#this is WHY its good to build slowly and/or train with somebody that already maintains a decent size kennel

[darkwood-sleddog]

look nothing but the best to these sort of people but I often see people get into mushing, acquire tons of dogs very quickly and then they commonly have accidental litters (or potentially purposeful...) on yearlings/very young dogs.

it is not cool.

[prince-of-dumbassery]

First

the first two sentences of my current project- I know it says first two but I really like my current WIP so here’s several paragraphs instead!

Alexander stood by the arts building, awkwardly pressed against the wall- there were hundreds of students rushing through to get to their next lectures or to catch their buses home- and Alexander was overwhelmed. Each person who walked past was a new whoosh of air around Alexander, complete with its own strong scents-sweat, deodorant, perfume, make up, washing powder- each unique to each person. And of course there was the noise, loud voices overlapping, high voices, squeaky voices, hoarse voices, smooth voices, deep voices, cracking voices, thick accents, gentle accents, harsh accents, different languages- beautiful but not when overlapping, not when there were so many stimuli at once.

He could feel his chest starting to ache, a dull, deep ache, like his chest was being crushed, slowly evolving into a sharp pain, as though one of his ribs had cracked and pierced his heart- or at least how he imagined that would feel. It was hard to get air in, tears brimming and boiling to the surface, the lump in his throat catching and threatening to let out a sob- he was tensing, trying hard not to let his hands fly to his ears to cover them, or to his hair to pull- then the worst- somebody made eye contact- Alexander’s eyes instinctively clamped shut- it felt like he’d been shot between them, a deep uncomfortableness welling up in his chest and stomach- he felt somebody brush past him, the sensation lingering on his skin. It was much like when a bee would fly into your face- you can still feel the contact minutes after- he could still feel where the person had brushed past him, and it was bothering him deeply, his stomach muscles tightening as he began to shake.

He wanted to run, he wanted to sit on the floor, he wanted to scream, he really wanted to scream- he pulled his headphones up as quickly as he could and clamped them down with his hands, hearing his own breathing getting louder, catching, followed by the feeling of white hot tears streaming down his face. He could feel his pulse pounding- it felt as though his pulse was shaking and blurred, like he could feel it when his heart relaxed. He could hear the blood in his ears, the whoosh, he could feel his pulse even through his teeth, his stomach, his eyelids- and he wanted to scream. But he couldn’t. There were people, too many people, and he could do without people trying to talk to him or people teasing him. And he could do without people telling him to just calm, down- as well meaning as it was, he couldn’t calm down- his brain was both racing and at a standstill, like a computer with too many tabs open, the battery heating up, screen cutting off…

He had to breathe through this, he had to. He couldn’t make it stop. He took gulping breaths, trying to relax his muscles despite them re-tensing. He kept his breathing in time to his music, every bar a breath in, the next bar a breath out. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a clicker, clicking in time to the music, each half beat to start, then each beat, maintaining that rhythm, mouthing the lyrics as the crushing feeling in his chest reduced. As soon as he noticed everybody had gone, he allowed himself to lean back against the wall for a second, opening his eyes and taking shaky breaths, feeling his tears drying on his cheeks. He looked up to the top of the building, but not so high that he could see the sky. His eyes felt heavy, his body aching in exhaustion, legs numb. So he shakily lowered himself to the floor, sitting with his back to the wall. Everything felt too hard, too real, too physical. The longer he sat there, and the more he became habituated to the feeling of the ground and the wall, the less he felt present. He felt… not exactly like he was floating, but not exactly like he was physical. He felt both heavy and light, only a numb tingling in the roof of his mouth from the crying left over.

Alexander pulled his headphones off, taking some calm breaths, listening to the gentle tweeting of birds and the soft rustling of leaves on the ground. It was October 2018, the start of university and the middle of Autumn, and this was his first day. He sighed and closed his eyes again, wondering how much worse his first day could go. Jason was meant to come with him- he’d promised- but Jason had been called away last minute for something important. So here Alexander was, sitting in damp loam an hour before his lecture. He pulled out his phone, again checking the timetable- he checked his student number and name with his student card and he repeated the checks again and again, locking his phone. But paranoia kept getting on top of him, re-checking the building and room and time and lecturer, a different kind of panic setting in.

This time, his skin felt hot, nausea gripping him. He could feel the blood rush to his cheeks, turning his cheeks a deep puce- Alexander was ivory skinned, very pale, almost flawless complexion, although in the cold the flesh on his hands would appear mottled, the skin a pale grey and fingers slightly tinted purple, tiny arteries and veins running cross-linked patterns across his hand, usually invisible blemishes standing out. Alexander thought that it may look as though his hands were unclean, so for the fifth time since he left the complex, he scrubbed them red with a wipe, a few spots on his hand prickling with tiny red dots from where he’d scrubbed to hard.

He hid his hands with the sleeves of his jacket and stood up, again checking the time, place, building, lecturer, university- even checking that he hadn’t accidentally applied to a different university. The more he walked the more the nausea gripped him, but it was worse to see people standing around inside talking, introducing themselves- he wondered if anybody would introduce themselves to him- perhaps the girl with the neon green hair- but no, she gravitated towards the pretty girl with the long blonde hair. Alexander felt the stress building up more and more, but it was turning from nerves to deep set emptiness. He already didn’t fit in, and he felt fractured, disjointed. The heavy feeling in his chest didn’t steer into sharp pains, but rather what he thought was a miserable face- bottom lip minutely sticking out more than usual, corners turned slightly downwards, eyes full of hopelessness, despair, isolation, desolate; he felt the slight knit of his brows and every time he swallowed he felt as though it echoed, catching on the lump in his throat. He knew his movements were slow, and he was sure how obvious his pain was- inside was screaming for help, screaming not to be here right now, screaming for reassurance that he was in the right place-

He found himself walking up some stairs with a large group who he assumed were on his course, finding a seat on the edge where he would have room to move should he actually vomit or should he need to run out, or just need space. Nobody had noticed his pain, or heard the screams he was trying to project- he tried to distract himself whilst waiting for the lecturer, thinking about the next phase of his training- wait no, that’s classified, and what if I just said that out loud, or if somebody knows what I’m thinking. They know. He panicked, feeling as though he’d just given out a catastrophically large piece of information - he told himself to stop being paranoid- it didn’t work, as suspected, but distracting himself had been a terrible idea. What if you were stabbed walking through the crowd? That’s why you have your hand on your side. Shit. Alexander froze like a statue- he was uncomfortable, he had no pain, but he could swear he felt a slow trickle of blood when he twitched his finger involuntarily. Move and you’ll get murdered. He wouldn’t look down. 

He spent the hour looking at the clock, the nausea spreading, more and more convinced that yes, he felt a punch in his side, he was bleeding- of course he felt sick, he had internal bleeding- 

Time to move. An instant relief washed over him, standing up and feeling no pain as he flexed. He tentatively moved his hand, uninjured, no blood stain, and the more he thought about it, the more he remembered that he’d avoided all contact with people. He felt stupid, hurrying out as quickly as he could, out of breath. But he’d only breathe through his nose, and he hadn’t had a sip of water all morning, because he hated his teeth. He had fangs, and his teeth weren’t perfectly straight- his two front teeth were slightly overlapped by the teeth next to them, and a few of his bottom teeth were out of alignment. Despite the burning feeling of the cold air through his nose, the sting, the pains in his chest, he continued to hurry to the bus station, desperate to let out a deep breath, his chest feeling as though it may burst. 

He grew colder and colder waiting for the bus- it hadn’t seemed cold enough for a coat, it had seemed mild, so he only had a black hoodie on his top half. He felt nauseated still- perhaps the anxiety had calmed a little but now he was left shaking from the sugar crash- he’d gagged when he’d tried some toast for breakfast, and to make matters worse, he seemed to have an unexplained cough, and he’d gag every time he coughed too. He could feel he was dehydrated, but there were people and he couldn’t let anybody see his teeth. The realisation set in that this would be his everyday- everyday he’d have to deal with the same emotions, but he’d worked so hard to get into this university- he’d been unable to revise much because he hadn’t been in a good mental place and the anxiety from the exams made him so nauseated and unable to focus that he’d have to sit outside. Plus, it wasn’t as if his college friends had talked to him much. He loved the campus- out of all the local universities, this campus was one he felt at home on, and he’d dreamed of this since he was four. Yet one day in, the content not even difficult, and it was already too much pressure for him.

[socialjusticeartshare]

In Mexico, kidnappings and misery for asylum-seekers waiting in camps for a shot at life in the U.S.

‘It infuriates me. This is a crisis,’ says a Brownsville resident and Iraq vet.

MATAMOROS, Mexico – Edwin Vaquiz’s frustration was rising as the 42-year-old Honduran asylum-seeker passed out supplies from a tent with a hand-lettered “Tienda No. 3” sign. There was little water available for drinking at Store No. 3, but there were two kinds of soap for washing clothes in the dirty Rio Grande. There were few portable toilets, but plenty of toilet paper.

Soon the camp of asylum-seekers would be blanketed in darkness and there would be no security.

“Miserable,” Vaquiz said last week of conditions at the migrant camp where he and his wife and daughter have been waiting for the last five months.

This sprawling camp is one of the most visible signs along the border of how the U.S. asylum process has slowed to a crawl, leaving thousands of people essentially stranded in Mexico, many in danger because of the high crime rate and violent cartels.

The violence in the state of Tamaulipas, where Matamoros sits, has forced about 2,000 asylum-seekers to cluster for protection here at the banks of the Rio Grande and along the Gateway International Bridge into Brownsville in Texas. A former Army nurse here estimates 18 people were kidnapped through October, probably by the dominant criminal group in this region. Then she stopped counting.

Volunteers from around the U.S. — from Dallas and Houston to Florida and Maine — regularly cycle through the border’s camps with food, tents, blankets, jeans, sweat shirts, diapers, toys — and even songs for the children. While the efforts are extraordinary and a patchy organization is slowly emerging, it clearly isn’t enough.

Vaquiz is grateful for the kindness. But what he could really use to protect his family is a battery-powered lamp. That way no one could sneak up on their tent.

Many people here whisper about the dangers. Migrants are taken by the local cartel members and their lookouts, who openly walk into the camp, at any hour, said a Honduran who didn’t want to be identified because he feared for his safety. A Honduran woman who has been at the camp for several months said a man posing as an asylum-seeker within the camp has molested two small girls. “We can’t complain. It’s a mafia and they will come and beat us,” she said.

No one runs the camps. There are no controls for who enters the encampment. Some migrants have clustered their tents on the sidewalks leading to the nearby Gateway International Bridge to be ready if their asylum cases are called, but they’re also hoping for more safety. Passing cars provide a bit of light. But the vast majority of people, hundreds more, have secured space on the tree-lined grounds near the river where the camp has grown. They are the most vulnerable.

“This is one of the worst situations I have been in, merely for the fact there are so few resources and security is so bad,” said Helen Perry, a former Army nurse who now runs operations for the small nonprofit Global Response Management. “We know people are trafficked out of the camps, and kidnapped. … It goes back to not having formal camp management.”

Traditionally, the United Nations refugee agency might be one of the groups that would play a role in organizing and running the place. But danger is keeping the usual help away.

Mike Benavides, a veteran of the Iraq War and a co-founder of the nonprofit Team Brownsville, said much more help is needed.

“It infuriates me. This is a crisis,” Benavides said.

Conditions were more sanitary in Iraq than they are here at this camp, Benavides said. Infectious diarrhea and dehydration are two of the biggest dangers. Recently, children have been coming down with the flu. And there are many pregnancies.

Giovanni Lepri, the deputy representative for Mexico for the U.N. refugee agency, praised Team Brownsville and other volunteers for work he called “amazing.” But they aren’t trained in camp management, he said. The U.N. was focused more on Mexico’s southern border where Mexico’s tiny refugee agency maintains an office, he said. They also opened an office in Monterrey, about four hours west of Matamoros.

Lepri acknowledged that the U.N.’s security advisers warned against opening a permanent office in Matamoros because of the danger in the region, which includes the more dangerous cities of Reynosa and Nuevo Laredo. “Our security unit, which is the U.N. security unit, has recommended for the moment we don’t establish a permanent presence,” Lepri said.

In November, the U.N. began using a mobile unit in the region. The staff sleeps on the U.S. side of the border, Lepri said.

The U.S. State Department has issued its harshest no-travel warning for the Mexican border state of Tamaulipas – a level 4 warning like the ones in war-torn Syria and Somalia.

More than 56,000 asylum-seekers who have made it to the U.S. border from Central America and other places have been sent back to Mexico by U.S. authorities to await the processing of their cases under what the Trump administration calls the Migration Protection Protocols. The policy was phased in earlier this year; in the past, once asylum-seekers got to the U.S., they would await the outcome of their cases in the States.

Most asylum-seekers wait in Mexico in the haphazard camps. Those with more money might rent apartments — but that can make them even more vulnerable to gangs.

Kidnapping is rampant in Matamoros, said immigration attorney Charlene D’Cruz, who runs a Lawyers for Good Government resource center near the camp. Asylum-seekers expect to be kidnapped and the risk increases the longer they stay.

“The resignation to die is how we dehumanize them,” the attorney said.

Life in the camp

In the stench of the camp, families have begun building their own ovens with mud bricks. They cut wood branches from trees for fires. And the smoke covers the smell of feces.

In a country of music-lovers, there is no music here. Muffled conversations come from inside tents. Sometimes, children can be heard laughing, but even that is infrequent.

Some families have been given pallets to place their tents on in case of rain. Others string clothes lines among the trees or place laundered clothes on fuchsia-flowering bougainvillea bushes near the entry lanes into Texas.

Last Sunday at the camp, some of the children received an early Christmas with gifts from a Brownsville group called Angry Tias y Abuelas of the Rio Grande Valley. The volunteers wrapped the gifts and tagged them with the names of children they saw regularly.

Others in the group prepared to read to the children, who in a normal world would be in school. There are geography lessons with an emphasis on the countries of origin of the migrating families. And lessons on the colors of the rainbow.

“Apurate,” shouted a skinny little girl to a smaller companion. “Apurate!” Hurry up, the little school is about to start, she urged.

On another night, a Houston volunteer plopped herself on the sidewalk to read to children a story from a picture book illustrated with Monarch butterflies, a symbol of migration.

“You are very valiant. You are so strong. Your journey is a miracle. I admire you,” she told the children in Spanish.

Then, she explained, “That’s what the butterfly says because they have flown so far.”

A Houston volunteer (right) reads to a group of asylum-seeking children by the Gateway International Bridge in Matamoros, Mexico, on Dec. 14, 2019.  (Lynda M. Gonzalez / Staff Photographer)

Another group of boys played checkers, using bottle caps made of creamy white and red plastic.

Other boys sat comfortably on flattened cardboard that covered the powdery dirt. They pushed their plastic green dinosaurs through a kingdom of the imagination. Then a child hit another on the head. Wails began. A father came to scold the group.

Another day, a toddler in a diaper waddled toward a hammock in stripes of blue, purple, yellow and red. But he was sullen. Vaquiz, the Honduran, stroked his puffy cheeks and called him “Donald Trump.” Why? “Because the child is always angry,” the Honduran said.

Grasp as they might for a normal childhood and a normal world, the children’s anxiety levels are high, medical doctor and volunteer Anjali Niyogi said. Some seem traumatized by the violence they fled in their home countries — and some are traumatized by the dangers within the camp.

“We see a lot of depression, anxiety, PTSD,” said Niyogi, who teaches at Tulane University School of Medicine in New Orleans.

Some children in the camp are even emotionless, so strong is their depression, the doctor said. “Moms tell me, ‘He just stopped eating.’ “

Recently, fierce dust storms swept through the camp, making it difficult to see until the wind died down. The doctor fears fecal matter has been scooped up into the air and children will be most susceptible to health risks.

The asylum program

Every weekday, immigrants’ names will come up for hearings in the U.S. immigration courts near the international bridge. Hearings are held in tent courts in Brownsville. Asylum-seekers cross into the U.S., and are sent back to wait in Mexico unless their asylum cases are advanced so that they can formally enter the U.S.

In Brownsville, hearings under new program began in September. The asylum caseloads there have rapidly made this the border’s second-busiest area for Border Patrol apprehensions through November, according to the Syracuse University nonprofit Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, or TRAC.

Already, through November, a fourth of all Migrant Protection Protocol asylum cases — nearly 14,000 — are pending here, TRAC data shows. About 16,400 cases are pending in the El Paso area.

“How can we really say that somebody can make a free choice to continue an asylum claim in the U.S., when they have to spend several months ... risking to be kidnapped or worse?” said Lepri, the U.N. representative.

Mexicans, too, are showing up in the camps. An increasing number of them are mostly indigenous Tzotzil Mayan people from the southernmost state of Chiapas. About a dozen Chiapans told The Dallas Morning News about a resurgence in violence there related to decades-old oppression against their people, including the murder of family members and the seizure of their land and homes.

Under U.S. asylum law, a well-founded fear of persecution because of race or nationality would be acceptable grounds for an application.

But a man from Chiapas who wanted to be identified only as Osiel said, “The guard just told us that asylum has been shut down. We are suffering here,” he said.

“We want to know if there is still asylum. If not, we don’t want to be here suffering,” he said.

Nearby, Gloria, a Honduran woman, said some parents are so worried about lengthy waits at the camp that they’ve sent their children alone across the border. “At times, it is the only exit one has,” she explained.

Jodi Goodwin, a Harlingen immigration attorney, said she faces difficult choices in what she tells asylum-seekers. Still, she persists in giving sidewalk workshops near the bridge to let them know their rights, or threading them into the volunteer network of Lawyers for Good Government.

They are like the kid with his finger in the dike. Only 4 percent of immigrants in the Migrant Protection Protocols program are represented by lawyers, according to TRAC.

What does Goodwin tell an immigrant who feels hopeless?

Sometimes it’s, “You got to fight and fight to the end.” But other times, she says she is brutally honest.

“Why sit here in squalor without the ability to minimally take care of your family for a case that I can tell you right now has zero chance of winning,” she explained.

Goodwin fears that the attorneys’ work will get only more difficult in January when asylum cases will be partially transferred to judges who sit in a year-old immigration court center in Fort Worth, which handles cases by video conference. Government attorneys are in another courtroom in another city and immigrants can be in yet-another location.

“It is so messed up,” Goodwin said. “This is not how you practice law.”

Caught amid the camp squalor, the danger and the tent court system, many immigrants aren’t showing up for their asylum hearings. TRAC found that of those required to wait in Mexico, about half failed to show up for a hearing. By comparison, 9 out of 10 immigrants who are allowed to remain in the U.S. while their cases are adjudicated attend every court hearing.

Trying to help

Into this misery flows charity aid – everything from beef burritos and chicken soup, sliced oranges and cashews, powder milk and plastic buckets for hauling water of dubious quality to volunteer medical teams. Late last week, a huge water purification system was being tested thanks to a charity donation from a group called the Planet Water Foundation. 

“We need to build everything to U.N. standards so, should the U.N. show up, all this will stay,” said Blake Davis, a volunteer with Global Response Management. The paramedic from Maine was overseeing the prize donation of the water purification system, hoping it would make a significant change in the bleakness and sickness at the camp.

Businesses, veteran charities and foundations, and some freshly formed nonprofits all lend assistance. Among them are Samaritan’s Purse, Church World Service, Physicians for Human Rights, Good Neighbor Settlement House, Manos Juntas of the Mexican Methodist Church, Lawyers for Good Government, and an anonymous T-Mobile manager who forgave a huge bill run up when migrants at the Brownsville shelter called family in Central America instead of the U.S.

Cassie Stewart, a former child protection social worker, started her nonprofit Rio Valley Relief Project during the summer of 2018 when she was shocked by seeing migrant parents separated from their children, causing global protest. Stewart began collecting donations, clothes, powdered milk, and diapers for long drives to a respite center run by Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley.

Sometimes, she would bring along her husband, immigration lawyer Daniel Stewart, who inspired her with stories about his work.

This night, the Rio Valley Relief Project distributed 1,000 beef tamales and 850 bean burritos as the sun set in hues of pink and orange. Cassie Stewart’s group spent hours in the Brownsville kitchen of the nonprofit Good Neighbor Settlement House, where asylum-seekers lucky enough to pass U.S. review can shower, get new clothes and move on to their next destination.

Later, a slow-moving man dressed in soiled clothes shuffled along the sidewalk to ask if there was any comida left. No, Stewart quickly said. Then, the Dallas woman took note of his brown eyes, his small, thin frame. She told him to wait.

Stewart grabbed the last canister of cashews and almonds and poured a mound on a white paper plate with some dried mangoes.

The man took the plate and disappeared into the indigo night.

Article Source

[olympus-summit]

Devil's in the Details | Nemesis | Re: Doctor, Setsuna, Shinobu, Elliott, Mina ATTN: Everyone

As much as he isn't his friend's keeper, Nemesis knows a dead end when he sees one. "Médica, it's never going to be satisfying." He murmurs, hoping this can somehow get across everything - that she's right to be furious, that they'd made the wrong choice, but also that she was wasting her breath. They would never fully admit it. They couldn't. They were long past that point. There was only dissonance here. Her worldview demanded pure moral objectivity, and theirs was almost entirely subjective - Setsuna was a perfect example of that, saying that she believes and trusts in a man who has spent the last however many minutes explaining how he's lied to and manipulated all of them specifically to break them. There's something heartbreaking about her simple, willful lack of comprehension, and about her statement: I'm tired. I want to go home.

God, don't they all.

But home doesn't exist anymore. Not hers, not his. They're all a hundred years or more away from their homes, their families, their lives. The future he'd wanted for himself was lived by someone else, and now what does he have? Only the people in this room, only what's on this airship. 

If he went back to Silicon now, would he even recognize it? A hundred years was more than a lifetime for most people. It encompassed generations. And of course Titan had apparently been working diligently to undo all the good work that had been done, fostering hostility and isolation, repressing advancement so they could maintain the status quo that kept them in power. The Summit was a joke, anyone with sense would know that people who had no idea what year it actually was, let alone any knowledge about the current geopolitical landscape, couldn't possibly govern effectively. Titan would have been tailoring and inventing policy for decades if not the entire century. 

Shinobu's presence and his side and their hand on his back are welcome anchors. After a few minutes, contemplating in silence and listening to their words - they're good at saying what's important, what's needed, at reasonable questions and effective statements - Nemesis shifts just enough to take their hand, holding it quietly, a reciprocation of support. 

He listens, and he thinks, and... Elliott mentioning the hostages briefly throws his train of thought off its tracks. The wave of nausea is abrupt and intense enough to make him breath out sharply, almost a gasp, as if he'd been hit in the chest. It certainly feels that way. 

[TW: Unreality, Identity Crisis/Dissociation, Objectification, Dehumanization] 

What the hell is he going to do? He doesn't want to see the copy of Marisol, some facsimile built from his memories of her, a living, breathing, real person made just to be used against him. 

"How could you...?" He doesn't mean to, he doesn't want to keep talking in circles, keep the feedback loop going, he already knows there aren't going to be satisfying responses and he doesn't want to keep hearing about how hurting them all was the best choice that could be made. But he can't possibly ignore this anymore, can't possibly hold it in any longer, not now that it's been brought up again. And so it slips out, his voice is shaking, his expression blanched - not angry this time, he's too horrified for the moment for the anger to keep its grip. "How could you? After what Titan did to us, to you too, how could you... how could you do it to others? How could you do it to them? Mitsu is right, there were a - a hundred, a thousand ways you could torture us, you didn't... you didn't need to do that. You made people. Those aren't our loved ones. You brought those people to life, you created them just to use against us. Do you even understand what that means? You created life. You made them. Those are your children. You brought them into existence just to use them, like weapons, like instruments of torture. Those are people and you just- you just made them, on an impulse, with no sense of responsibility, no - nothing, just, to treat them like... And they're not safe, how could they possibly be safe? They don't even know what's happening, Titan is out there wanting to kill us all, and the lives they had and the people they knew are a hundred years gone. Did you actually think about any of this? Did you ever consider what it meant when you created them? What you'd be putting them through?" 

There's a girl in the engine room who looks like the dead sister of the dead man whose memories he carries. There's a girl who will look at him and think he's her brother, even though they were both made in pods, even though she'll be lacking so much of what made Marisol who she was, because the only memories she has are the ones he could share with her - and what about the rest? Had the gaps been randomly generated? Was there some program made specifically to interpret the data of memories and manufacture more to fit in the spaces between when he'd seen her and talked to her and asked how her day went? Who is that girl? He doesn't know her, but he feels obligated to her, because she wears the face of someone he remembers loving, someone he never even met.

Nemesis wants to scream. He wants to curl into a ball and scream and scream and scream until someone just puts him out of his misery. He doesn't want to think about Not-Marisol, he doesn't want to think about the doppelganger he feels responsible for - if only because who else would be responsible for her? Who would support her, who would take care of her? She would have no one and nothing and he would be the only familiar face, even though he knows with a sickening certainty that every time he looked at hers, he would only be reminded of this fucking nightmare. Not only was his sister lost to him, stolen from him, but now she would be replaced, eclipsed by this stranger who looked and sounded like her.

It's too cruel. It's worse than anything he could ever have imagined and somehow it's reality. 

He wishes they were still lying. He wishes they would say those people never existed, that it was another trick, another simulation, or holograms or robots in costumes or fucking hypnotism, anything, anything but the ugly, painful, horrifying truth.

[End TW]

Feeling the telltale signs of heart palpitations and his breathing getting shallow, Nemesis closes his eyes and squeezes Shinobu's hand, trying to re-center himself. He can't do this, he can't do this, he can't fall apart right now. There's still too much to talk about, too much to do. Steady, focus, breathe. Breathe. 

Most of Izar's bizarre speech and uninvited physical displays go unseen, which is probably for the best, while Nemesis works on regulating his breathing and compartmentalizing until he no longer feels on the verge of another shattering panic attack.

This is exactly why he hadn't asked. 

There are tears sliding down his face, but he's breathing again, he feels like he's coming up for air after being trapped a hundred leagues underwater, but slowly his thoughts are reforming and he's steadily trying to make mental grabs for the topics they need to focus on now, the things he can actually do something about.

The strongest thought he can find, the one that offers the most solid ground to stand on, is simply: Someone has to pay. Someone has to pay for this. All of it. It cannot go unanswered.

And yet, he doesn't even glance at the sword on the ground. Instead he addresses the rest of the room, everyone in it, his fellow councilors, even their captors and tormentors.

"...We can't ignore Titan. We can't just release a bunch of destabilizing information to the public all at once. Titan has been building and entrenching their seat of power for a fucking century, if we end the Summit and release all the information now, at best we'll discredit them and leave the world without any system of governance, at worst we'll be giving up any leverage and power we have and leaving Titan a vulnerable, disaster-stricken world to put back together in whatever image they want."

Nemesis doesn't want this. He doesn't want to be a lifelong politician, he doesn't want to have to save the world. But goddamn, somebody has to. Somebody has to take some fucking responsibility - in the sense of cleaning up this goddamn mess, not taking the blame for or dying over it.

"Here's my proposal. We need more information. Mina's on the right track. We need to know everything, or as much as we can. And we need advisors - consultants, whatever. This isn't just about us, it isn't just about what's happened here. It's the whole world. We should try to make contact with various administrations in as many countries as possible. See if there's a way to get them to send representatives. We should contact... hospitals, transportation officials, emergency responders. If we're going to be risking riots then we need to make sure the infrastructure doesn't collapse. And we need to defang Titan. I want to know as much about them as possible - physical locations, employee rosters, boards of directors. That ship they sent after us came from somewhere. Do we know where their armories and bases are? Can we find out? Do they use a specific communications system or hub that we can disable? Give me full access to the computers on board and anything you have regarding modern operating systems and technology, and I should be able to launch a cyberattack. If we can orchestrate a media blackout in as many countries as possible until we're finished that would be ideal. Maybe we'll need the FURIES, maybe not, but we should be fucking smart about this. I don't want to start a war, I want to stage a coup. Once everything is stable, once we can establish new committees and alternate means of international relations, then we release the whole truth. Then we tell the world everything. If you don't want to be involved, you don't have to be. Does that make sense to everyone?"

Despite the fact that his face is still covered in tears and his hands are trembling, Nem's voice is firm, certain, the anger is back and it's been sharpened and polished to a razor edge. Clean, precise, practical. 

"Please. Help me if you want to, sit back and wait for the dust to settle if you don't, but vote with me now. Let me do this. I can do this."

It might be the only thing he can do, now.