tutorial on how to make your own Mondo Bag using her Quiltsmart pattern!

Visit the Glorious Color website to get your complete kit to make your own version of the Mondo Bag

CLICK HERE TO GET YOUR COMPLETE KIT

eats

MARK’S OLIVE OIL COOKIE RECIPE

What you need . . .

4 cups all-purpose flour

1 cup sugar

2 teaspoons cinnamon

1 tablespoon baking powder

3/4 cup olive oil

1 teaspoon lemon oil

1 teaspoon orange oil

1 teaspoon almond oil

1/2 cup half and half or whole milk

2 eggs

1 cup confectioners’ sugar

1 teaspoon meringue powder

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

1/2 teaspoon flavored oil such as orange, lemon, almond, or anise, etc. (optional)

colored jimmies, colored non-perils, or coarse sanding sugar (optional)

warm milk or water

Directions . . .

Preheat oven to 375 degrees

You can mix this by hand but I use my KitchenAid mixer using the dough attachment. In the mixing bowl, mix flour, baking powder, cinnamon and sugar and mix it well.  Next, add olive oil, half and half, the flavored oils, and eggs. Turn on the mixer to a medium setting and mix the ingredients together until the dough forms into a ball and away from the sides of the mixing bowl.

Grab small pieces of dough and roll them into 1″ balls and place them on a parchment paper covered cookie sheet, about an inch apart. They’ll puff up just a tiny bit during baking. Before putting them into the oven flatten their tops a little by gently pressing the top of each ball with the bottom of a drinking glass – just a little. Bake for 9 -10 minutes.

To Make Icing: Blend vanilla, flavored oil (optional), meringue powder, and enough warm milk to the confectioner’s sugar to form a smooth icing.

Dip the cookies into the icing and dry the cookies on a wire cake rack or directly on waxed paper. While the icing is still wet sprinkle them with colored non-perils, jimmies, or coarse sanding sugar.

HOMEMAKERS COUNTRY QUILTERS

Website: www.homemakerscountryquilters.org

ON MY WAY HOME

My visit with Mother Therese of Jesus

This is the cloister.  It’s huge.  On the bottom left side of the photo, beyond the trees is the terra cotta roofed mausoleum where the nuns are buried.

Some of the Carmelites in the cloister ages ago. I am told that there are only 4 cloistered nuns in the compound, the youngest in her 70’s.

Guess who?  Kinda creepy to me, but many cultures take photos of their deceased loved ones.

The tomb

The Grille

The Turn

One of the most amazing windows inside the shrine.  Each piece was made in Germany and sent to the United States for this building.

The Walmart Fat Quarter and now 3rd degree relic

Kidney Mary and Bonnie on the day we visited the National Centre for Padre Pio in Barto, Pennsylvania, where I created a 3rd degree relic brown fat quarter.

This is the wildest book about “Incorruptibles”!  I bought it, read it, then gave it away at some point. Just adding it in case you’re interested or think I’m cra cra . . . or both.  You can also Google “Incorruptibles” fo,r more information

The Incorruptibles: A Study of the Incorruption of the Bodies of Various Catholic Saints and Beati

SPEAKING OF MIRACLES

Here’s a part of a note I received from North Carolina quilter, Jane Lemley, dated August 18, 2015:

‘. . . Also, wondering if you ended up with my wooden pen that you used to sign 3 issues of your magazine after the meeting.  My friend, Clare, borrowed my pen for you to use.  It wouldn’t matter except that it was my Mom’s and she has passed away.  If not, no worries…maybe it’s on it’s way back to her!

Thanks again for your wonderful program!  May Slow Stitching stay with us always.

Sincerely, Jane Lemley”

JANE!  I FOUND YOUR PEN in my PROJECTOR CASE!!!  

PLEASE CALL ME at (908)876-1208

IF YOU KNOW JANE, PLEASE LET HER KNOW! 

Look what else I found in that darn case!  LOL  No kidding…

I’m going to sew my SUPER FLY on (or else culturally appropriate Mrs. Roper)

CAPE MAY QUILT & FIBER ARTS SHOW

Historic Cold Spring Village Quilt and Fiber Arts Show

June 24th and 25th.

Historic Cold Spring Village; 720 Route 9; Cape May, NJ

I’ll be speaking there both days.  Mr. Electric will be at the Historic Cold Spring Village Country Store with copies of his book and book readings for the kiddies!

Visit the Historic Cold Spring Village website here: https://hcsv.org/

Both days will feature demonstrations and vendors of quilting, textiles, knitting, crocheting, basket weaving, broom making, wool dyeing, sheep shearing and more! On Saturday, visitors may vote for their favorite quilts in the Welcome Center at the Viewer’s Choice Quilt Show, and on Sunday continue to enjoy the display and see the winners.  A rare wedding quilt, c. 1714, handmade by Cape May Countian Sarah Spicer, will be on display in the Welcome Center for its annual appearance. The quilt was restored in 2012 through a grant from the Cape May County Culture and Heritage Commission. Regional vendors are attending with quilting and sewing fabrics, yarn, baskets, supplies, and equipment to help inspire the creation of an heirloom project.

NEW BOOKS

Zen Doodle Calm

It’s out in October!

SENT

Thanks for the laugh, Kathy.

I found out that The Jolly Taxpayer Hotel which was built in 1906 was taken down 7-8 years ago and is now the Jameson House, an office and condo tower that was built in 2011.

Before and after

Before

After

Oh, and it was never a gay bar LOL

CALL YOUR SHOP

Tell your local shopkeeper that the Auriful’s  BEST SELLING THREAD COLLECTION, THE BASICS COLLECTION, is on sale at Checker.  Have you shop order a few.  If you don’t have one, buy one.  You will not regret it.

Yes, I sell them in my online store, but I would love it if you supported (or at least tried to support) your local brick and mortar quilt shop!  xoxom

  CATALOGS & MAGAZINES

Uppercase Magazine

The newest Uppercase issue has arrived!  Get yours here 

Spoonflower Catalog

A catalog? Ask for one here 

Take Our Poll

Sew News

I love this magazine!  There is always something I’m interested in (and I don’t sew clothing nor do I consider myself a “sewist”).  Find out about Sew News here 

      SHOWS

Mary Schaefer

This is the Gwen Marston book I referenced this week.

`

Catch the show, The Mary Schafer Collection: A Legacy of Quilt History at the Mercer Museum

in Doylestown, Pennsylvania until August 13.

https://www.mercermuseum.org

SPEAK YOUR WORDS, OWN YOUR TRUTH

and PUSH BACK AGAINST INJUSTICE and BULLYING

FACEBOOK LIVE with Mark Lipinski and Mr. Electric, May 21, 2017  If you missed our last Facebook LIVE live video, here it is!  Please feel free to leave a question or comment.