#the way oni would be so confused and rattled by

[cryysiswritesthings]

Beneath the Darkness in My Bones || Chapter Five

Fandom: Inuyasha Rating: Mature/NC-17 Warnings: Horror, Psychological Torture, Trauma, Implied/Referenced Torture, Rape, Parent/Child Incest, Obsession, Drugged Sex, Sexual Assault, Abuse, Non-Consensual Somnophilia Status: In Progress Pairing(s): KogKag (main), BanKag, Oni(gumo)Kag Summary: Horror is all she knows. Darkness is in his blood. She is the other half of his soul, and his calls for her echo long into the night.

Find it On: Tumblr | AO3

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Thank you so much to my amazing readers! You guys rock!

Series: Flowers Grown in Darkness Desecrate You

Chapters on Tumblr: Prologue || Chapter 1 || Chapter 2 || Chapter 3 || Chapter 4 || Chapter 5 || Chapter 6 ||

Tumblr Tags: #kogkag #bankag #onikag #inuyasha #beneath the darkness #btd chapter #flowers desecrate series

As each day came, Kagome spent more and more time in the hidden dungeon with her new companion. Inuyasha told her stories of the land in the West, the forest and meadows he called home. He told her of his elder half brother, a cold man who ruled his father’s lands. Of his Uncle, who had always treated him kindly, and was the undisputed leader of the Western armies. 

He told her of his mother, the human woman his father had fallen in love with. Of their passing nearly two decades prior, and the battle that had claimed their lives. And he told her of Kikyo, as he’d known her before Onigumo’s presence in her life.

Those stories were the hardest to believe, though she did her best to not let him know that. Or, she supposed it was not that they were hard to believe. More so that she could not reconcile the woman he spoke of with the negligent one who’d raised her.

When it was her turn, she told him only small things of her life. How she was meant to be married soon, though she did not know to whom. That her father’s guard was disturbingly obsessed with her. And when she displeased her lord father, he raised his hand against his only daughter.

That fact had been met with Inuyasha’s own anger, and he’d restlessly paced his cell for nearly an hour after. It hurt him that the man who’d killed his friend now abused her child. But trapped as he was, there was nothing he could do about it.

It comforted her that he was so upset on her behalf. That someone aside from Bankotsu might care for her well being was a balm to a long forgotten wound. But when he asked her why she didn’t, couldn’t, do more to stop the beatings, she worried he wouldn’t understand. 

Kagome was surprised to learn she’d been wrong. If anything, Inuyasha had understood her meaning perfectly. The duality of fear and heart ache, the terror of worse punishments and the desperate need to be loved by someone incapable of such an emotion.

They’d sat in silence the rest of the day, hands clinging to each other through the bars.

It was the middle of the day now, flecks of light shining through holes in the stone walls. The remains of their breakfast sat in the basket she’d found on the first day, gnats flitting wildly over the forgotten food.

Actually, now that she thought on it, there had been a distinct increase of the annoying pests over the last few days. And not just over their food either; she could hear true flies buzzing from inside Inuyasha’s cell. 

Her silver haired friend was currently lying on his back in front of her, allowing her the special privilege of playing with his hair. She’d wanted to wash it for him, even bring a bucket and rag he could use to wipe himself off and feel clean. But he’d refused her offer, worried about what Jakotsu’s reaction would be if there had been any signs of someone taking care of him while he was gone.

All things considered, it was a valid concern. But if that was the case, she would need to bring a bucket of water by anyway. That way he could clear his cell of what would be known as an ‘unusual’ amount of excrement for a man who shouldn’t be eating. If the smell was getting to her after just a few hours, she couldn’t imagine what it would be like living with it everyday.

That was when the idea came to her.

“Inuyasha? Could you do something for me?”

Twin ears flicked back in her direction, an amber orb opening. ���Not really sure what I could do from in here.”

Kagome shifted to her knees, scooting closer to the bars. “I need you to use your claws to cut something for me.”

“You want me to cut something?” Thoroughly confused, he moved anyway, setting himself closer to her. He looked wary. “And what am I cutting, exactly?”

Kagome held up a lock of her hair, smiling brightly. “This right here.”

He blinked once. Twice. “Why?”

“Just trust me!” Biting her lip, her grip on her hair loosened a bit. “Please? I promise its for a good reason.”

He scowled. “If you say so…” The chains rattled as he reached through the bars. He adjusted her grip, and with a quick slice, the strands were cut. “There, happy?”

“Yes!” Looking down at her dress, she dug through the fabric until she found her slip. This fabric she could tear on her own, and no one would notice the minor alteration.

Inuyasha watched, curious about her actions. Kagome tore off a small part of her undergarment and knotted it tightly around one end of the hair he’d cut for her. She then tugged his fingers close to the bars and made him hold the knot for her.

Slim fingers split the hair into three even parts, and Inuyasha starred in some surprise as she worked the strands into a braid. When she was near the end, she tore more of her dress to tie off the other end.

“Woman, what are you doing?”

Her smile was full of mischief, and she held out the braided lock for him. “It’s a present. It can’t smell good in here, so I thought this would give your nose a break when I’m not here.”

Inuyasha paled.

“Kagome, you can’t give me this. You can’t give me this.”

“Why not?” Glancing behind him, she nodded to the cell walls. “I’m sure you could pull one of those bricks out and hide it behind there. Jakotsu won’t see it that way.”

“That’s not the problem.” Swallowing hard, he tried to give it back to her even as his fingers tightened around the gift possessively. “I can’t accept this.”

“Yes you can. And you will. I won’t take no for an answer. And tomorrow I’ll bring something for you to wrap it in so it won’t get dirty.” Her friend still seemed to be struggling, so reached out to cover his hand with both of hers. “Please Inuyasha? I know it isn’t much, but it’s something I can give you. That way…” she looked away from him then, her eyes going to the floor. “Just in case.”

The other studied her, searching his mind for her motives. It occurred to him then--if her marriage ended up anything like her mother’s, he’d lose Kagome too.

Biting his tongue, he pulled his hand from her grip, cradling her gift to his chest. There was no way for her to know what such a thing meant to someone like him. What it would mean to her Other, if she ever escaped from this place.

If this princess ever managed to find them, and her Other found out about the gift, he’d be hunted down and killed. There was no questioning that.

But it was a comfort nonetheless. So he would return her gift of friendship with one of his own.

Inuyasha carefully set the braid to the side. One quick tug, and he pulled three hairs of his own.

Kagome watched him, a nervous excitement flickering to life in her chest. “Inuyasha, what are you…”

“Hush. I need to concentrate.” She didn’t speak again, so he went back to his task. His hair was made of stronger stuff, and so he had no need of other tools to tie it off. He tied off a small knot at the end and twirled the strands around his finger. As he let them slide free, the three hairs shifted, blending into one.

Kagome’s eyes were wide with awe. When he finished, he held it up for her to take.

“Here. It’s long enough that you can use it as a necklace, or as a tie around something you want to keep safe. And it’ll never break or tear on you.“

Biting her lip, she took his gift in return, inspecting the silver strand carefully. Tugging it between her hands gave credence to its strength, but even so it felt like a ribbon of silk.

Blinking back tears, she gave him a small, tremulous smile. “Thank you, Inuyasha. I’ll treasure it always.”

Hours had passed since then. The princess had gone to collect more food and water for them to share, each time taking longer to return. Her fears of being stopped had worsened the more time she spent away from the castle’s watchful eyes; as they were, there was nothing Inuyasha could do to help calm her.

This time, her delay had come from another stop. In her rooms had been a small deck of playing cards, which she and her companion now used for entertainment. She’d taught him simpler card games at first, but then they’d turned to balancing the cards in order to make shapes.

The sun had started to set, the last of its rays disappearing as the moon rose. A sudden, unexpected gust of wind made her shudder, but it was the call that made her heart stop.

Ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh… Ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh…

Swallowing hard, she tried to block out the sound, focusing harder on the half-made pyramid in front of her. But it was not to be ignored.

Ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh… Ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh…

She looked from the male behind the bars to the only sliver of light in the stone. It had been days since she’d heard that sound. She’d thought she was doing better.

Inuyasha followed her gaze for a moment before he turned back to her. Her eyes were half lidded, head tilted to the side. Like she was listening to something far away, something only she could hear.

Ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh… Ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh…

“What is it?”

She hummed lightly. “Nothing. You wouldn’t believe me.”

“Tell me anyway.”

It was a moment before she answered. “Howling. Always howling.”

“The wind?”

“The wind, the trees, the mountains… it’s inhuman.”

“Where is it coming from?”

“East. From the woods.” She blinked, coming back to herself. She was suspicious. “Why are you asking?”

He turned thoughtful, a white ear flicking atop his head. “I wondered what you were hearing, since I couldn’t.”

She seemed curious. “Is your hearing so acute?”

“All of my senses are. Hearing, sight, smell…” He bit his tongue, looking nervous. “You said it was inhuman. Does that bother you?”

She shook her head, shifting against the bars. “No. It…” she flushed lightly. “It sounds silly, but I feel better when I hear it. It’s… it’s as if whatever is howling is looking for me. It wants me to come to it, to find it…” her next words were soft. “So it can protect me.”

He seemed to relax, the corners of his mouth lifting in a smile. “Good. I’m glad.”

Something sparked in her chest, a question and answer all at once. “You… you know what it is, don’t you?”

“I know what it is.” He sighed, eyes drawn to the claws tipping his fingers. “Is… you said it was coming from the east. Are you sure? Not west?”

“It’s in the east. That’s where it wants me to go.” One of her hands circled the bars, teeth sinking into her lip. “Please, if you know anything…”

“If it’s from the east, it can only be a wolf.”

The statement drew her up short. “A…wolf?”

“Mm. You’ve probably seen him a few times, but you might not remember.”

She looked skeptical. “I think I would remember having seen a wolf, Inuyasha.”

“Not in person, doofus.” He grinned when she huffed at the playful insult. “In dreams. You’d have seen him then, like Kikyo did my Uncle.”

A beast of magnificent size, her hand tangled in coarse, dark fur.

She’d never touched him before.

Strength lined every tense muscle; she knew his urge to sweep her from the earth.

“Kagome?”

A muzzle as large as she was small, a chuff of warm breath and the squeal of a child’s delight. Her lady mother’s horrified screams, and a growl so loud she could feel it vibrating in her chest.

“Kagome?”

She shook her head, blinking her way back to reality. “You…”

Inuyasha’s smile was small, understanding. But there was a bitterness behind his eyes she couldn’t explain. “You’ve seen him.”

“He’s… he’s huge. Enormous. Wolves never get that big.”

“Lemme guess. When he walks next to you, his head comes up to what, your shoulder? Maybe sits a bit higher?”

“Bigger.”

He blinked in surprise, chains scraping the floor as he sat forward. “How much?”

“What?”

“How much bigger?”

“He…” She closed her eyes, trying to think. Trying to remember. “He towers over me. Twice the size of my father’s best horses.”

He stared at her in shock, which very quickly turned to worry. “You’re not afraid of him?”

“No, he’s… No.” She couldn’t understand where her surety came from, only that she knew without doubt that what she said was true. “He would never hurt me.”

Her friend relaxed. “Good. That’s good.” Curious, he questioned her further. “What does he look like? Do you know?”

Kagome shook her head. “No. I… I’ve only ever seen him in fragments.”

Inuyasha frowned. “That’s all?”

“That’s all.”

The half-dog hummed, elbows coming to rest on his knees. He stared at their tower, marginally aware of the princess’s eyes on him. “Can I ask you something?”

She blinked in surprise. “Of course.”

Inuyasha picked up a card, twirling it in his fingers. “Why did you think I wouldn’t believe you? I mean…” meeting her eyes, he pointed at his ears with the card. “It’d be a bit hard of me to say otherwise, considering.”

Flushing red, the princess reached through the bars and flicked a card out of place. Her friend’s indignant cry bought her a few minutes to try and find a way to answer him.

While Inuyasha grumbled, Kagome finally spoke. “You might think it’s silly.” Amber eyes flicked up to meet hers before looking back at their fallen tower. His way of telling her he was listening. “It’s just… I’ve never told anyone before. And even when I think about it sometimes, I wonder if maybe I’m really going crazy. Or if I’m turning into my lady mother, closed off and afraid.”

He winced, concerned. “Kagome…”

“I know she was different when you knew her,” she said quickly, cutting off his interruption. “But you have to understand, the person you and everyone else have been describing isn’t the woman I knew. She was… she was cold. Uncaring. She...” The confession was quite, almost impossible to hear. “She barely touched me unless she had too. Never gave me a kind word. She wandered the halls like a ghost, always searching for something. I don’t want that to happen to me.”

“It won’t happen to you. I promise.” The chains screeched across metal when he reached through the bars to cover her hands. “There’s so much you don’t know… so much I can’t tell you.” He sighed when she looked at him with confusion. “It’s part of our history. The more I tell you, the more danger you could be in. Kikyo… I think I told her more than I should have. And that’s why things went the way they did.”

Kagome shook her head insistently. “Inuyasha, my lord father is responsible for what happened. Not you.”

“But see, that’s just it.” Frustrated, he leaned against the bars, ears drooping. “I want to explain, but I’m afraid of what could happen if I do.”

Hesitant, but wanting to comfort him, Kagome reached through the bars and cupped the top of his head. “I think… I think I understand. At least a little.”

He sighed. “I don’t mean to keep secrets. I hate it when it’s done to me, so I don’t like doing it to other people.”

“It’s alright.” Her fingers scratched behind a delicate ear, unthinking. The appendage twitched, but aside from an exasperated huff, he did nothing to stop her. “Can I ask for something? If it’s not too much?” He hummed in answer, shoulders sinking as the tension in his muscles slowly ebbed. “When the time is right, will you promise to tell me as much as you can?”

“I promise.”

The alpha’s lips pulled back, baring fangs at one who couldn’t see them.

So. One born of the West was in the castle.

It wouldn’t matter. The Other would know not to encroach on his territory. Humans couldn’t see it, but all of the mates were marked with symbols of belonging. It was how they knew to keep safe those who were destined for them.

But just because the humans couldn’t see them didn’t mean they were unaware of the symbols all together. Those marks would draw others to them, humans of great strength, of cunning, of passion. They could not see, but they would sense the difference in the chosen nonetheless, even if they couldn’t understand what it was.

In the days of old, when human and Other would join for all to know, they had built communities and kingdoms of unparalleled renown. But such strength was not without weakness. And in those weaknesses, devastation would follow.

Soon, the lord and his guard would return. The pack had tracked their crossing. And after that…

The call of her soul was getting stronger. As was his. She would leave the castle and come to him. He knew it, even if instinct demanded he answer her summons.

All he had to do was wait.

[moonlightguardianmoon]

Dang I'm so lazy that I didn't do anything for the October month on my tumblr page, so you know what heres an assassin lost in modern ages AU (yes that's what I'm calling my AC headcannons now) this is also a bigbang reference as well cause I thought this scene was funny.

Enjoy =)

It was a crisp October night everyone in the house had pitched in to help decorate the house for Halloween, of course when the assassins in the house hold saw the strange decorations that Desmond, Shaun and rebecca were getting from the attic, some of them were quite confused at first. Altair was first to point this out and thought it was some kind of dark sorcery ritual, while Leonardo was more rational about it and thought it was for some kind of party maybe. Jacob being, well... Jacob agreed with Altair and thought it to be some spooky dark magic witch craft, trying to scare everyone into believing it. Kassandra and Desmond having to be the only ones out of the assassins family bloodline to knew more about the modern life explained that it was a holiday that people celebrated the first month of fall and explained that the tradition involved dress up as whatever you please and get treats for it.

It saddened Jacob when he learned that the treat part were for the kids, but his spirits came back strong when he learned that you could pull spooky pranks on people.

And so after all that mess Desmond, Jacob, and Rebecca decided to pull a spooky prank on Shaun when he got back from the store that night.

Shaun: *opeans the door* guys I'm home!

The house seems to be dark and Empty.

Shaun: hm? ... *tries to turn on the living room lights*

The lights don't turn on.

Shaun: odd... *starts walking into the kitchen to put the stuff down*

After putting the stuff was put away he heads up stairs to a dark and empty hallway that is usually bustling with assassins roaming the halls and the rooms that would normally have people in them seem empty and bare.

Shaun: ... oh, OH ok I get ha ha every funny it's Halloween, OoOo~ spooky~ ya nice try guys *starts walking* but it's gonna take more then a dark and dead silence hallway to scare me-

Unknown voice: ShaAaAUn~

Shaun: ...

Unknown voice: ShaAaAUn~

Shaun: *tries to turn on the hall lights*

The lights turn on for a second before the bulbs spark and shut off completely only having the empty rooms full of moonlight shine into the halls as a light scorce.

Shaun: ...

There was a ghostly moan in the wind, soon the sound of chains rattling followed by a witches cackle.

Shaun: *rolls his eyes* ha ha yes the Halloween foolery begins. *keeps walking but at a slow pace* A ghostly moan, rattling of chain, the witche's cackle. Trifecta! Haunted house cliches. Instead of AH I say yawn.

Unknown voice: ShAaAaAuN~

Shaun: *sees something dripping out of the walls*

The red unknown substance begins to drip from the once dry walls of the house hallway walls

Shaun: oh, the wall are dripping blood. Which looks nothing like it by the way! to wet to even possibly be considered blood! Tch- more like some children's water coloring set.

The blood soon forms into a five worded sentence. See you in hell Shaun

Shaun: see you in hell Shaun... The most frightening thing about that is the missing comma!

The out of no where a glowing neon green skeleton with glowing red eye comes flying out of no where towards Shaun.

Shaun: AH! *gasps* *starts panting* ok all right, *pants* that one was clever, *pants* skeleton with phosphorus on a zip line. *pants* come on out Merry Pranksters! Take a bow! *pants*

The lights turn back on and from around the corner Jacob, Desmond, and rebecca reveal themselves and give each other a hive fives and Pat's on the backs from each other as they walk and laugh towards Shaun.

Jacob:HAHA!

Desmond: HAHA!

Rebecca: you should've seen your face Shaun!

Shaun: yes there's nothing quite like slightly widen eyes of the mildly startled.

Desmond: Come on, Admit it we go you!

They walk into Shaun's room.

Shaun: please fright depends on an element of suprise the simple fact is because I am much smarter than you-

As shaun is talking Altair crawls out of Shaun's room vent with an oni mask covering his face and his hood up as usual, as he slowly begins to walk over behind shaun.

Shaun: and able to anticipate your actions it is highly unlikely that you three rubes could ever suprise me.

Altair is now 2 inches way from behind Shaun.

Rebecca: he's probably right.

Desmond: we can't beat him.

Jacob: he's just to smart.

Shaun: *smirks* assassins *turns around*

Altair: ...

Shaun: AAAHH!! *passes out*

Jacob: HAHA!

Desmond: HAHA!

Rebecca: HAHA!

Altair: *smirks and takes off the oni mask*

Desmond: ok who had money on faints!

Jacob: uh, I had pee his pants!

Altair: *looks down at Shaun* hang on... looks like everyone's a winner.

I know it's a day late but still happy Halloween everyone I hope you guys stayed safe and healthy this year, hope to do something better then a headcanon next year but for now enjoy Desmond, Jacob, Altair and rebecca's Halloween prank on Shaun.

[zafaria]

Mythopoeia

She told them her school.

They had said “That’s fine, we guess, but be careful what you do there.”

They had said “We really trusted you would be a thaumaturge. We’d have even been okay if you were a pyromancer, like your uncle; or maybe a diviner... you have creative energy.”

They had said “Is it too late to change?”

Was it too late to change?

Was there an expiry date on learning? No, maybe not. She’d stick with it though, the test was adamant to her, it almost seemed to threaten what would happen (or, worse, what wouldn’t) if she didn’t submit to being a conjurer.

A tricky thing. 

It was all fine and well those first few years at the school. Kind of boring, actually. Cyrus was a very mean professor, and she was a meek and restless child. So, maybe her disposition wasn’t great for Myth. She was flighty and subdued, not grand, not like a legend. She did daydream a lot, in a lost, wistful way, but the haze of it all made her think maybe she would’ve been better off curled behind the desk in the back of the Storm classroom. At least, maybe, Balestrom wouldn’t yell at her for it. Maybe he wouldn’t even say anything.

She did like her preliminary classes in the Fire school. She liked the flame and the heat, but she was absolutely miserable at casting, at focusing her attention and getting things to stay and materialize with enough magnitude to be meaningful. She’d have switched over to Fire, but she dreaded the idea of starting all the way from the bottom of the ladder, years and years and years behind, trying to overcome what appeared to be just an innate lack of a knack for it.

So, in the Myth class, she found her spot. Not quite at the bottom of the ladder, but low enough on it. Good enough in ability to pass, bad enough in her behavior to warrant lots of public ridicule in front of her classmates. Cyrus seemed to think that by calling on students, bad students, in front of everyone, he had embarrassed them or taught them a lesson or something, but the reality was that none of the other students really cared. There was no bullying or rumors or harassment for being called on, just a glance of well-meaning but undesirable pity after class. They all got it. They had all been the kids sitting disengaged at the back of the classroom once.

Her parents would write her once every week or so. 

“How are you doing?” “Fine.” Occasionally, she’d add in one episode of her trip to the Shopping District and what she bought.

“What are you learning now?” “I’ve been stuck in the Library for three days writing essays.”

“Have you made any friends yet?” “I have a lot of friends, but they are all in different schools so I don’t get to see them during the school days because our schedules are different.” Signed. Stuffed in an envelope. Wax dripped over the fold. Stamped. Sent. 

Her signature took on a different look every time. The top loop of the “J” got larger and wider, more grand, the little loop at the bottom got finer, more dagger-thin. In a few days, the return letter would arrive.

“Be smart with your money. Do you have a part-time job where you’re earning?” and,

“Work hard.” and,

“Do you think you would like to switch schools so you can be with your friends?”.

She would sit on the letter and let it expire, waiting instead for her parents to send another one that reverted back to the usual questions.

And it went on, for a couple of years. And then, it changed. And then there was the noise, the loud rumbling from all around the City during one of the afternoons she had detention.

She wanted things to change so badly, and everyone was distracted, and she was just finally fed up with wasting her afternoons continuing to be forcefully immersed in a subject she couldn’t bring herself to care for. She ran down Unicorn Way towards the sound to see what was amuck; when the guards asked her to show her badge, like a pass, to show she wasn’t a novice and would be safe, dutiful, thoughtful, she palmed her sister’s old adept’s badge from her pocket. The guards looked at it quickly and waved her along, not noticing the mismatch of the Ice symbol on the badge and the yellows and blues of her robes.

So it spiralled from there. The dead were undead, and then they were dead again. Had she really done that? With Myth magic? 

The cards and spells were so different in battle than the practice duels that Cyrus would take them to in the Arena and the few seconds of spellcasting she and her classmates would do in the classroom before Cyrus entered in the morning and told them all to hurry to their seats, sit straight, and prepare for lecture. They rarely got to attempt magic, and then they'd have practicals where their nerves got to them and the spells came out wonky.

But there, in the streets she had once only been able to try and stare down, it was all so real, so vibrant. The magic pulsated through her, like a second heartbeat.

She had that same kind of enamor with it all the way through the worlds. In Krokotopia, her magic never made her feel bad. In fact, it was the fire that made her feel bad; when she burned the Ahnic mummies. That left her feeling like her hands were always covered in soot, grimy, guilty. The soot stains on her soul never faded.

Then in Marleybone, there was just a hint of a shudder running around her bones, a shiver within the marrow, when she beheld the faces--or lack thereof--of the agony wraiths in Big Ben. Where had they come from? Did they miss those places, those tombs or graves or mausoleums? Were they even of Marleybone, or were they far from the grounds of their homes?

She didn’t try to think much of it when she went for the duel. She was too busy thinking of giants dislodging the bones with a club, long hollow femurs clattering to the wooden floor; an earthquake following and swallowing up the center of the clocktower. When she left, her lungs felt blackened from spending too long in the city breathing in the smog.

In Mooshu, it sank in the most. She would summon earthquakes in spirit realms and feel the little chunk of earth she was on rattle, the chasm opening up from nowhere. The friction between the worlds and shifting dirt underneath would normally propel the earthquakes, but in those disconnected little places, where the grounds were thin and hammered out flat like saucer-plates, she wondered where they stemmed from. The chasm and the shadows within it seemed to plunge deeper than the earth actually was. 

The onis that stared into her seemed to be looking deeper than they actually were. Her mind sweltered. The whole of the place was confusing and demented. And she thought that maybe it rubbed off on her too. Everything felt out of reach.

Her parents wrote a letter.

“How are you?” “I am tired. I have been travelling a lot. I am doing an externship as a part of my schoolwork, for Headmaster Ambrose. It is very busy.”

“What are you studying?” “High-level Myth magic. I have learned some new spells, but they required that I go collect some things from different worlds, that’s why I’ve been visiting so many places.” She’d include one of her sketches she did of the yellow windows of Marleybone or the endless fields of Mooshu in the envelope. Her parents would’ve liked her to travel, as long as they knew it was purposeful and being done in structured way, a safe way.

“How are your friends?” She didn’t address the question, and instead sent her parents a pressed flower. Sealed. Stamped. Sent.

Then, before Dragonspyre, Cyrus pulled her aside after class. He said “Malistaire is my brother,” like she wouldn’t have maybe guessed from appearances. And then that he wanted to duel her, to see if she was competent enough to handle the war-ravaged world alone. 

She desperately wanted to prove she had attained something, she had learned, she was good at this. She desperately wanted to come close in the duel, to be on the precipice of winning, but just barely lose, and to sob, put her head down, beg for help. She wanted to prove she could, and also that she couldn’t do it alone.

But the flow of battle, the rhythm of that second heartbeat in her dictated in a way all its own. It was powerful in that duel in a way it never had been. It was totally engulfing, pounding in her ears and vibrating against the veins in her wrists, and she won and she had to. If she didn’t, maybe her skin would crawl and split from the overbeat of the magic that was left unfulfilled.

Oh, and that feeling rose up once more when she faced Malistaire, when she could smell a metallic and humble aura of death and lava all across the top of the volcano in Dragonspyre. The same feeling, rushing over her, her hands floating in the air like she was only watching the spectacle and not acting in it, like her hands weren’t even hers. She was acutely aware of all she was doing, how fast her mind was moving, though. Her actions were all her own. At least, she thought, these few things I own wholly, no matter what, and they were not left to fate, nor the headmaster or the Book of Secrets, or ancient warring tribes, or an old tree’s prophecy, or her professor or her parents.

She wondered if she became overzealous at the thought. If it made her too fierce. Cyrus sat back somewhere, afraid to intervene, maybe knowing he couldn’t. Maybe he didn’t want to have his brother meet an unfortunate end at his hands, so he made his student do it for him.

Or maybe she wanted to show Cyrus her unflinching worth, and that training and practicing across the worlds and in the streets taught her something he never could, that he never thought would emerge in her: a dauntless courage to face cruelty, sometimes with cruelty in turn.

But, deep down, both knew that the most important factor of why Malistaire died, why he lost the duel and didn’t manage to stand to his feet again after, was because he was an incredibly ambitious man with a gravely weakened soul. His magic truly had split out of his skin, creating the aura that permeated around them, and infusing with the rituals to raise the Dragon Titan. And the human, non-magic parts of his soul were broken all across too. His wife was gone, truly gone. And his brother couldn’t face him, and he was beating on…a child. A hopeful, brave child who had the whole world in their eyes. And he just had nothing left in him at all.

Returning home after that was difficult for her. She walked out of the volcano and into a portal, with Cyrus’s hand pressed against her shoulder. He was guiding her toward the foggy vision of the Headmaster’s office, urging her forward but also holding her down to the ground. Under his palm, she wasn’t going to float away in a confused mire, and she also knew she couldn’t slink from under his palm into a ball on the ground and cry. She could only move forward. She knew he was telling her she had done well, she had done the right thing.

How was she going to explain to her parents that this is what her “externship” was about? That she wasn’t being a student, not at all; she was being a hero. And though a hero seemed much grander and fancier, it was very, very different from what she had prepared for. It was thoroughly taxing in the most unpredictable, inexplicable, extraordinary ways. There was no training for how to be a hero.

And after she was emotionally spent and wasted away in her room for a few days, she packed her things and went home. 

“Sabbatical, dear.” That’s what Greyrose said to her. “When you’re old and wizened like me, you take one every so often to remember to slow down.”

“You need one,” said Balestrom. “Very badly, you do need one. You look tired.” She was tired, and confused, and no longer hungry when all her life she had loved food, and she felt dirty and greasy.

She turned in a letter to Cyrus, who just stared down his nose at her, then nodded. His mouth stayed pressed shut through the entire process. She almost cried. She could feel her teeth pressing into each other, and they were so tightened in her jaw they felt soft, like little marshmellows. She thought she could maybe tell that Cyrus’s jaw was also more levelled out, more squared, like he was also clenching his teeth.

She walked out very quickly.

She walked into her home very quickly. Her parents hugged her, her father gave her a kind of firm pat on the back that made her shake a little. Like he was welcoming someone he didn’t particularly like into his home. Maybe she overthought, but her mother’s laughter was all wrong too. It used to fill the room, like a joyous thing, but now it filled the room in a suffocating way.

“We laugh to show our teeth, to show they’re still there,” she remembered from the readings for one of her essays, where she spent her time in the library for a day. 

They sat together at the dinner table, a plate of mashed potatoes with a loaf of bread and turkey casserole before each one of them. She picked at some of the things, then had her elbows on the table as she tore the bread into tiny pieces and began to chew them slowly, one-by-one, like a mouse.

“Are you okay, honey?” they asked. “Do you want to talk with us about something?”

“No, it’s fine.”

“Oh. Okay. How are classes, by the way? Have you been doing well?”

“Yes. I actually, uh, I did some directed independent studies with Cyrus.”

“OH! Advancing so fast, are we? Are you the teacher’s pet, and that’s why you get to do higher-level work?”

“Uhm, kind of. I also just needed to do something different. For my learning. Sitting in the classroom all day wasn’t really working for me.”

“Oh, like a practical? You’ve been safe, haven’t you? Are you missing any classes?”

“No, I’m actually on a short break right now,” she said. The questions were sweltering.

“Listen, we received some post from Headmaster Ambrose, that you’d maybe have something you want to share with us? Maybe about the kinds of schoolwork you’ve been doing? That you’d have something to tell us?” The curtain was up. She stared blankly, with her mouth open, blinking a little.

“Well, yeah, I... uh, Ambrose had a special assignment for me, I guess. There was...Listen, it sounds mad, but you must’ve felt it, the disruptions, and all of the ash and stuff. Anyways, there was an unhinged necromancer trying to destroy the Spiral? So, Ambrose had me and a few other strong students help him out with getting rid of undead monsters on the streets.” Calling Malistaire “unhinged” felt wrong, like a spike was being driven across her mouth, through her cheeks. She added the bit about there being friends, thinking that maybe if other students had been a part of the picture, her parents would find it less dangerous.

“So he had students acting like dogs for him,” they said, sitting back in their chairs. Her mother crossed her arms. She could barely look to them, unable to balance one disapproving face and the other. “And Cyrus approved of this all and had this count as your study versus the schoolwork you should’ve been doing on-campus?”

“It wasn’t as bad as it seems.”

“You’ve went all over the Spiral, you could’ve been killed. And we are aware about the changes recently, from that necromancer. And we’re also aware that he was a Professor at Ravenwood once, a Professor Drake. Cyrus is a Drake too, yes?”

They sounded like they were accusing her, but she wasn’t sure of what. It wasn’t like it was up to her that Cyrus and Malistaire were brothers. 

“So your professor had you meddling in his family affairs. Ambrose and Professor Drake had you engaging in some blood feud with Drake’s old family. That isn’t appropriate for a student,” her mother said, like she was going to try and create a case against the school and Ambrose. “You know, we didn’t like the idea of you being a conjurer,” she continued.

They all got into a yelling match over the schools, whether she was a disappointment, if she was cut out to continue on there. They blamed conjurery, endlessly. Always. Always, it was the fault of the Myth school and Myth magic.

Out of one of their mouths came “you killed someone,” or perhaps it was “I killed someone,” from her own mouth, owning it. Whoever said it, it greatly upset everyone at the table. Her parents talked to her, level again, and said “you can’t go back.” They would consider getting her an apprenticeship in something like bookkeeping or art.

“You could’ve listened to us. This wouldn’t have all happened if you had just studied under Professor Greyrose, like Katarin.”

Sitting at the table, she now could look her father in the eyes as he said those words. She was frowning, and crying furiously, a silent crying, and untempered one that showed no weakness, but instead infinite and defiant strength. 

She had learned some things in Cyrus’s classes. Not magic, nor imagination. She had been ridiculed in front of her peers, she had known that her professor saw her as low and untrying. She learned an unending patience, and the grace to know when the fight was over.

“That’s fine,” she barely murmured. “That’s fine.” A tear dripped off her chin with the movement of her jaw as she spoke. She grabbed her plate off the table with both hands and walked it over to the sink, scraping the contents off in one motion, then walking to her old room.

She spent the night there, passed out after dinner with the door locked in a stupor that reminded her of what her past few years should’ve been like. And then, in the morning, she packed everything she cared for from that room, swiping things off the dressers and desk and putting them into every corner of her backpack until it was nearly splitting its seams and lumpy all around.

And then she left, waving goodbye to the silent dark house behind her as she opened the door. She knew that her parents were people so different from her and that, despite their words, they had sent letters every week, cared about whether she was lonely or not, invited her back home often though she didn’t visit every time she possibly could’ve. They didn’t understand. They might never have understood. And because they didn’t understand, they seemed to want to wash their hands of her, their restless, second, failed child. At least for the immediate future.

So she would let them. They acted like she might be a student of some promise, like her studies and advancements were making them proud. They let her throw out their follow-up letters and pretended like they never existed. She would let them pretend like she didn’t either.

But she understood. She would find them later, if they wanted to be found by her. They didn’t think she was doing things that a mere student should have been resigned to. She was a conjurer, roped into an unfortunate, yes, feud. And she had done one thing that was horrible, and many things that were wrong, and she would never rid herself of those things. She resolved to do the only thing that she could’ve done, and pressed onwards as a hero.

[lloydskywalkers]

heartbreak

Missed a day but here’s “Heartbreak” for today’s @ninjago-angst-week ! Not much going on here but man do I love the FSM family and their never-ending angsty lives.

“Wu.”

“Psst, Wu.”

“I know you can hear me, Wu.”

Wu stifles the urge to open his eyes and glare at his brother. Instead, he takes a deep breath, letting it out through his nose like father taught him. He’s supposed to be meditating right now, not murdering his brother.

Garmadon pokes his side again, and Wu jumps.

“Stop it,” he hisses, glaring at Garmadon. “We’re supposed to be focusing.”

“On what, how boring this is?”

Wu tries not to roll his eyes. Mature, he reminds himself. Be the mature one.

"Come on, Wu,” Garmadon says, nudging him with his elbow. “Don’t you wanna get out of here?”

Wu looks down, hesitant. “Father wouldn’t approve.”

Garmadon rolls his eyes. “Who cares what father approves or doesn’t approve,” he says, in that blisteringly confident way he has. “All he’s done the last few days is sit around and talk to boring people anyways. He won’t even notice we’re gone.”

“But he said we should finish our meditation,” Wu says, trying in vain to keep his hands in position.

Garmadon scoots closer to him, grinning. “Well, father also says ‘never put off until tomorrow what you can do today’, right? And those caves aren’t gonna explore themselves.”

Wu sighs. “I don’t know, Garmadon.” He bites his lip. “The - the last time we followed that saying, it didn’t really end…well.”

Garmadon leans back, an unreadable look on his face. Wu squeezes his eyes shut, the familiar rush of guilt and fear flooding him. Ever the reminder that it’s his fault.

“That’s Oni shi-“

“Don’t curse,” Wu says, automatically.

Garmadon rolls his eyes. “Whatever, it still is,” he huffs. “The whole Oni and Dragon blood, the venom.”

Wu looks down, his crossed legs starting to go numb.

“Wu, you don’t actually think I’d - I’d hurt you, right?” Garmadon’s voice isn’t playful anymore. There’s a touch of fear there, a note of hurt.

Wu shakes his head. “No, of course not,” he says, giving his brother a weak smile. “I’m just…I’m just worried, you know? Father is so quiet lately.”

“Father’s always quiet,” Garmadon reminds him. “And then he’s all cryptic and confusing when he does talk.”

“He’s being wise, Garmadon.”

“Psh.”

Garmadon glances at him again, concern written across his face. “Brother, I can hear you thinking. Stop worrying so much about it.”

Wu’s fists clench. “It’s my fault,” he whispers, eyes scrunching up. “If I had just - if I hadn’t lost the sword-“

“Oh, stop that,” Garmadon says. He grabs Wu’s shoulders firmly, forcing him to to face him. “You can’t keep blaming yourself for something the Devourer did, alright? Besides,” he says, ruefully. “I should have seen it.”

“What if’s and should have’s can be the downfall of a man,” Wu says, sniffing.

Garmadon casts his eyes skyward. “Must you bring father into everything?”

Wu shrugs, and Garmadon gives a huff of laughter. He scoots up next to Wu, bumping his shoulder again.

“Listen, no snake is going to come between me and my family,” Garmadon says, stubbornly. “I hate snakes. Do you know how disgraceful that would be?”

Wu giggles in spite of himself. “Well, you’ve never been one to avoid a fight.”

“That is…a fair point,” Garmadon admits.

“Maybe you’re just destined to fight everything that comes your way.”

“I hate destiny,” Garmadon mutters, leaning back and bracing himself on his arms.

“Don’t offend higher powers like that, Garmadon.”

Garmadon rolls his eyes. “You’re no fun.”

“I’m fun!”

“Yeah, when you’re not being boring.”

“Fine,” Wu snaps, standing up abruptly. He wobbles a bit as feeling floods back into his legs. “If I beat you to the caves, you have to clean our whole room yourself, though.”

“Deal,” Garmadon says, grinning. “You’ll never win, anyways.”

“Your confidence is ever your downfa- hey! That’s cheating!”

Wu sprints after Garmadon as he cackles, flying down the monastery steps. Snake bite or not, his brother always plays dirty-

“-cle Wu?”

Wu blinks, the hazy smoke of incense pulling him back to the present.

“Uncle Wu?”

Lloyd sits before him, crossed-legged in his quarters on the Bounty, looking at him in concern. “Are you alright? You kinda spaced out there, a bit.”

Wu shakes his head, clearing the sting of the memories away. “I am alright, Lloyd,” he says, slowly. “I apologize for drifting.”

“Oh, that’s fine,” Lloyd says, brightly. “Do you want to take a break? I’m pretty tired, too.”

Wu gives him a look. “You know we need to stay focused, Lloyd. Every day we have must be spent preparing you for the final battle.”

“I know, I know,” Lloyd ducks his head. “It’d just be nice to slow down once in a while,” he mutters, his chin propped up in his hands.

Wu gives him a pitying look. “Your destiny does not allow for much pause, I’m afraid.”

Lloyd looks down. “I hate destiny,” he sighs.

Wu’s eyes flick skywards briefly. “Do not offend higher powers, Gar-“  

He cuts off violently, biting his tongue against the sudden swoop of horror.

Lloyd blinks at him, confused. “Huh?”

Wu shakes his head, motioning at Lloyd to speak. “Nothing. Tell me how your training with the other ninja is going.”

Lloyd brightens at that, sufficiently distracted as he launches into descriptions of his students’ lessons.

Wu tears his mind from the past, trying to focus on Lloyd’s voice. He focuses on Misako’s easy grace, the gentle way Lloyd handles the teacup, the reverent way he listens to stories of their ancestors, the traces of her he can see in Lloyd.

It’s easier to think of him that way - as Misako’s son.

“-they want to head out and patrol the villages tomorrow, though, so we’ll probably be focusing more on that,” Lloyd continues, oblivious to Wu’s inner turmoil. “But they’re doing really well, Uncle Wu. I’m learning a lot.”

“That’s good to hear,” Wu says, with a flicker of pride for his hand-picked students.  “Though I advise you not to focus so much on Kai’s training alone,” he narrows his eyes. “It would be unfortunate if the greatest lesson the Green Ninja took away was how to blow up the stove yet again.”

“Hey, that was Kai’s fault, not mine.”

Lloyd’s mouth quirks up in a half-grin that’s so startlingly familiar, Wu feels as if the air’s punched right out of him.

For a second, it’s not his nephew sitting in front of him, but his brother.

His brother, who his nephew is fated to destroy.

The teacup slips from Wu’s hands, shattering to the floor.

Lloyd starts at the sound, the smile sliding from his face like water. “Uncle Wu?” he says, concerned. “Are - are you alright?”

Wu passes a hand across his eyes, trying to banish the image in his mind as he fails to fight the agonizing pain constricting his chest. Trying to keep what’s left of his heart from breaking to pieces.

He must. He has to. He must train Lloyd to defeat the darkness. Even if that means he’s training him to fight his brother. Even if that means he’s ensuring his brother’s defeat.

Even if that means he’s condemning his brother to death.

His brother-

For a minute, it’s too much.

“Lloyd,” he manages, forcing some semblance of calm into his voice. “Leave me, please. We will resume our training later.”

Lloyd flinches back. “Did - did I do something wrong?“

No, but how is Wu to explain that he couldn’t help being born with such a destiny?

“Please, Lloyd.”

Hurt flashes in Lloyd’s eyes, and he pushes himself to his feet, rattling the teacup as he does. He doesn’t look at Wu, fleeing from the room like a shadow.

Wu drops his head into his hands, guilt overtaking him. It’s not Lloyd’s fault he looks so much like his father.

It’s not Lloyd’s fault he’s going to have to kill Garmadon.

No, that one is on Wu.

Training his own son to kill him. Wu almost laughs.

Instead, what’s left of Wu’s heart splinters. It’s funny, that this many years later, he’s still able to fail Garmadon in such an unforgivable way.

[aion-rsa]

Ready Player Two Review: Ernest Cline’s Soulless Sequel Beats a Dead Horse

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

It doesn’t take long for Ernest Cline’s Ready Player Two to reunite gunter-turned-billionaire Wade Owen Watts with a vintage video game that holds a clue to a virtual scavenger hunt that will forever change the future of the digital, escapist OASIS. But after winning this particular game, Parzival (Wade’s OASIS alter ego) finds that he automatically starts over. Because of an extra life, he is given the option of playing through the game again, even though there are no surprises, simply to rack up extra points and because he can.

Reading Ready Player Two feels a lot like that. Ready Player One, Cline’s 2011 debut novel, delighted readers with its futuristic generation of gunters who had taken on all things 1980s with religious fervor in search of the Easter egg that would bequeath the OASIS, Willy Wonka-style, to one lucky player. The book also made some incisive commentary on retreating into digital worlds instead of trying to fix the climate change-ravaged Earth. But neither of these is reason enough to warrant a sequel, especially one that effectively tries to play through the same plot of a posthumous quest with double the pop culture name-dropping and world-ending stakes.

This time around, Wade is rich beyond his wildest dreams but basically a friendless recluse, and now the OASIS can give you a full-senses experience but can also potentially kill you. Turns out that in addition to winning James Halliday’s fortune, Wade inherited one more thing: the OASIS Neural Interface, or ONI, which allows users to experience every touch, taste, and smell of their digital world. Pop culture aficionado that he is, Wade ponders how easily the ONI could be used for evil—and then decides to release it to his fellow OASIS users anyway, justifying it with the reasoning that he could never withhold wholly immersive escapism from the miserable masses.

Wade relates all this in a bevy of early chapters that jump ahead three years, smoothing out key emotional moments and massive changes to the book’s universe into an unemotional narrative blur—ironic, considering that the whole point of the ONI is that it allows people to feel like never before. I’ve read Wikipedia summaries with more feeling than the beginning of this book. By the time the main plot begins to unfold, readers will feel so distant from Wade that it will be difficult to care when his actions resurrect a ghost in the machine, sending Parzival and the rest of the “High Five”—his strained besties and business partners including Aech, Shoto, and ex-girlfriend Samantha a.k.a. Art3mis—on a muddled fantasy quest with a ticking clock. This time, when you die in the game, you actually die IRL (or, as the kiddos call it in 2048, the Earl—sigh).

Instead of three keys to three gates, it’s Seven Shards to the Siren’s Soul, which gives the book more of a fantasy quest feel than Ready Player One’s video game tournament vibe. Of course, that doesn’t preclude Wade from the aforementioned arcade visit, nor another batch of Halliday-approved ’80s references. The gunters’ single-minded ’80s obsession felt like clever commentary in Ready Player One; in the sequel, it verges on self-parody. It did not seem possible that Cline could find new pop culture trivia to shoehorn into these pages, and yet he does—sometimes a dozen to a single page, if we have the misfortune of encountering a character rattling off lists of movies or songs. The book’s first riddle combines Max Headroom, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and Tommy Tutone’s earworm “867-5309/Jenny,” so that should give you an idea of what you’re in for.

To be fair, Cline leans more into mashups this time around, likely following the conventional wisdom that the best way to make two familiar pieces new is to combine them. One notable excursion is the OASIS planet created in the image of John Hughes’ favorite fictional town of Shermer, Illinois. On this medley world, five different Molly Ringwalds all attend the same high school, and obscure knowledge of actors almost cast in iconic roles saves the day. The sequel also utilizes needle drops, with Parzival and his friends’ actions triggering music cues in Shermer as well as on a certain purple-themed musical world. The faithful listing of every song title and/or key lyrics reads a bit ponderous on the page, but no doubt the effect will be more fun in the inevitable Ready Player Two movie.

These interludes also have Parzival getting schooled by Art3mis and Aech for the gaps in his knowledge, for following Halliday’s broad-yet-narrow tastes and inheriting the man’s blind spots for pop culture that might have been more significant for women and people of color. It’s a different kind of self-awareness than existed in Ready Player One, but it feels more performative than anything else because it still comes from the perspective of a white man.

Ready Player One was published in 2011, and our world has changed a lot in the intervening decade, from the rise of social media influencers to gender fluidity (and its vocabulary and presentation) becoming more mainstream. One gets the sense that Cline took these cultural shifts into account when returning to the 2040s, retconning them into his speculative future. The ONI-net, in which OASIS users can experience the lives of celebrities and thrill-seekers through immersive viral clips, brings to mind Instagram and TikTok. Though there are some references to global pandemics, COVID-19 seems not to have made the cut (likely due to Ready Player Two’s publishing schedule). Nonbinary people exist in the OASIS and IRL, and one of the new supporting characters is trans, though the reader mostly experiences this through Wade’s own journey of acknowledging his own sexual confusion. Wade has become more woke, but he mostly proclaims such wokeness instead of actually acting on it.

The Wade of Ready Player One has a clear rags-to-riches story, as his obsession with a bygone decade literally pays off and transforms his life. Ready Player Two’s reverse narrative is not nearly as compelling, and falls into the trap of altering its characters’ circumstances without actually depicting character growth. Aech, Art3mis, and Shoto go through major life changes yet somehow get even less plot development than the first time around. That trans character gets shuffled off to a side quest that will no doubt become its own tie-in novella, when it would have been more affirming for her to be front-and-center—the new Parzival, eager to crack the puzzle. None of these characters are elevated from supporting cast to Wade’s crisis of conscience. Unlike the OASIS, the world of these books remains static and unchanging.

Rather than extend that extra life through another run-through of the same game, Wade wisely lets it expire and takes his win. If only Cline had done the same.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

Ready Player Two is available now from Ballantine Books.

The post Ready Player Two Review: Ernest Cline’s Soulless Sequel Beats a Dead Horse appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[deadeyehuckleberry]

Demon AU

I’ve seen all the 2 demon aus and the oni Hanzo aus as well as the Okami Hanzo aus... But I’ve never seen anyone do a demon Jesse AU... So I thought I’d try my hand at it... So enjoy and tell me what you think!

It started at the age of three...

Separated from his parents on a busy street, a sobbing little boy terrified as he looked around to realize he was no longer holding his mother’s hand. People walking past, noses in papers, eyes unfocused, no one wishing to aid the child that was in such peril, an anxiety attack.

The hand that grabbed his had him jumping, but the voice and sight of the man that was standing there when he looked up from their joined hands had him slightly confused and yet very enthused...

A cowboy! A real life cowboy!

“Whoa there, lil’ buckaroo... Easy now. Yer more rattled than a filly stuck in a bramble patch...” He looked down at him, eyes black and red for a moment before fading to a gentle golden amber hue. “Now then...” A smile came to his lips as he started sniffling and trying to wipe away his tears, “Where’s yer parents, hmm?”

“I-I...” He sniffled once more, fresh tears springing to his eyes but not falling. “I dunno. I lost Mama...”

“Well then, partner. Let’s find yer Mama,” The cowboy tipped his hat before his moment progressed forward, gently tugging him along with him.

The sound of his mother’s frantic voice had him running forward, hand sliding from the cowboy’s, a large smile coming to his face. “Hanzo?! Hanzo!”

As soon as those arms wrapped around him, he buried his face into her and felt warm once more. “Oh, Hanzo! We were worried! Do not run off like that again!”

He only nodded, spouting on and on about the cowboy that helped him find her. She chalked it up to an imaginary friend and thanked the dragons that he was safe.

The next glance of him was when his mother died giving birth to his younger brother Genji. 

He wanted nothing to do with his little brother, the pain and anguish almost too much to bear as he curled up in the gardens near the pond. And then he heard it, spurs and a whistle before the noise stopped and he could see boots within his vision.

There he was, the cowboy, smiling sadly as he crouched there near him, awaiting. He sniffled as he uncurled, the cowboy shifted to sit beside him, tossing what appeared to be a handful of food into the pond and enticing the fish to come to the surface to munch.

“Well howdy there, lil’ buckaroo,” he smiled, the slight shine of fang appearing before it disappeared as the smile died.

“You’re... you’re here,” his little voice was broken, the sound of an anguished child.

There was a small flit of something in the cowboy’s eyes... anguish? Pain? Agony? He was too small to know what it was, but sniffled as the man nodded.

“Came ta get somethin’... Hope ya don’ mind none?” He asked, and Hanzo shook his head as he turned his gaze down to the pond. “Thank ya kindly, partner...” He then was rubbing Hanzo’s back, “How ya holdin’ up, buckaroo?”

“Mama’s gone... The dragons have taken her to the heavens,” Hanzo whispered, and it almost sounded scripted, as if someone had said it to him and he was just repeating it - even if it ached him grandly.

“Well...” The cowboy almost sounded at a loss as to what to say, but recovered by clearing his throat. “I’ll make sure she’s taken good care o’, a’ite?” As the boy looked up at him hopefully, he couldn’t help but smile once more.

“Really?” The hope and awe in those eyes had the cowboy chuckling.

“O’course! Dontchu worry...” And then he was standing, tipping his hat before moving off, and Hanzo lost sight of him as he seemed to fade into a shadow right before people came running to find him.

The next time it happened, he was fifteen and out with friends... or at least, he had thought they were his friends.

It was the first time he had agreed to going out with them, his parents rather pleased he was socializing. But the night turned sour as they dragged him into an alleyway, ripping at his clothes and pinning him to the wall while ignoring his begs and pleads for them to stop.

A voice echoed from the front of the alleyway, a darkened figure standing there, cloaked in darkness from the blare of lights off the street behind him. His friends laughed and ignored him, throwing insults along the lines of “What you going to do?” 

The first shot that echoed through the air had all of them stopping, terror upon their faces right before one of them went flying away from him. And there he was, once more a figment of his imagination - at least that’s what his mother had told him. Grinning mischievously produced fangs a second before he was one more moving. Punching and kicking, movements fluid as if he had been fighting for years, the cowboy made quick work of those that had been ready to use Hanzo for their enjoyment.

“Well hey there, partner... Been a while, yeah?” He grinned once more as he pulled Hanzo to his feet, straightening his clothes to look presentable. “I thought ya woulda learned yer lesson all that time ago not to wander off from yer Mama, hmm?”

He was the same. Exactly the same. Black and red eyes that faded to a gentle golden amber hue. That devilish smirk. The hat and spurs, the six shooter upon his hip.

Was he hallucinating? Was he disassociating? Had his mind put him somewhere so he wouldn’t have to live what was truthfully happening to him?

“Now... you run along now, partner... You don’ need to be anywhere near here, yeah?” The cowboy tilted his hat slightly and winked, causing Hanzo to scramble and stumble his way back out of the alleyway.

As he turned his head back to look and see if it was real, there he was standing there, a finger to his lips; and Hanzo could make out the words leaving them. “This’ll be our lil’ secret, yeah partner?”

Two years later marked the death of his father. The last of his parents alive. The ache, the agony of it, was too much that he had to excuse himself from the gathering after the funeral, escaping out to sit upon one of the roofs at the castle.

“Mighty fine nigh’ to pay respects to the dead, see them proper like to the other side, yeah?”

The voice had his head snapping up, tears in his eyes of both sadness and anger. “You are just a figment of my imagination. Be gone!” He hissed quietly, burying his face into his knees.

“Aww... Now why’d you think that?” The voice was still there moments before he heard spurs and then a hand upon his shoulder came to rest.

“You are nothing but an imaginary friend I thought up when I was but a child, scared and frightened without my parents,” Hanzo reiterated. “And then brought  back when my mind wished not to be present...”

The cowboy sitting there raised his eyebrows, leaning back slightly before looking upwards to the sky, those demonic eyes of his almost looking contemplative, “Hmm... An imaginary friend, eh? Been called many things o’er the years... Bu’ never an’ imaginary friend... Tha’s a new one...”

He turned his gaze back onto Hanzo, fanged teeth broad in a full smile, and Hanzo couldn’t help but feel the slight chill run up his spine.

“What... what do you want?” Hanzo asked, almost breathlessly as his eyes were unable to glance away from the man beside him.

“Came ta get somethin’... Hope ya don’ mind, partner,” the cowboy tipped his hat before standing. “Now iffin’ you’ll excuse me... I got somethin’ I gotta get...”

Hanzo watched with angered eyes as the cowboy made a debacle as he tried to step upon the tiles of the room, slipping and grumbling to himself under his breath about Japanese architecture and it not being cohesive with boots. Of course, the grumbling stopped as he slipped off of the roof, and Hanzo was immediately scrambling to the edge in worry and trepidation of witnessing a broken body upon the ground.

Of course, all he saw was his brother looking up at him, sadness and confusion in his gaze. “Anija? There you are! I was starting to worry!” 

“Tch...” Hanzo hissed quietly. Maybe the man was a figment of his imagination after all.

At nineteen was the breaking point for Hanzo, the Elders demanding something of him that he could never complete.

To kill his brother.

“He has become too rowdy... He will not adhere to our voices! You must end him, Hanzo! Do not allow him to shame the Shimada name any longer!”

He could not. He would not! Genji was all he had left of his mother and father. They were family. And he would not lay a hand up to harm him.

So he gathered what little he had, what little he could, and ran.

He didn’t make it very far before a voice halted him in his tracks. “Now why’d you go an’ leave them, partner?”

Skidding to a halt, he clenched his fists, muttering under his breath. “You are just a figment of my imagination... Just a figment of my imagination...”

“Aww... now ya done gone an’ hurt my feelin’s, partner...” The voice echoed in the alleyway before spurs were heard clanking and jingling their way towards him. “Tho’... I gotta give ya credit fer finally breakin’ away from them...”

His head snapped up to look at the darkened figure in front of him which moved into the light of the street. He hadn’t changed a day. Still the same face, same boots and hat, same wrap around his neck and onto his shoulder... Same six shooter at his side.

Tears came to his eyes as he fell to his knees, finally feeling vulnerable and safe enough to allow it to happen. “I... could not kill my brother... They wanted me to kill my brother...”

The absolute pain and agony that shot through the cowboy’s eyes was missed by the teen. “Then it’s a good thing ya left, yeah?” He gently wrapped a hand around Hanzo’s arm and gently tugged him to his feet, “C’mon... I got a place fer ya to stay... Ya look tired, partner.”

[newsnigeria]

Check out New Post published on Ọmọ Oòduà

New Post has been published on http://ooduarere.com/news-from-nigeria/world-news/the-anglozionist-empire/

The AngloZionist Empire: a hyperpower with microbrains and no cred left

[This analysis was written for the Unz Review]

Last week saw what was supposed to be a hyperpower point fingers for its embarrassing defeat not only at Venezuela, which successfully defeated Uncle Shmuel’s coup plans, but also at a list of other countries including Cuba, Russia, China and Iran.  It’s is rather pathetic and, frankly, bordering on the comically ridiculous.

Uncle Shmuel clearly did not appreciate being the laughingstock of the planet.

Eviction notice of the USSS

And as Uncle Shmuel always does, he decided to flex some muscle and show the world “who is boss” by…

… blockading the Venezuelan Embassy in Washington, DC.

But even that was too much for the MAGA Admin, so they also denied doing so (how lame is that!?)

Which did not prevent US activists of entering the embassy (legally, they were invited in and confirm it all).

Now the US Secret Service wants to evict the people inside the building.

So much for the CIA’s beloved “plausible deniability” which now has morphed into “comical deniability”.

If you think that all this sounds incredibly amateurish and stupid – you are 100% correct.

In the wonderful words of Sergei Lavrov, the US diplomats have “lost the taste for diplomacy“.

But that was not all.

In an act of incredible courage the USA, which was told (by the Israelis, of course!), that the Iranians were about to attack “somewhere”, so Uncle Shmuel sent two aircraft carrier strike groups to the Middle-East.  In a “daring” operation, the brilliant USAF pilots B-52 bombers over the Persian Gulf to “send a message” to the “Mollahs”: don’t f*ck with us or else…

The “Mollahs” apparently were unimpressed as they simply declared that “the US carriers were not a threat, only a target“.

The AngloZionists apparently have also executed a false flag operation to get a pretext to strike Iran, but so far this seems to have gotten rather little traction in the region (so far – this might change).

Lavrov reacting to the latest US threats

Now let’s leave this “Kindergarten level of operations” and try to make some sense from this nonsense.

First, while the American can pour scorn on the Iranians, call them ragheads, terrorists, Mollahs, sand-niggers or confuse them with Iraqis or even think that Iranian are Arabs (as, apparently, are the Turks, at least by the US common standard of ignorance), but the truth is that the Iranians are world-class and most sophisticated players, especially their superbanalytical community.  They fully understand that a  B-52 anywhere near the Iranian airspace is a sitting duck and that if the Americans were planning to strike Iran, they would pull their aircraft carrier far away from any possible Iranian strikes. As for the B-52, they have long range cruise missiles and they don’t need to get near Iran to deliver their payloads.

In fact, I think that the proper way to really make the Iranians believe that Uncle Shmuel means business would be to flush any and all US ships out of the Persian Gulf, to position the B-52s in Diego Garcia and to place the carriers as far away as possible to still be able to support a missile/bomb attack on Iranian targets.  And you can bet that the Iranians keep very close tabs on exactly what CENTCOM aircraft are deployed and where.  To attack Iran the US would need to achieve a specific concentration of forces and support elements which are all trackable by the Iranians.  My guess is that the Iranians already have a full list of all CENTCOM officers down to the colonel level (and possibly even lower for airmen) and that they already know exactly which individual USAF/USN aircraft are ready to strike.  One could be excused to think that this is difficult to do, but in reality it is not.  I have personally seen it done.

Second, the Americans know that the Iranians know that (well, maybe not Mr MAGA, but folks at the DIA, ONI, NSA, etc. do know that).  So all this sabre-rattling is designed to show that Mr MAGA has tons of hair on his chest, it’s all for internal US consumption.  As for the Iranians, they have already heard any and all imaginable US threats, they have been attacked many times by both the USA and Israel (directly or by proxy), and they have been preparing for a US attack ever since the glorious days of Operation Eagle Claw: they are as ready as they can be, you can take that to the bank.  Finally, the terrorist attack by the USN on a civilian Iranian airliner certainly convinced the Iranians that the leaders of the AngloZionist Empire lack even basic decency, nevermind honor.  Nevermind the use of chemical warfare by Iraq against Iran with chemicals helpfully provided by various US and EU companies (with the full blessing of their governments).  No – the Iranians truly have no illusions whatsoever about what the Shaytân-e Bozorg is capable of in his rage.

Third, “attacking embassies” is a glaring admission of terminal weakness.  That was true for the seizure of Russian consular buildings, and this is true for the Venezuelan embassy.  In the real (supra-Kindergarten) world when country A has a beef with country B, it does not vent its frustration against its embassy.  Such actions are not only an admission of weakness, but also a sign of a fundamental lack of civilization.

[Sidebar: this issue is crucial to the understanding of the United States.  The US is an extremely developed country, but not a civilized one.  Oscar Wilde (and George Clemanceau) had it right: “America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between“.  There are signs of that everywhere in the USA: from the feudal labor laws, to the lack of universal healthcare, to absolutely ridiculous mandatory criminal sentences (the Soviet Penal Code under Stalin was MUCH more reasonable and civilized than the current US laws!), to the death penalty, to the socially accepted torture in GITMO and elsewhere, to racial tensions, the disgusting “food” constituting the typical “SAD” diet, to the completely barbaric “war on drugs”, to the world record of incarcerations, to an immense epidemic of sexual assaults and rapes (1/5 of all women in the USA!), homosexuality accepted as a “normal and positive variation of human sexuality“, 98 percent of men reported internet porn use in the last six months, … – you can continue that list ad nauseam.  Please don’t misunderstand me – there are as many kind, intelligent, decent, honorable, educated, compassionate people in the USA as anywhere else.  This is not about the people living in the USA: it is about the kind of society these people are living in.  In fact, I would argue the truism that US Americans are the first victims of the lack of civilization of their own society!  Finally, a lack of civilization is not always a bad thing, and sometimes it can make a society much more dynamic, more flexible, more innovative too.  But yeah, mostly it sucks…]

By the way, the USA is hardly unique in having had degenerate imbeciles in power.  Does anybody remember what Chernenko looked like when he became the Secretary General of the CPSU?  What about folks like Jean-Bédel Bokassa or Mikheil Saakashvili (this latter case is especially distressing since it happened in a country with a truly ancient and extremely rich culture!).  And while we can dislike folks like George Bush Senior or James Baker – these were superbly educated and extremely intelligent people.  Compare them to such psychopathic ignoramuses like Pompeo, Bolton or Trump himself!

So this latest US “attack” on the Venezuela is truly a most telling symptom of the wholesale collapse of US power and of the moral and intellectual bankruptcy and lack of civilization of the Neocon ruling elites.

The big question is obvious: will they attack Venezuela or Iran next?

NYT’s so-called “anti-Semitic” cartoon. Pretty accurate if you ask me!

In the very first article I ever wrote for my blog, as far back as 2007, I predicted that the US would attack Iran.  I still believe that the Israelis will never cease to try to get the US to do their dirty work for them (and let the goyim pay the price!).  What I am not sure about is whether the Israelis truly will have the power to push the USA into such a suicidal war (remember, if Iran cannot “win” against the USA, neither can the USA “win” against Iran – thus Iran will win simply by surviving and not caving in – which they will and they won’t).  The good news is that US power has been in sharp (and accelerating!) decline at least since Clinton and his gang.  I would even add that the last two idi*ts (Obama and Trump) did more damage to the US power than all their predecessors combined.  The bad news is that the collective IQ of US leaders has been falling even faster than US power.  We can hope that the first will hit zero long before the second, but there is no guarantee.

Truly, nobody knows if the US will or will not attack Iran and/or Venezuela next.  The Neocons sure want that, but whether they will make it happen this time around or not depends on so many variables that even the folks in the White House and the Pentagon probably don’t really know what will happen next.

What is certain is that the US reputation worldwide is basically roadkill.  The fact that most folks inside the USA are never told about that does not make it less real.  The Obama-Trump tag team has truly inflicted irreparable damage on the reputation of the USA (in both cases because they were hopelessly infected and corrupted by the Neocons).  The current US leaders appear to understand that, at least to some degree, this is why they are mostly lashing out at “easy” targets like free speech (on the Internet and elsewhere), Assange, the Venezuelan Embassy, etc.  The real danger comes from either one of two factors:

The Neocons will feel humiliated by the fact that all their threats are only met with indifference, disgust or laughter

The Neocons will feel buoyed by the fact that nothing terrible happened (so far) when they attacked a defenseless target

Either way, in both cases the outcome is the same: each “click!” brings us closer to the inevitable “bang!”.

By the way, I think I should also mention here that the current state of advanced paranoia in which the likes of Pompeo point their fingers left and right are also signs of terminal weakness: these are not so much ways to credibly explain the constant and systematic failures of the Israelis and the Americans to get anything actually done as they are a way to distract away from the real reasons for the current extreme weakness of the AngloZionists.

2006 The people of Lebanon celebrate the victory which turned the tide of AngloZionist imperialism

I concluded my last article by speaking of the terrified Venezuelans who refused to be afraid.  I will conclude this one by pointing at the first instance when a (comparatively) small adversary completely refused to be frightened even while it was the object of a truly terrifying attack: Hezbollah in 2006.  Even though they were outnumbered, outgunned and surrounded by the Israelis, the members of the Resistance in Lebanon simply refused to be afraid and, having lost the fear too which so many Arabs did succumb to before 2006, they proceeded to give the Israelis (fully backed by the USA) the worst and most humiliating thrashing in their country’s (admittedly short) history.

I urge you to read al-Sayyid Hassan’s famous “Divine Victory” speech (you can still find the English language transcript hereand here) – it is one of the most important speeches of the 20th century! – and pay attention to these words (emphasis added):

We feel that we won; Lebanon won; Palestine won; the Arab nation won, and every oppressed, aggrieved person in this world also won.  Our victory is not the victory of a party. I repeat what I said in Bint Jubayl on 25 May 2000: It is not the victory of a party or a community; rather it is a victory for true Lebanon, the true Lebanese people, and every free person in the world.  Don’t distort this big historic victory. Do not contain it in party, sectarian, communal, or regional cans. This victory is too big to be comprehended by us. The next weeks, months, and years will confirm this.

And, indeed, the next weeks, months and years have very much confirmed that!

Any US attack on Iran will have pretty similar results, but on a much, much bigger scale.

And the Iranians know that.  As do many in the Pentagon (the CIA and the White House are probably beyond hopeless by now).

Conclusion: good news and bad news

Finally some meaningful discussions between the two nuclear superpowers!

The good news first: Pompeo and Lavrov had what seems to be a meaningful dialog.  That is very, very good, even if totally insufficient.  They have also announced that they want to create study groups to improve the (currently dismal) relations between the two countries.  That is even better news (if that really happens).  Listening to Pompeo and Lavrov, I got a feeling that the Americans are slowly coming to the realization that they have an overwhelming need to re-establish a meaningful dialog with the other nuclear superpower.  Good.  But there is also bad news.

The rumor that the strategic geniuses surrounding Trump are now considering sending 120,000 troops to the Middle-East is really very bad news.  If this just stays a rumor, then it will be the usual hot air out of DC, along the lines of Trump’s “very powerful armada” sent to scare the DPRK (it failed).  The difference here is simple: sending carriers to the Middle-East is pure PR.  But sending carriers AND 120,000 troops completely changes that and now this threat, if executed, will become very real.  No, I don’t think that the US will attempt to invade Iran, but 120,000 is pretty close to what would be needed to try to re-open the Strait of Hormuz (assuming the Iranians close it) while protecting all the (pretty much defenseless) CENTCOM facilities and forces in the region.  Under this scenario, the trip of Pompeo to Russia might have a much more ominous reason: to explain to the Russians what the US is up to and to provide security guarantees that this entire operation is not aimed at Russian forces.  IF the US really plans to attack Iran, then it would make perfect sense for Pompeo to talk to Lavrov and open channels of communications between the two militaries to agree on “deconfliction” procedures.  Regardless of whether the Russians accept such deconfliction measures or not (my guess is that they definitely would), such a trip is a “must” when deploying large forces so near to Russian military forces.

So far Trump has denied this report – but we all know that he suffers from the “John Kerry syndrome”: he wants better relations with Russia only until the Neocons tell him not to. Then he makes a 180 and declares the polar opposite of what he just said.

Still, there are now rumors that Trump is getting fed up with Bolton (who, truth be told, totally FUBARed the Venezuelan situation!).

As for the Iraqis, they have already told the US to forget using Iraqi territory for any attack.  This reminds me of how the Brazilians told the US that Brazil would not allow its territory to be used for any attacks.  This is becoming a pattern.  Good.

Frankly, while an AngloZionist attack on Iran is always and by definition possible, I can’t imagine the folks at the Pentagon having the stomach for that.  In a recent article Eric Margolis outlined what the rationale for such an attack might be (check out his full article here).  Notice this sentence: “The Pentagon’s original plan to punish Iran called for some 2,300 air strikes on Day 1 alone“.  Can they really do that?  Yes, absolutely.  But imagine the consequences!  Margolis speaks of “punishing” Iran. 2,300 Air strikes in one day is not something I would call a “punishment”.  That is a full scale attack on Iran which, in turns, means that the Iranians will have exactly *ZERO* reasons to hold back in any way.  If the AngloZionists attack Iran with 2,300 air strikes on Day 1, then you can be sure that on Day2 all hell will break loose all over the Middle-East and the AngloZionists will have absolutely *NO* means of stopping it.

This will be a real bloodbath and nobody will have any idea as to how to stop it.

And you can be darn sure that the Iranians will show much more staying power than the imperialists, if only because they will be fighting in defense of their country, their faith, their liberty, their friends and their families. To expect the Iranians to cave in or surrender in any way would be the most stupid notion anybody could entertain.

Could they really be THAT stupid in Washington DC?

I don’t know.

But what I do know is this: any such attack will be extremely costly and very, very dangerous.  Obviously, the Neocons don’t give a rats ass about costs, financial or human.  They just want war, war, war and more war (remember McCain’s “bomb, bomb, bomb – bomb, bomb Iran“?).  But the Neocons are only a tiny fraction of the US ruling elites (even if the most powerful one) and my hope is that the sane elements will prevail (which, indeed, they have so far).

As for right now, we are still okay.  But if the US actually start sending large forces to the Middle-East, then all bets are off.

The Saker

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