#yes most of the ‘victims’ are parents of young children but that’s neither here nor there

[sonofcelluloid]

Wake up, beloved. I have treacherous news to share. I’ve fallen prey to a scheme most foul. Epic Games, whom I considered a close ally, has betrayed me— nay, SWINDLED me. Out of thousands of dollars. But fret not, my love. I have taken this to the highest authority. The Federal Trade Commission. Yes, I’ve already received my refund, but at this point it’s a matter of principle. My attorneys have amassed a class action suit of 600,000 victims. We shall milk them for all they are worth. They will regret making an enemy of me. They’ll beg for my clemency, and shower v-bucks upon me.

[rachelbethhines]

Tangled Salt Marathon - You're Kidding Me

So we’ve finally come to the last of season two’s filler episodes. Let’s see if we can knock this one out real quick. 

Summary: The front door of the mysterious seashell estate vanishes, trapping the group. They try to find another way out but find a spinning top whose magic regresses Cassandra and Lance into toddlers and Shorty into a baby.  They’ve only have an hour to find the top and reverse the effects or the changes become permanent. Unfortunately neither of Rapunzel’s or Eugene’s parenting methods keep their now childish friends on task. 

So Why Did No One Stand Watch Last Night?

They were all sleeping right next to the entrance, and after the run in with the mirror monsters, you would think that they would have taken turns standing watch. 

But nope, the front door vanishes when no one was looking cause they don't have any foresight. 

A Low Budget Doesn’t Excuse Filler

Like most of season two, this is yet another episode that adds very little to the overall story. It’s slightly better than the Return of Quaid or Curses, but not by much. I put it on the same level as The Forest of No Return, as I do like the mains’ development, but there’s really no reason why such episodes exist to begin with. 

The meta reason for staying in certain places for three episodes, instead of only one or two, is because of budgetary reasons. The crew have to build new sets and models for every new location or person the cast comes across. This costs money to make, so the higher ups wanted to reuse assets. Which is understandable, but not an excuse for utilizing them poorly.  

If you need to stay in one area or have characters reappear, then you need to give story reasons for that. Ones that tie back to the overall narrative and/or the mains’ character arcs. 

The shell house and Matthews should be more important than what they are as they both have connections to the ultimate big bad of the series.Adria shouldn’t be wasted for a whole episode when she’s the only one driving the plot in season two and has limited appearances. Vardaros and its people shouldn’t be a one and done thing if you’re going to spend so much time setting them up. And there’s still one off episodes, locations, and characters who aren’t brought back and add nothing 

Not only does this make for a weaker story, it also undermines the cost saving measures that you tried to implement to begin with.  

This Isn’t Representation! 

Get it?! 

She’s a top! 

She’s totally gay, but like not really, cause this can also be interpreted as a dominatrix joke, and there’s no other real indication of her orientation outside her like smiling at her best friend/crush/sister sometimes and keeping that rose her creepy ex-boyfriend gave her. 

And don't give me any bullshit excuses about Disney not letting the crew make Cassandra canonly gay/bi. 

The Owl House aired just this year, the same year as Tangled’s final season. Also Globby and Carl from Big Hero Six were both confirmed to be a couple on screen a month after this episode came out. Both shows would have been in development at the same time as Tangled was. Both would have been subject to the same regulations and restrictions while writing their stories. 

It isn’t ���Disney” that stopped the storyboard artists from having Cass be a confirmed lesbian, it’s Chris and Ben, the head writers themselves, who failed to write it into the story properly, if at all. 

Chris is the one who made Raps and Cass “sisters”. Chris is the one who wouldn’t tell the crew about his ‘twists’. Chris is the one who had Cass crush on Andrew, even after he tried to kill her. Chris is the one who made Cassandra ‘straight’ and has since used gay baiting to keep her fanbase in his pocket. 

Like I am really damn sick and tired of Casspunzel stans defending Chris on twitter, when he’s the very one who sunk thier ship to begin with. I’m also really fed up with certain fans trying to bully others for not accepting their “Cass is a lesbian” headcanons as fact because what the storyboarders say on twitter after the show is over with isn’t gospel and isn’t real rep. 

I don’t care if you ship Cass with Raps or headcanon her as being gay. Ships and headcanons are great and can be a lot of fun. But fuck you if you ever try to shame people for not sharing your ships/headcanons. Not only is it biophobic and acephobic to insist that there’s only ever a binary option when it comes to orientation and shipping, but it also reinforces harmful stereotypes and tropes about people in the queer community. 

Like, yes, I personally may be an introverted angry bitch who’s an LBGTQA member and activist, but that doesn’t mean that every introverted bitchy woman in media is a lesbian. What kind of message does that send people when that’s the only character archetype that’s given representation or is loudly proclaimed as ‘gay’ by the wider audience? Fuck that noise! 

I Know Humor is Subjective but...WHY?

Why did we give the baby a beard? How does that logically work? Did anyone outside of the crew actually find this funny? 

TTS has like this one out of touch dude throwing out jokes that don’t really land with the target audience. Fans have called it ‘boomer humor’ but it’s actually ‘Gen-X’ humor. Not only because Chris and Ben are Gen Xers but because this is the type of crap my older brother would find hilarious. 

Gen Xers are between Boomers and Millennials and so their humor is this weird blend of gross out shock humor, ironic nihilism, and out of date stereotypes that are only mildly better than those of the previous generation before them. They’re the generation who gave us Beavis and Butthead, South Park, and Clerks. 

That’s not a criticism of Gen X as a generation, but rather just an acknowledgment that they’re worlds away from the neo-dada absurdism, more socially conscious, and globalized humor of Gen Z.    

So Why Is the Bad Guy Telling the Heroes How to Foil His Plans? 

Like he not only tells them how to fix their problem and how long they got in order to do so, but he also informs them how it happened in the first place. This goes directly against his plans. Had he simply said nothing and stayed out sight, then Raps and Eugene would have been lost for the full hour and most likely not have saved everyone on time. 

I like to headcanon that Mathews is just “that asshole” that loves to taunt and tease but in a that manner that gives him plausible deniability. He also may just be bored, since he’s a ghost trapped in one place all the time. Yet that still doesn’t change the fact that he shot himself in the foot here. 

Raps and Young Cass’s Relationship Is the Same as Raps and Adult Cass’s, and That Is a Problem. 

Condescending, manipulative, hypocritical, and bossy is the way Rapunzel treats everyone. She doesn’t understand the actual difference between a child and an adult. She only understands who she who she can and can’t boss  around. And those people that she can’t place under her thumb are labeled antagonists by the show. 

Nor does she actually care about what either kid Lance or kid Cass has to say. She’s just being proformative, and young Cass can see through that BS, which why her methods do not work. It’s not because she’s not ‘strict’ enough; it’s because she’s not being honest. 

Meanwhile Child Cassandra is just as combative, rude, bullying, and entitled as Adult Cassandra. In season three she regresses even further and becomes more violent than before.

Unlike Rapunzel, Cassandra wasn’t trapped in a tower for 18 years with zero human contact outside of her abuser. She escaped that fate and was raised in a loving home. That doesn’t mean that there won't be scars, but I still expect her to be more mature than her seven year old self. Just because she’s whining about not being special enough at 24 instead of screaming about the floor being lava doesn’t mean that she’s still not throwing a temper tantrum.  

Like I should not be seeing a replay/foreshadowing of their main conflict here. They aren’t children. They’re dynamic isn’t that of a mother and child. It’s not even a big sister looking out for a little sister type relationship. Its two immature women dragging innocent victims into their bitchy cat fight for dominance over the other.  

If you want me to take their issues seriously then give them real stakes to disagree over, mature behavior that I can root for, and a resolvement that doesn’t reverse any potential development that they could have had.    

Matthews Plan Makes Zero Sense

For starters, half the group being kids isn’t enough of a reason for Rapunzel to stay at the shell house. Even if the effects of the time top became permanent, then Raps and Eugene could just leave and take the kids with them. Either to finish the road trip, or go straight back to Corona. Not that there’s any real reason to get the Dark Kingdom anyways, nor is there a ticking clock stopping Raps from trying again later if she chose to. 

Rapunzel also is not obligated to become anyone’s mother. If she took them back to Corona than Cap would undoubtedly raise Cassandra all over again, and Lance and Shorty could be adopted by someone else. Any of the pub thugs might take them or even perhaps the King and Queen since they missed out on raising their actual daughter. Though for my money I’d get Monty or Xavier to take them in. They seem the most mature and both are shown to be good with kids. 

Then again Rapunzel has been shown twice now to not give a damn about abandoning orphans, so even the ‘dump them at an orphanage’ or ‘leave them alone in the woods to fend for themselves’ isn’t entirely off the table either. I wish I was joking, but I’m not. Sadly, only Eugene’s love for Lance might be the one thing to stop her from doing just so, and even that’s iffy. 

As for the missing door from earlier, if that was all that was stopping them from leaving then the time top shenanigans were fully unnecessary altogether. 

I Actually Like Eugene and Rapunzel’s Conflict Here; I Just Wish It Was In a Better Episode. 

Each of their viewpoints stem from their upbringing. 

Rapunzel is unique in that she was simultaneously emotionally abused and neglected while being physically spoiled. Especially once she found out that she was princess, where she was then handed nearly anything and everything she wanted. She doesn’t recognize that getting your every possible whim come true can be damaging. Nor does she have any comprehension of what living in poverty is like and how this many toys is wasteful to someone like Eugene who had so very little and stole to survive. 

She does however associate limits, boundaries, and orders with abusive behavior because she’s been denied autonomy and respect her whole life. She’s never seen what healthy parenting looks like and how rules can be applied correctly.     

To Rapunzel no orders is ‘freeing’ and ‘validation’ is all that is needed to get a child to listen to you. Which doesn’t work for her because she doesn’t understand that real communication is more than just giving a compliment now and then. 

Meanwhile Eugene lacked any sort of anchor at all. He was left to his own devices at a young age and had no one to rely on for emotional needs and, after leaving the orphanage, no one to provide physical needs either. 

It’s telling that he and Lance latched onto Quaid as the only authority figure in their life, despite Quaid never out right adopting them. He was the only sense of stability that they had who they could trust wouldn’t hurt them, despite being strict with them. 

And now that Eugene has gotten older and is reformed, he can probably understand why Quaid was so harsh on him and Lance. Quaid probably did more to try and help them turn from a life crime than even Rapunzel did. Like meeting Rapunzel was the inciting incident that inspired Eugene to make that leap, but the groundwork was already laid out for him to do so elsewhere. Things like his good communication skills, respect and empathy of others, and understanding of boundaries had to be learned from somewhere, and if not from the Sheriff of Vardaros than who? 

What I’m getting at is that, while Rapunzel rejects her parents methods but then fails to break her learned habits from them anyways, Eugene is the reverse. He’s come to embrace his mentor’s teachings, but he fails to implement them correctly because he’s not Quaid. Being authoritative isn’t his strong suit. It goes against his usual nature as the easy going person that he is and so any attempts to come across as forceful fail as they’re hollow. 

Kids know authenticity and genuineness when they see it. The children reject Rapunzel because she’s not being real with them, yet they also reject Eugene cause he’s not being honest with himself. 

It’s a complex and mature conflict. Neither person is fully right nor wrong, and only by learning from each other and adopting both methods can they achieve their goal. 

TTS can be deep when it wants to be. There’s a good foundation here for mature themes and complex characterization. It’s just the series doesn’t ever commit to it. 

Whatever personal drama going on here about two young adults trying to cope with their past traumas and how that affects their current life and future goals is completely lost in the magical goofy antics and low stakes situation. Even the stuff about Eugene and his relationship with Quaid is reduced to nothing but a one off joke rather than being genuinely explored as a point of development.  

Imagine how much more powerful things would have been if Angry and Red were brought along on the trip. If this argument was over them and whether or not they should adopt the two girls themselves or consider other options. That would be something with real weight. Something with a choice that had actual consequences attached to it. Something that would permanently affect all involved parties. Something that wouldn’t make the two leads look like outright dicks for abandoning two children for a second damn time in a row.    

You Have 70 Feet of Magical, Indestructible Hair! Why Are You Afraid of a Bunch of Dogs!?

You’ve fought off giant monsters, killer robots, and supernatural beings with magical powers. What do you mean you can’t hold off a pack of guard dogs while busting down a stuck door? Why is Eugene the shield for everyone and not the actual unbreakable hair that you use as a shield all the damn time? And Why did we have to rely on Shorty again to be the deus ex machina of the episode? 

At this point the writers should have just made him Demantius instead of the monkey.   

What Happened To This New Dream? Where Did It Go In Season Three?

Most fans who do enjoy season two happen to be big New Dream fans as this is by far and away the best season for them. I’ll admit that the series, up to this point, had me actively liking them together, despite being originally lukewarm to the pairing in the movie. 

Their conflicts were for the the most part mature and real. They learned from one another equally and had open communication when it didn't involve ‘marriage is a trap’ BS. Things, like compromising on differentiating future goals, honesty and communication, and making time for one another and extending effort into a relationship while being true to yourself are all relatable issues. 

Even today's episode featured the topic of having kids and parenting. Which is a discussion you absolutely need to have with your prospective spouse before entering into any long term commitments and signing any legal contracts. For real, I’ve seen marriages fall apart because they didn’t agree on whether or not they wanted children. 

I don’t know what went down between writing season two and season three, but things quickly took a sharp turn away from this dynamic and nosedived into a pit of uncomfortable bullying and gross sexist implications here after. 

Matthews Plan Goes Against Zhan Tiri’s Plan 

Yeah so Matthews is one of Zhan Tiri’s disciples, but he apparently doesn’t know of her goals/plans, cause she needs Rapunzel and company to reach the moonstone, not stay stuck here. 

The meta reason for this that the Zhan Tiri’s story was altered at the last minute and the writers failed to make sure there was any sort of consistency between what they already set up and where they actually wound to actually taking the plot.  

The in universe reason is that Zhan Tiri is an impotent moron, but that’s not what the writers were going for so it’s a fail. 

Conclusion  

I like the New Dream stuff, and Matthews is at least entertaining despite being incompetent. Everything else about the episode is ‘meh’ tho. 

[blue-eyed-korra]

Is Dylan really Kieran? A Theory Dissection:

So I’ve taken the time to process everything that’s happened in the amazing season finale of Purple Hyacinth because I didn’t want to rush into posting about it and I really wanted to let my thoughts about it simmer for a bit. I also decided to reread the entire season over the course of a couple days to get the best idea of how it worked as a whole. Once again if you haven’t read this yet please do yourself a favour and check it out it’s really phenomenal.

I’ll probably make a few posts about PH over the next couple weeks as we wait for season 2. However I won’t post an analysis of the finale mainly because Lanxyuu already did an amazing job of that already. Check it out if you’ve got the time, it’s 10000 words of pure analytical gold. Writing about any of that would be redundant. That being said the first thing I’m gonna talk about is the whole ‘Is Kieran actually Dylan’ theory that’s the new hot thing in the fandom, mainly because I’ve received a lot of requests to discuss it and also because I feel like I can add my own points to the debate.

So let’s just get it out of the way: do I think Kieran is Dylan? As of right now the answer is no. I just don’t think we have enough evidence to prove it, and what’s there is more circumstantial. That doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy theorizing about it. I’ve found that discussing and sharing theories and ideas is one of my favourite ways to interact with a fandom. So I’m gonna put all of the evidence that I’ve observed in the entire first season both in favour of and against this theory and show why I think we can’t say that Kieran is Dylan. I’m not telling you to not believe it. Believe what you want! Like I said it’s fun to do this. I’ve just been specifically asked my opinion and I want to be able to justify it through what I’ve seen in the comic itself. 

For more of my posts about Purple Hyacinth check out my ‘ph posts’ tag!

So with all of that out of the way, let’s get started!

Evidence in favour of Kieran being Dylan:

One of the things I think most of us can agree on is that Dylan probably isn’t really dead. In general if I’m not shown a body, I don’t believe they’re dead. I’ve seen far too many movies and TV shows and have read far too many novels to be fooled by that. As of right now, in my head, Dylan is alive, or at least wasn’t killed in the bombing. So obviously if he isn’t dead then that frees him up to show up in the plot at some point or maybe he was there all along...?

This kind of ties into my next point: what happened to him then? His hat was found at the scene, so he must have lost it at some point before the explosion. This is all speculative, but he could have been snatched up by Tim and the driver in Lauren’s parents car. We heard Tim mention that children were in the car so it’s somewhat plausible that Dylan could have been kidnapped. Maybe he saw something suspicious and snooped around a bit which lead to him being snatched up or something. From there he’s tortured and broken and made into an assassin for the PS. Only he isn’t broken. He steels his resolve and does as he’s told because he’s now set on biding his time and getting revenge on those who robbed him of his life and humanity. It makes for a pretty compelling character arc.

The tragedy of his character arc could also be supplemented by the fact that when he was young, he wanted to be a doctor and save lives, but they made him into an assassin who takes lives. Brutally. Violently. Painfully. All of this would emphasize why he views himself as such a monster. The person he is now goes against everything the person he once was values. It’s this dichotomy that reinforces his ‘monster’ persona and allows him to justify this view of himself.

Another point is that this could explain why Kieran hesitated when he could have killed Lauren way back in episode 3. Of course he would hesitate to kill someone who was his close friend. Most of his murders were of people he either didn’t know or didn’t know very well. If he’d had a close friendship with her in childhood, it would obviously make him stop for a moment when he realizes who she is, just like he does in that episode. We even see Lauren say that if she knew why he hesitated then ‘everything would be different’. Obviously if she found out that he was her-long-lost-thought-to-be-dead friend, the person who symbolized her guilt for not stopping the bombing, the plot would be waaaaaay different. Just like the line about being the most blind of all in the prologue, the implications of this line are going to play a major role in the story, and this theory could explain that.

Then there’s those god damned purple hyacinths. Obviously Dylan’s knowledge of these flowers, both in their cultivation and meaning, are things that Kieran must know too. We pretty much know that they’re his signature for both their royal symbolism and their use in mourning, and that Kieran must have a stash of them growing somewhere. There’s also the fact that Lauren, who we know is very intelligent and well educated even at 12, doesn’t know the meaning of purple hyacinths other than their use as a symbol by the royal family. This tells me that their symbolism outshines their meaning in the traditional sense within the pop culture. Honestly, I didn’t even know the meanings of most flowers except for roses until I started reading this Webtoon. I’m not saying that people don’t know the meaning at all, I’m just saying it may not be common knowledge.

The final point I wanna talk about in favour of this theory is their appearances, since that will bleed nicely into the points against it for obvious reasons. So many people, myself included, have noticed that if you switch Dylan’s hair and eye colouring for Kieran’s, he’d basically look like little Kieran, and yes, I see it too. You could say that he could be dying his hair, it’s not crazy to believe hair dye exists in this world. How else does Belladonna have pink hair if they didn’t have access to dye? Unless it’s just stains from the blood of her victims… Actually that could be a theory lol but that’s not the point. Point is Kieran could theoretically have his hair dyed black, but it’s a bit of a stretch, as I explain in...

Evidence against Kieran being Dylan:

While he maaaaay be able to change his hair colour from light blond to black, there’s no way for him to change his eye colour from grey to blue. If rectangular glasses don’t even exist in this world yet (thank you Soph for this justification for why you gave him Harry Potter glasses), there’s no way that they’d have access to contact lenses yet. The other argument is that his eye colour changed with age but that feels a bit too... convenient for my taste. Odds are our boy Kieran is sporting the look he was born with.  Additionally, with everything going on in his life and his priorities, when would he have the time to constntly maintain this look, and why would he feel the need to disguise himself in the first place? He already operates in the shadows of the night and none of the authorities, other than Lauren, were able to get close enough to describe his appearance. There would simply be no need for all of that extra disguising.

Speaking of his appearance, we’ve seen one of his victims recognize him before he murders them. He says something interesting: ‘You were that boy’. Now this whole thing is one of my favourite mysteries of the series, so you best believe I am jumping on this shit the second we get more info about it. But for now, I want to use it to show that this aristocrat, who were loyal to the crown and presumably hadn’t seen him in years, took one look at Kieran’s face and immediately recognized him from when he was a child. If this man knew he had these same features as a boy, then it’s safe to assume that he’s always looked like this. This also links him to the aristocracy, since there’s no reason why this man of high status in opposition the PS would know anything about him unless he knew him before he entered the PS. Dylan, on the other hand, was the son of a gardener. He was friends with Lauren sure, but he clearly was of a lower station in society than someone like Lauren or the other aristocratic families. It’s doubtful that he’d leave such an impression on this high society man.

On top of all of that, if he were really Dylan and this man really did see through his change in appearance, why wouldn’t Lauren see through it too? She was one of his best friends and thinks about him constantly. If this man was able to recognize him in a single moment but she still doesn’t recognize him after months, then odds are he just isn’t Dylan.

There’s also the fact that Kieran doesn’t lie when he tells Lauren his name. It’s the same name that people like Belladonna know him by and it’s the name he uses when he becomes the archivist in Lauren’s precinct. Like he said before: there’s no need for him to hide his identity. He’s protected by his reputation and the PS itself. I can see an argument where he could have ‘renounced’ his old name because the person he once was is dead and only the monster remains, which is again a cool theory , or you could say it’s to keep people from knowing that he’s actually alive. But there would be no real need for him to change his name. He could have two names just like the hyacinths have two meanings. I will say that this theory about ‘Kieran White’ not being his true name could also work in favour for him not being Dylan too as, if he was an aristocrat, the PS could have changed his name to hide him from his family as well, but that’s neither here nor there, just something to consider. For now we know that he really is Kieran White and there’s no evidence to disprove that (yet).

Finally, many of the points listed in favour of the theory; the motive, the character arc, the knowledge of flowers, it’s all circumstantial. For all we know, Kieran could be Dylan Rosenthal, or he could be some boy connected to the aristocracy or even the royal family. He could be Dylan Rosenthal, or he could be his own character with his own arc yet to be fully revealed who’s connected to Lauren somehow. The meaning of purple hyacinths could come from Dylan’s prior knowledge, or they could common knowledge and Kieran just bought ‘Gardening for Dummies’ or some shit to make sure he didn’t kill them. Any number of different things could really be at play that we simply don’t know yet. But we do know that a man recognized him at a glance while Lauren, Dylan’s best friend, didn’t recognize him whatsoever. We do know that there’s no proof that hair and especially eye colour can be changed in this world. We do know that we still have quite a ways to go in this story and that the answers aren’t what we expect.

Eph and Soph have done an amazing job of revealing the story to us in disjointed pieces so that when we finally get that one piece that fits, may of them fall into place too. How many of us realized it was her parents’ car in the picture before it was revealed in episode 49? Or thought that Harvey was a spy all along? I don’t think we know nearly enough about him to prove he’s Dylan, but what we do have at this moment is enough to disprove it. What we have now is primarily speculation versus hard physical evidence. We need to accept that we don’t have all the pieces to the puzzle yet and that we’ll only receive new ones little by little.

So, until we learn more about Kieran’s past or until we see ‘changing-eye-colour’ join ‘lie-detecting’ as a new supernatural ability, I’m afraid that I can’t fully get behind this theory. Again, this doesn’t mean I’m telling you not to believe it. Thinking about all the implications of Kieran being Dylan is a lot of fun, just like thinking about Kieran’s backstory and motives is fun. And I could be wrong about all of this, who knows? Writing this just got me really excited to see where his arc will lead us and even more excited for season 2!

Thanks again to everyone who wanted me to discuss this! I had a lot of fun writing it and would love to hear feedback from you guys about any thing you may want to contribute that I may not have mentioned. This post was born of a sleepless night into morning and a need to get all my thoughts out of my brain so it could finally turn off and let me sleep. I already have an idea about what I’m gonna write next so stay tuned and thanks again for all the support!!

[warlock-enthusiast]

Waking up slow

The Wayhaven Chronicles

Adam du Mortain x female Detective (in the future)

Detective Kat Kingston faces a murder, Unit Bravo and her mother. 

AO3link

----

I don't know where to begin But I didn't think I cared I could be your friend But I'm unprepared

Kat looked at the mirror and stuck out her tongue.

Not much to see there. Especially after getting almost no sleep. Dark circles surrounded her eyes, hollowing out her face, and giving her a constant aura of exhaustion. With her pale skin, Kat wondered, if some aspiring filmmaker would hire her for an extra in their horrorfilm. Background zombie vampire number 21. Surely she could throw in some undead moans and shuffling.

She made a note to investigate, if anyone filmed in the surrounding areas.

Dressed in a pencil skirt and blouse, Kat felt a bit more like herself. It hugged her wide hips and concealed her tummy, which she hadn’t been ready to show to the world since her early teenage years. She decided to throw in some jewelry, a long necklace, earrings, nothing special.

A dash of powder and she faced her mirror again. “You can do this. Just take a deep breath and survive the day and make sure that no one else get killed.”

She’d been the logical choice for a promotion, but she started to doubt her abilities. Always the smart one in class, Kat now found herself facing obstacle after obstacle. A killer haunted her town and evidence seemed to be spare, one dead woman, strange blood samples, Verda working over hours to get some results. But nothing made sense. Wayhaven wasn’t known for it’s high crime rate. Most of the days, she investigated neighborhood disputes, lost cats (her rate of finding them was nearing 100%) and drug related incidents at times.

Lately, doubts crawled into her sleep and made her wonder, if she deserved the title of Detective. She saw herself as neither smart nor experienced enough.

Not to mention a whole squad of agents occupied her office and station. With them around her, Kat felt out of place and small. Between the four of them were years of actual agent work and whatever they’d been paid to do.

With them, her mother had also grabbed a part of her life again.

Wonderful.

“No. Not thinking of her.” Their complicated relationship offered too many raw wounds and too many missed birthdays and the vastness of a lonely childhood. At her ripe age of 31, she surely should get over it, but bitterness seemed rooted deep within in herself. All those expensive hours of therapy, just to face the same old shit.

Kat tucked her red hair behind her ears and nodded. “Off we go then.”

Half past seven and her neighbors slowly began their day. She heard laughing children and dogs barking. The pure picture of a quiet, idyllic town. Kat wrapped her scarf a bit tighter around her neck, because the air felt cold and smelled of frost. Though, she’d always liked this time of the year, before it got uncomfortable warm and before pollen attacked her nose and eyes.

She got in her car and found herself relaxing behind the wheel, with the help of Stevie Nicks and her comforting voice. Singing along Seven Wonders worked miracles on a bad mood.

Her shoulders tensed as she noticed a familiar figure in front of the station. Handsome and rugged, Bobby owned too much space in her memories and still too much space in her life.

Kat nodded. “Bobby.” “Hey, angel. Long time no see.” He smiled and stood right in front of the entrance. Sighing, she tried to find a way around him. “Look, Bobby, I haven’t got the time.” “Come on, just some small answers. Wouldn’t hurt you, eh?”

“At this point, I can’t tell you anything. We’re investigating different angles.”

“Please.” Bobby’s eyes were bright and cheerful and Kat rubbed her neck, hoping that she didn’t blush. He’d been charming back when they meet at college and then dumped her, because he couldn’t bring a chubby girl home to meet his parents.

Yeah, that had happened.

Concentrating on how she felt back then surely helped with bringing more distance between the two of them. It also pushed the self-doubts to a new high. Damn. This morning totally screwed her over.

“The detective is needed inside.”

Kat spun around and almost crushed into Adam’s chest. “Detective Kingston.” He opened the door and positioned himself right between herself and Bobby. Her throat seemed suddenly very, very dry with Adam standing so close. Dressed in his usual grey shirt and cargo trousers, he cut an impressive figure.

“So, are you going to answer a few questions.” “No.”

Kat slipped in and ignored Bobby’s protests. She already feared what he would write about her and the Wayhaven police. Probably calling them incompetent and lazy for selling a few more papers.

“Good morning, Douglas.”

His smile looked earnest and cheerful. “Morning, Kat. Everything alright?” “Yes, thank you.” Kat nodded and followed Adam, because further stalling wouldn’t improve anyone's day.

Adam opened her office door and she walked in. “Good morning. You’re awfully early.”

“Couldn’t wait to see you, Detective.” Felix quipped and Kat felt heat rising in her neck and up to her cheeks. Being the center of attention had never been comfortable and Kat tried hide her embarrassment with focussing on anything but Felix.

A hot, steaming coffee waited on Kat’s desk and she found a note from Tina and a smiley drawn beneath it. She liked it with a dash of oat milk and cupped it in her hands as she sat down. Kat would visit her later and thank her for indulging one tired detective. The rest of the team had already made themself comfortable. Mason leaning against a filing cabinet, Felix lounging on the only other chair, Nate crunched over her desk, checking his notes and comparing them to Kat’s.

“So, another day of research?” Felix sighed loudly enough for Adam to stare him into silence again.

Nate looked up, his warm eyes on Kat. “If that is your plan of action.” She looked down to check her mails. “Yeah, we need to find out what’s going on with the blood of the victim and how it fits into all of this.”

Back in college, she’d thought about following her passion for science and enter the pathology course, but it didn't worked out. It still lingered on her mind from time to time and she spent more time than necessary down in the lab with Verda.

Kat read through the file again.

Janet Greenland. Aspiring engineer. Far too young to face such a gruesome fate.

Kat took a sip of coffee. “I’d appreciate it, if you would tell me about your findings. You’ve been tracking him for a while and must know more than me.” Nate and Adam exchanged a glance. Did they really believe themself to be subtle? They’d only known each other for a few days, but often enough she felt left out of the conversation and their secrets.

“You already received all our information.” Adam’s face seemed unmoved and his intense eyes woke a squeamish sensation in her stomach.

Kat stood up and tried to scrap together her last pieces of confidence. “I know that you’re not exactly excited to work with me, but I appreciate your insight into this and would be really grateful, if you wouldn’t leave me in the dark.”

"Detective Kingston…” Nate started, but Adam didn’t let him continue.

Felix and Mason stayed quiet, probably used to the other two butting their heads.

Kat waited for an answer, knowing that red spots started to bloom on her neck, betraying her confident words.

"So?"

"So." Adam's answer held a final note.

Tina knocked on the door, thankfully cutting through the awkward silence that followed their exchange.

“Excuse me.” Kat got up and straightened her skirt. “Time for break. There is a nice bakery around the corner, if you’re hungry. Makes good sandwiches and cupcakes.”

She left with a feeling that no one in Unit Bravo would follow her advice, and with her coffee secured between her fingers.

Her friend slung an arm around Kat's shoulders and whispered. “The blond one is still staring.” “Probably thinking less and less of me and my competence. Wouldn't blame him." Adam du Mortain usually worked with skilled professionals, not some small town Detective that got a bit lucky and who had to be rescued from noisy ex-boyfriends.

"Let's check out, if anyone has repaired our vending machine.” Kat ignored the urge to look back through the glass and just held herself a bit stiffer. “You’re still hoping to get back your money?” Tina guided her towards their break room. “I do or at least that chocolate bar.”

“Always the optimist.” Kat snorted. “Haven’t been called that in a while.”

As expected, the vending machine didn’t work and she positioned herself against the counter. Tina opened their mini fridge and made a face. Douglas had forgotten about his lunch for about a week now and it began to grew a soft pelt. They really should trow it away, but neither of them seemed brave enough to touch it.

Crossing her arms in front of her chest, Tina nudged Kat’s shoulder with her own. “How you’re holding up? I mean with the case and with your mother back in Wayhaven?”

“Not that well, if you want the truth. I’m afraid for the people here and I don’t know, if I’m up to the task of catching the murderer. Unit Bravo doesn’t help as much as I thought they would.”

Kat bit her lip. “And Rebecca, hm, you know … I respect her on a professional level and that is as far as I’m thinking about her now.” “It’s a start.” “I guess.” Kat finished her coffee. Dead father, absent mother, didn’t help much growing up. She shook her head. “Enough of my stunted emotions. How was your date with… damn, what was her name? Anna?” “Annabelle.” Tina smiled. “Actually, pretty bad. We didn’t click and after dinner we decided to just accept that and part ways.” “Sorry to hear that.” “Nah, I’ll find the one and at least she didn't throw her drink at the bartender.”

Tina laughed and her eyes sparkled with amusement. Kat found herself smiling too. It seemed hard to not do when her friend was around. She also remembered their horrible double date, back when her guy got so angry about something that he threw his perfectly fine vodka soda at the Bartender. They didn’t arrest him but let him go off with a warning to behave better in the future.

“Here’s to another day in Wayhaven.” Kat raised her empty mug.

“Hear, hear!”

[thecaroliner]

That awful CBR Kataang article

I don’t normally do metas but this was so bad I had to respond. I think I actually had a stroke reading it

1. She shouldn’t teach him waterbending

At the beginning of the series, Katara was a waterbending novice, barely capable of maintaining a feeble orb of water in midair. As she traveled with Aang, they grew as waterbenders simultaneously, each growing through their journey to the north pole where they were taught by the same teacher.

After that, Katara assumed the duty of Aang’s waterbending tutor, which doesn’t really make sense considering that they should both be at the same approximate place in their training. In fact, Aang was shown to be more naturally adept at waterbending and capable of picking up the techniques easier.

So, like, did you completely miss the episode where Katara is shown to have advanced more than Pakku’s other students who have been training for months or maybe even years at this point? Yeah it’s a little weird considering that she’s only been there about a month, but Katara is just really, REALLY good at waterbending once she had a proper teacher. And yes Aang did pick it up really quickly but we also see in said episode he was lounging around playing with Momo rather than practicing, unlike Katara who it seemed like practiced hours each day.

2. They did their best work separated

Both Aang and Katara were intensely powerful benders who accomplished many amazing feats through their powers. However, it’s interesting to note that their most formidable feats were accomplished by themselves and separate from one another. Katara learned her most powerful techniques, bloodbending and water healing, completely without Aang’s aide. And the amount of incredible things Aang accomplished without her are immeasurable.

For starters, he was able to embody the spirit of the ocean, beat Fire Lord Ozai, and impressed the last dragons. In fact, he had to intentionally abandon her to attain his highest form and gain control of the Avatar State, pretty much definitively proving that they are more powerful when separated.

....What does this have to do with anything. Like, seriously, anything. Should they not be amazing, powerful benders unless the other is there to help them?? I genuinely don’t understand the point you’re trying to make here. Also do you not know how the Avatar state works? 

3. The Cave of Two Lovers

One of the defining moments in Aang and Katara’s romance was the episode “The Cave of Two Lovers.” In it, Aang and Katara are separated from everyone else in a system of caves on the way to the city of Omashu.

The romantic nature of the story inspires Aang to hint his true feelings to Katara and, after some rom-com levels of shenaniganry, the two almost kiss for the first time as their light goes out. Without the light, however, the pathway of glowing crystals becomes clear and the two are able to escape. The episode is generally never brought up, both in discussion and the show’s lore, because it is, for lack of a better word, cringy.

Great argument, just explain what happened in the episode and then don’t explain why it’s bad or weird

4. Political Disagreements

Their biggest obstacle came in the comics, where they came within moments of splitting up over political disagreements. Specifically, their fight was over the Harmony Restoration Movement, which attempted to remove Fire Nation colonies following the end of the war. After Zuko had a change of heart and wanted to keep the older colonies in place, Katara agreed with him.

Aang was initially of the mind that all Fire Nation presence in the Earth Kingdom needed to be removed to ensure peace. Their conflict came to the point of violence when Katara had to talk Aang down from the Avatar State to prevent him from ending Zuko.

Again you just explained what happened and not why it was bad

5. Aang’s grandkids are better without him

There’s clear evidence that Aang and Katara weren’t the best parents, as evidenced by the emotional and psychological hang-ups of their kids, but the most telling proof that they weren’t fit to raise kids is how their grandkids turned out. Given that Aang never met them, Tenzin’s kids were never directly influenced by their grandfather and they were all nearly ideal children. Sure Ikki and Meelo are hyperactive, but they’re kids and are shown to mature somewhat with age while retaining their energetic personalities.

Free from Aang’s influence, Jinora even becomes a more powerful spiritual advisor than her father, who was so burdened with Aang’s pressure that he was never able to fully embrace his spiritual side.

Um, WHAT? Are you freaking serious right now? Of course we gotta go with the dumb “Aang was a bad dad” argument, AGAIN, which obviously was blown way outta proportion. But I can’t believe you’d actually say that they are better off not knowing him

6. They both have PTSD

While to romance between Aang and Katara is often framed as being between two kindred souls who knew from childhood that they were meant to be together, that couldn’t be further from the truth. Even from the first moments they met each other, both exhibited acute symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder.

Katara’s maternal instincts are likely derived from witnessing her mother’s demise and the prospect of vengeance. Aang had a tendency to misdirect, project, and avoid his issues over abandoning his culture and being lost in time. He also demonstrated a consistent lack in ability to process his anger, often snapping and yelling at his comrades over his perception of their failures.

ONCE AGAIN. WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH ANYTHING. Also, are you literally implying that PTSD victims shouldn’t be in a relationship? ok

7. Aang kept her from seeing her dad

In one of the most despised episodes of the entire series, “Bato of the Water Tribe,” also featured a moment that probably should have destroyed Katara and Aang’s relationship. In the episode, Aang intercepts a letter that would provide Katara and her brother information on where their father, who they haven’t seen for three years, might be stationed and give them a chance to see him. Worried that they might abandon him, however, Aang hides the letter from them.

Katara’s father was at war and could have died at any time. If Aang had prevented the water tribe siblings from seeing their father, there’s no guarantee that they would have ever seen him again.

This is as close to a legitimate point as this article gets. But I guess they’re forgetting how Aang felt guilty about it and how neither Katara nor Sokka took it lightly and it took a while for them to forgive him. 

8. They gave their kids inadequacy issues

If there’s one thing that could be gleaned from the Legend of Korra spin-off series, it’s that Aang and Katara weren’t the best parents. The oldest, Bumi, was born a non-bender and even in what appear to be his mid-50s, and after an illustrious military career, was still dealing with the inadequacy issues imparted by his father who always wanted an airbending child.

His sister Kya was so affected by her parents’ pressures that she spent several years traveling the world by herself before being forced to return to the south pole to take care of her co-dependent mother. Tenzin, the only airbending child was denied a childhood by his father hoisting the burden of an entire culture on his young shoulders.

Nothing in the show implies Kya was forced to come back and live with Katara. Katara was an elderly woman, devastated by the loss of her husband of 50+ years. My grandpa died many years ago, and if we hadn’t already lived in the same town as them, my family would’ve definitely moved up there to be with my grandma who was all alone. Taking care of your family is bad, I guess.

9. Their relationship got worse in the comics

The romance between Katara and Aang was a slow build on the show, developing infrequently from beginning to end. After the show ended, the generally laudable comic series took over the narrative and fumbled their relationship worse than a clumsy wide receiver. After affirming their relationship, the series depended entirely on an unfair dynamic between the two.

Katara was jealous of Aang constantly flirting with other girls closer to his own age, Aang bragged about being able to kiss her to everyone who would listen, and neither could think of a better pet name than “sweetie.” Overall, their romance just sort of went on automatic in the comics.

Show me ONE TIME where Aang flirted with other girls. Being friends with other girls is not flirting with them. Aang only mentioned being able to kiss her ONCE, and it wasn’t in front of close friends. He didn’t freaking go out in the middle of a crowd and go “HEY EVERYONE LOOK I CAN KISS KATARA”

10. Their kiss at the end was weird

The only time when Katara and Aang’s romantic relationship really picked up steam was in the final season of the show, culminating in the final scene of the original series where the two finally share a reciprocated kiss. As romantic as the tone was, it was offset somewhat by the atmosphere between the two leading up to that moment.

Mere episodes earlier, with the looming threat of genocide, death, and continued global war hanging ever-present over their heads, Katara was still uncertain and upset over Aang’s advances and made that abundantly clear to him.

Whoa, Katara took time to think about her feelings before jumping into a relationship?? Wow, how stupid of her.

11. They worked better as friends

The Kataang relationship was present throughout much of the series, but was only addressed and developed a few times at sporadic intervals. For the vast majority of the series, their relationship was one of matriarch and dependent. Aang needed Katara to keep him humble and focused while Katara’s motherly nature made her want to keep Aang safe.

Put bluntly, they were friends and their relationship worked well in that regard. But whenever romance was forcibly inserted into the equation, Katara began questioning how she felt about Aang and stated openly that she was uncomfortable with his affections. I.E. red flags that they probably should just stay friends.

Man, how dare Katara and Aang have a solid friendship before being romantically involved!!!!!!! You’re not supposed to be FRIENDS with your significant other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

12. The age difference

Though Aang is technically over 100 years old, he’s biologically only 12. And though Katara herself is only 14 at the start of the series, the gulf between a 12-year-old and a 14-year-old is far greater than that between a 30-year-old and 32-year-old.

Despite having moments of genuine sage wisdom, Aang’s everyday behavior is more on par with an 8-year-old than anyone in his actual age bracket. This might not be his fault as his isolated, holistic upbringing instilled in him a strong sense of detachment, which might have prompted some of his more selfish actions, but even the most mature 12-year-old should not be making out with someone two years older.

I am forever baffled by y’all thinking that someone with a fun-loving, carefree personality is childish. When you get to a certain age are you supposed to stop having fun?? Stop telling jokes??? What a miserable life that would be

13. It was a one-sided relationship

When Aang was freed from the iceberg he’d been trapped in for the past hundred years, his first instinct was to fall head over heels in love with Katara. However, she didn’t see things the same way for quite some time. In fact, during the entire series, their romance was viewed through Aang’s lens with little to no input from Katara’s opinions on the matter.

In fact, she made it obliquely clear from the beginning of the series that she saw Aang more as a little brother or pseudo-child rather than a potential love interest, a view that didn’t change until very late. And even then, she was more embarrassed and confused by Aang’s affections than reciprocal.

Yeah, because relationships in real life are always 100% mutual from the beginning, and one person is never interested before the other is. That NEVER happens.

14. Their romance was unnecessary

While they were one of the primary pairs of the show, Katara and Aang’s relationship was only focused on in a handful of episodes in the original show’s three-season run. And those episodes tended to be considered weaker or filler between more significant arcs. Overall, their ship was not integral to the narrative of the show, both figuratively and thematically. You could remove all the Kataang content from the show and it wouldn’t change anything.

It wouldn’t even effect the series’ general quality, only improve it slightly. This might have been an issue in the writing staff as central breeding pairs are a trope in most shows, animated or otherwise. But just because stereotypes exist doesn’t mean they have a purpose or need to be used.

This was a show about magic, martial arts, and war. All the romance on the show was technically unnecessary. Doesn’t mean it shouldn’t have happened.

15. Zuko would’ve been a better match for her

The main rival of the Kataang ship is the Zutara vessel, the faction of viewers who believed that Katara would be better off with the series anti-hero Zuko. And they’re probably right. Zuko and Katara have expressed an interest in each other before, launching their ship in the first place, but it’s more because Zuko is more mature and, for lack of a better word, attractive than the alternative.

There’s also the pretty significant matter that they both have similar emotional baggage. Katara has issues with her father abandoning her for the war, Zuko has problems with his father being a dictatorial jerk, and they both lost their mothers at a young age due to the intricacies of politics and conflict.

*eye roll* “Zuko and Katara have expressed interest in each other before” Where? Show me where.

Ok so before you said that one of the reasons Kataang doesn’t work is because they both have PTSD. Buuuuut Katara and Zuko having PTSD is a reason..they should’ve been together? And full offense, but Katara having hard feelings towards her dad for a short time in one episode that was resolved quickly is in no way equal to Zuko experiencing lifelong physical and emotional abuse by his father. I’m actually really angry and kind of offended you would even think this was a reasonable comparison.

16. Their personalities never changed

One of the most important aspects of fictional characters is how they change. Round characters are indefinitely more interesting than flat, one-note characters. And while Aang and Katara are in no way flat characters, they didn’t change much within the confines of their relationship. That is to say, while their presence in each other’s lives changed the others’ personalities, they did not change all too much to each other after their childhood.

As seen in Legend of Korra, Katara is just as maternal and wise as she was in her youth. Korra’s brief flashbacks to Aang’s life demonstrated that he grew somewhat more serious as he aged, but was still immature enough to pose for pictures of him doing his marble trick.

fklafj;afjea;fef; if AANG MAKING A FUNNY POSE FOR A PICTURE IS IMMATURE. god i’m just. i am so done with this article.

17. Aang decided how many kids they had

One of the biggest decisions a long-term couple can make together is if they want to have children. It’s a choice that, if made in the affirmative, can never be taken back, and if they do decide to have kids, they both need to determine how many kids they want or can afford to have.

While Katara never said anything on the subject, their kids were more than happy to discuss how Aang was insistent on having children until at least one of them developed airbending so he had a surefire way to pass on his near-extinct culture. Presumably Katara was more than happy to have three kids with Aang, but if Tenzin had turned out to be a water- or non-bender, he would have demanded that she continue.

LITERALLY WHAT SHOW ARE YOU WATCHING HERE, MY DUDE. Where was this EVER said or even implied. Might I point out in Legacy where Aang literally says that he and Katara were open to the idea of having more kids after Tenzin

18. She lived without him for 20 years

t’s stated in Legend of Korra that Aang died when he was 66. Given that Katara is approximately two years older than him, that means she was about 68 when he passed. By the end of the spin-off series, Katara was 89, according to the official wiki.

That means that she had around 20 years to live, grow, and evolve as a person without Aang around. In all likelihood, if Aang had somehow returned to her after all that time, he might not even recognize Katara as the same woman he fell in love with. As far as the series is willing to tell, Katara’s only company after Aang’s death was her daughter, the Order of the White Lotus, Korra, and infrequent visits from her other children.

Wow, how dare Aang DIE and leave Katara all alone. What a jerk!!!!!!!! I guess my grandpa is a jerk for dying and leaving my grandma all alone, too! Men SUCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

19. She had a crush on Jet first

Kataang shippers tend to consider the start of the relationship to be the moment Aang saw Katara. He looked at her through rose colored glasses the moment she broke him out of the iceberg, framing her in light and a romantic breeze. It took Katara a little while to come around to having feelings for him, but she had a few different non-starter relationships along the way.

The first, and by far most impassioned of these, was with the freedom fighter Jet, who she met all the way back in the first season. Her crush was apparent and strong enough that she was disproportionately upset when she saw him several months later. She may have wound up with Aang, but she clearly had stronger initial feelings for Jet.

Wow because nobody in real life ever has multiple relationships throughout their lifetime or crushes on other people before meeting their significant other. And yeah, Katara totally shouldn’t have been upset to see the guy who tried to wipe out an entire innocent village unless she was madly in love with him

20. The (older) age difference

Despite only looking like a pre-teen, Aang is actually over 100 years old. He was born and raised before the start of the 100-year war at the Southern Air Temple. Upon learning he was the reincarnated Avatar, Aang was surprised. He and Appa were caught in a ferocious storm that sent them below the waves.

In a moment of self-preservation, his Avatar state activated for the first time and he bent himself into a frozen iceberg, which preserved him as he waited for a century beneath the seas near the Southern Water Tribe. The series is riddled with Aang’s hang-ups about his long-dead culture. It often causes rifts between himself and the other characters.

What does this have to do with their age difference or Kataang at all

[hufflly-puffs]

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

Chapter 13: The Secret Riddle

Something that I noticed during this chapter is that Dumbledore, after he had shown Harry another memory, interprets the scene for him. Therefore Rowling interprets the scene through the character of Dumbledore for her audience. This isn’t the first time. Especially Hermione (but also Dumbledore) functions often as an Exposition character, someone who gives Harry vital information about the Wizarding World, as well as interpreting certain situations for Harry, for example Cho’s emotional state on their horrible first date. In this case Dumbledore (therefore Rowling) wanted to make sure Harry (therefore the audience) pays attention to the right details when it comes to Voldemort. I’m usually not a huge fan of a writer trying to explain their story to me, but in this case it makes sense within the story.

“She appears to have brushed the necklace with the smallest possible amount of skin: there was a tiny hole in her glove. Had she put it on, had she even held it in her ungloved hand, she would have died, perhaps instantly.” – I wonder what kind of curse Katie almost fell victim to. Touching the necklace would have killed her immediately, but in her case even the smallest amount of skin caused severe damage. How exactly would the curse have killed her? What is it that happened to her?

“‘He only gave her ten Galleons?’ said Harry indignantly.” – Well, she could have bought a Hogwarts textbook from it. And maybe like one butterbeer.

“‘Ah,’ said Dumbledore, ‘perhaps she could. But it is my belief – I am guessing again, but I am sure I am right – that when her husband abandoned her, Merope stopped using magic. I do not think that she wanted to be a witch any longer. Of course, it is also possible that her unrequited love and the attendant despair sapped her of her powers; […].’” – I think for Merope magic has never been a good thing. Her father and her brother used magic against her, to oppress her, to the point where she was emotionally unstable enough not to perform any magic herself. She then eventually used magic to get Tom Riddle to fall in love with her, but the moment she stopped he left her, perhaps making her believe it was her being a witch that made him go. Being a witch has never been a positive experience for her, so the great irony is that the descendant of Salazar Slytherin, the mother of Lord Voldemort, no longer wanted to be a witch.

“‘Could you possibly be feeling sorry for Lord Voldemort?’ ‘No,’ said Harry quickly, ‘but she had a choice, didn’t she, not like my mother –’ ‘Your mother had a choice, too,’ said Dumbledore gently. ‘Yes, Merope Riddle chose death in spite of a son who needed her, but do not judge her too harshly, Harry.’” – Lily died for her son, died to protect him, chose death to save him. Merope chose death despite her son needing her; it would have been brave for her to choose life instead. Both Harry and Voldemort grew up as orphans, but the reasons why they had no parents taking care for them couldn’t have been more different. The one whose parents died for love became a good man, the one whose parents abandoned him became a monster.

“‘You mean he’s won a scholarship? How can he have done? He’s never been entered for one.’ ‘Well, his name has been down for our school since birth –’ ‘Who registered him? His parents?’ There was no doubt that Mrs Cole was an inconveniently sharp woman.” – Look, Mrs Cole might think that Tom is a bit strange and she is relieved that he will leave her orphanage, but still when a complete stranger appears to take away one of her children she asks the right questions.

“‘Here,’ said Dumbledore, waving his wand once as he passed her the piece of paper, ‘I think this will make everything clear.’ Mrs Cole’s eyes slid out of focus and back again as she gazed intently at the blank paper for a moment. ‘That seems perfectly in order,’ she said placidly, handing it back.” – Obviously this is the same magic paper the Doctor uses. #confirmed

“‘Well, we named him just as she’d said, it seemed so important to the poor girl, but no Tom nor Marvolo nor any kind of Riddle ever came looking for him, nor any family at all, so he stayed in the orphanage and he’s been here ever since.’” – We later find out that little Tom Riddle isn’t very fond of his name, and that is even before he found out that his father was a Muggle. The name ‘Tom’ is too common, not special, not the way Tom sees himself (he doesn’t even like that he shares his names with others). But it is so interesting that this is the name Merope chose for her son – the name of his Muggle dad. Merope, who no longer used magic, who no longer wanted to be a witch, gave her son a name that would leave no trace of his heritage. The only indicator to his Wizard ancestors is his middle name, Marvolo, so despite his abuse it is possible Merope still loved her father. Perhaps she had also given her son a Muggle name so that neither her father or her brother would find her son.

It is clear from what Mrs Cole tells Dumbledore about Tom that he is a psychopath. He doesn’t have any friends, he lies, he manipulates, he scares the other children. And there isn’t a defining incident that changed his personality, he has always been like this. Rowling avoids the stereotype to portray the orphanage as a horrible place – Harry mentions that the children look well-cared. From what we learn about Mrs Cole she has a genuine interest in the well-being of her children (and a little drinking problem). Her interest in getting rid of Riddle is more for the sake of the other children, who are afraid of him. There is no indication that Mrs Cole or anyone else at the orphanage has acted abusive, so in many ways Tom had a better childhood than Harry or Snape. The fact that Tom was a product of rape, that both his parents abandoned him, can be seen as a metaphor, that the loveless circumstances of his birth created a man who was never able to understand love himself. But little Tom Riddle doesn’t know this yet. It is no excuse for the frightening behaviour he already shows. And perhaps that is why he could never redeem himself in the end, because he has always been a monster.

“‘I can make things move without touching them. I can make animals do what I want them to do, without training them. I can make bad things happen to people who annoy me. I can make them hurt if I want to.’” – You remember the kind of accidental magic Harry produced as a child? Like making his hair grow back or magically escaping his bullies at school? None of those have the quality of “I can make them hurt if I want to”. Like if a child ever says something like that to you, congratulation, you found yourself in a horror movie. And he shows not a single bit of remorse about it. He is just fascinated by the kind of power he has over other people.

“‘I knew I was different,’ he whispered to his own quivering fingers. ‘I knew I was special. Always, I knew there was something.’” – And as Harry later remarks Tom’s reaction is quite different to his. He immediately believed Dumbledore when he learned that he was a wizard, because he already thought of himself to be special. To be different. Extraordinary. And even now, when he doesn’t know about Purebloods and the like, little Tom already has this mind-set that he is better, above all others, Muggles and Wizards alike.

“‘I haven’t got any money.’ ‘That is easily remedied,’ said Dumbledore, drawing a leather money-pouch from his pocket. ‘There is a fund at Hogwarts for those who require assistance to buy books and robes.” – How come the Weasleys never got any money from that fund? At least it is never mentioned. Does this fund only work for special cases like Riddle, who has no money of his own? Does it also apply to families with a low-income? Did the Weasleys simply refuse, too proud to take any money? Or does this fund no longer exist? (Though I doubt that Dumbledore as a headmaster would get rid of it)

“‘Was my father a wizard? He was called Tom Riddle too, they’ve told me.’ ‘I’m afraid I don’t know,’ said Dumbledore, his voice gentle. ‘My mother can’t have been magic, or she wouldn’t have died,’ said Riddle, more to himself than Dumbledore. ‘It must’ve been him.” – Already Tom associates Muggles with weakness and magic with power. He doesn’t believe his mother could have been a witch or else she wouldn’t have died. At some point he found out the truth however – that his father was a Muggle, that his mother was a witch, descendant from Slytherin, who still died after all, refusing to use magic to save her own life. Maybe that is where Voldemort’s fascination with immortality comes from – the belief that magic equals power, that used in the right way you can even avoid death, failing to see, as Dumbledore told him, that there are worse things than death.

“‘Did I know that I had just met the most dangerous Dark wizard of all time?’ said Dumbledore. ‘No, I had no idea that he was to grow up to be what he is. However, I was certainly intrigued by him. I returned to Hogwarts intending to keep an eye upon him, something I should have done in any case, given that he was alone and friendless, but which, already, I felt I ought to do for others’ sake as much as his.” – Even then Dumbledore saw that Tom was a psychopath, someone who could appear charming on the surface, but with no empathy for others, who already used magic as a weapon. I think that over the years Riddle perfected his mask of the incredible gifted young charming man, to avoid to draw any attention to his true nature. Dumbledore had seen glimpses of that true nature upon their first meeting, which is why he never trusted Tom completely.

“You will hear many of his Death Eaters claiming that they are in his confidence, that they alone are close to him, even understand him. They are deluded. Lord Voldemort has never had a friend, nor do I believe that he has ever wanted one.” – This perfectly corresponds with the second chapter, with Bellatrix’s firm belief that she is the closet to the Dark Lord and her anger when she learned that Voldemort confided in Snape as well. It is a part of Voldemort’s manipulative scheme, to let his followers believe they alone are his secret keepers, so therefore none of them will bond too much with the others. They all follow him, but as a group there are not united. Every single one of them is only interested what is best for them, not the collective.

“‘And lastly – I hope you are not too sleepy to pay attention to this, Harry – the young Tom Riddle liked to collect trophies. You saw the box of stolen articles he had hidden in his room. These were taken from victims of his bullying behaviour, souvenirs, if you will, of particularly unpleasant bits of magic. Bear in mind this magpie-like tendency, for this, particularly, will be important later.” – Obviously this will later make sense in reference to the Horcruxes, and the value Voldemort puts in certain artefacts, especially those that contain a certain history. But these little souvenirs he has here remind me of a psychopath who keeps souvenirs from his murders. And that is what his first Horcrux is after all – the diary only has personal value, as it is an evidence for the first murder Voldemort ever committed.

[anthonychiozza]

The Genocide Of The Innocent: Reprint From 12/19/15

    Written by: Anthony Chiozza

Hearing about babies dissected alive could lead one to despair easily. Those that are still in touch with their own soul feel an anger, and deep pain that can not be adequately communicated with the pen. Children of God for Life’s facebook page states the following: “Dr. Ian Donald explained what he witnessed at Karolinska Institute to Fr Paul Marx at HLI several years ago: Experiments were being performed on near-term alive aborted babies who were not even afforded the mercy of anesthetic as they writhed and cried in agony, and when their usefulness had expired, they were executed and discarded as garbage.” Difficult words to read for those with a soul. (1) For the record, the Karolinska Institute is located in Sweden. (2) However, the United States, Planned Parenthood, and the citizens of this country have enough blood on their hands as well, as revealed by the recent Planned Parenthood “scandal.” The only scandal that I am aware of is that millions of babies have been exterminated for years.

    There are not enough human tears to be wept that can make up for the atrocities committed against the weakest of the human species. Perhaps you have considered that I sound more like a humanist than a Catholic, but let me assure you that I fully expect God’s wrath to pour out upon this disgusting, “modern” society sooner rather than later. Some people hear, “God’s Wrath,” and they assume that this is some kind of evil God that enjoys punishing people. My theology might be off on this, but in any case, this is how my perception of this concept works itself out in my mind. God loves us so much that He weeps while having to destroy us, because we have rejected His love. If we think back to Scripture Jesus sheds tears on Jerusalem. His own people did not accept His Love, and Rome would decimate the city precisely as Jesus prophesized. Further, God’s Chastisements can also lead many to repent before death, and spare them an eternal death in hell.

For the record, I used to vote for politicians that murder babies. I was once  a full functioning member of the “Culture of Death,” in almost every regard. I have, through God’s mercy, had the good fortune to be slapped awake by Him, and I confessed those sins. These are just some of my sins, but how many pretend there is some subtle discussion to have about voting for millions of babies being slaughtered, while weighing the economic pros and cons? This cannot be considered clear reasoning. Considering if one should vote liberal to stop war is a more valid line of reasoning to follow, but also a line of reasoning that ultimately fails. Surely, liberals would continue to vote democrat if we were murdering Jews at home, but wanted to avoid killing others in wars abroad? I can hear the discussion now. “Well it is true that ‘Feel the Burn’ Sanders and Hillary want to keep murdering Jews in our country, but at least people won’t die in war abroad.” There is no subtle discussion to be had here.

    War is upon us, and it has been upon us for a long time, and many lives will be lost in war. Even under supposedly liberal leadership the slaughter of war continues, and whose fault is that? Those that have held the reigns of power in the past are guilty. Specifically, the Bush administration, which was fully stocked with a gaggle of neoconservatives. We cannot leave out Hillary Clinton, as she voted for the unjust war as well. The neocons didn’t listen to Saint John Paul II when he said they could not go to war in the middle east! “John Paul has insisted that war is a "defeat for humanity" and that a preventive strike against Iraq is neither legally nor morally justified.” (3)

     News flash for the Liberals out there laughing at the Neocons’ clouded reason, and disobedience to the Holy Father. Democrats have supported genocide much longer than any Republican Neocon, that didn’t listen to the Pope concerning the wars in the Middle East. This is not an excuse for the Bush administration’s disobedience to the Pope, but an important theological point! War is a punishment for the very crimes Liberals continue to support, by voting for leadership that is willing to sacrifice babies at Lucifer’s alter. When Our Lady of Fatima appeared to three shepherd children she confirmed Scripture, that war is indeed a punishment for sin. (4) (5)

    Again, why do Liberals continue to vote this way even though many of them are Catholic?  This vote is in trade for some false perception of economic advantage, or a misguided line of reasoning thinking we will spare lives by preventing war. I hear the emotional counter arguments now: “But if the economy is better, women will kill less babies.” Studying the statistics it does seem that the majority of abortions are happening for a lack of affordability. However, upon further investigation of the reasoning behind these decisions, and breaking down the data into subcategories, one must admit that affordability is highly subjective in the mind of the individual. The following statistics began being collected in 1986 and were published in 2005.

“Nearly three-quarters said they could not afford to have a baby.

Of those women who gave two or more answers, the most common response -- inability to afford a baby -- was most frequently followed by one of three other reasons:

Pregnancy/birth/baby would interfere with school or employment.

Reluctant to be a single mother or experiencing relationship problems.                       Done with childbearing or already have other children/dependents.

Below is

a breakdown of women's responses that

specified reasons that led to their abortion

decision

(percentage total will not add up to 100% as multiple answers were permissible):

74% felt "having a baby would dramatically change my life" (which includes interrupting education, interfering with job and career, and/or concern over other children or dependents)

73% felt they "can't afford a baby now" (due to various reasons such as being unmarried, being a student, inability to afford childcare or basic needs of life, etc.)

48% "don't want to be a single mother or [were] having relationship problem[s]" (6) (8)

  Only one reason listed seems to actually correlate with, “inability to afford a baby.” That reason is, “inability to afford basic needs of life.” The rest seem to be highly westernized ideas about “affordability.” There are women in dire poverty all around the world having babies, including the United States. For the sake of argument I will admit it is possible that these other categories might include some legitimate economic reasons, but that, of course, does not excuse the sin. When the statistics are broken down further we begin to get a clearer picture that these reasons are westernized reasons. Only twenty-three percent of abortions are because of affordability. Sixty-six percent of these abortions are happening for reasons other than affordability and that is without the health of the mother, or rape included! (7) In fairness two categories, or more, could be chosen by the woman filling out the form. Sixty-six percent is the best estimate that can made.  The percentage could be less.

Why Women Have Abortions:

The reasons they gave in 2004

25% Not ready for a(nother) child/timing is wrong

23% Can't afford a baby now

19% Have completed my childbearing/have other people depending on me/children are grown

8% Don't want to be a single mother/am having relationship problems

7% Don't feel mature enough to raise a(nother) child/feel too young

4% Would interfere with education or career plans

4% Physical problem with my health

3% Possible problems affecting the health of the fetus

<0.5% Was a victim of rape

<0.5% Husband or partner wants me to have an abortion

<0.5% Parents want me to have an abortion

<0.5% Don't want people to know I had sex or got pregnant

6% Other (7)

   Did voting Democrat ever stop 23% of these babies from being murdered? It would be interesting to break the statistics down further and see if the number of abortions in that category rose during the years of Democratic presidents. We obviously know that babies were murdered for that reason, in those years despite the numbers, so voting Democrat will never stop this from happening.  We always hear from Liberal Left about how much the government cares for everyone. Why don’t they care enough to use tax money to save babies instead of funding their genocide? Catholic Democrats hold up a magic economic key and argue they can stop allowing genocide, or at least most of it, if you will just vote for their party. I can hear the conversation with them continue, “We can save some of the Jews, even though we are the ones throwing them in the ovens, if you just vote for our party.”

    Turning back to the Republican side of the isle, can any Catholic clearly give me Donald Trump’s position on abortion? He seems to be all over the place.(9) Right now, apparently, it is not ok to kill babies in the Don’s mind, except for certain situations. This flies in the face of his previous position of being pro-abortion. He wouldn’t consider defunding Planned Parenthood, but maybe he will now? Who really knows? (Update: Thank God for President Trump. Could he still be critiqued? Yes, but he has done more than any other sitting POTUS that I can recall.) 

     Meanwhile we have candidates like Rand Paul, willing to stand on the Senate floor for hours filibustering, in order to defund Planned Parenthood! How can Conservative Catholics even seriously consider Trump when there are candidates that are more experienced, in regards to defending the country, and trying to save the unborn? Not only are they experienced, but they have proven they will fight the good fight! If Rubio shows up he might fight, I don’t know, probably not...I digress...The story recently broke that Planned Parenthood will be fully funded. Go back and read Dr. Donald’s witness testimony about babies screaming in pain as they are torn apart.

    What should Catholics be doing other than praying the rosary, to end this nightmare? I have personally heard at least two Priests, and read on EWTN that it is a mortal sin to vote for someone that supports abortion. The voters guide on EWTN by Father Taraco, Ph.D. states, “Except in the case in which a voter is faced with all pro-abortion candidates (in which case, as explained in question 8 above, he or she strives to determine which of them would cause the let damage in this regard), a candidate that is pro-abortion disqualifies himself from receiving a Catholic’s vote. This is because being pro-abortion cannot simply be placed alongside the candidate's other positions on Medicare and unemployment, for example; and this is because abortion is intrinsically evil and cannot be morally justified for any reason or set of circumstances. To vote for such a candidate even with the knowledge that the candidate is pro-abortion is to become an accomplice in the moral evil of abortion. If the voter also knows this, then the voter sins mortally.” (8)I would respectfully recommend that Trump supporters click the link in the source list below to the Catholic Answers article and consider if they are making the right moral decision weighing all the other candidates positions.

    It would follow that a good Catholic would make a prudent decision, even if they were still unsure, and follow what these good sources of Catholic teaching are saying. Unfortunately, Catholics in the United States continue to march us backwards into darkness. It would be impossible for politicians that condone the genocide of babies to be elected in this country if Catholics would actually be Catholic. For some inexplicable reason they choose not to follow the Church, but their own wills, desires, and political leanings. If only they were obedient like the Queen Mother Mary, to her Son, they might not only find that abortions end, but that the economy would also improve. Perhaps we might get more worthy candidates to vote for on both sides of the narrow political spectrum in this country as well! How many Catholics will continue to do their will and not the Father’s Will?  For now, “we the Catholic people,” seem to want more bread and circus in exchange for the blood of the innocent. Update 1: Ladies and Gentleman, I have a serious question, and thought experiment. Apparently the five non negotiables are not Catholic teaching when it comes to voting. Pope Benedict said, in a letter, that one could vote for a pro-abortion candidate, but NOT because they are pro-abortion. I can find nothing that carries the weight of encyclical that says otherwise. However, I still feel in my heart, very strongly, that it is wrong to vote for a pro-abortion candidate. My thinking relies on a statement from Pope John Paul II: "That is the dignity of America, the reason she exists, the condition of her

survival, yes, the ultimate test of her greatness: to respect every human person,

especially the weak and most defenseless ones, those as yet unborn."

-Pope John Paul II 

I feel Saint Pope John Paul II's desire for America will never be accomplished here if Catholics are free to vote for pro-abortion candidates because they like other parts of that candidates platform. The analogy I think of to explain this to people follows as: Do you think everyone would be trying to make the best choice while people are being marched off to the ovens and just kind of toss their hands and their air, and say, "Well, I don't agree with them burning those Jews, but they have a great economic policy, so I'll vote for them." Anyway, these are just my thoughts on why I think it should not be allowed for Catholics to ever vote for a pro-abortion candidate, but I accept that I am probably wrong. My heart tells me never to vote that way personally. Thanks for the thoughtful consideration. I offer my sincere apologies to those Catholics that choose to vote for pro-abortion candidates. God bless.

Update II: A good friend of mine sent me another article today from a Priest on the issue of abortion. I feel it is important for everyone to form their conscience appropriately on this issue. I would respectfully ask that everyone read this, whether conservative, or liberal. When Pope Benedict said it would not be a grave evil to vote for a pro-abortion candidate, it was in the context of a letter. This is far from an encyclical, or words spoken from the Chair of Peter. This was his opinion. While I respect his opinion, and believe he was a great Pope, my heart tells me he is very wrong. A Pope is a man as well, and can be mistaken in matters of the Faith. Even a great Pope like Benedict. It is important that we all SERIOUSLY consider our position on this issue before casting a vote that could possibly send us to hell. I am so concerned about this, specifically because of the salvation of my soul, and other souls, I am considering writing a second piece on abortion and voting. Please pray for my soul. LINK: https://www.thecatholicthing.org/2016/03/03/can-catholics-support-a-pro-abortion-candidate/

​Citations:

Debi Vinnedge, President and Executive Director, “Children of God For Life,” Nov. 9, 2015, accessed Dec. 17, 2015, https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=905776096177162&id=223315007756611&fref=nf&pnref=story

(2) Dr Cecilia Götherström, Associate Professor, “Unique stem cell brittle-bone study starts,” Oct. 12, 2015 0 2:00 EST, accessed Dec. 17, 2015,

http://news.cision.com/karolinska-institutet/r/unique-stem-cell-brittle-bone-study-starts,c9844692

(3) Associated Press, “ Vatican Strongly Opposes Iraq War,” March 12, 2003, accessed Dec. 17, 2015, http://www.foxnews.com/story/2003/03/12/vatican-strongly-opposes-iraq-war.html

(4) Father Nicholas Gruner, “ Part I – The Urgency of the Fatima Message,” unkown, acessed, Dec. 19, 2015,

http://www.fatima.org/books/divimp/dichap1.asp

(5) Catholic Answers Staff, “ Does God Send War As Punishment For Sin,” unknown, accessed Dec. 19, 2015,

http://www.catholic.com/quickquestions/does-god-send-wars-as-a-punishment-for-sin

(6)  Lawrence B. Finer, Lori F. Frohwirth, Lindsay A. Dauphinee, Susheela Singh and Ann M. Moore “Reasons U.S. Women Have Abortions :  Quantiative and Qualitative  Perspectives,” September 2005, accessed Nov. 17, 2015,

https://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/journals/3711005.pdf

(7) Gudrun Shultz, “The Real Reason Women Choose Abortion,” unkown, accessed, Dec. 19, 2015,

http://www.actionlife.org/index.php/life-issues/abortion/item/124-the-real-reason-women-choose-abortion

(8) Linda Lowen, “Why Women Choose Abortion - Statistical Breakdown of Reasons For Abortion,” Dec. 16, 2014, accessed Dec. 17, 2015, http://womensissues.about.com/od/reproductiverights/a/AbortionReasons_2.htm

(10) Fr. Stephen F. Torraco, PhD, “A Brief Catechism for Catholic Voters,” 2002, accessed Dec. 17, 2015,

https://www.ewtn.com/vote/brief_catechism.htm

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:(Statue)_Stop_Abortion._University_of_Ilorin.jpg#mw-jump-to-license

Women’s Rights Photo: Kenneth John Gill

(9) Bethany Blankley, “Donald Trump’s Abortion Muddle,” Dec. 5, 2015, accessed Dec. 18, 2015,

[pyrewriter]

For Whom it Tolls

An Akuma's minion drove its comically oversized axe deep into the ground where Chat Noir was just a moment ago and struggled to pull it out while the hero stood on the blunt end of the weapon. "I would have thought you and Hawkmoth would have learned this song and dance by now" Chat chided, addressing the newest villain. "You always lose and even when you win you're still going to lose one-way or another".

"Hawkmoth may give the orders but I ,The Ringmaster, am master of this show, disobedient cat" they spat back. "Now make him dance for me my Carnies" they ordered, cracking their whip at Chat, directing the small horde of jugglers, strong men and other oddities toward him. Of course that's exactly what Chat wanted as he led all the unfortunate bystanders who got turned to Carnies away and right to a group of waiting Cheshire. It didn't take long for the Carnies to be stripped of their weapons and contained by a parked bus on each side of the street rendering them virtually harmless. Chat left them in the care of the Cheshire after confirming that everyone was ok then headed back to fight with Ladybug against Ringmaster. 

When he returned the two of them were in a stalemate as Ladybug had subdued or knocked out what few Carnies remained. Joining the fray Chat swung his staff as he extended it, hitting Ringmaster from behind, knocking him from the roof he was standing on. Ring Master was surprised by the sudden attack from behind and took the fall hard landing flat on his back knocking him out cold. Ladybug wrapped up the last of the carnies while Chat descended to street level to the concussed villain to pick up the akumatized item which had been thrown from him. Luckily this akuma had chosen a fairly obvious item to use as it's vessel ,a top hat to be specific, poking a whole in it with his claw Chat released the corrupted butterfly. 

Before it fluttered off Chat whistled to his partner signaling her, she quickly captured the akuma to cleanse it. "Miraculous Ladybug!" fortunately neither Ladybug nor Chat had used their Miraculous' power and they had taken care of this attack relatively quickly. Ringmaster turned out to be another one of Hawkmoth's favorites, a young man with nothing particularly striking about him. 

He was disoriented both from the fall and the cleansing process "ugh my head" he groaned, looking around he noticed he was in the street again. Cursing under his breath he mumbled unintelligibly before getting to his feet and tried to run. Chat watched from a distance with his arms crossed.

"You're just gonna watch him get away?" Ladybug asked with an eyebrow raised.

"Give it a second..." Chat replied dryly ,unmoving, the former villain took only a few hurried steps then fell like a sack of flour "There it is". Moving to the young man Chat kneeled down and asked in a tone that conveyed his apathy to the humdrum fighting villains had become. "So are you going to tell me your name or are you gonna try and run again?" he asked.

"I have nothing to say to you, Stray!" he tried to spit but just drooled, "What did you do to me, why can't I move properly?" he asked flipping himself on his back. 

Chat lied down before answering the question "Well, you hit your head really hard after I knocked off the roof and while you're physically fine your body needs a minute. Which means we've got some time to kill sooo...are you gonna tell me your name and aren't you cold?". 

The young man's groan was long and clearly annoyed "You're not getting my name, and yes I'm freezing my butt off!". 

Chat adjusted to lay on his side resting his head in his hand "Well I guess I'll just have to refer to you as 'Kid' or 'Background character the villain' if you won't give me a name".

"Am I really just a background character to you? The more I fight you the more I see that she was right" Chat's eyes narrowed at his words sending chills down his spine. 

Chat's eyes softened as he asked "Who made you this way?".

The young man looked away from his interrogator, something about the tone in which the question was asked made the hero sound empathetic and concerned. He mentally shook his head "I won't talk" he stated with a hmph.

"You don't have to tell me anything more, I already know enough to make a pretty good guess as to who's behind all these repeat victims" Chat said. "I should warn you though, the city is debating law enforcement intervention. I'm against it but I can't guarantee the proposition won't pass, especially if people like you keep this up" he warned with a stern tone. Whistling he called two paramedics to him "Temporary paralysis and possible nausea, keep him upright and he'll be fine in half an hour" he told them. Before walking off he told the young man one more thing "The Cheshire can help, we're easy to find and hardy to escape".

When he thought about it, it should have been obvious from the beginning, the malice toward him and Ladybug, the way they fled like they were scared after being cleansed. Not even Hawkmoth himself had that kind of power ,no, only one person he knew of could manipulate people this much. Just the thought of her name made him clench his teeth in fury ,Lila Rossi, he wasn't one hundred percent sure but the evidence pointed to her. Ladybug tapped on his shoulder asking why he took so long talking with the young man that was their latest enemy. Considering the history the two girls had combined with the admittedly minuscule chance it wasn't Lila he thought it best not to tell Ladybug his theory. If he was going to find who was causing people to become repeatedly targeted and turned into Akuma villains he was going to have to be more physical.

For the next month Chat took every chance he could to subdue and capture villains before they were cleansed or had a chance to run after the fact. He questioned each of them the same way and got similar responses across the board, after they were caught however he rarely fought them again if ever. By November's end there were far fewer attacks which made it clear that sewing doubt in the ranks of Hawkmoth's favorites was working. But the few attacks that did occur were almost all carried out by the same person, luckily she was never able to cause much damage before being driven off and fleeing. 

Of course attacks still became a constant threat once again as December rolled in, with so many holidays in the same month it wasn't hard to find any number of potential Akuma victims. Luckily however this wasn't the first December where Adrien had to spend most of his time as Chat Noir, it was different now though. He had a Familia and a place to really call a home but that wasn't going to stop him from performing his duties to the city and checking in with Cheshire efforts. With the increased number of attacks also came an increased diversity of victims themselves, this fact coupled with the time of year made it easy to stop Akumas. Many of them were teens or parents who were just stressed and/or had a heated argument with family which Chat could easily relate to and talk through with most. 

On Christmas Chat took the time to go to the Master Fu, he had gone to wish him a happy holiday but on his way saw a caretaker and their charge walking down the street. It made him think of his sister and how she chose to spend her holiday, how she always chose to spend her time outside of her counseling work at the school. "Master Fu, I know it is a strange request to ask of you but...will you allow me to take two Miraculous?". 

Fu pondered the thought before responding "Forgive me for answering your question with a question but why do you wish to grant any Miraculous? You have been able to talk to most Akuma victims through their problems have you not?". 

Adrien bowed and Plagg followed his lead, "I have been visiting the city hospital for some time now to visit those bedridden and terminally ill. With the reappearance of Queen Bee and Rena Rouge only a few months ago I have heard murmurs of children and others who idolize them an-". 

"I have heard enough, raise your heads the both of you” Fu told them “Adrien, you are kind hearted and worthy of the praise you garner" he said moving to the phonograph that hid the box. "I will grant your request, when you are finished retrieve the Miraculous and return them to me" he instructed, placing the box between. Retrieving Fox and Bee Miraculous he placed them in separate cases before handing them to Adrien who nodded and thanked him before leaving. 

Transforming after distancing himself from the Guardian Adrien transformed and headed toward Le Grand Paris to deliver the Bee to its Queen. From what he could see it looked like Chloe' was alone on Christmas too, knocking on the window he got her attention and she let him in. "Chat Noir what are you doing here, shouldn't you be with your family?" she asked. 

Chat chuckled "They're all a little busy at the moment" he said "Looks like you're in the same boat" he told her voicing his observation.

"Daddy's busy being the Mayor of Paris and all the staff are on vacation so yeah it's just me, thanks for rubbing it in" she said sounding disappointed. 

Chat smiled warmly "Well how about you come help me make some unfortunate people very happy" he said holding out the Bee Miraculous allowing Pollen to manifest. 

Chloe' gasped before proceeding to nuzzle the Kwami, "So where are we going?" she asked proudly as she put the comb in her hair.

"Head to the Hospital and wait for me on the roof while I need to go get the other two members of our little greeting party" Chat told her. Chloe' nodded, transformed and was out the door with Chat close behind, they looked to each other one more time before heading to their separate ways. Chat had been to Alya's enough times as Adrien to know his way there but the hard part was going to be convincing her to leave her family for a few hours. Windows gave him a clear view inside, everyone was sitting on the couch enjoying old claymation Christmas movies. The window over the sink gave him a way into the kitchen if he could thread the needle and not get noticed. 

Deftly Chat jumped through the open window rolling silence his landing and hid behind an island that served as extra counter space. Searching the draws he found something to leave a message with, he wrote a note and placed it with the box inside the draw he had gotten the pen and paper from leaving it ajar. Keeping low he peeked around one edge of the island letting out a short whistle to try and get Alya's attention. It didn't work the first time as her parents also looked toward the noise but the second time only she looked while the others were enthralled in the movie. Chat lifted his tail waving it above the counter once she took interest he leaped back out the window, he didn't want to push his luck.  

Alya sacrificed her spot on the couch allowing her siblings to take it as she went to see what the Black Cat was doing in her home. Looking around the island she saw a draw open and inside lay a box with a paper with something written on it, she grabbed the box and paper, it was a note. 

"If you're willing I need your help to make some people really happy, I understand if you do not wish to leave your family. If you're not coming destroy this note and leave the box outside the window but if your in then bare your Miraculous. I am outside".

Moving to the window Alya stuck her head outside to look for Chat but saw nothing, closing the window she grabbed a coat and started toward the door. "Hey guys I'm gonna go out and get some fresh air" she announced. Her family looked at each other before telling her to be safe and have a good time, once she was outside she opened the box greeting her Kwami warmly and transformed.

Chat Jumped down from where he was watching, "Sorry to take you away from your family on the holidays" he said.

"Nothing to worry about" Rena told him waving off the apology "But I do have to ask, what's this about making people happy?".

"Follow me" Chat replied, leaping to the roofs once more and headed for the hospital with Rena in tow. "My apologies for keeping you waiting, Queen" he called as they approached, she greeted them with a friendly wave. 

"Aren't we missing one?" Rena pointed out.

"That we are Rena, I need to see if I can get in touch with her" Chat explained "You two should de-transform and wait someplace warm while I try to get Ladybug on the horn" he added. After several failed attempts to call his partner he hung up before it could go to voicemail again, an unimpressed groan managing to escape as he put his staff away. "I need to go find LB, sorry this is taking so long" he told them before getting a running start and pole vaulting onto a roof headed toward his normal sleeping spot. When he arrived minutes later he de-transformed, "Do mind getting LB or Tikki and telling them to meet us at the hospital?" he asked looking to his Kwami. Plagg crossed his arms and huffed, "There two slices of Camembert if you do" Adrien added trying to sweeten the deal.

Without a word Plagg flew through his wielder and into inside, he looked around but saw nothing, he didn't feel anything in the room either. Phasing through the floor into the living/dining room and kitchen he felt a strong aura emanating from a porcelain jar labeled "Cookies". "Of course she's in there" Plagg thought as he looked around to make sure the coast was clear and flew into the jar. 

"Plagg what are you doing in here?" Tikki asked but she was muffled on account of the cookies stuffed in her mouth. 

"I don't have much time to explain but Adrien got Rena and Queen and we're going to meet people at the hospital, get Mari and meet at the hospital" Plagg told her, leaving seconds later. Meeting Adrien outside he received the two slices of cheese as they agreed upon, once it was gone they transformed and headed for the hospital. 

Inside Tikki finished the cookie she had already taken a bite out of before poking her head out, Marinette's parent's backs were turned but she would have to be careful. Flying her way over Tikki hid inside Marinette's hair "Marinette, Chat wants us to meet him at the hospital, I don't know why" she whispered careful not to be heard by Tom or Sabine. 

Standing suddenly Marinette stated "I just remembered I'm going to volunteer with my friends today, I'll be back in while" and left abruptly. Once she was outside she looked around but the streets were empty, airing on the side of caution however she walked behind the school "Tikki, Spots On". It wasn't long after Chat had returned that Ladybug arrived slightly annoyed that she had been forced to lie about volunteering. The sight of Alya and Chloe' gave her a twinge of anger "This better be good if you've pried these two and myself away from our families, Chat" she told him with an annoyed tone. 

"Relax LB, you'll enjoy this" he replied, motioning for them to follow Alya and Chloe' transformed and fell in line behind Chat as he moved for the front door. Ladybug was suddenly starting to get the picture. "Afternoon Miss, do you mind calling a psych counselor by the name of Fe' for me?" he asked the receptionist on duty, she nodded and made a few calls. 

A short time later Fe' came into the lobby, "Chat, Ladybug, Queen Bee, Rena Rouge, what are you four doing here?" she asked.

"Came to see those who aren't so lucky" Chat replied flashing a warm smile. 

Fe' smiled back and waved for the group to follow "Please follow me then" she had been working with the Cheshire to keep tabs on who wanted to see Heroes for a while now. She didn't know if her brother knew this or if he suspected but in any case Fe' couldn't help but smile and be thankful that the other heroes had come with. They spent a number of hours going room by room visiting young and old alike to make their day just a little bit better. 

When almost the entire hospital had been visited Ladybug sheepishly apologized for snapping at him when she first arrived. "It was wrong of me to act like that ,you were right and I'm sorry, you're better at this public stuff than I am" she said rubbing her arm. Chat waved it off saying he didn't blame her since he knew how much being with family meant to her, she thanked him for understanding before zipping off to return home. Chat escorted Chloe' and Alya back to their respective homes collecting the Miraculous from each before leaving. With both the Bee and Fox Miraculous in his possession Chat returned to Master Fu ,as a civilian, to return them so he could secure them within the box. 

"Thank you for returning the Miraculous" Fu said as he placed the box back in it's phonograph facade. 

"Thank you for allowing me to grant them despite the lack of an attack. Protecting the Miraculous is my job" Adrien retorted.

Fu stroked his beard "Perhaps but it is also the job of a wielder to protect their people and that means making sure that your presence is not feared". He took a seat across from Adrien and sipped his tea then poured himself another cup offering some to his guest, Adrien graciously accepted. "I am aware of the feelings this time of year brings you" Fu started as he poured the tea "You have grown much since the attack last year however" he nodded to Wayzz. "In light of the past year and it's events we have gotten you a gift" Wayzz returned with a bottle filled with a golden liquid and a bag of cheese so pungent it's aroma was visible.

Adrien's eyes widened "Master Fu, you didn't have to-".

Plagg pushed his wielder's mouth shut, his own watering "Th-Thank you Master Fu, we will appreciate these gifts immensely" he said. Adrien rolled his eyes before pushing Plagg aside to accept the gifts from Wayzz, they took their leave shortly after finishing their tea. 

"Thank you and happy holidays" Adrien said over his shoulder before leaving, once they were far enough away he dipped into an alley and transformed. The tavern would be closed that night, both Milo and Nino would be with family like everyone else so there wasn't much for him to do. During a chat with Nalma he learned that there was a party going on with every previous wielder of every Miraculous that lasted through the whole month of December. 

Chat found the notion that even those from times and cultures long gone got to party and spent time together a little frustrating.  When he asked why she wasn't with them she replied "I've never been one to take part, I just feel out of place" she was silent for a moment then added "Besides I've got you to talk now". 

He found it comforting that he was able to help even those long past. After wandering aimlessly until he ran out of time he de-transformed, Plagg insisted that he recharge with the cheese gifted to him by Fu. The three of them sat in the snow trying to decide what they should do but none of them could think of anything but they did realize they were missing an important member. The moment Plagg was ready Adrien transformed and headed for Fe's place to pick up their missing member. With the group complete Chat patrolled the city slowly and with a bottle of whiskey in hand that he sipped heedful of how quickly he emptied the bottle. He wasn't alone this time though, he had Belial with his fluffy winter coat snuggled inside the collar of his jacket and Nalma, Plagg too during breaks. It certainly wasn't the worst Christmas ever, the company and knowing that he had made other peoples day so much brighter was enough to keep him occupied. 

Unfortunately attacks picked up by morning so there was no rest for the heroes during the days following. At this point however both Chat and Ladybug had become rather adept at handling attacks on their own. It had gotten to the point that one would handle the villain while the other would distract the minions or move civilians. Yet despite this the same one always managed to escape them. 

Much like Hawkmoth's favorite, the Cheshire had been far from idle over the course of the month. Every instance of an Akuma managing to flee was followed by the sighting of the same person leaving the area said Akuma was last seen in. Chat found it funny that the descriptions amounted to "A female with long brown hair and oversized bangs leaving with a smug look" or something to the same effect. He had yet to confirm these sightings for himself or successfully follow an Akuma to Lila but there were very few people he knew that would stoop so low.    

Now December was coming to an end and so was the year, New Years parties were preparing to kick off all over Paris with fireworks, family and way more sugary foods than anyone should eat. Adrien and the Familia knew they didn't get to spend time together during the holidays so they made it a point to have a party of their own. Nino, Milo, Adiren, Belial and Fe' worked the Tavern until sunset before closing down so they could have their preemptive New Year celebration. That same bottle that they had taken shots from was passed around with pizza, grilled cheese, and so much soda that everyone would be shaking from sugar. 

Plagg joined them as they drank and sang like there wasn't going to be a next year, none of them had ever had so much fun at a party in their lives. Something about the bond the group had forged through all that the past year had thrown at them made it special. "To the New Year and all the insanity it brings! CHEERS" Milo toasted.

"To the survivors".

"To the chaos we're gonna fix".

"To the cheese"

"To the Familia"

"Meow"

Unbenounced to the others Adrien had also manifested the previous wielders ,who were also partying like animals, it was certainly a night none of them would forget for a long time. With only a few hours to midnight it was time for Nino and Milo to leave for their own family festivities. Adrien decided it was time for him to take Fe' home and leave Belial with her since fireworks scared him. Transforming outside he let Belial and Fe' ride piggyback. Chat expected New Years to be as silent as just about every other holiday had been but he took care not to drink too much nonetheless. He was buzzed but still clear minded enough to run through the streets and use the allies to cut through city blocks.

It didn't take long for him to reach Fe's building but he couldn't climb up to her window with her on his back even if he was sober. Pulling out his staff and using it like an elevator he raised himself slowly and quietly to the window. It took a few tries but he eventually managed to open it with his foot allowing him to slip inside, he once again found himself being thankful for his ability to see in low light. Careful not to wake either of his piggyback riders he put his sister and furry companion to bed. Moving to the kitchen he grabbed a paper and pen to start writing a note for Fe' to find in the morning, as he did Belial walked in with his back arched and hair stood on end, hissing angrily.

"Hey what's wrong bud?" Chat asked cocking his head in confusion, he kneeled down to try and calm his friend. He felt something brush against his tail as he moved and on instinct he pivoted to face his target but saw nothing behind him. Chat already knew this trick though, lunging forward at the air in front of him he tackled who or whatever was there. Deftly he threw them through the open window, Belial jumped to Chat's shoulder before he followed the invisible thing. 

Casting his gaze about looking for clues to see where his stalker went he saw a shadow at the bottom of the alley cast by the moonlight. Looking up he saw her, it was an unforgettable silhouette and the words that came from it only confirmed what he had known. "So is this where you've been hiding out, stupid Stray? I guess it's fitting the second-rate hero should live with the second-rate, fake Agreste". 

Leaping from wall to wall Chat stood on the roof opposite his adversary, a cold indignation filling both his and Belial's eyes as they stared at the figure across from them. "Of course it was you, it's been you ever since your Master started running out of victims" his words were coated with poison. 

"He's not my 'master' Stray, he's just an enabler" she shot back annoyed at the suggestion she was a servant "Without me he would be practically useless" she added. 

Chat smiled at her tone ,he knew how to cut deep, "You may have combined some old tricks but recycled trash doesn't always make a better product". 

"Why you little-AGH!" rushing forward Chat's adversary came into full view again confirming what he knew, Lila Rossi had collaborated with Hawkmoth and Volpina was back. She was easily redirected but recovered and pulled out her flute, playing an off key note manifested two copies of her that turned invisible. Chat responded with a wide swing of his staff dispelling the two illusions, a smile crossing his mask. As the fight dragged on neither of them were backing down or stopping, the stakes were higher now and both of them could feel it, it was in their ferocity. If Hawkmoth hadn't discovered it during the Kaleidotherapist attack he definitely knew where Fe' lived now. Chat's experience fighting her in so many different forms had only sharpened his ability to fight her. The same could be said for Lila but the difference in general fighting prowess and experience the effect of their repeated encounters was dulled significantly.

Lila and Chat never broke the flow of their fight as they clashed on the rooftops but neither had managed to land a decisive blow on the other. Belial ,who had jumped from Chat's shoulder at some point, was hissing at the recycled fox Akuma from the school roof as they fought. Lila had gotten fed up with the cat constantly harassing her and decided that the best way for her to make an opening was to distract Chat. Playing another sour note with her flute Lila summoned another illusion this time it crossed it's arms and sank into the shadows and Chat prepared himself for an attack from anywhere.

When nothing came he was confused but immediately knew where the illusion had gone when he heard a cackle come from behind him. Belial was hissing and swatting at the figure that was slowly approaching him as he unknowingly backed toward the edge. Chat lunged at the illusion dispelling it with a slash, Belial was surprised and jumped backwards off the roof. Luckily Chat had over shot his target and caught him in mid air. 

Lila took advantage of this and ,with the help of another copy, flung herself at the pair of cats to deliver a devastating flying kick. Chat used himself as a shield to protect his friend, taking the full force of the attack. They were sent flying backwards with only the roof behind stopping them after crashing through it and into the building. Chat could hear...something coming from his left but he was in too much pain to bother looking at what it was. It wasn't the first time he had been thrown through a building and covered in rubble but he didn't have time to brace so it hurt a lot more than normal. 

He felt Belial squirm free in his arms and jump away but didn't see where but he was safe and at the moment that was all Chat really cared about. Looking at his hand Chat could see and hear the *BEEP BEEP* of the ring, he’s about to run out of time. "Dammit" he thought "I just need a little more time, then I could at least get away". 

"Ooohh what do I have here? A few of the Stray's other little friends" Lila sneered as she looked down from the school roof "Marinette Dupain-Cheng and Chloe' Bourgeois". 

The names of his friends cut clear through Chat's fuzzy hearing, a primal fury filled him and his vision was tinted with blood from a head injury. Then his hearing suddenly cleared but was dominated by a distinct sound, it was a church bell but it only rang once. Blinking Chat suddenly found himself surrounded by a featureless landscape with a boundless horizon. He got flashbacks to his fight with Pixelator but as he cast his gaze around and saw his precursors he relaxed ,if only a little, there didn't appear to be any immediate danger.

"Where am I, where are they, where's Mari and Chloe'?" he asked confused and concerned that he was incapacitated when he needed to be protecting his friends. 

A Kwami resembling a rabbit that he didn't recognize floated from somewhere out of view "Relax Ring Bearer, your friends are safe" it said. 

Sass and Plagg "It is true, your friends are safe" Sass repeated with a reassuring nod from Plagg. It was then that Adrien realized he was de-transformed and in civilian clothing. He opened his mouth to ask but a whistle from somewhere nearby interrupted him "It is time, follow me if you would" Sass said floating past with Plagg in tow. Adrien turned and saw a congregation of what he assumed to be the other Kwami and followed Sass, he started to walk toward it. 

The previous wielders joined him at his side, "Is anyone gonna explain what's going on?" Adrien asked. 

"I'm sorry, you shouldn't have to do this...not so young" Nalma whispered under her breath.

"This is something I hoped would never have to be called ,The Council, this is bad luck even for us Black Cats" Xylon explained bluntly with a somber tone in his voice. 

Adrien shook his head "Well that's not ominous at all" he continued toward the circle still confused but prepared for very bad news.

"This calling of the Council is in session, are all in attendance aware of the situation?" Wayzz asked looking to each Kwami in the circle then to Adrien and the precursors. 

"I don't know what's going on or where I am still so can I get the short version?" Adrien said with annoyance in his voice.

Wayzz looked almost sad but explained "This is the Council, a collection of all the Kwami and previous wielders of the Balck Cat's Ring. Together we deliberate on matters of great importance or events that could alter the course of history that are to be undertaken by the current wielder of the ring. This particular meeting the council turns it's attention to the girl Lila Rossi". 

"So you called me here for politics and aren't there a few members missing if 'all Kwami' are supposed to be present?"

"Your observation is accurate, there are four members missing but we can not bring them here without incurring repercussions. And we have not brought you here to debate, we have come to a consensus on what we believe must be done but a vote is required and for that you must be present" Wayzz explained. Adrien sighed and motioned for him to continue, "Now that all in attendance are up to speed we will begin the vote".

"Is this really ok?" Sass interjected. 

Plagg answered before anyone else "Like Wayzz said if we brought them here it could have disastrous repercussions, we cannot risk the safety of the Miraculous for semantics. Not to mention Fluff is already trying to keep her wielder from altering timelines anymore than she has already". 

Sass sighed heavily and shook his head "Very well, I have no further objections".

Wayzz nodded in acknowledgment, "All who believe Lila Rossi is a threat that can no longer be tolerated and is irredeemable by conventional means raise your hand or paw". The air fell silent as the vote was cast and all eyes were on the one among them. Adrien had his hand raised with little emotion on his face, concerned or surprised murmurs from both Kwami and wielders alike could be heard. Wayzz’s tone was level as he spoke, silencing the others, "The Judgement is passed, Wielder of the Black Cat's Ring ,Adrien, will you carry out and deliver this verdict?".

With a nod Adrien was thrust back into his body in the real world, his pain still present but no longer hindering him, he felt stronger, he could see clearer. Chat lifted himself from the rubble that had previously pinned him but now ,with the power granted to him by the council he felt unstoppable. Bringing himself to full height and removing his mask he glared at his target, the manifestation of an ancient and hateful god's Ire pouring from his eyes like the river of Styx. 

He spoke and the words came to him as though he had known them all his life, each laced in a cold malice toward the one he was addressing. "I am the fifteenth wielder of the Black Cat's Ring, third of whom's bell has tolled. You, the one known as 'Lila' have been deemed unfit for redemption by the Council ,minus four, the vote is unanimous. Surrender now and you will be allowed to make peace, continue to resist and-". 

Lila's response was to play her flute summoning an array of bladed weapons, "I'm not afraid of some stray from the streets" she spat before playing again to send them toward her targets. As the weapons hurtled toward Marinette, Chloe' and himself Chat calmly reached for his staff. Raising his weapon above his head Chat extended it to a precise length then brought it down with blinding speed to dispel the illusions aimed at his friends ignoring those that came for him. Marinette and Chloe' gasped in horror as they watched the blades aimed at the hero hit home. Chat stood in silence, he felt every inch of the cold metal that was buried in his flesh but again he was unhindered by the wounds. 

"Cataclysm" his hands became shrouded by an impossibly dark aura that seemed to churn and writhe. With a swipe the weapons that had embedded themselves in his body were gone but his power had not expired. "Your decision is made, for your actions you will be ERASED" he stated, in the blink of an eye he was in Lila's face poised to strike. 

Somehow she managed to dodge the claws and tried to run, playing her flute to summon copies and obstacles in an attempt to slow her assailant. Chat's advance was unyielding as he broke through or destroyed everything in his way at his touch, throwing his staff he shattered Lila’s ankle. He walked slowly toward her, she threw her flute in desperation which he was simply swatted from existence. "You shouldn't be able to do this, you're out of time, your power should have been used" she shouted trying to crawl away. 

Lila raised her hand to shield herself from his approach, pausing as he stood over her he sighed deeply as he raised his claw. "For whatever it's worth, I really am sorry" he muttered but his words were drowned out as a cacophony of fireworks lit up the sky around them with dazzling lights. The New Year had come. Marinette and Chloe' had moved to the balcony by now but all they could see was the silhouettes of Chat Noir slashing Lila across the abdomen turning her to an ashen husk. 

The destruction was instant ,as was her death, it was not the slow rotting spread of his normal power but in a way such a fate was what little mercy he could give. The only sign that she was attacked is the look of abject horror frozen in her face and a set of shallow claw marks where he had slashed. With the verdict of the Council carried out Chat's power ended and he was back to normal, de-transforming he looked to the sky as the fireworks continued to illuminate it. 

"Plagg,...could you...get Belial for me....please?" Adrien asked slowly, hesitantly.

"Sure thing, Kid" flying to the hole in Marinette's room, "Belial, time to go" he called ignoring the crack in his voice. Belial ran up to and nuzzled Plagg feeling something was wrong with his small floating feline friend, he meowed sounding somehow concerned. "Hehe I'm not the one you should be worried about little guy, come on the Kid's waiting for us" he said before flying into Belial and began floating him over. Adrien stared into the sky, past the fireworks and into the void at the stars, when the trio was all together he started walking. None of them were sure where they were going but Plagg and Adrien felt the need to be away ,it didn't matter where, they just needed to be away.

Previous Chapter   Next Chapter(Part1)   Chapter Guide

[roslinadama-sinequanon]

Major Crimes Re-Watch-Boys Will be Boys.

The episode starts out with a young girl running away from someone through a park.

I know MC is all about solving murders, but my favorite cases are the ones where the victim is possibly still alive and the team is working against the clock to find them. To me there is a lot more excitement and anticipation than there is in the same old same old, find a dead body let’s see who killed him/her. Also, I find the cases that involve children engage me more as a viewer because I really care about what happened to the child whereas sometimes the “victims” are such creeps I really don’t care who killed them.

“Just tell them to look for a tomboy in white skirt.”

“Is Michelle a boy?”

“She used to be Michael, now she's Michelle.”

Andy and Sykes are at the missing girl’s home trying to get descriptions of her and information about her and they’ve been there talking to the father and son for a while so why the heck did they wait so long to tell them Michelle was transgender? That should have been one of the first things they told them.

“OMG, you did it, you called the police.”

and

“We have turned our lives upside down for that child, what more do you want from us?”

Wow. What a bitch. Right away, we can see that we are not dealing with a Mom of the year here.

“Is there any way that you can get the pictures of the kid offline?”

Aww...Andy is in the middle of an investigation but is upset by the pictures of the bullies pulling Michelle’s pants down and is concerned with saving her from more of this humiliation. Tao, the other dad, is already on it. I also like the cases that involve kids because we see the parents on the team react as parents. Yes, they are professionals but I’m sure they look at these kids and think “My god that could have been my daughter/my son. 

“Just find her or him or whoever he is.”

Interesting that even after finding out that Michelle is transgender not once do Andy or Sykes refer to Michelle as anything but her or your daughter, they never refer to her as a male the way that Taylor does here.

“Looks like a girl’s scrunchie.”

Andy is the one to recognize a piece of purple fabric for what it is and he knows what it is called. Definitely has a daughter

. “What are you looking at faggot?” The first time I watched this episode, not knowing Rusty was gay, I thought he was just embarrassed to be called a faggot in front of Kris, but this time around, the look on his face told me something different. It was as if Rusty had an “OMG can people tell just from looking at me now,” moment?  And how great was Julio slamming the kid for saying that.

“How old are you?”

“15, how old are you?”“

“Old enough to recommend you get tried as an adult.”

Sharon is not flattered to be a hot MILF with a 15 year old hitting on her J “You know the last guy I dated was gay.”

Oh Sharon honey you are SO nosey when it comes to Rusty. As soon as Kris says this to Rusty, Sharon perks up, ears pricked with interest to see how Rusty is going to respond to this.

“Even tougher than working in internal affairs.” Jack actually has a moment of compassion and understanding for Sharon. He is also still working hard to ingratiate himself into Sharon's life. But why? Is it really to get what he wants from her or is he looking for some kind of reconciliation? That‘s what I was wondering the first time I watched this episode. Now I know. First time around, he almost suckered me in. I felt like Sharon was being overly suspicious of his motives, as he seemed to be trying to do better. Now of course I know she was completely right to be so suspicious, but I guess she just knew him better than we the viewers did. I can see why she gave him the benefit of the doubt so many times, he’s very good at knowing how to play her to get what he wants, but she’s wise to him now.

“It bothers me, a lot.”

Andy is the one who notices the sort of caring way that Michelle was buried. I wonder if having Andy the most involved with this little girl is foreshadowing for the upcoming daughter episodes by showing us that fatherly, tender side to Andy.

“Is it possible he was under...”

“She...Let’s stick with she, it helps me identify with the victim.”

Love the way Morale's nods his head at Sharon for recognizing that Michelle identified as a girl and she would remain a girl even in death. And typical for Emma not to have the sensitivity to recognize this. Also, this is a lesson she learned from Andy in episode one. Great continuity.

“I think that transgender kid was brave as hell, it took guts to live in the open like that and her father deserves credit for supporting her.”

Jack is so right here and he  sounds like he is being open-minded and compassionate, but is he? Or is this just a way of trying to get Rusty to open up about being gay. Interesting that it was Rusty who came out against the father buying dresses for his transgender child saying that he might has well have put a “beat me”  sign on her back. Of course, Rusty is still pretty much ensconced in the closet and for him it’s all about hiding who he is. Even now that he’s come out, he is still uncomfortable with overt signs of being gay, such as refusing to hold Gus's hand in public. He still feels like it needs to be hidden, something that is private. “You can't hide who are, as I'm sure you know.”

“What? What do I know?”

“Well as you know from being a foster child

Jack trips over his words as Rusty becomes suspicious of what he is talking about and starts to panic that Jack can see he’s gay. But Jack could also be talking about himself here. He is trying to do everything right, helping out with Rusty, cooking, trying to make himself helpful so Sharon doesn't throw him out, but ultimately he cannot change who he is and this domestic helpful side will only last for so long.

“She only wants one.”“Who only eats one pancake?”“Uh, your wife.”

This, to me, defined the Sharon and Jack relationship the first time I watched it. That one little statement spoke VOLUMES. Rusty knows more about Sharon in the year that he has lived with her than Jack does having known her for 30 years. That's pretty telling when it comes to the Sharon/Jack relationship--and given the look that passes between them, they know it too. It tells both the viewers and Rusty that Jack really doesn’t know Sharon at all. Later we will see that Andy truly does know who Sharon is. Even before they were dating he knew when she needed to have her confidence bolstered, “Sharon, for whatever it’s worth, you did great” and knew when she was upset and might need someone to talk to, “I’ll stay…In case you need me.“  When they are first dating and are with the whole team at Marianna’s funeral, he isn’t sure how comfortable Sharon will be with a PDA and lets her take the lead by reaching out to hold his hand (in such a cute way) Only after she makes the first move does he later wrap an arm around her waist and she leans into him. Another time, knowing Sharon needs things to remain professional at work, he looks around to make sure no one is watching before opening his arms to her in her office and allowing her to walk into them. There are countless little things that he picks up on that really show us how different the Sharon/Andy dynamic is from the old Sharon/Jack. 

Now, let’s get to the bigger question here. Neither Sharon nor Rusty put maple syrup or anything on their pancakes. Who eats dry pancakes? LOL.

“Are you two dating now?”

I love the way that Sharon flicks her fork at Jack to get him to shut up. Jack is direct in his questioning while Sharon just listens in and tries to gather clues. Andy did say she was sneaky, while Jack is definitely the bull in a china shop type.

“Maybe he's confused.  I could help him sort out his priorities.”

OMG, if I'd been drinking something I'd have spit it out over that one. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black. Seriously? There is nobody whose priorities are more messed up than Jack Raydor’s. And the fact that he is so completely unaware of this is astonishing. Jack is the LAST person who should be offering Rusty advice on priorities. 

“Listen I only told you about the ABUSE he went through so YOU could be sensitive.”

I like the way Sharon emphasizes the word abuse here. Jack has just questioned her about Rusty being gay since he was out hustling guys, as if this was some kind of choice for him and she wants Jack to know that Rusty wasn't hustling guys because he was gay and wanted to, that it was about survival and ABUSE and she certainly doesn’t want Jack talking to him about it. 

“You spent virtually no time with our children when they were Rusty's age, why are you so interested in him?”

“Look I am brutally aware that I am not a good parent. It's not necessary to remind of that every five minutes.”

“Oh it is.”

“Maybe I'm interested in the kid because you are.”

“I wish you would develop the same interest in finding yourself an apartment.”

And just like that, the nice little family breakfast is over. Sharon may be over how Jack has treated her in the past, but she can’t forgive or forget what he did to their children, mainly because he is still not making any efforts to rectify things with them. Instead, he’s using Rusty and when he says maybe he’s interested in Rusty because she is, that is EXACTLY what has Sharon worried. He’s using Rusty and she doesn’t want him hurt the same way Emily and Ricky were hurt by him. And while Jack thinks his little plan is working and that Sharon is getting used to having him around, she‘s NOT.  She wants him looking for that apartment.  She has been through this all with him before, dozens of times. She doesn't have any trust in him and is suspicious, with good reason, of his every move.

“You sure you want to do this, sir? Because who you see in there isn't going to be your daughter, and that image is going to be stuck in your head for the rest of your life.”

Father to father Andy tries to talk Michelle’s dad out of seeing her body, knowing how traumatic it will be. Although he’s seen many dead girls and dead women, you just know that Andy knows he’d be traumatized for life if he had to see Nicole like that. 

“I'm a good mother, I'm a good mother, I'm a good mother.” Sorry, the more you say it doesn't make it so. Without saying a word Sharon isn't having any of it. This is a woman who treated her child as if she were a destroyer of the family because she was transgender, was deaf to the little girl’s fear of the bullies and fought her husband and daughter every step of the way when it came to Michelle’s transgender journey. Then after her son killed Michelle, she buried the body and covered it up. Yeah, you’re a good mother all right.

BTW-Sharon looks absolutely extra fab in this episode, hair; make up and wardrobe are perfect.

“You want this case you GROW up and look at these pictures side by side.” and “Where's Hobbs? Captain where's Hobbs?”

Provenza has really had enough with immature whiney Emma and yes, where is Hobbs? In rewatching these episodes I think they made the right decision to get rid of Emma and to quit bringing in diffferent DDA's and instead focusing on Andrea. She's definitely the best in the bunch. Andrea is tough as nails, but she‘s professional and while she isn’t afraid to speak her mind she is also a team player. It is so much better when the team all works together than when they are at odds. They always seemed to be at odds with Emma.

“You think I understand boys who think they're girls? I'm just as much at sea as your jurors will be. But I know when a kid has had his head bashed in.”

That’s what it all boils down to. Gay, straight, transgender, black white purple, a child was killed and it nothing else matters. Provenza is definitely out of his element here and refers to Michelle as "him". Which makes sense for his character. Andy, on the other hand, never slipped. Michelle was always a she to him. Then again, when Provenza’s transgender former partner came back in The Closer, Andy was far more accepting of her too. Provenza has trouble with any kind of change whereas Andy doesn’t. 

“Have a miserable life.” So glad Louis is going to juvie, that kid needed to pay for what he did to Michelle. Julio took such pleasure in letting this punk know where he was going--I think I lived vicariously through that.

Last scene in the murder room-

This was a tough one for the whole team. Everyone is sad and shaking their heads as they clear off the murder board and put evidence away. Sharon is wiping her tears watching them having just listened to Michelle’s voice again on her voicemail. I think the kid murders would be the toughest for any of them, but for the parents on the squad, Sharon, Andy, Tao, and Provenza, it must make them think a lot about their own children.

“It's just like old times.”

“Yeah, really, really old times, Elizabethan, I think.”

Jack is trying to bring back memories of their good times, but Sharon is reminding him here that those good times were a really, really long time ago and are ancient history. 

“Was this your idea or Rusty's?”

Sharon could see Rusty was slightly uncomfortable with going to the movies with Kris, but she agreed to go when he said it sounded like fun. Still she is worried that Jack is pushing him into a relationship with Kris.

“Men, at our core we're really all alike.”

Not exactly. Wonder if this was some foreshadowing for the upcoming Andy storyline. Jack and Andy have some similar characteristics yet at their core they are very, very different men. Sharon will soon come to learn this.

[kaen-ace-of-diamonds]

The Lion and the Wolf

[AO3] [FF.Net]

Word Count: 19,000+ (oneshot)

Genre: Family/Horror

Pairings: Arba/Ren Gyokuen, Ren Gyokuen/Ren Hakutoku.

Characters: Arba, Ren Gyokuen, Ren Hakuryuu, Ren Hakuei, Ren Hakuyuu, Ren Hakuren, Ren Hakutoku, Judal, Ithnan, Falan, Ren Gyokuen’s siblings (OCs). 

Summary: In which not all of Arba's children are innocent, and being possessed doesn't necessarily make you a helpless victim.

Warnings for incest, physical and emotional abuse, descriptions of child murders, violence, manipulative/possessive behavior, and Arba and Gyokuen’s A+ parenting and general creepiness. 

~0~

“The wolf, he howls, the lion does roar; the wolf lets him in

The lion runs in through the door, the real fun begins

As they both rush upon you and rip open your flesh,

The lion eats his fill and then the wolf cleans up the mess.”

- The Lion and the Wolf, Thrice

~0~

It’s only a couple months after the fire that Arba remembers that she ought to tell her older daughter how their plan played out.

That night, alone in her bed, she closes her eyes and lets herself sink down, deep into the depths of her shared consciousness. She looks around at the smooth obsidian field, shivering a little at the cold on her skin, and calls for her child. “Gyokuen? Wake up, love. I want to talk to you.”

A moment later, on cue, Ren Gyokuen strides out from the black mist surrounding them, and smiles when she sees the other woman. “Hello, Mother.”

“Hello, darling. About two months have passed since we last talked, I hope you don’t mind that I waited this long to fill you in on everything.”

Gyokuen shrugs. “Two months, two weeks, two days, it’s all the same to me now. I assume everything went well, then?”

“Everything went excellently. Hakuei ran out of the fire a little worse for wear, but she healed up quickly and now she's good as new. The biggest problem I had with her was getting her to just stop crying already. Hakuryuu’s been in a coma for the past months, and he’s awake now, but he’ll have scars all over him for the rest of his life.”

“Will he? Poor little thing.”

“Indeed. But most importantly, Hakuyuu and Hakuren are out of our way for good. You're sure you're not upset?”

“No. You were the magnanimous one, after all, and it was their choice to reject us. Like I said before, it's their own fault for not being more like me. Now, more importantly, are you sure you covered our tracks? No one suspects that it was anything more than an accident?”

Arba smiles and shakes her head. “Not exactly, but - Don’t give me that face, you’ll love this part! Before the fire could kill him, Hakuyuu managed to tell Hakuryuu exactly who wanted them dead, and Hakuryuu didn’t believe him.”

“You’re joking.”

“I don’t joke, love. It took him quite a while to work up the courage to come ask me about it, but eventually he did. You should have seen him, he came up to me with this nervous little smile and said - ” She starts to mimic her son’s small, squeaky voice. “‘It’s a lie, isn’t it, Mother? That you were trying to murder us? It was all Uncle’s fault, right? I’m sure aniue was just confused and trying to tell me something else.’ He’s such a sweet boy, he genuinely thought I was completely innocent!”

“Well, it’s not all that surprising. I of all people can tell you that the love of a child for their mother is not easily swa - ” Gyokuen’s words catch in her throat as Arba’s fully register with her. “Wait a minute. What do you mean, he thought we were innocent? As in, he doesn’t think that anymore?”

“Oh, no, far from it,” Arba says, her voice overly bright. “I told him everything!”

The look of wide-eyed shock on Gyokuen’s face is almost as good as the one on Hakuryuu’s, Arba thinks. “You...You did what?!”

“Well, not everything, of course. He still doesn't know anything of why I do what I do. I just let him know beyond any shadow of a doubt that first, I killed his family; second, I’m going to get away with it; and finally, there's not a single thing he can do about it. He must feel so terribly betrayed, considering he glares at me now like he wants to take my head off. Though, considering he's only six, it's more funny than threatening. He looks like a rabid kitten.”

Gyokuen still stares at her mother, gaping like a fish as she tries to make her mouth work. “You didn’t...We’re really...Are you...?” she sputters, before finding her voice again and deciding on, “Have you lost your mind?!”

“That’s been a topic of discussion from time to time, yes.”

“Stop being so calm! You said we were in the clear; we still would be if you hadn’t spontaneously decided to ruin everything! Why did you do that?!”

Arba smirks. “Who knows? Maybe I just wanted to see the look on his face when I tore down everything he thought he knew about his life.”

“You just wanted to - Mother, I understand, but even I know that there’s a time and a place for those things!” Gyokuen shouts, raking her fingers through her hair in frustration. (Arba, for her part, watches with some interest; she can count on one hand the number of times she's seen her daughter get this worked up over something.) “And something as important as this is neither the time nor the place to fool around! You said it yourself, Hakuryuu didn’t want to believe it was us! He was trying to get you to agree with him, to say, No, you’re right, it wasn’t me, so why didn’t you just tell him what he wanted to hear and be done with it?!”

“Oh?” Arba tilts her head curiously, as if the possibility hadn’t occurred to her. “That probably would have worked on him, wouldn’t it?”

Gyokuen looks as if she's about to have a heart attack. “Of course it would have! He’s six! He loves us, he doesn't know any better! He’ll believe anything we say! Or at least he would have, when he still trusted us! He’s our son, so he had potential, but now we’ll never be able to use him for anything. And that's all that will happen if we’re lucky. You know how he is; every time he's scared or upset, he runs to somebody else for help. What if he tells someone? What if they believe him?”

Arba waves her hand dismissively. “He won't. Like you just said, he's young and afraid and painfully vulnerable, so it will be easy to convince him to keep his mouth shut. Luck has nothing to do with it. Honestly, you’re overreacting,” she adds, and gives her daughter a conspiratorial smile. “You used to be very good at keeping your little sisters quiet, weren’t you? You started early, too, and you trained them to keep secrets very well.”

But unusually, Gyokuen brushes off her mother’s flattery, narrowing her eyes instead. “That’s different. An and Kuro knew we weren’t what we pretended to be, yes. They knew we were dangerous, that we could hurt them if we wanted, and that we may or may not have been planning something bad. But that was all they knew. They couldn’t say anything because they had no idea what they would say to make someone else realize there was a serious problem, and they wouldn’t have any proof to back it up if they did. The worst I ever did was taunt An about what I might have done or wanted to do.”

Arba raises an eyebrow skeptically, her smile fading. “You’re really going to look me in the face and tell me that that’s the worst thing you ever did to Ankoku?”

“That’s irrelevant,” Gyokuen sighs. “My point is, I was careful. I was good at keeping to the rules. I never threw caution to the winds and endangered our life! Has a thousand years without any real obstacles turned you complacent, Mother?”

“You watch your tone. You know perfectly well that I am far from complacent. Don’t assume that I’m doing this thoughtlessly.”

“And why not? Was there something else I was supposed to take from your little performance, or - ”

“I said, watch yourself,” Arba snaps, and has the satisfaction of seeing her daughter immediately shut her mouth and take a small step back, the aggression disappearing from her stance. Good. Gyokuen has always been her most well-behaved child, and even if this outburst is anything but rebellious, Arba does not like the unfamiliar defiance that edges her voice. “Remember your place, my love.”

“You make it impossible to forget. But even so, I just wish you’d consulted me sooner. I’m here to help you; I should think that you would remember that instead of ignoring me. Especially after I've so graciously allowed you into my body,” she adds, crossing her arms and pointedly looking away.

Arba smirks, leaning forward with her hands on her hips. “So what are you going to do? Throw me out?”

“Of course not, after all the trouble I went through to get you into me in the first place. But I take it you really don't intend to solve this problem the way I solved that one?”

“No,” Arba says, straightening up. “For now, Hakuryuu will be allowed to live. Because you’re wrong when you say that we can't use him for anything. He's only known for a few days, but just picture how the rest of his life is going to go. His fear for his and his sister’s lives, his rage and despair over being too weak to change anything, and most importantly, his hatred for me...Those feelings will build and build over the years to come, with no sufficient outlet, until they’re tearing him apart from the inside out. That is a fate that anyone would curse, and even one more person in this world who's fallen into depravity benefits me. That is why I did it. Does that satisfy you?”

“...I suppose it does,” Gyokuen admits. “And if that doesn't happen?”

“Well, then.” Arba’s bright smile returns to her face. “He'll at least make a decent plaything, won't he? Telling him the truth was the most fun I’ve ever had with him. And when your siblings were alive, it was nice to have somebody you didn't have to pretend in front of, wasn't it?”

“If you say so,” Gyokuen concedes. Trying to fight her mother is a pointless effort, even for her.

“I'm glad you can agree. There's nothing to be afraid of, love. Haven't I always taken care of everything?”

“You have.” She can't deny that, she reasons. “If it's all right with you, I'm going back now. This is tiring me out.”

“That's all right,” Arba allows as her daughter turns and walks back into the mist surrounding them. “I'll wake you again soon.”

Gyokuen stops, takes another deep breath, and looks over her shoulder at her mother. “I'll just say this: I only hope you know what you're doing. This had better not backfire on us because you got overconfident.”

Arba’s smile doesn't quite reach her eyes. “How cute, that you think that you give the orders around here.”

“That’s not what I - !” Gyokuen grits her teeth and turns away again. “Just...Be careful. And remember that I’m here. That’s all I ask.”

Without waiting for a response, she disappears fully into the mist. Arba’s smile doesn’t falter; her child will come around sooner or later. On the rare occasions Gyokuen seriously disagrees with her, it doesn’t last long. Or if it does, nothing will come of it, if Arba says and does the right things to calm her. To her immense delight, she’s discovered while raising her favorite daughter that a lifetime’s worth of careful conditioning is completely unshakeable.

This task out of the way, Arba closes her eyes and relaxes, quickly losing herself to sleep. Both mother and daughter will rest now; there is always more to do tomorrow.

~0~

‘I wonder,’ Arba asks her daughter teasingly, as she makes her way through the halls of the palace after a morning meeting with her priests. ‘Would it be possible, just once, for you to see Ithnan without insulting him? One would think you'd tire of that by now.’

At the back of their shared mind, Gyokuen laughs. ‘It isn't as if he can hear me. I would think that you'd just be relieved that we don't have the time to bicker any more.’

‘Of course. It was amusing while it lasted, but you’re not a child anymore. And -’

Noticing something as she starts to turn the corner, Arba stops and takes a step back.

‘And speaking of children, would you like to have a look at ours?’

‘What? Let me see!’

Paying more attention to the outside, Gyokuen follows their gaze around the corner. In the adjacent hall, Hakuei and Hakuryuu are there, at the wrong angle and too caught up in whatever they’re talking about to notice their mother. While Hakuei is talking animatedly, Hakuryuu’s smile is tight. They have come in at the end of the pair’s conversation, it seems: before long, Hakuei is bidding her brother goodbye and starting to leave, but she stops just before turning the other corner.

“Hakuryuu, are you sure you're okay? There's nothing else that's bothering you?”

Hakuryuu shook his head. “No, aneue, I’m fine. Don’t worry.”

“You know you can talk to me if anything’s wrong, don't you?”

“I know,” Hakuryuu says, his smile widening. “Go on, you're going to be late to your lesson.”

“All right - I'll see you later!”

As soon as his sister is out of sight, the smile drops from Hakuryuu’s face. He stands still, looking where she had been with a torn expression, as if he’s grappling with some decision. If it were up to Gyokuen, she would narrow their eyes.

‘He had better not be thinking about what I think he’s thinking about.’

‘Don’t twist your tongue, love. I told you, he won’t tell her a thing, even if he considers it.’

‘Not good enough. Allowing even that thought will give it room to grow, especially if he thinks he can pass under our notice. Hakuei isn’t important, but do you think she’s the only one he’s considered saying something to?’

‘Hm...I suppose I see your point. Did you want to do something about it?’

‘I could give it a try. You had a point, too, about how I used to handle my sisters. Switch out?’

‘Very well, we’ll switch, but remember what I told you. Don’t do anything foolish.’

‘Of course. Thank you, Mother.’

The exchange lasts only a few seconds - mental conversations are so much faster and more convenient than spoken ones, she’s found - and as soon as it’s over, Gyokuen feels herself in control of their body again. It never feels quite the same as it did before; she can still sense Arba’s presence, silent but watchful, at the back of their mind. She lets her consciousness go dormant often, but her mother only rarely does the same. But it’s all right. This is what she wanted, after all: to merge the two of them into one. And her mother’s advice in her head is always welcome.

She doesn’t think she’ll need it quite yet, though. Hakuryuu isn’t very far away, but his back is to her, and she happens to be very good at moving without making a sound. (Her younger siblings had been decent practice: Surprisingly, little Kuroko had managed to either always see her coming or never react, but Enshan and Ankoku had never gotten used to her seemingly materializing out of nowhere next to them, and seeing the looks on their faces when she did was so satisfying.) She takes three long, careful strides forward, leans down, and sweeps Hakuryuu up into her arms.

He cries out at being suddenly grabbed, and starts struggling, but she holds him tightly to her and hushes him.

“Shh, now, don’t squirm like that. Did you get scared? Don’t worry, it’s just me,” she croons. Looking for the first time at the scar searing half of his face, at the unnatural paleness of his left eye, she almost starts laughing: without even meaning to, she’d gotten him on his blind side. They would have to remember that for later.

She's held her little boy before; the way he would always run up to them needing to be cuddled and protected, begging for their attention and their love, guaranteed it. (Though he can’t tell the difference between his two mothers at all, Gyokuen had still found herself flattered by his unthinking adoration of her.) As such, she can immediately tell that there’s a stark difference now. Instead of hanging on to her and relaxing into her touch, Hakuryuu is stiff and tense, trying not to shake and failing badly. He doesn't fit quite right in her arms any more. She supposes that's a shame.

“Aww, are you trembling? My cute little Hakuryuu, what are you afraid of?” she asks, putting on her kindest smile and the sickly sweet voice that had always turned her sisters’ stomachs. “I wouldn’t dream of hurting you, so long as you’re still my good boy. Aren’t you?”

Oh, my. It looks like Mother wasn’t exaggerating. Hakuryuu doesn’t say anything, but he doesn’t avoid her gaze, either. There is hatred strong and pure as flame in those mismatched eyes, stoked with the pain of her betrayal and far too fierce to belong on such a young face. All of a sudden, she’s reminded of Ankoku, of the way the girl’s eyes would narrow and her small fists would clench and quiver at every mocking word, every reminder of how helpless she was to stop her older sister from doing whatever she wanted with her. The unwelcome resemblance almost makes the smile fall from her face.

She wonders if this is how Ankoku would have looked at her had she known what was happening instead of being stuck with only the maddening sense that something was terribly wrong, had she known this hatred instead of mere suspicion and resentment. In her last moments, in all of her siblings’ last moments, there had been no time for true anger, only desperate terror. She wonders further what they all would have tried to do, if they had been able to uncover the truth and steel themselves to defy their mother and their eldest sibling. Confident as she is that they would have been no threat, she's still glad that they never had to take that chance. And if she has anything to do with it, they will not take any chances now.

“Hakuryuu? Aren't you?” Gyokuen presses, petting his hair. She must be careful with this step: she has to intimidate him enough that he won't even think of acting against them, but she absolutely cannot let on that she's only doing this because she herself feels threatened. “I watched you talking with your sister just now. What were you thinking of? Certainly nothing that would get her in trouble, right?”

Hakuryuu swallows hard, and something like a whimper escapes him, but he still doesn’t answer. It occurs to her that maybe it’s not that he’s refusing to speak out of defiance, but that he’s so scared of her now that he can’t. Poor baby...But I won't let you off the hook so easily.

“Even knowing what you know, you can still be caught unaware. I had a hold of you before you even realized I was here, didn't I? And you were alone, too. I could have done whatever I wanted and there's not a thing you could have done about it.”

As she talks, she trails her hand gently from Hakuryuu’s hair, down his face, to his throat. Her fingertips rest on his pulse, warm and racing, under her fingertips. It reminds her of when she used to caress her little brother’s neck; her son, too, goes still at her touch. But in this there is another stark difference. Unlike Enshan, Hakuryuu knows enough to sense the thoughts behind the action: not affectionate, but imagining what it would feel like to kill him here. She lets that thought hang in his mind for another moment before she starts talking again.

“So, if this is how it is with you, what chance do you think your sister has?”

Hakuryuu makes a strangled sound halfway between a yelp and a sob, and though for once he’s trying to keep them back, the tears well up and spill over almost immediately. He starts squirming again, trying to reposition himself in her arms; he clearly wants to hide his face but the only place he could do that is against her.

It takes some effort to keep her smile from broadening. Instead, she cradles him closer, tucking his head into the crook of her neck and rocking him gently. “No, shhh, shhh...Don’t cry, sweet boy, don't cry. Shh, I didn't mean to scare you. You won't let anything happen to her, will you? Nothing at all needs to happen to either of you, so long as you behave. I should have made that clear from the start. Do you understand?”

Hakuryuu just whimpers some more, trembling even harder, trying to stop crying and failing miserably. She can feel his tears running down her neck. He’s already so overwhelmed, but she has to make sure that he knows who is in control.

“Hakuryuu? Do you understand?”

He nods shakily. Not quite good enough.

“Hakuryuu, I need to hear you say it.”

He takes one slow, ragged breath, then another, and another, until he’s calmed himself down enough to at least speak coherently, and mumbles, “I...I understand, M-Mother.”

“Good boy.” She kisses his forehead lightly, giggling when he flinches. “My good boy.”

‘There,’ Arba says, as if this ends any argument. ‘A weak little thing like this will spend his life bowing to us, not causing us any harm. You see?’

‘Yes, I see,’ she replies obediently. But privately, she thinks, He's not going to stay little and weak forever. And I know I've seen that sort of look somewhere before...Where?

Still sniffling, Hakuryuu wriggles a little harder. “Put...Put me down?” he asks in a tiny, plaintive voice, as if he’s afraid to speak to her again.

‘Oh, he’s too cute,’ Arba laughs. ‘I think we can leave him be, love, you’ve done your job.’

‘Maybe. But I’ve never exactly been one to make things easy for my family.’

“Now, Hakuryuu,” she says in a mockingly admonishing tone, and Arba starts laughing even harder. “Mind your manners. If you want me to let you go, you'll have to ask nicely.”

“P-Please put me down!” he cries, looking and sounding about a second away from bursting into another round of tears.

‘Not as good as An and Kuro’s begging, but I'll take it.’

“Shh, all right, down you go...”

She bends for a moment to set him back on his feet, and the instant he gets near the floor, he wrenches himself out of her hands and darts halfway down the hall, putting himself out of her reach in case she changes her mind. But instead of running any further away, he spins around, glaring up at her and clenching his fists.

Gyokuen raises her eyebrows, letting her smile linger. “Is there something else you wanted to say, darling?”

He grits his teeth, as if there's so much he wants to scream at her, but can't, that it's choking him. The fire still burns strong in his eyes, and all of a sudden it hits her that she was mistaken before about where she recognizes that expression from.

That isn't the look of her bitter younger sister. This is the look of their vengeful eldest sons, at the moment that they had decided to become their enemy. And while it had fit perfectly on two fierce, grown warriors -

(on Hakuren’s face as he charged at them in blind fury, as he held his bleeding fist after Arba’s borg had knocked him away; on Hakuyuu’s face as he called them traitor, and coldly refused to take the offer for partnership that would have saved his and his brother’s lives, why didn’t he take it, why, why had he refused her?!)

- it looks monstrous and wrong in this boy. Their mother had ripped his innocence right out of him, and she can see the rage and terror and confusion pouring from him like blood from the open wound. The child he was before has been shattered, and this new person they’ve created from the burnt and blackened remains is dangerous, hanging onto his semblance of stability by a thread and preparing to kill once that thread finally breaks. And they are his only target, the only ones who will face his wrath once this runt puppy grows into a ferocious beast, like his father and brothers before him.

The thought does not cross Gyokuen’s mind that she may be overestimating the capabilities of one so young. She herself had been four years old when she helped her mother bury her father, and seven when she had very nearly drowned Ankoku, before their mother had stepped in. And unlike Ankoku (like her, instead), Hakuryuu won’t forget anything. The truth of everything they have done is quite literally burned into him. The way she sees it, six is more than old enough to be planning how to get rid of an unwanted parent. Her father had been ill-prepared, and had paid for it with his life. If they aren't careful...They could very well share that fate.

She does not like the uncomfortable cold feeling that settles on her body at these realizations. But it’s okay, she decides. She will control their son; if she cannot get rid of him, she will hold the beast inside him on a chokingly short leash and protect them both.

After a moment or so, Hakuryuu makes a small, sharp noise of frustration and whips around again, bolting away from them as fast as he can. She’s so lost in thought that she almost doesn't notice. (They have nothing more to say to each other, anyway.)

‘So?’ Arba asks. ‘What do you think of him now? Even with those scars, he's still such an adorable boy, isn't he?’

Gyokuen barely hears her, and takes another few moments to consider their child before she answers. As clear and present a danger as Hakuryuu may be, she has to wonder whether he really has the resilience to see whatever plan he may have through, or even to survive to attempt it. Arba was right: the pressure is clearly crushing him even now, and it's only going to get worse the longer he lives. She could see his entire future in those eyes: with no one else he dares share the pain or the burden with, he’ll grow up into a burnt-out shell kept alive only by his lust for his mother’s blood. And if they die and the object of his hatred is suddenly gone...

‘It would have been kinder to have just killed the poor thing.’

‘Mm, maybe so. But we are not kind people, are we?’

‘No, I suppose we’re not,’ she agrees, turning and walking back the way they had come. ‘Though, if you change your mind about keeping him, I’ll certainly take care of that for you.’

It occurs to her that she's never made a quick and clean kill before. Even wounded and bleeding out, Ankoku had tried to fight back and made things more difficult than they needed to be, Kuroko had screamed and struggled under her sister’s blade until her last breath, and she had wanted to savor her last moments with Enshan for as long as she could. But it should be easy: all she would need is one of her knives and a moment alone with their son, to put him out of his misery forever.

‘I'll think about it,’ Arba says, though she can tell that her mother just wants her to drop the subject. ‘For now, all we have to do is keep an eye on him. I know you're worried, but I promise, we’re in no danger. There are no threats left in this palace.’

‘Of course. I'm sorry, Mother.’

‘You trust me, don't you, my love?’

Gyokuen takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly.

‘With my life.’

~0~

She is not like the other vessels. She made a choice, instead of being blindsided. She fought for her perfect existence, instead of against it. She shares her life with Arba, instead of having it stolen away from her.

(“Do you enjoy being Mother’s spoiled little pet, aneue? Because if you think you’re anything else to her, you really are out of your mind.”)

She alone was chosen. She alone has won Arba’s love. She alone can understand the older woman’s mind and heart.

(“Where do you and Mother go all the time? Why are you keeping so many secrets? Sometimes you two really scare me.”)

She doesn't need control. All she needs is her mother.

(“Aneue, you’d tell me if something was wrong, wouldn’t you? I promise, there’s nothing I wouldn’t do to fix it.”)

It's better this way.

~0~

Since her possession, the years have passed far more quickly than usual, days or weeks or months at a time blinking by in between her times of awareness. But she is not consigned to oblivion like the rest. Devoted as she is to her mother, focused as she is on the future (her life has never had any particular purpose beyond the one Arba has given her), she can still enjoy looking outside herself to the present, sometimes. And Arba knows well what she enjoys the most, and wakes her so they can share this, too.

In this world, there is only one person that Gyokuen loves. However, there are exactly three people that she cares for, and they stand on the sidelines of the royal family’s training court, intently watching one of them.

‘She's improved quite a lot, hasn't she?’ Gyokuen remarks. Hakuei’s trainer left half an hour ago, but she still insists on doing extra drills. As someone with very little ambition herself, she has to admire her daughter’s dedication.

Arba, however, looks on the seventeen-year-old’s swordplay with a more critical eye. ‘She could be better. For one thing, her footwork is definitely off.’

‘Well, if you're dissatisfied, why don't you train her instead?’

‘Oh, no, I trained Hakuyuu and Hakuren and look what they did with it. All that was was nineteen years of wasted effort, and I have better things to do with my life.’

‘If you say so. She’d do so much better under your influence, but she's all right on her own, isn't she?’

At exactly that moment, Hakuei swings far too widely trying to finish a stroke, and loses her balance, landing hard in the dirt with a surprised yelp. As soon as the girl starts to look up, Gyokuen feels Arba quickly turn away and pretend to inspect their nails. ‘Mother, what are you doing?’

‘Pretending I didn't see that. Students do better if they're not embarrassed to keep trying.’

‘I remember if En or Kuro heard me laughing at them when they made mistakes, they'd look ashamed and give up. I suppose that must be why.’

Unlike their siblings, Ankoku had been the type to yell at her older sister and then try harder out of pure spite, and usually succeed, which had been no fun at all to watch. Hakuei doesn't have a spiteful bone in her body, but she jumps back up anyway, only taking a second to rub her bruised shoulder before starting the sequence over.

‘At least she didn't fall on her face,’ Arba comments. ‘Again.’

‘Oh, leave her alone, that was years ago,’ Gyokuen laughs. ‘She's just tired; she's doing her best.’

Part of her questions why being with her daughter, or even just watching her, fills her with such contentment. They aren't as close to her as they were to their eldest sons, and she has no particular investment in the girl’s life. But the rest of her has already figured out the answer.

She's heard so many people, her mother included, gush about how their daughter looks exactly like her. And she can certainly see that; Hakuei is a beautiful little thing, after all. But Gyokuen looks at this girl, all bright eyes and a hopeful smile, and sees her beloved husband in everything she does.

While she is far freer with her emotions than stoic Hakutoku, Hakuei is without a doubt her father’s daughter. She may have her mother’s face, but her drive and determination, her endless optimism, her desire to change the world for the better...Yes, those are all Hakutoku, though how much is inherited and how much is learned is anybody’s guess. Hakuei still does not know enough of the sword to wield it as easily as a new limb, the way her father and their mother do, but her technique is more refined by the day, her movements are swift as wind, and she will train as long and hard as she has to in order to improve.

Her father’s spirit, sheathed in her mother's beauty. A flawless combination. Gyokuen can't get enough of it.

‘You seem quite happy,’ Arba noted. ‘Is she really so consistently entertaining?’

‘Of course. Doesn't she seem a bit familiar to you?’

‘Well, yes. The older she gets, the more she reminds me of your little brother.’

‘What?’ Of the two answers she had been expecting, that was not one of them. In the mental space they share, she gives her mother a bewildered look. ‘She reminds you of Enshan?!’

Arba snickers. ‘Did you have another little brother I don't know about? I'm surprised you don't see it too.’ Their physical face keeps its expression of kind, mild interest, but here, she looks at their daughter with a small smirk. ‘A naïve little fool who hangs on Ren Hakutoku’s every word, who truly believes that a noble heart is the key to making this worthless world a better place, who would never suspect you of doing anything cruel...And what's more, who is entirely unaware of the fact that no matter how strong they become or how hard they work, everything they have ever done will mean nothing once their time comes. Who am I describing?’

Well, when she puts it like that, there's really no way to deny it. But even so...She can't meet her mother’s eyes.

‘That's really what you're thinking?’

‘Oh, yes.’ Arba’s smirk broadens. ‘Enshan died. Only in death did his useless little life have any point, isn't that right, love? And I might say that Hakuei will go the same way, but we both know that's not true. When her life is taken from her, it will be for a far greater purpose.’

When she doesn't hear immediate agreement from Gyokuen, Arba turns. ‘You know that, my love,’ she reminds her.

‘I do know. Only you could know better.’

She doesn't look on their daughter with sadness. She doesn't. Their line has been blessed with a great purpose, and accepting it is the only thing that has ever made her feel whole. But still, she is the only one who has ever willingly accepted it...Perhaps she really is the only one who can reach this perfect existence.

‘You are sure that she cannot understand? It...disappoints me that she will not share the same relationship with you that I do.’

‘It disappoints me, as well. But what you and I have is special, and I would not be able to recreate that bond with anyone else, not even her. It is certainly regrettable. But you are one of a kind, and she...’ Arba grimaces. ‘Well. You were right about one thing. She is her father’s daughter. She might have your face, but she's nothing like you. Her heart can never be swayed, she will always be blind to the truth.’

‘There's nothing you can do?’

‘Nothing at all, I’m afraid. You wish it were different, then?’

‘Yes.’

Gyokuen looks out at their daughter. Hakuei is finishing the sequence flawlessly now. When she pulls off the move that had tripped her up before, she turns for a second to smile at her mother, and for that one second Gyokuen is decades in the past, watching a beautiful young prince (still fresh-faced and energetic, with not nearly as many battle scars) practice the same techniques, with the same light in his sharp blue eyes, giving her the same sweet smile.

If she were in control of her body, she would smile genuinely, too. This girl looks just like her, but acts just like the man she adored. Even if their daughter won't understand what she was really meant for, she's still perfect. In an equally perfect world, she should be able to enjoy the same symbiosis as her mother.

‘If it’s for her, I wouldn't mind not being the only one.’

‘How touching.’

‘I only...I have one thing to ask of you. May I?’

‘Of course, anything.’

‘When you take her...Just don't hurt her. Let her go peacefully.’

‘Oh, my darling,’ Arba coos, smiling indulgently. She wraps her arms around her daughter from behind and holds her reassuringly close. ‘Of course I won't hurt our precious girl. It will be very quick, I promise. Just a little pain, only for a moment, and then she'll go right to sleep. Don't worry about her; she’ll never feel a thing.’

‘With me, you drew it out.’

‘Because that was your desire. But I have complete control over the process, I can make it as long or as short as I want. It will all be over before she knows it. No need for the poor girl to suffer any longer than she has to, right?’

‘Right.’

She looks out at Hakuei again. It's good that they've kept her ignorant of the truth - she's turned out to be living proof of the idea that ignorance is bliss, after all. Stay that way, my girl. It's what's best. And when our mother takes you, don't fight, it will be okay. It will all be okay.

Just then, she hears soft footsteps, those of one trying not to be noticed. Before she can ask, Arba turns their head, and as always, something inside her jumps when she sees their youngest approaching.

Hakuryuu, as usual, doesn't speak to them. (Sometimes that gets quite boring: Ankoku had been much more outwardly fiery, and consequently much more entertaining on that score, than her nephew.) He makes a point of staying away from them as much as he possibly can. Right now, he stands on the sidelines a good twenty feet away, taking only a second to glare at them before turning his attention to his sister, with an unreadable expression.

Gyokuen watches him grip the hilt of the training sword fastened at his hip, and then starts to study the rest of him. Her son seems to have grown a little taller since the last time she saw him, his features just barely beginning to sharpen into manhood. She thinks for a moment that he is starting to look more dangerous, but she knows it's probably just her imagination. The boy is no threat, she reminds herself, no threat at all.

Arba, feeling her daughter tensing in her arms, gives a light laugh. ‘It seems as if he’s almost reached that rebellious age, hasn’t he? And yet it’s exactly as you were saying that one time: He’s still just a toothless little puppy.’

‘Of course,’ she answers automatically.

Arba raises an eyebrow. ‘Oh? Years we’ve been going over this, and you still disapprove of my decision? You aren’t very good at hiding your feelings from me.’

She resists the urge to sigh. She is not going to get into this with her mother again. ‘Whether or not I approve has no bearing on this. You know better, so I have accepted all of your decisions. I am not going to go back on that.’

‘But?’ Arba prods.

‘But...Still...’ She pulls out of her mother’s embrace and turns around to face her. ‘Still, that doesn’t change the fact that every time I see him, I feel like I’m waiting for an axe to fall! And maybe I am being overly cautious, but you aren’t cautious at all! You’re as confident as you should be, and maybe it’s just because I don’t have your experience, but I worry that letting this go will hurt us one way or another. I'm sorry - ’

‘No. You're right. You are being overly cautious and you don't have my experience. After over a thousand years of fighting, I know better than almost anyone how to first read my opponents, and then deal with them effectively. One would think you would understand by now, even with the comparably short time you have had.’

She has to resist the urge to cringe back under her mother’s derision, like a child being reprimanded. ‘I do understand. You are stronger and smarter than anyone who wants to defy you, but that doesn’t stop me from considering every scenario, even those that are, most likely, not going to happen. I suppose someone like you...has grown past feeling the need to do that, so to speak.’

‘Something like that, yes.’ Arba’s expression softens. ‘I think you're getting the wrong idea, love. I've told you, there's nothing to fear. Don't let your imagination get the better of you. The little weakling lives only to suffer, to struggle endlessly and fail regardless, nothing more. I promise, this will not backfire on us.’

‘I know, I know. But like I said, my approval doesn't matter one way or the other. My...’

She does not want to say fear. She is not afraid of her own son, of this boy she could kill without blinking. She is not.

‘My uneasiness should not factor into what you choose to do. Your decisions have always been absolute, and neither of us should have any doubt in the other. Isn't that right?’

‘Of course. I'm glad that we can get past these little misunderstandings of yours. The less you think about him, the better off you'll be. Just focus on me, all right?’ Arba says sweetly. She reaches out to cup her daughter’s cheek, and the gentle touch is an instant relief.

‘All right. I won't bring it up again, I’m sorry.’

‘Like I said, don't be sorry. My darling eldest daughter can do no wrong, isn't that right?’

Their old refrain, that had made her feel secure in her position, driven Ankoku up the wall, and even made the normally calm and composed Kuroko bristle. She smiles. ‘Right.’

Just then, Hakuryuu makes an irritated noise in the back of his throat, and draws his mothers’ attention back to him. “Why are you staring at me?” he growls.

Gyokuen closes her eyes for a moment and suppresses another sigh. ‘Mother, did you forget to move our head?’

Arba shrugs, still smiling. ‘Maybe. You're quite distracting, after all,’ she explains, tracing her fingertips teasingly down her daughter’s face and neck.

To Hakuryuu, she just laughs and says, “What’s the matter? I can’t look at my cute little boy any more?”

He makes another noise - disgusted this time - and turns back to his sister. “Aneue,” he calls, and Hakuei stops short to give him her full attention. “I know you're tired, but do you have a few minutes?”

“Of course,” she says. The way she smiles at her brother, it’s clear that he means the world to her, and Gyokuen feels as if she’s being held out on. Surely her daughter’s affections would be better placed elsewhere.

Hakuyuu and Hakuren used to spar with each other fiercely, without a care in the world, but these two never do. They're too careful with each other, too afraid of harm coming to their only remaining sibling, to really go all out. But, that doesn't mean they can't train together. Hakuryuu watches with rapt attention as his sister demonstrates a new move for him, once at normal speed, and a second time more slowly, to show him clearly how all the steps go. He only takes his eyes off of her for a second, so he can glare daggers at his mother one more time.

‘Well,’ Gyokuen says, more amused than offended. ‘I suppose we know where we’re not wanted.’

Arba smirks at their son, even as she obligingly turns and leaves the field. ‘I’ll bet that he thinks he'd have a chance against me in a sword fight. He really is so cute. I almost want him to try it now, just to see the look on his face when he realizes how outclassed he is.’

‘Hm. Not exactly the combat I prefer. If he decides to start a knife fight, let me know.’

‘Oh, love, don't make me laugh. Your talent lies in murder, not a fair fight. Besides, I stopped wearing your knives a long time ago. It wasn't as if anyone would notice the difference.’

‘True. Though I do still find that method to have more finesse than what you prefer.’

‘To each her own. But, after seeing those two, I'm in the mood for some training of my own. If you would find that too boring...’

‘I understand. Wake me when something interesting happens.’

‘Of course. Sweet dreams, my love.’

With that, Gyokuen closes her eyes, and feels the thick, heady rush of unconsciousness pulling her down almost immediately. Her last thought before it takes her completely, is that maybe it wouldn't be so bad to let Hakuryuu try his hand at killing them, if he ever decides to stop being all bark and no bite. After all, she can’t say she wouldn’t love sharing the satisfaction of putting their arrogant son in his place.

~0~

She has killed exactly three times in her life. When she was only herself, the thought of feeling another human’s life end under her hands was constantly scratching at the back of her mind - not a hunger, more a wish, a fascination.

Causing one sister pain and humiliation behind closed doors, forcing the other to hold still and quiet and watch, feeling her brother’s reactions (reaction, but never resistance) when she ran gentle hands over his body...All that had been only mild, fleeting satisfaction. Their lives meant nothing to her; their sole purpose in existing was to be her playthings.

She doesn't pity them.

(As little love as she has for Ankoku, she has to admit that their bond is unique. Ankoku is one of only two people outside of al-Thamen who she allows to see her true colors, and she is free to take advantage of that however she pleases. Her sister can start as many arguments as she likes, but she will always come out on top.

The girl glares at her from across the breakfast table, and she meets her sister’s anger with a sweet, seemingly oblivious smile. The long sleeves of Ankoku’s robes mostly cover her forearm and hand, but she can still catch glimpses of the thin white bandages wound around it, covering the glass cuts that riddle her skin. She had gotten a little too full of herself in an argument yesterday, and if her older sister had ‘accidentally’ shoved her into her floor mirror when she'd gotten bored with dealing with her...Well, it was her own fault for getting too close.

“You look proud of yourself,” Ankoku growls, her scowl only made more apparent by the way she rests her head against the fist of her good hand. Her bandaged fingers tap restlessly against the wooden table. “Was this really such an accomplishment for you?”

“Elbow off the table, An,” she chides gently.

“Don't tell me what to do. You're not Mother.”

Give it a few years, she thinks. “There's no need to always be so petulant. You got out of line, and so I had to punish you for it. Nothing personal. Unless...” She does one of the things that Ankoku hates most: stares directly into her eyes and neither blinks nor breaks the contact. “That isn't the part you're still thinking about?”

Ankoku’s tapping immediately doubles in speed. But she takes a long, slow breath through her nose, and refuses to look away from her sister. “Do you have to go over this every time?”

“I might.”

She knows that the same images are playing out in their heads right now. Ankoku crying out in pain, trying to get up from the mess of broken glass she's lying in, but her injured arm buckling and sending her back down. Rapid footsteps in the hall, and the self-satisfied smile dropping from her face as she falls to her knees and pulls Ankoku into her arms. Their frantic brother running into the room to find out what’s wrong, only seeing his younger sister bleeding and upset, and his older sister trying to comfort her, looking up at him with a pitiable expression and begging for his help. That’s all she ever needs to win him over, all she will ever need.

Ankoku seems to disagree. “You know, one day you’re going to be in real trouble, aneue. And all the sweet-talking in the world isn't going to save you.”

“It isn’t as if you’re much help, either. We passed this time, but even Enshan isn't going to believe things like, ‘She just slipped,’ for much longer. You're going to have to start coming up with more creative explanations soon. But do try to keep it plausible.”

The first lesson she can remember learning from her mother is that she is free to do whatever she likes, but in order to avoid opposition and punishment from the rest of the world, she must wear a mask of kindness and keep anything “unsavory” under wraps no matter what. She remembers that day as clearly as anything, but she has never found out exactly how much Ankoku remembers of her part in it: of being held down in the shallows of a lake, seeing her sister’s face through the surface of the water before finally blacking out. All that their mother would say, and that she had instructed Gyokuen to repeat after explaining the rules to her, was that little Ankoku had fallen in the lake and her older sister had pulled her out and saved her life. She wonders often whether Ankoku’s hatred of her (and consequently, of deception and dishonesty) stems directly from this little incident, or another, better remembered one. For all she knows, it was a learning experience for them both.

“Why should I?” Ankoku’s tone is challenging, but she knows there's nothing serious behind it. “Why should I keep lying for you? I don't want to protect you!”

“You know why, An.” She gets up and goes to sit next to her sister, taking the girl’s chin and tilting it up. “Can you tell me?”

Ankoku holds her glare for another moment before giving a defeated sigh. “It's better for me to lie,” she says, with the tired monotone of an over-rehearsed line. “Because nobody is going to believe the truth.��

“That's right.” She leans forward to wrap her arms around her sister’s shoulders and hold her close once more. The girl does not resist. “Nobody is going to believe you.”)

She isn't sorry for what she did to them.

(Living as her mother’s shadow has taught her how to gather secrets, how to know every piece of private information in the palace. And while such a skill proves beneficial to her as a member of al-Thamen and as a dutiful wife to the crown prince, it also lets her have a bit of fun in her spare time.

Granted, it's not difficult to find the crack in the wall between her sister’s bedroom and her own and observe from the other side, but it's useful anyway. She wonders what they would look like if they knew that even their most private spaces were not off limits to her.

After she'd come upon them having a hushed discussion in the hall, Ankoku had snapped at her to leave them alone and stormed off to her room, dragging a yelping Kuroko by the wrist behind her; tiny for her age as Kuroko is, it's fairly easy to pull her wherever one wants her to go, no matter how the girl protests. So now, she observes the two more closely. Kuroko sits neatly in the middle of her sister’s bed, while Ankoku lounges against the pile of lacy pillows at its head.

“So,” Ankoku says. “You saw Mother with those weird priests again? What’s special about that? She’s always off somewhere, and we’ve seen those guys before.”

Kuroko shakes her head. “Not like this. There were more of them this time, I know it. And I still couldn’t see their faces, but the way they treated Mother...They belong to her. They acted as if...As if they were her dogs.”

Ankoku snorts derisively. “So aneue’s got some competition?”

“Please don’t joke. I didn't stay long, so I couldn't see what they were there for, but I don't think I could have figured it out even if I had stayed. Nee-sama...What is going on? I can't figure it out!”

“Kuro, shh. Relax,” Ankoku soothes, though the way her fingers worry the corner of the pillow nearest her hand betrays her own emotional state. “Let’s just think about this. Out of context, this isn't such a strange thing. Lots of other countries have priests or magic users in high positions. Our brothers were talking about how the Musta’sim Kingdom uses magicians just the other day, weren't they?”

“But those are units loyal to the nation and their ruler. It's perfectly clear what they're for. These people aren't going to answer to King Tokuma or to Hakutoku-onii-sama, not at all. They're Mother’s. What will she use them for, if not to help the family?”

“I don't know,” says Ankoku, with clearly forced patience. “Let’s think about that for a minute. I'm sure we can work some things out together; two heads are better than one, after all.”

“But why don't we try something else? There's only so much we can come up with on our own. We could do some digging and - ”

“No!” Ankoku snaps. “We do not get close to them, do you understand?!”

“But, nee-sama, we need to know more - ”

“I said no! And until I tell you otherwise, the answer will always be no! I’m angry enough that you snuck off without me this time, I don't want you anywhere near them! Don’t you get that it’s dangerous?! I let my guard down around them once, and I told you what that almost got me!”

Kuroko looks startled at her sister’s outburst, but still tries to speak calmly. “W-Well, in that case...If you’re too afraid of doing anything else - ”

“You think we don’t have reasons to be afraid?!”

“That’s not what I said. If this is all you want to do, then why don’t we talk to aniue? Three heads are better than two, aren’t they?”

“Sure they are, but our sweet big brother’s head is in the clouds,” Ankoku scoffs. “It’s one of the drawbacks to being a ray of sunshine, you see.”

“...Yes, I see. But doesn’t he deserve to know what - ”

“Of course he does. Everyone does. It makes me sick that those two can spend so long pulling the wool over everybody’s eyes. But aniue will deny that anything is wrong with this family until the evidence is smacking him in the face, so we can only talk to him when we have actual proof of how messed up our mother and sister are.”

“And when will that be?”

Ankoku gives a frustrated huff. “I don’t know. But it probably won't be anytime soon, if we're going to keep ourselves safe.”

Gyokuen smiles, deciding that she's heard enough, and silently turns to leave and report back to her mother. Her first thought is to deride her sisters as cowards, but she knows it’s the smarter move for them not to poke around where they don’t belong.

So long as the two can see sense where their mother and elder sister are concerned, she’ll be able to keep them around for her entertainment as long as she likes.)

Remorse and guilt are foreign concepts to her.

(Her little brother is a precious thing. Precious, but foolish.

Self-sacrificing, too. After hearing about what had happened on his most recent campaign with his big brother-in-law, she had decided that a caring older sister would go and check on him right away, so that is what she is doing. She opens the door to his bedroom and steps inside as quietly as she can, but she is noticed anyway.

Enshan still lies unconscious, but Hakutoku sits, stiff and straight-backed, in a chair next to his bed. The elder prince watches the younger with an impassive expression, but when he hears the door and sees his wife enter, a shadow of guilt passes over his face, and he looks away just as quickly.

Suppressing a sigh, she crosses the room and pulls up a chair next to her husband. Before she can say or do anything else, he's already talking.

“Gyokuen, I'm sorry,” he says, his voice lower than usual. He won't meet his wife’s eyes. “I wasn't watching him closely enough, when he needed me to watch him the most...This happened because of me.”

She takes a moment to look at her brother before responding. The boy looks softer and more breakable than usual, with thick bandages wound around his chest and stomach in lieu of a shirt. “It's not your fault.”

“He did it to protect me and I didn't stop him - ”

“Oh, I suppose you made him jump in front of a sword for you?” She would laugh at the absurdity of the idea, but it wouldn't be appropriate for the current mood. Instead, she takes his chin in her hand, and gently turns his face down toward her so she can kiss his lips. Even after pulling back, she holds his gaze. “Look at me. Do I look angry with you?”

“No.”

“Of course not. Now, I'll certainly be having a word with my reckless little brother when he’s aware enough to listen properly, but I can't blame you for this. So don’t blame yourself. All right?”

Hakutoku doesn’t look entirely convinced, but nods anyway, with a small grunt of agreement. He turns his eyes back to his brother, but wraps an arm around his wife to pull her close, and lets her rest her head on his shoulder. It's not quite as much attention as she would like to be getting from him, but it's warm and comfortable and enough for now. The silence only lasts for a moment.

“...Shuuen-dono hasn't put in an appearance yet,” Hakutoku says flatly, and although she knows he doesn't like to directly criticize family, the disapproval is clear in his voice. “Though I'm sure she already knows what's going on.”

“You know how my mother is. She probably thinks that it won't do any good to come while he's still asleep. When he wakes up and can actually see that she's there, then I'm sure she’ll stop by to check on him.”

“I'm sure,” he echoes tonelessly.

“She will, don't worry. And speaking of sleep,” she says, noticing for the first time the unusual pallor of her husband’s face, the dark shadows under his eyes. “When was the last time you got any rest?”

“I'm fine.”

“No, that wasn't what I asked. You've been watching over my brother ever since he got hurt, haven't you? It's all right, I can take over from here.”

“I can - ”

“I mean it, Toku. Go and sleep, and I’ll wake you if something changes. Enshan’s perfectly safe with me. Go on.”

Hakutoku only hesitates a moment before deciding that she’s right. He gives his wife a characteristically awkward one-armed hug, before getting up and leaving the room without another word. Once he’s gone, she moves from the chair to the bed, lifting her brother's head and cradling it in her lap as she sits down. She runs her fingers lightly through his soft, thick hair, as if petting a housecat. Before long, her eyes move from his face down to his wounded body. As she’s been told, the Gou soldier’s sword, meant to cut Hakutoku’s head off from behind, had instead slashed Enshan open from collarbone to hip when he got in its way.

She thinks that he must have looked stunning covered in blood, the bright red surely a stark contrast to the white of his clothes and the pale blue of his eyes and hair. That soon gives way to imagining what the scar will look like, once these bandages are removed - she’ll see it herself eventually, of course, but the thought is still interesting. She is more aware than usual of the tight leather straps around each of her upper arms and thighs, each holding a short but sharp dagger in place. What was it like, she wonders, to tear through this warm, perfectly unblemished skin with a cold blade? To leave a permanent mark on this boy? The thought crosses her mind that she should have been the one to leave such a mark, the one who her brother thinks of every time he looks at his own body. Her siblings belong to her, after all, and no one else.

While she's deep in thought, she almost doesn't catch the tiny noise that Enshan makes. His body tenses and starts to stir as he tries to wake himself up, and his eyelids twitch for a moment and then flutter open. He stares up at her blearily, and she can practically see the wheels turning in his head, trying to remember what happened and where he is.

“A-Ane...Aneue?” he says, his voice less than a whisper.

She smiles. “Yes, I’m right here.”

“Ane...”

“Shhh,” she murmurs, still stroking his hair. “It's all right. You're at home, you're safe now. You're safe.”

His eyes look a little clearer, but he still doesn't seem to get it. “O-Onii-sama...”

“Hakutoku is fine. Don't worry. Everything's all right.”

“Oh...” He tries to sit up, but hisses through clenched teeth as pain lances through his chest. Still whimpering softly, he lets his sister guide him back down onto her lap.

“No, don't try to move, just lie still,” she says, gently holding him down in case he tries again, with one hand on his head and the other flat on his chest. “You'll be okay, but you're still very hurt.”

Still only half-awake, Enshan’s mind returns to the previous subject quickly. “Onii-sama...He’s...”

“I told you, he's perfectly fine. Thanks to you, that is.”

Once he registers the answer, Enshan smiles too, and the idiotic mix of relief and pride almost makes her laugh. “Didn't...I didn't...w-wanna see...let him g-get hurt.”

“Yes, En, I know. You're a very good brother. But you need to take better care of yourself.”

“I...I'll protect...Protect you all...Aneue, I'll - ”

“Of course you will,” she coos, her voice sugary sweet. “But you were nearly killed. You just can't take such risks with your life. I don't want to lose you yet.”

Still the vacant smile and eyes. “I will protect you...I will.”

“I know.” She leans down and kisses his cheek, at the corner of his lips - not quite where she'd kissed her husband, but close enough. He doesn't seem to realize. “You’ll do anything for me, won't you? Such a good brother.”)

When she remembers her siblings - and she wonders why she remembers them as often as she does - all she recalls feeling is the satisfaction of knowing her place, of knowing that they would never be like her.

That had been all...Until that night.

(They stand in an empty corridor, facing each other, and she is frozen in shock.

She stares at her mother, uncomprehending, certain she must have heard wrong. A year since they had made their pact, a lifetime of devotion...Her mother would not repay her with betrayal. Never.

So she asks, somewhat shakily, for clarification. “Wh-What are you talking about? You chose me as your vessel.”

Her mother’s smile doesn't falter. “Yes, I did tell you that. But that may have been a mistake. I'm really starting to think that one of your little sisters might be a better choice.”

“But...” It’s taking every last bit of self-control she has not to scream. Hurt and fury are boiling in her stomach and heart, and she’s trying but she can't think of what she could have done so wrong that her mother would reject her. “I-I don't understand.”

“It shouldn't be hard to understand, love. Plans change, that's all, and this is what I have decided is best. It's nothing that you did wrong. And nothing about what you are to me needs to change, too.”

No! No, you're wrong! she wants to protest. Being your other half is what I am to you! I'm the only one who can be that to you! I’m the one who serves you, I'm the one you gave dark rukh to, I’m the one who is going to become queen, I’m the one carrying our child; everything has already been set in place perfectly for you with me! You can't go back on that now! You can't do this to me! What am I supposed to do without you?!

But she does not say any of this. She can't. Her mother's word is absolute.

So she takes a deep breath, and forces her lips into what she hopes passes for a smile. “Of course. I respect your decision, Mother.”

Her mother still smiles blissfully, as if she has no idea what she's just set off inside her daughter. “That's my good girl.”

“If...If you'll excuse me.”

Thinking that she’ll vomit if she has to look at that face for one more second, she turns on her heel and stalks away. As she turns a corner and disappears from the older woman’s sight, she still does not allow her rage to show on her face, but her mind is racing.

Her mother knows better than she does. Her mother’s plans always fall perfectly into place, no matter what they entail. Her mother will do whatever she has to to achieve her ultimate design, whether her daughter fits into it or not. These are just simple facts, as unalterable as the laws of nature.

At the moment, she couldn’t care less about any of that.

It barely even registers with her that this is the first time in her life she has ever had feelings like this. All she can think about is that there is no way she can allow this to happen. She is in this too deep, has been led to expect too much, for too long, to be able to accept any other life now. What does her mother expect her to do?! Just watch from the distance while one of her worthless siblings takes what is rightfully hers, knowing that her perfect existence is being dangled in front of her, just out of reach? She will never be satisfied with that. The only thing that can complete her is to become one with her mother.

The image of her sisters’ smiling faces flashes in her mind, and it only enrages her more. Those two don't understand anything. They don't love their mother the way she does; no one else can. They don't deserve her. They can't have her. They won't have her.

Her right hand slides up to her left arm, running her fingers up and down the knife held there under her sleeve. She won't let anyone else have her mother. She will set her life back on track.

Another deep breath, and her hand trails down from her arm to her stomach. She hasn’t started showing very much yet and it’s too soon for any movement, but she can feel the small life growing inside her regardless. Perhaps you can be of some help sooner than I thought, little one, she thinks, a plan starting to form in her head.

Since she told them the news, Ankoku acts just as hostile and Kuroko just as cautious as ever, but she’s listened to them showing their real feelings to each other when they think she can’t hear, gushing over the idea of getting a niece or nephew, even from the sister they fear. They might not be as likely to retaliate if she attacks them, before they realize that this time she’s striking to kill, and then it will be far too late.

Hakutoku and Enshan haven’t returned from the border yet, so if she can get this done before they do, then there won’t be anyone who notices in time that the girls are missing. And as for getting them in a secluded enough place that she can do it unseen and uninterrupted...She’s been told that an expectant woman’s mood becomes turbulent early on. She hasn’t felt anything like that yet, but her sisters don’t know that. If she can act empty-headed and harmless and completely unlike herself, just enough to make them let down their guard and unthinkingly allow her to lure them away from the palace and all its prying eyes...

Yes, she can make this work.

She must not rush; no, she must be as careful as always, to keep to the rules and not be caught. She will have to think much harder about her plan before she actually puts it into play, to ensure that it is completely foolproof. But she will do this.

Her mother will be the one left with no choice. She will have her eldest daughter, or she will have nothing, and die with nowhere else for her soul to reside in. If these are the lengths she must go to in order to reclaim her birthright, then so be it.)

She had to do it. She hadn’t had a choice.

Even if, in hindsight, the reality of the situation - that her mother had only wanted to see what she would do if offered the chance to back out of merging with her - was obvious, there still had been no other way. For her future to be secured, her sisters had had to die, by her own hand. And her brother, too; it had been better to make a clean job of it, even after she'd supposedly passed the test. Her mother had appeared to change her mind once, and once was enough to convince her that she could not allow Arba even a chance to do so again.

She only did it because her mother had forced her hand, but she has no regrets. In fact, she had been deliriously happy, that she had finally given in and done what had been calling to her since she was a child.

To hear the girls screaming, begging for their own lives and their siblings’, to see the raw terror in their crying eyes and contorted expressions, to feel their blood flowing over her skin as she plunged the blade into them, again and again and again: that was what she had been longing for. Killing her brother had been a completely different but equally fulfilling experience, with his throat held fatally tight in both her hands, his eyes bulging wide and his skin and lips turning a delicate shade of blue, the way his spasms and panicked scratching at her wrists grew weaker and weaker until he went limp and lifeless underneath her.

Aside from her mother, nothing had ever made her heart race the way the act of murder had. In those last seconds, in seeing the light leave their eyes, in knowing that the last thing they ever saw was her face, calm and contented in her success...In that, she had found greater power and satisfaction than she had ever thought possible. She wonders, sometimes, how something that felt so beautiful could be considered evil. But she never puts too much thought into it. Those are just the rules that she must pretend to abide by in order to blend in and avoid punishment, and they’re nothing to do with her personally.

Besides, she knows that she is ahead of the curve, anyway. Soon enough, it won’t matter who followed the rules of this world and who didn’t. When her mother can finally summon her god down from the rift between dimensions and bring everything and everyone in this place to ruin, nothing will matter any more.

She does not anticipate it with the zeal that her mother does, merely accepts it as an inevitability. But, one question does float into her mind every time the subject comes up: if feeling one person die under her hands could bring her such elation, then what will it feel like when the entire world is dying around her?

~0~

When the answer to that question comes, it does so, like everything else in her life now, unexpectedly soon. Her mother’s voice floats into her mind, loud and insistent:

‘Wake up. Wake up! Gyokuen, wake up, now!’

Arba’s excitement is palpable, and infectious; before Gyokuen even knows what’s going on, she is eager to share her mother’s feelings. But when she glances out at her limited view, at the legion of veiled priests on either side of them and at the dark grey clouds rolling in above them, she can’t quite put it together, though the unfamiliar energy she feels in the air certainly does set the scene apart.

‘Mother? What is this?’

In the mental space they share, Arba turns to gaze at her, her eyes and smile wide with the purest joy that Gyokuen has ever seen. Her lips fall open, but she can’t seem to find the right words. So after a moment, in lieu of speaking at all she runs for her daughter, grabbing her by the shoulders and pulling her in for a kiss. Gyokuen can feel the older woman’s hands shaking as her grip tightens, and she stays still and relaxed as her mother leans closer, presses harder on her lips. ‘My darling,’ Arba croons in her head, low and long. ‘My darling, I’ve done it, it’s happening right now. And I have you to thank for it.’

Arba pulls back, smiling proudly, and Gyokuen can’t help but do the same. ‘I’m glad. But what did you do?’

‘Come, look for yourself. Our Father is arriving.’

Arba has their head craned up to the sky. Though she knows there is nothing in the air above them, she, like her mother, is allowed to see through the eyes of the priests stationed wherever in the world this is actually happening. She doesn’t recognize the terrain, but she isn’t looking at it for long before what she’s supposed to be seeing catches her eye.

‘M-Mother!’

A colossal black mass, emerging from the clouds and stretching slowly down from sky to earth. Forget its dizzying size - the presence, the sheer power she feels from it hits her right in the pit of her stomach, and she very suddenly cannot breathe. She is faintly aware of their physical form, of the tears running down their face and Arba shrieking jubilantly in her daughter’s voice. But she is too transfixed by this thing, this...this god descending before her to care about anything else. Her eyes are locked onto its form, and she is shaking uncontrollably as she feels its influence on her, even in this state. Its darkness pours into her, sending her thoughts into a whirlwind and turning her blood to fire. This feeling...It's locking eyes with her father as her mother drives a knife through his heart, it’s clutching her own blade tight as it tears through her sisters, it's the itch in her fingers just before they close around her brother’s throat, and oh - !

This. This is what Arba has sought for a thousand years, this is what she loves more deeply and passionately than she could ever love her children. And for the first time in her life, she feels no envy at being passed over. For the first time, she understands.

She could happily lose herself here and bathe in this sensation forever. If all this goes uninterrupted, ‘forever’ won’t last very long anyway, and this way she won't even notice when it ends. But too soon, her mother takes hold of her again, jarring her back to reality.

‘I know, love, I know,’ she says, seeing the confused and disappointed look on her daughter’s face. ‘It’s an indescribable feeling to meet him, isn’t it? But I thought you’d like to take a quick look on the ground. Our family thinks that they have a chance at stopping us. But they are like ants struggling against the river’s current. Go on, watch.’

So she does, follows their gaze to the battlefield below. It’s not as interesting a sight, in her opinion. The towering creature born from their god is impressive, but she is surprised to find that, comparatively tiny and weak as they are, it is the humans darting around it that catch and hold her attention.

The blond boy and the blue-haired boy are unfamiliar and unimportant, and she barely sees them. But her nephews and niece are here, raising earth and fire and water against their weapon with everything they’ve got. (She still can’t quite wrap her head around the fact that beautiful warriors like this came from her repulsive brother-in-law). Her daughter is here as well, in shining white and gold, with the howling wind at her beck and call. She has to smile at the sight: the girl has grown up strong, after all, just like her father always said she would.

But she hasn't watched for long before it becomes apparent that something isn't right. Someone is missing.

‘Mother...Where is Hakuryuu?’

‘Ah, so you’ve noticed?’ Arba smiles. ‘He’s perfectly all right, but it seems he ignored Kouen’s call to arms. Clearly, he’s found more important things to do with his time than keep the world from ending. You didn’t hear, but we’re unable to locate Judal, too. If I had to guess, I’d say that Hakuryuu has taken him up on his offer for partnership, and they’ve finally decided to begin their revenge against me. Though I doubt that’s a surprise to you, either, considering how he behaved the last time I spoke with him. Remember?’

An uneasy laugh escapes her at that. Of course she remembers. Her mother had allowed her to take control to kill her brother-in-law, at her request. After decades of antagonism between them, it had felt good to win. But when she was done, she had returned to her usual position as a quiet observer of the events that followed. Hakuryuu had managed to surprise her, even more than he already had by actually surviving up to this point.

First he had bowed to them in the funeral room, deliberately trying to split the family apart, flaunting his rebellion in front of everybody. And then, he’d finally had the guts to draw his weapon and attack them, aiming to kill and damn the consequences. Though, when she remembers the look in his eyes every time they had touched his scars and brought up his sister before this, every time he had had to stay still and quiet because he knew he couldn’t yet retaliate, she figures that it was less that he’d planned to do that and more that he’d finally snapped after ten years of living with them. Her mother had stayed calm and controlled, as always, and it had startled Gyokuen to see how easy it really was for her to smack him down like an insect, and force him to resign himself to her touch.

May you always remain my adorable little Hakuryuu.

She and Arba both know that that is the one thing that Hakuryuu will never accept. If he hasn’t learned his place by now, he never will. The next time he comes to kill them, he will still be driven by rage, but he will have a plan and a partner and perhaps even more power. And none of it will do him any good at all. She understands now: if he dares challenge their mother again, he has no more hope of survival than his brothers did. She will not fight him herself, of course, but she wonders what it will be like to watch, and to feel her own body deal the finishing blow. She had not seen her eldest sons die, hadn’t even seen the fire, so she doesn’t yet know what it’s like to kill her own child. She wonders if it will feel any different than killing her siblings. Perhaps, this time, she will feel nothing at all.

She is sure that Arba will enjoy it, though, from what she’d said as they left the courtyard that day. According to her, their son had been on the edge of falling into depravity when they had last seen him. She smirks at the memory: Hakuryuu would be disgusted to hear how his mother had cooed over him.

You can’t see it, my love, but I can, Arba had said, with the air of an artist painting the final stroke of their masterpiece. I can see his rukh. I see the darkness in his heart surging to the surface and swirling around him. He’s exactly what I wanted him to become. When he finally falls...Oh, I can’t wait to see that. He’s going to be so beautiful. So perfect. After all these years, my perfect son.

‘Are you paying attention?’

That hadn’t been part of it. ‘What?’ she asks, jerked out of her reverie.

Arba rolls her eyes. ‘Clearly not. Well, perhaps it’s for the better. The tides have turned in the enemy’s favor. You see now?’

She looks, and is puzzled by what she sees. There are far more Metal Vessel users here now, and nothing of her mother’s. It isn’t the endgame she had been imagining at all. ‘We lost? So quickly?’

‘It would appear so. I told you about the singularity, didn’t I? King Sinbad. He’s the one down there with the ridiculous blue tail.’

‘He interfered?’

‘He and his whole damn kingdom, it seems,’ Arba growls, but then immediately returns to her usual relaxed tone. ‘Well, it scarcely matters. The dark spot we’ve torn into this world still remains, and they can’t keep fighting it off forever.’

Gyokuen smirks. ‘And we only need to get lucky once.’

‘Exactly,’ Arba agrees, her smile returning. ‘And I promise, next time won’t be such a letdown. You’ll be able to see exactly what I’ve been building up for all these years.’

‘Take as much time as you need, I’m in no hurry,’ she laughs. ‘I’ll go back to sleep for now, but do let me know when you start planning again. I’ll be happy to help.’

‘I know you are.’ Much more gently than before, Arba takes her daughter’s chin in her hand and leans in to kiss her cheek. ‘Sweet dreams, my love.’

‘Thank you. I’m already looking forward to whatever you’ll have in store for me when I wake next.’

She closes her eyes, and as always, sinks far down into herself. The warmth, the darkness, the sense of complete and total safety rushes up to meet her, enveloping her. Almost like a womb, in its perfection, she thinks, and the idea brings a small smile to her face as she falls asleep.

Mother...Let me see you again soon. Let me share in everything with you. Let every time I see you, the real you, be like the first time. Like that time...

~0~

Sometimes, floating in the dark waters of her consciousness, barely aware enough to think, she dreams.

~0~

Her newborn son squirms and murmurs in her arms, trying to fight sleep, but failing. “Shhh,” she coos, tucking his blanket more snugly around him. “Shh, Hakuren, it’s all right. Mama’s here.”

As she rocks him, Hakuren looks up at her with wide blue eyes - so much like her own, even if hers have long since lost their innocence. He's more demanding than his brother was at this age, needing to be held close by someone at all times to stay calm. It takes her a while to get him down for the night, but that’s okay. On this last night as herself, a little more time with her child couldn't hurt.

A week ago, her mother had stopped her for a moment as they passed each other in the hall, and whispered in her ear, “It's time. You have seven days; if there's anything left you’d like to do on your own, now is your chance.”

But she hadn't had anything in particular she wanted. In whiling the last days away with her husband and sons, all she had been able to think of was how her completion was so close now, so close. And now the time was finally here, for the two of them to become one. She remembers years ago, when she had found out that her rukh was different, was lesser, than her mother’s, and had insisted that she be allowed to have the same. Fortunately, her mother had already been working on a way to grant her wish; and such a sensation it had been when she had! It had taken so many times to complete the process, but the feeling of magic searing her blood was pure ecstasy, the most intimate she had ever been with another person. She knows, deep in her heart, that what her mother does to her this time will be beyond anything she has ever experienced or imagined. Finally, they will be merged together, and no one will be able to take what is hers, ever again.

As if sensing that his mother’s attention is drifting elsewhere, Hakuren whimpers again, and she smiles. “Shhh, sweetheart. Go to sleep, now. Mama’s not going anywhere.”

The way she sees it, that is perfectly true. These children - the little ones she has now and any that will come from her body in the future - still belong at least partially to her, even if she’s passing most of the responsibility for them onto Arba. They are still half her, and she just hopes that they will not only grow up strong, but also have the sense that she had and be able to support their mother the way she does. If not...Well. She supposes that she can help, doing what she can while she’s in control to make sure they’re just as attached to Arba as she is, but she really will have to hope. She doesn’t think she’ll want children she can’t see any of herself in, after all.

Finally, Hakuren’s eyes droop lower, and then close. She holds him in her arms, humming softly, for a few minutes more, until she’s sure that he’s sound asleep. If he wakes up while she’s gone, she reasons as she lays him down in his crib, one of the servants will come take care of him. “Good night, sweetheart,” she whispers as she slips out the door.

Her mother plans to move al-Thamen completely into the palace at some point, but for now, their base of operations is only a short distance from the grounds. She’s gone out riding by herself enough times that her departure tonight won’t be seen as unusual, and she knows the way there by heart. She had requested earlier that her horse be prepared, so she’ll be able to get going right away. However, she’s almost there when a loud, excited voice stops her.

“Mama! Mama!”

Before she can even turn around fully to see him, her other son is already at her side, gripping her hand and practically bouncing with a three-year-old’s typical excitement, and she smiles sweetly down at him. “What is it, Hakuyuu?”

“I’m learning swords!”

At that, she has to laugh. “I know, darling, you’ve been telling me that for the past three days.”

Hakuyuu does not care and keeps talking. “Papa says I’m already really good! He says I need to take it slow, though, but I want to do everything! You and Papa know how to do everything, don’t you?”

“Well - ”

“Papa learned from the palace trainers, but he said Grandmother Shuuen taught you. Did she really?”

“Yes, she did, but I was much older than you when she started.” And it had been less about teaching her to fight by herself, and more about strengthening her body to make it easier for her mother to fight in, but that was beside the point. “I'm glad you're excited about this, because I certainly don't miss it. I always thought it was boring.”

“It's not boring!” Hakuyuu says indignantly. “Do you think Grandmother would help teach me?”

“She might.” It would definitely give the boy a boost; there was no one in the palace who could match Arba in terms of swordsmanship. “When she gets back from her trip, we’ll see.”

“When is she coming back?”

“I haven't heard from her while she's been gone, but she said before she left that she'd be back here by tomorrow at the latest. I'm sure you can ask her then.”

Hakuyuu accepts this answer and promptly moves on. “Papa says he used to spar with his trainers to get better. Would you ever do that with Grandmother?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because I would lose.”

Truthfully, it's because she doesn't see the point in doing so, but it occurs to her that this is something of an opportunity. She kneels down to look her son in the eyes, keeping his small hands enveloped in hers. Hakuren is only a couple weeks old, so he won’t remember anything of when his mother was only herself. But Hakuyuu is a different story. She knows that once he’s grown, there really isn’t much chance that he’ll remember this specific moment from when he was just a toddler (she ought to know; her own memories start at the age of four). But that doesn’t mean she won’t be able to leave at least a little of herself in his memories.

“Hakuyuu, listen to me. You should never try and challenge somebody who you know is stronger than you. Never. Don’t give powerful people a reason to be your enemy, and don’t ever take the risk of losing. If you have to choose between doing one thing or another, always choose to do what will keep you safe. Do you understand?”

Hakuyuu looks a little puzzled at the sudden serious turn their conversation has taken, but seems to think that he’s got the gist of it, and nods happily. “Yes, Mama!”

“Very good. I’m sure you’ll pass it on to your little brother when he’s old enough to understand, too.” Anything to keep them on Arba’s side, strong and alive and serving her loyally. “Can you promise that you’ll remember all that? For your mother?”

“Sure! I promise!” he assures her, without even a second of hesitation.

Goodness, he makes her laugh sometimes. “That’s wonderful. I’m very proud of you, darling.”

Before either of them can say anything else, though, another voice makes them both look up.

“Hakuyuu? Hakuyuu, where are you?” When Hakutoku turns the corner and sees the two of them, the worry on his face immediately turns to relief. “There you are. I hoped I'd find him with you, jewel.”

“You were looking for him?” she asks, standing up again, as he bends to pick Hakuyuu up and hold him safely close.

“Yes. I told him we could go find you, but he ran off before he could hear the part about waiting for me,” he explains, looking pointedly at their son at the last three words. (Hakuyuu just giggles and leans against his father’s shoulder, knowing he’s not actually in trouble.)

“I can’t believe you lost our child,” she says flatly, before giving a light laugh to reassure him that she doesn’t mean it. “I’m glad you two showed up. I won’t be long, but I wanted to say good night before I go.”

Hakuyuu nods and leans down so his mother can kiss his forehead, but Hakutoku looks concerned again. “You’re still going out for a ride? After dark?”

“The stars are beautiful tonight, are they not? Besides, it's nothing I haven’t done before. With any luck, I might run into my mother on her way back. This is around the time she said she’d be returning, after all.”

“I still don’t like that she’s always so vague about things like this. It means I have both of you out there to worry about.”

“My mother can take care of herself, and so can I.” Her mother usually has one or two priests watching her when she’s alone; she can’t be hurt. She reaches up to take hold of her husband’s shoulders, and gets up on her toes to kiss his lips. “Don’t worry about a thing. I’ll be all right, and back before you know it.”

Her siblings had only been in-laws to him, but Hakutoku had cared for them as if they were his own blood. (Considering that his one actual sibling is a poor excuse for family, she supposes that they were more than adequate replacements.) Suddenly and inexplicably losing all three of them within the space of a few weeks had shaken him badly, to say the least, and though he’d been plenty protective before, he had worried even more over her and over their children ever since, realizing that they could be lost just as quickly. She gets back down, looking her husband in the eyes. If he knew what was about to happen to her, he would certainly try to stop it. But he wouldn’t understand. She doesn’t need to be protected from this.

When this is done, he will probably be the only one who notices that she isn't quite herself anymore. But it doesn't matter. She will be in control enough to dissuade him from thinking too hard about any times that her mother’s imitation of her isn't as convincing as it needs to be. (Arba has promised that she won't touch him, won't do anything at all to him, without her daughter’s permission. Her husband will belong to her and her alone until the day he dies.) Even if she wasn't, though, he will never be able to guess at the whole truth.

“If you're still awake, I’ll see you later tonight, Toku. And I'll see you,” she coos, reaching out to tickle Hakuyuu under the chin and make him giggle, “in the morning.”

“I'll wait up for you,” Hakutoku tells her. “Be safe, jewel.”

“I will, don't worry,” she says, as soothingly as she can.

With that, Gyokuen heads on her way again, while Hakutoku turns the other direction and carries their son off. For a moment, she has the strangest urge to look back, to watch the two of them until they fade from her sight. But it passes just as quickly as it came.

As requested, her horse is saddled and ready when she reaches it - Ayumu even whinnies happily to see her owner coming. Before long, she’s outside the palace grounds, and then outside the city, riding down the path she knows best with oppressively thick forest all around her. She's made this journey, from the palace to the base of the mountain, back and forth several times, but it feels much shorter now. With the wind in her face, the cold of the night on her skin, and the landscape rushing past her in a dark green blur to remind her that she is really doing this - racing forward, proud and unafraid, to claim her birthright once and for all - she has never felt more alive.

When she reaches the flat-roofed stone building hidden among the trees and slopes, the group of priests standing beside the entrance bow low at the sight of her, and she smirks. She dismounts, pats Ayumu on the neck, and makes her way towards the entrance while one of the priests detaches himself from the group and leads the amiable horse away.

“Gyokuen-sama,” the rest intone as she passes through them. “Welcome. Shuuen-sama awaits you inside.”

The first room is empty of furnishings, save for the two torches on the walls that provide its dim lighting. Ithnan and Falan stand on either side of the doorway to the next rooms, their eyes unreadable. She barely notices either of them: in the center of the doorway stands her mother, with a delighted smile on her face to rival Gyokuen’s own.

“Come, my love,” Arba says, reaching a hand out to her daughter. “We've waited long enough.”

“Do this however you'd like,” she replies, taking the offered hand and letting herself be led down the next hall. “I am yours.”

“Good girl.”

Arba takes her a short distance down the hall, then around a corner, and then opens the heavy wooden door to a small room at the end. The room contains only a torch on the wall and a small bed, which her mother guides her to lie down on.

“On your back, now. It's all right,” Arba soothes, kneeling down over her and reaching for the neckline of her dress. “Loose clothes, just like I told you; very good.”

“Why did you want that, anyway?” Gyokuen asks, as Arba takes her arms out of her sleeves and pulls her dress down to her waist.

“For this.” Arba lays her hand flat onto her daughter’s bare chest, right on her heart, and where their skin touches, she starts to feel a sharp sting.

“Ungh...And what is this for?”

“Just a precaution. I've marked your rukh, so that if anything unfortunate happens, it will destroy itself and your body. This way, if we’re ever defeated, we can take our opponent with us.”

She quirks an eyebrow. “You anticipate something like that happening?”

“I anticipate everything,” Arba corrects her, lifting her hand and tugging the dress half-heartedly back on. “Now...Are you ready?”

Her heart skips a beat at that, and she smiles. “Of course.”

She knows that she must be the only person in the world that her mother has ever looked at so lovingly. Arba brushes her hair out of her face, leans in so close their foreheads briefly touch, and gives her a small kiss. “All right. Let’s begin.”

She doesn’t even have time to nod before the first shard of pain hits her, right at the top of her head, and a small noise of surprise escapes her.

“I told you it would hurt,” Arba murmurs. “Don’t worry, it won’t be much, since you’re not resisting. Would you like me to finish quickly?”

“No...”

It’s not so much a sharp pain anymore as it is heat, still pounding in her head but starting to spread down her body, through her insides. Her muscles twitch minutely and it’s a little harder for her to see, but it’s not a wholly painful feeling. Her mother is here, after all, and this marks the beginning of their union. So instead of grimacing, she pulls her lips into a smile.

“That wouldn’t be any fun, now, would it?”

“No, not at all,” Arba laughs. “I'll give you some pleasure. You can take me in slowly.”

She gives a quick nod, sinking back deeper into the mattress. “You'll let me feel you...”

Because she has quickly realized that that is what this pain is: her mother’s soul, pouring into her like molten metal and melding with her own. The burning inside of her is stronger now, much stronger, and it makes her heart race hard and her blood run hot. Something like a moan works its way up from the back of her throat. Her eyes start to fall shut, but her mother grips her shoulders tight, digging her nails in, and they fly open again at the sting.

“No,” Arba hisses. Gyokuen can't quite tell, but it seems there's a haze coming over her eyes, too. “You keep your eyes on me. Eyes on me until this is over.”

“Y-Yes, Mother,” she manages. She must answer, but it’s getting harder to breathe, much less speak. Black is tinging the edges of her vision, and it’s a struggle to do as her mother orders. But still, there is nothing in her that says ‘disobey.’ There is pride and triumph and love in her mother’s eyes, the love that she has been chasing her entire life. At this moment, she couldn’t look anywhere else, even if she had wanted to.

This will be the final time she ever gazes at her mother’s face, that she ever feels this touch on her skin. She must not waste a second. She takes it all in, the pain and the pleasure alike, gladly and hungrily. Finally, they are merging, they are one -!

Arba’s hands are shaking now as she tries to hold onto her daughter, and her eyes slip between focused and unfocused. She’s not all there by this point, and under the heat, Gyokuen is becoming aware of the pounding in her head growing into something else, coming over her, smothering her. She can’t keep from whimpering. “M-Mother...”

A shaky smile finds its way onto Arba’s face. “It’s okay. I just can’t keep this up for much longer, I need to finish now. But don’t be scared. You’ll see me again...S-Soon...”

And before she can ask what that means, the darkness washes over her completely. Deep inside her, something severs, and she falls, down into suffocating black depths where she can’t feel or hear or see a thing. She tries to move her body, and finds that she can’t do that either. She’s completely disconnected from it now. But she has no time to be afraid. After a moment, there’s a voice in her head, soft and soothing.

‘There, we’re done. I told you it wouldn’t be so bad, didn’t I?’

‘Of course,’ she thinks, an automatic response. There is no question as to who is speaking to her, after all. ‘You’re in control, then?’

‘Yes. I assume it might feel a little strange to feel me move this body without your input, but don’t worry. You’ll get used to it, just as I’ll get used to sharing this space with you. I’ve never done this with any of my children before.’

‘So you’ve told me.’ Then she’s reminded of something. ‘Mother, what happens to Shuuen now?’

Arba snickers. ‘Oh, come now, I’m sure you’ve guessed. But if not, then look through our eyes and watch.’

The command confuses her, but with no further clarification given, she decides to just do what feels natural. She opens her eyes (or does Arba? She can’t yet tell) to the real world, and realizes that only a few seconds must have passed during their conversation. Shuuen is still leaning over her, unsteady and blinking as if waking up from a long, deep sleep. For just a moment, their eyes meet, and a look of total confusion starts to pass over Shuuen’s face.

But that's all she has time to do, before Arba lunges up at her, pulling one of Gyokuen’s knives out of her sleeve and slashing Shuuen’s throat in one swift motion. The woman’s eyes bulge and she immediately starts clutching at her neck in panic, as blood spurts from the ear-to-ear gash and pours over her hands. Arba grabs Shuuen by the hair at the side of her head, pulls back, and then pushes her off the bed, hard. There's a sickening crack as her skull strikes the stone wall, and she falls to the floor. Her body starts to spasm, and she's making terrified noises that might have been screams, had they not been drowned in blood.

Gyokuen finds herself mildly interested in the sight, but Arba couldn’t care less. She gets up from the bed (wiping off the blade of the knife on the sheets and slipping it back into her sleeve as she does so) and leaves the room, closing the door with Shuuen still choking and convulsing on the floor.

‘How do you feel, love?’ she asks as they walk back down the hall. ‘I don’t feel much different than usual, but what is it like for you?’

She has to consider that for a moment. Arba had been right: it was very odd to feel her body move under someone else’s control. Not like a marionette on a puppeteer’s strings, but...something more. She still exists, but detached from her physical form, she isn't sure where she fits into all of this any more. Even so, she's still gotten exactly what she wanted. Her mother is here, and no one will ever try to separate them again. They will be one, sharing body and mind, forever.

‘I'll tell you when I have the words for it.’

She feels her mother smile. ‘All right, then.’

As they near the first room, the sound of rapid whispering carries into the hall. When they reenter, Ithnan and Falan immediately step back apart and fall silent, pretending they hadn’t been talking, and Arba smirks. “You know, you two aren't very subtle.”

Falan looks them up and down - sees their flushed face and disheveled clothes - and narrows her eyes. “I could say the same of you. Just what in the world were you doing to her in there?”

Arba laughs, absently smoothing back their hair. “Why, Falan, what do you think I was doing to my daughter in there?”

Falan huffs in irritation and leans back against the wall, while Ithnan gives a short, mirthless laugh. “Why should the girl be any concern of ours?” he reminds Falan, and then turns to Arba. “So, this is the part where you reveal that you were playing Gyokuen for a fool this entire time and never intended to share that body with her, right?”

“No, Ithnan,” Arba laughs, before Gyokuen has time to be alarmed. “I meant what I said to her. She’s still in here with me.”

She can’t see Ithnan’s face, but she’s had enough practice reading his eyes to know he’s scowling underneath that veil. “Arba, I told you, if I have to deal with that little brat for another few decades - ”

“You’ll live,” Arba dismisses him, crossing the room to leave. “She wants to help, so I’m letting her. I still have my uses for her outside of being my vessel.”

“I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I never thought I’d live to see you spoiling one of your offspring this much.”

“There’s a lot we’ve lived to see, Ithnan, I don’t know why you’re surprised. And speaking of my offspring, I expect you two to have Shuuen’s body disposed of by the time I get back tomorrow,” Arba calls over her shoulder as she walks out the door.

‘You know they’re just going to start talking about us again as soon as we can’t hear, don’t you, Mother?’

‘I do the same to them. Fair’s fair.’

As they walk around the side of the building, the priests bow to them when they come near. The only one who’s not at all pleased to see them, it seems, is Ayumu. The horse’s ears twitch back and she paws the ground anxiously as they approach, and though she allows them to approach her and climb into the saddle, she’s quivering underneath her rider as a priest comes and unties her from her post.

‘What’s the matter with her?’ Gyokuen asks, taken aback. ‘She’s never behaved like this before.’

‘She knows I’m not you,’ Arba explains as she urges Ayumu into a careful trot, starting back home. ‘Animals are strange. They always know things that humans don’t. She’s not sure what’s going on, but she can sense that there’s something awfully wrong about us.’

‘Really?’

‘Oh, yes. I remember a few generations back, my newest vessel kept a pet dog, that she had for years; it rarely left her side. After I took her body, the second the dog laid eyes on me, it tried to bite me! Can you believe that?’

Gyokuen pauses to consider this new information. ‘Will it...Will it be the same with Toku? With our children? Will they shy away from us too?’

‘No, of course not. This is still your body, after all. Your touch, your scent, your voice, your heartbeat, it’s still all the same. True, young children can be very perceptive sometimes, but it’s very rare that they catch on that something’s different.’

‘Did I ever...?’

Arba laughs. ‘You never got the chance to. I took over Shuuen while she was still pregnant with you. The only one you’ve ever seen is me. And that reminds me...You still haven't truly seen me yet.’

‘What?’

‘I have one more surprise for you tonight, my love. Don't worry about the horse, I can handle it. I know the rukh is unfamiliar to you, but I don't think you'll have a problem. Just relax, close your eyes, and let yourself sink down to it - to the place where our souls are bound.’

She doesn't quite understand, but she decides again to let her instincts take over. She does as her mother orders, and feels something move. When she opens her eyes again, it's to another seemingly endless expanse of darkness, this one deep and shimmering and solid. There’s only one spot of color, of rich gold and white and red; only one other person in this place with her.

This woman doesn't tower over her the way her husband does, but Gyokuen still only comes up to her neck, now. Lean, hard muscles define her arms and abdomen. Thick braids fall down past her waist, and her russet eyes glitter with excitement. A welcoming smile curves her lips as she reaches a hand out to her daughter. “So? What do you think of me?”

This voice is stronger and more soothing than Shuuen’s was, and the sound of it makes the hair on the back of her neck stand up. “This...This is what you really look like?”

“Yes. Within our rukh, I get to stay in my true form, that of my original body. You are the only one in a thousand years to see it firsthand.”

She should feel flattered, she knows. Honored, even. But at this moment, she can’t do anything but stare, mesmerized. “You’re beautiful. So, so beautiful.”

Arba laughs, and opens her arms invitingly. “As are you, my love. Now, come to me.”

Before the words are out of her mouth, Gyokuen is already running to her, clinging to her. It doesn’t matter that the form is different, she decides, laying her head against the older woman’s chest. The feeling of her mother’s arms holding her close is exactly the same. Arba runs gentle fingers through her hair and hums contentedly. “Are you happy now, darling?” she murmurs.

The steady sound of her mother's heartbeat is in her ears, and she never wants this moment to end. And in a way, it never will. Finally, they are one complete being, and for the first time in her life, she is satisfied. Nothing and no one can ever take this away from her.

“With you? Always.”

~0~

It’s a good dream. A painless one, where everything is hers and everything is right. She is content to float in this stupor until oblivion comes. Here, one with her mother, until they can both die together, as they have lived.

~0~

Even before she fully registers that her mother has, unusually abruptly, woken her up and given her control of their body without a word of explanation, she can tell that something is wrong.

The silence and emptiness at the back of her mind are the first tip-off, but she doesn’t think too hard about that, at first. It’s the way her stomach drops and her skin goes cold that shakes her.

And that's before she looks up to see her son, stalking towards her with a sword in his hand, and stark terror pierces her heart.

‘Mother?! Mother, where are you?!’

There's silence - no, there's less than silence, there's nothing. Arba is gone.

Hakuryuu is still coming, like a tiger advancing on wounded prey, staring unblinkingly into her eyes. Sunlight glints blindingly off of his blade. Behind him, Judal crosses his arms behind his head and grins like a maniac, eyes flicking between her and Hakuryuu. (From what her mother’s told her about what they did to the young Magi, she's not surprised that he's reveling in her impending murder.) Blood is gushing from her neck and arm and she feels like she's been trampled; how badly did they beat her mother?!

Her pulse is pounding in her ears. She can't get up, let alone try to run away; she wouldn't make it very far anyway before being cut down. There's not one knife left on her that she could use to protect herself. She knows that even in perfect condition, with all her weapons, she could never hope to win without her mother’s help. She can't breathe. She can't breathe. For the first time in her life, her mother is gone

(our daughter she's with our daughter now but i need you now I need you please don't leave me)

and she is alone.

It takes her a couple tries, but though her voice is weak, it still comes out.

“H-Hakuryuu...!”

She can't run, she can't fight, but there's still a slim chance of getting out of this alive. If she can talk him down, make him hesitate long enough for her to convince him that she's not the one he needs to kill, then maybe she’ll have a chance. She’ll say anything she has to to escape, anything to get back to her mother, anything to make Hakuryuu stop looking at her with fire and bloodlust in his eyes.

“S-Stop, Hakuryuu...I'm your mother...”

Hakuryuu doesn’t break stride, and there’s not the tiniest change in his stony expression. It’s like he didn’t even hear her. She couldn’t look away from him if she tried. All of a sudden, under the panic, her sister’s voice is in her head.

You know, one day you’re going to be in real trouble, aneue. And all the sweet-talking in the world isn't going to save you.

Shut up shut up shut up shut up shut UP!

No, her sister’s wrong; keep talking, she just has to keep talking, her entire life has been a performance, she has to get the right words somehow!

“Hakuryuu...? Hakuyuu...”

The wrong name comes out completely unintentionally, but she can’t help it; he looks too much like his brother, fierce and vengeful and filled with hate, why couldn’t they have died together?! The mistake should help her, she has to sound as confused, frightened, and pitiful as she can. The act isn’t difficult at all, she’s hiding none of her fear.

“You...Where am I? What happened until now?”

She notices Judal’s grin slip off his face as he registers what she’s saying, and for a moment, she really is confused: he doesn’t know that she was possessed, does he? No, it hardly matters. The one she needs to get through to is her son. Her son, who stands over her shaking form and raises his sword, with no semblance of pity or mercy on his face. Her mouth goes dry, and she tries again to speak but nothing comes out, and still she can’t look away.

The fire still rages in his eyes, brighter and stronger than ever, but that won’t last forever, she can tell already. He will kill her here and for a moment he will feel the same rush through his veins that she once did, but it will be gone as soon as it comes, he will get no pleasure from her death, no resolution, because he’s not like their mother and he’s not like her, and without them, without revenge to drive him forward he will be left hollow, his life in ashes -

“It seems that you don’t understand, woman,” Hakuryuu snarls, making her jump. “I don’t care anymore! Die!”

The blade falls -

Some small part of her is surprised at how little it actually hurts. The cut is fast and clean, and shock and fear must be numbing the pain as her head flies from her shoulders. She feels her lips forming Hakuryuu’s name before she hits the ground, where she finds herself looking up at him again. Spattered with her blood, breathing hard and still clutching his sword tightly, blue eyes no longer monstrous but still shining with exhilaration, the image of him is striking.

Oh...My beautiful boy.

Despite everything, a smile stretches her lips. She had been right all along. He’s not like them. But he’s grown up just the way she knew he would: ruthless, strong, and dangerous.

Her body is destroyed, her mind is dulling, and she knows she has seconds to live. She knows that she will never see her mother again, in this life or the next. But there’s a chance that Hakuryuu will. If he lives to see his purpose in life revived, if he can grow even stronger, he will clash with Arba again.

I wish I could see that...

She starts to feel something else stirring around her, something she’s never noticed before. Is this the rukh? she thinks, and remembers the spell that Arba has placed on her all those decades ago. So many years, and she never thought twice about it, much less realized that its true purpose must be to cover Arba’s escape from one daughter’s body to the next. Perhaps it had been meant to keep her quiet about all of this, too, just in case.

She wonders whether Hakuryuu will even be able to figure out that his beloved sister is now gone, replaced by someone else entirely. She wonders whether he will go from there to realize that the same happened to her, whether he will pity her or grieve for her without knowing what she was truly like. She wonders, will it even matter how much either of her children know, or will Arba kill them both as easily as she killed their brothers? As easily as she left Gyokuen here to die?

Hakuryuu...I want to see you match her again...Like you must have done today, if you can pull the same tricks twice...

Heat is building up around her body. There’s a hum in the air that rises louder and louder every second, and the world around them starts to glow white. Hakuryuu looks confused, but horror flashes onto Judal’s face, and he starts to sprint towards them. She keeps smiling, keeps staring into Hakuryuu’s eyes for as long as she has left. If her mother’s face cannot be the last thing she sees before death, then she supposes her son will do.

I wish...I want to see you all...I want to see who wins - !

In an explosion of white fire, the world dies around her.

~0~

[preserving-ferretbrain]

Who Gives a F**k About Charlie Keeper

by Wardog

Tuesday, 09 June 2009

Wardog painfully reviews the self-published Who Is Charlie Keeper.~

I’ve had a busy few weeks. I’ve alphabetised all my socks, de-weeded the back garden and taken a vacation in Vienna but it’s finally got to the point of no return: I think I’m going to have to bring myself to review Who Is Charlie Keeper. I really don’t want Ferretbrain to become the place self-published books come to die, but thus far every self-published book I've read has only renewed my faith in the publishing industry. WICK, as you may have gathered, is a self-published young adult fantasy novel, and it’s, uhh, well...

Come back Jim. All is forgiven.

WICK is borderline unreadable and almost uncertainly unreviewable. Basically, imagine someone came up to you and said “Hey there, I’ve got you a car, come check it out.” And then it turned out the car had no wheels. Yes, maybe, the colour is rather nice, and its fitted with a CD player and sunroof, and the engine might be basically functional but ultimately what you’ve still got there is a car with no wheels.

So, Charlie Keeper is a

mysterious

sassy 12 year old girl who lives in a mysterious house with her amnesiac grandmother because her parents have mysteriously disappeared. Between having her inheritance stolen by the evil lawyer Mr Crow and buying a puppy with her best friend, she is chased into the alternative world of Bellania by the malignant Lord Bane. In which it becomes quickly apparent that Bad Shit Is Going Down and the fate of the world rests upon Charlie Keeper’s reluctant, 12 year old shoulders. There are good guys, bad guys, dragons, adventures,

Quidditch

K’changa, etc etc.

Putting aside for the moment, the fact that WICK is a car without wheels (and I will contextualise this metaphor in a moment), let me try to come up with something positive to say about it. Well, the original artwork that accompanies it is genuinely fabulous. In fact, if the book was even half as good as the art, we’d be laughing. Also Marcus Alexander has a remarkably good ear for dialogue, somehow navigating the spiked pit of accent and dialect without looking like a fool or reducing his characters to offensive stereotype. He’s a sample from Jensen the (Jamaican?) Treman: “Ah’s a Treman. Sweetheart, Ah’ can see yer education is sorely lacking. Who’s yer teacher? Whoever he is, he ain’t doing a proper job. Tell me, little Hippotomai, an’ don’t stomp yer feetsies at me, do ya know wot a Stoman is, or a Human? Eh?” You’d think it would get grating but, somehow, it never does. Overall, WICK romps along at a reasonable pace, and there’s lot of incident, danger and adventure. It’s certainly a colourful book, and it seems to be revelling in its own over-the-top exuberance. You know you’re dealing with a Proper villain when he massacres his own minions and gets all caps-locky about setbacks.

Unfortunately, all this counts for absolutely nothing because there are too many basic problems with the book. Firstly the style itself. I don’t know to what extent we’re dealing with a major slew of typos or if Marcus Alexander genuinely hates commas and wants them to suffer and die at his hands, but the grammar and the syntax through WICK are irregular at best and downright wrong at worst. I’ve skimmed about the internet looking for other responses to it and most of them are positive: “The author's odd use of justification adds extra weight and punctuation on actions, emotive points and speech patterns bringing not just the story but also the characters very much to life. Indeed the book is quite unusual as a whole entity but I would be the first to point out that it connects with today's ambience, fashion and prosetic style.” Hmmmm. Possibly I’m just hideously hidebound but the style is simply neither controlled nor consistent enough to support this interpretation. Here’s a sample:

Powerful muscles bunched and tensed. With long smooth bounds the creature took off. As it ran past the eerily silent columns it realized, with a sinking feeling that it would never reach this mysterious family member in time, the distance was too great. It sensed days of travels lay between the two and it could sense that whatever danger threatened it’s [sic] sibling, was already perilously close.

Or another:

Charlie answering his call, hurried to the lawyer’s study, she knew better than to keep him waiting. Walking straight up to the large leather bound desk she took up a pen and without needing to be asked signed the papers offered by Mr. Crow. She knew she should at least ask what she was signing but she remembered the first time she had plucked up courage to query him; Crow had fallen into such rage, striking her and screaming, that now she dared not question.

And the punctuation lightly and seemingly randomly scattered around the dialogue is enough to bring tears to my eyes:

“Fool! Grab her!” roared the giant, Crow made a lunge for her but tripped over his braces, “Idiot! Dogs come to me, come, your Master commands it.”

It’s more than commas where they shouldn’t be and conspicuous by their absence where they should. Although Alexander occasionally gets off a vivid description or a well-turned phrase, it seems more by luck than judgement a lot of the time and his writing often bogs down in repetition, cliché and an over-reliance on adjectives. Seriously, no noun connected to Mr Crow is allowed out of doors unprefaced by a “skinny”. So Mr Crow is thin, right? I get it. I get it. Please have mercy on me.

I’m no editor but there are equally fundamental issues with the structure of the book itself. The pacing is wobbly to say the least with the narrative either practically thrown into reverse while Charlie eats some spiced bread or we are forced to witness yet another interminable game of K’changa (I hate you JK Rowling, I hate you so much. I yearn for those halcyon days in which children’s books were allowed to exist that did not contain detailed descriptions of spurious sporting activities) and then speeding so rapidly through a succession of incidents that it’s enough to make you get motion sickness. The POV, equally, veers around all over the place and, dialogue aside, the characterisation – especially of Charlie – wavers too. She seems to be scared when the narrative prefers that she’s scared, and feisty when it’s time for her to be feisty. Furthermore, her famed “big mouth” barely lives up to its reputation for causing trouble. Maybe it’s just because she doesn’t have an accent but she seems like a complete void for most of the narrative. We’re told about her qualities (and, of course, her undeniable specialness) but we rarely seem them in action in a way that could make us care about her, or even be remotely interested in her. Alexander’s descriptions of scenery and action are at least nudging towards competence, but the emotional side of it all is completely flat:

Charlie, cheeks blushing uncontrollably, stared into the eyes of the woman who was supposed to be her guardian. Never had she felt such a hate so complete, never had such an anger awoken within her heart. Charlie, that very instant felt something deep within her move and change, something within her soul sickened and died and in its place something darker was born. This was a moment that would be etched eternally into her mind.

She gets over it. She kind of like de Sade’s Justine that way – ill-defined, unchanging and unaffected.

I can’t even in good conscience say that WICK has promise: until it gets some wheels, it ain’t going nowhere. I found it a real struggle to read, partially because I was mourning every tortured comma but also because whatever is good about it is completely eclipsed by its major and fundamental problems.Themes:

Books

,

Sci-fi / Fantasy

,

Young Adult / Children

,

Self-Published

~

bookmark this with - facebook - delicious - digg - stumbleupon - reddit

~Comments (

go to latest

)

Rami

at 12:51 on 2009-06-09Ouch. From those excerpts, it seems like a pretty painful read -- but then, I like my grammar to be in more or less the right place. There's a place for bending the rules, but ignoring them like that just makes me wonder if they know the rules in the first place. And looking like you don't know how to write is not, IMHO, a good way to be taken seriously as a writer.

permalink

-

go to top

Arthur B

at 13:12 on 2009-06-09Not only does the author have a strange way with commas, he also seems to urgently need to be introduced to a semicolon or two. Harsh as I was about Jim Bernheimer, but for the most part (aside from the odd "victim's fund" gaffe) his prose was readable, at least in the sense that it was capable of being read without getting a headache.

Maybe it's just because I'm a lawgeek, but does anyone else find it odd that Charlie is asked to sign contract when she's well below the age where she can actually enter binding agreements in the first place, and when there's a grandmother handy who is presumably legally capable of doing all that for her? Mr Crow seems to be as incompetent as he is corrupt.

permalink

-

go to top

Sonia Mitchell

at 23:15 on 2009-06-09I love this review. And feel pity for everyone involved.

It actually sounds a bit Neil Gaiman-ey in intention, though I'm obviously not going to read it and see.

permalink

-

go to top

Wardog

at 14:52 on 2009-06-18Actually this review makes me feel guilty as hell - panning something is never fun, but really, it was all in good conscience I could do.

[deniscollins]

China’s Tactic to Catch a Fugitive Official: Hold His Two American Children

Liu Changming is among China’s most-wanted fugitives, accused of helping to carry out one of the country’s biggest bank frauds, in which $1.4 billion in illegal loans was issued to property developers. He fled the country in 2007. More than 10 years later, if you were a government official, would you impose an “exit ban” on his children, now in their late 20s, in order to convince Liu to return to China: (1) Yes, (2) No? Why? What are the ethics underlying your decision?

When Victor and Cynthia Liu landed with their mother on a tropical Chinese island in June to visit an ailing grandfather, they thought they would soon be on a plane back to their East Coast lives — he to start his sophomore year at Georgetown University, and she to work at the consulting firm McKinsey & Company in New York.

Instead, within days, police officers detained their mother, Sandra Han, who, like her children, is an American citizen. They moved her to a secret site, commonly known as a black jail. The children discovered at the airport that they could not leave China, even though the police had said they were not being investigated or charged with a crime, the children told American officials and family associates.

By holding the family hostage, they said, the police are trying to force the siblings’ father to return to China to face criminal charges. The father, Liu Changming, a former executive at a state-owned bank, is accused of being a central player in a $1.4 billion fraud case.

The children say their father severed ties with the family in 2012, but the Chinese authorities have still held them for months under a practice known as an exit ban — a growing tactic that has become the latest flash point in the increasingly rancorous relationship between the United States and China.

Senior American diplomats, already contending with tensions over trade and territorial disputes, have denounced the way China uses exit bans as coercive, opaque and a violation of rights. In January, the State Department issued a travel warning, saying the practice posed risks to foreigners in China. Last month, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo criticized the bans during a visit to China, and this month he mentioned the Liu family to a top Chinese foreign policy official, Yang Jiechi, at a meeting in Washington.

The siblings have pleaded their case to American officials, including John R. Bolton, the national security adviser. “The investigative officers have made abundantly clear that neither my brother nor I am under any form of investigation,” Ms. Liu, 27, wrote to Mr. Bolton in an August letter obtained by The New York Times. “We are being held here as a crude form of human collateral to induce someone with whom I have no contact to return to China for reasons with which I am entirely unfamiliar.”

She made similar points in an email sent in recent days to a family associate, saying that “the Chinese authorities have been consistent that neither Victor nor I are accused of or suspected of any criminal activity,” and that the authorities have repeatedly said that “the reason we are here is exclusively to lure” their father.

On Friday, in response to questions from The Times, a State Department spokesman, Robert Palladino, said the United States would continue expressing concern about exit bans “until we see a transparent and fair process.”

The Chinese Foreign Ministry defended the holding of the three family members, saying: “The people you mentioned all own legal and valid identity documents as Chinese citizens. Because they are suspected of economic crimes, they are restricted from exiting the country by the Chinese police in accordance with the law.”

This account of the Liu family’s plight is based on interviews with administration and congressional officials, university employees and family associates, as well as correspondence by the children to them and public records. There are currently a handful of exit-ban cases involving Americans, but this is the first one in which those with knowledge of it are making the details public.

It is also a rare instance in which one of those being held — Mr. Liu, 19 — was born in the United States. More often, China imposes exit bans, which can last from days to years, on naturalized foreign citizens who were born in China. Security officers often treat them as if they were still Chinese citizens, even though China does not recognize dual nationality.

The law in China states that its nationals automatically lose their citizenship when they gain citizenship in another country. It also says that someone like Mr. Liu who is born with citizenship from another nation is not a Chinese citizen, no matter the parents’ citizenship.

The Liu family members all entered China on American passports, and the State Department is providing them with citizen services. The police from Guangzhou, the southern provincial capital where the father worked, have taken Ms. Han, 51, to a hotel several times to meet with an American consular officer.

Liu Changming, 53, the father, is among China’s most-wanted fugitives, accused of helping to carry out one of the country’s biggest bank frauds, in which $1.4 billion in illegal loans was issued to property developers. He fled the country in 2007.

In recent years, as the Chinese authorities have waged a fierce crackdown on corruption, they have increasingly viewed family members of corrupt officials as being tied to the illegal acts, with the police sometimes aiming to prosecute spouses.

The Liu family has lived with notable wealth in the United States, in part by acquiring real estate, though there is no indication from public records that the properties were purchased with the money that the father is accused of embezzling.

Senator Elizabeth Warren, Senator Edward J. Markey and Representative Joseph P. Kennedy III, Democrats from Massachusetts, where the mother lives, have urged the United States government to act.

“Our office is aware of Victor’s, Cynthia’s and Sandra’s situations and is deeply concerned,” Mr. Markey’s office said in a statement. “We are working to secure their safe return and continue to be in touch with U.S. officials to ensure a positive outcome.”

Purgatory With the Police

The Liu children are trapped in a situation far from their elite American lives. Both attended Groton, an expensive Massachusetts boarding school. Ms. Liu graduated from Stanford and Harvard Business School. The family has a $2.3 million house in a Boston suburb, and the mother, a businesswoman, controls or has her name on companies with real estate holdings worth at least $10 million, including two luxury apartments in Manhattan, according to public records.

Since June, the children have tried to leave China three times. They travel between cities, staying in hotels or with an uncle. Their ailing grandfather died in October. They limit their electronic communications because of suspected surveillance.

“Out of concern for the security of these young Americans, we will refrain from public comment as we continue our efforts to constructively and directly engage the Chinese government to allow them to return home,” said David Pressman, a partner at the law firm Boies Schiller Flexner who is representing the Liu children.

The Georgetown president met with the children this month in Beijing. Harvard has written to the Chinese ambassador in Washington. McKinsey is in touch with Ms. Liu. People tracking the case say they hope President Trump will raise the issue at the Group of 20 summit meeting this week in Argentina, where he and Xi Jinping, the Chinese president, are expected to meet.

China has convicted foreigners of crimes and even executed them. It has also detained Muslims who are foreign citizens in its northwest internment camp system. The exit bans are different — the authorities do not keep the people at a detention site or present a legal justification. They use the ban mainly as a means of coercion: to squeeze out information, to compel a relative or friend to return to China, or to force the victim to settle a business dispute.

In one case, an American stayed in China under an exit ban for more than two years. A continuing case involves a Singaporean national working for UBS, the Swiss bank, which has prompted UBS to issue travel warnings to its employees.

“Many police actions are now taken outside the legal system, and both Chinese citizens and foreigners, especially those who used to be Chinese citizens, have been kept in China with no apparent legal authority,” said Jerome A. Cohen, a law professor at New York University.

China’s increasing use of the practice is a result of major trends: a growing disregard for civil rights among Chinese security forces; a sweeping anti-corruption campaign started by Mr. Xi in 2012; and a rush among corrupt officials and executives to move overseas with their families. In 2014, China announced the start of a global campaign to hunt down fugitive former officials.

Many of the former officials live overseas in luxury, with new names and citizenship. China has sent secret agents to the United States to try to retrieve some. China has also asked the United States to send back former officials, but the two countries do not have an extradition treaty.

American officials have been reluctant to cooperate because of China’s human rights abuses and lack of rule of law, though there have been exceptions — including the repatriation of a former vice mayor accused of stealing $39 million.

The ‘Naked Official’

In 2007, Chinese auditors closed in on what was becoming the country’s biggest bank fraud case. Liu Changming fled China that December, state media reported. The top official at the Guangzhou branch of the Bank of Communications, he was at the center of the case.

Officials charged him in 2008 with making illegal loans of about 9.8 billion yuan, or $1.4 billion, including some to a company he secretly controlled, according to Caixin, a financial newsmagazine. Officials convicted Mr. Liu’s co-conspirators but recovered only half of the money.

In 2015, China put Mr. Liu on its “Skynet” list of 100 most-wanted fugitives. Interpol issued a “red notice” for his arrest. His whereabouts are unknown.

The Financial Times reported in 2009 that after escaping China, Mr. Liu took part in shareholder meetings in London for Canton Property Investment Ltd., a company whose Chinese subsidiaries received the illegal loans. The company had gone public in London in August 2007and raised $50 million, but was delisted the next year.

Public records show that a person named Changming Liu is linked to a home in Chestnut Hill, Mass. The address matches the one Cynthia Liu lists on her Harvard alumni page. The home is owned by Sandra Han, the mother. Zillow, the real estate website, estimates its value at $2.3 million.

A company controlled by Ms. Han bought the home in 2009. Several real estate companies, trusts and limited liability corporations are registered to that address, and they in turn own rental properties in Massachusetts and luxury apartments in New York.

While Mr. Liu was moving up the ranks of China’s banking bureaucracy, he became what the Chinese call a “naked official” — someone who settles his family abroad, with relatively easy paths to foreign citizenship and well-regarded schools, and with the Chinese authorities an ocean away.

The mother and daughter moved to California in 1998, and by early the next year they lived in a condominium in Alhambra, a Los Angeles suburb popular with Chinese immigrants. In June 1999, Mr. Liu and his wife bought a three-bedroom home in nearby Arcadia. Records show they obtained Social Security numbers in California around this time.

Their son Victor was born in California that July. He later lived in southern Chinese cities for five years, leaving Guangzhou in 2007.

The couple sold the Arcadia home in 2004 and bought a house in a gated community in Armonk, N.Y., an affluent town, records show. The home was transferred to Cynthia Liu’s name in 2011 and sold in 2014 for almost $900,000.

Ms. Han is a trustee of an entity called Bountiful Success Trust — 2014, which bought a $2.77 million condominium in downtown Manhattan in 2016. Another company she controls owns a unit at the Lucida on the Upper East Side that Zillow values at $4.17 million.

Like his mother and sister, Victor Liu is interested in business, and he rented a room this summer with Noor Darwish, his first-year roommate, in a Georgetown home to do an internship at his university’s endowment office. But he left suddenly in June. He called Mr. Darwish as he was leaving the country.

“He told me he had some family problems, and that his grandfather had had a heart attack,” Mr. Darwish said.

The university has strongly pushed for the siblings’ release. On his trip to China this month, the Georgetown president, John J. DeGioia, met with senior officials. With him was Evan S. Medeiros, a professor who had helped negotiate releases of American hostages in North Korea as senior Asia director in President Barack Obama’s National Security Council.

The university has a little-known connection to China’s leadership. A nephew of Mr. Xi, China’s president, is a recent graduate of Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service. While at Georgetown, he also interned at the Brookings Institution.

None of that has helped. With winter break looming, Mr. Liu’s friends on campus are asking why he has been absent all semester. “Our room is a lot lonelier now,” Mr. Darwish said.

In China, Mr. Liu has been eating and sleeping poorly. His sister mentioned concerns about her own health in her letter to the White House. She wrote, “We feel alone, angry, and most of all afraid, and more than anything, we just want to come home.”

[douglasacogan]

You be the state judge: what sentence for autistic man whose first convictions resulted from years of fondling young girl?

Perhaps because we recently have been discussing mandatory minimum sentences for aggravated sexual offenses in my Criminal Law class, I was intrigued by this sentencing story out of the state courts in Kansas.  The piece is headlined "Judge to weigh input before sentencing child molester, including numerous letters supporting him," and here are the basics that set up the question in the title of this post:

In August a jury convicted James M. Fletcher, 35, of Lawrence, of five counts of aggravated indecent liberties with a child, for repeatedly fondling a girl over the course of more than two years, starting when she was 11. Under sentencing guidelines, even though he has no other criminal history, Fletcher faces up to life in prison with no possibility of parole for at least 25 years, plus lifetime registration and supervision if he were to be paroled.

Fletcher’s sentencing hearing was Monday, but a ruling was delayed until Nov. 9. Judge Peggy Kittel took under advisement a request from Fletcher’s attorneys to give him a lighter sentence than what the guidelines require. Kittel said she wanted time to weigh her decision “due to the length of sentence Mr. Fletcher is facing.”

His situation is unusual, Kittel said.  “What makes this case so hard is that Mr. Fletcher has no criminal history, yet is facing a lifetime sentence,” Kittel said.

The numerous letters of support from family, friends, neighbors and co-workers are “impressive,” Kittel said. Fletcher’s co-workers lauded him as a capable electrical engineer, intelligent and even “brilliant,” she said.  “And yet a jury found him guilty of betraying the trust of (the victim),” the judge said. “…He stands convicted of something, really, ethically and morally wrong.”

More than three dozen people attended Monday’s hearing.  That included the victim, who also testified at the trial, but most were supporters of Fletcher. None spoke, and neither did Fletcher other than yes and no answers to the judge, with his head otherwise bowed. Fletcher, who has been jailed since his conviction, appeared in shackles and inmate clothing. The judge did, through prosecutors, receive and read a letter from the victim with a picture that she drew, but the letter was not read aloud nor the picture displayed in court. The judge also referenced the many letters in Fletcher’s support that she received earlier.

Fletcher’s attorneys, Sarah Swain and Cooper Overstreet, emphasized his lack of criminal history, his strong support system — pointing to Fletcher’s wife, parents, relatives and friends in the audience — his model behavior while out on bond prior to his conviction and his proactivity in seeking counseling for what was described in trial as a sexual attraction to the teenage body type. “That’s a very rare thing,” Swain said. “These can only be positive steps, steps in the right direction.”

Swain also added that, prior to legislation known as Jessica’s Law, the crimes of which Fletcher was convicted would have carried a substantially lighter sentence. That law, in part, increased penalties for certain sex crimes against children. Defense attorneys requested a total sentence for Fletcher of two and a half years, or 29 and a half months on each count, running concurrently.

Prosecutor Mark Simpson said the defense's arguments were not compelling enough to depart from sentencing guidelines. In fact, Simpson said some of those same points made Fletcher’s crimes even worse. “She trusted him,” Simpson said of the victim. “He was able to have access to her in a way that she could not have been more vulnerable.”

A psychological evaluation of Fletcher concluded that he would not be able to “groom” a child because he had autism, Simpson said, but that diagnoses only came when Fletcher was 34 and seemed to contradict descriptions of him in the numerous letters of support. The same analysis concluded that Fletcher intellectualized and rationalized behavior, limiting the ability of any treatment to be effective, Simpson said.

Simpson said the crimes occurred in a house under the same roof as several of Fletcher’s relatives, who at one point even suggested that his “cuddling” was inappropriate. Simpson said Fletcher orchestrated the abuse in part by trying to convince the girl she was only dreaming it. “This was not one bad decision,” Simpson said. “This was ongoing — years of carefully planned abuse by the defendant.”

Prosecutors are requesting a sentence of life in prison for Fletcher.  Simpson said that if Fletcher were paroled after 25 years, he would have served the equivalent of five years of prison for each count. "That does not seem like an inappropriately long sentence to me," he said.

Fletcher was charged in Douglas County District Court in September 2015 with one count of aggravated indecent liberties with a child under 14, with four more counts added in May 2016.  Charges indicate Fletcher molested the girl from December 2012 through January 2015, when the victim was 13.  The victim told the jury that numerous times when she stayed at Fletcher’s house in Lawrence, he fondled her bare breasts under her T-shirt at night. She said sometimes she was awakened by the action but that she pretended to be asleep, and that afterward she felt “scared,” “confused” and initially passed off the encounters as dreams “to give myself a reason to not have to tell anybody.”

The girl said no one else saw the alleged molestation and that she never told anyone until February 2015, after a confrontation between Fletcher and her mother, where Fletcher told her mother he was sexually attracted to teens and worried he would develop an attraction to the girl.

This kind of case is the sort that, in my view, showcases why sentencing decision-making can be so challenging for judges and why modern mass incarceration in a consequences of so many choices by so many players in the criminal justice system.  As the article reveals, the severity of the sentence here appears to be the product of, inter alia, the legislature increasing punishments under Jessica's law, prosecutors bringing multiple charges, the defendant contesting those charges at trial, and the operation of state sentencing guidelines.  And still, it appears, the sentencing judge has authority to impose a sentence as low as only 2.5 years in prison or as long as a mandatory 25 years in prison.  If/when judges regularly max out sentences in these kinds of tough cases, prison populations will always be large.

This case also serves as a notable example of how many different ways one can characterize offense conduct and offender characteristics.  Is this case properly and usefully labelled a violent offense?  Is it properly and usefully labelled a first or a repeat offense?  Is this the worst kind of sex offense because of the age of the victim and the duration of the activity or would the label repeat child rape not fairly characterize the the criminal activity.  And is the defendant here clearly autistic?  Does that matter?  Is he at high risk to reoffend if he only serves 2.5 years in prison?  Might be be at higher risk to reoffend if he were sentenced to a longer prison term? 

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8247011 http://sentencing.typepad.com/sentencing_law_and_policy/2017/10/you-be-the-state-judge-what-sentence-for-autistic-man-whose-first-convictions-resulted-from-years-of.html via http://www.rssmix.com/

[benrleeusa]

You be the state judge: what sentence for autistic man whose first convictions resulted from years of fondling young girl?

Perhaps because we recently have been discussing mandatory minimum sentences for aggravated sexual offenses in my Criminal Law class, I was intrigued by this sentencing story out of the state courts in Kansas.  The piece is headlined "Judge to weigh input before sentencing child molester, including numerous letters supporting him," and here are the basics that set up the question in the title of this post:

In August a jury convicted James M. Fletcher, 35, of Lawrence, of five counts of aggravated indecent liberties with a child, for repeatedly fondling a girl over the course of more than two years, starting when she was 11. Under sentencing guidelines, even though he has no other criminal history, Fletcher faces up to life in prison with no possibility of parole for at least 25 years, plus lifetime registration and supervision if he were to be paroled.

Fletcher’s sentencing hearing was Monday, but a ruling was delayed until Nov. 9. Judge Peggy Kittel took under advisement a request from Fletcher’s attorneys to give him a lighter sentence than what the guidelines require. Kittel said she wanted time to weigh her decision “due to the length of sentence Mr. Fletcher is facing.”

His situation is unusual, Kittel said.  “What makes this case so hard is that Mr. Fletcher has no criminal history, yet is facing a lifetime sentence,” Kittel said.

The numerous letters of support from family, friends, neighbors and co-workers are “impressive,” Kittel said. Fletcher’s co-workers lauded him as a capable electrical engineer, intelligent and even “brilliant,” she said.  “And yet a jury found him guilty of betraying the trust of (the victim),” the judge said. “…He stands convicted of something, really, ethically and morally wrong.”

More than three dozen people attended Monday’s hearing.  That included the victim, who also testified at the trial, but most were supporters of Fletcher. None spoke, and neither did Fletcher other than yes and no answers to the judge, with his head otherwise bowed. Fletcher, who has been jailed since his conviction, appeared in shackles and inmate clothing. The judge did, through prosecutors, receive and read a letter from the victim with a picture that she drew, but the letter was not read aloud nor the picture displayed in court. The judge also referenced the many letters in Fletcher’s support that she received earlier.

Fletcher’s attorneys, Sarah Swain and Cooper Overstreet, emphasized his lack of criminal history, his strong support system — pointing to Fletcher’s wife, parents, relatives and friends in the audience — his model behavior while out on bond prior to his conviction and his proactivity in seeking counseling for what was described in trial as a sexual attraction to the teenage body type. “That’s a very rare thing,” Swain said. “These can only be positive steps, steps in the right direction.”

Swain also added that, prior to legislation known as Jessica’s Law, the crimes of which Fletcher was convicted would have carried a substantially lighter sentence. That law, in part, increased penalties for certain sex crimes against children. Defense attorneys requested a total sentence for Fletcher of two and a half years, or 29 and a half months on each count, running concurrently.

Prosecutor Mark Simpson said the defense's arguments were not compelling enough to depart from sentencing guidelines. In fact, Simpson said some of those same points made Fletcher’s crimes even worse. “She trusted him,” Simpson said of the victim. “He was able to have access to her in a way that she could not have been more vulnerable.”

A psychological evaluation of Fletcher concluded that he would not be able to “groom” a child because he had autism, Simpson said, but that diagnoses only came when Fletcher was 34 and seemed to contradict descriptions of him in the numerous letters of support. The same analysis concluded that Fletcher intellectualized and rationalized behavior, limiting the ability of any treatment to be effective, Simpson said.

Simpson said the crimes occurred in a house under the same roof as several of Fletcher’s relatives, who at one point even suggested that his “cuddling” was inappropriate. Simpson said Fletcher orchestrated the abuse in part by trying to convince the girl she was only dreaming it. “This was not one bad decision,” Simpson said. “This was ongoing — years of carefully planned abuse by the defendant.”

Prosecutors are requesting a sentence of life in prison for Fletcher.  Simpson said that if Fletcher were paroled after 25 years, he would have served the equivalent of five years of prison for each count. "That does not seem like an inappropriately long sentence to me," he said.

Fletcher was charged in Douglas County District Court in September 2015 with one count of aggravated indecent liberties with a child under 14, with four more counts added in May 2016.  Charges indicate Fletcher molested the girl from December 2012 through January 2015, when the victim was 13.  The victim told the jury that numerous times when she stayed at Fletcher’s house in Lawrence, he fondled her bare breasts under her T-shirt at night. She said sometimes she was awakened by the action but that she pretended to be asleep, and that afterward she felt “scared,” “confused” and initially passed off the encounters as dreams “to give myself a reason to not have to tell anybody.”

The girl said no one else saw the alleged molestation and that she never told anyone until February 2015, after a confrontation between Fletcher and her mother, where Fletcher told her mother he was sexually attracted to teens and worried he would develop an attraction to the girl.

This kind of case is the sort that, in my view, showcases why sentencing decision-making can be so challenging for judges and why modern mass incarceration in a consequences of so many choices by so many players in the criminal justice system.  As the article reveals, the severity of the sentence here appears to be the product of, inter alia, the legislature increasing punishments under Jessica's law, prosecutors bringing multiple charges, the defendant contesting those charges at trial, and the operation of state sentencing guidelines.  And still, it appears, the sentencing judge has authority to impose a sentence as low as only 2.5 years in prison or as long as a mandatory 25 years in prison.  If/when judges regularly max out sentences in these kinds of tough cases, prison populations will always be large.

This case also serves as a notable example of how many different ways one can characterize offense conduct and offender characteristics.  Is this case properly and usefully labelled a violent offense?  Is it properly and usefully labelled a first or a repeat offense?  Is this the worst kind of sex offense because of the age of the victim and the duration of the activity or would the label repeat child rape not fairly characterize the the criminal activity.  And is the defendant here clearly autistic?  Does that matter?  Is he at high risk to reoffend if he only serves 2.5 years in prison?  Might be be at higher risk to reoffend if he were sentenced to a longer prison term? 

[daemonvols]

Chapter Six

Party Preparations

 Another five days passed without my noticing much of them. The news buddies returned to downtown shootings, tractor-trailer pile ups on 481 and more house fires. I burned every piece of meat I ate and contemplated going vegan.

One day, and I cannot even now remember which day it was, Charlie left a voice message. It wasn’t as irritating as Derek’s Post-it. However, if I were keeping such a score, Charlie lost romance points when he chose the middle of the night as well to avoid direct conversation. The message didn’t earn him any points to offset the loss, either:

“Yeah, well, I left the old stiff alone, but you probably know that. I have next Thursday night off, so I thought I’d come by again and see your ghosts and vampires and whatever else you got to show me. Nine-thirty’s good for me, so I’ll see you then.”

To be honest, I would have lost romance points, too. I had forgotten all about him since Helen and Nestor. I had forgotten a lot of things, now that I’d seen how fragile even the undead’s existence can be. I rose worked, ate and slept on automatic. It was the routine that saved me: office calls, bookkeeping, and not much more.

I still had regular visits from Missy and Mischa and the other ghosts who thought it now safe to come out and resume their haunting and whining. Missy started to say something about the ending of Helen and Nestor that I knew would be meant as comfort and therefore wholly inappropriate. I stopped her with a raised index finger and a sharp “Don’t!” I did not want them thinking about it anymore than I wanted to think about it.

Fortunately, their spectral minds were easy enough to re-direct. I had only to tell them that Charlie had called and that the party was on. I cannot recommend listening to a ghost squeal in delight, let alone two. It grays the hair. But it got them off the subject of the “ending.” Got me off the memory of it, too, for a while.  Though when the memory came roaring back to me just before I fell asleep I supposed that I could pack my belongings, empty my bank account and see what Canada had to offer a bookkeeper/cemetery caretaker.

Two nights, four novels and little sleep later, I drank the musty bitter cup of reality in the form of a cup of tea, the bag for which was months past its expiration, and set to planning.

Not that I hadn’t considered the matter at all since inviting Charlie that night in Section B.  In the blissful moments right before falling asleep that first-meeting night, I thought a lot about the little “party” being held on my porch. But I hadn’t thought, said or done anything more about it.

Well, all right, I had compiled a mental “guest list” from the residents. After Charlie RSVP’d to my invitation, I made decisions. The first was that I would not invite any more of the undead into my home. We would stay on the porch.

As for the specific invitees: Derek, no question and no choice. I’d let him pick one or two other vampires to bring along, provided they had all fed before they came into my yard. Missy and Mischa I could not keep out with a banishing spell (presuming I could learn and master one in that amount of time). That made four, six if you counted the living ones: Charlie and me. And I thought about a same-day invitation two younger ghosts, Lallie and Rin.

About two years ago, these two twenty somethings fell victim ago to a double dose of D and D. One dose was driving home at three a.m. from a late-night game of Dungeons and Dragons. The second dose was a drunk driver. The families made such a fuss as to how sweet a couple they had been in life that they insisted on burying them side by side, but with separate headstones for modesty’s sake. The plots they chose in Section H lay near trees (the last of Polehouse’s crab apple trees) and “running water” (the drainage ditch, which could be a third dose of D and D, if you think about it). I’ve often thought Rin would have moved on without a care, but Lallie in death as in life ruled the relationship and she wanted to stay a while longer.

As I said, it’s been about two years. She’s still sticking around and so is he. They would probably disturb Charlie less than an old horror like Benjamin Sharpe. And Rin and Lallie might balance Derek’s pomposity.

And you have another question: Yes, there are special considerations to this sort of affair. Ghosts have no real sense of days or time. They know daylight and nighttime, but couldn’t tell you what day of the week. Also, for them, every year is still the year in which their bodies died. Technological advances are tricks and deceptions. Mischa still thinks I have the poorest design in typewriters because I have to have a separate machine to print out my work. I would have to work out a signal for these four “guests.”

Vampires, on the other hand, are keenly aware of time. I suspect they secretly pride themselves on living so long off the blood of others. Kind of like career politicians in that respect.

And like all socials of a close knit family, there are those you invite and those you don’t invite because you invited the first ones and those two parties aren’t speaking. I asked Missy and Mischa to talk to the youngsters. They had other suggestions, but I had the answers ready.

“No, we can’t invite Emma Wascher or Susan Kegg because their headstones would loosen the dirt for the whole row and then we’d have to let Old Man Sharpe loose.”

“Don’t you remember, Missy that Fred Marsberg had a crush on Mischa and passed on to the Next Life because she wouldn’t look at him even after death?”

“It simply isn’t the caliber of event to expect a Plutarch to attend, even if he or she had the bad taste to linger here.”

“A small family gathering, then,” Missy sighed.

I looked at them and pictured the rest of my “family.” Then I reconsidered moving to Canada.

I had yet to see, let alone speak or invite Derek plus one.

However, my word had to be kept, if I was to get anywhere with Charlie. Which assumed I still wanted to get somewhere. I did. Let’s be honest: romance novels can only take you so far and pillows warm up only when you hold them for hours. They never “hold” back.

 I waited for Derek beside the south arch the night before the “party”. He’d gone casual into a leather jacket and jeans that didn’t quite fit him there as well as Charlie’s, and the death’s head on the front of the T-shirt had to have looked more appropriate on the biker Derek had taken it off of than it did on him. The whole ensemble brought to mind the picture of a mama’s boy trying to look tough, but I could not laugh at him.

“Going a nighttime stroll?” he sneered. “I thought your grandfather had beaten that out of you when you were five.”

“My grandfather never laid a hand on me, thank you,” I said. “And you’re going for a new look. It doesn’t suit you.”

A good way to get a vampire’s full attention: first, make (excuse the expression) dead certain he has no intentions of feeding on you or allowing anyone else to feed on you. Then insult him, especially about his clothes.

“What do you want, Jewess?” Now he was snarling and showing his long, spiky canine teeth.

“I want you to bring one of your crew after feeding to my porch two nights from now. That’s Thursday night. Before you ask,” I interrupted a guttural laugh that Derek saved for occasions like this or a victim’s plea for mercy, “I have a new gravedigger who does not believe that you, your kind or the ghosts exist.”

“Most of your kind do not believe that we exist, either,” he countered. “And by ‘your kind,’ I mean humans, although I am stretching the point in your case.” Derek considered himself quite the charmer, but on this night, he wasn’t even trying.

I ignored the comment. “Look, a digger who doesn’t believe at best disrespects the cemetery and the graves; at worst, he becomes a grave robber.”

“I would kill him, if he tried.”

“I know you would. Trouble is, he’s union, and if you killed him, the union would want answers. They’d likely go to the news media. That would raise the Board’s hackles and get me fired. And who knows they could just as easily fire me and hire a religious nut that’d spend his days staking the lot of you in the ground and burning out the mausoleums.” He snorted. “You heard Treasurer Meecham last winter when the city wouldn’t plow up to our entrances and we had to postpone the Jarvis funeral. He said he has that Bible-thumper Frankfort waiting in the proverbial wings. Besides, you owe me.”

“I what?” The Dangerous Voice. He once scared a young artist with that voice; scared the teenager so badly, the kid peed all over the graffiti he’d spray-painted on Derek’s headstone. For myself, I’d heard that voice enough to hear a sort of blood-sucking version of, “As if!” I shrugged.

I took in a deep breath before I played what Grandpa Dov would call my trump card: “Helen and Nestor.” He took my meaning: word could not spread to other “families” that a human had witnessed one vampire destroy another. That leads to territorial disputes and a possible bloodsucking war. And I’d seen Derek behead two of his own. He understood me, but argued on in true lawyer fashion.

“You were not invited.”

“And yet you dragged me to watch it anyway.”

“You have heard the term ‘extortion’?” He grabbed one rod of the iron and yanked a bend into it. I had won. I folded my arms and waited. “I will have to bring Ian. With Helen and Nestor gone, he’s my responsibility.”

I thought for a moment of how many parents I’d heard say as much with as much regret when they came to bury their children. It’s heartbreaking to them and more than likely devastating to their children’s spirits. The CPF has very few cheerful child ghosts. Most wail through the night for their loving parents.

Not that all parents love their children. That���s a simple fact, of which I’ve had some experience. My mother left us before I was two months old. I’ve neither seen nor heard from her since.

“He’ll be a little hard to explain,” I agreed. “But I think I may have an idea for him.”

Derek looked at me hard. I am no expert on vampire brains, but I suspected from his darting eyes that he was desperate to find a way out of it. He found none. “Then we shall attend your porch soiree.” He started to leave.

“After you feed,” I said.

I won’t repeat what he said to that.

 Two phone calls the next day to our garden center served two purposes: to replace the frosted rainbow gravel my Grandma Rose used in the flower beds and to signal the ghosts that it was Party Day.

Thursday morning, the red garden center truck dumped a mountain of colored stone on my front lawn. Missy and Mischa saw the signal. They roused the youngster ghosts in the early evening. Then the “ladies” floated through the house, making verbal lists of all the places I needed to clean. When they got to my bedroom, I cried foul.

“Do I go into your coffins and critique your housekeeping?” I said.

“We don’t hold parties in our coffins, dear,” Missy reminded me. She laid the shadow of her hand on my shoulder. I shivered from the cold.

“Nobody’s going into my bedroom tonight.”

Missy tutted. “That’s too bad, dear. You need somebody sometime, you know. Birds and the bees.”

“Well, if I do, there will not be dead things in my bedroom!”

They both sniffed and floated outside through the front windows with the Cat Move.

“Not much help are they?” Rin offered with an opaque shrug.

Rin must have been a sweet, if erratic young man when he was alive. It was a pity his family saw fit to send him through Eternity in a black suit, black shirt and tightly-tied black tie. His spirit looked about six foot-two inches and he wore his blonde, straight hair samurai-style: the front locks pulled back into a mini-ponytail that sat atop the shoulder-length hair on the sides and back. He had dark eyes, a sad smile, a soft voice, and a huge desire to help me.

He’d not been dead long enough to learn how to move physical objects with any accuracy, but still he tried. And failed. Six times he tried to move dishes to from the dining room sideboard to the kitchen. Six times, they rattled and refused to budge. In high frustration, he thrust energy at one of Grandma Rose’s china cups and sent it crashing to the floor.

I ceased cutting up celery and bell peppers when I heard it and came out of the kitchen to insist that he stop ‘helping’ and park his non-corporeal behind on one of the four three-legged stools I had around the kitchen island.

He obeyed, and sank down through the stool’s wooden seat up to his nose. I pretended not to notice and kept cutting celery ribs. It doesn’t do to mock a young ghost. It spoils any other interactions they might have with the living. And ghosts, for all their blissful ignorance of time, have a long memory. Rin withdrew from the stool, gauged it in distance and height, and in a moment was hovering in a seated position two inches above the seat.

This might have resulted in a reasonably tranquil scene. However, Lallie had discovered that she could pass through ceilings as well as walls. Even as a ghost, she was a sight: her family had dressed her in a red, drop-waist dress with a white silk rose the size of a soccer ball at her hip, and black-and-white striped stockings. She dangled from the rose down from the load-bearing beam in the kitchen ceiling and then used it as her own gymnastic bar to do forward and backward flips. She may have expected Rin to applaud her efforts, but her path swung her through his head over and over, despite his efforts to avoid her. Once she realized where they intersected, she started making kissy noises. Rin looked (excuse the expression) mortified. I cut more celery.

I probably cut too much celery. There would be two to feed that night, as long as Derek kept his word. He and Ian wouldn’t care for vegetables anyway. Still, I had the celery and peppers, some crackers and a dip my Grandma Rose swore would bring a husband into the house.

Well, what she had

said

was that it would bring marriage partner. She also told me she’d made it with crackers and celery the first time my father brought my mother to the house at the CPF. In hindsight, I may well have been (excuse the expression) dead wrong to make and serve it to Charlie Tischler.

[noramoya]

"MEDIA ACCOUNTABILITY AND CELEBRITY TRIALS : RECENT PROOF OF WHY WE STILL HAVE A LONG WAY TO GO ." ~ RAVEN WOODS : author, educator, pop culture journalist and author of "Allforloveblog". "The latest addition was ( for the media at least) a rather shocking allegation of abuse from a now adult female victim whose identity has only been released thus far as “Jane Doe.” This time, Finaldi, Manly and Stewart took a slightly different approach, “leaking” the story first to gossip rag TMZ rather than their usual go-to mouthpiece Radar Online. Interestingly, this allegation came only weeks on the heels of salacious claims published by Jackson’s doctor, Conrad Murray, as part of his sordid tell-all memoir, that Jackson wanted to marry Emma Watson when she was only twelve years old. Has anyone thought to connect the dots on these allegations? For over twenty years, the world was aware that Michael Jackson had been accused of molesting boys, but nothing had ever been heard from a female accuser. Then suddenly, Murray’s memoir makes such accusations and-voile’-within weeks we learn a female accuser has jumped on board Robson’s lawsuit! But who is this alleged Jane Doe, and more importantly, does she even exist? As usual, media outlets rushed to copy and paste the story without bothering to give even the slightest veneer of scrutiny to the alleged “evidence” being presented. This included a photocopied series of highly suspicious looking cashier’s checks, a series of handwritten notes supposedly written by Michael Jackson to the plaintiff, and an embarrassingly bad photoshopped picture alleged to be of Jackson and the plaintiff. TMZ posted the images of the alleged cashier’s checks and, without batting an eye, boldly proclaimed them as evidence that “Michael Jackson wrote a bunch of checks totaling over $900,000 to cover up child sex abuse allegations from a then-12-year-old girl...” It is an age old media tactic, of course, especially among the gossip tabloids. Headlines and opening liners are intended to present lurid allegations as factual information, and it is only when the reader bothers to actually delve into the story that they get the truth in very fine print. But what about the “evidence?” The alleged notes to the girl certainly do not mean much, as there is nothing inappropriate or explicit in their contents, and certainly nothing that was out of character for Jackson in his correspondences with young fans. It was always Jackson’s style to gush affectionately when corresponding with his young fans, male or female. There is nothing here that is particularly unique, nor evidence of unlawful behavior; nothing here that Jackson might not have written to his own daughter Paris. Lastly, we do not even know if the letters have been authenticated. Many Jackson fans have already pointed out some interesting discrepancies in the handwriting of the notes, which may be worth considering. The interesting irony is that Jackson’s handwriting-much like his vocal style and dance moves-was so unique that it has invited many knock-off imitations, and through the years there has certainly been no shortage of forged items purporting to contain Jackson’s signature or to be written in his unique signature style.hand. His writing, particularly (Jackson was well known for his flourished, child-like scrawl and blocky letters) is an easy style to mimic; therefore, an easy style to duplicate. Again, without authentication, there is simply no way to know. I also find it puzzling that a series of random notes, supposedly written on several different occasions over a period of months and years, would all be written on apparently the same notepad paper out of the same notebook, or that after thirty years, they would somehow remain magically in the same pristine condition as when they were first written! Neither are the purported checks sufficient evidence. There are still far too many loopholes for this “evidence” to hold up under scrutiny. The most obvious is that if she had cashed the checks, they would not be in her possession. Banks do not return checks or copies of checks to the payee. If she didn’t cash them, then the story gets even murkier. Who the heck would sit on that kind of money for over thirty years without bothering to cash the checks? Are we supposed to believe that this girl or her parents would have said, “You know, we have these checks from Michael Jackson but let’s just hang onto them, you know, in case we decide to join a lawsuit against his companies thirty years down the road.” Yes, makes perfect sense. Also, there is nothing on those images to indicate that Michael Jackson ever signed them-that most crucial bit of evidence that one would think would be most important if the checks are expected to hold up as evidence in a civil court, let alone a tabloid story. Any reference to the payee has, of course, been redacted, which leads to another troubling issue: With no signature from either party (either of Jackson or the alleged victim) there is simply no way to know what the purpose of these alleged checks may actually have been, or to who they were written, or even if they came directly from Michael Jackson. Interestingly, at least one of the checks has as its indicated purpose a “Cash Request.” Granted, this could have been a mere cover but in that case why not just refer to it as a “Gift” or something equally vague? A “Cash Request” would seem to indicate that the payee had actually made a request for the cash, which negates the whole idea of the check’s purpose being “hush money.” Also, it makes absolutely no sense that if Jackson had started abusing the girl at twelve, he would have waited four years, until she turned fifteen, to begin a pay out. He would have wanted to ensure her compliance as soon as possible-not four years down the road. That leads us to the real clincher: Even if we assume that Jackson did write the checks and did bestow monetary gifts on “Jane Doe” that still doesn’t equate to proof of sexual molestation. Jackson was a celebrity known for the legendary generosity he often bestowed upon friends, fans, and even casual acquaintances. Like Elvis Presley and many other celebrities who grew up poor only to find themselves awash in “new money,” Jackson spent on others as lavishly as he spent on himself. This is a man who would think nothing of writing a three figure check if he was given a good enough sob story. He donated millions in his lifetime to help children and families in need. Even a casual search into his humanitarianism reveals countless stories of children whose lives he saved, or whose funerals and burials he paid for, or whose medical expenses he covered. When a family in Germany lost everything they owned in a flood, he invited them to Neverland and gave them assistance. So if truth be told, we know Jackson donated a lot of money through the years to help practically anyone who asked him for help. This leads to a very troubling conundrum. So of all those many unfortunate families and children who hit Jackson up for money and favors throughout the decades-anyone for whom he may have cut a check as a personal favor or gift-any of them now can come out of the woodwork and claim that the money they received from Jackson was for some nefarious purpose. And who is going to be able to dispute or deny it, any more than it can be proven or unproven? The tragedy is that the whole “smoke and mirrors” myth that has been erected around Jackson and sexual allegations against minors-one that the media has been responsible for perpetuating-makes it almost perfectly believable to accept these stories at face value. This is how the media operates. It has been the modus operandi of Jackson’s accusers for over twenty years. The ultimate tragedy is that it just may have created the perfect smokescreen, one in which Michael Jackson’s own unchecked generosity and willingness to help anyone in need can now be used against him. "