#which almost never have concrete measurable results

[dragongirlbunny]

every day i take immense psychic damage and have to bite my tongue due to the fact that management is actually a critical component to get any sort of group effort done, but the job is so overvalued by corporations and infested with incompetent jackasses that the average non-mamager has a very understandably sour view of the role

[mywifeleftme]

300: Four Horsemen // Live in the West

Live in the West Four Horsemen 1977, Starborne

The Four Horsemen were Canada’s great contribution to international sound poetry, a genre that has traditionally involved the authors of the most abstruse literary theory ever written doing the verbal equivalent of Monty Python’s Department of Silly Walks for small audiences that regret their own open-mindedness. (Look, the Splash Zone was clearly labelled.) The Horsemen became genuine counter-culture favourites because they understood that absolute freedom is as absurd as it is sublime. As a result, their second LP Live in the West is probably the most fun thing that’d come out of the whole sound poetry movement to that point. The poets presented themselves as something between a band, an avant-garde theatre troupe, and a sketch group, and their compositions flit between high- and lowbrow signifiers in a way that feels prescient of today’s culture.

Side One is dedicated to shorter compositions, classical sound poetry conceits like dismantling a single loaded word into discrete phonemes (the word “Assassin” dissolved into startled AHHs and hissing esses) and deftly syncopated sequences of non-verbal glottal noises and grunts. On “From Beast/Matthew’s Line,” Paul Dutton (I think) opens with a snippet of an Irish-sounding folk song; he breaks off, allowing Rafael Barreto-Rivera and bpNichol to exchange repeated non-sequiturs in Spanish and English while Dutton keens in the background; Steve McCaffery begins speaking over them, intoning John Clare’s nineteenth century poem “I Am!”; as McCaffery nears the climax of the poem, the others gradually transition into raga-style vocalizations. The effect is quadrophonic, not unlike Glenn Gould’s “contrapuntal radio” piece The Idea of North (1967), which layered recordings of spoken monologues to see how their meanings and sounds complimented and “splashed off” one another. It also anticipates the sampling era to come, but the analogue physicality and precision required to pull the piece of without the aid of electronics gives it a spark all its own.

The elaborate collaging of “Matthew’s Line” previews the two longer pieces on Side Two, “Mischievous Eve” and “Goodbye Stagelost.” On these quasi-theatrical pieces, the Horsemen lean into the characters their voices suggest: the plummy British accent of the Sheffield-born McCaffery makes him a natural for playing the role of a fusty square, though he is never far from descending into gibbering imbecility; Barreto-Rivera’s Latin-accented good cheer provides an earthy counterpoint, even as he often lapses into Spanish passages that deepen the complexity of following their ratatat chemistry; Nichol has a measured, precise cadence, leading his colleagues like a conductor even as he often dives the furthest into abstraction; little Paul Dutton’s boyish, wiseacre Ontario deadpan sounds like one of the Kids in the Hall, making him the perfect foil when things need deflating. These longer selections resemble a slapstick update of the overlapping dialogues in the second part of Eliot’s The Waste Land, found writing and original material and classical literature swirled together to capture life in the charnel house of modern culture, but with more jokes (a special tip of the cap to Dutton’s passing allusion to Nichol’s “dick-washing habits”).

Fifty years down the line, sound and concrete poetry have little presence in the Canadian scene (or internationally, for that matter) outside of a few holdouts of the old guard. Almost nothing on the shelves or the stage feels as genuinely creative or lively as this old record does. I haven’t the space or energy here to litigate the institutionalization of the genre, but I know in my bones that the world could use a little more nastiness like this.

300/365

[dailyanarchistposts]

Children, Play And The Environment

The future of the human race – our children – are the people who most need a safe and diverse environment of experience but are most at risk from it. Children are also at risk from the war, starvation and water-borne diseases crippling the Majority World. But not here? Blood tests reveal that nearly every person on Earth is harbouring detectable levels of dozens of persistent organic pollutants, including the worst: PCBs and dioxins. These chemicals cause liver damage and in the womb and in breast milk have measurable damaging effects on the brains of children. Currently, we are all involuntary subjects in a vast worldwide experiment on which each day we are exposed to hundreds of chemicals, many of which have been shown to cause harm, and many of which have never been tested. These toxins are endocrine disruptors that have major effects on reproductive health. The alarming decline in sperm counts is almost entirely restricted to the industrialised world. Reproductive defects in men have doubled. Female infertility and miscarriages are on the increase in the industrialised world and are directly linked to environmental causes, such as eating fish with high levels of industrial toxins – industrial New England is one infertility hot spot. They also damage the immune system and increase mortality rates from diseases we had thought treatable.

Children are uniquely vulnerable to environmental toxins. They have greater exposures to environmental toxins than adults. Pound for pound, children drink more, eat more and breathe more air than do adults due to their more rapid metabolism.

Children therefore have substantially heavier exposures to any toxins that are present in water, food, or air. Children taste everything and are much closer to the earth than we are, putting them at risk from toxins in dust, soil and carpets as well as toxins that from low-lying layers in the air, such as some pesticide vapours. Children undergo rapid growth and their development is uniquely at risk form toxins. The nervous system is not well able to repair any structural damage caused by environmental toxins: if cells in the developing brain are destroyed by chemicals such as lead, mercury, or solvents, or if vital connections between nerve cells fail to form, there is high risk that the resulting neurobehavioral dysfunction will be permanent and irreversible. Even if damage is not apparent, we are storing up disaster for the future. Many diseases that are triggered by toxins in the environment require decades to develop. Examples include mesothelioma caused by exposure to asbestos, leukaemia caused by benzene, breast cancer caused by DDT and some chronic neurological diseases such as Parkinson’s may be caused by exposure to environmental neurotoxins. Many of those diseases are more likely in later life if the toxin was ingested when young – cancers of all kinds, for instance.

The natural environment is important to children because it represents a place where they can interact with nature and play, relatively safely: away from traffic and also, temporarily, away from the control of adults. The primary place for play and socialising is ‘waste’ or rough ground, precisely because it is ignored by most adults. The value of such an environment is that, unlike an artificial one, such as concrete, tarmac or an artificial sports surface, children can interact with and change it. This happens in many ways, from obvious things like dens, tree houses and water play to more subtle things such as bike tracks which vary with the weather and which are constantly modified by the wear and tear resulting from the children’s use of them. The natural environment is constantly being polluted, threatened, damaged and destroyed; the ‘countryside’ is largely agribusiness farmland where children are denied access and at risk from the many pesticides, fertilisers and dangerous machinery most farmers use. In cities and towns, in addition to pollution, there is dumping – some of it toxic – and the constant threat of development of these ‘wasted’ (i.e. nonprofit making) brownfield sites for industry, roads and housing.

Our response is not to stop using the 8000+ chemicals known to be damaging to our health – chemicals that capitalists swear are either not dangerous or necessary to our prosperity (sic, their profits!) – it is to increasingly restrict and protect our children from the environment: indoor play, antiseptic schools, air filters blowing during the school run every day, holidays abroad because we suppose the environment cleaner and safer. Children are told “don’t touch!”, “put it down”, “stay away”. They are forbidden to wander off, to explore and experience the world on their own terms because it has become so dangerous both in fact and in the minds of neurotic parents. We can do this because we have choices. But poor and marginalized people – and they exist in millions in the developed world as well – do not. They live by polluted rivers, must slog though toxic mud, drink pesticide-flavoured water, work in asbestos-ridden factories, labour in herbicide-drenched fields for the agricultural corporations. And often their children are beside them, if they are not already sick or dying. And why? Because children most of all have no power and no chance to escape the visible and invisible enemy – environmental pollution and degradation – that is damaging their health and development, stultifying their lives and prospects, and killing them slowly and eventually and all for money, and the pampered lives of the captains of industry, the corporate giants, the corrupted politicians.

[jcmarchi]

Climate action, here and now

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/climate-action-here-and-now/

Climate action, here and now

A few years ago, David Hsu started taking a keen interest in some apartment buildings in Brooklyn and the Bronx — but not because he was looking for a place to live. Hsu, an associate professor at MIT, works on urban climate change solutions. The property owners were retrofitting their buildings to make them net-zero emitters of carbon dioxide via better insulation, ventilation, and electric heating and appliances. They also wanted to see the effect on interior air quality.

In the process, the owners started working with Hsu and an MIT team to assess the results using top-grade air quality sensors. They found that beyond its climate benefits, retrofitting lowered indoor pollutants from high levels to almost-undetectable levels. It is a win-win outcome.

“Not only are those buildings cleaner and use less energy and do not emit greenhouse gases, they also have better air quality,” Hsu says. “The hopeful thing is that as we remake our buildings for decarbonization, a lot of technologies are so superior that our lives will be better, too.”

Hsu’s projects frequently yield practical, concrete steps for climate action. In New York City, Hsu found, mandating the measurement of energy use lowered consumption 13 to 14 percent over four years. In a 2017 paper, he and his co-authors studied which climate actions would most reduce carbon emissions in 11 major U.S. cities. Cleveland and Denver can greatly reduce use of fossil fuels, for example, while better energy efficiency in new homes would make a big difference in Houston and Phoenix.

“You have to figure out what works and doesn’t work,” Hsu says. “I try to figure out how we can have cleaner and healthier cities that will be more sustainable, equitable, and more just.”

Significantly, Hsu does not just prescribe climate action elsewhere, he also works for change at MIT. He helped create a zero-emissions roadmap for MIT’s School of Architecture and Planning as well as the Department of Urban Studies and Planning, where he is an associate professor of urban and environmental planning and is part of Fast Forward: MIT’s Climate Action Plan for the Decade, serving in the Climate Education Working Group.

“People can get depressed about how you tackle this large, civilization-wide problem, and then you realize lots of other people care about this. Lots of smart people at MIT and other places are working on it, and there are lots of things we can do, individually and collectively,” Hsu says.

And as Hsu’s work shows, lots of people tackle the climate crisis by working on local issues. For his research and teaching, Hsu was granted tenure at MIT this year.

Urban planning by way of Amherst

Hsu studies cities, but is not from one. Growing up in the college town of Amherst, Massachusetts, Hsu could walk out of his home and “be in the woods in a minute.” He attended Yale University as an undergraduate, majoring in physics, and started venturing into New York City with friends. After graduation, Hsu moved there and got a job.

Or three jobs, really. Over the next 10 years, Hsu worked as an engineer, in real estate finance, and for the New York City government as a vice president at the NYC Economic Development Corporation, where he helped manage the city’s post-September 11 redevelopment of the East River waterfront. Eventually, he decided to pursue graduate studies in urban planning, building on his experience.

“Engineering, finance, and government, you put those three things together and they’re basically urban planning,” Hsu says. “It took me a decade after school to realize urban planning is a thing I could do. I say to students, ‘You’re lucky, you have this major. I never had this in college.’”

As a graduate student, Hsu received an MS from Cornell University in applied and engineering physics, then an MSc from the London School of Economics and Political Science in city design and social science, before getting his PhD in urban design and planning at the University of Washington in Seattle. He served on the faculty at the University of Pennsylvania before moving to MIT in 2015.

Hsu studies an array of topics involving local governments and climate policy. He has published multiple papers on Philadelphia’s attempts to refurbish its stormwater infrastructure, for example. His studies about retrofitted apartment buildings are forthcoming as three papers. A 2022 Hsu paper, “Straight out of Cape Cod,” looked at the origins of Community Choice Aggregation, an approach to purchasing clean energy that started in a few Massachusetts communities and now involves 11 percent of the U.S. population.

“I joke that the ideal reader of my articles is not a mayor and it’s not an academic, it’s a midcareer bureaucrat trying to implement a policy,” Hsu says.

Actually, that’s no mere joke. At MIT, City of Cambridge officials have contacted Hsu to discuss his studies of New York and Philadelphia, something he welcomes. Even if not in local government himself, Hsu says, “I know I can do research that might move some of those projects along. It’s my way of trying to contribute to the world outside of academia.”

“It’s all important”

There is still another way Hsu contributes to climate action: by influencing what MIT does. He helped craft the climate policies of the School of Architecture and Planning and the Department of Urban Studies and Planning, which aim to produce net zero emissions for the department through the use of tools like carbon offsets for travel. As part of the Institute-wide Climate Education Working Group convened under the Fast Forward plan, Hsu is busy thinking about how to integrate climate studies into MIT education.

“Our Fast Forward team does great work together. David McGee, Lisa Ghaffari, Kate Trimble, Antje Danielson, Curt Newton, they’re so engaged,” says Hsu. “Our students are terrifically hard-working and skilled and care about climate change, but don’t know how to affect it necessarily. We want to give them on-ramps and skills.”

He is also chair of the fast-growing 11-6 major that combines urban studies and planning with computer science.

“Climate change is happening so fast, and is so big, that every job could be climate-change related,” Hsu says. “If people leave MIT with a higher base understanding of climate change, then you can be a lawyer or consultant or work in finance or computer science and address the unsolved problems.”

Indeed, Hsu thinks many students, who he believes increasingly recognize the severity of climate change, need to prioritize the battle against it when shaping their careers.

“Our fight against climate change is not going to be over by 2050, but 25 years from now, we’re going to know if we transitioned to a net-zero-emitting society for the sake of humanity,” Hsu says. “The students are more aware than ever that climate change is going to dominate their lives. I want students to look back with satisfaction that they helped society.”

More bluntly, he says: “Are you going to say, ‘Oh, I made some money and enhanced my career, but the planet’s going to be destroyed? Or ideally will you find a job that’s satisfying and can support your future hopes for yourself and your family, and also save the planet? Because I think there are a lot of [job] options like that out there.”

Hsu adds, “We’re going to need people pulling in different directions. It’s all important. That’s the message to our students. Go find something you think is important and use your skills. We’re going to need that many people to work on climate change.”

[otomes-world]

Sorry Azul and Leona and Idia but February will be Neige month. Seriously who could say no to this cinnamon roll. Not me definitely. Also I decided combine this request as they pretty similar. Plus little update: if you ask for g\n mc, then I won`t use any sex pronounce (only you\your), so main character in that case will always be reader.

@simp346

Everyone love apples

Probably, what you definitely did not expect was the beginning of a relationship with a celebrity. Although moving to a world completely different from yours was already an out of the ordinary event. By this alone, you should have known that your life would never be the same again. Compared to this, Neige was that very spoon of honey in a barrel of tar. The second one in your life you have quite a lot.

In your defense, you could say that you never meant anything bad. Just as soon as you take on at least something, forces invisible to the eye took on the responsibility of painting a dull, ordinary action in all the colors of the rainbow. However, this explanation did not suit either the director, or the teachers, or the head of your dorm - Riddle. Needless to say, despite everything that happened, you did not wear a collar. It just didn't make sense to deprive you of what you didn't have in the first place. They punished you, and unfairly, you could say, in a different way.

You remembered well how one day you decided to try yourself as a cook. You definitely remembered that you cooked quite tolerably. Of course, you could not challenge the chief specialists of the college even if you have desire, but, with a hand on your heart, you could admit that you did it many times better than Vanrouge. However, when the kitchen turned into something little recognizable, and in the middle of it, the installation "Devil's Assault on Trey's Holy Abode" - as Cater named and tag it in his account - appeared in an unknown way, the entrance to the kitchen was henceforth closed to you. A traitor named Trey Clover also did not take your side, although the cookies you baked turned out to be very tasty, which was noted by the already cooled Riddle. Delicious cookies were insufficient argument, put on the scales, which were outweighed by the mess you made in the process.

If you recalled your track record, then another feat of yours came to mind. How else to call the fact that you practically got out of the water, the duet of ADeuce plus Grimm did not know. You, in first place, didn't know it either, to be honest. It happened during one of your Potions lessons, when you managed to blow up the lab. You refused to admit guilt in this until the very last. You could be understood. You quietly, disturbing no one, prepared your potion, carefully measuring out the necessary substance bit by bit. Suddenly, someone rushed behind you, and you, having lost your balance, poured more than you needed into the cauldron. You could have sworn that you added a gram or two more, but the explosion occurred in any of the cases, as did the call to the carpet to the director. Even there, you almost stood up for your honor and innocence until Professor Crewel made a concrete argument. While everyone was making one potion, you were doing something completely different. As a result, you were forbidden to approach the laboratory even for a kilometer. You handed over all practical classes in writing, and then answered questions to the teacher.

This was a brief summary of the reasons why, of all the options LeBlanche, who undoubtedly had more than enough, could choose anyone but not you. The head of Pomefiore periodically reminded of this.

"I knew the potato didn't have good taste, but not to have it at all," Schoenheit made a somewhat caustic comment.

You didn’t answer anything to this, except that you mentally added a phrase for which the model’s hands would slowly but surely reach for your throat. If Neige was the fairest of all, then you had taste, excellent for sure. However, you remained silent, and your life was saved for a while.

Back to your boyfriend... to be honest, it still sounds a little weird, even in your head. You don't say this phrase out loud. After all, you never knew when and where Vil would decide to go. Even though you didn’t say any words, by the sarcastic smile on your face, don’t guess what you are thought could only a blind person. Everyone could say that you walked on the edge, but you healed all your life like that. So you did not attach more importance to this than the same thing was happened in the laboratory.

He was the embodiment of the ideal, that same prince on a white horse, only without a one. Although you strongly doubted that in the academy there weren`t horses. If the college had a stable, then the RSA included riding lessons in the curriculum. Closing your eyes to this, you would immediately admit if someone said that fate covered all the years of unluck in this way. However, it was difficult to call it a failure. After all, it was the people around you who suffered the consequences, not you.

Be that as it might, sitting in the nearby woods near the Academy - you wouldn't risk having a date near the college - and watching Neige weave a wreath for you, you felt like you were in a fairy tale that was usually read to children at bedtime. You were read completely different stories, so you imagined it only remotely, relying on your current feelings, but, probably, this was what people dreamed about. You chose to ignore why there was such a blooming clearing in the forest, dazzling with every possible wild flower. At such a romantic moment, you didn’t want to use logic, although seeing how different animals settled around you, attracted by Neige’s gentle tune, you really wanted to.

However, for the sake of such a "princess" you agreed to become even a prince, even a knight, or a second princess.

Noticing that his hat was a little slanted to one side, you reached out your hand to straighten it and the strands of hair that were escaping from there. The young man immediately turned to you, his cheeks turned into a delicate shade of pink, and a radiant smile appeared on his face, which you could not help answering. Never in your life you thought that someday you would communicate with someone through sounds and short chuckles. Like how it looks from the outside. You even guessed who would look away in disgust if you would chose sit not just anywhere, but in the garden of Pomefiore. Ignoring the urge to do it next time, you closed your eyes. While most thought Neige was prince in your relationship, you often caught yourself thinking that he was more suited to the role of princess.

[mariacallous]

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has returned from the Middle East with few tangible results in his diplomatic pouch.

With his visit coming just after several days of violence between Israelis and Palestinians—including an Israeli military raid in the West Bank city of Jenin that killed nine Palestinians, some of whom the Israel Defense Forces said were Palestine Islamic Jihad members implicated in past terrorist attacks, as well as a shooting outside an East Jerusalem synagogue by a Palestinian that killed seven Israelis—there wasn’t much hope, let alone expectation, of progress.

At a minimum, progress would have meant getting both Israeli and Palestinian leaders to take concrete steps to de-escalate and work together to prevent terrorism and violence in the future. Through no fault of Blinken’s, this could never have been achieved.

Blinken’s public remarks made clear that he had raised concerns with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about his government’s proposed judicial reforms that, according to many jurists, would impinge on Israel’s democratic system. Blinken advised reaching a national consensus before undertaking partisan change.

There wasn’t much to show, however, on efforts to contain the violence and rebuild trust between Israelis and Palestinians. The Palestinian Authority has suspended security cooperation with Israel in the West Bank, leaving everything in the hands of the Israeli army. Meanwhile, the Israeli cabinet proposed measures on Sunday to retaliate for the Jerusalem terrorist attack, but it is hard to see how the policies, which include destroying the homes of terrorists’ families or deporting them, will help deter future attacks; there’s scant evidence that it has worked when carried out in the past.

Coming almost immediately on the heels of a flurry of back-and-forth U.S. and Israeli trips—Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer to Washington and U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and CIA Director William Burns to Israel and the West Bank—it was clear well before Blinken arrived that his visit would be part of a broader piece, with particular focus on Iran. Never before had a U.S. administration engaged with a new Israeli government as early, as often, and at this high a level.

Clearly, that engagement reflected the Biden administration’s real concern about the new right-wing government’s direction and offered an opportunity to lay down some markers, especially on issues related to Israeli policies toward Palestinians and on the judicial reforms that might erode Israel democracy. At the same time, judging by the tone and tenor of the Blinken visit, the Biden administration has clearly decided to embrace the new Israeli coalition publicly and not confront it. We wouldn’t be surprised if an early Netanyahu visit to Washington is in the offing.

The administration surely is aware of the risk that this flurry of high-level visits will be perceived as legitimizing the most extreme government in Israel’s history. But Joe Biden—a preternaturally pro-Israel U.S. president whose initial instincts were never to confront Israel but to work with it—seems willing to take that risk. Biden has other priorities, not to mention his likely decision and announcement to seek a second term. Fighting with Israel is risky business, especially in light of a Republican Party that has set itself up as Israel’s sole stalwart friend. Biden might be persuaded to get tough with Israel and the Palestinians if there were realistic chances of achieving a breakthrough that would make a fight worthwhile. But there simply aren’t.

There are no easy choices for an administration facing this Israeli government. Here are five suggestions the Biden administration could follow to have any chance of successfully navigating what’s likely to be a very fraught road ahead.

1) Hang it on the prime minister. Netanyahu has said repeatedly he can control the more radical impulses and actions of his ministers, and the Biden administration ought to hold him to that commitment. Palestinian terrorism and the predisposition of some of Netanyahu’s ministers to use the violence to advance their narrow political agenda in the occupied territories present Netanyahu with a test that will be difficult to pass. The decisions made by the Israeli cabinet on Sunday indicate how difficult it will be for Netanyahu to rein in the radicals.

Netanyahu crafted this coalition to meet his immediate need to defer, nullify, and escape prosecution in his ongoing corruption trial. He is now saddled with it and needs to manage the coalition’s worst impulses, including by maintaining the status quo at Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount, not gutting Israel’s Supreme Court, and avoiding a full-blown conflict with Palestinians in the occupied territories. Indeed, a functional U.S.-Israeli relationship depends on it. As Blinken emphasized throughout his visit, this relationship depends on a confluence of both values and interests.

2) Make the relationship more transactional. Netanyahu looks after Israel’s interests first, and so should the Biden administration tend to the United States’. Allies trust one another and do for one another. There’s reciprocity, not just free-riding.

Israel wants U.S. help in normalizing relations with Saudi Arabia (an interest the Biden administration shares) and in toughening up an approach toward Iran. And the Biden administration wants any number of things from Netanyahu, including a tougher Israeli policy against Russia’s war in Ukraine. Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East, the United States’ closest ally there, and the only country in the region whose history is linked to genocide. It’s not unreasonable for the United States to expect more when it comes to Russia’s brutal invasion.

Biden isn’t pressing Israel on a two-state solution—but he does want Netanyahu’s government to avoid taking actions that could make the situation in the West Bank far worse than it already is. The United States also has its own set of problems to resolve with the Saudis; Israel can exacerbate both the U.S.-Saudi relationship and its own future relations with the kingdom if it continues to take provocative actions toward the Palestinians.

At this point, though, it’s hard to see the Biden administration explicitly laying out precise quid pro quos and trade-offs to Netanyahu (e.g., if you ratchet up pressure on the Palestinians, we’re not going to work with you to maintain and broaden the Abraham Accords), largely because there’s no guarantee countries such as the United Arab Emirates would play along. And Netanyahu would likely reject that approach. Nor is it politically viable with the U.S. Congress. Israel has yet to respond definitively to the U.S. request to supply vintage Hawk missiles to Ukraine. And given Israel’s refusal to supply military assistance to Ukraine, the answer is most likely to be no.

3) Make Iran the priority. As volatile as the Palestinian situation may be, Iran’s nuclear program is the only issue that might trigger a wider regional confrontation, replete with rising oil prices and falling financial markets.

The Biden administration and Israel still disagree over the virtues and drawbacks of reviving the Iran nuclear deal, officially called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, but they do not disagree about the danger that Iran poses in the region, whether through its drive toward becoming a nuclear threshold state or its aggressive behavior in Yemen, Syria, and elsewhere.

Iran’s brutal efforts to suppress its current domestic protests and Tehran’s support for Russia’s war in Ukraine have made the prospects of a renewed nuclear agreement unlikely, which should reduce some of the tensions with Netanyahu (unless, by some miracle, a renewed diplomatic opportunity with Iran arises on the nuclear issue). And major tensions could arise if Israel makes an assessment that it must use military force to respond to Iran’s ramped-up nuclear program and the United States disagrees.

But diplomacy, containment, and smart, demonstrable deterrence—certainly including but not limited to a credible military option—will be the key to dealing with Iran in the period ahead. That will require close and nuanced diplomatic and security cooperation and coordination between Israel and the United States. The recently concluded joint military exercise involving thousands of U.S. and Israeli forces in the Mediterranean Sea was clearly intended to send a signal to Iran of combined U.S. and Israeli resolve, and it won’t be the last of such coordinated initiatives in the months ahead.

4) Sharpen the almost nonexistent current focus on the Palestinian issue. Even if the prospects for serious progress on the Palestinian issue are almost nonexistent now, the Biden administration must continue to press both the Netanyahu government and the Palestinian Authority to prevent further deterioration on the ground. White House and State Department words and hand-wringing are not enough.

The raid in Jenin and the terrorist attack that followed showcased two long-standing truths in the Israeli-Palestinian drama. Some Palestinian groups, including Hamas, Palestine Islamic Jihad, and some within Fatah, remain intent on violent resistance. The Palestinian leaders lack a political strategy for advancing toward their stated goal of self-determination and statehood. The terrorism and violence inflict pain and suffering but do not move the dial closer to a resolution of the underlying conflict. Indeed, even the most serious outbreaks of violence and war are followed by a return to the status quo ante, or worse, with nothing having been accomplished.

For its part, Israel has pursued a counterinsurgency strategy for decades designed to disrupt Palestinian terrorist operations and inflict pain on the Palestinians as a means of trying to end the terrorism, but it, too, has no political goal. At best, Israel can make costs to Palestinians very high for engaging in terrorism, but as long as Palestinians see no political avenue out of the occupation, they appear willing to absorb those costs. For Israel, this has meant short periods of calm interspersed with short periods of terrorism and violence. It’s a strategic cul-de-sac with no way out.

The Biden administration must continue to press Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to resume security cooperation with Israel and to do more to preempt terrorism and violence in the West Bank. Abbas must also develop a diplomatic approach that responds to past Israeli and U.S. diplomatic initiatives. And he must invigorate Palestinian politics by calling elections for parliament and the presidency so that the Palestinian public can make clear its choice: a process of peacemaking or continued terrorism and violence under the slogan of resistance. The half a billion dollars the United States has provided to Palestinians since April 2021 provides some leverage in these discussions; more significant U.S. leverage would be a commitment to revive serious U.S. diplomacy in peacemaking, something that has been absent since at least 2014.

As for Israel, even as it takes security steps to protect its population, it must also take steps to shore up the Palestinian Authority. This includes pushing aside efforts to speed up or legalize creeping annexation; improving economic living conditions on the ground; ending rampant settlement activity, including the legalization of outposts that are illegal under current Israeli law; and avoiding actions that seek to permanently bind the West Bank to Israel. Even if the question of using aid as leverage with Israel is off the table—it simply will not fly in Washington, where Israel has become a domestic political football—the United States carries enough weight to persuade Israel to pay attention when it sees seriousness and determination on the part of the most senior U.S. officials.

5) Make it clear that the United States will stay out of Israeli politics—but Israel must stay out of U.S. politics, too. Israel needs to understand that the bilateral relationship thrives when U.S. policy toward Israel enjoys bipartisan support in Washington. It may be tempting for Israel to game U.S. politics and decide to throw its weight behind the Republicans, as Netanyahu has done previously, especially as the 2024 U.S. presidential campaign begins this year to shift into high gear.

But Israel needs to be reminded that the United States has one president at a time and that blatant interference of the kind that Netanyahu engaged in on Iran during the Obama administration will be called out as an unfriendly act with consequences for the personal relationship between the U.S. president and Israeli prime minister.

The new Israeli government presents the Biden administration with some very unpalatable and inconvenient choices. It is a democratically elected extremist coalition led by a very skillful and willful prime minister whose primary goal isn’t stopping Iran from getting a bomb or normalizing relations with Saudi Arabia but finding a way to escape his ongoing corruption trial.

For that, he needs the cooperation of his coalition partners. He may be able to control some of what they want, but because they have leverage over him, Netanyahu can’t block everything. This virtually ensures rising tensions with the United States, unless of course some deus ex machina intrudes, such as war with Iran, a third intifada, or the collapse of the government and its replacement by a more centrist coalition.

But more likely, if the worst of the right-wing extremists’ agenda comes to pass, the Biden administration and Netanyahu will enter a bad patch far worse than the Obama years. And Biden—with no choice but to push back—may well find himself in the middle of a nasty fight that he doesn’t want or need.

[liskantope]

[Content note: not going to be very charitable or thorough about my views on the general issue of recent developments on Roe vs. Wade, or bother cluttering this up with qualifications.]

Caught in the midst of another wave of work, I've been a little late in picking up the details of the leak of Alito's document and the fact that it represents the soon-forthcoming opinion of the Supreme Court as a whole in favor of overturning Roe vs. Wade.

I distinctly remember 4-5 years ago stating confidently to people that I just couldn't imagine it ever being overturned, not because the public tide would ever shift overwhelmingly in favor of pro-choice (as has been the case with same-sex marriage for instance), but because enough of the country favored the legality of abortion (a clear majority), and enough of that subset felt strongly enough about it, that there would be massive protests and rioting such as those of us who are reasonably young would have never seen in our lifetimes. The Supreme Court was clearly to a great extent a representation of political winds (much as this was against its premise of course), and the politicians-that-be on both sides of the aisle would surely be far too afraid of the violent public backlash to dare allow RvW to be overturned. Chipped away at through incremental legislation in dozens of states perhaps, but not straight-up reversed on the level of SCOTUS.

Then in summer 2020 I got a taste of what severe social unrest and widespread angry protesting/rioting look like. And still I remember saying (probably to myself, because I wasn't talking to many people at the time), "If RvW gets overturned, there will be protesting and rioting on a level that makes all this George Floyd stuff look like a joke in comparison."

But now that it's actually happening, I'm not sure that there will be anywhere near that much of a reaction. And I have complex feelings about that.

On the one hand, it's very easily possible to exaggerate how disastrous the effects of the overturning will be (I expect a good percentage of Americans sloppily confuse it with a ruling banning abortion everywhere for instance, alternate routes to abortion are more feasible than they were 50 years ago, etc.). And I consider protesting to have some positive but limited utility (while rioting has negative utility). On the other hand, I still consider it disastrous enough that I feel a desire to become much more activist about this than about most other things.

But on the third hand, I want to see a reaction that reassures me at least a tiny bit, when compared with the unrest two summers ago, that liberal social activism has some rational understanding of practical effects of laws and priorities and abstract narratives versus concrete facts and so on. In a way, I want to see far more protesting, far more domination of the national discourse, far more emotion, far more passion, far more raw force as a social movement attached to this than was ever attached to George Floyd's murder and the vaguely-understood cloud of oppressive attitudes it represented. There are concrete laws at stake here which affect vast numbers of people in a highly tractable way that doesn't depend on vague principles or desires for revolution or nebulous "understood truths". There are highly measurable ways that large demographics in our society will suffer, a more firmly-founded fuel for our emotions than anger over several individual outrageously tragic incidents.

In that vein, I want to see a moral panic over female reproductive rights. I want to see awareness and tension over these issues seep into almost every facet of our society. I want to see every major company speak up on it. I want to see widespread treatment of the perpetuation of poverty as a result of lack of control over reproduction, and those who think it's worth it because of their convictions about the sanctity of souls or possibly more unsavory beliefs, as a scourge on our culture. I want to see dating profiles, in the midst of the usual dog and sarcasm enthusiasm, explode with exhortations of "if you don't like women having choices, swipe left".

[anastkantdhangar]

How And What India Has Been Coping With During The Deadly Covid Second Wave

Last rites being performed by a family, like many, at the Seemapuri Crematorium Center in Delhi

The second wave of the coronavirus pandemic has been nothing less than that of one wreaking havoc and chaos for India - social media full of SOS messages asking for hospital beds, oxygen cylinders, medicines; crematorium centers had never witnessed such large amount of deceased being cremated, crematorium centers even had to be expanded with increased number of pyre-platforms at various parts of the country, and now the abandoned lifeless being found in rivers - simply nothing less than a catastrophe.

Heartbreaking visuals of people gasping for breath, lined outside hospitals unable to find beds, heavy shortage of important medicines like Remedesivir, lifeless bodies waiting for multiple hours at the crematorium centers for their turn to be cremated - this surely has been one of the worst health crisis India has ever seen. Exhausted frontline workers and workers at crematorium centers say they have never seen such huge crisis before. Woods have come to be short in numbers to cremate the dead. How have the authorities dealt with this?

There’s possibly not a single person in India who has not lost at least one of their relative, friend or a known one in last two months.

The centre alone did not fall well short and caught ill-prepared, states are equal culprits in their jurisdiction.

India has been under criticism by global media continuously for under-reporting of numbers of the deceased, and its lack of testing, with many reports from journalists on ground suggesting that the actual numbers of those deceased is actually at least 10-15 times more than the official numbers. A report showed that as the official data shows that in the capital of Madhya Pradesh, Bhopal, had seen only around 1,000 deaths due to covid since the pandemic began last year, whereas the data kept at crematorium centers shows that around 3,700 funerals have been done according to covid protocols in the city in the month of April alone in 2021. Such is the scale of under reporting of numbers in the official data, be it Delhi, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, and a majority of the Indian states.

From VIP treatments to the well-off even during these hard times, a classic case of Delhi government’s attempt to book Ashoka Hotel for safety measures for Delhi HC Judges with no inputs from the latter raising many eyebrows recently, states too have had their own bit of criticisms of handling of things during the pandemic.

When urban parts, despite having all the infrastructure and facilities, have seen such destruction, things in rural India have slowly started to catch headlines. With lack of information amongst the people about the virus and vaccines, multiple people in villages have been dying everyday lately complaining of fever, fatigue and shortness of breath, with no oxygen and testing facilities in most of the rural parts of the country despite being 15 months into the pandemic. How cruel things could unleash in the rural areas is a dangerous thought having seen the recent peak in urban ones.

Almost all of the country have been either in a lockdown or strict curfew with almost all states imposing the same, and this has shown some positive results in the last week with positivity rate coming down in various urban areas. The issue of oxygen crisis, after weeks long deliberation by the Supreme Court and various High Courts, have been dealt with to an extent in some manner only after the apex court made a separate National Oxygen Monitoring body.

The true figures lay not in the official data, but the crematorium centers of this country.

People waiting in queues at vaccination centers to get their jabs

Vaccination drive in many states have come to a halt owing to shortage of vaccines, with even those who are due for their second doses having difficulties finding a slot in many parts of the country. When the second wave started to wreak havoc, the widely demanded move by the opposition to open the vaccination drive for not only 45+ but for all adults was being considered by the government and given a nod, only to open big loopholes in the world’s largest vaccination drive, with one being heavy shortage of jabs.

The gap between the two doses of Covishield vaccine has been increased to 12-16 weeks on the basis of scientific data to show for it, surely there must be data now to show for it, but if this is so, then why the same expert’s panel earlier in February 2021 had advised states that the second dose of covishield should not be administered after 8 weeks in any case as it may not work then, and why Union I&B Minister also tweeted this very advisory on the same day? We cannot possibly answer this question just like we cannot estimate that actually how many people have died due to covid in this country. But for the record, The Lancet and WHO have themselves clarified way before that the gap between two doses for AstraZeneca vaccine, or Covishield should be 12-16 weeks; The UK follows 12 weeks gap and Canada follows 16 weeks gap, and India will follow the same to tackle the heavy shortage of jabs. The gap between two doses of Covaxin, on the other hand, stands the same as before.

When The USA and the European Union gave vaccination orders of millions of dollars last year, India did not order a single jab. Should not have we placed such orders last year itself? Did or did not the experts gave this input at that time? Have we even been doing it till as late as earlier this month? If not, then this itself is a much larger issue, but there's no transparency. State governments have been left with no other alternative than to issue global tenders to buy vaccines, which actually the centre should do in the global market, and as a result, not India, but its states are competing each other in the global market to purchase vaccines. Starting with Uttar Pradesh, then Maharashtra, followed by Orissa, Delhi and Karnataka have issued global tenders already to purchase vaccines.

Not a single Indian media outlet is now projecting Atmanirbhar slogans anymore, which was literally served by the same media to its viewers for months, confining them in a whole different world altogether. And it's only a matter of time that a new slogan arrives, and literally the same channels project it again for months, confining its viewers to another new world altogether, yet again.

Surely, superpower India of 2021 would not have wanted itself to be projected in such a manner in the foreign media. The majority of domestic mainstream media would not show you this, and would continuously keep you distracted with bogus narratives and side of things, killing your ability to question the status quo and to sustain a healthy democratic India.

Indian media back in January widely publicised about the ‘World’s Largest Vaccination Drive’, which holds true given our population, but no questions were asked about procurement of vaccines. Frontline covid workers were the first priority to be vaccinated, rightfully, and plan was to vaccinate 30 crore frontline workers inside 3-4 months in first phase of vaccination drive; and 5 months into the drive not even all of the frontline workers could be vaccinated. By numbers, India is amongst fastest vaccinating countries, but when it comes to ratio of its population, it fares poorly with not even 3% people been fully vaccinated yet. It is important to look into the matter and understand how much India has spent on research and production of vaccines.

A report from The Guardian, issued on 2nd April, 2021, claimed that as the US and European Union nations have been spending billions of dollars as aids for companies for research, development and production of vaccines, there is no concrete evidence of India spending on research and production of vaccines. Before the coronavirus pandemic struck, India was the largest vaccine producer in the world, but when the pandemic struck, soon the US and China surpassed India as largest vaccine manufacturers. Indian media had to go from taking pride in largest vaccination drive to reporting of mass shutting down of vaccinating centers owing to lack of jabs, such has been the vast hallucination we have been served for some years now. Owing to this very pride of Indian media, which not only confuses its people between Indian companies and the Indian government, it also reminds its people everyday that their very ability to question to sustain the world’s largest democracy is being massacred everyday.

After this report from The Guardian on 2nd April, 2021, the Indian government submitted an affidavit in the Supreme Court on 11th May, 2021 in which the government has clearly and specifically stated that the Indian government has not issued any grant or aid to the Serum Institute of India or Bharat Biotech, which implies no funds on research or development even for domestically developed Covaxin. Only 46 crores were funded to Bharat Biotech for clinical trials of Covaxin, that too by ICMR. Which means Indian media has been taking pride in vaccines made by AstraZeneca and a domestic company Bharat Biotech, and did not question for even once that why we have not been helping at least domestic companies for vaccine research.

If the affidavit submitted in Supreme Court by the government stands firm on authentic data and information, then what about the announcement made on 13th May, 2020 about 100 crores being allotted as aids for domestic candidates developing vaccines? Around same time last year, the US was investing 15 million dollars in various vaccine developing candidates, and was advancing vaccine orders worth 300 million dollars even before vaccines were developed. On 12th December, 2020, Union Finance Minister announced 900 crores aid for vaccine production, but the affidavit submitted by the government itself in SC claims no such grants were ever made. 20th April, 2021, news came in that Finance Ministry is advancing loans worth 3,000 crores to SII and 1,500 crores to Bharat Biotech for vaccine production, the affidavit holds advancement of these loans valid, though the money is yet to reach the companies. Adar Poonawalla of SII said last month while talking to a media outlet that he has been expecting these loans on the basis of media reports, thus he too believes in the Indian media, and on the same expectations his company has taken heavy loans from banks to continue vaccine production of Covishield. By the way Adar Poonawalla has field away from the country citing pressure from "influential" people and has been shying away from answering to what might have led to such huge covid surge in India during its second wave.

Thus, there was no Indian penny involved thus far in the production of vaccines by both these companies according to the Indian government.

With how we have been coping with the pandemic, various experts have been giving their ideas and views to deal with issues, and “revolutions” in Indian healthcare system are urgently required in post covid-era.

When the UK and many members of the European Union were witnessing devastating second wave earlier this year, Union Ministers in India were claiming that India has defeated covid and that India is in the ‘endgame’ of the pandemic, in fact the numbers were actually very low during the same period, and India was starting to return to normal just when the second wave started to unleash around mid-March, exposing lack of plans to tackle a potential second wave. Lack of preparedness on health infrastructure was visibly evident, when every political party was busy campaigning in states assembly elections and large crowd gatherings were seen at Kumbh. Could not these two super spreader events have been avoided temporarily to control covid surge, just like Nizamuddin Markaz could have been avoided last year, which again acted like a spreader event in the last wave, and was presented as such a heated topic by the Indian media for months last year?

In order to cope with heavy shortage of jabs, many health experts have been demanding government intervention in expanding vaccine production by involving other vaccine manufacturers as well by providing them vaccine formula and advancing tenders for vaccine production, for which steps are being taken only in this last week. The pace of the vaccination process also has been under heavy criticism as to why door to door vaccination proposals by several states has been turned down by the centre citing the latter has no such policy, given that polio vaccination process was a great success with minimum volunteers.

If both, SII and Bharat Biotech, are providing vaccines to the centre, states and private hospitals at different prices, with lowest price being for the centre and highest for private hospitals, could not the centre itself buy vaccines and provide them to state itself given that if states buy them on their own then they will have to pay double the price compared to the centre. 

The money of 22,000 crore rupees Central Vista project, if used to buy covid jabs, would buy a whopping 146.66 crore jabs, potentially enough to fully vaccinate around 70-72 crore Indian citizens, which again is potentially enough to create herd immunity throughout the country, just a mere statistic based on facts.

It is important to keep current feedbacks in mind in order for the work to be done. No person in this country would have ever thought that private hospitals one day would run out of their capabilities to treat them, and potentially exposing that bulk of them are mere money making firms. It is high time India start to spend more on its healthcare and education, and the possibility of government taking complete control of healthcare and education, like successful western countries, should not be ruled out even after it being a slow process to come true.

Recent lockdowns and curfews by states have shown a dip in covid numbers and positivity rate, oxygen crisis seem to be in some control in the recent week, and vaccine production is being increased after government stepped in. Surely next few weeks are very critical to control the new surge of B.1.617 Indian mutant strain, with people hoping that they will overcome this health crisis soon.

But history will remember that India’s numbers ascribed not in the official data, but at the crematorium centers.

[imaginetonyandbucky]

Keeping Me Alive

Chapter 10: Get Out Alive

by @dracusfyre​

    Now

“Save who you can,” Tony said to himself as he splashed water on his face.

He blindly grabbed for a towel and dried off, meeting his eyes in the mirror for what felt like the first time in years. “Don’t look back.” He straightened his shoulders and took a deep breath, trying to calm his nerves, and went out into his bedroom. He picked up the photo that sat on his bedside table and took it out of the frame, tucking it into the pocket of his pants. Glancing around his bedroom, he nodded once, and went down to his workshop. He saluted the painting of Howard on the wall then dug out the photo of the Winter Soldier from his desk and set it on fire, dropping it to the concrete floor and watching it burn.

 “Ready, JARVIS?” he asked. He ground the last bit of embers into the concrete to put them out.

 “Are you ready, sir?”

 “Yep,” Tony lied. “Let’s rock and roll.”

“Let it Burn Protocol initiated.” As JARVIS spoke, Tony felt the first explosion rock the house, rumbling through his feet as he stepped into the matte black suit in the gantry in the middle of the room. The facemask closed over his face as cracks appeared in the walls of the lab, and as the ground fell away from his feet he was already in the air.

36 days ago

Once he was sure that Stane was gone for good, Tony went down to his work shop and said, “Wake up, JARVIS, we have work to do.”

Sitting down at his workstation, he opened up the master file with the suit schematics and eyed the hologram critically. The hardest part of the suit to master was going to be the flight system, so he isolated and magnified that part from the diagram, studying the repulsors built into the gauntlets and boots with stabilizers along the back. “Start machining the parts I’m going to need for these,” he said. “Circumstances have changed and we are going to need to hit the ground running, so to speak."

“Yes, sir,” JARVIS said, and the whirring of machinery became a low hum, punctuated by sharp bzzts as parts were cut and de-burred. Tony studied the prototype, exploding the diagram, moving it around, and after a while came up with a short list of non-critical design items he could spoon feed to Hydra to show his ‘enthusiastic’ cooperation. An hour later, the whirring stopped and the sudden quiet broke Tony out of his concentration. He sat up and stretched, wincing as his back popped. Standing, he went over to the coffee maker and started a new pot, then dug under the counter for his emergency stash of scotch, splashing a fingers worth in his mug while he waited for the coffee.

He had realized two very important things today. The first was that the Soldier needed saving even more than Tony did; the knowledge that the man was Hydra’s slave, kept ignorant and locked up until Hydra needed an attack dog, had shifted Tony’s world view like a kaleidoscope, shaking up everything he thought knew and making an entirely new pattern. The second was that he couldn't keep waiting around for a chance to escape, he was going to have to make one.

This suit, he knew, was the key to both of those realizations. But this half-baked, insane plan to rescue the Winter Soldier was going to kick the anthill big time and Tony also knew he needed to have some kind of plan for dealing with Hydra in the aftermath. This wasn’t going to be like Afghanistan, where he thought he was out and got pulled right back in again. The stakes were way too high this time.

With that thought in mind, when the coffee was done, he filled up his mug and went back to his desk. He pulled up the operating program for the suit and created a subroutine to overload the reactor, ignoring the flash red warning that said that this would result in a critical core breach and an uncontrolled chain reaction, and set the activation code as “Last Resort.”

One way or another, he thought as he sipped on his doctored coffee, this suit would be his way out.

  32 Days Ago

Tony stared tiredly at the news as he took a swallow of stone-cold coffee. The breaking report was about the assassination of an Iranian nuclear scientist. Iran was already blaming Israel, who was of course denying it, but in response Iran was threatening to pull out of the treaties against nuclear enrichment and swore they could split the atom within the year. Political and military analysts were seeing storm clouds on the horizon unless someone backed down and talking about how another war would tax America's already overstretched military. Tony, meanwhile, could tell that this assassination had Hydra's fingerprints all over it, and knew that this was almost certainly the work of the Soldier. "JARVIS," Tony said, muting the television. "I need you to break into Hydra’s servers and find everything you can on the Winter Soldier. Cross reference it with the name James Barnes.” There was a chance that Stane had made the name up, but it seemed unlikely – from what he could tell, the Soldier would have responded to anything, and ‘James Barnes’ was a lot more specific than a simple ‘John Smith’ or ‘Joe Blow.’ “Actually, while you’re at it,” Tony said, having a sudden thought, “I want all of Hydra’s files. Copy them to one of SI’s remote servers.”

Hours later, Tony was just finishing up the wiring assembly for the repulsor system when his computer dinged. Setting down the soldering gun, Tony rubbed his eyes tiredly and turned on his monitor to see what JARVIS had found. To his dismay, there were thousands of files on the Winter Soldier; as he scrolled down the list, he realized that they went back decades. “Fuck,” he said aloud as he looked at the dates and the file names, most of which were a string of letters and numbers that no doubt made sense to someone in Hydra but gave no clue as to what the file contained. He buried his head in his hands and tried not to cry at the enormity of the task in front of him. He was so tired that his eyes were blurry and his head was pounding, but every time he tried to close his eyes he kept seeing James’s body arching with pain and hearing his screams.

“Sir, it has been twelve hours and thirty-six minutes since you last ate,” JARVIS said. “And you’ve made four mistakes in the past fifteen minutes. You need to rest.”

“I have?” Tony pulled his magnifying glass back over to the circuit board and saw what JARVIS was talking about. “Shit. Alright, fine.” He pushed away from the desk and went to the bar sink next to the coffee pot and ran his head under cold water for a second. He came up and wiped his face and the back of his neck, shivering as water dripped from his hair down his back, and went upstairs to look for food. Leaving his work shop felt like he was crossing into hostile territory, like he could be attacked at any moment. And he could, he thought as he opened the refrigerator. Stane had made sure that he always had free access to Tony’s home, because a locked door meant secrets and the only secrets Hydra allowed were their own. He wished he could just walk away from this place, blow it up and find a place to live that Hydra had never stepped foot in, a place that would feel like it was his –

He froze with a jug of orange juice in his hand. He stood there, thoughts racing, for so long that the chiller on the refrigerator came on with a hum. Then Tony said “Huh” to the boxes of leftovers and absently shut the fridge door, OJ still in hand.

25 Days Ago

“JARVIS, this doesn’t make sense,” Tony said, rereading the file for the fifth time. “This thing is saying that the first Winter Soldier was James Barnes, but the current Winter Soldier is James Barnes.” It was hard to think that it was a clerical error, since the earliest files went back to the 1940s and consisted of paper files that had been scanned into a computer sometimes in the 80s. “Is it an alias? Are all Winter Soldiers called ‘James Barnes’ as a security precaution?”

“Facial pattern analysis indicates that it is the same James Barnes,” JARVIS said, and it flashed up an image that looked like a scanned-in polaroid; in it the man was unconscious on an operating table, face dirty and bloody and pale. Next to it JARVIS pulled up an image from Hydra’s own security footage of what the Soldier looked like without his goggles and mask on. There was a vague resemblance to Tony’s eyes, but as the facial recognition algorithm measured the features in each photograph, the conclusion was mathematically precise – there was a 99.7% chance that it was the same man in each photo.

Tony’s face went slack with shock. “How is that possible? He’d have to be almost 100 years old!”

“That part I don’t know, sir.”

“Holy shit.” Tony went back to the original file, reading it more carefully. “James Buchanan Barnes,” he read. “Born 1917. American POW.” He paused at that and sat back in his chair. “Why does that sound familiar?”

In response, JARVIS pulled up a Wikipedia page on Tony’s screen. As he read it, Tony was speechless; for a long moment, he flipped screens between the dead-eyed man from Hydra’s surveillance footage and the smiling man with his arm around Captain America, but this time he didn’t need JARVIS to tell him that it was the same man. The implications made his stomach turn, and as he stared at the screen he exhaled shakily and covered his mouth with his hands. 80 years. James Barnes had been in Hydra’s clutches for 80 years.

He stood suddenly, sending his chair rolling backwards. “We’re doing another flight test. Right now.” 80 years was already far too long, and Tony wasn't going to let it be one more day longer than it had to be.

19 Days Ago

“Tony!” Ms. Potts said with surprise. “I didn’t expect you in the office today.”

Probably because Tony had been dodging Stark Industries for a while now, only coming out of his lab long enough to get her to leave him alone before burying himself in work again. It had occurred to him as he got in his car to go to SI headquarters, blinking in the bright sunlight, that this was the first time he had been outside of the house since Stane’s forced excursion. “Yeah, I wanted to meet with you,” Tony said, shutting the door behind him.  He set a stack of papers in front of her as he sat down.

“What’s this?” She said, flipping through the papers. There was a line of confusion between her eyebrows which only deepened as she started reading them.

“I’m making you CEO of Stark Industries,” Tony said. “Effective two weeks from now. Should be an easy transition, you do most of my job anyway.” He grabbed a pin from her desk and clicked it, the sound loud in the sudden silence. “Sign on the highlighted line, please,” he added, holding the pen out to her, and despite everything he had to smile at the stunned look on her face.

  11 Days Ago

Tony put a hand on Rhodey’s arm and met his eyes, willing him to understand. “I’m saying that Afghanistan wasn’t a random attack,” he said urgently. “I think I was being targeted, and I think whoever did it might try again.” He palmed a thumb drive from his pocket and slid it across the table. In the Hydra files, JARVIS had found that a senator named Stern had been behind the Afghanistan attack, apparently trying to get Tony out of the way so that his good buddy Justin Hammer and his company Hammer Industries could take over SI's lucrative military contracts. There was all of that and more on here, just enough information that if Rhodey put all the threads together he would start getting the bigger picture. Pierce, the STRIKE teams, all of it. “If anything happens to me, I need you to finish what I’ve started.”

“Tony, if you are afraid for your life-“ Rhodey started, still looking dubious but starting to get alarmed.

“Not just me. You. Ms. Potts. Anyone I'm friends with. I can’t do anything to make these people suspicious,” Tony insisted. It was strange to feel like he was lying even though every word he’d said was true. “No unexplained bodyguards, no sudden trips, and absolutely no cops.”

“I don’t like this,” Rhodey said emphatically. “You’re asking me to sit back and wait to see if someone kills you!”

“I know what I’m doing,” Tony said. That part was a lie. He had a plan in the broadest definition of the word; mostly he was making it up as he went along and praying he could handle the fallout. “I need you to trust me.” Rhodey’s mouth was a grim line and his jaw was tight, and Tony knew he wasn’t convinced so he pulled out his trump card. “I can’t do this unless I know you are safe,” he said, lowering his voice and leaning forward. “I won’t risk you.” It took a long minute, and Rhodey looked like he was swallowing something unpleasant, but he finally nodded and put the thumb drive in his pocket. Tony exhaled and sagged with relief. “Thank you."

“When this is over, you better have a good damn explanation,” Rhodey said threateningly, and Tony barked out a humorless laugh.

“You won’t even believe me when you hear it.”

  8 Days Ago

After Tony hit save on the final design of the suit, he stumbled over to the couch and landed on it face first, exhausted. He was laying on the couch, eyes drifting shut as he went over his plan for the hundredth time trying to figure out if he’d missed anything when the lab went dark. “What the hell, JARVIS?”

“Sir, it’s been 56 hours since you last slept,” JARVIS said. “I’m turning off your systems for a minimum of twelve hours.” The light in the stairwell going up to the main floor turned on, its glow just enough to let Tony get from the couch to the door without running into anything.

Tony stayed stubbornly on the couch. “We don’t have twelve hours to waste,” he said. “Turn my power back on.”

The lights stayed off. “Sir, you are a hazard to yourself and others.” Tony scowled and wondered if he had actually programmed JARVIS like this or if he was channeling the man himself. "Also, there's nothing for you to do while I assemble the suit."

“Fine. Ten hours.”

“Ten hours," JARVIS repeated. "I will be monitoring the situation while you sleep,” he added, and Tony knew that he meant not just monitoring Stane and James, but also Tony’s vital signs to make sure he actually slept.

“You’re insufferable,” Tony accused as he made his way up the stairs.

“Yes, sir.”

 2 Days Ago

“Sir, there’s something you should see.”

Tony looked up from the fine-tuning he was doing on the suit’s shoulder-fired weapons to look at the computer screen. JARVIS had maximized the window where he was constantly monitoring Pierce’s communications and highlighted a text that had just been sent. It was to an unknown number and all it said was lvl 10, CovJer10131973 nlt 200810162200Z. The first part was clearly a target identifier and Tony knew enough about the military to recognize the latter as a date time group, set for five days from now. “Bring up the camera feed,” Tony said, and sure enough when Tony looked at the video surveillance of the room where James was kept, he could see that the lights in the room were on and a technician was already in the room powering on computers. They’d found out a while ago that what Tony had taken for a hyperbaric chamber was in fact a cryostasis chamber, which partly explained why James was almost a hundred years old but looked younger than Tony.

“Shit." Tony exhaled long and low, feeling his heart rate spike with nervousness. "How long it takes to thaw him out? Was that in his files?”

JARVIS was silent for a moment. “Evidence suggests approximately 24 hours from the time the procedure is first initiated,” he said.

“Right,” Tony said grimly, turning back to his work with a new urgency. “Guess it’s time.”

 Now

Tony flew north along the coast as his house collapsed into the Pacific Ocean behind him, throwing billowing clouds of dust and smoke into the air as carefully placed explosives reduced it to a smoking ruin. It was thrilling and terrifying to know that for all intents and purposes Tony Stark was sinking to the bottom of the ocean. He'd become a dead man after all, and now the only thing left was this suit and his mission: rescue the Winter Soldier then burn Hydra to the ground.

“Pull up James' video feed for me," Tony said as he flew. Since he was over water, he set the suit to autopilot and shifted his attention to the small window at the corner of his HUD.  James was out of the cryostasis chamber, sitting on a chair as a medical assistant appeared to be taking his vitals. Every now and then he shivered, still shirtless. Other technicians were milling around, tending to the computers, and standing guard were was two members of the STRIKE team, hands on their weapons as they kept an eye on him. His records had indicated that he was prone to ‘erratic violent outbursts,’ which Tony figured was code for “periodically tries to fight back.” Tony had actually been happy to read that, because it meant that Hydra hadn't managed to break him completely. Right now, though, James just seemed willing to numbly submit to whatever the technicians were doing, his long hair a curtain in front of his face as he stared at the floor.

“Sir, we are approaching the facility,” JARVIS said, and minimized the video. Tony flew lower to the water, navigating around the giant cargo ships at dock. Even for a twenty-four hour facility it was late, and there were only one or two ships that had people still unloading shipping containers. He landed close to the Hydra facility but out of the line of sight; he had managed to camouflage the suit to the best of his ability, but he couldn’t hide the bright lights of the repulsors so he made the rest of the approach on foot.

JARVIS’s scanners found four total guards around the building, patrolling in pairs. By sticking to the deep shadows cast by the stacked shipping containers and the orange-yellow glow of the sodium-vapor security lights, Tony got within hearing distance and hit them with a pulse of high-pitched wave frequency. They both stiffened and fell over, paralyzed, helmets bouncing off the pavement hard enough to knock them unconscious. Tony bound them with their own zip ties and hid them out of sight, then used his backdoor access to the security system to unlock the doors and set all the surveillance cameras on a one hour loop. As he strode through the door into the lab, all eyes turned to face him, and before anyone could even speak there was a brrrt noise and they fell to the floor, killed by the precision targeting system Tony had built into his suit.

When JARVIS confirmed they were all dead, Tony took off the helmet and looked down at one of the bodies; the one closest to him had been here a month ago, monitoring James’ vitals as they wiped his mind. This was the first time Tony had killed anyone and he expected to feel..something, sad or upset or even vindictive, but he didn’t really feel anything. It all felt too easy, and Tony knew it was because he had designed a suit that had made it that easy. All the more reason that Hydra couldn't be allowed to get their hands on it.

James was still sitting in the chair, watching Tony as he approached; he hadn’t even gone for cover as everyone around him had died. Tony wondered if it was out of surprise or indifference. “Do you know me?” He asked, coming to stand in front of him. James studied his features for a moment and shook his head. “My name is Tony Stark. You are James Buchanan Barnes, and I am here to rescue you.” Tony offered him a hand to get to his feet, but James didn’t move, he just stared at Tony with those glacier blue eyes. There wasn't blankness in them now, only a narrow-eyed look of consideration. “Come on,” Tony tried again. “We’re escaping. We have to hurry before more people show up.”

James didn’t move. “There is no escape from Hydra. The only way out is-”

“Death, I know.” Tony kept his hand out but gestured expressively around the room with the other. “But they never said whose death.”

James studied him again, then turned his gaze to the dead bodies. Finally, after a long moment, he took Tony’s hand and let him pull him to his feet.

[prettyflyshyguy]

Teehee what if I was to drop most of the C Virus AU Fanfic CH3 right now at 12:28AM... Unless.

Unedited/draft Ch1, Ch2 first half, Ch2 second half, for your perusal, and here’s a very unedited first chunk of CH3 that isn’t quite finished because I have work tomorrow but it involves interaction with Ada and I’m sitting here all :)))))))))) while writing so I hope you enjoy!

Perched atop a building, he scanned the area below. As he was making his way towards the area where Simmons should be, he had heard gunfire. Despite his grizzly appearance, if someone was in trouble he could still find a way to help, surely. A street facing door was suddenly kicked open and a figure stumbled out, with a crossbow of all things in their hands. 

‘No. Way.’ he thought as he carefully descended from the roof, wanting to get a clearer look. 

The survivor fired a shot at something inside the building, before ducking back. A small explosion occurred and a BOW, screaming and flailing stumbled out. It was more grotesque than the other C-Virus monstrosities he’d seen so far, and it looked like it had a chainsaw for an arm. It screamed in agony while the survivor readied another shot. Carefully maneuvering himself behind some rubble, the light from another small explosion from the crossbow’s bolt illuminated the survivors face for a brief moment, fully confirming his suspicions. 

It was Ada, for sure. At least he thought so. She was wearing the same clothes as when he and Helena saw her in the catacombs. The mystery was still there however; which one was the real Ada Wong? Was there even a singular one? Was she just switching outfits and motives in some twisted game?

Flicking a glance back in her direction, she was staring down at the body of the BOW lying smoking on the floor, inert. He shuffled, ever so carefully, avoiding making any noise so he could tactically reposition to try and make contact. He stiffened as he felt the vibration of rubble shift under his foot, a small amount of dirt and rocks crumbling. 

“Now what do we have here.”

Hoping if he kept still enough, she’d think no one was there, he held his breath. His heart rate increased as he heard the soft clack of her boots on the concrete approaching at a gentle pace, a bolt being loaded. No time to think.

Placing his hands on the ground, crouching back, he launched himself over the rubble, ignoring the sound of a bolt  whizzing just past his ear. Spotting a broken window one floor up a building, he leapt into it and backed up against the wall panting, just as another bolt narrowly missed its mark.

“Honey I didn’t have the time to deal with this overly enthusiastic fellow,”

He heard the sound of another bolt being loaded.

“So how about you help a girl out and make this quick and easy for both of us.”

The ‘thwip’ of a bolt pierced the air and one landed on the other side of the room. It bounced off the wall, fell to the floor and rolled slowly towards him. The head of the bolt looked large and blunt and had a small blinking red LED. He didn’t need to guess what it meant as the rate increased, and the bolt exploded in a flash of light and smoke. 

Ada stared at the cloud billowing out of the window, preparing another round for good measure. Her eyes narrowed as a few seconds passed, with no movement. She raised her weapon and aimed at where the window was, but it was barely visible now as the smoke had spread. 

Suddenly the creature leapt through the smoke with frightening speed, grabbing her arm and pushing it away as she shot the loaded bolt in a random direction. It ripped the crossbow out of her arm and backed up as she spun around to face it, reaching for her holster. 

Feeling nothing, her eyes widened as she noticed it was holding her handgun and crossbow. It tossed the bow aside gently, and with elegance she’d never seen from a BOW removed the magazine from the gun and dropped both parts either side of it. It maintained eye contact with her the entire time, its eyes were piercing and displayed a terrifying degree of human intelligence.

Covering up the fear in her head, she smiled.

“I can’t say I’ve ever met a man who’s tried this hard to get my attention.”

She started to pace slowly around as she drew a knife from her belt, the creature mimicked her pace as they circled. 

It began to raise its arms, she dove in with the knife and test jabbed to check its reflexes. It was fast, faster than her. 

Her expression turned stern. It backed up a few paces, eyes focused on her as she furiously walked closer brandishing the knife.

“I’m a very, busy, woman.” she grunted while slashing. “And I don’t, have the time, for stalkers.”

Whatever the hell she was dealing with, it clearly knew the basics of CQC. Dancing and ducking around her every swing and jab, although it made no attempt to hit her back. Suddenly its eyes flicked to something behind her, a distraction and an opening. She thrusted the knife forward but something grabbed her by the ankle and almost toppled her, one hand slamming into the ground, the other with the knife at the ready. Flicking her head to the source, the charred and burnt BOW with the chainsaw arm simply refused to die, it and had a vice grip around her right ankle. The sound of bone and flesh grinding louder and louder as it lifted its twisted machination of a chainsaw arm up as the teeth and bone started spinning again. 

She looked back to the creature in front of her only to find it gone, suddenly turning back to the one grabbing her ankle, her eyes widened as she saw the second creature holding the chainsaw-arm back, with one foot on the BOW’s back. The charred living corpse let out a chilling howl as the creature pinning it down pulled its arm further back, dislocating the mutated tendons and bone, ripping muscle. The bone-tooth blade stopped spinning and the vice grip loosened. Ada sprung back up and turned around to face the creature that by all intends, spared her. It was panting while staring at the charred corpse, seemingly ensuring it was truly dead this time. She took the opportunity and sprung towards it, holding the knife in both hands.

At almost the last second before the knife hit its chest it flung one arm up to push hers back, and grabbed one of her wrists with its other, stopping her completely in her tracks. She grimaced and stared up at its face, meeting its eyes. There was almost a pleading look to them. Its grip on her wrist was firm, but not painful, she kept the knife pointed at its chest but shifted her weight so not as much force was pushing her into its arms. Despite the overcast sky, a small break in the clouds shifted and moonlight illuminated the scene and the creature's face. That’s when she noticed its unmistakable hair, the soft blue eyes. The fact it didn’t even lay a scratch on her. 

“...Leon?”

His face softened and the concern was replaced with the beginnings of a warm smile, he loosened his grip on her arms and started to relax-

Her knee struck his stomach with frightening force, he stumbled back with a grunt.

“That’s for almost breaking my crossbow.”

He smiled slightly as he cocked his head to one side, probably deserved that. He gently collected her sidearm and magazine, grateful to find out despite his hands shifting he was still able to comfortably reload the gun with ease. She collected her crossbow, a pleased smile graced her face as she examined it and found it was not damaged.

“So, cat got your tongue?” her playful tone hid a mixture of contradicting emotions. 

She turned back to Leon who had a hand extended, holding her sidearm out. Taking it back, she took a moment to actually look at him. He always ‘stood tall’ around her, she noted he was even taller now and actually towered over her with an air of confidence after managing to disarm her so carefully. It was hard to maintain a certain level of composure, he had hardly changed and the thought was warm but looking at what had happened was painful. His eyes were exactly the same but she could barely return his gaze without her composure breaking. 

He shuffled slightly, then opened his mouth. Hoping something normal sounding would come out. 

“Aa…” 

The more he tried to force it, the more it hurt his throat. His shoulders shrunk inwards slightly as he turned his head to face away from her, the embarrassment and shame of the situation returning. He didn’t want to face her like this, he was regretting even trying to talk to h-

“Did Simmons do this?”

Giving up the vocal option, he shook his head. He shifted towards a wall, leaning comfortably facing her, with a flick of the wrist he pointed a finger briefly towards her, then folded his arms.

“... It was the bitch in the blue dress, wasn’t it.”

He tilted his head to one side slightly, his expression stern. 

“After everything I’ve seen, it’d be pretty cold of me to just say ‘it’s complicated’ don’t you think?” she joked with a forced smile.

No one was laughing. Leon had a very high level of tolerance for her usual manner of speaking, cryptic and tangential, not today however. His entire life changed the day they met in Racoon City but this blows that experience well out of the water.

“I don’t know who she is, but Simmons made her using the C-Virus. Starting off as a bootleg version of me but it seems like she’s got big plans of her own now.”

His stare was piercing. 

“I’m sorry.” 

His face softened as he raised an eyebrow in surprise.

“Simmons became… A little too attached to me. I wasn’t interested in playing by his rules, let’s just say he took it a little personally when I didn’t reciprocate his feelings.”

She paced around the courtyard as she spoke.

“I don’t know how he did it, but his obsession resulted in him using the C-Virus to create a very imperfect clone of me. A bootleg Ada Wong if you will.”

Leon snorted in amusement, but he maintained his stance. Closely watching as she stood still and looked back at him.

“I’m not working for Simmons. We’re on the same side, I promise.”

Then who do you work for?

The question echoed in his mind. The one time Ada talks with him at length, he can barely say her name. He looked away, frustrated and ashamed of the circumstance. Hearing her walk closer he turned slightly only to feel the warmth of her hand brush up against his cheek, his eyes flicking towards it and back to her as they widened slightly. His arms fell to his side as her other hand gently rested on his arm. Despite the transformation he still felt the temperature of his face increase, not expecting anyone he knew would even be able to accept what happened to him and be so gentle, especially not Ada. 

“I came here to clean up the mess Simmons started but now… Now it’s personal.”

[muthaz-rapapa]

HealPre Final Review: Not terrible but not entirely laudable either...

*sigh* Where do I start?

Well, one thing I’m pretty sure of is that COVID definitely affected production somehow. By that, I don’t just mean the show needing to go on hiatus, resulting in a shorter run compared to previous seasons. I’m also talking about any possible changes that might’ve been made to the original narrative, if there was one.

Much like how Suite’s story had to be altered in the wake of the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami disaster, I believe Heal underwent a similar treatment in response to the pandemic becoming more widespread as 2020 went on.

Especially since it dealt with health and nature, HealPre is probably the season that has come the closest in relevancy to real life events.

Frankly, that can be quite scary because this virus was and is still a fucking nightmare on a massive global scale. From that view, I can understand why the writers/producers would be concerned of the anime hitting too near home. At least for their main demographic’s (children) sake, maybe they were compelled to shift to something lighter and less edgier so that the kids could find some comfort and enjoyment in the midst of the world’s current crisis.

So I can’t fault Toei for that, if that’s really the case. Going through a pandemic is terrifying, infuriating and exhausting and UGH. We could use something that can help ease our worries or momentarily distract us even a little bit. 

Though would it have killed them to dedicate one episode to the importance of wearing a mask or washing hands? (-_- ;;)

HOWEVER! Seeing as I am not a fragile child, I’ve still got several (oho~) criticisms to air out before I put this season behind me. This review isn’t particularly scathing but...there is a lot of discontent so you’ve been forewarned.

But first, let’s tediously review what structure means in Precure.

We all know that there are certain things that will forever (?) remain fixed in the series formula.

The plot is always going to be “magical girls fight evil doers threatening to ruin the world”.

There are plot points to indicate story progression but in reality, are put there to correspond with toy releases which are usually marked by these five: introductions, first power up, midseason Cure, second power up, and build-up to the climax + finale.

There is usually a specific message (a theme) to be told with every season and motifs (narrative tools) to aid in getting that across. For HealPre, the theme is “living is fighting” and its motifs are “health” and “nature”.

I left out “animals” b/c 1) it didn’t hold as much significance as the other two did, 2) animals are part of nature anyway and 3) let’s be real, it’s just a synonym for “mascots” which we already get every year. :P

Right. I’m probably forgetting something but for the most part, these are immovable pillars of Precure.

Story, on the other hand, has more variables you can work with.

Story is how you tell the plot, how you convey the message.

Precure, as a tv series, is unarguably carried by its main stars, the Cures. So it only makes sense that a huge percentage of a season’s success owes itself to how much of an impact its characters had on the audience as well as how effective their individual story arcs were as sub-plots tying back to the bigger picture (the message/theme).

Ideally, these arcs would shine the brightest in the filler episodes, where the plot  (“good guys vs. bad guys”) is less of a focus so there is more space for personal development and growth.

Also, not all character arcs have to be directly related to the plot but they ought to be written well in order to support the overarching message (the theme).

Now, has HealPre done that? Has each girl’s story demonstrated a good example of what “living is fighting” means?

...nnnnnnyyeeee... look, even I can’t give a straightforward answer on that because while technically they did, by virtue of Nodoka’s observance in ep 44 recounting it as such, there’s also actually not enough to make it feel substantial from a viewer’s standpoint.

At least, that’s what I thought while watching HealPre.

With the exception of Nodoka’s, there was a lot of saying but not much doing to convincingly back the other girls’ arcs up. The fillers themselves were very weak, loosely composed in relation to the motifs and, if I may be so blunt, downright boring that if Nodoka didn’t phrase those episodes as things that counted towards the theme, I probably would put up more of a fight on disagreeing. so shoot me, I’m soft for her :P

And I know that sounds confusing right now but I will elaborate as I continue.

Before that though, to be utterly fair, some seasons keep their respective themes shrouded in vagueness until they’re given a more concrete form in words around the finale. So it’s not like we can do much except make educated guesses on what they really are. Most of the time, we’re just measuring everything against our perception of a standard in the fog. Or maybe that’s just me?

Nevertheless, you can just tell, y’know? By simply watching and observing the whole show, you can tell if the characterization, the development, and the outcome (essentially the content given) really live up to what the season claims is endgame.

So let’s go through that first then. The characters, starting with our lead Cure...

Nodoka being the only Cure in her team to have an arc deserving of the praise “exceptional” should come as a surprise to no one.

She was the most solid in terms of direction on how her story was going to proceed. Out of all the girls, her journey had the greatest connection to the subject “health”, repeatedly delved into it every time the spotlight was on her and fulfilled everything it seemed to promise from her debut in episode 1.

Her struggles on the road to recovery from a long-term illness and the strength she’s drawn from that traumatizing experience as well as her time as Precure did more than establish her as the strongest character in HealPre.

She has also rose to become one of the most memorable Pink Cures in the entire franchise (personally, I rank her in the top 5).

And it’s not hard to see why she’s earned such high regard in a lot of fans’ hearts.

The writers clearly worked a lot on her character composition to the point where she can pretty much embody the theme of “living is fighting” all on her own.

She came into HealPre fresh out of the hospital and full of earnest desire to make the most of her newfound freedom but she also wasn’t without knowledge on what hardship is. From there, she only got stronger, even when she was stumbling and trying to figure things out along the way. She grew more fortified in her beliefs on what it means to be truly live a healthy life.

She bravely defied the ones who attempted to take advantage of her and twist her cause against her. And she learned that taking care of herself is equally as important as wanting others to be safe from harm.

It was never about winning or coming out on top. It was about protecting a fundamental yet precious truth. That one thing any decent human being should never have to concede: the right to live well.

Honestly, Nodoka is absolutely inspiring all around, as a fictional character, a heroine and a normal everyday person.

Everything about her arc went satisfyingly right like it was meant to and the best thing is, we don’t need to question it because we saw how it all happened with our very own eyes.

I sincerely wished I could say the same for the others but sadly, they were just too flawed.

And Pegitan can throw flippers with me all day if he wants but as undeniable as the above statements are about Chiyu, her arc failed to leap over the increasingly mounting disappointment I had with every episode that’s been assigned solely to her.

Two of which weren’t even about Chiyu. One centered on Pegitan’s admiration for his partner and the other focused on her brother, Touji. Which, while nice to give to supporting/secondary characters, is a fat waste of valuable screentime and not what I’m here for.

It also didn’t help that the conflict of her arc (the indecision over choosing between two dreams) started really late in the game and was resolved so quickly within two episodes. There was no time for me to get invested into it, there was no powerful sense of conviction like how Go!Pri or Hugtto handled theirs and really, it just felt like Chiyu was only following what the script dictated for her rather than genuinely awakening to her own competitive passion towards track and field.

It was almost like it didn’t matter. Almost as if the writers procrastinated in thinking up something worthwhile to further her development...but then settled on grabbing an old idea off the shelf without refining it to suit Chiyu when they ran out of time.

This happened similarly with Minami in Go!Pri and Elena in StarPre, both of whom left me angry at how their arcs were executed. Yet theirs don’t compare to how pissed off I am about Chiyu’s. Because while Minami’s took a while to arrive, it wasn’t done poorly and linked back to Go!Pri’s theme well enough. And while Elena’s was over crammed last minute, at least it was unique to her character and had lots of potential ways to play out if they actually started it earlier on in StarPre.

Chiyu’s arc is like a discount version of the former with hardly any of the intriguing qualities of the latter. Sure, she had two early episodes that laid out the two most important aspects of her life (her family inn and her dedication to her sport) but after that, they weren’t brought up again until we were only weeks away from the ending. Y’know, just to fill up episode slots and meet the minimal requirement of saying they did give Chiyu some issue to resolve. 

It was not engaging at all.

Furthermore, the fact that her arc had very little to no relation with either “health” or “nature” hurt my appreciation of her character somewhat. I just...don’t think her kind of story really matches with the central topics of HealPre?

...but maybe I’m being bitter about this all wrong and that’s screwing up my rational thinking on this matter.

Because Chiyu’s arc is valid under the logic of the overall theme, I would never say it isn’t. And again, character arcs don’t have to be close to the plot nor is it necessary to employ the “suffering builds character” method to make them interesting.

Chiyu always does her best every day. That’s sufficient argument on why her story does fit within the frame of HealPre’s premise.

Guess I’ll just have to wrangle my resistance into acceptance somehow.

...still, her arc could’ve been done so much better than what we were given. Chiyu at least deserved that much.

Next, Hinata.

Since the beginning, I knew she was gonna be runner-up to Nodoka for having the (for lack of better term atm) “best” arc because it was heavily implied that she has ADHD and therefore, immediately checked off the “health” trait. She was even more obvious about it than Nozomi was.

Difficulty paying attention, hyperactivity, impulsiveness. Hinata didn’t just display all those signs, she also showed how hard it was for her to deal with the downsides to them on a regular basis.

She kept apologizing and put herself down excessively for inconveniencing her friends even though they never blamed her for her condition. Got them annoyed a few times, yes, but didn’t stop them from staying friends with her and definitely didn’t make them hate her either.

Everybody was understanding of Hinata...except Hinata because she always took her failures to heart and considered quitting several times to avoid the crushing dejection of making mistakes over and over again.

She got better, though, and no one could have summed it up more heartwarmingly than Nyatoran with the encouraging words he gave her at the conclusion of her arc. 

But it still feels like there’s a huge chunk of development missing between the start and finish. Or rather, it seemed like all of it occurred offscreen and we were only informed later that it did in fact, happen.

To recap, iirc, Hinata had around 5 episodes that focused on her (ep 9, 13, 23, 35 and 40). Ep 18 doesn’t count because that was a Nyatoran-centric filler more than anything.

Ep 9 and 13 did their jobs of introducing and highlighting the details of Hinata’s troubles while also suggesting she will eventually learn to overcome her insecurities. The ones after, though? They pushed those issues to the backseat.

In Ep 23, she had to share the (uneven) spotlight with Asumi. Hinata’s improvements were briefly mentioned but the majority of the ep went to teaching Asumi what “cute” meant and how to get along with puppies. I mean, I get that Asumi recently joined the group and bonding with her was mandatory by tradition. But since each Cure only gets a limited number of eps to herself, it would’ve been more beneficial for Hinata if she didn’t have to split screentime with someone else’s growth schedule.

Ep 35 is slightly better but not by a whole lot. Sure, Natasha was able to reconcile with Elizabeth which was very sweet and heck, it was the goal for that episode. But again, nothing was really done or addressed about Hinata’s main conflict. She tossed it back with the rest of her homework to deal with later. ahaha, a TroPre hint

Then ep 40 came to formally close the curtains on her story and apparently, Hinata screwed up lots of times since...whenever but she picked herself up every time after and kept on trying. Awesome. So WHY didn’t we get to see that? 

I’m not asking for the impossible here. I’m not asking for Hinata to be cured or anything miraculous like that. There is treatment available for ADHD but it is not curable.

Also, forcing Hinata to find a way to get better at studying, the thing she struggles with the most, is not the solution either because that would only make her more stressed and anxious over her own disorder.

What I want is to see how she moved from wailing “I can’t do it! I don’t wanna! I’m so scared of failing so why bother?!” to determinedly declaring “So what if I failed 1 or 100 times? So what if I fail another 1000 times? What matters is that I don’t let that stop me!”

That confidence is not something that can be built up overnight. It’s gradual and it takes numerous tries to reach from where Hinata was to where Hinata is now.

Telling me she grew emotionally stronger can only allow me to believe so much. I need to actually witness the changes as well.

If it weren’t for that, Hinata’s arc would have been a lot more impressive. Shame.

Finally............... Asumi.

Asumi, Asumi, Asumi, Asumi, Asumi, Asumi, Asumi... *sighs & drums fingers*

...she has no arc, ok? Seriously, what story is there to speak of, much less write a hefty analysis on?

A spirit born for the sake of Latte who just went along with the Precure ride because Latte didn’t want to abandon her duty. She made friends with those who aren’t Latte, extended her knowledge and understanding and gained valuable human experience during her stay on Earth. But ultimately, she will always define her entire existence around a puppy. 

Nothing is more important than this puppy.

...... to be honest, Asumi not having a storyline isn’t what bothers me. It’s her lack of depth that does.

Hell, even the giant burger she ate had more depth than she did!

Oh, Asumi does have a personality alright. She’s consistently and unfailingly polite, utterly devoted to her raison d’être and in crucial moments, gives pearls of wisdom when the girls are in a pinch. She’s good.

But if that’s all she is, then she’s also painfully dull.

She has nothing to contribute to the discussion of health or nature, despite being created through an element of the Earth so you’d think she’d have an opinion of her own. At least worry about the planet that gave life to her as much as she frets over Latte all the time. But nope.

She shares the exact same face as Teatine’s past Precure partner so you’d think we’d explore that connection to see if it would influence or affect her in any way. But nope.

90% of the time, her role was just being Latte’s constant, fawning satellite.

Not only did that irritate the hell out of me but it just reinforced my stance that this type of character is one of the worst you can ever insert into any narrative.

Because if someone keeps reiterating how much they’re obsessed with this one thing and seldom talks about anything else without bringing their obsession into it... then what’s so special about them on their own?

You’ve practically surrendered the different qualities you could have had for worship of something else. That’s not a fair trade-in.

Asumi’s character is so packed with Latte-related stuff that there’s not much space left for anything that can be considered uniquely Asumi.

I mean, maybe it’s because I can never see myself or any normal person comfortable with living like that.

Living for the sake of being together with the one you love? Okay. But living with your whole universe revolving around that one thing? Making most if not all decisions based on this one thing?

No. That’s absolutely crazy, alright? Nobody with a healthy amount of awareness and self-worth would live like that.

And you can counter that Asumi’s just born like that. That she can’t help her origins because Teatine’s wish to protect her daughter is essentially what brought Asumi into existence so of course, her biggest concern would be Latte. At least, she wasn’t forced into it, right? As long as Asumi chose of her own will to follow Latte, it should be fine, right?

You can even use the fact that Asumi isn’t human. That she’s a spirit and we shouldn’t apply our human standards too strictly to her.

Yea, but those are feeble defenses in the face of her being a good main character, a good main heroine. 

There are many ways to make a decent MC. The way Asumi was written proves she certainly does not possess traits that can classify her as true protagonist material. A protagonist has to be more than one amplified feature, which Asumi is not.

For the record, I don’t hate Asumi (she’s not interesting enough to generate a feeling that intense). I'm just severely let down because even if I don’t end up loving the midseason Cure for whatever reason, I can usually count on them to bring something intriguing to the table to dissect and analyze. At least I should find something to care about them.

Didn’t happen with her. :(

Oh god, I’ve been working on this post for days now and I’ve got a headache and with the baton pass happening in less than a few hours as I type this, I just really need to get it done and over with so please forgive me for speeding up through the rest, I’ll try to keep it as coherent as possible. NYARGH! (@_@ ;;)

Mascots.

Would you be surprised to hear that I’m not surprised that they were actually written very well?

Like I said early on, I suspected the return of fairy partnerships were going to improve the mascots’ significance in the story and, well, I was right. 

This time, they didn’t just fill in the usual expectations of relaying exposition, serving as the Cures’ transformation devices and looking cute for the merchandise. The Healing Animals had to make progress on their own training to become doctors as well.

And they did through their relationships with their human partners.

It was a refreshing take on the mascot aspect of the series because the friendships felt really symbiotic. When the trainees arrived on Earth, they relied on the girls to help them perform their jobs as well as provide them with shelter, food, the occasional peptalk about their trainee status, etc.

Then as the story continued and they got to know each other better, the mascots were able to return the favor by giving support when the Cures needed it. Rabirin when Nodoka was frightened and confused about how to deal with Daruizen, Pegitan when Chiyu was having trouble choosing between two dreams and Nyatoran who made sure to always lift Hinata’s spirits up when she got upset at herself.

In short, they achieved their objectives of learning what it means to be good doctors by being there for their friends! How wonderful! :D

My memory for Latte is hazy, unfortunately, since she’s coddled by everyone all the time (can’t blame them, she’s friggin’ adorable! <3) but I’ll never forget how she stood firm on the battlefield to see things through, to fight for the Earth like she promised her mother. She started out so babie but showed us all there was enormous bravery behind her cute face and ugh, we should all be very proud of her! <3

The only major issues I had about the mascots were these:

1) Too many irrelevant fillers went to them. They only needed a maximum of two for their entire mascot group.

2) Latte kept getting sick even after she acquired a Precure partner of her own. I was hoping it wouldn’t hurt her as much as it did before Asumi arrived or that she would build up a stronger immunity but noooo, they insisted on torturing the poor pupper! T_T

Villains + Finale Battle

Not a lot needs to be said for the first part. We’ve had mediocre antagonists before. HealPre’s just happened to be extra annoying as they were despicable. 

Which is worse because jerks you can just leave in the trash but assholes won’t stop harassing you unless you pummel them into their graves, set fire to their corpses and leave no trace of them behind! >:(

Y’all know who I’m talking about. Opinions on him continue to vary depending on who you talk to and if they’re avid fans of his face or not but whatever. The son of a bitch served his purpose and is dead now. That’s all that matters to me.

Anyway, the King was flat like his two lesser generals. He was neither intimidating nor distinguished enough in the brand of evil to really make us think of him as a serious threat and because of that, it ended up making the boss fight look like any run of the mill boss fight.

I know, they tried so hard with all that shiny animation but it just didn’t have that glorious sense of vindication that previous seasons (or ep 42) gave and I blame it all on this Rumiko Takahashi reject.

Also, this strategy was pretty useless?

They built it up like Earth was gonna sacrifice herself and die or something (she wouldn’t and even if she came close, deus ex machina would’ve kicked in to prevent that and COVID-induced caution too I guess). 

But there were no signs of pain (well, that’s a relief) after absorbing Shindoi-ne and they really pissed King Byogen off more than they did any damage with the absorbed byo-gen power.

...so yea, this tactic was just to kill some time and budget, nothing more. Meh.

By the way, did Asumi eject Shindoi-ne’s pathogen out of her body yet or did they just leave it in there to bounce around until it eventually dissolves on its own?

Because that’s eww. I mean, it’s obviously not gonna hurt Asumi they can both relate on hyperfocusing their affection for someone so maybe the compatibility helps :P but still, ewwwww.

Fillers + Underused Motifs

In hindsight, perhaps HealPre didn’t exactly promise the content we I wanted about “health” and “nature” if their objective was to teach that any manner of “fighting” can count towards “living”.

......but fuck you Toei, you’re still cowards! >:/

Fillers will be fillers but it’s always better to try and make some of them as meaningful as possible. And they wasted the opportunity to inform an impressionable audience (during a very crucial period of our time, I must add) on a lot of things related to the HealPre’s motifs. Especially about the environment which for some ridiculous reason, they chose not to touch on for the main stretch of the overall story.

Proper hygiene, good diet plan and sleeping habits, regular exercise (already done by the girls a few times but could use another example), meditation, counseling/therapy (especially for mental health!), etc.

Real life pollution, climate change/global warming (IMPORTANT!!), deforestation, preservation vs conservation, endangered species, recycling, volunteering to clean up your community, etc.

These just came off the top of my head but yes, there’s more and no, I’m not saying that the writers need to cover all of them in extreme detail or replace the slice-of-life episodes.

But they should be able to mesh both serious and light-hearted together in harmony somehow. Like those fillers where the mascots saw people cleaning up littering at the park or that interaction with that arborist who taught them about wild animals and trees when the group went to visit a lake.

For health, maybe let the girls visit patients with chronic illness in the hospital or have them converse with a medical professional on some matter. Particularly if it’s got something to do with mental illness because stigma in Japan on those who are afflicted with such conditions is still prevalent and has caused a number of sad and shocking tragedies that could have otherwise been avoided if people didn’t have such outdated, judgmental mindsets.

That last part might be too dark for a children’s anime but there’s a lot more out there that is doable.

Do that without reducing it into a footnote, Toei. It is so necessary for your target audience to be aware of these issues at the age they are now. You have an almost 20-year old franchise to serve as a very effective platform. Make better use of it if you truly care about the message you’re conveying through your show!

Also, what the fuck.

The last episode was a mess. Why are you only mentioning this now when the season is already over?

This should’ve been brought up months ago!

All the things we could’ve seen the Cures done to protect the Earth without magic.

The excuse of “I didn’t know humans were so horrible!” is a shit one because everybody knows humans are deplorable trash when it comes to abusing the Earth. All the more reason why you have to persistently drill it into people’s heads that they should not be like those who don’t care or choose not to care.

One crack episode isn’t going to cut that.

God, I so want to unsee this ep just so I don’t have to end HealPre on a more sour note than it already was. *big aggrieved sigh*

Lastly (and this really is the end of my long ranting, I promise), the missing undisclosed lore.

There are few Precure seasons without a past lore of its own in the recent years. Is it a wonder, though?

Lore is mysterious and fascinating. If it involves a past Precure, even more so.

Sometimes fans might just hang onto a show because they’re curious about what happened before the main story. We’d never get the full tale of those adventures but at least, it’s fun to imagine the “prequel”.

Also, past Precure are just badass. Fact.

Strangely enough, we didn’t get that for Heal. All we know is that she was called “Fuu” and was very close to Teatine. 

Hmm. Probably one of those changes caused by COVID interference cuz I can’t imagine the writers choosing not to tell her past in the original draft.

With all that finally off my chest, I’m ready to part ways with you girls until the next All Stars (Nodoka, I’m gonna miss you so much! T_T)

HealPre wasn’t the worst and it was nowhere near the best that it had the potential to be. But it’s passable. At least for those who loved it even with its flaws, I’m genuinely glad it was good for you.

For those who are thinking about picking it up (although why you would read this spoilery post before watching, I have no idea), if you’re looking for a standard magical girl anime to enjoy casually, then this is a safe pick. If you really want to invest your attention and heart into it, though? Then perhaps it would be in your interest to ask someone who saw it already to help you filter out the episodes that are worth watching. You don’t need to worry about the rest, they’re inconsequential. :P

Ok then! Thanks for reading as always, brave souls who have reached this point. 

Stay healthy and safe out there and I’ll see you at the beach next week! Tropic underwater paradise here we coooooommmmmeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!!! xDDD

[cno-inbminor]

inpetus

a/n: watched ‘burlesque’ today and got an idea stuck in my head!! this is the unedited result of it. 

warnings/genre: mature settings, ft. kuroo & fem!reader who’s an exotic dancer/stripper, unedited, some angst

wc: ~3.0k

-

What am I doing here?

That’s the first thought that runs through Kuroo’s mind when he walks down the concrete steps, his coat fluttering at the ends from the draft that breezes through. A small, neon arrow bolted to the brick wall offers the path to what many would consider as indulging in sin, an uncontrollable desire and want. “It’s unlike anything you’ve ever seen,” his co-worker had expressed to him with wonder in his voice, one that he preferred keeping at arm’s length. “Take advantage of your bachelor days,” he had been told while clapped on the shoulder. “Being married is only fun for the first two years and then it goes to shit.”

Disgust had coursed through his veins at those words – they were greedy men who held the financial world in their hands, convinced into a delusion that nothing in the world could measure to their expectations. Constantly complaining about how their partners were never good enough, weren’t pretty enough, didn’t have the right body type, were too busy bitching at them for leaving their sock strewn around the house, their list of demands went on and on. Kuroo, only 25 years of age, felt lucky to be a consultant at a world-renowned investment firm in Tokyo where every morning, he rides an elevator 45 floors up through a fiberglass and steel skyscraper in one of his many tailored suits and sits at a desk by the window. At any point, he can stand from his chair and gaze out towards a wonderous view of the city with a cup of tea in hand, ignoring how ironic it seems to be when the higher the floor, the more entrenched they are in the smog.

Kuroo hadn’t meant to reveal that he might have been feeling a little lonely. He had some sake running through his veins when his co-workers pressed on as to why he didn’t have a partner or someone to go home to every night, and after kindly but vehemently refusing their offers to set up blind dates for him, they had spoken to him of the place. An environment underground that made you feel alive, that reminded you of the unspoken beauty in the mundane of everyday life, that left your soul winded at the fact that such a place could exist on this earth. “You should go when you’re feeling down, if you catch my drift,” the main proposer of this new adventure had snickered, elbowing the man on the other side. “It’ll be worth the money.”

Part of him felt shy once he had slipped through the metal door, coming to a stop at a stand with a woman, a guard, a red velvet rope, and blackout curtains. Kuroo took a cursory look at the sign and pulled out the exact cash he needed for the cover fee, a heftier one than usual, according to his co-workers. The woman thanked him sultrily, nodding to the guard to grant him access. When the velvet rope was unhooked and the curtains pulled back, Kuroo stepped into a new world.

The dark shadow from the entrance had been replaced with soft lights of crimson and chateau rose, blending in with icy hues of blue. Faux-crystal chandeliers hung from the ceiling in the faintest royal yellow, yet they were second to the harsh colors on the stage before him. Granted, there were numerous round tables before him, but with no desire to be seen as the poor, nervous newbie, he sat at one that wasn’t directly by the stage, but wasn’t too far from it either.

Part of him had expected the air to be filled with smoke and fumes of alcohol, yet instead, there was a hint of something floral. Whatever it was, it had instantly relaxed his nerves and put him at ease. He had only been sitting for a few minutes when a waitress came into his view to take his drink order. Naturally, she was gorgeous, her outfit shaping her curves sensuously and slightly revealing, yet leaving just enough skin covered to be desired. He gives a side-thought on how his co-workers would have commented on her being an ultimate tease, but wipes it from his brain as he orders a glass of cabernet sauvignon. She scribbles it down on a notepad before giving him another look, slightly tilting her head to take him in.

“Is it your first time here?” She enquires in a genuinely curious tone. Kuroo is thankful that it’s too dark for her to see the faint blush on his face as he nods. At first, he’s worried she’ll poke fun a little bit, but instead he’s given a warm, inviting smile. “In that case, welcome to the Covet Noir. You’re in luck today, one of our best dancers is showing her new routine tonight. When she’s done, I’ll let her know to give you a special visit. It’s something we do for any new clients.”

“Oh, that won’t be necessary,” Kuroo immediately replies. “I’m just…observing today?”

“Very well then. She’ll want to come, but you have every right to refuse. Though, after you watch her…I’m sure you won’t want to,” she says cheekily, sending him a quick wink before weaving between the tables towards the bar. Kuroo focuses on the stage again where a few men and women seem to be freestyling to some faint jazz over the speakers, some by poles and others with just the floor. They seem to be at varying stages of nudity, though none were fully nude. Their styles of dancing seemed to cater specifically to the audiences nearest them, accepting the tips given.

The waitress returns with his libation, silently setting it before him with a square napkin. He pulls out a couple large bills and hands it to her, to which she thanks him for and pockets it in her waist apron he didn’t notice last time. As if on cue, the jazz ends and the dancers saunter off stage, their hips swaying as they disappear into the darkness. A soft tenor speaks into a microphone somewhere off-stage.

“Ladies and gentleman, thank you for joining us this evening. I hope you enjoyed our wonderful dancers just now – aren’t they absolutely riveting?”

His pause leaves enough time for the patrons to give a polite applause, though some were more bold in their praise with short ‘whoops’ and affirmations. “We’re glad to hear that,” the tenor continues. “Now, with a new performance she’s been working on, please welcome our one and only, Camellia.”

The overhead lights are shining on the stage once again, though the red seems more harsh and daring. He and the other clients give a small applause as the sound of heels clicks against the stage, and everybody seems to be waiting with bated breath. The anticipatory air overwhelms him as the clicks come to a stop and suddenly, a bright spotlight is cast center stage.

You, Camellia, stand just inches away from another male – while the male is rigid and muscular in all the right places, you are more soft and highlighted in curves, body in a knee-length dress the color of Kuroo’s wine that possesses a slit that’s dangerously close to the top of her right thigh. Even from Kuroo’s distance, he can see your lipstick in the very shade of the blood that runs through their veins and the dark, winged eyeliner.  

Low string instruments creep into the speakers in a familiar tune, followed by the sharp entrance of a contrasting soprano note played by a violin. Your movements are quick and crisp, yet your body seems to always be moving, sensuous and delicately smooth. Kuroo is absolutely enraptured already, his body already leaning forward and wine forgotten. As much as he despises his co-workers’ lustful habits and thoughts, they were right about one thing: the beauty in everyone’s dancing is unlike anything he’s ever seen.

His eyes never leave your figure, subconsciously encoding every movement into his brain. It isn’t until about halfway through your routine that he feels his mouth is dry, and even as he lifts his glass to his lips to let the bitter liquid slide down his throat, he makes an effort to never miss a second. At one point, you are facing his direction and Kuroo finally understands the meaning of the waitress’s words: your eyes, the shape of them, the color, the intensity and fire in them, he feels as if he’s ready to jump into them, willing to be consumed by the flames. But you are turned away and spun into your partner’s arms, hands splayed over his shoulders as his own creep down the arch of your back.

El Tango de Roxanne, Kuroo finally recalls the name of the song playing, though it’s a slightly altered instrumental version of it. He had been roped into watching Moulin Rouge many years ago by an ex-girlfriend in high school, who had showered praises on the scene for this song. While he couldn’t match her enthusiasm at the time, he had understood her reasons. Yet with the current performance before him, he would argue that this is more beautiful, even without all the aesthetic cinematic cuts.  

Before he knows it, the routine is done and he’s clapping along with the other clients. It’s almost thunderous, and Kuroo takes a quick look around him, only to notice that the space had filled up significantly since he had arrived. Yet many were beginning to trickle out as the lights dim again and an ambient jazz song washes over them. Kuroo contemplates on leaving, the waitress’s words echoing in the chambers of his brain. He’s so focused on his decision-making that he doesn’t notice the star of the show making their way to his table.

“I’ve been told you’re new here,” you interrupt his thoughts, donned in a silk robe and hair undone from the bun it had been in. Kuroo startles and looks up towards you incredulously, a whirl of shock and embarrassment and being caught off-guard stewing in his gut. Your eyes seem frozen on him and somewhat mirror his emotions, but they quickly soften. Kuroo watches you slide into the seat next to him, your robe slipping off a shoulder and revealing the black lacy bralette you’re wearing. He finds himself gulping as inconspicuously as possible, directing his gaze towards your face that’s currently grinning at him.

“Do you need help speaking?” You ask with a teasing lilt. Your voice strikes triggers a feeling of déjà vu within him.

“I’m sorry, I suppose I was still thinking about your performance,” he musters out, desperate to save some reputation he believes he has. “Am I allowed to buy you a drink? As a way of saying thank you?”

“Normally, yes,” you reply, your tone now gentle and calming. “I’m not quite in the mood for a drink right now, but maybe next time. You came on a good night.”

“The waitress told me the same thing,” he chuckles, fingers sliding his wine glass in a circle against the tablecloth. “You’re a wonderful dancer. Do all of you have stage names as flowers?”

“Most of us, but some others wanted a different stage name.”

“Do you dance here full time?”

You shake your head. “Only part time. Something I like doing, as well as earn some extra money on the side.”

“Ah, I see.”

Silence falls over you two. However, you sigh and begin to stand from your chair. Of course, Kuroo would rather you not leave, but you have other clients to visit, and this was only a one-time special conversation for a new visitor.

“Will you be coming again?” You ask gently, as if you’re worried this’ll be the last time you see him. Your tone surprises him – he feels wanted, he feels like you, specifically, want him to return to this underground escape. But he knows he’s not special, that it’s just business for people like him to fall to your siren calls.

“Maybe,” he smiles. You step closer and into his personal space, causing him to twist slightly so he’s more directly facing you. Even though he’s sitting, with his height, you’re barely towering over him. He only needs to tilt his chin up a little bit to meet your gaze, trying not to flinch when you place a hand on his thigh. Once again, your eyes trigger something within him – in most circumstances, he would probably be feeling unsure of what to do. Yet now, he feels comfortable, as if this is something he normally experiences.

“I hope to see you come back then,” you murmur, in a way that’s only reserved for this job, before pulling back, your hand lingering on his thigh. Kuroo remembers his manners and hands you a few large bills, more than what he had given the waitress. You take them between your right index and middle fingers and tuck them into your bralette. “Thank you.”

“Thank you,” he replies as you saunter away. He downs the rest of the contents in his glass before moving to pay his tab at the bar counter. Soon after, he’s greeted by the black curtains once more, the guards letting him through and past the red velvet rope. As he steps into the night air with his coat shrugged on, he feels the stark contrast between the world behind him and the one in front. The floral scent has been replaced with the city air, his nose wrinkling at the stale cigarette smell mixed with general pollution.

About an hour later, he’s in bed back in his modest, minimalistic apartment, his two-year old cat stretched out in the space between his arm and the side of his chest. Donned in nothing but briefs and gym shorts, Kuroo stares at the ceiling, reliving the memories as much as possible. Your dance, the passion, the atmosphere, it had been something he thoroughly enjoyed, much to his chagrin. He wish it hadn’t been his co-workers who introduced him, but perhaps he was somewhat thankful for them.

In sleep, he dreams vividly. He’s suddenly back in Nekoma High School, red jersey and shorts on his figure, walking a cart of volleyballs past a cheering audience. His eyes are searching the stands for someone, landing on a girl donned in his spare jersey. He feels his mouth split open into a cocky grin, but it falls when he sees the face on the girl. Your eyes, the winged eyeliner, the lips blood-red, cheering for him—

And he’s thrown into the next sequence.

This time, he’s in a café, one he recognizes to be close to his parent’s home. He’s in a casual button down and jeans, sleeves neatly rolled up past his elbows. His foot taps against the ground and he feels the sensation of waiting for someone, eyes shifting between the window and his phone screen. Familiar hands cover his eyes and he finds himself playing along. “Ah, who could it be?”

“Who else would it be?”

The words are spoken in your voice, the same softness with the slight lilt, and he’s turning abruptly to look at this girl. Once again, those eyes, the makeup, your lips—

Yanked into the next sequence.

He’s sitting on the couch in front of his TV – his parents are gone, and he assumes it’s his ex-girlfriend that’s got her shoulders with his arm slung over. A movie plays on the screen as the girl munches on popcorn from the bowl in her lap.

“Tetsu, you have to pay attention to this scene, okay? It’s genius,” she says excitedly, shifting closer to him. Kuroo plants a kiss on top of her hair as he focuses on the movie, looking out for this clip that she seems so passionate about.

But his eyebrows furrow when the beginnings of El Tango de Roxanne begin to play, dancers on a large stage with Ewan McGregor’s face cutting in.

“First, there is desire. Then, passion. Then, suspicion. Jealousy, anger, betrayal! Love is for the highest bidder, there is no trust. Without trust, there is no love!”

A wave of affection for this girl washes over him as she sings along, her voice attempting to match the intensity of the man’s on the screen. Instead, it only comes off as absolutely adorable to him, and he gives her a tight squeeze. The rest of the scene passes by in a blur, but he feels impressed, the pain of Ewan’s character, the dreadful chill that ran down his body.

“That’s probably the best part of the movie,” she sighs happily. “Do you agree? How freakin’ genius it is?”

“I can see it, yeah,” he laughs, looking down at her. But for the third time, it’s your face, your features, your hair—

He sits up abruptly, startling his cat and causing it to give him a sleepy yowl. His chest is heavy and panting as his brain trudges through the visions, his dreams playing on the back of his eyelids. His body falls back and his head hits the pillow, an arm strung across his eyes. One night and you’re already haunting your dreams, but why? Why was he so comfortable with you? Why did the song take him back to happier times? Why was it that your eyes made such a deep impression on him? Why…

His eyes snap open. It hits him like a ton of bricks. The breath is removed from his lungs and he can’t believe it.

Camellia is you. You are his ex-girlfriend.

A pain wrenches his heart, twisting it horribly so. Feelings that he had long buried, memories he had long filtered and filed away, were all swimming to the surface again – he almost wanted to scream or cry, he wanted to run to a court and jump serve balls until his arm falls off and his legs fail him, he—

After all this time, he opens the lid on a truth he wishes he didn’t know: in all these years, he was still in love with you.

And even now…he still does.

[the-lady-of-stars]

Assuming the Worst

Requested by @thescarletknight2014​

Summary: Reader was Poe’s childhood best friend. At the age of sixteen she was recognised for her strength in the force and sent to train with Luke Skywalker. After that fateful night when a young Ben Solo turned against the Jedi, Poe had assumed the worst. 

You had never gotten over having to leave him behind. Poe Dameron had undoubtedly been the best friend you were ever going to have. Maybe, just maybe, had you not been called to the Jedi temple all those years ago, you could have become more. 

You shook your head, some sort of pathetic attempt to stop yourself from thinking about him. The wing of the trashed old ship you were perched on still felt slightly warm to the touch, despite it being night. That’s all there was to Jakku really- heat, sand. Better than nothing you supposed. 

After the incident with Ben Solo at the temple you had abandoned that lifestyle. Sure you could have stayed with Luke, but losing everyone you trained with wasn’t exactly the easiest thing to get over. Personally you had found it the easier option to just run off to Jakku. Fixing ships up for Unkar Plutt wasn’t a dreamy lifestyle but hey- credits were credits. 

Soon enough you found yourself drifting off on the wing of an old cargo ship under the stars, the uncomfortable heat of Jakku that even after all these years you still weren’t accustomed to pushing you over. 

----------------

A loud noise startled you out of your sleep. Blaster shots? Your eyes were still blurred but you could tell that it was morning. Squinting through the sun in an attempt to get your eyes to focus resulted in you seeing some sort of chase. Stormtroopers? You hadn’t seen them round these parts in a while. Ties soaring overhead rattled the cargo ship you were sat on, nearly knocking you off. You gripped onto the edge of the wing to keep yourself steady, trying to observe the situation closer. One of the two people running from the troopers was a man, a leather jacket with the well known Resistance symbol etched on it draped over his shoulders. You knew what to do. You couldn’t just let members of the Resistance get gunned down by the Order. 

Reaching out with the force you flung the troopers backwards hard enough to knock them out. Next you closed your eyes, sensing the ties which were circling like vultures and bringing them down in the direction of the sinking fields nearby. The two Resistance members stopped, staring at you, grateful for your help. 

The girl approached you first, shouting up a greeting. You tensed your legs and slid off the wing, landing softly in the sand in front of her. The man stood cautiously a few feet behind her, looking confused. 

“You did that?” the girl questioned you, furrowing her brown eyebrows. Her hair was tied back into three buns, and she held a staff in her hand. There was a small orange ball droid at her feet, which whistled curiously.

“Uh- yeah. Yeah I did,” you stuttered. The man behind her stepped forward, now stood shoulder to shoulder with the girl. 

“You’re a Jedi?” he gasped. 

“Used to be. Long time ago. Now I’m just a mechanic.”

“That’s a lightsaber on your belt!” the girl chimed in.

“Yeah. Didn’t have it in me to get rid of it.”

“I’m Rey, by the way,” she responded. “And this is Finn. He’s with the Resistance. I’m just a scavenger.” 

“Y/N.”

Finn waved a hand in an awkward but sweet greeting, not taking his eyes off the saber on your belt.

You were about to reply when the sound of more ties coming interrupted. 

“Kriff, there’s more!” Finn cried out. 

“You should get out of here,” you suggested urgently. “Take that old freighter there.”

“We could use someone like you on our side,” Rey said. 

“It’s now or never, the Order’s almost here!” Finn called as he started stepping in the direction of the freighter. 

“We’re going to the Resistance. Please come with us?”

“Sure, why not. Let’s get out of here now, though. Those ties are going to be on us like Kowakian monkey-lizards in about twenty seconds.”

-------- Time skip to Maz Kanata’s Castle --------------

Somehow the First Order had found out you were here again. As it turned out, that old freighter from the junkyard was the Millenium Falcon. Han Solo’s Millenium Falcon. 

Currently you were outside the remains of Maz Kanata’s castle, troopers surrounding you, Finn, Han and Chewbacca. Rey had been taken by Kylo Ren. Or Ben. Ben Solo. You were good friends back at the temple. You knew that he recognised you. He paused and looked into your eyes at one point, but you couldn’t look back into his. Where the sweet hazel eyes of a friend used to be you only saw a reflective metal visor. Cold. Dark. 

In a flash all of the troopers around you began panicking. They started heading for the bank of the lake, making you turn to Han in confusion, furrowing your brows. 

“It’s the Resistance,” he whispered, relief showing on his face. 

You saw them. A whole squadron of X-Wings, a black and orange one leading them. The black X-Wing soared up from the surface of the lake, blasting Tie after Tie out of the air, swerving through the ruins of Maz’s castle. 

“That’s one hell of a pilot!” Finn cheered giddily, a bright smile widening.

You only knew one pilot who could fly like that. You gasped sensing his presence through the force. It was him. Poe. Your Poe, after all these years. 

You felt yourself choking up, tears stinging at your eyes. 

“Y/N, you okay, kid?” Han asked. 

“Yeah, yeah I’m good,” you managed. Han didn’t look all that convinced but didn’t press you further. 

------------------ At the Resistance Base on D’Qar -------------

You stepped off the Falcon onto the concrete. Your eyes roamed rapidly in a search for the black and orange x-wing you were so sure held Poe. Finn ran past you, stopping when the ball droid you had come to know as BB-8 crashed into his legs in an attempt to speed past towards something. Towards someone. A man in an orange flight-suit hopped out of the black x-wing, pulling off his helmet and handing it to a nearby technician. You’d recognise those dark curls anywhere. It was him. Poe. 

Finn and Poe ran to each other. So that was who Finn was talking about when he said he’d escaped the First Order with a Resistance pilot. Small galaxy. They embraced, talking for a while before Poe happened to glance over Finn’s shoulder. He froze, face scrunching in confusion. Finn turned back to see what Poe was looking at. 

“You know Y/N?” Finn asked. Poe didn’t respond, starting to walk towards you at a slow, steady pace, still hesitant to approach you. You were dead. That’s what he’d told himself all those years. All those nights where he lay awake, crying over the loss of his very best friend. He shook his head in disbelief, blinking to bring himself out of whatever cruel dream he was currently in. You couldn’t be here. It wasn’t possible. He had heard that every Jedi at the temple had died in the betrayal of Ben Solo- and that had included you. 

The area had cleared now, everyone going inside to celebrate their victory at Takodana. Even Finn had gone with Han to speak to the General, deciding to leave Poe to it. 

Poe still stood about four metres in front of you, staring at you with a blank expression. You didn’t blame him. Couldn’t. You had let him believe that you had died all those years ago. Had never bothered to contact him to tell him you were okay. That you were alive. Thinking about it now, you felt awful. You should have at least sent him a message. 

Tears welled up in your eyes for the second time that day, hands shaking. As a tear escaped your eye, Poe was snapped out of his trance. He strode towards you, wrapping his arms around you ever so gently when he finally reached you, almost as if you would disappear if he held you too hard. 

“Poe,” you choked out quietly, desperation lacing your voice. 

“It’s really you?” his voice shook. You’d missed that voice. 

“Yeah, Poe. Yeah, it’s me.”

“No, no you died,” he finally released a sob. 

That was the line. That heart-wrenching sob that slipped out of his mouth was it. You broke down, tears now flowing freely as you clutched his sleeves. 

“I’m sorry, Poe. I’m so kriffing sorry. I should have told you I was okay. I just- freaked out and I needed to get away from everything so I-”

“Hey, hey- it’s alright. Really. You don’t have to explain yourself to me. I understand perfectly. What you went through couldn’t have been easy. All that matters is that you’re alive, and I’ve got you back. Oh, angel.” Poe sniffled, finally getting the courage to pull you close to him, burying you into his shoulders. 

You both stood there for a while, crying into each other for everything you had lost and everything you had found again. You held each other and rocked side to side, the time passing not crossing either of your minds for a second. 

Poe began to speak.

“You know, the night after you left all those years ago I couldn’t sleep a wink. I was up all night just thinking. Thinking about all the things I should have said when I had the chance. And after the whole temple thing? The things I thought I’d never be able to tell you. So I’m not gonna wait any longer. The galaxy is unpredictable. Who knows what’s gonna happen next. If I’ve learned anything it’s to not waste time thinking about whether you should say something or not. Because if I don’t say anything now then it shows that I haven’t learned anything- and I have. So I want you to know that I loved you. Still do, in fact. Never stopped. Really broke my heart to think that I’d never be able to tell you. But life’s given me a second chance. So I’m gonna tell you again and again until I’m out of breath just how much I love you, and how much you mean to me. Y’know, my dad always used to tell me to wish on a star and your dreams would come true. Thought it was nonsense- a fairy tale that you tell kids to keep them dreaming. But hell, desperate times call for desperate measures. I’ve wished on a star every single night since that day you left, begging whatever forces are out there in the galaxy to bring you back to me. Did I think it would work? Probably not. I thought I was just being hopeful. Yet here you are, stood in front of me again. I’m not going to lose you this time. Not again. I don’t have the strength for that. So what i’m trying to say is that I love you. I love you.”

You couldn’t verbalise a response. What do you even say when someone pours their heart out for you? So you did the only thing you could think of. 

It was a good kiss, perfect even. You might go as far as to call it one worth waiting a lifetime for. You weren’t letting him go again. Not now, not ever. 

[writingesgaypism]

been wanting to write some Quality BROT3 content with cormac and aisling, but i hit a snag and ended up writing this horribly soft nonsense as a palate cleanser. i’m kinda proud of how i captured that Morning Mood though so i’m subjecting the rest of you to it

sangarinus and the setting are ofc from my favorite wip, @diasporatheblog

————-

“I don’t think you should be allowed to be so alert in the morning,” Fionn mutters. They turn their face into the pillow, half-considering falling back asleep before their better judgment kicks in and they prop themself up on their elbows.

Sangarinus doesn’t reply, though they know he heard them from the way he tilts his head. It could almost be a concession of their point if it wasn’t far more likely to simply be acknowledgment that they’ve spoken.

They lift a hand to their face, scrubbing it over their eyes, then drop it back to the bed. After a moment more spent feeling sleepy and the slightest bit grumpy, they sigh and swing their legs to the floor. Sangarinus already looks to be ready for the day, but that’s not surprising. He could’ve been awake for the past several hours or he could’ve just woken up; he never displays any visible difference between the two, so it’s hard to tell without outright asking. In comparison, Fionn is slow to shake off drowsiness, and no one would be able to mistake them for being anything other than freshly awoken right now.

This morning they appear to be slow enough that it necessitates intervention. Sangarinus makes his way over to the bed where they still sit and takes a knee to be something closer to level with them.

They smile, slowly but still bright. “Fancy meeting you here…”

“In the place that I live,” he finishes with a roll of his eyes. It’s a common enough exchange between them, though his exasperation with it is mostly for show. “You’re going to have to get dressed if you want me to do your hair.”

“I don’t know about that,” they say. “You could always braid my hair and then I could go back to bed.”

He sighs. “Allow me to rephrase. I’m not going to do your hair unless you get out of bed.”

Fionn typically sleeps with their hair loose despite it being easier to keep it in a braid. They don’t like the feeling of sleeping on the braid. Playing at thoughtfulness, they run a hand through their hair, only to wince and ruin the illusion when they hit a snag. Definitely easier to keep in a braid, and less painful.

Sangarinus reaches up, measured enough to give them time to pull away even though they both know they won’t, and brushes a few strands out of their face.

They huff, soft and amused. “All right, fine. You win.”

His hand lingers for a moment or two, fingers grazing their jaw in a way that could almost be accidental but almost certainly isn’t when he finally withdraws. He rises to his feet to give them room to do the same, and they swap positions. While Fionn steadily moves about the room, carrying out their morning routine, he sits on the edge of the bed and observes.

They still like to have his attention on them. It doesn’t always fill them with that same half-nervous energy that it used to when it was all new, but it does make them smile. They have no idea what he’s thinking as he’s watching them; they find him easier to read than most do, but he remains remarkably good at keeping a straight face. Still, it doesn’t really matter. Whatever is running through his head, the line of his shoulders is relaxed and he doesn’t appear to be in a rush to go anywhere despite his insistence that Fionn stop lazing around.

Eventually, they pick up their comb and wander back to the bed. Sangarinus moves back, crossing his legs underneath him as he resettles, and Fionn perches in front of him with their back to him. They offer Sangarinus the comb with one hand and stifle a yawn with the other.

“Don’t mind me if I fall asleep,” they murmur.

“I thought the point was that you were waking up,” he replies, just as soft.

They hum noncommittally as he begins to run the comb through their hair, starting at the bottom and working up to avoid the worst of the tangling. His motions are gentle and repetitive, which inevitably means that it begins to feel soothing and does indeed reinforce their lingering drowsiness. With a small, discontented sound, they cast about for something to talk about to keep themself awake.

“Ah,” they say eventually, a satisfied smile quirking the corners of their mouth. “You promised to tell me about the material used to build Tarracina’s harbor. The concrete. Something about binding agents?”

He’s reached their scalp by now, and runs the comb from the roots of their hair to the ends a few times, checking for any last tangles. “Yes,” he says after a moment or two has passed. “The marine concrete we use is the same as any other in that it consists of an aggregate and a cement. The addition of volcanic ash and quicklime is what makes it uniquely suited to building in or near sea water.”

Fionn thinks for a moment. They’re slower than usual, but Sangarinus neither presses nor moves on without them; he merely starts separating their hair into sections. They yawn again, but largely ignore it.

“So, it… resists erosion,” they say. “I suppose the ash and the quicklime must react with the sea water itself somehow?”

“Just so,” he replies. He sounds pleased with their correct deduction, or maybe just with their engagement in general. “The result is that the concrete is actually strengthened by exposure to the sea.”

They smile. “How very opportunistic.”

“It’s been useful. Cost-effective.” There’s the sound of shifting fabric, which Fionn interprets as evidence of a shrug. “The increased durability of course translates into longer-lasting structures. Less pressure to shore up what’s worn away every few decades.”

They fall into a few beats of silence, but Fionn’s gotten their mind working enough that they’re no longer in imminent danger of nodding off. They haven’t seen a volcano themself in a while, not since the island they found the Eye of Maros on. They wonder how common such geologic features are in the south, or if volcanic ash is a limited resource that makes the creation and use of marine concrete particularly expensive.

So they ask.

“Common enough,” Sangarinus says. He reaches the end of the braid and Fionn automatically hands back something to tie it off with. “Enough that the cost is not prohibitive. Even if the materials were rarer, up to a certain point the longevity of this type of concrete would likely pay for itself.”

“I can think of a few things we could’ve used it for back north. Too bad we didn’t have any convenient volcanoes lying around.”

With that comment, Fionn stands, flipping their newly completed braid over one shoulder as they do so. Then they turn and offer Sangarinus a hand up. He certainly doesn’t need it, but he takes their hand anyway, and lets them keep holding his even after he’s back on his feet.

They give his hand a soft squeeze and smile. “Thank you.”

He doesn’t ask whether they’re thanking him for their hair or for answering their questions, which is just as well because the answer is both. He merely nods, smiling a bit himself. “Of course.”

[artsymew]

It’s raining somewhere else

It’s been a hot minute. Finally wrote the last installment for my Contestshipping fanfic “Race You to the City”. You can read it on FanFiction here or under the cut! Takes place in Castelia’s Cafe Sonata. Enjoy ^^

Context: May and Drew engage in small talk in "Café Sonata" seeking cover from the rain. Snippets of small talk. Their coffees keep going cold. Bragging rights. The rainy weather has them moody.

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"It's starting to rain."

The lights are dim in the little Café Sonata. The sudden downpour keeps them cooped up in Castelia's hidden alleyway café. The rain splatters on the concrete outside their window seats, earning Drew's comment. May grasps the now lukewarm caramel latte with both hands. Lost in thought.

"Ah!" May glances through the blinds of the window they are sitting besides, responding to Drew's comment, "looks like it is". She smiles slightly before turning her attention to the swirling foam again.

He wasn't expecting her to reply, yet he finds it odd that she hasn't started a conversation. Small talk is her thing. He watches her gaze trace the swirling bits of foam of what once was the latte art in her cup. He likes how the lighting in the café reflects on her face. A golden glow. Drew stares down at the steam coming from his own coffee; a usual dark roast – French press.

He likes the comfortable silences they share from time to time, yet this one seems too comforting. Disquieting, even. Any other time he'd admire the faraway look in her eyes; how she daydreams despite pocking fun at her for it. It's one of the things he loves about her. But the look she wears now seems too distant.

As if she is somewhere else.

"How is Max feeling about the upcoming League battles?"

He knows she is somewhere else; in her mind anyway. Hoenn. Judging from the phone conversation she had with Max last night, their home region is likely on her mind. Her brother giddily called exclaiming how he had finally won his 8th Gym Badge against Juan, a former coordinator and someone she and Ash had battled a few years ago. He planned to head home for a while before competing in the upcoming Hoenn League.

"He's really excited, following in Ash's footsteps and all", her tone comes off a bit deflated. She looks out the window, pensive. "I wish I could be there to celebrate with him."

"He misses you, you know."

She smiles half-heartedly, traces of guilt lingering as her eyes avert to the swirling foam again.

It had surprised Drew to hear that May hadn't visited her family in a while. Max playfully chastised during their call how he'll become League Champion twice fold by the next time she visits. Drew noted how May gripped her sleeve when she laughed him off.

He didn't pry for her reasonings about not visiting; he barely remembering the last time in a few years he visited his own family and had his own reasonings for that. He suspects hers have to do with the non-stop training and desperation. Desperation for a damn Ribbon Cup.

He doesn't see the glory of it anymore. He guesses it's the allure. The excitement waned quickly for him once he decided on his next contest route. Of course, it's easy for him to say now that he's attained the title of Top Coordinator and has a Ribbon Cup himself. But continuing to train and compete with his Pokemon is what drives him to get stronger, to get better. That and to compete against his rival. His rival who made that allure of winning worth it.

He figures May will come to understand that once she wins, too.

Once she gets out of this cloud of self doubt, that is.

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"Oran or Pecha?" May turns to Drew at his random question, looking at him inquisitively before he continues, "which do you prefer?"

May puts a finger to her lips and hums, pondering before deciding, "Pecha".

"Excuse me," Drew walked up to the café counter at May's surprise, pointing the barista to one of the Pecha pastries in the glass display, "this one please; with added whipped cream."

He sees May's suspicious look when he sits back down with a delicious Pecha Berry shortcake – with the added whipped cream. The rain outside continues to drawl, but some light returns to her eyes. The embers of the fireplace flicker in them. Drew smiles.

Prompting conversation has its ways.

"Felt like trying one of their pastries out," he shrugs off simply, gesturing at the two small forks on the plate "want some?"

May takes his offer with a quick thank you. "Didn't know you had a sweet tooth, Mr. Bitter Coffee", she playfully jabs while taking a bite off the cake. Her teasing lacks her usual spunk.

"Not usually, but you didn't drink your liquid sugar in one gulp today either," Drew's smirks when her eyebrow twitches, "leave some of it for me to try, will you?"

Bait.

May literally bites, her blissful expression from those first few chews turns incredulous. "You know I won't eat all of it!" she digs out another piece of the pastry, taking some of the whipped cream Drew so graciously asked for with good measure. "At least I don't take Slakoth sips from dirt-flavour coffee."

"It's an acquired taste from the sleepless nights of being a Top Coordinator" Drew takes a bite off the pastry and chuckles at her irritated chewing. To Sonata Café's credit the pastry is quite good. A bit too sweet for his own liking, though. He planned letting May have most of it anyway.

"Yeah, yeah, bragging rights" May sighs, unresentful. Their battle together last year had been breathtaking and incredibly difficult; Drew would not have wanted to win his title any other way. "Don't bragging rights expire at some point?"

"Until you win," Drew sips his coffee. He cocks a brow hearing her sigh, but decides not to push further at the moment. He goes to ask for another coffee.

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.

.

"I'll have to deal with Max bragging about his own championship title soon," May comments after a while, looking up from her notes. Another coffee in hand, this time a mocha. Drew perks at the hint of discomfort in her voice.

Ah.

"Not sure he'll win at all, though," Drew states bluntly, closing his book. The rain shutters against the pavement outside. Her reflection turns to watch him. "How many times has Ash – an experienced trainer - challenged the Pokémon League and won?"

It is a risk to critique Ash or Max in a conversation, let alone use Ash as an example of training criticism. But Drew is not one to use sweet flattery when someone is feeling down.

"But Ash continues to work hard for his dream!" she exclaims defensively, a bit miffed at her rival. The barista looks over to them, cleaning a cup. "He hasn't let his losses stop him from getting stronger."

"He still hasn't won a League," he states calmly, turning to face his now irritated companion across his table, "winning the Orange League or the Battle Towers does not count." Proceed with caution. "In short, no different from your current position."

She stabs her tiny fork at the Pecha berry. Surprisingly, the shortcake is only half gone. "Yes Drew! I know I haven't obtained the title of top coordinator yet", she munches and closes her notes. He worries about the little notebook and whether it would damage anything in the cafe if thrown. "but Max is a talented trainer; he can do it. He beat the gym leaders in Hoenn under a year. That's much faster than Ash."

"Yet he has yet to beat you in a Pokémon battle," Drew retorts.

"Why are you being so cynical?" May infuriated gaze aimed towards him, dismissing his backhanded compliment. 'A small price to pay', he thinks.

"Realistic, May" he brings his coffee to his lips, looking sternly at his rival. He's starting to feel irritated himself. The weather is affecting them both. "Max and Ash are good trainers, yes, but they've done nothing you haven't. I know because I battle the result of it."

He watches as her mouth parts agape, before she looks downward, frowning. "But I still haven't-"

"-Arceus, May," he interrupts as May's gaze widens. "Winning that damn title wouldn't have been worth it if I hadn't battled against you. You made it worth it." He looks into her eyes, unfaltering. "You're strong. Stop feeling sorry for yourself."

Drew goes to take an exasperated sip of his coffee only to realize he finished it. He presses a palm to his head and averts his gaze to the window again. Rain continues to fall even harder, shaking the Café's hanging sign almost off it's rails. The taste of bitter coffee grounds remains in his mouth. May's lips trembles in what he catches with a sideways glance. Is she about to cry? Mew.

He hadn't meant to spill his heart out like that at all. He picks up where he left off in the chapter, but can't concentrate. It's down-pouring outside. He lost his cool. They're both upset and the silence is now shredded and awkward. Great.

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All the sudden May bursts out laughing.

Tears fall from her eyes as she cackles. She has a hearty laugh that fills the room and opens up space to breathe. She wails even more when she sees his dumbfounded expression. What in the Arceus-

"Oh, Drew," she breathes while pushing away the tears from her eyes "look at us- what am I even saying? Needing you scold me like some kid, oh Mew," she exasperates through giggles and Drew can only stare at her, wide-eyed. She looks at the shortcake and laughs even harder.

"Oh no, don't tell me - you bought this freaking cake to cheer me up, didn't you?" she accuses, letting out a snort at his guilty blush. "You know me too well, Arceus-"

May's outburst of laughter is contagious, he can't help but start laughing too. What the hell. Cold coffee, half eaten cake. The bartender looking at them like a pair of lunatics. The café setting like some cheap soap opera. Bickering like children. Never being able to admit their obvious feelings. The entire situation is ridiculous.

Drew has never felt so smitten yet so lost before in his life.

They are still kids, aren't they?

He presses his hand to his face to cover his own snort. May laughs even harder, eyes twinkling. Drew finds the rain drops on the window suddenly appear interesting.

"Would you look at that!" May begins sarcastically, spunk restored. "'Top Coordinator Drew snorts when he laughs!' Where is the press?"

"Great story idea, would drive my fans wild. Empty shelves for sure."

"Here I was about to compliment your nice laugh" she flicks a Pecha berry at him, that he catches easily. She sighs contended, "You're so full of it. Guess we should finish eating your pity cake."

"Why, thank you, I've heard my laugh is quite charming," he ignores her jab, flicking his hair on purpose. She rolls her eyes at him but doesn't bothering to hide her grin. "And like I said May, I had a genuine urge to try it."

"Sure you did."

They both take up another piece, savouring the flavour. It tastes sweeter, somehow. A new comfortable silence ensues.

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"We never had this much rain in Hoenn, did we?" May asks after a while, glancing over to him.

"Probably," Drew watches how alleyway lights flicker in the puddles, "it's been a while since I've been."

He watches May look beyond the rainy view outside, a renewed focus. "I should visit them soon."

"You should," he agrees, "there should be enough time after the next contest. If you want to visit, I mean."

May hums in agreement, "that would be nice," she stares at Drew through the window, the rain fall lighter on the ground. "You're welcome anytime, you know?"

"Your dad wants to murder me with his Slaking whenever I visit," Drew deadpans, elicting another laugh from May. He doesn't give away how touched he feels and how smitten he gets whenever he makes May laugh with his comments.

A bit more time passes, both coordinators bask in silence as the downpour continues to fall. Occasional commentary. Eventually, he stands to order another coffee. Might as well wait out the rain.

She reaches over to grasp his hand on the table, squeezing it. Drew's heart jumps to his throat, he looks down to her. The smile reaches her eyes again. "Thank you, Drew."

Drew lets himself smile.

"Anytime, May."

.

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A/N: After a year, I think this is a good place to finish this fic. I felt a casual conversation at a coffee shop would suffice. I knew I wanted to write them in Café Sonata for a long time, but I wasn't sure what to do with the scenario. Going for a coffee at my local café during a rainy day inspired me. Thank you so much for your patience with this story. 😊

[inkribbon796]

A Diamond in the Rough Ch. 3

Chapter 3: A Gift

Summary: The chapter in which Eric gets some much needed protection and Damien attempts another surprise adoption.

A/N: A story in which Damien and Patton share the same brain cell, and it says to adopt the sad child.

Chapters: 1, 2, 3

Eventually Eric was able to tell a little bit of what had happened. Dark had killed his father in front of him, and he was scared and his hands wouldn’t stop aching and tingling. Randall’s mother came in to help try and calm him down. Patton did pass on the message to the other heroes before going back inside and using his powers to help calm Eric down again. It resulted in him falling asleep from exhaustion.

Logan wound up calling in with information, after looking through several police reports they found out that Eric was the survivor of an accident that killed his brother and that Derek was suspected of working for Dark but the police hadn’t been able to prove it.

Currently the only thing the doctors could prove was that while Eric didn’t have evidence of being stabbed, he had a lot of old and recent bruises. And that was making Patton overprotective and unhappy, wanting to coddle and smother Eric in love but was unable to for a multitude of reasons.

Logan was standing in his outfit, trying to “reason with him” while the two were in the lobby. “We cannot adopt him, he is a teenager and most likely has extended family, he is a witness in a murder investigation.”

“Yeah, but he’s so sad,” Patton smiled and tried to continue to argue his point.

“Marie Curie and her notebook,” Logan groaned. “This is why we don’t let you be around children.”

“Princey wants and sidekick and Silver and Jackie both have one,” Patton gave a huge smile.

“No,” Logan cut in to stomp that out. “No. No! We are not taking on an apprentice. I can barely corral you and Princey, I am not adding a literal child to those complications.”

“Aww, come on, it’d be great,” Patton continued.

“No, I am figuratively putting my foot down,” Logan said and distantly he heard the faint ringing of Dark’s aura and signaled an alarm. “Dark is here, we’ll continue this at a later time.”

The two Sides followed the staticky, ringing aura until they found Dark outside of Eric’s room.

“Halt!” Logan ordered him. “What do you think you’re doing here?”

“A surprise adoption,” Dark’s blue soul answered, not-so-helpfully, despite the heroes not being able to hear him or him being able to talk to them.

“Don’t start!” Dark’s red soul pushed him out of the way.

“That’s none of your business,” Dark managed to say despite the fact his twin souls were fighting with each other, his form splintering and fracturing. Which gave an unintended nefarious air to his words.

“You’re here to kill him aren’t you?” Patton accused.

“Of course not,” Dark told him in a rare moment of honesty. He didn’t want to kill the young Derekson boy; he wanted to add him to what Anti often referred to as Dark’s “hoard”.

Dark’s blue soul was quickly winning out and Dark knew he was losing against the impulse to take the Derekson kid and just run off with him. He was already planning on introducing him to Illinois and Kay first, Bim and Arthur were a bit too high energy for a first introduction.

“You can’t have him, you fiend,” Patton proclaimed loudly and bravely.

“You really are insufferable,” Dark told him.

Silver flew down the other side of the hallway, braced for a fight.

“Why are you looking for a kid?” Silver demanded.

“You should mind your own business,” Dark scoffed.

“Not in the job description,” Silver smiled, pulling up his fists. “Let’s dance, Darkcus.”

Dark scowled at him, looking about ready to literally hiss at him and he jumped at him, his aura curling around him.

“I’ll get him out, you make sure people are safe,” Silver called at the two Sides who were already going towards Eric’s door. Patton rushed in to find Randall’s mother not in the room.

“Where should we move them?” Patton asked as Logan closed the door, the quick entrance and the loud conversation had woken both Randall and Eric up, Eric easily getting disoriented at the unfamiliar scenario.

“No, while he’s still out there it is unsafe for anyone to move,” Logan warned. “I’ve already contacted the hospital staff to help Ms. Voorhees to get up here safely when Dark is removed from the floor.”

“What’s goin’ on here?” Randall demanded groggily.

“No, everything’s fine,” Patton promised, at the same moment that Silver came through the left wall, being thrown through by Dark.

Dark stepped through the hole, looked frustrated and very disgruntled, aura a shrill ringing.

Eric let out a squeak of terror and Randall huddled next to Eric.

“I’m not going to kill him,” Dark straightened his tie. “Killing a child is beneath me.”

“That doesn’t discount the numerous things that could happen to a child under your quote-unquote care,” Logan responded.

Dark let out a long sigh, swiping the fringe of his hair to the side as a quick slew of memories of everything that his Lost Ones had done while they’d been living in the Manor. He waved his hand and a large portal opened up and dropped all of them, along with everything in the room, into a currently unused construction site. One that Marvin was currently not at because he was still at the hospital currently ten miles away.

“There, now that pesky magician isn’t in the way,” Dark growled, cracking his neck in agitation, flattening out the already pristine front of his suit coat. “I really should get around to killing him one of these days.”

Eric looked around wildly, his IV and monitor no longer hooked up and the young teen started to slip into a panic.

Silver was already moving, “I’ve got—”

Dark had already grabbed, his aura had a crushing grip on the monochrome hero’s ankle, tugging him back, “Go away!”

The hero was flung up towards the half finished ceiling and because Silver was super sturdy and already moving quickly a couple pieces of rebar came loose, chunks of concrete still and started tipping over.

For all the adults, things were moving in slow motion and Dark let go of Silver to try and reach out in time with a portal but only half of it fell in and but because of its positioning a piece of concrete broke off from where the rebar hit the portal and fell right on top of the teens.

It hit Randall square on the back, Dark let out a horrified gasp that fortunately for Dark’s reputation — but not his nerves — Patton’s equally horrified gasp was much louder and he was closer to Logan so the other Side didn’t hear Dark.

For the heroes’ sakes, and for Eric’s as well, when it hit Randall it activated a superpower in him and the concret just fell apart like it was made of flimsy plaster. All the heroes just froze, Dark felt a chill of relief come over him and he held a portal over the teens to keep any more debris from falling over on top of them. Randall felt like his whole body was on pins and needles.

His only thought was: “Never before have I been so happy to see superpowers.”

All it looked like to the heroes was that Dark was planning something. Silver flew at him and slammed into Dark as Logan and Patton raced for the two teens, hurrying to. Pull them away from the site as Jackie and Marvin rushed in. They stayed in-between Dark, and Eric and Randall.

Dark snarled at him, “Fine! Pests, the lot of you! I did that boy a favor!”

Then there was a flash of a portal and Dark was gone. All the heroes stayed braced for an attack. When it didn’t come after a couple minutes, Silver and Jackie rushed to take the teens back to the hospital where the staff and Randall’s mother were very anxiously waiting for them.

Without any other physical wounds to treat, and confirmation that Dark was his father’s killer. The police got what scarce information they could.

Then Marvin was left to talk to Eric, and it took a little bit before the very skittish teen warmed up enough to him to even look at him.

Marvin smiled, “Don’t worry, we’re not gonna let anythin’ happen ta yah.”

Eric managed a small, sad smile, trying to hope that maybe they were right.

That maybe, just maybe his luck was finally turning around.

After Eric was deemed healthy enough to leave the heroes decided that for safety’s sake and security they could keep Eric living at the base, he wasn’t the only person living there. He would repeatedly meet with social services and a doctor as a follow up for health and wellness checks until they could find any other family. Randall’s mother offered to take him in if they couldn’t. But it was determined that until Dark stopped hunting for him, he would stay at the base and learn to control his explosive powers.

Silver even offered to help teach Randall to control his super strength, and with very tentative permission from his mother, training dates were set.

Immediately upon bringing Eric to the base, Bing and Logan took one look at the prosthetics he had, then they both looked at each other. Logan’s eyebrow was raised and Bing took off his glasses to take pictures of it.

“Who has been letting the little dude use these?” Bing commented.

“How soon could we procure replacements?” Logan asked.

“Procure nuthin’,” Bing boasted. “I could build better.”

“Maybe others could also be made in the process,” Logan proposed. “The holidays are coming up.”

“I like how yah think,” Bing smiled, putting his sunglasses back on. “Let me just get some measurements from the little dude, yah think he would like some rocket shoes?”

“How about we do not include such modifications?” Logan told him as they went to go and find Eric to get some leg measurements. It would take Bing a week to make some custom prosthetics for Eric. Some nanites embedded into it to help it react to whatever terrain or environments he was in.

Upon receiving them, Eric would burst into tears, almost too afraid to touch them for fear of breaking them but after an impromptu stress test where Bing demonstrated that short of an atomizer he couldn’t possibly break the new prosthetics, Eric took them and put them on.

Eric took some time getting used to his new prosthetics, but found that like his new life he would grow into it quite nicely.